1035	----	THE MAN AGAINST THE SKY A Book of Poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson [Note on text: Italicized words or phrases are capitalized. Lines longer than 78 characters are broken and the continuation is indented two spaces. Some obvious errors may have been corrected.] To the memory of WILLIAM EDWARD BUTLER Several of the poems included in this book are reprinted from American periodicals, as follows: "The Gift of God", "Old King Cole", "Another Dark Lady", and "The Unforgiven"; "Flammonde" and "The Poor Relation"; "The Clinging Vine"; "Eros Turannos" and "Bokardo"; "The Voice of Age"; "Cassandra"; "The Burning Book"; "Theophilus"; "Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford". Contents Flammonde The Gift of God The Clinging Vine Cassandra John Gorham Stafford's Cabin Hillcrest Old King Cole Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford Eros Turannos Old Trails The Unforgiven Theophilus Veteran Sirens Siege Perilous Another Dark Lady The Voice of Age The Dark House The Poor Relation The Burning Book Fragment Lisette and Eileen Llewellyn and the Tree Bewick Finzer Bokardo The Man against the Sky THE MAN AGAINST THE SKY Flammonde The man Flammonde, from God knows where, With firm address and foreign air, With news of nations in his talk And something royal in his walk, With glint of iron in his eyes, But never doubt, nor yet surprise, Appeared, and stayed, and held his head As one by kings accredited. Erect, with his alert repose About him, and about his clothes, He pictured all tradition hears Of what we owe to fifty years. His cleansing heritage of taste Paraded neither want nor waste; And what he needed for his fee To live, he borrowed graciously. He never told us what he was, Or what mischance, or other cause, Had banished him from better days To play the Prince of Castaways. Meanwhile he played surpassing well A part, for most, unplayable; In fine, one pauses, half afraid To say for certain that he played. For that, one may as well forego Conviction as to yes or no; Nor can I say just how intense Would then have been the difference To several, who, having striven In vain to get what he was given, Would see the stranger taken on By friends not easy to be won. Moreover, many a malcontent He soothed and found munificent; His courtesy beguiled and foiled Suspicion that his years were soiled; His mien distinguished any crowd, His credit strengthened when he bowed; And women, young and old, were fond Of looking at the man Flammonde. There was a woman in our town On whom the fashion was to frown; But while our talk renewed the tinge Of a long-faded scarlet fringe, The man Flammonde saw none of that, And what he saw we wondered at-- That none of us, in her distress, Could hide or find our littleness. There was a boy that all agreed Had shut within him the rare seed Of learning. We could understand, But none of us could lift a hand. The man Flammonde appraised the youth, And told a few of us the truth; And thereby, for a little gold, A flowered future was unrolled. There were two citizens who fought For years and years, and over nought; They made life awkward for their friends, And shortened their own dividends. The man Flammonde said what was wrong Should be made right; nor was it long Before they were again in line, And had each other in to dine. And these I mention are but four Of many out of many more. So much for them. But what of him-- So firm in every look and limb? What small satanic sort of kink Was in his brain? What broken link Withheld him from the destinies That came so near to being his? What was he, when we came to sift His meaning, and to note the drift Of incommunicable ways That make us ponder while we praise? Why was it that his charm revealed Somehow the surface of a shield? What was it that we never caught? What was he, and what was he not? How much it was of him we met We cannot ever know; nor yet Shall all he gave us quite atone For what was his, and his alone; Nor need we now, since he knew best, Nourish an ethical unrest: Rarely at once will nature give The power to be Flammonde and live. We cannot know how much we learn From those who never will return, Until a flash of unforeseen Remembrance falls on what has been. We've each a darkening hill to climb; And this is why, from time to time In Tilbury Town, we look beyond Horizons for the man Flammonde. The Gift of God Blessed with a joy that only she Of all alive shall ever know, She wears a proud humility For what it was that willed it so,-- That her degree should be so great Among the favored of the Lord That she may scarcely bear the weight Of her bewildering reward. As one apart, immune, alone, Or featured for the shining ones, And like to none that she has known Of other women's other sons,-- The firm fruition of her need, He shines anointed; and he blurs Her vision, till it seems indeed A sacrilege to call him hers. She fears a little for so much Of what is best, and hardly dares To think of him as one to touch With aches, indignities, and cares; She sees him rather at the goal, Still shining; and her dream foretells The proper shining of a soul Where nothing ordinary dwells. Perchance a canvass of the town Would find him far from flags and shouts, And leave him only the renown Of many smiles and many doubts; Perchance the crude and common tongue Would havoc strangely with his worth; But she, with innocence unwrung, Would read his name around the earth. And others, knowing how this youth Would shine, if love could make him great, When caught and tortured for the truth Would only writhe and hesitate; While she, arranging for his days What centuries could not fulfill, Transmutes him with her faith and praise, And has him shining where she will. She crowns him with her gratefulness, And says again that life is good; And should the gift of God be less In him than in her motherhood, His fame, though vague, will not be small, As upward through her dream he fares, Half clouded with a crimson fall Of roses thrown on marble stairs. The Clinging Vine "Be calm? And was I frantic? You'll have me laughing soon. I'm calm as this Atlantic, And quiet as the moon; I may have spoken faster Than once, in other days; For I've no more a master, And now--'Be calm,' he says. "Fear not, fear no commotion,-- I'll be as rocks and sand; The moon and stars and ocean Will envy my command; No creature could be stiller In any kind of place Than I... No, I'll not kill her; Her death is in her face. "Be happy while she has it, For she'll not have it long; A year, and then you'll pass it, Preparing a new song. And I'm a fool for prating Of what a year may bring, When more like her are waiting For more like you to sing. "You mock me with denial, You mean to call me hard? You see no room for trial When all my doors are barred? You say, and you'd say dying, That I dream what I know; And sighing, and denying, You'd hold my hand and go. "You scowl--and I don't wonder; I spoke too fast again; But you'll forgive one blunder, For you are like most men: You are,--or so you've told me, So many mortal times, That heaven ought not to hold me Accountable for crimes. "Be calm? Was I unpleasant? Then I'll be more discreet, And grant you, for the present, The balm of my defeat: What she, with all her striving, Could not have brought about, You've done. Your own contriving Has put the last light out. "If she were the whole story, If worse were not behind, I'd creep with you to glory, Believing I was blind; I'd creep, and go on seeming To be what I despise. You laugh, and say I'm dreaming, And all your laughs are lies. "Are women mad? A few are, And if it's true you say-- If most men are as you are-- We'll all be mad some day. Be calm--and let me finish; There's more for you to know. I'll talk while you diminish, And listen while you grow. "There was a man who married Because he couldn't see; And all his days he carried The mark of his degree. But you--you came clear-sighted, And found truth in my eyes; And all my wrongs you've righted With lies, and lies, and lies. "You've killed the last assurance That once would have me strive To rouse an old endurance That is no more alive. It makes two people chilly To say what we have said, But you--you'll not be silly And wrangle for the dead. "You don't? You never wrangle? Why scold then,--or complain? More words will only mangle What you've already slain. Your pride you can't surrender? My name--for that you fear? Since when were men so tender, And honor so severe? "No more--I'll never bear it. I'm going. I'm like ice. My burden? You would share it? Forbid the sacrifice! Forget so quaint a notion, And let no more be told; For moon and stars and ocean And you and I are cold." Cassandra I heard one who said: "Verily, What word have I for children here? Your Dollar is your only Word, The wrath of it your only fear. "You build it altars tall enough To make you see, but you are blind; You cannot leave it long enough To look before you or behind. "When Reason beckons you to pause, You laugh and say that you know best; But what it is you know, you keep As dark as ingots in a chest. "You laugh and answer, 'We are young; O leave us now, and let us grow.'-- Not asking how much more of this Will Time endure or Fate bestow. "Because a few complacent years Have made your peril of your pride, Think you that you are to go on Forever pampered and untried? "What lost eclipse of history, What bivouac of the marching stars, Has given the sign for you to see Millenniums and last great wars? "What unrecorded overthrow Of all the world has ever known, Or ever been, has made itself So plain to you, and you alone? "Your Dollar, Dove and Eagle make A Trinity that even you Rate higher than you rate yourselves; It pays, it flatters, and it's new. "And though your very flesh and blood Be what your Eagle eats and drinks, You'll praise him for the best of birds, Not knowing what the Eagle thinks. "The power is yours, but not the sight; You see not upon what you tread; You have the ages for your guide, But not the wisdom to be led. "Think you to tread forever down The merciless old verities? And are you never to have eyes To see the world for what it is? "Are you to pay for what you have With all you are?"--No other word We caught, but with a laughing crowd Moved on. None heeded, and few heard. John Gorham "Tell me what you're doing over here, John Gorham, Sighing hard and seeming to be sorry when you're not; Make me laugh or let me go now, for long faces in the moonlight Are a sign for me to say again a word that you forgot."-- "I'm over here to tell you what the moon already May have said or maybe shouted ever since a year ago; I'm over here to tell you what you are, Jane Wayland, And to make you rather sorry, I should say, for being so."-- "Tell me what you're saying to me now, John Gorham, Or you'll never see as much of me as ribbons any more; I'll vanish in as many ways as I have toes and fingers, And you'll not follow far for one where flocks have been before."-- "I'm sorry now you never saw the flocks, Jane Wayland, But you're the one to make of them as many as you need. And then about the vanishing. It's I who mean to vanish; And when I'm here no longer you'll be done with me indeed."-- "That's a way to tell me what I am, John Gorham! How am I to know myself until I make you smile? Try to look as if the moon were making faces at you, And a little more as if you meant to stay a little while."-- "You are what it is that over rose-blown gardens Makes a pretty flutter for a season in the sun; You are what it is that with a mouse, Jane Wayland, Catches him and lets him go and eats him up for fun."-- "Sure I never took you for a mouse, John Gorham; All you say is easy, but so far from being true That I wish you wouldn't ever be again the one to think so; For it isn't cats and butterflies that I would be to you."-- "All your little animals are in one picture-- One I've had before me since a year ago to-night; And the picture where they live will be of you, Jane Wayland, Till you find a way to kill them or to keep them out of sight."-- "Won't you ever see me as I am, John Gorham, Leaving out the foolishness and all I never meant? Somewhere in me there's a woman, if you know the way to find her. Will you like me any better if I prove it and repent?" "I doubt if I shall ever have the time, Jane Wayland; And I dare say all this moonlight lying round us might as well Fall for nothing on the shards of broken urns that are forgotten, As on two that have no longer much of anything to tell." Stafford's Cabin Once there was a cabin here, and once there was a man; And something happened here before my memory began. Time has made the two of them the fuel of one flame And all we have of them is now a legend and a name. All I have to say is what an old man said to me, And that would seem to be as much as there will ever be. "Fifty years ago it was we found it where it sat."-- And forty years ago it was old Archibald said that. "An apple tree that's yet alive saw something, I suppose, Of what it was that happened there, and what no mortal knows. Some one on the mountain heard far off a master shriek, And then there was a light that showed the way for men to seek. "We found it in the morning with an iron bar behind, And there were chains around it; but no search could ever find, Either in the ashes that were left, or anywhere, A sign to tell of who or what had been with Stafford there. "Stafford was a likely man with ideas of his own-- Though I could never like the kind that likes to live alone; And when you met, you found his eyes were always on your shoes, As if they did the talking when he asked you for the news. "That's all, my son. Were I to talk for half a hundred years I'd never clear away from there the cloud that never clears. We buried what was left of it,--the bar, too, and the chains; And only for the apple tree there's nothing that remains." Forty years ago it was I heard the old man say, "That's all, my son."--And here again I find the place to-day, Deserted and told only by the tree that knows the most, And overgrown with golden-rod as if there were no ghost. Hillcrest (To Mrs. Edward MacDowell) No sound of any storm that shakes Old island walls with older seas Comes here where now September makes An island in a sea of trees. Between the sunlight and the shade A man may learn till he forgets The roaring of a world remade, And all his ruins and regrets; And if he still remembers here Poor fights he may have won or lost,-- If he be ridden with the fear Of what some other fight may cost,-- If, eager to confuse too soon, What he has known with what may be, He reads a planet out of tune For cause of his jarred harmony,-- If here he venture to unroll His index of adagios, And he be given to console Humanity with what he knows,-- He may by contemplation learn A little more than what he knew, And even see great oaks return To acorns out of which they grew. He may, if he but listen well, Through twilight and the silence here, Be told what there are none may tell To vanity's impatient ear; And he may never dare again Say what awaits him, or be sure What sunlit labyrinth of pain He may not enter and endure. Who knows to-day from yesterday May learn to count no thing too strange: Love builds of what Time takes away, Till Death itself is less than Change. Who sees enough in his duress May go as far as dreams have gone; Who sees a little may do less Than many who are blind have done; Who sees unchastened here the soul Triumphant has no other sight Than has a child who sees the whole World radiant with his own delight. Far journeys and hard wandering Await him in whose crude surmise Peace, like a mask, hides everything That is and has been from his eyes; And all his wisdom is unfound, Or like a web that error weaves On airy looms that have a sound No louder now than falling leaves. Old King Cole In Tilbury Town did Old King Cole A wise old age anticipate, Desiring, with his pipe and bowl, No Khan's extravagant estate. No crown annoyed his honest head, No fiddlers three were called or needed; For two disastrous heirs instead Made music more than ever three did. Bereft of her with whom his life Was harmony without a flaw, He took no other for a wife, Nor sighed for any that he saw; And if he doubted his two sons, And heirs, Alexis and Evander, He might have been as doubtful once Of Robert Burns and Alexander. Alexis, in his early youth, Began to steal--from old and young. Likewise Evander, and the truth Was like a bad taste on his tongue. Born thieves and liars, their affair Seemed only to be tarred with evil-- The most insufferable pair Of scamps that ever cheered the devil. The world went on, their fame went on, And they went on--from bad to worse; Till, goaded hot with nothing done, And each accoutred with a curse, The friends of Old King Cole, by twos, And fours, and sevens, and elevens, Pronounced unalterable views Of doings that were not of heaven's. And having learned again whereby Their baleful zeal had come about, King Cole met many a wrathful eye So kindly that its wrath went out-- Or partly out. Say what they would, He seemed the more to court their candor; But never told what kind of good Was in Alexis and Evander. And Old King Cole, with many a puff That haloed his urbanity, Would smoke till he had smoked enough, And listen most attentively. He beamed as with an inward light That had the Lord's assurance in it; And once a man was there all night, Expecting something every minute. But whether from too little thought, Or too much fealty to the bowl, A dim reward was all he got For sitting up with Old King Cole. "Though mine," the father mused aloud, "Are not the sons I would have chosen, Shall I, less evilly endowed, By their infirmity be frozen? "They'll have a bad end, I'll agree, But I was never born to groan; For I can see what I can see, And I'm accordingly alone. With open heart and open door, I love my friends, I like my neighbors; But if I try to tell you more, Your doubts will overmatch my labors. "This pipe would never make me calm, This bowl my grief would never drown. For grief like mine there is no balm In Gilead, or in Tilbury Town. And if I see what I can see, I know not any way to blind it; Nor more if any way may be For you to grope or fly to find it. "There may be room for ruin yet, And ashes for a wasted love; Or, like One whom you may forget, I may have meat you know not of. And if I'd rather live than weep Meanwhile, do you find that surprising? Why, bless my soul, the man's asleep! That's good. The sun will soon be rising." Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford You are a friend then, as I make it out, Of our man Shakespeare, who alone of us Will put an ass's head in Fairyland As he would add a shilling to more shillings, All most harmonious,--and out of his Miraculous inviolable increase Fills Ilion, Rome, or any town you like Of olden time with timeless Englishmen; And I must wonder what you think of him-- All you down there where your small Avon flows By Stratford, and where you're an Alderman. Some, for a guess, would have him riding back To be a farrier there, or say a dyer; Or maybe one of your adept surveyors; Or like enough the wizard of all tanners. Not you--no fear of that; for I discern In you a kindling of the flame that saves-- The nimble element, the true phlogiston; I see it, and was told of it, moreover, By our discriminate friend himself, no other. Had you been one of the sad average, As he would have it,--meaning, as I take it, The sinew and the solvent of our Island, You'd not be buying beer for this Terpander's Approved and estimated friend Ben Jonson; He'd never foist it as a part of his Contingent entertainment of a townsman While he goes off rehearsing, as he must, If he shall ever be the Duke of Stratford. And my words are no shadow on your town-- Far from it; for one town's as like another As all are unlike London. Oh, he knows it,-- And there's the Stratford in him; he denies it, And there's the Shakespeare in him. So, God help him! I tell him he needs Greek; but neither God Nor Greek will help him. Nothing will help that man. You see the fates have given him so much, He must have all or perish,--or look out Of London, where he sees too many lords; They're part of half what ails him: I suppose There's nothing fouler down among the demons Than what it is he feels when he remembers The dust and sweat and ointment of his calling With his lords looking on and laughing at him. King as he is, he can't be king de facto, And that's as well, because he wouldn't like it; He'd frame a lower rating of men then Than he has now; and after that would come An abdication or an apoplexy. He can't be king, not even king of Stratford,-- Though half the world, if not the whole of it, May crown him with a crown that fits no king Save Lord Apollo's homesick emissary: Not there on Avon, or on any stream Where Naiads and their white arms are no more, Shall he find home again. It's all too bad. But there's a comfort, for he'll have that House-- The best you ever saw; and he'll be there Anon, as you're an Alderman. Good God! He makes me lie awake o' nights and laugh. And you have known him from his origin, You tell me; and a most uncommon urchin He must have been to the few seeing ones-- A trifle terrifying, I dare say, Discovering a world with his man's eyes, Quite as another lad might see some finches, If he looked hard and had an eye for nature. But this one had his eyes and their foretelling, And he had you to fare with, and what else? He must have had a father and a mother-- In fact I've heard him say so--and a dog, As a boy should, I venture; and the dog, Most likely, was the only man who knew him. A dog, for all I know, is what he needs As much as anything right here to-day, To counsel him about his disillusions, Old aches, and parturitions of what's coming,-- A dog of orders, an emeritus, To wag his tail at him when he comes home, And then to put his paws up on his knees And say, "For God's sake, what's it all about?" I don't know whether he needs a dog or not-- Or what he needs. I tell him he needs Greek; I'll talk of rules and Aristotle with him, And if his tongue's at home he'll say to that, "I have your word that Aristotle knows, And you mine that I don't know Aristotle." He's all at odds with all the unities, And what's yet worse, it doesn't seem to matter; He treads along through Time's old wilderness As if the tramp of all the centuries Had left no roads--and there are none, for him; He doesn't see them, even with those eyes,-- And that's a pity, or I say it is. Accordingly we have him as we have him-- Going his way, the way that he goes best, A pleasant animal with no great noise Or nonsense anywhere to set him off-- Save only divers and inclement devils Have made of late his heart their dwelling place. A flame half ready to fly out sometimes At some annoyance may be fanned up in him, But soon it falls, and when it falls goes out; He knows how little room there is in there For crude and futile animosities, And how much for the joy of being whole, And how much for long sorrow and old pain. On our side there are some who may be given To grow old wondering what he thinks of us And some above us, who are, in his eyes, Above himself,--and that's quite right and English. Yet here we smile, or disappoint the gods Who made it so: the gods have always eyes To see men scratch; and they see one down here Who itches, manor-bitten to the bone, Albeit he knows himself--yes, yes, he knows-- The lord of more than England and of more Than all the seas of England in all time Shall ever wash. D'ye wonder that I laugh? He sees me, and he doesn't seem to care; And why the devil should he? I can't tell you. I'll meet him out alone of a bright Sunday, Trim, rather spruce, and quite the gentleman. "What ho, my lord!" say I. He doesn't hear me; Wherefore I have to pause and look at him. He's not enormous, but one looks at him. A little on the round if you insist, For now, God save the mark, he's growing old; He's five and forty, and to hear him talk These days you'd call him eighty; then you'd add More years to that. He's old enough to be The father of a world, and so he is. "Ben, you're a scholar, what's the time of day?" Says he; and there shines out of him again An aged light that has no age or station-- The mystery that's his--a mischievous Half-mad serenity that laughs at fame For being won so easy, and at friends Who laugh at him for what he wants the most, And for his dukedom down in Warwickshire;-- By which you see we're all a little jealous.... Poor Greene! I fear the color of his name Was even as that of his ascending soul; And he was one where there are many others,-- Some scrivening to the end against their fate, Their puppets all in ink and all to die there; And some with hands that once would shade an eye That scanned Euripides and Aeschylus Will reach by this time for a pot-house mop To slush their first and last of royalties. Poor devils! and they all play to his hand; For so it was in Athens and old Rome. But that's not here or there; I've wandered off. Greene does it, or I'm careful. Where's that boy? Yes, he'll go back to Stratford. And we'll miss him? Dear sir, there'll be no London here without him. We'll all be riding, one of these fine days, Down there to see him--and his wife won't like us; And then we'll think of what he never said Of women--which, if taken all in all With what he did say, would buy many horses. Though nowadays he's not so much for women: "So few of them," he says, "are worth the guessing." But there's a work at work when he says that, And while he says it one feels in the air A deal of circumambient hocus-pocus. They've had him dancing till his toes were tender, And he can feel 'em now, come chilly rains. There's no long cry for going into it, However, and we don't know much about it. The Fitton thing was worst of all, I fancy; And you in Stratford, like most here in London, Have more now in the 'Sonnets' than you paid for; He's put her there with all her poison on, To make a singing fiction of a shadow That's in his life a fact, and always will be. But she's no care of ours, though Time, I fear, Will have a more reverberant ado About her than about another one Who seems to have decoyed him, married him, And sent him scuttling on his way to London,-- With much already learned, and more to learn, And more to follow. Lord! how I see him now, Pretending, maybe trying, to be like us. Whatever he may have meant, we never had him; He failed us, or escaped, or what you will,-- And there was that about him (God knows what,-- We'd flayed another had he tried it on us) That made as many of us as had wits More fond of all his easy distances Than one another's noise and clap-your-shoulder. But think you not, my friend, he'd never talk! Talk? He was eldritch at it; and we listened-- Thereby acquiring much we knew before About ourselves, and hitherto had held Irrelevant, or not prime to the purpose. And there were some, of course, and there be now, Disordered and reduced amazedly To resignation by the mystic seal Of young finality the gods had laid On everything that made him a young demon; And one or two shot looks at him already As he had been their executioner; And once or twice he was, not knowing it,-- Or knowing, being sorry for poor clay And saying nothing.... Yet, for all his engines, You'll meet a thousand of an afternoon Who strut and sun themselves and see around 'em A world made out of more that has a reason Than his, I swear, that he sees here to-day; Though he may scarcely give a Fool an exit But we mark how he sees in everything A law that, given we flout it once too often, Brings fire and iron down on our naked heads. To me it looks as if the power that made him, For fear of giving all things to one creature, Left out the first,--faith, innocence, illusion, Whatever 'tis that keeps us out o' Bedlam,-- And thereby, for his too consuming vision, Empowered him out of nature; though to see him, You'd never guess what's going on inside him. He'll break out some day like a keg of ale With too much independent frenzy in it; And all for cellaring what he knows won't keep, And what he'd best forget--but that he can't. You'll have it, and have more than I'm foretelling; And there'll be such a roaring at the Globe As never stunned the bleeding gladiators. He'll have to change the color of its hair A bit, for now he calls it Cleopatra. Black hair would never do for Cleopatra. But you and I are not yet two old women, And you're a man of office. What he does Is more to you than how it is he does it,-- And that's what the Lord God has never told him. They work together, and the Devil helps 'em; They do it of a morning, or if not, They do it of a night; in which event He's peevish of a morning. He seems old; He's not the proper stomach or the sleep-- And they're two sovran agents to conserve him Against the fiery art that has no mercy But what's in that prodigious grand new House. I gather something happening in his boyhood Fulfilled him with a boy's determination To make all Stratford 'ware of him. Well, well, I hope at last he'll have his joy of it, And all his pigs and sheep and bellowing beeves, And frogs and owls and unicorns, moreover, Be less than hell to his attendant ears. Oh, past a doubt we'll all go down to see him. He may be wise. With London two days off, Down there some wind of heaven may yet revive him; But there's no quickening breath from anywhere Shall make of him again the poised young faun From Warwickshire, who'd made, it seems, already A legend of himself before I came To blink before the last of his first lightning. Whatever there be, they'll be no more of that; The coming on of his old monster Time Has made him a still man; and he has dreams Were fair to think on once, and all found hollow. He knows how much of what men paint themselves Would blister in the light of what they are; He sees how much of what was great now shares An eminence transformed and ordinary; He knows too much of what the world has hushed In others, to be loud now for himself; He knows now at what height low enemies May reach his heart, and high friends let him fall; But what not even such as he may know Bedevils him the worst: his lark may sing At heaven's gate how he will, and for as long As joy may listen; but HE sees no gate, Save one whereat the spent clay waits a little Before the churchyard has it, and the worm. Not long ago, late in an afternoon, I came on him unseen down Lambeth way, And on my life I was afear'd of him: He gloomed and mumbled like a soul from Tophet, His hands behind him and his head bent solemn. "What is it now," said I,--"another woman?" That made him sorry for me, and he smiled. "No, Ben," he mused; "it's Nothing. It's all Nothing. We come, we go; and when we're done, we're done; Spiders and flies--we're mostly one or t'other-- We come, we go; and when we're done, we're done." "By God, you sing that song as if you knew it!" Said I, by way of cheering him; "what ails ye?" "I think I must have come down here to think," Says he to that, and pulls his little beard; "Your fly will serve as well as anybody, And what's his hour? He flies, and flies, and flies, And in his fly's mind has a brave appearance; And then your spider gets him in her net, And eats him out, and hangs him up to dry. That's Nature, the kind mother of us all. And then your slattern housemaid swings her broom, And where's your spider? And that's Nature, also. It's Nature, and it's Nothing. It's all Nothing. It's all a world where bugs and emperors Go singularly back to the same dust, Each in his time; and the old, ordered stars That sang together, Ben, will sing the same Old stave to-morrow." When he talks like that, There's nothing for a human man to do But lead him to some grateful nook like this Where we be now, and there to make him drink. He'll drink, for love of me, and then be sick; A sad sign always in a man of parts, And always very ominous. The great Should be as large in liquor as in love,-- And our great friend is not so large in either: One disaffects him, and the other fails him; Whatso he drinks that has an antic in it, He's wondering what's to pay in his insides; And while his eyes are on the Cyprian He's fribbling all the time with that damned House. We laugh here at his thrift, but after all It may be thrift that saves him from the devil; God gave it, anyhow,--and we'll suppose He knew the compound of his handiwork. To-day the clouds are with him, but anon He'll out of 'em enough to shake the tree Of life itself and bring down fruit unheard-of,-- And, throwing in the bruised and whole together, Prepare a wine to make us drunk with wonder; And if he live, there'll be a sunset spell Thrown over him as over a glassed lake That yesterday was all a black wild water. God send he live to give us, if no more, What now's a-rampage in him, and exhibit, With a decent half-allegiance to the ages An earnest of at least a casual eye Turned once on what he owes to Gutenberg, And to the fealty of more centuries Than are as yet a picture in our vision. "There's time enough,--I'll do it when I'm old, And we're immortal men," he says to that; And then he says to me, "Ben, what's 'immortal'? Think you by any force of ordination It may be nothing of a sort more noisy Than a small oblivion of component ashes That of a dream-addicted world was once A moving atomy much like your friend here?" Nothing will help that man. To make him laugh, I said then he was a mad mountebank,-- And by the Lord I nearer made him cry. I could have eat an eft then, on my knees, Tail, claws, and all of him; for I had stung The king of men, who had no sting for me, And I had hurt him in his memories; And I say now, as I shall say again, I love the man this side idolatry. He'll do it when he's old, he says. I wonder. He may not be so ancient as all that. For such as he, the thing that is to do Will do itself,--but there's a reckoning; The sessions that are now too much his own, The roiling inward of a stilled outside, The churning out of all those blood-fed lines, The nights of many schemes and little sleep, The full brain hammered hot with too much thinking, The vexed heart over-worn with too much aching,-- This weary jangling of conjoined affairs Made out of elements that have no end, And all confused at once, I understand, Is not what makes a man to live forever. O no, not now! He'll not be going now: There'll be time yet for God knows what explosions Before he goes. He'll stay awhile. Just wait: Just wait a year or two for Cleopatra, For she's to be a balsam and a comfort; And that's not all a jape of mine now, either. For granted once the old way of Apollo Sings in a man, he may then, if he's able, Strike unafraid whatever strings he will Upon the last and wildest of new lyres; Nor out of his new magic, though it hymn The shrieks of dungeoned hell, shall he create A madness or a gloom to shut quite out A cleaving daylight, and a last great calm Triumphant over shipwreck and all storms. He might have given Aristotle creeps, But surely would have given him his 'katharsis'. He'll not be going yet. There's too much yet Unsung within the man. But when he goes, I'd stake ye coin o' the realm his only care For a phantom world he sounded and found wanting Will be a portion here, a portion there, Of this or that thing or some other thing That has a patent and intrinsical Equivalence in those egregious shillings. And yet he knows, God help him! Tell me, now, If ever there was anything let loose On earth by gods or devils heretofore Like this mad, careful, proud, indifferent Shakespeare! Where was it, if it ever was? By heaven, 'Twas never yet in Rhodes or Pergamon-- In Thebes or Nineveh, a thing like this! No thing like this was ever out of England; And that he knows. I wonder if he cares. Perhaps he does.... O Lord, that House in Stratford! Eros Turannos She fears him, and will always ask What fated her to choose him; She meets in his engaging mask All reasons to refuse him; But what she meets and what she fears Are less than are the downward years, Drawn slowly to the foamless weirs Of age, were she to lose him. Between a blurred sagacity That once had power to sound him, And Love, that will not let him be The Judas that she found him, Her pride assuages her almost, As if it were alone the cost.-- He sees that he will not be lost, And waits and looks around him. A sense of ocean and old trees Envelops and allures him; Tradition, touching all he sees, Beguiles and reassures him; And all her doubts of what he says Are dimmed of what she knows of days-- Till even prejudice delays And fades, and she secures him. The falling leaf inaugurates The reign of her confusion; The pounding wave reverberates The dirge of her illusion; And home, where passion lived and died, Becomes a place where she can hide, While all the town and harbor side Vibrate with her seclusion. We tell you, tapping on our brows, The story as it should be,-- As if the story of a house Were told, or ever could be; We'll have no kindly veil between Her visions and those we have seen,-- As if we guessed what hers have been, Or what they are or would be. Meanwhile we do no harm; for they That with a god have striven, Not hearing much of what we say, Take what the god has given; Though like waves breaking it may be, Or like a changed familiar tree, Or like a stairway to the sea Where down the blind are driven. Old Trails (Washington Square) I met him, as one meets a ghost or two, Between the gray Arch and the old Hotel. "King Solomon was right, there's nothing new," Said he. "Behold a ruin who meant well." He led me down familiar steps again, Appealingly, and set me in a chair. "My dreams have all come true to other men," Said he; "God lives, however, and why care? "An hour among the ghosts will do no harm." He laughed, and something glad within me sank. I may have eyed him with a faint alarm, For now his laugh was lost in what he drank. "They chill things here with ice from hell," he said; "I might have known it." And he made a face That showed again how much of him was dead, And how much was alive and out of place, And out of reach. He knew as well as I That all the words of wise men who are skilled In using them are not much to defy What comes when memory meets the unfulfilled. What evil and infirm perversity Had been at work with him to bring him back? Never among the ghosts, assuredly, Would he originate a new attack; Never among the ghosts, or anywhere, Till what was dead of him was put away, Would he attain to his offended share Of honor among others of his day. "You ponder like an owl," he said at last; "You always did, and here you have a cause. For I'm a confirmation of the past, A vengeance, and a flowering of what was. "Sorry? Of course you are, though you compress, With even your most impenetrable fears, A placid and a proper consciousness Of anxious angels over my arrears. "I see them there against me in a book As large as hope, in ink that shines by night. For sure I see; but now I'd rather look At you, and you are not a pleasant sight. "Forbear, forgive. Ten years are on my soul, And on my conscience. I've an incubus: My one distinction, and a parlous toll To glory; but hope lives on clamorous. "'Twas hope, though heaven I grant you knows of what-- The kind that blinks and rises when it falls, Whether it sees a reason why or not-- That heard Broadway's hard-throated siren-calls; "'Twas hope that brought me through December storms, To shores again where I'll not have to be A lonely man with only foreign worms To cheer him in his last obscurity. "But what it was that hurried me down here To be among the ghosts, I leave to you. My thanks are yours, no less, for one thing clear: Though you are silent, what you say is true. "There may have been the devil in my feet, For down I blundered, like a fugitive, To find the old room in Eleventh Street. God save us!--I came here again to live." We rose at that, and all the ghosts rose then, And followed us unseen to his old room. No longer a good place for living men We found it, and we shivered in the gloom. The goods he took away from there were few, And soon we found ourselves outside once more, Where now the lamps along the Avenue Bloomed white for miles above an iron floor. "Now lead me to the newest of hotels," He said, "and let your spleen be undeceived: This ruin is not myself, but some one else; I haven't failed; I've merely not achieved." Whether he knew or not, he laughed and dined With more of an immune regardlessness Of pits before him and of sands behind Than many a child at forty would confess; And after, when the bells in 'Boris' rang Their tumult at the Metropolitan, He rocked himself, and I believe he sang. "God lives," he crooned aloud, "and I'm the man!" He was. And even though the creature spoiled All prophecies, I cherish his acclaim. Three weeks he fattened; and five years he toiled In Yonkers,--and then sauntered into fame. And he may go now to what streets he will-- Eleventh, or the last, and little care; But he would find the old room very still Of evenings, and the ghosts would all be there. I doubt if he goes after them; I doubt If many of them ever come to him. His memories are like lamps, and they go out; Or if they burn, they flicker and are dim. A light of other gleams he has to-day And adulations of applauding hosts; A famous danger, but a safer way Than growing old alone among the ghosts. But we may still be glad that we were wrong: He fooled us, and we'd shrivel to deny it; Though sometimes when old echoes ring too long, I wish the bells in 'Boris' would be quiet. The Unforgiven When he, who is the unforgiven, Beheld her first, he found her fair: No promise ever dreamt in heaven Could then have lured him anywhere That would have been away from there; And all his wits had lightly striven, Foiled with her voice, and eyes, and hair. There's nothing in the saints and sages To meet the shafts her glances had, Or such as hers have had for ages To blind a man till he be glad, And humble him till he be mad. The story would have many pages, And would be neither good nor bad. And, having followed, you would find him Where properly the play begins; But look for no red light behind him-- No fumes of many-colored sins, Fanned high by screaming violins. God knows what good it was to blind him, Or whether man or woman wins. And by the same eternal token, Who knows just how it will all end?-- This drama of hard words unspoken, This fireside farce, without a friend Or enemy to comprehend What augurs when two lives are broken, And fear finds nothing left to mend. He stares in vain for what awaits him, And sees in Love a coin to toss; He smiles, and her cold hush berates him Beneath his hard half of the cross; They wonder why it ever was; And she, the unforgiving, hates him More for her lack than for her loss. He feeds with pride his indecision, And shrinks from what will not occur, Bequeathing with infirm derision His ashes to the days that were, Before she made him prisoner; And labors to retrieve the vision That he must once have had of her. He waits, and there awaits an ending, And he knows neither what nor when; But no magicians are attending To make him see as he saw then, And he will never find again The face that once had been the rending Of all his purpose among men. He blames her not, nor does he chide her, And she has nothing new to say; If he were Bluebeard he could hide her, But that's not written in the play, And there will be no change to-day; Although, to the serene outsider, There still would seem to be a way. Theophilus By what serene malevolence of names Had you the gift of yours, Theophilus? Not even a smeared young Cyclops at his games Would have you long,--and you are one of us. Told of your deeds I shudder for your dreams, And they, no doubt, are few and innocent. Meanwhile, I marvel; for in you, it seems, Heredity outshines environment. What lingering bit of Belial, unforeseen, Survives and amplifies itself in you? What manner of devilry has ever been That your obliquity may never do? Humility befits a father's eyes, But not a friend of us would have him weep. Admiring everything that lives and dies, Theophilus, we like you best asleep. Sleep--sleep; and let us find another man To lend another name less hazardous: Caligula, maybe, or Caliban, Or Cain,--but surely not Theophilus. Veteran Sirens The ghost of Ninon would be sorry now To laugh at them, were she to see them here, So brave and so alert for learning how To fence with reason for another year. Age offers a far comelier diadem Than theirs; but anguish has no eye for grace, When time's malicious mercy cautions them To think a while of number and of space. The burning hope, the worn expectancy, The martyred humor, and the maimed allure, Cry out for time to end his levity, And age to soften its investiture; But they, though others fade and are still fair, Defy their fairness and are unsubdued; Although they suffer, they may not forswear The patient ardor of the unpursued. Poor flesh, to fight the calendar so long; Poor vanity, so quaint and yet so brave; Poor folly, so deceived and yet so strong, So far from Ninon and so near the grave. Siege Perilous Long warned of many terrors more severe To scorch him than hell's engines could awaken, He scanned again, too far to be so near, The fearful seat no man had ever taken. So many other men with older eyes Than his to see with older sight behind them Had known so long their one way to be wise,-- Was any other thing to do than mind them? So many a blasting parallel had seared Confusion on his faith,--could he but wonder If he were mad and right, or if he feared God's fury told in shafted flame and thunder? There fell one day upon his eyes a light Ethereal, and he heard no more men speaking; He saw their shaken heads, but no long sight Was his but for the end that he went seeking. The end he sought was not the end; the crown He won shall unto many still be given. Moreover, there was reason here to frown: No fury thundered, no flame fell from heaven. Another Dark Lady Think not, because I wonder where you fled, That I would lift a pin to see you there; You may, for me, be prowling anywhere, So long as you show not your little head: No dark and evil story of the dead Would leave you less pernicious or less fair-- Not even Lilith, with her famous hair; And Lilith was the devil, I have read. I cannot hate you, for I loved you then. The woods were golden then. There was a road Through beeches; and I said their smooth feet showed Like yours. Truth must have heard me from afar, For I shall never have to learn again That yours are cloven as no beech's are. The Voice of Age She'd look upon us, if she could, As hard as Rhadamanthus would; Yet one may see,--who sees her face, Her crown of silver and of lace, Her mystical serene address Of age alloyed with loveliness,-- That she would not annihilate The frailest of things animate. She has opinions of our ways, And if we're not all mad, she says,-- If our ways are not wholly worse Than others, for not being hers,-- There might somehow be found a few Less insane things for us to do, And we might have a little heed Of what Belshazzar couldn't read. She feels, with all our furniture, Room yet for something more secure Than our self-kindled aureoles To guide our poor forgotten souls; But when we have explained that grace Dwells now in doing for the race, She nods--as if she were relieved; Almost as if she were deceived. She frowns at much of what she hears, And shakes her head, and has her fears; Though none may know, by any chance, What rose-leaf ashes of romance Are faintly stirred by later days That would be well enough, she says, If only people were more wise, And grown-up children used their eyes. The Dark House Where a faint light shines alone, Dwells a Demon I have known. Most of you had better say "The Dark House", and go your way. Do not wonder if I stay. For I know the Demon's eyes, And their lure that never dies. Banish all your fond alarms, For I know the foiling charms Of her eyes and of her arms, And I know that in one room Burns a lamp as in a tomb; And I see the shadow glide, Back and forth, of one denied Power to find himself outside. There he is who is my friend, Damned, he fancies, to the end-- Vanquished, ever since a door Closed, he thought, for evermore On the life that was before. And the friend who knows him best Sees him as he sees the rest Who are striving to be wise While a Demon's arms and eyes Hold them as a web would flies. All the words of all the world, Aimed together and then hurled, Would be stiller in his ears Than a closing of still shears On a thread made out of years. But there lives another sound, More compelling, more profound; There's a music, so it seems, That assuages and redeems, More than reason, more than dreams. There's a music yet unheard By the creature of the word, Though it matters little more Than a wave-wash on a shore-- Till a Demon shuts a door. So, if he be very still With his Demon, and one will, Murmurs of it may be blown To my friend who is alone In a room that I have known. After that from everywhere Singing life will find him there; Then the door will open wide, And my friend, again outside, Will be living, having died. The Poor Relation No longer torn by what she knows And sees within the eyes of others, Her doubts are when the daylight goes, Her fears are for the few she bothers. She tells them it is wholly wrong Of her to stay alive so long; And when she smiles her forehead shows A crinkle that had been her mother's. Beneath her beauty, blanched with pain, And wistful yet for being cheated, A child would seem to ask again A question many times repeated; But no rebellion has betrayed Her wonder at what she has paid For memories that have no stain, For triumph born to be defeated. To those who come for what she was-- The few left who know where to find her-- She clings, for they are all she has; And she may smile when they remind her, As heretofore, of what they know Of roses that are still to blow By ways where not so much as grass Remains of what she sees behind her. They stay a while, and having done What penance or the past requires, They go, and leave her there alone To count her chimneys and her spires. Her lip shakes when they go away, And yet she would not have them stay; She knows as well as anyone That Pity, having played, soon tires. But one friend always reappears, A good ghost, not to be forsaken; Whereat she laughs and has no fears Of what a ghost may reawaken, But welcomes, while she wears and mends The poor relation's odds and ends, Her truant from a tomb of years-- Her power of youth so early taken. Poor laugh, more slender than her song It seems; and there are none to hear it With even the stopped ears of the strong For breaking heart or broken spirit. The friends who clamored for her place, And would have scratched her for her face, Have lost her laughter for so long That none would care enough to fear it. None live who need fear anything From her, whose losses are their pleasure; The plover with a wounded wing Stays not the flight that others measure; So there she waits, and while she lives, And death forgets, and faith forgives, Her memories go foraging For bits of childhood song they treasure. And like a giant harp that hums On always, and is always blending The coming of what never comes With what has past and had an ending, The City trembles, throbs, and pounds Outside, and through a thousand sounds The small intolerable drums Of Time are like slow drops descending. Bereft enough to shame a sage And given little to long sighing, With no illusion to assuage The lonely changelessness of dying,-- Unsought, unthought-of, and unheard, She sings and watches like a bird, Safe in a comfortable cage From which there will be no more flying. The Burning Book Or the Contented Metaphysician To the lore of no manner of men Would his vision have yielded When he found what will never again From his vision be shielded,-- Though he paid with as much of his life As a nun could have given, And to-night would have been as a knife, Devil-drawn, devil-driven. For to-night, with his flame-weary eyes On the work he is doing, He considers the tinder that flies And the quick flame pursuing. In the leaves that are crinkled and curled Are his ashes of glory, And what once were an end of the world Is an end of a story. But he smiles, for no more shall his days Be a toil and a calling For a way to make others to gaze On God's face without falling. He has come to the end of his words, And alone he rejoices In the choiring that silence affords Of ineffable voices. To a realm that his words may not reach He may lead none to find him; An adept, and with nothing to teach, He leaves nothing behind him. For the rest, he will have his release, And his embers, attended By the large and unclamoring peace Of a dream that is ended. Fragment Faint white pillars that seem to fade As you look from here are the first one sees Of his house where it hides and dies in a shade Of beeches and oaks and hickory trees. Now many a man, given woods like these, And a house like that, and the Briony gold, Would have said, "There are still some gods to please, And houses are built without hands, we're told." There are the pillars, and all gone gray. Briony's hair went white. You may see Where the garden was if you come this way. That sun-dial scared him, he said to me; "Sooner or later they strike," said he, And he never got that from the books he read. Others are flourishing, worse than he, But he knew too much for the life he led. And who knows all knows everything That a patient ghost at last retrieves; There's more to be known of his harvesting When Time the thresher unbinds the sheaves; And there's more to be heard than a wind that grieves For Briony now in this ageless oak, Driving the first of its withered leaves Over the stones where the fountain broke. Lisette and Eileen "When he was here alive, Eileen, There was a word you might have said; So never mind what I have been, Or anything,--for you are dead. "And after this when I am there Where he is, you'll be dying still. Your eyes are dead, and your black hair,-- The rest of you be what it will. "'Twas all to save him? Never mind, Eileen. You saved him. You are strong. I'd hardly wonder if your kind Paid everything, for you live long. "You last, I mean. That's what I mean. I mean you last as long as lies. You might have said that word, Eileen,-- And you might have your hair and eyes. "And what you see might be Lisette, Instead of this that has no name. Your silence--I can feel it yet, Alive and in me, like a flame. "Where might I be with him to-day, Could he have known before he heard? But no--your silence had its way, Without a weapon or a word. "Because a word was never told, I'm going as a worn toy goes. And you are dead; and you'll be old; And I forgive you, I suppose. "I'll soon be changing as all do, To something we have always been; And you'll be old... He liked you, too. I might have killed you then, Eileen. "I think he liked as much of you As had a reason to be seen,-- As much as God made black and blue. He liked your hair and eyes, Eileen." Llewellyn and the Tree Could he have made Priscilla share The paradise that he had planned, Llewellyn would have loved his wife As well as any in the land. Could he have made Priscilla cease To goad him for what God left out, Llewellyn would have been as mild As any we have read about. Could all have been as all was not, Llewellyn would have had no story; He would have stayed a quiet man And gone his quiet way to glory. But howsoever mild he was Priscilla was implacable; And whatsoever timid hopes He built--she found them, and they fell. And this went on, with intervals Of labored harmony between Resounding discords, till at last Llewellyn turned--as will be seen. Priscilla, warmer than her name, And shriller than the sound of saws, Pursued Llewellyn once too far, Not knowing quite the man he was. The more she said, the fiercer clung The stinging garment of his wrath; And this was all before the day When Time tossed roses in his path. Before the roses ever came Llewellyn had already risen. The roses may have ruined him, They may have kept him out of prison. And she who brought them, being Fate, Made roses do the work of spears,-- Though many made no more of her Than civet, coral, rouge, and years. You ask us what Llewellyn saw, But why ask what may not be given? To some will come a time when change Itself is beauty, if not heaven. One afternoon Priscilla spoke, And her shrill history was done; At any rate, she never spoke Like that again to anyone. One gold October afternoon Great fury smote the silent air; And then Llewellyn leapt and fled Like one with hornets in his hair. Llewellyn left us, and he said Forever, leaving few to doubt him; And so, through frost and clicking leaves, The Tilbury way went on without him. And slowly, through the Tilbury mist, The stillness of October gold Went out like beauty from a face. Priscilla watched it, and grew old. He fled, still clutching in his flight The roses that had been his fall; The Scarlet One, as you surmise, Fled with him, coral, rouge, and all. Priscilla, waiting, saw the change Of twenty slow October moons; And then she vanished, in her turn To be forgotten, like old tunes. So they were gone--all three of them, I should have said, and said no more, Had not a face once on Broadway Been one that I had seen before. The face and hands and hair were old, But neither time nor penury Could quench within Llewellyn's eyes The shine of his one victory. The roses, faded and gone by, Left ruin where they once had reigned; But on the wreck, as on old shells, The color of the rose remained. His fictive merchandise I bought For him to keep and show again, Then led him slowly from the crush Of his cold-shouldered fellow men. "And so, Llewellyn," I began-- "Not so," he said; "not so, at all: I've tried the world, and found it good, For more than twenty years this fall. "And what the world has left of me Will go now in a little while." And what the world had left of him Was partly an unholy guile. "That I have paid for being calm Is what you see, if you have eyes; For let a man be calm too long, He pays for much before he dies. "Be calm when you are growing old And you have nothing else to do; Pour not the wine of life too thin If water means the death of you. "You say I might have learned at home The truth in season to be strong? Not so; I took the wine of life Too thin, and I was calm too long. "Like others who are strong too late, For me there was no going back; For I had found another speed, And I was on the other track. "God knows how far I might have gone Or what there might have been to see; But my speed had a sudden end, And here you have the end of me." The end or not, it may be now But little farther from the truth To say those worn satiric eyes Had something of immortal youth. He may among the millions here Be one; or he may, quite as well, Be gone to find again the Tree Of Knowledge, out of which he fell. He may be near us, dreaming yet Of unrepented rouge and coral; Or in a grave without a name May be as far off as a moral. Bewick Finzer Time was when his half million drew The breath of six per cent; But soon the worm of what-was-not Fed hard on his content; And something crumbled in his brain When his half million went. Time passed, and filled along with his The place of many more; Time came, and hardly one of us Had credence to restore, From what appeared one day, the man Whom we had known before. The broken voice, the withered neck, The coat worn out with care, The cleanliness of indigence, The brilliance of despair, The fond imponderable dreams Of affluence,--all were there. Poor Finzer, with his dreams and schemes, Fares hard now in the race, With heart and eye that have a task When he looks in the face Of one who might so easily Have been in Finzer's place. He comes unfailing for the loan We give and then forget; He comes, and probably for years Will he be coming yet,-- Familiar as an old mistake, And futile as regret. Bokardo Well, Bokardo, here we are; Make yourself at home. Look around--you haven't far To look--and why be dumb? Not the place that used to be, Not so many things to see; But there's room for you and me. And you--you've come. Talk a little; or, if not, Show me with a sign Why it was that you forgot What was yours and mine. Friends, I gather, are small things In an age when coins are kings; Even at that, one hardly flings Friends before swine. Rather strong? I knew as much, For it made you speak. No offense to swine, as such, But why this hide-and-seek? You have something on your side, And you wish you might have died, So you tell me. And you tried One night last week? You tried hard? And even then Found a time to pause? When you try as hard again, You'll have another cause. When you find yourself at odds With all dreamers of all gods, You may smite yourself with rods-- But not the laws. Though they seem to show a spite Rather devilish, They move on as with a might Stronger than your wish. Still, however strong they be, They bide man's authority: Xerxes, when he flogged the sea, May've scared a fish. It's a comfort, if you like, To keep honor warm, But as often as you strike The laws, you do no harm. To the laws, I mean. To you-- That's another point of view, One you may as well indue With some alarm. Not the most heroic face To present, I grant; Nor will you insure disgrace By fearing what you want. Freedom has a world of sides, And if reason once derides Courage, then your courage hides A deal of cant. Learn a little to forget Life was once a feast; You aren't fit for dying yet, So don't be a beast. Few men with a mind will say, Thinking twice, that they can pay Half their debts of yesterday, Or be released. There's a debt now on your mind More than any gold? And there's nothing you can find Out there in the cold? Only--what's his name?--Remorse? And Death riding on his horse? Well, be glad there's nothing worse Than you have told. Leave Remorse to warm his hands Outside in the rain. As for Death, he understands, And he will come again. Therefore, till your wits are clear, Flourish and be quiet--here. But a devil at each ear Will be a strain? Past a doubt they will indeed, More than you have earned. I say that because you need Ablution, being burned? Well, if you must have it so, Your last flight went rather low. Better say you had to know What you have learned. And that's over. Here you are, Battered by the past. Time will have his little scar, But the wound won't last. Nor shall harrowing surprise Find a world without its eyes If a star fades when the skies Are overcast. God knows there are lives enough, Crushed, and too far gone Longer to make sermons of, And those we leave alone. Others, if they will, may rend The worn patience of a friend Who, though smiling, sees the end, With nothing done. But your fervor to be free Fled the faith it scorned; Death demands a decency Of you, and you are warned. But for all we give we get Mostly blows? Don't be upset; You, Bokardo, are not yet Consumed or mourned. There'll be falling into view Much to rearrange; And there'll be a time for you To marvel at the change. They that have the least to fear Question hardest what is here; When long-hidden skies are clear, The stars look strange. The Man against the Sky Between me and the sunset, like a dome Against the glory of a world on fire, Now burned a sudden hill, Bleak, round, and high, by flame-lit height made higher, With nothing on it for the flame to kill Save one who moved and was alone up there To loom before the chaos and the glare As if he were the last god going home Unto his last desire. Dark, marvelous, and inscrutable he moved on Till down the fiery distance he was gone,-- Like one of those eternal, remote things That range across a man's imaginings When a sure music fills him and he knows What he may say thereafter to few men,-- The touch of ages having wrought An echo and a glimpse of what he thought A phantom or a legend until then; For whether lighted over ways that save, Or lured from all repose, If he go on too far to find a grave, Mostly alone he goes. Even he, who stood where I had found him, On high with fire all round him,-- Who moved along the molten west, And over the round hill's crest That seemed half ready with him to go down, Flame-bitten and flame-cleft,-- As if there were to be no last thing left Of a nameless unimaginable town,-- Even he who climbed and vanished may have taken Down to the perils of a depth not known, From death defended though by men forsaken, The bread that every man must eat alone; He may have walked while others hardly dared Look on to see him stand where many fell; And upward out of that, as out of hell, He may have sung and striven To mount where more of him shall yet be given, Bereft of all retreat, To sevenfold heat,-- As on a day when three in Dura shared The furnace, and were spared For glory by that king of Babylon Who made himself so great that God, who heard, Covered him with long feathers, like a bird. Again, he may have gone down easily, By comfortable altitudes, and found, As always, underneath him solid ground Whereon to be sufficient and to stand Possessed already of the promised land, Far stretched and fair to see: A good sight, verily, And one to make the eyes of her who bore him Shine glad with hidden tears. Why question of his ease of who before him, In one place or another where they left Their names as far behind them as their bones, And yet by dint of slaughter toil and theft, And shrewdly sharpened stones, Carved hard the way for his ascendency Through deserts of lost years? Why trouble him now who sees and hears No more than what his innocence requires, And therefore to no other height aspires Than one at which he neither quails nor tires? He may do more by seeing what he sees Than others eager for iniquities; He may, by seeing all things for the best, Incite futurity to do the rest. Or with an even likelihood, He may have met with atrabilious eyes The fires of time on equal terms and passed Indifferently down, until at last His only kind of grandeur would have been, Apparently, in being seen. He may have had for evil or for good No argument; he may have had no care For what without himself went anywhere To failure or to glory, and least of all For such a stale, flamboyant miracle; He may have been the prophet of an art Immovable to old idolatries; He may have been a player without a part, Annoyed that even the sun should have the skies For such a flaming way to advertise; He may have been a painter sick at heart With Nature's toiling for a new surprise; He may have been a cynic, who now, for all Of anything divine that his effete Negation may have tasted, Saw truth in his own image, rather small, Forbore to fever the ephemeral, Found any barren height a good retreat From any swarming street, And in the sun saw power superbly wasted; And when the primitive old-fashioned stars Came out again to shine on joys and wars More primitive, and all arrayed for doom, He may have proved a world a sorry thing In his imagining, And life a lighted highway to the tomb. Or, mounting with infirm unsearching tread, His hopes to chaos led, He may have stumbled up there from the past, And with an aching strangeness viewed the last Abysmal conflagration of his dreams,-- A flame where nothing seems To burn but flame itself, by nothing fed; And while it all went out, Not even the faint anodyne of doubt May then have eased a painful going down From pictured heights of power and lost renown, Revealed at length to his outlived endeavor Remote and unapproachable forever; And at his heart there may have gnawed Sick memories of a dead faith foiled and flawed And long dishonored by the living death Assigned alike by chance To brutes and hierophants; And anguish fallen on those he loved around him May once have dealt the last blow to confound him, And so have left him as death leaves a child, Who sees it all too near; And he who knows no young way to forget May struggle to the tomb unreconciled. Whatever suns may rise or set There may be nothing kinder for him here Than shafts and agonies; And under these He may cry out and stay on horribly; Or, seeing in death too small a thing to fear, He may go forward like a stoic Roman Where pangs and terrors in his pathway lie,-- Or, seizing the swift logic of a woman, Curse God and die. Or maybe there, like many another one Who might have stood aloft and looked ahead, Black-drawn against wild red, He may have built, unawed by fiery gules That in him no commotion stirred, A living reason out of molecules Why molecules occurred, And one for smiling when he might have sighed Had he seen far enough, And in the same inevitable stuff Discovered an odd reason too for pride In being what he must have been by laws Infrangible and for no kind of cause. Deterred by no confusion or surprise He may have seen with his mechanic eyes A world without a meaning, and had room, Alone amid magnificence and doom, To build himself an airy monument That should, or fail him in his vague intent, Outlast an accidental universe-- To call it nothing worse-- Or, by the burrowing guile Of Time disintegrated and effaced, Like once-remembered mighty trees go down To ruin, of which by man may now be traced No part sufficient even to be rotten, And in the book of things that are forgotten Is entered as a thing not quite worth while. He may have been so great That satraps would have shivered at his frown, And all he prized alive may rule a state No larger than a grave that holds a clown; He may have been a master of his fate, And of his atoms,--ready as another In his emergence to exonerate His father and his mother; He may have been a captain of a host, Self-eloquent and ripe for prodigies, Doomed here to swell by dangerous degrees, And then give up the ghost. Nahum's great grasshoppers were such as these, Sun-scattered and soon lost. Whatever the dark road he may have taken, This man who stood on high And faced alone the sky, Whatever drove or lured or guided him,-- A vision answering a faith unshaken, An easy trust assumed of easy trials, A sick negation born of weak denials, A crazed abhorrence of an old condition, A blind attendance on a brief ambition,-- Whatever stayed him or derided him, His way was even as ours; And we, with all our wounds and all our powers, Must each await alone at his own height Another darkness or another light; And there, of our poor self dominion reft, If inference and reason shun Hell, Heaven, and Oblivion, May thwarted will (perforce precarious, But for our conservation better thus) Have no misgiving left Of doing yet what here we leave undone? Or if unto the last of these we cleave, Believing or protesting we believe In such an idle and ephemeral Florescence of the diabolical,-- If, robbed of two fond old enormities, Our being had no onward auguries, What then were this great love of ours to say For launching other lives to voyage again A little farther into time and pain, A little faster in a futile chase For a kingdom and a power and a Race That would have still in sight A manifest end of ashes and eternal night? Is this the music of the toys we shake So loud,--as if there might be no mistake Somewhere in our indomitable will? Are we no greater than the noise we make Along one blind atomic pilgrimage Whereon by crass chance billeted we go Because our brains and bones and cartilage Will have it so? If this we say, then let us all be still About our share in it, and live and die More quietly thereby. Where was he going, this man against the sky? You know not, nor do I. But this we know, if we know anything: That we may laugh and fight and sing And of our transience here make offering To an orient Word that will not be erased, Or, save in incommunicable gleams Too permanent for dreams, Be found or known. No tonic and ambitious irritant Of increase or of want Has made an otherwise insensate waste Of ages overthrown A ruthless, veiled, implacable foretaste Of other ages that are still to be Depleted and rewarded variously Because a few, by fate's economy, Shall seem to move the world the way it goes; No soft evangel of equality, Safe cradled in a communal repose That huddles into death and may at last Be covered well with equatorial snows-- And all for what, the devil only knows-- Will aggregate an inkling to confirm The credit of a sage or of a worm, Or tell us why one man in five Should have a care to stay alive While in his heart he feels no violence Laid on his humor and intelligence When infant Science makes a pleasant face And waves again that hollow toy, the Race; No planetary trap where souls are wrought For nothing but the sake of being caught And sent again to nothing will attune Itself to any key of any reason Why man should hunger through another season To find out why 'twere better late than soon To go away and let the sun and moon And all the silly stars illuminate A place for creeping things, And those that root and trumpet and have wings, And herd and ruminate, Or dive and flash and poise in rivers and seas, Or by their loyal tails in lofty trees Hang screeching lewd victorious derision Of man's immortal vision. Shall we, because Eternity records Too vast an answer for the time-born words We spell, whereof so many are dead that once In our capricious lexicons Were so alive and final, hear no more The Word itself, the living word no man Has ever spelt, And few have ever felt Without the fears and old surrenderings And terrors that began When Death let fall a feather from his wings And humbled the first man? Because the weight of our humility, Wherefrom we gain A little wisdom and much pain, Falls here too sore and there too tedious, Are we in anguish or complacency, Not looking far enough ahead To see by what mad couriers we are led Along the roads of the ridiculous, To pity ourselves and laugh at faith And while we curse life bear it? And if we see the soul's dead end in death, Are we to fear it? What folly is here that has not yet a name Unless we say outright that we are liars? What have we seen beyond our sunset fires That lights again the way by which we came? Why pay we such a price, and one we give So clamoringly, for each racked empty day That leads one more last human hope away, As quiet fiends would lead past our crazed eyes Our children to an unseen sacrifice? If after all that we have lived and thought, All comes to Nought,-- If there be nothing after Now, And we be nothing anyhow, And we know that,--why live? 'Twere sure but weaklings' vain distress To suffer dungeons where so many doors Will open on the cold eternal shores That look sheer down To the dark tideless floods of Nothingness Where all who know may drown. [End of text.] From the original advertisements: By the same author Captain Craig, A Book of Poems Revised edition with additional poems, 12mo, cloth, $1.25 "There are few poets writing in English to-day whose work is so permeated by individual charm as is Mr. Robinson's. Always one feels the presence of a man behind the poet--a man who knows life and people and things and writes of them clearly, with a subtle poetic insight that is not visible in the work of any other living writer."--'Brooklyn Daily Eagle'. "The 'Book of Annandale', a splendid poem included in this collection, is one of the most moving emotional narratives found in modern poetry." --'Review of Reviews'. "... His handling of Greek themes reveals him as a lyrical poet of inimitable charm and skill."--'Reedy's Mirror'. "A poem that must endure; if things that deserve long life get it."-- 'N. Y. Evening Sun'. "Wherever you hear people who know speak of American poets... they assume that you take the genius and place of Edwin Arlington Robinson as granted.... A man with something to say that has value and beauty. His thought is deep and his ideas are high and stimulating."--'Boston Transcript'. By the same author-------------- The Porcupine: A Drama in Three Acts Cloth, 12mo, $1.25 Edwin Arlington Robinson's comedy "Van Zorn" proved him to be one of the most accomplished of the younger generation of American dramatists. Of this play the 'Boston Transcript' said, "It is an effective presentation of modern life in New York City, in which a poet shows his skill of playwrighting... he brings to the American drama to-day a thing it sadly lacks, and that is character." In manner and technique Mr. Robinson's new play, "The Porcupine", recalls some of the work of Ibsen. Written adroitly and with the literary cleverness exhibited in "Van Zorn", it tells a story of a domestic entanglement in a dramatic fashion well calculated to hold the reader's attention. "Contains all of the qualities that are said to be conspicuously lacking in American Drama."--'N. Y. Evening Sun'. Van Zorn: A Comedy in Three Acts Cloth, 12mo, $1.25 Mr. Robinson is known as the leader of present-day American poets. In this delightful play he tells with a biting humor the story of the salvation of a soul. By clever arrangement of incident and skillful characterization he arouses strongly the reader's curiosity, and the suspense is admirably sustained. The dialogue is bright, and the construction of the plot shows the work of one well versed in the technique of the drama. Notes on the etext: John Gorham: Catches him and let's him go and eats him up for fun."-- changed to: Catches him and lets him go and eats him up for fun."-- Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford: Whatever there be, they'll be no more of that; not changed, but noted as possibly incorrect--should it be?: Whatever there be, there'll be no more of that; Then are as yet a picture in our vision. changed to: Than are as yet a picture in our vision. About the author: Edwin Arlington Robinson, 1869-1935. From the Biographical Notes of "The Second Book of Modern Verse" (1919, 1920), edited by Jessie B. Rittenhouse: Robinson, Edwin Arlington. Born at Head Tide, Maine, Dec. 22, 1869. Educated at Harvard University. Mr. Robinson is a psychological poet of great subtlety; his poems are usually studies of types and he has given us a remarkable series of portraits. He is recognized as one of the finest and most distinguished poets of our time. His successive volumes are: "Children of the Night", 1897; "Captain Craig", 1902; "The Town Down the River", 1910; "The Man against the Sky", 1916; "Merlin", 1917; and "Launcelot", 1920. The last-named volume was awarded a prize of five hundred dollars, given by The Lyric Society for the best book manuscript offered to it in 1919. In addition to his work in poetry, Mr. Robinson has written two prose plays, "Van Zorn", and "The Porcupine". In "American Poetry Since 1900", Louis Untermeyer notes, "his name was known only to a few of the literati until Theodore Roosevelt... acclaimed and aided him." Rittenhouse's Biographical Notes (above quoted) contain this entry immediately before Edwin Arlington Robinson's: "Robinson, Corinne Roosevelt.... Mrs. Robinson, who is a sister to Col. Theodore Roosevelt,... has written several volumes of verse...." It is always interesting to see the coincidence of events in history, and it is worth asking if this was not even a causal relationship.--A. L. 
1020	----	SWORD BLADES AND POPPY SEED by Amy Lowell [American (Massachusetts) poet, 1874-1925.] [Note on text: Lines longer than 78 characters have been cut and continued on the next line, which is indented 2 spaces unless in a prose poem.] SWORD BLADES AND POPPY SEED _"Face invisible! je t'ai gravée en médailles D'argent doux comme l'aube pâle, D'or ardent comme le soleil, D'airain sombre comme la nuit; Il y en a de tout métal, Qui tintent clair comme la joie, Qui sonnent lourd comme la gloire, Comme l'amour, comme la mort; Et j'ai fait les plus belles de belle argile Sèche et fragile. "Une à une, vous les comptiez en souriant, Et vous disiez: Il est habile; Et vous passiez en souriant. "Aucun de vous n'a donc vu Que mes mains tremblaient de tendresse, Que tout le grand songe terrestre Vivait en moi pour vivre en eux Que je gravais aux métaux pieux, Mes Dieux."_ Henri de Régnier, "Les Médailles d'Argile". Preface No one expects a man to make a chair without first learning how, but there is a popular impression that the poet is born, not made, and that his verses burst from his overflowing heart of themselves. As a matter of fact, the poet must learn his trade in the same manner, and with the same painstaking care, as the cabinet-maker. His heart may overflow with high thoughts and sparkling fancies, but if he cannot convey them to his reader by means of the written word he has no claim to be considered a poet. A workman may be pardoned, therefore, for spending a few moments to explain and describe the technique of his trade. A work of beauty which cannot stand an intimate examination is a poor and jerry-built thing. In the first place, I wish to state my firm belief that poetry should not try to teach, that it should exist simply because it is a created beauty, even if sometimes the beauty of a gothic grotesque. We do not ask the trees to teach us moral lessons, and only the Salvation Army feels it necessary to pin texts upon them. We know that these texts are ridiculous, but many of us do not yet see that to write an obvious moral all over a work of art, picture, statue, or poem, is not only ridiculous, but timid and vulgar. We distrust a beauty we only half understand, and rush in with our impertinent suggestions. How far we are from "admitting the Universe"! The Universe, which flings down its continents and seas, and leaves them without comment. Art is as much a function of the Universe as an Equinoctial gale, or the Law of Gravitation; and we insist upon considering it merely a little scroll-work, of no great importance unless it be studded with nails from which pretty and uplifting sentiments may be hung! For the purely technical side I must state my immense debt to the French, and perhaps above all to the, so-called, Parnassian School, although some of the writers who have influenced me most do not belong to it. High-minded and untiring workmen, they have spared no pains to produce a poetry finer than that of any other country in our time. Poetry so full of beauty and feeling, that the study of it is at once an inspiration and a despair to the artist. The Anglo-Saxon of our day has a tendency to think that a fine idea excuses slovenly workmanship. These clear-eyed Frenchmen are a reproof to our self-satisfied laziness. Before the works of Parnassians like Leconte de Lisle, and José-Maria de Heredia, or those of Henri de Régnier, Albert Samain, Francis Jammes, Remy de Gourmont, and Paul Fort, of the more modern school, we stand rebuked. Indeed--"They order this matter better in France." It is because in France, to-day, poetry is so living and vigorous a thing, that so many metrical experiments come from there. Only a vigorous tree has the vitality to put forth new branches. The poet with originality and power is always seeking to give his readers the same poignant feeling which he has himself. To do this he must constantly find new and striking images, delightful and unexpected forms. Take the word "daybreak", for instance. What a remarkable picture it must once have conjured up! The great, round sun, like the yolk of some mighty egg, BREAKING through cracked and splintered clouds. But we have said "daybreak" so often that we do not see the picture any more, it has become only another word for dawn. The poet must be constantly seeking new pictures to make his readers feel the vitality of his thought. Many of the poems in this volume are written in what the French call "Vers Libre", a nomenclature more suited to French use and to French versification than to ours. I prefer to call them poems in "unrhymed cadence", for that conveys their exact meaning to an English ear. They are built upon "organic rhythm", or the rhythm of the speaking voice with its necessity for breathing, rather than upon a strict metrical system. They differ from ordinary prose rhythms by being more curved, and containing more stress. The stress, and exceedingly marked curve, of any regular metre is easily perceived. These poems, built upon cadence, are more subtle, but the laws they follow are not less fixed. Merely chopping prose lines into lengths does not produce cadence, it is constructed upon mathematical and absolute laws of balance and time. In the preface to his "Poems", Henley speaks of "those unrhyming rhythms in which I had tried to quintessentialize, as (I believe) one scarce can do in rhyme." The desire to "quintessentialize", to head-up an emotion until it burns white-hot, seems to be an integral part of the modern temper, and certainly "unrhymed cadence" is unique in its power of expressing this. Three of these poems are written in a form which, so far as I know, has never before been attempted in English. M. Paul Fort is its inventor, and the results it has yielded to him are most beautiful and satisfactory. Perhaps it is more suited to the French language than to English. But I found it the only medium in which these particular poems could be written. It is a fluid and changing form, now prose, now verse, and permitting a great variety of treatment. But the reader will see that I have not entirely abandoned the more classic English metres. I cannot see why, because certain manners suit certain emotions and subjects, it should be considered imperative for an author to employ no others. Schools are for those who can confine themselves within them. Perhaps it is a weakness in me that I cannot. In conclusion, I would say that these remarks are in answer to many questions asked me by people who have happened to read some of these poems in periodicals. They are not for the purpose of forestalling criticism, nor of courting it; and they deal, as I said in the beginning, solely with the question of technique. For the more important part of the book, the poems must speak for themselves. Amy Lowell. May 19, 1914. Contents Sword Blades and Poppy Seed Sword Blades The Captured Goddess The Precinct. Rochester The Cyclists Sunshine through a Cobwebbed Window A London Thoroughfare. 2 A.M. Astigmatism The Coal Picker Storm-Racked Convalescence Patience Apology A Petition A Blockhead Stupidity Irony Happiness The Last Quarter of the Moon A Tale of Starvation The Foreigner Absence A Gift The Bungler Fool's Money Bags Miscast I Miscast II Anticipation Vintage The Tree of Scarlet Berries Obligation The Taxi The Giver of Stars The Temple Epitaph of a Young Poet Who Died Before Having Achieved Success In Answer to a Request Poppy Seed The Great Adventure of Max Breuck Sancta Maria, Succurre Miseris After Hearing a Waltz by Bartok Clear, with Light, Variable Winds The Basket In a Castle The Book of Hours of Sister Clotilde The Exeter Road The Shadow The Forsaken Late September The Pike The Blue Scarf White and Green Aubade Music A Lady In a Garden A Tulip Garden Sword Blades And Poppy Seed A drifting, April, twilight sky, A wind which blew the puddles dry, And slapped the river into waves That ran and hid among the staves Of an old wharf. A watery light Touched bleak the granite bridge, and white Without the slightest tinge of gold, The city shivered in the cold. All day my thoughts had lain as dead, Unborn and bursting in my head. From time to time I wrote a word Which lines and circles overscored. My table seemed a graveyard, full Of coffins waiting burial. I seized these vile abortions, tore Them into jagged bits, and swore To be the dupe of hope no more. Into the evening straight I went, Starved of a day's accomplishment. Unnoticing, I wandered where The city gave a space for air, And on the bridge's parapet I leant, while pallidly there set A dim, discouraged, worn-out sun. Behind me, where the tramways run, Blossomed bright lights, I turned to leave, When someone plucked me by the sleeve. "Your pardon, Sir, but I should be Most grateful could you lend to me A carfare, I have lost my purse." The voice was clear, concise, and terse. I turned and met the quiet gaze Of strange eyes flashing through the haze. The man was old and slightly bent, Under his cloak some instrument Disarranged its stately line, He rested on his cane a fine And nervous hand, an almandine Smouldered with dull-red flames, sanguine It burned in twisted gold, upon His finger. Like some Spanish don, Conferring favours even when Asking an alms, he bowed again And waited. But my pockets proved Empty, in vain I poked and shoved, No hidden penny lurking there Greeted my search. "Sir, I declare I have no money, pray forgive, But let me take you where you live." And so we plodded through the mire Where street lamps cast a wavering fire. I took no note of where we went, His talk became the element Wherein my being swam, content. It flashed like rapiers in the night Lit by uncertain candle-light, When on some moon-forsaken sward A quarrel dies upon a sword. It hacked and carved like a cutlass blade, And the noise in the air the broad words made Was the cry of the wind at a window-pane On an Autumn night of sobbing rain. Then it would run like a steady stream Under pinnacled bridges where minarets gleam, Or lap the air like the lapping tide Where a marble staircase lifts its wide Green-spotted steps to a garden gate, And a waning moon is sinking straight Down to a black and ominous sea, While a nightingale sings in a lemon tree. I walked as though some opiate Had stung and dulled my brain, a state Acute and slumbrous. It grew late. We stopped, a house stood silent, dark. The old man scratched a match, the spark Lit up the keyhole of a door, We entered straight upon a floor White with finest powdered sand Carefully sifted, one might stand Muddy and dripping, and yet no trace Would stain the boards of this kitchen-place. From the chimney, red eyes sparked the gloom, And a cricket's chirp filled all the room. My host threw pine-cones on the fire And crimson and scarlet glowed the pyre Wrapped in the golden flame's desire. The chamber opened like an eye, As a half-melted cloud in a Summer sky The soul of the house stood guessed, and shy It peered at the stranger warily. A little shop with its various ware Spread on shelves with nicest care. Pitchers, and jars, and jugs, and pots, Pipkins, and mugs, and many lots Of lacquered canisters, black and gold, Like those in which Chinese tea is sold. Chests, and puncheons, kegs, and flasks, Goblets, chalices, firkins, and casks. In a corner three ancient amphorae leaned Against the wall, like ships careened. There was dusky blue of Wedgewood ware, The carved, white figures fluttering there Like leaves adrift upon the air. Classic in touch, but emasculate, The Greek soul grown effeminate. The factory of Sevres had lent Elegant boxes with ornament Culled from gardens where fountains splashed And golden carp in the shadows flashed, Nuzzling for crumbs under lily-pads, Which ladies threw as the last of fads. Eggshell trays where gay beaux knelt, Hand on heart, and daintily spelt Their love in flowers, brittle and bright, Artificial and fragile, which told aright The vows of an eighteenth-century knight. The cruder tones of old Dutch jugs Glared from one shelf, where Toby mugs Endlessly drank the foaming ale, Its froth grown dusty, awaiting sale. The glancing light of the burning wood Played over a group of jars which stood On a distant shelf, it seemed the sky Had lent the half-tones of his blazonry To paint these porcelains with unknown hues Of reds dyed purple and greens turned blues, Of lustres with so evanescent a sheen Their colours are felt, but never seen. Strange winged dragons writhe about These vases, poisoned venoms spout, Impregnate with old Chinese charms; Sealed urns containing mortal harms, They fill the mind with thoughts impure, Pestilent drippings from the ure Of vicious thinkings. "Ah, I see," Said I, "you deal in pottery." The old man turned and looked at me. Shook his head gently. "No," said he. Then from under his cloak he took the thing Which I had wondered to see him bring Guarded so carefully from sight. As he laid it down it flashed in the light, A Toledo blade, with basket hilt, Damascened with arabesques of gilt, Or rather gold, and tempered so It could cut a floating thread at a blow. The old man smiled, "It has no sheath, 'Twas a little careless to have it beneath My cloak, for a jostle to my arm Would have resulted in serious harm. But it was so fine, I could not wait, So I brought it with me despite its state." "An amateur of arms," I thought, "Bringing home a prize which he has bought." "You care for this sort of thing, Dear Sir?" "Not in the way which you infer. I need them in business, that is all." And he pointed his finger at the wall. Then I saw what I had not noticed before. The walls were hung with at least five score Of swords and daggers of every size Which nations of militant men could devise. Poisoned spears from tropic seas, That natives, under banana trees, Smear with the juice of some deadly snake. Blood-dipped arrows, which savages make And tip with feathers, orange and green, A quivering death, in harlequin sheen. High up, a fan of glancing steel Was formed of claymores in a wheel. Jewelled swords worn at kings' levees Were suspended next midshipmen's dirks, and these Elbowed stilettos come from Spain, Chased with some splendid Hidalgo's name. There were Samurai swords from old Japan, And scimitars from Hindoostan, While the blade of a Turkish yataghan Made a waving streak of vitreous white Upon the wall, in the firelight. Foils with buttons broken or lost Lay heaped on a chair, among them tossed The boarding-pike of a privateer. Against the chimney leaned a queer Two-handed weapon, with edges dull As though from hacking on a skull. The rusted blood corroded it still. My host took up a paper spill From a heap which lay in an earthen bowl, And lighted it at a burning coal. At either end of the table, tall Wax candles were placed, each in a small, And slim, and burnished candlestick Of pewter. The old man lit each wick, And the room leapt more obviously Upon my mind, and I could see What the flickering fire had hid from me. Above the chimney's yawning throat, Shoulder high, like the dark wainscote, Was a mantelshelf of polished oak Blackened with the pungent smoke Of firelit nights; a Cromwell clock Of tarnished brass stood like a rock In the midst of a heaving, turbulent sea Of every sort of cutlery. There lay knives sharpened to any use, The keenest lancet, and the obtuse And blunted pruning bill-hook; blades Of razors, scalpels, shears; cascades Of penknives, with handles of mother-of-pearl, And scythes, and sickles, and scissors; a whirl Of points and edges, and underneath Shot the gleam of a saw with bristling teeth. My head grew dizzy, I seemed to hear A battle-cry from somewhere near, The clash of arms, and the squeal of balls, And the echoless thud when a dead man falls. A smoky cloud had veiled the room, Shot through with lurid glares; the gloom Pounded with shouts and dying groans, With the drip of blood on cold, hard stones. Sabres and lances in streaks of light Gleamed through the smoke, and at my right A creese, like a licking serpent's tongue, Glittered an instant, while it stung. Streams, and points, and lines of fire! The livid steel, which man's desire Had forged and welded, burned white and cold. Every blade which man could mould, Which could cut, or slash, or cleave, or rip, Or pierce, or thrust, or carve, or strip, Or gash, or chop, or puncture, or tear, Or slice, or hack, they all were there. Nerveless and shaking, round and round, I stared at the walls and at the ground, Till the room spun like a whipping top, And a stern voice in my ear said, "Stop! I sell no tools for murderers here. Of what are you thinking! Please clear Your mind of such imaginings. Sit down. I will tell you of these things." He pushed me into a great chair Of russet leather, poked a flare Of tumbling flame, with the old long sword, Up the chimney; but said no word. Slowly he walked to a distant shelf, And brought back a crock of finest delf. He rested a moment a blue-veined hand Upon the cover, then cut a band Of paper, pasted neatly round, Opened and poured. A sliding sound Came from beneath his old white hands, And I saw a little heap of sands, Black and smooth. What could they be: "Pepper," I thought. He looked at me. "What you see is poppy seed. Lethean dreams for those in need." He took up the grains with a gentle hand And sifted them slowly like hour-glass sand. On his old white finger the almandine Shot out its rays, incarnadine. "Visions for those too tired to sleep. These seeds cast a film over eyes which weep. No single soul in the world could dwell, Without these poppy-seeds I sell." For a moment he played with the shining stuff, Passing it through his fingers. Enough At last, he poured it back into The china jar of Holland blue, Which he carefully carried to its place. Then, with a smile on his aged face, He drew up a chair to the open space 'Twixt table and chimney. "Without preface, Young man, I will say that what you see Is not the puzzle you take it to be." "But surely, Sir, there is something strange In a shop with goods at so wide a range Each from the other, as swords and seeds. Your neighbours must have greatly differing needs." "My neighbours," he said, and he stroked his chin, "Live everywhere from here to Pekin. But you are wrong, my sort of goods Is but one thing in all its moods." He took a shagreen letter case From his pocket, and with charming grace Offered me a printed card. I read the legend, "Ephraim Bard. Dealer in Words." And that was all. I stared at the letters, whimsical Indeed, or was it merely a jest. He answered my unasked request: "All books are either dreams or swords, You can cut, or you can drug, with words. My firm is a very ancient house, The entries on my books would rouse Your wonder, perhaps incredulity. I inherited from an ancestry Stretching remotely back and far, This business, and my clients are As were those of my grandfather's days, Writers of books, and poems, and plays. My swords are tempered for every speech, For fencing wit, or to carve a breach Through old abuses the world condones. In another room are my grindstones and hones, For whetting razors and putting a point On daggers, sometimes I even anoint The blades with a subtle poison, so A twofold result may follow the blow. These are purchased by men who feel The need of stabbing society's heel, Which egotism has brought them to think Is set on their necks. I have foils to pink An adversary to quaint reply, And I have customers who buy Scalpels with which to dissect the brains And hearts of men. Ultramundanes Even demand some finer kinds To open their own souls and minds. But the other half of my business deals With visions and fancies. Under seals, Sorted, and placed in vessels here, I keep the seeds of an atmosphere. Each jar contains a different kind Of poppy seed. From farthest Ind Come the purple flowers, opium filled, From which the weirdest myths are distilled; My orient porcelains contain them all. Those Lowestoft pitchers against the wall Hold a lighter kind of bright conceit; And those old Saxe vases, out of the heat On that lowest shelf beside the door, Have a sort of Ideal, "couleur d'or". Every castle of the air Sleeps in the fine black grains, and there Are seeds for every romance, or light Whiff of a dream for a summer night. I supply to every want and taste." 'Twas slowly said, in no great haste He seemed to push his wares, but I Dumfounded listened. By and by A log on the fire broke in two. He looked up quickly, "Sir, and you?" I groped for something I should say; Amazement held me numb. "To-day You sweated at a fruitless task." He spoke for me, "What do you ask? How can I serve you?" "My kind host, My penniless state was not a boast; I have no money with me." He smiled. "Not for that money I beguiled You here; you paid me in advance." Again I felt as though a trance Had dimmed my faculties. Again He spoke, and this time to explain. "The money I demand is Life, Your nervous force, your joy, your strife!" What infamous proposal now Was made me with so calm a brow? Bursting through my lethargy, Indignantly I hurled the cry: "Is this a nightmare, or am I Drunk with some infernal wine? I am no Faust, and what is mine Is what I call my soul! Old Man! Devil or Ghost! Your hellish plan Revolts me. Let me go." "My child," And the old tones were very mild, "I have no wish to barter souls; My traffic does not ask such tolls. I am no devil; is there one? Surely the age of fear is gone. We live within a daylight world Lit by the sun, where winds unfurled Sweep clouds to scatter pattering rain, And then blow back the sun again. I sell my fancies, or my swords, To those who care far more for words, Ideas, of which they are the sign, Than any other life-design. Who buy of me must simply pay Their whole existence quite away: Their strength, their manhood, and their prime, Their hours from morning till the time When evening comes on tiptoe feet, And losing life, think it complete; Must miss what other men count being, To gain the gift of deeper seeing; Must spurn all ease, all hindering love, All which could hold or bind; must prove The farthest boundaries of thought, And shun no end which these have brought; Then die in satisfaction, knowing That what was sown was worth the sowing. I claim for all the goods I sell That they will serve their purpose well, And though you perish, they will live. Full measure for your pay I give. To-day you worked, you thought, in vain. What since has happened is the train Your toiling brought. I spoke to you For my share of the bargain, due." "My life! And is that all you crave In pay? What even childhood gave! I have been dedicate from youth. Before my God I speak the truth!" Fatigue, excitement of the past Few hours broke me down at last. All day I had forgot to eat, My nerves betrayed me, lacking meat. I bowed my head and felt the storm Plough shattering through my prostrate form. The tearless sobs tore at my heart. My host withdrew himself apart; Busied among his crockery, He paid no farther heed to me. Exhausted, spent, I huddled there, Within the arms of the old carved chair. A long half-hour dragged away, And then I heard a kind voice say, "The day will soon be dawning, when You must begin to work again. Here are the things which you require." By the fading light of the dying fire, And by the guttering candle's flare, I saw the old man standing there. He handed me a packet, tied With crimson tape, and sealed. "Inside Are seeds of many differing flowers, To occupy your utmost powers Of storied vision, and these swords Are the finest which my shop affords. Go home and use them; do not spare Yourself; let that be all your care. Whatever you have means to buy Be very sure I can supply." He slowly walked to the window, flung It open, and in the grey air rung The sound of distant matin bells. I took my parcels. Then, as tells An ancient mumbling monk his beads, I tried to thank for his courteous deeds My strange old friend. "Nay, do not talk," He urged me, "you have a long walk Before you. Good-by and Good-day!" And gently sped upon my way I stumbled out in the morning hush, As down the empty street a flush Ran level from the rising sun. Another day was just begun. SWORD BLADES The Captured Goddess Over the housetops, Above the rotating chimney-pots, I have seen a shiver of amethyst, And blue and cinnamon have flickered A moment, At the far end of a dusty street. Through sheeted rain Has come a lustre of crimson, And I have watched moonbeams Hushed by a film of palest green. It was her wings, Goddess! Who stepped over the clouds, And laid her rainbow feathers Aslant on the currents of the air. I followed her for long, With gazing eyes and stumbling feet. I cared not where she led me, My eyes were full of colours: Saffrons, rubies, the yellows of beryls, And the indigo-blue of quartz; Flights of rose, layers of chrysoprase, Points of orange, spirals of vermilion, The spotted gold of tiger-lily petals, The loud pink of bursting hydrangeas. I followed, And watched for the flashing of her wings. In the city I found her, The narrow-streeted city. In the market-place I came upon her, Bound and trembling. Her fluted wings were fastened to her sides with cords, She was naked and cold, For that day the wind blew Without sunshine. Men chaffered for her, They bargained in silver and gold, In copper, in wheat, And called their bids across the market-place. The Goddess wept. Hiding my face I fled, And the grey wind hissed behind me, Along the narrow streets. The Precinct. Rochester The tall yellow hollyhocks stand, Still and straight, With their round blossoms spread open, In the quiet sunshine. And still is the old Roman wall, Rough with jagged bits of flint, And jutting stones, Old and cragged, Quite still in its antiquity. The pear-trees press their branches against it, And feeling it warm and kindly, The little pears ripen to yellow and red. They hang heavy, bursting with juice, Against the wall. So old, so still! The sky is still. The clouds make no sound As they slide away Beyond the Cathedral Tower, To the river, And the sea. It is very quiet, Very sunny. The myrtle flowers stretch themselves in the sunshine, But make no sound. The roses push their little tendrils up, And climb higher and higher. In spots they have climbed over the wall. But they are very still, They do not seem to move. And the old wall carries them Without effort, and quietly Ripens and shields the vines and blossoms. A bird in a plane-tree Sings a few notes, Cadenced and perfect They weave into the silence. The Cathedral bell knocks, One, two, three, and again, And then again. It is a quiet sound, Calling to prayer, Hardly scattering the stillness, Only making it close in more densely. The gardener picks ripe gooseberries For the Dean's supper to-night. It is very quiet, Very regulated and mellow. But the wall is old, It has known many days. It is a Roman wall, Left-over and forgotten. Beyond the Cathedral Close Yelp and mutter the discontents of people not mellow, Not well-regulated. People who care more for bread than for beauty, Who would break the tombs of saints, And give the painted windows of churches To their children for toys. People who say: "They are dead, we live! The world is for the living." Fools! It is always the dead who breed. Crush the ripe fruit, and cast it aside, Yet its seeds shall fructify, And trees rise where your huts were standing. But the little people are ignorant, They chaffer, and swarm. They gnaw like rats, And the foundations of the Cathedral are honeycombed. The Dean is in the Chapter House; He is reading the architect's bill For the completed restoration of the Cathedral. He will have ripe gooseberries for supper, And then he will walk up and down the path By the wall, And admire the snapdragons and dahlias, Thinking how quiet and peaceful The garden is. The old wall will watch him, Very quietly and patiently it will watch. For the wall is old, It is a Roman wall. The Cyclists Spread on the roadway, With open-blown jackets, Like black, soaring pinions, They swoop down the hillside, The Cyclists. Seeming dark-plumaged Birds, after carrion, Careening and circling, Over the dying Of England. She lies with her bosom Beneath them, no longer The Dominant Mother, The Virile--but rotting Before time. The smell of her, tainted, Has bitten their nostrils. Exultant they hover, And shadow the sun with Foreboding. Sunshine through a Cobwebbed Window What charm is yours, you faded old-world tapestries, Of outworn, childish mysteries, Vague pageants woven on a web of dream! And we, pushing and fighting in the turbid stream Of modern life, find solace in your tarnished broideries. Old lichened halls, sun-shaded by huge cedar-trees, The layered branches horizontal stretched, like Japanese Dark-banded prints. Carven cathedrals, on a sky Of faintest colour, where the gothic spires fly And sway like masts, against a shifting breeze. Worm-eaten pages, clasped in old brown vellum, shrunk From over-handling, by some anxious monk. Or Virgin's Hours, bright with gold and graven With flowers, and rare birds, and all the Saints of Heaven, And Noah's ark stuck on Ararat, when all the world had sunk. They soothe us like a song, heard in a garden, sung By youthful minstrels, on the moonlight flung In cadences and falls, to ease a queen, Widowed and childless, cowering in a screen Of myrtles, whose life hangs with all its threads unstrung. A London Thoroughfare. 2 A.M. They have watered the street, It shines in the glare of lamps, Cold, white lamps, And lies Like a slow-moving river, Barred with silver and black. Cabs go down it, One, And then another. Between them I hear the shuffling of feet. Tramps doze on the window-ledges, Night-walkers pass along the sidewalks. The city is squalid and sinister, With the silver-barred street in the midst, Slow-moving, A river leading nowhere. Opposite my window, The moon cuts, Clear and round, Through the plum-coloured night. She cannot light the city; It is too bright. It has white lamps, And glitters coldly. I stand in the window and watch the moon. She is thin and lustreless, But I love her. I know the moon, And this is an alien city. Astigmatism To Ezra Pound With much friendship and admiration and some differences of opinion The Poet took his walking-stick Of fine and polished ebony. Set in the close-grained wood Were quaint devices; Patterns in ambers, And in the clouded green of jades. The top was of smooth, yellow ivory, And a tassel of tarnished gold Hung by a faded cord from a hole Pierced in the hard wood, Circled with silver. For years the Poet had wrought upon this cane. His wealth had gone to enrich it, His experiences to pattern it, His labour to fashion and burnish it. To him it was perfect, A work of art and a weapon, A delight and a defence. The Poet took his walking-stick And walked abroad. Peace be with you, Brother. The Poet came to a meadow. Sifted through the grass were daisies, Open-mouthed, wondering, they gazed at the sun. The Poet struck them with his cane. The little heads flew off, and they lay Dying, open-mouthed and wondering, On the hard ground. "They are useless. They are not roses," said the Poet. Peace be with you, Brother. Go your ways. The Poet came to a stream. Purple and blue flags waded in the water; In among them hopped the speckled frogs; The wind slid through them, rustling. The Poet lifted his cane, And the iris heads fell into the water. They floated away, torn and drowning. "Wretched flowers," said the Poet, "They are not roses." Peace be with you, Brother. It is your affair. The Poet came to a garden. Dahlias ripened against a wall, Gillyflowers stood up bravely for all their short stature, And a trumpet-vine covered an arbour With the red and gold of its blossoms. Red and gold like the brass notes of trumpets. The Poet knocked off the stiff heads of the dahlias, And his cane lopped the gillyflowers at the ground. Then he severed the trumpet-blossoms from their stems. Red and gold they lay scattered, Red and gold, as on a battle field; Red and gold, prone and dying. "They were not roses," said the Poet. Peace be with you, Brother. But behind you is destruction, and waste places. The Poet came home at evening, And in the candle-light He wiped and polished his cane. The orange candle flame leaped in the yellow ambers, And made the jades undulate like green pools. It played along the bright ebony, And glowed in the top of cream-coloured ivory. But these things were dead, Only the candle-light made them seem to move. "It is a pity there were no roses," said the Poet. Peace be with you, Brother. You have chosen your part. The Coal Picker He perches in the slime, inert, Bedaubed with iridescent dirt. The oil upon the puddles dries To colours like a peacock's eyes, And half-submerged tomato-cans Shine scaly, as leviathans Oozily crawling through the mud. The ground is here and there bestud With lumps of only part-burned coal. His duty is to glean the whole, To pick them from the filth, each one, To hoard them for the hidden sun Which glows within each fiery core And waits to be made free once more. Their sharp and glistening edges cut His stiffened fingers. Through the smut Gleam red the wounds which will not shut. Wet through and shivering he kneels And digs the slippery coals; like eels They slide about. His force all spent, He counts his small accomplishment. A half-a-dozen clinker-coals Which still have fire in their souls. Fire! And in his thought there burns The topaz fire of votive urns. He sees it fling from hill to hill, And still consumed, is burning still. Higher and higher leaps the flame, The smoke an ever-shifting frame. He sees a Spanish Castle old, With silver steps and paths of gold. From myrtle bowers comes the plash Of fountains, and the emerald flash Of parrots in the orange trees, Whose blossoms pasture humming bees. He knows he feeds the urns whose smoke Bears visions, that his master-stroke Is out of dirt and misery To light the fire of poesy. He sees the glory, yet he knows That others cannot see his shows. To them his smoke is sightless, black, His votive vessels but a pack Of old discarded shards, his fire A peddler's; still to him the pyre Is incensed, an enduring goal! He sighs and grubs another coal. Storm-Racked How should I sing when buffeting salt waves And stung with bitter surges, in whose might I toss, a cockleshell? The dreadful night Marshals its undefeated dark and raves In brutal madness, reeling over graves Of vanquished men, long-sunken out of sight, Sent wailing down to glut the ghoulish sprite Who haunts foul seaweed forests and their caves. No parting cloud reveals a watery star, My cries are washed away upon the wind, My cramped and blistering hands can find no spar, My eyes with hope o'erstrained, are growing blind. But painted on the sky great visions burn, My voice, oblation from a shattered urn! Convalescence From out the dragging vastness of the sea, Wave-fettered, bound in sinuous, seaweed strands, He toils toward the rounding beach, and stands One moment, white and dripping, silently, Cut like a cameo in lazuli, Then falls, betrayed by shifting shells, and lands Prone in the jeering water, and his hands Clutch for support where no support can be. So up, and down, and forward, inch by inch, He gains upon the shore, where poppies glow And sandflies dance their little lives away. The sucking waves retard, and tighter clinch The weeds about him, but the land-winds blow, And in the sky there blooms the sun of May. Patience Be patient with you? When the stooping sky Leans down upon the hills And tenderly, as one who soothing stills An anguish, gathers earth to lie Embraced and girdled. Do the sun-filled men Feel patience then? Be patient with you? When the snow-girt earth Cracks to let through a spurt Of sudden green, and from the muddy dirt A snowdrop leaps, how mark its worth To eyes frost-hardened, and do weary men Feel patience then? Be patient with you? When pain's iron bars Their rivets tighten, stern To bend and break their victims; as they turn, Hopeless, there stand the purple jars Of night to spill oblivion. Do these men Feel patience then? Be patient with you? You! My sun and moon! My basketful of flowers! My money-bag of shining dreams! My hours, Windless and still, of afternoon! You are my world and I your citizen. What meaning can have patience then? Apology Be not angry with me that I bear Your colours everywhere, All through each crowded street, And meet The wonder-light in every eye, As I go by. Each plodding wayfarer looks up to gaze, Blinded by rainbow haze, The stuff of happiness, No less, Which wraps me in its glad-hued folds Of peacock golds. Before my feet the dusty, rough-paved way Flushes beneath its gray. My steps fall ringed with light, So bright, It seems a myriad suns are strown About the town. Around me is the sound of steepled bells, And rich perfumed smells Hang like a wind-forgotten cloud, And shroud Me from close contact with the world. I dwell impearled. You blazon me with jewelled insignia. A flaming nebula Rims in my life. And yet You set The word upon me, unconfessed To go unguessed. A Petition I pray to be the tool which to your hand Long use has shaped and moulded till it be Apt for your need, and, unconsideringly, You take it for its service. I demand To be forgotten in the woven strand Which grows the multi-coloured tapestry Of your bright life, and through its tissues lie A hidden, strong, sustaining, grey-toned band. I wish to dwell around your daylight dreams, The railing to the stairway of the clouds, To guard your steps securely up, where streams A faery moonshine washing pale the crowds Of pointed stars. Remember not whereby You mount, protected, to the far-flung sky. A Blockhead Before me lies a mass of shapeless days, Unseparated atoms, and I must Sort them apart and live them. Sifted dust Covers the formless heap. Reprieves, delays, There are none, ever. As a monk who prays The sliding beads asunder, so I thrust Each tasteless particle aside, and just Begin again the task which never stays. And I have known a glory of great suns, When days flashed by, pulsing with joy and fire! Drunk bubbled wine in goblets of desire, And felt the whipped blood laughing as it runs! Spilt is that liquor, my too hasty hand Threw down the cup, and did not understand. Stupidity Dearest, forgive that with my clumsy touch I broke and bruised your rose. I hardly could suppose It were a thing so fragile that my clutch Could kill it, thus. It stood so proudly up upon its stem, I knew no thought of fear, And coming very near Fell, overbalanced, to your garment's hem, Tearing it down. Now, stooping, I upgather, one by one, The crimson petals, all Outspread about my fall. They hold their fragrance still, a blood-red cone Of memory. And with my words I carve a little jar To keep their scented dust, Which, opening, you must Breathe to your soul, and, breathing, know me far More grieved than you. Irony An arid daylight shines along the beach Dried to a grey monotony of tone, And stranded jelly-fish melt soft upon The sun-baked pebbles, far beyond their reach Sparkles a wet, reviving sea. Here bleach The skeletons of fishes, every bone Polished and stark, like traceries of stone, The joints and knuckles hardened each to each. And they are dead while waiting for the sea, The moon-pursuing sea, to come again. Their hearts are blown away on the hot breeze. Only the shells and stones can wait to be Washed bright. For living things, who suffer pain, May not endure till time can bring them ease. Happiness Happiness, to some, elation; Is, to others, mere stagnation. Days of passive somnolence, At its wildest, indolence. Hours of empty quietness, No delight, and no distress. Happiness to me is wine, Effervescent, superfine. Full of tang and fiery pleasure, Far too hot to leave me leisure For a single thought beyond it. Drunk! Forgetful! This the bond: it Means to give one's soul to gain Life's quintessence. Even pain Pricks to livelier living, then Wakes the nerves to laugh again, Rapture's self is three parts sorrow. Although we must die to-morrow, Losing every thought but this; Torn, triumphant, drowned in bliss. Happiness: We rarely feel it. I would buy it, beg it, steal it, Pay in coins of dripping blood For this one transcendent good. The Last Quarter of the Moon How long shall I tarnish the mirror of life, A spatter of rust on its polished steel! The seasons reel Like a goaded wheel. Half-numb, half-maddened, my days are strife. The night is sliding towards the dawn, And upturned hills crouch at autumn's knees. A torn moon flees Through the hemlock trees, The hours have gnawed it to feed their spawn. Pursuing and jeering the misshapen thing A rabble of clouds flares out of the east. Like dogs unleashed After a beast, They stream on the sky, an outflung string. A desolate wind, through the unpeopled dark, Shakes the bushes and whistles through empty nests, And the fierce unrests I keep as guests Crowd my brain with corpses, pallid and stark. Leave me in peace, O Spectres, who haunt My labouring mind, I have fought and failed. I have not quailed, I was all unmailed And naked I strove, 'tis my only vaunt. The moon drops into the silver day As waking out of her swoon she comes. I hear the drums Of millenniums Beating the mornings I still must stay. The years I must watch go in and out, While I build with water, and dig in air, And the trumpets blare Hollow despair, The shuddering trumpets of utter rout. An atom tossed in a chaos made Of yeasting worlds, which bubble and foam. Whence have I come? What would be home? I hear no answer. I am afraid! I crave to be lost like a wind-blown flame. Pushed into nothingness by a breath, And quench in a wreath Of engulfing death This fight for a God, or this devil's game. A Tale of Starvation There once was a man whom the gods didn't love, And a disagreeable man was he. He loathed his neighbours, and his neighbours hated him, And he cursed eternally. He damned the sun, and he damned the stars, And he blasted the winds in the sky. He sent to Hell every green, growing thing, And he raved at the birds as they fly. His oaths were many, and his range was wide, He swore in fancy ways; But his meaning was plain: that no created thing Was other than a hurt to his gaze. He dwelt all alone, underneath a leaning hill, And windows toward the hill there were none, And on the other side they were white-washed thick, To keep out every spark of the sun. When he went to market he walked all the way Blaspheming at the path he trod. He cursed at those he bought of, and swore at those he sold to, By all the names he knew of God. For his heart was soured in his weary old hide, And his hopes had curdled in his breast. His friend had been untrue, and his love had thrown him over For the chinking money-bags she liked best. The rats had devoured the contents of his grain-bin, The deer had trampled on his corn, His brook had shrivelled in a summer drought, And his sheep had died unshorn. His hens wouldn't lay, and his cow broke loose, And his old horse perished of a colic. In the loft his wheat-bags were nibbled into holes By little, glutton mice on a frolic. So he slowly lost all he ever had, And the blood in his body dried. Shrunken and mean he still lived on, And cursed that future which had lied. One day he was digging, a spade or two, As his aching back could lift, When he saw something glisten at the bottom of the trench, And to get it out he made great shift. So he dug, and he delved, with care and pain, And the veins in his forehead stood taut. At the end of an hour, when every bone cracked, He gathered up what he had sought. A dim old vase of crusted glass, Prismed while it lay buried deep. Shifting reds and greens, like a pigeon's neck, At the touch of the sun began to leap. It was dull in the tree-shade, but glowing in the light; Flashing like an opal-stone, Carved into a flagon; and the colours glanced and ran, Where at first there had seemed to be none. It had handles on each side to bear it up, And a belly for the gurgling wine. Its neck was slender, and its mouth was wide, And its lip was curled and fine. The old man saw it in the sun's bright stare And the colours started up through the crust, And he who had cursed at the yellow sun Held the flask to it and wiped away the dust. And he bore the flask to the brightest spot, Where the shadow of the hill fell clear; And he turned the flask, and he looked at the flask, And the sun shone without his sneer. Then he carried it home, and put it on a shelf, But it was only grey in the gloom. So he fetched a pail, and a bit of cloth, And he went outside with a broom. And he washed his windows just to let the sun Lie upon his new-found vase; And when evening came, he moved it down And put it on a table near the place Where a candle fluttered in a draught from the door. The old man forgot to swear, Watching its shadow grown a mammoth size, Dancing in the kitchen there. He forgot to revile the sun next morning When he found his vase afire in its light. And he carried it out of the house that day, And kept it close beside him until night. And so it happened from day to day. The old man fed his life On the beauty of his vase, on its perfect shape. And his soul forgot its former strife. And the village-folk came and begged to see The flagon which was dug from the ground. And the old man never thought of an oath, in his joy At showing what he had found. One day the master of the village school Passed him as he stooped at toil, Hoeing for a bean-row, and at his side Was the vase, on the turned-up soil. "My friend," said the schoolmaster, pompous and kind, "That's a valuable thing you have there, But it might get broken out of doors, It should meet with the utmost care. What are you doing with it out here?" "Why, Sir," said the poor old man, "I like to have it about, do you see? To be with it all I can." "You will smash it," said the schoolmaster, sternly right, "Mark my words and see!" And he walked away, while the old man looked At his treasure despondingly. Then he smiled to himself, for it was his! He had toiled for it, and now he cared. Yes! loved its shape, and its subtle, swift hues, Which his own hard work had bared. He would carry it round with him everywhere, As it gave him joy to do. A fragile vase should not stand in a bean-row! Who would dare to say so? Who? Then his heart was rested, and his fears gave way, And he bent to his hoe again.... A clod rolled down, and his foot slipped back, And he lurched with a cry of pain. For the blade of the hoe crashed into glass, And the vase fell to iridescent sherds. The old man's body heaved with slow, dry sobs. He did not curse, he had no words. He gathered the fragments, one by one, And his fingers were cut and torn. Then he made a hole in the very place Whence the beautiful vase had been borne. He covered the hole, and he patted it down, Then he hobbled to his house and shut the door. He tore up his coat and nailed it at the windows That no beam of light should cross the floor. He sat down in front of the empty hearth, And he neither ate nor drank. In three days they found him, dead and cold, And they said: "What a queer old crank!" The Foreigner Have at you, you Devils! My back's to this tree, For you're nothing so nice That the hind-side of me Would escape your assault. Come on now, all three! Here's a dandified gentleman, Rapier at point, And a wrist which whirls round Like a circular joint. A spatter of blood, man! That's just to anoint And make supple your limbs. 'Tis a pity the silk Of your waistcoat is stained. Why! Your heart's full of milk, And so full, it spills over! I'm not of your ilk. You said so, and laughed At my old-fashioned hose, At the cut of my hair, At the length of my nose. To carve it to pattern I think you propose. Your pardon, young Sir, But my nose and my sword Are proving themselves In quite perfect accord. I grieve to have spotted Your shirt. On my word! And hullo! You Bully! That blade's not a stick To slash right and left, And my skull is too thick To be cleft with such cuffs Of a sword. Now a lick Down the side of your face. What a pretty, red line! Tell the taverns that scar Was an honour. Don't whine That a stranger has marked you. * * * * * The tree's there, You Swine! Did you think to get in At the back, while your friends Made a little diversion In front? So it ends, With your sword clattering down On the ground. 'Tis amends I make for your courteous Reception of me, A foreigner, landed From over the sea. Your welcome was fervent I think you'll agree. My shoes are not buckled With gold, nor my hair Oiled and scented, my jacket's Not satin, I wear Corded breeches, wide hats, And I make people stare! So I do, but my heart Is the heart of a man, And my thoughts cannot twirl In the limited span 'Twixt my head and my heels, As some other men's can. I have business more strange Than the shape of my boots, And my interests range From the sky, to the roots Of this dung-hill you live in, You half-rotted shoots Of a mouldering tree! Here's at you, once more. You Apes! You Jack-fools! You can show me the door, And jeer at my ways, But you're pinked to the core. And before I have done, I will prick my name in With the front of my steel, And your lily-white skin Shall be printed with me. For I've come here to win! Absence My cup is empty to-night, Cold and dry are its sides, Chilled by the wind from the open window. Empty and void, it sparkles white in the moonlight. The room is filled with the strange scent Of wistaria blossoms. They sway in the moon's radiance And tap against the wall. But the cup of my heart is still, And cold, and empty. When you come, it brims Red and trembling with blood, Heart's blood for your drinking; To fill your mouth with love And the bitter-sweet taste of a soul. A Gift See! I give myself to you, Beloved! My words are little jars For you to take and put upon a shelf. Their shapes are quaint and beautiful, And they have many pleasant colours and lustres To recommend them. Also the scent from them fills the room With sweetness of flowers and crushed grasses. When I shall have given you the last one, You will have the whole of me, But I shall be dead. The Bungler You glow in my heart Like the flames of uncounted candles. But when I go to warm my hands, My clumsiness overturns the light, And then I stumble Against the tables and chairs. Fool's Money Bags Outside the long window, With his head on the stone sill, The dog is lying, Gazing at his Beloved. His eyes are wet and urgent, And his body is taut and shaking. It is cold on the terrace; A pale wind licks along the stone slabs, But the dog gazes through the glass And is content. The Beloved is writing a letter. Occasionally she speaks to the dog, But she is thinking of her writing. Does she, too, give her devotion to one Not worthy? Miscast I I have whetted my brain until it is like a Damascus blade, So keen that it nicks off the floating fringes of passers-by, So sharp that the air would turn its edge Were it to be twisted in flight. Licking passions have bitten their arabesques into it, And the mark of them lies, in and out, Worm-like, With the beauty of corroded copper patterning white steel. My brain is curved like a scimitar, And sighs at its cutting Like a sickle mowing grass. But of what use is all this to me! I, who am set to crack stones In a country lane! Miscast II My heart is like a cleft pomegranate Bleeding crimson seeds And dripping them on the ground. My heart gapes because it is ripe and over-full, And its seeds are bursting from it. But how is this other than a torment to me! I, who am shut up, with broken crockery, In a dark closet! Anticipation I have been temperate always, But I am like to be very drunk With your coming. There have been times I feared to walk down the street Lest I should reel with the wine of you, And jerk against my neighbours As they go by. I am parched now, and my tongue is horrible in my mouth, But my brain is noisy With the clash and gurgle of filling wine-cups. Vintage I will mix me a drink of stars,-- Large stars with polychrome needles, Small stars jetting maroon and crimson, Cool, quiet, green stars. I will tear them out of the sky, And squeeze them over an old silver cup, And I will pour the cold scorn of my Beloved into it, So that my drink shall be bubbled with ice. It will lap and scratch As I swallow it down; And I shall feel it as a serpent of fire, Coiling and twisting in my belly. His snortings will rise to my head, And I shall be hot, and laugh, Forgetting that I have ever known a woman. The Tree of Scarlet Berries The rain gullies the garden paths And tinkles on the broad sides of grass blades. A tree, at the end of my arm, is hazy with mist. Even so, I can see that it has red berries, A scarlet fruit, Filmed over with moisture. It seems as though the rain, Dripping from it, Should be tinged with colour. I desire the berries, But, in the mist, I only scratch my hand on the thorns. Probably, too, they are bitter. Obligation Hold your apron wide That I may pour my gifts into it, So that scarcely shall your two arms hinder them From falling to the ground. I would pour them upon you And cover you, For greatly do I feel this need Of giving you something, Even these poor things. Dearest of my Heart! The Taxi When I go away from you The world beats dead Like a slackened drum. I call out for you against the jutted stars And shout into the ridges of the wind. Streets coming fast, One after the other, Wedge you away from me, And the lamps of the city prick my eyes So that I can no longer see your face. Why should I leave you, To wound myself upon the sharp edges of the night? The Giver of Stars Hold your soul open for my welcoming. Let the quiet of your spirit bathe me With its clear and rippled coolness, That, loose-limbed and weary, I find rest, Outstretched upon your peace, as on a bed of ivory. Let the flickering flame of your soul play all about me, That into my limbs may come the keenness of fire, The life and joy of tongues of flame, And, going out from you, tightly strung and in tune, I may rouse the blear-eyed world, And pour into it the beauty which you have begotten. The Temple Between us leapt a gold and scarlet flame. Into the hollow of the cupped, arched blue Of Heaven it rose. Its flickering tongues up-drew And vanished in the sunshine. How it came We guessed not, nor what thing could be its name. From each to each had sprung those sparks which flew Together into fire. But we knew The winds would slap and quench it in their game. And so we graved and fashioned marble blocks To treasure it, and placed them round about. With pillared porticos we wreathed the whole, And roofed it with bright bronze. Behind carved locks Flowered the tall and sheltered flame. Without, The baffled winds thrust at a column's bole. Epitaph of a Young Poet Who Died Before Having Achieved Success Beneath this sod lie the remains Of one who died of growing pains. In Answer to a Request You ask me for a sonnet. Ah, my Dear, Can clocks tick back to yesterday at noon? Can cracked and fallen leaves recall last June And leap up on the boughs, now stiff and sere? For your sake, I would go and seek the year, Faded beyond the purple ranks of dune, Blown sands of drifted hours, which the moon Streaks with a ghostly finger, and her sneer Pulls at my lengthening shadow. Yes, 'tis that! My shadow stretches forward, and the ground Is dark in front because the light's behind. It is grotesque, with such a funny hat, In watching it and walking I have found More than enough to occupy my mind. I cannot turn, the light would make me blind. POPPY SEED The Great Adventure of Max Breuck 1 A yellow band of light upon the street Pours from an open door, and makes a wide Pathway of bright gold across a sheet Of calm and liquid moonshine. From inside Come shouts and streams of laughter, and a snatch Of song, soon drowned and lost again in mirth, The clip of tankards on a table top, And stir of booted heels. Against the patch Of candle-light a shadow falls, its girth Proclaims the host himself, and master of his shop. 2 This is the tavern of one Hilverdink, Jan Hilverdink, whose wines are much esteemed. Within his cellar men can have to drink The rarest cordials old monks ever schemed To coax from pulpy grapes, and with nice art Improve and spice their virgin juiciness. Here froths the amber beer of many a brew, Crowning each pewter tankard with as smart A cap as ever in his wantonness Winter set glittering on top of an old yew. 3 Tall candles stand upon the table, where Are twisted glasses, ruby-sparked with wine, Clarets and ports. Those topaz bumpers were Drained from slim, long-necked bottles of the Rhine. The centre of the board is piled with pipes, Slender and clean, the still unbaptized clay Awaits its burning fate. Behind, the vault Stretches from dim to dark, a groping way Bordered by casks and puncheons, whose brass stripes And bands gleam dully still, beyond the gay tumult. 4 "For good old Master Hilverdink, a toast!" Clamoured a youth with tassels on his boots. "Bring out your oldest brandy for a boast, From that small barrel in the very roots Of your deep cellar, man. Why here is Max! Ho! Welcome, Max, you're scarcely here in time. We want to drink to old Jan's luck, and smoke His best tobacco for a grand climax. Here, Jan, a paper, fragrant as crushed thyme, We'll have the best to wish you luck, or may we choke!" 5 Max Breuck unclasped his broadcloth cloak, and sat. "Well thought of, Franz; here's luck to Mynheer Jan." The host set down a jar; then to a vat Lost in the distance of his cellar, ran. Max took a pipe as graceful as the stem Of some long tulip, crammed it full, and drew The pungent smoke deep to his grateful lung. It curled all blue throughout the cave and flew Into the silver night. At once there flung Into the crowded shop a boy, who cried to them: 6 "Oh, sirs, is there some learned lawyer here, Some advocate, or all-wise counsellor? My master sent me to inquire where Such men do mostly be, but every door Was shut and barred, for late has grown the hour. I pray you tell me where I may now find One versed in law, the matter will not wait." "I am a lawyer, boy," said Max, "my mind Is not locked to my business, though 'tis late. I shall be glad to serve what way is in my power. 7 Then once more, cloaked and ready, he set out, Tripping the footsteps of the eager boy Along the dappled cobbles, while the rout Within the tavern jeered at his employ. Through new-burst elm leaves filtered the white moon, Who peered and splashed between the twinkling boughs, Flooded the open spaces, and took flight Before tall, serried houses in platoon, Guarded by shadows. Past the Custom House They took their hurried way in the Spring-scented night. 8 Before a door which fronted a canal The boy halted. A dim tree-shaded spot. The water lapped the stones in musical And rhythmic tappings, and a galliot Slumbered at anchor with no light aboard. The boy knocked twice, and steps approached. A flame Winked through the keyhole, then a key was turned, And through the open door Max went toward Another door, whence sound of voices came. He entered a large room where candelabra burned. 9 An aged man in quilted dressing gown Rose up to greet him. "Sir," said Max, "you sent Your messenger to seek throughout the town A lawyer. I have small accomplishment, But I am at your service, and my name Is Max Breuck, Counsellor, at your command." "Mynheer," replied the aged man, "obliged Am I, and count myself much privileged. I am Cornelius Kurler, and my fame Is better known on distant oceans than on land. 10 My ship has tasted water in strange seas, And bartered goods at still uncharted isles. She's oft coquetted with a tropic breeze, And sheered off hurricanes with jaunty smiles." "Tush, Kurler," here broke in the other man, "Enough of poetry, draw the deed and sign." The old man seemed to wizen at the voice, "My good friend, Grootver,--" he at once began. "No introductions, let us have some wine, And business, now that you at last have made your choice." 11 A harsh and disagreeable man he proved to be, This Grootver, with no single kindly thought. Kurler explained, his old hands nervously Twisting his beard. His vessel he had bought From Grootver. He had thought to soon repay The ducats borrowed, but an adverse wind Had so delayed him that his cargo brought But half its proper price, the very day He came to port he stepped ashore to find The market glutted and his counted profits naught. 12 Little by little Max made out the way That Grootver pressed that poor harassed old man. His money he must have, too long delay Had turned the usurer to a ruffian. "But let me take my ship, with many bales Of cotton stuffs dyed crimson, green, and blue, Cunningly patterned, made to suit the taste Of mandarin's ladies; when my battered sails Open for home, such stores will I bring you That all your former ventures will be counted waste. 13 Such light and foamy silks, like crinkled cream, And indigo more blue than sun-whipped seas, Spices and fragrant trees, a massive beam Of sandalwood, and pungent China teas, Tobacco, coffee!" Grootver only laughed. Max heard it all, and worse than all he heard The deed to which the sailor gave his word. He shivered, 'twas as if the villain gaffed The old man with a boat-hook; bleeding, spent, He begged for life nor knew at all the road he went. 14 For Kurler had a daughter, young and gay, Carefully reared and shielded, rarely seen. But on one black and most unfriendly day Grootver had caught her as she passed between The kitchen and the garden. She had run In fear of him, his evil leering eye, And when he came she, bolted in her room, Refused to show, though gave no reason why. The spinning of her future had begun, On quiet nights she heard the whirring of her doom. 15 Max mended an old goosequill by the fire, Loathing his work, but seeing no thing to do. He felt his hands were building up the pyre To burn two souls, and seized with vertigo He staggered to his chair. Before him lay White paper still unspotted by a crime. "Now, young man, write," said Grootver in his ear. "`If in two years my vessel should yet stay From Amsterdam, I give Grootver, sometime A friend, my daughter for his lawful wife.' Now swear." 16 And Kurler swore, a palsied, tottering sound, And traced his name, a shaking, wandering line. Then dazed he sat there, speechless from his wound. Grootver got up: "Fair voyage, the brigantine!" He shuffled from the room, and left the house. His footsteps wore to silence down the street. At last the aged man began to rouse. With help he once more gained his trembling feet. "My daughter, Mynheer Breuck, is friendless now. Will you watch over her? I ask a solemn vow." 17 Max laid his hand upon the old man's arm, "Before God, sir, I vow, when you are gone, So to protect your daughter from all harm As one man may." Thus sorrowful, forlorn, The situation to Max Breuck appeared, He gave his promise almost without thought, Nor looked to see a difficulty. "Bred Gently to watch a mother left alone; Bound by a dying father's wish, who feared The world's accustomed harshness when he should be dead; 18 Such was my case from youth, Mynheer Kurler. Last Winter she died also, and my days Are passed in work, lest I should grieve for her, And undo habits used to earn her praise. My leisure I will gladly give to see Your household and your daughter prosperous." The sailor said his thanks, but turned away. He could not brook that his humility, So little wonted, and so tremulous, Should first before a stranger make such great display. 19 "Come here to-morrow as the bells ring noon, I sail at the full sea, my daughter then I will make known to you. 'Twill be a boon If after I have bid good-by, and when Her eyeballs scorch with watching me depart, You bring her home again. She lives with one Old serving-woman, who has brought her up. But that is no friend for so free a heart. No head to match her questions. It is done. And I must sail away to come and brim her cup. 20 My ship's the fastest that owns Amsterdam As home, so not a letter can you send. I shall be back, before to where I am Another ship could reach. Now your stipend--" Quickly Breuck interposed. "When you once more Tread on the stones which pave our streets.--Good night! To-morrow I will be, at stroke of noon, At the great wharf." Then hurrying, in spite Of cake and wine the old man pressed upon Him ere he went, he took his leave and shut the door. 21 'Twas noon in Amsterdam, the day was clear, And sunshine tipped the pointed roofs with gold. The brown canals ran liquid bronze, for here The sun sank deep into the waters cold. And every clock and belfry in the town Hammered, and struck, and rang. Such peals of bells, To shake the sunny morning into life, And to proclaim the middle, and the crown, Of this most sparkling daytime! The crowd swells, Laughing and pushing toward the quays in friendly strife. 22 The "Horn of Fortune" sails away to-day. At highest tide she lets her anchor go, And starts for China. Saucy popinjay! Giddy in freshest paint she curtseys low, And beckons to her boats to let her start. Blue is the ocean, with a flashing breeze. The shining waves are quick to take her part. They push and spatter her. Her sails are loose, Her tackles hanging, waiting men to seize And haul them taut, with chanty-singing, as they choose. 23 At the great wharf's edge Mynheer Kurler stands, And by his side, his daughter, young Christine. Max Breuck is there, his hat held in his hands, Bowing before them both. The brigantine Bounces impatient at the long delay, Curvets and jumps, a cable's length from shore. A heavy galliot unloads on the walls Round, yellow cheeses, like gold cannon balls Stacked on the stones in pyramids. Once more Kurler has kissed Christine, and now he is away. 24 Christine stood rigid like a frozen stone, Her hands wrung pale in effort at control. Max moved aside and let her be alone, For grief exacts each penny of its toll. The dancing boat tossed on the glinting sea. A sun-path swallowed it in flaming light, Then, shrunk a cockleshell, it came again Upon the other side. Now on the lee It took the "Horn of Fortune". Straining sight Could see it hauled aboard, men pulling on the crane. 25 Then up above the eager brigantine, Along her slender masts, the sails took flight, Were sheeted home, and ropes were coiled. The shine Of the wet anchor, when its heavy weight Rose splashing to the deck. These things they saw, Christine and Max, upon the crowded quay. They saw the sails grow white, then blue in shade, The ship had turned, caught in a windy flaw She glided imperceptibly away, Drew farther off and in the bright sky seemed to fade. 26 Home, through the emptying streets, Max took Christine, Who would have hid her sorrow from his gaze. Before the iron gateway, clasped between Each garden wall, he stopped. She, in amaze, Asked, "Do you enter not then, Mynheer Breuck? My father told me of your courtesy. Since I am now your charge, 'tis meet for me To show such hospitality as maiden may, Without disdaining rules must not be broke. Katrina will have coffee, and she bakes today." 27 She straight unhasped the tall, beflowered gate. Curled into tendrils, twisted into cones Of leaves and roses, iron infoliate, It guards the pleasance, and its stiffened bones Are budded with much peering at the rows, And beds, and arbours, which it keeps inside. Max started at the beauty, at the glare Of tints. At either end was set a wide Path strewn with fine, red gravel, and such shows Of tulips in their splendour flaunted everywhere! 28 From side to side, midway each path, there ran A longer one which cut the space in two. And, like a tunnel some magician Has wrought in twinkling green, an alley grew, Pleached thick and walled with apple trees; their flowers Incensed the garden, and when Autumn came The plump and heavy apples crowding stood And tapped against the arbour. Then the dame Katrina shook them down, in pelting showers They plunged to earth, and died transformed to sugared food. 29 Against the high, encircling walls were grapes, Nailed close to feel the baking of the sun From glowing bricks. Their microscopic shapes Half hidden by serrated leaves. And one Old cherry tossed its branches near the door. Bordered along the wall, in beds between, Flickering, streaming, nodding in the air, The pride of all the garden, there were more Tulips than Max had ever dreamed or seen. They jostled, mobbed, and danced. Max stood at helpless stare. 30 "Within the arbour, Mynheer Breuck, I'll bring Coffee and cakes, a pipe, and Father's best Tobacco, brought from countries harbouring Dawn's earliest footstep. Wait." With girlish zest To please her guest she flew. A moment more She came again, with her old nurse behind. Then, sitting on the bench and knitting fast, She talked as someone with a noble store Of hidden fancies, blown upon the wind, Eager to flutter forth and leave their silent past. 31 The little apple leaves above their heads Let fall a quivering sunshine. Quiet, cool, In blossomed boughs they sat. Beyond, the beds Of tulips blazed, a proper vestibule And antechamber to the rainbow. Dyes Of prismed richness: Carmine. Madder. Blues Tinging dark browns to purple. Silvers flushed To amethyst and tinct with gold. Round eyes Of scarlet, spotting tender saffron hues. Violets sunk to blacks, and reds in orange crushed. 32 Of every pattern and in every shade. Nacreous, iridescent, mottled, checked. Some purest sulphur-yellow, others made An ivory-white with disks of copper flecked. Sprinkled and striped, tasselled, or keenest edged. Striated, powdered, freckled, long or short. They bloomed, and seemed strange wonder-moths new-fledged, Born of the spectrum wedded to a flame. The shade within the arbour made a port To o'ertaxed eyes, its still, green twilight rest became. 33 Her knitting-needles clicked and Christine talked, This child matured to woman unaware, The first time left alone. Now dreams once balked Found utterance. Max thought her very fair. Beneath her cap her ornaments shone gold, And purest gold they were. Kurler was rich And heedful. Her old maiden aunt had died Whose darling care she was. Now, growing bold, She asked, had Max a sister? Dropped a stitch At her own candour. Then she paused and softly sighed. 34 Two years was long! She loved her father well, But fears she had not. He had always been Just sailed or sailing. And she must not dwell On sad thoughts, he had told her so, and seen Her smile at parting. But she sighed once more. Two years was long; 'twas not one hour yet! Mynheer Grootver she would not see at all. Yes, yes, she knew, but ere the date so set, The "Horn of Fortune" would be at the wall. When Max had bid farewell, she watched him from the door. 35 The next day, and the next, Max went to ask The health of Jufvrouw Kurler, and the news: Another tulip blown, or the great task Of gathering petals which the high wind strews; The polishing of floors, the pictured tiles Well scrubbed, and oaken chairs most deftly oiled. Such things were Christine's world, and his was she Winter drew near, his sun was in her smiles. Another Spring, and at his law he toiled, Unspoken hope counselled a wise efficiency. 36 Max Breuck was honour's soul, he knew himself The guardian of this girl; no more, no less. As one in charge of guineas on a shelf Loose in a china teapot, may confess His need, but may not borrow till his friend Comes back to give. So Max, in honour, said No word of love or marriage; but the days He clipped off on his almanac. The end Must come! The second year, with feet of lead, Lagged slowly by till Spring had plumped the willow sprays. 37 Two years had made Christine a woman grown, With dignity and gently certain pride. But all her childhood fancies had not flown, Her thoughts in lovely dreamings seemed to glide. Max was her trusted friend, did she confess A closer happiness? Max could not tell. Two years were over and his life he found Sphered and complete. In restless eagerness He waited for the "Horn of Fortune". Well Had he his promise kept, abating not one pound. 38 Spring slipped away to Summer. Still no glass Sighted the brigantine. Then Grootver came Demanding Jufvrouw Kurler. His trespass Was justified, for he had won the game. Christine begged time, more time! Midsummer went, And Grootver waxed impatient. Still the ship Tarried. Christine, betrayed and weary, sank To dreadful terrors. One day, crazed, she sent For Max. "Come quickly," said her note, "I skip The worst distress until we meet. The world is blank." 39 Through the long sunshine of late afternoon Max went to her. In the pleached alley, lost In bitter reverie, he found her soon. And sitting down beside her, at the cost Of all his secret, "Dear," said he, "what thing So suddenly has happened?" Then, in tears, She told that Grootver, on the following morn, Would come to marry her, and shuddering: "I will die rather, death has lesser fears." Max felt the shackles drop from the oath which he had sworn. 40 "My Dearest One, the hid joy of my heart! I love you, oh! you must indeed have known. In strictest honour I have played my part; But all this misery has overthrown My scruples. If you love me, marry me Before the sun has dipped behind those trees. You cannot be wed twice, and Grootver, foiled, Can eat his anger. My care it shall be To pay your father's debt, by such degrees As I can compass, and for years I've greatly toiled. 41 This is not haste, Christine, for long I've known My love, and silence forced upon my lips. I worship you with all the strength I've shown In keeping faith." With pleading finger tips He touched her arm. "Christine! Beloved! Think. Let us not tempt the future. Dearest, speak, I love you. Do my words fall too swift now? They've been in leash so long upon the brink." She sat quite still, her body loose and weak. Then into him she melted, all her soul at flow. 42 And they were married ere the westering sun Had disappeared behind the garden trees. The evening poured on them its benison, And flower-scents, that only night-time frees, Rose up around them from the beamy ground, Silvered and shadowed by a tranquil moon. Within the arbour, long they lay embraced, In such enraptured sweetness as they found Close-partnered each to each, and thinking soon To be enwoven, long ere night to morning faced. 43 At last Max spoke, "Dear Heart, this night is ours, To watch it pale, together, into dawn, Pressing our souls apart like opening flowers Until our lives, through quivering bodies drawn, Are mingled and confounded. Then, far spent, Our eyes will close to undisturbed rest. For that desired thing I leave you now. To pinnacle this day's accomplishment, By telling Grootver that a bootless quest Is his, and that his schemes have met a knock-down blow." 44 But Christine clung to him with sobbing cries, Pleading for love's sake that he leave her not. And wound her arms about his knees and thighs As he stood over her. With dread, begot Of Grootver's name, and silence, and the night, She shook and trembled. Words in moaning plaint Wooed him to stay. She feared, she knew not why, Yet greatly feared. She seemed some anguished saint Martyred by visions. Max Breuck soothed her fright With wisdom, then stepped out under the cooling sky. 45 But at the gate once more she held him close And quenched her heart again upon his lips. "My Sweetheart, why this terror? I propose But to be gone one hour! Evening slips Away, this errand must be done." "Max! Max! First goes my father, if I lose you now!" She grasped him as in panic lest she drown. Softly he laughed, "One hour through the town By moonlight! That's no place for foul attacks. Dearest, be comforted, and clear that troubled brow. 46 One hour, Dear, and then, no more alone. We front another day as man and wife. I shall be back almost before I'm gone, And midnight shall anoint and crown our life." Then through the gate he passed. Along the street She watched his buttons gleaming in the moon. He stopped to wave and turned the garden wall. Straight she sank down upon a mossy seat. Her senses, mist-encircled by a swoon, Swayed to unconsciousness beneath its wreathing pall. 47 Briskly Max walked beside the still canal. His step was firm with purpose. Not a jot He feared this meeting, nor the rancorous gall Grootver would spit on him who marred his plot. He dreaded no man, since he could protect Christine. His wife! He stopped and laughed aloud. His starved life had not fitted him for joy. It strained him to the utmost to reject Even this hour with her. His heart beat loud. "Damn Grootver, who can force my time to this employ!" 48 He laughed again. What boyish uncontrol To be so racked. Then felt his ticking watch. In half an hour Grootver would know the whole. And he would be returned, lifting the latch Of his own gate, eager to take Christine And crush her to his lips. How bear delay? He broke into a run. In front, a line Of candle-light banded the cobbled street. Hilverdink's tavern! Not for many a day Had he been there to take his old, accustomed seat. 49 "Why, Max! Stop, Max!" And out they came pell-mell, His old companions. "Max, where have you been? Not drink with us? Indeed you serve us well! How many months is it since we have seen You here? Jan, Jan, you slow, old doddering goat! Here's Mynheer Breuck come back again at last, Stir your old bones to welcome him. Fie, Max. Business! And after hours! Fill your throat; Here's beer or brandy. Now, boys, hold him fast. Put down your cane, dear man. What really vicious whacks!" 50 They forced him to a seat, and held him there, Despite his anger, while the hideous joke Was tossed from hand to hand. Franz poured with care A brimming glass of whiskey. "Here, we've broke Into a virgin barrel for you, drink! Tut! Tut! Just hear him! Married! Who, and when? Married, and out on business. Clever Spark! Which lie's the likeliest? Come, Max, do think." Swollen with fury, struggling with these men, Max cursed hilarity which must needs have a mark. 51 Forcing himself to steadiness, he tried To quell the uproar, told them what he dared Of his own life and circumstance. Implied Most urgent matters, time could ill be spared. In jesting mood his comrades heard his tale, And scoffed at it. He felt his anger more Goaded and bursting;--"Cowards! Is no one loth To mock at duty--" Here they called for ale, And forced a pipe upon him. With an oath He shivered it to fragments on the earthen floor. 52 Sobered a little by his violence, And by the host who begged them to be still, Nor injure his good name, "Max, no offence," They blurted, "you may leave now if you will." "One moment, Max," said Franz. "We've gone too far. I ask your pardon for our foolish joke. It started in a wager ere you came. The talk somehow had fall'n on drugs, a jar I brought from China, herbs the natives smoke, Was with me, and I thought merely to play a game. 53 Its properties are to induce a sleep Fraught with adventure, and the flight of time Is inconceivable in swiftness. Deep Sunken in slumber, imageries sublime Flatter the senses, or some fearful dream Holds them enmeshed. Years pass which on the clock Are but so many seconds. We agreed That the next man who came should prove the scheme; And you were he. Jan handed you the crock. Two whiffs! And then the pipe was broke, and you were freed." 54 "It is a lie, a damned, infernal lie!" Max Breuck was maddened now. "Another jest Of your befuddled wits. I know not why I am to be your butt. At my request You'll choose among you one who'll answer for Your most unseasonable mirth. Good-night And good-by,--gentlemen. You'll hear from me." But Franz had caught him at the very door, "It is no lie, Max Breuck, and for your plight I am to blame. Come back, and we'll talk quietly. 55 You have no business, that is why we laughed, Since you had none a few minutes ago. As to your wedding, naturally we chaffed, Knowing the length of time it takes to do A simple thing like that in this slow world. Indeed, Max, 'twas a dream. Forgive me then. I'll burn the drug if you prefer." But Breuck Muttered and stared,--"A lie." And then he hurled, Distraught, this word at Franz: "Prove it. And when It's proven, I'll believe. That thing shall be your work. 56 I'll give you just one week to make your case. On August thirty-first, eighteen-fourteen, I shall require your proof." With wondering face Franz cried, "A week to August, and fourteen The year! You're mad, 'tis April now. April, and eighteen-twelve." Max staggered, caught A chair,--"April two years ago! Indeed, Or you, or I, are mad. I know not how Either could blunder so." Hilverdink brought "The Amsterdam Gazette", and Max was forced to read. 57 "Eighteen hundred and twelve," in largest print; And next to it, "April the twenty-first." The letters smeared and jumbled, but by dint Of straining every nerve to meet the worst, He read it, and into his pounding brain Tumbled a horror. Like a roaring sea Foreboding shipwreck, came the message plain: "This is two years ago! What of Christine?" He fled the cellar, in his agony Running to outstrip Fate, and save his holy shrine. 58 The darkened buildings echoed to his feet Clap-clapping on the pavement as he ran. Across moon-misted squares clamoured his fleet And terror-winged steps. His heart began To labour at the speed. And still no sign, No flutter of a leaf against the sky. And this should be the garden wall, and round The corner, the old gate. No even line Was this! No wall! And then a fearful cry Shattered the stillness. Two stiff houses filled the ground. 59 Shoulder to shoulder, like dragoons in line, They stood, and Max knew them to be the ones To right and left of Kurler's garden. Spine Rigid next frozen spine. No mellow tones Of ancient gilded iron, undulate, Expanding in wide circles and broad curves, The twisted iron of the garden gate, Was there. The houses touched and left no space Between. With glassy eyes and shaking nerves Max gazed. Then mad with fear, fled still, and left that place. 60 Stumbling and panting, on he ran, and on. His slobbering lips could only cry, "Christine! My Dearest Love! My Wife! Where are you gone? What future is our past? What saturnine, Sardonic devil's jest has bid us live Two years together in a puff of smoke? It was no dream, I swear it! In some star, Or still imprisoned in Time's egg, you give Me love. I feel it. Dearest Dear, this stroke Shall never part us, I will reach to where you are." 61 His burning eyeballs stared into the dark. The moon had long been set. And still he cried: "Christine! My Love! Christine!" A sudden spark Pricked through the gloom, and shortly Max espied With his uncertain vision, so within Distracted he could scarcely trust its truth, A latticed window where a crimson gleam Spangled the blackness, and hung from a pin, An iron crane, were three gilt balls. His youth Had taught their meaning, now they closed upon his dream. 62 Softly he knocked against the casement, wide It flew, and a cracked voice his business there Demanded. The door opened, and inside Max stepped. He saw a candle held in air Above the head of a gray-bearded Jew. "Simeon Isaacs, Mynheer, can I serve You?" "Yes, I think you can. Do you keep arms? I want a pistol." Quick the old man grew Livid. "Mynheer, a pistol! Let me swerve You from your purpose. Life brings often false alarms--" 63 "Peace, good old Isaacs, why should you suppose My purpose deadly. In good truth I've been Blest above others. You have many rows Of pistols it would seem. Here, this shagreen Case holds one that I fancy. Silvered mounts Are to my taste. These letters `C. D. L.' Its former owner? Dead, you say. Poor Ghost! 'Twill serve my turn though--" Hastily he counts The florins down upon the table. "Well, Good-night, and wish me luck for your to-morrow's toast." 64 Into the night again he hurried, now Pale and in haste; and far beyond the town He set his goal. And then he wondered how Poor C. D. L. had come to die. "It's grown Handy in killing, maybe, this I've bought, And will work punctually." His sorrow fell Upon his senses, shutting out all else. Again he wept, and called, and blindly fought The heavy miles away. "Christine. I'm well. I'm coming. My Own Wife!" He lurched with failing pulse. 65 Along the dyke the keen air blew in gusts, And grasses bent and wailed before the wind. The Zuider Zee, which croons all night and thrusts Long stealthy fingers up some way to find And crumble down the stones, moaned baffled. Here The wide-armed windmills looked like gallows-trees. No lights were burning in the distant thorps. Max laid aside his coat. His mind, half-clear, Babbled "Christine!" A shot split through the breeze. The cold stars winked and glittered at his chilling corpse. Sancta Maria, Succurre Miseris Dear Virgin Mary, far away, Look down from Heaven while I pray. Open your golden casement high, And lean way out beyond the sky. I am so little, it may be A task for you to harken me. O Lady Mary, I have bought A candle, as the good priest taught. I only had one penny, so Old Goody Jenkins let it go. It is a little bent, you see. But Oh, be merciful to me! I have not anything to give, Yet I so long for him to live. A year ago he sailed away And not a word unto today. I've strained my eyes from the sea-wall But never does he come at all. Other ships have entered port Their voyages finished, long or short, And other sailors have received Their welcomes, while I sat and grieved. My heart is bursting for his hail, O Virgin, let me spy his sail. _Hull down on the edge of a sun-soaked sea Sparkle the bellying sails for me. Taut to the push of a rousing wind Shaking the sea till it foams behind, The tightened rigging is shrill with the song: "We are back again who were gone so long."_ One afternoon I bumped my head. I sat on a post and wished I were dead Like father and mother, for no one cared Whither I went or how I fared. A man's voice said, "My little lad, Here's a bit of a toy to make you glad." Then I opened my eyes and saw him plain, With his sleeves rolled up, and the dark blue stain Of tattooed skin, where a flock of quail Flew up to his shoulder and met the tail Of a dragon curled, all pink and green, Which sprawled on his back, when it was seen. He held out his hand and gave to me The most marvellous top which could ever be. It had ivory eyes, and jet-black rings, And a red stone carved into little wings, All joined by a twisted golden line, And set in the brown wood, even and fine. Forgive me, Lady, I have not brought My treasure to you as I ought, But he said to keep it for his sake And comfort myself with it, and take Joy in its spinning, and so I do. It couldn't mean quite the same to you. Every day I met him there, Where the fisher-nets dry in the sunny air. He told me stories of courts and kings, Of storms at sea, of lots of things. The top he said was a sort of sign That something in the big world was mine. _Blue and white on a sun-shot ocean. Against the horizon a glint in motion. Full in the grasp of a shoving wind, Trailing her bubbles of foam behind, Singing and shouting to port she races, A flying harp, with her sheets and braces._ O Queen of Heaven, give me heed, I am in very utmost need. He loved me, he was all I had, And when he came it made the sad Thoughts disappear. This very day Send his ship home to me I pray. I'll be a priest, if you want it so, I'll work till I have enough to go And study Latin to say the prayers On the rosary our old priest wears. I wished to be a sailor too, But I will give myself to you. I'll never even spin my top, But put it away in a box. I'll stop Whistling the sailor-songs he taught. I'll save my pennies till I have bought A silver heart in the market square, I've seen some beautiful, white ones there. I'll give up all I want to do And do whatever you tell me to. Heavenly Lady, take away All the games I like to play, Take my life to fill the score, Only bring him back once more! _The poplars shiver and turn their leaves, And the wind through the belfry moans and grieves. The gray dust whirls in the market square, And the silver hearts are covered with care By thick tarpaulins. Once again The bay is black under heavy rain._ The Queen of Heaven has shut her door. A little boy weeps and prays no more. After Hearing a Waltz by Bartók But why did I kill him? Why? Why? In the small, gilded room, near the stair? My ears rack and throb with his cry, And his eyes goggle under his hair, As my fingers sink into the fair White skin of his throat. It was I! I killed him! My God! Don't you hear? I shook him until his red tongue Hung flapping out through the black, queer, Swollen lines of his lips. And I clung With my nails drawing blood, while I flung The loose, heavy body in fear. Fear lest he should still not be dead. I was drunk with the lust of his life. The blood-drops oozed slow from his head And dabbled a chair. And our strife Lasted one reeling second, his knife Lay and winked in the lights overhead. And the waltz from the ballroom I heard, When I called him a low, sneaking cur. And the wail of the violins stirred My brute anger with visions of her. As I throttled his windpipe, the purr Of his breath with the waltz became blurred. I have ridden ten miles through the dark, With that music, an infernal din, Pounding rhythmic inside me. Just Hark! One! Two! Three! And my fingers sink in To his flesh when the violins, thin And straining with passion, grow stark. One! Two! Three! Oh, the horror of sound! While she danced I was crushing his throat. He had tasted the joy of her, wound Round her body, and I heard him gloat On the favour. That instant I smote. One! Two! Three! How the dancers swirl round! He is here in the room, in my arm, His limp body hangs on the spin Of the waltz we are dancing, a swarm Of blood-drops is hemming us in! Round and round! One! Two! Three! And his sin Is red like his tongue lolling warm. One! Two! Three! And the drums are his knell. He is heavy, his feet beat the floor As I drag him about in the swell Of the waltz. With a menacing roar, The trumpets crash in through the door. One! Two! Three! clangs his funeral bell. One! Two! Three! In the chaos of space Rolls the earth to the hideous glee Of death! And so cramped is this place, I stifle and pant. One! Two! Three! Round and round! God! 'Tis he throttles me! He has covered my mouth with his face! And his blood has dripped into my heart! And my heart beats and labours. One! Two! Three! His dead limbs have coiled every part Of my body in tentacles. Through My ears the waltz jangles. Like glue His dead body holds me athwart. One! Two! Three! Give me air! Oh! My God! One! Two! Three! I am drowning in slime! One! Two! Three! And his corpse, like a clod, Beats me into a jelly! The chime, One! Two! Three! And his dead legs keep time. Air! Give me air! Air! My God! Clear, with Light, Variable Winds The fountain bent and straightened itself In the night wind, Blowing like a flower. It gleamed and glittered, A tall white lily, Under the eye of the golden moon. From a stone seat, Beneath a blossoming lime, The man watched it. And the spray pattered On the dim grass at his feet. The fountain tossed its water, Up and up, like silver marbles. Is that an arm he sees? And for one moment Does he catch the moving curve Of a thigh? The fountain gurgled and splashed, And the man's face was wet. Is it singing that he hears? A song of playing at ball? The moonlight shines on the straight column of water, And through it he sees a woman, Tossing the water-balls. Her breasts point outwards, And the nipples are like buds of peonies. Her flanks ripple as she plays, And the water is not more undulating Than the lines of her body. "Come," she sings, "Poet! Am I not more worth than your day ladies, Covered with awkward stuffs, Unreal, unbeautiful? What do you fear in taking me? Is not the night for poets? I am your dream, Recurrent as water, Gemmed with the moon!" She steps to the edge of the pool And the water runs, rustling, down her sides. She stretches out her arms, And the fountain streams behind her Like an opened veil. * * * * * In the morning the gardeners came to their work. "There is something in the fountain," said one. They shuddered as they laid their dead master On the grass. "I will close his eyes," said the head gardener, "It is uncanny to see a dead man staring at the sun." The Basket I The inkstand is full of ink, and the paper lies white and unspotted, in the round of light thrown by a candle. Puffs of darkness sweep into the corners, and keep rolling through the room behind his chair. The air is silver and pearl, for the night is liquid with moonlight. See how the roof glitters, like ice! Over there, a slice of yellow cuts into the silver-blue, and beside it stand two geraniums, purple because the light is silver-blue, to-night. See! She is coming, the young woman with the bright hair. She swings a basket as she walks, which she places on the sill, between the geranium stalks. He laughs, and crumples his paper as he leans forward to look. "The Basket Filled with Moonlight", what a title for a book! The bellying clouds swing over the housetops. He has forgotten the woman in the room with the geraniums. He is beating his brain, and in his eardrums hammers his heavy pulse. She sits on the window-sill, with the basket in her lap. And tap! She cracks a nut. And tap! Another. Tap! Tap! Tap! The shells ricochet upon the roof, and get into the gutters, and bounce over the edge and disappear. "It is very queer," thinks Peter, "the basket was empty, I'm sure. How could nuts appear from the atmosphere?" The silver-blue moonlight makes the geraniums purple, and the roof glitters like ice. II Five o'clock. The geraniums are very gay in their crimson array. The bellying clouds swing over the housetops, and over the roofs goes Peter to pay his morning's work with a holiday. "Annette, it is I. Have you finished? Can I come?" Peter jumps through the window. "Dear, are you alone?" "Look, Peter, the dome of the tabernacle is done. This gold thread is so very high, I am glad it is morning, a starry sky would have seen me bankrupt. Sit down, now tell me, is your story going well?" The golden dome glittered in the orange of the setting sun. On the walls, at intervals, hung altar-cloths and chasubles, and copes, and stoles, and coffin palls. All stiff with rich embroidery, and stitched with so much artistry, they seemed like spun and woven gems, or flower-buds new-opened on their stems. Annette looked at the geraniums, very red against the blue sky. "No matter how I try, I cannot find any thread of such a red. My bleeding hearts drip stuff muddy in comparison. Heigh-ho! See my little pecking dove? I'm in love with my own temple. Only that halo's wrong. The colour's too strong, or not strong enough. I don't know. My eyes are tired. Oh, Peter, don't be so rough; it is valuable. I won't do any more. I promise. You tyrannise, Dear, that's enough. Now sit down and amuse me while I rest." The shadows of the geraniums creep over the floor, and begin to climb the opposite wall. Peter watches her, fluid with fatigue, floating, and drifting, and undulant in the orange glow. His senses flow towards her, where she lies supine and dreaming. Seeming drowned in a golden halo. The pungent smell of the geraniums is hard to bear. He pushes against her knees, and brushes his lips across her languid hands. His lips are hot and speechless. He woos her, quivering, and the room is filled with shadows, for the sun has set. But she only understands the ways of a needle through delicate stuffs, and the shock of one colour on another. She does not see that this is the same, and querulously murmurs his name. "Peter, I don't want it. I am tired." And he, the undesired, burns and is consumed. There is a crescent moon on the rim of the sky. III "Go home, now, Peter. To-night is full moon. I must be alone." "How soon the moon is full again! Annette, let me stay. Indeed, Dear Love, I shall not go away. My God, but you keep me starved! You write `No Entrance Here', over all the doors. Is it not strange, my Dear, that loving, yet you deny me entrance everywhere. Would marriage strike you blind, or, hating bonds as you do, why should I be denied the rights of loving if I leave you free? You want the whole of me, you pick my brains to rest you, but you give me not one heart-beat. Oh, forgive me, Sweet! I suffer in my loving, and you know it. I cannot feed my life on being a poet. Let me stay." "As you please, poor Peter, but it will hurt me if you do. It will crush your heart and squeeze the love out." He answered gruffly, "I know what I'm about." "Only remember one thing from to-night. My work is taxing and I must have sight! I _must_!" The clear moon looks in between the geraniums. On the wall, the shadow of the man is divided from the shadow of the woman by a silver thread. They are eyes, hundreds of eyes, round like marbles! Unwinking, for there are no lids. Blue, black, gray, and hazel, and the irises are cased in the whites, and they glitter and spark under the moon. The basket is heaped with human eyes. She cracks off the whites and throws them away. They ricochet upon the roof, and get into the gutters, and bounce over the edge and disappear. But she is here, quietly sitting on the window-sill, eating human eyes. The silver-blue moonlight makes the geraniums purple, and the roof shines like ice. IV How hot the sheets are! His skin is tormented with pricks, and over him sticks, and never moves, an eye. It lights the sky with blood, and drips blood. And the drops sizzle on his bare skin, and he smells them burning in, and branding his body with the name "Annette". The blood-red sky is outside his window now. Is it blood or fire? Merciful God! Fire! And his heart wrenches and pounds "Annette!" The lead of the roof is scorching, he ricochets, gets to the edge, bounces over and disappears. The bellying clouds are red as they swing over the housetops. V The air is of silver and pearl, for the night is liquid with moonlight. How the ruin glistens, like a palace of ice! Only two black holes swallow the brilliance of the moon. Deflowered windows, sockets without sight. A man stands before the house. He sees the silver-blue moonlight, and set in it, over his head, staring and flickering, eyes of geranium red. Annette! In a Castle I Over the yawning chimney hangs the fog. Drip--hiss--drip--hiss-- fall the raindrops on the oaken log which burns, and steams, and smokes the ceiling beams. Drip--hiss--the rain never stops. The wide, state bed shivers beneath its velvet coverlet. Above, dim, in the smoke, a tarnished coronet gleams dully. Overhead hammers and chinks the rain. Fearfully wails the wind down distant corridors, and there comes the swish and sigh of rushes lifted off the floors. The arras blows sidewise out from the wall, and then falls back again. It is my lady's key, confided with much nice cunning, whisperingly. He enters on a sob of wind, which gutters the candles almost to swaling. The fire flutters and drops. Drip--hiss--the rain never stops. He shuts the door. The rushes fall again to stillness along the floor. Outside, the wind goes wailing. The velvet coverlet of the wide bed is smooth and cold. Above, in the firelight, winks the coronet of tarnished gold. The knight shivers in his coat of fur, and holds out his hands to the withering flame. She is always the same, a sweet coquette. He will wait for her. How the log hisses and drips! How warm and satisfying will be her lips! It is wide and cold, the state bed; but when her head lies under the coronet, and her eyes are full and wet with love, and when she holds out her arms, and the velvet counterpane half slips from her, and alarms her trembling modesty, how eagerly he will leap to cover her, and blot himself beneath the quilt, making her laugh and tremble. Is it guilt to free a lady from her palsied lord, absent and fighting, terribly abhorred? He stirs a booted heel and kicks a rolling coal. His spur clinks on the hearth. Overhead, the rain hammers and chinks. She is so pure and whole. Only because he has her soul will she resign herself to him, for where the soul has gone, the body must be given as a sign. He takes her by the divine right of the only lover. He has sworn to fight her lord, and wed her after. Should he be overborne, she will die adoring him, forlorn, shriven by her great love. Above, the coronet winks in the darkness. Drip--hiss--fall the raindrops. The arras blows out from the wall, and a door bangs in a far-off hall. The candles swale. In the gale the moat below plunges and spatters. Will the lady lose courage and not come? The rain claps on a loosened rafter. Is that laughter? The room is filled with lisps and whispers. Something mutters. One candle drowns and the other gutters. Is that the rain which pads and patters, is it the wind through the winding entries which chatters? The state bed is very cold and he is alone. How far from the wall the arras is blown! Christ's Death! It is no storm which makes these little chuckling sounds. By the Great Wounds of Holy Jesus, it is his dear lady, kissing and clasping someone! Through the sobbing storm he hears her love take form and flutter out in words. They prick into his ears and stun his desire, which lies within him, hard and dead, like frozen fire. And the little noise never stops. Drip--hiss--the rain drops. He tears down the arras from before an inner chamber's bolted door. II The state bed shivers in the watery dawn. Drip--hiss--fall the raindrops. For the storm never stops. On the velvet coverlet lie two bodies, stripped and fair in the cold, grey air. Drip--hiss--fall the blood-drops, for the bleeding never stops. The bodies lie quietly. At each side of the bed, on the floor, is a head. A man's on this side, a woman's on that, and the red blood oozes along the rush mat. A wisp of paper is twisted carefully into the strands of the dead man's hair. It says, "My Lord: Your wife's paramour has paid with his life for the high favour." Through the lady's silver fillet is wound another paper. It reads, "Most noble Lord: Your wife's misdeeds are as a double-stranded necklace of beads. But I have engaged that, on your return, she shall welcome you here. She will not spurn your love as before, you have still the best part of her. Her blood was red, her body white, they will both be here for your delight. The soul inside was a lump of dirt, I have rid you of that with a spurt of my sword point. Good luck to your pleasure. She will be quite complaisant, my friend, I wager." The end was a splashed flourish of ink. Hark! In the passage is heard the clink of armour, the tread of a heavy man. The door bursts open and standing there, his thin hair wavering in the glare of steely daylight, is my Lord of Clair. Over the yawning chimney hangs the fog. Drip--hiss--drip--hiss-- fall the raindrops. Overhead hammers and chinks the rain which never stops. The velvet coverlet is sodden and wet, yet the roof beams are tight. Overhead, the coronet gleams with its blackened gold, winking and blinking. Among the rushes three corpses are growing cold. III In the castle church you may see them stand, Two sumptuous tombs on either hand Of the choir, my Lord's and my Lady's, grand In sculptured filigrees. And where the transepts of the church expand, A crusader, come from the Holy Land, Lies with crossed legs and embroidered band. The page's name became a brand For shame. He was buried in crawling sand, After having been burnt by royal command. The Book of Hours of Sister Clotilde The Bell in the convent tower swung. High overhead the great sun hung, A navel for the curving sky. The air was a blue clarity. Swallows flew, And a cock crew. The iron clanging sank through the light air, Rustled over with blowing branches. A flare Of spotted green, and a snake had gone Into the bed where the snowdrops shone In green new-started, Their white bells parted. Two by two, in a long brown line, The nuns were walking to breathe the fine Bright April air. They must go in soon And work at their tasks all the afternoon. But this time is theirs! They walk in pairs. First comes the Abbess, preoccupied And slow, as a woman often tried, With her temper in bond. Then the oldest nun. Then younger and younger, until the last one Has a laugh on her lips, And fairly skips. They wind about the gravel walks And all the long line buzzes and talks. They step in time to the ringing bell, With scarcely a shadow. The sun is well In the core of a sky Domed silverly. Sister Marguerite said: "The pears will soon bud." Sister Angelique said she must get her spud And free the earth round the jasmine roots. Sister Veronique said: "Oh, look at those shoots! There's a crocus up, With a purple cup." But Sister Clotilde said nothing at all, She looked up and down the old grey wall To see if a lizard were basking there. She looked across the garden to where A sycamore Flanked the garden door. She was restless, although her little feet danced, And quite unsatisfied, for it chanced Her morning's work had hung in her mind And would not take form. She could not find The beautifulness For the Virgin's dress. Should it be of pink, or damasked blue? Or perhaps lilac with gold shotted through? Should it be banded with yellow and white Roses, or sparked like a frosty night? Or a crimson sheen Over some sort of green? But Clotilde's eyes saw nothing new In all the garden, no single hue So lovely or so marvellous That its use would not seem impious. So on she walked, And the others talked. Sister Elisabeth edged away From what her companion had to say, For Sister Marthe saw the world in little, She weighed every grain and recorded each tittle. She did plain stitching And worked in the kitchen. "Sister Radegonde knows the apples won't last, I told her so this Friday past. I must speak to her before Compline." Her words were like dust motes in slanting sunshine. The other nun sighed, With her pleasure quite dried. Suddenly Sister Berthe cried out: "The snowdrops are blooming!" They turned about. The little white cups bent over the ground, And in among the light stems wound A crested snake, With his eyes awake. His body was green with a metal brightness Like an emerald set in a kind of whiteness, And all down his curling length were disks, Evil vermilion asterisks, They paled and flooded As wounds fresh-blooded. His crest was amber glittered with blue, And opaque so the sun came shining through. It seemed a crown with fiery points. When he quivered all down his scaly joints, From every slot The sparkles shot. The nuns huddled tightly together, fear Catching their senses. But Clotilde must peer More closely at the beautiful snake, She seemed entranced and eased. Could she make Colours so rare, The dress were there. The Abbess shook off her lethargy. "Sisters, we will walk on," said she. Sidling away from the snowdrop bed, The line curved forwards, the Abbess ahead. Only Clotilde Was the last to yield. When the recreation hour was done Each went in to her task. Alone In the library, with its great north light, Clotilde wrought at an exquisite Wreath of flowers For her Book of Hours. She twined the little crocus blooms With snowdrops and daffodils, the glooms Of laurel leaves were interwoven With Stars-of-Bethlehem, and cloven Fritillaries, Whose colour varies. They framed the picture she had made, Half-delighted and half-afraid. In a courtyard with a lozenged floor The Virgin watched, and through the arched door The angel came Like a springing flame. His wings were dipped in violet fire, His limbs were strung to holy desire. He lowered his head and passed under the arch, And the air seemed beating a solemn march. The Virgin waited With eyes dilated. Her face was quiet and innocent, And beautiful with her strange assent. A silver thread about her head Her halo was poised. But in the stead Of her gown, there remained The vellum, unstained. Clotilde painted the flowers patiently, Lingering over each tint and dye. She could spend great pains, now she had seen That curious, unimagined green. A colour so strange It had seemed to change. She thought it had altered while she gazed. At first it had been simple green; then glazed All over with twisting flames, each spot A molten colour, trembling and hot, And every eye Seemed to liquefy. She had made a plan, and her spirits danced. After all, she had only glanced At that wonderful snake, and she must know Just what hues made the creature throw Those splashes and sprays Of prismed rays. When evening prayers were sung and said, The nuns lit their tapers and went to bed. And soon in the convent there was no light, For the moon did not rise until late that night, Only the shine Of the lamp at the shrine. Clotilde lay still in her trembling sheets. Her heart shook her body with its beats. She could not see till the moon should rise, So she whispered prayers and kept her eyes On the window-square Till light should be there. The faintest shadow of a branch Fell on the floor. Clotilde, grown staunch With solemn purpose, softly rose And fluttered down between the rows Of sleeping nuns. She almost runs. She must go out through the little side door Lest the nuns who were always praying before The Virgin's altar should hear her pass. She pushed the bolts, and over the grass The red moon's brim Mounted its rim. Her shadow crept up the convent wall As she swiftly left it, over all The garden lay the level glow Of a moon coming up, very big and slow. The gravel glistened. She stopped and listened. It was still, and the moonlight was getting clearer. She laughed a little, but she felt queerer Than ever before. The snowdrop bed Was reached and she bent down her head. On the striped ground The snake was wound. For a moment Clotilde paused in alarm, Then she rolled up her sleeve and stretched out her arm. She thought she heard steps, she must be quick. She darted her hand out, and seized the thick Wriggling slime, Only just in time. The old gardener came muttering down the path, And his shadow fell like a broad, black swath, And covered Clotilde and the angry snake. He bit her, but what difference did that make! The Virgin should dress In his loveliness. The gardener was covering his new-set plants For the night was chilly, and nothing daunts Your lover of growing things. He spied Something to do and turned aside, And the moonlight streamed On Clotilde, and gleamed. His business finished the gardener rose. He shook and swore, for the moonlight shows A girl with a fire-tongued serpent, she Grasping him, laughing, while quietly Her eyes are weeping. Is he sleeping? He thinks it is some holy vision, Brushes that aside and with decision Jumps--and hits the snake with his stick, Crushes his spine, and then with quick, Urgent command Takes her hand. The gardener sucks the poison and spits, Cursing and praying as befits A poor old man half out of his wits. "Whatever possessed you, Sister, it's Hatched of a devil And very evil. It's one of them horrid basilisks You read about. They say a man risks His life to touch it, but I guess I've sucked it Out by now. Lucky I chucked it Away from you. I guess you'll do." "Oh, no, Francois, this beautiful beast Was sent to me, to me the least Worthy in all our convent, so I Could finish my picture of the Most High And Holy Queen, In her dress of green. He is dead now, but his colours won't fade At once, and by noon I shall have made The Virgin's robe. Oh, Francois, see How kindly the moon shines down on me! I can't die yet, For the task was set." "You won't die now, for I've sucked it away," Grumbled old Francois, "so have your play. If the Virgin is set on snake's colours so strong,--" "Francois, don't say things like that, it is wrong." So Clotilde vented Her creed. He repented. "He can't do no more harm, Sister," said he. "Paint as much as you like." And gingerly He picked up the snake with his stick. Clotilde Thanked him, and begged that he would shield Her secret, though itching To talk in the kitchen. The gardener promised, not very pleased, And Clotilde, with the strain of adventure eased, Walked quickly home, while the half-high moon Made her beautiful snake-skin sparkle, and soon In her bed she lay And waited for day. At dawn's first saffron-spired warning Clotilde was up. And all that morning, Except when she went to the chapel to pray, She painted, and when the April day Was hot with sun, Clotilde had done. Done! She drooped, though her heart beat loud At the beauty before her, and her spirit bowed To the Virgin her finely-touched thought had made. A lady, in excellence arrayed, And wonder-souled. Christ's Blessed Mould! From long fasting Clotilde felt weary and faint, But her eyes were starred like those of a saint Enmeshed in Heaven's beatitude. A sudden clamour hurled its rude Force to break Her vision awake. The door nearly leapt from its hinges, pushed By the multitude of nuns. They hushed When they saw Clotilde, in perfect quiet, Smiling, a little perplexed at the riot. And all the hive Buzzed "She's alive!" Old Francois had told. He had found the strain Of silence too great, and preferred the pain Of a conscience outraged. The news had spread, And all were convinced Clotilde must be dead. For Francois, to spite them, Had not seen fit to right them. The Abbess, unwontedly trembling and mild, Put her arms round Clotilde and wept, "My child, Has the Holy Mother showed you this grace, To spare you while you imaged her face? How could we have guessed Our convent so blessed! A miracle! But Oh! My Lamb! To have you die! And I, who am A hollow, living shell, the grave Is empty of me. Holy Mary, I crave To be taken, Dear Mother, Instead of this other." She dropped on her knees and silently prayed, With anguished hands and tears delayed To a painful slowness. The minutes drew To fractions. Then the west wind blew The sound of a bell, On a gusty swell. It came skipping over the slates of the roof, And the bright bell-notes seemed a reproof To grief, in the eye of so fair a day. The Abbess, comforted, ceased to pray. And the sun lit the flowers In Clotilde's Book of Hours. It glistened the green of the Virgin's dress And made the red spots, in a flushed excess, Pulse and start; and the violet wings Of the angel were colour which shines and sings. The book seemed a choir Of rainbow fire. The Abbess crossed herself, and each nun Did the same, then one by one, They filed to the chapel, that incensed prayers Might plead for the life of this sister of theirs. Clotilde, the Inspired! She only felt tired. * * * * * The old chronicles say she did not die Until heavy with years. And that is why There hangs in the convent church a basket Of osiered silver, a holy casket, And treasured therein A dried snake-skin. The Exeter Road Panels of claret and blue which shine Under the moon like lees of wine. A coronet done in a golden scroll, And wheels which blunder and creak as they roll Through the muddy ruts of a moorland track. They daren't look back! They are whipping and cursing the horses. Lord! What brutes men are when they think they're scored. Behind, my bay gelding gallops with me, In a steaming sweat, it is fine to see That coach, all claret, and gold, and blue, Hop about and slue. They are scared half out of their wits, poor souls. For my lord has a casket full of rolls Of minted sovereigns, and silver bars. I laugh to think how he'll show his scars In London to-morrow. He whines with rage In his varnished cage. My lady has shoved her rings over her toes. 'Tis an ancient trick every night-rider knows. But I shall relieve her of them yet, When I see she limps in the minuet I must beg to celebrate this night, And the green moonlight. There's nothing to hurry about, the plain Is hours long, and the mud's a strain. My gelding's uncommonly strong in the loins, In half an hour I'll bag the coins. 'Tis a clear, sweet night on the turn of Spring. The chase is the thing! How the coach flashes and wobbles, the moon Dripping down so quietly on it. A tune Is beating out of the curses and screams, And the cracking all through the painted seams. Steady, old horse, we'll keep it in sight. 'Tis a rare fine night! There's a clump of trees on the dip of the down, And the sky shimmers where it hangs over the town. It seems a shame to break the air In two with this pistol, but I've my share Of drudgery like other men. His hat? Amen! Hold up, you beast, now what the devil! Confound this moor for a pockholed, evil, Rotten marsh. My right leg's snapped. 'Tis a mercy he's rolled, but I'm nicely capped. A broken-legged man and a broken-legged horse! They'll get me, of course. The cursed coach will reach the town And they'll all come out, every loafer grown A lion to handcuff a man that's down. What's that? Oh, the coachman's bulleted hat! I'll give it a head to fit it pat. Thank you! No cravat. _They handcuffed the body just for style, And they hung him in chains for the volatile Wind to scour him flesh from bones. Way out on the moor you can hear the groans His gibbet makes when it blows a gale. 'Tis a common tale._ The Shadow Paul Jannes was working very late, For this watch must be done by eight To-morrow or the Cardinal Would certainly be vexed. Of all His customers the old prelate Was the most important, for his state Descended to his watches and rings, And he gave his mistresses many things To make them forget his age and smile When he paid visits, and they could while The time away with a diamond locket Exceedingly well. So they picked his pocket, And he paid in jewels for his slobbering kisses. This watch was made to buy him blisses From an Austrian countess on her way Home, and she meant to start next day. Paul worked by the pointed, tulip-flame Of a tallow candle, and became So absorbed, that his old clock made him wince Striking the hour a moment since. Its echo, only half apprehended, Lingered about the room. He ended Screwing the little rubies in, Setting the wheels to lock and spin, Curling the infinitesimal springs, Fixing the filigree hands. Chippings Of precious stones lay strewn about. The table before him was a rout Of splashes and sparks of coloured light. There was yellow gold in sheets, and quite A heap of emeralds, and steel. Here was a gem, there was a wheel. And glasses lay like limpid lakes Shining and still, and there were flakes Of silver, and shavings of pearl, And little wires all awhirl With the light of the candle. He took the watch And wound its hands about to match The time, then glanced up to take the hour From the hanging clock. Good, Merciful Power! How came that shadow on the wall, No woman was in the room! His tall Chiffonier stood gaunt behind His chair. His old cloak, rabbit-lined, Hung from a peg. The door was closed. Just for a moment he must have dozed. He looked again, and saw it plain. The silhouette made a blue-black stain On the opposite wall, and it never wavered Even when the candle quavered Under his panting breath. What made That beautiful, dreadful thing, that shade Of something so lovely, so exquisite, Cast from a substance which the sight Had not been tutored to perceive? Paul brushed his eyes across his sleeve. Clear-cut, the Shadow on the wall Gleamed black, and never moved at all. Paul's watches were like amulets, Wrought into patterns and rosettes; The cases were all set with stones, And wreathing lines, and shining zones. He knew the beauty in a curve, And the Shadow tortured every nerve With its perfect rhythm of outline Cutting the whitewashed wall. So fine Was the neck he knew he could have spanned It about with the fingers of one hand. The chin rose to a mouth he guessed, But could not see, the lips were pressed Loosely together, the edges close, And the proud and delicate line of the nose Melted into a brow, and there Broke into undulant waves of hair. The lady was edged with the stamp of race. A singular vision in such a place. He moved the candle to the tall Chiffonier; the Shadow stayed on the wall. He threw his cloak upon a chair, And still the lady's face was there. From every corner of the room He saw, in the patch of light, the gloom That was the lady. Her violet bloom Was almost brighter than that which came From his candle's tulip-flame. He set the filigree hands; he laid The watch in the case which he had made; He put on his rabbit cloak, and snuffed His candle out. The room seemed stuffed With darkness. Softly he crossed the floor, And let himself out through the door. The sun was flashing from every pin And wheel, when Paul let himself in. The whitewashed walls were hot with light. The room was the core of a chrysolite, Burning and shimmering with fiery might. The sun was so bright that no shadow could fall From the furniture upon the wall. Paul sighed as he looked at the empty space Where a glare usurped the lady's place. He settled himself to his work, but his mind Wandered, and he would wake to find His hand suspended, his eyes grown dim, And nothing advanced beyond the rim Of his dreaming. The Cardinal sent to pay For his watch, which had purchased so fine a day. But Paul could hardly touch the gold, It seemed the price of his Shadow, sold. With the first twilight he struck a match And watched the little blue stars hatch Into an egg of perfect flame. He lit his candle, and almost in shame At his eagerness, lifted his eyes. The Shadow was there, and its precise Outline etched the cold, white wall. The young man swore, "By God! You, Paul, There's something the matter with your brain. Go home now and sleep off the strain." The next day was a storm, the rain Whispered and scratched at the window-pane. A grey and shadowless morning filled The little shop. The watches, chilled, Were dead and sparkless as burnt-out coals. The gems lay on the table like shoals Of stranded shells, their colours faded, Mere heaps of stone, dull and degraded. Paul's head was heavy, his hands obeyed No orders, for his fancy strayed. His work became a simple round Of watches repaired and watches wound. The slanting ribbons of the rain Broke themselves on the window-pane, But Paul saw the silver lines in vain. Only when the candle was lit And on the wall just opposite He watched again the coming of _it_, Could he trace a line for the joy of his soul And over his hands regain control. Paul lingered late in his shop that night And the designs which his delight Sketched on paper seemed to be A tribute offered wistfully To the beautiful shadow of her who came And hovered over his candle flame. In the morning he selected all His perfect jacinths. One large opal Hung like a milky, rainbow moon In the centre, and blown in loose festoon The red stones quivered on silver threads To the outer edge, where a single, fine Band of mother-of-pearl the line Completed. On the other side, The creamy porcelain of the face Bore diamond hours, and no lace Of cotton or silk could ever be Tossed into being more airily Than the filmy golden hands; the time Seemed to tick away in rhyme. When, at dusk, the Shadow grew Upon the wall, Paul's work was through. Holding the watch, he spoke to her: "Lady, Beautiful Shadow, stir Into one brief sign of being. Turn your eyes this way, and seeing This watch, made from those sweet curves Where your hair from your forehead swerves, Accept the gift which I have wrought With your fairness in my thought. Grant me this, and I shall be Honoured overwhelmingly." The Shadow rested black and still, And the wind sighed over the window-sill. Paul put the despised watch away And laid out before him his array Of stones and metals, and when the morning Struck the stones to their best adorning, He chose the brightest, and this new watch Was so light and thin it seemed to catch The sunlight's nothingness, and its gleam. Topazes ran in a foamy stream Over the cover, the hands were studded With garnets, and seemed red roses, budded. The face was of crystal, and engraved Upon it the figures flashed and waved With zircons, and beryls, and amethysts. It took a week to make, and his trysts At night with the Shadow were his alone. Paul swore not to speak till his task was done. The night that the jewel was worthy to give. Paul watched the long hours of daylight live To the faintest streak; then lit his light, And sharp against the wall's pure white The outline of the Shadow started Into form. His burning-hearted Words so long imprisoned swelled To tumbling speech. Like one compelled, He told the lady all his love, And holding out the watch above His head, he knelt, imploring some Littlest sign. The Shadow was dumb. Weeks passed, Paul worked in fevered haste, And everything he made he placed Before his lady. The Shadow kept Its perfect passiveness. Paul wept. He wooed her with the work of his hands, He waited for those dear commands She never gave. No word, no motion, Eased the ache of his devotion. His days passed in a strain of toil, His nights burnt up in a seething coil. Seasons shot by, uncognisant He worked. The Shadow came to haunt Even his days. Sometimes quite plain He saw on the wall the blackberry stain Of his lady's picture. No sun was bright Enough to dazzle that from his sight. There were moments when he groaned to see His life spilled out so uselessly, Begging for boons the Shade refused, His finest workmanship abused, The iridescent bubbles he blew Into lovely existence, poor and few In the shadowed eyes. Then he would curse Himself and her! The Universe! And more, the beauty he could not make, And give her, for her comfort's sake! He would beat his weary, empty hands Upon the table, would hold up strands Of silver and gold, and ask her why She scorned the best which he could buy. He would pray as to some high-niched saint, That she would cure him of the taint Of failure. He would clutch the wall With his bleeding fingers, if she should fall He could catch, and hold her, and make her live! With sobs he would ask her to forgive All he had done. And broken, spent, He would call himself impertinent; Presumptuous; a tradesman; a nothing; driven To madness by the sight of Heaven. At other times he would take the things He had made, and winding them on strings, Hang garlands before her, and burn perfumes, Chanting strangely, while the fumes Wreathed and blotted the shadow face, As with a cloudy, nacreous lace. There were days when he wooed as a lover, sighed In tenderness, spoke to his bride, Urged her to patience, said his skill Should break the spell. A man's sworn will Could compass life, even that, he knew. By Christ's Blood! He would prove it true! The edge of the Shadow never blurred. The lips of the Shadow never stirred. He would climb on chairs to reach her lips, And pat her hair with his finger-tips. But instead of young, warm flesh returning His warmth, the wall was cold and burning Like stinging ice, and his passion, chilled, Lay in his heart like some dead thing killed At the moment of birth. Then, deadly sick, He would lie in a swoon for hours, while thick Phantasmagoria crowded his brain, And his body shrieked in the clutch of pain. The crisis passed, he would wake and smile With a vacant joy, half-imbecile And quite confused, not being certain Why he was suffering; a curtain Fallen over the tortured mind beguiled His sorrow. Like a little child He would play with his watches and gems, with glee Calling the Shadow to look and see How the spots on the ceiling danced prettily When he flashed his stones. "Mother, the green Has slid so cunningly in between The blue and the yellow. Oh, please look down!" Then, with a pitiful, puzzled frown, He would get up slowly from his play And walk round the room, feeling his way From table to chair, from chair to door, Stepping over the cracks in the floor, Till reaching the table again, her face Would bring recollection, and no solace Could balm his hurt till unconsciousness Stifled him and his great distress. One morning he threw the street door wide On coming in, and his vigorous stride Made the tools on his table rattle and jump. In his hands he carried a new-burst clump Of laurel blossoms, whose smooth-barked stalks Were pliant with sap. As a husband talks To the wife he left an hour ago, Paul spoke to the Shadow. "Dear, you know To-day the calendar calls it Spring, And I woke this morning gathering Asphodels, in my dreams, for you. So I rushed out to see what flowers blew Their pink-and-purple-scented souls Across the town-wind's dusty scrolls, And made the approach to the Market Square A garden with smells and sunny air. I feel so well and happy to-day, I think I shall take a Holiday. And to-night we will have a little treat. I am going to bring you something to eat!" He looked at the Shadow anxiously. It was quite grave and silent. He Shut the outer door and came And leant against the window-frame. "Dearest," he said, "we live apart Although I bear you in my heart. We look out each from a different world. At any moment we may be hurled Asunder. They follow their orbits, we Obey their laws entirely. Now you must come, or I go there, Unless we are willing to live the flare Of a lighted instant and have it gone." A bee in the laurels began to drone. A loosened petal fluttered prone. "Man grows by eating, if you eat You will be filled with our life, sweet Will be our planet in your mouth. If not, I must parch in death's wide drouth Until I gain to where you are, And give you myself in whatever star May happen. O You Beloved of Me! Is it not ordered cleverly?" The Shadow, bloomed like a plum, and clear, Hung in the sunlight. It did not hear. Paul slipped away as the dusk began To dim the little shop. He ran To the nearest inn, and chose with care As much as his thin purse could bear. As rapt-souled monks watch over the baking Of the sacred wafer, and through the making Of the holy wine whisper secret prayers That God will bless this labour of theirs; So Paul, in a sober ecstasy, Purchased the best which he could buy. Returning, he brushed his tools aside, And laid across the table a wide Napkin. He put a glass and plate On either side, in duplicate. Over the lady's, excellent With loveliness, the laurels bent. In the centre the white-flaked pastry stood, And beside it the wine flask. Red as blood Was the wine which should bring the lustihood Of human life to his lady's veins. When all was ready, all which pertains To a simple meal was there, with eyes Lit by the joy of his great emprise, He reverently bade her come, And forsake for him her distant home. He put meat on her plate and filled her glass, And waited what should come to pass. The Shadow lay quietly on the wall. From the street outside came a watchman's call "A cloudy night. Rain beginning to fall." And still he waited. The clock's slow tick Knocked on the silence. Paul turned sick. He filled his own glass full of wine; From his pocket he took a paper. The twine Was knotted, and he searched a knife From his jumbled tools. The cord of life Snapped as he cut the little string. He knew that he must do the thing He feared. He shook powder into the wine, And holding it up so the candle's shine Sparked a ruby through its heart, He drank it. "Dear, never apart Again! You have said it was mine to do. It is done, and I am come to you!" Paul Jannes let the empty wine-glass fall, And held out his arms. The insentient wall Stared down at him with its cold, white glare Unstained! The Shadow was not there! Paul clutched and tore at his tightening throat. He felt the veins in his body bloat, And the hot blood run like fire and stones Along the sides of his cracking bones. But he laughed as he staggered towards the door, And he laughed aloud as he sank on the floor. The Coroner took the body away, And the watches were sold that Saturday. The Auctioneer said one could seldom buy Such watches, and the prices were high. The Forsaken Holy Mother of God, Merciful Mary. Hear me! I am very weary. I have come from a village miles away, all day I have been coming, and I ache for such far roaming. I cannot walk as light as I used, and my thoughts grow confused. I am heavier than I was. Mary Mother, you know the cause! Beautiful Holy Lady, take my shame away from me! Let this fear be only seeming, let it be that I am dreaming. For months I have hoped it was so, now I am afraid I know. Lady, why should this be shame, just because I haven't got his name. He loved me, yes, Lady, he did, and he couldn't keep it hid. We meant to marry. Why did he die? That day when they told me he had gone down in the avalanche, and could not be found until the snow melted in Spring, I did nothing. I could not cry. Why should he die? Why should he die and his child live? His little child alive in me, for my comfort. No, Good God, for my misery! I cannot face the shame, to be a mother, and not married, and the poor child to be reviled for having no father. Merciful Mother, Holy Virgin, take away this sin I did. Let the baby not be. Only take the stigma off of me! I have told no one but you, Holy Mary. My mother would call me "whore", and spit upon me; the priest would have me repent, and have the rest of my life spent in a convent. I am no whore, no bad woman, he loved me, and we were to be married. I carried him always in my heart, what did it matter if I gave him the least part of me too? You were a virgin, Holy Mother, but you had a son, you know there are times when a woman must give all. There is some call to give and hold back nothing. I swear I obeyed God then, and this child who lives in me is the sign. What am I saying? He is dead, my beautiful, strong man! I shall never feel him caress me again. This is the only baby I shall have. Oh, Holy Virgin, protect my baby! My little, helpless baby! He will look like his father, and he will be as fast a runner and as good a shot. Not that he shall be no scholar neither. He shall go to school in winter, and learn to read and write, and my father will teach him to carve, so that he can make the little horses, and cows, and chamois, out of white wood. Oh, No! No! No! How can I think such things, I am not good. My father will have nothing to do with my boy, I shall be an outcast thing. Oh, Mother of our Lord God, be merciful, take away my shame! Let my body be as it was before he came. No little baby for me to keep underneath my heart for those long months. To live for and to get comfort from. I cannot go home and tell my mother. She is so hard and righteous. She never loved my father, and we were born for duty, not for love. I cannot face it. Holy Mother, take my baby away! Take away my little baby! I don't want it, I can't bear it! And I shall have nothing, nothing! Just be known as a good girl. Have other men want to marry me, whom I could not touch, after having known my man. Known the length and breadth of his beautiful white body, and the depth of his love, on the high Summer Alp, with the moon above, and the pine-needles all shiny in the light of it. He is gone, my man, I shall never hear him or feel him again, but I could not touch another. I would rather lie under the snow with my own man in my arms! So I shall live on and on. Just a good woman. With nothing to warm my heart where he lay, and where he left his baby for me to care for. I shall not be quite human, I think. Merely a stone-dead creature. They will respect me. What do I care for respect! You didn't care for people's tongues when you were carrying our Lord Jesus. God had my man give me my baby, when He knew that He was going to take him away. His lips will comfort me, his hands will soothe me. All day I will work at my lace-making, and all night I will keep him warm by my side and pray the blessed Angels to cover him with their wings. Dear Mother, what is it that sings? I hear voices singing, and lovely silver trumpets through it all. They seem just on the other side of the wall. Let me keep my baby, Holy Mother. He is only a poor lace-maker's baby, with a stain upon him, but give me strength to bring him up to be a man. Late September Tang of fruitage in the air; Red boughs bursting everywhere; Shimmering of seeded grass; Hooded gentians all a'mass. Warmth of earth, and cloudless wind Tearing off the husky rind, Blowing feathered seeds to fall By the sun-baked, sheltering wall. Beech trees in a golden haze; Hardy sumachs all ablaze, Glowing through the silver birches. How that pine tree shouts and lurches! From the sunny door-jamb high, Swings the shell of a butterfly. Scrape of insect violins Through the stubble shrilly dins. Every blade's a minaret Where a small muezzin's set, Loudly calling us to pray At the miracle of day. Then the purple-lidded night Westering comes, her footsteps light Guided by the radiant boon Of a sickle-shaped new moon. The Pike In the brown water, Thick and silver-sheened in the sunshine, Liquid and cool in the shade of the reeds, A pike dozed. Lost among the shadows of stems He lay unnoticed. Suddenly he flicked his tail, And a green-and-copper brightness Ran under the water. Out from under the reeds Came the olive-green light, And orange flashed up Through the sun-thickened water. So the fish passed across the pool, Green and copper, A darkness and a gleam, And the blurred reflections of the willows on the opposite bank Received it. The Blue Scarf Pale, with the blue of high zeniths, shimmered over with silver, brocaded In smooth, running patterns, a soft stuff, with dark knotted fringes, it lies there, Warm from a woman's soft shoulders, and my fingers close on it, caressing. Where is she, the woman who wore it? The scent of her lingers and drugs me! A languor, fire-shotted, runs through me, and I crush the scarf down on my face, And gulp in the warmth and the blueness, and my eyes swim in cool-tinted heavens. Around me are columns of marble, and a diapered, sun-flickered pavement. Rose-leaves blow and patter against it. Below the stone steps a lute tinkles. A jar of green jade throws its shadow half over the floor. A big-bellied Frog hops through the sunlight and plops in the gold-bubbled water of a basin, Sunk in the black and white marble. The west wind has lifted a scarf On the seat close beside me, the blue of it is a violent outrage of colour. She draws it more closely about her, and it ripples beneath her slight stirring. Her kisses are sharp buds of fire; and I burn back against her, a jewel Hard and white; a stalked, flaming flower; till I break to a handful of cinders, And open my eyes to the scarf, shining blue in the afternoon sunshine. How loud clocks can tick when a room is empty, and one is alone! White and Green Hey! My daffodil-crowned, Slim and without sandals! As the sudden spurt of flame upon darkness So my eyeballs are startled with you, Supple-limbed youth among the fruit-trees, Light runner through tasselled orchards. You are an almond flower unsheathed Leaping and flickering between the budded branches. Aubade As I would free the white almond from the green husk So would I strip your trappings off, Beloved. And fingering the smooth and polished kernel I should see that in my hands glittered a gem beyond counting. Music The neighbour sits in his window and plays the flute. From my bed I can hear him, And the round notes flutter and tap about the room, And hit against each other, Blurring to unexpected chords. It is very beautiful, With the little flute-notes all about me, In the darkness. In the daytime, The neighbour eats bread and onions with one hand And copies music with the other. He is fat and has a bald head, So I do not look at him, But run quickly past his window. There is always the sky to look at, Or the water in the well! But when night comes and he plays his flute, I think of him as a young man, With gold seals hanging from his watch, And a blue coat with silver buttons. As I lie in my bed The flute-notes push against my ears and lips, And I go to sleep, dreaming. A Lady You are beautiful and faded Like an old opera tune Played upon a harpsichord; Or like the sun-flooded silks Of an eighteenth-century boudoir. In your eyes Smoulder the fallen roses of out-lived minutes, And the perfume of your soul Is vague and suffusing, With the pungence of sealed spice-jars. Your half-tones delight me, And I grow mad with gazing At your blent colours. My vigour is a new-minted penny, Which I cast at your feet. Gather it up from the dust, That its sparkle may amuse you. In a Garden Gushing from the mouths of stone men To spread at ease under the sky In granite-lipped basins, Where iris dabble their feet And rustle to a passing wind, The water fills the garden with its rushing, In the midst of the quiet of close-clipped lawns. Damp smell the ferns in tunnels of stone, Where trickle and plash the fountains, Marble fountains, yellowed with much water. Splashing down moss-tarnished steps It falls, the water; And the air is throbbing with it. With its gurgling and running. With its leaping, and deep, cool murmur. And I wished for night and you. I wanted to see you in the swimming-pool, White and shining in the silver-flecked water. While the moon rode over the garden, High in the arch of night, And the scent of the lilacs was heavy with stillness. Night, and the water, and you in your whiteness, bathing! A Tulip Garden Guarded within the old red wall's embrace, Marshalled like soldiers in gay company, The tulips stand arrayed. Here infantry Wheels out into the sunlight. What bold grace Sets off their tunics, white with crimson lace! Here are platoons of gold-frocked cavalry, With scarlet sabres tossing in the eye Of purple batteries, every gun in place. Forward they come, with flaunting colours spread, With torches burning, stepping out in time To some quick, unheard march. Our ears are dead, We cannot catch the tune. In pantomime Parades that army. With our utmost powers We hear the wind stream through a bed of flowers. [End of original text.] Notes: After Hearing a Waltz by Bartok: Originally: After Hearing a Waltz by Bartók: A Blockhead: "There are non, ever. As a monk who prays" changed to: "There are none, ever. As a monk who prays" A Tale of Starvation: "And he neither eat nor drank." changed to: "And he neither ate nor drank." The Great Adventure of Max Breuck: Stanza headings were originally Roman Numerals. The Book of Hours of Sister Clotilde: The following names are presented in this etext sans accents: Marguérite, Angélique, Véronique, Franc,ois. The following unconnected lines in the etext are presented sans accents: The factory of Sèvres had lent Strange wingéd dragons writhe about And rich perfuméd smells A faëry moonshine washing pale the crowds Our eyes will close to undisturbéd rest. And terror-wingéd steps. His heart began On the stripéd ground Some books by Amy Lowell: Poetry: A Critical Fable * A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass (1912) * Sword Blades and Poppy Seed (1914) * Men, Women and Ghosts (1916) Can Grande's Castle (1918) Pictures of the Floating World (1919) Legends (1921) What's O'Clock (1925) East Wind Ballads For Sale (In collaboration with Florence Ayscough) Fir-Flower Tablets: Poems Translated from the Chinese (1921) Prose: John Keats Six French Poets: Studies in Contemporary Literature (1915) Tendencies in Modern American Poetry (1917) * Now available online from Project Gutenberg. About the author: From the notes to "The Second Book of Modern Verse" (1919, 1920), edited by Jessie B. Rittenhouse. Lowell, Amy. Born in Brookline, Mass., Feb. 9, 1874. Educated at private schools. Author of "A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass", 1912; "Sword Blades and Poppy Seed", 1914; "Men, Women and Ghosts", 1916; "Can Grande's Castle", 1918; "Pictures of the Floating World", 1919. Editor of the three successive collections of "Some Imagist Poets", 1915, '16, and '17, containing the early work of the "Imagist School" of which Miss Lowell became the leader. This movement,... originated in England, the idea have been first conceived by a young poet named T. E. Hulme, but developed and put forth by Ezra Pound in an article called "Don'ts by an Imagist", which appeared in `Poetry; A Magazine of Verse'. ... A small group of poets gathered about Mr. Pound, experimenting along the technical lines suggested, and a cult of "Imagism" was formed, whose first group-expression was in the little volume, "Des Imagistes", published in New York in April, 1914. Miss Lowell did not come actively into the movement until after that time, but once she had entered it, she became its leader, and it was chiefly through her effort in America that the movement attained so much prominence and so influenced the trend of poetry for the years immediately succeeding. Miss Lowell many times, in admirable articles, stated the principles upon which Imagism is based, notably in the Preface to "Some Imagist Poets" and in the Preface to the second series, in 1916. She also elaborated it much more fully in her volume, "Tendencies in Modern American Poetry", 1917, in the articles pertaining to the work of "H.D." and John Gould Fletcher. In her own creative work, however, Miss Lowell did most to establish the possibilities of the Imagistic idea and of its modes of presentation, and opened up many interesting avenues of poetic form. Her volume, "Can Grande's Castle", is devoted to work in the medium which she styled "Polyphonic Prose" and contains some of her finest work, particularly "The Bronze Horses". 
1021	----	THE CONGO AND OTHER POEMS By Vachel Lindsay [Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, Illinois Artist. 1879-1931.] With an introduction by Harriet Monroe Editor of "Poetry" [Notes: The 'stage-directions' given in "The Congo" and those poems which are meant to be read aloud, are traditionally printed to the right side of the first line it refers to. This is possible, but impracticable, to imitate in a simple ASCII text. Therefore these 'stage-directions' are given on the line BEFORE the first line they refer to, and are furthermore indented 20 spaces and enclosed by #s to keep it clear to the reader which parts are text and which parts directions.] [This electronic text was transcribed from a reprint of the original edition, which was first published in New York, in September, 1914. Due to a great deal of irregularity between titles in the table of contents and in the text of the original, there are some slight differences from the original in these matters--with the more complete titles replacing cropped ones. In one case they are different enough that both are given, and "Twenty Poems in which...." was originally "Twenty Moon Poems" in the table of contents--the odd thing about both these titles is that there are actually twenty-TWO moon poems.] THE CONGO AND OTHER POEMS Introduction. By Harriet Monroe When 'Poetry, A Magazine of Verse', was first published in Chicago in the autumn of 1912, an Illinois poet, Vachel Lindsay, was, quite appropriately, one of its first discoveries. It may be not quite without significance that the issue of January, 1913, which led off with 'General William Booth Enters into Heaven', immediately followed the number in which the great poet of Bengal, Rabindra Nath Tagore, was first presented to the American public, and that these two antipodal poets soon appeared in person among the earliest visitors to the editor. For the coming together of East and West may prove to be the great event of the approaching era, and if the poetry of the now famous Bengali laureate garners the richest wisdom and highest spirituality of his ancient race, so one may venture to believe that the young Illinois troubadour brings from Lincoln's city an authentic strain of the lyric message of this newer world. It is hardly necessary, perhaps, to mention Mr. Lindsay's loyalty to the people of his place and hour, or the training in sympathy with their aims and ideals which he has achieved through vagabondish wanderings in the Middle West. And we may permit time to decide how far he expresses their emotion. But it may be opportune to emphasize his plea for poetry as a song art, an art appealing to the ear rather than the eye. The first section of this volume is especially an effort to restore poetry to its proper place--the audience-chamber, and take it out of the library, the closet. In the library it has become, so far as the people are concerned, almost a lost art, and perhaps it can be restored to the people only through a renewal of its appeal to the ear. I am tempted to quote from Mr. Lindsay's explanatory note which accompanied three of these poems when they were first printed in 'Poetry'. He said: "Mr. Yeats asked me recently in Chicago, 'What are we going to do to restore the primitive singing of poetry?' I find what Mr. Yeats means by 'the primitive singing of poetry' in Professor Edward Bliss Reed's new volume on 'The English Lyric'. He says in his chapter on the definition of the lyric: 'With the Greeks "song" was an all-embracing term. It included the crooning of the nurse to the child... the half-sung chant of the mower or sailor... the formal ode sung by the poet. In all Greek lyrics, even in the choral odes, music was the handmaid of verse.... The poet himself composed the accompaniment. Euripides was censured because Iophon had assisted him in the musical setting of some of his dramas.' Here is pictured a type of Greek work which survives in American vaudeville, where every line may be two-thirds spoken and one-third sung, the entire rendering, musical and elocutionary, depending upon the improvising power and sure instinct of the performer. "I respectfully submit these poems as experiments in which I endeavor to carry this vaudeville form back towards the old Greek precedent of the half-chanted lyric. In this case the one-third of music must be added by the instinct of the reader. He must be Iophon. And he can easily be Iophon if he brings to bear upon the piece what might be called the Higher Vaudeville imagination.... "Big general contrasts between the main sections should be the rule of the first attempts at improvising. It is the hope of the writer that after two or three readings each line will suggest its own separate touch of melody to the reader who has become accustomed to the cadences. Let him read what he likes read, and sing what he likes sung." It was during this same visit in Chicago, at 'Poetry's' banquet on the evening of March first, 1914, that Mr. Yeats honored Mr. Lindsay by addressing his after-dinner talk primarily to him as "a fellow craftsman", and by saying of 'General Booth': "This poem is stripped bare of ornament; it has an earnest simplicity, a strange beauty, and you know Bacon said, 'There is no excellent beauty without strangeness.'" This recognition from the distinguished Irish poet tempts me to hint at the cosmopolitan aspects of such racily local art as Mr. Lindsay's. The subject is too large for a merely introductory word, but the reader may be invited to reflect upon it. If Mr. Lindsay's poetry should cross the ocean, it would not be the first time that our most indigenous art has reacted upon the art of older nations. Besides Poe--who, though indigenous in ways too subtle for brief analysis, yet passed all frontiers in his swift, sad flight--the two American artists of widest influence, Whitman and Whistler, have been intensely American in temperament and in the special spiritual quality of their art. If Whistler was the first great artist to accept the modern message in Oriental art, if Whitman was the first great modern poet to discard the limitations of conventional form: if both were more free, more individual, than their contemporaries, this was the expression of their Americanism, which may perhaps be defined as a spiritual independence and love of adventure inherited from the pioneers. Foreign artists are usually the first to recognize this new tang; one detects the influence of the great dead poet and dead painter in all modern art which looks forward instead of back; and their countrymen, our own contemporary poets and painters, often express indirectly, through French influences, a reaction which they are reluctant to confess directly. A lighter phase of this foreign enthusiasm for the American tang is confessed by Signor Marinetti, the Italian "futurist", when in his article on 'Futurism and the Theatre', in 'The Mask', he urges the revolutionary value of "American eccentrics", citing the fundamental primitive quality in their vaudeville art. This may be another statement of Mr. Lindsay's plea for a closer relation between the poet and his audience, for a return to the healthier open-air conditions, and immediate personal contacts, in the art of the Greeks and of primitive nations. Such conditions and contacts may still be found, if the world only knew it, in the wonderful song-dances of the Hopis and others of our aboriginal tribes. They may be found, also, in a measure, in the quick response between artist and audience in modern vaudeville. They are destined to a wider and higher influence; in fact, the development of that influence, the return to primitive sympathies between artist and audience, which may make possible once more the assertion of primitive creative power, is recognized as the immediate movement in modern art. It is a movement strong enough to persist in spite of extravagances and absurdities; strong enough, it may be hoped, to fulfil its purpose and revitalize the world. It is because Mr. Lindsay's poetry seems to be definitely in that movement that it is, I think, important. Harriet Monroe. Table of Contents Introduction. By Harriet Monroe First Section Poems intended to be read aloud, or chanted. The Congo The Santa Fe Trail The Firemen's Ball The Master of the Dance The Mysterious Cat A Dirge for a Righteous Kitten Yankee Doodle The Black Hawk War of the Artists The Jingo and the Minstrel I Heard Immanuel Singing Second Section Incense An Argument A Rhyme about an Electrical Advertising Sign In Memory of a Child Galahad, Knight Who Perished The Leaden-eyed An Indian Summer Day on the Prairie The Hearth Eternal The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit By the Spring, at Sunset I Went down into the Desert Love and Law The Perfect Marriage Darling Daughter of Babylon The Amaranth The Alchemist's Petition Two Easter Stanzas The Traveller-heart The North Star Whispers to the Blacksmith's Son Third Section A Miscellany called "the Christmas Tree" This Section is a Christmas Tree The Sun Says his Prayers Popcorn, Glass Balls, and Cranberries (As it were) I. The Lion II. An Explanation of the Grasshopper III. The Dangerous Little Boy Fairies IV. The Mouse that gnawed the Oak-tree Down V. Parvenu VI. The Spider and the Ghost of the Fly VII. Crickets on a Strike How a Little Girl Danced In Praise of Songs that Die Factory Windows are always Broken To Mary Pickford Blanche Sweet Sunshine An Apology for the Bottle Volcanic When Gassy Thompson Struck it Rich Rhymes for Gloriana I. The Doll upon the Topmost Bough II. On Suddenly Receiving a Curl Long Refused III. On Receiving One of Gloriana's Letters IV. In Praise of Gloriana's Remarkable Golden Hair Fourth Section Twenty Poems in which the Moon is the Principal Figure of Speech Once More--To Gloriana First Section: Moon Poems for the Children/Fairy-tales for the Children I. Euclid II. The Haughty Snail-king III. What the Rattlesnake Said IV. The Moon's the North Wind's Cooky V. Drying their Wings VI. What the Gray-winged Fairy Said VII. Yet Gentle will the Griffin Be Second Section: The Moon is a Mirror I. Prologue. A Sense of Humor II. On the Garden-wall III. Written for a Musician IV. The Moon is a Painter V. The Encyclopaedia VI. What the Miner in the Desert Said VII. What the Coal-heaver Said VIII. What the Moon Saw IX. What Semiramis Said X. What the Ghost of the Gambler Said XI. The Spice-tree XII. The Scissors-grinder XIII. My Lady in her White Silk Shawl XIV. Aladdin and the Jinn XV. The Strength of the Lonely Fifth Section War. September 1, 1914 Intended to be Read Aloud I. Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight II. A Curse for Kings III. Who Knows? IV. To Buddha V. The Unpardonable Sin VI. Above the Battle's Front VII. Epilogue. Under the Blessing of Your Psyche Wings First Section ~~ Poems intended to be read aloud, or chanted. The Congo A Study of the Negro Race I. Their Basic Savagery Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room, Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable, # A deep rolling bass. # Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table, Pounded on the table, Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom, Hard as they were able, Boom, boom, BOOM, With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom, Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM. THEN I had religion, THEN I had a vision. I could not turn from their revel in derision. # More deliberate. Solemnly chanted. # THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK, CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK. Then along that riverbank A thousand miles Tattooed cannibals danced in files; Then I heard the boom of the blood-lust song # A rapidly piling climax of speed and racket. # And a thigh-bone beating on a tin-pan gong. And "BLOOD" screamed the whistles and the fifes of the warriors, "BLOOD" screamed the skull-faced, lean witch-doctors, "Whirl ye the deadly voo-doo rattle, Harry the uplands, Steal all the cattle, Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle, Bing. Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM," # With a philosophic pause. # A roaring, epic, rag-time tune From the mouth of the Congo To the Mountains of the Moon. Death is an Elephant, # Shrilly and with a heavily accented metre. # Torch-eyed and horrible, Foam-flanked and terrible. BOOM, steal the pygmies, BOOM, kill the Arabs, BOOM, kill the white men, HOO, HOO, HOO. # Like the wind in the chimney. # Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host. Hear how the demons chuckle and yell Cutting his hands off, down in Hell. Listen to the creepy proclamation, Blown through the lairs of the forest-nation, Blown past the white-ants' hill of clay, Blown past the marsh where the butterflies play:-- "Be careful what you do, # All the o sounds very golden. Heavy accents very heavy. Light accents very light. Last line whispered. # Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo, And all of the other Gods of the Congo, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you." II. Their Irrepressible High Spirits # Rather shrill and high. # Wild crap-shooters with a whoop and a call Danced the juba in their gambling-hall And laughed fit to kill, and shook the town, And guyed the policemen and laughed them down With a boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM. # Read exactly as in first section. # THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK, CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK. # Lay emphasis on the delicate ideas. Keep as light-footed as possible. # A negro fairyland swung into view, A minstrel river Where dreams come true. The ebony palace soared on high Through the blossoming trees to the evening sky. The inlaid porches and casements shone With gold and ivory and elephant-bone. And the black crowd laughed till their sides were sore At the baboon butler in the agate door, And the well-known tunes of the parrot band That trilled on the bushes of that magic land. # With pomposity. # A troupe of skull-faced witch-men came Through the agate doorway in suits of flame, Yea, long-tailed coats with a gold-leaf crust And hats that were covered with diamond-dust. And the crowd in the court gave a whoop and a call And danced the juba from wall to wall. # With a great deliberation and ghostliness. # But the witch-men suddenly stilled the throng With a stern cold glare, and a stern old song:-- "Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you."... # With overwhelming assurance, good cheer, and pomp. # Just then from the doorway, as fat as shotes, Came the cake-walk princes in their long red coats, Canes with a brilliant lacquer shine, And tall silk hats that were red as wine. # With growing speed and sharply marked dance-rhythm. # And they pranced with their butterfly partners there, Coal-black maidens with pearls in their hair, Knee-skirts trimmed with the jassamine sweet, And bells on their ankles and little black feet. And the couples railed at the chant and the frown Of the witch-men lean, and laughed them down. (O rare was the revel, and well worth while That made those glowering witch-men smile.) The cake-walk royalty then began To walk for a cake that was tall as a man To the tune of "Boomlay, boomlay, BOOM," # With a touch of negro dialect, and as rapidly as possible toward the end. # While the witch-men laughed, with a sinister air, And sang with the scalawags prancing there:-- "Walk with care, walk with care, Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo, And all of the other Gods of the Congo, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you. Beware, beware, walk with care, Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom. Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom, Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom, Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM." # Slow philosophic calm. # Oh rare was the revel, and well worth while That made those glowering witch-men smile. III. The Hope of their Religion # Heavy bass. With a literal imitation of camp-meeting racket, and trance. # A good old negro in the slums of the town Preached at a sister for her velvet gown. Howled at a brother for his low-down ways, His prowling, guzzling, sneak-thief days. Beat on the Bible till he wore it out Starting the jubilee revival shout. And some had visions, as they stood on chairs, And sang of Jacob, and the golden stairs, And they all repented, a thousand strong From their stupor and savagery and sin and wrong And slammed with their hymn books till they shook the room With "glory, glory, glory," And "Boom, boom, BOOM." # Exactly as in the first section. Begin with terror and power, end with joy. # THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK CUTTING THROUGH THE JUNGLE WITH A GOLDEN TRACK. And the gray sky opened like a new-rent veil And showed the apostles with their coats of mail. In bright white steele they were seated round And their fire-eyes watched where the Congo wound. And the twelve Apostles, from their thrones on high Thrilled all the forest with their heavenly cry:-- # Sung to the tune of "Hark, ten thousand harps and voices". # "Mumbo-Jumbo will die in the jungle; Never again will he hoo-doo you, Never again will he hoo-doo you." # With growing deliberation and joy. # Then along that river, a thousand miles The vine-snared trees fell down in files. Pioneer angels cleared the way For a Congo paradise, for babes at play, For sacred capitals, for temples clean. Gone were the skull-faced witch-men lean. # In a rather high key--as delicately as possible. # There, where the wild ghost-gods had wailed A million boats of the angels sailed With oars of silver, and prows of blue And silken pennants that the sun shone through. 'Twas a land transfigured, 'twas a new creation. Oh, a singing wind swept the negro nation And on through the backwoods clearing flew:-- # To the tune of "Hark, ten thousand harps and voices". # "Mumbo-Jumbo is dead in the jungle. Never again will he hoo-doo you. Never again will he hoo-doo you." Redeemed were the forests, the beasts and the men, And only the vulture dared again By the far, lone mountains of the moon To cry, in the silence, the Congo tune:-- # Dying down into a penetrating, terrified whisper. # "Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you. Mumbo... Jumbo... will... hoo-doo... you." This poem, particularly the third section, was suggested by an allusion in a sermon by my pastor, F. W. Burnham, to the heroic life and death of Ray Eldred. Eldred was a missionary of the Disciples of Christ who perished while swimming a treacherous branch of the Congo. See "A Master Builder on the Congo", by Andrew F. Hensey, published by Fleming H. Revell. The Santa Fe Trail (A Humoresque) I asked the old Negro, "What is that bird that sings so well?" He answered: "That is the Rachel-Jane." "Hasn't it another name, lark, or thrush, or the like?" "No. Jus' Rachel-Jane." I. In which a Racing Auto comes from the East # To be sung delicately, to an improvised tune. # This is the order of the music of the morning:-- First, from the far East comes but a crooning. The crooning turns to a sunrise singing. Hark to the _calm_-horn, _balm_-horn, _psalm_-horn. Hark to the _faint_-horn, _quaint_-horn, _saint_-horn.... # To be sung or read with great speed. # Hark to the _pace_-horn, _chase_-horn, _race_-horn. And the holy veil of the dawn has gone. Swiftly the brazen car comes on. It burns in the East as the sunrise burns. I see great flashes where the far trail turns. Its eyes are lamps like the eyes of dragons. It drinks gasoline from big red flagons. Butting through the delicate mists of the morning, It comes like lightning, goes past roaring. It will hail all the wind-mills, taunting, ringing, Dodge the cyclones, Count the milestones, On through the ranges the prairie-dog tills-- Scooting past the cattle on the thousand hills.... # To be read or sung in a rolling bass, with some deliberation. # Ho for the tear-horn, scare-horn, dare-horn, Ho for the _gay_-horn, _bark_-horn, _bay_-horn. _Ho for Kansas, land that restores us When houses choke us, and great books bore us! Sunrise Kansas, harvester's Kansas, A million men have found you before us._ II. In which Many Autos pass Westward # In an even, deliberate, narrative manner. # I want live things in their pride to remain. I will not kill one grasshopper vain Though he eats a hole in my shirt like a door. I let him out, give him one chance more. Perhaps, while he gnaws my hat in his whim, Grasshopper lyrics occur to him. I am a tramp by the long trail's border, Given to squalor, rags and disorder. I nap and amble and yawn and look, Write fool-thoughts in my grubby book, Recite to the children, explore at my ease, Work when I work, beg when I please, Give crank-drawings, that make folks stare To the half-grown boys in the sunset glare, And get me a place to sleep in the hay At the end of a live-and-let-live day. I find in the stubble of the new-cut weeds A whisper and a feasting, all one needs: The whisper of the strawberries, white and red Here where the new-cut weeds lie dead. But I would not walk all alone till I die Without some life-drunk horns going by. Up round this apple-earth they come Blasting the whispers of the morning dumb:-- Cars in a plain realistic row. And fair dreams fade When the raw horns blow. On each snapping pennant A big black name:-- The careering city Whence each car came. # Like a train-caller in a Union Depot. # They tour from Memphis, Atlanta, Savannah, Tallahassee and Texarkana. They tour from St. Louis, Columbus, Manistee, They tour from Peoria, Davenport, Kankakee. Cars from Concord, Niagara, Boston, Cars from Topeka, Emporia, and Austin. Cars from Chicago, Hannibal, Cairo. Cars from Alton, Oswego, Toledo. Cars from Buffalo, Kokomo, Delphi, Cars from Lodi, Carmi, Loami. Ho for Kansas, land that restores us When houses choke us, and great books bore us! While I watch the highroad And look at the sky, While I watch the clouds in amazing grandeur Roll their legions without rain Over the blistering Kansas plain-- While I sit by the milestone And watch the sky, The United States Goes by. # To be given very harshly, with a snapping explosiveness. # Listen to the iron-horns, ripping, racking. Listen to the quack-horns, slack and clacking. Way down the road, trilling like a toad, Here comes the _dice_-horn, here comes the _vice_-horn, Here comes the _snarl_-horn, _brawl_-horn, _lewd_-horn, Followed by the _prude_-horn, bleak and squeaking:-- (Some of them from Kansas, some of them from Kansas.) Here comes the _hod_-horn, _plod_-horn, _sod_-horn, Nevermore-to-_roam_-horn, _loam_-horn, _home_-horn. (Some of them from Kansas, some of them from Kansas.) # To be read or sung, well-nigh in a whisper. # Far away the Rachel-Jane Not defeated by the horns Sings amid a hedge of thorns:-- "Love and life, Eternal youth-- Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, Dew and glory, Love and truth, Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet." # Louder and louder, faster and faster. # WHILE SMOKE-BLACK FREIGHTS ON THE DOUBLE-TRACKED RAILROAD, DRIVEN AS THOUGH BY THE FOUL-FIEND'S OX-GOAD, SCREAMING TO THE WEST COAST, SCREAMING TO THE EAST, CARRY OFF A HARVEST, BRING BACK A FEAST, HARVESTING MACHINERY AND HARNESS FOR THE BEAST. THE HAND-CARS WHIZ, AND RATTLE ON THE RAILS, THE SUNLIGHT FLASHES ON THE TIN DINNER-PAILS. # In a rolling bass, with increasing deliberation. # And then, in an instant, Ye modern men, Behold the procession once again, # With a snapping explosiveness. # Listen to the iron-horns, ripping, racking, Listen to the _wise_-horn, desperate-to-_advise_-horn, Listen to the _fast_-horn, _kill_-horn, _blast_-horn.... # To be sung or read well-nigh in a whisper. # Far away the Rachel-Jane Not defeated by the horns Sings amid a hedge of thorns:-- Love and life, Eternal youth, Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, Dew and glory, Love and truth. Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet. # To be brawled in the beginning with a snapping explosiveness, ending in a languorous chant. # The mufflers open on a score of cars With wonderful thunder, CRACK, CRACK, CRACK, CRACK-CRACK, CRACK-CRACK, CRACK-CRACK-CRACK,... Listen to the gold-horn... Old-horn... Cold-horn... And all of the tunes, till the night comes down On hay-stack, and ant-hill, and wind-bitten town. # To be sung to exactly the same whispered tune as the first five lines. # Then far in the west, as in the beginning, Dim in the distance, sweet in retreating, Hark to the faint-horn, quaint-horn, saint-horn, Hark to the calm-horn, balm-horn, psalm-horn.... # This section beginning sonorously, ending in a languorous whisper. # They are hunting the goals that they understand:-- San Francisco and the brown sea-sand. My goal is the mystery the beggars win. I am caught in the web the night-winds spin. The edge of the wheat-ridge speaks to me. I talk with the leaves of the mulberry tree. And now I hear, as I sit all alone In the dusk, by another big Santa Fe stone, The souls of the tall corn gathering round And the gay little souls of the grass in the ground. Listen to the tale the cotton-wood tells. Listen to the wind-mills, singing o'er the wells. Listen to the whistling flutes without price Of myriad prophets out of paradise. Harken to the wonder That the night-air carries.... Listen... to... the... whisper... Of... the... prairie... fairies Singing o'er the fairy plain:-- # To the same whispered tune as the Rachel-Jane song-- but very slowly. # "Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet. Love and glory, Stars and rain, Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet...." The Firemen's Ball Section One "Give the engines room, Give the engines room." Louder, faster The little band-master Whips up the fluting, Hurries up the tooting. He thinks that he stands, # To be read, or chanted, with the heavy buzzing bass of fire-engines pumping. # The reins in his hands, In the fire-chief's place In the night alarm chase. The cymbals whang, The kettledrums bang:-- # In this passage the reading or chanting is shriller and higher. # "Clear the street, Clear the street, Clear the street--Boom, boom. In the evening gloom, In the evening gloom, Give the engines room, Give the engines room, Lest souls be trapped In a terrible tomb." The sparks and the pine-brands Whirl on high From the black and reeking alleys To the wide red sky. Hear the hot glass crashing, Hear the stone steps hissing. Coal black streams Down the gutters pour. There are cries for help From a far fifth floor. For a longer ladder Hear the fire-chief call. Listen to the music Of the firemen's ball. Listen to the music Of the firemen's ball. # To be read or chanted in a heavy bass. # "'Tis the NIGHT Of doom," Say the ding-dong doom-bells. "NIGHT Of doom," Say the ding-dong doom-bells. Faster, faster The red flames come. "Hum grum," say the engines, "Hum grum grum." # Shriller and higher. # "Buzz, buzz," Says the crowd. "See, see," Calls the crowd. "Look out," Yelps the crowd And the high walls fall:-- Listen to the music Of the firemen's ball. Listen to the music Of the firemen's ball. # Heavy bass. # "'Tis the NIGHT Of doom," Say the ding-dong doom-bells. "NIGHT Of doom," Say the ding-dong doom-bells. Whangaranga, whangaranga, Whang, whang, whang, Clang, clang, clangaranga, # Bass, much slower. # Clang, clang, clang. Clang--a--ranga-- Clang--a--ranga-- Clang, Clang, Clang. Listen--to--the--music-- Of the firemen's ball-- Section Two "Many's the heart that's breaking If we could read them all After the ball is over." (An old song.) # To be read or sung slowly and softly, in the manner of lustful, insinuating music. # Scornfully, gaily The bandmaster sways, Changing the strain That the wild band plays. With a red and royal intoxication, A tangle of sounds And a syncopation, Sweeping and bending From side to side, Master of dreams, With a peacock pride. A lord of the delicate flowers of delight He drives compunction Back through the night. Dreams he's a soldier Plumed and spurred, And valiant lads Arise at his word, Flaying the sober Thoughts he hates, Driving them back From the dream-town gates. How can the languorous Dancers know The red dreams come # To be read or chanted slowly and softly in the manner of lustful insinuating music. # When the good dreams go? "'Tis the NIGHT Of love," Call the silver joy-bells, "NIGHT Of love," Call the silver joy-bells. "Honey and wine, Honey and wine. Sing low, now, violins, Sing, sing low, Blow gently, wood-wind, Mellow and slow. Like midnight poppies The sweethearts bloom. Their eyes flash power, Their lips are dumb. Faster and faster Their pulses come, Though softer now The drum-beats fall. Honey and wine, Honey and wine. 'Tis the firemen's ball, 'Tis the firemen's ball. # With a climax of whispered mourning. # "I am slain," Cries true-love There in the shadow. "And I die," Cries true-love, There laid low. "When the fire-dreams come, The wise dreams go." # Suddenly interrupting. To be read or sung in a heavy bass. First eight lines as harsh as possible. Then gradually musical and sonorous. # BUT HIS CRY IS DROWNED BY THE PROUD BAND-MASTER. And now great gongs whang, Sharper, faster, And kettledrums rattle And hide the shame With a swish and a swirk In dead love's name. Red and crimson And scarlet and rose Magical poppies The sweethearts bloom. The scarlet stays When the rose-flush goes, And love lies low In a marble tomb. "'Tis the NIGHT Of doom," Call the ding-dong doom-bells. "NIGHT Of Doom," Call the ding-dong doom-bells. # Sharply interrupting in a very high key. # Hark how the piccolos still make cheer. "'Tis a moonlight night in the spring of the year." # Heavy bass. # CLANGARANGA, CLANGARANGA, CLANG... CLANG... CLANG. CLANG... A... RANGA... CLANG... A... RANGA... CLANG... CLANG... CLANG... LISTEN... TO... THE... MUSIC... OF... THE... FIREMEN'S BALL... LISTEN... TO... THE... MUSIC... OF... THE... FIREMEN'S... BALL.... Section Three In Which, contrary to Artistic Custom, the moral of the piece is placed before the reader. (From the first Khandaka of the Mahavagga: "There Buddha thus addressed his disciples: 'Everything, O mendicants, is burning. With what fire is it burning? I declare unto you it is burning with the fire of passion, with the fire of anger, with the fire of ignorance. It is burning with the anxieties of birth, decay and death, grief, lamentation, suffering and despair.... A disciple,... becoming weary of all that, divests himself of passion. By absence of passion, he is made free.'") # To be intoned after the manner of a priestly service. # I once knew a teacher, Who turned from desire, Who said to the young men "Wine is a fire." Who said to the merchants:-- "Gold is a flame That sears and tortures If you play at the game." I once knew a teacher Who turned from desire Who said to the soldiers, "Hate is a fire." Who said to the statesmen:-- "Power is a flame That flays and blisters If you play at the game." I once knew a teacher Who turned from desire, Who said to the lordly, "Pride is a fire." Who thus warned the revellers:-- "Life is a flame. Be cold as the dew Would you win at the game With hearts like the stars, With hearts like the stars." # Interrupting very loudly for the last time. # SO BEWARE, SO BEWARE, SO BEWARE OF THE FIRE. Clear the streets, BOOM, BOOM, Clear the streets, BOOM, BOOM, GIVE THE ENGINES ROOM, GIVE THE ENGINES ROOM, LEST SOULS BE TRAPPED IN A TERRIBLE TOMB. SAYS THE SWIFT WHITE HORSE TO THE SWIFT BLACK HORSE:-- "THERE GOES THE ALARM, THERE GOES THE ALARM. THEY ARE HITCHED, THEY ARE OFF, THEY ARE GONE IN A FLASH, AND THEY STRAIN AT THE DRIVER'S IRON ARM." CLANG... A... RANGA.... CLANG... A... RANGA.... CLANG... CLANG... CLANG.... CLANG... A... RANGA.... CLANG... A... RANGA.... CLANG... CLANG... CLANG.... CLANG... A... RANGA.... CLANG... A... RANGA.... CLANG... CLANG... _CLANG_.... The Master of the Dance A chant to which it is intended a group of children shall dance and improvise pantomime led by their dancing-teacher. I A master deep-eyed Ere his manhood was ripe, He sang like a thrush, He could play any pipe. So dull in the school That he scarcely could spell, He read but a bit, And he figured not well. A bare-footed fool, Shod only with grace; Long hair streaming down Round a wind-hardened face; He smiled like a girl, Or like clear winter skies, A virginal light Making stars of his eyes. In swiftness and poise, A proud child of the deer, A white fawn he was, Yet a fawn without fear. No youth thought him vain, Or made mock of his hair, Or laughed when his ways Were most curiously fair. A mastiff at fight, He could strike to the earth The envious one Who would challenge his worth. However we bowed To the schoolmaster mild, Our spirits went out To the fawn-footed child. His beckoning led Our troop to the brush. We found nothing there But a wind and a hush. He sat by a stone And he looked on the ground, As if in the weeds There was something profound. His pipe seemed to neigh, Then to bleat like a sheep, Then sound like a stream Or a waterfall deep. It whispered strange tales, Human words it spoke not. Told fair things to come, And our marvellous lot If now with fawn-steps Unshod we advanced To the midst of the grove And in reverence danced. We obeyed as he piped Soft grass to young feet, Was a medicine mighty, A remedy meet. Our thin blood awoke, It grew dizzy and wild, Though scarcely a word Moved the lips of a child. Our dance gave allegiance, It set us apart, We tripped a strange measure, Uplifted of heart. II We thought to be proud Of our fawn everywhere. We could hardly see how Simple books were a care. No rule of the school This strange student could tame. He was banished one day, While we quivered with shame. He piped back our love On a moon-silvered night, Enticed us once more To the place of delight. A greeting he sang And it made our blood beat, It tramped upon custom And mocked at defeat. He builded a fire And we tripped in a ring, The embers our books And the fawn our good king. And now we approached All the mysteries rare That shadowed his eyelids And blew through his hair. That spell now was peace The deep strength of the trees, The children of nature We clambered her knees. Our breath and our moods Were in tune with her own, Tremendous her presence, Eternal her throne. The ostracized child Our white foreheads kissed, Our bodies and souls Became lighter than mist. Sweet dresses like snow Our small lady-loves wore, Like moonlight the thoughts That our bosoms upbore. Like a lily the touch Of each cold little hand. The loves of the stars We could now understand. O quivering air! O the crystalline night! O pauses of awe And the faces swan-white! O ferns in the dusk! O forest-shrined hour! O earth that sent upward The thrill and the power, To lift us like leaves, A delirious whirl, The masterful boy And the delicate girl! What child that strange night-time Can ever forget? His fealty due And his infinite debt To the folly divine, To the exquisite rule Of the perilous master, The fawn-footed fool? III Now soldiers we seem, And night brings a new thing, A terrible ire, As of thunder awing. A warrior power, That old chivalry stirred, When knights took up arms, As the maidens gave word. THE END OF OUR WAR, WILL BE GLORY UNTOLD. WHEN THE TOWN LIKE A GREAT BUDDING ROSE SHALL UNFOLD! _Near, nearer that war, And that ecstasy comes, We hear the trees beating Invisible drums. The fields of the night Are starlit above, Our girls are white torches Of conquest and love. No nerve without will, And no breast without breath, We whirl with the planets That never know death!_ The Mysterious Cat A chant for a children's pantomime dance, suggested by a picture painted by George Mather Richards. I saw a proud, mysterious cat, I saw a proud, mysterious cat Too proud to catch a mouse or rat-- Mew, mew, mew. But catnip she would eat, and purr, But catnip she would eat, and purr. And goldfish she did much prefer-- Mew, mew, mew. I saw a cat--'twas but a dream, I saw a cat--'twas but a dream Who scorned the slave that brought her cream-- Mew, mew, mew. Unless the slave were dressed in style, Unless the slave were dressed in style And knelt before her all the while-- Mew, mew, mew. Did you ever hear of a thing like that? Did you ever hear of a thing like that? Did you ever hear of a thing like that? Oh, what a proud mysterious cat. Oh, what a proud mysterious cat. Oh, what a proud mysterious cat. Mew... mew... mew. A Dirge for a Righteous Kitten To be intoned, all but the two italicized lines, which are to be spoken in a snappy, matter-of-fact way. Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong. Here lies a kitten good, who kept A kitten's proper place. He stole no pantry eatables, Nor scratched the baby's face. _He let the alley-cats alone_. He had no yowling vice. His shirt was always laundried well, He freed the house of mice. Until his death he had not caused His little mistress tears, He wore his ribbon prettily, _He washed behind his ears_. Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong. Yankee Doodle This poem is intended as a description of a sort of Blashfield mural painting on the sky. To be sung to the tune of Yankee Doodle, yet in a slower, more orotund fashion. It is presumably an exercise for an entertainment on the evening of Washington's Birthday. Dawn this morning burned all red Watching them in wonder. There I saw our spangled flag Divide the clouds asunder. Then there followed Washington. Ah, he rode from glory, Cold and mighty as his name And stern as Freedom's story. Unsubdued by burning dawn Led his continentals. Vast they were, and strange to see In gray old regimentals:-- Marching still with bleeding feet, Bleeding feet and jesting-- Marching from the judgment throne With energy unresting. How their merry quickstep played-- Silver, sharp, sonorous, Piercing through with prophecy The demons' rumbling chorus-- Behold the ancient powers of sin And slavery before them!-- Sworn to stop the glorious dawn, The pit-black clouds hung o'er them. Plagues that rose to blast the day Fiend and tiger faces, Monsters plotting bloodshed for The patient toiling races. Round the dawn their cannon raged, Hurling bolts of thunder, Yet before our spangled flag Their host was cut asunder. Like a mist they fled away.... Ended wrath and roaring. Still our restless soldier-host From East to West went pouring. High beside the sun of noon They bore our banner splendid. All its days of stain and shame And heaviness were ended. Men were swelling now the throng From great and lowly station-- Valiant citizens to-day Of every tribe and nation. Not till night their rear-guard came, Down the west went marching, And left behind the sunset-rays In beauty overarching. War-god banners lead us still, Rob, enslave and harry Let us rather choose to-day The flag the angels carry-- Flag we love, but brighter far-- Soul of it made splendid: Let its days of stain and shame And heaviness be ended. Let its fifes fill all the sky, Redeemed souls marching after, Hills and mountains shake with song, While seas roll on in laughter. The Black Hawk War of the Artists Written for Lorado Taft's Statue of Black Hawk at Oregon, Illinois To be given in the manner of the Indian Oration and the Indian War-Cry. Hawk of the Rocks, Yours is our cause to-day. Watching your foes Here in our war array, Young men we stand, Wolves of the West at bay. _Power, power for war Comes from these trees divine; Power from the boughs, Boughs where the dew-beads shine, Power from the cones-- Yea, from the breath of the pine!_ Power to restore All that the white hand mars. See the dead east Crushed with the iron cars-- Chimneys black Blinding the sun and stars! Hawk of the pines, Hawk of the plain-winds fleet, You shall be king There in the iron street, Factory and forge Trodden beneath your feet. There will proud trees Grow as they grow by streams. There will proud thoughts Walk as in warrior dreams. There will proud deeds Bloom as when battle gleams! Warriors of Art, We will hold council there, Hewing in stone Things to the trapper fair, Painting the gray Veils that the spring moons wear, This our revenge, This one tremendous change: Making new towns, Lit with a star-fire strange, Wild as the dawn Gilding the bison-range. All the young men Chanting your cause that day, Red-men, new-made Out of the Saxon clay, Strong and redeemed, Bold in your war-array! The Jingo and the Minstrel An Argument for the Maintenance of Peace and Goodwill with the Japanese People Glossary for the uninstructed and the hasty: Jimmu Tenno, ancestor of all the Japanese Emperors; Nikko, Japan's loveliest shrine; Iyeyasu, her greatest statesman; Bushido, her code of knighthood; The Forty-seven Ronins, her classic heroes; Nogi, her latest hero; Fuji, her most beautiful mountain. # The minstrel speaks. # "Now do you know of Avalon That sailors call Japan? She holds as rare a chivalry As ever bled for man. King Arthur sleeps at Nikko hill Where Iyeyasu lies, And there the broad Pendragon flag In deathless splendor flies." # The jingo answers. # _"Nay, minstrel, but the great ships come From out the sunset sea. We cannot greet the souls they bring With welcome high and free. How can the Nippon nondescripts That weird and dreadful band Be aught but what we find them here:-- The blasters of the land?"_ # The minstrel replies. # "First race, first men from anywhere To face you, eye to eye. For _that_ do you curse Avalon And raise a hue and cry? These toilers cannot kiss your hand, Or fawn with hearts bowed down. Be glad for them, and Avalon, And Arthur's ghostly crown. "No doubt your guests, with sage debate In grave things gentlemen Will let your trade and farms alone And turn them back again. But why should brawling braggarts rise With hasty words of shame To drive them back like dogs and swine Who in due honor came?" # The jingo answers. # _"We cannot give them honor, sir. We give them scorn for scorn. And Rumor steals around the world All white-skinned men to warn Against this sleek silk-merchant here And viler coolie-man And wrath within the courts of war Brews on against Japan!"_ # The minstrel replies. # "Must Avalon, with hope forlorn, Her back against the wall, Have lived her brilliant life in vain While ruder tribes take all? Must Arthur stand with Asian Celts, A ghost with spear and crown, Behind the great Pendragon flag And be again cut down? "Tho Europe's self shall move against High Jimmu Tenno's throne The Forty-seven Ronin Men Will not be found alone. For Percival and Bedivere And Nogi side by side Will stand,--with mourning Merlin there, Tho all go down in pride. "But has the world the envious dream-- Ah, such things cannot be,-- To tear their fairy-land like silk And toss it in the sea? Must venom rob the future day The ultimate world-man Of rare Bushido, code of codes, The fair heart of Japan? "Go, be the guest of Avalon. Believe me, it lies there Behind the mighty gray sea-wall Where heathen bend in prayer: Where peasants lift adoring eyes To Fuji's crown of snow. King Arthur's knights will be your hosts, So cleanse your heart, and go. "And you will find but gardens sweet Prepared beyond the seas, And you will find but gentlefolk Beneath the cherry-trees. So walk you worthy of your Christ Tho church bells do not sound, And weave the bands of brotherhood On Jimmu Tenno's ground." I Heard Immanuel Singing (The poem shows the Master, with his work done, singing to free his heart in Heaven.) This poem is intended to be half said, half sung, very softly, to the well-known tune:-- "Last night I lay a-sleeping, There came a dream so fair, I stood in Old Jerusalem Beside the temple there,--" etc. Yet this tune is not to be fitted on, arbitrarily. It is here given to suggest the manner of handling rather than determine it. # To be sung. # I heard Immanuel singing Within his own good lands, I saw him bend above his harp. I watched his wandering hands Lost amid the harp-strings; Sweet, sweet I heard him play. His wounds were altogether healed. Old things had passed away. All things were new, but music. The blood of David ran Within the Son of David, Our God, the Son of Man. He was ruddy like a shepherd. His bold young face, how fair. Apollo of the silver bow Had not such flowing hair. # To be read very softly, but in spirited response. # I saw Immanuel singing On a tree-girdled hill. The glad remembering branches Dimly echoed still The grand new song proclaiming The Lamb that had been slain. New-built, the Holy City Gleamed in the murmuring plain. The crowning hours were over. The pageants all were past. Within the many mansions The hosts, grown still at last, In homes of holy mystery Slept long by crooning springs Or waked to peaceful glory, A universe of Kings. # To be sung. # He left his people happy. He wandered free to sigh Alone in lowly friendship With the green grass and the sky. He murmured ancient music His red heart burned to sing Because his perfect conquest Had grown a weary thing. No chant of gilded triumph-- His lonely song was made Of Art's deliberate freedom; Of minor chords arrayed In soft and shadowy colors That once were radiant flowers:-- The Rose of Sharon, bleeding In Olive-shadowed bowers:-- And all the other roses In the songs of East and West Of love and war and worshipping, And every shield and crest Of thistle or of lotus Or sacred lily wrought In creeds and psalms and palaces And temples of white thought:-- # To be read very softly, yet in spirited response. # All these he sang, half-smiling And weeping as he smiled, Laughing, talking to his harp As to a new-born child:-- As though the arts forgotten But bloomed to prophecy These careless, fearless harp-strings, New-crying in the sky. # To be sung. # "When this his hour of sorrow For flowers and Arts of men Has passed in ghostly music," I asked my wild heart then-- What will he sing to-morrow, What wonder, all his own Alone, set free, rejoicing, With a green hill for his throne? What will he sing to-morrow What wonder all his own Alone, set free, rejoicing, With a green hill for his throne? Second Section ~~ Incense An Argument I. The Voice of the Man Impatient with Visions and Utopias We find your soft Utopias as white As new-cut bread, and dull as life in cells, O, scribes who dare forget how wild we are How human breasts adore alarum bells. You house us in a hive of prigs and saints Communal, frugal, clean and chaste by law. I'd rather brood in bloody Elsinore Or be Lear's fool, straw-crowned amid the straw. Promise us all our share in Agincourt Say that our clerks shall venture scorns and death, That future ant-hills will not be too good For Henry Fifth, or Hotspur, or Macbeth. Promise that through to-morrow's spirit-war Man's deathless soul will hack and hew its way, Each flaunting Caesar climbing to his fate Scorning the utmost steps of yesterday. Never a shallow jester any more! Let not Jack Falstaff spill the ale in vain. Let Touchstone set the fashions for the wise And Ariel wreak his fancies through the rain. II. The Rhymer's Reply. Incense and Splendor Incense and Splendor haunt me as I go. Though my good works have been, alas, too few, Though I do naught, High Heaven comes down to me, And future ages pass in tall review. I see the years to come as armies vast, Stalking tremendous through the fields of time. MAN is unborn. To-morrow he is born, Flame-like to hover o'er the moil and grime, Striving, aspiring till the shame is gone, Sowing a million flowers, where now we mourn-- Laying new, precious pavements with a song, Founding new shrines, the good streets to adorn. I have seen lovers by those new-built walls Clothed like the dawn in orange, gold and red. Eyes flashing forth the glory-light of love Under the wreaths that crowned each royal head. Life was made greater by their sweetheart prayers. Passion was turned to civic strength that day-- Piling the marbles, making fairer domes With zeal that else had burned bright youth away. I have seen priestesses of life go by Gliding in samite through the incense-sea-- Innocent children marching with them there, Singing in flowered robes, "THE EARTH IS FREE": While on the fair, deep-carved unfinished towers Sentinels watched in armor, night and day-- Guarding the brazier-fires of hope and dream-- Wild was their peace, and dawn-bright their array! A Rhyme about an Electrical Advertising Sign I look on the specious electrical light Blatant, mechanical, crawling and white, Wickedly red or malignantly green Like the beads of a young Senegambian queen. Showing, while millions of souls hurry on, The virtues of collars, from sunset till dawn, By dart or by tumble of whirl within whirl, Starting new fads for the shame-weary girl, By maggoty motions in sickening line Proclaiming a hat or a soup or a wine, While there far above the steep cliffs of the street The stars sing a message elusive and sweet. Now man cannot rest in his pleasure and toil His clumsy contraptions of coil upon coil Till the thing he invents, in its use and its range, Leads on to the marvellous CHANGE BEYOND CHANGE. Some day this old Broadway shall climb to the skies, As a ribbon of cloud on a soul-wind shall rise. And we shall be lifted, rejoicing by night, Till we join with the planets who choir their delight. The signs in the street and the signs in the skies Shall make a new Zodiac, guiding the wise, And Broadway make one with that marvellous stair That is climbed by the rainbow-clad spirits of prayer. In Memory of a Child The angels guide him now, And watch his curly head, And lead him in their games, The little boy we led. He cannot come to harm, He knows more than we know, His light is brighter far Than daytime here below. His path leads on and on, Through pleasant lawns and flowers, His brown eyes open wide At grass more green than ours. With playmates like himself, The shining boy will sing, Exploring wondrous woods, Sweet with eternal spring. Galahad, Knight Who Perished A Poem Dedicated to All Crusaders against the International and Interstate Traffic in Young Girls Galahad... soldier that perished... ages ago, Our hearts are breaking with shame, our tears overflow. Galahad... knight who perished... awaken again, Teach us to fight for immaculate ways among men. Soldiers fantastic, we pray to the star of the sea, We pray to the mother of God that the bound may be free. Rose-crowned lady from heaven, give us thy grace, Help us the intricate, desperate battle to face Till the leer of the trader is seen nevermore in the land, Till we bring every maid of the age to one sheltering hand. Ah, they are priceless, the pale and the ivory and red! Breathless we gaze on the curls of each glorious head! Arm them with strength mediaeval, thy marvellous dower, Blast now their tempters, shelter their steps with thy power. Leave not life's fairest to perish--strangers to thee, Let not the weakest be shipwrecked, oh, star of the sea! The Leaden-eyed Let not young souls be smothered out before They do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride. It is the world's one crime its babes grow dull, Its poor are ox-like, limp and leaden-eyed. Not that they starve, but starve so dreamlessly, Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap, Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve, Not that they die, but that they die like sheep. An Indian Summer Day on the Prairie (In the Beginning) The sun is a huntress young, The sun is a red, red joy, The sun is an Indian girl, Of the tribe of the Illinois. (Mid-morning) The sun is a smouldering fire, That creeps through the high gray plain, And leaves not a bush of cloud To blossom with flowers of rain. (Noon) The sun is a wounded deer, That treads pale grass in the skies, Shaking his golden horns, Flashing his baleful eyes. (Sunset) The sun is an eagle old, There in the windless west. Atop of the spirit-cliffs He builds him a crimson nest. The Hearth Eternal There dwelt a widow learned and devout, Behind our hamlet on the eastern hill. Three sons she had, who went to find the world. They promised to return, but wandered still. The cities used them well, they won their way, Rich gifts they sent, to still their mother's sighs. Worn out with honors, and apart from her, They died as many a self-made exile dies. The mother had a hearth that would not quench, The deathless embers fought the creeping gloom. She said to us who came with wondering eyes-- "This is a magic fire, a magic room." The pine burned out, but still the coals glowed on, Her grave grew old beneath the pear-tree shade, And yet her crumbling home enshrined the light. The neighbors peering in were half afraid. Then sturdy beggars, needing fagots, came, One at a time, and stole the walls, and floor. They left a naked stone, but how it blazed! And in the thunderstorm it flared the more. And now it was that men were heard to say, "This light should be beloved by all the town." At last they made the slope a place of prayer, Where marvellous thoughts from God came sweeping down. They left their churches crumbling in the sun, They met on that soft hill, one brotherhood; One strength and valor only, one delight, One laughing, brooding genius, great and good. Now many gray-haired prodigals come home, The place out-flames the cities of the land, And twice-born Brahmans reach us from afar, With subtle eyes prepared to understand. Higher and higher burns the eastern steep, Showing the roads that march from every place, A steady beacon o'er the weary leagues, At dead of night it lights the traveller's face! Thus has the widow conquered half the earth, She who increased in faith, though all alone, Who kept her empty house a magic place, Has made the town a holy angel's throne. The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit A Broadside distributed in Springfield, Illinois Censers are swinging Over the town; Censers are swinging, Look overhead! Censers are swinging, Heaven comes down. City, dead city, Awake from the dead! Censers, tremendous, Gleam overhead. Wind-harps are ringing, Wind-harps unseen-- Calling and calling:-- "Wake from the dead. Rise, little city, Shine like a queen." Soldiers of Christ For battle grow keen. Heaven-sent winds Haunt alley and lane. Singing of life In town-meadows green After the toil And battle and pain. Incense is pouring Like the spring rain Down on the mob That moil through the street. Blessed are they Who behold it and gain Power made more mighty Thro' every defeat. Builders, toil on. Make all complete. Make Springfield wonderful. Make her renown Worthy this day, Till, at God's feet, Tranced, saved forever, Waits the white town. Censers are swinging Over the town, Censers gigantic! Look overhead! Hear the winds singing:-- "Heaven comes down. City, dead city, Awake from the dead." By the Spring, at Sunset Sometimes we remember kisses, Remember the dear heart-leap when they came: Not always, but sometimes we remember The kindness, the dumbness, the good flame Of laughter and farewell. Beside the road Afar from those who said "Good-by" I write, Far from my city task, my lawful load. Sun in my face, wind beside my shoulder, Streaming clouds, banners of new-born night Enchant me now. The splendors growing bolder Make bold my soul for some new wise delight. I write the day's event, and quench my drouth, Pausing beside the spring with happy mind. And now I feel those kisses on my mouth, Hers most of all, one little friend most kind. I Went down into the Desert I went down into the desert To meet Elijah-- Arisen from the dead. I thought to find him in an echoing cave; _For so my dream had said_. I went down into the desert To meet John the Baptist. I walked with feet that bled, Seeking that prophet lean and brown and bold. _I spied foul fiends instead_. I went down into the desert To meet my God. By him be comforted. I went down into the desert To meet my God. _And I met the devil in red_. I went down into the desert To meet my God. O, Lord my God, awaken from the dead! I see you there, your thorn-crown on the ground, I see you there, half-buried in the sand. I see you there, your white bones glistening, bare, _The carrion-birds a-wheeling round your head_. Love and Law True Love is founded in rocks of Remembrance In stones of Forbearance and mortar of Pain. The workman lays wearily granite on granite, And bleeds for his castle 'mid sunshine and rain. Love is not velvet, not all of it velvet, Not all of it banners, not gold-leaf alone. 'Tis stern as the ages and old as Religion. With Patience its watchword, and Law for its throne. The Perfect Marriage I I hate this yoke; for the world's sake here put it on: Knowing 'twill weigh as much on you till life is gone. Knowing you love your freedom dear, as I love mine-- Knowing that love unchained has been our life's great wine: Our one great wine (yet spent too soon, and serving none; Of the two cups free love at last the deadly one). II We grant our meetings will be tame, not honey-sweet No longer turning to the tryst with flying feet. We know the toil that now must come will spoil the bloom And tenderness of passion's touch, and in its room Will come tame habit, deadly calm, sorrow and gloom. Oh, how the battle scars the best who enter life! Each soldier comes out blind or lame from the black strife. Mad or diseased or damned of soul the best may come-- It matters not how merrily now rolls the drum, The fife shrills high, the horn sings loud, till no steps lag-- And all adore that silken flame, Desire's great flag. III We will build strong our tiny fort, strong as we can-- Holding one inner room beyond the sword of man. Love is too wide, it seems to-day, to hide it there. It seems to flood the fields of corn, and gild the air-- It seems to breathe from every brook, from flowers to sigh-- It seems a cataract poured down from the great sky; It seems a tenderness so vast no bush but shows Its haunting and transfiguring light where wonder glows. It wraps us in a silken snare by shadowy streams, And wildering sweet and stung with joy your white soul seems A flame, a flame, conquering day, conquering night, Brought from our God, a holy thing, a mad delight. But love, when all things beat it down, leaves the wide air, The heavens are gray, and men turn wolves, lean with despair. Ah, when we need love most, and weep, when all is dark, Love is a pinch of ashes gray, with one live spark-- Yet on the hope to keep alive that treasure strange Hangs all earth's struggle, strife and scorn, and desperate change. IV Love?... we will scarcely love our babes full many a time-- Knowing their souls and ours too well, and all our grime-- And there beside our holy hearth we'll hide our eyes-- Lest we should flash what seems disdain without disguise. Yet there shall be no wavering there in that deep trial-- And no false fire or stranger hand or traitor vile-- We'll fight the gloom and fight the world with strong sword-play, Entrenched within our block-house small, ever at bay-- As fellow-warriors, underpaid, wounded and wild, True to their battered flag, their faith still undefiled! Darling Daughter of Babylon Too soon you wearied of our tears. And then you danced with spangled feet, Leading Belshazzar's chattering court A-tinkling through the shadowy street. With mead they came, with chants of shame. DESIRE'S red flag before them flew. And Istar's music moved your mouth And Baal's deep shames rewoke in you. Now you could drive the royal car; Forget our Nation's breaking load: Now you could sleep on silver beds-- (Bitter and dark was our abode.) And so, for many a night you laughed, And knew not of my hopeless prayer, Till God's own spirit whipped you forth From Istar's shrine, from Istar's stair. Darling daughter of Babylon-- Rose by the black Euphrates flood-- Again your beauty grew more dear Than my slave's bread, than my heart's blood. We sang of Zion, good to know, Where righteousness and peace abide.... What of your second sacrilege Carousing at Belshazzar's side? Once, by a stream, we clasped tired hands-- Your paint and henna washed away. Your place, you said, was with the slaves Who sewed the thick cloth, night and day. You were a pale and holy maid Toil-bound with us. One night you said:-- "Your God shall be my God until I slumber with the patriarch dead." Pardon, daughter of Babylon, If, on this night remembering Our lover walks under the walls Of hanging gardens in the spring, A venom comes from broken hope, From memories of your comrade-song Until I curse your painted eyes And do your flower-mouth too much wrong. The Amaranth Ah, in the night, all music haunts me here.... Is it for naught high Heaven cracks and yawns And the tremendous Amaranth descends Sweet with the glory of ten thousand dawns? Does it not mean my God would have me say:-- "Whether you will or no, O city young, Heaven will bloom like one great flower for you, Flash and loom greatly all your marts among?" Friends, I will not cease hoping though you weep. Such things I see, and some of them shall come Though now our streets are harsh and ashen-gray, Though our strong youths are strident now, or dumb. Friends, that sweet town, that wonder-town, shall rise. Naught can delay it. Though it may not be Just as I dream, it comes at last I know With streets like channels of an incense-sea. The Alchemist's Petition Thou wilt not sentence to eternal life My soul that prays that it may sleep and sleep Like a white statue dropped into the deep, Covered with sand, covered with chests of gold, And slave-bones, tossed from many a pirate hold. But for this prayer thou wilt not bind in Hell My soul, that shook with love for Fame and Truth-- In such unquenched desires consumed his youth-- Let me turn dust, like dead leaves in the Fall, Or wood that lights an hour your knightly hall-- Amen. Two Easter Stanzas I The Hope of the Resurrection Though I have watched so many mourners weep O'er the real dead, in dull earth laid asleep-- Those dead seemed but the shadows of my days That passed and left me in the sun's bright rays. Now though you go on smiling in the sun Our love is slain, and love and you were one. You are the first, you I have known so long, Whose death was deadly, a tremendous wrong. Therefore I seek the faith that sets it right Amid the lilies and the candle-light. I think on Heaven, for in that air so clear We two may meet, confused and parted here. Ah, when man's dearest dies, 'tis then he goes To that old balm that heals the centuries' woes. Then Christ's wild cry in all the streets is rife:-- "I am the Resurrection and the Life." II We meet at the Judgment and I fear it Not Though better men may fear that trumpet's warning, I meet you, lady, on the Judgment morning, With golden hope my spirit still adorning. Our God who made you all so fair and sweet Is three times gentle, and before his feet Rejoicing I shall say:--"The girl you gave Was my first Heaven, an angel bent to save. Oh, God, her maker, if my ingrate breath Is worth this rescue from the Second Death, Perhaps her dear proud eyes grow gentler too That scorned my graceless years and trophies few. Gone are those years, and gone ill-deeds that turned Her sacred beauty from my songs that burned. We now as comrades through the stars may take The rich and arduous quests I did forsake. Grant me a seraph-guide to thread the throng And quickly find that woman-soul so strong. I dream that in her deeply-hidden heart Hurt love lived on, though we were far apart, A brooding secret mercy like your own That blooms to-day to vindicate your throne. The Traveller-heart (To a Man who maintained that the Mausoleum is the Stateliest Possible Manner of Interment) I would be one with the dark, dark earth:-- Follow the plough with a yokel tread. I would be part of the Indian corn, Walking the rows with the plumes o'erhead. I would be one with the lavish earth, Eating the bee-stung apples red: Walking where lambs walk on the hills; By oak-grove paths to the pools be led. I would be one with the dark-bright night When sparkling skies and the lightning wed-- Walking on with the vicious wind By roads whence even the dogs have fled. I would be one with the sacred earth On to the end, till I sleep with the dead. Terror shall put no spears through me. Peace shall jewel my shroud instead. I shall be one with all pit-black things Finding their lowering threat unsaid: Stars for my pillow there in the gloom,-- Oak-roots arching about my head! Stars, like daisies, shall rise through the earth, Acorns fall round my breast that bled. Children shall weave there a flowery chain, Squirrels on acorn-hearts be fed:-- Fruit of the traveller-heart of me, Fruit of my harvest-songs long sped: Sweet with the life of my sunburned days When the sheaves were ripe, and the apples red. The North Star Whispers to the Blacksmith's Son The North Star whispers: "You are one Of those whose course no chance can change. You blunder, but are not undone, Your spirit-task is fixed and strange. "When here you walk, a bloodless shade, A singer all men else forget. Your chants of hammer, forge and spade Will move the prairie-village yet. "That young, stiff-necked, reviling town Beholds your fancies on her walls, And paints them out or tears them down, Or bars them from her feasting-halls. "Yet shall the fragments still remain; Yet shall remain some watch-tower strong That ivy-vines will not disdain, Haunted and trembling with your song. "Your flambeau in the dusk shall burn, Flame high in storms, flame white and clear; Your ghost in gleaming robes return And burn a deathless incense here." Third Section ~~ A Miscellany called "the Christmas Tree" This Section is a Christmas Tree This section is a Christmas tree: Loaded with pretty toys for you. Behold the blocks, the Noah's arks, The popguns painted red and blue. No solemn pine-cone forest-fruit, But silver horns and candy sacks And many little tinsel hearts And cherubs pink, and jumping-jacks. For every child a gift, I hope. The doll upon the topmost bough Is mine. But all the rest are yours. And I will light the candles now. The Sun Says his Prayers "The sun says his prayers," said the fairy, Or else he would wither and die. "The sun says his prayers," said the fairy, "For strength to climb up through the sky. He leans on invisible angels, And Faith is his prop and his rod. The sky is his crystal cathedral. And dawn is his altar to God." Popcorn, Glass Balls, and Cranberries (As it were) I. The Lion The Lion is a kingly beast. He likes a Hindu for a feast. And if no Hindu he can get, The lion-family is upset. He cuffs his wife and bites her ears Till she is nearly moved to tears. Then some explorer finds the den And all is family peace again. II. An Explanation of the Grasshopper The Grasshopper, the grasshopper, I will explain to you:-- He is the Brownies' racehorse, The fairies' Kangaroo. III. The Dangerous Little Boy Fairies In fairyland the little boys Would rather fight than eat their meals. They like to chase a gauze-winged fly And catch and beat him till he squeals. Sometimes they come to sleeping men Armed with the deadly red-rose thorn, And those that feel its fearful wound Repent the day that they were born. IV. The Mouse that gnawed the Oak-tree Down The mouse that gnawed the oak-tree down Began his task in early life. He kept so busy with his teeth He had no time to take a wife. He gnawed and gnawed through sun and rain When the ambitious fit was on, Then rested in the sawdust till A month of idleness had gone. He did not move about to hunt The coteries of mousie-men. He was a snail-paced, stupid thing Until he cared to gnaw again. The mouse that gnawed the oak-tree down, When that tough foe was at his feet-- Found in the stump no angel-cake Nor buttered bread, nor cheese, nor meat-- The forest-roof let in the sky. "This light is worth the work," said he. "I'll make this ancient swamp more light," And started on another tree. V. Parvenu Where does Cinderella sleep? By far-off day-dream river. A secret place her burning Prince Decks, while his heart-strings quiver. Homesick for our cinder world, Her low-born shoulders shiver; She longs for sleep in cinders curled-- We, for the day-dream river. VI. The Spider and the Ghost of the Fly Once I loved a spider When I was born a fly, A velvet-footed spider With a gown of rainbow-dye. She ate my wings and gloated. She bound me with a hair. She drove me to her parlor Above her winding stair. To educate young spiders She took me all apart. My ghost came back to haunt her. I saw her eat my heart. VII. Crickets on a Strike The foolish queen of fairyland From her milk-white throne in a lily-bell, Gave command to her cricket-band To play for her when the dew-drops fell. But the cold dew spoiled their instruments And they play for the foolish queen no more. Instead those sturdy malcontents Play sharps and flats in my kitchen floor. How a Little Girl Danced Dedicated to Lucy Bates (Being a reminiscence of certain private theatricals.) Oh, cabaret dancer, _I_ know a dancer, Whose eyes have not looked on the feasts that are vain. _I_ know a dancer, _I_ know a dancer, Whose soul has no bond with the beasts of the plain: Judith the dancer, Judith the dancer, With foot like the snow, and with step like the rain. Oh, thrice-painted dancer, vaudeville dancer, Sad in your spangles, with soul all astrain, _I_ know a dancer, _I_ know a dancer, Whose laughter and weeping are spiritual gain, A pure-hearted, high-hearted maiden evangel, With strength the dark cynical earth to disdain. Flowers of bright Broadway, you of the chorus, Who sing in the hope of forgetting your pain: I turn to a sister of Sainted Cecilia, A white bird escaping the earth's tangled skein:-- The music of God is her innermost brooding, The whispering angels her footsteps sustain. Oh, proud Russian dancer: praise for your dancing. No clean human passion my rhyme would arraign. You dance for Apollo with noble devotion, A high cleansing revel to make the heart sane. But Judith the dancer prays to a spirit More white than Apollo and all of his train. I know a dancer who finds the true Godhead, Who bends o'er a brazier in Heaven's clear plain. I know a dancer, I know a dancer, Who lifts us toward peace, from this earth that is vain: Judith the dancer, Judith the dancer, With foot like the snow, and with step like the rain. In Praise of Songs that Die After having read a Great Deal of Good Current Poetry in the Magazines and Newspapers Ah, they are passing, passing by, Wonderful songs, but born to die! Cries from the infinite human seas, Waves thrice-winged with harmonies. Here I stand on a pier in the foam Seeing the songs to the beach go home, Dying in sand while the tide flows back, As it flowed of old in its fated track. Oh, hurrying tide that will not hear Your own foam-children dying near: Is there no refuge-house of song, No home, no haven where songs belong? Oh, precious hymns that come and go! You perish, and I love you so! Factory Windows are always Broken Factory windows are always broken. Somebody's always throwing bricks, Somebody's always heaving cinders, Playing ugly Yahoo tricks. Factory windows are always broken. Other windows are let alone. No one throws through the chapel-window The bitter, snarling, derisive stone. Factory windows are always broken. Something or other is going wrong. Something is rotten--I think, in Denmark. _End of the factory-window song_. To Mary Pickford Moving-picture Actress (On hearing she was leaving the moving-pictures for the stage.) Mary Pickford, doll divine, Year by year, and every day At the moving-picture play, You have been my valentine. Once a free-limbed page in hose, Baby-Rosalind in flower, Cloakless, shrinking, in that hour How our reverent passion rose, How our fine desire you won. Kitchen-wench another day, Shapeless, wooden every way. Next, a fairy from the sun. Once you walked a grown-up strand Fish-wife siren, full of lure, Snaring with devices sure Lads who murdered on the sand. But on most days just a child Dimpled as no grown-folk are, Cold of kiss as some north star, Violet from the valleys wild. Snared as innocence must be, Fleeing, prisoned, chained, half-dead-- At the end of tortures dread Roaring cowboys set you free. Fly, O song, to her to-day, Like a cowboy cross the land. Snatch her from Belasco's hand And that prison called Broadway. All the village swains await One dear lily-girl demure, Saucy, dancing, cold and pure, Elf who must return in state. Blanche Sweet Moving-picture Actress (After seeing the reel called "Oil and Water".) Beauty has a throne-room In our humorous town, Spoiling its hob-goblins, Laughing shadows down. Rank musicians torture Ragtime ballads vile, But we walk serenely Down the odorous aisle. We forgive the squalor And the boom and squeal For the Great Queen flashes From the moving reel. Just a prim blonde stranger In her early day, Hiding brilliant weapons, Too averse to play, Then she burst upon us Dancing through the night. Oh, her maiden radiance, Veils and roses white. With new powers, yet cautious, Not too smart or skilled, That first flash of dancing Wrought the thing she willed:-- Mobs of us made noble By her strong desire, By her white, uplifting, Royal romance-fire. Though the tin piano Snarls its tango rude, Though the chairs are shaky And the dramas crude, Solemn are her motions, Stately are her wiles, Filling oafs with wisdom, Saving souls with smiles; 'Mid the restless actors She is rich and slow. She will stand like marble, She will pause and glow, Though the film is twitching, Keep a peaceful reign, Ruler of her passion, Ruler of our pain! Sunshine For a Very Little Girl, Not a Year Old. Catharine Frazee Wakefield. The sun gives not directly The coal, the diamond crown; Not in a special basket Are these from Heaven let down. The sun gives not directly The plough, man's iron friend; Not by a path or stairway Do tools from Heaven descend. Yet sunshine fashions all things That cut or burn or fly; And corn that seems upon the earth Is made in the hot sky. The gravel of the roadbed, The metal of the gun, The engine of the airship Trace somehow from the sun. And so your soul, my lady-- (Mere sunshine, nothing more)-- Prepares me the contraptions I work with or adore. Within me cornfields rustle, Niagaras roar their way, Vast thunderstorms and rainbows Are in my thought to-day. Ten thousand anvils sound there By forges flaming white, And many books I read there, And many books I write; And freedom's bells are ringing, And bird-choirs chant and fly-- The whole world works in me to-day And all the shining sky, Because of one small lady Whose smile is my chief sun. She gives not any gift to me Yet all gifts, giving one.... Amen. An Apology for the Bottle Volcanic Sometimes I dip my pen and find the bottle full of fire, The salamanders flying forth I cannot but admire. It's Etna, or Vesuvius, if those big things were small, And then 'tis but itself again, and does not smoke at all. And so my blood grows cold. I say, "The bottle held but ink, And, if you thought it otherwise, the worser for your think." And then, just as I throw my scribbled paper on the floor, The bottle says, "Fe, fi, fo, fum," and steams and shouts some more. O sad deceiving ink, as bad as liquor in its way-- All demons of a bottle size have pranced from you to-day, And seized my pen for hobby-horse as witches ride a broom, And left a trail of brimstone words and blots and gobs of gloom. And yet when I am extra good and say my prayers at night, And mind my ma, and do the chores, and speak to folks polite, My bottle spreads a rainbow-mist, and from the vapor fine Ten thousand troops from fairyland come riding in a line. I've seen them on their chargers race around my study chair, They opened wide the window and rode forth upon the air. The army widened as it went, and into myriads grew, O how the lances shimmered, how the silvery trumpets blew! When Gassy Thompson Struck it Rich He paid a Swede twelve bits an hour Just to invent a fancy style To spread the celebration paint So it would show at least a mile. Some things they did I will not tell. They're not quite proper for a rhyme. But I WILL say Yim Yonson Swede Did sure invent a sunflower time. One thing they did that I can tell And not offend the ladies here:-- They took a goat to Simp's Saloon And made it take a bath in beer. That ENTERprise took MANagement. They broke a wash-tub in the fray. But mister goat was bathed all right And bar-keep Simp was, too, they say. They wore girls' pink straw hats to church And clucked like hens. They surely did. They bought two HOtel frying pans And in them down the mountain slid. They went to Denver in good clothes, And kept Burt's grill-room wide awake, And cut about like jumping-jacks, And ordered seven-dollar steak. They had the waiters whirling round Just sweeping up the smear and smash. They tried to buy the State-house flag. They showed the Janitor the cash. And old Dan Tucker on a toot, Or John Paul Jones before the breeze, Or Indians eating fat fried dog, Were not as happy babes as these. One morn, in hills near Cripple-creek With cheerful swears the two awoke. The Swede had twenty cents, all right. But Gassy Thompson was clean broke. Rhymes for Gloriana I. The Doll upon the Topmost Bough This doll upon the topmost bough, This playmate-gift, in Christmas dress, Was taken down and brought to me One sleety night most comfortless. Her hair was gold, her dolly-sash Was gray brocade, most good to see. The dear toy laughed, and I forgot The ill the new year promised me. II. On Suddenly Receiving a Curl Long Refused Oh, saucy gold circle of fairyland silk-- Impudent, intimate, delicate treasure: A noose for my heart and a ring for my finger:-- Here in my study you sing me a measure. Whimsy and song in my little gray study! Words out of wonderland, praising her fineness, Touched with her pulsating, delicate laughter, Saying, "The girl is all daring and kindness!" Saying, "Her soul is all feminine gameness, Trusting her insights, ardent for living; She would be weeping with me and be laughing, A thoroughbred, joyous receiving and giving!" III. On Receiving One of Gloriana's Letters Your pen needs but a ruffle To be Pavlova whirling. It surely is a scalawag A-scamping down the page. A pretty little May-wind The morning buds uncurling. And then the white sweet Russian, The dancer of the age. Your pen's the Queen of Sheba, Such serious questions bringing, That merry rascal Solomon Would show a sober face:-- And then again Pavlova To set our spirits singing, The snowy-swan bacchante All glamour, glee and grace. IV. In Praise of Gloriana's Remarkable Golden Hair The gleaming head of one fine friend Is bent above my little song, So through the treasure-pits of Heaven In fancy's shoes, I march along. I wander, seek and peer and ponder In Splendor's last ensnaring lair-- 'Mid burnished harps and burnished crowns Where noble chariots gleam and flare: Amid the spirit-coins and gems, The plates and cups and helms of fire-- The gorgeous-treasure-pits of Heaven-- Where angel-misers slake desire! O endless treasure-pits of gold Where silly angel-men make mirth-- I think that I am there this hour, Though walking in the ways of earth! Fourth Section ~~ Twenty Poems in which the Moon is the Principal Figure of Speech Once More--To Gloriana Girl with the burning golden eyes, And red-bird song, and snowy throat: I bring you gold and silver moons And diamond stars, and mists that float. I bring you moons and snowy clouds, I bring you prairie skies to-night To feebly praise your golden eyes And red-bird song, and throat so white. First Section: Moon Poems for the Children/Fairy-tales for the Children I. Euclid Old Euclid drew a circle On a sand-beach long ago. He bounded and enclosed it With angles thus and so. His set of solemn greybeards Nodded and argued much Of arc and of circumference, Diameter and such. A silent child stood by them From morning until noon Because they drew such charming Round pictures of the moon. II. The Haughty Snail-king (What Uncle William told the Children) Twelve snails went walking after night. They'd creep an inch or so, Then stop and bug their eyes And blow. Some folks... are... deadly... slow. Twelve snails went walking yestereve, Led by their fat old king. They were so dull their princeling had No sceptre, robe or ring-- Only a paper cap to wear When nightly journeying. This king-snail said: "I feel a thought Within.... It blossoms soon.... O little courtiers of mine,... I crave a pretty boon.... Oh, yes... (High thoughts with effort come And well-bred snails are ALMOST dumb.) "I wish I had a yellow crown As glistering... as... the moon." III. What the Rattlesnake Said The moon's a little prairie-dog. He shivers through the night. He sits upon his hill and cries For fear that _I_ will bite. The sun's a broncho. He's afraid Like every other thing, And trembles, morning, noon and night, Lest _I_ should spring, and sting. IV. The Moon's the North Wind's Cooky (What the Little Girl Said) The Moon's the North Wind's cooky. He bites it, day by day, Until there's but a rim of scraps That crumble all away. The South Wind is a baker. He kneads clouds in his den, And bakes a crisp new moon _that... greedy North... Wind... eats... again!_ V. Drying their Wings (What the Carpenter Said) The moon's a cottage with a door. Some folks can see it plain. Look, you may catch a glint of light, A sparkle through the pane, Showing the place is brighter still Within, though bright without. There, at a cosy open fire Strange babes are grouped about. The children of the wind and tide-- The urchins of the sky, Drying their wings from storms and things So they again can fly. VI. What the Gray-winged Fairy Said The moon's a gong, hung in the wild, Whose song the fays hold dear. Of course you do not hear it, child. It takes a FAIRY ear. The full moon is a splendid gong That beats as night grows still. It sounds above the evening song Of dove or whippoorwill. VII. Yet Gentle will the Griffin Be (What Grandpa told the Children) The moon? It is a griffin's egg, Hatching to-morrow night. And how the little boys will watch With shouting and delight To see him break the shell and stretch And creep across the sky. The boys will laugh. The little girls, I fear, may hide and cry. Yet gentle will the griffin be, Most decorous and fat, And walk up to the milky way And lap it like a cat. Second Section: The Moon is a Mirror I. Prologue. A Sense of Humor No man should stand before the moon To make sweet song thereon, With dandified importance, His sense of humor gone. Nay, let us don the motley cap, The jester's chastened mien, If we would woo that looking-glass And see what should be seen. O mirror on fair Heaven's wall, We find there what we bring. So, let us smile in honest part And deck our souls and sing. Yea, by the chastened jest alone Will ghosts and terrors pass, And fays, or suchlike friendly things, Throw kisses through the glass. II. On the Garden-wall Oh, once I walked a garden In dreams. 'Twas yellow grass. And many orange-trees grew there In sand as white as glass. The curving, wide wall-border Was marble, like the snow. I walked that wall a fairy-prince And, pacing quaint and slow, Beside me were my pages, Two giant, friendly birds. Half-swan they were, half peacock. They spake in courtier-words. Their inner wings a chariot, Their outer wings for flight, They lifted me from dreamland. We bade those trees good-night. Swiftly above the stars we rode. I looked below me soon. The white-walled garden I had ruled Was one lone flower--the moon. III. Written for a Musician Hungry for music with a desperate hunger I prowled abroad, I threaded through the town; The evening crowd was clamoring and drinking, Vulgar and pitiful--my heart bowed down-- Till I remembered duller hours made noble By strangers clad in some surprising grace. Wait, wait, my soul, your music comes ere midnight Appearing in some unexpected place With quivering lips, and gleaming, moonlit face. IV. The Moon is a Painter He coveted her portrait. He toiled as she grew gay. She loved to see him labor In that devoted way. And in the end it pleased her, But bowed him more with care. Her rose-smile showed so plainly, Her soul-smile was not there. That night he groped without a lamp To find a cloak, a book, And on the vexing portrait By moonrise chanced to look. The color-scheme was out of key, The maiden rose-smile faint, But through the blessed darkness She gleamed, his friendly saint. The comrade, white, immortal, His bride, and more than bride-- The citizen, the sage of mind, For whom he lived and died. V. The Encyclopaedia "If I could set the moon upon This table," said my friend, "Among the standard poets And brochures without end, And noble prints of old Japan, How empty they would seem, By that encyclopaedia Of whim and glittering dream." VI. What the Miner in the Desert Said The moon's a brass-hooped water-keg, A wondrous water-feast. If I could climb the ridge and drink And give drink to my beast; If I could drain that keg, the flies Would not be biting so, My burning feet be spry again, My mule no longer slow. And I could rise and dig for ore, And reach my fatherland, And not be food for ants and hawks And perish in the sand. VII. What the Coal-heaver Said The moon's an open furnace door Where all can see the blast, We shovel in our blackest griefs, Upon that grate are cast Our aching burdens, loves and fears And underneath them wait Paper and tar and pitch and pine Called strife and blood and hate. Out of it all there comes a flame, A splendid widening light. Sorrow is turned to mystery And Death into delight. VIII. What the Moon Saw Two statesmen met by moonlight. Their ease was partly feigned. They glanced about the prairie. Their faces were constrained. In various ways aforetime They had misled the state, Yet did it so politely Their henchmen thought them great. They sat beneath a hedge and spake No word, but had a smoke. A satchel passed from hand to hand. Next day, the deadlock broke. IX. What Semiramis Said The moon's a steaming chalice Of honey and venom-wine. A little of it sipped by night Makes the long hours divine. But oh, my reckless lovers, They drain the cup and wail, Die at my feet with shaking limbs And tender lips all pale. Above them in the sky it bends Empty and gray and dread. To-morrow night 'tis full again, Golden, and foaming red. X. What the Ghost of the Gambler Said Where now the huts are empty, Where never a camp-fire glows, In an abandoned canyon, A Gambler's Ghost arose. He muttered there, "The moon's a sack Of dust." His voice rose thin: "I wish I knew the miner-man. I'd play, and play to win. In every game in Cripple-creek Of old, when stakes were high, I held my own. Now I would play For that sack in the sky. The sport would not be ended there. 'Twould rather be begun. I'd bet my moon against his stars, And gamble for the sun." XI. The Spice-tree This is the song The spice-tree sings: "Hunger and fire, Hunger and fire, Sky-born Beauty-- Spice of desire," Under the spice-tree Watch and wait, Burning maidens And lads that mate. The spice-tree spreads And its boughs come down Shadowing village and farm and town. And none can see But the pure of heart The great green leaves And the boughs descending, And hear the song that is never ending. The deep roots whisper, The branches say:-- "Love to-morrow, And love to-day, And till Heaven's day, And till Heaven's day." The moon is a bird's nest in its branches, The moon is hung in its topmost spaces. And there, to-night, two doves play house While lovers watch with uplifted faces. Two doves go home To their nest, the moon. It is woven of twigs of broken light, With threads of scarlet and threads of gray And a lining of down for silk delight. To their Eden, the moon, fly home our doves, Up through the boughs of the great spice-tree;-- And one is the kiss I took from you, And one is the kiss you gave to me. XII. The Scissors-grinder (What the Tramp Said) The old man had his box and wheel For grinding knives and shears. No doubt his bell in village streets Was joy to children's ears. And I bethought me of my youth When such men came around, And times I asked them in, quite sure The scissors should be ground. The old man turned and spoke to me, His face at last in view. And then I thought those curious eyes Were eyes that once I knew. "The moon is but an emery-wheel To whet the sword of God," He said. "And here beside my fire I stretch upon the sod Each night, and dream, and watch the stars And watch the ghost-clouds go. And see that sword of God in Heaven A-waving to and fro. I see that sword each century, friend. It means the world-war comes With all its bloody, wicked chiefs And hate-inflaming drums. Men talk of peace, but I have seen That emery-wheel turn round. The voice of Abel cries again To God from out the ground. The ditches must flow red, the plague Go stark and screaming by Each time that sword of God takes edge Within the midnight sky. And those that scorned their brothers here And sowed a wind of shame Will reap the whirlwind as of old And face relentless flame." And thus the scissors-grinder spoke, His face at last in view. _And there beside the railroad bridge I saw the wandering Jew_. XIII. My Lady in her White Silk Shawl My lady in her white silk shawl Is like a lily dim, Within the twilight of the room Enthroned and kind and prim. My lady! Pale gold is her hair. Until she smiles her face Is pale with far Hellenic moods, With thoughts that find no place In our harsh village of the West Wherein she lives of late, She's distant as far-hidden stars, And cold--(almost!)--as fate. But when she smiles she's here again Rosy with comrade-cheer, A Puritan Bacchante made To laugh around the year. The merry gentle moon herself, Heart-stirring too, like her, Wakening wild and innocent love In every worshipper. XIV. Aladdin and the Jinn "Bring me soft song," said Aladdin. "This tailor-shop sings not at all. Chant me a word of the twilight, Of roses that mourn in the fall. Bring me a song like hashish That will comfort the stale and the sad, For I would be mending my spirit, Forgetting these days that are bad, Forgetting companions too shallow, Their quarrels and arguments thin, Forgetting the shouting Muezzin:"-- "I AM YOUR SLAVE," said the Jinn. "Bring me old wines," said Aladdin. "I have been a starved pauper too long. Serve them in vessels of jade and of shell, Serve them with fruit and with song:-- Wines of pre-Adamite Sultans Digged from beneath the black seas:-- New-gathered dew from the heavens Dripped down from Heaven's sweet trees, Cups from the angels' pale tables That will make me both handsome and wise, For I have beheld her, the princess, Firelight and starlight her eyes. Pauper I am, I would woo her. And--let me drink wine, to begin, Though the Koran expressly forbids it." "I AM YOUR SLAVE," said the Jinn. "Plan me a dome," said Aladdin, "That is drawn like the dawn of the MOON, When the sphere seems to rest on the mountains, Half-hidden, yet full-risen soon." "Build me a dome," said Aladdin, "That shall cause all young lovers to sigh, The fullness of life and of beauty, Peace beyond peace to the eye-- A palace of foam and of opal, Pure moonlight without and within, Where I may enthrone my sweet lady." "I AM YOUR SLAVE," said the Jinn. XV. The Strength of the Lonely (What the Mendicant Said) The moon's a monk, unmated, Who walks his cell, the sky. His strength is that of heaven-vowed men Who all life's flames defy. They turn to stars or shadows, They go like snow or dew-- Leaving behind no sorrow-- Only the arching blue. Fifth Section War. September 1, 1914 Intended to be Read Aloud I. Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight (In Springfield, Illinois) It is portentous, and a thing of state That here at midnight, in our little town A mourning figure walks, and will not rest, Near the old court-house pacing up and down, Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards He lingers where his children used to play, Or through the market, on the well-worn stones He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away. A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black, A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl Make him the quaint great figure that men love, The prairie-lawyer, master of us all. He cannot sleep upon his hillside now. He is among us:--as in times before! And we who toss and lie awake for long Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door. His head is bowed. He thinks on men and kings. Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep? Too many peasants fight, they know not why, Too many homesteads in black terror weep. The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart. He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main. He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now The bitterness, the folly and the pain. He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn Shall come;--the shining hope of Europe free: The league of sober folk, the Workers' Earth, Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp and Sea. It breaks his heart that kings must murder still, That all his hours of travail here for men Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace That he may sleep upon his hill again? II. A Curse for Kings A curse upon each king who leads his state, No matter what his plea, to this foul game, And may it end his wicked dynasty, And may he die in exile and black shame. If there is vengeance in the Heaven of Heavens, What punishment could Heaven devise for these Who fill the rivers of the world with dead, And turn their murderers loose on all the seas! Put back the clock of time a thousand years, And make our Europe, once the world's proud Queen, A shrieking strumpet, furious fratricide, Eater of entrails, wallowing obscene In pits where millions foam and rave and bark, Mad dogs and idiots, thrice drunk with strife; While Science towers above;--a witch, red-winged: Science we looked to for the light of life. Curse me the men who make and sell iron ships, Who walk the floor in thought, that they may find Each powder prompt, each steel with fearful edge, Each deadliest device against mankind. Curse me the sleek lords with their plumes and spurs, May Heaven give their land to peasant spades, Give them the brand of Cain, for their pride's sake, And felon's stripes for medals and for braids. Curse me the fiddling, twiddling diplomats, Haggling here, plotting and hatching there, Who make the kind world but their game of cards, Till millions die at turning of a hair. What punishment will Heaven devise for these Who win by others' sweat and hardihood, Who make men into stinking vultures' meat, Saying to evil still "Be thou my good"? Ah, he who starts a million souls toward death Should burn in utmost hell a million years! --Mothers of men go on the destined wrack To give them life, with anguish and with tears:-- Are all those childbed sorrows sneered away? Yea, fools laugh at the humble christenings, And cradle-joys are mocked of the fat lords: These mothers' sons made dead men for the Kings! All in the name of this or that grim flag, No angel-flags in all the rag-array-- Banners the demons love, and all Hell sings And plays wild harps. Those flags march forth to-day! III. Who Knows? They say one king is mad. Perhaps. Who knows? They say one king is doddering and grey. They say one king is slack and sick of mind, A puppet for hid strings that twitch and play. Is Europe then to be their sprawling-place? Their mad-house, till it turns the wide world's bane? Their place of maudlin, slavering conference Till every far-off farmstead goes insane? IV. To Buddha Awake again in Asia, Lord of Peace, Awake and preach, for her far swordsmen rise. And would they sheathe the sword before you, friend, Or scorn your way, while looking in your eyes? Good comrade and philosopher and prince, Thoughtful and thoroughbred and strong and kind, Dare they to move against your pride benign, Lord of the Law, high chieftain of the mind? ***** But what can Europe say, when in your name The throats are cut, the lotus-ponds turn red? And what can Europe say, when with a laugh Old Asia heaps her hecatombs of dead? V. The Unpardonable Sin This is the sin against the Holy Ghost:-- To speak of bloody power as right divine, And call on God to guard each vile chief's house, And for such chiefs, turn men to wolves and swine:-- To go forth killing in White Mercy's name, Making the trenches stink with spattered brains, Tearing the nerves and arteries apart, Sowing with flesh the unreaped golden plains. In any Church's name, to sack fair towns, And turn each home into a screaming sty, To make the little children fugitive, And have their mothers for a quick death cry,-- This is the sin against the Holy Ghost: This is the sin no purging can atone:-- To send forth rapine in the name of Christ:-- To set the face, and make the heart a stone. VI. Above the Battle's Front St. Francis, Buddha, Tolstoi, and St. John-- Friends, if you four, as pilgrims, hand in hand, Returned, the hate of earth once more to dare, And walked upon the water and the land, If you, with words celestial, stopped these kings For sober conclave, ere their battle great, Would they for one deep instant then discern Their crime, their heart-rot, and their fiend's estate? If you should float above the battle's front, Pillars of cloud, of fire that does not slay, Bearing a fifth within your regal train, The Son of David in his strange array-- If, in his majesty, he towered toward Heaven, Would they have hearts to see or understand? ... Nay, for he hovers there to-night we know, Thorn-crowned above the water and the land. VII. Epilogue. Under the Blessing of Your Psyche Wings Though I have found you like a snow-drop pale, On sunny days have found you weak and still, Though I have often held your girlish head Drooped on my shoulder, faint from little ill:-- Under the blessing of your Psyche-wings I hide to-night like one small broken bird, So soothed I half-forget the world gone mad:-- And all the winds of war are now unheard. My heaven-doubting pennons feel your hands With touch most delicate so circling round, That for an hour I dream that God is good. And in your shadow, Mercy's ways abound. I thought myself the guard of your frail state, And yet I come to-night a helpless guest, Hiding beneath your giant Psyche-wings, Against the pallor of your wondrous breast. [End of original text.] Biographical Note: Nicholas Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931): (Vachel is pronounced Vay-chul, that is, it rhymes with 'Rachel'). "The Eagle that is Forgotten" and "The Congo" are two of his best-known poems, and appear in his first two volumes of verse, "General William Booth Enters into Heaven" (1913) and "The Congo" (1914). Lindsay himself considered his drawings and his prose writings to be as important as his verse, all coming together to form a whole. His "Collected Poems" (1925) gives a good selection. ***** From an anthology of verse by Jessie B. Rittenhouse (1913, 1917): "Lindsay, Vachel. Born November 10, 1879. Educated at Hiram College, Ohio. He took up the study of art and studied at the Art Institute, Chicago, 1900-03 and at the New York School of Art, 1904-05. For a time after his technical study, he lectured upon art in its practical relation to the community, and returning to his home in Springfield, Illinois, issued what one might term his manifesto in the shape of "The Village Magazine", divided about equally between prose articles, pertaining to beautifying his native city, and poems, illustrated by his own drawings. Soon after this, Mr. Lindsay, taking as scrip for the journey, "Rhymes to be Traded for Bread", made a pilgrimage on foot through several Western States going as far afield as New Mexico. The story of this journey is given in his volume, "Adventures while Preaching the Gospel of Beauty". Mr. Lindsay first attracted attention in poetry by "General William Booth Enters into Heaven", a poem which became the title of his first volume, in 1913. His second volume was "The Congo", published in 1914. He is attempting to restore to poetry its early appeal as a spoken art, and his later work differs greatly from the selections contained in this anthology." 
1040	----	[Note on text: Italicized words or phrases are CAPITALIZED. Lines longer than 78 characters are broken and the continuation is indented two spaces. Some obvious errors may have been corrected.] The Three Taverns A Book of Poems By Edwin Arlington Robinson Author of "The Man Against the Sky", "Merlin, A Poem", etc. [American (Maine) Poet. 1869-1935.] To THOMAS SERGEANT PERRY and LILLA CABOT PERRY Contents The Valley of the Shadow The Wandering Jew Neighbors The Mill The Dark Hills The Three Taverns Demos I Demos II The Flying Dutchman Tact On the Way John Brown The False Gods Archibald's Example London Bridge Tasker Norcross A Song at Shannon's Souvenir Discovery Firelight The New Tenants Inferential The Rat Rahel to Varnhagen Nimmo Peace on Earth Late Summer An Evangelist's Wife The Old King's New Jester Lazarus Several poems included in this book appeared originally in American periodicals, as follows: The Three Taverns, London Bridge, A Song at Shannon's, The New Tenants, Discovery, John Brown; Archibald's Example, The Valley of the Shadow; Nimmo; The Wandering Jew, Souvenir; Neighbors, Tact; Demos; The Mill, An Evangelist's Wife; Firelight; Late Summer; Inferential; The Flying Dutchman; On the Way, The False Gods; Peace on Earth; The Old King's New Jester. ------------------- The Three Taverns ------------------- The Valley of the Shadow There were faces to remember in the Valley of the Shadow, There were faces unregarded, there were faces to forget; There were fires of grief and fear that are a few forgotten ashes, There were sparks of recognition that are not forgotten yet. For at first, with an amazed and overwhelming indignation At a measureless malfeasance that obscurely willed it thus, They were lost and unacquainted -- till they found themselves in others, Who had groped as they were groping where dim ways were perilous. There were lives that were as dark as are the fears and intuitions Of a child who knows himself and is alone with what he knows; There were pensioners of dreams and there were debtors of illusions, All to fail before the triumph of a weed that only grows. There were thirsting heirs of golden sieves that held not wine or water, And had no names in traffic or more value there than toys: There were blighted sons of wonder in the Valley of the Shadow, Where they suffered and still wondered why their wonder made no noise. There were slaves who dragged the shackles of a precedent unbroken, Demonstrating the fulfilment of unalterable schemes, Which had been, before the cradle, Time's inexorable tenants Of what were now the dusty ruins of their father's dreams. There were these, and there were many who had stumbled up to manhood, Where they saw too late the road they should have taken long ago: There were thwarted clerks and fiddlers in the Valley of the Shadow, The commemorative wreckage of what others did not know. And there were daughters older than the mothers who had borne them, Being older in their wisdom, which is older than the earth; And they were going forward only farther into darkness, Unrelieved as were the blasting obligations of their birth; And among them, giving always what was not for their possession, There were maidens, very quiet, with no quiet in their eyes: There were daughters of the silence in the Valley of the Shadow, Each an isolated item in the family sacrifice. There were creepers among catacombs where dull regrets were torches, Giving light enough to show them what was there upon the shelves -- Where there was more for them to see than pleasure would remember Of something that had been alive and once had been themselves. There were some who stirred the ruins with a solid imprecation, While as many fled repentance for the promise of despair: There were drinkers of wrong waters in the Valley of the Shadow, And all the sparkling ways were dust that once had led them there. There were some who knew the steps of Age incredibly beside them, And his fingers upon shoulders that had never felt the wheel; And their last of empty trophies was a gilded cup of nothing, Which a contemplating vagabond would not have come to steal. Long and often had they figured for a larger valuation, But the size of their addition was the balance of a doubt: There were gentlemen of leisure in the Valley of the Shadow, Not allured by retrospection, disenchanted, and played out. And among the dark endurances of unavowed reprisals There were silent eyes of envy that saw little but saw well; And over beauty's aftermath of hazardous ambitions There were tears for what had vanished as they vanished where they fell. Not assured of what was theirs, and always hungry for the nameless, There were some whose only passion was for Time who made them cold: There were numerous fair women in the Valley of the Shadow, Dreaming rather less of heaven than of hell when they were old. Now and then, as if to scorn the common touch of common sorrow, There were some who gave a few the distant pity of a smile; And another cloaked a soul as with an ash of human embers, Having covered thus a treasure that would last him for a while. There were many by the presence of the many disaffected, Whose exemption was included in the weight that others bore: There were seekers after darkness in the Valley of the Shadow, And they alone were there to find what they were looking for. So they were, and so they are; and as they came are coming others, And among them are the fearless and the meek and the unborn; And a question that has held us heretofore without an answer May abide without an answer until all have ceased to mourn. For the children of the dark are more to name than are the wretched, Or the broken, or the weary, or the baffled, or the shamed: There are builders of new mansions in the Valley of the Shadow, And among them are the dying and the blinded and the maimed. The Wandering Jew I saw by looking in his eyes That they remembered everything; And this was how I came to know That he was here, still wandering. For though the figure and the scene Were never to be reconciled, I knew the man as I had known His image when I was a child. With evidence at every turn, I should have held it safe to guess That all the newness of New York Had nothing new in loneliness; Yet here was one who might be Noah, Or Nathan, or Abimelech, Or Lamech, out of ages lost, -- Or, more than all, Melchizedek. Assured that he was none of these, I gave them back their names again, To scan once more those endless eyes Where all my questions ended then. I found in them what they revealed That I shall not live to forget, And wondered if they found in mine Compassion that I might regret. Pity, I learned, was not the least Of time's offending benefits That had now for so long impugned The conservation of his wits: Rather it was that I should yield, Alone, the fealty that presents The tribute of a tempered ear To an untempered eloquence. Before I pondered long enough On whence he came and who he was, I trembled at his ringing wealth Of manifold anathemas; I wondered, while he seared the world, What new defection ailed the race, And if it mattered how remote Our fathers were from such a place. Before there was an hour for me To contemplate with less concern The crumbling realm awaiting us Than his that was beyond return, A dawning on the dust of years Had shaped with an elusive light Mirages of remembered scenes That were no longer for the sight. For now the gloom that hid the man Became a daylight on his wrath, And one wherein my fancy viewed New lions ramping in his path. The old were dead and had no fangs, Wherefore he loved them -- seeing not They were the same that in their time Had eaten everything they caught. The world around him was a gift Of anguish to his eyes and ears, And one that he had long reviled As fit for devils, not for seers. Where, then, was there a place for him That on this other side of death Saw nothing good, as he had seen No good come out of Nazareth? Yet here there was a reticence, And I believe his only one, That hushed him as if he beheld A Presence that would not be gone. In such a silence he confessed How much there was to be denied; And he would look at me and live, As others might have looked and died. As if at last he knew again That he had always known, his eyes Were like to those of one who gazed On those of One who never dies. For such a moment he revealed What life has in it to be lost; And I could ask if what I saw, Before me there, was man or ghost. He may have died so many times That all there was of him to see Was pride, that kept itself alive As too rebellious to be free; He may have told, when more than once Humility seemed imminent, How many a lonely time in vain The Second Coming came and went. Whether he still defies or not The failure of an angry task That relegates him out of time To chaos, I can only ask. But as I knew him, so he was; And somewhere among men to-day Those old, unyielding eyes may flash, And flinch -- and look the other way. Neighbors As often as we thought of her, We thought of a gray life That made a quaint economist Of a wolf-haunted wife; We made the best of all she bore That was not ours to bear, And honored her for wearing things That were not things to wear. There was a distance in her look That made us look again; And if she smiled, we might believe That we had looked in vain. Rarely she came inside our doors, And had not long to stay; And when she left, it seemed somehow That she was far away. At last, when we had all forgot That all is here to change, A shadow on the commonplace Was for a moment strange. Yet there was nothing for surprise, Nor much that need be told: Love, with his gift of pain, had given More than one heart could hold. The Mill The miller's wife had waited long, The tea was cold, the fire was dead; And there might yet be nothing wrong In how he went and what he said: "There are no millers any more," Was all that she had heard him say; And he had lingered at the door So long that it seemed yesterday. Sick with a fear that had no form She knew that she was there at last; And in the mill there was a warm And mealy fragrance of the past. What else there was would only seem To say again what he had meant; And what was hanging from a beam Would not have heeded where she went. And if she thought it followed her, She may have reasoned in the dark That one way of the few there were Would hide her and would leave no mark: Black water, smooth above the weir Like starry velvet in the night, Though ruffled once, would soon appear The same as ever to the sight. The Dark Hills Dark hills at evening in the west, Where sunset hovers like a sound Of golden horns that sang to rest Old bones of warriors under ground, Far now from all the bannered ways Where flash the legions of the sun, You fade -- as if the last of days Were fading, and all wars were done. The Three Taverns When the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii Forum, and The Three Taverns. (Acts 28:15) Herodion, Apelles, Amplias, And Andronicus? Is it you I see -- At last? And is it you now that are gazing As if in doubt of me? Was I not saying That I should come to Rome? I did say that; And I said furthermore that I should go On westward, where the gateway of the world Lets in the central sea. I did say that, But I say only, now, that I am Paul -- A prisoner of the Law, and of the Lord A voice made free. If there be time enough To live, I may have more to tell you then Of western matters. I go now to Rome, Where Caesar waits for me, and I shall wait, And Caesar knows how long. In Caesarea There was a legend of Agrippa saying In a light way to Festus, having heard My deposition, that I might be free, Had I stayed free of Caesar; but the word Of God would have it as you see it is -- And here I am. The cup that I shall drink Is mine to drink -- the moment or the place Not mine to say. If it be now in Rome, Be it now in Rome; and if your faith exceed The shadow cast of hope, say not of me Too surely or too soon that years and shipwreck, And all the many deserts I have crossed That are not named or regioned, have undone Beyond the brevities of our mortal healing The part of me that is the least of me. You see an older man than he who fell Prone to the earth when he was nigh Damascus, Where the great light came down; yet I am he That fell, and he that saw, and he that heard. And I am here, at last; and if at last I give myself to make another crumb For this pernicious feast of time and men -- Well, I have seen too much of time and men To fear the ravening or the wrath of either. Yes, it is Paul you see -- the Saul of Tarsus That was a fiery Jew, and had men slain For saying Something was beyond the Law, And in ourselves. I fed my suffering soul Upon the Law till I went famishing, Not knowing that I starved. How should I know, More then than any, that the food I had -- What else it may have been -- was not for me? My fathers and their fathers and their fathers Had found it good, and said there was no other, And I was of the line. When Stephen fell, Among the stones that crushed his life away, There was no place alive that I could see For such a man. Why should a man be given To live beyond the Law? So I said then, As men say now to me. How then do I Persist in living? Is that what you ask? If so, let my appearance be for you No living answer; for Time writes of death On men before they die, and what you see Is not the man. The man that you see not -- The man within the man -- is most alive; Though hatred would have ended, long ago, The bane of his activities. I have lived, Because the faith within me that is life Endures to live, and shall, till soon or late, Death, like a friend unseen, shall say to me My toil is over and my work begun. How often, and how many a time again, Have I said I should be with you in Rome! He who is always coming never comes, Or comes too late, you may have told yourselves; And I may tell you now that after me, Whether I stay for little or for long, The wolves are coming. Have an eye for them, And a more careful ear for their confusion Than you need have much longer for the sound Of what I tell you -- should I live to say More than I say to Caesar. What I know Is down for you to read in what is written; And if I cloud a little with my own Mortality the gleam that is immortal, I do it only because I am I -- Being on earth and of it, in so far As time flays yet the remnant. This you know; And if I sting men, as I do sometimes, With a sharp word that hurts, it is because Man's habit is to feel before he sees; And I am of a race that feels. Moreover, The world is here for what is not yet here For more than are a few; and even in Rome, Where men are so enamored of the Cross That fame has echoed, and increasingly, The music of your love and of your faith To foreign ears that are as far away As Antioch and Haran, yet I wonder How much of love you know, and if your faith Be the shut fruit of words. If so, remember Words are but shells unfilled. Jews have at least A Law to make them sorry they were born If they go long without it; and these Gentiles, For the first time in shrieking history, Have love and law together, if so they will, For their defense and their immunity In these last days. Rome, if I know the name, Will have anon a crown of thorns and fire Made ready for the wreathing of new masters, Of whom we are appointed, you and I, -- And you are still to be when I am gone, Should I go presently. Let the word fall, Meanwhile, upon the dragon-ridden field Of circumstance, either to live or die; Concerning which there is a parable, Made easy for the comfort and attention Of those who preach, fearing they preach in vain. You are to plant, and then to plant again Where you have gathered, gathering as you go; For you are in the fields that are eternal, And you have not the burden of the Lord Upon your mortal shoulders. What you have Is a light yoke, made lighter by the wearing, Till it shall have the wonder and the weight Of a clear jewel, shining with a light Wherein the sun and all the fiery stars May soon be fading. When Gamaliel said That if they be of men these things are nothing, But if they be of God they are for none To overthrow, he spoke as a good Jew, And one who stayed a Jew; and he said all. And you know, by the temper of your faith, How far the fire is in you that I felt Before I knew Damascus. A word here, Or there, or not there, or not anywhere, Is not the Word that lives and is the life; And you, therefore, need weary not yourselves With jealous aches of others. If the world Were not a world of aches and innovations, Attainment would have no more joy of it. There will be creeds and schisms, creeds in creeds, And schisms in schisms; myriads will be done To death because a farthing has two sides, And is at last a farthing. Telling you this, I, who bid men to live, appeal to Caesar. Once I had said the ways of God were dark, Meaning by that the dark ways of the Law. Such is the glory of our tribulations; For the Law kills the flesh that kills the Law, And we are then alive. We have eyes then; And we have then the Cross between two worlds -- To guide us, or to blind us for a time, Till we have eyes indeed. The fire that smites A few on highways, changing all at once, Is not for all. The power that holds the world Away from God that holds himself away -- Farther away than all your works and words Are like to fly without the wings of faith -- Was not, nor ever shall be, a small hazard Enlivening the ways of easy leisure Or the cold road of knowledge. When our eyes Have wisdom, we see more than we remember; And the old world of our captivities May then become a smitten glimpse of ruin, Like one where vanished hewers have had their day Of wrath on Lebanon. Before we see, Meanwhile, we suffer; and I come to you, At last, through many storms and through much night. Yet whatsoever I have undergone, My keepers in this instance are not hard. But for the chance of an ingratitude, I might indeed be curious of their mercy, And fearful of their leisure while I wait, A few leagues out of Rome. Men go to Rome, Not always to return -- but not that now. Meanwhile, I seem to think you look at me With eyes that are at last more credulous Of my identity. You remark in me No sort of leaping giant, though some words Of mine to you from Corinth may have leapt A little through your eyes into your soul. I trust they were alive, and are alive Today; for there be none that shall indite So much of nothing as the man of words Who writes in the Lord's name for his name's sake And has not in his blood the fire of time To warm eternity. Let such a man -- If once the light is in him and endures -- Content himself to be the general man, Set free to sift the decencies and thereby To learn, except he be one set aside For sorrow, more of pleasure than of pain; Though if his light be not the light indeed, But a brief shine that never really was, And fails, leaving him worse than where he was, Then shall he be of all men destitute. And here were not an issue for much ink, Or much offending faction among scribes. The Kingdom is within us, we are told; And when I say to you that we possess it In such a measure as faith makes it ours, I say it with a sinner's privilege Of having seen and heard, and seen again, After a darkness; and if I affirm To the last hour that faith affords alone The Kingdom entrance and an entertainment, I do not see myself as one who says To man that he shall sit with folded hands Against the Coming. If I be anything, I move a driven agent among my kind, Establishing by the faith of Abraham, And by the grace of their necessities, The clamoring word that is the word of life Nearer than heretofore to the solution Of their tomb-serving doubts. If I have loosed A shaft of language that has flown sometimes A little higher than the hearts and heads Of nature's minions, it will yet be heard, Like a new song that waits for distant ears. I cannot be the man that I am not; And while I own that earth is my affliction, I am a man of earth, who says not all To all alike. That were impossible, Even as it were so that He should plant A larger garden first. But you today Are for the larger sowing; and your seed, A little mixed, will have, as He foresaw, The foreign harvest of a wider growth, And one without an end. Many there are, And are to be, that shall partake of it, Though none may share it with an understanding That is not his alone. We are all alone; And yet we are all parcelled of one order -- Jew, Gentile, or barbarian in the dark Of wildernesses that are not so much As names yet in a book. And there are many, Finding at last that words are not the Word, And finding only that, will flourish aloft, Like heads of captured Pharisees on pikes, Our contradictions and discrepancies; And there are many more will hang themselves Upon the letter, seeing not in the Word The friend of all who fail, and in their faith A sword of excellence to cut them down. As long as there are glasses that are dark -- And there are many -- we see darkly through them; All which have I conceded and set down In words that have no shadow. What is dark Is dark, and we may not say otherwise; Yet what may be as dark as a lost fire For one of us, may still be for another A coming gleam across the gulf of ages, And a way home from shipwreck to the shore; And so, through pangs and ills and desperations, There may be light for all. There shall be light. As much as that, you know. You cannot say This woman or that man will be the next On whom it falls; you are not here for that. Your ministration is to be for others The firing of a rush that may for them Be soon the fire itself. The few at first Are fighting for the multitude at last; Therefore remember what Gamaliel said Before you, when the sick were lying down In streets all night for Peter's passing shadow. Fight, and say what you feel; say more than words. Give men to know that even their days of earth To come are more than ages that are gone. Say what you feel, while you have time to say it. Eternity will answer for itself, Without your intercession; yet the way For many is a long one, and as dark, Meanwhile, as dreams of hell. See not your toil Too much, and if I be away from you, Think of me as a brother to yourselves, Of many blemishes. Beware of stoics, And give your left hand to grammarians; And when you seem, as many a time you may, To have no other friend than hope, remember That you are not the first, or yet the last. The best of life, until we see beyond The shadows of ourselves (and they are less Than even the blindest of indignant eyes Would have them) is in what we do not know. Make, then, for all your fears a place to sleep With all your faded sins; nor think yourselves Egregious and alone for your defects Of youth and yesterday. I was young once; And there's a question if you played the fool With a more fervid and inherent zeal Than I have in my story to remember, Or gave your necks to folly's conquering foot, Or flung yourselves with an unstudied aim, Less frequently than I. Never mind that. Man's little house of days will hold enough, Sometimes, to make him wish it were not his, But it will not hold all. Things that are dead Are best without it, and they own their death By virtue of their dying. Let them go, -- But think you not the world is ashes yet, And you have all the fire. The world is here Today, and it may not be gone tomorrow; For there are millions, and there may be more, To make in turn a various estimation Of its old ills and ashes, and the traps Of its apparent wrath. Many with ears That hear not yet, shall have ears given to them, And then they shall hear strangely. Many with eyes That are incredulous of the Mystery Shall yet be driven to feel, and then to read Where language has an end and is a veil, Not woven of our words. Many that hate Their kind are soon to know that without love Their faith is but the perjured name of nothing. I that have done some hating in my time See now no time for hate; I that have left, Fading behind me like familiar lights That are to shine no more for my returning, Home, friends, and honors, -- I that have lost all else For wisdom, and the wealth of it, say now To you that out of wisdom has come love, That measures and is of itself the measure Of works and hope and faith. Your longest hours Are not so long that you may torture them And harass not yourselves; and the last days Are on the way that you prepare for them, And was prepared for you, here in a world Where you have sinned and suffered, striven and seen. If you be not so hot for counting them Before they come that you consume yourselves, Peace may attend you all in these last days -- And me, as well as you. Yes, even in Rome. Well, I have talked and rested, though I fear My rest has not been yours; in which event, Forgive one who is only seven leagues From Caesar. When I told you I should come, I did not see myself the criminal You contemplate, for seeing beyond the Law That which the Law saw not. But this, indeed, Was good of you, and I shall not forget; No, I shall not forget you came so far To meet a man so dangerous. Well, farewell. They come to tell me I am going now -- With them. I hope that we shall meet again, But none may say what he shall find in Rome. Demos I All you that are enamored of my name And least intent on what most I require, Beware; for my design and your desire, Deplorably, are not as yet the same. Beware, I say, the failure and the shame Of losing that for which you now aspire So blindly, and of hazarding entire The gift that I was bringing when I came. Give as I will, I cannot give you sight Whereby to see that with you there are some To lead you, and be led. But they are dumb Before the wrangling and the shrill delight Of your deliverance that has not come, And shall not, if I fail you -- as I might. Demos II So little have you seen of what awaits Your fevered glimpse of a democracy Confused and foiled with an equality Not equal to the envy it creates, That you see not how near you are the gates Of an old king who listens fearfully To you that are outside and are to be The noisy lords of imminent estates. Rather be then your prayer that you shall have Your kingdom undishonored. Having all, See not the great among you for the small, But hear their silence; for the few shall save The many, or the many are to fall -- Still to be wrangling in a noisy grave. The Flying Dutchman Unyielding in the pride of his defiance, Afloat with none to serve or to command, Lord of himself at last, and all by Science, He seeks the Vanished Land. Alone, by the one light of his one thought, He steers to find the shore from which we came, -- Fearless of in what coil he may be caught On seas that have no name. Into the night he sails; and after night There is a dawning, though there be no sun; Wherefore, with nothing but himself in sight, Unsighted, he sails on. At last there is a lifting of the cloud Between the flood before him and the sky; And then -- though he may curse the Power aloud That has no power to die -- He steers himself away from what is haunted By the old ghost of what has been before, -- Abandoning, as always, and undaunted, One fog-walled island more. Tact Observant of the way she told So much of what was true, No vanity could long withhold Regard that was her due: She spared him the familiar guile, So easily achieved, That only made a man to smile And left him undeceived. Aware that all imagining Of more than what she meant Would urge an end of everything, He stayed; and when he went, They parted with a merry word That was to him as light As any that was ever heard Upon a starry night. She smiled a little, knowing well That he would not remark The ruins of a day that fell Around her in the dark: He saw no ruins anywhere, Nor fancied there were scars On anyone who lingered there, Alone below the stars. On the Way (Philadelphia, 1794) Note. -- The following imaginary dialogue between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, which is not based upon any specific incident in American history, may be supposed to have occurred a few months previous to Hamilton's retirement from Washington's Cabinet in 1795 and a few years before the political ingenuities of Burr -- who has been characterized, without much exaggeration, as the inventor of American politics -- began to be conspicuously formidable to the Federalists. These activities on the part of Burr resulted, as the reader will remember, in the Burr-Jefferson tie for the Presidency in 1800, and finally in the Burr-Hamilton duel at Weehawken in 1804. BURR Hamilton, if he rides you down, remember That I was here to speak, and so to save Your fabric from catastrophe. That's good; For I perceive that you observe him also. A President, a-riding of his horse, May dust a General and be forgiven; But why be dusted -- when we're all alike, All equal, and all happy. Here he comes -- And there he goes. And we, by your new patent, Would seem to be two kings here by the wayside, With our two hats off to his Excellency. Why not his Majesty, and done with it? Forgive me if I shook your meditation, But you that weld our credit should have eyes To see what's coming. Bury me first if -I- do. HAMILTON There's always in some pocket of your brain A care for me; wherefore my gratitude For your attention is commensurate With your concern. Yes, Burr, we are two kings; We are as royal as two ditch-diggers; But owe me not your sceptre. These are the days When first a few seem all; but if we live, We may again be seen to be the few That we have always been. These are the days When men forget the stars, and are forgotten. BURR But why forget them? They're the same that winked Upon the world when Alcibiades Cut off his dog's tail to induce distinction. There are dogs yet, and Alcibiades Is not forgotten. HAMILTON Yes, there are dogs enough, God knows; and I can hear them in my dreams. BURR Never a doubt. But what you hear the most Is your new music, something out of tune With your intention. How in the name of Cain, I seem to hear you ask, are men to dance, When all men are musicians. Tell me that, I hear you saying, and I'll tell you the name Of Samson's mother. But why shroud yourself Before the coffin comes? For all you know, The tree that is to fall for your last house Is now a sapling. You may have to wait So long as to be sorry; though I doubt it, For you are not at home in your new Eden Where chilly whispers of a likely frost Accumulate already in the air. I think a touch of ermine, Hamilton, Would be for you in your autumnal mood A pleasant sort of warmth along the shoulders. HAMILTON If so it is you think, you may as well Give over thinking. We are done with ermine. What I fear most is not the multitude, But those who are to loop it with a string That has one end in France and one end here. I'm not so fortified with observation That I could swear that more than half a score Among us who see lightning see that ruin Is not the work of thunder. Since the world Was ordered, there was never a long pause For caution between doing and undoing. BURR Go on, sir; my attention is a trap Set for the catching of all compliments To Monticello, and all else abroad That has a name or an identity. HAMILTON I leave to you the names -- there are too many; Yet one there is to sift and hold apart, As now I see. There comes at last a glimmer That is not always clouded, or too late. But I was near and young, and had the reins To play with while he manned a team so raw That only God knows where the end had been Of all that riding without Washington. There was a nation in the man who passed us, If there was not a world. I may have driven Since then some restive horses, and alone, And through a splashing of abundant mud; But he who made the dust that sets you on To coughing, made the road. Now it seems dry, And in a measure safe. BURR Here's a new tune From Hamilton. Has your caution all at once, And over night, grown till it wrecks the cradle? I have forgotten what my father said When I was born, but there's a rustling of it Among my memories, and it makes a noise About as loud as all that I have held And fondled heretofore of your same caution. But that's affairs, not feelings. If our friends Guessed half we say of them, our enemies Would itch in our friends' jackets. Howsoever, The world is of a sudden on its head, And all are spilled -- unless you cling alone With Washington. Ask Adams about that. HAMILTON We'll not ask Adams about anything. We fish for lizards when we choose to ask For what we know already is not coming, And we must eat the answer. Where's the use Of asking when this man says everything, With all his tongues of silence? BURR I dare say. I dare say, but I won't. One of those tongues I'll borrow for the nonce. He'll never miss it. We mean his Western Majesty, King George. HAMILTON I mean the man who rode by on his horse. I'll beg of you the meed of your indulgence If I should say this planet may have done A deal of weary whirling when at last, If ever, Time shall aggregate again A majesty like his that has no name. BURR Then you concede his Majesty? That's good, And what of yours? Here are two majesties. Favor the Left a little, Hamilton, Or you'll be floundering in the ditch that waits For riders who forget where they are riding. If we and France, as you anticipate, Must eat each other, what Caesar, if not yourself, Do you see for the master of the feast? There may be a place waiting on your head For laurel thick as Nero's. You don't know. I have not crossed your glory, though I might If I saw thrones at auction. HAMILTON Yes, you might. If war is on the way, I shall be -- here; And I've no vision of your distant heels. BURR I see that I shall take an inference To bed with me to-night to keep me warm. I thank you, Hamilton, and I approve Your fealty to the aggregated greatness Of him you lean on while he leans on you. HAMILTON This easy phrasing is a game of yours That you may win to lose. I beg your pardon, But you that have the sight will not employ The will to see with it. If you did so, There might be fewer ditches dug for others In your perspective; and there might be fewer Contemporary motes of prejudice Between you and the man who made the dust. Call him a genius or a gentleman, A prophet or a builder, or what not, But hold your disposition off the balance, And weigh him in the light. Once (I believe I tell you nothing new to your surmise, Or to the tongues of towns and villages) I nourished with an adolescent fancy -- Surely forgivable to you, my friend -- An innocent and amiable conviction That I was, by the grace of honest fortune, A savior at his elbow through the war, Where I might have observed, more than I did, Patience and wholesome passion. I was there, And for such honor I gave nothing worse Than some advice at which he may have smiled. I must have given a modicum besides, Or the rough interval between those days And these would never have made for me my friends, Or enemies. I should be something somewhere -- I say not what -- but I should not be here If he had not been there. Possibly, too, You might not -- or that Quaker with his cane. BURR Possibly, too, I should. When the Almighty Rides a white horse, I fancy we shall know it. HAMILTON It was a man, Burr, that was in my mind; No god, or ghost, or demon -- only a man: A man whose occupation is the need Of those who would not feel it if it bit them; And one who shapes an age while he endures The pin pricks of inferiorities; A cautious man, because he is but one; A lonely man, because he is a thousand. No marvel you are slow to find in him The genius that is one spark or is nothing: His genius is a flame that he must hold So far above the common heads of men That they may view him only through the mist Of their defect, and wonder what he is. It seems to me the mystery that is in him That makes him only more to me a man Than any other I have ever known. BURR I grant you that his worship is a man. I'm not so much at home with mysteries, May be, as you -- so leave him with his fire: God knows that I shall never put it out. He has not made a cripple of himself In his pursuit of me, though I have heard His condescension honors me with parts. Parts make a whole, if we've enough of them; And once I figured a sufficiency To be at least an atom in the annals Of your republic. But I must have erred. HAMILTON You smile as if your spirit lived at ease With error. I should not have named it so, Failing assent from you; nor, if I did, Should I be so complacent in my skill To comb the tangled language of the people As to be sure of anything in these days. Put that much in account with modesty. BURR What in the name of Ahab, Hamilton, Have you, in the last region of your dreaming, To do with "people"? You may be the devil In your dead-reckoning of what reefs and shoals Are waiting on the progress of our ship Unless you steer it, but you'll find it irksome Alone there in the stern; and some warm day There'll be an inland music in the rigging, And afterwards on deck. I'm not affined Or favored overmuch at Monticello, But there's a mighty swarming of new bees About the premises, and all have wings. If you hear something buzzing before long, Be thoughtful how you strike, remembering also There was a fellow Naboth had a vineyard, And Ahab cut his hair off and went softly. HAMILTON I don't remember that he cut his hair off. BURR Somehow I rather fancy that he did. If so, it's in the Book; and if not so, He did the rest, and did it handsomely. HAMILTON Commend yourself to Ahab and his ways If they inveigle you to emulation; But where, if I may ask it, are you tending With your invidious wielding of the Scriptures? You call to mind an eminent archangel Who fell to make him famous. Would you fall So far as he, to be so far remembered? BURR Before I fall or rise, or am an angel, I shall acquaint myself a little further With our new land's new language, which is not -- Peace to your dreams -- an idiom to your liking. I'm wondering if a man may always know How old a man may be at thirty-seven; I wonder likewise if a prettier time Could be decreed for a good man to vanish Than about now for you, before you fade, And even your friends are seeing that you have had Your cup too full for longer mortal triumph. Well, you have had enough, and had it young; And the old wine is nearer to the lees Than you are to the work that you are doing. HAMILTON When does this philological excursion Into new lands and languages begin? BURR Anon -- that is, already. Only Fortune Gave me this afternoon the benefaction Of your blue back, which I for love pursued, And in pursuing may have saved your life -- Also the world a pounding piece of news: Hamilton bites the dust of Washington, Or rather of his horse. For you alone, Or for your fame, I'd wish it might have been so. HAMILTON Not every man among us has a friend So jealous for the other's fame. How long Are you to diagnose the doubtful case Of Demos -- and what for? Have you a sword For some new Damocles? If it's for me, I have lost all official appetite, And shall have faded, after January, Into the law. I'm going to New York. BURR No matter where you are, one of these days I shall come back to you and tell you something. This Demos, I have heard, has in his wrist A pulse that no two doctors have as yet Counted and found the same, and in his mouth A tongue that has the like alacrity For saying or not for saying what most it is That pullulates in his ignoble mind. One of these days I shall appear again, To tell you more of him and his opinions; I shall not be so long out of your sight, Or take myself so far, that I may not, Like Alcibiades, come back again. He went away to Phrygia, and fared ill. HAMILTON There's an example in Themistocles: He went away to Persia, and fared well. BURR So? Must I go so far? And if so, why so? I had not planned it so. Is this the road I take? If so, farewell. HAMILTON Quite so. Farewell. John Brown Though for your sake I would not have you now So near to me tonight as now you are, God knows how much a stranger to my heart Was any cold word that I may have written; And you, poor woman that I made my wife, You have had more of loneliness, I fear, Than I -- though I have been the most alone, Even when the most attended. So it was God set the mark of his inscrutable Necessity on one that was to grope, And serve, and suffer, and withal be glad For what was his, and is, and is to be, When his old bones, that are a burden now, Are saying what the man who carried them Had not the power to say. Bones in a grave, Cover them as they will with choking earth, May shout the truth to men who put them there, More than all orators. And so, my dear, Since you have cheated wisdom for the sake Of sorrow, let your sorrow be for you, This last of nights before the last of days, The lying ghost of what there is of me That is the most alive. There is no death For me in what they do. Their death it is They should heed most when the sun comes again To make them solemn. There are some I know Whose eyes will hardly see their occupation, For tears in them -- and all for one old man; For some of them will pity this old man, Who took upon himself the work of God Because he pitied millions. That will be For them, I fancy, their compassionate Best way of saying what is best in them To say; for they can say no more than that, And they can do no more than what the dawn Of one more day shall give them light enough To do. But there are many days to be, And there are many men to give their blood, As I gave mine for them. May they come soon! May they come soon, I say. And when they come, May all that I have said unheard be heard, Proving at last, or maybe not -- no matter -- What sort of madness was the part of me That made me strike, whether I found the mark Or missed it. Meanwhile, I've a strange content, A patience, and a vast indifference To what men say of me and what men fear To say. There was a work to be begun, And when the Voice, that I have heard so long, Announced as in a thousand silences An end of preparation, I began The coming work of death which is to be, That life may be. There is no other way Than the old way of war for a new land That will not know itself and is tonight A stranger to itself, and to the world A more prodigious upstart among states Than I was among men, and so shall be Till they are told and told, and told again; For men are children, waiting to be told, And most of them are children all their lives. The good God in his wisdom had them so, That now and then a madman or a seer May shake them out of their complacency And shame them into deeds. The major file See only what their fathers may have seen, Or may have said they saw when they saw nothing. I do not say it matters what they saw. Now and again to some lone soul or other God speaks, and there is hanging to be done, -- As once there was a burning of our bodies Alive, albeit our souls were sorry fuel. But now the fires are few, and we are poised Accordingly, for the state's benefit, A few still minutes between heaven and earth. The purpose is, when they have seen enough Of what it is that they are not to see, To pluck me as an unripe fruit of treason, And then to fling me back to the same earth Of which they are, as I suppose, the flower -- Not given to know the riper fruit that waits For a more comprehensive harvesting. Yes, may they come, and soon. Again I say, May they come soon! -- before too many of them Shall be the bloody cost of our defection. When hell waits on the dawn of a new state, Better it were that hell should not wait long, -- Or so it is I see it who should see As far or farther into time tonight Than they who talk and tremble for me now, Or wish me to those everlasting fires That are for me no fear. Too many fires Have sought me out and seared me to the bone -- Thereby, for all I know, to temper me For what was mine to do. If I did ill What I did well, let men say I was mad; Or let my name for ever be a question That will not sleep in history. What men say I was will cool no cannon, dull no sword, Invalidate no truth. Meanwhile, I was; And the long train is lighted that shall burn, Though floods of wrath may drench it, and hot feet May stamp it for a slight time into smoke That shall blaze up again with growing speed, Until at last a fiery crash will come To cleanse and shake a wounded hemisphere, And heal it of a long malignity That angry time discredits and disowns. Tonight there are men saying many things; And some who see life in the last of me Will answer first the coming call to death; For death is what is coming, and then life. I do not say again for the dull sake Of speech what you have heard me say before, But rather for the sake of all I am, And all God made of me. A man to die As I do must have done some other work Than man's alone. I was not after glory, But there was glory with me, like a friend, Throughout those crippling years when friends were few, And fearful to be known by their own names When mine was vilified for their approval. Yet friends they are, and they did what was given Their will to do; they could have done no more. I was the one man mad enough, it seems, To do my work; and now my work is over. And you, my dear, are not to mourn for me, Or for your sons, more than a soul should mourn In Paradise, done with evil and with earth. There is not much of earth in what remains For you; and what there may be left of it For your endurance you shall have at last In peace, without the twinge of any fear For my condition; for I shall be done With plans and actions that have heretofore Made your days long and your nights ominous With darkness and the many distances That were between us. When the silence comes, I shall in faith be nearer to you then Than I am now in fact. What you see now Is only the outside of an old man, Older than years have made him. Let him die, And let him be a thing for little grief. There was a time for service, and he served; And there is no more time for anything But a short gratefulness to those who gave Their scared allegiance to an enterprise That has the name of treason -- which will serve As well as any other for the present. There are some deeds of men that have no names, And mine may like as not be one of them. I am not looking far for names tonight. The King of Glory was without a name Until men gave him one; yet there He was, Before we found Him and affronted Him With numerous ingenuities of evil, Of which one, with His aid, is to be swept And washed out of the world with fire and blood. Once I believed it might have come to pass With a small cost of blood; but I was dreaming -- Dreaming that I believed. The Voice I heard When I left you behind me in the north, -- To wait there and to wonder and grow old Of loneliness, -- told only what was best, And with a saving vagueness, I should know Till I knew more. And had I known even then -- After grim years of search and suffering, So many of them to end as they began -- After my sickening doubts and estimations Of plans abandoned and of new plans vain -- After a weary delving everywhere For men with every virtue but the Vision -- Could I have known, I say, before I left you That summer morning, all there was to know -- Even unto the last consuming word That would have blasted every mortal answer As lightning would annihilate a leaf, I might have trembled on that summer morning; I might have wavered; and I might have failed. And there are many among men today To say of me that I had best have wavered. So has it been, so shall it always be, For those of us who give ourselves to die Before we are so parcelled and approved As to be slaughtered by authority. We do not make so much of what they say As they of what our folly says of us; They give us hardly time enough for that, And thereby we gain much by losing little. Few are alive to-day with less to lose Than I who tell you this, or more to gain; And whether I speak as one to be destroyed For no good end outside his own destruction, Time shall have more to say than men shall hear Between now and the coming of that harvest Which is to come. Before it comes, I go -- By the short road that mystery makes long For man's endurance of accomplishment. I shall have more to say when I am dead. The False Gods "We are false and evanescent, and aware of our deceit, From the straw that is our vitals to the clay that is our feet. You may serve us if you must, and you shall have your wage of ashes, -- Though arrears due thereafter may be hard for you to meet. "You may swear that we are solid, you may say that we are strong, But we know that we are neither and we say that you are wrong; You may find an easy worship in acclaiming our indulgence, But your large admiration of us now is not for long. "If your doom is to adore us with a doubt that's never still, And you pray to see our faces -- pray in earnest, and you will. You may gaze at us and live, and live assured of our confusion: For the False Gods are mortal, and are made for you to kill. "And you may as well observe, while apprehensively at ease With an Art that's inorganic and is anything you please, That anon your newest ruin may lie crumbling unregarded, Like an old shrine forgotten in a forest of new trees. "Howsoever like no other be the mode you may employ, There's an order in the ages for the ages to enjoy; Though the temples you are shaping and the passions you are singing Are a long way from Athens and a longer way from Troy. "When we promise more than ever of what never shall arrive, And you seem a little more than ordinarily alive, Make a note that you are sure you understand our obligations -- For there's grief always auditing where two and two are five. "There was this for us to say and there was this for you to know, Though it humbles and it hurts us when we have to tell you so. If you doubt the only truth in all our perjured composition, May the True Gods attend you and forget us when we go." Archibald's Example Old Archibald, in his eternal chair, Where trespassers, whatever their degree, Were soon frowned out again, was looking off Across the clover when he said to me: "My green hill yonder, where the sun goes down Without a scratch, was once inhabited By trees that injured him -- an evil trash That made a cage, and held him while he bled. "Gone fifty years, I see them as they were Before they fell. They were a crooked lot To spoil my sunset, and I saw no time In fifty years for crooked things to rot. "Trees, yes; but not a service or a joy To God or man, for they were thieves of light. So down they came. Nature and I looked on, And we were glad when they were out of sight. "Trees are like men, sometimes; and that being so, So much for that." He twinkled in his chair, And looked across the clover to the place That he remembered when the trees were there. London Bridge "Do I hear them? Yes, I hear the children singing -- and what of it? Have you come with eyes afire to find me now and ask me that? If I were not their father and if you were not their mother, We might believe they made a noise. . . . What are you -- driving at!" "Well, be glad that you can hear them, and be glad they are so near us, -- For I have heard the stars of heaven, and they were nearer still. All within an hour it is that I have heard them calling, And though I pray for them to cease, I know they never will; For their music on my heart, though you may freeze it, will fall always, Like summer snow that never melts upon a mountain-top. Do you hear them? Do you hear them overhead -- the children -- singing? Do you hear the children singing? . . . God, will you make them stop!" "And what now in his holy name have you to do with mountains? We're back to town again, my dear, and we've a dance tonight. Frozen hearts and falling music? Snow and stars, and -- what the devil! Say it over to me slowly, and be sure you have it right." "God knows if I be right or wrong in saying what I tell you, Or if I know the meaning any more of what I say. All I know is, it will kill me if I try to keep it hidden -- Well, I met him. . . . Yes, I met him, and I talked with him -- today." "You met him? Did you meet the ghost of someone you had poisoned, Long ago, before I knew you for the woman that you are? Take a chair; and don't begin your stories always in the middle. Was he man, or was he demon? Anyhow, you've gone too far To go back, and I'm your servant. I'm the lord, but you're the master. Now go on with what you know, for I'm excited." "Do you mean -- Do you mean to make me try to think that you know less than I do?" "I know that you foreshadow the beginning of a scene. Pray be careful, and as accurate as if the doors of heaven Were to swing or to stay bolted from now on for evermore." "Do you conceive, with all your smooth contempt of every feeling, Of hiding what you know and what you must have known before? Is it worth a woman's torture to stand here and have you smiling, With only your poor fetish of possession on your side? No thing but one is wholly sure, and that's not one to scare me; When I meet it I may say to God at last that I have tried. And yet, for all I know, or all I dare believe, my trials Henceforward will be more for you to bear than are your own; And you must give me keys of yours to rooms I have not entered. Do you see me on your threshold all my life, and there alone? Will you tell me where you see me in your fancy -- when it leads you Far enough beyond the moment for a glance at the abyss?" "Will you tell me what intrinsic and amazing sort of nonsense You are crowding on the patience of the man who gives you -- this? Look around you and be sorry you're not living in an attic, With a civet and a fish-net, and with you to pay the rent. I say words that you can spell without the use of all your letters; And I grant, if you insist, that I've a guess at what you meant." "Have I told you, then, for nothing, that I met him? Are you trying To be merry while you try to make me hate you?" "Think again, My dear, before you tell me, in a language unbecoming To a lady, what you plan to tell me next. If I complain, If I seem an atom peevish at the preference you mention -- Or imply, to be precise -- you may believe, or you may not, That I'm a trifle more aware of what he wants than you are. But I shouldn't throw that at you. Make believe that I forgot. Make believe that he's a genius, if you like, -- but in the meantime Don't go back to rocking-horses. There, there, there, now." "Make believe! When you see me standing helpless on a plank above a whirlpool, Do I drown, or do I hear you when you say it? Make believe? How much more am I to say or do for you before I tell you That I met him! What's to follow now may be for you to choose. Do you hear me? Won't you listen? It's an easy thing to listen. . . ." "And it's easy to be crazy when there's everything to lose." "If at last you have a notion that I mean what I am saying, Do I seem to tell you nothing when I tell you I shall try? If you save me, and I lose him -- I don't know -- it won't much matter. I dare say that I've lied enough, but now I do not lie." "Do you fancy me the one man who has waited and said nothing While a wife has dragged an old infatuation from a tomb? Give the thing a little air and it will vanish into ashes. There you are -- piff! presto!" "When I came into this room, It seemed as if I saw the place, and you there at your table, As you are now at this moment, for the last time in my life; And I told myself before I came to find you, `I shall tell him, If I can, what I have learned of him since I became his wife.' And if you say, as I've no doubt you will before I finish, That you have tried unceasingly, with all your might and main, To teach me, knowing more than I of what it was I needed, Don't think, with all you may have thought, that you have tried in vain; For you have taught me more than hides in all the shelves of knowledge Of how little you found that's in me and was in me all along. I believed, if I intruded nothing on you that I cared for, I'd be half as much as horses, -- and it seems that I was wrong; I believed there was enough of earth in me, with all my nonsense Over things that made you sleepy, to keep something still awake; But you taught me soon to read my book, and God knows I have read it -- Ages longer than an angel would have read it for your sake. I have said that you must open other doors than I have entered, But I wondered while I said it if I might not be obscure. Is there anything in all your pedigrees and inventories With a value more elusive than a dollar's? Are you sure That if I starve another year for you I shall be stronger To endure another like it -- and another -- till I'm dead?" "Has your tame cat sold a picture? -- or more likely had a windfall? Or for God's sake, what's broke loose? Have you a bee-hive in your head? A little more of this from you will not be easy hearing. Do you know that? Understand it, if you do; for if you won't. . . . What the devil are you saying! Make believe you never said it, And I'll say I never heard it. . . . Oh, you. . . . If you. . . ." "If I don't?" "There are men who say there's reason hidden somewhere in a woman, But I doubt if God himself remembers where the key was hung." "He may not; for they say that even God himself is growing. I wonder if he makes believe that he is growing young; I wonder if he makes believe that women who are giving All they have in holy loathing to a stranger all their lives Are the wise ones who build houses in the Bible. . . ." "Stop -- you devil!" ". . . Or that souls are any whiter when their bodies are called wives. If a dollar's worth of gold will hoop the walls of hell together, Why need heaven be such a ruin of a place that never was? And if at last I lied my starving soul away to nothing, Are you sure you might not miss it? Have you come to such a pass That you would have me longer in your arms if you discovered That I made you into someone else. . . . Oh! . . . Well, there are worse ways. But why aim it at my feet -- unless you fear you may be sorry. . . . There are many days ahead of you." "I do not see those days." "I can see them. Granted even I am wrong, there are the children. And are they to praise their father for his insight if we die? Do you hear them? Do you hear them overhead -- the children -- singing? Do you hear them? Do you hear the children?" "Damn the children!" "Why? What have THEY done? . . . Well, then, -- do it. . . . Do it now, and have it over." "Oh, you devil! . . . Oh, you. . . ." "No, I'm not a devil, I'm a prophet -- One who sees the end already of so much that one end more Would have now the small importance of one other small illusion, Which in turn would have a welcome where the rest have gone before. But if I were you, my fancy would look on a little farther For the glimpse of a release that may be somewhere still in sight. Furthermore, you must remember those two hundred invitations For the dancing after dinner. We shall have to shine tonight. We shall dance, and be as happy as a pair of merry spectres, On the grave of all the lies that we shall never have to tell; We shall dance among the ruins of the tomb of our endurance, And I have not a doubt that we shall do it very well. There! -- I'm glad you've put it back; for I don't like it. Shut the drawer now. No -- no -- don't cancel anything. I'll dance until I drop. I can't walk yet, but I'm going to. . . . Go away somewhere, and leave me. . . . Oh, you children! Oh, you children! . . . God, will they never stop!" Tasker Norcross "Whether all towns and all who live in them -- So long as they be somewhere in this world That we in our complacency call ours -- Are more or less the same, I leave to you. I should say less. Whether or not, meanwhile, We've all two legs -- and as for that, we haven't -- There were three kinds of men where I was born: The good, the not so good, and Tasker Norcross. Now there are two kinds." "Meaning, as I divine, Your friend is dead," I ventured. Ferguson, Who talked himself at last out of the world He censured, and is therefore silent now, Agreed indifferently: "My friends are dead -- Or most of them." "Remember one that isn't," I said, protesting. "Honor him for his ears; Treasure him also for his understanding." Ferguson sighed, and then talked on again: "You have an overgrown alacrity For saying nothing much and hearing less; And I've a thankless wonder, at the start, How much it is to you that I shall tell What I have now to say of Tasker Norcross, And how much to the air that is around you. But given a patience that is not averse To the slow tragedies of haunted men -- Horrors, in fact, if you've a skilful eye To know them at their firesides, or out walking, --" "Horrors," I said, "are my necessity; And I would have them, for their best effect, Always out walking." Ferguson frowned at me: "The wisest of us are not those who laugh Before they know. Most of us never know -- Or the long toil of our mortality Would not be done. Most of us never know -- And there you have a reason to believe In God, if you may have no other. Norcross, Or so I gather of his infirmity, Was given to know more than he should have known, And only God knows why. See for yourself An old house full of ghosts of ancestors, Who did their best, or worst, and having done it, Died honorably; and each with a distinction That hardly would have been for him that had it, Had honor failed him wholly as a friend. Honor that is a friend begets a friend. Whether or not we love him, still we have him; And we must live somehow by what we have, Or then we die. If you say chemistry, Then you must have your molecules in motion, And in their right abundance. Failing either, You have not long to dance. Failing a friend, A genius, or a madness, or a faith Larger than desperation, you are here For as much longer than you like as may be. Imagining now, by way of an example, Myself a more or less remembered phantom -- Again, I should say less -- how many times A day should I come back to you? No answer. Forgive me when I seem a little careless, But we must have examples, or be lucid Without them; and I question your adherence To such an undramatic narrative As this of mine, without the personal hook." "A time is given in Ecclesiastes For divers works," I told him. "Is there one For saying nothing in return for nothing? If not, there should be." I could feel his eyes, And they were like two cold inquiring points Of a sharp metal. When I looked again, To see them shine, the cold that I had felt Was gone to make way for a smouldering Of lonely fire that I, as I knew then, Could never quench with kindness or with lies. I should have done whatever there was to do For Ferguson, yet I could not have mourned In honesty for once around the clock The loss of him, for my sake or for his, Try as I might; nor would his ghost approve, Had I the power and the unthinking will To make him tread again without an aim The road that was behind him -- and without The faith, or friend, or genius, or the madness That he contended was imperative. After a silence that had been too long, "It may be quite as well we don't," he said; "As well, I mean, that we don't always say it. You know best what I mean, and I suppose You might have said it better. What was that? Incorrigible? Am I incorrigible? Well, it's a word; and a word has its use, Or, like a man, it will soon have a grave. It's a good word enough. Incorrigible, May be, for all I know, the word for Norcross. See for yourself that house of his again That he called home: An old house, painted white, Square as a box, and chillier than a tomb To look at or to live in. There were trees -- Too many of them, if such a thing may be -- Before it and around it. Down in front There was a road, a railroad, and a river; Then there were hills behind it, and more trees. The thing would fairly stare at you through trees, Like a pale inmate out of a barred window With a green shade half down; and I dare say People who passed have said: `There's where he lives. We know him, but we do not seem to know That we remember any good of him, Or any evil that is interesting. There you have all we know and all we care.' They might have said it in all sorts of ways; And then, if they perceived a cat, they might Or might not have remembered what they said. The cat might have a personality -- And maybe the same one the Lord left out Of Tasker Norcross, who, for lack of it, Saw the same sun go down year after year; All which at last was my discovery. And only mine, so far as evidence Enlightens one more darkness. You have known All round you, all your days, men who are nothing -- Nothing, I mean, so far as time tells yet Of any other need it has of them Than to make sextons hardy -- but no less Are to themselves incalculably something, And therefore to be cherished. God, you see, Being sorry for them in their fashioning, Indemnified them with a quaint esteem Of self, and with illusions long as life. You know them well, and you have smiled at them; And they, in their serenity, may have had Their time to smile at you. Blessed are they That see themselves for what they never were Or were to be, and are, for their defect, At ease with mirrors and the dim remarks That pass their tranquil ears." "Come, come," said I; "There may be names in your compendium That we are not yet all on fire for shouting. Skin most of us of our mediocrity, We should have nothing then that we could scratch. The picture smarts. Cover it, if you please, And do so rather gently. Now for Norcross." Ferguson closed his eyes in resignation, While a dead sigh came out of him. "Good God!" He said, and said it only half aloud, As if he knew no longer now, nor cared, If one were there to listen: "Have I said nothing -- Nothing at all -- of Norcross? Do you mean To patronize him till his name becomes A toy made out of letters? If a name Is all you need, arrange an honest column Of all the people you have ever known That you have never liked. You'll have enough; And you'll have mine, moreover. No, not yet. If I assume too many privileges, I pay, and I alone, for their assumption; By which, if I assume a darker knowledge Of Norcross than another, let the weight Of my injustice aggravate the load That is not on your shoulders. When I came To know this fellow Norcross in his house, I found him as I found him in the street -- No more, no less; indifferent, but no better. `Worse' were not quite the word: he was not bad; He was not . . . well, he was not anything. Has your invention ever entertained The picture of a dusty worm so dry That even the early bird would shake his head And fly on farther for another breakfast?" "But why forget the fortune of the worm," I said, "if in the dryness you deplore Salvation centred and endured? Your Norcross May have been one for many to have envied." "Salvation? Fortune? Would the worm say that? He might; and therefore I dismiss the worm With all dry things but one. Figures away, Do you begin to see this man a little? Do you begin to see him in the air, With all the vacant horrors of his outline For you to fill with more than it will hold? If so, you needn't crown yourself at once With epic laurel if you seem to fill it. Horrors, I say, for in the fires and forks Of a new hell -- if one were not enough -- I doubt if a new horror would have held him With a malignant ingenuity More to be feared than his before he died. You smile, as if in doubt. Well, smile again. Now come into his house, along with me: The four square sombre things that you see first Around you are four walls that go as high As to the ceiling. Norcross knew them well, And he knew others like them. Fasten to that With all the claws of your intelligence; And hold the man before you in his house As if he were a white rat in a box, And one that knew himself to be no other. I tell you twice that he knew all about it, That you may not forget the worst of all Our tragedies begin with what we know. Could Norcross only not have known, I wonder How many would have blessed and envied him! Could he have had the usual eye for spots On others, and for none upon himself, I smile to ponder on the carriages That might as well as not have clogged the town In honor of his end. For there was gold, You see, though all he needed was a little, And what he gave said nothing of who gave it. He would have given it all if in return There might have been a more sufficient face To greet him when he shaved. Though you insist It is the dower, and always, of our degree Not to be cursed with such invidious insight, Remember that you stand, you and your fancy, Now in his house; and since we are together, See for yourself and tell me what you see. Tell me the best you see. Make a slight noise Of recognition when you find a book That you would not as lief read upside down As otherwise, for example. If there you fail, Observe the walls and lead me to the place, Where you are led. If there you meet a picture That holds you near it for a longer time Than you are sorry, you may call it yours, And hang it in the dark of your remembrance, Where Norcross never sees. How can he see That has no eyes to see? And as for music, He paid with empty wonder for the pangs Of his infrequent forced endurance of it; And having had no pleasure, paid no more For needless immolation, or for the sight Of those who heard what he was never to hear. To see them listening was itself enough To make him suffer; and to watch worn eyes, On other days, of strangers who forgot Their sorrows and their failures and themselves Before a few mysterious odds and ends Of marble carted from the Parthenon -- And all for seeing what he was never to see, Because it was alive and he was dead -- Here was a wonder that was more profound Than any that was in fiddles and brass horns. "He knew, and in his knowledge there was death. He knew there was a region all around him That lay outside man's havoc and affairs, And yet was not all hostile to their tumult, Where poets would have served and honored him, And saved him, had there been anything to save. But there was nothing, and his tethered range Was only a small desert. Kings of song Are not for thrones in deserts. Towers of sound And flowers of sense are but a waste of heaven Where there is none to know them from the rocks And sand-grass of his own monotony That makes earth less than earth. He could see that, And he could see no more. The captured light That may have been or not, for all he cared, The song that is in sculpture was not his, But only, to his God-forgotten eyes, One more immortal nonsense in a world Where all was mortal, or had best be so, And so be done with. `Art,' he would have said, `Is not life, and must therefore be a lie;' And with a few profundities like that He would have controverted and dismissed The benefit of the Greeks. He had heard of them, As he had heard of his aspiring soul -- Never to the perceptible advantage, In his esteem, of either. `Faith,' he said, Or would have said if he had thought of it, `Lives in the same house with Philosophy, Where the two feed on scraps and are forlorn As orphans after war. He could see stars, On a clear night, but he had not an eye To see beyond them. He could hear spoken words, But had no ear for silence when alone. He could eat food of which he knew the savor, But had no palate for the Bread of Life, That human desperation, to his thinking, Made famous long ago, having no other. Now do you see? Do you begin to see?" I told him that I did begin to see; And I was nearer than I should have been To laughing at his malign inclusiveness, When I considered that, with all our speed, We are not laughing yet at funerals. I see him now as I could see him then, And I see now that it was good for me, As it was good for him, that I was quiet; For Time's eye was on Ferguson, and the shaft Of its inquiring hesitancy had touched him, Or so I chose to fancy more than once Before he told of Norcross. When the word Of his release (he would have called it so) Made half an inch of news, there were no tears That are recorded. Women there may have been To wish him back, though I should say, not knowing, The few there were to mourn were not for love, And were not lovely. Nothing of them, at least, Was in the meagre legend that I gathered Years after, when a chance of travel took me So near the region of his nativity That a few miles of leisure brought me there; For there I found a friendly citizen Who led me to his house among the trees That were above a railroad and a river. Square as a box and chillier than a tomb It was indeed, to look at or to live in -- All which had I been told. "Ferguson died," The stranger said, "and then there was an auction. I live here, but I've never yet been warm. Remember him? Yes, I remember him. I knew him -- as a man may know a tree -- For twenty years. He may have held himself A little high when he was here, but now . . . Yes, I remember Ferguson. Oh, yes." Others, I found, remembered Ferguson, But none of them had heard of Tasker Norcross. A Song at Shannon's Two men came out of Shannon's having known The faces of each other for as long As they had listened there to an old song, Sung thinly in a wastrel monotone By some unhappy night-bird, who had flown Too many times and with a wing too strong To save himself, and so done heavy wrong To more frail elements than his alone. Slowly away they went, leaving behind More light than was before them. Neither met The other's eyes again or said a word. Each to his loneliness or to his kind, Went his own way, and with his own regret, Not knowing what the other may have heard. Souvenir A vanished house that for an hour I knew By some forgotten chance when I was young Had once a glimmering window overhung With honeysuckle wet with evening dew. Along the path tall dusky dahlias grew, And shadowy hydrangeas reached and swung Ferociously; and over me, among The moths and mysteries, a blurred bat flew. Somewhere within there were dim presences Of days that hovered and of years gone by. I waited, and between their silences There was an evanescent faded noise; And though a child, I knew it was the voice Of one whose occupation was to die. Discovery We told of him as one who should have soared And seen for us the devastating light Whereof there is not either day or night, And shared with us the glamour of the Word That fell once upon Amos to record For men at ease in Zion, when the sight Of ills obscured aggrieved him and the might Of Hamath was a warning of the Lord. Assured somehow that he would make us wise, Our pleasure was to wait; and our surprise Was hard when we confessed the dry return Of his regret. For we were still to learn That earth has not a school where we may go For wisdom, or for more than we may know. Firelight Ten years together without yet a cloud, They seek each other's eyes at intervals Of gratefulness to firelight and four walls For love's obliteration of the crowd. Serenely and perennially endowed And bowered as few may be, their joy recalls No snake, no sword; and over them there falls The blessing of what neither says aloud. Wiser for silence, they were not so glad Were she to read the graven tale of lines On the wan face of one somewhere alone; Nor were they more content could he have had Her thoughts a moment since of one who shines Apart, and would be hers if he had known. The New Tenants The day was here when it was his to know How fared the barriers he had built between His triumph and his enemies unseen, For them to undermine and overthrow; And it was his no longer to forego The sight of them, insidious and serene, Where they were delving always and had been Left always to be vicious and to grow. And there were the new tenants who had come, By doors that were left open unawares, Into his house, and were so much at home There now that he would hardly have to guess, By the slow guile of their vindictiveness, What ultimate insolence would soon be theirs. Inferential Although I saw before me there the face Of one whom I had honored among men The least, and on regarding him again Would not have had him in another place, He fitted with an unfamiliar grace The coffin where I could not see him then As I had seen him and appraised him when I deemed him unessential to the race. For there was more of him than what I saw. And there was on me more than the old awe That is the common genius of the dead. I might as well have heard him: "Never mind; If some of us were not so far behind, The rest of us were not so far ahead." The Rat As often as he let himself be seen We pitied him, or scorned him, or deplored The inscrutable profusion of the Lord Who shaped as one of us a thing so mean -- Who made him human when he might have been A rat, and so been wholly in accord With any other creature we abhorred As always useless and not always clean. Now he is hiding all alone somewhere, And in a final hole not ready then; For now he is among those over there Who are not coming back to us again. And we who do the fiction of our share Say less of rats and rather more of men. Rahel to Varnhagen Note. -- Rahel Robert and Varnhagen von Ense were married, after many protestations on her part, in 1814. The marriage -- so far as he was concerned, at any rate -- appears to have been satisfactory. Now you have read them all; or if not all, As many as in all conscience I should fancy To be enough. There are no more of them -- Or none to burn your sleep, or to bring dreams Of devils. If these are not sufficient, surely You are a strange young man. I might live on Alone, and for another forty years, Or not quite forty, -- are you happier now? -- Always to ask if there prevailed elsewhere Another like yourself that would have held These aged hands as long as you have held them, Not once observing, for all I can see, How they are like your mother's. Well, you have read His letters now, and you have heard me say That in them are the cinders of a passion That was my life; and you have not yet broken Your way out of my house, out of my sight, -- Into the street. You are a strange young man. I know as much as that of you, for certain; And I'm already praying, for your sake, That you be not too strange. Too much of that May lead you bye and bye through gloomy lanes To a sad wilderness, where one may grope Alone, and always, or until he feels Ferocious and invisible animals That wait for men and eat them in the dark. Why do you sit there on the floor so long, Smiling at me while I try to be solemn? Do you not hear it said for your salvation, When I say truth? Are you, at four and twenty, So little deceived in us that you interpret The humor of a woman to be noticed As her choice between you and Acheron? Are you so unscathed yet as to infer That if a woman worries when a man, Or a man-child, has wet shoes on his feet She may as well commemorate with ashes The last eclipse of her tranquillity? If you look up at me and blink again, I shall not have to make you tell me lies To know the letters you have not been reading. I see now that I may have had for nothing A most unpleasant shivering in my conscience When I laid open for your contemplation The wealth of my worn casket. If I did, The fault was not yours wholly. Search again This wreckage we may call for sport a face, And you may chance upon the price of havoc That I have paid for a few sorry stones That shine and have no light -- yet once were stars, And sparkled on a crown. Little and weak They seem; and they are cold, I fear, for you. But they that once were fire for me may not Be cold again for me until I die; And only God knows if they may be then. There is a love that ceases to be love In being ourselves. How, then, are we to lose it? You that are sure that you know everything There is to know of love, answer me that. Well? . . . You are not even interested. Once on a far off time when I was young, I felt with your assurance, and all through me, That I had undergone the last and worst Of love's inventions. There was a boy who brought The sun with him and woke me up with it, And that was every morning; every night I tried to dream of him, but never could, More than I might have seen in Adam's eyes Their fond uncertainty when Eve began The play that all her tireless progeny Are not yet weary of. One scene of it Was brief, but was eternal while it lasted; And that was while I was the happiest Of an imaginary six or seven, Somewhere in history but not on earth, For whom the sky had shaken and let stars Rain down like diamonds. Then there were clouds, And a sad end of diamonds; whereupon Despair came, like a blast that would have brought Tears to the eyes of all the bears in Finland, And love was done. That was how much I knew. Poor little wretch! I wonder where he is This afternoon. Out of this rain, I hope. At last, when I had seen so many days Dressed all alike, and in their marching order, Go by me that I would not always count them, One stopped -- shattering the whole file of Time, Or so it seemed; and when I looked again, There was a man. He struck once with his eyes, And then there was a woman. I, who had come To wisdom, or to vision, or what you like, By the old hidden road that has no name, -- I, who was used to seeing without flying So much that others fly from without seeing, Still looked, and was afraid, and looked again. And after that, when I had read the story Told in his eyes, and felt within my heart The bleeding wound of their necessity, I knew the fear was his. If I had failed him And flown away from him, I should have lost Ingloriously my wings in scrambling back, And found them arms again. If he had struck me Not only with his eyes but with his hands, I might have pitied him and hated love, And then gone mad. I, who have been so strong -- Why don't you laugh? -- might even have done all that. I, who have learned so much, and said so much, And had the commendations of the great For one who rules herself -- why don't you cry? -- And own a certain small authority Among the blind, who see no more than ever, But like my voice, -- I would have tossed it all To Tophet for one man; and he was jealous. I would have wound a snake around my neck And then have let it bite me till I died, If my so doing would have made me sure That one man might have lived; and he was jealous. I would have driven these hands into a cage That held a thousand scorpions, and crushed them, If only by so poisonous a trial I could have crushed his doubt. I would have wrung My living blood with mediaeval engines Out of my screaming flesh, if only that Would have made one man sure. I would have paid For him the tiresome price of body and soul, And let the lash of a tongue-weary town Fall as it might upon my blistered name; And while it fell I could have laughed at it, Knowing that he had found out finally Where the wrong was. But there was evil in him That would have made no more of his possession Than confirmation of another fault; And there was honor -- if you call it honor That hoods itself with doubt and wears a crown Of lead that might as well be gold and fire. Give it as heavy or as light a name As any there is that fits. I see myself Without the power to swear to this or that That I might be if he had been without it. Whatever I might have been that I was not, It only happened that it wasn't so. Meanwhile, you might seem to be listening: If you forget yourself and go to sleep, My treasure, I shall not say this again. Look up once more into my poor old face, Where you see beauty, or the Lord knows what, And say to me aloud what else there is Than ruins in it that you most admire. No, there was never anything like that; Nature has never fastened such a mask Of radiant and impenetrable merit On any woman as you say there is On this one. Not a mask? I thank you, sir, But you see more with your determination, I fear, than with your prudence or your conscience; And you have never met me with my eyes In all the mirrors I've made faces at. No, I shall never call you strange again: You are the young and inconvincible Epitome of all blind men since Adam. May the blind lead the blind, if that be so? And we shall need no mirrors? You are saying What most I feared you might. But if the blind, Or one of them, be not so fortunate As to put out the eyes of recollection, She might at last, without her meaning it, Lead on the other, without his knowing it, Until the two of them should lose themselves Among dead craters in a lava-field As empty as a desert on the moon. I am not speaking in a theatre, But in a room so real and so familiar That sometimes I would wreck it. Then I pause, Remembering there is a King in Weimar -- A monarch, and a poet, and a shepherd Of all who are astray and are outside The realm where they should rule. I think of him, And save the furniture; I think of you, And am forlorn, finding in you the one To lavish aspirations and illusions Upon a faded and forsaken house Where love, being locked alone, was nigh to burning House and himself together. Yes, you are strange, To see in such an injured architecture Room for new love to live in. Are you laughing? No? Well, you are not crying, as you should be. Tears, even if they told only gratitude For your escape, and had no other story, Were surely more becoming than a smile For my unwomanly straightforwardness In seeing for you, through my close gate of years Your forty ways to freedom. Why do you smile? And while I'm trembling at my faith in you In giving you to read this book of danger That only one man living might have written -- These letters, which have been a part of me So long that you may read them all again As often as you look into my face, And hear them when I speak to you, and feel them Whenever you have to touch me with your hand, -- Why are you so unwilling to be spared? Why do you still believe in me? But no, I'll find another way to ask you that. I wonder if there is another way That says it better, and means anything. There is no other way that could be worse? I was not asking you; it was myself Alone that I was asking. Why do I dip For lies, when there is nothing in my well But shining truth, you say? How do you know? Truth has a lonely life down where she lives; And many a time, when she comes up to breathe, She sinks before we seize her, and makes ripples. Possibly you may know no more of me Than a few ripples; and they may soon be gone, Leaving you then with all my shining truth Drowned in a shining water; and when you look You may not see me there, but something else That never was a woman -- being yourself. You say to me my truth is past all drowning, And safe with you for ever? You know all that? How do you know all that, and who has told you? You know so much that I'm an atom frightened Because you know so little. And what is this? You know the luxury there is in haunting The blasted thoroughfares of disillusion -- If that's your name for them -- with only ghosts For company? You know that when a woman Is blessed, or cursed, with a divine impatience (Another name of yours for a bad temper) She must have one at hand on whom to wreak it (That's what you mean, whatever the turn you give it), Sure of a kindred sympathy, and thereby Effect a mutual calm? You know that wisdom, Given in vain to make a food for those Who are without it, will be seen at last, And even at last only by those who gave it, As one or more of the forgotten crumbs That others leave? You know that men's applause And women's envy savor so much of dust That I go hungry, having at home no fare But the same changeless bread that I may swallow Only with tears and prayers? Who told you that? You know that if I read, and read alone, Too many books that no men yet have written, I may go blind, or worse? You know yourself, Of all insistent and insidious creatures, To be the one to save me, and to guard For me their flaming language? And you know That if I give much headway to the whim That's in me never to be quite sure that even Through all those years of storm and fire I waited For this one rainy day, I may go on, And on, and on alone, through smoke and ashes, To a cold end? You know so dismal much As that about me? . . . Well, I believe you do. Nimmo Since you remember Nimmo, and arrive At such a false and florid and far drawn Confusion of odd nonsense, I connive No longer, though I may have led you on. So much is told and heard and told again, So many with his legend are engrossed, That I, more sorry now than I was then, May live on to be sorry for his ghost. You knew him, and you must have known his eyes, -- How deep they were, and what a velvet light Came out of them when anger or surprise, Or laughter, or Francesca, made them bright. No, you will not forget such eyes, I think, -- And you say nothing of them. Very well. I wonder if all history's worth a wink, Sometimes, or if my tale be one to tell. For they began to lose their velvet light; Their fire grew dead without and small within; And many of you deplored the needless fight That somewhere in the dark there must have been. All fights are needless, when they're not our own, But Nimmo and Francesca never fought. Remember that; and when you are alone, Remember me -- and think what I have thought. Now, mind you, I say nothing of what was, Or never was, or could or could not be: Bring not suspicion's candle to the glass That mirrors a friend's face to memory. Of what you see, see all, -- but see no more; For what I show you here will not be there. The devil has had his way with paint before, And he's an artist, -- and you needn't stare. There was a painter and he painted well: He'd paint you Daniel in the lions' den, Beelzebub, Elaine, or William Tell. I'm coming back to Nimmo's eyes again. The painter put the devil in those eyes, Unless the devil did, and there he stayed; And then the lady fled from paradise, And there's your fact. The lady was afraid. She must have been afraid, or may have been, Of evil in their velvet all the while; But sure as I'm a sinner with a skin, I'll trust the man as long as he can smile. I trust him who can smile and then may live In my heart's house, where Nimmo is today. God knows if I have more than men forgive To tell him; but I played, and I shall pay. I knew him then, and if I know him yet, I know in him, defeated and estranged, The calm of men forbidden to forget The calm of women who have loved and changed. But there are ways that are beyond our ways, Or he would not be calm and she be mute, As one by one their lost and empty days Pass without even the warmth of a dispute. God help us all when women think they see; God save us when they do. I'm fair; but though I know him only as he looks to me, I know him, -- and I tell Francesca so. And what of Nimmo? Little would you ask Of him, could you but see him as I can, At his bewildered and unfruitful task Of being what he was born to be -- a man. Better forget that I said anything Of what your tortured memory may disclose; I know him, and your worst remembering Would count as much as nothing, I suppose. Meanwhile, I trust him; and I know his way Of trusting me, as always in his youth. I'm painting here a better man, you say, Than I, the painter; and you say the truth. Peace on Earth He took a frayed hat from his head, And "Peace on Earth" was what he said. "A morsel out of what you're worth, And there we have it: Peace on Earth. Not much, although a little more Than what there was on earth before. I'm as you see, I'm Ichabod, -- But never mind the ways I've trod; I'm sober now, so help me God." I could not pass the fellow by. "Do you believe in God?" said I; "And is there to be Peace on Earth?" "Tonight we celebrate the birth," He said, "of One who died for men; The Son of God, we say. What then? Your God, or mine? I'd make you laugh Were I to tell you even half That I have learned of mine today Where yours would hardly seem to stay. Could He but follow in and out Some anthropoids I know about, The God to whom you may have prayed Might see a world He never made." "Your words are flowing full," said I; "But yet they give me no reply; Your fountain might as well be dry." "A wiser One than you, my friend, Would wait and hear me to the end; And for His eyes a light would shine Through this unpleasant shell of mine That in your fancy makes of me A Christmas curiosity. All right, I might be worse than that; And you might now be lying flat; I might have done it from behind, And taken what there was to find. Don't worry, for I'm not that kind. `Do I believe in God?' Is that The price tonight of a new hat? Has He commanded that His name Be written everywhere the same? Have all who live in every place Identified His hidden face? Who knows but He may like as well My story as one you may tell? And if He show me there be Peace On Earth, as there be fields and trees Outside a jail-yard, am I wrong If now I sing Him a new song? Your world is in yourself, my friend, For your endurance to the end; And all the Peace there is on Earth Is faith in what your world is worth, And saying, without any lies, Your world could not be otherwise." "One might say that and then be shot," I told him; and he said: "Why not?" I ceased, and gave him rather more Than he was counting of my store. "And since I have it, thanks to you, Don't ask me what I mean to do," Said he. "Believe that even I Would rather tell the truth than lie -- On Christmas Eve. No matter why." His unshaved, educated face, His inextinguishable grace, And his hard smile, are with me still, Deplore the vision as I will; For whatsoever he be at, So droll a derelict as that Should have at least another hat. Late Summer (Alcaics) Confused, he found her lavishing feminine Gold upon clay, and found her inscrutable; And yet she smiled. Why, then, should horrors Be as they were, without end, her playthings? And why were dead years hungrily telling her Lies of the dead, who told them again to her? If now she knew, there might be kindness Clamoring yet where a faith lay stifled. A little faith in him, and the ruinous Past would be for time to annihilate, And wash out, like a tide that washes Out of the sand what a child has drawn there. God, what a shining handful of happiness, Made out of days and out of eternities, Were now the pulsing end of patience -- Could he but have what a ghost had stolen! What was a man before him, or ten of them, While he was here alive who could answer them, And in their teeth fling confirmations Harder than agates against an egg-shell? But now the man was dead, and would come again Never, though she might honor ineffably The flimsy wraith of him she conjured Out of a dream with his wand of absence. And if the truth were now but a mummery, Meriting pride's implacable irony, So much the worse for pride. Moreover, Save her or fail, there was conscience always. Meanwhile, a few misgivings of innocence, Imploring to be sheltered and credited, Were not amiss when she revealed them. Whether she struggled or not, he saw them. Also, he saw that while she was hearing him Her eyes had more and more of the past in them; And while he told what cautious honor Told him was all he had best be sure of, He wondered once or twice, inadvertently, Where shifting winds were driving his argosies, Long anchored and as long unladen, Over the foam for the golden chances. "If men were not for killing so carelessly, And women were for wiser endurances," He said, "we might have yet a world here Fitter for Truth to be seen abroad in; "If Truth were not so strange in her nakedness, And we were less forbidden to look at it, We might not have to look." He stared then Down at the sand where the tide threw forward Its cold, unconquered lines, that unceasingly Foamed against hope, and fell. He was calm enough, Although he knew he might be silenced Out of all calm; and the night was coming. "I climb for you the peak of his infamy That you may choose your fall if you cling to it. No more for me unless you say more. All you have left of a dream defends you: "The truth may be as evil an augury As it was needful now for the two of us. We cannot have the dead between us. Tell me to go, and I go." -- She pondered: "What you believe is right for the two of us Makes it as right that you are not one of us. If this be needful truth you tell me, Spare me, and let me have lies hereafter." She gazed away where shadows were covering The whole cold ocean's healing indifference. No ship was coming. When the darkness Fell, she was there, and alone, still gazing. An Evangelist's Wife "Why am I not myself these many days, You ask? And have you nothing more to ask? I do you wrong? I do not hear your praise To God for giving you me to share your task? "Jealous -- of Her? Because her cheeks are pink, And she has eyes? No, not if she had seven. If you should only steal an hour to think, Sometime, there might be less to be forgiven. "No, you are never cruel. If once or twice I found you so, I could applaud and sing. Jealous of -- What? You are not very wise. Does not the good Book tell you anything? "In David's time poor Michal had to go. Jealous of God? Well, if you like it so." The Old King's New Jester You that in vain would front the coming order With eyes that meet forlornly what they must, And only with a furtive recognition See dust where there is dust, -- Be sure you like it always in your faces, Obscuring your best graces, Blinding your speech and sight, Before you seek again your dusty places Where the old wrong seems right. Longer ago than cave-men had their changes Our fathers may have slain a son or two, Discouraging a further dialectic Regarding what was new; And after their unstudied admonition Occasional contrition For their old-fashioned ways May have reduced their doubts, and in addition Softened their final days. Farther away than feet shall ever travel Are the vague towers of our unbuilded State; But there are mightier things than we to lead us, That will not let us wait. And we go on with none to tell us whether Or not we've each a tether Determining how fast or far we go; And it is well, since we must go together, That we are not to know. If the old wrong and all its injured glamour Haunts you by day and gives your night no peace, You may as well, agreeably and serenely, Give the new wrong its lease; For should you nourish a too fervid yearning For what is not returning, The vicious and unfused ingredient May give you qualms -- and one or two concerning The last of your content. Lazarus "No, Mary, there was nothing -- not a word. Nothing, and always nothing. Go again Yourself, and he may listen -- or at least Look up at you, and let you see his eyes. I might as well have been the sound of rain, A wind among the cedars, or a bird; Or nothing. Mary, make him look at you; And even if he should say that we are nothing, To know that you have heard him will be something. And yet he loved us, and it was for love The Master gave him back. Why did He wait So long before He came? Why did He weep? I thought He would be glad -- and Lazarus -- To see us all again as He had left us -- All as it was, all as it was before." Mary, who felt her sister's frightened arms Like those of someone drowning who had seized her, Fearing at last they were to fail and sink Together in this fog-stricken sea of strangeness, Fought sadly, with bereaved indignant eyes, To find again the fading shores of home That she had seen but now could see no longer. Now she could only gaze into the twilight, And in the dimness know that he was there, Like someone that was not. He who had been Their brother, and was dead, now seemed alive Only in death again -- or worse than death; For tombs at least, always until today, Though sad were certain. There was nothing certain For man or God in such a day as this; For there they were alone, and there was he -- Alone; and somewhere out of Bethany, The Master -- who had come to them so late, Only for love of them and then so slowly, And was for their sake hunted now by men Who feared Him as they feared no other prey -- For the world's sake was hidden. "Better the tomb For Lazarus than life, if this be life," She thought; and then to Martha, "No, my dear," She said aloud; "not as it was before. Nothing is ever as it was before, Where Time has been. Here there is more than Time; And we that are so lonely and so far From home, since he is with us here again, Are farther now from him and from ourselves Than we are from the stars. He will not speak Until the spirit that is in him speaks; And we must wait for all we are to know, Or even to learn that we are not to know. Martha, we are too near to this for knowledge, And that is why it is that we must wait. Our friends are coming if we call for them, And there are covers we'll put over him To make him warmer. We are too young, perhaps, To say that we know better what is best Than he. We do not know how old he is. If you remember what the Master said, Try to believe that we need have no fear. Let me, the selfish and the careless one, Be housewife and a mother for tonight; For I am not so fearful as you are, And I was not so eager." Martha sank Down at her sister's feet and there sat watching A flower that had a small familiar name That was as old as memory, but was not The name of what she saw now in its brief And infinite mystery that so frightened her That life became a terror. Tears again Flooded her eyes and overflowed. "No, Mary," She murmured slowly, hating her own words Before she heard them, "you are not so eager To see our brother as we see him now; Neither is He who gave him back to us. I was to be the simple one, as always, And this was all for me." She stared again Over among the trees where Lazarus, Who seemed to be a man who was not there, Might have been one more shadow among shadows, If she had not remembered. Then she felt The cool calm hands of Mary on her face, And shivered, wondering if such hands were real. "The Master loved you as He loved us all, Martha; and you are saying only things That children say when they have had no sleep. Try somehow now to rest a little while; You know that I am here, and that our friends Are coming if I call." Martha at last Arose, and went with Mary to the door, Where they stood looking off at the same place, And at the same shape that was always there As if it would not ever move or speak, And always would be there. "Mary, go now, Before the dark that will be coming hides him. I am afraid of him out there alone, Unless I see him; and I have forgotten What sleep is. Go now -- make him look at you -- And I shall hear him if he stirs or whispers. Go! -- or I'll scream and bring all Bethany To come and make him speak. Make him say once That he is glad, and God may say the rest. Though He say I shall sleep, and sleep for ever, I shall not care for that . . . Go!" Mary, moving Almost as if an angry child had pushed her, Went forward a few steps; and having waited As long as Martha's eyes would look at hers, Went forward a few more, and a few more; And so, until she came to Lazarus, Who crouched with his face hidden in his hands, Like one that had no face. Before she spoke, Feeling her sister's eyes that were behind her As if the door where Martha stood were now As far from her as Egypt, Mary turned Once more to see that she was there. Then, softly, Fearing him not so much as wondering What his first word might be, said, "Lazarus, Forgive us if we seemed afraid of you;" And having spoken, pitied her poor speech That had so little seeming gladness in it, So little comfort, and so little love. There was no sign from him that he had heard, Or that he knew that she was there, or cared Whether she spoke to him again or died There at his feet. "We love you, Lazarus, And we are not afraid. The Master said We need not be afraid. Will you not say To me that you are glad? Look, Lazarus! Look at my face, and see me. This is Mary." She found his hands and held them. They were cool, Like hers, but they were not so calm as hers. Through the white robes in which his friends had wrapped him When he had groped out of that awful sleep, She felt him trembling and she was afraid. At last he sighed; and she prayed hungrily To God that she might have again the voice Of Lazarus, whose hands were giving her now The recognition of a living pressure That was almost a language. When he spoke, Only one word that she had waited for Came from his lips, and that word was her name. "I heard them saying, Mary, that He wept Before I woke." The words were low and shaken, Yet Mary knew that he who uttered them Was Lazarus; and that would be enough Until there should be more . . . "Who made Him come, That He should weep for me? . . . Was it you, Mary?" The questions held in his incredulous eyes Were more than she would see. She looked away; But she had felt them and should feel for ever, She thought, their cold and lonely desperation That had the bitterness of all cold things That were not cruel. "I should have wept," he said, "If I had been the Master. . . ." Now she could feel His hands above her hair -- the same black hair That once he made a jest of, praising it, While Martha's busy eyes had left their work To flash with laughing envy. Nothing of that Was to be theirs again; and such a thought Was like the flying by of a quick bird Seen through a shadowy doorway in the twilight. For now she felt his hands upon her head, Like weights of kindness: "I forgive you, Mary. . . . You did not know -- Martha could not have known -- Only the Master knew. . . . Where is He now? Yes, I remember. They came after Him. May the good God forgive Him. . . . I forgive Him. I must; and I may know only from Him The burden of all this. . . . Martha was here -- But I was not yet here. She was afraid. . . . Why did He do it, Mary? Was it -- you? Was it for you? . . . Where are the friends I saw? Yes, I remember. They all went away. I made them go away. . . . Where is He now? . . . What do I see down there? Do I see Martha -- Down by the door? . . . I must have time for this." Lazarus looked about him fearfully, And then again at Mary, who discovered Awakening apprehension in his eyes, And shivered at his feet. All she had feared Was here; and only in the slow reproach Of his forgiveness lived his gratitude. Why had he asked if it was all for her That he was here? And what had Martha meant? Why had the Master waited? What was coming To Lazarus, and to them, that had not come? What had the Master seen before He came, That He had come so late? "Where is He, Mary?" Lazarus asked again. "Where did He go?" Once more he gazed about him, and once more At Mary for an answer. "Have they found Him? Or did He go away because He wished Never to look into my eyes again? . . . That, I could understand. . . . Where is He, Mary?" "I do not know," she said. "Yet in my heart I know that He is living, as you are living -- Living, and here. He is not far from us. He will come back to us and find us all -- Lazarus, Martha, Mary -- everything -- All as it was before. Martha said that. And He said we were not to be afraid." Lazarus closed his eyes while on his face A tortured adumbration of a smile Flickered an instant. "All as it was before," He murmured wearily. "Martha said that; And He said you were not to be afraid . . . Not you . . . Not you . . . Why should you be afraid? Give all your little fears, and Martha's with them, To me; and I will add them unto mine, Like a few rain-drops to Gennesaret." "If you had frightened me in other ways, Not willing it," Mary said, "I should have known You still for Lazarus. But who is this? Tell me again that you are Lazarus; And tell me if the Master gave to you No sign of a new joy that shall be coming To this house that He loved. Are you afraid? Are you afraid, who have felt everything -- And seen . . . ?" But Lazarus only shook his head, Staring with his bewildered shining eyes Hard into Mary's face. "I do not know, Mary," he said, after a long time. "When I came back, I knew the Master's eyes Were looking into mine. I looked at His, And there was more in them than I could see. At first I could see nothing but His eyes; Nothing else anywhere was to be seen -- Only His eyes. And they looked into mine -- Long into mine, Mary, as if He knew." Mary began to be afraid of words As she had never been afraid before Of loneliness or darkness, or of death, But now she must have more of them or die: "He cannot know that there is worse than death," She said. "And you . . ." "Yes, there is worse than death." Said Lazarus; "and that was what He knew; And that is what it was that I could see This morning in his eyes. I was afraid, But not as you are. There is worse than death, Mary; and there is nothing that is good For you in dying while you are still here. Mary, never go back to that again. You would not hear me if I told you more, For I should say it only in a language That you are not to learn by going back. To be a child again is to go forward -- And that is much to know. Many grow old, And fade, and go away, not knowing how much That is to know. Mary, the night is coming, And there will soon be darkness all around you. Let us go down where Martha waits for us, And let there be light shining in this house." He rose, but Mary would not let him go: "Martha, when she came back from here, said only That she heard nothing. And have you no more For Mary now than you had then for Martha? Is Nothing, Lazarus, all you have for me? Was Nothing all you found where you have been? If that be so, what is there worse than that -- Or better -- if that be so? And why should you, With even our love, go the same dark road over?" "I could not answer that, if that were so," Said Lazarus, -- "not even if I were God. Why should He care whether I came or stayed, If that were so? Why should the Master weep -- For me, or for the world, -- or save Himself Longer for nothing? And if that were so, Why should a few years' more mortality Make Him a fugitive where flight were needless, Had He but held his peace and given his nod To an old Law that would be new as any? I cannot say the answer to all that; Though I may say that He is not afraid, And that it is not for the joy there is In serving an eternal Ignorance Of our futility that He is here. Is that what you and Martha mean by Nothing? Is that what you are fearing? If that be so, There are more weeds than lentils in your garden. And one whose weeds are laughing at his harvest May as well have no garden; for not there Shall he be gleaning the few bits and orts Of life that are to save him. For my part, I am again with you, here among shadows That will not always be so dark as this; Though now I see there's yet an evil in me That made me let you be afraid of me. No, I was not afraid -- not even of life. I thought I was . . . I must have time for this; And all the time there is will not be long. I cannot tell you what the Master saw This morning in my eyes. I do not know. I cannot yet say how far I have gone, Or why it is that I am here again, Or where the old road leads. I do not know. I know that when I did come back, I saw His eyes again among the trees and faces -- Only His eyes; and they looked into mine -- Long into mine -- long, long, as if He knew." 
10460	----	WHEN DAY IS DONE by EDGAR A. GUEST 1921 To S.H.D. A real friend who never knows when day is done INDEX Age of Ink, The All for the Best Always Saying "Don't!" Autumn Evenings Aw Gee Whiz! Bedtime Better Job, The Bob White Book of Memory. The Boy and His Dad, A Boy and His Dog, A Boy and His Stomach, A Boy and the Flag, The Boy O'Mine Brothers All Call of the Woods, The "Carry On" Castor Oil Chip on Your Shoulder, The Christmas Carol, A Christmas Gift for Mother, The Cleaning the Furnace Committee Meetings Contradictin' Joe Cookie Jar, The Couldn't Live Without You Cure for Weariness, The Dan McGann Declares Himself Deeds of Anger, The Family Row, A Father's Wish, A Feller's Hat, A Fellowship of Books, The Forgotten Boyhood God Made This Day for Me Golf Luck Good Little Boy, The Grate Fire, The Green Apple Time Happy Man, The He's Taken Out His Papers Home and the Office Homely Man, The How Do You Buy Your Money? I Ain't Dead Yet I'd Rather Be a Failure If I Had Youth If This Were All Joys of Home, The Joys We Miss, The Just a Boy Kick Under the Table, The Leader of the Gang Learn to Smile Life Is What We Make It Life's Single Standard Little Girls Are Best Little Wrangles Lonely Looking Back Loss Is Not So Great, The Lucky Man, The Ma and the Ouija Board Making of Friends, The Memorial Day Mother's Day My Religion No Better Land Than This No Children! No Room for Hate Nothing to Laugh At No Use Sighin' Old Mister Laughter Old Years and New Pa and the Monthly Bills Peaks of Valor, The Practicing Time Pretending Not to See Safe at Home Satisfied With Life She Mothered Five She Powders Her Nose Simple' Things, The Sittin' on the Porch Song of the Builder, The Spoiler, The Summer Dreams Things You Can't Forget, The Three Me's, The To a Little Girl To an Old Friend Too Big a Price Trouble Brings Friends True Man, The Vanished Joy, A "Wait Till Your Pa Comes Home" We're Dreamers All What Home's Intended For What I Call Living What Is Success? What Makes an Artist What We Need When Day Is Done When Friends Drop In When Ma Wants Something New When Mother's Sewing Buttons On When Sorrow Comes When The Minister Calls When We Play the Fool When We're All Alike When We Understand the Plan Where Children Play "Where's Mamma?" Wide Outdoors, The Willing Horse, The With Dog and Gun World and Bud, The When Day Is Done When day is done and the night slips down, And I've turned my back on the busy town, And come once more to the welcome gate Where the roses nod and the children wait, I tell myself as I see them smile That life is good and its tasks worth while. When day is done and I've come once more To my quiet street and the friendly door, Where the Mother reigns and the children play And the kettle sings in the old-time way, I throw my coat on a near-by chair And say farewell to my pack of care. When day is done, all the hurt and strife And the selfishness and the greed of life, Are left behind in the busy town; I've ceased to worry about renown Or gold or fame, and I'm just a dad, Content to be with his girl and lad. Whatever the day has brought of care, Here love and laughter are mine to share, Here I can claim what the rich desire-- Rest and peace by a ruddy fire, The welcome words which the loved ones speak And the soft caress of a baby's cheek. When day is done and I reach my gate, I come to a realm where there is no hate, For here, whatever my worth may be, Are those who cling to their faith in me; And with love on guard at my humble door, I have all that the world has struggled for. The Simple Things I would not be too wise--so very wise That I must sneer at simple songs and creeds, And let the glare of wisdom blind my eyes To humble people and their humble needs. I would not care to climb so high that I Could never hear the children at their play, Could only see the people passing by, And never hear the cheering words they say. I would not know too much--too much to smile At trivial errors of the heart and hand, Nor be too proud to play the friend the while, Nor cease to help and know and understand. I would not care to sit upon a throne, Or build my house upon a mountain-top, Where I must dwell in glory all alone And never friend come in or poor man stop. God grant that I may live upon this earth And face the tasks which every morning brings And never lose the glory and the worth Of humble service and the simple things. Life Is What We Make It Life is a jest; Take the delight of it. Laughter is best; Sing through the night of it. Swiftly the tear And the hurt and the ache of it Find us down here; Life must be what we make of it. Life is a song; Dance to the thrill of it. Grief's hours are long, And cold is the chill of it. Joy is man's need; Let us smile for the sake of it. This be our creed: Life must be what we make of it. Life is a soul; The virtue and vice of it, Strife for a goal, And man's strength is the price of it. Your life and mine, The bare bread and the cake of it End in this line: Life must be what we make of it. What We Need We were settin' there an' smokin' of our pipes, discussin' things, Like licker, votes for wimmin, an' the totterin'thrones o' kings, When he ups an' strokes his whiskers with his hand an' says t'me: "Changin' laws an' legislatures ain't, as fur as I can see, Goin' to make this world much better, unless somehow we can Find a way to make a better an' a finer sort o' man. "The trouble ain't with statutes or with systems--not at all; It's with humans jest like we air an' their petty ways an' small. We could stop our writin' law-books an' our regulatin' rules If a better sort of manhood was the product of our schools. For the things that we air needin' ain't no writin' from a pen Or bigger guns to shoot with, but a bigger typeof men. "I reckon all these problems air jest ornery like the weeds. They grow in soil that oughta nourish only decent deeds, An' they waste our time an' fret us when, if we were thinkin' straight An' livin' right, they wouldn't be so terrible an' great. A good horse needs no snaffle, an' a good man, I opine, Doesn't need a law to check him or to force him into line. "If we ever start in teachin' to our children, year by year, How to live with one another, there'll be less o' trouble here. If we'd teach 'em how to neighbor an' to walk in honor's ways, We could settle every problem which the mind o' man can raise. What we're needin' isn't systems or some regulatin' plan, But a bigger an' a finer an' a truer type o' man." A Boy and His Dad A boy and his dad on a fishing-trip-- There is a glorious fellowship! Father and son and the open sky And the white clouds lazily drifting by, And the laughing stream as it runs along With the clicking reel like a martial song, And the father teaching the youngster gay How to land a fish in the sportsman's way. I fancy I hear them talking there In an open boat, and the speech is fair; And the boy is learning the ways of men From the finest man in his youthful ken. Kings, to the youngster, cannot compare With the gentle father who's with him there. And the greatest mind of the human race Not for one minute could take his place. Which is happier, man or boy? The soul of the father is steeped in joy, For he's finding out, to his heart's delight, That his son is fit for the future fight. He is learning the glorious depths of him, And the thoughts he thinks and his every whim, And he shall discover, when night comes on, How close he has grown to his little son. A boy and his dad on a fishing-trip-- Oh, I envy them, as I see them there Under the sky in the open air, For out of the old, old long-ago Come the summer days that I used to know, When I learned life's truths from my father's lips As I shared the joy of his fishing-trips-- Builders of life's companionship! If I Had Youth If I had youth I'd bid the world to try me; I'd answer every challenge to my will. And though the silent mountains should defy me, I'd try to make them subject to my skill. I'd keep my dreams and follow where they led me; I'd glory in the hazards which abound. I'd eat the simple fare privations fed me, And gladly make my couch upon the ground. If I had youth I'd ask no odds of distance, Nor wish to tread the known and level ways. I'd want to meet and master strong resistance, And in a worth-while struggle spend my days. I'd seek the task which calls for full endeavor; I'd feel the thrill of battle in my veins. I'd bear my burden gallantly, and never Desert the hills to walk on common plains. If I had youth no thought of failure lurking Beyond to-morrow's dawn should fright my soul. Let failure strike--it still should find me working With faith that I should some day reach my goal. I'd dice with danger--aye!--and glory in it; I'd make high stakes the purpose of my throw. I'd risk for much, and should I fail to win it, I would not ever whimper at the blow. If I had youth no chains of fear should bind me; I'd brave the heights which older men must shun. I'd leave the well-worn lanes of life behind me, And seek to do what men have never done. Rich prizes wait for those who do not waver; The world needs men to battle for the truth. It calls each hour for stronger hearts and braver. This is the age for those who still have youth! Looking Back I might have been rich if I'd wanted the gold instead of the friendships I've made. I might have had fame if I'd sought for renown in the hours when I purposely played. Now I'm standing to-day on the far edge of life, and I'm just looking backward to see What I've done with the years and the days that were mine, and all that has happened to me. I haven't built much of a fortune to leave to those who shall carry my name, And nothing I've done shall entitle me now to a place on the tablets of fame. But I've loved the great sky and its spaces of blue; I've lived with the birds and the trees; I've turned from the splendor of silver and gold to share in such pleasures as these. I've given my time to the children who came; together we've romped and we've played, And I wouldn't exchange the glad hours spent with them for the money that I might have made. I chose to be known and be loved by the few, and was deaf to the plaudits of men; And I'd make the same choice should the chance come to me to live my life over again. I've lived with my friends and I've shared in their joys, known sorrow with all of its tears; I have harvested much from my acres of life, though some say I've squandered my years. For much that is fine has been mine to enjoy, and I think I have lived to my best, And I have no regret, as I'm nearing the end, for the gold that I might have possessed. God Made This Day for Me Jes' the sort o' weather and jes' the sort of sky Which seem to suit my fancy, with the white clouds driftin' by On a sea o' smooth blue water. Oh, I ain't an egotist, With an "I" in all my thinkin', but I'm willin' to insist That the Lord who made us humans an' the birds in every tree Knows my special sort o' weather an' he made this day fer me. This is jes' my style o' weather--sunshine floodin' all the place, An' the breezes from the eastward blowin' gently on my face; An' the woods chock full o' singin' till you'd think birds never had A single care to fret 'em or a grief to make 'em sad. Oh, I settle down contented in the shadow of a tree, An' tell myself right proudly that the day was made fer me. It's my day, my sky an' sunshine, an' the temper o' the breeze-- Here's the weather I would fashion could I run things as I please: Beauty dancin' all around me, music ringin' everywhere, Like a weddin' celebration--why, I've plumb fergot my care An' the tasks I should be doin' fer the rainy days to be, While I'm huggin' the delusion that God made this day fer me. The Grate Fire I'm sorry for a fellow if he cannot look and see In a grate fire's friendly flaming all the joys which used to be. If in quiet contemplation of a cheerful ruddy blaze He sees nothing there recalling all his happy yesterdays, Then his mind is dead to fancy and his life is bleak and bare, And he's doomed to walk the highways that are always thick with care. When the logs are dry as tinder and they crackle with the heat, And the sparks, like merry children, come a-dancing round my feet, In the cold, long nights of autumn I can sit before the blaze And watch a panorama born of all my yesterdays. I can leave the present burdens and the moment's bit of woe, And claim once more the gladness of the bygone long-ago. No loved ones ever vanish from the grate fire's merry throng; No hands in death are folded and no lips are stilled to song. All the friends who were are living--like the sparks that fly about They come romping out to greet me with the same old merry shout, Till it seems to me I'm playing once again on boyhood's stage, Where there's no such thing as sorrow and there's no such thing as age. I can be the care-free schoolboy! I can play the lover, too! I can walk through Maytime orchards with the old sweetheart I knew, I can dream the glad dreams over, greet the old familiar friends In a land where there's no parting and the laughter never ends. All the gladness life has given from a grate fire I reclaim, And I'm sorry for the fellow-who sees nothing there but flame. The Homely Man Looks as though a cyclone hit him-- Can't buy clothes that seem to fit him; An' his cheeks are rough like leather, Made for standin' any weather. Outwards he was fashioned plainly, Loose o' joint an' blamed ungainly, But I'd give a lot if I'd Been built half as fine inside. Best thing I can tell you of him Is the way the children love him. Now an' then I get to thinkin' He's much like old Abe Lincoln; Homely like a gargoyle graven-- Worse'n that when he's unshaven; But I'd take his ugly phiz Jes' to have a heart like his. I ain't over-sentimental, But old Blake is so blamed gentle An' so thoughtfull-like of others He reminds us of our mothers. Rough roads he is always smoothing An' his way is, Oh, so soothin', That he takes away the sting When your heart is sorrowing. Children gather round about him Like they can't get on without him. An' the old depend upon him, Pilin' all their burdens on him, Like as though the thing that grieves 'em Has been lifted when he leaves 'em. Homely? That can't be denied, But he's glorious inside. The Joys We Miss There never comes a lonely day but that we miss the laughing ways Of those who used to walk with us through all our happy yesterdays. We seldom miss the earthly great--the famous men that life has known-- But, as the years go racing by, we miss the friends we used to own. The chair wherein he used to sit recalls the kindly father true For, Oh, so filled with fun he was, and, Oh, so very much he knew! And as we face the problems grave with which the years of life are filled. We miss the hand which guided us and miss the voice forever stilled. We little guessed how much he did to smooth our pathway day by day, How much of joy he brought to us, how much of care he brushed away; But now that we must tread alone the thorough-fare of life, we find How many burdens we were spared by him who was so brave and kind. Death robs the living, not the dead--they sweetly sleep whose tasks are done; But we are weaker than before who still must live and labor on. For when come care and grief to us, and heavy burdens bring us woe, We miss the smiling, helpful friends on whom we leaned long years ago. We miss the happy, tender ways of those who brought us mirth and cheer; We never gather round the hearth but that we wish our friends were near; For peace is born of simple things--a kindly word, a goodnight kiss, The prattle of a babe, and love--these are the vanished joys we miss. The Fellowship of Books I care not who the man may be, Nor how his tasks may fret him, Nor where he fares, nor how his cares And troubles may beset him, If books have won the love of him, Whatever fortune hands him, He'll always own, when he's alone, A friend who understands him. Though other friends may come and go, And some may stoop to treason, His books remain, through loss or gain, And season after season The faithful friends for every mood, His joy and sorrow sharing, For old time's sake, they'll lighter make The burdens he is bearing. Oh, he has counsel at his side, And wisdom for his duty, And laughter gay for hours of play, And tenderness and beauty, And fellowship divinely rare, True friends who never doubt him, Unchanging love, and God above, Who keeps good books about him. When Sorrow Comes When sorrow comes, as come it must, In God a man must place his trust. There is no power in mortal speech The anguish of his soul to reach, No voice, however sweet and low, Can comfort him or ease the blow. He cannot from his fellowmen Take strength that will sustain him then. With all that kindly hands will do, And all that love may offer, too, He must believe throughout the test That God has willed it for the best. We who would be his friends are dumb; Words from our lips but feebly come; We feel, as we extend our hands, That one Power only understands And truly knows the reason why So beautiful a soul must die. We realize how helpless then Are all the gifts of mortal men. No words which we have power to say Can take the sting of grief away-- That Power which marks the sparrow's fall Must comfort and sustain us all. When sorrow comes, as come it must, In God a man must place his trust. With all the wealth which he may own, He cannot meet the test alone, And only he may stand serene Who has a faith on which to lean. Golf Luck As a golfer I'm not one who cops the money; I shall always be a member of the dubs; There are times my style is positively funny; I am awkward in my handling of the clubs. I am not a skillful golfer, nor a plucky, But this about myself I proudly say-- When I win a hole by freaky stroke or lucky, I never claim I played the shot that way. There are times, despite my blundering behavior, When fortune seems to follow at my heels; Now and then I play supremely in her favor, And she lets me pull the rankest sort of steals; She'll give to me the friendliest assistance, I'll jump a ditch at times when I should not, I'll top the ball and get a lot of distance-- But I don't claim that's how I played the shot. I've hooked a ball when just that hook I needed, And wondered how I ever turned the trick; I've thanked my luck for what a friendly tree did, Although my fortune made my rival sick; Sometimes my shots turn out just as I planned 'em, The sort of shots I usually play, But when up to the cup I chance to land 'em, I never claim I played 'em just that way. There's little in my game that will commend me; I'm not a shark who shoots the course in par; I need good fortune often to befriend me; I have my faults and know just what they are. I play golf in a desperate do-or-die way, And into traps and trouble oft I stray, But when by chance the breaks are coming my way, I do not claim I played the shots that way. Contradictin' Joe Heard of Contradictin' Joe? Most contrary man I know. Always sayin', "That's not so." Nothing's ever said, but he Steps right up to disagree-- Quarrelsome as he can be. If you start in to recite All the details of a fight, He'll butt in to set you right. Start a story that is true, He'll begin correctin' you-- Make you out a liar, too! Mention time o' year or day, Makes no difference what you say, Nothing happened just that way. Bet you, when his soul takes flight, An' the angels talk at night, He'll butt in to set 'em right. There where none should have complaints He will be with "no's" and "ain'ts" Contradictin' all the saints. The Better Job If I were running a factory I'd stick up a sign for all to see; I'd print it large and I'd nail it high On every wall that the men walked by; And I'd have it carry this sentence clear: "The 'better job' that you want is here!" It's the common trait of the human race To pack up and roam from place to place; Men have done it for ages and do it now; Seeking to better themselves somehow They quit their posts and their tools they drop For a better job in another shop. It may be I'm wrong, but I hold to this-- That something surely must be amiss When a man worth while must move away For the better job with the better pay; And something is false in our own renown When men can think of a better town. So if I were running a factory I'd stick up this sign for all to see, Which never an eye in the place could miss: "There isn't a better town than this! You need not go wandering, far or near-- The 'better job' that you want is here!" My Religion My religion's lovin' God, who made us, one and all, Who marks, no matter where it be, the humble sparrow's fall; An' my religion's servin' Him the very best I can By not despisin' anything He made, especially man! It's lovin' sky an' earth an' sun an' birds an' flowers an' trees, But lovin' human beings more than any one of these. I ain't no hand at preachin' an' I can't expound the creeds; I fancy every fellow's faith must satisfy his needs Or he would hunt for something else. An' I can't tell the why An' wherefore of the doctrines deep--and what's more I don't try. I reckon when this life is done and we can know His plan, God won't be hard on anyone who's tried to be a man. My religion doesn't hinge on some one rite or word; I hold that any honest prayer a mortal makes is heard; To love a church is well enough, but some get cold with pride An' quite forget their fellowmen for whom the Saviour died; I fancy he best worships God, when all is said an' done, Who tries to be, from day to day, a friend to everyone. If God can mark the sparrow's fall, I don't believe He'll fail To notice us an' how we act when doubts an' fears assail; I think He'll hold what's in our hearts above what's in our creeds, An' judge all our religion here by our recorded deeds; An' since man is God's greatest work since life on earth began, He'll get to Heaven, I believe, who helps his fellowman. What I Call Living The miser thinks he's living when he's hoarding up his gold; The soldier calls it living when he's doing something bold; The sailor thinks it living to be tossed upon the sea, And upon this vital subject no two of us agree. But I hold to the opinion, as I walk my way along, That living's made of laughter and good-fellowship and song. I wouldn't call it living always to be seeking gold, To bank all the present gladness for the days when I'll be old. I wouldn't call it living to spend all my strength for fame, And forego the many pleasures which to-day are mine to claim. I wouldn't for the splendor of the world set out to roam, And forsake my laughing children and the peace I know at home. Oh, the thing that I call living isn't gold or fame at all! It's good-fellowship and sunshine, and it's roses by the wall; It's evenings glad with music and a hearth fire that's ablaze, And the joys which come to mortals in a thousand different ways. It is laughter and contentment and the struggle for a goal; It is everything that's needful in the shaping of a soul. If This Were All If this were all of life we'll know, If this brief space of breath Were all there is to human toil, If death were really death, And never should the soul arise A finer world to see, How foolish would our struggles seem, How grim the earth would be! If living were the whole of life, To end in seventy years, How pitiful its joys would seem! How idle all its tears! There'd be no faith to keep us true, No hope to keep us strong, And only fools would cherish dreams-- No smile would last for long. How purposeless the strife would be If there were nothing more, If there were not a plan to serve, An end to struggle for! No reason for a mortal's birth Except to have him die-- How silly all the goals would seem For which men bravely try. There must be something after death; Behind the toil of man There must exist a God divine Who's working out a plan; And this brief journey that we know As life must really be The gateway to a finer world That some day we shall see. A Christmas Carol God bless you all this Christmas Day And drive the cares and griefs away. Oh, may the shining Bethlehem star Which led the wise men from afar Upon your heads, good sirs, still glow To light the path that ye should go. As God once blessed the stable grim And made it radiant for Him; As it was fit to shield His Son, May thy roof be a holy one; May all who come this house to share Rest sweetly in His gracious care. Within thy walls may peace abide, The peace for which the Savior died. Though humble be the rafters here, Above them may the stars shine clear, And in this home thou lovest well May excellence of spirit dwell. God bless you all this Christmas Day; May Bethlehem's star still light thy way And guide thee to the perfect peace When every fear and doubt shall cease. And may thy home such glory know As did the stable long ago. Forgotten Boyhood He wears a long and solemn face And drives the children from his place; He doesn't like to hear them shout Or race and run and romp about, And if they chance to climb his tree, He is as ugly as can be. If in his yard they drive a ball, Which near his pretty flowers should fall, He hides the leather sphere away, Thus hoping to prevent their play. The youngsters worry him a lot, This sorry man who has forgot That once upon a time, he too The self-same mischief used to do. The boyhood he has left behind Has strangely vanished from his mind, And he is old and gray and cross For having suffered such a loss. He thinks he never had the joy That is the birthright of a boy. He has forgotten how he ran, Or to a dog's tail tied a can, Broke window panes, and loved to swipe Some neighbor's apples, red and ripe-- He thinks that always, day or night, His conduct was exactly right. In boys to-day he cannot see The youngster that he used to be, Forgotten is that by-gone day, When he was mischievous as they. Poor man! I'm sorry for your lot. The best of life you have forgot. Could you remember what you were, Unharnessed and untouched by spur, These youngsters that you drive away Would be your comrades here to-day. Among them you could gayly walk And share their laughter and their talk; You could be young and blithe as they, Could you recall your yesterday. The Peaks of Valor These are the peaks of valor; keeping clean your father's name, Too brave for petty profit to risk the brand of shame, Adventuring for the future, yet mindful of the past, For God, for country and for home, still valorous to the last. These are the peaks of valor: a speech that knows no lie, A standard of what's right and wrong which no man's wealth can buy, All unafraid of failure, to venture forth to fight, Yet never for the victory's sake to turn away from right. Ten thousand times the victor is he who fails to win, Who could have worn the conqueror's crown by stooping low in sin; Ten thousand times the braver is he who turns away And scorns to crush a weaker man that he may rule the day. These are the peaks of valor: standing firm and standing true To the best your father taught you and the best you've learned anew, Helpful to all who need you, winning what joys you can, Writing in triumph to the end your record as a man. When the Minister Calls My Paw says that it used to be, Whenever the minister came for tea, 'At they sat up straight in their chairs at night An' put all their common things out o' sight, An' nobody cracked a joke or grinned, But they talked o' the way that people sinned, An' the burnin' fires that would cook you sure When you came to die, if you wasn't pure-- Such a gloomy affair it used to be Whenever the minister came for tea. But now when the minister comes to call I get him out for a game of ball, And you'd never know if you'd see him bat, Without any coat or vest or hat, That he is a minister, no, siree! He looks like a regular man to me. An' he knows just how to go down to the dirt For the grounders hot without gettin' hurt-- An' when they call us, both him an' me Have to git washed up again for tea. Our minister says if you'll just play fair You'll be fit for heaven or anywhere; An' fun's all right if your hands are clean An' you never cheat an' you don't get mean. He says that he never has understood Why a feller can't play an' still be good. An' my Paw says that he's just the kind Of a minister that he likes to find-- So I'm always tickled as I can be Whenever our minister comes for tea. The Age of Ink Swiftly the changes come. Each day Sees some lost beauty blown away And some new touch of lovely grace Come into life to take its place. The little babe that once we had One morning woke a roguish lad; The babe that we had put to bed Out of our arms and lives had fled. Frocks vanished from our castle then, Ne'er to be worn or seen again, And in his knickerbocker pride He boasted pockets at each side And stored them deep with various things-- Stones, tops and jacks and-colored strings; Then for a time we claimed the joy Of calling him our little boy. Brief was the reign of such a spell. One morning sounded out a bell; With tears I saw her brown eyes swim And knew that it was calling him. Time, the harsh master of us all, Was bidding him to heed his call; This shadow fell across life's pool-- Our boy was on his way to school. Our little boy! And still we dreamed, For such a little boy he seemed! And yesterday, with eyes aglow Like one who has just come to know Some great and unexpected bliss, He bounded in, announcing this: "Oh, Dad! Oh, Ma! Say, what d'you think? This year we're going to write with ink!" Here was a change I'd not foreseen, Another step from what had been. I paused a little while to think About this older age of ink-- What follows this great step, thought I, What next shall come as the time goes by? And something said: "His pathway leads Unto the day he'll write with deeds." No Use Sighin' No use frettin' when the rain comes down, No use grievin' when the gray clouds frown, No use sighin' when the wind blows strong, No use wailin' when the world's all wrong; Only thing that a man can do Is work an' wait till the sky gets blue. No use mopin' when you lose the game, No use sobbin' if you're free from shame, No use cryin' when the harm is done, Just keep on tryin' an' workin' on; Only thing for a man to do, Is take the loss an' begin anew. No use weepin' when the milk is spilled, No use growlin' when your hopes are killed, No use kickin' when the lightnin' strikes Or the floods come along an' wreck your dykes; Only thing for a man right then Is to grit his teeth an' start again. For it's how life is an' the way things are That you've got to face if you travel far; An' the storms will come an' the failures, too, An' plans go wrong spite of all you do; An' the only thing that will help you win, Is the grit of a man and a stern set chin. No Children! No children in the house to play-- It must be hard to live that way! I wonder what the people do When night comes on and the work is through, With no glad little folks to shout, No eager feet to race about, No youthful tongues to chatter on About the joy that's been and gone? The house might be a castle fine, But what a lonely place to dine! No children in the house at all, No fingermarks upon the wall, No corner where the toys are piled-- Sure indication of a child. No little lips to breathe the prayer That God shall keep you in His care, No glad caress and welcome sweet When night returns you to your street; No little lips a kiss to give-- Oh, what a lonely way to live! No children in the house! I fear We could not stand it half a year. What would we talk about at night, Plan for and work with all our might, Hold common dreams about and find True union of heart and mind, If we two had no greater care Than what we both should eat and wear? We never knew love's brightest flame Until the day the baby came. And now we could not get along Without their laughter and their song. Joy is not bottled on a shelf, It cannot feed upon itself, And even love, if it shall wear, Must find its happiness in care; Dull we'd become of mind and speech Had we no little ones to teach. No children in the house to play! Oh, we could never live that way! The Loss Is Not So Great It is better as it is: I have failed but I can sleep; Though the pit I now am in is very dark and deep I can walk to-morrow's streets and can meet to-morrow's men Unashamed to face their gaze as I go to work again. I have lost the hope I had; in the dust are all my dreams, But my loss is not so great or so dreadful as it seems; I made my fight and though I failed I need not slink away For I do not have to fear what another man may say. They may call me over-bold, they may say that I was frail; They may tell I dared too much and was doomed at last to fail; They may talk my battle o'er and discuss it as they choose, But I did no brother wrong--I'm the only one to lose. It is better as it is: I have kept my self-respect. I can walk to-morrow's streets meeting all men head erect. No man can charge his loss to a pledge I did not keep; I have no shame to regret: I have failed, but I can sleep. Dan McGann Declares Himself Said Dan McGann to a foreign man who worked at the selfsame bench, "Let me tell you this," and for emphasis he flourished a Stilson wrench; "Don't talk to me of the bourjoissee, don't open your mouth to speak Of your socialists or your anarchists, don't mention the bolsheveek, For I've had enough of this foreign stuff, I'm sick as a man can be Of the speech of hate, and I'm tellin' you straight that this is the land for me! "If you want to brag, just take that flag an' boast of its field o' blue, An' praise the dead an' the blood they shed for the peace o' the likes o' you. Enough you've raved," and once more he waved his wrench in a forceful way, "O' the cunning creed o' some Russian breed; I stand for the U.S.A.! I'm done with your fads, and your wild-eyed lads. Don't flourish your rag o' red Where I can see or by night there'll be tall candles around your bed. "So tip your hat to a flag like that! Thank God for its stripes an' stars! Thank God you're here where the roads are clear, away from your kings and czars. I can't just say what I feel to-day, for I'm not a talkin' man, But, first an' last, I am standin' fast for all that's American. So don't you speak of the bolsheveek, it's sick of that stuff I am! One God, one flag is the creed I brag! I'm boostin' for Uncle Sam." A Boy and His Stomach What's the matter with you--ain't I always been your friend? Ain't I been a pardner to you? All my pennies don't I spend In gettin' nice things for you? Don't I give you lots of cake? Say, stummick, what's the matter, that you had to go an' ache? Why, I loaded you with good things yesterday, I gave you more Potatoes, squash an' turkey than you'd ever had before. I gave you nuts an' candy, pumpkin pie an' chocolate cake, An' las' night when I got to bed you had to go an' ache. Say, what's the matter with you--ain't you satisfied at all? I gave you all you wanted, you was hard jes' like a ball, An' you couldn't hold another bit of puddin', yet las' night You ached mos' awful, stummick; that ain't treatin' me jes' right. I've been a friend to you, I have, why ain't you a friend o' mine? They gave me castor oil last night because you made me whine. I'm awful sick this mornin' an' I'm feelin' mighty blue, 'Cause you don't appreciate the things I do for you. Home and the Office Home is the place where the laughter should ring, And man should be found at his best. Let the cares of the day be as great as they may, The night has been fashioned for rest. So leave at the door when the toiling is o'er All the burdens of worktime behind, And just be a dad to your girl or your lad-- A dad of the rollicking kind. The office is made for the tasks you must face; It is built for the work you must do; You may sit there and sigh as your cares pile up high, And no one may criticize you; You may worry and fret as you think of your debt, You may grumble when plans go astray, But when it comes night, and you shut your desk tight, Don't carry the burdens away. Keep daytime for toil and the nighttime for play, Work as hard as you choose in the town, But when the day ends, and the darkness descends, Just forget that you're wearing a frown-- Go home with a smile! Oh, you'll find it worth while; Go home light of heart and of mind; Go home and be glad that you're loved as a dad, A dad of the fun-loving kind. He's Taken Out His Papers He's taken out his papers, an' he's just like you an' me. He's sworn to love the Stars and Stripes an' die for it, says he. An' he's done with dukes an' princes, an' he's done with kings an' queens, An' he's pledged himself to freedom, for he knows what freedom means. He's bought himself a bit of ground, an', Lord, he's proud an' glad! For in the land he came from that is what he never had. Now his kids can beat his writin', an' they're readin' books, says he, That the children in his country never get a chance to see. He's taken out his papers, an' he's prouder than a king: "It means a lot to me," says he, "just like the breath o' spring, For a new life lies before us; we've got hope an' faith an' cheer; We can face the future bravely, an' our kids don't need to fear." He's taken out his papers, an' his step is light to-day, For a load is off his shoulders an' he treads an easier way; An' he'll tell you, if you ask him, so that you can understand, Just what freedom means to people who have known some other land. Castor Oil I don't mind lickin's, now an' then, An' I can even stand it when My mother calls me in from play To run some errand right away. There's things 'bout bein' just a boy That ain't all happiness an' joy, But I suppose I've got to stand My share o' trouble in this land, An' I ain't kickin' much--but, say, The worst of parents is that they Don't realize just how they spoil A feller's life with castor oil. Of all the awful stuff, Gee Whiz! That is the very worst there is. An' every time if I complain, Or say I've got a little pain, There's nothing else that they can think 'Cept castor oil for me to drink. I notice, though, when Pa is ill, That he gets fixed up with a pill, An' Pa don't handle Mother rough An' make her swallow nasty stuff; But when I've got a little ache, It's castor oil I've got to take. I don't mind goin' up to bed Afore I get the chapter read; I don't mind being scolded, too, For lots of things I didn't do; But, Gee! I hate it when they say, "Come! Swallow this--an' right away!" Let poets sing about the joy It is to be a little boy, I'll tell the truth about my case: The poets here can have my place, An' I will take their life of-toil If they will take my castor oil. A Father's Wish What do I want my boy to be? Oft is the question asked of me, And oft I ask it of myself-- What corner, niche or post or shelf In the great hall of life would I Select for him to occupy? Statesman or writer, poet, sage Or toiler for a weekly wage, Artist or artisan? Oh, what Is to become his future lot? For him I do not dare to plan; I only hope he'll be a man. I leave it free for him to choose The tools of life which he shall use, Brush, pen or chisel, lathe or wrench, The desk of commerce or the bench, And pray that when he makes his choice In each day's task he shall rejoice. I know somewhere there is a need For him to labor and succeed; Somewhere, if he be clean and true, Loyal and honest through and through, He shall be fit for any clan, And so I hope he'll be a man. I would not build my hope or ask That he shall do some certain task, Or bend his will to suit my own; He shall select his post alone. Life needs a thousand kinds of men, Toilers and masters of the pen, Doctors, mechanics, sturdy hands To do the work which it commands, And wheresoe'er he's pleased to go, Honor and triumph he may know. Therefore I must do all I can To teach my boy to be a man. No Better Land Than This If I knew a better country in this glorious world today Where a man's work hours are shorter and he's drawing bigger pay, If the Briton or the Frenchman had an easier life than mine, I'd pack my goods this minute and I'd sail across the brine. But I notice when an alien wants a land of hope and cheer, And a future for his children, he comes out and settles here. Here's the glorious land of Freedom! Here's the milk and honey goal For the peasant out of Russia, for the long-subjected Pole. It is here the sons of Italy and men of Austria turn For the comfort of their bodies and the wages they can earn. And with all that men complain of, and with all that goes amiss, There's no happier, better nation on the world's broad face than this. So I'm thinking when I listen to the wails of discontent, And some foreign disbeliever spreads his evil sentiment, That the breed of hate and envy that is sowing sin and shame In this glorious land of Freedom should go back from whence it came. And I hold it is the duty, rich or poor, of every man Who enjoys this country's bounty to be all American. A Boy and His Dog A boy and his dog make a glorious pair: No better friendship is found anywhere, For they talk and they walk and they run and they play, And they have their deep secrets for many a day; And that boy has a comrade who thinks and who feels, Who walks down the road with a dog at his heels. He may go where he will and his dog will be there, May revel in mud and his dog will not care; Faithful he'll stay for the slightest command And bark with delight at the touch of his hand; Oh, he owns a treasure which nobody steals, Who walks down the road with a dog at his heels. No other can lure him away from his side; He's proof against riches and station and pride; Fine dress does not charm him, and flattery's breath Is lost on the dog, for he's faithful to death; He sees the great soul which the body conceals-- Oh, it's great to be young with a dog at your heels! "Wait Till Your Pa Comes Home" "Wait till your Pa comes home!" Oh, dear! What a dreadful threat for a boy to hear. Yet never a boy of three or four But has heard it a thousand times or more. "Wait till your Pa comes home, my lad, And see what you'll get for being bad, "Wait till your Pa comes home, you scamp! You've soiled the walls with your fingers damp, You've tracked the floor with your muddy feet And fought with the boy across the street; You've torn your clothes and you look a sight! But wait till your Pa comes home to-night." Now since I'm the Pa of that daily threat Which paints me as black as a thing of jet I rise in protest right here to say I won't be used in so fierce a way; No child of mine in the evening gloam Shall be afraid of my coming home. I want him waiting for me at night With eyes that glisten with real delight; When it's right that punished my boy should be I don't want the job postponed for me; I want to come home to a round of joy And not to frighten a little boy. "Wait till your Pa comes home!" Oh, dear, What a dreadful threat for a boy to hear. Yet that is ever his Mother's way Of saving herself from a bitter day; And well she knows in the evening gloam He won't be hurt when his Pa comes home. Nothing to Laugh At 'Taint nothin' to laugh at as I can see! If you'd been stung by a bumble bee, An' your nose wuz swelled an' it smarted, too, You wouldn't want people to laugh at you. If you had a lump that wuz full of fire, Like you'd been touched by a red hot wire, An' your nose spread out like a load of hay, You wouldn't want strangers who come your way To ask you to let 'em see the place An' laugh at you right before your face. What's funny about it, I'd like to know? It isn't a joke to be hurted so! An' how wuz I ever on earth to tell 'At the pretty flower which I stooped to smell In our backyard wuz the very one Which a bee wuz busily working on? An' jus' as I got my nose down there, He lifted his foot an' kicked for fair, An' he planted his stinger right into me, But it's nothin' to laugh at as I can see. I let out a yell an' my Maw came out To see what the trouble wuz all about. She says from my shriek she wuz sure 'at I Had been struck by a motor car passin' by; But when she found what the matter wuz She laughed just like ever'body does An' she made me stand while she poked about To pull his turrible stinger out. An' my Pa laughed, too, when he looked at me, But it's nothin' to laugh at, as I can see. My Maw put witch hazel on the spot To take down the swellin' but it has not. It seems to git bigger as time goes by An' I can't see good out o' this one eye; An' it hurts clean down to my very toes Whenever I've got to blow my nose. An' all I can say is when this gits well There ain't any flowers I'll stoop to smell. I'm through disturbin' a bumble bee, But it's nothin' to laugh at, as I can see. No Room for Hate We have room for the man with an honest dream, With his heart on fire and his eyes agleam; We have room for the man with a purpose true, Who comes to our shores to start life anew, But we haven't an inch of space for him Who comes to plot against life and limb. We have room for the man who will learn our ways, Who will stand by our Flag in its troubled days; We have room for the man who will till the soil, Who will give his hands to a fair day's toil, But we haven't an inch of space to spare For the breeder of hatred and black despair. We have room for the man who will neighbor here, Who will keep his hands and his conscience clear; We have room for the man who'll respect our laws And pledge himself to our country's cause, But we haven't an inch of land to give To the alien breed that will alien live. Against the vicious we bar the gate! This is no breeding ground for hate. This is the land of the brave and free And such we pray it shall always be. We have room for men who will love our flag, But none for the friends of the scarlet rag. The Boy and the Flag I want my boy to love his home, His Mother, yes, and me: I want him, wheresoe'er he'll roam, With us in thought to be. I want him to love what is fine, Nor let his standards drag, But, Oh! I want that boy of mine To love his country's flag! I want him when he older grows To love all things of earth; And Oh! I want him, when he knows, To choose the things of worth. I want him to the heights to climb Nor let ambition lag; But, Oh! I want him all the time To love his country's flag. I want my boy to know the best, I want him to be great; I want him in Life's distant West, Prepared for any fate. I want him to be simple, too, Though clever, ne'er to brag, But, Oh! I want him, through and through, To love his country's flag. I want my boy to be a man, And yet, in distant years, I pray that he'll have eyes that can Not quite keep back the tears When, coming from some foreign shore And alien scenes that fag, Borne on its native breeze, once more He sees his country's flag. Too Big a Price "They say my boy is bad," she said to me, A tired old woman, thin and very frail. "They caught him robbing railroad cars, an' he Must spend from five to seven years in jail. His Pa an' I had hoped so much for him. He was so pretty as a little boy--" Her eyes with tears grew very wet an' dim-- "Now nothing that we've got can give us joy!" "What is it that you own?" I questioned then. "The house we live in," slowly she replied, "Two other houses worked an' slaved for, when The boy was but a youngster at my side, Some bonds we took the time he went to war; I've spent my strength against the want of age-- We've always had some end to struggle for. Now shame an' ruin smear the final page. "His Pa has been a steady-goin' man, Worked day an' night an' overtime as well; He's lived an' dreamed an' sweated to his plan To own the house an' profit should we sell; He never drank nor played much cards at night, He's been a worker since our wedding day, He's lived his life to what he knows is right, An' why should son of his now go astray? "I've rubbed my years away on scrubbing boards, Washed floors for women that owned less than we, An' while they played the ladies an' the lords, We smiled an' dreamed of happiness to be." "And all this time where was the boy?" said I. "Out somewhere playin'!"--Like a rifle shot The thought went home--"My God!" she gave a cry, "We paid too big a price for what we got." Always Saying "Don't!" Folks are queer as they can be, Always sayin' "don't" to me; Don't do this an' don't do that. Don't annoy or tease the cat, Don't throw stones, or climb a tree, Don't play in the road. Oh, Gee! Seems like when I want to play "Don't" is all that they can say. If I start to have some fun, Someone hollers, "Don't you run!" If I want to go an' play Mother says: "Don't go away." Seems my life is filled clear through With the things I mustn't do. All the time I'm shouted at: "No, no, Sonny, don't do that!" Don't shout so an' make a noise, Don't play with those naughty boys, Don't eat candy, don't eat pie, Don't you laugh and don't you cry, Don't stand up and don't you fall, Don't do anything at all. Seems to me both night an' day "Don't" is all that they can say. When I'm older in my ways An' have little boys to raise, Bet I'll let 'em race an' run An' not always spoil their fun; I'll not tell 'em all along Everything they like is wrong, An' you bet your life I won't All the time be sayin' "don't." Boy O' Mine Boy o' mine, boy o' mine, this is my prayer for you, This is my dream and my thought and my care for you: Strong be the spirit which dwells in the breast of you, Never may folly or shame get the best of you; You shall be tempted in fancied security, But make no choice that is stained with impurity. Boy o' mine, boy o' mine, time shall command of you Thought from the brain of you, work from the hand of you; Voices of pleasure shall whisper and call to you, Luring you far from the hard tasks that fall to you; Then as you're meeting life's bitterest test of men, God grant you strength to be true as the best of men. Boy o' mine, boy o' mine, singing your way along, Cling to your laughter and cheerfully play along; Kind to your neighbor be, offer your hand to him, You shall grow great as your heart shall expand to him; But when for victory sweet you are fighting there, Know that your record of life you are writing there. Boy o' mine, boy o' mine, this is my prayer for you; Never may shame pen one line of despair for you; Never may conquest or glory mean all to you; Cling to your honor whatever shall fall to you; Rather than victory, rather than fame to you, Choose to be true and let nothing bring shame to you. To a Little Girl Oh, little girl with eyes of brown And smiles that fairly light the town, I wonder if you really know Just why it is we love you so, And why--with all the little girls With shining eyes and tangled curls That throng and dance this big world through-- Our hearts have room for only you. Since other little girls are gay And laugh and sing and romp in play, And all are beautiful to see, Why should you mean so much to me? And why should Mother, day and night, Make you her source of all delight, And always find in your caress Her greatest sum of happiness? Oh, there's a reason good for this, You laughing little bright-eyed miss! In all this town, with all its girls With shining eyes and sun-kissed curls, If we should search it through and through We'd find not one so fair as you; And none, however fair of face, Within our hearts could take your place. For, one glad day not long ago, God sent you down to us below, And said that you were ours to keep, To guard awake and watch asleep; And ever since the day you came No other child has seemed the same; No other smiles are quite so fair As those which happily you wear. We seem to live from day to day To hear the things you have to say; And just because God gave us you, We prize the little things you do. Though God has filled this world with flowers, We like you best because you're ours-- In you our greatest joys we know, And that is why we love you so. A Feller's Hat It's funny 'bout a feller's hat-- He can't remember where it's at, Or where he took it off, or when, The time he's wantin' it again. He knows just where he leaves his shoes; His sweater he won't often lose; An' he can find his rubbers, but He can't tell where his hat is put. A feller's hat gets anywhere. Sometimes he'll find it in a chair, Or on the sideboard, or maybe It's in the kitchen, just where he Gave it a toss beside the sink When he came in to get a drink, An' then forgot--but anyhow He never knows where it is now. A feller's hat is never where He thinks it is when he goes there; It's never any use to look For it upon a closet hook, 'Cause it is always in some place It shouldn't be, to his disgrace, An' he will find it, like as not, Behind some radiator hot. A feller's hat can get away From him most any time of day, So he can't ever find it when He wants it to go out again; It hides in corners dark an' grim An' seems to want to bother him; It disappears from sight somehow-- I wish I knew where mine is now. The Good Little Boy Once there was a boy who never Tore his clothes, or hardly ever, Never made his sister mad, Never whipped fer bein' bad, Never scolded by his Ma, Never frowned at by his Pa, Always fit fer folks to see, Always good as good could be. This good little boy from Heaven, So I'm told, was only seven, Yet he never shed real tears When his mother scrubbed his ears, An' at times when he was dressed Fer a party, in his best, He was careful of his shirt Not to get it smeared with dirt. Used to study late at night, Learnin' how to read an' write; When he played a baseball game, Right away he always came When his mother called him in. An' he never made a din But was quiet as a mouse When they'd comp'ny in the house. Liked to wash his hands an' face, Liked to work around the place; Never, when he'd tired of play, Left his wagon in the way, Or his bat an' ball around-- Put 'em where they could be found; An' that good boy married Ma, An' to-day he is my Pa. Green Apple Time Green apple time! an', Oh, the joy Once more to be a healthy boy, Casting a longin' greedy eye At every tree he passes by! Riskin' the direst consequence To sneak inside a neighbor's fence An' shake from many a loaded limb The fruit that seems so near to him Gosh! but once more I'd like to be The boy I was in eighty-three. Here I am sittin' with my pipe, Waitin' for apples to get ripe; Waitin' until the friendly sun Has bronzed 'em all an' says they're done; Not darin' any more to climb An' pick a few afore their time. No legs to run, no teeth to chew The way that healthy youngsters do; Jus' old enough to sit an' wait An' pick my apple from a plate. Plate apples ain't to be compared With those you've ventured for an' dared. It's winnin' 'em from branches high, Or nippin' 'em when no one's by, Or findin' 'em the time you feel You really need another meal, Or comin' unexpectedly Upon a farmer's loaded tree An' grabbin' all that you can eat, That goes to make an apple sweet. Green apple time! Go to it, boy, An' cram yourself right full o' joy; Watch for the farmer's dog an' run; There'll come a time it can't be done. There'll come a day you can't digest The fruit you've stuffed into your vest, Nor climb, but you'll sit down like me An' watch 'em ripening on the tree, An' jus' like me you'll have to wait To pick your apples from a plate. She Mothered Five She mothered five! Night after night she watched a little bed, Night after night she cooled a fevered head, Day after day she guarded little feet, Taught little minds the dangers of the street, Taught little lips to utter simple prayers, Whispered of strength that some day would be theirs, And trained them all to use it as they should. She gave her babies to the nation's good. She mothered five! She gave her beauty--from her cheeks let fade Their rose-blush beauty--to her mother trade. She saw the wrinkles furrowing her brow, Yet smiling said: "My boy grows stronger now." When pleasures called she turned away and said: "I dare not leave my babies to be fed By strangers' hands; besides they are too small; I must be near to hear them when they call." She mothered five! Night after night they sat about her knee And heard her tell of what some day would be. From her they learned that in the world outside Are cruelty and vice and selfishness and pride; From her they learned the wrongs they ought to shun, What things to love, what work must still be done. She led them through the labyrinth of youth And brought five men and women up to truth. She mothered five! Her name may be unknown save to the few; Of her the outside world but little knew; But somewhere five are treading virtue's ways, Serving the world and brightening its days; Somewhere are five, who, tempted, stand upright, Who cling to honor, keep her memory bright; Somewhere this mother toils and is alive No more as one, but in the breasts of five. Little Girls Are Best Little girls are mighty nice, Take 'em any way they come; They are always worth their price; Life without 'em would be glum; Run earth's lists of treasures through, Pile 'em high until they fall, Gold an' costly jewels, too-- Little girls are best of all. Nothing equals 'em on earth! I'm an old man an' I know Any little girl is worth More than all the gold below; Eyes o' blue or brown or gray, Raven hair or golden curls, There's no joy on earth to-day Quite so fine as little girls. Pudgy nose or freckled face, Fairy-like or plain to see, God has surely blessed the place Where a little girl may be; They're the jewels of His crown Dropped to earth from heaven above, Like wee angel souls sent down To remind us of His love. God has made some lovely things-- Roses red an' skies o' blue, Trees an' babbling silver springs, Gardens glistening with dew-- But take every gift to man, Big an' little, great an' small, Judge it on its merits, an' Little girls are best of all! The World and Bud If we were all alike, what a dreadful world 'twould be! No one would know which one was you or which of us was me. We'd never have a "Skinny" or a "Freckles" or a "Fat," An' there wouldn't be a sissy boy to wear a velvet hat; An' we'd all of us be pitchers when we played a baseball match, For we'd never have a feller who'd have nerve enough to catch. If we were all alike an' looked an' thought the same, I wonder how'd they call us, 'cause there'd only be one name. An' there'd only be one flavor for our ice cream sodas, too, An' one color for a necktie an' I 'spose that would be blue; An' maybe we'd have mothers who were very fond of curls, An' they'd make us fellers wear our hair like lovely little girls. Sometimes I think it's funny when I hear some feller say That he isn't fond of chocolate, when I eat it every day. Or some other fellow doesn't like the books I like to read; But I'm glad that we are different, yes, siree! I am indeed. If everybody looked alike an' talked alike, Oh, Gee! We'd never know which one was you or which of us was me. Aw Gee Whiz! Queerest little chap he is, Always saying: "Aw Gee Whiz!" Needing something from the store That you've got to send him for And you call him from his play, Then it is you hear him say: "Aw Gee Whiz!" Seems that most expressive phrase Is a part of childhood days; Call him in at supper time, Hands and face all smeared with grime, Send him up to wash, and he Answers you disgustedly: "Aw Gee Whiz!" When it's time to go to bed And he'd rather play instead, As you call him from the street, He comes in with dragging feet, Knowing that he has to go, Then it is he mutters low: "Aw Gee Whiz!" Makes no difference what you ask Of him as a little task; He has yet to learn that life Crosses many a joy with strife, So when duty mars his play, Always we can hear him say: "Aw Gee Whiz!" Practicing Time Always whenever I want to play I've got to practice an hour a day, Get through breakfast an' make my bed, And Mother says: "Marjorie, run ahead! There's a time for work and a time for fun, So go and get your practicing done." And Bud, he chuckles and says to me: "Yes, do your practicing, Marjorie." A brother's an awful tease, you know, And he just says that 'cause I hate it so. They leave me alone in the parlor there To play the scales or "The Maiden's Prayer," And if I stop, Mother's bound to call, "Marjorie dear, you're not playing at all! Don't waste your time, but keep right on, Or you'll have to stay when the hour is gone." Or maybe the maid looks in at me And says: "You're not playing, as I can see. Just hustle along--I've got work to do And I can't dust the room until you get through." Then when I've run over the scales and things Like "The Fairies' Dance," or "The Mountain Springs," And my fingers ache and my head is sore, I find I must sit there a half hour more. An hour is terribly long, I say, When you've got to practice and want to play. So slowly at times has the big hand dropped That I was sure that the clock had stopped, But Mother called down to me: "Don't forget-- A full hour, please. It's not over yet." Oh, when I get big and have children, too, There's one thing that I will never do-- I won't have brothers to tease the girls And make them mad when they pull their curls And laugh at them when they've got to stay And practice their music an hour a day; I won't have a maid like the one we've got, That likes to boss you around a lot; And I won't have a clock that can go so slow When it's practice time, 'cause I hate it so. The Christmas Gift for Mother In the Christmas times of the long ago, There was one event we used to know That was better than any other; It wasn't the toys that we hoped to get, But the talks we had--and I hear them yet-- Of the gift we'd buy for Mother. If ever love fashioned a Christmas gift, Or saved its money and practiced thrift, 'Twas done in those days, my brother-- Those golden times of Long Gone By, Of our happiest years, when you and I Talked over the gift for Mother. We hadn't gone forth on our different ways Nor coined our lives into yesterdays In the fires that smelt and smother, And we whispered and planned in our youthful glee Of that marvelous "something" which was to be The gift of our hearts to Mother. It had to be all that our purse could give, Something she'd treasure while she could live, And better than any other. We gave it the best of our love and thought, And, Oh, the joy when at last we'd bought That marvelous gift for Mother! Now I think as we go on our different ways, Of the joy of those vanished yesterdays. How good it would be, my brother, If this Christmas-time we could only know That same sweet thrill of the Long Ago When we shared in the gift for Mother. Bedtime It's bedtime, and we lock the door, Put out the lights--the day is o'er; All that can come of good or ill, The record of this day to fill, Is written down; the worries cease, And old and young may rest in peace. We knew not when we started out What dangers hedged us all about, What little pleasures we should gain, What should be ours to bear of pain. But now the fires are burning low, And this day's history we know. No harm has come. The laughter here Has been unbroken by a tear; We've met no hurt too great to bear, We have not had to bow to care; The children all are safe in bed, There's nothing now for us to dread. When bedtime comes and we can say That we have safely lived the day. How sweet the calm that settles down And shuts away the noisy town! There is no danger now to fear Until to-morrow shall appear. When the long bedtime comes, and I In sleep eternal come to lie-- When life has nothing more in store, And silently I close the door, God grant my weary soul may claim Security from hurt and shame. The Willing Horse I'd rather be the willing horse that people ride to death Than be the proud and haughty steed that children dare not touch; I'd rather haul a merry pack and finish out of breath Than never leave the barn to toil because I'm worth too much. So boast your noble pedigrees And talk of manners, if you please-- The weary horse enjoys his ease When all his work is done; The willing horse, day in and out, Can hear the merry children shout And every time they are about He shares in all their fun. I want no guards beside my door to pick and choose my friends for me; I would not be shut off from men as is the fancy steed; I do not care when I go by that no one turns his eyes to see The dashing manner of my gait which marks my noble breed; I am content to trudge the road And willingly to draw my load-- Sometimes to know the spur and goad When I begin to lag; I'd rather feel the collar jerk And tug at me, the while I work, Than all the tasks of life to shirk As does the stylish nag. So let me be the willing horse that now and then is overtasked, Let me be one the children love and freely dare to ride-- I'd rather be the gentle steed of which too much is sometimes asked Than be the one that never knows the youngsters at his side. So drive me wheresoe'er you will, On level road or up the hill, Pile on my back the burdens still And run me out of breath-- In love and friendship, day by day, And kindly words I'll take my pay; A willing horse; that is the way I choose to meet my death. Where Children Play On every street there's a certain place Where the children gather to romp and race; There's a certain house where they meet in throngs To play their games and to sing their songs, And they trample the lawn with their busy feet And they scatter their playthings about the street, But though some folks order them off, I say, Let the house be mine where the children play. Armies gather about the door And fill the air with their battle roar; Cowboys swinging their lariat loops Dash round the house with the wildest whoops, And old folks have to look out when they Are holding an Indian tribe at bay, For danger may find them on flying feet, Who pass by the house where the children meet. There are lawns too lovely to bear the weight Of a troop of boys when they roller skate; There are porches fine that must never know The stamping of footsteps that come and go, But on every street there's a favorite place Where the children gather to romp and race, And I'm glad in my heart that it's mine to say Ours is the house where the children play. How Do You Buy Your Money? How do you buy your money? For money is bought and sold, And each man barters himself on earth for his silver and shining gold, And by the bargain he makes with men, the sum of his life is told. Some buy their coins in a manly way, some buy them with honest toil; Some pay for their currency here on earth by tilling a patch of soil; Some buy it with copper and iron and steel, and some with barrels of oil. The good man buys it from day to day by giving the best he can; He coins his strength for his children's needs and lives to a simple plan, And he keeps some time for the home he makes and some for his fellowman. But some men buy it with women's tears, and some with a blasted name; And some will barter the joy of life for the fortune they hope to claim; And some are so mad for the clink of gold that they buy it with deeds of shame. How do you buy your money? For money demands its price, And some men think when they purchase coin that they mustn't be over-nice-- But beware of the man who would sell you gold at a shameful sacrifice! Mother's Day Let every day be Mother's Day! Make roses grow along her way And beauty everywhere. Oh, never let her eyes be wet With tears of sorrow or regret, And never cease to care! Come, grown up children, and rejoice That you can hear your mother's voice! A day for her! For you she gave Long years of love and service brave; For you her youth was spent. There was no weight of hurt or care Too heavy for her strength to bear; She followed where you went; Her courage and her love sublime You could depend on all the time. No day or night she set apart On which to open wide her heart And welcome you within; There was no hour you would not be First in her thought and memory, Though you were black as sin! Though skies were gray or skies were blue Not once has she forgotten you. Let every day be Mother's Day! With love and roses strew her way, And smiles of joy and pride! Come, grown up children, to the knee Where long ago you used to be And never turn aside; Oh, never let her eyes grow wet With tears, because her babes forget. When We Play the Fool Last night I stood in a tawdry place And watched the ways of the human race. I looked at a party of shrieking girls Piled on a table that whirls and whirls, And saw them thrown in a tangled heap, Sprawling and squirming and several deep. And unto the wife who was standing by, "These are all angels to be," said I. I followed the ways of the merry throng And heard the laughter and mirth and song. Into a barrel which turned and swayed Men and women a journey made, And tumbling together they seemed to be Like so many porpoises out at sea-- Men and women who'd worked all day, Eagerly seeking a chance to play. "What do you make of it all?" she said. I answered: "The dead are a long time dead, And care is bitter and duty stern, And each must weep when it comes his turn. And all grow weary and long for play, So here is laughter to end the day. Foolish? Oh, yes, it is that," said I, "But better the laugh than the dreary sigh. "Now look at us here, for we're like them, too, And many the foolish things we do. We often grow silly and seek a smile In a thousand ways that are not worth while; Yet after the mirth and the jest are through, We shall all be judged by the deeds we do, And God shall forget on the Judgment Day The fools we were in our hours of play." What Makes an Artist We got to talking art one day, discussing in a general way How some can match with brush and paint the glory of a tree, And some in stone can catch the things of which the dreamy poet sings, While others seem to have no way to tell the joys they see. Old Blake had sat in silence there and let each one of us declare Our notions of what's known as art, until he'd heard us through; And then said he: "It seems to me that any man, whoe'er he be, Becomes an artist by the good he daily tries to do. "He need not write the books men read to be an artist. No, indeed! He need not work with paint and brush to show his love of art; Who does a kindly deed to-day and helps another on his way, Has painted beauty on a face and played the poet's part. "Though some of us cannot express our inmost thoughts of loveliness, We prove we love the beautiful by how we act and live; The poet singing of a tree no greater poet is than he Who finds it in his heart some care unto a tree to give. "Though he who works in marble stone the name of artist here may own, No less an artist is the man who guards his children well; 'Tis art to love the fine and true; by what we are and what we do How much we love life's nobler things to all the world we tell." She Powders Her Nose A woman is queer, there's no doubt about that. She hates to be thin and she hates to be fat; One minute it's laughter, the next it's a cry-- You can't understand her, however you try; But there's one thing about her which everyone knows-- A woman's not dressed till she powders her nose. You never can tell what a woman will say; She's a law to herself every hour of the day. It keeps a man guessing to know what to do, And mostly he's wrong when his guessing is through; But this you can bet on, wherever she goes She'll find some occasion to powder her nose. I've studied the sex for a number of years; I've watched her in laughter and seen her in tears; On her ways and her whims I have pondered a lot, To find what will please her and just what will not; But all that I've learned from the start to the close Is that sooner or later she'll powder her nose. At church or a ball game, a dance or a show, There's one thing about her I know that I know-- At weddings or funerals, dinners of taste, You can bet that her hand will dive into her waist, And every few minutes she'll strike up a pose, And the whole world must wait till she powders her nose. The Chip on Your Shoulder You'll learn when you're older that chip on your shoulder Which you dare other boys to upset, And stand up and fight for and struggle and smite for, Has caused you much shame and regret. When Time, life's adviser, has made you much wiser, You won't be so quick with the blow; You won't be so willing to fight for a shilling, And change a good friend to a foe. You won't be a sticker for trifles, and bicker And quarrel for nothing at all; You'll grow to be kinder, more thoughtful and blinder To faults which are petty and small. You won't take the trouble your two fists to double When someone your pride may offend; When with rage now you bristle you'll smile or you'll whistle, And keep the good will of a friend. You'll learn when you're older that chip on your shoulder Which proudly you battle to guard, Has frequently shamed you and often defamed you And left you a record that's marred! When you've grown calm and steady, you won't be so ready To fight for a difference that's small, For you'll know, when you're older that chip on your shoulder Is only a chip after all. All for the Best Things mostly happen for the best. However hard it seems to-day, When some fond plan has gone astray Or what you've wished for most is lost An' you sit countin' up the cost With eyes half-blind by tears o' grief While doubt is chokin' out belief, You'll find when all is understood That what seemed bad was really good. Life can't be counted in a day. The present rain that will not stop Next autumn means a bumper crop. We wonder why some things must be-- Care's purpose we can seldom see-- An' yet long afterwards we turn To view the past, an' then we learn That what once filled our minds with doubt Was good for us as it worked out. I've never known an hour of care But that I've later come to see That it has brought some joy to me. Even the sorrows I have borne, Leavin' me lonely an' forlorn An' hurt an' bruised an' sick at heart, In life's great plan have had a part. An' though I could not understand Why I should bow to Death's command, As time went on I came to know That it was really better so. Things mostly happen for the best. So narrow is our vision here That we are blinded by a tear An' stunned by every hurt an' blow Which comes to-day to strike us low. An' yet some day we turn an' find That what seemed cruel once was kind. Most things, I hold, are wisely planned If we could only understand. The Kick Under the Table After a man has been married awhile, And his wife has grown used to his manner and style, When she knows from the twinkle that lights up his eye The thoughts he is thinking, the wherefore and why, And just what he'll say, and just what he'll do, And is sure that he'll make a bad break ere he's through, She has one little trick that she'll work when she's able-- She takes a sly kick at him under the table. He may fancy the story he's telling is true, Or he's doing the thing which is proper to do; He may fancy he's holding his own with the rest, The life of the party and right at his best, When quickly he learns to his utter dismay, That he mustn't say what he's just started to say. He is stopped at the place where he hoped to begin, By his wife, who has taken a kick at his shin. If he picks the wrong fork for the salad, he knows That fact by the feel of his wife's slippered toes. If he's started a bit of untellable news, On the calf of his leg there is planted a bruise. Oh, I wonder sometimes what would happen to me If the wife were not seated just where she could be On guard every minute to watch every trick, And keep me in line all the time with her kick. Leader of the Gang Seems only just a year ago that he was toddling round the place In pretty little colored suits and with a pink and shining face. I used to hold him in my arms to watch when our canary sang, And now tonight he tells me that he's leader of his gang. It seems but yesterday, I vow, that I with fear was almost dumb, Living those dreadful hours of care waiting the time for him to come; And I can still recall the thrill of that first cry of his which rang Within our walls. And now that babe tells me he's leader of his gang. Gone from our lives are all the joys which yesterday we used to own; The baby that we thought we had, out of the little home has flown, And in his place another stands, whose garments in disorder hang, A lad who now with pride proclaims that he's the leader of his gang. And yet somehow I do not grieve for what it seems we may have lost; To have so strong a boy as this, most cheerfully I pay the cost. I find myself a sense of joy to comfort every little pang, And pray that they shall find in him a worthy leader of the gang. Ma and the Ouija Board I don't know what it's all about, but Ma says that she wants to know If spirits in the other world can really talk to us below. An' Pa says, "Gosh! there's folks enough on earth to talk to, I should think, Without you pesterin' the folks whose souls have gone across the brink." But Ma, she wants to find out things an' study on her own accord, An' so a month or two ago she went an' bought a ouija board. It's just a shiny piece of wood, with letters printed here an' there, An' has a little table which you put your fingers on with care, An' then you sit an' whisper low some question that you want to know. Then by an' by the spirit comes an' makes the little table go, An' Ma, she starts to giggle then an' Pa just grumbles out, "Oh, Lord! I wish you hadn't bought this thing. We didn't need a ouija board." "You're movin' it!" says Ma to Pa. "I'm not!" says Pa, "I know it's you; You're makin' it spell things to us that you know very well aren't true." "That isn't so," says Ma to him, "but I am certain from the way The ouija moves that you're the one who's tellin' it just what to say." "It's just 'lectricity," says Pa; "like batteries all men are stored, But anyhow I don't believe we ought to have a ouija board." One night Ma got it out, an' said, "Now, Pa, I want you to be fair, Just keep right still an' let your hands rest lightly on the table there. Oh, Ouija, tell me, tell me true, are we to buy another car, An' will we get it very soon?" she asked. "Oh, tell us from afar." "Don't buy a car," the letters spelled, "the price this year you can't afford." Then Ma got mad, an' since that time she's never used the ouija board. The Call of the Woods I must get out to the woods again, to the whispering trees and the birds awing, Away from the haunts of pale-faced men, to the spaces wide where strength is king; I must get out where the skies are blue and the air is clean and the rest is sweet, Out where there's never a task to do or a goal to reach or a foe to meet. I must get out on the trails once more that wind through shadowy haunts and cool, Away from the presence of wall and door, and see myself in a crystal pool; I must get out with the silent things, where neither laughter nor hate is heard, Where malice never the humblest stings and no one is hurt by a spoken word. Oh, I've heard the call of the tall white pine, and heard the call of the running brook; I'm tired of the tasks which each day are mine; I'm weary of reading a printed book. I want to get out of the din and strife, the clang and clamor of turning wheel, And walk for a day where life is life, and the joys are true and the pictures real. Committee Meetings For this and that and various things It seems that men must get together, To purchase cups or diamond rings Or to discuss the price of leather. From nine to ten, or two to three, Or any hour that's fast and fleeting, There is a constant call for me To go to some committee meeting. The church has serious work to do, The lodge and club has need of workers, They ask for just an hour or two-- Surely I will not join the shirkers? Though I have duties of my own I should not drop before completing, There comes the call by telephone To go to some committee meeting. No longer may I eat my lunch In quietude and contemplation; I must foregather with the bunch To raise a fund to save the nation. And I must talk of plans and schemes The while a scanty bite I'm eating, Until I vow to-day it seems My life is one committee meeting. When over me the night shall fall, And my poor soul goes upwards winging Unto that heavenly realm, where all Is bright with joy and gay with singing, I hope to hear St. Peter say-- And I shall thank him for the greeting: "Come in and rest from day to day; Here there is no committee meeting!" Pa and the Monthly Bills When Ma gets out the monthly bills and sets them all in front of Dad, She makes us children run away because she knows he may get mad; An' then she smiles a bit and says: "I hope you will not fuss and fret-- There's nothing here except the things I absolutely had to get!" An' Pa he looks 'em over first. "The things you had to have!" says he; "I s'pose that we'd have died without that twenty dollar longeree." Then he starts in to write the checks for laundry an' for light an' gas, An' never says a word 'bout them--because they're small he lets 'em pass. But when he starts to grunt an' groan, an' stops the while his pipe he fills, We know that he is gettin' down to where Ma's hid the bigger bills. "Just what we had to have," says he, "an' I'm supposed to pay the tolls; Nine dollars an' a half for--say, what the deuce are camisoles? "If you should break a leg," says Pa, "an couldn't get down town to shop, I'll bet the dry goods men would see their business take an awful drop, An' if they missed you for a week, they'd have to fire a dozen clerks! Say, couldn't we have got along without this bunch of Billie Burkes?" But Ma just sits an' grins at him, an' never has a word to say, Because she says Pa likes to fuss about the bills he has to pay. Bob White Out near the links where I go to play My favorite game from day to day, There's a friend of mine that I've never met Walked with or broken bread with, yet I've talked to him oft and he's talked to me Whenever I've been where he's chanced to be; He's a cheery old chap who keeps out of sight, A gay little fellow whose name is Bob White. Bob White! Bob White! I can hear him call As I follow the trail to my little ball-- Bob White! Bob White! with a note of cheer That was just designed for a mortal ear. Then I drift far off from the world of men And I send an answer right back to him then; An' we whistle away to each other there, Glad of the life which is ours to share. Bob White! Bob White! May you live to be The head of a numerous family! May you boldly call to your friends out here, With never an enemy's gun to fear. I'm a better man as I pass along, For your cheery call and your bit of song. May your food be plenty and skies be bright To the end of your days, good friend Bob White! When Ma Wants Something New Last night Ma said to Pa: "My dear, The Williamsons are coming here To visit for a week or two, An' I must have a talk with you. We need some things which we must get-- You promised me a dinner set, An' I should like it while they're here." An' Pa looked up an' said: "My dear, A dinner set? Well, I guess not. What's happened to the one we've got?" "We need a parlor rug," says Ma. "We've got a parlor rug," says Pa. "We ought to have another chair." "You're sittin' in a good one there." "The parlor curtains are a fright." "When these are washed they look all right." "The old stuff's pitiful to see." "It still looks mighty good to me." "The sofa's worn beyond repair." "It doesn't look so bad, I swear." "Gee Whiz, you make me tired," says Ma. "Why, what's the matter now?" says Pa. "You come an' go an' never see How old our stuff has grown to be; It still looks just the same to you As what it did when it was new, An' every time you think it strange That I should like to have a change." "I'm gettin' old," says Pa. "Maybe You'd like a younger man than me." "If this old rug was worn an' thin, At night you'd still come walkin' in An' throw your hat upon a chair An' never see a single tear; So long as any chair could stand An' bear your weight you'd think it grand. If home depended all on you, It never would get something new." "All right," says Pa, "go buy the stuff! But, say, am I still good enough?" Sittin' on the Porch Sittin' on the porch at night when all the tasks are done, Just restin' there an' talkin', with my easy slippers on, An' my shirt band thrown wide open an' my feet upon the rail, Oh, it's then I'm at my richest, with a wealth that cannot fail; For the scent of early roses seems to flood the evening air, An' a throne of downright gladness is my wicker rocking chair. The dog asleep beside me, an' the children rompin' 'round With their shrieks of merry laughter, Oh, there is no gladder sound To the ears o' weary mortals, spite of all the scoffers say, Or a grander bit of music than the children at their play! An' I tell myself times over, when I'm sittin' there at night, That the world in which I'm livin' is a place o' real delight. Then the moon begins its climbin' an' the stars shine overhead, An' the mother calls the children an' she takes 'em up to bed, An' I smoke my pipe in silence an' I think o' many things, An' balance up my riches with the lonesomeness o' kings, An' I come to this conclusion, an' I'll wager that I'm right-- That I'm happier than they are, sittin' on my porch at night. With Dog and Gun Out in the woods with a dog an' gun Is my idea of a real day's fun. 'Tain't the birds that I'm out to kill That furnish me with the finest thrill, 'Cause I never worry or fret a lot, Or curse my luck if I miss a shot. There's many a time, an' I don't know why, That I shoot too low or I aim too high, An' all I can see is the distant whirr Of a bird that's gittin' back home to her-- Yep, gittin' back home at the end o' day, An' I'm just as glad that he got away. There's a whole lot more in the woods o' fall Than the birds you bag--if you think at all. There's colors o' gold an' red an' brown As never were known in the busy town; There's room to breathe in the purest air An' something worth looking at everywhere; There's the dog who's leadin' you on an' on To a patch o' cover where birds have gone, An' standin' there, without move or change, Till you give the sign that you've got the range. That's thrill enough for my blood, I say, So why should I care if they get away? Fact is, there are times that I'd ruther miss Than to bring 'em down, 'cause I feel like this: There's a heap more joy in a living thing Than a breast crushed in or a broken wing, An' I can't feel right, an' I never will, When I look at a bird that I've dared to kill. Oh, I'm jus' plumb happy to tramp about An' follow my dog as he hunts 'em out, Jus' watchin' him point in his silent way Where the Bob Whites are an' the partridge stay; For the joy o' the great outdoors I've had, So why should I care if my aim is bad? Old Mister Laughter Old Mister Laughter Comes a-grinnin' down the way, Singin': "Never mind your troubles, For they'll surely pass away." Singin': "Now the sun is shinin' An' there's roses everywhere; To-morrow will be soon enough To fret about your care." Old Mister Laughter Comes a-grinnin' at my door, Singin': "Don't go after money When you've got enough and more." Singin': "Laugh with me this mornin' An' be happy while you may. What's the use of riches If they never let you play?" Old Mister Laughter Comes a-grinnin' all the time, Singin' happy songs o' gladness In a good old-fashioned rhyme. Singin': "Keep the smiles a-goin', Till they write your epitaph, And don't let fame or fortune Ever steal away your laugh." A Family Row I freely confess there are good friends of mine, With whom we are often invited to dine, Who get on my nerves so that I cannot eat Or stay with my usual ease in my seat; For I know that if something should chance to occur Which he may not like or which doesn't please her, That we'll have to try to be pleasant somehow While they stage a fine little family row. Now a family row is a private affair, And guests, I am certain, should never be there; I have freely maintained that a man and his wife Cannot always agree on their journey through life, But they ought not to bicker and wrangle and shout And show off their rage when their friends are about; It takes all the joy from a party, I vow, When some couple starts up a family row. It's a difficult job to stay cool and polite When your host and your hostess are staging a fight: It's hard to talk sweet to a dame with a frown Or smile at a man that you want to knock down. You sit like a dummy and look far away, But you just can't help hearing the harsh things they say. It ruins the dinner, I'm telling you now, When your host and your hostess get mixed in a row. The Lucky Man Luck had a favor to bestow And wondered where to let it go. "No lazy man on earth," said she, "Shall get this happy gift from me. "I will not pass it to the man Who will not do the best he can. "I will not make this splendid gift To one who has not practiced thrift. "It shall not benefit deceit, Nor help the man who's played the cheat. "He that has failed to fight with pluck Shall never know the Goddess Luck. "I'll look around a bit to see What man has earned some help from me." She found a man whose hands were soiled Because from day to day he'd toiled. He'd dreamed by night and worked by day To make life's contest go his way. He'd kept his post and daily slaved, And something of his wage he'd saved. He'd clutched at every circumstance Which might have been his golden chance. The goddess smiled and then, kerslap! She dropped her favor in his lap. Lonely They're all away And the house is still, And the dust lies thick On the window sill, And the stairway creaks In a solemn tone This taunting phrase: "You are all alone." They've gone away And the rooms are bare; I miss his cap From a parlor chair. And I miss the toys In the lonely hall, But most of any I miss his call. I miss the shouts And the laughter gay Which greeted me At the close of day, And there isn't a thing In the house we own But sobbingly says: "You are all alone." It's only a house That is mine to know, An empty house That is cold with woe; Like a prison grim With its bars of black, And it won't be home Till they all come back. The Cookie Jar You can rig up a house with all manner of things, The prayer rugs of sultans and princes and kings; You can hang on its walls the old tapestries rare Which some dead Egyptian once treasured with care; But though costly and gorgeous its furnishings are, It must have, to be homelike, an old cookie jar. There are just a few things that a home must possess, Besides all your money and all your success-- A few good old books which some loved one has read, Some trinkets of those whose sweet spirits have fled, And then in the pantry, not shoved back too far For the hungry to get to, that old cookie jar. Let the house be a mansion, I care not at all! Let the finest of pictures be hung on each wall, Let the carpets be made of the richest velour, And the chairs only those which great wealth can procure, I'd still want to keep for the joy of my flock That homey, old-fashioned, well-filled cookie crock. Like the love of the Mother it shines through our years; It has soothed all our hurts and has dried away tears; It has paid us for toiling; in sorrow or joy, It has always shown kindness to each girl and boy; And I'm sorry for people, whoever they are, Who live in a house where there's no cookie jar. Little Wrangles Lord, we've had our little wrangles, an' we've had our little bouts; There's many a time, I reckon, that we have been on the outs; My tongue's a trifle hasty an' my temper's apt to fly, An' Mother, let me tell you, has a sting in her reply, But I couldn't live without her, an' it's plain as plain can be That in fair or sunny weather Mother needs a man like me. I've banged the door an' muttered angry words beneath my breath, For at times when she was scoldin' Mother's plagued me most to death, But we've always laughed it over, when we'd both cooled down a bit, An' we never had a difference but a smile would settle it. An' if such a thing could happen, we could share life's joys an' tears An' live right on together for another thousand years. Some men give up too easy in the game o' married life; They haven't got the courage to be worthy of a wife; An' I've seen a lot o' women that have made their lives a mess, 'Cause they couldn't bear the burdens that are, mixed with happiness. So long as folks are human they'll have many faults that jar, An' the way to live with people is to take them as they are. We've been forty years together, good an' bad, an' rain an' shine; I've forgotten Mother's faults now an' she never mentions mine. In the days when sorrow struck us an' we shared a common woe We just leaned upon each other, an' our weakness didn't show. An' I learned how much I need her an' how tender she can be An' through it, maybe, Mother saw the better side o' me. The Wide Outdoors The rich may pay for orchids rare, but, Oh the apple tree Flings out its blossoms to the world for every eye to see, And all who sigh for loveliness may walk beneath the sky And claim a richer beauty than man's gold can ever buy. The blooming cherry trees are free for all to look upon; The dogwood buds for all of us, and not some favorite one; The wide outdoors is no man's own; the stranger on the street Can cast his eyes on many a rose and claim its fragrance sweet. Small gardens are shut in by walls, but none can wall the sky, And none can hide the friendly trees from all who travel by; And none can hold the apple boughs and claim them for his own, For all the beauties of the earth belong to God alone. So let me walk the world just now and wander far and near; Earth's loveliness is mine to see, its music mine to hear; There's not a single apple bough that spills its blooms about But I can claim the joy of it, and none can shut me out. "Where's Mamma?" Comes in flying from the street; "Where's Mamma?" Friend or stranger thus he'll greet: "Where's Mamma?" Doesn't want to say hello, Home from school or play he'll go Straight to what he wants to know: "Where's Mamma?" Many times a day he'll shout, "Where's Mamma?" Seems afraid that she's gone out; "Where's Mamma?" Is his first thought at the door-- She's the one he's looking for, And he questions o'er and o'er, "Where's Mamma?" Can't be happy till he knows: "Where's Mamma?" So he begs us to disclose "Where's Mamma?" And it often seems to me, As I hear his anxious plea, That no sweeter phrase can be: "Where's Mamma?" Like to hear it day by day; "Where's Mamma?" Loveliest phrase that lips can say: "Where's Mamma?" And I pray as time shall flow, And the long years come and go, That he'll always want to know "Where's Mamma?" Summer Dreams Drowsy old summer, with nothing to do, I'd like to be drowsin' an' dreamin' with you; I'd like to stretch out in the shade of a tree, An' fancy the white clouds were ships out at sea, Or castles with turrets and treasures and things, And peopled with princesses, fairies and kings, An' just drench my soul with the glorious joy Which was mine to possess as a barefooted boy. Drowsy old summer, your skies are as blue As the skies which a dreamy-eyed youngster once knew, An' I fancy to-day all the pictures are there-- The ships an' the pirates an' princesses fair, The red scenes of battle, the gay, cheering throngs Which greeted the hero who righted all wrongs; But somehow or other, these old eyes of mine Can't see what they did as a youngster of nine. Drowsy old summer, I'd like to forget Some things which I've learned an' some hurts I have met; I'd like the old visions of splendor an' joy Which were mine to possess as a barefooted boy When I dreamed of the glorious deeds I would do As soon as I'd galloped my brief boyhood through; I'd like to come back an' look into your skies With that wondrous belief an' those far-seeing eyes. Drowsy old summer, my dream days have gone; Only things which are real I must now look upon; No longer I see in the skies overhead The pictures that were, for the last one has fled. I have learned that not all of our dreams can come true; That the toilers are many and heroes are few; But I'd like once again to look up there an' see The man that I fancied some day I might be. I Ain't Dead Yet Time was I used to worry and I'd sit around an' sigh, And think with every ache I got that I was goin' to die, I'd see disaster comin' from a dozen different ways An' prophesy calamity an' dark and dreary days. But I've come to this conclusion, that it's foolishness to fret; I've had my share o' sickness, but I Ain't Dead Yet! Wet springs have come to grieve me an' I've grumbled at the showers, But I can't recall a June-time that forgot to bring the flowers. I've had my business troubles, and looked failure in the face, But the crashes I expected seemed to pass right by the place. So I'm takin' life more calmly, pleased with everything I get, An' not over-hurt by losses, 'cause I Ain't Dead Yet! I've feared a thousand failures an' a thousand deaths I've died, I've had this world in ruins by the gloom I've prophesied. But the sun shines out this mornin' an' the skies above are blue, An' with all my griefs an' trouble, I have somehow lived 'em through. There may be cares before me, much like those that I have met; Death will come some day an' take me, but I Ain't Dead Yet! The Cure for Weariness Seemed like I couldn't stand it any more, The factory whistles blowin' day by day, An' men an' children hurryin' by the door, An' street cars clangin' on their busy way. The faces of the people seemed to be Washed pale by tears o' grief an' strife an' care, Till everywhere I turned to I could see The same old gloomy pictures of despair. The windows of the shops all looked the same, Decked out with stuff their owners wished to sell; When visitors across our doorway came I could recite the tales they'd have to tell. All things had lost their old-time power to please; Dog-tired I was an' irritable, too, An' so I traded chimney tops for trees, An' shingled roof for open skies of blue. I dropped my tools an' took my rod an' line An' tackle box an' left the busy town; I found a favorite restin' spot of mine Where no one seeks for fortune or renown. I whistled to the birds that flew about, An' built a lot of castles in my dreams; I washed away the stains of care an' doubt An' thanked the Lord for woods an' running streams. I've cooked my meals before an open fire, I've had the joy of green smoke in my face, I've followed for a time my heart's desire An' now the path of duty I retrace. I've had my little fishin' trip, an' go Once more contented to the haunts of men; I'm ready now to hear the whistles blow An' see the roofs an' chimney tops again. To an Old Friend When we have lived our little lives and wandered all their byways through, When we've seen all that we shall see and finished all that we must do, When we shall take one backward look off yonder where our journey ends, I pray that you shall be as glad as I shall be that we were friends. Time was we started out to find the treasures and the joys of life; We sought them in the land of gold through many days of bitter strife. When we were young we yearned for fame; in search of joy we went afar, Only to learn how very cold and distant all the strangers are. When we have met all we shall meet and know what destiny has planned, I shall rejoice in that last hour that I have known your friendly hand; I shall go singing down the way off yonder as my sun descends As one who's had a happy life, made glorious by the best of friends. Satisfied With Life I have known the green trees and the skies overhead And the blossoms of spring and the fragrance they shed; I have known the blue sea, and the mountains afar And the song of the pines and the light of a star; And should I pass now, I could say with a smile That my pilgrimage here has been well worth my while. I have known the warm handclasp of friends who were true; I have shared in their pleasures and wept with them, too; I have heard the gay laughter which sweeps away care And none of the comrades I've made could I spare; And should this be all, I could say ere I go, That life is worth while just such friendships to know. I have builded a home where we've loved and been glad; I have known the rich joy of a girl and a lad; I have had their caresses through storm and through shine, And watched them grow lovely, those youngsters of mine; And I think as I hold them at night on my knee, That life has been generous surely to me. Autumn Evenings Apples on the table an' the grate-fire blazin' high, Oh, I'm sure the whole world hasn't any happier man than I; The Mother sittin' mendin' little stockin's, toe an' knee, An' tellin' all that's happened through the busy day to me: Oh, I don't know how to say it, but these cosy autumn nights Seem to glow with true contentment an' a thousand real delights. The dog sprawled out before me knows that huntin' days are here, 'Cause he dreams and seems to whimper that a flock o' quail are near; An' the children playin' checkers till it's time to go to bed, Callin' me to settle questions whether black is beatin' red; Oh, these nights are filled with gladness, an' I puff my pipe an' smile, An' tell myself the struggle an' the work are both worth while. The flames are full o' pictures that keep dancin' to an' fro, Bringin' back the scenes o' gladness o' the happy long ago, An' the whole wide world is silent an' I tell myself just this-- That within these walls I cherish, there is all my world there is! Can I keep the love abiding in these hearts so close to me, An' the laughter of these evenings, I shall gain life's victory. Memorial Day These did not pass in selfishness; they died for all mankind; They died to build a better world for all who stay behind; And we who hold their memory dear, and bring them flowers to-day, Should consecrate ourselves once more to live and die as they. These were defenders of the faith and guardians of the truth; That you and I might live and love, they gladly gave their youth; And we who set this day apart to honor them who sleep Should pledge ourselves to hold the faith they gave their lives to keep. If tears are all we shed for them, then they have died in vain; If flowers are all we bring them now, forgotten they remain; If by their courage we ourselves to courage are not led, Then needlessly these graves have closed above our heroes dead. To symbolize our love with flowers is not enough to do; We must be brave as they were brave, and true as they were true. They died to build a better world, and we who mourn to-day Should consecrate ourselves once more to live and die as they. The Happy Man If you would know a happy man, Go find the fellow who Has had a bout with trouble grim And just come smiling through. The load is off his shoulders now, Where yesterday he frowned And saw no joy in life, to-day He laughs his way around. He's done the very thing he thought That he could never do; His sun is shining high to-day And all his skies are blue. He's stronger than he was before; Should trouble come anew He'll know how much his strength can bear And how much he can do. To-day he has the right to smile, And he may gaily sing, For he has conquered where he feared The pain of failure's sting. Comparison has taught him, too, The sweetest hours are those Which follow on the heels of care, With laughter and repose. If you would meet a happy man, Go find the fellow who Has had a bout with trouble grim And just come smiling through. The Song of the Builder I sink my piers to the solid rock, And I send my steel to the sky, And I pile up the granite, block by block Full twenty stories high; Nor wind nor weather shall wash away The thing that I've builded, day by day. Here's something of mine that shall ever stand Till another shall tear it down; Here is the work of my brain and hand, Towering above the town. And the idlers gay in their smug content, Have nothing to leave for a monument. Here from my girders I look below At the throngs which travel by, For little that's real will they leave to show When it comes their time to die. But I, when my time of life is through, Will leave this building for men to view. Oh, the work is hard and the days are long, But hammers are tools for men, And granite endures and steel is strong, Outliving both brush and pen. And ages after my voice is stilled, Men shall know I lived by the things I build. Old Years and New Old years and new years, all blended into one, The best of what there is to be, the best of what is gone-- Let's bury all the failures in the dim and dusty past And keep the smiles of friendship and laughter to the last. Old years and new years, life's in the making still; We haven't come to glory yet, but there's the hope we will; The dead old year was twelve months long, but now from it we're free, And what's one year of good or bad to all the years to be? Old years and new years, we need them one and all To reach the dome of character and build its sheltering wall; Past failures tried the souls of us, but if their tests we stood. The sum of what we are to be may yet be counted good. Old years and new years, with all their pain and strife, Are but the bricks and steel and stone with which we fashion life; So put the sin and shame away, and keep the fine and true, And on the glory of the past let's build the better new. When We're All Alike I've trudged life's highway up and down; I've watched the lines of men march by; I've seen them in the busy town, And seen them under country sky; I've talked with toilers in the ranks, And walked with men whose hands were white, And learned, when closed were stores and banks, We're nearly all alike at night. Just find the wise professor when He isn't lost in ancient lore, And he, like many other men, Romps with his children on the floor. He puts his gravity aside To share in innocent delight. Stripped of position's pomp and pride, We're nearly all the same at night. Serving a common cause, we go Unto our separate tasks by day, And rich or poor or great or low, Regardless of their place or pay, Cherish the common dreams of men-- A home where love and peace unite. We serve the self-same end and plan, We're all alike when it is night. Each for his loved ones wants to do His utmost. Brothers are we all, When we have run the work-day through, In romping with our children small; Rich men and poor delight in play When care and caste have taken flight. At home, in all we think and say, We're very much the same at night. The Things You Can't Forget They ain't much, seen from day to day-- The big elm tree across the way, The church spire, an' the meetin' place Lit up by many a friendly face. You pass 'em by a dozen times An' never think o' them in rhymes, Or fit for poet's singin'. Yet They're all the things you can't forget; An' they're the things you'll miss some day If ever you should go away. The people here ain't much to see-- Jes' common folks like you an' me, Doin' the ordinary tasks Which life of everybody asks: Old Dr. Green, still farin' 'round To where his patients can be found, An' Parson Hill, serene o' face, Carryin' God's message every place, An' Jim, who keeps the grocery store-- Yet they are folks you'd hunger for. They seem so plain when close to view-- Bill Barker, an' his brother too, The Jacksons, men of higher rank Because they chance to run the bank, Yet friends to every one round here, Quiet an' kindly an' sincere, Not much to sing about or praise, Livin' their lives in modest ways-- Yet in your memory they'd stay If ever you should go away. These are things an' these the men Some day you'll long to see again. Now it's so near you scarcely see The beauty o' that big elm tree, But some day later on you will An' wonder if it's standin' still, An' if the birds return to sing An' make their nests there every spring. Mebbe you scorn them now, but they Will bring you back again some day. The Making of Friends If nobody smiled and nobody cheered and nobody helped us along, If each every minute looked after himself and good things all went to the strong, If nobody cared just a little for you, and nobody thought about me, And we stood all alone to the battle of life, what a dreary old world it would be! If there were no such a thing as a flag in the sky as a symbol of comradeship here, If we lived as the animals live in the woods, with nothing held sacred or dear, And selfishness ruled us from birth to the end, and never a neighbor had we, And never we gave to another in need, what a dreary old world it would be! Oh, if we were rich as the richest on earth and strong as the strongest that lives, Yet never we knew the delight and the charm of the smile which the other man gives, If kindness were never a part of ourselves, though we owned all the land we could see, And friendship meant nothing at all to us here, what a dreary old world it would be! Life is sweet just because of the friends we have made and the things which in common we share; We want to live on not because of ourselves, but because of the people who care; It's giving and doing for somebody else--on that all life's splendor depends, And the joy of this world, when you've summed it all up, is found in the making of friends. The Deeds of Anger I used to lose my temper an' git mad an' tear around An' raise my voice so wimmin folks would tremble at the sound; I'd do things I was ashamed of when the fit of rage had passed, An' wish I hadn't done 'em, an' regret 'em to the last; But I've learned from sad experience how useless is regret, For the mean things done in anger are the things you can't forget. 'Tain't no use to kiss the youngster once your hand has made him cry; You'll recall the time you struck him till the very day you die; He'll forget it an' forgive you an' to-morrow seem the same, But you'll keep the hateful picture of your sorrow an' your shame, An' it's bound to rise to taunt you, though you long have squared the debt, For the things you've done in meanness are the things you can't forget. Lord, I sometimes sit an' shudder when some scene comes back to me, Which shows me big an' brutal in some act o' tyranny, When some triflin' thing upset me an' I let my temper fly, An' was sorry for it after--but it's vain to sit an' sigh. So I'd be a whole sight happier now my sun begins to set, If it wasn't for the meanness which I've done an' can't forget. Now I think I've learned my lesson an' I'm treadin' gentler ways, An' I try to build my mornings into happy yesterdays; I don't let my temper spoil 'em in the way I used to do An' let some splash of anger smear the record when it's through; I want my memories pleasant, free from shame or vain regret, Without any deeds of anger which I never can forget. I'd Rather Be a Failure I'd rather be a failure than the man who's never tried; I'd rather seek the mountain-top than always stand aside. Oh, let me hold some lofty dream and make my desperate fight, And though I fail I still shall know I tried to serve the right. The idlers line the ways of life and they are quick to sneer; They note the failing strength of man and greet it with a jeer; But there is something deep inside which scoffers fail to view-- They never see the glorious deed the failure tried to do. Some men there are who never leave the city's well-worn streets; They never know the dangers grim the bold adventurer meets; They never seek a better way nor serve a nobler plan; They never risk with failure to advance the cause of man. Oh, better 'tis to fail and fall in sorrow and despair, Than stand where all is safe and sure and never face a care; Yes, stamp me with the failure's brand and let men sneer at me, For though I've failed the Lord shall know the man I tried to be. Couldn't Live Without You You're just a little fellow with a lot of funny ways, Just three-foot-six of mischief set with eyes that fairly blaze; You're always up to something with those busy hands o' yours, And you leave a trail o' ruin on the walls an' on the doors, An' I wonder, as I watch you, an' your curious tricks I see, Whatever is the reason that you mean so much to me. You're just a chubby rascal with a grin upon your face, Just seven years o' gladness, an' a hard and trying case; You think the world's your playground, an' in all you say an' do You fancy everybody ought to bow an' scrape to you; Dull care's a thing you laugh at just as though 'twill never be, So I wonder, little fellow, why you mean so much to me. Now your face is smeared with candy or perhaps it's only dirt, An' it's really most alarming how you tear your little shirt; But I have to smile upon you, an' with all your wilful ways, I'm certain that I need you 'round about me all my days; Yes, I've got to have you with me, for somehow it's come to be That I couldn't live without you, for you're all the world to me. Just a Boy Get to understand the lad-- He's not eager to be bad; If the right he always knew, He would be as old as you. Were he now exceeding wise, He'd be just about your size; When he does things that annoy, Don't forget, he's just a boy. Could he know and understand, He would need no guiding hand; But he's young and hasn't learned How life's corners must be turned; Doesn't know from day to day There is more in life than play, More to face than selfish joy-- Don't forget he's just a boy. Being just a boy, he'll do Much you will not want him to; He'll be careless of his ways, Have his disobedient days, Wilful, wild and headstrong, too, Just as, when a boy, were you; Things of value he'll destroy, But, reflect, he's just a boy. Just a boy who needs a friend, Patient, kindly to the end, Needs a father who will show Him the things he wants to know; Take him with you when you walk, Listen when he wants to talk, His companionship enjoy, Don't forget, he's just a boy! What Home's Intended For When the young folks gather 'round in the good old-fashioned way, Singin' all the latest songs gathered from the newest play, Or they start the phonograph an' shove the chairs back to the wall An' hold a little party dance, I'm happiest of all. Then I sorter settle back, plumb contented to the core, An' I tell myself most proudly, that's what home's intended for. When the laughter's gaily ringin' an' the room is filled with song, I like, to sit an' watch 'em, all that glad an' merry throng, For the ragtime they are playin' on the old piano there Beats any high-toned music where the bright lights shine an' glare, An' the racket they are makin' stirs my pulses more and more, So I whisper in my gladness: that's what home's intended for. Then I smile an' say to Mother, let 'em move the chairs about, Let 'em frolic in the parlor, let 'em shove the tables out, Jus' so long as they are near us, jus' so long as they will stay By the fireplace we are keepin', harm will never come their way, An' you'll never hear me grumble at the bills that keep me poor, It's the finest part o' livin'--that's what home's intended for. Safe at Home Let the old fire blaze An' the youngsters shout An' the dog on the rug Sprawl full length out, An' Mother an' I Sort o' settle down-- An' it's little we care For the noisy town. Oh, it's little we care That the wind may blow, An' the streets grow white With the drifted snow; We'll face the storm With the break o' day, But to-night we'll dream An' we'll sing an' play. We'll sit by the fire Where it's snug an' warm, An' pay no heed To the winter storm; With a sheltering roof Let the blizzard roar; We are safe at home-- Can a king say more? That's all that counts When the day is done: The smiles of love And the youngsters' fun, The cares put down With the evening gloam-- Here's the joy of all: To be safe at home. When Friends Drop In It may be I'm old-fashioned, but the times I like the best Are not the splendid parties with the women gaily dressed, And the music tuned for dancing and the laughter of the throng, With a paid comedian's antics or a hired musician's song, But the quiet times of friendship, with the chuckles and the grin, And the circle at the fireside when a few good friends drop in. There's something 'round the fireplace that no club can imitate, And no throng can ever equal just a few folks near the grate; Though I sometimes like an opera, there's no music quite so sweet As the singing of the neighbors that you're always glad to meet; Oh, I know when they come calling that the fun will soon begin, And I'm happiest those evenings when a few good friends drop in. There's no pomp of preparation, there's no style or sham or fuss; We are glad to welcome callers who are glad to be with us, And we sit around and visit or we start a merry game, And we show them by our manner that we're mighty pleased they came, For there's something real about it, and the yarns we love to spin, And the time flies, Oh, so swiftly when a few good friends drop in. Let me live my life among them, cheerful, kindly folks and true, And I'll ask no greater glory till my time of life is through; Let me share the love and favor of the few who know me best, And I'll spend my time contented till my sun sinks in the west; I will take what fortune sends me and the little I may win, And be happy on those evenings when a few good friends drop in. The Book of Memory Turn me loose and let me be Young once more and fancy free; Let me wander where I will, Down the lane and up the hill, Trudging barefoot in the dust In an age that knows no "must," And no voice insistently Speaks of duty unto me; Let me tread the happy ways Of those by-gone yesterdays. Fame had never whispered then, Making slaves of eager men; Greed had never called me down To the gray walls of the town, Offering frankincense and myrrh If I'd be its prisoner; I was free to come and go Where the cherry blossoms blow, Free to wander where I would, Finding life supremely good. But I turned, as all must do, From the happiness I knew To the land of care and strife, Seeking for a fuller life; Heard the lure of fame and sought That renown so dearly bought; Listened to the voice of greed Saying: "These the things you need," Now the gray town holds me fast, Prisoner to the very last. Age has stamped me as its own; Youth to younger hearts has flown; Still the cherry blossoms blow In the land loused to know; Still the fragrant clover spills Perfume over dales and hills, But I'm not allowed to stray Where the young are free to play; All the years will grant to me Is the book of memory. Pretending Not to See Sometimes at the table, when He gets misbehavin', then Mother calls across to me: "Look at him, now! Don't you see What he's doin', sprawlin.' there! Make him sit up in his chair. Don't you see the messy way That he's eating?" An' I say: "No. He seems all right just now. What's he doing anyhow?" Mother placed him there by me, An' she thinks I ought to see Every time he breaks the laws An' correct him, just because There will come a time some day When he mustn't act that way. But I can't be all along Scoldin' him for doin' wrong. So if something goes astray, I jus' look the other way. Mother tells me now an' then I'm the easiest o' men, An' in dealin' with the lad I will never see the bad That he does, an' I suppose Mother's right for Mother knows; But I'd hate to feel that I'm Here to scold him all the time. Little faults might spoil the day, So I look the other way. Look the other way an' try Not to let him catch my eye, Knowin' all the time that he Doesn't mean so bad to be; Knowin', too, that now an' then I am not the best o' men; Hopin', too, the times I fall That the Father of us all, Lovin', watchin' over me, Will pretend He doesn't see. The Joys of Home Curling smoke from a chimney low, And only a few more steps to go, Faces pressed at a window pane Watching for someone to come again, And I am the someone they wait to see-- These are the joys life gives to me. What has my neighbor excelling this: A good wife's love and a baby's kiss? What if his chimneys tower higher? Peace is found at our humble fire. What if his silver and gold are more? Rest is ours when the day is o'er. Strive for fortune and slave for fame, You find that joy always stays the same: Rich man and poor man dream and pray For a home where laughter shall ever stay, And the wheels go round and men spend their might For the few glad hours they may claim at night. Home, where the kettle shall gaily sing, Is all that matters with serf or king; Gold and silver and laurelled fame Are only sweet when the hearth's aflame With a cheerful fire, and the loved ones there Are unafraid of the wolves of care. So let me come home at night to rest With those who know I have done my best; Let the wife rejoice and my children smile, And I'll know by their love that I am worthwhile, For this is conquest and world success-- A home where abideth happiness. We're Dreamers All Oh, man must dream of gladness wherever his pathways lead, And a hint of something better is written in every creed; And nobody wakes at morning but hopes ere the day is o'er To have come to a richer pleasure than ever he's known before. For man is a dreamer ever. He glimpses the hills afar And plans for the joys off yonder where all his to-morrows are; When trials and cares beset him, in the distance he still can see A hint of a future splendid and the glory that is to be. There's never a man among us but cherishes dreams of rest; We toil for that something better than that which is now our best. Oh, what if the cup be bitter and what if we're racked with pain? There are wonderful days to follow when never we'll grieve again. Back of the sound of the hammer, and back of the hissing steam, And back of the hand at the throttle is ever a lofty dream; All of us, great or humble, look over the present need To the dawn of the glad to-morrow which is promised in every creed. What Is Success? Success is being friendly when another needs a friend; It's in the cheery words you speak, and in the coins you lend; Success is not alone in skill and deeds of daring great; It's in the roses that you plant beside your garden gate. Success is in the way you walk the paths of life each day; It's in the little things you do and in the things you say; Success is in the glad hello you give your fellow man; It's in the laughter of your home and all the joys you plan. Success is not in getting rich or rising high to fame; It's not alone in winning goals which all men hope to claim; It's in the man you are each day, through happiness or care; It's in the cheery words you speak and in the smile you wear. Success is being big of heart and clean and broad of mind; It's being faithful to your friends, and to the stranger, kind; It's in the children whom you love, and all they learn from you-- Success depends on character and everything you do. The Three Me's I'd like to steal a day and be All alone with little me, Little me that used to run Everywhere in search of fun; Little me of long ago Who was glad and didn't know Life is freighted down with care For the backs of men to bear; Little me who thought a smile Ought to linger all the while-- On his Mother's pretty face And a tear should never trace Lines of sorrow, hurt or care On those cheeks so wondrous fair. I should like once more to be All alone with youthful me; Youthful me who saw the hills Where the sun its splendor spills And was certain that in time To the topmost height he'd climb; Youthful me, serene of soul, Who beheld a shining goal. And imagined he could gain Glory without grief or pain, Confident and quick with life, Madly eager for the strife, Knowing not that bitter care Waited for his coming there. I should like to sit alone With the me now older grown, Like to lead the little me And the youth that used to be Once again along the ways Of our glorious yesterdays. We could chuckle soft and low At the things we didn't know, And could laugh to think how bold We had been in days of old, And how blind we were to care With its heartache and despair, We could smile away the tears And the pain of later years. Brothers All Under the toiler's grimy shirt, Under the sweat and the grease and dirt, Under the rough outside you view, Is a man who thinks and feels as you. Go talk with him, Go walk with him, Sit down with him by a running stream, Away from the things that are hissing steam, Away from his bench, His hammer and wrench, And the grind of need And the sordid deed, And this you'll find As he bares his mind: In the things which count when this life is through He's as tender and big and as good as you. Be fair with him, And share with him An hour of time in a restful place, Brother to brother and face to face, And he'll whisper low Of the long ago, Of a loved one dead And the tears he shed; And you'll come to see That in suffering he, With you, is hurt by the self-same rod And turns for help to the self-same God. You hope as he, You dream of splendors, and so does he; His children must be as you'd have yours be; He shares your love For the Flag above, He laughs and sings For the self-same things; When he's understood He is mostly good, Thoughtful of others and kind and true, Brave, devoted--and much like you. Under the toiler's grimy shirt, Under the sweat and the grease and dirt, Under the rough outside you view, Is a man who thinks and feels as you. When We Understand the Plan I reckon when the world we leave And cease to smile and cease to grieve, When each of us shall quit the strife And drop the working tools of life, Somewhere, somehow, we'll come to find Just what our Maker had in mind. Perhaps through clearer eyes than these We'll read life's hidden mysteries, And learn the reason for our tears-- Why sometimes came unhappy years, And why our dearest joys were brief And bound so closely unto grief. There is so much beyond our scope, As blindly on through life we grope, So much we cannot understand, However wisely we have planned, That all who walk this earth about Are constantly beset by doubt. No one of us can truly say Why loved ones must be called away, Why hearts are hurt, or e'en explain Why some must suffer years of pain; Yet some day all of us shall know The reason why these things are so. I reckon in the years to come, When these poor lips of clay are dumb, And these poor hands have ceased to toil, Somewhere upon a fairer soil God shall to all of us make clear The purpose of our trials here. The Spoiler With a twinkle in his eye He'd come gayly walkin' by An' he'd whistle to the children An' he'd beckon 'em to come, Then he'd chuckle low an' say, "Come along, I'm on my way, An' it's I that need your company To buy a little gum." When his merry call they'd hear, All the children, far an' near, Would come flyin' from the gardens Like the chickens after wheat; When we'd shake our heads an' say: "No, you mustn't go to-day!" He'd beg to let him have 'em In a pack about his feet. Oh, he spoiled 'em, one an' all; There was not a youngster small But was over-fed on candy An' was stuffed with lollypops, An' I think his greatest joy Was to get some girl or boy An' bring 'em to their parents All besmeared by chocolate drops. Now the children's hearts are sore For he comes to them no more, And no more to them he whistles And no more for them he stops; But in Paradise, I think, With his chuckle and his wink, He is leading little angels To the heavenly candy shops. A Vanished Joy When I was but a little lad of six and seven and eight, One joy I knew that has been lost in customs up-to-date, Then Saturday was baking day and Mother used to make, The while I stood about and watched, the Sunday pies and cake; And I was there to have fulfilled a small boy's fondest wish, The glorious privilege of youth--to scrape the frosting dish! On Saturdays I never left to wander far away-- I hovered near the kitchen door on Mother's baking day; The fragrant smell of cooking seemed to hold me in its grip, And naught cared I for other sports while there were sweets to sip; I little cared that all my chums had sought the brook to fish; I chose to wait that moment glad when I could scrape the dish. Full many a slice of apple I have lifted from a pie Before the upper crust went on, escaping Mother's eye; Full many a time my fingers small in artfulness have strayed Into some sweet temptation rare which Mother's hands had made; But eager-eyed and watery-mouthed, I craved the greater boon, When Mother let me clean the dish and lick the frosting spoon. The baking days of old are gone, our children cannot know The glorious joys that childhood owned and loved so long ago. New customs change the lives of all and in their heartless way They've robbed us of the glad event once known as baking day. The stores provide our every need, yet many a time I wish Our kids could know that bygone thrill and scrape the frosting dish. "Carry On" They spoke it bravely, grimly, in their darkest hours of doubt; They spoke it when their hope was low and when their strength gave out; We heard it from the dying in those troubled days now gone, And they breathed it as their slogan for the living: "Carry on!" Now the days of strife are over, and the skies are fair again, But those two brave words of courage on our lips should still remain; In the trials which beset us and the cares we look upon, To our dead we should be faithful--we have still to "carry on!" "Carry on!" through storm and danger, "carry on" through dark despair, "Carry on" through hurt and failure, "carry on" through grief and care; 'Twas the slogan they bequeathed us as they fell beside the way, And for them and for our children, let us "carry on!" to-day. Life's Single Standard There are a thousand ways to cheat and a thousand ways to sin; There are ways uncounted to lose the game, but there's only one way to win; And whether you live by the sweat of your brow or in luxury's garb you're dressed, You shall stand at last, when your race is run, to be judged by the single test. Some men lie by the things they make; some lie in the deeds they do; And some play false for a woman's love, and some for a cheer or two; Some rise to fame by the force of skill, grow great by the might of power, Then wreck the temple they toiled to build, in a single, shameful hour. The follies outnumber the virtues good; sin lures in a thousand ways; But slow is the growth of man's character and patience must mark his days; For only those victories shall count, when the work of life is done, Which bear the stamp of an honest man, and by courage and faith were won. There are a thousand ways to fail, but only one way to win! Sham cannot cover the wrong you do nor wash out a single sin, And never shall victory come to you, whatever of skill you do, Save you've done your best in the work of life and unto your best were true. Learn to Smile The good Lord understood us when He taught us how to smile; He knew we couldn't stand it to be solemn all the while; He knew He'd have to shape us so that when our hearts were gay, We could let our neighbors know it in a quick and easy way. So He touched the lips of Adam and He touched the lips of Eve, And He said: "Let these be solemn when your sorrows make you grieve, But when all is well in Eden and your life seems worth the while, Let your faces wear the glory and the sunshine of a smile. "Teach the symbol to your children, pass it down through all the years. Though they know their share of sadness and shall weep their share of tears, Through the ages men and women shall prove their faith in Me By the smile upon their faces when their hearts are trouble-free." The good Lord understood us when He sent us down to earth, He knew our need for laughter and for happy signs of mirth; He knew we couldn't stand it to be solemn all the while, But must share our joy with others--so He taught us how to smile. The True Man This is the sort of a man was he: True when it hurt him a lot to be; Tight in a corner an' knowin' a lie Would have helped him out, but he wouldn't buy His freedom there in so cheap a way-- He told the truth though he had to pay. Honest! Not in the easy sense, When he needn't worry about expense-- We'll all play square when it doesn't count And the sum at stake's not a large amount-- But he was square when the times were bad, An' keepin' his word took all he had. Honor is something we all profess, But most of us cheat--some more, some less-- An' the real test isn't the way we do When there isn't a pinch in either shoe; It's whether we're true to our best or not When the right thing's certain to hurt a lot. That is the sort of a man was he: Straight when it hurt him a lot to be; Times when a lie would have paid him well, No matter the cost, the truth he'd tell; An' he'd rather go down to a drab defeat Than save himself if he had to cheat. Cleaning the Furnace Last night Pa said to Ma: "My dear, it's gettin' on to fall, It's time I did a little job I do not like at all. I wisht 'at I was rich enough to hire a man to do The dirty work around this house an' clean up when he's through, But since I'm not, I'm truly glad that I am strong an' stout, An' ain't ashamed to go myself an' clean the furnace out." Then after supper Pa put on his overalls an' said He'd work down in the cellar till 'twas time to go to bed. He started in to rattle an' to bang an' poke an' stir, An' the dust began a-climbin' up through every register Till Ma said: "Goodness gracious; go an' shut those things up tight Or we'll all be suffocated an' the house will be a sight." Then he carted out the ashes in a basket an' a pail, An' from cellar door to alley he just left an ashy trail. Then he pulled apart the chimney, an' 'twas full of something black, An' he skinned most all his knuckles when he tried to put it back. We could hear him talkin' awful, an' Ma looked at us an' said: "I think it would be better if you children went to bed." When he came up from the cellar there were ashes in his hair, There were ashes in his eyebrows--but he didn't seem to care-- There were ashes in his mustache, there were ashes in his eyes, An' we never would have known him if he'd took us by surprise. "Well, I got it clean," he sputtered, and Ma said: "I guess that's true; Once the dirt was in the furnace, but now most of it's on you." Trouble Brings Friends It's seldom trouble comes alone. I've noticed this: When things go wrong An' trouble comes a-visitin', it always brings a friend along; Sometimes it's one you've known before, and then perhaps it's someone new Who stretches out a helping hand an' stops to see what he can do. If never trials came to us, if grief an' sorrow passed us by, If every day the sun came out an' clouds were never in the sky, We'd still have neighbors, I suppose, each one pursuin' selfish ends, But only neighbors they would be--we'd never know them as our friends. Out of the troubles I have had have come my richest friendships here, Kind hands have helped to bear my care, kind words have fallen on my ear; An' so I say when trouble comes I know before the storm shall end That I shall find my bit of care has also brought to me a friend. 
10490	----	THE GOLDEN LEGEND BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW THE GOLDEN LEGEND PROLOGUE. THE SPIRE OF STRASBURG CATHEDRAL. _Night and storm._ LUCIFER, _with the Powers of the Air, trying to tear down the Cross._ _Lucifer._ HASTEN! hasten! O ye spirits! From its station drag the ponderous Cross of iron, that to mock us Is uplifted high in air! _Voices._ O, we cannot! For around it All the Saints and Guardian Angels Throng in legions to protect it; They defeat us everywhere! _The Bells._ Laudo Deum verum Plebem voco! Congrego clerum! _Lucifer._ Lower! lower! Hover downward! Seize the loud, vociferous bells, and Clashing, clanging, to the pavement Hurl them from their windy tower! _Voices._ All thy thunders Here are harmless! For these bells have been anointed, And baptized with holy water! They defy our utmost power. _The Bells._ Defunctos ploro! Pestem fugo! Festa decoro! _Lucifer._ Shake the casements! Break the painted Panes that flame with gold and crimson! Scatter them like leaves of Autumn, Swept away before the blast! _Voices._ O, we cannot! The Archangel Michael flames from every window, With the sword of fire that drove us Headlong, out of heaven, aghast! _The Bells._ Funera plango! Fulgora frango! Sabbata pango! _Lucifer._ Aim your lightnings At the oaken, Massive, iron-studded portals! Sack the house of God, and scatter Wide the ashes of the dead! _Voices._ O, we cannot! The Apostles And the Martyrs, wrapped in mantles, Stand as wardens at the entrance, Stand as sentinels o'erhead! _The Bells._ Excito lentos! Dissipo ventos! Paco cruentos! _Lucifer._ Baffled! baffled! Inefficient, Craven spirits! leave this labor Unto Time, the great Destroyer! Come away, ere night is gone! _Voices._ Onward! onward! With the night-wind, Over field and farm and forest, Lonely homestead, darksome hamlet, Blighting all we breathe upon! (_They sweep away. Organ and Gregorian Chant._) _Choir._ Nocte surgentes Vig lemus omnes! * * * * * I. THE CASTLE OF VAUTSBERG ON THE RHINE. * * * * * _A chamber in a tower._ PRINCE HENRY, _sitting alone, ill and restless._ _Prince Henry._ I cannot sleep! my fervid brain Calls up the vanished Past again, And throws its misty splendors deep Into the pallid realms of sleep! A breath from that far-distant shore Comes freshening ever more and more, And wafts o'er intervening seas Sweet odors from the Hesperides! A wind, that through the corridor Just stirs the curtain, and no more, And, touching the aeolian strings, Faints with the burden that it brings! Come back! ye friendships long departed! That like o'erflowing streamlets started, And now are dwindled, one by one, To stony channels in the sun! Come back! ye friends, whose lives are ended! Come back, with all that light attended, Which seemed to darken and decay When ye arose and went away! They come, the shapes of joy and woe, The airy crowds of long-ago, The dreams and fancies known of yore, That have been, and shall be no more. They change the cloisters of the night Into a garden of delight; They make the dark and dreary hours Open and blossom into flowers! I would not sleep! I love to be Again in their fair company; But ere my lips can bid them stay, They pass and vanish quite away! Alas! our memories may retrace Each circumstance of time and place, Season and scene come back again, And outward things unchanged remain; The rest we cannot reinstate; Ourselves we cannot re-create, Nor set our souls to the same key Of the remembered harmony! Rest! rest! O, give me rest and peace! The thought of life that ne'er shall cease Has something in it like despair, A weight I am too weak to bear! Sweeter to this afflicted breast The thought of never-ending rest! Sweeter the undisturbed and deep Tranquillity of endless sleep! (_A flash of lightning, out of which_ LUCIFER _appears, in the garb of a travelling Physician._) _Lucifer_. All hail Prince Henry! _Prince Henry_ (_starting_). Who is it speaks? Who and what are you? _Lucifer_. One who seeks A moment's audience with the Prince. _Prince Henry_. When came you in? _Lucifer_. A moment since. I found your study door unlocked, And thought you answered when I knocked. _Prince Henry_. I did not hear you. _Lucifer_. You heard the thunder; It was loud enough to waken the dead. And it is not a matter of special wonder That, when God is walking overhead, You should not have heard my feeble tread. _Prince Henry_. What may your wish or purpose be? _Lucifer_. Nothing or everything, as it pleases Your Highness. You behold in me Only a traveling Physician; One of the few who have a mission To cure incurable diseases, Or those that are called so. _Prince Henry_. Can you bring The dead to life? _Lucifer_. Yes; very nearly. And, what is a wiser and better thing, Can keep the living from ever needing Such an unnatural, strange proceeding, By showing conclusively and clearly That death is a stupid blunder merely, And not a necessity of our lives. My being here is accidental; The storm, that against your casement drives, In the little village below waylaid me. And there I heard, with a secret delight, Of your maladies physical and mental, Which neither astonished nor dismayed me. And I hastened hither, though late in the night, To proffer my aid! _Prince Henry (ironically)_ For this you came! Ah, how can I ever hope to requite This honor from one so erudite? _Lucifer_. The honor is mine, or will be when I have cured your disease. _Prince Henry_. But not till then. _Lucifer_. What is your illness? _Prince Henry_. It has no name. A smouldering, dull, perpetual flame, As in a kiln, burns in my veins, Sending up vapors to the head, My heart has become a dull lagoon, Which a kind of leprosy drinks and drains; I am accounted as one who is dead, And, indeed, I think that I shall be soon. _Lucifer_ And has Gordonius the Divine, In his famous Lily of Medicine,-- I see the book lies open before you,-- No remedy potent enough to restore you? _Prince Henry_. None whatever! _Lucifer_ The dead are dead, And their oracles dumb, when questioned Of the new diseases that human life Evolves in its progress, rank and rife. Consult the dead upon things that were, But the living only on things that are. Have you done this, by the appliance And aid of doctors? _Prince Henry_. Ay, whole schools Of doctors, with their learned rules, But the case is quite beyond their science. Even the doctors of Salern Send me back word they can discern No cure for a malady like this, Save one which in its nature is Impossible, and cannot be! _Lucifer_ That sounds oracular! _Prince Henry_ Unendurable! _Lucifer_ What is their remedy? _Prince Henry_ You shall see; Writ in this scroll is the mystery. _Lucifer (reading)._ "Not to be cured, yet not incurable! The only remedy that remains Is the blood that flows from a maiden's veins, Who of her own free will shall die, And give her life as the price of yours!" That is the strangest of all cures, And one, I think, you will never try; The prescription you may well put by, As something impossible to find Before the world itself shall end! And yet who knows? One cannot say That into some maiden's brain that kind Of madness will not find its way. Meanwhile permit me to recommend, As the matter admits of no delay, My wonderful Catholicon, Of very subtile and magical powers! _Prince Henry._ Purge with your nostrums and drugs infernal The spouts and gargoyles of these towers, Not me! My faith is utterly gone In every power but the Power Supernal! Pray tell me, of what school are you? _Lucifer._ Both of the Old and of the New! The school of Hermes Trismegistus, Who uttered his oracles sublime Before the Olympiads, in the dew Of the early dawn and dusk of Time, The reign of dateless old Hephaestus! As northward, from its Nubian springs, The Nile, forever new and old, Among the living and the dead, Its mighty, mystic stream has rolled; So, starting from its fountain-head Under the lotus-leaves of Isis, From the dead demigods of eld, Through long, unbroken lines of kings Its course the sacred art has held, Unchecked, unchanged by man's devices. This art the Arabian Geber taught, And in alembics, finely wrought, Distilling herbs and flowers, discovered The secret that so long had hovered Upon the misty verge of Truth, The Elixir of Perpetual Youth, Called Alcohol, in the Arab speech! Like him, this wondrous lore I teach! _Prince Henry._ What! an adept? _Lucifer._ Nor less, nor more! _Prince Henry._ I am a reader of such books, A lover of that mystic lore! With such a piercing glance it looks Into great Nature's open eye, And sees within it trembling lie The portrait of the Deity! And yet, alas! with all my pains, The secret and the mystery Have baffled and eluded me, Unseen the grand result remains! _Lucifer (showing a flask)._ Behold it here! this little flask Contains the wonderful quintessence, The perfect flower and efflorescence, Of all the knowledge man can ask! Hold it up thus against the light! _Prince Henry._ How limpid, pure, and crystalline, How quick, and tremulous, and bright The little wavelets dance and shine, As were it the Water of Life in sooth! _Lucifer._ It is! It assuages every pain, Cures all disease, and gives again To age the swift delights of youth. Inhale its fragrance. _Prince Henry._ It is sweet. A thousand different odors meet And mingle in its rare perfume, Such as the winds of summer waft At open windows through a room! _Lucifer._ Will you not taste it? _Prince Henry._ Will one draught Suffice? _Lucifer._ If not, you can drink more. _Prince Henry._ Into this crystal goblet pour So much as safely I may drink. _Lucifer (pouring)._ Let not the quantity alarm you: You may drink all; it will not harm you. _Prince Henry._ I am as one who on the brink Of a dark river stands and sees The waters flow, the landscape dim Around him waver, wheel, and swim, And, ere he plunges, stops to think Into what whirlpools he may sink; One moment pauses, and no more, Then madly plunges from the shore! Headlong into the dark mysteries Of life and death I boldly leap, Nor fear the fateful current's sweep, Nor what in ambush lurks below! For death is better than disease! (_An_ ANGEL _with an aeolian harp hovers in the air_.) _Angel._ Woe! woe! eternal woe! Not only the whispered prayer Of love, But the imprecations of hate, Reverberate Forever and ever through the air Above! This fearful curse Shakes the great universe! _Lucifer (disappearing)._ Drink! drink! And thy soul shall sink Down into the dark abyss, Into the infinite abyss, From which no plummet nor rope Ever drew up the silver sand of hope! _Prince Henry (drinking)._ It is like a draught of fire! Through every vein I feel again The fever of youth, the soft desire; A rapture that is almost pain Throbs in my heart and fills my brain! O joy! O joy! I feel The band of steel That so long and heavily has pressed Upon my breast Uplifted, and the malediction Of my affliction Is taken from me, and my weary breast At length finds rest. _The Angel._ It is but the rest of the fire, from which the air has been taken! It is but the rest of the sand, when the hour-glass is not shaken! It is but the rest of the tide between the ebb and the flow! It is but the rest of the wind between the flaws that blow! With fiendish laughter, Hereafter, This false physician Will mock thee in thy perdition. _Prince Henry._ Speak! speak! Who says that I am ill? I am not ill! I am not weak! The trance, the swoon, the dream, is o'er! I feel the chill of death no more! At length, I stand renewed in all my strength! Beneath me I can feel The great earth stagger and reel, As it the feet of a descending God Upon its surface trod, And like a pebble it rolled beneath his heel! This, O brave physician! this Is thy great Palingenesis! (_Drinks again_.) _The Angel._ Touch the goblet no more! It will make thy heart sore To its very core! Its perfume is the breath Of the Angel of Death, And the light that within it lies Is the flash of his evil eyes. Beware! O, beware! For sickness, sorrow, and care All are there! _Prince Henry (sinking back)._ O thou voice within my breast! Why entreat me, why upbraid me, When the steadfast tongues of truth And the flattering hopes of youth Have all deceived me and betrayed me? Give me, give me rest, O, rest! Golden visions wave and hover, Golden vapors, waters streaming, Landscapes moving, changing, gleaming! I am like a happy lover Who illumines life with dreaming! Brave physician! Rare physician! Well hast thou fulfilled thy mission! (_His head falls On his book_.) _The Angel (receding)._ Alas! alas! Like a vapor the golden vision Shall fade and pass, And thou wilt find in thy heart again Only the blight of pain, And bitter, bitter, bitter contrition! * * * * * COURT-YARD OF THE CASTLE. * * * * * HUBERT _standing by the gateway._ _Hubert._ How sad the grand old castle looks! O'erhead, the unmolested rooks Upon the turret's windy top Sit, talking of the farmer's crop; Here in the court-yard springs the grass, So few are now the feet that pass; The stately peacocks, bolder grown, Come hopping down the steps of stone, As if the castle were their own; And I, the poor old seneschal, Haunt, like a ghost, the banquet-hall. Alas! the merry guests no more Crowd through the hospital door; No eyes with youth and passion shine, No cheeks glow redder than the wine; No song, no laugh, no jovial din Of drinking wassail to the pin; But all is silent, sad, and drear, And now the only sounds I hear Are the hoarse rooks upon the walls, And horses stamping in their stalls! (_A horn sounds_.) What ho! that merry, sudden blast Reminds me of the days long past! And, as of old resounding, grate The heavy hinges of the gate, And, clattering loud, with iron clank, Down goes the sounding bridge of plank, As if it were in haste to greet The pressure of a traveler's feet! (_Enter_ WALTER _the Minnesinger_.) _Walter._ How now, my friend! This looks quite lonely! No banner flying from the walls, No pages and no seneschals, No wardens, and one porter only! Is it you, Hubert? _Hubert._ Ah! Master Walter! _Walter._ Alas! how forms and faces alter! I did not know you. You look older! Your hair has grown much grayer and thinner, And you stoop a little in the shoulder! _Hubert._ Alack! I am a poor old sinner, And, like these towers, begin to moulder; And you have been absent many a year! _Walter._ How is the Prince? _Hubert._ He is not here; He has been ill: and now has fled. _Walter._ Speak it out frankly: say he's dead! Is it not so? _Hubert._ No; if you please; A strange, mysterious disease Fell on him with a sudden blight. Whole hours together he would stand Upon the terrace, in a dream, Resting his head upon his hand, Best pleased when he was most alone, Like Saint John Nepomuck in stone, Looking down into a stream. In the Round Tower, night after night, He sat, and bleared his eyes with books; Until one morning we found him there Stretched on the floor, as if in a swoon He had fallen from his chair. We hardly recognized his sweet looks! _Walter._ Poor Prince! _Hubert._ I think he might have mended; And he did mend; but very soon The Priests came flocking in, like rooks, With all their crosiers and their crooks, And so at last the matter ended. _Walter._ How did it end? _Hubert._ Why, in Saint Rochus They made him stand, and wait his doom; And, as if he were condemned to the tomb, Began to mutter their hocus pocus. First, the Mass for the Dead they chaunted. Then three times laid upon his head A shovelful of church-yard clay, Saying to him, as he stood undaunted, "This is a sign that thou art dead, So in thy heart be penitent!" And forth from the chapel door he went Into disgrace and banishment, Clothed in a cloak of hodden gray, And bearing a wallet, and a bell, Whose sound should be a perpetual knell To keep all travelers away. _Walter._ O, horrible fate! Outcast, rejected, As one with pestilence infected! _Hubert._ Then was the family tomb unsealed, And broken helmet, sword and shield, Buried together, in common wreck, As is the custom, when the last Of any princely house has passed, And thrice, as with a trumpet-blast, A herald shouted down the stair The words of warning and despair,-- "O Hoheneck! O Hoheneck!" _Walter_. Still in my soul that cry goes on,-- Forever gone! forever gone! Ah, what a cruel sense of loss, Like a black shadow, would fall across The hearts of all, if he should die! His gracious presence upon earth Was as a fire upon a hearth; As pleasant songs, at morning sung, The words that dropped from his sweet tongue Strengthened our hearts; or, heard at night, Made all our slumbers soft and light. Where is he? _Hubert._ In the Odenwald. Some of his tenants, unappalled By fear of death, or priestly word,-- A holy family, that make Each meal a Supper of the Lord,-- Have him beneath their watch and ward, For love of him, and Jesus' sake! Pray you come in. For why should I With outdoor hospitality My prince's friend thus entertain? _Walter._ I would a moment here remain. But you, good Hubert, go before, Fill me a goblet of May-drink, As aromatic as the May From which it steals the breath away, And which he loved so well of yore; It is of him that I would think You shall attend me, when I call, In the ancestral banquet hall. Unseen companions, guests of air, You cannot wait on, will be there; They taste not food, they drink not wine, But their soft eyes look into mine, And their lips speak to me, and all The vast and shadowy banquet-hall Is full of looks and words divine! (_Leaning over the parapet_.) The day is done; and slowly from the scene The stooping sun upgathers his spent shafts, And puts them back into his golden quiver! Below me in the valley, deep and green As goblets are, from which in thirsty draughts We drink its wine, the swift and mantling river Flows on triumphant through these lovely regions, Etched with the shadows of its sombre margent, And soft, reflected clouds of gold and argent! Yes, there it flows, forever, broad and still, As when the vanguard of the Roman legions First saw it from the top of yonder hill! How beautiful it is! Fresh fields of wheat, Vineyard, and town, and tower with fluttering flag, The consecrated chapel on the crag, And the white hamlet gathered round its base, Like Mary sitting at her Saviour's feet, And looking up at his beloved face! O friend! O best of friends! Thy absence more Than the impending night darkens the landscape o'er! II. A FARM IN THE ODENWALD * * * * * _A garden; morning;_ PRINCE HENRY _seated, with a book_. ELSIE, _at a distance, gathering flowers._ _Prince Henry (reading)._ One morning, all alone, Out of his convent of gray stone, Into the forest older, darker, grayer, His lips moving as if in prayer, His head sunken upon his breast As in a dream of rest, Walked the Monk Felix. All about The broad, sweet sunshine lay without, Filling the summer air; And within the woodlands as he trod, The twilight was like the Truce of God With worldly woe and care; Under him lay the golden moss; And above him the boughs of hemlock-tree Waved, and made the sign of the cross, And whispered their Benedicites; And from the ground Rose an odor sweet and fragrant Of the wild flowers and the vagrant Vines that wandered, Seeking the sunshine, round and round. These he heeded not, but pondered On the volume in his hand, A volume of Saint Augustine; Wherein he read of the unseen Splendors of God's great town In the unknown land, And, with his eyes cast down In humility, he said: "I believe, O God, What herein I have read, But alas! I do not understand!" And lo! he heard The sudden singing of a bird, A snow-white bird, that from a cloud Dropped down, And among the branches brown Sat singing So sweet, and clear, and loud, It seemed a thousand harp strings ringing. And the Monk Felix closed his book, And long, long, With rapturous look, He listened to the song, And hardly breathed or stirred, Until he saw, as in a vision, The land Elysian, And in the heavenly city heard Angelic feet Fall on the golden flagging of the street. And he would fain Have caught the wondrous bird, But strove in vain; For it flew away, away, Far over hill and dell, And instead of its sweet singing He heard the convent bell Suddenly in the silence ringing For the service of noonday. And he retraced His pathway homeward sadly and in haste. In the convent there was a change! He looked for each well known face, But the faces were new and strange; New figures sat in the oaken stalls, New voices chaunted in the choir, Yet the place was the same place, The same dusky walls Of cold, gray stone, The same cloisters and belfry and spire. A stranger and alone Among that brotherhood The Monk Felix stood "Forty years," said a Friar. "Have I been Prior Of this convent in the wood, But for that space Never have I beheld thy face!" The heart of the Monk Felix fell: And he answered with submissive tone, "This morning, after the hour of Prime, I left my cell, And wandered forth alone, Listening all the time To the melodious singing Of a beautiful white bird, Until I heard The bells of the convent ringing Noon from their noisy towers, It was as if I dreamed; For what to me had seemed Moments only, had been hours!" "Years!" said a voice close by. It was an aged monk who spoke, From a bench of oak Fastened against the wall;-- He was the oldest monk of all. For a whole century Had he been there, Serving God in prayer, The meekest and humblest of his creatures. He remembered well the features Of Felix, and he said, Speaking distinct and slow: "One hundred years ago, When I was a novice in this place, There was here a monk, full of God's grace, Who bore the name Of Felix, and this man must be the same." And straightway They brought forth to the light of day A volume old and brown, A huge tome, bound With brass and wild-boar's hide, Therein were written down The names of all who had died In the convent, since it was edified. And there they found, Just as the old monk said, That on a certain day and date, One hundred years before, Had gone forth from the convent gate The Monk Felix, and never more Had entered that sacred door. He had been counted among the dead! And they knew, at last, That, such had been the power Of that celestial and immortal song, A hundred years had passed, And had not seemed so long As a single hour! (ELSIE _comes in with flowers._) _Elsie._ Here are flowers for you, But they are not all for you. Some of them are for the Virgin And for Saint Cecilia. _Prince Henry._ As thou standest there, Thou seemest to me like the angel That brought the immortal roses To Saint Cecilia's bridal chamber. _Elsie._ But these will fade. _Prince Henry._ Themselves will fade, But not their memory, And memory has the power To re-create them from the dust. They remind me, too, Of martyred Dorothea, Who from celestial gardens sent Flowers as her witnesses To him who scoffed and doubted. _Elsie._ Do you know the story Of Christ and the Sultan's daughter? That is the prettiest legend of them all. _Prince Henry._ Then tell it to me. But first come hither. Lay the flowers down beside me. And put both thy hands in mine. Now tell me the story. _Elsie._ Early in the morning The Sultan's daughter Walked in her father's garden, Gathering the bright flowers, All full of dew. _Prince Henry._ Just as thou hast been doing This morning, dearest Elsie. _Elsie._ And as she gathered them, She wondered more and more Who was the Master of the Flowers, And made them grow Out of the cold, dark earth. "In my heart," she said, "I love him; and for him Would leave my father's palace, To labor in his garden." _Prince Henry._ Dear, innocent child! How sweetly thou recallest The long-forgotten legend, That in my early childhood My mother told me! Upon my brain It reappears once more, As a birth-mark on the forehead When a hand suddenly Is laid upon it, and removed! _Elsie._ And at midnight, As she lay upon her bed, She heard a voice Call to her from the garden, And, looking forth from her window, She saw a beautiful youth Standing among the flowers. It was the Lord Jesus; And she went down to him, And opened the door for him; And he said to her, "O maiden! Thou hast thought of me with love, And for thy sake Out of my Father's kingdom Have I come hither: I am the Master of the Flowers. My garden is in Paradise, And if thou wilt go with me, Thy bridal garland Shall be of bright red flowers." And then he took from his finger A golden ring, And asked the Sultan's daughter If she would be his bride. And when she answered him with love, His wounds began to bleed, And she said to him, "O Love! how red thy heart is, And thy hands are full of roses," "For thy sake," answered he, "For thy sake is my heart so red, For thee I bring these roses. I gathered them at the cross Whereon I died for thee! Come, for my Father calls. Thou art my elected bride!" And the Sultan's daughter Followed him to his Father's garden. _Prince Henry._ Wouldst thou have done so, Elsie? _Elsie._ Yes, very gladly. _Prince Henry._ Then the Celestial Bridegroom Will come for thee also. Upon thy forehead he will place, Not his crown of thorns, But a crown of roses. In thy bridal chamber, Like Saint Cecilia, Thou shall hear sweet music, And breathe the fragrance Of flowers immortal! Go now and place these flowers Before her picture. * * * * * A ROOM IN THE FARM-HOUSE. * * * * * _Twilight._ URSULA _spinning._ GOTTLIEB _asleep in his chair._ _Ursula._ Darker and darker! Hardly a glimmer Of light comes in at the window-pane; Or is it my eyes are growing dimmer? I cannot disentangle this skein, Nor wind it rightly upon the reel. Elsie! _Gottlieb (starting)_. The stopping of thy wheel Has wakened me out of a pleasant dream. I thought I was sitting beside a stream, And heard the grinding of a mill, When suddenly the wheels stood still, And a voice cried "Elsie" in my ear! It startled me, it seemed so near. _Ursula._ I was calling her: I want a light. I cannot see to spin my flax. Bring the lamp, Elsie. Dost thou hear? _Elsie (within)._ In a moment! _Gottlieb._ Where are Bertha and Max? _Ursula._ They are sitting with Elsie at the door. She is telling them stories of the wood, And the Wolf, and Little Red Ridinghood. _Gottlieb_. And where is the Prince? _Ursula_. In his room overhead; I heard him walking across the floor, As he always does, with a heavy tread. (ELSIE _comes in with a lamp_. MAX _and_ BERTHA _follow her; and they all sing the Evening Song on the lighting of the lamps_.) EVENING SONG. O gladsome light Of the Father Immortal, And of the celestial Sacred and blessed Jesus, our Saviour! Now to the sunset Again hast thou brought us; And, seeing the evening Twilight, we bless thee, Praise thee, adore thee! Father omnipotent! Son, the Life-giver! Spirit, the Comforter! Worthy at all times Of worship and wonder! _Prince Henry (at the door)_. Amen! _Ursula_. Who was it said Amen? _Elsie_. It was the Prince: he stood at the door, And listened a moment, as we chaunted The evening song. He is gone again. I have often seen him there before. _Ursula_. Poor Prince! _Gottlieb_. I thought the house was haunted! Poor Prince, alas! and yet as mild And patient as the gentlest child! _Max._ I love him because he is so good, And makes me such fine bows and arrows, To shoot at the robins and the sparrows, And the red squirrels in the wood! _Bertha._ I love him, too! _Gottlieb._ Ah, yes! we all Love him, from the bottom of our hearts; He gave us the farm, the house, and the grange, He gave us the horses and the carts, And the great oxen in the stall, The vineyard, and the forest range! We have nothing to give him but our love! _Bertha._ Did he give us the beautiful stork above On the chimney-top, with its large, round nest? _Gottlieb._ No, not the stork; by God in heaven, As a blessing, the dear, white stork was given; But the Prince has given us all the rest. God bless him, and make him well again. _Elsie._ Would I could do something for his sake, Something to cure his sorrow and pain! _Gottlieb._ That no one can; neither thou nor I, Nor any one else. _Elsie._ And must he die? _Ursula._ Yes; if the dear God does not take Pity upon him, in his distress, And work a miracle! _Gottlieb._ Or unless Some maiden, of her own accord, Offers her life for that of her lord, And is willing to die in his stead. _Elsie._ I will! _Ursula._ Prithee, thou foolish child, be still! Thou shouldst not say what thou dost not mean! _Elsie._ I mean it truly! _Max._ O father! this morning, Down by the mill, in the ravine, Hans killed a wolf, the very same That in the night to the sheepfold came, And ate up my lamb, that was left outside. _Gottlieb._ I am glad he is dead. It will be a warning To the wolves in the forest, far and wide. _Max._ And I am going to have his hide! _Bertha._ I wonder if this is the wolf that ate Little Red Ridinghood! _Ursula._ O, no! That wolf was killed a long while ago. Come, children, it is growing late. _Max._ Ah, how I wish I were a man, As stout as Hans is, and as strong! I would do nothing else, the whole day long, But just kill wolves. _Gottlieb._ Then go to bed, And grow as fast as a little boy can. Bertha is half asleep already. See how she nods her heavy head, And her sleepy feet are so unsteady She will hardly be able to creep upstairs. _Ursula._ Good-night, my children. Here's the light. And do not forget to say your prayers Before you sleep. _Gottlieb._ Good-night! _Max and Bertha._ Good-night! (_They go out with_ ELSIE.) _Ursula, (spinning)._ She is a strange and wayward child, That Elsie of ours. She looks so old, And thoughts and fancies weird and wild Seem of late to have taken hold Of her heart, that was once so docile and mild! _Gottlieb._ She is like all girls. _Ursula._ Ah no, forsooth! Unlike all I have ever seen. For she has visions and strange dreams, And in all her words and ways, she seems Much older than she is in truth. Who would think her but fourteen? And there has been of late such a change! My heart is heavy with fear and doubt That she may not live till the year is out. She is so strange,--so strange,--so strange! _Gottlieb._ I am not troubled with any such fear! She will live and thrive for many a year. * * * * * ELSIE'S CHAMBER. * * * * * _Night._ ELSIE _praying._ _Elsie._ My Redeemer and my Lord, I beseech thee, I entreat thee, Guide me in each act and word, That hereafter I may meet thee, Watching, waiting, hoping, yearning, With my lamp well trimmed and burning! Interceding With these bleeding Wounds upon thy hands and side, For all who have lived and erred Thou hast suffered, thou hast died, Scourged, and mocked, and crucified, And in the grave hast thou been buried! If my feeble prayer can reach thee, O my Saviour, I beseech thee, Even as thou hast died for me, More sincerely Let me follow where thou leadest, Let me, bleeding as thou bleedest, Die, if dying I may give Life to one who asks to live, And more nearly, Dying thus, resemble thee! * * * * * THE CHAMBER OF GOTTLIEB AND URSULA. * * * * * _Midnight._ ELSIE _standing by their bedside, weeping._ _Gottlieb._ The wind is roaring; the rushing rain Is loud upon roof and window-pane, As if the Wild Huntsman of Rodenstein, Boding evil to me and mine, Were abroad to-night with his ghostly train! In the brief lulls of the tempest wild, The dogs howl in the yard; and hark! Some one is sobbing in the dark, Here in the chamber! _Elsie._ It is I. _Ursula._ Elsie! what ails thee, my poor child? _Elsie._ I am disturbed and much distressed, In thinking our dear Prince must die, I cannot close mine eyes, nor rest. _Gottlieb._ What wouldst thou? In the Power Divine His healing lies, not in our own; It is in the hand of God alone. _Elsie._ Nay, he has put it into mine, And into my heart! _Gottlieb._ Thy words are wild! _Ursula._ What dost thou mean? my child! my child! _Elsie._ That for our dear Prince Henry's sake I will myself the offering make, And give my life to purchase his. _Ursula_ Am I still dreaming, or awake? Thou speakest carelessly of death, And yet thou knowest not what it is. _Elsie._ 'T is the cessation of our breath. Silent and motionless we lie; And no one knoweth more than this. I saw our little Gertrude die, She left off breathing, and no more I smoothed the pillow beneath her head. She was more beautiful than before. Like violets faded were her eyes; By this we knew that she was dead. Through the open window looked the skies Into the chamber where she lay, And the wind was like the sound of wings, As if angels came to bear her away. Ah! when I saw and felt these things, I found it difficult to stay; I longed to die, as she had died, And go forth with her, side by side. The Saints are dead, the Martyrs dead, And Mary, and our Lord, and I Would follow in humility The way by them illumined! _Ursula._ My child! my child! thou must not die! _Elsie_ Why should I live? Do I not know The life of woman is full of woe? Toiling on and on and on, With breaking heart, and tearful eyes, And silent lips, and in the soul The secret longings that arise, Which this world never satisfies! Some more, some less, but of the whole Not one quite happy, no, not one! _Ursula._ It is the malediction of Eve! _Elsie._ In place of it, let me receive The benediction of Mary, then. _Gottlieb._ Ah, woe is me! Ah, woe is me! Most wretched am I among men! _Ursula._ Alas! that I should live to see Thy death, beloved, and to stand Above thy grave! Ah, woe the day! _Elsie._ Thou wilt not see it. I shall lie Beneath the flowers of another land, For at Salerno, far away Over the mountains, over the sea, It is appointed me to die! And it will seem no more to thee Than if at the village on market-day I should a little longer stay Than I am used. _Ursula._ Even as thou sayest! And how my heart beats, when thou stayest! I cannot rest until my sight Is satisfied with seeing thee. What, then, if thou wert dead? _Gottlieb_ Ah me! Of our old eyes thou art the light! The joy of our old hearts art thou! And wilt thou die? _Ursula._ Not now! not now! _Elsie_ Christ died for me, and shall not I Be willing for my Prince to die? You both are silent; you cannot speak. This said I, at our Saviour's feast, After confession, to the priest, And even he made no reply. Does he not warn us all to seek The happier, better land on high, Where flowers immortal never wither, And could he forbid me to go thither? _Gottlieb._ In God's own time, my heart's delight! When he shall call thee, not before! _Elsie._ I heard him call. When Christ ascended Triumphantly, from star to star, He left the gates of heaven ajar. I had a vision in the night, And saw him standing at the door Of his Father's mansion, vast and splendid, And beckoning to me from afar. I cannot stay! _Gottlieb._ She speaks almost As if it were the Holy Ghost Spake through her lips, and in her stead! What if this were of God? _Ursula._ Ah, then Gainsay it dare we not. _Gottlieb._ Amen! Elsie! the words that thou hast said Are strange and new for us to hear, And fill our hearts with doubt and fear. Whether it be a dark temptation Of the Evil One, or God's inspiration, We in our blindness cannot say. We must think upon it, and pray; For evil and good in both resembles. If it be of God, his will be done! May he guard us from the Evil One! How hot thy hand is! how it trembles! Go to thy bed, and try to sleep. _Ursula._ Kiss me. Good-night; and do not weep! (ELSIE _goes out._) Ah, what an awful thing is this! I almost shuddered at her kiss. As if a ghost had touched my cheek, I am so childish and so weak! As soon as I see the earliest gray Of morning glimmer in the east, I will go over to the priest, And hear what the good man has to say! * * * * * A VILLAGE CHURCH. * * * * * _A woman kneeling at the confessional. The Parish Priest (from within)_. Go, sin no more! Thy penance o'er, A new and better life begin! God maketh thee forever free From the dominion of thy sin! Go, sin no more! He will restore The peace that filled thy heart before, And pardon thine iniquity! (_The woman goes out. The Priest comes forth, and walks slowly up and down the church_.) O blessed Lord! how much I need Thy light to guide me on my way! So many hands, that, without heed, Still touch thy wounds, and make them bleed! So many feet, that, day by day, Still wander from thy fold astray! Unless thou fill me with thy light, I cannot lead thy flock aright; Nor, without thy support, can bear The burden of so great a care, But am myself a castaway! (_A pause_.) The day is drawing to its close; And what good deeds, since first it rose, Have I presented, Lord, to thee, As offerings of my ministry? What wrong repressed, what right maintained What struggle passed, what victory gained, What good attempted and attained? Feeble, at best, is my endeavor! I see, but cannot reach, the height That lies forever in the light, And yet forever and forever, When seeming just within my grasp, I feel my feeble hands unclasp, And sink discouraged into night! For thine own purpose, thou hast sent The strife and the discouragement! (_A pause_.) Why stayest thou, Prince of Hoheneck? Why keep me pacing to and fro Amid these aisles of sacred gloom, Counting my footsteps as I go, And marking with each step a tomb? Why should the world for thee make room, And wait thy leisure and thy beck? Thou comest in the hope to hear Some word of comfort and of cheer. What can I say? I cannot give The counsel to do this and live; But rather, firmly to deny The tempter, though his power is strong, And, inaccessible to wrong, Still like a martyr live and die! (_A pause_.) The evening air grows dusk and brown; I must go forth into the town, To visit beds of pain and death, Of restless limbs, and quivering breath, And sorrowing hearts, and patient eyes That see, through tears, the sun go down, But never more shall see it rise. The poor in body and estate, The sick and the disconsolate. Must not on man's convenience wait. (_Goes out. Enter_ LUCIFER, _as a Priest_. LUCIFER, _with a genuflexion, mocking_.) This is the Black Pater-noster. God was my foster, He fostered me Under the book of the Palm-tree! St. Michael was my dame. He was born at Bethlehem, He was made of flesh and blood. God send me my right food, My right food, and shelter too, That I may to yon kirk go, To read upon yon sweet book Which the mighty God of heaven shook. Open, open, hell's gates! Shut, shut, heaven's gates! All the devils in the air The stronger be, that hear the Black Prayer! (_Looking round the church_.) What a darksome and dismal place! I wonder that any man has the face To call such a hole the House of the Lord, And the Gate of Heaven,--yet such is the word. Ceiling, and walls, and windows old, Covered with cobwebs, blackened with mould; Dust on the pulpit, dust on the stairs, Dust on the benches, and stalls, and chairs! The pulpit, from which such ponderous sermons Have fallen down on the brains of the Germans, With about as much real edification As if a great Bible, bound in lead, Had fallen, and struck them on the head; And I ought to remember that sensation! Here stands the holy water stoup! Holy-water it may be to many, But to me, the veriest Liquor Gehennae! It smells like a filthy fast day soup! Near it stands the box for the poor; With its iron padlock, safe and sure, I and the priest of the parish know Whither all these charities go; Therefore, to keep up the institution, I will add my little contribution! (_He puts in money._) Underneath this mouldering tomb, With statue of stone, and scutcheon of brass, Slumbers a great lord of the village. All his life was riot and pillage, But at length, to escape the threatened doom Of the everlasting, penal fire, He died in the dress of a mendicant friar, And bartered his wealth for a daily mass. But all that afterward came to pass, And whether he finds it dull or pleasant, Is kept a secret for the present, At his own particular desire. And here, in a corner of the wall, Shadowy, silent, apart from all, With its awful portal open wide, And its latticed windows on either side, And its step well worn by the bended knees Of one or two pious centuries, Stands the village confessional! Within it, as an honored guest, I will sit me down awhile and rest! (_Seats himself in the confessional_.) Here sits the priest, and faint and low, Like the sighing of an evening breeze, Comes through these painted lattices The ceaseless sound of human woe, Here, while her bosom aches and throbs With deep and agonizing sobs, That half are passion, half contrition, The luckless daughter of perdition Slowly confesses her secret shame! The time, the place, the lover's name! Here the grim murderer, with a groan, From his bruised conscience rolls the stone, Thinking that thus he can atone For ravages of sword and flame! Indeed, I marvel, and marvel greatly, How a priest can sit here so sedately, Reading, the whole year out and in, Naught but the catalogue of sin, And still keep any faith whatever In human virtue! Never! never! I cannot repeat a thousandth part Of the horrors and crimes and sins and woes That arise, when with palpitating throes The graveyard in the human heart Gives up its dead, at the voice of the priest, As if he were an archangel, at least. It makes a peculiar atmosphere, This odor of earthly passions and crimes, Such as I like to breathe, at times, And such as often brings me here In the hottest and most pestilential season. To-day, I come for another reason; To foster and ripen an evil thought In a heart that is almost to madness wrought, And to make a murderer out of a prince, A sleight of hand I learned long since! He comes In the twilight he will not see the difference between his priest and me! In the same net was the mother caught! (_Prince Henry entering and kneeling at the confessional._) Remorseful, penitent, and lowly, I come to crave, O Father holy, Thy benediction on my head. _Lucifer_. The benediction shall be said After confession, not before! 'T is a God speed to the parting guest, Who stands already at the door, Sandalled with holiness, and dressed In garments pure from earthly stain. Meanwhile, hast thou searched well thy breast? Does the same madness fill thy brain? Or have thy passion and unrest Vanished forever from thy mind? _Prince Henry_. By the same madness still made blind, By the same passion still possessed, I come again to the house of prayer, A man afflicted and distressed! As in a cloudy atmosphere, Through unseen sluices of the air, A sudden and impetuous wind Strikes the great forest white with fear, And every branch, and bough, and spray Points all its quivering leaves one way, And meadows of grass, and fields of grain, And the clouds above, and the slanting rain, And smoke from chimneys of the town, Yield themselves to it, and bow down, So does this dreadful purpose press Onward, with irresistible stress, And all my thoughts and faculties, Struck level by the strength of this, From their true inclination turn, And all stream forward to Salem! _Lucifer_. Alas! we are but eddies of dust, Uplifted by the blast, and whirled Along the highway of the world A moment only, then to fall Back to a common level all, At the subsiding of the gust! _Prince Henry_. O holy Father! pardon in me The oscillation of a mind Unsteadfast, and that cannot find Its centre of rest and harmony! For evermore before mine eyes This ghastly phantom flits and flies, And as a madman through a crowd, With frantic gestures and wild cries, It hurries onward, and aloud Repeats its awful prophecies! Weakness is wretchedness! To be strong Is to be happy! I am weak, And cannot find the good I seek, Because I feel and fear the wrong! _Lucifer_. Be not alarmed! The Church is kind-- And in her mercy and her meekness She meets half-way her children's weakness, Writes their transgressions in the dust! Though in the Decalogue we find The mandate written, "Thou shalt not kill!" Yet there are cases when we must. In war, for instance, or from scathe To guard and keep the one true Faith! We must look at the Decalogue in the light Of an ancient statute, that was meant For a mild and general application, To be understood with the reservation, That, in certain instances, the Right Must yield to the Expedient! Thou art a Prince. If thou shouldst die, What hearts and hopes would prostrate he! What noble deeds, what fair renown, Into the grave with thee go down! What acts of valor and courtesy Remain undone, and die with thee! Thou art the last of all thy race! With thee a noble name expires, And vanishes from the earth's face The glorious memory of thy sires! She is a peasant. In her veins Flows common and plebeian blood; It is such as daily and hourly stains The dust and the turf of battle plains, By vassals shed, in a crimson flood, Without reserve, and without reward, At the slightest summons of their lord! But thine is precious, the fore-appointed Blood of kings, of God's anointed! Moreover, what has the world in store For one like her, but tears and toil? Daughter of sorrow, serf of the soil, A peasant's child and a peasant's wife, And her soul within her sick and sore With the roughness and barrenness of life! I marvel not at the heart's recoil From a fate like this, in one so tender, Nor at its eagerness to surrender All the wretchedness, want, and woe That await it in this world below, For the unutterable splendor Of the world of rest beyond the skies. So the Church sanctions the sacrifice: Therefore inhale this healing balm, And breathe this fresh life into thine; Accept the comfort and the calm She offers, as a gift divine, Let her fall down and anoint thy feet With the ointment costly and most sweet Of her young blood, and thou shall live. _Prince Henry._ And will the righteous Heaven forgive? No action, whether foul or fair, Is ever done, but it leaves somewhere A record, written by fingers ghostly, As a blessing or a curse, and mostly In the greater weakness or greater strength Of the acts which follow it, till at length The wrongs of ages are redressed, And the justice of God made manifest! _Lucifer_ In ancient records it is stated That, whenever an evil deed is done, Another devil is created To scourge and torment the offending one! But evil is only good perverted, And Lucifer, the Bearer of Light, But an angel fallen and deserted, Thrust from his Father's house with a curse Into the black and endless night. _Prince Henry._ If justice rules the universe, From the good actions of good men Angels of light should be begotten, And thus the balance restored again. _Lucifer._ Yes; if the world were not so rotten, And so given over to the Devil! _Prince Henry._ But this deed, is it good or evil? Have I thine absolution free To do it, and without restriction? _Lucifer._ Ay; and from whatsoever sin Lieth around it and within, From all crimes in which it may involve thee, I now release thee and absolve thee! _Prince Henry._ Give me thy holy benediction. _Lucifer._ (_stretching forth his hand and muttering_), Maledictione perpetua Maledicat vos Pater eternus! _The Angel_ (_with the aeolian harp_). Take heed! take heed! Noble art thou in thy birth, By the good and the great of earth Hast thou been taught! Be noble in every thought And in every deed! Let not the illusion of thy senses Betray thee to deadly offences. Be strong! be good! be pure! The right only shall endure, All things else are but false pretences! I entreat thee, I implore, Listen no more To the suggestions of an evil spirit, That even now is there, Making the foul seem fair, And selfishness itself a virtue and a merit! * * * * * A ROOM IN THE FARM-HOUSE. * * * * * _Gottlieb_. It is decided! For many days, And nights as many, we have had A nameless terror in our breast, Making us timid, and afraid Of God, and his mysterious ways! We have been sorrowful and sad; Much have we suffered, much have prayed That he would lead us as is best, And show us what his will required. It is decided; and we give Our child, O Prince, that you may live! _Ursula_. It is of God. He has inspired This purpose in her; and through pain, Out of a world of sin and woe, He takes her to himself again. The mother's heart resists no longer; With the Angel of the Lord in vain It wrestled, for he was the stronger. _Gottlieb_. As Abraham offered long ago His son unto the Lord, and even The Everlasting Father in heaven Gave his, as a lamb unto the slaughter, So do I offer up my daughter! (URSULA _hides her face_.) _Elsie_. My life is little, Only a cup of water, But pure and limpid. Take it, O my Prince! Let it refresh you, Let it restore you. It is given willingly, It is given freely; May God bless the gift! _Prince Henry._ And the giver! _Gottlieb._ Amen! _Prince Henry._ I accept it! _Gottlieb._ Where are the children? _Ursula._ They are already asleep. _Gottlieb._ What if they were dead? * * * * * IN THE GARDEN. * * * * * _Elsie._ I have one thing to ask of you. _Prince Henry._ What is it? It is already granted. _Elsie._ Promise me, When we are gone from here, and on our way Are journeying to Salerno, you will not, By word or deed, endeavor to dissuade me And turn me from my purpose, but remember That as a pilgrim to the Holy City Walks unmolested, and with thoughts of pardon Occupied wholly, so would I approach The gates of Heaven, in this great jubilee, With my petition, putting off from me All thoughts of earth, as shoes from off my feet. Promise me this. _Prince Henry._ Thy words fall from thy lips Like roses from the lips of Angelo: and angels Might stoop to pick them up! _Elsie._ Will you not promise? _Prince Henry._ If ever we depart upon this journey, So long to one or both of us, I promise. _Elsie._ Shall we not go, then? Have you lifted me Into the air, only to hurl me back Wounded upon the ground? and offered me The waters of eternal life, to bid me Drink the polluted puddles of this world? _Prince Henry._ O Elsie! what a lesson thou dost teach me! The life which is, and that which is to come, Suspended hang in such nice equipoise A breath disturbs the balance; and that scale In which we throw our hearts preponderates, And the other, like an empty one, flies up, And is accounted vanity and air! To me the thought of death is terrible, Having such hold on life. To thee it is not So much even as the lifting of a latch; Only a step into the open air Out of a tent already luminous With light that shines through its transparent walls! O pure in heart! from thy sweet dust shall grow Lilies, upon whose petals will be written "Ave Maria" in characters of gold! III. A STREET IN STRASBURG. * * * * * _Night._ PRINCE HENRY _wandering alone, wrapped in a cloak._ _Prince Henry._ Still is the night. The sound of feet Has died away from the empty street, And like an artisan, bending down His head on his anvil, the dark town Sleeps, with a slumber deep and sweet. Sleepless and restless, I alone, In the dusk and damp of these wails of stone, Wander and weep in my remorse! _Crier of the dead (ringing a bell)._ Wake! wake! All ye that sleep! Pray for the Dead! Pray for the Dead! _Prince Henry._ Hark! with what accents loud and hoarse This warder on the walls of death Sends forth the challenge of his breath! I see the dead that sleep in the grave! They rise up and their garments wave, Dimly and spectral, as they rise, With the light of another world in their eyes! _Crier of the dead._ Wake! wake! All ye that sleep! Pray for the Dead! Pray for the Dead! _Prince Henry._ Why for the dead, who are at rest? Pray for the living, in whose breast The struggle between right and wrong Is raging terrible and strong, As when good angels war with devils! This is the Master of the Revels, Who, at Life's flowing feast, proposes The health of absent friends, and pledges, Not in bright goblets crowned with roses, And tinkling as we touch their edges, But with his dismal, tinkling bell, That mocks and mimics their funeral knell! _Crier of the dead._ Wake! wake! All ye that sleep! Pray for the Dead! Pray for the Dead! _Prince Henry._ Wake not, beloved! be thy sleep Silent as night is, and as deep! There walks a sentinel at thy gate Whose heart is heavy and desolate, And the heavings of whose bosom number The respirations of thy slumber, As if some strange, mysterious fate Had linked two hearts in one, and mine Went madly wheeling about thine, Only with wider and wilder sweep! _Crier of the dead (at a distance)._ Wake! wake! All ye that sleep! Pray for the Dead! Pray for the Dead! _Prince Henry._ Lo! with what depth of blackness thrown Against the clouds, far up the skies, The walls of the cathedral rise, Like a mysterious grove of stone, With fitful lights and shadows bleeding, As from behind, the moon, ascending, Lights its dim aisles and paths unknown! The wind is rising; but the boughs Rise not and fall not with the wind That through their foliage sobs and soughs; Only the cloudy rack behind, Drifting onward, wild and ragged, Gives to each spire and buttress jagged A seeming motion undefined. Below on the square, an armed knight, Still as a statue and as white, Sits on his steed, and the moonbeams quiver Upon the points of his armor bright As on the ripples of a river. He lifts the visor from his cheek, And beckons, and makes as he would speak. _Walter the Minnesinger_ Friend! can you tell me where alight Thuringia's horsemen for the night? For I have lingered in the rear, And wander vainly up and down. _Prince Henry_ I am a stranger in the town, As thou art, but the voice I hear Is not a stranger to mine ear. Thou art Walter of the Vogelweid! _Walter_ Thou hast guessed rightly; and thy name Is Henry of Hoheneck! _Prince Henry_ Ay, the same. _Walter_ (_embracing him_). Come closer, closer to my side! What brings thee hither? What potent charm Has drawn thee from thy German farm Into the old Alsatian city? _Prince Henry_. A tale of wonder and of pity! A wretched man, almost by stealth Dragging my body to Salern, In the vain hope and search for health, And destined never to return. Already thou hast heard the rest But what brings thee, thus armed and dight In the equipments of a knight? _Walter_. Dost thou not see upon my breast The cross of the Crusaders shine? My pathway leads to Palestine. _Prince Henry_. Ah, would that way were also mine! O noble poet! thou whose heart Is like a nest of singing birds Rocked on the topmost bough of life, Wilt thou, too, from our sky depart, And in the clangor of the strife Mingle the music of thy words? _Walter_. My hopes are high, my heart is proud, And like a trumpet long and loud, Thither my thoughts all clang and ring! My life is in my hand, and lo! I grasp and bend it as a bow, And shoot forth from its trembling string An arrow, that shall be, perchance, Like the arrow of the Israelite king Shot from the window toward the east, That of the Lord's deliverance! _Prince Henry_. My life, alas! is what thou seest! O enviable fate! to be Strong, beautiful, and armed like thee With lyre and sword, with song and steel; A hand to smite, a heart to feel! Thy heart, thy hand, thy lyre, thy sword, Thou givest all unto thy Lord, While I, so mean and abject grown, Am thinking of myself alone. _Walter_. Be patient: Time will reinstate Thy health and fortunes. _Prince Henry_. 'T is too late! I cannot strive against my fate! _Walter_. Come with me; for my steed is weary; Our journey has been long and dreary, And, dreaming of his stall, he dints With his impatient hoofs the flints. _Prince Henry_ (_aside_). I am ashamed, in my disgrace, To look into that noble face! To-morrow, Walter, let it be. _Walter_. To-morrow, at the dawn of day, I shall again be on my way Come with me to the hostelry, For I have many things to say. Our journey into Italy Perchance together we may make; Wilt thou not do it for my sake? _Prince Henry_. A sick man's pace would but impede Thine eager and impatient speed. Besides, my pathway leads me round To Hirsehau, in the forest's bound, Where I assemble man and steed, And all things for my journey's need. (_They go out_. LUCIFER, _flying over the city_.) Sleep, sleep, O city! till the light Wakes you to sin and crime again, Whilst on your dreams, like dismal rain, I scatter downward through the night My maledictions dark and deep. I have more martyrs in your walls Than God has; and they cannot sleep; They are my bondsmen and my thralls; Their wretched lives are full of pain, Wild agonies of nerve and brain; And every heart-beat, every breath, Is a convulsion worse than death! Sleep, sleep, O city! though within The circuit of your walls there lies No habitation free from sin, And all its nameless miseries; The aching heart, the aching head, Grief for the living and the dead, And foul corruption of the time, Disease, distress, and want, and woe, And crimes, and passions that may grow Until they ripen into, crime! SQUARE IN FRONT OF THE CATHEDRAL. * * * * * _Easter Sunday_. FRIAR CUTHBERT _preaching to the crowd from a pulpit in the open air_. PRINCE HENRY _and_ ELSIE _crossing the square_. _Prince Henry_. This is the day, when from the dead Our Lord arose; and everywhere, Out of their darkness and despair, Triumphant over fears and foes, The hearts of his disciples rose, When to the women, standing near, The Angel in shining vesture said, "The Lord is risen; he is not here!" And, mindful that the day is come, On all the hearths in Christendom The fires are quenched, to be again Rekindled from the sun, that high Is dancing in the cloudless sky. The churches are all decked with flowers. The salutations among men Are but the Angel's words divine, "Christ is arisen!" and the bells Catch the glad murmur, as it swells, And chaunt together in their towers. All hearts are glad; and free from care The faces of the people shine. See what a crowd is in the square, Gaily and gallantly arrayed! _Elsie_. Let us go back; I am afraid! _Prince Henry_. Nay, let us mount the church-steps here, Under the doorway's sacred shadow; We can see all things, and be freer From the crowd that madly heaves and presses! _Elsie._ What a gay pageant! what bright dresses! It looks like a flower besprinkled meadow. What is that yonder on the square? _Prince Henry_ A pulpit in the open air, And a Friar, who is preaching to the crowd With a voice so deep and clear and loud, That, if we listen, and give heed, His lowest words will reach the ear. _Friar Cuthbert (gesticulating and cracking a postilion's whip)_ What ho! good people! do you not hear? Dashing along at the top of his speed, Booted and spurred, on his jaded steed, A courier comes with words of cheer. Courier! what is the news, I pray? "Christ is arisen!" Whence come you? "From court." Then I do not believe it; you say it in sport. (_Cracks his whip again._) There comes another, riding this way; We soon shall know what he has to say. Courier! what are the tidings to-day? "Christ is arisen!" Whence come you? "From town." Then I do not believe it; away with you, clown. (_Cracks his whip more violently._) And here comes a third, who is spurring amain; What news do you bring, with your loose-hanging rein, Your spurs wet with blood, and your bridle with foam? "Christ is arisen!" Whence come you? "From Rome." Ah, now I believe. He is risen, indeed. Ride on with the news, at the top of your speed! (_Great applause among the crowd._) To come back to my text! When the news was first spread That Christ was arisen indeed from the dead, Very great was the joy of the angels in heaven; And as great the dispute as to who should carry The tidings, thereof to the Virgin Mary, Pierced to the heart with sorrows seven. Old Father Adam was first to propose, As being the author of all our woes; But he was refused, for fear, said they, He would stop to eat apples on the way! Abel came next, but petitioned in vain, Because he might meet with his brother Cain! Noah, too, was refused, lest his weakness for wine Should delay him at every tavern sign; And John the Baptist could not get a vote, On account of his old fashioned, camel's-hair coat; And the Penitent Thief, who died on the cross, Was reminded that all his bones were broken! Till at last, when each in turn had spoken, The company being still at a loss, The Angel, who had rolled away the stone, Was sent to the sepulchre, all alone, And filled with glory that gloomy prison, And said to the Virgin, "The Lord is arisen!" (_The Cathedral bells ring_.) But hark! the bells are beginning to chime; And I feel that I am growing hoarse. I will put an end to my discourse, And leave the rest for some other time. For the bells themselves are the best of preachers; Their brazen lips are learned teachers, From their pulpits of stone, in the upper air, Sounding aloft, without crack or flaw, Shriller than trumpets under the Law, Now a sermon and now a prayer. The clangorous hammer is the tongue, This way, that way, beaten and swung, That from mouth of brass, as from Mouth of Gold, May be taught the Testaments, New and Old. And above it the great crossbeam of wood Representeth the Holy Rood, Upon which, like the bell, our hopes are hung. And the wheel wherewith it is swayed and rung Is the mind of man, that round and round Sways, and maketh the tongue to sound! And the rope, with its twisted cordage three, Denoteth the Scriptural Trinity Of Morals, and Symbols, and History; And the upward and downward motions show That we touch upon matters high and low; And the constant change and transmutation Of action and of contemplation, Downward, the Scripture brought from on high, Upward, exalted again to the sky; Downward, the literal interpretation, Upward, the Vision and Mystery! And now, my hearers, to make an end, I have only one word more to say; In the church, in honor of Easter day, Will be represented a Miracle Play; And I hope you will all have the grace to attend. Christ bring us at last So his felicity! Pax vobiscum! et Benedicite! IN THE CATHEDRAL. * * * * * CHAUNT. Kyrie Eleison! Christe Eleison! _Elsie._ I am at home here in my Father's house! These paintings of the Saints upon the walls Have all familiar and benignant faces. _Prince Henry._ The portraits of the family of God! Thine own hereafter shall be placed among them. _Elsie._ How very grand it is and wonderful! Never have I beheld a church so splendid! Such columns, and such arches, and such windows, So many tombs and statues in the chapels, And under them so many confessionals. They must be for the rich. I should not like To tell my sins in such a church as this. Who built it? _Prince Henry._ A great master of his craft, Erwin von Steinbach; but not he alone, For many generations labored with him. Children that came to see these Saints in stone, As day by day out of the blocks they rose, Grew old and died, and still the work went on, And on, and on, and is not yet completed. The generation that succeeds our own Perhaps may finish it. The architect Built his great heart into these sculptured stones, And with him toiled his children, and their lives Were builded, with his own, into the walls, As offerings unto God. You see that statue Fixing its joyous, but deep-wrinkled eyes Upon the Pillar of the Angels yonder. That is the image of the master, carved By the fair hand of his own child, Sabina. _Elsie._ How beautiful is the column that he looks at! _Prince Henry._ That, too, she sculptured. At the base of it Stand the Evangelists; above their heads Four Angels blowing upon marble trumpets, And over them the blessed Christ, surrounded By his attendant ministers, upholding The instruments of his passion. _Elsie._ O my Lord! Would I could leave behind me upon earth Some monument to thy glory, such as this! _Prince Henry._ A greater monument than this thou leavest In thine own life, all purity and love! See, too, the Rose, above the western portal Flamboyant with a thousand gorgeous colors, The perfect flower of Gothic loveliness! _Elsie._ And, in the gallery, the long line of statues, Christ with his twelve Apostles watching us. (_A_ BISHOP _in armor, booted and spurred, passes with his train._) _Prince Henry._ But come away; we have not time to look. The crowd already fills the church, and yonder Upon a stage, a herald with a trumpet, Clad like The Angel Gabriel, proclaims The Mystery that will now be represented. THE NATIVITY. * * * * * A MIRACLE PLAY. * * * * * THE NATIVITY. INTROITUS. _Præco._ Come, good people, all and each, Come and listen to our speech! In your presence here I stand, With a trumpet in my hand, To announce the Easter Play, Which we represent to-day! First of all we shall rehearse, In our action and our verse, The Nativity of our Lord, As written in the old record Of the Protevangelion, So that he who reads may run! (_Blows his trumpet._) * * * * * I. HEAVEN. _Mercy_ (_at the feet of God_). Have pity, Lord be not afraid To save mankind, whom thou hast made, Nor let the souls that were betrayed Perish eternally! _Justice._ It cannot be, it must not be! When in the garden placed by thee, The fruit of the forbidden tree He ate, and he must die! _Mercy._ Have pity, Lord! let penitence Atone for disobedience, Nor let the fruit of man's offence Be endless misery! _Justice._ What penitence proportionate Can e'er be felt for sin so great? Of the forbidden fruit he ate, And damned must he be! _God._ He shall be saved, if that within The bounds of earth one free from sin Be found, who for his kith and kin Will suffer martyrdom. _The Four Virtues._ Lord! we have searched the world around, From centre to the utmost bound, But no such mortal can be found; Despairing, back we come. _Wisdom._ No mortal, but a God made man, Can ever carry out this plan, Achieving what none other can, Salvation unto all! _God._ Go, then, O my beloved Son; It can by thee alone be done; By thee the victory shall be won O'er Satan and the Fall! (_Here the_ ANGEL GABRIEL _shall leave Paradise and fly toward the earth; the jaws of Hell open below, and the Devils walk about, making a great noise._) * * * * * II. MARY AT THE WELL. _Mary._ Along the garden walk, and thence Through the wicket in the garden fence, I steal with quiet pace, My pitcher at the well to fill, That lies so deep and cool and still In this sequestered place. These sycamores keep guard around; I see no face, I hear no sound, Save babblings of the spring, And my companions, who within The threads of gold and scarlet spin, And at their labor sing. _The Angel Gabriel._ Hail, Virgin Mary, full of grace! (_Here_ MARY _looketh around her, trembling, and then saith:_) _Mary._ Who is it speaketh in this place, With such a gentle voice? _Gabriel._ The Lord of heaven is with thee now! Blessed among all women thou, Who art his holy choice! _Mary_ (setting down the pitcher). What can this mean? No one is near, And yet, such sacred words I hear, I almost fear to stay. (_Here the_ ANGEL, _appearing to her, shall say:_) _Gabriel._ Fear not, O Mary! but believe! For thou, a Virgin, shalt conceive A child this very day. Fear not, O Mary! from the sky The majesty of the Most High Shall overshadow thee! _Mary._ Behold the handmaid of the Lord! According to thy holy word, So be it unto me! (_Here the Devils shall again make a great noise, under the stage._) III. THE ANGELS OF THE SEVEN PLANETS, _bearing the Star of Bethlehem._ _The Angels._ The Angels of the Planets Seven Across the shining fields of heaven The natal star we bring! Dropping our sevenfold virtues down, As priceless jewels in the crown Of Christ, our new-born King. _Raphael._ I am the Angel of the Sun, Whose flaming wheels began to run When God's almighty breath Said to the darkness and the Night, Let there be light! and there was light! I bring the gift of Faith. _Gabriel._ I am the Angel of the Moon, Darkened, to be rekindled soon Beneath the azure cope! Nearest to earth, it is my ray That best illumes the midnight way. I bring the gift of Hope! _Anael._ The Angel of the Star of Love, The Evening Star, that shines above The place where lovers be, Above all happy hearths and homes, On roofs of thatch, or golden domes, I give him Charity! _Zobiachel._ The Planet Jupiter is mine! The mightiest star of all that shine, Except the sun alone! He is the High Priest of the Dove, And sends, from his great throne above, Justice, that shall atone! _Michael._ The Planet Mercury, whose place Is nearest to the sun in space, Is my allotted sphere! And with celestial ardor swift I bear upon my hands the gift Of heavenly Prudence here! _Uriel._ I am the Minister of Mars, The strongest star among the stars! My songs of power prelude The march and battle of man's life, And for the suffering and the strife, I give him Fortitude! _Anachiel._ The Angel of the uttermost Of all the shining, heavenly host, From the far-off expanse Of the Saturnian, endless space I bring the last, the crowning grace, The gift of Temperance! (_A sudden light shines from the windows of the stable in the village below._) IV. THE WISE MEN OF THE EAST. _The stable of the Inn. The_ VIRGIN _and_ CHILD. _Three Gypsy Kings,_ GASPAR, MELCHIOR, _and_ BELSHAZZAR, _shall come in._ _Gaspar._ Hail to thee, Jesus of Nazareth! Though in a manger thou drawest thy breath, Thou art greater than Life and Death, Greater than Joy or Woe! This cross upon the line of life Portendeth struggle, toil, and strife, And through a region with dangers rife In darkness shall thou go! _Melchior._ Hail to thee, King of Jerusalem Though humbly born in Bethlehem, A sceptre and a diadem Await thy brow and hand! The sceptre is a simple reed, The crown will make thy temples bleed, And in thy hour of greatest need, Abashed thy subjects stand! _Belshazzar_. Hail to thee, Christ of Christendom! O'er all the earth thy kingdom come! From distant Trebizond to Rome Thy name shall men adore! Peace and good-will among all men, The Virgin has returned again, Returned the old Saturnian reign And Golden Age once more. _The Child Christ_. Jesus, the Son of God, am I, Born here to suffer and to die According to the prophecy, That other men may live! _The Virgin_. And now these clothes, that wrapped him, take And keep them precious, for his sake; For benediction thus we make, Naught else have we to give. (_She gives them swaddling-clothes and they depart_.) V. THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT. _Here shall_ JOSEPH _come in, leading an ass, on which are seated_ MARY _and the_ CHILD. _Mary_. Here will we rest us, under these Underhanging branches of the trees, Where robins chant their Litanies, And canticles of joy. _Joseph_. My saddle-girths have given way With trudging through the heat to-day To you I think it is but play To ride and hold the boy. _Mary_. Hark! how the robins shout and sing, As if to hail their infant King! I will alight at yonder spring To wash his little coat. _Joseph_. And I will hobble well the ass, Lest, being loose upon the grass, He should escape; for, by the mass. He is nimble as a goat. (_Here_ MARY _shall alight and go to the spring._) _Mary_. O Joseph! I am much afraid, For men are sleeping in the shade; I fear that we shall be waylaid, And robbed and beaten sore! (_Here a band of robbers shall be seen sleeping, two of whom shall rise and come forward_.) _Dumachus_. Cock's soul! deliver up your gold! _Joseph_. I pray you, Sirs, let go your hold! Of wealth I have no store. _Dumachus_. Give up your money! _Titus_. Prithee cease! Let these good people go in peace! _Dumachus_. First let them pay for their release, And then go on their way. _Titus_. These forty groats I give in fee, If thou wilt only silent be. _Mary_. May God be merciful to thee Upon the Judgment Day! _Jesus_. When thirty years shall have gone by, I at Jerusalem shall die, By Jewish hands exalted high On the accursed tree. Then on my right and my left side, These thieves shall both be crucified And Titus thenceforth shall abide In paradise with me. (_Here a great rumor of trumpets and horses, like the noise of a king with his army, and the robbers shall take flight._) VI. THE SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS. _King Herod._ Potz-tausend! Himmel-sacrament! Filled am I with great wonderment At this unwelcome news! Am I not Herod? Who shall dare My crown to take, my sceptre bear, As king among the Jews? (_Here he shall stride up and down and flourish his sword._) What ho! I fain would drink a can Of the strong wine of Canaan! The wine of Helbon bring, I purchased at the Fair of Tyre, As red as blood, as hot as fire, And fit for any king! (_He quaffs great goblets of wine._) Now at the window will I stand, While in the street the armed band The little children slay: The babe just born in Bethlehem Will surely slaughtered be with them, Nor live another day! (_Here a voice of lamentation shall be heard in the street._) _Rachel._ O wicked king! O cruel speed! To do this most unrighteous deed! My children all are slain! _Herod._ Ho seneschal! another cup! With wine of Sorek fill it up! I would a bumper drain! _Rahab._ May maledictions fall and blast Thyself and lineage, to the last Of all thy kith and kin! _Herod._ Another goblet! quick! and stir Pomegranate juice and drops of myrrh And calamus therein! _Soldiers (in the street)_. Give up thy child into our hands! It is King Herod who commands That he should thus be slain! _The Nurse Medusa._ O monstrous men! What have ye done! It is King Herod's only son That ye have cleft in twain! _Herod._ Ah, luckless day! What words of fear Are these that smite upon my ear With such a doleful sound! What torments rack my heart and head! Would I were dead! would I were dead, And buried in the ground! (_He falls down and writhes as though eaten by worms. Hell opens, and_ SATAN _and_ ASTAROTH _come forth, and drag him down._) VII. JESUS AT PLAY WITH HIS SCHOOLMATES. _Jesus._ The shower is over. Let us play, And make some sparrows out of clay, Down by the river's side. _Judas._ See, how the stream has overflowed Its banks, and o'er the meadow road Is spreading far and wide! (_They draw water out of the river by channels, and form little pools_ JESUS _makes twelve sparrows of clay, and the other boys do the same._) _Jesus._ Look! look! how prettily I make These little sparrows by the lake Bend down their necks and drink! Now will I make them sing and soar So far, they shall return no more Into this river's brink. _Judas._ That canst thou not! They are but clay, They cannot sing, nor fly away Above the meadow lands! _Jesus._ Fly, fly! ye sparrows! you are free! And while you live, remember me, Who made you with my hands. (_Here_ JESUS _shall clap his hands, and the sparrows shall fly away, chirruping._) _Judas._ Thou art a sorcerer, I know; Oft has my mother told me so, I will not play with thee! (_He strikes_ JESUS _on the right side._) _Jesus._ Ah, Judas! thou has smote my side, And when I shall be crucified, There shall I pierced be! (_Here_ JOSEPH _shall come in, and say:_) _Joseph._ Ye wicked boys! why do ye play, And break the holy Sabbath day? What, think ye, will your mothers say To see you in such plight! In such a sweat and such a heat, With all that mud-upon your feet! There's not a beggar in the street Makes such a sorry sight! VIII. THE VILLAGE SCHOOL. _The_ RABBI BEN ISRAEL, _with a long beard, sitting on a high stool, with a rod in his hand._ _Rabbi._ I am the Rabbi Ben Israel, Throughout this village known full well, And, as my scholars all will tell, Learned in things divine; The Kabala and Talmud hoar Than all the prophets prize I more, For water is all Bible lore, But Mishna is strong wine. My fame extends from West to East, And always, at the Purim feast, I am as drunk as any beast That wallows in his sty; The wine it so elateth me, That I no difference can see Between "Accursed Haman be!" And "Blessed be Mordecai!" Come hither, Judas Iscariot. Say, if thy lesson thou hast got From the Rabbinical Book or not. Why howl the dogs at night? _Judas._ In the Rabbinical Book, it saith The dogs howl, when with icy breath Great Sammaël, the Angel of Death, Takes through the town his flight! _Rabbi._ Well, boy! now say, if thou art wise, When the Angel of Death, who is full of eyes, Comes where a sick man dying lies, What doth he to the wight? _Judas._ He stands beside him, dark and tall, Holding a sword, from which doth fall Into his mouth a drop of gall, And so he turneth white. _Rabbi._ And now, my Judas, say to me What the great Voices Four may be, That quite across the world do flee, And are not heard by men? _Judas._ The Voice of the Sun in heaven's dome, The Voice of the Murmuring of Rome, The Voice of a Soul that goeth home, And the Angel of the Rain! _Rabbi._ Well have ye answered every one Now little Jesus, the carpenter's son, Let us see how thy task is done. Canst thou thy letters say? _Jesus._ Aleph. _Rabbi._ What next? Do not stop yet! Go on with all the alphabet. Come, Aleph, Beth; dost thou forget? Cock's soul! thou'dst rather play! _Jesus._ What Aleph means I fain would know, Before I any farther go! _Rabbi._ O, by Saint Peter! wouldst thou so? Come hither, boy, to me. And surely as the letter Jod Once cried aloud, and spake to God, So surely shalt thou feel this rod, And punished shalt thou be! (_Here_ RABBI BEN ISRAEL _shall lift up his rod to strike_ JESUS, _and his right arm shall be paralyzed._) IX. CROWNED WITH FLOWERS. JESUS _sitting among his playmates, crowned with flowers as their King._ _Boys._ We spread our garments on the ground' With fragrant flowers thy head is crowned, While like a guard we stand around, And hail thee as our King! Thou art the new King of the Jews! Nor let the passers-by refuse To bring that homage which men use To majesty to bring. (_Here a traveller shall go by, and the boys shall lay hold of his garments and say:_) _Boys._ Come hither! and all reverence pay Unto our monarch, crowned to-day! Then go rejoicing on your way, In all prosperity! _Traveller._ Hail to the King of Bethlehem, Who weareth in his diadem The yellow crocus for the gem Of his authority! (_He passes by; and others come in, bearing on a litter a sick child._) _Boys._ Set down the litter and draw near! The King of Bethlehem is here! What ails the child, who seems to fear That we shall do him harm? _The Bearers._ He climbed up to the robin's nest, And out there darted, from his rest, A serpent with a crimson crest, And stung him in the arm. _Jesus._ Bring him to me, and let me feel The wounded place; my touch can heal The sting of serpents, and can steal The poison from the bite! (_He touches the wound, and the boy begins to cry._) Cease to lament! I can foresee That thou hereafter known shalt be, Among the men who follow me, As Simon the Canaanite! * * * * * EPILOGUE. In the after part of the day Will be represented another play, Of the Passion of our Blessed Lord, Beginning directly after Nones! At the close of which we shall accord, By way of benison and reward, The sight of a holy Martyr's bones! IV. THE ROAD HIRSCHAU. PRINCE HENRY _and_ ELSIE, _with their attendants, on horseback._ _Elsie._ Onward and onward the highway runs to the distant city, impatiently bearing Tidings of human joy and disaster, of love and of hate, of doing and daring! _Prince Henry._ This life of ours is a wild aeolian harp of many a joyous strain, But under them all there runs a loud perpetual wail, as of souls in pain. _Elsie._ Faith alone can interpret life, and the heart that aches and bleeds with the stigma Of pain, alone bears the likeness of Christ, and can comprehend its dark enigma. _Prince Henry._ Man is selfish, and seeketh pleasure with little care of what may betide; Else why am I travelling here beside thee, a demon that rides by an angel's side? _Elsie._ All the hedges are white with dust, and the great dog under the creaking wain Hangs his head in the lazy heat, while onward the horses toil and strain _Prince Henry._ Now they stop at the wayside inn, and the wagoner laughs with the landlord's daughter, While out of the dripping trough the horses distend their leathern sides with water. _Elsie._ All through life there are wayside inns, where man may refresh his soul with love; Even the lowest may quench his thirst at rivulets fed by springs from above. _Prince Henry._ Yonder, where rises the cross of stone, our journey along the highway ends, And over the fields, by a bridle path, down into the broad green valley descends. _Elsie._ I am not sorry to leave behind the beaten road with its dust and heat; The air will be sweeter far, and the turf will be softer under our horses' feet. (_They turn down a green lane._) _Elsie._ Sweet is the air with the budding haws, and the valley stretching for miles below Is white with blossoming cheery trees, as if just covered with lightest snow. _Prince Henry._ Over our heads a white cascade is gleaming against the distant hill; We cannot hear it, nor see it move, but it hangs like a banner when winds are still. _Elsie._ Damp and cool is this deep ravine, and cool the sound of the brook by our side! What is this castle that rises above us, and lords it over a land so wide? _Prince Henry._ It is the home of the Counts of Calva; well have I known these scenes of old, Well I remember each tower and turret, remember the brooklet, the wood, and the wold. _Elsie._ Hark! from the little village below us the bells of the church are ringing for rain! Priests and peasants in long procession come forth and kneel on the arid plain. _Prince Henry._ They have not long to wait, for I see in the south uprising a little cloud, That before the sun shall be set will cover the sky above us as with a shroud. (_They pass on._) * * * * * THE CONVENT OF HIRSCHAU IN THE BLACK FOREST. * * * * * _The Convent cellar._ FRIAR CLAUS _comes in with a light and a basket of empty flagons._ _Friar Claus._ I always enter this sacred place With a thoughtful, solemn, and reverent pace, Pausing long enough on each stair To breathe an ejaculatory prayer, And a benediction on the vines That produce these various sorts of wines! For my part, I am well content That we have got through with the tedious Lent! Fasting is all very well for those Who have to contend with invisible foes; But I am quite sure it does not agree With a quiet, peaceable man like me, Who am not of that nervous and meagre kind That are always distressed in body and mind! And at times it really does me good To come down among this brotherhood, Dwelling forever under ground, Silent, contemplative, round and sound; Each one old, and brown with mould, But filled to the lips with the ardor of youth, With the latent power and love of truth, And with virtues fervent and manifold. I have heard it said, that at Easter-tide, When buds are swelling on every side, And the sap begins to move in the vine. Then in all the cellars, far and wide, The oldest, as well as the newest, wine Begins to stir itself, and ferment, With a kind of revolt and discontent At being so long in darkness pent, And fain would burst from its sombre tun To bask on the hillside in the sun; As in the bosom of us poor friars, The tumult of half-subdued desires For the world that we have left behind Disturbs at times all peace of mind! And now that we have lived through Lent, My duty it is, as often before, To open awhile the prison-door, And give these restless spirits vent. Now here is a cask that stands alone, And has stood a hundred years or more, Its beard of cobwebs, long and hoar, Trailing and sweeping along the floor, Like Barbarossa, who sits in his cave, Taciturn, sombre, sedate, and grave, Till his beard has grown through the table of stone! It is of the quick and not of the dead! In its veins the blood is hot and red, And a heart still beats in those ribs of oak That time may have tamed, but has not broke; It comes from Bacharach on the Rhine, Is one of the three best kinds of wine, And costs some hundred florins the ohm; But that I do not consider dear, When I remember that every year Four butts are sent to the Pope of Rome. And whenever a goblet thereof I drain, The old rhyme keeps running in my brain: At Bacharach on the Rhine, At Hochheim on the Main, And at Würzburg on the Stein, Grow the three best kinds of wine! They are all good wines, and better far Than those of the Neckar, or those of the Ahr In particular, Würzburg well may boast Of its blessed wine of the Holy Ghost, Which of all wines I like the most. This I shall draw for the Abbot's drinking, Who seems to be much of my way of thinking. (_Fills a flagon._) Ah! how the streamlet laughs and sings! What a delicious fragrance springs From the deep flagon, while it fills, As of hyacinths and daffodils! Between this cask and the Abbot's lips Many have been the sips and slips; Many have been the draughts of wine, On their way to his, that have stopped at mine; And many a time my soul has hankered For a deep draught out of his silver tankard, When it should have been busy with other affairs, Less with its longings and more with its prayers. But now there is no such awkward condition, No danger of death and eternal perdition; So here's to the Abbot and Brothers all, Who dwell in this convent of Peter and Paul! (_He drinks._) O cordial delicious! O soother of pain! It flashes like sunshine into my brain! A benison rest on the Bishop who sends Such a fudder of wine as this to his friends! And now a flagon for such as may ask A draught from the noble Bacharach cask, And I will be gone, though I know full well The cellar's a cheerfuller place than the cell. Behold where he stands, all sound and good, Brown and old in his oaken hood; Silent he seems externally As any Carthusian monk may be; But within, what a spirit of deep unrest! What a seething and simmering in his breast! As if the heaving of his great heart Would burst his belt of oak apart! Let me unloose this button of wood, And quiet a little his turbulent mood. (_Sets it running._) See! how its currents gleam and shine, As if they had caught the purple hues Of autumn sunsets on the Rhine, Descending and mingling with the dews; Or as if the grapes were stained with the blood Of the innocent boy, who, some years back, Was taken and crucified by the Jews, In that ancient town of Bacharach; Perdition upon those infidel Jews, In that ancient town of Bacharach! The beautiful town, that gives us wine With the fragrant odor of Muscadine! I should deem it wrong to let this pass Without first touching my lips to the glass, For here in the midst of the current I stand, Like the stone Pfalz in the midst of the river Taking toll upon either hand, And much more grateful to the giver. (_He drinks._) Here, now, is a very inferior kind, Such as in any town you may find, Such as one might imagine would suit The rascal who drank wine out of a boot, And, after all, it was not a crime, For he won thereby Dorf Hüffelsheim. A jolly old toper! who at a pull Could drink a postilion's jack boot full, And ask with a laugh, when that was done, If the fellow had left the other one! This wine is as good as we can afford To the friars, who sit at the lower board, And cannot distinguish bad from good, And are far better off than if they could, Being rather the rude disciples of beer Than of anything more refined and dear! (_Fills the other flagon and departs._) * * * * * THE SCRIPTORIUM. FRIAR PACIFICUS _transcribing and illuminating._ _Friar Pacificus_ It is growing dark! Yet one line more, And then my work for today is o'er. I come again to the name of the Lord! Ere I that awful name record, That is spoken so lightly among men, Let me pause awhile, and wash my pen; Pure from blemish and blot must it be When it writes that word of mystery! Thus have I labored on and on, Nearly through the Gospel of John. Can it be that from the lips Of this same gentle Evangelist, That Christ himself perhaps has kissed, Came the dread Apocalypse! It has a very awful look, As it stands there at the end of the book, Like the sun in an eclipse. Ah me! when I think of that vision divine, Think of writing it, line by line, I stand in awe of the terrible curse, Like the trump of doom, in the closing verse! God forgive me! if ever I Take aught from the book of that Prophecy, Lest my part too should be taken away From the Book of Life on the Judgment Day. This is well written, though I say it! I should not be afraid to display it, In open day, on the selfsame shelf With the writings of St Thecla herself, Or of Theodosius, who of old Wrote the Gospels in letters of gold! That goodly folio standing yonder, Without a single blot or blunder, Would not bear away the palm from mine, If we should compare them line for line. There, now, is an initial letter! King René himself never made a better! Finished down to the leaf and the snail, Down to the eyes on the peacock's tail! And now, as I turn the volume over, And see what lies between cover and cover, What treasures of art these pages hold, All ablaze with crimson and gold, God forgive me! I seem to feel A certain satisfaction steal Into my heart, and into my brain, As if my talent had not lain Wrapped in a napkin, and all in vain. Yes, I might almost say to the Lord, Here is a copy of thy Word, Written out with much toil and pain; Take it, O Lord, and let it be As something I have done for thee! (_He looks from the window._) How sweet the air is! How fair the scene! I wish I had as lovely a green To paint my landscapes and my leaves! How the swallows twitter under the eaves! There, now, there is one in her nest; I can just catch a glimpse of her head and breast, And will sketch her thus, in her quiet nook, In the margin of my Gospel book. (_He makes a sketch._) I can see no more. Through the valley yonder A shower is passing; I hear the thunder Mutter its curses in the air, The Devil's own and only prayer! The dusty road is brown with rain, And speeding on with might and main, Hitherward rides a gallant train. They do not parley, they cannot wait, But hurry in at the convent gate. What a fair lady! and beside her What a handsome, graceful, noble rider! Now she gives him her hand to alight; They will beg a shelter for the night. I will go down to the corridor, And try to see that face once more; It will do for the face of some beautiful Saint, Or for one of the Maries I shall paint. (_Goes out._) * * * * * THE CLOISTERS. * * * * * _The_ ABBOT ERNESTUS _pacing to and fro._ _Abbot._ Slowly, slowly up the wall Steals the sunshine, steals the shade; Evening damps begin to fall, Evening shadows are displayed. Round me, o'er me, everywhere, All the sky is grand with clouds, And athwart the evening air Wheel the swallows home in crowds. Shafts of sunshine from the west Paint the dusky windows red; Darker shadows, deeper rest, Underneath and overhead. Darker, darker, and more wan, In my breast the shadows fall; Upward steals the life of man, As the sunshine from the wall. From the wall into the sky, From the roof along the spire; Ah, the souls of those that die Are but sunbeams lifted higher. (_Enter_ PRINCE HENRY.) _Prince Henry._ Christ is arisen! _Abbot._ Amen! he is arisen! His peace be with you! _Prince Henry._ Here it reigns forever! The peace of God, that passeth understanding, Reigns in these cloisters and these corridors, Are you Ernestus, Abbot of the convent? _Abbot._ I am. _Prince Henry._ And I Prince Henry of Hoheneck, Who crave your hospitality to-night. _Abbot._ You are thrice welcome to our humble walls. You do us honor; and we shall requite it, I fear, but poorly, entertaining you With Paschal eggs, and our poor convent wine, The remnants of our Easter holidays. _Prince Henry._ How fares it with the holy monks of Hirschau? Are all things well with them? _Abbot._ All things are well. _Prince Henry._ A noble convent! I have known it long By the report of travellers. I now see Their commendations lag behind the truth. You lie here in the valley of the Nagold As in a nest: and the still river, gliding Along its bed, is like an admonition How all things pass. Your lands are rich and ample, And your revenues large. God's benediction Rests on your convent. _Abbot._ By our charities We strive to merit it. Our Lord and Master, When he departed, left us in his will, As our best legacy on earth, the poor! These we have always with us; had we not, Our hearts would grow as hard as are these stones. _Prince Henry._ If I remember right, the Counts of Calva Founded your convent. _Abbot._ Even as you say. _Prince Henry._ And, if I err not, it is very old. _Abbot._ Within these cloisters lie already buried Twelve holy Abbots. Underneath the flags On which we stand, the Abbot William lies, Of blessed memory. _Prince Henry._ And whose tomb is that, Which bears the brass escutcheon? _Abbot._ A benefactor's. Conrad, a Count of Calva, he who stood Godfather to our bells. _Prince Henry._ Your monks are learned And holy men, I trust. _Abbot._ There are among them Learned and holy men. Yet in this age We need another Hildebrand, to shake And purify us like a mighty wind. The world is wicked, and sometimes I wonder God does not lose his patience with it wholly, And shatter it like glass! Even here, at times, Within these walls, where all should be at peace, I have my trials. Time has laid his hand Upon my heart, gently, not smiting it, But as a harper lays his open palm Upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations. Ashes are on my head, and on my lips Sackcloth, and in my breast a heaviness And weariness of life, that makes me ready To say to the dead Abbots under us, "Make room for me!" Only I see the dusk Of evening twilight coming, and have not Completed half my task; and so at times The thought of my shortcomings in this life Falls like a shadow on the life to come. _Prince Henry._ We must all die, and not the old alone; The young have no exemption from that doom. _Abbot._ Ah, yes! the young may die, but the old must! That is the difference. _Prince Henry._ I have heard much laud Of your transcribers. Your Scriptorium Is famous among all, your manuscripts Praised for their beauty and their excellence. _Abbot._ That is indeed our boast. If you desire it, You shall behold these treasures. And meanwhile Shall the Refectorarius bestow Your horses and attendants for the night. (_They go in. The Vesper-bell rings._) * * * * * THE CHAPEL. * * * * * _Vespers; after which the monks retire, a chorister leading an old monk who is blind_. _Prince Henry._ They are all gone, save one who lingers, Absorbed in deep and silent prayer. As if his heart could find no rest, At times he beats his heaving breast With clenched and convulsive fingers, Then lifts them trembling in the air. A chorister, with golden hair, Guides hitherward his heavy pace. Can it be so? Or does my sight Deceive me in the uncertain light? Ah no! I recognize that face, Though Time has touched it in his flight, And changed the auburn hair to white. It is Count Hugo of the Rhine, The deadliest foe of all our race, And hateful unto me and mine! _The Blind Monk_. Who is it that doth stand so near His whispered words I almost hear? _Prince Henry_. I am Prince Henry of Hoheneck, And you, Count Hugo of the Rhine! I know you, and I see the scar, The brand upon your forehead, shine And redden like a baleful star! _The Blind Monk_. Count Hugo once, but now the wreck Of what I was. O Hoheneck! The passionate will, the pride, the wrath That bore me headlong on my path, Stumbled and staggered into fear, And failed me in my mad career, As a tired steed some evil-doer, Alone upon a desolate moor, Bewildered, lost, deserted, blind, And hearing loud and close behind The o'ertaking steps of his pursuer. Then suddenly, from the dark there came A voice that called me by my name, And said to me, "Kneel down and pray!" And so my terror passed away, Passed utterly away forever. Contrition, penitence, remorse, Came on me, with o'erwhelming force; A hope, a longing, an endeavor, By days of penance and nights of prayer, To frustrate and defeat despair! Calm, deep, and still is now my heart. With tranquil waters overflowed; A lake whose unseen fountains start, Where once the hot volcano glowed. And you, O Prince of Hoheneck! Have known me in that earlier time, A man of violence and crime, Whose passions brooked no curb nor check. Behold me now, in gentler mood, One of this holy brotherhood. Give me your hand; here let me kneel; Make your reproaches sharp as steel; Spurn me, and smite me on each cheek; No violence can harm the meek, There is no wound Christ cannot heal! Yes; lift your princely hand, and take Revenge, if 't is revenge you seek, Then pardon me, for Jesus' sake! _Prince Henry._ Arise, Count Hugo! let there be No farther strife nor enmity Between us twain; we both have erred! Too rash in act, too wroth in word, From the beginning have we stood In fierce, defiant attitude, Each thoughtless of the other's right, And each reliant on his might. But now our souls are more subdued; The hand of God, and not in vain, Has touched us with the fire of pain. Let us kneel down, and side by side Pray, till our souls are purified, And pardon will not be denied! (_They kneel._) * * * * * THE REFECTORY. * * * * * _Gaudiolum of Monks at midnight. LUCIFER disguised as a Friar._ _Friar Paul (sings)._ Ave! color vini clari, Dulcis potus, non aman, Tua nos inebriari Digneris potentia! _Friar Cuthbert._ Not so much noise, my worthy freres, You'll disturb the Abbot at his prayers. _Friar Paul (sings)._ O! quam placens in colore! O! quam fragrans in odore! O! quam sapidum in ore! Dulce linguse vinculum! _Friar Cuthbert._ I should think your tongue had broken its chain! _Friar Paul (sings)._ Felix venter quern intrabis! Felix guttur quod rigabis! Felix os quod tu lavabis! Et beata labia! _Friar Cuthbert._ Peace! I say, peace! Will you never cease! You will rouse up the Abbot, I tell you again! _Friar John._ No danger! to-night he will let us alone, As I happen to know he has guests of his own. _Friar Cuthbert._ Who are they? _Friar John._ A German Prince and his train, Who arrived here just before the rain. There is with him a damsel fair to see, As slender and graceful as a reed! When she alighted from her steed, It seemed like a blossom blown from a tree. _Friar Cuthbert._ None of your pale-faced girls for me! (_Kisses the girl at his side_.) _Friar John._ Come, old fellow, drink down to your peg! do not drink any farther, I beg! _Friar Paul (sings)._ In the days of gold, The days of old, Cross of wood And bishop of gold! _Friar Cuthbert (to the girl)._ What an infernal racket and din! No need not blush so, that's no sin. You look very holy in this disguise, Though there's something wicked in your eyes! _Friar Paul (continues.)_ Now we have changed That law so good, To cross of gold And bishop of wood! _Friar Cuthbert._ I like your sweet face under a hood. Sister! how came you into this way? _Girl._ It was you, Friar Cuthbert, who led me astray. Have you forgotten that day in June, When the church was so cool in the afternoon, And I came in to confess my sins? That is where my ruin begins. _Friar John._ What is the name of yonder friar, With an eye that glows like a coal of fire, And such a black mass of tangled hair? _Friar Paul._ He who is sitting there, With a rollicking, Devil may care, Free and easy look and air, As if he were used to such feasting and frollicking? _Friar John._ The same. _Friar Paul._ He's a stranger. You had better ask his name, And where he is going, and whence he came. _Friar John._ Hallo! Sir Friar! _Friar Paul._ You must raise your voice a little higher, He does not seem to hear what you say. Now, try again! He is looking this way. _Friar John._ Hallo! Sir Friar, We wish to inquire Whence you came, and where you are going, And anything else that is worth the knowing. So be so good as to open your head. _Lucifer._ I am a Frenchman born and bred, Going on a pilgrimage to Rome. My home Is the convent of St. Gildas de Rhuys, Of which, very like, you never have heard. _Monks._ Never a word! _Lucifer._ You must know, then, it is in the diocese Called the Diocese of Vannes, In the province of Brittany. From the gray rocks of Morbihan It overlooks the angry sea; The very seashore where, In his great despair, Abbot Abelard walked to and fro, Filling the night with woe, And wailing aloud to the merciless seas The name of his sweet Heloise! Whilst overhead The convent windows gleamed as red As the fiery eyes of the monks within, Who with jovial din Gave themselves up to all kinds of sin! Ha! that is a convent! that is an abbey! Over the doors, None of your death-heads carved in wood, None of your Saints looking pious and good, None of your Patriarchs old and shabby! But the heads and tusks of boars, And the cells Hung all round with the fells of the fallow-deer, And then what cheer! What jolly, fat friars, Sitting round the great, roaring fires, Roaring louder than they, With their strong wines, And their concubines, And never a bell, With its swagger and swell, Calling you up with a start of affright In the dead of night, To send you grumbling down dark stairs, To mumble your prayers, But the cheery crow Of cocks in the yard below, After daybreak, an hour or so, And the barking of deep-mouthed hounds, These are the sounds That, instead of bells, salute the ear. And then all day Up and away Through the forest, hunting the deer! Ah, my friends! I'm afraid that here You are a little too pious, a little too tame, And the more is the shame, It is the greatest folly Not to be jolly; That's what I think! Come, drink, drink, Drink, and die game! _Monks,_ And your Abbot What's-his-name? _Lucifer._ Abelard! _Monks._ Did he drink hard? _Lucifer._ O, no! Not he! He was a dry old fellow, Without juice enough to get thoroughly mellow. There he stood, Lowering at us in sullen mood, As if he had come into Brittany Just to reform our brotherhood! (_A roar of laughter_.) But you see It never would do! For some of us knew a thing or two, In the Abbey of St. Gildas de Rhuys! For instance, the great ado With old Fulbert's niece, The young and lovely Heloise! _Friar John._ Stop there, if you please, Till we drink to the fair Heloise. _All (drinking and shouting)._ Heloise! Heloise! (_The Chapel-bell tolls_.) _Lucifer (starting)._ What is that bell for? Are you such asses As to keep up the fashion of midnight masses? _Friar Cuthbert._ It is only a poor, unfortunate brother, Who is gifted with most miraculous powers Of getting up at all sorts of hours, And, by way of penance and Christian meekness, Of creeping silently out of his cell To take a pull at that hideous bell; So that all the monks who are lying awake May murmur some kind of prayer for his sake, And adapted to his peculiar weakness! _Friar John._ From frailty and fall-- _All._ Good Lord, deliver us all! _Friar Cuthbert._ And before the bell for matins sounds, He takes his lantern, and goes the rounds, Flashing it into our sleepy eyes, Merely to say it is time to arise. But enough of that. Go on, if you please, With your story about St. Gildas de Rhuys. _Lucifer._ Well, it finally came to pass That, half in fun and half in malice, One Sunday at Mass We put some poison into the chalice. But, either by accident or design, Peter Abelard kept away From the chapel that day, And a poor, young friar, who in his stead Drank the sacramental wine, Fell on the steps of the altar, dead! But look! do you see at the window there That face, with a look of grief and despair, That ghastly face, as of one in pain? _Monks._ Who? where? _Lucifer._ As I spoke, it vanished away again. _Friar Cuthbert._ It is that nefarious Siebald the Refectorarius. That fellow is always playing the scout, Creeping and peeping and prowling about; And then he regales The Abbot with Scandalous tales. _Lucifer_. A spy in the convent? One of the brothers Telling scandalous tales of the others? Out upon him, the lazy loon! I would put a stop to that pretty soon, In a way he should rue it. _Monks_. How shall we do it? _Lucifer_. Do you, brother Paul, Creep under the window, close to the wall, And open it suddenly when I call. Then seize the villain by the hair, And hold him there, And punish him soundly, once for all. _Friar Cuthbert_. As St. Dustan of old, We are told, Once caught the Devil by the nose! _Lucifer_. Ha! ha! that story is very clever, But has no foundation whatsoever. Quick! for I see his face again Glaring in at the window pane; Now! now! and do not spare your blows. (FRIAR PAUL _opens the window suddenly, and seizes_ SIEBALD. _They beat him._) _Friar Siebald_. Help! help! are you going to slay me? _Friar Paul_. That will teach you again to betray me! _Friar Siebald_. Mercy! mercy! _Friar Paul_ (_shouting and beating_). Rumpas bellorum lorum, Vim confer amorum Morum verorum, rorun. Tu plena polorum! _Lucifer_. Who stands in the doorway yonder, Stretching out his trembling hand, Just as Abelard used to stand, The flash of his keen, black eyes Forerunning the thunder? _The Monks (in confusion)_. The Abbot! the Abbot! _Friar Cuthbert (to the girl)_. Put on your disguise! _Friar Francis_. Hide the great flagon From the eyes of the dragon! _Friar Cuthbert_. Pull the brown hood over your face, Lest you bring me into disgrace! _Abbot_. What means this revel and carouse? Is this a tavern and drinking-house? Are you Christian monks, or heathen devils, To pollute this convent with your revels? Were Peter Damian still upon earth, To be shocked by such ungodly mirth, He would write your names, with pen of gall, In his Book of Gomorrah, one and all! Away, you drunkards! to your cells, And pray till you hear the matin-bells; You, Brother Francis, and you, Brother Paul! And as a penance mark each prayer With the scourge upon your shoulders bare; Nothing atones for such a sin But the blood that follows the discipline. And you, Brother Cuthbert, come with me Alone into the sacristy; You, who should be a guide to your brothers, And are ten times worse than all the others, For you I've a draught that has long been brewing You shall do a penance worth the doing! Away to your prayers, then, one and all! I wonder the very, convent wall Does not crumble and crush you in its fall! * * * * * THE NEIGHBORING NUNNERY. * * * * * _The_ ABBESS IRMINGARD _sitting with_ ELSIE _in the moonlight._ _Irmingard_ The night is silent, the wind is still, The moon is looking from yonder hill Down upon convent, and grove, and garden; The clouds have passed away from her face, Leaving behind them no sorrowful trace, Only the tender and quiet grace Of one, whose heart had been healed with pardon! And such am I. My soul within Was dark with passion and soiled with sin. But now its wounds are healed again; Gone are the anguish, the terror, and pain; For across that desolate land of woe, O'er whose burning sands I was forced to go, A wind from heaven began to blow; And all my being trembled and shook, As the leaves of the tree, or the grass of the field, And I was healed, as the sick are healed, When fanned by the leaves of the Holy Book! As thou sittest in the moonlight there, Its glory flooding thy golden hair, And the only darkness that which lies In the haunted chambers of thine eyes, I feel my soul drawn unto thee, Strangely, and strongly, and more and more, As to one I have known and loved before; For every soul is akin to me That dwells in the land of mystery! I am the Lady Irmingard, Born of a noble race and name! Many a wandering Suabian bard, Whose life was dreary, and bleak, and hard, Has found through me the way to fame. Brief and bright were those days, and the night Which followed was full of a lurid light. Love, that of every woman's heart Will have the whole, and not a part, That is to her, in Nature's plan, More than ambition is to man, Her light, her life, her very breath, With no alternative but death, Found me a maiden soft and young, Just from the convent's cloistered school, And seated on my lowly stool, Attentive while the minstrels sung. Gallant, graceful, gentle, tall, Fairest, noblest, best of all, Was Walter of the Vogelweid, And, whatsoever may betide, Still I think of him with pride! His song was of the summer-time The very birds sang in his rhyme; The sunshine, the delicious air, The fragrance of the flowers, were there, And I grew restless as I heard, Restless and buoyant as a bird, Down soft, aërial currents sailing, O'er blossomed orchards, and fields in bloom, And through the momentary gloom Of shadows o'er the landscape trailing, Yielding and borne I knew not where, But feeling resistance unavailing. And thus, unnoticed and apart, And more by accident than choice. I listened to that single voice Until the chambers of my heart Were filled with it by night and day, One night,--it was a night in May,-- Within the garden, unawares, Under the blossoms in the gloom, I heard it utter my own name With protestations and wild prayers; And it rang through me, and became Like the archangel's trump of doom, Which the soul hears, and must obey; And mine arose as from a tomb. My former life now seemed to me Such as hereafter death may be, When in the great Eternity We shall awake and find it day. It was a dream, and would not stay; A dream, that in a single night Faded and vanished out of sight. My father's anger followed fast This passion, as a freshening blast Seeks out and fans the fire, whose rage It may increase, but not assuage. And he exclaimed: "No wandering bard Shall win thy hand, O Irmingard! For which Prince Henry of Hoheneck By messenger and letter sues." Gently, but firmly, I replied: "Henry of Hoheneck I discard! Never the hand of Irmingard Shall lie in his as the hand of a bride!" This said I, Walter, for thy sake: This said I, for I could not choose. After a pause, my father spake In that cold and deliberate tone Which turns the hearer into stone, And seems itself the act to be That follows with such dread certainty; "This, or the cloister and the veil!" No other words than these he said, But they were like a funeral wail; My life was ended, my heart was dead. That night from the castle-gate went down, With silent, slow, and stealthy pace, Two shadows, mounted on shadowy steeds, Taking the narrow path that leads Into the forest dense and brown, In the leafy darkness of the place, One could not distinguish form nor face, Only a bulk without a shape, A darker shadow in the shade; One scarce could say it moved or stayed, Thus it was we made our escape! A foaming brook, with many a bound, Followed us like a playful hound; Then leaped before us, and in the hollow Paused, and waited for us to follow, And seemed impatient, and afraid That our tardy flight should be betrayed By the sound our horses' hoof-beats made, And when we reached the plain below, He paused a moment and drew rein To look back at the castle again; And we saw the windows all aglow With lights, that were passing to and fro; Our hearts with terror ceased to beat; The brook crept silent to our feet; We knew what most we feared to know. Then suddenly horns began to blow; And we heard a shout, and a heavy tramp, And our horses snorted in the damp Night-air of the meadows green and wide, And in a moment, side by side, So close, they must have seemed but one, The shadows across the moonlight run, And another came, and swept behind, Like the shadow of clouds before the wind! How I remember that breathless flight Across the moors, in the summer night! How under our feet the long, white road Backward like a river flowed, Sweeping with it fences and hedges, Whilst farther away, and overhead, Paler than I, with fear and dread, The moon fled with us, as we fled Along the forest's jagged edges! All this I can remember well; But of what afterward befell I nothing farther can recall Than a blind, desperate, headlong fall; The rest is a blank and darkness all. When I awoke out of this swoon, The sun was shining, not the moon, Making a cross upon the wall With the bars of my windows narrow and tall; And I prayed to it, as I had been wont to pray, From early childhood, day by day, Each morning, as in bed I lay! I was lying again in my own room! And I thanked God, in my fever and pain, That those shadows on the midnight plain Were gone, and could not come again! I struggled no longer with my doom! This happened many years ago. I left my father's home to come Like Catherine to her martyrdom, For blindly I esteemed it so. And when I heard the convent door Behind me close, to ope no more, I felt it smite me like a blow, Through all my limbs a shudder ran, And on my bruised spirit fell The dampness of my narrow cell As night-air on a wounded man, Giving intolerable pain. But now a better life began, I felt the agony decrease By slow degrees, then wholly cease, Ending in perfect rest and peace! It was not apathy, nor dulness, That weighed and pressed upon my brain, But the same passion I had given To earth before, now turned to heaven With all its overflowing fulness. Alas! the world is full of peril! The path that runs through the fairest meads, On the sunniest side of the valley, leads Into a region bleak and sterile! Alike in the high-born and the lowly, The will is feeble, and passion strong. We cannot sever right from wrong; Some falsehood mingles with all truth; Nor is it strange the heart of youth Should waver and comprehend but slowly The things that are holy and unholy! But in this sacred and calm retreat, We are all well and safely shielded From winds that blow, and waves that beat, From the cold, and rain, and blighting heat, To which the strongest hearts have yielded. Here we stand as the Virgins Seven, For our celestial bridegroom yearning; Our hearts are lamps forever burning, With a steady and unwavering flame, Pointing upward, forever the same, Steadily upward toward the Heaven! The moon is hidden behind a cloud; A sudden darkness fills the room, And thy deep eyes, amid the gloom, Shine like jewels in a shroud. On the leaves is a sound of falling rain; A bird, awakened in its nest, Gives a faint twitter of unrest, Then smoothes its plumes and sleeps again. No other sounds than these I hear; The hour of midnight must be near. Thou art o'erspent with the day's fatigue Of riding many a dusty league; Sink, then, gently to thy slumber; Me so many cares encumber, So many ghosts, and forms of fright, Have started from their graves to-night, They have driven sleep from mine eyes away: I will go down to the chapel and pray. * * * * * V. A COVERED BRIDGE AT LUCERNE. * * * * * _Prince Henry_. God's blessing on the architects who build The bridges o'er swift rivers and abysses Before impassable to human feet, No less than on the builders of cathedrals, Whose massive walls are bridges thrown across The dark and terrible abyss of Death. Well has the name of Pontifex been given Unto the Church's head, as the chief builder And architect of the invisible bridge That leads from earth to heaven. _Elsie_ How dark it grows! What are these paintings on the walls around us? _Prince Henry_ The Dance Macaber! _Elsie_ What? _Prince Henry_ The Dance of Death! All that go to and fro must look upon it, Mindful of what they shall be, while beneath, Among the wooden piles, the turbulent river Rushes, impetuous as the river of life, With dimpling eddies, ever green and bright, Save where the shadow of this bridge falls on it. _Elsie._ O, yes! I see it now! _Prince Henry_ The grim musician Leads all men through the mazes of that dance, To different sounds in different measures moving; Sometimes he plays a lute, sometimes a drum, To tempt or terrify. _Elsie_ What is this picture? _Prince Henry_ It is a young man singing to a nun, Who kneels at her devotions, but in kneeling Turns round to look at him, and Death, meanwhile, Is putting out the candles on the altar! _Elsie_ Ah, what a pity 't is that she should listen to such songs, when in her orisons She might have heard in heaven the angels singing! _Prince Henry_ Here he has stolen a jester's cap and bells, And dances with the Queen. _Elsie_ A foolish jest! _Prince Henry_ And here the heart of the new-wedded wife, Coming from church with her beloved lord, He startles with the rattle of his drum. _Elsie_ Ah, that is sad! And yet perhaps 't is best That she should die, with all the sunshine on her, And all the benedictions of the morning, Before this affluence of golden light Shall fade into a cold and clouded gray, Then into darkness! _Prince Henry_ Under it is written, "Nothing but death shall separate thee and me!" _Elsie._ And what is this, that follows close upon it? _Prince Henry_ Death, playing on a ducimer. Behind him, A poor old woman, with a rosary, Follows the sound, and seems to wish her feet Were swifter to o'ertake him. Underneath, The inscription reads, "Better is Death than Life." _Elsie._ Better is Death than Life! Ah yes! to thousands Death plays upon a dulcimer, and sings That song of consolation, till the air Rings with it, and they cannot choose but follow Whither he leads. And not the old alone, But the young also hear it, and are still. _Prince Henry_ Yes, in their sadder moments. 'T is the sound Of their own hearts they hear, half full of tears, Which are like crystal cups, half filled with water. Responding to the pressure of a finger With music sweet and low and melancholy. Let us go forward, and no longer stay In this great picture-gallery of Death! I hate it! ay, the very thought of it! _Elsie._ Why is it hateful to you? _Prince Henry._ For the reason That life, and all that speaks of life, is lovely, And death, and all that speaks of death, is hateful. _Elsie._ The grave is but a covered bridge, leading from light to light, through a brief darkness! _Prince Henry (emerging from the bridge)._ I breathe again more freely! Ah, how pleasant To come once more into the light of day, Out of that shadow of death! To hear again The hoof-beats of our horses on firm ground, And not upon those hollow planks, resounding With a sepulchral echo, like the clods On coffins in a churchyard! Yonder lies The Lake of the Four Forest-Towns, apparelled In light, and lingering, like a village maiden, Hid in the bosom of her native mountains, Then pouring all her life into another's, Changing her name and being! Overhead, Shaking his cloudy tresses loose in air, Rises Pilatus, with his windy pines. (_They pass on_.) * * * * * THE DEVIL'S BRIDGE. * * * * * PRINCE HENRY _and_ ELSIE _crossing, with attendants._ _Guide._ This bridge is called the Devil's Bridge. With a single arch, from ridge to ridge, It leaps across the terrible chasm Yawning beneath us, black and deep, As if, in some convulsive spasm, the summits of the hills had cracked, and made a road for the cataract, That raves and rages down the steep! _Lucifer (under the bridge)._ Ha! ha! _Guide._ Never any bridge but this Could stand across the wild abyss; All the rest, of wood or stone, By the Devil's hand were overthrown. He toppled crags from the precipice, And whatsoe'er was built by day In the night was swept away; None could stand but this alone. _Lucifer (under the bridge)._ Ha! ha! _Guide._ I showed you in the valley a boulder Marked with the imprint of his shoulder; As he was bearing it up this way, A peasant, passing, cried, "Herr Jé!" And the Devil dropped it in his fright, And vanished suddenly out of sight! _Lucifer (under the bridge)._ Ha! ha! _Guide._ Abbot Giraldus of Einsiedel, For pilgrims on their way to Rome, Built this at last, with a single arch, Under which, on its endless march, Runs the river, white with foam, Like a thread through the eye of a needle. And the Devil promised to let it stand, Under compact and condition That the first living thing which crossed Should be surrendered into his hand, And be beyond redemption lost. _Lucifer (under the bridge)._ Ha! ha! perdition! _Guide._ At length, the bridge being all completed, The Abbot, standing at its head, Threw across it a loaf of bread, Which a hungry dog sprang after, And the rocks reechoed with peals of laughter To see the Devil thus defeated! (_They pass on_) _Lucifer_ (_under the bridge_) Ha! ha! defeated! For journeys and for crimes like this To let the bridge stand o'er the abyss! * * * * * THE ST. GOTHARD PASS. * * * * * _Prince Henry._ This is the highest point. Two ways the rivers Leap down to different seas, and as they roll Grow deep and still, and their majestic presence Becomes a benefaction to the towns They visit, wandering silently among them, Like patriarchs old among their shining tents. _Elsie._ How bleak and bare it is! Nothing but mosses Grow on these rocks. _Prince Henry._ Yet are they not forgotten; Beneficent Nature sends the mists to feed them. _Elsie._ See yonder little cloud, that, borne aloft So tenderly by the wind, floats fast away Over the snowy peaks! It seems to me The body of St. Catherine, borne by angels! _Prince Henry._ Thou art St. Catherine, and invisible angels Bear thee across these chasms and precipices, Lest thou shouldst dash thy feet against a stone! _Elsie._ Would I were borne unto my grave, as she was, Upon angelic shoulders! Even now I Seem uplifted by them, light as air! What sound is that? _Prince Henry_. The tumbling avalanches! _Elsie_ How awful, yet how beautiful! _Prince Henry_. These are The voices of the mountains! Thus they ope Their snowy lips, and speak unto each other, In the primeval language, lost to man. _Elsie_. What land is this that spreads itself beneath us? _Prince Henry_ Italy! Italy! _Elsie_ Land of the Madonna! How beautiful it is! It seems a garden Of Paradise! _Prince Henry_. Nay, of Gethsemane To thee and me, of passion and of prayer! Yet once of Paradise. Long years ago I wandered as a youth among its bowers, And never from my heart has faded quite Its memory, that, like a summer sunset, Encircles with a ring of purple light All the horizon of my youth. _Guide_. O friends! The days are short, the way before us long; We must not linger, if we think to reach The inn at Belinzona before vespers! (_They pass on_.) * * * * * AT THE FOOT OF THE ALPS. * * * * * _A halt under the trees at noon_. _Prince Henry_ Here let us pause a moment in the trembling Shadow and sunshine of the roadside trees, And, our tired horses in a group assembling, Inhale long draughts of this delicious breeze Our fleeter steeds have distanced our attendants; They lag behind us with a slower pace; We will await them under the green pendants Of the great willows in this shady place. Ho, Barbarossa! how thy mottled haunches Sweat with this canter over hill and glade! Stand still, and let these overhanging branches Fan thy hot sides and comfort thee with shade! _Elsie._ What a delightful landscape spreads before us, Marked with a whitewashed cottage here and there! And, in luxuriant garlands drooping o'er us, Blossoms of grapevines scent the sunny air. _Prince Henry._ Hark! what sweet sounds are those, whose accents holy Fill the warm noon with music sad and sweet! _Elsie._ It is a band of pilgrims, moving slowly On their long journey, with uncovered feet. _Pilgrims (chaunting the Hymn of St. Hildebert)_ Me receptet Sion illa, Sion David, urbs tranquilla, Cujus faber auctor lucis, Cujus portae lignum crucis, Cujus claves lingua Petri, Cujus cives semper laeti, Cujus muri lapis vivus, Cujus custos Rex festivus! _Lucifer (as a Friar in the procession)._ Here am I, too, in the pious band, In the garb of a barefooted Carmelite dressed! The soles of my feet are as hard and tanned As the conscience of old Pope Hildebrand, The Holy Satan, who made the wives Of the bishops lead such shameful lives. All day long I beat my breast, And chaunt with a most particular zest The Latin hymns, which I understand Quite as well, I think, as the rest. And at night such lodging in barns and sheds, Such a hurly-burly in country inns, Such a clatter of tongues in empty heads, Such a helter-skelter of prayers and sins! Of all the contrivances of the time For sowing broadcast the seeds of crime, There is none so pleasing to me and mine As a pilgrimage to some far-off shrine! _Prince Henry._ If from the outward man we judge the inner, And cleanliness is godliness, I fear A hopeless reprobate, a hardened sinner, Must be that Carmelite now passing near. _Lucifer._ There is my German Prince again, Thus far on his journey to Salern, And the lovesick girl, whose heated brain Is sowing the cloud to reap the rain; But it's a long road that has no turn! Let them quietly hold their way, I have also a part in the play. But first I must act to my heart's content This mummery and this merriment, And drive this motley flock of sheep Into the fold, where drink and sleep The jolly old friars of Benevent. Of a truth, it often provokes me to laugh To see these beggars hobble along, Lamed and maimed, and fed upon chaff, Chanting their wonderful piff and paff, And, to make up for not understanding the song, Singing it fiercely, and wild, and strong! Were it not for my magic garters and staff, And the goblets of goodly wine I quaff, And the mischief I make in the idle throng, I should not continue the business long. _Pilgrims (chaunting)._ In hâc uibe, lux solennis, Ver aeternum, pax perennis, In hâc odor implens caelos, In hâc semper festum melos! _Prince Henry._ Do you observe that monk among the train, Who pours from his great throat the roaring bass, As a cathedral spout pours out the rain, And this way turns his rubicund, round face? _Elsie._ It is the same who, on the Strasburg square, Preached to the people in the open air. _Prince Henry._ And he has crossed o'er mountain, field, and fell, On that good steed, that seems to bear him well, The hackney of the Friars of Orders Gray, His own stout legs! He, too, was in the play, Both as King Herod and Ben Israel. Good morrow, Friar! _Friar Cuthbert._ Good morrow, noble Sir! _Prince Henry._ I speak in German, for, unless I err, You are a German. _Friar Cuthbert._ I cannot gainsay you. But by what instinct, or what secret sign, Meeting me here, do you straightway divine That northward of the Alps my country lies? _Prince Henry._ Your accent, like St, Peter's, would betray you, Did not your yellow beard and your blue eyes, Moreover, we have seen your face before, And heard you preach at the Cathedral door On Easter Sunday, in the Strasburg square We were among the crowd that gathered there, And saw you play the Rabbi with great skill, As if, by leaning o'er so many years To walk with little children, your own will Had caught a childish attitude from theirs, A kind of stooping in its form and gait, And could no longer stand erect and straight. Whence come you now? _Friar Cuthbert._ From the old monastery Of Hirschau, in the forest; being sent Upon a pilgrimage to Benevent, To see the image of the Virgin Mary, That moves its holy eyes, and sometimes speaks, And lets the piteous tears run down its cheeks, To touch the hearts of the impenitent. _Prince Henry._ O, had I faith, as in the days gone by, That knew no doubt, and feared no mystery! _Lucifer (at a distance)._ Ho, Cuthbert! Friar Cuthbert! _Friar Cuthbert._ Farewell, Prince! I cannot stay to argue and convince. _Prince Henry._ This is indeed the blessed Mary's land, Virgin and Mother of our dear Redeemer! All hearts are touched and softened at her name; Alike the bandit, with the bloody hand, The priest, the prince, the scholar, and the peasant, The man of deeds, the visionary dreamer, Pay homage to her as one ever present! And even as children, who have much offended A too indulgent father, in great shame, Penitent, and yet not daring unattended To go into his presence, at the gate Speak with their sister, and confiding wait Till she goes in before and intercedes; So men, repenting of their evil deeds, And yet not venturing rashly to draw near With their requests an angry father's ear, Offer to her their prayers and their confession, And she for them in heaven makes intercession. And if our Faith had given us nothing more Than this example of all womanhood, So mild, so merciful, so strong, so good, So patient, peaceful, loyal, loving, pure, This were enough to prove it higher and truer Than all the creeds the world had known before. _Pilgrims (chaunting afar off)_. Urbs ccelestis, urbs beata, Supra petram collocata, Urbs in portu satis tuto De longinquo te saluto, Te saluto, te suspiro, Te affecto, te requiro! * * * * * THE INN AT GENOA. * * * * * _A terrace overlooking the sea. Night._ _Prince Henry._ It is the sea, it is the sea, In all its vague immensity, Fading and darkening in the distance! Silent, majestical, and slow, The white ships haunt it to and fro, With all their ghostly sails unfurled, As phantoms from another world Haunt the dim confines of existence! But ah! how few can comprehend Their signals, or to what good end From land to land they come and go! Upon a sea more vast and dark The spirits of the dead embark, All voyaging to unknown coasts. We wave our farewells from the shore, And they depart, and come no more, Or come as phantoms and as ghosts. Above the darksome sea of death Looms the great life that is to be, A land of cloud and mystery, A dim mirage, with shapes of men Long dead, and passed beyond our ken. Awe-struck we gaze, and hold our breath Till the fair pageant vanisheth, Leaving us in perplexity, And doubtful whether it has been A vision of the world unseen, Or a bright image of our own Against the sky in vapors thrown. _Lucifer (singing from the sea)_. Thou didst not make it, thou canst not mend it, But thou hast the power to end it! The sea is silent, the sea is discreet, Deep it lies at thy very feet; There is no confessor like unto Death! Thou canst not see him, but he is near; Thou needest not whisper above thy breath, And he will hear; He will answer the questions, The vague surmises and suggestions, That fill thy soul with doubt and fear! _Prince Henry_. The fisherman, who lies afloat, With shadowy sail, in yonder boat, Is singing softly to the Night! But do I comprehend aright The meaning of the words he sung So sweetly in his native tongue? Ah, yes! the sea is still and deep. All things within its bosom sleep! A single step, and all is o'er; A plunge, a bubble, and no more; And thou, dear Elsie, wilt be free From martyrdom and agony. _Elsie (coming from her chamber upon the terrace)._ The night is calm and cloudless, And still as still can be, And the stars come forth to listen To the music of the sea. They gather, and gather, and gather, Until they crowd the sky, And listen, in breathless silence, To the solemn litany. It begins in rocky caverns, As a voice that chaunts alone To the pedals of the organ In monotonous undertone; And anon from shelving beaches, And shallow sands beyond, In snow-white robes uprising The ghostly choirs respond. And sadly and unceasing The mournful voice sings on, And the snow-white choirs still answer Christe eleison! _Prince Henry._ Angel of God! thy finer sense perceives Celestial and perpetual harmonies! Thy purer soul, that trembles and believes, Hears the archangel's trumpet in the breeze, And where the forest rolls, or ocean heaves, Cecilia's organ sounding in the seas, And tongues of prophets speaking in the leaves. But I hear discord only and despair, And whispers as of demons in the air! * * * * * AT SEA. * * * * * _Il Padrone._ The wind upon our quarter lies, And on before the freshening gale, That fills the snow-white lateen sail, Swiftly our light felucca flies. Around, the billows burst and foam; They lift her o'er the sunken rock, They beat her sides with many a shock, And then upon their flowing dome They poise her, like a weathercock! Between us and the western skies The hills of Corsica arise; Eastward, in yonder long, blue line, The summits of the Apennine, And southward, and still far away, Salerno, on its sunny bay. You cannot see it, where it lies. _Prince Henry._ Ah, would that never more mine eyes Might see its towers by night or day! _Elsie._ Behind us, dark and awfully, There comes a cloud out of the sea, That bears the form of a hunted deer, With hide of brown, and hoofs of black, And antlers laid upon its back, And fleeing fast and wild with fear, As if the hounds were on its track! _Prince Henry._ Lo! while we gaze, it breaks and falls In shapeless masses, like the walls Of a burnt city. Broad and red The fires of the descending sun Glare through the windows, and o'erhead, Athwart the vapors, dense and dun, Long shafts of silvery light arise, Like rafters that support the skies! _Elsie._ See! from its summit the lurid levin Flashes downward without warning, As Lucifer, son of the morning, Fell from the battlements of heaven! _Il Padrone._ I must entreat you, friends, below! The angry storm begins to blow, For the weather changes with the moon. All this morning, until noon, We had baffling winds, and sudden flaws Struck the sea with their cat's-paws. Only a little hour ago I was whistling to Saint Antonio For a capful of wind to fill our sail, And instead of a breeze he has sent a gale. Last night I saw St. Elmo's stars, With their glimmering lanterns, all at play On the tops of the masts and the tips of the spars, And I knew we should have foul weather to-day. Cheerily, my hearties! yo heave ho! Brail up the mainsail, and let her go As the winds will and Saint Antonio! Do you see that Livornese felucca, That vessel to the windward yonder, Running with her gunwale under? I was looking when the wind o'ertook her, She had all sail set, and the only wonder Is that at once the strength of the blast Did not carry away her mast. She is a galley of the Gran Duca, That, through the fear of the Algerines, Convoys those lazy brigantines, Laden with wine and oil from Lucca. Now all is ready, high and low; Blow, blow, good Saint Antonio! Ha! that is the first dash of the rain, With a sprinkle of spray above the rails, Just enough to moisten our sails, And make them ready for the strain. See how she leaps, as the blasts o'ertake her, And speeds away with a bone in her mouth! Now keep her head toward the south, And there is no danger of bank or breaker. With the breeze behind us, on we go; Not too much, good Saint Antonio! VI. THE SCHOOL OF SALERNO. _A traveling Scholastic affixing his Theses to the gate of the College._ _Scholastic._ There, that is my gauntlet, my banner, my shield, Hung up as a challenge to all the field! One hundred and twenty-five propositions, Which I will maintain with the sword of the tongue Against all disputants, old and young. Let us see if doctors or dialecticians Will dare to dispute my definitions, Or attack any one of my learned theses. Here stand I; the end shall be as God pleases. I think I have proved, by profound research The error of all those doctrines so vicious Of the old Areopagite Dionysius, That are making such terrible work in the churches, By Michael the Stammerer sent from the East, And done into Latin by that Scottish beast, Erigena Johannes, who dares to maintain, In the face of the truth, the error infernal, That the universe is and must be eternal; At first laying down, as a fact fundamental, That nothing with God can be accidental; Then asserting that God before the creation Could not have existed, because it is plain That, had he existed, he would have created; Which is begging the question that should be debated, And moveth me less to anger than laughter. All nature, he holds, is a respiration Of the Spirit of God, who, in breathing, hereafter Will inhale it into his bosom again, So that nothing but God alone will remain. And therein he contradicteth himself; For he opens the whole discussion by stating, That God can only exist in creating. That question I think I have laid on the shelf! (_He goes out. Two Doctors come in disputing, and followed by pupils._) _Doctor Serafino._ I, with the Doctor Seraphic, maintain, That a word which is only conceived in the brain Is a type of eternal Generation; The spoken word is the Incarnation. _Doctor Cherubino._ What do I care for the Doctor Seraphic, With all his wordy chaffer and traffic? _Doctor Serafino._ You make but a paltry show of resistance; Universals have no real existence! _Doctor Cherubino._ Your words are but idle and empty chatter; Ideas are eternally joined to matter! _Doctor Serafino_. May the Lord have mercy on your position, You wretched, wrangling culler of herbs! _Doctor Cherubino_. May he send your soul to eternal perdition, For your Treatise on the Irregular Verbs! (_They rush out fighting. Two Scholars come in._) _First Scholar_. Monte Cassino, then, is your College. What think you of ours here at Salern? _Second Scholar_. To tell the truth, I arrived so lately, I hardly yet have had time to discern. So much, at least, I am bound to acknowledge: The air seems healthy, the buildings stately, And on the whole I like it greatly. _First Scholar_. Yes, the air is sweet; the Calabrian hills Send us down puffs of mountain air; And in summer time the sea-breeze fills With its coolness cloister, and court, and square. Then at every season of the year There are crowds of guests and travellers here; Pilgrims, and mendicant friars, and traders From the Levant, with figs and wine, And bands of wounded and sick Crusaders, Coming back from Palestine. _Second Scholar_. And what are the studies you pursue? What is the course you here go through? _First Scholar_. The first three years of the college course Are given to Logic alone, as the source Of all that is noble, and wise, and true. _Second Scholar_. That seems rather strange, I must confess. In a Medical School; yet, nevertheless, You doubtless have reasons for that. _First Scholar_. Oh yes! For none but a clever dialectician Can hope to become a great physician; That has been settled long ago. Logic makes an important part Of the mystery of the healing art; For without it how could you hope to show That nobody knows so much as you know? After this there are five years more Devoted wholly to medicine, With lectures on chirurgical lore, And dissections of the bodies of swine, As likest the human form divine. _Second Scholar_. What are the books now most in vogue? _First Scholar_. Quite an extensive catalogue; Mostly, however, books of our own; As Gariopontus' Passionarius, And the writings of Matthew Platearius; And a volume universally known As the Regimen of the School of Salern, For Robert of Normandy written in terse And very elegant Latin verse. Each of these writings has its turn. And when at length we have finished these, Then comes the struggle for degrees, With all the oldest and ablest critics; The public thesis and disputation, Question, and answer, and explanation Of a passage out of Hippocrates, Or Aristotle's Analytics. There the triumphant Magister stands! A book is solemnly placed in his hands, On which he swears to follow the rule And ancient forms of the good old School; To report if any confectionarius Mingles his drugs with matters various, And to visit his patients twice a day, And once in the night, if they live in town, And if they are poor, to take no pay. Having faithfully promised these, His head is crowned with a laurel crown; A kiss on his cheek, a ring on his hand, The Magister Artium et Physices Goes forth from the school like a lord of the land. And now, as we have the whole morning before us Let us go in, if you make no objection, And listen awhile to a learned prelection On Marcus Aurelius Cassiodorus. (_They go in. Enter_ LUCIFER _as a Doctor._) _Lucifer_. This is the great School of Salern! A land of wrangling and of quarrels, Of brains that seethe, and hearts that burn, Where every emulous scholar hears, In every breath that comes to his ears, The rustling of another's laurels! The air of the place is called salubrious; The neighborhood of Vesuvius lends it An odor volcanic, that rather mends it, And the buildings have an aspect lugubrious, That inspires a feeling of awe and terror Into the heart of the beholder, And befits such an ancient homestead of error, Where the old falsehoods moulder and smoulder, And yearly by many hundred hands Are carried away, in the zeal of youth, And sown like tares in the field of truth, To blossom and ripen in other lands. What have we here, affixed to the gate? The challenge of some scholastic wight, Who wishes to hold a public debate On sundry questions wrong or right! Ah, now this is my great delight! For I have often observed of late That such discussions end in a fight. Let us see what the learned wag maintains With such a prodigal waste of brains. (_Reads._) "Whether angels in moving from place to place Pass through the intermediate space. Whether God himself is the author of evil, Or whether that is the work of the Devil. When, where, and wherefore Lucifer fell, And whether he now is chained in hell." I think I can answer that question well! So long as the boastful human mind Consents in such mills as this to grind, I sit very firmly upon my throne! Of a truth it almost makes me laugh, To see men leaving the golden grain To gather in piles the pitiful chaff That old Peter Lombard thrashed with his brain, To have it caught up and tossed again On the horns of the Dumb Ox of Cologne! But my guests approach! there is in the air A fragrance, like that of the Beautiful Garden Of Paradise, in the days that were! An odor of innocence, and of prayer, And of love, and faith that never fails, Which as the fresh-young heart exhales Before it begins to wither and harden! I cannot breathe such an atmosphere! My soul is filled with a nameless fear, That, after all my trouble and pain, After all my restless endeavor, The youngest, fairest soul of the twain, The most ethereal, most divine, Will escape from my hands forever and ever. But the other is already mine! Let him live to corrupt his race, Breathing among them, with every breath, Weakness, selfishness, and the base And pusillanimous fear of death. I know his nature, and I know That of all who in my ministry Wander the great earth to and fro, And on my errands come and go, The safest and subtlest are such as he. (_Enter_ PRINCE HENRY _and_ ELSIE _with attendants_.) _Prince Henry._ Can you direct us to Friar Angelo? _Lucifer._ He stands before you. _Prince Henry._ Then you know our purpose. I am Prince Henry of Hoheneck, and this The maiden that I spake of in my letters. _Lucifer._ It is a very grave and solemn business! We must not be precipitate. Does she Without compulsion, of her own free will, Consent to this? _Prince Henry._ Against all opposition, Against all prayers, entreaties, protestations. She will not be persuaded. _Lucifer._ That is strange! Have you thought well of it? _Elsie._ I come not here To argue, but to die. Your business is not to question, but to kill me. I am ready. I am impatient to be gone from here Ere any thoughts of earth disturb again The spirit of tranquillity within me. _Prince Henry._ Would I had not come here Would I were dead, And thou wert in thy cottage in the forest, And hadst not known me! Why have I done this? Let me go back and die. _Elsie._ It cannot be; Not if these cold, flat stones on which we tread Were coulters heated white, and yonder gateway Flamed like a furnace with a sevenfold heat. I must fulfil my purpose. _Prince Henry._ I forbid it! Not one step farther. For I only meant To put thus far thy courage to the proof. It is enough. I, too, have courage to die, For thou hast taught me! _Elsie._ O my Prince! remember Your promises. Let me fulfill my errand. You do not look on life and death as I do. There are two angels, that attend unseen Each one of us, and in great books record Our good and evil deeds. He who writes down The good ones, after every action closes His volume, and ascends with it to God. The other keeps his dreadful day-book open Till sunset, that we may repent; which doing, The record of the action fades away, And leaves a line of white across the page. Now if my act be good, as I believe it, It cannot be recalled. It is already Sealed up in heaven, as a good deed accomplished. The rest is yours. Why wait you? I am ready. (_To her attendants._) Weep not, my friends! rather rejoice with me. I shall not feel the pain, but shall be gone, And you will have another friend in heaven. Then start not at the creaking of the door Through which I pass. I see what lies beyond it. (_To_ PRINCE HENRY.) And you, O Prince! bear back my benison Unto my father's house, and all within it. This morning in the church I prayed for them, After confession, after absolution, When my whole soul was white, I prayed for them. God will take care of them, they need me not. And in your life let my remembrance linger, As something not to trouble and disturb it, But to complete it, adding life to life. And if at times beside the evening fire You see my face among the other faces, Let it not be regarded as a ghost That haunts your house, but as a guest that loves you. Nay, even as one of your own family, Without whose presence there were something wanting. I have no more to say. Let us go in. _Prince Henry._ Friar Angelo! I charge you on your life, Believe not what she says, for she is mad, And comes here not to die, but to be healed. _Elsie._ Alas! Prince Henry! _Lucifer._ Come with me; this way. (ELSIE _goes in with_ LUCIFER, _who thrusts_ PRINCE HENRY _back and closes the door._) _Prince Henry._ Gone! and the light of all my life gone with her! A sudden darkness falls upon the world! _Forester._ News from the Prince! _Ursula._ Of death or life? _Forester._ You put your questions eagerly! _Ursula._ Answer me, then! How is the Prince? _Forester._ I left him only two hours since Homeward returning down the river, As strong and well as if God, the Giver, Had given him back in his youth again. _Ursula (despairing)._ Then Elsie, my poor child, is dead! _Forester._ That, my good woman, I have not said. Don't cross the bridge till you come to it, Is a proverb old, and of excellent wit. _Ursula._ Keep me no longer in this pain! _Forester._ It is true your daughter is no more;-- That is, the peasant she was before. _Ursula._ Alas! I am simple and lowly bred I am poor, distracted, and forlorn. And it is not well that you of the court Should mock me thus, and make a sport Of a joyless mother whose child is dead, For you, too, were of mother, born! _Forester._ Your daughter lives, and the Prince is well! You will learn ere long how it all befell. Her heart for a moment never failed; But when they reached Salerno's gate, The Prince's nobler self prevailed, And saved her for a nobler fate, And he was healed, in his despair, By the touch of St. Matthew's sacred bones; Though I think the long ride in the open air, That pilgrimage over stocks and stones, In the miracle must come in for a share! _Ursula._ Virgin! who lovest the poor and lonely, If the loud cry of a mother's heart Can ever ascend to where thou art, Into thy blessed hands and holy Receive my prayer of praise and thanksgiving! Let the hands that bore our Saviour bear it Into the awful presence of God; For thy feet with holiness are shod, And if thou bearest it he will hear it. Our child who was dead again is living! _Forester._ I did not tell you she was dead; If you thought so 'twas no fault of mine; At this very moment, while I speak, They are sailing homeward down the Rhine, In a splendid barge, with golden prow, And decked with banners white and red As the colors on your daughter's cheek. They call her the Lady Alicia now; For the Prince in Salerno made a vow That Elsie only would he wed. _Ursula._ Jesu Maria! what a change! All seems to me so weird and strange! _Forester._ I saw her standing on the deck, Beneath an awning cool and shady; Her cap of velvet could not hold The tresses of her hair of gold, That flowed and floated like the stream, And fell in masses down her neck. As fair and lovely did she seem As in a story or a dream Some beautiful and foreign lady. And the Prince looked so grand and proud, And waved his hand thus to the crowd That gazed and shouted from the shore, All down the river, long and loud. _Ursula._ We shall behold our child once more; She is not dead! She is not dead! God, listening, must have overheard The prayers, that, without sound or word, Our hearts in secrecy have said! O, bring me to her; for mine eyes Are hungry to behold her face; My very soul within me cries; My very hands seem to caress her, To see her, gaze at her, and bless her; Dear Elsie, child of God and grace! (_Goes out toward the garden._) _Forester._ There goes the good woman out of her head; And Gottlieb's supper is waiting here; A very capacious flagon of beer, And a very portentous loaf of bread. One would say his grief did not much oppress him. Here's to the health of the Prince, God bless him! (_He drinks._) Ha! it buzzes and stings like a hornet! And what a scene there, through the door! The forest behind and the garden before, And midway an old man of threescore, With a wife and children that caress him. Let me try still further to cheer and adorn it With a merry, echoing blast of my cornet! (_Goes out blowing his horn._) * * * * * THE CASTLE OF VAUTSBERG ON THE RHINE. * * * * * PRINCE HENRY _and_ ELSIE _standing on the terrace at evening. The sound of bells heard from a distance._ _Prince Henry._ We are alone. The wedding guests Ride down the hill, with plumes and cloaks, And the descending dark invests The Niederwald, and all the nests Among its hoar and haunted oaks. _Elsie._ What bells are those, that ring so slow, So mellow, musical, and low? _Prince Henry._ They are the bells of Geisenheim, That with their melancholy chime Ring out the curfew of the sun. _Elsie._ Listen, beloved. _Prince Henry._ They are done! Dear Elsie! many years ago Those same soft bells at eventide Rang in the ears of Charlemagne, As, seated by Fastrada's side At Ingelheim, in all his pride He heard their sound with secret pain. _Elsie._ Their voices only speak to me Of peace and deep tranquillity, And endless confidence in thee! _Prince Henry._ Thou knowest the story of her ring, How, when the court went back to Aix, Fastrada died; and how the king Sat watching by her night and day, Till into one of the blue lakes, That water that delicious land, They cast the ring, drawn from her hand; And the great monarch sat serene And sad beside the fated shore, Nor left the land forever more. _Elsie._ That was true love. _Prince Henry._ For him the queen Ne'er did what thou hast done for me. _Elsie._ Wilt thou as fond and faithful be? Wilt thou so love me after death? _Prince Henry._ In life's delight, in death's dismay, In storm and sunshine, night and day, In health, in sickness, in decay, Here and hereafter, I am thine! Thou hast Fastrada's ring. Beneath The calm, blue waters of thine eyes Deep in thy steadfast soul it lies, And, undisturbed by this world's breath, With magic light its jewels shine! This golden ring, which thou hast worn Upon thy finger since the morn, Is but a symbol and a semblance, An outward fashion, a remembrance, Of what thou wearest within unseen, O my Fastrada, O my queen! Behold! the hilltops all aglow With purple and with amethyst; While the whole valley deep below Is filled, and seems to overflow, With a fast-rising tide of mist. The evening air grows damp and chill; Let us go in. _Elsie._ Ah, not so soon. See yonder fire! It is the moon Slow rising o'er the eastern hill. It glimmers on the forest tips, And through the dewy foliage drips In little rivulets of light, And makes the heart in love with night. _Prince Henry._ Oft on this terrace, when the day Was closing, have I stood and gazed, And seen the landscape fade away, And the white vapors rise and drown Hamlet and vineyard, tower and town While far above the hilltops blazed. But men another hand than thine Was gently held and clasped in mine; Another head upon my breast Was laid, as thine is now, at rest. Why dost thou lift those tender eyes With so much sorrow and surprise? A minstrel's, not a maiden's hand, Was that which in my own was pressed. A manly form usurped thy place, A beautiful, but bearded face, That now is in the Holy Land, Yet in my memory from afar Is shining on us like a star. But linger not. For while I speak, A sheeted spectre white and tall, The cold mist climbs the castle wall, And lays his hand upon thy cheek! (_They go in._) * * * * * EPILOGUE. * * * * * THE TWO RECORDING ANGELS ASCENDING. _The Angel of Good Deeds (with closed book_). God sent his messenger the rain, And said unto the mountain brook, "Rise up, and from thy caverns look And leap, with naked, snow-white feet. From the cool hills into the heat Of the broad, arid plain." God sent his messenger of faith, And whispered in the maiden's heart, "Rise up, and look from where thou art, And scatter with unselfish hands Thy freshness on the barren sands And solitudes of Death." O beauty of holiness, Of self-forgetfulness, of lowliness! O power of meekness, Whose very gentleness and weakness Are like the yielding, but irresistible air! Upon the pages Of the sealed volume that I bear, The deed divine Is written in characters of gold, That never shall grow old, But all through ages Burn and shine, With soft effulgence! O God! it is thy indulgence That fills the world with the bliss Of a good deed like this! _The Angel of Evil Deeds (with open book)._ Not yet, not yet Is the red sun wholly set, But evermore recedes, While open still I bear The Book of Evil Deeds, To let the breathings of the upper air Visit its pages and erase The records from its face! Fainter and fainter as I gaze On the broad blaze The glimmering landscape shines, And below me the black river Is hidden by wreaths of vapor! Fainter and fainter the black lines Begin to quiver Along the whitening surface of the paper; Shade after shade The terrible words grow faint and fade, And in their place Runs a white space! Down goes the sun! But the soul of one, Who by repentance Has escaped the dreadful sentence, Shines bright below me as I look. It is the end! With closed Book To God do I ascend. Lo! over the mountain steeps A dark, gigantic shadow sweeps Beneath my feet; A blackness inwardly brightening With sullen heat, As a storm-cloud lurid with lightning. And a cry of lamentation, Repeated and again repeated, Deep and loud As the reverberation Of cloud answering unto cloud, Swells and rolls away in the distance, As if the sheeted Lightning retreated, Baffled and thwarted by the wind's resistance. It is Lucifer, The son of mystery; And since God suffers him to be, He, too, is God's minister, And labors for some good By us not understood! 
10596	----	CAP AND GOWN A Treasury of College Verse Selected by Frederic Lawrence Knowles _Editor of "The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics," etc. _1897_ TO THE REVERED MEMORY OF A GREAT SCHOLAR AND GREAT TEACHER WHOM I WAS ONCE PROUD TO CALL MY FRIEND, Frances James Child, THIS LITTLE BOOK IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED. _In "Cap and Gown" you look in vain For epic or heroic strain. Not ours to scale the heights sublime, Which hardly masters dare to climb; We only sing of youth and joy, And love,--the credo of the boy!_ PREFATORY NOTE The gay verses which celebrate undergraduate life must not be taken too seriously. They seldom pretend to the dignity of poetry. College verse, if I understand it, is verse suited to the period and point of view of undergraduate days. Light, graceful, humorous, sparkling,--this it should be for the most part; serious sometimes, it is true,--for young men and women about to take upon themselves the responsibilities of mature life are at heart by no means frivolous, but touching the note of grief, if at all, almost as though by accident. Life is often sad enough in the after-years, and for the period of sorrow, sad verse may be in place. Happy they who have not yet traded cap and bells (never far hidden under cap and gown) for the "Sable stole of cypress lawn." Happier still if they never need make such a sorry exchange. Yes, like all sound art, college verse must, above all else, be honest. Let us not say, however, that the thoughtful moods of young men and women may not sincerely be set to the music of verse. One department in this collection bears the name "In Serious Mood," and its sentiment rings as true as that of any other. In looking over very many undergraduate papers, I have been struck with several facts. I will give them for what they are worth, leaving their explanation to others. First, there seems to be a general fondness for the sonnet, and a very general lack of success in writing it. Second, the French forms of light verse are exceedingly popular--particularly the rondeau, ballade, and triolet. These, more easily lending themselves to gay moods than does the sonnet, are written with much greater success. Triolets are perhaps least often, rondeaus most often, successful. Third, purely sentimental verse is little written in women's colleges, its place being taken by poetry of nature or of reflection. Oddly enough, when it _is_ attempted, the writer usually fancies herself the lover, and describes feminine, not masculine, beauty. College girls show possibly more maturity of reflective power than do their brothers, but they are notably weaker in the sense of humor. Fourth, amongst so much merely graceful verse, there are not wanting touches here and there of genuine poetry. I shall be disappointed if the reader does not discover many such in this little book. While I have confined myself, for the most part, to verse printed in the college publications of the past five years, I have overstepped this limit in a few instances. None of the poems in the present book, however, were included in the first series published in 1892. Thanks are due Messrs. Andrus & Church, of Ithaca, N.Y., for their generous loan of bound files of the _Cornell Era_, to the assistant librarian of Harvard University for numerous courtesies, and to the editors of many college papers, without whose kind cooperation the second series of "Cap and Gown" would have been impossible. F.L.K. COLLEGE PUBLICATIONS REPRESENTED. AMHERST COLLEGE _Amherst Literary Monthly, The_. BALTIMORE, WOMAN'S COLLEGE OF _Kalends, The_. BOWDOIN COLLEGE _Bowdoin Orient, The._ _Bowdoin Quill, The_. BROWN UNIVERSITY _Brown Magazine, The_. _Brunonian, The_. BRYN MAWR COLLEGE _Bryn Mawr Lantern, The_. CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITY _University of California Magazine._ CHICAGO UNIVERSITY _University of Chicago Weekly, The_. COLGATE UNIVERSITY _Madisonensis_. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY _Columbia Literary Monthly, The._ _Columbia Spectator, The._ _Morningside, The_. CORNELL UNIVERSITY _Cornell Era, The_. _Cornell Magazine, The_. DARTMOUTH COLLEGE _Dartmouth Literary Monthly, The._ _Dartmouth Lyrics, 16mo, 1893_. HAMILTON COLLEGE _Hamilton Literary Monthly, The_. HARVARD UNIVERSITY _Harvard Advocate, The_. _Harvard Lampoon, The_. _Harvard Monthly, The_. KANSAS, UNIVERSITY OF _Kansas University Weekly_. LEHIGH UNIVERSITY _Lehigh Burr, The_. LELAND STANFORD UNIVERSITY _Palo Alto, The_. _Sequoia_. _Stanford Quad, The_ _Four-Leaved Clover: Stanford Rhymes, 16mo, 1896_. MASS. INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY _Tech, The_. MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY _Inlander, The._ _Wrinkle, The_ MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE _Mount Holyoke, The_ NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY _Syllabus, The_. OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY _Makio, The_. PENNSYLVANIA, UNIVERSITY OF _Red and Blue_. PRINCETON UNIVERSITY _Nassau Literary Monthly_. ROCHESTER, UNIVERSITY OF _Campus, The_. SMITH COLLEGE _Smith College Monthly_. SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY _University Herald_. TEXAS, UNIVERSITY OF _University of Texas Magazine_. TRINITY COLLEGE _Trinity Tablet, The_. TUFTS COLLEGE _Tuftonian, The_. UNION COLLEGE _Concordiensis, The_. _Garnet, The_. _Parthenon, The_. VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY _Vanderbilt Observer, The_. VASSAR COLLEGE _Vassar Miscellany, The_. VIRGINIA, UNIVERSITY OF _Virginia University Magazine_. WELLESLEY COLLEGE _Wellesley Magazine, The_. _Wellesley Lyrics, 16mo, 1894_. WELLS COLLEGE _Cardinal, The_. WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY _Wesleyan Argus, The_. _Wesleyan Literary Monthly, The_. _Olla Podrida, The_. _Wesleyan Verse, 16mo, 1894_. WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY _College Folio, The_. WILLIAMS COLLEGE _Williams Literary Monthly, The_. _Williams Weekly, The_. WISCONSIN, UNIVERSITY OF _Badger, The_. _Wisconsin Aegis_. YALE UNIVERSITY _Yale Courant, The_. _Yale Literary Magazine, The._ _Yale Record, The_. * * * * * ~Soap-Bubbles.~ As a little child at play Blows upon a pipe of clay Bubbles, evanescent, bright, With their iridescent light, So I fling upon the wind Verses of the bubble kind. And my friend with eyes of blue Looks my dainty verses through, Pauses from his books awhile, With an intellectual smile; For my fancy seems as naught To this man of deeper thought. Still I plead as my excuse: "Even bubbles have their use. They are perfect while they live, And their short career may give, As they shimmer, and are flown, Some suggestion for our own. "Let their beauty, pure and glad, Make another soul less sad, And, as upward they are whirled, Let them show their little world, Floating clouds and perfect sky, Warmly mirrored, ere they die." HERBERT MULLER HOPKINS. _Columbia Literary Monthly._ I. LOVE AND SENTIMENT ~Love Laughs.~ "Love laughs at locksmiths," laughs ho! ho! Still Thisbe steals to meet a beau, Naught recks of bolt and bar and night, And father's frown and word despite. As in the days of long ago, In southern heat and northern snow Still twangs the archer's potent bow, And as his flying arrows smite, Love laughs. _Trinity Tablet_. ~Where Cupid Dwells.~ Way over the seas, is a far, far land, Where skies are blue and gold; Where ripples break on a silver sand, And sunbeams ne'er grow old; There's a dale where Cupid dwells, they say, And 'tis there that he rests from his frolic play. Oh, there's many a lass and many a swain That knows of his shafts made there; For Cupid spares naught of a deep heart-pain. Though love be all his care. And I think he should make a reflection or two, When he rests over there from his play. Don't you? ROBERT L. MUNGER. _Yale Courant_. ~To Ruby Lips.~ Two ruby lips are hers; a pair Of eyes a cynic to ensnare, A tinted cheek, a perfect nose, A throat as white as winter's snows, And o'er her brow bright golden hair. But, though she's everything that's fair, My captured fancy's focused where A saucy smile suffuses those Two ruby lips. Why longer wait their sweets to share? We're safe behind the portière. A moment, then, that no one knows-- Ah! now she's flown, _couleur de rose_, With, one might hint (but who would dare?) _Too_ ruby lips. H.A. RICHMOND. _The Tech._ ~A Gift.~ My friend holds careless in his palm A glittering stone. He does not know a jewel rare Is all his own. But in its flashing lights I see A diamond shine, And though he holds it in his hand, The gem is mine. ELIZABETH REEVE CUTTER. _Smith College Monthly_. ~Jacqueminot.~ Are you filled with wonder, Jacqueminot, Do you think me mad that I kiss you so? If a rose could only its thoughts express, I'd find you mocking, I more than guess; And yet if you vow me a fond old fool, Just think if your own fine pulse was cool When you lay in her tresses an hour ago, Jacqueminot. This pale, proud girl, you must understand, Held all my fate in her small white hand, And when I asked her to be my bride, She wanted a day to think--decide; And I asked, if her answer were _no_, she'd wear A Marshal Niel to the ball in her hair, But if 'twere _yes_, she would tell me so By a Jacqueminot. My heart found heaven, I had seen my sign, And after the dance I knew her mine, And I plucked you out of her warm, soft hair, As her stately pride stood trembling there, And I felt in the dark for her lips to kiss, And I pressed them close to my own like _this_, And I held her cheek to my own cheek--_so_, Jacqueminot! FREDERIC LAWRENCE KNOWLES. _Wesleyan Literary Monthly._ ~Don't You Wish You Knew!~ Glancing in the moonlight, Gliding in the dark, Down the river slowly, Floats our dainty bark. Sweetly sound two voices, Shadows hide the view; Heard the rushes something? Don't you wish you knew! Gently sigh the zephyrs, Shine the stars above, Eyes of brighter lustre Speak of lasting love. Quickly pass the hours, Glides the bark canoe; Heard the rushes something? Don't you wish you knew! A.H.B. _Brunonian._ ~Prom-Roses.~ Only a bunch of roses fair, A duster of pink and white, Roses that nod to the music low, The flowers she wore that night. She tenderly lifts each drooping head That gracefully tosses there, And the dainty flowers, nestling close, Smile back at the maiden fair. "How beautiful they are," she said, As she pressed them to her cheek, "Why, the opened petals almost seem As if they were trying to speak." I wonder why she cannot hear The song that the flowers sing, I wonder if she knows or cares For the message the roses bring. JAMES P. SAWYER. _Yale Record_. ~A Lyric.~ Beneath the lilac-tree, With its breathing blooms of white, You waved a parting kiss to me In the deepening amber light. Your face is always near, Your tender eyes of brown. I see your form in dreams; I hear The whisper of your gown. Once more the lilac-tree With twilight dew is wet; But, oh, I would that you might be Alive to love me yet. EDWARD M. HULME. _The Palo Alto._ Pallas You say there's a sameness in my style, You long for the savor of something new, You tell me that love is not worth while, You wish for verse that is strong and true. Well, I will leave the choice to you-- Prose or poetry, short or long, Only we'll let this be the cue-- Love is excluded from the song. I'll sing of some old cathedral pile, Where, as we sit in a carved oak pew, The sunlight illumines nave and aisle, And peace seems thrilling us through and through. No? you don't think that will do? How would you like a busy throng, A battle, Elizabeth's retinue? But love is excluded from the song. A journey, a voyage, a tropic isle, The hush of the forest, the ocean blue, A lament for all that is false and vile, A paean for all that is good and true. Pompadour's fan, or Louis's queue, Mournful or merry, right or wrong. Subjects, you'll find, are not so few, But love is excluded from the song. Oh! for a song of yourself you sue! Do you think you can trap me? You are wrong. Sing of your eyes and your smile and--Pooh! Love is excluded from the song. GUY WETMORE CARRYL. _Columbia Spectator._ ~How I Love Her.~ Dear, I'll tell you how I love you-- Not by singing sweetly of you-- Oh, I love you far too much, For the daintiest rhyme's light touch; No, it needs no language signs, It's written here between the lines, How I love you! You will see If you look there, loving me. C.B. NEWTON. _Nassau Literary Monthly._ ~Polly.~ She fluttered gaily down the hill-- That merry, dimpled lass-- She hurried singing down the hill, And then she loitered by the mill, And saw the bubbles pass, Made double in the glass Of the mirror of the water, greeny still. She heard a sparrow pertly cry, She smelt the new-mown hay, She felt the sunshine in the sky, As lightly she went skipping by, A-down the sunny way-- 'Twas like a holiday, The keen, expectant sparkle in her eye. And Cupid's wings were on her feet, As nimbly she ran down; And Cupid's wings were on her feet: For pretty Polly went to meet Her lover in the town. She wore that lilac gown That made him say--oh, nothing to repeat! CHARLES W. SHOPE. _Harvard Advocate_. ~Under the Rose.~ Last night the blush rose clustered,-- To-day the rough wind blows In showers her broken petals; Last night,--yet no one knows,-- I kissed thee, sweetheart, sweetheart, Under the rose! Last night my fond hope blossomed,-- To-day December snows Drift deep and cold above it; To-day,--ah! no one knows,-- My heart breaks, sweetheart, sweetheart, Under the rose! CATHERINE Y. GLEN. _Mount Holyoke._ [Illustration: MT. HOLYOKE GIRL.] ~A Bit of Human Nature.~ 'Tis only a pair of woman's eyes, So long-lashed, soft, and brown, Half hiding the light that in them lies, As dreamily looking down. 'Tis only the dainty curve of a lip, Half full, half clear defined, And the shell-like pink of a finger-tip, And a figure half reclined. 'Tis only a coil of rich, dark hair, With sunlight sifted through, And a truant curl just here and there, And a knot of ribbon blue. 'Tis only the wave of a feather fan, That ruffles the creamy lace, Loose gathered about the bosom fair, By rhinestones held in place. 'Tis only the toe of a high-heeled shoe, With the glimpse of a color above-- A stocking tinted a faint sky-blue, The shade that lovers love. 'Tis only a woman--a woman, that's all, And, as only a woman can, Bringing a heart to her beck and call By waving her feather fan. 'Tis only a woman, and I--'twere best To forget that waving fan. She only a woman--you know the rest? But I am only a man. CHARLES WASHINGTON COLEMAN. _Virginia University Magazine._ ~Her Little Glove.~ Her little glove, I dare aver, Would set your pulses all astir; It hides a something safe from sight So soft and warm, so small and white, A cynic would turn flatterer! Could Pegasus have better spur? 'Twould almost cause a saint to err-- A Puritan to grow polite-- Her little glove. 'Twill satisfy a connoisseur, This dainty thing of lavender; And when it clasps her fingers tight I think--I wonder if it's right-- That somehow--well--I wish _I_ were Her little glove. FREDERIC LAWRENCE KNOWLES. _Wesleyan Verse_. ~Skating Hath Charms.~ So cold was the night, And her cheeks were cold, too, Though it wasn't quite right, So cold was the night, And so sad was her plight, That I--well, wouldn't you? So cold was the night, And her cheeks were cold, too. H.H. _Amherst Literary Monthly._ ~The Portrait.~ Pearls and patches, powder and paint, This was her grandmother years ago. Gown and coiffure so strange and quaint, Features just lacking the prim of the saint, From the mischievous dimple that lurks below; High-heeled slippers and satin bow, Red lips mocking the heart's constraint, Free from passion, devoid of taint-- This was her grandmother years ago. Straight and slender, gallant and tall. Ah, how he loved her, years ago! Just so she looked at that last dim ball, When, in a niche of the dusk old hall, They whispered together soft and low. She whispered "yes," but fate answered "no:" Some one listened and told it all, And the horses might wait by the garden wall, But none came to answer him, years ago. So, standing, fresh as the rose on her breast, Smiling down on me here below, Never a care on her brow impressed, Never the dream of a thought confessed Of all the weariness and the woe, Hearts would break were time not so slow. Swept are life's chambers; comes the new guest. Old love, or new love--which was the best? For this was her grandmother years ago. _Southern Collegian_. ~The Convert.~ I wrote lots of trash about Cupid, And the telling bewitchment of curls, And that men were excessively stupid To be madly devoted to girls. I remarked that true love was unstable, As compared with position or pelf, 'Till one day I met you, little Mabel, And learned what it felt like, myself! Don't read all the things I have written When I knew that my heart was my own, But since I confess I am smitten, Read these little verses alone. And sincerely I trust I'll be able To convince you, you sly little elf, To grant me your heart, little Mabel, And learn what it feels like yourself! GUY WETMORE CARRYL. _Columbia Literary Monthly_. ~A Thief's Apology.~ I stole a kiss!--What could I do? Before the door we stood, we two, About to say a plain good-by; She seemed so innocent and shy, But what she thought, I thought I knew. Ah, swift the blissful moments flew, And when at last I said adieu (Perhaps you think me bold), but I-- I stole a kiss. The tale is told; perhaps it's true, Perhaps it was a deed to rue; But when that look came in her eye I thought she wished to have me try-- I don't know how 'twould been with you-- _I_ stole a kiss. ROBERT PORTER ST. JOHN. _Amherst Literary Monthly._ ~A Ballad of Dorothy.~ It's "Dorothy! Where's Dorothy?" From morn to even fall, There's not a lad on Cowslip Farm Who joins not in the call. It's Dolly here and Dolly there, Where can the maiden be? No wench in all the countryside's So fine as Dorothy. With tucked-up gown and shining pail, Before the day is bright, Down dewy lanes she singing goes Among the hawthorns white. Perchance her roses need her care, She tends them faithfully. There's not a rose in all the world As fresh and sweet as she! With morning sunshine in her hair A-churning Dolly stands: Oh, happy chum, I envy it, Held close between her hands; And when the crescent moon hangs bright Athwart the soft night sky, Down shady paths we strolling go, Just Dorothy and I. As true of heart as sweet of face, With gay and girlish air, The painted belles of citydom Are not a whit as fair. Come Michaelmas the parish chimes Will ring out merrily. Who is the bride I lead to church? Why, who but Dorothy? ARTHUR KETCHUM. _Williams Literary Monthly_. ~A Cup and Saucer Episode.~ 'Twas only coffee, yet we both drank deep, I won't deny I felt intoxication; For just to see those roguish moon-eyes peep Over the cup, I plunged in dissipation. She raised her cup, and I raised also mine; She gave a look, as if "Now are you ready?" Our eyes met o'er the rims--it seemed like wine, So sweet, divine, bewitching, almost "heady." So cup on cup! The salad, too, was good. I had of that far more than my fair rations. Yet served it merely as an interlude Between the music of the cup flirtations. And then to have her say 'twas all my fault! I fairly blushed, and gazed down at my cup. I noticed, though, she had not called the halt Until the pot was empty, every sup. BERT ROSS. _Harvard Advocate_. ~Faint Heart Ne'er Won Fair Lady.~ "The burn runs swiftly, my dainty lass, And its foam-wreathed stones are mossy, An I carry ye ower to yonder shore Ye will na think me saucy?" "I thank ye, sir, but a Scottish lass Recks not of a little wetting. Will ye stand aside, sir? I can na bide, sir. The sun o' the gloamin's setting." "Yet stay, my pretty, the stepping-stones Are a bridge o' my are hands' making. An ye pay no toll I maun be so bold-- The sweeter a kiss for taking." "Farewell, ye braw young Highlander. Tho' first ye sought to mask it: Unceevil 'tis to steal a kiss. But muckle waur to ask it." CHARLES POTTER HINE. _Yale Literary Magazine_. ~A Foreign Tongue.~ When lovers talk, they talk a foreign tongue, Their words are not like ours, But full of meanings like the throb of flowers Yet in the earth, unborn. I think the snow Feels the mysterious passage and the flow Of inarticulate streams that surge below. And it is easy learning for the young; When lovers talk, they talk a foreign tongue. ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH. _Smith College Monthly_. ~Ye Gold-Headed Cane.~ It stands in the corner yet, stately and tall, With a top that once shone like the sun. It whispers of muster-field, playhouse, and ball, Of gallantries, courtship, and fun. It is hardly the stick for the dude of to-day, He would swear it was deucedly plain, But the halos of memory crown its decay-- My grandfather's gold-headed cane. It could tell how a face in a circling calash Grew red as the poppies she wore, When a dandy stepped up with a swagger and dash. And escorted her home to her door. How the beaux cried with jealousy, "Jove! what a buck!" As they glared at the fortunate swain, And the wand which appeared to have fetched him his luck-- My grandfather's gold-headed cane. It could tell of the rides in the grand yellow gig, When, from under a broad scuttle hat, The eyes of fair Polly were lustrous and big, And--but no! would it dare tell of _that_? Ah me! by those wiles that bespoke the coquette How many a suitor was slain! There was one, though, who conquered the foe when they met With the gleam of his gold-headed cane. Oh, the odors of lavender, lilac, and musk! They scent these old halls even yet; I can still see the dancers as down through the dusk They glide in the grave minuet. The small satin slippers, my grandmamma's pride, Long, long in the chest have they lain; Let us shake out the camphor and place them beside My grandfather's gold-headed cane. FREDERIC LAWRENCE KNOWLES. _Wesleyan Literary Monthly._ ~Hours.~ Matchless, melting eyes of brown, This is but a cheerless town; You should beam 'neath warmer skies, Matchless, melting, dark brown eyes. Yours should be a land of flowers, Perfumed air and sunny hours; Eastern fires within you rise, Matchless, melting, dark brown eyes. Eyes of beauty, eyes of light, Burning mystically bright, Prithee here no longer stay, You will burn my heart away. W. _Hamilton Literary Monthly_. ~A Fickle Heart.~ A fickle heart! Let subtler poets sing Of changeless love and all that kind of thing, Of hearts in which a passion never dies-- _My_ heart's as fickle as the summer skies Across whose face the changing cloud-forms wing. Unfailing loves unfailing troubles bring. I love to touch on Cupid's harp each string, Though each unto my questioning touch replies A fickle heart. So, 'twixt some thirty loves I'm wavering, To each the same unstable vows I fling, Reading the first glad gleam of love's surprise In thirty pair of brown and azure eyes, Finding in all the same thought answering; A fickle heart. GUY WETMORE CARRYL. _Columbia Spectator._ ~My Lady goes to the Play.~ With the link-boys running on before To light her on her way, A-lounging in her sedan goes Belinda to the play. In patch and powder, puff and frill, From satin shoe to hair, Of all the maids in London town I wot there's none so fair! From Mayfair down along the Strand To Covent Garden's light, Where Master David Garrick acts In a new rôle to-night, The swinging sedan takes its way, And with expectant air Belinda fans, and wonders who To-night there will be there. Sir Charles, perhaps, or, happy thought, Flushing thro' her powder, He might come in--beneath her stays She feels her heart beat louder. The place, at last! The flunkies set Their dainty burden down, "Lud, what a crowd!" My Lady frowns And gathers up her gown. ENVOY. Alack for human loveliness And for its little span! Where's Belinda? Here, quite fresh, Are still her gown and fan! ARTHUR KETCHUM. _Williams Literary Monthly._ ~Confession and Avoidance.~ They say that you're a flirt at best, And warn me to beware: your glances Would make, they say, a treach'rous test By which to gauge a fellow's chances. And yet--I love you so! a throng Of passions bid me speak to-day. Ah! darling, tell me they are wrong! Are you as heartless as they say? Am I? well, so I have been told, Though never yet have I confessed it; But you, sir, seem so very bold That I--well, I admit you've guessed it. Alas! 'tis true I'm heartless; yes, They're right, but only right in part; The reason, dear, is--can't you guess? Because--because you have my heart. JOHN ALAN HAMILTON. _Cornell Magazine._ ~Clarissa Laughs.~ Clarissa laughs. I plead in vain, She hears my suit with sweet disdain, When I remind her--speaking low-- That once she did not flout me so, She asks me--do I think 'twill rain? Then when in anger I am fain To leave her, swear I've naught to gain By staying, save th'increase of woe, Clarissa laughs. Yet when I beg of her to deign To answer, give it joy or pain, She smiles. So then I cannot go, For with her smiles my love doth grow. Yet when I press my suit again, Clarissa laughs. RUTH PARSONS MILNE. _Smith College Monthly_. ~'Mid the Roses.~ 'Mid the roses she is standing, In her garden, waiting there; Roses all about her glowing, Roses shining in her hair. May I, dare I, ask the question Which my heart has asked before? Then I falter, "Can you love me, Darling?" I can say no more. Now the petals fall more slowly: One has lodged upon her dress; Now her eyes she raises gently; Meeting mine, they answer "Yes." F.T. GEROULD. _Dartmouth Literary Monthly_. ~A Society Martyr.~ Rustling billows of silk 'neath the foam of old lace, A half-languid smile upon each listless face,-- A dreaming of roses and rose-leaf shades,-- A medley of modern and Grecian maids. Such clatter and clink One scarcely can think Till he spies a shy nook where he lonely can sink,-- For how can a bachelor be at his ease With such chatter and gossip at afternoon teas? Fair Phyllis's gold lashes demurely cast down, Her face in sweet doubt 'twixt a smile and a frown,-- A venturesome rosebud o'ertopping the rest Now lies all a-quiver upon her white breast, The curves of her neck Man's vow often wreck,-- She has the whole world at her call and her beck. So how can a bachelor be at his ease With such variant emotions at afternoon teas? Behind sheltering palms, safe from gossips' sharp gaze, Is acted in mime one of life's dearest plays,-- Sweet Bessie's brown eyes raised beseechingly up, Her lips just released from the kiss of her cup, And Fred, I much fear, From small sounds that I hear, Is as bold as the rim of her cup,--and as near,-- And how can a bachelor be at his ease With such sights and such sounds at our afternoon teas? Shrewd maters watch Phyllis and Bessie and Fred,-- Each smile and each look and each toss of the head,-- And wonder and ponder and figure and scheme, While fortune and fashion 'gainst love tip the beam. For Bessie's dark locks And Phyllis's smart frocks Are but snares to entrap the society fox. Pray, how can a bachelor be at his ease With such artful devices at afternoon teas? JOHN CLINTON ANTHONY. _Brown Magazine_. ~O Mores!~ Cupid's bow is lying broken, Fallen on the ground, And his arrows all with blunted Points are strewn around. For to reach our modern hearts Powerless are the blind god's darts, From his rosy shoulders stripped; Since, to pierce the breasts so cold, Shafts must always be of gold, Arrows must be diamond-tipped. ALBERT ELLSWORTH THOMAS. _Brunonian._ ~Which?~ Blonde or brunette? Shall Ethel fair, My winter girl, with golden hair, Or Maud, whose dark brown eyes bewitch,-- My summer girl,--now govern? Which? Shall cold Bostonianism rule? Shall Love teach Browning in his school? Or shall coy glances, passion-rich, Compel my fond allegiance? Which? And yet the solving's really clear. For winter's gone and summer's here. I want no statue in a niche, So Cupid says, "Let Maud be 'Which!'" W.C. NICHOLS. _Harvard Lampoon._ ~Then and Now.~ When first we met she was three feet high, And three, I think, was her age as well, A touch of the heaven was in her eye; I cannot say she was very shy, (As you'll see by her actions by and by), But the way I behaved I blush to tell. We met at a party, on the stair; She was decked in ribbons and silk galore, She smiled with a most bewitching air, And then, I'm afraid, I pulled her hair. You know you can't expect savoir-faire Of a cavalier of the age of four! She only laughed with her subtle charm, And took it more sweetly than you'd have believed, But later she really took alarm-- When she wanted to kiss me I pinched her arm, And she ran away to escape from harm; At which, no doubt, I was much relieved. She did not offer to kiss again; I saw her go off with another beau. She pretended to hold up her ten-inch train, And whispered low to her new-found swain. I was eating ice-cream with might and main,-- And that was some seventeen years ago. I see her to-night on the winding stair, She replies with a smile to my sober bow; The palms lean lovingly toward her hair, And her foot keeps time to a distant air. I'm afraid she does not recall or care-- She does not offer to kiss me now! Heigho! What a sad, what a sweet affair, What a curious mixture life seems to be! I am fast in the net of love, and there, With another man on the winding stair, Is the girl I love,--and I pulled her hair When she wanted a kiss at the age of three! GUY WETMORE CARRYL. _Columbia Spectator._ ~A Toast.~ Clink, clink, Fill up your glasses. Drink, drink, Drink to the lasses. Eyes that are blue, Lips that are sweet, Hearts that are true, Figures petite. Clink, clink, Fill up your glasses. Drink, drink, Drink to the lasses. Drink, for there's nothing so sweet as a maid is; Drink to the dearest of mortals, The Ladies. HENRY MORGAN STONE. _Brunonian_. ~A Bit of Lace.~ It lay upon a pillow white, The framework of a beauteous sight Wherein its mistress laid a bright Ecstatic face, And when each night it proudly bore Her wavy wealth of "cheveux d'or" It seemed a very Heaven for The bit of lace. But lace can from a pillow part And by a touch, of cunning art Adorn the casket of the heart, Where every grace, Half hidden by its witching fold, Seeks to betray a charm untold-- How envies each admirer bold The bit of lace! Still maidens' mind and garments change, And so there comes a new exchange; The real Valenciennes finds a strange New resting-place, Where tiny feet and ankles hide, And where but for a shoe untied No human eye had e'er espied The bit of lace. A crowded street, a sudden scare, A little rush, a lengthy tear, A snowy skirt that needs repair, Decides the case. And what each morn her footman missed Hung from a dainty, dimpled wrist, And ardent lovers fondly kissed The bit of lace. * * * * * This tale is incomplete, I know, But where else could the traveller go? Ah, it was fifty years ago All this took place. And nodding, in her noonday nap, Secure from every sad mishap, I see in Grandma's dainty cap The bit of lace. _Red and Blue._ ~A Song to Her.~ A song to a maid with eyes like stars; Lad, you can sing it. Any old tune to trip the bars, Any old voice to ring it; Love will wend it away to her; Love will mend it and pray to her; Love with his love will wing it. A song to a maid, a song of songs Born in the singing Ever, oh! ever to love belongs; Ringing, ringing, ringing! Holly berry, a winter theme, Bursting cherry, a summer's dream, Love on love's pinions winging. _Wrinkle_. ~Circe.~ Merry smiles and entrancing eyes, Words that are light as passing air. Lips that never disown disguise, Hearts that endeavor hearts to snare, Tongues that know not the way to spare, Babbling on in a thoughtless whirl; Would-be worshippers, O beware! These are the ways of the modern girl. Faces fickle as April skies, Eyes where Cupid has made his lair; When they tempt you to idolize, Then for a broken heart prepare. What does she care for your despair, Striving peace from your life to hurl? Would-be worshippers, O take care! These are the ways of the modern girl. Ribbons and laces, smiles and sighs, A knot of vermilion in her hair, Glances where veiled deception lies, A kiss, perchance, on the winding stair, Exquisite gowns and roses rare, Shimmer of silver, gloss of pearl-- Where is the heart, O woman, where? These are the ways of the modern girl. ENVOY. Fashion and pique her hours share, Nature and truth their standards furl, Fair as fickle, and false as fair, These are the ways of the modern girl. _Columbia Spectator_. ~A Wish.~ Cupid laughs, nor seems to care How his shafts are wont to harrow. Ah! that I could unaware, Wound him with his golden arrow. A. _Columbia Spectator._ ~To Phyllis.~ I said your beauty shamed the rose's blush; You thought the simile was trite, untrue; But, oh, I saw each rose for pleasure flush To hear itself compared, dear heart, to you! ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE. _Columbia Spectator_. ~L'Amour, L'Amour.~ We catch the fleeting perfume of roses As the evening closes the golden day, And the rhythmic beating of waves in motion Comes from the ocean a mile away; In the west is dying the sunset's splendor, And twilight tender enfolds the land; Where the tide is flying a-down the river, And the grasses quiver, we silent stand. In your radiant eyes the sun unknowing Has left his glowing to deeper glow, And your tender sighs sound far more sweetly Than the winds that fleetly and blithely blow And first all shyly your small hand lingers With trembling fingers within my own, The blushes slyly and swiftly starting, And then departing like rose-leaves blown. Alas, the envious time is fleeting, But your heart is beating in time with mine, And Cupid's rhyme rings louder--clearer, As I draw you nearer, my love divine! In the twilight dim we have found love's tether, And are linked together, no more to part; While the white stars swing in a maze of glory, To hear the story that bares your heart. GUY WETMORE CARRYL. _Columbia Spectator._ ~Lines on a Ring.~ Oh, precious drop of crystal dew, Set in a tiny band of gold, Which doth within its little grasp A blue-veined finger softly hold-- Thou failest if thy radiant rays Are seeking--bold attempt 'twould be!-- To show a fraction of the love That beams from Edith's eyes on me. LOREN M. LUKE. _Nassau Literary Monthly_. ~A Memory.~ Shadows up the hillside creeping, Gold in western sky, Meadow-brook beneath us keeping Dreamy lullaby. Soft stars through the pine-trees gleaming-- Gems in dark robes caught-- Everything about us seeming With hidden meaning fraught. Sweet dark eyes, upon me turning, Challenge if I dare, Vie with amorous sunbeams burning O'er her face and hair. But a truce to idle musing-- That was long ago. Was she gracious or refusing? You may never know. Winter's snows those fields are hiding 'Neath a robe of white, For another she is biding Tryst of love to-night. I was only glancing over A book beloved of yore, When a sprig of mountain clover Fluttered to the floor. IRVILLE C. LECOMPTE. _Wesleyan Literary Monthly_. [Illustration: A WESLEYAN GIRL.] ~The Soul's Kiss.~ Not your sweet, red lips, dear, Tremulous with sighs, Lest their passion dull love's rapture; Kiss me with your eyes. Gleam on Cupid's wing, dear, At the least touch flies, Even lips may brush to dimness; Kiss me with your eyes. Pain within the bliss, dear, Of those soft curves lies; Only love the soul's light carries; Kiss me with your eyes. MAUD THOMPSON. _Wellesley Magazine._ ~A Portrait.~ A slim, young girl, in lilac quaintly dressed; A mammoth bonnet, lilac like the gown, Hangs from her arm by wide, white strings, the crown Wreathed round with lilac blooms; and on her breast A cluster; lips still smiling at some jest Just uttered, while the gay, gray eyes half frown Upon the lips' conceit; hair, wind-blown, brown Where shadows stray, gold where the sunbeams rest. Ah! lilac lady, step from your gold frame, Between that starched old Bishop and the dame In awe-inspiring ruff. We'll brave their ire And trip a minuet. You will not?--Fie! Those mocking lips half make me wish that I, Her grandson, might have been my own grandsire. _Trinity Tablet_. ~A Picture.~ On spinet old, Clarissa plays The melodies of by-gone days. Forgotten fugue, a solemn tune, The bars of stately rigadoon. With head bent down to scan each note, A crimson ribbon round her throat, The very birds to sing forget As some old-fashioned minuet Clarissa plays. King George long since has passed away, And minuets have had their day. Within a hidden attic nook Covered with dust, her music-book. Gone are the keys her fingers pressed. The bunch of roses at her breast. But still, unmindful of time's flight, With face so fair and hands so white, Clarissa plays. EDWARD B. REED. _Yale Literary Magazine._ ~Tildy in the Choir.~ Lines that ripple, notes that dance, Foreign measures brought from France, Reaching with a careless ease From high C to--where you please, Clever, frivolous, and gay-- These will answer in their way; But that tune of long ago-- Stately, solemn, somewhat slow (Dear "Old Hundred"--that's the air)-- Will outrank them anywhere; Once it breathed a seraph's fire. (Tildy sang it in the choir.) How she stood up straight and tall! Ah! again I see it all; Cheeks that glowed and eyes that laughed, Teeth like cream, and lips that quaffed All the genial country's wealth Of large cheer and perfect health, Gown--well, yes--old-fashioned quite, _You_ would call it "just a fright," But I love that quaint attire. (Tildy wore it in the choir.) How we sang--for _I_ was there, Occupied a singer's chair Next to--well, no prouder man Ever lifts the bass, nor can, Sometimes held the self-same book, (How my nervous fingers shook!) Sometimes--wretch--while still the air Echoed to the parson's prayer, I would whisper in her ear What she could not help but hear. Once, I told her my desire. (Tildy promised in the choir.) Well, those days are past, and now Come gray hairs, and yet somehow I can't think those years have fled-- Still those roadways know my tread, Still I climb that old pine stair, Sit upon the stiff-backed chair, Stealing glances toward my left Till her eyes repay the theft; Death's a dream and Time's a liar-- Tildy still is in the choir. Come, Matilda number two, _Fin de siècle _maiden you! Wonder if you'd like to see Her I loved in fifty-three? Yes? All right, then go and find Mother's picture--"Papa!"--Mind! She and I were married. You Were our youngest. Now you, too, Raise the same old anthems till All the church is hushed and still With a single soul to hear. Do I flatter? Ah, my dear, Time has brought my last desire-- Tildy still _is_ in the choir! FREDERIC LAWRENCE KNOWLES. _Wesleyan Literary Monthly_. ~A Memory.~ We sat in the lamplight's gentle glow, Alone on the winding stair, And the distant strains of a waltz fell low On the fragrance-laden air. I caught from her lips a murmured "yes," And the stately palms amid There came a blissful, sweet caress-- I shouldn't have--but I did! I might forget that joyous night, As the months slip swiftly by; I might forget the gentle light That shone in her hazel eye; But I can't forget that whispered "yes" That came the palms amid, I can't forget that one caress-- I shouldn't have--but I did! GUY WETMORE CARRYL _Columbia Spectator._ ~The American Girl.~ The German may sing of his rosy-cheeked lass, The French of his brilliant-eyed pearl; But ever the theme of my praises shall be The laughing American girl, Yes, the jolly American girl. She laughs at her sorrows, she laughs at her joys, She laughs at Dame Fortune's mad whirl; And laughing will meet all her troubles in life, The laughing American girl, Yes, the joyous American girl. You say she can't love if she laughs all the time? A laugh at your logic she'll hurl; She loves while she laughs and she laughs while she loves, The laughing American girl, Oh, the laughing American girl! S.F.P. _Campus_. ~Ballade of Justification.~ A jingle of bells and a crunch of snow, Skies that are clear as the month of May, Winds that merrily, briskly blow, A pretty girl and a cozy sleigh, Eyes that are bright and laughter gay, All that favors Dan Cupid's art; I was but twenty. What can you say If I confess I lost my heart? What if I answered in whispers low, Begged that she would not say me nay, Asked if my love she did not know, What if I did? Who blames me, pray? Suppose she blushed. 'Tis the proper way For lovely maidens to play their part. Does it seem too much for a blush to pay If I confess I lost my heart? What if I drove extremely slow, Was there not cause enough to stay? Such opportunities do not grow Right in one's pathway every day; Cupid I dared not disobey, If he saw fit to cast his dart; Is it a thing to cause dismay If I confess I lost my heart? ENVOY. What if I kissed her? Jealous they Who scoff at buyers in true love's mart. Who can my sound good sense gainsay If I confess I lost my heart? GUY WETMORE CARRYL. _Columbia Spectator_. ~Perdita.~ 'Twas only a tiny, withered rose, But it once belonged to Grace. The goody didn't know that, I suppose-- 'Twas only a tiny, withered rose, No longer sweet to the eye or nose, So she tossed it out from the Dresden vase.-- 'Twas only a tiny, withered rose, But it once belonged to Grace. _Harvard Advocate_. ~Strategy.~ Some, Cupid kills with arrows, Some, with traps; But this spring the little rascal Found, perhaps, That he needed both to slay me; So he laid a cunning snare On the hillside, and he hid it In a lot of maidenhair; And I doubt not he is laughing At the joke, For he made his arrows out of Poison-oak. CHARLES KELLOGG FIELD. _Sequoia_. ~Canoe Song.~ Dip! Dip! Softly slip Down the river shining wide, Dim and far the dark banks are; Life is love and naught beside. Onward, drifting with the tide. Drip, drip, from paddle tip Myriad ripples swirl and swoon; Shiv'ring 'mid the ruddy stars, Mirrored in the deep lagoon, Faintly floats the mummied moon. Soft, soft, high aloft,-- Ever thus till time is done,-- Worlds will die; may thou and I Glide beneath a gentler sun, Young as now and ever one. E. FRÈRE CHAMPNEY. _Harvard Advocate._ ~A Rambling Rhyme of Dorothy.~ When ye Crocuss shews his heade & ye Wyndes of Marche have flede, Springe doth come, and happylye Then I thinke of Dorothy. Haycockes fragrante in ye sun Give me reste when taskes are done: Summer's here, & merrylye Then I dreame of Dorothy. Scarlette leaves & heapinge binne; Cyder, ye cool Tankard in; Autumn's come. Righte jollylye Then I drinke to Dorothy. When ye Northe Wynde sweeps ye snowe & Icyclles hange all belowe, Then, for soothe, Olde Winter, he Letts me dance with Dorothy! ARTHUR CHENEY TRAIN. _Harvard Advocate._ ~The Prof.'s Little Girl.~ She comes to the Quad when her Ladyship pleases, And loiters at will in the sun and the shade; As free from the burden of work as the breezes That play with the bamboo is this little maid. The tongues of the bells, as they beat out the morning, Like mad in their echoing cases may whirl Till they weary of calling her,--all their sharp warning Is lost on the ear of the prof's little girl. With a scarred-over heart that is old in the knowledge Of all the manoeuvres and snares of the Hall, Grown wary of traps in its four years at college, And able at last to keep clear of them all,-- Oh, what am I doing away from my classes With a little blue eye and a brown little curl? Ah me! fast again, and each precious hour passes In slavery sweet to the prof's little girl. She makes me a horse, and I mind her direction, Though it takes me o'er many a Faculty green; I'm pledged to the cause of her pussy's protection From ghouls of the Lab and the horrors they mean; I pose as the sire of a draggled rag dolly Who owns the astonishing title of Pearl;-- And I have forgotten that all this is folly, So potent the charm of the prof's little girl! Yet, spite of each sacrifice made to impress her, She smiles on my rival. Oh, vengeance I'd gain! But he wears the same name as my major professor, And so in his graces I have to remain; And when she trots off with this juvenile lover, Leaving me and the cat and the doll in a whirl, It's pitiful truly for us to discover The signs of her sex in the prof's little girl. CHARLES KELLOGG FIELD. _Four-Leaved Clover._ ~Gertrude.~ Fair Gertrude lives at Farmington, Perhaps you've seen her there; Her eyes delight in laughing light, Let gods describe her hair; Her figure--well, grave Juno ne'er Had half the supple grace Of Gertrude fair of Farmington-- Perhaps you know that place? Beneath her lips there gleam two rows Of greed-inspiring pearls; Such rows of teeth the gods bequeath To but their choicest girls. For other things at Farmington I do not care a rap, Although it is a lovely place-- I've seen it (on the map). I would the gods had given me Some mild poetic skill; In Gertrude's praise I'd sing for days, And volumes I could fill. Perhaps you think I love this maid-- In sooth perhaps I do; Well, If I did, I'd tell her-- But, by Jove, I'd not tell _you._ J.H. Scranton _Yale Record._ ~My Politics.~ I am for gold--her golden hair Whose mesh my soul entrances; Caressing this, what do I care For national finances? For silver, too--those silver tones That with her laughter rise; This wealth, thank God. no law or thrones Can e'er demonetize. G.W. PIERCE. _University of Texas Magazine._ ~The Summer Girl.~ A half-reclining form In a "sleepy-hollow" chair, A cloud of curls that storm About her beauty fair, Two laughing eyes that tell A shyly answered "Yes." A dainty hand to--well, Say simply to caress. An airy little sprite In a billowy flood of lace, Which flutters in its flight In the galop's tripping grace. And, oh, the broken hearts Which follow the rapturous whirl! Oh, the Redfern gown, and the arts Of the annual summer girl! EDWIN OSGOOD GROVER. _Dartmouth Literary Monthly._ ~Love's Token.~ The frost and snow of mistletoe, The warmth of holly berry, These I combine, O lady mine, To make thy yule-tide merry. And shouldst thou learn, sweet, to return My love, nor deem it folly, Twined in thy hair the snow fruit wear, And on thy breast the holly. ALICE R. TAGGART. _Vassar Miscellany_. ~A Passing Song.~ Ah, only love I have ever known, Ah, only love I shall ever know, The careless hours of youth have flown And the light-hearted past to the winds is thrown, And faster and faster the hours go. To your heart and mine there's a secret lying While the spring's breath thrills in the air of May, While life seems ever to be defying The flight of time and the thought of dying, And the great world runs on its careless way. Yet one dear thought in my heart is resting As I face the path I must tread ere long, When wearied with life's unending questing, Its tawdry joys and its idle jesting, I shall pass to the midst of the missing throng. That here I have known your heart's dear thrilling, Your helping hand and your watchful eye, My life with your tender love fulfilling. I know but this, and am strangely willing To learn your love and in learning--die. GUY WETMORE CARRYL. _Columbia Spectator_. ~Safe.~ When I picked up her glove I let Fate decide it. So great was my love, When I picked up her glove; 'Twas as soft as a dove _And her hand was inside it._ When I picked up her glove I let Fate decide it. W. _Columbia Spectator._ ~Her Winsome Smile.~ Her winsome smile! It beams on me From where the choir makes melody, Behind the parson; maid demure, Her witching eyes my thoughts allure, Although, in church, this should not be. Pale Luna's light, the dimpling sea, Are very taking, I'll agree; But to her smile all else is poor-- Her winsome smile. The preacher, in a mournful key, Shoves on the Year of Jubilee, Shows present times without a cure, With pessimistic portraiture-- His back is turned, he cannot see Her winsome smile. HARRY KEISER MUNROE. _Wesleyan Argus._ ~The Summer Girl.~ I wooed her in the summer months, When all the world was gay, And on the hillside, in the sun, The yellow harvest lay, And late, across the level lawns, The twilight met the day. Together, in the garden walks, At early morn we went; Together, in the deep green groves, The drowsy noontide spent; And in the evening watched how well The sunset glories blent. Oh, happy morn! The trysting oak Hung o'er the orchard gate. I waited for her in the shade--- I had quite long to wait, For with the coachman she eloped And left me to my fate. _Yale Record._ ~Phyllis's Slippers.~ Before the firelight's genial glow She sits, and dreams of waltzes sweet, Nor heeds the curious gleams that show Grandmamma's slippers on her feet. Ah, happy slippers, thus to hold So rare a burden! It were meet That you should be of beaten gold To clasp so close such dainty feet. H. A. RICHMOND. _The Tech_. ~Vindication.~ Pray, why do maidens ever stand beneath The mistletoe? And why was ever hung the mystic wreath-- Why should it grow? And why were laughing eyes and lashes made, If not to tease? And such an opportunity displayed, If not to seize? Why, pouting lips should always ready be To catch a kiss. If cheeks will blush, why, it is plain to see 'Tis not amiss. And when a maiden sweet, and roguish eyes, And mistletoe, And madd'ning lips, while telltale blushes rise, A-teasing so-- Think you that I all idle waiting sat To see her go? Did I believe when she insisted that She didn't know? ARTHUR MAURICE SMITH. _Wrinkle_. ~To an Imaginary One.~ Say, darling, do you love me true? Return you my affection? Pray answer as I want you to, And speak with circumspection. Don't blurt me out a _yes, chérie_, And throw your arms around me: A lack of maiden modesty Would shock me and confound me. Be distant as the morning star, Nor let me know how real, How most material you are-- My love is too ideal. Yes, be a little bit afraid, And make a sweet resistance; So near, a maid is but a maid, A goddess at a distance. Still deign to play the charmer, dear, Blush while you're thinking of me, Breathe coyest wordlets in mine ear, But _don't_ confess you love me! HENRY B. EDDY. _Harvard Advocate_. ~When Gladys Plays.~ When Gladys plays in gladsome glee, All men and gods might wish to see. With flushing cheek and flashing eye She strokes the ball or lobs it high, With cuts of great variety. The ball hides in some blooming tree, And sorely tries poor patient me; But I swear not, oh, no! not I, When Gladys plays. When whist with all propriety, As Foster, Hoyle, or Pole decree, We play together, although my Good ace she trumps, I merely sigh And grant the points to the enemy, When Gladys plays. FERRIS GREENSLET. _Wesleyan Literary Monthly._ ~At the Club.~ When a pretty maiden passes By the window down the Street, Cards and billiards lose their sweet; Conversation on old brasses Languishes; up go the glasses: "Nice complexion!" "Dainty feet!" When a pretty maiden passes By the window down the street Smith forgets the "toiling masses," Robinson, the fall in wheat; All the club is indiscreet. Ah, the wisest men are asses When a pretty maiden passes By the window down the street! RICHARD HOVEY. _Dartmouth Lyrics._ ~Friends.~ The wintry sky may be chill and drear, And the wind go sighing in mournful strain, Or it may be the spring of the waking year, When flowers and birds return again. Be it March or May, it matters not, Snow or violets on the ground, I know a little bewitching spot, Where it is fair the whole year round. A low tea-table set out for two, A divan with cushions piled on high, Dresden tea-cups of pink and blue, A fat little kettle simmering nigh, In winter a fire that cracks and roars, In summer a window where breezes play. What if it hails or snows or pours, In that little spot it is always May. A girl--of course, you will say, when one Describes such a haven from life's mad whirl. There must be a--wait till my song is done. This is _such_ an entrancing girl! Cheeks as fresh as a summer rose, Eyes that change like the changing sea, Lips where a smile first comes, then goes. And, oh! but she makes delicious tea. So we sit and talk while the kettle sings, And. life seems better at least to me, The fleeting hours have golden wings, When in that little spot I'm drinking tea. Love? Ah, no, we are far above Such folly. Our time we can better spend. This world is brimming with loveless love, But 'tis rarely enough one finds a friend. GUY WETMORE CARRYL. _Columbia Spectator._ ~Another Complaint Against Cupid.~ Wherever maidens may be found Dan Cupid's sure to wander round, I found him once, the little fool, Attending on a cooking-school. The scholars only laughed and smiled, And cried: "How sweet, how smart a child!" He kept his wings close hid, yet I Remembered him from days gone by, And, stepping up, I whispered this: "My boy, compound for me a kiss." His face grew thoughtful, then the rogue Lisped out: "Well, _this_ is most in vogue: An acorn-cup of sugar first, Sprinkle quite well with bubbles burst, Then add a pinch of down that lies All over June's brown butterflies. Mix well, and take, to stir it up, The stem of one long buttercup. But, sir, you ne'er can taste a mite Until I add the appetite." Whereat, ere I could turn to start, I saw--I _felt_ the flashing dart. FREDERIC LAWRENCE KNOWLES. _Olla Podrida._ ~Sub-Mistletoe.~ We two stood near The chandelier, With mistletoe upon it. A lovely girl, My head awhirl, Her wrap--I'll help her don it. A button caught; I surely ought To help, when she'd begun it. A pause, a hush, A kiss, a blush, And now, by Jove, I've done it! _Lehigh Burr_. ~She Sayeth "No."~ She sayeth "No"--my lady fair-- And lightly laughs at my despair. She quick evades my least caress, Nor grants to me a single tress From out her wealth of golden hair. Yet to her cheeks creeps crimson rare, When I for her my love declare. But while her blue eyes tell me "Yes," She sayeth "No." The maid well knows I would not dare Try to escape her gentle snare. And, if I really must confess, I own I trust her lips far less Than her blue eyes beyond compare. She _sayeth_ "No." BERTRAND A. SMALLEY. _Dartmouth Literary Monthly._ ~Silhouettes.~ Grandma's shadow on the wall, Graceful figure, slim and tall, Shadow of a maiden fair, Lofty head, with rippling hair, Nose "la Grecque" from Hebe stole: Charming, very, on the whole, Is this shadow on the wall, Fifty years ago,--that's all. Grandpa's shadow on the wall, Straight this shadow is, and tall; (Nose "la Roman," we might say) Stately mien, and courtly way; Now it's deeply bowing, oh! But see! for kneeling low Is this shadow on the wall, Fifty years ago,--that's all. * * * * Grandma's shadow on the wall, Bent this figure is, not tall; Shadow in a rocking-chair, Rocking gently,--now with care; Now it nodding, nodding seems. Do you think this shadow dreams Of some shadows on the wall Fifty years ago,--that's all? ANNIE KNOWLTON PILLSBURY. _Mount Holyoke_. ~Bread and Wine.~ All day work in the shops, The weary tread Of toil that knows no change. And this is bread. At night when work is done, Her hand in mine, The hope of happier days, And this is wine. ELIZABETH REEVE CUTTER. _Smith College Monthly._ ~A Song.~ This I learned from the birds, Dear heart, And they told me in woodland words, Apart, And they told me true, That all their singing the summer through Was of you, of you. This I learned from the flowers, Dear heart, In the dewy morning hours Apart, And they sware it, too, That all their sweetness the summer through Was for you, for you. This I learned from the leaves, Dear heart, On stilly, starry eves Apart, Though their words were few, That all their sighing the summer through Was for you, for you. This I learned from the stars, Dear heart,-- From the Seven Sisters, and Mars, Apart In the boundless blue,-- That their light the lingering summer through Was for you, for you. This I learned from my life, Dear heart, 'Mid its storms, and stress, and strife, Apart, (God knows it's true!) That I need to love me my long way through, Only you, dear, you. FRANCIS CHARLES MCDONALD. _Nassau Literary Monthly._ ~Drifting.~ Drifting in our frail canoe On the dusky, silent stream, Dearest, see! The sunset-gleam Fires love's torch for me and you. Coral clouds and pearly sky, Flaming in the farthest west, Softly whisper peace and rest, Peace and rest that never die. Let us shun the sable shore, Frowning at us slipping by. Let's be happy, you and I, Drifting, drifting evermore. H. H. CHAMBERLIN, JR. _Harvard Advocate._ ~Cloudland.~ Over the hills, at the close of day, Gazing with listless-seeming eyes, Margery watches them sail away, The sunlit clouds of the western skies. Margery sighs with a vain regret, As slowly they fade from gold to gray, Till night has come, and the sun has set, And the clouds have drifted beyond the day. What are you dreaming, my little maid For yours are beautiful thoughts, I know; What were the words that the wild wind said, And where, in the dark, did the cloud-ships go? Come through the window and touch her hair, Wind of the vast and starry deep! And tell her not of this old world's care, But kiss her softly and let her sleep. _Columbia Literary Monthly._ ~Two of a Kind.~ HE: Down in the glen By the trysting tree, Somebody's sister is waiting for me. Under the stars, In the dewy grass Waiting for me--the poor little lass! And I sit alone In my cozy den, A much better place than that clammy glen, And I think of her tears As she waits in vain Till it seems almost cruel to give her such pain. SHE: Down in the glen By the trysting tree, Somebody's brother is waiting for me; Waiting in vain, Though it may seem cruel, But how can I help it--the poor little fool! I know I'm not faithful As he is--but then, Women are never as constant as men. He'll never forgive me; I know I'm to blame, But he might have treated me some day the same. WALTER TALLMADGE ARNDT. _The Badger._ ~To the Cigarette Girl.~ Your motions all are sweet and full of grace As daintily you roll your cigarette; You smoke it with a pretty puckered face That I, a mortal man, can ne'er forget. It's jolly fun when you adopt our sins; Pray never fear of being thought a "poke." Your every mood sincerest worship wins, And yet I wish, my dear, you didn't smoke. H. F. H. _Amherst Literary Monthly,_ ~A Game of Chess.~ We played at chess one wintry night Beside the fire, that warm and bright Was mirrored in her hazel eyes; Methought a gleam from Paradise Outshone the back-log's flickering light. The hand that took my queen was white, I trembled at its gentle might; Nor sweeter game could Love devise-- We played at chess. I scarce could see to play aright, I took a pawn and lost a knight, And then she gazed with mild surprise-- She said I was not shrewd nor wise; And yet, to me, with strange delight We played at chess. ROBERT PORTER ST. JOHN. _Amherst Literary Monthly_. ~When Margaret Laughs.~ When Margaret laughs the world is gay, All care is driven far away; Her hat aslant, with roguish air, A red carnation in her hair-- True daughter of the merry May. The rosebuds of a summer's day, The modest flowers along her way, All seem to have a grace more fair, When Margaret laughs. Oh, youth! for her so bright and gay, Oh, years! that slip so fast away, Keep her, I pray thee, fresh and fair, Dainty, bewitching, debonair, For life is but a holiday When Margaret laughs. GEORGE B. KILBOURNE. _Williams Literary Monthly._ ~The Captive.~ I've sought for Cupid by day and night, But he always contrived to elude me, And kept discreetly out of my sight, Nor showed his face, the crafty wight, Nor e'er for a moment sued me. And often while for his face I sought I thought with a thrill I had found him, By my little wiles and my coaxing caught, Or even for gold ignobly bought, With his arrows and bow around him. But now my pulse gives a fresh, wild start, And a throb of joyous surprise, dear, As I see him, armed with his subtle dart, A fellow prisoner with my heart, In the depths of your hazel eyes, dear. GUY WETMORE CARRYL. _Columbia Spectator_ ~The Difference.~ All in the days of long ago, When Grandfather a-wooing went, He looked a gallant, dashing beau, And with his looks was well content He rode beside My Lady's chair With gracious salutation, He vowed she was divinely fair And told his adoration. But now, alas, poor Grandfather Would stand but sorry chances Of passionately telling her His bosom's sweetest fancies. For since a wheel My Lady rides, The bravest, gayest courtier Would lose her, if he weren't besides A fairly rapid scorcher. H.K. WEBSTER. _Hamilton Literary Monthly._ ~The Lenten Maid.~ Her wonted smiles are turned to frowns, Her laugh a sigh, Sackcloth and ashes for ball gowns-- Ah, luckless I. While worldly thought! away are gone,-- Her Lenten part,-- Does Cupid blunt his darts upon A stony heart? Ah, though her mirth and jollities She puts aside, The silent laughter of her eyes She cannot hide. S. R. KENNEDY. _Yale Record_. ~Wealth.~ I like pretty maids flushed with joy, With glad hair blowing free. They smile right kind on many a boy, But only one on me. But I have a penny, a fiddle, and Joan, And my sweet Joan has me. Meadow and flock, the wise folk said, It never were right to miss, But my maid Joan has a kirtle red And a merry mouth to kiss. And I can fiddle and Joan can sing, And what were better than this? The young men talk of getting and gold, And lands far over the sea. But I and my fiddle will never grow old, And this is the life for me. I have a penny, my fiddle, and Joan, And my sweet Joan has me. ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH. _Smith College Monthly._ ~Jamie's Word wi' the Sea.~ (A-WAITIN' FER JINNIE.) Ye'll no fret ye mair the noo, Wull ye, sea? Like ye've dune the winter through, Roarin' at the sands and me. Ye were wearyin' yersel' Till her bit, Wee, licht fuitstep by ye fell. Ay, but lookee noo! an' quit! Ken ye no the way she rins? Hoo her hair, Ower-muckle fer the pins, Blaws aboot her everywhere? Ye'll no stop yer clatt'rin' din? Puir blin' thing! Ye'll no see her happy rin; "Jamie!" ye'll no hear her sing. Hoots! Awa', ye loupin' sea, Doon yer sands, Jinnie's callin' doon tae me! Jinnie's haudin' oot her hands! ROBERT JERMAIN COLE. _Columbia Literary Monthly._ ~Lent.~ Priscilla is a maid devout In this repentant season, And to the world and all its ways Has vowed a pious treason. Sweet little saint, so shy, demure!-- Though long I've tried to win her I fear that I'm not in it with Some other lucky sinner. For when I begged she'd trust her heart To me, and o'er her bent, She blushed and softly murmured, "How can I when it's Lent." T. L. CLARKE. _Yale Record._ ~I Dream of Flo.~ I dream of Flo, and memory, fleeting light, Calls up the happy bygone days to-night, The scent of lavender is faint in air, (Ah, well-remembered flowers she loved to wear!) My senses float afar in rapt delight. How can I e'er forget that summer night! 'Tis not because her black eyes shone so bright, Nor is it for the witchery in her hair, I dream of Flo. She promised me a cushion well bedight With ruffles blue, and I, oh, luckless wight, Must send to her--she said, exchange is fair-- My college pin in gold. Her cushion's where With half-closed eyes I lie. Is't not aright I dream of Flo? ALBERT SARGENT DAVIS. _Yale Courant._ ~A Humble Romance.~ Her ways were rather frightened, and she wasn't much to see, She wasn't good at small talk, or quick at repartee; Her gown was somewhat lacking in the proper cut and tone, And it wasn't difficult to see she'd made it all alone. So the gay young men whose notice would have filled her with delight Paid very small attention to the little girl in white. He couldn't talk the theatre, for he hadn't time to go, And, though he knew that hay was high, and butter rather low, He couldn't say the airy things that other men rehearse, While his waltzing was so rusty that he didn't dare reverse. The beauties whom he sighed for were most frigidly polite, So perforce he came and sat beside the little girl in white. She soon forgot her envy of the glittering _beau monde_, For their common love of horses proved a sympathetic bond. She told him all about the farm, and how she came to town, And showed the honest little heart beneath the home-made gown. A humble tale, you say,--and yet he blesses now the night When first he came and sat beside the little girl in white. JULIET W. TOMPKINS. _Vassar Miscellany_. ~Mendicants.~ "Foot-sore, weary, o'er the hills To your friendly door I come. I'm a mother; in my breast I have wrapped my only son. Lady, blessed of the Three, Give us shelter for a night. Pure and wise they say thou art, Pity one by fate bedight." Calm and grave the maiden stood; Eyed that weary mother long, Drooping form, despairing face, Eyes pathetic with great wrong. "Enter," gently then she spake, "Peace be thine from skies above, Only I have closed my door, Closed and barred it fast from Love." By the hearthstone warm and bright Sits the mother crooning low; Ah! an arrow's silver gleam, Flashes of a golden bow! Soft she sways a dimpled child Winged with down, and innocent; "Hush thee, Eros,--sleep, my son," Sings her voice in glad content. M. E. H. EVERETT. _Madisonensis_. ~With My Cigar.~ With my cigar I sit alone, Alone in twilight's undertone, With wav'ring shadows growing deep, While long-forgotten faces peep Midst curling mists of smoke, now blown Into a frame that doth enthrone A face that from my heart hath grown. Sweet mem'ries o'er my being creep, With my cigar. Those hazel eyes on me have shone, Those roguish lips have pressed my own, And this the harvest that I reap! And this the sweetness that I keep, To wake, to find the vision flown With my cigar! JOHN CLINTON ANTHONY. _Brunonian_. ~To Waltz with Thee.~ To waltz with thee, my pretty belle, To silver music's magic spell, Was such a strange unmixed delight That I had wished the merry night Into eternity might swell. * * * * Terpsichore ne'er danced so well! Can all the Graces in thee dwell? My soul was raised to such a height To waltz with thee. Enchanting strains now rose, now fell, Thy charms what raptures would compel! Thy feet were winged, thy figure slight, Thy winning tread, entrancing, light,-- What bliss to me that night befell, To waltz with thee! GEORGE B. ZUG. _Amherst Literary Monthly._ ~To Maude's Guitar.~ Sweet guitar, so old thou art Thou seemest strange to modern eyes, Yet in thy broad-backed cavern-heart The softest music hidden lies. Whene'er thy strings with gentle hand I lightly sweep in deep-bassed chords, There comes a breath of foreign lands That seems to sing soft Spanish words. Was Caballero's passion deep E'er sung to thy rich-chorded bass? Didst ever break señora's sleep By music 'neath her window-case? Somewhere--sometime, a song was sung By lover bold or maiden fair, So sweet, thou hid'st it deep among Thy soulful strings, and kept it there. Whoe'er it was, that distant day, That loved to strike thy mellow strings, Whoever sang that sweet love-lay, Its echo still within thee rings. Though Maude may vow she loves me not, And jolly glees may lightly play, I look beyond the surface thought, And hear that echoing old love-lay. L. C. STONE. _Amherst Literary Monthly_. [Illustration: A BROWN GIRL.] ~Tantalizing.~ Her rosy cheeks are pressed to mine, Her gleaming hair lies on my shoulder, Her arms are clasped about my neck, And yet my arms do not enfold her. Her throbbing heart beats loud and fast, Her wistful eyes are gently pleading. Her blushing lips are pursed to kiss, And yet my lips are all unheeding. I coldly loose her clinging arms, And roughly from my side I shove her. It's amateur theatricals, And I must play the tyrant lover. HENRY MORGAN STONE. _Brunonian_ ~Phantasy.~ Her beaming eyes of deepest blue Enthralled all who to Yale were true. Her crimson lips, too, conquests made: Fair Harvard's sons their homage paid, And many a suitor came to woo Petite Elaine. I begged a kiss awhile ago; The crimson lips, 'tis true, said "No," But in her eyes turned up to me I read the answer differently-- The crimson never had a show, Yale won again. _Yale Record._ ~Rosebuds.~ She plucked a rosebud by the wall And placed it in his outstretched hands; It was love's token, that was all, And he rode off to foreign lands. He kept the rosebud in his breast, And when the battle charge was led, They found him slain among the rest, The rosebud stained a deeper red. But she, beside the wall that day, A rosebud gave to other hands; Nor thought of that one borne away By him who rode to foreign lands. _Bowdoin Orient._ ~Bashful Johnny.~ Young bashful Johnny loved sweet May, And went to court her every day, But his tongue could never swear He loved her true. It seems to me, had I been there, I'd vowed my love--now wouldn't you? Sweet May would sit by Johnny's side And all her thoughts to him confide, Yet take her hand he'd never dare-- So near his, too. It seems to me, had I been there, I'd clasped it tight--now wouldn't you? And May's red lips seemed to invite Sweet kisses, but so bold a flight He thought--yet wondered if she'd care-- Would never do. It seems to me, had I been there, I would have kissed her--now wouldn't you? GEORGE G. GILLETTE. _Williams Literary Monthly._ ~Cupid's Blunder.~ Poor Cupid froze his wings one day, When winds were cold and skies were gray, And clouds with snow were laden. A little maid was passing by; She caught the rogue,--he could not fly,-- O naughty little maiden! She sent him off with sharpen'd dart, To steal for her a certain heart; But, oh, the mishap stupid! Since Cupid's blind, and cannot see. He went astray, and came to me. O naughty little Cupid! So that is why my heart is gone, And I am dreary and forlorn, With tears my eyes are laden. She does not want my heart--ah, no! I did not wish to have it go; O Cupid, and O maiden! GERTRUDE JONES. _Wellesley Magazine._ ~As Toll.~ Lovely Mabel, were you dreaming? Glad the day you said to me, Dancing eyes so brightly beaming, "Give my love to dear Marie!" What a strange exhilaration To be bearer of your heart, What a wonderful temptation For a part. For I have not tried to find her Since you sent your love by me; Day by day I think I'm blinder,-- Fruitless search, as you might see. I wonder, if in sending, If you choose your slave by chance, What that twinkle was portending In your glance? Tell me, when I bear the treasure, Would you very angry be Should I keep a trifling measure That was hardly meant for me? For it's common in commissions Some percentage of the whole To extract from you patricians. Just for toll. JOHN BARKER. _Williams Literary Monthly._ ~Chansonette.~ Dimpled cheeks and scarlet lips, Pink and dainty finger-tips, Glowing blushes, fragrant sighs, Looks dove-sweet from starry eyes, These do show this saying true-- Maidens all were meant to woo! Guerdon dear shall be his meed Who will be Love's thrall in deed: Strollings 'neath a mellow moon, Whispers soft as rain in June, Kisses, maybe, one or two-- Maidens all were meant to woo! WILL L. GRAVES. _Makio_. ~Triolet.~ He kissed me 'neath the mistletoe! Of course I said it wasn't fair To take advantage of me so, And kiss me 'neath the mistletoe,-- But then, 'twas only Jack, you know, And so I really didn't care! He kissed me 'neath the mistletoe, Although I said ft wasn't fair! GERTRUDE CRAVEN. _Smith College Monthly_. ~Song.~ The April sun smiles bright above, The skies are deep and blue, I walk among the growing fields And dream, sweetheart, of you. And as I go, from out the wood A mocking-bird calls clear, "Sweetheart, sweetheart," and I turn, Half hoping thou art here. Alas! the sunlight floods the earth, Yet all is dark to me; The flowers may gaily bud and bloom, The earth be fair to see; And "sweetheart, sweetheart," evermore The mocking-bird may sing, But in a fairer land thine eyes Are opening to the spring. R.L. EATON. _Morningside_. ~The Effigy.~ And so she smiles!--Nor frown nor pout That look divine can put to rout. I would, my love, thou wert half So constant as thy photograph! P.P.S. _Parthenon_. ~Sotto Voce.~ Sing we of the summer, Of the old, old days, Of the reed songs and the murmur Of the waterways. Let thy song be merry, ever mine be sad; Let thy sigh be airy, even ofttimes glad; For then comes a sadness I cannot explain, Like the deep-plunged echo of a sea's refrain; And it dooms the sweetness Of her winsome ways To the dead completeness Of the old, old days. Sing, Oh! then with joyance, Thou, my mandolin; Drown each dread annoyance Deep, thy soul within; Whisper ever lowly of her glad, true eyes; Sing her name, love, slowly, thou can'st sympathize; Teach my heart, my wilful heart, the faith of peace, Promising her constancy with time's increase. Bar, Oh! break the sadness Of the doubter's sin; Sing eternal gladness, Thou, my mandolin. HAROLD MARTIN BOWMAN. _Inlander_. ~On Tying Daphne's Shoe.~ Tying her shoe, I knelt at Daphne's feet; My fumbling fingers found such service sweet, And lingered o'er the task till, when I rose, Cupid had bound me captive in her bows. J. STUART BRYAN. _Virginia University Magazine_. II. COMEDY ~Chappie's Lament.~ I walked one day with Phyllith Ovah in Bothton town, I in me long Pwinth Albert, She in a new Worth gown, I talked that day with Phyllith, Ovah in Bothton town, Of things intenth and thoulful, Begged her me love to cwown. I pawted that day fwom Phyllith Ovah in Bothton town; She'd be a bwothah to me, she said, But wouldn't be Mitheth Bwown. FERRIS GREENSLET. _Wesleyan Literary Monthly_. ~Marigold.~ I love confinement in thy bonds, I love thy little stock to hold, Thy very scent, Aye, marigold! I'll love confinement of thy bonds, I'll love thy little stocks to hold, Thy every cent, _I_ marry gold! HENRY SAFFORD CANDEE. _Trinity Tablet_. ~An Idyl of the Strap.~ She spoke to me, her voice was low And sweet, With hidden thought I could not know Replete. She cast on me a lingering look That all my inmost being shook, And, as our glances mixed, she took My seat. _Red and Blue._ ~The Jim-Jam King of the Jou-Jous.~ AN ARABIAN LEGEND. _Translated from the Arabic._ Far off in the waste of desert sand, The Jim-jam rules in the Jou-jou land: He sits on a throne of red-hot rocks, And moccasin snakes are his curling locks; And the Jou-jous have the conniption fits In the far-off land where the Jim-jam sits-- If things are nowadays as things were then. Allah il Allah! Oo-aye! Amen! The country's so dry in Jou-jou land You could wet it down with Sahara sand, And over its boundaries the air Is hotter than 'tis--no matter where: A camel drops down completely tanned When he crosses the line into Jou-jou land-- If things are nowadays as things were then. Allah il Allah! Oo-aye! Amen! A traveller once got stuck in the sand On the fiery edge of Jou-jou land; The Jou-jous they confiscated him, And the Jim-jam tore him limb from limb; But, dying, he said: "If eaten I am, I'll disagree with this Dam-jim-jam! He'll think his stomach's a Hoodoo's den!" Allah il Allah! Oo-aye! Amen! Then the Jim-jam felt so bad inside, It just about humbled his royal pride. He decided to physic himself with sand, And throw up his job in the Jou-jou land. He descended his throne of red-hot rocks, And hired a barber to cut his locks: The barber died of the got-'em-again, Allah il Allah! Oo-aye! Amen! And now let every good Mussulman Get all the good from this tale he can. If you wander off on a Jamboree, Across the stretch of the desert sea, Look out that right at the height of your booze You don't get caught by the Jou-jou-jous! You may, for the Jim-jam's at it again. Allah il Allah! Oo-aye! Amen! ALARIC BERTRAND START. _Tuftonian_. ~Love up to Date.~ I know she loves me, though with scorn She treats my adoration; I know she loves me, though my suit She checks with strong negation. And this I know, with proof as sure As though her lips had said it: Her heart I have before my eyes, And there I've plainly read it. For cathode rays have stolen through This maiden so deceiving; And thus her heart I've photographed, And seeing is believing. S. L. HOWARD. _The Tech._ ~Miss Milly O'Naire.~ She is not young and fair, Nor has she golden hair, Nor a dimple in each cheek, If that is what you seek; Hers is a gift more rare, Miss Milly O'Naire. She has not laughing eyes, Blue as the summer skies, Nor lips of cherry red, On kisses to be fed; No, it's not for these I care, Miss Milly O'Naire. She is not wondrous wise, Seeks not for learning's prize. 'Tis true she knows no Greek, And her English grammar's weak, But why should I despair, Miss Milly O'Naire. So woo and win her I will, For there's my tailor's bill, And creditors by the score; But they'll trouble me no more, For she has a million to spare, Miss Millionaire. WILLARD GROSVENOR BLEYER. _The Badger._ ~A Shy Little Maid.~ A love-lorn lad wooed a coy maid once, All of a summer's day he plead; Oft he spoke of the bonds of love--the dunce! And she shyly shook her head. When from his heart hope had almost fled, He spoke of bonds he had in town. Still the shy little maiden shook her head-- But she shook it _up and down_. _Trinity Tablet_. ~My Mistake.~ I met her on a Pullman car, In section number nine; Each eye shone like a morning star, With radiance divine. So when I placed my bags and traps In section number ten, She looked so tempting 'mid her wraps I sought her face again. She glanced at me with roguish pose, Yet innocent of guile, Then colored like a blushing rose, And tried to hide a smile; The sweet confusion but enhanced Her dainty tint of pink, And quite by accident she chanced The nearest eye to wink. When she refused my proffered card With scorn and proud disdain, I tried my best, and pleaded hard My error to explain. She listened to my mumblings crude, Then tossed her nose on high; "I think," she said, "you'd wink, if you'd A cinder in your eye." E. P. G. _The Tech._ ~Sic Semper.~ I sent her a spoon, She is married to-day; The wedding's at noon. I sent her a spoon-- And she loved me in June! But that's always their way. I sent her a spoon, She is married to-day. WILL L. GRAVES. _Makio_. ~A Modern Instance.~ Her little hand in his he took, All hot and quivering it was; And noted how her eyes did look Bright as a lucent sapphire does. Within her dainty little wrist Her pulse throbbed quick, as if her heart Beat love's glad summons to be kissed, Heart's first reveille since life's start, Her oval cheeks were flushed with rose; Her red lips parted for such breath As hot from tropic spice lands blows; Enough 'twas to have warmed old Death! He gazed at her; he spoke--and she Stuck out at him a small tongue's tip: The family doctor old was he, And she--he said she had _la grippe_. _Red and Blue_. ~The Echo from the 17th.~ Who builds de railroads and canals, But furriners? Who helps across de street de gals, But furriners? Who in de caucus has der say, Who does de votin' 'lection day, And who discovered U.S.A., But furriners? FRANK TOURTELLOT EASTON. _Brunonian_. ~Ballade of Laura's Fan.~ It was never imported from France With a dainty Parisian frou-frou, Nor upon it do bull-fighters prance, As only the Spaniards can do. It was stencilled by no one knows who, Yet _I'd_ give all my coupons and rents For that one precious keepsake from you-- The fan that cost $0.63. On the staircase we sat out a dance, Or twenty, for all that I knew; At times on the bliss of my trance The breath of the roses stole through. But redder than rose-petals grew Your cheeks, at my swift compliments; So the softest of breezes it blew-- The fan that cost $0.63. It all seemed like a fairy romance, Below us the laughter and mu- Sic, while now and again, such a glance As is given on earth but to few From the depths of your eyes, fond and true, Set me dreaming of all their contents, Till I woke,--something hid them, from view,-- The fan that cost $0.63! ENVOY. My queen, for your favor I sue; If your heart through my pleading relents, To your feelings pray send me one clue-- The fan that cost $0.63. _Harvard Lampoon_. ~Apparent.~ When I questioned young Smithson, a short time ago, Why no longer he courted Miss B., He looked at me strangely, and smiled just a bit-- "The reason's a parent!" cried he. ALBERT ELLSWORTH THOMAS. _Brunonian_. ~The Call of Duty.~ At early morn, a valiant knight, On prancing charger, richly dight, With helm and lance and armor bright, Rose from his lordly halls: "Now, in this region, round about, There dwell three outlaws, strong and stout: If luck be mine, I'll find them out! For duty calls." Friday, at three, another knight (Knowing that ladies all delight In music), shod with patents bright, Steers clear of Music Halls: "In Boston's Back Bay, round about, There dwell three matrons, plain and stout: If luck be mine, I'll find them out-- For 'duty calls.'" R. C. ROBBINS. _Harvard Lampoon._ ~A Paradox.~ 'Tis a curious fact, but a fact very old; You can keep a fire hot by keeping it coaled. HERBERT ERNEST DAY. _Brunonian_. ~St. Valentine's Eve.~ HE. "I will write little Ethel some verses, The love that I bear her to tell; I've no money for tokens more costly, I'm sure these will do quite as well. "How pleased she will be when she gets them! What a sweet little note I'll receive In acknowledgment of the verses I sent her St. Valentine's eve." SHE. "What a miserable jumble of phrases! What chaotic verse do I see! I wonder what could have possessed him To send these effusions to me! "Never mind, though, I'm sure they'll be useful, And I think I know just about where." So she took them, and twisted, and placed them In the newly made curls of her hair. E.W. BURLINGAME. _Yale Record_. ~Evidence.~ Of all the lines that volumes fill, Since Aesop first his fables told, The wisest is the proverb old, That every Jack must have his Jill. But when the crowd that nightly fills The down-town places, hillward goes, To hear them sing, one would suppose That every Jack had several gills. B.O.H. _Cornell Magazine_. ~The Widow's Mite.~ She was a widow stern and spry, And brimming with lots of fight; She married a little man five feet high, And he died from the widow's might. _Columbia Spectator_. ~Lines to Her.~ There are other fellows nearer,-- And some of them are dearer,-- Of those sad thoughts my heart has not a doubt. But I want to get in line With my little Valentine, So's not to let those fellows cut me out. CHARLES FLOYD McCLURE. _Wisconsin Aegis_. ~A Sensible Serenade.~ I sing beneath your lattice, love, A serenade in praise of you; The moon is getting rather high, My voice is, too, my voice is, too. The lakelet in deep shadow lies, Where frogs make much hullabaloo, I think they sing a trifle hoarse, And I do, too, and I do, too. The blossoms on the pumpkin vine Are weeping diamond tears of dew; 'Tis warm, the flowers are wilting fast, My linen, too, my linen, too. All motionless the cedars stand, With silent moonbeams glancing through, The very air is drowsy, love, And I am, too, and I am, too. Oh, could I soar on loving wings, And at your window gently woo! But then your lattice you would bolt, So I'll bolt, too, so I'll bolt, too. L.M.L. _Columbia Spectator_. ~Love's Secret.~ Well I know she is not handsome, She can neither sing nor dance, But I strangely am attracted By each careless nod and glance Of my Madeline. Quite a philanthropic feeling Is my love, so true and rare, For she's burdened with great riches; In which burden I would share With my Madeline. From such heavy care to shield her, Each and every purpose tends. I will help to clip the coupons, And I'll draw the dividends Of my Madeline. ROBERT PECK BATES. _Trinity Tablet_. ~Pity 'tis, 'tis True.~ I sat me down at leisure; The ready waiter flew, My order took suavely, And shouted, "_Oyster stew_!" The steaming dish was waiting, The ready waiter flew, Then, rose I up in anger, And left,--'twas "oysters two!" HERBERT WELCH. _Wesleyan Argus._ ~Broken Chains.~ He was tired of being shackled; She was faithless, that was plain; So his lawyer filed the papers, And the papers filed his chain. EUGENE A. COX. _Vanderbilt Observer._ ~Gory Gambols.~ I love my adversary's leg to kick, To frisk upon his features with my feet, Or bunt him in the stomach till he's sick-- All this is sweet. I smile to hear his collar bone collapse, Accompanied by his expiring screech; To crack his ribs is happiness, perhaps, Beyond all reach. I laugh aloud when, in the scrimmage wild, I smash the thigh bone of some lusty boy, And see him borne off, helpless as a child-- That, that is joy. My sturdy heel into his spine I jam, To beat his mouth until he pouts at fate, To punch him sternly in the diaphragm Is rapture great. Than to perceive his manly blood run red No greater joy can unto me be given; But at one kick to kick him down stone-dead-- That, that is heaven, _Lehigh Burr_. ~The Man without a Country.~ The "man without a country" was in such a sorry plight, There wasn't any place on land where he might pass the night, But if you'd like to see a man as badly off as he, Who hasn't any place at all to stay on land or sea, Who has no spot he may enjoy to any great extent, Just wait until you see some time the man without a cent. H.F.H. _Amherst Literary Monthly_. ~She Shook Her Head.~ "May I kiss you, dear," a youth once cried, Although scarce hoping what he said; But the maiden turned away her eyes And slowly, sadly, shook her head. "But would you mind," he still went on, "Now would you really care," he said, "If I should kiss you?" and again She turned aside--and shook her head. J.P. SAWYER. _Yale Record._ ~Priscilla.~ Priscilla in the garret loft Of rare old silks and velvets soft A heap espying,-- Forgotten hues of a by-gone day!-- The little maid in deft array Carefully folds and lays away With envious sighing. Did they some rustic beauty grace, A comely form and winsome face. With footsteps flying? Or does she sigh because a bride They once adorned; now cast aside, Left in the garret there to hide, The dust defying? Perchance her great-grandmother wore Them hundred years ago and more-- Priscilla's crying! "Come little maid, why this despair? What makes those big tears standing there?" "Ah, sir! because they will not bear Another dyeing." _Yale Record_. ~Hard to Beat.~ Last night I held a little hand So dainty and so neat, Methought my heart would burst with joy, So wildly did it beat. No other hand into my soul Could greater solace bring, Than that I held last night, which was Four aces and a king. WILLIAM A. THOMPSON. _Wesleyan Literary Monthly_. [Illustration: "THAT SWEET GIRL GRADUATE."] ~That Sweet Girl Graduate.~ So stately and so dignified She looks in cap and gown, I hardly dare to speak to her, This grad. of great renown. I scarcely can believe my eyes! It surely can't be she Who always seemed so very shy, So very coy to me! But suddenly the spell departs, And I give thanks to Fate; For anxiously she asks me if Her mortar-board's on straight. _Harvard Lampoon._ ~Faint Heart.~ My lady fair Her golden hair Lets fall a-down her shoulder. I'd steal a tress,-- She's no redress,-- Were I a little bolder. From her sweet lip A bee might sip, Sweeter than rose-leaf's savor. A kiss I'd take,-- No cry she'd make,-- Were I a little braver. Her neat, trim waist Just suits my taste; Close in my arms I'd fold her, And clasp her tight,-- She'd feel no fright,-- Were I a little bolder. She's waiting now 'Till I find how To ask of her a favor. She'll be my wife,-- I'd stake my life,-- When I'm a little braver. HARLAN COLBY PEARSON. _Dartmouth Literary Monthly_. ~A Spring Lament.~ The spring is come; warm breezes blow; It doesn't make me happy, tho';-- For seasons' changes only bring To me the pain of ordering Another suit. Style changes so! This hat I'll hardly dare to show Near "Easter bonnets;" it's too low; I fear I must be purchasing; The spring is come. I'm glad to have the winter go; I don't like ice, I don't like snow. Green fields, bright flowers, and birds to sing, Of course I like that sort of thing; But still--it makes me blue to know The spring is come. LOUIS JONES MAGEE. _Wesleyan Argus_. ~A Street-Car Romance.~ I write to offer you my heart, O maiden, whom I do not know. Pray do not think me premature In making known my feelings so, For I have loved you steadfastly, O damsel of the unknown name, And all last night and half to-day My passion has been in a flame. 'Twas not your face, though that is fair, Nor yet your voice bewitched me so: (I heard you ask the motor-man How long before the car would go.) I saw you on the car that went From Harvard Square on Tuesday noon; I don't believe that you saw me, For you were reading the _Lampoon_. And this is why I write to you: To say that I am wholly thine, I love you, for that first-page joke,-- The one you laughed at,--_that was mine._ W. AMES. _Harvard Lampoon_. ~Applied Mathematics.~ "My daughter," and his voice was stern, "You must set this matter right; What time did the Sophomore leave, Who sent in his card last night?" "His work was pressing, father dear, And his love for it was great; He took his leave and went away Before a quarter of eight." Then a twinkle came to her bright blue eye, And her dimple deeper grew. "'Tis surely no sin to tell him that, For a quarter of eight is two." _Lehigh Burr_. ~The District Telegraph Boy.~ Hear the clatter of those feet; See him coming up the street On the trot! He is going to the Greens; No, he's going to the Dean's, Is he not? See the uniform of blue, And the shiny letters, too, On his cap. I imagine he is quite An intelligent and bright Little chap. What a careless tune he hums, And how innocently comes Hurrying. Ah, how little does he know Of the happiness or woe He can bring! Now he brings a hopeless sigh. Now a sparkle to the eye, Now a tear. More of griefs, I think, than joys-- Why! the fateful little boy's Coming here! Goodness, how he pulls the bell! He has some bad news to tell, I'm afraid. Oh, I hope it's not for me! Alice, sign for it, and see If it's paid. It is surely not from Will, For his morning smoke is still In the air. Has poor uncle breathed his last? Has his weary spirit passed From all care? Then poor auntie is bereft, And that sunny home is left Fatherless. Or old cousin Ed and May 'Ve gone and had another ba- By, I guess. What if John has lost, poor man, Little Clementine or Nan, Or his wife! Oh, the hopefulness, the fears! Oh, the rapture! Oh, the tears! Of this life! I don't like the thing a bit; I don't dare to open it; How I shake! Why, It's from that man of mine: "_Will bring partner home to dine; Get a steak."_ LOUIS JONES MAGEE. _Wesleyan Argus_. ~Relapse.~ I study Evolution, And hear the teacher tell How we have all developed From an isolated cell; And in the examination Some fellows make it plain Their principles will bring them To the starting-point again. CHARLES KELLOGG FIELD. _Sequoia_. ~Yale, A.D. 2000.~ Far from the ball-room's crowded throng These two had strolled apart, While he with fervor whispered of Her image in his heart. And that he might detain it there Forever from that day, Our Co-ed shyly gave to him A Yale lock long and gray. _Yale Record_. ~In Maiden Meditation.~ "Were I a man," quoth Mistress Jane, "Ah, would I were!--I'd drink champagne And smoke--be dashing in my dress-- And let my roving eyes express A love I never entertain. "With rose lips near, I'd not refrain From kissing. I would e'er maintain That woman's 'No' is often 'Yes,' Were I a man. "Yet while I muse, it seems quite plain That as I am I can't complain, For Tom and Jack--they both confess-- Adore me. So I rather guess I'd wish I were a girl again, Were I a man!" W.C. NICHOLS. _Harvard Lampoon_. ~"Three's a Crowd."~ Crisp and hard lay the snow beneath, The frosty air made young blood tingle. As we glided over the polished road To the sleigh-bells' merriest jingle. We were warmly wrapped to our chins in rugs, Fur-proof against winter's biting weather, There was room in the sleigh for only two, But--three of us sleighed together. The moon from the clear, cold sky above Flooded the snow with a golden glory, And I whispered--for how could I refrain?-- The old, old, world-famous story. Must have seemed quite a crowd, you say, With three in the sleigh? Well you _are_ stupid! Three's a pleastanter company far, than two, When the person who crowds you is Cupid! _Vassar Miscellany._ ~On Bills.~ At the first of the month I grow morbid and sad; As I gaze on that pile I believe In the saying that never was potent before-- "'Tis more blessed to give than receive." _Lehigh Burr_. ~A Senior's Plea.~ "Dear Father: Once you said, 'My son, To manhood you have grown; Make others trust you, trust yourself, And learn to stand alone!' "Now, father, soon I graduate, And those who long have shown How well they trust me, want their pay, And I can stand a loan." JOHN CURTIS UNDERWOOD. _Trinity Tablet_. ~After the Game.~ They played at cards on the yellow sand. When the fields and the trees were green, She thought that the trump was in her hand, He thought that he held the queen. But winter has come, and they both have strayed Away from the throbbing wave-- He finds 'twas only the deuce she played, She finds that he played the knave. _Columbia Spectator_. ~Old Days.~ Sing a song of old days, Old days and true, True days and bold days, Deeds to dare and do. Quarter-staff and buckles Trip, turn and tread-- Tapped upon the knuckles, Rapped upon the head. Pouch and pocket-fillings, Knavery and worse-- Oh, the crowns and shillings In the miser's purse! Tumbled into limbo, Picking thro' the locks, Fast with arms akimbo, Stewing in the stocks. Pretty maids a-laughing-- Here's to rosy lips, Port and sherry quaffing While the pottle drips. Quaffing port and sherry, Jolly roaring blades, Making gay and merry With the giddy maids. Red blood and revel, Murder, love, and fraud,-- Dancing to the devil, Laughing to the Lord. Bright gold and yellow, Meek maids and bold, Old wine and mellow-- Wine and maids and gold. Light life and long life, Brisk life and brave; Strong life and wrong life, Great to the grave. Sing a song of old days, Sing them back again; Kill the canny, cold days, Let us live like men. _Harvard Advocate_. ~A Reward of Merit.~ The father asked: "How have you done In mastering ancient lore?" "I did so well," replied the son, "They gave me an encore; The Faculty like me and hold me so dear, They make me repeat my Freshman year." _Trinity Tablet_. ~A Fin de Siecle Girl.~ She studies Henrik Ibsen "to cultivate her mind," And reads Shakespeare and Browning through and through; Meanwhile she knits her brows--it is the only kind Of fancy work this modern maid can do. _Concordiensis_. ~Her Reason.~ Once a learned Boston maiden Was besought for one sweet kiss; "Only one," he softly pleaded, But the maid's reply was this: "I am quite surprised you ask it, When you know physicians say That for spreading dire contagion Kissing is the surest way. "Though I own that what you ask me Would be pure, unbounded bliss, Yet, from hygienic reasons, I cannot allow a kiss." JAMES P. SAWYER. _Yale Record_. ~The Cruel Maid.~ One summer night, in twilight dim, A fellow wooed a maiden prim. Around her waist, with, some alarm, The naughty man had put his arm. Her dimpled hand he stroked awhile, Then murmured low, with loving smile, "Could e'er so soft a thing be found, If all the world were searched around?" With laughing eyes and flaming cheeks, The maid replied, "'Tis just two weeks Since I found out that you, my pet, Have something that is softer yet!" "That I? I have? Oh, can it be? You darling, now I _do_ love thee!" Oh, Vanitas! No sooner said, She put her hand upon his head. A. BRADLEY. _Columbia Spectator_. ~A Football Tragedy.~ She clung to him, the game was o'er. Content was in her soul; "Dear heart, I'm very happy now That you have come back whole." With gentle hand he smoothed her curls, And tried to keep a laugh back; "My dear, your joy is premature, For I am only _half-back_." _University of Chicago Weekly_. ~It Was.~ He seized her in the dark and kissed her, And for a moment bliss was his; "Oh, my! I thought it was my sister!" He cried. She laughed and said, "It is." _Yale Record_. ~A Summer Campaign.~ I've travelled from the coast of Maine To Jersey's balmy shore. Nor have my efforts been in vain, For maids I've won galore. In mountain climbs I spent my breath, On lakes and rivers, too; I flirted here with coy Beth, And there with lovely Sue. No tournament, no sail, nor hop, Without me was complete; Nor from love-making did I stop, Till all were at my feet. The summer's gone upon the run, Maids utter sighs in billows; I've broken sixteen hearts and won Just sixteen sofa pillows. J. H. SCRANTON. _Yale Record_. ~From June to June.~ Two lovers 'mong the weedy brake Were rowing--happy pair! They drifted far upon the lake To get the sun and air. A year has fled. Again they float; But one is now the pair, And three are riding in the boat-- They bring their _son_ and _heir_. NORMAN STAUNTON DIKE. _Brunonian_. ~At the North Avenue Fire.~ The boy stood in the burning block, Whence all but him had fled; He smashed the china on a rock, But saved the feather bed. A.M. WHITE, JR. _Harvard Lampoon_. ~I Love my Love.~ Every one thinks some face fairer Than all others in the land, Thinks this one alone is perfect, Vows to her his heart and hand. Then he sings in loudest praises Of her wealth of golden hair, Of her lips like ripest cherries, She alone divinely fair. But there's one that's quite forgotten, One whose charms they fail to see; Yet in my abject devotion Fairest of the fair is she. There's not one half so entrancing Or so makes my poor heart thrill-- It is Martha Washington's picture On a bright one dollar bill. J. P. SAWYER. _Yale Record_. ~The Diva.~ Gone are her bird-notes, thin she sings, and flat, Enough to craze Concone or Scarlatti. Where once she made our hearts go pit-a-pat, To-day, alas, they only pity Patti. S.F. BATCHELDER. _Harvard Lampoon_. Mathematical. In Vassar's halls a tutor young, 'Tis said, once met his fate; He taught her in the Calculus To differentiate. They're married now--at meal-times oft Discord invades their state; For he has found that she with him Would differ when she ate. _Lehigh Burr_. ~She Still Wins.~ He had worn a colored blazer on the Nile; He had sported spats in Persia just for style; With a necktie quite too utter, In the streets of old Calcutta, He had stirred up quite a flutter for a while. The maids of Java flocked before his door, Attracted by the trousers that he wore; While his vest, a bosom-venter, Shook Formosa to the centre, And they hailed him as a mentor by the score. On his own ground as a masher, on the street He outdid a Turkish Pasha, who stood treat; He gave Shanghai girls the jumps, And their cheeks stuck out like mumps At the patent-leather pumps upon his feet. But he called upon a Boston girl one night, With a necktie ready-made, which wasn't right; And she looked at him, this maid did, And he faded, and he faded, And he faded, and he faded out of sight. _The Tech_. ~Her Present.~ He had hinted at diamonds, a fan by Watteau, A fine water spaniel,--so great was his zeal,-- A chatelaine watch, or a full set of Poe, And then at the end sent a padded _Lucile_. F. _Harvard Lampoon_. ~On the Weather.~ The sultry stillness of a summer's day Oppresses every sense. The droning bees Alone the silence break, and restless play The shadows of the gently swaying trees. The very ripples in the stream are still, Save now and then a low and gentle swash, All which doth try me sore against my will-- So hot! And all my ducks are in the wash. FERRIS GREENSLET. _Wesleyan Literary Monthly_. ~Tom's Philosophy.~ The bridges mingle with the river, And the river with the ocean; The lights of Boston mix forever With a jagged motion; Not a lamp-post near looks single; All things, when in town I dine, With weird, uncanny phantoms mingle, Why not I with wine? See the house-tops fall from heaven! And that chimney hit the other-- A college man would be forgiven If home he'd help a brother. Is it the sun that shines on earth, Or moonbeams that I see? What are all my struggles worth, Since I've lost my key? _Harvard Lampoon_. ~Fashion's Folly.~ I knew a maiden fair and sweet, Whom I had loved for years. At last one day I told her this, Although with many fears. At first she did not say a word, Then in a pleasant way She looked out to the west, and said: "It _is_ a pleasant day." She had not heard a single word, She's told me since with tears; She wore her hair, as some girls will, Down over both her ears. S.W. CHAMBERLAIN. _Vassar Miscellany_. ~Christmas in Chicago.~ The girl from Chicago arose sharp at eight, As her maid on the door was knocking; She found a piano, a desk, and a slate Concealed in the toe of her stocking. A. M. WHITE, JR. _Harvard Advocate_. ~A Discovery in Biology.~ I think I know what Cupid is: _Bacteria Amoris;_ And when he's fairly at his work, He causes _dolor cordis_. So, if you'd like, for this disease, A remedy specific, Prepare an antitoxine, please, By methods scientific. Inoculate another heart With germs of this affection, Apply this culture to your own, 'Twill heal you to perfection. MARY E. LEVERETT. _Vassar Miscellany_. ~Logic.~ Say, does Fact or Reason err, And, if they both err, which the more? The man of smallest calibre Is sure to be the greatest bore. _Harvard Lampoon_. ~A Flirtation on the Cars.~ I did not even know her name, Nor where she lived, nor whence she came-- 'Twas sad, and yet Was I so very much to blame, That all my heart should start to flame, And flare and fret? She was so sweet, so passing fair, With such a smile, with such an air-- What could I do? A glance as shy, as debonair, An eye as bright, a smile as rare, I never knew! And so I smiled across the aisle, And met the winsome, merry smile She sent so bold; At last she laughed, then after while She cooed aloud in friendly style, "_I'm_ free years old!" _University of Chicago Weekly_. ~Has It Come to This?~ A youth, with shining locks of gold, And eyes than summer skies more blue, With plaintive voice and modest mien, Went forth to greet his sweetheart true. And sang, in accents sweet and low, Beneath, her window (so says rumor), "Than others art thou fairer far, Du bist wie eine _bloomer_." MARIE REIMER. _Vassar Miscellany_. ~And the Hammock Swung On.~ "A is the maid of winning charm; B is the snug, encircling arm; How many times is A in B?" He questioned calculatively. She flushed, and said, with air sedate, "It's not quite clear; please demonstrate." HAMILTON GREY. _Hamilton Literary Monthly_. ~The Critic.~ "Are _you_ a LAMPOON man? Not really! Oh, dear, though, I know you must be! That's why you've been smiling so queerly-- My goodness, you're studying _me_! Now, _what_ have I said that is funny? And oh, _will_ you publish it soon?" 'Tis thus, with a voice sweet as honey, She mentions the HARVARD LAMPOON. "Indeed, yes, I see it quite often, The pictures are _simply_ inane; The verses and jokes--they would soften An average Vassar girl's brain. Of course they are killingly comic; I laugh, but I feel like a _loon_!" And thus, with a fierceness atomic, She censures the HARVARD LAMPOON. "But then they are _bright_, I don't doubt them, And _very_ artistic, _of course_! Outsiders don't know all about them, You have to explain the--the--'_horse_.' Do send me that sweet book of 'pickings,' I hear you will publish in June." And thus she gives over her flickings, And praises the HARVARD LAMPOON. S.F. BATCHELDER. _Harvard Lampoon_. ~Her Leghorn Hat.~ Her leghorn hat has rows on rows Of ribbon, tied with charming bows. The crown is wreathed in dainty green, And from their leaves there peep between Some rosebuds white as winter snows. The brim's so large, whene'er it blows, Her face is hid from friends and foes, As all must know who once have seen Her leghorn hat. I wonder why it droops and flows About her face; howe'er she pose, It always serves her as a screen; I cannot guess, and yet I ween It keeps the freckles from her nose, Her leghorn hat. _Yale Record._ ~Equivocal.~ On the wealthy Larica's worn features I wrote In rhyme some extravagant praise. The verses were spurned (and I'm in the same boat), For I called them "Some _Lines_ on Her Face." BEN JOHNSON. _Brunonian_. ~A Problem.~ My love's face is exceeding fair, With eyes like jewels bright; Above, a wealth of flowing hair, A golden crown of light. With smiles more radiant than the sun, My love frees me from care, And yet, when all is said and done, I'm driven, to despair. And if the reason you'd seek out Why I should mournful be, I'll tell you that I'm filled with doubt Which girl is meant for me. And yet I love but one sweet face,-- Oh, happy he who wins,-- But I, I'm in an awkward place, My love, you see, is twins. G.P. DAY. _Yale Record_. ~The Outward Shows.~ She was the _première danseuse_ of the ballet, And she tripped the light fantastic like a fay; She was so sweet and cunning, And withal so very stunning, That I was bound to meet her right away. I went behind the scenes after the play, And imagine my surprise as well you may: This maid so sweet and cunning, And withal so very stunning, I'll swear that she was forty if a day. _Harvard Lampoon_. ~"As Ye Sow."~ "What awful debts are these, my son? Not one cent more, forsooth! I never was a rake like you In the hey-day of my youth." "Quite right you are," the sport replied; "And yet you twist the truth, For once you used to rake the fields In the hay-day of your youth." J. J. MACK, JR. _Harvard Lampoon._ ~On Afric's Golden Sands.~ A wild and warlike Zulu chief Was he; His costume was as brief as brief Could be. He vowed that he would woo and win A maid, But she skipped out and left him in The shade. At first she liked him; this was how She ceased-- He simply _wouldn't_ wear his trou- Sers creased. _University Herald._ ~Two Simple Little Ostriches.~ Now we can talk. Thank goodness, that old bore Who took me out is talking business o'er With some one else. The roses were so sweet, You reckless fellow. It's such fun to meet Like ordinary friends, while no one knows Our precious secret. Do you like my clothes? They're new. You dear! I'm really looking well? Why don't you like the sleeves? They're very swell. "They're more offensive than my buzz-saw hat?" What do you mean? O Jack! How simply flat! They sha'n't keep you away, dear. Now take care! No, keep your hands at home. _You've seen the Fair, Of course?_ They're listening, Jack. Do try to talk. _I'm glad they didn't have it in New York, Aren't you? Two weeks of it was quite enough. The Ferris Wheel._ You wretch! 'Twas rather rough To make me do it at all, while you sat back And howled at me. When we are married, Jack,-- O dearest, please be careful! They will guess, If you don't look less interested. Yes, yes, You know I do. Oh, dearly. By and by I'll give you three. Well, four. _Will Congress try To introduce new silver laws?_ Don't laugh! _I wish they could do something in behalf Of all the hungry people out of work_. You make me do it all, you wretched shirk. Now I must leave you, dearest. Au revoir! Don't stay forever over your cigar. (THEIR VIS-A-VIS.) It's not announced, but then we know it's on. It's simply low--another good man gone! JULIET W. TOMPKINS. _Vassar Miscellany._ ~Continuity and Differentiation.~ Whenever in America A girl is asked to wed, She straightway says, "Go ask papa," And coyly droops her head. And over in the Fatherland, Where flows the terraced Rhine, She whispers, while he clasps her hand, "Ich liebe dich allein." But up in Russia, where the snow Sweeps hissing thro' the firs, She simply murmurs soft and low, "Bhjushkst zwmstk rstk pbjunsk pjbrs." _University Herald_. ~Deception.~ Among her curls with wanton glee The breezes play caressingly, Catch up stray locks with cunning grace, And as she turns aside her face, Blow them about provokingly. Then with a smile that's fair to see She tries, and most coquettishly, To stop the breeze's merry race Among her curls. But all in vain, for now one wee Small lock escapes, and is still free. And as I peer beneath the lace I see, stowed snugly in its place, A tiny switch put secretly Among her curls. _Yale Record._ ~George Birthington's Washday.~ There was a famous washing day, its action near the Hub; A nation's raiment in the suds, a hero at the tub. Then come, ye loyal patriots, and listen to my lay! I'll sing of good George Birthington on this, his washing day. "The time is come," said Birthington, "when wash we really must, For, see our country's garments, how they're trampled in the dust; And Liberty's bright tunic is so sadly soiled, I ween, That nothing but a washing day will make it bright and clean." The morning dawned, the washers came, the washing was begun; The steam rose high, nor ceased to rise till cleanliness was won. And now, though good George Birthington is gone to his repose, The grateful country still recalls how well he washed her clothes. FLORENCE E. HOMES. _Wellesly Lyrics._ ~The Freshman's Vacation.~ He had fished in the Aroostook, And he'd trolled in the Walloostook, And he'd angled in the Mattawamkeag, He had hunted Lake Umbagog, And spent weeks on Memphremagog, For he'd sworn to bring the fish home by the bag. All too soon the summer ended, And his homeward way he wended, And he left his tent within the shady vale; But before he reached New Lyddom, He took all his fish and hid 'em In an envelope and sent them home by mail. _University Herald_. ~A Rondel.~ "I'd draw the knot as tight as man can draw, And firm I'd make it fast by every law; Dearest, you need not speak your fond consent, Your paleness and your blush so finely blent," He gently said; "tell me my happy lot: I'd draw the knot." But ere he could the eager phrase repeat,-- The phrase his manly fancy found so sweet,-- The modest maiden toward him turned her face: Her eyes met his a moment's rapturous space,-- She spoke, her firm glance faltering scarce a jot, "I'd rather not." J.J. MACK, JR. _Harvard Lampoon_. ~The Ladye of the Lab.~ He fareth in a joyous wise Where runs the road 'neath gentle skies-- How should his canine heart surmise That where the red-roofed towers rise The blood is red upon the slab? His way is warm with sunlight yet, He knoweth not the sun must set; And he hath in the roadway met The Ladye of the Lab. How should he read her face aright? Upon her brow the hair is bright, Within her eyes a tender light, Her luring hands are lily-white, Tho' blood be red upon the slab; Her calling voice is siren-sweet,-- He crouches fawning at her feet,-- It is a fatal thing to meet The Ladye of the Lab! And she hath ta'en him with a string To where the linnets never sing, Where stiff and still is everything, And there a heart lies quivering When blood is red upon the slab; O little dog that wandered free! And hath she done this thing to thee? How may she work her will with me,-- The Ladye of the Lab! CHARLES KELLOGG FIELD. _Four-Leaved Clover_. ~Our Wrongs.~ When girls are only babies, Their mammas quite insist That they by us-- Against our wills-- Be kissed--kissed--kissed. But when those girls Are sweet eighteen, Their mammas say we sha'n't, And though we'd like to kiss them, We can't--can't--can't. C.F.H. _Williams Weekly_. ~A Snare and a Delusion.~ Between the trees a hammock swings On the lawn, at twilight's glow; Oh, what bliss sweet memory brings Of the days of long ago! A dainty gown of spotless white, Moulded to a faultless form, Fashioned like a fairy sprite, Riding on love's tidal storm. In the gloaming, dim discerning, We can faintly see the book; Softly stealing, with lore's yearning,-- Gracious heaven! it's the cook! _Yale Record_. ~At the Junior Promenade.~ The stars were out and the moon was bright At the Junior Promenade, But all the glories of starlit night Were bated before the splendid sight Of that merry throng--and my lady in white, At the Junior Promenade. Oh, she was tall and wondrous fair At the Junior Promenade, Her eyes were stars, and black was her hair, Her cheeks shone red in the bright light's glare: I worshiped her quite as I danced with her there, At the Junior Promenade. She waltzed with the grace of a goddess divine At the Junior Promenade. I held her close, her hand in mine, My cheek touched the strands of her hair so fine. A perfume arose from her lips of wine, At the junior Promenade. Such seeds of love in my heart were sown At the Junior Promenade, Till soon came the end--I was left alone, And then found out--what I cannot disown-- That I had made love to the chaperone At the Junior Promenade. CAREY CULBERTSON. _Syllabus_. ~El Dorado.~ 'Twas a youthful would-be poet, Gazing with enraptured air Through the starlight, when a comrade Found him standing silent there. "Don't disturb me," was his answer, When addressed, "Oh, let me be! I am filled with heavenly raptures, For I see infinity! "Let me gaze until I'm sated, For at last I've found a place, Where there's absolutely nothing Crowded out for want of space!" GRANT SHOWERMAN. _Wisconsin Aegis_. ~The Conversion.~ She told him surely 'twas not right To smoke a pipe from morn to night "Indeed," cried he, "what would you, dear? 'Tis but to aid my thoughts of you." "Why, then," she whispered, nestling near, "Why, then, I love your old pipe, too." R. W. BERGENGREN. _Harvard Advocate_. ~Were It Only Now.~ I'm sitting musing in my room, The snow is on the ground; The moon has hid her face to-night, And darkness is profound. 'Twas somewhat such a night as this, A little darker, though, I asked Bess to go sleighing, and She said that she would go. But just as we were starting out, Said she, "For just us two" (A smile played round her mouth) "I think It much too dark, don't you?" I did not know their wiles as yet, I was so young and slow; But thought she really meant it, and I stammered, "I--think--so." She cast at me a pitying glance, Then in the house we went; The balance of that evening was In conversation spent. * * * * * Since then she's always been polite, And cordial, too, you know; But from that time I realize I've never had a show. A. W. BELL. _Yale Record_. ~Her Thanks.~ She thanked them all for everything, From Christmas card to diamond ring; And as her gifts she gaily flaunted, She told her friends, "Just what I wanted." But I, who had no cash to blow, Just kissed her 'neath the mistletoe. She blushed a bit, yet never daunted, Repeated low, "Just what I wanted." M.D. FOLLANSBEE. _Harvard Lampoon_. ~An Idyl.~ He stands before his glass in doubt; His beard by night hath sprouted well. He needs must scrape,--and yet without He hears begin the lecture bell. Too many times he's skipped the course-- He fears its doors on him may shut: His blade is dull. Now which is worse, To cut and shave, or shave and cut? _Harvard Lampoon_. ~"When?"~ When Harvard's crimson cohorts came From classic Cambridge down, And Eli's lovers of the game Forsook their leafy town, And met on neutral ground to claim The football victor's crown, I carried Rose to see the sight, The pageant's grand review; We watched the struggling heroes fight, The crimson and the blue; The crowd was yelling with delight, And fierce the contest grew. First Yale rose up, an azure sea, And shouted through the din; Then Harvard yelled triumphantly, And each was sure to win, When Rosa, smiling, said to me, "When does the game begin?" E. A. BLOUNT, JR. _Columbia Spectator_. ~An Unfortunate Phrase.~ He sent her twelve Jacqueminot roses, All fragrant and blooming and fair, That nestled so sweetly and shyly 'Neath smilax and maidenhair. She sent him a letter to thank him, On paper just tinted with blue-- "The flowers are still very fresh, John, When I see them I think of you." She posted her letter that morning, He got it that evening at ten. She can't understand what has changed him, For he called on her never again. F.S. _Columbia Spectator_. ~Lines to a Monkey.~ (_After reading Darwin_.) It seems quite funny to reflect, And yet what else could we expect (If Darwin's true), That my primeval grandmamma And prehistoric grandpapa Looked just like you. How any one could ever see Relationship 'twixt you and me I can't explain. You're such an awkward little beast, Your features are (to say the least) So very plain. And since the rule's considered poor That doesn't work both ways, I'm sure As I can be, That ages hence, if earth endures, Some distant relative of yours Will look like me. HENRY RUTGERS CONGER. _Williams Literary Monthly_. ~Hymns Ancient And Modern.~ ANCIENT. Complexion like the winter snow, Just tinted by the sunset glow, Throat white as alabaster, Teeth of pearl, and hair of gold, And figure--sure in Venus's mould Th' immortal gods have east her. And I am proud her slave to be, And deem it high felicity To die, if she should will it so. Ye fates! to-night propitious be, For I approach divinity: My life depends on "Yes" or "No." MODERN. Stunning girl, Out of sight. Guess I'll pop Tuesday night. Bully shape, Pretty eyes; Papa's rich, Quite a prize. Sure to have me, Can't say no; Lots of rocks-- It's a go. R. L. RAYMOND. _Harvard Lampoon_. ~Nightmare Of A Freshman Sign Swiper.~ He turned and tossed upon his bed, Repose he could not find, For all night long such things as these Kept coursing through his mind. "Keep off the Grass," and "Beer on Draught," "H-O," and "Pyle's Pearline;" "Look out for paint," and "Use Pear's Soap," Were signs which he had seen. And in the midst of all of these A demon seemed to dance, Who asked him with a fiendish grin, "I say, 'Do you wear pants?'" W.D. FLAGG. _Harvard Lampoon_. ~What the Wild Waves Said.~ Do you hear the ocean moaning, Ever moaning sad and low? 'Tis because that fat old bather Stepped upon its undertow. _University Herald_. ~A Decision.~ As a maid so nice, With step precise, Tripped o'er the ice, She slipped; her care in vain. And at the fall, With usual gall, The schoolboys call, "Third down; two feet to gain." ARTHUR LLEWELLYN ENO. _Brunonian_. ~The Thorn that Guards.~ Far in the corner on the stairs, We were sitting together, she and I; The murmuring music was soft and low, Like zephyrs that float 'neath a summer sky. She held in her fingers a deep red rose, And was plucking the petals, one by one; Her eyes were filled with the dreamy light That softens the west when the day is done. "Ah, Mildred, you are a bud yourself; Its blushing sweetness is wholly thine; Cannot you let me press the flower, And keep it forever, and call it mine?" The fair lips trembled, the dimples smiled, Her eyes told clearly that I had lost; But my heart still hoped, till she gently sighed, "You forget what _American Beauties_ cost." T.G.P. _Cornell Era_. ~A Kiss.~ "A kiss it is a poeme faire."--_Old Song._ A kiss is not like the poems at all Which I drop through the editor's office door; For I like it as well "returned with thanks," As "accepted, with a request for more." L. _Wesleyan Literary Monthly_. ~The Modern Book.~ Extremely small or of giant size, Bound in vellum or boards antique, The pages of paper made by hand With deckle edge and shape unique; Margins four inches wide, at least, And straggling o'er the page a line Or two (no more), of beautiful print In type advertised as "our own design." You pay a price exorbitant This cherished morsel to procure; You get a gem of the bookman's art And five cents' worth of literature. M.R. _Vassar Miscellany_. ~His Father Took Him Home.~ "I was always so poor in Greek," _He played the guitar_, "A 'dec' I never could speak," _He won every race_, "My Latin I have to 'horse,'" _In football a star_, "The German is 'cribbed' perforce." _He played second base._ S.J.R. _Madisonensis_. ~Beautiful Sprig.~ Sprig, sweet Sprig, is cobig; For I feel it id the air, See, the groud is gedtly thawig, Bud ad slush are everywhere. Dow I doff by widter fladdels, Ad I dod by subber close; Thed for weeks ad weeks together Vaidly try to blow by dose. J. P. WELSH. _Harvard Lampoon_. III. COLLEGE AND CAMPUS ~The Way of It.~ A little learning, scattered o'er A frolic of four years or more. Then--Presto, change!--and you create The sober college graduate! _Yale Record_. ~Comfort.~ With pipe and book, an old armchair, A glowing hearth, what need I care For empty honors, wealth or fame? Grant me but this: an honest name, A cup of ale, a coat to wear, And then, while smoke wreaths rift the air, The banquet of the gods I share, Content to sit before the flame With pipe and book. Above the city's noisy glare, Yet sweet, tho' humble, is my fare; For changing not from praise to blame, These faithful friends are still the same-- No earthly comforts can compare With pipe and book. CHARLES E. MERRILL, JR. _Yale Courant_. ~O Hero.~ Out into the mud and the wet he goes, My hero, tall and strong; Under his jersey the muscle shows, And, Samson-like, his dark hair grows Delightfully thick and long. Out from his feet the black mud flies, His jacket is far from white; Bother these boys with their dapper ties, Who come and compel me to turn my eyes Away from a nobler sight! The hills are red with the western sun, The twilight comes like a dream; But until the practice work is done I strain my eyes for his every run, And I know he will make the team. I envy the fellow who keeps his cap, With so little appreciation, While I stroll back with a soft-tongued chap Whose muscles I know aren't worth a rap, And whose hair is an imitation. CHARLES KELLOGG FIELD. _Four-Leaved Clover_. ~To the Faculty.~ You tell us in philosophy That time does not exist, That 'tis but a film of fancy, A little mental mist. And space--why, space is nothing More than mere mode of thought, A sort of mental telescope Our feeble minds have wrought. Well, if that's true, Respected Sirs, I'll breakfast at my ease, And think myself in chapel Just as often as you please. H. K. WEBSTER. _Hamilton Literary Monthly_. ~Her Answer.~ "Maud, take my heart!" cried Algernon. (Maud goes to Barnard College.) She said, "You know I'm wedded to A noble search for knowledge. "I cannot take your heart, Al, but--" He saw her eyes with pleasure beam-- "I'm much obliged. You've given me A subject for a daily theme." C.H. _Columbia Literary Monthly_. ~"Give Me the Town."~ Give me the town; let others go Where babbling streams of water flow, Where soars the lark on daring wing (I'd rather hear De Reszke sing), And where sweet-scented breezes blow. I love to be where, to and fro, Weary or eager, fast or slow, The _human_ tide is eddying; Give me the town. The balls, the theatres, the row, Who would not find amusement so? Here's where a man can have his fling, Can drink the dregs of--everything. Would you change this for Surrey? Oh, Give me the town. MARY HELEN RITCHIE. _Bryn Mawr Lantern_. [Illustration: A BRYN MAWR GIRL.] ~I Flunked To-Day.~ I flunked to-day. "I'm not prepared," Was all I said. Still less I cared. No more I strive the depths to try, Or drink the fount of wisdom dry; Yet once at learning's court I fared; There with the best my work compared; My weary brain was never spared. But now,--some one could tell you why I flunked to-day. As once to college I repaired, A half-veiled glance my heart ensnared. I felt my love (for knowledge) die; And thus it was without a sigh I flunked to-day. ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE. _Columbia Spectator_. ~Ring from the Rim of the Glass, Boys.~ Ring from the rim of the glass, boys, Ripples of tinkling tones; Drink to the heyday of youth, boys, Mindless of after-moans. Over the rim of the glass, boys, Gaze into eyes that are bright. Drink with each sip of the wine, boys, Passionate gleams of delight. Sing to the rim of the glass, boys, Chorus wherever we roam. Drink in its sparkling-eyed depths, boys, A love as light as its foam. Kiss the rim of the glass, boys, Blind to its siren-gleam. Drink in its shading depths, boys, The wav'ring forms of a dream. Then ring from the rim of the glass, boys, Ripples of tinkling tones. Drink to the heyday of youth, boys, Mindless of after-moans. JOHN CLINTON ANTHONY. _Brown Magazine_. ~Comforting Reflections of a Nonentity.~ I cannot boast of learning deep, Nor can I much to art aspire; My poetry loses me no sleep, Nor oratory's burning fire. I do not row upon the crew, Nor on th'eleven glory win; I am not of the chosen few Who sing or play the mandolin. I am not any social star, But then--within my certain knowledge, Like me, unknown to fame, there are Some fifteen hundred men in college. S.M. WILLIAMS. _Harvard Lampoon_. ~When Witherspoon was President.~ Their manners had a formal cast A century or more ago, Their bow was suited, as they passed To place in Academic row. With "honored sir" and "humbly so," Their speech was truly reverent-- True learning did true grace bestow, When Witherspoon was president. The clothes they wore would now be classed At best as but a curio, Huge buckles held their slippers fast-- Low cut and pointed at the toe. Gray powdered hair, small-clothes below, A long blue coat fresh splendor lent-- In sooth they made a goodly show When Witherspoon was president. But when the trumpet's warring blast Had knelled the fate that tyrants know, They proved no laggards at the last, And sprang to meet their country's foe. Their master's words undying glow-- "To slavery there's no consent, My fame, my life is on the throw--" When Witherspoon was president. Aye, manners, customs, clothes may flow, Unchanging is such sentiment-- We would have done as they, I trow, When Witherspoon was president. DAVID POTTER. _Nassau Literary Monthly._ ~My Pipe is Out.~ My pipe is out; the hour is late, And sitting lonely by the grate Sweet thoughts that led their circling train In puffs cerulean 'round my brain Have flown, and left me to my fate. No more the form of lovely Kate Floats in the smoke-rings I create; And this the cause of all my pain, My pipe is out. How can my pen the woes relate That on these happy moments wait? With eager eyes I look again Within my empty pouch,--in vain! So I must cease to meditate, My pipe is out. HERBERT MULLER HOPKINS. _Columbia Spectator_. ~At the Race.~ She wore a little knot of blue, He waved a flag of red; With all her heart she would be true To Yale--she said. And as she spoke a dainty flush Gave token of her pride; He thought the crimson of her blush Her words belied. So while he watched her blushes start-- "Deny it if you will, Your blood--yes, even in your heart-- Is crimson still." She turned and spoke, her voice was low, And yet it pierced him through-- "Sir, pardon me, I'd have you know My blood is blue!" _Yale Record._ ~To an "Instructor."~ Treat not with such wanton disdain The title of which you're possessor, Nor sorrow, because you remain Instructor instead of "Professor." Content you should be to be known As one of enlightenment's ductors, Rememb'ring how oft we bemoan Professors who are not instructors. HARRY S. FURBUR, JR. _Syllabus_. ~As Usual.~ Oh, the gay and festive Freshman has appeared upon the scene,-- 'Tis not the monster jealousy that makes him look so green, 'Tis not the fumes of rum that give his nose that ruddy glare, But the boy has caught hay-fever from the hay-seed in his hair. The blush upon his cheek is not the bloom upon the rye, But tells of health and happiness, and johnny-cake and pie. The firm, elastic tread with which the boy is wont to roam Comes from running on a steep side hill to drive the heifers home. The funny tales he'll have to tell of cows that get astray Will all be sure to help him in a purely social way; And all the strength that he's acquired from milking them each trip Will come in mighty handy when he tries to learn the grip. For father will go barefoot, and mother dear will scrub The neighbors' dirty linen within a sudsy tub, And Jane will wear no Sunday hat, and Jim no Sunday tie, So Sam can go to Harvard to adorn the Zeta Psi. Then nearly every morning, at the druggist's, for a bluff, He'll ask the clerk for vichy, to make him think he's tough. That boy will smoke a cigarette, and quite forget the plow! And mother will not know her son a year or so from now. _Harvard Lampoon._ ~Speed.~ They tell how fast the arrow sped, When William shot the apple, But who can calculate the speed Of him who's late for chapel? _Trinity Tablet._ ~A Senior Schedule.~ We're a-studying of Literature As hard as e'er we can; We dote on Revolutions And the Brotherhood of Man. We're returning to the People With a truly Lyric Cry; And for Democratic Spirit We'd lay us down and die. We're a-reading of Philosophy To find out why we be, And a-learning that External Worlds Lie wholly in the Me. We don't believe in Matter, And of Mind we're not quite sure; We're inclined to think Uncertainties Most likely to endure. We're a-studying Geology Of Pre-historic Times, Before the Tides of Primal Sea Got written into rhymes; When the "Old World spun forever," And the poets never knew it,-- And all the Rocks, and Stones, and Things, Were nicely mixed up through it. We're a-looking at Fine Pictures Made by People what are dead; And we criticize Cathedrals With a Ruskin at our head. We're a-growing awful learnèd,-- There's lots more of the kind,-- But we do not mind confessing That it's all a Beastly Grind. MARY HOLLANDS McLEAN. _Wellesley Lyrics_. ~A Change of Heart.~ I knew he cut his classes, and I'd heard him flunk in history, And how he dared say "not prepared" so often was a mystery. He'd sometimes cram for an exam., but seldom knew a word in it. His parted hair grew long and fair; I thought he looked absurd in it. I felt regret whene'er we met, and bowed with utmost gravity; I didn't dream he'd joined the team--I thought him all depravity. So when I found, at Haight Street ground, how great was his agility, I oped my eyes in marked surprise, amazed at his ability. He tackled hard, gained many a yard, place-kicked and charged successively; He turned the edge of the flying wedge, and interfered aggressively! He bucked the line! I thought it fine, and shouted out excitedly; He passed the ball behind them all! I saw the scheme delightedly. He slipped about the line without a thought of trip or fumbling, When to the din of tooting tin a crowd on him came tumbling. I felt a chill, my heart stood still, when those mean boys fell down on him, His clothes were torn, his nose cap gone, and streaks of black and brown on him. He scored a touchdown then, and such a frenzy I did never see; It made the umpire's whistle dumb, and overwhelmed the referee. Then when he punted out in front, though hoarse with loud admiring, I with, delight yelled, "He's all right!" for they were all inquiring. The game was won, and we'd begun to cheer each man respectively; We rah! rah! rahed! and blew horns hard, and shook our flags effectively; His eyes shone bright, as left and right they called to him vivaciously; I my disdain recalled with pain, and waved my banner graciously. Now let him miss the German quiz, and fail to pass astronomy, To football lore what's physics or political economy? To have him bow is rapture now, to be o'erlooked adversity; To catch his smile is worth the while attending University. HENRIETTA L. STADTMULLER. _Sequoia_. ~Drinking Song.~ Let sparkling wine o'erbrim the glass, And kiss its lips in haste to fly; But though it would to glory pass, It is not eager as am I. I fain would drain the utmost drop, And leave the beaker's hollow bare, For when I turn its foot atop, I see my true love's image there. Each bubble of the dancing wine Symbols a love-kiss softly given, And rising upward is a sign That earth hath joys to equal heaven. Ah! were the cup a league in rim, And deep as is the ocean's blue, I'd hold its girth were all too slim And wine of kisses thrice too few. B.A. GOULD, JR. _Harvard Lampoon_. ~Sour Valentines.~ To-morrow is the day for valentines; Then let me leave my thesis for a space, Lower the lamplight on these weary lines, And dream a little in the shadowed place. In my three years at college, I have named My Valentine and kept the season thrice; The jolly saint himself is to be blamed If I have never had the same one twice. In Freshman days, with all about me strange, And home's sweet halo shining on my way, My heart had never known the sense of change, And one dear face was with me day by day; So, when the time was here, I wrote my verse And drew the heart and arrow up above, And, happy in the thought I might do worse, I sent it off to Mother with my love. When I had felt the thrill of Sophomore days, My thoughts were given to a dainty maid At college with me, and in woodland ways And quiet music-rooms my court I paid. But, with, my Junior dignity, I chose My Queen abroad, within the city's glare, Forgot the violet for the gayer rose, And lost my heart and pocket-money there. Saint Valentine, those days were long ago; Your power is lost upon this penitent, For, with my Senior gravity, I know That life means more than your light sentiment. And yet, this once, your day shall have from me Some of the old observance, though I scoff; My thesis waits,--my Valentine shall be The old-maid sister of my major prof. CHARLES KELLOGG FIELD. _Sequoia_. ~The Banjo Fiend.~ There is a fellow across the way Who plays the banjo night and day, And all you ever hear him play, Is plunk, plunk, plunkety, plunk, plunk. He plays along with might and main, Be it foul or fair, be it snow or rain, And, oh! it is that constant strain, That plunk, plunk, plunkety, plunk, plunk. You sit here in your room and swear, But he can't hear, nor does he care, Only goes on playing that same old air, The plunk, plunk, plunkety, plunk, plunk. It is his hope that some fine day On the Banjo Club they'll let him play, But he won't if we have aught to say, With his plunk, plunk, plunkety, plunk, plunk. WILLARD GROSVENOR BLEYER. _The Badger_. ~Varium et Mutabile.~ I saw her going to the game, Her eyes were bright, her cheeks aflame, And o'er her shoulders lightly fell A Princeton scarf, her choice to tell. I saw her when the game was o'er, A loyal Nassau maid no more; To Yale, the victor, now she's true-- Her yellow scarf was lined with blue. J. P. SAWYER, _Yale Record._ ~In His Own Country.~ I made myself a poet in the place, And blithely sang of college life and ways, The pleasure of the undergraduate pace, And all the joy between the holidays; No care spoke ever in my careless song, From graver strains I kept my pipe apart, And played the upper notes; ah, was it wrong To dream my music reached the student heart? Upon a day one said, with kind intent: "Why sing forever of these trivial things? For better music was your piping meant; Will you confess such earth-restricted wings? Strike some Byronic chord, sublime and deep, Find in ethereal flight the upper air, And speak to us some word that we may keep Within our hearts and ever treasure there!" Then, with one pang for wasted hours, I gave Another meaning to my faltering lay, And sang of Life and Pain, an early grave, Hope and Despair, and Love that lives alway; But when I listened for an echoing heart, I saw all other lips with laughter curl, And heard them whisper jestingly apart, "He's got it bad, poor fool; we know the girl!" CHARLES KELLOGG FIELD. _Sequoia_. ~His Letter.~ "Dear Father: Please excuse," he wrote, "The hurried shortness of this note, But studies so demand attention That I have barely time to mention That I am well, and add that I Lack funds; please send me some. Good-by. Your loving son." He signed his name, And hastened to the--foot-ball game. W.R. HEREFORD. _Harvard Lampoon._ ~The Unwilling Muse.~ Oh nothing in all life worse is, For abating superfluous pride, Than having to scribble on verses With the editor waiting outside; I am hearing a lecture on Shelley, Where I ought to be able to dream, But my brain is as vapid as jelly. And I cannot alight on a theme. The bell rings. My friend, the Professor, Is beginning to read out the roll. How time drags! Am I present? Oh, yes, sir, But, oh, what a blank is my soul. I fear that my cunning has left me, Inspiration refuses to guide, The rouse of her aid has bereft me, And the editor's waiting outside. GUY WETMORE CARRYL. _Columbia Spectator._ ~A Written Lesson.~ I was happy that day, For I knew what to say, And I knew how to tell it; But I found with dismay, As is always the way, When I know what to say, And know how to tell it, That I know what to say But I never can spell it. S.W. CHAMBERLAIN. _Vassar Miscellany._ [Illustration: "THE IDEAL CO-ED"] ~The Deal Closed.~ The ideal co-ed is a thing of books, A creature of brain entirely; With stooping shoulders and studious looks, She digs all day and half the night; People say she is wondrous bright, But her figure's an awful sight! Her thoughts are deep in the classic past, She only thinks of A. B. at last; She has fled this world and its masculine charms, And a refuge found in Minerva's arms. Now, the kind of co-ed that I describe Is a co-ed seen very rarely; The real co-ed's a thing of grace, With dainty figure and winsome face; She walks and rides, and she cuts, mon Dieu! But every professor lets her through; For her each year is a round of joy, A. B. means nothing if not "A Boy," And you and I must yield to her charms, And take the place of Minerva's arms, CHARLES KELLOGG FIELD. _Stanford Quad._ ~Conditioned.~ Dear old pipe, my oldest friend, Brier of darkest hue, How I long to smoke and dream-- I'm in love with you. Good old beer, an oft-tried friend, Best and choicest brew, How I long for you again-- I'm in love with you. Laughing lips and rosy cheeks, Eyes of deepest blue, You I long for most of all-- I'm in love with you. Tempt me not, my dear old friends, I have work to do-- Four conditions in a term-- For I loved but you. _Brunonian_. ~Evening on the Campus.~ Behind a screen of western hills The sunset color fades to-night; Along the arching corridors Long shadows steal with footsteps light. The banners of the day are furled; Thro' darkening space the twilight creeps And smooths the forehead of the world Until he sleeps. The oak-trees closer draw their hoods; A bird, belated, wings his dim, Uncertain flight, and far above A star looks down and laughs at him; The sky and mountains melt in one; Tall gum-trees range their ranks around; The white walk marks its length upon The velvet ground. From out the dusk the chimney points, Like guiding finger, to the skies; Down drops the curtain of the night, And all the plain in darkness lies, When, as the college buildings seem To lose their form in shapeless mass, The lights shine out as poppies gleam Amid the grass. CHARLES KELLOGG FIELD. _Four-Leaved Clover._ ~Philosophy.~ Shall I grieve because a maid Swore to love me--failed to do it? When we both are old and staid, I shall laugh--and she shall rue it. Shall I grieve, if for a prize, Strive my best--I fail to win it? In the world where honor lies, Medal men are seldom in it. C.W. CRANNELL. _Garnet_. ~Bed During Exams.~ _(With Apologies to Mr. Stevenson.)_ I used to go to bed at night, And only worked when day was light. But now 'tis quite the other way, I never get to bed till day. I look up from my work and see The morning light shine in on me, And listen to a warning knell-- The tinkle of the rising bell. And does there not seem cause to weep, When I should like so much to sleep, I have to sing this mournful lay, I cannot get to bed till day? CLARA WARREN VAIL. _Bryn Mawr Lantern._ ~Under Two Flags.~ It's all very well For a boy, who can yell For his own special college through all, without fail. How can I be true To the red or the blue, When Will is at Harvard, and Tom is at Yale? When one comes to call, I must stop in the hall To see that his pin's in a prominent place, They're both on the crew, And I'm all in a stew, For I'm pledged as a mascot for both in the race! Dear Will's such a swell, And he dresses so well, (Tom says that he puts on a great deal of dog), His tenor is fine And his waltzing divine. But you ought to see Tom do his skirt-dance and clog! It's all very well For a boy, who can yell For his own special college through all, without fail. Why, I'd gladly be true To the red or the blue, If Tom were at Harvard, or Will went to Yale! JULIET W. TOMPKINS. _Vassar Miscellany._ ~After the Soirée ~ I beside the blue-gate lying, Round and round all objects flying, Just to reach my bed was trying, After the Soirée. Now I hear the music stopping, Now the corks from champagne popping, Now the wasted money dropping, After the Soirée, Now I sleep and now awaken, Find myself by classmates taken To the bed that I'd forsaken, After the Soirée. When the light of day comes o'er me, What have I but flunks before me? Greek and Latin, how they bore me, After the Soirée. F.R.D.B. _Garnet_. ~A Panacea.~ If your health is not quite right, If you have no appetite, If you cannot sleep at night, Light your pipe. If conditions round you press, If your stock of cuts grows less, Spoiling all your happiness, Light your pipe. If your debts upon you weigh, If your bills you cannot pay, As they come in day by day, Light your pipe. There's no trouble in this land, Lack of wealth, or loss of stand, Loss of health, or lady's hand, Which can this sure cure withstand! Light your pipe. R.O. RYDER. _Yale Record._ ~A Toast.~ What though the storm-king growls in rage, And the daylight fast is dimming; We'll add to the score on Mem'ry's page, While the butt with cheer is brimming. And Love shall be the tapster gay, To draw at nod or winking; And whether the clouds be gold or gray, Here's to the cup and its clinking! Those moist lips, touched in single bliss, More constant are than lovers'; Their foamy depth holds many a kiss, And many a sigh it smothers. Then ho for the blood of youth, say I, And the mad, glad hopes it bringeth; For the palsied step of Age draws nigh,-- "_Sans_ hope, _sans_ joy!" he singeth. A. K. LANE. _Tuftonian_. ~A Ballade of College Girls.~ What do the dear girls learn nowadays, At all the colleges where they go? They've no cane-rushes nor football frays; Whence can their wealth of wisdom flow? Up at Wellesley they learn to row; Gowns and mortar-boards there are swell; They flirt in the shades of "Tupelo": I have been there,--but I won't tell! The Smith girls had the dramatic craze, And even the critics puffed their show; The Amherst men are loud in their praise; They diet on pickled limes and Poe. At good Mount Holyoke, which some deem slow, They learn to cook and to sweep as well; Along with their Greek they're taught to sew: I have been there,--but I won't tell! Cornell's "co-eds" have flattering ways; Many a soul they have filled with woe; Up at Vassar they're prone to stays, And no girl there can have a beau; All those beautiful blooms must throw Their sweetness away where no man may dwell; Rules can be cheated, sometimes, though: I have been there,--but I won't tell! ENVOY. Girls, the Blue and the Crimson know How a tryst is kept after bedtime bell. "Hush-sh," you whisper, "be cautious!" Oh, I have been there,--but I won't tell! F.R. BATCHELDER. _Harvard Lampoon._ ~Ballade of the Alumna.~ How sadly in these latter days, In search of memories bitter-sweet, We tread the once-accustomed ways With step grown slow, and lagging feet,-- Timed to the pulse's slower beat,-- And climb the stair and reach the floor, To find--alas! how time is fleet! Another's name is on the door! We timid knock, and beg to gaze On all once ours--are shown a seat, O irony! In sad amaze We marvel that it looks so neat, Recalling how we used to meet At gruesome hours in days of yore,-- Hours that fate can ne'er repeat: Another's name is on the door. Our ready chaff, our wordy frays, Conviction backed by young conceit, Have left no echoes; nothing stays To mark how once we "led the street;" But others come with youthful heat, Nor reck of those who came before, And play their part--their years complete;-- Another's name is on the door. ENVOY. Freshmen, our age with reverence greet, And warning take, though grieved sore, No words delay, no prayers entreat,-- Another's name is on the door. EDITH CHILD. _Bryn Mawr Lantern._ ~A Banquet Song.~ I. Comrades, fill the banquet cup Brimming up! Fill it full of love and laughter, Claret lips and kisses after, Crown it with a maiden's smiles, And the foam of magic wiles. Drink it, drain it, clink your glasses, For the love of loving lasses Ere it passes! II. Fill again, the banquet cup Brimming up! Overflow it with the roses Which her timid blush discloses. With her sparkling eyelight sift it, Till it flavored is. Then lift it. Drink it, drain it, clink your glasses, For the love of loving lasses Ere it passes! III. Comrades, fill a parting cup Brimming up! Flood it in your praise's zest, For the uninvited guest. With her charms and graces fill it, Touch the lips and heartward spill it. Drink it, drain it, clink your glasses, For the love of loving lasses Ere it passes! EDWIN OSGOOD GROVER. _Dartmouth Literary Monthly._ ~The Senior And The Rose.~ A few faded rose-leaves-- A Freshman-year treasure-- I view you again with a sigh. Three years have I kept you In care without measure, And now must I tell you good-by? A rose that a Senior Once dropped and deserted, A rose from the bright banquet-hall, A rose that man gave me, When madly I flirted With him at the great Junior Ball. Alas for the rose-leaves! Confusion o'ercomes me! My cheek is quite crimson with shame! Which rose were you part of? And which Senior was she? And what was that college man's name? EVA LINNETTE SOULE. _Cardinal_. IV. NATURE ~The American Partridge.~ Neglected minstrel of the single song, Piping at twilight through the russet fields, Thy two soft silver notes, one short, one long, Rich with the careless joy that nature yields, Rise from the stubble round the well-stocked fields, Far from the chattering flock or warbling throng: Bob White! American! All hail, my countryman! Thy treble, sweet or shrill, delights my ear; A song of freedom ere our race began, A challenger of conquest loud and clear; Bespeaking nature pure as God's first plan, And pride and peace, and quiet ever dear: Bob White! _Southern Collegian._ ~To a Chrysanthemum.~ Thou beauteous flower, with heart of gold, Bravely defying winter's cold, When dreary north winds shrilly whistle Over the desolate fields of thistle; Thou comest to bless in beauty's ways, With memories of summer days, When at the touch of gentle showers, Decked were the fields in myriad flowers; Yet more than all I praise to-day This blossom bright, Since on her breast it lay Only last night. JOHN ANGUS THOMPSON. _Wesleyan Literary Monthly_ ~My Treasures.~ My jewels are the drops of dew That sparkle on the grass, Or break into a thousand bits When ruthless footsteps pass. My gold bedecks the sunlit cloud, Untouched by human hand; My silver is the sleeping sea, Unshadowed by the land. My friend is every wooded hill, And every singing brook; For they are always true to me, And wear a kindly look And yet how few would ever think To count these treasures o'er; But, dreaming oft of Satan's gold, Would ask kind Heaven for more. Co-heirs of Nature all may be, Although of humble birth; And yet, the miser hugs his gold, While poor men own the earth. WILBUR DANIEL SPENCER. _Dartmouth Literary Monthly,_ ~A Pasture.~ Rough pasture where the blackberries grow!-- It bears upon its churlish face No sign of beauty, art or grace; Not here the silvery coverts glow That April and the angler know. There sleeps no brooklet in this wild, Smooth-resting on its mosses sleek, Like loving lips upon a cheek Soft as the face of maid or child-- Just boulders, helter-skelter piled. Ungenerous nature but endows These acres with the stumps and stocks Which should be trees, with rude, gray rocks; Over these humps and hollows browse, Daily, the awkward, shambling cows. Here on the right, a straggling wall Of crazy, granite stones, and there A rotten pine-trunk, brown and bare, A mass of huge brakes, rank and tall-- The burning blue sky over all. And yet these blackberries! shy and chaste! The noisy markets know no such-- So ripe they tumble when you touch; Long, taper--rarer wines they waste Than ever town-bred topers taste. And tell me! have you looked o'erhead From lawns where lazy hammocks swing And seen such bird-throats lent a wing? Such flames of song that flashed and fled? Well, maybe--_I'm_ not city-bred. FREDERIC LAWRENCE KNOWLES. _Wesleyan Literary Monthly._ ~Skating Song.~ Moon so bright, Stars alight, Clouds adance, adance; Snow of night, Fleecy white, Silver ice agleam, aglance. High, hey, high, hey, Skimming the smooth, bright way, High, hey, high, hey, Over the ice away. Cheeks so bright, Face alight, Heart adance, adance; Eyes of night, Brow of white, Silver skates agleam, aglance. High, hey, high, hey, Skimming the smooth, bright way, High, hey, high, hey, Over the ice away. CORA ISABEL WARBURTON. _Smith College Monthly_. ~A Mystery.~ Once, a little while ago, 'twas so warm and still Down here, in this soft, dark place. Now I feel a thrill Darting through me. Shivering, quivering, bursts my wrappage brown, Struggling, striving, something in me reaches up and down. Ah! it must be death, this anguish that I cannot understand. One inch more,--I lift my head above the parted mould, Oh! what rapture! Falling on me something sweet and gold, Something humming, singing, moving, growing on each side; High above me a blue glory stretching far and wide,-- And I know 'twas life, that anguish that I could not understand. MARY E. HOYT. _Bryn Mawr Lantern._ ~The Birch-Tree.~ Like a shower, breeze-suspended, Caught and played with by the air, April from the sky descended, Tricked by sunshine unaware, To a pale green fountain fashioned, Silver shaft with airy fling, Tremulous and sun-impassioned Is the birch-tree in the spring. Like the spirit of the fountain-- Seen when earth was yet a child-- Leaping, white-armed, from the mountain, Laughing, beckoning, water-wild, Sheen of mist her beauty veiling, Which she only half can hide, Garments o'er her white feet trailing, Seems the birch at summer-tide. E.A.H. _Inlander_. ~My Quest.~ Over the meadow and over the hill, Over the heath and heather, I seek for the spot where the dawn-wind sleeps, And slips from its night-bound tether. Is it here? Is it there? Pray tell me where The morning zephyrs tarry, That I may bide Where they crouch and hide, And sip of the dew they carry. Over the billow and over the wave, Over the vales and valleys, I seek for the spot where the night-wind dreams, And rests from its twilight rallies. Is it here? Is it there? Pray tell me where The breath of night lies sleeping, That I may rest In its downy nest, With its breath my eyelids steeping. W.T.O. _Trinity Tablet._ ~Lullaby.~ Breezes in the tree-tops high, Sighing softly as you blow, Sing a restful lullaby; Sing the sweetest song you know, Something slow, something low,-- Lulla-lullaby. Barley heads and crested wheat, Swaying gently to and fro, Sing the music of the heat, Sing the drowsiest song you know, Something slow, something low,-- Lulla-lullaby. Brooklet hidden in the grass, Murmuring faintly as you flow, Sing a sleep song while you pass; Sing the dreamiest song you know, Something slow, something low,-- Lulla-lullaby. MABEL A. CARPENTER. _Wellesley Magazine._ ~Our Scarlet King.~ He comes along the great highway In scarlet coat and crown, And high the shrilling trumpets bray And fierce his lancers frown. Bright scarlet is his royal crest; Bright scarlet shines his royal vest; Oh! pr'ythee canst thou bring A knight more nobly known and dressed Than this, our Scarlet King. See how he throws his largess gold Into the bending trees. He doth the forest walls enfold In purple tapestries. He giveth all a majesty; He holds in fiel the shore, the sea; Oh! pr'ythee come and sing A song, and sing it merrily To him, our Scarlet King. Past crypt and wayside canopy, Beyond each bloarny throne, Full fleetly speed his heralds free To make his advent known. His scarlet banners bend and blow; Our scarlet vintages shall flow; And pr'ythee with us sing, That proud October all may know And hail--"our Scarlet King." HAROLD M. BOWMAN. _Inlander_. ~Bob White.~ At morn, when first the rosy gleam Of rising sun proclaimed the day, There reached me, thro' my last sweet dream, This oft-repeated lay: (Too sweet for cry. Too brief for song, 'Twas borne along The reddening sky) _Bob White! Daylight, Bob White! Daylight!_ At eve, when first the fading glow Of setting sun foretold the night, The same sweet call came, soft and low, Across the dying light: (Too sweet for cry, Too brief for song, 'Twas but a long, Contented sigh) _Bob White! Good Night, Bob White! Good Night!_ FRANCIS CHARLES MCDONALD. _Nassau Literary Monthly._ ~An Evening Song.~ O red, red clouds in the westering sky, That are lit with a lamp of gold, The hours are faint, they sleep, they die, The stars are earthward rolled; Make bright day's burial-place, make bright, So it crimson-canopied be-- It dies, and Fancy out of the night Comes down--comes down to me. O red, red clouds with your glory gone, That are ghostly shapes of gray. My lady dreams by a moon-lit lawn, Away from me--away; Go down--go down from the sky, so the gleams Of the moon shine over the sea, And bring the thought of my lady's dreams Over to me--to me. ROBERT L. HUNGER. _Yale Courant._ ~Panacea ~ When life proves disappointing, And sorrow seems anointing Brows of care, Take a brace and go a-sailing, Either dolphin back or whaling, Anywhere. Fling your troubles to the breezes, Where the salted Ocean sneezes Spray your face-- Never mind the moments flying, There'll be left of care and sighing, Not a trace. ANNIE NYHAN SCEIBNER. _Wisconsin Aegis._ ~The Dive.~ One moment, poised above the flashing blue, The next I'm slipping, sliding through The water, that caresses, yields, resists, Wrapping my sight in cooling, gray-green mists. Another moment, my body swirls, I rise, Shaking the water from my blinded eyes, And strike out strong, glad that I am alive, To swim back to the gray old pile from which I dive. CORNELIA BROWNELL GOULD. _Smith College Monthly._ ~The Robin.~ A STUDY. Abstracted, contemplative air, A sudden run and stop, A glance indifferent round about, Head poised--another hop. A plunge well-aimed, a backward tug, A well-resisted squirm, Then calm indifference as before. But oh, alack, the worm! KATHERINE VAN D. HARKEE, _Vassar Miscellany._ ~A Mountain Brook.~ I come from the depths of the mountain, The dark, hidden, head of the fountain, I spring from a nook in the ledges, And bathe the gray granite's rough edges, I rush over wide mossy masses To quench the hot thirst of the grasses. I bathe the cleft hoofs of the cattle, As o'er the rude ford-stones I rattle. I glide through the glens deep in shadow; I flow in the sun-bathed meadow, And seek, with a shake and a quiver, The still steady flow of the river, Then on to the wild rhythmic motion Of my mother, the sky-tinted ocean. CHARLES OTIS JUDKINS. _Wesleyan Literary Monthly._ ~In the San Joaquin.~ Across the hills the screeching blue-jays fly In countless flocks, and as they hasten by The children look up from their merry play To watch them slowly, slowly fade away; And night steals up the corners of the sky. No silent, trembling star shines there, on high: The hollow rivers, that were still and dry, Begin to murmur; falls a gentle spray Across the hills. The stubble colors through the fallen hay, And infant grasses pin the moistened clay; The drooping trees shake off their dust and sigh; And waking nature, with a gladdened eye, Beholds the summer lose its ending day, Across the hills. NORMAN HUTCHINSON. _Cornell Magazine._ ~Four-o'clocks.~ It was that they loved the children, The children used to say, For there was no doubt That when school was out, At the same time every day, Down by the wall, Where the grass grew tall, Under the hedge of the hollyhocks, One by one, At the touch of the sun, There opened the four-o'clocks. It was that they loved the children;-- But the children have gone away, And somebody goes When nobody knows, At the same time every day, To see by the wall, Where the grass grows tall, Under the hedge of the hollyhocks, How, one by one, At the touch of the sun, Still open the four-o'clocks. LILLIAN B. QUIMBY. _Wellesley Magazine,_ ~The Voice of the West Wind.~ The Wind of the East and the Wind of the North From the gates of the Sun and the Cold blow forth: They wander wide and they wander free, But never a word do they speak to me; I hear but the voice I know the best, Of my brother-in-blood the Wind of the West, And the word that the West Wind whispers me, Is a message, Heart of my heart, for thee. Heart of my heart, when the skies hang low, And all day long the light winds blow, When the South, and the East, and the North, are gray And the soft rain falls through the autumn day, Then, Light of my soul, canst thou not hear The voice of the West Wind, soft and clear? "Come," he whispers, and "Come," again, Leave the dull skies and the steady rain, Leave thou the lowlands and chill gray sea, Heart of my own heart, and come with me. ROBERT PALFREY UTTER. _Harvard Monthly_ ~A Fairy Barcarolle.~ My skiff is of bark from the white birch-tree, A butterfly's wing is my sail, And twisted grasses my cordage be, Stretched taut by the favoring gale. My cushions are pearly gossamers frail, My mast is a tapering reed, My rudder a blush-rose petal pale, My ballast of wild-flower seed. Through forests old and meads remote We'll sail on the leaf-arched streams, Down the silver rivers of Fancy float To the golden sea of dreams. WILLIAM HOLDEN EDDY. _Brown Magazine._ ~A Bird's Cradle-Song.~ Weary, weary loves! Day is o'er and past; Every drooping lily bell Chimes good-night at last. Softly! nursing winds Swing them to and fro With the tinkle, tinkle, tinkle of the rivulet below. Even the willow leaves Brooding silence keep; All the great, good world is hushed-- Hushed that you may sleep! But in heaven two wee, wee stars Dance and whirl and glow To the tinkle, tinkle, tinkle of the rivulet below. EVELYN M. WORTHLEY. _Mount Holyoke._ ~The Wood Orchid.~ A butterfly, wing-weary, came to find A sweet seclusion from the amorous wind, Deep in the pine woods, where the dusky trees Shut in the forest's sounding silences With close-twined boughs from which the breeze has blown The fragrance-breathing fragments of the cone. Deeply she drank the nectar of repose. Spreading her downy wings all veined with rose, Upon the gray-green mosses, cool and dank, Languished the sprite, and in a swoon she sank, While a delicious numbness born of death Stilled the soft wings that stirred with each faint breath. One summer morning, while the languid breeze Strayed with a languid murmur thro' the trees, It breathed a kiss upon a folded pair Of pink flushed wings--and found them rooted there. _College Folio._ ~A Song.~ Oh, the hopper grass is clattering and flying all the day Round the tawny, trembling tassels of the corn, While the dreamy, drowsy bumblebee goes bumbling on his way, And the locust in the woodland sounds his horn. Above the rattling cottonwoods that line the lisping stream, The crow is proudly calling to the sun, And the beetles in the bushes make the summer day a dream, For they hum and cheep until the day is done. When the lotus-flower closes, and the stars are in the sky, Then the owl awakes and sings a plaintive song, While the crickets in the thickets sing the soothing lullaby, And the katydid is chirping all night long. S.P. _Kansas University Weekly_. ~The Skaters.~ Above the frozen floods Gay feet keep time, Steel-shod, their measures beat Insistent rhyme. No cares oppress the hearts Glad youth makes light; The winter skies and happy eyes Alike are bright. Shores where the summer waves Have whispered low, Echo the skaters' song, As to and fro Glide flitting forms, And watch-fire's glow Leaps into frosty air And crimsons snow. Fly, skaters, with wing'd feet! The night wears on; Be your stroke ne'er so fleet, Night soon is gone. With morning's dawn, the fires In ashes lie, And mountains keep their ward Silently by. GRACE W. LEACH _Madisonensis_. ~By the Roadside.~ Shy violets among the tangled grass; Red robin, to thine own mate blithely singing, Among the elm-tree boughs so gayly swinging; My love, my true love, down this way will pass. How shall you know her? By her sunny hair, Her grave, sweet eyes, all pure, no evil knowing: Oh, robin! thou wilt turn to watch her going; There is no maid in all the land so fair. Shy violets among the tangled grass, Shed forth your richest perfumes 'neath her feet! And gallant robin, when thou seest her pass, Trill out thy merriest lay her ears to greet; And elm-tree branches, drooping low above her, Whisper to her that I came by and love her. LOUISE R. LOOMIS. _Wellesley Magazine._ [Illustration: A WELLESLEY GIRL.] ~"A White Morning"~ Many a morning the trees' slim fingers Lift to the blue their frosted tips; Winter has paused beside them, passing, And blown upon them, through icy lips. After the day has dawned in earnest, Comes a blaze from the soul of things. Some small snow-bird, beneath the window, Beats out life, from his restless wings. Never trust to the cold and silence; Suns will rise, and the day climb higher. Under the snows are resurrections; Under the frost is hidden fire. GRACE W. LEACH. _Madisonensis_. V. IN SERIOUS MOOD ~Verses.~ What must be must be, little one, The dark night follow the day, And the ebbing tide to the seaward glide Across the moonlit bay. What must be must be, little one, The winter follow the fall, And the prying wind an entrance find Through the chinks of the cottage wall. What must be must be, little one, The brown hair turn to gray, And the soul like the light of the early night Slip gently far away. FORSYTH WICKES. _Yale Literary Magazine._ ~A Little Parable.~ Just beyond the toiling town I saw a child to-day, With busy little hands of brown Making toys of clay. Working there with all his heart, Beneath the spreading trees, He moulded with unconscious art Whatever seemed to please. Men and fortress, plates and pies, All out of clay he made, Then rubbed with chubby fists his eyes, And slumbered in the shade. JOHN CLAIR MINOT. _Bowdoin Quill_. ~When Morning Breaks.~ When morning breaks, what fortune waits for me? What ships shall rise from out the misty sea? What friends shall clasp my hand in fond farewell? What dream-wrought castles, as night's clouds dispel, Shall raise their sun-kissed towers upon the lea? To-night the moon-queen shining wide and free, To-night the sighing breeze, the song, and thee; But time is brief. What cometh, who can tell, When morning breaks? To-night, to-night, then happy let us be! To-night, to-night, life's shadowy cares shall flee! And though the dawn come in with chime or knell, When night recalls its last bright sentinel, I shall, at least, have memories left to me, When morning breaks. EDWARD A. RALEIGH. _Cornell Magazine_. ~A Lost Memory.~ Listening in the twilight, very long ago, To a sweet voice singing very soft and low. Was the song a ballad of a lady fair, Saved from deadly peril by a bold corsair, Or a song of battle and a flying foe? Nay, I have forgotten, 'tis so long ago. Scarcely half remembered, more than half forgot, I can only tell you what the song was not. Memory, unfaithful, has not kept that strain, Heard once in the twilight, never heard again. Every day brings twilight, but no twilight brings To my ear that music on its quiet wings. After autumn sunsets, in the dreaming light, When long summer evenings deepen into night, All that I am sure of, is that, long ago, Some one sang at twilight, very sweet and low. PHILIP C. PECK. _Yale Literary Magazine_. ~The Truth-Seekers.~ They who sought Truth since dawn And sought in vain, Now, at the close of day. Come with slow step and faces drawn With nameless pain, To meet the night half-way. "She whom we love is not! Of her no sight Had we, nor faintest trace!" "Nay, here am I ye sought!"-- Beyond the night They met her, face to face. FRANCIS CHARLES MCDONALD. _Nassau Literary Monthly_. ~To-morrow.~ There is a day which never comes To light the morning sky, But in our thoughts alone it lives, And there may never die; It holds our hopes of future bliss, Our aspirations high, And life itself is but a point In that eternity-- To-morrow. Each sunset brings us nearer that Which earth shall not behold, Where, far away beyond the hills And through the clouds of gold, We see a glimpse of brighter hours Than tongue of bard has told, When marks of time will be effaced, When men will not grow old-- To-morrow. WILBUR DANIEL SPENCER. _Dartmouth Literary Monthly._ ~From My Window.~ I sit within my little room And see the world pass by, The merry, youthful, thoughtless world, That knows not I am I. I watch it from my window ledge Below me, at its play-- It makes an end of foolish things, And thinks the sad ones gay. And there above I sit, alone, Behind my curtains long, And I but peep, and mock a bit, And sing a bit of song. EDITH THEODORA AMES. _Smith College Monthly._ ~To a Friend.~ Your eyes are--but I cannot tell Just what's the color of your eyes, I only know therein doth dwell A something that can sympathize, When selfish love would fail to see The depths revealed alone to me. JOHN GOWDY. _Wesleyan Literary Monthly._ ~Love and Death.~ _Love and death_ is all of poets' singing, What sounds else can stir the heavenly breath? What save these can set the lyre-strings ringing: Love and death? What things else in maiden spirit springing? What words else in all the preacher saith? What thoughts else in God, the world forthbringing? In the moon's pulse and the sea's slow swinging, Death that draws, and love that sighs beneath: Yea, life's wine is mingled; sweet, and stinging,-- Love and death. GEORGIANA GODDARD KING. _Bryn Mawr Lantern._ ~Opportunity.~ I know not what the future holds-- But this I know, Youth is a guest, who on his way Too soon will go. Once gone we call to deafened ears. All prayers are vain! For tears of blood, he will not come Back once again. Then spread the board of Life, with wine And roses drest, Drink deep and long, greet Joy and Love While Youth is guest! ARTHUR KETCHUM. _Williams Literary Monthly,_ ~To Austin Dobson.~ Not unto you the gods gave wings, To scale the far Olympic height, But made content with simpler things, Your Pegasus takes lower flight. Yet while into oblivion float Those vaster songs, sublimely grand-- All men are listening to your note, And as they listen, understand. Sing on, then, while the heart of youth In glad accordance answ'ring thrills, And life and love have still their truth, As spring has still its daffodils. ARTHUR KETCHUM. _Williams Literary Monthly._ ~With a Copy of Keats.~ Like listless lullabies of sail-swept seas Heard from still coves, and dulcet-soft as these, Such is the echo of his perfect song, It lives, it lingers long! We love him more than all his wonder tales, Sweeter his own song than his nightingale's; No voice speaks, in the century that has fled, So deathless from the dead! How many stately epics have been tossed Rudely against Time's shore, and wrecked and lost, While Keats, the dreaming boy, floats down Time's sea His lyric argosy! FREDERIC LAWRENCE KNOWLES. _Wesleyan Literary Monthly._ ~George Du Maurier.~ "Ah, if we knew; if we only knew for certain." "Ah, if we only _knew_!" he said, The master--now laid cold and dead-- Under the sweetest song joy sang This, like a burden, ever rang-- "Ah, if we only _knew_!" can we, Now death shows him the certainty, Now he has won his peace thro' pain, Wish him back to the doubt again? Nay, pass! thou great prince Gentle Heart! Crowned with the deathless days of Art-- To that far country--old, yet ever new-- The land where all the dreams are true. ARTHUR KETCHUM. _Williams Literary Monthly._ ~Lizy Ann.~ "My darter?" Yes, that's Lizy Ann Ez full o' grit ez any man 'T you ever see! She does the chores Days when I can't git out-o'-doors 'Account o' this 'ere rheumatiz, And sees to everything there is To see to here about the place, And never makes a rueful face At housework, like some women do, But does it well--and cheerful, too. There's mother--she's been bedrid now This twenty year. And you'll allow It takes a grist o' care and waitin' To tend on _her_. But I'm a-statin' But jest the facts when this I say: There's never been a single day That gal has left her mother's side Except for meetin', or to ride Through mud and mire, through rain or snow, To market when I couldn't go. "She's thirty-five or so?" Yes, more Than that. She's mighty nigh twoscore. But what's the odds? She's sweet and mild To me and mother as a child. There doesn't breathe a better than Our eldest darter, Lizy Ann! "Had offers?" Wal, I reckon; though She ne'er told me nor mother so. I mind one chap--a likely man-- Who seemed clean gone on Lizy Ann, And yet she let the feller slide, And he's sence found another bride. The roses in her cheeks is gone, And left 'em kinder pale and wan. Her mates is married, dead, or strayed To other places. Youth nor maid No longer comes to see her. Yet You'll hear no murmur of regret. "My life's a part o' heaven's own plan," She often says. Thet's Lizy Ann. EDGAR F. DAVIS. _Bowdoin Quill_. ~Be Thou a Bird, My Soul.~ Be thou a bird, my soul, and mount and soar Out of thy wilderness, Till earth grows less and less, Heaven, more and more. Be thou a bird, and mount, and soar, and sing, Till all the earth shall be Vibrant with ecstasy Beneath thy wing. Be thou a bird, and trust, the autumn come, That through the pathless air Thou shalt find otherwhere Unerring, home. A.G.C. _Kansas University Weekly._ ~God's Acre.~ Oh, so pure the white syringas! Oh, so sweet the lilac bloom In the Arboretum growing Near a granite tomb! By the arching pepper-branches Let us tender silence keep; We have come into God's Acre, Where the children sleep. In the trees the quail are calling To the rabbits at their play, While the little birds, unknowing, Sing their lives away; In the night-time through the branches Wistfully the young stars peep, But, with all these playmates round them, Still the children sleep. Once within that leafy shelter Some one hid herself, to rest, With another little dreamer Folded to her breast; And a sense of consolation Stealeth unto them that weep, While that mother-heart lies sleeping Where the children sleep. Year by year the Christmas berries Redden in the quiet air,-- Year by year the vineyard changes, Buds and ripens there; We give place to other faces, But the years' relentless sweep Cometh not into God's Acre, Where the children sleep. CHARLES KELLOGG FIELD. _Four-Leaved Clover._ ~Unique.~ His presence makes the Spring to blush. He shines in ample Summer's glow, He kindles Autumn's burning-bush, And flings the Winter's fleece of snow. _Hamilton Literary Monthly._ ~A Letter.~ "Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul!" _The Chambered Nautilus._ * * * * * Self, Soul & Co., Architects: _Dear Sirs;_ I find Your "ad." in the _Nautilus_ quite to my mind. Pray build me a mansion (for plans see below) More stately and lofty than this that I know. Dig deep the foundations in reason and truth; I want no pavilion--a fortress forsooth, Secure against windstorms of doctrine and doubt; In style--Emersonian--inside and out. It should, sir, be double, with rooms on each side, For justice and mercy, for meekness and pride; For heating and lighting, it only requires Faith's old-fashioned candles, and Love's open fires. Write me minimum charges in struggle and stress, And extras in suffering. Yours truly, C.S. _Kalends_. ~The Record of a Life.~ He lived and died, and all is passed away That bound him to his so-soon-darkened day. He is forgotten in time's sweeping tide; This is his history: He lived--and died! HENRY DAVID GRAY. _Madisonensis_. ~Who Knows?~ If when the day has been sped with laughter, Mirth and song as the light wind blows, A sob and a sigh come quickly after-- Who knows? If eyes that smile till the day's completeness Droop a little at evening's close, And tears cloud over their tender sweetness-- Who knows? If lips that laugh while the sun be shining, Curved as fair as the leaf of a rose, Quiver with grief at day's declining-- Who knows? If the heart that seems to know no aching While the fair, gold sunlight gleams and glows, Under the stars be bitterly breaking-- Who knows? JESSIE V. KERR. _Kalends_. ~Inconstancy.~ I sighed as the soul of April fled, And a tear on my cheek Told of the love I had borne the dead-- And I signed the cross, and bowed my head-- And was sad for a week. With a carol and catch the May came in With her wonderful way-- And I saucily chucked her under the chin, And tuned me the strings of my violin-- And was glad for a day. FRANCIS CHARLES MCDONALD. _Nassau Literary Monthly._ ~Yesterday.~ Thou art to me like all the days-- They ebb and flow with punctual tides, Leave driftwood--wreckage on the sands, Perhaps a shell besides; Swift, incommunicable, vast, They poise--then perish in the past. And yet I have not all forgot Those years when every day seemed long, A separate age of joys and play, Of wonder-tales and song; I marvel, Yesterday, to know Thou still art childhood's Long Ago! FREDERIC LAWRENCE KNOWLES. _Harvard Advocate._ ~The Last Word.~ Life is a boat that is drifting, Riding high, rocking low, While the tide turns. Love is the sands that are shifting In and out, to and fro, While the tide turns, Let the boat drift, no oar to lift, Clear sky above, calm sea below, Till the tide turns. Dream on the shore, wander it o'er; Gold gleam the sands 'neath the sun's glow. Till the tide turns. Time enough, love, to be lifting 'Gainst the waves, then, thy oar When the tide turns. Dreams are sweet, love, e'er the shifting Shows how false is the shore, When the tide turns. ELIZABETH SANDERSON. _University of California Magazine._ "_Whence all these verses?" you ask me. Would that I knew! "How came they written?"--You task me, Who can tell, who! Stripping a butterfly's pinions To learn how they grew; Wasting a violet's dominions To search for the dew; Spoiling the odor, the juices, The flavor, the hue; Rifling the haunts of the Muses, For secrets and clue! All one can say is: "Sir Quibbler, Once on a time, Songs in the heart of the scribbler Sang into rhyme; Latin lost all its enchantment; Logic was worse; Joy claimed its rights; the result is Just 'college verse_.'" 
109	----	Renascence and Other Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay Contents: Renascence All I could see from where I stood Interim The room is full of you!--As I came in The Suicide "Curse thee, Life, I will live with thee no more! God's World O world, I cannot hold thee close enough! Afternoon on a Hill I will be the gladdest thing Sorrow Sorrow like a ceaseless rain Tavern I'll keep a little tavern Ashes of Life Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike; The Little Ghost I knew her for a little ghost Kin to Sorrow Am I kin to Sorrow, Three Songs of Shattering I The first rose on my rose-tree II Let the little birds sing; III All the dog-wood blossoms are underneath the tree! The Shroud Death, I say, my heart is bowed The Dream Love, if I weep it will not matter, Indifference I said,--for Love was laggard, O, Love was slow to come,-- Witch-Wife She is neither pink nor pale, Blight Hard seeds of hate I planted When the Year Grows Old I cannot but remember Sonnets I Thou art not lovelier than lilacs,--no, II Time does not bring relief; you all have lied III Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring, IV Not in this chamber only at my birth-- V If I should learn, in some quite casual way, VI Bluebeard This door you might not open, and you did; Renascence and Other Poems Renascence All I could see from where I stood Was three long mountains and a wood; I turned and looked another way, And saw three islands in a bay. So with my eyes I traced the line Of the horizon, thin and fine, Straight around till I was come Back to where I'd started from; And all I saw from where I stood Was three long mountains and a wood. Over these things I could not see; These were the things that bounded me; And I could touch them with my hand, Almost, I thought, from where I stand. And all at once things seemed so small My breath came short, and scarce at all. But, sure, the sky is big, I said; Miles and miles above my head; So here upon my back I'll lie And look my fill into the sky. And so I looked, and, after all, The sky was not so very tall. The sky, I said, must somewhere stop, And--sure enough!--I see the top! The sky, I thought, is not so grand; I 'most could touch it with my hand! And reaching up my hand to try, I screamed to feel it touch the sky. I screamed, and--lo!--Infinity Came down and settled over me; Forced back my scream into my chest, Bent back my arm upon my breast, And, pressing of the Undefined The definition on my mind, Held up before my eyes a glass Through which my shrinking sight did pass Until it seemed I must behold Immensity made manifold; Whispered to me a word whose sound Deafened the air for worlds around, And brought unmuffled to my ears The gossiping of friendly spheres, The creaking of the tented sky, The ticking of Eternity. I saw and heard, and knew at last The How and Why of all things, past, And present, and forevermore. The Universe, cleft to the core, Lay open to my probing sense That, sick'ning, I would fain pluck thence But could not,--nay! But needs must suck At the great wound, and could not pluck My lips away till I had drawn All venom out.--Ah, fearful pawn! For my omniscience paid I toll In infinite remorse of soul. All sin was of my sinning, all Atoning mine, and mine the gall Of all regret. Mine was the weight Of every brooded wrong, the hate That stood behind each envious thrust, Mine every greed, mine every lust. And all the while for every grief, Each suffering, I craved relief With individual desire,-- Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire About a thousand people crawl; Perished with each,--then mourned for all! A man was starving in Capri; He moved his eyes and looked at me; I felt his gaze, I heard his moan, And knew his hunger as my own. I saw at sea a great fog bank Between two ships that struck and sank; A thousand screams the heavens smote; And every scream tore through my throat. No hurt I did not feel, no death That was not mine; mine each last breath That, crying, met an answering cry From the compassion that was I. All suffering mine, and mine its rod; Mine, pity like the pity of God. Ah, awful weight! Infinity Pressed down upon the finite Me! My anguished spirit, like a bird, Beating against my lips I heard; Yet lay the weight so close about There was no room for it without. And so beneath the weight lay I And suffered death, but could not die. Long had I lain thus, craving death, When quietly the earth beneath Gave way, and inch by inch, so great At last had grown the crushing weight, Into the earth I sank till I Full six feet under ground did lie, And sank no more,--there is no weight Can follow here, however great. From off my breast I felt it roll, And as it went my tortured soul Burst forth and fled in such a gust That all about me swirled the dust. Deep in the earth I rested now; Cool is its hand upon the brow And soft its breast beneath the head Of one who is so gladly dead. And all at once, and over all The pitying rain began to fall; I lay and heard each pattering hoof Upon my lowly, thatched roof, And seemed to love the sound far more Than ever I had done before. For rain it hath a friendly sound To one who's six feet underground; And scarce the friendly voice or face: A grave is such a quiet place. The rain, I said, is kind to come And speak to me in my new home. I would I were alive again To kiss the fingers of the rain, To drink into my eyes the shine Of every slanting silver line, To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze From drenched and dripping apple-trees. For soon the shower will be done, And then the broad face of the sun Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth Until the world with answering mirth Shakes joyously, and each round drop Rolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top. How can I bear it; buried here, While overhead the sky grows clear And blue again after the storm? O, multi-colored, multiform, Beloved beauty over me, That I shall never, never see Again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold, That I shall never more behold! Sleeping your myriad magics through, Close-sepulchred away from you! O God, I cried, give me new birth, And put me back upon the earth! Upset each cloud's gigantic gourd And let the heavy rain, down-poured In one big torrent, set me free, Washing my grave away from me! I ceased; and through the breathless hush That answered me, the far-off rush Of herald wings came whispering Like music down the vibrant string Of my ascending prayer, and--crash! Before the wild wind's whistling lash The startled storm-clouds reared on high And plunged in terror down the sky, And the big rain in one black wave Fell from the sky and struck my grave. I know not how such things can be; I only know there came to me A fragrance such as never clings To aught save happy living things; A sound as of some joyous elf Singing sweet songs to please himself, And, through and over everything, A sense of glad awakening. The grass, a-tiptoe at my ear, Whispering to me I could hear; I felt the rain's cool finger-tips Brushed tenderly across my lips, Laid gently on my sealed sight, And all at once the heavy night Fell from my eyes and I could see,-- A drenched and dripping apple-tree, A last long line of silver rain, A sky grown clear and blue again. And as I looked a quickening gust Of wind blew up to me and thrust Into my face a miracle Of orchard-breath, and with the smell,-- I know not how such things can be!-- I breathed my soul back into me. Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I And hailed the earth with such a cry As is not heard save from a man Who has been dead, and lives again. About the trees my arms I wound; Like one gone mad I hugged the ground; I raised my quivering arms on high; I laughed and laughed into the sky, Till at my throat a strangling sob Caught fiercely, and a great heart-throb Sent instant tears into my eyes; O God, I cried, no dark disguise Can e'er hereafter hide from me Thy radiant identity! Thou canst not move across the grass But my quick eyes will see Thee pass, Nor speak, however silently, But my hushed voice will answer Thee. I know the path that tells Thy way Through the cool eve of every day; God, I can push the grass apart And lay my finger on Thy heart! The world stands out on either side No wider than the heart is wide; Above the world is stretched the sky,-- No higher than the soul is high. The heart can push the sea and land Farther away on either hand; The soul can split the sky in two, And let the face of God shine through. But East and West will pinch the heart That can not keep them pushed apart; And he whose soul is flat--the sky Will cave in on him by and by. Interim The room is full of you!--As I came in And closed the door behind me, all at once A something in the air, intangible, Yet stiff with meaning, struck my senses sick!-- Sharp, unfamiliar odors have destroyed Each other room's dear personality. The heavy scent of damp, funereal flowers,-- The very essence, hush-distilled, of Death-- Has strangled that habitual breath of home Whose expiration leaves all houses dead; And wheresoe'er I look is hideous change. Save here. Here 'twas as if a weed-choked gate Had opened at my touch, and I had stepped Into some long-forgot, enchanted, strange, Sweet garden of a thousand years ago And suddenly thought, "I have been here before!" You are not here. I know that you are gone, And will not ever enter here again. And yet it seems to me, if I should speak, Your silent step must wake across the hall; If I should turn my head, that your sweet eyes Would kiss me from the door.--So short a time To teach my life its transposition to This difficult and unaccustomed key!-- The room is as you left it; your last touch-- A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself As saintly--hallows now each simple thing; Hallows and glorifies, and glows between The dust's grey fingers like a shielded light. There is your book, just as you laid it down, Face to the table,--I cannot believe That you are gone!--Just then it seemed to me You must be here. I almost laughed to think How like reality the dream had been; Yet knew before I laughed, and so was still. That book, outspread, just as you laid it down! Perhaps you thought, "I wonder what comes next, And whether this or this will be the end"; So rose, and left it, thinking to return. Perhaps that chair, when you arose and passed Out of the room, rocked silently a while Ere it again was still. When you were gone Forever from the room, perhaps that chair, Stirred by your movement, rocked a little while, Silently, to and fro. . . And here are the last words your fingers wrote, Scrawled in broad characters across a page In this brown book I gave you. Here your hand, Guiding your rapid pen, moved up and down. Here with a looping knot you crossed a "t", And here another like it, just beyond These two eccentric "e's". You were so small, And wrote so brave a hand! How strange it seems That of all words these are the words you chose! And yet a simple choice; you did not know You would not write again. If you had known-- But then, it does not matter,--and indeed If you had known there was so little time You would have dropped your pen and come to me And this page would be empty, and some phrase Other than this would hold my wonder now. Yet, since you could not know, and it befell That these are the last words your fingers wrote, There is a dignity some might not see In this, "I picked the first sweet-pea to-day." To-day! Was there an opening bud beside it You left until to-morrow?--O my love, The things that withered,--and you came not back! That day you filled this circle of my arms That now is empty. (O my empty life!) That day--that day you picked the first sweet-pea,-- And brought it in to show me! I recall With terrible distinctness how the smell Of your cool gardens drifted in with you. I know, you held it up for me to see And flushed because I looked not at the flower, But at your face; and when behind my look You saw such unmistakable intent You laughed and brushed your flower against my lips. (You were the fairest thing God ever made, I think.) And then your hands above my heart Drew down its stem into a fastening, And while your head was bent I kissed your hair. I wonder if you knew. (Beloved hands! Somehow I cannot seem to see them still. Somehow I cannot seem to see the dust In your bright hair.) What is the need of Heaven When earth can be so sweet?--If only God Had let us love,--and show the world the way! Strange cancellings must ink th' eternal books When love-crossed-out will bring the answer right! That first sweet-pea! I wonder where it is. It seems to me I laid it down somewhere, And yet,--I am not sure. I am not sure, Even, if it was white or pink; for then 'Twas much like any other flower to me, Save that it was the first. I did not know, Then, that it was the last. If I had known-- But then, it does not matter. Strange how few, After all's said and done, the things that are Of moment. Few indeed! When I can make Of ten small words a rope to hang the world! "I had you and I have you now no more." There, there it dangles,--where's the little truth That can for long keep footing under that When its slack syllables tighten to a thought? Here, let me write it down! I wish to see Just how a thing like that will look on paper! "*I had you and I have you now no more*." O little words, how can you run so straight Across the page, beneath the weight you bear? How can you fall apart, whom such a theme Has bound together, and hereafter aid In trivial expression, that have been So hideously dignified?--Would God That tearing you apart would tear the thread I strung you on! Would God--O God, my mind Stretches asunder on this merciless rack Of imagery! O, let me sleep a while! Would I could sleep, and wake to find me back In that sweet summer afternoon with you. Summer? 'Tis summer still by the calendar! How easily could God, if He so willed, Set back the world a little turn or two! Correct its griefs, and bring its joys again! We were so wholly one I had not thought That we could die apart. I had not thought That I could move,--and you be stiff and still! That I could speak,--and you perforce be dumb! I think our heart-strings were, like warp and woof In some firm fabric, woven in and out; Your golden filaments in fair design Across my duller fibre. And to-day The shining strip is rent; the exquisite Fine pattern is destroyed; part of your heart Aches in my breast; part of my heart lies chilled In the damp earth with you. I have been torn In two, and suffer for the rest of me. What is my life to me? And what am I To life,--a ship whose star has guttered out? A Fear that in the deep night starts awake Perpetually, to find its senses strained Against the taut strings of the quivering air, Awaiting the return of some dread chord? Dark, Dark, is all I find for metaphor; All else were contrast,--save that contrast's wall Is down, and all opposed things flow together Into a vast monotony, where night And day, and frost and thaw, and death and life, Are synonyms. What now--what now to me Are all the jabbering birds and foolish flowers That clutter up the world? You were my song! Now, let discord scream! You were my flower! Now let the world grow weeds! For I shall not Plant things above your grave--(the common balm Of the conventional woe for its own wound!) Amid sensations rendered negative By your elimination stands to-day, Certain, unmixed, the element of grief; I sorrow; and I shall not mock my truth With travesties of suffering, nor seek To effigy its incorporeal bulk In little wry-faced images of woe. I cannot call you back; and I desire No utterance of my immaterial voice. I cannot even turn my face this way Or that, and say, "My face is turned to you"; I know not where you are, I do not know If Heaven hold you or if earth transmute, Body and soul, you into earth again; But this I know:--not for one second's space Shall I insult my sight with visionings Such as the credulous crowd so eager-eyed Beholds, self-conjured, in the empty air. Let the world wail! Let drip its easy tears! My sorrow shall be dumb! --What do I say? God! God!--God pity me! Am I gone mad That I should spit upon a rosary? Am I become so shrunken? Would to God I too might feel that frenzied faith whose touch Makes temporal the most enduring grief; Though it must walk a while, as is its wont, With wild lamenting! Would I too might weep Where weeps the world and hangs its piteous wreaths For its new dead! Not Truth, but Faith, it is That keeps the world alive. If all at once Faith were to slacken,--that unconscious faith Which must, I know, yet be the corner-stone Of all believing,--birds now flying fearless Across would drop in terror to the earth; Fishes would drown; and the all-governing reins Would tangle in the frantic hands of God And the worlds gallop headlong to destruction! O God, I see it now, and my sick brain Staggers and swoons! How often over me Flashes this breathlessness of sudden sight In which I see the universe unrolled Before me like a scroll and read thereon Chaos and Doom, where helpless planets whirl Dizzily round and round and round and round, Like tops across a table, gathering speed With every spin, to waver on the edge One instant--looking over--and the next To shudder and lurch forward out of sight-- * * * * * Ah, I am worn out--I am wearied out-- It is too much--I am but flesh and blood, And I must sleep. Though you were dead again, I am but flesh and blood and I must sleep. The Suicide "Curse thee, Life, I will live with thee no more! Thou hast mocked me, starved me, beat my body sore! And all for a pledge that was not pledged by me, I have kissed thy crust and eaten sparingly That I might eat again, and met thy sneers With deprecations, and thy blows with tears,-- Aye, from thy glutted lash, glad, crawled away, As if spent passion were a holiday! And now I go. Nor threat, nor easy vow Of tardy kindness can avail thee now With me, whence fear and faith alike are flown; Lonely I came, and I depart alone, And know not where nor unto whom I go; But that thou canst not follow me I know." Thus I to Life, and ceased; but through my brain My thought ran still, until I spake again: "Ah, but I go not as I came,--no trace Is mine to bear away of that old grace I brought! I have been heated in thy fires, Bent by thy hands, fashioned to thy desires, Thy mark is on me! I am not the same Nor ever more shall be, as when I came. Ashes am I of all that once I seemed. In me all's sunk that leapt, and all that dreamed Is wakeful for alarm,--oh, shame to thee, For the ill change that thou hast wrought in me, Who laugh no more nor lift my throat to sing! Ah, Life, I would have been a pleasant thing To have about the house when I was grown If thou hadst left my little joys alone! I asked of thee no favor save this one: That thou wouldst leave me playing in the sun! And this thou didst deny, calling my name Insistently, until I rose and came. I saw the sun no more.--It were not well So long on these unpleasant thoughts to dwell, Need I arise to-morrow and renew Again my hated tasks, but I am through With all things save my thoughts and this one night, So that in truth I seem already quite Free and remote from thee,--I feel no haste And no reluctance to depart; I taste Merely, with thoughtful mien, an unknown draught, That in a little while I shall have quaffed." Thus I to Life, and ceased, and slightly smiled, Looking at nothing; and my thin dreams filed Before me one by one till once again I set new words unto an old refrain: "Treasures thou hast that never have been mine! Warm lights in many a secret chamber shine Of thy gaunt house, and gusts of song have blown Like blossoms out to me that sat alone! And I have waited well for thee to show If any share were mine,--and now I go! Nothing I leave, and if I naught attain I shall but come into mine own again!" Thus I to Life, and ceased, and spake no more, But turning, straightway, sought a certain door In the rear wall. Heavy it was, and low And dark,--a way by which none e'er would go That other exit had, and never knock Was heard thereat,--bearing a curious lock Some chance had shown me fashioned faultily, Whereof Life held content the useless key, And great coarse hinges, thick and rough with rust, Whose sudden voice across a silence must, I knew, be harsh and horrible to hear,-- A strange door, ugly like a dwarf.--So near I came I felt upon my feet the chill Of acid wind creeping across the sill. So stood longtime, till over me at last Came weariness, and all things other passed To make it room; the still night drifted deep Like snow about me, and I longed for sleep. But, suddenly, marking the morning hour, Bayed the deep-throated bell within the tower! Startled, I raised my head,--and with a shout Laid hold upon the latch,--and was without. * * * * * Ah, long-forgotten, well-remembered road, Leading me back unto my old abode, My father's house! There in the night I came, And found them feasting, and all things the same As they had been before. A splendour hung Upon the walls, and such sweet songs were sung As, echoing out of very long ago, Had called me from the house of Life, I know. So fair their raiment shone I looked in shame On the unlovely garb in which I came; Then straightway at my hesitancy mocked: "It is my father's house!" I said and knocked; And the door opened. To the shining crowd Tattered and dark I entered, like a cloud, Seeing no face but his; to him I crept, And "Father!" I cried, and clasped his knees, and wept. Ah, days of joy that followed! All alone I wandered through the house. My own, my own, My own to touch, my own to taste and smell, All I had lacked so long and loved so well! None shook me out of sleep, nor hushed my song, Nor called me in from the sunlight all day long. I know not when the wonder came to me Of what my father's business might be, And whither fared and on what errands bent The tall and gracious messengers he sent. Yet one day with no song from dawn till night Wondering, I sat, and watched them out of sight. And the next day I called; and on the third Asked them if I might go,--but no one heard. Then, sick with longing, I arose at last And went unto my father,--in that vast Chamber wherein he for so many years Has sat, surrounded by his charts and spheres. "Father," I said, "Father, I cannot play The harp that thou didst give me, and all day I sit in idleness, while to and fro About me thy serene, grave servants go; And I am weary of my lonely ease. Better a perilous journey overseas Away from thee, than this, the life I lead, To sit all day in the sunshine like a weed That grows to naught,--I love thee more than they Who serve thee most; yet serve thee in no way. Father, I beg of thee a little task To dignify my days,--'tis all I ask Forever, but forever, this denied, I perish." "Child," my father's voice replied, "All things thy fancy hath desired of me Thou hast received. I have prepared for thee Within my house a spacious chamber, where Are delicate things to handle and to wear, And all these things are thine. Dost thou love song? My minstrels shall attend thee all day long. Or sigh for flowers? My fairest gardens stand Open as fields to thee on every hand. And all thy days this word shall hold the same: No pleasure shalt thou lack that thou shalt name. But as for tasks--" he smiled, and shook his head; "Thou hadst thy task, and laidst it by", he said. God's World O world, I cannot hold thee close enough! Thy winds, thy wide grey skies! Thy mists, that roll and rise! Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff! World, World, I cannot get thee close enough! Long have I known a glory in it all, But never knew I this; Here such a passion is As stretcheth me apart,--Lord, I do fear Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year; My soul is all but out of me,--let fall No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call. Afternoon on a Hill I will be the gladdest thing Under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers And not pick one. I will look at cliffs and clouds With quiet eyes, Watch the wind bow down the grass, And the grass rise. And when lights begin to show Up from the town, I will mark which must be mine, And then start down! Sorrow Sorrow like a ceaseless rain Beats upon my heart. People twist and scream in pain,-- Dawn will find them still again; This has neither wax nor wane, Neither stop nor start. People dress and go to town; I sit in my chair. All my thoughts are slow and brown: Standing up or sitting down Little matters, or what gown Or what shoes I wear. Tavern I'll keep a little tavern Below the high hill's crest, Wherein all grey-eyed people May set them down and rest. There shall be plates a-plenty, And mugs to melt the chill Of all the grey-eyed people Who happen up the hill. There sound will sleep the traveller, And dream his journey's end, But I will rouse at midnight The falling fire to tend. Aye, 'tis a curious fancy-- But all the good I know Was taught me out of two grey eyes A long time ago. Ashes of Life Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike; Eat I must, and sleep I will,--and would that night were here! But ah!--to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike! Would that it were day again!--with twilight near! Love has gone and left me and I don't know what to do; This or that or what you will is all the same to me; But all the things that I begin I leave before I'm through,-- There's little use in anything as far as I can see. Love has gone and left me,--and the neighbors knock and borrow, And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse,-- And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow There's this little street and this little house. The Little Ghost I knew her for a little ghost That in my garden walked; The wall is high--higher than most-- And the green gate was locked. And yet I did not think of that Till after she was gone-- I knew her by the broad white hat, All ruffled, she had on. By the dear ruffles round her feet, By her small hands that hung In their lace mitts, austere and sweet, Her gown's white folds among. I watched to see if she would stay, What she would do--and oh! She looked as if she liked the way I let my garden grow! She bent above my favourite mint With conscious garden grace, She smiled and smiled--there was no hint Of sadness in her face. She held her gown on either side To let her slippers show, And up the walk she went with pride, The way great ladies go. And where the wall is built in new And is of ivy bare She paused--then opened and passed through A gate that once was there. Kin to Sorrow Am I kin to Sorrow, That so oft Falls the knocker of my door-- Neither loud nor soft, But as long accustomed, Under Sorrow's hand? Marigolds around the step And rosemary stand, And then comes Sorrow-- And what does Sorrow care For the rosemary Or the marigolds there? Am I kin to Sorrow? Are we kin? That so oft upon my door-- *Oh, come in*! Three Songs of Shattering I The first rose on my rose-tree Budded, bloomed, and shattered, During sad days when to me Nothing mattered. Grief of grief has drained me clean; Still it seems a pity No one saw,--it must have been Very pretty. II Let the little birds sing; Let the little lambs play; Spring is here; and so 'tis spring;-- But not in the old way! I recall a place Where a plum-tree grew; There you lifted up your face, And blossoms covered you. If the little birds sing, And the little lambs play, Spring is here; and so 'tis spring-- But not in the old way! III All the dog-wood blossoms are underneath the tree! Ere spring was going--ah, spring is gone! And there comes no summer to the like of you and me,-- Blossom time is early, but no fruit sets on. All the dog-wood blossoms are underneath the tree, Browned at the edges, turned in a day; And I would with all my heart they trimmed a mound for me, And weeds were tall on all the paths that led that way! The Shroud Death, I say, my heart is bowed Unto thine,--O mother! This red gown will make a shroud Good as any other! (I, that would not wait to wear My own bridal things, In a dress dark as my hair Made my answerings. I, to-night, that till he came Could not, could not wait, In a gown as bright as flame Held for them the gate.) Death, I say, my heart is bowed Unto thine,--O mother! This red gown will make a shroud Good as any other! The Dream Love, if I weep it will not matter, And if you laugh I shall not care; Foolish am I to think about it, But it is good to feel you there. Love, in my sleep I dreamed of waking,-- White and awful the moonlight reached Over the floor, and somewhere, somewhere, There was a shutter loose,--it screeched! Swung in the wind,--and no wind blowing!-- I was afraid, and turned to you, Put out my hand to you for comfort,-- And you were gone! Cold, cold as dew, Under my hand the moonlight lay! Love, if you laugh I shall not care, But if I weep it will not matter,-- Ah, it is good to feel you there! Indifference I said,--for Love was laggard, O, Love was slow to come,-- "I'll hear his step and know his step when I am warm in bed; But I'll never leave my pillow, though there be some As would let him in--and take him in with tears!" I said. I lay,--for Love was laggard, O, he came not until dawn,-- I lay and listened for his step and could not get to sleep; And he found me at my window with my big cloak on, All sorry with the tears some folks might weep! Witch-Wife She is neither pink nor pale, And she never will be all mine; She learned her hands in a fairy-tale, And her mouth on a valentine. She has more hair than she needs; In the sun 'tis a woe to me! And her voice is a string of colored beads, Or steps leading into the sea. She loves me all that she can, And her ways to my ways resign; But she was not made for any man, And she never will be all mine. Blight Hard seeds of hate I planted That should by now be grown,-- Rough stalks, and from thick stamens A poisonous pollen blown, And odors rank, unbreathable, From dark corollas thrown! At dawn from my damp garden I shook the chilly dew; The thin boughs locked behind me That sprang to let me through; The blossoms slept,--I sought a place Where nothing lovely grew. And there, when day was breaking, I knelt and looked around: The light was near, the silence Was palpitant with sound; I drew my hate from out my breast And thrust it in the ground. Oh, ye so fiercely tended, Ye little seeds of hate! I bent above your growing Early and noon and late, Yet are ye drooped and pitiful,-- I cannot rear ye straight! The sun seeks out my garden, No nook is left in shade, No mist nor mold nor mildew Endures on any blade, Sweet rain slants under every bough: Ye falter, and ye fade. When the Year Grows Old I cannot but remember When the year grows old-- October--November-- How she disliked the cold! She used to watch the swallows Go down across the sky, And turn from the window With a little sharp sigh. And often when the brown leaves Were brittle on the ground, And the wind in the chimney Made a melancholy sound, She had a look about her That I wish I could forget-- The look of a scared thing Sitting in a net! Oh, beautiful at nightfall The soft spitting snow! And beautiful the bare boughs Rubbing to and fro! But the roaring of the fire, And the warmth of fur, And the boiling of the kettle Were beautiful to her! I cannot but remember When the year grows old-- October--November-- How she disliked the cold! Sonnets I Thou art not lovelier than lilacs,--no, Nor honeysuckle; thou art not more fair Than small white single poppies,--I can bear Thy beauty; though I bend before thee, though From left to right, not knowing where to go, I turn my troubled eyes, nor here nor there Find any refuge from thee, yet I swear So has it been with mist,--with moonlight so. Like him who day by day unto his draught Of delicate poison adds him one drop more Till he may drink unharmed the death of ten, Even so, inured to beauty, who have quaffed Each hour more deeply than the hour before, I drink--and live--what has destroyed some men. II Time does not bring relief; you all have lied Who told me time would ease me of my pain! I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide; The old snows melt from every mountain-side, And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane; But last year's bitter loving must remain Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide! There are a hundred places where I fear To go,--so with his memory they brim! And entering with relief some quiet place Where never fell his foot or shone his face I say, "There is no memory of him here!" And so stand stricken, so remembering him! III Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring, And all the flowers that in the springtime grow, And dusty roads, and thistles, and the slow Rising of the round moon, all throats that sing The summer through, and each departing wing, And all the nests that the bared branches show, And all winds that in any weather blow, And all the storms that the four seasons bring. You go no more on your exultant feet Up paths that only mist and morning knew, Or watch the wind, or listen to the beat Of a bird's wings too high in air to view,-- But you were something more than young and sweet And fair,--and the long year remembers you. IV Not in this chamber only at my birth-- When the long hours of that mysterious night Were over, and the morning was in sight-- I cried, but in strange places, steppe and firth I have not seen, through alien grief and mirth; And never shall one room contain me quite Who in so many rooms first saw the light, Child of all mothers, native of the earth. So is no warmth for me at any fire To-day, when the world's fire has burned so low; I kneel, spending my breath in vain desire, At that cold hearth which one time roared so strong, And straighten back in weariness, and long To gather up my little gods and go. V If I should learn, in some quite casual way, That you were gone, not to return again-- Read from the back-page of a paper, say, Held by a neighbor in a subway train, How at the corner of this avenue And such a street (so are the papers filled) A hurrying man--who happened to be you-- At noon to-day had happened to be killed, I should not cry aloud--I could not cry Aloud, or wring my hands in such a place-- I should but watch the station lights rush by With a more careful interest on my face, Or raise my eyes and read with greater care Where to store furs and how to treat the hair. VI Bluebeard This door you might not open, and you did; So enter now, and see for what slight thing You are betrayed. . . . Here is no treasure hid, No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain For greed like yours, no writhings of distress, But only what you see. . . . Look yet again-- An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless. Yet this alone out of my life I kept Unto myself, lest any know me quite; And you did so profane me when you crept Unto the threshold of this room to-night That I must never more behold your face. This now is yours. I seek another place. 
11059	----	[Transcriber's Note: Footnotes have been numbered and moved to the end.] The Sylphs of the Seasons with Other Poems. By W. Allston. Contents. The Sylphs of the Seasons; a Poet's Dream The Two Pointers; a Tale Eccentricity The Paint King Myrtilla: addressed to a Lady, who lamented that she had never been in love To a Lady who spoke slightingly of Poets Sonnet on a Falling Group in the Last Judgment of Michael Angelo, in the Cappella Sistina Sonnet on the Group of the Three Angels before the Tent of Abraham, by Raffaelle, in the Vatican Sonnet, on seeing the Picture of Æolus, by Peligrino Tibaldi, in the Institute at Bologna Sonnet on Rembrant; occasioned by his Picture of Jacob's Dream Sonnet on the Luxembourg Gallery Sonnet to my venerable Friend, the President of the Royal Academy The Mad Lover at the Grave of his Mistress First Love: a Ballad The Complaint Will, the Maniac: a Ballad The Sylphs of the Seasons; _A Poet's Dream._ Prefatory Note to The Sylphs of the Seasons. As it may be objected to the following Poem, that some of the images there introduced are not wholly peculiar to the Season described, the Author begs leave to state, that, both in their selection and disposition, he was guided by that, which, in his limited experience, was found to be the Season of their greatest impression: and, though he has not always felt the necessity of pointing out the collateral causes by which the effect was increased, he yet flatters himself that, in general, they are sufficiently implied either by what follows or precedes them. Thus, for instance, the _running brook_, though by no means peculiar, is appropriated to Spring; as affording by its motion and _seeming_ exultation one of the most lively images of that spirit of renovation which animates the earth after its temporary suspension during the Winter. By the same rule, is assigned to Summer the _placid lake_, &c. not because that image is never seen, or enjoyed, at any other season; but on account of its affecting us more in Summer, than either in the Spring, or in Autumn; the indolence and languor generally then experienced disposing us to dwell with particular delight on such an object of repose, not to mention the grateful idea of coolness derived from a knowledge of its temperature. Thus also the _evening cloud_, exhibiting a fleeting representation of successive objects, is, perhaps, justly appropriated to Autumn, as in that Season the general decay of inanimate nature leads the mind to turn upon itself, and without effort to apply almost every image of sense or vision of the imagination,* to its own transitory state. If the above be admitted, it is needless to add more; if it be not, it would be useless. The Sylphs of the Seasons. Long has it been my fate to hear The slave of Mammon, with a sneer, My indolence reprove. Ah, little knows he of the care, The toil, the hardship that I bear, While lolling in my elbow-chair, And seeming scarce to move: For, mounted on the Poet's steed, I _there_ my ceaseless journey speed O'er mountain, wood, and stream: And oft within a little day 'Mid comets fierce 'tis mine to stray, And wander o'er the Milky-way To catch a Poet's dream. But would the Man of Lucre know What riches from my labours flow?-- A DREAM is my reply. And who for wealth has ever pin'd, That had a World within his mind, Where every treasure he may find, And joys that never die! One night, my task diurnal done, (For I had travell'd with the Sun O'er burning sands, o'er snows) Fatigued, I sought the couch of rest; My wonted pray'r to Heaven address'd; But scarce had I my pillow press'd When thus a vision rose. Methought within a desert cave, Cold, dark, and solemn as the grave, I suddenly awoke. It seem'd of sable Night the cell, Where, save when from the ceiling fell An oozing drop, her silent spell No sound had ever broke. There motionless I stood alone, Like some strange monument of stone Upon a barren wild; Or like, (so solid and profound The darkness seem'd that wall'd me round) A man that's buried under ground, Where pyramids are pil'd. Thus fix'd, a dreadful hour I past, And now I heard, as from a blast, A voice pronounce my name: Nor long upon my ear it dwelt, When round me 'gan the air to melt. And motion once again I felt Quick circling o'er my frame. Again it call'd; and then a ray, That seem'd a gushing fount of day, Across the cavern stream'd. Half struck with terror and delight, I hail'd the little blessed light, And follow'd 'till my aching sight An orb of darkness seem'd. Nor long I felt the blinding pain; For soon upon a mountain plain I gaz'd with wonder new. There high a castle rear'd its head; And far below a region spread, Where every Season seem'd to shed Its own peculiar hue. Now at the castle's massy gate, Like one that's blindly urged by fate, A bugle-horn I blew. The mountain-plain it shook around, The vales return'd a hollow sound, And, moving with a sigh profound. The portals open flew. Then ent'ring, from a glittering hall I heard a voice seraphic call, That bade me "ever reign, All hail!" it said in accent wild, "For thou art Nature's chosen child, Whom wealth nor blood has e'er defil'd, Hail, Lord of this Domain!" And now I paced a bright saloon, That seem'd illumin'd by the moon, So mellow was the light. The walls with jetty darkness teem'd, While down them chrystal columns streamed, And each a mountain torrent seem'd. High-flashing through the night. Rear'd in the midst, a double throne. Like burnish'd cloud of evening shone; While, group'd the base around, Four Damsels stood of Faery race; Who, turning each with heavenly grace Upon me her immortal face, Transfix'd me to the ground. And _thus_ the foremost of the tram: Be thine the throne, and thine to reign O'er all the varying year! But ere thou rulest the Fates command; That of our chosen rival band A Sylph shall win thy heart and hand, Thy sovereignty to share. For we, the sisters of a birth, Do rule by turns the subject earth To serve ungrateful man; But since our varied toils impart No joy to his capricious heart, 'Tis now ordain'd that human art Shall rectify the plan. Then spake the Sylph of Spring serene, 'Tis _I_ thy joyous heart I ween, With sympathy shall move: For I with living melody Of birds in choral symphony, First wak'd thy soul to poesy, To piety and love. When thou, at call of vernal breeze, And beck'ning bough of budding trees, Hast left thy sullen fire; And stretch'd thee in some mossy dell. And heard the browsing wether's bell, Blythe echoes rousing from their cell To swell the tinkling quire: Or heard from branch of flow'ring thorn The song of friendly cuckoo warn The tardy-moving swain; Hast bid the purple swallow hail; And seen him now through ether sail, Now sweeping downward o'er the vale. And skimming now the plain; Then, catching with a sudden glance The bright and silver-clear expanse Of some broad river's stream. Beheld the boats adown it glide, And motion wind again the tide, Where, chain'd in ice by Winter's pride, Late roll'd the heavy team: Or, lur'd by some fresh-scented gale, That woo'd the moored fisher's sail To tempt the mighty main, Hast watch'd the dim receding shore, Now faintly seen the ocean o'er, Like hanging cloud, and now no more To bound the sapphire plain; Then, wrapt in night the scudding bark, (That seem'd, self-pois'd amid the dark, Through upper air to leap,) Beheld, from thy most fearful height, Beneath the dolphin's azure light Cleave, like a living meteor bright, The darkness of the deep: 'Twas mine the warm, awak'ning hand That made thy grateful heart expand, And feel the high control Of Him, the mighty Power, that moves Amid the waters and the groves, And through his vast creation proves His omnipresent soul. Or, brooding o'er some forest rill, Fring'd with the early daffodil, And quiv'ring maiden-hair, When thou hast mark'd the dusky bed, With leaves and water-rust o'erspread, That seem'd an amber light to shed On all was shadow'd there; And thence, as by its murmur call'd, The current traced to where it brawl'd Beneath the noontide ray; And there beheld the checquer'd shade Of waves, in many a sinuous braid, That o'er the sunny channel play'd, With motion ever gay: 'Twas I to these the magick gave, That made thy heart, a willing slave, To gentle Nature bend; And taught thee how with tree and flower, And whispering gale, and dropping shower, In converse sweet to pass the hour, As with an early friend: That mid the noontide sunny haze Did in thy languid bosom raise The raptures of the boy; When, wak'd as if to second birth, Thy soul through every pore look'd forth, And gaz'd upon the beauteous Earth With myriad eyes of joy: That made thy heart, like HIS above, To flow with universal love For every living thing. And, oh! if I, with ray divine, Thus tempering, did thy soul refine, Then let thy gentle heart be mine, And bless the Sylph of Spring. And next the Sylph of Summer fair; The while her crisped, golden hair Half veil'd her sunny eyes: Nor less may _I_ thy homage claim, At touch of whose exhaling flame The fog of Spring that chill'd thy frame In genial vapour flies. Oft by the heat of noon opprest, With flowing hair and open vest, Thy footsteps have I won To mossy couch of welling grot, Where thou hast bless'd thy happy lot. That thou in that delicious spot May'st see, not feel, the sun: Thence tracing from the body's change, In curious philosophic range, The motion of the mind; And how from thought to thought it flew, Still hoping in each vision new The faery land of bliss to view, But ne'er that land to find. And then, as grew thy languid mood, To some embow'ring silent wood I led thy careless way; Where high from tree to tree in air Thou saw'st the spider swing her snare. So bright!--as if, entangled there, The sun had left a ray: Or lur'd thee to some beetling steep To mark the deep and quiet sleep That wrapt the tarn below; And mountain blue and forest green Inverted on its plane serene, Dim gleaming through the filmy sheen That glaz'd the painted show; Perchance, to mark the fisher's skiff Swift from beneath some shadowy cliff Dart, like a gust of wind; And, as she skimm'd the sunny lake, In many a playful wreath her wake Far-trailing, like a silvery snake, With sinuous length behind. Nor less when hill and dale and heath Still Evening wrapt in mimic death. Thy spirit true I prov'd: Around thee, as the darkness stole, Before thy wild, creative soul I bade each faery vision roll, Thine infancy had lov'd. Then o'er the silent sleeping land, Thy fancy, like a magick wand, Forth caird the Elfin race: And now around the fountain's brim In circling dance they gaily skim; And now upon its surface swim, And water-spiders chase; Each circumstance of sight or sound Peopling the vacant air around With visionary life: For if amid a thicket stirr'd, Or flitting bat, or wakeful bird, Then straight thy eager fancy heard The din of Faery strife; Now, in the passing beetle's hum The Elfin army's goblin drum To pigmy battle sound; And now, where dripping dew-drops plash On waving grass, their bucklers clash, And now their quivering lances flash, Wide-dealing death around: Or if the moon's effulgent form The passing clouds of sudden storm In quick succession veil; Vast serpents now, their shadows glide, And, coursing now the mountain's side, A band of giants huge, they stride O'er hill, and wood, and dale. And still on many a service rare Could I descant, if need there were, My firmer claim to bind. But rest I most my high pretence On that my genial influence, Which made the body's indolence The vigour of the mind. And now, in accents deep and low, Like voice of fondly-cherish'd woe, The Sylph of Autumn sad: Though I may not of raptures sing, That grac'd the gentle song of Spring, Like Summer, playful pleasures bring, Thy youthful heart to glad; Yet still may I in hope aspire Thy heart to touch with chaster fire, And purifying love: For I with vision high and holy, And spell of quick'ning melancholy, Thy soul from sublunary folly First rais'd to worlds above. What though be mine the treasures fair Of purple grape and yellow pear, And fruits of various hue, And harvests rich of golden grain, That dance in waves along the plain To merry song of reaping swain, Beneath the welkin blue; With these I may not urge my suit, Of Summer's patient toil the fruit, For mortal purpose given: Nor may it fit my sober mood To sing of sweetly murmuring flood, Or dies of many-colour'd wood, That mock the bow of heaven. But, know, 'twas mine the secret power That wak'd thee at the midnight hour, In bleak November's reign: 'Twas I the spell around thee cast, When thou didst hear the hollow blast In murmurs tell of pleasures past, That ne'er would come again: And led thee, when the storm was o'er, To hear the sullen ocean roar, By dreadful calm opprest; Which still, though not a breeze was there, Its mountain-billows heav'd in air, As if a living thing it were, That strove in vain for rest. 'Twas I, when thou, subdued by woe, Didst watch the leaves descending slow, To each a moral gave; And as they mov'd in mournful train, With rustling sound, along the plain, Taught them to sing a seraph's strain Of peace within the grave. And then uprais'd thy streaming eye, I met thee in the western sky In pomp of evening cloud; That, while with varying form it roll'd; Some wizard's castle seem'd of gold, And now a crimson'd knight of old, Or king in purple proud. And last, as sunk the setting sun, And Evening with her shadows dun, The gorgeous pageant past, 'Twas then of life a mimic shew, Of human grandeur here below, Which thus beneath the fatal blow Of Death must fall at last. Oh, then with what aspiring gaze Didst thou thy tranced vision raise To yonder orbs on high, And think how wondrous, how sublime 'Twere upwards to their spheres to climb, And live, beyond the reach of Time, Child of Eternity! And last the Sylph of Winter spake; The while her piercing voice did shake The castle-vaults below. Oh, youth, if thou, with soul refin'd, Hast felt the triumph pure of mind, And learnt a secret joy to find In deepest scenes of woe; If e'er with fearful ear at eve Hast heard the wailing tempest grieve Through chink of shatter'd wall; The while it conjur'd o'er thy brain Of wandering ghosts a mournful train, That low in fitful sobs complain, Of Death's untimely call: Or feeling, as the storm increas'd, The love of terror nerve thy breast, Didst venture to the coast; To see the mighty war-ship leap From wave to wave upon the deep, Like chamoise goat from steep to steep, 'Till low in valleys lost; Then, glancing to the angry sky, Behold the clouds with fury fly The lurid moon athwart; Like armies huge in battle, throng, And pour in vollying ranks along, While piping winds in martial song To rushing war exhort: Oh, then to me thy heart be given, To me, ordain'd by Him in heaven Thy nobler powers to wake. And oh! if thou with poet's soul, High brooding o'er the frozen pole, Hast felt beneath my stern control The desert region quake; Or from old Hecla's cloudy height, When o'er the dismal, half-year's night He pours his sulph'rous breath, Hast known my petrifying wind Wild ocean's curling billows bind, Like bending sheaves by harvest hind, Erect in icy-*death; Or heard adown the mountain's steep The northern blast with furious sweep Some cliff dissever'd dash; And seen it spring with dreadful bound From rock to rock, to gulph profound, While echoes fierce from caves resound The never-ending crash: If thus, with terror's mighty spell Thy soul inspir'd, was wont to swell, Thy heaving frame expand; Oh, then to me thy heart incline; For know, the wondrous charm was mine That fear and joy did thus combine In magick union bland. Nor think confin'd my native sphere To horrors gaunt, or ghastly fear, Or desolation wild: For I of pleasures fair could sing, That steal from life its sharpest sting, And man have made around it cling, Like mother to her child. When thou, beneath the clear blue sky, So calm no cloud was seen to fly, Hast gaz'd on snowy plain, Where Nature slept so pure and sweet, She seem'd a corse in winding-sheet, Whose happy soul had gone to meet The blest Angelic train; Or mark'd the sun's declining ray In thousand varying colours play O'er ice-incrusted heath, In gleams of orange now, and green, And now in red and azure sheen, Like hues on dying dolphins seen, Most lovely when in death; Or seen at dawn of eastern light The frosty toil of Fays by night On pane of casement clear, Where bright the mimic glaciers shine, And Alps, with many a mountain pine, And armed knights from Palestine In winding march appear: 'Twas I on each enchanting scene The charm bestow'd that banished spleen Thy bosom pure and light. But still a _nobler_ power I claim; That power allied to poets' fame, Which language vain has dar'd to name-- The soul's creative might. Though Autumn grave, and Summer fair, And joyous Spring demand a share Of Fancy's hallow'd power, Yet these I hold of humbler kind, To grosser means of earth confin'd, Through mortal _sense_ to reach the mind, By mountain, stream, or flower. But mine, of purer nature still, Is _that_ which to thy secret will Did minister unseen, Unfelt, unheard; when every sense Did sleep in drowsy indolence, And Silence deep and Night intense Enshrowded every scene; That o'er thy teeming brain did raise The spirits of departed days[1] Through all the varying year; And images of things remote, And sounds that long had ceas'd to float, With every hue, and every note, As living now they were: And taught thee from the motley mass Each harmonizing part to class, (Like Nature's self employ'd;) And then, as work'd thy wayward will, From these with rare combining skill, With new-created worlds to fill Of space the mighty void. Oh then to me thy heart incline; To me whose plastick powers combine The harvest of the mind; To me, whose magic coffers bear The spoils of all the toiling year, That still in mental vision wear A lustre more refin'd. She ceas'd--And now in doubtful mood, All motionless and mute I stood, Like one by charm opprest: By turns from each to each I rov'd, And each by turns again I lov'd; For ages ne'er could one have prov'd More lovely than the rest. "Oh blessed band, of birth divine, What mortal task is like to mine!"-- And further had I spoke, When, lo! there pour'd a flood of light So fiercely on my aching sight, I fell beneath the vision bright, And with the pain I woke. The Two Painters: _A Tale._ Say why in every work of man Some imperfection mars the plan? Why join'd in every human art A perfect and imperfect part? Is it that life for art is short? Or is it nature's cruel sport? Or would she thus a moral teach; That man should see, but never reach, The height of excellence, and show The vanity of works below? Or consequence of Pride, or Sloth; Or rather the effect of both? Whoe'er on life his eye has cast, I fear, alas, will say the last! Once on a time in Charon's wherry Two Painters met, on Styx's ferry. Good sir, said one, with bow profound, I joy to meet thee under ground, And though with zealous spite we strove To blast each other's fame above, Yet here, as neither bay nor laurel Can tempt us to prolong our quarrel, I hope the hand which I extend Will meet the welcome of a friend. Sweet sir! replied the other Shade, While scorn on either nostril play'd, Thy proffer'd love were great and kind Could I in thee a _rival_ find.-- rival, sir! returned the first, Ready with rising wind to burst, Thy meekness, sure, in this I see; We are not rivals, I agree: And therefore am I more inclin'd To cherish one of humble mind, Who apprehends that one above him Can never condescend to love him. Nor longer did their courteous guile, Like serpent, twisting through a smile, Each other sting in civil phrase, And poison with envenom'd praise; For now the fiend of anger rose, Distending each death-withered nose, And, rolling fierce each glassy eye, Like owlets' at the noonday sky, Such flaming vollies pour'd of ire As set old Charon's phlegm on fire. Peace! peace! the grizly boatman cried, You drown the roar of Styx's tide; Unmanner'd ghosts! if such your strife, 'Twere better you were still in life! If passions such as these you show You'll make another Earth below; Which, sure, would be a viler birth, Than if we made a Hell on Earth. At which in loud defensive strain 'Gan speak the angry Shades again. I'll hear no more, cried he; 'no more' In echoes hoarse return'd the shore. To Minos' court you soon shall hie, (Chief Justice here) 'tis he will try Your jealous cause, and prove at once That only dunce can hate a dunce. Thus check'd, in sullen mood they sped, Nor more on either side was said; Nor aught the dismal silence broke, Save only when the boatman's stroke, Deep-whizzing through the wave was heard, And now and then a spectre-bird, Low-cow'ring, with a hungry scream. For spectre-fishes in the stream. Now midway pass'd, the creaking oar Is heard upon the fronting shore; Where thronging round in many a band, The curious ghosts beset the strand. Now suddenly the boat they 'spy, Like gull diminish'd in the sky; And now, like cloud of dusky white, Slow sailing o'er the deep of night, The sheeted group within the bark Is seen amid the billows dark. Anon the keel with grating sound They hear upon the pebbly ground. And now with kind, officious hand, They help the ghostly crew to land. What news? they cried with one accord I pray you, said a noble lord, Tell me if in the world above I still retain the people's love: Or whether they, like us below, The motives of a Patriot know? And me inform, another said, What think they of a Buck that's dead? Have they discerned that, being dull, I knock'd my wit from watchmen's skull? And me, cried one, of knotty front, With many a scar of pride upon't Resolve me if the world opine Philosophers are still divine; That having hearts for friends too small, Or rather having none at all, Profess'd to love, with saving grace, The _abstract_ of the human race? And I, exclaim'd a fourth, would ask What think they of the Critick's task? Perceive they now our shallow arts; That merely from the want of parts To write ourselves, we gravely taught How books by others should be wrought? Whom interrupting, then inquir'd A fifth, in squalid garb attir'd, Do now the world with much regard In mem'ry hold the dirty Bard, Who credit gain'd for genius rare By shabby coat and uncomb'd hair? Or do they, said a Shade of prose, With many a pimple's ghost on nose, Th' eccentric author still admire, Who wanting that same genius' fire, Diving in cellars underground, In pipe the spark ethereal found: Which, fann'd by many a ribbald joke, From brother tipplers puff'd in smoke, Such blaze diffused with crackling loud, As blinded all the staring croud? And last, with jealous glancing eye, That seem'd in all around to pry, A Painter's ghost in voice suppres'd, Thus questioning, the group address'd; Sweet strangers, may I too demand, How thrive the offspring of my hand? Whether, as when in life I flourish'd, They still by puffs of fame are nourish'd? Or whether have the world discern'd The tricks by which my fame was earn'd; That, lacking in my pencil skill, I made my tongue its office fill: That, marking (as for love of truth) In others' works a limb uncouth, Or face too young, or face too old, Or colour hot, or colour cold; Or hinting, (if to praise betray'd) 'Though coloured well, it yet might _fade_;' And 'though its grace I can't deny, Yet pity 'tis so hard and dry.'-- I thus by implication show'd That mine were wrought in better mode; And talking thus superiors down, Obliquely raise my own renown? In short, I simply this would ask,-- If Truth has stript me of the mask; And, chasing Fashion's mist away, Expos'd me to the eye of day--[2] A Painter false, without a heart, Who lov'd himself, and not his art? At which, with fix'd and fishy The Strangers both express'd amaze. Good Sir, said they, 'tis strange you dare Such meanness of yourself declare. Were I on earth, replied the Shade, I never had the truth betray'd; For there (and I suspect like you) I ne'er had time myself to view. Yet, knowing that 'bove all creation I held myself in estimation, I deem'd that what I _lov'd_ the _best_ Of every virtue was possess'd. But _here_ in colours black and true, Men see themselves, who never knew Their motives in the worldly strife, Or real characters through life. And here, alas! I scarce had been A little day, when every sin That slumber'd in my living breast, By Minos rous'd from torpid rest, Like thousand adders, rushing out, Entwin'd my shuddering limbs about.-- Oh, strangers, hear!--the truth I tell-- That fearful sight I saw was Hell. And, oh I with what unmeasur'd wo Did bitterness upon me flow, When thund'ring through the hissing air, I heard the sentence of Despair-- 'Now never hope from Hell to flee; Yourself is all the Hell you see!'-- He ceas'd. But still with stubborn pride The Rival Shades each other eyed; When, bursting with terrifick sound, The voice of Minos shook the ground, The startled ghosts on either side, Like clouds before the wind, divide; And leaving far a passage free, Each, conning his defensive plea, With many a crafty lure for grace. The Painters onward hold their pace. Anon before the Judgement Seat, With sneer confronting sneer they meet: And now in deep and awful strain, Piercing like fiery darts the brain, Thus Minos spake. Though I am he, From whom no secret thought may flee; Who sees it ere the birth be known To him, that claims it for his own; Yet would I still with patience hear What each may for himself declare, That all in your defence may see The justice pure of my decree.-- But, hold!--It ill beseems my place To hear debate in such a case: Be therefore thou, Da Vinci's shade, Who when on earth to men display'd The scattered powers of human kind In thy capacious soul combin'd; Be thou the umpire of the strife, And judge as thou wert still in life. Thus bid, with grave becoming air, Th' appointed judge assum'd the chair. And now with modest-seeming air, The rivals straight for speech prepare: And thus, with hand upon his breast, The Senior Ghost the Judge address'd: The world, (if ought the world I durst In this believe) did call me first Of those, who by the magick play Of harmonizing colours, sway The gazer's sense with such surprise, As make him disbelieve his eyes. 'Tis true that some of vision dim, Or squeamish taste, or pedant whim, My works assail'd with narrow spite; And, passing o'er my colour bright, Reproach'd me for my want of grace, And silks and velvets out of place; And vulgar form, and lame design, And want of character; in fine, For lack of worth of every kind To charm or to enlarge the mind. Now this, my Lord, as will appear, Was nothing less than malice sheer, To stab me, like assassins dark, Because I did not hit a mark, At which (as I have hope of fame) I never once design'd to aim. For seeing that the life of man Was scarcely longer than a span; And, knowing that the Graphic Art Ne'er mortal master'd but _in part_; I wisely deem'd 'twere labour vain, Should I attempt the _whole_ to gain; And therefore, with ambition high, Aspir'd to reach what pleas'd the eye; Which, truly, sir, must be confess'd, A part that far excels the rest: For if, as all the world agree, 'Twixt Painting and fair Poesy The diff'rence in the mode be found, Of colour this, and that of sound, 'Tis plain, o'er every other grace, That colour holds the highest place; As being that distinctive part, Which bounds it from another art. If therefore, with reproof severe I've galled my pigmy Rival here, 'Twas only, as your Lordship knows, Because his foolish envy chose To rank his classic forms of mud Above my wholesome flesh and blood. Thus ended parle the Senior Shade. And now, as scorning to upbraid, With curving, _parabolick_ smile, Contemptuous, eying him the while, His Rival thus: 'Twere vain, my Lord, To wound a gnat by spear or sword[3]; If therefore _I_, of greater might, Would meet this _thing_ in equal fight, 'Twere fit that I in size should be As mean, diminutive, as he; Of course, disdaining to reply, I pass the wretch unheeded by. But since your Lordship deigns to know What I in my behalf may show, With due submission, I proclaim, That few on earth have borne a name More envied or esteem'd than mine, For grace, expression, and design, For manners true of every clime, And composition's art sublime. In academick lore profound, I boldly took that lofty ground, Which, as it rais'd me near the sky, Was thence for vulgar eyes too high; Or, if beheld, to them appear'd By clouds of gloomy darkness blear'd. Yet still that misty height I chose, For well I knew the world had those, Whose sight, by learning clear'd of rheum, Could pierce with ease the thickest gloom. Thus, perch'd sublime, 'mid clouds I wrought, Nor heeded what the vulgar thought. What, though with clamour coarse and rude They jested on my colours crude; Comparing with malicious grin, My drapery to bronze and tin, My flesh to brick and earthen ware, And wire of various kinds my hair; Or (if a landscape-bit they saw) My trees to pitchforks crown'd with straw; My clouds to pewter plates of thin edge, And fields to dish of eggs and spinage; Yet this, and many a grosser rub, Like fam'd Diogenes in tub, I bore with philosophic nerve, Nay, gladly bore; for, here observe, _'Twas that which gave to them offense, Did constitute my excellence._ I see, my Lord, at this you stare: Yet thus I'll prove it to a hair.-- As Mind and Body are distinct, Though long in social union link'd, And as the only power they boast, Is merely at each other's cost; If both should hold an equal station, They'd both be kings without a nation: If therefore, one would paint the Mind In partnership with Body join'd, And give to each an equal place, With each an equal truth and grace, 'Tis clear the picture could not fail To be without or head or tail. And therefore as the Mind alone I chose should fill my graphick throne, To fix her pow'r beyond dispute, I trampled Body under foot: That is, in more prosaick dress, As I the passions would express, And as they ne'er could be portray'd Without the subject Body's aid, I show'd no more of that than merely Sufficed to represent them clearly: As thus--by simple means and pure Of light and shadow, and contour: But since what mortals call complexion, Has with the mind no more connexion Than ethicks with a country dance, I left my col'ring all to chance; Which oft (as I may proudly state) With Nature war'd at such a rate, As left no mortal hue or stain Of base, corrupting flesh, to chain The Soul to Earth; but, free as light, E'en let her soar till out of sight. Thus spake the champion bold of mind; And thus the Colourist rejoin'd: In truth, my Lord, I apprehend, If I by _words_ with him contend, My case is gone; far he, by gift Of what is call'd the _gab_, can shift The right for wrong, with such a sleight, That right seems wrong and wrong the right; Nay, by his twisting logick make A square the form of circle take. I therefore, with submission meet, In justice do your Grace intreat To let awhile your judgment pause, That _works_ not _words_ may plead our cause. Let Merc'ry then to Earth repair, The works of both survey with care, And hither bring the best of each, And save us further waste of speech. Such fair demand, the Judge replied, Could not with justice be denied. Good Merc'ry, hence! I fly, my Lord, The Courier said. And, at the word, High-bounding, wings his airy flight So swift his form eludes the sight; Nor aught is seen his course to mark, Save when athwart the region dark His brazen helm is spied afar, Bright-trailing like a falling star. And now for minutes ten there stole A silence deep o'er every soul-- When, lo! again before them stands The courier's self with empty hands. Why, how is this? exclaim'd the twain; Where are the _pictures_, sir? Explain! Good sirs, replied the God of Post, I scarce had reached the other coast, When Charon told me, one he ferried Inform'd him they were dead and buried: Then bade me hither haste and say, Their ghosts were now upon the way. In mute amaze the Painters stood. But soon upon the Stygian flood, Behold! the spectre-pictures float, Like rafts behind the towing boat: Now reach'd the shore, in close array, Like armies drill'd in Homer's day, When marching on to meet the foe, By bucklers hid from top to toe, They move along the dusky fields, A grizly troop of painted shields: And now, arrived in order fair, A gallery huge they hang in air. The ghostly croud with gay surprize Began to rub their stony eyes: Such pleasant lounge, they all averr'd, None saw since he had been interr'd; And thus, like connoisseurs on Earth, Began to weigh the pictures' worth: But first (as deem'd of higher kind) Examin'd they the works of _Mind_.[4] Pray what is this? demanded one.-- That, sir, is Phoebus, alias, Sun: A classick work you can't deny; The car and horses in the sky, The clouds on which they hold their way, Proclaim him all the God of Day. Nay, learned sir, his dirty plight More fit beseems the God of Night. Besides, I cannot well divine How mud like this can ever shine.-- Then look at that a little higher.-- I see 'tis Orpheus, by his lyre. The beasts that listening stand around, Do well declare the force of sound: But why the fiction thus reverse, And make the power of song a curse? The ancient Orpheus soften'd rocks, Yours changes living things to blocks.-- Well, this you'll sure acknowledge fine, Parnassus' top with all the Nine. Ah, _there_ is beauty, soul and fire, And all that human wit inspire!-- Good sir, you're right; for being stone, They're each to blunted wits a hone. And what is that? inquir'd another.-- That, sir, is Cupid and his Mother.-- What, Venus? sure it cannot be: That skin begrim'd ne'er felt the sea; That Cupid too ne'er knew the sky; For lead, I'm sure, could never fly.-- I'll hear no more, the Painter said, Your souls are, like your bodies, dead! With secret triumph now elate, His grinning Rival 'gan to prate. Oh, fie! my friends; upon my word, You're too severe: he should be _heard_; For _Mind_ can ne'er to glory reach, Without the usual aid of _speech_. If thus howe'er, you seal his doom, What hope have I unknown to Rome? But since the _truth_ be your dominion, I beg to hear your just opinion. This picture then--which some have thought By far the best I ever wrought-- Observe it well with critick ken; 'Tis Daniel in the Lion's Den.-- 'Tis flesh itself! exclaim'd a Critick. But why make Daniel paralytick? His limbs and features are distorted. And then his legs are badly sorted. 'Tis true, a miracle you've hit, But not as told in Holy Writ; For there the miracle was braving, With _bones unbroke_, the Lion's craving; But yours (what ne'er could man befall) That he should _live with none at all_.-- And pray, inquir'd another spectre, What Mufti's that at pious lecture? That's Socrates, condemned to die; He next, in sable, standing by, Is Galen[5], come to save his friend, If possible, from such an end; The other figures, group'd around, His Scholars, wrapt in woe profound.-- And am I like to this portray'd? Exclaim'd the Sage's smiling Shade. Good Sir, I never knew before That I a Turkish turban wore, Or mantle hemm'd with golden stitches, Much less a pair of satin breeches; But as for him in sable clad, Though wond'rous kind, 'twas rather mad To visit one like me forlorn, So long before himself was born. And what's the next? inquir'd a third; A jolly blade upon my word!-- 'Tis Alexander, Philip's son, Lamenting o'er his battles won; That now his mighty toils are o'er, The world has nought to conquer more. At which, forth stalking from the host, Before them stood the Hero's Ghost-- Was that, said he, my earthly form, The Genius of the battle-storm? From top to toe the figure's Dutch! Alas, my friend, had I been such, Had I that fat and meaty skull, Those bloated cheeks, and eyes so dull, That driv'ling mouth, and bottle nose, Those shambling legs, and gouty toes; Thus form'd to snore throughout the day,-- And eat and drink the night away; I ne'er had felt the fev'rish flame That caus'd my bloody thirst for fame; Nor madly claim'd immortal birth, Because the vilest brute on Earth: And, oh! I'd not been doom'd to hear, Still whizzing in my blister'd ear, The curses deep, in damning peals, That rose from 'neath my chariot wheels, When I along the embattled plain With furious triumph crush'd the slain: I should not thus be doom'd to see, In every shape of agony, The victims of my cruel wrath, For ever dying, strew my path; The grinding teeth, the lips awry, The inflated nose, the starting eye, The mangled bodies writhing round, Like serpents, on the bloody ground; I should not thus for ever seem A charnel house, and scent the steam Of black, fermenting, putrid gore, Rank oozing through each burning pore; Behold, as on a dungeon wall, The worms upon my body crawl, The which, if I would brush away, Around my clammy fingers play, And, twining fast with many a coil, In loathsome sport my labor foil. Enough! the frighted Painter cried, And hung his head in fallen pride. Not so the other. He, of stuff More stubborn, ne'er would cry enough; But like a soundly cudgell'd oak, More sturdy grew at every stroke, And thus again his ready tongue With fluent logick would have rung: My Lord, I'll prove, or I'm a liar-- Whom interrupting then with ire, Thus check'd the Judge: Oh, proud yet mean! And canst thou hope from me to screen Thy foolish heart, and o'er it spread A veil to cheat th' omniscient dead? And canst thou hope, as once on Earth, Applause to gain by specious worth; Like those that still by sneer and taunt Would prove pernicious what they want; And claim the mastership of Art, Because thou only know'st a _part_? Had'st thou from Nature, not the Schools Distorted by pedantic rules, With patience wrought, such logic vain Had ne'er perverted thus thy brain: For Genius never gave delight By means of what offends the sight: Nor hadst thou deem'd, with folly mad, Thou could'st to Nature's beauties _add_, By _taking from her that which gives The best assurance that she lives; By imperfection give attraction, And multiply them by subtraction._ Did Raffaelle thus, whose honour'd ghost Is now Elysium's fairest boast? Far diff'rent He. Though weak and lame In parts that gave to others fame, Yet sought not _he_ by such defect To swindle praise for _wise neglect_ Of _vulgar_ charms, that only _blind_ The dazzled eye to those of Mind. By Heaven impressed with Genius' seal, An eye to see, and heart to feel, His soul through boundless Nature rov'd, And seeing felt, and feeling lov'd. But weak the power of mind at will To give the hand the painter's skill; For mortal works, maturing slow, From patient care and labour flow: And hence restrain'd, his youthful hand Obey'd a master's dull command; But soon with health his sickly style From Leonardo learn'd to smile; And now from Bonarroti caught A nobler Form; and now it sought Of colour fair the magic spell, And trac'd her to the Friar's[6] cell. No foolish pride, no narrow rule Enslav'd his soul; from every School, Whatever fair, whatever grand, His pencil, like a potent wand, Transfusing, bade his canvass grace. Progressive thus, with giant pace. And energy no toil could tame, He climb'd the rugged mount of Fame: And soon had reach'd the summit bold, When Death, who there delights to hold His fatal watch, with envious blow Quick hurl'd him to the shades below. Thus check'd the Judge the champion vain Of _Classic Form_; and thus in strain, By anger half and pity mov'd, The ghostly Colourist reprov'd. And what didst _Thou_ aspire to gain, _Who_ dar'd'st the will of Jove arraign, That bounded thus within a span The little life of little man; With shallow art deriving thence Excuses for thy indolence? 'Tis cant and hypocritic stuff! The life of man is long enough: For did he but the half improve He would not quarrel thus with Jove. But most I marvel (if it be That aught may wond'rous seem to me) That Jove's high Gift, your noble Art, Bestow'd to raise Man's grov'ling heart, Refining with ethereal ray Each gross and selfish thought away, Should pander turn of paltry pelf, Imprisoning each within himself; Or like a gorgeous serpent, be Your splendid source of misery, And, crushing with his burnish'd folds, Still narrower make your narrow souls. But words can ne'er reform produce, In Ignorance and Pride obtuse. Then know, ye rain and foolish Pair! Your doom is fix'd a yoke to bear Like beasts on Earth; and, thus in tether, Five Centuries to paint together. If, thus by mutual labours join'd, Your jarring souls should be combin'd, The faults of each the other mending, The powers of both harmonious blending; Great Jove, perhaps, in gracious vein, May send your souls on Earth again; Yet there One only Painter be; For thus the eternal Fates decree: One Leg alone shall never run, Nor two Half-Painters make but One. Eccentricity. Projecere animas. VIRG. Alas, my friend! what hope have I of fame, Who am, as Nature made me, still the same? And thou, poor suitor to a bankrupt muse, How mad thy toil, how arrogant thy views! What though endued with Genius' power to move The magick chords of sympathy and love, The painter's eye, the poet's fervid heart, The tongue of eloquence, the vital art Of bold Prometheus, kindling at command With breathing life the labours of his hand; Yet shall the World thy daring high pretence With scorn deride, for thou--hast common sense. But dost thou, reckless of stern honour's laws, Intemperate hunger for the World's applause? Bid Nature hence; her fresh embow'ring woods, Her lawns and fields, and rocks, and rushing floods, And limpid lakes, and health-exhaling soil, Elastick gales, and all the glorious toil Of Heaven's own hand, with courtly shame discard, And Fame shall triumph in her city bard. Then, pent secure in some commodious lane, Where stagnant Darkness holds her morbid reign. Perchance snug-roosted o'er some brazier's den, Or stall of nymphs, by courtesy _not_ men, Whose gentle trade to skin the living eel, The while they curse it that it dares to feel[7]; Whilst ribbald jokes and repartees proclaim Their happy triumph o'er the sense of shame: Thy city Muse invoke, that imp of mind By smoke engendered on an eastern wind; Then, half-awake, thy patent-thinking pen The paper give, and blot the souls of men. The time has been when Nature's simple face Perennial youth possessed and winning grace; But who shall dare, in this refining age, With Nature's praise to soil his snowy page? What polish'd lover, unappall'd by sneers Dare court a beldame of six thousand years, When every clown with microscopick eyes The gaping furrows on her forehead spies?-- 'Good sir, your pardon: In her naked state, Her wither'd form we cannot chuse but hate; But fashion's art the waste of time repairs, Each wrinkle fills, and dies her silver hairs; Thus wrought anew, our gentle bosoms low; We cannot chuse but love what's _comme il faut_.' Thy city Muse invoke, that imp of mind By smoke engender'd on an eastern wind; Then, half-awake, thy patent-thinking pen The paper give, and blot the souls of men. The time has been when Nature's simple face Perennial youth possessed and winning grace; But who shall dare, in this refining age, With Nature's praise to soil his snowy page? What polish'd lover, unappall'd by sneers, Dare court a beldame of six thousand years, When every clown with microscopick eyes The gaping furrows on her forehead spies?-- 'Good sir, your pardon: In her naked state, Her withered form we cannot chuse but hate; But fashion's art the waste of time repairs, Each wrinkle fills, and dies her silver hairs; Thus wrought anew, our gentle bosoms low; We cannot chuse but love what's _comme il fauts_.' Alas, poor Cowper! could thy chasten'd eye, (Awhile forgetful of thy joys on high) Revisit earth, what indignation strange Would sting thee to behold the courtly change! Here "velvet" lawns, there "plushy" woods that lave Their "silken" tresses in the "glassy" wave; Here "'broider'd" meads, there flow'ry "carpets" spread, And "downy" banks to "pillow" Nature's head; How wouldst thou start to find thy native soil. Like birth-day belle, by gross mechanick toil Trick'd out to charm with meretricious air, As though all France and Manchester were there! But this were luxury, were bliss refin'd, To view the alter'd region of the mind; Where whim and mystery, like wizards, rule, And conjure wisdom from the seeming fool; Where learned heads, like old cremonas, boast Their merit soundest that are cracked the most; While Genius' self, infected with the joke, His person decks with Folly's motley cloak. Behold, loud-rattling like a thousand drums, Eccentrick Hal, the child of Nature, comes! Of Nature once--but _now_ he acts a part, And Hal is now the full grown boy of art. In youth's pure spring his high impetuous soul Nor custom own'd nor fashion's vile control. By Truth impelled where beck'ning Nature led, Through life he mov'd with firm elastic tread; But soon the world, with wonder-teeming eyes, His manners mark, and goggle with surprise. "He's wond'rous strange!" exclaims each gaping clod, "A wond'rous genius, for he's wond'rous odd!" Where'er he goes, there goes before his fame, And courts and taverns echo round his name; 'Till, fairly knocked by admiration down, The petted monster cracks his wond'rous crown. No longer now to simple Nature true, He studies only to be oddly new; Whate'er he does, whatever he deigns to say, Must all be said and done the oddest way; Nay, e'en in dress eccentrick as in thought, His wardrobe seems by Lapland witches wrought, Himself by goblins in a whirlwind drest With rags of clouds from Hecla's stormy crest. 'Has Truth no charms?' When first beheld, I grant, But, wanting novelty, has every want: For pleasure's thrill the sickly palate flies, Save haply pungent with a rare surprise. The humble toad that leaps her nightly round, The harmless tenant of the garden ground, Is loath'd, abhor'd, nay, all the reptile race Together join'd were never half so base; Yet snugly find her in some quarry pent, Through ages doom'd to one tremendous lent, Surviving still, as if "in Nature's spite," Without or nourishment, or air, or light, What raptures then th' astonish'd gazer seize! What lovely creature like a toad can please! Hence many an oaf, by Nature doom'd to shine The unknown father of an unknown line, If haply shipwreck'd on some desert shore Of Folly's seas, by man untrod before, Which, bleak and barren, to the starving mind Yields nought but fog, or damp, unwholesome wind, With loud applause the wond'ring world shall hail, And Fame embalm him in the marv'lous tale. With chest erect, and bright uplifted eye, On tiptoe rais'd, like one prepared to fly. Yon wight behold, whose sole aspiring hope Eccentrick soars to catch the hangman's rope. In order rang'd, with date of place and time, Each owner's name, his parentage and crime, High on his walls, inscribed to glorious shame, Unnumber'd halters gibbet him to Fame. Who next appears thus stalking by his side? Why that is one who'd sooner die than--ride! No inch of ground can maps unheard of show Untrac'd by him, unknown to every toe: As if intent this punning age to suit, The globe's circumf'rence meas'ring by the foot. Nor less renown'd whom stars invet'rate doom To smiles eternal, or eternal gloom; For what's a _character_ save one confin'd To some unchanging sameness of the mind; To some strange, fix'd monotony of mien, Or dress forever brown, forever green? A sample comes. Observe his sombre face, Twin-born with Death, without his brother's grace! No joy in mirth his soul perverted knows, Whose only joy to tell of others' woes. A fractur'd limb, a conflagrating fire, A name or fortune lost his tongue inspire: From house to house where'er misfortunes press, Like Fate, he roams, and revels in distress; In every ear with dismal boding moans-- walking register of sighs and groans! High tow'ring next, as he'd eclipse the moon, With pride upblown, behold yon live balloon. All trades above, all sciences and arts, To fame he climbs through very scorn of parts; With solemn emptiness distends his state, And, great in nothing, soars above the great; Nay stranger still, through apathy of blood, By candour number'd with the chaste and good: With wife, and child, domestic, stranger, friend, Alike he lives, as though his being's end Were o'er his house like formal guest to roam, And walk abroad to leave himself at home. But who is _he_, that sweet obliging youth? He looks the picture of ingenuous truth. Oh, that's his antipode, of courteous race, The man of bows and ever-smiling face. Why Nature made him, or for what design'd, Never he knew, nor ever sought to find, 'Till cunning came, blest harbinger of ease! And kindly whisper'd, 'thou wert born to please.' Rous'd by the news, behold him now expand, Like beaten gold, and glitter o'er the land. Well stored with nods and sly approving winks, Now first with this and now with that he thinks; Howe'er opposing, still assents to each, And claps a dovetail to each booby's speech. At random thus for all, for none, he lives, Profusely lavish though he nothing gives; The world he roves as living but to show A friendless man without a single foe; From bad to good, to bad from good to run, And find a character by seeking none. Who covets fame should ne'er be over nice, Some slight distortion pays the market price. If haply lam'd by some propitious chance, Instruct in attitude, or teach to dance; Be still extravagant in deed, or word; If new, enough, no matter how absurd. Then what is Genius? Nay, if rightly us'd, Some gift of Nature happily abus'd. Nor wrongly deem by this eccentrick rule That Nature favours whom she makes a fool; Her scorn and favour we alike despise; Not Nature's follies but our own we prize. "Or what is wit?" a meteor bright and rare, What comes and goes we know not whence, or where; A brilliant nothing out of something wrought, A mental vacuum by condensing thought. Behold Tortoso. There's a man of wit; To all things fitted, though for nothing fit; Scourge of the world, yet crouching for a name, And honour bartering for the breath of fame: Born to command, and yet an arrant slave; Through too much honesty a seeming knave; At all things grasping, though on nothing bent, And ease pursuing e'en with discontent; Through Nature, Arts, and Sciences he flies, And gathers truth to manufacture lies. Nor only Wits, for tortur'd talents claim Of sov'reign mobs the glorious meed of fame; E'en Sages too, of grave and rev'rend air, Yclepp'd _Philosophers_, must have their share; Who deeper still in conjuration skill'd, _A mighty something out of nothing build._ 'Then wherefore read? why cram the youthful head With all the learned lumber of the dead; Who seeking wisdom followed Nature's laws, Nor dar'd effects admit without a cause?' Why?--Ask the sophist of our modern school; To foil the workman we must know the tool; And, that possess'd, how swiftly is defac'd The noblest, rarest monument of taste! So neatly too, the mutilations stand Like native errors of the artist's hand; Nay, what is more, the very tool betray'd To seem the product of the work it made. 'Oh, monstrous slander on the human race!' Then read conviction in Ortuno's case. By Nature fashion'd in her happiest mood, With learning, fancy, keenest wit endued; To what high purpose, what exalted end These lofty gifts did great Ortuno bend? With grateful triumph did Ortuno raise The mighty trophies to their Author's praise; With skill deducing from th' harmonious whole Immortal proofs of One Creative soul? Ah, no! infatuate with the dazzling light, In them he saw their own creative might; Nay, madly deem'd, if _such_ their wond'rous _skill_, The phantom of a God 'twas theirs to _will_. But granting that he _is_, he bids you show By what you prove it, or by what you know. Oh, reas'ning worm! who questions thus of Him That lives in all, and moves in every limb, Must with himself in very strangeness dwell, Has never heard the voice of Conscience tell Of right and wrong, and speak in louder tone Than tropick thunder of that Holy One, Whose pure, eternal, justice shall requite The deed of wrong, and justify the right. Can such blaspheme and breathe the vital air? Let mad philosophy their names declare. Yet some there are, less daring in their aim, With humbler cunning butcher sense for fame; Who doubting still, with many a fearful pause, Th' existence grant of one almighty cause; But halting there, in bolder tone deny The life hereafter, when the man shall die, Nor mark the monstrous folly of their gain-- That God all-wise should fashion _them_ in vain. 'Twere labour lost in this material age, When school boys trample on the Inspir'd Page, When coblers prove by syllogistick pun The soal they mend, and that of man are one; 'Twere waste of time to check the Muses' speed, For all the _whys_ and _wherefores_ of their creed; To show how prov'd the juices are the same That feed the body, and the mental frame. But who, half sceptic, half afraid of wrong, Shall walk our streets, and mark the passing throng; The brawny oaf in mould herculean cast, The pigmy statesman trembling in his blast, The cumb'rous citizen of portly paunch, Unwont to soar beyond the smoaking haunch; The meagre bard behind the moving tun, His shadow seeming lengthen'd by the sun; Who forms scarce visible shall thus descry, Like flitting clouds athwart the mental sky; From giant bodies then bare gleams of mind, Like mountain watch-lights blinking to the wind; Nor blush to find his unperverted eye Flash on his heart, and give his tongue the lie. 'Tis passing strange! yet, born as if to show Man to himself his most malignant foe, There are (so desperate is the madness grown) Who'd rather live a _lie_ than live unknown; Whose very tongues, with force of holy writ, Their doctrines damn with self-recoiling wit. Behold yon dwarf, of visage pale and wan; A sketch of life, a remnant of a man! Whose livid lips, as now he moulds a grin, Like charnel doors disclose the waste within; Whose stiffen'd joints within their sockets grind, Like gibbets creaking to the passing wind; Whose shrivell'd skin with much adhesion clings His bones around in hard compacted rings, If veins there were, no blood beneath could force, Unless by miracle, its trickling course;-- Yet even _he_ within that sapless frame, A mind sustained that climb'd the steeps of fame. Such is the form by mystic Heaven design'd, The earthly mansion of the rarest mind. But, mark his gratitude. This soul sublime, This soul lord paramount o'er space and time, This soul of fire, with impious madness sought, Itself to prove of mortal matter wrought; Nay, bred, engendered, on the grub-worm plan, From that vile clay which made his outward man, That shadowy form which dark'ning into birth, But seem'd a sign to mark a soul on earth. But who shall cast an introverted eye Upon himself, that will not there descry A conscious life that shall, nor cannot die? E'en at our birth, when first the infant mould Gives it a mansion and an earthly hold, Th' exulting Spirit feels the heavenly fire That lights her tenement will ne'er expire; And when, in after years, disease and age, Our fellow-bodies sweeping from life's stage, Obtrude the thought of death, e'en then we seem, As in the revelation of a dream, To hear a voice, more audible than speech, Warn of a part which death can never reach. Survey the tribes of savage men that roam Like wand'ring herds, each wilderness their home;-- Nay, even there th' immortal spirit stands Firm on the verge of death, and looks to brighter lands. Shall human wisdom then, with beetle sight, Because obstructed in its blund'ring flight, Despise the deep conviction of our birth, And limit life to this degraded earth? Oh, far from me be that insatiate pride, Which, turning on itself, drinks up the tide Of natural light; 'till one eternal gloom, Like walls of adamant enclose the tomb. Tremendous thought! that this transcendant Power, Fell'd with the body in one fatal hour, With all its faculties, should pass like air For ages without end as though it never were! Say, whence, obedient, to their destin'd end The various tribes of living nature tend? Why beast, and bird, and all the countless race Of earth and waters, each his proper place Instinctive knows, and through the endless chain Of being moves in one harmonious strain; While man alone, with strange perversion, draws Rebellious fame from Nature's broken laws? Methinks I hear, in that still voice which stole On Horeb's mount o'er rapt Elijah's soul, With stern reproof indignant Heaven reply: 'Tis o'erweening Pride, that blinds the eye Of reasoning man, and o'er his darkened life Confusion spreads and misery and strife. With wonder fill'd and self-reflecting praise, The slave of pride his mighty powers surveys; On Reason's sun (by bounteous Nature given, To guide the soul upon her way to heaven) Adoring gazes, 'till the dazzling light, To darkness sears his rain presumptuous sight; Then bold, though blind, through error's night he runs, In fancy lighted by a thousand suns; For bloody laurels now the warrior plays, Now libels nature for the poet's bays; Now darkness drinks from metaphysic springs, Or follows fate on astrologick wings: 'Mid toils at length the world's loud wonder won, With Persian piety, to Reason's sun Profound he bows, and, idolist of fame, Forgets the God who lighted first the flame. All potent Reason! what thy wond'rous light? A shooting star athwart a polar night; A bubble's gleam amid the boundless main; A sparkling sand on waste Arabia's plain: E'en such, vain Power, thy limited control, E'en such thou art, to mans mysterious soul! Presumptuous man! would'st thou aspiring reach True wisdom's height, let conscious weakness teach Thy feeble soul her poor dependant state, Nor madly war with Nature to be great. Come then, Humility, thou surest guide! On earth again with frenzied men reside; Tear the dark film of vanity and lies, And inward turn their renovated eyes; In aspect true let each himself behold, By self deform'd in pride's portentous mould. And if thy voice, on Bethl'em's holy plain Once heard, can reach their flinty hearts again, Teach them, as fearful of a serpent's gaze, Teach them to shun the gloating eye of praise; That slightest swervings from their nature's plan Make them a lie, and poison all the man, 'Till black corruption spread the soul throughout, Whence thick and fierce, like fabled mandrakes, sprout The seeds of rice with more than tropick force, Exhausting in the growth their very vital source. Nor wrongly deem the cynick muse aspires, With monkish tears to quench our nobler fires. Let honest pride our humble hearts inflame, First to deserve, ere yet we look to, fame; Not fame miscall'd, the mob's applauding stare; This monsters have, proportion'd as they're rare; But that sweet praise, the tribute of the good, For wisdom gain'd, through love of truth pursued. Coeval with our birth, this pure desire Was given to lift our grov'ling natures higher, Till that high praise, by genuine merit wrung From men's slow justice, shall employ the tongue Of yon Supernal Court, from whom may flow Or bliss eternal or eternal wo. And since in all this hope exalting lives, Let virtuous toil improve what Nature gives: Each in his sphere some glorious palm may gain, For Heaven all-wise created nought in vain. Oh, task sublime, to till the human soil Where fruits immortal crown the lab'ror's toil! Where deathless flowers, in everlasting bloom, May gales from Heaven with odorous sweets perfume; Whose fragrance still when man's last work is done, And hoary Time his final course has run, Thro' ages back, with fresh'ning power shall last, Mark his long track, and linger where he past! The Paint-Kings. Fair Ellen was long the delight of the young, No damsel could with her compare; Her charms were the theme of the heart and the tongue. And bards without number in extacies sung, The beauties of Ellen the fair. Yet cold was the maid; and tho' legions advanced, All drill'd by Ovidean art, And languish'd, and ogled, protested and danced, Like shadows they came, and like shadows they glanced From the hard polish'd ice of her heart. Yet still did the heart of fair Ellen implore A something that could not be found; Like a sailor she seem'd on a desolate shore, With nor house, nor a tree, nor a sound but the roar Of breakers high dashing around. From object to object still, still would she veer, Though nothing, alas, could she find; Like the moon, without atmosphere, brilliant and clear, Yet doom'd, like the moon, with no being to cheer The bright barren waste of her mind. But rather than sit like a statue so still When the rain made her mansion a _pound_, Up and down would she go, like the sails of a mill, And pat every stair, like a woodpecker's bill, From the tiles of the roof to the ground. One morn, as the maid from her casement inclin'd, Pass'd a youth, with a frame in his hand. The casement she clos'd--not the eye of her mind; For, do all she could, no, she could not be blind; Still before her she saw the youth stand. "Ah, what can he do," said the languishing maid, "Ah, what with that frame can he do?" And she knelt to the Goddess of Secrets and pray'd, When the youth pass'd again, and again he display'd The frame and a picture to view. "Oh, beautiful picture!" the fair Ellen cried, "I must see thee again or I die." Then under her white chin her bonnet she tied, And after the youth and the picture she hied, When the youth, looking back, met her eye. "Fair damsel," said he (and he chuckled the while) "This picture I see you admire: Then take it, I pray you, perhaps 'twill beguile Some moments of sorrow; (nay, pardon my smile) Or, at least, keep you home by the fire." Then Ellen the gift with delight and surprise From the cunning young stripling receiv'd. But she knew not the poison that enter'd her eyes, When sparkling with rapture they gaz'd on her prize-- Thus, alas, are fair maidens deceiv'd! 'Twas a youth o'er the form of a statue inclin'd, And the sculptor he seem'd of the stone; Yet he languished as tho' for its beauty he pin'd And gaz'd as the eyes of the statue so blind Reflected the beams of his own. Twas the tale of the sculptor Pygmalion of old; Fair Ellen remember'd, and sigh'd; "Ah, could'st thou but lift from that marble so cold, Thine eyes too imploring, thy arms should enfold, And press me this day as thy bride." She said: when, behold, from the canvass arose The youth, and he stepp'd from the frame: With a furious transport his arms did enclose The love-plighted Ellen: and, clasping, he froze The blood of the maid with his flame! She turn'd and beheld on each shoulder a wing. "Oh, heaven! cried she, who art thou?" From the roof to the ground did his fierce answer ring, As frowning, he thunder'd " I am the PAINT-KING! And mine, lovely maid, thou art now!" Then high from the ground did the grim monster lift The loud screaming maid like a blast; And he sped through the air like a meteor swift, While the clouds, wand'ring by him, did fearfully drift To the right and the left as he pass'd. Now suddenly sloping his hurricane flight, With an eddying whirl he descends; The air all below him becomes black as night, And the ground where he treads, as if mov'd with affright, Like the surge of the Caspian bends. "I am here!" said the Fiend, and he thundering knock'd At the gates of a mountainous cave; The gates open flew, as by magick unlocked, While the peaks of the mount, reeling to and fro, rock'd Like an island of ice on the wave. "Oh, mercy!" cried Ellen, and swoon'd in his arms, But the PAINT-KING, he scoff'd at her pain. "Prithee, love," said the monster, "what mean these alarms?" She hears not, she sees not the terrible charms, That work her to horrour again. She opens her lids, but no longer her eyes Behold the fair youth she would woo; Now appears the PAINT-KING in his natural guise; His face, like a palette of villainous dies, Black and white, red, and yellow, and blue. On the skull of a Titan, that Heaven defied, Sat the fiend, like the grito Giant Gog, While aloft to his mouth a huge pipe he applied, Twice as big as the Eddystone Lighthouse, descried As it looms through an easterly fog. And anon, as he puff'd the vast volumes, were seen, In horrid festoons on the wall, Legs and arms, heads and bodies emerging between, Like the drawing-room grim of the Scotch Sawney Beane, By the Devil dress'd out for a ball. "Ah me!" cried the Damsel, and fell at his feet. "Must I hang on these walls to be dried?" "Oh, no!" said the fiend, while he sprung from his seat, "A far nobler fortune thy person shall meet; Into paint will I grind thee, my bride!" Then, seizing the maid by her dark auburn hair, An oil jug he plung'd her within. Seven days seven nights, with the shrieks of despair, Did Ellen in torment convulse the dun air, All covered with oil to the chin. On the morn of the eighth on a huge sable stone Then Ellen, all reeking, he laid; With a rock for his muller he crush'd every bone, But, though ground to jelly, still, still did she groan; For life had forsook not the maid. Now reaching his palette, with masterly care Each tint on its surface he spread; The blue of her eyes, and the brown of her hair, And the pearl and the white of her forehead so fair, And her lips' and her cheeks' rosy red. Then, stamping his foot, did the monster exclaim, "Now I brave, cruel Fairy, thy scorn!" When lo! from a chasm wide-yawning there came A light tiny chariot of rose-colour'd flame, By a team of ten glow-worms upborne. Enthroned In the midst on an emerald bright, Fair Geraldine sat without peer; Her robe was a gleam of the first blush of light, And her mantle the fleece of a noon-cloud white, And a beam of the moon was her spear. In an accent that stole on the still charmed air Like the first gentle language of Eve, Thus spake from her chariot the Fairy so fair: "I come at thy call, but, oh Paint-King, beware. Beware if again you deceive." "Tis true," said the monster, "thou queen of my heart, Thy portrait I oft have essay'd; Yet ne'er to the canvass could I with my art The least of thy wonderful beauties impart; And my failure with scorn you repaid. "Now I swear by the light of the Comet-King's tail!" And he tower'd with pride as he spoke, "If again with these magical colours I fail, The crater of Etna shall hence be my jail, And my food shall be sulphur and smoke. "But if I succeed, then, oh, fair Geraldine! Thy promise with justice I claim, And thou, queen of Fairies, shalt ever be mine, The bride of my bed; and thy portrait divine Shall fill all the earth with my fame." He spake; when, behold, the fair Geraldine's form On the canvass enchantingly glow'd; His touches--they flew like the leaves in a storm; And the pure pearly white and the carnation warm Contending in harmony flow'd; And now did the portrait a twin-sister seem To the figure of Geraldine fair: With the same _sweet_ expression did faithfully teem Each muscle; each feature; in short not a gleam Was lost of her beautiful hair. Twas the Fairy herself! but, alas, her blue eyes Still a pupil did ruefully lack; And who shall describe the terrifick surprise That seiz'd the PAINT-KING when, behold, he descries Not a speck on his palette of black! "I am lost!" said the Fiend, and he shook like a leaf; When, casting his eyes to the ground, He saw the lost pupils of Ellen with grief In the jaws of a mouse, and the sly little thief Whisk away from his sight with a bound. "I am lost!" said the Fiend, and he fell like a stone; Then rising the Fairy in ire With a touch of her finger she loosen'd her zone, (While the limbs on the wall gave a terrible groan,) And she swelled to a column of fire. Her spear now a thunder-bolt flash'd in the air, And sulphur the vault fill'd around: She smote the grim monster; and now by the hair High-lifting, she hurl'd him in speechless despair Down the depths of the chasm profound. Then over the picture thrice waving her spear, "Come forth!" said the good Geraldine; When, behold, from the canvass descending, appear Fair Ellen, in person more lovely than e'er, With grace more than ever divine! Myrtilla. _Addressed to a LADY, who lamented that she had never been in love._ "Al nuovo giorno, Pietosa man' mi sollevo." METASTASIO. "Ah me! how sad," Myrtilla cried, "To waste alone my years!" While o'er a streamlet's flow'ry side She pensive hung, and watch'd the tide That dimpled with her tears. "The world, though oft to merit blind, Alas, I cannot blame; For they have oft the knee inclined. And pour'd the sigh--but, like the wind Of winter, cold it came. "Ah no! neglect I cannot rue." Then o'er the limpid stream She cast her eyes of ether blue; Her wat'ry eyes look'd up to view Their lovelier parent's beam. And ever as the sad lament Would thus her lips divide, Her lips, like sister roses bent By passing gales, elastick sent Their blushes from the tide. While mournful o'er her pictur'd face Did then her glances steal, She seem'd she thought a marble Grace, T' enslave with love the human race, But ne'er that love to feel. "Ah, what avail those eyes replete With charms without a name! Alas, no kindred rays they meet, To kindle by collision sweet Of mutual love the flame! "Oh, 'tis the worst of cruel things, This solitary state! Yon bird that trims his purple wings, As on the bending bow he swings. Prepares to join his mate. "The little glow-worm sheds her light, Nor sheds her light in vain-- That still her tiny lover's sight Amid the darkness of the night May trace her o'er the plain. "All living nature seems to move By sympathy divine-- The sea, the earth, the air above; As if one universal love Did all their hearts entwine! "My heart alone of all my kind No love can ever warm: That only can resemblance find With waste Arabia, where the wind Ne'er breathes on human form; "A blank, embodied space, that knows No changes in its reign, Save when the fierce tornado throws Its barren sands, like drifted snows, In ridges o'er the plain." Thus plain'd the maid; and now her eyes Slow-lifting from the tide, Their liquid orbs with sweet surprise A youth beheld in extacies, Mute standing by her side. "Forbear, oh, lovely maid, forbear," The youth enamour'd cried, "Nor with Arabia's waste compare The heart of one so young and fair, To every charm allied. "Or, if Arabia--rather say, Where some delicious spring Remurmurs to the leaves that play Mid palm and date and flow'ret gay, On zephyr's frolick wing. "And now, methinks, I cannot deem The picture else but true; For I a wand'ring trav'ller seem O'er life's drear waste, without a gleam Of hope--if not in _you_." Thus spake the youth; and then his tongue Such converse sweet distill'd, It seem'd, as on his words she hung, As though a heavenly spirit sung, And all her soul he fill'd. He told her of his cruel fate, Condemn'd along to rove, From infancy to man's estate, Though courted by the fair and great, Yet never once to love. And then from many a poet's page The blest reverse he proved: How sweet to pass life's pilgrimage, From purple youth to sere old age, Aye loving and beloved! Here ceased the youth; but still his words Did o'er her fancy play; They seem'd the matin song of birds, Or like the distant low of herds That welcomes in the day. The sympathetick chord she feels Soft thrilling in her soul; And, as the sweet vibration steals Through every vein, in tender peals She seems to hear it roll. Her alter'd heart, of late so drear, Then seem'd a faery land, Where nymphs and rosy loves appear On margin green of fountain clear, And frolick hand in hand. But who shall paint her crimson blush, Nor think his hand of stone, As now the secret with a flush Did o'er her aching senses rush-- _Her heart was not her own!_ The happy Lindor, with a look That every hope confessed, Her glowing hand exulting took, And press'd it, as she fearful shook, In silence to his breast. Myrtilla felt the spreading flame, Yet knew not how to chide; So sweet it mantled o'er her frame, That, with a smile of pride and shame, She own'd herself his bride. No longer then, ye fair, complain, And call the fates unkind; The high, the low, the meek, the vain, Shall each a sympathetick swain, Another _self_ shall find. To a Lady Who Spoke Slightingly of Poets. Oh, censure not the Poet's art, Nor think it chills the feeling heart To love the gentle Muses. Can that which in a stone or flower, As if by transmigrating power, His gen'rous soul infuses; Can that for social joys impair The heart that like the lib'ral air All Nature's self embraces; That in the cold Norwegian main, Or mid the tropic hurricane Her varied beauty traces; That in her meanest work can find A fitness and a grace combin'd In blest harmonious union, That even with the cricket holds, As if by sympathy of souls, Mysterious communion; Can that with sordid selfishness His wide-expanded heart impress, Whose consciousness is loving; Who, giving life to all he spies, His joyous being multiplies, In youthfulness improving? Oh, Lady, then, fair queen of Earth, Thou loveliest of mortal birth, Spurn not thy truest lover; Nor censure _him_ whose keener sense Can feel thy magic influence Where nought the world discover; Whose eye on that bewitching face Can every source unnumber'd trace Of germinating blisses; See Sylphids o'er thy forehead weave The lily-fibred film, and leave It fix'd with honied kisses; While some within thy liquid eyes, Like minnows of a thousand dies Through lucid waters glancing, In busy motion to and fro, The gems of diamond-beetles sow, Their lustre thus enhancing; Here some, their little vases fill'd With blushes for thy cheek distill'd From roses newly blowing, Each tiny thirsting pore supply; And some in quick succession by The down of peaches strewing; There others who from hanging bell Of cowslip caught the dew that fell While yet the day was breaking, And o'er thy pouting lips diffuse The tincture--still its glowing hues Of purple morn partaking: Here some, that in the petals prest Of humid honeysuckles, rest From nightly fog defended, Flutter their fragrant wings between, Like humming-birds that scarce are seen, They seem with air so blended! While some, in equal clusters knit. On either side in circles flit, Like bees in April swarming, Their tiny weight each other lend, And force the yielding cheek to bend, Thy laughing dimples forming. Nor, Lady, think the Poet's eye Can only outward charms espy, Thy form alone adoring-- Ah, Lady, no: though fair they be. Yet he a fairer sight may see, Thy lovely _soul_ exploring: And while from part to part it flies The gentle Spirit he descries, Through every line pursuing; And feels upon his nature shower That pure, that humanizing power, Which raises by subduing. Sonnet _On a Falling Group in the Last Judgement of MICHAEL ANGELO, in the Cappella Sistina._ How vast, how dread, overwhelming is the thought Of Space interminable! to the soul A circling weight that crushes into nought Her mighty faculties! a wond'rous whole, Without or parts, beginning, or an end! How fearful then on desp'rate wings to send The fancy e'en amid the waste profound! Yet, born as if all daring to astound, Thy giant hand, oh Angelo, hath hurl'd E'en human forms, with all their mortal weight, Down the dread void--fall endless as their fate! Already now they seem from world to world For ages thrown; yet doom'd, another past, Another still to reach, nor e'er to reach the last! Sonnet _On the Group of the Three Angels before the Tent of Abraham, by RAFFAELLE, in the Vatican._ Oh, now I feel as though another sense From Heaven descending had informed my soul; I feel the pleasurable, full control Of Grace, harmonious, boundless, and intense. In thee, celestial Group, embodied lives The subtle mystery; that speaking gives Itself resolv'd: the essences combin'd Of Motion ceaseless, Unity complete. Borne like a leaf by some soft eddying wind, Mine eyes, impelled as by enchantment sweet, From part to part with circling motion rove, Yet seem unconscious of the power to move; From line to line through endless changes run, O'er countless shapes, yet seem to gaze on One. Sonnet _On seeing the Picture of Æolus by PELIGRINO TIBALDI, in the Institute at Bologna._ Full well, Tibaldi, did thy kindred mind The mighty spell of Bonarroti own. Like one who, reading magick words, receives The gift of intercourse with worlds uknnown, 'Twas thine, decyph'ring Nature's mystick leaves, To hold strange converse with the viewless wind; To see the Spirits, in embodied forms, Of gales and whirlwinds, hurricanes and storms. For, lo! obedient to thy bidding, teems Fierce into shape their stern relentless Lord: His form of motion ever-restless seems; Or, if to rest inclin'd his turbid soul, On Hecla's top to stretch, and give the word To subject Winds that sweep the desert pole. Sonnet _On REMBRANT; occasioned by his Picture of Jacob's Dream._ As in that twilight, superstitious age When all beyond the narrow grasp of mind Seem'd fraught with meanings of supernal kind, When e'en the learned philosophic sage, Wont with the stars thro' boundless space to range. Listen'd with rev'rence to the changeling's tale; E'en so, thou strangest of all beings strange! E'en so thy visionary scenes I hail; That like the ramblings of an idiot's speech, No image giving of a thing on earth. Nor thought significant in Reason's reach, Yet in their random shadowings give birth To thoughts and things from other worlds that come, And fill the soul, and strike the reason dumb. Sonnet _On the Luxembourg Gallery._ There is a Charm no vulgar mind can reach. No critick thwart, no mighty master teach; A Charm how mingled of the good and ill! Yet still so mingled that the mystick whole Shall captive hold the struggling Gazer's will, 'Till vanquish'd reason own its full control. And such, oh Rubens, thy mysterious art, The charm that vexes, yet enslaves the heart! Thy lawless style, from timid systems free, Impetuous rolling like a troubled sea, High o'er the rocks of reason's lofty verge Impending hangs; yet, ere the foaming surge Breaks o'er the bound, the refluent ebb of taste Back from the shore impels the wat'ry waste. Sonnet _To my venerable Friend, the President of the Royal Academy._ From one unus'd in pomp of words to raise A courtly monument of empty praise, Where self, transpiring through the flimsy pile, Betrays the builder's ostentatious guile, Accept, oh West, these unaffected lays, Which genius claims and grateful justice pays. Still green in age, thy vig'rous powers impart The youthful freshness of a blameless heart; For thine, unaided by another's pain, The wiles of envy, or the sordid train Of selfishness, has been the manly race Of one who felt the purifying grace Of honest fame; nor found the effort vain E'en far itself to love thy soul-ennobling art. The Mad Lover _At the Grave of his Mistress._ Stay, gentle Stranger, softly tread! Oh, trouble not this hallow'd heap. Vile Envy says my Julia's dead; But Envy thus Will never sleep. Ye creeping Zephyrs, hist you, pray, Nor press so hard yon wither'd leaves; For Julia sleeps beneath this clay-- Nay, feel it, how her bosom heaves! Oh, she was purer than the stream That saw the first created morn; Her words were like a sick man's dream That nerves with health a heart forlorn. And who their lot would hapless deem Those lovely, speaking lips to view; That light between like rays that beam Through sister clouds of rosy hue? Yet these were to her fairer soul But, as yon op'ning clouds on high To glorious worlds that o'er them roll, The portals to a brighter sky. And shall the glutton worm defile This spotless tenement of love, That like a playful infant's smile Seem'd born of purest light above? And yet I saw the sable pall Dark-trailing o'er the broken ground-- The earth did on her coffin fall-- I heard the heavy, hollow sound Avaunt, thou Fiend! nor tempt my brain With thoughts of madness brought from Hell! No wo like this of all her train Has Mem'ry in her blackest cell. 'Tis all a tale of fiendish art-- Thou com'st, my love, to prove it so! I'll press thy hand upon my heart-- It chills me like a hand of snow! Thine eyes are glaz'd, thy cheeks are pale, Thy lips are livid, and thy breath Too truly tells the dreadful tale--- Thou comest from the house of death! Oh, speak, Beloved! lest I rave; The fatal truth I'll bravely meet, And I will follow to the grave, And wrap me in thy winding sheet. First Love. _A Ballad_[8]. Ah me! how hard the task to bear The weight of ills we know! But harder still to dry the tear, That mourns a nameless we. If by the side of Lucy's wheel I sit to see her spin, My head around begins to reel, My heart to beat within. Or when on harvest holliday I lead the dance along, If Lucy chance to cross my way, So sure she leads me wrong, If I attempt the pipe to play, And catch my Lucy's eye, The trembling musick dies away, And melts into a sigh. Where'er I go, where'er I turn, If Lucy there be found, I seem to shiver, yet I burn, My head goes swimming round. I cannot bear to see her smile, Unless she smile on me; And if she frown, I sigh the while, But know not whence it be. Ah, what have I to Lucy done To cause me so much stir? From rising to the setting sun I sigh, and think of her. In vain I strive to join the throng In social mirth and ease; Now lonely woods I stray among, For only woods can please. Ah, me! this restless heart I fear Will never be at rest, 'Till Lucy cease to live, or tear Her image from my breast. The Complaint. "Oh, had I Colin's winning ease," Said Lindor with a sigh, "So carelessly ordained to please, I'd every care defy. "If Colin but for Daphne's hair A simple garland weave, He gives it with so sweet an air He seems a crown to give. "But, though I cull the fairest flower That decks the breast of spring, And posies from the woodland bower For Daphne's bosom bring, "When I attempt to give the fair, With many a speech in store, My half-form'd words dissolve in air, I blush and dare no more. "And shall I then expect a smile From Daphne on my love, When every word and look the while My clownish weakness prove? "Oft at the close of summer day, When Daphne wander'd by, I've left my little flock astray, And follow'd with a sigh. "Yet, fearing to approach too near, I lingered far behind: And, lest my step should reach her ear, I shook at every wind. "How happy then must Colin be Who never knew this fear, Whose sweet address at liberty Commands the fair-one's ear! "A smile, a tear, a word, a sigh, Stand ready at his call; In me unknown they live and die, Who have and feel them all." Ah, simple swain, how little knows The love-sick mind to scan Those gifts which real love bestows To mark the favoured man. Secure, let fluent parrots feign The musick of the dove; 'Tis only in the eye may reign The eloquence of love. Will, the Maniac. _A Ballad._ HARK! what wild sound is on the breeze? 'Tis Will, at evening fall Who sings to yonder waving trees That shade his prison wall. Poor Will was once the gayest swain At village dance was seen; No freer heart of wicked stain E'er tripp'd the moonlight green. His flock was all his humble pride, A finer ne'er was shorn; And only when a lambkin died Had Will a cause to mourn. But now poor William's brain is turn'd, He knows no more his flock; For when I ask'd "if them he mourn'd," He mock'd the village clock. No, William does not mourn his fold, Though tenantless and drear; Some say, a love he never told Did crush his heart with fear. And she, 'tis said, for whom he pin'd Was heiress of the land, A lovely lady, pure of mind Of open heart and hand. And others tell, as _how_ he strove To win the noble fair. Who, scornful, jeer'd his simple love. And left him to despair. Will wander'd then amid the rocks Through all the live long day, And oft would creep where bursting shocks Had rent the earth away. He lov'd to delve the darksome dell Where never pierc'd a ray, There to the wailing night-bird tell, 'How love was turn'd to clay.' And oft upon yon craggy mount, Where threatening cliffs hang high, Have I observ'd him stop to count With fixless stare the sky. Footnotes [1] In a late beautiful poem by Mr. Montgomery is the following lines "_The spirits of departed hours_." The Author, fearing that so singular a coincidence of thought and language might subject him to the charge of plagiarism, thinks it necessary to state that his poem was written long before he had the pleasure of reading Mr. M.'s. [2] The Author would be sorry to have it supposed that he alludes here to any individual; for he can say with truth, that such a character has never fallen under his observation: much less would he be thought to reflect on the Artists, as a class of men to which such baseness may be generally imputed. The case here is merely _supposed_, to shew how easily imbecility and selfishness may pervert this most innocent of all arts to the vilest purposes. He may be allowed also to disclaim an opinion too generally prevalent; namely, that envy and detraction are the natural offspring of the art. That Artists should possess a portion of these vices, in common with Poets, Musicians, and other candidates for fame, is reasonably to be expected; but that they should exclusively monopolise them, or even hold an undue proportion, 'twere ungenerous to suppose. The Author has known Artists in various countries; and can truly say, that, with a very few exceptions, he has found them candid and liberal; prompt to discover merit, and just in applauding it. If there have been exceptions, he has also generally been able to trace their cause to the unpropitious coincidence of narrow circumstances, a defective education, and poverty of intellect. Is it then surprising, that in the hands of such a triumvirate the art should be degraded to an imposture, to the trick of a juggler? but it surely would be a cause of wonder, if, with such leprous members, the sound and respectable body of its professors should escape the suspicion of partaking their contamination. [3] "Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?" Pope. [4] The Author having no revenge to gratify, and consequently no pleasure in giving pain, has purposely excluded the Works of all living Artists from this Gallery. [5] To those who are conversant with the Works of the Old Masters this piece of anachronism will hardly appear exaggerated. [6] Fra. Bartolomeo. [7] See Boswell's Life of Johnson. [8] This and the two following ballads were written at a very early age, and have already appeared in some of the Periodical Works of their day. 
11558	----	provided by Internet Archive Children's Library and University of Florida. POEMS BY S.G. GOODRICH NEW-YORK: G.P. PUTNAM, 155 BROADWAY 1851. [Illustration: Frontispiece] And 'mid the awful stillness Of their grave, The forest oaks have flourished-- And the breath Of years hath swept their races, Wave on wave, As ages fainted On the shores of death. The tumbling cliff perchance Hath thundered deep, Like a rough note Of music in the song Of centuries, and the whirlwind's Crushing sweep, Hath ploughed the forest With its furrows strong. [Illustration: Vignette] LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. ILLUSTRATIONS. DRAWN BY ENGRAVED BY 1. Frontispiece Billings Lossing & Barrett 2. Vignette Croome Anderson 3. Vignette Billings Hartwell 4. The Departure of the Fairies Billings Bobbett & Edmonds 5. Voyage of the Fairies Billings Bobbett & Edmonds 6. The Fairies' Search Billings Hartwell 7. The Fairy Dance Billings Lossing & Barrett 8. Indians' discovery of the Humming Birds Billings Lossing & Barrett 9. Lake Superior Billings Hartwell 10. The Leaf Billings Marsh 11. The Bubble Chase Billings Hartwell 12. Dream of Life Harvey Hartwell 13. The Surf Sprite Billings Brown 14. Vignette Billings Brown 15. The First Frost of Autumn Billings Nichols 16. The Sea Bird Billings Brown 17. Vignette Billings Brown 18. The King of Terrors Billings Marsh 19. The Rainbow Bridge Billings Bobbett & Edmonds 20. The Rival Bubbles Billings Marsh 21. The Mississippi Billings Bobbett & Edmonds 22. Banks of the Mississippi Billings Lossing & Barrett 23. The Indian Lovers Chapman Adams 24. Vignette Billings Lossing & Barrett 25. The Two Windmills Billings Hartwell 26. The Gipsy's Prayer Billings Hartwell 27. The Robin Chapman Adams 28. Burial at Sea Billings Richardson 29. The Dream of Youth Billings Hartwell 30. The Old Oak Billings Brown 31. To a Wild Violet in March Croome Anderson 32. The Rose Cheney Fairchild 33. The Maniac Billings Brown 34. The Two Shades Billings Marsh 35. The Outcast Billings Hartwell 36. "My Native Hills," &c. Billings Andrews 37. The Moonlit Prairie Billings Andrews 38. The Farewell Billings Andrews 39. The Expulsion from Eden Billings Marsh 40. Vignette Croome Anderson Henry J. Crate, Pressman. [Illustration: Vignette] CONTENTS. Birth-night of the Humming Birds Lake Superior The Leaf The Bubble Chase A Dream of Life The Surf Sprite The First Frost of Autumn The Sea Bird The King of Terrors The Rainbow Bridge The Rival Bubbles Good Night The Mississippi The Two Windmills The Ideal and the Actual The Golden Dream The Gipsy's Prayer Inscription for a Rural Cemetery Song: the Robin Thoughts at Sea A Burial at Sea The Dream of Youth Remembrance The Old Oak To a Wild Violet in March Illusions The Rose: to Ellen The Maniac The Two Shades The Teacher's Lesson Perennials To a Lady who had been Singing The Broken Heart The Star of the West The Outcast Good and Evil The Mountain Stream Birth-night of the Humming Birds. [Illustration: The Departure of the Fairies] I. I'll tell you a Fairy Tale that's new: How the merry Elves o'er the ocean flew From the Emerald isle to this far-off shore, As they were wont in the days of yore; And played their pranks one moonlit night, Where the zephyrs alone could see the sight. II. Ere the Old world yet had found the New, The fairies oft in their frolics flew To the fragrant isles of the Caribbee-- Bright bosom-gems of a golden sea. Too dark was the film of the Indian's eye, These gossamer sprites to suspect or spy,-- So they danced 'mid the spicy groves unseen, And mad were their merry pranks, I ween; For the fairies, like other discreet little elves, Are freest and fondest when all by themselves. No thought had they that in after time, The Muse would echo their deeds in rhyme; So gayly doffing light stocking and shoe, They tripped o'er the meadow all dappled in dew. III. I could tell, if I would, some right merry tales, Of unslippered fairies that danced in the vales-- But the lovers of scandal I leave in the lurch-- And, beside, these elves don't belong to the church. If they danced--be it known--'twas not in the clime Of your Mathers and Hookers, where laughter was crime; Where sentinel virtue kept guard o'er the lip, Though witchcraft stole into the heart by a slip! Oh no! 'twas the land of the fruit and the flower-- Where Summer and Spring both dwelt in one bower-- Where one hung the citron, all ripe from the bough, And the other with blossoms encircled her brow; Where the mountains embosomed rich tissues of gold, And the rivers o'er rubies and emeralds rolled. It was there, where the seasons came only to bless, And the fashions of Eden still lingered, in dress, That these gay little fairies were wont, as I say, To steal in their merriest gambols away. But dropping the curtain o'er frolic and fun, Too good to be told, or too bad to be done, I give you a legend from Fancy's own sketch, Though I warn you he's given to fibbing--the wretch! Yet I learn by the legends of breezes and brooks, 'Tis as true as the fairy tales told in the books. IV. One night, when the moon shone fair on the main, Choice spirits were gathered from meadow and plain-- And lightly embarking from Erin's bold cliffs, They slid o'er the wave in their moonbeam skiffs. A ray for a rudder--a thought for a sail-- Swift, swift was each bark as the wing of the gale. [Illustration: Voyage of the Fairies] Yet long were the tale, Should I linger to say What gambol and frolic Enlivened the way; How they flirted with bubbles That danced on the wave, Or listened to mermaids That sang from the cave; Or slid with the moonbeams Down deep to the grove Of coral, where mullet And goldfish rove: How there, in long vistas Of silence and sleep, They waltzed, as if mocking The death of the deep: How, oft, where the wreck Lay scattered and torn, They peeped in the skull, All ghastly and lorn; Or deep, 'mid wild rocks, Quizzed the goggling shark, And mouthed at the sea-wolf, So solemn and stark; Each seeming to think That the earth and the sea Were made but for fairies, For gambol and glee! V. Enough, that at last they came to the Isle, Where moonlight and fragrance were rivals the while. Not yet had those vessels from Palos been here, To turn the bright gem to the blood-mingled tear. Oh no! still blissful and peaceful the land, And the merry elves flew from the sea to the strand. Right happy and joyous seemed now the fond crew, As they tripped 'mid the orange groves flashing in dew, For they were to hold a revel that night, A gay fancy ball, and each to be dight In the gem or the flower that fancy might choose, From mountain or vale, for its fragrance or hues. VI. Away sped the maskers like arrows of light To gather their gear for the revel bright. To the dazzling peaks of far-off Peru, In emulous speed some sportively flew, And deep in the mine, or 'mid glaciers on high, For ruby and sapphire searched heedful and sly. For diamonds rare that gleam in the bed Of Brazilian streams, some merrily sped, While others for topaz and emerald stray, 'Mid the cradle cliffs of the Paraguay. [Illustration: The Fairies' Search] VII. As these are gathering the rarest of gems, Others are plucking the rarest of stems. They range wild dells where the zephyr alone, To the blushing blossoms before was known; Through forests they fly, whose branches are hung By creeping plants, with fair flowerets strung, Where temples of nature with arches of bloom, Are lit by the moonlight, and faint with perfume. They stray where the mangrove and clematis twine, Where azalia and laurel in rivalry shine; Where, tall as the oak, the passion-tree glows, And jasmine is blent with rhodora and rose. O'er blooming savannas and meadows of light, 'Mid regions of summer they sweep in their flight, And gathering the fairest, they speed to their bower, Each one with his favorite brilliant or flower. VIII. The hour is come, and the fairies are seen In their plunder arrayed on the moonlit green. The music is breathed--'tis a soft strain of pleasure, And the light giddy throng whirl into the measure. [Illustration: The Fairy Dance] 'Twas a joyous dance, and the dresses were bright, Such as never were known till that famous night; For the gems and the flowers that shone in the scene, O'ermatched the regalia of princess and queen. No gaudy slave to a fair one's brow Was the rose, or the ruby, or emerald now, But lighted with souls by the playful elves, The brilliants and blossoms seemed dancing themselves. IX. Of all that did chance, 'twere a long tale to tell, Of the dresses and waltzes, and who was the belle; But each was so happy, and all were so fair, That night stole away and the dawn caught them there! Such a scampering never before was seen, As the fairies' flight on that island green. They rushed to the bay with twinkling feet, But vain was their haste, for the moonlight fleet Had passed with the dawn, and never again Were those fairies permitted to traverse the main. But 'mid the groves, when the sun was high, The Indian marked with a worshipping eye, The HUMMING BIRDS, all unknown before, Glancing like thoughts from flower to flower, And seeming as if earth's loveliest things, The brilliants and blossoms, had taken wings: And Fancy hath whispered in numbers light, That these are the fairies who danced that night, And linger yet in the garb they wore, Content in our clime and more blest than before! [Illustration: Indians' discovery of the Humming Birds] Lake Superior. [Illustration: Lake Superior] Father of Lakes! thy waters bend, Beyond the eagle's utmost view, When, throned in heaven, he sees thee send Back to the sky its world of blue. Boundless and deep the forests weave Their twilight shade thy borders o'er, And threatening cliffs, like giants, heave Their rugged forms along thy shore. Nor can the light canoes, that glide Across thy breast like things of air, Chase from thy lone and level tide, The spell of stillness deepening there. Yet round this waste of wood and wave, Unheard, unseen, a spirit lives, That, breathing o'er each rock and cave, To all, a wild, strange aspect gives. The thunder-riven oak, that flings Its grisly arms athwart the sky, A sudden, startling image brings To the lone traveller's kindled eye. The gnarled and braided boughs that show Their dim forms in the forest shade, Like wrestling serpents seem, and throw Fantastic horrors through the glade. The very echoes round this shore, Have caught a strange and gibbering tone, For they have told the war-whoop o'er, Till the wild chorus is their own. Wave of the wilderness, adieu-- Adieu, ye rocks, ye wilds, ye woods! Roll on, thou Element of blue, And fill these awful solitudes! Thou hast no tale to tell of man. God is thy theme. Ye sounding caves, Whisper of Him, whose mighty plan, Deems as a bubble all your waves! The Leaf. [Illustration: The Leaf] It came with spring's soft sun and showers, Mid bursting buds and blushing flowers; It flourished on the same light stem, It drank the same clear dews with them. The crimson tints of summer morn That gilded one, did each adorn: The breeze that whispered light and brief To bud or blossom, kissed the leaf; When o'er the leaf the tempest flew, The bud and blossom trembled too. But its companions passed away, And left the leaf to lone decay. The gentle gales of spring went by: The fruits and flowers of summer die. The autumn winds swept o'er the hill, And winter's breath came cold and chill. The leaf now yielded to the blast, And on the rushing stream was cast. Far, far it glided to the sea, And whirled and eddied wearily, Till suddenly it sank to rest, And slumbered in the ocean's breast. Thus life begins--its morning hours, Bright as the birthday of the flowers-- Thus passes like the leaves away, As withered and as lost as they. Beneath the parent roof we meet In joyous groups, and gayly greet The golden beams of love and light, That dawn upon the youthful sight. But soon we part, and one by one, Like leaves and flowers, the group is gone. One gentle spirit seeks the tomb, His brow yet fresh with childhood's bloom: Another treads the paths of fame, And barters peace to win a name. Another still, tempts fortune's wave, And seeking wealth, secures a grave. The last, grasps yet the brittle thread: Though friends are gone and joy is dead-- Still dares the dark and fretful tide, And clutches at its power and pride-- Till suddenly the waters sever, And like the leaf, he sinks for ever! The Bubble Chase. [Illustration: The Bubble Chase] Twas morn, and, wending on its way, Beside my path a stream was playing; And down its banks, in humor gay, A thoughtless boy was idly straying. Light as the breeze they onward flew-- That joyous youth and laughing tide, And seemed each other's course to woo, For long they bounded side by side. And now the dimpling water staid, And glassed its ripples in a nook; And on its breast a bubble played, Which won the boy's admiring look. He bent him o'er the river's brim, And on the radiant vision gazed; For lovelier still it seemed to him, That in its breast his imaged blazed. With beating heart and trembling finger, He stooped the wondrous gem to clasp, But, spellbound, seemed a while to linger, Ere yet he made th' adventurous grasp. And still a while the glittering toy, Coquettish, seemed to shun the snare, And then more eager grew the boy, And followed with impetuous air. Round and around, with heedful eyes, He chased it o'er the wavy river: He marked his time and seized his prize, But in his hand it burst for ever! Upon the river's marge he sate, The tears adown his young cheek gushing; And long,--his heart disconsolate-- He heeded not the river's rushing. But tears will cease. And now the boy Once more looked forth upon the stream: 'Twas morning still, and lo! a toy, Bright as the last one, in the beam! He rose--pursued--the bubble caught; It burst--he sighed--then others chased; And as I parted, still he sought New bubbles in their downward haste. My onward path I still pursued, Till the high noontide sun was o'er me. And now, though changed in form and mood, That Youth and river seemed before me. The deepened stream more proudly swept, Though chafed by many a vessel's prow; The Youth in manhood's vigor stept, But care was chiselled on his brow. Still on the stream he kept his eye, And wooed the bubbles to the shore, And snatched them, as they circled by, Though bursting as they burst before. Once more we parted. Yet again We met--though now 'twas evening dim: Onward the waters rushed amain, And vanished o'er a cataract's brim. Though swift and dark the raging surge, The Bubble-Chaser still was there; And, bending o'er the dizzy verge, Clutched at the gaudy things of air. With staff in hand and tottering knee, Upon the slippery brink he stood, And watched, with doting ecstasy, Each wreath of foam that rode the flood. "One bubble more!" I heard him call, And saw his trembling fingers play: He snatched, and down the roaring fall, With the lost bubble, passed away! A Dream of Life. [Illustration: Dream of Life] When I was young--long, long ago-- I dreamed myself among the flowers; And fancy drew the picture so, They seemed like Fairies in their bowers. The rose was still a rose, you know-- But yet a maid. What could I do? You surely would not have me go, When rosy maidens seem to woo? My heart was gay, and 'mid the throng I sported for an hour or two; We danced the flowery paths along, And did as youthful lovers do. But sports must cease, and so I dreamed To part with these, my fairy flowers-- But oh, how very hard it seemed To say good-by 'mid such sweet bowers! And one fair Maid of modest air Gazed on me with her eye of blue; I saw the tear-drop gathering there-- How could I say to her, Adieu! I fondly gave my hand and heart, And we were wed. Bright hour of youth! How little did I think to part With my sweet bride, whose name was Truth! But time passed on, and Truth grew gray, And chided, though with gentlest art: I loved her, though I went astray, And almost broke her faithful heart. And then I left her, and in tears-- These could not move my hardened breast! I wandered, and for weary years I sought for bliss, but found no rest. I sought--yet ever sought in vain-- To find the peace, the joy of youth: At last, I turned me back again, And found them with my faithful Truth. The Surf Sprite. [Illustration: The Surf Sprite] I. In the far off sea there is many a sprite, Who rests by day, but awakes at night. In hidden caves where monsters creep, When the sun is high, these spectres sleep: From the glance of noon, they shrink with dread, And hide 'mid the bones of the ghastly dead. Where the surf is hushed, and the light is dull, In the hollow tube and the whitened skull, They crouch in fear or in whispers wail, For the lingering night, and the coming gale. But at even-tide, when the shore is dim, And bubbling wreaths with the billows swim, They rise on the wing of the freshened breeze, And flit with the wind o'er the rolling seas. II. At summer eve, as I sat on the cliff, I marked a shape like a dusky skiff, That skimmed the brine, toward the rocky shore-- I heard a voice in the surge's roar-- I saw a form in the flashing spray, And white arms beckoned me away. Away o'er the tide we went together, Through shade and mist and stormy weather-- Away, away, o'er the lonely water, On wings of thought like shadows we flew, Nor paused 'mid scenes of wreck and slaughter, That came from the blackened waves to view. The staggering ship to the gale we left, The drifting corse and the vacant boat; The ghastly swimmer all hope bereft-- We left them there on the sea to float! Through mist and shade and stormy weather, That night we went to the icy Pole, And there on the rocks we stood together, And saw the ocean before us roll. No moon shone down on the hermit sea, No cheering beacon illumed the shore, No ship on the water, no light on the lea, No sound in the ear but the billow's roar! But the wave was bright, as if lit with pearls, And fearful things on its bosom played; Huge crakens circled in foamy whirls, As if the deep for their sport was made, And mighty whales through the crystal dashed, And upward sent the far glittering spray, Till the darkened sky with the radiance flashed, And pictured in glory the wild array.[A] III. Hast thou seen the deep in the moonlight beam, Its wave like a maiden's bosom swelling? Hast thou seen the stars in the water's gleam, As if its depths were their holy dwelling? We met more beautiful scenes that night, As we slid along in our spirit-car, For we crossed the South Sea, and, ere the light, We doubled Cape Horn on a shooting star. In our way we stooped o'er a moonlit isle, Which the fairies had built in the lonely sea, And the Surf Sprite's brow was bent with a smile, As we gazed through the mist on their revelry. The ripples that swept to the pebbly shore, O'er shells of purple in wantonness played, And the whispering zephyrs sweet odors bore, From roses that bloomed amid silence and shade. In winding grottos, with gems all bright, Soft music trembled from harps unseen, And fair forms glided on wings of light, 'Mid forests of fragrance, and valleys of green. There were voices of gladness the heart to beguile, And glances of beauty too fond to be true-- For the Surf Sprite shrieked, and the Fairy Isle, By the breath of the tempest was swept from our view. IV. Then the howling gale o'er the billows rushed, And trampled the sea in its march of wrath; From stooping clouds the red lightnings gushed, And thunders moved in their blazing path. 'Twas a fearful night, but my shadowy guide Had a voice of glee as we rode on the gale, For we saw afar a ship on the tide, With a bounding course and a fearless sail. In darkness it came, like a storm-sent bird, But another ship it met on the wave: A shock--a shout--but no more we heard, For they both went down to their ocean-grave! We paused on the misty wing of the storm, As a ruddy flash lit the face of the deep, And far in its bosom full many a form Was swinging down to its silent sleep. Another flash! and they seemed to rest, In scattered groups, on the floor of the tide: The lover and loved, they were breast to breast, The mother and babe, they were side by side. The leaping waves clapped their hands in joy, And gleams of gold with the waters flowed, But the peace of the sleepers knew no alloy, For all was hushed in their lone abode! V. On, on, like midnight visions, we passed, The storm above, and the surge below, And shrieking forms swept by on the blast, Like demons speeding on errands of woe. My spirit sank, for aloft in the cloud, A Star-set Flag on the whirlwind flew, And I knew that the billow must be the shroud Of the noble ship and her gallant crew. Her side was striped with a belt of white, And a dozen guns from each battery frowned, But the lightning came in a sheet of flame,[B] And the towering sails in its folds were wound. Vain, vain was the shout, that in battle rout, Had rung as a knell in the ear of the foe, For the bursting deck was heaved from the wreck, And the sky was bathed in the awful glow! The ocean shook to its oozy bed, As the swelling sound to the canopy went, And the splintered fires like meteors shed Their light o'er the tossing element. A moment they gleamed, then sank in the foam, And darkness swept over the gorgeous glare-- They lighted the mariners down to their home, And left them all sleeping in stillness there! VI. The storm is hushed, and my vision is o'er, The Surf Sprite changed to a foamy wreath, The night is deepened along the shore, And I thread my way o'er the dusky heath. But often again I shall go to that cliff, And seek for her form on the flashing tide, For I know she will come in her airy skiff, And over the sea we shall swiftly ride! [Footnote A: The Laplanders are said to entertain the idea that the coruscations of the Aurora Borealis, are occasioned by the sports of the fishes in the polar seas.] [Footnote B: The loss of the United States Sloop-of-War Hornet, in the Gulf of Mexico, 1829, suggested this passage. She was supposed to have gone down in a hurricane, but as nothing is positively known on the subject, it is not beyond lawful poetical license to imagine, at least in a dream, that the powder magazine was set on fire by the lightning, and the ship rent in pieces, by the explosion.] [Illustration: Vignette] The First Frost of Autumn. [Illustration: The First Frost of Autumn] At evening it rose in the hollow glade, Where wild-flowers blushed 'mid silence and shade; Where, hid from the gaze of the garish noon, They were slily wooed by the trembling moon. It rose--for the guardian zephyrs had flown, And left the valley that night alone. No sigh was borne from the leafy hill, No murmur came from the lapsing rill; The boughs of the willow in silence wept, And the aspen leaves in that sabbath slept. The valley dreamed, and the fairy lute Of the whispering reed by the brook was mute. The slender rush o'er the glassy rill, As a marble shaft, was erect and still, And no airy sylph on the mirror wave, A dimpling trace of its footstep gave. The moon shone down, but the shadows deep Of the pensile flowers, were hushed in sleep. The pulse was still in that vale of bloom, And the Spirit rose from its marshy tomb. It rose o'er the breast of a silver spring, Where the mist at morn shook its snowy wing, And robed like the dew, when it woos the flowers. It stole away to their secret bowers. With a lover's sigh, and a zephyr's breath, It whispered bliss, but its work was death: It kissed the lip of a rose asleep, And left it there on its stem to weep: It froze the drop on a lily's leaf, And the shivering blossom was bowed in grief. O'er the gentian it breathed, and the withered flower Fell blackened and scathed in its lonely bower; It stooped to the asters all blooming around, And kissed the buds as they slept on the ground. They slept, but no morrow could waken their bloom, And shrouded by moonlight, they lay in their tomb. The Frost Spirit went, like the lover light, In search of fresh beauty and bloom that night Its wing was plumed by the moon's cold ray, And noiseless it flew o'er the hills away. It flew, yet its dallying fingers played, With a thrilling touch, through the maple's shade; It toyed with the leaves of the sturdy oak, It sighed o'er the aspen, and whispering spoke To the bending sumach, that stooped to throw Its chequering shade o'er a brook below. It kissed the leaves of the beech, and breathed O'er the arching elm, with its ivy wreathed: It climbed to the ash on the mountain's height-- It flew to the meadow, and hovering light O'er leafy forest and fragrant dell, It bound them all in its silvery spell. Each spreading bough heard the whispered bliss, And gave its cheek to the gallant's kiss-- Though giving, the leaves disdainingly shook, As if refusing the boon they took. Who dreamed that the morning's light would speak, And show that kiss on the blushing cheek? For in silence the fairy work went through-- And no croning owl of the scandal knew: No watch-dog broke from his slumbers light, To tell the tale to the listening night. But that which in secret is darkly done, Is oft displayed by the morrow's sun; And thus the leaves in the light revealed, With their glowing hues what the night concealed. The sweet, frail flowers that once welcomed the morn, Now drooped in their bowers, all shrivelled and lorn; While the hardier trees shook their leaves in the blast-- Though tell-tale colors were over them cast. The maple blushed deep as a maiden's cheek, And the oak confessed what it would not speak. The beech stood mute, but a purple hue O'er its glossy robe was a witness true. The elm and the ivy with varying dyes, Protesting their innocence, looked to the skies: And the sumach rouged deeper, as stooping to look, It glanced at the colors that flared in the brook. The delicate aspen grew nervous and pale, As the tittering forest seemed full of the tale; And the lofty ash, though it tossed up its bough, With a puritan air on the mountain's brow, Bore a purple tinge o'er its leafy fold, And the hidden revel was gayly told! The Sea-Bird. [Illustration: The Sea-Bird] Far, far o'er the deep is my island throne, Where the sea-gull roams and reigns alone; Where nought is seen but the beetling rock, And nought is heard but the ocean-shock, And the scream of birds when the storm is nigh, And the crash of the wreck, and the fearful cry Of drowning men, in their agony. I love to sit, when the waters sleep, And ponder the depths of the glassy deep, Till I dream that I float on a corse at sea, And sing of the feast that is made for me. I love on the rush of the storm to sail, And mingle my scream with the hoarser gale. When the sky is dark, and the billow high, When the tempest sweeps in its terror by, I love to ride on the maddening blast-- To flap my wing o'er the fated mast, And sing to the crew a song of fear, Of the reef and the surge that await them here. When the storm is done and the revel is o'er, I love to sit on the rocky shore, And tell to the ear of the dying breeze, The tales that are hushed in the sullen seas; Of the ship that sank in the reefy surge, And left her fate to the sea-gull's dirge: Of the lover that sailed to meet his bride, And his story gave to the secret tide: Of the father that went on the trustless main, And never was met by his child again: Of the hidden things which the waves conceal, And the sea-bird's song can alone reveal. I tell of the ship that hath found a grave-- Her spars still float on the restless wave, But down in the halls of the voiceless deep, The forms of the brave and the beautiful sleep. I saw the storm as it gathered fast, I heard the roar of the coming blast, I marked the ship in her fearful strife, As she flew on the tide, like a thing of life. But the whirlwind came, and her masts were wrung, Away, and away on the waters flung. I sat on the gale o'er the sea-swept deck, And screamed in delight o'er the coming wreck: I flew to the reef with a heart of glee, And wiled the ship to her destiny. On the hidden rocks like a hawk she rushed, And the sea through her riven timbers gushed: O'er the whirling surge the wreck was flung, And loud on the gale wild voices rung. I gazed on the scene--I saw despair On the pallid brows of a youthful pair. The maiden drooped like a gentle flower, When lashed by the gale in its quivering bower: Her arms round her lover she wildly twined, And gazed on the sea with a wildered mind. He bent o'er the trembler, and sheltered her form, From the plash of the sea, and the sweep of the storm; But woe to the lover, and woe to the maid, Whose hopes on the treacherous deep are laid! For the Sea hath a King whose palaces shine, In lustre and light down the pearly brine, And he loves to gather in glory there, The choicest things of the earth and air. In his deep saloons with coral crowned, Where gems are sparkling above and around, He gathers his harem of love and grace, And beauty he takes to his cold embrace. The winds and the waves are his messengers true. And lost is the wanderer whom they pursue. They sweep the shore, they plunder the wreck, His stores to heap, and his halls to deck. Oh! lady and lover, ye are doomed their prey-- They come! they come! ye are swept away! Ye sink in the tide,--but it cannot sever The fond ones who sleep in its depths for ever! Wild! wild was the storm, and loud was its roar, And strange were the sights that I hovered o'er: I saw the babe with its mother die; I listened to catch its parting sigh; And I laughed to see the black billows play With the sleeping child in their gambols gay. I saw a girl whose arms were white, As the foam that flashed on the billows' height; And the ripples played with her glossy curls, And her cheek was kissed by the dancing whirls; But her bosom was dead to hope and fear, For she shuddered not as the shark came near. I poised my foot on the forehead fair Of a lovely boy that floated there; I looked in the eyes of the drowning brave, As they upward gazed through the glassy wave; I screamed o'er the bubbles that told of death, And stooped as the last gave up his breath. I flapped my wing, for the work was done-- The storm was hushed, and the laughing sun Sent his gushing light o'er the sullen seas-- And I tell my tale to the fainting breeze, Of the hidden things which the waves conceal, And the sea-bird's song can alone reveal! [Illustration: Vignette] The King of Terrors. [Illustration: The King of Terrors] I. As a shadow He flew, but sorrow and wail Came up from his path, like the moan of the gale. His quiver was full, though his arrows fell fast As the sharp hail of winter when urged by the blast. He smiled on each shaft as it flew from the string, Though feathered by fate, and the lightning its wing. Unerring, unsparing, it sped to its mark, As the mandate of destiny, certain and dark. The mail of the warrior it severed in twain,-- The wall of the castle it shivered amain: No shield could shelter, no prayer could save, And Love's holy shrine no immunity gave. A babe in the cradle--its mother bent o'er,-- The arrow is sped,--and that babe is no more! At the faith-plighting altar, a lovely one bows,-- The gem on her finger,--in Heaven her vows; Unseen is the blow, but she sinks in the crowd, And her bright wedding-garment is turned to a shroud! II. On flew the Destroyer, o'er mountain and main,-- And where there was life, there, there are the slain! No valley so deep, no islet so lone, But his shadow is cast, and his victims are known. He paused not, though years rolled weary and slow, And Time's hoary pinion drooped languid and low: He paused not till Man from his birth-place was swept, And the sea and the land in solitude slept. III. On a mountain he stood, for the struggle was done,-- A smile on his lip for the victory won. The city of millions,--lone islet and cave, The home of the hermit,--all earth was a grave! The last of his race, where the first saw the light, The monarch had met, and triumphed in fight: Swift, swift was the steed, o'er Shinar's wide sand, But swifter the arrow that flew from Death's hand! IV. O'er the mountain he seems like a tempest to lower, Triumphant and dark in the fulness of power; And flashes of flame, that play round his crest, Bespeak the fierce lightning that glows in his breast. But a vision of wonder breaks now on his sight; The blue vault of heaven is gushing with light, And, facing the tyrant, a form from the sky Returns the fierce glance of his challenging eye. A moment they pause,--two princes of might,-- The Demon of Darkness,--an Angel of Light! Each gazes on each,--no barrier between-- And the quivering rocks shrink aghast from the scene! The sword of the angel waves free in the air; Death looks to his quiver,--no arrow is there! He falls like a pyramid, crumbled and torn; And a vision of light on his dying eye borne, In glory reveals the blest souls of the slain,-- And he sees that his sceptre was transient and vain; For, 'mid the bright throng, e'en the infant he slew, And the altar-struck bride, beam full on the view! The Rainbow Bridge. [Illustration: The Rainbow Bridge] Love and Hope and Youth, together-- Travelling once in stormy weather, Met a deep and gloomy tide, Flowing swift and dark and wide. 'Twas named the river of Despair,-- And many a wreck was floating there! The urchins paused, with faces grave, Debating how to cross the wave, When lo! the curtain of the storm Was severed, and the rainbow's form Stood against the parting cloud-- Emblem of peace on trouble's shroud! Hope pointed to the signal flying, And the three, their shoulders plying, O'er the stream the light arch threw-- A rainbow bridge of loveliest hue! Now, laughing as they tripped it o'er, They gayly sought the other shore: But soon the hills began to frown, And the bright sun went darkly down. Though their step was light and fleet, The rainbow vanished 'neath their feet,-- And down they went,--the giddy things! But Hope put forth his ready wings,-- And clinging Love and Youth he bore In triumph to the other shore. But ne'er I ween should mortals deem On rainbow bridge to cross a stream, Unless bright, buoyant Hope is nigh, And, light with Love and Youth, they fly! The Rival Bubbles. [Illustration: The Rival Bubbles] Two bubbles on a mountain stream, Began their race one shining morn, And lighted by the ruddy beam, Went dancing down 'mid shrub and thorn. The stream was narrow, wild and lone, But gayly dashed o'er mound and rock, And brighter still the bubbles shone, As if they loved the whirling shock. Each leaf, and flower, and sunny ray, Was pictured on them as they flew, And o'er their bosoms seemed to play In lovelier forms and colors new. Thus on they went, and side by side, They kept in sad and sunny weather, And rough or smooth the flowing tide, They brightest shone when close together. Nor did they deem that they could sever, That clouds could rise, or morning wane; They loved, and thought that love for ever Would bind them in its gentle chain. But soon the mountain slope was o'er, And 'mid new scenes the waters flowed, And the two bubbles now no more With their first morning beauty glowed. They parted, and the sunny ray That from each other's love they borrowed; That made their dancing bosoms gay, While other bubbles round them sorrowed: That ray was dimmed, and on the wind A shadow came, as if from Heaven; Yet on they flew, and sought to find From strife, the bliss that love had given. They parted, yet in sight they kept, And rivals now the friends became, And if, perchance, the eddies swept Them close, they flashed with flame. And fiercer forward seemed to bound, With the swift ripples toward the main; And all the lesser bubbles round, Each sought to gather in its train. They strove, and in that eager strife Their morning friendship was forgot, And all the joys that sweeten life, The rival bubbles knew them not. The leaves, the flowers, the grassy shore, Were all neglected in the chase, And on their bosoms now no more These forms of beauty found a place. But all was dim and drear within, And envy dwelt where love was known, And images of fear and sin Were traced, where truth and pleasure shone. The clouds grew dark, the tide swelled high, And gloom was o'er the waters flung, But riding on the billows, nigh Each other now the bubbles swung. Closer and closer still they rushed, In anger o'er the rolling river; They met, and 'mid the waters crushed, The rival bubbles burst for ever! Good Night. The sun has sunk behind the hills, The shadows o'er the landscape creep; A drowsy sound the woodland fills, And nature folds her arms to sleep: Good night--good night. The chattering jay has ceased his din-- The noisy robin sings no more-- The crow, his mountain haunt within, Dreams 'mid the forest's surly roar: Good night--good night. The sunlit cloud floats dim and pale; The dew is falling soft and still; The mist hangs trembling o'er the vale, And silence broods o'er yonder mill: Goodnight--good night. The rose, so ruddy in the light, Bends on its stem all rayless now, And by its side the lily white A sister shadow, seems to bow: Good night--good night. The bat may wheel on silent wing-- The fox his guilty vigils keep-- The boding owl his dirges sing; But love and innocence will sleep: Good night--good night! The Mississippi.[A] [Illustration: The Mississippi] I. Far in the West, where snow-capt mountains rise, Like marble shafts beneath Heaven's stooping dome, And sunset's dreamy curtain drapes the skies, As if enchantment there would build her home-- O'er wood and wave, from haunts of men away-- From out the glen, all trembling like a child, A babbling streamlet comes as if to play-- Albeit the scene is savage, lone and wild. Here at the mountain's foot, that infant wave 'Mid bowering leaves doth hide its rustic birth-- Here learns the rock and precipice to brave-- And go the Monarch River of the Earth! Far, far from hence, its bosom deep and wide, Bears the proud steamer on its fiery wing-- Along its banks, bright cities rise in pride, And o'er its breast their gorgeous image fling. The Mississippi needs no herald now-- But here within this glen unknown to fame, It flows content--a bubble on its brow, A leaf upon its breast--without a name! [Illustration: Banks of the Mississippi] II. Strange contrasts here--for on the glacier's height, The tempest raves, and arrowy lightnings leap-- Yet deep beneath, the wild flowers lone and light, On slender stems in breezeless silence sleep. Skyward the racing eagles wildly fling Their savage clamor to the echoing dell-- While sheltered deep, the bee with folded wing, Voluptuous slumbers in his fragrant cell. Around, the splintered rocks are heaped to heaven, With grisly caverns yawning wide between, As if the Titans there had battle given, And left their ruin written on the scene! Yet o'er these ghastly shapes, soft lichens wind, And timid daisies droop, and tranquil flowers A robe of many-colored beauty, bind, As if some vagrant fairy claimed these bowers. III. Fit cradle this--Majestic Stream, for thee! Nursed at the glacier's foot--by tempests fed-- The lightning flashing o'er thy canopy, And thunders pealing round thine infant bed-- The pious Indian marks thy mystic birth, 'Mid storm and cloud, and nature's aspect wild-- And wondering, deems thee not a thing of earth, But great Manitto's fair and favored child. Aye--and the mind, by inspiration taught, Like nature's pupil feels a Presence near, Which bids the bosom tremble with the thought That He who came from Teman hath been here![B] IV. What thronging fancies crowd upon the soul, As from these heights the Giant Stream we trace, And wander with its waters as they roll From hence, to their far ocean dwelling-place-- Marking its birth in this bleak frigid zone, Its conquering march to yonder tropic shore, The boundless valley which it makes its own, With thousand tribute rivers as they pour! No classic page its story to reveal; No nymph, or naïad, sporting in its glades; No banks encrimsoned with heroic steel; And haunted yet by dim poetic shades-- Its annals linger in the eternal rock, Hoary with centuries; in cataracts that sing To the dull ear of ages; in the shock Of plunging glaciers that madly fling, The forest like a flight of spears, aloft: In wooded vales that spread beyond the view; In boundless prairies, blooming fair and soft; In mantling vines that teem with clusters blue; And as the sunny south upon us breathes-- In orange groves that scent the balmy air, And tempt soft summer with its fragrant wreaths, Throughout the year to be a dweller there. V. These of the past their whispered lore unfold, And fertile fancy with its wizard art, May weave wild legends, as the seers of old Made gods and heroes into being start. Perchance some mystic mound may wake the spell: A crumbled skull--a spear--a vase of clay Within its bosom half the tale may tell-- And all the rest 'tis fancy's gift to say. Alas! that ruthless science in these days, To its stern crucible hath brought at last, The cherished shapes that all so fondly gaze Upon us from the dim poetic past! Else might these moonlit prairies show at dawn, The dew-swept circle of the elfin dance-- These woodlands teem with sportive fay and faun-- These grottoes glimmer with sweet Echo's glance. Perchance a future Homer might have wrought From out the scattered wreck of ages fled, Some long lost Troy, where mighty heroes fought, And made the earth re-echo with their tread! VI. It may not be, for though these scenes are fair, As fabled Arcady--the sylph and fay, And all their gentle kindred, shun the air, Where car and steamer make their stormy way. Perchance some Cooper's magic art may wake The sleeping legends of this mighty vale, And twine fond memories round the lawn and lake, Where Warrior fought or Lover told his tale: And when the Red Man's form hath left these glades, And memory's moonlight o'er his story streams, From their dim graves shall rise heroic shades, And fill the fancy with romantic dreams. Then, in the city's gorgeous squares shall rise The chiselled column to the admiring view-- To mark the spot where some stern Black Hawk lies, Whom ages gone, our glorious grandsires slew! [Illustration: The Indian Lovers] VII. Dim shadows these that come at Fancy's call-- Yet deeper scenes before the Patriot rise, As fate's stern prophet lifts the fearful pall, And shows the future to his straining eyes. Oh! shall that vision paint this glorious vale With happy millions o'er its bosom spread-- Or ghastly scenes where battle taints the gale With brother's blood by brother's weapon shed? Away, ye phantom fears--the scene is fair, Down the long vista of uncounted years; Bright harvests smile, sweet meadows scent the air, And peaceful plenty o'er the scene appears. The village rings with labor's jocund laugh, The hoyden shout around the school-house door, The old man's voice, as bending o'er his staff, He waxes valiant in the tales of yore: Far tapering spires from teeming cities rise, The sabbath bell comes stealing on the air, A holy anthem seeks the bending skies, And earth and heaven seem fondly blended there! Aye--and beyond, where distance spreads its blue, Down the unfolding vale of future time, A glorious vision rises on the view, And wakes the bosom with a hope sublime. Majestic Stream! at dim Creation's dawn, Thou wert a witness of that glorious birth-- And thy proud waters still shall sweep the lawn When Peace shall claim dominion of the earth. Here in this vale for mighty empire made, Perchance the glorious flag shall be unfurled, And violence and wrong and ruin fade, Before its conquering march around the world! [Footnote A: We are told by the Geographers that the Missouri, which rises in the glaciers of the Rocky Mountains, is properly the head stream of the Mississippi, and it is thus regarded in these lines. In this view, the Mississippi is the longest river in the world.] [Footnote B: Habakkuk iii. 3.] [Illustration: Vignette] The Two Windmills. [Illustration: The Two Windmills] Two neighbors, living on a hill, Had each--and side by side--a mill. The one was Jones,--a thrifty wight-- Whose mill in every wind went right. The storm and tempest vainly spent Their rage upon it--round it went! E'en when the summer breeze was light, The whirling wings performed their flight; And hence a village saying rose-- "As sure as Jones's mill, it goes." Not so with neighbor Smith's--close by; Full half the time it would not ply: Save only when the wind was west, Still as a post it stood at rest. By every tempest it was battered, By every thundergust 'twas shattered; Through many a rent the rain did filter; And, fair or foul, 'twas out of kilter; And thus the saying came at last-- "Smith's mill is made for folks that fast." Now, who can read this riddle right? Two mills are standing on a height-- One whirling brisk, whate'er the weather, The other, idle, weeks together! Come, gentle reader, lend thine ear, And thou the simple truth shalt hear; And mark,--for here the moral lurks,-- Smith held to faith, but not to works; While Jones believed in both, and so, By faith and practice, made it go! Smith prayed, and straight sent in his bill, Expecting Heaven to tend his mill; And grumbled sore, whene'er he found That wheels ungreased would not go round. Not so with Jones--for, though as prayerful, To grease his wheels he e'er was careful, And healed, with ready stitch, each rent That ruthless time or tempest sent; And thus, by works, his faith expressed, Good neighbor Jones by Heaven was blessed. The Ideal and the Actual. My boat is on the bounding tide, Away, away from surge and shore; A waif upon the wave I ride, Without a rudder or an oar. Blow as ye list, ye breezes, blow-- The compass now is nought to me; Flow as ye will, ye billows, flow, If but ye bear me out to sea. Yon waving line of dusky blue, Where care and toil oppress the heart-- To thee I bid a long adieu, And smile to feel that thus we part. There let the sweating ploughman toil, The yearning miser count his gain, The fevered scholar waste his oil, But I am bounding o'er the main! How fresh these breezes to the brow-- How dear this freedom to the soul; Bright ocean, I am with thee now, So let thy golden billows roll! * * * * * But stay--what means this throbbing brain-- This heaving chest--these pulses quick? Oh, take me to the land again, _For I am very, very sick!_ The Golden Dream. In midnight dreams the Wizard came, And beckoned me away-- With tempting hopes of wealth and fame, He cheered my lonely way. He led me o'er a dusky heath, And there a river swept, Whose gay and glassy tide beneath, Uncounted treasure, slept. The wooing ripples lightly dashed Around the cherished store, And circling eddies brightly flashed Above the yellow ore. I bent me o'er the deep smooth stream, And plunged the gold to get,-- But oh! it vanished with my dream-- And I got dripping wet! O'er lonely heath and darksome hill, As shivering home I went, The mocking Wizard whispered shrill, 'Thou'dst better been content!' The Gipsy's Prayer. [Illustration: The Gipsy's Prayer] Our altar is the dewy sod-- Our temple yon blue throne of God: No priestly rite our souls to bind-- We bow before the Almighty Mind. Oh, Thou whose realm is wide as air-- Thou wilt not spurn the Gipsies' prayer: Though banned and barred by all beside, Be Thou the Outcast's guard and guide. Poor fragments of a Nation wrecked-- Its story whelmed in Time's neglect-- We drift unheeded on the wave, If God refuse the lost to save. Yet though we name no Fatherland-- And though we clasp no kindred hand-- Though houseless, homeless wanderers we-- Oh give us Hope, and Heaven with Thee! Inscription for a Rural Cemetery. Peace to the dead! The forest weaves, Around your couch, its shroud of leaves; While shadows dim and silence deep, Bespeak the quiet of your sleep. Rest, pilgrim, here! Your journey o'er, Life's weary cares ye heed no more; Time's sun has set, in yonder west-- Your work is done--rest, Pilgrim, rest! Rest till the morning hour; wait Here, at Eternity's dread gate, Safe in the keeping of the sod, And the sure promises of God. Dark is your home--yet round the tomb, Tokens of hope--sweet flowerets bloom; And cherished memories, soft and dear, Blest as their fragrance, linger here! We speak, yet ye are dumb! How dread This deep, stern silence of the Dead! The whispers of the Grave, severe, The listening Soul alone can hear! Song: The Robin. [Illustration: The Robin] At misty dawn, At rosy morn, The Redbreast sings alone: At twilight dim, Still, still, his hymn Hath a sad, and sorrowing tone. Another day, his song is gay, For a listening bird is near-- O ye who sorrow, come borrow, borrow, A lesson of robin here! Thoughts at Sea. Here is the boundless ocean,--there the sky, O'er-arching broad and blue-- Telling of God and heaven--how deep, how high, How glorious and true! Upon the wave there is an anthem sweet, Whispered in fear and love, Sending a solemn tribute to the feet Of Him who sits above. God of the waters! Nature owns her King! The Sea thy sceptre knows; At thy command the tempest spreads its wing, Or folds it to repose. And when the whirlwind hath gone rushing by, Obedient to thy will, What reverence sits upon the wave and sky, Humbled, subdued, and still! Oh! let my soul, like this submissive sea, With peace upon its breast, By the deep influence of thy Spirit be Holy and hushed to rest. And as the gladdening sun lights up the morn, Bidding the storm depart, So may the Sun of Righteousness adorn, With love, my shadowed heart. A Burial at Sea. [Illustration: Burial at Sea] The shore hath blent with the distant skies, O'er the bend of the crested seas, And the leaning ship in her pathway flies, On the sweep of the freshened breeze. Swift be its flight! for a dying guest It bears across the billow, And she fondly sighs in her native West To find a peaceful pillow. There, o'er the tide, her kindred sleep, And she would sleep beside them-- It may not be! for the sea is deep, And the waves--the waves divide them! It may not be! for the flush is flown, That lighted her lily cheek-- 'Twas the passing beam, ere the sun goes down.-- Life's last and loveliest streak. 'Tis gone, and a dew is o'er her now-- The dew of the mornless eve-- No morrow will shine on that pallid brow, For the spirit hath ta'en its leave. * * * * * The ship heaves to, and the funeral rite, O'er the lovely form is said, And the rough man's cheek with tears is bright, As he lowers the gentle dead. The corse sinks down, alone--alone, To its dark and dreary grave, And the soul on a lightened wing hath flown, To the world beyond the wave. * * * * * 'Tis a fearful thing in the sea to sleep Alone in a silent bed-- 'Tis a fearful thing on the shoreless deep Of the spirit-world to tread! The Dream of Youth. [Illustration: The Dream of Youth] In days of yore, while yet the world was new, And all around was beautiful to view-- When spring or summer ruled the happy hours, And golden fruit hung down mid opening flowers; When, if you chanced among the woods to stray, The rosy-footed dryad led the way,-- Or if, beside a mountain brook, your path, You ever caught some naïad at her bath: 'Twas in that golden day, that Damon strayed. Musing, alone, along a Grecian glade. Retired the scene, yet in the morning light, Athens in view, shone glimmering to the sight. 'Twas far away, yet painted on the skies, It seemed a marble cloud of glorious dyes, Where yet the rosy morn, with lingering ray, Loved on the sapphire pediments to play. But why did Damon heed the _distant_ scene? For he was young, and all around was green: A noisy brook was romping through the dell, And on his ear the laughing echoes fell: Along his path the stooping wild flowers grew, And woo'd the very zephyrs as they flew. Then why young Damon, heeding nought around, Seemed in some thrall of distant vision bound, I cannot tell--but dreamy grew his gaze, And all his thought was in a misty maze. Awhile he sauntered--then beneath a tree, He sat him down, and there a reverie Came o'er his spirit like a spell,--and bright, A truth-like vision, shone upon his sight. Around on every side, with glowing pinions, A circling band, as if from Jove's dominions, All wooing came, and sought with wily art, To steal away the youthful dreamer's heart. One offered wealth--another spoke of fame, And held a wreath to twine around his name. One brought the pallet, and the magic brush, By which creative art bids nature blush, To see her rival--and the artful boy, His story told--the all-entrancing joy His skill could give,--but well the rogue concealed The piercing thorns that flourish, unrevealed, Along the artist's path--the poverty, the strife Of study, and the weary waste of life-- All these, the drawback of his wily tale, The little artist covered with a veil. Young Damon listened, and his heart beat high-- But now a cunning archer gained his eye-- And stealing close, he whispered in his ear, A glowing tale, so musical and dear, That Damon vowed, like many a panting youth, To Love, eternal constancy and truth! But while the whisper from his bosom broke, A fearful Image to his spirit spoke: With frowning brow, and giant arm he stood, Holding a glass, as if in threatening mood, He waited but a moment for the sand, To sweep the idle Dreamer from the land! Young Damon started, and his dream was o'er, But to his soul, the seeming vision bore A solemn meaning, which he could not spurn-- And Youth, perchance, may from our fable learn, That while the beckoning passions woo and sigh, TIME, with his ready scythe, stands listening by. Remembrance.[A] You bid the minstrel strike the lute, And wake once more a soothing tone-- Alas! its strings, untuned, are mute, Or only echo moan for moan. The flowers around it twined are dead, And those who wreathed them there, are flown; The spring that gave them bloom is fled, And winter's frost is o'er them thrown. Poor lute! forgot 'mid strife and care, I fain would try thy strings once more,-- Perchance some lingering tone is there-- Some cherished melody of yore. If flowers that bloom no more are here, Their odors still around us cling-- And though the loved are lost-still dear, Their memories may wake the string. I strike--but lo, the wonted thrill, Of joy in sorrowing cadence dies: Alas! the minstrel's hand is chill, And the sad lute, responsive, sighs. 'Tis ever thus--our life begins, In Eden, and all fruit seems sweet-- We taste and knowledge, with our sins, Creeps to the heart and spoils the cheat. In youth, the sun brings light alone-- No shade then rests upon the sight-- But when the beaming morn is flown, We see the shadows--not the light I once found music every where-- The whistle from the willow wrung-- The string, set in the window, there, Sweet measures to my fancy flung. But now, this dainty lute is dead-- Or answers but to sigh and wail, Echoing the voices of the fled, Passing before me dim and pale! Yet angel forms are in that train, And One upon the still air flings, Of woven melody, a strain, Down trembling from Her heaven-bent wings. 'Tis past--that Speaking Form is flown-- But memory's pleased and listening ear, Shall oft recall that choral tone, To love and poetry so dear. And far away in after time, Shall blended Piety and Love Find fond expression in the rhyme, Bequeathed to earth by One above. * * * * * Poor lute!--thy bounding pulse is still,-- Yet all thy silence I forgive, That thus thy last--thy dying thrill, Would make Her gentle virtues live! [Footnote A: Written by request for the "Memorial," a work published in New-York, 1850, in commemoration of the late Frances S. Osgood,--edited by Mary E. Hewett.] The Old Oak. [Illustration: The Old Oak] Friend of my early days, we meet once more! Once more I stand thine aged boughs beneath, And hear again the rustling music pour, Along thy leaves, as whispering spirits breathe. Full many a day of sunshine and of storm, Since last we parted, both have surely known; Thy leaves are thinned, decrepit is thy form,-- And all my cherished visions, they are flown! How beautiful, how brief, those sunny hours Departed now, when life was in its spring-- When Fancy knew no scene undecked with flowers, And Expectation flew on Fancy's wing! Here, on the bank, beside this whispering stream, Which still runs by as gayly as of yore, Marking its eddies, I was wont to dream Of things away, on some far fairy shore. Then every whirling leaf and bubbling ball, That floated by, was full of radiant thought; Each linked with love, had music at its call, And thrilling echoes o'er my bosom brought. The bird that sang within this gnarled oak, The waves that dallied with its leafy shade, The mellow murmurs from its boughs that broke, Their joyous tribute to my spirit paid. No phantom rose to tell of future ill, No grisly warning marr'd my prophet dreams-- My heart translucent as the leaping rill, My thoughts all free and flashing at its beams. Here is the grassy knoll I used to seek At summer noon, beneath the spreading shade, And watch the flowers that stooped with glowing cheek, To meet the romping ripples as they played. Here is the spot which memory's magic glass Hath often brought, arrayed in fadeless green, Making this oak, this brook, this waving grass-- A simple group--fond Nature's fairest scene. And as I roamed beside the Rhone or Rhine, Or other favored stream, in after days, With jealous love, this rivulet would shine, Full on my heart, and claim accustomed praise. And oh! how oft by sorrow overborne, By care oppressed, or bitter malice wrung, By friends betrayed, or disappointment torn, My weary heart, all sickened and unstrung-- Hath yearned to leave the bootless strife afar, And find beneath this oak a quiet grave, Where the rough echo of the world's loud jar, Yields to the music of the mellow wave! And now again I stand this stream beside; Again I hear the silver ripples flow-- I mark the whispers murmuring o'er the tide, And the light bubbles trembling as they go. But oh! the magic-spell that lingered here, In boyhood's golden age, my heart to bless, With the bright waves that rippled then so clear, Is lost in ocean's dull forgetfulness. Gone are the visions of that glorious time-- Gone are the glancing birds I loved so well, Nor will they wake again their silver chime, From the deep tomb of night in which they dwell! And if perchance some fleeting memories steal, Like far-off echoes to my dreaming ear, Away, ungrasped, the cheating visions wheel, As spectres start upon the wing of fear. Alas! the glorious sun, which then was high, Touching each common thing with rosy light, Is darkly banished from the lowering sky-- And life's dull onward pathway lies, in night. Yes--I am changed--and this gray gnarled form, Its leaves all scattered by the rending blast, Is but an image of my heart;--the storm-- The storm of life, doth make us such at last! Farewell, old oak! I leave thee to the wind, And go to struggle with the chafing tide-- Soon to the dust thy form shall be resigned, And I would sleep thy crumbling limbs beside. Thy memory will pass; thy sheltering shade, Will weave no more its tissue o'er the sod; And all thy leaves, ungathered in the glade, Shall, by the reckless hoof of time, be trod. My cherished hopes, like shadows and like leaves, Name, fame, and fortune--each shall pass away; And all that castle-building fancy weaves, Shall sleep, unthinking, as the drowsy clay. But from thy root another tree shall bloom-- With living leaves its tossing boughs shall rise; And the winged spirit--bursting from the tomb,-- Oh, shall it spring to light beyond these skies? To a Wild Violet, in March. [Illustration: To a Wild Violet, in March] My pretty flower, How cam'st thou here? Around thee all Is sad and sere,-- The brown leaves tell Of winter's breath, And all but thou Of doom and death. The naked forest Shivering sighs,-- On yonder hill The snow-wreath lies, And all is bleak-- Then say, sweet flower, Whence cam'st thou here In such an hour? No tree unfolds its timid bud-- Chill pours the hill-side's lurid flood-- The tuneless forest all is dumb-- Whence then, fair violet, didst thou come? Spring hath not scattered yet her flowers, But lingers still in southern bowers; No gardener's art hath cherished thee, For wild and lone thou springest free. Thou springest here to man unknown, Waked into life by God alone! Sweet flower--thou tellest well thy birth,-- Thou cam'st from Heaven, though soiled in earth! Illusions. I. As down life's morning stream we glide, Full oft some Flower stoops o'er its side, And beckons to the smiling shore, Where roses strew the landscape o'er: Yet as we reach that Flower to clasp, It seems to mock the cheated grasp, And whisper soft, with siren glee, "My bloom is not--oh not for thee!" II. Within Youth's flowery vale I tread, By some entrancing shadow led-- And Echo to my call replies-- Yet, as she answers, lo, she flies! And, as I seem to reach her cell-- The grotto, where she weaves her spell-- The Nymph's sweet voice afar I hear-- So Love departs, as we draw near! III. Upon a mountain's dizzy height, Ambition's temple gleams with light: Proud forms are moving fair within, And bid us strive that light to win. O'er giddy cliff and crag we strain, And reach the mountain top--in vain! For lo! the temple, still afar, Shines cold and distant as a star. IV. I hear a voice, whose accents dear Melt, like soft music, in mine ear. A gentle hand, that seems divine, Is warmly, fondly clasped in mine; And lips upon my cheeks are pressed, That whisper tones from regions blest: But soon I start--for friendship's kiss Is gone, and lo! a serpent's hiss. V. The sun goes down, and shadows rest On the gay scenes by morning blest; The gathering clouds invest the air-- Yet one bright constant Star is there. Onward we press, with heavy load, O'er tangled path and rough'ning road, For still that Star shines bright before; But now it sinks, and all is o'er! The Rose: to Ellen. [Illustration: The Rose] The sportive sylphs that course the air, Unseen on wings that twilight weaves, Around the opening rose repair, And breathe sweet incense o'er its leaves. With sparkling cups of bubbles made, They catch the ruddy beams of day, And steal the rainbow's sweetest shade, Their blushing favorite to array. They gather gems with sunbeams bright, From floating clouds and falling showers-- They rob Aurora's locks of light To grace their own fair queen of flowers. Thus, thus adorned, the speaking Rose, Becomes a token fit to tell, Of things that words can ne'er disclose, And nought but this reveal so well. Then take my flower, and let its leaves Beside thy heart be cherished near, While that confiding heart receives The thought it whispers to thine ear! The Maniac. [Illustration: The Maniac] On a tall cliff that overhung the deep, A maniac stood. He heeded not the sweep Of the swift gale that lashed the troubled main, And spread with showery foam the watery plain. His reckless foot was on the dizzy line That edged the rock, impending o'er the brine; His form was bent, and leaning from the height, Like the light gull whose wing is stretched for flight. Far down beneath his feet, the surges broke; Above his head the pealing thunders spoke; Around him flashed the lightning's ruddy glare, And rushing torrents swept along the air. But nought he heeded, save a gallant sail That on the sea was wrestling with the gale. Far on the ocean's billowy verge she hung, And strove to shun the storm that landward swung. With many a tack she turned her bending side To the rude blast, and bravely stemmed the tide. In vain! the bootless strife with fate is o'er-- And the doomed vessel nears the iron shore. A mighty bird, she seems, whose wing is rent By the red shaft from heaven's fierce quiver sent. Her mast is shivered and her helm is lashed, Around her prow the kindled waves are dashed-- And as an eagle swooping in its might, Toward the dark cliff she speeds her headlong flight. She comes, she strikes! the trembling wave withdraws, And the hushed elements a moment pause; Then swelling high above their helpless prey, The billows burst, and bear the wreck away! One look to heaven the raptured Maniac cast, One low breathed murmur from his bosom passed: 'God of the soul and sea! I read thy choice-- Told by the shipwreck and the whirlwind's voice. In this dread omen I can trace my doom, And hear thee bid me seek an ocean-tomb. Like the lost ship my weary mind hath striven With the wild tempest o'er my spirit driven; That strife is done--and the dim caverned sea Of this wrecked bosom must the mansion be. Thou who canst bid the billows cease to roll, Oh! smooth a pillow for my weary soul-- Watch o'er the pilgrim in his shadowy sleep, And send sweet dreams to light the sullen deep!' Thus spoke the maniac, while above he gazed, And his pale hands beseechingly upraised; Then on the viewless wind he swiftly sprung, And far below his senseless form was flung; A thin white spray told where he met the wave, And battling surges thunder o'er his grave! The Two Shades. [Illustration: The Two Shades] Along that gloomy river's brim, Where Charon plies the ceaseless oar, Two mighty Shadows, dusk and dim, Stood lingering on the dismal shore. Hoarse came the rugged Boatman's call, While echoing caves enforced the cry-- And as they severed life's last thrall, Each Spirit spoke one parting sigh. "Farewell to earth! I leave a name, Written in fire, on field and flood-- Wide as the wind, the voice of fame, Hath borne my fearful tale of blood. And though across this leaden wave, Returnless now my spirit haste, Napoleon's name shall know no grave, His mighty deeds be ne'er erased. The rocky Alp, where once was set My courser's hoof, shall keep the seal, And ne'er the echo there forget The clangor of my glorious steel. Marengo's hill-sides flow with wine-- And summer there the olive weaves, But busy memory e'er will twine The blood-stained laurel with its leaves. The Danube's rushing billows haste With the black ocean-wave to hide-- Yet is my startling story traced, In every murmur of its tide. The pyramid on Giseh's plain, Its founder's fame hath long forgot-- But from its memory, time, in vain Shall strive Napoleon's name to blot. The bannered storm that floats the sky, With God's red quiver in its fold, O'er startled realms shall lowering fly, A type of me, till time is told. The storm--a thing of weal and woe, Of life and death, of peace and power-- That lays the giant forest low, Yet cheers the bent grass with its shower-- That, in its trampled pathway leaves, The uptorn roots to bud anew, And where the past o'er ruin grieves, Bids fresher beauty spring to view:-- The storm--an emblem of my name,-- Shall keep my memory in the skies-- Its flash-wreathed wing, a flag of flame, Shall spread my glory as it flies." The Spirit passed, and now alone, The darker Shadow trod the shore-- Deep from his breast the parting tone Swept with the wind, the landscape o'er. "Farewell! I will not speak of deeds,-- For these are written but in sand-- And, as the furrow choked with weeds, Fade from the memory of the land. The war-plumed chieftain cannot stay, To guard the gore his blade hath shed-- Time sweeps the purple stain away, And throws a veil o'er glory's bed. But though my form must fade from view. And Byron bow to fate resigned,-- Undying as the fabled Jew, Harold's dark spirit stays behind! And he who yet in after years, Shall tread the vine-clad shores of Rhine, In Chillon's gloom shall pour his tears, Or raptured, see blue Leman shine-- He shall not--cannot, go alone-- Harold unseen shall seek his side: Shall whisper in his ear a tone, So seeming sweet, he cannot chide. He cannot chide; although he feel, While listening to the magic verse, A serpent round his bosom steal, He still shall hug the coiling curse. Or if beneath Italian skies, The wanderer's feet delighted glide, Harold, in merry Juan's guise, Shall be his tutor and his guide. One living essence God hath poured In every heart--the love of sway-- And though he may not wield the sword, Each is a despot in his way. The infant rules by cries and tears-- The maiden, with her sunny eyes-- The miser, with the hoard of years-- The monarch, with his clanking ties. To me the will--the power--were given. O'er plaything man to weave my spell, And if I bore him up to heaven, 'Twas but to hurl him down to hell. And if I chose upon the rack Of doubt to stretch the tortured mind, To turn Faith's heavenward footstep back, Her hope despoiled--her vision, blind-- Or if on Virtue's holy brow, A wreath of scorn I sought to twine-- And bade her minions mocking bow, With sweeter vows at pleasure's shrine-- Or if I mirrored to the thought, With glorious truth the charms of earth, While yet the trusting fool I taught, To scoff at Him who gave it birth-- Or if I filled the soul with light, And bore its buoyant wing in air-- To plunge it down in deeper night, And mock its maniac wanderings there-- I did but wield the wand of power, That God intrusted to my clasp, And not, the tyrant of an hour-- Will I resign it to Death's grasp! The despot with his iron chain, In idle bonds the limbs may bind-- He who would hold a sterner reign, Must twine the links around the mind. Thus I have thrown upon my race, A chain that ages cannot rend-- And mocking Harold stays to trace, The slaves that to my sceptre bend." The Teacher's Lesson. I saw a child some four years old, Along a meadow stray; Alone she went--unchecked--untold-- Her home not far away. She gazed around on earth and sky-- Now paused, and now proceeded; Hill, valley, wood,--she passed them by, Unmarked, perchance unheeded. And now gay groups of roses bright, In circling thickets bound her-- Yet on she went with footsteps light, Still gazing all around her. And now she paused, and now she stooped, And plucked a little flower-- A simple daisy 'twas, that drooped Within a rosy bower. The child did kiss the little gem, And to her bosom pressed it; And there she placed the fragile stem, And with soft words caressed it. I love to read a lesson true, From nature's open book-- And oft I learn a lesson new, From childhood's careless look. Children are simple--loving--true; 'Tis Heaven that made them so; And would you teach them--be so too-- And stoop to what they know. Begin with simple lessons--things On which they love to look: Flowers, pebbles, insects, birds on wings-- These are God's spelling-book. And children know His A, B, C, As bees where flowers are set: Would'st thou a skilful teacher be?-- Learn, then, this alphabet. From leaf to leaf, from page to page, Guide thou thy pupil's look, And when he says, with aspect sage, "Who made this wondrous book?" Point thou with reverent gaze to heaven, And kneel in earnest prayer, That lessons thou hast humbly given, May lead thy pupil there. Perennials. Life is a journey, and its fairest flowers Lie in our path beneath pride's trampling feet; Oh, let us stoop to virtue's humble bowers, And gather those, which, faded, still are sweet. These way-side blossoms amulets are of price; They lead to pleasure, yet from dangers warn;-- Turn toil to bliss, this earth to Paradise, And sunset death to heaven's eternal morn. A good deed done hath memory's blest perfume,-- A day of self-forgetfulness, all given To holy charity, hath perennial bloom That goes, undrooping, up from earth to heaven. Forgiveness, too, will flourish in the skies-- Justice, transplanted thither, yields fair fruit; And if repentance, borne to heaven, dies, 'Tis that no tears are there to wet its root. To a Lady who had been Singing. The spirit-harp within the breast A spirit's touch alone can know,-- Yet thine the power to wake its rest, And bid its echoing numbers flow. Yes,--and thy minstrel art the while, Can blend the tones of weal and we, So archly, that the heart may smile, Though bright, unbidden tear-drops flow. And thus thy wizard skill can weave Music's soft twilight o'er the breast, As mingling day and night, at eve, Robe the far purpling hills for rest. Thy voice is treasured in my soul, And echoing memory shall prolong Those woman tones, whose sweet control Melts joy and sorrow into song. The tinted sea-shell, borne away Far from the ocean's pebbly shore, Still loves to hum the choral lay, The whispering mermaid taught of yore. The hollow cave, that once hath known Echo's lone voice, can ne'er forget-- But gives--though parting years have flown-- The wild responsive cadence yet. So shall thy plaintive melody, Undying, linger in my heart, Till the last string of memory, By death's chill finger struck, shall part! The Broken Heart. Oh think not with love's soft token, Or music my heart to thrill-- For its strings--its strings are broken, And the chords would fain be still! Oh think not to waken the measure Of joy on a ruined lute-- Think not to waken pleasure, Where grief sits mourning and mute. The pearls that gleam in the billow, But darken the gloom of the deep-- And laughter plants the pillow With thorns, where sorrow would sleep. The gems that gleam on the finger Of her who is sleeping and cold, But wring the hearts that linger. And dream of the love they told. My bosom is but a grave, My breast a voiceless choir-- Speak not to the echoless cave, Touch not the broken lyre! The Star Of The West. I. The cannon is mute and the sword in its sheath-- Uncrimsoned the banner floats joyous and fair: Yet beauty is twining an evergreen wreath, And the voice of the minstrel is heard on the air. Are these for the glory encircling a crown-- A phantom evoked but by tyranny's breath? Are these for the conqueror's vaunted renown-- All ghastly with gore, and all tainted with death? Bright Star of the West--broad Land of the Free, The wreath and the anthem are woven for thee! II. When Tyranny came, his fierce lions aloft Told the instinct that burned in his cohorts of mail-- But our eagles swooped down, and the battle-field oft, Was the grave of the foeman,--stern, ghastly and pale. The cloud of the strife rolled darkly away-- And the carnage-fed wolves slunk back to their den-- While Peace shone around like the god of the day, And shed her blest light on the children of men. Bright Star of the West--broad Land of the Free! The wreath and the anthem are woven for thee! III. Thus Liberty dawned from the midnight of years; And here rose her altar. Oh kneel at her shrine! Her blessings unnumbered--ye children of tears, Whatever be thy Fatherland--lo they are thine! In faith and in joy, let us cherish the light, That comes like the sunshine all warm from above, For thus shall the Demons that sprung from the night Of the Past fade away in the noontide of love. Bright Star of the West--broad Land of the Free, The wreath and the anthem are woven for thee! IV. Stern Seer of the future, thy curtain unroll, And show to long ages our empire of peace-- Where man never bent to the despot's control, And the spirit of liberty never shall cease. Our Stars and our Stripes 'mid battle's loud thunder, Were bound by our sires in the wedlock of love-- Oh! ne'er shall the spirit of strife put asunder, The UNION thus hallowed by spirits above. Bright Star of the West--broad Land of the Free, The wreath and the anthem are woven for thee! The Outcast. [Illustration: The Outcast] I. Far, far away, where sunsets weave Their golden tissues o'er the scene, And distant glaciers, dimly heave, Like trailing ghosts, their peaks between-- Where, at the Rocky Mountain's base, Arkansas, yet an infant, lingers, A while the drifting leaves to chase, Like laughing youth, with playful fingers-- There Nature, in her childhood, wrought 'Mid rock and rill, with leaf and flower, A vale more beautiful than thought E'er gave to favored fairy's bower: And in that hidden hermitage, Of forest, river, lake, and dell,-- While Time himself grew gray and sage, The lone Enchantress loved to dwell. II. Ages have flown,--the vagrant gales Have swept that lonely land; the flowers Have nodded to the breeze; the vales, Long, long, have sheltered in their bowers, The forest minstrels; and the race Of mastodons hath come and gone; And with the stream of time, the chase Of bubbling life hath swept the lawn, Unmarked, save that the bedded clay, Tells where some giant sleeper lies; And wrinkled cliffs, tottering and gray, Whisper of crumbled centuries. Yet there the valley smiles; the tomb Of ages is a garden gay, And wild flowers freshen in their bloom, As from the sod they drink decay. And creeping things of every hue, Dwell in this savage Eden-land, And all around it blushes new, As when it rose at God's command. Untouched by man, the forests wave, The floods pour by, the torrents fall, And shelving cliff and shadowy cave, Hang as bold nature hung them all! The hunter's wandering foot hath wound, To this far scene, perchance like mine, And there a Forest Dreamer found, Who walks the dell with spectral mien. Youthful his brow, his bearing high-- Yet writhed his lip, and all subdued, The fire that once hath lit his eye. Wayward and sullen oft his mood; But he perchance may deign to tell, As he hath told to me, his tale, In words like these,--while o'er the dell, The autumn twilight wove its veil. III. "Stranger! these woods are wild and drear; These tangled paths are rough and lone; These dells are full of things of fear, And should be rather shunned than known. Then turn thy truant foot away, And seek afar the cultured glade, Nor dare with reckless step to stray, 'Mid these lone realms of fear and shade! You go not, and you seek to hear, Why one like me should idly roam, 'Mid scenes like these, so dark, so drear-- These rocks my bed, these woods my home? IV. "One crime hath twined with serpent coil Around my heart its fatal fold; And though my struggling bosom toil, To heave the monster from its hold-- It will not from its victim part. By day or night, in down or dell, Where'er I roam, still, still my heart Is pressed by that sad serpent spell. Aye, as the strangling boa clings Around his prey with fatal grasp, And as he feels each struggle, wrings His victim with a closer clasp; Nor yet till every pulse is dumb, And every fluttering spasm o'er, Releases, what, in death o'ercome, Can strive or struggle now no more; So is my wrestling spirit wrung, By that one deep and deadly sin, That will not, while I live, be flung, From its sad work of woe within. [Illustration: "My native hills," &c.] V. "My native hills are far away, Beneath a soft and sunny sky; Green as the sea, the forests play, 'Mid the fresh winds that sweep them by. I loved those hills, I loved the flowers, That dashed with gems their sunny swells, And oft I fondly dreamed for hours, By streams within those mountain dells. I loved the wood--each tree and leaf, In breeze or blast, to me was fair, And if my heart was touched with grief, I always found a solace there. My parents slumbered in the tomb; But thrilling thoughts of them came back, And seemed within my breast to bloom. As lone I ranged the forest track. The wild flowers rose beneath my feet Like memories dear of those who slept, And all around to me was sweet, Although, perchance, I sometimes wept. I wept, but not, oh not in sadness, And those bright tears I would not smother, For less they flowed in grief than gladness, So blest the memory of my mother. And she was linked, I know not why, With leaves and flowers, and landscapes fair And all beneath the bending sky, As if she still were with me there. The echo bursting from the dell, Recalled her song beside my bed; The hill-side with its sunny swell, Her bosom-pillow for my head. The breathing lake at even-tide, When o'er it fell the down of night, Seemed the sweet heaven, which by her side, I found in childhood's dreams of light: And morning, as it brightly broke, And blessed the hills with joyous dyes, Was like her look, when first I woke, And found her gazing in my eyes. VI. "Nature became my idol; wood, Wave, wilderness,--I loved them all; I loved the forest and the solitude, That brooded o'er the waterfall,-- I loved the autumn winds that flew Between the swaying boughs at night, And from their whispers fondly drew Wild woven dreams of lone delight. I loved the stars, and musing sought To read them in their depths of blue-- My fancy spread her sail of thought, And o'er that sea of azure flew. Hovering in those blest paths afar, The wheeling planets seem to trace, My spirit found some islet-star, And chose it for its dwelling-place. I loved the morn, and ere the lay Of plaintive meadow-lark began, 'Mid dewy shrubs I tore my way, Up the wild crag where waters ran. I listened to the babbling tide, And thought of childhood's merry morn,-- I listened to the bird that tried Prelusive airs, amid the thorn. And then I went upon my way; Yet ere the sunrise kissed my cheek, I stood upon the forehead gray Of some lone mountain's dizzy peak. A ruddy light was on the hill, But shadows in the valley slept; A white mist rested o'er the rill, And shivering leaves with tear-drops wept. The sun came up, and nature woke, As from a deep and sweet repose; From every bush soft music broke, And blue wreaths from each chimney rose. From the green vale that lay below. Full many a carol met my ear; The boy that drove the teeming cow. And sung or whistled in his cheer; The dog that by his master's side, Made the lone copse with echoes ring: The mill that whirling in the tide, Seemed with a droning voice to sing; The lowing herd, the bleating flock, And many a far-off murmuring wheel: Each sent its music up the rock, And woke my bosom's echoing peal. VII. "And thus my early hours went o'er: Each scene and sound but gave delight; Or if I grieved, 'twas like the shower, That comes in sunshine, brief and bright. My heart was like the summer lake, A mirror in some valley found, Whose depths a mimic world can make More beautiful than that around. The wood, the slope, the rocky dell, To others dear, were dearer yet To me; for they would fondly dwell Mirrored in memory; and set In the deep azure of my dreams At night, how sweet they rose to view! How soft the echo, and the streams, How swift their laughing murmurs flew! And when the vision broke at morn, The music in my charmed ear, As of some fairy's lingering horn,-- My native hills, how soft, how dear! VIII. "So passed my boyhood; 'twas a stream Of frolic flow, 'mid Nature's bowers; A ray of light--a golden dream-- A morning fair--a path of flowers! But now another charm came o'er me: The ocean I had never seen; Yet suddenly it rolled before me, With all its crested waves of green! Soft sunny islands, far and lone, Where the shy petrel builds her nest; Deep coral caves to mermaids known-- These were my visions bright and blest. Oh! how I yearned to meet the tide, And hear the bristling surges sweep; To stand the watery world beside, And ponder o'er the glorious deep! I bade my home adieu, and bent My eager footsteps toward the shore, And soon my native hills were blent, With the pale sky that arched them o'er. Four days were passed, and now I stood Upon a rock that walled the deep: Before me rolled the boundless flood, A glorious dreamer in its sleep. 'Twas summer morn, and bright as heaven; And though I wept, I was not sad, For tears, thou knowest, are often given When the overflowing heart is glad. Long, long I watched the waves, whose whirls Leaped up the rocks, their brows to kiss, And dallied with the sea-weed curls, That stooped and met, as if in bliss. Long, long I listened to the peal, That whispered from the pebbly shore, And like a spirit seemed to steal In music to my bosom's core. And now I looked afar, and thought The sea a glad and glorious thing; And fancy to my bosom brought Wild dreams upon her wizard wing-- Her wing that stretched o'er spreading waves, And chased the far-off flashing ray, Or hovering deep in twilight caves, Caught the lone mermaid at her play. IX. "And thus the sunny day went by, And night came brooding o'er the seas; A thick cloud swathed the distant sky, And hollow murmurs filled the breeze. The white gull screaming, left the rock, And seaward bent its glancing wing, While heavy waves, with measured shock, Made the dun cliff with echoes ring. How changed the scene! The glassy deep That slumbered in its resting-place, And seeming in its morning sleep To woo me to its soft embrace, Now wakened, was a fearful thing,-- A giant with a scowling form, Who from his bosom seemed to fling The blackened billows to the storm. The wailing winds in terror gushed From the swart sky, and seemed to lash The foaming waves, which madly rushed Toward the tall cliff with headlong dash. Upward the glittering spray was sent, Backward the growling surges whirled, And splintered rocks by lightnings rent, Down thundering midst the waves were hurled. I trembled, yet I would not fly; I feared, yet loved, the awful scene; And gazing on the sea and sky, Spell-bound I stood the rocks between. X. "'Twas strange that I, a mountain boy, A lover of green fields and flowers,-- One, who with laughing rills could toy, And hold companionship for hours, With leaves that whispered low at night, Or fountains bubbling from their springs, Or summer winds, whose downy flight, Seemed but the sweep of angel wings:-- 'Twas strange that I should love the clash Of ocean in its maddest hour, And joy to see the billows dash O'er the rent cliff with fearful power. 'Twas strange,--but I was nature's own, Unchecked, untutored; in my soul A harp was set that gave its tone To every touch without control. The zephyr stirred in childhood warm, Thoughts like itself, as soft and blest; And the swift fingers of the storm Woke its own echo in my breast. Aye, and the strings that else had lain Untouched, and to myself unknown, Within my heart, gave back the strain That o'er the sea and rock was thrown. Yes, and wild passions, which had slept Within their cradle, as the waves At morning by the winds unswept, Rippling within their infant caves-- Now, wakened into billows, rose, And held communion with the storm: I saw the air and ocean close In deadly struggle; marked the form Of the dun cloud with misty wing, That wrestled with the giant main; I saw the racing billows spring Like lions leaping from the plain; I saw the surf that upward threw Gray pyramids of foam to heaven; I heard the battle-cry that flew Along the cliff, as though t'were given To cheer the elemental war; I heard the wild bird screaming near; I felt the rock beneath me jar, As if the granite thrilled with fear; I saw, I heard,--yet in my heart The cloud, the cliff, the billow seemed As of myself an imaged part,-- Things I had seen, or oft had dreamed; And in my ear, the thundering tide Was music, and the ocean's moan An echo of my spirit, wide As the wave, and stormy as its own. XI. "So passed my morning dreams away, Like birds that shun a wintry cloud, And phantom visions, grim and gray, Came mist-like from the watery shroud: Prophetic visions of the deep, Emblems of those within the breast, Which, summoned from their shadowy sleep, Ride on the storm by passion pressed! In ghastly shapes they rose to view, All gibbering from their crystal caves, As if some horrid mirth they drew From the wild uproar of the waves. With beckoning hands they seemed to urge My footsteps down the dizzy way, To join their train upon the surge, And dance with them amidst the spray: And such the madness of my brain, That I was fain to seek the throng; To meet and mingle on the main, With their mad revelry and song. One step, and down the dizzy cliff, My form had to the waters swung, But gliding in a wreathy skiff, That o'er the crested billows hung, A white form like my mother seemed To shine a moment on my eye;-- With warning look the vision gleamed, Then vanished upward to the sky! XII. "I left the thundering tide, and sought Once more the mountain and the stream; But long the wrestling ocean wrought Within my bosom: as a dream My boyhood vanished, and I woke Startled to manhood's early morn; No father's hand my pride to yoke, No mother's angel voice to warn. No,--and the gentle vision, lost, That once could curb my wayward will, And lull my bosom passion-tossed, With one soft whisper, "Peace, be still!"-- That vision, spurned by manhood's pride, Came down from heaven to me no more, And I was launched without a guide, To be a wreck on passion's shore. Alas! the giddy bark at sea, 'Mid waves that woo it down to death, From helm and compass wafted free, The toy of every tempest's breath,-- Is but a type of him who goes, Trusting to nature, on the tide Of life, where breezy passion blows, To whelm the adventurer in his pride. Yes, for the smoothest lake hath waves Within its bosom, which will rise And revel when the tempest raves; The cloud will come o'er gentlest skies; And not a favored spot on earth, The furrowing ploughman finds, but there The rank and ready weeds have birth, Sown by the winds to mock his care. 'Tis thus with every human heart; The seeds of ill are scattered wide, And flaunting flowers of vice will start Thick o'er the soil they seek to hide. Aye, and the gentleness of youth, That seems some hill-side sown with flowers, Odorous, as if with budding truth, Shoots into wild fantastic bowers. The spark for ever tends to flame; The ray that quivers in the plash Of yonder river, is the same That feeds the lightning's ruddy flash. The summer breeze that fans the rose, Or eddies down some flowery path, Is but the infant gale that blows To-morrow with the whirlwind's wrath. And He alone, who wields the storm, And bids the arrowy lightning play, Can guide the heart, when wild and warm, It springs on passion's wing away! One angel minister is sent, To guard and guide us to the sky, And still Her sheltering wing is bent, Till manhood rudely throws it by. Oh, then with mad disdain we spurn A mother's gentle teaching; throw Her bosom from us, and we burn, To rush in freedom, where the glow Of pleasure lights the dancing wave: We launch the bark, we woo the gale, And reckless of the darkling grave That yawns below, we speed the sail! XIII. "Stranger! a murderer stands before thee! To tell the guilty tale were vain-- It is enough--the curse is o'er me-- And I am but a wandering Cain. What boots it that the world bestows, For deeds of death its honors dear? The blood that from the duel flows, Will cry to heaven, and heaven will hear! Thou shalt not kill!' 'Twas deeply traced In living stone, and thunder-sealed; It cannot be by man effaced, Or fashion's impious act repealed. And though we seek with thin deceit, To blind Jehovah's piercing gaze, Call murder, honor,--can we cheat The Omniscient with a specious phrase? Alas! 'tis adding crime to crime, To veil the blood our hands have spilt, And seek by words of softening chime, To lend blest virtue's charm to guilt. Oh, no! in vain the world may give The fearful deed a gentle name-- I slew my friend, and now I live To feel perdition's glowing flame. His missile cut the upward air-- Mine, winged with murder won its way, Straight to his manly bosom,--there He fell, unconscious as the clay! One thrill of triumph through me swept,-- But, as I gazed upon his brow, A chilling horror o'er me crept,-- And I am what thou seest now! [Illustration: The Moonlit Prairie] XIV. "Stranger,--thy bosom cannot know The desolation of the soul, When the rough, gale hath ceased to blow, Yet o'er it bids the billow roll. A helmless wreck upon the tide-- An earthquake's ruin wrapped in gloom-- A gnarled oak blasted in its pride-- Are feeble emblems of my doom. There is a tongue in every leaf, A sigh in every tossing tree-- A murmur in each wave; of grief They whisper, and they speak to me. Nature hath many voices--strings Of varied melody: and oft Lone spirits come on breezy wings, To wake their music sad or soft. But in the wilderness, where Heaven Is the wrapt listener, the tone Is ever mournful: there is given, A chorus for the skies, alone. At night, when the pale moonlight falls O'er prairies, sleeping like a grave, And glorious through these mountain halls, Pours in a flood its silvery wave-- I climb the cliff, and hear the song, That o'er the breast of stillness steals: I hear the cataract thundering strong From far; I hear the wave that peals Along the lone lake's pebbly shore; I hear the sweeping gust that weaves The tree tops, and the winds that pour In rippling lapses through the leaves. And as the diapason sweeps Across the breast of night, the moan Of wolves upon the spirit creeps, Lending the hymn a wilder tone. The panther's wail, the owlet's scream, The whippoorwill's complaining song, Blend with the cataract's solemn theme, And the wild cadences prolong. And often when the heart is chilled By the deep harmony, the note Of some light-hearted bird is trilled Upon the breeze. How sweet its throat! Yet, as a gem upon the finger Of a pale corse, deepens the gloom, By its bright rays that laugh and linger In the dread bosom of the tomb; So doth the note of that wild bird, Sadden the anthem of the hills, And my hushed bosom, spirit-stirred, With lonelier desolation thrills. XV. "You bid me pray? aye, I have prayed! Each cliff and cave, each rock and glen, Have heard my ardent lips invade The ear of Heaven,--again, again. And in the secret hour of night, When all-revealing darkness brings Its brighter world than this of light-- My spirit, borne on wizard wings, Hath won its upward way afar, And ranged the shoreless sea of dreams-- Hath touched at many a wheeling star That shines beyond these solar beams; And on the trackless deep of thought, Like Him, who found this Western World, 'Mid doubt and storm my passage wrought, Till weary fancy's wing was furled-- And, as the sky-bent eagle, borne Down by the lightning blast of heaven, So was my outcast spirit torn, And backward to its dwelling driven. Yet not in vain, perchance, my tears, My penitence, my patient prayer, For, softened with the flow of years, My breast is lightened of its care. And once at night when meteors flew Down on their glittering wings from heaven, My mother's spirit met my view, Whispering of peace and sin forgiven! Yet, though my lip to thee confess, My wrestling bosom's sweet relief, Think not I count my crime the less, That pitying Heaven hath soothed my grief. No--yon wild rose hath sweet perfume To scatter on this desert air; Yet, hid beneath its fragrant bloom, Sharp thorns are set, the flesh to tear. And thus, repentance, while it brings Forgiveness to the broken heart, Still leaves contrition's thousand stings To waken sorrow with their smart. XVI. "Such is my story--this my home,-- And I the monarch of the dell-- Above my head, the forest dome,-- Around, the battlements that swell To heaven, and make my castle strong. My messengers are winds that lave Far reedy shores, and bring me song, Blent with the murmurs of the wave. And birds of every rainbow hue, The antelope, and timid deer, The wild goat mingling with the blue Of heaven on yonder rock, are here. And oft at morn, the mocking-bird Doth greet me with its sweetest lay; The wood-dove, where the bush is stirred, Looks from its cover on my way. I would not break the spider's thread,-- The buzzing insect dances free; I crush no toad beneath my tread,-- The lizard crawls in liberty! I harm no living thing; my sway Of peace hath soothed the grumbling bear,-- The wolf walks by in open day, And fawns upon me from his lair. Aye, and my heart hath bowed so low, I gather in this solitude, Joy from the love that seems to flow From these brute tenants of the leafy wood. [Illustration: The Farewell] XVII. "Stranger, farewell! The deepening eve doth warn, And the mild moonlight beckons thee away; And, ere the lingering night shall melt to morn, Let thy swift foot across the prairie stray. Nay, tempt me not! for I alone am cast, A wretch from all I used to grieve or bless; And doomed to wail and wander here at last, Am deeply wedded to the wilderness. Thy hand again shall feel the thrilling grasp Of friendship--and thine ear shall catch the tone Of joyous kindred; and thine arm shall clasp, Perchance, some gentle bosom to thine own. Oh God! 'tis right--for he hath never torn, With his own daring hand the thread of life-- He ne'er hath stolen thy privilege, or borne A fellow mortal down in murderous strife! XVIII. "Stranger, farewell! these woods shall be my home, And here shall be my grave! My hour is brief, But while it lasts, it is my task to roam, And read of Heaven from nature's open leaf. And though I wander from my race away, As some lone meteor, dim and distant, wheels In wintry banishment, where but a ray Of kindred stars in timid twilight steals-- Still will I catch the light that faintly falls Through my leaf-latticed window of the skies, And I will listen to the voice that calls From heaven, where the wind stricken forest sighs. And I will read of dim Creation's morn, From the deep archives of these mossy hills-- On wings of wizard thought, my fancy, borne Back by the whispers of these pouring rills, Shall read the unwritten record of the land-- For God, unwitnessed here hath walked the dell, These cliffs have quivered at his loud command, These waters blushed, where his deep shadow fell! And at his bidding, 'mid these solitudes, The ebb and flow of life have poured their waves, Till Time, the hoary sexton of these woods, Despairing, broods o'er the uncounted graves. And warrior tribes have come from some far land, And made these mountains echo with their cry-- And they have mouldered--and their mighty hand Hath writ no record on the earth or sky! And 'mid the awful stillness of their grave, The forest oaks have flourished; and the breath Of years hath swept their races, wave on wave, As ages fainted on the shores of death. The tumbling cliff perchance hath thundered deep, Like a rough note of music in the song Of centuries, and the whirlwind's crushing sweep, Hath ploughed the forest with its furrows strong. And though these legends, like the eddying leaves Of autumn, scattered by the whirlwind's breath, Are borne away where dim Oblivion weaves Her shroud, within the rayless halls of death; Still with a prophet gaze I'll thread my way, And wake the giant spectres of the tomb; With fancy's wand I'll chase the phantoms gray, And burst the shadowy seal that shrouds their doom. Thus shall the past its misty lore unfold, And bid my soul on nature's ladder rise, Till I shall meet some clasping hand, whose hold Shall draw my homesick spirit to the skies. XIX. "Farewell! the thread of sympathy that tied My heart to man is sundered, and I go To hold communion with the shades that glide, Wherever forests wave, or waters flow. And when my fluttering heart shall faint and fail, These limbs shall totter to some hollow cave, Where the poor Dreamer's dream shall cease. The gale Shall gather music from the wood and wave, And pour it in my dying ear; the wing Of busy zephyrs to the flowers shall go, And from them all their sweetest odors bring, To soothe, perchance, their fainting lover's woe. My sinking soul shall catch the dreamy sound Of far-off waters, murmuring to their doom, And eddying winds, from distant mountains bound, Shall come to sing a requiem round my tomb. The breeze shall o'er me weave a leafy shroud, And I shall slumber in the shadowy dell-- Till God shall rend the spirit's darkling cloud, And give it wings of light. Stranger, Farewell!" Good and Evil. [Illustration: The Expulsion from Eden] When man from Paradise was driven, And thorns around his pathway sprung, Sweet Mercy wandering there from heaven Upon those thorns bright roses flung. Aye, and as Justice cursed the ground, She stole behind, unheard, unseen-- And while the curses fell around, She scattered seeds of joy between. And thus, as evils sprung to light, And spread, like weeds, their poisons wide, Fresh healing plants came blooming bright, And stood, to check them, side by side. And now, though Eden blooms afar, And man is exiled from its bowers, Still mercy steals through bolt and bar, And brings away its choicest flowers. The very toil, the thorns of care, That Heaven in wrath for sin imposes, By mercy changed, no curses are-- One brings us rest, the other roses. Thus joy is linked with every woe-- Each cup of ill its pleasure brings; The rose is crushed, but then, you know, The sweeter fragrance from it springs. If justice throw athwart our way, A deepening eve of fear and sorrow, Hope, like the moon, reflects the ray Of the bright sun that shines to-morrow. And mercy gilds with stars the night; Sweet music plays through weeping willows; The blackest cave with gems is bright, And pearls illume the ocean billows. The very grave, though clouds may rise, And shroud it o'er with midnight gloom, Unfolds to faith the deep blue skies, That glorious shine beyond the tomb. The Mountain Stream. One summer morn, while yet the thrilling lay, Of the dew-loving lark was full and strong, Trampling the wild flowers in my careless way, Up the steep mountain-side I strode along-- My only guide, a brook whose joyous song, Seemed like a boy's light-hearted roundelay, As down it rushed, the leafy bowers among, Scattering o'er bud and bloom its pearly spray-- A beauteous semblance of life's opening day. And looking back to that all-gladdening morn, When I was free and sportive as the stream-- When roses blushed with no suspected thorn, And fancy's sunlight gilded every dream-- While hope yet shed its sweet delusive beam, And disappointment still delayed to warn-- With fond regret, I still pursued the theme-- With clambering step still up the steep was borne, Too sad to smile, too pleased perchance to mourn. And now I stood beside that rivulet's spring, That came unbidden with a bubbling bound-- And stealing forth, a gentle trembling thing, It seemed an infant fearing all around-- Yet clinging to its mother's breast--the ground. But soon it bolder grew, and with a wing It went: its carol was a joyous sound, Making the silent woods responsive ring, And the far forest-echoes, sighing, sing. And now I stood upon the mountain's height-- Like a wide map, the landscape lay unrolled-- There could I trace that rivulet's path of light, From the steep mountain to the sea of gold; Now leaping o'er the rocks like chamois bold,-- Now like a crouching hare concealed from sight,-- Now hid beneath the willow's bowering fold, As if they sought to stay its arrowy flight, Then give it forth again more swift and bright. 'Twas changeful--beautiful; now dark, now fair-- A tale of life, from childhood to the tomb-- Its birth-place near the skies, in mountain air, Where wild flowers throw around their sweet perfume, Like the blest thoughts that often brightly bloom, At home, beneath a mother's culturing care-- Its form now hid in shadows, such as gloom Our downward way--its grave in ocean, where It mingles with the wave--a dweller there! And though that stream be hidden from the view, 'Tis yet preserved 'neath ocean's briny crest: That wide eternity of waves is true-- And as the planets anchored in their rest, The sparkling streamlet lives; and while unblest, The land-wave stagnant lingers--there the blue Tide holds the river stainless in its breast-- An image still of life, that sparkles through The starry deep of heaven, for ever new. [Illustration: Vignette] 
10763	----	Proofreaders IT CAN BE DONE POEMS OF INSPIRATION COLLECTED BY JOSEPH MORRIS and ST. CLAIR ADAMS FOREWORD This is a volume of inspirational poems. Its purpose is to bring men courage and resolution, to cheer them, to fire them with new confidence when they grow dispirited, to strengthen their faith that THINGS CAN BE DONE. It is better for this purpose than the entire works of any one poet, for it takes the cream of many and has greater diversity than any one writer can show. It is made up chiefly of very recent poems--not such as were written for anthologies of poetical "gems," but such as speak directly to the heart, always in very simple language, often in the phrases of shop or office or street. Included, however, with the poems of the day are a few of the fine old pieces that have been of comfort to men through the ages. Besides the poems themselves, the volume contains helps to their understanding and enjoyment. The pieces are introduced by short comments; these serve the same purpose as the strain played by the pianist before the singer begins to sing; they create a mood, give a point of view, throw light on the meaning of what follows. Also the lives of the authors are briefly summarized; this is in answer to our natural interest in the writer of a poem we like, and in the case of living poets it brings together facts hardly to be found anywhere else. Finally, the book is not one to be read and then cast aside. It is to be kept as a constant companion and an unfailing recourse in weariness or gloom. Human companions are not always in the mood to cheer us, and may talk upon themes we dislike. But this book will converse or be silent, it is never out of sorts or discouraged, and so far from being wed to some single topic, it will speak to us at any time on any subject we desire. To many authors and publishers acknowledgment is due for generous permission to use copyright material. CONTENTS Abou Ben Adhem............................. _Leigh Hunt_ Answer, The................................ _Grantland Rice_ Appreciation............................... _William Judson Kibby_ Arrow and the Song, The.................... _Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_ Awareness.................................. _Miriam Teichner_ Bars of Fate, The.......................... _Ellen M.H. Gates_ Battle Cry................................. _John G. Neihardt_ Belly and the Members, The................. _William Shakespeare_ Be the Best of Whatever You Are............ _Douglas Malloch_ Borrowed Feathers.......................... _Joseph Morris_ Borrowing Trouble.......................... _Robert Burns_ Brave Life................................. _Grantland Rice_ Call of the Unbeaten, The.................. _Grantland Rice_ Can't...................................... _Edgar A. Guest_ Can You Sing a Song?....................... _Joseph Morris_ Cares...................................... _Elizabeth Barrett Browning_ Celestial Surgeon, The..................... _Robert Louis Stevenson_ Challenge.................................. _Jean Nette_ Chambered Nautilus, The.................... _Oliver Wendell Holmes_ Character of a Happy Life.................. _Sir Henry Wotton_ Clear the Way.............................. _Charles Mackay_ Cleon and I................................ _Charles Mackay_ Columbus................................... _Joaquin Miller_ Conqueror, The............................. _Berton Braley_ Co-operation............................... _J. Mason Knox_ Courage.................................... _Florence Earle Coates Cowards.................................... _William Shakespeare_ Creed, A................................... _Edwin Markham_ Daffodils, The............................. _William Wordsworth_ Days of Cheer.............................. _James W. Foley_ December 31................................ _S.E. Kiser_ De Sunflower Ain't de Daisy................ _Anonymous_ Disappointed, The.......................... _Ella Wheeler Wilcox_ Duty....................................... _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ Duty....................................... _Edwin Markham_ Envoi...................................... _John G. Neihardt_ Essentials................................. _St. Clair Adams_ Fable...................................... _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ Fairy Song................................. _John Keats_ Faith...................................... _S.E. Kiser_ Faith...................................... _Edward Rowland Sill_ Fighter, The............................... _S.E. Kiser_ Fighting Failure, The...................... _Everard Jack Appleton_ Firm of Grin and Barrett, The.............. _Sam Walter Foss_ Four Things................................ _Henry Van Dyke_ Friends of Mine............................ _James W. Foley_ Game, The.................................. _Grantland Rice _ Gifts of God, The.......................... _George Herbert_ Gift, The.................................. _Robert Burns_ Gladness................................... _Anna Hempstead Branch_ Glad Song, The............................. _Joseph Morris_ God........................................ _Gamaliel Bradford_ Good Deeds................................. _William Shakespeare_ Good Intentions............................ _St. Clair Adams_ Good Name, A............................... _William Shakespeare_ Gradatim................................... _G. Holland_ Gray Days.................................. _Griffith Alexander_ Greatness of the Soul, The................. _Alfred Tennyson_ Grief...................................... _Angela Morgan_ Grumpy Guy, The............................ _Griffith Alexander_ Happy Heart, The........................... _Thomas Dekker_ Has-Beens, The............................. _Walt Mason_ Having Done and Doing...................... _William Shakespeare_ Heinelet................................... _Gamaliel Bradford _ Helpin' Out................................ _William Judson Kibby_ Here's Hopin'.............................. _Frank L. Stanton_ Hero, A.................................... _Florence Earle Coates_ He Whom a Dream Hath Possessed............. _Sheamus O Sheel_ His Ally................................... _William Rose Benét_ Hoe Your Row............................... _Frank L. Stanton_ Hold Fast.................................. _Everard Jack Appleton_ Hope....................................... _Anonymous_ Hopeful Brother, A......................... _Frank L. Stanton_ House by the Side of the Road, The......... _Sam Walter Foss_ How Did You Die?........................... _Edmund Vance Cooke_ How Do You Tackle Your Work?............... _Edgar A. Guest_ Hymn to Happiness, A....................... _James W. Foley_ If......................................... _John Kendrick Bangs_ If......................................... _Rudyard Kipling_ If I Should Die............................ _Ben King_ If You Can't Go Over or Under, Go Round.... _Joseph Morris_ I'm Glad................................... _Anonymous_ Inner Light, The........................... _John Milton_ Invictus................................... _William Ernest Henley_ Is It Raining, Little Flower?.............. _Anonymous_ It Couldn't Be Done........................ _Edgar A. Guest_ It May Be.................................. _S.E. Riser_ It Won't Stay Blowed....................... _St. Clair Adams_ Jaw........................................ _St. Clair Adams_ Joy of Living, The......................... _Gamaliel Bradford_ Just Be Glad............................... _James Whitcomb Riley_ Just Whistle............................... _Frank L. Stanton_ Keep A-Goin'!.............................. _Frank L. Stanton_ Keep On Keepin' On......................... _Anonymous_ Keep Sweet................................. _Strickland W. Gillilan_ Kingdom of Man, The........................ _John Kendrick Bangs_ Know Thyself............................... _Angela Morgan_ Laugh a Little Bit......................... _Edmund Vance Cooke_ Lesson from History, A..................... _Joseph Morris_ Let Me Live Out My Years................... _John G. Neihardt_ Life....................................... _Griffith Alexander_ Life....................................... _Edward Rowland Sill_ Life....................................... _Ella Wheeler Wilcox_ Life and Death............................. _Anna Barbauld_ Life and Death............................. _Ernest H. Crosby_ Life, not Death............................ _Alfred Tennyson_ Life Without Passion....................... _William Shakespeare_ Lion Path, The............................. _Charlotte Perkins Gilman_ Lions and Ants............................. _Walt Mason_ Little Prayer, A........................... _S.E. Kiser_ Little Thankful Song, A.................... _Frank L. Stanton_ Lose the Day Loitering..................... _Johann Wolfgang von Goethe_ Man, Bird, and God......................... _Robert Browning_ Man or Manikin............................. _Richard Butler Glaenzer_ Man's a Man for A' That, A................. _Robert Burns_ Man Who Frets at Worldly Strife, The....... _Joseph Rodman Drake_ Meetin' Trouble............................ _Everard Jack Appleton_ "Might Have Been".......................... _Grantland Rice_ Mistress Fate.............................. _William Rose Benét_ Morality................................... _Matthew Arnold_ My Creed................................... _S.E. Kiser_ My Philosophy.............................. _James Whitcomb Riley_ My Triumph................................. _John Greenleaf Whittier_ My Wage.................................... _Jessie B. Rittenhouse_ Never Trouble Trouble...................... _St. Clair Adams_ New Duckling, The.......................... _Alfred Noyes_ Noble Nature, The.......................... _Ben Jonson_ Ode to Duty................................ _William Wordsworth_ On Being Ready............................. _Grantland Rice_ On Down the Road........................... _Grantland Rice_ One Fight More............................. _Theodosia Garrison_ One of These Days.......................... _James W. Foley_ One, The................................... _Everard Jack Appleton_ Opening Paradise........................... _Thomas Gray_ Opportunity................................ _Berton Braley_ Opportunity................................ _John James Ingalls_ Opportunity................................ _Walter Malone_ Opportunity................................ _Edwin Markham_ Opportunity................................ _William Shakespeare_ Opportunity................................ _Edward Rowland Sill_ Order and the Bees......................... _William Shakespeare_ Ownership.................................. _St. Clair Adams_ Painting the Lily.......................... _William Shakespeare_ Per Aspera................................. _Florence Earle Coates_ Pessimist, The............................. _Ben King_ Philosopher, A............................. _John Kendrick Bangs_ Philosophy for Croakers.................... _Joseph Morris_ Pippa's Song............................... _Robert Browning_ Playing the Game........................... _Anonymous_ Playing the Game........................... _Berton Braley_ Play the Game.............................. _Henry Newbolt_ Polonius's Advice to Laertes............... _William Shakespeare_ Poor Unfortunate, A........................ _Frank L. Stanton_ Praise the Generous Gods for Giving........ _William Ernest Henley_ Prayer, A.................................. _Theodosia Garrison_ Prayer for Pain............................ _John G. Neihardt_ Preparedness............................... _Edwin Markham_ Press On................................... _Park Benjamin _ Pretty Good World, A....................... _Frank L. Stanton_ Problem to Be Solved, A.................... _St. Clair Adams_ Prometheus Unbound......................... _Percy Bysshe Shelley_ Prospice................................... _Robert Browning_ Psalm of Life, A........................... _Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_ Quitter, The............................... _Robert W. Service_ Rabbi Ben Ezra............................. _Robert Browning_ Rainbow, The............................... _William Wordsworth_ Rectifying Years, The...................... _St. Clair Adams_ Resolve.................................... _Charlotte Perkins Gilman_ Richer Mines, The.......................... _John Kendrick Bangs_ Ring Out, Wild Bells....................... _Alfred Tennyson_ Rules for the Road......................... _Edwin Markham_ Sadness and Merriment...................... _William Shakespeare_ Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth....... _Arthur Hugh Clough_ See It Through............................. _Edgar A. Guest_ Self-Dependence............................ _Matthew Arnold_ Serenity................................... _Lord Byron_ Sit Down, Sad Soul......................... _Bryan Waller Procter_ Sleep and the Monarch...................... _William Shakespeare_ Slogan..................................... _Jane M'Lean_ Smiles..................................... _Ella Wheeler Wilcox_ Smiling Paradox, A......................... _John Kendrick Bangs_ Solitude................................... _Ella Wheeler Wilcox_ Song of Endeavor........................... _James W. Foley_ Song of Life, A............................ _Angela Morgan_ Song of Thanksgiving, A.................... _Angela Morgan_ Song of To-morrow, A....................... _Frank L. Stanton_ Stability.................................. _William Shakespeare_ Stand Forth!............................... _Angela Morgan_ Start Where You Stand...................... _Bert on Braley_ Steadfast.................................. _Everard Jack Appleton_ Stone Rejected, The........................ _Edwin Markham_ Struggle, The.............................. _Miriam Teichner_ Submission................................. _Miriam Teichner_ Success.................................... _Berton Braley_ Swellitis.................................. _Joseph Morris_ Syndicated Smile, The...................... _St. Clair Adams_ There Will Always Be Something to Do....... _Edgar A. Guest_ Thick Is the Darkness...................... _William Ernest Henley_ Things That Haven't Been Done Before, The.. _Edgar A. Guest_ This World................................. _Frank L. Stanton_ Times Go by Turns.......................... _Robert Southwell_ Tit for Tat................................ _St. Clair Adams_ To Althea from Prison...................... _Richard Lovelace_ Toast to Merriment, A...................... _James W. Foley_ To a Young Man............................. _Edgar A. Guest_ To-day..................................... _Thomas Carlyle_ To-day..................................... _Douglas Malloch_ To Melancholy.............................. _John Kendrick Bangs_ To the Men Who Lose........................ _Anonymous_ To Those Who Fail.......................... _Joaquin Miller_ To Youth After Pain........................ _Margaret Widdemer_ Trainers, The.............................. _Grantland Rice_ Two at a Fireside.......................... _Edwin Markham_ Two Raindrops.............................. _Joseph Morris_ Ultimate Act............................... _Henry Bryan Binns_ Ulysses.................................... _Alfred Tennyson_ Unafraid................................... _Everard Jack Appleton_ Undismayed................................. _James W. Foley_ Unmusical Soloist, The..................... _Joseph Morris_ Unsubdued.................................. _S.E. Kiser_ Victory.................................... _Miriam Teichner_ Victory in Defeat.......................... _Edwin Markham_ Wanted--a Man.............................. _St. Clair Adams_ Welcome Man, The........................... _Walt Mason_ What Dark Days Do.......................... _Everard Jack Appleton_ When Earth's Last Picture Is Painted....... _Rudyard Kipling_ When Nature Wants a Man.................... _Angela Morgan_ Will....................................... _Alfred Tennyson_ Will....................................... _Ella Wheeler Wilcox_ Wisdom of Folly, The....................... _Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler_ Wishing.................................... _Ella Wheeler Wilcox_ Woman Who Understands, The................. _Everard Jack Appleton_ Word, The.................................. _John Kendrick Bangs_ Work....................................... _Angela Morgan_ Work....................................... _Henry Van Dyke_ World Is Against Me, The................... _Edgar A. Guest_ Worth While................................ _Ella Wheeler Wilcox_ You May Count That Day..................... _George Eliot_ Your Mission............................... _Ellen M.H. Gates_ IT CAN BE DONE BE THE BEST OF WHATEVER YOU ARE We all dream of great deeds and high positions, away from the pettiness and humdrum of ordinary life. Yet success is not occupying a lofty place or doing conspicuous work; it is being the best that is in you. Rattling around in too big a job is much worse than filling a small one to overflowing. Dream, aspire by all means; but do not ruin the life you must lead by dreaming pipe-dreams of the one you would like to lead. Make the most of what you have and are. Perhaps your trivial, immediate task is your one sure way of proving your mettle. Do the thing near at hand, and great things will come to your hand to be done. If you can't be a pine on the top of the hill Be a scrub in the valley--but be The best little scrub by the side of the rill; Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If you can't be a bush be a bit of the grass, And some highway some happier make; If you can't be a muskie then just be a bass-- But the liveliest bass in the lake! We can't all be captains, we've got to be crew, There's something for all of us here. There's big work to do and there's lesser to do, And the task we must do is the near. If you can't be a highway then just be a trail, If you can't be the sun be a star; It isn't by size that you win or you fail-- Be the best of whatever you are! _Douglas Malloch._ THE HOUSE BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD This poem has as its keynote friendship and sympathy for other people. It is a paradox of life that by hoarding love and happiness we lose them, and that only by giving them away can we keep them for ourselves. The more we share, the more we possess. We of course find in other people weaknesses and sins, but our best means of curing these are through a wise and sympathetic understanding. Let me live in a house by the side of the road, Where the race of men go by-- The men who are good and the men who are bad, As good and as bad as I. I would not sit in the scorner's seat, Or hurl the cynic's ban;-- Let me live in a house by the side of the road And be a friend to man. I see from my house by the side of the road, By the side of the highway of life, The men who press with the ardor of hope, The men who are faint with the strife. But I turn not away from their smiles nor their tears-- Both parts of an infinite plan;-- Let me live in my house by the side of the road And be a friend to man. I know there are brook-gladdened meadows ahead And mountains of wearisome height; And the road passes on through the long afternoon And stretches away to the night. But still I rejoice when the travelers rejoice, And weep with the strangers that moan, Nor live in my house by the side of the road Like a man who dwells alone. Let me live in my house by the side of the road Where the race of men go by-- They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong, Wise, foolish--so am I. Then why should I sit in the scorner's seat Or hurl the cynic's ban?-- Let me live in my house by the side of the road And be a friend to man. _Sam Walter Foss._ From "Dreams in Homespun." FOUR THINGS What are the qualities of ideal manhood? Various people have given various answers to this question. Here the poet states what qualities he thinks indispensable. Four things a man must learn to do If he would make his record true: To think without confusion clearly; To love his fellow-men sincerely; To act from honest motives purely; To trust in God and Heaven securely. _Henry Van Dyke._ From "Collected Poems." IF The central idea of this poem is that success comes from self-control and a true sense of the values of things. In extremes lies danger. A man must not lose heart because of doubts or opposition, yet he must do his best to see the grounds for both. He must not be deceived into thinking either triumph or disaster final; he must use each wisely--and push on. In all things he must hold to the golden mean. If he does, he will own the world, and even better, for his personal reward he will attain the full stature of manhood. If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream--and not make dreams your master; If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim, If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two imposters just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them; "Hold on!" If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings--nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son! _Rudyard Kipling._ From "Rudyard Kipling's Verse, 1885-1918." INVICTUS Triumph in spirit over adverse conditions is the keynote of this poem of courage undismayed. It rings with the power of the individual to guide his own destiny. Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul. _William Ernest Henley._ IT COULDN'T BE DONE After a thing has been done, everybody is ready to declare it easy. But before it has been done, it is called impossible. One reason why people fear to embark upon great enterprises is that they see all the difficulties at once. They know they could succeed in the initial tasks, but they shrink from what is to follow. Yet "a thing begun is half done." Moreover the surmounting of the first barrier gives strength and ingenuity for the harder ones beyond. Mountains viewed from a distance seem to be unscalable. But they can be climbed, and the way to begin is to take the first upward step. From that moment the mountains are less high. As Hannibal led his army across the foothills, then among the upper ranges, and finally over the loftiest peaks and passes of the Alps, or as Peary pushed farther and farther into the solitudes that encompass the North Pole, so can you achieve any purpose whatsoever if you heed not the doubters, meet each problem as it arises, and keep ever with you the assurance _It Can Be Done_. Somebody said that it couldn't be done, But he with a chuckle replied That "maybe it couldn't," but he would be one Who wouldn't say so till he'd tried. So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin On his face. If he worried he hid it. He started to sing as he tackled the thing That couldn't be done, and he did it. Somebody scoffed: "Oh, you'll never do that; At least no one ever has done it"; But he took off his coat and he took off his hat, And the first thing we knew he'd begun it. With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin, Without any doubting or quiddit, He started to sing as he tackled the thing That couldn't be done, and he did it. There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done, There are thousands to prophesy failure; There are thousands to point out to you one by one, The dangers that wait to assail you. But just buckle in with a bit of a grin, Just take off your coat and go to it; Just start to sing as you tackle the thing That "cannot be done," and you'll do it. _Edgar A. Guest._ From "The Path to Home." THE WELCOME MAN There's a man in the world who is never turned down, wherever he chances to stray; he gets the glad hand in the populous town, or out where the farmers make hay; he's greeted with pleasure on deserts of sand, and deep in the aisles of the woods; wherever he goes there's the welcoming hand--he's The Man Who Delivers the Goods. The failures of life sit around and complain; the gods haven't treated them white; they've lost their umbrellas whenever there's rain, and they haven't their lanterns at night; men tire of the failures who fill with their sighs the air of their own neighborhoods; there's one who is greeted with love-lighted eyes--he's The Man Who Delivers the Goods. One fellow is lazy, and watches the clock, and waits for the whistle to blow; and one has a hammer, with which he will knock, and one tells a story of woe; and one, if requested to travel a mile, will measure the perches and roods; but one does his stunt with a whistle or smile--he's The Man Who Delivers the Goods. One man is afraid that he'll labor too hard--the world isn't yearning for such; and one man is always alert, on his guard, lest he put in a minute too much; and one has a grouch or a temper that's bad, and one is a creature of moods; so it's hey for the joyous and rollicking lad--for the One Who Delivers the Goods! _Walt Mason._ From "Walt Mason, His Book." THE QUITTER In the famous naval duel between the _Bonhomme Richard_ and the _Serapis_, John Paul Jones was hailed by his adversary to know whether he struck his colors. "I have not yet begun to fight," was his answer. When the surrender took place, it was not Jones's ship that became the prize of war. Everybody admires a hard fighter--the man who takes buffets standing up, and in a spirit of "Never say die" is always ready for more. When you're lost in the wild and you're scared as a child, And death looks you bang in the eye; And you're sore as a boil, it's according to Hoyle To cock your revolver and die. But the code of a man says fight all you can, And self-dissolution is barred; In hunger and woe, oh it's easy to blow-- It's the hell served for breakfast that's hard. You're sick of the game? Well now, that's a shame! You're young and you're brave and you're bright. You've had a raw deal, I know, but don't squeal. Buck up, do your damnedest and fight! It's the plugging away that will win you the day, So don't be a piker, old pard; Just draw on your grit; it's so easy to quit-- It's the keeping your chin up that's hard. It's easy to cry that you're beaten and die, It's easy to crawfish and crawl, But to fight and to fight when hope's out of sight, Why, that's the best game of them all. And though you come out of each grueling bout, All broken and beaten and scarred-- Just have one more try. It's dead easy to die, It's the keeping on living that's hard. _Robert W. Service._ From "Rhymes of a Rolling Stone." [Illustration: ROBERT WILLIAM SERVICE] FRIENDS OF MINE We like to be hospitable. To what should we be more hospitable than a glad spirit or a kind impulse? Good-morning, Brother Sunshine, Good-morning, Sister Song, I beg your humble pardon If you've waited very long. I thought I heard you rapping, To shut you out were sin, My heart is standing open, Won't you walk right in? Good-morning, Brother Gladness, Good-morning, Sister Smile, They told me you were coming, So I waited on a while. I'm lonesome here without you, A weary while it's been, My heart is standing open, Won't you walk right in? Good-morning, Brother Kindness, Good-morning, Sister Cheer, I heard you were out calling, So I waited for you here. Some way, I keep forgetting I have to toil or spin When you are my companions, Won't you walk right in? _James W. Foley._ From "The Voices of Song." THE WOMAN WHO UNDERSTANDS "Is this the little woman that made this great war?" was Lincoln's greeting to Harriet Beecher Stowe. Often a woman is responsible for events by whose crash and splendor she herself is obscured. Often too she shapes the career of husband or brother or son. A man succeeds and reaps the honors of public applause, when in truth a quiet little woman has made it all possible--has by her tact and encouragement held him to his best, has had faith in him when his own faith has languished, has cheered him with the unfailing assurance, "You can, you must, you will." _Somewhere she waits to make you win, your soul in her firm, white hands-- Somewhere the gods have made for you, the Woman Who Understands!_ As the tide went out she found him Lashed to a spar of Despair, The wreck of his Ship around him-- The wreck of his Dreams in the air; Found him and loved him and gathered The soul of him close to her heart-- The soul that had sailed an uncharted sea, The soul that had sought to win and be free-- The soul of which _she_ was part! And there in the dusk she cried to the man, "Win your battle--you can, you can!" Broken by Fate, unrelenting, Scarred by the lashings of Chance; Bitter his heart--unrepenting-- Hardened by Circumstance; Shadowed by Failure ever, Cursing, he would have died, But the touch of her hand, her strong warm hand, And her love of his soul, took full command, Just at the turn of the tide! Standing beside him, filled with trust, "Win!" she whispered, "you must, you must!" Helping and loving and guiding, Urging when that were best, Holding her fears in hiding Deep in her quiet breast; This is the woman who kept him True to his standards lost, When, tossed in the storm and stress of strife, He thought himself through with the game of life And ready to pay the cost. Watching and guarding, whispering still, "Win you can--and you will, you will!" This is the story of ages, This is the Woman's way; Wiser than seers or sages, Lifting us day by day; Facing all things with a courage Nothing can daunt or dim, Treading Life's path, wherever it leads-- Lined with flowers or choked with weeds, But ever with him--with him! Guidon--comrade--golden spur-- The men who win are helped by _her_! _Somewhere she waits, strong in belief, your soul in her firm, white hands: Thank well the gods, when she comes to you--the Woman Who Understands!_ _Everard Jack Appleton._ From "The Quiet Courage." WANTED--A MAN Business and the world are exacting in their demands upon us. They make no concessions to half-heartedness, incompetence, or plodding mediocrity. But for the man who has proved his worth and can do the exceptional things with originality and sound judgment, they are eagerly watchful and have rich rewards. You say big corporations scheme To keep a fellow down; They drive him, shame him, starve him too If he so much as frown. God knows I hold no brief for them; Still, come with me to-day And watch those fat directors meet, For this is what they say: "In all our force not one to take The new work that we plan! In all the thousand men we've hired Where shall we find a man?" The world is shabby in the way It treats a fellow too; It just endures him while he works, And kicks him when he's through. It's ruthless, yes; let him make good, Or else it grabs its broom And grumbles: "What a clutter's here! We can't have this. Make room!" And out he goes. It says, "Can bread Be made from mouldy bran? The men come swarming here in droves, But where'll I find a man?" Yes, life is hard. But all the same It seeks the man who's best. Its grudging makes the prizes big; The obstacle's a test. Don't ask to find the pathway smooth, To march to fife and drum; The plum-tree will not come to you; Jack Horner, hunt the plum. The eyes of life are yearning, sad, As humankind they scan. She says, "Oh, there are men enough, But where'll I find a man?" _St. Clair Adams._ IF I SHOULD DIE A man whose word is as good as his bond is a man the world admires. It is related of Fox that a tradesman whom he long had owed money found him one day counting gold and asked for payment. Fox replied: "No; I owe this money to Sheridan. It is a debt of honor. If an accident should happen to me, he has nothing to show." The tradesman tore his note to pieces: "I change my debt into a debt of honor." Fox thanked him and handed over the money, saying that Sheridan's debt was not of so long standing and that Sheridan must wait. But most of us know men who are less scrupulous than Fox. If I should die to-night And you should come to my cold corpse and say, Weeping and heartsick o'er my lifeless clay-- If I should die to-night, And you should come in deepest grief and woe-- And say: "Here's that ten dollars that I owe," I might arise in my large white cravat And say, "What's that?" If I should die to-night And you should come to my cold corpse and kneel, Clasping my bier to show the grief you feel, I say, if I should die to-night And you should come to me, and there and then Just even hint 'bout payin' me that ten, I might arise the while, But I'd drop dead again. _Ben King._ From "Ben King's Verse." JUST BE GLAD Misfortunes overtake us, difficulties confront us; but these things must not induce us to give up. A Congressman who had promised Thomas B. Reed to be present at a political meeting telegraphed at the last moment: "Cannot come; washout on the line." "No need to stay away," said Reed's answering telegram; "buy another shirt." O heart of mine, we shouldn't Worry so! What we've missed of calm we couldn't Have, you know! What we've met of stormy pain, And of sorrow's driving rain, We can better meet again, If it blow! We have erred in that dark hour We have known, When our tears fell with the shower, All alone!-- Were not shine and shower blent As the gracious Master meant?-- Let us temper our content With His own. For, we know, not every morrow Can be sad; So, forgetting all the sorrow We have had, Let us fold away our fears, And put by our foolish tears, And through all the coming years Just be glad. _James Whitcomb Riley._ From the Biographical Edition Of the Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley. OPPORTUNITY "I lack only one of having a hundred," said a student after an examination; "I have the two naughts." And all he did lack was a one, _rightly placed_. The world is full of opportunities. Discernment to perceive, courage to undertake, patience to carry through, will change the whole aspect of the universe for us and bring positive achievement out of meaningless negation. With doubt and dismay you are smitten You think there's no chance for you, son? Why, the best books haven't been written The best race hasn't been run, The best score hasn't been made yet, The best song hasn't been sung, The best tune hasn't been played yet, Cheer up, for the world is young! No chance? Why the world is just eager For things that you ought to create Its store of true wealth is still meagre Its needs are incessant and great, It yearns for more power and beauty More laughter and love and romance, More loyalty, labor and duty, No chance--why there's nothing but chance! For the best verse hasn't been rhymed yet, The best house hasn't been planned, The highest peak hasn't been climbed yet, The mightiest rivers aren't spanned, Don't worry and fret, faint hearted, The chances have just begun, For the Best jobs haven't been started, The Best work hasn't been done. _Berton Braley._ From "A Banjo at Armageddon." SOLITUDE Said an Irishman who had several times been kicked downstairs: "I begin to think they don't want me around here." So it is with our sorrows, our struggles. Life decrees that they belong to us individually. If we try to make others share them, we are shunned. But struggling and weary humanity is glad enough to share our joys. Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone; For the sad old earth Must borrow its mirth, It has trouble enough of its own. Sing, and the hills will answer; Sigh, it is lost on the air; The echoes bound To a joyful sound, But shrink from voicing care. Rejoice, and men will seek you; Grieve, and they turn and go; They want full measure Of all your pleasure, But they do not want your woe. Be glad, and your friends are many; Be sad, and you lose them all; There are none to decline Your nectared wine, But alone you must drink life's gall. Feast, and your halls are crowded; Fast, and the world goes by; Succeed and give, And it helps you live, But it cannot help you die. There is room in the halls of pleasure For a long and lordly train; But one by one We must all file on Through the narrow aisles of pain. _Ella Wheeler Wilcox._ From "How Salvator Won." UNSUBDUED "An artist's career," said Whistler, "always begins to-morrow." So does the career of any man of courage and imagination. The Eden of such a man does not lie in yesterday. If he has done well, he forgets his achievements and dreams of the big deeds ahead. If he has been thwarted, he forgets his failures and looks forward to vast, sure successes. If fate itself opposes him, he defies it. Farragut's fleet was forcing an entrance into Mobile Bay. One of the vessels struck something, a terrific explosion followed, the vessel went down. "Torpedoes, sir." They scanned the face of the commander-in-chief. But Farragut did not hesitate. "Damn the torpedoes," said he. "Go ahead." I have hoped, I have planned, I have striven, To the will I have added the deed; The best that was in me I've given, I have prayed, but the gods would not heed. I have dared and reached only disaster, I have battled and broken my lance; I am bruised by a pitiless master That the weak and the timid call Chance. I am old, I am bent, I am cheated Of all that Youth urged me to win; But name me not with the defeated, To-morrow again, I begin. _S.E. Kiser._ From "Poems That Have Helped Me." WORK "A SONG OF TRIUMPH" When Captain John Smith was made the leader of the colonists at Jamestown, Va., he discouraged the get-rich-quick seekers of gold by announcing flatly, "He who will not work shall not eat." This rule made of Jamestown the first permanent English settlement in the New World. But work does more than lead to material success. It gives an outlet from sorrow, restrains wild desires, ripens and refines character, enables human beings to cooperate with God, and when well done, brings to life its consummate satisfaction. Every man is a Prince of Possibilities, but by work alone can he come into his Kingship. Work! Thank God for the might of it, The ardor, the urge, the delight of it-- Work that springs from the heart's desire, Setting the brain and the soul on fire-- Oh, what is so good as the heat of it, And what is so glad as the beat of it, And what is so kind as the stern command, Challenging brain and heart and hand? Work! Thank God for the pride of it, For the beautiful, conquering tide of it. Sweeping the life in its furious flood, Thrilling the arteries, cleansing the blood, Mastering stupor and dull despair, Moving the dreamer to do and dare. Oh, what is so good as the urge of it, And what is so glad as the surge of it, And what is so strong as the summons deep, Rousing the torpid soul from sleep? Work! Thank God for the pace of it, For the terrible, keen, swift race of it; Fiery steeds in full control, Nostrils a-quiver to greet the goal. Work, the Power that drives behind, Guiding the purposes, taming the mind, Holding the runaway wishes back, Reining the will to one steady track, Speeding the energies faster, faster, Triumphing over disaster. Oh, what is so good as the pain of it, And what is so great as the gain of it? And what is so kind as the cruel goad, Forcing us on through the rugged road? Work! Thank God for the swing of it, For the clamoring, hammering ring of it, Passion and labor daily hurled On the mighty anvils of the world. Oh, what is so fierce as the flame of it? And what is so huge as the aim of it? Thundering on through dearth and doubt, Calling the plan of the Maker out. Work, the Titan; Work, the friend, Shaping the earth to a glorious end, Draining the swamps and blasting the hills, Doing whatever the Spirit wills-- Rending a continent apart, To answer the dream of the Master heart. Thank God for a world where none may shirk-- Thank God for the splendor of work! _Angela Morgan._ From "The Hour Has Struck." HOW DID YOU DIE? Grant at Ft. Donelson demanded unconditional and immediate surrender. At Appomattox he offered as lenient terms as victor ever extended to vanquished. Why the difference? The one event was at the beginning of the war, when the enemy's morale must be shaken. The other was at the end of the conflict, when a brave and noble adversary had been rendered helpless. In his quiet way Grant showed himself one of nature's gentlemen. He also taught a great lesson. No honor can be too great for the man, be he even our foe, who has steadily and uncomplainingly done his very best--and has failed. Did you tackle that trouble that came your way With a resolute heart and cheerful? Or hide your face from the light of day With a craven soul and fearful? Oh, a trouble's a ton, or a trouble's an ounce, Or a trouble is what you make it, And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts, But only how did you take it? You are beaten to earth? Well, well, what's that! Come up with a smiling face. It's nothing against you to fall down flat, But to lie there--that's disgrace. The harder you're thrown, why the higher you bounce Be proud of your blackened eye! It isn't the fact that you're licked that counts; It's how did you fight--and why? And though you be done to the death, what then? If you battled the best you could, If you played your part in the world of men, Why, the Critic will call it good. Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce, And whether he's slow or spry, It isn't the fact that you're dead that counts, But only how did you die? _Edmund Vance Cooke._ From "Impertinent Poems." A LESSON FROM HISTORY To break the ice of an undertaking is difficult. To cross on broken ice, as Eliza did to freedom, or to row amid floating ice, as Washington did to victory, is harder still. This poem applies especially to those who are discouraged in a struggle to which they are already committed. Everything's easy after it's done; Every battle's a "cinch" that's won; Every problem is clear that's solved-- The earth was round when it _revolved!_ But Washington stood amid grave doubt With enemy forces camped about; He could not know how he would fare Till _after_ he'd crossed the Delaware. Though the river was full of ice He did not think about it twice, But started across in the dead of night, The enemy waiting to open the fight. Likely feeling pretty blue, Being human, same as you, But he was brave amid despair, And Washington crossed the Delaware! So when you're with trouble beset, And your spirits are soaking wet, When all the sky with clouds is black, Don't lie down upon your back And look at _them_. Just do the thing; Though you are choked, still try to sing. If times are dark, believe them fair, And you will cross the Delaware! _Joseph Morris._ RABBI BEN EZRA (SELECTED VERSES) To some people success is everything, and the easier it is gained the better. To Browning success is nothing unless it is won by painful effort. What Browning values is struggle. Throes, rebuffs, even failure to achieve what we wish, are to be welcomed, for the effects of vigorous endeavor inweave themselves into our characters; moreover through struggle we lift ourselves from the degradation into which the indolent fall. In the intervals of strife we may look back dispassionately upon what we have gone through, see where we erred and where we did wisely, watch the workings of universal laws, and resolve to apply hereafter what we have hitherto learned. Then, welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go! Be our joys three-parts pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe! For thence,--a paradox Which comforts while it mocks,-- Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail: What I aspired to be, And was not, comforts me: A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale. So, still within this life, Though lifted o'er its strife, Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last, "This rage was right i' the main, That acquiescence vain: The Future I may face now I have proved the Past." For more is not reserved To man, with soul just nerved To act to-morrow what he learns to-day: Here, work enough to watch The Master work, and catch Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play. _Robert Browning._ TO MELANCHOLY The last invitation anybody would accept is "Come, let us weep together." If we keep melancholy at our house, we should be careful to have it under lock and key, so that no one will observe it. Melancholy, Melancholy, I've no use for you, by Golly! Yet I'm going to keep you hidden In some chamber dark, forbidden, Just as though you were a prize, sir, Made of gold, and I a miser-- Not because I think you jolly, Melancholy! Not for that I mean to hoard you, Keep you close and lodge and board you As I would my sisters, brothers, Cousins, aunts, and old grandmothers, But that you shan't bother others With your sniffling, snuffling folly, Howling, Yowling, Melancholy. _John Kendrick Bangs._ From "Songs of Cheer." THE LION PATH Admiral Dupont was explaining to Farragut his reasons for not taking his ironclads into Charleston harbor. "You haven't given me the main reason yet," said Farragut. "What's that?" "You didn't think you could do it." So the man who thinks he can't pass a lion, can't. But the man who thinks he can, can. Indeed he oftentimes finds that the lion isn't really there at all. I dare not!-- Look! the road is very dark-- The trees stir softly and the bushes shake, The long grass rustles, and the darkness moves Here! there! beyond--! There's something crept across the road just now! And you would have me go--? Go _there_, through that live darkness, hideous With stir of crouching forms that wait to kill? Ah, _look_! See there! and there! and there again! Great yellow, glassy eyes, close to the ground! Look! Now the clouds are lighter I can see The long slow lashing of the sinewy tails, And the set quiver of strong jaws that wait--! Go there? Not I! Who dares to go who sees So perfectly the lions in the path? Comes one who dares. Afraid at first, yet bound On such high errand as no fear could stay. Forth goes he, with lions in his path. And then--? He dared a death of agony-- Outnumbered battle with the king of beasts-- Long struggles in the horror of the night-- Dared, and went forth to meet--O ye who fear! Finding an empty road, and nothing there-- And fences, and the dusty roadside trees-- Some spitting kittens, maybe, in the grass. _Charlotte Perkins Gilman._ From "In This Our World." THE ANSWER Bob Fitzsimmons lacked the physical bulk of the men he fought, was ungainly in build and movement, and not infrequently got himself floored in the early rounds of his contests. But many people consider him the best fighter for his weight who ever stepped into the prize ring. Not a favorite at first, he won the popular heart by making good. Of course he had great natural powers; from any position when the chance at last came he could dart forth a sudden, wicked blow that no human being could withstand. But more formidable still was the spirit which gave him cool and complete command of all his resources, and made him most dangerous when he was on the verge of being knocked out. When the battle breaks against you and the crowd forgets to cheer When the Anvil Chorus echoes with the essence of a jeer; When the knockers start their panning in the knocker's nimble way With a rap for all your errors and a josh upon your play-- There is one quick answer ready that will nail them on the wing; There is one reply forthcoming that will wipe away the sting; There is one elastic come-back that will hold them, as it should-- Make good. No matter where you finish in the mix-up or the row, There are those among the rabble who will pan you anyhow; But the entry who is sticking and delivering the stuff Can listen to the yapping as he giggles up his cuff; The loafer has no come-back and the quitter no reply When the Anvil Chorus echoes, as it will, against the sky; But there's one quick answer ready that will wrap them in a hood-- Make good. _Grantland Rice._ From "The Sportlight." THE WORLD IS AGAINST ME Babe Ruth doesn't complain that opposing pitchers try to strike him out; he swings at the ball till he swats it for four bases. Ty Cobb doesn't complain that whole teams work wits and muscles overtime to keep him from stealing home; he pits himself against them all and comes galloping or hurdling or sliding in. What other men can do any man can do if he works long enough with a brave enough heart. "The world is against me," he said with a sigh. "Somebody stops every scheme that I try. The world has me down and it's keeping me there; I don't get a chance. Oh, the world is unfair! When a fellow is poor then he can't get a show; The world is determined to keep him down low." "What of Abe Lincoln?" I asked. "Would you say That he was much richer than you are to-day? He hadn't your chance of making his mark, And his outlook was often exceedingly dark; Yet he clung to his purpose with courage most grim And he got to the top. Was the world against him? "What of Ben Franklin? I've oft heard it said That many a time he went hungry to bed. He started with nothing but courage to climb, But patiently struggled and waited his time. He dangled awhile from real poverty's limb, Yet he got to the top. Was the world against him? "I could name you a dozen, yes, hundreds, I guess, Of poor boys who've patiently climbed to success; All boys who were down and who struggled alone, Who'd have thought themselves rich if your fortune they'd known; Yet they rose in the world you're so quick to condemn, And I'm asking you now, was the world against them?" _Edgar A. Guest._ From "Just Folks." SAY NOT THE STRUGGLE NOUGHT AVAILETH In any large or prolonged enterprise we are likely to take too limited a view of the progress we are making. The obstacles do not yield at some given point; we therefore imagine we have made no headway. The poet here uses three comparisons to show the folly of accepting this hasty and partial evidence. A soldier may think, from the little part of the battle he can see, that the day is going against him; but by holding his ground stoutly he may help his comrades in another quarter to win the victory. Successive waves may seem to rise no higher on the land, but far back in swollen creek and inlet is proof that the tide is coming in. As we look toward the east, we are discouraged at the slowness of daybreak; but by looking westward we see the whole landscape illumined. Say not the struggle nought availeth, The labor and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not, nor faileth, And as things have been they remain. If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars; It may be, in yon smoke conceal'd, Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers, And, but for you, possess the field. For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, Seem here no painful inch to gain, Far back, through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in, the main. And not by eastern windows only, When daylight comes, comes in the light, In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly, But westward, look, the land is bright. _Arthur Hugh Clough._ WORTH WHILE A little boy whom his mother had rebuked for not turning a deaf ear to temptation protested, with tears, that he had no deaf ear. But temptation, even when heard, must somehow be resisted. Yea, especially when heard! We deserve no credit for resisting it unless it comes to our ears like the voice of the siren. It is easy enough to be pleasant, When life flows by like a song, But the man worth while is one who will smile, When everything goes dead wrong. For the test of the heart is trouble, And it always comes with the years, And the smile that is worth the praises of earth, Is the smile that shines through tears. It is easy enough to be prudent, When nothing tempts you to stray, When without or within no voice of sin Is luring your soul away; But it's only a negative virtue Until it is tried by fire, And the life that is worth the honor on earth, Is the one that resists desire. By the cynic, the sad, the fallen, Who had no strength for the strife, The world's highway is cumbered to-day, They make up the sum of life. But the virtue that conquers passion, And the sorrow that hides in a smile, It is these that are worth the homage on earth For we find them but once in a while. _Ella Wheeler Wilcox._ From "Poems of Sentiment." HOPE Gloom and despair are really ignorance in another form. They fail to reckon with the fact that what appears to be baneful often turns out to be good. Lincoln lost the senatorship to Douglas and thought he had ended his career; had he won the contest, he might have remained only a senator. Life often has surprise parties for us. Things come to us masked in gloom and black; but Time, the revealer, strips off the disguise, and lo, what we have is blessings. Never go gloomy, man with a mind, Hope is a better companion than fear; Providence, ever benignant and kind, Gives with a smile what you take with a tear; All will be right, Look to the light. Morning was ever the daughter of night; All that was black will be all that is bright, Cheerily, cheerily, then cheer up. Many a foe is a friend in disguise, Many a trouble a blessing most true, Helping the heart to be happy and wise, With love ever precious and joys ever new. Stand in the van, Strike like a man! This is the bravest and cleverest plan; Trusting in God while you do what you can. Cheerily, cheerily, then cheer up. _Anonymous._ I'M GLAD I'm glad the sky is painted blue; And the earth is painted green; And such a lot of nice fresh air All sandwiched in between. _Anonymous._ THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS The nautilus is a small mollusk that creeps upon the bottom of the sea, though it used to be supposed to swim, or even to spread a kind of sail so that the wind might drive it along the surface. What interests us in this poem is the way the nautilus _grows_. Just as a tree when sawed down has the record of its age in the number of its rings, so does the nautilus measure its age by the ever-widening compartments of its shell. These it has successively occupied. The poet, looking upon the now empty shell, thinks of human life as growing in the same way. We advance from one state of being to another, each nobler than the one which preceded it, until the spirit leaves its shell altogether and attains a glorious and perfect freedom. This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sailed the unshadowed main,-- The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; Wrecked is the ship of pearl! And every chambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed,-- Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed! Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap, forlorn! From thy dead lips a clearer note is born Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn! While on mine ear it rings, Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:-- Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! _Oliver Wendell Holmes._ PIPPA'S SONG This little song vibrates with an optimism that embraces the whole universe. A frequent error in quoting it is the substitution of the word _well_ for _right_. Browning is no such shallow optimist as to believe that all is well with the world, but he does maintain that things are right with the world, for in spite of its present evils it is slowly working its way toward perfection, and in the great scheme of things it may make these evils themselves an instrument to move it toward its ultimate goal. The year's at the spring And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in his heaven-- All's right with the world. _Robert Browning._ OWNERSHIP The true value of anything lies, not in the object itself or in its legal possession, but in our attitude to it. We may own a thing in fee simple, yet derive from it nothing but vexation. For those who have little, as indeed for those who have much, there are no surer means of happiness than enjoying that which they do not possess. Emerson shows us that two harvests may be gathered from every field--a material one by the man who raised the crop, and an esthetic or spiritual one by whosoever can see beauty or thrill with an inner satisfaction. They ride in Packards, those swell guys, While I can't half afford a Ford; Choice fillets fill a void for them, We've cheese and prunes the place I board; They've smirking servants hanging round, You'd guess by whom my shoes are shined. But all the same I'm rich as they, For ownership's a state of mind. _They_ own, you say? Pshaw, they possess! And what a fellow has, has him! The rich can't stop and just enjoy Their lawns and shrubs and house-fronts trim. They're tied indoors and foot the bills; I stroll or stray, as I'm inclined-- Possession was not meant for use, But ownership's a state of mind. The folks who have must try to keep Against the thieves who swarm and steal; They dare not stride, they mince along-- Their pavement's a banana peel. Who owns, the jeweler or I, Yon gems by window-bars confined? Possession lies in locks and keys; True ownership's a state of mind. I own my office (I've a boss, But so have all men--so has he); The business is not mine, but yet I own the whole blamed company; Stockholders are less proud than I When competition's auld lang syned. What care I that the profit's theirs? I have what counts--an owner's mind. The pretty girls I meet are mine (I do not choose to tell them so); I own the flowers, the trees, the birds; I own the sunshine and the snow; I own the block, I own the town-- The smiles, the songs of humankind. For ownership is how you feel; It's just a healthy state of mind. _St. Clair Adams._ A SMILING PARADOX Good nature or ill is like the loaves and fishes. The more we give away, the more we have. I've squandered smiles to-day, And, strange to say, Altho' my frowns with care I've stowed away, To-night I'm poorer far in frowns than at the start; While in my heart, Wherein my treasures best I store, I find my smiles increased by several score. _John Kendrick Bangs._ From "Songs of Cheer." THE NEW DUCKLING There are people who, without having anything exceptional in their natures or purposes or visions, yet try to be different for the sake of being different. They are not content to be what they are; they wish to be "utterly other." Of course they are hollow, artificial, insincere; moreover they are nuisances. Their very foundations are wrong ones. Be _yourself_ unless you're a fool; in that case, of course, try to be somebody else. "I want to be new," said the duckling. "O ho!" said the wise old owl, While the guinea-hen cluttered off chuckling To tell all the rest of the fowl. "I should like a more elegant figure," That child of a duck went on. "I should like to grow bigger and bigger, Until I could swallow a swan. "I _won't_ be the bond slave of habit, I _won't_ have these webs on my toes. I want to run round like a rabbit, A rabbit as red as a rose. "I _don't_ want to waddle like mother, Or quack like my silly old dad. I want to be utterly other, And _frightfully_ modern and mad." "Do you know," said the turkey, "you're quacking! There's a fox creeping up thro' the rye; And, if you're not utterly lacking, You'll make for that duck-pond. Good-bye!" But the duckling was perky as perky. "Take care of your stuffing!" he called. (This was horribly rude to a turkey!) "But you aren't a real turkey," he bawled. "You're an Early-Victorian Sparrow! A fox is more fun than a sheep! I shall show that _my_ mind is not narrow And give him my feathers--to keep." Now the curious end of this fable, So far as the rest ascertained, Though they searched from the barn to the stable, Was that _only his feathers remained._ So he _wasn't_ the bond slave of habit, And he _didn't_ have webs on his toes; And _perhaps_ he runs round like a rabbit, A rabbit as red as a rose. _Alfred Noyes._ From "Collected Poems." CAN YOU SING A SONG? Nothing lifts the spirit more than a song, especially the _inward_ song of a worker who can sound it alike at the beginning of his task, in the heat of midday, and in the weariness and cool of the evening. Can you sing a song to greet the sun, Can you cheerily tackle the work to be done, Can you vision it finished when only begun, Can you sing a song? Can you sing a song when the day's half through, When even the thought of the rest wearies you, With so little done and so much to do, Can you sing a song? Can you sing a song at the close of the day, When weary and tired, the work's put away, With the joy that it's done the best of the pay, Can you sing a song? _Joseph Morris._ KNOW THYSELF It seems impossible that human beings could endure so much until we realize that they _have_ endured it. The spirit of man performs miracles; it transcends the limitations of flesh and blood. It is like Uncle Remus's account of Brer Rabbit climbing a tree. "A rabbit couldn't do that," the little boy protested. "He did," Uncle Remus responded; "he was jes' 'bleeged to." Reined by an unseen tyrant's hand, Spurred by an unseen tyrant's will, Aquiver at the fierce command That goads you up the danger hill, You cry: "O Fate, O Life, be kind! Grant but an hour of respite--give One moment to my suffering mind! I can not keep the pace and live." But Fate drives on and will not heed The lips that beg, the feet that bleed. Drives, while you faint upon the road, Drives, with a menace for a goad; With fiery reins of circumstance Urging his terrible advance The while you cry in your despair, "The pain is more than I can bear!" Fear not the goad, fear not the pace, Plead not to fall from out the race-- It is your own Self driving you, Your Self that you have never known, Seeing your little self alone. Your Self, high-seated charioteer, Master of cowardice and fear, Your Self that sees the shining length Of all the fearful road ahead, Knows that the terrors that you dread Are pigmies to your splendid strength; Strength you have never even guessed, Strength that has never needed rest. Your Self that holds the mastering rein, Seeing beyond the sweat and pain And anguish of your driven soul, The patient beauty of the goal! Fighting upon the terror field Where man and Fate came breast to breast, Prest by a thousand foes to yield, Tortured and wounded without rest, You cried: "Be merciful, O Life-- The strongest spirit soon must break Before this all-unequal strife, This endless fight for failure's sake!" But Fate, unheeding, lifted high His sword, and thrust you through to die, And then there came one strong and great, Who towered high o'er Chance and Fate, Who bound your wound and eased your pain And bade you rise and fight again. And from some source you did not guess Gushed a great tide of happiness-- A courage mightier than the sun-- You rose and fought and, fighting, won! It was your own Self saving you, Your Self no man has ever known, Looking on flesh and blood alone. That Self that lives so close to God As roots that feed upon the sod. That one who stands behind the screen, Looks through the window of your eyes-- A being out of Paradise. The Self no human eye has seen, The living one who never tires, Fed by the deep eternal fires. Your flaming Self, with two-edged sword, Made in the likeness of the Lord, Angel and guardian at the gate, Master of Death and King of Fate! _Angela Morgan._ From "The Hour Has Struck." JUST WHISTLE There is a psychological benefit in the mere physical act of whistling. When the body makes music, the spirit falls into harmonies too and the discords that assail us cease to make themselves heard. When times are bad an' folks are sad An' gloomy day by day, Jest try your best at lookin' glad An' whistle 'em away. Don't mind how troubles bristle, Jest take a rose or thistle. Hold your own An' change your tone An' whistle, whistle, whistle! A song is worth a world o' sighs. When red the lightnings play, Look for the rainbow in the skies An' whistle 'em away. Don't mind how troubles bristle, The rose comes with the thistle. Hold your own An' change your tone An' whistle, whistle, whistle! Each day comes with a life that's new, A strange, continued story But still beneath a bend o' blue The world rolls on to glory. Don't mind how troubles bristle, Jest take a rose or thistle. Hold your own An' change your tone An' whistle, whistle, whistle! _Frank L. Stanton._ [Illustration: GRANTLAND RICE] "MIGHT HAVE BEEN" "Yes, it's pretty hard," the optimistic old woman admitted. "I have to get along with only two teeth, one in the upper jaw and one in the lower--but thank God, they meet." Here's to "The days that might have been"; Here's to "The life I might have led"; The fame I might have gathered in-- The glory ways I might have sped. Great "Might Have Been," I drink to you Upon a throne where thousands hail-- And then--there looms another view-- I also "might have been" in jail. O "Land of Might Have Been," we turn With aching hearts to where you wait; Where crimson fires of glory burn, And laurel crowns the guarding gate; We may not see across your fields The sightless skulls that knew their woe-- The broken spears--the shattered shields-- That "might have been" as truly so. "Of all sad words of tongue or pen"-- So wails the poet in his pain-- The saddest are, "It might have been," And world-wide runs the dull refrain. The saddest? Yes--but in the jar This thought brings to me with its curse, I sometimes think the gladdest are "It might have been a blamed sight worse." _Grantland Rice._ From "The Sportlight." THE ONE In our youth we picture ourselves as we will be in the future--not mere types of this or that kind of success, but above all and in all, Ideal Men. Then come the years and the struggles, and we are buffeted and baffled, and our very ideal is eclipsed. But others have done better than we. Weary and harassed, they yet embody our visions. And we, if we are worth our salt, do not envy them when we see them. Nor should we grow dispirited. Rather should we rejoice in their triumph, rejoice that our dreams were not impossibilities, take courage to strive afresh for that which we know is best. I knew his face the moment that he passed Triumphant in the thoughtless, cruel throng,-- Triumphant, though the quiet, tired eyes Showed that his soul had suffered overlong. And though across his brow faint lines of care Were etched, somewhat of Youth still lingered there. I gently touched his arm--he smiled at me-- He was the Man that Once I Meant to Be! Where I had failed, he'd won from life, Success; Where I had stumbled, with sure feet he stood; Alike--yet unalike--we faced the world, And through the stress he found that life was good And I? The bitter wormwood in the glass, The shadowed way along which failures pass! Yet as I saw him thus, joy came to me-- He was the Man that Once I Meant to Be! I knew him! And I knew he knew me for The man HE might have been. Then did his soul Thank silently the gods that gave him strength To win, while I so sorely missed the goal? He turned, and quickly in his own firm hand He took my own--the gulf of Failure spanned, ... And that was all--strong, self-reliant, free, He was the Man that Once I Meant to Be! We did not speak. But in his sapient eyes I saw the spirit that had urged him on, The courage that had held him through the fight Had once been mine, I thought, "Can it be gone?" He felt that unasked question--felt it so His pale lips formed the one-word answer, "No!" * * * * * Too late to win? No! Not too late for me-- He is the Man that Still I Mean to Be! _Everard Jack Appleton._ From "The Quiet Courage." THE JOY OF LIVING Men too often act as if life were nothing more than hardships to be endured and difficulties to be overcome. They look upon what is happy or inspiring with eyes that really fail to see. As Wordsworth says of Peter Bell, "A primrose by the river's brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more." But to stop now and then and realize that the world is fresh and buoyant and happy, will do much to keep the spirit young. We should be glad that we are alive, should tell ourselves often in the words of Charles Lamb: "I am in love with this green earth." The south wind is driving His splendid cloud-horses Through vast fields of blue. The bare woods are singing, The brooks in their courses Are bubbling and springing And dancing and leaping, The violets peeping. I'm glad to be living: Aren't you? _Gamaliel Bradford._ THERE WILL ALWAYS BE SOMETHING TO DO An old lady, famous for her ability to find in other people traits that she could commend, was challenged to say a good word for the devil. After a moment's hesitation she answered, "You must at least give him credit for being industrious." Perhaps it is this superactivity of Satan that causes beings less wickedly inclined to have such scope for the exercise of their qualities. Certain it is that nobody need hang back from want of something to do, to promote, to assail, to protect, to endure, or to sympathize with. There will always be something to do, my boy; There will always be wrongs to right; There will always be need for a manly breed And men unafraid to fight. There will always be honor to guard, my boy; There will always be hills to climb, And tasks to do, and battles new From now till the end of time. There will always be dangers to face, my boy; There will always be goals to take; Men shall be tried, when the roads divide, And proved by the choice they make. There will always be burdens to bear, my boy; There will always be need to pray; There will always be tears through the future years, As loved ones are borne away. There will always be God to serve, my boy, And always the Flag above; They shall call to you until life is through For courage and strength and love. So these are things that I dream, my boy, And have dreamed since your life began: That whatever befalls, when the old world calls, It shall find you a sturdy man. _Edgar A. Guest._ From "The Path to Home." GOOD INTENTIONS Thinking you would like a square meal will not in itself earn you one. Thinking you would like a strong body will not without effort on your part make you an athlete. Thinking you would like to be kind or successful will not bring you gentleness or achievement if you stop with mere thinking. The arrows of intention must have the bow of strong purpose to impel them. The road to hell, they assure me, With good intentions is paved; And I know my desires are noble, But my deeds might brand me depraved. It's the warped grain in our nature, And St. Paul has written it true: "The good that I would I do not; But the evil I would not I do." I've met few men who are monsters When I came to know them inside; Yet their bearing and dealings external Are crusted with cruelty, pride, Scorn, selfishness, envy, indifference, Greed--why the long list pursue? The good that they would they do not; But the evil they would not they do. Intentions may still leave us beast-like; With unchangeable purpose we're men. We must drive the nail home--and then clinch it Or storms shake it loose again. In things of great import, in trifles, We our recreant souls must subdue Till the evil we would not we do not And the good that we would we do. _St. Clair Adams._ PHILOSOPHY FOR CROAKERS Many people seem to get pleasure in seeing all the bad there is, and in making everything about them gloomy. They are like the old woman who on being asked how her health was, replied: "Thank the Lord, I'm poorly." Some folks git a heap o' pleasure Out o' lookin' glum; Hoard their cares like it was treasure-- Fear they won't have some. Wear black border on their spirit; Hang their hopes with crape; Future's gloomy and they fear it, Sure there's no escape. Now there ain't no use of whining Weightin' joy with lead; There is silver in the linin' Somewhere on ahead. Can't enjoy the sun to-day-- It may rain to-morrow; When a pain won't come their way, Future pains they borrow. If there's good news to be heard, Ears are stuffed with cotton; Evils dire are oft inferred; Good is all forgotten. When upon a peel I stand, Slippin' like a goner, Luck, I trust, will shake my hand Just around the corner. Keep a scarecrow in the yard, Fierce old bulldog near 'em; Chase off joy that's tryin' hard To come in an' cheer 'em. Wear their blinders big and strong, Dodge each happy sight; Like to keep their faces long; Think the day is night. Now I've had my share of trouble; Back been bent with ill; Big load makes the joy seem double When I mount the hill. Got the toothache in their soul; Corns upon their feelin's; Get their share but want the whole, Say it's crooked dealings. Natures steeped in indigo; Got their joy-wires crossed; Swear it's only weeds that grow; Flowers always lost. Now it's best to sing a song 'Stead o' sit and mourn; Rose you'll find grows right along Bigger than the thorn. Beat the frogs the way they croak; See with goggles blue-- Universe is cracked or broke, 'Bout to split in two. Think the world is full of sin, Soon go up the spout; Badness always movin' in, Goodness movin' out. But I've found folks good and kind, 'Cause I thought they would be; Most men try, at least I find, To be what they should be. _Joseph Morris._ THE FIGHTING FAILURE "I'm not a rabid, preachy, pollyanna optimist. Neither am I a gloomy grouch. I believe in a loving Divine Providence Who expects you to play the Game to the limit, Who wants you to hold tight to His hand, and Who compensates you for the material losses by giving you the ability to retain your sense of values, and keep your spiritual sand out of the bearings of your physical machine, if you'll trust and--'Keep Sweet, Keep Cheerful, or else--Keep Still'"--_Everard Jack Appleton_. He has come the way of the fighting men, and fought by the rules of the Game, And out of Life he has gathered--What? A living,--and little fame, Ever and ever the Goal looms near,--seeming each time worth while; But ever it proves a mirage fair--ever the grim gods smile. And so, with lips hard set and white, he buries the hope that is gone,-- His fight is lost--and he knows it is lost--and yet he is fighting on. Out of the smoke of the battle-line watching men win their way, And, cheering with those who cheer success, he enters again the fray, Licking the blood and the dust from his lips, wiping the sweat from his eyes, He does the work he is set to do--and "therein honor lies." Brave they were, these men he cheered,--theirs is the winners' thrill; _His_ fight is lost--and he knows it is lost--and yet he is fighting still. And those who won have rest and peace; and those who died have more; But, weary and spent, he can not stop seeking the ultimate score; Courage was theirs for a little time,--but what of the man who sees That he must lose, yet will not beg mercy upon his knees? Side by side with grim Defeat, he struggles at dusk or dawn,-- His fight is lost--and he knows it is lost--and yet he is fighting on. Praise for the warriors who succeed, and tears for the vanquished dead; The world will hold them close to her heart, wreathing each honored head, But there in the ranks, soul-sick, time-tried, he battles against the odds, _Sans_ hope, but true to his colors torn, the plaything of the gods! Uncover when he goes by, at last! Held to his task by _will_ The fight is lost--and he knows it is lost--and yet he is fighting still! _Everard Jack Appleton._ From "The Quiet Courage." DUTY In a single sentence Emerson crystallizes the faith that nothing is impossible to those whose guide is duty. His words, though spoken primarily of youth, apply to the whole of human life. So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When duty whispers low, _Thou must_, The youth replies, _I can_. _Ralph Waldo Emerson._ THE CALL OF THE UNBEATEN P.T. Barnum had shrewdness, inventiveness, hair-trigger readiness in acting or deciding, an eye for hidden possibilities, an instinct for determining beforehand what would prove popular. All these qualities helped him in his original and extraordinary career. But the quality he valued most highly was the one he called "stick-to-it-iveness." This completed the others. Without it the great showman could not have succeeded at all. Nor did he think that any man who lacks it will make much headway in life. We know how rough the road will be, How heavy here the load will be, We know about the barricades that wait along the track; But we have set our soul ahead Upon a certain goal ahead And nothing left from hell to sky shall ever turn us back. We know how brief all fame must be, We know how crude the game must be, We know how soon the cheering turns to jeering down the block; But there's a deeper feeling here That Fate can't scatter reeling here, In knowing we have battled with the final ounce in stock. We sing of no wild glory now, Emblazoning some story now Of mighty charges down the field beyond some guarded pit; But humbler tasks befalling us, Set duties that are calling us, Where nothing left from hell to sky shall ever make us quit. _Grantland Rice._ From "The Sportlight." POLONIUS'S ADVICE TO LAERTES A father's advice to his son how to conduct himself in the world: Don't tell all you think, or put into action thoughts out of harmony or proportion with the occasion. Be friendly, but not common; don't dull your palm by effusively shaking hands with every chance newcomer. Avoid quarrels if you can, but if they are forced on you, give a good account of yourself. Hear every man's censure (opinion), but express your own ideas to few. Dress well, but not ostentatiously. Neither borrow nor lend. And guarantee yourself against being false to others by setting up the high moral principle of being true to yourself. Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportion'd thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar; The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in, Bear 't that th' opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice; Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; For the apparel oft proclaims the man. * * * * * Neither a borrower, nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. _William Shakespeare._ HOW DO YOU TACKLE YOUR WORK? It would be foolish to begin digging a tunnel through a mountain with a mere pick and spade. We must assemble for the task great mechanical contrivances. And so with our energies of will; a slight tool means a slight achievement; a huge, aggressive engine, driving on at full blast, means corresponding bigness of results. How do you tackle your work each day? Are you scared of the job you find? Do you grapple the task that comes your way With a confident, easy mind? Do you stand right up to the work ahead Or fearfully pause to view it? Do you start to toil with a sense of dread Or feel that you're going to do it? You can do as much as you think you can, But you'll never accomplish more; If you're afraid of yourself, young man, There's little for you in store. For failure comes from the inside first, It's there if we only knew it, And you can win, though you face the worst, If you feel that you're going to do it. Success! It's found in the soul of you, And not in the realm of luck! The world will furnish the work to do, But you must provide the pluck. You can do whatever you think you can, It's all in the way you view it. It's all in the start you make, young man: You must feel that you're going to do it. How do you tackle your work each day? With confidence clear, or dread? What to yourself do you stop and say When a new task lies ahead? What is the thought that is in your mind? Is fear ever running through it? If so, just tackle the next you find By thinking you're going to do it. _Edgar A. Guest._ From "A Heap o' Livin'." MAN OR MANIKIN The world does not always distinguish between appearance and true merit. Pretence often gets the plaudits, but desert is above them--it has rewards of its own. No matter whence you came, from a palace or a ditch, You're a man, man, man, if you square yourself to life; And no matter what they say, hermit-poor or Midas-rich, You are nothing but a husk if you sidestep strife. For it's do, do, do, with a purpose all your own, That makes a man a man, whether born a serf or king; And it's loaf, loaf, loaf, lolling on a bench or throne That makes a being thewed to act a limp and useless thing! No matter what you do, miracles or fruitless deeds, You're a man, man, man, if you do them with a will; And no matter how you loaf, cursing wealth or mumbling creeds, You are nothing but a noise, and its weight is nil. For it's be, be, be, champion of your heart and soul, That makes a man a man, whether reared in silk or rags; And it's talk, talk, talk, from a tattered shirt or stole, That makes the image of a god a manikin that brags. _Richard Butler Glaenzer._ From "Munsey's Magazine." HAVING DONE AND DOING (ADAPTED FROM "TROILUS AND CRESSIDA") A member of Parliament, having succeeded notably in his maiden effort at speech-making, remained silent through the rest of his career lest he should not duplicate his triumph. This course was stupid; in time the address which had brought him fame became a theme for disparagement and mockery. A man cannot rest upon his laurels, else he will soon lack the laurels to rest on. If he has true ability, he must from time to time show it, instead of asking us to recall what he did in the past. There is a natural instinct which makes the whole world kin. It is distrust of a mere reputation. It is a hankering to be shown. Unless the evidence to set us right is forthcoming, we will praise dust which is gilded over rather than gold which is dusty from disuse. Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, A great-sized monster of ingratitudes: Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devoured As fast as they are made, forgot as soon As done: perseverance, dear my lord, Keeps honor bright: to have done, is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mockery. Take the instant way; For honor travels in a strait so narrow Where one but goes abreast: keep, then, the path; For emulation hath a thousand sons That one by one pursue: if you give way, Or hedge aside from the direct forthright, Like to an entered tide they all rush by And leave you hindmost; Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank, Lie there for pavement to the abject rear, O'errun and trampled on: then what they do in present, Though less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours; For time is like a fashionable host, That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, And with his arms outstretched, as he would fly, Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles, And farewell goes out sighing. O! let not virtue seek Remuneration for the thing it was; for beauty, wit, High birth, vigor of bone, desert in service, Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all To envious and calumniating time. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin, That all with one consent praise new-born gawds, Though they are made and moulded of things past, And give to dust that is a little gilt More laud than gilt o'er-dusted. The present eye praises the present object, Since things in motion sooner catch the eye Than what not stirs. _William Shakespeare._ FAITH Faith is not a passive thing--mere believing or waiting. It is an active thing--a positive striving and achievement, even if conditions be untoward. Faith is not merely praying Upon your knees at night; Faith is not merely straying Through darkness to the light. Faith is not merely waiting For glory that may be, Faith is not merely hating The sinful ecstasy. Faith is the brave endeavor The splendid enterprise, The strength to serve, whatever Conditions may arise. _S.E. Kiser._ OPPORTUNITY What is opportunity? To the brilliant mind of Senator Ingalls it is a stupendous piece of luck. It comes once and once only to every human being, wise or foolish, good or wicked. If it be not perceived on the instant, it passes by forever. No longing for it, no effort, can bring it back. Notice that this view is fatalistic; it makes opportunity an external thing--one that enriches men or leaves their lives empty without much regard to what they deserve. Master of human destinies am I! Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait. Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate Deserts and seas remote, and passing by Hovel and mart and palace--soon or late I knock, unbidden, once at every gate! If sleeping, wake--if feasting, rise before I turn away. It is the hour of fate, And they who follow me reach every state Mortals desire, and conquer every foe Save death; but those who doubt or hesitate, Condemned to failure, penury, and woe, Seek me in vain and uselessly implore. I answer not, and I return no more! _John James Ingalls._ OPPORTUNITY There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat; And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures. _William Shakespeare._ OPPORTUNITY To the thought of the preceding poem we have here a direct answer. No matter how a man may have failed in the past, the door of opportunity is always open to him. He should not give way to useless regrets; he should know that the future is within his control, that it will be what he chooses to make it. They do me wrong who say I come no more When once I knock and fail to find you in; For every day I stand outside your door, And bid you wake, and rise to fight and win. Wail not for precious chances passed away, Weep not for golden ages on the wane! Each night I burn the records of the day,-- At sunrise every soul is born again! Laugh like a boy at splendors that have sped, To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb; My judgments seal the dead past with its dead, But never bind a moment yet to come. Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep; I lend my arm to all who say "I can!" No shame-faced outcast ever sank so deep, But yet might rise and be again a man! Dost thou behold thy lost youth all aghast? Dost reel from righteous Retribution's blow? Then turn from blotted archives of the past, And find the future's pages white as snow. Art thou a mourner? Rouse thee from thy spell; Art thou a sinner? Sins may be forgiven; Each morning gives thee wings to flee from hell, Each night a star to guide thy feet to heaven. _Walter Malone._ OPPORTUNITY In this poem yet another view of opportunity is presented. The recreant or the dreamer complains that he has no real chance. He would succeed, he says, if he had but the implements of success--money, influence, social prestige, and the like. But success lies far less in implements than in the use we make of them. What one man throws away as useless, another man seizes as the best means of victory at hand. For every one of us the materials for achievement are sufficient. The spirit that prompts us is what ultimately counts. This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream:-- There spread a cloud of dust along a plain; And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince's banner Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes. A craven hung along the battle's edge, And thought, "Had I a sword of keener steel-- That blue blade that the king's son bears,--but this Blunt thing--!" he snapt and flung it from his hand, And lowering crept away and left the field. Then came the king's son, wounded, sore bestead, And weaponless, and saw the broken sword, Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand, And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shout Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down, And saved a great cause that heroic day. _Edward Rowland Sill._ From "Poems." [Illustration: JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY] MY PHILOSOPHY Though dogs persist in barking at the moon, the moon's business is not to answer the dogs or to waste strength placating them, but simply to shine. The man who strives or succeeds is sure to be criticized. Is he therefore to abstain from all effort? We are responsible for our own lives and cannot regulate them according to other people's ideas. "Whoso would be a man," says Emerson, "must be a nonconformist." I allus argy that a man Who does about the best he can Is plenty good enugh to suit This lower mundane institute-- No matter ef his daily walk Is subject fer his neghbor's talk, And critic-minds of ev'ry whim Jest all git up and go fer him! * * * * * It's natchurl enugh, I guess, When some gits more and some gits less, Fer them-uns on the slimmest side To claim it ain't a fare divide; And I've knowed some to lay and wait, And git up soon, and set up late, To ketch some feller they could hate For goin' at a faster gait. * * * * * My doctern is to lay aside Contensions, and be satisfied: Jest do your best, and praise er blame That follers that, counts jest the same. I've allus noticed grate success Is mixed with troubles, more er less, And it's the man who does the best That gits more kicks than all the rest. _James Whitcomb Riley._ From the Biographical Edition Of the Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley. ULYSSES This volume consists chiefly of contemporary or very recent verse. But it could not serve its full purpose without the presence, here and there, of older poems--of "classics." These express a truth, a mood, or a spirit that is universal, and they express it in words of noble dignity and beauty. They are not always easy to understand; they are crops we must patiently cultivate, not crops that volunteer. But they wear well; they grow upon us; we come back to them again and again, and still they are fresh, living, significant--not empty, meaningless, and weather-worn, like a last year's crow's nest. Such a poem is _Ulysses_. It is shot through and through with the spirit of strenuous and never-ceasing endeavor--a spirit manifest in a hero who has every temptation to rest and enjoy. Ulysses is old. After ten long years of warfare before Troy, after endless misfortunes on his homeward voyage, after travels and experiences that have taken him everywhere and shown him everything that men know and do, he has returned to his rude native kingdom. He is reunited with his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus. He is rich and famous. Yet he is unsatisfied. The task and routine of governing a slow, materially minded people, though suited to his son's temperament, are unsuited to his. He wants to wear out rather than to rust out. He wants to discover what the world still holds. He wants to drink life to the lees. The morning has passed, the long day has waned, twilight and the darkness are at hand. But scant as are the years left to him, he will use them in a last, incomparable quest. He rallies his old comrades--tried men who always "With a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine"-- and asks them to brave with him once more the hazards and the hardships of the life of vast; unsubdued enterprise. It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel; I will drink Life to the lees. All times I have enjoy'd Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea. I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known,--cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honor'd of them all,-- And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains; but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. This is my son, mine own Telemachus, To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,-- Well-beloved of me, discerning to fulfil This labor, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail; There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me,-- That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads,--you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honor and his toil. Death closes all; but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks; The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down; It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,-- One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. _Alfred Tennyson._ PREPAREDNESS For all your days prepare, And meet them ever alike: When you are the anvil, bear-- When you are the hammer, strike. _Edwin Markham._ From "The Gates of Paradise, and Other Poems." THE WISDOM OF FOLLY "Jog on, jog on, the footpath way, And merrily hent the stile-a: A merry heart goes all the day, Your sad tires in a mile-a." Shakespeare's lilting stanza conveys a great truth--the power of cheerfulness to give impetus and endurance. The _a_ at the end of lines is merely an addition in singing; the word _hent_ means take. The cynics say that every rose Is guarded by a thorn which grows To spoil our posies; But I no pleasure therefore lack; I keep my hands behind my back When smelling roses. Though outwardly a gloomy shroud The inner half of every cloud Is bright and shining: I therefore turn my clouds about, And always wear them inside out To show the lining. My modus operandi this-- To take no heed of what's amiss; And not a bad one; Because, as Shakespeare used to say, A merry heart goes twice the way That tires a sad one. _Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler. (The Honorable Mrs. Alfred Felkin.)_ From "Verses Wise and Otherwise." SEE IT THROUGH An American traveler in Italy stood watching a lumberman who, as the logs floated down a swift mountain stream, jabbed his hook in an occasional one and drew it carefully aside. "Why do you pick out those few?" the traveler asked. "They all look alike." "But they are not alike, seignior. The logs I let pass have grown on the side of a mountain, where they have been protected all their lives. Their grain is coarse; they are good only for lumber. But these logs, seignior, grew on the top of the mountain. From the time they were sprouts and saplings they were lashed and buffeted by the winds, and so they grew strong with fine grain. We save them for choice work; they are not 'lumber,' seignior." When you're up against a trouble, Meet it squarely, face to face; Lift your chin and set your shoulders, Plant your feet and take a brace. When it's vain to try to dodge it, Do the best that you can do; You may fail, but you may conquer, See it through! Black may be the clouds about you And your future may seem grim, But don't let your nerve desert you; Keep yourself in fighting trim. If the worse is bound to happen, Spite of all that you can do, Running from it will not save you, See it through! Even hope may seem but futile, When with troubles you're beset, But remember you are facing Just what other men have met. You may fail, but fall still fighting; Don't give up, whate'er you do; Eyes front, head high to the finish. See it through! _Edgar A. Guest._ From "Just Folks." DECEMBER 31 If January 1 is an ideal time for renewed consecration, December 31 is an ideal time for thankful reminiscence. The year has not brought us everything we might have hoped, but neither has it involved us in everything we might have feared. Many are the perils, the failures, the miseries we have escaped, and life to us is still gracious and wholesome and filled to the brim with satisfaction. Best day of all the year, since I May see thee pass and know That if thou dost not leave me high Thou hast not found me low, And since, as I behold thee die, Thou leavest me the right to say That I to-morrow still may vie With them that keep the upward way. Best day of all the year to me, Since I may stand and gaze Across the grayish past and see So many crooked ways That might have led to misery, Or might have ended at Disgrace-- Best day since thou dost leave me free To look the future in the face. Best day of all days of the year, That was so kind, so good, Since thou dost leave me still the dear Old faith in brotherhood-- Best day since I, still striving here, May view the past with small regret, And, undisturbed by doubts or fear, Seeks paths that are untrod as yet. _S.E. Kiser._ RING OUT, WILD BELLS This great New Year's piece belongs almost as well to every day in the year, since it expresses a social ideal of justice and happiness. Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light: The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true. Ring out the grief that saps the mind, For those that here we see no more; Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind. Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws. Ring out the want, the care, the sin, The faithless coldness of the times; Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, But ring the fuller minstrel in. Ring out false pride in place and blood, The civic slander and the spite; Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good. Ring out old shapes of foul disease; Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace. Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be. _Alfred Tennyson._ [Illustration: HENRY VAN DYKE] WORK The dog that dropped his bone to snap at its reflection in the water went dinnerless. So do we often lose the substance--the joy--of our work by longing for tasks we think better fitted to our capabilities. Let me but do my work from day to day, In field or forest, at the desk or loom, In roaring market-place or tranquil room; Let me but find it in my heart to say, When vagrant wishes beckon me astray, "This is my work; my blessing, not my doom; Of all who live, I am the one by whom This work can best be done in the right way." Then shall I see it not too great, nor small To suit my spirit and to prove my powers; Then shall I cheerful greet the laboring hours, And cheerful turn, when the long shadows fall At eventide, to play and love and rest, Because I know for me my work is best. _Henry Van Dyke._ From "Collected Poems." START WHERE YOU STAND When a man who had been in the penitentiary applied to Henry Ford for employment, he started to tell Mr. Ford his story. "Never mind," said Mr. Ford, "I don't care about the past. Start where you stand!"--Author's note. Start where you stand and never mind the past, The past won't help you in beginning new, If you have left it all behind at last Why, that's enough, you're done with it, you're through; This is another chapter in the book, This is another race that you have planned, Don't give the vanished days a backward look, Start where you stand. The world won't care about your old defeats If you can start anew and win success, The future is your time, and time is fleet And there is much of work and strain and stress; Forget the buried woes and dead despairs, Here is a brand new trial right at hand, The future is for him who does and dares, Start where you stand. Old failures will not halt, old triumphs aid, To-day's the thing, to-morrow soon will be; Get in the fight and face it unafraid, And leave the past to ancient history; What has been, has been; yesterday is dead And by it you are neither blessed nor banned, Take courage, man, be brave and drive ahead, Start where you stand. _Berton Braley._ From "A Banjo at Armageddon." A HOPEFUL BROTHER A Cripple Creek miner remarked that he had hunted for gold for twenty-five years. He was asked how much he had found. "None," he replied, "but the prospects are good." Ef you ask him, day or night, When the worl' warn't runnin' right, "Anything that's good in sight?" This is allus what he'd say, In his uncomplainin' way-- "Well, I'm hopin'." When the winter days waz nigh, An' the clouds froze in the sky, Never sot him down to sigh, But, still singin' on his way, He'd stop long enough to say-- "Well, I'm hopin'." Dyin', asked of him that night (Sperrit waitin' fer its flight), "Brother, air yer prospec's bright?" An'--last words they heard him say, In the ol', sweet, cheerful way-- "Well, I'm hopin'." _Frank L. Stanton._ "The Atlanta Constitution." A SONG OF THANKSGIVING We should have grateful spirits, not merely for personal benefits, but also for the right to sympathize, to understand, to help, to trust, to struggle, to aspire. Thank God I can rejoice In human things--the multitude's glad voice, The street's warm surge beneath the city light, The rush of hurrying faces on my sight, The million-celled emotion in the press That would their human fellowship confess. Thank Thee because I may my brother feed, That Thou hast opened me unto his need, Kept me from being callous, cold and blind, Taught me the melody of being kind. Thus, for my own and for my brother's sake-- Thank Thee I am awake! Thank Thee that I can trust! That though a thousand times I feel the thrust Of faith betrayed, I still have faith in man, Believe him pure and good since time began-- Thy child forever, though he may forget The perfect mould in which his soul was set. Thank Thee that when love dies, fresh love springs up. New wonders pour from Heaven's cup. Young to my soul the ancient need returns, Immortal in my heart the ardor burns; My altar fires replenished from above-- Thank Thee that I can love! Thank Thee that I can hear, Finely and keenly with the inner ear, Below the rush and clamor of a throng The mighty music of the under-song. And when the day has journeyed to its rest, Lo, as I listen, from the amber west, Where the great organ lifts its glowing spires, There sounds the chanting of the unseen choirs. Thank Thee for sight that shows the hidden flame Beneath all breathing, throbbing things the same, Thy Pulse the pattern of the thing to be.... Thank Thee that I can see! Thank Thee that I can feel! That though life's blade be terrible as steel, My soul is stript and naked to the fang, I crave the stab of beauty and the pang. _To be alive, To think, to yearn, to strive,_ To suffer torture when the goal is wrong, To be sent back and fashioned strong Rejoicing in the lesson that was taught By all the good the grim experience wrought; At last, exulting, to _arrive_.... Thank God I am alive! _Angela Morgan._ From "The Hour Has Struck." LOSE THE DAY LOITERING Anything is hard to begin, whether it be taking a cold bath, writing a letter, clearing up a misunderstanding, or falling to on the day's work. Yet "a thing begun is half done." No matter how unpleasant a thing is to do, begin it and immediately it becomes less unpleasant. Form the excellent habit of making a start. Lose the day loitering, 'twill be the same story To-morrow, and the next more dilatory, For indecision brings its own delays, And days are lost lamenting o'er lost days. Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute! What you can do, or think you can, begin it! Only engage, and then the mind grows heated; Begin it, and the work will be completed. _Johann Wolfgang von Goethe._ PLAYING THE GAME We don't like the man who whines that the cards were stacked against him or that the umpire cheated. We admire the chap who, when he must take his medicine, takes it cheerfully, bravely. To play the game steadily is a merit, whether the game be a straight one or crooked. A thoroughbred, even though bad, has more of our respect than the craven who cleaves to the proprieties solely from fear to violate them. It has well been said: "The mistakes which make us men are better than the accuracies that keep us children." Yes, he went an' stole our steers, So, of course, he had to die; I ain't sheddin' any tears, But, when I cash in--say, I Want to take it like that guy-- Laughin', jokin', with the rest, Not a whimper, not a cry, Standin' up to meet the test Till we swung him clear an' high, With his face turned toward the west! Here's the way it looks to me; Cattle thief's no thing to be, But if you take up that trade, Be the best one ever made; If you've got a thing to do Do it strong an' SEE IT THROUGH! That was him! He played the game, Took his chances, bet his hand, When at last the showdown came An' he lost, he kept his sand; Didn't weep an' didn't pray, Didn't waver er repent, Simply tossed his cards away, Knowin' well just what it meant. Never claimed the deck was stacked, Never called the game a snide, Acted like a man should act, Took his medicine--an' died! So I say it here again, What I think is true of men; They should try to do what's right, Fair an' square an' clean an' white, But, whatever is their line, Bad er good er foul er fine, Let 'em go the Limit, play Like a plunger, that's the way! _Berton Braley._ From "Songs of the Workaday World." [Illustration: CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN] RESOLVE There are some things we should all resolve to do. What are they? Any one may make a list for himself. It would be interesting to compare it with the one here given by the poet. To keep my health! To do my work! To live! To see to it I grow and gain and give! Never to look behind me for an hour! To wait in weakness, and to walk in power; But always fronting onward to the light, Always and always facing towards the right. Robbed, starved, defeated, fallen, wide astray-- On, with what strength I have! Back to the way! _Charlotte Perkins Gilman._ From "In This Our World." WHEN NATURE WANTS A MAN Only melting and hammering can shape and temper steel for fine use. Only struggle and suffering can give a man the qualities that enable him to render large service to humanity. Lincoln was born in a log cabin. He split rails, and conned a few books by the firelight in the evening. He became a backwoods lawyer with apparently no advantages or encouraging prospects. But all the while he had his visions, which ever became nobler; and the adversities he knew but gave him the deeper sympathy for others and the wider and steadier outlook on human problems. Thus when the supreme need arose, Lincoln was ready--harsh-visaged nature had done its work of moulding and preparing a man. When Nature wants to drill a man And thrill a man, And skill a man, When Nature wants to mould a man To play the noblest part; When she yearns with all her heart To create so great and bold a man That all the world shall praise-- Watch her method, watch her ways! How she ruthlessly perfects Whom she royally elects; How she hammers him and hurts him And with mighty blows converts him Into trial shapes of clay which only Nature understands-- While his tortured heart is crying and he lifts beseeching hands!-- How she bends, but never breaks, When his good she undertakes.... How she uses whom she chooses And with every purpose fuses him, By every art induces him To try his splendor out-- Nature knows what she's about. When Nature wants to take a man And shake a man And wake a man; When Nature wants to make a man To do the Future's will; When she tries with all her skill And she yearns with all her soul To create him large and whole.... With what cunning she prepares him! How she goads and never spares him, How she whets him and she frets him And in poverty begets him.... How she often disappoints Whom she sacredly anoints, With what wisdom she will hide him, Never minding what betide him Though his genius sob with slighting and his pride may not forget! Bids him struggle harder yet. Makes him lonely So that only God's high messages shall reach him So that she may surely teach him What the Hierarchy planned. Though he may not understand Gives him passions to command-- How remorselessly she spurs him, With terrific ardor stirs him When she poignantly prefers him! When Nature wants to name a man And fame a man And tame a man; When Nature wants to shame a man To do his heavenly best.... When she tries the highest test That her reckoning may bring-- When she wants a god or king!-- How she reins him and restrains him So his body scarce contains him While she fires him And inspires him! Keeps him yearning, ever burning for a tantalising goal-- Lures and lacerates his soul. Sets a challenge for his spirit, Draws it higher when he's near it-- Makes a jungle, that he clear it; Makes a desert, that he fear it And subdue it if he can-- So doth Nature make a man. Then, to test his spirit's wrath Hurls a mountain in his path-- Puts a bitter choice before him And relentless stands o'er him. "Climb, or perish!" so she says.... Watch her purpose, watch her ways! Nature's plan is wondrous kind Could we understand her mind ... Fools are they who call her blind. When his feet are torn and bleeding Yet his spirit mounts unheeding, All his higher powers speeding Blazing newer paths and fine; When the force that is divine Leaps to challenge every failure and his ardor still is sweet And love and hope are burning in the presence of defeat.... Lo, the crisis! Lo, the shout That must call the leader out. When the people need salvation Doth he come to lead the nation.... Then doth Nature show her plan When the world has found--a man! _Angela Morgan._ From "Forward, March!" ORDER AND THE BEES (FROM "HENRY V.") We often wish that we might do some other man's work, occupy his social or political station. But such an interchange is not easy. The world is complex, and its adjustments have come from long years of experience. Each man does well to perform the tasks for which nature and training have fitted him. And instead of feeling envy toward other people, we should rejoice that all labor, however diverse, is to one great end--it makes life richer and fuller. Therefore doth heaven divide The state of man in divers functions, Setting endeavor in continual motion; To which is fixéd, as an aim or butt, Obedience: for so work the honey-bees, Creatures that by a rule in nature teach The act of order to a peopled kingdom. They have a king and officers of sorts; Where some, like magistrates, correct at home, Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad, Others, like soldiers, arméd in their stings, Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds; Which pillage they with merry march bring home To the tent-royal of their emperor: Who, busied in his majesty, surveys The singing masons building roofs of gold, The civil citizens kneading up the honey, The poor mechanic porters crowding in Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate, The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum, Delivering o'er to executors pale The lazy yawning drone. I this infer, That many things, having full reference To one consent, may work contrariously. _William Shakespeare._ SELF-DEPENDENCE One star does not ask another to adore it or amuse it; Mt. Shasta, though it towers for thousands of feet above its neighbors, does not repine that it is alone or that the adjacent peaks see much that it misses under the clouds. Nature does not trouble itself about what the rest of nature is doing. But man constantly worries about other men--what they think of him, do to him, fail to emulate in him, have or secure in comparison with him. He lacks nature's inward quietude. Calmness and peace come by being self-contained. Weary of myself, and sick of asking What I am, and what I ought to be, At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea. And a look of passionate desire O'er the sea and to the stars I send: "Ye who from my childhood up have calmed me, Calm me, ah, compose me to the end! "Ah, once more," I cried, "ye stars, ye waters, On my heart your mighty charm renew; Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you, Feel my soul becoming vast like you!" From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven, Over the lit sea's unquiet way, In the rustling night-air came the answer: "Wouldst thou BE as these are? LIVE as they. "Unaffrighted by the silence round them, Undistracted by the sights they see, These demand not that the things without them Yield them love, amusement, sympathy. "And with joy the stars perform their shining, And the sea its long, moon-silver'd roll; For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting All the fever of some differing soul. "Bounded by themselves, and unregardful In what state God's other works may be, In their own tasks all their powers pouring, These attain the mighty life you see." O air-born voice! long since, severely clear, A cry like thine in mine own heart I hear: "Resolve to be thyself; and know that he Who finds himself, loses his misery!" _Matthew Arnold._ A LITTLE PRAYER We should strive to bring what happiness we can to others. More still, we should strive to bring them no unhappiness. When we come to die, it is, as George Eliot once said, not our kindness or our patience or our generosity that we shall regret, but our intolerance and our harshness. That I may not in blindness grope, But that I may with vision clear Know when to speak a word of hope Or add a little wholesome cheer. That tempered winds may softly blow Where little children, thinly clad, Sit dreaming, when the flame is low, Of comforts they have never had. That through the year which lies ahead No heart shall ache, no cheek be wet, For any word that I have said Or profit I have tried to get. _S.E. Kiser._ A MAN'S A MAN FOR A' THAT It is said that once at a laird's house Burns was placed at a second table, and that this rankled in his breast and caused him to write his poem on equality. He insists that rank, wealth, and external distinctions are merely the stamp on the guinea; the man is the gold itself. Snobbishness he abhors; poverty he confesses to without hanging his head in the least; the pith of sense and the pride of worth he declares superior to any dignity thrust upon a person from the outside. In a final, prophetic mood he looks forward to the time when a democracy of square dealing shall prevail, praise shall be reserved for merit, and men the world over shall be to each other as brothers. In line 8 gowd=gold; 9, hamely=homely, commonplace; 11, gie=give; 15, sae=so; 17, birkie=fellow; 20, cuif=simpleton; 25, mak=make; 27, aboon=above; 28, mauna=must not; fa'=acclaim; 36, gree=prize. Is there, for honest poverty, That hangs his head, and a' that? The coward-slave, we pass him by, We dare be poor for a' that! For a' that, and a' that, Our toils obscure, and a' that; The rank is but the guinea stamp; The man's the gowd for a' that. What tho' on hamely fare we dine, Wear hodden-gray, and a' that; Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine, A man's a man for a' that. For a' that, and a' that, Their tinsel show, and a' that; The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor, Is King o' men for a' that. Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord, Wha struts, and stares, and a' that; Tho' hundreds worship at his word, He's but a cuif for a' that: For a' that, and a' that. His riband, star, and a' that, The man of independent mind, He looks and laughs at a' that. A prince can mak a belted knight, A marquis, duke, and a' that; But an honest man's aboon his might, Guid faith he mauna fa' that! For a' that, and a' that, Their dignities, and a' that, The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth, Are higher rank than a' that. Then let us pray that come it may, As come it will for a' that; That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth, May bear the gree, and a' that. For a' that and a' that, It's coming yet, for a' that, That man to man the warld o'er Shall brothers be for a' that. _Robert Burns._ LIFE AND DEATH Life! I know not what thou art, But know that thou and I must part; And when, or how, or where we met I own to me a secret yet. Life! We've been long together, Through pleasant and through cloudy weather; 'Tis hard to part when friends are dear; Perhaps will cost a sigh, a tear; Then steal away, give little warning, Choose thine own time; Say not "Good Night"--but in some brighter clime, Bid me "Good Morning!" _Anna Barbauld._ LIFE AND DEATH Many a man would die for wife and children, for faith, for country. But would he live for them? That, often, is the more heroic course--and the more sensible. A rich man was hiring a driver for his carriage. He asked each applicant how close he could drive to a precipice without toppling over. "One foot," "Six inches," "Three inches," ran the replies. But an Irishman declared, "Faith, and I'd keep as far away from the place as I could." "Consider yourself employed," was the rich man's comment. So he died for his faith. That is fine-- More than most of us do. But stay, can you add to that line That he lived for it, too? In death he bore witness at last As a martyr to truth. Did his life do the same in the past From the days of his youth? It is easy to die. Men have died For a wish or a whim-- From bravado or passion or pride. Was it harder for him? But to live: every day to live out All the truth that he dreamt, While his friends met his conduct with doubt, And the world with contempt-- Was it thus that he plodded ahead, Never turning aside? Then we'll talk of the life that he led-- Never mind how he died. _Ernest H. Crosby_ From "Swords and Ploughshares." ON BEING READY At nightfall after bloody Antietam Lee's army, outnumbered and exhausted, lay with the Potomac at its back. So serious was the situation that all the subordinate officers advised retreat. But Lee, though too maimed to attack, would not leave the field save of his own volition. "If McClellan wants a battle," he declared, "he can have it." McClellan hesitated, and through the whole of the next day kept his great army idle. The effect upon the morale of the two forces, and the two governments, can be imagined. The man who is there with the wallop and punch The one who is trained to the minute, May well be around when the trouble begins, But you seldom will find he is in it; For they let him alone when they know he is there For any set part in the ramble, To pick out the one who is shrinking and soft And not quite attuned to the scramble. The one who is fixed for whatever they start Is rarely expected to prove it; They pass him along for the next shot in sight Where they take a full wind-up and groove it; For who wants to pick on a bulldog or such Where a quivering poodle is handy, When he knows he can win with a kick or a brick With no further trouble to bandy? _Grantland Rice._ From "The Sportlight." TWO AT A FIRESIDE I built a chimney for a comrade old, I did the service not for hope or hire-- And then I traveled on in winter's cold, Yet all the day I glowed before the fire. _Edwin Markham._ From "The Man with the Hoe, and Other Poems." TO-DAY We often lose the happiness of to-day by brooding over the sorrows of yesterday or fearing the troubles of to-morrow. This is exceedingly foolish. There is always _some_ pleasure at hand; seize it, and at no time will you be without pleasure. You cannot change the past, but your spirit at this moment will in some measure shape your future. Live life, therefore, in the present tense; do not miss the joys of to-day. Sure, this world is full of trouble-- I ain't said it ain't. Lord! I've had enough, an' double, Reason for complaint. Rain an' storm have come to fret me, Skies were often gray; Thorns an' brambles have beset me On the road--but, say, Ain't it fine to-day? What's the use of always weepin', Makin' trouble last? What's the use of always keepin' Thinkin' of the past? Each must have his tribulation, Water with his wine. Life it ain't no celebration. Trouble? I've had mine-- But to-day is fine. It's to-day that I am livin', Not a month ago, Havin', losin', takin', givin', As time wills it so. Yesterday a cloud of sorrow Fell across the way; It may rain again to-morrow, It may rain--but, say, Ain't it fine to-day! _Douglas Malloch._ THE ARROW AND THE SONG We can calculate with fair accuracy the number of miles an automobile will go in an hour. We can gauge pretty closely the amount of merchandise a given sum of money will buy. But a good deed or a kind impulse is not measurable. Their influence works in devious ways and lives on when perhaps we can see them no more. I shout an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For, so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight. I breathed a song into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For who has sight so keen and strong, That it can follow the flight of song? Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroke; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend. _Henry Wadsworth Longfellow._ THE INNER LIGHT "Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just, And he but naked, though locked up in steel, Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted," says Shakespeare. But not only does a clear conscience give power; it also gives light. With it we could sit at the center of the earth and yet enjoy the sunshine. Without it we live in a rayless prison. He that has light within his own clear breast May sit i' the center, and enjoy bright day: But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts Benighted walks under the midday sun; Himself is his own dungeon. _John Milton._ THE THINGS THAT HAVEN'T BEEN DONE BEFORE It is said that if you hold a stick in front of the foremost sheep in a flock that files down a trail in the mountains, he will jump it--and that every sheep thereafter will jump when he reaches the spot, even if the stick be removed. So are many people mere unthinking imitators, blind to facts and opportunities about them. Kentucky could not be lived in by the white race till Daniel Boone built his cabin there. The air was not part of the domain of humanity till the Wright brothers made themselves birdmen. The things that haven't been done before, Those are the things to try; Columbus dreamed of an unknown shore At the rim of the far-flung sky, And his heart was bold and his faith was strong As he ventured in dangers new, And he paid no heed to the jeering throng Or the fears of the doubting crew. The many will follow the beaten track With guideposts on the way, They live and have lived for ages back With a chart for every day. Someone has told them it's safe to go On the road he has traveled o'er, And all that they ever strive to know Are the things that were known before. A few strike out, without map or chart, Where never a man has been, From the beaten paths they draw apart To see what no man has seen. There are deeds they hunger alone to do; Though battered and bruised and sore, They blaze the path for the many, who Do nothing not done before. The things that haven't been done before Are the tasks worth while to-day; Are you one of the flock that follows, or Are you one that shall lead the way? Are you one of the timid souls that quail At the jeers of a doubting crew, Or dare you, whether you win or fail, Strike out for a goal that's new? _Edgar A. Guest._ From "A Heap o' Livin'." THE HAS-BEENS I read the papers every day, and oft encounter tales which show there's hope for every jay who in life's battle fails. I've just been reading of a gent who joined the has-been ranks, at fifty years without a cent, or credit at the banks. But undismayed he buckled down, refusing to be beat, and captured fortune and renown; he's now on Easy Street. Men say that fellows down and out ne'er leave the rocky track, but facts will show, beyond a doubt, that has-beens do come back. I know, for I who write this rhyme, when forty-odd years old, was down and out, without a dime, my whiskers full of mold. By black disaster I was trounced until it jarred my spine; I was a failure so pronounced I didn't need a sign. And after I had soaked my coat, I said (at forty-three), "I'll see if I can catch the goat that has escaped from me." I labored hard; I strained my dome, to do my daily grind, until in triumph I came home, my billy-goat behind. And any man who still has health may with the winners stack, and have a chance at fame and wealth--for has-beens do come back. _Walt Mason._ From "Walt Mason, His Book." WISHING Horace Greeley said that no one need fear the editor who indulged in diatribes against the prevalence of polygamy in Utah, but that malefactors had better look out when an editor took up his pen against abuses in his own city. We all tend to begin our reforms too far away from home. The man who wishes improvement strongly enough to set to work on himself is the man who will obtain results. Do you wish the world were better? Let me tell you what to do. Set a watch upon your actions, Keep them always straight and true. Rid your mind of selfish motives, Let your thoughts be clean and high. You can make a little Eden Of the sphere you occupy. Do you wish the world were wiser? Well, suppose you make a start, By accumulating wisdom In the scrapbook of your heart; Do not waste one page on folly; Live to learn, and learn to live. If you want to give men knowledge You must get it, ere you give. Do you wish the world were happy? Then remember day by day Just to scatter seeds of kindness As you pass along the way, For the pleasures of the many May be ofttimes traced to one. As the hand that plants an acorn Shelters armies from the sun. _Ella Wheeler Wilcox._ From "Poems of Power." AWARENESS A man must keep a keen sense of the drift and significance of what he is engaged in if he is to make much headway. Yet many human beings are so sunk in the routine of their work that they fail to realize what it is all for. A man who was tapping with a hammer the wheels of a railroad train remarked that he had been at the job for twenty-seven years. "What do you do when a wheel doesn't sound right?" a passenger inquired. The man was taken aback. "I never found one that sounded that way," said he. God--let me be aware. Let me not stumble blindly down the ways, Just getting somehow safely through the days, Not even groping for another hand, Not even wondering why it all was planned, Eyes to the ground unseeking for the light, Soul never aching for a wild-winged flight, Please, keep me eager just to do my share. God--let me be aware. God--let me be aware. Stab my soul fiercely with others' pain, Let me walk seeing horror and stain. Let my hands, groping, find other hands. Give me the heart that divines, understands. Give me the courage, wounded, to fight. Flood me with knowledge, drench me in light. Please--keep me eager just to do my share. God--let me be aware. _Miriam Teichner._ ONE OF THESE DAYS The worst fault in a hound is to run counter--to follow the trail backward, not forward. Is the fault less when men are guilty of it? Behind us is much that we have found to be faithless, cruel, or unpleasant. Why go back to that? Why not go forward to the things we really desire? Say! Let's forget it! Let's put it aside! Life is so large and the world is so wide. Days are so short and there's so much to do, What if it was false--there's plenty that's true. Say! Let's forget it! Let's brush it away Now and forever, so what do you say? All of the bitter words said may be praise One of these days. Say! Let's forget it! Let's wipe off the slate, Find something better to cherish than hate. There's so much good in the world that we've had, Let's strike a balance and cross off the bad. Say! Let's forgive it, whatever it be, Let's not be slaves when we ought to be free. We shall be walking in sunshiny ways One of these days. Say! Let's not mind it! Let's smile it away, Bring not a withered rose from yesterday; Flowers are so fresh from the wayside and wood, Sorrows are blessings but half understood. Say! Let's not mind it, however it seems, Hope is so sweet and holds so many dreams; All of the sere fields with blossoms shall blaze One of these days. Say! Let's not take it so sorely to heart! Hates may be friendships just drifted apart, Failure be genius not quite understood, Say! Let's get closer to somebody's side, See what his dreams are and learn how he tried, See if our scoldings won't give way to praise One of these days. Say! Let's not wither! Let's branch out and rise Out of the byways and nearer the skies. Let's spread some shade that's refreshing and deep Where some tired traveler may lie down and sleep. Say! Let's not tarry! Let's do it right now; So much to do if we just find out how! We may not be here to help folks or praise One of these days. _James W. Foley._ From "The Voices of Song." [Illustration: JAMES WILLIAM FOLEY] GOD We often think people shallow, think them incapable of anything serious or profound, because their work is humdrum and their speech trivial. Such a judgment is unfair, since that part of our own life which shows itself to others is superficial likewise, though we are conscious that within us is much that it does not reveal. I think about God. Yet I talk of small matters. Now isn't it odd How my idle tongue chatters! Of quarrelsome neighbors, Fine weather and rain, Indifferent labors, Indifferent pain, Some trivial style Fashion shifts with a nod. And yet all the while I am thinking of God. _Gamaliel Bradford._ From "Shadow Verses." MY TRIUMPH The poet, looking back upon the hopes he has cherished, perceives that he has fallen far short of achieving them. The songs he has sung are less sweet than those he has dreamed of singing; the wishes he has wrought into facts are less noble than those that are yet unfulfilled. But he looks forward to the time when all that he desires for humankind shall yet come to pass. The praise will not be his; it will belong to others. Still, he does not envy those who are destined to succeed where he failed. Rather does he rejoice that through them his hopes for the race will be realized. And he is happy that by longing for just such a triumph he shares in it--he makes it _his_ triumph. Let the thick curtain fall; I better know than all How little I have gained, How vast the unattained. Not by the page word-painted Let life be banned or sainted: Deeper than written scroll The colors of the soul. Sweeter than any sung My songs that found no tongue Nobler than any fact My wish that failed to act. Others shall sing the song, Others shall right the wrong,-- Finish what I begin, And all I fail of win. What matter, I or they? Mine or another's day, So the right word be said And life the sweeter made? Hail to the coming singers! Hail to the brave light-bringers! Forward I reach and share All that they sing and dare. The airs of heaven blow o'er me; A glory shines before me Of what mankind shall be,-- Pure, generous, brave, and free. A dream of man and woman Diviner but still human, Solving the riddle old, Shaping the Age of Gold! The love of God and neighbor; An equal-handed labor; The richer life, where beauty Walks hand in hand with duty. Ring, bells in unreared steeples, The joy of unborn peoples! Sound, trumpets far off blown, Your triumph is my own. Parcel and part of all, I keep the festival, Fore-reach the good to be, And share the victory. I feel the earth move sunward, I join the great march onward, And take, by faith, while living, My freehold of thanksgiving. _John Green leaf Whittier._ TO ALTHEA FROM PRISON In the great Civil War in England between the Puritans and Charles the First the author of this poem sacrificed everything in the royal cause. That cause was defeated and Lovelace was imprisoned. In these stanzas he makes the most of his gloomy situation and sings the joys of various kinds of freedom. First is the freedom brought by love, when his sweetheart speaks to him through the grate of the dungeon. Second is the freedom brought by the recollection of good fellowship, when tried and true comrades took their wine straight--"with no allaying Thames." Third is the freedom brought by remembrance of the king for whom he was suffering. Finally comes the passionate and heroic assertion that though the body of a man may be confined, nevertheless his spirit can remain free and chainless. When Love with unconfinéd wings Hovers within my gates, And my divine Althea brings To whisper at the grates; When I lie tangled in her hair And fetter'd to her eye, The Gods that wanton in the air Know no such liberty. When flowing cups run swiftly round With no allaying Thames, Our careless heads with roses bound, Our hearts with loyal flames; When thirsty grief in wine we steep, When healths and draughts go free-- Fishes that tipple in the deep Know no such liberty. When (like committed linnets) I With shriller throat shall sing The sweetness, mercy, majesty And glories of my King; When I shall voice aloud how good He is, how great should be, Enlarged winds, that curl the flood, Know no such liberty. Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage; If I have freedom in my love And in my soul am free, Angels alone, that soar above, Enjoy such liberty. _Richard Lovelace._ GRIEF Shakespeare says: "I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching." This is especially true regarding grief or affliction. "Man was born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward," but we bid other people bear their sorrows manfully; we should therefore bear ours with equal courage. Upon this trouble shall I whet my life As 'twere a dulling knife; Bade I my friend be brave? I shall still braver be. No man shall say of me, "Others he saved, himself he cannot save." But swift and fair As the Primeval word that smote the night-- "Let there be light!" Courage shall leap from me, a gallant sword To rout the enemy and all his horde, Cleaving a kingly pathway through despair. _Angela Morgan._ From "Forward, March!" THE RECTIFYING YEARS Time brings the deeper understanding that clears up our misconceptions; it shows us the error of our hates; it dispels our worries and our fears; it allays the grief that seemed too poignant to be borne. Yes, things are more or less amiss; To-day it's that, to-morrow this; Yet with so much that's out of whack, Life does not wholly jump the track Because, since matters move along, No _one_ thing's always _staying_ wrong. So heed not failures, losses, fears, But trust the rectifying years. What we shall have's not what we've got; Our pains don't linger in one spot-- They skip about; the seesaw's end That's up will mighty soon descend; You've looked at bacon? Life's like that-- A streak of lean, a streak of fat. Change, like a sky that clouds, that clears, Hangs o'er the rectifying years. Uneven things not leveled down Are somehow simply got aroun'; The sting is taken from offence; The evil has its recompense; The broken heart is knit again; The baffled longing knows not pain; Wrong fades and trouble disappears Before the rectifying years. Then envy, hate towards man or class Should from your sinful nature pass. Though others hold a higher place Or have more power or wealth or grace, The best of them, be sure, cannot Escape the common human lot; So many smiles, so many tears Come with the rectifying years. _St. Clair Adams._ TO THOSE WHO FAIL We too often praise the man who wins just because he wins; the plaudits and laurels of victory are the unthinking crowd's means of estimating success. But the vanquished may have fought more nobly than the victor; he may have done his best against hopeless odds. As Addison makes Cato say, "'Tis not in mortals to command success, But we'll do more, Sempronius,--we'll deserve it." "All honor to him who shall win the prize," The world has cried for a thousand years; But to him who tries, and who fails and dies, I give great honor and glory and tears; Give glory and honor and pitiful tears To all who fail in their deeds sublime; Their ghosts are many in the van of years, They were born with Time, in advance of Time. Oh, great is the hero who wins a name, But greater many and many a time Some pale-faced fellow who dies in shame, And lets God finish the thoughts sublime. And great is the man with a sword undrawn, And good is the man who refrains from wine; But the man who fails and yet still fights on, Lo, he is the twin-born brother of mine. _Joaquin Miller._ From "Joaquin Miller's Complete Poems." HELPING' OUT "I always look out for Number One," was the favorite remark of a man who thought he had found the great rule to success, but he had only stated his own doctrine of selfishness, and his life was never very successful. A man must be big to succeed, and selfishness is always cramping and narrow. Da's a lot of folks what preach all day An' always pointing' out de way, Dey say dat prayin' all de time An' keepin' yo' heart all full of rhyme Will lead yo' soul to heights above Whah angels coo like a turtledove. But I's des lookin' round, dat's me-- I's trustin' lots in what I see; It 'pears to me da's lots to do Befo' we pass dat heavenly blue. I believes in prayin', preachin' about, But believe a lot mo' in helpin' out. I believes in 'ligin, it's mighty sweet, But de kind dat gits in yo' hands and feet An' makes you work when dey ain't no praise, Nuthin' but a heart dat's all a-blaze. If it rains or shines, dey's des de same-- Say, bless you, honey, Sunshine's dey name; Dey don't fuss round 'bout how much pay But climbs up de trail, helpin' all de way. De load is often twice der size, And smilin' is der biggest prize. Dey never gits dis awful gout 'Cause dey's busy all de time in helpin' out. We had an old mule on Massa's place, As fo' looks he'd certainly lose de race; But der wa'n't a horse fo' miles around Could pull mo' load or plow mo' ground. An' when dat donkey brayed his best, He seemed to know he'd licked de rest. Dat bray of his was strong as wool-- It always come at de hardest pull. We need mo' mules with brains on guard Dat knos de game of pullin' hard, An' a heart dat's tender, true and stout, Dat believes all day in helpin' out. We's all des human, des common clay, Des needs a little help to make work play. I'se read a lot of philosophy day an' night, An' worked around a heap wid de law of right. I'se seen de high an' mighty come an' go, I'se seen de simple spirit come from below; An' I'se seen a lot of principle most folks miss-- I'se not a-stretchin' truth when I say dis: "Keep a-smilin' an' a-lovin' an a-doin' all yo' can, Fo' yo' loses all yo' trouble when yo' help yo' fellow man; An' you gits on best yo'self, an' of this dey ain't no doubt, When yo' practise de art of always helpin' out." _William Judson Kibby._ OPENING PARADISE We appreciate even the common things of life if we are denied them. See the wretch, that long has tost On the thorny bed of Pain, At length repair his vigor lost, And breathe and walk again: The meanest flow'r'et of the vale, The simplest note that swells the gale, The common Sun, the air, and skies, To him are opening Paradise. _Thomas Gray._ TO THE MEN WHO LOSE When Captain Scott's ill-fated band, after reaching the South Pole, was struggling through the cold and storms back towards safety, the strength of Evans, one of the men, became exhausted. He had done his best--vainly. Now he did not wish to imperil his companions, already sorely tried. At a halting-place, therefore, he left them and, staggering out into a blizzard, perished alone. It was a failure, yes; but was it not also magnificent success? Here's to the men who lose! What though their work be e'er so nobly planned, And watched with zealous care, No glorious halo crowns their efforts grand, Contempt is failure's share. Here's to the men who lose! If triumph's easy smile our struggles greet, Courage is easy then; The king is he who, after fierce defeat, Can up and fight again. Here's to the men who lose! The ready plaudits of a fawning world Ring sweet in victor's ears; The vanquished's banners never are unfurled-- For them there sound no cheers. Here's to the men who lose! The touchstone of true worth is not success; There is a higher test-- Though fate may darkly frown, onward to press, And bravely do one's best. Here's to the men who lose! It is the vanquished's praises that I sing, And this is the toast I choose: "A hard-fought failure is a noble thing; Here's to the men who lose!" _Anonymous._ IT MAY BE Many, many are the human struggles in which we can lend no aid. But if we cannot help, at least we need not hinder. It may be that you cannot stay To lend a friendly hand to him Who stumbles on the slippery way, Pressed by conditions hard and grim; It may be that you dare not heed His call for help, because you lack The strength to lift him, but you need Not push him back. It may be that he has not won The right to hope for your regard; He may in folly have begun The course that he has found so hard; It may be that your fingers bleed, That Fortune turns a bitter frown Upon your efforts, but you need Not kick him down. _S.E. Kiser._ LIFE In life is necessarily much monotony, sameness. But our triumph may lie in putting richness and meaning into routine that apparently lacks them. Forenoon and afternoon and night,--Forenoon, And afternoon, and night,--Forenoon, and--what! The empty song repeats itself. No more? Yea, that is Life: make this forenoon sublime, This afternoon a psalm, this night a prayer, And Time is conquered, and thy crown is won. _Edward Rowland Sill._ From "Poems." THE GRUMPY GUY When students came, full of ambition, to the great scientist Agassiz, he gave each a fish and told him to find out what he could about it. They went to work and in a day or two were ready for their report. But Agassiz didn't come round. To kill time they went to work again, observed, dissected, conjectured, and when at the end of a fortnight Agassiz finally appeared, they felt that their knowledge was really exhaustive. The master's brief comment was that they had made a fair beginning, and again he left. They then fell to in earnest and after weeks and months of investigation declared that a fish was the most fascinating of studies. If our interest in life fails, it is not from material to work on. No two leaves are alike, not two human beings are alike, and if we are discerning, the attraction of any one of them is infinite. The Grumpy Guy was feeling blue; the Grumpy Guy was glum; The Grumpy Guy with baleful eye took Misery for a chum. He hailed misfortunes as his pals, and murmured, "Let 'em come!" "Oh, what's the blooming use?" he yelped, his face an angry red, "When everything's been thought before and everything's been said? And what's a Grumpy Guy to do except to go to bed? "And where's the joy the poets sing, the merriment and fun? How can one start a thing that's new when everything's begun?-- When everything's been planned before and everything's been done?-- "When everything's been dreamed before and everything's been sought? When everything that ever ran has, so to speak, been caught?-- When every game's been played before and every battle fought?" I started him at solitaire, a fooling, piffling game. He played it ninety-seven hours and failed to find it tame. In all the times he dealt the cards no two games were the same. He never tumbled to its tricks nor mastered all its curves. He grunted, "Well, this takes the cake, the pickles and preserves! Its infinite variety is getting on my nerves." "Its infinite variety!" I scoffed. "Just fifty-two Poor trifling bits of pasteboard!--their combinations few Compared to what there is in man!--the poorest!--even you! "Variety! You'll never find in forty-seven decks One tenth of the variety found in the gentler sex. Card combinations are but frills to hang around their necks. "The sun won't rise to-morrow as it came to us to-day, 'Twill be older, we'll be older, and to Time this debt we pay. For nothing can repeat itself, for nothing knows the way." Then the Grumpy Guy was silent as a miser hoarding pelf. He knew 'twas time to put his grouch away upon the shelf. And so he did.--You see, I was just talking to myself! _Griffith Alexander._ From "The Pittsburg Dispatch." THE FIGHTER If life were all easy, we should degenerate into weaklings--into human mush. It is the fighting spirit that makes us strong. Nor do any of us lack for a chance to exercise this spirit. Struggle is everywhere; as Kearny said at Fair Oaks, "There is lovely fighting along the whole line." I fight a battle every day Against discouragement and fear; Some foe stands always in my way, The path ahead is never clear! I must forever be on guard Against the doubts that skulk along; I get ahead by fighting hard, But fighting keeps my spirit strong. I hear the croakings of Despair, The dark predictions of the weak; I find myself pursued by Care, No matter what the end I seek; My victories are small and few, It matters not how hard I strive; Each day the fight begins anew, But fighting keeps my hopes alive. My dreams are spoiled by circumstance, My plans are wrecked by Fate or Luck; Some hour, perhaps, will bring my chance, But that great hour has never struck; My progress has been slow and hard, I've had to climb and crawl and swim, Fighting for every stubborn yard, But I have kept in fighting trim. I have to fight my doubts away, And be on guard against my fears; The feeble croaking of Dismay Has been familiar through the years; My dearest plans keep going wrong, Events combine to thwart my will, But fighting keeps my spirit strong, And I am undefeated still! _S.E. Kiser._ From "The New York American." [Illustration: SAMUEL ELLSWORTH KISER] TO YOUTH AFTER PAIN Since pain is the lot of all, we cannot hope to escape it. Since only through pain can we come into true and helpful sympathy with men, we should not wish to escape it. What if this year has given Grief that some year must bring, What if it hurt your joyous youth, Crippled your laughter's wing? You always knew it was coming, Coming to all, to you, They always said there was suffering-- Now it is done, come through. Even if you have blundered, Even if you have sinned, Still is the steadfast arch of the sky And the healing veil of the wind.... And after only a little, A little of hurt and pain, You shall have the web of your own old dreams Wrapping your heart again. Only your heart can pity Now, where it laughed and passed, Now you can bend to comfort men, One with them all at last, You shall have back your laughter, You shall have back your song, Only the world is your brother now, Only your soul is strong! _Margaret Widdemer._ From "The Old Road to Paradise." CAN'T A great, achieving soul will not clog itself with a cowardly thought or a cowardly watchword. Cardinal Richelieu in Bulwer-Lytton's play declares: "In the lexicon of youth, which fate reserves For a bright manhood, there is no such word As 'fail.'" "Impossible," Napoleon is quoted as saying, "is a word found only in the dictionary of fools." _Can't_ is the worst word that's written or spoken; Doing more harm here than slander and lies; On it is many a strong spirit broken, And with it many a good purpose dies. It springs from the lips of the thoughtless each morning And robs us of courage we need through the day: It rings in our ears like a timely-sent warning And laughs when we falter and fall by the way. _Can't_ is the father of feeble endeavor, The parent of terror and half-hearted work; It weakens the efforts of artisans clever, And makes of the toiler an indolent shirk. It poisons the soul of the man with a vision, It stifles in infancy many a plan; It greets honest toiling with open derision And mocks at the hopes and the dreams of a man. _Can't_ is a word none should speak without blushing; To utter it should be a symbol of shame; Ambition and courage it daily is crushing; It blights a man's purpose and shortens his aim. Despise it with all of your hatred of error; Refuse it the lodgment it seeks in your brain; Arm against it as a creature of terror, And all that you dream of you some day shall gain. _Can't_ is the word that is foe to ambition, An enemy ambushed to shatter your will; Its prey is forever the man with a mission And bows but to courage and patience and skill. Hate it, with hatred that's deep and undying, For once it is welcomed 'twill break any man; Whatever the goal you are seeking, keep trying And answer this demon by saying: "I _can_." _Edgar A. Guest._ From "A Heap o' Livin'." THE STRUGGLE We all dream of being St. Georges and fighting dragons amid glamor and glory and the applause of the world. But our real fights are mostly commonplace, routine battles, where no great victory is ours at the end of the day. To persist in them requires quiet strength and unfaltering courage. Did you ever want to take your two bare hands, And choke out of the world your big success? Beat, torn fists bleeding, pathways rugged, grand, By sheer brute strength and bigness, nothing less? So at the last, triumphant, battered, strong, You might gaze down on what you choked and beat, And say, "Ah, world, you've wrought to do me wrong; And thus have I accepted my defeat." Have you ever dreamed of virile deeds, and vast, And then come back from dreams with wobbly knees, To find your way (the braver vision past), By picking meekly at typewriter keys; By bending o'er a ledger, day by day, By some machine-like drudging? No great woe To grapple with. Slow, painful is the way, And still, the bravest fight and conquer so. _Miriam Teichner._ HOLD FAST A football coach who told his players that their rivals were too strong for them would be seeking a new position the next year. If the opposing team is formidable, he says so; if his men have their work cut out for them, he admits it; but he mentions these things as incitements to effort. Merely saying of victory that it can be won is among the surest ways of winning it. When you're nearly drowned in trouble, and the world is dark as ink; When you feel yourself a-sinking 'neath the strain, And you think, "I've got to holler 'Help!'" just take another breath And pretend you've lost your voice--and can't complain! (That's the idea!) Pretend you've lost your voice and can't complain! When the future glowers at you like a threatening thunder cloud, Just grit your teeth and bend your head and say: "It's dark and disagreeable and I can't help feeling blue, But there's coming sure as fate a brighter day!" (Say it slowly!) "But there's coming sure as fate, a brighter day!" You have bluffed your way through ticklish situations; that I know. You are looking back on troubles past and gone; Now, turn the tables, and as you have fought and won before, Just BLUFF YOURSELF to keep on holding on! (Try it once.) Just bluff YOURSELF to keep on--holding on. Don't worry if the roseate hues of life are faded out, Bend low before the storm and wait awhile. The pendulum is bound to swing again and you will find That you have not forgotten how to smile. (That's the truth!) That you have not forgotten how to smile. _Everard Jack Appleton._ From "The Quiet Courage." [Illustration: JOHN KENDRICK BANGS] WILL Warren Hastings resolved in his boyhood that he would be the owner of the estate known as Daylesford. This was the one great purpose that unified his varied and far-reaching activities. Admire him or not, we must at least praise his pluck in holding to his purpose--a purpose he ultimately attained. You will be what you will to be; Let failure find its false content In that poor word "environment," But spirit scorns it, and is free. It masters time, it conquers space, It cowes that boastful trickster Chance, And bids the tyrant Circumstance Uncrown and fill a servant's place. The human Will, that force unseen, The offspring of a deathless Soul, Can hew the way to any goal, Though walls of granite intervene. Be not impatient in delay, But wait as one who understands; When spirit rises and commands The gods are ready to obey. The river seeking for the sea Confronts the dam and precipice, Yet knows it cannot fail or miss; _You will be what you will to be!_ _Ella Wheeler Wilcox._ From "Poems of Power." THE GAME Lessing said that if God should come to him with truth in one hand and the never-ending pursuit of truth in the other, and should offer him his choice, he would humbly and reverently take the pursuit of truth. Perhaps it is best that finite beings should not attain infinite success. But however remote that for which they seek or strive, they may by their diligence and generosity make the very effort to secure it noble. In doing this they earn, as Pope tells us, a truer commendation than success itself could bring them. "Act well thy part; there all the honor lies." Let's play it out--this little game called Life, Where we are listed for so brief a spell; Not just to win, amid the tumult rife, Or where acclaim and gay applauses swell; Nor just to conquer where some one must lose, Or reach the goal whatever be the cost; For there are other, better ways to choose, Though in the end the battle may be lost. Let's play it out as if it were a sport Wherein the game is better than the goal, And never mind the detailed "score's" report Of errors made, if each with dauntless soul But stick it out until the day is done, Not wasting fairness for success or fame, So when the battle has been lost or won, The world at least can say: "He played the game." Let's play it out--this little game called Work, Or War or Love or what part each may draw; Play like a man who scorns to quit or shirk Because the break may carry some deep flaw; Nor simply holding that the goal is all That keeps the player in the contest staying; But stick it out from curtain rise to fall, As if the game itself were worth the playing. _Grantland Rice._ From "The Sportlight." COURAGE The philosopher Kant held himself to his habits so precisely that people set their watches by him as he took his daily walk. We may be equally constant amid worldly vicissitudes, but only a man of true courage is. 'Tis the front towards life that matters most-- The tone, the point of view, The constancy that in defeat Remains untouched and true; For death in patriot fight may be Less gallant than a smile, And high endeavor, to the gods, Seems in itself worth while! _Florence Earle Coates._ From "Poems." A GOOD NAME We should respect the good name of other people, and should safeguard our own by a high sense of honor. At the close of the Civil War a representative of an insurance company offered Robert E. Lee the presidency of the firm at a salary of $50,000 a year. Lee replied that while he wished to earn his living, he doubted whether his services would be worth so large a sum. "We don't want your services," the man interrupted; "we want your name." "That," said Lee, quietly, "is not for sale." He accepted, instead, the presidency of a college at $1500 a year. Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, Is the immediate jewel of their souls: Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing; 'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands; But he that filches from me my good name Robs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed. _William Shakespeare._ SWELLITIS A certain employer of large numbers of men makes it a principle to praise none of them, not because they are undeserving, and not because he dislikes to commend, but because experience has taught him that usually the praise goes to the head of the recipient, both impairing his work and making it harder for others to associate with him. A good test of a man is his way of taking commendation. He may, even while grateful, be stirred to humility that he has not done better still, and may resolve to accomplish more. Or imitating the frog who wished to look like an ox, he may swell and swell until--figuratively speaking--he bursts. Somebody said he'd done it well, And presto! his head began to swell; Bigger and bigger the poor thing grew-- A wonder it didn't split in two. In size a balloon could scarcely match it; He needed a fishing-pole to scratch it;--- But six and a half was the size of his hat, And it rattled around on his head at that! "Good work," somebody chanced to say, And his chest swelled big as a load of hay. About himself, like a rooster, he crowed; Of his wonderful work he bragged and blowed He marched around with a peacock strut; Gigantic to him was the figure he cut;-- But he wore a very small-sized suit, And loosely it hung on him, to boot! HE was the chap who made things hum! HE was the drumstick and the drum! HE was the shirt bosom and the starch! HE was the keystone in the arch! HE was the axis of the earth! Nothing existed before his birth! But when he was off from work a Nobody knew that he was away! This is a fact that is sad to tell: It's the empty head that is bound to swell; It's the light-weight fellow who soars to the skies And bursts like a bubble before your eyes. A big man is humbled by honest praise, And tries to think of all the ways To improve his work and do it well;-- But a little man starts of himself to yell! _Joseph Morris:_ CARES To those who are wearied, fretted, and worried there is no physician like nature. When our nerves are frazzled and our sleep is unrefreshing, we can find no better antidote to the clamorous grind and frenzy of the city than the stillness and solitude of hills, streams, and tranquil stars. That man lays up for himself resources of strength who now and then exchanges the ledger for green leaves, the factory for wild flowers, business for brook-croon and bird-song. The little cares that fretted me, I lost them yesterday Among the fields above the sea, Among the winds at play; Among the lowing of the herds, The rustling of the trees, Among the singing of the birds, The humming of the bees. The foolish fears of what may happen, I cast them all away Among the clover-scented grass, Among the new-mown hay; Among the husking of the corn Where drowsy poppies nod, Where ill thoughts die and good are born Out in the fields with God. _Elisabeth Barrett Browning._ FAITH Any one who has ridden across the continent on a train must marvel at the faith and imagination of the engineers who constructed the road--the topographical advantages seized, the grades made easy of ascent, the curves and straight stretches planned, the tunnels so carefully calculated that workmen beginning on opposite sides of a mountain met in the middle--and all this visualized and thought out before the actual work was begun. Faith has such foresight, such courage, whether it toils actively or can merely bide its time. The tree-top, high above the barren field, Rising beyond the night's gray folds of mist, Rests stirless where the upper air is sealed To perfect silence, by the faint moon kissed. But the low branches, drooping to the ground, Sway to and fro, as sways funereal plume, While from their restless depths low whispers sound: "We fear, we fear the darkness and the gloom; Dim forms beneath us pass and reappear, And mournful tongues are menacing us here." Then from the topmost bough falls calm reply: "Hush, hush, I see the coming of the morn; Swiftly the silent night is passing by, And in her bosom rosy Dawn is borne. 'Tis but your own dim shadows that ye see, 'Tis but your own low moans that trouble ye." So Life stands, with a twilight world around; Faith turned serenely to the steadfast sky, Still answering the heart that sweeps the ground Sobbing in fear, and tossing restlessly-- "Hush, hush! The Dawn breaks o'er the Eastern sea, 'Tis but thine own dim shadow troubling thee." _Edward Rowland Sill._ From "Poems." PLAYING THE GAME We all like the good sport--the man who plays fair and courteously and with every ounce of his energy, even when the game is going against him. Life is a game with a glorious prize, If we can only play it right. It is give and take, build and break, And often it ends in a fight; But he surely wins who honestly tries (Regardless of wealth or fame), He can never despair who plays it fair-- How are you playing the game? Do you wilt and whine, if you fail to win In the manner you think your due? Do you sneer at the man in case that he can And does, do better than you? Do you take your rebuffs with a knowing grin? Do you laugh tho' you pull up lame? Does your faith hold true when the whole world's blue? How are you playing the game? Get into the thick of it--wade in, boys! Whatever your cherished goal; Brace up your will till your pulses thrill, And you dare--to your very soul! Do something more than make a noise; Let your purpose leap into flame As you plunge with a cry, "I shall do or die," Then you will be playing the game. _Anonymous_. WHAT DARK DAYS DO A real man does not want all his barriers leveled. He of course welcomes easy tasks, but he welcomes hard ones also. The difficult or unpleasant thing puts him on his mettle, throws him on his own resources. It gives him something of "The stern joy which warriors feel In foemen worthy of their steel." Moreover as a foil or contrast it enables him to value more truly the good things he constantly enjoys, perhaps without perceiving them. I sorter like a gloomy day, Th' kind that jest _won't_ smile; It makes a feller hump hisself T' make life seem wuth while. When sun's a-shinin' an' th' sky Is washed out bright an' gay, It ain't no job to whistle--but It is-- When skies air gray! So gloomy days air good fer us, They make us look about To find our blessin's--make us count The friends who never doubt, Most any one kin smile and joke And hold blue-devils back When it is bright, but we must work T' grin-- When skies air black! That's why I sorter _like_ dark days, That put it up to me To keep th' gloom from soakin' in My whole anatomy! An' if they _never_ come along My soul would surely rust-- Th' dark days keeps my cheerfulness From draggin' In th' dust! _Everard Jack Appleton._ From "The Quiet Courage." GLADNESS A coal miner does not need the sun's illumination. He carries his own light. The world has brought not anything To make me glad to-day! The swallow had a broken wing, And after all my journeying There was no water in the spring-- My friend has said me nay. But yet somehow I needs must sing As on a luckier day. Dusk fails as gray as any tear, There is no hope in sight! But something in me seems so fair, That like a star I needs must wear A safety made of shining air Between me and the night. Such inner weavings do I wear All fashioned of delight! I need not for these robes of mine The loveliness of earth, But happenings remote and fine Like threads of dreams will blow and shine In gossamer and crystalline, And I was glad from birth. So even while my eyes repine, My heart is clothed in mirth. _Anna Hempstead Branch._ From "The Shoes That Danced, and Other Poems." IT WON'T STAY BLOWED It is easier to fail than succeed. It is easier to drift downstream than up. But just as pent steam finds an escape somewhere, so will the man who persists break at one point or another through confining circumstance. To the sniffing pickaninny once his good old mammy said, "Yo' lil' black nose am drippin' from de cold dat's in yo' head, An' yo' sleeve am slick and shiny like de hillside when it snows. Why doan' you pump de bellers from de inside ob yo' nose?" "Ain't I been," the child replied to her, "a-doin' ob jes' dat Twel I's got a turble empty feel right whur I wears muh hat? De traffic soht o' nacherly keeps gittin' in de road. I blow muh nose a-plenty, but it won't stay blowed. "What's de use ob raisin' chickens ef dey won't stay riz? What's de use ob freezin' sherbet ef it won't stay friz? What's de use ob payin' debts off ef dey's gwine stay owed? What's de use ob blowin' noses ef dey won't stay blowed?" This old world is sometimes jealous of the chap who means to rise; It sneers at what he's doing or it bats him 'twixt the eyes; It trips him when he's careless, and it makes his way so hard What's left of him is sinew, not a walking tub of lard; But it's only wasting effort, for by George, the guy keeps on When his hopes have crumbled round him and you'd think his faith was gone, Till the world at last knocks under and it passes him a crown: Once, twice, thrice it has upset him, but he won't stay down. What cares he when out he's flattened by the cruel blow it deals? He has rubber in his shoulders and a mainspring in his heels. Let the world uncork its buffets till he's bruised from toe to crown; Let it thump him, bump him, dump him, but he won't stay down. _St. Clair Adams._ THE RAINBOW Our lives are not a hodge-podge of separate experiences, though they sometimes seem so. They are held together by simple things which we behold again and again with the same emotions. Thus the man is what the boy has been; the tree is inclined in the precise direction the twig was bent. My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety. _William Wordsworth._ THE FIRM OF GRIN AND BARRETT It has been said that when disaster overtakes us, we can do one of two things--we can grin and bear it, or we needn't grin. The spirit that keeps a smile on our faces when our burden is heaviest is the spirit that will win in the long run. Many men know how to take success quietly. The real test of a man is he way he takes failure. No financial throe volcanic Ever yet was known to scare it; Never yet was any panic Scared the firm of Grin and Barrett. From the flurry and the fluster, From the ruin and the crashes, They arise in brighter lustre, Like the phoenix from his ashes. When the banks and corporations Quake with fear, they do not share it; Smiling through all perturbations Goes the firm of Grin and Barrett. Grin and Barrett, Who can scare it? Scare the firm of Grin and Barrett? When the tide-sweep of reverses Smites them, firm they stand and dare it Without wailings, tears, or curses, This stout firm of Grin and Barrett. Even should their house go under In the flood and inundation, Calm they stand amid the thunder Without noise or demonstration. And, when sackcloth is the fashion, With a patient smile they wear it, Without petulance or passion, This old firm of Grin and Barrett. Grin and Barrett, Who can scare it? Scare the firm of Grin and Barrett? When the other firms show dizziness, Here's a house that does not share it. Wouldn't you like to join the business? Join the firm of Grin and Barrett? Give your strength that does not murmur, And your nerve that does not falter, And you've joined a house that's firmer Than the old rock of Gibraltar. They have won a good prosperity; Why not join the firm and share it? Step, young fellow, with celerity; Join the firm of Grin and Barrett. Grin and Barrett, Who can scare it? Scare the firm of Grin and Barrett? _Sam Walter Foss._ From "Songs of the Average Man." [Illustration: SAM WALTER FOSS] CHALLENGE Napoleon is reported to have complained of the English that they didn't have sense enough to know when they were beaten. Even if defeat is unmistakable, it need not be final. A battle may be lost, but the campaign won; a campaign lost, but the war won. Life, I challenge you to try me, Doom me to unending pain; Stay my hand, becloud my vision, Break my heart and then--again. Shatter every dream I've cherished, Fill my heart with ruthless fear; Follow every smile that cheers me With a bitter, blinding tear. Thus I dare you; you can try me, Seek to make me cringe and moan, Still my unbound soul defies you, I'll withstand you--and, alone! _Jean Nette._ YOUR MISSION One of the most often-heard of sentences is "I don't know what I'm to do in the world." Yet very few people are ever for a moment out of something to do, especially if they do not insist on climbing to the top of the pole and waving the flag, but are willing to steady the pole while somebody else climbs. If you cannot on the ocean Sail among the swiftest fleet, Rocking on the highest billows, Laughing at the storms you meet; You can stand among the sailors, Anchored yet within the bay, You can lend a hand to help them As they launch their boats away. If you are too weak to journey Up the mountain, steep and high, You can stand within the valley While the multitudes go by; You can chant in happy measure As they slowly pass along-- Though they may forget the singer, They will not forget the song. * * * * * If you cannot in the harvest Garner up the richest sheaves, Many a grain, both ripe and golden, Oft the careless reaper leaves; Go and glean among the briars Growing rank against the wall, For it may be that their shadow Hides the heaviest grain of all. If you cannot in the conflict Prove yourself a soldier true; If, where fire and smoke are thickest, There's no work for you to do; When the battle field is silent, You can go with careful tread; You can bear away the wounded, You can cover up the dead. Do not then stand idly waiting For some greater work to do; Fortune is a lazy goddess, She will never come to you; Go and toil in any vineyard, Do not fear to do and dare. If you want a field of labor You can find it anywhere. _Ellen M.H. Gates._ VICTORY To fail is not a disgrace; the disgrace lies in not trying. In his old age Sir Walter Scott found that a publishing firm he was connected with was heavily in debt. He refused to take advantage of the bankruptcy law, and sat down with his pen to make good the deficit. Though he wore out his life in the struggle and did not live to see the debt entirely liquidated, he died an honored and honorable man. I call no fight a losing fight If, fighting, I have gained some straight new strength; If, fighting, I turned ever toward the light, All unallied with forces of the night; If, beaten, quivering, I could say at length: "I did no deed that needs to be unnamed; I fought--and lost--and I am unashamed." _Miriam Teichner._ TIMES GO BY TURNS One of the greatest blessings in life is alteration. The ins become outs, the outs ins; the ups become downs, the downs ups; and so on--and it is better so. We must not get too highly elated at success, for life is not all success. We must not grow too downcast from failure, for life is not all failure. The lopped tree in time may grow again, Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower; The sorriest wight may find release of pain, The driest soil suck in some moistening shower; Time goes by turns, and chances change by course, From foul to fair, from better hap to worse. The sea of Fortune doth not ever flow; She draws her favors to the lowest ebb; Her tides have equal times to come and go; Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web; No joy so great but runneth to an end, No hap so hard but may in fine amend. Not always fall of leaf, nor ever Spring; Not endless night, yet not eternal day; The saddest birds a season find to sing; The roughest storm a calm may soon allay. Thus, with succeeding turns God tempereth all, That man may hope to rise, yet fear to fall. A chance may win that by mischance was lost; That net that holds no great takes little fish; In some things all, in all things none are crost; Few all they need, but none have all they wish. Unmingled joys here to no man befall; Who least, hath some; who most, hath never all. _Robert Southwell._ TO-DAY The past did not behold to-day; the future shall not. We must use it now if it is to be of any benefit to mankind. So here hath been dawning Another blue day; Think, wilt thou let it Slip useless away? Out of Eternity This new day is born; Into Eternity, At night will return. Behold it aforetime No eye ever did; So soon it for ever From all eyes is hid. Here hath been dawning Another blue day; Think, wilt thou let it Slip useless away? _Thomas Carlyle._ UNAFRAID I have no fear. What is in store for me Shall find me ready for it, undismayed. God grant my only cowardice may be Afraid--to be afraid! _Everard Jack Appleton._ From "The Quiet Courage." BORROWED FEATHERS Many good, attractive people spoil the merits they have by trying to be something bigger or showier. It is always best to be one's self. A rooster one morning was preening his feathers That glistened so bright in the sun; He admired the tints of the various colors As he laid them in place one by one. Now as roosters go he was a fine bird, And he should have been satisfied; But suddenly there as he marched along, Some peacock feathers he spied. They had beautiful spots and their colors were gay-- He wished that his own could be green; He dropped his tail, tried to hide it away; Was completely ashamed to be seen. Then his foolish mind hatched up a scheme-- A peacock yet he could be; So he hopped behind a bush to undress Where the other fowls could not see. He caught his own tail between his bill, And pulled every feather out; And into the holes stuck the peacock plumes; Then proudly strutted about. The other fowls rushed to see the queer sight; And the peacocks came when they heard; They could not agree just what he was, But pronounced him a funny bird. Then the chickens were angry that one of their kind Should try to be a peacock; And the peacocks were mad that one with their tail Should belong to a common fowl flock. So the chickens beset him most cruelly behind, And yanked his whole tail out together; The peacocks attacked him madly before, And pulled out each chicken feather. And when he stood stripped clean down to the skin, A horrible thing to the rest, He learned this sad lesson when it was too late-- As his own simple self he was best. _Joseph Morris._ KEEP ON KEEPIN' ON The author of these homely stanzas has caught perfectly the spirit which succeeds in the rough-and-tumble of actual life. If the day looks kinder gloomy And your chances kinder slim, If the situation's puzzlin' And the prospect's awful grim, If perplexities keep pressin' Till hope is nearly gone, Just bristle up and grit your teeth And keep on keepin' on. Frettin' never wins a fight And fumin' never pays; There ain't no use in broodin' In these pessimistic ways; Smile just kinder cheerfully Though hope is nearly gone, And bristle up and grit your teeth And keep on keepin' on. There ain't no use in growlin' And grumblin' all the time, When music's ringin' everywhere And everything's a rhyme. Just keep on smilin' cheerfully If hope is nearly gone, And bristle up and grit your teeth And keep on keepin' on. _Anonymous._ THE DISAPPOINTED Those who have striven nobly and failed deserve sympathy. Sometimes they deserve also praise unreserved, in that they have refused to do something ignoble which would have led to what the world calls success. They have lived the idea which Macbeth merely proclaimed: "I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more is none." There are songs enough for the hero Who dwells on the heights of fame; I sing of the disappointed-- For those who have missed their aim. I sing with a tearful cadence For one who stands in the dark, And knows that his last, best arrow Has bounded back from the mark. I sing for the breathless runner, The eager, anxious soul, Who falls with his strength exhausted. Almost in sight of the goal; For the hearts that break in silence, With a sorrow all unknown, For those who need companions, Yet walk their ways alone. There are songs enough for the lovers Who share love's tender pain, I sing for the one whose passion Is given all in vain. For those whose spirit comrades Have missed them on their way, I sing, with a heart o'erflowing, This minor strain to-day. And I know the Solar system Must somewhere keep in space A prize for that spent runner Who barely lost the race. For the plan would be imperfect Unless it held some sphere That paid for the toil and talent And love that are wasted here. _Ella Wheeler Wilcox._ From "Picked Poems." LET ME LIVE OUT MY YEARS We speak of the comforts and ease of old age, but our noblest selves do not really desire them. We want to do more than exist. We want to be alive to the very last. Let me live out my years in heat of blood! Let me die drunken with the dreamer's wine! Let me not see this soul-house built of mud Go toppling to the dust--a vacant shrine! Let me go quickly like a candle light Snuffed out just at the heyday of its glow! Give me high noon--and let it then be night! Thus would I go. And grant that when I face the grisly Thing, My song may triumph down the gray Perhaps! Let me be as a tuneswept fiddlestring That feels the Master Melody--and snaps. _John G. Neihardt_ From "The Quest" (collected lyrics). COLUMBUS This poem pictures courage and high resolution. To the terrors of an unknown sea and the mutinous dismay of the sailors Columbus has but two things to oppose--his faith and his unflinching will. But these suffice, as they always do. In the last four lines of the poem is a lesson for our nation to-day. The seas upon which our ideals have launched us are perilous and uncharted. In some ways our whole voyage of democracy seems futile. Shall we turn back, or shall we, like Columbus, answer the falterers in words that leap like a leaping sword; "Sail on, sail on"? Behind him lay the gray Azores, Behind the Gates of Hercules; Before him not the ghost of shores: Before him only shoreless seas. The good mate said: "Now must we pray, For lo! the very stars are gone. Brave Adm'r'l, speak; what shall I say?" "Why, say: 'Sail on! sail on! and on!'" "My men grow mutinous day by day; My men grow ghastly wan and weak." The stout mate thought of home; a spray Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek. "What shall I say, brave Adm'r'l, say, If we sight naught but seas at dawn?" "Why, you shall say at break of day: 'Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!'" They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow; Until at last the blanched mate said: "Why, now not even God would know Should I and all my men fall dead. These very winds forget their way, For God from these dread seas is gone. Now speak, brave Adm'r'l; speak and say--" He said: "Sail on! sail on! and on!" They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate: "This mad sea shows his teeth to-night. He curls his lip, he lies in wait, With lifted teeth, as if to bite! Brave Adm'r'l, say but one good word: What shall we do when hope is gone?" The words leapt like a leaping sword: "Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!" Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck, And peered through darkness. Ah, that night Of all dark nights! And then a speck-- It grew, a starlit flag unfurled! It grew to be Time's burst of dawn. He gained a world; he gave that world Its grandest lesson: "On! sail on!" _Joaquin Miller._ From "Joaquin Miller's Complete Poems." PER ASPERA A motto has been made of the Latin phrase "per aspera ad astra," of which the translation sometimes given is "through bolts and bars to the stars." Thank God, a man can grow! He is not bound With earthward gaze to creep along the ground: Though his beginnings be but poor and low, Thank God, a man can grow! The fire upon his altars may burn dim, The torch he lighted may in darkness fail, And nothing to rekindle it avail,-- Yet high beyond his dull horizon's rim, Arcturus and the Pleiads beckon him. _Florence Earle Coates._ From "Poems." TIT FOR TAT We are quick to notice obstacles, grudges, affronts. Are we equally quick to recognize the kindly influences that speed us on our way? The truth is we are each of us a debtor to life, and as honest men we should do all we can to discharge the obligation. "Life," you say, "'s an old curmudgeon; yes, a thing whose heart is flint; When I ask a friendly greeting, all I get's an angry glint. Let me do it every good turn that I can--my very best, Still it strikes me, trips, maligns me, and denies my least request. "So," you say, "my patience ended, I will give it tit for tat." What a bunch of animosities is covered by your hat! All the roses life can offer bloom and beckon to your soul, But you close your eyes to roses and in thorns lie down and roll. Life does nothing for you, sonny? What a notion you have! Say, Make a little inventory of its gifts to you to-day. You've a house or room to sleep in--did you build it with your hand? If you did, who made the hammer and who cleared for you the land? And electric lights--you use them; did you also put them there? Beefsteak, coal, your mail, shoes, street cars--do they come like rain from air? Or do countless men, far-scattered, toil that you may have more ease?-- Stokers, hodmen, farmers, plumbers, Yankees, dagoes, Japanese? "Oh, that's general," you tell me. You have private blessings too. Why, your mother in your childhood slaved and wrought and lived for you. Helpful hands were all around you--hopes, fond wishes in the past; Even now each day from somewhere friendly looks are on you cast. Though you've been both crossed and harried, you've not struggled on alone; Through the discords of endeavor comes to you an answering tone. Life has done you many favors. Will you give it tit for tat? Since you've looked so much at this side, won't you have a look at that? Don't help only those who've helped you, count the rest as strangers, foes; How long now would you have lasted had all done as you propose? Many and many a benefactor you did not nor can repay-- There's your mother. Pass the kindness on to others--that's the way. Life it is that's given freely. Unto life make due return. Whether folks are undeserving, neither seek nor wish to learn. Hit your dernedest for your teammates every time you come to bat, And the world will be more happy that you give it tit for tat. _St. Clair Adams._ THE KINGDOM OF MAN The wisest men know that the greatest world is not outside them. They could, in Shakespeare's phrase, be bounded by a nut-shell and count themselves kings of infinite space. What of the outer drear, As long as there's inner light; As long as the sun of cheer Shines ardently bright? As long as the soul's a-wing, As long as the heart is true, What power hath trouble to bring A sorrow to you? No bar can encage the soul, Nor capture the spirit free, As long as old earth shall roll, Or hours shall be. Our world is the world within, Our life is the thought we take, And never an outer sin Can mar it or break. Brood not on the rich man's land, Sigh not for miser's gold, Holding in reach of your hand The treasure untold That lies in the Mines of Heart, That rests in the soul alone-- Bid worry and care depart, Come into your own! _John Kendrick_ From "Songs of Cheer." ABOU BEN ADHEM "Forgive my enemies?" said the dying man to the priest. "I have none. I've killed them all." This old ideal of exterminating our enemies has by no means disappeared from the earth. But it is waning. "Live and let live" is a more modern slogan, which mounts in turn from mere toleration of other people to a spirit of service and universal brotherhood. Love of our fellow men--has humanity reached any height superior to this? Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!) Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, And saw, within the moonlight in his room, Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom, An angel writing in a book of gold:-- Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold, And to the presence in the room he said, "What writest thou?"--The vision raised its head, And with a look made of all sweet accord, Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord." "And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so," Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low, But cheerily still; and said, "I pray thee, then, Write me as one that loves his fellow-men." The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night It came again with a great wakening light, And showed the names whom love of God had blessed, And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest. _Leigh Hunt._ THIS WORLD There is good in life and there is ill. The question is where we should put the emphasis. This world that we're a-livin' in Is mighty hard to beat; You git a thorn with every rose, But _ain't _the roses _sweet_! _Frank L. Stanton._ From "The Atlanta Constitution." GRAY DAYS By reckoning up the odds against us and ignoring the forces in our favor, we may indeed close the door of hope. But why not take matters the other way about? Why not see the situation clearly and then throw our own strong purpose in the scales? In the course of a battle an officer reported to Stonewall Jackson that he must fall back because his ammunition had been spoiled by a rainstorm. "So has the enemy's," was the instant reply. "Give them the bayonet." This resolute spirit won the battle. Hang the gray days! The deuce-to-pay days! The feeling-blue and nothing-to-do days! The sit-by-yourself-for-there's-nothing-new days! When the cat that Care killed without excuse With your inner self's crying, "Oh, what's the use?" And you wonder whatever is going to become of you, And you feel that a cipher expresses the sum of you; And you know that you'll never, Oh, never, be clever, Spite of all your endeavor Or hard work or whatever! Oh, gee! What a mix-up you see When you look at the world where you happen to be! Where strangers are hateful and friends are a bore, And you know in your heart you will smile nevermore! Gee, kid! Clap on the lid! It is all a mistake! Give your worries the skid! There are sunny days coming Succeeding the blue And bees will be humming Making honey for you, And your heart will be singing The merriest tune While April is bringing A May and a June! Gray days? Play days! Joy-bringing pay days And heart-lifting May days! The sun will be shining in just a wee while So smile! _Griffith Alexander._ From "The Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger." [Illustration: EDMUND VANCE COOKE] LAUGH A LITTLE BIT "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine"; a little laughter cures many a seeming ill. Here's a motto, just your fit-- Laugh a little bit. When you think you're trouble hit, Laugh a little bit. Look misfortune in the face. Brave the beldam's rude grimace; Ten to one 'twill yield its place, If you have the wit and grit Just to laugh a little bit. Keep your face with sunshine lit, Laugh a little bit. All the shadows off will flit, If you have the grit and wit Just to laugh a little bit. Cherish this as sacred writ-- Laugh a little bit. Keep it with you, sample it, Laugh a little bit. Little ills will sure betide you, Fortune may not sit beside you, Men may mock and fame deride you, But you'll mind them not a whit If you laugh a little bit. _Edmund Vance Cooke._ From "A Patch of Pansies." A SONG OF LIFE Many of us merely exist, and think that we live. What we should regain at all costs is freshness and intensity of being. This need not involve turbulent activity. It may involve quite the opposite. Say not, "I live!" Unless the morning's trumpet brings A shock of glory to your soul, Unless the ecstasy that sings Through rushing worlds and insects' wings, Sends you upspringing to your goal, Glad of the need for toil and strife, Eager to grapple hands with Life-- Say not, "I live!" Say not, "I live!" Unless the energy that rings Throughout this universe of fire A challenge to your spirit flings, Here in the world of men and things, Thrilling you with a huge desire To mate your purpose with the stars, To shout with Jupiter and Mars-- Say not, "I live!" Say not, "I live!" Such were a libel on the Plan Blazing within the mind of God Ere world or star or sun began. Say rather, with your fellow man, "I grub; I burrow in the sod." Life is not life that does not flame With consciousness of whence it came-- Say not, "I live!" _Angela Morgan._ From "The Hour Has Struck." A POOR UNFORTUNATE Things are never so bad but they might have been worse. An immigrant into the South paid a negro to bring him a wild turkey. The next day he complained: "You shouldn't shoot at the turkey's body, Rastus. Shoot at his head. The flesh of that turkey was simply full of shot." "Boss," said the negro, "dem shot was meant for me." I His hoss went dead an' his mule went lame; He lost six cows in a poker game; A harricane came on a summer's day, An' carried the house whar' he lived away; Then a airthquake come when that wuz gone, An' swallered the lan' that the house stood on! An' the tax collector, _he_ come roun' An' charged him up fer the hole in the groun'! An' the city marshal--he come in view An' said he wanted his street tax, too! II Did he moan an' sigh? Did he set an' cry An' cuss the harricane sweepin' by? Did he grieve that his ol' friends failed to call When the airthquake come an' swallered all? Never a word o' blame he said, With all them troubles on top his head! Not _him_.... He clumb to the top o' the hill-- Whar' standin' room wuz left him still, An', barin' his head, here's what he said: "I reckon it's time to git up an' git; But, Lord, I hain't had the measels yit!" _Frank L. Stanton._ From "The Atlanta Constitution." THE TRAINERS To Franklin, seeking recognition and aid for his country at the French court, came news of an American disaster. "Howe has taken Philadelphia," his opponents taunted him. "Oh, no," he answered, "Philadelphia has taken Howe." He shrewdly foresaw that the very magnitude of what the British had done would lull them into overconfidence and inaction, and would stir the Americans to more determined effort. Above all, he himself was undisturbed; for to the strong-hearted, trials and reverses are instruments of final success. My name is Trouble--I'm a busy bloke-- I am the test of Courage--and of Class-- I bind the coward to a bitter yoke, I drive the craven from the crowning pass; Weaklings I crush before they come to fame; But as the red star guides across the night, I train the stalwart for a better game; I drive the brave into a harder fight. My name is Hard Luck--the wrecker of rare dreams-- I follow all who seek the open fray; I am the shadow where the far light gleams For those who seek to know the open way; Quitters I break before they reach the crest, But where the red field echoes with the drums, I build the fighter for the final test And mold the brave for any drive that comes. My name is Sorrow--I shall come to all To block the surfeit of an endless joy; Along the Sable Road I pay my call Before the sweetness of success can cloy; And weaker souls shall weep amid the throng And fall before me, broken and dismayed; But braver hearts shall know that I belong And take me in, serene and unafraid. My name's Defeat--but through the bitter fight, To those who know, I'm something more than friend; For I can build beyond the wrath of might And drive away all yellow from the blend; For those who quit, I am the final blow, But for the brave who seek their chance to learn, I show the way, at last, beyond the foe, To where the scarlet flames of triumph burn. _Grantland Rice._ From "The Sportlight." LIFE Most of us have failed or gone astray in one fashion or another, at one time or another. But we need not become despondent at such times. We should resolve to reap the full benefit of the discovery of our weakness, our folly. All in the dark we grope along, And if we go amiss We learn at least which path is wrong, And there is gain in this. We do not always win the race By only running right, We have to tread the mountain's base Before we reach its height. * * * * * But he who loves himself the last And knows the use of pain, Though strewn with errors all his past, He surely shall attain. Some souls there are that needs must taste Of wrong, ere choosing right; We should not call those years a waste Which led us to the light. _Etta Wheeler Wilcox._ From "Poems of Power." A TOAST TO MERRIMENT A lady said to Whistler that there were but two painters--himself and Velazquez. He replied: "Madam, why drag in Velazquez?" So it is with Joyousness and Gloom. Both exist,--but why drag in Gloom? Make merry! Though the day be gray Forget the clouds and let's be gay! How short the days we linger here: A birth, a breath, and then--the bier! Make merry, you and I, for when We part we may not meet again! What tonic is there in a frown? You may go up and I go down, Or I go up and you--who knows The way that either of us goes? Make merry! Here's a laugh, for when We part we may not meet again! Make merry! What of frets and fears? There is no happiness in tears. You tremble at the cloud and lo! 'Tis gone--and so 'tis with our woe, Full half of it but fancied ills. Make merry! 'Tis the gloom that kills. Make merry! There is sunshine yet, The gloom that promised, let's forget, The quip and jest are on the wing, Why sorrow when we ought to sing? Refill the cup of joy, for then We part and may not meet again. A smile, a jest, a joke--alas! We come, we wonder, and we pass. The shadow falls; so long we rest In graves, where is no quip or jest. Good day! Good cheer! Good-bye! For then We part and may not meet again! _James W. Foley._ From "Friendly Rhymes." MISTRESS FATE "Faint heart never won fair lady," Mistress Fate herself should be courted, not with feminine finesse, but with masculine courage and aggression. Flout her power, young man! She is merely shrewish, scolding,-- She is plastic to your molding, She is woman in her yielding to the fires desires fan. Flout her power, young man! Fight her fair, strong man! Such a serpent love is this,-- Bitter wormwood in her kiss! When she strikes, be nerved and ready; Keep your gaze both bright and steady, Chance no rapier-play, but hotly press the quarrel she began! Fight her fair, strong man! Gaze her down, old man! Now no laughter may defy her, Not a shaft of scorn come nigh her, But she waits within the shadows, in dark shadows very near. And her silence is your fear. Meet her world-old eyes of warning! Gaze them down with courage! _Can You gaze them down, old man?_ _William Rose Benét._ From "Merchants from Cathay." SLEEP AND THE MONARCH (FROM "2 HENRY IV.") The great elemental blessings cannot be "cornered." Indeed they cannot be bought at all, but are the natural property of the man whose ways of life are such as to retain them. In this passage a disappointed and harassed king comments on the slumber which he cannot woo to his couch, yet which his humblest subject enjoys. How many thousand of my poorest subjects Are at this hour asleep! O sleep! O gentle sleep! Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down And steep my senses in forgetfulness? Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee, And hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber, Than in the perfumed chambers of the great, Under the canopies of costly state, And lulled with sound of sweetest melody? O thou dull god! why liest thou with the vile In loathsome beds, and leav'st the kingly couch A watch-case or a common 'larum bell? Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains In cradle of the rude imperious surge, And in the visitation of the winds, Who take the ruffian billows by the top, Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them With deafning clamor in the slippery clouds, That with the hurly death itself awakes? Canst thou, O partial sleep! give thy repose To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude, And in the calmest and most stillest night, With all appliances and means to boot, Deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie down! Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. _William Shakespeare._ NEVER TROUBLE TROUBLE To borrow trouble is to contract a debt that any man is better without. If your troubles are not borrowed, they are not likely to be many or great. I used to hear a saying That had a deal of pith; It gave a cheerful spirit To face existence with, Especially when matters Seemed doomed to go askew, 'Twas _Never trouble trouble Till trouble troubles you._ Not woes at hand, those coming Are hardest to resist; We hear them stalk like giants, We see them through a mist. But big things in the brewing Are small things in the brew; So never trouble trouble Till trouble troubles you. Just look at things through glasses That show the evidence; One lens of them is courage, The other common sense. They'll make it clear, misgivings Are just a bugaboo; No more you'll trouble trouble Till trouble troubles you. _St. Clair Adams._ CLEAR THE WAY Humanity is always meeting obstacles. All honor to the men who do not fear obstacles, but push them aside and press on. Stephenson was explaining his idea that a locomotive steam engine could run along a track and draw cars after it. "But suppose a cow gets on the track," some one objected. "So much the worse," said Stephenson, "for the cow." Men of thought! be up and stirring, Night and day; Sow the seed, withdraw the curtain, Clear the way! Men of action, aid and cheer them, As ye may! There's a fount about to stream, There's a light about to gleam, There's a warmth about to glow, There's a flower about to blow; There's midnight blackness changing Into gray! Men of thought and men of action, Clear the way! Once the welcome light has broken, Who shall say What the unimagined glories Of the day? What the evil that shall perish In its ray? Aid it, hopes of honest men; Aid the dawning, tongue and pen; Aid it, paper, aid it, type, Aid it, for the hour is ripe; And our earnest must not slacken Into play. Men of thought and men of action, Clear the way! Lo! a cloud's about to vanish From the day; And a brazen wrong to crumble Into clay! With the Right shall many more Enter, smiling at the door; With the giant Wrong shall fall Many others great and small, That for ages long have held us For their prey. Men of thought and men of action, Clear the way! _Charles Mackay._ ONE FIGHT MORE We need not expect much of the man who, when defeated, gives way either to despair or to a wild impulse for immediate revenge. But from the man who stores up his strength quietly and bides his time for a new effort, we may expect everything. Now, think you, Life, I am defeated quite? More than a single battle shall be mine Before I yield the sword and give the sign And turn, a crownless outcast, to the night. Wounded, and yet unconquered in the fight, I wait in silence till the day may shine Once more upon my strength, and all the line Of your defenses break before my might. Mine be that warrior's blood who, stricken sore, Lies in his quiet chamber till he hears Afar the clash and clang of arms, and knows The cause he lived for calls for him once more; And straightway rises, whole and void of fears, And armed, turns him singing to his foes. _Theodosia Garrison._ From "The Earth Cry." A PSALM OF LIFE At times this existence of ours seems to be meaningless; whether we have succeeded or whether we have failed appears to make little difference to us, and therefore effort seems scarcely worth while. But Longfellow tells us this view is all wrong. The past can take care of itself, and we need not even worry very much about the future; but if we are true to our own natures, we must be up and doing in the present. Time is short, and mastery in any field of human activity is so long a process that it forbids us to waste our moments. Yet we must learn also how to wait and endure. In short, we must not become slaves to either indifference or impatience, but must make it our business to play a man's part in life. Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream!-- For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul. Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way; But to act, that each to-morrow Find us farther than to-day. Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave. In the world's broad field of battle, In the bivouac of Life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle! Be a hero in the strife! Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act,--act in the living Present! Heart within, and God o'erhead! Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time; Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again. Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait. _Henry Wadsworth Longfellow._ A CREED Men may seem sundered from each other; but the soul that each possesses, and the destiny common to all, invest them with a basic brotherhood. There is a destiny that makes us brothers: None goes his way alone: All that we send into the lives of others Comes back into our own. I care not what his temples or his creeds, One thing holds firm and fast-- That into his fateful heap of days and deeds The soul of a man is cast. _Edwin Markham_ From "Lincoln, and Other Poems." BATTLE CRY We should win if we can. But in any case we should prove our manhood by fighting. More than half beaten, but fearless, Facing the storm and the night; Breathless and reeling but tearless, Here in the lull of the fight, I who bow not but before thee, God of the fighting Clan, Lifting my fists, I implore Thee, Give me the heart of a Man! What though I live with the winners Or perish with those who fall? Only the cowards are sinners, Fighting the fight is all. Strong is my foe--he advances! Snapt is my blade, O Lord! See the proud banners and lances! Oh, spare me this stub of a sword! Give me no pity, nor spare me; Calm not the wrath of my Foe. See where he beckons to dare me! Bleeding, half beaten--I go. Not for the glory of winning, Not for the fear of the night; Shunning the battle is sinning-- Oh, spare me the heart to fight! Red is the mist about me; Deep is the wound in my side; "Coward" thou criest to flout me? O terrible Foe, thou hast lied! Here with my battle before me, God of the fighting Clan, Grant that the woman who bore me Suffered to suckle a Man! _John G. Neihardt._ From "The Quest" (collected lyrics). THE HAPPY HEART One of our objects in life should be to find happiness, contentment. The means of happiness are surprisingly simple. We need not be rich or high-placed or powerful in order to be content. In fact the lowly are often the best satisfied. Izaak Walton lived the simple life and thanked God that there were so many things in the world of which he had no need. Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers? O sweet content! Art thou rich, yet is thy mind perplexed? O punishment! Dost thou laugh to see how fools are vexed To add to golden numbers, golden numbers? O sweet content! O sweet, O sweet content! Work apace, apace, apace, apace; Honest labor bears a lovely face; Then hey nonny nonny, hey nonny nonny! Canst drink the waters of the crispéd spring? O sweet content! Swimm'st thou in wealth, yet sink'st in thine own tears? O punishment! Then he that patiently want's burden bears No burden bears, but is a king, a king! O sweet content! O sweet, O sweet content! Work apace, apace, apace, apace; Honest labor bears a lovely face; Then hey nonny nonny, hey nonny nonny! _Thomas Dekker._ IF YOU CAN'T GO OVER OR UNDER, GO ROUND Often the straight road to the thing we desire is blocked. We should not then weakly give over our purpose, but should set about attaining it by some indirect method. A politician knows that one way of getting a man's vote is to please the man's wife, and that one way of pleasing the wife is to kiss her baby. A baby mole got to feeling big, And wanted to show how he could dig; So he plowed along in the soft, warm dirt Till he hit something hard, and it surely hurt! A dozen stars flew out of his snout; He sat on his haunches, began to pout; Then rammed the thing again with his head-- His grandpap picked him up half dead. "Young man," he said, "though your pate is bone. You can't butt your way through solid stone. This bit of advice is good, I've found: If you can't go over or under, go round." A traveler came to a stream one day, And because it presumed to cross his way, And wouldn't turn round to suit his whim And change its course to go with him, His anger rose far more than it should, And he vowed he'd cross right where he stood. A man said there was a bridge below, But not a step would he budge or go. The current was swift and the bank was steep, But he jumped right in with a violent leap. A fisherman dragged him out half-drowned: "When you can't go over or under, go round." If you come to a place that you can't get _through,_ Or _over_ or _under_, the thing to do Is to find a way _round_ the impassable wall, Not say you'll go YOUR way or not at all. You can always get to the place you're going, If you'll set your sails as the wind is blowing. If the mountains are high, go round the valley; If the streets are blocked, go up some alley; If the parlor-car's filled, don't scorn a freight; If the front door's closed, go in the side gate. To reach your goal this advice is sound: If you can't go over or under, go round! _Joseph Morris._ THICK IS THE DARKNESS How many of us forget when the sun goes down that it will rise again! Thick is the darkness-- Sunward, O, sunward! Rough is the highway-- Onward, still onward! Dawn harbors surely East of the shadows. Facing us somewhere Spread the sweet meadows. Upward and forward! Time will restore us: Light is above us, Rest is before us. _William Ernest Henley._ THE BELLY AND THE MEMBERS (ADAPTED FROM "CORIOLANUS") No doubt the world is cursed with grafters and parasites--men who live off the body economic and give nothing substantial in return. But an appearance of uselessness is not always proof of such. We should not condemn men in ignorance. As old as Aesop is the fable of the rebellion of the other members of the body against the idle unproductiveness of the belly. In this passage the fable is used as an answer to the plebeians of Rome who have complained that the patricians are merely an encumbrance. There was a time when all the body's members Rebelled against the belly; thus accused it: That only like a gulf it did remain I' the midst o' the body, idle and unactive, Still cupboarding the viand, never bearing Like labor with the rest, where the other instruments Did see and hear, devise, instruct, walk, feel, And, mutually participant, did minister Unto the appetite and affection common Of the whole body. Note me this, good friend; Your most grave belly was deliberate, Not rash like his accusers, and thus answered: "True is it, my incorporate friends," quoth he, "That I receive the general food at first, Which you do live upon; and fit it is; Because I am the store-house and the shop Of the whole body: but, if you do remember, I send it through the rivers of your blood, Even to the court, the heart, to the seat o' the brain: And, through the cranks and offices of man, The strongest nerves and small inferior veins From me receive that natural competency Whereby they live. Though all at once cannot See what I do deliver out to each, Yet I can make my audit up, that all From me do back receive the flour of all, And leave me but the bran." What say you to 't? _William Shakespeare._ THE CELESTIAL SURGEON We may acquire the resolution to be happy by resting on a bed of roses. If that fails us, we should try a bed of nettles. If I have faltered more or less In my great task of happiness; If I have moved among my race And shown no glorious morning face; If beams from happy human eyes Have moved me not; if morning skies, Books, and my food, and summer rain Knocked on my sullen heart in vain:-- Lord, thy most pointed pleasure take And stab my spirit broad awake; Or, Lord, if too obdurate I, Choose thou, before that spirit die, A piercing pain, a killing sin, And to my dead heart run them in! _Robert Louis Stevenson._ MAN, BIRD, AND GOD Robert Bruce, despairing of his country's cause, was aroused to new hope and purpose by the sight of a spider casting its lines until at last it had one that held. In the following passage the poet, uncertain as to his own future, yet trusts the providence which guides the birds in their long and uncharted migrations. I go to prove my soul! I see my way as birds their trackless way. I shall arrive! what time, what circuit first, I ask not: but unless God send his hail Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow, In some time, his good time, I shall arrive: He guides me and the bird. In his good time! _Robert Browning._ HIS ALLY The thought of this poem is that a man's best helper may be that which gives him no direct aid at all--a sense of humor. He fought for his soul, and the stubborn fighting Tried hard his strength. "One needs seven souls for this long requiting," He said at length. "Six times have I come where my first hope jeered me And laughed me to scorn; But now I fear as I never feared me To fall forsworn. "God! when they fight upright and at me I give them back Even such blows as theirs that combat me; But now, alack! "They fight with the wiles of fiends escaping And underhand. Six times, O God, and my wounds are gaping! I--reel to stand. "Six battles' span! By this gasping breath No pantomime. Tis all that I can. I am sick unto death. And--a seventh time? "This is beyond all battles' soreness!" Then his wonder cried; For Laughter, with shield and steely harness, Stood up at his side! _William Rose Benét,_ From "Merchants from Cathay." SUBMISSION There are times when the right thing to do is to submit. There are times when the right thing is to strive, to fight. To put forth one's best effort is itself a reward. But sometimes it brings a material reward also. The frog that after falling into the churn found that it couldn't jump out and wouldn't try, was drowned. The frog that kept leaping in brave but seemingly hopeless endeavor at last churned the milk, mounted the butter for a final effort, and escaped. Submission? They have preached at that so long. As though the head bowed down would right the wrong, As though the folded hand, the coward heart Were saintly signs of souls sublimely strong; As though the man who acts the waiting part And but submits, had little wings a-start. But may I never reach that anguished plight Where I at last grow weary of the fight. Submission: "Wrong of course must ever be Because it ever was. 'Tis not for me To seek a change; to strike the maiden blow. 'Tis best to bow the head and not to see; 'Tis best to dream, that we need never know The truth. To turn our eyes away from woe." Perhaps. But ah--I pray for keener sight, And may I not grow weary of the fight. _Miriam Teichner._ A PRAYER Garibaldi, the Italian patriot, said to his men: "I do not promise you ease; I do not promise you comfort. I promise you hardship, weariness, suffering; but I promise you victory." I do not pray for peace, Nor ask that on my path The sounds of war shall shrill no more, The way be clear of wrath. But this I beg thee, Lord, Steel Thou my heart with might, And in the strife that men call life, Grant me the strength to fight. I do not pray for arms, Nor shield to cover me. What though I stand with empty hand, So it be valiantly! Spare me the coward's fear-- Questioning wrong or right: Lord, among these mine enemies, Grant me the strength to fight. I do not pray that Thou Keep me from any wound, Though I fall low from thrust and blow, Forced fighting to the ground; But give me wit to hide My hurt from all men's sight, And for my need the while I bleed, Lord, grant me strength to fight. I do not pray that Thou Shouldst grant me victory; Enough to know that from my foe I have no will to flee. Beaten and bruised and banned, Flung like a broken sword, Grant me this thing for conquering-- Let me die fighting, Lord! _Theodosia Garrison._ From "The Earth Cry." STABILITY Whom do we wish for our friends and allies? On whom would we wish to depend in a time of need? Those who are not the slaves of fortune, but have made the most of both her buffets and her rewards. Those who control their fears and rash impulses, and do not give way to sudden emotion. Amid confusion and disaster men like these will stand, as Jackson did at Bull Run, like a veritable stone wall. Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice And could of men distinguish, her election Hath sealed thee for herself; for thou hast been As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing, A man that fortune's buffets and rewards Hast ta'en with equal thanks; and bless'd are those Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger To sound what stop she please. Give me that man That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart, As I do thee. _William Shakespeare._ THE BARS OF FATE "There ain't no such beast," ejaculated a farmer as he gazed at the rhinoceros at a circus. His incredulity did not of course do away with the existence of the creature. But our incredulity about many of our difficulties will do away with them. They exist chiefly in our imaginations. I stood before the bars of Fate And bowed my head disconsolate; So high they seemed, so fierce their frown. I thought no hand could break them down. Beyond them I could hear the songs Of valiant men who marched in throngs; And joyful women, fair and free, Looked back and waved their hands to me. I did not cry "Too late! too late!" Or strive to rise, or rail at Fate, Or pray to God. My coward heart, Contented, played its foolish part. So still I sat, the tireless bee Sped o'er my head, with scorn for me, And birds who build their nests in air Beheld me, as I were not there. From twig to twig, before my face, The spiders wove their curious lace, As they a curtain fine would see Between the hindering bars and me. Then, sudden change! I heard the call Of wind and wave and waterfall; From heaven above and earth below A clear command--"ARISE AND GO!" I upward sprang in all my strength, And stretched my eager hands at length To break the bars--no bars were there; My fingers fell through empty air! _Ellen M.H. Gates._ From "To the Unborn Peoples." ULTIMATE ACT It is well to have purposes we can carry out. It is also well to have purposes so lofty that we cannot carry them out; for these latter are the mighty inner fires which warm our being at its core and without which our impulse to do even the lesser things would be feeble. I had rather cut man's purpose deeper than Achieving it be crowned as conqueror; To will divinely is to accomplish more Than a mere deed: it fills anew the wan Aspect of life with blood; it draws upon Sources beyond the common reach and lore Of mortals, to replenish at its core The God-impassioned energy of man. And herewith all the worlds of deed and thought Quicken again with meaning--pulse and thrill With Deity--that had forgot His touch. There is not any act avails so much As this invisible wedding of the will With Life--yea, though it seem to accomplish naught. _Henry Bryan Binns._ From "The Free Spirit." HE WHOM A DREAM HATH POSSESSED The man possessed by a vision is not perplexed, troubled, restricted, as the rest of us are. He wanders yet is not lost from home, sees a million dawns yet never night descending, faces death and destruction and in them finds triumph. He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no more of doubting, For mist and the blowing of winds and the mouthing of words he scorns; Not the sinuous speech of schools he hears, but a knightly shouting, And never comes darkness down, yet he greeteth a million morns. He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no more of roaming; All roads and the flowing of waves and the speediest flight he knows, But wherever his feet are set, his soul is forever homing, And going, he comes, and coming he heareth a call and goes. He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no more of sorrow, At death and the dropping of leaves and the fading of suns he smiles, For a dream remembers no past and scorns the desire of a morrow, And a dream in a sea of doom sets surely the ultimate isles. He whom a dream hath possessed treads the impalpable marches, From the dust of the day's long road he leaps to a laughing star, And the ruin of worlds that fall he views from eternal arches, And rides God's battlefield in a flashing and golden car. _Sheamus O Sheel._ From "The Lyric Year." SUCCESS As necessity is the mother of invention, strong desire is the mother of attainment. If you want a thing bad enough To go out and fight for it, Work day and night for it, Give up your time and your peace and your sleep for it If only desire of it Makes you quite mad enough Never to tire of it, Makes you hold all other things tawdry and cheap for it If life seems all empty and useless without it And all that you scheme and you dream is about it, If gladly you'll sweat for it, Fret for it, Plan for it, Lose all your terror of God or man for it, If you'll simply go after that thing that you want, With all your capacity, Strength and sagacity, Faith, hope and confidence, stern pertinacity, If neither cold poverty, famished and gaunt, Nor sickness nor pain Of body or brain Can turn you away from the thing that you want, If dogged and grim you besiege and beset it, _You'll get it!_ _Berton Braley._ From "Things As They Are." PLAY THE GAME The Duke of Wellington said that the battle of Waterloo was won on the cricket fields of Eton. English sport at its best is admirable; it asks outward triumph if possible, but far more it asks that one do his best till the very end and treat his opponent with courtesy and fairness. The spirit thus instilled at school has again and again been carried in after life into the large affairs of the nation. There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night-- Ten to make and the match to win-- A bumping pitch and a blinding light, An hour to play and the last man in. And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat Or the selfish hope of a season's fame, But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote; "Play up! Play up! And play the game!" The sand of the desert is sodden red-- Red with the wreck of a square that broke; The Gatling's jammed and the colonel dead, And the regiment's blind with dust and smoke. The river of death has brimmed his banks, And England's far and Honor a name, But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks, "Play up! Play up! And play the game!" This is the word that year by year, While in her place the School is set, Every one of her sons must hear, And none that hears it dare forget. This they all with a joyful mind Bear through life like a torch in flame, And falling, fling to the host behind-- "Play up! Play up! And play the game!" _Henry Newbolt._ From "Admirals All, and Other Verses." THE MAN WHO FRETS AT WORLDLY STRIFE "Lord, what fools these mortals be!" exclaims Puck in _A Mid-summer Night's Dream. _And well might the fairy marvel who sees folk vexing themselves over matters that nine times out of ten come to nothing. Much wiser is the man who smiles at misfortunes, even when they are real ones and affect him personally. Charles Lamb once cheerfully helped to hiss off the stage a play he himself had written. The man who frets at worldly strife Grows sallow, sour, and thin; Give us the lad whose happy life Is one perpetual grin: He, Midas-like, turns all to gold-- He smiles when others sigh, Enjoys alike the hot and cold, And laughs though wet or dry. There's fun in everything we meet,-- The greatest, worst, and best; Existence is a merry treat, And every speech a jest: * * * * * So, come what may, the man's in luck Who turns it all to glee, And laughing, cries, with honest Puck, "Good Lord! what fools ye be." _Joseph Rodman Drake._ SERENITY Calmness of mind to face anything the future may have in store is expressed in this quatrain. Here's a sigh to those who love me And a smile to those who hate; And whatever sky's above me, Here's a heart for every fate. _Lord Byron._ HERE'S HOPIN' An optimist has been described as a man who orders oysters at a restaurant and expects to find a pearl to pay the bill with. This of course is not optimism, but brazen brainlessness. Yet somehow the pearls come only to those who expect them. Year ain't been the very best;-- Purty hard by trouble pressed; But the rough way leads to rest,-- Here's hopin'! Maybe craps way short; the rills Couldn't turn the silent mills; But the light's behind the hills,-- Here's hopin'! Where we planted roses sweet Thorns come up an' pricked the feet; But this old world's hard to beat,-- Here's hopin'! P'r'aps the buildin' that we planned 'Gainst the cyclone couldn't stand; But, thank God we've got the _land_,-- Here's hopin'! Maybe flowers we hoped to save Have been scattered on a grave; But the heart's still beatin' brave,-- Here's hopin'! That we'll see the mornin' light-- That the very darkest night Can't hide heaven from our sight,-- Here's hopin'! _Frank L. Stanton._ From "The Atlanta Constitution." CLEON AND I Toward the end of the yacht race in which the _America_ won her historic cup the English monarch, who was one of the spectators, inquired: "Which boat is first?" "The _America_ seems to be first, your majesty," replied an aide. "And which is second?" asked the monarch. "Your majesty, there seems to be no second." So it is in the race for happiness. The man who is natural, who is open and kind of heart, is always first. The man who is merely rich or sheltered or proud is not even a good second. Cleon hath a million acres, ne'er a one have I; Cleon dwelleth in a palace, in a cottage I; Cleon hath a dozen fortunes, not a penny I; Yet the poorer of the twain is Cleon, and not I. Cleon, true, possesses acres, but the landscape I; Half the charm to me it yieldeth money can not buy, Cleon harbors sloth and dullness, freshening vigor I; He in velvet, I in fustian, richer man am I. Cleon is a slave to grandeur, free as thought am I; Cleon fees a score of doctors, need of none have I; Wealth-surrounded, care-environed, Cleon fears to die; Death may come, he'll find me ready, happier man am I. Cleon sees no charm in nature, in a daisy I; Cleon hears no anthems ringing in the sea and sky; Nature sings to me forever, earnest listener I; State for state, with all attendants, who would change? Not I. _Charles Mackay_. THE PESSIMIST Most of our ills and troubles are not very serious when we come to examine the realities of them. Or perhaps we expect too much. An old negro was complaining that the railroad would not pay him for his mule, which it had killed--nay, would not even give him back his rope. "What rope?" he was asked. "Why, sah," answered he, "de rope dat I tied de mule on de track wif." Nothing to do but work, Nothing to eat but food, Nothing to wear but clothes To keep one from going nude. Nothing to breathe but air Quick as a flash 'tis gone; Nowhere to fall but off, Nowhere to stand but on. Nothing to comb but hair, Nowhere to sleep but in bed, Nothing to weep but tears, Nothing to bury but dead. Nothing to sing but songs, Ah, well, alas! alack! Nowhere to go but out, Nowhere to come but back. Nothing to see but sights, Nothing to quench but thirst, Nothing to have but what we've got; Thus thro' life we are cursed. Nothing to strike but a gait; Everything moves that goes. Nothing at all but common sense Can ever withstand these woes. _Ben King_. From "Ben King's Verse." A PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED There are irritating, troublesome people about us. Of what use is it to be irritating in our turn or to add to the trouble? Most offenders have their better side. Our wisest course is to find this and upon the basis of it build up a better relationship. There's a fellow in your office Who complains and carps and whines Till you'd almost do a favor To his heirs and his assigns. But I'll tip you to a secret (And this chap's of course involved)-- He's no foeman to be fought with; He's a problem to be solved. There's a duffer in your district Whose sheer cussedness is such He has neither pride nor manners-- No, nor gumption, overmuch. 'Twould be great to up and tell him Where to go. But be resolved-- He's no foeman to be fought with, Just a problem to be solved. This old earth's (I'm sometimes thinking) One menagerie of freaks-- Folks invested with abnormal Lungs or brains or galls or beaks. But we're not just shrieking monkeys In a dim, vast cage revolved; We're not foemen to be fought with, Merely problems to be solved. _St. Clair Adams_. PROSPICE Here the poet looks forward to death. He does not ask for an easy death; he does not wish to creep past an experience which all men sooner or later must face, and which many men have faced so heroically. He has fought well in life; he wishes to make the last fight too. The poem was written shortly after the death of Mrs. Browning, and the closing lines refer to her. Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat, The mist in my face, When the snows begin, and the blasts denote I am nearing the place, The power of the night, the press of the storm, The post of the foe; Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form, Yet the strong man must go: For the journey is done and the summit attained, And the barriers fall, Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained, The reward of it all. I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more, The best and the last! I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore. And bade me creep past. No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers The heroes of old, Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears Of pain, darkness and cold. For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, The black minute's at end, And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave, Shall dwindle, shall blend, Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, Then a light, then thy breast, O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, And with God be the rest! _Robert Browning_. THE GREATNESS OF THE SOUL Geologists tell us that in the long processes of the ages mountains have been raised and leveled, continents formed and washed away. Astronomers tell us that in space are countless worlds, many of them doubtless inhabited--perhaps by creatures of a lower type than we, perhaps by creatures of a higher. The magnitude of these changes and of these worlds makes the imagination reel. But on one thing we can rely--the greatness of the human soul. On one thing we can confidently build--the men whose spirit is lofty, divine. For tho' the Giant Ages heave the hill And break the shore, and evermore Make and break, and work their will; Tho' world on world in myriad myriads roll Round us, each with different powers, And other forms of life than ours, What know we greater than the soul? On God and Godlike men we build our trust. _Alfred Tennyson_. HEINELET What sheer perseverance can accomplish, even in matters of the heart, is revealed in this little poem written in Heine's mood of mingled seriousness and gayety. He asked if she ever could love him. She answered him, no, on the spot. He asked if she ever could love him. She assured him again she could not. He asked if she ever could love him. She laughed till his blushes he hid. He asked if she ever could love him. By God, she admitted she did. _Gamaliel Bradford_. From "Shadow Verses." STAND FORTH! The human spirit can triumph over difficulties, as flowers bloom along the edge of the Alpine snow. Stand forth, my soul, and grip thy woe, Buckle the sword and face thy foe. What right hast thou to be afraid When all the universe will aid? Ten thousand rally to thy name, Horses and chariots of flame. Do others fear? Do others fail? _My soul must grapple and prevail_. My soul must scale the mountainside And with the conquering army ride-- Stand forth, my soul! Stand forth, my soul, and take command. 'Tis I, thy master, bid thee stand. Claim thou thy ground and thrust thy foe, Plead not thine enemy should go. Let others cringe! My soul is free, No hostile host can conquer me. There lives no circumstance so great Can make me yield, or doubt my fate. My soul must know what kings have known. Must reach and claim its rightful throne-- Stand forth, my soul! I ask no truce, I have no qualms, I seek no quarter and no alms. Let those who will obey the sod, My soul sprang from the living God. 'Tis I, the king, who bid thee stand; Grasp with thy hand my royal hand-- Stand forth! _Angela Morgan_. From "The Hour Has Struck." [Illustration: WALT MASON] LIONS AND ANTS Once a hunter met a lion near the hungry critter's lair, and the way that lion mauled him was decidedly unfair; but the hunter never whimpered when the surgeons, with their thread, sewed up forty-seven gashes in his mutilated head; and he showed the scars in triumph, and they gave him pleasant fame, and he always blessed the lion that had camped upon his frame. Once that hunter, absent minded, sat upon a hill of ants, and about a million bit him, and you should have seen him dance! And he used up lots of language of a deep magenta tint, and apostrophized the insects in a style unfit to print. And it's thus with worldly troubles; when the big ones come along, we serenely go to meet them, feeling valiant, bold and strong, but the weary little worries with their poisoned stings and smarts, put the lid upon our courage, make us gray, and break our hearts. _Walt Mason_. From "Walt Mason, His Book." LIFE, NOT DEATH Sometimes life is so unsatisfying that we think we should like to be rid of it. But we really are not longing for death; we are longing for more life. Whatever crazy sorrow saith, No life that breathes with human breath Has ever truly longed for death. 'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, Oh life, not death, for which we pant; More life, and fuller, that I want. _Alfred Tennyson_. THE UNMUSICAL SOLOIST In any sort of athletic contest a man who individually is good--perhaps even of the very best--may be a poor member of the team because he wishes to do all the playing himself and will not co-operate with his fellows. Every coach knows how such a man hashes the game. The same thing is true in business or in anything else where many people work together; a really capable man often fails because he hogs the center of the stage and wants to be the whole show. To seek petty, immediate triumphs instead of earning and waiting for the big, silent approval of one's own conscience and of those who understand, is a mark of inferiority. It is also a barrier to usefulness, for an egotistical man is necessarily selfish and a selfish man cannot co-operate. Music hath charms--at least it should; Even a homely voice sounds good That sings a cheerful, gladsome song That shortens the way, however long. A screechy fife, a bass drum's beat Is wonderful music to marching feet; A scratchy fiddle or banjo's thump May tickle the toes till they want to jump. But one musician fills the air With discords that jar folks everywhere. A pity it is he ever was born-- The discordant fellow who toots his own horn. He gets in the front where all can see-- "Now turn the spot-light right on me," He says, and sings in tones sonorous His own sweet halleluiah chorus. Refrain and verse are both the same-- The pronoun I or his own name. He trumpets his worth with such windy tooting That louder it sounds than cowboys shooting. This man's a nuisance wherever he goes, For the world soon tires of the chap who blows. Whether mighty in station or hoer of corn, Unwelcome's the fellow who toots his own horn. The poorest woodchopper makes the most sound; A poor cook clatters the most pans around; The rattling spoke carries least of the load; And jingling pennies pay little that's owed; A rooster crows but lays no eggs; A braggart blows but drives no pegs. He works out of harmony with any team, For others are skim milk and he is the cream. "The world," so far as he can see, "Consists of a few other folks and ME." He richly deserves to be held in scorn-- The ridiculous fellow who toots his own horn. _Joseph Morris_. ON DOWN THE ROAD Hazlitt said that the defeat of the Whigs could be read in the shifting and irresolute countenance of Charles James Fox, and the triumph of the Tories in Pitt's "aspiring nose." The empires of the Montezumas are conquered by men who, like Cortez, risk everything in the enterprise and make retreat impossible by burning their ships behind them. Hold to the course, though the storms are about you; Stick to the road where the banner still flies; Fate and his legions are ready to rout you-- Give 'em both barrels--and aim for their eyes. Life's not a rose bed, a dream or a bubble, A living in clover beneath cloudless skies; And Fate hates a fighter who's looking for trouble, So give 'im both barrels--and shoot for the eyes. Fame never comes to the loafers and sitters, Life's full of knots in a shifting disguise; Fate only picks on the cowards and quitters, So give 'em both barrels--and aim for the eyes. _Grantland Rice_. From "The Sportlight." MEETIN' TROUBLE Some students of biology planned a trick on their professor. They took the head of one beetle, the body of another of a totally different species, the wings of a third, the legs of a fourth. These members they carefully pasted together. Then they asked the professor what kind of bug the creature was. He answered promptly, "A humbug." Just such a monstrosity is trouble--especially future trouble. Some things about it are real, but the whole combined menace is only an illusion, not a thing which actually exists at all. Face the trouble itself; give no heed to that idea of it which invests it with a hundred dire calamities. Trouble in the distance seems all-fired big-- Sorter makes you shiver when you look at it a-comin'; Makes you wanter edge aside, er hide, er take a swig Of somethin' that is sure to set your worried head a-hummin'. Trouble in the distance is a mighty skeery feller-- But wait until it reaches you afore you start to beller! Trouble standin' in th' road and frownin' at you, black, Makes you feel like takin' to the weeds along the way; Wish to goodness you could turn and hump yerself straight back; Know 'twill be awful when he gets you close at bay! Trouble standin' in the road is bound to make you shy-- But wait until it reaches you afore you start to cry! Trouble face to face with you ain't pleasant, but you'll find That it ain't one-ha'f as big as fust it seemed to be; Stand up straight and bluff it out! Say, "I gotter a mind To shake my fist and skeer you off--you don't belong ter me!" Trouble face to face with you? Though you mayn't feel gay, Laugh at it as if you wuz--and it'll sneak away! _Everard Jack Appleton_. From "The Quiet Courage." PRESS ON The spirit that has tamed this continent is the spirit which says, "Press on." It appeals, not so much to men in the mass, as to individuals. There is only one way for mankind to go forward. Each individual must be determined that, come what will, he will never quail or recede. Press on! Surmount the rocky steps, Climb boldly o'er the torrent's arch; He fails alone who feebly creeps, He wins who dares the hero's march. Be thou a hero! Let thy might Tramp on eternal snows its way, And through the ebon walls of night Hew down a passage unto day. Press on! If once and twice thy feet Slip back and stumble, harder try; From him who never dreads to meet Danger and death they're sure to fly. To coward ranks the bullet speeds, While on their breasts who never quail, Gleams, guardian of chivalric deeds, Bright courage like a coat of mail. Press on! If Fortune play thee false To-day, to-morrow she'll be true; Whom now she sinks she now exalts, Taking old gifts and granting new, The wisdom of the present hour Makes up the follies past and gone; To weakness strength succeeds, and power From frailty springs! Press on, press on! _Park Benjamin_. MY CREED We all have a philosophy of life, whether or not we formulate it. Does it end in self, or does it include our relations and our duties to our fellows? General William Booth of the Salvation Army was once asked to send a Christmas greeting to his forces throughout the world. His life had been spent in unselfish service; over the cable he sent but one word--OTHERS. This is my creed: To do some good, To bear my ills without complaining, To press on as a brave man should For honors that are worth the gaining; To seek no profits where I may, By winning them, bring grief to others; To do some service day by day In helping on my toiling brothers This is my creed: To close my eyes To little faults of those around me; To strive to be when each day dies Some better than the morning found me; To ask for no unearned applause, To cross no river until I reach it; To see the merit of the cause Before I follow those who preach it. This is my creed: To try to shun The sloughs in which the foolish wallow; To lead where I may be the one Whom weaker men should choose to follow. To keep my standards always high, To find my task and always do it; This is my creed--I wish that I Could learn to shape my action to it. _S.E. Kiser._ CO-OPERATION "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately," Benjamin Franklin is reported to have said at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It ain't the guns nor armament, Nor funds that they can pay, But the close co-operation, That makes them win the day. It ain't the individual, Nor the army as a whole, But the everlasting team-work Of every bloomin' soul. _J. Mason Knox_. THE NOBLE NATURE There is a deceptive glamour about mere bigness. Quality may accompany quantity, but it need not. In fact good things are usually done up in small parcels. "I could eat you at a mouthful," roared a bulky opponent to the small and sickly Alexander H. Stephens. "If you did," replied Stephens quietly, "you'd have more brains in your belly than ever you had in your head." It is not growing like a tree In bulk, doth make Man better be; Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere: A lily of a day Is fairer far in May, Although it fall and die that night-- It was the plant and flower of Light. In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures life may perfect be. _Ben Jonson_. DAYS OF CHEER Edison says that genius is two parts inspiration, ninety-eight parts perspiration. So happiness is two parts circumstance, ninety-eight parts mental attitude. "Feelin' fine," he used to say, Come a clear or cloudy day, Wave his hand, an' shed a smile, Keepin' sunny all th' while. Never let no bugbears grim Git a wrastle-holt o' him, Kep' a-smilin' rain or shine, Tell you he was "feelin' fine!" "Feelin' fine," he used to say Wave his hand an' go his way. Never had no time to lose So he said, fighting blues. Had a twinkle in his eye Always when a-goin' by, Sort o' smile up into mine, Tell me he was "feelin' fine!" "Feelin' fine," he'd allus say, An' th' sunshine seemed to stay Close by him, or else he shone With some sunshine of his own. Didn't seem no clouds could dim Any happiness for him, Allus seemed to have a line Out f'r gladness--"feelin' fine!" "Feelin' fine," I've heard him say Half a dozen times a day, An' as many times I knowed He was bearin' up a load. But he never let no grim Troubles git much holt on him, Kep' his spirits jest like wine, Bubblin' up an' "feelin' fine!" "Feelin' fine"--I hope he'll stay All his three score that-a-way, Lettin' his demeanor be Sech as you could have or me Ef we tried, an' went along Spillin' little drops o' song, Lettin' rosebuds sort o' twine O'er th' thorns and "feelin' fine." _James W. Foley_. From "Tales of the Trail." DE SUNFLOWER AIN'T DE DAISY "Know yourself," said the Greeks. "Be yourself," bade Marcus Aurelius. "Give yourself," taught the Master. Though the third precept is the noblest, the first and second are admirable also. The second is violated on all hands. Yet to be what nature planned us--to develop our own natural selves--is better than to copy those who are wittier or wiser or otherwise better endowed than we. Genuineness should always be preferred to imitation. De sunflower ain't de daisy, and de melon ain't de rose; Why is dey all so crazy to be sumfin else dat grows? Jess stick to de place yo're planted, and do de bes yo knows; Be de sunflower or de daisy, de melon or de rose. Don't be what yo ain't, jess yo be what yo is, If yo am not what yo are den yo is not what you is, If yo're jess a little tadpole, don't yo try to be de frog; If yo are de tail, don't yo try to wag de dawg. Pass de plate if yo can't exhawt and preach; If yo're jess a little pebble, don't yo try to be de beach; When a man is what he isn't, den he isn't what he is, An' as sure as I'm talking, he's a-gwine to get his. _Anonymous_. THE DAFFODILS The poet in lonely mood came suddenly upon a host of daffodils and was thrilled by their joyous beauty. But delightful as the immediate scene was, it was by no means the best part of his experience. For long afterwards, when he least expected it, memory brought back the flowers to the eye of his spirit, filled his solitary moments with thoughts of past happiness, and took him once more (so to speak) into the free open air and the sunshine. Just so for us the memory of happy sights we have seen comes back again to bring us pleasure. I wander'd lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden daffodils, Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretch'd in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced, but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:-- A Poet could not but be gay In such a jocund company! I gazed--and gazed--but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought; For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. _William Wordsworth._ [Illustration: FRANK L. STANTON] A LITTLE THANKFUL SONG No man is without a reason to be thankful. If he lacks gratitude, the fault lies at least partly with himself. For what are we thankful for? For this: For the breath and the sunlight of life For the love of the child, and the kiss On the lips of the mother and wife. For roses entwining, For bud and for bloom, And hopes that are shining Like stars in the gloom. For what are we thankful for? For this: The strength and the patience of toil; For ever the dreams that are bliss-- The hope of the seed in the soil. For souls that are whiter From day unto day; And lives that are brighter From going God's way. For what are we thankful for? For all: The sunlight--the shadow--the song; The blossoms may wither and fall, But the world moves in music along! For simple, sweet living, (Tis love that doth teach it) A heaven forgiving And faith that can reach it! _Frank L. Stanton._ From "The Atlanta Constitution." TWO RAINDROPS (A FABLE) An egotist is not only selfish; he is usually ridiculous as well, for he sets us to wondering as to any possible ground for his exalted opinion of himself. The real workers do not emphasize their superiority to other people, do not even emphasize the differences, but are grateful that they may share in humanity's privilege of rendering service. Two little raindrops were born in a shower, And one was so pompously proud of his power, He got in his head an extravagant notion He'd hustle right off and swallow the ocean. A blade of grass that grew by the brook Called for a drink, but no notice he took Of such trifling things. He must hurry to be Not a mere raindrop, but the whole sea. A stranded ship needed water to float, But he could not bother to help a boat. He leaped in the sea with a puff and a blare-- And nobody even knew he was there! But the other drop as along it went Found the work to do for which it was sent: It refreshed the lily that drooped its head, And bathed the grass that was almost dead. It got under the ships and helped them along, And all the while sang a cheerful song. It worked every step of the way it went, Bringing joy to others, to itself content. At last it came to its journey's end, And welcomed the sea as an old-time friend. "An ocean," it said, "there could not be Except for the millions of drops like me." _Joseph Morris,_ MY WAGE We may as well aim high as low, ask much as little. The world will not miss what it gives us, and our reward will largely be governed by our demands. I bargained with Life for a penny, And Life would pay no more, However I begged at evening When I counted my scanty store; For Life is a just employer, He gives you what you ask, But once you have set the wages, Why, you must bear the task. I worked for a menial's hire, Only to learn, dismayed, That any wage I had asked of Life, Life would have paid. _Jessie B. Rittenhouse._ From "The Door of Dreams." THE GIFT "Trust thyself," says Emerson; "every heart vibrates to that iron string." This is wholesome and inspiring advice, but there is, as always, another side to the question. Many a man falls into absurdities and mistakes because he cannot get outside of himself and look at himself from other people's eyes. We should cultivate the ability to see everything, including ourselves, from more than one standpoint. O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae mony a blunder free us, And foolish notion; What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us, And ev'n devotion! _Robert Burns._ PROMETHEUS UNBOUND In the poem from which this excerpt is taken, Prometheus the Titan has been cruelly tortured for opposing the malignant will of Jupiter. In the end Prometheus wins a complete outward victory. Better still, by his steadfastness and high purpose he has won a great inward triumph. The spirit that has actuated him and the nature of his achievement are expressed in the following lines. To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory. _Percy Bysshe Shelley._ VICTORY IN DEFEAT The great, radiant souls of earth--the Davids, the Shakespeares, the Lincolns--know grief and affliction as well as joy and triumph. But adversity is never to them mere adversity; it "Doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange"; and in the crucible of character their suffering itself is transmuted into song. Defeat may serve as well as victory To shake the soul and let the glory out. When the great oak is straining in the wind, The boughs drink in new beauty, and the trunk Sends down a deeper root on the windward side. Only the soul that knows the mighty grief Can know the mighty rapture. Sorrows come To stretch out spaces in the heart for joy. _Edwin Markham._ From "The Shoes of Happiness, and Other Poems." THE RICHER MINES No man is so poor but that he is a stockholder. Yet many a man has no real riches; his stocks draw dividends in dollars and cents only. When it comes to buying shares In the mines of earth, May I join the millionaires Who are rich in mirth. Let me have a heavy stake In fresh mountain air-- I will promise now to take All that you can spare. When you're setting up your claim In the Mines of Glee, Don't forget to use my name-- You can count on me. Nothing better can be won, Freer from alloy, Than a bouncing claim in "Con- Solidated Joy." You can have your Copper Stocks Gold and tin and coal-- What I'd have within my box Has to do with Soul. _John Kendrick Bangs._ From "Songs of Cheer." BRAVE LIFE To be absolutely without physical fear may not be the highest courage; to shrink and quake, and yet stand at one's post, may be braver still. So of success. It lies less in the attainment of some external end than in holding yourself to your purposes and ideals; for out of high loyalty and effort comes that intangible thing called character, which is no mere symbol of success, but success itself. I do not know what I shall find on out beyond the final fight; I do not know what I shall meet beyond the last barrage of night; Nor do I care--but this I know--if I but serve within the fold And play the game--I'll be prepared for all the endless years may hold. Life is a training camp at best for what may wait beyond the years; A training camp of toiling days and nights that lean to dreams and tears; But each may come upon the goal, and build his soul above all Fate By holding an unbroken faith and taking Courage for a mate. Is not the fight itself enough that man must look to some behest? Wherein does Failure miss Success if all engaged but do their best? Where does the Victor's cry come in for wreath of fame or laureled brow If one he vanquished fought as well as weaker muscle would allow? If my opponent in the fray should prove to be a stronger foe-- Not of his making--but because the Destinies ordained it so; If he should win--and I should lose--although I did my utmost part, Is my reward the less than his if he should strive with equal heart? Brave Life, I hold, is something more than driving upward to the peak; Than smashing madly through the strong, and crashing onward through the weak; I hold the man who makes his fight against the raw game's crushing odds Is braver than his brothers are who hold the favor of the gods. On by the sky line, faint and vague, in that Far Country all must know, No laurel crown of fame may wait beyond the sunset's glow; But life has given me the chance to train and serve within the fold, To meet the test--and be prepared for all the endless years may hold. _Grantland Rice._ From "The Sportlight." A SONG OF TO-MORROW A night's sleep and a new day--these are excellent things to look forward to when one is weary or in trouble. Li'l bit er trouble, Honey, fer terday; Yander come Termorrer-- Shine it all away! Rainy Sky is sayin', "Dis'll never do! Fetch dem rainbow ribbons, En I'll dress in blue!" _Frank L. Stanton._ From "The Atlanta Constitution." THE GLAD SONG Gladness begins with the first person, with you. But it may spread far, like the ripples when you toss a stone in the water. Sing a song, sing a song, Ring the glad-bells all along; Smile at him who frowns at you, He will smile and then they're two. Laugh a bit, laugh a bit, Folks will soon be catching it, Can't resist a happy face; World will be a merry place. Laugh a Bit and Sing a Song, Where they are there's nothing wrong; Joy will dance the whole world through, But it must begin with you. _Joseph Morris._ PAINTING THE LILY Many people are not content to let well enough alone, but spoil what they have by striving for an unnecessary and foolish improvement. If they have a rich title, they try to ornament it still further; if they have refined gold, they try to gild it; if they have a lily, they try to paint it into still purer color. Therefore, to be possessed with double pomp, To guard a title that was rich before, To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, Is wasteful and ridiculous excess. _William Shakespeare._ A PRETTY GOOD WORLD The world has its faults, but few of us would give it up till we have to. Pretty good world if you take it all round-- Pretty good world, good people! Better be on than under the ground-- Pretty good world, good people! Better be here where the skies are as blue As the eyes of your sweetheart a-smilin' at you-- Better than lyin' 'neath daisies and dew-- Pretty good world, good people! Pretty good world with its hopes and its fears-- Pretty good world, good people! Sun twinkles bright through the rain of its tears-- Pretty good world, good people! Better be here, in the pathway you know-- Where the thorn's in the garden where sweet roses grow, Than to rest where you feel not the fall o' the snow-- Pretty good world, good people! Pretty good world! Let us sing it that way-- Pretty good world, good people! Make up your mind that you're in it to stay-- At least for a season, good people! Pretty good world, with its dark and its bright-- Pretty good world, with its love and its light; Sing it that way till you whisper, "Good-night!"-- Pretty good world, good people! _Frank L. Stanton._ From "The Atlanta Constitution." ODE TO DUTY In the first stanza the poet hails duty as coming from God. It is a light to guide us and a rod to check. To obey it does not lead to victory; to obey it _is_ victory--is to live by a high, noble law. In the second stanza he admits that some people do right without driving themselves to it--do it by instinct and "the genial sense of youth." In stanza 3 he looks forward to a time when all people will be thus blessed, but he thinks that as yet it is unsafe for most of us to lose touch completely with stern, commanding duty. In stanzas 4 and 5 he states that he himself has been too impatient of control, has wearied himself by changing from one desire to another, and now wishes to regulate his life by some great abiding principle. In stanza 6 he declares that duty, though stern, is benignant; the flowers bloom in obedience to it, and the stars keep their places. In the final stanza he dedicates his life to its service. Stern Daughter of the Voice of God! O Duty! if that name thou love Who art a light to guide, a rod To check the erring, and reprove; Thou who art victory and law When empty terrors overawe; From vain temptations dost set free, And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity! There are who ask not if thine eye Be on them; who, in love and truth Where no misgiving is, rely Upon the genial sense of youth: Glad hearts! without reproach or blot, Who do thy work, and know it not: Oh! if through confidence misplaced They fail, thy saving arms, dread Power! around them cast. Serene will be our days and bright And happy will our nature be When love is an unerring light, And joy its own security. And they a blissful course may hold Ev'n now, who, not unwisely bold, Live in the spirit of this creed; Yet seek thy firm support, according to their need. I, loving freedom, and untried, No sport of every random gust, Yet being to myself a guide, Too blindly have reposed my trust: And oft, when in my heart was heard Thy timely mandate, I deferr'd The task, in smoother walks to stray; But thee I now would serve more strictly, if I may. Through no disturbance of my soul Or strong compunction in me wrought, I supplicate for thy control, But in the quietness of thought: Me this uncharter'd freedom tires; I feel the weight of chance-desires: My hopes no more must change their name; I long for a repose that ever is the same. Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear The Godhead's most benignant grace, Nor know we anything so fair As is the smile upon thy face; Flowers laugh before thee on their beds, And fragrance in thy footing treads; Thou dost preserve the Stars from wrong; And the most ancient Heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong. To humbler functions, awful Power! I call thee: I myself commend Unto thy guidance from this hour; Oh let my weakness have an end! Give unto me, made lowly wise, The spirit of self-sacrifice; The confidence of reason give; And in the light of truth thy Bondman let me live. _William Wordsworth._ THE SYNDICATED SMILE A ready and sincere friendliness is the one thing we can show to every human being, whether we know him or not. The world is full of perplexed and lonely people whom even a smile or a kind look will help. Yet that which is so easy to give we too often reserve for a few, and those perhaps the least appreciative. I knew a girl who had a beau And his name wasn't Adams-- No child of hers would ever call The present writer "daddums." I didn't love the girl, but still I found her most beguiling; And so did all the other chaps-- She did it with her smiling. "I'm not a one-man girl," she said-- "Of smiles my beau first took his; But some are left; I'll syndicate And pass them round like cookies." That syndicated smile! When trouble seemed the most in style, It heartened us-- That indicated, Syndicated Smile. It's not enough to please your boss Or fawn round folks with bankrolls; Be just as friendly to the guys Whose homespun round their shank rolls. The best investment in the world Is goodwill, twenty carat; It costs you nothing, brings returns; So get yours out and air it. A niggard of good nature cheats Himself and wrongs his fellows. You'd serve mankind? Then be less close With friendly nods and helloes. The syndicated smile! If you have kept it all the while, You've vindicated The indicated, Syndicated Smile. _St. Clair Adams._ FAIRY SONG The great beneficent forces of life are not exhausted when once used, but are recurrent. The sun rises afresh each new day. Once a year the springtime returns and "God renews His ancient rapture." So it is with our joys. They do not stay by us constantly; they pass from us and are gone; but we need not trouble ourselves--they are sure to come back. Shed no tear! O shed no tear! The flower will bloom another year. Weep no more! O weep no more! Young buds sleep in the root's white core. Dry your eyes! O dry your eyes, For I was taught in Paradise To ease my breast of melodies-- Shed no tear. Overhead! look overhead, 'Mong the blossoms white and red-- Look up, look up--I flutter now On this flush pomegranate bough. See me! 'tis this silvery bill Ever cures the good man's ill. Shed no tear! O shed no tear! The flowers will bloom another year. Adieu, adieu--I fly, adieu, I vanish in the heaven's blue-- Adieu, adieu! _John Keats._ PRAISE THE GENEROUS GODS FOR GIVING Some of us find joy in toil, some in art, some in the open air and the sunshine. All of us find it in simply being alive. Life is the gift no creature in his right mind would part with. As Milton asks, "For who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, These thoughts that wander through eternity, To perish rather, swallowed up and lost In the wide womb of uncreated night, Devoid of sense and motion?" Praise the generous gods for giving In a world of wrath and strife, With a little time for living, Unto all the joy of life. At whatever source we drink it, Art or love or faith or wine, In whatever terms we think it, It is common and divine. Praise the high gods, for in giving This to man, and this alone, They have made his chance of living Shine the equal of their own. _William Ernest Henley._ COWARDS We might as well accept the inevitable as the inevitable. There is no escaping death or taxes. Cowards die many times before their deaths: The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come, when it will come. _William Shakespeare._ THE WORD The Cumaean sibyl offered Tarquin the Proud nine books for what seemed an exorbitant sum. He refused. She burned three of the books, and placed the same price on the six as on the original nine. Again he refused. She burned three more books, and offered the remainder for the sum she first named. This time Tarquin accepted. The books were found to contain prophecies and invaluable directions regarding Roman policy, but alas, they were no longer complete. So it is with joy. To take it now is to get it in its entirety. To defer until some other occasion is to get less of it--at the same cost. Today, whatever may annoy, The word for it is Joy, just simple joy: The joy of life; The joy of children and of wife; The joy of bright blue skies; The joy of rain; the glad surprise Of twinkling stars that shine at night; The joy of winged things upon their flight; The joy of noonday, and the tried, True joyousness of eventide; The joy of labor and of mirth; The joy of air, and sea, and earth-- The countless joys that ever flow from Him Whose vast beneficence doth dim The lustrous light of day, And lavish gifts divine upon our way. Whatever there be of Sorrow I'll put off till To-morrow, And when To-morrow comes, why, then 'Twill be To-day, and Joy again! _John Kendrick Bangs._ From "The Atlantic Monthly." ENVOI Franklin K. Lane stipulated that when he died his body should be cremated and the ashes scattered from El Capitan over the beautiful Yosemite Valley. He thus symbolized what many of us feel--the unity of our deeper and finer selves with the eternal life and loveliness of nature. Oh seek me not within a tomb; Thou shalt not find me in the clay! I pierce a little wall of gloom To mingle with the Day! I brothered with the things that pass, Poor giddy Joy and puckered Grief; I go to brother with the Grass And with the sunning Leaf. Not Death can sheathe me in a shroud; A joy-sword whetted keen with pain, I join the armies of the Cloud The Lightning and the Rain. Oh subtle in the sap athrill, Athletic in the glad uplift, A portion of the Cosmic Will, I pierce the planet-drift. My God and I shall interknit As rain and Ocean, breath and Air; And oh, the luring thought of it Is prayer! _John G. Neihardt_ From "The Quest" (collected lyrics). JAW We all like a firm, straightforward chin provided it is not ruled by a wagging, gossiping tongue. This fellow's jaw is built so frail That you could break it like a weed; That fellow's chin retreats until You'd think it in a wild stampede. Defects like these but show how soon The purpose droops, the spirits flag-- We like a jaw that's made of steel, Just so it's not inclined to wag. The lower jaw should be as strong And changeless as a granite cliff; Its very look should be a _thus_ And not a _maybe, somehow, if;_ Should mark a soul so resolute It will not fear or cease or lag-- We need a rugged mandible, Provided we don't let it wag. Yes, with endurance, let it too A tender modesty possess; And to its grim strength let it add The gracious power of gentleness. Above all, let its might of deeds Induce no loud or vulgar brag-- We like to see a good, firm jaw, But do not wish to hear it wag. _St. Clair Adams._ THE CONQUEROR Age is wise; it attempts nothing impossible. Youth is wiser; it believes nothing impossible. Age conserves more; youth accomplishes more. Between the two is an irreconcilable difference. "Crabbéd age and youth Cannot live together," as Shakespeare says. And the sympathy of the world is with youth. It is better so; for though many cherished things would be saved from sacrifice if rash immaturity were more often checked, progress would be stayed if life were dominated by sterile and repressive age. Room for me, graybeards, room, make room! Menace me not with your eyes of gloom; Jostle me not from the place I seek, For my arms are strong and your own are weak, And if my plea to you be denied I'll thrust your wearying forms aside. Pity you? Yes, but I cannot stay; I am the spirit of Youth; make way! Room for me, timid ones, room, make room! Little I care for your fret and fume-- I laugh at sorrow and jeer defeat; To doubt and doubters I give the lie, And fear is stilled as I swagger by, And life's a fight and I seek the fray; I am the spirit of Youth; make way! Room for me, mighty ones, room, make room! I fear no power and dread no doom; And you who curse me and you who bless Alike must bow to my dauntlessness. I topple the king from his golden throne, I smash old idols of brass and stone, I am not hampered by yesterday. Room for the spirit of Youth; make way! Room for me, all of you, make me room! Where the rifles clash and the cannon boom, Where glory beckons or love or fame I plunge me heedlessly in the game. The old, the wary, the wise, the great, They cannot stay me, for I am Fate, The brave young master of all good play, I am the spirit of Youth; make way! _Berton Braley._ From "Things As They Are." [Illustration: BERTON BRALEY] IS IT RAINING, LITTLE FLOWER? "Sweet are the uses of adversity." They bring us benefits not otherwise to be had. To mope because of them is foolish. Showers alternate with sunshine, sorrows with pleasure, pain and weariness with comfort and rest; but accept the one as necessary to the other, and you will enjoy both. Is it raining, little flower? Be glad of rain. Too much sun would wither thee, 'Twill shine again. The sky is very black, 'tis true, But just behind it shines The blue. Art thou weary, tender heart? Be glad of pain; In sorrow the sweetest things will grow As flowers in the rain. God watches and thou wilt have sun When clouds their perfect work Have done. _Anonymous_. GRADATIM In the old fable the tortoise won the race from the hare, not by a single burst of speed, but by plodding on steadily, tirelessly. In the Civil War it was found that Lee's army could not be overwhelmed in a single battle, but one Federal general perceived that it could be worn down by time and the pressure of numbers. "I propose," said Grant, "to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." It took more than a summer; it took nearly a year--but he did it. In the moral realm likewise, "All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare." Character is not attained over-night. The only way to develop moral muscles is to exercise them patiently and long. Heaven is not reached at a single bound; But we build the ladder by which we rise From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, And we mount to its summit, round by round. I count this thing to be grandly true: That a noble deed is a step towards God,-- Lifting the soul from the common clod To a purer air and a broader view. We rise by the things that are under feet; By what we have mastered of good and gain; By the pride deposed and the passion slain, And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet. We hope, we aspire, we resolve, we trust, When the morning calls us to life and light, But our hearts grow weary, and, ere the night, Our lives are trailing the sordid dust. We hope, we resolve, we aspire, we pray, And we think that we mount the air on wings Beyond the recall of sensual things, While our feet still cling to the heavy clay. Wings for the angels, but feet for men! We may borrow the wings to find the way-- We may hope, and resolve, and aspire, and pray; But our feet must rise, or we fall again. Only in dreams is a ladder thrown From the weary earth to the sapphire walls; But the dreams depart, and the vision falls, And the sleeper wakes on his pillow of stone. Heaven is not reached at a single bound; But we build the ladder by which we rise From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, And we mount to its summit, round by round. _J.G. Holland._ From "Complete Poetical Writings." RULES FOR THE ROAD Ardor of sinew and spirit--what else do we need to make our journey prosperous and happy? Stand straight: Step firmly, throw your weight: The heaven is high above your head, The good gray road is faithful to your tread. Be strong: Sing to your heart a battle song: Though hidden foemen lie in wait, Something is in you that can smile at Fate. Press through: Nothing can harm if you are true. And when the night comes, rest: The earth is friendly as a mother's breast. _Edwin Markham._ From "The Gates of Paradise, and Other Poems." LIFE "What is life?" we ask. "Just one darned thing after another," the cynic replies. Yes, a multiplicity of forces and interests, and each of them, even the disagreeable, may be of real help to us. It's good for a dog, says a shrewd philosopher, to be pestered with fleas; it keeps him from thinking too much about being a dog. What's life? A story or a song; A race on any track; A gay adventure, short or long, A puzzling nut to crack; A grinding task; a pleasant stroll; A climb; a slide down hill; A constant striving for a goal; A cake; a bitter pill; A pit where fortune flouts or stings; A playground full of fun;-- With many any of these things; With others all in one. What's life? To love the things we see; The hills that touch the skies; The smiling sea; the laughing lea; The light in woman's eyes; To work and love the work we do; To play a game that's square; To grin a bit when feeling blue; With friends our joys to share; To smile, though games be lost or won; To earn our daily bread;-- And when at last the day is done To tumble into bed. _Griffith Alexander,_ From "The Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger." HOE YOUR ROW We must not dream of harvests and neglect the toil that produces them. De fiel's 'll soon be hummin' Roun' de country high en low; De harves' is a-comin': Hoe yo' row! Hoe yo' row! No time now fer de sleeper; It's "Git up now, en go!" It's de sower makes de reaper; Hoe yo' row! Hoe yo' row! It's sweet de birds is singin' De songs you lovin' so; But de harves' bells is ringin'; Hoe yo' row! Hoe yo' row! _Frank L. Stanton._ From "The Atlanta Constitution." BORROWING TROUBLE It is bad enough to cry over spilt milk. But many of us do worse; we cry over milk that we think is going to be spilt. In line 1 sic=such; 2, a'=all; 3, nae=no; 4, enow=enough; 5, hae=have; sturt=fret, trouble. But human bodies are sic fools, For a' their colleges an' schools, That when nae real ills perplex them, They mak enow themsels to vex them; An' ay the less they hae to sturt them, In like proportion less will hurt them. _Robert Burns_ UNDISMAYED A convict explained to a visitor why he had been sent to the penitentiary. "They can't put you in here for that!" the visitor exclaimed. "They did," replied the convict. So smiling seems a futile thing. Apparently it cannot get us anywhere--but it does. He came up smilin'--used to say He made his fortune that-a-way; He had hard luck a-plenty, too, But settled down an' fought her through; An' every time he got a jolt He jist took on a tighter holt, Slipped back some when he tried to climb But came up smilin' every time. He came up smilin'--used to git His share o' knocks, but he had grit, An' if they hurt he didn't set Around th' grocery store an' fret. He jist grabbed Fortune by th' hair An' hung on till he got his share. He had th' grit in him to stay An' come up smilin' every day. He jist gripped hard an' all alone Like a set bull-pup with a bone, An' if he got shook loose, why then He got up an' grabbed holt again. He didn't have no time, he'd say, To bother about yesterday, An' when there was a prize to win He came up smilin' an' pitched in. He came up smilin'--good fer him! He had th' grit an' pluck an' vim, So he's on Easy Street, an' durned If I don't think his luck is earned! No matter if he lost sometimes, He's got th' stuff in him that climbs, An' when his chance was mighty slim, He came up smilin'--good fer him! _James W. Foley._ From "Tales of the Trail." A HERO If defeat strengthens and sweetens character, it is not defeat at all, but victory. He sang of joy; whate'er he knew of sadness He kept for his own heart's peculiar share: So well he sang, the world imagined gladness To be sole tenant there. For dreams were his, and in the dawn's fair shining, His spirit soared beyond the mounting lark; But from his lips no accent of repining Fell when the days grew dark; And though contending long dread Fate to master, He failed at last her enmity to cheat, He turned with such a smile to face disaster That he sublimed defeat. _Florence Earle Coates._ From "Poems." WILL "I can resist anything but temptation," says a character in one of Oscar Wilde's plays. Too many of us have exactly this strength of will. We perhaps do not fall into gross crime, but because of our flabby resolution our lives become purposeless, negative, negligible. No one would miss us in particular if we were out of the way. I O well for him whose will is strong! He suffers, but he will not suffer long; He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong. For him nor moves the loud world's random mock; Nor all Calamity's hugest waves confound, Who seems a promontory of rock, That, compass'd round with turbulent sound, In middle ocean meets the surging shock, Tempest-buffeted, citadel-crown'd. II But ill for him who, bettering not with time, Corrupts the strength of heaven-descended Will, And ever weaker grows thro' acted crime, Or seeming-genial venial fault, Recurring and suggesting still! He seems as one whose footsteps halt, Toiling in immeasurable sand, And o'er a weary sultry land, Far beneath a blazing vault, Sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill The city sparkles like a grain of salt. _Alfred Tennyson._ [Illustration: EVERARD JACK APPLETON] FABLE To be impressed by a thing merely because it is big is a human failing. Yet our standard of judgment would be truer if we considered, instead, the success of that thing in performing its own particular task. And quality is better than quantity. The lioness in the old fable was being taunted because she bore only one offspring at a time, not a numerous litter. "It is true," she admitted; "but that one is a lion." The mountain and the squirrel Had a quarrel, And the former called the latter "Little Prig"; Bun replied, "You are doubtless very big; But all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together, To make up a year And a sphere. And I think it no disgrace To occupy my place. If I'm not so large as you, You are not so small as I, And not half so spry. I'll not deny you make A very pretty squirrel track; Talents differ; all is well and wisely put; If I cannot carry forests on my back, Neither can you crack a nut." _Ralph Waldo Emerson._ DUTY When Duty comes a-knocking at your gate, Welcome him in, for if you bid him wait, He will depart only to come once more And bring seven other duties to your door. _Edwin Markham._ From "The Gates of Paradise, and Other Poems." PRAYER FOR PAIN "The thief steals from himself. The swindler swindles himself," says Emerson. Apparent gain may be actual loss; material escape may be spiritual imprisonment. Any one may idle; but the men who are not content unless they climb the unscalable mountains or cross the uncharted seas or bear the burdens that others shrink from, are the ones who keep the heritage of the spirit undiminished. I do not pray for peace nor ease, Nor truce from sorrow: No suppliant on servile knees Begs here against to-morrow! Lean flame against lean flame we flash, O, Fates that meet me fair; Blue steel against blue steel we clash-- Lay on, and I shall dare! But Thou of deeps the awful Deep, Thou Breather in the clay, Grant this my only prayer--Oh keep My soul from turning gray! For until now, whatever wrought Against my sweet desires, My days were smitten harps strung taut, My nights were slumbrous lyres. And howsoe'er the hard blow rang Upon my battered shield, Some lark-like, soaring spirit sang Above my battlefield. And through my soul of stormy night The zigzag blue flame ran. I asked no odds--I fought my fight-- Events against a man. But now--at last--the gray mist chokes And numbs me. _Leave me pain! Oh let me feel the biting strokes That I may fight again!_ _John G. Neihardt._ From "The Quest" (collected lyrics). STEADFAST No one ever has a trouble so great that some other person has not a greater. The thought of the heroism shown by those more grievously afflicted than we, helps us to bear our own ills patiently. If I can help another bear an ill By bearing mine with somewhat of good grace-- Can take Fate's thrusts with not too long a face And help him through his trials, then I WILL! For do not braver men than I decline To bow to troubles graver, far, than mine? Pain twists this body? Yes, but it shall not Distort my soul, by all the gods that be! And when it's done its worst, Pain's victory Shall be an empty one! Whate'er my lot, My banner, ragged, but nailed to the mast, Shall fly triumphant to the very last! Others so much worse off than I have fought; Have smiled--have met defeat with unbent head They shame me into following where they led. Can I ignore the lesson they have taught? Strike hands with me! Dark is the way we go, But souls-courageous line it--that I know! _Everard Jack Appleton._ From "The Quiet Courage." IF If I were fire I'd burn the world away. If I were wind I'd turn my storms thereon, If I were water I'd soon let it drown. _Cecco Angolieri._ If I were fire I'd seek the frozen North And warm it till it blossomed fairly forth And in the sweetness of its smiling mien Resembled some soft southern garden scene. And when the winter came again I'd seek The chilling homes of lowly ones and meek And do my small but most efficient part To bring a wealth of comfort to the heart. If I were wind I'd turn my breath upon The calm-bound mariner until, anon, The eager craft on which he sailed should find The harbor blest towards which it hath inclined. And in the city streets, when summer's days Were withering the souls with scorching rays, I'd seek the fevered brow and aching eyes And take to them a touch of Paradise. If I were water it would be my whim To seek out all earth's desert places grim, And turn each arid acre to a fair Lush home of flowers and oasis rare. Resolved in dew, I'd nestle in the rose. As summer rain I'd ease the harvest woes, And where a tear to pain would be relief, A tear I'd be to kill the sting of grief. If I were gold, I'd seek the poor man's purse. I'd try to win my way into the verse Of some grand singer of Man's Brotherhood, And prove myself so pure, so fraught with good. That all the world would bless me for the cup Of happiness I'd brought for all to sup. And when at last my work of joy was o'er I'd be content to die, and be no more! _John Kendrick Bangs._ From "Songs of Cheer." THE GIFTS OF GOD Why are we never entirely satisfied? Why are we never at absolute peace or rest? Many are the answers that have been made to this question. The answer here given by the poet is that so richly is man endowed with qualities and attributes that if contentment were added to them, he would be satisfied with what he has, and would not strive for that which is higher still--the fulfilment of his spiritual cravings. When God at first made Man, Having a glass of blessings standing by; Let us (said He) pour on him all we can: Let the world's riches, which disperséd lie, Contract into a span. So strength first made a way; Then beauty flow'd, then wisdom, honor, pleasure When almost all was out, God made a stay, Perceiving that alone, of all His treasure, Rest in the bottom lay. For if I should (said He) Bestow this jewel also on My creature, He would adore My gifts instead of Me, And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature. So both should losers be. Yet let him keep the rest, But keep them with repining restlessness: Let him be rich and weary, that at least, If goodness lead him not, yet weariness May toss him to My breast. _George Herbert._ A PHILOSOPHER "The web of our life is of mingled yarn, good and ill together," says Shakespeare. It behooves us therefore to find the good and to make the best of the ill. Two men were falling from an aeroplane. "I'll bet you five dollars," said one, "that I hit the ground first." To take things as they be-- Thet's my philosophy. No use to holler, mope, or cuss-- If they was changed they might be wuss. If rain is pourin' down, An' lightnin' buzzin' roun', I ain't a-fearin' we'll be hit, But grin thet I ain't out in it. If I got deep in debt-- It hasn't happened yet-- And owed a man two dollars, Gee! Why I'd be glad it wasn't three. If some one come along, And tried to do me wrong, Why I should sort of take a whim To thank the Lord I wasn't him. I never seen a night So dark there wasn't light Somewheres about if I took care To strike a match and find out where. _John Kendrick Bangs._ From "Songs of Cheer." THE LIFE WITHOUT PASSION A person may feel deeply without shouting his emotion to the skies, or be strong without seizing occasions to exhibit his strength. In truth we distrust the power which makes too much a display of itself. Let it exert itself only to the point of securing the ends that are really necessary. Restraint, self-control are in truth more mighty than might unshackled, just as a self-possessed opponent is more dangerous than a frenzied one. Moreover, there is a moral side to the question. A good quality, if abused or allowed free sway, becomes a force for evil and does its owner more harm than if he had not possessed it in the first place. They that have power to hurt, and will do none, That do not do the thing they most do show, Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow,-- They rightly do inherit heaven's graces, And husband nature's riches from expense; They are the lords and owners of their faces, Others, but stewards of their excellence. The summer's flower is to the summer sweet, Though to itself it only live and die; But if that flower with base infection meet, The basest weed outbraves his dignity: For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. _William Shakespeare._ CHARACTER OF A HAPPY LIFE "I'd rather be right than President," said Henry Clay. It is to men who are animated by this spirit that the greatest satisfaction in life comes. For true blessedness does not lie far off and above us. It is close at hand. Booker T. Washington once told a story of a ship that had exhausted its supply of fresh water and signaled its need to a passing vessel. The reply was, "Send down your buckets where you are." Thinking there was some misunderstanding, the captain repeated his signal, only to be answered as before. This time he did as he was bidden and secured an abundance of fresh water. His ship was opposite the mouth of a mighty river which still kept its current unmingled with the waters of the ocean. How happy is he born and taught That serveth not another's will; Whose armor is his honest thought And simple truth his utmost skill! Whose passions not his masters are, Whose soul is still prepared for death, Not tied unto the world with care Of public fame or private breath; Who envies none that chance doth raise Or vice; who never understood How deepest wounds are given by praise Nor rules of state, but rules of good; Who hath his life from rumors freed, Whose conscience is his strong retreat; Whose state can neither flatterers feed, Nor ruin make accusers great; Who God doth late and early pray More of his grace than gifts to lend; And entertains the harmless day With a well-chosen book or friend; --This man is freed from servile bands Of hope to rise or fear to fall; Lord of himself, though not of lands; And having nothing, yet hath all. _Sir Henry Wotton._ ESSENTIALS The things here named are essential to a happy and successful life. They may not be the only essentials. Roll up your sleeves, lad, and begin; Disarm misfortune with a grin; Let discontent not wag your chin-- Let gratitude. Don't try to find things all askew; Don't be afraid of what is new; Nor banish as unsound, untrue, A platitude. If folks don't act as you would choose Remember life is varied; use Your common sense; don't get the blues; Show latitude. Sing though in quavering sharps and flats, Love though the folk you love are cats, Work though you're worn and weary--that's The attitude. _St. Clair Adams._ THE STONE REJECTED The story here poetically retold of the great Florentine sculptor shows how much a lofty spirit may make of unpromising material. For years it had been trampled in the street Of Florence by the drift of heedless feet-- The stone that star-touched Michael Angelo Turned to that marble loveliness we know. You mind the tale--how he was passing by When the rude marble caught his Jovian eye, That stone men had dishonored and had thrust Out to the insult of the wayside dust. He stooped to lift it from its mean estate, And bore it on his shoulder to the gate, Where all day long a hundred hammers rang. And soon his chisel round the marble sang, And suddenly the hidden angel shone: It had been waiting prisoned in the stone. Thus came the cherub with the laughing face That long has lighted up an altar-place. _Edwin Markham._ From "The Gates of Paradise, and Other Poems." GOOD DEEDS The influence of good deeds usually extends far beyond the limits we can see or trace; but as well not have the power to do them as not use it. How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world. Heaven doth with us as we with torches do; Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike As if we had them not. _William Shakespeare._ YOU MAY COUNT THAT DAY A class of little settlement girls besought Mrs. George Herbert Palmer, one insufferable summer morning, to tell them how to be happy. "I'll give you three rules," she said, "and you must keep them every day for a week. First, commit something good to memory each day. Three or four words will do, just a pretty bit of poem, or a Bible verse. Do you understand?" A girl jumped up. "I know; you want us to learn something we'd be glad to remember if we went blind." Mrs. Palmer was relieved; these children understood. She gave the three rules--memorize something good each day, see something beautiful each day, do something helpful each day. When the children reported at the end of the week, not a single day had any of them lost. But hard put to it to obey her? Indeed they had been. One girl, kept for twenty-four hours within squalid home-walls by a rain, had nevertheless seen two beautiful things--a sparrow taking a bath in the gutter, and a gleam of sunlight on a baby's hair. If you sit down at set of sun And count the acts that you have done, And, counting, find One self-denying deed, one word That eased the heart of him who heard-- One glance most kind, That fell like sunshine where it went-- Then you may count that day well spent. But if, through all the livelong day, You've cheered no heart, by yea or nay-- If, through it all You've nothing done that you can trace That brought the sunshine to one face-- No act most small That helped some soul and nothing cost-- Then count that day as worse than lost. _George Eliot_. SADNESS AND MERRIMENT (ADAPTED FROM "THE MERCHANT OF VENICE") In this passage Antonio states that he is overcome by a sadness he cannot account for. Salarino tells him that the mental attitude is everything; that mirth is as easy as gloom; that nature in her freakishness makes some men laugh at trifles until their eyes become mere slits, yet leaves others dour and unsmiling before jests that would convulse even the venerable Nestor. Gratiano maintains that Antonio is too absorbed in worldly affairs, and that he must not let his spirits grow sluggish or irritable. _ANT._ In sooth, I know not why I am so sad: It wearies me; you say it wearies you; But how I caught it, found it, or came by it, What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born, I am to learn. _Salar_. Then let's say you are sad Because you are not merry: and 'twere as easy For you to laugh and leap, and say you are merry, Because you are not sad. Now, by two-headed Janus, Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time: Some that will evermore peep through their eyes And laugh like parrots at a bag-piper, And other of such vinegar aspect That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile, Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable. _Gra_. You look not well, Signior Antonio; You have too much respect upon the world: They lose it that do buy it with much care: Believe me, you are marvelously changed. _Ant_. I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano A stage where every man must play a part, And mine a sad one. _Gra_. Let me play the fool: With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come, And let my liver rather heat with wine Than my heart cool with mortifying groans. Why should a man whose blood is warm within Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster? Sleep when he wakes, and creep into a jaundice By being peevish? Fare ye well awhile: I'll end my exhortation after dinner. _William Shakespeare._ APPRECIATION Life's a bully good game with its kicks and cuffs-- Some smile, some laugh, some bluff; Some carry a load too heavy to bear While some push on with never a care, But the load will seldom heavy be When I appreciate you and you appreciate me. He who lives by the side of the road And helps to bear his brother's load May seem to travel lone and long While the world goes by with a merry song, But the heart grows warm and sorrows flee When I appreciate you and you appreciate me. When I appreciate you and you appreciate me, The road seems short to victory; It buoys one up and calls "Come on," And days grow brighter with the dawn; There is no doubt or mystery When I appreciate you and you appreciate me. It's the greatest thought in heaven or earth-- It helps us know our fellow's worth; There'd be no wars or bitterness, No fear, no hate, no grasping; yes, It makes work play, and the careworn free When I appreciate you and you appreciate me. _William Judson Kibby,_ KEEP SWEET Even the direst catastrophes may be softened by our attitude to them. Charles II said to those who had gathered about his deathbed: "You'll pardon any little lapses, gentlemen. I've never done this thing before." Don't be foolish and get sour when things don't just come your way-- Don't you be a pampered baby and declare, "Now I won't play!" Just go grinning on and bear it; Have you heartache? Millions share it, If you earn a crown, you'll wear it-- Keep sweet. Don't go handing out your troubles to your busy fellow-men-- If you whine around they'll try to keep from meeting you again; Don't declare the world's "agin" you, Don't let pessimism win you, Prove there's lots of good stuff in you-- Keep sweet. If your dearest hopes seem blighted and despair looms into view, Set your jaw and whisper grimly, "Though they're false, yet I'll be true." Never let your heart grow bitter; With your lips to Hope's transmitter, Hear Love's songbirds bravely twitter, "Keep sweet." Bless your heart, this world's a good one, and will always help a man; Hate, misanthropy, and malice have no place in Nature's plan. Help your brother there who's sighing. Keep his flag of courage flying; Help him try--'twill keep you trying-- Keep sweet. _Strickland W. Gillilan._ MORALITY We can't always, even when accomplishing, have the ardor of accomplishment; we can only hold to the purpose formed in more inspired hours. After a work is finished, even though it be a good work which our final judgment will approve, we are likely to be oppressed for a time by the anxieties we have passed through; the comfort of effort has left us, and we recall our dreams, our intentions, beside which our actual achievement seems small. In such moments we should remember that just after the delivery of the Gettysburg Address Lincoln believed it an utter failure. Yet the address was a masterpiece of commemorative oratory. We cannot kindle when we will The fire which in the heart resides; The spirit bloweth and is still, In mystery our soul abides. But tasks in hours of insight will'd Can be through hours of gloom fulfill'd With aching hands and bleeding feet We dig and heap, lay stone on stone; We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day and wish 'twere done. Not till the hours of light return, All we have built do we discern. _Matthew Arnold_ A HYMN TO HAPPINESS A man who owed Artemus Ward two hundred dollars fell into such hard circumstances that Artemus offered to knock off half the debt. "I won't let you outdo me in generosity," said the man; "I'll knock off the other half." Similarly, when we resolve to live down our causes of gloom, fate comes to our aid and removes most of them altogether. Let us smile along together, Be the weather What it may. Through the waste and wealth of hours, Plucking flowers By the way. Fragrance from the meadows blowing, Naught of heat or hatred knowing, Kindness seeking, kindness sowing, Not to-morrow, but to-day. Let us sing along, beguiling Grief to smiling In the song. With the promises of heaven Let us leaven The day long, Gilding all the duller seemings With the roselight of our dreamings, Splashing clouds with sunlight's gleamings, Here and there and all along. Let us live along, the sorrow Of to-morrow Never heed. In the pages of the present What is pleasant Only read. Bells but pealing, never knelling, Hearts with gladness ever swelling. Tides of charity up welling In our every dream and deed. Let us hope along together, Be the weather What it may, Where the sunlight glad is shining, Not repining By the way. Seek to add our meed and measure To the old Earth's joy and treasure, Quaff the crystal cup of pleasure, Not to-morrow, but to-day. _James W. Foley_. From "The Voices of Song." OPPORTUNITY Procrastination is not only the thief of time; it is also the grave of opportunity. In an old city by the storied shores Where the bright summit of Olympus soars, A cryptic statue mounted towards the light-- Heel-winged, tip-toed, and poised for instant flight. "O statue, tell your name," a traveler cried, And solemnly the marble lips replied: "Men call me Opportunity: I lift My winged feet from earth to show how swift My flight, how short my stay-- How Fate is ever waiting on the way." "But why that tossing ringlet on your brow?" "That men may seize me any moment: _Now_, NOW is my other name: to-day my date: O traveler, to-morrow is too late!" _Edwin Markham._ From "The Gates of Paradise, and Other Poems." TO A YOUNG MAN "Jones write a book! Impossible! I knew his father." This attitude towards distinction of any sort, whether in authorship or in the field of action, is characteristic of many of us. We think transcendent ability is entirely above and apart from the things of ordinary life. Yet genius itself has been defined as common sense in an uncommon degree. The great men are human. Shakespeare remembered this when he said, "I think the king is but a man as I am." We should take heart at the thought that since the great are like us, we may develop ourselves until we are like them. The great were once as you. They whom men magnify to-day Once groped and blundered on life's way, Were fearful of themselves, and thought By magic was men's greatness wrought. They feared to try what they could do; Yet Fame hath crowned with her success The selfsame gifts that you possess. The great were young as you, Dreaming the very dreams you hold, Longing yet fearing to be bold, Doubting that they themselves possessed The strength and skill for every test, Uncertain of the truths they knew, Not sure that they could stand to fate With all the courage of the great. Then came a day when they Their first bold venture made, Scorning to cry for aid. They dared to stand to fight alone, Took up the gauntlet life had thrown, Charged full-front to the fray, Mastered their fear of self, and then Learned that our great men are but men. Oh, Youth, go forth and do! You, too, to fame may rise; You can be strong and wise. Stand up to life and play the man-- You can if you'll but think you can; The great were once as you. You envy them their proud success? 'Twas won with gifts that you possess. _Edgar A. Guest._ SLOGAN Some men want ideal conditions with pay in advance before they will work. But the world does not want such men, and has little place for them. Don't prate about what is your right, But bare your fists and show your might; Life is another man to fight Catch as catch can. Don't talk of Life as scurvy Fate, Who gave you favors just too late, Or Luck who threw you smiles for bait Before he ran. Don't whine and wish that you were dead, But wrestle for your daily bread, And afterward let it be said "He was a man." _Jane M'Lean._ SMILES Smiles bring out the latent energies within us, as water reveals the bright colors in the stone it flows over. Smile a little, smile a little, As you go along, Not alone when life is pleasant, But when things go wrong. Care delights to see you frowning, Loves to hear you sigh; Turn a smiling face upon her, Quick the dame will fly. Smile a little, smile a little, All along the road; Every life must have its burden, Every heart its load. Why sit down in gloom and darkness, With your grief to sup? As you drink Fate's bitter tonic Smile across the cup. Smile upon the troubled pilgrims Whom you pass and meet; Frowns are thorns, and smiles are blossoms Oft for weary feet. Do not make the way seem harder By a sullen face, Smile a little, smile a little, Brighten up the place. Smile upon your undone labor; Not for one who grieves O'er his task, waits wealth or glory; He who smiles achieves. Though you meet with loss and sorrow In the passing years, Smile a little, smile a little, Even through your tears. _Ella Wheeler Wilcox._ From "Poems of Power." [Illustration: ELLA WHEELER WILCOX] SIT DOWN, SAD SOUL "A watched pot never boils." Though the pot be the pot of happiness, the proverb still holds true. Sit down, sad soul, and count The moments flying: Come,--tell the sweet amount That's lost by sighing! How many smiles--a score? Then laugh, and count no more; For day is dying. Lie down, sad soul, and sleep, And no more measure The flight of Time, nor weep The loss of leisure; But here, by this lone stream, Lie down with us and dream Of starry treasure. We dream: do thou the same: We love--forever; We laugh; yet few we shame, The gentle, never. Stay, then, till Sorrow dies; _Then_--hope and happy skies Are thine forever! _Bryan Waller Procter._ SONG OF ENDEAVOR Don Quixote discovered that there are no eggs in last year's bird's-nests. Many of us waste our time in regrets for the past, without seeming to perceive that hope lies only in endeavor for the future. 'Tis not by wishing that we gain the prize, Nor yet by ruing, But from our falling, learning how to rise, And tireless doing. The idols broken, nor our tears and sighs, May yet restore them. Regret is only for fools; the wise Look but before them. Nor ever yet Success was wooed with tears; To notes of gladness Alone the fickle goddess turns her ears, She hears not sadness. The heart thrives not in the dull rain and mist Of gloomy pining. The sweetest flowers are the flowers sun-kissed, Where glad light's shining. Look not behind thee; there is only dust And vain regretting. The lost tide ebbs; in the next flood thou must Learn, by forgetting. For the lost chances be ye not distressed To endless weeping; Be not the thrush that o'er the empty nest Is vigil keeping. But in new efforts our regrets to-day To stillness whiling, Let us in some pure purpose find the way To future smiling. _James W. Foley._ From "The Voices of Song." KEEP A-GOIN'! Some men fail and quit. Some succeed and quit. The wise refuse to quit, whether they fail or succeed. Ef you strike a thorn or rose, Keep a-goin'! Ef it hails, or ef it snows, Keep a-goin! 'Taint no use to sit an' whine, When the fish ain't on yer line; Bait yer hook an' keep a-tryin'-- Keep a-goin'! When the weather kills yer crop, Keep a-goin'! When you tumble from the top, Keep a-goin'! S'pose you're out of every dime, Bein' so ain't any _crime;_ Tell the world you're feelin' _prime_-- Keep a-goin'! When it looks like all is up, Keep a-goin'! Drain the sweetness from the cup, Keep a-goin'! See the wild birds on the wing, Hear the bells that sweetly ring, When you feel like sighin' _sing--_ Keep a-goin'! _Frank L. Stanton._ From "The Atlanta Constitution." WHEN EARTH'S LAST PICTURE IS PAINTED What is it that a human being wants? Most of us have something that we like to do more than anything else. We are not free to do it as we wish. We are handicapped by the need to earn a living, by physical weariness, by the carpings and scoffs of the envious, by the limited time we have at our disposal. But underneath all this is _the spirit of work_--the desire to take up our task for its own sake alone, to give our whole selves to it, to carry it through, not in some partial way, but in accordance with the fulness of our dream. We want to be free from distractions and interruptions; if we are driven at all, we want it to be by our own inner promptings, not by obligation or necessity. Of course these favorable, these ideal conditions belong to heaven, not to earth. Kipling here explains what they will mean to the artist, the painter; but in doing so he expresses the longings of the true workman of whatsoever sort--he sums up the true spirit of work. When Earth's last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried, When the oldest colors have faded, and the youngest critic has died, We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it--lie down for an aeon or two, Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall set us to work anew. And those that were good will be happy: they shall sit in a golden chair; They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comets' hair. They shall find real saints to draw from--Magdalene, Peter, and Paul; They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all! And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame; And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame, But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star, Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They are! _Rudyard Kipling._ From "Rudyard Kipling's Verse, 1885-1918." INDEX BY AUTHORS A ADAMS, ST. CLAIR. Born in Arkansas, 1883. University education; European travel; has resided at one time or another in nearly all sections of America. Miscellaneous literary and editorial work. _A Problem to Be Solved; Essentials; Good Intentions; It Won't Stay Blowed; Jaw; Never Trouble Trouble; Ownership; The Rectifying Years; The Syndicated Smile; Tit for Tat; Wanted--a Man_. ALEXANDER, GRIFFITH. Born at Liverpool, Eng., Jan. 15, 1868. Educated in public schools; came to the United States 1887; been connected with newspapers in great variety of capacities; President of the American Press Humorists. _Gray Days; Life; The Grumpy Guy_. ANONYMOUS. _De Sunflower Ain't de Daisy; Hope; I'm Glad; Is It Raining, Little Flower?; Keep On Keepin' On; Playing the Game; To the Men Who Lose_. APPLETON, EVERARD JACK. Born at Charleston, W. Va., Mar. 24, 1872. Very little schooling, but had advantages of home literary influences and a good library; at seventeen went into newspaper work in his home town; later went to Cincinnati, and worked on the daily _Tribune_, then on the _Commercial Gazette_; later connected with the Cincinnati _Times-Star_. For five years he wrote daily column of verse and humor; besides his newspaper work, he has written over one hundred and fifty stories, hundreds of poems, many songs, and innumerable jokes, jingles, cheer-up wall cards, and the like. Author of two books of poetry, "The Quiet Courage" and "With the Colors." With such intense work his health broke down, and for a number of years he has been a chronic invalid, but his cheer and his faith are as bright as ever. _Hold Fast; Meetin' Trouble; Steadfast; The Fighting Failure; The One; The Woman Who Understands; Unafraid; What Dark Days Do_. ARNOLD, MATTHEW. Born at Laleham, Middlesex, Eng., Dec. 24, 1822; died at Liverpool, Apr. 15, 1888. Educated at Winchester, Rugby, and Oxford. Became Lord Lansdowne's secretary 1847; became inspector of schools 1851; appointed Professor of Poetry at Oxford 1857; continental tours to inspect foreign educational systems 1859 and 1865; assigned a pension of £250 by Gladstone 1883; lecture trips to America 1883 and 1886; retired as inspector of schools 1886. Among his works are "Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems," "Essays in Criticism" (first and second series), "Culture and Anarchy," "Literature and Dogma," "Discourses in America," and "On the Study of Celtic Literature." _Morality_; _Self-Dependence_. B BANGS, JOHN KENDRICK. Born at Yonkers, N.Y., May 27, 1862; died Jan. 21, 1922. Received Ph.B. degree from Columbia 1883; associate editor of _Life_ 1884-8; has since served in various editorial capacities on _Harper's Magazine, Harper's Weekly_, and the _Metropolitan Magazine_. Among his books are "The Idiot," "A House Boat on the Styx," "The Bicyclers, and Other Farces," "Songs of Cheer," "Line o' Cheer for Each Day o' the Year," "The Foothills of Parnassus," "A Quest for Song," and "The Cheery Way." _A Philosopher_; _A Smiling Paradox_; _If_; _The Kingdom of Man_; _The Richer Mines_; _The Word_; _To Melancholy_. BARBAULD, ANNA LETITIA AIKIN. Born at Kibworth-Harcourt, Leicestershire, Eng., June 20, 1743; died at Stoke-Newington, Mar. 9, 1825. Poet and essayist. _Life and Death_. BENÉT, WILLIAM ROSE. Born at Fort Hamilton, New York Harbor, Feb. 2, 1886. Graduated from Albany, N.Y., Academy 1904; Ph.B. from Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University 1907. Reader for _Century Magazine_ 1907-11; assistant editor of the same 1911-14. 2d Lieutenant U.S. Air Service 1914-18. Assistant editor of the _Nation's Business_ 1919. His books are "Merchants from Cathay," "The Falconer of God," "The Great White Wall," and "The Burglar of the Zodiac." _His Ally_; _Mistress Fate_. BENJAMIN, PARK. Born at Demerara, British Guiana, Aug. 14, 1809; died at New York City, Sept. 12, 1864. Connected with various periodicals. _Press On_. BINNS, HENRY BRYAN. _Ultimate Act_. BRADFORD, GAMALIEL. Born at Boston, Mass., Oct. 9, 1863; privately tutored till 1882; entered Harvard College 1882 but was obliged to leave almost immediately because of ill health. Contributor of essays and poems to various magazines; has a remarkable insight into the characters of historical figures, and in a few pages reveals their inner souls. Among his books are "Types of American Character," "A Pageant of Life," "The Private Tutor," "Between Two Masters," "Matthew Porter," "Lee, the American," "Confederate Portraits," "Union Portraits," "A Naturalist of Souls," and "Portraits of American Women." _God; Heinelet; The Joy of Living_. BRALEY, BERTON. Born at Madison, Wis., Jan. 29, 1882. Graduated from the University of Wisconsin 1905; reporter on the Butte, Mont., _Inter Mountain_ 1905-6; later with the Butte _Evening News_ and the Billings, Mont., _Gazette_; with the New York _Evening Mail_ 1909; associate editor of _Puck_ 1910; free lance writer since 1910; special correspondent in Northern Europe 1915-16; in France, England, and Germany 1918-19. Among his books are "Sonnets of a Freshman," "Songs of a Workaday World," "Things as They Are," "A Banjo at Armageddon," "In Camp and Trench," and "Buddy Ballads." _Opportunity; Playing the Game; Start Where You Stand; Success; The Conqueror_. BRANCH, ANNA HEMPSTEAD. Born at New London, Conn. Graduated at Adelphi Academy, Brooklyn, 1893, from Smith College 1897, and from the American Academy of Dramatic Art, New York, 1900. Among her books are "The Heart of the Road," "The Shoes That Danced," "Rose of the Wind," and "Nimrod, and Other Poems." _Gladness_. BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT. Born at Coxhoe Hall, Durham, Eng., Mar. 6, 1806; died at Florence, Italy, June 30, 1861. A semi-invalid all her life. Married Robert Browning 1846, and resided in Italy for the remainder of her life. Author of "Casa Guidi Windows," "Aurora Leigh," and "Sonnets from the Portuguese." _Cares_. BROWNING, ROBERT. Born at Camberwell, Eng., May 7, 1812; died at Venice, Italy, Dec. 12, 1889. Educated at home and at London University; well trained in music. Travel in Russia 1833; considered diplomatic career; trip to Italy 1838; married Elizabeth Barrett 1846, and during her life time resided chiefly at Florence, Italy. After her death in 1861, he lived in London and Venice. Among his works are "Pauline," "Paracelsus," "Strafford," "Sordello," "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon," "Colombe's Birthday," "Dramatis Personae," "A Soul's Tragedy," "Luna," "Men and Women," "The Ring and the Book," "Fifine at the Fair," "The Inn-Album," "Dramatic Idyls," and "Asolando." _Man, Bird, and God; Pippa's Song; Prospice; Rabbi Ben Ezra_. BURNS, ROBERT. Born at Alloway, near Ayr, Scotland, Jan. 25, 1759; died at Dumfries, Scotland, July 21, 1796. Received little education; drudgery on a farm at Mt. Oliphant 1766-77; on a farm at Lochlea 1777-84, during which time there was a period of loose living and bad companionship; at the death of his father he and his brother Gilbert rented Mossgiel farm near Mauchline, where many of his best poems were written; winter of 1786-7 he visited Edinburgh, and was received into the best society; winter of 1787-8 revisited Edinburgh but rather coolly received by Edinburgh society; 1788 married Jean Armour, by whom he had previously had several children. Took farm at Ellisland 1788; became an excise officer 1789. Removed to Dumfries 1791; later years characterized by depression and poverty. Some of his best-known poems are "The Holy Fair," "The Cotter's Saturday Night," and "Tam O'Shanter"; wrote many of the most popular songs in the English language. _A Man's a Man for A' That; Borrowing Trouble; The Gift_. BYRON, LORD (George Gordon Byron). Born at London, Jan. 22, 1788; died at Missolonghi, Greece, Apr. 19, 1824, and buried in parish church at Hucknell, near Newstead. Born with a deformed foot; much petted as a child; inherited title and estate at death of his granduncle, William, fifth Lord Byron, 1798. Studied at Harrow and at Cambridge University, receiving M.A. degree 1808. Traveled in Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Turkey 1809-11. In 1815 married Anna Milbanke, who left him 1816. In 1816 met Miss Clairmont at Geneva, who bore him an illegitimate daughter, Allegra, 1817; in 1819 met Teresa, Countess Guiccioli, at Venice, and remained with her during his stay in Italy. Joined the Greek insurgents 1823, and died of a fever in their cause of freedom from the Turks. Among his works are "Hours of Idleness," "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," "Childe Harold," "The Giaour," "The Corsair," "The Prisoner of Chillon," "Cain," "Manfred," and "Don Juan." _Serenity_. C CARLYLE, THOMAS. Born at Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, Dec. 4, 1795; died at Chelsea, London, Feb. 4, 1881. Educated at Annan Grammar School and Edinburgh University; mathematical tutor at Annan 1814; teacher at Kirkcaldy 1816; went to Edinburgh to study law 1819; tutor in Buller family 1822-4; married Jane Welsh 1826; lived successively at Comely Bank, Edinburgh, and Craigenputtoch 1828-34; moved to Chelsea 1834; and remained there the rest of his life. Elected Lord Rector of Edinburgh University 1865. Among his works are "Life of Schiller," "Sartor Resartus," "The French Revolution," "Chartism," "Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History," "Life and Letters of Oliver Cromwell," "Life of Sterling," "Latter-Day Pamphlets," and "Frederick the Great." _To-Day_. CLOUGH, ARTHUR HUGH. Born at Liverpool, Eng., Jan. 1, 1819; died at Florence, Italy, Nov. 13, 1861. Went to school at Rugby and Oxford; accepted headship of University Hall, London, 1849; came to America 1852; health began to fail 1859. _Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth_. COATES, FLORENCE EARLE. Born at Philadelphia, Pa.; educated at private schools and at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, France; studied also at Brussels. President of the Browning Society of Philadelphia 1895-1903 and 1907-8; a founder of the Contemporary Club, Philadelphia, 1886; member of the Society of Mayflower Descendants, and Colonial Dames of America. Among her books are "Mine and Thine," "Lyrics of Life," and "The Unconquered Air, and Other Poems." _A Hero; Courage; Per Aspera_. COOKE, EDMUND VANCE. Born at Port Dover, Canada, June 5, 1866. Educated principally at common schools. He began to give lecture entertainments 1893, and has been for years one of the most popular lyceum men before the public. Frequent contributor of poems, stories, and articles to the leading magazines. His poem "How Did You Die?" has attained a nation-wide popularity. Among his books are "Just Then Something Happened," "The Story Club," "Told to the Little Tot," "Chronicles of the Little Tot," "I Rule the House," "Impertinent Poems," "Little, Songs for Two," "Rimes to be Read," "The Uncommon Commoner," and "A Patch of Pansies." _How Did You Die?; Laugh a Little Bit_. CROSBY, ERNEST HOWARD. Born at New York City, Nov. 4, 1856; died there Jan. 3, 1907. Graduated from University of New York 1876, and from Columbia Law School 1878; lawyer in New York 1878-89; judge of international court at Alexandria, Egypt, 1889-94; returned to New York 1894, and interested himself in social reform. Among his books are "Plain Talk in Psalm and Parable," "Captain Jenks, Hero," "Swords and Plowshares," "Tolstoi and His Message," and "Labor and Neighbor." _Life and Death_. D DEKKER, THOMAS. Born at London, about 1570; died about 1641. Little is known of his life; imprisoned several times; had literary quarrels with Ben Jonson. Lived in the great period of the English drama (the age of Shakespeare); wrote many of his plays in collaboration with other writers of the period. Among his best-known plays are "The Shoe-makers' Holiday" and "Old Fortunatus." _The Happy Heart_. DRAKE, JOSEPH RODMAN. Born at New York City, Aug. 7, 1795; died there Sept. 21, 1820. Author of "The Culprit Fay" and "The American Flag." _The Man Who Frets at Worldly Strife_. E ELIOT, GEORGE (Mary Ann Evans Lewes Cross). Born at Arbury Farm, Warwickshire, Eng., Nov. 22, 1819; died at Chelsea, London, Dec. 22, 1880. Educated at Nuneaton and Coventry; assistant editor of the _Westminster Review_ 1851-3. Lived with George Henry Lewes from 1854 until his death in 1878; married John Walter Cross in 1880. Among her books (mostly novels) are "Adam Bede," "The Mill on the Floss," "Silas Marner," "Romola," "Felix Holt," "The Spanish Gypsy," "Middlemarch," "Daniel Deronda," and "Impressions of Theophrastus Such." _You May Count That Day_. EMERSON, RALPH WALDO. Born at Boston, Mass., May 25, 1803; died at Concord, Mass., Apr. 27, 1882. Graduated at Harvard College 1821, working his way; taught school; began to study for the ministry 1823; licensed to preach 1826; trip to the South for his health 1827-8; Unitarian minister in Boston 1829-32; European travel 1832-3; settled at Concord 1834; lectured extensively for over thirty years. Contributed to the _Dial_ 1840-4; visited Europe 1847-8 and 1872-3. Lectured at Harvard 1868-70. Some of his works are "Nature," "The American Scholar," "Essays" (first and second series), "Representative Men," "English Traits," "The Conduct of Life," and "Society and Solitude." _Duty; Fable_. F FOLEY, JAMES WILLIAM. Born at St. Louis, Mo., Feb. 4, 1874. Educated at the University of South Dakota. Member of Masonic Order and Past Grand Master of Masons. Had early ranch experience; knew Theodore Roosevelt during his ranching days. Began newspaper work on the Bismarck, N. Dak., _Tribune_ 1892. During the Great War he served seventeen months in army camps as an entertainer and inspirational lecturer, traveling fifty thousand miles and addressing a quarter of a million men. For fifteen years he has been lecturing and writing. His work includes books of verse, humorous sketches, and plays. At present associate editor of the Pasadena, Cal., _Evening Post._ Among his books are "Boys and Girls," "Tales of the Trail," "Friendly Rhymes," "Voices of Song," "Letters of William Green," and "Songs of Schooldays." _A Hymn to Happiness; A Toast to Merriment; Days of Cheer; Friends of Mine; One of These Days; Song of Endeavor; Undismayed_. FOSS, SAM WALTER. Born at Candia, N.H., June 19, 1858; died in 1911. Graduated from Brown University 1882; editor 1883-93; general writer 1893-8; librarian at Somerville, Mass., from 1898; lecturer and reader of his own poems. Among his books are "Back Country Poems," "Whiffs from Wild Meadows," "Dreams in Homespun," "Songs of War and Peace," and "Songs of the Average Man." _The Firm of Grin and Barrett_, 118; _The House by the Side of the Road_, 2. FOWLER, ELLEN THORNEYCROFT (The Honorable Mrs. Alfred Felkin). Elder daughter of 1st Viscount Wolverhampton; married to Alfred Laurence Felkin 1903. Among her books are "Verses Grave and Gay," "Verses Wise and Otherwise," "Cupid's Garden," "Concerning Isabel Carnaby," "A Double Thread," "The Farringdons," "Love's Argument," "Place and Power," "Miss Fallowfield's Fortune," "The Wisdom of Folly," "Her Ladyship's Conscience," and "Ten Degrees Backward." _The Wisdom of Folly_, 61. G GARRISON, THEODOSIA. Born at Newark, N.J., 1874. Educated at private schools at Newark. Married Joseph Garrison of Newark 1898; married Frederick J. Faulks of Newark 1911. Among her books are "The Joy of Life, and Other Poems," "Earth Cry, and Other Poems," and "The Dreamers." _A Prayer_, 156; _One Fight More_, 145. GATES, ELLEN M. HUNTINGTON. Born at Torrington, Conn., 1834; died at New York City, Oct. 12, 1920. Schooling at Hamilton, N.Y. Among her books are "Treasures of Kurium," "The Dark," "To the Unborn Peoples," and "The Marble House." _The Bars of Fate_, 158; _Your Mission_, 120. GILLILAN, STRICKLAND W. Born at Jackson, Ohio, Oct. 9, 1869. Attended Ohio University to junior year; began newspaper work on the Jackson, Ohio, _Herald_ 1887; and has since been on the staffs of many newspapers and magazines in various capacities. Writer of humorous verse, and popular lyceum lecturer. Among his books are "Including Finnigan," "Including You and Me," and "A Sample Case of Humor." _Keep Sweet_, 220. GILMAN, CHARLOTTE PERKINS. Born at Hartford, Conn., July 3, 1860. Excellent home instruction; school attendance scant; real education reading and thinking, mainly in natural science, history, and sociology. Writer and lecturer on humanitarian topics, especially along lines of educational and legal advancement. _The Forerunner_, a monthly magazine, entirely written by her, published for seven years from 1910. Among her publications are "In This Our World," "Women and Economics," "Concerning Children," "The Home," "Human Work," "The Yellow Wallpaper," "The Man-made World," "Moving the Mountain," "What Diantha Did," and "The Crux." _Resolve; The Lion Path_. GLAENZER, RICHARD BUTLER. Born at Paris, France, Dec. 15, 1876. Educated at the Hill School and Yale. Interior decorator, poet, and essayist. At present scenario writer at Hollywood, California. Author of "Beggar and King" and "Literary Snapshots." _Man or Manikin_. GOETHE, JOHANN WOLFGANG VON. Born at Frankfort-on-the-Main, Germany, Aug. 28, 1749; died at Weimar, Mar. 22, 1832. Famous poet, dramatist, and prose writer. Among his well-known works are "The Sorrows of Young Werther," "Wilhelm Meister," "Hermann and Dorothea," and "Faust." _Lose the Day Loitering_. GRAY, THOMAS. Born at London, Dec. 26, 1716; died at Cambridge, July 30, 1771. Educated at Eton and Cambridge; went with Horace Walpole on trip to Continent 1739-41; became professor of modern history at Cambridge 1768, but did not teach. A man singularly retiring and shy throughout his life. Among his well-known poems are "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College," "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," "The Progress of Poetry," "The Bard," "The Fatal Sisters," and "The Descent of Odin." _Opening Paradise_. GUEST, EDGAR ALBERT. Born at Birmingham, Eng., Aug. 20, 1881; brought to the United States 1891; educated in grammar and high schools of Detroit, Mich. Connected with the Detroit _Free Press_ since 1895; syndicates a daily poem in several hundred newspapers. His books are "A Heap o' Livin'," "Just Folks," "Over Here," "Path to Home," and "When Day is Done." _Can't; How Do You Tackle Your Work?; It Couldn't Be Done; See It Through; There Will Always Be Something to Do; The Things That Haven't Been Done Before; The World Is Against Me; To a Young Man_. H HENLEY, WILLIAM ERNEST. Born at Gloucester, Eng., Aug. 23, 1849; died July 11, 1903. Educated at the Crypt Grammar School at Gloucester. Afflicted with physical infirmity, and in hospital at Edinburgh 1874--an experience which gave the material for his "Hospital Sketches." Went to London 1877; edited _London_ (a magazine of art) 1882-6; the _Scots Observer_ (which became the _National Observer_) 1888-93; and the _New Review_ 1893-8. Besides three plays which he wrote in collaboration with Robert Louis Stevenson, he is the author of "Views and Reviews," "Hospital Sketches," "London Voluntaries" and "Hawthorn and Lavenden" _Invictus_, 5; _Praise the Generous Gods for Giving_, 194; _Thick Is the Darkness_, 151. HERBERT, GEORGE. Born at Montgomery Castle, Wales, Apr. 3, 1593; died at Bemerton, near Salisbury, Eng., Feb., 1633. Graduated from Cambridge 1613; took M.A. degree 1616. He was in high favor at court; appointed by the King as rector to Bemerton Church in 1630, and there wrote the religious poems for which he is remembered. _The Gifts of God_, 211. HOLLAND, JOSIAH GILBERT. Born at Belchertown, Mass., July 24, 1819; died at New York City, Oct. 21, 1881. Editor of the _Springfield Republican_ 1849-66; editor-in-chief of _Scribner's Monthly_ (which later became the _Century Magazine_). Among his poems are "Kathrina" and "Bitter-Sweet." _Gradatim_, 200. HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL. Born at Cambridge, Mass., Aug. 29, 1809; died there Oct. 7, 1894. Physician; professor of anatomy and physiology in the medical school of Harvard University 1847-82. Some of his best-known poems are "Bill and Joe," "The Deacon's Masterpiece," and "The Chambered Nautilus." Of his three novels "Elsie Venner" is the best known. His "Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table," "Professor at the Breakfast-Table," "Poet at the Breakfast-Table," and "Over the Tea-Cups" all appeared originally in the _Atlantic Monthly_. _The Chambered Nautilus_, 30. HUNT, JAMES HENRY LEIGH. Born at Southgate, Eng., Oct. 19, 1784; died at Putney, Eng., Aug. 28, 1859. Imprisoned for radical political views; writer of popular poems and essays, _Abou Ben Adhem_, 133. I INGALLS, JOHN JAMES. Born at Middleton, Mass., Dec. 29, 1833; died at Las Vegas, N. Mex., Aug. 16, 1900. Educated at Williams College; admitted to the bar 1857; moved to Kansas; member of the state senate 1861; U.S. senator from Kansas 1873-91. _Opportunity_, 54. J JONSON, BEN. Born at Westminster, Eng., about 1573; died Aug. 6, 1637. Went to school at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields and Westminster. Shakespeare played one of the roles in his comedy "Every Man in His Humour" 1598. He went to France as the tutor of the son of Sir Walter Raleigh 1613; was in the favor of the court, from which he received a pension. Attacked with palsy 1626, and later with dropsy, and confined to his bed most of his later years. Well-known plays besides the one cited above are "Epicoene," "The Alchemist," "Volpone," "Bartholomew Fair," and "Cataline"; author of the lyric "Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes," and a volume of criticism "Timber." _The Noble Nature_, 177. K KEATS, JOHN. Born at London, Oct. 29, 1795; died at Rome, Feb. 23, 1821. Went to Enfield School; apprenticed to a druggist 1811-15; student in London hospitals 1815-17; passed examination at Apothecaries Hall 1816, but never practised. Walking trip to Scotland 1818; his health rapidly failed, and he sailed to Naples in Sept. 1820, and then went to Rome, where, until his death, he was attended by his friend Severn. Among his well-known poems are "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," "Endymion," "The Eve of St. Agnes," "Isabella," "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," "Ode to Psyche," "Ode to a Grecian Urn," "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on Melancholy," "Lamia," "Ode to Autumn," and "Hyperion." _Fairy Song_, 193. KIBBY, WILLIAM JUDSON. Born at Knoxville, Tenn., Mar. 12, 1876. Educated in Knoxville Public Schools; graduate of the Sheldon School. Character analyst and industrial psychologist; newspaper and magazine contributor. President of the Lion's Club of New York; thirty-second degree Mason. _Appreciation_, 219; _Helpin' Out_, 96. KING, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, JR. Born at St. Joseph, Mich., Mar. 17, 1857; died at Bowling Green, Ky., Apr. 7, 1894. At an early age showed a remarkable talent in music; a public entertainer on the piano and reciter of his own verse. His poems collected in "Ben King's Verse." _If I Should Die_, 13; _The Pessimist_, 166. KIPLING, RUDYARD. Born at Bombay, India, Dec. 30, 1865. Educated in England at United Service College; returned to India 1880; assistant editor of _Civil and Military Gazette_ 1882-89; returned to England 1889; resided in the United States for several years; has traveled in Japan and Australasia. Received the Noble Prize for Literature 1907; honorary degrees from McGill University, Durham, Oxford, and Cambridge. Among his books are "Departmental Ditties," "Plain Tales from the Hills," "Under the Deodars," "Phantom' Rickshaw," "Wee Willie Winkle," "Life's Handicap," "The Light That Failed," "Barrack-Room Ballads," "The Jungle Book," "The Second Jungle Book," "The Seven Seas," "Captains Courageous," "The Day's Work," "Kim," "Just So Stories," "Puck of Pook's Hill," "Actions and Reactions," "Rewards and Fairies," "Fringes of the Fleet," and "Sea Warfare." _If_, 4; _When Earth's Last Picture Is Painted_, 230. KISER, SAMUEL ELLSWORTH. Born at Shippenville, Pa. Educated in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Began newspaper work in Cleveland, and from 1900 until 1914 was editorial and special writer for the Chicago _Record-Herald_. Noted for his humorous sketches, which have been widely syndicated. His poem "Unsubdued" is, like Henley's "Invictus," a splendid portrayal of undaunted courage in the face of defeat. Among his books are "Georgie," "Charles the Chauffeur," "Love Sonnets of an Office Boy," "Ballads of the Busy Days," "Sonnets of a Chorus Girl," "The Whole Glad Year," and "The Land of Little Care." _A Little Prayer; December 31; Faith; It May Be; My Creed; The Fighter; Unsubdued_. KNOX, J. MASON. _Co-operation_. L LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH. Born at Portland, Me., Feb. 27, 1807; died at Cambridge, Mass., Mar. 24, 1882. Graduated from Bowdoin College 1825; traveled in Europe 1826-9; professor of modern languages at Bowdoin 1829-34; again visited Europe 1835-6; professor of modern languages and belles lettres at Harvard College 1836-54; European travel 1868-9. Some of his best-known poems are "A Psalm of Life," "The Village Blacksmith," "The Wreck of the Hesperus," "The Skeleton in Armor," "The Bridge," "Evangeline," "The Building of the Ship," "Hiawatha," "The Courtship of Miles Standish," and "Tales of a Wayside Inn"; author of two novels, "Hyperion" and "Kavanagh"; translator of Dante's "Divine Comedy." _A Psalm of Life; The Arrow and the Song_. LOVELACE, RICHARD. Born in Kent, 1618; died at London, 1658. Educated at Oxford; imprisoned for support of the royalist cause 1642 and 1648; released from prison after the execution of King Charles I, but his estate had been ruined and he died in poverty. _To Althea from Prison_. M MACKAY, CHARLES. Born at Perth, Eng., Mar. 27, 1814; died at London, Dec. 24, 1889. Editor of the Glasgow _Argus_ 1844-47 and of the _Illustrated London News_ 1852-59; New York correspondent of the London _Times_ during the Civil War. _Clear the Way; Cleon and I_. M'LEAN, JANE. _Slogan_. MALLOCH, DOUGLAS. Born at Muskegon, Mich., May 5, 1877. Common school education; reporter on the Muskegon _Daily Chronicle_ 1886-1903; member of the editorial staff of the _American Lumberman_ from 1903; associate editor from 1910; contributes verse relating to the forest and lumber camps to various magazines; is called "The Poet of the Woods," He is author of "In Forest Land," "Resawed Fables," "The Woods," "The Enchanted Garden," and "Tote-Road and Trail." _Be the Best of Whatever You Are; To-Day_. MALONE, WALTER. Born in De Soto Co., Miss., Feb. 10, 1866; died May 18, 1915. Received the degree of Ph.B. from the University of Mississippi 1887; practised law at Memphis, Tenn., 1887-97; literary work in New York City 1897-1900; then resumed law practice at Memphis; became Judge of second Circuit Court, Shelby Co., Tenn., 1905, and served till his death. Annual exercises held in the Capleville schools in his honor. An excellent edition of his poems, issued under the direction of his sister, Mrs. Ella Malone Watson of Capleville, Tenn., is published by the John P. Morton Co., of Louisville, Ky. _Opportunity_. MARKHAM, EDWIN. Born at Oregon City, Ore., Apr. 23, 1852. Went to California 1857; worked at farming and black-smithing, and herded cattle and sheep, during boyhood. Educated at San José Normal School and two Western colleges; special student in ancient and modern literature and Christian sociology; principal and superintendent of schools in California until 1899. Mr. Markham is one of the most distinguished of American poets and lecturers. His poem "The Man with the Hoe" in his first volume of poems is world-famous, and has been heralded by many as "the battle-cry of the next thousand years." He has sounded in his work the note of universal brotherhood and humanitarian interest, and has been credited as opening up a new school of American poetry appealing to the social conscience, where Whitman appealed only to the social consciousness. His books are "The Man with the Hoe, and Other Poems," "Lincoln, and Other Poems," "The Shoes of Happiness, and Other Poems," and "Gates of Paradise, and Other Poems." His book "California the Wonderful" is a volume of beautiful prose giving a historical, social, and literary study of the state. _A Creed; Duty; Opportunity; Preparedness; Rules for the Road; The Stone Rejected; Two at a Fireside; Victory in Defeat_. MASON, WALT. Born at Columbus, Ontario, May 4, 1862. Self-educated. Came to the United States 1880; was connected with the Atchison _Globe_ 1885-7; later with Lincoln, Neb., _State Journal_; editorial paragrapher of the _Evening News_, Washington, 1893; with the Emporia, Kan., _Gazette_ since 1907. Writes a daily prose poem which is syndicated in over two hundred newspapers, and is believed to have the largest audience of any living writer. Among his books are "Rhymes of the Range," "Uncle Walt," "Walt Mason's Business Prose Poems," "Rippling Rhymes," "Horse Sense," "Terse Verse," and "Walt Mason, His Book." _Lions and Ants; The Has-Beens; The Welcome Man_. MILLER, JOAQUIN. Born in Indiana, Nov. 11, 1841; died Feb. 17, 1913. He went to Oregon 1854; was afterwards a miner in California; studied law; was a judge in Grant County, Oregon, 1866-70. For a while he was a journalist in Washington, D.C.; returned to California 1887. He is the author of various books of verse, and is called "The Poet of the Sierras." _Columbus; To Those Who Fail_. MILTON, JOHN. Born at London, Dec. 9, 1608; died there Nov. 8, 1674. Attended St. Paul's School; at Cambridge 1625-32. At Horton, writing and studying, 1632-38. In 1638 went to Italy; met Galileo in Florence. During the great Civil War wrote pamphlets against the Royalists; was made Latin Secretary to the new Commonwealth 1649; became totally blind 1652. Until his third marriage in 1663, his domestic life had been rendered unhappy by the undutifulness of his three daughters. Among his works are "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," "Comus," "Lycidas," "Paradise Lost," "Paradise Regained," and "Samson Agonistes." _The Inner Light_. MORGAN, ANGELA. Born at Washington, D.C. Educated under private tutors and at public schools; took special work at Columbia University. Began early as a newspaper writer, first with the Chicago _American_; then with the Chicago _Journal_, and New York and Boston papers. She is a member of the Poetry Society of America, The MacDowell Club, Three Arts, and the League of American Pen Women. She is one of the most eloquent readers before the public to-day; was a delegate to the Congress of Women at The Hague 1915, at which she read her poem "Battle Cry of the Mothers." Her four books of poems are "The Hour Has Struck," "Utterance, and Other Poems," "Forward, March!" and "Hail, Man!" and a fifth is soon to be published. Her book of fiction "The Imprisoned Splendor" contains well-known stories ("What Shall We Do with Mother?" "The Craving," "Such Is the Love of Woman," and "The Making of a Man"), some of which appeared previously in magazines. A novel is shortly to be published. _A Song of Life; A Song of Thanksgiving; Grief; Know Thyself; Stand Forth!; When Nature Wants a Man; Work_. MORRIS, JOSEPH. Born in Ohio 1889. College and university education; professor of English and lecturer on literary subjects; newspaper and magazine contributor; connected with publishing houses since 1917 in various editorial capacities. _A Lesson from History; Borrowed Feathers; Can You Sing a Song?; If You Can't Go Over or Under, Go Round; Philosophy for Croakers; Swellitis; The Glad Song; The Unmusical Soloist; Two Raindrops_. N NEIHARDT, JOHN GNEISENAU. Born near Sharpsburg, Ill., Jan. 8, 1881. Completed the scientific course at the Nebraska Normal College 1897; received the degree of Litt.D. from the University of Nebraska 1917. Declared Poet Laureate of Nebraska by a joint resolution of the Legislature, Apr. 1921, in recognition of the significance of the American epic cycle upon which he has been working for eight years. Winner of the prize of five hundred dollars offered by the Poetry Society of America for the best volume of poetry ("The Song of Three Friends") published by an American in 1919. Has been literary critic of the Minneapolis _Journal_ since 1912. Among his books are "The Divine Enchantment," "The Lonesome Trail," "A Bundle of Myrrh," "Man-Song," "The River and I," "The Dawn-Builder," "The Stranger at the Gate," "Death of Agrippina," "Life's Lure," "The Song of Hugh Glass," "The Quest," "The Song of Three Friends," "The Splendid Wayfaring," and "Two Mothers." _Battle Cry_, 148; _Envoi_, 196; _Let Me Live Out My Years_, 127; _Prayer for Pain_, 208. NETTE, JEAN. _Challenge_, 119. NEWBOLT, SIR HENRY. Born at Bilston, Eng., June 6, 1862. Educated at Oxford; practised law until 1899; editor of _Monthly Review_ 1900-04; Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature; created a Knight 1915. Among his books are "Taken from the Enemy," "Mordred," "Admirals All," "The Island Race," "The Old Country," "The Book of Cupid," "Poems Old and New," and "The New June." _Play the Game_, 162. NOYES, ALFRED. Born in Staffordshire, Eng., Sept. 16, 1880. Educated at Oxford; received honorary degree of Litt.D. from Yale 1913; gave the Lowell Lectures in America on "The Sea in English Poetry" 1913; elected to Professorship of Modern Poetry at Princeton 1914; temporarily attached to the foreign office 1916. Among his books are "Collected Poems" (three volumes), "The Elfin Artist," "The New Morning," "The Lord of Misrule," "A Belgian Christmas Eve," "The Wine-Press," "Tales of the Mermaid Tavern," "Sherwood," "The Enchanted Island," "Drake," "Beyond the Desert," "Walking Shadows," "Open Boats," "The Golden Hynde." "The Flower of Old Japan," and "A Salute from the Fleet." _The New Duckling_, 34. O O SHEEL, SHEAMUS. Born at New York City, Sept. 19, 1886. Educated in the New York City grammar and high schools; took special work in English and history at Columbia 1906-8. Member of the Poetry Society of America and the Gaelic Society. Interested in political and civic reforms. Among his books are "Blossomy Bough" and "The Light Feet of Goats." _He Whom a Dream Hath Possessed_. P PROCTER, BRYAN WALLER ("Barry Cornwall"). Born at Leeds, Eng., Nov. 21, 1787; died Oct. 5, 1874. Educated at Harrow; schoolmate of Byron and Sir Robert Peel; called to the bar 1831; commissioner of lunacy 1832-61. Among his books are "Dramatic Scenes, and Other Poems," "A Sicilian Story," "Flood of Thessaly," and "English Songs." _Sit Down, Sad Soul_. R RICE, GRANTLAND. Born at Nashville, Tenn., Nov. 1, 1880. Attended Vanderbilt University. Worked as sporting writer on the Atlanta _Journal_; came to New York City in 1911. His sporting column, "The Sportlight," is said to be more widely syndicated and more widely read than any other writing on topics of sport in the United States. Irvin S. Cobb says that it often reaches the height of pure literature, and as a writer of homely, simple American verse Grantland Rice is held by many to be the logical successor to James Whitcomb Riley. He is author of "Songs of the Stalwart" and editor of the _American Golfer_. _Brave Life_; "_Might Have Been_"; _On Being Ready_; _On Down the Road_; _The Answer_; _The Call of the Unbeaten_; _The Game_; _The Trainers_. RILEY, JAMES WHITCOMB. Born at Greenfield, Ind., 1849; died at Indianapolis, Ind., July 22, 1916. Public school education; received honorary degree of M.A. from Yale 1902; Litt.D. from Wabash College 1903 and from the University of Pennsylvania 1904, and LL.D. from Indiana University 1907. Began contributing poems to Indiana papers 1873; known as the "Hoosier Poet," and much of his verse in the middle Western and Hoosier dialect. Among his books are "The Old Swimmin' Hole," "Afterwhiles," "Old Fashioned Roses," "Pipes o' Pan at Zekesbury," "Neighborly Poems," "Green Fields and Running Brooks," "Poems Here at Home," "Child-Rhymes," "Love Lyrics," "Home Folks," "Farm-Rhymes," "An Old Sweetheart of Mine," "Out to Old Aunt Mary's," "A Defective Santa Claus," "Songs o' Cheer," "Boys of the Old Glee Club," "Raggedy Man," "Little Orphan Annie," "Songs of Home," "When the Frost Is on the Punkin," "All the Year Round," "Knee-Deep in June," "A Song of Long Ago," and "Songs of Summer." His complete works are issued by the Bobbs-Merrill Company in the "Biographical Edition of James Whitcomh Riley" 1913. _Just Be Glad_, 14; _My Philosophy_, 57. RITTENHOUSE, JESSIE BELLE. Born at Mt. Morris, N.Y. Graduate of Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, Lima, N.Y.; teacher of Latin and English in a private school at Cairo, Ill., and at Ackley Institute for Girls, Grand Haven, Mich., 1893-4; active newspaper work and reviewer until 1900; contributor to New York _Times_ Review of Books and _The Bookman_; lecturer on modern poetry in extension courses of Columbia University. Her books are "The Little Book of Modern Verse," "The Little Book of Modern American Verse," "Second Book of Modern Verse," "The Younger American Poets," and "The Door of Dreams." _My Wage_, 183. S SERVICE, ROBERT WILLIAM. Born at Preston, Eng., Jan. 10, 1874. Educated at Hillhead Public School, Glasgow; served apprenticeship with the Commercial Bank of Scotland, Glasgow; emigrated to Canada and settled on Vancouver Island; for a while engaged in farming, and later traveled up and down the Pacific coast, following many occupations; finally joined the staff of the Canadian Bank of Commerce in Victoria, B.C., 1905; was later transferred to White Horse, Yukon Territory, and then to Dawson; he spent eight years in the Yukon, much of it in travel. In Europe during the Great War; in Paris 1921. Among his books are "The Spell of the Yukon," "Ballads of a Cheerchako," "Rhymes of a Rolling Stone," "Rhymes of a Red Cross Man," and "Ballads of a Bohemian." _The Quitter_, 8. SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM. Born at Stratford on Avon, Apr. 23, 1564; died there Apr. 23, 1616, and buried in Stratford church. Probably attended Stratford Grammar School; married Anne Hathaway, who was eight years his senior, Nov., 1582; a daughter, Susanna, born May 1, 1583; twins, Hamnet and Judith, born 1585. About 1585 went to London, and became connected with the theater as actor, reviser of old plays, etc. His son Hammet died 1596; his father applied for a coat of arms 1596. Bought New Place at Stratford 1597; coat of arms granted 1599; shareholder in Globe theater 1599. His father died 1601; his daughter Susanna married to John Hall, a physician at Stratford, 1607; his mother died 1608. Retired from theatre and returned to Stratford about 1611. His daughter Judith married to Thomas Quinney, a vintner, 1616; his wife died 1623; last descendant, Lady Bernard, died 1670. Folio edition of his plays 1623. Characterized by surpassing ability in both comedy and tragedy, extraordinary insight into human character, and supreme mastery of language. Besides his plays, which are too well known to require listing, he wrote "Sonnets," "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece." _A Good Name_, 109; _Cowards_, 194; _Good Deeds_, 216; _Having Done and Doing_, 52; _Opportunity_, 54; _Order and the Bees_, 75; _Painting the Lily_, 188; _Polonius's Advice to Laertes_, 49; _Sadness and Merriment_, 218; _Sleep and the Monarch_, 142; _Stability_, 157; _The Belly and the Members_, 152; _The Life Without Passion_, 213. SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE. Born at Field Place, Sussex, Eng., Aug. 4, 1792; drowned off Vireggio, Italy, July 8, 1822. Educated at Eton 1804-10; expelled from Oxford for publication of pamphlet "The Necessity of Atheism" 1811. Married Harriet Westbrook 1811; left her 1814, and went to Switzerland with Mary Godwin; returned to England 1815; received £1000 a year from his grandfather's estate 1815. Harriet drowned herself 1816, and he formally married Mary the next month. They went to Italy 1818; he was drowned on a voyage to welcome Leigh Hunt to Italy; his body burned on a funeral pyre in the presence of Byron, Hunt, and Trelawney. Some of his well-known poems are "Queen Mab," "Alastor," "The Revolt of Islam," "Prometheus Unbound," "Adonais," "To a Skylark," and "Ode to the West Wind"; he also wrote a poetical tragedy, "The Cenci." _Prometheus Unbound_, 184. SILL, EDWARD ROWLAND. Born at Windsor, Conn., 1841; died at Cleveland, Ohio, Feb. 27, 1887. Graduated from Yale 1861; professor of English at University of California 1874-82. _Faith_, 112; _Life_, 99; _Opportunity_, 56. SOUTHWELL, ROBERT. Born about 1561; executed at Tyburn, Feb. 21, 1595. Educated at Paris; received into the Society of Jesus 1578; returned to England 1586; became chaplain to the Countess of Arundel 1589; betrayed to the authorities 1592; imprisoned for three years and finally executed. _Times Go by Turns_, 122. STANTON, FRANK LEBBY. Born at Charleston, S.C., Feb. 22, 1857. Common school education; served apprenticeship as printer; identified with the Atlanta press for years, especially with the Atlanta _Constitution_ in which his poems have been a feature, and have won for him a unique place among modern verse writers. Some of his books are "Songs of the Soil," "Comes One With a Song," "Songs from Dixie Land," "Up from Georgia," and "Little Folks Down South." _A Hopeful Brother_, 67; _A Little Thankful Song_, 181; _A Poor Unfortunate_, 137; _A Pretty Good World_, 189; _A Song of To-Morrow_, 187; _Here's Hopin'_, 164; _Hoe Your Row_, 203; _Just Whistle_, 38; _Keep A-Goin'!_ 229; _This World_, 133. STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS. Born at Edinburgh, Nov. 13, 1850; died at Apia, Samoa, Dec. 4, 1894. Early education irregular because of poor health; went to Italy with his parents 1863; at Edinburgh University 1867-73, at first preparing for engineering but later taking up law; admitted to the bar 1875 but never practised. Various trips to the Continent between 1873-79; visited America 1879-80; resided in Switzerland, France, and England 1882-7; came to America again 1887-8; voyages in Pacific 1888-91; at Vailima, Samoa, 1891-94. A conspicuous example of a man always in poor health yet courageous and optimistic throughout his life. Among his books are "A Lodging for the Night," "Travels with a Donkey," "Virginibus Puerisque," "New Arabian Nights," "Treasure Island," "A Child's Garden of Verse," "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," "Kidnapped," "The Master of Ballantrae," "Father Damien," "Ebb Tide," and "Weir of Hermiston." _The Celestial Surgeon_. T TEICHNER, MIRIAM. Born at Detroit, Mich., 1888. Educated in public schools there; graduated from Central High School; took special courses in English and economics at the University of Michigan. Member of staff of Detroit _News_ after leaving school, writing a daily column of verse and humor; came to New York City as special feature writer of the New York _Globe_ 1915; in Germany for the Detroit _News_ and Associated Newspapers writing of post-war social and economic conditions 1921. _Awareness_; _Submission_; _The Struggle_; _Victory_. TENNYSON, ALFRED LORD. Born at Somersby, Lincolnshire, Eng., Aug. 6, 1809; died at Aldworth House, near Haslemere, Surrey, Oct. 6, 1892. Student at Cambridge 1828-31, but did not take a degree; trip to the Pyrenees with Arthur Hallam 1832; granted a pension of £200 by Peel 1845; after residing successively at Twickenham and Aldworth, he settled at Farringford, the Isle of Wight, 1853. Became poet laureate 1850; raised to the peerage 1884. Some of his well-known poems are "The Lady of Shalott," "The Palace of Art," "The Lotus Eaters," "A Dream of Fair Women," "Oenone," "Morte d'Arthur," "Dora," "Ulysses," "Locksley Hall," "The Princess," "In Memoriam," "Maud," "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington," "Charge of the Light Brigade," "Idylls of the King," "Enoch Arden," and the plays "Queen Mary" and "Becket." _Life, not Death_; _Ring Out, Wild Bells_; _The Greatness of the Soul_; _Ulysses_; _Will_. V VAN DYKE, HENRY. Born at Germantown, Pa., Nov. 10, 1852; graduated at Polytechnical Institute of Brooklyn 1869; A.B. degree from Princeton 1873; M.A. degree from there 1876; graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary 1877; studied at University of Berlin 1877-9; has received honorary degrees from Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Union, Wesleyan, Pennsylvania, and Oxford. Pastor of United Congregational Church, Newport, R.I., 1879-82, and of the Brick Presbyterian Church, New York, 1883-1900; professor of English literature at Princeton from 1900; U.S. minister to the Netherlands and Luxemburg 1913-17. Author of "The Poetry of Tennyson," "Sermons to Young Men," "Little Rivers," "The Other Wise Man," "The First Christmas Tree," "The Builders, and Other Poems," "The Lost Word," "Fisherman's Luck," "The Toiling of Felix, and Other Poems," "The Blue Flower," "Music, and Other Poems," "Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land," "The Mansion," and "The Unknown Quantity." _Four Things, 3; Work_, 65. W WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF. Born at Haverhill, Mass., Dec. 17, 1807; died at Hampton Falls, N.H., Sept. 7, 1892. Of Quaker ancestory; father a poor farmer; as a boy he injured his health by hard work on the farm. Taught school; attended Haverhill Academy for two terms 1827-8; edited Haverhill _Gazette_ 1830; returned to the farm in broken health 1832. Member of Massachusetts Legislature 1835-6. An ardent opponent of slavery; edited the Pennsylvania _Freeman_ 1838-40; several times attacked by mobs because of his views on slavery. Leading writer for the Washington _National Era _1847-57; contributed to the _Atlantic Monthly_ 1857. Some of his well-known poems are "Maud Muller," "The Barefoot Boy," "Barbara Freitchie," "Snow-Bound," and "The Eternal Goodness." _My Triumph_, 90. WIDDEMER, MARGARET. Born at Doylestown, Pa.; educated at home; graduated at the Drexel Institute Library School 1909. Began writing in childhood; her first published poem "The Factories" was widely quoted; married Robert Haven Schauffler 1919. Among her books are "The Rose-Garden Husband," "Winona of the Camp Fire," "Factories, with Other Lyrics," "Why Not?" "The Wishing-Ring Man," "The Old Road to Paradise," and "The Board Walk." _To Youth After Pain_, 103. WILCOX, ELLA WHEELER. Born at Johnston Centre, Wis., 1855; died at her home in Connecticut, Oct. 31, 1919. Educated "Poems of Pleasure," "Kingdom of Love," "Poems of Passion," "Poems of Progress," "Poems of Sentiment," "New Thought Common Sense," "Picked Poems," "Gems from Wilcox," "Faith," "Love," "Hope," "Cheer," and "The World and I." _Life_, 139; _Smiles_, 226; _Solitude_, 16; _The Disappointed_, 126; _Will_, 107; _Wishing_, 86; _Worth While_, 28. WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM. Born at Cockermouth, Cumberland, Eng., Apr. 7, 1770; died at Rydal Mount, Apr. 23, 1850. Educated at Hawkshead grammar school and Cambridge University, where he graduated 1791. Traveled on Continent 1790; in France 1791-2, where he sympathized with the French republicans. Received £900 legacy 1795, and settled with his sister Dorothy at Racedown, Dorsetshire; to be near Coleridge he removed to Alfoxden 1797; went to Continent 1798; returned to England 1799, and settled at Grasmere in the lake district; married Mary Hutchison 1802; settled at Allan Bank 1808; removed to Grasmere 1811. Appointed distributer of stamps 1813, and settled at Rydal Mount; traveled in Scotland 1814 and 1832; on the Continent 1820 and 1837. Given a pension of £300 by Peel 1842; became poet laureate 1843. Some of his well-known poems are "The Excursion," "Tintern Abbey," "Yarrow Revisited," "The Prelude," "Intimations of Immortality," and "We Are Seven." _Ode to Duty_, 190; _The Daffodils_, 180; _The Rainbow_, 117. WOTTON, SIR HENRY. Born at Bocton Malherbe, Kent, Eng., 1568; died at Eton, 1639. Educated at Winchester and Oxford; on the Continent 1588-95; became the secretary of the Earl of Essex 1595; English ambassador to Venice, Germany, etc.; became provost of Eton College 1624. _Character of a Happy Life_, 214. 
1165	----	None 
1166	----	None 
11986	----	THE BOOK OF AMERICAN NEGRO POETRY Chosen and Edited With An Essay On The Negro's Creative Genius by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON Author of "Fifty Years and Other Poems" 1922 Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc., New York Printed in the U.S.A. by the Quinn & Boden Company, Rahway, N.J. CONTENTS PREFACE PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR A Negro Love Song Little Brown Baby Ships That Pass in the Night Lover's Lane The Debt The Haunted Oak When de Co'n Pone's Hot A Death Song JAMES EDWIN CAMPBELL Negro Serenade De Cunjah Man Uncle Eph's Banjo Song Ol' Doc' Hyar When Ol' Sis' Judy Pray Compensation JAMES D. CORROTHERS At the Closed Gate of Justice Paul Laurence Dunbar The Negro Singer The Road to the Bow In the Matter of Two Men An Indignation Dinner Dream and the Song DANIEL WEBSTER DAVIS 'Weh Down Souf Hog Meat WILLIAM H. A. MOORE Dusk Song It Was Not Fate W. E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS A Litany of Atlanta GEORGE MARION McCLELLAN Dogwood Blossoms A Butterfly in Church The Hills of Sewanee The Feet of Judas WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE Sandy Star and Willie Gee I. Sculptured Worship II. Laughing It Out III. The Exit IV. The Way V. Onus Probandi Del Cascar Turn Me to My Yellow Leaves Ironic: LL.D Scintilla Sic Vita Rhapsody GEORGE REGINALD MARGETSON Stanzas from The Fledgling Bard and the Poetry Society JAMES WELDON JOHNSON O Black and Unknown Bards Sence You Went Away The Creation The White Witch Mother Night O Southland Brothers Fifty Years JOHN WESLEY HOLLOWAY Miss Melerlee Calling the Doctor The Corn Song Black Mammies LESLIE PINCKNEY HILL Tuskegee Christmas at Melrose Summer Magic The Teacher EDWARD SMYTH JONES A Song of Thanks RAY G. DANDRIDGE Time to Die 'Ittle Touzle Head Zalka Peetruza Sprin' Fevah De Drum Majah FENTON JOHNSON Children of the Sun The New Day Tired The Banjo Player The Scarlet Woman R. NATHANIEL DETT The Rubinstein Staccato Etude GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON The Heart of a Woman Youth Lost Illusions I Want to Die While You Love Me Welt My Little Dreams CLAUDE McKAY The Lynching If We Must Die To the White Fiends The Harlem Dancer Harlem Shadows After the Winter Spring in New Hampshire The Tired Worker The Barrier To O. E. A Flame-Heart Two-an'-Six JOSEPH S. COTTER, JR. A Prayer And What Shall You Say Is It Because I Am Black? The Band of Gideon Rain Music Supplication ROSCOE C. JAMISON The Negro Soldiers JESSIE FAUSET La Vie C'est la Vie Christmas Eve in France Dead Fires Oriflamme Oblivion ANNE SPENCER Before the Feast of Shushan At the Carnival The Wife-Woman Translation Dunbar ALEX ROGERS Why Adam Sinned The Rain Song WAVERLEY TURNER CARMICHAEL Keep Me, Jesus, Keep Me Winter Is Coming ALICE DUNBAR-NELSON Sonnet CHARLES BERTRAM JOHNSON A Little Cabin Negro Poets OTTO LEYLAND BOHANAN The Dawn's Awake! The Washer-Woman THEODORE HENRY SHACKLEFORD The Big Bell in Zion LUCIAN B. WATKINS Star of Ethiopia Two Points of View To Our Friends BENJAMIN BRAWLEY My Hero Chaucer JOSHUA HENRY JONES, JR. To a Skull PREFACE There is, perhaps, a better excuse for giving an Anthology of American Negro Poetry to the public than can be offered for many of the anthologies that have recently been issued. The public, generally speaking, does not know that there are American Negro poets--to supply this lack of information is, alone, a work worthy of somebody's effort. Moreover, the matter of Negro poets and the production of literature by the colored people in this country involves more than supplying information that is lacking. It is a matter which has a direct bearing on the most vital of American problems. A people may become great through many means, but there is only one measure by which its greatness is recognized and acknowledged. The final measure of the greatness of all peoples is the amount and standard of the literature and art they have produced. The world does not know that a people is great until that people produces great literature and art. No people that has produced great literature and art has ever been looked upon by the world as distinctly inferior. The status of the Negro in the United States' is more a question of national mental attitude toward the race than of actual conditions. And nothing will do more to change that mental attitude and raise his status than a demonstration of intellectual parity by the Negro through the production of literature and art. Is there likelihood that the American Negro will be able to do this? There is, for the good reason that he possesses the innate powers. He has the emotional endowment, the originality and artistic conception, and, what is more important, the power of creating that which has universal appeal and influence. I make here what may appear to be a more startling statement by saying that the Negro has already proved the possession of these powers by being the creator of the only things artistic that have yet sprung from American soil and been universally acknowledged as distinctive American products. These creations by the American Negro may be summed up under four heads. The first two are the Uncle Remus stories, which were collected by Joel Chandler Harris, and the "spirituals" or slave songs, to which the Fisk Jubilee Singers made the public and the musicians of both the United States and Europe listen. The Uncle Remus stories constitute the greatest body of folklore that America has produced, and the "spirituals" the greatest body of folk-song. I shall speak of the "spirituals" later because they are more than folk-songs, for in them the Negro sounded the depths, if he did not scale the heights, of music. The other two creations are the Cakewalk and ragtime. We do not need to go very far back to remember when cakewalking was the rage in the United States, Europe and South America. Society in this country and royalty abroad spent time in practicing the intricate steps. Paris pronounced it the "poetry of motion." The popularity of the cakewalk passed away but its influence remained. The influence can be seen to-day on any American stage where there is dancing. The influence which the Negro has exercised on the art of dancing in this country has been almost absolute. For generations the "buck and wing" and the "stop-time" dances, which are strictly Negro, have been familiar to American theatre audiences. A few years ago the public discovered the "turkey trot," the "eagle rock," "ballin' the jack," and several other varieties that started the modern dance craze. These dances were quickly followed by the "tango," a dance originated by the Negroes of Cuba and later transplanted to South America. (This fact is attested by no less authority than Vincente Blasco Ibañez in his "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.") Half the floor space in the country was then turned over to dancing, and highly paid exponents sprang up everywhere. The most noted, Mr. Vernon Castle, and, by the way, an Englishman, never danced except to the music of a colored band, and he never failed to state to his audiences that most of his dances had long been done by "your colored people," as he put it. Any one who witnesses a musical production in which there is dancing cannot fail to notice the Negro stamp on all the movements; a stamp which even the great vogue of Russian dances that swept the country about the time of the popular dance craze could not affect. That peculiar swaying of the shoulders which you see done everywhere by the blond girls of the chorus is nothing more than a movement from the Negro dance referred to above, the "eagle rock." Occasionally the movement takes on a suggestion of the, now outlawed, "shimmy." As for Ragtime, I go straight to the statement that it is the one artistic production by which America is known the world over. It has been all-conquering. Everywhere it is hailed as "American music." For a dozen years or so there has been a steady tendency to divorce Ragtime from the Negro; in fact, to take from him the credit of having originated it. Probably the younger people of the present generation do not know that Ragtime is of Negro origin. The change wrought in Ragtime and the way in which it is accepted by the country have been brought about chiefly through the change which has gradually been made in the words and stories accompanying the music. Once the text of all Ragtime songs was written in Negro dialect, and was about Negroes in the cabin or in the cotton field or on the levee or at a jubilee or on Sixth Avenue or at a ball, and about their love affairs. To-day, only a small proportion of Ragtime songs relate at all to the Negro. The truth is, Ragtime is now national rather than racial. But that does not abolish in any way the claim of the American Negro as its originator. Ragtime music was originated by colored piano players in the questionable resorts of St. Louis, Memphis, and other Mississippi River towns. These men did not know any more about the theory of music than they did about the theory of the universe. They were guided by their natural musical instinct and talent, but above all by the Negro's extraordinary sense of rhythm. Any one who is familiar with Ragtime may note that its chief charm is not in melody, but in rhythms. These players often improvised crude and, at times, vulgar words to fit the music. This was the beginning of the Ragtime song. Ragtime music got its first popular hearing at Chicago during the world's fair in that city. From Chicago it made its way to New York, and then started on its universal triumph. The earliest Ragtime songs, like Topsy, "jes' grew." Some of these earliest songs were taken down by white men, the words slightly altered or changed, and published under the names of the arrangers. They sprang into immediate popularity and earned small fortunes. The first to become widely known was "The Bully," a levee song which had been long used by roustabouts along the Mississippi. It was introduced in New York by Miss May Irwin, and gained instant popularity. Another one of these "jes' grew" songs was one which for a while disputed for place with Yankee Doodle; perhaps, disputes it even to-day. That song was "A Hot Time in the Old Town To-night"; introduced and made popular by the colored regimental bands during the Spanish-American War. Later there came along a number of colored men who were able to transcribe the old songs and write original ones. I was, about that time, writing words to music for the music show stage in New York. I was collaborating with my brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, and the late Bob Cole. I remember that we appropriated about the last one of the old "jes' grew" songs. It was a song which had been sung for years all through the South. The words were unprintable, but the tune was irresistible, and belonged to nobody. We took it, re-wrote the verses, telling an entirely different story from the original, left the chorus as it was, and published the song, at first under the name of "Will Handy." It became very popular with college boys, especially at football games, and perhaps still is. The song was, "Oh, Didn't He Ramble!" In the beginning, and for quite a while, almost all of the Ragtime songs that were deliberately composed were the work of colored writers. Now, the colored composers, even in this particular field, are greatly outnumbered by the white. The reader might be curious to know if the "jes' grew" songs have ceased to grow. No, they have not; they are growing all the time. The country has lately been flooded with several varieties of "The Blues." These "Blues," too, had their origin in Memphis, and the towns along the Mississippi. They are a sort of lament of a lover who is feeling "blue" over the loss of his sweetheart. The "Blues" of Memphis have been adulterated so much on Broadway that they have lost their pristine hue. But whenever you hear a piece of music which has a strain like this in it: [Illustration: Music] you will know you are listening to something which belonged originally to Beale Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee. The original "Memphis Blues," so far as it can be credited to a composer, must be credited to Mr. W. C. Handy, a colored musician of Memphis. As illustrations of the genuine Ragtime song in the making, I quote the words of two that were popular with the Southern colored soldiers in France. Here is the first: "Mah mammy's lyin' in her grave, Mah daddy done run away, Mah sister's married a gamblin' man, An' I've done gone astray. Yes, I've done gone astray, po' boy, An' I've done gone astray, Mah sister's married a gamblin' man, An' I've done gone astray, po' boy." These lines are crude, but they contain something of real poetry, of that elusive thing which nobody can define and that you can only tell that it is there when you feel it. You cannot read these lines without becoming reflective and feeling sorry for "Po' Boy." Now, take in this word picture of utter dejection: "I'm jes' as misabul as I can be, I'm unhappy even if I am free, I'm feelin' down, I'm feelin' blue; I wander 'round, don't know what to do. I'm go'n lay mah haid on de railroad line, Let de B. & O. come and pacify mah min'." These lines are, no doubt, one of the many versions of the famous "Blues." They are also crude, but they go straight to the mark. The last two lines move with the swiftness of all great tragedy. In spite of the bans which musicians and music teachers have placed on it, the people still demand and enjoy Ragtime. In fact, there is not a corner of the civilized world in which it is not known and liked. And this proves its originality, for if it were an imitation, the people of Europe, at least, would not have found it a novelty. And it is proof of a more important thing, it is proof that Ragtime possesses the vital spark, the power to appeal universally, without which any artistic production, no matter how approved its form may be, is dead. Of course, there are those who will deny that Ragtime is an artistic production. American musicians, especially, instead of investigating Ragtime, dismiss it with a contemptuous word. But this has been the course of scholasticism in every branch of art. Whatever new thing the people like is pooh-poohed; whatever is popular is regarded as not worth while. The fact is, nothing great or enduring in music has ever sprung full-fledged from the brain of any master; the best he gives the world he gathers from the hearts of the people, and runs it through the alembic of his genius. Ragtime deserves serious attention. There is a lot of colorless and vicious imitation, but there is enough that is genuine. In one composition alone, "The Memphis Blues," the musician will find not only great melodic beauty, but a polyphonic structure that is amazing. It is obvious that Ragtime has influenced, and in a large measure, become our popular music; but not many would know that it has influenced even our religious music. Those who are familiar with gospel hymns can at once see this influence if they will compare the songs of thirty years ago, such as "In the Sweet Bye and Bye," "The Ninety and Nine," etc., with the up-to-date, syncopated tunes that are sung in Sunday Schools, Christian Endeavor Societies, Y.M.C.A.'s and like gatherings to-day. Ragtime has not only influenced American music, it has influenced American life; indeed, it has saturated American life. It has become the popular medium for our national expression musically. And who can say that it does not express the blare and jangle and the surge, too, of our national spirit? Any one who doubts that there is a peculiar heel-tickling, smile-provoking, joy-awakening, response-compelling charm in Ragtime needs only to hear a skilful performer play the genuine article, needs only to listen to its bizarre harmonies, its audacious resolutions often consisting of an abrupt jump from one key to another, its intricate rhythms in which the accents fall in the most unexpected places but in which the fundamental beat is never lost in order to be convinced. I believe it has its place as well as the music which draws from us sighs and tears. Now, these dances which I have referred to and Ragtime music may be lower forms of art, but they are evidence of a power that will some day be applied to the higher forms. And even now we need not stop at the Negro's accomplishment through these lower forms. In the "spirituals," or slave songs, the Negro has given America not only its only folksongs, but a mass of noble music. I never think of this music but that I am struck by the wonder, the miracle of its production. How did the men who originated these songs manage to do it? The sentiments are easily accounted for; they are, for the most part, taken from the Bible. But the melodies, where did they come from? Some of them so weirdly sweet, and others so wonderfully strong. Take, for instance, "Go Down, Moses"; I doubt that there is a stronger theme in the whole musical literature of the world. [Illustration: Music (Oppressed so hard they could not stand, Let my people go. Go down, Mo-ses, way down in E-gypt land, Tell ole Pha-raoh, Let my people go.)] It is to be noted that whereas the chief characteristic of Ragtime is rhythm, the chief characteristic of the "spirituals" is melody. The melodies of "Steal Away to Jesus," "Swing Low Sweet Chariot," "Nobody Knows de Trouble I See," "I Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray," "Deep River," "O, Freedom Over Me," and many others of these songs possess a beauty that is--what shall I say? poignant. In the riotous rhythms of Ragtime the Negro expressed his irrepressible buoyancy, his keen response to the sheer joy of living; in the "spirituals" he voiced his sense of beauty and his deep religious feeling. Naturally, not as much can be said for the words of these songs as for the music. Most of the songs are religious. Some of them are songs expressing faith and endurance and a longing for freedom. In the religious songs, the sentiments and often the entire lines are taken bodily from the Bible. However, there is no doubt that some of these religious songs have a meaning apart from the Biblical text. It is evident that the opening lines of "Go Down, Moses," "Go down, Moses, 'Way down in Egypt land; Tell old Pharoah, Let my people go." have a significance beyond the bondage of Israel in Egypt. The bulk of the lines to these songs, as is the case in all communal music, is made up of choral iteration and incremental repetition of the leader's lines. If the words are read, this constant iteration and repetition are found to be tiresome; and it must be admitted that the lines themselves are often very trite. And, yet, there is frequently revealed a flash of real, primitive poetry. I give the following examples: "Sometimes I feel like an eagle in de air." "You may bury me in de East, You may bury me in de West, But I'll hear de trumpet sound In-a dat mornin'." "I know de moonlight, I know de starlight; I lay dis body down. I walk in de moonlight, I walk in de starlight; I lay dis body down. I know de graveyard, I know de graveyard, When I lay dis body down. I walk in de graveyard, I walk troo de graveyard To lay dis body down. I lay in de grave an' stretch out my arms; I lay dis body down. I go to de judgment in de evenin' of de day When I lay dis body down. An' my soul an' yo' soul will meet in de day When I lay dis body down." Regarding the line, "I lay in de grave an' stretch out my arms," Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson of Boston, one of the first to give these slave songs serious study, said: "Never it seems to me, since man first lived and suffered, was his infinite longing for peace uttered more plaintively than in that line." These Negro folksongs constitute a vast mine of material that has been neglected almost absolutely. The only white writers who have in recent years given adequate attention and study to this music, that I know of, are Mr. H.E. Krehbiel and Mrs. Natalie Curtis Burlin. We have our native composers denying the worth and importance of this music, and trying to manufacture grand opera out of so-called Indian themes. But there is a great hope for the development of this music, and that hope is the Negro himself. A worthy beginning has already been made by Burleigh, Cook, Johnson, and Dett. And there will yet come great Negro composers who will take this music and voice through it not only the soul of their race, but the soul of America. And does it not seem odd that this greatest gift of the Negro has been the most neglected of all he possesses? Money and effort have been expended upon his development in every direction except this. This gift has been regarded as a kind of side show, something for occasional exhibition; wherein it is the touchstone, it is the magic thing, it is that by which the Negro can bridge all chasms. No persons, however hostile, can listen to Negroes singing this wonderful music without having their hostility melted down. This power of the Negro to suck up the national spirit from the soil and create something artistic and original, which, at the same time, possesses the note of universal appeal, is due to a remarkable racial gift of adaptability; it is more than adaptability, it is a transfusive quality. And the Negro has exercised this transfusive quality not only here in America, where the race lives in large numbers, but in European countries, where the number has been almost infinitesimal. Is it not curious to know that the greatest poet of Russia is Alexander Pushkin, a man of African descent; that the greatest romancer of France is Alexander Dumas, a man of African descent; and that one of the greatest musicians of England is Coleridge-Taylor, a man of African descent? The fact is fairly well known that the father of Dumas was a Negro of the French West Indies, and that the father of Coleridge-Taylor was a native-born African; but the facts concerning Pushkin's African ancestry are not so familiar. When Peter the Great was Czar of Russia, some potentate presented him with a full-blooded Negro of gigantic size. Peter, the most eccentric ruler of modern times, dressed this Negro up in soldier clothes, christened him Hannibal, and made him a special body-guard. But Hannibal had more than size, he had brain and ability. He not only looked picturesque and imposing in soldier clothes, he showed that he had in him the making of a real soldier. Peter recognized this, and eventually made him a general. He afterwards ennobled him, and Hannibal, later, married one of the ladies of the Russian court. This same Hannibal was great-grandfather of Pushkin, the national poet of Russia, the man who bears the same relation to Russian literature that Shakespeare bears to English literature. I know the question naturally arises: If out of the few Negroes who have lived in France there came a Dumas; and out of the few Negroes who have lived in England there came a Coleridge-Taylor; and if from the man who was at the time, probably, the only Negro in Russia there sprang that country's national poet, why have not the millions of Negroes in the United States with all the emotional and artistic endowment claimed for them produced a Dumas, or a Coleridge-Taylor, or a Pushkin? The question seems difficult, but there is an answer. The Negro in the United States is consuming all of his intellectual energy in this gruelling race-struggle. And the same statement may be made in a general way about the white South. Why does not the white South produce literature and art? The white South, too, is consuming all of its intellectual energy in this lamentable conflict. Nearly all of the mental efforts of the white South run through one narrow channel. The life of every Southern white man and all of his activities are impassably limited by the ever present Negro problem. And that is why, as Mr. H. L. Mencken puts it, in all that vast region, with its thirty or forty million people and its territory as large as a half a dozen Frances or Germanys, there is not a single poet, not a serious historian, not a creditable composer, not a critic good or bad, not a dramatist dead or alive. But, even so, the American Negro has accomplished something in pure literature. The list of those who have done so would be surprising both by its length and the excellence of the achievements. One of the great books written in this country since the Civil War is the work of a colored man, "The Souls of Black Folk," by W.E.B. Du Bois. Such a list begins with Phillis Wheatley. In 1761 a slave ship landed a cargo of slaves in Boston. Among them was a little girl seven or eight years of age. She attracted the attention of John Wheatley, a wealthy gentleman of Boston, who purchased her as a servant for his wife. Mrs. Wheatley was a benevolent woman. She noticed the girl's quick mind and determined to give her opportunity for its development. Twelve years later Phillis published a volume of poems. The book was brought out in London, where Phillis was for several months an object of great curiosity and attention. Phillis Wheatley has never been given her rightful place in American literature. By some sort of conspiracy she is kept out of most of the books, especially the text-books on literature used in the schools. Of course, she is not a _great_ American poet--and in her day there were no great American poets--but she is an important American poet. Her importance, if for no other reason, rests on the fact that, save one, she is the first in order of time of all the women poets of America. And she is among the first of all American poets to issue a volume. It seems strange that the books generally give space to a mention of Urian Oakes, President of Harvard College, and to quotations from the crude and lengthy elegy which he published in 1667; and print examples from the execrable versified version of the Psalms made by the New England divines, and yet deny a place to Phillis Wheatley. Here are the opening lines from the elegy by Oakes, which is quoted from in most of the books on American literature: "Reader, I am no poet, but I grieve. Behold here what that passion can do, That forced a verse without Apollo's leave, And whether the learned sisters would or no." There was no need for Urian to admit what his handiwork declared. But this from the versified Psalms is still worse, yet it is found in the books: "The Lord's song sing can we? being in stranger's land, then let lose her skill my right hand if I Jerusalem forget." Anne Bradstreet preceded Phillis Wheatley by a little over twenty years. She published her volume of poems, "The Tenth Muse," in 1750. Let us strike a comparison between the two. Anne Bradstreet was a wealthy, cultivated Puritan girl, the daughter of Thomas Dudley, Governor of Bay Colony. Phillis, as we know, was a Negro slave girl born in Africa. Let us take them both at their best and in the same vein. The following stanza is from Anne's poem entitled "Contemplation": "While musing thus with contemplation fed, And thousand fancies buzzing in my brain, The sweet tongued Philomel percht o'er my head, And chanted forth a most melodious strain, Which rapt me so with wonder and delight, I judged my hearing better than my sight, And wisht me wings with her awhile to take my flight." And the following is from Phillis' poem entitled "Imagination": "Imagination! who can sing thy force? Or who describe the swiftness of thy course? Soaring through air to find the bright abode, The empyreal palace of the thundering God, We on thy pinions can surpass the wind, And leave the rolling universe behind, From star to star the mental optics rove, Measure the skies, and range the realms above, There in one view we grasp the mighty whole, Or with new worlds amaze the unbounded soul." We do not think the black woman suffers much by comparison with the white. Thomas Jefferson said of Phillis: "Religion has produced a Phillis Wheatley, but it could not produce a poet; her poems are beneath contempt." It is quite likely that Jefferson's criticism was directed more against religion than against Phillis' poetry. On the other hand, General George Washington wrote her with his own hand a letter in which he thanked her for a poem which she had dedicated to him. He, later, received her with marked courtesy at his camp at Cambridge. It appears certain that Phillis was the first person to apply to George Washington the phrase, "First in peace." The phrase occurs in her poem addressed to "His Excellency, General George Washington," written in 1775. The encomium, "First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen" was originally used in the resolutions presented to Congress on the death of Washington, December, 1799. Phillis Wheatley's poetry is the poetry of the Eighteenth Century. She wrote when Pope and Gray were supreme; it is easy to see that Pope was her model. Had she come under the influence of Wordsworth, Byron or Keats or Shelley, she would have done greater work. As it is, her work must not be judged by the work and standards of a later day, but by the work and standards of her own day and her own contemporaries. By this method of criticism she stands out as one of the important characters in the making of American literature, without any allowances for her sex or her antecedents. According to "A Bibliographical Checklist of American Negro Poetry," compiled by Mr. Arthur A. Schomburg, more than one hundred Negroes in the United States have published volumes of poetry ranging in size from pamphlets to books of from one hundred to three hundred pages. About thirty of these writers fill in the gap between Phillis Wheatley and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Just here it is of interest to note that a Negro wrote and published a poem before Phillis Wheatley arrived in this country from Africa. He was Jupiter Hammon, a slave belonging to a Mr. Lloyd of Queens-Village, Long Island. In 1760 Hammon published a poem, eighty-eight lines in length, entitled "An Evening Thought, Salvation by Christ, with Penettential Cries." In 1788 he published "An Address to Miss Phillis Wheatley, Ethiopian Poetess in Boston, who came from Africa at eight years of age, and soon became acquainted with the Gospel of Jesus Christ." These two poems do not include all that Hammon wrote. The poets between Phillis Wheatley and Dunbar must be considered more in the light of what they attempted than of what they accomplished. Many of them showed marked talent, but barely a half dozen of them demonstrated even mediocre mastery of technique in the use of poetic material and forms. And yet there are several names that deserve mention. George M. Horton, Frances E. Harper, James M. Bell and Alberry A. Whitman, all merit consideration when due allowances are made for their limitations in education, training and general culture. The limitations of Horton were greater than those of either of the others; he was born a slave in North Carolina in 1797, and as a young man began to compose poetry without being able to write it down. Later he received some instruction from professors of the University of North Carolina, at which institution he was employed as a janitor. He published a volume of poems, "The Hope of Liberty," in 1829. Mrs. Harper, Bell and Whitman would stand out if only for the reason that each of them attempted sustained work. Mrs. Harper published her first volume of poems in 1854, but later she published "Moses, a Story of the Nile," a poem which ran to 52 closely printed pages. Bell in 1864 published a poem of 28 pages in celebration of President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. In 1870 he published a poem of 32 pages in celebration of the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Whitman published his first volume of poems, a book of 253 pages, in 1877; but in 1884 he published "The Rape of Florida," an epic poem written in four cantos and done in the Spenserian stanza, and which ran to 97 closely printed pages. The poetry of both Mrs. Harper and of Whitman had a large degree of popularity; one of Mrs. Harper's books went through more than twenty editions. Of these four poets, it is Whitman who reveals not only the greatest imagination but also the more skilful workmanship. His lyric power at its best may be judged from the following stanza from the "Rape of Florida": "'Come now, my love, the moon is on the lake; Upon the waters is my light canoe; Come with me, love, and gladsome oars shall make A music on the parting wave for you. Come o'er the waters deep and dark and blue; Come where the lilies in the marge have sprung, Come with me, love, for Oh, my love is true!' This is the song that on the lake was sung, The boatman sang it when his heart was young." Some idea of Whitman's capacity for dramatic narration may be gained from the following lines taken from "Not a Man, and Yet a Man," a poem of even greater length than "The Rape of Florida": "A flash of steely lightning from his hand, Strikes down the groaning leader of the band; Divides his startled comrades, and again Descending, leaves fair Dora's captors slain. Her, seizing then within a strong embrace, Out in the dark he wheels his flying pace; He speaks not, but with stalwart tenderness Her swelling bosom firm to his doth press; Springs like a stag that flees the eager hound, And like a whirlwind rustles o'er the ground. Her locks swim in dishevelled wildness o'er His shoulders, streaming to his waist and more; While on and on, strong as a rolling flood, His sweeping footsteps part the silent wood." It is curious and interesting to trace the growth of individuality and race consciousness in this group of poets. Jupiter Hammon's verses were almost entirely religious exhortations. Only very seldom does Phillis Wheatley sound a native note. Four times in single lines she refers to herself as "Afric's muse." In a poem of admonition addressed to the students at the "University of Cambridge in New England" she refers to herself as follows: "Ye blooming plants of human race divine, An Ethiop tells you 'tis your greatest foe." But one looks in vain for some outburst or even complaint against the bondage of her people, for some agonizing cry about her native land. In two poems she refers definitely to Africa as her home, but in each instance there seems to be under the sentiment of the lines a feeling of almost smug contentment at her own escape therefrom. In the poem, "On Being Brought from Africa to America," she says: "'Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land, Taught my benighted soul to understand That there's a God and there's a Saviour too; Once I redemption neither sought or knew. Some view our sable race with scornful eye, 'Their color is a diabolic dye.' Remember, Christians, Negroes black as Cain, May be refined, and join th' angelic train." In the poem addressed to the Earl of Dartmouth, she speaks of freedom and makes a reference to the parents from whom she was taken as a child, a reference which cannot but strike the reader as rather unimpassioned: "Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song, Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung, Whence flow these wishes for the common good, By feeling hearts alone best understood; I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate Was snatch'd from Afric's fancy'd happy seat; What pangs excruciating must molest, What sorrows labor in my parents' breast? Steel'd was that soul and by no misery mov'd That from a father seiz'd his babe belov'd; Such, such my case. And can I then but pray Others may never feel tyrannic sway?" The bulk of Phillis Wheatley's work consists of poems addressed to people of prominence. Her book was dedicated to the Countess of Huntington, at whose house she spent the greater part of her time while in England. On his repeal of the Stamp Act, she wrote a poem to King George III, whom she saw later; another poem she wrote to the Earl of Dartmouth, whom she knew. A number of her verses were addressed to other persons of distinction. Indeed, it is apparent that Phillis was far from being a democrat. She was far from being a democrat not only in her social ideas but also in her political ideas; unless a religious meaning is given to the closing lines of her ode to General Washington, she was a decided royalist: "A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine With gold unfading, Washington! be thine." Nevertheless, she was an ardent patriot. Her ode to General Washington (1775), her spirited poem, "On Major General Lee" (1776) and her poem, "Liberty and Peace," written in celebration of the close of the war, reveal not only strong patriotic feeling but an understanding of the issues at stake. In her poem, "On Major General Lee," she makes her hero reply thus to the taunts of the British commander into whose hands he has been delivered through treachery: "O arrogance of tongue! And wild ambition, ever prone to wrong! Believ'st thou, chief, that armies such as thine Can stretch in dust that heaven-defended line? In vain allies may swarm from distant lands, And demons aid in formidable bands, Great as thou art, thou shun'st the field of fame, Disgrace to Britain and the British name! When offer'd combat by the noble foe, (Foe to misrule) why did the sword forego The easy conquest of the rebel-land? Perhaps TOO easy for thy martial hand. What various causes to the field invite! For plunder YOU, and we for freedom fight, Her cause divine with generous ardor fires, And every bosom glows as she inspires! Already thousands of your troops have fled To the drear mansions of the silent dead: Columbia, too, beholds with streaming eyes Her heroes fall--'tis freedom's sacrifice! So wills the power who with convulsive storms Shakes impious realms, and nature's face deforms; Yet those brave troops, innum'rous as the sands, One soul inspires, one General Chief commands; Find in your train of boasted heroes, one To match the praise of Godlike Washington. Thrice happy Chief in whom the virtues join, And heaven taught prudence speaks the man divine." What Phillis Wheatley failed to achieve is due in no small degree to her education and environment. Her mind was steeped in the classics; her verses are filled with classical and mythological allusions. She knew Ovid thoroughly and was familiar with other Latin authors. She must have known Alexander Pope by heart. And, too, she was reared and sheltered in a wealthy and cultured family,--a wealthy and cultured Boston family; she never had the opportunity to learn life; she never found out her own true relation to life and to her surroundings. And it should not be forgotten that she was only about thirty years old when she died. The impulsion or the compulsion that might have driven her genius off the worn paths, out on a journey of exploration, Phillis Wheatley never received. But, whatever her limitations, she merits more than America has accorded her. Horton, who was born three years after Phillis Wheatley's death, expressed in all of his poetry strong complaint at his condition of slavery and a deep longing for freedom. The following verses are typical of his style and his ability: "Alas! and am I born for this, To wear this slavish chain? Deprived of all created bliss, Through hardship, toil, and pain? * * * * * Come, Liberty! thou cheerful sound, Roll through my ravished ears; Come, let my grief in joys be drowned, And drive away my fears." In Mrs. Harper we find something more than the complaint and the longing of Horton. We find an expression of a sense of wrong and injustice. The following stanzas are from a poem addressed to the white women of America: "You can sigh o'er the sad-eyed Armenian Who weeps in her desolate home. You can mourn o'er the exile of Russia From kindred and friends doomed to roam. * * * * * But hark! from our Southland are floating Sobs of anguish, murmurs of pain, And women heart-stricken are weeping O'er their tortured and slain. * * * * * Have ye not, oh, my favored sisters, Just a plea, a prayer or a tear For mothers who dwell 'neath the shadows Of agony, hatred and fear? * * * * * Weep not, oh my well sheltered sisters, Weep not for the Negro alone, But weep for your sons who must gather The crops which their fathers have sown." Whitman, in the midst of "The Rape of Florida," a poem in which he related the taking of the State of Florida from the Seminoles, stops and discusses the race question. He discusses it in many other poems; and he discusses it from many different angles. In Whitman we find not only an expression of a sense of wrong and injustice, but we hear a note of faith and a note also of defiance. For example, in the opening to Canto II of "The Rape of Florida": "Greatness by nature cannot be entailed; It is an office ending with the man,-- Sage, hero, Saviour, tho' the Sire be hailed, The son may reach obscurity in the van: Sublime achievements know no patent plan, Man's immortality's a book with seals, And none but God shall open--none else can-- But opened, it the mystery reveals,-- Manhood's conquest of man to heaven's respect appeals. "Is manhood less because man's face is black? Let thunders of the loosened seals reply! Who shall the rider's restive steed turn back, Or who withstand the arrows he lets fly Between the mountains of eternity? Genius ride forth! Thou gift and torch of heav'n! The mastery is kindled in thine eye; To conquest ride! thy bow of strength is giv'n-- The trampled hordes of caste before thee shall be driv'n! * * * * * "'Tis hard to judge if hatred of one's race, By those who deem themselves superior-born, Be worse than that quiescence in disgrace, Which only merits--and should only--scorn. Oh, let me see the Negro night and morn, Pressing and fighting in, for place and power! All earth is place--all time th' auspicious hour, While heaven leans forth to look, oh, will he quail or cower? "Ah! I abhor his protest and complaint! His pious looks and patience I despise! He can't evade the test, disguised as saint; The manly voice of freedom bids him rise, And shake himself before Philistine eyes! And, like a lion roused, no sooner than A foe dare come, play all his energies, And court the fray with fury if he can; For hell itself respects a fearless, manly man." It may be said that none of these poets strike a deep native strain or sound a distinctively original note, either in matter or form. That is true; but the same thing may be said of all the American poets down to the writers of the present generation, with the exception of Poe and Walt Whitman. The thing in which these black poets are mostly excelled by their contemporaries is mere technique. Paul Laurence Dunbar stands out as the first poet from the Negro race in the United States to show a combined mastery over poetic material and poetic technique, to reveal innate literary distinction in what he wrote, and to maintain a high level of performance. He was the first to rise to a height from which he could take a perspective view of his own race. He was the first to see objectively its humor, its superstitions, its shortcomings; the first to feel sympathetically its heart-wounds, its yearnings, its aspirations, and to voice them all in a purely literary form. Dunbar's fame rests chiefly on his poems in Negro dialect. This appraisal of him is, no doubt, fair; for in these dialect poems he not only carried his art to the highest point of perfection, but he made a contribution to American literature unlike what any one else had made, a contribution which, perhaps, no one else could have made. Of course, Negro dialect poetry was written before Dunbar wrote, most of it by white writers; but the fact stands out that Dunbar was the first to use it as a medium for the true interpretation of Negro character and psychology. And, yet, dialect poetry does not constitute the whole or even the bulk of Dunbar's work. In addition to a large number of poems of a very high order done in literary English, he was the author of four novels and several volumes of short stories. Indeed, Dunbar did not begin his career as a writer of dialect. I may be pardoned for introducing here a bit of reminiscence. My personal friendship with Paul Dunbar began before he had achieved recognition, and continued to be close until his death. When I first met him he had published a thin volume, "Oak and Ivy," which was being sold chiefly through his own efforts. "Oak and Ivy" showed no distinctive Negro influence, but rather the influence of James Whitcomb Riley. At this time Paul and I were together every day for several months. He talked to me a great deal about his hopes and ambitions. In these talks he revealed that he had reached a realization of the possibilities of poetry in the dialect, together with a recognition of the fact that it offered the surest way by which he could get a hearing. Often he said to me: "I've got to write dialect poetry; it's the only way I can get them to listen to me." I was with Dunbar at the beginning of what proved to be his last illness. He said to me then: "I have not grown. I am writing the same things I wrote ten years ago, and am writing them no better." His self-accusation was not fully true; he had grown, and he had gained a surer control of his art, but he had not accomplished the greater things of which he was constantly dreaming; the public had held him to the things for which it had accorded him recognition. If Dunbar had lived he would have achieved some of those dreams, but even while he talked so dejectedly to me he seemed to feel that he was not to live. He died when he was only thirty-three. It has a bearing on this entire subject to note that Dunbar was of unmixed Negro blood; so, as the greatest figure in literature which the colored race in the United States has produced, he stands as an example at once refuting and confounding those who wish to believe that whatever extraordinary ability an Aframerican shows is due to an admixture of white blood. As a man, Dunbar was kind and tender. In conversation he was brilliant and polished. His voice was his chief charm, and was a great element in his success as a reader of his own works. In his actions he was impulsive as a child, sometimes even erratic; indeed, his intimate friends almost looked upon him as a spoiled boy. He was always delicate in health. Temperamentally, he belonged to that class of poets who Taine says are vessels too weak to contain the spirit of poetry, the poets whom poetry kills, the Byrons, the Burns's, the De Mussets, the Poes. To whom may he be compared, this boy who scribbled his early verses while he ran an elevator, whose youth was a battle against poverty, and who, in spite of almost insurmountable obstacles, rose to success? A comparison between him and Burns is not unfitting. The similarity between many phases of their lives is remarkable, and their works are not incommensurable. Burns took the strong dialect of his people and made it classic; Dunbar took the humble speech of his people and in it wrought music. Mention of Dunbar brings up for consideration the fact that, although he is the most outstanding figure in literature among the Aframericans of the United States, he does not stand alone among the Aframericans of the whole Western world. There are Plácido and Manzano in Cuba; Vieux and Durand in Haiti, Machado de Assis in Brazil; Leon Laviaux in Martinique, and others still that might be mentioned, who stand on a plane with or even above Dunbar. Plácido and Machado de Assis rank as great in the literatures of their respective countries without any qualifications whatever. They are world figures in the literature of the Latin languages. Machado de Assis is somewhat handicapped in this respect by having as his tongue and medium the lesser known Portuguese, but Plácido, writing in the language of Spain, Mexico, Cuba and of almost the whole of South America, is universally known. His works have been republished in the original in Spain, Mexico and in most of the Latin-American countries; several editions have been published in the United States; translations of his works have been made into French and German. Plácido is in some respects the greatest of all the Cuban poets. In sheer genius and the fire of inspiration he surpasses even the more finished Heredia. Then, too, his birth, his life and his death ideally contained the tragic elements that go into the making of a halo about a poet's head. Plácido was born in Habana in 1809. The first months of his life were passed in a foundling asylum; indeed, his real name, Gabriel de la Concepcion Valdés, was in honor of its founder. His father took him out of the asylum, but shortly afterwards went to Mexico and died there. His early life was a struggle against poverty; his youth and manhood was a struggle for Cuban independence. His death placed him in the list of Cuban martyrs. On the 27th of June, 1844, he was lined up against a wall with ten others and shot by order of the Spanish authorities on a charge of conspiracy. In his short but eventful life he turned out work which bulks more than six hundred pages. During the few hours preceding his execution he wrote three of his best known poems, among them his famous sonnet, "Mother, Farewell!" Plácido's sonnet to his mother has been translated into every important language; William Cullen Bryant did it in English; but in spite of its wide popularity, it is, perhaps, outside of Cuba the least understood of all Plácido's poems. It is curious to note how Bryant's translation totally misses the intimate sense of the delicate subtility of the poem. The American poet makes it a tender and loving farewell of a son who is about to die to a heart-broken mother; but that is not the kind of a farewell that Plácido intended to write or did write. The key to the poem is in the first word, and the first word is the Spanish conjunction _Si_ (if). The central idea, then, of the sonnet is, "If the sad fate which now overwhelms me should bring a pang to your heart, do not weep, for I die a glorious death and sound the last note of my lyre to you." Bryant either failed to understand or ignored the opening word, "If," because he was not familiar with the poet's history. While Plácido's father was a Negro, his mother was a Spanish white woman, a dancer in one of the Habana theatres. At his birth she abandoned him to a foundling asylum, and perhaps never saw him again, although it is known that she outlived her son. When the poet came down to his last hours he remembered that somewhere there lived a woman who was his mother; that although she had heartlessly abandoned him; that although he owed her no filial duty, still she might, perhaps, on hearing of his sad end feel some pang of grief or sadness; so he tells her in his last words that he dies happy and bids her not to weep. This he does with nobility and dignity, but absolutely without affection. Taking into account these facts, and especially their humiliating and embittering effect upon a soul so sensitive as Plácido's, this sonnet, in spite of the obvious weakness of the sestet as compared with the octave, is a remarkable piece of work.[1] [Footnote 1: Plácido's sonnet and two English versions will be found in the Appendix.] In considering the Aframerican poets of the Latin languages I am impelled to think that, as up to this time the colored poets of greater universality have come out of the Latin-American countries rather than out of the United States, they will continue to do so for a good many years. The reason for this I hinted at in the first part of this preface. The colored poet in the United States labors within limitations which he cannot easily pass over. He is always on the defensive or the offensive. The pressure upon him to be propagandic is well nigh irresistible. These conditions are suffocating to breadth and to real art in poetry. In addition he labors under the handicap of finding culture not entirely colorless in the United States. On the other hand, the colored poet of Latin-America can voice the national spirit without any reservations. And he will be rewarded without any reservations, whether it be to place him among the great or declare him the greatest. So I think it probable that the first world-acknowledged Aframerican poet will come out of Latin-America. Over against this probability, of course, is the great advantage possessed by the colored poet in the United States of writing in the world-conquering English language. This preface has gone far beyond what I had in mind when I started. It was my intention to gather together the best verses I could find by Negro poets and present them with a bare word of introduction. It was not my plan to make this collection inclusive nor to make the book in any sense a book of criticism. I planned to present only verses by contemporary writers; but, perhaps, because this is the first collection of its kind, I realized the absence of a starting-point and was led to provide one and to fill in with historical data what I felt to be a gap. It may be surprising to many to see how little of the poetry being written by Negro poets to-day is being written in Negro dialect. The newer Negro poets show a tendency to discard dialect; much of the subject-matter which went into the making of traditional dialect poetry, 'possums, watermelons, etc., they have discarded altogether, at least, as poetic material. This tendency will, no doubt, be regretted by the majority of white readers; and, indeed, it would be a distinct loss if the American Negro poets threw away this quaint and musical folk-speech as a medium of expression. And yet, after all, these poets are working through a problem not realized by the reader, and, perhaps, by many of these poets themselves not realized consciously. They are trying to break away from, not Negro dialect itself, but the limitations on Negro dialect imposed by the fixing effects of long convention. The Negro in the United States has achieved or been placed in a certain artistic niche. When he is thought of artistically, it is as a happy-go-lucky, singing, shuffling, banjo-picking being or as a more or less pathetic figure. The picture of him is in a log cabin amid fields of cotton or along the levees. Negro dialect is naturally and by long association the exact instrument for voicing this phase of Negro life; and by that very exactness it is an instrument with but two full stops, humor and pathos. So even when he confines himself to purely racial themes, the Aframerican poet realizes that there are phases of Negro life in the United States which cannot be treated in the dialect either adequately or artistically. Take, for example, the phases rising out of life in Harlem, that most wonderful Negro city in the world. I do not deny that a Negro in a log cabin is more picturesque than a Negro in a Harlem flat, but the Negro in the Harlem flat is here, and he is but part of a group growing everywhere in the country, a group whose ideals are becoming increasingly more vital than those of the traditionally artistic group, even if its members are less picturesque. What the colored poet in the United States needs to do is something like what Synge did for the Irish; he needs to find a form that will express the racial spirit by symbols from within rather than by symbols from without, such as the mere mutilation of English spelling and pronunciation. He needs a form that is freer and larger than dialect, but which will still hold the racial flavor; a form expressing the imagery, the idioms, the peculiar turns of thought, and the distinctive humor and pathos, too, of the Negro, but which will also be capable of voicing the deepest and highest emotions and aspirations, and allow of the widest range of subjects and the widest scope of treatment. Negro dialect is at present a medium that is not capable of giving expression to the varied conditions of Negro life in America, and much less is it capable of giving the fullest interpretation of Negro character and psychology. This is no indictment against the dialect as dialect, but against the mould of convention in which Negro dialect in the United States has been set. In time these conventions may become lost, and the colored poet in the United States may sit down to write in dialect without feeling that his first line will put the general reader in a frame of mind which demands that the poem be humorous or pathetic. In the meantime, there is no reason why these poets should not continue to do the beautiful things that can be done, and done best, in the dialect. In stating the need for Aframerican poets in the United States to work out a new and distinctive form of expression I do not wish to be understood to hold any theory that they should limit themselves to Negro poetry, to racial themes; the sooner they are able to write _American_ poetry spontaneously, the better. Nevertheless, I believe that the richest contribution the Negro poet can make to the American literature of the future will be the fusion into it of his own individual artistic gifts. Not many of the writers here included, except Dunbar, are known at all to the general reading public; and there is only one of these who has a widely recognized position in the American literary world, he is William Stanley Braithwaite. Mr. Braithwaite is not only unique in this respect, but he stands unique among all the Aframerican writers the United States has yet produced. He has gained his place, taking as the standard and measure for his work the identical standard and measure applied to American writers and American literature. He has asked for no allowances or rewards, either directly or indirectly, on account of his race. Mr. Braithwaite is the author of two volumes of verses, lyrics of delicate and tenuous beauty. In his more recent and uncollected poems he shows himself more and more decidedly the mystic. But his place in American literature is due more to his work as a critic and anthologist than to his work as a poet. There is still another role he has played, that of friend of poetry and poets. It is a recognized fact that in the work which preceded the present revival of poetry in the United States, no one rendered more unremitting and valuable service than Mr. Braithwaite. And it can be said that no future study of American poetry of this age can be made without reference to Braithwaite. Two authors included in the book are better known for their work in prose than in poetry: W.E.B. Du Bois whose well-known prose at its best is, however, impassioned and rhythmical; and Benjamin Brawley who is the author, among other works, of one of the best handbooks on the English drama that has yet appeared in America. But the group of the new Negro poets, whose work makes up the bulk of this anthology, contains names destined to be known. Claude McKay, although still quite a young man, has already demonstrated his power, breadth and skill as a poet. Mr. McKay's breadth is as essential a part of his equipment as his power and skill. He demonstrates mastery of the three when as a Negro poet he pours out the bitterness and rebellion in his heart in those two sonnet-tragedies, "If We Must Die" and "To the White Fiends," in a manner that strikes terror; and when as a cosmic poet he creates the atmosphere and mood of poetic beauty in the absolute, as he does in "Spring in New Hampshire" and "The Harlem Dancer." Mr. McKay gives evidence that he has passed beyond the danger which threatens many of the new Negro poets--the danger of allowing the purely polemical phases of the race problem to choke their sense of artistry. Mr. McKay's earliest work is unknown in this country. It consists of poems written and published in his native Jamaica. I was fortunate enough to run across this first volume, and I could not refrain from reproducing here one of the poems written in the West Indian Negro dialect. I have done this not only to illustrate the widest range of the poet's talent and to offer a comparison between the American and the West Indian dialects, but on account of the intrinsic worth of the poem itself. I was much tempted to introduce several more, in spite of the fact that they might require a glossary, because however greater work Mr. McKay may do he can never do anything more touching and charming than these poems in the Jamaica dialect. Fenton Johnson is a young poet of the ultra-modern school who gives promise of greater work than he has yet done. Jessie Fauset shows that she possesses the lyric gift, and she works with care and finish. Miss Fauset is especially adept in her translations from the French. Georgia Douglas Johnson is a poet neither afraid nor ashamed of her emotions. She limits herself to the purely conventional forms, rhythms and rhymes, but through them she achieves striking effects. The principal theme of Mrs. Johnson's poems is the secret dread down in every woman's heart, the dread of the passing of youth and beauty, and with them love. An old theme, one which poets themselves have often wearied of, but which, like death, remains one of the imperishable themes on which is made the poetry that has moved men's hearts through all ages. In her ingenuously wrought verses, through sheer simplicity and spontaneousness, Mrs. Johnson often sounds a note of pathos or passion that will not fail to waken a response, except in those too sophisticated or cynical to respond to natural impulses. Of the half dozen or so of colored women writing creditable verse, Anne Spencer is the most modern and least obvious in her methods. Her lines are at times involved and turgid and almost cryptic, but she shows an originality which does not depend upon eccentricities. In her "Before the Feast of Shushan" she displays an opulence, the love of which has long been charged against the Negro as one of his naïve and childish traits, but which in art may infuse a much needed color, warmth and spirit of abandon into American poetry. John W. Holloway, more than any Negro poet writing in the dialect to-day, summons to his work the lilt, the spontaneity and charm of which Dunbar was the supreme master whenever he employed that medium. It is well to say a word here about the dialect poems of James Edwin Campbell. In dialect, Campbell was a precursor of Dunbar. A comparison of his idioms and phonetics with those of Dunbar reveals great differences. Dunbar is a shade or two more sophisticated and his phonetics approach nearer to a mean standard of the dialects spoken in the different sections. Campbell is more primitive and his phonetics are those of the dialect as spoken by the Negroes of the sea islands off the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia, which to this day remains comparatively close to its African roots, and is strikingly similar to the speech of the uneducated Negroes of the West Indies. An error that confuses many persons in reading or understanding Negro dialect is the idea that it is uniform. An ignorant Negro of the uplands of Georgia would have almost as much difficulty in understanding an ignorant sea island Negro as an Englishman would have. Not even in the dialect of any particular section is a given word always pronounced in precisely the same way. Its pronunciation depends upon the preceding and following sounds. Sometimes the combination permits of a liaison so close that to the uninitiated the sound of the word is almost completely lost. The constant effort in Negro dialect is to elide all troublesome consonants and sounds. This negative effort may be after all only positive laziness of the vocal organs, but the result is a softening and smoothing which makes Negro dialect so delightfully easy for singers. Daniel Webster Davis wrote dialect poetry at the time when Dunbar was writing. He gained great popularity, but it did not spread beyond his own race. Davis had unctuous humor, but he was crude. For illustration, note the vast stretch between his "Hog Meat" and Dunbar's "When de Co'n Pone's Hot," both of them poems on the traditional ecstasy of the Negro in contemplation of "good things" to eat. It is regrettable that two of the most gifted writers included were cut off so early in life. R. C. Jamison and Joseph S. Cotter, Jr., died several years ago, both of them in their youth. Jamison was barely thirty at the time of his death, but among his poems there is one, at least, which stamps him as a poet of superior talent and lofty inspiration. "The Negro Soldiers" is a poem with the race problem as its theme, yet it transcends the limits of race and rises to a spiritual height that makes it one of the noblest poems of the Great War. Cotter died a mere boy of twenty, and the latter part of that brief period he passed in an invalid state. Some months before his death he published a thin volume of verses which were for the most part written on a sick bed. In this little volume Cotter showed fine poetic sense and a free and bold mastery over his material. A reading of Cotter's poems is certain to induce that mood in which one will regretfully speculate on what the young poet might have accomplished had he not been cut off so soon. As intimated above, my original idea for this book underwent a change in the writing of the introduction. I first planned to select twenty-five to thirty poems which I judged to be up to a certain standard, and offer them with a few words of introduction and without comment. In the collection, as it grew to be, that "certain standard" has been broadened if not lowered; but I believe that this is offset by the advantage of the wider range given the reader and the student of the subject. I offer this collection without making apology or asking allowance. I feel confident that the reader will find not only an earnest for the future, but actual achievement. The reader cannot but be impressed by the distance already covered. It is a long way from the plaints of George Horton to the invectives of Claude McKay, from the obviousness of Frances Harper to the complexness of Anne Spencer. Much ground has been covered, but more will yet be covered. It is this side of prophecy to declare that the undeniable creative genius of the Negro is destined to make a distinctive and valuable contribution to American poetry. I wish to extend my thanks to Mr. Arthur A. Schomburg, who placed his valuable collection of books by Negro authors at my disposal. I wish also to acknowledge with thanks the kindness of Dodd, Mead & Co. for permitting the reprint of poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar; of the Cornhill Publishing Company for permission to reprint poems of Georgia Douglas Johnson, Joseph S. Cotter, Jr., Bertram Johnson and Waverley Carmichael; and of Neale & Co. for permission to reprint poems of John W. Holloway. I wish to thank Mr. Braithwaite for permission to use the included poems from his forthcoming volume, "Sandy Star and Willie Gee." And to acknowledge the courtesy of the following magazines: _The Crisis, The Century Magazine, The Liberator, The Freeman, The Independent, Others_, and _Poetry: A Magazine of Verse_. James Weldon Johnson. New York City, 1921. THE BOOK OF AMERICAN NEGRO POETRY Paul Laurence Dunbar A NEGRO LOVE SONG[1] Seen my lady home las' night, Jump back, honey, jump back. Hel' huh han' an' sque'z it tight, Jump back, honey, jump back. Hyeahd huh sigh a little sigh, Seen a light gleam f'om huh eye, An' a smile go flittin' by-- Jump back, honey, jump back. Hyeahd de win' blow thoo de pine, Jump back, honey, jump back. Mockin'-bird was singin' fine, Jump back, honey, jump back. An' my hea't was beatin' so, When I reached my lady's do', Dat I could n't ba' to go-- Jump back, honey, jump back. Put my ahm aroun' huh wais', Jump back, honey, jump back. Raised huh lips an' took a tase, Jump back, honey, jump back. Love me, honey, love me true? Love me well ez I love you? An' she answe'd, "Cose I do"-- Jump back, honey, jump back. [Footnote 1: Copyright by Dodd, Mead & Company.] LITTLE BROWN BABY Little brown baby wif spa'klin' eyes, Come to yo' pappy an' set on his knee. What you been doin', suh--makin' san' pies? Look at dat bib--You's ez du'ty ez me. Look at dat mouf--dat's merlasses, I bet; Come hyeah, Maria, an' wipe off his han's. Bees gwine to ketch you an' eat you up yit, Bein' so sticky an' sweet--goodness lan's! Little brown baby wif spa'klin' eyes Who's pappy's darlin' an' who's pappy's chile? Who is it all de day nevah once tries Fu' to be cross, er once loses dat smile? Whah did you git dem teef? My, you's a scamp! Whah did dat dimple come f'om in yo' chin? Pappy do' know you--I b'lieves you's a tramp; Mammy, dis hyeah's some ol' straggler got in! Let's th'ow him outen de do' in de san', We do' want stragglers a-layin' 'roun' hyeah; Let's gin him 'way to de big buggah-man; I know he's hidin' erroun' hyeah right neah. Buggah-man, buggah-man, come in de do', Hyeah's a bad boy you kin have fu' to eat. Mammy an' pappy do' want him no mo', Swaller him down f'om his haid to his feet! Dah, now, I t'ought dat you'd hug me up close. Go back, ol' buggah, you sha'n't have dis boy. He ain't no tramp, ner no straggler, of co'se; He's pappy's pa'dner an' playmate an' joy. Come to you' pallet now--go to you' res'; Wisht you could allus know ease an' cleah skies; Wisht you could stay jes' a chile on my breas'-- Little brown baby wif spa'klin' eyes! SHIPS THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT Out in the sky the great dark clouds are massing; I look far out into the pregnant night, Where I can hear a solemn booming gun And catch the gleaming of a random light, That tells me that the ship I seek is passing, passing. My tearful eyes my soul's deep hurt are glassing; For I would hail and check that ship of ships. I stretch my hands imploring, cry aloud, My voice falls dead a foot from mine own lips, And but its ghost doth reach that vessel, passing, passing. O Earth, O Sky, O Ocean, both surpassing, O heart of mine, O soul that dreads the dark! Is there no hope for me? Is there no way That I may sight and check that speeding bark Which out of sight and sound is passing, passing? LOVER'S LANE Summah night an' sighin' breeze, 'Long de lovah's lane; Frien'ly, shadder-mekin' trees, 'Long de lovah's lane. White folks' wo'k all done up gran'-- Me an' 'Mandy han'-in-han' Struttin' lak we owned de lan', 'Long de lovah's lane. Owl a-settin' 'side de road, 'Long de lovah's lane, Lookin' at us lak he knowed Dis uz lovah's lane. Go on, hoot yo' Mou'nful tune, You ain' nevah loved in June, An' come hidin' f'om de moon Down in lovah's lane. Bush it ben' an' nod an' sway, Down in lovah's lane, Try'n' to hyeah me whut I say 'Long de lovah's lane. But I whispahs low lak dis, An' my 'Mandy smile huh bliss-- Mistah Bush he shek his fis', Down in lovah's lane. Whut I keer ef day is long, Down in lovah's lane. I kin allus sing a song 'Long de lovah's lane. An' de wo'ds I hyeah an' say Meks up fu' de weary day Wen I's strollin' by de way, Down in lovah's lane. An' dis t'ought will allus rise Down in lovah's lane; Wondah whethah in de skies Dey's a lovah's lane. Ef dey ain't, I tell you true, 'Ligion do look mighty blue, 'Cause I do' know whut I'd do 'Dout a lovah's lane. THE DEBT This is the debt I pay Just for one riotous day, Years of regret and grief. Sorrow without relief. Pay it I will to the end-- Until the grave, my friend, Gives me a true release-- Gives me the clasp of peace. Slight was the thing I bought, Small was the debt I thought, Poor was the loan at best-- God! but the interest! THE HAUNTED OAK Pray why are you so bare, so bare, Oh, bough of the old oak-tree; And why, when I go through the shade you throw, Runs a shudder over me? My leaves were green as the best, I trow, And sap ran free in my veins, But I saw in the moonlight dim and weird A guiltless victim's pains. I bent me down to hear his sigh; I shook with his gurgling moan, And I trembled sore when they rode away, And left him here alone. They'd charged him with the old, old crime, And set him fast in jail: Oh, why does the dog howl all night long, And why does the night wind wail? He prayed his prayer and he swore his oath, And he raised his hand to the sky; But the beat of hoofs smote on his ear, And the steady tread drew nigh. Who is it rides by night, by night, Over the moonlit road? And what is the spur that keeps the pace, What is the galling goad? And now they beat at the prison door, "Ho, keeper, do not stay! We are friends of him whom you hold within, And we fain would take him away From those who ride fast on our heels With mind to do him wrong; They have no care for his innocence, And the rope they bear is long." They have fooled the jailer with lying words, They have fooled the man with lies; The bolts unbar, the locks are drawn, And the great door open flies. Now they have taken him from the jail, And hard and fast they ride, And the leader laughs low down in his throat, As they halt my trunk beside. Oh, the judge, he wore a mask of black, And the doctor one of white, And the minister, with his oldest son, Was curiously bedight. Oh, foolish man, why weep you now? 'Tis but a little space, And the time will come when these shall dread The mem'ry of your face. I feel the rope against my bark, And the weight of him in my grain, I feel in the throe of his final woe The touch of my own last pain. And never more shall leaves come forth On a bough that bears the ban; I am burned with dread, I am dried and dead, From the curse of a guiltless man. And ever the judge rides by, rides by, And goes to hunt the deer, And ever another rides his soul In the guise of a mortal fear. And ever the man he rides me hard, And never a night stays he; For I feel his curse as a haunted bough On the trunk of a haunted tree. WHEN DE CO'N PONE'S HOT Dey is times in life when Nature Seems to slip a cog an' go, Jes' a-rattlin' down creation, Lak an ocean's overflow; When de worl' jes' stahts a-spinnin' Lak a picaninny's top, An' yo' cup o' joy is brimmin' 'Twell it seems about to slop, An' you feel jes' lak a racah, Dat is trainin' fu' to trot-- When yo' mammy says de blessin' An' de co'n pone's hot. When you set down at de table, Kin' o' weary lak an' sad, An' you'se jes' a little tiahed An' purhaps a little mad; How yo' gloom tu'ns into gladness, How yo' joy drives out de doubt When de oven do' is opened, An' de smell comes po'in' out; Why, de 'lectric light o' Heaven Seems to settle on de spot, When yo' mammy says de blessin' An' de co'n pone's hot. When de cabbage pot is steamin' An' de bacon good an' fat, When de chittlins is a-sputter'n' So's to show you whah dey's at; Tek away yo' sody biscuit, Tek away yo' cake an' pie, Fu' de glory time is comin', An' it's 'proachin' mighty nigh, An' you want to jump an' hollah, Dough you know you'd bettah not, When yo' mammy says de blessin' An' de co'n pone's hot. I have hyeahd o' lots o' sermons, An' I've hyeahd o' lots o' prayers, An' I've listened to some singin' Dat has tuck me up de stairs Of de Glory-Lan' an' set me Jes' below de Mastah's th'one, An' have lef my hea't a-singin' In a happy aftah tone; But dem wu'ds so sweetly murmured Seem to tech de softes' spot, When my mammy says de blessin', An' de co'n pone's hot. A DEATH SONG Lay me down beneaf de willers in de grass, Whah de branch'll go a-singin' as it pass An' w'en I's a-layin' low, I kin hyeah it as it go Singin', "Sleep, my honey, tek yo' res' at las'." Lay me nigh to whah hit meks a little pool, An' de watah stan's so quiet lak an' cool, Whah de little birds in spring, Ust to come an' drink an' sing, An' de chillen waded on dey way to school. Let me settle w'en my shouldahs draps dey load Nigh enough to hyeah de noises in de road; Fu' I t'ink de las' long res' Gwine to soothe my sperrit bes' If I's layin' 'mong de t'ings I's allus knowed. James Edwin Campbell NEGRO SERENADE O, de light-bugs glimmer down de lane, Merlindy! Merlindy! O, de whip'-will callin' notes ur pain-- Merlindy, O, Merlindy! O, honey lub, my turkle dub, Doan' you hyuh my bawnjer ringin', While de night-dew falls an' de ho'n owl calls By de ol' ba'n gate Ise singin'. O, Miss 'Lindy, doan' you hyuh me, chil', Merlindy! Merlindy! My lub fur you des dribe me wil'-- Merlindy, O, Merlindy! I'll sing dis night twel broad day-light, Ur bu's' my froat wid tryin', 'Less you come down, Miss 'Lindy Brown, An' stops dis ha't f'um sighin'! DE CUNJAH MAN O chillen, run, de Cunjah man, Him mouf ez beeg ez fryin' pan, Him yurs am small, him eyes am raid, Him hab no toof een him ol' haid, Him hab him roots, him wu'k him trick, Him roll him eye, him mek you sick-- De Cunjah man, de Cunjah man, O chillen, run, de Cunjah man! Him hab ur ball ob raid, raid ha'r, Him hide it un' de kitchen sta'r, Mam Jude huh pars urlong dat way, An' now huh hab ur snaik, de say. Him wrop ur roun' huh buddy tight, Huh eyes pop out, ur orful sight-- De Cunjah man, de Cunjah man, O chillen, run, de Cunjah man! Miss Jane, huh dribe him f'um huh do', An' now huh hens woan' lay no mo'; De Jussey cow huh done fall sick, Hit all done by de Cunjah trick. Him put ur root un' 'Lijah's baid, An' now de man he sho' am daid-- De Cunjah man, de Cunjah man, O chillen, run, de Cunjah man! Me see him stan' de yudder night Right een de road een white moon-light; Him toss him arms, him whirl him 'roun', Him stomp him foot urpon de groun'; De snaiks come crawlin', one by one, Me hyuh um hiss, me break an' run-- De Cunjah man, de Cunjah man, O chillen, run, de Cunjah man! UNCLE EPH'S BANJO SONG Clean de ba'n an' sweep de flo', Sing, my bawnjer, sing! We's gwine ter dawnce dis eb'nin' sho', Ring, my bawnjer, ring! Den hits up de road an' down de lane, Hurry, niggah, you miss de train; De yaller gal she dawnce so neat, De yaller gal she look so sweet, Ring, my bawnjer, ring! De moon come up, de sun go down, Sing, my bawnjer, sing! De niggahs am all come f'um town, Ring, my bawnjer, ring! Den hits roun' de hill an' froo de fiel'-- Lookout dar, niggah, doan' you steal! De milyuns on dem vines am green, De moon am bright, O you'll be seen, Ring, my bawnjer, ring! OL' DOC' HYAR Ur ol' Hyar lib in ur house on de hill, He hunner yurs ol' an' nebber wuz ill; He yurs dee so long an' he eyes so beeg, An' he laigs so spry dat he dawnce ur jeeg; He lib so long dat he know ebbry tings 'Bout de beas'ses dat walks an' de bu'ds dat sings-- Dis Ol' Doc' Hyar, Whar lib up dar Een ur mighty fine house on ur mighty high hill. He doctah fur all de beas'ses an' bu'ds-- He put on he specs an' he use beeg wu'ds, He feel dee pu's' den he look mighty wise, He pull out he watch an' he shet bofe eyes; He grab up he hat an' grab up he cane, Den--"blam!" go de do'--he gone lak de train, Dis Ol' Doc' Hyar, Whar lib up dar Een ur mighty fine house on ur mighty high hill. Mistah Ba'r fall sick--dee sont fur Doc' Hyar, "O, Doctah, come queeck, an' see Mr. B'ar; He mighty nigh daid des sho' ez you b'on!" "Too much ur young peeg, too much ur green co'n," Ez he put on he hat, said Ol' Doc' Hyar; "I'll tek 'long meh lawnce, an' lawnce Mistah B'ar," Said Ol' Doc' Hyar, Whar lib up dar Een ur mighty fine house on ur mighty high hill. Mistah B'ar he groaned, Mistah B'ar he growled, W'ile de ol' Miss B'ar an' de chillen howled; Doctah Hyar tuk out he sha'p li'l lawnce, An' pyu'ced Mistah B'ar twel he med him prawnce Den grab up he hat an' grab up he cane "Blam!" go de do' an' he gone lak de train, Dis Ol' Doc' Hyar, Whar lib up dar Een ur mighty fine house on ur mighty high hill. But de vay naix day Mistah B'ar he daid; Wen dee tell Doc' Hyar, he des scratch he haid: "Ef pahsons git well ur pahsons git wu's, Money got ter come een de Ol' Hyar's pu's; Not wut folkses does, but fur wut dee know Does de folkses git paid"--an' Hyar larfed low, Dis Ol' Doc' Hyar, Whar lib up dar Een de mighty fine house on de mighty high hill! WHEN OL' SIS' JUDY PRAY When ol' Sis' Judy pray, De teahs come stealin' down my cheek, De voice ur God widin me speak'; I see myse'f so po' an' weak, Down on my knees de cross I seek, When ol' Sis' Judy pray. When ol' Sis' Judy pray, De thun'ers ur Mount Sin-a-i Comes rushin' down f'um up on high-- De Debbil tu'n his back an' fly While sinnahs loud fur pa'don cry, When ol' Sis' Judy pray. When ol' Sis' Judy pray, Ha'd sinnahs trimble in dey seat Ter hyuh huh voice in sorro 'peat; (While all de chu'ch des sob an' weep) "O Shepa'd, dese, dy po' los' sheep!" When ol' Sis' Judy pray. When ol' Sis' Judy pray, De whole house hit des rock an' moan Ter see huh teahs an' hyuh huh groan; Dar's somepin' in Sis' Judy's tone Dat melt all ha'ts dough med ur stone When ol' Sis' Judy pray. When ol' Sis' Judy pray, Salvation's light comes pourin' down-- Hit fill de chu'ch an' all de town-- Why, angels' robes go rustlin' 'roun', An' hebben on de Yurf am foun', When ol' Sis' Judy pray. When ol' Sis' Judy pray, My soul go sweepin' up on wings, An' loud de chu'ch wid "Glory!" rings, An' wide de gates ur Jahsper swings Twel you hyuh ha'ps wid golding strings, When ol' Sis' Judy pray. COMPENSATION O, rich young lord, thou ridest by With looks of high disdain; It chafes me not thy title high, Thy blood of oldest strain. The lady riding at thy side Is but in name thy promised bride, Ride on, young lord, ride on! Her father wills and she obeys, The custom of her class; 'Tis Land not Love the trothing sways-- For Land he sells his lass. Her fair white hand, young lord, is thine, Her _soul_, proud fool, her _soul_ is mine, Ride on, young lord, ride on! No title high my father bore; The tenant of thy farm, He left me what I value more: Clean heart, clear brain, strong arm And love for bird and beast and bee And song of lark and hymn of sea, Ride on, young lord, ride on! The boundless sky to me belongs, The paltry acres thine; The painted beauty sings thy songs, The lavrock lilts me mine; The hot-housed orchid blooms for thee, The gorse and heather bloom for me, Ride on, young lord, ride on! James D. Corrothers AT THE CLOSED GATE OF JUSTICE To be a Negro in a day like this Demands forgiveness. Bruised with blow on blow, Betrayed, like him whose woe dimmed eyes gave bliss Still must one succor those who brought one low, To be a Negro in a day like this. To be a Negro in a day like this Demands rare patience--patience that can wait In utter darkness. 'Tis the path to miss, And knock, unheeded, at an iron gate, To be a Negro in a day like this. To be a Negro in a day like this Demands strange loyalty. We serve a flag Which is to us white freedom's emphasis. Ah! one must love when Truth and Justice lag, To be a Negro in a day like this. To be a Negro in a day like this-- Alas! Lord God, what evil have we done? Still shines the gate, all gold and amethyst, But I pass by, the glorious goal unwon, "Merely a Negro"--in a day like this! PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR He came, a youth, singing in the dawn Of a new freedom, glowing o'er his lyre, Refining, as with great Apollo's fire, His people's gift of song. And thereupon, This Negro singer, come to Helicon Constrained the masters, listening to admire, And roused a race to wonder and aspire, Gazing which way their honest voice was gone, With ebon face uplit of glory's crest. Men marveled at the singer, strong and sweet, Who brought the cabin's mirth, the tuneful night, But faced the morning, beautiful with light, To die while shadows yet fell toward the west, And leave his laurels at his people's feet. Dunbar, no poet wears your laurels now; None rises, singing, from your race like you. Dark melodist, immortal, though the dew Fell early on the bays upon your brow, And tinged with pathos every halcyon vow And brave endeavor. Silence o'er you threw Flowerets of love. Or, if an envious few Of your own people brought no garlands, how Could Malice smite him whom the gods had crowned? If, like the meadow-lark, your flight was low Your flooded lyrics half the hilltops drowned; A wide world heard you, and it loved you so It stilled its heart to list the strains you sang, And o'er your happy songs its plaudits rang. THE NEGRO SINGER O'er all my song the image of a face Lieth, like shadow on the wild sweet flowers. The dream, the ecstasy that prompts my powers; The golden lyre's delights bring little grace To bless the singer of a lowly race. Long hath this mocked me: aye in marvelous hours, When Hera's gardens gleamed, or Cynthia's bowers, Or Hope's red pylons, in their far, hushed place! But I shall dig me deeper to the gold; Fetch water, dripping, over desert miles, From clear Nyanzas and mysterious Niles Of love; and sing, nor one kind act withhold. So shall men know me, and remember long, Nor my dark face dishonor any song. THE ROAD TO THE BOW Ever and ever anon, After the black storm, the eternal, beauteous bow! Brother, to rosy-painted mists that arch beyond, Blithely I go. My brows men laureled and my lyre Twined with immortal ivy for one little rippling song; My "House of Golden Leaves" they praised and "passionate fire"-- But, Friend, the way is long! Onward and onward, up! away! Though Fear flaunt all his banners in my face, And my feet stumble, lo! the Orphean Day! Forward by God's grace! These signs are still before me: "Fear," "Danger," "Unprecedented," and I hear black "No" Still thundering, and "Churl." Good Friend, I rest me here-- Then to the glittering bow! Loometh and cometh Hate in wrath, Mailed Wrong, swart Servitude and Shame with bitter rue, Nathless a Negro poet's feet must tread the path The winged god knew. Thus, my true Brother, dream-led, I Forefend the anathema, following the span. I hold my head as proudly high As any man. IN THE MATTER OF TWO MEN One does such work as one will not, And well each knows the right; Though the white storm howls, or the sun is hot, The black must serve the white. And it's, oh, for the white man's softening flesh, While the black man's muscles grow! Well I know which grows the mightier, _I_ know; full well I know. The white man seeks the soft, fat place, And he moves and he works by rule. Ingenious grows the humbler race In Oppression's prodding school. And it's, oh, for a white man gone to seed, While the Negro struggles so! And I know which race develops most, I know; yes, well I know. The white man rides in a palace car, And the Negro rides "Jim Crow." To damn the other with bolt and bar, One creepeth so low; so low! And it's, oh, for a master's nose in the mire, While the humbled hearts o'erflow! Well I know whose soul grows big at this, And whose grows small; _I know_! The white man leases out his land, And the Negro tills the same. One works; one loafs and takes command; But I know who wins the game! And it's, oh, for the white man's shrinking soil, As the black's rich acres grow! Well I know how the signs point out at last, I know; ah, well I know! The white man votes for his color's sake, While the black, for his is barred; (Though "ignorance" is the charge they make), But the black man studies hard. And it's, oh, for the white man's sad neglect, For the power of his light let go! So, I know which man must win at last, I know! Ah, Friend, I know! AN INDIGNATION DINNER Dey was hard times jes fo' Christmas round our neighborhood one year; So we held a secret meetin', whah de white folks couldn't hear, To 'scuss de situation, an' to see what could be done Towa'd a fust-class Christmas dinneh an' a little Christmas fun. Rufus Green, who called de meetin', ris an' said: "In dis here town, An' throughout de land, de white folks is a-tryin' to keep us down." S' 'e: "Dey's bought us, sold us, beat us; now dey 'buse us 'ca'se we's free; But when dey tetch my stomach, dey's done gone too fur foh me! "Is I right?" "You sho is, Rufus!" roared a dozen hungry throats. "Ef you'd keep a mule a-wo'kin', don't you tamper wid his oats. Dat's sense," continued Rufus. "But dese white folks nowadays Has done got so close and stingy you can't live on what dey pays. "Here 'tis Christmas-time, an', folkses, I's indignant 'nough to choke. Whah's our Christmas dinneh comin' when we's 'mos' completely broke? I can't hahdly 'fo'd a toothpick an' a glass o' water. Mad? Say, I'm desp'ret! Dey jes better treat me nice, dese white folks had!" Well, dey 'bused de white folks scan'lous, till old Pappy Simmons ris, Leanin' on his cane to s'pote him, on account his rheumatis', An' s' 'e: "Chilun, whut's dat wintry wind a-sighin' th'ough de street 'Bout yo' wasted summeh wages? But, no matter, we mus' eat. "Now, I seed a beau'ful tuhkey on a certain gemmun's fahm. He's a-growin' fat an' sassy, an' a-struttin' to a chahm. Chickens, sheeps, hogs, sweet pertaters--all de craps is fine dis year; All we needs is a committee foh to tote de goodies here." Well, we lit right in an' voted dat it was a gran idee, An' de dinneh we had Christmas was worth trabblin' miles to see; An' we eat a full an' plenty, big an' little, great an' small, Not beca'se we was dishonest, but indignant, sah. Dat's all. DREAM AND THE SONG So oft our hearts, belovèd lute, In blossomy haunts of song are mute; So long we pore, 'mid murmurings dull, O'er loveliness unutterable. So vain is all our passion strong! The dream is lovelier than the song. The rose thought, touched by words, doth turn Wan ashes. Still, from memory's urn, The lingering blossoms tenderly Refute our wilding minstrelsy. Alas! we work but beauty's wrong! The dream is lovelier than the song. Yearned Shelley o'er the golden flame? Left Keats for beauty's lure, a name But "writ in water"? Woe is me! To grieve o'er flowerful faëry. My Phasian doves are flown so long-- The dream is lovelier than the song! Ah, though we build a bower of dawn, The golden-wingèd bird is gone, And morn may gild, through shimmering leaves, Only the swallow-twittering eaves. What art may house or gold prolong A dream far lovelier than a song? The lilting witchery, the unrest Of wingèd dreams, is in our breast; But ever dear Fulfilment's eyes Gaze otherward. The long-sought prize, My lute, must to the gods belong. The dream is lovelier than the song. Daniel Webster Davis 'WEH DOWN SOUF O, de birds ar' sweetly singin', 'Weh down Souf, An' de banjer is a-ringin', 'Weh down Souf; An' my heart it is a-sighin', Whil' de moments am a-flyin', Fur my hom' I am a-cryin', 'Weh down Souf. Dar de pickaninnies 's playin', 'Weh down Souf, An' fur dem I am a-prayin', 'Weh down Souf; An' when I gits sum munny, Yo' kin bet I'm goin', my hunny, Fur de lan' dat am so sunny, 'Weh down Souf. Whil' de win' up here's a-blowin', 'Weh down Souf De corn is sweetly growin', 'Weh down Souf. Dey tells me here ub freedum, But I ain't a-gwine to heed um, But I'se gwine fur to lebe um, Fur 'weh down Souf. I bin up here a-wuckin', From 'weh down Souf, An' I ain't a bin a-shurkin'-- I'm frum 'weh down Souf; But I'm gittin' mighty werry, An' de days a-gittin' drerry, An' I'm hongry, O, so berry, Fur my hom' down Souf. O, de moon dar shines de brighter, 'Weh down Souf, An' I know my heart is lighter, 'Weh down Souf; An' de berry thought brings pledjur, I'll be happy dar 'dout medjur, Fur dar I hab my tredjur, 'Weh down Souf. HOG MEAT Deze eatin' folks may tell me ub de gloriz ub spring lam', An' de toofsumnis ub tuckey et wid cel'ry an' wid jam; Ub beef-st'ak fried wid unyuns, an' sezoned up so fine-- But you' jes' kin gimme hog-meat, an' I'm happy all de time. When de fros' is on de pun'kin an' de sno'-flakes in de ar', I den begin rejoicin'--hog-killin' time is near; An' de vizhuns ub de fucher den fill my nightly dreams, Fur de time is fas' a-comin' fur de 'lishus pork an' beans. We folks dat's frum de kuntry may be behin' de sun-- We don't like city eatin's, wid beefsteaks dat ain' done-- 'Dough mutton chops is splendid, an' dem veal cutlits fine, To me 'tain't like a sphar-rib, or gret big chunk ub chine. Jes' talk to me 'bout hog-meat, ef yo' want to see me pleased, Fur biled wid beans tiz gor'jus, or made in hog-head cheese; An' I could jes' be happy, 'dout money, cloze or house, Wid plenty yurz an' pig feet made in ol'-fashun "souse." I 'fess I'm only humun, I hab my joys an' cares-- Sum days de clouds hang hebby, sum days de skies ar' fair; But I forgib my in'miz, my heart is free frum hate, When my bread is filled wid cracklins an' dar's chidlins on my plate. 'Dough 'possum meat is glo'yus wid 'taters in de pan, But put 'longside pork sassage it takes a backward stan'; Ub all yer fancy eatin's, jes gib to me fur mine Sum souse or pork or chidlins, sum sphar-rib, or de chine. William H.A. Moore DUSK SONG The garden is very quiet to-night, The dusk has gone with the Evening Star, And out on the bay a lone ship light Makes a silver pathway over the bar Where the sea sings low. I follow the light with an earnest eye, Creeping along to the thick far-away, Until it fell in the depths of the deep, dark sky With the haunting dream of the dusk of day And its lovely glow. Long nights, long nights and the whisperings of new ones, Flame the line of the pathway down to the sea With the halo of new dreams and the hallow of old ones, And they bring magic light to my love reverie And a lover's regret. Tender sorrow for loss of a soft murmured word, Tender measure of doubt in a faint, aching heart, Tender listening for wind-songs in the tree heights heard When you and I were of the dusks a part, Are with me yet. I pray for faith to the noble spirit of Space, I sound the cosmic depths for the measure of glory Which will bring to this earth the imperishable race Of whom Beauty dreamed in the soul-toned story The Prophets told. Silence and love and deep wonder of stars Dust-silver the heavens from west to east, From south to north, and in a maze of bars Invisible I wander far from the feast As night grows old. Half blind is my vision I know to the truth, My ears are half deaf to the voice of the tear That touches the silences as Autumn's ruth Steals thru the dusks of each returning year A goodly friend. The Autumn, then Winter and wintertime's grief! But the weight of the snow is the glistening gift Which loving brings to the rose and its leaf, For the days of the roses glow in the drift And never end. * * * * * The moon has come. Wan and pallid is she. The spell of half memories, the touch of half tears, And the wounds of worn passions she brings to me With all the tremor of the far-off years And their mad wrong. Yet the garden is very quiet to-night, The dusk has long gone with the Evening Star, And out on the bay the moon's wan light Lays a silver pathway beyond the bar, Dear heart, pale and long. IT WAS NOT FATE It was not fate which overtook me, Rather a wayward, wilful wind That blew hot for awhile And then, as the even shadows came, blew cold. What pity it is that a man grown old in life's dreaming Should stop, e'en for a moment, to look into a woman's eyes. And I forgot! Forgot that one's heart must be steeled against the east wind. Life and death alike come out of the East: Life as tender as young grass, Death as dreadful as the sight of clotted blood. I shall go back into the darkness, Not to dream but to seek the light again. I shall go by paths, mayhap, On roads that wind around the foothills Where the plains are bare and wild And the passers-by come few and far between. I want the night to be long, the moon blind, The hills thick with moving memories, And my heart beating a breathless requiem For all the dead days I have lived. When the Dawn comes--Dawn, deathless, dreaming-- I shall will that my soul must be cleansed of hate, I shall pray for strength to hold children close to my heart, I shall desire to build houses where the poor will know shelter, comfort, beauty. And then may I look into a woman's eyes And find holiness, love and the peace which passeth understanding. W.E. Burghardt Du Bois A LITANY OF ATLANTA Done at Atlanta, in the Day of Death, 1906 O Silent God, Thou whose voice afar in mist and mystery hath left our ears an-hungered in these fearful days-- _Hear us, good Lord!_ Listen to us, Thy children: our faces dark with doubt are made a mockery in Thy sanctuary. With uplifted hands we front Thy heaven, O God, crying: _We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!_ We are not better than our fellows, Lord, we are but weak and human men. When our devils do deviltry, curse Thou the doer and the deed: curse them as we curse them, do to them all and more than ever they have done to innocence and weakness, to womanhood and home. _Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners!_ And yet whose is the deeper guilt? Who made these devils? Who nursed them in crime and fed them on injustice? Who ravished and debauched their mothers and their grandmothers? Who bought and sold their crime, and waxed fat and rich on public iniquity? _Thou knowest, good God!_ Is this Thy justice, O Father, that guile be easier than innocence, and the innocent crucified for the guilt of the untouched guilty? _Justice, O judge of men!_ Wherefore do we pray? Is not the God of the fathers dead? Have not seers seen in Heaven's halls Thine hearsed and lifeless form stark amidst the black and rolling smoke of sin, where all along bow bitter forms of endless dead? _Awake, Thou that sleepest!_ Thou art not dead, but flown afar, up hills of endless light, thru blazing corridors of suns, where worlds do swing of good and gentle men, of women strong and free--far from the cozenage, black hypocrisy and chaste prostitution of this shameful speck of dust! _Turn again, O Lord, leave us not to perish in our sin!_ From lust of body and lust of blood _Great God, deliver us!_ From lust of power and lust of gold, _Great God, deliver us!_ From the leagued lying of despot and of brute, _Great God, deliver us!_ A city lay in travail, God our Lord, and from her loins sprang twin Murder and Black Hate. Red was the midnight; clang, crack and cry of death and fury filled the air and trembled underneath the stars when church spires pointed silently to Thee. And all this was to sate the greed of greedy men who hide behind the veil of vengeance! _Bend us Thine ear, O Lord!_ In the pale, still morning we looked upon the deed. We stopped our ears and held our leaping hands, but they--did they not wag their heads and leer and cry with bloody jaws: _Cease from Crime_! The word was mockery, for thus they train a hundred crimes while we do cure one. _Turn again our captivity, O Lord!_ Behold this maimed and broken thing; dear God, it was an humble black man who toiled and sweat to save a bit from the pittance paid him. They told him: _Work and Rise_. He worked. Did this man sin? Nay, but some one told how some one said another did--one whom he had never seen nor known. Yet for that man's crime this man lieth maimed and murdered, his wife naked to shame, his children, to poverty and evil. _Hear us, O Heavenly Father!_ Doth not this justice of hell stink in Thy nostrils, O God? How long shall the mounting flood of innocent blood roar in Thine ears and pound in our hearts for vengeance? Pile the pale frenzy of blood-crazed brutes who do such deeds high on Thine altar, Jehovah Jireh, and burn it in hell forever and forever! _Forgive us, good Lord; we know not what we say!_ Bewildered we are, and passion-tost, mad with the madness of a mobbed and mocked and murdered people; straining at the armposts of Thy Throne, we raise our shackled hands and charge Thee, God, by the bones of our stolen fathers, by the tears of our dead mothers, by the very blood of Thy crucified Christ: _What meaneth this?_ Tell us the Plan; give us the Sign! _Keep not thou silence, O God!_ Sit no longer blind, Lord God, deaf to our prayer and dumb to our dumb suffering. Surely Thou too art not white, O Lord, a pale, bloodless, heartless thing? _Ah! Christ of all the Pities!_ Forgive the thought! Forgive these wild, blasphemous words. Thou art still the God of our black fathers, and in Thy soul's soul sit some soft darkenings of the evening, some shadowings of the velvet night. But whisper--speak--call, great God, for Thy silence is white terror to our hearts! The way, O God, show us the way and point us the path. Whither? North is greed and South is blood; within, the coward, and without, the liar. Whither? To death? _Amen! Welcome dark sleep!_ Whither? To life? But not this life, dear God, not this. Let the cup pass from us, tempt us not beyond our strength, for there is that clamoring and clawing within, to whose voice we would not listen, yet shudder lest we must, and it is red, Ah! God! It is a red and awful shape. _Selah!_ In yonder East trembles a star. _Vengeance is mine; I mill repay, saith the Lord!_ Thy will, O Lord, be done! _Kyrie Eleison!_ Lord, we have done these pleading, wavering words. _We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!_ We bow our heads and hearken soft to the sobbing of women and little children. _We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!_ Our voices sink in silence and in night. _Hear us, good Lord!_ In night, O God of a godless land! _Amen!_ In silence, O Silent God. _Selah!_ George Marion McClellan DOGWOOD BLOSSOMS To dreamy languors and the violet mist Of early Spring, the deep sequestered vale Gives first her paling-blue Miamimist, Where blithely pours the cuckoo's annual tale Of Summer promises and tender green, Of a new life and beauty yet unseen. The forest trees have yet a sighing mouth, Where dying winds of March their branches swing, While upward from the dreamy, sunny South, A hand invisible leads on the Spring. His rounds from bloom to bloom the bee begins With flying song, and cowslip wine he sups, Where to the warm and passing southern winds, Azaleas gently swing their yellow cups. Soon everywhere, with glory through and through, The fields will spread with every brilliant hue. But high o'er all the early floral train, Where softness all the arching sky resumes, The dogwood dancing to the winds' refrain, In stainless glory spreads its snowy blooms. A BUTTERFLY IN CHURCH What dost thou here, thou shining, sinless thing, With many colored hues and shapely wing? Why quit the open field and summer air To flutter here? Thou hast no need of prayer. 'Tis meet that we, who this great structure built, Should come to be redeemed and washed from guilt, For we this gilded edifice within Are come, with erring hearts and stains of sin. But thou art free from guilt as God on high; Go, seek the blooming waste and open sky, And leave us here our secret woes to bear, Confessionals and agonies of prayer. THE HILLS OF SEWANEE Sewanee Hills of dear delight, Prompting my dreams that used to be, I know you are waiting me still to-night By the Unika Range of Tennessee. The blinking stars in endless space, The broad moonlight and silvery gleams, To-night caress your wind-swept face, And fold you in a thousand dreams. Your far outlines, less seen than felt, Which wind with hill propensities, In moonlight dreams I see you melt Away in vague immensities. And, far away, I still can feel Your mystery that ever speaks Of vanished things, as shadows steal Across your breast and rugged peaks. O, dear blue hills, that lie apart, And wait so patiently down there, Your peace takes hold upon my heart And makes its burden less to bear. THE FEET OF JUDAS Christ washed the feet of Judas! The dark and evil passions of his soul, His secret plot, and sordidness complete, His hate, his purposing, Christ knew the whole, And still in love he stooped and washed his feet. Christ washed the feet of Judas! Yet all his lurking sin was bare to him, His bargain with the priest, and more than this, In Olivet, beneath the moonlight dim, Aforehand knew and felt his treacherous kiss. Christ washed the feet of Judas! And so ineffable his love 'twas meet, That pity fill his great forgiving heart, And tenderly to wash the traitor's feet, Who in his Lord had basely sold his part. Christ washed the feet of Judas! And thus a girded servant, self-abased, Taught that no wrong this side the gate of heaven Was ever too great to wholly be effaced, And though unasked, in spirit be forgiven. And so if we have ever felt the wrong Of Trampled rights, of caste, it matters not, What e'er the soul has felt or suffered long, Oh, heart! this one thing should not be forgot: Christ washed the feet of Judas. William Stanley Braithwaite SANDY STAR AND WILLIE GEE Sandy Star and Willie Gee, Count 'em two, you make 'em three: Pluck the man and boy apart And you'll see into my heart. SANDY STAR I _Sculptured Worship_ The zones of warmth around his heart, No alien airs had crossed; But he awoke one morn to feel The magic numbness of autumnal frost. His thoughts were a loose skein of threads, And tangled emotions, vague and dim; And sacrificing what he loved He lost the dearest part of him. In sculptured worship now he lives, His one desire a prisoned ache; If he can never melt again His very heart will break. II _Laughing It Out_ He had a whim and laughed it out Upon the exit of a chance; He floundered in a sea of doubt-- If life was real--or just romance. Sometimes upon his brow would come A little pucker of defiance; He totalled in a word the sum Of all man made of facts and science. And then a hearty laugh would break, A reassuring shrug of shoulder; And we would from his fancy take A faith in death which made life bolder. III _Exit_ No, his exit by the gate Will not leave the wind ajar; He will go when it is late With a misty star. One will call, he cannot see; One will call, he will not hear; He will take no company Nor a hope or fear. We shall smile who loved him so-- They who gave him hate will weep; But for us the winds will blow Pulsing through his sleep. IV _The Way_ He could not tell the way he came, Because his chart was lost: Yet all his way was paved with flame From the bourne he crossed. He did not know the way to go, Because he had no map: He followed where the winds blow,-- And the April sap. He never knew upon his brow The secret that he bore,-- And laughs away the mystery now The dark's at his door. V _Onus Probandi_ No more from out the sunset, No more across the foam, No more across the windy hills Will Sandy Star come home. He went away to search it With a curse upon his tongue: And in his hand the staff of life, Made music as it swung. I wonder if he found it, And knows the mystery now-- Our Sandy Star who went away, With the secret on his brow. DEL CASCAR Del Cascar, Del Cascar, Stood upon a flaming star, Stood, and let his feet hang down Till in China the toes turned brown. And he reached his fingers over The rim of the sea, like sails from Dover, And caught a Mandarin at prayer, And tickled his nose in Orion's hair. The sun went down through crimson bars, And left his blind face battered with stars-- But the brown toes in China kept Hot the tears Del Cascar wept. TURN ME TO MY YELLOW LEAVES Turn me to my yellow leaves, I am better satisfied; There is something in me grieves-- That was never born, and died. Let me be a scarlet flame On a windy autumn morn, I who never had a name, Nor from breathing image born. From the margin let me fall Where the farthest stars sink down, And the void consumes me,--all In nothingness to drown. Let me dream my dream entire, Withered as an autumn leaf-- Let me have my vain desire, Vain--as it is brief. IRONIC: LL.D. There are no hollows any more Between the mountains; the prairie floor Is like a curtain with the drape Of the winds' invisible shape; And nowhere seen and nowhere heard The sea's quiet as a sleeping bird. Now we're traveling, what holds back Arrival, in the very track Where the urge put forth; so we stay And move a thousand miles a day. Time's a Fancy ringing bells Whose meaning, charlatan history, tells! SCINTILLA I kissed a kiss in youth Upon a dead man's brow; And that was long ago,-- And I'm a grown man now. It's lain there in the dust, Thirty years and more;-- My lips that set a light At a dead man's door. SIC VITA Heart free, hand free, Blue above, brown under, All the world to me Is a place of wonder. Sun shine, moon shine, Stars, and winds a-blowing, All into this heart of mine Flowing, flowing, flowing! Mind free, step free, Days to follow after, Joys of life sold to me For the price of laughter. Girl's love, man's love, Love of work and duty, Just a will of God's to prove Beauty, beauty, beauty! RHAPSODY I am glad daylong for the gift of song, For time and change and sorrow; For the sunset wings and the world-end things Which hang on the edge of to-morrow. I am glad for my heart whose gates apart Are the entrance-place of wonders, Where dreams come in from the rush and din Like sheep from the rains and thunders. George Reginald Margetson STANZAS FROM THE FLEDGLING BARD AND THE POETRY SOCIETY _Part I_ I'm out to find the new, the modern school, Where Science trains the fledgling bard to fly, Where critics teach the ignorant, the fool, To write the stuff the editors would buy; It matters not e'en tho it be a lie,-- Just so it aims to smash tradition's crown And build up one instead decked with a new renown. A thought is haunting me by night and day, And in some safe archive I seek to lay it; I have some startling thing I wish to say, And they can put me wise just how to say it. Without their aid, I, like the ass, must bray it, Without due knowledge of its mood and tense, And so 'tis sure to fail the bard to recompense. Will some kind one direct me to that college Where every budding genius now is headed, The only source to gain poetic knowledge, Where all the sacred truths lay deep imbedded, Where nothing but the genuine goods are shredded,-- The factory where they shape new feet and meters That make poetic symbols sound like carpet beaters. * * * * * I hope I'll be an eligible student, E'en tho I am no poet in a sense, But just a hot-head youth with ways imprudent,-- A rustic ranting rhymer like by chance Who thinks that he can make the muses dance By beating on some poet's borrowed lyre, To win some fool's applause and please his own desire. Perhaps they'll never know or e'en suspect That I am not a true, a genuine poet; If in the poet's colors I am decked They may not ask me e'er to prove or show it. I'll play the wise old cock, nor try to crow it, But be content to gaze with open mind; I'll never show the lead but eye things from behind. * * * * * _Part II_ I have a problem all alone to solve, A problem how to find the poetry club, It makes my sky piece like a top revolve, For fear that they might mark me for a snob. They'll call me poetry monger and then dub Me rustic rhymer, anything they choose, Ay, anything at all, but heaven's immortal muse. Great Byron, when he published his Childe book, In which he sang of all his lovely dears, Called forth hot condemnation and cold look, From lesser mortals who were not his peers. They chided him for telling his affairs, Because they could not tell their own so well, They plagued the poet lord and made his life a hell. They called him lewd, vile drunkard, vicious wight, And all because he dared to tell the truth, Because he was no cursed hermaphrodite,-- A full fledged genius with the fire of youth. They hounded him, they hammered him forsooth; Because he blended human with divine, They branded him "the bard of women and of wine." Of course I soak the booze once in a while, But I don't wake the town to sing and shout it; I love the girls, they win me with a smile, But no one knows, for I won't write about it. And so the fools may never think to doubt it, When I declare I am a moral man, As gifted, yet as good as God did ever plan. * * * * * Every man has got a hobby, Every poet has some fault, Every sweet contains its bitter, Every fresh thing has its salt. Every mountain has a valley, Every valley has a hill, Every ravine is a river, Every river is a rill. Every fool has got some wisdom, Every wise man is a fool, Every scholar is a block-head, Every dunce has been to school. Every bad man is a good man, Every fat man is not stout, Every good man is a bad man But 'tis hard to find him out. Every strong man is a weak man, You may doubt it as you please, Every well man is a sick man, Every doctor has disease. James Weldon Johnson O BLACK AND UNKNOWN BARDS O black and unknown bards of long ago, How came your lips to touch the sacred fire? How, in your darkness, did you come to know The power and beauty of the minstrel's lyre? Who first from midst his bonds lifted his eyes? Who first from out the still watch, lone and long, Feeling the ancient faith of prophets rise Within his dark-kept soul, burst into song? Heart of what slave poured out such melody As "Steal away to Jesus"? On its strains His spirit must have nightly floated free, Though still about his hands he felt his chains. Who heard great "Jordan roll"? Whose starward eye Saw chariot "swing low"? And who was he That breathed that comforting, melodic sigh, "Nobody knows de trouble I see"? What merely living clod, what captive thing, Could up toward God through all its darkness grope, And find within its deadened heart to sing These songs of sorrow, love and faith, and hope? How did it catch that subtle undertone, That note in music heard not with the ears? How sound the elusive reed so seldom blown, Which stirs the soul or melts the heart to tears. Not that great German master in his dream Of harmonies that thundered amongst the stars At the creation, ever heard a theme Nobler than "Go down, Moses." Mark its bars How like a mighty trumpet-call they stir The blood. Such are the notes that men have sung Going to valorous deeds; such tones there were That helped make history when Time was young. There is a wide, wide wonder in it all, That from degraded rest and servile toil The fiery spirit of the seer should call These simple children of the sun and soil. O black slave singers, gone, forgot, unfamed, You--you alone, of all the long, long line Of those who've sung untaught, unknown, unnamed, Have stretched out upward, seeking the divine. You sang not deeds of heroes or of kings; No chant of bloody war, no exulting pean Of arms-won triumphs; but your humble strings You touched in chord with music empyrean. You sang far better than you knew; the songs That for your listeners' hungry hearts sufficed Still live,--but more than this to you belongs: You sang a race from wood and stone to Christ. SENCE YOU WENT AWAY Seems lak to me de stars don't shine so bright, Seems lak to me de sun done loss his light, Seems lak to me der's nothin' goin' right, Sence you went away. Seems lak to me de sky ain't half so blue, Seems lak to me dat ev'ything wants you, Seems lak to me I don't know what to do, Sence you went away. Seems lak to me dat ev'ything is wrong, Seems lak to me de day's jes twice es long, Seems lak to me de bird's forgot his song, Sence you went away. Seems lak to me I jes can't he'p but sigh, Seems lak to me ma th'oat keeps gittin' dry, Seems lak to me a tear stays in ma eye, Sence you went away. THE CREATION (_A Negro Sermon_) And God stepped out on space, And He looked around and said, _"I'm lonely-- I'll make me a world."_ And far as the eye of God could see Darkness covered everything, Blacker than a hundred midnights Down in a cypress swamp. Then God smiled, And the light broke, And the darkness rolled up on one side, And the light stood shining on the other, And God said, _"That's good!"_ Then God reached out and took the light in His hands, And God rolled the light around in His hands Until He made the sun; And He set that sun a-blazing in the heavens. And the light that was left from making the sun God gathered it up in a shining ball And flung it against the darkness, Spangling the night with the moon and stars. Then down between The darkness and the light He hurled the world; And God said, _"That's good!"_ Then God himself stepped down-- And the sun was on His right hand, And the moon was on His left; The stars were clustered about His head, And the earth was under His feet. And God walked, and where He trod His footsteps hollowed the valleys out And bulged the mountains up. Then He stopped and looked and saw That the earth was hot and barren. So God stepped over to the edge of the world And He spat out the seven seas; He batted His eyes, and the lightnings flashed; He clapped His hands, and the thunders rolled; And the waters above the earth came down, The cooling waters came down. Then the green grass sprouted, And the little red flowers blossomed, The pine tree pointed his finger to the sky, And the oak spread out his arms, The lakes cuddled down in the hollows of the ground, And the rivers ran down to the sea; And God smiled again, And the rainbow appeared, And curled itself around His shoulder. Then God raised His arm and He waved His hand Over the sea and over the land, And He said, _"Bring forth! Bring forth!"_ And quicker than God could drop His hand, Fishes and fowls And beasts and birds Swam the rivers and the seas, Roamed the forests and the woods, And split the air with their wings. And God said, _"That's good!"_ Then God walked around, And God looked around On all that He had made. He looked at His sun, And He looked at His moon, 'And He looked at His little stars; He looked on His world With all its living things, And God said, _"I'm lonely still."_ Then God sat down On the side of a hill where He could think; By a deep, wide river He sat down; With His head in His hands, God thought and thought, Till He thought, _"I'll make me a man!"_ Up from the bed of the river God scooped the clay; And by the bank of the river He kneeled Him down; And there the great God Almighty Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky, Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night, Who rounded the earth in the middle of His hand; This Great God, Like a mammy bending over her baby, Kneeled down in the dust Toiling over a lump of clay Till He shaped it in His own image; Then into it He blew the breath of life, And man became a living soul. Amen. Amen. THE WHITE WITCH O brothers mine, take care! Take care! The great white witch rides out to-night. Trust not your prowess nor your strength, Your only safety lies in flight; For in her glance there is a snare, And in her smile there is a blight. The great white witch you have not seen? Then, younger brothers mine, forsooth, Like nursery children you have looked For ancient hag and snaggle-tooth; But no, not so; the witch appears In all the glowing charms of youth. Her lips are like carnations, red, Her face like new-born lilies, fair, Her eyes like ocean waters, blue, She moves with subtle grace and air, And all about her head there floats The golden glory of her hair. But though she always thus appears In form of youth and mood of mirth, Unnumbered centuries are hers, The infant planets saw her birth; The child of throbbing Life is she, Twin sister to the greedy earth. And back behind those smiling lips, And down within those laughing eyes, And underneath the soft caress Of hand and voice and purring sighs, The shadow of the panther lurks, The spirit of the vampire lies. For I have seen the great white witch, And she has led me to her lair, And I have kissed her red, red lips And cruel face so white and fair; Around me she has twined her arms, And bound me with her yellow hair. I felt those red lips burn and sear My body like a living coal; Obeyed the power of those eyes As the needle trembles to the pole; And did not care although I felt The strength go ebbing from my soul. Oh! she has seen your strong young limbs, And heard your laughter loud and gay, And in your voices she has caught The echo of a far-off day, When man was closer to the earth; And she has marked you for her prey. She feels the old Antaean strength In you, the great dynamic beat Of primal passions, and she sees In you the last besieged retreat Of love relentless, lusty, fierce, Love pain-ecstatic, cruel-sweet. O, brothers mine, take care! Take care! The great white witch rides out to-night. O, younger brothers mine, beware! Look not upon her beauty bright; For in her glance there is a snare, And in her smile there is a blight. MOTHER NIGHT Eternities before the first-born day, Or ere the first sun fledged his wings of flame, Calm Night, the everlasting and the same, A brooding mother over chaos lay. And whirling suns shall blaze and then decay, Shall run their fiery courses and then claim The haven of the darkness whence they came; Back to Nirvanic peace shall grope their way. So when my feeble sun of life burns out, And sounded is the hour for my long sleep, I shall, full weary of the feverish light, Welcome the darkness without fear or doubt, And heavy-lidded, I shall softly creep Into the quiet bosom of the Night. O SOUTHLAND! O Southland! O Southland! Have you not heard the call, The trumpet blown, the word made known To the nations, one and all? The watchword, the hope-word, Salvation's present plan? A gospel new, for all--for you: Man shall be saved by man. O Southland! O Southland! Do you not hear to-day The mighty beat of onward feet, And know you not their way? 'Tis forward, 'tis upward, On to the fair white arch Of Freedom's dome, and there is room For each man who would march. O Southland, fair Southland! Then why do you still cling To an idle age and a musty page, To a dead and useless thing? 'Tis springtime! 'Tis work-time! The world is young again! And God's above, and God is love, And men are only men. O Southland! my Southland! O birthland! do not shirk The toilsome task, nor respite ask, But gird you for the work. Remember, remember That weakness stalks in pride; That he is strong who helps along The faint one at his side. BROTHERS See! There he stands; not brave, but with an air Of sullen stupor. Mark him well! Is he Not more like brute than man? Look in his eye! No light is there; none, save the glint that shines In the now glaring, and now shifting orbs Of some wild animal caught in the hunter's trap. How came this beast in human shape and form? Speak, man!--We call you man because you wear His shape--How are you thus? Are you not from That docile, child-like, tender-hearted race Which we have known three centuries? Not from That more than faithful race which through three wars Fed our dear wives and nursed our helpless babes Without a single breach of trust? Speak out! I am, and am not. Then who, why are you? I am a thing not new, I am as old As human nature. I am that which lurks, Ready to spring whenever a bar is loosed; The ancient trait which fights incessantly Against restraint, balks at the upward climb; The weight forever seeking to obey The law of downward pull;--and I am more: The bitter fruit am I of planted seed; The resultant, the inevitable end Of evil forces and the powers of wrong. Lessons in degradation, taught and learned, The memories of cruel sights and deeds, The pent-up bitterness, the unspent hate Filtered through fifteen generations have Sprung up and found in me sporadic life. In me the muttered curse of dying men, On me the stain of conquered women, and Consuming me the fearful fires of lust, Lit long ago, by other hands than mine. In me the down-crushed spirit, the hurled-back prayers Of wretches now long dead,--their dire bequests,-- In me the echo of the stifled cry Of children for their bartered mothers' breasts. I claim no race, no race claims me; I am No more than human dregs; degenerate; The monstrous offspring of the monster, Sin; I am--just what I am. . . . The race that fed Your wives and nursed your babes would do the same To-day, but I-- Enough, the brute must die! Quick! Chain him to that oak! It will resist The fire much longer than this slender pine. Now bring the fuel! Pile it'round him! Wait! Pile not so fast or high! or we shall lose The agony and terror in his face. And now the torch! Good fuel that! the flames Already leap head-high. Ha! hear that shriek! And there's another! Wilder than the first. Fetch water! Water! Pour a little on The fire, lest it should burn too fast. Hold so! Now let it slowly blaze again. See there! He squirms! He groans! His eyes bulge wildly out, Searching around in vain appeal for help! Another shriek, the last! Watch how the flesh Grows crisp and hangs till, turned to ash, it sifts Down through the coils of chain that hold erect The ghastly frame against the bark-scorched tree. Stop! to each man no more than one man's share. You take that bone, and you this tooth; the chain-- Let us divide its links; this skull, of course, In fair division, to the leader comes. And now his fiendish crime has been avenged; Let us back to our wives and children.--Say, What did he mean by those last muttered words, _"Brothers in spirit, brothers in deed are we"?_ FIFTY YEARS (1863-1913) _On the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Signing of the Emancipation Proclamation._ O brothers mine, to-day we stand Where half a century sweeps our ken, Since God, through Lincoln's ready hand, Struck off our bonds and made us men. Just fifty years--a winter's day-- As runs the history of a race; Yet, as we look back o'er the way, How distant seems our starting place! Look farther back! Three centuries! To where a naked, shivering score, Snatched from their haunts across the seas, Stood, wild-eyed, on Virginia's shore. This land is ours by right of birth, This land is ours by right of toil; We helped to turn its virgin earth, Our sweat is in its fruitful soil. Where once the tangled forest stood,-- Where flourished once rank weed and thorn,-- Behold the path-traced, peaceful wood, The cotton white, the yellow corn. To gain these fruits that have been earned, To hold these fields that have been won, Our arms have strained, our backs have burned, Bent bare beneath a ruthless sun. That Banner which is now the type Of victory on field and flood-- Remember, its first crimson stripe Was dyed by Attucks' willing blood. And never yet has come the cry-- When that fair flag has been assailed-- For men to do, for men to die, That we have faltered or have failed. We've helped to bear it, rent and torn, Through many a hot-breath'd battle breeze Held in our hands, it has been borne And planted far across the seas. And never yet,--O haughty Land, Let us, at least, for this be praised-- Has one black, treason-guided hand Ever against that flag been raised. Then should we speak but servile words, Or shall we hang our heads in shame? Stand back of new-come foreign hordes, And fear our heritage to claim? No! stand erect and without fear, And for our foes let this suffice-- We've bought a rightful sonship here, And we have more than paid the price. And yet, my brothers, well I know The tethered feet, the pinioned wings, The spirit bowed beneath the blow, The heart grown faint from wounds and stings; The staggering force of brutish might, That strikes and leaves us stunned and dazed; The long, vain waiting through the night To hear some voice for justice raised. Full well I know the hour when hope Sinks dead, and 'round us everywhere Hangs stifling darkness, and we grope With hands uplifted in despair. Courage! Look out, beyond, and see The far horizon's beckoning span! Faith in your God-known destiny! We are a part of some great plan. Because the tongues of Garrison And Phillips now are cold in death, Think you their work can be undone? Or quenched the fires lit by their breath? Think you that John Brown's spirit stops? That Lovejoy was but idly slain? Or do you think those precious drops From Lincoln's heart were shed in vain? That for which millions prayed and sighed, That for which tens of thousands fought, For which so many freely died, God cannot let it come to naught. John Wesley Holloway MISS MELERLEE Hello dar, Miss Melerlee! Oh, you're pretty sight to see! Sof brown cheek, an' smilin' face, An' willowy form chuck full o' grace-- De sweetes' gal Ah evah see, An' Ah wush dat you would marry me! Hello, Miss Melerlee! Hello dar, Miss Melerlee! You're de berry gal fo' me! Pearly teef, an' shinin' hair, An' silky arm so plump an' bare! Ah lak yo' walk, Ah lak yo' clothes, An' de way Ah love you,--goodness knows! Hello, Miss Melerlee! Hello dar, Miss Melerlee! Dat's not yo' name, but it ought to be! Ah nevah seed yo' face befo' An' lakly won't again no mo'; But yo' sweet smile will follow me Cla'r into eternity! Farewell, Miss Melerlee! CALLING THE DOCTOR Ah'm sick, doctor-man, Ah'm sick! Gi' me some'n' to he'p me quick, Don't,--Ah'll die! Tried mighty hard fo' to cure mahse'f; Tried all dem t'ings on de pantry she'f; Couldn' fin' not'in' a-tall would do, An' so Ah sent fo' you. "Wha'd Ah take?" Well, le' me see: Firs',--horhound drops an' catnip tea; Den rock candy soaked in rum, An' a good sized chunk o' camphor gum; Next Ah tried was castor oil, An' snakeroot tea brought to a boil; Sassafras tea fo' to clean mah blood; But none o' dem t'ings didn' do no good. Den when home remedies seem to shirk, Dem pantry bottles was put to work: Blue-mass, laud'num, liver pills, "Sixty-six, fo' fever an' chills," Ready Relief, an' A.B.C., An' half a bottle of X.Y.Z. An' sev'al mo' Ah don't recall, Dey nevah done no good at all. Mah appetite begun to fail; 'Ah fo'ced some clabber, about a pail, Fo' mah ol' gran'ma always said When yo' can't eat you're almost dead. So Ah got scared an' sent for you.-- Now, doctor, see what you c'n do. Ah'm sick, doctor-man. Gawd knows Ah'm sick! Gi' me some'n' to he'p me quick, Don't,--Ah'll die! THE CORN SONG Jes' beyan a clump o' pines,-- Lis'n to 'im now!-- Hyah de jolly black boy, Singin', at his plow! In de early mornin', Thoo de hazy air, Loud an' clear, sweet an' strong Comes de music rare: "O mah dovee, Who-ah! Do you love me? Who-ah! Who-ah!" An' as 'e tu'ns de cotton row, Hyah 'im tell 'is ol' mule so; "Whoa! Har! Come'ere!" Don't yo' love a co'n song? How it stirs yo' blood! Ever'body list'nin', In de neighborhood! Standin' in yo' front do' In de misty mo'n, Hyah de jolly black boy, Singin' in de co'n: "O Miss Julie, Who-ah! Love me truly, Who-ah! Who-ah!" Hyah 'im scol' 'is mule so, W'en 'e try to mek 'im go: "Gee! Whoa! Come 'ere!" O you jolly black boy, Yod'lin' in de co'n, Callin' to yo' dawlin', In de dewy mo'n, Love 'er, boy, forevah, Yodel ever' day; Only le' me lis'n, As yo' sing away: "O mah dawlin'! Who-ah! Hyah me callin'! Who-ah! Who-ah!" Tu'n aroun' anothah row, Holler to yo' mule so: "Whoa! Har! Come 'ere!" BLACK MAMMIES If Ah evah git to glory, an' Ah hope to mek it thoo, Ah expec' to hyah a story, an' Ah hope you'll hyah it, too,-- Hit'll kiver Maine to Texas, an' f'om Bosting to Miami,-- Ov de highes' shaf in glory, 'rected to de Negro Mammy. You will see a lot o' Washington, an' Washington again; An' good ol' Fathah Lincoln, tow'rin' 'bove de rest o' men; But dar'll be a bunch o' women standin' hard up by de th'one, An' dey'll all be black an' homely,--'less de Virgin Mary's one. Dey will be de talk of angels, dey will be de praise o' men, An' de whi' folks would go crazy 'thout their Mammy folks again: If it's r'ally true dat meekness makes you heir to all de eart', Den our blessed, good ol' Mammies must 'a' been of noble birt'. If de greates' is de servant, den Ah got to say o' dem, Dey'll be standin' nex' to Jesus, sub to no one else but Him; If de crown goes to de fait'ful, an' de palm de victors wear, Dey'll be loaded down wid jewels more dan anybody dere. She'd de hardes' road to trabel evah mortal had to pull; But she knelt down in huh cabin till huh cup o' joy was full; Dough' ol' Satan tried to shake huh f'om huh knees wid scowl an' frown, She jes' "clumb up Jacob's ladder," an' he nevah drug huh down. She'd jes' croon above de babies, she'd jes' sing when t'ings went wrong, An' no matter what de trouble, she would meet it wid a song; She jes' prayed huh way to heaben, findin' comfort in de rod; She jes' "stole away to Jesus," she jes' sung huh way to God! She "kep' lookin' ovah Jurdan," kep' "a-trustin' in de word," Kep' a-lookin' fo "de char'et," kep' "a-waitin' fo' de Lawd," If she evah had to quavah of de shadder of a doubt, It ain't nevah been discovahed, fo' she nevah sung it out; But she trusted in de shadder, an' she trusted in de shine, An' she longed fo' one possession: "dat heaben to be mine"; An' she prayed huh chil'en freedom, but she won huhse'f de bes',-- Peace on eart' amids' huh sorrows, an' up yonder heabenly res'! Leslie Pinckney Hill TUSKEGEE Wherefore this busy labor without rest? Is it an idle dream to which we cling, Here where a thousand dusky toilers sing Unto the world their hope? "Build we our best. By hand and thought," they cry, "although unblessed." So the great engines throb, and anvils ring, And so the thought is wedded to the thing; But what shall be the end, and what the test? Dear God, we dare not answer, we can see Not many steps ahead, but this we know-- If all our toilsome building is in vain, Availing not to set our manhood free, If envious hate roots out the seed we sow, The South will wear eternally a stain. CHRISTMAS AT MELROSE Come home with me a little space And browse about our ancient place, Lay by your wonted troubles here And have a turn of Christmas cheer. These sober walls of weathered stone Can tell a romance of their own, And these wide rooms of devious line Are kindly meant in their design. Sometimes the north wind searches through, But he shall not be rude to you. We'll light a log of generous girth For winter comfort, and the mirth Of healthy children you shall see About a sparkling Christmas tree. Eleanor, leader of the fold, Hermione with heart of gold, Elaine with comprehending eyes, And two more yet of coddling size, Natalie pondering all that's said, And Mary with the cherub head-- All these shall give you sweet content And care-destroying merriment, While one with true madonna grace Moves round the glowing fire-place Where father loves to muse aside And grandma sits in silent pride. And you may chafe the wasting oak, Or freely pass the kindly joke To mix with nuts and home-made cake And apples set on coals to bake. Or some fine carol we will sing In honor of the Manger-King, Or hear great Milton's organ verse Or Plato's dialogue rehearse What Socrates with his last breath Sublimely said of life and death. These dear delights we fain would share With friend and kinsman everywhere, And from our door see them depart Each with a little lighter heart. SUMMER MAGIC So many cares to vex the day, So many fears to haunt the night, My heart was all but weaned away From every lure of old delight. Then summer came, announced by June, With beauty, miracle and mirth. She hung aloft the rounding moon, She poured her sunshine on the earth, She drove the sap and broke the bud, She set the crimson rose afire. She stirred again my sullen blood, And waked in me a new desire. Before my cottage door she spread The softest carpet nature weaves, And deftly arched above my head A canopy of shady leaves. Her nights were dreams of jeweled skies, Her days were bowers rife with song, And many a scheme did she devise To heal the hurt and soothe the wrong. For on the hill or in the dell, Or where the brook went leaping by Or where the fields would surge and swell With golden wheat or bearded rye, I felt her heart against my own, I breathed the sweetness of her breath, Till all the cark of time had flown, And I was lord of life and death. THE TEACHER Lord, who am I to teach the way To little children day by day, So prone myself to go astray? I teach them KNOWLEDGE, but I know How faint they flicker and how low The candles of my knowledge glow. I teach them POWER to will and do, But only now to learn anew My own great weakness through and through. I teach them LOVE for all mankind And all God's creatures, but I find My love comes lagging far behind. Lord, if their guide I still must be, Oh let the little children see The teacher leaning hard on Thee. Edward Smyth Jones A SONG OF THANKS For the sun that shone at the dawn of spring, For the flowers which bloom and the birds that sing, For the verdant robe of the gray old earth, For her coffers filled with their countless worth, For the flocks which feed on a thousand hills, For the rippling streams which turn the mills, For the lowing herds in the lovely vale, For the songs of gladness on the gale,-- From the Gulf and the Lakes to the Oceans' banks,-- Lord God of Hosts, we give Thee thanks! For the farmer reaping his whitened fields, For the bounty which the rich soil yields, For the cooling dews and refreshing rains, For the sun which ripens the golden grains, For the bearded wheat and the fattened swine, For the stallèd ox and the fruitful vine, For the tubers large and cotton white, For the kid and the lambkin frisk and blithe, For the swan which floats near the river-banks,-- Lord God of Hosts, we give Thee thanks! For the pumpkin sweet and the yellow yam, For the corn and beans and the sugared ham, For the plum and the peach and the apple red, For the dear old press where the wine is tread, For the cock which crows at the breaking dawn, And the proud old "turk" of the farmer's barn, For the fish which swim in the babbling brooks, For the game which hide in the shady nooks,-- From the Gulf and the Lakes to the Oceans' banks-- Lord God of Hosts, we give Thee thanks! For the sturdy oaks and the stately pines, For the lead and the coal from the deep, dark mines, For the silver ores of a thousand fold, For the diamond bright and the yellow gold, For the river boat and the flying train, For the fleecy sail of the rolling main, For the velvet sponge and the glossy pearl, For the flag of peace which we now unfurl,-- From the Gulf and the Lakes to the Oceans' banks,-- Lord God of Hosts, we give Thee thanks! For the lowly cot and the mansion fair, For the peace and plenty together share, For the Hand which guides us from above, For Thy tender mercies, abiding love, For the blessed home with its children gay, For returnings of Thanksgiving Day, For the bearing toils and the sharing cares, We lift up our hearts in our songs and our prayers,-- From the Gulf and the Lakes to the Oceans' banks,-- Lord God of Hosts, we give Thee thanks! Ray G. Dandridge TIME TO DIE Black brother, think you life so sweet That you would live at any price? Does mere existence balance with The weight of your great sacrifice? Or can it be you fear the grave Enough to live and die a slave? O Brother! be it better said, When you are gone and tears are shed, That your death was the stepping stone Your children's children cross'd upon. Men have died that men might live: Look every foeman in the eye! If necessary, your life give For something, ere in vain you die. 'ITTLE TOUZLE HEAD (_To R. V.P._) Cum, listen w'ile yore Unkel sings Erbout how low sweet chariot swings, Truint Angel, wifout wings, Mah 'ittle Touzle Head. Stop! Stop! How dare you laff et me, Bekaze I foul de time an' key, Thinks you dat I is Black Pattie, Mah 'ittle Touzle Head? O, Honey Lam'! dem sparklin' eyes, Dat offen laffs an' selem cries, Is sho a God gib natchel prize, Mah 'ittle Touzle Head. An' doze wee ban's so sof an' sweet, Mates wid dem toddlin', velvet feet, Jes to roun' you out, complete, Mah 'ittle Touzle Head. Sma't! youse sma't ez sma't kin be, Knows yore evah A, B, C, Plum on down to X, Y, Z, Mah 'ittle Touzle Head. De man doan know how much he miss, Ef he ain't got no niece lak dis; Fro yore Unkel one mo' kiss, Mah 'ittle Touzle Head! I wist sum magic w'u'd ellow, (By charm or craf'--doan mattah how) You stay jes lak you is right now, Mah 'ittle Touzle Head. ZALKA PEETRUZA (_Who Was Christened Lucy Jane_) She danced, near nude, to tom-tom beat, With swaying arms and flying feet, 'Mid swirling spangles, gauze and lace, Her all was dancing--save her face. A conscience, dumb to brooding fears, Companioned hearing deaf to cheers; A body, marshalled by the will, Kept dancing while a heart stood still: And eyes obsessed with vacant stare, Looked over heads to empty air, As though they sought to find therein Redemption for a maiden sin. 'Twas thus, amid force driven grace, We found the lost look on her face; And then, to us, did it occur That, though we saw--we saw not her. SPRIN' FEVAH Dar's a lazy, sortah hazy Feelin' grips me, thoo an' thoo; An' I feels lak doin' less dan enythin'; Dough de saw is sharp an' greasy, Dough de task et han' is easy, An' de day am fair an' breezy, Dar's a thief dat steals embition in de win'. Kaint defy it, kaint deny it, Kaze it jes won't be denied; Its a mos' pursistin' stubbern sortah thin'; Anti Tox' doan neutrolize it; Doctahs fail to analyze it; So I yiel's (dough I despise it) To dat res'less, wretchit fevah evah Sprin'. DE DRUM MAJAH He's struttin' sho ernuff, Wearin' a lady's muff En' ways erpon his head, Red coat ob reddest red, Purtty white satin ves', Gole braid ercross de ches'; Goo'ness! he cuts a stunt, Prancin' out dar in frunt, Leadin' his ban'. Wen dat ah whistle blows, Each man behine him knows 'Zacklee whut he mus' do; You bet! he dues it, too. W'en dat brass stick he twirls, Ole maids an' lub-sick gurls Looks on wid longin' eyes, Dey simpley idolize Dat han'sum man. Sweet fife an' piccalo, Bofe warblin' sof an' lo' Slide ho'n an' saxophones, Jazz syncopated tones, Snare drum an' lead cornet, Alto an' clarinet, Las', but not least, dar cum Cymbals an' big bass drum-- O! whut a ban'! Cose, we all undahstan' Each piece he'ps maik de ban', But dey all mus' be led, Sum one mus' be de head: No doubt, de centipede Has all de laigs he need, But take erway de head, Po' centipede am dead; So am de ban'. Fenton Johnson CHILDREN OF THE SUN We are children of the sun, Rising sun! Weaving Southern destiny, Waiting for the mighty hour When our Shiloh shall appear With the flaming sword of right, With the steel of brotherhood, And emboss in crimson die Liberty! Fraternity! We are the star-dust folk, Striving folk! Sorrow songs have lulled to rest; Seething passions wrought through wrongs, Led us where the moon rays dip In the night of dull despair, Showed us where the star gleams shine, And the mystic symbols glow-- Liberty! Fraternity! We have come through cloud and mist, Mighty men! Dusk has kissed our sleep-born eyes, Reared for us a mystic throne In the splendor of the skies, That shall always be for us, Children of the Nazarene, Children who shall ever sing Liberty! Fraternity! THE NEW DAY From a vision red with war I awoke and saw the Prince of Peace hovering over No Man's Land. Loud the whistles blew and the thunder of cannon was drowned by the happy shouting of the people. From the Sinai that faces Armageddon I heard this chant from the throats of white-robed angels: Blow your trumpets, little children! From the East and from the West, From the cities in the valley, From God's dwelling on the mountain, Blow your blast that Peace might know She is Queen of God's great army. With the crying blood of millions We have written deep her name In the Book of all the Ages; With the lilies in the valley, With the roses by the Mersey, With the golden flower of Jersey We have crowned her smooth young temples. Where her footsteps cease to falter Golden grain will greet the morning, Where her chariot descends Shall be broken down the altars Of the gods of dark disturbance. Nevermore shall men know suffering, Nevermore shall women wailing Shake to grief the God of Heaven. From the East and from the West, From the cities in the valley, From God's dwelling on the mountain, Little children, blow your trumpets! From Ethiopia, groaning 'neath her heavy burdens, I heard the music of the old slave songs. I heard the wail of warriors, dusk brown, who grimly fought the fight of others in the trenches of Mars. I heard the plea of blood-stained men of dusk and the crimson in my veins leapt furiously. Forget not, O my brothers, how we fought In No Man's Land that peace might come again! Forget not, O my brothers, how we gave Red blood to save the freedom of the world! We were not free, our tawny hands were tied; But Belgium's plight and Serbia's woes we shared Each rise of sun or setting of the moon. So when the bugle blast had called us forth We went not like the surly brute of yore But, as the Spartan, proud to give the world The freedom that we never knew nor shared. These chains, O brothers mine, have weighed us down As Samson in the temple of the gods; Unloosen them and let us breathe the air That makes the goldenrod the flower of Christ. For we have been with thee in No Man's Land, Through lake of fire and down to Hell itself; And now we ask of thee our liberty, Our freedom in the land of Stars and Stripes. I am glad that the Prince of Peace is hovering over No Man's Land. TIRED I am tired of work; I am tired of building up somebody else's civilization. Let us take a rest, M'Lissy Jane. I will go down to the Last Chance Saloon, drink a gallon or two of gin, shoot a game or two of dice and sleep the rest of the night on one of Mike's barrels. You will let the old shanty go to rot, the white people's clothes turn to dust, and the Calvary Baptist Church sink to the bottomless pit. You will spend your days forgetting you married me and your nights hunting the warm gin Mike serves the ladies in the rear of the Last Chance Saloon. Throw the children into the river; civilization has given us too many. It is better to die than it is to grow up and find out that you are colored. Pluck the stars out of the heavens. The stars mark our destiny. The stars marked my destiny. I am tired of civilization. THE BANJO PLAYER There is music in me, the music of a peasant people. I wander through the levee, picking my banjo and singing my songs of the cabin and the field. At the Last Chance Saloon I am as welcome as the violets in March; there is always food and drink for me there, and the dimes of those who love honest music. Behind the railroad tracks the little children clap their hands and love me as they love Kris Kringle. But I fear that I am a failure. Last night a woman called me a troubadour. What is a troubadour? THE SCARLET WOMAN Once I was good like the Virgin Mary and the Minister's wife. My father worked for Mr. Pullman and white people's tips; but he died two days after his insurance expired. I had nothing, so I had to go to work. All the stock I had was a white girl's education and a face that enchanted the men of both races. Starvation danced with me. So when Big Lizzie, who kept a house for white men, came to me with tales of fortune that I could reap from the sale of my virtue I bowed my head to Vice. Now I can drink more gin than any man for miles around. Gin is better than all the water in Lethe. R. Nathaniel Dett THE RUBINSTEIN STACCATO ETUDE Staccato! Staccato! Leggier agitato! In and out does the melody twist-- Unique proposition Is this composition. (Alas! for the player who hasn't the wrist!) Now in the dominant Theme ringing prominent, Bass still repeating its one monotone, Double notes crying, Up keyboard go flying, The change to the minor comes in like a groan. Without a cessation A chaste modulation Hastens adown to subdominant key, Where melody mellow-like Singing so 'cello-like Rises and falls in a wild ecstasy. Scarce is this finished When chords all diminished Break loose in a patter that comes down like rain, A pedal-point wonder Rivaling thunder. Now all is mad agitation again. Like laughter jolly Begins the finale; Again does the 'cello its tones seem to lend Diminuendo ad molto crescendo. Ah! Rubinstein only could make such an end! Georgia Douglas Johnson THE HEART OF A WOMAN The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn, As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on, Afar o'er life's turrets and vales does it roam In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home. The heart of a woman falls back with the night, And enters some alien cage in its plight, And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars. YOUTH The dew is on the grasses, dear, The blush is on the rose, And swift across our dial-youth, A shifting shadow goes. The primrose moments, lush with bliss, Exhale and fade away, Life may renew the Autumn time, But nevermore the May! LOST ILLUSIONS Oh, for the veils of my far away youth, Shielding my heart from the blaze of the truth, Why did I stray from their shelter and grow Into the sadness that follows--to know! Impotent atom with desolate gaze Threading the tumult of hazardous ways-- Oh, for the veils, for the veils of my youth Veils that hung low o'er the blaze of the truth! I WANT TO DIE WHILE YOU LOVE ME I want to die while you love me, While yet you hold me fair, While laughter lies upon my lips And lights are in my hair. I want to die while you love me, And bear to that still bed, Your kisses turbulent, unspent To warm me when I'm dead. I want to die while you love me Oh, who would care to live Till love has nothing more to ask And nothing more to give! I want to die while you love me And never, never see The glory of this perfect day Grow dim or cease to be. WELT Would I might mend the fabric of my youth That daily flaunts its tatters to my eyes, Would I might compromise awhile with truth Until our moon now waxing, wanes and dies. For I would go a further while with you, And drain this cup so tantalant and fair Which meets my parched lips like cooling dew, Ere time has brushed cold fingers thru my hair! MY LITTLE DREAMS I'm folding up my little dreams Within my heart to-night, And praying I may soon forget The torture of their sight. For Time's deft fingers scroll my brow With fell relentless art-- I'm folding up my little dreams To-night, within my heart! Claude McKay THE LYNCHING His spirit in smoke ascended to high heaven. His father, by the crudest way of pain, Had bidden him to his bosom once again; The awful sin remained still unforgiven. All night a bright and solitary star (Perchance the one that ever guided him, Yet gave him up at last to Fate's wild whim) Hung pitifully o'er the swinging char. Day dawned, and soon the mixed crowds came to view The ghastly body swaying in the sun: The women thronged to look, but never a one Showed sorrow in her eyes of steely blue; And little lads, lynchers that were to be, Danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee. IF WE MUST DIE If we must die--let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursed lot. If we must die--oh, let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead! Oh, Kinsmen! We must meet the common foe; Though far outnumbered, let us still be brave, And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow! What though before us lies the open grave? Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but--fighting back! TO THE WHITE FIENDS Think you I am not fiend and savage too? Think you I could not arm me with a gun And shoot down ten of you for every one Of my black brothers murdered, burnt by you? Be not deceived, for every deed you do I could match--out-match: am I not Africa's son, Black of that black land where black deeds are done? But the Almighty from the darkness drew My soul and said: Even thou shalt be a light Awhile to burn on the benighted earth, Thy dusky face I set among the white For thee to prove thyself of highest worth; Before the world is swallowed up in night, To show thy little lamp: go forth, go forth! THE HARLEM DANCER Applauding youths laughed with young prostitutes And watched her perfect, half-clothed body sway; Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes Blown by black players upon a picnic day. She sang and danced on gracefully and calm, The light gauze hanging loose about her form; To me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm Grown lovelier for passing through a storm. Upon her swarthy neck black, shiny curls Profusely fell; and, tossing coins in praise, The wine-flushed, bold-eyed boys, and even the girls, Devoured her with their eager, passionate gaze; But, looking at her falsely-smiling face I knew her self was not in that strange place. HARLEM SHADOWS I hear the halting footsteps of a lass In Negro Harlem when the night lets fall Its veil. I see the shapes of girls who pass Eager to heed desire's insistent call: Ah, little dark girls, who in slippered feet Go prowling through the night from street to street. Through the long night until the silver break Of day the little gray feet know no rest, Through the lone night until the last snow-flake Has dropped from heaven upon the earth's white breast, The dusky, half-clad girls of tired feet Are trudging, thinly shod, from street to street. Ah, stern harsh world, that in the wretched way Of poverty, dishonor and disgrace, Has pushed the timid little feet of clay. The sacred brown feet of my fallen race! Ah, heart of me, the weary, weary feet In Harlem wandering from street to street. AFTER THE WINTER Some day, when trees have shed their leaves, And against the morning's white The shivering birds beneath the eaves Have sheltered for the night, We'll turn our faces southward, love, Toward the summer isle Where bamboos spire the shafted grove And wide-mouthed orchids smile. And we will seek the quiet hill Where towers the cotton tree, And leaps the laughing crystal rill, And works the droning bee. And we will build a lonely nest Beside an open glade, And there forever will we rest, O love--O nut-brown maid! SPRING IN NEW HAMPSHIRE Too green the springing April grass, Too blue the silver speckled sky, For me to linger here, alas, While happy winds go laughing by, Wasting the golden hours indoors, Washing windows and scrubbing floors. Too wonderful the April night, Too faintly sweet the first May flowers, The stars too gloriously bright, For me to spend the evening hours, When fields are fresh and streams are leaping, Wearied, exhausted, dully sleeping. THE TIRED WORKER O whisper, O my soul!--the afternoon Is waning into evening--whisper soft! Peace, O my rebel heart! for soon the moon From out its misty veil will swing aloft! Be patient, weary body, soon the night Will wrap thee gently in her sable sheet, And with a leaden sigh thou wilt invite To rest thy tired hands and aching feet. The wretched day was theirs, the night is mine; Come, tender sleep, and fold me to thy breast. But what steals out the gray clouds red like wine? O dawn! O dreaded dawn! O let me rest! Weary my veins, my brain, my life,--have pity! No! Once again the hard, the ugly city. THE BARRIER I must not gaze at them although Your eyes are dawning day; I must not watch you as you go Your sun-illumined way; I hear but I must never heed The fascinating note, Which, fluting like a river-reed, Comes from your trembling throat; I must not see upon your face Love's softly glowing spark; For there's the barrier of race, You're fair and I am dark. TO O. E. A. Your voice is the color of a robin's breast, And there's a sweet sob in it like rain--still rain in the night. Among the leaves of the trumpet-tree, close to his nest, The pea-dove sings, and each note thrills me with strange delight Like the words, wet with music, that well from your trembling throat. I'm afraid of your eyes, they're so bold, Searching me through, reading my thoughts, shining like gold. But sometimes they are gentle and soft like the dew on the lips of the eucharis Before the sun comes warm with his lover's kiss, You are sea-foam, pure with the star's loveliness, Not mortal, a flower, a fairy, too fair for the beauty-shorn earth, All wonderful things, all beautiful things, gave of their wealth to your birth: O I love you so much, not recking of passion, that I feel it is wrong, But men will love you, flower, fairy, non-mortal spirit burdened with flesh, Forever, life-long. FLAME-HEART So much have I forgotten in ten years, So much in ten brief years; I have forgot What time the purple apples come to juice And what month brings the shy forget-me-not; Forgotten is the special, startling season Of some beloved tree's flowering and fruiting, What time of year the ground doves brown the fields And fill the noonday with their curious fluting: I have forgotten much, but still remember The poinsettia's red, blood-red in warm December. I still recall the honey-fever grass, But I cannot bring back to mind just when We rooted them out of the ping-wing path To stop the mad bees in the rabbit pen. I often try to think in what sweet month The languid painted ladies used to dapple The yellow bye road mazing from the main, Sweet with the golden threads of the rose-apple: I have forgotten, strange, but quite remember The poinsettia's red, blood-red in warm December. What weeks, what months, what time o' the mild year We cheated school to have our fling at tops? What days our wine-thrilled bodies pulsed with joy Feasting upon blackberries in the copse? Oh, some I know! I have embalmed the days, Even the sacred moments, when we played, All innocent of passion uncorrupt, At noon and evening in the flame-heart's shade: We were so happy, happy,--I remember Beneath the poinsettia's red in warm December. TWO-AN'-SIX Merry voices chatterin', Nimble feet dem patterin', Big an' little, faces gay, Happy day dis market day. Sateday, de marnin' break, Soon, soon market-people wake; An' de light shine from de moon While dem boy, wid pantaloon Roll up ober dem knee-pan, 'Tep across de buccra lan' To de pastur whe' de harse Feed along wid de jackass, An' de mule cant' in de track Wid him tail up in him back, All de ketchin' to defy, No ca' how dem boy might try. In de early marnin'-tide, When de cocks crow on de hill An' de stars are shinin' still, Mirrie by de fireside Hots de coffee for de lads Comin' ridin' on de pads T'rown across dem animul-- Donkey, harse too, an' de mule, Which at last had come do'n cool. On de bit dem hol' dem full: Racin' ober pastur' lan', See dem comin' ebery man, Comin' fe de steamin' tea Ober hilly track an' lea. Hard-wuk'd donkey on de road Trottin' wid him ushal load, Hamper pack' wi' yam an' grain, Sour-sop, and Gub'nor cane. Cous' Sun sits in hired dray, Drivin' 'long de market way; Whole week grindin' sugar cane T'rough de boilin' sun an' rain, Now, a'ter de toilin' hard, He goes seekin' his reward, While he's thinkin' in him min' Of de dear ones lef behin', Of de loved though ailin' wife, Darlin' treasure of his life, An' de picknies, six in all, Whose 'nuff burdens 'pon him fall: Seben lovin' ones in need, Seben hungry mouths fe feed; On deir wants he thinks alone, Neber dreamin' of his own, But gwin' on wid joyful face Till him re'ch de market-place. Sugar bears no price to-day, Though it is de mont' o' May, When de time is hellish hot, An' de water cocoanut An' de cane bebridge is nice, Mix' up wid a lilly ice. Big an' little, great an' small, Afou yam is all de call; Sugar tup an' gill a quart, Yet de people hab de heart Wantin' brater top o' i', Want de sweatin' higgler fe Ram de pan an' pile i' up, Yet sell i' fe so-so tup. Cousin Sun is lookin' sad, As de market is so bad; 'Pon him han' him res' him chin, Quietly sit do'n thinkin' Of de loved wife sick in bed, An' de children to be fed-- What de laborers would say When dem know him couldn' pay; Also what about de mill Whe' him hire from ole Bill; So him think, an' think on so, Till him t'oughts no more could go. Then he got up an' began Pickin' up him sugar-pan: In his ears rang t'rough de din "Only two-an'-six a tin'." What a tale he'd got to tell, How bad, bad de sugar sell! Tekin' out de lee amount, Him set do'n an' begin count All de time him min' deh doubt How expenses would pay out; Ah, it gnawed him like de ticks, Sugar sell fe two-an'-six! So he journeys on de way, Feelinl sad dis market day; No e'en buy a little cake To gi'e baby when she wake,-- Passin' 'long de candy-shop 'Douten eben mek a stop To buy drops fe las'y son, For de lilly cash nea' done. So him re'ch him own a groun', An' de children scamper roun', Each one stretchin' out him han', Lookin' to de poor sad man. Oh, how much he felt de blow, As he watched dem face fall low, When dem wait an' nuttin' came An' drew back deir han's wid shame! But de sick wife kissed his brow: "Sun, don't get down-hearted now; Ef we only pay expense We mus' wuk we common-sense, Cut an' carve, an' carve an' cut, Mek gill sarbe fe quattiewut; We mus' try mek two ends meet Neber mind how hard be it. We won't mind de haul an' pull, While dem pickny belly full." An' de shadow lef' him face, An' him felt an inward peace, As he blessed his better part For her sweet an' gentle heart: "Dear one o' my heart, my breat', Won't I lub you to de deat'? When my heart is weak an' sad, Who but you can mek it glad?" So dey kissed an' kissed again, An' deir t'oughts were not on pain, But was 'way down in de sout' Where dey'd wedded in deir yout', In de marnin' of deir life Free from all de grief an' strife, Happy in de marnin' light, Never thinkin' of de night. So dey k'lated eberyt'ing; An' de profit it could bring, A'ter all de business fix', Was a princely two-an'-six. Joseph S. Cotter, Jr. A PRAYER As I lie in bed, Flat on my back; There passes across my ceiling An endless panorama of things-- Quick steps of gay-voiced children, Adolescence in its wondering silences, Maid and man on moonlit summer's eve, Women in the holy glow of Motherhood, Old men gazing silently thru the twilight Into the beyond. O God, give me words to make my dream-children live. AND WHAT SHALL YOU SAY? Brother, come! And let us go unto our God. And when we stand before Him I shall say-- "Lord, I do not hate, I am hated. I scourge no one, I am scourged. I covet no lands, My lands are coveted. I mock no peoples, My people are mocked." And, brother, what shall you say? IS IT BECAUSE I AM BLACK? Why do men smile when I speak, And call my speech The whimperings of a babe That cries but knows not what it wants? Is it because I am black? Why do men sneer when I arise And stand in their councils, And look them eye to eye, And speak their tongue? Is it because I am black? THE BAND OF GIDEON The band of Gideon roam the sky, The howling wind is their war-cry, The thunder's roll is their trump's peal, And the lightning's flash their vengeful steel. Each black cloud Is a fiery steed. And they cry aloud With each strong deed, "The sword of the Lord and Gideon." And men below rear temples high And mock their God with reasons why, And live in arrogance, sin and shame, And rape their souls for the world's good name. Each black cloud Is a fiery steed. And they cry aloud With each strong deed, "The sword of the Lord and Gideon." The band of Gideon roam the sky And view the earth with baleful eye; In holy wrath they scourge the land With earth-quake, storm and burning brand. Each black cloud Is a fiery steed. And they cry aloud With each strong deed, "The sword of the Lord and Gideon." The lightnings flash and the thunders roll, And "Lord have mercy on my soul," Cry men as they fall on the stricken sod, In agony searching for their God. Each black cloud Is a fiery steed. And they cry aloud With each strong deed, "The sword of the Lord and Gideon." And men repent and then forget That heavenly wrath they ever met, The band of Gideon yet will come And strike their tongues of blasphemy dumb. Each black cloud Is a fiery steed. And they cry aloud With each strong deed, "The sword of the Lord and Gideon." RAIN MUSIC On the dusty earth-drum Beats the falling rain; Now a whispered murmur, Now a louder strain. Slender, silvery drumsticks, On an ancient drum, Beat the mellow music Bidding life to come. Chords of earth awakened, Notes of greening spring, Rise and fall triumphant Over every thing. Slender, silvery drumsticks Beat the long tattoo-- God, the Great Musician, Calling life anew. SUPPLICATION I am so tired and weary, So tired of the endless fight, So weary of waiting the dawn And finding endless night. That I ask but rest and quiet-- Rest for days that are gone, And quiet for the little space That I must journey on. Roscoe C. Jamison THE NEGRO SOLDIERS These truly are the Brave, These men who cast aside Old memories, to walk the blood-stained pave Of Sacrifice, joining the solemn tide That moves away, to suffer and to die For Freedom--when their own is yet denied! O Pride! O Prejudice! When they pass by, Hail them, the Brave, for you now crucified! These truly are the Free, These souls that grandly rise Above base dreams of vengeance for their wrongs, Who march to war with visions in their eyes Of Peace through Brotherhood, lifting glad songs, Aforetime, while they front the firing line. Stand and behold! They take the field to-day, Shedding their blood like Him now held divine, That those who mock might find a better way! Jessie Fauset LA VIE C'EST LA VIE On summer afternoons I sit Quiescent by you in the park, And idly watch the sunbeams gild And tint the ash-trees' bark. Or else I watch the squirrels frisk And chaffer in the grassy lane; And all the while I mark your voice Breaking with love and pain. I know a woman who would give Her chance of heaven to take my place; To see the love-light in your eyes, The love-glow on your face! And there's a man whose lightest word Can set my chilly blood afire; Fulfilment of his least behest Defines my life's desire. But he will none of me, Nor I Of you. Nor you of her. 'Tis said The world is full of jests like these.-- I wish that I were dead. CHRISTMAS EVE IN FRANCE Oh little Christ, why do you sigh As you look down to-night On breathless France, on bleeding France, And all her dreadful plight? What bows your childish head so low? What turns your cheek so white? Oh little Christ, why do you moan, What is it that you see In mourning France, in martyred France, And her great agony? Does she recall your own dark day, Your own Gethsemane? Oh little Christ, why do you weep, Why flow your tears so sore For pleading France, for praying France, A suppliant at God's door? "God sweetened not my cup," you say, "Shall He for France do more?" Oh little Christ, what can this mean, Why must this horror be For fainting France, for faithful France, And her sweet chivalry? "I bled to free all men," you say "France bleeds to keep men free." Oh little, lovely Christ--you smile! What guerdon is in store For gallant France, for glorious France, And all her valiant corps? "Behold I live, and France, like me, Shall live for evermore." DEAD FIRES If this is peace, this dead and leaden thing, Then better far the hateful fret, the sting. Better the wound forever seeking balm Than this gray calm! Is this pain's surcease? Better far the ache, The long-drawn dreary day, the night's white wake, Better the choking sigh, the sobbing breath Than passion's death! ORIFLAMME "I can remember when I was a little, young girl, how my old mammy would sit out of doors in the evenings and look up at the stars and groan, and I would say, 'Mammy, what makes you groan so?' And she would say, 'I am groaning to think of my poor children; they do not know where I be and I don't know where they be. I look up at the stars and they look up at the stars!'"--_Sojourner Truth_. I think I see her sitting bowed and black, Stricken and seared with slavery's mortal scars, Reft of her children, lonely, anguished, yet Still looking at the stars. Symbolic mother, we thy myriad sons, Pounding our stubborn hearts on Freedom's bars, Clutching our birthright, fight with faces set, Still visioning the stars! OBLIVION _From the French of Massillon Coicou (Haiti)_ I hope when I am dead that I shall lie In some deserted grave--I cannot tell you why, But I should like to sleep in some neglected spot Unknown to every one, by every one forgot. There lying I should taste with my dead breath The utter lack of life, the fullest sense of death; And I should never hear the note of jealousy or hate, The tribute paid by passersby to tombs of state. To me would never penetrate the prayers and tears That futilely bring torture to dead and dying ears; There I should lie annihilate and my dead heart would bless Oblivion--the shroud and envelope of happiness. Anne Spencer BEFORE THE FEAST OF SHUSHAN Garden of Shushan! After Eden, all terrace, pool, and flower recollect thee: Ye weavers in saffron and haze and Tyrian purple, Tell yet what range in color wakes the eye; Sorcerer, release the dreams born here when Drowsy, shifting palm-shade enspells the brain; And sound! ye with harp and flute ne'er essay Before these star-noted birds escaped from paradise awhile to Stir all dark, and dear, and passionate desire, till mine Arms go out to be mocked by the softly kissing body of the wind-- Slave, send Vashti to her King! The fiery wattles of the sun startle into flame The marbled towers of Shushan: So at each day's wane, two peers--the one in Heaven, the other on earth--welcome with their Splendor the peerless beauty of the Queen. Cushioned at the Queen's feet and upon her knee Finding glory for mine head,--still, nearly shamed Am I, the King, to bend and kiss with sharp Breath the olive-pink of sandaled toes between; Or lift me high to the magnet of a gaze, dusky, Like the pool when but the moon-ray strikes to its depth; Or closer press to crush a grape 'gainst lips redder Than the grape, a rose in the night of her hair; Then--Sharon's Rose in my arms. And I am hard to force the petals wide; And you are fast to suffer and be sad. Is any prophet come to teach a new thing Now in a more apt time? Have him 'maze how you say love is sacrament; How says Vashti, love is both bread and wine; How to the altar may not come to break and drink, Hulky flesh nor fleshly spirit! I, thy lord, like not manna for meat as a Judahn; I, thy master, drink, and red wine, plenty, and when I thirst. Eat meat, and full, when I hunger. I, thy King, teach you and leave you, when I list. No woman in all Persia sets out strange action To confuse Persia's lord-- Love is but desire and thy purpose fulfillment; I, thy King, so say! AT THE CARNIVAL Gay little Girl-of-the-Diving-Tank, I desire a name for you, Nice, as a right glove fits; For you--who amid the malodorous Mechanics of this unlovely thing, Are darling of spirit and form. I know you--a glance, and what you are Sits-by-the-fire in my heart. My Limousine-Lady knows you, or Why does the slant-envy of her eye mark Your straight air and radiant inclusive smile? Guilt pins a fig-leaf; Innocence is its own adorning. The bull-necked man knows you--this first time His itching flesh sees form divine and vibrant health And thinks not of his avocation. I came incuriously-- Set on no diversion save that my mind Might safely nurse its brood of misdeeds In the presence of a blind crowd. The color of life was gray. Everywhere the setting seemed right For my mood. Here the sausage and garlic booth Sent unholy incense skyward; There a quivering female-thing Gestured assignations, and lied To call it dancing; There, too, were games of chance With chances for none; But oh! Girl-of-the-Tank, at last! Gleaming Girl, how intimately pure and free The gaze you send the crowd, As though you know the dearth of beauty In its sordid life. We need you--my Limousine-Lady, The bull-necked man and I. Seeing you here brave and water-clean, Leaven for the heavy ones of earth, I am swift to feel that what makes The plodder glad is good; and Whatever is good is God. The wonder is that you are here; I have seen the queer in queer places, But never before a heaven-fed Naiad of the Carnival-Tank! Little Diver, Destiny for you, Like as for me, is shod in silence; Years may seep into your soul The bacilli of the usual and the expedient; I implore Neptune to claim his child to-day! THE WIFE-WOMAN Maker-of-Sevens in the scheme of things From earth to star; Thy cycle holds whatever is fate, and Over the border the bar. Though rank and fierce the mariner Sailing the seven seas, He prays, as he holds his glass to his eyes, Coaxing the Pleiades. I cannot love them; and I feel your glad Chiding from the grave, That my all was only worth at all, what Joy to you it gave. These seven links the _Law_ compelled For the human chain-- I cannot love _them_; and _you_, oh, Seven-fold months in Flanders slain! A jungle there, a cave here, bred six And a million years, Sure and strong, mate for mate, such Love as culture fears; I gave you clear the oil and wine; You saved me your hob and hearth-- See how _even_ life may be ere the Sickle comes and leaves a swath. But I can wait the seven of moons, Or years I spare, Hoarding the heart's plenty, nor spend A drop, nor share-- So long but outlives a smile and A silken gown; Then gaily I reach up from my shroud, And you, glory-clad, reach down. TRANSLATION We trekked into a far country, My friend and I. Our deeper content was never spoken, But each knew all the other said. He told me how calm his soul was laid By the lack of anvil and strife. "The wooing kestrel," I said, "mutes his mating-note To please the harmony of this sweet silence." And when at the day's end We laid tired bodies 'gainst The loose warm sands, And the air fleeced its particles for a coverlet; When star after star came out To guard their lovers in oblivion-- My soul so leapt that my evening prayer Stole my morning song! DUNBAR Ah, how poets sing and die! Make one song and Heaven takes it; Have one heart and Beauty breaks it; Chatterton, Shelley, Keats and I-- Ah, how poets sing and die! Alex Rogers WHY ADAM SINNED "I heeard da ole folks talkin' in our house da other night 'Bout Adam in da scripchuh long ago. Da lady folks all 'bused him, sed, he knowed it wus'n right An' 'cose da men folks dey all sed, "Dat's so." I felt sorry fuh Mistuh Adam, an' I felt like puttin' in, 'Cause I knows mo' dan dey do, all 'bout whut made Adam sin: Adam nevuh had no Mammy, fuh to take him on her knee An' teach him right fum wrong an' show him Things he ought to see. I knows down in my heart--he'd-a let dat apple be But Adam nevuh had no dear old Ma-am-my. He nevuh knowed no chilehood roun' da ole log cabin do', He nevuh knowed no pickaninny life. He started in a great big grown up man, an' whut is mo', He nevuh had da right kind uf a wife. Jes s'pose he'd had a Mammy when dat temptin' did begin An' she'd a come an' tole him "Son, don' eat dat--dat's a sin." But, Adam nevuh had no Mammy fuh to take him on her knee An' teach him right fum wrong an' show him Things he ought to see. I knows down in my heart he'd a let dat apple be, But Adam nevuh had no dear old Ma-am-my. THE RAIN SONG _Bro. Simmons_ "Walk right in Brother Wilson--how you feelin' today?" _Bro. Wilson_ "Jes Mod'rate, Brother Simmons, but den I ginnerly feels dat way." _Bro. Simmons_ "Here's White an' Black an' Brown an' Green; how's all you gent'men's been?", _Bro. White_ "My health is good but my bus'ness slack." _Bro. Black_ "I'se been suff'rin' lots wid pains in my back." _Bro. Brown_ "My ole 'ooman's sick, but I'se alright--" _Bro. Green_ "Yes, I went aftuh Doctuh fuh her 'tuther night--" _Bro. Simmons_ "Here's Sandy Turner, as I live!" _Bro. Turner_ "Yes, I didn' 'spect to git here--but here I is!" _Bro. Simmons_ "Now, gent'mens, make yo'selves to home, Dare's nothin' to fear--my ole 'ooman's gone-- My stars; da weather's pow'ful warm-- I wouldn' be s'prised ef we had a storm." _Bro. Brown_ "No, Brother Simmons, we kin safely say-- 'Tain't gwine to be no storm to-day Kase here am facts dat's mighty plain An' any time you sees 'em you kin look fuh rain: Any time you hears da cheers an' tables crack An' da folks wid rheumatics--dare jints is on da rack--" _All_ "Lookout fuh rain, rain, rain. "When da ducks quack loud an' da peacocks cry, An' da far off hills seems to be right nigh, Prepare fuh rain, rain, rain! "When da ole cat on da hearth wid her velvet paws 'Gins to wipin' over her whiskered jaws, Sho' sign o' rain, rain, rain! "When da frog's done changed his yaller vest, An' in his brown suit he is dressed, Mo' rain, an' still mo' rain! "When you notice da air it Stan's stock still, An' da blackbird's voice it gits so awful shrill, Dat am da time fuh rain. "When yo' dog quits bones an' begins to fas', An' when you see him eatin'; he's eatin' grass: Shoes', trues', cert'nes sign ob rain!" _Refrain_ "No, Brother Simmons, we kin safely say, 'Tain't gwine tuh be no rain to-day, Kase da sut ain't fallin' an' da dogs ain't sleep, An' you ain't seen no spiders fum dare cobwebs creep; Las' night da sun went bright to bed, An' da moon ain't nevah once been seen to hang her head; If you'se watched all dis, den you kin safely say, Dat dare ain't a-gwine to be no rain to-day." Waverley Turner Carmichael KEEP ME, JESUS, KEEP ME Keep me 'neath Thy mighty wing, Keep me, Jesus, keep me; Help me praise Thy Holy name, Keep me, Jesus, keep me. O my Lamb, come, my Lamb, O my good Lamb, Save me, Jesus, save me. Hear me as I cry to Thee; Keep me, Jesus, keep me; May I that bright glory see; Keep me, Jesus, keep me. O my Lamb, my good Lamb, O my good Lamb, Keep me, Jesus, keep me. WINTER IS COMING De winter days are drawin' nigh An' by the fire I sets an' sigh; De nothe'n win' is blowin' cold, Like it done in days of old. De yaller leafs are fallin' fas', Fur summer days is been an' pas'; The air is blowin' mighty cold, Like it done in days of old. De frost is fallin' on de gras' An' seem to say "Dis is yo' las'"-- De air is blowin' mighty cold Like it done in days of old. Alice Dunbar-Nelson SONNET I had no thought of violets of late, The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet In wistful April days, when lovers mate And wander through the fields in raptures sweet. The thought of violets meant florists' shops, And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine; And garish lights, and mincing little fops And cabarets and songs, and deadening wine. So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed, I had forgot wide fields, and clear brown streams; The perfect loveliness that God has made,-- Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams. And now--unwittingly, you've made me dream Of violets, and my soul's forgotten gleam. Charles Bertram Johnson A LITTLE CABIN Des a little cabin Big ernuff fur two. Des awaitin', honey, Cozy fixt fur you; Down dah by de road, Not ve'y far from town, Waitin' fur de missis, When she's ready to come down. Des a little cabin, An' er acre o' groun', Vines agrowin' on it, Fruit trees all aroun', Hollyhawks a-bloomin' In de gyahden plot-- Honey, would you like to Own dat little spot? Make dat little cabin Cheery, clean an' bright, With an' angel in it Like a ray of light? Make dat little palace Somethin' fine an' gran', Make it like an Eden, Fur a lonely man? Des you listen, Honey, While I 'splain it all, How some lady's go'nter Boss dat little hall; Des you take my ban' Dat's de way it's writ, Des you take my heart, Dat's de deed to it. NEGRO POETS Full many lift and sing Their sweet imagining; Not yet the Lyric Seer, The one bard of the throng, With highest gift of song, Breaks on our sentient ear. Not yet the gifted child, With notes enraptured, wild, That storm and throng the heart, To make his rage our own, Our hearts his lyric throne; Hard won by cosmic art. I hear the sad refrain, Of slavery's sorrow-strain; The broken half-lispt speech Of freedom's twilit hour; The greater growing reach Of larger latent power. Here and there a growing note Swells from a conscious throat; Thrilled with a message fraught The pregnant hour is near; We wait our Lyric Seer, By whom our wills are caught. Who makes our cause and wrong The motif of his song; Who sings our racial good, Bestows us honor's place, The cosmic brotherhood Of genius--not of race. Blind Homer, Greek or Jew, Of fame's immortal few Would still be deathless born; Frail Dunbar, black or white, In Fame's eternal light, Would shine a Star of Morn. An unhorizoned range, Our hour of doubt and change, Gives song a nightless day, Whose pen with pregnant mirth Will give our longings birth, And point our souls the way? Otto Leland Bohanan THE DAWN'S AWAKE! The Dawn's awake! A flash of smoldering flame and fire Ignites the East. Then, higher, higher, O'er all the sky so gray, forlorn, The torch of gold is borne. The Dawn's awake! The dawn of a thousand dreams and thrills. And music singing in the hills A paean of eternal spring Voices the new awakening. The Dawn's awake! Whispers of pent-up harmonies, With the mingled fragrance of the trees; Faint snatches of half-forgotten song-- Fathers! torn and numb,-- The boon of light we craved, awaited long, Has come, has come! THE WASHER-WOMAN A great swart cheek and the gleam of tears, The flutter of hopes and the shadow of fears, And all day long the rub and scrub With only a breath betwixt tub and tub. Fool! Thou hast toiled for fifty years And what hast thou now but thy dusty tears? In silence she rubbed... But her face I had seen, Where the light of her soul fell shining and clean. Theodore Henry Shackelford THE BIG BELL IN ZION Come, children, hear the joyful sound, Ding, Dong, Ding. Go spread the glad news all around, Ding, Dong, Ding. _Chorus_ Oh, the big bell's tollin' up in Zion, The big bell's tollin' up in Zion, The big bell's tollin' up in Zion, Ding, Dong, Ding. I've been abused and tossed about, Ding, Dong, Ding. But glory to the Lamb, I shout! Ding, Dong, Ding. My bruthah jus' sent word to me, Ding, Dong, Ding. That he'd done set his own self free. Ding, Dong, Ding. Ole massa said he could not go, Ding, Dong, Ding. But he's done reached Ohio sho'. Ding, Dong, Ding. Ise gwine to be real nice an' meek, Ding, Dong, Ding. Den I'll run away myself nex' week. Ding, Dong, Ding. _Chorus_ Oh, the big bell's tollin' up in Zion, The big bell's tollin' up in Zion, The big bell's tollin' up in Zion, Ding, Dong Ding. Lucian B. Watkins STAR OF ETHIOPIA Out in the Night thou art the sun Toward which thy soul-charmed children run, The faith-high height whereon they see The glory of their Day To Be-- The peace at last when all is done. The night is dark but, one by one, Thy signals, ever and anon, Smile beacon answers to their plea, Out in the Night. Ah, Life! thy storms these cannot shun; Give them a hope to rest upon, A dream to dream eternally, The strength of men who would be free And win the battle race begun, Out in the Night! TWO POINTS OF VIEW From this low-lying valley; Oh, how sweet And cool and calm and great is life, I ween, There on yon mountain-throne--that sun-gold crest! From this uplifted, mighty mountain-seat: How bright and still and warm and soft and green Seems yon low lily-vale of peace and rest! TO OUR FRIENDS We've kept the faith. Our souls' high dreams Untouched by bondage and its rod, Burn on! and on! and on! It seems We shall have FRIENDS--while God is God! Benjamin Brawley MY HERO (_To Robert Gould Shaw_) Flushed with the hope of high desire, He buckled on his sword, To dare the rampart ranged with fire, Or where the thunder roared; Into the smoke and flame he went, For God's great cause to die-- A youth of heaven's element, The flower of chivalry. This was the gallant faith, I trow, Of which the sages tell; On such devotion long ago The benediction fell; And never nobler martyr burned, Or braver hero died, Than he who worldly honor spurned To serve the Crucified. And Lancelot and Sir Bedivere May pass beyond the pale, And wander over moor and mere To find the Holy Grail; But ever yet the prize forsooth My hero holds in fee; And he is Blameless Knight in truth, And Galahad to me. CHAUCER Gone are the sensuous stars, and manifold, Clear sunbeams burst upon the front of night; Ten thousand swords of azure and of gold Give darkness to the dark and welcome light; Across the night of ages strike the gleams, And leading on the gilded host appears An old man writing in a book of dreams, And telling tales of lovers for the years; Still Troilus hears a voice that whispers, Stay; In Nature's garden what a mad rout sings! Let's hear these motley pilgrims wile away The tedious hours with stories of old things; Or might some shining eagle claim These lowly numbers for the House of Fame! Joshua Henry Jones, Jr. TO A SKULL Ghastly, ghoulish, grinning skull, Toothless, eyeless, hollow, dull, Why your smirk and empty smile As the hours away you wile? Has the earth become such bore That it pleases nevermore? Whence your joy through sun and rain? Is 't because of loss of pain? Have you learned what men learn not That earth's substance turns to rot? After learning now you scan Vain endeavors man by man? Do you mind that you as they Once was held by mystic sway; Dreamed and struggled, hoped and prayed, Lolled and with the minutes played? Sighed for honors; battles planned; Sipped of cups that wisdom banned But would please the weak frail flesh; Suffered, fell, 'rose, struggled fresh? Now that you are but a skull Glimpse you life as life is, full Of beauties that we miss Till time withers with his kiss? Do you laugh in cynic vein Since you cannot try again? And you know that we, like you, Will too late our failings rue? Tell me, ghoulish, grinning skull What deep broodings, o'er you mull? Tell me why you smirk and smile Ere I pass life's sunset stile. APPENDIX PLÁCIDO'S SONNET TO HIS MOTHER DESPIDA A MI MADRE _(En La Capilla)_ Si la suerte fatal que me ha cabido, Y el triste fin de mi sangrienta historia, Al salir de esta vida transitoria Deja tu corazon de muerte herido; Baste de Ilanto: el ánimo afligido Recobre su quietud; moro en la gloria, Y mi plácida lira á tu memoria Lanza en la tumba su postrer sonido. Sonido dulce, melodioso y santo, Glorioso, espiritual, puro y divino, Inocente, espontáneo como el llanto Que vertiera al nacer: ya el cuello inclino! Ya de la religion me cubre el manto! Adios, mi madre! adios--El Peligrino. FAREWELL TO MY MOTHER _(In the Chapel)_ The appointed lot has come upon me, mother, The mournful ending of my years of strife, This changing world I leave, and to another In blood and terror goes my spirit's life. But thou, grief-smitten, cease thy mortal weeping And let thy soul her wonted peace regain; I fall for right, and thoughts of thee are sweeping Across my lyre to wake its dying strains. A strain of joy and gladness, free, unfailing All glorious and holy, pure, divine, And innocent, unconscious as the wailing I uttered on my birth; and I resign Even now, my life, even now descending slowly, Faith's mantle folds me to my slumbers holy. Mother, farewell! God keep thee--and forever! _Translated by William Cullen Bryant._ PLÁCIDO'S FAREWELL TO HIS MOTHER (_Written in the Chapel of the Hospital de Santa Cristina on the Night Before His Execution_) If the unfortunate fate engulfing me, The ending of my history of grief, The closing of my span of years so brief, Mother, should wake a single pang in thee, Weep not. No saddening thought to me devote; I calmly go to a death that is glory-filled, My lyre before it is forever stilled Breathes out to thee its last and dying note. A note scarce more than a burden-easing sigh, Tender and sacred, innocent, sincere-- Spontaneous and instinctive as the cry I gave at birth--And now the hour is here-- O God, thy mantle of mercy o'er my sins! Mother, farewell! The pilgrimage begins. _Translated by James Weldon Johnson_. BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX OF AUTHORS BOHANAN, OTTO LELAND. Born in Washington, D.C. Educated in the public schools in Washington. He is a graduate of Howard University, School of Liberal Arts, Washington, D.C., and did special work in English at the Catholic University in that city. At present he is engaged in the musical profession in New York. BRAITHWAITE, WILLIAM STANLEY. Born in Boston, 1878. Mainly self-educated. A critic of poetry and the friend of poets. Author of _Lyrics-of Life, The House of Falling Leaves, The Poetic Year, The Story of the Great War,_ etc. Editor and compiler of _The Book of Elizabethan Verse, The Book of Georgian Verse, The Book of Restoration Verse_ and a series of yearly anthologies of magazine verse. One of the literary editors of the Boston _Transcript_. BRAWLEY, BENJAMIN. Born at Columbia, S.C., 1882. Educated at the Atlanta Baptist College, the University of Chicago and Harvard University. For two years he was professor of English at Howard University, Washington, D.C. Later he became dean of Morehouse College, Atlanta, Ga. Author of _A Short History of the American Negro, The Negro in Literature and Art, A Short History of the English Drama, A Social History of the American Negro_, etc. Now living in Boston and engaged in research and writing. CAMPBELL, JAMES EDWIN. Was born at Pomeroy, Ohio, in the early sixties. His early life was somewhat shrouded in mystery; he never referred to it even to his closest associates. He was educated in the public schools of his native city. Later he spent a while at Miami College. In the late eighties and early nineties he was engaged in newspaper work in Chicago. He wrote regularly on the various dailies of that city. He was also one of a group that issued the _Four O'Clock Magazine_, a literary publication which flourished for several years. He died, perhaps, twenty years ago. He was the author of _Echoes from The Cabin and Elsewhere_, a volume of poems. CARMICHAEL, WAVERLEY TURNER. A young man who had never been out of his native state of Alabama until several years ago when he entered one of the summer courses at Harvard University. His education to that time had been very limited and he had endured poverty and hard work. His verses came to the attention of one of the Harvard professors. He has since published a volume, _From the Heart of a Folk_. He served with the 367th Regiment, "The Buffaloes," during the World War and saw active service in France. At present he is employed as a postal clerk in Boston, Mass. CORROTHERS, JAMES D., 1869-1919. Born in Cass County, Michigan. Student in Northwestern University, minister and poet. Many of his poems appeared in _The Century Magazine_. COTTER, JOSEPH S., JR., 1895-1919. Born at Louisville, Kentucky, in the room in which Paul Laurence Dunbar first read his dialect poems in the South. He was precocious as a child, having read a number of books before he was six years old. All through his boyhood he had the advantage and inspiration of the full library of poetic books belonging to his father, himself a poet of considerable talent. Young Cotter attended Fisk University but left in his second year because he had developed tuberculosis. A volume of verse, _The Band of Gideon_, and a number of unpublished poems were written during the six years in which he was an invalid. DANDRIDGE, RAY G. Born at Cincinnati, Ohio, 1882. Educated in the grammar and high school of his native city. In 1912, as the result of illness, he lost the use of both legs and his right arm. He does most of his writing lying flat in bed and using his left hand. He is the author of _The Poet and Other Poems_. DAVIS, DANIEL WEBSTER. Born in Virginia, near Richmond. For a number of years he was a minister and principal of the largest public school in Richmond. He died in that city some years ago. He was the author of _'Weh Down Souf_, a volume of verse. He was very popular as an orator and a reader of his own poems. DETT, R. NATHANIEL. Born at Drummondville, Canada, 1882. Graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. He is a composer, most of his compositions being based on themes from the old "slave songs." His "Listen to de Lambs" is widely used by choral societies. He is director of music at Hampton Institute. He is also the author of _The Album of a Heart_, a volume of verse. DU BOIS, W. E. BURGHARDT. Born at Great Barrington, Mass., 1868. Educated at Fisk University, Harvard University and the University of Berlin. For a number of years professor of economics and history at Atlanta University. Author of the _Suppression of the Slave Trade, The Philadelphia Negro, The Souls of Black Folk, John Brown, Darkwater_, etc. He is the editor of _The Crisis_. DUNBAR, PAUL LAURENCE. Born at Dayton, Ohio, 1872; died 1906. Dunbar was educated in the public schools. He wrote his early poems while working as an elevator boy. His first volume of poems, _Oak and Ivy_, was published in 1893 and sold largely through his own efforts. This was followed by _Majors and Minors, Lyrics of Lowly Life, Lyrics of the Hearthside, Lyrics of Love and Laughter, Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow_ and _Howdy, Honey, Howdy_. _Lyrics of Lowly Life_, published in New York in 1896 with an introduction written by William Dean Howells, gained national recognition for Dunbar. In addition to poetical works, Dunbar was the author of four novels, _The Uncalled, The Love of Landry, The Sport of the Gods_, and _The Fanatics_. He also published several volumes of short stories. Partly because of his magnificent voice and refined manners, he was a very successful reader of his own poems and was able to add greatly to their popularity. FAUSET, JESSIE REDMON. Born at Snow Hill, New Jersey. She was educated in the public schools of Philadelphia, at Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania. For a while she was teacher of French in the Dunbar High School, Washington, D.C. Author of a number of uncollected poems and several short stories. She is literary editor of _The Crisis_. HILL, LESLIE PINCKNEY. Born at Lynchburg, Va., 1880. He was educated in the public schools at Lynchburg and at Harvard University. On graduation he became a teacher of English and methods at Tuskegee. Author of the _Wings of Oppression_, a volume of verse. He is principal of the Cheyney Training School for Teachers at Cheyney, Pa. HOLLOWAY, JOHN WESLEY. Born in Merriweather County, Ga, 1865. His father, who learned to read and write in slavery, became one of the first colored teachers in Georgia after the Civil War. Mr. Holloway was educated at Clark University, Atlanta, Ga., and at Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn. He was for a while a member of the Fisk Jubilee Singers. Has been a teacher and is now a preacher. He is the author of _From the Desert_, a volume of verse. JAMISON, ROSCOE C. Born at Winchester, Tenn., 1888; died 1918. He was a graduate of Fisk University. JOHNSON, CHARLES BERTRAM. Born at Callao, Mo., 1880. He was educated in the public schools of his home town and at Western College, Lincoln Institute and at Chicago University. He was a teacher for a number of years and is now a pastor of a church at Moberly, Mo. He is the author of _Songs of My People_. JOHNSON, FENTON. Born at Chicago, 1888. He was educated in the public schools and at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. The author of _A Little Dreaming, Songs of the Soil_ and _Visions of the Dusk_. He has devoted much time to journalism and the editing of a magazine. JOHNSON, GEORGIA DOUGLAS. Born in Atlanta, Ga., 1886. She was educated in the public schools of that city and at Atlanta University. She is the author of a volume of verse, _The Heart of a Woman_ and other poems. JOHNSON, JAMES WELDON. Born at Jacksonville, Fla., 1871. He was educated in the public schools of Jacksonville, at Atlanta University and at Columbia University. He taught school in his native town for several years. Later he came to New York with his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, and began writing for the musical comedy stage. He served seven years as U. S. Consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua. Author of _The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man, Fifty Years and Other Poems_, and the English libretto to _Goyescas_, the Spanish grand opera, produced at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1915. JONES, EDWARD SMYTH. Attracted national attention about ten years ago by walking some hunderds of miles from his home in the South to Harvard University. Arriving there, he was arrested on a charge of vagrancy. While in jail, he wrote a poem, "Harvard Square." The poem created a sentiment that led to his quick release. He is the author of _The Sylvan Cabin_. JONES, JOSHUA HENRY, JR. He is engaged in newspaper work in Boston and is the author of a volume of poems, _The Heart of the World_. MARGETSON, GEORGE REGINALD. Was born at St. Kitts, British West Indies, in 1877. He was educated at the Moravian school in his district. He came to the United States in 1897. Mr. Margetson has found it necessary to work hard to support a large family and his poems have been written in his spare moments. He is the author of two volumes of verses, _Songs of Life_ and _The Fledgling Bard and the Poetry Society_ and, in addition, a large number of uncollected poems. Mr. Margetson lives in Boston. McCLELLAN, GEORGE MARION. Born at Belfast, Tenn., 1860. Graduate of Fisk University and Hartford Theological Seminary, teacher, principal and author. He is the author of _The Path of Dreams_. McKAY, CLAUDE. Born in Jamaica, West Indies, 1889. Such education as he gained in boyhood he received from his brother. He served for a while as a member of the Kingston Constabulary. In 1912 he came to the United States. For two years he was a student of agriculture at the Kansas State College. Since leaving school Mr. McKay has turned his hand to any kind of work to earn a living. He has worked in hotels and on the Pullman cars. He is to-day associate editor of _The Liberator_. He is the author of two volumes of poems, _Songs of Jamaica_ and _Spring in New Hampshire_, the former published in Jamaica and the latter in London. MOORE; WILLIAM H. A. Was born in New York City and received his education in the public schools and at the City College. He also did some special work at Columbia University. He has had a long career as a newspaper man, working on both white and colored publications. He now lives in Chicago. He is the author of _Dusk Songs_, a volume of poems. NELSON, ALICE MOORE (DUNBAR). Born at New Orleans, La., 1875. She was educated in the schools of New Orleans and has taken special courses at Cornell University, Columbia University, and the University of Pennsylvania. Author of _Violets and Other Tales, The Goodness of St. Rocque, Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence_, and _The Dunbar Speaker_. She was married to Paul Laurence Dunbar in 1898. She has been a teacher and is well known on the lecture platform and as an editor. ROGERS, ALEX. Born at Nashville, Tenn., 1876. Educated in the public schools of that city. For many years a writer of words for popular songs. He wrote many of the songs for the musical comedies in which Williams and Walker appeared. He is the author of _The Jonah Man, Nobody_ and other songs made popular by Mr. Bert Williams. SHACKELFORD, THEODORE HENRY. Author of _Mammy's Cracklin' Bread and Other Poems_, and _My Country and Other Poems_. SPENCER, ANNE. Born in Bramwell, W. Va., 1882. Educated at the Virginia Seminary, Lynchburg, Va. She lives at Lynchburg and takes great pride and pleasure in her garden. WATKINS, LUCIAN B., was born in Virginia. He served overseas in the great war and lost his health. He died in 1921. He was the author of a large number of uncollected poems. INDEX OF TITLES After the Winter And What Shall You Say? At the Carnival At the Closed Gate of Justice Band of Gideon, The Banjo Player, The Barrier, The Before the Feast of Shushan Big Bell in Zion, The Black Mammies Brothers Butterfly in Church, A Calling the Doctor Chaucer Children of the Sun Christmas at Melrose Christmas Eve in France Compensation Corn Song, The Creation, The Cunjah Man, De Dawn's Awake! The Dead Fires Death Song, A Debt, The Del Cascar Dogwood Blossoms Dream and the Song Drum Majah, De Dunbar Dusk Song Feet of Judas, The Fifty Years Flame-Heart Harlem Dancer, The Harlem Shadows Haunted Oak, The Heart of a Woman, The Hills of Sewanee, The Hog Meat If We Must Die Indignation Dinner, An In the Matter of Two Men Ironic: LL.D. Is It Because I Am Black? 'Ittle Touzle Head It Was Not Fate I Want to Die While You Love Me Keep Me, Jesus, Keep Me La Vie C'est la Vie Litany of Atlanta, A Little Brown Baby Little Cabin, A Lost Illusions Lover's Lane Lynching, The Miss Melerlee Mother Night My Hero My Little Dreams Negro Love Song, A Negro Poets Negro Serenade Negro Singer, The Negro Soldiers, The New Day, The O Black and Unknown Bards Oblivion Ol' Doc' Hyar Oriflamme O Southland Paul Laurence Dunbar Prayer, A Rain Music Rain Song, The Rhapsody Road to the Bow, The Rubinstein Staccato Etude, The Sandy Star and Willie Gee Scarlet Woman, The Scintilla Sence You Went Away Ships That Pass in the Night Sic Vita Song of Thanks, A Sonnet Sprin' Fevah Spring in New Hampshire Stanzas from The Fledgling Bard and the Poetry Society Star of Ethiopia Summer Magic Supplication Teacher, The Time to Die Tired Tired Worker, The To a Skull To O. E. A To Our Friends To the White Fiends Translation Turn Me to My Yellow Leaves Tuskegee Two-an'-Six Two Points of View Uncle Eph's Banjo Song Washer-Woman, The 'Weh Down Souf Welt When de Co'n Pone's Hot When Ol' Sis Judy Pray White Witch, The Why Adam Sinned Wife-Woman, The Winter Is Coming Youth Zalka Peetruza 
12093	----	THE SONG OF THE STONE WALL BY HELEN KELLER 1910 Copyright, 1909, 1910. _Published October, 1910_. DEDICATION When I began �The Song of the Stone Wall,� Dr. Edward Everett Hale was still among us, and it was my intention to dedicate the poem to him if it should be deemed worthy of publication. I fancied that he would like it; for he loved the old walls and the traditions that cling about them. As I tried to image the men who had built the walls long ago, it seemed to me that Dr. Hale was the living embodiment of whatever was heroic in the founders of New England. He was a great American. He was also a great Puritan. Was not the zeal of his ancestors upon his lips, and their courage in his heart? Had they not bequeathed to him their torch-like faith, their patient fervor of toil and their creed of equality? But his bright spirit had inherited no trace of their harshness and gloom. The windows of his soul opened to the sunlight of a joyous faith. His optimism and genial humor inspired gladness and good sense in others. With an old story he prepared their minds to receive new ideas, and with a parable he opened their hearts to generous feelings. All men loved him because he loved them. They knew that his heart was in their happiness, and that his humanity embraced their sorrows. In him the weak found a friend, the unprotected, a champion. Though a herald and proclaimer of peace, he could fight stubbornly and passionately on the side of justice. His was a lovable, uplifting greatness which drew all men near and ever nearer to God and to each other. Like his ancestors, he dreamed of a land of freedom founded on the love of God and the brotherhood of man, a land where each man shall achieve his share of happiness and learn the work of manhood�to rule himself and �lend a hand.� Thoughts like these were often in my mind as the poem grew and took form. It is fitting, therefore, that I should dedicate it to him, and in so doing I give expression to the love and reverence which I have felt for him ever since he called me his little cousin, more than twenty years ago. HELEN KELLER Wrentham, Massachusetts, January, 1910. THE SONG OF THE STONE WALL Come walk with me, and I will tell What I have read in this scroll of stone; I will spell out this writing on hill and meadow. It is a chronicle wrought by praying workmen, The forefathers of our nation-- Leagues upon leagues of sealed history awaiting an interpreter. This is New England's tapestry of stone Alive with memories that throb and quiver At the core of the ages As the prophecies of old at the heart of God�s Word. The walls have many things to tell me, And the days are long. I come and listen: My hand is upon the stones, and the tale I fain would hear Is of the men who built the walls, And of the God who made the stones and the workers. With searching feet I walk beside the wall; I plunge and stumble over the fallen stones; I follow the windings of the wall Over the heaving hill, down by the meadow-brook, Beyond the scented fields, by the marsh where rushes grow. On I trudge through pine woods fragrant and cool And emerge amid clustered pools and by rolling acres of rye. The wall is builded of field-stones great and small, Tumbled about by frost and storm, Shaped and polished by ice and rain and sun; Some flattened, grooved, and chiseled By the inscrutable sculpture of the weather; Some with clefts and rough edges harsh to the touch. Gracious Time has glorified the wall And covered the historian stones with a mantle of green. Sunbeams flit and waver in the rifts, Vanish and reappear, linger and sleep, Conquer with radiance the obdurate angles, Filter between the naked rents and wind-bleached jags. I understand the triumph and the truth Wrought into these walls of rugged stone. They are a miracle of patient hands, They are a victory of suffering, a paean of pain; All pangs of death, all cries of birth, Are in the mute, moss-covered stones; They are eloquent to my hands. O beautiful, blind stones, inarticulate and dumb! In the deep gloom of their hearts there is a gleam Of the primeval sun which looked upon them When they were begotten. So in the heart of man shines forever A beam from the everlasting sun of God. Rude and unresponsive are the stones; Yet in them divine things lie concealed; I hear their imprisoned chant:-- "We are fragments of the universe, Chips of the rock whereon God laid the foundation of the world: Out of immemorial chaos He wrought us. Out of the sun, out of the tempest, out of the travail of the earth we grew. We are wonderfully mingled of life and death; We serve as crypts for innumerable, unnoticed, tiny forms. We are manifestations of the Might That rears the granite hills unto the clouds And sows the tropic seas with coral isles. We are shot through and through with hidden color; A thousand hues are blended in our gray substance. Sapphire, turquoise, ruby, opal, Emerald, diamond, amethyst, are our sisters from the beginning, And our brothers are iron, lead, zinc, Copper and silver and gold. We are the dust of continents past and to come, We are a deathless frieze carved with man's destiny; In us is the record sibylline of far events. We are as old as the world, our birth was before the hills. We are the cup that holds the sea And the framework of the peak that parts the sky. When Chaos shall again return, And endless Night shall spread her wings upon a rained world, We alone shall stand up from the shattered earth, Indestructible, invincible witnesses of God�s eternal purpose.� In reflective mood by the wall I wander; The hoary stones have set my heart astir; My thoughts take shape and move beside me in the guise Of the stern men who built the wall in early olden days. One by one the melancholy phantoms go stepping from me, And I follow them in and out among the stones. I think of the days long gone, Flown like birds beyond the ramparts of the world. The patient, sturdy men who piled the stones Have vanished, like the days, beyond the bounds Of earth and mortal things. From their humble, steadfast lives has sprung the greatness of my nation. I am bone of their bone, breath of their breath, Their courage is in my soul. The wall is an Iliad of granite: it chants to me Of pilgrims of the perilous deep, Of fearless journeyings and old forgotten things. The blood of grim ancestors warms the fingers That trace the letters of their story; My pulses beat in unison with pulses that are stilled; The fire of their zeal inspires me In my struggle with darkness and pain. These embossed books, unobliterated by the tears and laughter of Time, Are signed with the vital hands of undaunted men. I love these monoliths, so crudely imprinted With their stalwart, cleanly, frugal lives. From my seat among the stones I stretch my hand and touch My friend the elm, urnlike, lithesome, tall. Far above the reach of my exploring fingers Birds are singing and winging joyously Through leafy billows of green. The elm-tree�s song is wondrous sweet; The words are the ancientest language of trees-- They tell of how earth and air and light Are wrought anew to beauty and to fruitfulness. I feel the glad stirrings under her rough bark; Her living sap mounts up to bring forth leaves; Her great limbs thrill beneath the wand of spring. This wall was builded in our fathers� days-- Valorous days when life was lusty and the land was new. Resemble the walls the builders, buffeted, stern, and worn. To us they left the law, Order, simplicity, obedience, And the wall is the bond they gave the nation At its birth of courage and unflinching faith. Before the epic here inscribed began, They wrote their course upon a trackless sea. O, tiny craft, bearing a nation�s seed! Frail shallop, quick with unborn states! Autumn was mellow in the fatherland when they set sail, And winter deepened as they neared the West. Out of the desert sea they came at last, And their hearts warmed to see that frozen land. O, first gray dawn that filtered through the dark! Bleak, glorious birth-hour of our northern states! They stood upon the shore like new created men; On barren solitudes of sand they stood, The conquered sea behind, the unconquered wilderness before. Some died that year beneath the cruel cold, And some for heartsick longing and the pang Of homes remembered and souls torn asunder. That spring the new-plowed field for bread of life Bordered the new-dug acre marked for death; Beside the springing corn they laid in the sweet, dark earth The young man, strong and free, the maiden fair and trustful, The little child, and the uncomplaining mother. Across the meadow, by the ancient pines, Where I, the child of life that lived that spring, Drink in the fragrances of the young year, The field-wall meets one grimly squared and straight. Beyond it rise the old tombs, gray and restful, And the upright slates record the generations. Stiffly aslant before the northern blasts, Like the steadfast, angular beliefs Of those whom they commemorate, the headstones stand, Cemented deep with moss and invisible roots. The rude inscriptions charged with faith and love, Graceless as Death himself, yet sweet as Death, Are half erased by the impartial storms. As children lisping words which move to laughter Are themselves poems of unconscious melody, So the old gravestones with their crabbed muse Are beautiful for their halting words of faith, Their groping love that had no gift of song. But all the broken tragedy of life And all the yearning mystery of death Are celebrated in sweet epitaphs of vines and violets. Close by the wall a peristyle of pines Sings requiem to all the dead that sleep. Beyond the village churchyard, still and calm, Steeped in the sweetness of eternal morn, The wall runs down in crumbling cadence Beside the brook which plays Through the land like a silver harp. A wind of ancient romance blows across the field, A sweet disturbance thrills the air; The silken skirts of Spring go rustling by, And the earth is astir with joy. Up the hill, romping and shaking their golden heads, Come the little children of the wood. From ecstasy to ecstasy the year mounts upward. Up from the south come the odor-laden winds, Angels and ministers of life, Dropping seeds of fruitfulness Into the bosoms of flowers. Elusive, alluring secrets hide in wood and hedge Like the first thoughts of love In the breast of a maiden; The witchery of love is in rock and tree. Across the pasture, star-sown with daisies, I see a young girl--the spirit of spring she seems, Sister of the winds that run through the rippling daisies. Sweet and clear her voice calls father and brother, And one whose name her shy lips will not utter. But a chorus of leaves and grasses speaks her heart And tells his name: the birches flutter by the wall; The wild cherry-tree shakes its plumy head And whispers his name; the maple Opens its rosy lips and murmurs his name; The marsh-marigold sends the rumor Down the winding stream, and the blue flag Spread the gossip to the lilies in the lake: All Nature�s eyes and tongues conspire In the unfolding of the tale That Adam and Eve beneath the blossoming rose-tree Told each other in the Garden of Eden. Once more the wind blows from the walls, And I behold a fair young mother; She stands at the lilac-shaded door With her baby at her breast; She looks across the twilit fields and smiles And whispers to her child: �Thy father comes!� Life triumphed over many-weaponed Death. Sorrow and toil and the wilderness thwarted their stout invasion; But with the ship that sailed again went no retreating soul! Stubborn, unvanquished, clinging to the skirts of Hope, They kept their narrow foothold on the land, And the ship sailed home for more. With yearlong striving they fought their way into the forest; Their axes echoed where I sit, a score of miles from the sea. Slowly, slowly the wilderness yielded To smiling grass-plots and clearings of yellow corn; And while the logs of their cabins were still moist With odorous sap, they set upon the hill The shrine of liberty for man�s mind, And by it the shrine of liberty for man�s soul, The school-house and the church. The apple-tree by the wall sheds its blossom about me-- A shower of petals of light upon darkness. From Nature�s brimming cup I drink a thousand scents; At noon the wizard sun stirs the hot soil under the pines. I take the top stone of the wall in my hands And the sun in my heart; I feel the rippling land extend to right and left, Bearing up a receptive surface to my uncertain feet; I clamber up the hill and beyond the grassy sweep; I encounter a chaos of tumbled rocks. Piles of shadow they seem, huddling close to the land. Here they are scattered like sheep, Or like great birds at rest, There a huge block juts from the giant wave of the hill. At the foot of the aged pines the maiden�s moccasins Track the sod like the noiseless sandals of Spring. Out of chinks in the wall delicate grasses wave, As beauty grew out of the crannies of these hard souls. Joyously, gratefully, after their long wrestling With the bitter cold and the harsh white winter, They heard the step of Spring on the edge of melting snow-drifts; Gladly, with courage that flashed from their life-beaten souls, As the fire-sparks fly from the hammered stone, They hailed the fragrant arbutus; Its sweetness trailed beside the path that they cut through the forest, And they gave it the name of their ship Mayflower. Beauty was at their feet, and their eyes beheld it; The earth cried out for labor, and they gave it. But ever as they saw the budding spring, Ever as they cleared the stubborn field, Ever as they piled the heavy stones, In mystic vision they saw, the eternal spring; They raised their hardened hands above the earth, And beheld the walls that are not built of stone, The portals opened by angels whose garments are of light; And beyond the radiant walls of living stones They dreamed vast meadows and hills of fadeless green. In the old house across the road With weather-beaten front, like the furrowed face of an old man, The lights are out forever, the windows are broken, And the oaken posts are warped; The storms beat into the rooms as the passion of the world Racked and buffeted those who once dwelt in them. The psalm and the morning prayer are silent. But the walls remain visible witnesses of faith That knew no wavering or shadow of turning. They have withstood sun and northern blast, They have outlasted the unceasing strife Of forces leagued to tear them down. Under the stars and the clouds, under the summer sun, Beaten by rain and wind, covered with tender vines, The walls stand symbols of a granite race, The measure and translation of olden times. In the rough epic of their life, their toil, their creeds, Their psalms, their prayers, what stirring tales Of days that were their past had they to tell Their children to keep the new faith burning? Tales of grandsires in the fatherland Whose faith was seven times tried in fiery furnaces,-- Of Rowland Taylor who kissed the stake, And stood with hands folded and eyes steadfastly turned To the sky, and smiled upon the flames; Of Latimer, and of Cranmer who for cowardice heroically atoned-- Who thrust his right hand into the fire Because it had broken plight with his heart And written against the voice of his conviction. With such memories they exalted and cherished The heroism of their tried souls, And ours are wrung with doubt and self-distrust! I am kneeling on the odorous earth; The sweet, shy feet of Spring come tripping o�er the land, Winter is fled to the hills, leaving snowy wreaths On apple-tree, meadow, and marsh. The walls are astir; little waves of blue Run through my fingers murmuring: �We follow the winds and the snow!� Their heart is a cup of gold. Soft whispers of showers and flowers Are mingled in the spring song of the walls. Hark to the songs that go singing like the wind Through the chinks of the wall and thrill the heart And quicken it with passionate response! The walls sing the song of wild bird, the hoof-beat of deer, The murmur of pine and cedar, the ripple of many streams; Crows are calling from the Druidical wood; The morning mist still haunts the meadows Like the ghosts of the wall builders. As I listen, methinks I hear the bitter plaint Of the passing of a haughty race, The wronged, friendly, childlike, peaceable tribes, The swarthy archers of the wilderness, The red men to whom Nature opened all her secrets, Who knew the haunts of bird and fish, The hidden virtue of herb and root; All the travail of man and beast they knew-- Birth and death, heat and cold, Hunger and thirst, love and hate; For these are the unchanging things writ in the imperishable book of life That man suckled at the breast of woman must know. In the dim sanctuary of the pines The winds murmur their mysteries through dusky aisles-- Secrets of earth�s renewal and the endless cycle of life. Living things are afoot among the grasses; The closed fingers of the ferns unfold, New bees explore new flowers, and the brook Pours virgin waters from the rushing founts of May. In the old walls there are sinister voices-- The groans of women charged with witchcraft. I see a lone, gray, haggard woman standing at bay, Helpless against her grim, sin-darkened judges. Terror blanches her lips and makes her confess Bonds with demons that her heart knows not. Satan sits by the judgment-seat and laughs. The gray walls, broken, weatherworn oracles, Sing that she was once a girl of love and laughter, Then a fair mother with lullabies on her lips, Caresses in her eyes, who spent her days In weaving warmth to keep her brood against the winter cold. And in her tongue was the law of kindness; For her God was the Lord Jehovah. Enemies uprose and swore her accused, Laid at her door the writhing forms of little children, And she could but answer: �The Evil One Torments them in my shape.� She stood amazed before the tribunal of her church And heard the gate of God�s house closed against her. Oh, shuddering silence of the throng, And fearful the words spoken from the judgment-seat! She raised her white head and clasped her wrinkled hands: �Pity me, Lord, pity my anguish! Nor, since Thou art a just and terrible God, Forget to visit thy wrath upon these people; For they have sworn away the life of Thy servant Who hath lived long in the land keeping Thy commandments. I am old, Lord, and betrayed; By neighbor and kin am I betrayed; A Judas kiss hath marked me for a witch. Possessed of a devil? Here be a legion of devils! Smite them, O God, yea, utterly destroy them that persecute the innocent.� Before this mother in Israel the judges cowered; But still they suffered her to die. Through the tragic, guilty walls I hear the sighs Of desolate women and penitent, remorseful men. Sing of happier themes, O many-voiced epic, Sing how the ages, like thrifty husbandmen, winnow the creeds of men, And leave only faith and love and truth. Sing of the Puritan�s nobler nature, Fathomless as the forests he felled, Irresistible as the winds that blow. His trenchant conviction was but the somber bulwark Which guarded his pure ideal. Resolute by the communion board he stood, And after solemn prayer solemnly cancelled And abolished the divine right of kings And declared the holy rights of man. Prophet and toiler, yearning for other worlds, yet wise in this; Scornful of earthly empire and brooding on death, Yet wrestling life out of the wilderness And laying stone on stone the foundation of a temporal state! I see him standing at his cabin-door at eventide With dreaming, fearless eyes gazing at sunset hills; In his prophetic sight Liberty, like a bride, Hasteth to meet her lord, the westward-going man! Even as he saw the citadel of Heaven, He beheld an earthly state divinely fair and just. Mystic and statesman, maker of homes, Strengthened by the primal law of toil, And schooled by monarch-made injustices, He carried the covenant of liberty with fire and sword, And laid a rich state on frugality! Many republics have sprung into being, Full-grown, equipped with theories forged in reason; All, all have fallen in a single night; But to the wise, fire-hardened Puritan Democracy was not a blaze of glory To crackle for an hour and be quenched out By the first gust that blows across the world. I see him standing at his cabin-door, And all his dreams are true as when he dreamed them; But only shall they be fulfilled if we Are mindful of the toil that gave him power, Are brave to dare a wilderness of wrong; So long shall Nature nourish us and Spring Throw riches in the lap of man As we beget no wasteful, weak-handed generations, But bend us to the fruitful earth in toil. Beyond the wall a new-plowed field lies steaming in the sun, And down the road a merry group of children Run toward the village school. Hear, O hear! In the historian walls Rises the beat and the tumult of the struggle for freedom. Sacred, blood-stained walls, your peaceful front Sheltered the fateful fires of Lexington; Builded to fence green fields and keep the herds at pasture, Ye became the frowning breastworks of stern battle; Lowly boundaries of the freeman�s farm, Ye grew the rampart of a land at war; And still ye cross the centuries Between the ages of monarchs and the age When farmers in their fields are kings. From the Revolution the young Republic emerged, She mounted up as on the wings of the eagle, She ran and was not weary, and all the children of the world Joined her and followed her shining path. But ever as she ran, above her lifted head Darkened the monster cloud of slavery. Hark! In the walls, amid voices of prayer and of triumph, I hear the clank of manacles and the ominous mutterings of bondsmen! At Gettysburg, our Golgotha, the sons of the fathers Poured their blood to wash out a nation�s shame. Cleansed by tribulation and atonement, The broken nation rose from her knees, And with hope reborn in her heart set forth again Upon the open road to ideal democracy. Sing, walls, in lightning words that shall cause the world to vibrate, Of the democracy to come, Of the swift, teeming, confident thing! We are part of it--the wonder and the terror and the glory! Fearless we rush forward to meet the years, The years that come flying towards us With wings outspread, agleam on the horizon of time! O eloquent, sane walls, instinct with a new faith, Ye are barbarous, in congruous, but great with the greatness of reality. Walls wrought in unfaltering effort, Sing of our prosperity, the joyous harvest Of the labor of lusty toilers. Down through the years comes the ring of their victorious axes: �Ye are titans of the forest, but we are stronger; Ye are strong with the strength of mighty winds, But we are strong with the unconquerable strength of souls!� Still the young race, unassailable, inviolate, Shakes the solitudes with the strokes of creation; Doubly strong we renew the valorous days, And like a measureless sea we overflow The fresh green, benevolent West, The buoyant, fruitful West that dares and sings! Pure, dew-dripping walls that guard The quiet, lovable, fertile fields, Sing praises to Him who from the mossy rocks Can bid the fountains leap in thirsty lands. I walk beside the stones through the young grain, Through waves of wheat that billow about my knees. The walls contest the onward march of the wheat; But the wheat is charged with the life of the world; Its force is irresistible; onward it sweeps, An engulfing tide, over all the land, Till hill and valley, field and plain Are flooded with its green felicity! Out of the moist earth it has sprung; In the gracious amplitudes of her bosom it was nurtured, And in it is wrought the miracle of life. Sing, prophetic, mystic walls, of the dreams of the builders; Sing in thundering tones that shall thrill us To try our dull discontent, our barren wisdom Against their propagating, unquenchable, questionless visions. Sing in renerving refrain of the resolute men, Each a Lincoln in his smoldering patience, Each a Luther in his fearless faith, Who made a breach in the wall of darkness And let the hosts of liberty march through. Calm, eternal walls, tranquil, mature, Which old voices, old songs, old kisses cover, As mosses and lichens cover your ancient stones, Teach me the secret of your serene repose; Tell of the greater things to be, When love and wisdom are the only creed, And law and right are one. Sing that the Lord cometh, the Lord cometh, The fountain-head and spring of life! Sing, steady, exultant walls, in strains hallowed and touched with fire, Sing that the Lord shall build us all together. As living stones build us, cemented together. May He who knoweth every pleasant thing That our sires forewent to teach the peoples law and truth, Who counted every stone blessed by their consecrated hands, Grant that we remain liberty-loving, substantial, elemental, And that faith, the rock not fashioned of human hands, Be the stability of our triumphant, toiling days. 
12241	----	POEMS by EMILY DICKINSON Third Series Edited by MABEL LOOMIS TODD It's all I have to bring to-day, This, and my heart beside, This, and my heart, and all the fields, And all the meadows wide. Be sure you count, should I forget, -- Some one the sum could tell, -- This, and my heart, and all the bees Which in the clover dwell. PREFACE. The intellectual activity of Emily Dickinson was so great that a large and characteristic choice is still possible among her literary material, and this third volume of her verses is put forth in response to the repeated wish of the admirers of her peculiar genius. Much of Emily Dickinson's prose was rhythmic, --even rhymed, though frequently not set apart in lines. Also many verses, written as such, were sent to friends in letters; these were published in 1894, in the volumes of her _Letters_. It has not been necessary, however, to include them in this Series, and all have been omitted, except three or four exceptionally strong ones, as "A Book," and "With Flowers." There is internal evidence that many of the poems were simply spontaneous flashes of insight, apparently unrelated to outward circumstance. Others, however, had an obvious personal origin; for example, the verses "I had a Guinea golden," which seem to have been sent to some friend travelling in Europe, as a dainty reminder of letter-writing delinquencies. The surroundings in which any of Emily Dickinson's verses are known to have been written usually serve to explain them clearly; but in general the present volume is full of thoughts needing no interpretation to those who apprehend this scintillating spirit. M. L. T. AMHERST, _October_, 1896. I. LIFE. POEMS. I. REAL RICHES. 'T is little I could care for pearls Who own the ample sea; Or brooches, when the Emperor With rubies pelteth me; Or gold, who am the Prince of Mines; Or diamonds, when I see A diadem to fit a dome Continual crowning me. II. SUPERIORITY TO FATE. Superiority to fate Is difficult to learn. 'T is not conferred by any, But possible to earn A pittance at a time, Until, to her surprise, The soul with strict economy Subsists till Paradise. III. HOPE. Hope is a subtle glutton; He feeds upon the fair; And yet, inspected closely, What abstinence is there! His is the halcyon table That never seats but one, And whatsoever is consumed The same amounts remain. IV. FORBIDDEN FRUIT. I. Forbidden fruit a flavor has That lawful orchards mocks; How luscious lies the pea within The pod that Duty locks! V. FORBIDDEN FRUIT. II. Heaven is what I cannot reach! The apple on the tree, Provided it do hopeless hang, That 'heaven' is, to me. The color on the cruising cloud, The interdicted ground Behind the hill, the house behind, -- There Paradise is found! VI. A WORD. A word is dead When it is said, Some say. I say it just Begins to live That day. VII. To venerate the simple days Which lead the seasons by, Needs but to remember That from you or me They may take the trifle Termed mortality! To invest existence with a stately air, Needs but to remember That the acorn there Is the egg of forests For the upper air! VIII. LIFE'S TRADES. It's such a little thing to weep, So short a thing to sigh; And yet by trades the size of these We men and women die! IX. Drowning is not so pitiful As the attempt to rise. Three times, 't is said, a sinking man Comes up to face the skies, And then declines forever To that abhorred abode Where hope and he part company, -- For he is grasped of God. The Maker's cordial visage, However good to see, Is shunned, we must admit it, Like an adversity. X. How still the bells in steeples stand, Till, swollen with the sky, They leap upon their silver feet In frantic melody! XI. If the foolish call them 'flowers,' Need the wiser tell? If the savans 'classify' them, It is just as well! Those who read the Revelations Must not criticise Those who read the same edition With beclouded eyes! Could we stand with that old Moses Canaan denied, -- Scan, like him, the stately landscape On the other side, -- Doubtless we should deem superfluous Many sciences Not pursued by learnèd angels In scholastic skies! Low amid that glad _Belles lettres_ Grant that we may stand, Stars, amid profound Galaxies, At that grand 'Right hand'! XII. A SYLLABLE. Could mortal lip divine The undeveloped freight Of a delivered syllable, 'T would crumble with the weight. XIII. PARTING. My life closed twice before its close; It yet remains to see If Immortality unveil A third event to me, So huge, so hopeless to conceive, As these that twice befell. Parting is all we know of heaven, And all we need of hell. XIV. ASPIRATION. We never know how high we are Till we are called to rise; And then, if we are true to plan, Our statures touch the skies. The heroism we recite Would be a daily thing, Did not ourselves the cubits warp For fear to be a king. XV. THE INEVITABLE. While I was fearing it, it came, But came with less of fear, Because that fearing it so long Had almost made it dear. There is a fitting a dismay, A fitting a despair. 'Tis harder knowing it is due, Than knowing it is here. The trying on the utmost, The morning it is new, Is terribler than wearing it A whole existence through. XVI. A BOOK. There is no frigate like a book To take us lands away, Nor any coursers like a page Of prancing poetry. This traverse may the poorest take Without oppress of toll; How frugal is the chariot That bears a human soul! XVII. Who has not found the heaven below Will fail of it above. God's residence is next to mine, His furniture is love. XVIII. A PORTRAIT. A face devoid of love or grace, A hateful, hard, successful face, A face with which a stone Would feel as thoroughly at ease As were they old acquaintances, -- First time together thrown. XIX. I HAD A GUINEA GOLDEN. I had a guinea golden; I lost it in the sand, And though the sum was simple, And pounds were in the land, Still had it such a value Unto my frugal eye, That when I could not find it I sat me down to sigh. I had a crimson robin Who sang full many a day, But when the woods were painted He, too, did fly away. Time brought me other robins, -- Their ballads were the same, -- Still for my missing troubadour I kept the 'house at hame.' I had a star in heaven; One Pleiad was its name, And when I was not heeding It wandered from the same. And though the skies are crowded, And all the night ashine, I do not care about it, Since none of them are mine. My story has a moral: I have a missing friend, -- Pleiad its name, and robin, And guinea in the sand, -- And when this mournful ditty, Accompanied with tear, Shall meet the eye of traitor In country far from here, Grant that repentance solemn May seize upon his mind, And he no consolation Beneath the sun may find. NOTE. -- This poem may have had, like many others, a personal origin. It is more than probable that it was sent to some friend travelling in Europe, a dainty reminder of letter-writing delinquencies. XX. SATURDAY AFTERNOON. From all the jails the boys and girls Ecstatically leap, -- Beloved, only afternoon That prison doesn't keep. They storm the earth and stun the air, A mob of solid bliss. Alas! that frowns could lie in wait For such a foe as this! XXI. Few get enough, -- enough is one; To that ethereal throng Have not each one of us the right To stealthily belong? XXII. Upon the gallows hung a wretch, Too sullied for the hell To which the law entitled him. As nature's curtain fell The one who bore him tottered in, For this was woman's son. ''T was all I had,' she stricken gasped; Oh, what a livid boon! XXIII. THE LOST THOUGHT. I felt a clearing in my mind As if my brain had split; I tried to match it, seam by seam, But could not make them fit. The thought behind I strove to join Unto the thought before, But sequence ravelled out of reach Like balls upon a floor. XXIV. RETICENCE. The reticent volcano keeps His never slumbering plan; Confided are his projects pink To no precarious man. If nature will not tell the tale Jehovah told to her, Can human nature not survive Without a listener? Admonished by her buckled lips Let every babbler be. The only secret people keep Is Immortality. XXV. WITH FLOWERS. If recollecting were forgetting, Then I remember not; And if forgetting, recollecting, How near I had forgot! And if to miss were merry, And if to mourn were gay, How very blithe the fingers That gathered these to-day! XXVI. The farthest thunder that I heard Was nearer than the sky, And rumbles still, though torrid noons Have lain their missiles by. The lightning that preceded it Struck no one but myself, But I would not exchange the bolt For all the rest of life. Indebtedness to oxygen The chemist may repay, But not the obligation To electricity. It founds the homes and decks the days, And every clamor bright Is but the gleam concomitant Of that waylaying light. The thought is quiet as a flake, -- A crash without a sound; How life's reverberation Its explanation found! XXVII. On the bleakness of my lot Bloom I strove to raise. Late, my acre of a rock Yielded grape and maize. Soil of flint if steadfast tilled Will reward the hand; Seed of palm by Lybian sun Fructified in sand. XXVIII. CONTRAST. A door just opened on a street -- I, lost, was passing by -- An instant's width of warmth disclosed, And wealth, and company. The door as sudden shut, and I, I, lost, was passing by, -- Lost doubly, but by contrast most, Enlightening misery. XXIX. FRIENDS. Are friends delight or pain? Could bounty but remain Riches were good. But if they only stay Bolder to fly away, Riches are sad. XXX. FIRE. Ashes denote that fire was; Respect the grayest pile For the departed creature's sake That hovered there awhile. Fire exists the first in light, And then consolidates, -- Only the chemist can disclose Into what carbonates. XXXI. A MAN. Fate slew him, but he did not drop; She felled -- he did not fall -- Impaled him on her fiercest stakes -- He neutralized them all. She stung him, sapped his firm advance, But, when her worst was done, And he, unmoved, regarded her, Acknowledged him a man. XXXII. VENTURES. Finite to fail, but infinite to venture. For the one ship that struts the shore Many's the gallant, overwhelmed creature Nodding in navies nevermore. XXXIII. GRIEFS. I measure every grief I meet With analytic eyes; I wonder if it weighs like mine, Or has an easier size. I wonder if they bore it long, Or did it just begin? I could not tell the date of mine, It feels so old a pain. I wonder if it hurts to live, And if they have to try, And whether, could they choose between, They would not rather die. I wonder if when years have piled -- Some thousands -- on the cause Of early hurt, if such a lapse Could give them any pause; Or would they go on aching still Through centuries above, Enlightened to a larger pain By contrast with the love. The grieved are many, I am told; The reason deeper lies, -- Death is but one and comes but once, And only nails the eyes. There's grief of want, and grief of cold, -- A sort they call 'despair;' There's banishment from native eyes, In sight of native air. And though I may not guess the kind Correctly, yet to me A piercing comfort it affords In passing Calvary, To note the fashions of the cross, Of those that stand alone, Still fascinated to presume That some are like my own. XXXIV. I have a king who does not speak; So, wondering, thro' the hours meek I trudge the day away,-- Half glad when it is night and sleep, If, haply, thro' a dream to peep In parlors shut by day. And if I do, when morning comes, It is as if a hundred drums Did round my pillow roll, And shouts fill all my childish sky, And bells keep saying 'victory' From steeples in my soul! And if I don't, the little Bird Within the Orchard is not heard, And I omit to pray, 'Father, thy will be done' to-day, For my will goes the other way, And it were perjury! XXXV. DISENCHANTMENT. It dropped so low in my regard I heard it hit the ground, And go to pieces on the stones At bottom of my mind; Yet blamed the fate that fractured, less Than I reviled myself For entertaining plated wares Upon my silver shelf. XXXVI. LOST FAITH. To lose one's faith surpasses The loss of an estate, Because estates can be Replenished, -- faith cannot. Inherited with life, Belief but once can be; Annihilate a single clause, And Being's beggary. XXXVII. LOST JOY. I had a daily bliss I half indifferent viewed, Till sudden I perceived it stir, -- It grew as I pursued, Till when, around a crag, It wasted from my sight, Enlarged beyond my utmost scope, I learned its sweetness right. XXXVIII. I worked for chaff, and earning wheat Was haughty and betrayed. What right had fields to arbitrate In matters ratified? I tasted wheat, -- and hated chaff, And thanked the ample friend; Wisdom is more becoming viewed At distance than at hand. XXXIX. Life, and Death, and Giants Such as these, are still. Minor apparatus, hopper of the mill, Beetle at the candle, Or a fife's small fame, Maintain by accident That they proclaim. XL. ALPINE GLOW. Our lives are Swiss, -- So still, so cool, Till, some odd afternoon, The Alps neglect their curtains, And we look farther on. Italy stands the other side, While, like a guard between, The solemn Alps, The siren Alps, Forever intervene! XLI. REMEMBRANCE. Remembrance has a rear and front, -- 'T is something like a house; It has a garret also For refuse and the mouse, Besides, the deepest cellar That ever mason hewed; Look to it, by its fathoms Ourselves be not pursued. XLII. To hang our head ostensibly, And subsequent to find That such was not the posture Of our immortal mind, Affords the sly presumption That, in so dense a fuzz, You, too, take cobweb attitudes Upon a plane of gauze! XLIII. THE BRAIN. The brain is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side, The one the other will include With ease, and you beside. The brain is deeper than the sea, For, hold them, blue to blue, The one the other will absorb, As sponges, buckets do. The brain is just the weight of God, For, lift them, pound for pound, And they will differ, if they do, As syllable from sound. XLIV. The bone that has no marrow; What ultimate for that? It is not fit for table, For beggar, or for cat. A bone has obligations, A being has the same; A marrowless assembly Is culpabler than shame. But how shall finished creatures A function fresh obtain? -- Old Nicodemus' phantom Confronting us again! XLV. THE PAST. The past is such a curious creature, To look her in the face A transport may reward us, Or a disgrace. Unarmed if any meet her, I charge him, fly! Her rusty ammunition Might yet reply! XLVI. To help our bleaker parts Salubrious hours are given, Which if they do not fit for earth Drill silently for heaven. XLVII. What soft, cherubic creatures These gentlewomen are! One would as soon assault a plush Or violate a star. Such dimity convictions, A horror so refined Of freckled human nature, Of Deity ashamed, -- It's such a common glory, A fisherman's degree! Redemption, brittle lady, Be so, ashamed of thee. XLVIII. DESIRE. Who never wanted, -- maddest joy Remains to him unknown: The banquet of abstemiousness Surpasses that of wine. Within its hope, though yet ungrasped Desire's perfect goal, No nearer, lest reality Should disenthrall thy soul. XLIX. PHILOSOPHY. It might be easier To fail with land in sight, Than gain my blue peninsula To perish of delight. L. POWER. You cannot put a fire out; A thing that can ignite Can go, itself, without a fan Upon the slowest night. You cannot fold a flood And put it in a drawer, -- Because the winds would find it out, And tell your cedar floor. LI. A modest lot, a fame petite, A brief campaign of sting and sweet Is plenty! Is enough! A sailor's business is the shore, A soldier's -- balls. Who asketh more Must seek the neighboring life! LII. Is bliss, then, such abyss I must not put my foot amiss For fear I spoil my shoe? I'd rather suit my foot Than save my boot, For yet to buy another pair Is possible At any fair. But bliss is sold just once; The patent lost None buy it any more. LIII. EXPERIENCE. I stepped from plank to plank So slow and cautiously; The stars about my head I felt, About my feet the sea. I knew not but the next Would be my final inch, -- This gave me that precarious gait Some call experience. LIV. THANKSGIVING DAY. One day is there of the series Termed Thanksgiving day, Celebrated part at table, Part in memory. Neither patriarch nor pussy, I dissect the play; Seems it, to my hooded thinking, Reflex holiday. Had there been no sharp subtraction From the early sum, Not an acre or a caption Where was once a room, Not a mention, whose small pebble Wrinkled any bay, -- Unto such, were such assembly, 'T were Thanksgiving day. LV. CHILDISH GRIEFS. Softened by Time's consummate plush, How sleek the woe appears That threatened childhood's citadel And undermined the years! Bisected now by bleaker griefs, We envy the despair That devastated childhood's realm, So easy to repair. II. LOVE. I. CONSECRATION. Proud of my broken heart since thou didst break it, Proud of the pain I did not feel till thee, Proud of my night since thou with moons dost slake it, Not to partake thy passion, my humility. II. LOVE'S HUMILITY. My worthiness is all my doubt, His merit all my fear, Contrasting which, my qualities Do lowlier appear; Lest I should insufficient prove For his beloved need, The chiefest apprehension Within my loving creed. So I, the undivine abode Of his elect content, Conform my soul as 't were a church Unto her sacrament. III. LOVE. Love is anterior to life, Posterior to death, Initial of creation, and The exponent of breath. IV. SATISFIED. One blessing had I, than the rest So larger to my eyes That I stopped gauging, satisfied, For this enchanted size. It was the limit of my dream, The focus of my prayer, -- A perfect, paralyzing bliss Contented as despair. I knew no more of want or cold, Phantasms both become, For this new value in the soul, Supremest earthly sum. The heaven below the heaven above Obscured with ruddier hue. Life's latitude leant over-full; The judgment perished, too. Why joys so scantily disburse, Why Paradise defer, Why floods are served to us in bowls, -- I speculate no more. V. WITH A FLOWER. When roses cease to bloom, dear, And violets are done, When bumble-bees in solemn flight Have passed beyond the sun, The hand that paused to gather Upon this summer's day Will idle lie, in Auburn, -- Then take my flower, pray! VI. SONG. Summer for thee grant I may be When summer days are flown! Thy music still when whippoorwill And oriole are done! For thee to bloom, I'll skip the tomb And sow my blossoms o'er! Pray gather me, Anemone, Thy flower forevermore! VII. LOYALTY. Split the lark and you'll find the music, Bulb after bulb, in silver rolled, Scantily dealt to the summer morning, Saved for your ear when lutes be old. Loose the flood, you shall find it patent, Gush after gush, reserved for you; Scarlet experiment! sceptic Thomas, Now, do you doubt that your bird was true? VIII. To lose thee, sweeter than to gain All other hearts I knew. 'T is true the drought is destitute, But then I had the dew! The Caspian has its realms of sand, Its other realm of sea; Without the sterile perquisite No Caspian could be. IX. Poor little heart! Did they forget thee? Then dinna care! Then dinna care! Proud little heart! Did they forsake thee? Be debonair! Be debonair! Frail little heart! I would not break thee: Could'st credit me? Could'st credit me? Gay little heart! Like morning glory Thou'll wilted be; thou'll wilted be! X. FORGOTTEN. There is a word Which bears a sword Can pierce an armed man. It hurls its barbed syllables,-- At once is mute again. But where it fell The saved will tell On patriotic day, Some epauletted brother Gave his breath away. Wherever runs the breathless sun, Wherever roams the day, There is its noiseless onset, There is its victory! Behold the keenest marksman! The most accomplished shot! Time's sublimest target Is a soul 'forgot'! XI. I've got an arrow here; Loving the hand that sent it, I the dart revere. Fell, they will say, in 'skirmish'! Vanquished, my soul will know, By but a simple arrow Sped by an archer's bow. XII. THE MASTER. He fumbles at your spirit As players at the keys Before they drop full music on; He stuns you by degrees, Prepares your brittle substance For the ethereal blow, By fainter hammers, further heard, Then nearer, then so slow Your breath has time to straighten, Your brain to bubble cool, -- Deals one imperial thunderbolt That scalps your naked soul. XIII. Heart, we will forget him! You and I, to-night! You may forget the warmth he gave, I will forget the light. When you have done, pray tell me, That I my thoughts may dim; Haste! lest while you're lagging, I may remember him! XIV. Father, I bring thee not myself, -- That were the little load; I bring thee the imperial heart I had not strength to hold. The heart I cherished in my own Till mine too heavy grew, Yet strangest, heavier since it went, Is it too large for you? XV. We outgrow love like other things And put it in the drawer, Till it an antique fashion shows Like costumes grandsires wore. XVI. Not with a club the heart is broken, Nor with a stone; A whip, so small you could not see it. I've known To lash the magic creature Till it fell, Yet that whip's name too noble Then to tell. Magnanimous of bird By boy descried, To sing unto the stone Of which it died. XVII. WHO? My friend must be a bird, Because it flies! Mortal my friend must be, Because it dies! Barbs has it, like a bee. Ah, curious friend, Thou puzzlest me! XVIII. He touched me, so I live to know That such a day, permitted so, I groped upon his breast. It was a boundless place to me, And silenced, as the awful sea Puts minor streams to rest. And now, I'm different from before, As if I breathed superior air, Or brushed a royal gown; My feet, too, that had wandered so, My gypsy face transfigured now To tenderer renown. XIX. DREAMS. Let me not mar that perfect dream By an auroral stain, But so adjust my daily night That it will come again. XX. NUMEN LUMEN. I live with him, I see his face; I go no more away For visitor, or sundown; Death's single privacy, The only one forestalling mine, And that by right that he Presents a claim invisible, No wedlock granted me. I live with him, I hear his voice, I stand alive to-day To witness to the certainty Of immortality Taught me by Time, -- the lower way, Conviction every day, -- That life like this is endless, Be judgment what it may. XXI. LONGING. I envy seas whereon he rides, I envy spokes of wheels Of chariots that him convey, I envy speechless hills That gaze upon his journey; How easy all can see What is forbidden utterly As heaven, unto me! I envy nests of sparrows That dot his distant eaves, The wealthy fly upon his pane, The happy, happy leaves That just abroad his window Have summer's leave to be, The earrings of Pizarro Could not obtain for me. I envy light that wakes him, And bells that boldly ring To tell him it is noon abroad, -- Myself his noon could bring, Yet interdict my blossom And abrogate my bee, Lest noon in everlasting night Drop Gabriel and me. XXII. WEDDED. A solemn thing it was, I said, A woman white to be, And wear, if God should count me fit, Her hallowed mystery. A timid thing to drop a life Into the purple well, Too plummetless that it come back Eternity until. III. NATURE. I. NATURE'S CHANGES. The springtime's pallid landscape Will glow like bright bouquet, Though drifted deep in parian The village lies to-day. The lilacs, bending many a year, With purple load will hang; The bees will not forget the tune Their old forefathers sang. The rose will redden in the bog, The aster on the hill Her everlasting fashion set, And covenant gentians frill, Till summer folds her miracle As women do their gown, Or priests adjust the symbols When sacrament is done. II. THE TULIP. She slept beneath a tree Remembered but by me. I touched her cradle mute; She recognized the foot, Put on her carmine suit, -- And see! III. A light exists in spring Not present on the year At any other period. When March is scarcely here A color stands abroad On solitary hills That science cannot overtake, But human nature feels. It waits upon the lawn; It shows the furthest tree Upon the furthest slope we know; It almost speaks to me. Then, as horizons step, Or noons report away, Without the formula of sound, It passes, and we stay: A quality of loss Affecting our content, As trade had suddenly encroached Upon a sacrament. IV. THE WAKING YEAR. A lady red upon the hill Her annual secret keeps; A lady white within the field In placid lily sleeps! The tidy breezes with their brooms Sweep vale, and hill, and tree! Prithee, my pretty housewives! Who may expected be? The neighbors do not yet suspect! The woods exchange a smile -- Orchard, and buttercup, and bird -- In such a little while! And yet how still the landscape stands, How nonchalant the wood, As if the resurrection Were nothing very odd! V. TO MARCH. Dear March, come in! How glad I am! I looked for you before. Put down your hat -- You must have walked -- How out of breath you are! Dear March, how are you? And the rest? Did you leave Nature well? Oh, March, come right upstairs with me, I have so much to tell! I got your letter, and the birds'; The maples never knew That you were coming, -- I declare, How red their faces grew! But, March, forgive me -- And all those hills You left for me to hue; There was no purple suitable, You took it all with you. Who knocks? That April! Lock the door! I will not be pursued! He stayed away a year, to call When I am occupied. But trifles look so trivial As soon as you have come, That blame is just as dear as praise And praise as mere as blame. VI. MARCH. We like March, his shoes are purple, He is new and high; Makes he mud for dog and peddler, Makes he forest dry; Knows the adder's tongue his coming, And begets her spot. Stands the sun so close and mighty That our minds are hot. News is he of all the others; Bold it were to die With the blue-birds buccaneering On his British sky. VII. DAWN. Not knowing when the dawn will come I open every door; Or has it feathers like a bird, Or billows like a shore? VIII. A murmur in the trees to note, Not loud enough for wind; A star not far enough to seek, Nor near enough to find; A long, long yellow on the lawn, A hubbub as of feet; Not audible, as ours to us, But dapperer, more sweet; A hurrying home of little men To houses unperceived, -- All this, and more, if I should tell, Would never be believed. Of robins in the trundle bed How many I espy Whose nightgowns could not hide the wings, Although I heard them try! But then I promised ne'er to tell; How could I break my word? So go your way and I'll go mine, -- No fear you'll miss the road. IX. Morning is the place for dew, Corn is made at noon, After dinner light for flowers, Dukes for setting sun! X. To my quick ear the leaves conferred; The bushes they were bells; I could not find a privacy From Nature's sentinels. In cave if I presumed to hide, The walls began to tell; Creation seemed a mighty crack To make me visible. XI. A ROSE. A sepal, petal, and a thorn Upon a common summer's morn, A flash of dew, a bee or two, A breeze A caper in the trees, -- And I'm a rose! XII. High from the earth I heard a bird; He trod upon the trees As he esteemed them trifles, And then he spied a breeze, And situated softly Upon a pile of wind Which in a perturbation Nature had left behind. A joyous-going fellow I gathered from his talk, Which both of benediction And badinage partook, Without apparent burden, I learned, in leafy wood He was the faithful father Of a dependent brood; And this untoward transport His remedy for care, -- A contrast to our respites. How different we are! XIII. COBWEBS. The spider as an artist Has never been employed Though his surpassing merit Is freely certified By every broom and Bridget Throughout a Christian land. Neglected son of genius, I take thee by the hand. XIV. A WELL. What mystery pervades a well! The water lives so far, Like neighbor from another world Residing in a jar. The grass does not appear afraid; I often wonder he Can stand so close and look so bold At what is dread to me. Related somehow they may be, -- The sedge stands next the sea, Where he is floorless, yet of fear No evidence gives he. But nature is a stranger yet; The ones that cite her most Have never passed her haunted house, Nor simplified her ghost. To pity those that know her not Is helped by the regret That those who know her, know her less The nearer her they get. XV. To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, -- One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do If bees are few. XVI. THE WIND. It's like the light, -- A fashionless delight It's like the bee, -- A dateless melody. It's like the woods, Private like breeze, Phraseless, yet it stirs The proudest trees. It's like the morning, -- Best when it's done, -- The everlasting clocks Chime noon. XVII. A dew sufficed itself And satisfied a leaf, And felt, 'how vast a destiny! How trivial is life!' The sun went out to work, The day went out to play, But not again that dew was seen By physiognomy. Whether by day abducted, Or emptied by the sun Into the sea, in passing, Eternally unknown. XVIII. THE WOODPECKER. His bill an auger is, His head, a cap and frill. He laboreth at every tree, -- A worm his utmost goal. XIX. A SNAKE. Sweet is the swamp with its secrets, Until we meet a snake; 'T is then we sigh for houses, And our departure take At that enthralling gallop That only childhood knows. A snake is summer's treason, And guile is where it goes. XX. Could I but ride indefinite, As doth the meadow-bee, And visit only where I liked, And no man visit me, And flirt all day with buttercups, And marry whom I may, And dwell a little everywhere, Or better, run away With no police to follow, Or chase me if I do, Till I should jump peninsulas To get away from you, -- I said, but just to be a bee Upon a raft of air, And row in nowhere all day long, And anchor off the bar,-- What liberty! So captives deem Who tight in dungeons are. XXI. THE MOON. The moon was but a chin of gold A night or two ago, And now she turns her perfect face Upon the world below. Her forehead is of amplest blond; Her cheek like beryl stone; Her eye unto the summer dew The likest I have known. Her lips of amber never part; But what must be the smile Upon her friend she could bestow Were such her silver will! And what a privilege to be But the remotest star! For certainly her way might pass Beside your twinkling door. Her bonnet is the firmament, The universe her shoe, The stars the trinkets at her belt, Her dimities of blue. XXII. THE BAT. The bat is dun with wrinkled wings Like fallow article, And not a song pervades his lips, Or none perceptible. His small umbrella, quaintly halved, Describing in the air An arc alike inscrutable, -- Elate philosopher! Deputed from what firmament Of what astute abode, Empowered with what malevolence Auspiciously withheld. To his adroit Creator Ascribe no less the praise; Beneficent, believe me, His eccentricities. XXIII. THE BALLOON. You've seen balloons set, haven't you? So stately they ascend It is as swans discarded you For duties diamond. Their liquid feet go softly out Upon a sea of blond; They spurn the air as 't were too mean For creatures so renowned. Their ribbons just beyond the eye, They struggle some for breath, And yet the crowd applauds below; They would not encore death. The gilded creature strains and spins, Trips frantic in a tree, Tears open her imperial veins And tumbles in the sea. The crowd retire with an oath The dust in streets goes down, And clerks in counting-rooms observe, ''T was only a balloon.' XXIV. EVENING. The cricket sang, And set the sun, And workmen finished, one by one, Their seam the day upon. The low grass loaded with the dew, The twilight stood as strangers do With hat in hand, polite and new, To stay as if, or go. A vastness, as a neighbor, came, -- A wisdom without face or name, A peace, as hemispheres at home, -- And so the night became. XXV. COCOON. Drab habitation of whom? Tabernacle or tomb, Or dome of worm, Or porch of gnome, Or some elf's catacomb? XXVI. SUNSET. A sloop of amber slips away Upon an ether sea, And wrecks in peace a purple tar, The son of ecstasy. XXVII. AURORA. Of bronze and blaze The north, to-night! So adequate its forms, So preconcerted with itself, So distant to alarms, -- An unconcern so sovereign To universe, or me, It paints my simple spirit With tints of majesty, Till I take vaster attitudes, And strut upon my stem, Disdaining men and oxygen, For arrogance of them. My splendors are menagerie; But their competeless show Will entertain the centuries When I am, long ago, An island in dishonored grass, Whom none but daisies know. XXVIII. THE COMING OF NIGHT. How the old mountains drip with sunset, And the brake of dun! How the hemlocks are tipped in tinsel By the wizard sun! How the old steeples hand the scarlet, Till the ball is full, -- Have I the lip of the flamingo That I dare to tell? Then, how the fire ebbs like billows, Touching all the grass With a departing, sapphire feature, As if a duchess pass! How a small dusk crawls on the village Till the houses blot; And the odd flambeaux no men carry Glimmer on the spot! Now it is night in nest and kennel, And where was the wood, Just a dome of abyss is nodding Into solitude! -- These are the visions baffled Guido; Titian never told; Domenichino dropped the pencil, Powerless to unfold. XXIX. AFTERMATH. The murmuring of bees has ceased; But murmuring of some Posterior, prophetic, Has simultaneous come, -- The lower metres of the year, When nature's laugh is done, -- The Revelations of the book Whose Genesis is June. IV. TIME AND ETERNITY. I. This world is not conclusion; A sequel stands beyond, Invisible, as music, But positive, as sound. It beckons and it baffles; Philosophies don't know, And through a riddle, at the last, Sagacity must go. To guess it puzzles scholars; To gain it, men have shown Contempt of generations, And crucifixion known. II. We learn in the retreating How vast an one Was recently among us. A perished sun Endears in the departure How doubly more Than all the golden presence It was before! III. They say that 'time assuages,' -- Time never did assuage; An actual suffering strengthens, As sinews do, with age. Time is a test of trouble, But not a remedy. If such it prove, it prove too There was no malady. IV. We cover thee, sweet face. Not that we tire of thee, But that thyself fatigue of us; Remember, as thou flee, We follow thee until Thou notice us no more, And then, reluctant, turn away To con thee o'er and o'er, And blame the scanty love We were content to show, Augmented, sweet, a hundred fold If thou would'st take it now. V. ENDING. That is solemn we have ended, -- Be it but a play, Or a glee among the garrets, Or a holiday, Or a leaving home; or later, Parting with a world We have understood, for better Still it be unfurled. VI. The stimulus, beyond the grave His countenance to see, Supports me like imperial drams Afforded royally. VII. Given in marriage unto thee, Oh, thou celestial host! Bride of the Father and the Son, Bride of the Holy Ghost! Other betrothal shall dissolve, Wedlock of will decay; Only the keeper of this seal Conquers mortality. VIII. That such have died enables us The tranquiller to die; That such have lived, certificate For immortality. IX. They won't frown always, -- some sweet day When I forget to tease, They'll recollect how cold I looked, And how I just said 'please.' Then they will hasten to the door To call the little child, Who cannot thank them, for the ice That on her lisping piled. X. IMMORTALITY. It is an honorable thought, And makes one lift one's hat, As one encountered gentlefolk Upon a daily street, That we've immortal place, Though pyramids decay, And kingdoms, like the orchard, Flit russetly away. XI. The distance that the dead have gone Does not at first appear; Their coming back seems possible For many an ardent year. And then, that we have followed them We more than half suspect, So intimate have we become With their dear retrospect. XII. How dare the robins sing, When men and women hear Who since they went to their account Have settled with the year! -- Paid all that life had earned In one consummate bill, And now, what life or death can do Is immaterial. Insulting is the sun To him whose mortal light, Beguiled of immortality, Bequeaths him to the night. In deference to him Extinct be every hum, Whose garden wrestles with the dew, At daybreak overcome! XIII. DEATH. Death is like the insect Menacing the tree, Competent to kill it, But decoyed may be. Bait it with the balsam, Seek it with the knife, Baffle, if it cost you Everything in life. Then, if it have burrowed Out of reach of skill, Ring the tree and leave it, -- 'T is the vermin's will. XIV. UNWARNED. 'T is sunrise, little maid, hast thou No station in the day? 'T was not thy wont to hinder so, -- Retrieve thine industry. 'T is noon, my little maid, alas! And art thou sleeping yet? The lily waiting to be wed, The bee, dost thou forget? My little maid, 't is night; alas, That night should be to thee Instead of morning! Hadst thou broached Thy little plan to me, Dissuade thee if I could not, sweet, I might have aided thee. XV. Each that we lose takes part of us; A crescent still abides, Which like the moon, some turbid night, Is summoned by the tides. XVI. Not any higher stands the grave For heroes than for men; Not any nearer for the child Than numb three-score and ten. This latest leisure equal lulls The beggar and his queen; Propitiate this democrat By summer's gracious mien. XVII. ASLEEP. As far from pity as complaint, As cool to speech as stone, As numb to revelation As if my trade were bone. As far from time as history, As near yourself to-day As children to the rainbow's scarf, Or sunset's yellow play To eyelids in the sepulchre. How still the dancer lies, While color's revelations break, And blaze the butterflies! XVIII. THE SPIRIT. 'T is whiter than an Indian pipe, 'T is dimmer than a lace; No stature has it, like a fog, When you approach the place. Not any voice denotes it here, Or intimates it there; A spirit, how doth it accost? What customs hath the air? This limitless hyperbole Each one of us shall be; 'T is drama, if (hypothesis) It be not tragedy! XIX. THE MONUMENT. She laid her docile crescent down, And this mechanic stone Still states, to dates that have forgot, The news that she is gone. So constant to its stolid trust, The shaft that never knew, It shames the constancy that fled Before its emblem flew. XX. Bless God, he went as soldiers, His musket on his breast; Grant, God, he charge the bravest Of all the martial blest. Please God, might I behold him In epauletted white, I should not fear the foe then, I should not fear the fight. XXI. Immortal is an ample word When what we need is by, But when it leaves us for a time, 'T is a necessity. Of heaven above the firmest proof We fundamental know, Except for its marauding hand, It had been heaven below. XXII. Where every bird is bold to go, And bees abashless play, The foreigner before he knocks Must thrust the tears away. XXIII. The grave my little cottage is, Where, keeping house for thee, I make my parlor orderly, And lay the marble tea, For two divided, briefly, A cycle, it may be, Till everlasting life unite In strong society. XXIV. This was in the white of the year, That was in the green, Drifts were as difficult then to think As daisies now to be seen. Looking back is best that is left, Or if it be before, Retrospection is prospect's half, Sometimes almost more. XXV. Sweet hours have perished here; This is a mighty room; Within its precincts hopes have played, -- Now shadows in the tomb. XXVI. Me! Come! My dazzled face In such a shining place! Me! Hear! My foreign ear The sounds of welcome near! The saints shall meet Our bashful feet. My holiday shall be That they remember me; My paradise, the fame That they pronounce my name. XXVII. INVISIBLE. From us she wandered now a year, Her tarrying unknown; If wilderness prevent her feet, Or that ethereal zone No eye hath seen and lived, We ignorant must be. We only know what time of year We took the mystery. XXVIII. I wish I knew that woman's name, So, when she comes this way, To hold my life, and hold my ears, For fear I hear her say She's 'sorry I am dead,' again, Just when the grave and I Have sobbed ourselves almost to sleep, -- Our only lullaby. XXIX. TRYING TO FORGET. Bereaved of all, I went abroad, No less bereaved to be Upon a new peninsula, -- The grave preceded me, Obtained my lodgings ere myself, And when I sought my bed, The grave it was, reposed upon The pillow for my head. I waked, to find it first awake, I rose, -- it followed me; I tried to drop it in the crowd, To lose it in the sea, In cups of artificial drowse To sleep its shape away, -- The grave was finished, but the spade Remained in memory. XXX. I felt a funeral in my brain, And mourners, to and fro, Kept treading, treading, till it seemed That sense was breaking through. And when they all were seated, A service like a drum Kept beating, beating, till I thought My mind was going numb. And then I heard them lift a box, And creak across my soul With those same boots of lead, again. Then space began to toll As all the heavens were a bell, And Being but an ear, And I and silence some strange race, Wrecked, solitary, here. XXXI. I meant to find her when I came; Death had the same design; But the success was his, it seems, And the discomfit mine. I meant to tell her how I longed For just this single time; But Death had told her so the first, And she had hearkened him. To wander now is my abode; To rest, -- to rest would be A privilege of hurricane To memory and me. XXXII. WAITING. I sing to use the waiting, My bonnet but to tie, And shut the door unto my house; No more to do have I, Till, his best step approaching, We journey to the day, And tell each other how we sang To keep the dark away. XXXIII. A sickness of this world it most occasions When best men die; A wishfulness their far condition To occupy. A chief indifference, as foreign A world must be Themselves forsake contented, For Deity. XXXIV. Superfluous were the sun When excellence is dead; He were superfluous every day, For every day is said That syllable whose faith Just saves it from despair, And whose 'I'll meet you' hesitates If love inquire, 'Where?' Upon his dateless fame Our periods may lie, As stars that drop anonymous From an abundant sky. XXXV. So proud she was to die It made us all ashamed That what we cherished, so unknown To her desire seemed. So satisfied to go Where none of us should be, Immediately, that anguish stooped Almost to jealousy. XXXVI. FAREWELL. Tie the strings to my life, my Lord, Then I am ready to go! Just a look at the horses -- Rapid! That will do! Put me in on the firmest side, So I shall never fall; For we must ride to the Judgment, And it's partly down hill. But never I mind the bridges, And never I mind the sea; Held fast in everlasting race By my own choice and thee. Good-by to the life I used to live, And the world I used to know; And kiss the hills for me, just once; Now I am ready to go! XXXVII. The dying need but little, dear, -- A glass of water's all, A flower's unobtrusive face To punctuate the wall, A fan, perhaps, a friend's regret, And certainly that one No color in the rainbow Perceives when you are gone. XXXVIII. DEAD. There's something quieter than sleep Within this inner room! It wears a sprig upon its breast, And will not tell its name. Some touch it and some kiss it, Some chafe its idle hand; It has a simple gravity I do not understand! While simple-hearted neighbors Chat of the 'early dead,' We, prone to periphrasis, Remark that birds have fled! XXXIX. The soul should always stand ajar, That if the heaven inquire, He will not be obliged to wait, Or shy of troubling her. Depart, before the host has slid The bolt upon the door, To seek for the accomplished guest, -- Her visitor no more. XL. Three weeks passed since I had seen her, -- Some disease had vexed; 'T was with text and village singing I beheld her next, And a company -- our pleasure To discourse alone; Gracious now to me as any, Gracious unto none. Borne, without dissent of either, To the parish night; Of the separated people Which are out of sight? XLI. I breathed enough to learn the trick, And now, removed from air, I simulate the breath so well, That one, to be quite sure The lungs are stirless, must descend Among the cunning cells, And touch the pantomime himself. How cool the bellows feels! XLII. I wonder if the sepulchre Is not a lonesome way, When men and boys, and larks and June Go down the fields to hay! XLIII. JOY IN DEATH. If tolling bell I ask the cause. 'A soul has gone to God,' I'm answered in a lonesome tone; Is heaven then so sad? That bells should joyful ring to tell A soul had gone to heaven, Would seem to me the proper way A good news should be given. XLIV. If I may have it when it's dead I will contented be; If just as soon as breath is out It shall belong to me, Until they lock it in the grave, 'T is bliss I cannot weigh, For though they lock thee in the grave, Myself can hold the key. Think of it, lover! I and thee Permitted face to face to be; After a life, a death we'll say, -- For death was that, and this is thee. XLV. Before the ice is in the pools, Before the skaters go, Or any cheek at nightfall Is tarnished by the snow, Before the fields have finished, Before the Christmas tree, Wonder upon wonder Will arrive to me! What we touch the hems of On a summer's day; What is only walking Just a bridge away; That which sings so, speaks so, When there's no one here, -- Will the frock I wept in Answer me to wear? XLVI. DYING. I heard a fly buzz when I died; The stillness round my form Was like the stillness in the air Between the heaves of storm. The eyes beside had wrung them dry, And breaths were gathering sure For that last onset, when the king Be witnessed in his power. I willed my keepsakes, signed away What portion of me I Could make assignable, -- and then There interposed a fly, With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz, Between the light and me; And then the windows failed, and then I could not see to see. XLVII. Adrift! A little boat adrift! And night is coming down! Will no one guide a little boat Unto the nearest town? So sailors say, on yesterday, Just as the dusk was brown, One little boat gave up its strife, And gurgled down and down. But angels say, on yesterday, Just as the dawn was red, One little boat o'erspent with gales Retrimmed its masts, redecked its sails Exultant, onward sped! XLVIII. There's been a death in the opposite house As lately as to-day. I know it by the numb look Such houses have alway. The neighbors rustle in and out, The doctor drives away. A window opens like a pod, Abrupt, mechanically; Somebody flings a mattress out, -- The children hurry by; They wonder if It died on that, -- I used to when a boy. The minister goes stiffly in As if the house were his, And he owned all the mourners now, And little boys besides; And then the milliner, and the man Of the appalling trade, To take the measure of the house. There'll be that dark parade Of tassels and of coaches soon; It's easy as a sign, -- The intuition of the news In just a country town. XLIX. We never know we go, -- when we are going We jest and shut the door; Fate following behind us bolts it, And we accost no more. L. THE SOUL'S STORM. It struck me every day The lightning was as new As if the cloud that instant slit And let the fire through. It burned me in the night, It blistered in my dream; It sickened fresh upon my sight With every morning's beam. I thought that storm was brief, -- The maddest, quickest by; But Nature lost the date of this, And left it in the sky. LI. Water is taught by thirst; Land, by the oceans passed; Transport, by throe; Peace, by its battles told; Love, by memorial mould; Birds, by the snow. LII. THIRST. We thirst at first, -- 't is Nature's act; And later, when we die, A little water supplicate Of fingers going by. It intimates the finer want, Whose adequate supply Is that great water in the west Termed immortality. LIII. A clock stopped -- not the mantel's; Geneva's farthest skill Can't put the puppet bowing That just now dangled still. An awe came on the trinket! The figures hunched with pain, Then quivered out of decimals Into degreeless noon. It will not stir for doctors, This pendulum of snow; The shopman importunes it, While cool, concernless No Nods from the gilded pointers, Nods from the seconds slim, Decades of arrogance between The dial life and him. LIV. CHARLOTTE BRONTË'S GRAVE. All overgrown by cunning moss, All interspersed with weed, The little cage of 'Currer Bell,' In quiet Haworth laid. This bird, observing others, When frosts too sharp became, Retire to other latitudes, Quietly did the same, But differed in returning; Since Yorkshire hills are green, Yet not in all the nests I meet Can nightingale be seen. Gathered from many wanderings, Gethsemane can tell Through what transporting anguish She reached the asphodel! Soft fall the sounds of Eden Upon her puzzled ear; Oh, what an afternoon for heaven, When 'Brontë' entered there! LV. A toad can die of light! Death is the common right Of toads and men, -- Of earl and midge The privilege. Why swagger then? The gnat's supremacy Is large as thine. LVI. Far from love the Heavenly Father Leads the chosen child; Oftener through realm of briar Than the meadow mild, Oftener by the claw of dragon Than the hand of friend, Guides the little one predestined To the native land. LVII. SLEEPING. A long, long sleep, a famous sleep That makes no show for dawn By stretch of limb or stir of lid, -- An independent one. Was ever idleness like this? Within a hut of stone To bask the centuries away Nor once look up for noon? LVIII. RETROSPECT. 'T was just this time last year I died. I know I heard the corn, When I was carried by the farms, -- It had the tassels on. I thought how yellow it would look When Richard went to mill; And then I wanted to get out, But something held my will. I thought just how red apples wedged The stubble's joints between; And carts went stooping round the fields To take the pumpkins in. I wondered which would miss me least, And when Thanksgiving came, If father'd multiply the plates To make an even sum. And if my stocking hung too high, Would it blur the Christmas glee, That not a Santa Claus could reach The altitude of me? But this sort grieved myself, and so I thought how it would be When just this time, some perfect year, Themselves should come to me. LIX. ETERNITY. On this wondrous sea, Sailing silently, Ho! pilot, ho! Knowest thou the shore Where no breakers roar, Where the storm is o'er? In the silent west Many sails at rest, Their anchors fast; Thither I pilot thee, -- Land, ho! Eternity! Ashore at last! 
12242	----	POEMS by EMILY DICKINSON Edited by two of her friends MABEL LOOMIS TODD and T.W. HIGGINSON PREFACE. The verses of Emily Dickinson belong emphatically to what Emerson long since called "the Poetry of the Portfolio,"--something produced absolutely without the thought of publication, and solely by way of expression of the writer's own mind. Such verse must inevitably forfeit whatever advantage lies in the discipline of public criticism and the enforced conformity to accepted ways. On the other hand, it may often gain something through the habit of freedom and the unconventional utterance of daring thoughts. In the case of the present author, there was absolutely no choice in the matter; she must write thus, or not at all. A recluse by temperament and habit, literally spending years without setting her foot beyond the doorstep, and many more years during which her walks were strictly limited to her father's grounds, she habitually concealed her mind, like her person, from all but a very few friends; and it was with great difficulty that she was persuaded to print, during her lifetime, three or four poems. Yet she wrote verses in great abundance; and though brought curiously indifferent to all conventional rules, had yet a rigorous literary standard of her own, and often altered a word many times to suit an ear which had its own tenacious fastidiousness. Miss Dickinson was born in Amherst, Mass., Dec. 10, 1830, and died there May 15, 1886. Her father, Hon. Edward Dickinson, was the leading lawyer of Amherst, and was treasurer of the well-known college there situated. It was his custom once a year to hold a large reception at his house, attended by all the families connected with the institution and by the leading people of the town. On these occasions his daughter Emily emerged from her wonted retirement and did her part as gracious hostess; nor would any one have known from her manner, I have been told, that this was not a daily occurrence. The annual occasion once past, she withdrew again into her seclusion, and except for a very few friends was as invisible to the world as if she had dwelt in a nunnery. For myself, although I had corresponded with her for many years, I saw her but twice face to face, and brought away the impression of something as unique and remote as Undine or Mignon or Thekla. This selection from her poems is published to meet the desire of her personal friends, and especially of her surviving sister. It is believed that the thoughtful reader will find in these pages a quality more suggestive of the poetry of William Blake than of anything to be elsewhere found,--flashes of wholly original and profound insight into nature and life; words and phrases exhibiting an extraordinary vividness of descriptive and imaginative power, yet often set in a seemingly whimsical or even rugged frame. They are here published as they were written, with very few and superficial changes; although it is fair to say that the titles have been assigned, almost invariably, by the editors. In many cases these verses will seem to the reader like poetry torn up by the roots, with rain and dew and earth still clinging to them, giving a freshness and a fragrance not otherwise to be conveyed. In other cases, as in the few poems of shipwreck or of mental conflict, we can only wonder at the gift of vivid imagination by which this recluse woman can delineate, by a few touches, the very crises of physical or mental struggle. And sometimes again we catch glimpses of a lyric strain, sustained perhaps but for a line or two at a time, and making the reader regret its sudden cessation. But the main quality of these poems is that of extraordinary grasp and insight, uttered with an uneven vigor sometimes exasperating, seemingly wayward, but really unsought and inevitable. After all, when a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence. As Ruskin wrote in his earlier and better days, "No weight nor mass nor beauty of execution can outweigh one grain or fragment of thought." ---Thomas Wentworth Higginson TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE As is well documented, Emily Dickinson's poems were edited in these early editions by her friends, better to fit the conventions of the times. In particular, her dashes, often small enough to appear as dots, became commas and semi-colons. In the second series of poems published, a facsimile of her handwritten poem which her editors titled "Renunciation" is given, and I here transcribe that manuscript as faithfully as I can, showing _underlined_ words thus. There came a day - at Summer's full - Entirely for me - I thought that such were for the Saints - Where Resurrections - be - The sun - as common - went abroad - The flowers - accustomed - blew, As if no soul - that solstice passed - Which maketh all things - new - The time was scarce profaned - by speech - The falling of a word Was needless - as at Sacrament - The _Wardrobe_ - of our Lord! Each was to each - the sealed church - Permitted to commune - _this_ time - Lest we too awkward show At Supper of "the Lamb." The hours slid fast - as hours will - Clutched tight - by greedy hands - So - faces on two Decks look back - Bound to _opposing_ lands. And so, when all the time had leaked, Without external sound, Each bound the other's Crucifix - We gave no other bond - Sufficient troth - that we shall _rise_, Deposed - at length the Grave - To that new marriage - _Justified_ - through Calvaries - of Love! From the handwriting, it is not always clear which are dashes, which are commas and which are periods, nor it is entirely clear which initial letters are capitalized. However, this transcription may be compared with the edited version in the main text to get a flavor of the changes made in these early editions. ---JT This is my letter to the world, That never wrote to me, -- The simple news that Nature told, With tender majesty. Her message is committed To hands I cannot see; For love of her, sweet countrymen, Judge tenderly of me! I. LIFE. I. SUCCESS. [Published in "A Masque of Poets" at the request of "H.H.," the author's fellow-townswoman and friend.] Success is counted sweetest By those who ne'er succeed. To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need. Not one of all the purple host Who took the flag to-day Can tell the definition, So clear, of victory, As he, defeated, dying, On whose forbidden ear The distant strains of triumph Break, agonized and clear! II. Our share of night to bear, Our share of morning, Our blank in bliss to fill, Our blank in scorning. Here a star, and there a star, Some lose their way. Here a mist, and there a mist, Afterwards -- day! III. ROUGE ET NOIR. Soul, wilt thou toss again? By just such a hazard Hundreds have lost, indeed, But tens have won an all. Angels' breathless ballot Lingers to record thee; Imps in eager caucus Raffle for my soul. IV. ROUGE GAGNE. 'T is so much joy! 'T is so much joy! If I should fail, what poverty! And yet, as poor as I Have ventured all upon a throw; Have gained! Yes! Hesitated so This side the victory! Life is but life, and death but death! Bliss is but bliss, and breath but breath! And if, indeed, I fail, At least to know the worst is sweet. Defeat means nothing but defeat, No drearier can prevail! And if I gain, -- oh, gun at sea, Oh, bells that in the steeples be, At first repeat it slow! For heaven is a different thing Conjectured, and waked sudden in, And might o'erwhelm me so! V. Glee! The great storm is over! Four have recovered the land; Forty gone down together Into the boiling sand. Ring, for the scant salvation! Toll, for the bonnie souls, -- Neighbor and friend and bridegroom, Spinning upon the shoals! How they will tell the shipwreck When winter shakes the door, Till the children ask, "But the forty? Did they come back no more?" Then a silence suffuses the story, And a softness the teller's eye; And the children no further question, And only the waves reply. VI. If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain. VII. ALMOST! Within my reach! I could have touched! I might have chanced that way! Soft sauntered through the village, Sauntered as soft away! So unsuspected violets Within the fields lie low, Too late for striving fingers That passed, an hour ago. VIII. A wounded deer leaps highest, I've heard the hunter tell; 'T is but the ecstasy of death, And then the brake is still. The smitten rock that gushes, The trampled steel that springs; A cheek is always redder Just where the hectic stings! Mirth is the mail of anguish, In which it cautions arm, Lest anybody spy the blood And "You're hurt" exclaim! IX. The heart asks pleasure first, And then, excuse from pain; And then, those little anodynes That deaden suffering; And then, to go to sleep; And then, if it should be The will of its Inquisitor, The liberty to die. X. IN A LIBRARY. A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is To meet an antique book, In just the dress his century wore; A privilege, I think, His venerable hand to take, And warming in our own, A passage back, or two, to make To times when he was young. His quaint opinions to inspect, His knowledge to unfold On what concerns our mutual mind, The literature of old; What interested scholars most, What competitions ran When Plato was a certainty. And Sophocles a man; When Sappho was a living girl, And Beatrice wore The gown that Dante deified. Facts, centuries before, He traverses familiar, As one should come to town And tell you all your dreams were true; He lived where dreams were sown. His presence is enchantment, You beg him not to go; Old volumes shake their vellum heads And tantalize, just so. XI. Much madness is divinest sense To a discerning eye; Much sense the starkest madness. 'T is the majority In this, as all, prevails. Assent, and you are sane; Demur, -- you're straightway dangerous, And handled with a chain. XII. I asked no other thing, No other was denied. I offered Being for it; The mighty merchant smiled. Brazil? He twirled a button, Without a glance my way: "But, madam, is there nothing else That we can show to-day?" XIII. EXCLUSION. The soul selects her own society, Then shuts the door; On her divine majority Obtrude no more. Unmoved, she notes the chariot's pausing At her low gate; Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling Upon her mat. I've known her from an ample nation Choose one; Then close the valves of her attention Like stone. XIV. THE SECRET. Some things that fly there be, -- Birds, hours, the bumble-bee: Of these no elegy. Some things that stay there be, -- Grief, hills, eternity: Nor this behooveth me. There are, that resting, rise. Can I expound the skies? How still the riddle lies! XV. THE LONELY HOUSE. I know some lonely houses off the road A robber 'd like the look of, -- Wooden barred, And windows hanging low, Inviting to A portico, Where two could creep: One hand the tools, The other peep To make sure all's asleep. Old-fashioned eyes, Not easy to surprise! How orderly the kitchen 'd look by night, With just a clock, -- But they could gag the tick, And mice won't bark; And so the walls don't tell, None will. A pair of spectacles ajar just stir -- An almanac's aware. Was it the mat winked, Or a nervous star? The moon slides down the stair To see who's there. There's plunder, -- where? Tankard, or spoon, Earring, or stone, A watch, some ancient brooch To match the grandmamma, Staid sleeping there. Day rattles, too, Stealth's slow; The sun has got as far As the third sycamore. Screams chanticleer, "Who's there?" And echoes, trains away, Sneer -- "Where?" While the old couple, just astir, Fancy the sunrise left the door ajar! XVI. To fight aloud is very brave, But gallanter, I know, Who charge within the bosom, The cavalry of woe. Who win, and nations do not see, Who fall, and none observe, Whose dying eyes no country Regards with patriot love. We trust, in plumed procession, For such the angels go, Rank after rank, with even feet And uniforms of snow. XVII. DAWN. When night is almost done, And sunrise grows so near That we can touch the spaces, It 's time to smooth the hair And get the dimples ready, And wonder we could care For that old faded midnight That frightened but an hour. XVIII. THE BOOK OF MARTYRS. Read, sweet, how others strove, Till we are stouter; What they renounced, Till we are less afraid; How many times they bore The faithful witness, Till we are helped, As if a kingdom cared! Read then of faith That shone above the fagot; Clear strains of hymn The river could not drown; Brave names of men And celestial women, Passed out of record Into renown! XIX. THE MYSTERY OF PAIN. Pain has an element of blank; It cannot recollect When it began, or if there were A day when it was not. It has no future but itself, Its infinite realms contain Its past, enlightened to perceive New periods of pain. XX. I taste a liquor never brewed, From tankards scooped in pearl; Not all the vats upon the Rhine Yield such an alcohol! Inebriate of air am I, And debauchee of dew, Reeling, through endless summer days, From inns of molten blue. When landlords turn the drunken bee Out of the foxglove's door, When butterflies renounce their drams, I shall but drink the more! Till seraphs swing their snowy hats, And saints to windows run, To see the little tippler Leaning against the sun! XXI. A BOOK. He ate and drank the precious words, His spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, Nor that his frame was dust. He danced along the dingy days, And this bequest of wings Was but a book. What liberty A loosened spirit brings! XXII. I had no time to hate, because The grave would hinder me, And life was not so ample I Could finish enmity. Nor had I time to love; but since Some industry must be, The little toil of love, I thought, Was large enough for me. XXIII. UNRETURNING. 'T was such a little, little boat That toddled down the bay! 'T was such a gallant, gallant sea That beckoned it away! 'T was such a greedy, greedy wave That licked it from the coast; Nor ever guessed the stately sails My little craft was lost! XXIV. Whether my bark went down at sea, Whether she met with gales, Whether to isles enchanted She bent her docile sails; By what mystic mooring She is held to-day, -- This is the errand of the eye Out upon the bay. XXV. Belshazzar had a letter, -- He never had but one; Belshazzar's correspondent Concluded and begun In that immortal copy The conscience of us all Can read without its glasses On revelation's wall. XXVI. The brain within its groove Runs evenly and true; But let a splinter swerve, 'T were easier for you To put the water back When floods have slit the hills, And scooped a turnpike for themselves, And blotted out the mills! II. LOVE. I. MINE. Mine by the right of the white election! Mine by the royal seal! Mine by the sign in the scarlet prison Bars cannot conceal! Mine, here in vision and in veto! Mine, by the grave's repeal Titled, confirmed, -- delirious charter! Mine, while the ages steal! II. BEQUEST. You left me, sweet, two legacies, -- A legacy of love A Heavenly Father would content, Had He the offer of; You left me boundaries of pain Capacious as the sea, Between eternity and time, Your consciousness and me. III. Alter? When the hills do. Falter? When the sun Question if his glory Be the perfect one. Surfeit? When the daffodil Doth of the dew: Even as herself, O friend! I will of you! IV. SUSPENSE. Elysium is as far as to The very nearest room, If in that room a friend await Felicity or doom. What fortitude the soul contains, That it can so endure The accent of a coming foot, The opening of a door! V. SURRENDER. Doubt me, my dim companion! Why, God would be content With but a fraction of the love Poured thee without a stint. The whole of me, forever, What more the woman can, -- Say quick, that I may dower thee With last delight I own! It cannot be my spirit, For that was thine before; I ceded all of dust I knew, -- What opulence the more Had I, a humble maiden, Whose farthest of degree Was that she might, Some distant heaven, Dwell timidly with thee! VI. If you were coming in the fall, I'd brush the summer by With half a smile and half a spurn, As housewives do a fly. If I could see you in a year, I'd wind the months in balls, And put them each in separate drawers, Until their time befalls. If only centuries delayed, I'd count them on my hand, Subtracting till my fingers dropped Into Van Diemen's land. If certain, when this life was out, That yours and mine should be, I'd toss it yonder like a rind, And taste eternity. But now, all ignorant of the length Of time's uncertain wing, It goads me, like the goblin bee, That will not state its sting. VII. WITH A FLOWER. I hide myself within my flower, That wearing on your breast, You, unsuspecting, wear me too -- And angels know the rest. I hide myself within my flower, That, fading from your vase, You, unsuspecting, feel for me Almost a loneliness. VIII. PROOF. That I did always love, I bring thee proof: That till I loved I did not love enough. That I shall love alway, I offer thee That love is life, And life hath immortality. This, dost thou doubt, sweet? Then have I Nothing to show But Calvary. IX. Have you got a brook in your little heart, Where bashful flowers blow, And blushing birds go down to drink, And shadows tremble so? And nobody knows, so still it flows, That any brook is there; And yet your little draught of life Is daily drunken there. Then look out for the little brook in March, When the rivers overflow, And the snows come hurrying from the hills, And the bridges often go. And later, in August it may be, When the meadows parching lie, Beware, lest this little brook of life Some burning noon go dry! X. TRANSPLANTED. As if some little Arctic flower, Upon the polar hem, Went wandering down the latitudes, Until it puzzled came To continents of summer, To firmaments of sun, To strange, bright crowds of flowers, And birds of foreign tongue! I say, as if this little flower To Eden wandered in -- What then? Why, nothing, only, Your inference therefrom! XI. THE OUTLET. My river runs to thee: Blue sea, wilt welcome me? My river waits reply. Oh sea, look graciously! I'll fetch thee brooks From spotted nooks, -- Say, sea, Take me! XII. IN VAIN. I cannot live with you, It would be life, And life is over there Behind the shelf The sexton keeps the key to, Putting up Our life, his porcelain, Like a cup Discarded of the housewife, Quaint or broken; A newer Sevres pleases, Old ones crack. I could not die with you, For one must wait To shut the other's gaze down, -- You could not. And I, could I stand by And see you freeze, Without my right of frost, Death's privilege? Nor could I rise with you, Because your face Would put out Jesus', That new grace Glow plain and foreign On my homesick eye, Except that you, than he Shone closer by. They'd judge us -- how? For you served Heaven, you know, Or sought to; I could not, Because you saturated sight, And I had no more eyes For sordid excellence As Paradise. And were you lost, I would be, Though my name Rang loudest On the heavenly fame. And were you saved, And I condemned to be Where you were not, That self were hell to me. So we must keep apart, You there, I here, With just the door ajar That oceans are, And prayer, And that pale sustenance, Despair! XIII. RENUNCIATION. There came a day at summer's full Entirely for me; I thought that such were for the saints, Where revelations be. The sun, as common, went abroad, The flowers, accustomed, blew, As if no soul the solstice passed That maketh all things new. The time was scarce profaned by speech; The symbol of a word Was needless, as at sacrament The wardrobe of our Lord. Each was to each the sealed church, Permitted to commune this time, Lest we too awkward show At supper of the Lamb. The hours slid fast, as hours will, Clutched tight by greedy hands; So faces on two decks look back, Bound to opposing lands. And so, when all the time had failed, Without external sound, Each bound the other's crucifix, We gave no other bond. Sufficient troth that we shall rise -- Deposed, at length, the grave -- To that new marriage, justified Through Calvaries of Love! XIV. LOVE'S BAPTISM. I'm ceded, I've stopped being theirs; The name they dropped upon my face With water, in the country church, Is finished using now, And they can put it with my dolls, My childhood, and the string of spools I've finished threading too. Baptized before without the choice, But this time consciously, of grace Unto supremest name, Called to my full, the crescent dropped, Existence's whole arc filled up With one small diadem. My second rank, too small the first, Crowned, crowing on my father's breast, A half unconscious queen; But this time, adequate, erect, With will to choose or to reject. And I choose -- just a throne. XV. RESURRECTION. 'T was a long parting, but the time For interview had come; Before the judgment-seat of God, The last and second time These fleshless lovers met, A heaven in a gaze, A heaven of heavens, the privilege Of one another's eyes. No lifetime set on them, Apparelled as the new Unborn, except they had beheld, Born everlasting now. Was bridal e'er like this? A paradise, the host, And cherubim and seraphim The most familiar guest. XVI. APOCALYPSE. I'm wife; I've finished that, That other state; I'm Czar, I'm woman now: It's safer so. How odd the girl's life looks Behind this soft eclipse! I think that earth seems so To those in heaven now. This being comfort, then That other kind was pain; But why compare? I'm wife! stop there! XVII. THE WIFE. She rose to his requirement, dropped The playthings of her life To take the honorable work Of woman and of wife. If aught she missed in her new day Of amplitude, or awe, Or first prospective, or the gold In using wore away, It lay unmentioned, as the sea Develops pearl and weed, But only to himself is known The fathoms they abide. XVIII. APOTHEOSIS. Come slowly, Eden! Lips unused to thee, Bashful, sip thy jasmines, As the fainting bee, Reaching late his flower, Round her chamber hums, Counts his nectars -- enters, And is lost in balms! III. NATURE. I. New feet within my garden go, New fingers stir the sod; A troubadour upon the elm Betrays the solitude. New children play upon the green, New weary sleep below; And still the pensive spring returns, And still the punctual snow! II. MAY-FLOWER. Pink, small, and punctual, Aromatic, low, Covert in April, Candid in May, Dear to the moss, Known by the knoll, Next to the robin In every human soul. Bold little beauty, Bedecked with thee, Nature forswears Antiquity. III. WHY? The murmur of a bee A witchcraft yieldeth me. If any ask me why, 'T were easier to die Than tell. The red upon the hill Taketh away my will; If anybody sneer, Take care, for God is here, That's all. The breaking of the day Addeth to my degree; If any ask me how, Artist, who drew me so, Must tell! IV. Perhaps you'd like to buy a flower? But I could never sell. If you would like to borrow Until the daffodil Unties her yellow bonnet Beneath the village door, Until the bees, from clover rows Their hock and sherry draw, Why, I will lend until just then, But not an hour more! V. The pedigree of honey Does not concern the bee; A clover, any time, to him Is aristocracy. VI. A SERVICE OF SONG. Some keep the Sabbath going to church; I keep it staying at home, With a bobolink for a chorister, And an orchard for a dome. Some keep the Sabbath in surplice; I just wear my wings, And instead of tolling the bell for church, Our little sexton sings. God preaches, -- a noted clergyman, -- And the sermon is never long; So instead of getting to heaven at last, I'm going all along! VII. The bee is not afraid of me, I know the butterfly; The pretty people in the woods Receive me cordially. The brooks laugh louder when I come, The breezes madder play. Wherefore, mine eyes, thy silver mists? Wherefore, O summer's day? VIII. SUMMER'S ARMIES. Some rainbow coming from the fair! Some vision of the world Cashmere I confidently see! Or else a peacock's purple train, Feather by feather, on the plain Fritters itself away! The dreamy butterflies bestir, Lethargic pools resume the whir Of last year's sundered tune. From some old fortress on the sun Baronial bees march, one by one, In murmuring platoon! The robins stand as thick to-day As flakes of snow stood yesterday, On fence and roof and twig. The orchis binds her feather on For her old lover, Don the Sun, Revisiting the bog! Without commander, countless, still, The regiment of wood and hill In bright detachment stand. Behold! Whose multitudes are these? The children of whose turbaned seas, Or what Circassian land? IX. THE GRASS. The grass so little has to do, -- A sphere of simple green, With only butterflies to brood, And bees to entertain, And stir all day to pretty tunes The breezes fetch along, And hold the sunshine in its lap And bow to everything; And thread the dews all night, like pearls, And make itself so fine, -- A duchess were too common For such a noticing. And even when it dies, to pass In odors so divine, As lowly spices gone to sleep, Or amulets of pine. And then to dwell in sovereign barns, And dream the days away, -- The grass so little has to do, I wish I were the hay! X. A little road not made of man, Enabled of the eye, Accessible to thill of bee, Or cart of butterfly. If town it have, beyond itself, 'T is that I cannot say; I only sigh, -- no vehicle Bears me along that way. XI. SUMMER SHOWER. A drop fell on the apple tree, Another on the roof; A half a dozen kissed the eaves, And made the gables laugh. A few went out to help the brook, That went to help the sea. Myself conjectured, Were they pearls, What necklaces could be! The dust replaced in hoisted roads, The birds jocoser sung; The sunshine threw his hat away, The orchards spangles hung. The breezes brought dejected lutes, And bathed them in the glee; The East put out a single flag, And signed the fete away. XII. PSALM OF THE DAY. A something in a summer's day, As slow her flambeaux burn away, Which solemnizes me. A something in a summer's noon, -- An azure depth, a wordless tune, Transcending ecstasy. And still within a summer's night A something so transporting bright, I clap my hands to see; Then veil my too inspecting face, Lest such a subtle, shimmering grace Flutter too far for me. The wizard-fingers never rest, The purple brook within the breast Still chafes its narrow bed; Still rears the East her amber flag, Guides still the sun along the crag His caravan of red, Like flowers that heard the tale of dews, But never deemed the dripping prize Awaited their low brows; Or bees, that thought the summer's name Some rumor of delirium No summer could for them; Or Arctic creature, dimly stirred By tropic hint, -- some travelled bird Imported to the wood; Or wind's bright signal to the ear, Making that homely and severe, Contented, known, before The heaven unexpected came, To lives that thought their worshipping A too presumptuous psalm. XIII. THE SEA OF SUNSET. This is the land the sunset washes, These are the banks of the Yellow Sea; Where it rose, or whither it rushes, These are the western mystery! Night after night her purple traffic Strews the landing with opal bales; Merchantmen poise upon horizons, Dip, and vanish with fairy sails. XIV. PURPLE CLOVER. There is a flower that bees prefer, And butterflies desire; To gain the purple democrat The humming-birds aspire. And whatsoever insect pass, A honey bears away Proportioned to his several dearth And her capacity. Her face is rounder than the moon, And ruddier than the gown Of orchis in the pasture, Or rhododendron worn. She doth not wait for June; Before the world is green Her sturdy little countenance Against the wind is seen, Contending with the grass, Near kinsman to herself, For privilege of sod and sun, Sweet litigants for life. And when the hills are full, And newer fashions blow, Doth not retract a single spice For pang of jealousy. Her public is the noon, Her providence the sun, Her progress by the bee proclaimed In sovereign, swerveless tune. The bravest of the host, Surrendering the last, Nor even of defeat aware When cancelled by the frost. XV. THE BEE. Like trains of cars on tracks of plush I hear the level bee: A jar across the flowers goes, Their velvet masonry Withstands until the sweet assault Their chivalry consumes, While he, victorious, tilts away To vanquish other blooms. His feet are shod with gauze, His helmet is of gold; His breast, a single onyx With chrysoprase, inlaid. His labor is a chant, His idleness a tune; Oh, for a bee's experience Of clovers and of noon! XVI. Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn Indicative that suns go down; The notice to the startled grass That darkness is about to pass. XVII. As children bid the guest good-night, And then reluctant turn, My flowers raise their pretty lips, Then put their nightgowns on. As children caper when they wake, Merry that it is morn, My flowers from a hundred cribs Will peep, and prance again. XVIII. Angels in the early morning May be seen the dews among, Stooping, plucking, smiling, flying: Do the buds to them belong? Angels when the sun is hottest May be seen the sands among, Stooping, plucking, sighing, flying; Parched the flowers they bear along. XIX. So bashful when I spied her, So pretty, so ashamed! So hidden in her leaflets, Lest anybody find; So breathless till I passed her, So helpless when I turned And bore her, struggling, blushing, Her simple haunts beyond! For whom I robbed the dingle, For whom betrayed the dell, Many will doubtless ask me, But I shall never tell! XX. TWO WORLDS. It makes no difference abroad, The seasons fit the same, The mornings blossom into noons, And split their pods of flame. Wild-flowers kindle in the woods, The brooks brag all the day; No blackbird bates his jargoning For passing Calvary. Auto-da-fe and judgment Are nothing to the bee; His separation from his rose To him seems misery. XXI. THE MOUNTAIN. The mountain sat upon the plain In his eternal chair, His observation omnifold, His inquest everywhere. The seasons prayed around his knees, Like children round a sire: Grandfather of the days is he, Of dawn the ancestor. XXII. A DAY. I'll tell you how the sun rose, -- A ribbon at a time. The steeples swam in amethyst, The news like squirrels ran. The hills untied their bonnets, The bobolinks begun. Then I said softly to myself, "That must have been the sun!" * * * But how he set, I know not. There seemed a purple stile Which little yellow boys and girls Were climbing all the while Till when they reached the other side, A dominie in gray Put gently up the evening bars, And led the flock away. XXIII. The butterfly's assumption-gown, In chrysoprase apartments hung, This afternoon put on. How condescending to descend, And be of buttercups the friend In a New England town! XXIV. THE WIND. Of all the sounds despatched abroad, There's not a charge to me Like that old measure in the boughs, That phraseless melody The wind does, working like a hand Whose fingers brush the sky, Then quiver down, with tufts of tune Permitted gods and me. When winds go round and round in bands, And thrum upon the door, And birds take places overhead, To bear them orchestra, I crave him grace, of summer boughs, If such an outcast be, He never heard that fleshless chant Rise solemn in the tree, As if some caravan of sound On deserts, in the sky, Had broken rank, Then knit, and passed In seamless company. XXV. DEATH AND LIFE. Apparently with no surprise To any happy flower, The frost beheads it at its play In accidental power. The blond assassin passes on, The sun proceeds unmoved To measure off another day For an approving God. XXVI. 'T WAS later when the summer went Than when the cricket came, And yet we knew that gentle clock Meant nought but going home. 'T was sooner when the cricket went Than when the winter came, Yet that pathetic pendulum Keeps esoteric time. XXVII. INDIAN SUMMER. These are the days when birds come back, A very few, a bird or two, To take a backward look. These are the days when skies put on The old, old sophistries of June, -- A blue and gold mistake. Oh, fraud that cannot cheat the bee, Almost thy plausibility Induces my belief, Till ranks of seeds their witness bear, And softly through the altered air Hurries a timid leaf! Oh, sacrament of summer days, Oh, last communion in the haze, Permit a child to join, Thy sacred emblems to partake, Thy consecrated bread to break, Taste thine immortal wine! XXVIII. AUTUMN. The morns are meeker than they were, The nuts are getting brown; The berry's cheek is plumper, The rose is out of town. The maple wears a gayer scarf, The field a scarlet gown. Lest I should be old-fashioned, I'll put a trinket on. XXIX. BECLOUDED. The sky is low, the clouds are mean, A travelling flake of snow Across a barn or through a rut Debates if it will go. A narrow wind complains all day How some one treated him; Nature, like us, is sometimes caught Without her diadem. XXX. THE HEMLOCK. I think the hemlock likes to stand Upon a marge of snow; It suits his own austerity, And satisfies an awe That men must slake in wilderness, Or in the desert cloy, -- An instinct for the hoar, the bald, Lapland's necessity. The hemlock's nature thrives on cold; The gnash of northern winds Is sweetest nutriment to him, His best Norwegian wines. To satin races he is nought; But children on the Don Beneath his tabernacles play, And Dnieper wrestlers run. XXXI. There's a certain slant of light, On winter afternoons, That oppresses, like the weight Of cathedral tunes. Heavenly hurt it gives us; We can find no scar, But internal difference Where the meanings are. None may teach it anything, 'T is the seal, despair, -- An imperial affliction Sent us of the air. When it comes, the landscape listens, Shadows hold their breath; When it goes, 't is like the distance On the look of death. IV. TIME AND ETERNITY. I. One dignity delays for all, One mitred afternoon. None can avoid this purple, None evade this crown. Coach it insures, and footmen, Chamber and state and throng; Bells, also, in the village, As we ride grand along. What dignified attendants, What service when we pause! How loyally at parting Their hundred hats they raise! How pomp surpassing ermine, When simple you and I Present our meek escutcheon, And claim the rank to die! II. TOO LATE. Delayed till she had ceased to know, Delayed till in its vest of snow Her loving bosom lay. An hour behind the fleeting breath, Later by just an hour than death, -- Oh, lagging yesterday! Could she have guessed that it would be; Could but a crier of the glee Have climbed the distant hill; Had not the bliss so slow a pace, -- Who knows but this surrendered face Were undefeated still? Oh, if there may departing be Any forgot by victory In her imperial round, Show them this meek apparelled thing, That could not stop to be a king, Doubtful if it be crowned! III. ASTRA CASTRA. Departed to the judgment, A mighty afternoon; Great clouds like ushers leaning, Creation looking on. The flesh surrendered, cancelled, The bodiless begun; Two worlds, like audiences, disperse And leave the soul alone. IV. Safe in their alabaster chambers, Untouched by morning and untouched by noon, Sleep the meek members of the resurrection, Rafter of satin, and roof of stone. Light laughs the breeze in her castle of sunshine; Babbles the bee in a stolid ear; Pipe the sweet birds in ignorant cadence, -- Ah, what sagacity perished here! Grand go the years in the crescent above them; Worlds scoop their arcs, and firmaments row, Diadems drop and Doges surrender, Soundless as dots on a disk of snow. V. On this long storm the rainbow rose, On this late morn the sun; The clouds, like listless elephants, Horizons straggled down. The birds rose smiling in their nests, The gales indeed were done; Alas! how heedless were the eyes On whom the summer shone! The quiet nonchalance of death No daybreak can bestir; The slow archangel's syllables Must awaken her. VI. FROM THE CHRYSALIS. My cocoon tightens, colors tease, I'm feeling for the air; A dim capacity for wings Degrades the dress I wear. A power of butterfly must be The aptitude to fly, Meadows of majesty concedes And easy sweeps of sky. So I must baffle at the hint And cipher at the sign, And make much blunder, if at last I take the clew divine. VII. SETTING SAIL. Exultation is the going Of an inland soul to sea, -- Past the houses, past the headlands, Into deep eternity! Bred as we, among the mountains, Can the sailor understand The divine intoxication Of the first league out from land? VIII. Look back on time with kindly eyes, He doubtless did his best; How softly sinks his trembling sun In human nature's west! IX. A train went through a burial gate, A bird broke forth and sang, And trilled, and quivered, and shook his throat Till all the churchyard rang; And then adjusted his little notes, And bowed and sang again. Doubtless, he thought it meet of him To say good-by to men. X. I died for beauty, but was scarce Adjusted in the tomb, When one who died for truth was lain In an adjoining room. He questioned softly why I failed? "For beauty," I replied. "And I for truth, -- the two are one; We brethren are," he said. And so, as kinsmen met a night, We talked between the rooms, Until the moss had reached our lips, And covered up our names. XI. "TROUBLED ABOUT MANY THINGS." How many times these low feet staggered, Only the soldered mouth can tell; Try! can you stir the awful rivet? Try! can you lift the hasps of steel? Stroke the cool forehead, hot so often, Lift, if you can, the listless hair; Handle the adamantine fingers Never a thimble more shall wear. Buzz the dull flies on the chamber window; Brave shines the sun through the freckled pane; Fearless the cobweb swings from the ceiling -- Indolent housewife, in daisies lain! XII. REAL. I like a look of agony, Because I know it 's true; Men do not sham convulsion, Nor simulate a throe. The eyes glaze once, and that is death. Impossible to feign The beads upon the forehead By homely anguish strung. XIII. THE FUNERAL. That short, potential stir That each can make but once, That bustle so illustrious 'T is almost consequence, Is the eclat of death. Oh, thou unknown renown That not a beggar would accept, Had he the power to spurn! XIV. I went to thank her, But she slept; Her bed a funnelled stone, With nosegays at the head and foot, That travellers had thrown, Who went to thank her; But she slept. 'T was short to cross the sea To look upon her like, alive, But turning back 't was slow. XV. I've seen a dying eye Run round and round a room In search of something, as it seemed, Then cloudier become; And then, obscure with fog, And then be soldered down, Without disclosing what it be, 'T were blessed to have seen. XVI. REFUGE. The clouds their backs together laid, The north begun to push, The forests galloped till they fell, The lightning skipped like mice; The thunder crumbled like a stuff -- How good to be safe in tombs, Where nature's temper cannot reach, Nor vengeance ever comes! XVII. I never saw a moor, I never saw the sea; Yet know I how the heather looks, And what a wave must be. I never spoke with God, Nor visited in heaven; Yet certain am I of the spot As if the chart were given. XVIII. PLAYMATES. God permits industrious angels Afternoons to play. I met one, -- forgot my school-mates, All, for him, straightway. God calls home the angels promptly At the setting sun; I missed mine. How dreary marbles, After playing Crown! XIX. To know just how he suffered would be dear; To know if any human eyes were near To whom he could intrust his wavering gaze, Until it settled firm on Paradise. To know if he was patient, part content, Was dying as he thought, or different; Was it a pleasant day to die, And did the sunshine face his way? What was his furthest mind, of home, or God, Or what the distant say At news that he ceased human nature On such a day? And wishes, had he any? Just his sigh, accented, Had been legible to me. And was he confident until Ill fluttered out in everlasting well? And if he spoke, what name was best, What first, What one broke off with At the drowsiest? Was he afraid, or tranquil? Might he know How conscious consciousness could grow, Till love that was, and love too blest to be, Meet -- and the junction be Eternity? XX. The last night that she lived, It was a common night, Except the dying; this to us Made nature different. We noticed smallest things, -- Things overlooked before, By this great light upon our minds Italicized, as 't were. That others could exist While she must finish quite, A jealousy for her arose So nearly infinite. We waited while she passed; It was a narrow time, Too jostled were our souls to speak, At length the notice came. She mentioned, and forgot; Then lightly as a reed Bent to the water, shivered scarce, Consented, and was dead. And we, we placed the hair, And drew the head erect; And then an awful leisure was, Our faith to regulate. XXI. THE FIRST LESSON. Not in this world to see his face Sounds long, until I read the place Where this is said to be But just the primer to a life Unopened, rare, upon the shelf, Clasped yet to him and me. And yet, my primer suits me so I would not choose a book to know Than that, be sweeter wise; Might some one else so learned be, And leave me just my A B C, Himself could have the skies. XXII. The bustle in a house The morning after death Is solemnest of industries Enacted upon earth, -- The sweeping up the heart, And putting love away We shall not want to use again Until eternity. XXIII. I reason, earth is short, And anguish absolute, And many hurt; But what of that? I reason, we could die: The best vitality Cannot excel decay; But what of that? I reason that in heaven Somehow, it will be even, Some new equation given; But what of that? XXIV. Afraid? Of whom am I afraid? Not death; for who is he? The porter of my father's lodge As much abasheth me. Of life? 'T were odd I fear a thing That comprehendeth me In one or more existences At Deity's decree. Of resurrection? Is the east Afraid to trust the morn With her fastidious forehead? As soon impeach my crown! XXV. DYING. The sun kept setting, setting still; No hue of afternoon Upon the village I perceived, -- From house to house 't was noon. The dusk kept dropping, dropping still; No dew upon the grass, But only on my forehead stopped, And wandered in my face. My feet kept drowsing, drowsing still, My fingers were awake; Yet why so little sound myself Unto my seeming make? How well I knew the light before! I could not see it now. 'T is dying, I am doing; but I'm not afraid to know. XXVI. Two swimmers wrestled on the spar Until the morning sun, When one turned smiling to the land. O God, the other one! The stray ships passing spied a face Upon the waters borne, With eyes in death still begging raised, And hands beseeching thrown. XXVII. THE CHARIOT. Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality. We slowly drove, he knew no haste, And I had put away My labor, and my leisure too, For his civility. We passed the school where children played, Their lessons scarcely done; We passed the fields of gazing grain, We passed the setting sun. We paused before a house that seemed A swelling of the ground; The roof was scarcely visible, The cornice but a mound. Since then 't is centuries; but each Feels shorter than the day I first surmised the horses' heads Were toward eternity. XXVIII. She went as quiet as the dew From a familiar flower. Not like the dew did she return At the accustomed hour! She dropt as softly as a star From out my summer's eve; Less skilful than Leverrier It's sorer to believe! XXIX. RESURGAM. At last to be identified! At last, the lamps upon thy side, The rest of life to see! Past midnight, past the morning star! Past sunrise! Ah! what leagues there are Between our feet and day! XXX. Except to heaven, she is nought; Except for angels, lone; Except to some wide-wandering bee, A flower superfluous blown; Except for winds, provincial; Except by butterflies, Unnoticed as a single dew That on the acre lies. The smallest housewife in the grass, Yet take her from the lawn, And somebody has lost the face That made existence home! XXXI. Death is a dialogue between The spirit and the dust. "Dissolve," says Death. The Spirit, "Sir, I have another trust." Death doubts it, argues from the ground. The Spirit turns away, Just laying off, for evidence, An overcoat of clay. XXXII. It was too late for man, But early yet for God; Creation impotent to help, But prayer remained our side. How excellent the heaven, When earth cannot be had; How hospitable, then, the face Of our old neighbor, God! XXXIII. ALONG THE POTOMAC. When I was small, a woman died. To-day her only boy Went up from the Potomac, His face all victory, To look at her; how slowly The seasons must have turned Till bullets clipt an angle, And he passed quickly round! If pride shall be in Paradise I never can decide; Of their imperial conduct, No person testified. But proud in apparition, That woman and her boy Pass back and forth before my brain, As ever in the sky. XXXIV. The daisy follows soft the sun, And when his golden walk is done, Sits shyly at his feet. He, waking, finds the flower near. "Wherefore, marauder, art thou here?" "Because, sir, love is sweet!" We are the flower, Thou the sun! Forgive us, if as days decline, We nearer steal to Thee, -- Enamoured of the parting west, The peace, the flight, the amethyst, Night's possibility! XXXV. EMANCIPATION. No rack can torture me, My soul's at liberty Behind this mortal bone There knits a bolder one You cannot prick with saw, Nor rend with scymitar. Two bodies therefore be; Bind one, and one will flee. The eagle of his nest No easier divest And gain the sky, Than mayest thou, Except thyself may be Thine enemy; Captivity is consciousness, So's liberty. XXXVI. LOST. I lost a world the other day. Has anybody found? You'll know it by the row of stars Around its forehead bound. A rich man might not notice it; Yet to my frugal eye Of more esteem than ducats. Oh, find it, sir, for me! XXXVII. If I shouldn't be alive When the robins come, Give the one in red cravat A memorial crumb. If I couldn't thank you, Being just asleep, You will know I'm trying With my granite lip! XXXVIII. Sleep is supposed to be, By souls of sanity, The shutting of the eye. Sleep is the station grand Down which on either hand The hosts of witness stand! Morn is supposed to be, By people of degree, The breaking of the day. Morning has not occurred! That shall aurora be East of eternity; One with the banner gay, One in the red array, -- That is the break of day. XXXIX. I shall know why, when time is over, And I have ceased to wonder why; Christ will explain each separate anguish In the fair schoolroom of the sky. He will tell me what Peter promised, And I, for wonder at his woe, I shall forget the drop of anguish That scalds me now, that scalds me now. XL. I never lost as much but twice, And that was in the sod; Twice have I stood a beggar Before the door of God! Angels, twice descending, Reimbursed my store. Burglar, banker, father, I am poor once more! POEMS by EMILY DICKINSON Second Series Edited by two of her friends MABEL LOOMIS TODD and T.W. HIGGINSON PREFACE The eagerness with which the first volume of Emily Dickinson's poems has been read shows very clearly that all our alleged modern artificiality does not prevent a prompt appreciation of the qualities of directness and simplicity in approaching the greatest themes,--life and love and death. That "irresistible needle-touch," as one of her best critics has called it, piercing at once the very core of a thought, has found a response as wide and sympathetic as it has been unexpected even to those who knew best her compelling power. This second volume, while open to the same criticism as to form with its predecessor, shows also the same shining beauties. Although Emily Dickinson had been in the habit of sending occasional poems to friends and correspondents, the full extent of her writing was by no means imagined by them. Her friend "H.H." must at least have suspected it, for in a letter dated 5th September, 1884, she wrote:-- MY DEAR FRIEND,-- What portfolios full of verses you must have! It is a cruel wrong to your "day and generation" that you will not give them light. If such a thing should happen as that I should outlive you, I wish you would make me your literary legatee and executor. Surely after you are what is called "dead" you will be willing that the poor ghosts you have left behind should be cheered and pleased by your verses, will you not? You ought to be. I do not think we have a right to withhold from the world a word or a thought any more than a deed which might help a single soul. . . . Truly yours, HELEN JACKSON. The "portfolios" were found, shortly after Emily Dickinson's death, by her sister and only surviving housemate. Most of the poems had been carefully copied on sheets of note-paper, and tied in little fascicules, each of six or eight sheets. While many of them bear evidence of having been thrown off at white heat, still more had received thoughtful revision. There is the frequent addition of rather perplexing foot-notes, affording large choice of words and phrases. And in the copies which she sent to friends, sometimes one form, sometimes another, is found to have been used. Without important exception, her friends have generously placed at the disposal of the Editors any poems they had received from her; and these have given the obvious advantage of comparison among several renderings of the same verse. To what further rigorous pruning her verses would have been subjected had she published them herself, we cannot know. They should be regarded in many cases as merely the first strong and suggestive sketches of an artist, intended to be embodied at some time in the finished picture. Emily Dickinson appears to have written her first poems in the winter of 1862. In a letter to oone of the present Editors the April following, she says, "I made no verse, but one or two, until this winter." The handwriting was at first somewhat like the delicate, running Italian hand of our elder gentlewomen; but as she advanced in breadth of thought, it grew bolder and more abrupt, until in her latest years each letter stood distinct and separate from its fellows. In most of her poems, particularly the later ones, everything by way of punctuation was discarded, except numerous dashes; and all important words began with capitals. The effect of a page of her more recent manuscript is exceedingly quaint and strong. The fac-simile given in the present volume is from one of the earlier transition periods. Although there is nowhere a date, the handwriting makes it possible to arrange the poems with general chronologic accuracy. As a rule, the verses were without titles; but "A Country Burial," "A Thunder-Storm," "The Humming-Bird," and a few others were named by their author, frequently at the end,--sometimes only in the accompanying note, if sent to a friend. The variation of readings, with the fact that she often wrote in pencil and not always clearly, have at times thrown a good deal of responsibility upon her Editors. But all interference not absolutely inevitable has been avoided. The very roughness of her rendering is part of herself, and not lightly to be touched; for it seems in many cases that she intentionally avoided the smoother and more usual rhymes. Like impressionist pictures, or Wagner's rugged music, the very absence of conventional form challenges attention. In Emily Dickinson's exacting hands, the especial, intrinsic fitness of a particular order of words might not be sacrificed to anything virtually extrinsic; and her verses all show a strange cadence of inner rhythmical music. Lines are always daringly constructed, and the "thought-rhyme" appears frequently,--appealing, indeed, to an unrecognized sense more elusive than hearing. Emily Dickinson scrutinized everything with clear-eyed frankness. Every subject was proper ground for legitimate study, even the sombre facts of death and burial, and the unknown life beyond. She touches these themes sometimes lightly, sometimes almost humorously, more often with weird and peculiar power; but she is never by any chance frivolous or trivial. And while, as one critic has said, she may exhibit toward God "an Emersonian self-possession," it was because she looked upon all life with a candor as unprejudiced as it is rare. She had tried society and the world, and found them lacking. She was not an invalid, and she lived in seclusion from no love-disappointment. Her life was the normal blossoming of a nature introspective to a high degree, whose best thought could not exist in pretence. Storm, wind, the wild March sky, sunsets and dawns; the birds and bees, butterflies and flowers of her garden, with a few trusted human friends, were sufficient companionship. The coming of the first robin was a jubilee beyond crowning of monarch or birthday of pope; the first red leaf hurrying through "the altered air," an epoch. Immortality was close about her; and while never morbid or melancholy, she lived in its presence. MABEL LOOMIS TODD. AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS, August, I891. My nosegays are for captives; Dim, long-expectant eyes, Fingers denied the plucking, Patient till paradise, To such, if they should whisper Of morning and the moor, They bear no other errand, And I, no other prayer. I. LIFE. I. I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there 's a pair of us -- don't tell! They 'd banish us, you know. How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog To tell your name the livelong day To an admiring bog! II. I bring an unaccustomed wine To lips long parching, next to mine, And summon them to drink. Crackling with fever, they essay; I turn my brimming eyes away, And come next hour to look. The hands still hug the tardy glass; The lips I would have cooled, alas! Are so superfluous cold, I would as soon attempt to warm The bosoms where the frost has lain Ages beneath the mould. Some other thirsty there may be To whom this would have pointed me Had it remained to speak. And so I always bear the cup If, haply, mine may be the drop Some pilgrim thirst to slake, -- If, haply, any say to me, "Unto the little, unto me," When I at last awake. III. The nearest dream recedes, unrealized. The heaven we chase Like the June bee Before the school-boy Invites the race; Stoops to an easy clover -- Dips -- evades -- teases -- deploys; Then to the royal clouds Lifts his light pinnace Heedless of the boy Staring, bewildered, at the mocking sky. Homesick for steadfast honey, Ah! the bee flies not That brews that rare variety. IV. We play at paste, Till qualified for pearl, Then drop the paste, And deem ourself a fool. The shapes, though, were similar, And our new hands Learned gem-tactics Practising sands. V. I found the phrase to every thought I ever had, but one; And that defies me, -- as a hand Did try to chalk the sun To races nurtured in the dark; -- How would your own begin? Can blaze be done in cochineal, Or noon in mazarin? VI. HOPE. Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm. I 've heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me. VII. THE WHITE HEAT. Dare you see a soul at the white heat? Then crouch within the door. Red is the fire's common tint; But when the vivid ore Has sated flame's conditions, Its quivering substance plays Without a color but the light Of unanointed blaze. Least village boasts its blacksmith, Whose anvil's even din Stands symbol for the finer forge That soundless tugs within, Refining these impatient ores With hammer and with blaze, Until the designated light Repudiate the forge. VIII. TRIUMPHANT. Who never lost, are unprepared A coronet to find; Who never thirsted, flagons And cooling tamarind. Who never climbed the weary league -- Can such a foot explore The purple territories On Pizarro's shore? How many legions overcome? The emperor will say. How many colors taken On Revolution Day? How many bullets bearest? The royal scar hast thou? Angels, write "Promoted" On this soldier's brow! IX. THE TEST. I can wade grief, Whole pools of it, -- I 'm used to that. But the least push of joy Breaks up my feet, And I tip -- drunken. Let no pebble smile, 'T was the new liquor, -- That was all! Power is only pain, Stranded, through discipline, Till weights will hang. Give balm to giants, And they 'll wilt, like men. Give Himmaleh, -- They 'll carry him! X. ESCAPE. I never hear the word "escape" Without a quicker blood, A sudden expectation, A flying attitude. I never hear of prisons broad By soldiers battered down, But I tug childish at my bars, -- Only to fail again! XI. COMPENSATION. For each ecstatic instant We must an anguish pay In keen and quivering ratio To the ecstasy. For each beloved hour Sharp pittances of years, Bitter contested farthings And coffers heaped with tears. XII. THE MARTYRS. Through the straight pass of suffering The martyrs even trod, Their feet upon temptation, Their faces upon God. A stately, shriven company; Convulsion playing round, Harmless as streaks of meteor Upon a planet's bound. Their faith the everlasting troth; Their expectation fair; The needle to the north degree Wades so, through polar air. XIII. A PRAYER. I meant to have but modest needs, Such as content, and heaven; Within my income these could lie, And life and I keep even. But since the last included both, It would suffice my prayer But just for one to stipulate, And grace would grant the pair. And so, upon this wise I prayed, -- Great Spirit, give to me A heaven not so large as yours, But large enough for me. A smile suffused Jehovah's face; The cherubim withdrew; Grave saints stole out to look at me, And showed their dimples, too. I left the place with all my might, -- My prayer away I threw; The quiet ages picked it up, And Judgment twinkled, too, That one so honest be extant As take the tale for true That "Whatsoever you shall ask, Itself be given you." But I, grown shrewder, scan the skies With a suspicious air, -- As children, swindled for the first, All swindlers be, infer. XIV. The thought beneath so slight a film Is more distinctly seen, -- As laces just reveal the surge, Or mists the Apennine. XV. The soul unto itself Is an imperial friend, -- Or the most agonizing spy An enemy could send. Secure against its own, No treason it can fear; Itself its sovereign, of itself The soul should stand in awe. XVI. Surgeons must be very careful When they take the knife! Underneath their fine incisions Stirs the culprit, -- Life! XVII. THE RAILWAY TRAIN. I like to see it lap the miles, And lick the valleys up, And stop to feed itself at tanks; And then, prodigious, step Around a pile of mountains, And, supercilious, peer In shanties by the sides of roads; And then a quarry pare To fit its sides, and crawl between, Complaining all the while In horrid, hooting stanza; Then chase itself down hill And neigh like Boanerges; Then, punctual as a star, Stop -- docile and omnipotent -- At its own stable door. XVIII. THE SHOW. The show is not the show, But they that go. Menagerie to me My neighbor be. Fair play -- Both went to see. XIX. Delight becomes pictorial When viewed through pain, -- More fair, because impossible That any gain. The mountain at a given distance In amber lies; Approached, the amber flits a little, -- And that 's the skies! XX. A thought went up my mind to-day That I have had before, But did not finish, -- some way back, I could not fix the year, Nor where it went, nor why it came The second time to me, Nor definitely what it was, Have I the art to say. But somewhere in my soul, I know I 've met the thing before; It just reminded me -- 't was all -- And came my way no more. XXI. Is Heaven a physician? They say that He can heal, But medicine posthumous Is unavailable. Is Heaven an exchequer? They speak of what we owe; But that negotiation I 'm not a party to. XXII. THE RETURN. Though I get home how late, how late! So I get home, 't will compensate. Better will be the ecstasy That they have done expecting me, When, night descending, dumb and dark, They hear my unexpected knock. Transporting must the moment be, Brewed from decades of agony! To think just how the fire will burn, Just how long-cheated eyes will turn To wonder what myself will say, And what itself will say to me, Beguiles the centuries of way! XXIII. A poor torn heart, a tattered heart, That sat it down to rest, Nor noticed that the ebbing day Flowed silver to the west, Nor noticed night did soft descend Nor constellation burn, Intent upon the vision Of latitudes unknown. The angels, happening that way, This dusty heart espied; Tenderly took it up from toil And carried it to God. There, -- sandals for the barefoot; There, -- gathered from the gales, Do the blue havens by the hand Lead the wandering sails. XXIV. TOO MUCH. I should have been too glad, I see, Too lifted for the scant degree Of life's penurious round; My little circuit would have shamed This new circumference, have blamed The homelier time behind. I should have been too saved, I see, Too rescued; fear too dim to me That I could spell the prayer I knew so perfect yesterday, -- That scalding one, "Sabachthani," Recited fluent here. Earth would have been too much, I see, And heaven not enough for me; I should have had the joy Without the fear to justify, -- The palm without the Calvary; So, Saviour, crucify. Defeat whets victory, they say; The reefs in old Gethsemane Endear the shore beyond. 'T is beggars banquets best define; 'T is thirsting vitalizes wine, -- Faith faints to understand. XXV. SHIPWRECK. It tossed and tossed, -- A little brig I knew, -- O'ertook by blast, It spun and spun, And groped delirious, for morn. It slipped and slipped, As one that drunken stepped; Its white foot tripped, Then dropped from sight. Ah, brig, good-night To crew and you; The ocean's heart too smooth, too blue, To break for you. XXVI. Victory comes late, And is held low to freezing lips Too rapt with frost To take it. How sweet it would have tasted, Just a drop! Was God so economical? His table 's spread too high for us Unless we dine on tip-toe. Crumbs fit such little mouths, Cherries suit robins; The eagle's golden breakfast Strangles them. God keeps his oath to sparrows, Who of little love Know how to starve! XXVII. ENOUGH. God gave a loaf to every bird, But just a crumb to me; I dare not eat it, though I starve, -- My poignant luxury To own it, touch it, prove the feat That made the pellet mine, -- Too happy in my sparrow chance For ampler coveting. It might be famine all around, I could not miss an ear, Such plenty smiles upon my board, My garner shows so fair. I wonder how the rich may feel, -- An Indiaman -- an Earl? I deem that I with but a crumb Am sovereign of them all. XXVIII. Experiment to me Is every one I meet. If it contain a kernel? The figure of a nut Presents upon a tree, Equally plausibly; But meat within is requisite, To squirrels and to me. XXIX. MY COUNTRY'S WARDROBE. My country need not change her gown, Her triple suit as sweet As when 't was cut at Lexington, And first pronounced "a fit." Great Britain disapproves "the stars;" Disparagement discreet, -- There 's something in their attitude That taunts her bayonet. XXX. Faith is a fine invention For gentlemen who see; But microscopes are prudent In an emergency! XXXI. Except the heaven had come so near, So seemed to choose my door, The distance would not haunt me so; I had not hoped before. But just to hear the grace depart I never thought to see, Afflicts me with a double loss; 'T is lost, and lost to me. XXXII. Portraits are to daily faces As an evening west To a fine, pedantic sunshine In a satin vest. XXXIII. THE DUEL. I took my power in my hand. And went against the world; 'T was not so much as David had, But I was twice as bold. I aimed my pebble, but myself Was all the one that fell. Was it Goliath was too large, Or only I too small? XXXIV. A shady friend for torrid days Is easier to find Than one of higher temperature For frigid hour of mind. The vane a little to the east Scares muslin souls away; If broadcloth breasts are firmer Than those of organdy, Who is to blame? The weaver? Ah! the bewildering thread! The tapestries of paradise So notelessly are made! XXXV. THE GOAL. Each life converges to some centre Expressed or still; Exists in every human nature A goal, Admitted scarcely to itself, it may be, Too fair For credibility's temerity To dare. Adored with caution, as a brittle heaven, To reach Were hopeless as the rainbow's raiment To touch, Yet persevered toward, surer for the distance; How high Unto the saints' slow diligence The sky! Ungained, it may be, by a life's low venture, But then, Eternity enables the endeavoring Again. XXXVI. SIGHT. Before I got my eye put out, I liked as well to see As other creatures that have eyes, And know no other way. But were it told to me, to-day, That I might have the sky For mine, I tell you that my heart Would split, for size of me. The meadows mine, the mountains mine, -- All forests, stintless stars, As much of noon as I could take Between my finite eyes. The motions of the dipping birds, The lightning's jointed road, For mine to look at when I liked, -- The news would strike me dead! So safer, guess, with just my soul Upon the window-pane Where other creatures put their eyes, Incautious of the sun. XXXVII. Talk with prudence to a beggar Of 'Potosi' and the mines! Reverently to the hungry Of your viands and your wines! Cautious, hint to any captive You have passed enfranchised feet! Anecdotes of air in dungeons Have sometimes proved deadly sweet! XXXVIII. THE PREACHER. He preached upon "breadth" till it argued him narrow, -- The broad are too broad to define; And of "truth" until it proclaimed him a liar, -- The truth never flaunted a sign. Simplicity fled from his counterfeit presence As gold the pyrites would shun. What confusion would cover the innocent Jesus To meet so enabled a man! XXXIX. Good night! which put the candle out? A jealous zephyr, not a doubt. Ah! friend, you little knew How long at that celestial wick The angels labored diligent; Extinguished, now, for you! It might have been the lighthouse spark Some sailor, rowing in the dark, Had importuned to see! It might have been the waning lamp That lit the drummer from the camp To purer reveille! XL. When I hoped I feared, Since I hoped I dared; Everywhere alone As a church remain; Spectre cannot harm, Serpent cannot charm; He deposes doom, Who hath suffered him. XLI. DEED. A deed knocks first at thought, And then it knocks at will. That is the manufacturing spot, And will at home and well. It then goes out an act, Or is entombed so still That only to the ear of God Its doom is audible. XLII. TIME'S LESSON. Mine enemy is growing old, -- I have at last revenge. The palate of the hate departs; If any would avenge, -- Let him be quick, the viand flits, It is a faded meat. Anger as soon as fed is dead; 'T is starving makes it fat. XLIII. REMORSE. Remorse is memory awake, Her companies astir, -- A presence of departed acts At window and at door. It's past set down before the soul, And lighted with a match, Perusal to facilitate Of its condensed despatch. Remorse is cureless, -- the disease Not even God can heal; For 't is his institution, -- The complement of hell. XLIV. THE SHELTER. The body grows outside, -- The more convenient way, -- That if the spirit like to hide, Its temple stands alway Ajar, secure, inviting; It never did betray The soul that asked its shelter In timid honesty. XLV. Undue significance a starving man attaches To food Far off; he sighs, and therefore hopeless, And therefore good. Partaken, it relieves indeed, but proves us That spices fly In the receipt. It was the distance Was savory. XLVI. Heart not so heavy as mine, Wending late home, As it passed my window Whistled itself a tune, -- A careless snatch, a ballad, A ditty of the street; Yet to my irritated ear An anodyne so sweet, It was as if a bobolink, Sauntering this way, Carolled and mused and carolled, Then bubbled slow away. It was as if a chirping brook Upon a toilsome way Set bleeding feet to minuets Without the knowing why. To-morrow, night will come again, Weary, perhaps, and sore. Ah, bugle, by my window, I pray you stroll once more! XLVII. I many times thought peace had come, When peace was far away; As wrecked men deem they sight the land At centre of the sea, And struggle slacker, but to prove, As hopelessly as I, How many the fictitious shores Before the harbor lie. XLVIII. Unto my books so good to turn Far ends of tired days; It half endears the abstinence, And pain is missed in praise. As flavors cheer retarded guests With banquetings to be, So spices stimulate the time Till my small library. It may be wilderness without, Far feet of failing men, But holiday excludes the night, And it is bells within. I thank these kinsmen of the shelf; Their countenances bland Enamour in prospective, And satisfy, obtained. XLIX. This merit hath the worst, -- It cannot be again. When Fate hath taunted last And thrown her furthest stone, The maimed may pause and breathe, And glance securely round. The deer invites no longer Than it eludes the hound. L. HUNGER. I had been hungry all the years; My noon had come, to dine; I, trembling, drew the table near, And touched the curious wine. 'T was this on tables I had seen, When turning, hungry, lone, I looked in windows, for the wealth I could not hope to own. I did not know the ample bread, 'T was so unlike the crumb The birds and I had often shared In Nature's dining-room. The plenty hurt me, 't was so new, -- Myself felt ill and odd, As berry of a mountain bush Transplanted to the road. Nor was I hungry; so I found That hunger was a way Of persons outside windows, The entering takes away. LI. I gained it so, By climbing slow, By catching at the twigs that grow Between the bliss and me. It hung so high, As well the sky Attempt by strategy. I said I gained it, -- This was all. Look, how I clutch it, Lest it fall, And I a pauper go; Unfitted by an instant's grace For the contented beggar's face I wore an hour ago. LII. To learn the transport by the pain, As blind men learn the sun; To die of thirst, suspecting That brooks in meadows run; To stay the homesick, homesick feet Upon a foreign shore Haunted by native lands, the while, And blue, beloved air -- This is the sovereign anguish, This, the signal woe! These are the patient laureates Whose voices, trained below, Ascend in ceaseless carol, Inaudible, indeed, To us, the duller scholars Of the mysterious bard! LIII. RETURNING. I years had been from home, And now, before the door, I dared not open, lest a face I never saw before Stare vacant into mine And ask my business there. My business, -- just a life I left, Was such still dwelling there? I fumbled at my nerve, I scanned the windows near; The silence like an ocean rolled, And broke against my ear. I laughed a wooden laugh That I could fear a door, Who danger and the dead had faced, But never quaked before. I fitted to the latch My hand, with trembling care, Lest back the awful door should spring, And leave me standing there. I moved my fingers off As cautiously as glass, And held my ears, and like a thief Fled gasping from the house. LIV. PRAYER. Prayer is the little implement Through which men reach Where presence is denied them. They fling their speech By means of it in God's ear; If then He hear, This sums the apparatus Comprised in prayer. LV. I know that he exists Somewhere, in silence. He has hid his rare life From our gross eyes. 'T is an instant's play, 'T is a fond ambush, Just to make bliss Earn her own surprise! But should the play Prove piercing earnest, Should the glee glaze In death's stiff stare, Would not the fun Look too expensive? Would not the jest Have crawled too far? LVI. MELODIES UNHEARD. Musicians wrestle everywhere: All day, among the crowded air, I hear the silver strife; And -- waking long before the dawn -- Such transport breaks upon the town I think it that "new life!" It is not bird, it has no nest; Nor band, in brass and scarlet dressed, Nor tambourine, nor man; It is not hymn from pulpit read, -- The morning stars the treble led On time's first afternoon! Some say it is the spheres at play! Some say that bright majority Of vanished dames and men! Some think it service in the place Where we, with late, celestial face, Please God, shall ascertain! LVII. CALLED BACK. Just lost when I was saved! Just felt the world go by! Just girt me for the onset with eternity, When breath blew back, And on the other side I heard recede the disappointed tide! Therefore, as one returned, I feel, Odd secrets of the line to tell! Some sailor, skirting foreign shores, Some pale reporter from the awful doors Before the seal! Next time, to stay! Next time, the things to see By ear unheard, Unscrutinized by eye. Next time, to tarry, While the ages steal, -- Slow tramp the centuries, And the cycles wheel. II. LOVE. I. CHOICE. Of all the souls that stand create I have elected one. When sense from spirit files away, And subterfuge is done; When that which is and that which was Apart, intrinsic, stand, And this brief tragedy of flesh Is shifted like a sand; When figures show their royal front And mists are carved away, -- Behold the atom I preferred To all the lists of clay! II. I have no life but this, To lead it here; Nor any death, but lest Dispelled from there; Nor tie to earths to come, Nor action new, Except through this extent, The realm of you. III. Your riches taught me poverty. Myself a millionnaire In little wealths, -- as girls could boast, -- Till broad as Buenos Ayre, You drifted your dominions A different Peru; And I esteemed all poverty, For life's estate with you. Of mines I little know, myself, But just the names of gems, -- The colors of the commonest; And scarce of diadems So much that, did I meet the queen, Her glory I should know: But this must be a different wealth, To miss it beggars so. I 'm sure 't is India all day To those who look on you Without a stint, without a blame, -- Might I but be the Jew! I 'm sure it is Golconda, Beyond my power to deem, -- To have a smile for mine each day, How better than a gem! At least, it solaces to know That there exists a gold, Although I prove it just in time Its distance to behold! It 's far, far treasure to surmise, And estimate the pearl That slipped my simple fingers through While just a girl at school! IV. THE CONTRACT. I gave myself to him, And took himself for pay. The solemn contract of a life Was ratified this way. The wealth might disappoint, Myself a poorer prove Than this great purchaser suspect, The daily own of Love Depreciate the vision; But, till the merchant buy, Still fable, in the isles of spice, The subtle cargoes lie. At least, 't is mutual risk, -- Some found it mutual gain; Sweet debt of Life, -- each night to owe, Insolvent, every noon. V. THE LETTER. "GOING to him! Happy letter! Tell him -- Tell him the page I didn't write; Tell him I only said the syntax, And left the verb and the pronoun out. Tell him just how the fingers hurried, Then how they waded, slow, slow, slow; And then you wished you had eyes in your pages, So you could see what moved them so. "Tell him it wasn't a practised writer, You guessed, from the way the sentence toiled; You could hear the bodice tug, behind you, As if it held but the might of a child; You almost pitied it, you, it worked so. Tell him -- No, you may quibble there, For it would split his heart to know it, And then you and I were silenter. "Tell him night finished before we finished, And the old clock kept neighing 'day!' And you got sleepy and begged to be ended -- What could it hinder so, to say? Tell him just how she sealed you, cautious, But if he ask where you are hid Until to-morrow, -- happy letter! Gesture, coquette, and shake your head!" VI. The way I read a letter 's this: 'T is first I lock the door, And push it with my fingers next, For transport it be sure. And then I go the furthest off To counteract a knock; Then draw my little letter forth And softly pick its lock. Then, glancing narrow at the wall, And narrow at the floor, For firm conviction of a mouse Not exorcised before, Peruse how infinite I am To -- no one that you know! And sigh for lack of heaven, -- but not The heaven the creeds bestow. VII. Wild nights! Wild nights! Were I with thee, Wild nights should be Our luxury! Futile the winds To a heart in port, -- Done with the compass, Done with the chart. Rowing in Eden! Ah! the sea! Might I but moor To-night in thee! VIII. AT HOME. The night was wide, and furnished scant With but a single star, That often as a cloud it met Blew out itself for fear. The wind pursued the little bush, And drove away the leaves November left; then clambered up And fretted in the eaves. No squirrel went abroad; A dog's belated feet Like intermittent plush were heard Adown the empty street. To feel if blinds be fast, And closer to the fire Her little rocking-chair to draw, And shiver for the poor, The housewife's gentle task. "How pleasanter," said she Unto the sofa opposite, "The sleet than May -- no thee!" IX. POSSESSION. Did the harebell loose her girdle To the lover bee, Would the bee the harebell hallow Much as formerly? Did the paradise, persuaded, Yield her moat of pearl, Would the Eden be an Eden, Or the earl an earl? X. A charm invests a face Imperfectly beheld, -- The lady dare not lift her veil For fear it be dispelled. But peers beyond her mesh, And wishes, and denies, -- Lest interview annul a want That image satisfies. XI. THE LOVERS. The rose did caper on her cheek, Her bodice rose and fell, Her pretty speech, like drunken men, Did stagger pitiful. Her fingers fumbled at her work, -- Her needle would not go; What ailed so smart a little maid It puzzled me to know, Till opposite I spied a cheek That bore another rose; Just opposite, another speech That like the drunkard goes; A vest that, like the bodice, danced To the immortal tune, -- Till those two troubled little clocks Ticked softly into one. XII. In lands I never saw, they say, Immortal Alps look down, Whose bonnets touch the firmament, Whose sandals touch the town, -- Meek at whose everlasting feet A myriad daisies play. Which, sir, are you, and which am I, Upon an August day? XIII. The moon is distant from the sea, And yet with amber hands She leads him, docile as a boy, Along appointed sands. He never misses a degree; Obedient to her eye, He comes just so far toward the town, Just so far goes away. Oh, Signor, thine the amber hand, And mine the distant sea, -- Obedient to the least command Thine eyes impose on me. XIV. He put the belt around my life, -- I heard the buckle snap, And turned away, imperial, My lifetime folding up Deliberate, as a duke would do A kingdom's title-deed, -- Henceforth a dedicated sort, A member of the cloud. Yet not too far to come at call, And do the little toils That make the circuit of the rest, And deal occasional smiles To lives that stoop to notice mine And kindly ask it in, -- Whose invitation, knew you not For whom I must decline? XV. THE LOST JEWEL. I held a jewel in my fingers And went to sleep. The day was warm, and winds were prosy; I said: "'T will keep." I woke and chid my honest fingers, -- The gem was gone; And now an amethyst remembrance Is all I own. XVI. What if I say I shall not wait? What if I burst the fleshly gate And pass, escaped, to thee? What if I file this mortal off, See where it hurt me, -- that 's enough, -- And wade in liberty? They cannot take us any more, -- Dungeons may call, and guns implore; Unmeaning now, to me, As laughter was an hour ago, Or laces, or a travelling show, Or who died yesterday! III. NATURE. I. MOTHER NATURE. Nature, the gentlest mother, Impatient of no child, The feeblest or the waywardest, -- Her admonition mild In forest and the hill By traveller is heard, Restraining rampant squirrel Or too impetuous bird. How fair her conversation, A summer afternoon, -- Her household, her assembly; And when the sun goes down Her voice among the aisles Incites the timid prayer Of the minutest cricket, The most unworthy flower. When all the children sleep She turns as long away As will suffice to light her lamps; Then, bending from the sky With infinite affection And infiniter care, Her golden finger on her lip, Wills silence everywhere. II. OUT OF THE MORNING. Will there really be a morning? Is there such a thing as day? Could I see it from the mountains If I were as tall as they? Has it feet like water-lilies? Has it feathers like a bird? Is it brought from famous countries Of which I have never heard? Oh, some scholar! Oh, some sailor! Oh, some wise man from the skies! Please to tell a little pilgrim Where the place called morning lies! III. At half-past three a single bird Unto a silent sky Propounded but a single term Of cautious melody. At half-past four, experiment Had subjugated test, And lo! her silver principle Supplanted all the rest. At half-past seven, element Nor implement was seen, And place was where the presence was, Circumference between. IV. DAY'S PARLOR. The day came slow, till five o'clock, Then sprang before the hills Like hindered rubies, or the light A sudden musket spills. The purple could not keep the east, The sunrise shook from fold, Like breadths of topaz, packed a night, The lady just unrolled. The happy winds their timbrels took; The birds, in docile rows, Arranged themselves around their prince (The wind is prince of those). The orchard sparkled like a Jew, -- How mighty 't was, to stay A guest in this stupendous place, The parlor of the day! V. THE SUN'S WOOING. The sun just touched the morning; The morning, happy thing, Supposed that he had come to dwell, And life would be all spring. She felt herself supremer, -- A raised, ethereal thing; Henceforth for her what holiday! Meanwhile, her wheeling king Trailed slow along the orchards His haughty, spangled hems, Leaving a new necessity, -- The want of diadems! The morning fluttered, staggered, Felt feebly for her crown, -- Her unanointed forehead Henceforth her only one. VI. THE ROBIN. The robin is the one That interrupts the morn With hurried, few, express reports When March is scarcely on. The robin is the one That overflows the noon With her cherubic quantity, An April but begun. The robin is the one That speechless from her nest Submits that home and certainty And sanctity are best. VII. THE BUTTERFLY'S DAY. From cocoon forth a butterfly As lady from her door Emerged -- a summer afternoon -- Repairing everywhere, Without design, that I could trace, Except to stray abroad On miscellaneous enterprise The clovers understood. Her pretty parasol was seen Contracting in a field Where men made hay, then struggling hard With an opposing cloud, Where parties, phantom as herself, To Nowhere seemed to go In purposeless circumference, As 't were a tropic show. And notwithstanding bee that worked, And flower that zealous blew, This audience of idleness Disdained them, from the sky, Till sundown crept, a steady tide, And men that made the hay, And afternoon, and butterfly, Extinguished in its sea. VIII. THE BLUEBIRD. Before you thought of spring, Except as a surmise, You see, God bless his suddenness, A fellow in the skies Of independent hues, A little weather-worn, Inspiriting habiliments Of indigo and brown. With specimens of song, As if for you to choose, Discretion in the interval, With gay delays he goes To some superior tree Without a single leaf, And shouts for joy to nobody But his seraphic self! IX. APRIL. An altered look about the hills; A Tyrian light the village fills; A wider sunrise in the dawn; A deeper twilight on the lawn; A print of a vermilion foot; A purple finger on the slope; A flippant fly upon the pane; A spider at his trade again; An added strut in chanticleer; A flower expected everywhere; An axe shrill singing in the woods; Fern-odors on untravelled roads, -- All this, and more I cannot tell, A furtive look you know as well, And Nicodemus' mystery Receives its annual reply. X. THE SLEEPING FLOWERS. "Whose are the little beds," I asked, "Which in the valleys lie?" Some shook their heads, and others smiled, And no one made reply. "Perhaps they did not hear," I said; "I will inquire again. Whose are the beds, the tiny beds So thick upon the plain?" "'T is daisy in the shortest; A little farther on, Nearest the door to wake the first, Little leontodon. "'T is iris, sir, and aster, Anemone and bell, Batschia in the blanket red, And chubby daffodil." Meanwhile at many cradles Her busy foot she plied, Humming the quaintest lullaby That ever rocked a child. "Hush! Epigea wakens! -- The crocus stirs her lids, Rhodora's cheek is crimson, -- She's dreaming of the woods." Then, turning from them, reverent, "Their bed-time 't is," she said; "The bumble-bees will wake them When April woods are red." XI. MY ROSE. Pigmy seraphs gone astray, Velvet people from Vevay, Belles from some lost summer day, Bees' exclusive coterie. Paris could not lay the fold Belted down with emerald; Venice could not show a cheek Of a tint so lustrous meek. Never such an ambuscade As of brier and leaf displayed For my little damask maid. I had rather wear her grace Than an earl's distinguished face; I had rather dwell like her Than be Duke of Exeter Royalty enough for me To subdue the bumble-bee! XII. THE ORIOLE'S SECRET. To hear an oriole sing May be a common thing, Or only a divine. It is not of the bird Who sings the same, unheard, As unto crowd. The fashion of the ear Attireth that it hear In dun or fair. So whether it be rune, Or whether it be none, Is of within; The "tune is in the tree," The sceptic showeth me; "No, sir! In thee!" XIII. THE ORIOLE. One of the ones that Midas touched, Who failed to touch us all, Was that confiding prodigal, The blissful oriole. So drunk, he disavows it With badinage divine; So dazzling, we mistake him For an alighting mine. A pleader, a dissembler, An epicure, a thief, -- Betimes an oratorio, An ecstasy in chief; The Jesuit of orchards, He cheats as he enchants Of an entire attar For his decamping wants. The splendor of a Burmah, The meteor of birds, Departing like a pageant Of ballads and of bards. I never thought that Jason sought For any golden fleece; But then I am a rural man, With thoughts that make for peace. But if there were a Jason, Tradition suffer me Behold his lost emolument Upon the apple-tree. XIV. IN SHADOW. I dreaded that first robin so, But he is mastered now, And I 'm accustomed to him grown, -- He hurts a little, though. I thought if I could only live Till that first shout got by, Not all pianos in the woods Had power to mangle me. I dared not meet the daffodils, For fear their yellow gown Would pierce me with a fashion So foreign to my own. I wished the grass would hurry, So when 't was time to see, He 'd be too tall, the tallest one Could stretch to look at me. I could not bear the bees should come, I wished they 'd stay away In those dim countries where they go: What word had they for me? They 're here, though; not a creature failed, No blossom stayed away In gentle deference to me, The Queen of Calvary. Each one salutes me as he goes, And I my childish plumes Lift, in bereaved acknowledgment Of their unthinking drums. XV. THE HUMMING-BIRD. A route of evanescence With a revolving wheel; A resonance of emerald, A rush of cochineal; And every blossom on the bush Adjusts its tumbled head, -- The mail from Tunis, probably, An easy morning's ride. XVI. SECRETS. The skies can't keep their secret! They tell it to the hills -- The hills just tell the orchards -- And they the daffodils! A bird, by chance, that goes that way Soft overheard the whole. If I should bribe the little bird, Who knows but she would tell? I think I won't, however, It's finer not to know; If summer were an axiom, What sorcery had snow? So keep your secret, Father! I would not, if I could, Know what the sapphire fellows do, In your new-fashioned world! XVII. Who robbed the woods, The trusting woods? The unsuspecting trees Brought out their burrs and mosses His fantasy to please. He scanned their trinkets, curious, He grasped, he bore away. What will the solemn hemlock, What will the fir-tree say? XVIII. TWO VOYAGERS. Two butterflies went out at noon And waltzed above a stream, Then stepped straight through the firmament And rested on a beam; And then together bore away Upon a shining sea, -- Though never yet, in any port, Their coming mentioned be. If spoken by the distant bird, If met in ether sea By frigate or by merchantman, Report was not to me. XIX. BY THE SEA. I started early, took my dog, And visited the sea; The mermaids in the basement Came out to look at me, And frigates in the upper floor Extended hempen hands, Presuming me to be a mouse Aground, upon the sands. But no man moved me till the tide Went past my simple shoe, And past my apron and my belt, And past my bodice too, And made as he would eat me up As wholly as a dew Upon a dandelion's sleeve -- And then I started too. And he -- he followed close behind; I felt his silver heel Upon my ankle, -- then my shoes Would overflow with pearl. Until we met the solid town, No man he seemed to know; And bowing with a mighty look At me, the sea withdrew. XX. OLD-FASHIONED. Arcturus is his other name, -- I'd rather call him star! It's so unkind of science To go and interfere! I pull a flower from the woods, -- A monster with a glass Computes the stamens in a breath, And has her in a class. Whereas I took the butterfly Aforetime in my hat, He sits erect in cabinets, The clover-bells forgot. What once was heaven, is zenith now. Where I proposed to go When time's brief masquerade was done, Is mapped, and charted too! What if the poles should frisk about And stand upon their heads! I hope I 'm ready for the worst, Whatever prank betides! Perhaps the kingdom of Heaven 's changed! I hope the children there Won't be new-fashioned when I come, And laugh at me, and stare! I hope the father in the skies Will lift his little girl, -- Old-fashioned, naughty, everything, -- Over the stile of pearl! XXI. A TEMPEST. An awful tempest mashed the air, The clouds were gaunt and few; A black, as of a spectre's cloak, Hid heaven and earth from view. The creatures chuckled on the roofs And whistled in the air, And shook their fists and gnashed their teeth. And swung their frenzied hair. The morning lit, the birds arose; The monster's faded eyes Turned slowly to his native coast, And peace was Paradise! XXII. THE SEA. An everywhere of silver, With ropes of sand To keep it from effacing The track called land. XXIII. IN THE GARDEN. A bird came down the walk: He did not know I saw; He bit an angle-worm in halves And ate the fellow, raw. And then he drank a dew From a convenient grass, And then hopped sidewise to the wall To let a beetle pass. He glanced with rapid eyes That hurried all abroad, -- They looked like frightened beads, I thought; He stirred his velvet head Like one in danger; cautious, I offered him a crumb, And he unrolled his feathers And rowed him softer home Than oars divide the ocean, Too silver for a seam, Or butterflies, off banks of noon, Leap, splashless, as they swim. XXIV. THE SNAKE. A narrow fellow in the grass Occasionally rides; You may have met him, -- did you not, His notice sudden is. The grass divides as with a comb, A spotted shaft is seen; And then it closes at your feet And opens further on. He likes a boggy acre, A floor too cool for corn. Yet when a child, and barefoot, I more than once, at morn, Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash Unbraiding in the sun, -- When, stooping to secure it, It wrinkled, and was gone. Several of nature's people I know, and they know me; I feel for them a transport Of cordiality; But never met this fellow, Attended or alone, Without a tighter breathing, And zero at the bone. XXV. THE MUSHROOM. The mushroom is the elf of plants, At evening it is not; At morning in a truffled hut It stops upon a spot As if it tarried always; And yet its whole career Is shorter than a snake's delay, And fleeter than a tare. 'T is vegetation's juggler, The germ of alibi; Doth like a bubble antedate, And like a bubble hie. I feel as if the grass were pleased To have it intermit; The surreptitious scion Of summer's circumspect. Had nature any outcast face, Could she a son contemn, Had nature an Iscariot, That mushroom, -- it is him. XXVI. THE STORM. There came a wind like a bugle; It quivered through the grass, And a green chill upon the heat So ominous did pass We barred the windows and the doors As from an emerald ghost; The doom's electric moccason That very instant passed. On a strange mob of panting trees, And fences fled away, And rivers where the houses ran The living looked that day. The bell within the steeple wild The flying tidings whirled. How much can come And much can go, And yet abide the world! XXVII. THE SPIDER. A spider sewed at night Without a light Upon an arc of white. If ruff it was of dame Or shroud of gnome, Himself, himself inform. Of immortality His strategy Was physiognomy. XXVIII. I know a place where summer strives With such a practised frost, She each year leads her daisies back, Recording briefly, "Lost." But when the south wind stirs the pools And struggles in the lanes, Her heart misgives her for her vow, And she pours soft refrains Into the lap of adamant, And spices, and the dew, That stiffens quietly to quartz, Upon her amber shoe. XXIX. The one that could repeat the summer day Were greater than itself, though he Minutest of mankind might be. And who could reproduce the sun, At period of going down -- The lingering and the stain, I mean -- When Orient has been outgrown, And Occident becomes unknown, His name remain. XXX. THE WIND'S VISIT. The wind tapped like a tired man, And like a host, "Come in," I boldly answered; entered then My residence within A rapid, footless guest, To offer whom a chair Were as impossible as hand A sofa to the air. No bone had he to bind him, His speech was like the push Of numerous humming-birds at once From a superior bush. His countenance a billow, His fingers, if he pass, Let go a music, as of tunes Blown tremulous in glass. He visited, still flitting; Then, like a timid man, Again he tapped -- 't was flurriedly -- And I became alone. XXXI. Nature rarer uses yellow Than another hue; Saves she all of that for sunsets, -- Prodigal of blue, Spending scarlet like a woman, Yellow she affords Only scantly and selectly, Like a lover's words. XXXII. GOSSIP. The leaves, like women, interchange Sagacious confidence; Somewhat of nods, and somewhat of Portentous inference, The parties in both cases Enjoining secrecy, -- Inviolable compact To notoriety. XXXIII. SIMPLICITY. How happy is the little stone That rambles in the road alone, And doesn't care about careers, And exigencies never fears; Whose coat of elemental brown A passing universe put on; And independent as the sun, Associates or glows alone, Fulfilling absolute decree In casual simplicity. XXXIV. STORM. It sounded as if the streets were running, And then the streets stood still. Eclipse was all we could see at the window, And awe was all we could feel. By and by the boldest stole out of his covert, To see if time was there. Nature was in her beryl apron, Mixing fresher air. XXXV. THE RAT. The rat is the concisest tenant. He pays no rent, -- Repudiates the obligation, On schemes intent. Balking our wit To sound or circumvent, Hate cannot harm A foe so reticent. Neither decree Prohibits him, Lawful as Equilibrium. XXXVI. Frequently the woods are pink, Frequently are brown; Frequently the hills undress Behind my native town. Oft a head is crested I was wont to see, And as oft a cranny Where it used to be. And the earth, they tell me, On its axis turned, -- Wonderful rotation By but twelve performed! XXXVII. A THUNDER-STORM. The wind begun to rock the grass With threatening tunes and low, -- He flung a menace at the earth, A menace at the sky. The leaves unhooked themselves from trees And started all abroad; The dust did scoop itself like hands And throw away the road. The wagons quickened on the streets, The thunder hurried slow; The lightning showed a yellow beak, And then a livid claw. The birds put up the bars to nests, The cattle fled to barns; There came one drop of giant rain, And then, as if the hands That held the dams had parted hold, The waters wrecked the sky, But overlooked my father's house, Just quartering a tree. XXXVIII. WITH FLOWERS. South winds jostle them, Bumblebees come, Hover, hesitate, Drink, and are gone. Butterflies pause On their passage Cashmere; I, softly plucking, Present them here! XXXIX. SUNSET. Where ships of purple gently toss On seas of daffodil, Fantastic sailors mingle, And then -- the wharf is still. XL. She sweeps with many-colored brooms, And leaves the shreds behind; Oh, housewife in the evening west, Come back, and dust the pond! You dropped a purple ravelling in, You dropped an amber thread; And now you 've littered all the East With duds of emerald! And still she plies her spotted brooms, And still the aprons fly, Till brooms fade softly into stars -- And then I come away. XLI. Like mighty footlights burned the red At bases of the trees, -- The far theatricals of day Exhibiting to these. 'T was universe that did applaud While, chiefest of the crowd, Enabled by his royal dress, Myself distinguished God. XLII. PROBLEMS. Bring me the sunset in a cup, Reckon the morning's flagons up, And say how many dew; Tell me how far the morning leaps, Tell me what time the weaver sleeps Who spun the breadths of blue! Write me how many notes there be In the new robin's ecstasy Among astonished boughs; How many trips the tortoise makes, How many cups the bee partakes, -- The debauchee of dews! Also, who laid the rainbow's piers, Also, who leads the docile spheres By withes of supple blue? Whose fingers string the stalactite, Who counts the wampum of the night, To see that none is due? Who built this little Alban house And shut the windows down so close My spirit cannot see? Who 'll let me out some gala day, With implements to fly away, Passing pomposity? XLIII. THE JUGGLER OF DAY. Blazing in gold and quenching in purple, Leaping like leopards to the sky, Then at the feet of the old horizon Laying her spotted face, to die; Stooping as low as the otter's window, Touching the roof and tinting the barn, Kissing her bonnet to the meadow, -- And the juggler of day is gone! XLIV. MY CRICKET. Farther in summer than the birds, Pathetic from the grass, A minor nation celebrates Its unobtrusive mass. No ordinance is seen, So gradual the grace, A pensive custom it becomes, Enlarging loneliness. Antiquest felt at noon When August, burning low, Calls forth this spectral canticle, Repose to typify. Remit as yet no grace, No furrow on the glow, Yet a druidic difference Enhances nature now. XLV. As imperceptibly as grief The summer lapsed away, -- Too imperceptible, at last, To seem like perfidy. A quietness distilled, As twilight long begun, Or Nature, spending with herself Sequestered afternoon. The dusk drew earlier in, The morning foreign shone, -- A courteous, yet harrowing grace, As guest who would be gone. And thus, without a wing, Or service of a keel, Our summer made her light escape Into the beautiful. XLVI. It can't be summer, -- that got through; It 's early yet for spring; There 's that long town of white to cross Before the blackbirds sing. It can't be dying, -- it's too rouge, -- The dead shall go in white. So sunset shuts my question down With clasps of chrysolite. XLVII. SUMMER'S OBSEQUIES. The gentian weaves her fringes, The maple's loom is red. My departing blossoms Obviate parade. A brief, but patient illness, An hour to prepare; And one, below this morning, Is where the angels are. It was a short procession, -- The bobolink was there, An aged bee addressed us, And then we knelt in prayer. We trust that she was willing, -- We ask that we may be. Summer, sister, seraph, Let us go with thee! In the name of the bee And of the butterfly And of the breeze, amen! XLVIII. FRINGED GENTIAN. God made a little gentian; It tried to be a rose And failed, and all the summer laughed. But just before the snows There came a purple creature That ravished all the hill; And summer hid her forehead, And mockery was still. The frosts were her condition; The Tyrian would not come Until the North evoked it. "Creator! shall I bloom?" XLIX. NOVEMBER. Besides the autumn poets sing, A few prosaic days A little this side of the snow And that side of the haze. A few incisive mornings, A few ascetic eyes, -- Gone Mr. Bryant's golden-rod, And Mr. Thomson's sheaves. Still is the bustle in the brook, Sealed are the spicy valves; Mesmeric fingers softly touch The eyes of many elves. Perhaps a squirrel may remain, My sentiments to share. Grant me, O Lord, a sunny mind, Thy windy will to bear! L. THE SNOW. It sifts from leaden sieves, It powders all the wood, It fills with alabaster wool The wrinkles of the road. It makes an even face Of mountain and of plain, -- Unbroken forehead from the east Unto the east again. It reaches to the fence, It wraps it, rail by rail, Till it is lost in fleeces; It flings a crystal veil On stump and stack and stem, -- The summer's empty room, Acres of seams where harvests were, Recordless, but for them. It ruffles wrists of posts, As ankles of a queen, -- Then stills its artisans like ghosts, Denying they have been. LI. THE BLUE JAY. No brigadier throughout the year So civic as the jay. A neighbor and a warrior too, With shrill felicity Pursuing winds that censure us A February day, The brother of the universe Was never blown away. The snow and he are intimate; I 've often seen them play When heaven looked upon us all With such severity, I felt apology were due To an insulted sky, Whose pompous frown was nutriment To their temerity. The pillow of this daring head Is pungent evergreens; His larder -- terse and militant -- Unknown, refreshing things; His character a tonic, His future a dispute; Unfair an immortality That leaves this neighbor out. IV. TIME AND ETERNITY. I. Let down the bars, O Death! The tired flocks come in Whose bleating ceases to repeat, Whose wandering is done. Thine is the stillest night, Thine the securest fold; Too near thou art for seeking thee, Too tender to be told. II. Going to heaven! I don't know when, Pray do not ask me how, -- Indeed, I 'm too astonished To think of answering you! Going to heaven! -- How dim it sounds! And yet it will be done As sure as flocks go home at night Unto the shepherd's arm! Perhaps you 're going too! Who knows? If you should get there first, Save just a little place for me Close to the two I lost! The smallest "robe" will fit me, And just a bit of "crown;" For you know we do not mind our dress When we are going home. I 'm glad I don't believe it, For it would stop my breath, And I 'd like to look a little more At such a curious earth! I am glad they did believe it Whom I have never found Since the mighty autumn afternoon I left them in the ground. III. At least to pray is left, is left. O Jesus! in the air I know not which thy chamber is, -- I 'm knocking everywhere. Thou stirrest earthquake in the South, And maelstrom in the sea; Say, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, Hast thou no arm for me? IV. EPITAPH. Step lightly on this narrow spot! The broadest land that grows Is not so ample as the breast These emerald seams enclose. Step lofty; for this name is told As far as cannon dwell, Or flag subsist, or fame export Her deathless syllable. V. Morns like these we parted; Noons like these she rose, Fluttering first, then firmer, To her fair repose. Never did she lisp it, And 't was not for me; She was mute from transport, I, from agony! Till the evening, nearing, One the shutters drew -- Quick! a sharper rustling! And this linnet flew! VI. A death-blow is a life-blow to some Who, till they died, did not alive become; Who, had they lived, had died, but when They died, vitality begun. VII. I read my sentence steadily, Reviewed it with my eyes, To see that I made no mistake In its extremest clause, -- The date, and manner of the shame; And then the pious form That "God have mercy" on the soul The jury voted him. I made my soul familiar With her extremity, That at the last it should not be A novel agony, But she and Death, acquainted, Meet tranquilly as friends, Salute and pass without a hint -- And there the matter ends. VIII. I have not told my garden yet, Lest that should conquer me; I have not quite the strength now To break it to the bee. I will not name it in the street, For shops would stare, that I, So shy, so very ignorant, Should have the face to die. The hillsides must not know it, Where I have rambled so, Nor tell the loving forests The day that I shall go, Nor lisp it at the table, Nor heedless by the way Hint that within the riddle One will walk to-day! IX. THE BATTLE-FIELD. They dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars, Like petals from a rose, When suddenly across the June A wind with fingers goes. They perished in the seamless grass, -- No eye could find the place; But God on his repealless list Can summon every face. X. The only ghost I ever saw Was dressed in mechlin, -- so; He wore no sandal on his foot, And stepped like flakes of snow. His gait was soundless, like the bird, But rapid, like the roe; His fashions quaint, mosaic, Or, haply, mistletoe. His conversation seldom, His laughter like the breeze That dies away in dimples Among the pensive trees. Our interview was transient,-- Of me, himself was shy; And God forbid I look behind Since that appalling day! XI. Some, too fragile for winter winds, The thoughtful grave encloses, -- Tenderly tucking them in from frost Before their feet are cold. Never the treasures in her nest The cautious grave exposes, Building where schoolboy dare not look And sportsman is not bold. This covert have all the children Early aged, and often cold, -- Sparrows unnoticed by the Father; Lambs for whom time had not a fold. XII. As by the dead we love to sit, Become so wondrous dear, As for the lost we grapple, Though all the rest are here, -- In broken mathematics We estimate our prize, Vast, in its fading ratio, To our penurious eyes! XIII. MEMORIALS. Death sets a thing significant The eye had hurried by, Except a perished creature Entreat us tenderly To ponder little workmanships In crayon or in wool, With "This was last her fingers did," Industrious until The thimble weighed too heavy, The stitches stopped themselves, And then 't was put among the dust Upon the closet shelves. A book I have, a friend gave, Whose pencil, here and there, Had notched the place that pleased him, -- At rest his fingers are. Now, when I read, I read not, For interrupting tears Obliterate the etchings Too costly for repairs. XIV. I went to heaven, -- 'T was a small town, Lit with a ruby, Lathed with down. Stiller than the fields At the full dew, Beautiful as pictures No man drew. People like the moth, Of mechlin, frames, Duties of gossamer, And eider names. Almost contented I could be 'Mong such unique Society. XV. Their height in heaven comforts not, Their glory nought to me; 'T was best imperfect, as it was; I 'm finite, I can't see. The house of supposition, The glimmering frontier That skirts the acres of perhaps, To me shows insecure. The wealth I had contented me; If 't was a meaner size, Then I had counted it until It pleased my narrow eyes Better than larger values, However true their show; This timid life of evidence Keeps pleading, "I don't know." XVI. There is a shame of nobleness Confronting sudden pelf, -- A finer shame of ecstasy Convicted of itself. A best disgrace a brave man feels, Acknowledged of the brave, -- One more "Ye Blessed" to be told; But this involves the grave. XVII. TRIUMPH. Triumph may be of several kinds. There 's triumph in the room When that old imperator, Death, By faith is overcome. There 's triumph of the finer mind When truth, affronted long, Advances calm to her supreme, Her God her only throng. A triumph when temptation's bribe Is slowly handed back, One eye upon the heaven renounced And one upon the rack. Severer triumph, by himself Experienced, who can pass Acquitted from that naked bar, Jehovah's countenance! XVIII. Pompless no life can pass away; The lowliest career To the same pageant wends its way As that exalted here. How cordial is the mystery! The hospitable pall A "this way" beckons spaciously, -- A miracle for all! XIX. I noticed people disappeared, When but a little child, -- Supposed they visited remote, Or settled regions wild. Now know I they both visited And settled regions wild, But did because they died, -- a fact Withheld the little child! XX. FOLLOWING. I had no cause to be awake, My best was gone to sleep, And morn a new politeness took, And failed to wake them up, But called the others clear, And passed their curtains by. Sweet morning, when I over-sleep, Knock, recollect, for me! I looked at sunrise once, And then I looked at them, And wishfulness in me arose For circumstance the same. 'T was such an ample peace, It could not hold a sigh, -- 'T was Sabbath with the bells divorced, 'T was sunset all the day. So choosing but a gown And taking but a prayer, The only raiment I should need, I struggled, and was there. XXI. If anybody's friend be dead, It 's sharpest of the theme The thinking how they walked alive, At such and such a time. Their costume, of a Sunday, Some manner of the hair, -- A prank nobody knew but them, Lost, in the sepulchre. How warm they were on such a day: You almost feel the date, So short way off it seems; and now, They 're centuries from that. How pleased they were at what you said; You try to touch the smile, And dip your fingers in the frost: When was it, can you tell, You asked the company to tea, Acquaintance, just a few, And chatted close with this grand thing That don't remember you? Past bows and invitations, Past interview, and vow, Past what ourselves can estimate, -- That makes the quick of woe! XXII. THE JOURNEY. Our journey had advanced; Our feet were almost come To that odd fork in Being's road, Eternity by term. Our pace took sudden awe, Our feet reluctant led. Before were cities, but between, The forest of the dead. Retreat was out of hope, -- Behind, a sealed route, Eternity's white flag before, And God at every gate. XXIII. A COUNTRY BURIAL. Ample make this bed. Make this bed with awe; In it wait till judgment break Excellent and fair. Be its mattress straight, Be its pillow round; Let no sunrise' yellow noise Interrupt this ground. XXIV. GOING. On such a night, or such a night, Would anybody care If such a little figure Slipped quiet from its chair, So quiet, oh, how quiet! That nobody might know But that the little figure Rocked softer, to and fro? On such a dawn, or such a dawn, Would anybody sigh That such a little figure Too sound asleep did lie For chanticleer to wake it, -- Or stirring house below, Or giddy bird in orchard, Or early task to do? There was a little figure plump For every little knoll, Busy needles, and spools of thread, And trudging feet from school. Playmates, and holidays, and nuts, And visions vast and small. Strange that the feet so precious charged Should reach so small a goal! XXV. Essential oils are wrung: The attar from the rose Is not expressed by suns alone, It is the gift of screws. The general rose decays; But this, in lady's drawer, Makes summer when the lady lies In ceaseless rosemary. XXVI. I lived on dread; to those who know The stimulus there is In danger, other impetus Is numb and vital-less. As 't were a spur upon the soul, A fear will urge it where To go without the spectre's aid Were challenging despair. XXVII. If I should die, And you should live, And time should gurgle on, And morn should beam, And noon should burn, As it has usual done; If birds should build as early, And bees as bustling go, -- One might depart at option From enterprise below! 'T is sweet to know that stocks will stand When we with daisies lie, That commerce will continue, And trades as briskly fly. It makes the parting tranquil And keeps the soul serene, That gentlemen so sprightly Conduct the pleasing scene! XXVIII. AT LENGTH. Her final summer was it, And yet we guessed it not; If tenderer industriousness Pervaded her, we thought A further force of life Developed from within, -- When Death lit all the shortness up, And made the hurry plain. We wondered at our blindness, -- When nothing was to see But her Carrara guide-post, -- At our stupidity, When, duller than our dullness, The busy darling lay, So busy was she, finishing, So leisurely were we! XXIX. GHOSTS. One need not be a chamber to be haunted, One need not be a house; The brain has corridors surpassing Material place. Far safer, of a midnight meeting External ghost, Than an interior confronting That whiter host. Far safer through an Abbey gallop, The stones achase, Than, moonless, one's own self encounter In lonesome place. Ourself, behind ourself concealed, Should startle most; Assassin, hid in our apartment, Be horror's least. The prudent carries a revolver, He bolts the door, O'erlooking a superior spectre More near. XXX. VANISHED. She died, -- this was the way she died; And when her breath was done, Took up her simple wardrobe And started for the sun. Her little figure at the gate The angels must have spied, Since I could never find her Upon the mortal side. XXXI. PRECEDENCE. Wait till the majesty of Death Invests so mean a brow! Almost a powdered footman Might dare to touch it now! Wait till in everlasting robes This democrat is dressed, Then prate about "preferment" And "station" and the rest! Around this quiet courtier Obsequious angels wait! Full royal is his retinue, Full purple is his state! A lord might dare to lift the hat To such a modest clay, Since that my Lord, "the Lord of lords" Receives unblushingly! XXXII. GONE. Went up a year this evening! I recollect it well! Amid no bells nor bravos The bystanders will tell! Cheerful, as to the village, Tranquil, as to repose, Chastened, as to the chapel, This humble tourist rose. Did not talk of returning, Alluded to no time When, were the gales propitious, We might look for him; Was grateful for the roses In life's diverse bouquet, Talked softly of new species To pick another day. Beguiling thus the wonder, The wondrous nearer drew; Hands bustled at the moorings -- The crowd respectful grew. Ascended from our vision To countenances new! A difference, a daisy, Is all the rest I knew! XXXIII. REQUIEM. Taken from men this morning, Carried by men to-day, Met by the gods with banners Who marshalled her away. One little maid from playmates, One little mind from school, -- There must be guests in Eden; All the rooms are full. Far as the east from even, Dim as the border star, -- Courtiers quaint, in kingdoms, Our departed are. XXXIV. What inn is this Where for the night Peculiar traveller comes? Who is the landlord? Where the maids? Behold, what curious rooms! No ruddy fires on the hearth, No brimming tankards flow. Necromancer, landlord, Who are these below? XXXV. It was not death, for I stood up, And all the dead lie down; It was not night, for all the bells Put out their tongues, for noon. It was not frost, for on my flesh I felt siroccos crawl, -- Nor fire, for just my marble feet Could keep a chancel cool. And yet it tasted like them all; The figures I have seen Set orderly, for burial, Reminded me of mine, As if my life were shaven And fitted to a frame, And could not breathe without a key; And 't was like midnight, some, When everything that ticked has stopped, And space stares, all around, Or grisly frosts, first autumn morns, Repeal the beating ground. But most like chaos, -- stopless, cool, -- Without a chance or spar, Or even a report of land To justify despair. XXXVI. TILL THE END. I should not dare to leave my friend, Because -- because if he should die While I was gone, and I -- too late -- Should reach the heart that wanted me; If I should disappoint the eyes That hunted, hunted so, to see, And could not bear to shut until They "noticed" me -- they noticed me; If I should stab the patient faith So sure I 'd come -- so sure I 'd come, It listening, listening, went to sleep Telling my tardy name, -- My heart would wish it broke before, Since breaking then, since breaking then, Were useless as next morning's sun, Where midnight frosts had lain! XXXVII. VOID. Great streets of silence led away To neighborhoods of pause; Here was no notice, no dissent, No universe, no laws. By clocks 't was morning, and for night The bells at distance called; But epoch had no basis here, For period exhaled. XXXVIII. A throe upon the features A hurry in the breath, An ecstasy of parting Denominated "Death," -- An anguish at the mention, Which, when to patience grown, I 've known permission given To rejoin its own. XXXIX. SAVED! Of tribulation these are they Denoted by the white; The spangled gowns, a lesser rank Of victors designate. All these did conquer; but the ones Who overcame most times Wear nothing commoner than snow, No ornament but palms. Surrender is a sort unknown On this superior soil; Defeat, an outgrown anguish, Remembered as the mile Our panting ankle barely gained When night devoured the road; But we stood whispering in the house, And all we said was "Saved"! XL. I think just how my shape will rise When I shall be forgiven, Till hair and eyes and timid head Are out of sight, in heaven. I think just how my lips will weigh With shapeless, quivering prayer That you, so late, consider me, The sparrow of your care. I mind me that of anguish sent, Some drifts were moved away Before my simple bosom broke, -- And why not this, if they? And so, until delirious borne I con that thing, -- "forgiven," -- Till with long fright and longer trust I drop my heart, unshriven! XLI. THE FORGOTTEN GRAVE. After a hundred years Nobody knows the place, -- Agony, that enacted there, Motionless as peace. Weeds triumphant ranged, Strangers strolled and spelled At the lone orthography Of the elder dead. Winds of summer fields Recollect the way, -- Instinct picking up the key Dropped by memory. XLII. Lay this laurel on the one Too intrinsic for renown. Laurel! veil your deathless tree, -- Him you chasten, that is he! POEMS by EMILY DICKINSON Third Series Edited by MABEL LOOMIS TODD It's all I have to bring to-day, This, and my heart beside, This, and my heart, and all the fields, And all the meadows wide. Be sure you count, should I forget, -- Some one the sum could tell, -- This, and my heart, and all the bees Which in the clover dwell. PREFACE. The intellectual activity of Emily Dickinson was so great that a large and characteristic choice is still possible among her literary material, and this third volume of her verses is put forth in response to the repeated wish of the admirers of her peculiar genius. Much of Emily Dickinson's prose was rhythmic, --even rhymed, though frequently not set apart in lines. Also many verses, written as such, were sent to friends in letters; these were published in 1894, in the volumes of her _Letters_. It has not been necessary, however, to include them in this Series, and all have been omitted, except three or four exceptionally strong ones, as "A Book," and "With Flowers." There is internal evidence that many of the poems were simply spontaneous flashes of insight, apparently unrelated to outward circumstance. Others, however, had an obvious personal origin; for example, the verses "I had a Guinea golden," which seem to have been sent to some friend travelling in Europe, as a dainty reminder of letter-writing delinquencies. The surroundings in which any of Emily Dickinson's verses are known to have been written usually serve to explain them clearly; but in general the present volume is full of thoughts needing no interpretation to those who apprehend this scintillating spirit. M. L. T. AMHERST, _October_, 1896. I. LIFE. I. REAL RICHES. 'T is little I could care for pearls Who own the ample sea; Or brooches, when the Emperor With rubies pelteth me; Or gold, who am the Prince of Mines; Or diamonds, when I see A diadem to fit a dome Continual crowning me. II. SUPERIORITY TO FATE. Superiority to fate Is difficult to learn. 'T is not conferred by any, But possible to earn A pittance at a time, Until, to her surprise, The soul with strict economy Subsists till Paradise. III. HOPE. Hope is a subtle glutton; He feeds upon the fair; And yet, inspected closely, What abstinence is there! His is the halcyon table That never seats but one, And whatsoever is consumed The same amounts remain. IV. FORBIDDEN FRUIT. I. Forbidden fruit a flavor has That lawful orchards mocks; How luscious lies the pea within The pod that Duty locks! V. FORBIDDEN FRUIT. II. Heaven is what I cannot reach! The apple on the tree, Provided it do hopeless hang, That 'heaven' is, to me. The color on the cruising cloud, The interdicted ground Behind the hill, the house behind, -- There Paradise is found! VI. A WORD. A word is dead When it is said, Some say. I say it just Begins to live That day. VII. To venerate the simple days Which lead the seasons by, Needs but to remember That from you or me They may take the trifle Termed mortality! To invest existence with a stately air, Needs but to remember That the acorn there Is the egg of forests For the upper air! VIII. LIFE'S TRADES. It's such a little thing to weep, So short a thing to sigh; And yet by trades the size of these We men and women die! IX. Drowning is not so pitiful As the attempt to rise. Three times, 't is said, a sinking man Comes up to face the skies, And then declines forever To that abhorred abode Where hope and he part company, -- For he is grasped of God. The Maker's cordial visage, However good to see, Is shunned, we must admit it, Like an adversity. X. How still the bells in steeples stand, Till, swollen with the sky, They leap upon their silver feet In frantic melody! XI. If the foolish call them 'flowers,' Need the wiser tell? If the savans 'classify' them, It is just as well! Those who read the Revelations Must not criticise Those who read the same edition With beclouded eyes! Could we stand with that old Moses Canaan denied, -- Scan, like him, the stately landscape On the other side, -- Doubtless we should deem superfluous Many sciences Not pursued by learnèd angels In scholastic skies! Low amid that glad _Belles lettres_ Grant that we may stand, Stars, amid profound Galaxies, At that grand 'Right hand'! XII. A SYLLABLE. Could mortal lip divine The undeveloped freight Of a delivered syllable, 'T would crumble with the weight. XIII. PARTING. My life closed twice before its close; It yet remains to see If Immortality unveil A third event to me, So huge, so hopeless to conceive, As these that twice befell. Parting is all we know of heaven, And all we need of hell. XIV. ASPIRATION. We never know how high we are Till we are called to rise; And then, if we are true to plan, Our statures touch the skies. The heroism we recite Would be a daily thing, Did not ourselves the cubits warp For fear to be a king. XV. THE INEVITABLE. While I was fearing it, it came, But came with less of fear, Because that fearing it so long Had almost made it dear. There is a fitting a dismay, A fitting a despair. 'Tis harder knowing it is due, Than knowing it is here. The trying on the utmost, The morning it is new, Is terribler than wearing it A whole existence through. XVI. A BOOK. There is no frigate like a book To take us lands away, Nor any coursers like a page Of prancing poetry. This traverse may the poorest take Without oppress of toll; How frugal is the chariot That bears a human soul! XVII. Who has not found the heaven below Will fail of it above. God's residence is next to mine, His furniture is love. XVIII. A PORTRAIT. A face devoid of love or grace, A hateful, hard, successful face, A face with which a stone Would feel as thoroughly at ease As were they old acquaintances, -- First time together thrown. XIX. I HAD A GUINEA GOLDEN. I had a guinea golden; I lost it in the sand, And though the sum was simple, And pounds were in the land, Still had it such a value Unto my frugal eye, That when I could not find it I sat me down to sigh. I had a crimson robin Who sang full many a day, But when the woods were painted He, too, did fly away. Time brought me other robins, -- Their ballads were the same, -- Still for my missing troubadour I kept the 'house at hame.' I had a star in heaven; One Pleiad was its name, And when I was not heeding It wandered from the same. And though the skies are crowded, And all the night ashine, I do not care about it, Since none of them are mine. My story has a moral: I have a missing friend, -- Pleiad its name, and robin, And guinea in the sand, -- And when this mournful ditty, Accompanied with tear, Shall meet the eye of traitor In country far from here, Grant that repentance solemn May seize upon his mind, And he no consolation Beneath the sun may find. NOTE. -- This poem may have had, like many others, a personal origin. It is more than probable that it was sent to some friend travelling in Europe, a dainty reminder of letter-writing delinquencies. XX. SATURDAY AFTERNOON. From all the jails the boys and girls Ecstatically leap, -- Beloved, only afternoon That prison doesn't keep. They storm the earth and stun the air, A mob of solid bliss. Alas! that frowns could lie in wait For such a foe as this! XXI. Few get enough, -- enough is one; To that ethereal throng Have not each one of us the right To stealthily belong? XXII. Upon the gallows hung a wretch, Too sullied for the hell To which the law entitled him. As nature's curtain fell The one who bore him tottered in, For this was woman's son. ''T was all I had,' she stricken gasped; Oh, what a livid boon! XXIII. THE LOST THOUGHT. I felt a clearing in my mind As if my brain had split; I tried to match it, seam by seam, But could not make them fit. The thought behind I strove to join Unto the thought before, But sequence ravelled out of reach Like balls upon a floor. XXIV. RETICENCE. The reticent volcano keeps His never slumbering plan; Confided are his projects pink To no precarious man. If nature will not tell the tale Jehovah told to her, Can human nature not survive Without a listener? Admonished by her buckled lips Let every babbler be. The only secret people keep Is Immortality. XXV. WITH FLOWERS. If recollecting were forgetting, Then I remember not; And if forgetting, recollecting, How near I had forgot! And if to miss were merry, And if to mourn were gay, How very blithe the fingers That gathered these to-day! XXVI. The farthest thunder that I heard Was nearer than the sky, And rumbles still, though torrid noons Have lain their missiles by. The lightning that preceded it Struck no one but myself, But I would not exchange the bolt For all the rest of life. Indebtedness to oxygen The chemist may repay, But not the obligation To electricity. It founds the homes and decks the days, And every clamor bright Is but the gleam concomitant Of that waylaying light. The thought is quiet as a flake, -- A crash without a sound; How life's reverberation Its explanation found! XXVII. On the bleakness of my lot Bloom I strove to raise. Late, my acre of a rock Yielded grape and maize. Soil of flint if steadfast tilled Will reward the hand; Seed of palm by Lybian sun Fructified in sand. XXVIII. CONTRAST. A door just opened on a street -- I, lost, was passing by -- An instant's width of warmth disclosed, And wealth, and company. The door as sudden shut, and I, I, lost, was passing by, -- Lost doubly, but by contrast most, Enlightening misery. XXIX. FRIENDS. Are friends delight or pain? Could bounty but remain Riches were good. But if they only stay Bolder to fly away, Riches are sad. XXX. FIRE. Ashes denote that fire was; Respect the grayest pile For the departed creature's sake That hovered there awhile. Fire exists the first in light, And then consolidates, -- Only the chemist can disclose Into what carbonates. XXXI. A MAN. Fate slew him, but he did not drop; She felled -- he did not fall -- Impaled him on her fiercest stakes -- He neutralized them all. She stung him, sapped his firm advance, But, when her worst was done, And he, unmoved, regarded her, Acknowledged him a man. XXXII. VENTURES. Finite to fail, but infinite to venture. For the one ship that struts the shore Many's the gallant, overwhelmed creature Nodding in navies nevermore. XXXIII. GRIEFS. I measure every grief I meet With analytic eyes; I wonder if it weighs like mine, Or has an easier size. I wonder if they bore it long, Or did it just begin? I could not tell the date of mine, It feels so old a pain. I wonder if it hurts to live, And if they have to try, And whether, could they choose between, They would not rather die. I wonder if when years have piled -- Some thousands -- on the cause Of early hurt, if such a lapse Could give them any pause; Or would they go on aching still Through centuries above, Enlightened to a larger pain By contrast with the love. The grieved are many, I am told; The reason deeper lies, -- Death is but one and comes but once, And only nails the eyes. There's grief of want, and grief of cold, -- A sort they call 'despair;' There's banishment from native eyes, In sight of native air. And though I may not guess the kind Correctly, yet to me A piercing comfort it affords In passing Calvary, To note the fashions of the cross, Of those that stand alone, Still fascinated to presume That some are like my own. XXXIV. I have a king who does not speak; So, wondering, thro' the hours meek I trudge the day away,-- Half glad when it is night and sleep, If, haply, thro' a dream to peep In parlors shut by day. And if I do, when morning comes, It is as if a hundred drums Did round my pillow roll, And shouts fill all my childish sky, And bells keep saying 'victory' From steeples in my soul! And if I don't, the little Bird Within the Orchard is not heard, And I omit to pray, 'Father, thy will be done' to-day, For my will goes the other way, And it were perjury! XXXV. DISENCHANTMENT. It dropped so low in my regard I heard it hit the ground, And go to pieces on the stones At bottom of my mind; Yet blamed the fate that fractured, less Than I reviled myself For entertaining plated wares Upon my silver shelf. XXXVI. LOST FAITH. To lose one's faith surpasses The loss of an estate, Because estates can be Replenished, -- faith cannot. Inherited with life, Belief but once can be; Annihilate a single clause, And Being's beggary. XXXVII. LOST JOY. I had a daily bliss I half indifferent viewed, Till sudden I perceived it stir, -- It grew as I pursued, Till when, around a crag, It wasted from my sight, Enlarged beyond my utmost scope, I learned its sweetness right. XXXVIII. I worked for chaff, and earning wheat Was haughty and betrayed. What right had fields to arbitrate In matters ratified? I tasted wheat, -- and hated chaff, And thanked the ample friend; Wisdom is more becoming viewed At distance than at hand. XXXIX. Life, and Death, and Giants Such as these, are still. Minor apparatus, hopper of the mill, Beetle at the candle, Or a fife's small fame, Maintain by accident That they proclaim. XL. ALPINE GLOW. Our lives are Swiss, -- So still, so cool, Till, some odd afternoon, The Alps neglect their curtains, And we look farther on. Italy stands the other side, While, like a guard between, The solemn Alps, The siren Alps, Forever intervene! XLI. REMEMBRANCE. Remembrance has a rear and front, -- 'T is something like a house; It has a garret also For refuse and the mouse, Besides, the deepest cellar That ever mason hewed; Look to it, by its fathoms Ourselves be not pursued. XLII. To hang our head ostensibly, And subsequent to find That such was not the posture Of our immortal mind, Affords the sly presumption That, in so dense a fuzz, You, too, take cobweb attitudes Upon a plane of gauze! XLIII. THE BRAIN. The brain is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side, The one the other will include With ease, and you beside. The brain is deeper than the sea, For, hold them, blue to blue, The one the other will absorb, As sponges, buckets do. The brain is just the weight of God, For, lift them, pound for pound, And they will differ, if they do, As syllable from sound. XLIV. The bone that has no marrow; What ultimate for that? It is not fit for table, For beggar, or for cat. A bone has obligations, A being has the same; A marrowless assembly Is culpabler than shame. But how shall finished creatures A function fresh obtain? -- Old Nicodemus' phantom Confronting us again! XLV. THE PAST. The past is such a curious creature, To look her in the face A transport may reward us, Or a disgrace. Unarmed if any meet her, I charge him, fly! Her rusty ammunition Might yet reply! XLVI. To help our bleaker parts Salubrious hours are given, Which if they do not fit for earth Drill silently for heaven. XLVII. What soft, cherubic creatures These gentlewomen are! One would as soon assault a plush Or violate a star. Such dimity convictions, A horror so refined Of freckled human nature, Of Deity ashamed, -- It's such a common glory, A fisherman's degree! Redemption, brittle lady, Be so, ashamed of thee. XLVIII. DESIRE. Who never wanted, -- maddest joy Remains to him unknown: The banquet of abstemiousness Surpasses that of wine. Within its hope, though yet ungrasped Desire's perfect goal, No nearer, lest reality Should disenthrall thy soul. XLIX. PHILOSOPHY. It might be easier To fail with land in sight, Than gain my blue peninsula To perish of delight. L. POWER. You cannot put a fire out; A thing that can ignite Can go, itself, without a fan Upon the slowest night. You cannot fold a flood And put it in a drawer, -- Because the winds would find it out, And tell your cedar floor. LI. A modest lot, a fame petite, A brief campaign of sting and sweet Is plenty! Is enough! A sailor's business is the shore, A soldier's -- balls. Who asketh more Must seek the neighboring life! LII. Is bliss, then, such abyss I must not put my foot amiss For fear I spoil my shoe? I'd rather suit my foot Than save my boot, For yet to buy another pair Is possible At any fair. But bliss is sold just once; The patent lost None buy it any more. LIII. EXPERIENCE. I stepped from plank to plank So slow and cautiously; The stars about my head I felt, About my feet the sea. I knew not but the next Would be my final inch, -- This gave me that precarious gait Some call experience. LIV. THANKSGIVING DAY. One day is there of the series Termed Thanksgiving day, Celebrated part at table, Part in memory. Neither patriarch nor pussy, I dissect the play; Seems it, to my hooded thinking, Reflex holiday. Had there been no sharp subtraction From the early sum, Not an acre or a caption Where was once a room, Not a mention, whose small pebble Wrinkled any bay, -- Unto such, were such assembly, 'T were Thanksgiving day. LV. CHILDISH GRIEFS. Softened by Time's consummate plush, How sleek the woe appears That threatened childhood's citadel And undermined the years! Bisected now by bleaker griefs, We envy the despair That devastated childhood's realm, So easy to repair. II. LOVE. I. CONSECRATION. Proud of my broken heart since thou didst break it, Proud of the pain I did not feel till thee, Proud of my night since thou with moons dost slake it, Not to partake thy passion, my humility. II. LOVE'S HUMILITY. My worthiness is all my doubt, His merit all my fear, Contrasting which, my qualities Do lowlier appear; Lest I should insufficient prove For his beloved need, The chiefest apprehension Within my loving creed. So I, the undivine abode Of his elect content, Conform my soul as 't were a church Unto her sacrament. III. LOVE. Love is anterior to life, Posterior to death, Initial of creation, and The exponent of breath. IV. SATISFIED. One blessing had I, than the rest So larger to my eyes That I stopped gauging, satisfied, For this enchanted size. It was the limit of my dream, The focus of my prayer, -- A perfect, paralyzing bliss Contented as despair. I knew no more of want or cold, Phantasms both become, For this new value in the soul, Supremest earthly sum. The heaven below the heaven above Obscured with ruddier hue. Life's latitude leant over-full; The judgment perished, too. Why joys so scantily disburse, Why Paradise defer, Why floods are served to us in bowls, -- I speculate no more. V. WITH A FLOWER. When roses cease to bloom, dear, And violets are done, When bumble-bees in solemn flight Have passed beyond the sun, The hand that paused to gather Upon this summer's day Will idle lie, in Auburn, -- Then take my flower, pray! VI. SONG. Summer for thee grant I may be When summer days are flown! Thy music still when whippoorwill And oriole are done! For thee to bloom, I'll skip the tomb And sow my blossoms o'er! Pray gather me, Anemone, Thy flower forevermore! VII. LOYALTY. Split the lark and you'll find the music, Bulb after bulb, in silver rolled, Scantily dealt to the summer morning, Saved for your ear when lutes be old. Loose the flood, you shall find it patent, Gush after gush, reserved for you; Scarlet experiment! sceptic Thomas, Now, do you doubt that your bird was true? VIII. To lose thee, sweeter than to gain All other hearts I knew. 'T is true the drought is destitute, But then I had the dew! The Caspian has its realms of sand, Its other realm of sea; Without the sterile perquisite No Caspian could be. IX. Poor little heart! Did they forget thee? Then dinna care! Then dinna care! Proud little heart! Did they forsake thee? Be debonair! Be debonair! Frail little heart! I would not break thee: Could'st credit me? Could'st credit me? Gay little heart! Like morning glory Thou'll wilted be; thou'll wilted be! X. FORGOTTEN. There is a word Which bears a sword Can pierce an armed man. It hurls its barbed syllables,-- At once is mute again. But where it fell The saved will tell On patriotic day, Some epauletted brother Gave his breath away. Wherever runs the breathless sun, Wherever roams the day, There is its noiseless onset, There is its victory! Behold the keenest marksman! The most accomplished shot! Time's sublimest target Is a soul 'forgot'! XI. I've got an arrow here; Loving the hand that sent it, I the dart revere. Fell, they will say, in 'skirmish'! Vanquished, my soul will know, By but a simple arrow Sped by an archer's bow. XII. THE MASTER. He fumbles at your spirit As players at the keys Before they drop full music on; He stuns you by degrees, Prepares your brittle substance For the ethereal blow, By fainter hammers, further heard, Then nearer, then so slow Your breath has time to straighten, Your brain to bubble cool, -- Deals one imperial thunderbolt That scalps your naked soul. XIII. Heart, we will forget him! You and I, to-night! You may forget the warmth he gave, I will forget the light. When you have done, pray tell me, That I my thoughts may dim; Haste! lest while you're lagging, I may remember him! XIV. Father, I bring thee not myself, -- That were the little load; I bring thee the imperial heart I had not strength to hold. The heart I cherished in my own Till mine too heavy grew, Yet strangest, heavier since it went, Is it too large for you? XV. We outgrow love like other things And put it in the drawer, Till it an antique fashion shows Like costumes grandsires wore. XVI. Not with a club the heart is broken, Nor with a stone; A whip, so small you could not see it. I've known To lash the magic creature Till it fell, Yet that whip's name too noble Then to tell. Magnanimous of bird By boy descried, To sing unto the stone Of which it died. XVII. WHO? My friend must be a bird, Because it flies! Mortal my friend must be, Because it dies! Barbs has it, like a bee. Ah, curious friend, Thou puzzlest me! XVIII. He touched me, so I live to know That such a day, permitted so, I groped upon his breast. It was a boundless place to me, And silenced, as the awful sea Puts minor streams to rest. And now, I'm different from before, As if I breathed superior air, Or brushed a royal gown; My feet, too, that had wandered so, My gypsy face transfigured now To tenderer renown. XIX. DREAMS. Let me not mar that perfect dream By an auroral stain, But so adjust my daily night That it will come again. XX. NUMEN LUMEN. I live with him, I see his face; I go no more away For visitor, or sundown; Death's single privacy, The only one forestalling mine, And that by right that he Presents a claim invisible, No wedlock granted me. I live with him, I hear his voice, I stand alive to-day To witness to the certainty Of immortality Taught me by Time, -- the lower way, Conviction every day, -- That life like this is endless, Be judgment what it may. XXI. LONGING. I envy seas whereon he rides, I envy spokes of wheels Of chariots that him convey, I envy speechless hills That gaze upon his journey; How easy all can see What is forbidden utterly As heaven, unto me! I envy nests of sparrows That dot his distant eaves, The wealthy fly upon his pane, The happy, happy leaves That just abroad his window Have summer's leave to be, The earrings of Pizarro Could not obtain for me. I envy light that wakes him, And bells that boldly ring To tell him it is noon abroad, -- Myself his noon could bring, Yet interdict my blossom And abrogate my bee, Lest noon in everlasting night Drop Gabriel and me. XXII. WEDDED. A solemn thing it was, I said, A woman white to be, And wear, if God should count me fit, Her hallowed mystery. A timid thing to drop a life Into the purple well, Too plummetless that it come back Eternity until. III. NATURE. I. NATURE'S CHANGES. The springtime's pallid landscape Will glow like bright bouquet, Though drifted deep in parian The village lies to-day. The lilacs, bending many a year, With purple load will hang; The bees will not forget the tune Their old forefathers sang. The rose will redden in the bog, The aster on the hill Her everlasting fashion set, And covenant gentians frill, Till summer folds her miracle As women do their gown, Or priests adjust the symbols When sacrament is done. II. THE TULIP. She slept beneath a tree Remembered but by me. I touched her cradle mute; She recognized the foot, Put on her carmine suit, -- And see! III. A light exists in spring Not present on the year At any other period. When March is scarcely here A color stands abroad On solitary hills That science cannot overtake, But human nature feels. It waits upon the lawn; It shows the furthest tree Upon the furthest slope we know; It almost speaks to me. Then, as horizons step, Or noons report away, Without the formula of sound, It passes, and we stay: A quality of loss Affecting our content, As trade had suddenly encroached Upon a sacrament. IV. THE WAKING YEAR. A lady red upon the hill Her annual secret keeps; A lady white within the field In placid lily sleeps! The tidy breezes with their brooms Sweep vale, and hill, and tree! Prithee, my pretty housewives! Who may expected be? The neighbors do not yet suspect! The woods exchange a smile -- Orchard, and buttercup, and bird -- In such a little while! And yet how still the landscape stands, How nonchalant the wood, As if the resurrection Were nothing very odd! V. TO MARCH. Dear March, come in! How glad I am! I looked for you before. Put down your hat -- You must have walked -- How out of breath you are! Dear March, how are you? And the rest? Did you leave Nature well? Oh, March, come right upstairs with me, I have so much to tell! I got your letter, and the birds'; The maples never knew That you were coming, -- I declare, How red their faces grew! But, March, forgive me -- And all those hills You left for me to hue; There was no purple suitable, You took it all with you. Who knocks? That April! Lock the door! I will not be pursued! He stayed away a year, to call When I am occupied. But trifles look so trivial As soon as you have come, That blame is just as dear as praise And praise as mere as blame. VI. MARCH. We like March, his shoes are purple, He is new and high; Makes he mud for dog and peddler, Makes he forest dry; Knows the adder's tongue his coming, And begets her spot. Stands the sun so close and mighty That our minds are hot. News is he of all the others; Bold it were to die With the blue-birds buccaneering On his British sky. VII. DAWN. Not knowing when the dawn will come I open every door; Or has it feathers like a bird, Or billows like a shore? VIII. A murmur in the trees to note, Not loud enough for wind; A star not far enough to seek, Nor near enough to find; A long, long yellow on the lawn, A hubbub as of feet; Not audible, as ours to us, But dapperer, more sweet; A hurrying home of little men To houses unperceived, -- All this, and more, if I should tell, Would never be believed. Of robins in the trundle bed How many I espy Whose nightgowns could not hide the wings, Although I heard them try! But then I promised ne'er to tell; How could I break my word? So go your way and I'll go mine, -- No fear you'll miss the road. IX. Morning is the place for dew, Corn is made at noon, After dinner light for flowers, Dukes for setting sun! X. To my quick ear the leaves conferred; The bushes they were bells; I could not find a privacy From Nature's sentinels. In cave if I presumed to hide, The walls began to tell; Creation seemed a mighty crack To make me visible. XI. A ROSE. A sepal, petal, and a thorn Upon a common summer's morn, A flash of dew, a bee or two, A breeze A caper in the trees, -- And I'm a rose! XII. High from the earth I heard a bird; He trod upon the trees As he esteemed them trifles, And then he spied a breeze, And situated softly Upon a pile of wind Which in a perturbation Nature had left behind. A joyous-going fellow I gathered from his talk, Which both of benediction And badinage partook, Without apparent burden, I learned, in leafy wood He was the faithful father Of a dependent brood; And this untoward transport His remedy for care, -- A contrast to our respites. How different we are! XIII. COBWEBS. The spider as an artist Has never been employed Though his surpassing merit Is freely certified By every broom and Bridget Throughout a Christian land. Neglected son of genius, I take thee by the hand. XIV. A WELL. What mystery pervades a well! The water lives so far, Like neighbor from another world Residing in a jar. The grass does not appear afraid; I often wonder he Can stand so close and look so bold At what is dread to me. Related somehow they may be, -- The sedge stands next the sea, Where he is floorless, yet of fear No evidence gives he. But nature is a stranger yet; The ones that cite her most Have never passed her haunted house, Nor simplified her ghost. To pity those that know her not Is helped by the regret That those who know her, know her less The nearer her they get. XV. To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, -- One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do If bees are few. XVI. THE WIND. It's like the light, -- A fashionless delight It's like the bee, -- A dateless melody. It's like the woods, Private like breeze, Phraseless, yet it stirs The proudest trees. It's like the morning, -- Best when it's done, -- The everlasting clocks Chime noon. XVII. A dew sufficed itself And satisfied a leaf, And felt, 'how vast a destiny! How trivial is life!' The sun went out to work, The day went out to play, But not again that dew was seen By physiognomy. Whether by day abducted, Or emptied by the sun Into the sea, in passing, Eternally unknown. XVIII. THE WOODPECKER. His bill an auger is, His head, a cap and frill. He laboreth at every tree, -- A worm his utmost goal. XIX. A SNAKE. Sweet is the swamp with its secrets, Until we meet a snake; 'T is then we sigh for houses, And our departure take At that enthralling gallop That only childhood knows. A snake is summer's treason, And guile is where it goes. XX. Could I but ride indefinite, As doth the meadow-bee, And visit only where I liked, And no man visit me, And flirt all day with buttercups, And marry whom I may, And dwell a little everywhere, Or better, run away With no police to follow, Or chase me if I do, Till I should jump peninsulas To get away from you, -- I said, but just to be a bee Upon a raft of air, And row in nowhere all day long, And anchor off the bar,-- What liberty! So captives deem Who tight in dungeons are. XXI. THE MOON. The moon was but a chin of gold A night or two ago, And now she turns her perfect face Upon the world below. Her forehead is of amplest blond; Her cheek like beryl stone; Her eye unto the summer dew The likest I have known. Her lips of amber never part; But what must be the smile Upon her friend she could bestow Were such her silver will! And what a privilege to be But the remotest star! For certainly her way might pass Beside your twinkling door. Her bonnet is the firmament, The universe her shoe, The stars the trinkets at her belt, Her dimities of blue. XXII. THE BAT. The bat is dun with wrinkled wings Like fallow article, And not a song pervades his lips, Or none perceptible. His small umbrella, quaintly halved, Describing in the air An arc alike inscrutable, -- Elate philosopher! Deputed from what firmament Of what astute abode, Empowered with what malevolence Auspiciously withheld. To his adroit Creator Ascribe no less the praise; Beneficent, believe me, His eccentricities. XXIII. THE BALLOON. You've seen balloons set, haven't you? So stately they ascend It is as swans discarded you For duties diamond. Their liquid feet go softly out Upon a sea of blond; They spurn the air as 't were too mean For creatures so renowned. Their ribbons just beyond the eye, They struggle some for breath, And yet the crowd applauds below; They would not encore death. The gilded creature strains and spins, Trips frantic in a tree, Tears open her imperial veins And tumbles in the sea. The crowd retire with an oath The dust in streets goes down, And clerks in counting-rooms observe, ''T was only a balloon.' XXIV. EVENING. The cricket sang, And set the sun, And workmen finished, one by one, Their seam the day upon. The low grass loaded with the dew, The twilight stood as strangers do With hat in hand, polite and new, To stay as if, or go. A vastness, as a neighbor, came, -- A wisdom without face or name, A peace, as hemispheres at home, -- And so the night became. XXV. COCOON. Drab habitation of whom? Tabernacle or tomb, Or dome of worm, Or porch of gnome, Or some elf's catacomb? XXVI. SUNSET. A sloop of amber slips away Upon an ether sea, And wrecks in peace a purple tar, The son of ecstasy. XXVII. AURORA. Of bronze and blaze The north, to-night! So adequate its forms, So preconcerted with itself, So distant to alarms, -- An unconcern so sovereign To universe, or me, It paints my simple spirit With tints of majesty, Till I take vaster attitudes, And strut upon my stem, Disdaining men and oxygen, For arrogance of them. My splendors are menagerie; But their competeless show Will entertain the centuries When I am, long ago, An island in dishonored grass, Whom none but daisies know. XXVIII. THE COMING OF NIGHT. How the old mountains drip with sunset, And the brake of dun! How the hemlocks are tipped in tinsel By the wizard sun! How the old steeples hand the scarlet, Till the ball is full, -- Have I the lip of the flamingo That I dare to tell? Then, how the fire ebbs like billows, Touching all the grass With a departing, sapphire feature, As if a duchess pass! How a small dusk crawls on the village Till the houses blot; And the odd flambeaux no men carry Glimmer on the spot! Now it is night in nest and kennel, And where was the wood, Just a dome of abyss is nodding Into solitude! -- These are the visions baffled Guido; Titian never told; Domenichino dropped the pencil, Powerless to unfold. XXIX. AFTERMATH. The murmuring of bees has ceased; But murmuring of some Posterior, prophetic, Has simultaneous come, -- The lower metres of the year, When nature's laugh is done, -- The Revelations of the book Whose Genesis is June. IV. TIME AND ETERNITY. I. This world is not conclusion; A sequel stands beyond, Invisible, as music, But positive, as sound. It beckons and it baffles; Philosophies don't know, And through a riddle, at the last, Sagacity must go. To guess it puzzles scholars; To gain it, men have shown Contempt of generations, And crucifixion known. II. We learn in the retreating How vast an one Was recently among us. A perished sun Endears in the departure How doubly more Than all the golden presence It was before! III. They say that 'time assuages,' -- Time never did assuage; An actual suffering strengthens, As sinews do, with age. Time is a test of trouble, But not a remedy. If such it prove, it prove too There was no malady. IV. We cover thee, sweet face. Not that we tire of thee, But that thyself fatigue of us; Remember, as thou flee, We follow thee until Thou notice us no more, And then, reluctant, turn away To con thee o'er and o'er, And blame the scanty love We were content to show, Augmented, sweet, a hundred fold If thou would'st take it now. V. ENDING. That is solemn we have ended, -- Be it but a play, Or a glee among the garrets, Or a holiday, Or a leaving home; or later, Parting with a world We have understood, for better Still it be unfurled. VI. The stimulus, beyond the grave His countenance to see, Supports me like imperial drams Afforded royally. VII. Given in marriage unto thee, Oh, thou celestial host! Bride of the Father and the Son, Bride of the Holy Ghost! Other betrothal shall dissolve, Wedlock of will decay; Only the keeper of this seal Conquers mortality. VIII. That such have died enables us The tranquiller to die; That such have lived, certificate For immortality. IX. They won't frown always, -- some sweet day When I forget to tease, They'll recollect how cold I looked, And how I just said 'please.' Then they will hasten to the door To call the little child, Who cannot thank them, for the ice That on her lisping piled. X. IMMORTALITY. It is an honorable thought, And makes one lift one's hat, As one encountered gentlefolk Upon a daily street, That we've immortal place, Though pyramids decay, And kingdoms, like the orchard, Flit russetly away. XI. The distance that the dead have gone Does not at first appear; Their coming back seems possible For many an ardent year. And then, that we have followed them We more than half suspect, So intimate have we become With their dear retrospect. XII. How dare the robins sing, When men and women hear Who since they went to their account Have settled with the year! -- Paid all that life had earned In one consummate bill, And now, what life or death can do Is immaterial. Insulting is the sun To him whose mortal light, Beguiled of immortality, Bequeaths him to the night. In deference to him Extinct be every hum, Whose garden wrestles with the dew, At daybreak overcome! XIII. DEATH. Death is like the insect Menacing the tree, Competent to kill it, But decoyed may be. Bait it with the balsam, Seek it with the knife, Baffle, if it cost you Everything in life. Then, if it have burrowed Out of reach of skill, Ring the tree and leave it, -- 'T is the vermin's will. XIV. UNWARNED. 'T is sunrise, little maid, hast thou No station in the day? 'T was not thy wont to hinder so, -- Retrieve thine industry. 'T is noon, my little maid, alas! And art thou sleeping yet? The lily waiting to be wed, The bee, dost thou forget? My little maid, 't is night; alas, That night should be to thee Instead of morning! Hadst thou broached Thy little plan to me, Dissuade thee if I could not, sweet, I might have aided thee. XV. Each that we lose takes part of us; A crescent still abides, Which like the moon, some turbid night, Is summoned by the tides. XVI. Not any higher stands the grave For heroes than for men; Not any nearer for the child Than numb three-score and ten. This latest leisure equal lulls The beggar and his queen; Propitiate this democrat By summer's gracious mien. XVII. ASLEEP. As far from pity as complaint, As cool to speech as stone, As numb to revelation As if my trade were bone. As far from time as history, As near yourself to-day As children to the rainbow's scarf, Or sunset's yellow play To eyelids in the sepulchre. How still the dancer lies, While color's revelations break, And blaze the butterflies! XVIII. THE SPIRIT. 'T is whiter than an Indian pipe, 'T is dimmer than a lace; No stature has it, like a fog, When you approach the place. Not any voice denotes it here, Or intimates it there; A spirit, how doth it accost? What customs hath the air? This limitless hyperbole Each one of us shall be; 'T is drama, if (hypothesis) It be not tragedy! XIX. THE MONUMENT. She laid her docile crescent down, And this mechanic stone Still states, to dates that have forgot, The news that she is gone. So constant to its stolid trust, The shaft that never knew, It shames the constancy that fled Before its emblem flew. XX. Bless God, he went as soldiers, His musket on his breast; Grant, God, he charge the bravest Of all the martial blest. Please God, might I behold him In epauletted white, I should not fear the foe then, I should not fear the fight. XXI. Immortal is an ample word When what we need is by, But when it leaves us for a time, 'T is a necessity. Of heaven above the firmest proof We fundamental know, Except for its marauding hand, It had been heaven below. XXII. Where every bird is bold to go, And bees abashless play, The foreigner before he knocks Must thrust the tears away. XXIII. The grave my little cottage is, Where, keeping house for thee, I make my parlor orderly, And lay the marble tea, For two divided, briefly, A cycle, it may be, Till everlasting life unite In strong society. XXIV. This was in the white of the year, That was in the green, Drifts were as difficult then to think As daisies now to be seen. Looking back is best that is left, Or if it be before, Retrospection is prospect's half, Sometimes almost more. XXV. Sweet hours have perished here; This is a mighty room; Within its precincts hopes have played, -- Now shadows in the tomb. XXVI. Me! Come! My dazzled face In such a shining place! Me! Hear! My foreign ear The sounds of welcome near! The saints shall meet Our bashful feet. My holiday shall be That they remember me; My paradise, the fame That they pronounce my name. XXVII. INVISIBLE. From us she wandered now a year, Her tarrying unknown; If wilderness prevent her feet, Or that ethereal zone No eye hath seen and lived, We ignorant must be. We only know what time of year We took the mystery. XXVIII. I wish I knew that woman's name, So, when she comes this way, To hold my life, and hold my ears, For fear I hear her say She's 'sorry I am dead,' again, Just when the grave and I Have sobbed ourselves almost to sleep, -- Our only lullaby. XXIX. TRYING TO FORGET. Bereaved of all, I went abroad, No less bereaved to be Upon a new peninsula, -- The grave preceded me, Obtained my lodgings ere myself, And when I sought my bed, The grave it was, reposed upon The pillow for my head. I waked, to find it first awake, I rose, -- it followed me; I tried to drop it in the crowd, To lose it in the sea, In cups of artificial drowse To sleep its shape away, -- The grave was finished, but the spade Remained in memory. XXX. I felt a funeral in my brain, And mourners, to and fro, Kept treading, treading, till it seemed That sense was breaking through. And when they all were seated, A service like a drum Kept beating, beating, till I thought My mind was going numb. And then I heard them lift a box, And creak across my soul With those same boots of lead, again. Then space began to toll As all the heavens were a bell, And Being but an ear, And I and silence some strange race, Wrecked, solitary, here. XXXI. I meant to find her when I came; Death had the same design; But the success was his, it seems, And the discomfit mine. I meant to tell her how I longed For just this single time; But Death had told her so the first, And she had hearkened him. To wander now is my abode; To rest, -- to rest would be A privilege of hurricane To memory and me. XXXII. WAITING. I sing to use the waiting, My bonnet but to tie, And shut the door unto my house; No more to do have I, Till, his best step approaching, We journey to the day, And tell each other how we sang To keep the dark away. XXXIII. A sickness of this world it most occasions When best men die; A wishfulness their far condition To occupy. A chief indifference, as foreign A world must be Themselves forsake contented, For Deity. XXXIV. Superfluous were the sun When excellence is dead; He were superfluous every day, For every day is said That syllable whose faith Just saves it from despair, And whose 'I'll meet you' hesitates If love inquire, 'Where?' Upon his dateless fame Our periods may lie, As stars that drop anonymous From an abundant sky. XXXV. So proud she was to die It made us all ashamed That what we cherished, so unknown To her desire seemed. So satisfied to go Where none of us should be, Immediately, that anguish stooped Almost to jealousy. XXXVI. FAREWELL. Tie the strings to my life, my Lord, Then I am ready to go! Just a look at the horses -- Rapid! That will do! Put me in on the firmest side, So I shall never fall; For we must ride to the Judgment, And it's partly down hill. But never I mind the bridges, And never I mind the sea; Held fast in everlasting race By my own choice and thee. Good-by to the life I used to live, And the world I used to know; And kiss the hills for me, just once; Now I am ready to go! XXXVII. The dying need but little, dear, -- A glass of water's all, A flower's unobtrusive face To punctuate the wall, A fan, perhaps, a friend's regret, And certainly that one No color in the rainbow Perceives when you are gone. XXXVIII. DEAD. There's something quieter than sleep Within this inner room! It wears a sprig upon its breast, And will not tell its name. Some touch it and some kiss it, Some chafe its idle hand; It has a simple gravity I do not understand! While simple-hearted neighbors Chat of the 'early dead,' We, prone to periphrasis, Remark that birds have fled! XXXIX. The soul should always stand ajar, That if the heaven inquire, He will not be obliged to wait, Or shy of troubling her. Depart, before the host has slid The bolt upon the door, To seek for the accomplished guest, -- Her visitor no more. XL. Three weeks passed since I had seen her, -- Some disease had vexed; 'T was with text and village singing I beheld her next, And a company -- our pleasure To discourse alone; Gracious now to me as any, Gracious unto none. Borne, without dissent of either, To the parish night; Of the separated people Which are out of sight? XLI. I breathed enough to learn the trick, And now, removed from air, I simulate the breath so well, That one, to be quite sure The lungs are stirless, must descend Among the cunning cells, And touch the pantomime himself. How cool the bellows feels! XLII. I wonder if the sepulchre Is not a lonesome way, When men and boys, and larks and June Go down the fields to hay! XLIII. JOY IN DEATH. If tolling bell I ask the cause. 'A soul has gone to God,' I'm answered in a lonesome tone; Is heaven then so sad? That bells should joyful ring to tell A soul had gone to heaven, Would seem to me the proper way A good news should be given. XLIV. If I may have it when it's dead I will contented be; If just as soon as breath is out It shall belong to me, Until they lock it in the grave, 'T is bliss I cannot weigh, For though they lock thee in the grave, Myself can hold the key. Think of it, lover! I and thee Permitted face to face to be; After a life, a death we'll say, -- For death was that, and this is thee. XLV. Before the ice is in the pools, Before the skaters go, Or any cheek at nightfall Is tarnished by the snow, Before the fields have finished, Before the Christmas tree, Wonder upon wonder Will arrive to me! What we touch the hems of On a summer's day; What is only walking Just a bridge away; That which sings so, speaks so, When there's no one here, -- Will the frock I wept in Answer me to wear? XLVI. DYING. I heard a fly buzz when I died; The stillness round my form Was like the stillness in the air Between the heaves of storm. The eyes beside had wrung them dry, And breaths were gathering sure For that last onset, when the king Be witnessed in his power. I willed my keepsakes, signed away What portion of me I Could make assignable, -- and then There interposed a fly, With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz, Between the light and me; And then the windows failed, and then I could not see to see. XLVII. Adrift! A little boat adrift! And night is coming down! Will no one guide a little boat Unto the nearest town? So sailors say, on yesterday, Just as the dusk was brown, One little boat gave up its strife, And gurgled down and down. But angels say, on yesterday, Just as the dawn was red, One little boat o'erspent with gales Retrimmed its masts, redecked its sails Exultant, onward sped! XLVIII. There's been a death in the opposite house As lately as to-day. I know it by the numb look Such houses have alway. The neighbors rustle in and out, The doctor drives away. A window opens like a pod, Abrupt, mechanically; Somebody flings a mattress out, -- The children hurry by; They wonder if It died on that, -- I used to when a boy. The minister goes stiffly in As if the house were his, And he owned all the mourners now, And little boys besides; And then the milliner, and the man Of the appalling trade, To take the measure of the house. There'll be that dark parade Of tassels and of coaches soon; It's easy as a sign, -- The intuition of the news In just a country town. XLIX. We never know we go, -- when we are going We jest and shut the door; Fate following behind us bolts it, And we accost no more. L. THE SOUL'S STORM. It struck me every day The lightning was as new As if the cloud that instant slit And let the fire through. It burned me in the night, It blistered in my dream; It sickened fresh upon my sight With every morning's beam. I thought that storm was brief, -- The maddest, quickest by; But Nature lost the date of this, And left it in the sky. LI. Water is taught by thirst; Land, by the oceans passed; Transport, by throe; Peace, by its battles told; Love, by memorial mould; Birds, by the snow. LII. THIRST. We thirst at first, -- 't is Nature's act; And later, when we die, A little water supplicate Of fingers going by. It intimates the finer want, Whose adequate supply Is that great water in the west Termed immortality. LIII. A clock stopped -- not the mantel's; Geneva's farthest skill Can't put the puppet bowing That just now dangled still. An awe came on the trinket! The figures hunched with pain, Then quivered out of decimals Into degreeless noon. It will not stir for doctors, This pendulum of snow; The shopman importunes it, While cool, concernless No Nods from the gilded pointers, Nods from the seconds slim, Decades of arrogance between The dial life and him. LIV. CHARLOTTE BRONT�'S GRAVE. All overgrown by cunning moss, All interspersed with weed, The little cage of 'Currer Bell,' In quiet Haworth laid. This bird, observing others, When frosts too sharp became, Retire to other latitudes, Quietly did the same, But differed in returning; Since Yorkshire hills are green, Yet not in all the nests I meet Can nightingale be seen. Gathered from many wanderings, Gethsemane can tell Through what transporting anguish She reached the asphodel! Soft fall the sounds of Eden Upon her puzzled ear; Oh, what an afternoon for heaven, When 'Brontë' entered there! LV. A toad can die of light! Death is the common right Of toads and men, -- Of earl and midge The privilege. Why swagger then? The gnat's supremacy Is large as thine. LVI. Far from love the Heavenly Father Leads the chosen child; Oftener through realm of briar Than the meadow mild, Oftener by the claw of dragon Than the hand of friend, Guides the little one predestined To the native land. LVII. SLEEPING. A long, long sleep, a famous sleep That makes no show for dawn By stretch of limb or stir of lid, -- An independent one. Was ever idleness like this? Within a hut of stone To bask the centuries away Nor once look up for noon? LVIII. RETROSPECT. 'T was just this time last year I died. I know I heard the corn, When I was carried by the farms, -- It had the tassels on. I thought how yellow it would look When Richard went to mill; And then I wanted to get out, But something held my will. I thought just how red apples wedged The stubble's joints between; And carts went stooping round the fields To take the pumpkins in. I wondered which would miss me least, And when Thanksgiving came, If father'd multiply the plates To make an even sum. And if my stocking hung too high, Would it blur the Christmas glee, That not a Santa Claus could reach The altitude of me? But this sort grieved myself, and so I thought how it would be When just this time, some perfect year, Themselves should come to me. LIX. ETERNITY. On this wondrous sea, Sailing silently, Ho! pilot, ho! Knowest thou the shore Where no breakers roar, Where the storm is o'er? In the silent west Many sails at rest, Their anchors fast; Thither I pilot thee, -- Land, ho! Eternity! Ashore at last! 
1229	----	None 
1246	----	THE HOUSE OF DUST A Symphony By Conrad Aiken To Jessie NOTE . . . Parts of this poem have been printed in "The North American Review, Others, Poetry, Youth, Coterie, The Yale Review". . . . I am indebted to Lafcadio Hearn for the episode called "The Screen Maiden" in Part II. THE HOUSE OF DUST PART I. I. The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light. The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east: And lights wink out through the windows, one by one. A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night. Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun. And the wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams, The eternal asker of answers, stands in the street, And lifts his palms for the first cold ghost of rain. The purple lights leap down the hill before him. The gorgeous night has begun again. 'I will ask them all, I will ask them all their dreams, I will hold my light above them and seek their faces. I will hear them whisper, invisible in their veins . . .' The eternal asker of answers becomes as the darkness, Or as a wind blown over a myriad forest, Or as the numberless voices of long-drawn rains. We hear him and take him among us, like a wind of music, Like the ghost of a music we have somewhere heard; We crowd through the streets in a dazzle of pallid lamplight, We pour in a sinister wave, ascend a stair, With laughter and cry, and word upon murmured word; We flow, we descend, we turn . . . and the eternal dreamer Moves among us like light, like evening air . . . Good-night! Good-night! Good-night! We go our ways, The rain runs over the pavement before our feet, The cold rain falls, the rain sings. We walk, we run, we ride. We turn our faces To what the eternal evening brings. Our hands are hot and raw with the stones we have laid, We have built a tower of stone high into the sky, We have built a city of towers. Our hands are light, they are singing with emptiness. Our souls are light; they have shaken a burden of hours . . . What did we build it for? Was it all a dream? . . . Ghostly above us in lamplight the towers gleam . . . And after a while they will fall to dust and rain; Or else we will tear them down with impatient hands; And hew rock out of the earth, and build them again. II. One, from his high bright window in a tower, Leans out, as evening falls, And sees the advancing curtain of the shower Splashing its silver on roofs and walls: Sees how, swift as a shadow, it crosses the city, And murmurs beyond far walls to the sea, Leaving a glimmer of water in the dark canyons, And silver falling from eave and tree. One, from his high bright window, looking down, Peers like a dreamer over the rain-bright town, And thinks its towers are like a dream. The western windows flame in the sun's last flare, Pale roofs begin to gleam. Looking down from a window high in a wall He sees us all; Lifting our pallid faces towards the rain, Searching the sky, and going our ways again, Standing in doorways, waiting under the trees . . . There, in the high bright window he dreams, and sees What we are blind to,--we who mass and crowd From wall to wall in the darkening of a cloud. The gulls drift slowly above the city of towers, Over the roofs to the darkening sea they fly; Night falls swiftly on an evening of rain. The yellow lamps wink one by one again. The towers reach higher and blacker against the sky. III. One, where the pale sea foamed at the yellow sand, With wave upon slowly shattering wave, Turned to the city of towers as evening fell; And slowly walked by the darkening road toward it; And saw how the towers darkened against the sky; And across the distance heard the toll of a bell. Along the darkening road he hurried alone, With his eyes cast down, And thought how the streets were hoarse with a tide of people, With clamor of voices, and numberless faces . . . And it seemed to him, of a sudden, that he would drown Here in the quiet of evening air, These empty and voiceless places . . . And he hurried towards the city, to enter there. Along the darkening road, between tall trees That made a sinister whisper, loudly he walked. Behind him, sea-gulls dipped over long grey seas. Before him, numberless lovers smiled and talked. And death was observed with sudden cries, And birth with laughter and pain. And the trees grew taller and blacker against the skies And night came down again. IV. Up high black walls, up sombre terraces, Clinging like luminous birds to the sides of cliffs, The yellow lights went climbing towards the sky. From high black walls, gleaming vaguely with rain, Each yellow light looked down like a golden eye. They trembled from coign to coign, and tower to tower, Along high terraces quicker than dream they flew. And some of them steadily glowed, and some soon vanished, And some strange shadows threw. And behind them all the ghosts of thoughts went moving, Restlessly moving in each lamplit room, From chair to mirror, from mirror to fire; From some, the light was scarcely more than a gloom: From some, a dazzling desire. And there was one, beneath black eaves, who thought, Combing with lifted arms her golden hair, Of the lover who hurried towards her through the night; And there was one who dreamed of a sudden death As she blew out her light. And there was one who turned from clamoring streets, And walked in lamplit gardens among black trees, And looked at the windy sky, And thought with terror how stones and roots would freeze And birds in the dead boughs cry . . . And she hurried back, as snow fell, mixed with rain, To mingle among the crowds again, To jostle beneath blue lamps along the street; And lost herself in the warm bright coiling dream, With a sound of murmuring voices and shuffling feet. And one, from his high bright window looking down On luminous chasms that cleft the basalt town, Hearing a sea-like murmur rise, Desired to leave his dream, descend from the tower, And drown in waves of shouts and laughter and cries. V. The snow floats down upon us, mingled with rain . . . It eddies around pale lilac lamps, and falls Down golden-windowed walls. We were all born of flesh, in a flare of pain, We do not remember the red roots whence we rose, But we know that we rose and walked, that after a while We shall lie down again. The snow floats down upon us, we turn, we turn, Through gorges filled with light we sound and flow . . . One is struck down and hurt, we crowd about him, We bear him away, gaze after his listless body; But whether he lives or dies we do not know. One of us sings in the street, and we listen to him; The words ring over us like vague bells of sorrow. He sings of a house he lived in long ago. It is strange; this house of dust was the house I lived in; The house you lived in, the house that all of us know. And coiling slowly about him, and laughing at him, And throwing him pennies, we bear away A mournful echo of other times and places, And follow a dream . . . a dream that will not stay. Down long broad flights of lamplit stairs we flow; Noisy, in scattered waves, crowding and shouting; In broken slow cascades. The gardens extend before us . . . We spread out swiftly; Trees are above us, and darkness. The canyon fades . . . And we recall, with a gleaming stab of sadness, Vaguely and incoherently, some dream Of a world we came from, a world of sun-blue hills . . . A black wood whispers around us, green eyes gleam; Someone cries in the forest, and someone kills. We flow to the east, to the white-lined shivering sea; We reach to the west, where the whirling sun went down; We close our eyes to music in bright cafees. We diverge from clamorous streets to streets that are silent. We loaf where the wind-spilled fountain plays. And, growing tired, we turn aside at last, Remember our secret selves, seek out our towers, Lay weary hands on the banisters, and climb; Climbing, each, to his little four-square dream Of love or lust or beauty or death or crime. VI. Over the darkened city, the city of towers, The city of a thousand gates, Over the gleaming terraced roofs, the huddled towers, Over a somnolent whisper of loves and hates, The slow wind flows, drearily streams and falls, With a mournful sound down rain-dark walls. On one side purples the lustrous dusk of the sea, And dreams in white at the city's feet; On one side sleep the plains, with heaped-up hills. Oaks and beeches whisper in rings about it. Above the trees are towers where dread bells beat. The fisherman draws his streaming net from the sea And sails toward the far-off city, that seems Like one vague tower. The dark bow plunges to foam on blue-black waves, And shrill rain seethes like a ghostly music about him In a quiet shower. Rain with a shrill sings on the lapsing waves; Rain thrills over the roofs again; Like a shadow of shifting silver it crosses the city; The lamps in the streets are streamed with rain; And sparrows complain beneath deep eaves, And among whirled leaves The sea-gulls, blowing from tower to lower tower, From wall to remoter wall, Skim with the driven rain to the rising sea-sound And close grey wings and fall . . . . . . Hearing great rain above me, I now remember A girl who stood by the door and shut her eyes: Her pale cheeks glistened with rain, she stood and shivered. Into a forest of silver she vanished slowly . . . Voices about me rise . . . Voices clear and silvery, voices of raindrops,-- 'We struck with silver claws, we struck her down. We are the ghosts of the singing furies . . . ' A chorus of elfin voices blowing about me Weaves to a babel of sound. Each cries a secret. I run among them, reach out vain hands, and drown. 'I am the one who stood beside you and smiled, Thinking your face so strangely young . . . ' 'I am the one who loved you but did not dare.' 'I am the one you followed through crowded streets, The one who escaped you, the one with red-gleamed hair.' 'I am the one you saw to-day, who fell Senseless before you, hearing a certain bell: A bell that broke great memories in my brain.' 'I am the one who passed unnoticed before you, Invisible, in a cloud of secret pain.' 'I am the one who suddenly cried, beholding The face of a certain man on the dazzling screen. They wrote me that he was dead. It was long ago. I walked in the streets for a long while, hearing nothing, And returned to see it again. And it was so.' Weave, weave, weave, you streaks of rain! I am dissolved and woven again . . . Thousands of faces rise and vanish before me. Thousands of voices weave in the rain. 'I am the one who rode beside you, blinking At a dazzle of golden lights. Tempests of music swept me: I was thinking Of the gorgeous promise of certain nights: Of the woman who suddenly smiled at me this day, Smiled in a certain delicious sidelong way, And turned, as she reached the door, To smile once more . . . Her hands are whiter than snow on midnight water. Her throat is golden and full of golden laughter, Her eyes are strange as the stealth of the moon On a night in June . . . She runs among whistling leaves; I hurry after; She dances in dreams over white-waved water; Her body is white and fragrant and cool, Magnolia petals that float on a white-starred pool . . . I have dreamed of her, dreaming for many nights Of a broken music and golden lights, Of broken webs of silver, heavily falling Between my hands and their white desire: And dark-leaved boughs, edged with a golden radiance, Dipping to screen a fire . . . I dream that I walk with her beneath high trees, But as I lean to kiss her face, She is blown aloft on wind, I catch at leaves, And run in a moonless place; And I hear a crashing of terrible rocks flung down, And shattering trees and cracking walls, And a net of intense white flame roars over the town, And someone cries; and darkness falls . . . But now she has leaned and smiled at me, My veins are afire with music, Her eyes have kissed me, my body is turned to light; I shall dream to her secret heart tonight . . . ' He rises and moves away, he says no word, He folds his evening paper and turns away; I rush through the dark with rows of lamplit faces; Fire bells peal, and some of us turn to listen, And some sit motionless in their accustomed places. Cold rain lashes the car-roof, scurries in gusts, Streams down the windows in waves and ripples of lustre; The lamps in the streets are distorted and strange. Someone takes his watch from his pocket and yawns. One peers out in the night for the place to change. Rain . . . rain . . . rain . . . we are buried in rain, It will rain forever, the swift wheels hiss through water, Pale sheets of water gleam in the windy street. The pealing of bells is lost in a drive of rain-drops. Remote and hurried the great bells beat. 'I am the one whom life so shrewdly betrayed, Misfortune dogs me, it always hunted me down. And to-day the woman I love lies dead. I gave her roses, a ring with opals; These hands have touched her head. 'I bound her to me in all soft ways, I bound her to me in a net of days, Yet now she has gone in silence and said no word. How can we face these dazzling things, I ask you? There is no use: we cry: and are not heard. 'They cover a body with roses . . . I shall not see it . . . Must one return to the lifeless walls of a city Whose soul is charred by fire? . . . ' His eyes are closed, his lips press tightly together. Wheels hiss beneath us. He yields us our desire. 'No, do not stare so--he is weak with grief, He cannot face you, he turns his eyes aside; He is confused with pain. I suffered this. I know. It was long ago . . . He closes his eyes and drowns in death again.' The wind hurls blows at the rain-starred glistening windows, The wind shrills down from the half-seen walls. We flow on the mournful wind in a dream of dying; And at last a silence falls. VII. Midnight; bells toll, and along the cloud-high towers The golden lights go out . . . The yellow windows darken, the shades are drawn, In thousands of rooms we sleep, we await the dawn, We lie face down, we dream, We cry aloud with terror, half rise, or seem To stare at the ceiling or walls . . . Midnight . . . the last of shattering bell-notes falls. A rush of silence whirls over the cloud-high towers, A vortex of soundless hours. 'The bells have just struck twelve: I should be sleeping. But I cannot delay any longer to write and tell you. The woman is dead. She died--you know the way. Just as we planned. Smiling, with open sunlit eyes. Smiling upon the outstretched fatal hand . . .' He folds his letter, steps softly down the stairs. The doors are closed and silent. A gas-jet flares. His shadow disturbs a shadow of balustrades. The door swings shut behind. Night roars above him. Into the night he fades. Wind; wind; wind; carving the walls; Blowing the water that gleams in the street; Blowing the rain, the sleet. In the dark alley, an old tree cracks and falls, Oak-boughs moan in the haunted air; Lamps blow down with a crash and tinkle of glass . . . Darkness whistles . . . Wild hours pass . . . And those whom sleep eludes lie wide-eyed, hearing Above their heads a goblin night go by; Children are waked, and cry, The young girl hears the roar in her sleep, and dreams That her lover is caught in a burning tower, She clutches the pillow, she gasps for breath, she screams . . . And then by degrees her breath grows quiet and slow, She dreams of an evening, long ago: Of colored lanterns balancing under trees, Some of them softly catching afire; And beneath the lanterns a motionless face she sees, Golden with lamplight, smiling, serene . . . The leaves are a pale and glittering green, The sound of horns blows over the trampled grass, Shadows of dancers pass . . . The face smiles closer to hers, she tries to lean Backward, away, the eyes burn close and strange, The face is beginning to change,-- It is her lover, she no longer desires to resist, She is held and kissed. She closes her eyes, and melts in a seethe of flame . . . With a smoking ghost of shame . . . Wind, wind, wind . . . Wind in an enormous brain Blowing dark thoughts like fallen leaves . . . The wind shrieks, the wind grieves; It dashes the leaves on walls, it whirls then again; And the enormous sleeper vaguely and stupidly dreams And desires to stir, to resist a ghost of pain. One, whom the city imprisoned because of his cunning, Who dreamed for years in a tower, Seizes this hour Of tumult and wind. He files through the rusted bar, Leans his face to the rain, laughs up at the night, Slides down the knotted sheet, swings over the wall, To fall to the street with a cat-like fall, Slinks round a quavering rim of windy light, And at last is gone, Leaving his empty cell for the pallor of dawn . . . The mother whose child was buried to-day Turns her face to the window; her face is grey; And all her body is cold with the coldness of rain. He would have grown as easily as a tree, He would have spread a pleasure of shade above her, He would have been his father again . . . His growth was ended by a freezing invisible shadow. She lies, and does not move, and is stabbed by the rain. Wind, wind, wind; we toss and dream; We dream we are clouds and stars, blown in a stream: Windows rattle above our beds; We reach vague-gesturing hands, we lift our heads, Hear sounds far off,--and dream, with quivering breath, Our curious separate ways through life and death. VIII. The white fog creeps from the cold sea over the city, Over the pale grey tumbled towers,-- And settles among the roofs, the pale grey walls. Along damp sinuous streets it crawls, Curls like a dream among the motionless trees And seems to freeze. The fog slips ghostlike into a thousand rooms, Whirls over sleeping faces, Spins in an atomy dance round misty street lamps; And blows in cloudy waves over open spaces . . . And one from his high window, looking down, Peers at the cloud-white town, And thinks its island towers are like a dream . . . It seems an enormous sleeper, within whose brain Laborious shadows revolve and break and gleam. PART II. I. The round red sun heaves darkly out of the sea. The walls and towers are warmed and gleam. Sounds go drowsily up from streets and wharves. The city stirs like one that is half in dream. And the mist flows up by dazzling walls and windows, Where one by one we wake and rise. We gaze at the pale grey lustrous sea a moment, We rub the darkness from our eyes, And face our thousand devious secret mornings . . . And do not see how the pale mist, slowly ascending, Shaped by the sun, shines like a white-robed dreamer Compassionate over our towers bending. There, like one who gazes into a crystal, He broods upon our city with sombre eyes; He sees our secret fears vaguely unfolding, Sees cloudy symbols shape to rise. Each gleaming point of light is like a seed Dilating swiftly to coiling fires. Each cloud becomes a rapidly dimming face, Each hurrying face records its strange desires. We descend our separate stairs toward the day, Merge in the somnolent mass that fills the street, Lift our eyes to the soft blue space of sky, And walk by the well-known walls with accustomed feet. II. THE FULFILLED DREAM More towers must yet be built--more towers destroyed-- Great rocks hoisted in air; And he must seek his bread in high pale sunlight With gulls about him, and clouds just over his eyes . . . And so he did not mention his dream of falling But drank his coffee in silence, and heard in his ears That horrible whistle of wind, and felt his breath Sucked out of him, and saw the tower flash by And the small tree swell beneath him . . . He patted his boy on the head, and kissed his wife, Looked quickly around the room, to remember it,-- And so went out . . . For once, he forgot his pail. Something had changed--but it was not the street-- The street was just the same--it was himself. Puddles flashed in the sun. In the pawn-shop door The same old black cat winked green amber eyes; The butcher stood by his window tying his apron; The same men walked beside him, smoking pipes, Reading the morning paper . . . He would not yield, he thought, and walk more slowly, As if he knew for certain he walked to death: But with his usual pace,--deliberate, firm, Looking about him calmly, watching the world, Taking his ease . . . Yet, when he thought again Of the same dream, now dreamed three separate times, Always the same, and heard that whistling wind, And saw the windows flashing upward past him,-- He slowed his pace a little, and thought with horror How monstrously that small tree thrust to meet him! . . . He slowed his pace a little and remembered his wife. Was forty, then, too old for work like this? Why should it be? He'd never been afraid-- His eye was sure, his hand was steady . . . But dreams had meanings. He walked more slowly, and looked along the roofs, All built by men, and saw the pale blue sky; And suddenly he was dizzy with looking at it, It seemed to whirl and swim, It seemed the color of terror, of speed, of death . . . He lowered his eyes to the stones, he walked more slowly; His thoughts were blown and scattered like leaves; He thought of the pail . . . Why, then, was it forgotten? Because he would not need it? Then, just as he was grouping his thoughts again About that drug-store corner, under an arc-lamp, Where first he met the girl whom he would marry,-- That blue-eyed innocent girl, in a soft blouse,-- He waved his hand for signal, and up he went In the dusty chute that hugged the wall; Above the tree; from girdered floor to floor; Above the flattening roofs, until the sea Lay wide and waved before him . . . And then he stepped Giddily out, from that security, To the red rib of iron against the sky, And walked along it, feeling it sing and tremble; And looking down one instant, saw the tree Just as he dreamed it was; and looked away, And up again, feeling his blood go wild. He gave the signal; the long girder swung Closer to him, dropped clanging into place, Almost pushing him off. Pneumatic hammers Began their madhouse clatter, the white-hot rivets Were tossed from below and deftly caught in pails; He signalled again, and wiped his mouth, and thought A place so high in the air should be more quiet. The tree, far down below, teased at his eyes, Teased at the corners of them, until he looked, And felt his body go suddenly small and light; Felt his brain float off like a dwindling vapor; And heard a whistle of wind, and saw a tree Come plunging up to him, and thought to himself, 'By God--I'm done for now, the dream was right . . .' III. INTERLUDE The warm sun dreams in the dust, the warm sun falls On bright red roofs and walls; The trees in the park exhale a ghost of rain; We go from door to door in the streets again, Talking, laughing, dreaming, turning our faces, Recalling other times and places . . . We crowd, not knowing why, around a gate, We crowd together and wait, A stretcher is carried out, voices are stilled, The ambulance drives away. We watch its roof flash by, hear someone say 'A man fell off the building and was killed-- Fell right into a barrel . . .' We turn again Among the frightened eyes of white-faced men, And go our separate ways, each bearing with him A thing he tries, but vainly, to forget,-- A sickened crowd, a stretcher red and wet. A hurdy-gurdy sings in the crowded street, The golden notes skip over the sunlit stones, Wings are upon our feet. The sun seems warmer, the winding street more bright, Sparrows come whirring down in a cloud of light. We bear our dreams among us, bear them all, Like hurdy-gurdy music they rise and fall, Climb to beauty and die. The wandering lover dreams of his lover's mouth, And smiles at the hostile sky. The broker smokes his pipe, and sees a fortune. The murderer hears a cry. IV. NIGHTMARE 'Draw three cards, and I will tell your future . . . Draw three cards, and lay them down, Rest your palms upon them, stare at the crystal, And think of time . . . My father was a clown, My mother was a gypsy out of Egypt; And she was gotten with child in a strange way; And I was born in a cold eclipse of the moon, With the future in my eyes as clear as day.' I sit before the gold-embroidered curtain And think her face is like a wrinkled desert. The crystal burns in lamplight beneath my eyes. A dragon slowly coils on the scaly curtain. Upon a scarlet cloth a white skull lies. 'Your hand is on the hand that holds three lilies. You will live long, love many times. I see a dark girl here who once betrayed you. I see a shadow of secret crimes. 'There was a man who came intent to kill you, And hid behind a door and waited for you; There was a woman who smiled at you and lied. There was a golden girl who loved you, begged you, Crawled after you, and died. 'There is a ghost of murder in your blood-- Coming or past, I know not which. And here is danger--a woman with sea-green eyes, And white-skinned as a witch . . .' The words hiss into me, like raindrops falling On sleepy fire . . . She smiles a meaning smile. Suspicion eats my brain; I ask a question; Something is creeping at me, something vile; And suddenly on the wall behind her head I see a monstrous shadow strike and spread, The lamp puffs out, a great blow crashes down. I plunge through the curtain, run through dark to the street, And hear swift steps retreat . . . The shades are drawn, the door is locked behind me. Behind the door I hear a hammer sounding. I walk in a cloud of wonder; I am glad. I mingle among the crowds; my heart is pounding; You do not guess the adventure I have had! . . . Yet you, too, all have had your dark adventures, Your sudden adventures, or strange, or sweet . . . My peril goes out from me, is blown among you. We loiter, dreaming together, along the street. V. RETROSPECT Round white clouds roll slowly above the housetops, Over the clear red roofs they flow and pass. A flock of pigeons rises with blue wings flashing, Rises with whistle of wings, hovers an instant, And settles slowly again on the tarnished grass. And one old man looks down from a dusty window And sees the pigeons circling about the fountain And desires once more to walk among those trees. Lovers walk in the noontime by that fountain. Pigeons dip their beaks to drink from the water. And soon the pond must freeze. The light wind blows to his ears a sound of laughter, Young men shuffle their feet, loaf in the sunlight; A girl's laugh rings like a silver bell. But clearer than all these sounds is a sound he hears More in his secret heart than in his ears,-- A hammer's steady crescendo, like a knell. He hears the snarl of pineboards under the plane, The rhythmic saw, and then the hammer again,-- Playing with delicate strokes that sombre scale . . . And the fountain dwindles, the sunlight seems to pale. Time is a dream, he thinks, a destroying dream; It lays great cities in dust, it fills the seas; It covers the face of beauty, and tumbles walls. Where was the woman he loved? Where was his youth? Where was the dream that burned his brain like fire? Even a dream grows grey at last and falls. He opened his book once more, beside the window, And read the printed words upon that page. The sunlight touched his hand; his eyes moved slowly, The quiet words enchanted time and age. 'Death is never an ending, death is a change; Death is beautiful, for death is strange; Death is one dream out of another flowing; Death is a chorded music, softly going By sweet transition from key to richer key. Death is a meeting place of sea and sea.' VI. ADELE AND DAVIS She turned her head on the pillow, and cried once more. And drawing a shaken breath, and closing her eyes, To shut out, if she could, this dingy room, The wigs and costumes scattered around the floor,-- Yellows and greens in the dark,--she walked again Those nightmare streets which she had walked so often . . . Here, at a certain corner, under an arc-lamp, Blown by a bitter wind, she stopped and looked In through the brilliant windows of a drug-store, And wondered if she dared to ask for poison: But it was late, few customers were there, The eyes of all the clerks would freeze upon her, And she would wilt, and cry . . . Here, by the river, She listened to the water slapping the wall, And felt queer fascination in its blackness: But it was cold, the little waves looked cruel, The stars were keen, and a windy dash of spray Struck her cheek, and withered her veins . . . And so She dragged herself once more to home, and bed. Paul hadn't guessed it yet--though twice, already, She'd fainted--once, the first time, on the stage. So she must tell him soon--or else--get out . . . How could she say it? That was the hideous thing. She'd rather die than say it! . . . and all the trouble, Months when she couldn't earn a cent, and then, If he refused to marry her . . . well, what? She saw him laughing, making a foolish joke, His grey eyes turning quickly; and the words Fled from her tongue . . . She saw him sitting silent, Brooding over his morning coffee, maybe, And tried again . . . she bit her lips, and trembled, And looked away, and said . . . 'Say Paul, boy,--listen-- There's something I must tell you . . . ' There she stopped, Wondering what he'd say . . . What would he say? 'Spring it, kid! Don't look so serious!' 'But what I've got to say--IS--serious!' Then she could see how, suddenly, he would sober, His eyes would darken, he'd look so terrifying-- He always did--and what could she do but cry? Perhaps, then, he would guess--perhaps he wouldn't. And if he didn't, but asked her 'What's the matter?'-- She knew she'd never tell--just say she was sick . . . And after that, when would she dare again? And what would he do--even suppose she told him? If it were Felix! If it were only Felix!-- She wouldn't mind so much. But as it was, Bitterness choked her, she had half a mind To pay out Felix for never having liked her, By making people think that it was he . . . She'd write a letter to someone, before she died,-- Just saying 'Felix did it--and wouldn't marry.' And then she'd die . . . But that was hard on Paul . . . Paul would never forgive her--he'd never forgive her! Sometimes she almost thought Paul really loved her . . . She saw him look reproachfully at her coffin. And then she closed her eyes and walked again Those nightmare streets that she had walked so often: Under an arc-lamp swinging in the wind She stood, and stared in through a drug-store window, Watching a clerk wrap up a little pill-box. But it was late. No customers were there,-- Pitiless eyes would freeze her secret in her! And then--what poison would she dare to ask for? And if they asked her why, what would she say? VII. TWO LOVERS: OVERTONES Two lovers, here at the corner, by the steeple, Two lovers blow together like music blowing: And the crowd dissolves about them like a sea. Recurring waves of sound break vaguely about them, They drift from wall to wall, from tree to tree. 'Well, am I late?' Upward they look and laugh, They look at the great clock's golden hands, They laugh and talk, not knowing what they say: Only, their words like music seem to play; And seeming to walk, they tread strange sarabands. 'I brought you this . . . ' the soft words float like stars Down the smooth heaven of her memory. She stands again by a garden wall, The peach tree is in bloom, pink blossoms fall, Water sings from an opened tap, the bees Glisten and murmur among the trees. Someone calls from the house. She does not answer. Backward she leans her head, And dreamily smiles at the peach-tree leaves, wherethrough She sees an infinite May sky spread A vault profoundly blue. The voice from the house fades far away, The glistening leaves more vaguely ripple and sway . . The tap is closed, the water ceases to hiss . . . Silence . . . blue sky . . . and then, 'I brought you this . . . ' She turns again, and smiles . . . He does not know She smiles from long ago . . . She turns to him and smiles . . . Sunlight above him Roars like a vast invisible sea, Gold is beaten before him, shrill bells of silver; He is released of weight, his body is free, He lifts his arms to swim, Dark years like sinister tides coil under him . . . The lazy sea-waves crumble along the beach With a whirring sound like wind in bells, He lies outstretched on the yellow wind-worn sands Reaching his lazy hands Among the golden grains and sea-white shells . . . 'One white rose . . . or is it pink, to-day?' They pause and smile, not caring what they say, If only they may talk. The crowd flows past them like dividing waters. Dreaming they stand, dreaming they walk. 'Pink,--to-day!'--Face turns to dream-bright face, Green leaves rise round them, sunshine settles upon them, Water, in drops of silver, falls from the rose. She smiles at a face that smiles through leaves from the mirror. She breathes the fragrance; her dark eyes close . . . Time is dissolved, it blows like a little dust: Time, like a flurry of rain, Patters and passes, starring the window-pane. Once, long ago, one night, She saw the lightning, with long blue quiver of light, Ripping the darkness . . . and as she turned in terror A soft face leaned above her, leaned softly down, Softly around her a breath of roses was blown, She sank in waves of quiet, she seemed to float In a sea of silence . . . and soft steps grew remote . . 'Well, let us walk in the park . . . The sun is warm, We'll sit on a bench and talk . . .' They turn and glide, The crowd of faces wavers and breaks and flows. 'Look how the oak-tops turn to gold in the sunlight! Look how the tower is changed and glows!' Two lovers move in the crowd like a link of music, We press upon them, we hold them, and let them pass; A chord of music strikes us and straight we tremble; We tremble like wind-blown grass. What was this dream we had, a dream of music, Music that rose from the opening earth like magic And shook its beauty upon us and died away? The long cold streets extend once more before us. The red sun drops, the walls grow grey. VIII. THE BOX WITH SILVER HANDLES Well,--it was two days after my husband died-- Two days! And the earth still raw above him. And I was sweeping the carpet in their hall. In number four--the room with the red wall-paper-- Some chorus girls and men were singing that song 'They'll soon be lighting candles Round a box with silver handles'--and hearing them sing it I started to cry. Just then he came along And stopped on the stairs and turned and looked at me, And took the cigar from his mouth and sort of smiled And said, 'Say, what's the matter?' and then came down Where I was leaning against the wall, And touched my shoulder, and put his arm around me . . . And I was so sad, thinking about it,-- Thinking that it was raining, and a cold night, With Jim so unaccustomed to being dead,-- That I was happy to have him sympathize, To feel his arm, and leaned against him and cried. And before I knew it, he got me into a room Where a table was set, and no one there, And sat me down on a sofa, and held me close, And talked to me, telling me not to cry, That it was all right, he'd look after me,-- But not to cry, my eyes were getting red, Which didn't make me pretty. And he was so nice, That when he turned my face between his hands, And looked at me, with those blue eyes of his, And smiled, and leaned, and kissed me-- Somehow I couldn't tell him not to do it, Somehow I didn't mind, I let him kiss me, And closed my eyes! . . . Well, that was how it started. For when my heart was eased with crying, and grief Had passed and left me quiet, somehow it seemed As if it wasn't honest to change my mind, To send him away, or say I hadn't meant it-- And, anyway, it seemed so hard to explain! And so we sat and talked, not talking much, But meaning as much in silence as in words, There in that empty room with palms about us, That private dining-room . . . And as we sat there I felt my future changing, day by day, With unknown streets opening left and right, New streets with farther lights, new taller houses, Doors swinging into hallways filled with light, Half-opened luminous windows, with white curtains Streaming out in the night, and sudden music,-- And thinking of this, and through it half remembering A quick and horrible death, my husband's eyes, The broken-plastered walls, my boy asleep,-- It seemed as if my brain would break in two. My voice began to tremble . . . and when I stood, And told him I must go, and said good-night-- I couldn't see the end. How would it end? Would he return to-morrow? Or would he not? And did I want him to--or would I rather Look for another job?--He took my shoulders Between his hands, and looked down into my eyes, And smiled, and said good-night. If he had kissed me, That would have--well, I don't know; but he didn't . . And so I went downstairs, then, half elated, Hoping to close the door before that party In number four should sing that song again-- 'They'll soon be lighting candles round a box with silver handles'-- And sure enough, I did. I faced the darkness. And my eyes were filled with tears. And I was happy. IX. INTERLUDE The days, the nights, flow one by one above us, The hours go silently over our lifted faces, We are like dreamers who walk beneath a sea. Beneath high walls we flow in the sun together. We sleep, we wake, we laugh, we pursue, we flee. We sit at tables and sip our morning coffee, We read the papers for tales of lust or crime. The door swings shut behind the latest comer. We set our watches, regard the time. What have we done? I close my eyes, remember The great machine whose sinister brain before me Smote and smote with a rhythmic beat. My hands have torn down walls, the stone and plaster. I dropped great beams to the dusty street. My eyes are worn with measuring cloths of purple, And golden cloths, and wavering cloths, and pale. I dream of a crowd of faces, white with menace. Hands reach up to tear me. My brain will fail. Here, where the walls go down beneath our picks, These walls whose windows gap against the sky, Atom by atom of flesh and brain and marble Will build a glittering tower before we die . . . The young boy whistles, hurrying down the street, The young girl hums beneath her breath. One goes out to beauty, and does not know it. And one goes out to death. X. SUDDEN DEATH 'Number four--the girl who died on the table-- The girl with golden hair--' The purpling body lies on the polished marble. We open the throat, and lay the thyroid bare . . . One, who held the ether-cone, remembers Her dark blue frightened eyes. He heard the sharp breath quiver, and saw her breast More hurriedly fall and rise. Her hands made futile gestures, she turned her head Fighting for breath; her cheeks were flushed to scarlet,-- And, suddenly, she lay dead. And all the dreams that hurried along her veins Came to the darkness of a sudden wall. Confusion ran among them, they whirled and clamored, They fell, they rose, they struck, they shouted, Till at last a pallor of silence hushed them all. What was her name? Where had she walked that morning? Through what dark forest came her feet? Along what sunlit walls, what peopled street? Backward he dreamed along a chain of days, He saw her go her strange and secret ways, Waking and sleeping, noon and night. She sat by a mirror, braiding her golden hair. She read a story by candlelight. Her shadow ran before her along the street, She walked with rhythmic feet, Turned a corner, descended a stair. She bought a paper, held it to scan the headlines, Smiled for a moment at sea-gulls high in sunlight, And drew deep breaths of air. Days passed, bright clouds of days. Nights passed. And music Murmured within the walls of lighted windows. She lifted her face to the light and danced. The dancers wreathed and grouped in moving patterns, Clustered, receded, streamed, advanced. Her dress was purple, her slippers were golden, Her eyes were blue; and a purple orchid Opened its golden heart on her breast . . . She leaned to the surly languor of lazy music, Leaned on her partner's arm to rest. The violins were weaving a weft of silver, The horns were weaving a lustrous brede of gold, And time was caught in a glistening pattern, Time, too elusive to hold . . . Shadows of leaves fell over her face,--and sunlight: She turned her face away. Nearer she moved to a crouching darkness With every step and day. Death, who at first had thought of her only an instant, At a great distance, across the night, Smiled from a window upon her, and followed her slowly From purple light to light. Once, in her dreams, he spoke out clearly, crying, 'I am the murderer, death. I am the lover who keeps his appointment At the doors of breath!' She rose and stared at her own reflection, Half dreading there to find The dark-eyed ghost, waiting beside her, Or reaching from behind To lay pale hands upon her shoulders . . . Or was this in her mind? . . . She combed her hair. The sunlight glimmered Along the tossing strands. Was there a stillness in this hair,-- A quiet in these hands? Death was a dream. It could not change these eyes, Blow out their light, or turn this mouth to dust. She combed her hair and sang. She would live forever. Leaves flew past her window along a gust . . . And graves were dug in the earth, and coffins passed, And music ebbed with the ebbing hours. And dreams went along her veins, and scattering clouds Threw streaming shadows on walls and towers. XI. Snow falls. The sky is grey, and sullenly glares With purple lights in the canyoned street. The fiery sign on the dark tower wreathes and flares . . . The trodden grass in the park is covered with white, The streets grow silent beneath our feet . . . The city dreams, it forgets its past to-night. And one, from his high bright window looking down Over the enchanted whiteness of the town, Seeing through whirls of white the vague grey towers, Desires like this to forget what will not pass, The littered papers, the dust, the tarnished grass, Grey death, stale ugliness, and sodden hours. Deep in his heart old bells are beaten again, Slurred bells of grief and pain, Dull echoes of hideous times and poisonous places. He desires to drown in a cold white peace of snow. He desires to forget a million faces . . . In one room breathes a woman who dies of hunger. The clock ticks slowly and stops. And no one winds it. In one room fade grey violets in a vase. Snow flakes faintly hiss and melt on the window. In one room, minute by minute, the flutist plays The lamplit page of music, the tireless scales. His hands are trembling, his short breath fails. In one room, silently, lover looks upon lover, And thinks the air is fire. The drunkard swears and touches the harlot's heartstrings With the sudden hand of desire. And one goes late in the streets, and thinks of murder; And one lies staring, and thinks of death. And one, who has suffered, clenches her hands despairing, And holds her breath . . . Who are all these, who flow in the veins of the city, Coil and revolve and dream, Vanish or gleam? Some mount up to the brain and flower in fire. Some are destroyed; some die; some slowly stream. And the new are born who desire to destroy the old; And fires are kindled and quenched; and dreams are broken, And walls flung down . . . And the slow night whirls in snow over towers of dreamers, And whiteness hushes the town. PART III I As evening falls, And the yellow lights leap one by one Along high walls; And along black streets that glisten as if with rain, The muted city seems Like one in a restless sleep, who lies and dreams Of vague desires, and memories, and half-forgotten pain . . . Along dark veins, like lights the quick dreams run, Flash, are extinguished, flash again, To mingle and glow at last in the enormous brain And die away . . . As evening falls, A dream dissolves these insubstantial walls,-- A myriad secretly gliding lights lie bare . . . The lovers rise, the harlot combs her hair, The dead man's face grows blue in the dizzy lamplight, The watchman climbs the stair . . . The bank defaulter leers at a chaos of figures, And runs among them, and is beaten down; The sick man coughs and hears the chisels ringing; The tired clown Sees the enormous crowd, a million faces, Motionless in their places, Ready to laugh, and seize, and crush and tear . . . The dancer smooths her hair, Laces her golden slippers, and runs through the door To dance once more, Hearing swift music like an enchantment rise, Feeling the praise of a thousand eyes. As darkness falls The walls grow luminous and warm, the walls Tremble and glow with the lives within them moving, Moving like music, secret and rich and warm. How shall we live tonight? Where shall we turn? To what new light or darkness yearn? A thousand winding stairs lead down before us; And one by one in myriads we descend By lamplit flowered walls, long balustrades, Through half-lit halls which reach no end. II. THE SCREEN MAIDEN You read--what is it, then that you are reading? What music moves so silently in your mind? Your bright hand turns the page. I watch you from my window, unsuspected: You move in an alien land, a silent age . . . . . . The poet--what was his name--? Tokkei--Tokkei-- The poet walked alone in a cold late rain, And thought his grief was like the crying of sea-birds; For his lover was dead, he never would love again. Rain in the dreams of the mind--rain forever-- Rain in the sky of the heart--rain in the willows-- But then he saw this face, this face like flame, This quiet lady, this portrait by Hiroshigi; And took it home with him; and with it came What unexpected changes, subtle as weather! The dark room, cold as rain, Grew faintly fragrant, stirred with a stir of April, Warmed its corners with light again, And smoke of incense whirled about this portrait, And the quiet lady there, So young, so quietly smiling, with calm hands, Seemed ready to loose her hair, And smile, and lean from the picture, or say one word, The word already clear, Which seemed to rise like light between her eyelids . . He held his breath to hear, And smiled for shame, and drank a cup of wine, And held a candle, and searched her face Through all the little shadows, to see what secret Might give so warm a grace . . . Was it the quiet mouth, restrained a little? The eyes, half-turned aside? The jade ring on her wrist, still almost swinging? . . . The secret was denied, He chose his favorite pen and drew these verses, And slept; and as he slept A dream came into his heart, his lover entered, And chided him, and wept. And in the morning, waking, he remembered, And thought the dream was strange. Why did his darkened lover rise from the garden? He turned, and felt a change, As if a someone hidden smiled and watched him . . . Yet there was only sunlight there. Until he saw those young eyes, quietly smiling, And held his breath to stare, And could have sworn her cheek had turned--a little . . . Had slightly turned away . . . Sunlight dozed on the floor . . . He sat and wondered, Nor left his room that day. And that day, and for many days thereafter, He sat alone, and thought No lady had ever lived so beautiful As Hiroshigi wrought . . . Or if she lived, no matter in what country, By what far river or hill or lonely sea, He would look in every face until he found her . . . There was no other as fair as she. And before her quiet face he burned soft incense, And brought her every day Boughs of the peach, or almond, or snow-white cherry, And somehow, she seemed to say, That silent lady, young, and quietly smiling, That she was happy there; And sometimes, seeing this, he started to tremble, And desired to touch her hair, To lay his palm along her hand, touch faintly With delicate finger-tips The ghostly smile that seemed to hover and vanish Upon her lips . . . Until he knew he loved this quiet lady; And night by night a dread Leered at his dreams, for he knew that Hiroshigi Was many centuries dead,-- And the lady, too, was dead, and all who knew her . . Dead, and long turned to dust . . . The thin moon waxed and waned, and left him paler, The peach leaves flew in a gust, And he would surely have died; but there one day A wise man, white with age, Stared at the portrait, and said, 'This Hiroshigi Knew more than archimage,-- Cunningly drew the body, and called the spirit, Till partly it entered there . . . Sometimes, at death, it entered the portrait wholly . . Do all I say with care, And she you love may come to you when you call her . . . ' So then this ghost, Tokkei, Ran in the sun, bought wine of a hundred merchants, And alone at the end of day Entered the darkening room, and faced the portrait, And saw the quiet eyes Gleaming and young in the dusk, and held the wine-cup, And knelt, and did not rise, And said, aloud, 'Lo-san, will you drink this wine?' Said it three times aloud. And at the third the faint blue smoke of incense Rose to the walls in a cloud, And the lips moved faintly, and the eyes, and the calm hands stirred; And suddenly, with a sigh, The quiet lady came slowly down from the portrait, And stood, while worlds went by, And lifted her young white hands and took the wine cup; And the poet trembled, and said, 'Lo-san, will you stay forever?'--'Yes, I will stay.'-- 'But what when I am dead?' 'When you are dead your spirit will find my spirit, And then we shall die no more.' Music came down upon them, and spring returning, They remembered worlds before, And years went over the earth, and over the sea, And lovers were born and spoke and died, But forever in sunlight went these two immortal, Tokkei and the quiet bride . . . III. HAUNTED CHAMBERS The lamplit page is turned, the dream forgotten; The music changes tone, you wake, remember Deep worlds you lived before,--deep worlds hereafter Of leaf on falling leaf, music on music, Rain and sorrow and wind and dust and laughter. Helen was late and Miriam came too soon. Joseph was dead, his wife and children starving. Elaine was married and soon to have a child. You dreamed last night of fiddler-crabs with fiddles; They played a buzzing melody, and you smiled. To-morrow--what? And what of yesterday? Through soundless labyrinths of dream you pass, Through many doors to the one door of all. Soon as it's opened we shall hear a music: Or see a skeleton fall . . . We walk with you. Where is it that you lead us? We climb the muffled stairs beneath high lanterns. We descend again. We grope through darkened cells. You say: this darkness, here, will slowly kill me. It creeps and weighs upon me . . . Is full of bells. This is the thing remembered I would forget-- No matter where I go, how soft I tread, This windy gesture menaces me with death. Fatigue! it says, and points its finger at me; Touches my throat and stops my breath. My fans--my jewels--the portrait of my husband-- The torn certificate for my daughter's grave-- These are but mortal seconds in immortal time. They brush me, fade away: like drops of water. They signify no crime. Let us retrace our steps: I have deceived you: Nothing is here I could not frankly tell you: No hint of guilt, or faithlessness, or threat. Dreams--they are madness. Staring eyes--illusion. Let us return, hear music, and forget . . . IV. ILLICIT Of what she said to me that night--no matter. The strange thing came next day. My brain was full of music--something she played me--; I couldn't remember it all, but phrases of it Wreathed and wreathed among faint memories, Seeking for something, trying to tell me something, Urging to restlessness: verging on grief. I tried to play the tune, from memory,-- But memory failed: the chords and discords climbed And found no resolution--only hung there, And left me morbid . . . Where, then, had I heard it? . . . What secret dusty chamber was it hinting? 'Dust', it said, 'dust . . . and dust . . . and sunlight . . A cold clear April evening . . . snow, bedraggled, Rain-worn snow, dappling the hideous grass . . . And someone walking alone; and someone saying That all must end, for the time had come to go . . . ' These were the phrases . . . but behind, beneath them A greater shadow moved: and in this shadow I stood and guessed . . . Was it the blue-eyed lady? The one who always danced in golden slippers-- And had I danced with her,--upon this music? Or was it further back--the unplumbed twilight Of childhood?--No--much recenter than that. You know, without my telling you, how sometimes A word or name eludes you, and you seek it Through running ghosts of shadow,--leaping at it, Lying in wait for it to spring upon it, Spreading faint snares for it of sense or sound: Until, of a sudden, as if in a phantom forest, You hear it, see it flash among the branches, And scarcely knowing how, suddenly have it-- Well, it was so I followed down this music, Glimpsing a face in darkness, hearing a cry, Remembering days forgotten, moods exhausted, Corners in sunlight, puddles reflecting stars--; Until, of a sudden, and least of all suspected, The thing resolved itself: and I remembered An April afternoon, eight years ago-- Or was it nine?--no matter--call it nine-- A room in which the last of sunlight faded; A vase of violets, fragrance in white curtains; And, she who played the same thing later, playing. She played this tune. And in the middle of it Abruptly broke it off, letting her hands Fall in her lap. She sat there so a moment, With shoulders drooped, then lifted up a rose, One great white rose, wide opened like a lotos, And pressed it to her cheek, and closed her eyes. 'You know--we've got to end this--Miriam loves you . . . If she should ever know, or even guess it,-- What would she do?--Listen!--I'm not absurd . . . I'm sure of it. If you had eyes, for women-- To understand them--which you've never had-- You'd know it too . . . ' So went this colloquy, Half humorous, with undertones of pathos, Half grave, half flippant . . . while her fingers, softly, Felt for this tune, played it and let it fall, Now note by singing note, now chord by chord, Repeating phrases with a kind of pleasure . . . Was it symbolic of the woman's weakness That she could neither break it--nor conclude? It paused . . . and wandered . . . paused again; while she, Perplexed and tired, half told me I must go,-- Half asked me if I thought I ought to go . . . Well, April passed with many other evenings, Evenings like this, with later suns and warmer, With violets always there, and fragrant curtains . . . And she was right: and Miriam found it out . . . And after that, when eight deep years had passed-- Or nine--we met once more,--by accident . . . But was it just by accident, I wonder, She played this tune?--Or what, then, was intended? . . . V. MELODY IN A RESTAURANT The cigarette-smoke loops and slides above us, Dipping and swirling as the waiter passes; You strike a match and stare upon the flame. The tiny fire leaps in your eyes a moment, And dwindles away as silently as it came. This melody, you say, has certain voices-- They rise like nereids from a river, singing, Lift white faces, and dive to darkness again. Wherever you go you bear this river with you: A leaf falls,--and it flows, and you have pain. So says the tune to you--but what to me? What to the waiter, as he pours your coffee, The violinist who suavely draws his bow? That man, who folds his paper, overhears it. A thousand dreams revolve and fall and flow. Some one there is who sees a virgin stepping Down marble stairs to a deep tomb of roses: At the last moment she lifts remembering eyes. Green leaves blow down. The place is checked with shadows. A long-drawn murmur of rain goes down the skies. And oaks are stripped and bare, and smoke with lightning: And clouds are blown and torn upon high forests, And the great sea shakes its walls. And then falls silence . . . And through long silence falls This melody once more: 'Down endless stairs she goes, as once before.' So says the tune to him--but what to me? What are the worlds I see? What shapes fantastic, terrible dreams? . . . I go my secret way, down secret alleys; My errand is not so simple as it seems. VI. PORTRAIT OF ONE DEAD This is the house. On one side there is darkness, On one side there is light. Into the darkness you may lift your lanterns-- O, any number--it will still be night. And here are echoing stairs to lead you downward To long sonorous halls. And here is spring forever at these windows, With roses on the walls. This is her room. On one side there is music-- On one side not a sound. At one step she could move from love to silence, Feel myriad darkness coiling round. And here are balconies from which she heard you, Your steady footsteps on the stair. And here the glass in which she saw your shadow As she unbound her hair. Here is the room--with ghostly walls dissolving-- The twilight room in which she called you 'lover'; And the floorless room in which she called you 'friend.' So many times, in doubt, she ran between them!-- Through windy corridors of darkening end. Here she could stand with one dim light above her And hear far music, like a sea in caverns, Murmur away at hollowed walls of stone. And here, in a roofless room where it was raining, She bore the patient sorrow of rain alone. Your words were walls which suddenly froze around her. Your words were windows,--large enough for moonlight, Too small to let her through. Your letters--fragrant cloisters faint with music. The music that assuaged her there was you. How many times she heard your step ascending Yet never saw your face! She heard them turn again, ring slowly fainter, Till silence swept the place. Why had you gone? . . . The door, perhaps, mistaken . . . You would go elsewhere. The deep walls were shaken. A certain rose-leaf--sent without intention-- Became, with time, a woven web of fire-- She wore it, and was warm. A certain hurried glance, let fall at parting, Became, with time, the flashings of a storm. Yet, there was nothing asked, no hint to tell you Of secret idols carved in secret chambers From all you did and said. Nothing was done, until at last she knew you. Nothing was known, till, somehow, she was dead. How did she die?--You say, she died of poison. Simple and swift. And much to be regretted. You did not see her pass So many thousand times from light to darkness, Pausing so many times before her glass; You did not see how many times she hurried To lean from certain windows, vainly hoping, Passionate still for beauty, remembered spring. You did not know how long she clung to music, You did not hear her sing. Did she, then, make the choice, and step out bravely From sound to silence--close, herself, those windows? Or was it true, instead, That darkness moved,--for once,--and so possessed her? . . . We'll never know, you say, for she is dead. VII. PORCELAIN You see that porcelain ranged there in the window-- Platters and soup-plates done with pale pink rosebuds, And tiny violets, and wreaths of ivy? See how the pattern clings to the gleaming edges! They're works of art--minutely seen and felt, Each petal done devoutly. Is it failure To spend your blood like this? Study them . . . you will see there, in the porcelain, If you stare hard enough, a sort of swimming Of lights and shadows, ghosts within a crystal-- My brain unfolding! There you'll see me sitting Day after day, close to a certain window, Looking down, sometimes, to see the people . . . Sometimes my wife comes there to speak to me . . . Sometimes the grey cat waves his tail around me . . . Goldfish swim in a bowl, glisten in sunlight, Dilate to a gorgeous size, blow delicate bubbles, Drowse among dark green weeds. On rainy days, You'll see a gas-light shedding light behind me-- An eye-shade round my forehead. There I sit, Twirling the tiny brushes in my paint-cups, Painting the pale pink rosebuds, minute violets, Exquisite wreaths of dark green ivy leaves. On this leaf, goes a dream I dreamed last night Of two soft-patterned toads--I thought them stones, Until they hopped! And then a great black spider,-- Tarantula, perhaps, a hideous thing,-- It crossed the room in one tremendous leap. Here,--as I coil the stems between two leaves,-- It is as if, dwindling to atomy size, I cried the secret between two universes . . . A friend of mine took hasheesh once, and said Just as he fell asleep he had a dream,-- Though with his eyes wide open,-- And felt, or saw, or knew himself a part Of marvelous slowly-wreathing intricate patterns, Plane upon plane, depth upon coiling depth, Amazing leaves, folding one on another, Voluted grasses, twists and curves and spirals-- All of it darkly moving . . . as for me, I need no hasheesh for it--it's too easy! Soon as I shut my eyes I set out walking In a monstrous jungle of monstrous pale pink roseleaves, Violets purple as death, dripping with water, And ivy-leaves as big as clouds above me. Here, in a simple pattern of separate violets-- With scalloped edges gilded--here you have me Thinking of something else. My wife, you know,-- There's something lacking--force, or will, or passion, I don't know what it is--and so, sometimes, When I am tired, or haven't slept three nights, Or it is cloudy, with low threat of rain, I get uneasy--just like poplar trees Ruffling their leaves--and I begin to think Of poor Pauline, so many years ago, And that delicious night. Where is she now? I meant to write--but she has moved, by this time, And then, besides, she might find out I'm married. Well, there is more--I'm getting old and timid-- The years have gnawed my will. I've lost my nerve! I never strike out boldly as I used to-- But sit here, painting violets, and remember That thrilling night. Photographers, she said, Asked her to pose for them; her eyes and forehead,-- Dark brown eyes, and a smooth and pallid forehead,-- Were thought so beautiful.--And so they were. Pauline . . . These violets are like words remembered . . . Darling! she whispered . . . Darling! . . . Darling! . . . Darling! Well, I suppose such days can come but once. Lord, how happy we were! . . . Here, if you only knew it, is a story-- Here, in these leaves. I stopped my work to tell it, And then, when I had finished, went on thinking: A man I saw on a train . . . I was still a boy . . . Who killed himself by diving against a wall. Here is a recollection of my wife, When she was still my sweetheart, years ago. It's funny how things change,--just change, by growing, Without an effort . . . And here are trivial things,-- A chill, an errand forgotten, a cut while shaving; A friend of mine who tells me he is married . . . Or is that last so trivial? Well, no matter! This is the sort of thing you'll see of me, If you look hard enough. This, in its way, Is a kind of fame. My life arranged before you In scrolls of leaves, rosebuds, violets, ivy, Clustered or wreathed on plate and cup and platter . . . Sometimes, I say, I'm just like John the Baptist-- You have my head before you . . . on a platter. VIII. COFFINS: INTERLUDE Wind blows. Snow falls. The great clock in its tower Ticks with reverberant coil and tolls the hour: At the deep sudden stroke the pigeons fly . . . The fine snow flutes the cracks between the flagstones. We close our coats, and hurry, and search the sky. We are like music, each voice of it pursuing A golden separate dream, remote, persistent, Climbing to fire, receding to hoarse despair. What do you whisper, brother? What do you tell me? . . . We pass each other, are lost, and do not care. One mounts up to beauty, serenely singing, Forgetful of the steps that cry behind him; One drifts slowly down from a waking dream. One, foreseeing, lingers forever unmoving . . . Upward and downward, past him there, we stream. One has death in his eyes: and walks more slowly. Death, among jonquils, told him a freezing secret. A cloud blows over his eyes, he ponders earth. He sees in the world a forest of sunlit jonquils: A slow black poison huddles beneath that mirth. Death, from street to alley, from door to window, Cries out his news,--of unplumbed worlds approaching, Of a cloud of darkness soon to destroy the tower. But why comes death,--he asks,--in a world so perfect? Or why the minute's grey in the golden hour? Music, a sudden glissando, sinister, troubled, A drift of wind-torn petals, before him passes Down jangled streets, and dies. The bodies of old and young, of maimed and lovely, Are slowly borne to earth, with a dirge of cries. Down cobbled streets they come; down huddled stairways; Through silent halls; through carven golden doorways; From freezing rooms as bare as rock. The curtains are closed across deserted windows. Earth streams out of the shovel; the pebbles knock. Mary, whose hands rejoiced to move in sunlight; Silent Elaine; grave Anne, who sang so clearly; Fugitive Helen, who loved and walked alone; Miriam too soon dead, darkly remembered; Childless Ruth, who sorrowed, but could not atone; Jean, whose laughter flashed over depths of terror, And Eloise, who desired to love but dared not; Doris, who turned alone to the dark and cried,-- They are blown away like windflung chords of music, They drift away; the sudden music has died. And one, with death in his eyes, comes walking slowly And sees the shadow of death in many faces, And thinks the world is strange. He desires immortal music and spring forever, And beauty that knows no change. IX. CABARET We sit together and talk, or smoke in silence. You say (but use no words) 'this night is passing As other nights when we are dead will pass . . .' Perhaps I misconstrue you: you mean only, 'How deathly pale my face looks in that glass . . .' You say: 'We sit and talk, of things important . . . How many others like ourselves, this instant, Mark the pendulum swinging against the wall? How many others, laughing, sip their coffee-- Or stare at mirrors, and do not talk at all? . . . 'This is the moment' (so you would say, in silence) When suddenly we have had too much of laughter: And a freezing stillness falls, no word to say. Our mouths feel foolish . . . For all the days hereafter What have we saved--what news, what tune, what play? 'We see each other as vain and futile tricksters,-- Posturing like bald apes before a mirror; No pity dims our eyes . . . How many others, like ourselves, this instant, See how the great world wizens, and are wise? . . .' Well, you are right . . . No doubt, they fall, these seconds . . . When suddenly all's distempered, vacuous, ugly, And even those most like angels creep for schemes. The one you love leans forward, smiles, deceives you, Opens a door through which you see dark dreams. But this is momentary . . . or else, enduring, Leads you with devious eyes through mists and poisons To horrible chaos, or suicide, or crime . . . And all these others who at your conjuration Grow pale, feeling the skeleton touch of time,-- Or, laughing sadly, talk of things important, Or stare at mirrors, startled to see their faces, Or drown in the waveless vacuum of their days,-- Suddenly, as from sleep, awake, forgetting This nauseous dream; take up their accustomed ways, Exhume the ghost of a joke, renew loud laughter, Forget the moles above their sweethearts' eyebrows, Lean to the music, rise, And dance once more in a rose-festooned illusion With kindness in their eyes . . . They say (as we ourselves have said, remember) 'What wizardry this slow waltz works upon us! And how it brings to mind forgotten things!' They say 'How strange it is that one such evening Can wake vague memories of so many springs!' And so they go . . . In a thousand crowded places, They sit to smile and talk, or rise to ragtime, And, for their pleasures, agree or disagree. With secret symbols they play on secret passions. With cunning eyes they see The innocent word that sets remembrance trembling, The dubious word that sets the scared heart beating . . . The pendulum on the wall Shakes down seconds . . . They laugh at time, dissembling; Or coil for a victim and do not talk at all. X. LETTER From time to time, lifting his eyes, he sees The soft blue starlight through the one small window, The moon above black trees, and clouds, and Venus,-- And turns to write . . . The clock, behind ticks softly. It is so long, indeed, since I have written,-- Two years, almost, your last is turning yellow,-- That these first words I write seem cold and strange. Are you the man I knew, or have you altered? Altered, of course--just as I too have altered-- And whether towards each other, or more apart, We cannot say . . . I've just re-read your letter-- Not through forgetfulness, but more for pleasure-- Pondering much on all you say in it Of mystic consciousness--divine conversion-- The sense of oneness with the infinite,-- Faith in the world, its beauty, and its purpose . . . Well, you believe one must have faith, in some sort, If one's to talk through this dark world contented. But is the world so dark? Or is it rather Our own brute minds,--in which we hurry, trembling, Through streets as yet unlighted? This, I think. You have been always, let me say, "romantic,"-- Eager for color, for beauty, soon discontented With a world of dust and stones and flesh too ailing: Even before the question grew to problem And drove you bickering into metaphysics, You met on lower planes the same great dragon, Seeking release, some fleeting satisfaction, In strange aesthetics . . . You tried, as I remember, One after one, strange cults, and some, too, morbid, The cruder first, more violent sensations, Gorgeously carnal things, conceived and acted With splendid animal thirst . . . Then, by degrees,-- Savoring all more delicate gradations In all that hue and tone may play on flesh, Or thought on brain,--you passed, if I may say so, From red and scarlet through morbid greens to mauve. Let us regard ourselves, you used to say, As instruments of music, whereon our lives Will play as we desire: and let us yield These subtle bodies and subtler brains and nerves To all experience plays . . . And so you went From subtle tune to subtler, each heard once, Twice or thrice at the most, tiring of each; And closing one by one your doors, drew in Slowly, through darkening labyrinths of feeling, Towards the central chamber . . . Which now you've reached. What, then's, the secret of this ultimate chamber-- Or innermost, rather? If I see it clearly It is the last, and cunningest, resort Of one who has found this world of dust and flesh,-- This world of lamentations, death, injustice, Sickness, humiliation, slow defeat, Bareness, and ugliness, and iteration,-- Too meaningless; or, if it has a meaning, Too tiresomely insistent on one meaning: Futility . . . This world, I hear you saying,-- With lifted chin, and arm in outflung gesture, Coldly imperious,--this transient world, What has it then to give, if not containing Deep hints of nobler worlds? We know its beauties,-- Momentary and trivial for the most part, Perceived through flesh, passing like flesh away,-- And know how much outweighed they are by darkness. We are like searchers in a house of darkness, A house of dust; we creep with little lanterns, Throwing our tremulous arcs of light at random, Now here, now there, seeing a plane, an angle, An edge, a curve, a wall, a broken stairway Leading to who knows what; but never seeing The whole at once . . . We grope our way a little, And then grow tired. No matter what we touch, Dust is the answer--dust: dust everywhere. If this were all--what were the use, you ask? But this is not: for why should we be seeking, Why should we bring this need to seek for beauty, To lift our minds, if there were only dust? This is the central chamber you have come to: Turning your back to the world, until you came To this deep room, and looked through rose-stained windows, And saw the hues of the world so sweetly changed. Well, in a measure, so only do we all. I am not sure that you can be refuted. At the very last we all put faith in something,-- You in this ghost that animates your world, This ethical ghost,--and I, you'll say, in reason,-- Or sensuous beauty,--or in my secret self . . . Though as for that you put your faith in these, As much as I do--and then, forsaking reason,-- Ascending, you would say, to intuition,-- You predicate this ghost of yours, as well. Of course, you might have argued,--and you should have,-- That no such deep appearance of design Could shape our world without entailing purpose: For can design exist without a purpose? Without conceiving mind? . . . We are like children Who find, upon the sands, beside a sea, Strange patterns drawn,--circles, arcs, ellipses, Moulded in sand . . . Who put them there, we wonder? Did someone draw them here before we came? Or was it just the sea?--We pore upon them, But find no answer--only suppositions. And if these perfect shapes are evidence Of immanent mind, it is but circumstantial: We never come upon him at his work, He never troubles us. He stands aloof-- Well, if he stands at all: is not concerned With what we are or do. You, if you like, May think he broods upon us, loves us, hates us, Conceives some purpose of us. In so doing You see, without much reason, will in law. I am content to say, 'this world is ordered, Happily so for us, by accident: We go our ways untroubled save by laws Of natural things.' Who makes the more assumption? If we were wise--which God knows we are not-- (Notice I call on God!) we'd plumb this riddle Not in the world we see, but in ourselves. These brains of ours--these delicate spinal clusters-- Have limits: why not learn them, learn their cravings? Which of the two minds, yours or mine, is sound? Yours, which scorned the world that gave it freedom, Until you managed to see that world as omen,-- Or mine, which likes the world, takes all for granted, Sorrow as much as joy, and death as life?-- You lean on dreams, and take more credit for it. I stand alone . . . Well, I take credit, too. You find your pleasure in being at one with all things-- Fusing in lambent dream, rising and falling As all things rise and fall . . . I do that too-- With reservations. I find more varied pleasure In understanding: and so find beauty even In this strange dream of yours you call the truth. Well, I have bored you. And it's growing late. For household news--what have you heard, I wonder? You must have heard that Paul was dead, by this time-- Of spinal cancer. Nothing could be done-- We found it out too late. His death has changed me, Deflected much of me that lived as he lived, Saddened me, slowed me down. Such things will happen, Life is composed of them; and it seems wisdom To see them clearly, meditate upon them, And understand what things flow out of them. Otherwise, all goes on here much as always. Why won't you come and see us, in the spring, And bring old times with you?--If you could see me Sitting here by the window, watching Venus Go down behind my neighbor's poplar branches,-- Just where you used to sit,--I'm sure you'd come. This year, they say, the springtime will be early. XI. CONVERSATION: UNDERTONES What shall we talk of? Li Po? Hokusai? You narrow your long dark eyes to fascinate me; You smile a little. . . . Outside, the night goes by. I walk alone in a forest of ghostly trees . . . Your pale hands rest palm downwards on your knees. 'These lines--converging, they suggest such distance! The soul is drawn away, beyond horizons. Lured out to what? One dares not think. Sometimes, I glimpse these infinite perspectives In intimate talk (with such as you) and shrink . . . 'One feels so petty!--One feels such--emptiness!--' You mimic horror, let fall your lifted hand, And smile at me; with brooding tenderness . . . Alone on darkened waters I fall and rise; Slow waves above me break, faint waves of cries. 'And then these colors . . . but who would dare describe them? This faint rose-coral pink . . this green--pistachio?-- So insubstantial! Like the dim ghostly things Two lovers find in love's still-twilight chambers . . . Old peacock-fans, and fragrant silks, and rings . . . 'Rings, let us say, drawn from the hapless fingers Of some great lady, many centuries nameless,-- Or is that too sepulchral?--dulled with dust; And necklaces that crumble if you touch them; And gold brocades that, breathed on, fall to rust. 'No--I am wrong . . . it is not these I sought for--! Why did they come to mind? You understand me-- You know these strange vagaries of the brain!--' --I walk alone in a forest of ghostly trees; Your pale hands rest palm downwards on your knees; These strange vagaries of yours are all too plain. 'But why perplex ourselves with tedious problems Of art or . . . such things? . . . while we sit here, living, With all that's in our secret hearts to say!--' Hearts?--Your pale hand softly strokes the satin. You play deep music--know well what you play. You stroke the satin with thrilling of finger-tips, You smile, with faintly perfumed lips, You loose your thoughts like birds, Brushing our dreams with soft and shadowy words . . We know your words are foolish, yet sit here bound In tremulous webs of sound. 'How beautiful is intimate talk like this!-- It is as if we dissolved grey walls between us, Stepped through the solid portals, become but shadows, To hear a hidden music . . . Our own vast shadows Lean to a giant size on the windy walls, Or dwindle away; we hear our soft footfalls Echo forever behind us, ghostly clear, Music sings far off, flows suddenly near, And dies away like rain . . . We walk through subterranean caves again,-- Vaguely above us feeling A shadowy weight of frescos on the ceiling, Strange half-lit things, Soundless grotesques with writhing claws and wings . . . And here a beautiful face looks down upon us; And someone hurries before, unseen, and sings . . . Have we seen all, I wonder, in these chambers-- Or is there yet some gorgeous vault, arched low, Where sleeps an amazing beauty we do not know? . . ' The question falls: we walk in silence together, Thinking of that deep vault and of its secret . . . This lamp, these books, this fire Are suddenly blown away in a whistling darkness. Deep walls crash down in the whirlwind of desire. XII. WITCHES' SABBATH Now, when the moon slid under the cloud And the cold clear dark of starlight fell, He heard in his blood the well-known bell Tolling slowly in heaves of sound, Slowly beating, slowly beating, Shaking its pulse on the stagnant air: Sometimes it swung completely round, Horribly gasping as if for breath; Falling down with an anguished cry . . . Now the red bat, he mused, will fly; Something is marked, this night, for death . . . And while he mused, along his blood Flew ghostly voices, remote and thin, They rose in the cavern of his brain, Like ghosts they died away again; And hands upon his heart were laid, And music upon his flesh was played, Until, as he was bidden to do, He walked the wood he so well knew. Through the cold dew he moved his feet, And heard far off, as under the earth, Discordant music in shuddering tones, Screams of laughter, horrible mirth, Clapping of hands, and thudding of drums, And the long-drawn wail of one in pain. To-night, he thought, I shall die again, We shall die again in the red-eyed fire To meet on the edge of the wood beyond With the placid gaze of fed desire . . . He walked; and behind the whisper of trees, In and out, one walked with him: She parted the branches and peered at him, Through lowered lids her two eyes burned, He heard her breath, he saw her hand, Wherever he turned his way, she turned: Kept pace with him, now fast, now slow; Moving her white knees as he moved . . . This is the one I have always loved; This is the one whose bat-soul comes To dance with me, flesh to flesh, In the starlight dance of horns and drums . . . The walls and roofs, the scarlet towers, Sank down behind a rushing sky. He heard a sweet song just begun Abruptly shatter in tones and die. It whirled away. Cold silence fell. And again came tollings of a bell. * * * * * This air is alive with witches: the white witch rides Swifter than smoke on the starlit wind. In the clear darkness, while the moon hides, They come like dreams, like something remembered . . Let us hurry! beloved; take my hand, Forget these things that trouble your eyes, Forget, forget! Our flesh is changed, Lighter than smoke we wreathe and rise . . . The cold air hisses between us . . . Beloved, beloved, What was the word you said? Something about clear music that sang through water . . . I cannot remember. The storm-drops break on the leaves. Something was lost in the darkness. Someone is dead. Someone lies in the garden and grieves. Look how the branches are tossed in this air, Flinging their green to the earth! Black clouds rush to devour the stars in the sky, The moon stares down like a half-closed eye. The leaves are scattered, the birds are blown, Oaks crash down in the darkness, We run from our windy shadows; we are running alone. * * * * * The moon was darkened: across it flew The swift grey tenebrous shape he knew, Like a thing of smoke it crossed the sky, The witch! he said. And he heard a cry, And another came, and another came, And one, grown duskily red with blood, Floated an instant across the moon, Hung like a dull fantastic flame . . . The earth has veins: they throb to-night, The earth swells warm beneath my feet, The tips of the trees grow red and bright, The leaves are swollen, I feel them beat, They press together, they push and sigh, They listen to hear the great bat cry, The great red bat with the woman's face . . . Hurry! he said. And pace for pace That other, who trod the dark with him, Crushed the live leaves, reached out white hands And closed her eyes, the better to see The priests with claws, the lovers with hooves, The fire-lit rock, the sarabands. I am here! she said. The bough he broke-- Was it the snapping bough that spoke? I am here! she said. The white thigh gleamed Cold in starlight among dark leaves, The head thrown backward as he had dreamed, The shadowy red deep jasper mouth; And the lifted hands, and the virgin breasts, Passed beside him, and vanished away. I am here! she cried. He answered 'Stay!' And laughter arose, and near and far Answering laughter rose and died . . . Who is there? in the dark? he cried. He stood in terror, and heard a sound Of terrible hooves on the hollow ground; They rushed, were still; a silence fell; And he heard deep tollings of a bell. * * * * * Look beloved! Why do you hide your face? Look, in the centre there, above the fire, They are bearing the boy who blasphemed love! They are playing a piercing music upon him With a bow of living wire! . . . The virgin harlot sings, She leans above the beautiful anguished body, And draws slow music from those strings. They dance around him, they fling red roses upon him, They trample him with their naked feet, His cries are lost in laughter, Their feet grow dark with his blood, they beat and beat, They dance upon him, until he cries no more . . . Have we not heard that cry before? Somewhere, somewhere, Beside a sea, in the green evening, Beneath green clouds, in a copper sky . . . Was it you? was it I? They have quenched the fires, they dance in the darkness, The satyrs have run among them to seize and tear, Look! he has caught one by the hair, She screams and falls, he bears her away with him, And the night grows full of whistling wings. Far off, one voice, serene and sweet, Rises and sings . . . 'By the clear waters where once I died, In the calm evening bright with stars. . . .' Where have I heard these words? Was it you who sang them? It was long ago. Let us hurry, beloved! the hard hooves trample; The treetops tremble and glow. * * * * * In the clear dark, on silent wings, The red bat hovers beneath her moon; She drops through the fragrant night, and clings Fast in the shadow, with hands like claws, With soft eyes closed and mouth that feeds, To the young white flesh that warmly bleeds. The maidens circle in dance, and raise From lifting throats, a soft-sung praise; Their knees and breasts are white and bare, They have hung pale roses in their hair, Each of them as she dances by Peers at the blood with a narrowed eye. See how the red wing wraps him round, See how the white youth struggles in vain! The weak arms writhe in a soundless pain; He writhes in the soft red veiny wings, But still she whispers upon him and clings. . . . This is the secret feast of love, Look well, look well, before it dies, See how the red one trembles above, See how quiet the white one lies! . . . . Wind through the trees. . . . and a voice is heard Singing far off. The dead leaves fall. . . . 'By the clear waters where once I died, In the calm evening bright with stars, One among numberless avatars, I wedded a mortal, a mortal bride, And lay on the stones and gave my flesh, And entered the hunger of him I loved. How shall I ever escape this mesh Or be from my lover's body removed?' Dead leaves stream through the hurrying air And the maenads dance with flying hair. * * * * * The priests with hooves, the lovers with horns, Rise in the starlight, one by one, They draw their knives on the spurting throats, They smear the column with blood of goats, They dabble the blood on hair and lips And wait like stones for the moon's eclipse. They stand like stones and stare at the sky Where the moon leers down like a half-closed eye. . . In the green moonlight still they stand While wind flows over the darkened sand And brood on the soft forgotten things That filled their shadowy yesterdays. . . . Where are the breasts, the scarlet wings? . . . . They gaze at each other with troubled gaze. . . . And then, as the shadow closes the moon, Shout, and strike with their hooves the ground, And rush through the dark, and fill the night With a slowly dying clamor of sound. There, where the great walls crowd the stars, There, by the black wind-riven walls, In a grove of twisted leafless trees. . . . Who are these pilgrims, who are these, These three, the one of whom stands upright, While one lies weeping and one of them crawls? The face that he turned was a wounded face, I heard the dripping of blood on stones. . . . Hooves had trampled and torn this place, And the leaves were strewn with blood and bones. Sometimes, I think, beneath my feet, The warm earth stretches herself and sighs. . . . Listen! I heard the slow heart beat. . . . I will lie on this grass as a lover lies And reach to the north and reach to the south And seek in the darkness for her mouth. * * * * * Beloved, beloved, where the slow waves of the wind Shatter pale foam among great trees, Under the hurrying stars, under the heaving arches, Like one whirled down under shadowy seas, I run to find you, I run and cry, Where are you? Where are you? It is I. It is I. It is your eyes I seek, it is your windy hair, Your starlight body that breathes in the darkness there. Under the darkness I feel you stirring. . . . Is this you? Is this you? Bats in this air go whirring. . . . And this soft mouth that darkly meets my mouth, Is this the soft mouth I knew? Darkness, and wind in the tortured trees; And the patter of dew. * * * * * Dance! Dance! Dance! Dance! Dance till the brain is red with speed! Dance till you fall! Lift your torches! Kiss your lovers until they bleed! Backward I draw your anguished hair Until your eyes are stretched with pain; Backward I press you until you cry, Your lips grow white, I kiss you again, I will take a torch and set you afire, I will break your body and fling it away. . . . Look, you are trembling. . . . Lie still, beloved! Lock your hands in my hair, and say Darling! darling! darling! darling! All night long till the break of day. Is it your heart I hear beneath me. . . . Or the far tolling of that tower? The voices are still that cried around us. . . . The woods grow still for the sacred hour. Rise, white lover! the day draws near. The grey trees lean to the east in fear. 'By the clear waters where once I died . . . .' Beloved, whose voice was this that cried? 'By the clear waters that reach the sun By the clear waves that starward run. . . . I found love's body and lost his soul, And crumbled in flame that should have annealed. . . How shall I ever again be whole, By what dark waters shall I be healed?' Silence. . . . the red leaves, one by one, Fall. Far off, the maenads run. Silence. Beneath my naked feet The veins of the red earth swell and beat. The dead leaves sigh on the troubled air, Far off the maenads bind their hair. . . . Hurry, beloved! the day comes soon. The fire is drawn from the heart of the moon. * * * * * The great bell cracks and falls at last. The moon whirls out. The sky grows still. Look, how the white cloud crosses the stars And suddenly drops behind the hill! Your eyes are placid, you smile at me, We sit in the room by candle-light. We peer in each other's veins and see No sign of the things we saw this night. Only, a song is in your ears, A song you have heard, you think, in dream: The song which only the demon hears, In the dark forest where maenads scream . . . 'By the clear waters where once I died . . . In the calm evening bright with stars . . . ' What do the strange words mean? you say,-- And touch my hand, and turn away. XIII. The half-shut doors through which we heard that music Are softly closed. Horns mutter down to silence. The stars whirl out, the night grows deep. Darkness settles upon us. A vague refrain Drowsily teases at the drowsy brain. In numberless rooms we stretch ourselves and sleep. Where have we been? What savage chaos of music Whirls in our dreams?--We suddenly rise in darkness, Open our eyes, cry out, and sleep once more. We dream we are numberless sea-waves languidly foaming A warm white moonlit shore; Or clouds blown windily over a sky at midnight, Or chords of music scattered in hurrying darkness, Or a singing sound of rain . . . We open our eyes and stare at the coiling darkness, And enter our dreams again. PART IV. I. CLAIRVOYANT 'This envelope you say has something in it Which once belonged to your dead son--or something He knew, was fond of? Something he remembers?-- The soul flies far, and we can only call it By things like these . . . a photograph, a letter, Ribbon, or charm, or watch . . . ' . . . Wind flows softly, the long slow even wind, Over the low roofs white with snow; Wind blows, bearing cold clouds over the ocean, One by one they melt and flow,-- Streaming one by one over trees and towers, Coiling and gleaming in shafts of sun; Wind flows, bearing clouds; the hurrying shadows Flow under them one by one . . . ' . . . A spirit darkens before me . . . it is the spirit Which in the flesh you called your son . . . A spirit Young and strong and beautiful . . . He says that he is happy, is much honored; Forgives and is forgiven . . . rain and wind Do not perplex him . . . storm and dust forgotten . . The glittering wheels in wheels of time are broken And laid aside . . . ' 'Ask him why he did the thing he did!' 'He is unhappy. This thing, he says, transcends you: Dust cannot hold what shines beyond the dust . . . What seems calamity is less than a sigh; What seems disgrace is nothing.' 'Ask him if the one he hurt is there, And if she loves him still!' 'He tells you she is there, and loves him still,-- Not as she did, but as all spirits love . . . A cloud of spirits has gathered about him. They praise him and call him, they do him honor; He is more beautiful, he shines upon them.' . . . Wind flows softly, the long deep tremulous wind, Over the low roofs white with snow . . . Wind flows, bearing dreams; they gather and vanish, One by one they sing and flow; Over the outstretched lands of days remembered, Over remembered tower and wall, One by one they gather and talk in the darkness, Rise and glimmer and fall . . . 'Ask him why he did the thing he did! He knows I will understand!' 'It is too late: He will not hear me: I have lost my power.' 'Three times I've asked him! He will never tell me. God have mercy upon him. I will ask no more.' II. DEATH: AND A DERISIVE CHORUS The door is shut. She leaves the curtained office, And down the grey-walled stairs comes trembling slowly Towards the dazzling street. Her withered hand clings tightly to the railing. The long stairs rise and fall beneath her feet. Here in the brilliant sun we jostle, waiting To tear her secret out . . . We laugh, we hurry, We go our way, revolving, sinister, slow. She blinks in the sun, and then steps faintly downward. We whirl her away, we shout, we spin, we flow. Where have you been, old lady? We know your secret!-- Voices jangle about her, jeers, and laughter. . . . She trembles, tries to hurry, averts her eyes. Tell us the truth, old lady! where have you been? She turns and turns, her brain grows dark with cries. Look at the old fool tremble! She's been paying,-- Paying good money, too,--to talk to spirits. . . . She thinks she's heard a message from one dead! What did he tell you? Is he well and happy? Don't lie to us--we all know what he said. He said the one he murdered once still loves him; He said the wheels in wheels of time are broken; And dust and storm forgotten; and all forgiven. . . . But what you asked he wouldn't tell you, though,-- Ha ha! there's one thing you will never know! That's what you get for meddling so with heaven! Where have you been, old lady? Where are you going? We know, we know! She's been to gab with spirits. Look at the old fool! getting ready to cry! What have you got in an envelope, old lady? A lock of hair? An eyelash from his eye? How do you know the medium didn't fool you? Perhaps he had no spirit--perhaps he killed it. Here she comes! the old fool's lost her son. What did he have--blue eyes and golden hair? We know your secret! what's done is done. Look out, you'll fall--and fall, if you're not careful, Right into an open grave. . . but what's the hurry? You don't think you will find him when you're dead? Cry! Cry! Look at her mouth all twisted,-- Look at her eyes all red! We know you--know your name and all about you, All you remember and think, and all you scheme for. We tear your secret out, we leave you, go Laughingly down the street. . . . Die, if you want to! Die, then, if you're in such a hurry to know!-- . . . . She falls. We lift her head. The wasted body Weighs nothing in our hands. Does no one know her? Was no one with her when she fell? . . . We eddy about her, move away in silence. We hear slow tollings of a bell. III. PALIMPSEST: A DECEITFUL PORTRAIT Well, as you say, we live for small horizons: We move in crowds, we flow and talk together, Seeing so many eyes and hands and faces, So many mouths, and all with secret meanings,-- Yet know so little of them; only seeing The small bright circle of our consciousness, Beyond which lies the dark. Some few we know-- Or think we know. . . Once, on a sun-bright morning, I walked in a certain hallway, trying to find A certain door: I found one, tried it, opened, And there in a spacious chamber, brightly lighted, A hundred men played music, loudly, swiftly, While one tall woman sent her voice above them In powerful sweetness. . . . Closing then the door I heard it die behind me, fade to whisper,-- And walked in a quiet hallway as before. Just such a glimpse, as through that opened door, Is all we know of those we call our friends. . . . We hear a sudden music, see a playing Of ordered thoughts--and all again is silence. The music, we suppose, (as in ourselves) Goes on forever there, behind shut doors,-- As it continues after our departure, So, we divine, it played before we came . . . What do you know of me, or I of you? . . . Little enough. . . . We set these doors ajar Only for chosen movements of the music: This passage, (so I think--yet this is guesswork) Will please him,--it is in a strain he fancies,-- More brilliant, though, than his; and while he likes it He will be piqued . . . He looks at me bewildered And thinks (to judge from self--this too is guesswork) The music strangely subtle, deep in meaning, Perplexed with implications; he suspects me Of hidden riches, unexpected wisdom. . . . Or else I let him hear a lyric passage,-- Simple and clear; and all the while he listens I make pretence to think my doors are closed. This too bewilders him. He eyes me sidelong Wondering 'Is he such a fool as this? Or only mocking?'--There I let it end. . . . Sometimes, of course, and when we least suspect it-- When we pursue our thoughts with too much passion, Talking with too great zeal--our doors fly open Without intention; and the hungry watcher Stares at the feast, carries away our secrets, And laughs. . . . but this, for many counts, is seldom. And for the most part we vouchsafe our friends, Our lovers too, only such few clear notes As we shall deem them likely to admire: 'Praise me for this' we say, or 'laugh at this,' Or 'marvel at my candor'. . . . all the while Withholding what's most precious to ourselves,-- Some sinister depth of lust or fear or hatred, The sombre note that gives the chord its power; Or a white loveliness--if such we know-- Too much like fire to speak of without shame. Well, this being so, and we who know it being So curious about those well-locked houses, The minds of those we know,--to enter softly, And steal from floor to floor up shadowy stairways, From room to quiet room, from wall to wall, Breathing deliberately the very air, Pressing our hands and nerves against warm darkness To learn what ghosts are there,-- Suppose for once I set my doors wide open And bid you in. . . . Suppose I try to tell you The secrets of this house, and how I live here; Suppose I tell you who I am, in fact. . . . Deceiving you--as far as I may know it-- Only so much as I deceive myself. If you are clever you already see me As one who moves forever in a cloud Of warm bright vanity: a luminous cloud Which falls on all things with a quivering magic, Changing such outlines as a light may change, Brightening what lies dark to me, concealing Those things that will not change . . . I walk sustained In a world of things that flatter me: a sky Just as I would have had it; trees and grass Just as I would have shaped and colored them; Pigeons and clouds and sun and whirling shadows, And stars that brightening climb through mist at nightfall,-- In some deep way I am aware these praise me: Where they are beautiful, or hint of beauty, They point, somehow, to me. . . . This water says,-- Shimmering at the sky, or undulating In broken gleaming parodies of clouds, Rippled in blue, or sending from cool depths To meet the falling leaf the leaf's clear image,-- This water says, there is some secret in you Akin to my clear beauty, silently responsive To all that circles you. This bare tree says,-- Austere and stark and leafless, split with frost, Resonant in the wind, with rigid branches Flung out against the sky,--this tall tree says, There is some cold austerity in you, A frozen strength, with long roots gnarled on rocks, Fertile and deep; you bide your time, are patient, Serene in silence, bare to outward seeming, Concealing what reserves of power and beauty! What teeming Aprils!--chorus of leaves on leaves! These houses say, such walls in walls as ours, Such streets of walls, solid and smooth of surface, Such hills and cities of walls, walls upon walls; Motionless in the sun, or dark with rain; Walls pierced with windows, where the light may enter; Walls windowless where darkness is desired; Towers and labyrinths and domes and chambers,-- Amazing deep recesses, dark on dark,-- All these are like the walls which shape your spirit: You move, are warm, within them, laugh within them, Proud of their depth and strength; or sally from them, When you are bold, to blow great horns at the world. . This deep cool room, with shadowed walls and ceiling, Tranquil and cloistral, fragrant of my mind, This cool room says,--just such a room have you, It waits you always at the tops of stairways, Withdrawn, remote, familiar to your uses, Where you may cease pretence and be yourself. . . . And this embroidery, hanging on this wall, Hung there forever,--these so soundless glidings Of dragons golden-scaled, sheer birds of azure, Coilings of leaves in pale vermilion, griffins Drawing their rainbow wings through involutions Of mauve chrysanthemums and lotus flowers,-- This goblin wood where someone cries enchantment,-- This says, just such an involuted beauty Of thought and coiling thought, dream linked with dream, Image to image gliding, wreathing fires, Soundlessly cries enchantment in your mind: You need but sit and close your eyes a moment To see these deep designs unfold themselves. And so, all things discern me, name me, praise me-- I walk in a world of silent voices, praising; And in this world you see me like a wraith Blown softly here and there, on silent winds. 'Praise me'--I say; and look, not in a glass, But in your eyes, to see my image there-- Or in your mind; you smile, I am contented; You look at me, with interest unfeigned, And listen--I am pleased; or else, alone, I watch thin bubbles veering brightly upward From unknown depths,--my silver thoughts ascending; Saying now this, now that, hinting of all things,-- Dreams, and desires, velleities, regrets, Faint ghosts of memory, strange recognitions,-- But all with one deep meaning: this is I, This is the glistening secret holy I, This silver-winged wonder, insubstantial, This singing ghost. . . . And hearing, I am warmed. * * * * * You see me moving, then, as one who moves Forever at the centre of his circle: A circle filled with light. And into it Come bulging shapes from darkness, loom gigantic, Or huddle in dark again. . . . A clock ticks clearly, A gas-jet steadily whirs, light streams across me; Two church bells, with alternate beat, strike nine; And through these things my pencil pushes softly To weave grey webs of lines on this clear page. Snow falls and melts; the eaves make liquid music; Black wheel-tracks line the snow-touched street; I turn And look one instant at the half-dark gardens, Where skeleton elm-trees reach with frozen gesture Above unsteady lamps,--with black boughs flung Against a luminous snow-filled grey-gold sky. 'Beauty!' I cry. . . . My feet move on, and take me Between dark walls, with orange squares for windows. Beauty; beheld like someone half-forgotten, Remembered, with slow pang, as one neglected . . . Well, I am frustrate; life has beaten me, The thing I strongly seized has turned to darkness, And darkness rides my heart. . . . These skeleton elm-trees-- Leaning against that grey-gold snow filled sky-- Beauty! they say, and at the edge of darkness Extend vain arms in a frozen gesture of protest . . . A clock ticks softly; a gas-jet steadily whirs: The pencil meets its shadow upon clear paper, Voices are raised, a door is slammed. The lovers, Murmuring in an adjacent room, grow silent, The eaves make liquid music. . . . Hours have passed, And nothing changes, and everything is changed. Exultation is dead, Beauty is harlot,-- And walks the streets. The thing I strongly seized Has turned to darkness, and darkness rides my heart. If you could solve this darkness you would have me. This causeless melancholy that comes with rain, Or on such days as this when large wet snowflakes Drop heavily, with rain . . . whence rises this? Well, so-and-so, this morning when I saw him, Seemed much preoccupied, and would not smile; And you, I saw too much; and you, too little; And the word I chose for you, the golden word, The word that should have struck so deep in purpose, And set so many doors of wish wide open, You let it fall, and would not stoop for it, And smiled at me, and would not let me guess Whether you saw it fall. . . These things, together, With other things, still slighter, wove to music, And this in time drew up dark memories; And there I stand. This music breaks and bleeds me, Turning all frustrate dreams to chords and discords, Faces and griefs, and words, and sunlit evenings, And chains self-forged that will not break nor lengthen, And cries that none can answer, few will hear. Have these things meaning? Or would you see more clearly If I should say 'My second wife grows tedious, Or, like gay tulip, keeps no perfumed secret'? Or 'one day dies eventless as another, Leaving the seeker still unsatisfied, And more convinced life yields no satisfaction'? Or 'seek too hard, the sight at length grows callous, And beauty shines in vain'?-- These things you ask for, These you shall have. . . So, talking with my first wife, At the dark end of evening, when she leaned And smiled at me, with blue eyes weaving webs Of finest fire, revolving me in scarlet,-- Calling to mind remote and small successions Of countless other evenings ending so,-- I smiled, and met her kiss, and wished her dead; Dead of a sudden sickness, or by my hands Savagely killed; I saw her in her coffin, I saw her coffin borne downstairs with trouble, I saw myself alone there, palely watching, Wearing a masque of grief so deeply acted That grief itself possessed me. Time would pass, And I should meet this girl,--my second wife-- And drop the masque of grief for one of passion. Forward we move to meet, half hesitating, We drown in each others' eyes, we laugh, we talk, Looking now here, now there, faintly pretending We do not hear the powerful pulsing prelude Roaring beneath our words . . . The time approaches. We lean unbalanced. The mute last glance between us, Profoundly searching, opening, asking, yielding, Is steadily met: our two lives draw together . . . . . . .'What are you thinking of?'. . . . My first wife's voice Scattered these ghosts. 'Oh nothing--nothing much-- Just wondering where we'd be two years from now, And what we might be doing . . . ' And then remorse Turned sharply in my mind to sudden pity, And pity to echoed love. And one more evening Drew to the usual end of sleep and silence. And, as it is with this, so too with all things. The pages of our lives are blurred palimpsest: New lines are wreathed on old lines half-erased, And those on older still; and so forever. The old shines through the new, and colors it. What's new? What's old? All things have double meanings,-- All things return. I write a line with passion (Or touch a woman's hand, or plumb a doctrine) Only to find the same thing, done before,-- Only to know the same thing comes to-morrow. . . . This curious riddled dream I dreamed last night,-- Six years ago I dreamed it just as now; The same man stooped to me; we rose from darkness, And broke the accustomed order of our days, And struck for the morning world, and warmth, and freedom. . . . What does it mean? Why is this hint repeated? What darkness does it spring from, seek to end? You see me, then, pass up and down these stairways, Now through a beam of light, and now through shadow,-- Pursuing silent ends. No rest there is,-- No more for me than you. I move here always, From quiet room to room, from wall to wall, Searching and plotting, weaving a web of days. This is my house, and now, perhaps, you know me. . . Yet I confess, for all my best intentions, Once more I have deceived you. . . . I withhold The one thing precious, the one dark thing that guides me; And I have spread two snares for you, of lies. IV. COUNTERPOINT: TWO ROOMS He, in the room above, grown old and tired, She, in the room below--his floor her ceiling-- Pursue their separate dreams. He turns his light, And throws himself on the bed, face down, in laughter. . . . She, by the window, smiles at a starlight night, His watch--the same he has heard these cycles of ages-- Wearily chimes at seconds beneath his pillow. The clock, upon her mantelpiece, strikes nine. The night wears on. She hears dull steps above her. The world whirs on. . . . New stars come up to shine. His youth--far off--he sees it brightly walking In a golden cloud. . . . Wings flashing about it. . . . Darkness Walls it around with dripping enormous walls. Old age--far off--her death--what do they matter? Down the smooth purple night a streaked star falls. She hears slow steps in the street--they chime like music; They climb to her heart, they break and flower in beauty, Along her veins they glisten and ring and burn. . . . He hears his own slow steps tread down to silence. Far off they pass. He knows they will never return. Far off--on a smooth dark road--he hears them faintly. The road, like a sombre river, quietly flowing, Moves among murmurous walls. A deeper breath Swells them to sound: he hears his steps more clearly. And death seems nearer to him: or he to death. What's death?--She smiles. The cool stone hurts her elbows. The last of the rain-drops gather and fall from elm-boughs, She sees them glisten and break. The arc-lamp sings, The new leaves dip in the warm wet air and fragrance. A sparrow whirs to the eaves, and shakes his wings. What's death--what's death? The spring returns like music, The trees are like dark lovers who dream in starlight, The soft grey clouds go over the stars like dreams. The cool stone wounds her arms to pain, to pleasure. Under the lamp a circle of wet street gleams. . . . And death seems far away, a thing of roses, A golden portal, where golden music closes, Death seems far away: And spring returns, the countless singing of lovers, And spring returns to stay. . . . He, in the room above, grown old and tired, Flings himself on the bed, face down, in laughter, And clenches his hands, and remembers, and desires to die. And she, by the window, smiles at a night of starlight. . . . The soft grey clouds go slowly across the sky. V. THE BITTER LOVE-SONG No, I shall not say why it is that I love you-- Why do you ask me, save for vanity? Surely you would not have me, like a mirror, Say 'yes,--your hair curls darkly back from the temples, Your mouth has a humorous, tremulous, half-shy sweetness, Your eyes are April grey. . . . with jonquils in them?' No, if I tell at all, I shall tell in silence . . . I'll say--my childhood broke through chords of music --Or were they chords of sun?--wherein fell shadows, Or silences; I rose through seas of sunlight; Or sometimes found a darkness stooped above me With wings of death, and a face of cold clear beauty. . I lay in the warm sweet grass on a blue May morning, My chin in a dandelion, my hands in clover, And drowsed there like a bee. . . . blue days behind me Stretched like a chain of deep blue pools of magic, Enchanted, silent, timeless. . . . days before me Murmured of blue-sea mornings, noons of gold, Green evenings streaked with lilac, bee-starred nights. Confused soft clouds of music fled above me. Sharp shafts of music dazzled my eyes and pierced me. I ran and turned and spun and danced in the sunlight, Shrank, sometimes, from the freezing silence of beauty, Or crept once more to the warm white cave of sleep. No, I shall not say 'this is why I praise you-- Because you say such wise things, or such foolish. . .' You would not have me say what you know better? Let me instead be silent, only saying--: My childhood lives in me--or half-lives, rather-- And, if I close my eyes cool chords of music Flow up to me . . . long chords of wind and sunlight. . . . Shadows of intricate vines on sunlit walls, Deep bells beating, with aeons of blue between them, Grass blades leagues apart with worlds between them, Walls rushing up to heaven with stars upon them. . . I lay in my bed and through the tall night window Saw the green lightning plunging among the clouds, And heard the harsh rain storm at the panes and roof. . . . How should I know--how should I now remember-- What half-dreamed great wings curved and sang above me? What wings like swords? What eyes with the dread night in them? This I shall say.--I lay by the hot white sand-dunes. . Small yellow flowers, sapless and squat and spiny, Stared at the sky. And silently there above us Day after day, beyond our dreams and knowledge, Presences swept, and over us streamed their shadows, Swift and blue, or dark. . . . What did they mean? What sinister threat of power? What hint of beauty? Prelude to what gigantic music, or subtle? Only I know these things leaned over me, Brooded upon me, paused, went flowing softly, Glided and passed. I loved, I desired, I hated, I struggled, I yielded and loved, was warmed to blossom . . . You, when your eyes have evening sunlight in them, Set these dunes before me, these salt bright flowers, These presences. . . . I drowse, they stream above me, I struggle, I yield and love, I am warmed to dream. You are the window (if I could tell I'd tell you) Through which I see a clear far world of sunlight. You are the silence (if you could hear you'd hear me) In which I remember a thin still whisper of singing. It is not you I laugh for, you I touch! My hands, that touch you, suddenly touch white cobwebs, Coldly silvered, heavily silvered with dewdrops; And clover, heavy with rain; and cold green grass. . . VI. CINEMA As evening falls, The walls grow luminous and warm, the walls Tremble and glow with the lives within them moving, Moving like music, secret and rich and warm. How shall we live to-night, where shall we turn? To what new light or darkness yearn? A thousand winding stairs lead down before us; And one by one in myriads we descend By lamplit flowered walls, long balustrades, Through half-lit halls which reach no end. . . . Take my arm, then, you or you or you, And let us walk abroad on the solid air: Look how the organist's head, in silhouette, Leans to the lamplit music's orange square! . . . The dim-globed lamps illumine rows of faces, Rows of hands and arms and hungry eyes, They have hurried down from a myriad secret places, From windy chambers next to the skies. . . . The music comes upon us. . . . it shakes the darkness, It shakes the darkness in our minds. . . . And brilliant figures suddenly fill the darkness, Down the white shaft of light they run through darkness, And in our hearts a dazzling dream unwinds . . . Take my hand, then, walk with me By the slow soundless crashings of a sea Down miles on miles of glistening mirrorlike sand,-- Take my hand And walk with me once more by crumbling walls; Up mouldering stairs where grey-stemmed ivy clings, To hear forgotten bells, as evening falls, Rippling above us invisibly their slowly widening rings. . . . Did you once love me? Did you bear a name? Did you once stand before me without shame? . . . Take my hand: your face is one I know, I loved you, long ago: You are like music, long forgotten, suddenly come to mind; You are like spring returned through snow. Once, I know, I walked with you in starlight, And many nights I slept and dreamed of you; Come, let us climb once more these stairs of starlight, This midnight stream of cloud-flung blue! . . . Music murmurs beneath us like a sea, And faints to a ghostly whisper . . . Come with me. Are you still doubtful of me--hesitant still, Fearful, perhaps, that I may yet remember What you would gladly, if you could, forget? You were unfaithful once, you met your lover; Still in your heart you bear that red-eyed ember; And I was silent,--you remember my silence yet . . . You knew, as well as I, I could not kill him, Nor touch him with hot hands, nor yet with hate. No, and it was not you I saw with anger. Instead, I rose and beat at steel-walled fate, Cried till I lay exhausted, sick, unfriended, That life, so seeming sure, and love, so certain, Should loose such tricks, be so abruptly ended, Ring down so suddenly an unlooked-for curtain. How could I find it in my heart to hurt you, You, whom this love could hurt much more than I? No, you were pitiful, and I gave you pity; And only hated you when I saw you cry. We were two dupes; if I could give forgiveness,-- Had I the right,--I should forgive you now . . . We were two dupes . . . Come, let us walk in starlight, And feed our griefs: we do not break, but bow. Take my hand, then, come with me By the white shadowy crashings of a sea . . . Look how the long volutes of foam unfold To spread their mottled shimmer along the sand! . . . Take my hand, Do not remember how these depths are cold, Nor how, when you are dead, Green leagues of sea will glimmer above your head. You lean your face upon your hands and cry, The blown sand whispers about your feet, Terrible seems it now to die,-- Terrible now, with life so incomplete, To turn away from the balconies and the music, The sunlit afternoons, To hear behind you there a far-off laughter Lost in a stirring of sand among dry dunes . . . Die not sadly, you whom life has beaten! Lift your face up, laughing, die like a queen! Take cold flowers of foam in your warm white fingers! Death's but a change of sky from blue to green . . . As evening falls, The walls grow luminous and warm, the walls Tremble and glow . . . the music breathes upon us, The rayed white shaft plays over our heads like magic, And to and fro we move and lean and change . . . You, in a world grown strange, Laugh at a darkness, clench your hands despairing, Smash your glass on a floor, no longer caring, Sink suddenly down and cry . . . You hear the applause that greets your latest rival, You are forgotten: your rival--who knows?--is I . . . I laugh in the warm bright light of answering laughter, I am inspired and young . . . and though I see You sitting alone there, dark, with shut eyes crying, I bask in the light, and in your hate of me . . . Failure . . . well, the time comes soon or later . . . The night must come . . . and I'll be one who clings, Desperately, to hold the applause, one instant,-- To keep some youngster waiting in the wings. The music changes tone . . . a room is darkened, Someone is moving . . . the crack of white light widens, And all is dark again; till suddenly falls A wandering disk of light on floor and walls, Winks out, returns again, climbs and descends, Gleams on a clock, a glass, shrinks back to darkness; And then at last, in the chaos of that place, Dazzles like frozen fire on your clear face. Well, I have found you. We have met at last. Now you shall not escape me: in your eyes I see the horrible huddlings of your past,-- All you remember blackens, utters cries, Reaches far hands and faint. I hold the light Close to your cheek, watch the pained pupils shrink,-- Watch the vile ghosts of all you vilely think . . . Now all the hatreds of my life have met To hold high carnival . . . we do not speak, My fingers find the well-loved throat they seek, And press, and fling you down . . . and then forget. Who plays for me? What sudden drums keep time To the ecstatic rhythm of my crime? What flute shrills out as moonlight strikes the floor? . . What violin so faintly cries Seeing how strangely in the moon he lies? . . . The room grows dark once more, The crack of white light narrows around the door, And all is silent, except a slow complaining Of flutes and violins, like music waning. Take my hand, then, walk with me By the slow soundless crashings of a sea . . . Look, how white these shells are, on this sand! Take my hand, And watch the waves run inward from the sky Line upon foaming line to plunge and die. The music that bound our lives is lost behind us, Paltry it seems . . . here in this wind-swung place Motionless under the sky's vast vault of azure We stand in a terror of beauty, face to face. The dry grass creaks in the wind, the blown sand whispers, The soft sand seethes on the dunes, the clear grains glisten, Once they were rock . . . a chaos of golden boulders . . . Now they are blown by the wind . . . we stand and listen To the sliding of grain upon timeless grain And feel our lives go past like a whisper of pain. Have I not seen you, have we not met before Here on this sun-and-sea-wrecked shore? You shade your sea-gray eyes with a sunlit hand And peer at me . . . far sea-gulls, in your eyes, Flash in the sun, go down . . . I hear slow sand, And shrink to nothing beneath blue brilliant skies . . . * * * * * The music ends. The screen grows dark. We hurry To go our devious secret ways, forgetting Those many lives . . . We loved, we laughed, we killed, We danced in fire, we drowned in a whirl of sea-waves. The flutes are stilled, and a thousand dreams are stilled. Whose body have I found beside dark waters, The cold white body, garlanded with sea-weed? Staring with wide eyes at the sky? I bent my head above it, and cried in silence. Only the things I dreamed of heard my cry. Once I loved, and she I loved was darkened. Again I loved, and love itself was darkened. Vainly we follow the circle of shadowy days. The screen at last grows dark, the flutes are silent. The doors of night are closed. We go our ways. VII. The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light. The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east: And lights wink out through the windows, one by one. A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night. Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun. And the wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams, The eternal asker of answers, stands in the street, And lifts his palms for the first cold ghost of rain. The purple lights leap down the hill before him. The gorgeous night has begun again. 'I will ask them all, I will ask them all their dreams, I will hold my light above them and seek their faces, I will hear them whisper, invisible in their veins. . . . ' The eternal asker of answers becomes as the darkness, Or as a wind blown over a myriad forest, Or as the numberless voices of long-drawn rains. We hear him and take him among us like a wind of music, Like the ghost of a music we have somewhere heard; We crowd through the streets in a dazzle of pallid lamplight, We pour in a sinister mass, we ascend a stair, With laughter and cry, with word upon murmured word, We flow, we descend, we turn. . . . and the eternal dreamer Moves on among us like light, like evening air . . . Good night! good night! good night! we go our ways, The rain runs over the pavement before our feet, The cold rain falls, the rain sings. We walk, we run, we ride. We turn our faces To what the eternal evening brings. Our hands are hot and raw with the stones we have laid, We have built a tower of stone high into the sky. We have built a city of towers. Our hands are light, they are singing with emptiness. Our souls are light. They have shaken a burden of hours. . . . What did we build it for? Was it all a dream? . . . Ghostly above us in lamplight the towers gleam . . . And after a while they will fall to dust and rain; Or else we will tear them down with impatient hands; And hew rock out of the earth, and build them again. 1916-1917 
1247	----	SECOND APRIL By Edna St. Vincent Millay TO MY BELOVED FRIEND CAROLINE B. DOW CONTENTS SPRING INLAND CITY TREES TO A POET THAT DIED YOUNG THE BLUE-FLAG IN THE BOG WRAITH JOURNEY EBB EEL-GRASS ELAINE ELEGY BEFORE DEATH BURIAL THE BEAN-STALK MARIPOSA WEEDS THE LITTLE HILL PASSER MORTUUS EST DOUBT NO MORE THAT OBERON PASTORAL LAMENT ASSAULT EXILED TRAVEL THE DEATH OF AUTUMN LOW-TIDE ODE TO SILENCE SONG OF A SECOND APRIL MEMORIAL TO D. C. ROSEMARY UNNAMED SONNETS I-XII THE POET AND HIS BOOK WILD SWANS ALMS SECOND APRIL SPRING To what purpose, April, do you return again? Beauty is not enough. You can no longer quiet me with the redness Of little leaves opening stickily. I know what I know. The sun is hot on my neck as I observe The spikes of the crocus. The smell of the earth is good. It is apparent that there is no death. But what does that signify? Not only under ground are the brains of men Eaten by maggots, Life in itself Is nothing, An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs. It is not enough that yearly, down this hill, April Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers. CITY TREES The trees along this city street, Save for the traffic and the trains, Would make a sound as thin and sweet As trees in country lanes. And people standing in their shade Out of a shower, undoubtedly Would hear such music as is made Upon a country tree. Oh, little leaves that are so dumb Against the shrieking city air, I watch you when the wind has come,-- I know what sound is there. THE BLUE-FLAG IN THE BOG God had called us, and we came; Our loved Earth to ashes left; Heaven was a neighbor's house, Open to us, bereft. Gay the lights of Heaven showed, And 'twas God who walked ahead; Yet I wept along the road, Wanting my own house instead. Wept unseen, unheeded cried, "All you things my eyes have kissed, Fare you well! We meet no more, Lovely, lovely tattered mist! Weary wings that rise and fall All day long above the fire!"-- Red with heat was every wall, Rough with heat was every wire-- "Fare you well, you little winds That the flying embers chase! Fare you well, you shuddering day, With your hands before your face! And, ah, blackened by strange blight, Or to a false sun unfurled, Now forevermore goodbye, All the gardens in the world! On the windless hills of Heaven, That I have no wish to see, White, eternal lilies stand, By a lake of ebony. But the Earth forevermore Is a place where nothing grows,-- Dawn will come, and no bud break; Evening, and no blossom close. Spring will come, and wander slow Over an indifferent land, Stand beside an empty creek, Hold a dead seed in her hand." God had called us, and we came, But the blessed road I trod Was a bitter road to me, And at heart I questioned God. "Though in Heaven," I said, "be all That the heart would most desire, Held Earth naught save souls of sinners Worth the saving from a fire? Withered grass,--the wasted growing! Aimless ache of laden boughs!" Little things God had forgotten Called me, from my burning house. "Though in Heaven," I said, "be all That the eye could ask to see, All the things I ever knew Are this blaze in back of me." "Though in Heaven," I said, "be all That the ear could think to lack, All the things I ever knew Are this roaring at my back." It was God who walked ahead, Like a shepherd to the fold; In his footsteps fared the weak, And the weary and the old, Glad enough of gladness over, Ready for the peace to be,-- But a thing God had forgotten Was the growing bones of me. And I drew a bit apart, And I lagged a bit behind, And I thought on Peace Eternal, Lest He look into my mind: And I gazed upon the sky, And I thought of Heavenly Rest,-- And I slipped away like water Through the fingers of the blest! All their eyes were fixed on Glory, Not a glance brushed over me; "Alleluia! Alleluia!" Up the road,--and I was free. And my heart rose like a freshet, And it swept me on before, Giddy as a whirling stick, Till I felt the earth once more. All the earth was charred and black, Fire had swept from pole to pole; And the bottom of the sea Was as brittle as a bowl; And the timbered mountain-top Was as naked as a skull,-- Nothing left, nothing left, Of the Earth so beautiful! "Earth," I said, "how can I leave you?" "You are all I have," I said; "What is left to take my mind up, Living always, and you dead?" "Speak!" I said, "Oh, tell me something! Make a sign that I can see! For a keepsake! To keep always! Quick!--before God misses me!" And I listened for a voice;-- But my heart was all I heard; Not a screech-owl, not a loon, Not a tree-toad said a word. And I waited for a sign;-- Coals and cinders, nothing more; And a little cloud of smoke Floating on a valley floor. And I peered into the smoke Till it rotted, like a fog:-- There, encompassed round by fire, Stood a blue-flag in a bog! Little flames came wading out, Straining, straining towards its stem, But it was so blue and tall That it scorned to think of them! Red and thirsty were their tongues, As the tongues of wolves must be, But it was so blue and tall-- Oh, I laughed, I cried, to see! All my heart became a tear, All my soul became a tower, Never loved I anything As I loved that tall blue flower! It was all the little boats That had ever sailed the sea, It was all the little books That had gone to school with me; On its roots like iron claws Rearing up so blue and tall,-- It was all the gallant Earth With its back against a wall! In a breath, ere I had breathed,-- Oh, I laughed, I cried, to see!-- I was kneeling at its side, And it leaned its head on me! Crumbling stones and sliding sand Is the road to Heaven now; Icy at my straining knees Drags the awful under-tow; Soon but stepping-stones of dust Will the road to Heaven be,-- Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Reach a hand and rescue me! "There--there, my blue-flag flower; Hush--hush--go to sleep; That is only God you hear, Counting up His folded sheep! Lullabye--lullabye-- That is only God that calls, Missing me, seeking me, Ere the road to nothing falls! He will set His mighty feet Firmly on the sliding sand; Like a little frightened bird I will creep into His hand; I will tell Him all my grief, I will tell Him all my sin; He will give me half His robe For a cloak to wrap you in. Lullabye--lullabye--" Rocks the burnt-out planet free!-- Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Reach a hand and rescue me! Ah, the voice of love at last! Lo, at last the face of light! And the whole of His white robe For a cloak against the night! And upon my heart asleep All the things I ever knew!-- "Holds Heaven not some cranny, Lord, For a flower so tall and blue?" All's well and all's well! Gay the lights of Heaven show! In some moist and Heavenly place We will set it out to grow. JOURNEY Ah, could I lay me down in this long grass And close my eyes, and let the quiet wind Blow over me--I am so tired, so tired Of passing pleasant places! All my life, Following Care along the dusty road, Have I looked back at loveliness and sighed; Yet at my hand an unrelenting hand Tugged ever, and I passed. All my life long Over my shoulder have I looked at peace; And now I fain would lie in this long grass And close my eyes. Yet onward! Cat birds call Through the long afternoon, and creeks at dusk Are guttural. Whip-poor-wills wake and cry, Drawing the twilight close about their throats. Only my heart makes answer. Eager vines Go up the rocks and wait; flushed apple-trees Pause in their dance and break the ring for me; Dim, shady wood-roads, redolent of fern And bayberry, that through sweet bevies thread Of round-faced roses, pink and petulant, Look back and beckon ere they disappear. Only my heart, only my heart responds. Yet, ah, my path is sweet on either side All through the dragging day,--sharp underfoot And hot, and like dead mist the dry dust hangs-- But far, oh, far as passionate eye can reach, And long, ah, long as rapturous eye can cling, The world is mine: blue hill, still silver lake, Broad field, bright flower, and the long white road A gateless garden, and an open path: My feet to follow, and my heart to hold. EEL-GRASS No matter what I say, All that I really love Is the rain that flattens on the bay, And the eel-grass in the cove; The jingle-shells that lie and bleach At the tide-line, and the trace Of higher tides along the beach: Nothing in this place. ELEGY BEFORE DEATH There will be rose and rhododendron When you are dead and under ground; Still will be heard from white syringas Heavy with bees, a sunny sound; Still will the tamaracks be raining After the rain has ceased, and still Will there be robins in the stubble, Brown sheep upon the warm green hill. Spring will not ail nor autumn falter; Nothing will know that you are gone, Saving alone some sullen plough-land None but yourself sets foot upon; Saving the may-weed and the pig-weed Nothing will know that you are dead,-- These, and perhaps a useless wagon Standing beside some tumbled shed. Oh, there will pass with your great passing Little of beauty not your own,-- Only the light from common water, Only the grace from simple stone! THE BEAN-STALK Ho, Giant! This is I! I have built me a bean-stalk into your sky! La,--but it's lovely, up so high! This is how I came,--I put Here my knee, there my foot, Up and up, from shoot to shoot-- And the blessed bean-stalk thinning Like the mischief all the time, Till it took me rocking, spinning, In a dizzy, sunny circle, Making angles with the root, Far and out above the cackle Of the city I was born in, Till the little dirty city In the light so sheer and sunny Shone as dazzling bright and pretty As the money that you find In a dream of finding money-- What a wind! What a morning!-- Till the tiny, shiny city, When I shot a glance below, Shaken with a giddy laughter, Sick and blissfully afraid, Was a dew-drop on a blade, And a pair of moments after Was the whirling guess I made,-- And the wind was like a whip Cracking past my icy ears, And my hair stood out behind, And my eyes were full of tears, Wide-open and cold, More tears than they could hold, The wind was blowing so, And my teeth were in a row, Dry and grinning, And I felt my foot slip, And I scratched the wind and whined, And I clutched the stalk and jabbered, With my eyes shut blind,-- What a wind! What a wind! Your broad sky, Giant, Is the shelf of a cupboard; I make bean-stalks, I'm A builder, like yourself, But bean-stalks is my trade, I couldn't make a shelf, Don't know how they're made, Now, a bean-stalk is more pliant-- La, what a climb! WEEDS White with daisies and red with sorrel And empty, empty under the sky!-- Life is a quest and love a quarrel-- Here is a place for me to lie. Daisies spring from damned seeds, And this red fire that here I see Is a worthless crop of crimson weeds, Cursed by farmers thriftily. But here, unhated for an hour, The sorrel runs in ragged flame, The daisy stands, a bastard flower, Like flowers that bear an honest name. And here a while, where no wind brings The baying of a pack athirst, May sleep the sleep of blessed things, The blood too bright, the brow accurst. PASSER MORTUUS EST Death devours all lovely things; Lesbia with her sparrow Shares the darkness,--presently Every bed is narrow. Unremembered as old rain Dries the sheer libation, And the little petulant hand Is an annotation. After all, my erstwhile dear, My no longer cherished, Need we say it was not love, Now that love is perished? PASTORAL If it were only still!-- With far away the shrill Crying of a cock; Or the shaken bell From a cow's throat Moving through the bushes; Or the soft shock Of wizened apples falling From an old tree In a forgotten orchard Upon the hilly rock! Oh, grey hill, Where the grazing herd Licks the purple blossom, Crops the spiky weed! Oh, stony pasture, Where the tall mullein Stands up so sturdy On its little seed! ASSAULT I I had forgotten how the frogs must sound After a year of silence, else I think I should not so have ventured forth alone At dusk upon this unfrequented road. II I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk Between me and the crying of the frogs? Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass, That am a timid woman, on her way From one house to another! TRAVEL The railroad track is miles away, And the day is loud with voices speaking, Yet there isn't a train goes by all day But I hear its whistle shrieking. All night there isn't a train goes by, Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming But I see its cinders red on the sky, And hear its engine steaming. My heart is warm with the friends I make, And better friends I'll not be knowing, Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take, No matter where it's going. LOW-TIDE These wet rocks where the tide has been, Barnacled white and weeded brown And slimed beneath to a beautiful green, These wet rocks where the tide went down Will show again when the tide is high Faint and perilous, far from shore, No place to dream, but a place to die,-- The bottom of the sea once more. There was a child that wandered through A giant's empty house all day,-- House full of wonderful things and new, But no fit place for a child to play. SONG OF A SECOND APRIL April this year, not otherwise Than April of a year ago, Is full of whispers, full of sighs, Of dazzling mud and dingy snow; Hepaticas that pleased you so Are here again, and butterflies. There rings a hammering all day, And shingles lie about the doors; In orchards near and far away The grey wood-pecker taps and bores; The men are merry at their chores, And children earnest at their play. The larger streams run still and deep, Noisy and swift the small brooks run Among the mullein stalks the sheep Go up the hillside in the sun, Pensively,--only you are gone, You that alone I cared to keep. ROSEMARY For the sake of some things That be now no more I will strew rushes On my chamber-floor, I will plant bergamot At my kitchen-door. For the sake of dim things That were once so plain I will set a barrel Out to catch the rain, I will hang an iron pot On an iron crane. Many things be dead and gone That were brave and gay; For the sake of these things I will learn to say, "An it please you, gentle sirs," "Alack!" and "Well-a-day!" THE POET AND HIS BOOK Down, you mongrel, Death! Back into your kennel! I have stolen breath In a stalk of fennel! You shall scratch and you shall whine Many a night, and you shall worry Many a bone, before you bury One sweet bone of mine! When shall I be dead? When my flesh is withered, And above my head Yellow pollen gathered All the empty afternoon? When sweet lovers pause and wonder Who am I that lie thereunder, Hidden from the moon? This my personal death?-- That lungs be failing To inhale the breath Others are exhaling? This my subtle spirit's end?-- Ah, when the thawed winter splashes Over these chance dust and ashes, Weep not me, my friend! Me, by no means dead In that hour, but surely When this book, unread, Rots to earth obscurely, And no more to any breast, Close against the clamorous swelling Of the thing there is no telling, Are these pages pressed! When this book is mould, And a book of many Waiting to be sold For a casual penny, In a little open case, In a street unclean and cluttered, Where a heavy mud is spattered From the passing drays, Stranger, pause and look; From the dust of ages Lift this little book, Turn the tattered pages, Read me, do not let me die! Search the fading letters, finding Steadfast in the broken binding All that once was I! When these veins are weeds, When these hollowed sockets Watch the rooty seeds Bursting down like rockets, And surmise the spring again, Or, remote in that black cupboard, Watch the pink worms writhing upward At the smell of rain, Boys and girls that lie Whispering in the hedges, Do not let me die, Mix me with your pledges; Boys and girls that slowly walk In the woods, and weep, and quarrel, Staring past the pink wild laurel, Mix me with your talk, Do not let me die! Farmers at your raking, When the sun is high, While the hay is making, When, along the stubble strewn, Withering on their stalks uneaten, Strawberries turn dark and sweeten In the lapse of noon; Shepherds on the hills, In the pastures, drowsing To the tinkling bells Of the brown sheep browsing; Sailors crying through the storm; Scholars at your study; hunters Lost amid the whirling winter's Whiteness uniform; Men that long for sleep; Men that wake and revel;-- If an old song leap To your senses' level At such moments, may it be Sometimes, though a moment only, Some forgotten, quaint and homely Vehicle of me! Women at your toil, Women at your leisure Till the kettle boil, Snatch of me your pleasure, Where the broom-straw marks the leaf; Women quiet with your weeping Lest you wake a workman sleeping, Mix me with your grief! Boys and girls that steal From the shocking laughter Of the old, to kneel By a dripping rafter Under the discolored eaves, Out of trunks with hingeless covers Lifting tales of saints and lovers, Travelers, goblins, thieves, Suns that shine by night, Mountains made from valleys,-- Bear me to the light, Flat upon your bellies By the webby window lie, Where the little flies are crawling,-- Read me, margin me with scrawling, Do not let me die! Sexton, ply your trade! In a shower of gravel Stamp upon your spade! Many a rose shall ravel, Many a metal wreath shall rust In the rain, and I go singing Through the lots where you are flinging Yellow clay on dust! ALMS My heart is what it was before, A house where people come and go; But it is winter with your love, The sashes are beset with snow. I light the lamp and lay the cloth, I blow the coals to blaze again; But it is winter with your love, The frost is thick upon the pane. I know a winter when it comes: The leaves are listless on the boughs; I watched your love a little while, And brought my plants into the house. I water them and turn them south, I snap the dead brown from the stem; But it is winter with your love,-- I only tend and water them. There was a time I stood and watched The small, ill-natured sparrows' fray; I loved the beggar that I fed, I cared for what he had to say, I stood and watched him out of sight; Today I reach around the door And set a bowl upon the step; My heart is what it was before, But it is winter with your love; I scatter crumbs upon the sill, And close the window,--and the birds May take or leave them, as they will. INLAND People that build their houses inland, People that buy a plot of ground Shaped like a house, and build a house there, Far from the sea-board, far from the sound Of water sucking the hollow ledges, Tons of water striking the shore,-- What do they long for, as I long for One salt smell of the sea once more? People the waves have not awakened, Spanking the boats at the harbor's head, What do they long for, as I long for,-- Starting up in my inland bed, Beating the narrow walls, and finding Neither a window nor a door, Screaming to God for death by drowning,-- One salt taste of the sea once more? TO A POET THAT DIED YOUNG Minstrel, what have you to do With this man that, after you, Sharing not your happy fate, Sat as England's Laureate? Vainly, in these iron days, Strives the poet in your praise, Minstrel, by whose singing side Beauty walked, until you died. Still, though none should hark again, Drones the blue-fly in the pane, Thickly crusts the blackest moss, Blows the rose its musk across, Floats the boat that is forgot None the less to Camelot. Many a bard's untimely death Lends unto his verses breath; Here's a song was never sung: Growing old is dying young. Minstrel, what is this to you: That a man you never knew, When your grave was far and green, Sat and gossipped with a queen? Thalia knows how rare a thing Is it, to grow old and sing; When a brown and tepid tide Closes in on every side. Who shall say if Shelley's gold Had withstood it to grow old? WRAITH "Thin Rain, whom are you haunting, That you haunt my door?" --Surely it is not I she's wanting; Someone living here before-- "Nobody's in the house but me: You may come in if you like and see." Thin as thread, with exquisite fingers,-- Have you seen her, any of you?-- Grey shawl, and leaning on the wind, And the garden showing through? Glimmering eyes,--and silent, mostly, Sort of a whisper, sort of a purr, Asking something, asking it over, If you get a sound from her.-- Ever see her, any of you?-- Strangest thing I've ever known,-- Every night since I moved in, And I came to be alone. "Thin Rain, hush with your knocking! You may not come in! This is I that you hear rocking; Nobody's with me, nor has been!" Curious, how she tried the window,-- Odd, the way she tries the door,-- Wonder just what sort of people Could have had this house before . . . EBB I know what my heart is like Since your love died: It is like a hollow ledge Holding a little pool Left there by the tide, A little tepid pool, Drying inward from the edge. ELAINE OH, come again to Astolat! I will not ask you to be kind. And you may go when you will go, And I will stay behind. I will not say how dear you are, Or ask you if you hold me dear, Or trouble you with things for you The way I did last year. So still the orchard, Lancelot, So very still the lake shall be, You could not guess--though you should guess-- What is become of me. So wide shall be the garden-walk, The garden-seat so very wide, You needs must think--if you should think-- The lily maid had died. Save that, a little way away, I'd watch you for a little while, To see you speak, the way you speak, And smile,--if you should smile. BURIAL Mine is a body that should die at sea! And have for a grave, instead of a grave Six feet deep and the length of me, All the water that is under the wave! And terrible fishes to seize my flesh, Such as a living man might fear, And eat me while I am firm and fresh,-- Not wait till I've been dead for a year! MARIPOSA Butterflies are white and blue In this field we wander through. Suffer me to take your hand. Death comes in a day or two. All the things we ever knew Will be ashes in that hour, Mark the transient butterfly, How he hangs upon the flower. Suffer me to take your hand. Suffer me to cherish you Till the dawn is in the sky. Whether I be false or true, Death comes in a day or two. THE LITTLE HILL OH, here the air is sweet and still, And soft's the grass to lie on; And far away's the little hill They took for Christ to die on. And there's a hill across the brook, And down the brook's another; But, oh, the little hill they took,-- I think I am its mother! The moon that saw Gethsemane, I watch it rise and set: It has so many things to see, They help it to forget. But little hills that sit at home So many hundred years, Remember Greece, remember Rome, Remember Mary's tears. And far away in Palestine, Sadder than any other, Grieves still the hill that I call mine,-- I think I am its mother! DOUBT NO MORE THAT OBERON Doubt no more that Oberon-- Never doubt that Pan Lived, and played a reed, and ran After nymphs in a dark forest, In the merry, credulous days,-- Lived, and led a fairy band Over the indulgent land! Ah, for in this dourest, sorest Age man's eye has looked upon, Death to fauns and death to fays, Still the dog-wood dares to raise-- Healthy tree, with trunk and root-- Ivory bowls that bear no fruit, And the starlings and the jays-- Birds that cannot even sing-- Dare to come again in spring! LAMENT Listen, children: Your father is dead. From his old coats I'll make you little jackets; I'll make you little trousers From his old pants. There'll be in his pockets Things he used to put there, Keys and pennies Covered with tobacco; Dan shall have the pennies To save in his bank; Anne shall have the keys To make a pretty noise with. Life must go on, And the dead be forgotten; Life must go on, Though good men die; Anne, eat your breakfast; Dan, take your medicine; Life must go on; I forget just why. EXILED Searching my heart for its true sorrow, This is the thing I find to be: That I am weary of words and people, Sick of the city, wanting the sea; Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness Of the strong wind and shattered spray; Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound Of the big surf that breaks all day. Always before about my dooryard, Marking the reach of the winter sea, Rooted in sand and dragging drift-wood, Straggled the purple wild sweet-pea; Always I climbed the wave at morning, Shook the sand from my shoes at night, That now am caught beneath great buildings, Stricken with noise, confused with light. If I could hear the green piles groaning Under the windy wooden piers, See once again the bobbing barrels, And the black sticks that fence the weirs, If I could see the weedy mussels Crusting the wrecked and rotting hulls, Hear once again the hungry crying Overhead, of the wheeling gulls, Feel once again the shanty straining Under the turning of the tide, Fear once again the rising freshet, Dread the bell in the fog outside,-- I should be happy,--that was happy All day long on the coast of Maine! I have a need to hold and handle Shells and anchors and ships again! I should be happy, that am happy Never at all since I came here. I am too long away from water. I have a need of water near. THE DEATH OF AUTUMN When reeds are dead and a straw to thatch the marshes, And feathered pampas-grass rides into the wind Like aged warriors westward, tragic, thinned Of half their tribe, and over the flattened rushes, Stripped of its secret, open, stark and bleak, Blackens afar the half-forgotten creek,-- Then leans on me the weight of the year, and crushes My heart. I know that Beauty must ail and die, And will be born again,--but ah, to see Beauty stiffened, staring up at the sky! Oh, Autumn! Autumn!--What is the Spring to me? ODE TO SILENCE Aye, but she? Your other sister and my other soul Grave Silence, lovelier Than the three loveliest maidens, what of her? Clio, not you, Not you, Calliope, Nor all your wanton line, Not Beauty's perfect self shall comfort me For Silence once departed, For her the cool-tongued, her the tranquil-hearted, Whom evermore I follow wistfully, Wandering Heaven and Earth and Hell and the four seasons through; Thalia, not you, Not you, Melpomene, Not your incomparable feet, O thin Terpsichore, I seek in this great hall, But one more pale, more pensive, most beloved of you all. I seek her from afar, I come from temples where her altars are, From groves that bear her name, Noisy with stricken victims now and sacrificial flame, And cymbals struck on high and strident faces Obstreperous in her praise They neither love nor know, A goddess of gone days, Departed long ago, Abandoning the invaded shrines and fanes Of her old sanctuary, A deity obscure and legendary, Of whom there now remains, For sages to decipher and priests to garble, Only and for a little while her letters wedged in marble, Which even now, behold, the friendly mumbling rain erases, And the inarticulate snow, Leaving at last of her least signs and traces None whatsoever, nor whither she is vanished from these places. "She will love well," I said, "If love be of that heart inhabiter, The flowers of the dead; The red anemone that with no sound Moves in the wind, and from another wound That sprang, the heavily-sweet blue hyacinth, That blossoms underground, And sallow poppies, will be dear to her. And will not Silence know In the black shade of what obsidian steep Stiffens the white narcissus numb with sleep? (Seed which Demeter's daughter bore from home, Uptorn by desperate fingers long ago, Reluctant even as she, Undone Persephone, And even as she set out again to grow In twilight, in perdition's lean and inauspicious loam). She will love well," I said, "The flowers of the dead; Where dark Persephone the winter round, Uncomforted for home, uncomforted, Lacking a sunny southern slope in northern Sicily, With sullen pupils focussed on a dream, Stares on the stagnant stream That moats the unequivocable battlements of Hell, There, there will she be found, She that is Beauty veiled from men and Music in a swound." "I long for Silence as they long for breath Whose helpless nostrils drink the bitter sea; What thing can be So stout, what so redoubtable, in Death What fury, what considerable rage, if only she, Upon whose icy breast, Unquestioned, uncaressed, One time I lay, And whom always I lack, Even to this day, Being by no means from that frigid bosom weaned away, If only she therewith be given me back?" I sought her down that dolorous labyrinth, Wherein no shaft of sunlight ever fell, And in among the bloodless everywhere I sought her, but the air, Breathed many times and spent, Was fretful with a whispering discontent, And questioning me, importuning me to tell Some slightest tidings of the light of day they know no more, Plucking my sleeve, the eager shades were with me where I went. I paused at every grievous door, And harked a moment, holding up my hand,--and for a space A hush was on them, while they watched my face; And then they fell a-whispering as before; So that I smiled at them and left them, seeing she was not there. I sought her, too, Among the upper gods, although I knew She was not like to be where feasting is, Nor near to Heaven's lord, Being a thing abhorred And shunned of him, although a child of his, (Not yours, not yours; to you she owes not breath, Mother of Song, being sown of Zeus upon a dream of Death). Fearing to pass unvisited some place And later learn, too late, how all the while, With her still face, She had been standing there and seen me pass, without a smile, I sought her even to the sagging board whereat The stout immortals sat; But such a laughter shook the mighty hall No one could hear me say: Had she been seen upon the Hill that day? And no one knew at all How long I stood, or when at last I sighed and went away. There is a garden lying in a lull Between the mountains and the mountainous sea, I know not where, but which a dream diurnal Paints on my lids a moment till the hull Be lifted from the kernel And Slumber fed to me. Your foot-print is not there, Mnemosene, Though it would seem a ruined place and after Your lichenous heart, being full Of broken columns, caryatides Thrown to the earth and fallen forward on their jointless knees, And urns funereal altered into dust Minuter than the ashes of the dead, And Psyche's lamp out of the earth up-thrust, Dripping itself in marble wax on what was once the bed Of Love, and his young body asleep, but now is dust instead. There twists the bitter-sweet, the white wisteria Fastens its fingers in the strangling wall, And the wide crannies quicken with bright weeds; There dumbly like a worm all day the still white orchid feeds; But never an echo of your daughters' laughter Is there, nor any sign of you at all Swells fungous from the rotten bough, grey mother of Pieria! Only her shadow once upon a stone I saw,--and, lo, the shadow and the garden, too, were gone. I tell you you have done her body an ill, You chatterers, you noisy crew! She is not anywhere! I sought her in deep Hell; And through the world as well; I thought of Heaven and I sought her there; Above nor under ground Is Silence to be found, That was the very warp and woof of you, Lovely before your songs began and after they were through! Oh, say if on this hill Somewhere your sister's body lies in death, So I may follow there, and make a wreath Of my locked hands, that on her quiet breast Shall lie till age has withered them! (Ah, sweetly from the rest I see Turn and consider me Compassionate Euterpe!) "There is a gate beyond the gate of Death, Beyond the gate of everlasting Life, Beyond the gates of Heaven and Hell," she saith, "Whereon but to believe is horror! Whereon to meditate engendereth Even in deathless spirits such as I A tumult in the breath, A chilling of the inexhaustible blood Even in my veins that never will be dry, And in the austere, divine monotony That is my being, the madness of an unaccustomed mood. This is her province whom you lack and seek; And seek her not elsewhere. Hell is a thoroughfare For pilgrims,--Herakles, And he that loved Euridice too well, Have walked therein; and many more than these; And witnessed the desire and the despair Of souls that passed reluctantly and sicken for the air; You, too, have entered Hell, And issued thence; but thence whereof I speak None has returned;--for thither fury brings Only the driven ghosts of them that flee before all things. Oblivion is the name of this abode: and she is there." Oh, radiant Song! Oh, gracious Memory! Be long upon this height I shall not climb again! I know the way you mean,--the little night, And the long empty day,--never to see Again the angry light, Or hear the hungry noises cry my brain! Ah, but she, Your other sister and my other soul, She shall again be mine; And I shall drink her from a silver bowl, A chilly thin green wine, Not bitter to the taste, Not sweet, Not of your press, oh, restless, clamorous nine,-- To foam beneath the frantic hoofs of mirth-- But savoring faintly of the acid earth, And trod by pensive feet From perfect clusters ripened without haste Out of the urgent heat In some clear glimmering vaulted twilight under the odorous vine. Lift up your lyres! Sing on! But as for me, I seek your sister whither she is gone. MEMORIAL TO D. C. [VASSAR COLLEGE, 1918] Oh, loveliest throat of all sweet throats, Where now no more the music is, With hands that wrote you little notes I write you little elegies! EPITAPH Heap not on this mound Roses that she loved so well; Why bewilder her with roses, That she cannot see or smell? She is happy where she lies With the dust upon her eyes. PRAYER TO PERSEPHONE Be to her, Persephone, All the things I might not be; Take her head upon your knee. She that was so proud and wild, Flippant, arrogant and free, She that had no need of me, Is a little lonely child Lost in Hell,--Persephone, Take her head upon your knee; Say to her, "My dear, my dear, It is not so dreadful here." CHORUS Give away her gowns, Give away her shoes; She has no more use For her fragrant gowns; Take them all down, Blue, green, blue, Lilac, pink, blue, From their padded hangers; She will dance no more In her narrow shoes; Sweep her narrow shoes From the closet floor. ELEGY Let them bury your big eyes In the secret earth securely, Your thin fingers, and your fair, Soft, indefinite-colored hair,-- All of these in some way, surely, From the secret earth shall rise; Not for these I sit and stare, Broken and bereft completely; Your young flesh that sat so neatly On your little bones will sweetly Blossom in the air. But your voice,--never the rushing Of a river underground, Not the rising of the wind In the trees before the rain, Not the woodcock's watery call, Not the note the white-throat utters, Not the feet of children pushing Yellow leaves along the gutters In the blue and bitter fall, Shall content my musing mind For the beauty of that sound That in no new way at all Ever will be heard again. Sweetly through the sappy stalk Of the vigorous weed, Holding all it held before, Cherished by the faithful sun, On and on eternally Shall your altered fluid run, Bud and bloom and go to seed; But your singing days are done; But the music of your talk Never shall the chemistry Of the secret earth restore. All your lovely words are spoken. Once the ivory box is broken, Beats the golden bird no more. DIRGE Boys and girls that held her dear, Do your weeping now; All you loved of her lies here. Brought to earth the arrogant brow, And the withering tongue Chastened; do your weeping now. Sing whatever songs are sung, Wind whatever wreath, For a playmate perished young, For a spirit spent in death. Boys and girls that held her dear, All you loved of her lies here. SONNETS I We talk of taxes, and I call you friend; Well, such you are,--but well enough we know How thick about us root, how rankly grow Those subtle weeds no man has need to tend, That flourish through neglect, and soon must send Perfume too sweet upon us and overthrow Our steady senses; how such matters go We are aware, and how such matters end. Yet shall be told no meagre passion here; With lovers such as we forevermore Isolde drinks the draught, and Guinevere Receives the Table's ruin through her door, Francesca, with the loud surf at her ear, Lets fall the colored book upon the floor. II Into the golden vessel of great song Let us pour all our passion; breast to breast Let other lovers lie, in love and rest; Not we,--articulate, so, but with the tongue Of all the world: the churning blood, the long Shuddering quiet, the desperate hot palms pressed Sharply together upon the escaping guest, The common soul, unguarded, and grown strong. Longing alone is singer to the lute; Let still on nettles in the open sigh The minstrel, that in slumber is as mute As any man, and love be far and high, That else forsakes the topmost branch, a fruit Found on the ground by every passer-by. III Not with libations, but with shouts and laughter We drenched the altars of Love's sacred grove, Shaking to earth green fruits, impatient after The launching of the colored moths of Love. Love's proper myrtle and his mother's zone We bound about our irreligious brows, And fettered him with garlands of our own, And spread a banquet in his frugal house. Not yet the god has spoken; but I fear Though we should break our bodies in his flame, And pour our blood upon his altar, here Henceforward is a grove without a name, A pasture to the shaggy goats of Pan, Whence flee forever a woman and a man. IV Only until this cigarette is ended, A little moment at the end of all, While on the floor the quiet ashes fall, And in the firelight to a lance extended, Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended, The broken shadow dances on the wall, I will permit my memory to recall The vision of you, by all my dreams attended. And then adieu,--farewell!--the dream is done. Yours is a face of which I can forget The color and the features, every one, The words not ever, and the smiles not yet; But in your day this moment is the sun Upon a hill, after the sun has set. V Once more into my arid days like dew, Like wind from an oasis, or the sound Of cold sweet water bubbling underground, A treacherous messenger, the thought of you Comes to destroy me; once more I renew Firm faith in your abundance, whom I found Long since to be but just one other mound Of sand, whereon no green thing ever grew. And once again, and wiser in no wise, I chase your colored phantom on the air, And sob and curse and fall and weep and rise And stumble pitifully on to where, Miserable and lost, with stinging eyes, Once more I clasp,--and there is nothing there. VI No rose that in a garden ever grew, In Homer's or in Omar's or in mine, Though buried under centuries of fine Dead dust of roses, shut from sun and dew Forever, and forever lost from view, But must again in fragrance rich as wine The grey aisles of the air incarnadine When the old summers surge into a new. Thus when I swear, "I love with all my heart," 'Tis with the heart of Lilith that I swear, 'Tis with the love of Lesbia and Lucrece; And thus as well my love must lose some part Of what it is, had Helen been less fair, Or perished young, or stayed at home in Greece. VII When I too long have looked upon your face, Wherein for me a brightness unobscured Save by the mists of brightness has its place, And terrible beauty not to be endured, I turn away reluctant from your light, And stand irresolute, a mind undone, A silly, dazzled thing deprived of sight From having looked too long upon the sun. Then is my daily life a narrow room In which a little while, uncertainly, Surrounded by impenetrable gloom, Among familiar things grown strange to me Making my way, I pause, and feel, and hark, Till I become accustomed to the dark. VIII And you as well must die, beloved dust, And all your beauty stand you in no stead; This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head, This body of flame and steel, before the gust Of Death, or under his autumnal frost, Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead Than the first leaf that fell,--this wonder fled. Altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost. Nor shall my love avail you in your hour. In spite of all my love, you will arise Upon that day and wander down the air Obscurely as the unattended flower, It mattering not how beautiful you were, Or how beloved above all else that dies. IX Let you not say of me when I am old, In pretty worship of my withered hands Forgetting who I am, and how the sands Of such a life as mine run red and gold Even to the ultimate sifting dust, "Behold, Here walketh passionless age!"--for there expands A curious superstition in these lands, And by its leave some weightless tales are told. In me no lenten wicks watch out the night; I am the booth where Folly holds her fair; Impious no less in ruin than in strength, When I lie crumbled to the earth at length, Let you not say, "Upon this reverend site The righteous groaned and beat their breasts in prayer." X Oh, my beloved, have you thought of this: How in the years to come unscrupulous Time, More cruel than Death, will tear you from my kiss, And make you old, and leave me in my prime? How you and I, who scale together yet A little while the sweet, immortal height No pilgrim may remember or forget, As sure as the world turns, some granite night Shall lie awake and know the gracious flame Gone out forever on the mutual stone; And call to mind that on the day you came I was a child, and you a hero grown?-- And the night pass, and the strange morning break Upon our anguish for each other's sake! XI As to some lovely temple, tenantless Long since, that once was sweet with shivering brass, Knowing well its altars ruined and the grass Grown up between the stones, yet from excess Of grief hard driven, or great loneliness, The worshiper returns, and those who pass Marvel him crying on a name that was,-- So is it now with me in my distress. Your body was a temple to Delight; Cold are its ashes whence the breath is fled, Yet here one time your spirit was wont to move; Here might I hope to find you day or night, And here I come to look for you, my love, Even now, foolishly, knowing you are dead. XII Cherish you then the hope I shall forget At length, my lord, Pieria?--put away For your so passing sake, this mouth of clay These mortal bones against my body set, For all the puny fever and frail sweat Of human love,--renounce for these, I say, The Singing Mountain's memory, and betray The silent lyre that hangs upon me yet? Ah, but indeed, some day shall you awake, Rather, from dreams of me, that at your side So many nights, a lover and a bride, But stern in my soul's chastity, have lain, To walk the world forever for my sake, And in each chamber find me gone again! WILD SWANS I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over. And what did I see I had not seen before? Only a question less or a question more; Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying. Tiresome heart, forever living and dying, House without air, I leave you and lock your door. Wild swans, come over the town, come over The town again, trailing your legs and crying! 
12658	----	Proofreaders [Illustration: Ambrose Bierce.] SHAPES OF CLAY BY AMBROSE BIERCE AUTHOR OF "IN THE MIDST OF LIFE," "CAN SUCH THINGS BE?" "BLACK BEETLES IN AMBER," AND "FANTASTIC FABLES" 1903 DEDICATION. WITH PRIDE IN THEIR WORK, FAITH IN THEIR FUTURE AND AFFECTION FOR THEMSELVES, AN OLD WRITER DEDICATES THIS BOOK TO HIS YOUNG FRIENDS AND PUPILS, GEORGE STERLING AND HERMAN SCHEFFAUER. A.B. PREFACE. Some small part of this book being personally censorious, and in that part the names of real persons being used without their assent, it seems fit that a few words be said of the matter in sober prose. What it seems well to say I have already said with sufficient clarity in the preface of another book, somewhat allied to this by that feature of its character. I quote from "Black Beetles in Amber:" "Many of the verses in this book are republished, with considerable alterations, from various newspapers. Of my motives in writing and in now republishing I do not care to make either defence or explanation, except with reference to those who since my first censure of them have passed away. To one having only a reader's interest in the matter it may easily seem that the verses relating to those might properly have been omitted from this collection. But if these pieces, or indeed, if any considerable part of my work in literature, have the intrinsic worth which by this attempt to preserve some of it I have assumed, their permanent suppression is impossible, and it is only a question of when and by whom they will be republished. Some one will surely search them out and put them in circulation. "I conceive it the right of an author to have his fugitive work collected in his lifetime; and this seems to me especially true of one whose work, necessarily engendering animosities, is peculiarly exposed to challenge as unjust. That is a charge that can best be examined before time has effaced the evidence. For the death of a man of whom I have written what I may venture to think worthy to live I am no way responsible; and however sincerely I may regret it, I can hardly consent that it shall affect my literary fortunes. If the satirist who does not accept the remarkable doctrine that, while condemning the sin he should spare the sinner, were bound to let the life of his work be coterminous with that of his subject his were a lot of peculiar hardship. "Persuaded of the validity of all this I have not hesitated to reprint even certain 'epitaphs' which, once of the living, are now of the dead, as all the others must eventually be. The objection inheres in all forms of applied satire--my understanding of whose laws and liberties is at least derived from reverent study of the masters. That in respect of matters herein mentioned I have but followed their practice can be shown by abundant instance and example." In arranging these verses for publication I have thought it needless to classify them according to character, as "Serious," "Comic," "Sentimental," "Satirical," and so forth. I do the reader the honor to think that he will readily discern the nature of what he is reading; and I entertain the hope that his mood will accommodate itself without disappointment to that of his author. AMBROSE BIERCE. CONTENTS. THE PASSING SHOW ELIXIR VITAE CONVALESCENT AT THE CLOSE OF THE CANVASS NOVUM ORGANUM GEOTHEOS YORICK A VISION OF DOOM POLITICS POESY IN DEFENSE AN INVOCATION RELIGION A MORNING FANCY VISIONS OF SIN THE TOWN OF DAE AN ANARCHIST AN OFFER OF MARRIAGE ARMA VIRUMQUE ON A PROPOSED CREMATORY A DEMAND THE WEATHER WIGHT T.A.H. MY MONUMENT MAD HOSPITALITY FOR A CERTAIN CRITIC RELIGIOUS PROGRESS MAGNANIMITY TO HER TO A SUMMER POET ARTHUR MCEWEN CHARLES AND PETER CONTEMPLATION CREATION BUSINESS A POSSIBILITY TO A CENSOR THE HESITATING VETERAN A YEAR'S CASUALTIES INSPIRATION TO-DAY AN ALIBI REBUKE J.F.B. THE DYING STATESMAN THE DEATH OF GRANT THE FOUNTAIN REFILLED LAUS LUCIS NANINE TECHNOLOGY A REPLY TO A LETTER TO OSCAR WILDE PRAYER A "BORN LEADER OF MEN" TO THE BARTHOLDI STATUE AN UNMERRY CHRISTMAS BY A DEFEATED LITIGANT AN EPITAPH THE POLITICIAN AN INSCRIPTION FROM VIRGINIA TO PARIS A "MUTE INGLORIOUS MILTON" THE FREE TRADER'S LAMENT SUBTERRANEAN PHANTASIES IN MEMORIAM THE STATESMEN THE BROTHERS THE CYNIC'S BEQUEST CORRECTED NEWS AN EXPLANATION JUSTICE MR. FINK'S DEBATING DONKEY TO MY LAUNDRESS FAME OMNES VANITAS ASPIRATION DEMOCRACY THE NEW "ULALUME" CONSOLATION FATE PHILOSOPHER BIMM REMINDED SALVINI IN AMERICA ANOTHER WAY ART AN ENEMY TO LAW AND ORDER TO ONE ACROSS THE WAY THE DEBTOR ABROAD FORESIGHT A FAIR DIVISION GENESIS LIBERTY THE PASSING OF "BOSS" SHEPHERD TO MAUDE THE BIRTH OF VIRTUE STONEMAN IN HEAVEN THE SCURRIL PRESS STANLEY ONE OF THE UNFAIR SEX THE LORD'S PRAYER ON A COIN A LACKING FACTOR THE ROYAL JESTER A CAREER IN LETTERS THE FOLLOWING PAIR POLITICAL ECONOMY VANISHED AT COCK-CROW THE UNPARDONABLE SIN INDUSTRIAL DISCONTENT TEMPORA MUTANTUR CONTENTMENT THE NEW ENOCH DISAVOWAL AN AVERAGE WOMAN INCURABLE THE PUN A PARTISAN'S PROTEST TO NANINE VICE VERSA A BLACK-LIST A BEQUEST TO MUSIC AUTHORITY THE PSORIAD ONEIROMANCY PEACE THANKSGIVING L'AUDACE THE GOD'S VIEW-POINT THE AESTHETES JULY FOURTH WITH MINE OWN PETARD CONSTANCY SIRES AND SONS A CHALLENGE TWO SHOWS A POET'S HOPE THE WOMAN AND THE DEVIL TWO ROGUES BEECHER NOT GUILTY PRESENTIMENT A STUDY IN GRAY A PARADOX FOR MERIT A BIT OF SCIENCE THE TABLES TURNED TO A DEJECTED POET A FOOL THE HUMORIST MONTEFIORE A WARNING DISCRETION AN EXILE THE DIVISION SUPERINTENDENT PSYCHOGRAPHS TO A PROFESSIONAL EULOGIST FOR WOUNDS ELECTION DAY THE MILITIAMAN A LITERARY METHOD A WELCOME A SERENADE THE WISE AND GOOD THE LOST COLONEL FOR TAT A DILEMMA METEMPSYCHOSIS THE SAINT AND THE MONK THE OPPOSING SEX A WHIPPER-IN JUDGMENT THE FALL OF MISS LARKIN IN HIGH LIFE A BUBBLE A RENDEZVOUS FRANCINE AN EXAMPLE REVENGE THE GENESIS OF EMBARRASSMENT IN CONTUMACIAM RE-EDIFIED A BULLETIN FROM THE MINUTES WOMAN IN POLITICS TO AN ASPIRANT A BALLAD OF PIKEVILLE A BUILDER AN AUGURY LUSUS POLITICUS BEREAVEMENT AN INSCRIPTION A PICKBRAIN CONVALESCENT THE NAVAL CONSTRUCTOR DETECTED BIMETALISM THE RICH TESTATOR TWO METHODS FOUNDATIONS OF THE STATE IN IMPOSTER UNEXPOUNDED FRANCE THE EASTERN QUESTION A GUEST A FALSE PROPHECY TWO TYPES SOME ANTE-MORTEM EPITAPHS A HYMN OF THE MANY ONE MORNING AN ERROR AT THE "NATIONAL ENCAMPMENT" THE KING OF BORES HISTORY THE HERMIT TO A CRITIC OF TENNYSON THE YEARLY LIE CO-OPERATION AN APOLOGUE DIAGNOSIS FALLEN DIES IRAE THE DAY OF WRATH ONE MOOD'S EXPRESSION SOMETHING IN THE PAPERS IN THE BINNACLE HUMILITY ONE PRESIDENT THE BRIDE STRAINED RELATIONS THE MAN BORN BLIND A NIGHTMARE A WET SEASON THE CONFEDERATE FLAGS HAEC FARULA DOCET EXONERATION AZRAEL AGAIN HOMO PODUNKENSIS A SOCIAL CALL SHAPES OF CLAY THE PASSING SHOW. I. I know not if it was a dream. I viewed A city where the restless multitude, Between the eastern and the western deep Had roared gigantic fabrics, strong and rude. Colossal palaces crowned every height; Towers from valleys climbed into the light; O'er dwellings at their feet, great golden domes Hung in the blue, barbarically bright. But now, new-glimmering to-east, the day Touched the black masses with a grace of gray, Dim spires of temples to the nation's God Studding high spaces of the wide survey. Well did the roofs their solemn secret keep Of life and death stayed by the truce of sleep, Yet whispered of an hour-when sleepers wake, The fool to hope afresh, the wise to weep. The gardens greened upon the builded hills Above the tethered thunders of the mills With sleeping wheels unstirred to service yet + By the tamed torrents and the quickened rills. A hewn acclivity, reprieved a space, Looked on the builder's blocks about his base And bared his wounded breast in sign to say: "Strike! 't is my destiny to lodge your race. "'T was but a breath ago the mammoth browsed Upon my slopes, and in my caves I housed Your shaggy fathers in their nakedness, While on their foeman's offal they caroused." Ships from afar afforested the bay. Within their huge and chambered bodies lay The wealth of continents; and merrily sailed The hardy argosies to far Cathay. Beside the city of the living spread-- Strange fellowship!--the city of the dead; And much I wondered what its humble folk, To see how bravely they were housed, had said. Noting how firm their habitations stood, Broad-based and free of perishable wood-- How deep in granite and how high in brass The names were wrought of eminent and good, I said: "When gold or power is their aim, The smile of beauty or the wage of shame, Men dwell in cities; to this place they fare When they would conquer an abiding fame." From the red East the sun--a solemn rite-- Crowned with a flame the cross upon a height Above the dead; and then with all his strength Struck the great city all aroar with light! II. I know not if it was a dream. I came Unto a land where something seemed the same That I had known as 't were but yesterday, But what it was I could not rightly name. It was a strange and melancholy land. Silent and desolate. On either hand Lay waters of a sea that seemed as dead, And dead above it seemed the hills to stand, Grayed all with age, those lonely hills--ah me, How worn and weary they appeared to be! Between their feet long dusty fissures clove The plain in aimless windings to the sea. One hill there was which, parted from the rest, Stood where the eastern water curved a-west. Silent and passionless it stood. I thought I saw a scar upon its giant breast. The sun with sullen and portentous gleam Hung like a menace on the sea's extreme; Nor the dead waters, nor the far, bleak bars Of cloud were conscious of his failing beam. It was a dismal and a dreadful sight, That desert in its cold, uncanny light; No soul but I alone to mark the fear And imminence of everlasting night! All presages and prophecies of doom Glimmered and babbled in the ghastly gloom, And in the midst of that accursèd scene A wolf sat howling on a broken tomb. ELIXER VITAE. Of life's elixir I had writ, when sleep (Pray Heaven it spared him who the writing read!) Sealed upon my senses with so deep A stupefaction that men thought me dead. The centuries stole by with noiseless tread, Like spectres in the twilight of my dream; I saw mankind in dim procession sweep Through life, oblivion at each extreme. Meanwhile my beard, like Barbarossa's growing, Loaded my lap and o'er my knees was flowing. The generations came with dance and song, And each observed me curiously there. Some asked: "Who was he?" Others in the throng Replied: "A wicked monk who slept at prayer." Some said I was a saint, and some a bear-- These all were women. So the young and gay, Visibly wrinkling as they fared along, Doddered at last on failing limbs away; Though some, their footing in my beard entangled, Fell into its abysses and were strangled. At last a generation came that walked More slowly forward to the common tomb, Then altogether stopped. The women talked Excitedly; the men, with eyes agloom Looked darkly on them with a look of doom; And one cried out: "We are immortal now-- How need we these?" And a dread figure stalked, Silent, with gleaming axe and shrouded brow, And all men cried: "Decapitate the women, Or soon there'll be no room to stand or swim in!" So (in my dream) each lovely head was chopped From its fair shoulders, and but men alone Were left in all the world. Birth being stopped, Enough of room remained in every zone, And Peace ascended Woman's vacant throne. Thus, life's elixir being found (the quacks Their bread-and-butter in it gladly sopped) 'Twas made worth having by the headsman's axe. Seeing which, I gave myself a hearty shaking, And crumbled all to powder in the waking. CONVALESCENT. What! "Out of danger?" Can the slighted Dame Or canting Pharisee no more defame? Will Treachery caress my hand no more, Nor Hatred He alurk about my door?-- Ingratitude, with benefits dismissed, Not close the loaded palm to make a fist? Will Envy henceforth not retaliate For virtues it were vain to emulate? Will Ignorance my knowledge fail to scout, Not understanding what 'tis all about, Yet feeling in its light so mean and small That all his little soul is turned to gall? What! "Out of danger?" Jealousy disarmed? Greed from exaction magically charmed? Ambition stayed from trampling whom it meets, Like horses fugitive in crowded streets? The Bigot, with his candle, book and bell, Tongue-tied, unlunged and paralyzed as well? The Critic righteously to justice haled, His own ear to the post securely nailed-- What most he dreads unable to inflict, And powerless to hawk the faults he's picked? The liar choked upon his choicest lie, And impotent alike to villify Or flatter for the gold of thrifty men Who hate his person but employ his pen-- Who love and loathe, respectively, the dirt Belonging to his character and shirt? What! "Out of danger?"--Nature's minions all, Like hounds returning to the huntsman's call, Obedient to the unwelcome note That stays them from the quarry's bursting throat?-- Famine and Pestilence and Earthquake dire, Torrent and Tempest, Lightning, Frost and Fire, The soulless Tiger and the mindless Snake, The noxious Insect from the stagnant lake (Automaton malevolences wrought Out of the substance of Creative Thought)-- These from their immemorial prey restrained, Their fury baffled and their power chained? I'm safe? Is that what the physician said? What! "Out of danger?" Then, by Heaven, I'm dead! AT THE CLOSE OF THE CANVASS. 'Twas a Venerable Person, whom I met one Sunday morning, All appareled as a prophet of a melancholy sect; And in a jeremaid of objurgatory warning He lifted up his _jodel_ to the following effect: O ye sanguinary statesmen, intermit your verbal tussles O ye editors and orators, consent to hear my lay! And a little while the digital and maxillary muscles And attend to what a Venerable Person has to say. Cease your writing, cease your shouting, cease your wild unearthly lying; Cease to bandy such expressions as are never, never found In the letter of a lover; cease "exposing" and "replying"-- Let there be abated fury and a decrement of sound. For to-morrow will be Monday and the fifth day of November-- Only day of opportunity before the final rush. _Carpe diem!_ go conciliate each person who's a member Of the other party--do it while you can without a blush. "Lo! the time is close upon you when the madness of the season Having howled itself to silence, like a Minnesota 'clone, Will at last be superseded by the still, small voice of reason, When the whelpage of your folly you would willingly disown. "Ah, 'tis mournful to consider what remorses will be thronging, With a consciousness of having been so ghastly indiscreet, When by accident untoward two ex-gentlemen belonging To the opposite political denominations meet! "Yes, 'tis melancholy, truly, to forecast the fierce, unruly Supersurging of their blushes, like the flushes upon high When Aurora Borealis lights her circumpolar palace And in customary manner sets her banner in the sky. "Each will think: 'This falsifier knows that I too am a liar. Curse him for a son of Satan, all unholily compound! Curse my leader for another! Curse that pelican, my mother! Would to God that I when little in my victual had been drowned!'" Then that Venerable Person went away without returning And, the madness of the season having also taken flight, All the people soon were blushing like the skies to crimson burning When Aurora Borealis fires her premises by night. NOVUM ORGANUM. In Bacon see the culminating prime Of Anglo-Saxon intellect and crime. He dies and Nature, settling his affairs, Parts his endowments among us, his heirs: To every one a pinch of brain for seed, And, to develop it, a pinch of greed. Each thrifty heir, to make the gift suffice, Buries the talent to manure the vice. GEOTHEOS. As sweet as the look of a lover Saluting the eyes of a maid, That blossom to blue as the maid Is ablush to the glances above her, The sunshine is gilding the glade And lifting the lark out of shade. Sing therefore high praises, and therefore Sing songs that are ancient as gold, Of Earth in her garments of gold; Nor ask of their meaning, nor wherefore They charm as of yore, for behold! The Earth is as fair as of old. Sing songs of the pride of the mountains, And songs of the strength of the seas, And the fountains that fall to the seas From the hands of the hills, and the fountains That shine in the temples of trees, In valleys of roses and bees. Sing songs that are dreamy and tender, Of slender Arabian palms, And shadows that circle the palms, Where caravans, veiled from the splendor, Are kneeling in blossoms and balms, In islands of infinite calms. Barbaric, O Man, was thy runing When mountains were stained as with wine By the dawning of Time, and as wine Were the seas, yet its echoes are crooning, Achant in the gusty pine And the pulse of the poet's line. YORICK. Hard by an excavated street one sat In solitary session on the sand; And ever and anon he spake and spat And spake again--a yellow skull in hand, To which that retrospective Pioneer Addressed the few remarks that follow here: "Who are you? Did you come 'der blains agross,' Or 'Horn aroundt'? In days o' '49 Did them thar eye-holes see the Southern Cross From the Antarctic Sea git up an' shine? Or did you drive a bull team 'all the way From Pike,' with Mr. Joseph Bowers?--say! "Was you in Frisco when the water came Up to Montgum'ry street? and do you mind The time when Peters run the faro game-- Jim Peters from old Mississip--behind Wells Fargo's, where he subsequent was bust By Sandy, as regards both bank and crust? "I wonder was you here when Casey shot James King o' William? And did you attend The neck-tie dance ensuin'? _I_ did not, But j'ined the rush to Go Creek with my friend Ed'ard McGowan; for we was resolved In sech diversions not to be involved. "Maybe I knowed you; seems to me I've seed Your face afore. I don't forget a face, But names I disremember--I'm that breed Of owls. I'm talking some'at into space An' maybe my remarks is too derned free, Seein' yer name is unbeknown to me. "Ther' was a time, I reckon, when I knowed Nigh onto every dern galoot in town. That was as late as '50. Now she's growed Surprisin'! Yes, me an' my pardner, Brown, Was wide acquainted. If ther' was a cuss We didn't know, the cause was--he knowed us. "Maybe you had that claim adjoinin' mine Up thar in Calaveras. Was it you To which Long Mary took a mighty shine, An' throwed squar' off on Jake the Kangaroo? I guess if she could see ye now she'd take Her chance o' happiness along o' Jake. "You ain't so purty now as you was then: Yer eyes is nothin' but two prospect holes, An' women which are hitched to better men Would hardly for sech glances damn their souls, As Lengthie did. By G----! I _hope_ it's you, For" _(kicks the skull)_ "I'm Jake the Kangaroo." A VISION OF DOOM. I stood upon a hill. The setting sun Was crimson with a curse and a portent, And scarce his angry ray lit up the land That lay below, whose lurid gloom appeared Freaked with a moving mist, which, reeking up From dim tarns hateful with some horrid ban, Took shapes forbidden and without a name. Gigantic night-birds, rising from the reeds With cries discordant, startled all the air, And bodiless voices babbled in the gloom-- The ghosts of blasphemies long ages stilled, And shrieks of women, and men's curses. All These visible shapes, and sounds no mortal ear Had ever heard, some spiritual sense Interpreted, though brokenly; for I Was haunted by a consciousness of crime, Some giant guilt, but whose I knew not. All These things malign, by sight and sound revealed, Were sin-begotten; that I knew--no more-- And that but dimly, as in dreadful dreams The sleepy senses babble to the brain Imperfect witness. As I stood a voice, But whence it came I knew not, cried aloud Some words to me in a forgotten tongue, Yet straight I knew me for a ghost forlorn, Returned from the illimited inane. Again, but in a language that I knew, As in reply to something which in me Had shaped itself a thought, but found no words, It spake from the dread mystery about: "Immortal shadow of a mortal soul That perished with eternity, attend. What thou beholdest is as void as thou: The shadow of a poet's dream--himself As thou, his soul as thine, long dead, But not like thine outlasted by its shade. His dreams alone survive eternity As pictures in the unsubstantial void. Excepting thee and me (and we because The poet wove us in his thought) remains Of nature and the universe no part Or vestige but the poet's dreams. This dread, Unspeakable land about thy feet, with all Its desolation and its terrors--lo! 'T is but a phantom world. So long ago That God and all the angels since have died That poet lived--yourself long dead--his mind Filled with the light of a prophetic fire, And standing by the Western sea, above The youngest, fairest city in the world, Named in another tongue than his for one Ensainted, saw its populous domain Plague-smitten with a nameless shame. For there Red-handed murder rioted; and there The people gathered gold, nor cared to loose The assassin's fingers from the victim's throat, But said, each in his vile pursuit engrossed: 'Am I my brother's keeper? Let the Law Look to the matter.' But the Law did not. And there, O pitiful! the babe was slain Within its mother's breast and the same grave Held babe and mother; and the people smiled, Still gathering gold, and said: 'The Law, the Law,' Then the great poet, touched upon the lips With a live coal from Truth's high altar, raised His arms to heaven and sang a song of doom-- Sang of the time to be, when God should lean Indignant from the Throne and lift his hand, And that foul city be no more!--a tale, A dream, a desolation and a curse! No vestige of its glory should survive In fact or memory: its people dead, Its site forgotten, and its very name Disputed." "Was the prophecy fulfilled?" The sullen disc of the declining sun Was crimson with a curse and a portent, And scarce his angry ray lit up the land That lay below, whose lurid gloom appeared Freaked with a moving mist, which, reeking up From dim tarns hateful with a horrid ban, Took shapes forbidden and without a name. Gigantic night-birds, rising from the reeds With cries discordant, startled all the air, And bodiless voices babbled in the gloom. But not to me came any voice again; And, covering my face with thin, dead hands, I wept, and woke, and cried aloud to God! POLITICS. That land full surely hastens to its end Where public sycophants in homage bend The populace to flatter, and repeat The doubled echoes of its loud conceit. Lowly their attitude but high their aim, They creep to eminence through paths of shame, Till fixed securely in the seats of pow'r, The dupes they flattered they at last devour. POESY. Successive bards pursue Ambition's fire That shines, Oblivion, above thy mire. The latest mounts his predecessor's trunk, And sinks his brother ere himself is sunk. So die ingloriously Fame's _élite_, But dams of dunces keep the line complete. IN DEFENSE. You may say, if you please, Johnny Bull, that our girls Are crazy to marry your dukes and your earls; But I've heard that the maids of your own little isle Greet bachelor lords with a favoring smile. Nay, titles, 'tis said in defense of our fair, Are popular here because popular there; And for them our ladies persistently go Because 'tis exceedingly English, you know. Whatever the motive, you'll have to confess The effort's attended with easy success; And--pardon the freedom--'tis thought, over here, 'Tis mortification you mask with a sneer. It's all very well, sir, your scorn to parade Of the high nasal twang of the Yankee maid, But, ah, to my lord when he dares to propose No sound is so sweet as that "Yes" from the nose. Our ladies, we grant, walk alone in the street (Observe, by-the-by, on what delicate feet!) 'Tis a habit they got here at home, where they say The men from politeness go seldom astray. Ah, well, if the dukes and the earls and that lot Can stand it (God succor them if they cannot!) Your commoners ought to assent, I am sure, And what they 're not called on to suffer, endure. "'Tis nothing but money?" "Your nobles are bought?" As to that, I submit, it is commonly thought That England's a country not specially free Of Croesi and (if you'll allow it) Croesae. You've many a widow and many a girl With money to purchase a duke or an earl. 'Tis a very remarkable thing, you'll agree, When goods import buyers from over the sea. Alas for the woman of Albion's isle! She may simper; as well as she can she may smile; She may wear pantalettes and an air of repose-- But my lord of the future will talk through his nose. AN INVOCATION. [Read at the Celebration of Independence Day in San Francisco, in 1888.] Goddess of Liberty! O thou Whose tearless eyes behold the chain, And look unmoved upon the slain, Eternal peace upon thy brow,-- Before thy shrine the races press, Thy perfect favor to implore-- The proudest tyrant asks no more, The ironed anarchist no less. Thine altar-coals that touch the lips Of prophets kindle, too, the brand By Discord flung with wanton hand Among the houses and the ships. Upon thy tranquil front the star Burns bleak and passionless and white, Its cold inclemency of light More dreadful than the shadows are. Thy name we do not here invoke Our civic rites to sanctify: Enthroned in thy remoter sky, Thou heedest not our broken yoke. Thou carest not for such as we: Our millions die to serve the still And secret purpose of thy will. They perish--what is that to thee? The light that fills the patriot's tomb Is not of thee. The shining crown Compassionately offered down To those who falter in the gloom, And fall, and call upon thy name, And die desiring--'tis the sign Of a diviner love than thine, Rewarding with a richer fame. To him alone let freemen cry Who hears alike the victor's shout, The song of faith, the moan of doubt, And bends him from his nearer sky. God of my country and my race! So greater than the gods of old-- So fairer than the prophets told Who dimly saw and feared thy face,-- Who didst but half reveal thy will And gracious ends to their desire, Behind the dawn's advancing fire Thy tender day-beam veiling still,-- To whom the unceasing suns belong, And cause is one with consequence,-- To whose divine, inclusive sense The moan is blended with the song,-- Whose laws, imperfect and unjust, Thy just and perfect purpose serve: The needle, howsoe'er it swerve, Still warranting the sailor's trust,-- God, lift thy hand and make us free To crown the work thou hast designed. O, strike away the chains that bind Our souls to one idolatry! The liberty thy love hath given We thank thee for. We thank thee for Our great dead fathers' holy war Wherein our manacles were riven. We thank thee for the stronger stroke Ourselves delivered and incurred When--thine incitement half unheard-- The chains we riveted we broke. We thank thee that beyond the sea The people, growing ever wise, Turn to the west their serious eyes And dumbly strive to be as we. As when the sun's returning flame Upon the Nileside statue shone, And struck from the enchanted stone The music of a mighty fame, Let Man salute the rising day Of Liberty, but not adore. 'Tis Opportunity--no more-- A useful, not a sacred, ray. It bringeth good, it bringeth ill, As he possessing shall elect. He maketh it of none effect Who walketh not within thy will. Give thou or more or less, as we Shall serve the right or serve the wrong. Confirm our freedom but so long As we are worthy to be free. But when (O, distant be the time!) Majorities in passion draw Insurgent swords to murder Law, And all the land is red with crime; Or--nearer menace!--when the band Of feeble spirits cringe and plead To the gigantic strength of Greed, And fawn upon his iron hand;-- Nay, when the steps to state are worn In hollows by the feet of thieves, And Mammon sits among the sheaves And chuckles while the reapers mourn; Then stay thy miracle!--replace The broken throne, repair the chain, Restore the interrupted reign And veil again thy patient face. Lo! here upon the world's extreme We stand with lifted arms and dare By thine eternal name to swear Our country, which so fair we deem-- Upon whose hills, a bannered throng, The spirits of the sun display Their flashing lances day by day And hear the sea's pacific song-- Shall be so ruled in right and grace That men shall say: "O, drive afield The lawless eagle from the shield, And call an angel to the place!" RELIGION. Hassan Bedreddin, clad in rags, ill-shod, Sought the great temple of the living God. The worshippers arose and drove him forth, And one in power beat him with a rod. "Allah," he cried, "thou seest what I got; Thy servants bar me from the sacred spot." "Be comforted," the Holy One replied; "It is the only place where I am not." A MORNING FANCY. I drifted (or I seemed to) in a boat Upon the surface of a shoreless sea Whereon no ship nor anything did float, Save only the frail bark supporting me; And that--it was so shadowy--seemed to be Almost from out the very vapors wrought Of the great ocean underneath its keel; And all that blue profound appeared as naught But thicker sky, translucent to reveal, Miles down, whatever through its spaces glided, Or at the bottom traveled or abided. Great cities there I saw--of rich and poor, The palace and the hovel; mountains, vales, Forest and field, the desert and the moor, Tombs of the good and wise who'd lived in jails, And seas of denser fluid, white with sails Pushed at by currents moving here and there And sensible to sight above the flat Of that opaquer deep. Ah, strange and fair The nether world that I was gazing at With beating heart from that exalted level, And--lest I founder--trembling like the devil! The cities all were populous: men swarmed In public places--chattered, laughed and wept; And savages their shining bodies warmed At fires in primal woods. The wild beast leapt Upon its prey and slew it as it slept. Armies went forth to battle on the plain So far, far down in that unfathomed deep The living seemed as silent as the slain, Nor even the widows could be heard to weep. One might have thought their shaking was but laughter; And, truly, most were married shortly after. Above the wreckage of that silent fray Strange fishes swam in circles, round and round-- Black, double-finned; and once a little way A bubble rose and burst without a sound And a man tumbled out upon the ground. Lord! 'twas an eerie thing to drift apace On that pellucid sea, beneath black skies And o'er the heads of an undrowning race; And when I woke I said--to her surprise Who came with chocolate, for me to drink it: "The atmosphere is deeper than you think it." VISIONS OF SIN. KRASLAJORSK, SIBERIA, March 29. "My eyes are better, and I shall travel slowly toward home." DANENHOWER. From the regions of the Night, Coming with recovered sight-- From the spell of darkness free, What will Danenhower see? He will see when he arrives, Doctors taking human lives. He will see a learned judge Whose decision will not budge Till both litigants are fleeced And his palm is duly greased. Lawyers he will see who fight Day by day and night by night; Never both upon a side, Though their fees they still divide. Preachers he will see who teach That it is divine to preach-- That they fan a sacred fire And are worthy of their hire. He will see a trusted wife (Pride of some good husband's life) Enter at a certain door And--but he will see no more. He will see Good Templars reel-- See a prosecutor steal, And a father beat his child. He'll perhaps see Oscar Wilde. From the regions of the Night Coming with recovered sight-- From the bliss of blindness free, That's what Danenhower'll see. 1882. THE TOWN OF DAE. _Swains and maidens, young and old, You to me this tale have told._ Where the squalid town of Dae Irks the comfortable sea, Spreading webs to gather fish, As for wealth we set a wish, Dwelt a king by right divine, Sprung from Adam's royal line, Town of Dae by the sea, Divers kinds of kings there be. Name nor fame had Picklepip: Ne'er a soldier nor a ship Bore his banners in the sun; Naught knew he of kingly sport, And he held his royal court Under an inverted tun. Love and roses, ages through, Bloom where cot and trellis stand; Never yet these blossoms grew-- Never yet was room for two-- In a cask upon the strand. So it happened, as it ought, That his simple schemes he wrought Through the lagging summer's day In a solitary way. So it happened, as was best, That he took his nightly rest With no dreadful incubus This way eyed and that way tressed, Featured thus, and thus, and thus, Lying lead-like on a breast By cares of State enough oppressed. Yet in dreams his fancies rude Claimed a lordly latitude. Town of Dae by the sea, Dreamers mate above their state And waken back to their degree. Once to cask himself away He prepared at close of day. As he tugged with swelling throat At a most unkingly coat-- Not to get it off, but on, For the serving sun was gone-- Passed a silk-appareled sprite Toward her castle on the height, Seized and set the garment right. Turned the startled Picklepip-- Splendid crimson cheek and lip! Turned again to sneak away, But she bade the villain stay, Bade him thank her, which he did With a speech that slipped and slid, Sprawled and stumbled in its gait As a dancer tries to skate. Town of Dae by the sea, In the face of silk and lace Rags too bold should never be. Lady Minnow cocked her head: "Mister Picklepip," she said, "Do you ever think to wed?" Town of Dae by the sea, No fair lady ever made a Wicked speech like that to me! Wretched little Picklepip Said he hadn't any ship, Any flocks at his command, Nor to feed them any land; Said he never in his life Owned a mine to keep a wife. But the guilty stammer so That his meaning wouldn't flow; So he thought his aim to reach By some figurative speech: Said his Fate had been unkind Had pursued him from behind (How the mischief could it else?) Came upon him unaware, Caught him by the collar--there Gushed the little lady's glee Like a gush of golden bells: "Picklepip, why, that is _me_!" Town of Dae by the sea, Grammar's for great scholars--she Loved the summer and the lea. Stupid little Picklepip Allowed the subtle hint to slip-- Maundered on about the ship That he did not chance to own; Told this grievance o'er and o'er, Knowing that she knew before; Told her how he dwelt alone. Lady Minnow, for reply, Cut him off with "So do I!" But she reddened at the fib; Servitors had she, _ad lib._ Town of Dae by the sea, In her youth who speaks no truth Ne'er shall young and honest be. Witless little Picklepip Manned again his mental ship And veered her with a sudden shift. Painted to the lady's thought How he wrestled and he wrought Stoutly with the swimming drift By the kindly river brought From the mountain to the sea, Fuel for the town of Dae. Tedious tale for lady's ear: From her castle on the height, She had watched her water-knight Through the seasons of a year, Challenge more than met his view And conquer better than he knew. Now she shook her pretty pate And stamped her foot--'t was growing late: "Mister Picklepip, when I Drifting seaward pass you by; When the waves my forehead kiss And my tresses float above-- Dead and drowned for lack of love-- You'll be sorry, sir, for this!" And the silly creature cried-- Feared, perchance, the rising tide. Town of Dae by the sea, Madam Adam, when she had 'em, May have been as bad as she. _Fiat lux!_ Love's lumination Fell in floods of revelation! Blinded brain by world aglare, Sense of pulses in the air, Sense of swooning and the beating Of a voice somewhere repeating Something indistinctly heard! And the soul of Picklepip Sprang upon his trembling lip, But he spake no further word Of the wealth he did not own; In that moment had outgrown Ship and mine and flock and land-- Even his cask upon the strand. Dropped a stricken star to earth, Type of wealth and worldly worth. Clomb the moon into the sky, Type of love's immensity! Shaking silver seemed the sea, Throne of God the town of Dae! Town of Dae by the sea, From above there cometh love, Blessing all good souls that be. AN ANARCHIST. False to his art and to the high command God laid upon him, Markham's rebel hand Beats all in vain the harp he touched before: It yields a jingle and it yields no more. No more the strings beneath his finger-tips Sing harmonies divine. No more his lips, Touched with a living coal from sacred fires, Lead the sweet chorus of the golden wires. The voice is raucous and the phrases squeak; They labor, they complain, they sweat, they reek! The more the wayward, disobedient song Errs from the right to celebrate the wrong, More diligently still the singer strums, To drown the horrid sound, with all his thumbs. Gods, what a spectacle! The angels lean Out of high Heaven to view the sorry scene, And Israfel, "whose heart-strings are a lute," Though now compassion makes their music mute, Among the weeping company appears, Pearls in his eyes and cotton in his ears. AN OFFER OF MARRIAGE. Once I "dipt into the future far as human eye could see," And saw--it was not Sandow, nor John Sullivan, but she-- The Emancipated Woman, who was weeping as she ran Here and there for the discovery of Expurgated Man. But the sun of Evolution ever rose and ever set, And that tardiest of mortals hadn't evoluted yet. Hence the tears that she cascaded, hence the sighs that tore apart All the tendinous connections of her indurated heart. Cried Emancipated Woman, as she wearied of the search: "In Advancing I have left myself distinctly in the lurch! Seeking still a worthy partner, from the land of brutes and dudes I have penetrated rashly into manless solitudes. Now without a mate of any kind where am I?--that's to say, Where shall I be to-morrow?--where exert my rightful sway And the purifying strength of my emancipated mind? Can solitude be lifted up, vacuity refined? Calling, calling from the shadows in the rear of my Advance-- From the Region of Unprogress in the Dark Domain of Chance-- Long I heard the Unevolvable beseeching my return To share the degradation he's reluctant to unlearn. But I fancy I detected--though I pray it wasn't that-- A low reverberation, like an echo in a hat. So I've held my way regardless, evoluting year by year, Till I'm what you now behold me--or would if you were here-- A condensed Emancipation and a Purifier proud An Independent Entity appropriately loud! Independent? Yes, in spirit, but (O, woful, woful state!) Doomed to premature extinction by privation of a mate-- To extinction or reversion, for Unexpurgated Man Still awaits me in the backward if I sicken of the van. O the horrible dilemma!--to be odiously linked With an Undeveloped Species, or become a Type Extinct!" As Emancipated Woman wailed her sorrow to the air, Stalking out of desolation came a being strange and rare-- Plato's Man!--bipedal, featherless from mandible to rump, Its wings two quilless flippers and its tail a plumeless stump. First it scratched and then it clucked, as if in hospitable terms It invited her to banquet on imaginary worms. Then it strutted up before her with a lifting of the head, And in accents of affection and of sympathy it said: "My estate is some 'at 'umble, but I'm qualified to draw Near the hymeneal altar and whack up my heart and claw To Emancipated Anything as walks upon the earth; And them things is at your service for whatever they are worth. I'm sure to be congenial, marm, nor e'er deserve a scowl-- I'm Emancipated Rooster, I am Expurgated Fowl!" From the future and its wonders I withdrew my gaze, and then Wrote this wild unfestive prophecy about the Coming Hen. ARMA VIRUMQUE. "Ours is a Christian Army"; so he said A regiment of bangomen who led. "And ours a Christian Navy," added he Who sailed a thunder-junk upon the sea. Better they know than men unwarlike do What is an army and a navy, too. Pray God there may be sent them by-and-by The knowledge what a Christian is, and why. For somewhat lamely the conception runs Of a brass-buttoned Jesus firing guns. ON A PROPOSED CREMATORY. When a fair bridge is builded o'er the gulf Between two cities, some ambitious fool, Hot for distinction, pleads for earliest leave To push his clumsy feet upon the span, That men in after years may single him, Saying: "Behold the fool who first went o'er!" So be it when, as now the promise is, Next summer sees the edifice complete Which some do name a crematorium, Within the vantage of whose greater maw's Quicker digestion we shall cheat the worm And circumvent the handed mole who loves, With tunnel, adit, drift and roomy stope, To mine our mortal parts in all their dips And spurs and angles. Let the fool stand forth To link his name with this fair enterprise, As first decarcassed by the flame. And if With rival greedings for the fiery fame They push in clamoring multitudes, or if With unaccustomed modesty they all Hold off, being something loth to qualify, Let me select the fittest for the rite. By heaven! I'll make so warrantable, wise And excellent censure of their true deserts, And such a searching canvass of their claims, That none shall bait the ballot. I'll spread my choice Upon the main and general of those Who, moved of holy impulse, pulpit-born, Protested 'twere a sacrilege to burn God's gracious images, designed to rot, And bellowed for the right of way for each Distempered carrion through the water pipes. With such a sturdy, boisterous exclaim They did discharge themselves from their own throats Against the splintered gates of audience 'Twere wholesomer to take them in at mouth Than ear. These shall burn first: their ignible And seasoned substances--trunks, legs and arms, Blent indistinguishable in a mass, Like winter-woven serpents in a pit-- None vantaged of his fellow-fools in point Of precedence, and all alive--shall serve As fueling to fervor the retort For after cineration of true men. A DEMAND. You promised to paint me a picture, Dear Mat, And I was to pay you in rhyme. Although I am loth to inflict your Most easy of consciences, I'm Of opinion that fibbing is awful, And breaking a contract unlawful, Indictable, too, as a crime, A slight and all that. If, Lady Unbountiful, any Of that By mortals called pity has part In your obdurate soul--if a penny You care for the health of my heart, By performing your undertaking You'll succor that organ from breaking-- And spare it for some new smart, As puss does a rat. Do you think it is very becoming, Dear Mat, To deny me my rights evermore And--bless you! if I begin summing Your sins they will make a long score! You never were generous, madam, If you had been Eve and I Adam You'd have given me naught but the core, And little of that. Had I been content with a Titian, A cat By Landseer, a meadow by Claude, No doubt I'd have had your permission To take it--by purchase abroad. But why should I sail o'er the ocean For Landseers and Claudes? I've a notion All's bad that the critics belaud. I wanted a Mat. Presumption's a sin, and I suffer For that: But still you _did_ say that sometime, If I'd pay you enough (here's enougher-- That's more than enough) of rhyme You'd paint me a picture. I pay you Hereby in advance; and I pray you Condone, while you can, your crime, And send me a Mat. But if you don't do it I warn you, Dear Mat, I'll raise such a clamor and cry On Parnassus the Muses will scorn you As mocker of poets and fly With bitter complaints to Apollo: "Her spirit is proud, her heart hollow, Her beauty"--they'll hardly deny, On second thought, _that_! THE WEATHER WIGHT. The way was long, the hill was steep, My footing scarcely I could keep. The night enshrouded me in gloom, I heard the ocean's distant boom-- The trampling of the surges vast Was borne upon the rising blast. "God help the mariner," I cried, "Whose ship to-morrow braves the tide!" Then from the impenetrable dark A solemn voice made this remark: "For this locality--warm, bright; Barometer unchanged; breeze light." "Unseen consoler-man," I cried, "Whoe'er you are, where'er abide, "Thanks--but my care is somewhat less For Jack's, than for my own, distress. "Could I but find a friendly roof, Small odds what weather were aloof. "For he whose comfort is secure Another's woes can well endure." "The latch-string's out," the voice replied, "And so's the door--jes' step inside." Then through the darkness I discerned A hovel, into which I turned. Groping about beneath its thatch, I struck my head and then a match. A candle by that gleam betrayed Soon lent paraffinaceous aid. A pallid, bald and thin old man I saw, who this complaint began: "Through summer suns and winter snows I sets observin' of my toes. "I rambles with increasin' pain The path of duty, but in vain. "Rewards and honors pass me by-- No Congress hears this raven cry!" Filled with astonishment, I spoke: "Thou ancient raven, why this croak? "With observation of your toes What Congress has to do, Heaven knows! "And swallow me if e'er I knew That one could sit and ramble too!" To answer me that ancient swain Took up his parable again: "Through winter snows and summer suns A Weather Bureau here I runs. "I calls the turn, and can declare Jes' when she'll storm and when she'll fair. "Three times a day I sings out clear The probs to all which wants to hear. "Some weather stations run with light Frivolity is seldom right. "A scientist from times remote, In Scienceville my birth is wrote. "And when I h'ist the 'rainy' sign Jes' take your clo'es in off the line." "Not mine, O marvelous old man, The methods of your art to scan, "Yet here no instruments there be-- Nor 'ometer nor 'scope I see. "Did you (if questions you permit) At the asylum leave your kit?" That strange old man with motion rude Grew to surprising altitude. "Tools (and sarcazzems too) I scorns-- I tells the weather by my corns. "No doors and windows here you see-- The wind and m'isture enters free. "No fires nor lights, no wool nor fur Here falsifies the tempercher. "My corns unleathered I expose To feel the rain's foretellin' throes. "No stockin' from their ears keeps out The comin' tempest's warnin' shout. "Sich delicacy some has got They know next summer's to be hot. "This here one says (for that he's best): 'Storm center passin' to the west.' "This feller's vitals is transfixed With frost for Janawary sixt'. "One chap jes' now is occy'pied In fig'rin on next Fridy's tide. "I've shaved this cuss so thin and true He'll spot a fog in South Peru. "Sech are my tools, which ne'er a swell Observatory can excel. "By long a-studyin' their throbs I catches onto all the probs." Much more, no doubt, he would have said, But suddenly he turned and fled; For in mine eye's indignant green Lay storms that he had not foreseen, Till all at once, with silent squeals, His toes "caught on" and told his heels. T.A.H. Yes, he was that, or that, as you prefer-- Did so and so, though, faith, it wasn't all; Lived like a fool, or a philosopher. And had whatever's needful for a fall. As rough inflections on a planet merge In the true bend of the gigantic sphere, Nor mar the perfect circle of its verge, So in the survey of his worth the small Asperities of spirit disappear, Lost in the grander curves of character. He lately was hit hard: none knew but I The strength and terror of that ghastly stroke-- Not even herself. He uttered not a cry, But set his teeth and made a revelry; Drank like a devil--staining sometimes red The goblet's edge; diced with his conscience; spread, Like Sisyphus, a feast for Death, and spoke His welcome in a tongue so long forgot That even his ancient guest remembered not What race had cursed him in it. Thus my friend Still conjugating with each failing sense The verb "to die" in every mood and tense, Pursued his awful humor to the end. When like a stormy dawn the crimson broke From his white lips he smiled and mutely bled, And, having meanly lived, is grandly dead. MY MONUMENT. It is pleasant to think, as I'm watching my ink A-drying along my paper, That a monument fine will surely be mine When death has extinguished my taper. From each rhyming scribe of the journalist tribe Purged clean of all sentiments narrow, A pebble will mark his respect for the stark Stiff body that's under the barrow. By fellow-bards thrown, thus stone upon stone Will make my celebrity deathless. O, I wish I could think, as I gaze at my ink, They'd wait till my carcass is breathless. MAD. O ye who push and fight To hear a wanton sing-- Who utter the delight That has the bogus ring,-- O men mature in years, In understanding young, The membranes of whose ears She tickles with her tongue,-- O wives and daughters sweet, Who call it love of art To kiss a woman's feet That crush a woman's heart,-- O prudent dams and sires, Your docile young who bring To see how man admires A sinner if she sing,-- O husbands who impart To each assenting spouse The lesson that shall start The buds upon your brows,-- All whose applauding hands Assist to rear the fame That throws o'er all the lands The shadow of its shame,-- Go drag her car!--the mud Through which its axle rolls Is partly human blood And partly human souls. Mad, mad!--your senses whirl Like devils dancing free, Because a strolling girl Can hold the note high C. For this the avenging rod Of Heaven ye dare defy, And tear the law that God Thundered from Sinai! HOSPITALITY. Why ask me, Gastrogogue, to dine (Unless to praise your rascal wine) Yet never ask some luckless sinner Who needs, as I do not, a dinner? FOR A CERTAIN CRITIC. Let lowly themes engage my humble pen-- Stupidities of critics, not of men. Be it mine once more the maunderings to trace Of the expounders' self-directed race-- Their wire-drawn fancies, finically fine, Of diligent vacuity the sign. Let them in jargon of their trade rehearse The moral meaning of the random verse That runs spontaneous from the poet's pen To be half-blotted by ambitious men Who hope with his their meaner names to link By writing o'er it in another ink The thoughts unreal which they think they think, Until the mental eye in vain inspects The hateful palimpsest to find the text. The lark ascending heavenward, loud and long Sings to the dawning day his wanton song. The moaning dove, attentive to the sound, Its hidden meaning hastens to expound: Explains its principles, design--in brief, Pronounces it a parable of grief! The bee, just pausing ere he daubs his thigh With pollen from a hollyhock near by, Declares he never heard in terms so just The labor problem thoughtfully discussed! The browsing ass looks up and clears his whistle To say: "A monologue upon the thistle!" Meanwhile the lark, descending, folds his wing And innocently asks: "What!--did I sing?" O literary parasites! who thrive Upon the fame of better men, derive Your sustenance by suction, like a leech, And, for you preach of them, think masters preach,-- Who find it half is profit, half delight, To write about what you could never write,-- Consider, pray, how sharp had been the throes Of famine and discomfiture in those You write of if they had been critics, too, And doomed to write of nothing but of you! Lo! where the gaping crowd throngs yonder tent, To see the lion resolutely bent! The prosing showman who the beast displays Grows rich and richer daily in its praise. But how if, to attract the curious yeoman, The lion owned the show and showed the showman? RELIGIOUS PROGRESS. Every religion is important. When men rise above existing conditions a new religion comes in, and it is better than the old one.--_Professor Howison_. Professor dear, I think it queer That all these good religions ('Twixt you and me, some two or three Are schemes for plucking pigeons)-- I mean 'tis strange that every change Our poor minds to unfetter Entails a new religion--true As t' other one, and better. From each in turn the truth we learn, That wood or flesh or spirit May justly boast it rules the roast Until we cease to fear it. Nay, once upon a time long gone Man worshipped Cat and Lizard: His God he'd find in any kind Of beast, from a to izzard. When risen above his early love Of dirt and blood and slumber, He pulled down these vain deities, And made one out of lumber. "Far better that than even a cat," The Howisons all shouted; "When God is wood religion's good!" But one poor cynic doubted. "A timber God--that's very odd!" Said Progress, and invented The simple plan to worship Man, Who, kindly soul! consented. But soon our eye we lift asky, Our vows all unregarded, And find (at least so says the priest) The Truth--and Man's discarded. Along our line of march recline Dead gods devoid of feeling; And thick about each sun-cracked lout Dried Howisons are kneeling. MAGNANIMITY. "To the will of the people we loyally bow!" That's the minority shibboleth now. O noble antagonists, answer me flat-- What would you do if you didn't do that? TO HER. O, Sinner A, to me unknown Be such a conscience as your own! To ease it you to Sinner B Confess the sins of Sinner C. TO A SUMMER POET. Yes, the Summer girl is flirting on the beach, With a him. And the damboy is a-climbing for the peach, On the limb; Yes, the bullfrog is a-croaking And the dudelet is a-smoking Cigarettes; And the hackman is a-hacking And the showman is a-cracking Up his pets; Yes, the Jersey 'skeeter flits along the shore And the snapdog--we have heard it o'er and o'er; Yes, my poet, Well we know it-- Know the spooners how they spoon In the bright Dollar light Of the country tavern moon; Yes, the caterpillars fall From the trees (we know it all), And with beetles all the shelves Are alive. Please unbuttonhole us--O, Have the grace to let us go, For we know How you Summer poets thrive, By the recapitulation And insistent iteration Of the wondrous doings incident to Life Among Ourselves! So, I pray you stop the fervor and the fuss. For you, poor human linnet, There's a half a living in it, But there's not a copper cent in it for us! ARTHUR McEWEN. Posterity with all its eyes Will come and view him where he lies. Then, turning from the scene away With a concerted shrug, will say: "H'm, Scarabaeus Sisyphus-- What interest has that to us? We can't admire at all, at all, A tumble-bug without its ball." And then a sage will rise and say: "Good friends, you err--turn back, I pray: This freak that you unwisely shun Is bug and ball rolled into one." CHARLES AND PETER. Ere Gabriel's note to silence died All graves of men were gaping wide. Then Charles A. Dana, of "The Sun," Rose slowly from the deepest one. "The dead in Christ rise first, 't is writ," Quoth he--"ick, bick, ban, doe,--I'm It!" (His headstone, footstone, counted slow, Were "ick" and "bick," he "ban" and "doe": Of beating Nick the subtle art Was part of his immortal part.) Then straight to Heaven he took his flight, Arriving at the Gates of Light. There Warden Peter, in the throes Of sleep, lay roaring in the nose. "Get up, you sluggard!" Dana cried-- "I've an engagement there inside." The Saint arose and scratched his head. "I recollect your face," he said. "(And, pardon me, 't is rather hard), But----" Dana handed him a card. "Ah, yes, I now remember--bless My soul, how dull I am I--yes, yes, "We've nothing better here than bliss. Walk in. But I must tell you this: "We've rest and comfort, though, and peace." "H'm--puddles," Dana said, "for geese. "Have you in Heaven no Hell?" "Why, no," Said Peter, "nor, in truth, below. "'T is not included in our scheme-- 'T is but a preacher's idle dream." The great man slowly moved away. "I'll call," he said, "another day. "On earth I played it, o'er and o'er, And Heaven without it were a bore." "O, stuff!--come in. You'll make," said Pete, "A hell where'er you set your feet." 1885. CONTEMPLATION. I muse upon the distant town In many a dreamy mood. Above my head the sunbeams crown The graveyard's giant rood. The lupin blooms among the tombs. The quail recalls her brood. Ah, good it is to sit and trace The shadow of the cross; It moves so still from place to place O'er marble, bronze and moss; With graves to mark upon its arc Our time's eternal loss. And sweet it is to watch the bee That reve's in the rose, And sense the fragrance floating free On every breeze that blows O'er many a mound, where, safe and sound, Mine enemies repose. CREATION. God dreamed--the suns sprang flaming into place, And sailing worlds with many a venturous race! He woke--His smile alone illumined space. BUSINESS. Two villains of the highest rank Set out one night to rob a bank. They found the building, looked it o'er, Each window noted, tried each door, Scanned carefully the lidded hole For minstrels to cascade the coal-- In short, examined five-and-twenty Good paths from poverty to plenty. But all were sealed, they saw full soon, Against the minions of the moon. "Enough," said one: "I'm satisfied." The other, smiling fair and wide, Said: "I'm as highly pleased as you: No burglar ever can get through. Fate surely prospers our design-- The booty all is yours and mine." So, full of hope, the following day To the exchange they took their way And bought, with manner free and frank, Some stock of that devoted bank; And they became, inside the year, One President and one Cashier. Their crime I can no further trace-- The means of safety to embrace, I overdrew and left the place. A POSSIBILITY. If the wicked gods were willing (Pray it never may be true!) That a universal chilling Should ensue Of the sentiment of loving,-- If they made a great undoing Of the plan of turtle-doving, Then farewell all poet-lore, Evermore. If there were no more of billing There would be no more of cooing And we all should be but owls-- Lonely fowls Blinking wonderfully wise, With our great round eyes-- Sitting singly in the gloaming and no longer two and two, As unwilling to be wedded as unpracticed how to woo; With regard to being mated, Asking still with aggravated Ungrammatical acerbity: "To who? To who?" TO A CENSOR. "The delay granted by the weakness and good nature of our judges is responsible for half the murders."--_Daily Newspaper_. Delay responsible? Why, then; my friend, Impeach Delay and you will make an end. Thrust vile Delay in jail and let it rot For doing all the things that it should not. Put not good-natured judges under bond, But make Delay in damages respond. Minos, Aeacus, Rhadamanthus, rolled Into one pitiless, unsmiling scold-- Unsparing censor, be your thongs uncurled To "lash the rascals naked through the world." The rascals? Nay, Rascality's the thing Above whose back your knotted scourges sing. _Your_ satire, truly, like a razor keen, "Wounds with a touch that's neither felt nor seen;" For naught that you assail with falchion free Has either nerves to feel or eyes to see. Against abstractions evermore you charge You hack no helmet and you need no targe. That wickedness is wrong and sin a vice, That wrong's not right and foulness never nice, Fearless affirm. All consequences dare: Smite the offense and the offender spare. When Ananias and Sapphira lied Falsehood, had you been there, had surely died. When money-changers in the Temple sat, At money-changing you'd have whirled the "cat" (That John-the-Baptist of the modern pen) And all the brokers would have cried amen! Good friend, if any judge deserve your blame Have you no courage, or has he no name? Upon his method will you wreak your wrath, Himself all unmolested in his path? Fall to! fall to!--your club no longer draw To beat the air or flail a man of straw. Scorn to do justice like the Saxon thrall Who cuffed the offender's shadow on a wall. Let rascals in the flesh attest your zeal-- Knocked on the mazzard or tripped up at heel! We know that judges are corrupt. We know That crimes are lively and that laws are slow. We know that lawyers lie and doctors slay; That priests and preachers are but birds of pray; That merchants cheat and journalists for gold Flatter the vicious while at vice they scold. 'Tis all familiar as the simple lore That two policemen and two thieves make four. But since, while some are wicked, some are good, (As trees may differ though they all are wood) Names, here and there, to show whose head is hit, The bad would sentence and the good acquit. In sparing everybody none you spare: Rebukes most personal are least unfair. To fire at random if you still prefer, And swear at Dog but never kick a cur, Permit me yet one ultimate appeal To something that you understand and feel: Let thrift and vanity your heart persuade-- You might be read if you would learn your trade. Good brother cynics (you have doubtless guessed Not one of you but all are here addressed) Remember this: the shaft that seeks a heart Draws all eyes after it; an idle dart Shot at some shadow flutters o'er the green, Its flight unheeded and its fall unseen. THE HESITATING VETERAN. When I was young and full of faith And other fads that youngsters cherish A cry rose as of one that saith With unction: "Help me or I perish!" 'Twas heard in all the land, and men The sound were each to each repeating. It made my heart beat faster then Than any heart can now be beating. For the world is old and the world is gray-- Grown prudent and, I guess, more witty. She's cut her wisdom teeth, they say, And doesn't now go in for Pity. Besides, the melancholy cry Was that of one, 'tis now conceded, Whose plight no one beneath the sky Felt half so poignantly as he did. Moreover, he was black. And yet That sentimental generation With an austere compassion set Its face and faith to the occasion. Then there were hate and strife to spare, And various hard knocks a-plenty; And I ('twas more than my true share, I must confess) took five-and-twenty. That all is over now--the reign Of love and trade stills all dissensions, And the clear heavens arch again Above a land of peace and pensions. The black chap--at the last we gave Him everything that he had cried for, Though many white chaps in the grave 'Twould puzzle to say what they died for. I hope he's better off--I trust That his society and his master's Are worth the price we paid, and must Continue paying, in disasters; But sometimes doubts press thronging round ('Tis mostly when my hurts are aching) If war for union was a sound And profitable undertaking. 'Tis said they mean to take away The Negro's vote for he's unlettered. 'Tis true he sits in darkness day And night, as formerly, when fettered; But pray observe--howe'er he vote To whatsoever party turning, He'll be with gentlemen of note And wealth and consequence and learning. With Hales and Morgans on each side, How could a fool through lack of knowledge, Vote wrong? If learning is no guide Why ought one to have been in college? O Son of Day, O Son of Night! What are your preferences made of? I know not which of you is right, Nor which to be the more afraid of. The world is old and the world is bad, And creaks and grinds upon its axis; And man's an ape and the gods are mad!-- There's nothing sure, not even our taxes. No mortal man can Truth restore, Or say where she is to be sought for. I know what uniform I wore-- O, that I knew which side I fought for! A YEAR'S CASUALTIES. Slain as they lay by the secret, slow, Pitiless hand of an unseen foe, Two score thousand old soldiers have crossed The river to join the loved and lost. In the space of a year their spirits fled, Silent and white, to the camp of the dead. One after one, they fall asleep And the pension agents awake to weep, And orphaned statesmen are loud in their wail As the souls flit by on the evening gale. O Father of Battles, pray give us release From the horrors of peace, the horrors of peace! INSPIRATION. O hoary sculptor, stay thy hand: I fain would view the lettered stone. What carvest thou?--perchance some grand And solemn fancy all thine own. For oft to know the fitting word Some humble worker God permits. "Jain Ann Meginnis, Agid 3rd. He givith His beluved fits." TO-DAY. I saw a man who knelt in prayer, And heard him say: "I'll lay my inmost spirit bare To-day. "Lord, for to-morrow and its need I do not pray; Let me upon my neighbor feed To-day. "Let me my duty duly shirk And run away From any form or phase of work To-day. "From Thy commands exempted still Let me obey The promptings of my private will To-day. "Let me no word profane, no lie Unthinking say If anyone is standing by To-day. "My secret sins and vices grave Let none betray; The scoffer's jeers I do not crave To-day. "And if to-day my fortune all Should ebb away, Help me on other men's to fall To-day. "So, for to-morrow and its mite I do not pray; Just give me everything in sight To-day." I cried: "Amen!" He rose and ran Like oil away. I said: "I've seen an honest man To-day." AN ALIBI. A famous journalist, who long Had told the great unheaded throng Whate'er they thought, by day or night. Was true as Holy Writ, and right, Was caught in--well, on second thought, It is enough that he was caught, And being thrown in jail became The fuel of a public flame. "_Vox populi vox Dei_," said The jailer. Inxling bent his head Without remark: that motto good In bold-faced type had always stood Above the columns where his pen Had rioted in praise of men And all they said--provided he Was sure they mostly did agree. Meanwhile a sharp and bitter strife To take, or save, the culprit's life Or liberty (which, I suppose, Was much the same to him) arose Outside. The journal that his pen Adorned denounced his crime--but then Its editor in secret tried To have the indictment set aside. The opposition papers swore His father was a rogue before, And all his wife's relations were Like him and similar to her. They begged their readers to subscribe A dollar each to make a bribe That any Judge would feel was large Enough to prove the gravest charge-- Unless, it might be, the defense Put up superior evidence. The law's traditional delay Was all too short: the trial day Dawned red and menacing. The Judge Sat on the Bench and wouldn't budge, And all the motions counsel made Could not move _him_--and there he stayed. "The case must now proceed," he said, "While I am just in heart and head, It happens--as, indeed, it ought-- Both sides with equal sums have bought My favor: I can try the cause Impartially." (Prolonged applause.) The prisoner was now arraigned And said that he was greatly pained To be suspected--_he_, whose pen Had charged so many other men With crimes and misdemeanors! "Why," He said, a tear in either eye, "If men who live by crying out 'Stop thief!' are not themselves from doubt Of their integrity exempt, Let all forego the vain attempt To make a reputation! Sir, I'm innocent, and I demur." Whereat a thousand voices cried Amain he manifestly lied-- _Vox populi_ as loudly roared As bull by _picadores_ gored, In his own coin receiving pay To make a Spanish holiday. The jury--twelve good men and true-- Were then sworn in to see it through, And each made solemn oath that he As any babe unborn was free From prejudice, opinion, thought, Respectability, brains--aught That could disqualify; and some Explained that they were deaf and dumb. A better twelve, his Honor said, Was rare, except among the dead. The witnesses were called and sworn. The tales they told made angels mourn, And the Good Book they'd kissed became Red with the consciousness of shame. Whenever one of them approached The truth, "That witness wasn't coached, Your Honor!" cried the lawyers both. "Strike out his testimony," quoth The learned judge: "This Court denies Its ear to stories which surprise. I hold that witnesses exempt From coaching all are in contempt." Both Prosecution and Defense Applauded the judicial sense, And the spectators all averred Such wisdom they had never heard: 'Twas plain the prisoner would be Found guilty in the first degree. Meanwhile that wight's pale cheek confessed The nameless terrors in his breast. He felt remorseful, too, because He wasn't half they said he was. "If I'd been such a rogue," he mused On opportunities unused, "I might have easily become As wealthy as Methusalum." This journalist adorned, alas, The middle, not the Bible, class. With equal skill the lawyers' pleas Attested their divided fees. Each gave the other one the lie, Then helped him frame a sharp reply. Good Lord! it was a bitter fight, And lasted all the day and night. When once or oftener the roar Had silenced the judicial snore The speaker suffered for the sport By fining for contempt of court. Twelve jurors' noses good and true Unceasing sang the trial through, And even _vox populi_ was spent In rattles through a nasal vent. Clerk, bailiff, constables and all Heard Morpheus sound the trumpet call To arms--his arms--and all fell in Save counsel for the Man of Sin. That thaumaturgist stood and swayed The wand their faculties obeyed-- That magic wand which, like a flame. Leapt, wavered, quivered and became A wonder-worker--known among The ignoble vulgar as a Tongue. How long, O Lord, how long my verse Runs on for better or for worse In meter which o'ermasters me, Octosyllabically free!-- A meter which, the poets say, No power of restraint can stay;-- A hard-mouthed meter, suited well To him who, having naught to tell, Must hold attention as a trout Is held, by paying out and out The slender line which else would break Should one attempt the fish to take. Thus tavern guides who've naught to show But some adjacent curio By devious trails their patrons lead And make them think 't is far indeed. Where was I? While the lawyer talked The rogue took up his feet and walked: While all about him, roaring, slept, Into the street he calmly stepped. In very truth, the man who thought The people's voice from heaven had caught God's inspiration took a change Of venue--it was passing strange! Straight to his editor he went And that ingenious person sent A Negro to impersonate The fugitive. In adequate Disguise he took his vacant place And buried in his arms his face. When all was done the lawyer stopped And silence like a bombshell dropped Upon the Court: judge, jury, all Within that venerable hall (Except the deaf and dumb, indeed, And one or two whom death had freed) Awoke and tried to look as though Slumber was all they did not know. And now that tireless lawyer-man Took breath, and then again began: "Your Honor, if you did attend To what I've urged (my learned friend Nodded concurrence) to support The motion I have made, this court May soon adjourn. With your assent I've shown abundant precedent For introducing now, though late, New evidence to exculpate My client. So, if you'll allow, I'll prove an _alibi_!" "What?--how?" Stammered the judge. "Well, yes, I can't Deny your showing, and I grant The motion. Do I understand You undertake to prove--good land!-- That when the crime--you mean to show Your client wasn't _there_?" "O, no, I cannot quite do that, I find: My _alibi's_ another kind Of _alibi_,--I'll make it clear, Your Honor, that he isn't _here_." The Darky here upreared his head, Tranquillity affrighted fled And consternation reigned instead! REBUKE. When Admonition's hand essays Our greed to curse, Its lifted finger oft displays Our missing purse. J.F.B. How well this man unfolded to our view The world's beliefs of Death and Heaven and Hell-- This man whose own convictions none could tell, Nor if his maze of reason had a clew. Dogmas he wrote for daily bread, but knew The fair philosophies of doubt so well That while we listened to his words there fell Some that were strangely comforting, though true. Marking how wise we grew upon his doubt, We said: "If so, by groping in the night, He can proclaim some certain paths of trust, How great our profit if he saw about His feet the highways leading to the light." Now he sees all. Ah, Christ! his mouth is dust! THE DYING STATESMAN. It is a politician man-- He draweth near his end, And friends weep round that partisan, Of every man the friend. Between the Known and the Unknown He lieth on the strand; The light upon the sea is thrown That lay upon the land. It shineth in his glazing eye, It burneth on his face; God send that when we come to die We know that sign of grace! Upon his lips his blessed sprite Poiseth her joyous wing. "How is it with thee, child of light? Dost hear the angels sing?" "The song I hear, the crown I see, And know that God is love. Farewell, dark world--I go to be A postmaster above!" For him no monumental arch, But, O, 'tis good and brave To see the Grand Old Party march To office o'er his grave! THE DEATH OF GRANT. Father! whose hard and cruel law Is part of thy compassion's plan, Thy works presumptuously we scan For what the prophets say they saw. Unbidden still the awful slope Walling us in we climb to gain Assurance of the shining plain That faith has certified to hope. In vain!--beyond the circling hill The shadow and the cloud abide. Subdue the doubt, our spirits guide To trust the Record and be still. To trust it loyally as he Who, heedful of his high design, Ne'er raised a seeking eye to thine, But wrought thy will unconsciously, Disputing not of chance or fate, Nor questioning of cause or creed; For anything but duty's deed Too simply wise, too humbly great. The cannon syllabled his name; His shadow shifted o'er the land, Portentous, as at his command Successive cities sprang to flame! He fringed the continent with fire, The rivers ran in lines of light! Thy will be done on earth--if right Or wrong he cared not to inquire. His was the heavy hand, and his The service of the despot blade; His the soft answer that allayed War's giant animosities. Let us have peace: our clouded eyes, Fill, Father, with another light, That we may see with clearer sight Thy servant's soul in Paradise. THE FOUNTAIN REFILLED. Of Hans Pietro Shanahan (Who was a most ingenious man) The Muse of History records That he'd get drunk as twenty lords. He'd get so truly drunk that men Stood by to marvel at him when His slow advance along the street Was but a vain cycloidal feat. And when 'twas fated that he fall With a wide geographical sprawl, They signified assent by sounds Heard (faintly) at its utmost bounds. And yet this Mr. Shanahan (Who was a most ingenious man) Cast not on wine his thirsty eyes When it was red or otherwise. All malt, or spirituous, tope He loathed as cats dissent from soap; And cider, if it touched his lip, Evoked a groan at every sip. But still, as heretofore explained, He not infrequently was grained. (I'm not of those who call it "corned." Coarse speech I've always duly scorned.) Though truth to say, and that's but right, Strong drink (it hath an adder's bite!) Was what had put him in the mud, The only kind he used was blood! Alas, that an immortal soul Addicted to the flowing bowl, The emptied flagon should again Replenish from a neighbor's vein. But, Mr. Shanahan was so Constructed, and his taste that low. Nor more deplorable was he In kind of thirst than in degree; For sometimes fifty souls would pay The debt of nature in a day To free him from the shame and pain Of dread Sobriety's misreign. His native land, proud of its sense Of his unique inabstinence, Abated something of its pride At thought of his unfilled inside. And some the boldness had to say 'Twere well if he were called away To slake his thirst forevermore In oceans of celestial gore. But Hans Pietro Shanahan (Who was a most ingenious man) Knew that his thirst was mortal; so Remained unsainted here below-- Unsainted and unsaintly, for He neither went to glory nor To abdicate his power deigned Where, under Providence, he reigned, But kept his Boss's power accurst To serve his wild uncommon thirst. Which now had grown so truly great It was a drain upon the State. Soon, soon there came a time, alas! When he turned down an empty glass-- All practicable means were vain His special wassail to obtain. In vain poor Decimation tried To furnish forth the needful tide; And Civil War as vainly shed Her niggard offering of red. Poor Shanahan! his thirst increased Until he wished himself deceased, Invoked the firearm and the knife, But could not die to save his life! He was so dry his own veins made No answer to the seeking blade; So parched that when he would have passed Away he could not breathe his last. 'Twas then, when almost in despair, (Unlaced his shoon, unkempt his hair) He saw as in a dream a way To wet afresh his mortal clay. Yes, Hans Pietro Shanahan (Who was a most ingenious man) Saw freedom, and with joy and pride "Thalassa! (or Thalatta!)" cried. Straight to the Aldermen went he, With many a "pull" and many a fee, And many a most corrupt "combine" (The Press for twenty cents a line Held out and fought him--O, God, bless Forevermore the holy Press!) Till he had franchises complete For trolley lines on every street! The cars were builded and, they say, Were run on rails laid every way-- Rhomboidal roads, and circular, And oval--everywhere a car-- Square, dodecagonal (in great Esteem the shape called Figure 8) And many other kinds of shapes As various as tails of apes. No other group of men's abodes E'er had such odd electric roads, That winding in and winding out, Began and ended all about. No city had, unless in Mars, That city's wealth of trolley cars. They ran by day, they flew by night, And O, the sorry, sorry sight! And Hans Pietro Shanahan (Who was a most ingenious man) Incessantly, the Muse records, Lay drunk as twenty thousand lords! LAUS LUCIS. Theosophists are about to build a "Temple for the revival of the Mysteries of Antiquity."--_Vide the Newspapers, passim_. Each to his taste: some men prefer to play At mystery, as others at piquet. Some sit in mystic meditation; some Parade the street with tambourine and drum. One studies to decipher ancient lore Which, proving stuff, he studies all the more; Another swears that learning is but good To darken things already understood, Then writes upon Simplicity so well That none agree on what he wants to tell, And future ages will declare his pen Inspired by gods with messages to men. To found an ancient order those devote Their time--with ritual, regalia, goat, Blankets for tossing, chairs of little ease And all the modern inconveniences; These, saner, frown upon unmeaning rites And go to church for rational delights. So all are suited, shallow and profound, The prophets prosper and the world goes round. For me--unread in the occult, I'm fain To damn all mysteries alike as vain, Spurn the obscure and base my faith upon The Revelations of the good St. John. 1897. NANINE. We heard a song-bird trilling-- 'T was but a night ago. Such rapture he was rilling As only we could know. This morning he is flinging His music from the tree, But something in the singing Is not the same to me. His inspiration fails him, Or he has lost his skill. Nanine, Nanine, what ails him That he should sing so ill? Nanine is not replying-- She hears no earthly song. The sun and bird are lying And the night is, O, so long! TECHNOLOGY. 'Twas a serious person with locks of gray And a figure like a crescent; His gravity, clearly, had come to stay, But his smile was evanescent. He stood and conversed with a neighbor, and With (likewise) a high falsetto; And he stabbed his forefinger into his hand As if it had been a stiletto. His words, like the notes of a tenor drum, Came out of his head unblended, And the wonderful altitude of some Was exceptionally splendid. While executing a shake of the head, With the hand, as it were, of a master, This agonizing old gentleman said: "'Twas a truly sad disaster! "Four hundred and ten longs and shorts in all, Went down"--he paused and snuffled. A single tear was observed to fall, And the old man's drum was muffled. "A very calamitous year," he said. And again his head-piece hoary He shook, and another pearl he shed, As if he wept _con amore._ "O lacrymose person," I cried, "pray why Should these failures so affect you? With speculators in stocks no eye That's normal would ever connect you." He focused his orbs upon mine and smiled In a sinister sort of manner. "Young man," he said, "your words are wild: I spoke of the steamship 'Hanner.' "For she has went down in a howlin' squall, And my heart is nigh to breakin'-- Four hundred and ten longs and shorts in all Will never need undertakin'! "I'm in the business myself," said he, "And you've mistook my expression; For I uses the technical terms, you see, Employed in my perfession." That old undertaker has joined the throng On the other side of the River, But I'm still unhappy to think I'm a "long," And a tape-line makes me shiver. A REPLY TO A LETTER. O nonsense, parson--tell me not they thrive And jubilate who follow your dictation. The good are the unhappiest lot alive-- I know they are from careful observation. If freedom from the terrors of damnation Lengthens the visage like a telescope, And lacrymation is a sign of hope, Then I'll continue, in my dreadful plight, To tread the dusky paths of sin, and grope Contentedly without your lantern's light; And though in many a bog beslubbered quite, Refuse to flay me with ecclesiastic soap. You say 'tis a sad world, seeing I'm condemned, With many a million others of my kidney. Each continent's Hammed, Japheted and Shemmed With sinners--worldlings like Sir Philip Sidney And scoffers like Voltaire, who thought it bliss To simulate respect for Genesis-- Who bent the mental knee as if in prayer, But mocked at Moses underneath his hair, And like an angry gander bowed his head to hiss. Seeing such as these, who die without contrition, Must go to--beg your pardon, sir--perdition, The sons of light, you tell me, can't be gay, But count it sin of the sort called omission The groan to smother or the tear to stay Or fail to--what is that they live by?--pray. So down they flop, and the whole serious race is Put by divine compassion on a praying basis. Well, if you take it so to heart, while yet Our own hearts are so light with nature's leaven, You'll weep indeed when we in Hades sweat, And you look down upon us out of Heaven. In fancy, lo! I see your wailing shades Thronging the crystal battlements. Cascades Of tears spring singing from each golden spout, Run roaring from the verge with hoarser sound, Dash downward through the glimmering profound, Quench the tormenting flame and put the Devil out! Presumptuous ass! to you no power belongs To pitchfork me to Heaven upon the prongs Of a bad pen, whose disobedient sputter, With less of ink than incoherence fraught Befits the folly that it tries to utter. Brains, I observe, as well as tongues, can stutter: You suffer from impediment of thought. When next you "point the way to Heaven," take care: Your fingers all being thumbs, point, Heaven knows where! Farewell, poor dunce! your letter though I blame, Bears witness how my anger I can tame: I've called you everything except your hateful name! TO OSCAR WILDE. Because from Folly's lips you got Some babbled mandate to subdue The realm of Common Sense, and you Made promise and considered not-- Because you strike a random blow At what you do not understand, And beckon with a friendly hand To something that you do not know, I hold no speech of your desert, Nor answer with porrected shield The wooden weapon that you wield, But meet you with a cast of dirt. Dispute with such a thing as you-- Twin show to the two-headed calf? Why, sir, if I repress my laugh, 'T is more than half the world can do. 1882. PRAYER. Fear not in any tongue to call Upon the Lord--He's skilled in all. But if He answereth my plea He speaketh one unknown to me. A "BORN LEADER OF MEN." Tuckerton Tamerlane Morey Mahosh Is a statesman of world-wide fame, With a notable knack at rhetorical bosh To glorify somebody's name-- Somebody chosen by Tuckerton's masters To succor the country from divers disasters Portentous to Mr. Mahosh. Percy O'Halloran Tarpy Cabee Is in the political swim. He cares not a button for men, not he: Great principles captivate him-- Principles cleverly cut out and fitted To Percy's capacity, duly submitted, And fought for by Mr. Cabee. Drusus Turn Swinnerton Porfer Fitzurse Holds office the most of his life. For men nor for principles cares he a curse, But much for his neighbor's wife. The Ship of State leaks, but _he_ doesn't pump any, Messrs. Mahosh, Cabee & Company Pump for good Mr. Fitzurse. TO THE BARTHOLDI STATUE. O Liberty, God-gifted-- Young and immortal maid-- In your high hand uplifted; The torch declares your trade. Its crimson menace, flaming Upon the sea and shore, Is, trumpet-like, proclaiming That Law shall be no more. Austere incendiary, We're blinking in the light; Where is your customary Grenade of dynamite? Where are your staves and switches For men of gentle birth? Your mask and dirk for riches? Your chains for wit and worth? Perhaps, you've brought the halters You used in the old days, When round religion's altars You stabled Cromwell's bays? Behind you, unsuspected, Have you the axe, fair wench, Wherewith you once collected A poll-tax from the French? America salutes you-- Preparing to disgorge. Take everything that suits you, And marry Henry George. 1894 AN UNMERRY CHRISTMAS. Christmas, you tell me, comes but once a year. One place it never comes, and that is here. Here, in these pages no good wishes spring, No well-worn greetings tediously ring-- For Christmas greetings are like pots of ore: The hollower they are they ring the more. Here shall no holly cast a spiny shade, Nor mistletoe my solitude invade, No trinket-laden vegetable come, No jorum steam with Sheolate of rum. No shrilling children shall their voices rear. Hurrah for Christmas without Christmas cheer! No presents, if you please--I know too well What Herbert Spencer, if he didn't tell (I know not if he did) yet might have told Of present-giving in the days of old, When Early Man with gifts propitiated The chiefs whom most he doubted, feared and hated, Or tendered them in hope to reap some rude Advantage from the taker's gratitude. Since thus the Gift its origin derives (How much of its first character survives You know as well as I) my stocking's tied, My pocket buttoned--with my soul inside. I save my money and I save my pride. Dinner? Yes; thank you--just a human body Done to a nutty brown, and a tear toddy To give me appetite; and as for drink, About a half a jug of blood, I think, Will do; for still I love the red, red wine, Coagulating well, with wrinkles fine Fretting the satin surface of its flood. O tope of kings--divine Falernian--blood! Duse take the shouting fowls upon the limb, The kneeling cattle and the rising hymn! Has not a pagan rights to be regarded-- His heart assaulted and his ear bombarded With sentiments and sounds that good old Pan Even in his demonium would ban? No, friends--no Christmas here, for I have sworn To keep my heart hard and my knees unworn. Enough you have of jester, player, priest: I as the skeleton attend your feast, In the mad revelry to make a lull With shaken finger and with bobbing skull. However you my services may flout, Philosophy disdain and reason doubt, I mean to hold in customary state, My dismal revelry and celebrate My yearly rite until the crack o' doom, Ignore the cheerful season's warmth and bloom And cultivate an oasis of gloom. BY A DEFEATED LITIGANT. Liars for witnesses; for lawyers brutes Who lose their tempers to retrieve their suits; Cowards for jurors; and for judge a clown Who ne'er took up the law, yet lays it down; Justice denied, authority abused, And the one honest person the accused-- Thy courts, my country, all these awful years, Move fools to laughter and the wise to tears. AN EPITAPH. Here lies Greer Harrison, a well cracked louse-- So small a tenant of so big a house! He joyed in fighting with his eyes (his fist Prudently pendent from a peaceful wrist) And loved to loll on the Parnassian mount, His pen to suck and all his thumbs to count,-- What poetry he'd written but for lack Of skill, when he had counted, to count back! Alas, no more he'll climb the sacred steep To wake the lyre and put the world to sleep! To his rapt lip his soul no longer springs And like a jaybird from a knot-hole sings. No more the clubmen, pickled with his wine, Spread wide their ears and hiccough "That's divine!" The genius of his purse no longer draws The pleasing thunders of a paid applause. All silent now, nor sound nor sense remains, Though riddances of worms improve his brains. All his no talents to the earth revert, And Fame concludes the record: "Dirt to dirt!" THE POLITICIAN. "Let Glory's sons manipulate The tiller of the Ship of State. Be mine the humble, useful toil To work the tiller of the soil." AN INSCRIPTION For a Proposed Monument in Washington to Him who Made it Beautiful. Erected to "Boss" Shepherd by the dear Good folk he lived and moved among in peace-- Guarded on either hand by the police, With soldiers in his front and in his rear. FROM VIRGINIA TO PARIS. The polecat, sovereign of its native wood, Dashes damnation upon bad and good; The health of all the upas trees impairs By exhalations deadlier than theirs; Poisons the rattlesnake and warts the toad-- The creeks go rotten and the rocks corrode! She shakes o'er breathless hill and shrinking dale The horrid aspergillus of her tail! From every saturated hair, till dry, The spargent fragrances divergent fly, Deafen the earth and scream along the sky! Removed to alien scenes, amid the strife Of urban odors to ungladden life-- Where gas and sewers and dead dogs conspire The flesh to torture and the soul to fire-- Where all the "well defined and several stinks" Known to mankind hold revel and high jinks-- Humbled in spirit, smitten with a sense Of lost distinction, leveled eminence, She suddenly resigns her baleful trust, Nor ever lays again our mortal dust. Her powers atrophied, her vigor sunk, She lives deodorized, a sweeter skunk. A "MUTE INGLORIOUS MILTON." "O, I'm the Unaverage Man, But you never have heard of me, For my brother, the Average Man, outran My fame with rapiditee, And I'm sunk in Oblivion's sea, But my bully big brother the world can span With his wide notorietee. I do everything that I can To make 'em attend to me, But the papers ignore the Unaverage Man With a weird uniformitee." So sang with a dolorous note A voice that I heard from the beach; On the sable waters it seemed to float Like a mortal part of speech. The sea was Oblivion's sea, And I cried as I plunged to swim: "The Unaverage Man shall reside with me." But he didn't--I stayed with him! THE FREE TRADER'S LAMENT. Oft from a trading-boat I purchased spice And shells and corals, brought for my inspection From the fair tropics--paid a Christian price And was content in my fool's paradise, Where never had been heard the word "Protection." 'T was my sole island; there I dwelt alone-- No customs-house, collector nor collection, But a man came, who, in a pious tone Condoled with me that I had never known The manifest advantage of Protection. So, when the trading-boat arrived one day, He threw a stink-pot into its mid-section. The traders paddled for their lives away, Nor came again into that haunted bay, The blessed home thereafter of Protection. Then down he sat, that philanthropic man, And spat upon some mud of his selection, And worked it, with his knuckles in a pan, To shapes of shells and coral things, and span A thread of song in glory of Protection. He baked them in the sun. His air devout Enchanted me. I made a genuflexion: "God help you, gentle sir," I said. "No doubt," He answered gravely, "I'll get on without Assistance now that we have got Protection." Thenceforth I bought his wares--at what a price For shells and corals of such imperfection! "Ah, now," said he, "your lot is truly nice." But still in all that isle there was no spice To season to my taste that dish, Protection. SUBTERRANEAN PHANTASIES. I died. As meekly in the earth I lay, With shriveled fingers reverently folded, The worm--uncivil engineer!--my clay Tunneled industriously, and the mole did. My body could not dodge them, but my soul did; For that had flown from this terrestrial ball And I was rid of it for good and all. So there I lay, debating what to do-- What measures might most usefully be taken To circumvent the subterranean crew Of anthropophagi and save my bacon. My fortitude was all this while unshaken, But any gentleman, of course, protests Against receiving uninvited guests. However proud he might be of his meats, Not even Apicius, nor, I think, Lucullus, Wasted on tramps his culinary sweets; "_Aut Caesar_," say judicious hosts, "_aut nullus_." And though when Marcius came unbidden Tullus Aufidius feasted him because he starved, Marcius by Tullus afterward was carved. We feed the hungry, as the book commands (For men might question else our orthodoxy) But do not care to see the outstretched hands, And so we minister to them by proxy. When Want, in his improper person, knocks he Finds we're engaged. The graveworm's very fresh To think we like his presence in the flesh. So, as I said, I lay in doubt; in all That underworld no judges could determine My rights. When Death approaches them they fall, And falling, naturally soil their ermine. And still below ground, as above, the vermin That work by dark and silent methods win The case--the burial case that one is in. Cases at law so slowly get ahead, Even when the right is visibly unclouded, That if all men are classed as quick and dead, The judges all are dead, though some unshrouded. Pray Jove that when they're actually crowded On Styx's brink, and Charon rows in sight, His bark prove worse than Cerberus's bite. Ah! Cerberus, if you had but begot A race of three-mouthed dogs for man to nourish And woman to caress, the muse had not Lamented the decay of virtues currish, And triple-hydrophobia now would flourish, For barking, biting, kissing to employ Canine repeaters were indeed a joy. Lord! how we cling to this vile world! Here I, Whose dust was laid ere I began this carping, By moles and worms and such familiar fry Run through and through, am singing still and harping Of mundane matters--flatting, too, and sharping. I hate the Angel of the Sleeping Cup: So I'm for getting--and for shutting--up. IN MEMORIAM Beauty (they called her) wasn't a maid Of many things in the world afraid. She wasn't a maid who turned and fled At sight of a mouse, alive or dead. She wasn't a maid a man could "shoo" By shouting, however abruptly, "Boo!" She wasn't a maid who'd run and hide If her face and figure you idly eyed. She was'nt a maid who'd blush and shake When asked what part of the fowl she'd take. (I blush myself to confess she preferred, And commonly got, the most of the bird.) She wasn't a maid to simper because She was asked to sing--if she ever was. In short, if the truth must be displayed _In puris_--Beauty wasn't a maid. Beauty, furry and fine and fat, Yawny and clawy, sleek and all that, Was a pampered and spoiled Angora cat! I loved her well, and I'm proud that she Wasn't indifferent, quite, to me; In fact I have sometimes gone so far (You know, mesdames, how silly men are) As to think she preferred--excuse the conceit-- _My_ legs upon which to sharpen her feet. Perhaps it shouldn't have gone for much, But I started and thrilled beneath her touch! Ah, well, that's ancient history now: The fingers of Time have touched my brow, And I hear with never a start to-day That Beauty has passed from the earth away. Gone!--her death-song (it killed her) sung. Gone!--her fiddlestrings all unstrung. Gone to the bliss of a new _régime_ Of turkey smothered in seas of cream; Of roasted mice (a superior breed, To science unknown and the coarser need Of the living cat) cooked by the flame Of the dainty soul of an erring dame Who gave to purity all her care, Neglecting the duty of daily prayer,-- Crisp, delicate mice, just touched with spice By the ghost of a breeze from Paradise; A very digestible sort of mice. Let scoffers sneer, I propose to hold That Beauty has mounted the Stair of Gold, To eat and eat, forever and aye, On a velvet rug from a golden tray. But the human spirit--that is my creed-- Rots in the ground like a barren seed. That is my creed, abhorred by Man But approved by Cat since time began. Till Death shall kick at me, thundering "Scat!" I shall hold to that, I shall hold to that. THE STATESMEN. How blest the land that counts among Her sons so many good and wise, To execute great feats of tongue When troubles rise. Behold them mounting every stump Our liberty by speech to guard. Observe their courage:--see them jump And come down hard! "Walk up, walk up!" each cries aloud, "And learn from me what you must do To turn aside the thunder cloud, The earthquake too. "Beware the wiles of yonder quack Who stuffs the ears of all that pass. I--I alone can show that black Is white as grass." They shout through all the day and break The silence of the night as well. They'd make--I wish they'd _go_ and make-- Of Heaven a Hell. A advocates free silver, B Free trade and C free banking laws. Free board, clothes, lodging would from me Win warm applause. Lo, D lifts up his voice: "You see The single tax on land would fall On all alike." More evenly No tax at all. "With paper money" bellows E "We'll all be rich as lords." No doubt-- And richest of the lot will be The chap without. As many "cures" as addle wits Who know not what the ailment is! Meanwhile the patient foams and spits Like a gin fizz. Alas, poor Body Politic, Your fate is all too clearly read: To be not altogether quick, Nor very dead. You take your exercise in squirms, Your rest in fainting fits between. 'T is plain that your disorder's worms-- Worms fat and lean. Worm Capital, Worm Labor dwell Within your maw and muscle's scope. Their quarrels make your life a Hell, Your death a hope. God send you find not such an end To ills however sharp and huge! God send you convalesce! God send You vermifuge. THE BROTHERS. Scene--_A lawyer's dreadful den. Enter stall-fed citizen._ LAWYER.--'Mornin'. How-de-do? CITIZEN.--Sir, same to you. Called as counsel to retain you In a case that I'll explain you. Sad, _so_ sad! Heart almost broke. Hang it! where's my kerchief? Smoke? Brother, sir, and I, of late, Came into a large estate. Brother's--h'm, ha,--rather queer Sometimes _(tapping forehead) _here. What he needs--you know--a "writ"-- Something, eh? that will permit Me to manage, sir, in fine, His estate, as well as mine. 'Course he'll _kick_; 't will break, I fear, His loving heart--excuse this tear. LAWYER.--Have you nothing more? All of this you said before-- When last night I took your case. CITIZEN.--Why, sir, your face Ne'er before has met my view! LAWYER.--Eh? The devil! True: My mistake--it was your brother. But you're very like each other. THE CYNIC'S BEQUEST In that fair city, Ispahan, There dwelt a problematic man, Whose angel never was released, Who never once let out his beast, But kept, through all the seasons' round, Silence unbroken and profound. No Prophecy, with ear applied To key-hole of the future, tried Successfully to catch a hint Of what he'd do nor when begin 't; As sternly did his past defy Mild Retrospection's backward eye. Though all admired his silent ways, The women loudest were in praise: For ladies love those men the most Who never, never, never boast-- Who ne'er disclose their aims and ends To naughty, naughty, naughty friends. Yet, sooth to say, the fame outran The merit of this doubtful man, For taciturnity in him, Though not a mere caprice or whim, Was not a virtue, such as truth, High birth, or beauty, wealth or youth. 'Twas known, indeed, throughout the span Of Ispahan, of Gulistan-- These utmost limits of the earth Knew that the man was dumb from birth. Unto the Sun with deep salaams The Parsee spreads his morning palms (A beacon blazing on a height Warms o'er his piety by night.) The Moslem deprecates the deed, Cuts off the head that holds the creed, Then reverently goes to grass, Muttering thanks to Balaam's Ass For faith and learning to refute Idolatry so dissolute! But should a maniac dash past, With straws in beard and hands upcast, To him (through whom, whene'er inclined To preach a bit to Madmankind, The Holy Prophet speaks his mind) Our True Believer lifts his eyes Devoutly and his prayer applies; But next to Solyman the Great Reveres the idiot's sacred state. Small wonder then, our worthy mute Was held in popular repute. Had he been blind as well as mum, Been lame as well as blind and dumb, No bard that ever sang or soared Could say how he had been adored. More meagerly endowed, he drew An homage less prodigious. True, No soul his praises but did utter-- All plied him with devotion's butter, But none had out--'t was to their credit-- The proselyting sword to spread it. I state these truths, exactly why The reader knows as well as I; They've nothing in the world to do With what I hope we're coming to If Pegasus be good enough To move when he has stood enough. Egad! his ribs I would examine Had I a sharper spur than famine, Or even with that if 'twould incline To examine his instead of mine. Where was I? Ah, that silent man Who dwelt one time in Ispahan-- He had a name--was known to all As Meerza Solyman Zingall. There lived afar in Astrabad, A man the world agreed was mad, So wickedly he broke his joke Upon the heads of duller folk, So miserly, from day to day, He gathered up and hid away In vaults obscure and cellars haunted What many worthy people wanted, A stingy man!--the tradesmen's palms Were spread in vain: "I give no alms Without inquiry"--so he'd say, And beat the needy duns away. The bastinado did, 'tis true, Persuade him, now and then, a few Odd tens of thousands to disburse To glut the taxman's hungry purse, But still, so rich he grew, his fear Was constant that the Shah might hear. (The Shah had heard it long ago, And asked the taxman if 'twere so, Who promptly answered, rather airish, The man had long been on the parish.) The more he feared, the more he grew A cynic and a miser, too, Until his bitterness and pelf Made him a terror to himself; Then, with a razor's neckwise stroke, He tartly cut his final joke. So perished, not an hour too soon, The wicked Muley Ben Maroon. From Astrabad to Ispahan At camel speed the rumor ran That, breaking through tradition hoar, And throwing all his kinsmen o'er, The miser'd left his mighty store Of gold--his palaces and lands-- To needy and deserving hands (Except a penny here and there To pay the dervishes for prayer.) 'Twas known indeed throughout the span Of earth, and into Hindostan, That our beloved mute was the Residuary legatee. The people said 'twas very well, And each man had a tale to tell Of how he'd had a finger in 't By dropping many a friendly hint At Astrabad, you see. But ah, They feared the news might reach the Shah! To prove the will the lawyers bore 't Before the Kadi's awful court, Who nodded, when he heard it read, Confirmingly his drowsy head, Nor thought, his sleepiness so great, Himself to gobble the estate. "I give," the dead had writ, "my all To Meerza Solyman Zingall Of Ispahan. With this estate I might quite easily create Ten thousand ingrates, but I shun Temptation and create but one, In whom the whole unthankful crew The rich man's air that ever drew To fat their pauper lungs I fire Vicarious with vain desire! From foul Ingratitude's base rout I pick this hapless devil out, Bestowing on him all my lands, My treasures, camels, slaves and bands Of wives--I give him all this loot, And throw my blessing in to boot. Behold, O man, in this bequest Philanthropy's long wrongs redressed: To speak me ill that man I dower With fiercest will who lacks the power. Allah il Allah! now let him bloat With rancor till his heart's afloat, Unable to discharge the wave Upon his benefactor's grave!" Forth in their wrath the people came And swore it was a sin and shame To trick their blessed mute; and each Protested, serious of speech, That though _he'd_ long foreseen the worst He'd been against it from the first. By various means they vainly tried The testament to set aside, Each ready with his empty purse To take upon himself the curse; For _they_ had powers of invective Enough to make it ineffective. The ingrates mustered, every man, And marched in force to Ispahan (Which had not quite accommodation) And held a camp of indignation. The man, this while, who never spoke-- On whom had fallen this thunder-stroke Of fortune, gave no feeling vent Nor dropped a clue to his intent. Whereas no power to him came His benefactor to defame, Some (such a length had slander gone to) Even whispered that he didn't want to! But none his secret could divine; If suffering he made no sign, Until one night as winter neared From all his haunts he disappeared-- Evanished in a doubtful blank Like little crayfish in a bank, Their heads retracting for a spell, And pulling in their holes as well. All through the land of Gul, the stout Young Spring is kicking Winter out. The grass sneaks in upon the scene, Defacing it with bottle-green. The stumbling lamb arrives to ply His restless tail in every eye, Eats nasty mint to spoil his meat And make himself unfit to eat. Madly his throat the bulbul tears-- In every grove blasphemes and swears As the immodest rose displays Her shameless charms a dozen ways. Lo! now, throughout the utmost span Of Ispahan--of Gulistan-- A big new book's displayed in all The shops and cumbers every stall. The price is low--the dealers say 'tis-- And the rich are treated to it gratis. Engraven on its foremost page These title-words the eye engage: "The Life of Muley Ben Maroon, Of Astrabad--Rogue, Thief, Buffoon And Miser--Liver by the Sweat Of Better Men: A Lamponette Composed in Rhyme and Written all By Meerza Solyman Zingall!" CORRECTED NEWS. 'T was a maiden lady (the newspapers say) Pious and prim and a bit gone-gray. She slept like an angel, holy and white, Till ten o' the clock in the shank o' the night (When men and other wild animals prey) And then she cried in the viewless gloom: "There's a man in the room, a man in the room!" And this maiden lady (they make it appear) Leapt out of the window, five fathom sheer! Alas, that lying is such a sin When newspaper men need bread and gin And none can be had for less than a lie! For the maiden lady a bit gone-gray Saw the man in the room from across the way, And leapt, not out of the window but in-- _Ten_ fathom sheer, as I hope to die! AN EXPLANATION. "I never yet exactly could determine Just how it is that the judicial ermine Is kept so safely from predacious vermin." "It is not so, my friend: though in a garret 'Tis kept in camphor, and you often air it, The vermin will get into it and wear it." JUSTICE. Jack Doe met Dick Roe, whose wife he loved, And said: "I will get the best of him." So pulling a knife from his boot, he shoved It up to the hilt in the breast of him. Then he moved that weapon forth and back, Enlarging the hole he had made with it, Till the smoking liver fell out, and Jack Merrily, merrily played with it. Then he reached within and he seized the slack Of the lesser bowel, and, traveling Hither and thither, looked idly back On that small intestine, raveling. The wretched Richard, with many a grin Laid on with exceeding suavity, Curled up and died, and they ran John in And charged him with sins of gravity. The case was tried and a verdict found: The jury, with great humanity, Acquitted the prisoner on the ground Of extemporary insanity. MR. FINK'S DEBATING DONKEY. Of a person known as Peters I will humbly crave your leave An unusual adventure into narrative to weave-- Mr. William Perry Peters, of the town of Muscatel, A public educator and an orator as well. Mr. Peters had a weakness which, 'tis painful to relate, Was a strong predisposition to the pleasures of debate. He would foster disputation wheresoever he might be; In polygonal contention none so happy was as he. 'Twas observable, however, that the exercises ran Into monologue by Peters, that rhetorical young man. And the Muscatelian rustics who assisted at the show, By involuntary silence testified their overthrow-- Mr. Peters, all unheedful of their silence and their grief, Still effacing every vestige of erroneous belief. O, he was a sore affliction to all heretics so bold As to entertain opinions that he didn't care to hold. One day--'t was in pursuance of a pedagogic plan For the mental elevation of Uncultivated Man-- Mr. Peters, to his pupils, in dismissing them, explained That the Friday evening following (unless, indeed, it rained) Would be signalized by holding in the schoolhouse a debate Free to all who their opinions might desire to ventilate On the question, "Which is better, as a serviceable gift, Speech or hearing, from barbarity the human mind to lift?" The pupils told their fathers, who, forehanded always, met At the barroom to discuss it every evening, dry or wet, They argued it and argued it and spat upon the stove, And the non-committal "barkeep" on their differences throve. And I state it as a maxim in a loosish kind of way: You'll have the more to back your word the less you have to say. Public interest was lively, but one Ebenezer Fink Of the Rancho del Jackrabbit, only seemed to sit and think. On the memorable evening all the men of Muscatel Came to listen to the logic and the eloquence as well-- All but William Perry Peters, whose attendance there, I fear. Was to wreak his ready rhetoric upon the public ear, And prove (whichever side he took) that hearing wouldn't lift The human mind as ably as the other, greater gift. The judges being chosen and the disputants enrolled, The question he proceeded _in extenso_ to unfold: "_Resolved_--The sense of hearing lifts the mind up out of reach Of the fogs of error better than the faculty of speech." This simple proposition he expounded, word by word, Until they best understood it who least perfectly had heard. Even the judges comprehended as he ventured to explain-- The impact of a spit-ball admonishing in vain. Beginning at a period before Creation's morn, He had reached the bounds of tolerance and Adam yet unborn. As down the early centuries of pre-historic time He tracked important principles and quoted striking rhyme, And Whisky Bill, prosaic soul! proclaiming him a jay, Had risen and like an earthquake, "reeled unheededly away," And a late lamented cat, when opportunity should serve, Was preparing to embark upon her parabolic curve, A noise arose outside--the door was opened with a bang And old Ebenezer Fink was heard ejaculating "G'lang!" Straight into that assembly gravely marched without a wink An ancient ass--the property it was of Mr. Fink. Its ears depressed and beating time to its infestive tread, Silent through silence moved amain that stately quadruped! It stopped before the orator, and in the lamplight thrown Upon its tail they saw that member weighted with a stone. Then spake old Ebenezer: "Gents, I heern o' this debate On w'ether v'ice or y'ears is best the mind to elevate. Now 'yer's a bird ken throw some light uponto that tough theme: He has 'em both, I'm free to say, oncommonly extreme. He wa'n't invited for to speak, but he will not refuse (If t'other gentleman ken wait) to exposay his views." Ere merriment or anger o'er amazement could prevail; He cut the string that held the stone on that canary's tail. Freed from the weight, that member made a gesture of delight, Then rose until its rigid length was horizontal quite. With lifted head and level ears along his withers laid, Jack sighed, refilled his lungs and then--to put it mildly--brayed! He brayed until the stones were stirred in circumjacent hills, And sleeping women rose and fled, in divers kinds of frills. 'T is said that awful bugle-blast--to make the story brief-- Wafted William Perry Peters through the window, like a leaf! Such is the tale. If anything additional occurred 'Tis not set down, though, truly, I remember to have heard That a gentleman named Peters, now residing at Soquel, A considerable distance from the town of Muscatel, Is opposed to education, and to rhetoric, as well. TO MY LAUNDRESS. Saponacea, wert thou not so fair I'd curse thee for thy multitude of sins-- For sending home my clothes all full of pins-- A shirt occasionally that's a snare And a delusion, got, the Lord knows where, The Lord knows why--a sock whose outs and ins None know, nor where it ends nor where begins, And fewer cuffs than ought to be my share. But when I mark thy lilies how they grow, And the red roses of thy ripening charms, I bless the lovelight in thy dark eyes dreaming. I'll never pay thee, but I'd gladly go Into the magic circle of thine arms, Supple and fragrant from repeated steaming. FAME. One thousand years I slept beneath the sod, My sleep in 1901 beginning, Then, by the action of some scurvy god Who happened then to recollect my sinning, I was revived and given another inning. On breaking from my grave I saw a crowd-- A formless multitude of men and women, Gathered about a ruin. Clamors loud I heard, and curses deep enough to swim in; And, pointing at me, one said: "Let's put _him_ in." Then each turned on me with an evil look, As in my ragged shroud I stood and shook. "Nay, good Posterity," I cried, "forbear! If that's a jail I fain would be remaining Outside, for truly I should little care To catch my death of cold. I'm just regaining The life lost long ago by my disdaining To take precautions against draughts like those That, haply, penetrate that cracked and splitting Old structure." Then an aged wight arose From a chair of state in which he had been sitting, And with preliminary coughing, spitting And wheezing, said: "'T is not a jail, we're sure, Whate'er it may have been when it was newer. "'T was found two centuries ago, o'ergrown With brush and ivy, all undoored, ungated; And in restoring it we found a stone Set here and there in the dilapidated And crumbling frieze, inscribed, in antiquated Big characters, with certain uncouth names, Which we conclude were borne of old by awful Rapscallions guilty of all sinful games-- Vagrants engaged in purposes unlawful, And orators less sensible than jawful. So each ten years we add to the long row A name, the most unworthy that we know." "But why," I asked, "put _me_ in?" He replied: "You look it"--and the judgment pained me greatly; Right gladly would I then and there have died, But that I'd risen from the grave so lately. But on examining that solemn, stately Old ruin I remarked: "My friend, you err-- The truth of this is just what I expected. This building in its time made quite a stir. I lived (was famous, too) when 't was erected. The names here first inscribed were much respected. This is the Hall of Fame, or I'm a stork, And this goat pasture once was called New York." OMNES VANITAS. Alas for ambition's possessor! Alas for the famous and proud! The Isle of Manhattan's best dresser Is wearing a hand-me-down shroud. The world has forgotten his glory; The wagoner sings on his wain, And Chauncey Depew tells a story, And jackasses laugh in the lane. ASPIRATION. No man can truthfully say that he would not like to be President.--_William C. Whitney._ Lo! the wild rabbit, happy in the pride Of qualities to meaner beasts denied, Surveys the ass with reverence and fear, Adoring his superior length of ear, And says: "No living creature, lean or fat, But wishes in his heart to be like That!" DEMOCRACY. Let slaves and subjects with unvaried psalms Before their sovereign execute salaams; The freeman scorns one idol to adore-- Tom, Dick and Harry and himself are four. THE NEW "ULALUME." The skies they were ashen and sober, The leaves they were crisped and sere,-- " " " withering " " It was night in the lonesome October Of my most immemorial year; It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,-- " " down " " dark tarn " " In the misty mid region of Weir,-- " " ghoul-haunted woodland " " CONSOLATION. Little's the good to sit and grieve Because the serpent tempted Eve. Better to wipe your eyes and take A club and go out and kill a snake. What do you gain by cursing Nick For playing her such a scurvy trick? Better go out and some villain find Who serves the devil, and beat him blind. But if you prefer, as I suspect, To philosophize, why, then, reflect: If the cunning rascal upon the limb Hadn't tempted her she'd have tempted him. FATE. Alas, alas, for the tourist's guide!-- He turned from the beaten trail aside, Wandered bewildered, lay down and died. O grim is the Irony of Fate: It switches the man of low estate And loosens the dogs upon the great. It lights the fireman to roast the cook; The fisherman squirms upon the hook, And the flirt is slain with a tender look. The undertaker it overtakes; It saddles the cavalier, and makes The haughtiest butcher into steaks. Assist me, gods, to balk the decree! Nothing I'll do and nothing I'll be, In order that nothing be done to me. PHILOSOPHER BIMM. Republicans think Jonas Bimm A Democrat gone mad, And Democrats consider him Republican and bad. The Tough reviles him as a Dude And gives it him right hot; The Dude condemns his crassitude And calls him _sans culottes._ Derided as an Anglophile By Anglophobes, forsooth, As Anglophobe he feels, the while, The Anglophilic tooth. The Churchman calls him Atheist; The Atheists, rough-shod, Have ridden o'er him long and hissed "The wretch believes in God!" The Saints whom clergymen we call Would kill him if they could; The Sinners (scientists and all) Complain that he is good. All men deplore the difference Between themselves and him, And all devise expedients For paining Jonas Bimm. I too, with wild demoniac glee, Would put out both his eyes; For Mr. Bimm appears to me Insufferably wise! REMINDED. Beneath my window twilight made Familiar mysteries of shade. Faint voices from the darkening down Were calling vaguely to the town. Intent upon a low, far gleam That burned upon the world's extreme, I sat, with short reprieve from grief, And turned the volume, leaf by leaf, Wherein a hand, long dead, had wrought A million miracles of thought. My fingers carelessly unclung The lettered pages, and among Them wandered witless, nor divined The wealth in which, poor fools, they mined. The soul that should have led their quest Was dreaming in the level west, Where a tall tower, stark and still, Uplifted on a distant hill, Stood lone and passionless to claim Its guardian star's returning flame. I know not how my dream was broke, But suddenly my spirit woke Filled with a foolish fear to look Upon the hand that clove the book, Significantly pointing; next I bent attentive to the text, And read--and as I read grew old-- The mindless words: "Poor Tom's a-cold!" Ah me! to what a subtle touch The brimming cup resigns its clutch Upon the wine. Dear God, is 't writ That hearts their overburden bear Of bitterness though thou permit The pranks of Chance, alurk in nooks, And striking coward blows from books, And dead hands reaching everywhere? SALVINI IN AMERICA. Come, gentlemen--your gold. Thanks: welcome to the show. To hear a story told In words you do not know. Now, great Salvini, rise And thunder through your tears, Aha! friends, let your eyes Interpret to your ears. Gods! 't is a goodly game. Observe his stride--how grand! When legs like his declaim Who can misunderstand? See how that arm goes round. It says, as plain as day: "I love," "The lost is found," "Well met, sir," or, "Away!" And mark the drawing down Of brows. How accurate The language of that frown: Pain, gentlemen--or hate. Those of the critic trade Swear it is all as clear As if his tongue were made To fit an English ear. Hear that Italian phrase! Greek to your sense, 't is true; But shrug, expression, gaze-- Well, they are Grecian too. But it is Art! God wot Its tongue to all is known. Faith! he to whom 't were not Would better hold his own. Shakespeare says act and word Must match together true. From what you've seen and heard, How can you doubt they do? Enchanting drama! Mark The crowd "from pit to dome", One box alone is dark-- The prompter stays at home. Stupendous artist! You Are lord of joy and woe: We thrill if you say "Boo," And thrill if you say "Bo." ANOTHER WAY. I lay in silence, dead. A woman came And laid a rose upon my breast and said: "May God be merciful." She spoke my name, And added: "It is strange to think him dead. "He loved me well enough, but 't was his way To speak it lightly." Then, beneath her breath: "Besides"--I knew what further she would say, But then a footfall broke my dream of death. To-day the words are mine. I lay the rose Upon her breast, and speak her name and deem It strange indeed that she is dead. God knows I had more pleasure in the other dream. ART. For Gladstone's portrait five thousand pounds Were paid, 't is said, to Sir John Millais. I cannot help thinking that such fine pay Transcended reason's uttermost bounds. For it seems to me uncommonly queer That a painted British stateman's price Exceeds the established value thrice Of a living statesman over here. AN ENEMY TO LAW AND ORDER. A is defrauded of his land by B, Who's driven from the premises by C. D buys the place with coin of plundered E. "That A's an Anarchist!" says F to G. TO ONE ACROSS THE WAY. When at your window radiant you've stood I've sometimes thought--forgive me if I've erred-- That some slight thought of me perhaps has stirred Your heart to beat less gently than it should. I know you beautiful; that you are good I hope--or fear--I cannot choose the word, Nor rightly suit it to the thought. I've heard Reason at love's dictation never could. Blindly to this dilemma so I grope, As one whose every pathway has a snare: If you are minded in the saintly fashion Of your pure face my passion's without hope; If not, alas! I equally despair, For what to me were hope without the passion? THE DEBTOR ABROAD. Grief for an absent lover, husband, friend, Is barely felt before it comes to end: A score of early consolations serve To modify its mouth's dejected curve. But woes of creditors when debtors flee Forever swell the separating sea. When standing on an alien shore you mark The steady course of some intrepid bark, How sweet to think a tear for you abides, Not all unuseful, in the wave she rides!-- That sighs for you commingle in the gale Beneficently bellying her sail! FORESIGHT. An "actors' cemetery"! Sure The devil never tires Of planning places to procure The sticks to feed his fires. A FAIR DIVISION. Another Irish landlord gone to grass, Slain by the bullets of the tenant class! Pray, good agrarians, what wrong requires Such foul redress? Between you and the squires All Ireland's parted with an even hand-- For you have all the ire, they all the land. GENESIS. God said: "Let there be Man," and from the clay Adam came forth and, thoughtful, walked away. The matrix whence his body was obtained, An empty, man-shaped cavity, remained All unregarded from that early time Till in a recent storm it filled with slime. Now Satan, envying the Master's power To make the meat himself could but devour, Strolled to the place and, standing by the pool, Exerted all his will to make a fool. A miracle!--from out that ancient hole Rose Morehouse, lacking nothing but a soul. "To give him that I've not the power divine," Said Satan, sadly, "but I'll lend him mine." He breathed it into him, a vapor black, And to this day has never got it back. LIBERTY. "'Let there be Liberty!' God said, and, lo! The red skies all were luminous. The glow Struck first Columbia's kindling mountain peaks One hundred and eleven years ago!" So sang a patriot whom once I saw Descending Bunker's holy hill. With awe I noted that he shone with sacred light, Like Moses with the tables of the Law. One hundred and eleven years? O small And paltry period compared with all The tide of centuries that flowed and ebbed To etch Yosemite's divided wall! Ah, Liberty, they sing you always young Whose harps are in your adoration strung (Each swears you are his countrywoman, too, And speak no language but his mother tongue). And truly, lass, although with shout and horn Man has all-hailed you from creation's morn, I cannot think you old--I think, indeed, You are by twenty centuries unborn. 1886. THE PASSING OF "BOSS" SHEPHERD. The sullen church-bell's intermittent moan, The dirge's melancholy monotone, The measured march, the drooping flags, attest A great man's progress to his place of rest. Along broad avenues himself decreed To serve his fellow men's disputed need-- Past parks he raped away from robbers' thrift And gave to poverty, wherein to lift Its voice to curse the giver and the gift-- Past noble structures that he reared for men To meet in and revile him, tongue and pen, Draws the long retinue of death to show The fit credentials of a proper woe. "Boss" Shepherd, you are dead. Your hand no more Throws largess to the mobs that ramp and roar For blood of benefactors who disdain Their purity of purpose to explain, Their righteous motive and their scorn of gain. Your period of dream--'twas but a breath-- Is closed in the indifference of death. Sealed in your silences, to you alike If hands are lifted to applaud or strike. No more to your dull, inattentive ear Praise of to-day than curse of yesteryear. From the same lips the honied phrases fall That still are bitter from cascades of gall. We note the shame; you in your depth of dark The red-writ testimony cannot mark On every honest cheek; your senses all Locked, _incommunicado_, in your pall, Know not who sit and blush, who stand and bawl. "Seven Grecian cities claim great Homer dead, Through which the living Homer begged his bread." So sang, as if the thought had been his own, An unknown bard, improving on a known. "Neglected genius!"--that is sad indeed, But malice better would ignore than heed, And Shepherd's soul, we rightly may suspect, Prayed often for the mercy of neglect When hardly did he dare to leave his door Without a guard behind him and before To save him from the gentlemen that now In cheap and easy reparation bow Their corrigible heads above his corse To counterfeit a grief that's half remorse. The pageant passes and the exile sleeps, And well his tongue the solemn secret keeps Of the great peace he found afar, until, Death's writ of extradition to fulfill, They brought him, helpless, from that friendly zone To be a show and pastime in his own-- A final opportunity to those Who fling with equal aim the stone and rose; That at the living till his soul is freed, This at the body to conceal the deed! Lone on his hill he's lying to await What added honors may befit his state-- The monument, the statue, or the arch (Where knaves may come to weep and dupes to march) Builded by clowns to brutalize the scenes His genius beautified. To get the means, His newly good traducers all are dunned For contributions to the conscience fund. If each subscribe (and pay) one cent 'twill rear A structure taller than their tallest ear. Washington, May 4, 1903. TO MAUDE. Not as two errant spheres together grind With monstrous ruin in the vast of space, Destruction born of that malign embrace, Their hapless peoples all to death consigned-- Not so when our intangible worlds of mind, Even mine and yours, each with its spirit race Of beings shadowy in form and face, Shall drift together on some blessed wind. No, in that marriage of gloom and light All miracles of beauty shall be wrought, Attesting a diviner faith than man's; For all my sad-eyed daughters of the night Shall smile on your sweet seraphim of thought, Nor any jealous god forbid the banns. THE BIRTH OF VIRTUE. When, long ago, the young world circling flew Through wider reaches of a richer blue, New-eyed, the men and maids saw, manifest, The thoughts untold in one another's breast: Each wish displayed, and every passion learned-- A look revealed them as a look discerned. But sating Time with clouds o'ercast their eyes; Desire was hidden, and the lips framed lies. A goddess then, emerging from the dust, Fair Virtue rose, the daughter of Distrust. STONEMAN IN HEAVEN. The Seraphs came to Christ, and said: "Behold! The man, presumptuous and overbold, Who boasted that his mercy could excel Thine own, is dead and on his way to Hell." Gravely the Saviour asked: "What did he do To make his impious assertion true?" "He was a Governor, releasing all The vilest felons ever held in thrall. No other mortal, since the dawn of time, Has ever pardoned such a mass of crime!" Christ smiled benignly on the Seraphim: "Yet I am victor, for I pardon _him_." THE SCURRIL PRESS. TOM JONESMITH _(loquitur)_: I've slept right through The night--a rather clever thing to do. How soundly women sleep _(looks at his wife.)_ They're all alike. The sweetest thing in life Is woman when she lies with folded tongue, Its toil completed and its day-song sung. (_Thump_) That's the morning paper. What a bore That it should be delivered at the door. There ought to be some expeditious way To get it _to_ one. By this long delay The fizz gets off the news _(a rap is heard)_. That's Jane, the housemaid; she's an early bird; She's brought it to the bedroom door, good soul. _(Gets up and takes it in.)_ Upon the whole The system's not so bad a one. What's here? Gad, if they've not got after--listen dear _(To sleeping wife)_--young Gastrotheos! Well, If Freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell She'll shriek again--with laughter--seeing how They treated Gast. with her. Yet I'll allow 'T is right if he goes dining at The Pup With Mrs. Thing. WIFE _(briskly, waking up)_: With her? The hussy! Yes, it serves him right. JONESMITH (_continuing to "seek the light"_): What's this about old Impycu? That's good! Grip--that's the funny man--says Impy should Be used as a decoy in shooting tramps. I knew old Impy when he had the "stamps" To buy us all out, and he wasn't then So bad a chap to have about. Grip's pen Is just a tickler!--and the world, no doubt, Is better with it than it was without. What? thirteen ladies--Jumping Jove! we know Them nearly all!--who gamble at a low And very shocking game of cards called "draw"! O cracky, how they'll squirm! ha-ha! haw-haw! Let's see what else (_wife snores_). Well, I'll be blest! A woman doesn't understand a jest. Hello! What, what? the scurvy wretch proceeds To take a fling at _me_, condemn him! (_reads_): Tom Jonesmith--my name's Thomas, vulgar cad!--_Of the new Shavings Bank_--the man's gone mad! That's libelous; I'll have him up for that--_Has had his corns cut_. Devil take the rat! What business is 't of his, I'd like to know? He didn't have to cut them. Gods! what low And scurril things our papers have become! You skim their contents and you get but scum. Here, Mary, (_waking wife_) I've been attacked In this vile sheet. By Jove, it is a fact! WIFE (_reading it_): How wicked! Who do you Suppose 't was wrote it? JONESMITH: Who? why, who But Grip, the so-called funny man--he wrote Me up because I'd not discount his note. (_Blushes like sunset at the hideous lie-- He'll think of one that's better by and by-- Throws down the paper on the floor, and treads A lively measure on it--kicks the shreds And patches all about the room, and still Performs his jig with unabated will._) WIFE (_warbling sweetly, like an Elfland horn_): Dear, do be careful of that second corn. STANLEY. Noting some great man's composition vile: A head of wisdom and a heart of guile, A will to conquer and a soul to dare, Joined to the manners of a dancing bear, Fools unaccustomed to the wide survey Of various Nature's compensating sway, Untaught to separate the wheat and chaff, To praise the one and at the other laugh, Yearn all in vain and impotently seek Some flawless hero upon whom to wreak The sycophantic worship of the weak. Not so the wise, from superstition free, Who find small pleasure in the bended knee; Quick to discriminate 'twixt good and bad, And willing in the king to find the cad-- No reason seen why genius and conceit, The power to dazzle and the will to cheat, The love of daring and the love of gin, Should not dwell, peaceful, in a single skin. To such, great Stanley, you're a hero still, Despite your cradling in a tub for swill. Your peasant manners can't efface the mark Of light you drew across the Land of Dark. In you the extremes of character are wed, To serve the quick and villify the dead. Hero and clown! O, man of many sides, The Muse of Truth adores you and derides, And sheds, impartial, the revealing ray Upon your head of gold and feet of clay. ONE OF THE UNFAIR SEX. She stood at the ticket-seller's Serenely removing her glove, While hundreds of strugglers and yellers, And some that were good at a shove, Were clustered behind her like bats in a cave and unwilling to speak their love. At night she still stood at that window Endeavoring her money to reach; The crowds right and left, how they sinned--O, How dreadfully sinned in their speech! Ten miles either way they extended their lines, the historians teach. She stands there to-day--legislation Has failed to remove her. The trains No longer pull up at that station; And over the ghastly remains Of the army that waited and died of old age fall the snows and the rains. THE LORD'S PRAYER ON A COIN. Upon this quarter-eagle's leveled face, The Lord's Prayer, legibly inscribed, I trace. "Our Father which"--the pronoun there is funny, And shows the scribe to have addressed the money-- "Which art in Heaven"--an error this, no doubt: The preposition should be stricken out. Needless to quote; I only have designed To praise the frankness of the pious mind Which thought it natural and right to join, With rare significancy, prayer and coin. A LACKING FACTOR. "You acted unwisely," I cried, "as you see By the outcome." He calmly eyed me: "When choosing the course of my action," said he, "I had not the outcome to guide me." THE ROYAL JESTER. Once on a time, so ancient poets sing, There reigned in Godknowswhere a certain king. So great a monarch ne'er before was seen: He was a hero, even to his queen, In whose respect he held so high a place That none was higher,--nay, not even the ace. He was so just his Parliament declared Those subjects happy whom his laws had spared; So wise that none of the debating throng Had ever lived to prove him in the wrong; So good that Crime his anger never feared, And Beauty boldly plucked him by the beard; So brave that if his army got a beating None dared to face him when he was retreating. This monarch kept a Fool to make his mirth, And loved him tenderly despite his worth. Prompted by what caprice I cannot say, He called the Fool before the throne one day And to that jester seriously said: "I'll abdicate, and you shall reign instead, While I, attired in motley, will make sport To entertain your Majesty and Court." 'T was done and the Fool governed. He decreed The time of harvest and the time of seed; Ordered the rains and made the weather clear, And had a famine every second year; Altered the calendar to suit his freak, Ordaining six whole holidays a week; Religious creeds and sacred books prepared; Made war when angry and made peace when scared. New taxes he inspired; new laws he made; Drowned those who broke them, who observed them, flayed, In short, he ruled so well that all who'd not Been starved, decapitated, hanged or shot Made the whole country with his praises ring, Declaring he was every inch a king; And the High Priest averred 't was very odd If one so competent were not a god. Meantime, his master, now in motley clad, Wore such a visage, woeful, wan and sad, That some condoled with him as with a brother Who, having lost a wife, had got another. Others, mistaking his profession, often Approached him to be measured for a coffin. For years this highborn jester never broke The silence--he was pondering a joke. At last, one day, in cap-and-bells arrayed, He strode into the Council and displayed A long, bright smile, that glittered in the gloom Like a gilt epithet within a tomb. Posing his bauble like a leader's staff, To give the signal when (and why) to laugh, He brought it down with peremptory stroke And simultaneously cracked his joke! I can't repeat it, friends. I ne'er could school Myself to quote from any other fool: A jest, if it were worse than mine, would start My tears; if better, it would break my heart. So, if you please, I'll hold you but to state That royal Jester's melancholy fate. The insulted nation, so the story goes, Rose as one man--the very dead arose, Springing indignant from the riven tomb, And babes unborn leapt swearing from the womb! All to the Council Chamber clamoring went, By rage distracted and on vengeance bent. In that vast hall, in due disorder laid, The tools of legislation were displayed, And the wild populace, its wrath to sate, Seized them and heaved them at the Jester's pate. Mountains of writing paper; pools and seas Of ink, awaiting, to become decrees, Royal approval--and the same in stacks Lay ready for attachment, backed with wax; Pens to make laws, erasers to amend them; With mucilage convenient to extend them; Scissors for limiting their application, And acids to repeal all legislation-- These, flung as missiles till the air was dense, Were most offensive weapons of offense, And by their aid the Fool was nigh destroyed. They ne'er had been so harmlessly employed. Whelmed underneath a load of legal cap, His mouth egurgitating ink on tap, His eyelids mucilaginously sealed, His fertile head by scissors made to yield Abundant harvestage of ears, his pelt, In every wrinkle and on every welt, Quickset with pencil-points from feet to gills And thickly studded with a pride of quills, The royal Jester in the dreadful strife Was made (in short) an editor for life! An idle tale, and yet a moral lurks In this as plainly as in greater works. I shall not give it birth: one moral here Would die of loneliness within a year. A CAREER IN LETTERS. When Liberverm resigned the chair Of This or That in college, where For two decades he'd gorged his brain With more than it could well contain, In order to relieve the stress He took to writing for the press. Then Pondronummus said, "I'll help This mine of talent to devel'p;" And straightway bought with coin and credit The _Thundergust_ for him to edit. The great man seized the pen and ink And wrote so hard he couldn't think; Ideas grew beneath his fist And flew like falcons from his wrist. His pen shot sparks all kinds of ways Till all the rivers were ablaze, And where the coruscations fell Men uttered words I dare not spell. Eftsoons with corrugated brow, Wet towels bound about his pow, Locked legs and failing appetite, He thought so hard he couldn't write. His soaring fancies, chickenwise, Came home to roost and wouldn't rise. With dimmer light and milder heat His goose-quill staggered o'er the sheet, Then dragged, then stopped; the finish came-- He couldn't even write his name. The _Thundergust_ in three short weeks Had risen, roared, and split its cheeks. Said Pondronummus, "How unjust! The storm I raised has laid my dust!" When, Moneybagger, you have aught Invested in a vein of thought, Be sure you've purchased not, instead, That salted claim, a bookworm's head. THE FOLLOWING PAIR. O very remarkable mortal, What food is engaging your jaws And staining with amber their portal? "It's 'baccy I chaws." And why do you sway in your walking, To right and left many degrees, And hitch up your trousers when talking? "I follers the seas." Great indolent shark in the rollers, Is "'baccy," too, one of your faults?-- You, too, display maculate molars. "I dines upon salts." Strange diet!--intestinal pain it Is commonly given to nip. And how can you ever obtain it? "I follers the ship." POLITICAL ECONOMY. "I beg you to note," said a Man to a Goose, As he plucked from her bosom the plumage all loose, "That pillows and cushions of feathers and beds As warm as maids' hearts and as soft as their heads, Increase of life's comforts the general sum-- Which raises the standard of living." "Come, come," The Goose said, impatiently, "tell me or cease, How that is of any advantage to geese." "What, what!" said the man--"you are very obtuse! Consumption no profit to those who produce? No good to accrue to Supply from a grand Progressive expansion, all round, of Demand? Luxurious habits no benefit bring To those who purvey the luxurious thing? Consider, I pray you, my friend, how the growth Of luxury promises--" "Promises," quoth The sufferer, "what?--to what course is it pledged To pay me for being so often defledged?" "Accustomed"--this notion the plucker expressed As he ripped out a handful of down from her breast-- "To one kind of luxury, people soon yearn For others and ever for others in turn; And the man who to-night on your feathers will rest, His mutton or bacon or beef to digest, His hunger to-morrow will wish to assuage By dining on goose with a dressing of sage." VANISHED AT COCK-CROW. "I've found the secret of your charm," I said, Expounding with complacency my guess. Alas! the charm, even as I named it, fled, For all its secret was unconsciousness. THE UNPARDONABLE SIN. I reckon that ye never knew, That dandy slugger, Tom Carew, He had a touch as light an' free As that of any honey-bee; But where it lit there wasn't much To jestify another touch. O, what a Sunday-school it was To watch him puttin' up his paws An' roominate upon their heft-- Particular his holy left! Tom was my style--that's all I say; Some others may be equal gay. What's come of him? Dunno, I'm sure-- He's dead--which make his fate obscure. I only started in to clear One vital p'int in his career, Which is to say--afore he died He soiled his erming mighty snide. Ye see he took to politics And learnt them statesmen-fellers' tricks; Pulled wires, wore stovepipe hats, used scent, Just like he was the President; Went to the Legislator; spoke Right out agin the British yoke-- But that was right. He let his hair Grow long to qualify for Mayor, An' once or twice he poked his snoot In Congress like a low galoot! It had to come--no gent can hope To wrastle God agin the rope. Tom went from bad to wuss. Being dead, I s'pose it oughtn't to be said, For sech inikities as flow From politics ain't fit to know; But, if you think it's actin' white To tell it--Thomas throwed a fight! INDUSTRIAL DISCONTENT. As time rolled on the whole world came to be A desolation and a darksome curse; And some one said: "The changes that you see In the fair frame of things, from bad to worse, Are wrought by strikes. The sun withdrew his glimmer Because the moon assisted with her shimmer. "Then, when poor Luna, straining very hard, Doubled her light to serve a darkling world, He called her 'scab,' and meanly would retard Her rising: and at last the villain hurled A heavy beam which knocked her o'er the Lion Into the nebula of great O'Ryan. "The planets all had struck some time before, Demanding what they said were equal rights: Some pointing out that others had far more That a fair dividend of satellites. So all went out--though those the best provided, If they had dared, would rather have abided. "The stars struck too--I think it was because The comets had more liberty than they, And were not bound by any hampering laws, While _they_ were fixed; and there are those who say The comets' tresses nettled poor Altair, An aged orb that hasn't any hair. "The earth's the only one that isn't in The movement--I suppose because she's watched With horror and disgust how her fair skin Her pranking parasites have fouled and blotched With blood and grease in every labor riot, When seeing any purse or throat to fly at." TEMPORA MUTANTUR. "The world is dull," I cried in my despair: "Its myths and fables are no longer fair. "Roll back thy centuries, O Father Time. To Greece transport me in her golden prime. "Give back the beautiful old Gods again-- The sportive Nymphs, the Dryad's jocund train, "Pan piping on his reeds, the Naiades, The Sirens singing by the sleepy seas. "Nay, show me but a Gorgon and I'll dare To lift mine eyes to her peculiar hair "(The fatal horrors of her snaky pate, That stiffen men into a stony state) "And die--erecting, as my soul goes hence, A statue of myself, without expense." Straight as I spoke I heard the voice of Fate: "Look up, my lad, the Gorgon sisters wait." Raising my eyes, I saw Medusa stand, Stheno, Euryale, on either hand. I gazed unpetrified and unappalled-- The girls had aged and were entirely bald! CONTENTMENT. Sleep fell upon my senses and I dreamed Long years had circled since my life had fled. The world was different, and all things seemed Remote and strange, like noises to the dead. And one great Voice there was; and something said: "Posterity is speaking--rightly deemed Infallible:" and so I gave attention, Hoping Posterity my name would mention. "Illustrious Spirit," said the Voice, "appear! While we confirm eternally thy fame, Before our dread tribunal answer, here, Why do no statues celebrate thy name, No monuments thy services proclaim? Why did not thy contemporaries rear To thee some schoolhouse or memorial college? It looks almighty queer, you must acknowledge." Up spake I hotly: "That is where you err!" But some one thundered in my ear: "You shan't Be interrupting these proceedings, sir; The question was addressed to General Grant." Some other things were spoken which I can't Distinctly now recall, but I infer, By certain flushings of my cheeks and forehead, Posterity's environment is torrid. Then heard I (this was in a dream, remark) Another Voice, clear, comfortable, strong, As Grant's great shade, replying from the dark, Said in a tone that rang the earth along, And thrilled the senses of the Judges' throng: "I'd rather you would question why, in park And street, my monuments were not erected Than why they were." Then, waking, I reflected. THE NEW ENOCH. Enoch Arden was an able Seaman; hear of his mishap-- Not in wild mendacious fable, As 't was told by t' other chap; For I hold it is a youthful Indiscretion to tell lies, And the writer that is truthful Has the reader that is wise. Enoch Arden, able seaman, On an isle was cast away, And before he was a freeman Time had touched him up with gray. Long he searched the fair horizon, Seated on a mountain top; Vessel ne'er he set his eyes on That would undertake to stop. Seeing that his sight was growing Dim and dimmer, day by day, Enoch said he must be going. So he rose and went away-- Went away and so continued Till he lost his lonely isle: Mr. Arden was so sinewed He could row for many a mile. Compass he had not, nor sextant, To direct him o'er the sea: Ere 't was known that he was extant, At his widow's home was he. When he saw the hills and hollows And the streets he could but know, He gave utterance as follows To the sentiments below: "Blast my tarry toplights! (shiver, Too, my timbers!) but, I say, W'at a larruk to diskiver, I have lost me blessid way! "W'at, alas, would be my bloomin' Fate if Philip now I see, Which I lammed?--or my old 'oman, Which has frequent basted _me_?" Scenes of childhood swam around him At the thought of such a lot: In a swoon his Annie found him And conveyed him to her cot. 'T was the very house, the garden, Where their honeymoon was passed: 'T was the place where Mrs. Arden Would have mourned him to the last. Ah, what grief she'd known without him! Now what tears of joy she shed! Enoch Arden looked about him: "Shanghaied!"--that was all he said. DISAVOWAL. Two bodies are lying in Phoenix Park, Grim and bloody and stiff and stark, And a Land League man with averted eye Crosses himself as he hurries by. And he says to his conscience under his breath: "I have had no hand in this deed of death!" A Fenian, making a circuit wide And passing them by on the other side, Shudders and crosses himself and cries: "Who says that I did it, he lies, he lies!" Gingerly stepping across the gore, Pat Satan comes after the two before, Makes, in a solemnly comical way, The sign of the cross and is heard to say: "O dear, what a terrible sight to see, For babes like them and a saint like me!" 1882. AN AVERAGE. I ne'er could be entirely fond Of any maiden who's a blonde, And no brunette that e'er I saw Had charms my heart's whole warmth to draw. Yet sure no girl was ever made Just half of light and half of shade. And so, this happy mean to get, I love a blonde and a brunette. WOMAN. Study good women and ignore the rest, For he best knows the sex who knows the best. INCURABLE. From pride, joy, hate, greed, melancholy-- From any kind of vice, or folly, Bias, propensity or passion That is in prevalence and fashion, Save one, the sufferer or lover May, by the grace of God, recover: Alone that spiritual tetter, The zeal to make creation better, Glows still immedicably warmer. Who knows of a reformed reformer? THE PUN. Hail, peerless Pun! thou last and best, Most rare and excellent bequest Of dying idiot to the wit He died of, rat-like, in a pit! Thyself disguised, in many a way Thou let'st thy sudden splendor play, Adorning all where'er it turns, As the revealing bull's-eye burns, Of the dim thief, and plays its trick Upon the lock he means to pick. Yet sometimes, too, thou dost appear As boldly as a brigadier Tricked out with marks and signs, all o'er, Of rank, brigade, division, corps, To show by every means he can An officer is not a man; Or naked, with a lordly swagger, Proud as a cur without a wagger, Who says: "See simple worth prevail-- All dog, sir--not a bit of tail!" 'T is then men give thee loudest welcome, As if thou wert a soul from Hell come. O obvious Pun! thou hast the grace Of skeleton clock without a case-- With all its boweling displayed, And all its organs on parade. Dear Pun, you're common ground of bliss, Where _Punch_ and I can meet and kiss; Than thee my wit can stoop no low'r-- No higher his does ever soar. A PARTISAN'S PROTEST. O statesmen, what would you be at, With torches, flags and bands? You make me first throw up my hat, And then my hands. TO NANINE. Dear, if I never saw your face again; If all the music of your voice were mute As that of a forlorn and broken lute; If only in my dreams I might attain The benediction of your touch, how vain Were Faith to justify the old pursuit Of happiness, or Reason to confute The pessimist philosophy of pain. Yet Love not altogether is unwise, For still the wind would murmur in the corn, And still the sun would splendor all the mere; And I--I could not, dearest, choose but hear Your voice upon the breeze and see your eyes Shine in the glory of the summer morn. VICE VERSA. Down in the state of Maine, the story goes, A woman, to secure a lapsing pension, Married a soldier--though the good Lord knows That very common act scarce calls for mention. What makes it worthy to be writ and read-- The man she married had been nine hours dead! Now, marrying a corpse is not an act Familiar to our daily observation, And so I crave her pardon if the fact Suggests this interesting speculation: Should some mischance restore the man to life Would she be then a widow, or a wife? Let casuists contest the point; I'm not Disposed to grapple with so great a matter. 'T would tie my thinker in a double knot And drive me staring mad as any hatter-- Though I submit that hatters are, in fact, Sane, and all other human beings cracked. Small thought have I of Destiny or Chance; Luck seems to me the same thing as Intention; In metaphysics I could ne'er advance, And think it of the Devil's own invention. Enough of joy to know though when I wed I _must_ be married, yet I _may_ be dead. A BLACK-LIST. "Resolved that we will post," the tradesmen say, "All names of debtors who do never pay." "Whose shall be first?" inquires the ready scribe-- "Who are the chiefs of the marauding tribe?" Lo! high Parnassus, lifting from the plain, Upon his hoary peak, a noble fane! Within that temple all the names are scrolled Of village bards upon a slab of gold; To that bad eminence, my friend, aspire, And copy thou the Roll of Fame, entire. Yet not to total shame those names devote, But add in mercy this explaining note: "These cheat because the law makes theft a crime, And they obey all laws but laws of rhyme." A BEQUEST TO MUSIC. "Let music flourish!" So he said and died. Hark! ere he's gone the minstrelsy begins: The symphonies ascend, a swelling tide, Melodious thunders fill the welkin wide-- The grand old lawyers, chinning on their chins! AUTHORITY. "Authority, authority!" they shout Whose minds, not large enough to hold a doubt, Some chance opinion ever entertain, By dogma billeted upon their brain. "Ha!" they exclaim with choreatic glee, "Here's Dabster if you won't give in to me-- Dabster, sir, Dabster, to whom all men look With reverence!" The fellow wrote a book. It matters not that many another wight Has thought more deeply, could more wisely write On t' other side--that you yourself possess Knowledge where Dabster did but faintly guess. God help you if ambitious to persuade The fools who take opinion ready-made And "recognize authorities." Be sure No tittle of their folly they'll abjure For all that you can say. But write it down, Publish and die and get a great renown-- Faith! how they'll snap it up, misread, misquote, Swear that they had a hand in all you wrote, And ride your fame like monkeys on a goat! THE PSORIAD. The King of Scotland, years and years ago, Convened his courtiers in a gallant row And thus addressed them: "Gentle sirs, from you Abundant counsel I have had, and true: What laws to make to serve the public weal; What laws of Nature's making to repeal; What old religion is the only true one, And what the greater merit of some new one; What friends of yours my favor have forgot; Which of your enemies against me plot. In harvests ample to augment my treasures, Behold the fruits of your sagacious measures! The punctual planets, to their periods just, Attest your wisdom and approve my trust. Lo! the reward your shining virtues bring: The grateful placemen bless their useful king! But while you quaff the nectar of my favor I mean somewhat to modify its flavor By just infusing a peculiar dash Of tonic bitter in the calabash. And should you, too abstemious, disdain it, Egad! I'll hold your noses till you drain it! "You know, you dogs, your master long has felt A keen distemper in the royal pelt-- A testy, superficial irritation, Brought home, I fancy, from some foreign nation. For this a thousand simples you've prescribed-- Unguents external, draughts to be imbibed. You've plundered Scotland of its plants, the seas You've ravished, and despoiled the Hebrides, To brew me remedies which, in probation, Were sovereign only in their application. In vain, and eke in pain, have I applied Your flattering unctions to my soul and hide: Physic and hope have been my daily food-- I've swallowed treacle by the holy rood! "Your wisdom, which sufficed to guide the year And tame the seasons in their mad career, When set to higher purposes has failed me And added anguish to the ills that ailed me. Nor that alone, but each ambitious leech His rivals' skill has labored to impeach By hints equivocal in secret speech. For years, to conquer our respective broils, We've plied each other with pacific oils. In vain: your turbulence is unallayed, My flame unquenched; your rioting unstayed; My life so wretched from your strife to save it That death were welcome did I dare to brave it. With zeal inspired by your intemperate pranks, My subjects muster in contending ranks. Those fling their banners to the startled breeze To champion some royal ointment; these The standard of some royal purge display And 'neath that ensign wage a wasteful fray! Brave tongues are thundering from sea to sea, Torrents of sweat roll reeking o'er the lea! My people perish in their martial fear, And rival bagpipes cleave the royal ear! "Now, caitiffs, tremble, for this very hour Your injured sovereign shall assert his power! Behold this lotion, carefully compound Of all the poisons you for me have found-- Of biting washes such as tan the skin, And drastic drinks to vex the parts within. What aggravates an ailment will produce-- I mean to rub you with this dreadful juice! Divided counsels you no more shall hatch-- At last you shall unanimously scratch. Kneel, villains, kneel, and doff your shirts--God bless us! They'll seem, when you resume them, robes of Nessus!" The sovereign ceased, and, sealing what he spoke, From Arthur's Seat[1] confirming thunders broke. The conscious culprits, to their fate resigned, Sank to their knees, all piously inclined. This act, from high Ben Lomond where she floats, The thrifty goddess, Caledonia, notes. Glibly as nimble sixpence, down she tilts Headlong, and ravishes away their kilts, Tears off each plaid and all their shirts discloses, Removes each shirt and their broad backs exposes. The king advanced--then cursing fled amain Dashing the phial to the stony plain (Where't straight became a fountain brimming o'er, Whence Father Tweed derives his liquid store) For lo! already on each back _sans_ stitch The red sign manual of the Rosy Witch! [Footnote 1: A famous height overlooking Edinburgh.] ONEIROMANCY. I fell asleep and dreamed that I Was flung, like Vulcan, from the sky; Like him was lamed--another part: His leg was crippled and my heart. I woke in time to see my love Conceal a letter in her glove. PEACE. When lion and lamb have together lain down Spectators cry out, all in chorus; "The lamb doesn't shrink nor the lion frown-- A miracle's working before us!" But 't is patent why Hot-head his wrath holds in, And Faint-heart her terror and loathing; For the one's but an ass in a lion's skin, The other a wolf in sheep's clothing. THANKSGIVING. _The Superintendent of an Almshouse. A Pauper._ SUPERINTENDENT: So _you're_ unthankful--you'll not eat the bird? You sit about the place all day and gird. I understand you'll not attend the ball That's to be given to-night in Pauper Hall. PAUPER: Why, that is true, precisely as you've heard: I have no teeth and I will eat no bird. SUPERINTENDENT: Ah! see how good is Providence. Because Of teeth He has denuded both your jaws The fowl's made tender; you can overcome it By suction; or at least--well, you can gum it, Attesting thus the dictum of the preachers That Providence is good to all His creatures-- Turkeys excepted. Come, ungrateful friend, If our Thanksgiving dinner you'll attend You shall say grace--ask God to bless at least The soft and liquid portions of the feast. PAUPER. Without those teeth my speech is rather thick-- He'll hardly understand Gum Arabic. No, I'll not dine to-day. As to the ball, 'Tis known to you that I've no legs at all. I had the gout--hereditary; so, As it could not be cornered in my toe They cut my legs off in the fond belief That shortening me would make my anguish brief. Lacking my legs I could not prosecute With any good advantage a pursuit; And so, because my father chose to court Heaven's favor with his ortolans and Port (Thanksgiving every day!) the Lord supplied Saws for my legs, an almshouse for my pride And, once a year, a bird for my inside. No, I'll not dance--my light fantastic toe Took to its heels some twenty years ago. Some small repairs would be required for putting My feelings on a saltatory footing. _(Sings)_ O the legless man's an unhappy chap-- _Tum-hi, tum-hi, tum-he o'haddy._ The favors o' fortune fall not in his lap-- _Tum-hi, tum-heedle-do hum._ The plums of office avoid his plate No matter how much he may stump the State-- _Tum-hi, ho-heeee._ The grass grows never beneath his feet, But he cannot hope to make both ends meet-- _Tum-hi._ With a gleeless eye and a somber heart, He plays the role of his mortal part: Wholly himself he can never be. O, a soleless corporation is he! _Tum_. SUPERINTENDENT: The chapel bell is calling, thankless friend, Balls you may not, but church you _shall_, attend. Some recognition cannot be denied To the great mercy that has turned aside The sword of death from us and let it fall Upon the people's necks in Montreal; That spared our city, steeple, roof and dome, And drowned the Texans out of house and home; Blessed all our continent with peace, to flood The Balkan with a cataclysm of blood. Compared with blessings of so high degree, Your private woes look mighty small--to me. L'AUDACE. Daughter of God! Audacity divine-- Of clowns the terror and of brains the sign-- Not thou the inspirer of the rushing fool, Not thine of idiots the vocal drool: Thy bastard sister of the brow of brass, Presumption, actuates the charging ass. Sky-born Audacity! of thee who sings Should strike with freer hand than mine the strings; The notes should mount on pinions true and strong, For thou, the subject shouldst sustain the song, Till angels lean from Heaven, a breathless throng! Alas! with reeling heads and wavering tails, They (notes, not angels) drop and the hymn fails; The minstrel's tender fingers and his thumbs Are torn to rags upon the lyre he strums. Have done! the lofty thesis makes demand For stronger voices and a harder hand: Night-howling apes to make the notes aspire, And Poet Riley's fist to slug the rebel wire! THE GOD'S VIEW-POINT. Cheeta Raibama Chunder Sen, The wisest and the best of men, Betook him to the place where sat With folded feet upon a mat Of precious stones beneath a palm, In sweet and everlasting calm, That ancient and immortal gent, The God of Rational Content. As tranquil and unmoved as Fate, The deity reposed in state, With palm to palm and sole to sole, And beaded breast and beetling jowl, And belly spread upon his thighs, And costly diamonds for eyes. As Chunder Sen approached and knelt To show the reverence he felt; Then beat his head upon the sod To prove his fealty to the god; And then by gestures signified The other sentiments inside; The god's right eye (as Chunder Sen, The wisest and the best of men, Half-fancied) grew by just a thought More narrow than it truly ought. Yet still that prince of devotees, Persistent upon bended knees And elbows bored into the earth, Declared the god's exceeding worth, And begged his favor. Then at last, Within that cavernous and vast Thoracic space was heard a sound Like that of water underground-- A gurgling note that found a vent At mouth of that Immortal Gent In such a chuckle as no ear Had e'er been privileged to hear! Cheeta Raibama Chunder Sen, The wisest, greatest, best of men, Heard with a natural surprise That mighty midriff improvise. And greater yet the marvel was When from between those massive jaws Fell words to make the views more plain The god was pleased to entertain: "Cheeta Raibama Chunder Sen," So ran the rede in speech of men-- "Foremost of mortals in assent To creed of Rational Content, Why come you here to impetrate A blessing on your scurvy pate? Can you not rationally be Content without disturbing me? Can you not take a hint--a wink-- Of what of all this rot I think? Is laughter lost upon you quite, To check you in your pious rite? What! know you not we gods protest That all religion is a jest? You take me seriously?--you About me make a great ado (When I but wish to be alone) With attitudes supine and prone, With genuflexions and with prayers, And putting on of solemn airs, To draw my mind from the survey Of Rational Content away! Learn once for all, if learn you can, This truth, significant to man: A pious person is by odds The one most hateful to the gods." Then stretching forth his great right hand, Which shadowed all that sunny land, That deity bestowed a touch Which Chunder Sen not overmuch Enjoyed--a touch divine that made The sufferer hear stars! They played And sang as on Creation's morn When spheric harmony was born. Cheeta Raibama Chunder Sen, The most astonished man of men, Fell straight asleep, and when he woke The deity nor moved nor spoke, But sat beneath that ancient palm In sweet and everlasting calm. THE AESTHETES. The lily cranks, the lily cranks, The loppy, loony lasses! They multiply in rising ranks To execute their solemn pranks, They moon along in masses. Blow, sweet lily, in the shade! O, Sunflower decorate the dado! The maiden ass, the maiden ass, The tall and tailless jenny! In limp attire as green as grass, She stands, a monumental brass, The one of one too many. Blow, sweet lily, in the shade! O, Sunflower decorate the dado! JULY FOURTH. God said: "Let there be noise." The dawning fire Of Independence gilded every spire. WITH MINE OWN PETARD. Time was the local poets sang their songs Beneath their breath in terror of the thongs I snapped about their shins. Though mild the stroke Bards, like the conies, are "a feeble folk," Fearing all noises but the one they make Themselves--at which all other mortals quake. Now from their cracked and disobedient throats, Like rats from sewers scampering, their notes Pour forth to move, where'er the season serves, If not our legs to dance, at least our nerves; As once a ram's-horn solo maddened all The sober-minded stones in Jerich's wall. A year's exemption from the critic's curse Mends the bard's courage but impairs his verse. Thus poolside frogs, when croaking in the night, Are frayed to silence by a meteor's flight, Or by the sudden plashing of a stone From some adjacent cottage garden thrown, But straight renew the song with double din Whene'er the light goes out or man goes in. Shall I with arms unbraced (my casque unlatched, My falchion pawned, my buckler, too, attached) Resume the cuishes and the broad cuirass, Accomplishing my body all in brass, And arm in battle royal to oppose A village poet singing through the nose, Or strolling troubadour his lyre who strums With clumsy hand whose fingers all are thumbs? No, let them rhyme; I fought them once before And stilled their songs--but, Satan! how they swore!-- Cuffed them upon the mouth whene'er their throats They cleared for action with their sweetest notes; Twisted their ears (they'd oft tormented mine) And damned them roundly all along the line; Clubbed the whole crew from the Parnassian slopes, A wreck of broken heads and broken hopes! What gained I so? I feathered every curse Launched at the village bards with lilting verse. The town approved and christened me (to show its High admiration) Chief of Local Poets! CONSTANCY. Dull were the days and sober, The mountains were brown and bare, For the season was sad October And a dirge was in the air. The mated starlings flew over To the isles of the southern sea. She wept for her warrior lover-- Wept and exclaimed: "Ah, me! "Long years have I mourned my darling In his battle-bed at rest; And it's O, to be a starling, With a mate to share my nest!" The angels pitied her sorrow, Restoring her warrior's life; And he came to her arms on the morrow To claim her and take her to wife. An aged lover--a portly, Bald lover, a trifle too stiff, With manners that would have been courtly, And would have been graceful, if-- If the angels had only restored him Without the additional years That had passed since the enemy bored him To death with their long, sharp spears. As it was, he bored her, and she rambled Away with her father's young groom, And the old lover smiled as he ambled Contentedly back to the tomb. SIRES AND SONS. Wild wanton Luxury lays waste the land With difficulty tilled by Thrift's hard hand! Then dies the State!--and, in its carcass found, The millionaires, all maggot-like, abound. Alas! was it for this that Warren died, And Arnold sold himself to t' other side, Stark piled at Bennington his British dead, And Gates at Camden, Lee at Monmouth, fled?-- For this that Perry did the foeman fleece, And Hull surrender to preserve the peace? Degenerate countrymen, renounce, I pray, The slothful ease, the luxury, the gay And gallant trappings of this idle life, And be more fit for one another's wife. A CHALLENGE. A bull imprisoned in a stall Broke boldly the confining wall, And found himself, when out of bounds, Within a washerwoman's grounds. Where, hanging on a line to dry, A crimson skirt inflamed his eye. With bellowings that woke the dead, He bent his formidable head, With pointed horns and gnarly forehead; Then, planting firm his shoulders horrid, Began, with rage made half insane, To paw the arid earth amain, Flinging the dust upon his flanks In desolating clouds and banks, The while his eyes' uneasy white Betrayed his doubt what foe the bright Red tent concealed, perchance, from sight. The garment, which, all undismayed, Had never paled a single shade, Now found a tongue--a dangling sock, Left carelessly inside the smock: "I must insist, my gracious liege, That you'll be pleased to raise the siege: My colors I will never strike. I know your sex--you're all alike. Some small experience I've had-- You're not the first I've driven mad." TWO SHOWS. The showman (blessing in a thousand shapes!) Parades a "School of Educated Apes!" Small education's needed, I opine, Or native wit, to make a monkey shine; The brute exhibited has naught to do But ape the larger apes who come to view-- The hoodlum with his horrible grimace, Long upper lip and furtive, shuffling pace, Significant reminders of the time When hunters, not policemen, made him climb; The lady loafer with her draggling "trail," That free translation of an ancient tail; The sand-lot quadrumane in hairy suit, Whose heels are thumbs perverted by the boot; The painted actress throwing down the gage To elder artists of the sylvan stage, Proving that in the time of Noah's flood Two ape-skins held her whole profession's blood; The critic waiting, like a hungry pup, To write the school--perhaps to eat it--up, As chance or luck occasion may reveal To earn a dollar or maraud a meal. To view the school of apes these creatures go, Unconscious that themselves are half the show. These, if the simian his course but trim To copy them as they have copied him, Will call him "educated." Of a verity There's much to learn by study of posterity. A POET'S HOPE. 'Twas a weary-looking mortal, and he wandered near the portal Of the melancholy City of the Discontented Dead. He was pale and worn exceeding and his manner was unheeding, As if it could not matter what he did nor what he said. "Sacred stranger"--I addressed him with a reverence befitting The austere, unintermitting, dread solemnity he wore; 'Tis the custom, too, prevailing in that vicinage when hailing One who possibly may be a person lately "gone before"-- "Sacred stranger, much I ponder on your evident dejection, But my carefulest reflection leaves the riddle still unread. How do you yourself explain your dismal tendency to wander By the melancholy City of the Discontented Dead?" Then that solemn person, pausing in the march that he was making, Roused himself as if awaking, fixed his dull and stony eye On my countenance and, slowly, like a priest devout and holy, Chanted in a mournful monotone the following reply: "O my brother, do not fear it; I'm no disembodied spirit-- I am Lampton, the Slang Poet, with a price upon my head. I am watching by this portal for some late lamented mortal To arise in his disquietude and leave his earthy bed. "Then I hope to take possession and pull in the earth above me And, renouncing my profession, ne'er be heard of any more. For there's not a soul to love me and no living thing respects me, Which so painfully affects me that I fain would 'go before.'" Then I felt a deep compassion for the gentleman's dejection, For privation of affection would refrigerate a frog. So I said: "If nothing human, and if neither man nor woman Can appreciate the fashion of your merit--buy a dog." THE WOMAN AND THE DEVIL. When Man and Woman had been made, All but the disposition, The Devil to the workshop strayed, And somehow gained admission. The Master rested from his work, For this was on a Sunday, The man was snoring like a Turk, Content to wait till Monday. "Too bad!" the Woman cried; "Oh, why, Does slumber not benumb me? A disposition! Oh, I die To know if 'twill become me!" The Adversary said: "No doubt 'Twill be extremely fine, ma'am, Though sure 'tis long to be without-- I beg to lend you mine, ma'am." The Devil's disposition when She'd got, of course she wore it, For she'd no disposition then, Nor now has, to restore it. TWO ROGUES. Dim, grim, and silent as a ghost, The sentry occupied his post, To all the stirrings of the night Alert of ear and sharp of sight. A sudden something--sight or sound, About, above, or underground, He knew not what, nor where--ensued, Thrilling the sleeping solitude. The soldier cried: "Halt! Who goes there?" The answer came: "Death--in the air." "Advance, Death--give the countersign, Or perish if you cross that line!" To change his tone Death thought it wise-- Reminded him they 'd been allies Against the Russ, the Frank, the Turk, In many a bloody bit of work. "In short," said he, "in every weather We've soldiered, you and I, together." The sentry would not let him pass. "Go back," he growled, "you tiresome ass-- Go back and rest till the next war, Nor kill by methods all abhor: Miasma, famine, filth and vice, With plagues of locusts, plagues of lice, Foul food, foul water, and foul gases, Rank exhalations from morasses. If you employ such low allies This business you will vulgarize. Renouncing then the field of fame To wallow in a waste of shame, I'll prostitute my strength and lurk About the country doing work-- These hands to labor I'll devote, Nor cut, by Heaven, another throat!" BEECHER. So, Beecher's dead. His was a great soul, too-- Great as a giant organ is, whose reeds Hold in them all the souls of all the creeds That man has ever taught and never knew. When on this mighty instrument He laid His hand Who fashioned it, our common moan Was suppliant in its thundering. The tone Grew more vivacious when the Devil played. No more those luring harmonies we hear, And lo! already men forget the sound. They turn, retracing all the dubious ground O'er which it led them, pigwise, by the ear. NOT GUILTY. "I saw your charms in another's arms," Said a Grecian swain with his blood a-boil; "And he kissed you fair as he held you there, A willing bird in a serpent's coil!" The maid looked up from the cinctured cup Wherein she was crushing the berries red, Pain and surprise in her honest eyes-- "It was only one o' those gods," she said. PRESENTIMENT. With saintly grace and reverent tread, She walked among the graves with me; Her every foot-fall seemed to be A benediction on the dead. The guardian spirit of the place She seemed, and I some ghost forlorn Surprised in the untimely morn She made with her resplendent face. Moved by some waywardness of will, Three paces from the path apart She stepped and stood--my prescient heart Was stricken with a passing chill. The folk-lore of the years agone Remembering, I smiled and thought: "Who shudders suddenly at naught, His grave is being trod upon." But now I know that it was more Than idle fancy. O, my sweet, I did not think such little feet Could make a buried heart so sore! A STUDY IN GRAY. I step from the door with a shiver (This fog is uncommonly cold) And ask myself: What did I give her?-- The maiden a trifle gone-old, With the head of gray hair that was gold. Ah, well, I suppose 'twas a dollar, And doubtless the change is correct, Though it's odd that it seems so much smaller Than what I'd a right to expect. But you pay when you dine, I reflect. So I walk up the street--'twas a saunter A score of years back, when I strolled From this door; and our talk was all banter Those days when her hair was of gold, And the sea-fog less searching and cold. I button my coat (for I'm shaken, And fevered a trifle, and flushed With the wine that I ought to have taken,) Time was, at this coat I'd have blushed, Though truly, 'tis cleverly brushed. A score? Why, that isn't so very Much time to have lost from a life. There's reason enough to be merry: I've not fallen down in the strife, But marched with the drum and the fife. If Hope, when she lured me and beckoned, Had pushed at my shoulders instead, And Fame, on whose favors I reckoned, Had laureled the worthiest head, I could garland the years that are dead. Believe me, I've held my own, mostly Through all of this wild masquerade; But somehow the fog is more ghostly To-night, and the skies are more grayed, Like the locks of the restaurant maid. If ever I'd fainted and faltered I'd fancy this did but appear; But the climate, I'm certain, has altered-- Grown colder and more austere Than it was in that earlier year. The lights, too, are strangely unsteady, That lead from the street to the quay. I think they'll go out--and I'm ready To follow. Out there in the sea The fog-bell is calling to me. A PARADOX. "If life were not worth having," said the preacher, "'T would have in suicide one pleasant feature." "An error," said the pessimist, "you're making: What's not worth having cannot be worth taking." FOR MERIT. To Parmentier Parisians raise A statue fine and large: He cooked potatoes fifty ways, Nor ever led a charge. "_Palmam qui meruit"_--the rest You knew as well as I; And best of all to him that best Of sayings will apply. Let meaner men the poet's bays Or warrior's medal wear; Who cooks potatoes fifty ways Shall bear the palm--de terre. A BIT OF SCIENCE. What! photograph in colors? 'Tis a dream And he who dreams it is not overwise, If colors are vibration they but seem, And have no being. But if Tyndall lies, Why, come, then--photograph my lady's eyes. Nay, friend, you can't; the splendor of their blue, As on my own beclouded orbs they rest, To naught but vibratory motion's due, As heart, head, limbs and all I am attest. How could her eyes, at rest themselves, be making In me so uncontrollable a shaking? THE TABLES TURNED. Over the man the street car ran, And the driver did never grin. "O killer of men, pray tell me when Your laughter means to begin. "Ten years to a day I've observed you slay, And I never have missed before Your jubilant peals as your crunching wheels Were spattered with human gore. "Why is it, my boy, that you smother your joy, And why do you make no sign Of the merry mind that is dancing behind A solemner face than mine?" The driver replied: "I would laugh till I cried If I had bisected you; But I'd like to explain, if I can for the pain, 'T is myself that I've cut in two." TO A DEJECTED POET. Thy gift, if that it be of God, Thou hast no warrant to appraise, Nor say: "Here part, O Muse, our ways, The road too stony to be trod." Not thine to call the labor hard And the reward inadequate. Who haggles o'er his hire with Fate Is better bargainer than bard. What! count the effort labor lost When thy good angel holds the reed? It were a sorry thing indeed To stay him till thy palm be crossed. "The laborer is worthy"--nay, The sacred ministry of song Is rapture!--'t were a grievous wrong To fix a wages-rate for play. A FOOL. Says Anderson, Theosophist: "Among the many that exist In modern halls, Some lived in ancient Egypt's clime And in their childhood saw the prime Of Karnak's walls." Ah, Anderson, if that is true 'T is my conviction, sir, that you Are one of those That once resided by the Nile, Peer to the sacred Crocodile, Heir to his woes. My judgment is, the holy Cat Mews through your larynx (and your hat) These many years. Through you the godlike Onion brings Its melancholy sense of things, And moves to tears. In you the Bull divine again Bellows and paws the dusty plain, To nature true. I challenge not his ancient hate But, lowering my knurly pate, Lock horns with you. And though Reincarnation prove A creed too stubborn to remove, And all your school Of Theosophs I cannot scare-- All the more earnestly I swear That you're a fool. You'll say that this is mere abuse Without, in fraying you, a use. That's plain to see With only half an eye. Come, now, Be fair, be fair,--consider how It eases _me_! THE HUMORIST. "What is that, mother?" "The funny man, child. His hands are black, but his heart is mild." "May I touch him, mother?" "'T were foolishly done: He is slightly touched already, my son." "O, why does he wear such a ghastly grin?" "That's the outward sign of a joke within." "Will he crack it, mother?" "Not so, my saint; 'T is meant for the _Saturday Livercomplaint."_ "Does he suffer, mother?" "God help him, yes!-- A thousand and fifty kinds of distress." "What makes him sweat so?" "The demons that lurk In the fear of having to go to work." "Why doesn't he end, then, his life with a rope?" "Abolition of Hell has deprived him of hope." MONTEFIORE. I saw--'twas in a dream, the other night-- A man whose hair with age was thin and white: One hundred years had bettered by his birth, And still his step was firm, his eye was bright. Before him and about him pressed a crowd. Each head in reverence was bared and bowed, And Jews and Gentiles in a hundred tongues Extolled his deeds and spoke his fame aloud. I joined the throng and, pushing forward, cried, "Montefiore!" with the rest, and vied In efforts to caress the hand that ne'er To want and worth had charity denied. So closely round him swarmed our shouting clan He scarce could breathe, and taking from a pan A gleaming coin he tossed it o'er our heads, And in a moment was a lonely man! A WARNING. Cried Age to Youth: "Abate your speed!-- The distance hither's brief indeed." But Youth pressed on without delay-- The shout had reached but half the way. DISCRETION. SHE: I'm told that men have sometimes got Too confidential, and Have said to one another what They--well, you understand. I hope I don't offend you, sweet, But are you sure that _you're_ discreet? HE: 'Tis true, sometimes my friends in wine Their conquests _do_ recall, But none can truly say that mine Are known to him at all. I never, never talk you o'er-- In truth, I never get the floor. AN EXILE. 'Tis the census enumerator A-singing all forlorn: It's ho! for the tall potater, And ho! for the clustered corn. The whiffle-tree bends in the breeze and the fine Large eggs are a-ripening on the vine. "Some there must be to till the soil And the widow's weeds keep down. I wasn't cut out for rural toil But they _won't_ let me live in town! They 're not so many by two or three, As they think, but ah! they 're too many for me." Thus the census man, bowed down with care, Warbled his wood-note high. There was blood on his brow and blood in his hair, But he had no blood in his eye. THE DIVISION SUPERINTENDENT. Baffled he stands upon the track-- The automatic switches clack. Where'er he turns his solemn eyes The interlocking signals rise. The trains, before his visage pale, Glide smoothly by, nor leave the rail. No splinter-spitted victim he Hears uttering the note high C. In sorrow deep he hangs his head, A-weary--would that he were dead. Now suddenly his spirits rise-- A great thought kindles in his eyes. Hope, like a headlight's vivid glare, Splendors the path of his despair. His genius shines, the clouds roll back-- "I'll place obstructions on the track!" PSYCHOGRAPHS. Says Gerald Massey: "When I write, a band Of souls of the departed guides my hand." How strange that poems cumbering our shelves, Penned by immortal parts, have none themselves! TO A PROFESSIONAL EULOGIST. Newman, in you two parasites combine: As tapeworm and as graveworm too you shine. When on the virtues of the quick you've dwelt, The pride of residence was all you felt (What vain vulgarian the wish ne'er knew To paint his lodging a flamboyant hue?) And when the praises of the dead you've sung, 'Twas appetite, not truth, inspired your tongue; As ill-bred men when warming to their wine Boast of its merit though it be but brine. Nor gratitude incites your song, nor should-- Even charity would shun you if she could. You share, 'tis true, the rich man's daily dole, But what you get you take by way of toll. Vain to resist you--vermifuge alone Has power to push you from your robber throne. When to escape you he's compelled to die Hey! presto!--in the twinkling of an eye You vanish as a tapeworm, reappear As graveworm and resume your curst career. As host no more, to satisfy your need He serves as dinner your unaltered greed. O thrifty sycophant of wealth and fame, Son of servility and priest of shame, While naught your mad ambition can abate To lick the spittle of the rich and great; While still like smoke your eulogies arise To soot your heroes and inflame our eyes; While still with holy oil, like that which ran Down Aaron's beard, you smear each famous man, I cannot choose but think it very odd It ne'er occurs to you to fawn on God. FOR WOUNDS. O bear me, gods, to some enchanted isle Where woman's tears can antidote her smile. ELECTION DAY. Despots effete upon tottering thrones Unsteadily poised upon dead men's bones, Walk up! walk up! the circus is free, And this wonderful spectacle you shall see: Millions of voters who mostly are fools-- Demagogues' dupes and candidates' tools, Armies of uniformed mountebanks, And braying disciples of brainless cranks. Many a week they've bellowed like beeves, Bitterly blackguarding, lying like thieves, Libeling freely the quick and the dead And painting the New Jerusalem red. Tyrants monarchical--emperors, kings, Princes and nobles and all such things-- Noblemen, gentlemen, step this way: There's nothing, the Devil excepted, to pay, And the freaks and curios here to be seen Are very uncommonly grand and serene. No more with vivacity they debate, Nor cheerfully crack the illogical pate; No longer, the dull understanding to aid, The stomach accepts the instructive blade, Nor the stubborn heart learns what is what From a revelation of rabbit-shot; And vilification's flames--behold! Burn with a bickering faint and cold. Magnificent spectacle!--every tongue Suddenly civil that yesterday rung (Like a clapper beating a brazen bell) Each fair reputation's eternal knell; Hands no longer delivering blows, And noses, for counting, arrayed in rows. Walk up, gentlemen--nothing to pay-- The Devil goes back to Hell to-day. THE MILITIAMAN. "O warrior with the burnished arms-- With bullion cord and tassel-- Pray tell me of the lurid charms Of service and the fierce alarms: The storming of the castle, The charge across the smoking field, The rifles' busy rattle-- What thoughts inspire the men who wield The blade--their gallant souls how steeled And fortified in battle." "Nay, man of peace, seek not to know War's baleful fascination-- The soldier's hunger for the foe, His dread of safety, joy to go To court annihilation. Though calling bugles blow not now, Nor drums begin to beat yet, One fear unmans me, I'll allow, And poisons all my pleasure: How If I should get my feet wet!" "A LITERARY METHOD." His poems Riley says that he indites Upon an empty stomach. Heavenly Powers, Feed him throat-full: for what the beggar writes Upon his empty stomach empties ours! A WELCOME. Because you call yourself Knights Templar, and There's neither Knight nor Temple in the land,-- Because you thus by vain pretense degrade To paltry purposes traditions grand,-- Because to cheat the ignorant you say The thing that's not, elated still to sway The crass credulity of gaping fools And women by fantastical display,-- Because no sacred fires did ever warm Your hearts, high knightly service to perform-- A woman's breast or coffer of a man The only citadel you dare to storm,-- Because while railing still at lord and peer, At pomp and fuss-and-feathers while you jeer, Each member of your order tries to graft A peacock's tail upon his barren rear,-- Because that all these things are thus and so, I bid you welcome to our city. Lo! You're free to come, and free to stay, and free As soon as it shall please you, sirs--to go. A SERENADE. "Sas agapo sas agapo," He sang beneath her lattice. "'Sas agapo'?" she murmured--"O, I wonder, now, what _that_ is!" Was she less fair that she did bear So light a load of knowledge? Are loving looks got out of books, Or kisses taught in college? Of woman's lore give me no more Than how to love,--in many A tongue men brawl: she speaks them all Who says "I love," in any. THE WISE AND GOOD. "O father, I saw at the church as I passed The populace gathered in numbers so vast That they couldn't get in; and their voices were low, And they looked as if suffering terrible woe." "'Twas the funeral, child, of a gentleman dead For whom the great heart of humanity bled." "What made it bleed, father, for every day Somebody passes forever away? Do the newspaper men print a column or more Of every person whose troubles are o'er?" "O, no; they could never do that--and indeed, Though printers might print it, no reader would read. To the sepulcher all, soon or late, must be borne, But 'tis only the Wise and the Good that all mourn." "That's right, father dear, but how can our eyes Distinguish in dead men the Good and the Wise?" "That's easy enough to the stupidest mind: They're poor, and in dying leave nothing behind." "Seest thou in mine eye, father, anything green? And takest thy son for a gaping marine? Go tell thy fine tale of the Wise and the Good Who are poor and lamented to babes in the wood." And that horrible youth as I hastened away Was building a wink that affronted the day. THE LOST COLONEL. "'Tis a woeful yarn," said the sailor man bold Who had sailed the northern-lakes-- "No woefuler one has ever been told Exceptin' them called 'fakes.'" "Go on, thou son of the wind and fog, For I burn to know the worst!" But his silent lip in a glass of grog Was dreamily immersed. Then he wiped it on his sleeve and said: "It's never like that I drinks But what of the gallant gent that's dead I truly mournful thinks. "He was a soldier chap--leastways As 'Colonel' he was knew; An' he hailed from some'rs where they raise A grass that's heavenly blue. "He sailed as a passenger aboard The schooner 'Henery Jo.' O wild the waves and galeses roared, Like taggers in a show! "But he sat at table that calm an' mild As if he never had let His sperit know that the waves was wild An' everlastin' wet!-- "Jest set with a bottle afore his nose, As was labeled 'Total Eclipse' (The bottle was) an' he frequent rose A glass o' the same to his lips. "An' he says to me (for the steward slick Of the 'Henery Jo' was I): 'This sailor life's the very old Nick-- On the lakes it's powerful dry!' "I says: 'Aye, aye, sir, it beats the Dutch. I hopes you'll outlast the trip.' But if I'd been him--an' I said as much-- I'd 'a' took a faster ship. "His laughture, loud an' long an' free, Rang out o'er the tempest's roar. 'You're an elegant reasoner,' says he, 'But it's powerful dry ashore!'" "O mariner man, why pause and don A look of so deep concern? Have another glass--go on, go on, For to know the worst I burn." "One day he was leanin' over the rail, When his footing some way slipped, An' (this is the woefulest part o' my tale), He was accidental unshipped! "The empty boats was overboard hove, As he swum in the 'Henery's wake'; But 'fore we had 'bouted ship he had drove From sight on the ragin' lake!" "And so the poor gentleman was drowned-- And now I'm apprised of the worst." "What! him? 'Twas an hour afore he was found-- In the yawl--stone dead o' thirst!" FOR TAT. O, heavenly powers! will wonders never cease?-- Hair upon dogs and feathers upon geese! The boys in mischief and the pigs in mire! The drinking water wet! the coal on fire! In meadows, rivulets surpassing fair, Forever running, yet forever there! A tail appended to the gray baboon! A person coming out of a saloon! Last, and of all most marvelous to see, A female Yahoo flinging filth at me! If 'twould but stick I'd bear upon my coat May Little's proof that she is fit to vote. A DILEMMA. Filled with a zeal to serve my fellow men, For years I criticised their prose and verges: Pointed out all their blunders of the pen, Their shallowness of thought and feeling; then Damned them up hill and down with hearty curses! They said: "That's all that he can do--just sneer, And pull to pieces and be analytic. Why doesn't he himself, eschewing fear, Publish a book or two, and so appear As one who has the right to be a critic? "Let him who knows it all forbear to tell How little others know, but show his learning." The public added: "Who has written well May censure freely"--quoting Pope. I fell Into the trap and books began out-turning,-- Books by the score--fine prose and poems fair, And not a book of them but was a terror, They were so great and perfect; though I swear I tried right hard to work in, here and there, (My nature still forbade) a fault or error. 'Tis true, some wretches, whom I'd scratched, no doubt, Professed to find--but that's a trifling matter. Now, when the flood of noble books was out I raised o'er all that land a joyous shout, Till I was thought as mad as any hatter! (Why hatters all are mad, I cannot say. 'T were wrong in their affliction to revile 'em, But truly, you'll confess 'tis very sad We wear the ugly things they make. Begad, They'd be less mischievous in an asylum!) "Consistency, thou art a"--well, you're _paste_! When next I felt my demon in possession, And made the field of authorship a waste, All said of me: "What execrable taste, To rail at others of his own profession!" Good Lord! where do the critic's rights begin Who has of literature some clear-cut notion, And hears a voice from Heaven say: "Pitch in"? He finds himself--alas, poor son of sin-- Between the devil and the deep blue ocean! METEMPSYCHOSIS. Once with Christ he entered Salem, Once in Moab bullied Balaam, Once by Apuleius staged He the pious much enraged. And, again, his head, as beaver, Topped the neck of Nick the Weaver. Omar saw him (minus tether-- Free and wanton as the weather: Knowing naught of bit or spur) Stamping over Bahram-Gur. Now, as Altgeld, see him joy As Governor of Illinois! THE SAINT AND THE MONK. Saint Peter at the gate of Heaven displayed The tools and terrors of his awful trade; The key, the frown as pitiless as night, That slays intending trespassers at sight, And, at his side in easy reach, the curled Interrogation points all ready to be hurled. Straight up the shining cloudway (it so chanced No others were about) a soul advanced-- A fat, orbicular and jolly soul With laughter-lines upon each rosy jowl-- A monk so prepossessing that the saint Admired him, breathless, until weak and faint, Forgot his frown and all his questions too, Forgoing even the customary "Who?"-- Threw wide the gate and, with a friendly grin, Said, "'Tis a very humble home, but pray walk in." The soul smiled pleasantly. "Excuse me, please-- Who's in there?" By insensible degrees The impudence dispelled the saint's esteem, As growing snores annihilate a dream. The frown began to blacken on his brow, His hand to reach for "Whence?" and "Why?" and "How?" "O, no offense, I hope," the soul explained; "I'm rather--well, particular. I've strained A point in coming here at all; 'tis said That Susan Anthony (I hear she's dead At last) and all her followers are here. As company, they'd be--confess it--rather queer." The saint replied, his rising anger past: "What can I do?--the law is hard-and-fast, Albeit unwritten and on earth unknown-- An oral order issued from the Throne. By but one sin has Woman e'er incurred God's wrath. To accuse Them Loud of that would be absurd." That friar sighed, but, calling up a smile, Said, slowly turning on his heel the while: "Farewell, my friend. Put up the chain and bar-- I'm going, so please you, where the pretty women are." 1895. THE OPPOSING SEX. The Widows of Ashur Are loud in their wailing: "No longer the 'masher' Sees Widows of Ashur!" So each is a lasher Of Man's smallest failing. The Widows of Ashur Are loud in their wailing. The Cave of Adullam, That home of reviling-- No wooing can gull 'em In Cave of Adullam. No angel can lull 'em To cease their defiling The Cave of Adullam, That home of reviling. At men they are cursing-- The Widows of Ashur; Themselves, too, for nursing The men they are cursing. The praise they're rehearsing Of every slasher At men. _They_ are cursing The Widows of Ashur. A WHIPPER-IN. [Commissioner of Pensions Dudley has established a Sunday-school and declares he will remove any clerk in his department who does not regularly attend.--_N.Y. World.]_ Dudley, great placeman, man of mark and note, Worthy of honor from a feeble pen Blunted in service of all true, good men, You serve the Lord--in courses, _table d'hôte: Au, naturel,_ as well as _à la Nick_-- "Eat and be thankful, though it make you sick." O, truly pious caterer, forbear To push the Saviour and Him crucified _(Brochette_ you'd call it) into their inside Who're all unused to such ambrosial fare. The stomach of the soul makes quick revulsion Of aught that it has taken on compulsion. I search the Scriptures, but I do not find That e'er the Spirit beats with angry wings For entrance to the heart, but sits and sings To charm away the scruples of the mind. It says: "Receive me, please; I'll not compel"-- Though if you don't you will go straight to Hell! Well, that's compulsion, you will say. 'T is true: We cower timidly beneath the rod Lifted in menace by an angry God, But won't endure it from an ape like you. Detested simian with thumb prehensile, Switch _me_ and I would brain you with my pencil! Face you the Throne, nor dare to turn your back On its transplendency to flog some wight Who gropes and stumbles in the infernal night Your ugly shadow lays along his track. O, Thou who from the Temple scourged the sin, Behold what rascals try to scourge it in! JUDGMENT. I drew aside the Future's veil And saw upon his bier The poet Whitman. Loud the wail And damp the falling tear. "He's dead--he is no more!" one cried, With sobs of sorrow crammed; "No more? He's this much more," replied Another: "he is damned!" 1885. THE FALL OF MISS LARKIN. Hear me sing of Sally Larkin who, I'd have you understand, Played accordions as well as any lady in the land; And I've often heard it stated that her fingering was such That Professor Schweinenhauer was enchanted with her touch; And that beasts were so affected when her apparatus rang That they dropped upon their haunches and deliriously sang. This I know from testimony, though a critic, I opine, Needs an ear that is dissimilar in some respects to mine. She could sing, too, like a jaybird, and they say all eyes were wet When Sally and the ranch-dog were performing a duet-- Which I take it is a song that has to be so loudly sung As to overtax the strength of any single human lung. That, at least, would seem to follow from the tale I have to tell, Which (I've told you how she flourished) is how Sally Larkin fell. One day there came to visit Sally's dad as sleek and smart A chap as ever wandered there from any foreign part. Though his gentle birth and breeding he did not at all obtrude It was somehow whispered round he was a simon-pure Dude. Howsoe'er that may have been, it was conspicuous to see That he _was_ a real Gent of an uncommon high degree. That Sally cast her tender and affectionate regards On this exquisite creation was, of course, upon the cards; But he didn't seem to notice, and was variously blind To her many charms of person and the merits of her mind, And preferred, I grieve to say it, to play poker with her dad, And acted in a manner that in general was bad. One evening--'twas in summer--she was holding in her lap Her accordion, and near her stood that melancholy chap, Leaning up against a pillar with his lip in grog imbrued, Thinking, maybe, of that ancient land in which he was a Dude. Then Sally, who was melancholy too, began to hum And elongate the accordion with a preluding thumb. Then sighs of amorosity from Sally L. exhaled, And her music apparatus sympathetically wailed. "In the gloaming, O my darling!" rose that wild impassioned strain, And her eyes were fixed on his with an intensity of pain, Till the ranch-dog from his kennel at the postern gate came round, And going into session strove to magnify the sound. He lifted up his spirit till the gloaming rang and rang With the song that to _his_ darling he impetuously sang! Then that musing youth, recalling all his soul from other scenes, Where his fathers all were Dudes and his mothers all Dudines, From his lips removed the beaker and politely, o'er the grog, Said: "Miss Larkin, please be quiet: you will interrupt the dog." IN HIGH LIFE. Sir Impycu Lackland, from over the sea, Has led to the altar Miss Bloatie Bondee. The wedding took place at the Church of St. Blare; The fashion, the rank and the wealth were all there-- No person was absent of all whom one meets. Lord Mammon himself bowed them into their seats, While good Sir John Satan attended the door And Sexton Beelzebub managed the floor, Respectfully keeping each dog to its rug, Preserving the peace between poodle and pug. Twelve bridesmaids escorted the bride up the aisle To blush in her blush and to smile in her smile; Twelve groomsmen supported the eminent groom To scowl in his scowl and to gloom in his gloom. The rites were performed by the hand and the lip Of his Grace the Diocesan, Billingham Pip, Assisted by three able-bodied divines. He prayed and they grunted, he read, they made signs. Such fashion, such beauty, such dressing, such grace Were ne'er before seen in that heavenly place! That night, full of gin, and all blazing inside, Sir Impycu blackened the eyes of his bride. A BUBBLE. Mrs. Mehitable Marcia Moore Was a dame of superior mind, With a gown which, modestly fitting before, Was greatly puffed up behind. The bustle she wore was ingeniously planned With an inspiration bright: It magnified seven diameters and Was remarkably nice and light. It was made of rubber and edged with lace And riveted all with brass, And the whole immense interior space Inflated with hydrogen gas. The ladies all said when she hove in view Like the round and rising moon: "She's a stuck up thing!" which was partly true, And men called her the Captive Balloon. To Manhattan Beach for a bath one day She went and she said: "O dear! If I leave off _this_ what will people say? I shall look so uncommonly queer!" So a costume she had accordingly made To take it all nicely in, And when she appeared in that suit arrayed, She was greeted with many a grin. Proudly and happily looking around, She waded out into the wet, But the water was very, very profound, And her feet and her forehead met! As her bubble drifted away from the shore, On the glassy billows borne, All cried: "Why, where is Mehitable Moore? I saw her go in, I'll be sworn!" Then the bulb it swelled as the sun grew hot, Till it burst with a sullen roar, And the sea like oil closed over the spot-- Farewell, O Mehitable Moore! A RENDEZVOUS. Nightly I put up this humble petition: "Forgive me, O Father of Glories, My sins of commission, my sins of omission, My sins of the Mission Dolores." FRANCINE. Did I believe the angels soon would call You, my beloved, to the other shore, And I should never see you any more, I love you so I know that I should fall Into dejection utterly, and all Love's pretty pageantry, wherein we bore Twin banners bravely in the tumult's fore, Would seem as shadows idling on a wall. So daintily I love you that my love Endures no rumor of the winter's breath, And only blossoms for it thinks the sky Forever gracious, and the stars above Forever friendly. Even the fear of death Were frost wherein its roses all would die. AN EXAMPLE. They were two deaf mutes, and they loved and they Resolved to be groom and bride; And they listened to nothing that any could say, Nor ever a word replied. From wedlock when warned by the married men, Maintain an invincible mind: Be deaf and dumb until wedded--and then Be deaf and dumb and blind. REVENGE. A spitcat sate on a garden gate And a snapdog fared beneath; Careless and free was his mien, and he Held a fiddle-string in his teeth. She marked his march, she wrought an arch Of her back and blew up her tail; And her eyes were green as ever were seen, And she uttered a woful wail. The spitcat's plaint was as follows: "It ain't That I am to music a foe; For fiddle-strings bide in my own inside, And I twang them soft and low. "But that dog has trifled with art and rifled A kitten of mine, ah me! That catgut slim was marauded from him: 'Tis the string that men call E." Then she sounded high, in the key of Y, A note that cracked the tombs; And the missiles through the firmament flew From adjacent sleeping-rooms. As her gruesome yell from the gate-post fell She followed it down to earth; And that snapdog wears a placard that bears The inscription: "Blind from birth." THE GENESIS OF EMBARRASSMENT. When Adam first saw Eve he said: "O lovely creature, share my bed." Before consenting, she her gaze Fixed on the greensward to appraise, As well as vision could avouch, The value of the proffered couch. And seeing that the grass was green And neatly clipped with a machine-- Observing that the flow'rs were rare Varieties, and some were fair, The posts of precious woods, besprent With fragrant balsams, diffluent, And all things suited to her worth, She raised her angel eyes from earth To his and, blushing to confess, Murmured: "I love you, Adam--yes." Since then her daughters, it is said, Look always down when asked to wed. IN CONTUMACIAM. Och! Father McGlynn, Ye appear to be in Fer a bit of a bout wid the Pope; An' there's divil a doubt But he's knockin' ye out While ye're hangin' onto the rope. An' soon ye'll lave home To thravel to Rome, For its bound to Canossa ye are. Persistin' to shtay When ye're ordered away-- Bedad! that is goin' too far! RE-EDIFIED. Lord of the tempest, pray refrain From leveling this church again. Now in its doom, as so you've willed it, We acquiesce. But _you'll_ rebuild it. A BULLETIN. "Lothario is very low," So all the doctors tell. Nay, nay, not _so_--he will be, though, If ever he get well. FROM THE MINUTES. When, with the force of a ram that discharges its ponderous body Straight at the rear elevation of the luckless culler of simples, The foot of Herculean Kilgore--statesman of surname suggestive Or carnage unspeakable!--lit like a missile prodigious Upon the Congressional door with a monstrous and mighty momentum, Causing that vain ineffective bar to political freedom To fly from its hinges, effacing the nasal excrescence of Dingley, That luckless one, decently veiling the ruin with ready bandanna, Lamented the loss of his eminence, sadly with sobs as follows: "Ah, why was I ever elected to the halls of legislation, So soon to be shown the door with pitiless emphasis? Truly, I've leaned on a broken Reed, and the same has gone back on me meanly. Where now is my prominence, erstwhile in council conspicuous, patent? Alas, I did never before understand what I now see clearly, To wit, that Democracy tends to level all human distinctions!" His fate so untoward and sad the Pine-tree statesman, bewailing, Stood in the corridor there while Democrats freed from confinement Came trooping forth from the chamber, dissembling all, as they passed him, Hilarious sentiments painful indeed to observe, and remarking: "O friend and colleague of the Speaker, what ails the unjoyous proboscis?" WOMAN IN POLITICS. What, madam, run for School Director? You? And want my vote and influence? Well, well, That beats me! Gad! where _are_ we drifting to? In all my life I never have heard tell Of such sublime presumption, and I smell A nigger in the fence! Excuse me, madam; We statesmen sometimes speak like the old Adam. But now you mention it--well, well, who knows? We might, that's certain, give the sex a show. I have a cousin--teacher. I suppose If I stand in and you 're elected--no? You'll make no bargains? That's a pretty go! But understand that school administration Belongs to Politics, not Education. We'll pass the teacher deal; but it were wise To understand each other at the start. You know my business--books and school supplies; You'd hardly, if elected, have the heart Some small advantage to deny me--part Of all my profits to be yours. What? Stealing? Please don't express yourself with so much feeling. You pain me, truly. Now one question more. Suppose a fair young man should ask a place As teacher--would you (pardon) shut the door Of the Department in his handsome face Until--I know not how to put the case-- Would you extort a kiss to pay your favor? Good Lord! you laugh? I thought the matter graver. Well, well, we can't do business, I suspect: A woman has no head for useful tricks. My profitable offers you reject And will not promise anything to fix The opposition. That's not politics. Good morning. Stay--I'm chaffing you, conceitedly. Madam, I mean to vote for you--repeatedly. TO AN ASPIRANT. What! you a Senator--you, Mike de Young? Still reeking of the gutter whence you sprung? Sir, if all Senators were such as you, Their hands so crimson and so slender, too,-- (Shaped to the pocket for commercial work, For literary, fitted to the dirk)-- So black their hearts, so lily-white their livers, The toga's touch would give a man the shivers. A BALLAD OF PIKEVILLE. Down in Southern Arizona where the Gila monster thrives, And the "Mescalero," gifted with a hundred thousand lives, Every hour renounces one of them by drinking liquid flame-- The assassinating wassail that has given him his name; Where the enterprising dealer in Caucasian hair is seen To hold his harvest festival upon his village-green, While the late lamented tenderfoot upon the plain is spread With a sanguinary circle on the summit of his head; Where the cactuses (or cacti) lift their lances in the sun, And incautious jackass-rabbits come to sorrow as they run, Lived a colony of settlers--old Missouri was the State Where they formerly resided at a prehistoric date. Now, the spot that had been chosen for this colonizing scheme Was as waterless, believe me, as an Arizona stream. The soil was naught but ashes, by the breezes driven free, And an acre and a quarter were required to sprout a pea. So agriculture languished, for the land would not produce, And for lack of water, whisky was the beverage in use-- Costly whisky, hauled in wagons many a weary, weary day, Mostly needed by the drivers to sustain them on their way. Wicked whisky! King of Evils! Why, O, why did God create Such a curse and thrust it on us in our inoffensive state? Once a parson came among them, and a holy man was he; With his ailing stomach whisky wouldn't anywise agree; So he knelt upon the _mesa_ and he prayed with all his chin That the Lord would send them water or incline their hearts to gin. Scarcely was the prayer concluded ere an earthquake shook the land, And with copious effusion springs burst out on every hand! Merrily the waters gurgled, and the shock which gave them birth Fitly was by some declared a temperance movement of the earth. Astounded by the miracle, the people met that night To celebrate it properly by some religious rite; And 'tis truthfully recorded that before the moon had sunk Every man and every woman was devotionally drunk. A half a standard gallon (says history) per head Of the best Kentucky prime was at that ceremony shed. O, the glory of that country! O, the happy, happy folk. By the might of prayer delivered from Nature's broken yoke! Lo! the plains to the horizon all are yellowing with rye, And the corn upon the hill-top lifts its banners to the sky! Gone the wagons, gone the drivers, and the road is grown to grass, Over which the incalescent Bourbon did aforetime pass. Pikeville (that's the name they've given, in their wild, romantic way, To that irrigation district) now distills, statistics say, Something like a hundred gallons, out of each recurrent crop, To the head of population--and consumes it, every drop! A BUILDER. I saw the devil--he was working free: A customs-house he builded by the sea. "Why do you this?" The devil raised his head; "Churches and courts I've built enough," he said. AN AUGURY. Upon my desk a single spray, With starry blossoms fraught. I write in many an idle way, Thinking one serious thought. "O flowers, a fine Greek name ye bear, And with a fine Greek grace." Be still, O heart, that turns to share The sunshine of a face. "Have ye no messages--no brief, Still sign: 'Despair', or 'Hope'?" A sudden stir of stem and leaf-- A breath of heliotrope! LUSUS POLITICUS. Come in, old gentleman. How do you do? Delighted, I'm sure, that you've called. I'm a sociable sort of a chap and you Are a pleasant-appearing person, too, With a head agreeably bald. That's right--sit down in the scuttle of coal And put up your feet in a chair. It is better to have them there: And I've always said that a hat of lead, Such as I see you wear, Was a better hat than a hat of glass. And your boots of brass Are a natural kind of boots, I swear. "May you blow your nose on a paper of pins?" Why, certainly, man, why not? I rather expected you'd do it before, When I saw you poking it in at the door. It's dev'lish hot-- The weather, I mean. "You are twins"? Why, that was evident at the start, From the way that you paint your head In stripes of purple and red, With dots of yellow. That proves you a fellow With a love of legitimate art. "You've bitten a snake and are feeling bad"? That's very sad, But Longfellow's words I beg to recall: Your lot is the common lot of all. "Horses are trees and the moon is a sneeze"? That, I fancy, is just as you please. Some think that way and others hold The opposite view; I never quite knew, For the matter o' that, When everything's been said-- May I offer this mat If you _will_ stand on your head? I suppose I look to be upside down From your present point of view. It's a giddy old world, from king to clown, And a topsy-turvy, too. But, worthy and now uninverted old man, _You're_ built, at least, on a normal plan If ever a truth I spoke. Smoke? Your air and conversation Are a liberal education, And your clothes, including the metal hat And the brazen boots--what's that? "You never could stomach a Democrat Since General Jackson ran? You're another sort, but you predict That your party'll get consummately licked?" Good God! what a queer old man! BEREAVEMENT. A Countess (so they tell the tale) Who dwelt of old in Arno's vale, Where ladies, even of high degree, Know more of love than of A.B.C, Came once with a prodigious bribe Unto the learned village scribe, That most discreet and honest man Who wrote for all the lover clan, Nor e'er a secret had betrayed-- Save when inadequately paid. "Write me," she sobbed--"I pray thee do-- A book about the Prince di Giu-- A book of poetry in praise Of all his works and all his ways; The godlike grace of his address, His more than woman's tenderness, His courage stern and lack of guile, The loves that wantoned in his smile. So great he was, so rich and kind, I'll not within a fortnight find His equal as a lover. O, My God! I shall be drowned in woe!" "What! Prince di Giu has died!" exclaimed The honest man for letters famed, The while he pocketed her gold; "Of what'?--if I may be so bold." Fresh storms of tears the lady shed: "I stabbed him fifty times," she said. AN INSCRIPTION FOR A STATUE OF NAPOLEON, AT WEST POINT. A famous conqueror, in battle brave, Who robbed the cradle to supply the grave. His reign laid quantities of human dust: He fell upon the just and the unjust. A PICKBRAIN. What! imitate me, friend? Suppose that you With agony and difficulty do What I do easily--what then? You've got A style I heartily wish _I_ had not. If I from lack of sense and you from choice Grieve the judicious and the unwise rejoice, No equal censure our deserts will suit-- We both are fools, but you're an ape to boot! CONVALESCENT. "By good men's prayers see Grant restored!" Shouts Talmage, pious creature! Yes, God, by supplication bored From every droning preacher, Exclaimed: "So be it, tiresome crew-- But I've a crow to pick with _you_." THE NAVAL CONSTRUCTOR. He looked upon the ships as they All idly lay at anchor, Their sides with gorgeous workmen gay-- The riveter and planker-- Republicans and Democrats, Statesmen and politicians. He saw the swarm of prudent rats Swimming for land positions. He marked each "belted cruiser" fine, Her poddy life-belts floating In tether where the hungry brine Impinged upon her coating. He noted with a proud regard, As any of his class would, The poplar mast and poplar yard Above the hull of bass-wood. He saw the Eastlake frigate tall, With quaintly carven gable, Hip-roof and dormer-window--all With ivy formidable. In short, he saw our country's hope In best of all conditions-- Equipped, to the last spar and rope, By working politicians. He boarded then the noblest ship And from the harbor glided. "Adieu, adieu!" fell from his lip. Verdict: "He suicided." 1881. DETECTED. In Congress once great Mowther shone, Debating weighty matters; Now into an asylum thrown, He vacuously chatters. If in that legislative hall His wisdom still he 'd vented, It never had been known at all That Mowther was demented. BIMETALISM. Ben Bulger was a silver man, Though not a mine had he: He thought it were a noble plan To make the coinage free. "There hain't for years been sech a time," Said Ben to his bull pup, "For biz--the country's broke and I'm The hardest kind of up. "The paper says that that's because The silver coins is sea'ce, And that the chaps which makes the laws Puts gold ones in their place. "They says them nations always be Most prosperatin' where The wolume of the currency Ain't so disgustin' rare." His dog, which hadn't breakfasted, Dissented from his view, And wished that he could swell, instead, The volume of cold stew. "Nobody'd put me up," said Ben, "With patriot galoots Which benefits their feller men By playin' warious roots; "But havin' all the tools about, I'm goin' to commence A-turnin' silver dollars out Wuth eighty-seven cents. "The feller takin' 'em can't whine: (No more, likewise, can I): They're better than the genooine, Which mostly satisfy. "It's only makin' coinage free, And mebby might augment The wolume of the currency A noomerous per cent." I don't quite see his error nor Malevolence prepense, But fifteen years they gave him for That technical offense. THE RICH TESTATOR. He lay on his bed and solemnly "signed," Gasping--perhaps 'twas a jest he meant: "This of a sound and disposing mind Is the last ill-will and contestament." TWO METHODS. To bucks and ewes by the Good Shepherd fed The Priest delivers masses for the dead, And even from estrays outside the fold Death for the masses he would not withhold. The Parson, loth alike to free or kill, Forsakes the souls already on the grill, And, God's prerogative of mercy shamming, Spares living sinners for a harder damning. FOUNDATIONS OF THE STATE Observe, dear Lord, what lively pranks Are played by sentimental cranks! First this one mounts his hinder hoofs And brays the chimneys off the roofs; Then that one, with exalted voice, Expounds the thesis of his choice, Our understandings to bombard, Till all the window panes are starred! A third augments the vocal shock Till steeples to their bases rock, Confessing, as they humbly nod, They hear and mark the will of God. A fourth in oral thunder vents His awful penury of sense Till dogs with sympathetic howls, And lowing cows, and cackling fowls, Hens, geese, and all domestic birds, Attest the wisdom of his words. Cranks thus their intellects deflate Of theories about the State. This one avers 'tis built on Truth, And that on Temperance. This youth Declares that Science bears the pile; That graybeard, with a holy smile, Says Faith is the supporting stone; While women swear that Love alone Could so unflinchingly endure The heavy load. And some are sure The solemn vow of Christian Wedlock Is the indubitable bedrock. Physicians once about the bed Of one whose life was nearly sped Blew up a disputatious breeze About the cause of his disease: This, that and t' other thing they blamed. "Tut, tut!" the dying man exclaimed, "What made me ill I do not care; You've not an ounce of it, I'll swear. And if you had the skill to make it I'd see you hanged before I'd take it!" AN IMPOSTER. Must you, Carnegie, evermore explain Your worth, and all the reasons give again Why black and red are similarly white, And you and God identically right? Still must our ears without redress submit To hear you play the solemn hypocrite Walking in spirit some high moral level, Raising at once his eye-balls and the devil? Great King of Cant! if Nature had but made Your mouth without a tongue I ne'er had prayed To have an earless head. Since she did not, Bear me, ye whirlwinds, to some favored spot-- Some mountain pinnacle that sleeps in air So delicately, mercifully rare That when the fellow climbs that giddy hill, As, for my sins, I know at last he will, To utter twaddle in that void inane His soundless organ he will play in vain. UNEXPOUNDED. On Evidence, on Deeds, on Bills, On Copyhold, on Loans, on Wills, Lawyers great books indite; The creaking of their busy quills I've never heard on Right. FRANCE. Unhappy State! with horrors still to strive: Thy Hugo dead, thy Boulanger alive; A Prince who'd govern where he dares not dwell, And who for power would his birthright sell-- Who, anxious o'er his enemies to reign, Grabs at the scepter and conceals the chain; While pugnant factions mutually strive By cutting throats to keep the land alive. Perverse in passion, as in pride perverse-- To all a mistress, to thyself a curse; Sweetheart of Europe! every sun's embrace Matures the charm and poison of thy grace. Yet time to thee nor peace nor wisdom brings: In blood of citizens and blood of kings The stones of thy stability are set, And the fair fabric trembles at a threat. THE EASTERN QUESTION. Looking across the line, the Grecian said: "This border I will stain a Turkey red." The Moslem smiled securely and replied: "No Greek has ever for his country dyed." While thus each patriot guarded his frontier, The Powers stole all the country in his rear. A GUEST. Death, are you well? I trust you have no cough That's painful or in any way annoying-- No kidney trouble that may carry you off, Or heart disease to keep you from enjoying Your meals--and ours. 'T were very sad indeed To have to quit the busy life you lead. You've been quite active lately for so old A person, and not very strong-appearing. I'm apprehensive, somehow, that my bold, Bad brother gave you trouble in the spearing. And my two friends--I fear, sir, that you ran Quite hard for them, especially the man. I crave your pardon: 'twas no fault of mine; If you are overworked I'm sorry, very. Come in, old man, and have a glass of wine. What shall it be--Marsala, Port or Sherry? What! just a mug of blood? That's funny grog To ask a friend for, eh? Well, take it, hog! A FALSE PROPHECY. Dom Pedro, Emperor of far Brazil (Whence coffee comes and the three-cornered nut), They say that you're imperially ill, And threatened with paralysis. Tut-tut! Though Emperors are mortal, nothing but A nimble thunderbolt could catch and kill A man predestined to depart this life By the assassin's bullet, bomb or knife. Sir, once there was a President who freed Ten million slaves; and once there was a Czar Who freed five times as many serfs. Sins breed The means of punishment, and tyrants are Hurled headlong out of the triumphal car If faster than the law allows they speed. Lincoln and Alexander struck a rut; _You_ freed slaves too. Paralysis--tut-tut! 1885. TWO TYPES. Courageous fool!--the peril's strength unknown. Courageous man!--so conscious of your own. SOME ANTE-MORTEM EPITAPHS. STEPHEN DORSEY. Fly, heedless stranger, from this spot accurst, Where rests in Satan an offender first In point of greatness, as in point of time, Of new-school rascals who proclaim their crime. Skilled with a frank loquacity to blab The dark arcana of each mighty grab, And famed for lying from his early youth, He sinned secure behind a veil of truth. Some lock their lips upon their deeds; some write A damning record and conceal from sight; Some, with a lust of speaking, die to quell it. His way to keep a secret was to tell it. STEPHEN J. FIELD. Here sleeps one of the greatest students Of jurisprudence. Nature endowed him with the gift Of the juristhrift. All points of law alike he threw The dice to settle. Those honest cubes were loaded true With railway metal. GENERAL B.F. BUTLER. Thy flesh to earth, thy soul to God, We gave, O gallant brother; And o'er thy grave the awkward squad Fired into one another! Beneath this monument which rears its head. A giant note of admiration--dead, His life extinguished like a taper's flame. John Ericsson is lying in his fame. Behold how massive is the lofty shaft; How fine the product of the sculptor's craft; The gold how lavishly applied; the great Man's statue how impressive and sedate! Think what the cost-was! It would ill become Our modesty to specify the sum; Suffice it that a fair per cent, we're giving Of what we robbed him of when he was living. Of Corporal Tanner the head and the trunk Are here in unconsecrate ground duly sunk. His legs in the South claim the patriot's tear, But, stranger, you needn't be blubbering here. Jay Gould lies here. When he was newly dead He looked so natural that round his bed The people stood, in silence all, to weep. They thought, poor souls! that he did only sleep. Here Ingalls, sorrowing, has laid The tools of his infernal trade-- His pen and tongue. So sharp and rude They grew--so slack in gratitude, His hand was wounded as he wrote, And when he spoke he cut his throat. Within this humble mausoleum Poor Guiteau's flesh you'll find. His bones are kept in a museum, And Tillman has his mind. Stranger, uncover; here you have in view The monument of Chauncey M. Depew. Eater and orator, the whole world round For feats of tongue and tooth alike renowned. Pauper in thought but prodigal in speech, Nothing he knew excepting how to teach. But in default of something to impart He multiplied his words with all his heart: When least he had to say, instructive most-- A clam in wisdom and in wit a ghost. Dining his way to eminence, he rowed With knife and fork up water-ways that flowed From lakes of favor--pulled with all his force And found each river sweeter than the source. Like rats, obscure beneath a kitchen floor, Gnawing and rising till obscure no more, He ate his way to eminence, and Fame Inscribes in gravy his immortal name. A trencher-knight, he, mounted on his belly, So spurred his charger that its sides were jelly. Grown desperate at last, it reared and threw him, And Indigestion, overtaking, slew him. Here the remains of Schuyler Colfax lie; Born, all the world knows when, and Heaven knows why. In '71 he filled the public eye, In '72 he bade the world good-bye, In God's good time, with a protesting sigh, He came to life just long enough to die. Of Morgan here lies the unspirited clay, Who secrets of Masonry swore to betray. He joined the great Order and studied with zeal The awful arcana he meant to reveal. At last in chagrin by his own hand he fell-- There was nothing to learn, there was nothing to tell. A HYMN OF THE MANY. God's people sorely were oppressed, I heard their lamentations long;-- I hear their singing, clear and strong, I see their banners in the West! The captains shout the battle-cry, The legions muster in their might; They turn their faces to the light, They lift their arms, they testify: "We sank beneath the Master's thong, Our chafing chains were ne'er undone;-- Now clash your lances in the sun And bless your banners with a song! "God bides his time with patient eyes While tyrants build upon the land;-- He lifts his face, he lifts his hand, And from the stones his temples rise. "Now Freedom waves her joyous wing Beyond the foemen's shields of gold. March forward, singing, for, behold, The right shall rule while God is king!" ONE MORNING. Because that I am weak, my love, and ill, I cannot follow the impatient feet Of my desire, but sit and watch the beat Of the unpitying pendulum fulfill The hour appointed for the air to thrill And brighten at your coming. O my sweet, The tale of moments is at last complete-- The tryst is broken on the gusty hill! O lady, faithful-footed, loyal-eyed, The long leagues silence me; yet doubt me not; Think rather that the clock and sun have lied And all too early, you have sought the spot. For lo! despair has darkened all the light, And till I see your face it still is night. AN ERROR. Good for he's old? Ah, Youth, you do not dream How sweet the roses in the autumn seem! AT THE "NATIONAL ENCAMPMENT." You 're grayer than one would have thought you: The climate you have over there In the East has apparently brought you Disorders affecting the hair, Which--pardon me--seems a thought spare. You'll not take offence at my giving Expression to notions like these. You might have been stronger if living Out here in our sanative breeze. It's unhealthy here for disease. No, I'm not as plump as a pullet. But that's the old wound, you see. Remember my paunching a bullet?-- And how that it didn't agree With--well, honest hardtack for me. Just pass me the wine--I've a helly And horrible kind of drouth! When a fellow has that in his belly Which didn't go in at his mouth He's hotter than all Down South! Great Scott! what a nasty day _that_ was-- When every galoot in our crack Division who didn't lie flat was Dissuaded from further attack By the bullet's felicitous whack. 'Twas there that our major slept under Some cannon of ours on the crest, Till they woke him by stilling their thunder, And he cursed them for breaking his rest, And died in the midst of his jest. That night--it was late in November-- The dead seemed uncommonly chill To the touch; and one chap I remember Who took it exceedingly ill When I dragged myself over his bill. Well, comrades, I'm off now--good morning. Your talk is as pleasant as pie, But, pardon me, one word of warning: Speak little of self, say I. That's my way. God bless you. Good-bye. THE KING OF BORES. Abundant bores afflict this world, and some Are bores of magnitude that-come and--no, They're always coming, but they never go-- Like funeral pageants, as they drone and hum Their lurid nonsense like a muffled drum, Or bagpipe's dread unnecessary flow. But one superb tormentor I can show-- Prince Fiddlefaddle, Duc de Feefawfum. He the johndonkey is who, when I pen Amorous verses in an idle mood To nobody, or of her, reads them through And, smirking, says he knows the lady; then Calls me sly dog. I wish he understood This tender sonnet's application too. HISTORY. What wrecked the Roman power? One says vice, Another indolence, another dice. Emascle says polygamy. "Not so," Says Impycu--"'twas luxury and show." The parson, lifting up a brow of brass, Swears superstition gave the _coup de grâce_, Great Allison, the statesman-chap affirms 'Twas lack of coins (croaks Medico: "'T was worms") And John P. Jones the swift suggestion collars, Averring the no coins were silver dollars. Thus, through the ages, each presuming quack Turns the poor corpse upon its rotten back, Holds a new "autopsy" and finds that death Resulted partly from the want of breath, But chiefly from some visitation sad That points his argument or serves his fad. They're all in error--never human mind The cause of the disaster has divined. What slew the Roman power? Well, provided You'll keep the secret, I will tell you. I did. THE HERMIT. To a hunter from the city, Overtaken by the night, Spake, in tones of tender pity For himself, an aged wight: "I have found the world a fountain Of deceit and Life a sham. I have taken to the mountain And a Holy Hermit am. "Sternly bent on Contemplation, Far apart from human kind---- In the hill my habitation, In the Infinite my mind. "Ten long years I've lived a dumb thing, Growing bald and bent with dole. Vainly seeking for a Something To engage my gloomy soul. "Gentle Pilgrim, while my roots you Eat, and quaff my simple drink, Please suggest whatever suits you As a Theme for me to Think." Then the hunter answered gravely: "From distraction free, and strife, You could ponder very bravely On the Vanity of Life." "O, thou wise and learned Teacher, You have solved the Problem well-- You have saved a grateful creature From the agonies of hell. "Take another root, another Cup of water: eat and drink. Now I have a Subject, brother, Tell me What, and How, to think." TO A CRITIC OF TENNYSON. Affronting fool, subdue your transient light; When Wisdom's dull dares Folly to be bright: If Genius stumble in the path to fame, 'Tis decency in dunces to go lame. THE YEARLY LIE. A merry Christmas? Prudent, as I live!-- You wish me something that you need not give. Merry or sad, what does it signify? To you 't is equal if I laugh, or die. Your hollow greeting, like a parrot's jest, Finds all its meaning in the ear addressed. Why "merry" Christmas? Faith, I'd rather frown Than grin and caper like a tickled clown. When fools are merry the judicious weep; The wise are happy only when asleep. A present? Pray you give it to disarm A man more powerful to do you harm. 'T was not your motive? Well, I cannot let You pay for favors that you'll never get. Perish the savage custom of the gift, Founded in terror and maintained in thrift! What men of honor need to aid their weal They purchase, or, occasion serving, steal. Go celebrate the day with turkeys, pies, Sermons and psalms, and, for the children, lies. Let Santa Claus descend again the flue; If Baby doubt it, swear that it is true. "A lie well stuck to is as good as truth," And God's too old to legislate for youth. Hail Christmas! On my knees and fowl I fall: For greater grace and better gravy call. _Vive l'Humbug!_--that's to say, God bless us all! COOPERATION. No more the swindler singly seeks his prey; To hunt in couples is the modern way-- A rascal, from the public to purloin, An honest man to hide away the coin. AN APOLOGUE. A traveler observed one day A loaded fruit-tree by the way. And reining in his horse exclaimed: "The man is greatly to be blamed Who, careless of good morals, leaves Temptation in the way of thieves. Now lest some villain pass this way And by this fruit be led astray To bag it, I will kindly pack It snugly in my saddle-sack." He did so; then that Salt o' the Earth Rode on, rejoicing in his worth. DIAGNOSIS. Cried Allen Forman: "Doctor, pray Compose my spirits' strife: O what may be my chances, say, Of living all my life? "For lately I have dreamed of high And hempen dissolution! O doctor, doctor, how can I Amend my constitution?" The learned leech replied: "You're young And beautiful and strong-- Permit me to inspect your tongue: H'm, ah, ahem!--'tis long." FALLEN. O, hadst thou died when thou wert great, When at thy feet a nation knelt To sob the gratitude it felt And thank the Saviour of the State, Gods might have envied thee thy fate! Then was the laurel round thy brow, And friend and foe spoke praise of thee, While all our hearts sang victory. Alas! thou art too base to bow To hide the shame that brands it now. DIES IRAE. A recent republication of the late Gen. John A. Dix's disappointing translation of this famous medieval hymn, together with some researches into its history which I happened to be making at the time, induces me to undertake a translation myself. It may seem presumption in me to attempt that which so many eminent scholars of so many generations have attempted before me; but the conspicuous failure of others encourages me to hope that success, being still unachieved, is still achievable. The fault of previous translations, from Lord Macaulay's to that of Gen. Dix, has been, I venture to think, a too strict literalness, whereby the delicate irony and subtle humor of the immortal poem--though doubtless these admirable qualities were well appreciated by the translators--have been utterly sacrificed in the result. In none of the English versions that I have examined is more than a trace of the mocking spirit of insincerity pervading the whole prayer,--the cool effrontery of the suppliant in enumerating his demerits, his serenely illogical demands of salvation in spite, or rather because, of them, his meek submission to the punishment of others, and the many similarly pleasing characteristics of this amusing work, being most imperfectly conveyed. By permitting myself a reasonable freedom of rendering--in many cases boldly supplying that "missing link" between the sublime and the ridiculous which the author, writing for the acute monkish apprehension of the 13th century, did not deem it necessary to insert--I have hoped at least partially to liberate the lurking devil of humor from his fetters, letting him caper, not, certainly, as he does in the Latin, but as he probably would have done had his creator written in English. In preserving the metre and double rhymes of the original, I have acted from the same reverent regard for the music with which, in the liturgy of the Church, the verses have become inseparably wedded that inspired Gen. Dix; seeking rather to surmount the obstacles to success by honest effort, than to avoid them by the adoption of an easier versification which would have deprived my version of all utility in religious service. I must bespeak the reader's charitable consideration in respect of the first stanza, the insuperable difficulties of which seem to have been purposely contrived in order to warn off trespassers at the very boundary of the alluring domain. I have got over the inhibition--somehow--but David and the Sibyl must try to forgive me if they find themselves represented merely by the names of those conspicuous personal qualities to which they probably owed, respectively, their powers of prophecy, as Samson's strength lay in his hair. DIES IRAE. Dies irae! dies ilia! Solvet saeclum in favilla Teste David cum Sibylla. Quantus tremor est futurus, Quando Judex est venturus. Cuncta stricte discussurus. Tuba mirum spargens sonum Per sepulchra regionem, Coget omnes ante thronum. Mors stupebit, et Natura, Quum resurget creatura Judicanti responsura. Liber scriptus proferetur, In quo totum continetur, Unde mundus judicetur. Judex ergo quum sedebit, Quicquid latet apparebit, Nil inultum remanebit. Quid sum miser tunc dicturus, Quem patronem rogaturus, Quum vix justus sit securus? Rex tremendae majestatis, Qui salvandos salvas gratis; Salva me, Fons pietatis Recordare, Jesu pie Quod sum causa tuae viae; Ne me perdas illa die. Quarens me sedisti lassus Redimisti crucem passus, Tantus labor non sit cassus. Juste Judex ultionis, Donum fac remissionis Ante diem rationis. Ingemisco tanquam reus, Culpa rubet vultus meus; Supplicanti parce, Deus. Qui Mariam absolvisti Et latronem exaudisti, Mihi quoque spem dedisti. Preces meae non sunt dignae, Sed tu bonus fac benigne Ne perenni cremer igne. Inter oves locum praesta. Et ab haedis me sequestra, Statuens in parte dextra. Confutatis maledictis, Flammis acribus addictis, Voca me cum benedictis. Oro supplex et acclinis, Cor contritum quasi cinis; Gere curam mei finis. Lacrymosa dies illa Qua resurgent et favilla, Judicandus homo reus Huic ergo parce, Deus! THE DAY OF WRATH. Day of Satan's painful duty! Earth shall vanish, hot and sooty; So says Virtue, so says Beauty. Ah! what terror shall be shaping When the Judge the truth's undraping! Cats from every bag escaping! Now the trumpet's invocation Calls the dead to condemnation; All receive an invitation. Death and Nature now are quaking, And the late lamented, waking, In their breezy shrouds are shaking. Lo! the Ledger's leaves are stirring, And the Clerk, to them referring, Makes it awkward for the erring. When the Judge appears in session, We shall all attend confession, Loudly preaching non-suppression. How shall I then make romances Mitigating circumstances? Even the just must take their chances. King whose majesty amazes. Save thou him who sings thy praises; Fountain, quench my private blazes. Pray remember, sacred Savior, Mine the playful hand that gave your Death-blow. Pardon such behavior. Seeking me fatigue assailed thee, Calvary's outlook naught availed thee: Now 't were cruel if I failed thee. Righteous judge and learned brother, Pray thy prejudices smother Ere we meet to try each other. Sighs of guilt my conscience gushes, And my face vermilion flushes; Spare me for my pretty blushes. Thief and harlot, when repenting, Thou forgav'st--be complimenting Me with sign of like relenting. If too bold is my petition I'll receive with due submission My dismissal--from perdition. When thy sheep thou hast selected From the goats, may I, respected, Stand amongst them undetected. When offenders are indicted, And with trial-flames ignited, Elsewhere I'll attend if cited. Ashen-hearted, prone, and prayerful, When of death I see the air full, Lest I perish, too, be careful. On that day of lamentation, When, to enjoy the conflagration. Men come forth, O, be not cruel. Spare me, Lord--make them thy fuel. ONE MOOD'S EXPRESSION. See, Lord, fanatics all arrayed For revolution! To foil their villainous crusade Unsheathe again the sacred blade Of persecution. What though through long disuse 't is grown A trifle rusty? 'Gainst modern heresy, whose bone Is rotten, and the flesh fly-blown, It still is trusty. Of sterner stuff thine ancient foes, Unapprehensive, Sprang forth to meet thy biting blows; Our zealots chiefly to the nose Assume the offensive. Then wield the blade their necks to hack, Nor ever spare one. Thy crowns of martyrdom unpack, But see that every martyr lack The head to wear one. SOMETHING IN THE PAPERS. "What's in the paper?" Oh, it's dev'lish dull: There's nothing happening at all--a lull After the war-storm. Mr. Someone's wife Killed by her lover with, I think, a knife. A fire on Blank Street and some babies--one, Two, three or four, I don't remember, done To quite a delicate and lovely brown. A husband shot by woman of the town-- The same old story. Shipwreck somewhere south. The crew, all saved--or lost. Uncommon drouth Makes hundreds homeless up the River Mud-- Though, come to think, I guess it was a flood. 'T is feared some bank will burst--or else it won't They always burst, I fancy--or they don't; Who cares a cent?--the banker pays his coin And takes his chances: bullet in the groin-- But that's another item--suicide-- Fool lost his money (serve him right) and died. Heigh-ho! there's noth--Jerusalem! what's this: Tom Jones has failed! My God, what an abyss Of ruin!--owes me seven hundred clear! Was ever such a damned disastrous year! IN THE BINNACLE. [The Church possesses the unerring compass whose needle points directly and persistently to the star of the eternal law of God.--_Religious Weekly._] The Church's compass, if you please, Has two or three (or more) degrees Of variation; And many a soul has gone to grief On this or that or t'other reef Through faith unreckoning or brief Miscalculation. Misguidance is of perils chief To navigation. The obsequious thing makes, too, you'll mark, Obeisance through a little arc Of declination; For Satan, fearing witches, drew From Death's pale horse, one day, a shoe, And nailed it to his door to undo Their machination. Since then the needle dips to woo His habitation. HUMILITY. Great poets fire the world with fagots big That make a crackling racket, But I'm content with but a whispering twig To warm some single jacket. ONE PRESIDENT. "What are those, father?" "Statesmen, my child-- Lacrymose, unparliamentary, wild." "What are they that way for, father?" "Last fall, 'Our candidate's better,' they said, 'than all!'" "What did they say he was, father?" "A man Built on a straight incorruptible plan-- Believing that none for an office would do Unless he were honest and capable too." "Poor gentlemen--_so_ disappointed!" "Yes, lad, That is the feeling that's driving them mad; They're weeping and wailing and gnashing because They find that he's all that they said that he was." THE BRIDE. "You know, my friends, with what a brave carouse I made a second marriage in my house-- Divorced old barren Reason from my bed And took the Daughter of the Vine to spouse." So sang the Lord of Poets. In a gleam Of light that made her like an angel seem, The Daughter of the Vine said: "I myself Am Reason, and the Other was a Dream." STRAINED RELATIONS. Says England to Germany: "Africa's ours." Says Germany: "Ours, I opine." Says Africa: "Tell me, delectable Pow'rs, What is it that ought to be mine?" THE MAN BORN BLIND. A man born blind received his sight By a painful operation; And these are things he saw in the light Of an infant observation. He saw a merchant, good and wise. And greatly, too, respected, Who looked, to those imperfect eyes, Like a swindler undetected. He saw a patriot address A noisy public meeting. And said: "Why, that's a calf. I guess. That for the teat is bleating." A doctor stood beside a bed And shook his summit sadly. "O see that foul assassin!" said The man who saw so badly. He saw a lawyer pleading for A thief whom they'd been jailing, And said: "That's an accomplice, or My sight again is failing." Upon the Bench a Justice sat, With nothing to restrain him; "'Tis strange," said the observer, "that They ventured to unchain him." With theologic works supplied, He saw a solemn preacher; "A burglar with his kit," he cried, "To rob a fellow creature." A bluff old farmer next he saw Sell produce in a village, And said: "What, what! is there no law To punish men for pillage?" A dame, tall, fair and stately, passed, Who many charms united; He thanked his stars his lot was cast Where sepulchers were whited. He saw a soldier stiff and stern, "Full of strange oaths" and toddy; But was unable to discern A wound upon his body. Ten square leagues of rolling ground To one great man belonging, Looked like one little grassy mound With worms beneath it thronging. A palace's well-carven stones, Where Dives dwelt contented, Seemed built throughout of human bones With human blood cemented. He watched the yellow shining thread A silk-worm was a-spinning; "That creature's coining gold." he said, "To pay some girl for sinning." His eyes were so untrained and dim All politics, religions, Arts, sciences, appeared to him But modes of plucking pigeons. And so he drew his final breath, And thought he saw with sorrow Some persons weeping for his death Who'd be all smiles to-morrow. A NIGHTMARE. I dreamed that I was dead. The years went by: The world forgot that such a man as I Had ever lived and written: other names Were hailed with homage, in their turn to die. Out of my grave a giant beech upgrew. Its roots transpierced my body, through and through, My substance fed its growth. From many lands Men came in troops that giant tree to view. 'T was sacred to my memory and fame-- My monument. But Allen Forman came, Filled with the fervor of a new untruth, And carved upon the trunk his odious name! A WET SEASON. Horas non numero nisi serenas. The rain is fierce, it flogs the earth, And man's in danger. O that my mother at my birth Had borne a stranger! The flooded ground is all around. The depth uncommon. How blest I'd be if only she Had borne a salmon. If still denied the solar glow 'T were bliss ecstatic To be amphibious--but O, To be aquatic! We're worms, men say, o' the dust, and they That faith are firm of. O, then, be just: show me some dust To be a worm of. The pines are chanting overhead A psalm uncheering. It's O, to have been for ages dead And hard of hearing! Restore, ye Pow'rs, the last bright hours The dial reckoned; 'Twas in the time of Egypt's prime-- Rameses II. THE CONFEDERATE FLAGS. Tut-tut! give back the flags--how can you care You veterans and heroes? Why should you at a kind intention swear Like twenty Neroes? Suppose the act was not so overwise-- Suppose it was illegal-- Is 't well on such a question to arise And pinch the Eagle? Nay, let's economize his breath to scold And terrify the alien Who tackles him, as Hercules of old The bird Stymphalian. Among the rebels when we made a breach Was it to get their banners? That was but incidental--'t was to teach Them better manners. They know the lesson well enough to-day; Now, let us try to show them That we 're not only stronger far than they. (How we did mow them!) But more magnanimous. You see, my lads, 'T was an uncommon riot; The warlike tribes of Europe fight for "fads," We fought for quiet. If we were victors, then we all must live With the same flag above us; 'Twas all in vain unless we now forgive And make them love us. Let kings keep trophies to display above Their doors like any savage; The freeman's trophy is the foeman's love, Despite war's ravage. "Make treason odious?" My friends, you'll find You can't, in right and reason, While "Washington" and "treason" are combined-- "Hugo" and "treason." All human governments must take the chance And hazard of sedition. O, wretch! to pledge your manhood in advance To blind submission. It may be wrong, it may be right, to rise In warlike insurrection: The loyalty that fools so dearly prize May mean subjection. Be loyal to your country, yes--but how If tyrants hold dominion? The South believed they did; can't you allow For that opinion? He who will never rise though rulers plods His liberties despising How is he manlier than the _sans culottes_ Who's always rising? Give back the foolish flags whose bearers fell Too valiant to forsake them. Is it presumptuous, this counsel? Well, I helped to take them. HAEC FABULA DOCET. A rat who'd gorged a box of bane And suffered an internal pain, Came from his hole to die (the label Required it if the rat were able) And found outside his habitat A limpid stream. Of bane and rat 'T was all unconscious; in the sun It ran and prattled just for fun. Keen to allay his inward throes, The beast immersed his filthy nose And drank--then, bloated by the stream, And filled with superheated steam, Exploded with a rascal smell, Remarking, as his fragments fell Astonished in the brook: "I'm thinking This water's damned unwholesome drinking!" EXONERATION. When men at candidacy don't connive, From that suspicion if their friends would free 'em, The teeth and nails with which they did not strive Should be exhibited in a museum. AZRAEL. The moon in the field of the keel-plowed main Was watching the growing tide: A luminous peasant was driving his wain, And he offered my soul a ride. But I nourished a sorrow uncommonly tall, And I fixed him fast with mine eye. "O, peasant," I sang with a dying fall, "Go leave me to sing and die." The water was weltering round my feet, As prone on the beach they lay. I chanted my death-song loud and sweet; "Kioodle, ioodle, iay!" Then I heard the swish of erecting ears Which caught that enchanted strain. The ocean was swollen with storms of tears That fell from the shining swain. "O, poet," leapt he to the soaken sand, "That ravishing song would make The devil a saint." He held out his hand And solemnly added: "Shake." We shook. "I crave a victim, you see," He said--"you came hither to die." The Angel of Death, 't was he! 't was he! And the victim he crove was I! 'T was I, Fred Emerson Brooks, the bard; And he knocked me on the head. O Lord! I thought it exceedingly hard, For I didn't want to be dead. "You'll sing no worser for that," said he, And he drove with my soul away, O, death-song singers, be warned by me, Kioodle, ioodle, iay! AGAIN. Well, I've met her again--at the Mission. She'd told me to see her no more; It was not a command--a petition; I'd granted it once before. Yes, granted it, hoping she'd write me. Repenting her virtuous freak-- Subdued myself daily and nightly For the better part of a week. And then ('twas my duty to spare her The shame of recalling me) I Just sought her again to prepare her For an everlasting good-bye. O, that evening of bliss--shall I ever Forget it?--with Shakespeare and Poe! She said, when 'twas ended: "You're never To see me again. And now go." As we parted with kisses 'twas human And natural for me to smile As I thought, "She's in love, and a woman: She'll send for me after a while." But she didn't; and so--well, the Mission Is fine, picturesque and gray; It's an excellent place for contrition-- And sometimes she passes that way. That's how it occurred that I met her, And that's ah there is to tell-- Except that I'd like to forget her Calm way of remarking: "I'm well." It was hardly worth while, all this keying My soul to such tensions and stirs To learn that her food was agreeing With that little stomach of hers. HOMO PODUNKENSIS. As the poor ass that from his paddock strays Might sound abroad his field-companions' praise, Recounting volubly their well-bred leer, Their port impressive and their wealth of ear, Mistaking for the world's assent the clang Of echoes mocking his accurst harangue; So the dull clown, untraveled though at large, Visits the city on the ocean's marge, Expands his eyes and marvels to remark Each coastwise schooner and each alien bark; Prates of "all nations," wonders as he stares That native merchants sell imported wares, Nor comprehends how in his very view A foreign vessel has a foreign crew; Yet, faithful to the hamlet of his birth, Swears it superior to aught on earth, Sighs for the temples locally renowned-- The village school-house and the village pound-- And chalks upon the palaces of Rome The peasant sentiments of "Home, Sweet Home!" A SOCIAL CALL. Well, well, old Father Christmas, is it you, With your thick neck and thin pretense of virtue? Less redness in the nose--nay, even some blue Would not, I think, particularly hurt you. When seen close to, not mounted in your car, You look the drunkard and the pig you are. No matter, sit you down, for I am not In a gray study, as you sometimes find me. Merry? O, no, nor wish to be, God wot, But there's another year of pain behind me. That's something to be thankful for: the more There are behind, the fewer are before. I know you, Father Christmas, for a scamp, But Heaven endowed me at my soul's creation With an affinity to every tramp That walks the world and steals its admiration. For admiration is like linen left Upon the line--got easiest by theft. Good God! old man, just think of it! I've stood, With brains and honesty, some five-and-twenty Long years as champion of all that's good, And taken on the mazzard thwacks a-plenty. Yet now whose praises do the people bawl? Those of the fellows whom I live to maul! Why, this is odd!--the more I try to talk Of you the more my tongue grows egotistic To prattle of myself! I'll try to balk Its waywardness and be more altruistic. So let us speak of others--how they sin, And what a devil of a state they 're in! That's all I have to say. Good-bye, old man. Next year you possibly may find me scolding-- Or miss me altogether: Nature's plan Includes, as I suppose, a final folding Of these poor empty hands. Then drop a tear To think they'll never box another ear. 
12402	----	THE POETS AND POETRY OF CECIL COUNTY, MARYLAND COLLECTED AND EDITED BY GEORGE JOHNSTON, AUTHOR OF THE HISTORY OF CECIL COUNTY. A verse may finde him whom a sermon flies, And turn delight into a sacrifice. --Herbert. ELKTON, MD: PUBLISHED BY THE EDITOR. 1887 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1887, by GEORGE JOHNSTON, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D.C. PREFACE. This volume owes its existence to the desire of some of the teachers and pupils of the public schools in the northeastern part of Cecil county, to do honor to the memory of the late School Commissioner David Scott. Shortly after Mr. Scott's death, some of the parties referred to, proposed to collect enough money by voluntary contributions to erect a monument over his grave, in order to perpetuate his memory, and also to show the high regard in which he was held by them. This project being brought to the knowledge of the editor, he ventured to express the opinion that the best monument Mr. Scott could have, would be the collection and publication of his poems in book form. This suggestion met the approbation of the originators of the project, who asked the writer to undertake the work of collecting the poems and editing the book. Subsequent investigation showed that Mr. Scott had not left enough poems to justify their publication in a volume by themselves; and the original plan of the work was changed, so as to include, so far as it has been practicable to do so, the writings of all the native poets of the county, and those who though not natives, have resided and written in it. Owing to causes not necessary to state it was impracticable, in some cases, to make as creditable a selection as could have been made had it been possible to have had access to all the poetry of the different writers. In a few instances the book contains all the poetry of the different writers that it has been practicable to obtain. Herein, it is hoped, will be found sufficient apology, if any apology is needed, for the character of some of the matter in the book. If any apology is needed for the prominence given to the poems of David Scott (of John.) it may be found in the foregoing statement concerning the origin of the book; and in the fact, that, for more than a quarter of a century, the editor was probably his most intimate friend. So intimate indeed were the relations between Mr. Scott and the writer, that the latter had the pleasure of reading many of his friend's poems before they were published. The same may be said in a more extended sense, of the poems of David Scott (of James) to whose example and teaching, as well as to that of the other Mr. Scott--for he was a pupil of each of them--the writer owes much of whatever literary ability he may possess. The editor is also on terms of intimacy with many of the other contemporary writers whose poetry appears in the book, and has striven to do justice to their literary ability, by the selection of such of their poems as are best calculated, in his opinion, to do credit to them, without offending the taste of the most fastidious readers of the book. From the foregoing statement it will be apparent that the object of the editor was not to produce a book of poetical jems, but only to select the poems best adapted to the exemplification of the diversified talents of their authors. The work has been a labor of love; and though conscious that it has been imperfectly performed, the compiler ventures to express the hope that it will be received by a generous and discriminating public, in the same spirit in which it was done. EDITORIAL NOTES It is a remarkable fact that all the native poets of Cecil county except one or two were born in the northern part of it, and within about eight miles of the boundary line between Maryland and Pennsylvania. What effect, if any, the pure atmosphere and picturesque scenery of the country along the banks and romantic hills of the Susquehanna and Octoraro may have had to do with producing or developing poetical genius, cannot be told; but nevertheless it is a fact, that William P., and Edwin E. Ewing, Emma Alice Browne, Alice Coale Simpers, John M. Cooley and Rachel E. Patterson were born and wrote much of their poetry, as did also Mrs. Caroline Hall, in that beautifully diversified and lovely section of the county. It is also worthy of note that Tobias and Zebulon Rudulph were brothers, as are also William P. and Edwin E. Ewing; and that Mrs. Caroline Hall was of the same family; and that Folger McKinsey and William J. Jones are cousins, as are also Mrs. James McCormick and Mrs. Frank J. Darlington, and Emma Alice Browne and George Johnston. Owing to the fact that the size of the book was necessarily limited by the price of it; and to the fact that the poems of three of the writers were not obtained until after a large part of the book had been printed, it was impossible to give some of the writers, whose proper places were in the latter part of the book, as much space as was desirable. For the reason just stated, the editor was compelled to omit a large number of excellent poems, written by David Scott (of James,) and others. CONTENTS. DAVID SCOTT (of John.) Biography Lines Suggested by the Singing of a Bird An Eastern Tale The Market-Man's License Lines on the death of Mrs. Elizabeth Scott My Schoolboy Days The Donation Visit Lines on the death of Miss Mary Hayes Lines on the death of Miss Eleanora Henderson Lines on the death of Mrs. Burnite Stanzas read at the Seventy-second Anniversary of the birthday of Joseph Steele To Mary Impromptu to Mrs. Anna C. Baker Lament for the year 1877 Verses presented to my Daughter Lines on the death of a young lady of Wilmington Youthful Reminiscences Stanzas to a little girl on her birthday To Miss Mary Bain Stanzas addressed to Mr. and Mrs. T. Jefferson Scott Birthday Verses written for a little girl on her ninth birthday Roll Call In Memoriam Rensellaer Biddle Stanzas written on the fly leaf of a child's Bible Christmas Greeting, 1877 Anniversary Poem read at the anniversary of the Seventieth birthday of Mrs. Ann Peterson Lines on the death of Jane Flounders What is Matter? Anniversary Hymn The Intellectual Telegraph Lines on an Indian Arrow-Head Acrostic to Miss Annie Eliza McNamee Minutes of the Jackson Hall Debating Society, Dec. 5, 1877 Retrospection Acrostic to Miss Florence Wilson McNamee The Book of Books The Lesson of the Seasons John A. Calhoun, My Joe John EMMA ALICE BROWNE. Biography My Brother My Father. In Memoriam, 1857 At the Nightfall The Midnight Chime May-Thalia Memories The Old Homestead Gurtha In Memoriam. John B. Abrahams Missive to ---- Chick-A-Dee's Song To My Sister Measuring the Baby The Light of Dreams Ben Hafed's Meed Winter Bound Misled At Milking time The Singer's Song Aunt Betty's Thanksgiving In Hoc Signo Vinces How Katie Saved the Train Off the Skidloe Life's Crosses NATHAN COVINGTON BROOKS. Biography The Mother to her dead boy To a Dove Fall of Superstition The Infant St. John the Baptist Shelley's Obsequies The Fountain Revisited Death of Samson An Infant's prayer JOHN MARCHBORN COOLEY. Biography A Story with a Moral Forty Years After The Past Loved and Lost Death of Henry Clay, Jr. A Valentine Lines suggested on visiting the grave of a dear Friend GEORGE WASHINGTON CRUIKSHANK. Biography Stonewall Jackson In Memoriam New Year Ode My Birthday MRS. ANNIE McCARER DARLINGTON. Biography A Birthday Greeting Murmurings The Old Oak Tree Sweet Florida Evening REV. WILLIAM DUKE. Biography Hymn Hymn Rejoicing in Hope Hymn Remorse Morning EDWIN EVANS EWING. Biography The Cherubim Death and Beauty Take the Harp Death of the Beautiful Asphodel WILLIAM PINKNEY EWING. Biography The Angel Voice Then and Now The Neglected Harp Alone Gone Astray Lay of the Last Indian CHARLES H. EVANS. Biography Influences Musings Lines MRS. SARAH HALL. Biography Sketch of a Landscape With a Rose in January Life MRS. SALLIE W. HARDCASTLE. Biography On Receipt of a Bouquet October Old Letters June Roses Music Lines on the death of a Friend MRS. MARY E. IRELAND. Biography At the Party Mother and Son The Missionary's Story Transition Dorothy Moore Homeward Bound GEORGE JOHNSTON. Biography Here and Hereafter The Turtle's Sermon Skye If You don't believe it, try it Bye and Bye WILLIAM JAMES JONES. Biography Autumn Mary's Grave To Anselmo Flowers Life JOHN HENRY KIMBLE. Biography His Last Tune Advice to an Ambitious Youth Too Late After the Shower Tribute to the Memory of David Scott (of John) Spring JAMES McCAULEY. Biography Henry Clay Virtuous Age Acrostic Work To-day On the death of a Child Spring Hope Autumn MRS. IDA McCORMICK. Biography My Fancy Land With the Tide The Old Fashion My Baby and the Rose FOLGER McKINSKY. Biography Waiting their Crowns Sea Echoes Where Fancy Dwells At Key's Grave The Eternal Life MRS. ROSALIENE R. MURPHY. Biography Woman's Rights Only A Baby To Helen RACHEL E. PATTERSON. Biography Judge Not The Wish The Christian's Anchor CALLANDER PATTERSON. Biography God Is Great TOBIAS RUDULPH. Biography Selection from Tancred ZEBULON RUDULPH. Biography The Surprise Thoughts on the death of my grandchild Fanny The Decree A view from Mount Carmel MRS. ALICE COALE SIMPERS. Biography The Miller's Romance The Last Time Only a Simple Maid The Mystic Clock Rube and Will The Legend of St. Bavon DAVID SCOTT (of James.) Biography The Forced Alliance My Cottage Home The Mighty One The Surviving Thought The Working-Man's Song Ode to Death HENRY VANDERFORD. Biography On the Mountains Progress Winter Lines Written in St. Ann's Cemetery Merry May DAVID SCOTT (of John.) David Scott (of John,) so-called to distinguish him from his first cousin David Scott (of James,) was the grandson of David Scott, who emigrated from Ireland in the latter part of the eighteenth century and settled not far from Cowantown in the Fourth district. His son John, the father of the subject of this sketch, was born in Ireland, but was quite young when his father came to this country. David, the subject of this sketch, was born quite near to what was formerly known as Dysart's Tavern, now Appleton, on the 2nd of September, 1817, and died near Cowantown, on the 14th of November, 1885. All his life was spent within about two miles of the place of his birth, and most of it on the Big Elk creek at what was known while he owned them, as "Scott's Mills." His early life was devoted to farming, but upon reaching the proper age he learned the trade of augermaking, which at that time was one of the leading industries of this county, and at which he soon became an expert workman, as well as a skilful worker in iron and steel. The editor of this book has heard him remark that when he could find no one else capable of making odd pieces of ironwork for the machinery in his mills he would take the hammer and make them himself, and has also seen him make and temper the knives for a spoke machine which he used for a time in his bending mill. He and the late Palmer C. Ricketts were intimate friends in boyhood and remained such during the lifetime of Mr. Ricketts. Mr. Ricketts being of a literary turn of mind, their friendship probably had much to do with forming the literary tastes and shaping the political opinions of Mr. Scott. Mr. Scott was originally a Democrat, and when only about 23 years of age is said to have aspired to a seat in the General Assembly of his native State. But the leaders of the party failed to recognize his claims, and he shortly afterwards was instrumental in the formation of the first politico temperance organization in this county, and ran for the House of Delegates on the first temperance ticket placed before the people in 1845. For a few years afterwards he took no part in politics, his whole time and talents being engrossed in business, but in 1853 at the solicitation of his friend Ricketts, he consented to be a candidate for County Commissioner, and succeeded in carrying the Fourth district in which he lived, which was then known as the Gibraltar of Democracy, by a small majority, and securing his election by a majority of one vote over Griffith M. Eldredge, his highest competitor on the Democratic ticket. In 1855 he ran on the American ticket, with the late Samuel Miller and Dr. Slater B. Stubbs, for the House of Delegates, and was elected by a handsome majority. In 1859 Mr. Scott consented to run on the American ticket for the State Senate. His competitor was the late Joseph J. Heckart, who was elected. This was a memorable campaign on account of the effect produced by the John Brown raid upon the State of Virginia and the capture of Harper's Ferry, which had a disastrous effect upon Mr. Scott's prospects, owing probably to which he was defeated. At the outbreaking of the war of the rebellion he espoused the Union cause and gave it his hearty support during the continuance of the struggle, and remained a consistent Republican until his death. In 1864 he was a delegate to represent Cecil county in the Constitutional Convention, his colleagues being Thomas P. Jones, George Earle and the late Joseph B. Pugh. He was assigned to a place upon the Committee on the Elective Franchise and had more to do with originating that section of the Constitution which provided for the passage of a registration law than any other person on the committee--probably more than any other member of the Convention. He was an intimate friend of Henry H. Goldsborough, whom he had previously nominated in the Republican State Convention for the office of Comptroller of the State Treasury, which office he still held, and whom Mr. Scott also nominated for President of the Constitutional Convention in the Republican caucus, and, as was very natural, was often called upon by Mr. Goldsborough to preside over the Convention in his absence, which he did with that _suaviter in modo_ and _fortiter in re_ for which he was remarkable and with great acceptability to the members of both political parties. During the invasion of the State in July, 1864, he was one of the most active members in urging upon the loyalists of Annapolis and the military authorities in that city and at Camp Parole the necessity of defending the Capital of the State. He held the handles of the plow with which the first furrow that marked the line of the fortifications around the city was made. It may not be out of place to say that the editor of this book, in company with Mr. Scott, walked along the line of the ditch the morning before, and that the former walked ahead of the team attached to the plow so that the person who led the team might know where to go. Mr. Scott was also one of about a dozen members who remained in Annapolis for about two weeks, during much of which time the arrival of the rebel raiders was hourly expected, and kept the Convention alive by adjourning from day to day, without which, by the rules adopted for the government of the Convention, it could not have maintained a legal existence. He was appointed School Commissioner in 1882, which office he filled with great acceptability to the public until incapacitated by the disease which terminated his life. Mr. Scott, though one of the most amiable of men, was fond of argument when properly conducted, and from the time he was twenty years of age until nearly the close of his life was always ready to participate in a debate if he could find any person to oppose him; and thought it no hardship to walk any where within a radius of four or five miles, in the coldest weather, in order to attend a debating society. He was possessed of a large and varied stock of information and a very retentive memory, which enabled him to quote correctly nearly everything of importance with which he had ever been familiar. His ability in this direction, coupled with a keen sense of the ridiculous and satirical, rendered him an opponent with whom few debaters were able to successfully contend. But it was as a companion, a friend and a poet that he was best known among the people of his neighborhood, to which his genial character and kind and amiable disposition greatly endeared him. Mr. Scott began to write poetry when about twenty-one years of age, and continued to do so, though sometimes at long intervals, until a short time before his death. His early poems were printed in "The Cecil Whig," but being published anonymously cannot be identified. Like many others, he did not preserve his writings, and a few of his best poems have been lost. Of his poetic ability and religious belief, we do not care to speak, but prefer that the reader should form his own judgment of them from the data derived from a perusal of his poems. In 1844, Mr. Scott married Miss Agatha R. Fulton, a most estimable lady, who, with their son Howard Scott and daughter Miss Annie Mary Scott, survive him. In conclusion, the editor thinks it not improper to say that he enjoyed the pleasure of Mr. Scott's intimate friendship for nearly thirty years, and esteemed him as his best and most intimate friend. And that while his friend was only mortal, and subject to mortal frailities, he had a kind and generous heart; a soul which shrank from even the semblance of meanness, and was the embodiment of every trait which ennobles and elevates humanity. LINES SUGGESTED BY THE SINGING OF A BIRD EARLY IN MARCH, 1868. Sing on, sweet feathered warbler, sing! Mount higher on thy joyous wing, And let thy morning anthem ring Full on my ear; Thou art the only sign of spring I see or hear. The earth is buried deep in snow; The muffled streams refuse to flow, The rattling mill can scarcely go, For ice and frost: The beauty of the vale below In death is lost. Save thine, no note of joy is heard-- Thy kindred songsters of the wood Have long since gone, and thou, sweet bird, Art left behind-- A faithful friend, whose every word Is sweet and kind. But Spring will come, as thou wilt see, With blooming flower and budding tree, And song of bird and hum of bee Their charms to lend; But I will cherish none like thee, My constant friend. Like the dear friends who ne'er forsake me-- Whatever sorrows overtake me-- In spite of all my faults which make me Myself detest, They still cling to and kindly take me Unto their breast. AN EASTERN TALE ADDRESSED TO MRS. S.C. CHOATE. A Persian lady we're informed-- This happened long, long years before The Christian era ever dawned, A thousand years, it may be more, The date and narrative are so obscure, I have to guess some things that should be sure. I'm puzzled with this history, And rue that I began the tale; It seems a kind of mystery-- I'm very much afraid I'll fail, For want of facts of the sensation kind: I therefore dwell upon the few I find. I like voluminous writing best, That gives the facts dress'd up in style. A handsome woman when she's dressed Looks better than (repress that smile) When she in plainer costume does appear; The more it costs we know she is more _dear_. The story is a Grecian one, The author's name I cannot tell; Perhaps it was old Xenophon Or Aristotle, I can't dwell On trifles; perhaps Plutarch wrote the story: At any rate its years have made it hoary. The Greeks were famous in those days In arts, in letters and in arms; Quite plain and simple in their ways; With their own hands they tilled their farms; Some dressed the vine, some plow'd the ocean's wave; Some wrote, were orators, or teachers grave. They were Republicans, in fact; The Persians might have called them "black Republicans;" they never lacked The power to beat a foeman back. Thermopylæ, so famed in Grecian story Is but another name for martial glory. A busy hive to work or fight, Like our New England bold and strong; A little frantic for the right, As sternly set against the wrong; And when for right they drew the sword, we know, Stopped not to count the number of the foe. To me it is a painful sight To see a nation great and good Reduced to such a sorry plight, And courtiers crawl where freemen stood, And king and priests combine to seize the spoil, While widows weep and beggar'd yeomen toil. The philosophic mind might dwell Upon this subject for an age: The philanthropic heart might swell Till tears as ink would wet the page; The mystery, a myst'ry will remain-- The learning of the learned cannot explain. The Persians were a gaudy race, Much giv'n to dress and grand display; I'm grieved to note this is the case With other people at this day; And folks are judged of from outside attractions, Instead of from good sense and genteel actions. The dame in question was a type Of all her class; handsome and rich And proud, of course, and flashing like A starry constellation, which She was, in fact a moving mass of light From jewels which outshone the stars at night. The tale is somewhat out of joint-- I'm not much given to complain; 'Tis in a most essential point A blank; I've read it oft in vain To find one syllable about her size, The color of her hair, or of her eyes. Or whether she was short or tall, Or if she sung or play'd with grace, If she wore hoops or waterfall I cannot find a single trace Of proof; and as I like to be precise, My disappointment equals my surprise. This Persian belle; (confound the belle) Excuse me, please; I won't be rude; She's in my way, so I can't tell My tale, so much does she intrude; I wish I knew her age, and whether she Was single, married, or engaged to be. These are important facts to know, I wonder how they slipped the pen Of him who wrote the story, so I wonder at the taste of men Who wrote for future ages thus to spoil A tale to save time, paper, ink or oil. Our Persian lady, as I said, Decked out in costly jewels rare, A visit to a Grecian made-- A lady of great worth, and fair To look upon, of great domestic merit Which from a noble race she did inherit. Puffed up with vanity and pride, The Persian flashing like a gem, Displayed her brilliants, glittering wide; The Grecian coldly looked at them: "Have you no jewelry at all, to wear? Your dress and person look so poor and bare." She called her children to her side, Seven stalwart sons of martial mien; "These are my jewels," she replied, "I'm richer far than you, I ween: These are the glory and the strength of Greece, Which all the gems on earth would not increase," Let others shine in diamonds bright, Or hoard their greenbacks, bonds or gold, You have your jewels in your sight, And hearing, like the matron old; And should they still continue to increase, You'll beat the model mother of old Greece. Then hail Columbia, happy land! While California yields her ore, May you increase your jewel band, By adding every year one more; And when you're asked your jewels to display. Point to your score of sons saying "these are they." THE MARKET-MAN'S LICENSE, OR THE FARMER'S APPEAL FROM A JACKASS TO THE MAYOR. The following poem grew out of a misunderstanding between Mr. Scott and the clerk of the Wilmington market. In the winter of 1868, Mr. Scott was in the habit of selling hominy in the market, and the clerk treated him rudely and caused him to leave his usual stand and remove to another one. From this arbitrary exercise of power Mr. Scott appealed to the Mayor, who reinstated him in his old place. Mr. Scott soon afterwards had several hundred of the poems printed and scattered them throughout the market. In an introductory note he says, "the lines referring to Mayor Valentine are intended as a compliment to that officer, as well as a play on his official title of Mayor." I've horses seen of noble blood, And stopped to gaze and stare: But ne'er before to-day I stood In presence of a Mayor. I've talked with rulers, in and ex, With working man and boss; Mayor Valentine! they you unsex-- You surely are a horse. For every blooded horse one meets, Or clever mare he passes, He finds in all the city streets A score of brainless asses. A Jackass, in the days of old, Dress'd in a lion's skin, Went forth to ape the lion bold, And raised a mighty din: His ass-ship's ears he could not hide; His roaring would not pass; The startled beasts his ears descried, And recognized the ass. The moral of this tale you'll meet Each market day in town, With scales in hand, in Market street, Dress'd in the lion's gown: He roars, 'tis true, but scan him well Whene'er you see him pass; Look at his ears and you can tell He's but a braying ass. LINES ON THE DEATH OF MRS. ELIZABETH SCOTT. Ransom'd spirit, spread thy wings, Leave thy broken house of clay; Soar from earth and earthly things, To the realms of endless day. Weary pilgrim, take thy rest, Thine has been a tiresome road; Aching head and tortur'd breast, Added to thy galling load. Patient sufferer, dry thy tears, All thy sorrows now are o'er; Foes without, or inward fears, Never can afflict thee more. Faithful soldier of the cross, All thy conflicts now are done; Earthly triumphs are but loss, Thine is an immortal one. Palms of vict'ry thou shall bear, And a crown of fadeless light Will be given thee to wear, And a robe of spotless white. Thou shalt join the countless throng, Which, through tribulation, came: And repeat the angels' song-- "Worthy! worthy is His name Who hath conquered death and hell; Captive led captivity; Always doing, all things well; Giving us the victory!" MY SCHOOLBOY DAYS. The following poem was read at the forty-fifth anniversary of the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. James Swaney, on January 11th, 1883. Mr. and Mrs. Swaney's residence is not far from the site of the school house where Mr. Scott first went to school. Dear friends and neighbors, one and all, I'm pleased to meet you here; 'Tis fit that we should make this call Thus early in the year. That time flies rapidly along, And hurries us away, Has been the theme of many a song, And it is mine to-day. I stand where in my childhood's days, I often stood before, But nothing meets my altered gaze As in the days of yore. The trees I climbed in youthful glee, Or slept beneath their shade. Have disappeared--no trace I see Of them upon the glade. The school house, too, which stood near by, Has long since ceased to be; To find its site I often try, No trace of it I see. The road I traveled to and fro, With nimble feet and spry, I cannot find, but well I know It must have been hard by. The pond where skating once I fell Upon the ice so hard-- I lost my senses for a spell, And hence became a bard-- Is dry land now where grain or grass Is growing year by year; I see the spot, as oft I pass, No ice nor pond is there. A barn is standing on the spot Where once the school house stood; A dwelling on the playground lot, A cornfield in the wood. I mourn not for these altered scenes, Although it seems so strange That all are changed; I know it means That everything must change. I mourn the loss of early friends, My schoolboy friends so dear; I count upon my fingers' ends The few remaining here. In early youth some found their graves, With friends and kindred by; While some beneath the ocean's waves In dreamless slumbers lie; While many more, in distant lands, No friends nor kindred near, Are laid to rest by strangers' hands, Without one friendly tear. A few survive, both far and near, But O! how changed are they! Like the small band assembled here, Enfeebled, old, and gray. Strange feelings rise within my soul, My eyes o'erflow with tears, As backward I attempt to roll The flood of by-gone years. This honored pair we come to greet, For five-and-forty years Through winter's cold and summer's heat, Have worn the nuptial gears. The heat and burden of the day They honestly have borne, Until their heads are growing gray, Their limbs with toil are worn. In all the ups and downs of life-- Of which they've had their share-- They never knew domestic strife, Or, if at all, 'twas rare. They now seem standing on the verge Of that unfathomed sea, Just waiting for the final surge That opes eternity. When comes that surge, or soon or late, May they in peace depart; And meet within the shining gate, No more to grieve or part. THE DONATION VISIT. The following poem was read upon the occasion of a donation visit by the Head of Christiana congregation to their pastor, Rev. James I. Vallandigham. Fair ladies dear, and gentlemen. I thought not to be here to-day: But I'm a slave, and therefore, when My muse commands, I must obey. I've struggled hard against her power, And dashed her yoke in scorn away, And then returned, within an hour, And meekly bowed and owned her sway. I know the ground on which I stand And tremble like an aspen when I see around, on every hand, Such learned and such gifted men, Who really have been to college, And know the Latin and the Greek; And are so charged with general knowledge That it requires no little cheek In an obscure and modest bard To meet a galaxy so bright,-- Indeed, I find it rather hard To face the music here to-night. Dear friends, we've met, as it is meet That we should meet at such a time, Each other and our host to greet,-- Or guest, 'tis all the same in rhyme. No king nor queen do I revere; The majesty of God I own. An honest man, though poor, is peer To him that sits upon a throne. I long to see the coming day When wicked wars and strifes shall cease, And ignorance and crime give way Before the march of truth and peace. That welcome day is drawing near; I sometimes think I see its dawn; The trampling of the hosts I hear, By science, truth and love led on. I see the murderous cannon fused, With its death-dealing shot and shell, For making railway carwheels used, Or civil railway tracks as well. And small arms, too, will then be wrought Into machines for cutting wheat; While those who used them will be taught To labor for their bread and meat. God speed the day,--'tis bound to come, But not as comes the lightning's stroke; But slowly, as the acorn dumb Expands into the giant oak. Now, reverend sir, I turn to you, To say what all your flock well know; You, as a pastor kind and true, Have led the way we ought to go. You have rejoiced in all our joys, And sympathised with us in trouble; You have baptized our girls and boys-- And often you have made them double. With all your gifts and talents rare, You meekly take the servants place, And guard the sheep with jealous care And hold the lambs in your embrace. In all the ups and downs of life We've found in you a constant friend; You've counselled peace, discouraged strife, And taught us all our ways to mend. For eight-and-twenty years you've stood A watchman on the outer wall; Repressing evil, aiding good, And kindly watching over all. Though age may enervate your frame And dim the lustre of your eye, No lapse of time can soil your name, For names like yours can never die. LINES ON THE DEATH OF MISS MARY HAYES. Another star has left the sky, Another flower has ceased to bloom; The fairest are the first to die, The best go earliest to the tomb. That radiant star, whose cheering ray, Adorn'd her quiet, rural home, Went down, in darkness, at mid-day. And left that quiet home in gloom. That lovely flower, admired so much, In all its loveliness, was lost, It withered at the fatal touch Of death's untimely, killing frost. The mourners go about the street, While children tell their tale of woe To every passer-by they meet, In faltering accents, faint and low. "Dear Mary Hayes is dead," they say, While tears roll down their cheeks like rain, "Her eyes are closed, she's cold as clay," And then their tears gush out again. And stalwart men are dumb with grief, And sorrow pales the sternest cheek, While gentler women find relief, In tears--more eloquent than speech. Surely there is some fairer land, Where friends who love each other here Can dwell, united heart and hand, Nor death nor separation fear. Dear sister, dry thy flowing tears; Fond father, raise thy drooping head; Kind brothers, banish all your fears; Your Mary sleeps--she is not dead, The care-worn casket rests in dust, The fadeless jewel wings its flight To that fair land, we humbly trust, To shine with ever glowing light. For, on that ever-vernal shore, When death's appalling stream is cross'd, Your star will shine forevermore, Your flower will bloom, untouch'd by frost. LINES ON THE DEATH OF MISS ELEANORA HENDERSON. She is not dead, but sleepeth. --Luke 8:52. She is not dead, she's sleeping The dreamless sleep and drear; Her friends are gathered weeping Round her untimely bier. She is not dead, her spirit, Too pure to dwell with clay, Has gone up to inherit The realms of endless day. She is not dead, she's singing With angel bands on high; On golden harp she's singing God's praises in the sky. She is not dead, O mother, Your loss you will deplore; Kind sisters and fond brother, Your Nora is no more! No more, as we have seen her, The light and life of home, Of christian-like demeanor, Which ever brightly shone: Of youth the guide and teacher, Of age the stay and hope-- To all a faithful preacher, To whom we all looked up. She is not dead, she's sleeping, Her loving Saviour said; Then friends repress your weeping, God's will must be obeyed. She is not dead, she's shining In robes of spotless white; Why then are we repining? God's ways are always right. She is not dead--O never Will sorrow cross her track; She's passed Death's darksome river, And who would have her back? Back from the joys of heaven! Back from that world of bliss! Call back the pure, forgiven, To such a world as this? A world of grief and anguish-- A world of sin and strife-- In which the righteous languish, And wickedness is rife, She is not dead, she's shouting, Borne on triumphant wing, "O grave, where is thy vict'ry, O Death, where is thy sting?" LINES ON THE DEATH OF MRS. BURNITE WHO DIED FEBRUARY 2, 1878. Thou, my friend, in dust art sleeping, Closed thine eyes to all below; Round thy grave kind friends are weeping, Ling'ring, loath to let thee go. Husband fond and children dear, Crushed and stricken by the blow, Banish ev'ry anxious fear, While we lay the lov'd one low. For the angel's trump shall sound, And the bands of death will break; Then the pris'ner in this mound Shall to endless life awake. Then the spirit which is gone Will return and claim this dust, And this "mortal will put on Immortality," we trust. When that glorious day shall dawn, And the bridegroom shall descend With a gorgeous angel throng, The glad nuptials to attend, Oh, the rapture of that meeting! We of earth can never know Till we mingle in the greeting, Of our lov'd, lost long ago. Let me like the righteous die, Let my last end be like his; When I close, on earth, my eye, Let me wake in realms of bliss. STANZAS Read at the celebration of the seventy-second anniversary of the birthday of Joseph Steele, Dec. 13, 1884. Dear friends and neighbors, one and all, I'm pleased to meet you here to-day; 'Tis nice for neighbors thus to call, In such a social way. We meet to celebrate a day, Which people seldom see; Time flies so rapidly away 'Tis like a dream to me; Since I, a lad with flaxen hair First met our friend, so gray; We both were free from thought and care, But full of hope and play. Well Joseph Steele, we may be glad That we are here to-day, Although it makes me somewhat sad To think of friends away. Of all our schoolboy friends but few Alas! can now be found, Not many but myself and you Are still above the ground. I count upon my fingers' ends About the half, I know. Of all acquaintances and friends With whom we used to go; To _Humphreys_ and _Montgomery_ To _Cochran_ and to _Dance_, And some, who slip my memory, That used to make us prance, Whene'er we missed a lesson Or placed a crooked pin Just where some one would press on Enough to drive it in. O, it was fun alive, I vow, To see that fellow bounce And hear him howl and make a row And threaten he would trounce The boy that did the mischief, But that boy was seldom found, And so, he had to bear his grief And nurse the unseen wound; But time and rhyme can never tell The half our funny pranks, And that we ever learned to spell, We ought to render thanks. Poor Dance! I always pitied him For he was just from college, And never having learned to swim, Was drowned with all his knowledge. Of Cochran, I but little knew, He was a stranger here, 'Twas always said he would get blue, And acted very queer. Montgomery I knew right well, He was rather kind than cross, He taught the willing how to spell, And always would be boss. He wrote a very pretty hand And could command a school: His appetite got the command, And that he could not rule. One day he took a heavy slug Of something rather hot; He took that something from a jug, And shortly he was not. Who "took" him, though, I never can Nor need I ever say; But when the Lord doth take a man, 'Tis seldom done that way. Poor Humphreys was a sort of crank (Folks said his learning made him mad,) But this I know, he always drank, And that will make the best man, bad. Excuse this rather long digression, My pen has carried me astray; These schoolboy days make an impression From which 'tis hard to get away. Then let me turn, and return too, For I have wandered from my text,-- Well, Mr. Steele, how do you do? I hope you are not vexed. 'Tis pleasant in our riper years To have our children come And bring their children--little dears, They make it seem like home. An old man's children are his crown, And you may well be proud When from your throne you just look down Upon this hopeful crowd. But now my neighbors dear, adieu; "The best of friends must part;" I'll often kindly think of you, And treasure each one in my heart; And if we never meet again On this poor frozen clod, O! may we meet to part no more Around the throne of God. TO MARY. The following lines suggested by the beautiful story of the sisters, Martha and Mary of Bethany, (Luke, 10:38-42,) were addressed to Miss Mary M., of Wilmington, Del. In Bethany there dwelt a maid, And she was young and very fair; 'Twas at her house that Jesus stayed, And loved to stay, when he was there. For Mary seated at his feet, In rapture hung upon His word: His language flow'd in accent sweet, Such language mortal never heard. Her sister, cross in looks and word, (The cares of life have this effect,) Came and accused her, to her Lord, Of idleness and of neglect. "Martha, Martha," He kindly said, Forego thy troubles and thy care-- One needful thing, a crust of bread, Is all I ask with thee to share. "Mary hath chosen that good part, To hear my word and do my will, Which shall not from her trusting heart Be taken." It shall flourish still. Dear Mary, in this picture see Thy own, drawn by a master hand; Name, face and character agree Drawn by Saint Luke, an artist grand. IMPROMPTU TO MRS. ANNA C. BAKER. Composed in the top of a cherry tree when the wind was blowing a gale. In fishing for men, I should judge from your looks You've always had biters enough at your hooks. And whenever you dipp'd your net in the tide You had little need to spread it out wide. To encircle so many you wish'd for no more And like the old fishers sat down on the shore, Casting all the worthless and bad ones away-- Preserving the good and the true to this day. May the promising youth, I saw by your side All blooming and beaming, your hope and your pride, Be a pillar of state, so strong and so tall As to make you rejoice, that you made such a haul. LAMENT FOR THE YEAR 1887. Read before the Jackson Hall Debating Society. My tale to-night is full of woe, I would that it were one of gladness; I would not thrill your hearts, you know, With notes of grief or sadness. My friend and yours is near his end, His pulse is beating faint and low, 'Tis sad to lose so good a friend, His time has come and he must go. His life is ebbing fast away, His mortal race is almost run, He cannot live another day, Nor see another rising sun. While watching round his dying bed, The tears we shed are tears of sorrow, We'll close his eyes for he'll be dead, And carried hence before to-morrow. His frame, so fragile now and weak, Was late the seat of vital power, But now, alas! he cannot speak, He's growing weaker every hour. Old seventy-seven, your friend and mine, Has done his part by you and me, Then friends, let us unite and twine, A bright wreath to his memory. His reign has been a checker'd reign, While some have suffered loss and wrong, We have no reason to complain, So come and join me in my song. He found me in the lowly vale, In poverty with robust health, And sweet contentment in the scale, Outweighing fame and pomp and wealth. Destroying war beneath his reign, Has drench'd the earth with blood and tears, Which ever flow, but flow in vain, As they have done through countless years. When will the reign of peace begin? When will the flood of human woe, That flows from folly, pride, and sin, Subside, and ever cease to flow? God speed the time when war's alarms, Will never more convulse the earth, And love and peace restore the charms Which dwelt in Eden at its birth. Old seventy-seven, again adieu, We'll ne'er again each other see. I've been a constant friend to you, As you have always been to me. "Step down and out" you've had your day, Your young successor's at the gate, Let him be crowned without delay, The royal stranger seventy-eight. VERSES Presented to my daughter with a watch and a locket with a picture of myself. Receive, my child, this gift of love, And wear it ever near thy heart, A pledge of union may it prove, Which time nor distance ne'er can part. I've watched thy infant sleep, and prest My eager lips against thy brow, And lingered near thy couch, and blest, Thy tender form with many a vow. But O! the rapture of that hour, None but a parent's heart can know When first thy intellectual power Began the germ of life to show. I've marked the progress of thy mind, And felt a thrill of joy and pride, To see thy youthful steps inclined To wisdom's ways and virtue's side. And when this fiery restless soul, Has chafed the thread of life away And reached, or high or low, the goal, And fought and won or lost the day,-- Then cherish this bright gift, my dear, And on those features kindly gaze, And bathe them with a filial tear, When I'm beyond all blame or praise. LINES ON THE DEATH OF A YOUNG LADY OF WILMINGTON. Chill frost will nip the fairest flower; The sweetest dream is soonest pass'd; The brightest morning in an hour, May be with storm clouds overcast. So Josephine in early bloom, Was blighted by death's cruel blast, While weeping round her early tomb, We joy to know, she is not lost. Fond mother, dry that tearful tide, Your child will not return, you know: She's waiting on the other side And where she is, you too may go. YOUTHFUL REMINISCENCES. Their schoolboy days have form'd a theme, For nearly all the bards I know, But mine are like a fading dream Which happen'd three score years ago. My memory is not the best, While some things I would fain forget Come like an uninvited guest, And often cause me much regret. I see the ghosts of murdered hours, As they flit past in countless throngs, They taunt me with their meager powers, And ridicule my senseless songs. 'Tis useless now to speculate, Or grieve o'er that which might have been, My failures though they have been great, Are not the greatest I have seen. In school I was a quiet child, And gave my teachers little fash, But as I grew I grew more wild, And hasty as the lightning's flash. Of study I was never fond, My school books gave me no delight, I patronized the nearest pond, To fish or swim by day or night. And when the frosts of winter came, And bound the streams in fetters tight, It gave me pleasure all the same To skate upon their bosom bright. I was athletic in my way And on my muscle went it strong, And stood to fight or ran to play, Regardless of the right or wrong. In wrestling I did much excel And lov'd to douse a boasting fop, Nor cared I how or where we fell Provided I fell on the top. I loved my friends with all my might, My foes I hated just as strong, My friends were always in the right, My foes forever in the wrong. A sportsman early I became, A sort of second Daniel Boone, And bagg'd my share of ev'ry game From cony, up or down, to coon. No tawny chieftain's swarthy son, Was ever fonder of the chase, Than I was of my trusty gun, Although I had a paler face. I shot the squirrel near his den. The silly rabbit near her lair; And captured ev'ry now and then, A pheasant in my cunning snare. And many things I think of here, Which time forbids me now to say, That happen'd in my wild career, To me, since that eventful day When my fond mother wash'd my face, And combed my flaxen hair, And started me in learning's race, And breath'd to heav'n a silent prayer, That I might grow to man's estate, And cultivate my opening mind; And not be rich or wise or great, But gentle, true and good and kind. My mother's face, I see it yet, That thoughtful face, with eyes of blue, I trust I never shall forget Her words of counsel, sage and true. She left me, when she pass'd away, More than a royal legacy, I would not for a monarch's sway, Exchange the things she gave to me. She gave me naught of sordid wealth, But that which wealth can never be, Her iron frame and robust health, Are more than diadems to me. She left to me the azure sky, With all its countless orbs of light, Which wonder-strike the thoughtful eye, And beautify the dome of night. The deep blue sea from shore to shore, The boundless rays of solar light, The lightnings flash, the thunders roar-- I hold them all in my own right. And lastly that there be no lack, Of any good thing by her given, She left to me the shining track, Which led her footsteps up to heaven. STANZAS TO A LITTLE GIRL ON HER BIRTHDAY. My dear, the bard his greeting sends, And wishes you and all your friends, A happy birthday meeting. Let social pleasures crown the day, But while you chase dull care away, Remember time is fleeting. Then learn the lesson of this day, Another year has pass'd away, Beyond our reach forever. And as the fleeting moments glide, They bear us on their noiseless tide, Like straws upon the river, Into that vast, unfathomed sea, Marked on the map "eternity," With neither bound nor shore. There may we find some blissful isle Where basking in our Saviour's smile, We'll meet to part no more. TO MISS MARY BAIN. My cousin fair, dear Mary B, Excuse my long neglect I pray, And pardon too, the homely strain, In which I sing this rustic lay. My muse and I are sorted ill, I'm in my yellow leaf and sere; While she is young and ardent still And urges me to persevere. She reads to me the roll of fame, And presses me to join the throng, That surge and struggle for a name, Among the gifted sons of song. Of that vain stuff the world calls fame I've had I think my ample share. At best 'tis but a sounding name An idle puff of empty air. For more than once I've been the choice Of freemen to enact their laws, And patriots cheered me when my voice, I raised to vindicate their cause. And more than this I've brought to pass, For I have made a lot of ground Produce the second blade of grass, Where formerly but one was found. But now I love the calm retreat, Away from tumult, noise and strife, And in the works of nature sweet I learn her laws, the laws of life. The monuments which I erect Will hand my name for ages down, While tombs of kings will meet neglect, Or worse, be greeted with a frown. My trees will bloom and bear their fruit, My carp-pond glitter in the sun; My cherished grape-vines too, though mute, Will tell the world what I have done. Now lest you think that I am vain, And that my trumpeter is dead, I'll drop this graceless, boasting strain, And sing of you, dear Coz, instead. Of all my Cousins, old or new, I love the prairie chicken best, I see the rising sun in you,-- Although you're rising in the west. The picture you are working on, I'd almost give my eyes to see, I know it is a striking one, For it is of the "deep blue sea." But how you ever took the notion To paint a picture of the sea Before you ever saw the ocean, Is something that surprises me. I'm glad you have the skill to paint, And pluck to labor and to wait; And too much sense to pine and faint, Because the world don't call you great. True greatness is achieved by toil, And labor for the public good, 'Tis labor breaks the barren soil, And makes it yield our daily food. Then cultivate your talents rare, And study nature's lovely face, And copy every tint with care; Your work will then have life and grace. When fame and fortune you attain, And more than royal sway is sure, 'Twill be the majesty of brain, A majesty that must endure, Till thrones of kings and queens shall tumble, And monuments of stone and brass, Shall into shapeless ruin crumble, And blow away like withered grass. The world moves on with quickening pace, And those who falter fall behind, Then enter for the mental race, Where mind is pitted against mind. While we are cousins in the flesh, In mind I think we're nearer still, Your genius leads you to the brush, But mine inclines me to the quill. And now, my cousin fair, adieu, My promise I have somehow kept, That I would write a line for you, I hope you will these lines accept. STANZAS Addressed to Mr. and Mrs. T. Jefferson Scott, upon the occasion of the 24th anniversary of their wedding, March 2nd, 1882. Kind gentlemen and ladies fair, I have a word or two to say, If you have got the time to spare, Sit down, and hear my humble lay. No tiresome homily, I bring, To chill your joys and make you sad, I'd rather hear you laugh or sing, Than see you solemn, dull or mad, A bow that's always bent, they say, Will lose its force and wonted spring, And Jack's all work and never play, Makes him a dull and stupid thing. Man's greatest lesson is mankind, A problem difficult to solve, I've turned it over in my mind, And reached, at last, this sage resolve: That when I know myself right well, I have a key to all the race, Thoughts, purposes and aims that tell On me, are but a common case. There is a time to laugh and sing, A time to mourn and grieve as well; Then let your song and laughter ring, This is no time on griefs to dwell. We've met to greet our friend, T.J., And tender our congratulations, Without forgetting Phebe A., In our most heartfelt salutations. For four-and-twenty changeful years They've worn the bright hymenial bands, And shared each other's hopes and fears, And each held up the other's hands. He, like a stately, giant oak, Has spread his branches wide and high, Unscathed by lightning's fatal stroke, Or tempest raving through the sky. She, like a tender, trusting vine, Twines round and through and o'er the tree; Her modesty and worth combine, To hide what roughness there might be, Beneath this cool, refreshing shade, The wretched quite forget their woes, The hungry find the needed bread, The weary wanderer, his repose. Long live this honored, worthy pair! May fortune come at their command! And may their sons and daughter fair, Grow up to grace their native land! And when their earthly toils are o'er, And they repose beneath the sod, Theirs be a home on that bright shore, Illumined by the smile of God. BIRTHDAY VERSES. Written for a little girl on her ninth birthday. In the morning of life's day, All before is bright and gay, All behind is like a dream, Or the morn's uncertain beam, Falling on a misty stream. In the morning of thy youth, Learn this sober, solemn truth; Life is passing like a stream, Or a meteor's sudden gleam; Like the bright aurora's blaze, Disappearing while we gaze; Soon the child becomes a maid, In the pride of youth arrayed, And her mind and form expand To proportions great and grand; Then she changes to a wife, Battling with the ills of life; Thus we come and thus we go, And our cups with joy and woe, Oft are made to overflow. Each returning bright birthday, Like the mile-stones by the way, Will remind you as you go-- Though at first they pass so slow That behind there is one more And, of course, one less before; Watch the moments as they fly, With a never tiring eye-- Since you cannot stop their flow, O! improve them as they go. ROLL CALL. Written on the death of William Sutton, a member of the order of Good Templars. Call the roll! Call the roll of our band, Let each to his name answer clear, There's danger abroad, there's death in the land, Call the roll, see if each one is here. The roll call is through, one answers not, Brother Sutton, so prompt heretofore, Has answered another roll call; the spot Which knew him shall know him no more. He's at rest by the beautiful river, Which flows by the evergreen shore, Where the verdure of spring lasts forever, And sickness and death are no more. O alas! that the righteous should die, While sinners so greatly abound, In the world that's to come we'll know why, The latter incumber the ground. This mystery we'll then comprehend, And all will be plain to our sight, Then dry up the tears which flow for our friend, In full faith that God doeth right. IN MEMORIAM RENSELLAER BIDDLE. A noble heart is sleeping here, Beneath this lowly mound; With reverence let us draw near, For this is holy ground. The mortal frame that rests below This consecrated sward, Was late with heavenly hope aglow, A temple of the Lord. His charity was like a flood, It seemed to have no bound, But reached the evil and the good, Wherever want was found. The poor and needy sought his door, The wretched and distressed, He blessed them from his ample store, With shelter, food and rest. Giving his substance to the poor, He lent it to the Lord; While each returning harvest brought Him back a rich reward. Thus passed his useful life away, Dispensing good to all, Till on the evening of his day, He heard his Master call. "Brave soldier of the cross, well done, You've fought a noble fight; Come up, and claim the victor's crown, And wear it as your right." "For all your works of christian love And heaven-born charity, Are registered in Heaven above As so much done to Me." STANZAS WRITTEN ON THE FLY LEAF OF A CHILD'S BIBLE. Dear Mollie, in thy early days, While treading childhood's dreamy maze, Peruse this book with care: Peruse it by the rising sun; Peruse it when the day is done, Peruse it oft with prayer. Search it for counsel in thy youth, For every page is bright with truth And wisdom from on high. Consult it in thy riper years, When foes without and inward fears Thy utmost powers defy. And when life's sands are well nigh run And all thy work on earth is done, In patience wait and trust, That He whose promises are sure Will number you among the pure, The righteous and the just. CHRISTMAS GREETING, 1877. Read before the Jackson Hall Debating Society. The rolling seasons come and go, As ebbs the tide again to flow, And Christmas which seemed far away A year ago, is near to-day. And day and night in quick succession, Are passing by like a procession. While we like straws upon a stream, Are drifting faster than we deem, To that unknown, that untried shore, Where days and nights will be no more, And where time's surging tide will be, Absorbed in vast eternity. Where then shall we poor mortals go? No man can tell, we only know We are but strangers in the land. Our fathers all have gone before, And shortly we shall be no more. This hall where we so often meet Will soon be trod by other's feet, And where our voices now resound, Will other speakers soon be found. And thus like wave pursuing wave, Between the cradle and the grave The human tide is prone to run, The sire succeeded by the son. May we so spend life's fleeting day, That when it shall have passed away, We all may meet on that blessed shore, Where friends shall meet to part no more. ANNIVERSARY POEM. Read at the anniversary of the seventieth birthday of Mrs. Ann Peterson. No costly gifts have I to bring, To grace your festive board, This humble song, I've brought to sing, Is all I can afford. Then let my humble rhyme be heard In silence, if you please, You'll find it true in ev'ry word, It flows along with ease. We've met in honor of our friend Who seventy years ago, Came to this earth some years to spend, How many none can know. The world is using her so well, I hope she'll tarry long, And ten years hence I hope to tell, "I have another song." THE PETERSON GENEALOGICAL TREE. I'll sing you a song of a wonderful tree, Whose beauty and strength are a marvel to me; Its cloud piercing branches ascend to the sky, While its deep rooted trunk may the tempest defy, Like the tree which the great king of Babylon saw, Which fill'd him with wonder, amazement and awe. This vision the wise men all failed to expound, Till Daniel the Hebrew, its true meaning found. What the king saw in vision, we lit'rally see, In the Peterson genealogical tree; It was feeble at first, and slowly it grew; Its roots being small and its branches but few. The whirlwinds and tempests in fury raved round it, And the rains fell in floods, as if they would drown it. Though slow in its growth it was steady and sure, And like plants of slow growth 'tis bound to endure. While the seasons roll round in their wanted succession, And the ages move on in an endless procession, While the sun in its glory reigns over the day, And the moon rules the night with her gentler sway, While the planets their courses pursue in the sky, And far distant stars light their torches on high, May this family tree grow taller and stronger And its branches increase growing longer and longer. May every branch of this vigorous tree, Increase and spread wider from mountain to sea, And under its shade may the poor and distressed Find shelter and comfort and kindness and rest, And when the great harvest we read of shall come When the angels shall gather and carry it home May this tree root and branch, trunk and fruit all be found, Transplanted from earth into holier ground, Where storms never rise and where frosts never blight, Where day ever shines unsucceeded by night, Where sickness and sorrow and death are no more, And friends never part. On that beautiful shore, May we hope that the friends who have met round this board, And greeted each other in social accord, May each meet the others to part never more. LINES Written on the death of Jane Flounders, a pupil of Cherry Hill public school, and read at her funeral. The mysteries of life and death, Lie hidden from all human ken, We know it is the vital breath Of God, that makes us living men. We also know, _that_ breath withdrawn, And man becomes a lifeless clod, The soul immortal having gone Into the presence of its God. Here knowledge fails and faith appears, And bids us dry the scalding tear, And banish all our anxious fears, Which cluster round the loved ones here. The deep, dark, cold, remorseless grave Has closed o'er lovely Jennie's face, No art, nor skill, nor prayers could save Her from its terrible embrace. Home now is dark and desolate, And friends and schoolmates are in tears, While strangers wonder at the fate, Which crushed her in her tender years. Death never won a brighter prize, Nor friends a richer treasure lost, Another star has left our skies, But heaven is richer at our cost. We mourn but not in hopeless grief, In tears we kiss the chast'ning rod, This sweet reflection brings relief, That all is good that comes from God. Through and beyond this scene of gloom, Faith points the mourner's downcast eyes, While from the portals of the tomb, They see their lost loved one arise, In blooming immortality; As she comes forth they hear her sing O! grave, where is thy victory! O! monster death where is thy sting! WHAT IS MATTER? DEDICATED TO HIS FRIEND GEORGE JOHNSTON. How are you, George, my rhyming brother? We should be kinder to each other, For we are kindred souls at least; I don't mean kindred, like the beast,-- Mere blood and bones and flesh and matter,-- But what this last is makes no matter. Philosophers have tried to teach it, But all their learning cannot reach it; 'Tis matter still, "that's what's the matter" With all their philosophic chatter, And Latin, Greek, and Hebrew clatter, Crucibles, retorts, and receivers, Wedges, inclined planes, and levers, Screws, blow pipes, electricity and light, And fifty other notions, quite Too much to either read or write. Just ask the wisest, What is matter? And notice how he will bespatter The subject, in his vain endeavor, With deep philosophy so clever, To prove you what you knew before, That matter's matter, and no more. Well, this much then, we know at least, That matter's substance, and the beast And bird and fish and creeping thing That moves on foot, with fin or wing, Is matter, just like you and me. Are they our kindred? Must it be That all the fools in all creation, And knaves and thieves of every station In life, can call me their relation? But that's not all--the horse I ride, The ox I yoke, the dog I chide, The flesh and fish and fowl we feed on Are kindred, too; is that agreed on? Then kindred blood I quite disown, Though it descended from a throne, For it connects us down, also, With everything that's mean and low-- Insects and reptiles, foul and clean, And men a thousand times more mean. Let's hear no more of noble blood, For noble brains, or actions good, Are only marks of true nobility. The kindred which I claim with you, Connects us with the just and true, And great in purpose, heart and soul, And makes us parts of that great whole Whose bonds of all embracing love A golden chain will ever prove To bind us to the good above. Then strive to elevate mankind By operating on the mind; The empire of good will extend, A helping hand in trouble lend, Go to thy brother in distress, One kindly word may make it less, A single word, when fitly spoken, May heal a heart with sorrow broken, A smile may overcome your foe, And make his heart with friendship glow, A frown might turn his heart to steel. And all its tendencies congeal, Be it our constant aim to cure The woes our fellow men endure, Teach them to act toward each other As they would act toward a brother. Thus may our circle wider grow, The golden chain still brighter glow; And may our kindred souls, in love United live, here and above, With all the good and wise and pure, While endless ages shall endure. ANNIVERSARY HYMN. Written for the anniversary of the Jackson Sabbath School, Aug. 23rd, 1870. The ever rolling flood of years, Is bearing us, our hopes and fears, With all we are or crave, Into that fathomless abyss-- A world of endless woe or bliss, Beyond the darksome grave. One year of priceless time has passed, Since we in Sabbath school were class'd, To read and sing and pray; To hear the counsels of the good; Have we improved them as we should? How stands the case to-day? How have we used this fleeting year? Have we grown wiser? O, I fear, And tremble to reflect, How sadly it has gone to loss, How I have shunn'd my daily cross, Some idol to erect. To gain some trifling, selfish end, It may be I have wronged a friend, And turned his love to hate; How many idle words I've said; How many broken vows I've made; How shunn'd the narrow gate! O Lord! forgive our wanderings wide, Our oft departures from thy side, And keep us in thy fold; Be thou our Shepherd and our all; Protect these lambs, lest any fall, And perish in the cold. On this our Anniversary, Help us to put our trust in Thee, And lean upon Thy arm; Direct us through the coming year; Protect us, for the wolf is near, And shield us from all harm. Our Superintendent superintend; On him Thy special blessings send, And guide him in the way; Enrich our Treasurer with Thy grace, So that he may adorn the place, He fills so well to-day. Write on our Secretary's heart Thy perfect law; and O, impart, To our Librarian dear, The volume of thy perfect love Which cometh only from above, And casteth out all fear. In pastures green, O lead us still! And help us all to do thy will, And all our wants supply; Help us in every grace to grow, And when we quit thy fold below, Receive us all on high. Then, by life's river broad and bright, Our blissful day will have no night; On that immortal plain May all the Jackson scholars meet, And all their loving teachers greet, And never part again. THE INTELLECTUAL TELEGRAPH. ADDRESSED TO MISS C. CASHO. Dear friend! O, how my blood warms at that word, And thrills and courses through my every vein; My inmost soul, with deep emotion stirr'd-- Friend! Friend! repeats it o'er and o'er again. I'll make a song of that sweet word, and sing It oft, to cheer me in my lonely hours, Till list'ning hills, and dells, and woodlands ring, And echo answers, Friend! with all her powers. 'Tis truly strange, and strangely true; I doubt If any can explain, though all have seen, How kindred spirits find each other out, Though deserts vast or oceans lie between. Some golden sympathetic cords unseen, Unite their souls as if with bands of steel, So finely strung, so sensitively keen, The slightest touch all in the circle feel. Their pulses distance electricity, And leave the struggling solar rays behind, The slightest throb pervades immensity, And instant reaches the remotest mind. 'Tis an inspiring, glorious thought to me, Which raises me above this earthly clod, To think the cords which bind our souls may be Connected some way with the throne of God. I sometimes think my wild and strange desires, And longings after something yet unknown, Are currents passing on those hidden wires To lead me on and upward to that throne. These visions often do I entertain, And, if they are but visions, and the birth Of fancy, still they are not all in vain; They lift the soul above the things of earth. They teach her how to use her wings though weak, And all unequal to the upward flight-- The eaglet flaps upon the mountain peak, Then cleaves the heavens beyond our utmost sight. LINES ON AN INDIAN ARROW-HEAD. Rude relic of a lost and savage race! Memento of a people proud and cold! Sole lasting monument to mark the place Where the red tide of Indian valor rolled. Cold is the hand that fashion'd thee, rude dart! Cold the strong arm that drew the elastic bow! And cold the dust of the heroic heart, Whence, cleft by thee, the crimson tide did flow. Unnumbered years have o'er their ashes flown; Their unrecovered names and deeds are gone; All that remains is this rude pointed stone, To tell of nations mighty as our own. Such is earth's pregnant lesson: through all time Kingdom succeeds to kingdom--empires fall; From out their ashes, others rise and climb, Then flash through radiant greatness, to their fall. ACROSTIC TO MISS ANNIE ELIZA M'NAMEE. My much respected, fair young friend In youth's bright sunshine glowing: Some friendly token I would send, Some trifle, worth your knowing. A lovely bird; the garden's pride; Nurs'd with the utmost care, No flow'r, in all the gardens wide; Incited hopes so rare: Each passing day develops more Each beauty, than the day before. Lovely in form, in features mild; In thy deportment pure: Zealous for right, e'en from a child, A friend, both true and sure. May thy maturer years be bright, Cloudless and fair thy skies; No storms to fright, nor frosts to blight, And cause thy fears to rise. May thy last days, in peace go past, Each being better than the last; Eternally thy joys grow brighter-- So prays D. Scott the humble writer. MINUTES OF THE JACKSON HALL DEBATING SOCIETY, DEC. 5, 1877. My muse inspire me, while I tell The weighty matters that befell On Monday night at Jackson Hall December fifth. I'll tell it all, Day and year I'll tell you even, 'Twas eighteen hundred seventy-seven. The Jacksonites were out in force, No common thing was up of course, But something rare and rich and great, 'Twas nothing short of a debate; What was the question? Let me see, Yes; "Can Christians consistently Engage in war against a brother And at the same time love each other?" But first and foremost let me say, My muse has taken me astray, So I'll return to the beginning Digression is my common sinning For which your pardon I implore, If granted, I will sin no more, That is no more till the next time, For when I'm forging out a rhyme, The narrative which I would fix up, I somehow rather oddly mix up. A president must first be got, So they elected James M. Scott, He said he'd serve; (and that was clever,) A little while, but not forever. A paper called a "constitution," Was read and on some person's motion, Was all adopted, at a word, A thing that seemed to me absurd. Then instantly to work they went, And filled the chair of president, And William Henderson they took, They knew their man just like a book. A scribe was wanted next to keep, A record of their doings deep. On looking round they cast the lot, And so it fell on David Scott. A treasurer was next in order When looking up and down the border, For one to hoard the gold and silver, The mantle fell on Joseph Miller. The executive committee Was now to fill and here we see A piece of work I apprehend, May lead to trouble in the end, For while they only wanted five, Yet six they got, as I'm alive, First they installed Peter Jaquett, Then John Creswell, two men well met, James Law, but they were not enough, And so they added William Tuft. One more was wanted that was plain, That one was found in John McKane, But when the five were call'd to meet There were but four came to the seat; There are but four, said one so racy, So they elected William Gracy. Now you perceive this grave committee Which numbers five both wise and witty, Has got into a pretty fix With but five seats and numbers six. The question for the next debate Was then selected, which I'll state If I have only got the gumption To make some word rhyme with resumption, "Should Congress now repeal the act To pay all debts in gold in fact." The speakers now were trotted out Their sides to choose and take a bout Upon the question, which I stated As having been so well debated, Namely, "Can christians go to war," The very devil might abhor To contemplate this proposition Offspring of pride and superstition That brothers by a second birth, Should make a very hell of earth. The war of words waxed loud and long, Each side was right, the other wrong; The speakers eager for the fray, Wished their ten minutes half a day; But time and tide will wait for none, So glibly did the gabble run, That nine o'clock soon spoiled the fun, And all that rising tide of words, Was smothered never to be heard. The fight is o'er, the race is run, And soon we'll know which side has won, But this is not so easy done; Indeed I have a world of pity For the executive committee Who hear in silence all this clatter And then decide upon the matter; To give each speaker justice due, And sift the error from the true, Is not an easy thing to do. To decide what facts have any bearing Upon the question they are hearing, And generally keep in hand The arguments, so strong and grand, And draw from them a just conclusion Without a mixture of confusion; The negative got the decision Unanimous, without division. The speakers then took their position, Upon the doubtful proposition Of the repeal of gold resumption, Upon the plausible presumption, That those who pay must have the money, That laws of Congress, (that seems funny,) Are not above the laws of trade, And therefore cannot be obeyed. Here now my muse, poor worthless jade, Deserted, as I was afraid From the beginning she would do; So I must say good-night to you, And these long rambling minutes close, In just the dullest kind of prose. RETROSPECTION. The phantoms have flown which I cherished; The dreams which delighted have passed; My castles in air have all perished-- I grieved o'er the fall of the last. 'Twas bright, but as frail as a shadow; It passed like a vapor away-- As the mist which hangs over the meadow Dissolves in the sun's burning ray. The joys of my youth are all shattered; My hopes lie in wrecks on the shore; The friends of my childhood are scattered; Their faces I'll see never more. Some are estranged, some have gone under; The battle of life is severe. When I stand by their graves, the wonder, The mystery, seems to be clear: They were vet'rans more noble than I; And placed in the van of the fight, They fell where the hero would die, When he bleeds for truth and the right. The battle of life is proceeding-- The rear will advance to the van; I'll follow where duty is leading, And fall at my post like a man. ACROSTIC TO MISS FLORENCE WILSON M'NAMEE. Maiden, lovely, young and gay, In the bloom of life's young May! Sweet perfumes are in the air; Songs of gladness ev'rywhere! Flowers are springing round thy way, Lovely flowers, bright and gay: Over head and all about Rings one constant joyous shout! Earth is carpeted with green, Nature greets you as her queen. Call the trees and flow'rs your own, Each will bow before your throne. While in youth's enchanting maze, Incline thy steps to wisdom's ways! Lead a quiet peaceful life; Swiftly fly from noise and strife; Own thy Lord before mankind; 'Neath his banner you will find More than all this world can give; Contentment while on earth you live, Nearer to your journey's end, All your aspirations tend: May you end your days in peace; Earthly ties in joy release; Eternally thy joys increase; That this may be thy joyous lot Ever prays thy friend D. Scott. THE BOOK OF BOOKS. Written on a blank leaf of a Bible presented to Martha Cowan, June 1st, 1868. Esteemed young friend This book I send, I know full well thou wilt receive; For thou canst read Its shining creed, And understand it and believe. Oh could I say As much to-day, What joys would thrill this heart of grief,-- I do believe. Oh Lord, receive My prayer--help THOU mine unbelief! This book though small, Is more than all The wealth of India to thee; Oh priceless treasure! Rich beyond measure Are all who build their hopes on thee. THE LESSON OF THE SEASONS. Written for a little girl on her eleventh birthday. Fleeting time is on the wing-- Surely Winter, joyous Spring, Glowing Summer, Autumn sere, Mark the changes of the year. Late the earth was green and fair, Flowers were blooming everywhere; Birds were singing in the trees, While the balmy healthful breeze, Laden with perfume and song, Health and beauty flowed along. But a change comes o'er the scene; Still the fields and trees are green, And the birds keep singing on, Though the early flowers are gone; And the melting noon-day heat, Strips the shoes from little feet, And the coats from little backs; While the paddling bare-foot tracks, In the brooklet which I see, Tell of youthful sports and glee. Hay is rip'ning on the plain, Fields are rich in golden grain, Mowers rattle sharp and shrill, Reapers echo from the hill, Farmer, dark and brown with heat, Push your labor--it is sweet, For the hope, in which you plow, And sow, you are reaping now. Corn, which late, was scarcely seen, Struggling slowly into green, 'Neath the Summer's torrid glow-- How like magic it does grow; Rising to majestic height, Drinks the sunbeams with delight, Sends its rootlets through the soil, Foraging for hidden spoil; Riches more than golden ore, Silent workers they explore: With their apparatus small, Noiselessly they gather all. When their work is done, behold Treasures, richer far than gold, Fill the farmers store-house wide-- And his grateful soul beside. But the scene must change again, Hill and dell and spreading plain, Speak so all can comprehend Summer's reign is at an end. Forests, gorgeously arrayed, (Queens such dresses ne'er displayed) Grace the coronation scene Of the lovely Autumn queen. Birds, with multifarious notes, Ringing from ten thousand throats, Shout aloud that Summer's dead, And Autumn reigns in her stead. Now another change behold-- All the varied tints of gold, Purple, crimson, orange, green-- Every hue and shade between, That bedecked the forest trees, Now lie scattered by the breeze. The birds have flown. Faithless friends Love the most when they're best fed; And when they have gained their ends, Shamefully have turned and fled. Winter claims his wide domain, And begins his frigid reign. Thus the seasons come and go: Spring gives place to Summer's glow; Then comes mellow Autumn's sway, Rip'ning fruits and short'ning day; Gorgeous woods in crimson dress, Surpassing queens in loveliness. Then the Frost King mounts the throne, Claims the empire for his own; Hail and rain and sleet and snow Are his ministers that go On the swift wings of the blast, At his bidding, fierce and fast. Like the seasons of the year, Your young life will change, my dear. Now you're in your early Spring, Hope and joy are on the wing; Flow'rets blooming fresh and gay, Shed their fragrance round your way. Summer's heat is coming fast, And your Spring will soon be past; For, where you are, I have been; All that you see, I have seen. Hopes that beamed around my way, Cast their light on yours to-day. All that you do, I have done; All your childish ways I've run, All your joys and pangs I've had-- All that make you gay or sad; I have sported in the brook, Truant from my work or book; Chased the butterfly and bee, Robb'd the bird's nest on the tree; Damm'd the brook and built my mill; Flew my kite from hill to hill; Sported with my top and ball-- Childish joys, I know them all. Childish sorrows, too I've felt-- Anguish that my heart would melt; Tears have wet my burning cheek, Caused by thoughts I could not speak. Mysteries then confused my brain, Which have since become more plain; Much that then seemed plain and clear Has grown darker year by year; When my artless prayers I said, Skies were near--just over head; And the angels seemed so near, I could whisper in their ear. All that I have learned since then, I would give, if once again, Those bright visions would return. For I find, the more I learn, Further off the skies appear, And the angels come not near. Though in better words I pray, Heaven seems so far away, That I wish, but wish in vain, That the skies were near again; That no other words I knew, But those simple ones and few, That the angels used to hear, When I whispered in their ear. I would barter all the fame, Wealth and learning that I claim, Which a life of toil have cost, For those priceless seasons lost. JOHN A. CALHOUN, MY JOE JOHN. A PARODY. This poem was the outgrowth of a newspaper controversy between John A. Calhoun, a school teacher of this county, and one of the trustees of Jackson Hall, who wrote above the signature of "Turkey," in which Mr. Calhoun said some rather hard things about the school trustees of the county. The poem was written at the request of the trustee, who was the other party engaged in the controversy. John A. Calhoun, my Joe John, "I wonder what you mean?" You're always getting in some scrape and getting off your spleen; Keep cooler, John, and do not fret, however things may go; You'll longer last and have more friends, John A. Calhoun, my Joe. John A. Calhoun, my Joe John, don't pout about your name; It never will disgrace you, John, but you may it defame By doing silly things, John, and things, you ought to know, Will but recoil upon yourself, John A. Calhoun, my Joe. John A. Calhoun, my Joe John, the "Turkey" let alone; My name is very humble, John, but then it is my own. "There's nothing in a name," John, and this you ought to know, That actions are the cards that win, John A. Calhoun, my Joe. John A. Calhoun, my Joe John; your temper must be sour; Your scholars pester you, John; you flog them every hour. But leave the rod behind you, John, when from the school you go, Or else you may get flogged yourself, John A. Calhoun, my Joe. John A. Calhoun, my Joe John, the terror of your name Does not extend beyond the walls which for your own you claim; So drop your haughty airs, John, and lay your wattle low, And people will esteem you more, John A. Calhoun, my Joe. John A. Calhoun, my Joe John, just take a friend's advice; And drop your pedagogic ways (you know they are not nice;) And treat grown people with respect, and they the same will show, And use those "open eyes" of yours, John A. Calhoun, my Joe. John A. Calhoun, my Joe John, the trustees of our schools Are not so smart as you, John, but then they're not all fools; And you have made yourself, John, appear a little low, By your abuse of these poor men, John A. Calhoun, my Joe. John A. Calhoun, my Joe John, now let us part in peace, And may your honest name, John, so mightily increase, That half a score of sons, John, may like their father grow-- But just a little modester, John A. Calhoun, my Joe. EMMA ALICE BROWNE. Emma Alice Browne was born about forty-five years ago, in an unpretentious cottage, which is still standing near the northeast corner of the cross-roads, on the top of Mount Pleasant, or Vinegar Hill, as it was then called, about a mile west of Colora. She is the oldest child of William A. Browne and Hester A. Touchstone, sister of the late James Touchstone. Her father was the youngest son of William Brown, who married Ann Spear, of Chester county, and settled a few yards north of the State Line, in what is now Lewisville, Chester county, Pennsylvania, where his son William was born, early in the present century. He was a stonemason by trade, and though comparatively uneducated, was possessed of a brilliant imagination, and so highly endowed by nature with poetic ability that he frequently amused and delighted his fellow-workmen by singing songs which he extemporized while at his work. There is no doubt that his granddaughter, the subject of this sketch, inherited much of her poetic talent from him; though her family is connected with that of Mrs. Felicia Hemans, the English poetess, whom though in some respects she resembles, we hesitate not to say she greatly surpasses in grandeur of conception and beauty of expression. William Brown was a half-brother of the mother of the editor of this book; consequently Emma and he are cousins. If, therefore, this sketch should seem to exceed or fall short of the truth, the reader must attribute its imperfections to the inability of the writer to do justice to the subject, or to the great, but he hopes pardonable, admiration which he has long entertained for his relative's literary productions. The Brown family are of Scotch-Irish extraction, and trace their lineage away back through a long line of ancestors to the time when the name was spelled Brawn, because of the great muscular development of the rugged old Scotch Highlander who founded it. William Brown's early education was obtained at the common schools of the neighborhood where he was born. He was endowed by nature with a logical mind, a vivid imagination and great practical common sense; and a memory so tenacious as to enable him to repeat a sermon almost, if not quite, verbatim, a year after he had heard it delivered. Early in life he became an exemplary member of the Methodist Church, and was ordained as a Local Preacher in the Methodist Protestant persuasion, by the Rev. John G. Wilson, very early in the history of that denomination, in the old Harmony Church, not far south of Rowlandville. Subsequently he was admitted to the Conference as a traveling minister and sent to southeastern Pennsylvania, where he continued to preach the gospel with much success until his death, which occurred when his daughter Emma was a child about eight years of age. Emma's education began on her father's knee, when she was little if any more than three years old. Before she was four years old she could repeat Anacreon's Ode to a Grasshopper, which her father had learned from a quaint old volume of heathen mythology, and taught his little daughter to repeat, by reciting it aloud to her, as she sat upon his knee. Subsequently, and before she had learned to read, he taught her in the same manner "Byron's Apostrophe to the Ocean," Campbell's "Battle of Hohenlinden," and Byron's "Destruction of Sennacherib," all of which seem to have made a deep impression upon her infantile mind, particularly the latter, in speaking of which she characterizes it as "a poem whose barbaric glitter and splendor captivated my imagination even at that early period, and fired my fancy with wild visions of Oriental magnificence and sublimity, so that I believe all my after life caught color and warmth and form from those early impressions of the gorgeous word-painting of the East." Emma's subsequent education was limited to a few weeks' attendance at a young ladies' seminary at West Chester, Pennsylvania, and a like experience of a few weeks in Wilmington, Delaware, when she was about sixteen years old. But her mind was so full of poesy that there was no room in it for ordinary matters and things, and the duties of a student soon became so irksome that she left both the institutions in disgust. Of her it may be truly said, "she lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came," for she composed verses at four years of age, and published poems at ten. Her first effusions appeared in a local paper at Reading, Pa. Being a born poetess, her success as a writer was assured from the first, and her warmth of expression and richness of imagery, combined with a curious quaintness, the outgrowth of the deep vein of mysticism that pervades her nature, soon attracted the attention of the _literati_ of this country, one of the most distinguished of whom, the late George D. Prentice, did not hesitate to pronounce her the most extraordinary woman of America; "for," said he, "if she can't find a word to suit her purpose, she makes one." While some of her earlier poems may have lacked the artistic finish and depth of meaning of those of mature years, they had a beauty and freshness peculiar to themselves, which captivated the minds and rarely failed to make a deep impression upon the hearts of those who read them. In 1855, the family came to Port Deposit, where they remained about two years, and then went West, Emma having secured a good paying position on the _Missouri Republican_, for which she wrote her only continued story, "Not Wanted." For the last twenty years she has been a regular contributor to the _New York Ledger_. In 1864, Emma came East and was married to Captain J. Lewis Beaver, of Carroll county, Maryland, whose acquaintance she made while he was a wounded invalid in the Naval School Hospital at Annapolis. After her marriage, she continued to write under her maiden name, and has always been known in the literary world as Emma Alice Browne, though all the rest of the family spell the name without the final vowel. Her marriage was not a fortunate one, and the writer in deference to the wishes of his relative, will only say she is now a widow, with three sons, the youngest of whom seems to have inherited much of his mother's poetic talent, and who, though only about ten years of age, has written some very creditable verses, which have been published. Within a year or two, Emma has developed a talent for painting, which seems to have been overshadowed and dwarfed by her poetic faculty, but which now bids fair to make her as famous as an artist as she has long been as a poetess. She resides in Danville, Illinois, and is about publishing a volume of poems, which will be the first book from her pen. The following selections have been made with the view of showing the versatility, rather than the poetic beauty and power of their author. Most, if not all, of those designated as earlier poems were written more than thirty years ago. EARLIER POEMS. MY BROTHER. Oh, brier rose clamber; And cover the chamber-- The chamber, so dreary and lone-- Where with meekly-closed lips, And eyes in eclipse, My brother lies under the stone. Oh, violets, cover, The narrow roof over, Oh, cover the window and door! For never the lights, Through the long days and nights, Make shadows across the floor! The lilies are blooming, The lilies are white, Where his play haunts used to be; And the sweet cherry blossoms Blow over the bosoms Of birds in the old roof tree. When I hear on the hills The shout of the storm, In the valley the roar of the river; I shiver and shake, On the hearth stone warm, As I think of his cold "forever." His white hands are folded, And never again, With the song of the robin or plover, When the Summer has come, With her bees and her grain, Will he play in the meadow clover. Oh, dear little brother, My sweet little brother, In the palace above the sun, Oh, pray the good angels, The glorious evangels, To take me--when life is done. MY FATHER. IN MEMORIAM, 1857. The late George D. Prentice in speaking of this poem used the following language: "To our minds there is nothing in all the In Memoriam of Tennyson more beautiful than the following holy tribute to a dead father from our young correspondent at Pleasant Grove." The poem was first published in the "Louisville Journal" of which Mr. Prentice was the editor. [Transcriber's note: The original text referred to the "Louirville Journal" (clearly an erratum).] My Father! Orphan lips unknown To love's sweet uses sob the word My father! dim with anguish, heard In Heaven between a storm of moan And the white calm that faith hath fixed For solace, far beyond the world, Where, all our starry dreams unfurled, We drink the wine of peace unmixed. Mine! folded in the awful trust That draws the world's face down in awe, Holding her breath, as if she saw God's secret written in the dust-- My father! oh, the dreary years The dreary winds have wailed across Since his path, from the hills of loss, Wound, shining, o'er the golden spheres. What time the Angel at our door Said soft, between our orphan-moan-- Arise! oh, soul! the night is done And day hath bloomed forevermore! I locked my icy hand across My sobbing heart and sadly cried-- I lose thee in the glorified-- The world is darkened with my loss! Oh, Angel! cried I--wrath complete! With awful brows and eyes intense! (For faith's white robe of reverence Slid noiseless to my sorrow's feet) Oh, Angel, help me out of strife! I could have borne all mortal pain-- I could have lived my life in vain-- But this hath touched my inner life! And eighteen hundred fifty-seven Hath filled a decade of slow years Since first my orphan cries and tears Broke wild across the walls of Heaven. This eve his grave is winter-white! And 'twixt the snow-wind's stormy thrills I hear across the Northern hills The solemn footsteps of the night! Blow wind! Oh, wind, blow wild and high! Blow o'er the dismal space of woods-- Blow down the roaring Northern floods And let the dreary day go by! Blow, wind, from out the shining West, And wrap the hazy world in glow-- Blow wind and drift about my snow The summer of his endless rest! For he has fallen fast asleep And cannot give me moan for moan-- My heart is heavy as a stone And there is no one left to weep! My _soul_ is heavy and doth lie Reaching up from my wretchedness-- Reaching up blindly for redress The stern gray walls of entity! Once in the golden spring-time hours, In the sweet garden of my youth, There fell a seed of bitter truth That sprang and shadowed all the flowers-- Alone! The roses died apace And pale the mournful violet blew-- Only the royal lily grew And glorified the lonesome place! In me the growth of human ills Than human love had reached no higher, But Seraphim with lips of fire Have won me to the shining hills-- I cannot hide my soul in art-- I cannot mend my life's defect-- This thunderous space of intellect God gave me for a peaceful heart! Hush! oh, my mournful heart, be still, The heavy night is coming on, But heavier lie the shadows drawn About his grave so low and chill-- From out the awful sphere of God, Oh, deathly wind, blow soft and low! My soul is weary and would go Where never foot of mortal trod! AT THE NIGHTFALL. I muse alone in the fading light, Where the mournful winds forever Sweep down from the dim old hills of night, Like the wail of a haunted river. Alone! by the grave of a buried love, The ghostly mist is parted, Where the stars shine faint in the blue above, Like the smile of the broken-hearted. The living turn from my fond embrace, As if no love were needed; The tears I wept on thy young dead face Were never more unheeded Than my wild prayer for peace unwon-- One pure affection only, One faithful heart to lean upon, When life is sad and lonely. The low grassy roof, my glorious dead, Is bright with the buttercup's blossom, And the night-blooming roses burn dimly and red On the green sod that covers thy bosom. Thy pale hands are folded, oh beautiful saint, Like lily-buds chilly and dew-wet, And the smile on thy lip is as solemn and faint As the beams of a norland sunset. The angel that won thee a long time ago To the shore of the glorious immortals, In the sphere of the starland shall wed us, I know, When I pass through the beautiful portals. THE MIDNIGHT CHIME. Suggested by the tolling of the bell on the sash factory in Port Deposit on a stormy night in January, 1856. The rain is the loudest and wildest Of rains that ever fell; And the winds like an army of chanters Through the desolate pine-woods swell, And hark! through the shout of the tempest, The sound of the midnight bell. Now close on the storm it rises, Now sadly it sinks with a moan-- Like a human heart in its anguish, Crushing a fruitless groan-- Like a soul that goes wailing and pining, Thro' the motherless world, alone. Is it hung in an ancient turret? Is it swung by a mortal hand? Is it chiming in woe or gladness, Its symphonies sweet and grand? Is it rung for a shadowy sorrow, In the shadowy phantom land? Alas for the beautiful guesses That live in a poet's rhyme-- 'Tis only the bell of the factory Tolling its woe sublime; And the wind is the ghostly ringer, Ringing the midnight chime. Toll, mournful bell of the tempest, Through my dreams by sleep unblest; My bosom is throbbing as madly To surges of wild unrest-- E'en as thy heart of iron Is beating thy brazen breast! MAY-THALIA. TO THOMAS HEMPSTEAD. Thy lay--a sweet sung bridal hymn, Wedding the Old year to the New, 'Mid starry buds, and silver dew, And brooks, and birds in woodlands dim-- That touched the hidden veins of thought With the electric force of strife, Thrilled the dumb marble of my life Unto a perfect beauty wrought. And straight, unclasping from my brow The thorny crown of lost delight, The solemn grandeur of the night Flashed on me from old years, as now. The budding of my days is past! And May sits weeping in the shade The weeds on April's grave have made, Blown slantwise in the sobbing blast. Ah me! but in the Poet's heart Some pools of troubled water lie! The hidden founts of agony, That keep the better springs apart. What comfort is there in the Earth! What height, or depth, where we may hide Our life long anguish, and abide The ripening unto newer birth! But Poet, in thy song is power To lift the flood gates of my woe, And bid its solemn surging flow Far from the triumph of this hour. Yea, rising from life's evil things, My soul, long blinded from the light, Starlit across the purple night Sweeps the red lightning of her wings! I will be free! there is a strength In the full blowing of our youth To climb the rosied hills of truth From the dry desert's burning length. From far a voice shouts to my fate As shout the choiring Angels, when The fiery cross of suffering men Falls broken at the narrow gate! Be brave! be noble, and sublime Thyself unto a higher aim-- Keeping thy nature white of blame In all the dreary walks of time! Oh musty creeds in mouldy books! Blind teachers of the blind are ye-- A plainer wisdom talks with me In God's full psalmody of brooks. The rustling of a leaf hath force To wake the currents of my blood, That sweep, a wild Niagara-flood, Hurled headlong in its fiery course. The moaning of the wind hath power To stir the anthem of my soul, Unto a mightier thunder roll Than ever shook a triumph hour. Betwixt the gorgeous twilight bars Rare truths flow from melodious lips-- God's all-sublime Apocalypse-- His awful poem writ in stars! Each ray that spends its burning might In the alembic of the morn, Is, in the Triune splendors, born Of the great uncreated light! To me the meanest creeping thing Speaks with a loud Evangel tongue, Of the far climes forever young In His all-glorious blossoming. And thus, oh Poet! hath thy lay-- Woven of brightest buds and flowers Blowing, in breezy South-land bowers, Against the blushing face of May-- A passion, and a power, that thrills My hidden nature unto strife, To battle bravely, for the life Across the dim Eternal hills! MEMORIES. While the wild north hills are reddening In the sunset's fiery glow, And along the dreary moorlands, Shine the stormy drifts of snow, Sit I in my voiceless chamber From the household ones apart, And again is Memory lighting The pale ruins of my heart. And again are white hands sweeping, Wildly, its invisible chords, With the burden of a sorrow That I may not wed to words. Vainly I this day have striven, List'ning to the snow-wind's roll, To forget the haunting music That is throbbing in my soul. Not my pleasant household duties, Nor the rosied light of Morn, Nor the banners of the sunset On the wintry hills forlorn, Could unclasp the starry yearning From my mortal, weary breast, Nor interpret the weird meaning Of the phantom's wild unrest. All last night I heard the crickets Chirping on the lonely hearth, And I thought of him that lieth In the embraces of the earth; Till the lights died in the village, And the armies of the snow, In the bitter woods of midnight Tracked the wild winds to and fro. Oh my lover, safely folded In the shadow of the grave, While about my low-roofed dwelling Moaning gusts of winter rave. Well I know thy pale hands, folded In the silence of long years, Cannot give me back caresses For my sacrifice of tears. Oh ye dark and vexing phantoms-- Ghostly memories that arise, Keeping ever 'twixt my spirit And the beauty of the skies-- Memories of a faded splendor, And a lost hope, long ago, Ere my April grew to blushing And my heavy heart to woe. Saw ye in your solemn marches From the citadel of death, In our bridal halls of beauty Burning still the lamp of faith? Doth a watcher, pale and patient, Folded from the tempest's wrath, Wait the coming of my footsteps Down the grave's long, lonesome path? No reply!--the dreary shadows Lengthen from the silent hills, And a heavy boding sorrow Still my aching bosom fills. Now the moon is up in beauty, Walking on a starry hight, While her trailing vesture brightens The gray hollows of the night. Things of evil go out from me, Leave this silence-haunted room, Full enough of darkness keepeth In the chamber of his tomb. Full enough of shadow lieth In that dim futurity-- In that wedding night, where, meekly, My beloved waits for me! THE OLD HOMESTEAD. I remember the dear little cabin That stood by the weather-brown mill, And the beautiful wavelets of sunshine That flowed down the slope of the hill, And way down the winding green valley, And over the meadow--smooth shorn,-- How the dew-drops lay flashing and gleaming On the pale rosy robes of the morn. How the blush-blossoms shook on the upland, Like a red-cloud of sunset afar, And the lilies gleamed up from the marsh pond Like the pale silver rim of a star; How the brook chimed a beautiful chorus, With the birds that sang high in the trees; And how the bright shadows of sunset Trailed goldenly down on the breeze. I remember the mossy-rimmed springlet, That gushed in the shade of the oaks, And how the white buds of the mistletoe, Fell down at the woodman's strokes, On the morning when cruel Sir Spencer Came down with his haughty train, To uproot the old kings of the greenwood That shadowed his golden grain. For he dwelt in a lordly castle That towered half-way up the hill, And we in a poor little cabin In the shade of the weather-brown mill, Therefore the haughty Earl Spencer Came down with his knightly train, And uprooted our beautiful roof-trees That shadowed his golden grain. Ah! wearily sighed our mother, When the mistletoe boughs lay shed; But never the curse of the orphan Was breathed on the rich man's head; And when again the gentle summer Had gladdened the earth once more, No branches of gnarled oaks olden Made shadows across the floor. GURTHA. The lone winds creep with a snakish hiss Among the dwarfish bushes, And with deep sighing sadly kiss The wild brook's border rushes; The woods are dark, save here and there The glow-worm shineth faintly, And o'er the hills one lonely star That trembles white and saintly. Ah! well I know this mournful eve So like an evening olden; With many a goodly harvest sheaf The upland fields were golden; The lily moon in bridal white Leaned o'er the sea, her lover, And stars with beauty filled the Night-- The wind sang in the clover. The halls were bright with revelry, The beakers red with wassail; And music's grandest symphony Rung thro' the ancient castle; And she, the brightest of the throng, With wedding-veil and roses, Seemed like the beauty of a song Between the organ's pauses. My memory paints her sweetly meek, With her long sunny tresses, And how the blushes on her cheek Kissed back their warm caresses; But like an angry cloud that cleaves Down thro' the mists of glory, I see the flowers a pale hand weaves Around a forehead gory. The road was lone that lay between His, and her father's castle, And many a stirrup-cup, I ween, Quaffed he of generous wassail. My soul drank in a larger draught From the burning well of hate, The hand that sped the murderous shaft Was guided by my fate. Red shadows lay upon the sward That night, instead of golden-- And long the bride's maids wait the lord In the bridal-chamber olden; Ah, well! pale hands unwove the flowers That bound the milk-white forehead-- The star has sunk, the red moon glowers Down slopes of blackness horrid. IN MEMORIAM. JOHN B. ABRAHAMS, OF PORT DEPOSIT, AGED 22 YEARS. He giveth His beloved sleep. --Psalms 127:2 From heaven's blue walls the splendid light Of signal-stars gleams far and bright Down the abyssmal deeps of night. Against the dim, dilating skies Orion's radiant mysteries Of belt, and plume, and helmet rise-- I see--with flashing sword in hand, With eyes sublime, and forehead grand-- The conquering constellation stand! And on one purple tower the moon Hangs her white lamp--the night wind's rune Floats faint o'er holt and black lagoon. Far down the dimly shining bay The drifting sea-fog, cold and gray, Wraps all the golden ships away-- The fair-sailed ships, that in the glow Of ghostly moon and vapor go, Like wandering phantoms, to and fro! With mournful thought I sit alone-- My heart is heavy as a stone, And hath no utterance but a moan. I think of him, who, being blest, With pale hands crossed on silent breast, Taketh his long unending rest; While lone winds chant a funeral stave, And pallid church-yard daisies wave About his new unsodded grave. The skies are solemn with their throng Of choiring stars--and deep and strong The river moans an undersong. Oh mournful wind! Oh moaning river, Oh golden planets, pausing never! His lips have lost your song forever! His lips, that done with pleadings vain-- And human sighing, born of pain-- Are hymning heav'ns triumphal strain. The ages tragic Rhythm of change Clashing on projects new and strange-- The tireless nations forward range-- Can ne'er disturb the perfect rest Wherein he lieth--being blest, With chill hands cross'd on silent breast. Oh mourning heart! whose heavy plaint Drifts down the deathly shadows faint, Why weep ye for this risen saint? His life's pale ashes, under foot That cling about the daisies' root Will bear at last most glorious fruit! 'Tis but the casket hid away Neath roof of stone and burial clay; The jewel shines in endless day! And thus I gather for my tears Sweet hope from faith in after years; And far across the glimmering spheres Height over height the heavens expand-- I see him in God's Eden land, With palms of vict'ry in his hand; O'er brows of solemn breadth profound, With fadeless wreaths of glory wound, He stands a seraph, robed and crowned. Aye! in a vision, see I now; Christ's symbol written on his brow-- Found worthy unto death art thou! And ever in this heart of mine, So won to glorious peace, divine This vision of our lost shall shine; Not with pale forehead in eclipse With close-sealed lids and silent lips, But grand in Life's Apocalypse! For very truly hath been said-- For the pale living--not the dead-- Should mourning's bitterest tears be shed! MISSIVE TO ----. Purple shafts of sunset fire Glory-crown the passionate sea, Throbbing with a fierce desire For the blue immensity. Floods of pale and scarlet flame Sweep the bases of the hills, With a blushing unto shame Thro' their rosy bridal-thrills. Slowly to the gorgeous West Twilight paces from the East, Like a dark, unbidden guest Going to a marriage feast. Dian--palaced in the blue-- O'er the eve-star, newly born, Shakes a sweet baptismal dew From her pearly drinking-horn. Not the Ocean's fiery soul Throbbing up thro' all his deeps-- Not the sunset tides that roll Gloriously against the steeps Of the hills, that to the stars Lift their regal wedded brows, Glittering, through the golden bars Clasping close their nuptial snows. Not the palace lights of Hesper In the Queendom of the Moon, Win me from that lovely vesper-- The last one of our last June. Oh the golden-tressed minutes! Oh the silver-footed hours! Oh the thoughts that sang like linnets, In a woodland full of flowers! When my wild heart beat so lightly It forgot its mortal shroud; And an Angel trembled brightly In the fold of every cloud. Wo! That storms of sorrow-strife Hold the pitying light apart, And the golden waves of life Beat against a breaking heart. Saddest fate that e'er has been Woven in the loom of years, Our sworn faith has come between, Heavy with the wine of tears. Broken vow and slighted trust-- Hope's white garments soiled and torn-- Passion trampled in the dust By the iron heel of scorn. Thou art dead, to me, as those Folded safe from mortal strife; Dead! as tho' the grave-mould froze The red rivers of thy life! Oh! My Sweet! My Light! My Love! With my grief co-heir sublime! Storms and sorrows ever prove True inheritors of Time. Hush! An Angel holds my heart From its breaking--tho' I stand, From the happy world apart, On a broad and barren sand. I will love thee tho' I die! Love thee, with my ancient faith! For immortal voices cry: Love is mightier than Death! CHICK-A-DEE'S SONG. Sweet, sweet, sweet! High up in the budding vine I've woven and hidden a dainty retreat For this little brown darling of mine! Along the garden borders, Out of the rich dark mold, The daffodils and jonquils Are pushing their heads of gold; And high in her bower-chamber The little brown mother sits, While to and fro, as the west winds blow, Her pretty shadow flits. Weet, weet, weet! Safe in the branching vine, Pillowed on woven grasses sweet, Our pearly treasures shine; And all day long in the sunlight, By vernal breezes fanned, The daffodil and the jonquil Their jeweled discs expand; And two and fro, as the west winds blow, In the airy house a-swing, The feeble life in the pearly eggs She warms with brooding wing! Sweet, sweet, sweet! Under a flowery spray Downy heads and little pink feet Are cunningly tucked away! Along the shining furrows, The rows of sprouting corn Flash in the sun, and the orchards Are blushing red as morn; And the time o' the year for toil is here, And idle song and play With the jonquils, and the daffodils, Must wait for another May. LATER POEMS. TO MY SISTER. M.A. KENNON. "God's dear love is over all." Dear, the random words you said Once, as we two walked apart, Still keep ringing in my head, Still keep singing in my heart: Like the lone pipe of a bird, Like a tuneful waterfall Far in desert places heard-- "God's dear love is over all!" Thro' the ceaseless toil and strife They have taught me to be strong! Fashioned all my narrow life To the measure of a song! They have kept me brave and true-- Saved my feet from many a fall, Since, what ever fate may do, God's dear love is over all! Lying in your chamber low, Neath the daisies and the dew, Can you hear me? Can you know All the good I owe to you? You, whose spirit dwells alway Free from earthly taint and thrall! You who taught me that sweet day God's dear love is over all! From your holy, far off Heaven, When the beams of twilight wane, Thro' the jasper gates of even Breathe those trustful words again; They shall aid and cheer me still, What-so-ever fate befall, Since thro' every good and ill God's dear love is over all! MEASURING THE BABY. We measured the riotous baby Against the cottage wall: A lily grew at the threshold, And the boy was just so tall; A royal tiger lily, With spots of purple and gold, And a heart like a jeweled chalice, The fragrant dews to hold. Without the blue birds whistled, High up in the old roof trees; And to and fro at the window The red rose rocked her bees; And the wee pink fists of the baby Were never a moment still, Snatching at shine and shadow, That danced on the lattice sill! His eyes were wide as blue-bells, His mouth like a flower unblown, Two little barefeet, like funny white mice, Peept out from his snowy gown; And we thought, with a thrill of rapture. That yet had a touch of pain-- When June rolls around with her roses We'll measure the boy again! Ah me! In a darkened chamber, With the sunshine shut away, Thro' tears that fell like a bitter rain We measured the Boy to-day! And the little bare feet, that were dimpled, And sweet as a budding rose, Lay side by side together, In the hush of a long repose! Up from the dainty pillow, White as the rising dawn, The fair little face lay smiling With the light of Heaven thereon! And the dear little hands, like rose leaves Dropt from a rose, lay still, Never to snatch at the sunshine, That crept to the shrouded sill! We measured the sleeping baby With ribbons white as snow, For the shining rose-wood casket That waited him below; And out of the darkened chamber We crept with a childless moan: To the height of the sinless Angels Our little one had grown! THE LIGHT OF DREAMS. Last night I walked in happy dreams, The paths I used to know; I heard a sound of running streams, And saw the violets blow; I breathed a scent of daffodils; And faint and far withdrawn, A light upon the distant hills, Like morning, led me on. And childish hands clung fast to mine, And little pattering feet Trod with me thro' the still sunshine Of by-ways green and sweet; The flax-flower eyes of tender blue, The locks of palest gold, Were just the eyes and locks I knew And loved, and lost--of old! By many a green familiar lane Our pathway seemed to run Between long fields of waving grain, And slopes of dew and sun; And still we seemed to breathe alway A scent of daffodils, And that soft light of breaking day Shone on the distant hills. And out of slumber suddenly I seemed to wake, and know The little feet, that followed me, Were ashes long ago! And in a burst of rapturous tears I clung to her and said: "Dear Pitty-pat! The lonesome years They told me you were dead! "O, when the mother drew, of old, About her loving knee The little heads of dusk and gold, I know that we were three! And then there was an empty chair-- A stillness, strange and new: We could not find you anywhere-- And we were only two!" She pointed where serenely bright The hills yet glowed afar: "Sweet sister, yon ineffable light Is but the gates ajar! And evermore, by night and day, We children still are three, Tho' I have gone a little way To open the gates," said she. Then all in colors faint and fine The morning round me shone, The little hands slipt out of mine, And I was left alone; But still I smelled the daffodils, I heard the running streams; And that far glory on the hills-- Was it the light of dreams? BEN HAFED'S MEED. Ben Hafed, when the vernal rain Warmed the chill heart of earth again, Tilled the dull plot of sterile ground, Within the dank and narrow round That compassed his obscure domain; With earnest zeal, thro' heat and cold, He wrought and turned the sluggish mold, And all in furrows straight and fair He sowed the yellow seed with care, Trusting the harvest--as of old. Soft fell the rains, the suns shone bright, The long days melted into night, And beautiful, on either hand, Outspread the shining summer land, And all his neighbor's fields were white. Long drawn, beneath the genial skies, He saw deep-fruited vineyards rise; On every hill the bladed corn Flashed like the falchions of the morn Before Ben Hafed's wistful eyes. But in the garden, dull and bare, Where he had wrought with patient care, No cluster purpled on the vine, No blossom made the furrows shine With hints of harvest anywhere! Ben Hafed, scorning to complain, Bent to his thankless toil again: "I slight no task I find to do, Dear Lord, and if my sheaves be few, Thou wilt not count my labor vain?" His neighbors, rich in flocks and lands, Stood by and mocked his empty hands: "Why wage with ceaseless fret and toil The grim warfare that yields no spoil? Why spend thy zest on barren sands? The circling seasons come and go, And others garner as they sow; But year by year, in sun and rain, Thou till'st these fields with toil and pain, Where only tares and thistles grow!" With quiet mien Ben Hafed heard, And answered not by sign or word, Tho' some divine, all-trustful sense Of loss made sweet thro' recompense, In God's good time, within him stirred. With no vain protest or lament, Low to the stubborn glebe he bent: "I till the fields Thou gavest me, And leave the harvest, Lord, to thee," He said--and plodded on, content. And ever, with the golden seeds, He sowed an hundred gracious deeds-- Some act of helpful charity, A saving word of cheer, may be, To some poor soul in bitter need! And life wore on from gold to gray; The world went by, another way: "Tho' long and wearisome my task, Dear Lord, 'tis but a tithe I ask, And Thou will grant me that, some day!" One morn upon his humble bed, They found Ben Hafed lying dead, God's light upon his worn old face, And God's ineffable peace and grace Folding him round from feet to head. And lo! in cloudless sunshine rolled The glebe but late so bare and cold, Between fair rows of tree and vine Rich clustered, sweating oil and wine, Shone all in glorious harvest gold! And One whose face was strangely bright With loving ruth--whose garments white Were spotless as the lilies sweet That sprang beneath His shining feet-- Moved slowly thro' those fields of light; "Blest be Ben Hafed's work--thrice blest!" He said, and gathered to His breast The harvest sown in toil and tears: "Henceforth, thro' Mine eternal years, Thou, faithful servant, cease and rest!" WINTER BOUND. If I could live to see beyond the night, The first spring morning break with fiery thrills, And tremble into rose and violet light Along the distant hills! If I could hear the first wild note that swells The blue bird's silvery throat when spring is here, And all the sweet, wind ruffled lily bells Ring out the joyous matins of the year! Only to smell the budding lilac blooms The balmy airs from sprouting brake and wold, Rich with the strange ineffable perfumes Of growing grass and newly furrowed mold! If I could hear the rushing waters call In the wild exultation of release, Dear, I might turn my face unto the wall And fall asleep in peace! MISLED. Thro' moss, and bracken, and purple bloom, With a glitter of gorses here and there, Shoulder deep in the dewy bloom, My love, I follow you everywhere! By faint sweet signs my soul divines, Dear heart, at dawning you came this way, By the jangled bells of the columbines, And the ruffled gold of the gorses gay. By hill and hollow, by mead and lawn, Thro' shine and shade of dingle and glade, Fast and far as I hurry on My eager seeking you still evade. But, were you shod with the errant breeze, Spirit of shadow and fire and dew, O'er trackless deserts of lands and seas Still would I follow and find out you. Like a dazzle of sparks from a glowing brand, 'Mid the tender green of the feathery fern And nodding sedge, by the light gale fanned, The Indian pinks in the sunlight burn; And the wide, cool cups of the corn flower brim With the sapphire's splendor of heaven's own blue, In sylvan hollows and dingles dim, Still sweet with a hint of the morn--and you! For here is the print of your slender foot, And the rose that fell from your braided hair, In the lush deep moss at the bilberry's root-- And the scent of lilacs is in the air! Do lilacs bloom in the wild green wood? Do roses drop from the bilberry bough? Answer me, little Red Riding Hood! You are hiding there in the bracken, now! Come out of your covert, my Bonny Belle-- I see the glint of your eyes sweet blue-- Your yellow locks--ah, you know full well Your scarlet mantle has told on you; Come out this minute, you laughing minx! --By all the dryads of wood and wold! 'Tis only a cluster of Indian pinks And corn flowers, under the gorses' gold. AT MILKING-TIME. "Coe, Berry-brown! Hie, Thistledown! Make haste; the milking-time is come! The bells are ringing in the town, Tho' all the green hillside is dumb, And Morn's white curtain, half withdrawn, Just shows a rosy glimpse of dawn." Tinkle, tinkle in the pail: "Ah! my heart, if Tom should fail! See the vapors, white as curd, By the waking winds are stirred, And the east is brightening slow Tom is long a-field, I know! "Coe, Bell! Come Bright! Miss Lilywhite, I see you hiding in the croft! By yon steep stair of ruddy light The sun is climbing fast aloft; What makes the stealthy, creeping chill That hangs about the morning still?" Tinkle, tinkle in the pail: "Some one saunters up the vale, Pauses at the brook awhile, Dawdles at the meadow stile-- Well! if loitering be a crime, Some one takes his own sweet time! "So! Berry, so! Now, cherry-blow, Keep your pink nose out of the pail! How dull the morning is--how low The churning vapors coil and trail! How dim the sky, and far away! What ails the sunshine and the day?" Tinkle, tinkle in the pail: "But for that preposterous tale Nancy Mixer brought from town, 'Tom is courting Kitty Brown,' I'd not walked with Willie Snow, Just to tease my Tom, you know! "So! stand still, my thistledown! Tom is coming thro' the gate, But his forehead wears a frown, And he never was so late! Till that vexing demon, Doubt, Angered us, and we fell out!" Tinkle, tinkle in the pail: "Tom roosts on the topmost rail, Chewing straws, and looking grim When I choose to peep at him; Wonder if he's sulking still, All about my walk with Will? "Cherry, Berry, Lilywhite, Hasten fieldward, every one; All the heavens are growing bright, And the milking time is done; I will speak to him, and see If his lordship answers me: 'Tom!' He tumbles off the rail, Stoops to lift the brimming pail; With a mutual pleading glance Lip meets lip--mayhap by chance-- And--but need I whisper why?-- Tom is happy--and so am I!" THE SINGER'S SONG O weary heart of mine, Keep still, and make no sign! The world hath learned a newer joy-- A sweeter song than thine! Tho' all the brooks of June Should lilt and pipe in tune. The music by and by would cloy-- The world forgets so soon! So thou mayest put away Thy little broken lay; Perhaps some wistful, loving soul May take it up some day-- Take up the broken thread, Dear heart, when thou art dead, And weave into diviner song The things thou wouldst have said! Rest thou, and make no sign, The world, O, heart of mine, Is listening for the hand that smites A grander chord than thine! The loftier strains that teach Great truths beyond thy reach; Whose far faint echo they have heard In thy poor stammering speech. Thy little broken bars, That wailing discord mars, To vast triumphal harmonies Shall swell beyond the stars. So rest thee, heart, and cease; Awhile, in glad release, Keep silence here, with God, amid The lilies of His peace. AUNT PATTY'S THANKSGIVING. [Transcriber's note: The original text titled this poem here as "Aunt Patty's Thanksgiving" and in the table of contents as "Aunt Betty's Thanksgiving." This discrepancy is intentionally preserved.] Now Cleo, fly round! Father's going to town With a load o' red russets, to meet Captain Brown; The mortgage is due, and it's got to be paid, And father is troubled to raise it, I'm 'fraid! We've had a bad year, with the drouth and the blight The harvest was short, and the apple crop light; The early hay cutting scarce balanced the cost, And the heft o' the after-math's ruined with frost; A gloomy Thanksgiving to-morrow will be-- But the ways o' the Lord are not our ways, ah me! But His dear will be done! If we jest do our best, And trust Him, I guess He'll take care o' the rest; I'd not mind the worry, nor stop to repine, Could I take father's share o' the burden with mine! He is grieving, I know, tho' he says not a word, But, last night, 'twixt the waking and dreaming, I heard The long, sobbing sighs of a strong man in pain, And I knew he was fretting for Robert again! Our Robert, our first-born: the comfort and stay Of our age, when we two should grow feeble and gray; What a baby he was! with his bright locks, and eyes Just as blue as a bit o' the midsummer skies! And in youth--why, it made one's heart lightsome and glad Like a glimpse o' the sun, just to look at the lad! But the curse came upon him--the spell of unrest-- Like a voice calling out of the infinite West-- And Archibald Grace, he was going--and so We gave Rob our blessing, and jest let him go! There, Cleo, your father is out at the gate: Be spry as a cricket; he don't like to wait! Here's the firkin o' butter, as yellow as gold-- And the eggs, in this basket--ten dozen all told. Tell father be sure and remember the tea-- And the spice and the yard o' green gingham for me; And the sugar for baking:--and ask him to go To the office--there might be a letter, you know! May Providence go with your father to town, And soften the heart o' this rich Captain Brown. He's the stranger that's buying the Sunnyside place, We all thought was willed to poor Archibald Grace, Along with the mortgage that's jest falling due, And that father allowed Archie Grace would renew; And, Cleo, I reckon that father will sell The Croft, and the little real Alderney, Bel. You raised her, I know; and it's hard she must go; But father will pay every dollar we owe; It's his way, to be honest and fair as the day; And he always was dreadfully set in his way. I try to find comfort in thinking, my dear, That things would be different if Robert was here; I guess he'd a stayed but for Archibald Grace. And helped with the chores and looked after the place; But Archie, he heard from that Eben Carew, And went wild to go off to the gold-diggings, too; And so they must up and meander out West, And now they are murdered--or missing, at best-- Surprised by that bloody, marauding "Red Wing," 'Way out in the Yellowstone country, last spring. No wonder, Cleora, I'm getting so gray! I grieve for my lost darling day after day; And, Cleo, my daughter, don't mind if it's true, But I reckon I've guessed about Archie and you! And the Lord knows our burdens are grievous to bear, But there's still a bright edge to my cloud of despair, And somehow I hear, like a tune in my head: "The boys are coming! The boys aren't dead!" So to-morrow, for dear father's sake, we will try To make the day seem like Thanksgivings gone by; And tho' we mayn't see where Thanksgiving comes in, Things were never so bad yet as things might a-been. But it's nigh time the kettle was hung on the crane, And somebody's driving full tilt up the lane-- For the land's sake! Cleora, you're dropping that tray O' blue willow tea-cups! What startled you? Hey? You're white as a ghost--Why, here's father from town! And who are those men, daughter, helping him down? Run! open the door! There's a whirr in my head, And the tune's getting louder--"The boys aren't dead!" Cleora! That voice--it is Robert!--O, Lord! I have leaned on Thy promise, and trusted Thy word, And out of the midst of great darkness and night Thy mercy has led me again to the light! IN HOC SIGNO VINCES! (UNDER THIS SIGN THOU SHALT CONQUER.) Beneath the solemn stars that light The dread infinitudes of night, Mid wintry solitudes that lie Where lonely Hecla's toweling pyre Reddens an awful space of sky With Thor's eternal altar fire! Worn with the fever of unrest, And spent with years of eager quest, Beneath the vaulted heaven they stood, Pale, haggard eyed, of garb uncouth, The seekers of the Hidden Good, The searchers for Eternal Truth! From fiery Afric's burning sands, From Asia's hoary templed lands, From the pale borders of the North, From the far South--the fruitful West, O, long ago each journeyed forth, Led hither by one glorious quest! And each, with pilgrim staff and shoon, Bore on his scrip a mystic rune, Some maxim of his chosen creed, By which, with swerveless rule and line, He shaped his life in word and deed To ends heroic and divine! Around their dreary winter world The great ice-kraken dimly curled The white seas of the frozen zone; And like a mighty lifted shield The hollow heavens forever shone On gleaming fiord and pathless field! Behind them, in the nether deep, The central fires, that never sleep, Grappled and rose, and fell again; And with colossal shock and throe The shuddering mountain rent in twain Her garments of perpetual snow! Then Aba Seyd, grave-eyed and grand, Stood forth with lifted brow and hand; Kingly of height, of mien sublime, Like glorious Saul among his peers, With matchless wisdom for all time Gleaned from the treasure house of years; His locks rose like an eagle's crest, His gray beard stormed on cheek and breast, His silvery voice sonorous rang, As when, exulting in the fray, Where lances hissed and trumpets sang, He held the Bedouin hordes at bay. "Lo! Here we part: henceforth alone We journey to the goal unknown; But whatsoever paths we find, The ties of fellowship shall bind Our constant souls; and soon or late-- We laboring still in harmony-- The grand results for which we wait Shall crown the mighty years to be! Now scoffed at, baffled, and beset, We grope in twilight darkness yet, We who would found the age of gold, Based on the universal good, And forge the links that yet shall hold The world in common Brotherhood! "O, comrades of the Mystic Quest! Who seek the Highest and the Best! Where'er the goal for which we strive-- Whate'er the knowledge we may win-- This truth supreme shall live and thrive, 'Tis love that makes the whole world kin! The love sublime and purified, That puts all dross of self aside To live for others--to uphold Before our own a brother's cause: This is the master power shall mould The nobler customs, higher laws! "Then shall all wars, all discords cease, And, rounded to perpetual peace, The bounteous years shall come and go Unvexed; and all humanity, Nursed to a loftier type, shall grow Like to that image undefiled, That fair reflex of Deity, Who, first, beneath the morning skies And glowing palms of paradise, A God-like man, awoke and smiled!" * * * * Like some weird strain of music, spent In one full chord, the sweet voice ceased; A faint white glow smote up the east, Like wings uplifting--and a cry Of winds went forth, as if the night Beneath the brightening firmament Had voiced, in hollow prophecy, The affirmation: "By and by!" HOW KATIE SAVED THE TRAIN. The floods were out. Far as the bound Of sight was one stupendous round Of flat and sluggish crawling water! As, from a slowly drowning rise, She looked abroad with startled eyes, The engineer's intrepid daughter. Far as her straining eyes could see, The seething, swoolen Tombigbee Outspread his turbulent yellow tide; His angry currents swirled and surged O'er leagues of fertile lands submerged, And ruined hamlets, far and wide. Along a swell of higher ground, Still, like a gleaming serpent, wound The heavy graded iron trail; But, inch by inch, the overflow Dragged down the road bed, till the slow Back-water crept across the rail. And where the ghostly trestle spanned A stretch of marshy bottom-land, The stealthy under current gnawed At sunken pile, and massive pier, And the stout bridge hung airily where She sullen dyke lay deep and broad. Above the hollow, droning sound Of waves that filled the watery round, She heard a distant shout and din-- The levees of the upper land Had crumbled like a wall of sand, And the wild floods were pouring in! She saw the straining dyke give way-- The quaking trestle reel and sway. Yet hold together, bravely, still! She saw the rushing waters drown The piers, while ever sucking down The undermined and treacherous "fill!" Her strong heart hammered in her breast, As o'er a distant woody crest A dim gray plume of vapor trailed; And nearer, clearer, by and by, Like the faint echo of a cry, A warning whistle shrilled and wailed! Her frightened gelding reared and plunged, As the doomed trestle rocked and lunged-- The keen lash scored his silken hide: "Come, Bayard! We must reach the bridge And cross to yonder higher ridge-- For thrice an hundred lives we ride!" She stooped and kissed his tawny mane, Sodden with flecks of froth and rain; Then put him at the surging flood! Girth deep the dauntless gelding sank, The tide hissed round his smoking flank, But straight for life or death she rode! The wide black heavens yawned again, Down came the torrent rushing rain-- The icy river clutched her! Shrill in her ears the waters sang, Strange fires from the abysses sprang, The sharp sleet stung like whip and spur! Her yellow hair, blown wild and wide, Streamed like a meteor o'er the tide; Her set white face yet whiter grew, As lashed by furious flood and rain, Still for the bridge, with might and main, Her gallant horse swam, straight and true! They gained the track, and slowly crept Timber by timber, torrents swept, Across the boiling hell of water-- Till past the torn and shuddering bridge He bore her to the safer ridge, The engineer's intrepid daughter! The night was falling wild and black, The waters blotted out the track; She gave her flying horse free rein, For full a dreadful mile away The lonely wayside station lay, And hoarse above his startled neigh She heard the thunder of the train! "What if they meet this side the goal?" She thought with sick and shuddering soul; For well she knew what doom awaited A fell mischance--a step belated-- The grinding wheels, the yawning dyke-- Sure death for her--for them--alike! Like danger-lamps her blue eyes glowed, As thro' the whirling gloom she rode, Her laboring breath drawn sharply in; Pitted against yon rushing wheels Were tireless grit and trusty heels, And with God's favor they might win! And soon along the perilous line Flamed out the lurid warning sign, While round her staggering horse the crowd Surged with wild cheers and plaudits loud.-- And this is how, thro' flood and rain, Brave Kate McCarthy saved the train! OFF THE SKIDLOE. With leagues of wasteful water ringed about, And wrapped in sheeted foam from base to peak, A sheer, stupendous monolith, wrought out By the slow, ceaseless labor of the deeps, In awful isolation, old as Time, The gray, forbidding Rock of Skidloe stands-- Breasting the wild incursions of the North-- The grim antagonist of a thousand waves! Far to the leeward, faintly drawn against A dim perspective of perpetual storms, A frowning line of black basaltic cliffs Baffles the savage onset of the surf. But, rolled in cloud and foam, old Skidloe lifts His dark, defiant head forever mid The shock and thunder of contending tides, And fixed, immovable as fate, hurls back The rude, eternal protest of the sea! Colossal waters coil about his feet, Deep rooted in the awful gulfs between The measureless walls of mountain chains submerged; An infinite hoarse murmur wells from all His dim mysterious crypts and corridors: The inarticulate mutterings that voice The ancient secret of the mighty main. In all the troubled round of sea and air, No glimpse of brightness lends the vivid zest Of life and light to the harsh monotone Of gray tumultuous flood and spectral sky; Far off the black basaltic crags are heaved Against the desolate emptiness of space; But no sweet beam of sunset ever falls Athwart old Skidloe's cloudy crest--no soft And wistful glory of awakened dawn Lays on his haggard brows a touch of grace. Sometimes a lonely curlew skims across The seething torment of the dread abyss, And, shrieking, dips into the mist beyond; But, solitary and unchanged for aye, He towers amid the rude revolt of waves, His stony face seamed by a thousand years, And wrinkled with a million furrows, worn By the slow drip of briny tears, that creep Along his hollow cheek. His hidden hands Drag down the drowned and tossing wrecks that drive Before the fury of the Northern gales, And mute, inscrutable as destiny, He keeps his sombre secrets as of yore. The slow years come and go; the seasons dawn And fade, and pass to swell the solemn ranks Of august ages in the march of Time. But changeless still, amid eternal change, Old Skidloe bears the furious brunt of all The warring elements that grapple mid The mighty insurrections of the sea! Gray desolation, ancient solitude, Brood o'er his wide, unrestful water world, While grim, unmoved, forbidding as of yore, He wraps his kingly altitudes about With the fierce blazon of the thunder cloud; And on his awful and uplifted brows The red phylactery of the lightning shines; And throned amid eternal wars, he dwells, His dread regality hedged round by all The weird magnificence of exultant storms! LIFE'S CROSSES. "O life! O, vailed destiny!" She cried--"within thy hidden hands What recompense is waiting me Beyond these naked wintry sands? For lo! The ancient legend saith: 'Take ye a rose at Christmas tide, And pin thereto your loving faith, And cast it to the waters wide; Whate'er the wished-for guerdon be, God's hand will guide it safe to thee!' "I pace the river's icy brink, This dreary Christmas Eve," she said, "And watch the dying sunset sink From pallid gold to ashen red. My eyes are hot with weary tears, I heed not how the winds may blow, While thinking of the vanished years Beyond the stormy heave and throe Of yon far sea-line, dimly curled Around my lonely island-world. "The winds make melancholy moan; I hear the river flowing by, As, heavy-hearted and alone, Beneath the wild December sky, I take the roses from my breast-- White roses of the Holy Rood-- And, filled with passionate unrest, I cast them to the darkening flood. O, roses, drifting out to sea, Bring my lost treasures back to me! "Bring back the joyous hopes of youth! The faith that knew no flaw of doubt! The spotless innocence and truth That clothed my maiden soul about! Bring back the grace of girlhood gone, The rapturous zest of other days! The dew and freshness of the dawn, That lay on life's untrodden ways-- The glory that will shine no more For me on earthly sea or shore! "Call back the sweet home-joys of old That gladdened many a Christmas-tide-- The faces hidden in the mould, The dear lost loves that changed or died! O, gentle spirits, gone before, Come, from the undiscovered lands, And bring the precious things of yore To aching heart and empty hands; Keep all the wealth of earth and sea, But give my lost ones back to me. "Vain are my tears, my pleadings vain! O, roses, drifting with the tide, To me shall never come again The glory of the years that died! Thro' gloom and night, sweet flowers, drift on-- Drift out upon the unknown sea; Into the holy Christmas dawn Bear this impassioned prayer for me: O, turn, dear Lord, my heart away From things that are but for a day; Teach me to trust thy loving will, And bear life's heavy crosses still." NATHAN COVINGTON BROOKS, A.M., LL.D. The following sketch is principally from the Third Volume of Biographical Sketches of Eminent Americans. "Nathan Covington Brooks, the youngest son of John and Mary Brooks, was born in West Nottingham, Cecil county, Maryland, on the 12th of August, 1809. His education was commenced at the West Nottingham Academy, then under the charge of Rev. James Magraw, D.D., and subsequently he graduated as Master of Arts, at St. John's College, Annapolis, Md. His thesis was a poem on the World's Changes. Diligent and persevering in his studies, his rapid progress and high attainments won the regard of his teachers, while his amiable manners endeared him to his classmates. While his principal delight was in the study of the Classics, he devoted much attention to mathematics and other studies. Like many other writers, some of his earliest efforts were in verse. Indeed it may be said of him, as of Pope, that he 'lisped in rhyme.' Though we have no Shakespeares, or Miltons, or Byrons, there is no scarcity of literary amateurs who, in their hours of recreation and dalliance with letters, betake themselves to poetry as an amusement for their leisure hours or a solace amid the rude trials of life. High in the rank of these writers of occasional poetry stands Dr. Brooks. Nature, in all her forms, he has made the subject of close observation and profound reflection, and in looking at Nature, he has used his own eyes and not the spectacles of other writers. He has a keen relish for the beautiful, and a deep sympathy with the truthful and the good. His taste, formed on the finest models, has been ripened and chastened by a patient study of the great monuments of antiquity. His thoughts seem to be the natural development of his mind; and his words the unstudied expression of his thoughts. The music of his verse reminds us sometimes of the soft cadences of Hemans, and not unfrequently of the mournful harp of Byron." In his eighteenth year he was a contributor of prose and poetry to the _Minerva and Emerald_, and _Saturday Post_, of Baltimore; subsequently contributed to _The Wreath_, _Monument_, _Athenæum_, and _Protestant_, of the same city. In 1830 he edited _The Amethyst_, an annual and soon after became a contributor of prose and poetry to _Atkinson's Casket_, and _The Lady's Book_, of which latter he was the first paid contributor; wrote for _Burton's Magazine_, and _Graham's_, _The New York Mirror_, _The Ladies' Companion_, and the _Home Journal_; and the following annuals, _The Gift_, _The Christian Keepsake_, and _The Religious Souvenir_. He contributed also prose and poetry to _The Southern Literary Messenger_, _The Southern Quarterly_ of New Orleans, _The London Literary Gazette_, and _The London Court Journal_. In 1837 Marshall, of Philadelphia, published a volume of his religious poems, entitled "Scriptural Anthology." In 1840, Kay Brothers, of Philadelphia, published a volume of his prose and poetry, under the name of "The Literary Amaranth." Besides these Dr. Brooks has edited a series of Greek and Latin classics, has written four volumes on religious subjects, one on "Holy Week," just issued from the press, "The History of the Mexican War," which was translated into German, "Battles of the Revolution," etc. In his literary career he has won three prizes that will be cherished as heirlooms in the family, a silver pitcher, for the best prose tale, entitled "The Power of Truth," and two silver goblets, one a prize for the poem entitled "The Fall of Superstition," the other a prize for a poem, "The South-sea Islander," for which fifteen of our leading poets were competitors. Though in his leisure moments Dr. Brooks has achieved so much in literature, his profession has been that of an educator, in which he has had the mental training of males and females to the number of five or six thousand. In 1824, he was appointed to the village school in Charlestown, Cecil county, in 1826, established a private school in Baltimore city; in 1831 was elected principal of the Franklin Academy, Reistertown, and in 1834 principal of the Brookesville Academy, Montgomery county, both endowed by the State; in 1839, he was unanimously elected over forty-five applicants as principal of the Baltimore City High School which position he held for nine years, until asked by the Trustees of the Baltimore Female College, in 1848, to accept the organization of the institution. The College is chartered and endowed by the State of Maryland, has graduated over three hundred young ladies, and trained and sent forth two hundred teachers. Emory College, Oxford, Georgia, conferred the degree of LL.D., on Professor Brooks in 1859, and in 1863 his name was presented, with others, for the presidency of Girard College. Though Major Smith, a Philadelphian of an influential family, was elected president, Professor Brooks received more votes than any of the other competitors. In 1827, he married Mary Elizabeth, eldest daughter of William Gobright, a lady of great beauty and excellence, and in 1867, married Christiana Octavia, youngest daughter of Dr. William Crump, of Virginia. Of the former union four sons and two daughters are living; of the latter union a son. The following poems are selected as specimens of his style. THE MOTHER TO HER DEAD BOY. The flowers you reared repose in sleep With folded bells where the night-dews weep, And the passing wind, like a spirit, grieves In a gentle dirge through the sighing leaves. The sun will kiss the dew from the rose, Its crimson petals again unclose, And the violet ope the soft blue ray Of its modest eye to the gaze of day; But when will the dews and shades that lie So cold and damp on thy shrouded eye, Be chased from the folded lids, my child, And thy glance break forth so sweetly wild? The fawn, thy partner in sportive play, Has ceased his gambols at close of day, And his weary limbs are relaxed and free In gentle sleep by his favorite tree. He will wake ere long, and the rosy dawn Will call him forth to the dewy lawn, And his sprightly gambols be seen again, Through the parted boughs and upon the plain; But oh! when will slumber cease to hold The limbs that lie so still and cold? When wilt thou come with thy tiny feet That bounded my glad embrace to meet? The birds you tended have ceased to sing, And shaded their eyes with the velvet wing, And, nestled among the leaves of the trees, They are rocked to rest by the cool night breeze. The morn will the chains of sleep unbind, And spread their plumes to the freshening wind; And music from many a warbler's mouth Will honey the grove, like the breath of the south; But when shall the lips, whose lightest word Was sweeter far than the warbling bird, Their rich wild strain of melody pour? They are mute! they are cold! they will ope no more! When heaven's great bell in a tone sublime Shall sound the knell of departed Time, And its echoes pierce with a voice profound Through the liquid sea and the solid ground, Thou wilt wake, my child, from the dreamless sleep Whose oblivious dews thy senses steep, And then will the eye, now dim, grow bright In the glorious rays of Heaven's own light, The limbs, that an angel's semblance bore, Bloom 'neath living trees on the golden shore, And the voice that's hushed, God's praises hymn 'Mid the bands of the harping seraphim. TO A DOVE. MOURNING AMID THE RUINS OF AN ANCIENT CHURCH. The fields have faded, the groves look dead, The summer is gone, its beauty has fled, And there breathes a low and plaintive sound From each stream and solemn wood around. In unison with their tone, my breast With a spirit of kindred gloom is opprest, And the sighs burst forth as I gaze, the while, On the crumbling stone of the reverend pile, And list to the sounds of the moaning wind As it stirs the old ivy-boughs entwined,-- Sighs mournful along through chancel and nave, And shakes the loose panel and architrave, While the mouldering branches and withered leaves Are rustling around the moss-grown eaves. But sadder than these, thou emblem of love, Thy moanings fall, disconsolate dove, In the solemn eve on my pensive ear, As the wailing sounds of a requiem drear, As coming from crumbling altar stone They are borne on the winds in a dirge-like tone, Like the plaintive voice of the broken-hearted O'er hopes betrayed and joys departed. Why dost thou pour thy sad complaint On the evening winds from a bosom faint? As if thou hadst come from the shoreless main Of a world submerged to the ark again, With a weary heart to lament and brood O'er the wide and voiceless solitude. Dost thou mourn that the gray and mouldering door Swings back to the reverent crowd no more? That the tall and waving grass defiles The well-worn flags of the crowdless aisles? That the wild fox barks, and the owlet screams Where the organ and choir pealed out their themes? Dost thou mourn, that from sacred desk the word Of life and truth is no longer heard? That the gentle shepherd, who to pasture bore His flock, has gone, to return no more? Dost thou mourn for the hoary-headed sage Who has sunk to the grave 'neath the weight of age? For the vanquished pride of manhood's bloom? For the light of youth quenched in the tomb? For the bridegroom's fall? For the bride's decay? That pastor and people have passed away, And the tears of night their graves bedew By the funeral cypress and solemn yew? Or dost thou mourn that the house of God Has ceased to be a divine abode? That the Holy Spirit, which erst did brood O'er the Son of Man by Jordan's flood, In thine own pure form to the eye of sense, From its resting place has departed hence, And twitters the swallow, and wheels the bat O'er the mercy-seat where its presence sat? I have marked thy trembling breast, and heard With a heart responsive thy tones, sweet bird, And have mourned, like thee, of earth's fairest things The blight and the loss--Oh! had I thy wings, From a world of woe to the realms of the blest I would flee away, and would be at rest. FALL OF SUPERSTITION. A PRIZE POEM. The star of Bethlehem rose, and truth and light Burst on the nations that reposed in night, And chased the Stygian shades with rosy smile That spread from Error's home, the land of Nile. No more with harp and sistrum Music calls To wanton rites within Astarte's halls, The priests forget to mourn their Apis slain, And bear Osiris' ark with pompous train; Gone is Serapis, and Anubis fled, And Neitha's unraised vail shrouds Isis' prostrate head. Where Jove shook heaven when the red bolt was hurled, Neptune the sea--and Phoebus lit the world; Where fair-haired naiads held each silver flood, A fawn each field--a dryad every wood-- The myriad gods have fled, and God alone Above their ruined fanes has reared his throne.[A] No more the augur stands in snowy shroud To watch each flitting wing and rolling cloud, Nor Superstition in dim twilight weaves Her wizard song among Dodona's leaves; Phoebus is dumb, and votaries crowd no more The Delphian mountain and the Delian shore, And lone and still the Lybian Ammon stands, His utterance stifled by the desert sands. No more in Cnydian bower, or Cyprian grove The golden censers flame with gifts to Love; The pale-eyed Vestal bends no more and prays Where the eternal fire sends up its blaze; Cybele hears no more the cymbal's sound, The Lares shiver the fireless hearthstone round; And shatter'd shrine and altar lie o'erthrown, Inscriptionless, save where Oblivion lone Has dimly traced his name upon the mouldering stone. Medina's sceptre is despoiled of might-- Once stretched o'er realms that bowed in pale affright; The Moon that rose, as waved the scimetar Where sunk the Cross amid the storm of war, Now pale and dim, is hastening to its wane, The sword is broke that spread the Koran's reign, And soon will minaret and swelling dome Fall, like the fanes of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. On other lands has dawned immortal day, And Superstition's clouds have rolled away; O'er Gallia's mounts and on Iona's shore The Runic altars roll their smoke no more; Fled is the Druid from his ancient oak, His harp is mute--his magic circle broke; And Desolation mopes in Odin's cells Where spirit-voices called to join the feast of shells. O'er Indian plains and ocean-girdled isles With brow of beauty Truth serenely smiles; The nations bow, as light is shed abroad, And break their idols for the living God. Where purple streams from human victims run And votive flesh hangs quivering in the sun, Quenched are the pyres, as shines salvation's star-- Grim Juggernaut is trembling on his car And cries less frequent come from Ganges' waves Where infant forms sink into watery graves. Where heathen prayers flamed by the cocoa tree They supplicate the Christians' Deity And chant in living aisles the vesper hymn Where giant god-trees rear their temples dim. Still speed thy truth!--still wave thy spirit sword, Till every land acknowledge Thee the Lord, And the broad banner of the Cross, unfurled In triumph, wave above a subject world. And here O God! where feuds thy church divide-- The sectary's rancor, and the bigot's pride-- Melt every heart, till all our breasts enshrine One faith, one hope, one love, one zeal divine, And, with one voice, adoring nations call Upon the Father and the God of all. [Footnote A: The Pantheon that was built to all the gods was transformed into a Christian temple.] THE INFANT ST. JOHN, THE BAPTIST. O sweeter than the breath of southern wind With all its perfumes is the whisper'd prayer From infant lips, and gentler than the hind, The feet that bear The heaven-directed youth in wisdom's pathway fair. And thou, the early consecrate, like flowers Didst shed thy incense breath to heaven abroad; And prayer and praise the measure of thy hours, The desert trod Companionless, alone, save of the mighty God. As Phosphor leads the kindling glory on, And fades, lost in the day-god's bright excess, So didst thou in Redemption's coming dawn, Grow lustreless, The fading herald of the Sun of Righteousness. But when the book of life shall be unsealed, And stars of glory round the throne divine In all their light and beauty be revealed, The brightest thine Of all the hosts of earth with heavenly light shall shine. SHELLEY'S OBSEQUIES. Ibi tu calentem Debita sparges lacryma favillam Vatis amici. --Horace. Percy Bysshe Shelley, an eminent English poet, while sailing in the Mediterranean sea, in 1822, was drowned off the coast of Tuscany in a squall which wrecked the boat in which he had embarked. Two weeks afterwards his body was washed ashore. The Tuscan quarantine regulations at that time required that whatever came ashore from the sea should be burned. Shelley's body was accordingly placed on a pyre and reduced to ashes, in the presence of Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt, who are the "brother bards" referred to in the last stanza of the poem. Beneath the axle of departing day The weary waters on the horizon's verge Blush'd like the cheek of children tired in play, As bore the surge The poet's wasted form with slow and mournful dirge. On Via Reggio's surf-beaten strand The late-relenting sea, with hollow moan Gave back the storm-tossed body to the land, As if in tone Of sorrow it bewailed the deed itself had done. There laid upon his bed of shells--around The moon and stars their lonely vigils kept; While in their pall-like shades the mountains bound And night bewept The bard of nature as in death's cold arms he slept. The tuneful morn arose with locks of light-- The ear that drank her music's call was chill; The eye that shone was sealed in endless night, And cold and still The pulses stood that 'neath her gaze were wont to thrill. With trees e'en like the sleeper's honors sered And prows of galleys, like his bosom riven, The melancholy pile of death was reared Aloft to heaven, And on its pillared height the corpse to torches given. From his meridian throne the eye of day Beheld the kindlings of the funeral fire, Where, like a war-worn Roman chieftain, lay Upon his pyre The poet of the broken heart and broken lyre. On scented wings the sorrowing breezes came And fanned the blaze, until the smoke that rushed In dusky volumes upward, lit with flame All redly blushed Like Melancholy's sombre cheek by weeping flushed. And brother bards upon that lonely shore Were standing by, and wept as brightly burned The pyre, till all the form they loved before, To ashes turned, With incense, wine, and tears was sprinkled and inurned. THE FOUNTAIN REVISITED. Let the classic pilgrim rove, By Egeria's fount to stand, Or sit in Vancluse's grot of love, Afar from his native land; Let him drink of the crystal tides Of the far-famed Hippocrene, Or list to the waves where Peneus glides His storied mounts between: But dearer than aught 'neath a foreign sky Is the fount of my native dell, It has fairer charms for my musing eye For my heart a deeper spell. Dear fount! what memories rush Through the heart and wildered brain, As beneath the old beech I list to the gush Of thy sparkling waves again; For here in a fairy dream With friends, my childhood's hours Glided on like the flow of thy beautiful stream, And like it were wreathed with flowers: Here we saw on thy waves, from the shade, The dance of the sunbeams at noon; Or heard, half-afraid, the deep murmurings made In thy cavernous depths, 'neath the moon. I have heard thy waves away From thy scenes, dear fount, apart; And have felt the play, in life's fevered day, Of thy waters through my heart; But oh! thou art not the same: Youth's friends are gone--I am lone-- Thy beeches are carved with many a name Now graved on the funeral stone. As I stand and muse, my tears Are troubling the stream whose waves The lullaby sang to their infantile years, And now murmur around their graves. DEATH OF SAMSON. Within Philistia's princely hall Is held a glorious festival, And on the fluctuant ether floats The music of the timbrel's notes, While living waves of voices gush, Echoing among the distant hills, Like an impetuous torrent's rush When swollen by a thousand rills. The stripling and the man of years, Warriors with twice ten thousand spears, Peasants and slaves and husbandmen,-- The shepherd from his mountain glen, Vassal, and chief arrayed in gold And purple robes--Philistines all Are drawn together to behold Their mighty foeman held in thrall. Loud pealed the accents of the horn Upon the air of the clear morn, And deafening rose the mingled shout, Cleaving the air from that wild rout, As, guarded by a cavalcade The illustrious prisoner appeared And, 'mid the grove the dense spears made, His forehead like a tall oak reared. He stood with brawny shoulders bare, And tossed his nervous arms in air-- Chains, leathern thongs, and brazen bands Parted like wool within his hands; And giant trunks of gnarled oak, Splintered and into ribbons rent, Or by his iron sinews broke, Increased the people's wonderment. The amphitheatre, where stood Spell-bound the mighty multitude, Rested its long and gilded walls Upon two pillars' capitals: His brawny arms, with labor spent, He threw around the pillars there, And to the deep blue firmament Lifted his sightless orbs in prayer. Anon the columns move--they shake, Totter, and vacillate, and shake, And wrenched by giant force, come down Like a disrupted mountain's crown, With cornice, frieze, and chapiter, Girder, and spangled dome, and wall, Ceiling of gold, and roof of fir, Crumbled in mighty ruin all. Down came the structure--on the air Uprose in wildest shrieks despair, Rolling in echoes loud and long Ascending from the myriad throng: And Samson, with the heaps of dead Priest, vassal, chief, in ruin blent, Piled over his victorious head His sepulchre and monument. AN INFANT'S PRAYER. The day is spent, on the calm evening hours, Like whispered prayer, come nature's sounds abroad, And with bowed heads the pure and gentle flowers Shake from their censers perfume to their God; Thus would I bow the head and bend the knee, And pour my soul's pure incense, Lord, to Thee. Creator of my body, I adore, Redeemer of my soul, I worship Thee, Preserver of my being, I implore Thy light and power to guide and shelter me; Be Thou my sun, as life's dark vale I tread, Be thou my shield to guard my infant head. And when these eyes in dewy sleep shall close, Uplifted now in love to Thy great throne, In the defenceless hours of my repose, Father and God, oh! leave me not alone, But send thy angel minister's to keep With hovering wings their vigils while I sleep. JOHN MARCHBORN COOLEY. John Marchborn Cooley, the eldest son of the late Corbin Cooley, was born at the Cooley homestead, on the Susquehanna river, in Cecil county, a short distance below the junction of that stream and the Octoraro creek, on the first of March, 1827; and died at Darlington, Harford county, Maryland, April 13th, 1878. In childhood he showed a taste for learning, and in early youth was sent to West Nottingham Academy, where he received his education. While at the Academy he is said to have been always willing to write the compositions of his fellow students, and to help them with any literary work in which they were engaged. Mr. Cooley studied law in the office of the late Col. John C. Groome, and was admitted to the Elkton bar on the 4th of April, 1850. He practiced his profession in Elkton for a short time, during a part of which he was counsel to the County Commissioners, but removed to Warsaw, Illinois, where he continued to practice his profession for six years, after which he came to Harford county, where he resided until the outbreaking of the war of the rebellion, when he joined the Union army and continued to serve his country until the close of the war. In 1866, he married Miss Hattie Lord, of Manchester, New Hampshire, and settled in Darlington, Harford county, Maryland, where he was engaged in teaching a classical school until the time of his death. Mr. Cooley was born within a few miles of the birthplace of William P. and E.E. Ewing, and Emma Alice Brown and almost within sight of the mansion in which Mrs. Hall wrote the poems which are published in this book. Mr. Cooley was a born poet, a voluminous and beautiful writer, and the author of several poems of considerable length and great merit. Mr. Cooley's widow and son, Marvin L. Cooley, still survive, and at present reside in Darlington. A STORY WITH A MORAL. One ev'ning, as some children play'd Beneath an oak tree's summer shade, A stranger, travel-stained and gray, Beside them halted on his way. As if a spell, upon them thrown, Had changed their agile limbs to stone, Each in the spot where it first view'd Th' approaching wand'rer mutely stood. Ere silence had oppressive grown The old man's voice thus found a tone; "I too was once as blithe and gay-- My days as lightly flew away As if I counted all their hours Upon a dial-plate of flowers; And gentle slumber oft renew'd The joyance of my waking mood, As if my soul in slumber caught The radiance of expiring thought; As if perception's farewell beam Could tinge my bosom with a dream-- That twilight of the mind which throws Such mystic splendor o'er repose. Contrasted with a youth so bright My manhood seems one dreary night, A chilling, cheerless night, like those Which over Arctic regions close. I married one, to my fond eyes An angel draped in human guise. Alas! she had one failing; No secret could she keep In spite of all my railing, And curses loud and deep. No matter what the danger Of gossiping might be, She'd gossip with a stranger As quickly as with me. One can't be always serious, And talking just for show, For that is deleterious To fellowship, and so I oft with her would chatter, Just as I felt inclined, Of any little matter I chanced to call to mind. Alas! on one ill-fated day, I heard an angry neighbor say, 'Don't tell John Jones of your affairs, Don't tell him for your life, Without you wish the world to know, For he will tell his wife.' 'For he will tell his wife' did ring All day through heart and brain; In sleep a nightmare stole his voice, And shouted it again. I spent whole days in meditating How I should break the spell, Which made my wife keep prating Of things she shouldn't tell. Some awful crime I'll improvise, Which I'll to her confide, Upon the instant home I rushed, My hands in blood were dyed. 'Now, Catharine, by your love for me, My secret closely hide.' Her quiet tongue, for full three days, The secret kept so well, I almost grew to hope that she This secret wouldn't tell. Alas! upon the following day She had revealed it, for I found Some surly men with warrants arm'd Were slyly lurking round. They took me to the county jail My tristful Kate pursuing, And all the way she sobb'd and cried 'Oh! what have I been doing?' Before the judge I was arraigned, Who sternly frowning gazed on me, And by his clerk straightway inquired, What was the felon's plea. May't please your honor, I exclaim'd This case you may dismiss-- Now hearken all assembled here, My whole defence is this: I killed a dog--a thievish wretch-- His body may be found, Beneath an apple tree of mine, A few feet under ground, This simple plot I laid in hope To cure my tattling wife; I find, alas! that she must talk, Though talking risk my life. So from her presence then I fled, In spite of all the tears she shed, And since, a wand'ring life I've led, And told the tale where'er I sped." FORTY YEARS AFTER. For twenty guests the feast is laid With luscious wines and viands rare, And perfumes such as might persuade The very gods to revel there. A youthful company gathered here, Just two score years ago to-day, Agreed to meet once ev'ry year Until the last one passed away. And when the group might fewer grow The vacant chairs should still be placed Around the board whereon should glow The glories of the earliest feast. One guest was there, with sunken eye And mem'ry busy with the past-- Could he have chosen the time to die, Some earlier feast had been his last. "But thrice we met" the old man said, But thrice in youthful joy and pride, When all for whom this board was spread Were seated gaily at my side. Then first we placed an empty chair And ev'ry breast was filled with gloom, For he we knew, who should be there, That hour was absent in the tomb. The jest and song were check'd awhile, But quickly we forgot the dead, And o'er each face th' arrested smile In all its former freedom spread. For still our circle seem'd intact. The lofty chorus rose as well As when our numbers had not lack'd That voice the more in mirth to swell. But we parted with a sadder mien And hands were clasped more kindly then, For each one knew where death had been We might expect him o'er again. Ah! wondrous soon our feast before A lessening group was yearly spread, And all our joys were ruffled o'er With somber mem'ries of the dead. The song and jest less rude became, Our voices low and looks more kind, Each toast recall'd some cherish'd name Or brought a buried friend to mind. At length, alas! we were but two With features shrivel'd, shrunk, and changed, Whose faded eyes could scarcely view The vacant seats around us ranged. But fancy, as we passed the bowl, Fill'd ev'ry empty chair again. Inform'd the silent air with soul And shaped the shadowy void to men. The breezy air around us stirr'd With snatches of familiar song, Nor cared we then how fancy err'd Since her delusion made us strong. But now, I am the only guest, The grave--the grave now covers all Who joined me at the annual feast We kept in this deserted hall. He paused and then his goblet fill'd, But never touch'd his lips the brim, His arm was stay'd, his pulses still'd, And ah! his glazing eyes grew dim. The farther objects in the room Have vanish'd from his failing sight; One broad horizon spreads in gloom Around a lessening disc of light. And then he seem'd like one who kept A vigil with suspended breath-- So kindly to his breast had crept Some gentlest messenger of death. THE PAST. Still--still the Earth each primal grace renews, And blooms, or brightens with Creation's hues: Repeats the sun the glories of the sky, Which upward lured the earliest watcher's eye; Yet bids his beams the glowing clouds adorn With all the charms of Earth's initial morn, And duplicates at eve the splendors yet That fixed the glance, that first beheld him set. LOVED AND LOST. Love cannot call her back again, But oh! it may presume With ceaseless accents to complain, All wildly near her tomb. A madd'ning mirage of the mind Still bids her image rise, That form my heart can never find Yet haunts my wearied eyes. Since Earth received its earliest dead, Man's sorrow has been vain; Though useless were the tears they shed, Still I will weep again. The breast, that may its pangs conceal, Is not from torture freed, For still the wound, that will not heal, Alas! must inly bleed. Vain Sophist! ask no reason why The love that cannot save, Will hover with despairing cry Around the dear ones grave. Mine is not frenzy's sudden gust, The passion of an hour, Which sprinkles o'er beloved dust Its brief though burning shower. Then bid not me my tears to check, The effort would but fail, The face, I hid at custom's beck, Would weep behind its veil. The tree its blighted trunk will rear, With sap and verdure gone, And hearts may break, yet many a year All brokenly live on. Earth has no terror like the tomb Which hides my darling's head, Yet seeking her amid its gloom, I grope among the dead. And oh! could love restore that form To its recovered grace, How soon would it again grow warm Within my wild embrace. DEATH OF HENRY CLAY, JR. KILLED IN ONE OF THE BATTLES OF THE MEXICAN WAR. Fierce as the sword upon his thigh, Doth gleam the panting soldier's eye, But nerveless hangs the arm that swayed So proudly that terrific blade. The feeble bosom scarce can give A throb to show he yet doth live, And in his eye the light which glows, Is but the stare, that death bestows. The filmy veins that circling thread The cooling balls are turning red; And every pang that racks him now, Starts the cold sweat up to his brow, But yet his smile not even death Could from his boyish face unwreath, Or in convulsive writhing show The pangs, that wring the brain below. To the far fight he seeks to gaze, Where battling arms yet madly blaze, And with a gush of manly pride, Weeps as his banner is descried Above the piling smoke-clouds borne, Like the first dubious streaks of morn That o'er the mountains misty height Will kindle in a lovely sight. "A foreign soil my blood doth stain, And the few drops that yet remain Add but still longer to my pain. Land of my birth! thy hills no more May these fast glazing eyes explore, Yet oh! may not my body rest Beneath that sod my heart loves best? My father--home! Joys most adored Dwell in that simple English word-- Go, comrades! Till your field is won Forget me--father, I die thy son." Hark the wild cry rolls on his ear! The foe approach who hovered near; Rings the harsh clang of bick'ring steel In blows his arm no more may deal. "Beside me now no longer be, Ye need not seek to die with me; Go, friends"--his manly bosom swell'd With life the stiff'ning wounds withheld; And struggling to his knees, he shook The sword his hand had not forsook, But to his arm it was denied To slay the foe his heart defied. The faintly wielded steel was left In the slight wound it barely cleft. Borne to the earth by the same thrust, That smote his en'my to the dust, His breast receiv'd their cowardly blows-- The fluttering eye-lids slowly close, Then parting, show the eye beneath White with the searching touch of Death. The last thick drops congeal around The jagged edge of many a wound; See breaking through the marble skin The clammy dews that lurk within, The lip still quivers, but no breath Seeks the unmoving heart beneath. Thou gallant Clay--thy name doth cast A halo o'er the glorious past; For in the brightness of such blaze Even Alexander fame decays, Yes--yes, Columbia's noble son Died! Monarchs could no more have done. A VALENTINE. Oh! for a brief poetic mood In which to write a merry line-- A line, which might, could, would or should Do duty as a Valentine. Then to the woods the birds repair In pairs, prepared to woo A mate whose breast shall fondly share This world's huge load of ceaseless care Which grows so light when borne by two. But ah! such language will not suit, I'd better far have still been mute. My mate is dead or else she's flown And I am left to brood alone, To think of joys of vanish'd years And banish thus some present tears; But then our life is but a dream And things are not what they seem. LINES SUGGESTED ON VISITING THE GRAVE OF A DEAR FRIEND. Like him who mourns a jewel lost In some unfathomable sea, The precious gem he cherish'd most-- So, dearest, do I mourn for thee. For oh! the future is as dark As is the ocean's barren plain, Whose restless waters wear no mark To guide his eyes, who seeks in vain. True, reckless Fancy dares invade The realm of time's uncounted hours, As fondly gay, as if she stray'd In safety through a land of flowers. And still doth hope shine bright and warm-- But oh! the light with which it cheers, My darling one, but glows to form A rainbow o'er a vale of tears. GEORGE WASHINGTON CRUIKSHANK. George W. Cruikshank was born in Fredericktown, Cecil county, Md., May 11th, 1838. He received his early education in the common school of Cecilton, and was afterwards sent to a military academy at Brandywine Springs, in New Castle county, Delaware, and graduated at Delaware College in 1858. He is among the very best classical and literary scholars that his native county has produced. Mr. Cruikshank studied law for about a year in the office of Charles J.M. Gwinn, of Baltimore, but was compelled by the threatened loss of sight to relinquish study until 1865, when he completed the prescribed course of reading in the office of Colonel John C. Groome, in Elkton, and was admitted to the Elkton Bar on September 18th, 1865, and on the same day purchased an interest in _The Cecil Democrat_, and became its editor, a position he still continues to fill. In 1883 Mr. Cruikshank became connected with the Baltimore _Day_, which he edited while that journal existed. Mr. Cruikshank, in 1869, married his cousin Sarah Elizabeth Cruikshank. They are the parents of five children--three of whom survive. Mr. Cruikshank is one of the most forcible and brilliant editorial writers in the State, and the author of a number of chaste and erudite poems written in early manhood, only two or three of which have been published. STONEWALL JACKSON. [1863.] AN IMPROMPTU ON HEARING OF HIS DEATH. Bury the mighty dead-- Long, long to live in story! Bury the mighty dead In his own shroud of glory. Question not his purpose; Sully not his name, Nor think that adventitious aid Can build or blight his fame, Nor hope, by obloquizing what He strove for, glory's laws Can be gainsaid, or he defiled Who'd honor any cause. Question not his motives, Ye who have felt his might! Who doubts, that ever saw him strike, He aimed to strike for right? His was no base ambition;-- No angry thirst for blood. Naught could avail to lift his arm, But love of common good. Yet, when he deigned to raise it, Who could resist its power? Or who shall hope, or friend, or foe, E'er to forget that hour? His life he held as nothing. His country claimed his all. Ah! what shall dry that country's tears Fast falling o'er his fall? His life he held as nothing, As through the flame he trod; To duty gave he all of earth And all beyond to God. The justness of his effort He never lent to doubt. His aim, his arm, his all was fix'd To put the foe to rout. Mistrusting earth's tribunals, Scorning the tyrant's rod, He chose the fittest Arbiter, 'Twixt foe and sword, his God. And doubted not, a moment, That, when the fight was won, Who rules the fate of nations Would bid His own:--Well done! And doubted not, a moment, As fiercest flashed the fire, The bullet's fatal blast would call:-- Glad summons!--Come up higher! And who would hence recall thee?-- Thy work so nobly done! Enough for mortal brow to wear The crown thy prowess won:-- Grim warrior, grand in battle! Rapt christian, meek in prayer!-- Vain age! that fain would reproduce A character as rare! The world has owned its heroes;-- Its martyrs, great and good, Who rode the storm of power, Or swam the sea of blood:-- Napoleons, Cæsars, Cromwells, Melancthons, Luthers brave! But, who than Jackson ever yet Has filled a prouder grave? The cause for which he struggled, May fall before the foe: Stout hearts, devoted to their trust, All moulder, cold and low. The land may prove a charnel-house For millions of the slain, And blood and carnage mark the track Where madmen march amain,-- Fanatic heels may scourge it, Black demons blight the sod; And hell's foul desolation Mock Liberty's fair God.-- The future leave no record, Of mighty struggle there, Save hollowness, and helplessness, And bitter, bald despair.-- Proud cities lose their names e'en; Tall towers fall to earth.-- Mount Vernon fade, and Westmoreland Forget illustrious birth;-- And yet, upon tradition, Will float the name of him Whose virtues time may tarnish not, Eternity not dim. Whose life on earth was only, So grand, so free, so pure, For brighter realms and sunnier skies, A preparation sure. And whose sweet faith, so child-like, Nor blast, nor surge nor rod, One moment could avert from The bosom of his God. Bury the mighty dead! Long, long to live in story! Bury the hero dead In his own shroud of glory! IN MEMORIAM. FRANK M. CRUIKSHANK, DIED 1862. Frank is dead! The mournful message Comes gushing from the ocean's roar. Frank is dead! His mortal passage Has ended on the heavenly shore. In earthly agony he died To join his Saviour crucified. Frank is dead! Time's bitter trials Drove him a wanderer from home, To meet life's lot, share its denials, Or gain a rest where cares ne'er come. His frail form sinking, his grand spirit Careered to realms the blest inherit. Frank is dead! In life's young morning, When heavenly promise lit his day, His smitten spirit, homeward turning, Forsook its tenement of clay. No more to battle here with sin; No more to suffer mid earth's din. Frank is dead! By fever stricken, How long he suffered, and how deep! With none to feel his hot blood quicken, No loved one near to calm his sleep. No mother's presence him to gladden: Naught, naught to cheer--all, all to sadden. Frank is dead! His pangs are over. His gentle spirit hence has flown. Strangers, with earth, his body cover, Strangers attend his dying moan. On stranger forms his eyes last close, To meet A FRIEND in their repose. Frank is dead! Aye! weep, fond mourner! The grand, the beautiful is lost. Too pure for earth, the meek sojourner, On passion's billows tempest-tossed, Has found a source of sweeter bliss In realms that sunder wide from this. Frank is dead! Yes, dead to sorrow, Dead to sadness, dead to pain. Dead! Dead to all save the tomorrow Whose light eternally shall reign. He's dead to young ambition's vow And the big thought that stamped his brow. Frank is dead! Dead to the labors He'd staked his life to triumph in:-- To win his friends, his dying neighbors, And fellows all from death and sin. With steady faith he toiled to fit Christ's armor on and honor it. Frank is dead! Omniscient pleasure Has closed his bright career too soon To realize how rich a treasure The ranks had entered ere high noon. His brilliant promise, dashed in youth, One less is left to fight for truth. Frank is dead! Yes, dead to mortals. No more we'll see his noble brow Or flashing eye; but in the portals Above, by faith I see him now With gladden'd step and fluttering heart, Marching to share the better part. Frank is dead!! No, never, never! Not dead but only gone before. Back,--back! Thou tear-drop, rising ever; Nor Heaven's fiat now deplore. Wail not the sorrows earth can lend To banish spirits that ascend. And fare thee well, my noble brother! 'Tis hard to think that thou art not; To realize that never other Footstep like thine shall share my cot, And think of all thy heart endured, By sore besetments often tried. But,--Heaven be thanked,--all now is cured And thou, fair boy, art glorified. NEW-YEAR ODE. [1863.] Let the bier move onward.--Let no tear be shed. The midnight watch is ended: The grim old year is dead. His life was full of turmoil. In death he ends his woes. As fraught with toil his pilgrimage, may peaceful be its close. Let the bier move onward.--Let no tear drop fall. The couch of birth is waiting the egress of the pall. Haste! Hasten the obsequies:--the natal hour is nigh. Waste not a moment weeping when expectation's high. * * * * * Draw back the veil; the curtain lift. Ho! Thirsting hearts, rejoice! The new-born is no puny gift:-- Time's latest, grandest choice. Nurseling and giant! Infant grown! Majestic even now! 'Tis well that such a restless throne Descends to such as thou. * * * * * Dame nature's travail bore thee; Her pangs a world upheaved. A world now bending o'er thee Awaits those pangs relieved. A world is waiting for thee: And shall it be deceived? Ah no! Such pangs were never To mother giv'n in vain. Rise, new-born! Rise and sever Tyranny's clanking chain. Rise, Virtue! Rise forever! The New-Year comes amain! O! Give him welcome ever! Can bleeding hearts refrain? * * * * * All hail! Oh beautiful New-Year! Full, full of promise fraught with cheer. Bright promise of the glad return Of glowing fires that erst did burn On hearths long desolate! Hail! Great deliverer from wrath, Brave pioneer upon the path That leads to better fate! Joy be to thee thy natal day, As dawns Aurora's earliest ray, While youth is fresh and faith is clear And hope is bright with coming cheer! Thou promisest eventful life As, giant-like, thou leap'st to earth, Robed in full majesty at birth; With power to do and will to dare And arm to shield from threat'ning care, And eye to ken the dead past's strife. Thy young life's hand knows yet no stain Of blood, or greed, or guilt, or gain. But, know, Oh Friend! thou'rt ushered in To feel the jar and note the din Of war-blast's rude alarms. Thy elder brother, gone before, Has left upon this nether shore A burden for thine arms. 'Tis thine to choose the part thou'lt take, Oh giant mighty! Thine to make An early choice; lose not an hour. 'Tis crime to waste prodigious power. Great, vast, appalling, is the task By fate assigned to thee. No mask Of indecision now is given. The bolt of Mars the rock has riven. The hour is dark:--the danger nigh. The ravens caw: the eagles cry. The breakers dash--the chasm yawns: The skies are lurid:--chaos dawns. Thunder with thunder-peal is riven As if to shake earth's faith in heaven! All, all is wild! No sun! No moon! Earth, air and sky, in dire commune, Demand--what hand shall guide them now? New-Year, stand forth and bide the call To thee address'd. We stand or fall As thou decree'st. Frown, and we perish. Smile, we rise To joys that savor of the skies. Bid lethargy depart thy brow And strike for right and truth. Young, thou; but hast no youth. No hours are thine for sportive mirth. Minerva-like, mature from birth, Great deeds and valiant thine must be, In wisdom guided, fair and free.-- Deeds that no year hath known before; Fraught not with strife;--drenched not in gore. Free from old taint of fell disease And ancient forms of party strife. Rich in the gentler modes of life With sweeter manners, purer laws, Forerunner of those years of ease That token a sublimer cause! What say'st thou? Giant, young and strong, What impulse heaves thy throbbing breast? Shall warrior plumes bedeck thy crest? Wilt whisper peace? Or shout for war? Wilt plead for right, or bleed for wrong? Wilt peal the bugle-blast afar And urge the cannon's madd'ning roar? Or wing the note through vale and glen:-- Hail! Peace on earth! Good-will to men! Reason return:--let strife be o'er? Thou speak'st not, giant, but I feel Hope's roseate flush upon my brow. Thy deeds will seal thy silent vow. New aims thy glory will reveal. Thou heed'st the anguished bosom's smart, And thou wilt choose the better part. Thou'lt live on hist'ry's brightest page A monarch mighty, gentle sage: Great, great for what thou wilt have done And blest in all the course thou'lt run:-- Thy crown not carved in brass or wood, To crumble or decay; But be in endless day, Emblem of grandeur, shrined in good. And truth and peace will round thee weave An amaranthyne wreath of love, Its blessed motto ... trust--believe. And thou wilt share the realm above, Where bleeding hearts shall triumph meet, Around one common mercy-seat. All hail, then, beautiful New-Year! Hero of promise, fraught with cheer! Bright promise of the glad return Of glowing fires that erst did burn On hearths long desolate! Thy stainless youth supports our faith That thou wilt break the bonds of death And snap the web of hate. * * * * * And thou farewell, grim tyrant old! Who, who would call thee back! Thou cam'st with bloody footstep, bold; Thou leav'st a blood-stained track. Go! Find a grave in the billowy surge That ne'er can wash thee clean; The wail of millions be thy dirge-- Thy judge--the Great Unseen! And when the resurrection morn Shall seek thy name to blot, Ho! Heed the voice that asks in scorn,-- Thou liv'dst and reign'dst for what? Passion unbridled, stubborn pride, Avengers, thine to rue, Of outraged virtue, truth defied, Shall 'balm in blood thy due, Lost eighteen sixty-two. MY BIRTHDAY. TO S---- 1864. The night is strangely, wildly dark; The thunders fiercely roll, And lightnings flash their angry spark; But thou absorb'st my soul. I have no care for storm-king's cloud, How black soe'er it be;-- No truant thought for earth's dark shroud: I'm thinking, love, of thee. To-night the God of battles views, With deprecating eye, A scene where demons wild infuse A thirst for victory. 'Tis His, not mine to guide the storm; 'Tis His to calm the sea: My spirit hovers 'round thy form. I'm thinking, love, of thee. Time's cycle once again has wrought Its round:--I'm twenty six. Another mile-stone's gained--sad thought-- Toward deep, silent Styx. I count no laurels I have won; Years bring no joy to me, While yet alone I wander on In timid thought of thee. Years six and twenty have been mine To journey on alone: Shall I as many more repine, Before I am undone? Or shall the journey henceforth take A brighter phaze for me? Shall I next six-and-twenty make My journey, love, with thee? If so, good-bye grim doubt and fear: Adieu to arid sand. All Hail! Oh prospect bright and clear! All Hail, oasis grand! Hand joined in hand, heart linked with heart, Come joy, come hope, come glee! United, ne'er on earth to part, I'll always think of thee. If not, Good-bye! The spirit breaks; The fountain soon must dry. If not, good God! The temple shakes; It totters! What am I? A wreck of hope!--An aimless thing! A helmless ship at sea To whose last spar love still must cling, And sigh:--Alas!--for thee. MRS. ANNIE McCARER DARLINGTON. Annie McCarer Darlington, the daughter of Charles Biles and Catharine Ross Biles, was born July 20th, 1836, at Willow Grove, in Cecil county, about four miles east of the village of Brick Meeting House, and near the old Blue Ball Tavern. She is a cousin of Mrs. Ida McCormick, whose poetry may be found in this book, their mothers being sisters. Miss Biles was married November 20th, 1860, to Francis James Darlington, of West Chester, Pa., and spent the next five years of her life on a farm near Unionville, formerly the property of the sculptor, Marshall Swayne. The family then removed to their present residence near Westtown Friends' Boarding School, where they spend the Summer season. The Winters are spent with their seven children, in a quiet little home in the town of Melrose, on the banks of the beautiful Lake Santa Fe, in Florida. Miss Biles began to write poetry when about eighteen years of age, and for the ensuing five years was a frequent contributor to _The Cecil Democrat_, under the _nom de plume_ of "Gertrude St. Orme." A BIRTHDAY GREETING TO MY LITTLE NEPHEW. [JULY 4TH, 1886.] I know a happy little boy, They call him Charlie Gray, Whose face is bright, because you know, He's six years old to-day. I scarce can think six years have passed Since Charlie really came, I well remember long ago, We never heard his name. But here he is, almost a man, With knickerbockers on, And baby dresses packed away, You'll find them, every one. And every year as time rolls on, And Charlie's birthdays come, The world goes out to celebrate With banner, fife, and drum. At sunrise on those happy days The cannon's deaf'ning roar, Reminded us that Charlie Gray Was two, or three, or four. But now those landmarks all are passed, He's getting fast away, The boy's a man, no baby now, He's six years old to-day. Just think of it, ye many friends Who wish him worlds of joy, That Charlie Gray is six to-day, A patriotic boy. And if he sometimes noisy grows, What matter, if he's right? Give me the boys that make a noise And play with all their might. I know 'tis whispered far and near, That Charlie loves his way, But I can tell of grown up men, Who do the same to-day. Who never yield or quit the field, Can you blame Charlie then? For most small boys will imitate What's seen in grown up men. And now good friends, I give you leave To find him if you can, Another boy, more glad with joy, Than this brave little man. Heigh ho! I still am in a maze, To think he's six to-day, Some other time I'll tell you more, If--Charlie says I may. MURMURINGS. Falling, falling--gently falling, Pattering on the window pane, Like a weird spirit calling Come the heavy drops of rain. Sweeping by the crazy casement, Where the creeping ivy clings, Sounds the wind in gustful musings Loudly speaking bitter things. Hush! the tones are sinking lower, Sweetest strains of music roll; Like Aeolian harps in Heaven, Pouring incense o'er the soul. But 'tis gone! a wilder wailing Fills the air where music reigned, Hoarsely groans the wild storm-demon, Drowning all those sweeter strains. And the tall pines shake and quiver As the monarch rideth by; Onward where the troubled river Dashes spray-drops towards the sky. But he pauses not to listen, Onward with demoniac will; Till Aeolian harps in Heaven Softly whisper, "Peace, be still." THE OLD OAK TREE. Woodman, spare that tree! Touch not a single bough: In youth it sheltered me, And I'd protect it now. --George P. Morris. 'Tis living yet! Time has not dared To mark it, as his own, Nor claimed one bough, but kindly spared This giant, firm and lone. It stands, as stood in years gone by, The chieftain in its shade, And breathed the warning, ere the cry Of war went through the glade. The Council tires then brightly burned Beneath its spreading bough, But oh, alas! the scene has turned, Where burn those fires now? The old oak stands where it did then, The same fresh violets bloom, But far down in the narrow glen, They deck the Indian's tomb. Life then seemed bright and free from care; When this old tree was young The Indian maiden twined her hair, And to her chieftain sung A song, low, gentle, and sincere, In pathos rich and rare; The warrior-lover brushed a tear, For thought was busy there. Yes, busy was the fertile brain, That bid him onward flee, The Indian moon was on the wane And drooped the hawthorne tree. The light canoe of rounded bark Scarce dared to skim the flood, For they had come with meaning dark To ravage lake and wood. * * * * * The conflict ended! but the bow Which twanged across the plain. Dealt its proud owner death's cold blow, And laid him with the slain. But to a better, happier home, Have gone the Indian braves; Where cruel white men cannot come, To call their brothers--slaves. Then let it stand, that aged oak, Among its kindred trees; Tho' now, no more the wigwam smoke Will curl upon the breeze. 'Tis left alone--the last sad thing That marks a nation vast, Then spare it, that its boughs may sing A requiem to the Past. SWEET FLORIDA. Beautiful Florida! land of the flowers, Home of the mocking bird, saucy and bold, Sweet are the roses that perfume thy bowers, And brilliant thy sunshine like burnished gold. Soft are thy rivulets, gentle thy water-falls, Rippling so merrily toward the broad sea; Fringed with bright daisies, which bloom on thy borders, E'en Nature herself pays a tribute to thee. Sweeter and lovelier than all thy fair sisters, Thy gentleness surely hath fame for thee won, While thy star, not forgotten, shines forth in a glory That crowns the best flag that waves under the sun. Thy name brings a scent of the dogwood and myrtle, The jessamine, too, comes in for a share, With great yellow petals so heavy with perfume, That can with the tube-rose's only compare. Tho' large be the family, there's room for the fairest; No house is too small for a family with love: So Florida, thou who art brightest and dearest, The "Pet of the Household" forever shall prove. Thy rivers are broad and thy lakes fringed with grasses, The glint of the waves of the bright Santa Fe, With her edging of cypress and long-floating mosses, Forever are murmuring a sonnet to thee. While high on a hill sits the Queen of the Villas, Sweet Melrose! whose name is the least of her charms, Waves a welcome to all, to come over the billows And find a safe home 'neath her sheltering arms. And so they are coming, the weak and the weary, From near and from far, the strong and the brave, All ready to drink of the life giving breezes, The only Elixir that truly can save. EVENING. 'Tis Evening! soul enchanting hour, And queenly silence reigns supreme; A shade is cast o'er lake and bower, All nature sinks beneath the power Of sweet oblivion's dream. The Sun--the hero-god of day, Has from this happier half of earth, Passed on with sweet life-giving ray, To smile on millions glad and gay, In sorrow or in mirth. While in his stead, the Heavens above Are shaded with a silver light, So soft, so pure--that angels rove, To guard from evil those who love The God, who made all bright. Then soon that planetary sea Is studded o'er with diadems, Shining alike on land and sea. High, high above the loftiest tree; Proud Nature's priceless gems. Who would not leave the crowded room, The grand, but cold musician's art; To wander 'neath the calm still moon. When nature speaks 'mid wild perfume, So sweetly to the heart. Who would not shun proud Fashion's hall, Escape her cold and torturings ways, To calmly rest where dew-drops fall; Perfumes that mind and soul enthrall, Beneath fair Luna's rays. Who would exchange a home of flowers, Down in a pure and modest dell, For palaces 'mid art-reared bowers, Washed o'er by artificial showers, Where naught but sorrows dwell. Blest hour of thought! to thy pure scene A mild and soothing charm is given, When hearts to hearts in love convene, And roses deck the silvered green Of mingled Earth and Heaven. The truth--that plainly proves a God, Not chance, performed the better part Which teaches us His Heavenly Word: Breathes magic for the singing bird, And links us heart to heart. REV. WILLIAM DUKE. The Rev. William Duke was born in the southern part of what is now Harford county, but was at the time of his birth included in Baltimore county, on the 15th of September, 1757, and died in Elkton on the 31st of May, 1840. He became enamoured of the doctrines of Methodism in early youth, and allied himself with that denomination before its separation from the Protestant Episcopal Church, and was licensed to preach by Rev. Francis Asbury when he was only seventeen years old. Mr. Duke's name appears upon the minutes of the first Conference, held in Philadelphia in 1774, as one of the seven ministers who were that year taken on trial. The next year he was admitted to full membership, and remained in connection with the Conference as a traveling preacher until 1779, when he ceased to travel, and subsequently took orders in the Protestant Episcopal Church; being impelled to do so by his opposition to the erection of the Methodist Society into an independent Church. Mr. Duke became Rector of North Elk Parish in 1793, but resigned the charge three years later, and removed to Anne Arundel county, but returned to Elkton about a year afterwards; soon after he removed to Kent county, where he taught a parochial school for a short time, but returned to Elkton again in 1799 and opened a school, and preached during the three following years at North East, Elkton, and at the Episcopal Church near New London, Pa. In 1803 he was appointed Professor of Languages in St. John's College, Annapolis, and had charge of St. Ann's Church, in that city, until 1806, when he returned to Elkton, and the next year took charge of the Elkton Academy. Mr. Duke remained in Cecil county until 1812, when he took charge of Charlotte Hall, in St. Mary's county, and continued in charge of the school at that place until 1814, when he returned to Elkton, where he officiated as aforetime until the Spring of 1818, when he was appointed Principal of the Academy. He continued to reside in Elkton until the time of his death. In 1793 Mr. Duke married Hetty Coudon, the daughter of the Rev. Joseph Coudon, a former Rector of North Elk Parish, and the ancestor of the Coudon family of this county. Mr. and Mrs. Duke were the parents of Miss Hetty Duke, who was their only child, and who died in Elkton, February 19th, 1875. Mr. Duke was a very learned man, and is said by the Rev. Ethan Allan, the Historian of "The Old Parishes of Maryland," to have been more of the student than the preacher. He was the author of a pamphlet published in Elkton in 1795, entitled "Observations on the Present State of Religion in Maryland," which is now of great rarity and value. He also published a small volume entitled "Hymns and Poems on Various Occasions," which was printed by Samuel and John Adams, of Baltimore, in 1790; and several other poems of considerable length, the most popular of which was entitled "A View of the Woods," which was descriptive of the adventures and experience of Western emigrants in the latter part of the last century. The following selections have been made from "Hymns and Poems on Various Occasions." HYMN. And truly if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned; but now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly. --Hebrews 11:15,16. Abr'am, the father of the Jews, The servant, and the friend of God, When call'd from heaven, did not refuse To leave his Syrian abode. His father's house and kindred dear Plead, and dissuaded him in vain; Neither could earthly hope nor fear The noble enterprise restrain. Nor he alone; a host of saints Renounced the world, and nobly chose That heavenly inheritance Which neither death nor sorrow knows. No intervening dangers check Their ardent progress to the skies, Well may they venture, who expect An heavenly and immortal prize. When faith to their delighted view Their future blissful portion brings, They, firm and cheerful, bid adieu To sin, and self, and earthly things. Happy to leave the world behind, Their conduct speaks a noble aim; They seek a city, and shall find The promised new Jerusalem. Nor yet does impotence or fear Their sense of earthly bliss restrain, Did they not heaven to earth prefer, They soon might wed the world again. In heaven their treasure is laid up Beyond the reach of accident, There shall their lively glorious hope Receive its full accomplishment. HYMN. But yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead; and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. --Romans 6:13. My heart, the world forsake, And every earthly toy; The Lord of all thy portion make, And in Him all enjoy. May sensible delight, Corrected and refined, A thirst of nobler joys excite, And urge the lingering mind. Should ardent love impel And actuate my soul, Still may celestial fires prevail, And every thought control. Should glory stimulate, And daring deeds propose, That only fame I'd emulate, To triumph in the cross. Or should my yielding powers Acknowledge pleasure's sway, I'd think of sacred streams and bowers, And sweets that ne'er decay. Should soaring science me Her votary avow, My only excellence should be Christ crucified to know. Should wealth my mind impress, With the desire of more, In Christ the fullness I possess, Of Heaven's exhaustless store. With all that nature craves, Fully from thence supplied, No aching want my bosom heaves No wish unsatisfied. REJOICING IN HOPE. Tost on the troubled sea of life, On every side assailed, Involved in passion's stormy strife, In irksome suff'rance held. The faithful word of promise cheers And bears my spirits up, Dispels my dark desponding fears And stablishes my hope. Hope that shall every toil survive, That smoothes the rugged path, That mitigates the ills of life, And soothes the hour of death. And when the storms of life are o'er, And all our conflicts cease, When landed on the heavenly shore To enjoy eternal peace. Hope at the last, her charge resigned, Securely we dismiss, And an abundant entrance find, To the abodes of bliss. Till then our progress she attends To solace and relieve: And waits till every conflict ends To take her final leave. Possessed of all we hoped below, Our utmost wish attained, Our happiness complete, we know Our full perfection gained. Thus may I cheerfully endure, Till thus my warfare past;-- Suffice for me the promise sure, I shall be crowned at last. HYMN. There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. --Hebrews 4:9. Oh how I languish to possess, A safe and permanent abode! To rest in unmolested peace, And cast my care on thee, my God. In thee I joy, in thee I rest, Though all inferior comforts fail; No hopeless anguish heaves my breast, And no tormenting fears assail. To thee with confidence I look, And calmly wait thy promised aid; I rest securely on that Rock, On which Almighty help is laid. Oh may I on His firmness stand, The ground of my immortal hope; Or nobly rise, at his command, To Pisgah's heaven-aspiring top. That I may with ecstatic view, My future heritage descry, Where pleasures spring forever new, And perfect love shall never die. REMORSE. What racking fear, what painful grief Ensue a pleasant sin! In vain the world proffers relief For maladies within. Its blandishments and smooth deceit No real succor bring; Its remedies but irritate And pleasure leaves a sting. Confusion, shame, and slavish fear O'erwhelm a guilty mind; A burden more than I can bear, My sins upon me bind. Oh had I weighed the matter well Ere my consent was given! Avoided then the gates of hell And urged my way to heaven! Lord, give me strength now to resume My former confidence; Remove my terrors, bid me come With hopeful penitence. In mercy hear my humble cry, Redeem my soul from sin, My guilty conscience pacify And speak the peace serene. MORNING. But now the dawn of day appears, And now the dappled East declares Ambrosial morn again arrived, And nature's slumbering powers revived, And while they into action spring The infant breeze with odorous wing, Perfumes of sweetest scent exhales, And the enlivened sense regales, With sweets exempt from all alloy Which neither irritate nor cloy. Nor less the calmly gladdened sight Enjoys the milder forms of light, Reflected soft in twinkling beams, From numberless translucent gems. But now Aurora dries her tears, And with a gayer mien appears, With cheerful aspect smiles serene, And ushers in the splendid scene Of golden day: while feeble night Precipitates his dreary flight Dispelled by the all cheering sway Of the resplendent God of day, Who, mounted in his royal car, And all arrayed in golden glare With arduous career drives on Ascending his meridian throne: From thence a Sovereign of the day, His full-grown glories to display. EDWIN EVANS EWING. Edwin Evans Ewing, son of Patrick Ewing and brother of William Pinkney Ewing, was born on his father's farm on the Octoraro creek, not far from Rowlandville, in this county, on the 9th of January, 1824. His family is of Scotch-Irish extraction, and settled on the Octoraro more than a century ago. The family has long been distinguished for the intellectuality and literary ability of its members, among whom were the Rev. John Ewing, one of the most eminent scientists and Presbyterian divines of his time, and his daughter Sarah, who became the wife of John Hall, and whose biography is published in this volume. The subject of this sketch spent his youth and early manhood, on his father's farm. Recently when asked for a sketch of his life Mr. Ewing replied: "I didn't have any life. I just growed like Topsy. I didn't have any educating. I just picked it up; and as for poetry, I never wrote any, only rhyme." Notwithstanding this assertion, Mr. Ewing being unable to resist the prompting of the "divinity which stirred within him," when quite young, began to write poetry. There seems to be a subtle influence pervading the romantic Octoraro hills, which if not the direct cause of poetic inspiration seems to encourage its growth, Mr. Ewing being one of five poets who claim that region as their birthplace, or who have profited by a residence therein. When quite young Mr. Ewing wrote poetry which was published in the local journals of Cecil and Lancaster counties, and subsequently contributed poetry to the Philadelphia _Dollar Newspaper_, being a contemporary contributor to that journal with his brother, William P. Ewing, and the late David Scott (of James.) In 1856 Mr. Ewing made a trip to the Southwest, traveling extensively on horseback in Texas. He gave an account of his travels and a description of the country through which he passed in a series of letters published in the _Cecil Whig_, which were much admired. In 1861, Mr. Ewing became the proprietor and editor of the _Cecil Whig_, which was the Union organ of the county. Being a man of decided convictions, and unflinching courage, he never lost an opportunity to advocate the cause of the Union, to which he adhered with great devotion, through evil and through good report. In 1876 he disposed of the _Whig_ and the next year bought an interest in the _Kansas Farmer_ and the _Juvenile Magazine_, published in Topeka, Kansas. He subsequently became connected with the _Daily Capital_, and eventually became sole proprietor of the _Kansas Farmer_. The climate of Kansas not agreeing with him, he removed to Highlands, Macon county, N.C., where in 1882 he established the _Blue Ridge Enterprise_ which he soon afterwards disposed of, and in 1885 became the proprietor of the _Midland Journal_, published in the village of Rising Sun, in this county. Mr. Ewing is a brilliant and forcible writer. Like many others Mr. Ewing kept none of his poems except one which is too lengthy to be given a place in this volume. In consequence of this the compiler has only been able to obtain the following specimens of his poetry after great labor and trouble. THE CHERUBIM--A VISION. 'Twas at that season, when the gloom Of cheerless Winter's pass'd away, And flowers spring up, with sweet perfume, To scent the breeze and cheer our way, Where'er we saunter--o'er the hill, Or through the valley--warm and still, Or broken only by the sound Of tinkling rills, which softly flow, And busy bees, that hum around The flowers which on their borders grow, That I, from life's turmoil had strayed To spend an hour in solitude; And where a sparkling fountain played, I laid me down, in pensive mood, To ponder o'er the fleeting day Of youth, that hies so fast away In golden dreams which quickly fly, Like tints that deck a Summer sky. Soon Fancy, on her airy wing, Was sporting mid Elysian bowers, Where flowers of sweetest odor spring, And birds of golden plumage sing, And wanton thro' the sylvan bowers. There lakelets sparkled in the glow, Wreathed round with flowers of many a hue, And golden pebbles shone below The wave that bore the swan of snow, Reflecting, in its mirror true, The flowers which o'er its surface grew, The tints of earth--the hues of sky-- That in its limpid bosom lie. And groups of happy children played Around the verge of each cascade; Or gambol'd o'er the flowery lea In wanton mirth and joyous glee; Pursuing, o'er the sparkling lawn, The insect in its airy flight, Which still eludes, but tempting on From flower to flower, with plumage bright, The hand that woos to stay its flight-- Till soaring high, on pinions wild It leaves the charm'd and tearful child. One maid there was, divinely fair, Whose cheeks, beneath her peerless eyes, Bloomed like the roses, rich and rare, That yield perfume to summer skies; Her shining locks of silky hair Hung round her neck like grapes of gold, And o'er her snowy bosom roll'd, Hiding the blush that mantled there. The brightest of the fairy throng, She led the dancing group along Through tangled brakes and fretted bowers, Where grew the richest, rarest flowers, That wooed the bee to banquet there, Or yielded sweets to Summer air. But she who moved with elfin pace, And taught the infant throng to play, Raised to heaven her cherub face, While that bright celestial ray, Which halos the throne of glory round, Illumed her azure, orient eye, That seemed to penetrate the sky. Bending her gaze upon the ground, Her gentle bosom heaved a sigh, And anxious faces press around, While pearls of pity dim each eye, As tho' they'd weep again to rest The troubled spirit of that breast. "Weep not for me!" the cherub said, While o'er her seraph beauty played A smile like evening's parting beam, That sparkles o'er the glassy stream, Or lingers on a lucid lake-- Whose dimpling wave the zephyrs break. "Far thro' yon skies, where orient day Is shedding his last lingering ray, Bright angels beckon me away;-- I go--I go--a last farewell!" And as she spoke around her fell, From heaven, a bright celestial ray, Whose lustre dimm'd the light of day; And 'mid that heavenly blaze unfold Her glittering pinions tipp'd with gold. While strains of sweet unearthly sound Awoke their dulcet chime around, She soared away on wings of light, Like sparkling meteor of the night; Still lessening, as she further drew Amid the ether of heavenly blue, Till lost within a blazing star That above the horizon shown-- As if from Paradise a car 'Twere sent to bear the cherub home. No more that happy throng is rending, With gladsome shouts the summer air, Nor songs of love to heaven ascending, From hearts that know no guile nor care; But on each peerless infant brow The gloom of care is settling now; While passion madly fires each eye, And swells each bosom beating high; And tongues that lisped an infant name, Now speak in haughty tones of Fame! While some, in senatorial pride, With scorn their fellow-man deride; And others, more sanguinary still, From words of ire appeal to brands, Nor scruple a brother's blood to spill-- Cain-like!--with ensanguined hands Polluting the flowers which smile--in vain Wooing the heart to love again. Long o'er this painful scene I sighed, Where licentious passion, unrestrained, Was left to riot in her pride-- Spreading destruction where'er she reigned. "And was this bright--this fair domain-- With all its beauty, formed in vain? Where Nature, a paradise to grace, Hath loved her every charm to trace, That man, enamored of distress Should mar it into wilderness?" I raised my arm while thus I spoke, And o'er Beauty's broken bowers sighed; But with the effort I awoke, And found myself by Hela's side. DEATH AND BEAUTY. On a lone sequestered mead, Where silver-streamlets flow, I saw a rose and lily twine, And in love and beauty grow; Again to that lone, peaceful spot, From worldly cares I hied-- But the flowers that lately bloom'd so fair, Had wither'd, drooped, and died! Like love's young dream, they passed away, With all their vernal bloom, And they, who lately shone so fair, Now moulder in the tomb! But ere the minstrels left the bowers, And to summer climes had fled, They sang the dirge o'er fading flowers, That by their stems lay dead. Slumbering on its mother's breast A beauteous infant lay, The blush upon its dimpled cheek, Was like a rose in May: But the glow that tinged that cheek so fair, Was but the transient bloom, That brightens with the flitting breath-- A flow'ret of the tomb. The infant oped its azure eyes, And sweetly smiling, said, "Mamma," its gentle spirit ebbing, Was numbered with the dead; It laid its throbbing temples on The mother's heaving breast, And its gentle spirit pass'd to Heaven, With angels bright to rest! Lovely as the morning flowers, That bloom so fresh and gay, I saw a beauteous fair one decked In the bridal's bright array; But she, who had, at morning rise, Exulted in her bloom, Was doom'd ere evening's sun had set, To grace the silent tomb. Alas! that things so beautiful, So soon must pass away, And all of earth that's loveliest Must moulder in the clay; But well we know those charms so bright, Which Heaven hath form'd in love, Tho' ravaged by death's icy hand, Shall bloom again above! TAKE THE HARP. TO KATE. 'Tis supposed the muses hang a harp by every stream, where it remains till some lady arises to take it and sing the "loves and joys, the rural scenes and pleasures," the beauty and grandeur of the place. Take the harp, nor longer leave it Sighing on the willow tree; Pass thy gentle fingers o'er it, And awake its melody; The streams tho' icy chains may bind them, Still will murmur back thy trill, And the roses wild, though blasted, On thy cheeks are blooming still. Then touch the harp, till its wild numbers The lone groves and valleys fill; And tho' winter's frosts have sear'd them, Thou canst dream they're beauteous still-- Thou canst clothe their banks with verdure, And wild flowers above them rise; What tho' chilly blasts have strewn them, Their fragrance lingers on thy sighs! Take the harp, nor on it dirges Longer let Eolus play; Touch it, and those notes of sadness Change to joyous rhapsody! And tho' the grape, the gift of Autumn, Has been prest to crown the bowl-- Still in thy tresses shine its clusters, While down thy snowy neck they roll. Take the harp, and wake its numbers To thy sister planet's praise, As up the eastern sky she blazes, Followed by the morning rays; Queen of starry heaven beaming, From her azure realm afar; So thou dost shine midst beauty's daughters, Love's bright and glorious morning star. DEATH OF THE BEAUTIFUL. The following poem was written in 1850 on the death of Miss Sarah E. McCullough, of Pleasant Grove, Lancaster county, Pennsylvania. Miss McCullough was a cousin of Mr. Ewing. I saw thy form in youthful prime, Nor thought that pale Decay Would steal before the steps of Time, And waste its bloom away. --Moore. And thou art dead, The gifted, the beautiful, Thy spirit's fled! Thou, the fairest 'mong ten thousand, art no more! Death culls the sweetest flowers to grace the tomb-- He hath touched thee--thou hast left us in thy bloom! How oft amid the virgin throng, I've seen thee, fairest, dance along; And thine eyes, so brightly dark, Gleaming like the diamond's spark; But now how dim Those orbs are left-- By Death bereft Of their brightness, And that neck of its whiteness, Where once the curling tress descended, Where once the rose and lily blended, As the warm blush came and flew; Now o'er all hath Death extended His pallid hue-- Sallow and blue; And sunken 'neath the purple lid, Those eyes are hid, Once so bright; And the shroud, as thine own pure spirit white, All that remains of what was once so lovely, holds! In its snowy folds-- Then fare thee well, sweet one, Thy bright, thy fleeting race is run, And with the flowers thou art sleeping, And o'er thy grave the friends are weeping Of thine early day. Thou wert lovely--aye, as Spring, When birds and blossoms bloom and sing, The happy, happy hours welcoming Of gentle May. In the past I see thee shining, Like the star of tender morning, A day of love and peace divining, And the sky of Hope adorning. Smiles--that dimpled mouth are wreathing; Music--those rosy lips are breathing, Like morn glancing through the sky, Like the zephyr's softest sigh. Ah, then, who'd dream that aught so fair, Was fleeting as the Summer air? Yet in that hour Disease, so deceitful, stole upon thee, As blight upon a flower; And thou art dead! And thy spirit's past away. Like a dew-drop from the spray, Like a sunbeam from the mountain, Like a bubble from the fountain; And thou art now at rest, In thy damp, narrow cell, With the clod heap'd o'er thy breast; Fare thee well! ASPHODEL. I'll think of thee, I'll think of thee, When raging tempests wildly blow, Mid storm and darkness--wond'rous powers! Heaping the stainless, virgin snow Above thy fragile form, that bowed Beneath the blighting frost that fell, Scattering o'er earth those gorgeous hues, Thy grace and pride, sweet Asphodel. I'll think of thee, I'll think of thee, When dreary winter leaves the plain, And smiling spring leads forth in state, With vestal pride, her flow'ry train, And vernal songs of love and hope, In one harmonious concert swell-- Amid the floral throng I'll turn To thee, alone, sweet Asphodel. I'll think of thee, I'll think of thee, When morning dawns upon the world, And through the golden gates of Heaven, Like fiery cars his beams are hurled, Driving the shades of somber night, Back to their caverned haunts to dwell-- Thou'lt come to me with charms renewed, My peerless flower, sweet Asphodel. WILLIAM PINKNEY EWING. William Pinkney Ewing, son of Patrick Ewing, was born May 28, 1828, on his father's farm near Rowlandville. He is a brother of Edwin E. Ewing, a sketch of whose life is published in this book, and to which the reader is referred for other information respecting the family. Mr. Ewing's early life was spent on his father's farm. When about eighteen years of age he commenced to write poetry, the first of which was published in the Philadelphia _Dollar Newspaper_. He was subsequently a frequent contributor to the _Ladies' Garland_, the _Cecil Whig_ and _Cecil Democrat_. In 1848, Mr. Ewing commenced the study of the law in the office of the late John C. Groome in Elkton, and was admitted to the Elkton Bar, April 10, 1851. In 1853 he removed to Cincinnati, and became connected with the editorial department of the _Daily Atlas_ of that city, and contributed editorially and otherwise to several other papers in Cincinnati, until the _Atlas_ was merged into the _Gazette_. He then accepted a position on the _Southern Lady's Book_, published in New Orleans and remained in that city until the magazine changed proprietors. Mr. Ewing returned to Elkton in 1855, and resumed the practice of his profession, but continued to write poetry occasionally for some years afterwards. In 1871 Mr. Ewing removed to Ashtabula, Ohio, and has since been connected with newspapers in Chicago, Topeka and other western cities; and has corresponded occasionally with the New York _Tribune_, New York _Evening Post_ and _Chicago Tribune_. In politics Mr. Ewing was originally a Democrat, but in 1850 became a member of the Free Soil party, and an elector on the Free Soil ticket in 1856. He was a delegate to the Chicago convention that nominated Lincoln in 1860, and also an elector for the State of Maryland on the Lincoln ticket the same year. In 186l Mr. Ewing was appointed United States Naval Agent for the port of Baltimore, and held the position until the office was abolished in 1865. In September 1863 he married Mrs. Emma P. Smith, a lady of fine literary taste and ability who is at this time the head of the cooking school of the State Agricultural College of Iowa. Like many other writers Mr. Ewing took no pains to preserve his poems and it was only after the expenditure of great labor and much trouble that the following meagre selection was made, which it is feared will not do full justice to the ability of their author. THE ANGEL VOICE. "Oh mother, dear mother, As calmly last night I lay on my pallet An angel in white Hover'd o'er me, and softly Said--'come, brother, come, Away from this world, To a heavenly home!'" "Then let me die, mother-- Tho' sweet birds are singing, And flowers in brightness And beauty are springing On hillside and mountain, O'er meadow and lea, They no longer possess Any sweetness for me." "For that angelic voice, Ringing still in my ear, Has attuned my heart To a holier sphere; And like a caged eagle, My soul pines to stay So long from its home-- Its redeemer away." O, pale grew that mother, And heavy her heart, For she knew her dear boy From her sight must depart, And be laid, cold and stiff, In the earth's humid breast, Where the wicked cease troubling, The weary have rest; But she smoothed down his pillow, And murmured a prayer, For the Giver of mercies Her loved one to spare; But ere she had finished Her pious request, His spirit had flown To the realms of the blest! THEN AND NOW. [MIDNIGHT.] I love thee, Maude, as I ne'er loved before, And as I feel I cannot love again; And though that love has cost me much of pain, Of agony intense, I would live o'er Most willingly, each bitter hour I've known Since first we met, to claim thee as my own. But mine thou will not be: thy wayward heart On one by thee deemed worthier is set, And I must bear the keen and deathless smart, Of passion unrequited, or forget That which is of my very life a part. To cherish it may lead to madness, yet I will brood over it: for oh, The joy its memory brings, surpasses far the woe. [DAYDAWN.] "I love thee, Maude, as I ne'er loved before, And as I feel I cannot love again;" Thus wrote I many moons ago, and more Devotedly I love thee now, than when Those lines were written. But avails it aught? Have I return? Hold I the slightest part Within the boundless realm of thy confiding heart? Or dost thou ever give to me one thought? I dare believe so:--nor will soon resign The dream I've cherished long, that some day thou'lt be mine. THE NEGLECTED HARP. I touch not that harp, Let it slumber alone; For its notes but awaken Sad memories of one Whose hand often swept The soft wires along, And aroused them to music, To love, and to song. But Death, the destroyer, Ere grief threw a ray O'er her flowery path, Snatched her rudely away; And the harp that resounded, With loveliest tone, To her delicate touch, Has since slumbered alone. Then awake not a strain-- Let it still repose there, And be breathed on alone By the sweet summer air; For its numbers though lively, Though joyous and light, But cast o'er my spirits A wildering blight. ALONE. Never, no nevermore, Shall thy soft hand be pressed in mine, Or on my breast thy weary head recline, As oft of yore. And though thou wert to me Life's only charm, I yet can bear A little while, since thou art free from care, Alone to be. For to my heart is given, The cheering hope, that soon, where pain And partings are unknown, we'll meet again-- In yonder heaven. GONE ASTRAY. Leila, thou art resting well, In thy lonely, narrow cell-- Dark and lonely, narrow cell,-- And I would with thee had died, And was sleeping by thy side,-- In the graveyard by thy side,-- She who gave thee being, she Who made life a joy to me,-- A blessing and a joy to me. Were she with thee, I could bear All life's agony and care,-- Bitter agony and care,-- But alas, she went astray From the straight and narrow way,-- Virtue's straight and narrow way-- And, O misery, became To her sex a thing of shame,-- A thing of infamy and shame. Now, of her and thee bereft, Naught have I to live for left,-- Naught on earth to live for left;-- And with bleeding heart I roam, From a desecrated home,-- A broken, desecrated home,-- Looking, longing for the day When my life shall ebb away,-- To its giver, ebb away. For I feel, a God of love, In the better land above,-- Brighter, better land above,-- To these yearning arms again, With a soul all free from stain,-- Free from every earthly stain,-- Will the wanderer restore, To be tempted nevermore-- Passion-tempted nevermore. LAY OF THE LAST INDIAN. They are gone--They are gone, From their green mountain homes, Where the antelope sports, And the buffalo roams; For the pale faces came, With insidious art, And the red men were forced From their homes to depart! In the land Manitou Bestowed on their sires, Oh! never again Round their bright council-fires, Will they gather, to talk Of the feats they have done, Or, to boast of the scalps By their prowess they've won. For they've gone--they have passed, Like the dew from the spray, And their name to remembrance Grows fainter each day; But for this were they forced From their ancestors' graves; They dared to be freemen, They scorned to be slaves. CHARLES H. EVANS. Charles H. Evans was born in Philadelphia, March 17, 1851, and was educated in the public schools of that city. In 1866 his father David Z. Evans, purchased a farm at Town Point in Cecil county, and removed to that place taking his son with him. Shortly after coming to Town Point Mr. Evans began to write poetry, much of which was published in one of the local newspapers under the signature of _Agricola_. In 1873 Mr. Evans married Isabell R. Southgate, since deceased, of Christiana, Delaware. For some years Mr. Evans has been engaged in business in Philadelphia, but occasionally finds time to cultivate his acquaintance with the Muses. INFLUENCES. Drop follows drop and swells, With rain, the sweeping river; Word follows word, and tells A truth that lasts forever. Flake follows flake, like sprites, Whose wings the winds dissever; Thought follows thought, and lights The realms of mind forever. Beam follows beam, to cheer The cloud a bolt would shiver; Dream follows dream, and fear Gives way to joy forever. The drop, the flake, the beam, Teach us a lesson ever; The word, the thought, the dream, Impress the heart forever. MUSINGS. Few the joys--oh! few and scattered-- That from fleeting life we borrow; And we're paying, ever paying, With an usury of sorrow! If a bright emotion, passing, Casts a sun-ray o'er our faces, Plodding Time--the envious plowman-- Soon a shadowy furrow traces! If a hope--ambition-nurtured-- Gilds our future, ere we've won it, Vaunting Time--the hoary jailor-- Shuts his somber gates upon it! If a heart our bosom seeking, With a fond affection woos it, Heartless Time--remorseless reaper-- Sweeps his ruthless sickle through it! Things of earth, all, all, are shadows! And while we in vain pursue them, Time unclasps his withered fingers-- And our wasted life slips through them. LINES. WRITTEN ON VIEWING TURKEY POINT FROM A DISTANCE. Thou gray old cliff, like turret raised on high, With light-house mingling with the summer sky, How long in lonely grandeur hast thou stood, Braving alike the wild winds and the flood? What howling gales have swept those shores along, What tempests dire have piped their dismal song. And lightnings glared those towering trees among? And oft, as now, the summer sun has shed His golden glories round thy mountain head, And tarried there with late and lingering hues, While all below was steeped in twilight dews, And night's proud queen, in ages past, as now, Hung her pale crescent o'er thy beetling brow. Soft lamp--that lights the happy to their rest, But wakes fresh anguish in the hapless breast, And calls it forth a restless ghost, to glide In lonely sadness up the mountain side; And couldst not thou, oh! giant of the past, Some far off knowledge o'er my senses cast, Sigh in the hollow moanings of the gale, And of past ages tell mysterious tale-- Speak of those ages of primeval worth, And all the hidden wonders of thy birth-- Convulsions strange that heaved thy mighty breast, And raised the stately masses of thy crest? Perchance the Indian climbed thy rugged side, Ere the pale face subdued his warlike pride, And bent him down to kneel, to serve, to toil, To alien shrines upon his native soil. It needs not thee, O mount! to tell the story That stained the wreath of many a hero's glory; But Nature's mysteries must ever rest Within the gloomy confines of thy breast, Where wealth, uncounted, hapless lies concealed, Locked in thine inmost temple unrevealed. MRS. SARAH HALL. Mrs. Sarah Hall was born in Philadelphia October 30th, 1761, and died in that city April 8th, 1830. She was the daughter of the Rev. John Ewing, D.D., a member of the Ewing family of the Eighth district of this county, and one of the most distinguished scholars and divines of his time, and who was for many years Provost of the University of Pennsylvania and pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia. Miss Ewing's early education was confined to learning to read and write, and in acquiring a thorough knowledge of housewifery. In 1782 she married John Hall, a member of the Hall family of the Eighth district, and the newly wedded pair came to reside in the house near Rowlandville, formerly owned by the late Commodore Conner, and now occupied by his son P.S.P. Conner. It was while residing in this old mansion, surrounded by the picturesque scenery of the Octoraro hills, that she wrote the poem entitled "Sketch of a Landscape," which no doubt was inspired by the beauty of the surrounding scenery and the fine view of the "Modest Octoraro," which may be had from the porch of the old historic mansion in which she resided. After a residence of about eight years in Cecil county the family removed to Philadelphia, where Mr. Hall successively filled the offices of Secretary of the Land Office, and United States Marshal for the District of Pennsylvania. The family returned to Maryland in 1805, and resided on Mr. Hall's paternal estate for about six years. Mrs. Hall's literary career commenced with the publication of her writings in the _Port Folio_, a literary magazine published in Philadelphia about the beginning of this century, and of which her son, John E. Hall, subsequently became the editor. She soon attained high rank as a magazine writer, and, until the time of her death, occupied a position second to none of the female writers of this country. Mrs. Hall is best known in the literary world by her book entitled "Conversations on the Bible." It was written after she was fifty years of age and the mother of eleven children, and was so popular as to astonish its author by the rapidity of its sale. SKETCH OF A LANDSCAPE In Cecil county, Maryland, at the junction of the Octoraro creek with the Susquehanna, suggested by hearing the birds sing during the remarkably warm weather in February, 1806. What joyous notes are those, so soft, so sweet, That unexpected, strike my charmed ear! They are the Robin's song! This genial morn Deceives the feathered tribe: for yet the sun In Pisces holds his course; nor yet has Spring Advanc'd one legal claim; but though oblique So mild, so warm, descend his cheering rays, Impris'ning winter seems subdued. No dread Of change retards their wing; but off they soar Triumphing in the fancied dawn of Spring. Advent'rous birds, and rash! ye little think, Though lilacs bud, and early willows burst. How soon the blasts of March--the snowy sleets, May turn your hasty flight, to seek again Your wonted warm abodes. Thus prone is youth, Thus easily allured, to put his trust In fair appearance; and with hope elate, And naught suspecting, thus he sallies forth, To earn experience in the storms of life! But why thus chide--why not with gratitude Receive and cherish ev'ry gleam of joy? For many an hour can witness, that not oft, My solitude is cheered by feelings such, So blithe--so pleasurable as thy song Sweet Robin, gives. Yet on thy graceful banks, Majestic Susquehanna--joy might dwell! For whether bounteous Summer sport her stores, Or niggard Winter bind them--still the forms Most grand, most elegant, that Nature wears Beneath Columbia's skies, are here combin'd. The wide extended landscape glows with more Than common beauty. Hills rise on hills-- An amphitheater, whose lofty top, The spreading oak, or stately poplar crowns-- Whose ever-varying sides present such scenes Smooth or precipitous--harmonious still-- Mild or sublime,--as wake the poet's lay; Nor aught is wanting to delight the sense; The gifts of Ceres, or Diana's shades. The eye enraptur'd roves o'er woods and dells, Or dwells complacent on the numerous signs Of cultivated life. The laborer's decent cot, Marks the clear spring, or bubbling rill. The lowlier hut hard by the river's edge, The boat, the seine suspended, tell the place Where in his season hardy fishers toil. More elevated on the grassy slope, The farmer's mansion rises mid his trees; Thence, o'er his fields the master's watchful eye Surveys the whole. He sees his flocks, his herds Excluded from the grain-built cone; all else, While rigid winter reigns, their free domain! Range through the pastures, crop the tender root, Or climbing heights abrupt, search careful out, The welcome herb,--now prematurely sprung Through half-thawed earth. Beside him spreading elms, His friendly barrier from th' invading north, Contrast their shields defensive with the willow Whose flexile drapery sweeps his rustic lawn. Before him lie his vegetable stores, His garden, orchards, meadows--all his hopes-- Now bound in icy chains: but ripening suns Shall bring their treasures to his plenteous board. Soon too, the hum of busy man shall wake Th' adjacent shores. The baited hook, the net, Drawn skilful round the wat'ry cove, shall bring Their prize delicious to the rural feast. Here blooms the laurel on the rugged breaks, Umbrageous, verdant, through the circling year His bushy mantle scorning winds or snows-- While there--two ample streams confluent grace-- Complete the picture--animate the whole! Broad o'er the plain the Susquehanna rolls, His rapid waves far sounding as he comes. Through many a distant clime and verdant vale, A thousand springy caverns yield their rills, Augmenting still his force. The torrent grows, Spreads deep and wide, till braving all restraint Ev'n mountain ridges feel the imperious press; Forced from their ancient rock-bound base--they leave Their monumental sides, erect, to guard The pass--and tell to future days, and years, The wond'rous tale! Meanwhile, The conqueror flood holds on his course, Resistless ever--sinuous, or direct. Unconscious tribes beneath his surface play, Nor heed the laden barques, his surface bear; Now gliding swiftly by the threat'ning rocks, Now swimming smoothly to the distant bay. To meet and bring his liberal tribute too, The modest Octoraro winds his way-- Not ostentatious like a boasting world Their little charities proclaiming loud-- But silent through the glade retir'd and wild, Between the shaded banks on either hand, Till circling yonder meed--he yields his name. Nor proudly, Susquehanna! boast thy gain, For thence, not far, thou too, like him shall give Thy congregated waters, title--all, To swell the nobler name of Chesapeake! And is not such a scene as this the spell, That lulls the restless passions into peace? Yes. Cold must be the sordid heart, unmov'd By Nature's bounties: but they cannot fill, That ardent craving in the mind of man, For social intercourse,--the healthful play-- The moral gem--the light of intellect-- Communion sweet with those we love! WITH A ROSE IN JANUARY. Will you accept this bud my dear, Fit emblem of the coming year: The bud expands, the flower blooms, And gives awhile its rich perfumes: Its strength decays, its leaf descends, Its sweets are gone--its beauty ends, Such is the year.--The morning brings The bud of pleasure in its wings: Hope, health, and fortune, smile their day, And charm each threat'ning cloud away: But gathering ills increase their force, And though concealed--make sure their course. They come--they press--they stand confest, And disappointment tells the rest. LIFE. SUGGESTED BY A SUMMER EVENING. 'Tis early eve--the sun's last trembling glance, Still hovers o'er and gilds the western wild, And slowly leaves the haunts of solitude. Venus, bright mistress of the musing hour, Above the horizon lifts her beck'ning torch; Stars, in their order, follow one by one The graceful movement of their brilliant queen, Obedient to the hand that fix'd them all, And said to each--Be this thy place. Refreshing airs revive man's sinking strength, And hallowed thoughts come rushing to the heart! Now from her eastern clime the golden Moon, Set in a frame of azure, lifts her shield, And all creation wakes to life renewed! Not long she holds supreme her joyous course; Her foes in sullen vapors fitful rise, And envious, hovering over her splendid path, Now thin--now dense, impede her kindly ray. In hasty, partial gleams, of light and shade, She holds her purposed way.--Now darker clouds Collect, combine, advance--she falls--'twould seem To rise no more--sudden they break--they pass, Once more she shines--bright sovereign of the skies! Thus 'tis with life--it is not dubious hope In early youth--'tis joy--joy unalloy'd; Joy blooms within, all objects take the tint, And glowing colors paint the vista's length. Not long, life dances on the plastic scene, Care's haggard form invades each flow'ry path; Disease, with pallid hue, leads on her train, And Sorrow sheds her tears in wasting showers! But Pain and Grief pass on, and harrowing Care Awhile put on some pleasing, treacherous shape; Then hope revives, health blooms! love smiles-- And wealth and honors crown the distant day. How long? Envenom'd ills collect all 'round, And while short-sighted man his fragile schemes Pursues--not grasps--blow after blow fall swift, Fall reckless--and he sinks beneath their weight! To rise no more? Like yon triumphant Moon, That "walks in brightness" now, beyond the clouds, Through patient suffering, man shall surely rise To dwell above that orb, in light ineffable, Where pain--where sin--where sorrows, never come! MRS. SALLIE WILLIAMS HARDCASTLE. Mrs. Hardcastle's maiden name was Sallie Williams Minter. She was born in Bedford county, Virginia, June 19, 1841. Reared in the shadow of the Peaks of Otter, whose lofty summits tower in magnificent grandeur far above the wooded heights and billowy green hills of the surrounding country, it is little wonder that the subject of this sketch should have been early imbued with the spirit of poesy, and led to the cultivation of tastes and the selection of themes which the grand and picturesque in nature are apt to suggest. But in addition to these favorable surroundings, a literary and thoughtful turn of mind was inherited from her father and grandfather--the latter having been eminent in his day as the author of a religious work, replete with keen arguments and logical conclusions. The former also was a writer of ability, and having a thorough knowledge of the politics of his State, frequently discussed them in the local journals with a ready and trenchant pen. Mrs. Hardcastle was educated at Bedford Female College, but is indebted to her father for her best and earliest tuition. At the age of fourteen her first verses, written on the death of a little friend of her own age, were published in the _Virginia Sentinel_. She was an occasional contributor to the _Literacy Companion_, _Magnolia Weekly_, and other Southern periodicals. Mrs. Hardcastle was married in 1863 to Dr. Jerome H. Hardcastle, then a surgeon in the hospital at Liberty, Va. After the war they came to Maryland, and subsequently, in 1876, to Cecilton, in this county, where they have since resided. They are the parents of five daughters and one son. Like many other persons, Mrs. Hardcastle neglected to carefully preserve her poetical writings. And was so unfortunate as to lose most of the few in her possession at the time of the evacuation of Richmond, in consequence of which the following poems are all it has been practicable to obtain, which is a matter of regret, inasmuch as they are by no means the best of her writings. ON RECEIPT OF A BOUQUET. I thank thee, my friend, for thy delicate gift, These fair and beautiful flowers, They come to me now, like a boon from above, To gladden my pensive hours. All the brilliant bloom, of the summer days, These lovely flowers restore; And my childhood's home, with its fields and flowers, Comes back to me once more. How fragile and fair!--some pale, some blushing, All breathing rarest perfume-- But brighter and fairer they seem, my friend, Because from thee they come. I know that this beauty is frail and brief-- That their fragrance and bloom must depart, But like the mem'ry of thee, these flowers will live Forever enshrined in my heart. OCTOBER. Oh, days of the lovely October, How dear thou art to me; Words are weak, when my soul would speak, In language taught by thee. Not alone do thy glorious sunsets, Nor thy trees of a thousand dyes, But all touch my heart with thy sweet spell, Oh, earth, and air, and skies. In the gardens that shone with beauty, The flowers have faded, I know, And here, by my favorite pathway, The roses no longer may blow. But the leaves are burning with splendor, And I'll weave them in garlands bright, As I did in the sweet days of childhood, When my heart was aglow with delight. I've ruby and sapphire, blended with gold, And here's an emerald green, A parting gift, for my coronet, From summer's dying queen. Oh, loveliest month of the year, Too soon will thy glories depart, But not the sweet faith thou'st wakened, Within this worshiping heart. For though, like all beauty of earth, Thou'rt trammeled by earthly decay, Yet my soul is lifted by thine, To glories that fade not away. OLD LETTERS. TO MRS. ANNIE P----. "Burn my old letters"--ah! for you These words are easy to say, For you, who know not the light they brought To many a darksome day. And, then, old letters to me are links To those days forever gone; For we cling to the past as age would cling To youth, in its rosy dawn. But the wintry air is chill without, And the fire is faint and low, So I'll gather them up--the page of to-day With the date of long ago. Gather them up and cast them in Like trash, to the greedy flame; And I marvel not that the world hath said, "Friendship is only a name!" For the human heart's a changeful thing, And sometime we would borrow The light, that other days have given, To cheer us on the morrow. And so, as I sit in the merry light Of the blaze that upward flashes, I think, like these, our dearest hopes May come to dust and ashes. JUNE ROSES. What marvelous new-born glory Is flushing the garden and lawn! Hath the queen of all blossoming beauty Come forth with the early dawn? Like the first faint flush of morn, To the watchers, aweary with night,-- Like treasures long hidden away, Ye burst on my joyous sight. Not e'en the "first rose of Summer," Could yesterday be seen-- Only a tint like the sea-shell, Deep in a prison of green. Did the lover-like kiss of the south wind, While wand'ring o'er forest and lake, Bid thee start in thy slumbering beauty, And crimson with blushes awake? 'Tis long since the fragrant lilac Flourished and drooped at thy side, While many a frail young flow'ret since Hath quietly blossomed and died. And for days the pale, proud lily In regal beauty hath shown, Catching the sun's warm glances Ere the young roses had blown. But perfumed breezes are whispering: "To-day the roses have come," And the cottage will rival the palace, Decked in thy radiant bloom. MUSIC. The spirit is often enraptured With sweet tokens of love divine, But seldom in language so plain As spoken through music, to mine. Then my soul flings wide her portals, And visions of Paradise throng, While I bow, in silent devotion, To the Author of genius and song. The pleasures of earth are but few, And scarce for our sorrows repay, But we catch, in sweet moments like this, A glimpse of the perfect day. When I reach the Celestial City And gaze from her golden tower, Methinks my freed spirit would turn Far back, to this rapturous hour. And as angels are harping their songs-- Sweet songs of a heavenly birth-- I'll listen to hear the same touch That played us this prelude on earth. LINES ON THE DEATH OF A FRIEND. We loved thee--yes, we loved thee, But the angels loved thee too; And so thou now art sleeping 'Neath the sky so bright and blue. Sleeping now thy last long slumber, In the low and quiet tomb, Where life's ills can ne'er disturb thee-- Where sorrow ne'er can come. What tho' our hearts are bleeding, And our lonely spirits mourn, That thou with Spring's sweet flow'rets Wilt never more return, We would not call thee back, dear friend, To life's dull path again; Where thorns amid the flowers, Would often give thee pain; But sweetly rest thee, dear one, In thy long and dreamless sleep, Nor heed the sighs above thee, And the blinding tears we weep. MRS. MARY ELIZA IRELAND. Mrs. Mary Eliza Ireland, the daughter of Joseph Haines and Harriet (Kirk) Haines, was born in the village of Brick Meeting House, now called Calvert, January 9, 1834. In early life she married John M. Ireland, son of Colonel Joseph Ireland, of Kent county, Md. They are the parents of three children, one of whom died in infancy. They now reside in Baltimore, where Mr. Ireland holds the position of United States storekeeper in the Internal Revenue Department. Until the past few years Mrs. Ireland has always lived in the old homestead where she was born and married, and from whence her parents were removed by death. Her first literary effort was a short story written when quite a young girl, entitled "Ellen Linwood," and published in the _Cecil Whig_, then edited by the late Palmer C. Ricketts, under the _nom de plume_ of "Marie Norman." For several years after the publication of "Ellen Linwood" Mrs. Ireland occasionally contributed to the _Cecil Whig_ and Oxford _Press_. Some years ago she wrote a story for _Arthur's Magazine_, and being in Philadelphia soon after it was written, she took it to the publishing house, and there met for the first time T.S. Arthur, whom she had known from childhood through his books. He received her kindly, promised to read her story, and to let her know his decision the next day. That decision was, that though entertaining and well written, it was scarcely suited to his magazine. He suggested another periodical where it would likely meet with favor. He also asked for another story, and presented her with a set of the magazines that she might see the style of writing that he desired. Her next story for _Arthur's_ was a success, and from that time until his death he remained the candid critic of all she sent him for publication, as well as of some stories published elsewhere, and the kind literary adviser and friend. She retained her first story (which he had declined) for three years, made some changes in it, and he accepted and published it. Since then she has been an acceptable contributor to _Cottage Hearth_, _Household_, and other domestic magazines, besides the _Literary World_, _Ladies' Cabinet_, _Woman's Journal_, and several church papers; and has written two prize stories, which took first prizes. In 1882 her short stories were collected and connected into a continued story, which was accepted and published by J.B. Lippincott & Co., under the title of "Timothy; His Neighbors and His Friends." Many letters of appreciation from distant parts of the Union testified to the merit of the book, and she was encouraged to accede to the request of the Presbyterian Observer Company of Baltimore to write a serial for their paper. It was entitled "Ivandale," and was warmly commended by judges of literary work. Wishing to read German literature in the original, she undertook the study of German, and as she had no time which she was willing to devote to regular lessons, she obtained a German pronouncing reader, and without instruction from any one she succeeded in learning to read and translate, pronouncing correctly enough to be understood by any German. This knowledge of the language has been a well-spring of pleasure to her, and well repays her for the few moments' attention she daily bestowed upon it. She has translated several books, two of which were published as serials in the _Oxford Press_, and the Lutheran Board of Publication have published one of her translations, entitled "Betty's Decision." Many beautiful short stories have found their way into our language and periodicals through the medium of her pen. Her time is well filled with her household duties, her missionary and church work, and in reviewing new books for the press. She has no specified time for writing, nor does she neglect her household or social duties for the sake of it, always having looked upon her literary work as a recreation. She leads a busy life, yet is rarely hurried; and, although she enjoys the companionship of many people noted in literature, it is powerless to weaken her attachment for friends who have no inclination in that way. All have a warm place in her heart, and a cordial welcome to her cheerful and happy home. Mrs. Ireland, contrary to the experience of most writers, never wrote any poetry until she had attained distinction as a writer of prose. AT THE PARTY. I gave her a rose, so sweet, so fair; She picked it to pieces while standing there. I praised the deep blue of her starry eyes; She turned them upon me in cold surprise. Her white hand I kissed in a transport of love; My kiss she effaced with her snowy glove. I touched a soft ringlet of golden brown; She rebuked my daring with a haughty frown. I asked her to dance in most penitent tone; On the arm of a rival she left me alone. This gave me a hint; I veered from my track, And waltzed with an heiress, to win my love back. I carried her fan, and indulged in a sigh, And whispered sweet nothings when my loved one was nigh. It worked like a charm; oh, joy of my life! This stratagem wins me a sweet little wife. MOTHER AND SON. Postman, good postman, halt I pray, And leave a letter for me to-day; If it's only a line from over the sea To say that my Sandy remembers me. I have waited and hoped by day and by night; I'll watch--if spared--till my locks grow white; Have prayed--yet repent that my faith waxed dim, When passing, you left no message from him. My proud arms cradled his infant head, My prayers arose by his boyhood's bed; To better our fortunes, he traversed the main; God guard him, and bring him to me again. The postman has passed midst the beating rain, And my heart is bowed with its weight of pain; This dark, dark day, I am tortured with dread That Sandy, my boy, may be ill or dead. But hark! there's a step! my heart be still! A step at the gate, in the path, on the sill; Did the postman return? my letter forget? Oh 'tis Sandy! Thank God, he loves me yet! THE MISSIONARY'S STORY. Hard were her hands, and brown; Coarsest of stuff her gown: Sod hut her home. Pale was her care-worn face, Beauty and youth and grace Long since have flown. Stern was her lot in life; She was a drunkard's wife; And forests drear Shut not temptation out; Strong drink was sold and bought; Poor pioneer! Slave he to demon rum; Houses and lands all gone; Want came by stealth. Yet her scant fare she shared With me, who worse have fared In homes of wealth. Stranger was I to her Save as Christ's messenger; And for His sake She, all her little store Wishing it were but more,-- Bade me to take. Oh like the widow's mite, Given for love of right, May it be blest. When her last hour has come, May angels bear her home, Ever to rest. TRANSITION. She is lying in state, this fair June day, While the bee from the rose its sweetness sips; Her heart thrills not at the lark's clear lay, Though a smile illumines her pallid lips. What glorified form did the Angel of Death Assume to her view, that it left the bright trace Of a jubilant welcome, whose icy breath Froze the sunny smile on her fair young face? Did angels with snow-white wings come down And hover about her dying bed? Did they bear a white robe, and a starry crown To place on their sainted comrade's head? Did her gaze rest on valleys and pastures green, Where roses in beauty supernal, bloom? Where lilies in snowy and golden sheen Fill the air with their heavenly, rare perfume? Did strains of sweet music her senses entrance While Earth, with her loved ones, receded in air? Did friends who had left it, to greet her, advance And joyfully lead her to dwell with them, there? Did she cross the deep Jordan without any fears For all were now calmed on her dear Saviour's breast? On pinions of light did she mount to the spheres Where all is contentment, and pleasure, and rest? All this we may humbly and truly believe, For Christ to the Bethany sisters did give The comforting promise, which all may receive: "He that believeth, though dead, yet shall live." DOROTHY MOORE. A bachelor gray, was Valentine Brown; He lived in a mansion just out of the town, A mansion spacious and grand; He was wealthy as Vanderbilt, Astor or Tome, Had money invested abroad and at home, And thousands of acres of land. A friend of his boyhood was Archibald Gray; And to prove what queer antics Dame Fortune will play When she sets about trying to plan, She heaped all her favors on Valentine, bold, And always left Archibald out of her fold, The harmless, and weak-minded man. So, while Valentine reigned like a king on his throne, Poor Archibald ne'er had a home of his own, Yet never was known to complain; Year in and year out, he wandered around, In mansion and farmhouse a welcome he found As long as he chose to remain. The lilacs and snowballs which guarded the door Of the ivy-decked cottage of good Parson Moore, Were waking from out their long sleep; For the last month of winter was hastening by, The last hours of Valentine's day had drawn nigh, When Archibald's travel-worn feet Were heard on the door-step; he entered and smiled, Then sat down and slept like a play-weary child, Woke, and told them how long he would stay; Then slumbered again, while sweet Dorothy Moore, The motherless daughter, who loved all God's poor, Made him welcome around the tea-tray. And archly she said as she gave him his tea, "Where's the valentine Archy, you promised to me? All maidens expect one to-day;" Then forgot it; nor noticed when supper was done, And her father had gone to his study alone, That Archie had stolen away. But, drawing the curtains on darkness and night! She sat down to spin by the cheery fire-light, While before it, so cozy and warm, Slept the kitten,--a snowy white ball of content-- And her wheel, with its humming activity, lent To the hour, a picturesque charm. No scene more enchanting could artist dream know, Than this peaceful, calm spot, in the ruby-red glow Of the pine knots aflame on the hearth; But Dorothy thought, "Were he but there with me And loved me as I love, a desert would be The happiest place upon earth." "Oh were he but poor, and forsaken;" she sighed, "He then a poor maiden might seek for his bride, But his love will some great lady crown; Since all is so hopeless, dear Father above Oh help me to cast out my unreturned love! And forget the proud Valentine Brown." In his elegant library, sat Valentine Brown, The argand burned brightly, the rich curtains down, Luxurious home of repose;-- Yet his handsome face saddened, his heart was oppressed; He sighed, and his spirit was full of unrest, For his love he should never disclose. He had roamed over Europe, and Countesses fair Had graciously smiled on the great millionaire. Yet his heart had turned coldly away; "From her childhood, I've loved her, sweet Dorothy Moore," Just then the latch clicked--through the half opened door Crept humbly, poor Archibald Gray. "I want you!" he whispered; "I promised her, come!" And Valentine followed, till reaching the home Where Dorothy spun by the hearth; And when he had entered with Archibald Gray And courteously waited, commands to obey, Knew no lovelier picture on earth. But the tact which had piloted Valentine there Deserted poor Archie; then Dorothy fair, Blushing deeply, yet smilingly said: "Why, Archibald, why did you leave us I pray? You said till to-morrow at noon, you would stay, And in less than an hour you had fled." The memory of Archibald took up the clew Thus kindly supplied, and eager he grew; "Yes, yes; Archie promised he would; I have brought you a valentine, Valentine Brown," (Here he smoothed his gray beard, and looked helplessly down), "He's so good to poor Archie, so good!" The three stood in silence, two wondering no doubt How this intricate problem would ever turn out, And Valentine, thoughtful and kind,-- Felt pity for Archie, who meant for the best; And for Dorothy--flushing like clouds in the west And fearing he thought it designed. He looked at the maiden--modest and sweet; At her lovely blue eyes, her peach-blossom cheek And sighed for his youth which had fled; "She never could love me, good Archibald Gray, Her beauty and youthfulness stand in the way, Just look at my frost-covered head." "Please tell him, good Archie," said Dorothy fair, "That I love nothing better than silvery hair When it crowns one so noble and true; His heart all men say is exalted and grand, He is known for his good deeds all over the land, Loved by every one, equalled by few." "That heart, my good Archie, I lay at her feet To spurn or to thrill with an ecstasy sweet;" (And he reverently took her white hand,) "That hand is his, Archie, and so is my heart To have and to keep until death do us part To meet in the Heavenly land." Good friends new and old, should you journey that way And should anything happen, to cause a delay, And you call upon Valentine Brown: In the coziest nook, you'll see Archibald Gray, Awaiting with patience the dallying day, Till the sickle of Time mows him down. And Fortune still favors her Valentine dear, She winters and summers there year after year; To thank her he never forgets; With his rosy-cheeked children and beautiful wife The heart of his heart, and the life of his life, The sun of his peace never sets. HOMEWARD BOUND. We grow in grace if day by day We keep in mind to watch and pray, Thus walking in the Heavenward way. But, drifting from the guiding hand Of Him who rules the sea and land, We wreck ourselves on barren strand, In name of Him who for us died, We cry for help, when deeply tried, Receive it, whatso'er betide. Of good we sow some scattered seed, We help to shield the bruised reed, Supply to want, the urgent need. Then once more hope to reach the goal, For faith with works will save a soul, Though hostile billows round it roll. Thus tempest-tost, we struggle on; Now sad, now cheered, till life is gone, And trust to hear the bless'd, well done! GEORGE JOHNSTON. [The editor is indebted to his friend, George A. Blake, Esq., of the Elkton Bar, for the following sketch of his life.] George Johnston, the editor and compiler of this book, was born in Philadelphia, May 15, 1829, the place of his birth being on Penn street, one door south of the southeast corner of Penn and Lombard streets. He is the oldest son of Isaac Johnston, and was named for his grandfather, George Johnston, the youngest son of Isaac Johnson, who lived on his farm, one mile west of the east end of Mason and Dixon's line, as early as 1755. There is reason to believe that the earliest member of the family who lived in that neighborhood was Samuel Johnston, who resided there as early as 1708. Mr. Johnston's mother, Susan Curry, was a cousin of his father, she being the daughter of Ann Spear, the grandmother of Emma Alice Browne, a sketch of whose life appears in this Volume. When about two years of age, the subject of this sketch was placed in charge of his paternal grandmother and his uncle, George Johnston, who resided on the homestead, in Cecil county. Here he was carefully nurtured and trained, and here were planted the seeds which have since sprung up and brought forth fruit in his intellectual and moral life. The family being Presbyterian in training, and of the type from which sprang those who in earlier years drafted the Mecklenberg Declaration, the lad was early imbued with those religious principles which ever serve as the true basis of mental growth and moral purpose. The educational advantages of a half century ago were not such as are enjoyed by the youth of to-day; but such as the neighborhood provided and his uncle's means afforded, were placed at the disposal of the boy, who soon manifested an aptitude to learn. When but five years of age he was sent to what was then called a "Subscription School," kept in the neighborhood. This he attended during the next seven years, and in the Winter time until the year 1849, when he took charge as teacher of a school, in the Center School House, situated near Fair Hill, in Cecil county. In the Spring of 1847 Mr. Johnston spent three months in Chesapeake City (in this county) as an apprentice to the carpenter business. He completed his trade in the neighborhood in which he had been raised, and from the year 1851 to 1864 spent his time about equally in teaching school and working at his trade. When the war of the rebellion broke out in 1861, Mr. Johnston, without hesitation, took the side of the Union, and was, during all those dark days, an ardent supporter of the Government, the intensity of his convictions being no doubt increased by the result of his observations during a business trip to Texas and through the South in the Winter of eighteen hundred and sixty and sixty-one. In the Constitutional Convention of this State in 1864 he served with ability as committee clerk, having accepted the position at the solicitation of the late David Scott (of John), who was a member of that body. While acting as committee clerk, Mr. Johnston had the honor of engrossing that section of the Constitution which abolished slavery in the State of Maryland. Many years afterwards he presented the pen used on that occasion to Frederick Douglass, then United States Marshal of the District of Columbia. Mr. Johnston's health, which had always been precarious, became so bad in 1875 that he was obliged to abandon his trade and turn his attention to another occupation. Accordingly, two years later he became connected with _The Cecil Whig_, and for about three years had charge of its local columns. While associated with that journal, his attention was attracted to the mine of wealth offered to the investigator by the early history of Cecil county. Prompted by a love of historical investigation, he was led to make researches into this mine--a task hitherto largely unattempted or ineffectually prosecuted. The results of these studies enriched the columns of _The Cecil Whig_ during a period of three years, and attracted wide attention. In 1881 he published the "History of Cecil County, Md., and the Early Settlements Around the Head of the Chesapeake Bay and on the Delaware River, with Sketches of Some of the Old Families of Cecil County." This work, which embodied the results of the author's investigations during a period of some years, is one of rare value. To those who have given but little thought to the subject, it is ever a matter of surprise to learn how closely the history of Cecil and the surrounding counties is interwoven with that of our common country, and how valuable as data of the past are the materials which invited the lover of truth to their discovery. One can scarcely estimate the laborious research involved in the task of gathering the component parts of a history which stretched over a period of nearly two hundred and seventy-five years. Old volumes, musty records, masses of court documents, correspondence (official and otherwise), previous historical attempts, personal knowledge, tradition and personal interviews, were all laid under contribution by the author, and served as sources of his authority. These he has woven together with such judgment in selection, skill in arrangement and force of style and diction, that just as "Gray's Elegy" alone has placed him in the front rank of poets, so this one work has given the author a high and permanent place among the historians of our country. The work attempted is so well done, and withal so accurate and reliable as one of reference and authority, that in recognition of its merits Mr. Johnston has been elected a member of the Historical Societies of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Wisconsin. On January 1, 1883, he became local editor of _The Cecil Democrat_, and was in such capacity connected with that newspaper for three years and a half. Early in life Mr. Johnston was a pupil of David Scott (of James), who then taught a school in the Fourth district of Cecil county, and whose sister, Miss Hannah F. Scott, he subsequently married. The scholar being advanced in studies beyond the other pupils of the school, naturally a close intimacy was formed between him and his teacher. This afterwards deepened into a friendship which continued without interruption until Mr. Scott's death, and was the means of creating in Mr. Johnston an ardent love of poetry. Since 1851 he has written a number of poems, some of which have appeared in print. These have been so well received by the public that the author, in deference to the wishes of some of his friends, has ventured to include the following rhymes in this work: HERE AND HEREAFTER. Sad echoes of unequal strife, Go sighing through the aftermath, That skirts the dark uncertain path, That leads me to the close of life;-- And years ago dark shadows fell Athwart the amber sky of youth, Blighting the bloom of hope and truth, That erst had blossom'd all too well. The world's great heart beats wild and high, With wealth of bliss and love untold-- While I with unblanch'd eye behold Its fading phantoms wane and die. Without a sigh I mark their flight; A stranger to the world unknown, Amid its mazes all alone, I wander in Egyptian night. I worship not at its cold shrine, Nor fear the terror of its frown, It cannot chain my spirit down, The soaring of my soul confine. For ah! we parted at the tomb, Where buried hopes of youthful years, Embalm'd in sorrow's bitter tears, Lie mouldering within the gloom. Ah! few and dim the lights that gleam Around me in life's dismal maze, Scarce seen amid the somber haze That shrouds me in life's dismal dream. I never drank the wine of bliss, Made sweeter by the wealth of joy; My cup is mix'd with griefs alloy, And I have tasted only this. Life's problem oft to solve, I try, And hope I have not lived in vain, And borne this galling fetter chain Through all its years without a sigh. Some tears, perhaps, I may have dried-- My own in sympathy I shed O'er joys and hopes of others dead, By sorrow's legions crucified. Earthly joys, alas! are fleeting, Shadowy and evanescent, Scarce full orb'd before the crescent Tells us of their final setting. And soon our starry dreams are wreck'd, And all our earthly hopes sublime Lie stranded on the shores of Time, In drapery of woe bedeck'd, Yet I know 'tis vain repining;-- Though to-day the sky with sorrow May be overcast, to-morrow All the love-lights may be shining, Made brighter by the long eclipse; And shadows of earth's dreary night, That shrouded from my spirit's sight, Life's glorious Apocalypse. To tread this weary round of Toil Is not the whole of mortal life;-- There is an unseen inner strife, Where battling for the victor's spoil, The wrong contendeth with the right,-- Passion and pride with gentleness Pity with sorrow and distress-- And faith with sin's deep with'ring blight. And truth my spirit oft beguiles, While her dear face is wreath'd in smiles, By whisp'ring sweetly unto me; As thou hast measured, it shall be In justice meted out to thee, When thou hast reached the blissful isles Beyond the misty veil of Time; Thou'lt find a rest from earthly wars, And healing for thy earthly scars, Within that sweet supernal clime. THE TURTLE'S SERMON. An old and crafty terrapin, Who lately found his speech, Like many another simple lout, Concluded he could preach. And so he waddled to the shore, And thus address'd his friends-- The bullfrogs and the snappers bold, About their latter ends. And told them all how they must be Made into soup at last; And how the serpent sharp can see When last year's hide is cast. And how the wary pickerel Enjoys the minnow sweet, Which he doth never fail to catch, When it goes out to skate; And how the beaver builds his house Within his winter dam; And how the oyster lays its egg, And hatches out a clam; And how the busy bumble bee, Doth blow his little horn, Whene'er he goes in quest of food, Amid the standin' corn: And how the gentle butterfly Sings many a merry tune Because he's glad he has escaped From out the old cocoon; And how the rabbit flies his kite, When he can find a string; And how the owl sits up all night, To hear the squirrel sing; And many other curious things That did his hearers good,-- Of cats that did a swimmin' go And eels that chew'd the cud; And toads that dance upon their ears When they a courtin' go; And moles that stand upon their heads, That they may see the show. His sermon, as you see, was queer, And muchly out of joint;-- And 'cause the preacher took no text, He failed to make his point. And soon his hearers all grew tired, And mortified and vex'd, Because he chose to play the fool, And preach without a text. And so they left him there alone-- And this is what befel-- He grew so mad it broke his heart, And almost burst his shell. MORAL. If you successfully would preach, Be sure a text to take, And stick unto it like a leech Until your point you make. SKYE. THE DOG WITH THE BEAUTIFUL EYE. Someone has written a song about "Tray," But no one has courage to write about Skye; So methinks I will rhyme, in my own rugged way, Of the queer little dog with the beautiful eye. The land that he came from is said to be cold, And nature has dress'd him its storms to defy-- In the ugliest coat that ever was seen-- But giv'n him a charming and beautiful eye. His coat is so ugly it makes him look old And scrawny and poor and most ready to die; But you'd change your opinion, I think, if you saw The life and the beauty that beams from his eye. 'Twere hard to conceive of an uglier thing Than this queer little dog from the island of Skye-- Grotesque and uncouth, and ugly as sin-- Yet bless'd with a mild and a beautiful eye. Among dogs, like the heathen Chinee among men, His civilization is not very high; But then his dark ways we can always excuse On account of his lovely and charming bright eye. He is sad and forlorn, yet so gentle and kind, You could not but love him I'm sure it you'd try-- This dog so demure and so kindly inclined-- This dog with the mild and the beautiful eye. Sometimes he will follow his master to church; Tho' his piety's weak, I must say with a sigh, Perhaps he's as good as some other ones there Whose piety seems to be all in their eye. He's full of strange antics--most little dogs are-- And tho' he's forlorn, he can mischief descry; Indeed--I'm strongly impress'd with the fact-- It eternally lurks in his beautiful eye. His hair is the queerest that dog ever wore; Tho' kind to his master, of strangers he's shy; He is wise in his way; deeply learned in dog lore; Intelligence beams from his beautiful eye. He's patient and faithful, affectionate too; My love for his virtues time's lapse will defy; I'm sure, if you knew him, you'd love him, like me, This dog with the mild and the beautiful eye. IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE IT, TRY IT. 'Tis better far to wear away In honest strong endeavor, Than idly rust in slow decay And work and labor never; By honest toil to earn your bread, Or wherewithal to buy it; 'Tis very well, and truly said-- If you don't believe it, try it. Ye idle loafers in the streets, The honest workman spurning, Know this--a living to be sweet Is better for the earning. To loaf and lounge and lie about, On others' toil to riot, Is only practiced by a lout; No honest man will try it. Oh! him that earns his daily bread! Despise and spurn him never, A thousand blessings on his head 'Tis he that feeds you ever. Should others work no more than you Quite spare would be your diet, Your gills would turn a livid hue If they would stop and try it. Then go to work with hands or head, You'll surely profit by it; And strive to earn some honest bread-- You can, if you will try it. Ye sweeter ones of gentler sex, Who tread the pavement hourly, I do not wish your hearts to vex, Then pray don't take it sourly-- Methinks sometimes 'tis no disgrace Tho' seldom you are nigh it, To be at home, your proper place,-- If you don't believe it, try it. Are there no duties there to do? If so "be up and doing!" No clothes to mend, that you could sew, No beer that's worth the brewing? Then stay at home, sometimes, at least, My counsel, don't defy it, A little rest's as good's a feast, If you don't believe it, try it. 'Tis easy quite to do the right, And in it there is beauty, What e'er you do, do with your might, But always do your duty. Be true unto yourself, and then-- Wise counsel--don't decry it, You can't be false to other men-- If you don't believe it, try it. BYE AND BYE. Shadowy, dreamy phantoms ever rising Up before wild Fancy's eyes, With their untold and beauteous splendor, Make us present things despise. And procrastination whispers softly, Wait a little longer yet; Rashness will defeat your purpose, mortal, And be cause of deep regret. Wait with patience just a moment longer, Then with safety clutch them fast-- Thus the spirit of delay beguiles us, Till the lucky time is past. Moments freighted deep with joy ecstatic All unheeded pass away; While we musing scan the misty future, Hoping they will ever stay. Bye and bye! may gaily point us forward, Unto scenes with joy o'ercast-- Only mirage of Life's barren desert, They are found to be at last. Bye and bye! with all its artful scheming, Though it may seem most sublime, Wisdom horror-stricken spurneth from her, Knowing only present time. Reason tells us now's the time for action, And this truth will ever last, Written as it is throughout all nature, On the pages of the Past. WILLIAM JAMES JONES. William James Jones was born in Elkton, August 25, 1829, and received his education at the common school and Academy in that town. His youth and early manhood was spent in mechanical pursuits and in the improvement of his mind by a desultory course of reading, and in perfecting himself in the knowledge of the Latin language. In 1852, Mr. Jones purchased a half interest in the _Cecil Whig_ and became the editor of that journal for a short time, and until its founder P.C. Ricketts, who was then editing the _Daily News_, of Baltimore, returned from that city and resumed the duties of editor of the _Whig_. In 1853, Mr. Jones commenced the study of the law in the office of John C. Groome, Esq., in Elkton and was admitted to the Bar, September 21, 1855. In politics Mr. Jones was a Whig, but allied himself with the American party when it was in course of formation and continued to be an active member as long as the party lasted. In 1857 he was appointed State's Attorney for Cecil county, to fill a vacancy, and in 1859 was elected to the same office for the term of four years. At the outbreak of the war of the rebellion Mr. Jones allied himself with the Union cause and was elected to the House of Delegates by the Union party in 1863, and was appointed two years afterwards, United States' District Attorney for the district of Maryland, and held the office for about a year, and until he was removed by President Andrew Johnson for opposing his policy of reconstruction. In 1858 he married Miss Mary Jane Smith, of Connecticut. They are the parents of one son and two daughters, the eldest of whom is the wife of Rev. Walter E. Avery, of the Wilmington Conference. Mr. Jones is one of the most earnest and successful members of the Elkton Bar, and though not a voluminous writer, in early life contributed poetry to the columns of the _Cecil Whig_, of which the following poems are specimens. AUTUMN. The autumn winds are moaning round And through the branches sighing, And autumn leaves upon the ground All seared and dead are lying. The summer flowers have ceased to bloom For autumn frosts have blighted, And laid them in a cheerless tomb By summer sun unlighted. Thus all our "fondest hopes decay" Beneath the chill of sorrow, The joys that brightest seem to-day Are withered by the morrow. But there are flowers that bloom enshrin'd In hearts by love united, Unscathed by the autumn wind, By autumn frost unblighted. And there are hearts that ever thrill With friendship warm and glowing, And joys unseared by sorrow's chill With hallowed truth o'erflowing. MARY'S GRAVE. In a quiet country churchyard From the city far away, Where no marble stands in mockery Above the mould'ring clay; Where rears no sculptured monument-- There grass and flowers wave 'Round a spot where mem'ry lingers-- My once-loved Mary's grave. They laid her down to slumber In this lonely quiet spot, They raised no stone above her, No epitaph they wrote; They pressed the fresh mould o'er her As earth to earth they gave-- Their hearts with anguish bursting, They turned from Mary's grave. She knew not much of grief or care Ere yet by Death's cold hand, Her soul was snatched from earth away To join the spirit band: Her mild blue eye hath lost its gleam, No more her sufferings crave The hand of pity, but the tear Falls oft o'er Mary's grave. I too would pay my tribute there, I who have loved her well. And drop one silent, sorrowing tear This storm of grief to quell; 'Tis all the hope I dare indulge, 'Tis all the boon I crave, To pay the tribute of a tear, Loved Mary, o'er thy grave. TO ANSELMO. Anselmo was the nom de plume of David Scott, of James. I know thee not, and yet I fain Would call thee brother, friend; I know that friendship, virtue, truth, All in thy nature blend. I know by thee the formal bow, The half deceitful smile Are valued not; they ill become The man that's free from guile. I know thee not, and yet my breast Thrills ever at thy song, And bleeds to know, that thou hast felt The weight of "woe and wrong." 'Tis said the soul with care opprest Grows patient 'neath the weight, And after years can bear it well E'en though the load be great. And, that the heart oft stung by grief Is senseless to the pain, And bleeding bares it to the barb, To bid it strike again. I care not if the heart has borne All that the world can give, Of "disappointment, hate and scorn;" In hope 'twill ever live, And feel the barb'd and poison'd stings Of anguish, grief and care, As keenly as in years gone by, When first they entered there. The weary soul by care opprest May utter no complaints, But loaths the weight it cannot bear And weakens till it faints. FLOWERS. Bring flowers for the youthful throng, Of variegated glow, And twine of them a gaudy wreath Around each childish brow. Bring flowers for the maiden gay, Bring flowers rich and rare, And weave the buds of brightest hue Among her waving hair. Bring flowers to the man of grief-- They hold the syren art, To charm the care-look from his brow, The sorrow from his heart. Bring flowers for the sick girl's couch; 'Twill cheer her languid eye To know the flowers have bloomed again, And see them ere she die. Bring flowers when her soul has fled, And place them on her breast, Tho' ere their blooming freshness fade We lay her down to rest. LIFE. Life at best is but a dream, We're launched upon a rapid stream, Gushing from some unknown source, Rushing swiftly on its course, Save when amid some painful scene, And then it flows calm and serene, That we may gaze in mute despair On every hated object there. Fortune our bark and hope our chart, With childish glee on our voy'ge we start, The boat glides merrily o'er the wave. But ah! there's many a storm to brave, And many a dang'rous reef to clear, And rushing rapid o'er which to steer. Anon the stream grows wide and deep, While here and there wild breakers leap, O'er rocks half hidden by the flood, Where for ages they have stood, Upon whose bleak and rugged crest, Many a proud form sank to rest, And many a heart untouched by care Laid its unstained offering there. Ah! they have met a happier lot, Whose bark was wrecked ere they forgot The pleasing scenes of childhood's years, 'Mid that tempestuous vale of tears Which farther on begirts the stream, Where phantom hopes like lightning gleam Through the murky air, and flit around The brain with hellish shrieking sound Conjuring up each mad'ning thought, With black despair or malice fraught. Swiftly, on in our course we go To where sweetest flow'rs are hanging low We stretch our hand their stems to clasp But ah! they're crush'd within our grasp, While forward th' rushing stream flows fast And soon the beauteous scene is past. At last we view another sight, The shore with drifted snow is white, The stream grows dark and soon we feel An icy coldness o'er us steal, We cast our eyes ahead and see The ocean of Eternity. When once amid its peaceful waves No holier joy the bosom craves-- Ten thousand stars are shining bright Yet one reflects a purer light-- No sooner does its glowing blaze Attract the spirit's wand'ring gaze, Than all is turned to joy we see-- That star is Immortality. JOHN HENRY KIMBLE. John Henry Kimble was born in Buckingham township, Bucks county, Pennsylvania, September 8, 1850. He is the second son of Henry H. Kimble, and is descended on his father's side from English stock, being a lineal descendant from Governor John Carver, who came to this country in the Mayflower in 1620. On his mother's side, his grandfather, Seruch Titus, was a prominent citizen of Bucks county, and, as his name indicates, was of Italian descent. Mr. Kimble moved with his parents to the Fourth Election district of Cecil county, in the Spring of 1855, and has been engaged in farming all his life, except two years spent in teaching in our public schools. He is a popular music teacher and performer on musical instruments, and has won local distinction as a debater. In 1870 his first verses were published in the _Morris Scholastic_ a newspaper published in Grundy county, Illinois. He afterwards wrote for the _Cecil Whig_. In 1875 he wrote "The Patrons of Husbandry," a serial poem, which was published by the Grange organ of the State of Pennsylvania, in seven parts, with illustrations. It was pronounced by competent critics to be one of the "best and most natural descriptions of farm life ever written." It attracted wide attention and received favorable comment from the N.Y. _World_ and other leading papers. He wrote another serial in 1876, entitled "Two Granges." Mr. Kimble makes no pretensions as a writer and has never allowed his love of literature to interfere with his farm work. In the Winters of 1872, '73 and '74 he taught in the public schools of this county with satisfaction to his patrons. In December, 1873, he was married to Miss Sarah Teresa Gallagher, daughter of John E. Gallagher, of the Fourth district. They have five children, three daughters and two sons. In 1880, Mr. Kimble moved from the farm near Fair Hill, where he had spent twenty-five years, to Appleton, where he still resides. He is now a frequent and popular contributor to the _Cecil Democrat_. HIS LAST TUNE. The shade of death had haunted him Through many a weary day; With dread disease his youthful frame Was wasting slow away. He took his violin and sighed,-- "I am too weak to play." But, rising in his cushioned chair, He grasps, with trembling hand, The neck and bow, and tunes the strings And thinks of concerts grand; And hears the crowd applauding loud As when he led the band. Inspired with supernatural power He plays a melody, Forgetting all the terrors of His mortal malady; And, as of yore, his soul once more Is with the gay and free. Something responsive in the soul Wakes with melodious sound A lively melody that makes The languid pulse rebound, While recollection takes the mind Through many a happy round. Now fast, now slow, he draws the bow To suit his changing will; A march, a waltz, a polka, and An intricate quadrille, Each in its turn is rendered with An artist's ready skill. With failing strength he strikes at length His favorite--"Home, Sweet Home;" His dreamy spirit ceases with The pleasing past to roam, And, through the future, seems to rise Up, up to Heaven's high dome. And mingling with his violin He hears the joyful strains That vibrate o'er angelic hosts, Where song supernal reigns! Oh! glimpse of glory! lifting him Above all mortal pains. The last sweet note of that sweet tune Within the room has died-- And now he's playing on the harp Upon the other side Of death's dark river, safe and free, Among the glorified. ADVICE TO AN AMBITIOUS YOUTH. You look with joy to-day along life's vista clear, And great will be your deeds through many a happy year, And smiling friends will come to crown with glad acclaim A hero, when you reach the glittering heights of fame. Your life will be above the common herd, I trow, You will not toil and drudge as they are doing now: Success attend your steps; a word I would not say To chill your warmest hopes, or shade your sunny way. Your mark is high, my child, then aim your arrow straight, The world has need to-day, of heroes good and great, You feel so strong; and wish life's battle would begin, You'll find a chance ere long, to do your best and win. But may be you will fail, 'tis ten to one you will, And men will laugh, to see your lack of pluck and skill, Perhaps you will not have one mighty thing to do; But many little things will prove if you are true. To carry brick and stone for someone else's wall, To do the hardest part and get no praise at all, To see a weaker man upheld by circumstance, And find the path hedged high, just when you would advance; Or, in the jostling crowd, to slip, and fall, and see, How many men will scoff at your adversity, And though your heart may ache, you must not shed a tear, But plan, and push, and work, and smother all your fear. No darling mother then can sympathize with you,-- No father when you stick, will kindly pull you through; Through years of grasping toil the wealth you gain, and fame, May vanish all, and leave you poverty and shame. But you need not be lost, all people are not bad, The Lord has servants good, as He has ever had; They'll find you in your grief, and lend a helping hand, And point the road that leads up to the "Better Land." Remember this, my child, wherever you may go, That God rules over all, though it may not seem so; And what you sow, you'll reap, with joy or misery, If not in time, O, surely in eternity. TOO LATE. A dear old friend of mine is very ill, I hear, I have not seen his face for many a weary year. Ah, many toilsome days we've spent with little train, And he was poor and weak, but never would complain. I knew his fears and hopes, he knew my hopes and fears. We shared each other's joys and wept each other's tears! He had his faults, and I oft sinned in word and deed; But through our troubles all, we seldom disagreed. And when we did, we soon were truly reconciled; So, while we might have quarrelled, we compromised and smiled. But fortune bade us part; we bid good-bye at last, Each toiled as bravely on as both had in the past. I've written him, and he has answered prompt and true; But we have never met as we had promised to. For he was busy there and I was busy here, And so our lots were cast apart from year to year. But when a mutual friend told me this afternoon That he was very sick and wished to see me soon, I left my home at once and on the earliest train I'm speeding to his home across the distant plain. He looks for me! and I, to reach him scarce can wait, O, for the lightning's speed! that I may not be late. The fields seem spinning round, the trees seem flying past, The engine thunders on, the station's reached at last. And to my friend I haste, to greet him as of yore, Rejoicing in his thrift, I pause beside his door. A servant asks me in, and there upon his bed, Behold my dear old friend, who sent for me--just dead! I speak his name once more, and check the rising tears, And kiss his honest face, changed little through the years. "He asked for you," they said, but could no longer wait; Alas! alas! to be but fifteen minutes late. AFTER THE SHOWER. After the shower the fields are green, The winds are hushed, the air is cool, The merry children now are seen Barefoot wading the wayside pool, Loitering on their way to school, After the morning shower. After the shower the farmers walk Around their homes with thanks sincere. The shower is foremost in their talk, See! how it makes their crops appear, The finest seen for many a year. Thanks for the gentle shower. Westward the dark clouds roll away To vanish in the ether blue, Eastward the curtains light and gay Exclude the glorious sun from view Till, as they shift, he flashes through And lights the charming scene. Against the melting clouds, behold The lofty arch, the beauteous bow, The sacred sign to saints of old, As bright as when first seen below, How fair the matchless colors glow After the cooling shower. Washed by the countless, crystal drops, Awhile from swarming insects free, The cattle clip the clover tops Forth wandering o'er the fertile lea, The birds sing with unusual glee After the drenching shower. Over the hills and valleys green Wild flowers are blooming fresh and fair, In cottage lawns and yards are seen The good results of woman's care, Tulips and pinks and lillies rare Fresh from the timely shower. A TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF DAVID SCOTT (OF JOHN.) I weep for the loss of a leader in thought, Whose lessons of truth, with simplicity taught, Have bless'd and encouraged the humble and poor, Who always were welcomed with joy at his door. How happy the hours when we gathered around, To hear his solutions of problems profound; And bright through my mem'ry what pleasure returns When I think of his rendering of Byron and Burns. The "Saturday Night," and "To Mary in Heaven," With true Scottish accent were touchingly given, And reckless "Don Juan's" most comical plight,-- And pathos of "Harold" he gave with delight. The pages of Hebraic sages divine, Made vocal by him with new beauties did shine; His choice conversation with children and men, Was often enriched with a song from his pen. In public debate, whosoever arose, His well-grounded argument firm to oppose, Though sharp the contention, was forced to declare, That he was an honorable champion there. And, those he offended, as everyone must, Whose thoughts are progressive, whose actions are just, With kindness he reasoned all errors to show, And made a staunch friend of a bickering foe. He owned like a hero the penalty dread-- "By the sweat of thy brow shalt thou earn thy bread," And his toil through summer, and mid-winter snows, Has made the wild wilderness bloom as the rose. The choicest of fruits in profusion appeared, On trees that he planted, and vines that he reared; And few things delighted him more than to send, A rare little treat to an invalid friend. He scorned false pretences and arrogant pride, The follies of fashion he loved to deride; But acknowledged true merit wherever 'twas shown, By a serf in his hut, or a king on his throne. His faults be forgotten, we've all gone astray, Lord, show us in mercy, the straight, narrow way, Peace, peace to his ashes, and sweet be his rest, With angels of light, in the home of the blest. SPRING. Rosy morn is brightly breaking, Cheerful birds melodious sing, Earth with thankful songs awaking Hails with joy the merry Spring, Silver clouds in sunlight glowing Slowly float the azure dome, Tender flowers are sweetly blowing Round each cozy cottage home. Dreary winter's icy fingers Have released the bending tree, Genial life reviving, lingers O'er the cold and sterile lea. From the rocky, snow-clad mountains, Where the breath of sunny Spring Has unfettered muffled fountains, Hear the songs of gladness ring. In the morn of playful childhood, With dear friends 'mid sylvan bowers, O'er the fields and through the wildwood, Culling all the choicest flow'rs; Twining wreaths, each other crowning, Dew-drops bright for royal gems, Ne'er a thought of worldly frowning On the precious diadems. Marched we on with true devotion, While the scenes of after years, Stirr'd the spirits deep emotion, With alternate hopes and fears. While before us lay life's prizes, Dazzling in the sunlight gleam,-- How we gazed with sad surprises, When they vanished like a dream. Many happy hearts grew weary, Rosy cheeks grew pale and white, Pleasant paths grew dark and dreary, Swept by storms of withering blight; How the changing years have fleeted, Strewing wrecks on either side, Cherished schemes have been defeated, And the cares of age abide. But when cheery Spring advances, Crowned with gems of beauty rare, Pleasure like a fairy, dances O'er the landscape everywhere, And the tide of life flows higher, Gloom's dark curtains are withdrawn, And again youth's hidden fire, Thrills me as in life's fresh dawn. JAMES McCAULEY. James McCauley was born August 23, 1809, near Mechanics Valley, in Cecil county, and received his education in the log schoolhouse in that neighborhood known as Maffit's schoolhouse. He learned the trade of a cooper with his father John McCauley. After coming of age he taught school for a few years, and then commenced making threshing machines and horse powers, doing the wood and iron work himself. In 1836 he removed to New Leeds, where he has since resided. In 1841, Mr. McCauley was appointed County Surveyor by Governor Pratt, and served in that capacity for several years and has ever since practiced land surveying with much success in all parts of Cecil county. In 1857 he was elected Register of Wills and served until the Fall of 1863. In 1864 he was elected a delegate to the General Assembly of the State, and served in the session of 1865, and the special session of 1866. Mr. McCauley has always been deeply interested in the cause of education and was chairman of the committee on that subject in the House of Delegates. While in the Legislature he was instrumental in securing the passage of the law prohibiting the sale of intoxicating liquors in Cecil county on election day. In the early part of 1868 Mr. McCauley was appointed School Commissioner, and soon afterwards Chief Judge of the Orphan's Court, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of the late Levi H. Evans, which he did with so much acceptability that he has since been elected for four terms of four years each. In 1834, Mr. McCauley married Sarah, the youngest daughter of Hugh Beard, a well-known surveyor of this county. His first wife died in 1846, leaving five children. In 1849 he married Millicent, daughter of Jacob Price, of Sassafras Neck. Mr. McCauley commenced to write poetry when a young man and has contributed poetry, but much more prose, to the newspapers of this county during the last half century. HENRY CLAY. He needs no monument, no marble pile, 'Tis vain thus to commemorate a name That must endure in noble grandeur while His country lives,--the temple of his fame. VIRTUOUS AGE. As early youth in brightness vies, With advent of the day, When Sol first opes his golden eyes, And chases night away. So may the virtuous man compare, In his declining day, With setting sun, in ev'ning fair, Passing from earth away. And though his face no more we see, He still reflects his light, And shines with glorious majesty, In other realms more bright. And still his light doth ne'er decline, But gath'ring up fresh store, Through ages yet to come, shall shine, And shine, forever more. ACROSTIC. Enraptured thoughts intuitive, Make haste to greet thy page. Melodious with sweet accord, And classic too with age. And ever may the sacred nine, Lead thee to their embrace, Inspire thy song with themes divine, Choice gems select from nature's mine, Enriched with matchless grace. Be thine a life of social joy, Removed from care and pain, On earth thy early years employ, With prospect of that gain No mortal here can realize, Eternal bliss beyond the skies. WORK TO-DAY. Youth's the time; Youth's the season! Learn and labor while you may, Hear the voice of age and reason,-- Work to-day. Labor hard in morning's prime, Hasten on without delay, Make the most of early time-- Work to-day. Up betimes, nor let the sun Find you sleeping or at play, Sleep enough when life is done-- Work to-day. Cull the sweets from ev'ry flower, Seize the moments while you may, Nor idly pass one sunny hour-- Work to-day. ON THE DEATH OF A CHILD. Dear sister, has thy little son, Been snatched from thy embrace, Thy fav'rite child, thy darling one, Has left a vacant place. His father oft with little John Beguil'd the hours away, To watch his little fav'rite son, Enjoy his childish play; For there was laughter in his eye, And health was on his cheek, I fancy that he's standing by, And almost hear him speak. The patt'ring of his little feet, In fancy's ear is heard, The music of his voice as sweet, As singing of a bird. The objects that we fondly prize, How soon they pass away, And we are left to realize, The emblems of decay. Dear sister, be resigned then, Nor let your faith grow dim, He cannot come to you again, But you can go to him. SPRING. Awake and sing, for early Spring Comes forth with beauty gay, With joy elate, both small and great Now bless the happy day. Through all the earth comes beauty forth, So sweet, so fresh and fair, And ev'ry sound that echoes round, Comes with a gladsome air. While from the hill the little rill, Comes trickling down so clear, Its bubbling voice made me rejoice, In many an early year. Along the mead where'er we tread, Will little flow'rets spring, And through the air in colors rare, Waves many a tiny wing. Back to their home, the songsters come, And gaily, blithely sing, The sun looks gay, I love the day, The sweet and early spring. HOPE. When storms arise, and tumults jar, And wreck this mortal form, There is a bright, a lovely star, That shines above the storm. 'Tis hope that buoys our spirits up, Along the chequer'd way, And when we drain the bitter cup It points a brighter day. Though all the ills of life stand by, It proffers still to save; And when the shades of death are nigh, It looks beyond the grave. AUTUMN. How sad the breath of autumn sighs, With mourning and decay; The woods are clothed in varying dyes, Of funeral array. Where beauty bloomed of late around, On mountain top and vale, Now wither'd foliage strews the ground, And tells a piteous tale. And summer birds are on the wing, Bound for a warmer sky, They greeted us in early spring-- They bid us now good bye. So pass away our early years, Youth sinks into decay, And age, like autumn soon appears, And quick we pass away. MRS. IDA McCORMICK. Mrs. Ida McCormick was born at Cameron Park, the family homestead, one mile south of the pleasant little village of Zion, Cecil county, Maryland, December 31, 1850. She is the daughter of William Cameron (of Robert,) and a cousin of Annie M. Biles; her mother Anna M. Oldham, being a sister of Catherine R. Oldham, the mother of Annie M. Darlington, whose biography may be found in this volume. She was educated at the Church-side Seminary, at Zion, and at an early age engaged in teaching in the public schools of her native county. She commenced to write poetry when quite young, and for some years occasionally contributed to the columns of the _Cecil Whig_. On the 7th of August, 1873, she married James McCormick, of Woodlawn, and for about a year after her marriage resided with her husband near that place. In 1876 the family removed to Philadelphia where they have since resided, except short intervals when traveling. MY FANCY LAND. I'm roaming to-day in a far-away land Where the roses and violets grow, Where white waves break on a silvery strand, And are lost on the cliffs below. High up in a palace of sparkling gold Where voices are hushed and still, Where lips are silent and hearts are cold, And the days are rich with a glory untold, And no one disputes my will. The walls are rich with an amber light, And waters in fountains fall, There are landscapes which vie with Italy bright, And servants within my call; There are sounds of music, bewitchingly sweet, With tender, plaintive chords, Like the patter of tiny innocent feet, Or the voices of joy when loved ones meet And their hearts speak out, their words. All day from my turret I watch the sails That fleck the sweep of the tide,-- Whose passengers all are joyous and hale, As into the harbor they ride. They enter my golden castle gate,-- They roam thro' my stately halls,-- They rest in chambers furnished in state, Then close by my glory-throne they wait, Until I shall answer their call. There are faces bright with a merry light And the music of long ago; And others dark as Lethe's night And as cold as the winter's snow. Hands that meet mine in a trusty clasp With blushes that come and go, Strangers to pain in this world so vast, With its pleasure now and sorrow at last, In the land we do not know. They are bound for this strangely mystical land So shadowy, lone and so dim, And my castle's a port on the ocean strand, Where they wait for the ferryman grim, To row them away from the silvery beach Beyond the foam of the tide, Where a palace looms far away from their reach, Whose gates are closed with a clang to each Who have chosen the pathway wide. They tell me I'm treading with careless feet This thorny, deceitful path, When the Master cometh my face to greet He will open his vials of wrath. But I turn again to the world so real, And my "Fancy Land" grows dim, Time's hand has taught me not to feel The wounds which sympathy cannot heal, And I anchor my faith in Him. WITH THE TIDE. Beneath the bright sun's dazzling ray, She watched his vessel sail away To distant, far-famed lands. Her heart was gone,--upon her hand Sparkled a diamond fair and grand, Telling in silent jubilee "His love is all the world to me." Time goes by wings,--the years flew on, The days had come,--the summers gone, And still no loved one came To feed the burning passion flame Still glowing in her heart. They told her "in another land He captive held a heart and hand And graced Dame Fashion's mart." She listened to love's second tale That came with Autumn's misty gale, And hid her heart within the fold Of satins rare, and lustrous gold, Sadness so deep, must live untold Shut in her marble palace high, Reared almost up to touch the sky. Haughty and cold her heart had grown, For wealth and glory she lived alone, Yet as oft she watched an out bound ship Its prow in foamy waters dip, The day came back when lip to lip Her heart met his in a sad farewell. Murmuring this sad and low refrain, As cold and chill as winter rain-- "He's falser than human tongue can tell." * * * * * September's sun with yellow heat, Fell burning where the waves had beat With restless motion, against the shore, And music like unto that of yore, When a tiny speck in the clouds she saw, Moving and nearing the pleasant land Quietly, swiftly, as by a law. Screening her brown eyes with her hand, She saw it strike the pebbled sand, And heard a glad shout cleave the air, And saw a noble, manly form, With locks of silvered raven hair, And a heart with love and passion warm. She held her breath in silent dread, The crimson from her soft cheek fled, Low at her feet he knelt;-- "No welcome for the leal and true? Speak, darling, speak! it is my due, Back through the years I've come to you Faithful as when I went!" "No answer still? my love, oh, why No answer to my pleading cry?" Thou'rt dead! Why have I lived for this? To gain a life of shipwrecked bliss? To distant lands to roam and then Dead lips to welcome me again? * * * * * A funeral train,--all mourners great, Pall-bearers clothed in robes of state, The form they love more fair in death Than when 'twas warmed by living breath, A haughty man with silvered hair, Among the strangers gathered there;-- A rose dropped by an unknown hand With perfume from a foreign land, Upon the casket lid,-- A ship at anchor in the bay, That in the evening bore away A form that landed yesterday. THE OLD FASHION. "The old, old fashion,--Death! Oh, thank God, all who see it, for that older fashion yet, of Immortality!" --Dickens. Despite all human passion, And all that we can do,-- There is an old, old fashion That comes to me and you. It has come to me so often That I know its meaning well, Nothing its pain can soften Nothing its power can quell. When the battle-field was silent, Gone to their final rest, Dead in their last encampment Lay the ones I loved the best. And then, when my heart was lightest, It came with a snake-like tread, And darkened the day that was brightest, Then left me with my dead. It came in the wild March weather With bluster of storm and sleet, And stilled in our home forever The patter of boyish feet. And then,--God pity my treason, When life again had smiled, It came in the holiday season And took from me my child. "Give thanks for the old, old fashion," No, that can never be. Where is the Divine compassion That God has shown to me? Fling wide each shining portal,-- Let me--a sinner through,-- Thank God for the immortal Is all that I can do. No prayer of love or passion Can give my dead to me, But I bless the old, old fashion, Of immortality. MY BABY AND THE ROSE. A rose tree grew by the garden wall, And its highest blossom was just as tall As my baby's curly head; A lovely, fragrant, perfect rose,-- But sweeter from head to dimpled toes, Was the baby I fondly led. Now summer is over and winter gone, And the winds of March are whistling on Where the rose its petals shed; No trace of rose perfumed and rare, No baby face as seraph fair, My baby sweet is dead. The summer sun will shine again, And 'neath the pattering, warm June rain, Again the rose will bloom, And so beyond these lowering skies My baby dear, with smiling eyes, Shall peer through earthly gloom, And guide me with her angel hand Through Heaven's gates,--and with me stand Away from worldly woes,-- Where Heaven's flowers, divinely sweet, Soften the path for weary feet With perfume of the rose. FOLGER McKINSEY. Folger McKinsey was born in Elkton, on the 29th of August, 1866, in the cottage on Bow street now occupied by Thomas W. Green. His early life was spent in Elkton, except a few years in childhood when his parents resided in the West and South, until 1879, when they removed to Philadelphia, taking their son with them. His paternal grandfather was a Scotchman, and his grand parents on his mother's side were Germans, from the country bordering on the Rhine. Through the marriage of his maternal great grandmother he is distantly related to Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe. Both his parents are persons of intellectual ability, and have written verse, his mother having been a contributor to the local newspapers of this county, and to several western journals. Mr. McKinsey received his education at the primary school of Miss Tabitha Jones, on Main street, in Elkton, where he was sent when seven years of age. Except an attendance of eight months at the public school of Elkton, he never attended any other schools. In early childhood he showed a great desire to read, and is indebted to his relative, William J. Jones, and to L. Marshall Haines and E.E. Ewing for the means of gratifying his early thirst for information. Shortly after removing to Philadelphia Mr. McKinsey entered a mercantile establishment as clerk, but soon afterwards accepted a position in the office of a publishing house, and subsequently entered the office of the Philadelphia and Reading railroad company as clerk in the record department. While in the office of the railroad company he wrote and published his first poem. It is called "Satana Victo" and is written in blank verse. Since that time he has been a prolific writer of both poetry and prose, much of which has been published. In October, 1884, Mr. McKinsey accepted the position of editor of the _Shore Gazette_, a weekly journal published at Ocean Beach, N.J., which he continued to fill for some months, when he returned to Philadelphia and accepted a position as special writer on a prominent daily journal of that city. In October, 1885, Mr. McKinsey accepted the position of associate editor of the _Cecil Whig_, which he continued to fill until the following March when he became editor of the _Daily_ and _Weekly News_, of Frederick City, Maryland. During the time he was connected with the _Whig_ he began the publication of a journal in Darby, called the _Delaware County Independent_. In January, 1886, Mr. McKinsey married Miss Fannie Holenrake Dungan, an estimable young English lady of Camden, N.J. Mr. McKinsey is a great admirer of Joaquin Miller and Walt Whitman, and a warm personal friend of the latter. Though young in years he writes with as much fluency and ease as if he had been writing poetry for half an ordinary lifetime, and gives promise of a brilliant career that will be creditable to his native town, and beneficial to the human race. WAITING THEIR CROWNS. They wait, the forest monarchs tall, In naked beauty on the hills, Until the snows of Winter fall, And icy arms embrace the rills. The golden glory of the days, When Indian Summer fills the land, Descends in gleams and dreamful haze, Like blessings from the Lord's right hand. No matin call of tardy bird, Long stayed by sunshine in the north, Above the fluttering clouds is heard. A moment's pause, then bursting forth In all the glorious sweets of song That thrill from soul to soul aflame, And die the barren hills among From whence the summer carols came. All day the leafless monarchs wave Their hoary branches high in air, And white-winged spirits guard the grave Where late they laid the Autumn fair. A sterner nature marks the land, The soft blue airs of spring-time sleep, The Summer trips it, hand in hand, With Autumn o'er the distant deep. Where lift the dim, perpetual isles Their purple ensigns of the youth That ever dimples, romps and smiles Beyond the wrinkled pale of ruth. And deep within the wooded lane The oak and pine, in plaintive call, Unto the wintry tide complain, As leaves and brown nuts constant fall. They wait their crowns, the naked kings! And down the avenues of night The frosty god, December, brings Them glistening diadems of white. White petals of the virgin snow, With sprigs of ivy here and there, They deck the forest monarch's brow, While breezes whistle through his hair. A sterner nature marks the soul, Men's lips draw near the cup of life, They wait to hear the centuries' roll That bring the kingly crowns of strife. The spring-time months and summer years Beside the Autumn days are laid, Beneath the grave of conquered fears, Beneath the sloping hill-side's shade. And deeper joy, serener faith, Spring forth the golden crowns to grasp, While death, the monarch, gently lay'th Upon their brows a kinglier clasp. They wait no more the golden crown; Men, trees, the careless days of strife, Drift onward to the far, sweet town,-- God's kingdom of eternal life. SEA ECHOES. I walk not by the sounding sea; I dwell full many leagues from shore And still an echo drifts to me Of the eternal, constant roar Of waves, that beetle past the crags And moan in weary flights of song Where wet sea moss and coral drags The shiny lengths of sand along. I see beyond the friendly vales, And grand old hills that guard my home, To where the seaward petrel sails And storm winds of the Northland moan. I live again in brighter days, New-born from dreams of the dead past, When she and I stood there to gaze At sparkling hull, and spar, and mast Of some staunch sea-craft bound amain At will of wayward wind and fate, Deep plunging in the waves to gain Some northern isle, or rich estate Of palm and pine in southward clime, Where all day long the playful air Pranks with the grizzled beard of time And paints his hoary visage fair. Within the dim, old forests here, I wander now long leagues from shore, And still the old song haunts my ear, The century singing ocean's roar; And now I know, fond soul of love; Why still the murmurous echoes live, And sound for aye the hills above That back to earth the music give; She, too, walked there in dreams with me, In love's sweet unity we trod The moon-bathed sands, and swore to be Forever true before our God. I see it still, her pale, calm face, With angel love-light in her eyes, And ever there, beside such grace, A dim, sweet token of surprise. Oh, tender touch of one soft hand! I held it then in simple trust, Alas, ye waves that lick the sand! How long has that hand lain in dust? I see her soul in yonder star, I see the soft lines of her face, And could God so unkindly mar That angel beauty and its grace? Roll, murmuring echoes of the sea! Repeat thy sweet, immortal moan, Drift ever inland unto me Within my sunny Southern home; And it shall be a tender dream-- Thy plaintive music thrilling me, And her star face above--shall seem Like other days beside the sea When our lips touched eternally. WHERE FANCY DWELLS. The sea winds blow from western isles, From isles where fancy dwells and peace. Where summer sunshine softly smiles And perfumes of the far off east Float over waves white-capped with foam That glisten in the pale sweet light Shed from the far eternal dome Where fair star faces paint the night. Life must have rest sometime, somewhere, On land or wave its peace shall be, And I have found my life's fond share In yon fair isle of Hebride; In yon fair isle where all day long The sunlight shadows drift and float And all the world seems bathed in song Borne trembling from the skylark's throat. O! isle of peace, the waves that kiss Thy beaches all the centuries through, Flow from mysterious founts of bliss From founts o'er run with sunny dew, And o'er thy tree-tops lazily The perfumed breezes come and go With odors from that far countree Where eglantine and jessamine grow. Fair isle of summer, isle of love, Where souls forget their bitter strife And mingled sadnesses that move In tempests o'er the sea of life; I kiss thy fair shore with my knee, And lift a thankful heart to God, For perfect joy comes unto me Where thy trees' blossomed branches nod. Thy long sea waves float in beyond The dim blue lines of sunlit sky, Where films of cloudy lacework frond The billows tumbling mountain high; And shoreward in the still sweet eve The low songs of the mermaids drift, As in some coral grot they weave Their seaweed robes, and sometimes lift Their long, strong, tangled lengths of hair Above the bosom of the wave, While 'mid its golden meshes fair The distant sunbeams stoop to lave. Sweet isle of fancy, far beyond The dark dim vales of human woe, My bark of love sails o'er the fond Blue waves that ever shoreward flow. My bark sails on the unknown sea Led by a large, pale star alone, That star wherein her face may be, Who to that better land hath gone. O, never turn, brave white-sailed ship, Again towards that barren shore But bear me on the waves that dip And kiss yon isle forevermore. Sweet day of rest when toil is past, When hearts can lay their burdens by And feel the peace God's angels cast In isleward flights from his fair sky! Sweet isle of love where fancy dwells, And nature knows no pang of care, I hear the music of its bells Far floating on the evening air. I hear the lonely shepherd's song Flow down the green and mossy vale, And westward all the calm night long The restless sea gulls sail. I sometimes turn towards the stars With sudden shock of glad surprise, And half believe these island bars Are but the gates to Paradise. AT KEY'S GRAVE. I stood one summer, friend, beside The foam waves of a distant sea That muttered all the summer through A low sweet threnody. A mournful song was ever on The lips that it were death to kiss, A song for those who died as died The brave at ancient Salamis. A thousand graves lay in the trough Of that great ocean of the East, A thousand souls fled through its foam Towards the starlit land of peace. And for each ship-wrecked soul that slept Beneath the dark inconstant waves The wind gave songs in memory Of men true-hearted, pure and brave. But I have stood, sweet-singer, by Thy lonely, unmarked grave to-day, And all the songs thy memory got Came from the branches in their sway. Ah, peace! ah, love! ah, friendship true! No wreath rests here wove by your hands To mark the Poet's silent tomb. As tombs are marked in other lands. But in my noon-day dream there came From the fair bosom of the hills The voice of some sweet psalmist, thus-- "'Tis so God wills, 'tis so God wills." THE ETERNAL LIFE. I care not for the life that is, I think not of the things that are; I live, oh! soul of tenderness, Beneath an angel blessedness That draws its light from one small star. I know not if the world be ill, I care not for its throb of pain, I live, oh heart, in fellowship With other hearts that rise and dip In the great sea that floods the main From east to west with tides of love-- The ocean of Eternal Life, Whose waves flow ever free and warm From land of snow to land of palm And heal the naked wounds of strife. I only know God's law is just, And that is all we need to know, I live down creeds of hate and spite, I build the nobler creeds of right That beautify our beings so. The days are brief that come apace, When morn wakes up and night sinks down, But far beyond the hills of jet The glory of the sweet sunset Lights all the steeples of the town Within whose walls no sadness lives, No broken hearts, no simple strife, For that I live, oh soul of faith, For that whereof the Master saith "Here find eternal love and life." MRS. ROSALIENE ROMULA MURPHY. Mrs. Rosaliene Romula Murphy, daughter of John and Hannah Mooney, was born in Philadelphia, May, 1, 1838, and married Thomas H.P. Murphy, son of John C. and Ann Rothwell Murphy, and grandson of Hyland Price, of Cecil county, on the 18th of May, 1858. Her education was obtained at a school taught by the Sisters of Mercy, and at the public schools of her native city. Immediately after her marriage Mrs. Murphy came to Cecil county, and for ten years resided near the head of Bohemia river; subsequently she has resided in Middletown, Delaware, in Chester county, Pennsylvania, and for the last ten years in Philadelphia. Mr. and Mrs. Murphy are the parents of eight children, four of whom are now living. From early childhood Mrs. Murphy has shown a remarkable aptitude for literary work, and when quite a little girl at school, frequently took the highest average for composition. She commenced to write for the press at an early age and while in this county contributed poetry to the columns of the local newspapers and some of the journals of Wilmington and Philadelphia. WOMAN'S RIGHTS. Woman has certain rights I own, That none will dare deny; No king nor senate can destroy Her claims,--nor will they try. 'Tis hers to smooth the homeward path Of age,--her strength their stay; To guide their feeble footsteps here,-- To brush life's thorns away. 'Tis hers to make a sunny home, To cherish and support With love, the one who claims her heart, Through good and bad report. To watch the tiny sleeping babe, Just nestling in her breast, To shield it with her mother-love, And guard it in its rest. To watch in vigils of the night, The fever-tossed frame; To cool the dry, and parched lips, And ease the racking pain. To close the eyes when all is o'er, To weep with those who weep; To help the weary in their task, Keep guard whilst others sleep. To love and cherish, guard, protect, Make home a sunny spot-- Keep ever pure her mother name, A name not soon forgot! To win and wear her husband's love, As an honored, cherished crest; To hold her children's hearts, so "they Will rise and call her bless'd." To nobly share the widow's woe, To dry the orphan's tears, To pray for strength for hearts oppress'd, And help allay their fears; To reach a helping, loving hand, To those who go astray, And woo them back again to God, As they faint along the way. She claims but loving trusting hearts!-- Let all their wealth be shown!-- No law can take, nor ballot give The jewels of her crown! These, these, are all a woman's rights-- Quite easy to attain-- For most she governs, it is said, "When least she seems to reign." ONLY A BABY. My way was stopped, as I hurried on, A carriage pass'd--and again 'twas clear, But my glance took in the tiny box, And the mourners bending near. "Only a baby"--was lightly said-- As I safely crossed the street, But my heart went with the little group, With their darling at their feet. "Only a baby,"--God but knows The mother's bleeding heart; And the father's white, sad face would tell, How hard it is to part. "Only a baby!" what a void, In a merry, cheery home; An empty cradle, a half worn shoe; And a mother's broken tone. "Only a baby!" the aching eyes Look out on the busy street, And fall on other laughing babes, And the silent form at her feet. "Only a baby!" a desolate home, Those stricken hearts will know, When they lay their darling down to rest, 'Neath the willows bending low. "Only a baby!" how cold it seemed To speak of the angel near,-- My heart went after the snowy form. For its parents I breathed a prayer: "Only a baby!" ah, the weary day And the sleepless night, The feverish longing--the aching heart-- For the baby gone from sight! "Only a baby!" the heart sobs out, What hopes lie shatter'd here, The broken bud--the tiny frame, An angel hovering near. "Only a baby!"--the years creep by-- 'Twill ever be, tho' locks be gray; Growing no older--only their babe; As years before it passed away. TO HELEN, ON WRITING A SECOND TIME IN HER ALBUM. You plucked a grey hair from my head, To-day, as you stood near me: There's plenty more, that are deftly hid By wavy crimps,--I fear me. 'Tis many years since last I wrote, With fun, and spirits plenty; But now my fourth son has a vote, And my babe's not far from twenty. Ah! so it goes; old time strides on, Nor cares for years, and worries, But knocks us here; and hits us there, As past us quick he hurries; We still are friends, and have our fun, In spite of years, and trouble; We've planted, reaped, and had our day. And now we're in the stubble. RACHEL ELIZABETH PATTERSON. Rachel Elizabeth Patterson, better known as Lizzie Patterson, is the daughter of William Patterson and Sarah (Catts) Patterson, and was born in Port Deposit, February 2, 1820. She is also the granddaughter of an Englishman who settled on Taylor's Island, in Chesapeake Bay, where he owned considerable property, which by some means seems to have been lost by his family. Her father at one time kept a clothing store in Port Deposit, where he died when the subject of this sketch was quite young, leaving a family of helpless children, who were soon scattered among strangers. Elizabeth was placed in a family residing a short distance south of the village of Rising Sun. While in this family she was seized with a violent illness, which confined her to bed for many months and from which she arose a cripple and a sufferer for life. Her poetic talent began to manifest itself in those early days of suffering, and during subsequent years of confinement she found solace and recreation by composing her "Songs in Affliction," which about thirty years ago, in accordance with the advice of her friends, she published in a small volume bearing that name. The first edition consisted of eight hundred, and was so well received as to warrant the publication of another one of five hundred copies. In 1872 she published another small volume, entitled "The Little Streamlet," which contained some poems written since the publication of the first volume. Miss Patterson at present and for many years past has resided in Baltimore. "JUDGE NOT!" How, poor frail and erring mortal, Darest thou judge thy fellow-man And with bitter words and feelings, All his faults and frailties scan? Why rake out from time's dull ashes, And before the world display Deeds, it may be, long repented And forgiven, ere this day? Canst thou search his secret feelings? Canst thou read his inmost soul? Canst thou tell the hidden motives Which his actions here control? Is he erring? seek in kindness, Then, to win him back to peace; Is he weak? oh try to strengthen; Sad? then bid his sorrows cease! Lay thou not a heavier burden By an unkind look or word, On a heart which may by anguish To its inmost depths be stirred. O! forbear thy hasty judging! Should thy righteous God demand Half the justice which thy brother Is receiving from thy hand, What, oh what would be thy portion, Though more righteous thou than he, Would not the glad gates of mercy Soon their portals close on thee? THE WISH. I do not wish thee worldly wealth-- For it may flee away; I do not wish thee beauty's charms-- For they will soon decay. I do not wish for thee the joys Which from earth's pleasures spring; These give at best a fleeting bliss, And leave a lasting sting. I do not wish thee mortal fame-- This, like a meteor bright, Gleams but a moment on the sky, And leaves behind no light. I wish for thee that richer wealth, No earthly mines reveal, "Which moth and rust cannot corrupt, And thief can never steal." I wish for thee the sweeter joys, Which from religion flow; These have the power to soothe and bless, In hours of deepest woe. I wish for thee the honor pure, Descending from on high; To lift thy soul away from earth, And raise it to the sky. I wish that peace through all thy life, May on each step attend; May rapture crown its closing hour, And perfect bliss its end. THE CHRISTIAN'S ANCHOR. How oft when youthful skies are clear, And joy's sweet breezes round us play, We dream that as through life we steer, The morrow shall be like to-day. We paint each scene with rainbow hues, And gaily sail on stormless seas, While hope, through life's bright future, views The port she thinks to make with ease. But ah! how soon dark clouds of woe Spread o'er those skies a deepening shade, And waves of sorrow overflow, And all the rainbow glories fade. 'Tis thus earth's hopes, however bright, Expire and vanish, one by one, E'en as the shore recedes from sight, When glides the free bark swiftly on. Yet the redeemed, with anchor firm, Time's swelling billows shall outride, And far beyond the raging storm Shall make the port on Canaan's side. Oh, may this bright and blissful hope Fill my poor heart with joy and peace, Bid me 'mid all life's storms look up To yon blest land, where storms shall cease. And when with life's last gale I've striven, And all its raging waves have pass'd, Oh, may I, in the port of heaven, My anchor Hope securely cast. CALLANDER PATTERSON. Callander Patterson was born near Perryville, Cecil county, May 6, 1820. His education was obtained at the common schools of the neighborhood. Many years ago he went to Philadelphia, where he studied dentistry, which he has since practiced in that city. Mr. Patterson commenced writing poetry when quite young, but published nothing until upwards of forty years of age. His poetry--of which he has written much--seems to have been of a religious character. Owing to causes beyond our control, the following poem is the only one, adapted to this book, that we have been able to obtain. GOD IS GREAT. Our God is great! and to his arm I'll trust my destiny; For what in life or death can harm The soul that leans on thee? Thine arm supports the universe, For by thy might alone The blazing comets speed their course, Revolving round thy throne. They go and come at thy command To do thy sovereign will; Each one supported by thy hand, Its mission to fulfill. Through boundless space, 'mid shining spheres, Those wingless heralds fly; Proclaiming through the lapse of years That God still reigns on high. And all those burning suns of night That light the distant space, Declare thy power infinite, Thy wisdom and thy grace. We try to scan those regions far Till vision fades away, And yet beyond the utmost star Are plains of endless day. And when we earthward turn our gaze, With wonder and delight, We marvel at the lightning's blaze And tremble at its might. And yet, thy hand is in it all, For there thy love is seen: By it the rain is made to fall, And earth is robed in green. The cyclone on its path of death That rises in an hour, The fierce tornadoes' wildest breath, But faintly show thy power. And though the laws are yet unknown That guide them in their path, They are the agents of thy throne For mercy, or for wrath. Thus I behold thy wondrous arm And own thy works divine: Then what in life or death can harm So long as thou art mine? TOBIAS RUDULPH. Tobias Rudulph, the subject of this sketch, was the third person of that name and was the grandson of the Tobias Rudulph, who was one of four brothers who emigrated from Prussia and settled in Cecil county early in the eighteenth century. For many years the family took a conspicuous part in public affairs. Tobias Rudulph's uncle and his uncle's cousin Michael, the son of Jacob, and the uncle of Mrs. Lucretia Garfield, very early in the Revolutionary war joined a company of Light Horsemen, which was recruited in this county and served with great bravery and distinction in Light Horse Harry Lee's Legion in his Southern campaigns. They were called the Lions of the Legion. John Rudulph won the title of "Fighting Jack" by his courage and audacity, both of which essential requisites of a good soldier he seems to have possessed in a superabundant degree. Tobias, the subject of this sketch, was born in Elkton, in the old brick mansion two doors east of the court house, on December 8, 1787. He was the oldest of four children, namely: Zebulon, a sketch of whose life appears in this volume; Anna Maria, who married James Sewell; and Martha, who married the Reverend William Torbert. Anna Maria is said to have been a poetess of no mean ability, but owing to the state of literature in this county at the time she wrote, none of her poetry, so far as we have been able to learn was published, and after diligent search we have been unable to find any of her manuscript. Tobias studied law with his mother's brother, James Milner, who resided in Philadelphia, where he practiced law,--but who subsequently became a distinguished Presbyterian minister and Doctor of Divinity--and was admitted to the Elkton Bar and practiced his profession successfully until the time of his death which occurred in the Fall of 1828. He was a man of fine ability and amused himself when he had leisure in courting the Muses, but owing to his excessive modesty published nothing now extant except "Tancred, or The Siege of Antioch," a drama in three acts, which was printed in Philadelphia, in 1827. Owing to the fact that simultaneously with its publication, a drama of the same name by another author appeared as a candidate for literary favor, Mr. Rudulph--though his work was highly commended by Joseph Jefferson the elder, then in the height of his dramatic career, through the foolish fear that he might he accused of plagiarism--suppressed his drama and never allowed it to be introduced upon the stage. Mr. Rudulph married Maria Hayes. They were the parents of four children, Amelia, James, Anna Maria and Tobias. The two first mentioned are dead, the others reside in Elkton. Until a very recent period the family spelled the name Rudulph, which spelling has been followed in this work, though the name is now generally spelled Rudolph. SELECTION FROM TANCRED. Tancred was the son of the Marquis of Odo, surnamed the good, and Emma, the sister of Robert Guiscard who figured conspicuously in the wars which distracted Europe just previous to the first Crusade, which occurred under the leadership of Peter, the Hermit, and Walter, the Penniless, in A.D. 1096. The scene of the drama is laid at Antioch in 1097. A historian of the Crusades in speaking of the siege of Antioch, says that the wealth of the harvest and the vintage spread before them its irresistible temptations, and the herds feeding in the rich pastures seemed to promise an endless feast. The cattle, the corn and the wine were alike wasted with besotted folly, while the Turks within the walls received tidings of all that passed in the crusading camps from some Greek and Armenian christians to whom they allowed free egress and ingress. Of this knowledge they availed themselves in planing sallies by which they caused great distress to the Crusaders. The following extract comprises the third scene of the first act and is laid in the camp of the Crusaders--the chiefs being in council. DRAMATIS PERSONAE. _Godfrey_ of Bouillon, Duke of Lorraine. _Alexius_, Emperor of Greece. _Bohemond_, Prince of Tarentum. _Tancred_. _Raymond_, Count of Thoulouse. Alex. The truce being ended, I propose, my friends, To-morrow we should storm the walls of Antioch-- What say my worthy allies?-- Boh. If any here so base and cowardly, As to give other counsel, let him speak.-- Ray. I have known those, who foremost to advise, Were yet the last to venture on the battle.-- Boh. What means the Count of Thoulouse?-- Ray. Simply this;-- That some men thoughtlessly sit down to eat, Without having first obtained an appetite.-- Boh. By the Holy Sepulchre I swear, That knight must have some stomach who maintains, What you have just now utter'd-- [Throws down his gauntlet.] There lays my guage-- If you will wear my glove, choose with what arms We shall decide this quarrel.-- [Raymond advances to take up the glove.] God. Hold, Thoulouse, let it lay.-- I do impeach Bohemond of Tarentum of base wiles, And treachery most foul, to knighthood's cause-- Boh. Why then take you the glove.-- God. In mine own cause I do accept the challenge.-- [Takes up the glove.] Alex. Is our league dissolv'd, and shall the holy cause For which embattled Europe is in arms, Be idly given to the scorn of men, To gratify our passions and vile feuds?-- But speak Lorraine, for you have heretofore Been held the mediator in these jars-- Upon what quarrel do you thus arraign Bohemond of Tarentum?-- God. A gorgeous canopy, a present from The gov'nor of Armenia I have lost-- By what base means, Bohemond best can tell.-- Boh. True he can tell--and briefly thus it is-- I won the silken bauble in a fight, And claim it as my spoil.-- God. You basely stole The treasure of a friend--Pancrates had The conduct of the present to my camp; You coward-like surprised him on the way, And robb'd him of my prize.-- Boh. (Contemptuously) Well be it so-- I stole it, and will keep it-- You may keep the glove.-- Alex. Christians, forbear, the Infidels will laugh, To know a silken toy has broke our league, And sav'd the Sepulchre--It must not be, My friends, that private discord shall cut short The work we have begun--Bohemond, no-- Restore the treasure to its rightful Lord, And my pavilion shall replace the spoil.-- Boh. I do consent--provided Godfrey will Return my glove to the brave Count of Thoulouse-- Alex. That's nobly done Bohemond--but the war 'Twixt you and Thoulouse, is a war of words-- Like two pert game cocks picking at a straw, You doubt each other's courage--then make proof Upon the Paynim forces if you please, Which is the braver man--To-morrow's field Will afford ample scope to try your blades Upon the common enemy of each, And leave unscathed his ally--I propose, That he who first shall scale the citadel, And plant the Red-Cross banner on the walls, Shall be rewarded with the victor's prize, And hold the government of Antioch-- What says the council?-- All the Chiefs. We are all agreed.-- (Bohemond and Raymond advance and shake hands in apparent token of agreement.) [Enter a Greek Messenger.] Mes. The Persian succors are but one day's march, Beyond the Orontes.-- God. Why let them come and help to bury then, Their Paynim brothers.--Friends, I give you joy-- Curse on my fortune, I do much regret The iv'ry tushes of that ruthless boar, Will keep me from the contest for fair fame.-- Bohemond, you shall lead my Frisons on-- And doubt not but you'll win the prize from Thoulouse.-- Boh. I thank your grace. ZEBULON RUDULPH. Zebulon Rudulph was the second son of Tobias Rudulph, an account of whose family is given elsewhere in this volume. He was born in Elkton, June 28, 1794. Though well remembered by some of the older residents of the place of his nativity who knew him when they were young, but little is known of his early life except that he was possessed of a kind heart and an affable disposition; and appears to have been more given to the cultivation of his literary tastes, than to the practice of those utilitarian traits which had they been more highly developed, would have enabled him to have reaped a richer pecuniary harvest than fell to his lot from the cultivation of the others. For a time in early manhood Mr. Rudulph was engaged in merchandising in Elkton, and subsequently became the first agent of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad Company in that town, which office he held from the time the company commenced business in 1837, until 1840 or '41, when he removed to Memphis, Tennessee, where in 1847 he published a small volume of 247 pages entitled "Every Man's Book; or, the Road to Heaven Staked Out; being a Collection of Holy Proofs Alphabetically Arranged as a Text Book for Preachers and Laymen of all Denominations." Mr. Rudulph was a Universalist, and the object of the book was to inculcate the tenets of that denomination. Mr. Rudulph remained in Memphis for a few years and subsequently removed to Izard county, Arkansas, where he died a short time before the commencement of the war of the rebellion. He was a voluminous writer, and the author of a large number of fugitive poems, many of which are said to have been quite humorous and possessed of much literary merit. Very few of his poems have been preserved, which is much regretted for the reason that it is highly probable that those extant do not fully set forth the poetical ability of their author. The following poems except the one entitled "Thoughts on the Death of his grandchild Fanny," were published in _The Elkton Courier_ nearly half a century ago. THE SURPRISE. At twilight one ev'ning, a poor old man, Whose tattered cloak had once seen better days, (That now were dwindled to the shortest span:) Whose rimless, crownless hat provoked the gaze Of saucy urchins and of grown-up boys: Whose hoary locks should e'er protect from scorn, One who had ceased to court earth's fading joys,-- Knock'd at a door, thus lonely and forlorn. A pilgrim's staff supported his frail form, Whilst tremblingly he waited at the door; And feeble tho' he seemed, he feared not harm, For 'neath his cloak a trusty sword he bore. A menial came, and thus he spoke:--'Away! Old man, away! seek not to enter here: We feed none such as you: so hence! I say:-- Perhaps across the street you'll better fare.' In broken accents now the pilgrim plead-- 'Friend, I have journeyed far; from lands abroad; And bear a message from the absent dead, To one who dwells in this august abode. Thy mistress,--fair Beatrice,--dwells she here? If so, quick, bring me to her instantly; For I have speech that fits her private ear Forthwith: none else my words shall hear but she.' Now, ushered thro' the spacious hall, he passed Into a gorgeous room, where sat alone, Beatrice fair; who, on the pilgrim cast Inquiring looks, and scarce suppressed a groan. 'Be seated, aged father;' thus she said: 'And tell me whence you are, and why you seek A private conf'rence with a lonely maid Whose sorrows chase the color from her cheek. 'If true it is, from distant lands you come, Mayhap from Palestine you wend your way; If so, be silent, be forever dumb, Or else, in joyful accents, quickly say, That all is well with one most dear to me, Who, two long years ago, forsook his home, And now forgets his vows of constancy, For bloody wars in distant lands to roam.' As if to dash a tear, he bends his head, And sighing, thus the weary pilgrim speaks: 'Alas! my words are few,--thy friend is dead!'-- As monumental marble pale, she shrieks, And falls into the aged pilgrim's arms; Who, justly filled with terror and dismay, In speechless wonder, gazed upon her charms, As, inwardly he seemed to curse the day. But, slowly she revives--when, quick as light, His cloak and wig are instantly thrown by-- And what is that that greets her 'wildered sight? Ah! whose fond gaze now meets her longing eye?-- Her own dear Alfred, from the wars returned, Had chosen thus to steal upon his love:-- And whilst his kisses on her cheek now burned, He vow'd to her, he never more would rove. THOUGHTS, ON THE DEATH OF MY GRANDCHILD FANNY. And all wept and bewailed her: but He said, weep not; she is not dead, but sleepeth. --Luke 8:52. Oh true, "she is not dead, but sleepeth--" Her dust alone is here; The spirit pure that Heavenward leapeth, Hath gone to bliss fore'er. 'Twas but a fragile flower that lent Its sweets to earth a day; From Heaven's parterre 'twas kindly sent, But 'twas not here to stay. Weep not, fond mother, that lost one; 'Tis clasped in angel's arms-- From earth's dread trials passed and gone, 'Tis decked in seraph's charms. See how it beckons thee to come, And taste its rapture there;-- No longer linger o'er that tomb-- To join it let's prepare. THE DECREE. And the king said, bring me a sword. And they brought a sword before the king. And the king said, divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other. Then spake the woman whose the living child was unto the king, for her bowels yearned upon her son, and she said, O my lord give her the living child, and in no wise slay it. --I Kings 3:24-36. Hark! did you not hear that loud shriek? Ah! do you not see that wild eye? List--do you hear that mother speak For her son that is doom'd to die? Behold the eloquence of love! A mother for her child distress'd: A gush of feeling from above Invades and fills her yearning breast. That flood of tears,--those wringing hands, Mark her abandonment of soul, As, list'ning to the king's commands, Her grief refuses all control. My child! my child!--(tho' she betray it,) "The living child" give to my foe! 'Where is my child?--Oh! do not slay it! Let me my arms around it throw!' Thus nature's impulse bursting forth, Reveals the mother's kindred blood, And stamps upon her claim the truth: Whilst foil'd the guilty claimant stood. Such love breathes not in courts, where meet Soft, studied ease and pamper'd vice: As soon you'll find the genial heat Of nature's sun in fields of ice! And that fond soul was one like she Who bathed the Saviour's feet with tears: And hers, like Mary's ecstasy, Flows from the influence of prayers: For, Solomon had sought of God Not hoards of wealth, nor "length of days:" But holy unction from His rod, The bright indwelling of Truth's rays. A VIEW FROM MOUNT CARMEL. And Elijah went up to the top of Carmel; and he cast himself down upon the earth, and put his face between his knees. And said to his servant, 'Go up now, look towards the sea.' And he went up, and looked, and said, 'There is nothing.' And he said, Go again seven times. And it came to pass at the seventh time, that he said, behold, there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand. --I Kings 18:42,41. Up Carmel's wood-clad height an aged prophet slowly creeps, And sadly drags his weary limbs o'er rocks and mossgrown steeps. He bows himself upon the earth, "his face between his knees," And thus he to his servant speaks, beneath the lofty trees. "Go further up this craggy steep, and seaward look, I pray--" His faithful servant goes, and strains his vision towards that way, But says "there's nothing."--"Go sev'n times," the prophet says "for me,--" And on the seventh time, behold! arising from the sea, A little cloud, as 'twere, no bigger than a human hand,-- But swiftly, darkly spreading o'er the parched, thirsty land, It widely displays its threatening armies thro' the sky, Its lurid lightnings flash in forked streaks upon the eye. Like countless fiery serpents thro' the troubled air, Whilst loud the roaring thunder bursts amid the flaming glare; And rage the winds, uprooting mountain oaks before the view,-- Refreshing show'rs descend, and quick the fainting earth renew. Scarcely could Israel's monarch in his chariot reach his court, Ere nature's pent up elements broke forth in airy sport, And to earth (which for three long years had known nor rain nor dew,) The long desired drops, their welcome downward course pursue. Once more Samaria's people gladly tune their harps and sing The praises of Jehovah, God, the everlasting King:-- Once more, the voice of gladness sounds where naught but anguish dwelt; There, once again, the gush of rapture, absent long, is felt! MRS. ALICE COALE SIMPERS. Mrs. Alice Coale Simpers was born in the old brick mansion known as "Traveler's Repose," a short distance south of Harrisville, in the Sixth district of Cecil county, on the first day of December, 1843. The Coale family of which Mrs. Simpers is a member, trace their descent from Sir Philip Blodgett, a distinguished Englishman, who settled in Baltimore shortly after its foundation, and are related to the Matthews, Worthingtons, Jewetts, and other leading families of Harford county. On her mother's side she is related to the Jacksons, Puseys, and other well-known Friends of Chester county, Pennsylvania, and Wilmington, Delaware. Mrs. Simpers' early education was received at Waring's Friends' School, near the village of Colora, which was kept up by a few families of Friends in the neighborhood. She also attended the State Normal School in Baltimore, and qualified herself for teaching in the public schools of the State, in which she taught for about ten years in Cecil county, and also in Dorchester county. She also taught school in the State of Illinois with great acceptability and success. When Mrs. Simpers was quite young her father removed his family to the banks of the romantic Octoraro, near Rowlandville, and within less than two miles of the birth-place of the two poetic Ewings and the late John Cooley, and the romantic spot where Mrs. Hall lived when she wrote the poems which are published in this volume. The soul-inspiring beauty of this romantic region seems to have had the same effect upon her mind as it had upon the other persons composing the illustrious quintette, of which she is a distinguished member, and when only seventeen years of age she began to write poetry. At the solicitation of her friend, E.E. Ewing, she sent the first poem she published to him, who gave it a place in _The Cecil Whig_, of which he was the editor and proprietor. In 1875 Mrs. Simpers began to write for the New York _Mercury_, which then numbered among its contributors Ned Buntline, Harriet Prescott, George Marshall, George Arnold, Bayard Taylor, W. Scott Way, and many other distinguished writers with whom she ranked as an equal in many respects, and many of whom she excelled as a brilliant satirist and pathetic painter of the quaint and the beautiful. For ten years she continued to contribute letters, essays, stories and poems to the _Mercury_, and to advocate the claims of her sex to the right of suffrage, in which she still continues to be a firm believer. Mrs. Simpers has also contributed largely to the _Woman's Journal_ and other periodicals. Though possessed of a brilliant poetic genius, Mrs. Simpers is best known as a writer of prose; and, in addition to the large quantity of matter she has contributed to the newspaper press, is the author of a story of about two hundred pages illustrative of the principles and practices and exemplifying the social life of the Friends, for which she received a prize of two hundred dollars. This story was highly spoken of by Dr. Shelton McKenzie, with whom she was on terms of intimacy for some years immediately before his death, and also by many other distinguished writers. On the 22d of February, 1879, the subject of this sketch married Captain John G. Simpers, who served with distinction in the Second Regiment Delaware Volunteers in the war of the rebellion. They, at the time of writing this sketch, reside near the summit of Mount Pleasant, and within a short distance of the birth-place of Emma Alice Browne. THE MILLER'S ROMANCE. The miller leaned o'er the oaken door, Quaint shadows swung on the dusty floor, The spider toiled in the dust o'erhead, With restless haste, and noiseless speed, Like one who toils for sorest need-- Like one who toils for bread. "Ha!" says the miller, "does he pause to hark-- Hark! Hark! Hark! To the voice of the waters, down in the dark-- Dark! Dark! Dark! Turning the lumbering, mumbling wheel; Which moans and groans as tho't could feel?" "Ha!" laughed the miller, "he pauses not and why-- In the sunshine pausing and musing I? When the spiteful waves seem to repeat-- Repeat! Repeat! Repeat! The hateful word deceit-- Deceit! Deceit! Deceit" "Nay," mused the miller, "their musical drip-- Drip! Drip! Drip! Is like to naught but the trip-- Trip! Trip! Trip! In the dance of her fairy feet, Or her rippling-laughter cool and sweet!" * * * * * Once more, The miller leans o'er the oaken door. Still play the shadows upon the floor, Still toils the spider overhead; Like one who toils for daily bread-- "Since the red lips unto me have lied The spell hath lost its power, For never a false heart brings my bride Whatever else her dower!" And louder yet the waves repeat Their burthen old, deceit, deceit! * * * * * In flocks of brown, the leaves haste down, And floods, in the wild March weather; While the mill, the miller, and the miller's love dream, Have all grown old together! THE LAST TIME. We shall see the daylight breaking, Watch the rosy dawn awaking; We shall see the twilight fading-- Adown the path the elms are shading, For the last, last time. We shall see the blossoms swelling, Watch the spring-bird build his dwelling, See the dead leaves downward sailing, While the Autumn winds are wailing, For the last, last time. We shall hear the song of pleasure, Join the dance's merry measure; Shrink and dread the form of sorrow, Which may meet us on the morrow, For the last, last time. We shall feel hates' venomed dart Aimed to pierce the inmost heart; We shall know love's sweet caressing, Breathed from lips our own are pressing, For the last, last time. But in that land where we are going, Where the skies are ever glowing; In that fair and fadeless clime, Never comes the last, last time. ONLY A SIMPLE MAID! And this is the end of it all! It rounds the years completeness, Though only a walk to the stile Through fields a-foam with sweetness. Only the sunset light, Purple and red on the river, Only a calm "good night," That means good bye forever! I can only go back to my simple ways-- To my homely household cares; And yet,--and yet--in after days I shall think of you in my prayers. We can bear so much in youth; Who cares for a swift sharp pain? The two-edged sword of truth Cuts deep, but leaves no stain, And over the ways we have trod together, My foot shall fall as lightly, As though my heart were a feather. Only a woman's heart, strong to have and to keep; Patient when children cry, Soft to lull them to sleep; Glad when another delving hand Finds a gem to wear on the breast, While hers found only sand; Good bye, but as oft as the blossoms come, The peach with its waxen pink, The waving snow of the plum; I shall think how I used to wait And watch--so happy to see you pass, I could almost kiss your shadow As it fell on the dewy grass. A love is but half a love, That contents itself with less Than love's utmost faith and truth And love's unwavering tenderness. Only this walk to the stile-- This parting word by the river; It seems to me whatever shall go or come-- Memory shall hold forever! Sweetheart, good bye, good bye, After all--drear poverty and toil For the rich, red flower of love to grow, Were but a cold and barren soil: And so, good bye, good bye! THE MYSTIC CLOCK. A NEW YEAR'S POEM. "Warden, wind the clock again! Mighty years are going on Through the shadows, joy and pain, And the happy hearted dawn." High within Time's temple hoar Doth this mystic timepiece stand, And when'er twelve moons have vanished The clock is wound by unseen hand; But we hear the pinions rushing Through the storied air o'erhead, And our hearts grow sick and silent With throbs of fear and dread; For the temple seemeth crowded With still forms all white and shrouded, Like the pale, uncoffined dead; Stirs the startled soul within With a grief too deep for tears, Bowing with a mighty anguish-- O'er our dead and wasted years. * * * * * "Warden, wind the clock again!" O'er the horologe's mystic dial, Watch the sweep of shadowy ages Ere the pens of seers and sages Wrote men's deeds on fadeless pages. But lo! the warden winds again-- And see yon radiant star arise Flaming in the Orient skies; Hear the grand, glad, chorus ringing, Which the joyous hosts are singing, To the humble shepherds, keeping Patient watch, while kings are sleeping! See the wise men in the manger, Bow before the Heavenly stranger! Lowliest born beneath the sun! Yet He the jeweled throne shall banish, And the sword and sceptre vanish, Ere His given work be done! * * * * * "Warden, wind the clock again!" But in vain the charge is given, For see the mighty Angel stand, One foot on sea, and one on land, Swearing with uplifted hand, Nevermore in earth or heaven Shall the mystic key be found Or the mighty clock be wound! "RUBE" AND "WILL." AN EPISODE RELATED BY AUNT SHEBA. He'ah dat ole gray sinna H's jes brimful o' gas, Singin' dat tomfool ditty As he goes hobblin' pas'! He betta be prayin' and mebbe H'll git in de fold at las'! Yes, he's gwine to de grabe up yonder By de trees dar on de hill, Where all alone by hisself one day He buried po' massa Will! You see dey war boys togedder; To-day dey'd cuss an' fight; But dey'd make it up to-morrow And hunt fur coons at night. It wasn't much ob a massa, Ole missus made you see! Folks sed, "dem Walden niggas Mought about as well be free." Once dey went fur de turkeys, Dat's Rube and Massa Will, Wid roastin' ears fur stuffin', Made a barbecue behind de mill! But dey couln'd keep it secret, Ole missus found 'm out, An' she vow'd to sell dat nigga-- He was a thievin' lazy lout, He was a ruinin' Massa Willum; Dat fac', she said, was plain; She'd sell him! On her plantation He'd never set his foot again. An' suah befo' de sun next day went down. To take dat nigga Reuben A trader had cum from town. I guess she was glad to sell 'm Fur she needed de money bad, An' meant to spen' it mos'ly In de schoolin' ob her lad! But jes as dat ole trader Had slipt de han'cuffs on, We sees young massa cumin' Ridin' cross de lawn; He stopped right dar afore 'm, His face was pale as death, With all his might he shouted, Soon as he got his bref: "Take dem right off dat nigga! (and jerkin' his pistol out) Take 'em off I tell you! An' min' what you're about; Or I'll send you to de debil Faster dan you 'spec to go." Den massa trader dusted And he didn't trabbel slow. * * * * * Ah me! dem times seems like a dream, It was so long ago! Ole missus died next year, De war cum'd on at last And all de Souf lan' echoed With de joyful freedom blast. We lef' de ole plantation, We trabbled de Norf lan' thro; Chilled by de winds in Winter, In Summer drenched wid dew; But we neber cum to Canaan, Nor found de promised lan', And back to de ole plantation We cum a broken ban'. But Rube had stayed heah faithful, Stayed by his massa's side, And nussed him in de fever Till in his arms he died; But de freedum star in Hebben, It brightens year by year, An' our chillun has foun' de Canaan, Oh yes! des foun' it here; So I don't care what you call us, De tribes ob Sham or Hem, Dat blessed lan' o' promise, Has come right home to dem. THE LEGEND OF ST. BAVON! Shaded lights were burning low-- Muffled bells swung to and fro-- Solemn monks were chanting slow-- Chanting of the Crucified; When the good St. Bavon died. Oft had he trod the jeering street, With bare and bleeding feet; Leaving crimson-flecked the snow In memory of his Master's woe; With grief closed lips, sat he apart, The comrade of the dead man's heart; At last the chanting throng were gone And he was with th' dead alone; When the bare uncurtained room Grew still and ghastly like a tomb, On the icy neck he fell And begged the death-sealed lips to tell If one deed were left undone,-- That in that radiance like the sun Didst shade with grief the spirit flown, Or dim the brightness of his crown! Then heard his spirit's inmost ear A voice that he alone could hear, "A shadow walks with me akin to pain, I seek to shun it, but in vain, "For as I left the life of time, And journeyed toward th' blessed clime, I passed along that darkened shore. Where wail the lost forevermore. "As on that awful gulf I walked, A black-robed demon with me talked: 'Behold yon spirit lost!' I heard him cry, ''Tis one we strove o'er, thou and I. "'I, with the tempter's gilded snare, Thou, with the pleading voice of prayer; Hadst thou but prayed till set of sun, My power had vanished; thou hadst won.' "Above the harps and angel's songs I hear, The demon's laugh, and taunting jeer; Oh, comrade! brother! saint! Pray for the tempted; oh, pray and do not faint!" DAVID SCOTT (of James.) DAVID SCOTT (of James,) so called to distinguish him from his first cousin, David Scott (of John)--to a sketch of whose life the reader is referred for other information respecting the family--was born on his father's farm, called "Scott's Adventure," on the road leading from Cowantown to Newark and about two miles from the former place, on January 7, 1824 and died at Elkton, May 13, 1879. His early life was spent on the farm, and in learning the trade of auger making, at which his father was an expert workman. His education was obtained at the common schools of the neighborhood, except that which he obtained by attending Newark Academy for a few months in early manhood. In early life he became enamoured of learning, and commenced teaching a private school in the family mansion in the winter of 1840, when only seventeen years old, and continued to teach in the neighborhood until 1851, when he was appointed Clerk to the County Commissioners and removed to Elkton. Mr. Scott was a Democrat, and from early life took an active part in the politics of his native country. After serving as Clerk to the Commissioners for one term of two years, Mr. Scott started a general warehouse business at the Elkton depot, in which he continued as head of the firm of D. Scott & Bro. until the time of his death. In 1867 he was elected Clerk of the Circuit Court for Cecil county, and served six years with great acceptability. In 1876 Mr. Scott was appointed Chief Weigher, and continued to have charge of the State Cattle Scales in the city of Baltimore, until the time of his death. In 1852 Mr. Scott was married to Miss Mary Jane Wilson, of Newark. They were the parents of three children, two of whom are now living. His first wife died in 1858, and he subsequently married Miss Annie Elizabeth Craig, who, with their four children, still survives him. In early life Mr. Scott began to write poetry, and continued to write for the local newspapers under the nom de plume of "Anselmo," and the Philadelphia _Dollar Newspaper_ during the time he was engaged in teaching school, and occasionally for the county papers until the close of his life. For many years Mr. Scott enjoyed the friendship of the literati of Newark, Delaware, and was one of a large number of poetical writers who contributed to the columns of the Philadelphia _Dollar Newspaper_, with several of whom he enjoyed a personal acquaintance, and with several others of whom he carried on a literary correspondence for several years. Mr. Scott, though not a voluminous writer, was the author of a considerable number of poems, all of which were of a highly intellectual character. THE FORCED ALLIANCE. Can earthly commerce hush the music of the heart, and shut the door of memory on a friend? --Miss Whittlesey. Ah, that our natural wants and best affections Should thus in fierce, unnatural conflict struggle! Ah, that the spirit and its dear connections, Whose derelictions merit such corrections, Must bear the illicit smuggle! We would it were not so. This compromising, Which cold, severe necessity hath bidden, Of higher natures, with the wants arising From poor humanity--'tis a sympathizing That may not all be hidden. We both have learned there is a high soul feeling, That lifts the heart towards the stars and Heaven; And one of us, there is a sad congealing Of sweet affection!--a veil the rock concealing, Where hearts are rent and riven. Ah, sorrow, change and death hold sad dominion; And arbitrary fate is earth's arbiter; The adverse elements of a marvelous union, With counter-currents vex the spirit's pinion, When high intents invite her. It is a truth, the sad, unwelcome hearing May wring the spirit with a quivering pain; Our hearts are half of earth, and the careering Of highest thoughts in its divinest daring, Is but a momentary, blissful sharing, That flutters back again. It may be ours to tread the vale of sorrow, Or wander withering in the maze of doubt, Anticipating scarce a joy to-morrow, Save what from the pale lamp of Song we borrow-- That will not all go out. Yes! there are bosom-chords--thanks to the Giver! The sad, low whisperings of which can never Be all subdued, though they may shake and shiver With death and coldness, if we brave the river With wise and strong endeavor. O Song! O fount of sweetest nectar welling! Of thy refreshings let my sad heart drink; 'Tis past!--too late--too late, vain trump, your swelling; My spirit ear hath heard a surer knelling-- 'Tis passing sweet, what these mule wires are telling-- O what a joy to think! MY COTTAGE HOME. A VESPER HYMN. Awake, my harp! a song for thee, While the mellow tinge of sunset lingers; 'Tis an eve of June! and the sweets are free-- Wilt thou trill to the touch of outwearied fingers? For the day's well spent, And I'm content, Tho' weary and worn, and worn and weary; 'Tis a heaven below, The joys to know-- The joys of a Cottage Home so cheery. The world's all beauteous now and bright, And calm as a cradled infant sleeping, And the chords of love are attuned aright, Far joyous thoughts in the heart are leaping As free and sweet As a brother's greet In a foreign land all strange and dreary; And halls more bright Have less delight, I ween, than my Cottage Home so cheery. My Cottage Home! My Cottage Home! With its trellised vines around the casement clinging, And the happy strain of that sweet refrain, The gentle tones of loved ones ringing, When the day's well spent, And all content. What though the o'er-labored limbs are weary? Our hearts are free And merry, and we Rejoice in a Cottage Home so cheery. With wants so few, while hearts so true, With a fond concern, are beating near us; We'll cheerfully toil while we meet the smile. The approving smile of Him to cheer us, Who makes us to know The poor and the low. Tho' weary and worn, and worn and weary, At last will rest With the truly blest-- O! this makes a Cottage Home so cheery. THE MIGHTY ONE. You have felt his power--you have felt his power-- For a mighty one is he: He is found in the field and is known in the bower And hid in the cup of the tenderest flower, He lurks where you may not see. He's a sleepless sprite, and at dead of night He'll come with his feathery tread, And dally with fancy, and play with your dreams, And light up your vision with silver beams, Though he leaves you an aching head. Away, and away, like a thought, he flies, His home in the air and sea; Of all that is earth he claims a birth, And he speaks in the wind, and his voice goes forth On the breeze's back, unceasingly. In the sea's great deeps, where the mermaid sleeps, In chambers of coral and gold-- Where the Sirocco sweeps and Loneliness weeps O'er temples all silent, where dark ivy creeps, And places that never were told-- He is everywhere, and very well known In palace, in court, and cot; Though ages have crumbled, and centuries flown, He is youthful and strong, and is still on his throne, And his chains are spells of thought. The maiden has murmured in 'plaint so low, While the tear trickled over a smile, That scarcely a wo could be uttered, till "no," Was the heart's quick response, "I would not have him go-- The 'Annoyer' may linger awhile." He shadows the pages of classic lore In the student's loneliest hour, And wakes up a thought that had slept before-- An image is born that can die no more-- The student feels his power. A voice on the hill-top, a voice in the river, A voice in the song of birds; It hangs on the zephyr, it comes from the quiver Of oak, beech and fir-leaf--it speaketh forever In thrilling, mysterious words; 'Tis the voice of the strong one! Know ye well, His presence you may not shun; For he thrones in the heart, and he rules with a spell, And poets may sing us and sages may tell That Love is a mighty one! THE SURVIVING THOUGHT. How long, ah me! this weary heart hath striven With vanity, and with a wild desire! How long, and yet how long, must this frail bark be driven, While these unsteady, fitful hope-lights given, One after one expire? These earthly visions prove, alas! unstable; And we are all too prone to clutch them fast, Though false, aye, falser than the veriest fable, To which a "thread of gossamer is cable--" They cannot--cannot last! Our eye must soon behold the appalling writing-- The settlement of proud Belshazzar's doom! These timely buds must early feel a blighting-- This earthly strife--ah, 'tis a sorry fighting! The victory--the Tomb! The dreams fond youth in years agone had cherished; The hopes that wove a rainbow tissue bright-- Are they all gone--forever gone, and perished-- Ev'n the last bud my silent tears had nourished-- Have all been Death's delight? And will he come and mock me with his booty, And twirl my visions round his bony finger? And will he tell my heart no other beauty Upon the earth is mine--no other duty, Than for his mandate linger? Up, rise, thou vital spark! not yet extinguished, Assert thy heritage--exert thy might; Though in the sloughs of sorrow thou hast languished, And pain and wrong's envenomed part out-anguished, One ray breaks through the night. There is, there is one blessed thought surviving; The heart's sure fulcrum in the saddest strait-- An overture to this unequal striving-- A hope, a home, a last and blest arriving! Bear up, my heart, and wait. Bear up, poor heart! be patient, and be meekful; A calm must follow each untoward blast; With steady eye look forward to the sequel; The common road will then seem less unequal, That brings us home "at last." Come trial, pain, and disappointment's shiver, Ye are my kindsmen--brothers of this clay; We must abide and I must bear the quiver A little while, and we shall part forever-- Beyond the surges of that shoreless river Ye cannot "come away." THE WORKING MAN'S SONG. Toil, toil, toil, Ever, unceasingly; The sun gets up, and the sun goes down, Alike in the city, in field or town, He brings fresh toil to me, And I ply my hard, rough hands With a heart as light and free As the birds that greet my early plow, Or the wind that fans my sunburnt brow In gusts of song and glee. Toil, toil, toil, Early, and on, and late: They may call it mean and of low degree, But I smile to know that I'm strong and free, And the good alone are great. 'Tis nature's great command, And a pleasing task to me, For true life is action and usefulness; And I know an approving God will bless The toiler abundantly. Toil, toil, toil-- Glory awaits that word; My arm is strong and my heart is whole, And exult as I toil with manly soul That the voice of Truth is heard. On, Comrades! faint not now-- Ours is a manly part! Toil, for a glorious meed is ours-- The fulcrum of all earthly powers Is in our hands and heart. Toil, toil, toil-- Life is labor and love: Live, love and labor is then our song, Till we lay down our toils for the resting throng, With our Architect above. Then monuments will stand That need no polish'd rhyme-- Firm as the everlasting hills, High as the clarion note that swells The "praises of all time." ODE TO DEATH. I do not fear thee, Death! I have a bantering thought!--though I am told Thou art inflexible, and stern, and bold; And that thy upas breath Rides on the vital air; Monarch and Prince of universal clime, Executor of the decrees of Time-- Sin's dark, eternal heir. Over the land and sea Is felt the swooping of thy ebon wings, And on my ear thy demon-chuckle rings, Over the feast the panting summer brings, "For me--'tis all for me!" All seasons and all climes-- In city crowded, and in solitude, Ye gather your unsatisfying food; Ev'n through the rosy gates of joy intrude Thy deep, sepulchral chimes. I know thee well, though young; Thrice, ruthlessly, this little circle broke Hast thou. A brother, sister--then the Oak, (Ah, hadst thou spared that last and hardest stroke,) Round which our young hopes clung! Ye wantonly have crush'd, By your untimely and avenging frost, The buds of hope which bid to promise most; Oh! had ye known the heart-consuming cost, Could ye, O! Death have hush'd The music that endears, And makes this chill'd existence tolerable? Yet will I not such selfishness--'tis well; I hear, I hear a happier, holier swell From out the eternal spheres! I do defy thee, Death! Why flee me, like a debtor in arrears? To weary out the agony of years, With nothing but the bitter brine of tears, And scarcer existing breath. My soul is growing strong, And somewhat fretful with its house of clay, And waiting quite impatiently to lay It off, and soar in light away, To hymn th' "eternal song." This is a cowardice Perhaps--a deep, mean selfishness withal. That whets our longings in the spirit's thrall To lay aside these trials, and forestall The hours of Paradise. Thou wise, Eternal God! Oh, let me not offend Thy great design! Teach thou thy erring mortal to resign, Make me be patient, let me not repine Beneath this chast'ning rod; Though storm and tempest whelm, And beat upon this naked barque, 'tis well; And I shall smile upon their heaviest swell-- Hush, rebel thoughts!--my heart be calm and still, The Master's at the helm! HENRY VANDERFORD. Henry Vanderford, editor and journalist, was born at Hillsborough, Caroline county, Md., December 23, 1811. His maternal ancestors were from Wales, his paternal from Holland. He was educated at Hillsborough Academy, a celebrated institution at that time, having pupils from the adjoining counties of Queen Anne's and Talbot. He acquired a knowledge of the art of printing in the office of the _Easton Star_, Thomas Perrin Smith, proprietor. From 1835 to 1837 he published the _Caroline Advocate_, Denton, Md., the only paper in the county, and neutral in politics, though the editor was always a decided Democrat, and took an active part in the reform movement of 1836, which resulted in the election of the "Glorious Nineteen" and the Twenty-one Electors. The press and type of the _Advocate_ were transferred in 1837 to Centreville, Queen Anne's county, where he founded the _Sentinel_, the first Democratic paper published in that county, in January, 1838. He was appointed for three successive years by Governor Grason chief judge of the Magistrate's Court, but declined the office. In 1840 he was appointed Deputy Marshal for Queen Anne's, and took the census of that county in that year. In 1842 he sold the _Sentinel_ and removed to Baltimore, where, three years later, he resumed his profession and founded _The Ray_, a weekly literary and educational journal, and the subsequent year published the _Baltimore Daily News_, and the _Weekly Statesman_, in company with Messrs. Adams and Brown, under the firm of Adams, Vanderford & Brown. The _News_ and _Statesman_ were Democratic papers. In February, 1848, he bought _The Cecil Democrat_ of Thomas M. Coleman, enlarged the paper, quadrupled its circulation, and refitted it with new material. In 1865 he sold out the _Democrat_ to Albert Constable and Judge Frederick Stump, and bought a farm in St. Mary's county, Md., and engaged in agriculture. Three years later, failing health of himself and family, induced him to sell his farm and remove to Middletown, Del., where he founded the _Transcript_, and resumed the business of a printer and publisher. The _Transcript_ was the first paper published in that town, and was a success from the start. It was transferred in 1870 to his youngest son, Charles H. Vanderford. From 1870 to 1878 he was associated with his eldest son, William H. Vanderford, in the publication of _The Democratic Advocate_, Westminster, Md. In 1873 he was elected to the House of Delegates from Carroll county, and in 1879 to the Senate, in which body he held the important position of Chairman of the Committee on Finance, and was a member of the Committee on Engrossed Bills and the Committee on Printing. On the 6th of June, 1839, he married Angelina, the daughter of Henry Vanderford, of Queen Anne's county, a distant relative of his father. Mr. Vanderford is a member of the Masonic Order, and he and his wife are both communicants of the Protestant Episcopal Church, the Church of their ancestors, as far back as the history of the Church can be traced in the Eastern part of Maryland. Charles Vanderford, great grandfather of the subject of this sketch, was a vestryman of St. Paul's Parish, Centreville, Md., in 1719. Charles Wrench Vanderford was his grandfather, and a member of the Old Maryland Line, in the Revolutionary war. William Vanderford, his father, was a native of Queen Anne's county, where the family held a grant of land of one thousand acres from the crown, located between Wye Mills and Hall's Cross Roads, on which the old mansion was built of brick imported from England. Mr. Vanderford is now in retiracy, in the 76th year of his age, but still active, and in the possession of good health and as genial and cheerful as in the days of his prime. ON THE MOUNTAINS. Written after a visit to Rawley Springs, in the mountains of Virginia. On the mountains! Oh, how sweet! The busy world beneath my feet! Outspread before my raptur'd eyes The wide unbounded prospect lies; The panoramic vision glows In beauty, grandeur and repose. I gaze into the vaulted blue And on the em'rald fields below; The genial sunlight shimmers down Upon the mountain's rugged crown, The eye sweeps round the horizon Until its utmost verge is won. The hoary peaks, with forests crown'd, Spread their vast solitudes around, And intervening rocks and rills The eye with very transport fills. The bosom wells with joy serene While viewing all the lovely scene, The spirit soars on airy wings Above all sublunary things. I peer into the depths profound Of the cerulean around, And ether's far-off heights I scan, As if, to feeble finite man, The power of vision here were given To view the battlements of heaven. But, though I gaze and gaze intent, Close scanning all the firmament, No Mount of Vision unto me Does this bold summit prove to be. Though in elysian wrapt the while, Where sublimated thoughts beguile, Icarian pinions, all too frail, Were sure my fancy's flight to fail. Confined within this mortal clod, Vain man would yet ascend to God, Presumptuous, as of yore, to be The heir of immortality. But, from those fair, celestial heights Of fervid fancy's loftiest flights, My airy visions topple down To where cool reason's realm is found, And fancy folds her weary wings, Content, the while, with earthly things. PROGRESS. "Man hath sought out many inventions." The planets, forced by Nature's law, Within their orbits ceaseless roll, And man the lesson thence may draw-- By industry to reach his goal. Hail! industry's all-conquering might! Hail! engineering's giant skill! That clambers up the mountain height, And intervening valleys fill. The enterprise of man shall know No bounds upon this mundane sphere, Whate'er his hands may find to do He executes with skill and care. His genius Nature's self subdues, And all her powers subservient lie At his command, and pleas'd he views His great resources multiply. He mines the earth and skims the air, He plows the main, descends the deep, And through its silent chambers there, Electric forces flash and leap. He flies, upon the wings of steam, Mounts up with ærostatic pow'r, He paints with every solar beam-- Unfolds new wonders ev'ry hour! Not in material things alone Does Progress mark its high career, Fair science builds her regal throne, And morals her triumphal car. Man stands erect--his image fair In God's own likeness first was cast, His high prerogatives appear, He seeks his destiny at last. Upward and onward is his course, In mental and in moral life, With higher purpose, now, perforce, With loftier aspirations rife. In matters both of Church and State, A high ambition spurs him on, With buoyancy and hope elate, He plies his task till it be done. WINTER. Written in the month of January, the ground covered with snow. 'Tis winter, drear winter, and cold the winds blow, The ground is all cover'd with ice and with snow, The trees are all gemm'd with a crystalline sheen, No birdling or blossom are now to be seen. The landscape is wearing a mantle of white, Its verdure lies wither'd and hidden from sight, Rude Borean blasts bleakly blow o'er the hills, 'Till the life-current, coursing, his icy-breath chills. The rills in their ice-fetters firmly are bound As the frost-spirit breathes o'er the face of the ground The icicles pendant hang over the eaves, And the wind whirls in eddies the rustling leaves. It shrieks through the casement and in at the door-- All through the long night hear it fitfully roar, The mitre ethereal silently flies So keen and so cutting through storm-troubled skies. The dark leaden clouds dim the light of the sun, And the dull dreary hours drone slothfully on, Euroclydon forges the cold biting sleet, And the snow-drifts he piles at the traveler's feet. The wealthy, at ease in their mansions so warm, Heed not the rude blast of the pitiless storm-- The loud-roaring tempest, the elements din, Serve only to heighten their comforts within. The poor, in their hovels, feel keenly the blast, And shudder and shake as the storm-sprite goes past; Oh! pity the poor, in their lowly estate, And turn them not empty away from your gate. LINES ON WITNESSING THREE SISTERS DEPOSITING FLOWERS ON THE GRAVE OF A FRIEND, IN ST. ANN'S CEMETERY, MIDDLETOWN, DELAWARE. At an early hour of the Sabbath morn, Beside the ancient, sacred pile, I stood Of old St. Ann's. The ivy careless clamber'd Along its moss-grown, antique walls; The sun-light bathed in golden glory The calm, sequester'd scene, and silence Reigned through all the leafy grove, Save where the warbling songster pour'd His wood-notes wild, or where "the gray old trunks That high in heaven mingled their mossy boughs," Murmur'd with sound of "the invisible breath That played among their giant branches," And "bowed the wrapt spirit with the thought Of boundless power and inaccessible majesty." Within the lone church no loitering footfall O'er threshold, aisle, or chancel echoed, No sound intruded on the hush profound Of that ancient temple. The pale sleepers In the weird city of the dead lay mute, Their mouldering ashes mingling with the dust, While sculptured tablets with memorial brief, Their memories from oblivion rescued. As thus upon the scene around I gazed, The fresh-turned earth upon a new-made grave, Within its marble confines neat enclosed, My vision steadfast fixed, and I beheld Three maidens, bearing each a rich bouquet, Approach the tomb, and softly by its side Stoop down and place thereon their floral gems In token of the love they bore the friend So late inurned, whom yet they fondly cherish'd. Full preparation one had duly made To stand beside her at the bridal altar; But now, beside her early grave she stood, With floral tokens of unfailing love For the fair young wither'd flower beneath. Touching and beautiful the lovely sight Of such devotion deep at friendship's shrine. My sterner heart, in welling sympathy, Throbb'd its response to this ennobling act Of these fair sisters, and did them homage Deep down within its silent recesses. Oh, when with them life's fitful fever ends May ne'er be wanted hand of sympathy To strew affection's token o'er their graves. MERRY MAY. Ethereal mildness, gentle showers. Springing verdure, opening flowers, Apple blossoms, bobolinks, Budding roses, blushing pinks, Cherries snowy, peach buds sleek, Rivaling a maiden's cheek, Balmy zephyrs, halcyon hours, Song of birds and scent of flowers, Vernal season, swelling spray, All belong to Merry May. 
12696	----	[Illustration: Eugene Field] JOHN SMITH U.S.A. BY EUGENE FIELD AUTHOR OF THE CLINK OF THE ICE IN WINK-A-WAY-LAND HOOSIER LYRICS, ETC. 1905. INTRODUCTION. From whatever point of view the character of Eugene Field is seen, genius--rare and quaint presents itself is childlike simplicity. That he was a poet of keen perception, of rare discrimination, all will admit. He was a humorist as delicate and fanciful as Artemus Ward, Mark Twain, Bill Nye, James Whitcomb Riley, Opie Read, or Bret Harte in their happiest moods. Within him ran a poetic vein, capable of being worked in any direction, and from which he could, at will, extract that which his imagination saw and felt most. That he occasionally left the child-world, in which he longed to linger, to wander among the older children of men, where intuitively the hungry listener follows him into his Temple of Mirth, all should rejoice, for those who knew him not, can while away the moments imbibing the genius of his imagination in the poetry and prose here presented. Though never possessing an intimate acquaintanceship with Field, owing largely to the disparity in our ages, still there existed a bond of friendliness that renders my good opinion of him in a measure trustworthy. Born in the same city, both students in the same college, engaged at various times in newspaper work both in St. Louis and Chicago, residents of the same ward, with many mutual friends, it is not surprising that I am able to say of him that "the world is better off that he lived, not in gold and silver or precious jewels, but in the bestowal of priceless truths, of which the possessor of this book becomes a benefactor of no mean share of his estate." Every lover of Field, whether of the songs of childhood or the poems that lend mirth to the out-pouring of his poetic nature, will welcome this unique collection of his choicest wit and humor. CHARLES WALTER Brown. Chicago, January, 1905. CONTENTS. John Smith The Fisherman's Feast To John J. Knickerbocker, Jr. The Bottle and the Bird The Man Who Worked with Dana on the "Sun" A Democratic Hymn The Blue and the Gray It is the Printer's Fault Summer Heat Plaint of the Missouri 'Coon in the Berlin Zoological Gardens The Bibliomaniac's Bride Ezra J. M'Manus to a Soubrette The Monstrous Pleasant Ballad of the Taylor Pup Long Meter To DeWitt Miller Francois Villon Lydia Dick The Tin Bank In New Orleans The Peter-Bird Dibdin's Ghost An Autumn Treasure-Trove When the Poet Came The Perpetual Wooing My Playmates Mediaeval Eventide Song Alaskan Balladry Armenian Folk-Song--The Stork The Vision of the Holy Grail The Divine Lullaby Mortality A Fickle Woman Egyptian Folk-Song Armenian Folk-Song--The Partridge Alaskan Balladry, No. 1 Old Dutch Love Song An Eclogue from Virgil Horace to Maecenas Horace's "Sailor and Shade" Uhland's "Chapel" "The Happy Isles" of Horace Horatian Lyrics Hugo's "Pool in the Forest" Horace I., 4 Love Song--Heine Horace II., 3 The Two Coffins Horace I., 31 Horace to His Lute Horace I., 22 The "Ars Poetica" of Horace XXIII Marthy's Younkit Abu Midjan The Dying Year Dead Roses JOHN SMITH. To-day I strayed in Charing Cross as wretched as could be With thinking of my home and friends across the tumbling sea; There was no water in my eyes, but my spirits were depressed And my heart lay like a sodden, soggy doughnut in my breast. This way and that streamed multitudes, that gayly passed me by-- Not one in all the crowd knew me and not a one knew I! "Oh, for a touch of home!" I sighed; "oh, for a friendly face! Oh, for a hearty handclasp in this teeming desert place!" And so, soliloquizing as a homesick creature will, Incontinent, I wandered down the noisy, bustling hill And drifted, automatic-like and vaguely, into Lowe's, Where Fortune had in store a panacea for my woes. The register was open, and there dawned upon my sight A name that filled and thrilled me with a cyclone of delight-- The name that I shall venerate unto my dying day-- The proud, immortal signature: "John Smith, U.S.A." Wildly I clutched the register and brooded on that name-- I knew John Smith, yet could not well identify the same. I knew him North, I knew him South, I knew him East and West-- I knew him all so well I knew not which I knew the best. His eyes, I recollect, were gray, and black, and brown, and blue, And, when he was not bald, his hair was of chameleon hue; Lean, fat, tall, short, rich, poor, grave, gay, a blonde and a brunette-- Aha, amid this London fog, John Smith, I see you yet; I see you yet, and yet the sight is all so blurred I seem To see you in composite, or as in a waking dream, Which are you, John? I'd like to know, that I might weave a rhyme Appropriate to your character, your politics and clime; So tell me, were you "raised" or "reared"--your pedigree confess In some such treacherous ism as "I reckon" or "I guess"; Let fall your tell-tale dialect, that instantly I may Identify my countryman, "John Smith, U.S.A." It's like as not you are the John that lived a spell ago Down East, where codfish, beans 'nd bona-fide school-marms grow; Where the dear old homestead nestles like among the Hampshire hills And where the robin hops about the cherry boughs and trills; Where Hubbard squash 'nd huckleberries grow to powerful size, And everything is orthodox from preachers down to pies; Where the red-wing blackbirds swing 'nd call beside the pickril pond, And the crows air cawin' in the pines uv the pasture lot beyond; Where folks complain uv bein' poor, because their money's lent Out West on farms 'nd railroads at the rate uv ten per cent; Where we ust to spark the Baker girls a-comin' home from choir, Or a-settin' namin' apples round the roarin' kitchen fire: Where we had to go to meetin' at least three times a week, And our mothers learnt us good religious Dr. Watts to speak, And where our grandmas sleep their sleep--God rest their souls, I say! And God bless yours, ef you're that John, "John Smith, U.S.A." Or, mebbe, Colonel Smith, yo' are the gentleman I know In the country whar the finest democrats 'nd horses grow; Whar the ladies are all beautiful an' whar the crap of cawn Is utilized for Bourbon and true dawters are bawn; You've ren for jedge, and killed yore man, and bet on Proctor Knott-- Yore heart is full of chivalry, yore skin is full of shot; And I disremember whar I've met with gentlemen so true As yo' all in Kaintucky, whar blood an' grass are blue; Whar a niggah with a ballot is the signal fo' a fight, Whar a yaller dawg pursues the coon throughout the bammy night; Whar blooms the furtive 'possum--pride an' glory of the South-- And Aunty makes a hoe-cake, sah, that melts within yo' mouth! Whar, all night long, the mockin'-birds are warblin' in the trees And black-eyed Susans nod and blink at every passing breeze, Whar in a hallowed soil repose the ashes of our Clay-- Hyar's lookin' at yo', Colonel "John Smith, U.S.A."! Or wuz you that John Smith I knew out yonder in the West-- That part of our republic I shall always love the best? Wuz you him that went prospectin' in the spring of sixty-nine In the Red Hoss mountain country for the Gosh-All-Hemlock Mine? Oh, how I'd like to clasp your hand an' set down by your side And talk about the good old days beyond the big divide; Of the rackaboar, the snaix, the bear, the Rocky Mountain goat, Of the conversazzhyony 'nd of Casey's tabble-dote, And a word of them old pardners that stood by us long ago (Three-Fingered Hoover, Sorry Tom and Parson Jim, you know)! Old times, old friends, John Smith, would make our hearts beat high again, And we'd see the snow-top mountain like we used to see 'em then; The magpies would go flutterin' like strange sperrits to 'nd fro, And we'd hear the pines a-singing' in the ragged gulch below; And the mountain brook would loiter like upon its windin' way, Ez if it waited for a child to jine it in its play. You see, John Smith, just which you are I cannot well recall, And, really, I am pleased to think you somehow must be all! For when a man sojourns abroad awhile (as I have done) He likes to think of all the folks he left at home as one-- And so they are! For well you know there's nothing in a name--- Our Browns, our Joneses and our Smiths are happily the same; All represent the spirit of the land across the sea, All stand for one high purpose in our country of the free! Whether John Smith be from the South, the North, the West, the East-- So long as he's American, it mattereth not the least; Whether his crest be badger, bear, palmetto, sword or pine, He is the glory of the stars that with the stripes combine! Where'er he be, whate'er his lot, he's eager to be known, Not by his mortal name, but by his country's name alone! And so, compatriot, I am proud you wrote your name to-day Upon the register at Lowe's, "John Smith, U.S.A." THE FISHERMAN'S FEAST. Of all the gracious gifts of Spring, Is there another can safely surpass This delicate, voluptuous thing-- This dapple-green, plump-shouldered bass? Upon a damask napkin laid, What exhalations superfine Our gustatory nerves pervade, Provoking quenchless thirsts for wine. The ancients loved this noble fish, And, coming from the kitchen fire All piping hot upon a dish, What raptures did he not inspire! "Fish should swim twice," they used to say-- Once in their native vapid brine, And then a better way-- You understand? Fetch on the wine! Ah, dainty monarch of the flood, How often have I cast for you-- How often sadly seen you scud Where weeds and pussy willows grew! How often have you filched my bait! How often have you snapped my treacherous line!-- Yet here I have you on this plate. You _shall_ swim twice, and _now_ in _wine_! And, harkee, garcon! let the blood Of cobwebbed years be spilt for him-- Aye, in a rich Burgundy flood This piscatorial pride should swim; So, were he living, he should say He gladly died for me and mine, And, as it was his native spray, He'd lash the sauce--What, ho! the wine! I would it were ordained for me To share your fate, oh finny friend! I surely were not loath to be Reserved for such a noble end; For when old Chronos, gaunt and grim, At last reels in his ruthless line, What were my ecstacy to swim In wine, in wine, in glorious wine! Well, here's a health to you, sweet Spring! And, prithee, whilst I stick to earth, Come hither every year and bring The boons provocative of mirth; And should your stock of bass run low, However much I might repine, I think I might survive the blow If plied with wine, and still more wine! TO JOHN J. KNICKERBOCKER, JR. Whereas, good friend, it doth appear You do possess the notion To his awhile away from here To lands across the ocean; Now, by these presents we would show That, wheresoever wend you, And wheresoever gales may blow, Our friendship shall attend you. What though on Scotia's banks and braes You pluck the bonnie gowan, Or chat of old Chicago days O'er Berlin brew with Cowen; What though you stroll some boulevard In Paris (c'est la belle ville!), Or make the round of Scotland Yard With our lamented Melville? Shall paltry leagues of foaming brine True heart from true hearts sever? No--in this draught of honest wine We pledge it, comrade--never! Though mountain waves between us roll, Come fortune or disaster-- 'Twill knit us closer soul to soul And bind our friendships faster. So here's a bowl that shall be quaff'd To loyalty's devotion, And here's to fortune that shall waft Your ship across the ocean, And here's a smile for those who prate Of Davy Jones's locker, And here's a pray'r in every fate-- God bless you, Knickerbocker! THE BOTTLE AND THE BIRD. Once on a time a friend of mine prevailed on me to go To see the dazzling splendors of a sinful ballet show, And after we had reveled in the saltatory sights We sought a neighboring cafe for more tangible delights; When I demanded of my friend what viands he preferred, He quoth: "A large cold bottle and a small hot bird!" Fool that I was, I did not know what anguish hidden lies Within the morceau that allures the nostrils and the eyes! There is a glorious candor in an honest quart of wine-- A certain inspiration which I cannot well define! How it bubbles, how it sparkles, how its gurgling seems to say: "Come, on a tide of rapture let me float your soul away!" But the crispy, steaming mouthful that is spread upon your plate-- How it discounts human sapience and satirizes fate! You wouldn't think a thing so small could cause the pains and aches That certainly accrue to him that of that thing partakes; To me, at least (a guileless wight!) it never once occurred What horror was encompassed in that one small hot bird. Oh, what a head I had on me when I awoke next day, And what a firm conviction of intestinal decay! What seas of mineral water and of bromide I applied To quench those fierce volcanic fires that rioted inside! And, oh! the thousand solemn, awful vows I plighted then Never to tax my system with a small hot bird again! The doctor seemed to doubt that birds could worry people so, But, bless him! since I ate the bird, I guess I ought to know! The acidous condition of my stomach, so he said, Bespoke a vinous irritant that amplified my head, And, ergo, the causation of the thing, as he inferred, Was the large cold bottle, not the small hot bird. Of course, I know it wasn't, and I'm sure you'll say I'm right If ever it has been your wont to train around at night; How sweet is retrospection when one's heart is bathed in wine, And before its balmy breath how do the ills of life decline! How the gracious juices drown what griefs would vex a mortal breast, And float the flattered soul into the port of dreamless rest! But you, O noxious, pigmy bird, whether it be you fly Or paddle in the stagnant pools that sweltering, festering lie-- I curse you and your evil kind for that you do me wrong, Engendering poisons that corrupt my petted muse of song; Go, get thee hence, and nevermore discomfit me and mine-- I fain would barter all thy brood for one sweet draught of wine! So hither come, O sportive youth! when fades the tell-tale day-- Come hither with your fillets and your wreathes of posies gay; We shall unloose the fragrant seas of seething, frothing wine Which now the cobwebbed glass and envious wire and corks confine, And midst the pleasing revelry the praises shall be heard Of the large cold bottle, _not_ the small hot bird. THE MAN WHO WORKED WITH DANA ON THE "SUN". Thar showed up out 'n Denver in the spring of '81 A man who'd worked with Dana on the Noo York Sun. His name was Cantell Whoppers, 'nd he was a sight ter view Ez he walked into the orfice 'nd inquired for work to do; Thar warn't no places vacant then--fer, be it understood, That was the time when talent flourished at that altitood; But thar the stranger lingered, tellin' Raymond 'nd the rest Uv what perdigious wonders he could do when at his best-- 'Til finally he stated (quite by chance) that he had done A heap uv work with Dana on the Noo York Sun. Wall, that wuz quite another thing; we owned that ary cuss Who'd worked f'r Mr. Dana _must_ be good enough for _us_! And so we tuk the stranger's word 'nd nipped him while we could, For if _we didn't_ take him we knew John Arkins _would_-- And Cooper, too, wuz mousin' round for enterprise 'nd brains, Whenever them commodities blew in across the plains. At any rate, we nailed him--which made ol' Cooper swear And Arkins tear out handfuls uv his copious curly hair-- But _we_ set back and cackled, 'nd had a power uv fun With our man who'd worked with Dana on the Noo York Sun. It made our eyes hang on our cheeks 'nd lower jaws ter drop Ter hear that feller tellin' how ol' Dana run his shop; It seems that Dana was the biggest man you ever saw-- He lived on human bein's 'nd preferred to eat 'em raw! If he had democratic drugs to take, before he took 'em, As good old allopathic laws prescribe, he allus shook 'em! The man that could set down 'nd write like Dana never grew And the sum of human knowledge wuzn't half what Dana knew. The consequence appeared to be that nearly everyone Concurred with Mr. Dana of the Noo York Sun. This feller, Cantell Whoppers, never brought an item in-- He spent his time at Perrin's shakin' poker dice f'r gin; Whatever the assignment, he wuz allus sure to shirk-- He wuz very long on likker and all-fired short on work! If any other cuss had played the tricks he dare ter play, The daisies would be bloomin' over his remains to-day; But, somehow, folks respected him and stood him to the last, Considerin' his superior connections in the past; So, when he bilked at poker, not a sucker drew a gun On the man who'd worked with Dana on the Noo York Sun. Wall, Dana came ter Denver in the fall uv '83-- A very different party from the man we thought ter see! A nice 'nd clean old gentleman, so dignerfied 'nd calm-- You bet yer life he never did no human bein' harm! A certain hearty manner 'nd a fullness uv the vest Betokened that his sperrits 'nd his victuals wuz the best; His face was so benevolent, his smile so sweet 'nd kind, That they seemed to be the reflex uv an honest, healthy mind, And God had set upon his head a crown uv silver hair In promise of the golden crown He meaneth him to wear; So, uv us boys that met him out 'n Denver there wuz none But fell in love with Dana uv the Noo York Sun. But when he came to Denver in that fall uv '83 His old friend, Cantell Whoppers, disappeared upon a spree; The very thought uv seein' Dana worked upon him so (They hadn't been together fer a year or two, you know) That he borrowed all the stuff he could and started on a bat, And, strange as it may seem, we didn't see him after that. So when ol' Dana hove in sight we couldn't understand Why he didn't seem to notice that his crony wa'n't on hand; No casual allusion--not a question, no, not one-- For the man who'd "worked with Dana on the Noo York Sun"! We broke it gently to him, but he didn't seem surprised-- Thar wuz no big burst uv passion as we fellers had surmised; He said that Whoppers wuz a man he didn't never heerd about, But he might have carried papers on a Jersey City route-- And then he recollected hearin' Mr. Laflin say That he fired a man named Whoppers fur bein' drunk one day, Which, with more likker _underneath_ than money in his vest, Had started on a freight train fur the great 'nd boundin' West-- But further information or statistics he had none Uv the man who'd "worked with Dana on the Noo York Sun." We dropped the matter quietly 'nd never made no fuss-- When we get played fer suckers--why, that's a horse on us! But every now 'nd then we Denver fellers have to laff To hear some other paper boast uv havin' on its staff A man who's "worked with Dana"--'nd then we fellers wink And pull our hats down on our eyes 'nd set around 'nd think. It seems like Dana couldn't be as smart as people say If he educates so many folks 'nd lets 'em get away; And, as for us, in future we'll be very apt to shun The man who "worked with Dana on the Noo York Sun"! But, bless ye, Mr. Dana! may you live a thousan' years, To sort o' keep things lively in this vale of human tears; An' may I live a thousan', too--a thousan', less a day, For I shouldn't like to be on earth to hear you'd passed away. And when it comes your time to go you'll need no Latin chaff Nor biographic data put in your epitaph; But one straight line of English and of truth will let folks know The homage 'nd the gratitude 'nd reverence they owe; You'll need no epitaph but this: "Here sleeps the man who run That best 'nd brightest paper, the Noo York Sun." A DEMOCRATIC HYMN. Republicans of differing views Are pro or con protection; If that's the issue they would choose, Why, we have no objection. The issue we propose concerns Our hearts and homes more nearly: A wife to whom the nation turns And venerates so dearly. So, confident of what shall be, Our gallant host advances, Giving three cheers for Grover C. And three times three for Frances! So gentle is that honored dame, And fair beyond all telling, The very mention of her name Sets every breast to swelling. She wears no mortal crown of gold-- No courtiers fawn around her-- But with their love young hearts and old In loyalty have crowned her-- And so with Grover and his bride We're proud to take our chances, And it's three times three for the twain give we-- But particularly for Frances! THE BLUE AND THE GRAY. The Blue and the Gray collided one day In the future great town of Missouri, And if all that we hear is the truth, 'twould appear That they tackled each other with fury. While the weather waxed hot they hove and they sot, Like the scow in the famous old story, And what made the fight an enjoyable sight Was the fact that they fought con amore. They as participants fought in such wise as was taught, As beseemed the old days of the dragons, When you led to the dance and defended with lance The damsel you pledged in your flagons. In their dialect way the knights of the Gray Gave a flout at the buckeye bandana, And the buckeye came back with a gosh-awful whack, And that's what's the matter with Hannah. This resisted attack took the Grays all a-back, And feeling less coltish and frisky, They resolved to elate the cause of their state, And also their persons, with whisky. Having made ample use of the treacherous juice, Which some folks say stings like an adder, They went back again at the handkerchief men, Who slowly got madder and madder. You can bet it was h--l in the Southern Hotel And elsewhere, too many to mention, But the worst of it all was achieved in the hall Where the President held his convention. They ripped and they hewed and they, sweating imbrued, Volleyed and bellowed and thundered; There was nothing to do until these yawpers got through, So the rest of us waited and wondered. As the result of these frays it appears that the Grays, Who once were as chipper as daisies, Have changed their complexion to one of dejection, And at present are bluer than blazes. IT IS THE PRINTER'S FAULT. In Mrs. Potter's latest play The costuming is fine; Her waist is made decollete-- Her skirt is new design. SUMMER HEAT. Nay, why discuss this summer heat, Of which vain people tell? Oh, sinner, rather were it meet To fix thy thoughts on hell! The punishment ordained for you In that infernal spot Is het by Satan's impish crew And kept forever hot. Sumatra might be reckoned nice, And Tophet passing cool, And Sodom were a cake of ice Beside that sulphur pool. An awful stench and dismal wail Come from the broiling souls, Whilst Satan with his fireproof tail Stirs up the brimstone coals. Oh, sinner, on this end 'tis meet That thou shouldst ponder well, For what, oh, what, is worldly heat Unto the heat of hell? PLAINT OF THE MISSOURI 'COON IN THE BERLIN ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS. Friend, by the way you hump yourself you're from the States, I know, And born in old Mizzourah, where the 'coons in plenty grow; I, too, am a native of that clime, but harsh, relentless fate Has doomed me to an exile far from that noble state, And I, who used to climb around and swing from tree to tree, Now lead a life of ignominious ease, as you can see. Have pity, O compatriot mine! and bide a season near While I unfurl a dismal tale to catch your friendly ear. My pedigree is noble--they used my grandsire's skin To piece a coat for Patterson to warm himself within-- Tom Patterson of Denver; no ermine can compare With the grizzled robe that democratic statesman loves to wear! Of such a grandsire I have come, and in the County Cole, All up an ancient cottonwood, our family had its hole-- We envied not the liveried pomp nor proud estate of kings As we hustled around from day to day in search of bugs and things. And when the darkness fell around, a mocking bird was nigh, Inviting pleasant, soothing dreams with his sweet lullaby; And sometimes came the yellow dog to brag around all night That nary 'coon could wollop him in a stand-up barrel fight; We simply smiled and let him howl, for all Mizzourians know That ary 'coon can beat a dog if the 'coon gets half a show! But we'd nestle close and shiver when the mellow moon had ris'n And the hungry nigger sought our lair in hopes to make us his'n! Raised as I was, it's hardly strange I pine for those old days-- I cannot get acclimated or used to German ways; The victuals that they give me here may all be very fine For vulgar, common palates, but they will not do for mine! The 'coon that's been used to stanch democratic cheer Will not put up with onion tarts and sausage steeped in beer! No; let the rest, for meat and drink, accede to slavish terms, But send _me_ back from whence I came and let me grub for worms! They come (these gaping Teutons do) on Sunday afternoons And wonder what I am--alas! there are no German 'coons! For, if there were, I might still swing at home from tree to tree, A symbol of democracy that's woolly, blythe and free. And yet for what my captors are I would not change my lot, For _I_ have tasted liberty--these others, _they_ have not! So, even caged, the democratic 'coon more glory feels Than the conscript German puppets with their swords about their heels! Well, give my love to Crittenden, to Clardy and O'Neill, To Jasper Burke and Colonel Jones, and tell 'em how I feel; My compliments to Cockrill, Munford, Switzler, Hasbrook, Vest, Bill Nelson, J. West Goodwin, Jedge Broadhead and the rest; Bid them be steadfast in the faith and pay no heed at all To Joe McCullagh's badinage or Chauncy Filley's gall; And urge them to retaliate for what I'm suffering here By cinching all the alien class that wants its Sunday beer. THE BIBLIOMANIAC'S BRIDE. The women folk are like to books-- Most pleasing to the eye, Whereon if anybody looks He feels disposed to buy. I hear that many are for sale-- Those that record no dates, And such editions as regale The view with colored plates. Of every quality and grade And size they may be found-- Quite often beautifully made, As often poorly bound. Now, as for me, had I my choice, I'd choose no folio tall, But some octavo to rejoice My sight and heart withal. As plump and pudgy as a snipe-- Well worth her weight in gold, Of honest, clean, conspicuous type, And just the size to hold! With such a volume for my wife, How should I keep and con? How like a dream should speed my life Unto its colophon! Her frontispiece should be more fair Than any colored plate; Blooming with health she would not care To extra-illustrate. And in her pages there should be A wealth of prose and verse, With now and then a jeu d'esprit-- But nothing ever worse! Prose for me when I wished for prose, Verse, when to verse inclined-- Forever bringing sweet repose To body, heart, and mind. Oh, I should bind this priceless prize In bindings full and fine, And keep her where no human eyes Should see her charms, but mine! With such a fair unique as this, What happiness abounds! Who--who could paint my rapturous bliss, My joy unknown to Lowndes! EZRA J. M'MANUS TO A SOUBRETTE. 'Tis years, soubrette, since last we met, And yet, ah yet, how swift and tender My thoughts go back in Time's dull track To you, sweet pink of female gender! I shall not say--though others may-- That time all human joy enhances; But the same old thrill comes to me still With memories of your songs and dances. Soubrettish ways these latter days Invite my praise, but never get it; I still am true to yours and you-- My record's made--I'll not upset it! The pranks they play, the things they say-- I'd blush to put the like on paper; And I'll avow they don't know how To dance, so awkwardly they caper! I used to sit down in the pit And see you flit like elf or fairy Across the stage, and I'll engage No moonbeam sprite were half so airy. Lo! everywhere about me there Were rivals reeking with pomatum, And if perchance they caught a glance In song or dance, how did I hate 'em! At half-past ten came rapture--then Of all those men was I most happy, For wine and things and food for kings And tete-a-tetes were on the tapis. Did you forget, my fair soubrette, Those suppers in the Cafe Rector-- The cozy nook where we partook Of sweeter draughts than fabled nectar? Oh, happy days, when youth's wild ways Knew every phase of harmless folly! Oh, blissful nights whose fierce delights Defied gaunt-featured Melancholy! Gone are they all beyond recall, And I, a shade--a mere reflection-- Am forced to feed my spirits' greed Upon the husks of retrospection. And lo! to-night the phantom light That as a sprite flits on the fender Reveals a face whose girlish grace Brings back the feeling, warm and tender; And all the while the old time smile Plays on my visage, grim and wrinkled, As though, soubrette, your footfalls yet Upon my rusty heart-strings tinkled. THE MONSTROUS PLEASANT BALLAD OF THE TAYLOR PUP. Now lithe and listen, gentles all, Now lithe ye all and hark Unto a ballad I shall sing About Buena Park. Of all the wonders happening there The strangest hap befell Upon a famous April morn, As you I now shall tell. It is about the Taylor pup And of his mistress eke, And of the pranking time they had That I would fain to speak. FITTE THE FIRST. The pup was of a noble mein As e'er you gazed upon; They called his mother Lady And his father was a Don. And both his mother and his sire Were of the race Bernard-- The family famed in histories And hymned of every bard. His form was of exuberant mold, Long, slim and loose of joints; There never was a pointer-dog So full as he of points. His hair was like a yellow fleece, His eyes were black and kind, And like a nodding, gilded plume His tail stuck up behind. His bark was very, very fierce And fierce his appetite, Yet was it only things to eat That he was prone to bite. But in that one particular He was so passing true That never did he quit a meal Until he had got through. Potatoes, biscuits, mush or hash, Joint, chop, or chicken limb-- So long as it was edible, 'Twas all the same to him! And frequently when Hunger's pangs Assailed that callow pup, He masticated boots and gloves Or chewed a door-mat up. So was he much beholden of The folk that him did keep; They loved him when he was awake And better still asleep. FITTE THE SECOND. Now once his master lingering o'er His breakfast coffee-cup, Observed unto his doting spouse: "You ought to wash the pup!" "That shall I do this very day," His doting spouse replied; "You will not know the pretty thing When he is washed and dried. "But tell me, dear, before you go Unto your daily work, Shall I use Ivory soap on him, Or Colgate, Pears' or Kirk?" "Odzooks, it matters not a whit-- They all are good to use! Take Pearline, if it pleases you-- Sapolio, if you choose! "Take any soap, but take the pup And also water take, And mix the three discreetly up Till they a lather make. "Then mixing these constituent parts, Let nature take her way," With such advice that sapient sir Had nothing more to say. Then fared he to his daily toil All in the Board of Trade, While Mistress Taylor for that bath Due preparations made. FITTE THE THIRD. She whistled gayly to the pup And called him by his name, And presently the guileless thing All unsuspecting came. But when she shut the bath-room door And caught him as catch-can, And dove him in that odious tub, His sorrows then began. How did that callow, yellow thing Regret that April morn-- Alas! how bitterly he rued The day that he was born! Twice and again, but all in vain He lifted up his wail; His voice was all the pup could lift, For thereby hangs this tale. 'Twas by that tail she held him down And presently she spread The creamery lather on his back, His stomach and his head. His ears hung down in sorry wise, His eyes were, oh! so sad-- He looked as though he just had lost The only friend he had. And higher yet the water rose, The lather still increased, And sadder still the countenance Of that poor martyred beast! Yet all this time his mistress spoke Such artful words of cheer As "Oh, how nice!" and "Oh, how clean!" And "There's a patient dear!" At last the trial had an end, At last the pup was free; She threw awide the bath-room door-- "Now get you gone!" quoth she. FITTE THE FOURTH. Then from that tub and from that room He gat with vast ado; At every hop he gave a shake And--how the water flew! He paddled down the winding stairs And to the parlor hied, Dispensing pools of foamy suds And slop on every side. Upon the carpet then he rolled And brushed against the wall, And, horror! whisked his lathery sides On overcoat and shawl. Attracted by the dreadful din, His mistress came below-- Who, who can speak her wonderment-- Who, who can paint her woe! Great smears of soap were here and there-- Her startled vision met With blots of lather everywhere, And everything was wet! Then Mrs. Taylor gave a shriek Like one about to die; "Get out--get out, and don't you dare Come in till you are dry!" With that she opened wide the door And waved the critter through; Out in the circumambient air With grateful yelp he flew. FITTE THE FIFTH. He whisked into the dusty street And to the Waller lot Where bonny Annie Evans played With charming Sissy Knott. And with these pretty little dears He mixed himself all up-- Oh, fie upon such boisterous play-- Fie, fie, you naughty pup! Woe, woe on Annie's India mull, And Sissy's blue percale! One got the pup's belathered flanks, And one his soapy tail! Forth to the rescue of those maids Rushed gallant Willie Clow; His panties they were white and clean-- Where are those panties now? Where is the nicely laundered shirt That Kendall Evans wore, And Robbie James' tricot coat All buttoned up before? The leaven, which, as we are told, Leavens a monstrous lump, Hath far less reaching qualities Than a wet pup on the jump. This way and that he swung and swayed, He gamboled far and near, And everywhere he thrust himself He left a soapy smear. FITTE THE SIXTH. That noon a dozen little dears Were spanked and put to bed With naught to stay their appetites But cheerless crusts of bread. That noon a dozen hired girls Washed out each gown and shirt Which that exuberant Taylor pup Had frescoed o'er with dirt. That whole day long the April sun Smiled sweetly from above On clothes lines flaunting to the breeze With emblems mothers love. That whole day long the Taylor pup This way and that did hie Upon his mad, erratic course Intent on getting dry. That night when Mr. Taylor came His vesper meal to eat, He uttered things my pious pen Would liefer not repeat. Yet still that noble Taylor pup Survives to romp and bark And stumble over folks and things In fair Buena Park. Good sooth, I wot he should be called Buena's favorite son Who's sired of such a noble sire And damned by every one. LONG METER. All human joys are swift of wing For heaven doth so allot it That when you get an easy thing You find you haven't got it. Man never yet has loved a maid, But they were sure to part, sir; Nor never lacked a paltry spade But that he drew a heart, sir! Go, Chauncey! it is plain as day You much prefer a dinner To walking straight in wisdom's way-- Go to, thou babbling sinner. The froward part that you have played To me this lesson teaches: To trust no man whose stock in trade Is after-dinner speeches. TO DE WITT MILLER. Dear Miller: You and I despise The cad who gathers books to sell 'em, Be they but sixteen-mos in cloth Or stately folios garbed in vellum. But when one fellow has a prize Another bibliophile is needing, Why, then, a satisfactory trade Is quite a laudable proceeding. There's precedent in Bristol's case The great collector--preacher-farmer; And in the case of that divine Who shrives the soul of P.D. Armour. When from their sapient, saintly lips The words of wisdom are not dropping, They turn to trade--that is to say, When they're not preaching they are swapping! So to the flock it doth appear That this a most conspicuous fact is: That which these godly pastors do Must surely be a proper practice. Now, here's a pretty prize, indeed, On which De Vinne's art is lavished; Harkee! the bonny, dainty thing Is simply waiting to be ravished! And you have that for which I pine As you should pine for this fair creature: Come, now, suppose we make a trade-- You take this gem, and send the Beecher! Surely, these graceful, tender songs (In samite garb with lots of gilt on) Are more to you than those dull tome? Her pastor gave to Lizzie Tilton! FRANCOIS VILLON. If I were Francois Villon and Francois Villon I, What would it matter to me how the time might drag or fly? _He_ would in sweaty anguish toil the days and night away, And still not keep the prowling, growling, howling wolf at bay! But, with my valiant bottle and my frouzy brevet-bride, And my score of loyal cut-throats standing guard for me outside, What worry of the morrow would provoke a casual sigh If I were Francois Villon and Francois Villon I? If I were Francois Villon and Francois Villon I, To yonder gloomy boulevard at midnight I would hie; "Stop, stranger! and deliver your possessions, ere you feel The mettle of my bludgeon or the temper of my steel!" He should give me gold and diamonds, his snuffbox and his cane-- "Now back, my boon companions, to our brothel with our gain!" And, back within that brothel, how the bottles they would fly, If I were Francois Villon and Francois Villon I! If I were Francois Villon and Francois Villon I, We both would mock the gibbet which the law has lifted high; _He_ in his meager, shabby home, _I_ in my roaring den-- He with his babes around him, _I_ with my hunted men! His virtue be his bulwark--my genius should be mine!-- "Go fetch my pen, sweet Margot, and a jorum of your wine!" * * * * * So would one vainly plod, and one win immortality-- If I were Francois Villon and Francois Villon I! LYDIA DICK. When I was a boy at college, Filling up with classic knowledge, Frequently I wondered why Old Professor Demas Bently Used to praise so eloquently "Opera Horatii." Toiling on a season longer Till my reasoning power got stronger, As my observation grew, I became convinced that mellow, Massic-loving poet fellow Horace knew a thing or two Yes, we sophomores figured duly That, if we appraised him truly, Horace must have been a brick; And no wonder that with ranting Rhymes he went a-gallivanting Round with sprightly Lydia Dick! For that pink of female gender Tall and shapely was, and slender, Plump of neck and bust and arms; While the raiment that invested Her so jealously suggested Certain more potential charms. Those dark eyes of her that fired him-- Those sweet accents that inspired him, And her crown of glorious hair-- These things baffle my description; I should have a fit conniption If I tried--so I forbear! May be Lydia had her betters; Anyway, this man of letters Took that charmer as his pick; Glad--yes, glad I am to know it! I, a fin de siecle poet, Sympathize with Lydia Dick! Often in my arbor shady I fall thinking of that lady And the pranks she used to play; And I'm cheered--for all we sages Joy when from those distant ages Lydia dances down our way. Otherwise some folks might wonder With good reason why in thunder Learned professors, dry and prim, Find such solace in the giddy Pranks that Horace played with Liddy Or that Liddy played on him. Still this world of ours rejoices In those ancient singing voices, And our hearts beat high and quick, To the cadence of old Tiber Murmuring praise of roistering Liber And of charming Lydia Dick. Still, Digentia, downward flowing, Prattleth to the roses blowing By the dark, deserted grot; Still, Soracte, looming lonely, Watcheth for the coming only Of a ghost that cometh not. THE TIN BANK. Speaking of banks, I'm bound to say That a bank of tin is far the best, And I know of one that has stood for years In a pleasant home away out west. It has stood for years on the mantelpiece Between the clock and the Wedgwood plate-- A wonderful bank, as you'll concede When you've heard the things I'll now relate. This bank was made of McKinley tin, Well soldered up at sides and back; But it didn't resemble tin at all, For they'd painted it over an iron black. And that it really was a bank 'Twas an easy thing to see and say, For above the door in gorgeous red Appeared the letters B-A-N-K! The bank had been so well devised And wrought so cunningly that when You put your money in at the hole It couldn't get out of that hole again! Somewhere about that stanch, snug thing A secret spring was hid away, But _where_ it was or _how it_ worked-- Excuse me, please, but I will not say. Thither, with dimpled cheeks aglow, Came pretty children oftentimes, And, standing up on stool or chair, Put in their divers pence and dimes. Once Uncle Hank came home from town After a cycle of grand events, And put in a round, blue, ivory thing, He said was good for 50 cents! The bank went clinkety-clinkety-clink, And larger grew the precious sum Which grandma said she hoped would prove A gracious boon to heathendom! But there were those--I call no names-- Who did not fancy any plan That did not in some wise involve The candy and banana man. Listen; once when the wind went "Yooooooo!" And the raven croaked in the tangled tarn-- When, with a wail, the screech-owl flew Out of her lair in the haunted barn-- There came three burglars down the road-- Three burglars skilled in arts of sin, And they cried: "What's this? Aha! Oho!" And straightway tackled the bank of tin. They burgled from half-past ten p.m., Till the village bell struck four o'clock; They hunted and searched and guessed and tried-- But the little tin bank would not unlock! They couldn't discover the secret spring! So, when the barn-yard rooster crowed, They up with their tools and stole away With the bitter remark that they'd be blowed! Next morning came a sweet-faced child And reached her dimpled hand to take A nickel to send to the heathen poor And a nickel to spend for her stomach's sake. She pressed the hidden secret spring, And lo! the bank flew open then With a cheery creak that seemed to say: "I'm glad to see you; come again!" If you were I, and if I were you, What would we keep our money in? In a downtown bank of British steel, Or an at-home bank of McKinley tin? Some want silver and some want gold, But the little tin bank that wants the two And is run on the double standard plan-- Why, that is the bank for me and you! IN NEW ORLEANS 'Twas in the Crescent city not long ago befell The tear-compelling incident I now propose to tell; So come, my sweet collector friends, and listen while I sing Unto your delectation this brief, pathetic thing-- No lyric pitched in vaunting key, but just a requiem Of blowing twenty dollars in by 9 o'clock a.m. Let critic folk the poet's use of vulgar slang upbraid, But, when I'm speaking by the card, I call a spade a spade; And I, who have been touched of that same mania, myself, Am well aware that, when it comes to parting with his pelf, The curio collector is so blindly lost in sin That he doesn't spend his money--he simply blows it in! In Royal Street (near Conti) there's a lovely curio-shop, And there, one balmy, fateful morn, it was my chance to stop: To stop was hesitation--in a moment I was lost-- That kind of hesitation does not hesitate at cost: I spied a pewter tankard there, and, my! it was a gem-- And the clock in old St. Louis told the hour of 8 a.m.! Three quaint Bohemian bottles, too, of yellow and of green, Cut in archaic fashion that I ne'er before had seen; A lovely, hideous platter wreathed about with pink and rose, With its curious depression into which the gravy flows; Two dainty silver salters--oh, there was no resisting them.-- And I'd blown in twenty dollars by 9 o'clock a.m. With twenty dollars, one who is a prudent man, indeed, Can buy the wealth of useful things his wife and children need; Shoes, stockings, knickerbockers, gloves, bibs, nursing-bottles, caps, A gown--the gown for which his spouse too long has pined, perhaps! These and ten thousand other specters harrow and condemn The man who's blowing in twenty by 9 o'clock a.m. Oh, mean advantage conscience takes (and one that I abhor!) In asking one this question: "What did you buy it for?" Why doesn't conscience ply its blessed trade before the act, Before one's cussedness becomes a bald, accomplished fact-- Before one's fallen victim to the Tempter's strategem And blown in twenty dollars by 9 o'clock a.m.? Ah, me! now the deed is done, how penitent I am! I was a roaring lion--behold a bleating lamb! I've packed and shipped those precious things to that most precious wife Who shares with our sweet babes the strange vicissitudes of life, While he, who, in his folly, gave up his store of wealth, Is far away, and means to keep his distance--for his health! THE PETER-BIRD. Out of the woods by the creek cometh a calling for Peter, From the orchard a voice echoes and echoes it over; Down in the pasture the sheep hear that strange crying for Peter, Over the meadows that call is aye and forever repeated. So let me tell you the tale, when, where and how it all happened, And, when the story is told, let us pay heed to the lesson. Once on a time, long ago, lived in the state of Kentucky One that was reckoned a witch--full of strange spells and devices; Nightly she wandered the woods, searching for charms voodooistic-- Scorpions, lizards, and herbs, dormice, chameleons and plantains! Serpents and caw-caws and bats, screech-owls and crickets and adders-- These were the guides of the witch through the dank deeps of the forest. Then, with her roots and her herbs, back to her cave in the morning Ambled that hussy to brew spells of unspeakable evil; And, when the people awoke, seeing the hillside and valley Sweltered in swathes as of mist--"Look!" they would whisper in terror-- "Look! the old witch is at work brewing her spells of great evil!" Then would they pray till the sun, darting his rays through the vapor, Lifted the smoke from the earth and baffled the witch's intentions. One of the boys at that time was a certain young person named Peter, Given too little to work, given too largely to dreaming; Fonder of books than of chores you can imagine that Peter Led a sad life on the farm, causing his parents much trouble. "Peter!" his mother would call, "the cream is a-ready for churning!" "Peter!" his father would cry, "go grub at the weeds in the garden!" So it was "Peter!" all day--calling, reminding and chiding-- Peter neglected his work; therefore that nagging at Peter! Peter got hold of some books--how I'm unable to tell you; Some have suspected the witch--this is no place for suspicions! It is sufficient to stick close to the thread of the legend. Nor is it stated or guessed what was the trend of those volumes; What thing soever it was--done with a pen and a pencil, Wrought with the brain, not a hoe--surely 'twas hostile to farming! "Fudge on the readin'!" they quoth; "that's what's the ruin of Peter!" So, when the mornings were hot, under the beech or the maple, Cushioned in grass that was blue, breathing the breath of the blossoms. Lulled by the hum of the bees, the coo of the ringdoves a-mating, Peter would frivol his time at reading, or lazing, or dreaming. "Peter!" his mother would call, "the cream is a-ready for churning!" "Peter!" his father would cry, "go grub at the weeds in the garden!" "Peter!" and "Peter!" all day--calling, reminding and chiding-- Peter neglected his chores; therefore that outcry for Peter; Therefore the neighbors allowed evil would surely befall him-- Yes, on account of these things, ruin would come upon Peter! Surely enough, on a time, reading and lazing and dreaming Wrought the calamitous ill all had predicted for Peter; For, of a morning in spring when lay the mist in the valleys-- "See," quoth the folk, "how the witch breweth her evil decoctions! See how the smoke from her fire broodeth on wood land and meadow! Grant that the sun cometh out to smother the smudge of her caldron! She hath been forth in the night, full of her spells and devices, Roaming the marshes and dells for heathenish musical nostrums; Digging in leaves and at stumps for centipedes, pismires and spiders, Grubbing in poisonous pools for hot salmanders and toadstools; Charming the bats from the flues, snaring the lizards by twilight, Sucking the scorpion's egg and milking the breast of the adder!" Peter derided these things held in such faith by the farmer, Scouted at magic and charms, hooted at Jonahs and hoodoos-- Thinking the reading of books must have unsettled his reason! "There ain't no witches," he cried; "it isn't smoky, but foggy! I will go out in the wet--you all can't hender me, nuther!" Surely enough he went out into the damp of the morning, Into the smudge that the witch spread over woodland and meadow, Into the fleecy gray pall brooding on hillside and valley. Laughing and scoffing, he strode into that hideous vapor; Just as he said he would do, just as he bantered and threatened, Ere they could fasten the door, Peter had gone and done it! Wasting his time over books, you see, had unsettled his reason-- Soddened his callow young brain with semi-pubescent paresis, And his neglect of his chores hastened this evil condition. Out of the woods by the creek cometh a calling for Peter And from the orchard a voice echoes and echoes it over; Down in the pasture the sheep hear that shrill crying for Peter, Up from the spring-house the wail stealeth anon like a whisper, Over the meadows that call is aye and forever repeated. Such are the voices that whooped wildly and vainly for Peter Decades and decades ago down in the state of Kentucky-- Such are the voices that cry from the woodland and meadow, "Peter--O Peter!" all day, calling, reminding, and chiding-- Taking us back to the time when Peter he done gone and done it! These are the voices of those left by the boy in the farmhouse When, with his laughter and scorn, hatless and bootless and sockless, Clothed in his jeans and his pride, Peter sailed out in the weather, Broke from the warmth of his home into that fog of the devil. Into the smoke of that witch brewing her damnable porridge! Lo, when he vanished from sight, knowing the evil that threatened, Forth with importunate cries hastened his father and mother. "Peter!" they shrieked in alarm, "Peter!" and evermore "Peter!"-- Ran from the house to the barn, ran from the barn to the garden, Ran to the corn-crib anon, then to the smokehouse proceeded; Henhouse and woodpile they passed, calling and wailing and weeping, Through the front gate to the road, braving the hideous vapor-- Sought him in lane and on pike, called him in orchard and meadow, Clamoring "Peter!" in vain, vainly outcrying for Peter. Joining the search came the rest, brothers, and sisters and cousins, Venting unspeakable fears in pitiful wailing for Peter! And from the neighboring farms gathered the men and the women. Who, upon hearing the news, swelled the loud chorus for Peter. Farmers and hussifs and maids, bosses and field-hands and niggers, Colonels and jedges galore from corn-fields and mint-beds and thickets. All that had voices to voice, all to those parts appertaining. Came to engage in the search, gathered and bellowed for Peter. The Taylors, the Dorseys, the Browns, the Wallers, the Mitchells, the Logans. The Yenowines, Crittendens, Dukes, the Hickmans, the Hobbses, the Morgans; The Ormsbys, the Thompsons, the Hikes, the Williamsons, Murrays and Hardins, The Beynroths, the Sherlays, the Hokes, the Haldermans, Harneys and Slaughters-- All famed in Kentucky of old for prowess prodigious at farming. Now surged from their prosperous homes to join in the hunt for the truant. To ascertain where he was at, to help out the chorus for Peter. Still on these prosperous farms were heirs and assigns of the people Specified hereinabove and proved by the records of probate-- Still on these farms shall you hear (and still on the turnpikes adjacent) That pitiful, petulant call, that pleading, expostulant wailing, That hopeless, monotonous moan, that crooning and droning for Peter. Some say the witch in her wrath transmogrified all those good people; That, wakened from slumber that day by the calling and bawling for Peter, She out of her cave in a trice, and, waving the foot of a rabbit (Crossed with the caul of a coon and smeared with the blood of a chicken), She changed all these folks into birds and shrieking with demoniac venom: "Fly away over the land, moaning your Peter forever, Croaking of Peter, the boy who didn't believe there were hoodoos, Crooning of Peter the fool who scouted at stories of witches. Crying for Peter for aye, forever outcalling for Peter!" This is the story they tell; so in good sooth saith the legend: As I have told, so tell the folk and the legend, That it is true I believe, for on the breeze of the morning Come the shrill voices of birds calling and calling for Peter; Out of the maple and beech glitter the eyes of the wailers, Peeping and peering for him who formerly lived in these places-- Peter, the heretic lad, lazy and careless and dreaming, Sorely afflicted with books and with pubescent paresis. Hating the things of the farm, care of the barn and the garden. Always neglecting his chores--given to books and to reading, Which, as all people allow, turn the young person to mischief, Harden his heart against toil, wean his affections from tillage. This is the legend of yore told in the state of Kentucky When in the springtime the birds call from the beeches and maples, Call from the petulant thorn, call from the acrid persimmon; When from the woods by the creek and from the pastures and meadows, When from the spring-house and lane and from the mint-bed and orchard, When from the redbud and gum and from redolent lilac, When from the dirt roads and pikes comes that calling for Peter; Cometh the dolorous cry, cometh that weird iteration Of "Peter" and "Peter" for aye, of "Peter" and "Peter" forever! This is the legend of old, told in the tumtitty meter Which the great poets prefer, being less labor than rhyming (My first attempt at the same, my last attempt, too, I reckon,) Nor have I further to say, for the sad story is ended. DIBDIN'S GHOST. Dear wife, last midnight while I read The tomes you so despise, A specter rose beside the bed And spoke in this true wise; "From Canaan's beatific coast I've come to visit thee, For I'm Frognall Dibdin's ghost!" Says Dibdin's ghost to me. I bade him welcome and we twain Discussed with buoyant hearts The various things that appertain To bibliomaniac arts. "Since you are fresh from t'other side, Pray tell me of that host That treasured books before they died," Says I to Dibdin's ghost. "They've entered into perfect rest, For in the life they've won There are no auctions to molest, No creditors to dun; Their heavenly rapture has no bounds Beside that jasper sea-- It is a joy unknown to Lowndes!" Says Dibdin's ghost to me. Much I rejoiced to hear him speak Of biblio-bliss above, For I am one of those who seek What bibliomaniacs love; "But tell me--for I long to hear What doth concern me most-- Are wives admitted to that sphere?" Says I to Dibdin's ghost. "The women folk are few up there, For 'twere not fair you know That they our heavenly joy should share Who vex us here below! The few are those who have been kind To husbands such as we-- They knew our fads, and didn't mind," Says Dibdin's ghost to me. "But what of those who scold at us When we would read in bed? Or, wanting victuals, make a fuss If we buy books, instead? And what of those who've dusted not Our motley pride and boast? Shall they profane that sacred spot?" Says I to Dibdin's ghost. "Oh, no! they tread that other path Which leads where torments roll, And worms--yes bookworms--vent their wrath Upon the guilty soul! Untouched of bibliomaniac grace That saveth such as we, They wallow in that dreadful place!" Says Dibdin's ghost to me. "To my dear wife will I recite What things I've heard you say; She'll let me read the books by night She's let me buy by day; For we, together, by and by, Would join that heavenly host-- She's earned a rest as well as I!" Says I to Dibdin's ghost. AN AUTUMN TREASURE-TROVE. 'Tis the time of the year's sundown, and flame Hangs on the maple bough; And June is the faded flower of a name; The thin hedge hides not a singer now. Yet rich am I; for my treasures be The gold afloat in my willow-tree. Sweet morn on the hillside dripping with dew, Girded with blue and pearl, Counts the leaves afloat in the streamlet too; As the love-lorn heart of a wistful girl, She sings while her soul brooding tearfully Sees a dream of gold in the willow-tree. All day pure white and saffron at eve, Clouds awaiting the sun Turn them at length to ghosts that leave When the moon's white path is slowly run Till the morning comes, and with joy for me O'er my gold agleam in the willow-tree. The lilacs that blew on the breast of May Are an old and lost delight; And the rose lies ruined in his careless way As the wind turns the poplars underwhite, Yet richer am I for the autumn; see All my misty gold in the willow-tree. WHEN THE POET CAME. The ferny places gleam at morn, The dew drips off the leaves of corn; Along the brook a mist of white Fades as a kiss on lips of light; For, lo! the poet with his pipe Finds all these melodies are ripe! Far up within the cadenced June Floats, silver-winged, a living tune That winds within the morning's chime And sets the earth and sky to rhyme; For, lo! the poet, absent long, Breathes the first raptures of his song! Across the clover-blossoms, wet, With dainty clumps of violet, And wild red roses in her hair, There comes a little maiden fair. I cannot more of June rehearse-- She is the ending of my verse. Ah, nay! For through perpetual days Of summer gold and filmy haze, When Autumn dies in Winter's sleet, I yet will see those dew-washed feet, And o'er the tracts of Life and Time They make the cadence for my rhyme. THE PERPETUAL WOOING. The dull world clamors at my feet And asks my hand and helping sweet; And wonders when the time shall be I'll leave off dreaming dreams of thee. It blames me coining soul and time And sending minted bits of rhyme-- A-wooing of thee still. Shall I make answer? This it is: I camp beneath thy galaxies Of starry thoughts and shining deeds; And, seeing new ones, I must needs Arouse my speech to tell thee, dear, Though thou art nearer, I am near-- A-wooing of thee still. I feel thy heart-beat next mine own; Its music hath a richer tone. I rediscover in thine eyes A balmier, dewier paradise. I'm sure thou art a rarer girl-- And so I seek thee, finest pearl, A-wooing of thee still. With blood of roses on thy lips-- Canst doubt my trembling?--something slips Between thy loveliness and me-- So commonplace, so fond of thee. Ah, sweet, a kiss is waiting where That last one stopped thy lover's prayer-- A-wooing of thee still. When new light falls upon thy face My gladdened soul discerns some trace Of God, or angel, never seen In other days of shade and sheen. Ne'er may such rapture die, or less Than joy like this my heart confess-- A-wooing of thee still. Go thou, O soul of beauty, go Fleet-footed toward the heavens aglow. Mayhap, in following, thou shalt see Me worthier of thy love and thee. Thou wouldst not have me satisfied Until thou lov'st me--none beside-- A-wooing of thee still. This was a song of years ago-- Of spring! Now drifting flowers of snow Bloom on the window-sills as white As gray-beard looking through love's light And holding blue-veined hands the while. He finds her last--the sweetest smile-- A-wooing of her still. MY PLAYMATES. The wind comes whispering to me of the country green and cool-- Of redwing blackbirds chattering beside a reedy pool; It brings me soothing fancies of the homestead on the hill, And I hear the thrush's evening song and the robin's morning trill; So I fall to thinking tenderly of those I used to know Where the sassafras and snakeroot and checker-berries grow. What has become of Ezra Marsh who lived on Baker's hill? And what's become of Noble Pratt whose father kept the mill? And what's become of Lizzie Crum and Anastasia Snell, And of Roxie Root who 'tended school in Boston for a spell? They were the boys and they the girls who shared my youthful play-- They do not answer to my call! My playmates--where are they? What has become of Levi and his little brother Joe Who lived next door to where we lived some forty years ago? I'd like to see the Newton boys and Quincy Adams Brown, And Hepsy Hall and Ella Cowles who spelled the whole school down! And Gracie Smith, the Cutler boys, Leander Snow and all Who I'm sure would answer could they only hear my call! I'd like to see Bill Warner and the Conkey boys again And talk about the times we used to wish that we were men! And one--I shall not name her--could I see her gentle face And hear her girlish treble in this distant, lonely place! The flowers and hopes of springtime--they perished long ago And the garden where they blossomed is white with winter snow. O cottage 'neath the maples, have you seen those girls and boys That but a little while ago made, oh! such pleasant noise? O trees, and hills, and brooks, and lanes, and meadows, do you know Where I shall find my little friends of forty years ago? You see I'm old and weary, and I've traveled long and far; I am looking for my playmates--I wonder where they are! MEDIAEVAL EVENTIDE SONG. Come hither, lyttel chylde, and lie upon my breast to-night, For yonder fares an angell yclad in raimaunt white, And yonder sings ye angell, as onely angells may, And hys songe ben of a garden that bloometh farre awaye. To them that have no lyttel chylde Godde sometimes sendeth down A lyttel chylde that ben a lyttel lampkyn of His own, And, if soe be they love that chylde, He willeth it to staye, But, elsewise, in His mercie He taketh it awaye. And, sometimes, though they love it, Godde yearneth for ye chylde, And sendeth angells singing whereby it ben beguiled-- They fold their arms about ye lamb that croodleth at his playe And bear him to ye garden that bloometh farre awaye. I wolde not lose ye lyttel lamb that Godde hath lent to me-- If I colde sing that angell songe, hoy joysome I sholde bee! For, with my arms about him my music in his eare, What angell songe of paradize soever sholde I feare? Soe come, my lyttel chylde, and lie upon my breast to-night, For yonder fares an angell, yclad in raimaunt white, And yonder sings that angell, as onely angells may, And hys songe ben of a garden that bloometh farre awaye. ALASKAN BALLADRY. Krinken was a little child-- It was summer when he smiled; Oft the hoary sea and grim Stretched its white arms out to him, Calling: "Sun-Child, come to me, Let me warm my heart with thee"-- But the child heard not the sea Calling, yearning evermore For the summer on the shore. Krinken on the beach one day Saw a maiden Nis at play-- On the pebbly beach she played In the summer Krinken made. Fair and very fair was she-- Just a little child was he. "Krinken," said the maiden Nis "Let me have a little kiss-- Just a kiss and go with me To the summer lands that be Down within the silver sea!" Krinken was a little child-- By the maiden Nis beguiled, Hand in hand with her went he-- And 'twas summer in the sea! And the hoary sea and grim To its bosom folded him-- Clasped and kissed the little form, And the ocean's heart was warm. But upon the misty shore Winter brooded evermore. With that winter in my heart, Oft in dead of night I start-- Start and lift me up and weep, For those visions in my sleep Mind me of the yonder deep! 'Tis _his_ face lifts from the sea-- 'Tis _his_ voice calls out to me-- _Thus_ the winter bides with me. Krinken was the little child By the maiden Nis beguiled; Oft the hoary sea and grim Reached its longing arms to him, Calling: "Sun-Child, come to me, Let me warm my heart with thee!" But the sea calls out no more And 'tis winter on the shore-- Summer in the silver sea Where with maiden Nis went he-- And the winter bides with me! ARMENIAN FOLK-SONG--THE STORK. Welcome, O truant stork! And where have you been so long? And do you bring that grace of spring That filleth my heart with song? Descend upon my roof-- Bide on this ash content; I would have you know what cruel woe Befell me when you went. All up in the moody sky (A shifting threat o'er head!) They were breaking the snow and bidding it go Cover the beautiful dead. Came snow on garden spot, Came snow on mere and wold, Came the withering breath of white robed death, And the once warm earth was cold. Stork, the tender rose tree, That bloometh when you are here, Trembled and sighed like a waiting bride-- Then drooped on a virgin bier. But the brook that hath seen you come Leaps forth with a hearty shout, And the crocus peeps from the bed where it sleeps To know what the noise is about. Welcome, O honest friend! And bide on my roof content; For my heart would sing of the grace of spring, When the winter of woe is spent. THE VISION OF THE HOLY GRAIL. _Deere Chryste, let not the cheere of earth, To fill our hearts with heedless mirth This holy Christmasse time; But give us of thy heavenly cheere That we may hold thy love most deere And know thy peace sublime._ * * * * * Full merry waxed King Pelles court With Yuletide cheere and Yuletide sport, And, when the board was spread, Now wit ye well 'twas good to see So fair and brave a companie With Pelles at the head. "Come hence, Elaine," King Pelles cried, "Come hence and sit ye by my side, For never yet, I trow, Have gentle virtues like to thine Been proved by sword nor pledged in wine, Nor shall be nevermo!" "Sweete sir, my father," quoth Elaine, "Me it repents to give thee pain-- Yet, tarry I may not; For I shall soond and I shall die If I behold this companie And see not Launcelot! "My heart shall have no love but this-- My lips shall know no other kiss, Save only, father, thine; So graunt me leave to seek my bower, The lonely chamber in the toure, Where sleeps his child and mine." Then frowned the King in sore despite; "A murrain seize that traitrous knight, For that he lies!" he cried-- "A base, unchristian paynim he, Else, by my beard, he would not be A recreant to his bride! "Oh, I had liefer yield my life Than see thee the deserted wife Of dastard Launcelot! Yet, an' thou hast no mind to stay, Go with thy damosels away-- Lo, I'll detain ye not." Her damosels in goodly train Back to her chamber led Elaine, And when her eyes were cast Upon her babe, her tears did flow And she did wail and weep as though Her heart had like to brast. The while she grieved the Yuletide sport Waxed lustier in King Pelles' court, And louder, houre by houre, The echoes of the rout were borne To where the lady, all forlorn, Made moning in the toure, "Swete Chryste," she cried, "ne let me hear Their ribald sounds of Yuletide cheere That mock at mine and me; Graunt that my sore affliction cease And give me of the heavenly peace That comes with thoughts of thee!" Lo, as she spake, a wondrous light Made all that lonely chamber bright, And o'er the infant's bed A spirit hand, as samite pail, Held sodaine foorth the Holy Grail Above the infant's head. And from the sacred golden cup A subtle incense floated up And filled the conscious air, Which, when she breather, the fair Elaine Forgot her grief, forgot her pain. Forgot her sore despair. And as the Grail's mysterious balm Wrought in her heart a wondrous calm, Great mervail 'twas to see The sleeping child stretch one hand up As if in dreams he held the cup Which none mought win but he. Through all the night King Pelles' court Made mighty cheer and goodly sport. Nor never recked the joy That was vouchsafed that Christmass tide To Launcelot's deserted bride And to her sleeping boy. _Swete Chryste, let not the cheere of earth To fill our hearts with heedless mirth This present Christmasse night; But send among us to and fro Thy Holy Grail, that men may know The joy withe wisdom dight._ THE DIVINE LULLABY. I hear Thy voice, dear Lord, I hear it by the stormy sea, When winter nights are black and wild, And when, affright, I call to Thee; It calms my fears and whispers me, "Sleep well, my child." I hear Thy voice, dear Lord, In singing winds and falling snow, The curfew chimes, the midnight bell, "Sleep well, my child," it murmurs low; "The guardian angels come and go-- O child, sleep well!" I hear Thy voice, dear Lord, Aye, though the singing winds be stilled, Though hushed the tumult of the deep, My fainting heart with anguish chilled By Thy assuring tone is thrilled-- "Fear not, and sleep!" Speak on--speak on, dear Lord! And when the last dread night is near, With doubts and fears and terrors wild, Oh, let my soul expiring hear Only these words of heavenly cheer, "Sleep well, my child!" MORTALITY. O Nicias, not for us alone Was laughing Eros born, Nor shines alone for us the moon, Nor burns the ruddy morn; Alas! to-morrow lies not in the ken Of us who are, O Nicias, mortal men! A FICKLE WOMAN. Her nature is the sea's, that smiles to-night A radiant maiden in the moon's soft light; The unsuspecting seaman sets his sails, Forgetful of the fury of her gales; To-morrow, mad with storms, the ocean roars, And o'er his hapless wreck the flood she pours! EGYPTIAN FOLK-SONG. Grim is the face that looks into the night Over the stretch of sands; A sullen rock in the sea of white-- A ghostly shadow in ghostly light, Peering and moaning it stands. "_Oh, is it the king that rides this way-- Oh, is it the king that rides so free? I have looked for the king this many a day, But the years that mock me will not say Why tarrieth he!_" 'Tis not your king that shall ride to-night, But a child that is fast asleep; And the horse he shall ride is the Dream-Horse white-- Aha, he shall speed through the ghostly light Where the ghostly shadows creep! "_My eyes are dull and my face is sere, Yet unto the word he gave I cling, For he was a Pharoah that set me here-- And lo! I have waited this many a year For him--my king!_" Oh, past thy face my darling shall ride Swift as the burning winds that bear The sand clouds over the desert wide-- Swift to the verdure and palms beside The wells off there! "_And is it the mighty king I shall see Come riding into the night? Oh, is it the king come back to me-- Proudly and fiercely rideth he, With centuries dight!_" I know no king but my dark-eyed dear That shall ride the Dream-Horse white; But see! he wakes at my bosom here, While the Dream-Horse frettingly lingers near To speed with my babe to-night! _And out of the desert darkness peers A ghostly, ghastly, shadowy thing Like a spirit come out of the moldering years, And ever that waiting specter hears The coming king!_ ARMENIAN FOLK-SONG--THE PARTRIDGE. As beats the sun from mountain crest, With "pretty, pretty", Cometh the partridge from her nest; The flowers threw kisses sweet to her (For all the flowers that bloomed knew her); Yet hasteneth she to mine and me-- Ah! pretty, pretty; Ah! dear little partridge! And when I hear the partridge cry So pretty, pretty, Upon the house-top, breakfast I; She comes a-chirping far and wide, And swinging from the mountain side-- I see and hear the dainty dear! Ah! pretty, pretty; Ah! dear little partridge! Thy nest's inlaid with posies rare. And pretty, pretty Bloom violet, rose, and lily there; The place is full of balmy dew (The tears of flowers in love with you!) And one and all impassioned call; "O pretty, pretty-- O dear little partridge!" Thy feathers they are soft and sleek-- So pretty, pretty! Long is thy neck and small thy breast; The color of thy plumage far More bright than rainbow colors are! Sweeter than dove is she I love-- My pretty, pretty-- My dear little partridge! When comes the partridge from the tree, So pretty, pretty! And sings her little hymn to me, Why, all the world is cheered thereby-- The heart leaps up into the eye, And echo then gives back again Our "Pretty, pretty," Our "Dear little partridge!" Admitting the most blest of all And pretty, pretty, The birds come with thee at thy call; In flocks they come and round they play, And this is what they seem to say-- They say and sing, each feathered thing; "Ah! pretty, pretty; Ah! dear little partridge!" ALASKAN BALLADRY, NO. 1. The Northland reared his hoary head And spied the Southland leagues away-- "Fairest of all fair brides," he said, "Be thou my bride, I pray!" Whereat the Southland laughed and cried "I'll bide beside my native sea, And I shall never be thy bride 'Til thou com'st wooing me!" The Northland's heart was a heart of ice, A diamond glacier, mountain high-- Oh, love is sweet at my price, As well know you and I! So gayly the Northland took his heart; And cast it in the wailing sea-- "Go, thou, with all my cunning art And woo my bride for me!" For many a night and for many a day, And over the leagues that rolled between The true heart messenger sped away To woo the Southland queen. But the sea wailed loud, and the sea wailed long While ever the Northland cried in glee: "Oh, thou shalt sing us our bridal song, When comes my bride, O sea!" At the foot of the Southland's golden throne The heart of the Northland ever throbs-- For that true heart speaks in the waves that moan The songs that it sings are sobs. Ever the Southland spurns the cries Of the messenger pleading the Northland's part-- The summer shines in the Southland's eyes-- The winter bides in her heart. And ever unto that far-off place Which love doth render a hallow spot, The Northland turneth his honest face And wonders she cometh not. The sea wails loud, and the sea wails long, As the ages of waiting drift slowly by, But the sea shall sing no bridal song-- As well know you and I! OLD DUTCH LOVE SONG. I am not rich, and yet my wealth Surpasseth human measure; My store untold Is not of gold Nor any sordid treasure. Let this one hoard his earthly pelf, Another court ambition-- Not for a throne Would I disown My poor and proud condition! The worldly gain achieved to-day To-morrow may be flying-- The gifts of kings Are fleeting things-- The gifts of love undying! In her I love is all my wealth-- For her my sole endeavor; No heart, I ween, Hath fairer queen, No liege such homage, ever! AN ECLOGUE FROM VIRGIL. (The exile Meliboeus finds Tityrus in possession of his own farm, restored to him by the emperor Augustus, and a conversation ensues. The poem is in praise of Augustus, peace and pastoral life.) _Meliboeus_-- Tityrus, all in the shade of the wide-spreading beech tree reclining, Sweet is that music you've made on your pipe that is oaten and slender; Exiles from home, you beguile our hearts from their hopeless repining, As you sing Amaryllis the while in pastorals tuneful and tender. _Tityrus_-- A god--yes, a god, I declare--vouchsafes me these pleasant conditions, And often I gayly repair with a tender white lamb to his altar, He gives me the leisure to play my greatly admired compositions, While my heifers go browsing all day, unhampered of bell and halter. _Meliboeus_-- I do not begrudge you repose; I simply admit I'm confounded To find you unscathed of the woes of pillage and tumult and battle; To exile and hardship devote and by merciless enemies hounded, I drag at this wretched old goat and coax on my famishing cattle. Oh, often the omens presaged the horrors which now overwhelm me-- But, come, if not elsewise engaged, who is this good deity, tell me! _Tityrus_ (reminiscently)-- The city--the city called Rome, with, my head full of herding and tillage, I used to compare with my home, these pastures wherein you now wander; But I didn't take long to find out that the city surpasses the village As the cypress surpasses the sprout that thrives in the thicket out yonder. _Meliboeus_-- Tell me, good gossip, I pray, what led you to visit the city? _Tityrus_-- Liberty! which on a day regarded my lot with compassion My age and distresses, forsooth, compelled that proud mistress to pity, That had snubbed the attentions of youth in most reprehensible fashion. Oh, happy, thrice happy, the day when the cold Galatea forsook me, And equally happy, I say, the hour when that other girl took me! _Meliboeus_ (slyly, as if addressing the damsel)-- So now, Amaryllis the truth of your ill-disguised grief I discover! You pined for a favorite youth with cityfied damsels hobnobbing. And soon your surroundings partook of your grief for your recusant lover-- The pine trees, the copse and the brook for Tityrus ever went sobbing. _Tityrus_-- Meliboeus, what else could I do? Fate doled me no morsel of pity; My toil was all in vain the year through, no matter how earnest or clever, Till, at last, came that god among men--that king from that wonderful city, And quoth: "Take your homesteads again--they are yours and your assigns forever!" _Meliboeus_-- Happy, oh, happy old man! rich in what's better than money-- Rich in contentment, you can gather sweet peace by mere listening; Bees with soft murmurings go hither and thither for honey. Cattle all gratefully low in pastures where fountains are glistening-- Hark! in the shade of that rock the pruner with singing rejoices-- The dove in the elm and the flock of wood-pigeons hoarsely repining, The plash of the sacred cascade--ah, restful, indeed, are these voices, Tityrus, all in the shade of your wide-spreading beech-tree reclining! _Tityrus_-- And he who insures this to me--oh, craven I were not to love him! Nay, rather the fish of the sea shall vacate the water they swim in, The stag quit his bountiful grove to graze in the ether above him. While folk antipodean rove along with their children and women! _Meliboeus_ (suddenly recalling his own misery)-- But we who are exiled must go; and whither--ah, whither--God knoweth! Some into those regions of snow or of desert where Death reigneth only; Some off to the country of Crete, where rapid Oaxes down floweth. And desperate others retreat to Britain, the bleak isle and lonely. Dear land of my birth! shall I see the horde of invaders oppress thee? Shall the wealth that outspringeth from thee by the hand of the alien be squandered? Dear cottage wherein I was born! shall another in conquest possess thee-- Another demolish in scorn the fields and the groves where I've wandered? My flock! never more shall you graze on that furze-covered hillside above me-- Gone, gone are the halcyon days when my reed piped defiance to sorrow! Nevermore in the vine-covered grot shall I sing of the loved ones that love me-- Let yesterday's peace be forgot in dread of the stormy to-morrow! _Tityrus_-- But rest you this night with me here; my bed--we will share it together, As soon as you've tasted my cheer, my apples and chestnuts and cheeses; The evening a'ready is nigh--the shadows creep over the heather, And the smoke is rocked up to the sky to the lullaby song of the breezes. HORACE TO MAECENAS. How breaks my heart to hear you say You feel the shadows fall about you! The gods forefend That fate, O friend! I would not, I could not live without you! You gone, what would become of me, Your shadow, O beloved Maecenas? We've shared the mirth-- And sweets of earth-- Let's share the pangs of death between us! I should not dread Chinaera's breath Nor any threat of ghost infernal; Nor fear nor pain Should part us twain-- For so have willed the powers eternal. No false allegiance have I sworn, And, whatsoever fate betide you, Mine be the part To cheer your heart-- With loving song to fare beside you! Love snatched you from the claws of death And gave you to the grateful city; The falling tree That threatened me Did Fannus turn aside in pity; With horoscopes so wondrous like, Why question that we twain shall wander, As in this land, So, hand in hand, Into the life that waiteth yonder? So to your shrine, O patron mine, With precious wine and victims fare you; Poor as I am, A humble lamb Must testify what love I bear you. But to the skies shall sweetly rise The sacrifice from shrine and heather, And thither bear The solemn prayer That, when we go, we go together! HORACE'S "SAILOR AND SHADE." _Sailor._ You, who have compassed land and sea Now all unburied lie; All vain your store of human lore, For you were doomed to die. The sire of Pelops likewise fell, Jove's honored mortal guest-- So king and sage of every age At last lie down to rest. Plutonian shades enfold the ghost Of that majestic one Who taught as truth that he, forsooth, Had once been Pentheus' son; Believe who may, he's passed away And what he did is done. A last night comes alike to all-- One path we all must tread, Through sore disease or stormy seas Or fields with corpses red-- Whate'er our deeds that pathway leads To regions of the dead. _Shade_. The fickle twin Illyrian gales O'erwhelmed me on the wave-- But that you live, I pray you give My bleaching bones a grave! Oh, then when cruel tempests rage You all unharmed shall be-- Jove's mighty hand shall guard by land And Neptune's on the sea. Perchance you fear to do what shall Bring evil to your race. Or, rather fear that like me here You'll lack a burial place. So, though you be in proper haste, Bide long enough I pray, To give me, friend, what boon will send My soul upon its way! UHLAND'S "CHAPEL." Yonder stands the hillside chapel, 'Mid the evergreens and rocks, All day long it hears the song Of the shepherd to his flocks. Then the chapel bell goes tolling-- Knolling for a soul that's sped; Silent and sad the shepherd lad Hears the requiem for the dead. Shepherd, singers of the valley, Voiceless now, speed on before; Soon shall knell that chapel bell For the songs you'll sing no more. "THE HAPPY ISLES" OF HORACE. Oh, come with me to the Happy Isles In the golden haze off yonder, Where the song of the sun-kissed breeze beguiles And the ocean loves to wander. Fragrant the vines that mantle those hills, Proudly the fig rejoices, Merrily dance the virgin rills, Blending their myriad voices. Our herds shall suffer no evil there, But peacefully feed and rest them-- Never thereto shall prowling bear Or serpent come to molest them. Neither shall Eurus, wanton bold, Nor feverish drought distress us, But he that compasseth heat and cold Shall temper them both to bless us. There no vandal foot has trod, And the pirate hordes that wander Shall never profane the sacred sod Of these beautiful isles out yonder. Never a spell shall blight our vines Nor Sirius blaze above us. But you and I shall drink our wines And sing to the loved that love us. So come with me where fortune smiles And the gods invite devotion-- Oh, come with me to the Happy Isles In the haze of that far-off ocean! HORATIAN LYRICS. I. Odes I, 11. What end the gods may have ordained for me, And what for thee, Seek not to learn, Leuconoe; we may not know; Chaldean tables cannot bring us rest-- 'Tis for the best To bear in patience what may come, or weal or woe. If for more winters our poor lot is cast, Or this the last, Which on the crumbling rocks has dashed Etruscan seas; Strain clear the wine--this life is short, at best; Take hope with zest, And, trusting not To-Morrow, snatch To-Day for ease! II. Odes I, 23. Why do you shun me, Chloe, like the fawn, That, fearful of the breezes and the wood, Has sought her timorous mother since the dawn And on the pathless mountain tops has stood? Her trembling heart a thousand fears invites-- Her sinking knees with nameless terrors shake; Whether the rustling leaf of spring affrights, Or the green lizards stir the slumbering brake. I do not follow with a tigerish thought Or with the fierce Gaetulian lion's quest; So, quickly leave your mother, as you ought, Full ripe to nestle on a husband's breast. HORACE II, 13. O fountain of Blandusia, Whence crystal waters flow, With garlands gay and wine I'll pay The sacrifice I owe; A sportive kid with budding horns I have, whose crimson blood Anon shall die and sanctify Thy cool and babbling flood. O fountain of Blandusia, The dogstar's hateful spell No evil brings unto the springs That from thy bosom well; Here oxen, wearied by the plow, The roving cattle here, Hasten in quest of certain rest And quaff thy gracious cheer. O fountain of Blandusia, Ennobled shalt thou be, For I shall sing the joys that spring Beneath your ilex tree; Yes, fountain of Blandusia, Posterity shall know The cooling brooks that from thy nooks Singing and dancing go! HORACE IV, II. Come, Phyllis, I've a cask of wine That fairly reeks with precious juices. And in your tresses you shall twine The loveliest flowers this vale produces. My cottage wears a gracious smile-- The altar decked in floral glory,-- Yearns for the lamb which bleats the while As though it pined for honors gory. Hither our neighbors nimbly fare-- The boys agog, the maidens snickering, And savory smells possess the air As skyward kitchen flames are flickering. You ask what means this grand display, This festive throng and goodly diet? Well--since you're bound to have your way-- I don't mind telling on the quiet. 'Tis April 13, as you know-- A day and month devote to Venus, Whereon was born some years ago, My very worthy friend, Macenas. Nay, pay no heed to Telephus-- Your friends agree he doesn't love you; The way he flirts convinces us He really is not worthy of you! Aurora's son, unhappy lad! You know the fate that overtook him? And Pegasus a rider had-- I say he _had_ before he shook him! Haec docet (as you may agree): 'Tis meet that Phyllis should discover A wisdom in preferring me And mittening every other lover. So come, O Phyllis, last and best Of loves with which this heart's been smitten; Come, sing my jealous fears to rest-- And let your songs be those _I've_ written. HUGO'S "POOL IN THE FOREST." How calm, how beauteous, and how cool-- How like a sister to the skies, Appears the broad, transparent pool That in this quiet forest lies. The sunshine ripples on its face, And from the world around, above, It hath caught down the nameless grace Of such reflections as we love. But deep below its surface crawl The reptile horrors of the Night-- The dragons, lizards, serpents--all The hideous brood that hate the Light; Through poison fern and slimy weed, And under ragged, jagged stones They scuttle, or, in ghoulish greed, They lap a dead man's bones. And as, O pool, thou dost cajole With seemings that beguile us well, So doeth many a human soul That teemeth with the lusts of hell. HORACE I, 4. 'Tis spring! the boats bound to the sea; The breezes, loitering kindly over The fields, again bring herds and men The grateful cheer of honeyed clover. Now Venus hither leads her train, The Nymphs and Graces join in orgies, The moon is bright and by her light Old Vulcan kindles up his forges. Bind myrtle now about your brow, And weave fair flowers in maiden tresses-- Appease God Pan, who, kind to man, Our fleeting life with affluence blesses. But let the changing seasons mind us That Death's the certain doom of mortals-- Grim Death who waits at humble gat And likewise stalks through kingly portals. Soon, Sestius, shall Plutonian shades Enfold you with their hideous seemings-- Then love and mirth and joys of earth Shall fade away like fevered dreamings. LOVE SONG--HEINE. Many a beauteous flower doth spring From the tears that flood my eyes, And the nightingale doth sing In the burthen of my sighs. If, O child, thou lovest me, Take these flowerets, fair and frail, And my soul shall waft to thee Love songs of the nightingale. HORACE II, 3. Be tranquil, Dellius, I pray; For though you pine your life away With dull complaining breath, Or speed with song and wine each day-- Still, still your doom is death. Where the white poplar and the pine In glorious arching shade combine And the brook singing goes, Bid them bring store of nard and wine And garlands of the rose. Let's live while chance and youth obtain-- Soon shall you quit this fair domain Kissed by the Tiber's gold, And all your earthly pride and gain Some heedless heir shall hold. One ghostly boat shall some time bear From scenes of mirthfulness or care Each fated human soul!-- Shall waft and leave his burden where The waves of Lethe roll. _So come, I pri' thee, Dellius, mine-- Let's sing our songs and drink our wine In that sequestered nook Where the white poplar and the pine Stand listening to the brook._ THE TWO COFFINS. In yonder old cathedral Two lonely coffins lie; In one the head of the state lies dead, And a singer sleeps hard by. Once had that king great power, And proudly he ruled the land-- His crown e'en now is on his brow And his sword is in his hand! How sweetly sleeps the singer With calmly folded eyes, And on the breast of the bard at rest The harp that he sounded lies. The castle walls are falling And war distracts the land, But the sword leaps not from that mildewed spot-- There in that dead king's hand! But with every grace of nature There seems to float along-- To cheer the hearts of men-- The singer's deathless song! HORACE I, 31. As forth he pours the new made wine, What blessing asks the lyric poet-- What boon implores in this fair shrine Of one full likely to bestow it? Not for Sardinia's plenteous store, Nor for Calabrian herds he prayeth, Nor yet for India's wealth galore, Nor meads where voiceless Liris playeth. Let honest riches celebrate The harvest earned--I'd not deny it; Yet am I pleased with my estate, My humble home, my frugal diet. Child of Latonia, this I crave; May peace of mind and health attend me, And down into my very grave May this dear lyre of mine befriend me! HORACE TO HIS LUTE. If ever in the sylvan shade A song immortal we have made, Come now, O lute, I pri' thee come-- Inspire a song of Latium. A Lesbian first thy glories proved-- In arms and in repose he loved To sweep thy dulcet strings and raise His voice in Love's and Liber's praise; The Muses, too, and him who clings To Mother Venus' apron-strings, And Lycus beautiful, he sung In those old days when you were young. O shell, that art the ornament Of Phoebus, bringing sweet content To Jove, and soothing troubles all-- Come and requite me, when I call! HORACE I, 22. Fuscus, whoso to good inclines-- And is a faultless liver-- Nor moorish spear nor bow need fear, Nor poison-arrowed quiver. Ay, though through desert wastes he roams, Or scales the rugged mountains, Or rests beside the murmuring tide Of weird Hydaspan fountains! Lo, on a time, I gayly paced The Sabine confines shady, And sung in glee of Lalage, My own and dearest lady. And, as I sung, a monster wolf Slunk through the thicket from me--- But for that song, as I strolled along He would have overcome me! Set me amid those poison mists Which no fair gale dispelleth, Or in the plains where silence reigns And no thing human dwelleth; Still shall I love my Lalage-- Still sing her tender graces; And, while I sing my theme shall bring Heaven to those desert places! THE "ARS POETICA" OF HORACE XXIII. I love the lyric muse! For when mankind ran wild in groves, Came holy Orpheus with his songs And turned men's hearts from bestial loves, From brutal force and savage wrongs; Came Amphion, too, and on his lyre Made such sweet music all the day That rocks, instinct with warm desire, Pursued him in his glorious way. I love the lyric muse! Hers was the wisdom that of yore Taught man the rights of fellow-man-- Taught him to worship God the more And to revere love's holy ban; Hers was the hand that jotted down The laws correcting divers wrongs-- And so came honor and renown To bards and to their noble songs. I love the lyric muse! Old Homer sung unto the lyre, Tyrtaeus, too, in ancient days-- Still, warmed by their immortal fire, How doth our patriot spirit blaze! The oracle, when questioned, sings-- So we our way in life are taught; In verse we soothe the pride of kings, In verse the drama has been wrought. I love the lyric muse! Be not ashamed, O noble friend, In honest gratitude to pay Thy homage to the gods that send This boon to charm all ill away. With solemn tenderness revere This voiceful glory as a shrine Wherein the quickened heart may hear The counsels of a voice divine! MARTHY'S YOUNKIT. The mountain brook sung lonesomelike And loitered on its way Ez if it waited for a child To jine it in its play; The wild flowers of the hillside Bent down their heads to hear The music of the little feet That had, somehow, grown so dear; The magpies, like winged shadders, Wuz a-flutterin' to and fro Among the rocks and holler stumps In the ragged gulch below; The pines 'nd hemlock tosst their boughs (Like they wuz arms) 'nd made Soft, sollum music on the slope Where he had often played. But for these lonesome, sollum voices On the mountain side, There wuz no sound the summer day That Marthy's younkit died. We called him Marthy's younkit, For Marthy wuz the name Uv her ez wuz his mar, the wife Uv Sorry Tom--the same Ez taught the school-house on the hill Way back in sixty-nine When she married Sorry Tom wich ownt The Gosh-all-Hemlock mine; And Marthy's younkit wuz their first, Wich, bein' how it meant The first on Red Hoss mountain, Wuz trooly a event! The miners sawed off short on work Es soon ez they got word That Dock Devine allowed to Casey What had just occurred; We loaded 'nd whooped around Until we all wuz hoarse, Salutin' the arrival, Wich weighed ten pounds, uv course! Three years, and sech a pretty child! His mother's counterpart-- Three years, and sech a holt ez he Had got on every heart! A peert and likely little tyke With hair ez red ez gold, A laughin', toddlin' everywhere-- And only three years old! Up yonder, sometimes, to the store, And sometimes down the hill He kited (boys _is_ boys, you know-- You couldn't keep him still!) And there he'd play beside the brook Where purpel wild flowers grew And the mountain pines 'nd hemlocks A kindly shadder threw And sung soft, sollum toons to him, While in the gulch below The magpies, like strange sperrits, Went flutterin' to and fro. Three years, and then the fever come; It wuzn't right, you know, With all us _old_ ones in the camp, For that little child to go! It's right the old should die, but that A harmless little child Should miss the joy uv life 'nd love-- _That_ can't be reconciled! That's what we thought that summer day, And that is what we said Ez we looked upon the piteous face Uv Marthy's younkit dead; But for his mother sobbin' The house wuz very still, And Sorry Tom wuz lookin' through The winder down the hill To the patch beneath the hemlocks Where his darlin' used to play, And the mountain brook sung lonesomelike And loitered on its way. A preacher come from Roarin' Forks To comfort 'em 'nd pray, And all the camp wuz present At the obsequies next day, A female teacher staged it twenty miles To sing a hymn, And we jined her in the chorus-- Big, husky men 'nd grim Sung "Jesus, Lover uv my Soul," And then the preacher prayed And preacht a sermon on the death Uv that fair blossom laid Among them other flow'rs he loved-- Which sermon set sech weight On sinners bein' always heelt Against the future state That, though it had been fash'nable To swear a perfect streak, There warnt no swearin' in the camp For pretty nigh a week! Last thing uv all, six strappin' men Took up the little load And bore it tenderly along The windin' rocky road To where the coroner had dug A grave beside the brook-- In sight uv Marthy's winder, where The same could set and look And wonder if his cradle in That green patch long 'nd wide Wuz ez soothin' ez the cradle that Wuz empty at her side; And wonder of the mournful songs The pines wuz singin' then Wuz ez tender ez the lullabies She'd never sing again; And if the bosom uv the earth In which he lay at rest Wuz half ez lovin' 'nd ez warm Ez wuz his mother's breast. The camp is gone, but Red Hoss mountain Rears its kindly head And looks down sort uv tenderly, Upon its cherished dead; And I reckon that, through all the years That little boy wich died Sleeps sweetly 'nd contentedly Upon the mountain-side; That the wild flowers of the summer time Bend down their heads to hear The footfall uv a little friend they Know not slumbers near; That the magpies on the sollum rocks Strange flutterin' shadders make. And the pines 'nd hemlocks wonder that The sleeper doesn't wake; That the mountain brook sings lonesomelike And loiters on its way Ez if it waited f'r a child To jine it in its play. ABU MIDJAN. "When Father Time swings round his scythe, Intomb me 'neath the bounteous vine, So that its juices, red and blithe, May cheer these thirsty bones of mine. "Elsewise with tears and bated breath Should I survey the life to be. But oh! How should I hail the death That brings that vinous grace to me!" So sung the dauntless Saracen, Whereat the Prophet-Chief ordains That, curst of Allah, loathed of men, The faithless one shall die in chains. But one vile Christian slave that lay A prisoner near that prisoner saith; "God willing, I will plant some day A vine where thou liest in death." Lo, over Abu Midjan's grave With purpling fruit a vine-tree grows; Where rots the martyred Christian slave Allah, and only Allah, knows! THE DYING YEAR. The year has been a tedious one-- A weary round of toil and sorrow, And, since it now at last is gone, We say farewell and hail the morrow. Yet o'er the wreck which time has wrought A sweet, consoling ray is shimmered-- The one but compensating thought That literary life has glimmered. Struggling with hunger and with cold The world contemptuously beheld 'er; The little thing was one year old-- But who'd have cared had she been elder? DEAD ROSES. He placed a rose in my nut-brown hair-- A deep red rose with a fragrant heart And said: "We'll set this day apart, So sunny, so wondrous fair." His face was full of a happy light, His voice was tender and low and sweet, The daisies and the violets grew at our feet-- Alas, for the coming of night! The rose is black and withered and dead! 'Tis hid in a tiny box away; The nut-brown hair is turning to gray, And the light of the day is fled! The light of the beautiful day is fled, Hush'd is the voice so sweet and low-- And I--ah, me! I loved him so-- And the daisies grow over his head! 
13184	----	NARRATIVE AND LYRIC POEMS (FIRST SERIES) FOR USE IN THE LOWER SCHOOL WITH ANNOTATIONS BY O. J. STEVENSON, M.A., D.PAED., Professor of English, Ontario Agricultural College. TORONTO THE COPP, CLARK COMPANY, LIMITED Copyright, Canada, 1912, by THE COPP, CLARK COMPANY, LIMITED, Toronto, Ontario. PREFACE The Narrative and Lyric Poems contained in this volume are those prescribed by the Department of Education for examination for Junior and Senior Public School Diplomas, and for the Senior High School Entrance, and Entrance into the Model Schools. (Circular 58.) In arranging the order of the poems, the Editor has taken into consideration the character of the selections with the object both of grading them in the order of increasing difficulty, and of securing variety in the subjects treated. The teacher may, however, follow his own judgment as to the order in which the poems should be taken up in class. In the annotations the chief points of difficulty have been explained. In the case of a number of the poems, different editions of the poets' works contain different readings. In such cases we have followed the readings that are best known and that have been recognized by the best authorities. CONTENTS The Meeting of the Water . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Moore Jock o' Hazeldean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Scott Horatius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Macaulay Alice Brand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Scott The Solitary Reaper . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wordsworth The Island of the Scots . . . . . . . . . . . . . Aytoun Dickens in Camp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Harte A Musical Instrument . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrs. Browning Gradatim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Holland The Battle of the Lake Regillus . . . . . . . . Macaulay The Vision of Sir Launfal . . . . . . . . . . . . Lowell The Builders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Longfellow British Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wordsworth The Courtship of Miles Standish . . . . . . . . Longfellow Sohrab and Rustum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Arnold NARRATIVE AND LYRIC POEMS THE MEETING OF THE WATERS. There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet! Oh! the last rays of feeling and life must depart Ere the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart. Yet it _was_ not that nature had shed o'er the scene 5 Her purest of crystal and brightest of green; 'Twas _not_ the soft magic of streamlet or hill, Oh! no--it was something more exquisite still. 'Twas that friends, the beloved of my bosom, were near, Who made every dear scene of enchantment more dear, 10 And who felt how the best charms of nature improve, When we see them reflected from looks that we love. Sweet vale of Avoca![1] how calm could I rest In thy bosom of shade with the friends I love best, Where the storms that we feel in this cold world should cease, 15 And our hearts, like thy waters, be mingled in peace! --_Moore_. [1] Avoca. A valley and river in the County of Wicklow, Ireland. The name signifies "The Meeting of the Waters." JOCK O' HAZELDEAN. "Why weep ye by the tide, ladie? Why weep ye by the tide? I'll wed ye to my youngest son, And ye sall[1] be his bride: And ye sall be his bride, ladie, 5 Sae comely to be seen"-- But aye she loot[2] the tears down fa' For Jock o' Hazeldean. "Now let this wilfu' grief be done, And dry that cheek so pale; 10 Young Frank is chief of Errington, And lord of Langley-dale; His step is first in peaceful ha', His sword in battle keen"-- But aye she loot the tears down fa' 15 For Jock o' Hazeldean. "A chain of gold ye sall not lack, Nor braid to bind your hair; Nor mettled hound, nor managed[3] hawk, Nor palfrey fresh and fair; 20 And you, the foremost o' them a' Shall ride our forest-queen"-- But aye she loot the tears down fa' For Jock o' Hazeldean. The kirk was deck'd at morning-tide, 25 The tapers glimmer'd fair; The priest and bridegroom wait the bride, And dame and knight are there. They sought her baith by bower and ha'. The ladie was not seen! 30 She's o'er the border, and awa' Wi' Jock o' Hazeldean! --_Scott_ [1] sall. shall. [2] loot. let. [3] managed. trained. HORATIUS. A LAY MADE ABOUT THE YEAR OF THE CITY CCCLX. According to legend, Tarquinius Superbus, or Tarquin the Proud, the last of the early kings of Rome, was driven out of the city, partly on account of his own tyranny, and partly because of the misdeeds of his son Sextus Tarquin. The immediate cause of the expulsion of the Tarquins was "the deed of shame," committed by Sextus against Lucretia, the wife of one of the Roman governors. After two unsuccessful attempts to regain the throne, Tarquinius Superbus sought the aid of the Etruscans and Latins, and under the leadership of Lars Porsena, the head of the Etruscan League, the combined forces marched upon Rome. It was then that the incident recorded in the story of _Horatius_ is supposed to have taken place. After the defence of the bridge by Horatius, Lars Porsena laid siege to the city and at last reduced it to submission. He did not, however, insist upon the reinstatement of the Tarquins. A fourth and last attempt was made by Tarquin the Proud to regain the throne, by the aid of his Latin allies, under Mamilius of Tusculum. The story of this expedition forms the subject of _The Battle of Lake Regulus_. I Lars[1] Porsena of Clusium[2] By the Nine Gods[3] he swore That the great house of Tarquin Should suffer wrong no more. By the Nine Gods he swore it, 5 And named a trysting day,[4] And bade his messengers ride forth, East and west and south and north, To summon his array. II East and west and south and north 10 The messengers ride fast, And tower and town and cottage Have heard the trumpet's blast. Shame on the false Etruscan, Who lingers in his home, 15 When Porsena of Clusium Is on the march to Rome. III The horsemen and the footmen Are pouring in amain From many a stately market-place, 20 From many a fruitful plain, From many a lonely hamlet, Which, hid by beech and pine, Like an eagle's nest, hangs on the crest Of purple Apennine; 25 IV From lordly Volaterrae,[5] Where scowls the far-famed hold Piled by the hands of giants For godlike kings of old; From seagirt Populonia, 30 Whose sentinels descry Sardinia's snowy mountain-tops Fringing the southern sky; V From the proud mart of Pisse,[6] Queen of the western waves, 35 Where ride Massilia's triremes[7] Heavy with fair-haired slaves, From where sweet Olanis[8] wanders Through corn and vines and flowers, From where Cortona lifts to heaven 40 Her diadem of towers. VI Tall are the oaks whose acorns Drop in dark Auser's[9] rill; Fat are the stags that champ the boughs Of the Ciminian hill;[10] 45 Beyond all streams Clitumnus[11] Is to the herdsman dear; Best of all pools the fowler loves The great Volsinian mere.[12] VII But now no stroke of woodman 50 Is heard by Auser's rill; No hunter tracks the stag's green path Up the Ciminian hill; Unwatched along Clitumnus Grazes the milk-white steer; 55 Unharmed the waterfowl may dip In the Volsinian mere. VIII The harvests of Arretium,[13] This year, old men shall reap, This year, young boys in Umbro[14] 60 Shall plunge the struggling sheep; And in the vats of Luna, This year, the must[15] shall foam Round the white feet of laughing girls Whose sires have marched to Rome. IX There be thirty chosen prophets, The wisest of the land, Who alway by Lars Porsena Both morn and evening stand: Evening and morn the Thirty 70 Have turned the verses o'er, Traced from the right[16] on linen white By mighty seers of yore, X And with one voice the Thirty Have their glad answer given: 75 "Go forth, go forth, Lars Porsena; Go forth, beloved of Heaven: Go, and return in glory To Clusium's royal dome; And hang round Nurscia's[17] altars 80 The golden shields[18] of Rome." XI And now hath every city Sent up her tale[19] of men: The foot are fourscore thousand, The horse are thousands ten. 85 Before the gates of Sutrium[20] Is met the great array. A proud man was Lars Porsena Upon the trysting day. XII For all the Etruscan armies 90 Were ranged beneath his eye And many a banished Roman, And many a stout ally; And with a mighty following To join the muster came 95 The Tusculan Mamilius,[21] Prince of the Latian[22] name. XIII But by the yellow Tiber Was tumult and affright: From all the spacious champaign 100 To Rome men took their flight. A mile around the city, The throng stopped up the ways; A fearful sight it was to see Through two long nights and days. 105 XIV For aged folks on crutches, And women great with child, And mothers sobbing over babes That clung to them and smiled, And sick men borne in litters 110 High on the necks of slaves, And troops of sunburnt husbandmen With reaping-hooks and staves, XV And droves of mules and asses Laden with skins of wine, 115 And endless flocks of goats and sheep, And endless herds of kine, And endless trains of wagons That creaked beneath the weight Of corn-sacks and of household goods, 120 Choked every roaring gate. XVI Now, from the rock Tarpeian,[23] Could the wan burghers spy The line of blazing villages Red in the midnight sky. 125 The Fathers[24] of the City, They sat all night and day, For every hour some horseman came With tidings of dismay. XVII To eastward and to westward 130 Have spread the Tuscan bands; Nor house nor fence nor dovecote In Crustumerium[25] stands. Verbenna down to Ostia[26] Hath wasted all the plain; 135 Astur hath stormed Janiculum,[27] And the stout guards are slain. XVIII I wis,[28] in all the Senate, There was no heart so bold, But sore it ached, and fast it beat; 140 When that ill news was told. Forthwith up rose the Consul, Up rose the Fathers all; In haste they girded up their gowns, And hied them to the wall. 145 XIX They held a council standing Before the River-Gate[30]; Short time was there, ye well may guess, For musing or debate. Out spake the Consul roundly: 150 "The bridge[31] must straight go down; For, since Janiculum is lost, Naught else can save the town." XX Just then a scout came flying, All wild with haste and fear; 155 "To arms! to arms! Sir Consul: Lars Porsena is here." On the low hills to westward The Consul fixed his eye, And saw the swarthy storm of dust 160 Rise fast along the sky. XXI And nearer fast and nearer Doth the red whirlwind come; And louder still and still more loud, From underneath that rolling cloud, 165 Is heard the trumpet's war-note proud, The trampling, and the hum. And plainly and more plainly Now through the gloom appears, Far to left and far to right, 170 In broken gleams of dark-blue light, The long array of helmets bright, The long array of spears. XXII And plainly, and more plainly Above that glimmering line, 175 Now might ye see the banners Of twelve fair cities[32] shine; But the banner of proud Clusium Was highest of them all, The terror of the Umbrian,[33] 180 The terror of the Gaul.[34] XXIII And plainly and more plainly Now might the burghers know, By port and vest,[35] by horse and crest, Each warlike Lucumo.[36] 185 There Cilnius of Arretium On his fleet roan[37] was seen; And Astur of the fourfold shield,[38] Girt with the brand none else may wield; Tolumnius with the belt of gold, 190 And dark Verbenna from the hold By reedy Thrasymene.[39] XXIV Fast by the royal standard, O'erlooking all the war, Lars Porsena of Clusium 195 Sat in his ivory car. By the right wheel rode Mamilius, Prince of the Latian name; And by the left false Sextus, That wrought the deed of shame. 200 XXV But when the face of Sextus Was seen among the foes, A yell that rent the firmament From all the town arose. On the house-tops was no woman 205 But spat towards him and hissed, No child but screamed out curses, And shook its little fist. XXVI But the Consul's brow was sad, And the Consul's speech was low. 210 And darkly looked he at the wall, And darkly at the foe. "Their van will be upon us Before the bridge goes down; And if they once may win the bridge, 215 What hope to save the town?" XXVII Then out spake brave Horatius, The Captain of the Gate: "To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late, 220 And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers, And the temples of his Gods, XXVIII And for the tender mother 225 Who dandled him to rest, And for the wife that nurses His baby at her breast, And for the holy maidens[40] Who feed the eternal flame, 230 To save them from false Sextus That wrought the deed of shame?" XXIX "Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul, With all the speed ye may, I, with two more to help me, 235 Will hold the foe in play. In yon strait path a thousand May well be stopped by three. Now who will stand on either hand, And keep the bridge with me?" 240 XXX Then out spake Spurius Lartius; A Ramnian[41] proud was he: "Lo, I will stand at thy right hand, And keep the bridge with thee." And out spake strong Herminius; 245 Of Titian blood was he: "I will abide on thy left side, And keep the bridge with thee." XXXI "Horatius," quoth the Consul, "As thou sayest, so let it be," 250 And straight against that great array Forth went the dauntless Three. For Romans in Rome's quarrel Spared neither land nor gold, Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life, 255 In the brave days of old.[42] XXXII Then none was for a party; Then all were for the state; Then the great man helped the poor. And the poor man loved the great, 260 Then lands were fairly portioned, Then spoils were fairly sold:[43] The Romans were like brothers In the brave days of old. XXXIII Now Roman is to Roman 265 More hateful than a foe, And the Tribunes[44] beard[45] the high, And the Fathers grind the low. As we wax hot in faction, In battle we wax cold: 270 Wherefore men fight not as they fought In the brave days of old. XXXIV Now while the Three were tightening Their harness[46] on their backs, The Consul was the foremost man 275 To take in hand an axe: And Fathers mixed with Commons Seized hatchet, bar, and crow, And smote upon the planks above, And loosed the props below. 280 XXXV Meanwhile the Tuscan army, Right glorious to behold, Came flashing back the noonday light, Rank behind rank, like surges bright Of a broad sea of gold. 285 Four hundred trumpets sounded A peal of warlike glee, As that great host, with measured tread, And spears advanced, and ensigns spread, Rolled slowly towards the bridge's head, 290 Where stood the dauntless Three. XXXVI The Three stood calm and silent, And looked upon the foes, And a great shout of laughter From all the vanguard rose; 295 And forth three chiefs came spurring Before that deep array; To earth they sprang, their swords they drew, And lifted high their shields, and flew To win the narrow way; 300 XXXVII Aunus from green Tifernum,[47] Lord of the Hill of Vines; And Seius, whose eight hundred slaves Sicken in Ilva's[48] mines; And Picus, long to Clusium 305 Vassal in peace and war, Who led to fight his Umbrian powers From that gray crag where, girt with towers, The fortress of Nequinum[49] lowers O'er the pale waves of Nar. 310 XXXVIII Stout Lartius hurled down Aunus Into the stream beneath: Herminius struck at Seius, And clove him to the teeth: At Picus brave Horatius 315 Darted one fiery thrust; And the proud Umbrian's gilded arms Clashed in the bloody dust. XXXIX Then Ocnus of Palerii[50] Rushed on the Roman Three; 320 And Lausulus of Urgo,[51] The rover of the sea;[52] And Aruns of Volsinium, Who slew the great wild boar, The great wild boar that had his den 325 Amidst the reeds of Cosa's[53] fen And wasted fields, and slaughtered men, Along Albinia's[54] shore. XL Herminius smote down Aruns: Lartius laid Ocnus low: 330 Right to the heart of Lausulus Horatius sent a blow. "Lie there," he cried, "fell pirate! No more, aghast and pale, From Ostia's walls the crowd shall mark 335 The track of thy destroying bark. No more Campania's[55] hinds[56] shall fly To woods and caverns when they spy Thy thrice accursed sail." XLI But now no sound of laughter 340 Was heard among the foes. A wild and wrathful clamor From all the vanguard rose. Six spears' lengths from the entrance Halted that deep array, 345 And for a space no man came forth To win the narrow way. XLII But hark! the cry is Astur: And lo! the ranks divide; And the great Lord of Luna Comes with his stately stride. 350 Upon his ample shoulders Clangs loud the fourfold shield, And in his hand he shakes the brand Which none but he can wield. 355 XLIII He smiled on those bold Romans A smile serene and high; He eyed the flinching Tuscans, And scorn was in his eye. Quoth he, "The she-wolf's litter[57] 360 Stand savagely at bay: But will ye dare to follow, If Astur clears the way?" XLIV Then, whirling up his broadsword With both hands to the height, 365 He rushed against Horatius, And smote with all his might. With shield and blade Horatius, Right deftly turned the blow. The blow, though turned, came yet too nigh: 370 It missed his helm, but gashed his thigh: The Tuscans raised a joyful cry To see the red blood flow. XLV He reeled, and on Herminius He leaned one breathing-space; 375 Then, like a wild-cat mad with wounds, Sprang right at Astur's face. Through teeth, and skull, and helmet So fierce a thrust he sped The good sword stood a hand-breadth out 380 Behind the Tuscan's head. XLVI And the great Lord of Luna Fell at that deadly stroke, As falls on Mount Alvernus A thunder-smitten oak. 385 Far o'er the crashing forest The giant arms lie spread; And the pale augurs, muttering low, Gaze on the blasted head. XLVII On Astur's throat Horatius 390 Right firmly pressed his heel; And thrice and four times tugged amain, Ere be wrenched out the steel. "And see," he cried, "the welcome, Fair guests, that waits you here! 395 What noble Lucumo comes next To taste our Roman cheer?" XLVI But at his haughty challenge A sullen murmur ran, Mingled of wrath, and shame, and dread, 400 Along that glittering van. There lacked not men of prowess, Nor men of lordly race, For all Etruria's noblest Were round the fatal place. 405 XLIX But all Etruria's noblest Felt their hearts sink to see On the earth the bloody corpses, In the path the dauntless Three: And from the ghastly entrance 410 Where those bold Romans stood, All shrank, like boys who unaware, Ranging the woods to start a hare, Come to the mouth of the dark lair, Where, growling low, a fierce old bear 415 Lies amidst bones and blood. L Was none who would be foremost To lead such dire attack; But those behind cried, "Forward!" And those before cried, "Back!" 420 And backward now and forward Wavers the deep array; And on the tossing sea of steel, To and fro the standards reel; And the victorious trumpet-peal 425 Dies fitfully away. LI Yet one man for one moment Stood out before the crowd; Well known was he to all the Three, And they gave him greeting loud. 430 "Now welcome, welcome, Sextus! Now welcome to thy home! Why dost thou stay, and turn away? Here lies the road to Rome." LII Thrice looked he at the city; 435 Thrice looked he at the dead And thrice came on in fury, And thrice turned back in dread: And, white with fear and hatred, Scowled at the narrow way 440 Where, wallowing in a pool of blood, The bravest Tuscans lay. LIII But meanwhile axe and lever Have manfully been plied; And now the bridge hangs tottering 445 Above the boiling tide. "Come back, come back, Horatius!" Loud cried the Fathers all. "Back, Lartius! back, Herminius! Back, ere the ruin fall!" 450 LIV Back darted Spurius Lartius, Herminius darted back: And, as they passed, beneath their feet They felt the timbers crack. But when they turned their faces, 455 And on the farther shore Saw brave Horatius stand alone, They would have crossed once more. LV But with a crash like thunder Fell every loosened beam, 460 And, like a dam, the mighty wreck Lay right athwart the stream; And a long shout of triumph Rose from the walls of Rome, As to the highest turret-tops 465 Was splashed the yellow foam. LVI And like a horse unbroken When first he feels the rein, The furious river struggled hard, And tossed his tawny mane, 470 And burst the curb, and bounded, Rejoicing to be free, And whirling down, in fierce career, Battlement, and plank, and pier, Rushed headlong to the sea. 475 LVII Alone stood brave Horatius, But constant still in mind; Thrice thirty thousand foes before, And the broad flood behind. "Down with him!" cried false Sextus, 480 With a smile on his pale face. "Now yield thee," cried Lars Porsena, "Now yield thee to our grace." LVIII Round turned he, as not deigning Those craven ranks to see; 485 Nought spake he to Lars Porsena, To Sextus nought spake he; But he saw on Palatinus[58] The white porch of his home; And he spake to the noble river 490 That rolls by the towers of Rome. LIX "Oh, Tiber! father Tiber! To whom the Romans pray, A Roman's life, a Roman's arms, Take thou in charge this day." 495 So he spake, and speaking sheathed The good sword by his side, And with his harness on his back, Plunged headlong in the tide. LX No sound of joy or sorrow 500 Was heard from either bank; But friends and foes, in dumb surprise, With parted lips and straining eyes, Stood gazing where he sank; And when above the surges 505 They saw his crest appear, All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry, And even the ranks of Tuscany Could scarce forbear to cheer. LXI But fiercely ran the current, 510 Swollen high by months of rain: And fast his blood was flowing, And he was sore in pain, And heavy with his armor, And spent with changing[59] blows: 515 And oft they thought him sinking, But still again he rose. LXII Never, I ween,[80] did swimmer, In such an evil case, Struggle through such a raging flood 520 Safe to the landing-place: But his limbs were borne up bravely By the brave heart within, And our good father Tiber Bore bravely up his chin. 525 LXIII "Curse on him!" quoth false Sextus, "Will not the villain drown? But for this stay, ere close of day We should have sacked the town!" "Heaven help him!" quoth Lars Porsena, 530 "And bring him safe to shore; For such a gallant feat of arms Was never seen before." LXI And now he feels the bottom; Now on dry earth he stands; 535 Now round him throng the Fathers To press his gory hands; And now, with shouts and clapping, And noise of weeping loud, He enters through the River-Gate, 540 Borne by the joyous crowd. LXV They gave him of the corn-land, That was of public right,[81] As much as two strong oxen Could plough from morn till night; 545 And they made a molten image, And set it up on high, And there it stands unto this, day, To witness if I lie. LXVI It stands in the Comitium,[62] 545 Plain for all folk to see; Horatius in his harness, Halting upon one knee: And underneath is written, In letters all of gold, 550 How valiantly he kept the bridge, In the brave days of old. LXVII And still his name sounds stirring Unto the men of Rome, As the trumpet-blast that cries to them 560 To charge the Volscian home,[63] And wives still pray to Juno[64] For boys with hearts as bold As his who kept the bridge so well, In the brave days of old. 565 LXVIII And in the nights of winter, When the cold north winds blow, And the long howling of the wolves Is heard amidst the snow; When round the lonely cottage 570 Roars loud the tempest's din, And the good logs of Algidus[65] Roar louder yet within; LXIX When the oldest cask is opened, And the largest lamp is lit 575 When the chestnuts glow in the embers, And the kid turns on the spit; When young and old in circle Around the firebrands close; When the girls are weaving baskets, 580 And the lads are shaping bows; LXX When the goodman mends his armor, And trims his helmet's plume; When the good wife's shuttle merrily Goes flashing through the loom: 585 With weeping and with laughter Still is the story told, How well Horatius kept the bridge In the brave days of old. --_Macaulay_ [1] Lars. Lord or Chieftain. [2] Clusium. The modern Chiusi. [3] Nine Gods. The chief Gods of the Etruscans were nine in number. [4] trysting day. A day appointed for meeting. [5] Volaterrae. The modern Volterra. The walls of the ancient fortress were built of enormous blocks of stone fitted together without cement. [6] Pisse. Pisa [7] Massilia. The modern Marseilles, originally a Greek colony and a flourishing commercial centre. triremes. Vessels with three banks of oars on each side. fair-haired slaves. Slaves from Gaul. [8] Clanis. The modern river Chiana. [9] Auser. A tributary of the Anio. [10] Ciminian hill. A lofty mountain in the northern Apennines. [11] Clitumnus. The river Clitumno. [12] Volsinian mere. A lake which took its name from the town of Volsinii (modern Bolsena) situated on its banks. [13] Arretium. Arezzo. [14] Umbro. A river in Etruria,--the modern Ombrone. [15] must. new wine. [16] Written from right to left. [17] Nurscia. The Etruscan goddess of fortune. [18] golden shields. Twelve golden shields kept in the temple of Vesta, and believed by the Romans to be bound up with the safety of their city. See notes on pp. 68 and 71. [19] tale. (A. S. _talian_, "to reckon".) number. [20] Sutrium. Sutri, a city about thirty miles from Rome. [21] Tusculan Mamilius. Tusculum is the modern Frascati, a city about twelve miles from Rome. Mamilius was the son-in-law of Tarquin. [22] Latium was a province in central Italy, inhabited by the Latins. It was conquered by Rome in the fourth century B.C. [23] Tarpeian. The Tarpeian Rock was a cliff on one side of the Capitoline Hill in Rome. Tarpeia, from whom the cliff took its name, was the daughter of Tarpeius, the governor of the citadel, on this hill. She betrayed the fortress to the Sabines, but as they entered, they threw their shields upon her and she was crushed to death. [24] Fathers of the City. The senators. [25] Crustumerium. A Latin city a few miles from Rome. [26] Ostia. A city at the mouth of the Tiber, fifteen miles from Rome. [27] Janiculum. A hill on the right bank of the Tiber. [28] I wis. See H. S. Grammar, p. 176. [29] Consul. After the expulsion of the Tarquin kings, Rome was governed by two chief magistrates, known as consuls. [30] the River-Gate. The gate facing the Janiculum hill. [31] bridge. The Sublician bridge, which connected Rome with Janiculum. [32] twelve fair cities. The Etruscan confederacy was composed of twelve cities. [33] Umbrian. Umbria was a division of Italy. [34] the Gaul. The Gauls were beginning to invade Italy from the north. [35] port and vest. Bearing and dress. [36] Lucumo. Etruscan chief. [37] roan. A roan horse is of a reddish colour, with white hairs thickly interspersed. [38] fourfold. With four thicknesses of leather. [39] Thrasymene. Lake Trasimenus (modern Lake of Perugia). It is only about twenty feet deep. [40] holy maidens. The vestal virgins, whose duty it was to keep the fire burning on the altar in the temple of Vesta. Vesta was the goddess of the home, and the vestal virgins were bound by oath never to marry. [41] Ramnian. The Ramnes were one of the three tribes of which the Roman people were mainly comprised; the Tities were a second of these tribes; Horatius himself belonged to the Luceres, the third tribe, so that in the defence of the bridge all three tribes were represented. [42] The story is supposed to be told by one of the plebeians, or common people in Rome, about 120 years after the event took place. [43] The speaker voices the grievances of the Plebeians against the Patricians. [44] Tribunes. The officers appointed to defend the rights of the Plebeians against the encroachments of the Patricians. [45] beard. openly defy. [46] harness. armour. [47] Tifernum. A town on the river Tiber. [48] Ilva. Elba, an island in the Mediterranean, on the coast of Italy. [49] Nequinum. Narni, on the Nar, which is a tributary of the Tiber. [50] Falerii. One of the twelve Etruscan cities. [51] Urgo. An island in the Mediterranean. [52] rover of the sea. pirate. [53] Cosa. A town on the sea-coast. [54] Albinia. A river in Etruria. [55] Campania. A district along the sea-coast. [56] hinds. peasants. [57] The she-wolf's litter. A reference to the legend, of Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome, who were said to have been suckled by a she-wolf. [58] Palatinus. The Palatine Hill, one of the seven hills of Rome. [59] changing. exchanging. [60] ween. think, fancy. [61] of public right. Belonging to the state. [62] Comitium. That part of the Roman forum, or public square, where the Patricians were accustomed to meet. [63] To charge the Volscian home. The Volsciana lived in the southern part of Latium. They were constantly at war with the Romans. _Home_ is here an adverb strengthening the meaning of _charge_. [64] Juno. Wife of Jupiter, and queen of heaven. [65] Algidus. A hill about twelve miles from Rome. ALICE BRAND. Merry it is in the good greenwood, When the mavis and merle[1] are singing, When the deer sweeps by and the hounds are in cry, And the hunter's horn is ringing. "O Alice Brand, my native land 5 Is lost for love of you; And we must hold by wood and wold,[2] As outlaws wont to do. "O Alice, 'twas all for thy locks so bright, And 'twas all for thine eyes so blue, 10 That on the night of our luckless flight Thy brother bold I slew. "Now must I teach to hew the beech The hand that held the glaive,[3] For leaves to spread our lowly bed, 15 And stakes to fence our cave. "And for vest of pall,[4] thy fingers small, That wont on harp to stray, A cloak must shear from the slaughtered deer, To keep the cold away." 20 "O Richard! if my brother died, Twas but a fatal chance; For darkling[5] was the battle tried, And fortune sped the lance. "If pall and vair[6] no more I wear, 25 Nor thou the crimson sheen, As warm, we 'll say, is the russet gray, As gay the forest-green. "And, Richard, if our lot be hard, And lost thy native land, 30 Still Alice has her own Richard, And he his Alice Brand." 'T is merry, 't is merry, in good greenwood So blithe Lady Alice is singing; On the beech's pride, and oak's brown side, 35 Lord Richard's axe is ringing. Up spoke the moody Elfin King,[7] Who woned[8] within the hill,-- Like wind in the porch of a ruined church, His voice was ghostly shrill. 40 "Why sounds yon stroke on beech and oak, Our moonlight circle's[9] screen? Or who comes here to chase the deer, Beloved of our Elfin Queen? Or who may dare on wold to wear 45 The fairies' fatal green?[10] "Up, Urgan, up! to yon mortal hie, For thou wert christened[11] man; For cross or sign thou wilt not fly, For muttered word or ban.[12] 50 "Lay on him the curse of the withered heart, The curse of the sleepless eye Till he wish and pray that his life would part, Nor yet find leave to die." Tis merry, 'tis merry, in good greenwood 55 Though the birds have stilled their singing, The evening blaze doth Alice raise, And Richard is fagots bringing. Up Urgan starts, that hideous dwarf, Before Lord Richard stands, 60 And, as he crossed and blessed himself, "I fear not sign," quoth the grisly[13] elf, "That is made with bloody hands." But out then spoke she, Alice Brand, That woman void of fear,-- 65 "And if there's blood upon his hand, 'Tis but the blood of deer." "Now loud thou liest, thou bold of mood! It cleaves unto his hand, The stain of thine own kindly blood,[14] 70 The blood of Ethert Brand." Then forward stepped she, Alice Brand, And made the holy sign,-- "And if there's blood on Richard's hand, A spotless hand is mine. 75 "And I conjure[15] thee, demon elf, By Him whom demons fear, To show us whence thou art thyself, And what thine errand here?" "'Tis merry, 'tis merry, in Fairy-land, 80 When fairy birds are singing, When the court doth ride by their monarch's side, With bit and bridle ringing: "And gayly shines the Fairy-land-- But all is glistening show 85 Like the idle gleam that December's beam Can dart on ice and snow. "And fading, like that varied gleam, Is our inconstant shape, "Who now like knight and lady seem, 90 And now like dwarf and ape. "It was between the night and day, When the Fairy King has power, That I sunk down in a sinful fray, And 'twixt life and death was snatched away 95 To the joyless Elfin bower. "But wist[16] I of a woman bold, Who thrice my brow durst sign,[17] I might regain my mortal mould, As fair a form as thine." 100 She crossed him once--she crossed him twice--- That lady was so brave; The fouler grew his goblin hue, The darker grew the cave. She crossed him thrice, that lady bold, 105 He rose beneath her hand, The fairest knight on Scottish mould, Her brother, Ethert Brand! Merry it is in good greenwood, When the mavis and merle are singing, 110 But merrier were they in Dunfermline[18] gray, When all the bells were ringing. --_Scott_ [1] mavis and merle. thrush and blackbird. [2] wold. hilly, open country. [3] glaive. sword. [4] pall. A rich cloth from which mantles of noblemen were made. [5] darkling. In the dark. [6] vair. The fur of the squirrel. [7] Elfin King. King of the fairies. [8] woned. dwelt. [9] circle. dance. [10] fairies' fatal green. The dress of the fairies was green and they were angered when mortals dared to wear garments of that colour. [11] christened. Those who had been baptized were, according to mediaeval belief, supposed to enjoy special advantages or privileges. [12] ban. curse. [13] grisly. horrible; hideous. [14] kindly blood. The blood of your kindred. [15] conjure. Call upon by oath. Distinguished from conjure, meaning "to influence by magic." [16] wist. See High School Grammar, p. 176. [17] sign. Make the sign of the cross upon ray brow. [18] Dunfermline. A town, about twenty miles from Edinburgh. THE SOLITARY REAPER. Behold her, single in the field, Yon solitary Highland lass! Reaping and singing by herself, Stop here, or gently pass! Alone she cuts and binds the grain 5 And sings a melancholy strain. Oh, listen! for the vale profound Is overflowing with the sound. No nightingale did ever chant So sweetly to reposing bands 10 Of travellers in some shady haunt Among Arabian sands: No sweeter voice was ever heard In spring time from the cuckoo-bird Breaking the silence of the seas 15 Among the farthest Hebrides. "Will no one tell me what she sings? Perhaps the plaintive numbers now For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago. 20 Or is it some more humble lay, Familiar matter of to-day? Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, That has been, and may be again? "Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang 25 As if her song could have no ending; I saw her singing at her work, And o'er the sickle bending;-- I listen'd motionless and still; And, as I mounted up the hill, 30 The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more. --_Wordsworth_. THE ISLAND OF THE SCOTS. The Rhine is running deep and red, the island lies before,-- "Now is there one of all the host will dare to venture o'er? For not alone the river's sweep might make a brave man quail; The foe are on the further side, their shot comes fast as hail. God help us, if the middle isle we may not hope to win; 5 Now is there any of the host will dare to venture in?" "The ford is deep, the banks are steep, the island-shore lies wide; Nor man nor horse could stem its force, or reach the further side. See there! amidst the willow-boughs the serried[1] bayonets gleam, They've flung their bridge,--they've won the isle; the foe have cross'd the stream! 10 Their volley flashes sharp and strong,--by all the saints! I trow There never yet was soldier born could force that passage now!" So spoke the bold French Mareschal[2] with him who led the van, Whilst, rough and red before their view the turbid river ran. Nor bridge nor boat had they to cross the wild and swollen Rhine, 15 And thundering on the other bank far stretch'd the German line. Hard by there stood a swarthy man, was leaning on his sword, And a sadden'd smile lit up his face as he heard the Captain's word. "I've seen a wilder stream ere now than that which rushes there; I've stemm'd a heavier torrent yet and never thought to dare. 20 If German steel be sharp and keen, is ours not strong and true? There may be danger in the deed, but there is honour too." The old lord in his saddle turn'd, and hastily he said, "Hath bold Duguesclin's[3] fiery heart awaken'd from the dead? Thou art the leader of the Scots,--now well and sure I know, 25 That gentle blood in dangerous hour ne'er yet ran cold nor slow; And I have seen ye in the fight do all that mortal may: If honour is the boon ye seek, it may be won this day,-- The prize is in the middle isle, there lies the adventurous way, And armies twain are on the plain, the daring deed to see,-- 30 Now ask thy gallant company if they will follow thee!" Right gladsome look'd the Captain then, and nothing did he say, But he turn'd him to his little band, O, few, I ween, were they! The relics of the bravest force that ever fought in fray. No one of all that company but bore a gentle name, 35 Not one whose fathers had not stood in Scotland's fields of fame. All they had march'd with great Dundee[4] to where he fought and fell, And in the deadly battle-strife had venged their leader well; And they had bent the knee to earth when every eye was dim, As o'er their hero's buried corpse they sang the funeral hymn; 40 And they had trod the Pass[5] once more, and stoop'd on either side. To pluck the heather from the spot where he had dropp'd and died, And they had bound it next their hearts, and ta'en a last farewell Of Scottish earth and Scottish sky, where Scotland's glory fell. Then went they forth to foreign lands like bent and broken men, 45 Who leave their dearest hope behind, and may not turn again. "The stream," he said, "is broad and deep, and stubborn is the foe,-- Yon island-strength is guarded well,--say, brothers, will ye go? From home and kin for many a year our steps have wander'd wide, And never may our bones be laid our fathers' graves beside. 50 No children have we to lament, no wives to wail our fall; The traitor's and the spoiler's hand have reft our hearths of all. But we have hearts, and we have arms, as strong to will and dare As when our ancient banners flew within the northern air. Come, brothers! let me name a spell, shall rouse your souls again, 55 And send the old blood bounding free through pulse and heart and vein. Call back the days of bygone years,--be young and strong once more; Think yonder stream, so stark and red, is one we've cross'd before. Rise, hill and glen! rise, crag and wood! rise up on either hand,-- Again upon the Garry's[6] banks, on Scottish soil we stand! 60 Again I see the tartans[7] wave, again the trumpets ring; Again I hear our leader's call; 'Upon them for the King!' Stay'd we behind that glorious day for roaring flood or linn?[8] The soul of Graeme is with us still,--now, brothers, will ye in?" No stay,--no pause. With one accord, they grasp'd each other's hand, 65 Then plunged into the angry flood, that bold and dauntless band. High flew the spray above their heads, yet onward still they bore, Midst cheer, and shout, and answering yell, and shot, and cannon-roar,-- "Now, by the Holy Cross! I swear, since earth and sea began, Was never such a daring deed essay'd by mortal man!" 70 Thick blew the smoke across the stream, and faster flash'd the flame: The water plash'd in hissing jets as ball and bullet came. Yet onward push'd the Cavaliers all stern and undismay'd, With thousand armed foes before, and none behind to aid. Once, as they near'd the middle stream, so strong the torrent swept, 75 That scarce that long and living wall their dangerous footing kept. Then rose a warning cry behind, a joyous shout before: "The current's strong,--the way is long,--they'll never reach the shore! See, see! they stagger in the midst, they waver in their line! Fire on the madmen! break their ranks, and whelm them in the Rhine!" 80 Have you seen the tall trees swaying when the blast is sounding shrill, And the whirlwind reels in fury down the gorges to the hill? How they toss their mighty branches, struggling with the temper's shock; How they keep their place of vantage, cleaving firmly to the rock? Even so the Scottish warriors held their own against the river. 85 Though the water flashed around them, not an eye was seen to quiver; Though the shot flew sharp and deadly, not a man relax'd his hold; For their hearts were big and thrilling with the mighty thoughts of old. One word was spoken among them, and through the ranks it spread,-- "Remember our dead Claverhouse!" was all the Captain said. 90 Then, sternly bending forward, they wrestled on a while, Until they clear'd the heavy stream, then rush'd toward the isle. The German heart is stout and true, the German arm is strong; The German foot goes seldom back where armed foemen throng. But never bad they faced in field so stern a charge before, 95 And never had they felt the sweep of Scotland's broad claymore.[9] Not fiercer pours the avalanche adown the steep incline, That rises o'er the parent springs of rough and rapid Rhine,-- Scarce swifter shoots the bolt from heaven, than came the Scottish band Right up against the guarded trench, and o'er it, sword in hand. 100 In vain their leaders forward press,--they meet the deadly brand! O lonely island of the Rhine,--Where seed was never sown, What harvest lay upon thy sands, by those strong reapers thrown? What saw the winter moon that night, as, struggling through the rain, She pour'd a wan and fitful light on marsh, and stream, and plain? 105 A dreary spot with corpses strewn, and bayonets glistening round; A broken bridge, a stranded boat, a bare and batter'd mound; And one huge watch-fire's kindled pile, that sent its quivering glare To tell the leaders of the host the conquering Scots were there. And did they twine the laurel-wreath,[10] for those who fought so well 110 And did they honour those who liv'd, and weep for those who fell? What meed of thanks was given to them let aged annals tell. Why should they bring the laurel-wreath,--why crown the cup with wine? It was not Frenchmen's blood that flow'd so freely on the Rhine,-- A stranger band of beggar'd men had done the venturous deed; 115 The glory was to France alone, the danger was their meed, And what cared they for idle thanks from foreign prince and peer? What virtue had such honey'd words the exiled heart to cheer? What matter'd it that men should vaunt, and loud and fondly swear That higher feat of chivalry was never wrought elsewhere? 120 They bore within their breast the grief that fame can never heal,-- The deep, unutterable woe which none save exiles feel. Their hearts were yearning for the land they ne'er might see again,-- For Scotland's high and heather'd hills, for mountains, loch and glen-- For those who haply lay at rest beyond the distant sea, 125 Beneath the green and daisied turf where they would gladly be! Long years went by. The lonely isle in Rhine's tempestuous flood Has ta'en another name from those who bought it with their blood: And, though the legend does not live,--for legends lightly die-- The peasant, as he sees the stream in winter rolling by, 130 And foaming o'er its channel-bed between him and the spot Won by the warriors of the sword, still calls that deep and dangerous ford The Passage of the Scot. --_Aytoun_. [1] serried. crowded. [2] Mareschal. Marshal, an officer of the highest rank in the French army. [3] Duguesclin. A noted French commander, famous for his campaigns against the English in the 14th century. [4] Dundee. John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, a Scottish soldier. He raised a body of Highlanders in 1689 to fight for James II against William of Orange. At the battle of Killecrankie (1689) he was mortally wounded. [5] The Pass. The Pass of Killecrankie. [6] Garry. A river in Perthshire, Scotland. [7] tartan. A Scotch plaid [8] linn. A waterfall. [9] claymore. The heavy broadsword used by the Highlanders. [10] laurel-wreath. The laurel is an evergreen shrub found in parts of Europe. A wreath of laurel was a mark of distinction or honour. DICKENS IN CAMP. Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting, The river sang below, The dim Sierras,[1] far beyond, uplifting Their minarets of snow. The roaring camp-fire, with rude humor, painted 5 The ruddy tints of health On haggard face and form that drooped and fainted In the fierce race for wealth; Till one arose, and from his pack's scant treasure A hoarded volume drew, 10 And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure, To hear the tale anew; And then, while round them shadows gathered faster, And as the firelight fell, He read aloud the book wherein the Master[2] 15 Had writ of "Little Nell."[3] Perhaps 'twas boyish fancy,--for the reader Was youngest of them all,-- But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar A silence seemed to fall; 20 The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows, Listened in every spray, While the whole camp, with "Nell," on English meadows Wandered and lost their way. And so in mountain solitudes--o'ertaken 25 As by some spell divine-- Their cares dropped from them like the needles shaken From out the gusty pine. Lost is that camp, and wasted all its fire: And he who wrought that spell?-- 30 Ah, towering pine and stately Kentish spire,[4] Ye have one tale[5] to tell! Lost is that camp! but let its fragrant story[6] Blend with the breath that thrills With hop-vines' incense[7] all the pensive glory 35 That fills the Kentish hills. And on that grave where English oak and holly And laurel wreaths intwine,[8] Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly,-- This spray of Western pine. 40 --Harte. [1] Sierra. A Spanish term, meaning a mountain range. The name Sierra was applied, of course, to a great many different ranges. [2] the Master. Dickens. [3] Little Nell. The heroine of Dickens' novel, _The Old Curiosity Shop_. [4] Dickens died at Gadshill, Kent, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. [5] one tale. Both they who heard the story, and he who wrote it, are dead. [6] Let the fragrance of the western pine blend with the incense of the hop-vines in memory of Dickens. In other words, let me add this story as another tribute to his memory. [7] hop-vines' incense. The smell of the hop-vines. Kent is the chief hop-growing county of England. [8] The great writers of England have done honour to Dickens. A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT. I What was he doing, the great god Pan,[1] Down in the reeds by the river! Spreading ruin, and scattering ban, Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, And breaking the golden lilies afloat 5 With the dragon-fly on the river. II He tore out a reed, the great god Pan, From the deep, cool bed of the river. The limpid water turbidly ran, And the broken lilies a-dying lay, 10 And the dragon-fly had fled away, Ere he brought it out of the river. III High on the shore sat the great god Pan, While turbidly flowed the river, And hacked and hewed as a great god can, 15 With his hard bleak steel, at the patient reed, Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed To prove it fresh from the river. IV He cut it short, did the great god Pan, (How tall it stood in the river!) 20 Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man, Steadily from the outside ring, And notched the poor, dry, empty thing In holes, as he sat by the river. V "This is the way," laughed the great god Pan, 25 (Laughed while he sat by the river,) "The only way, since gods began To make sweet music, they could succeed." Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed, He blew in power by the river. 30 VI Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan! Piercing sweet by the river! Blinding sweet, O great god Pan! The sun on the lull forgot to die, And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly 35 Came back to dream on the river. VII Yet half a beast is the great god Pan, To laugh as he sits by the river, Making a poet out of a man: The true gods[2] sigh for the cost and pain,-- 40 For the reed which grows nevermore again As a reed with the reeds in the river. --Mrs. Browning. [1] Pan. In Greek mythology, the god of pastures, forests and flocks. He was represented as half-man, half-goat, in appearance. He was the inventor of the shepherd's flute. [2] Pan was not one of the gods of Olympus, and was literally "half a beast." GRADATIM.[1] Heaven is not reached at a single bound; But we build the ladder by which we rise From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, And we mount to the summit round by round. I count this thing to be grandly true, 5 That a noble deed is a step toward God-- Lifting the soul from the common sod[2] To a purer air and a broader view. We rise by things that are under our feet;[3] By what we have mastered of good and gain; 10 By the pride deposed and the passion slain, And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet. We hope, we aspire, we resolve, we trust, When the morning calls us to life and light; But our hearts grow weary, and ere the night, 15 Our lives are trailing the sordid[4] dust. We hope, we resolve, we aspire, we pray, And we think that we mount the air on wings Beyond the recall of sensual things, While our feet still cling to the heavy clay. 20 Wings for the angels, but feet for the men![5] We may borrow the wings to find the way-- We may hope, and resolve, and aspire, arid pray. But our feet must rise, or we fall again. Only in dreams is a ladder[6] thrown 25 From the weary earth to the sapphire walls; But the dreams depart, and the vision falls, And the Sleeper wakes on his pillow of stone. Heaven is not reached at a single bound; But we build the ladder by which we rise From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, 30 And we mount to the summit round by round. --_Holland_. [1] Gradatim. A step at a time. [2] the common sod. earthly things. [3] See Longfellow, _The Ladder of Saint Augustine_. [4] sordid. mean; base. [5] Good resolves and aspirations ("wings") are not sufficient. We can rise only step by step by overcoming the petty difficulties of everyday life. [6] ladder. A reference to Jacob's ladder (Genesis xxviii, 12). THE BATTLE OF THE LAKE REGILLUS.[1] A LAY SUNG AT THE FEAST OF CASTOR AND POLLUX,[2] ON THE IDES OF QUINTILIS,[3] IN THE YEAR OF THE CITY CCCCLI (B.C. 303). [_This is the feast of Castor and Pollux, and the anniversary of the battle of Lake Regillus, which they did so much to win. Let us remember them, and sing their praises_.] I Ho, trumpets, sound a war-note! Ho, lictors,[4] clear the way! The Knights[5] will ride, in all their pride, Along the streets to-day, To-day the doors and windows 5 Are hung with garlands all, From Castor[6] in the forum,[7] To Mars without the wall. Each Knight is robed in purple, With olive each is crowned, 10 A gallant war-horse under each Paws haughtily the ground. While flows the Yellow River,[8] While stands the Sacred Hill,[9] The proud Ides of Quintilis, 15 Shall have such honour still. Gay are the Martian Kalends:[10] December's Nones[11] are gay: But the proud Ides, when the squadron rides, Shall be Rome's whitest[12] day. 20 II Unto the Great Twin Brethren We keep this solemn feast. Swift, swift, the Great Twin Brethren Came spurring from the east. They came o'er wild Parthenius[13] 25 Tossing in waves of pine, O'er Cirrha's dome,[14] o'er Adria's[15] foam, O'er purple Apennine, From where with flutes and dances Their ancient mansion rings, 30 In lordly Lacedaemon,[16] The city of two kings, To where, by Lake Regillus, Under the Porcian[17] height, All in the lands of Tusculum, 35 Was fought the glorious fight. III Now on the place of slaughter Are cots and sheepfolds seen, And rows of vines, and fields of wheat, And apple-orchards green; 40 And swine crush the big acorns That fall from Corne's[18] oaks. Upon the turf by the Fair Fount[19] The reaper's pottage smokes. The fisher baits his angle; 45 The hunter twangs his bow; Little they think on those strong limbs That moulder deep below. Little they think how sternly That day the trumpets pealed; 50 How in the slippery swamp of blood Warrior and war-horse reeled; How wolves came with fierce gallop, And crows on eager wings, To tear the flesh of captains, 55 And peck the eyes of kings; How thick the dead lay scattered Under the Porcian height: How through the gates of Tusculum Raved the wild stream of night; 60 And how the Lake Regillus Bubbled with crimson foam, What time the Thirty Cities[20] Came forth to war with Rome. IV But, Roman, when thou standest 65 Upon that holy ground, Look thou with heed on the dark rock. That girds the dark lake round, So shall thou see a hoof-mark[21] Stamped deep into the flint: 70 It was no hoof of mortal steed That made so strange a dint; There to the Great Twin Brethren Vow thou thy vows, and pray That they, in tempest and in fight, 75 Will keep thy head alway. [_The Latins send a message calling on the Romans to restore the Tarquins. The consul proudly refuses, and a dictator is appointed. The Roman army encamps hard by Lake Regillus_.] Since last the Great Twin Brethren Of mortal eyes were seen, Have years gone by an hundred And fourscore and thirteen. 80 That summer a Virginius[22] Was Consul first in place;[23] The second was stout Aulus, Of the Posthumian race. The Herald of the Latines 85 From Gabii[24] came in state: The Herald of the Latines Passed through Rome's Eastern Gate The herald of the Latines Did in our Forum stand; 90 And there he did his office, A sceptre in his hand. VI "Hear, Senators and people Of the good town of Rome, The Thirty Cities charge you 95 To bring the Tarquins home: And if ye still be stubborn, To work the Tarquins wrong, The Thirty Cities warn you, Look that your walls be strong." 100 VII Then spake the Consul Aulus, He spake a bitter jest: "Once the jay sent a message Unto the eagle's nest:-- Now yield thou up thine eyrie 105 Unto the carrion-kite, Or come forth valiantly, and face The jays in deadly fight.-- Forth looked in wrath the eagle; And carrion-kite and jay, 110 Soon as they saw his beak and claw, Fled screaming far away." VIII The Herald of the Latines Hath hied him back in state; The Fathers of the City 115 Are met in high debate. Then spake the elder Consul, An ancient man and wise: "Now hearken, Conscript Fathers,[25] To that which I advise. 120 In seasons of great peril Tis good that one bear sway; Then choose we a Dictator, Whom all men shall obey. Camerium[26] knows how deeply 125 The sword of Aulus bites, And all our city calls him The man of seventy fights. Then let him be Dictator For six months and no more, 130 And have a Master of the Knights,[27] And axes twenty-four."[28] IX So Aulus was Dictator, The man of seventy fights He made Aebutius Elva 135 His Master of the Knights. On the third morn thereafter, At dawning of the day, Did Aulus and Aebutius Set forth with their array. 140 Sempronius Atratinus Was left in charge at home With boys, and with grey-headed men, To keep the walls of Rome. Hard by the Lake Regillus 145 Our camp was pitched at night: Eastward a mile the Latines lay, Under the Porcian height. Far over hill and valley Their mighty host was spread; 150 And with their thousand watch-fires The midnight sky was red. [_The names of the towns which contributed to the Latin army of threescore thousand men, and their order of battle. All Latium was there to fight with Rome_.] Up rose the golden morning Over the Porcian height, The proud Ides of Quintilis 155 Marked evermore with white. Not without; secret trouble Our bravest saw the foes; For girt by threescore thousand spears The thirty standards rose. 160 From every warlike city That boasts the Latian name, Foredoomed to dogs and vultures, That gallant army came; From Sofia's purple vineyards, 165 From Norba's ancient wall, From the white streets of Tusculum, The proudest town of all; From where the Witch's Fortress[29] O'erhangs the dark-blue seas; 170 From the still glassy lake that sleeps Beneath Aricia's trees-- Those trees in whose dim shadow The ghastly priest[30] doth reign, The priest who slew the slayer, 175 And shall himself be slain; From the drear banks of Ufens,[31] Where nights of marsh-fowl play, And buffaloes lie wallowing Through the hot summer's day, 180 From the gigantic watch-towers, No work of earthly men, Whence Cora's sentinels o'erlook The never-ending fen; From the Laurentian[32] jungle, 185 The wild hog's reedy home; From the green steeps whence Anio leaps In floods of snow-white foam. XI Aricia, Cora, Norba, Velitrae, with the might; 190 Of Setia and of Tusculum, Were marshalled on the right: The leader was Mamilius, Prince of the Latian name, Upon his head a helmet 195 Of red gold shone like flame: High on a gallant charger Of dark-grey hue he rode: Over his gilded armour A vest of purple flowed, 200 Woven in the land of sunrise By Syria's dark-browed daughters, And by the sails of Carthage[33] brought Far o'er the southern waters. XII Lavinium and Laurentum 205 Had on the left their post, With all the banners of the marsh, And banners of the coast. Their leader was false Sextus, That wrought the deed of shame: 210 With restless pace and haggard face To his last field he came. Men said he saw strange visions Which none beside might see, And that strange sounds were in his ears 215 Which none might hear but he. A woman[34] fair and stately, But pale as are the dead, Oft through the watches of the night Sat spinning by his bed. 220 And as she plied the distaff, In a sweet voice and low, She sang of great old houses, And fights fought long ago. So spun she, and so sang she, 225 Until the east was grey, Then pointed to her bleeding breast, And shrieked, and fled away. XIII But in the centre thickest Were ranged the shields of foes, 230 And from the centre loudest The cry of battle rose. There Tibur[35] marched and Pedum Beneath proud Tarquin's rule, And Ferentinum of the rock, 235 And Gabii of the pool. There rode the Volscian succours: There, in a dark stern ring, The Roman exiles gathered close, Around the ancient king. 240 Though white as Mount Soracte,[36] When winter nights are long, His beard flowed down o'er mail and belt, His heart and hand were strong: Under his hoary eyebrows 245 Still flashed forth quenchless rage, And, if the lance shook in his gripe, 'Twas more with hate than age. Close at his side was Titus On an Apulian[37] steed, 250 Titus, the youngest Tarquin, Too good for such a breed. [_The battle begins. False Sextus flees from Herminius, one of the defenders of the bridge. Aebutius slays Tubero, but is severely wounded by Mamilius of Tusculum, and retires from the fight_.] XIV Now on each side the leaders Gave signal for the charge; And on each side the footmen 255 Strode on with lance and targe;[38] And on each side the horsemen Struck their spurs deep in gore; And front to front, the armies Met with a mighty roar: 260 And under that great battle The earth with blood was red; And, like the Pomptine[39] fog at morn, The dust hung overhead; And louder still and louder 265 Rose from the darkened field The braying of the war-horns, The clang of sword and shield, The rush of squadrons sweeping Like whirlwinds o'er the plain, The shouting of the slayers, 270 And screeching of the slain. XV False Sextus rode out foremost: His look was high and bold; His corslet was of bison's hide, 275 Plated with steel and gold. As glares the famished eagle From the Digentian rock[40] On a choice lamb that bounds alone Before Bandusia's[41] flock, 280 Herminius glared on Sextus, And came with eagle speed, Herminius on black Auster,[42] Brave champion on brave steed; In his right hand the broadsword 285 That kept the bridge so well, And on his helm the crown[43] he won When proud Fidenae fell. Woe to the maid whose lover Shall cross his path to-day! 290 False Sextus saw, and trembled, And turned, and fled away. As turns, as flies, the woodman In the Calabrian[44] brake, When through the reeds gleams the round eye 295 Of that fell speckled snake; So turned, so fled, false Sextus, And hid him in the rear, Behind the dark Lavinian ranks, Bristling with crest and spear. 300 XVI But far to north Aebutius, The Master of the Knights, Gave Tubero of Norba To feed the Porcian kites. Next under those red horse-hoofs 305 Flaccus of Setia lay; Better had he been pruning Among his elms[45] that day. Mamilius saw the slaughter, And tossed his golden crest, 310 And towards the Master of the Knights Through the thick battle pressed. Aebutias smote Mamilius So fiercely, on the shield That the great lord of Tusculum 315 Well nigh rolled on the field. Mamilius smote Aebutius, With a good aim and true, Just where the neck and shoulder join, And pierced him through and through; 320 And brave Aebutius Elva Fell swooning to the ground: But a thick wall of bucklers Encompassed him around. His clients[46] from the battle 325 Bare him some little space, And filled a helm from the dark lake, And bathed his brow and face; And when at last he opened His swimming eyes to light, 330 Men say, the earliest word he spake Was, "Friends, how goes the fight?" [_The struggle in the centre, where the ancient Tarquin is struck down. The Latins fight over him as he lies, and Titus kills Valerius, round whose body the struggle waxes hot_.] XVII But meanwhile in the centre Great deeds of arms were wrought; There Aulus the Dictator 335 And there Valerius fought. Aulus with his good broadsword A bloody passage cleared To where, amidst the thickest foes, He saw the long white beard. 340 Flat lighted that good broadsword Upon proud Tarquin's head. He dropped the lance: he dropped the reins: He fell as fall the dead. Down Aulus springs to slay him, 345 With eyes like coals of fire; But faster Titus[47] hath sprung down, And hath bestrode his sire. Latian captains, Roman knights, Fast down to earth they spring, 350 And hand to hand they fight on foot Around the ancient king. First Titus gave tall Caeso A death wound in the face; Tall Caeso was the bravest man 355 Of the brave Fabian[48] race: Aulus slew Rex of Gabii, The priest of Juno's shrine: Valerius smote down Julius, Of Rome's great Julian line;[49] 360 Julius, who left his mansion High on the Velian hill,[50] And through all turns of weal and woe Followed proud Tarquin still. Now right across proud Tarquin 365 A corpse was Julius laid; And Titus groaned with rage and grief, And at Valerius made. Valerius struck at Titus, And lopped off half his crest; 370 But Titus stabbed Valerius A span deep in the breast. Like a mast snapped by the tempest, Valerius reeled and fell. Ah! woe is me for the good house 375 That loves the people well! Then shouted loud the Latines; And with one rush they bore The struggling Romans backward Three lances' length and more: 380 And up they took proud Tarquin, And laid him on a shield, And four strong yeoman bare him, Still senseless from the field. XVIII But fiercer grew the fighting 385 Around Valerius dead; For Titus dragged him by the foot, And Aulus by the head. "On, Latines, on!" quoth Titus, "See how the rebels fly!" 390 "Romans, stand firm!" quoth Aulus, "And win this fight or die! They must not give Valerius To raven and to kite; For aye Valerius loathed the wrong, 395 And aye upheld the right: And for your wives and babies In the front rank he fell. Now play the men for the good house That loves the people well!" 400 XIX Then tenfold round the body The roar of battle rose, Like the roar of a burning forest, "When a strong north wind blows. Now backward, and now forward, 405 Rocked furiously the fray, Till none could see Valerius, And none wist where he lay. For shivered arms and ensigns Were heaped there in a mound, 410 And corpses stiff, and dying men, That writhed and gnawed the ground, And wounded horses kicking, And snorting purple foam: Right well did such a couch befit 415 A Consular of Rome. [_Mamilius is seen coming to the aid of the Latins. Cossus gallops off to summon Herminus, who comes at once. Mamilius flings himself athwart his course, and both champions are slain_.] XX But north looked the Dictator; North looked he long and hard; And spake to Caius Cossus, The Captain of his Guard: 420 "Caius, of all the Romans Thou hast the keenest sight; Say, what through yonder storm of dust Comes from the Latian right?" XXI Then answered Caius Cossus 425 "I see an evil sight; The banner of proud Tusculum Comes from the Latian right: I see the plumed horsemen; And far before the rest 430 I see the dark-grey charger, I see the purple vest, I see the golden helmet That shines far off like flame; So ever rides Mamilius, 435 Prince of the Latian name." XXII "Now hearken, Caius Cossus: Spring on thy horse's back; Ride as the wolves of Apennine Were all upon thy track; 440 Haste to our southward battle: And never draw thy rein Until thou find Herminius, And bid him come amain." XXIII So Aulus spake, and turned him 445 Again to that fierce strife, And Caius Cossus mounted, And rode for death and life. Loud clanged beneath his horse-hoofs The helmets of the dead, 450 And many a curdling pool of blood Splashed him from heel to head. So came he far to southward, Where fought the Roman host, Against the banners of the marsh 455 And banners of the coast. Like corn before the sickle The stout Lavinians fell, Beneath the edge of the true sword That kept the bridge so well. 460 XXIV "Herminius: Aulus greets thee; He bids thee come with speed, To help our central battle: For sore is there our need. There wars the youngest Tarquin, 465 And there the Crest of Flame,[51] The Tusculan Mamilius, Prince of the Latian name. Valerius hath fallen fighting In front of our array: 470 And Aulus of the seventy fields Alone upholds the day." XXV Herminius beat his bosom: But never a word he spake. He clapped his hand on Auster's mane, 475 He gave the reins a shake: Away, away went Auster, Like an arrow from the bow: Black Auster was the fleetest steed From Aufidus to Po.[52] 480 XXVI Right glad were all the Romans Who, in that hour of dread, Against great odds bare up the war Around Valerius dead, When from the south the cheering 485 Rose with a mighty swell; "Herminius comes, Herminius, Who kept the bridge so well!" XXVII Mamilius spied Herminius, And dashed across the way. 490 "Herminius! I have sought thee Through many a bloody day. One of us two, Herminius, Shall never more go home, I will lay on for Tusculum, 495 And lay thou on for Rome!" XXVIII All round them paused the battle, While met in mortal fray The Roman and the Tusculan, The horses black and grey. 500 Herminius smote Mamilius Through breast-plate and through breast, And fast flowed out the purple blood Over the purple vest. Mamilius smote Herminius 505 Through head-piece and through head; And side by side those chiefs of pride Together fell down dead. Down fell they dead together In a great lake of gore; 510 And still stood all who saw them fall While men might count a score. [_Mamilius' charger dashes off to Tusculum, Black Auster remains by his master's body. Titus attempts to mount him, but is slain by Aulus the Dictator_.] XXIX Fast, fast, with heels wild spurning, The dark-grey charger fled: He burst through ranks of fighting men; 515 He sprang o'er heaps of dead. His bridle far out-streaming, His flanks all blood and foam, He sought the southern mountains, The mountains of his home. 520 The pass was steep and rugged, The wolves they howled and whined; But he ran like a whirlwind up the pass, And he left the wolves behind. Through many a startled hamlet 525 Thundered his flying feet; He rushed through the gate of Tusculum, He rushed up the long white street; He rushed by tower and temple, And paused not from his race 530 Till he stood before his master's door In the stately market-place. And straightway round him gathered A pale and trembling crowd, And when they knew him, cries of rage 535 Brake forth, and wailing loud: And women rent their tresses For their great prince's fall; And old men girt on their old swords, And went to man the wall. 540 XXX But, like a graven image, Black Auster kept his place, And ever wistfully he looked Into his master's face. The raven-mane that daily, 545 With pats and fond caresses, The young Herminia washed and combed, And twined in even tresses, And decked with coloured ribands From her own gay attire, 550 Hung sadly o'er her father's corpse In carnage and in mire. Forth with a shout sprang Titus, And seized Black Auster's rein. Then Aulus sware a fearful oath, 555 And ran at him amain. "The furies of thy brother[53] With me and mine abide, If one of your accursed house Upon black Auster ride!" 560 As on an Alpine watch-tower From heaven comes down the flame, Full on the neck of Titus The blade of Aulus came: And out the red blood spouted, 565 In a wide arch and tall, As spouts a fountain in the court Of some rich Capuan's[54] hall. The knees of all the Latines Were loosened with dismay 570 When dead, on dead Herminius, The bravest Tarquin lay. [_Aulus prepares to mount black Auster, when he spies two strange horsemen by his side. These are Castor and Pollux, who charge at the head of the Roman army_.] XXXI And Aulus the Dictator Stroked Auster's raven mane, With heed he looked unto the girths, 575 With heed unto the rein. "Now bear me well, black Auster, Into yon thick array; And thou and I will have revenge For thy good lord this day." 580 XXXII So spake he; and was buckling Tighter black Auster's band, When he was aware of a princely pair That rode at his right hand. So like they were, no mortal 585 Might one from other know: White as snow their armour was; Their steeds were white as snow. Never on earthly anvil Did such rare armour gleam; 590 And never did such gallant steeds Drink of an earthly stream. XXXIII And all who saw them trembled, And pale grew every cheek, And Aulus the Dictator 595 Scarce gathered voice to speak. "Say by what name men call you? What city is your home? And wherefore ride ye in such guise Before the ranks of Rome?" 600 XXXIV "By many names men call us; In many lands we dwell; Well Samothracia[55] knows us, Cyrene knows us well. Our house in gay Tarentum[56] 605 Is hung each morn with flowers: High o'er the masts of Syracuse[57] Our marble portal towers; But by the proud Eurotas[58] Is our dear native home; 610 And for the right we come to fight Before the ranks of Rome." XXXV So answered those strange horsemen, And each couched low his spear; And forthwith all the ranks of Rome 615 Were bold, and of good cheer; And on the thirty armies Came wonder and affright, And Ardea wavered on the left, And Cora on the right. 620 "Rome to the charge!" cried Aulus; "The foe begins to yield! Charge for the hearth of Vesta![59] Charge for the Golden Shield![60] Let no man stop to plunder, 625 But slay, and slay, and slay: The Gods who live forever Are on our side to-day." [_The Latins turn and flee. Many of their chiefs are slain, and above all false Sextus, who dies a coward's death_.] XXXVI Then the fierce trumpet-flourish From earth to heaven arose. 630 The kites know well the long stern swell That bids the Romans close. Then the good sword of Aulus Was lifted up to slay: Then, like a crag down Apennine, 635 Rushed Auster through the fray. But under those strange horsemen Still thicker lay the slain: And after those strange horses Black Auster toiled in vain. 640 Behind them Rome's long battle Came rolling on the foe, Ensigns dancing wild above, Blades all in line below, So comes the Po in flood-time 645 Upon the Celtic plain:[61] So comes the squall, blacker than night, Upon the Adrian main. How, by our Sire Quirinus,[62] It was a goodly sight 650 To see the thirty standards Swept down the tide of flight. So flies the spray of Adria When the black squall doth blow, So corn-sheaves in the flood-time 655 Spin down the whirling Po. False Sextus to the mountains Turned first his horse's head; And fast fled Ferentinum, And fast Lanuvium fled. 660 The horsemen of Nomentum Spurred hard out of the fray, The footmen of Velitrae Threw shield and spear away. And underfoot was trampled, 665 Amidst the mud and gore, The banner of proud Tusculum, That never stooped before: And down went Flavius Faustus, Who led his stately ranks 670 From where the apple-blossoms wave On Anio's echoing banks, And Tullus of Arpinum, Chief of the Volscian aids, And Metius with the long fair curls, 675 The love of Anxur's maids, And the white head of Vulgo, The great Arician seer, And Nepos of Laurentum, The hunter of the deer; 680 And in the back false Sextus Felt the good Roman steel; And wriggling in the dust he died, Like a worm beneath the wheel: And fliers and pursuers 685 Were mingled in a mass; And far away the battle Went roaring through the pass. [_The Dioscuri ride to Rome with news of victory. No one dares to ask who they are, and after washing their steeds in Vesta's fountain they vanish from mortal sight_.] XXXVII Sempronius Atratinus Sate in the Eastern Gate, 690 Beside him were three Fathers, Each in his chair of state; Fabius, whose nine stout grandsons That day were in the field, And Manlius, eldest of the Twelve[63] 695 Who kept the Golden Shield; And Sergius, the High Pontiff,[64] For wisdom far renowned, In all Etruria's colleges Was no such Pontiff found. 700 And all around the portal, And high above the wall, Stood a great throng of people, But sad and silent all; Young lads, and stooping elders 705 That might not bear the mail, Matrons with lips that quivered, And maids with faces pale. Since the first gleam of daylight, Sempronius had not ceased 710 To listen for the rushing Of horse-hoofs from the east. The mist of eve was rising. The sun was hastening down, When he was aware of a princely pair 715 Fast pricking towards the town, So like they were, man never Saw twins so like before; Red with gore their armour was, Their steeds were red with gore. 720 XXXVIII "Hail to the great Asylum![65] Hail to the hill-tops seven! Hail to the fire[66] that burns for aye! And the shield that fell from heaven! This day, by Lake Regillus, 725 Under the Porcian height, All in the lands of Tusculum Was fought a glorious fight. To-morrow your Dictator Shall bring in triumph home 730 The spoils of thirty cities To deck the shrines of Rome!" XXXIX Then burst from that great concourse A shout that shook the towers, And some ran north, and some ran south, 735 Crying, "The day is ours!" But on rode these strange horsemen, With slow and lordly pace; And none who saw their bearing Durst ask their name or race. 740 On rode they to the Forum, While laurel-boughs and flowers, From house-tops and from windows, Fell on their crests in showers. When they drew nigh to Vesta, 745 They vaulted down amain, And washed their horses in the well That springs by Vesta's fane. And straight again they mounted, And rode to Vesta's door; 750 Then, like a blast, away they passed, And no man saw them more. [_The Pontiff tells the Romans who their god-like visitors are, and bids the citizens build a temple to them and establish an annual procession in their honour_.] XL And all the people trembled, And pale grew every cheek; And Sergius the High Pontiff 755 Alone found voice to speak: "The gods who live for ever Have fought for Rome to-day! These be the Great Twin Brethren To whom the Dorians[67] pray. 760 Back comes the Chief in triumph, Who, in the hour of fight, Hath seen the Great Twin Brethren In harness on his right. Safe comes the ship to haven, 765 Through billows and through gales, If once the Great Twin Brethren Sit shining on the sails.[68] Wherefore they washed their horses In Vesta's holy well, 770 Wherefore they rode to Vesta's door, I know, but may not tell. Here, hard by Vesta's Temple, Build we a stately dome Unto the Great Twin Brethren 775 Who fought so well for Rome. And when the months returning Bring back this day of fight, The proud Ides of Quintilis, Marked evermore with white, 780 Unto the Great Twin Brethren Let all the people throng, With chaplets and with offerings, With music and with song; And let the doors and windows 785 Be hung with garlands all, And let the Knights be summoned To Mars without the wall: Thence let them ride in purple With joyous trumpet-sound, 790 Each mounted on his war-horse, And each with olive crowned; And pass in solemn order Before the sacred dome, Where dwell the Great Twin Brethren 795 Who fought so well for Rome!" --_Macaulay_. [1] Ten years after the siege of Rome by Lars Porsena, the Latins, under Mamilius of Tusculum, made a last attempt to force the Romans to restore the Tarquin kings. A battle was fought at Lake Regillus (B.C. 498) between the Latins and the Romans, in which the Romans were successful. Lake Regillus has disappeared and its exact site is no longer known. It is supposed to have been situated at the foot of the Tusculan hills, about ten miles to the southeast of Rome. [2] Castor and Pollux were twin deities, the sons of Zeus (or Jupiter). Their birthplace was Sparta, in Greece, and there they had their chief temple. [3] Ides of Quintilis. The fifteenth of July. [4] lictors. The body-guard of the magistrates, armed with rods and axes. [5] The Knights. The cavalry. [6] Castor, and Mars. The temples of Castor and of Mars. [7] Forum. The market-place, or public square. [8] Yellow River. The Tiber, so called from its yellow sands. [9] Sacred Hill. A famous hill about three miles from Rome. [10] Martian Kalends. The first of March, on which a feast to Juno was held. [11] December's Nones. December the fifth, on which was held a feast to Faunus, a god of the flocks and herds. [12] whitest. We should say "a red-letter day." [13] Parthemus. A mountain range in Greece. [14] Cirrha's dome. The dome of the temple of Apollo at Delphi, near Cirrha, in Greece. [15] Adria. The Adriatic. [16] Lacedaemon. Sparta, which was governed by two kings representing two great families. [17] Porcian height. Monte Porzio, near the scene of the battle. [18] Corne. A hill near Tusculum. [19] Fair Fount. A spring in the vicinity. [20] Thirty Cities. The Latin cities, banded together in aid of the Tarquins. [21]"One spot on the margin of Lake Regillus was regarded during many ages with superstitious awe. A mark, resembling in shape a horse's hoof, was discernible in the volcanic rock; and this mark was believed to have been made by one of the celestial chargers."--_Macaulay_. [22] a Virginius. One of the family of the Virginii. [23] The consul who was elected first was usually held in greater honour than the other. [24] Gabii. A Latin city about twelve miles from Rome. [25] Conscript Fathers. The senate. The original expression is _patres conscripti_ (_patres et conscripti_), _patres_ referring to the patrician element, and _conscripti_ to the plebeian element in the senate. [26] Camerium. One of the Latin cities. [27] Master of the Knights. Chief lieutenant. [28] The Consuls usually had twelve lictors each; the Dictator twenty-four. [29] Witch's Fortress. The town of Circeii, which Macaulay associates here with Circe, the enchantress. [30] ghastly priest. The temple of Diana, in a grove near Aricia, had for its priest a runaway slave, who was to hold office until slain by another runaway slave stronger than he. [31] Ufens. A river. [32] Laurentian jungle. Marshy thickets near the town of Laurentum. [33] Carthage. On the north coast of Africa. The Carthaginians were a commercial and sea-faring people. [34] a woman. Lucretia. After she had been wronged by Sextus, she stabbed herself and died. [35] Tibur. The modern city of Tivoli. [36] Soracte. A snow-capped mountain about twenty-five miles from Rome. [37] Apulian. Apulia was one of the divisions of Italy. [38] targe. shield. [39] Pomptine. The Pontine marshes in the southern part of Latium. [40] Digentian rock. A crag near the river Digentia. [41] Bandusia. A fountain. [42] Auster. The word signifies "the stormy south wind." [43] crown. The first Roman to scale the walls of a besieged town received a crown of gold. [44] Calabrian. Calabria forms the "heel" of Italy. [45] Pruning the vines entwined around the trunks of the elms. [46] clients. Servants attached to the Patrician families. [47] Titus. Son of Tarquin the Proud. [48] Fabian. The Fabii were a famous Roman family. [49] The Julian house claimed to be descended from Iulus, son of Aeneas. [50] Velian hill. The Velian hill was not far from the Forum in Rome. [51] Crest of Flame. The flaming crest on the helmet of Mamilius. See l. 434. [52] From Aufidus to Po. In all Italy. Aufidus was a river in the south of Italy; Po, a river in the north. [53] thy brother. False Sextus, supposed to be haunted by the furies (the Greek goddesses of Vengeance) for his crime. [54] Capuan. Capua was a luxurious city in southern Italy. [55] Samothracia. An island in the Aegean, where Castor and Pollux were worshipped. [56] Tarentum. A Greek town in the south of Italy. [57] Syracuse. An important city in Sicily. [58] Eurotas. A river in Greece, flowing past the city of Sparta. [59] Vesta. The goddess of the hearth. [60] Golden Shield. The shield of Mars which had fallen from heaven during the reign of Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome. [61] Celtic plain. The north of Italy, inhabited by Celtic tribes. [62] Sire Quirinus. Romulus, the founder of Rome. [63] The Twelve. In order to prevent the shield of Mars from being stolen, eleven others were made after the same pattern, and twelve priests were appointed to guard the twelve shields. [64] High Pontiff. The chief priest. [65] Asylum. Romulus was said to have promised a refuge to all fugitives, in the newly-founded city of Rome. [66] the fire. In the temple of Vesta. [67] Dorians. The Spartans belonged to the Dorian branch of the Greek people. [68] Castor and Pollux were the special guardians of sailors at sea. When, during a thunderstorm, a light played around the masts and sails of the ship, Castor and Pollux were supposed to be present, watching over the fortunes of the vessel. THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL. PRELUDE TO PART FIRST. Over his keys the musing organist, Beginning doubtfully and far away, First lets his fingers wander as they list, And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay: Then, as the touch of his loved instrument 5 Gives hopes and fervor, nearer draws his theme, First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent Along the wavering vista of his dream.[1] Not only around our infancy Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; 10 Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais[2] climb and know it not; Over our manhood bond the skies, Against our fallen and traitor lives The great winds utter prophecies; 15 With our faint hearts the mountain strives; Its arms outstretched, the druid[3] wood Waits with its benedicite:[4] And to our age's drowsy blood Still shouts the inspiring sea.[5] 20 Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us, The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in, The priest hath his foe who comes and shrives[6] us, We bargain for the graves we lie in; At the Devil's booth are all things sold, 25 Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold; For a cap and bells our lives we pay,[7] Bubbles we earn with a whole soul's tasking: 'T is heaven alone that is given away, 'T is only God may be had for the asking, 30 There is no price set on the lavish summer, And June may be had by the poorest comer. And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, 35 And over it softly her warm ear lays: Whether we look, or whether we listen, We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; Every clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 40 And, grasping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul for grass and flowers; The flush of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in meadows green, 45 The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, And there's never a leaf or a blade too mean To be some happy creature's palace, The little bird sits at his door in the sun, Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 50 And lets his illumined being o'errun With the deluge of summer it receives; His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings; He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,-- 55 In the nice[8] ear of nature which song is the best? Now is the high-tide of the year, And whatever of life hath ebbed away Comes flooding back, with a ripply cheer, Into every bare inlet and creek and bay; 60 Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, We are happy now because God so wills it; No matter how barren the past may have been, 'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green. We sit in the warm shade and feel right well 65 How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell; We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing That skies are clear and grass is growing; The breeze comes whispering in our ear, That dandelions are blossoming near, 70 That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, That the river is bluer than the sky, That the robin is plastering his house hard by: And if the breeze kept the good news back, For other couriers we should not lack; 75 We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing,-- And hark! how clear bold chanticleer,[9] Warmed with the new wine of the year, Tells all in his lusty crowing! Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how; 80 Everything is happy now, Everything is upward striving; 'T is as easy now for the heart to be true As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,-- 'T is the natural way of living, 85 Who knows whither the clouds have fled? In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake; And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, The heart forgets its sorrow and ache; The soul partakes the season's youth, 90 And the sulphurous rifts[10] of passion and woe Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. What wonder if Sir Launfal[11] now Remembered the keeping of his vow? 95 PART FIRST. I "My golden spurs now bring to me, And bring to me my richest mail, For to-morrow I go over land and sea In search of the Holy Grail;[12] Shall never a bed for me be spread. 100 Nor shall a pillow be under my head, Till I begin my vow to keep, Here on the rushes[13] will I sleep, And perchance there may come a vision true Ere day create the world anew." 105 Slowly Sir Launfal's eyes grew dim, Slumber fell like a cloud on him, And into his soul the vision flew. II The crows flapped over by twos and threes, In the pool drowsed the cattle up to their knees, 110 The little birds sang as if it were The one day of summer in all the year And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees The castle alone in the landscape lay Like an outpost of winter, dull and gray; 115 'T was the proudest hall in the North Countree,[14] And never its gates might opened be, Save to lord or lady of high degree; Summer besieged it on every side, But the churlish stone her assaults defied; 120 She could not scale the chilly wall, Though round it for leagues her pavilions tall[16] Stretched left and right, Over the hills and out of sight; Green and broad was every tent, 125 And out of each a murmur went Till the breeze fell off at night. III The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang, And through the dark arch a charger sprang, Bearing Sir Launfal, the maiden knight, 130 In his gilded mail, that flamed so bright It seemed the dark castle had gathered all Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over its wall In his siege of three hundred summers long, And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf, 135 Had cast them forth; so, young and strong, And lightsome as a locust leaf, Sir Launfal flashed forth in his unscarred mail, To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail. IV It was morning on hill and stream and tree, 140 And morning in the young knight's heart; Only the castle moodily Rebuffed the gifts of the sunshine free, And gloomed by itself apart; The season brimmed all other things up 145 Full as the rain fills the pitcher-plant's cup. V As Sir Launfal made morn through the darksome gate, He was ware of a leper, crouched by the same, Who begged with his hand and moaned as he sate; And a loathing over Sir Launfal came, 150 The sunshine went out of his soul with a thrill, The flesh 'neath his armor did shrink and crawl. And midway its leap his heart stood still Like a frozen waterfall; For this man, so foul and bent of stature, 155 Rasped harshly against his dainty nature, And seemed the one blot on the summer morn,-- So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn. VI The leper raised not the gold from the dust: "Better to me the poor man's crust, 160 Better the blessing of the poor, Though I turn me empty from his door; That is no true alms which the hand can hold; He gives nothing but worthless gold Who gives from a sense of duty; 165 But he who gives a slender mite,[16] And gives to that which is out of sight, That thread of the all-sustaining Beauty Which runs through all and doth all unite,-- The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms, 170 The heart outstretches its eager palms, For a god goes with it and makes it store[17] To the soul that was starving in darkness before." PRELUDE TO PART SECOND. Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak, From the snow five thousand summers old: 175 On open wold and hill-top bleak It had gathered all the cold, And whirled it like a sheet on the wanderer's cheek; It carried a shiver everywhere From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare; 180 The little brook heard it and built a roof 'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof: All night by the white stars' frosty gleams He groined[18] his arches and matched his beams; Slender and clear were his crystal spars 185 As the lashes of light that trim the stars; He sculptured every summer delight In his halls and chambers out of sight; Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt.[19] 190 Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees Bending to counterfeit a breeze; Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew But silvery mosses that downward grew; Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief[20] 195 With quaint arabesques[21] of ice-fern leaf; Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and here He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops And hung them thickly with diamond drops, 200 Which crystalled the beams of moon and sun, And made a star of every one: So mortal builder's most rare device Could match this winter-palace of ice; 'T was as if every image that mirrored lay 205 In his depths serene through the summer day, Each flitting shadow of earth and sky, Lest the happy model should be lost, Had been mimicked in fairy masonry By the elfin builders of the frost. 210 Within the hall are song and laughter, The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, And sprouting is every corbel[22] and rafter With the lightsome green of ivy and holly; Through the deep gulf[23] of the chimney wide 215 Wallows the Yule-log's[24] roaring tide; The broad flame-pennons droop and flap And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, Hunted to death in its galleries blind; 220 And swift little troops of silent sparks, Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear, Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks Like herds of startled deer. But the wind without was eager and sharp, 225 Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp, And rattles and wrings The icy strings, Singing, in dreary monotone, A Christmas carol of its own, 230 Whose burden[25] still, as he might guess, Was--"Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless!" The voice of the seneschal[26] flared like a torch As he shouted the wanderer away from the porch, And he sat in the gateway and saw all night 235 The great hall-fire, so cheery and bold, Through the window-slits of the castle old, Build out its piers of ruddy light Against the drift of the cold. PART SECOND. I There was never a leaf on bush or tree 240 The bare boughs rattled shudderingly; The river was dumb and could not speak, For the frost's swift shuttles its shroud had spun; A single crow on the tree-top bleak From his shining feathers shed off the cold sun; 245 Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold, As if her veins were sapless and old, And she rose up decrepitly For a last dim look at earth and sea. II Sir Launfal turned from his own hard gate, 250 For another heir in his earldom sate; An old, bent man, worn out and frail, He came back from seeking the Holy Grail; Little he recked of his earldom's loss, No more on his surcoat[27] was blazoned the cross, 255 But deep in his soul the sign he wore, The badge of the suffering and the poor. III Sir Launfal's raiment thin and spare Was idle mail 'gainst the barbed air, For it was just at the Christmas time; 260 So he mused, as he sat, of a sunnier clime, And sought for a shelter from cold and snow In the light and warmth of long ago;[28] He sees the snake-like caravan crawl O'er the edge of the desert, black and small, 265 Then nearer and nearer, till, one by one, He can count the camels in the sun, As over the red-hot sands they pass To where, in its slender necklace of grass, The little spring laughed and leapt in the shade, 270 And with its own self like an infant played, And waved its signal of palms. IV "For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms;" The happy camels may reach the spring, But Sir Launfal sees naught save the grewsome thing,[29] 275 The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone, That cowered beside him, a thing as lone And white as the ice-isles of Northern seas In the desolate horror of his disease. V And Sir Launfal said,--"I behold in thee 280 An image of Him who died on the tree;[30] Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns,-- Thou also hast had the world's buffets and scorns. And to thy life were not denied The wounds in the hands and feet and side; 285 Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me; Behold, through him, I give to thee!" VI Then the soul of the leper stood up in his eyes And looked at Sir Launfal, and straightway he Remembered in what a haughtier guise 290 He had flung an alms to leprosie, "When he caged his young life up in gilded mail And set forth in search of the Holy Grail, The heart within him was ashes and dust; He parted in twain his single crust, 295 He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink, And gave the leper to eat and drink; 'T was a mouldy crust of coarse brown bread, 'T was water out of a wooden bowl,-- Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed, 300 And 't was red wine he drank with his thirsty soul. VII As Sir Launfal mused with a downcast face, A light shone round about the place; The leper no longer crouched at his side, But stood before him glorified, 305 Shining and tall and fair and straight As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate,--[31] Himself the Gate whereby men can Enter the temple of God in Man.[32] VIII His words were shed softer than leaves from the pine, 310 And they fell on Sir Launfal as snows on the brine, Which mingle their softness and quiet in one With the shaggy unrest they float down upon; And the voice that was calmer than silence said, "Lo, it is I, be not afraid! 315 In many climes, without avail, Thou has spent thy life for the Holy Grail; Behold it is here,--this cup which thou Didst fill at the streamlet for me but now; This crust is my body broken for thee, 320 This water His blood that died on the tree;[33] The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, In whatso we share with another's need,-- Not that which we give, but what we share,-- For the gift without the giver is bare; 325 Who bestows himself with his alms feeds three,-- Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me." IX Sir Launfal awoke, as from a swound;-- "The Grail in my castle here is found! Hang my idle armor up on the wall, 330 Let it be the spider's banquet-hall; He must be fenced with stronger mail Who would seek and find the Holy Grail." X The castle-gate stands open now, And the wanderer is welcome to the hall 335 As the hangbird[34] is to the elm-tree bough, No longer scowl the turrets tall, The Summer's long siege at last is o'er; When the first poor outcast went in at the door, She entered with him in disguise, 340 And mastered the fortress by surprise; There is no spot she loves so well on ground. She lingers and smiles there the whole year round; The meanest serf on Sir Launfal's land Has hall and bower at his command; 345 And there's no poor man in the North Countree But is lord of the earldom as much as he. --_Lowell_. [1] Just as the organist gets into the spirit of his theme by means of a dreamy prelude, so the poet by means of this introduction intends to suggest the spirit of the poem that follows. [2] Sinais. See Exodus, xix and xx. [3] Druid. The druids were the priests of the ancient Celts. [4] benedicite. Blessing, benediction. [5] No matter how engrossed we may be with worldly things, Nature is always influencing us for good. [6] shrives. Hears confession and grants absolution. [7] We give our lives in pursuit of foolish things. The cap and bells was a part of the costume of the court jester. [8] nice. discriminating, able to make fine distinctions. [9] chanticleer. A crowing cock. The bird that "sings clear." [10] rifts. Literally, clefts or fissures; used metaphorically here with reference to the effects of "passion and woe" on the soul. [11] Sir Launfal. A Knight of King Arthur's Round Table. [12] Holy Grail. According to legend, the Holy Grail is the cup or bowl from which Christ drank at the Last Supper, and which was used by Joseph of Arimathea to receive the blood from Christ's wounds when his body was removed from the cross. The Grail was taken to England by Joseph of Arimathea, and at his death it remained in the keeping of his descendants. But in the course of time, owing to the impurity of life of its guardians, the Grail disappeared; and thereafter it appeared only to those whose lives were free from sin. The search for the Grail was undertaken by many of the knights of the Round Table, but only one knight, Sir Galahad, was pure enough to see the vision. [13] rushes. Rushes were used in Mediaeval times to strew the floors of the feudal castles. [14] North Countree. The north of England. [15] Pavilion and tent, as here used, refer to the trees. [16] See Luke, xxi, 1-4. [17] store. plenty. [18] groined. The groin is the line made by the intersection of two arches. [19] crypt. A subterranean cell or chapel. [20] relief. Figures are said to be in relief when they project or stand out from the ground on which they are formed. [21] arabesques. A style of ornament, representing flowers, fruit, and foliage, adopted from the Arabs. [22] corbel. A projection from the face of a wall, supporting an arch or rafter above. [23] gulf. The opening, or throat, of the chimney. [24] Yule-log. A great log of wood laid, in ancient times, across the hearth-fire on Christmas Eve. [25] burden. refrain. [26] seneschal. High-steward; the officer who had charge of feasts and other ceremonies. [27] surcoat. A cloak worn over the armour of a knight. The surcoat of a Christian knight, was generally white, with a large red cross displayed conspicuously ("blazoned") upon it. [28] He tried to forget the cold and snow, by calling to mind pictures of the hot desert. [29] grewsome. horrible, hideous. [30] tree. the cross. [31] Beautiful Gate. See John, x, 7. [32] temple of God in Man. "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost?" I Cor., vi, 19. [33] See Luke, xxii, 19, 20. [34] hangbird. oriole. THE BUILDERS. All are architects of Fate, Working in these walls of Time,[1] Some with massive deeds and great, Some with ornaments of rhyme. Nothing useless is, or low; 5 Each thing in its plane is best; And what seems but idle show Strengthens and supports the rest. For the structure that we raise, Time is with materials filled; 10 Our to-days and yesterdays Are the blocks with which we build. Truly shape and fashion these; Leave no yawning gaps between; Think not, because no man sees, 15 Such things will remain unseen. In the elder days of Art, Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part; For the Gods see everywhere. 20 Let us do our work as well, Both the unseen and the seen; Make the house, where Gods may dwell, Beautiful, entire and clean. Else our lives are incomplete, 25 Standing in these walls of Time, Broken stairways, where the feet Stumble as they seek to climb. Build to-day, then, strong and sure With a firm and ample base 30 And ascending and secure Shall to-morrow find its place. Thus alone can we attain To those turrets, where the eye Sees the world as one vast plain, 35 And one boundless reach of sky.[2] --_Longfellow_. [1] The figure seems to be that of a great edifice (Time) within which we are building stairways (our lives) which enable us to rise to higher levels. [2] We gain a broader outlook on life. BRITISH FREEDOM.[1] It is not to be thought of that the flood Of British freedom, which, to the open sea Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity Hath flow'd "with pomp of waters unwithstood"--[2] Roused though it be full often to a mood, 5 Which spurns the check of salutary bands, That this most famous stream in bogs and sands Should perish,[3] and to evil and to good Be lost for ever. In our halls is hung Armoury of the invincible knights of old: 10 We must be free or die, who speak the tongue That Shakspeare spake--the faith and morals hold Which Milton held. In everything we're sprung Of earth's first blood, have titles manifold. --_Wordsworth_. [1] Written in 1802 or 1803, when an invasion of England by Napoleon was expected. [2] This phrase is quoted from a poem by Daniel, an Elizabethan poet. [3] in bogs and sands should perish. Should be destroyed by Napoleon. THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH.[1] I MILES STANDISH. In the Old Colony days, in Plymouth the land of the Pilgrims,[2] To and fro in a room of his simple and primitive dwelling, Clad in doublet[3] and hose, and boots of Cordovan[4] leather, Strode, with a martial air, Miles Standish the Puritan Captain. Buried in thought he seemed, with his hands behind him, and pausing 5 Ever and anon to behold his glittering weapons of warfare. Hanging in shining array along the walls of the chamber,-- Cutlass and corselet[5] of steel, and his trusty sword of Damascus,[6] Curved at the point and inscribed with its mystical[7] Arabic sentence, While underneath, in a corner, were fowling-piece, musket, and matchlock.[8] 10 Short of stature he was, but strongly built and athletic, Broad in the shoulders, deep-chested, with muscles and sinews of iron; Brown as a nut was his face, but his russet beard was already, Flaked with patches of snow, as hedges sometimes in November. Near him was seated John Alden,[9] his friend and household companion, 15 Writing with diligent speed at a table of pine by the window; Fair-haired, azure-eyed, with delicate Saxon complexion, Having the dew of his youth, and the beauty thereof, as the captives Whom Saint Gregory saw, and exclaimed, "Not Angles but Angels."[10] Youngest of all was he of the men who came in the Mayflower. 20 Suddenly breaking the silence, the diligent scribe interrupting, Spake, in the pride of his heart, Miles Standish the Captain of Plymouth. "Look at these arms," he said, "the warlike weapons that hang here Burnished and bright and clean, as if for parade or inspection! This is the sword of Damascus, I fought with in Flanders;[11] this breastplate, 25 Well I remember the day! once saved my life in a skirmish; Here in front you can see the very dint of the bullet Fired point-blank at my heart by a Spanish arcabucero.[12] Had it not been of sheer steel, the forgotten bones of Miles Standish Would at this moment be mould, in their grave in the Flemish morasses." 30 Thereupon answered John Alden, but looked not up from his writing: "Truly the breath of the Lord hath slackened the speed of the bullet; He in his mercy preserved you, to be our shield and our weapon!" Still the Captain continued, unheeding the words of the stripling: "See, how bright they are burnished, as if in an arsenal hanging; 35 That is because I have done it myself, and not left it to others. Serve yourself, would you be well served, is an excellent adage; So I take care of my arms, as you of your pens and your ink-horn. Then, too, there are my soldiers, my great, invincible army, Twelve men, all equipped, having each his rest and his matchlock, 40 Eighteen shillings a month, together with diet and pillage, And, like Caesar, I know the name of each of my soldiers!" This he said with a smile, that danced in his eyes, as the sunbeams Dance on the waves of the sea, and vanish again in a moment. Alden laughed as he wrote, and still the Captain continued: 45 "Look! you can see from this window my brazen howitzer[13] planted High on the roof of the church,[14] a preacher who speaks to the purpose, Steady, straightforward, and strong, with irresistible logic, Orthodox, flashing conviction right into the hearts of the heathen. "Now we are ready, I think, for any assault of the Indians: 50 Let them come, if they like, and the sooner they try it the better,-- Let them come if they like, be it sagamore, sachem, or powwow,[15] Aspinet, Samoset, Corbitant, Squanto, or Tokamahamon!" Long at the window he stood, and wistfully gazed on the landscape, Washed with a cold gray mist, the vapory breath of the east wind. 55 Forest and meadow and hill, and the steel-blue rim of the ocean, Lying silent and sad, in the afternoon shadows and sunshine. Over his countenance flitted a shadow like those on the landscape, Gloom intermingled with light; and his voice was subdued with emotion, Tenderness, pity, regret, as after a pause he proceeded: 60 "Yonder there, on the hill by the sea lies buried Rose Standish; Beautiful rose of love, that bloomed for me by the wayside! She was the first to die of all who came in the Mayflower! Green above her is growing the field of wheat we have sown there, Better to hide from the Indian scouts the graves of our people, 65 lest they should count them and see how many already have perished!" Sadly his face he averted, and strode up and down and was thoughtful. Fixed to the opposite wall was a shelf of books, and among them Prominent three, distinguished alike for bulk and for binding; Barriffe's Artillery Guide, and the Commentaries of Caesar, 70 Out of the Latin translated by Arthur Goldinge of London,[16] And, as if guarded by these, between them was standing the Bible. Musing a moment before them, Miles Standish paused, as if doubtful Which of the three he should choose for his consolation and comfort, Whether the wars of the Hebrews, the famous campaigns of the Romans, 75 Or the Artillery practice, designed for belligerent Christians. Finally down from its shelf he dragged the ponderous Roman, Seated himself at the window, and opened the book, and in silence Turned o'er the well-worn leaves, where thumb-marks thick on the margin, Like the trample of feet proclaimed the battle was hottest. 80 Nothing was heard in the room but the hurrying pen of the stripling, Busily writing epistles important, to go by the Mayflower,[17] Ready to sail on the morrow, or next day at latest, God willing! Homeward bound with the tidings of all that terrible winter, Letters written by Alden, and full of the name of Priscilla,[18] 85 Full of the name and the fame of the Puritan maiden Priscilla! II LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. Nothing was heard in the room but the hurrying pen of the stripling, Or an occasional sigh from the laboring heart of the Captain, Reading the marvellous words and achievements of Julius Caesar. After a while he exclaimed, as he smote with his hand, palm downwards, 90 Heavily on the page: "A wonderful man was this Caesar! You are a writer, and I am a fighter, but here is a fellow Who could both write and fight, and in both was equally skilful!" Straightway answered and spake John Alden, the comely, the youthful: "Yes, he was equally skilled, as you say, with his pen and his weapons. 95 Somewhere have I read, but where I forget, he could dictate Seven letters at once, at the same time writing his memoirs." "Truly," continued, the Captain, not heeding or hearing the other, "Truly a wonderful man was Caius Julius Caesar! Better be first, he said, in a little Iberian village, 100 Than be second in Rome,[19] and I think he was right when he said it. Twice was he married before he was twenty, and many times after, Battles five hundred he fought, and a thousand cities he conquered; He, too, fought, in Flanders, as he himself has recorded; Finally he was stabbed by his friend, the orator Brutus! 105 Now, do you know what he did on a certain occasion in Flanders, When the rear-guard of his army retreated, the front giving way too, And the immortal Twelfth Legion was crowded so closely together There was no room for their swords? Why, he seized a shield from a soldier, Put himself straight at the head of his troops, and commanded the captains, 110 Calling on each by his name, to order forward the ensigns; Then to widen the ranks, and give more room for their weapons; So he won the day, the battle of something-or-other. That's what I always say; if you wish a thing to be well done, You must do it yourself, you must not leave it to others!" 115 All was silent again; the Captain continued his reading. Nothing was heard in the room but the hurrying pen of the stripling Writing epistles important to go next day by the Mayflower, Filled with the name and the fame of the Puritan maiden Priscilla; Every sentence began or closed with the name of Priscilla, 120 Till the treacherous pen, to which he confided the secret, Strove to betray it by singing and shouting the name of Priscilla! Finally closing his book, with a bang of the ponderous cover, Sudden and loud as the sound of a soldier grounding his musket, Thus to the young man spake Miles Standish the Captain of Plymouth: 125 "When you have finished your work, I have something important to tell you. Be not however in haste; I can wait, I shall not be impatient!" Straightway Alden replied, as he folded the last of his letters, Pushing his papers aside, and giving respectful attention: "Speak: for whenever you speak, I am always ready to listen. 130 Always ready to hear whatever pertains to Miles Standish." Thereupon answered the Captain, embarrassed, and culling his phrases; "'T is not good for a man to be alone, say the Scriptures.[20] This I have said before, and again and again I repeat it; Every hour in the day, I think it, and feel it, and say it. 135 Since Rose Standish died, my life has been weary and dreary, Sick at heart have I been, beyond the healing of friendship. Oft in my lonely hours have I thought of the maiden Priscilla. She is alone in the world; her father and mother and brother Died in the winter together; I saw her going and coming, 140 Now to the grave of the dead, and now to the bed of the dying. Patient, courageous, and strong, and said to myself, that if ever There were angels on earth, as there are angels in heaven, Two have I seen and known, and the angel whose name is Priscilla Holds in my desolate life the place which the other abandoned. 145 Long have I cherished the thought, but never have dared to reveal it, Being a coward in this, though valiant enough for the most part. Go to the damsel Priscilla, the loveliest maiden of Plymouth, Say that a blunt old Captain, a man not of words but of actions, Offers his hand and his heart, the hand and heart of a soldier. 150 Not in these words, you know, but this in short is my meaning; I am a maker of war, and not a maker of phrases, You, who are bred as a scholar, can say it in elegant language, Such as you read in your books of the pleadings and wooings of lovers, Such as you think best adapted to win the heart of a maiden." 155 "When he had spoken, John Alden, the fair-haired, taciturn stripling, All aghast at his words, surprised, embarrassed, bewildered, Trying to mask his dismay by treating the subject with lightness, Trying to smile, and yet feeling his heart stand still in his bosom. Just as a timepiece stops in a house that is stricken by lightning. 160 Thus made answer and spake, or rather stammered than answered: "Such a message as that, I am sure I should mangle and mar it; If you would have it well done,--I am only repeating your maxim,-- You must do it yourself, you must not leave it to others!" But with the air of a man whom nothing can turn from his purpose 165 Gravely shaking his head, made answer the Captain of Plymouth: "Truly the maxim is good, and I do not mean to gainsay it; But we must use it discreetly, and not waste powder for nothing. Now, as I said before, I was never a maker of phrases. I can march up to a fortress and summon the place to surrender, 170 But march up to a woman with such a proposal, I dare not. I'm not afraid of bullets, nor shot from the mouth of a cannon, But of a thundering 'No!' point-blank from the mouth of a woman, That I confess I'm afraid of, nor am I ashamed to confess it! So you must grant my request, for you are an elegant scholar, 175 Having the graces of speech, and skill in the turning of phrases," Taking the hand of his friend; who still was reluctant and doubtful, Holding it long in his own, and pressing it kindly, he added: "Though I have spoken thus lightly, yet deep is the feeling that prompts me; Surely you cannot refuse what I ask in the name of our friendship!" 180 Then made answer John Alden: "The name of friendship is sacred; What you demand in that name, I have not the power to deny you!" So the strong will prevailed, subduing and moulding the gentler, Friendship prevailed over love, and Alden went on his errand. III THE LOVER'S ERRAND. So the strong will prevailed, and Alden went on his errand, 185 Out of the street of the village, and into the paths of the forest, Into the tranquil woods, where bluebirds and robins were building Towns in the populous trees, with hanging gardens of verdure, Peaceful, aerial cities of joy and affection, and freedom! All around him was calm, but within him commotion and conflict, 190 Love contending with friendship, and self with each generous impulse. To and fro in his breast his thoughts were heaving and dashing, As in a foundering ship, with every roll of the vessel, Washes the bitter sea, the merciless surge of the ocean! "Must I relinquish it all," he cried with a wild lamentation,-- 195 "Must I relinquish it all, the joy, the hope, the illusion?[21] Was it for this I have loved, and waited, and worshipped in silence! Was it for this I have followed the flying feet and the shadow Over the wintry sea, to the desolate shores of New England? Truly the heart is deceitful, and out of its depths of corruption 200 Rise, like an exhalation, the misty phantoms of passion; Angels of light they seem, but are only delusions of Satan. All is clear to me now; I feel it, I see it distinctly! This is the hand of the Lord; it is laid upon me in anger, For I have followed too much the heart's desires and devices, 205 Worshipping Astaroth blindly, and impious idols of Baal.[22] This is the cross I must bear; the sin and the swift retribution." So through the Plymouth woods John Alden went, on his errand; Crossing the brook at the ford, where it brawled over pebble and shallow, Gathering still, as he went, the Mayflowers[23] blooming around him, 210 Fragrant, filling the air with a strange and wonderful sweetness, Children lost in the woods, and covered with leaves in their slumber. "Puritan flowers," he said, "and the type of Puritan maidens, Modest and simple and sweet, the very type of Priscilla! So I will take them to her; to Priscilla the Mayflower of Plymouth, 215 Modest and simple and sweet, as a parting gift will I take them; Breathing their silent farewells, as they fade and wither and perish, Soon to be thrown away as is the heart of the giver." So through the Plymouth woods John Alden went on his errand; Came to an open space, and saw the disk of the ocean, 220 Sailless, sombre and cold with the comfortless breath of the east-wind; Saw the new-built house, and people at work in a meadow; Heard, as he drew near the door, the musical voice of Priscilla Singing the hundredth Psalm, the grand old Puritan anthem, Music that Luther sang to the sacred words of the Psalmist, 225 Full of the breath of the Lord, consoling and comforting many. Then, as he opened the door, he beheld the form of the maiden, Seated beside her wheel, and the carded wool like a snow-drift Piled at her knee, her white hands feeding the ravenous spindle, While with her foot on the treadle she guided the wheel in its motion. 230 Open wide on her lap lay the well-worn psalm-book of Ainsworth,[34] Printed in Amsterdam, the words and the music together, Rough-hewn, angular notes, like stones in the wall of a churchyard, Darkened and overhung by the running vine of the verses. Such was the book from whose pages she sang the old Puritan anthem, 235 She, the Puritan girl, in the solitude of the forest, Making the humble house and the modest apparel of homespun Beautiful with her beauty, and rich with the wealth of her being! Over him rushed, like a wind that is keen and cold and relentless, Thoughts of what might have been, and the weight and woe of his errand; 240 All the dreams that had faded, and all the hopes that had vanished, All his life henceforth a dreary and tenantless mansion, Haunted by vain regrets, and pallid, sorrowful faces. Still he said to himself, and almost fiercely he said it, "Let not him that putteth his hand to the plough look backwards;[35] 245 Though the ploughshare cut through the flowers of life to its fountains, Though it pass o'er the graves of the dead and the hearths of the living, It is the will of the Lord, and his mercy endureth forever!" So he entered the house; and the hum of the wheel and the singing Suddenly ceased; for Priscilla, aroused by his step on the threshold, 250 Rose as he entered and gave him her hand, in signal of welcome, Saying, "I knew it was you, when I heard your step in the passage; For I was thinking of you, as I sat there singing and spinning." Awkward and dumb with delight, that a thought of him had been mingled Thus in the sacred psalm, that came from the heart of the maiden, 255 Silent before her he stood, and gave her the flowers for an answer, Finding no words for his thought. He remembered that day in the winter, After the first great snow, when he broke a path from the village, Reeling and plunging along through the drifts that encumbered the doorway, Stamping the snow from his feet as he entered the house, and Priscilla 260 Laughed at his snowy locks, and gave him a seat by the fireside, Grateful and pleased to know he had thought of her in the snow-storm. Had he but spoken then! perhaps not in vain had he spoken; Now it was all too late; the golden moment had vanished! So he stood there abashed, and gave her the flowers for an answer. 265 Then they sat down and talked of the birds and the beautiful Spring-time; Talked of their friends at home, and the Mayflower that sailed on the morrow. "I have been thinking all day," said gently the Puritan maiden, "Dreaming all night, and thinking all day, of the hedge-rows of England,-- They are in blossom now, and the country is all like a garden; 270 Thinking of lanes and fields, and the song of the lark and the linnet, Seeing the village street, and familiar faces of neighbors Going about as of old, and stopping to gossip together, And, at the end of the street, the village church, with the ivy Climbing the old gray tower, and the quiet graves in the churchyard. 275 Kind are the people I live with, and dear to me my religion; Still my heart is so sad, that I wish myself back in Old England. You will say it is wrong, but I cannot help it: I almost Wish myself back in Old England, I feel so lonely and wretched." Thereupon answered the youth: "Indeed I do not condemn you; 280 Stouter hearts than a woman's have quailed in this terrible winter. Yours is tender and trusting, and needs a stronger to lean on; So I have come to you now, with an offer and proffer of marriage Made by a good man and true, Miles Standish the Captain of Plymouth!" Thus he delivered his message, the dexterous writer of letters,-- 285 Did not embellish the theme, nor array it in beautiful phrases, But came straight to the point, and blurted it out like a school-boy; Even the Captain himself could hardly have said it more bluntly. Mute with amazement and sorrow, Priscilla the Puritan maiden Looked into Alden's face, her eyes dilated with wonder, 290 Feeling his words like a blow, that stunned her and rendered her speechless; Till at length she exclaimed, interrupting the ominous silence: "If the great Captain of Plymouth is so very eager to wed me, Why does he not come himself, and take the trouble to woo me? If I am not worth the wooing, I surely am not worth the winning!" 295 Then John Alden began explaining and smoothing the matter, Making it worse as he went, by saying the Captain was busy,-- Had no time for such things;--such things! the words grated harshly Fell on the ear of Priscilla; and swift as a flash she made answer: "Has he no time for such things, as you call it, before he is married, 300 Would he be likely to find it, or make it, after the wedding? That is the way with you men; you don't understand us, you cannot. When you have made up your minds, after thinking of this one and that one, Choosing, selecting, rejecting, comparing one with another, Then you make known your desire, with abrupt and sudden avowal, 305 And are offended and hurt, and indignant, perhaps, that a woman Does not respond at once to a love that she never suspected, Does not attain at a bound the height to which you have been climbing. This is not right nor just, for surely a woman's affection Is not a thing to be asked for, and had for only the asking. 310 When one is truly in love, one not only says it, but shows it Had he but waited awhile, had he only showed that he loved me, Even this Captain of yours--who knows?--at last might have won me, Old and rough as he is, but now it never can happen." Still John Alden went on, unheeding the words of Priscilla, 315 Urging the suit of his friend, explaining, persuading, expanding; Spoke of his courage and skill, and of all his battles in Flanders, How with the people of God he had chosen to suffer affliction, How, in return for his zeal, they had made him Captain of Plymouth; He was a gentleman born, could trace his pedigree plainly 320 Back to Hugh Standish of Duxbury Hall, in Lancashire, England, Who was the son of Ralph; and the grandson of Thurston de Standish; Heir unto vast estates, of which he was basely defrauded, Still bore the family arms, and had for his crest a cock argent Combed and wattled gules,[26] and all the rest of the blazon. 325 He was a man of honor, of noble and generous nature; Though he was rough, he was kindly; she knew how during the winter He had attended the sick, with a hand as gentle as woman's; Somewhat hasty and hot, he could not deny it, and headstrong, Stern as a soldier might be, but hearty, and placable always, 330 Not to be laughed at and scorned, because he was little of stature; For he was great of heart, magnanimous, courtly, courageous; Any woman in Plymouth, nay, any woman in England, Might be happy and proud to be called the wife of Miles Standish! But as he warmed and glowed, in his simple and eloquent language, 335 Quite forgetful of self, and full of the praise of his rival, Archly the maiden smiled, and, with eyes overrunning with laughter, Said, in a tremulous voice, "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" IV JOHN ALDEN. Into the open air John Alden, perplexed and bewildered, Rushed like a man insane, and wandered alone by the sea-side, 340 Paced up and down the sands, and bared his head to the east-wind, Cooling his heated brow, and the fire and fever within him. Slowly, as out of the heavens, with apocalyptical splendors, Sank the City of God, in the vision of John the Apostle,[27] So, with its cloudy walls of chrysolite, jasper, and sapphire, 345 Sank the broad red sun, and over its turrets uplifted Glimmered the golden reed of the angel who measured the city. "Welcome, O wind of the East!" he exclaimed in his wild exultation, "Welcome, O wind of the East, from the caves of the misty Atlantic! Blowing o'er fields of dulse,[38] and measureless meadows of sea-grass, 350 Blowing o'er rocky wastes, and the grottos and gardens of ocean! Lay thy cold, moist hand on my burning forehead, and wrap me Close in thy garments of mist, to allay the fever within me!" Like an awakened conscience, the sea was moaning and tossing, Beating remorseful and loud the mutable sands of the sea-shore, 355 Fierce in his soul was the struggle and tumult of passions contending; Love triumphant and crowned, and friendship wounded and bleeding, Passionate cries of desire, and importunate pleadings of duty! "Is it my fault," he said, "that the maiden has chosen between us? Is it my fault that he failed,--my fault that I am the victor? 360 Then within him there thundered a voice, like the voice of the Prophet: "It hath displeased the Lord!"--and he thought of David's transgression,[29] Bathsheba's beautiful face, and his friend in the front of the battle! Shame and confusion of guilt, and abasement and self-condemnation, Overwhelmed him at once; and he cried in the deepest contrition: 365 "It hath displeased the Lord! It is the temptation of Satan!" Then, uplifting his head, he looked at the sea, and beheld there Dimly the shadowy form of the Mayflower riding at anchor, Rocked on the rising tide, and ready to sail on the morrow; Heard the voices of men through the mist, the rattle of cordage 370 Thrown on the deck, the shouts of the mate, and the sailors' "Ay, ay, Sir!" Clear and distinct, but not loud, in the dripping air of the twilight. Still for a moment he stood, and listened, and stared at the vessel, Then went hurriedly on, as one who, seeing a phantom, Stops, then quickens his pace, and follows the beckoning, shadow. 375 "Yes, it is plain, to me now," he murmured; "the hand of the Lord is Leading me out of the land of darkness, the bondage of error, Through the sea, that shall lift the walls of its waters around me, Hiding me, cutting me off, from the cruel thoughts that pursue me. Back will I go o'er the ocean, this dreary land will abandon, 380 Her whom I may not love, and him whom my heart has offended. Better to be in my grave in the green old churchyard in England, Close by my mother's side, and among the dust of my kindred; Better be dead and forgotten, than living in shame and dishonor! Sacred and safe and unseen, in the dark of the narrow chamber 385 With me my secret shall lie, like a buried jewel that glimmers Bright on the hand that is dust, in the chambers of silence and darkness,-- Yes, as the marriage ring of the great espousal hereafter!" Thus as he spake, he turned, in the strength of his strong resolution, Leaving behind him the shore, and hurried along in the twilight, 390 Through the congenial gloom of the forest silent and sombre, Till he beheld the lights in the seven houses of Plymouth, Shining like seven stars in the dusk and mist of the evening. Soon he entered his door, and found the redoubtable Captain Sitting alone, and absorbed in the martial pages of Caesar, 395 Fighting some great campaign in Hainault or Brabant or Flanders.[30] "Long have you been on your errand," he said with a cheery demeanor, Even as one who is waiting an answer, and fears not the issue. "Not far off is the house, although the woods are between us; But you have lingered so long, that while you were going and coming 400 I have fought ten battles and sacked and demolished a city. Come, sit down, and in order relate to me all that has happened." Then John Alden spake, and related the wondrous adventure From beginning to end, minutely, just as it happened; How he had seen Priscilla, and how he had sped in his courtship, 405 Only smoothing a little, and softening down her refusal. But when he came at length to the words Priscilla had spoken, Words so tender and cruel, "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" Up leaped the Captain of Plymouth, and stamped on the floor, till his armor Clanged on the wall, where it hung, with a sound of sinister omen. 410 All his pent-up wrath burst forth in a sudden explosion, E'en as a hand-grenade,[31] that scatters destruction around it. Wildly he shouted, and loud: "John Alden! you have betrayed me! Me, Miles Standish, your friend! have supplanted, defrauded, betrayed me! One of my ancestors ran his sword through the heart of Wat Tyler;[32] 415 Who shall prevent me from running my own through the heart of a traitor? Yours is the greater treason, for yours is a treason to friendship! You, who lived under my roof, whom I cherished and loved as a brother; You, who have fed at my board, and drunk at my cup, to whose keeping I have intrusted my honor, my thoughts the most sacred and secret,-- 420 You, too, Brutus! ah, woe to the name of friendship hereafter! Brutus was Caesar's friend, and you were mine, but hence-forward Let there be nothing between us save war, and implacable hatred!" So spake the Captain of Plymouth, and strode about in the chamber, Chafing and choking with rage, like cords were the veins on his temples. 425 But in the midst of his anger a man appeared at the doorway, Bringing in uttermost haste a message of urgent importance, Rumors of danger and war and hostile incursions of Indians! Straightway the Captain paused, and, without further question or parley, Took from the nail on the wall his sword with its scabbard of iron, 430 Buckled the belt round his waist, and, frowning fiercely, departed. Alden was left alone. He heard the clank of the scabbard Growing fainter and fainter, and dying away in the distance. Then he arose from his seat, and looked forth into the darkness, Felt the cool air blow on his cheek, that was hot with the insult, 435 Lifted his eyes to the heavens, and, folding his hands as in childhood, Prayed in the silence of night to the Father who seeth in secret. Meanwhile the choleric Captain strode wrathful away to the council, Found it already assembled, impatiently waiting his coming; Men in the middle of life, austere and grave in deportment, 440 Only one of them old, the hill that was nearest to heaven, Covered with snow, but erect, the excellent Elder of Plymouth.[33] God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this planning, Then had sifted the wheat, as the living seed of a nation; So say the chronicles' old, and such is the faith of the people! 445 Near them was standing an Indian, in attitude stern and defiant, Naked down to the waist, and grim and ferocious in aspect; While on the table before them was lying unopened a Bible, Ponderous, bound in leather, brass-studded, printed in Holland, And beside it outstretched the skin of a rattlesnake glittered, 450 Filled, like a quiver, with arrows: a signal and challenge of warfare, Brought by the Indian, and speaking with arrowy tongues of defiance. This Miles Standish beheld, as he entered, and heard them debating What were an answer befitting the hostile message and menace, Talking of tins and of that, contriving, suggesting, objecting; 455 One voice only for peace, and that the voice of the Elder, Judging it wise and well that some at least were converted, Rather than any were slain, for this was but Christian behavior! Then out spake Miles Standish, the stalwart Captain of Plymouth, Muttering deep in his throat, for his voice was husky with anger, 460 "What! do you mean to make war with milk and the water of roses? Is it to shoot red squirrels you have your howitzer planted There on the roof of the church, or is it to shoot red devils? Truly the only tongue that is understood by a savage Must be the tongue of fire that speaks from the mouth of the cannon!" 465 Thereupon answered and said the excellent Elder of Plymouth, Somewhat amazed and alarmed at this irreverent language: "Not so thought Saint Paul, nor yet the other Apostles; Not from the cannon's mouth were the tongues of fire they spake with!"[34] But unheeded fell this mild rebuke on the Captain, 470 Who had advanced to the table, and thus continued discoursing: "Leave this matter to me, for to me by right it pertaineth. War is a terrible trade; but in the cause that is righteous, Sweet is the smell of powder, and thus I answer the challenge!" Then from the rattlesnake's skin, with a sudden, contemptuous gesture, 475 Jerking the Indian arrows, he filled it with powder and bullets Full to the very jaws, and handed it back to the savage, Saying, in thundering tones; "Here, take it! this is your answer!" Silently out of the room then glided the glistening savage, Bearing the serpent's skin, and seeming himself like a serpent, 480 Winding his sinuous way in the dark to the depths of the forest. V THE SAILING OF THE MAYFLOWER. Just in the gray of the dawn, as the mists uprose from the meadows, There was a stir and a sound in the slumbering village of Plymouth; Clanging and clicking of arms, and the order imperative, "Forward!" Given in tone suppressed, a tramp of feet, and then silence. 485 Figures ten, in the mist, marched slowly out of the village. Standish the stalwart it was, with eight of his valorous army, Led by their Indian guide, by Hobomok, friend of the white men, Northward marching to quell the sudden revolt of the savage. Giants they seemed in the mist, or the mighty men of King David; 490 Giants in heart they were, who believed in God and the Bible,-- Ay, who believed in the smiting of Midianites and Philistines, Over them gleamed far off the crimson banners of morning; Under them loud on the sands, the serried billows, advancing, Fired along the line, and in regular order retreated. 495 Many a mile had they marched, when at length the village of Plymouth Woke from its sleep, and arose, intent on its manifold labors. Sweet was the air and soft; and slowly the smoke from the chimneys Rose over roofs of thatch, and pointed steadily eastward; Men came forth from the doors, and paused and talked of the weather, 500 Said that the wind had changed, and was blowing fair for the Mayflower; Talked of their Captain's departure, and all the dangers that menaced, He being gone, the town, and what should be done in his absence. Merrily sang the birds, and the tender voices of women Consecrated with hymns the common cares of the household. 505 Out of the sea rose the sun, and the billows rejoiced at his coming; Beautiful were his feet on the purple tops of the mountains, Beautiful on the sails of the Mayflower riding at anchor, Battered and blackened and worn by all the storms of the winter. Loosely against her masts was hanging and flapping her canvas, 510 Rent by so many gales, and patched by the hands of the sailors. Suddenly from her side, as the sun rose over the ocean, Darted a puff of smoke, and floated seaward; anon rang Loud over field and forest the cannon's roar, and the echoes Heard and repeated the sound, the signal-gun of departure! 515 Ah! but with louder echoes replied the hearts of the people! Meekly, in voices subdued, the chapter was read from the Bible, Meekly the prayer was begun, but ended in fervent entreaty! Then from their houses in haste came forth the Pilgrims of Plymouth, Men and women and children, all hurrying down to the seashore, 520 Eager, with tearful eyes, to say farewell to the Mayflower, Homeward bound o'er the sea, and leaving them here in the desert. Foremost among them was Alden. All night he had lain without slumber, Turning and tossing about in the heat and unrest of his fever. He had beheld Miles Standish, who came back late from the council, 535 Stalking into the room, and heard him mutter and murmur, Sometimes it seemed a prayer, and sometimes it sounded like swearing. Once he had come to the bed, and stood there a moment in silence; Then he had turned away, and said: "I will not awake him; Let him sleep on, it is best; for what is the use of more talking!" 530 Then he extinguished the light, and threw himself down on his pallet, Dressed as he was, and ready to start at the break of the morning,-- Covered himself with the cloak he had worn in his campaigns in Flanders,-- Slept as a soldier sleeps in his bivouac, ready for action. But with the dawn he arose; in the twilight Alden beheld him 535 Put on his corselet of steel, and all the rest of his armor, Buckle about his waist his trusty blade of Damascus, Take from the corner his musket, and so stride out of the chamber. Often the heart of the youth had burned and yearned to embrace him, Often his lips had essayed to speak, imploring for pardon; 540 All the old friendship came back with its tender and grateful emotions; But his pride overmastered the nobler nature within him,-- Pride, and the sense of his wrong, and the burning fire of the insult. So he beheld his friend departing in anger, but spake not, Saw him go forth to danger, perhaps to death, and he spake not! 545 Then he arose from his bed, and heard what the people were saying, Joined in the talk at the door, with Stephen and Richard and Gilbert,[35] Joined in the morning prayer, and in the reading of Scripture, And, with the others, in haste went hurrying down to the sea-shore, Down to the Plymouth Rock, that had been to their feet as a doorstep 550 Into a world unknown,--the corner-stone of a nation! There with his boat was the Master, already a little impatient Lest he should lose the tide, or the wind might shift to the eastward, Square-built, hearty, and strong, with an odor of ocean about him, Speaking with this one and that, and cramming letters and parcels 555 Into his pockets capacious, and messages mingled together Into his narrow brain, till at last he was wholly bewildered. Nearer the boat stood Alden, with one foot placed on the gunwale,[36] One still firm on the rock, and talking at times with the sailors, Seated erect on the thwarts,[37] all ready and eager for starting, 560 He too was eager to go, and thus put an end to his anguish, Thinking to fly from despair, that swifter than keel is or canvas, Thinking to drown in the sea the ghost that would rise and pursue him. But as he gazed on the crowd, he beheld the form of Priscilla Standing dejected among them, unconscious of all that was passing. 565 Fixed were her eyes upon his, as if she divined his intention, Fixed with a look so sad, so reproachful, imploring, and patient, That with a sudden revulsion his heart recoiled from its purpose, As from the verge of a crag, where one step more is destruction. Strange is the heart of man, with its quick, mysterious instincts! 570 Strange is the life of man, and fatal or fated are moments, Whereupon turn, as on hinges, the gates of the wall adamantine[38] "Here I remain!" he exclaimed, as he looked at the heavens above him, Thanking the Lord whose breath had scattered the mist and the madness, Wherein, blind and lost, to death he was staggering headlong. 575 "Yonder snow-white cloud, that floats in the ether above me, Seems like a hand that is pointing, and beckoning over the ocean. There is another hand, that is not so spectral and ghost-like, Holding me, drawing me back, and clasping mine for protection. Float, O hand of cloud, and vanish away in the ether! 580 Roll thyself up like a fist, to threaten, and daunt me; I heed not Either your warning or menace, or any omen of evil! There is no land so sacred, no air so pure and so wholesome, As is the air she breathes, and the soil that is pressed by her footsteps. Here for her sake will I stay, and like an invisible presence 585 Hover around her forever, protecting, supporting her weakness; Yes! as my foot was the first that stepped on this rock at the landing, So, with the blessing of God, shall it be the last at the leaving!" Meanwhile the Master alert, but with dignified air and important, Scanning with watchful eye the tide and the wind and the weather, 590 Walked about on the sands, and the people crowded around him Saying a few last words, and enforcing his careful remembrance. Then, taking each by the hand, as if he were grasping a tiller, Into the boat he sprang, and in haste shoved off to his vessel, Glad in his heart to get rid of all this worry and flurry, 595 Glad to be gone from a land of sand and sickness and sorrow, Short allowance of victual, and plenty of nothing but Gospel! Lost in the sound of the oars was the last farewell of the Pilgrims. O strong hearts and true! not one went back in the Mayflower! No, not one looked back, who had set his hand to this ploughing! 600 Soon we heard on board the shouts and songs of the sailors Heaving the windlass round, and hoisting the ponderous anchor. Then the yards[39] were braced, and all sails set to the west-wind, Blowing steady and strong, and the Mayflower sailed from the harbor, Rounded the point of the Gurnet,[40] and leaving far to the southward 605 Island and cape of sand, and the Field of the First Encounter,[41] Took the wind on her quarter, and stood for the open Atlantic, Borne on the sand of the sea, and the swelling hearts of the Pilgrims. Long in silence they watched, the receding sail of the vessel, Much endeared to them all, as something living and human; 610 Then, as it filled with the spirit, and wrapped in a vision prophetic, Baring his hoary head, the excellent Elder of Plymouth. Said, "Let us pray!" and they prayed, and thanked the Lord and took courage. Mournfully sobbed the waves at the base of the rock, and above them Bowed and whispered the wheat on the hill of death, and their kindred 615 Seemed to awake in their graves, and to join in the prayer that they uttered. Sun-illumined and white, on the eastern verge of the ocean Gleamed the departing sail, like a marble slab in a graveyard; Buried beneath it lay forever all hope of escaping, Lo! as they turned to depart, they saw the form of an Indian, 620 Watching them from the hill; but while they spake with each other, Pointing with outstretched hands, and saying, "Look!" he had vanished. So they returned to their homes; but Alden lingered a little, Musing alone on the shore, and watching the wash of the billows Round the base of the rock, and the sparkle and flash of the sunshine, 625 Like the spirit of God, moving visibly over the waters.[42] VI PRISCILLA. Thus for a while he stood, and mused by the shore of the ocean, Thinking of many things, and most of all of Priscilla; And as if thought had the power to draw to itself, like the loadstone, Whatsoever it touches, by subtile laws of its nature, 630 Lo! as he turned to depart, Priscilla was standing beside him. "Are you so much offended, you will not speak to me?" said she. "Am I so much to blame, that yesterday, when you were pleading Warmly the cause of another, my heart, impulsive and wayward, Pleaded your own, and spake out, forgetful perhaps of decorum? 635 Certainly you can forgive me for speaking so frankly, for saying What I ought not to have said, yet now I can never unsay it; For there are moments in life, when the heart is so full of emotion, That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret, 640 Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together. Yesterday I was shocked, when I heard you speak of Miles Standish, Praising his virtues, transforming his very defects into virtues, Praising his courage and strength, and even his fighting in Flanders, As if by fighting alone you could win the heart of a woman, 645 Quite overlooking yourself and the rest, in exalting your hero. Therefore I spake as I did, by an irresistible impulse. You will forgive me, I hope, for the sake of the friendship between us, Which is too true and too sacred to be so easily broken!" Thereupon answered John Alden, the scholar, the friend of Miles Standish: 650 "I was not angry with you, with myself alone I was angry, Seeing how badly I managed the matter I had in my keeping." "No!" interrupted the maiden, with answer prompt, and decisive; "No; you were angry with me, for speaking so frankly and freely. I was wrong, I acknowledge; for it is the fate of a woman 655 Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is speechless, Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence. Hence is the inner life of so many suffering women Sunless and silent and deep, like subterranean rivers Running through caverns of darkness, unheard, unseen, and unfruitful, 660 Chafing their channels of stone, with endless and profitless murmurs." Thereupon answered John Alden, the young man, the lover of women: "Heaven forbid it, Priscilla; and truly they seem to me always More like the beautiful rivers that watered the garden of Eden,[43] More like the river Euphrates, through deserts of Havilah flowing, 665 Filling the land with delight, and memories sweet of the garden!" "Ah, by these words, I can see," again interrupted the maiden, "How very little you prize me, or care for what I am saying. When from the depths of my heart, in pain and with secret misgiving, Frankly I speak to you, asking for sympathy only and kindness, 670 Straightway you take up my words, that are plain and direct and in earnest, Turn them away from their meaning, and answer with flattering phrases. This is not right, is not just, is not true to the best that is in you; For I know and esteem you, and feel that your nature is noble, Lifting mine up to a higher, a more ethereal level. 675 Therefore I value your friendship, and feel it perhaps the more keenly If you say aught that implies I am only as one among many, If you make use of those common and complimentary phrases Most men think so fine, in dealing and speaking with women, But which women reject as insipid, if not as insulting." 680 Mute and amazed was Alden; and listened and looked at Priscilla, Thinking he never had seen her more fair, more divine in her beauty. He who but yesterday pleaded so glibly the cause of another, Stood there embarrassed and silent, and seeking in vain for an answer. So the maiden went on, and little divined or imagined 685 What was at work in his heart, that made him so awkward and speechless. "Let us, then, be what we are, and speak what we think, and in all things Keep ourselves loyal to truth, and the sacred professions of friendship. It is no secret I tell you, nor am I ashamed to declare it: I have liked to be with you, to see you, to speak with you always. 690 So I was hurt at your words, and a little affronted to hear you Urge me to marry your friend, though he were the Captain Miles Standish. For I must tell you the truth: much more to me is our friendship Than all the love he could give, were he twice the hero you think him." Then she extended her hand, and Alden, who eagerly grasped it, 695 Felt all the wounds in his heart, that were aching and bleeding so sorely, Healed by the touch of that hand, and he said, with a voice full of feeling: "Yes, we must ever be friends; and of all who offer you friendship Let me be ever the first, the truest, the nearest and dearest!" Casting a farewell look at the glimmering sail of the Mayflower 700 Distant, but still in sight, and sinking below the horizon, Homeward together they walked, with a strange, indefinite feeling, That all the rest had departed and left them alone in the desert. But, as they went through the fields in the blessing and smile of the sunshine, Lighter grew their hearts, and Priscilla said very archly: 705 "Now that our terrible Captain has gone in pursuit of the Indians, Where he is happier far than he would be commanding a household, You may speak boldly, and tell me of all that happened between you, When you returned last night, and said how ungrateful you found me." Thereupon answered John Alden, and told her the whole of the story,-- 710 Told her his own despair, and the direful wrath of Miles Standish. Whereat the maiden smiled, and said between laughing and earnest, "He is a little chimney, and heated hot in a moment!" But as he gently rebuked her, and told her how he had suffered,-- How he had even determined to sail that day in the Mayflower, 715 And had remained for her sake, on hearing the dangers that threatened,-- All her manner was changed, and she said with a faltering accent, "Truly I thank you for this: how good you have been to me always!" Thus, as a pilgrim devout, who toward Jerusalem journeys, Taking three steps in advance, and one reluctantly backward, 730 Urged by importunate zeal, and withheld by pangs of contrition; Slowly but steadily onward, receding yet ever advancing, Journeyed this Puritan youth to the Holy Land of his longings, Urged by the fervor of love, and withheld by remorseful misgivings. VII THE MARCH OF MILES STANDISH.[44] Meanwhile the stalwart Miles Standish was marching steadily northward, 725 Winding through forest and swamp, and along the trend of the sea-shore, All day long, with hardly a halt, the fire of his anger Burning and crackling within, and the sulphurous odor of powder Seeming more sweet to his nostrils than all the scents of the forest. Silent and moody he went, and much he revolved his discomfort; 730 He who was used to success, and to easy victories always, Thus to be flouted, rejected, and laughed to scorn by a maiden, Thus to be mocked and betrayed by the friend whom most he had trusted! Ah! 't was too much to be borne, and he fretted and chafed in his armor! "I alone am to blame," he muttered, "for mine was the folly. 735 What has a rough old soldier, grown grim and gray in the harness, Used to the camp and its ways, to do with the wooing of maidens? 'T was but a dream,--let it pass,--let it vanish like so many others! "What I thought was a flower, is only a weed, and is worthless; Out of my heart will I pluck it, and throw it away, and henceforward 740 Be but a fighter of battles, a lover and wooer of dangers." Thus he revolved in his mind his sorry defeat and discomfort, While he was marching by day or lying at night in the forest, Looking up at the trees and the constellations beyond them. After a three days' march he came to an Indian encampment 745 Pitched on the edge of a meadow, between the sea and the forest; Women at work by the tents, and warriors, horrid with war-paint, Seated about a fire and smoking and talking together; Who, when they saw from afar the sudden approach of the white men, Saw the flash of the sun on breastplate and sabre and musket, 750 Straightway leaped to their feet, and two, from among them advancing, Came to parley with Standish, and offer him furs as a present; Friendship was in their looks, but in their hearts there was hatred. Braves of the tribe were these, and brothers, gigantic in stature, Huge as Goliath of Gath, or the terrible Og, king of Bashan;[45] 755 One was Pecksuot named, and the other was called Wattawamat. Round their necks were suspended their knives in scabbards of wampum,[46] Two-edged, trenchant knives, with points as sharp as a needle. Other arms had they none, for they were running and crafty. "Welcome, English!" they said,--these words they had learned from the traders 760 Touching at times on the coast, to barter, and chaffer for peltries.[47] Then in their native tongue they began to parley with Standish, Through his guide and interpreter, Hoborook, friend of the white man, Begging for blankets and knives, but mostly for muskets and powder, Kept by the white man, they said, concealed, with the plague, in his cellars, 765 Ready to be let loose, and destroy his brother the red man! But when Standish refused, and said he would give them the Bible, Suddenly changing their tone, they began to boast and to bluster. Then Wattawamat advanced with a stride in front of the other, And, with a lofty demeanor, thus vauntingly spake to the Captain: 770 "Now Wattawamat can see, by the fiery eyes of the Captain, Angry is he in his heart; but the heart of the brave Wattawamat Is not afraid at the sight. He was not born of a woman But on a mountain, at night, from an oak-tree riven by lightning, Forth he sprang at a bound, with all his weapons about him, 775 Shouting, 'Who is there here to fight with the brave Wattawamat?'" Then he unsheathed his knife, and, whetting the blade on his left hand, Held it aloft and displayed a woman's face on the handle, Saying, with bitter expression and look of sinister meaning: "I have another at home, with the face of a man on the handle, 780 By and by they shall marry; and there will be plenty of children!" Then stood Pecksuot forth, self-vaunting, insulting Miles Standish; While with his fingers he patted the knife that hung at his bosom, Drawing it half from his sheath, and plunging it back, as he muttered, "By and by it shall see; it shall eat; ah, ha! but shall speak not! 785 This is the mighty Captain the white men have sent to destroy us! He is a little man; let him go and work with the women!" Meanwhile Standish had noted the faces and figures of Indians Peeping and creeping about from bush to tree in the forest, Feigning to look for game, with arrows set on their bowstrings, 790 Drawing about him still closer and closer the net of their ambush. But undaunted he stood, and dissembled and treated them smoothly; So the old chronicles say, that were writ in the days of the fathers. But when he heard their defiance, the boast, the taunt and the insult, All the hot blood of his race, of Sir Hugh and of Thurston de Standish, 795 Boiled and beat in his heart, and swelled in the veins of his temples. Headlong he leaped on the boaster, and, snatching his knife from its scabbard, Plunged it into his heart, and, reeling backward, the savage Fell with his face to the sky, and a fiendlike fierceness upon it. Straight there arose from the forest the awful sound of the war-whoop, 800 And, like a flurry of snow on the whistling wind of December, Swift and sudden and keen came a flight of feathery arrows. Then came a cloud of smoke, and out of the cloud came the lightning, Out of the lightning thunder; and death unseen ran before it. Frightened the savages fled for shelter in swamp and in thicket, 805 Hotly pursued and beset; but their sachem, the brave Wattawamat, Fled not; he was dead. Unswerving and swift had a bullet Passed through his brain, and he fell with both hands clutching the greensward, Seeming in death to hold back from his foe the land of his fathers. There on the flowers of the meadow the warriors lay, and above them, 810 Silent, with folded arms, stood Hobomok, friend of the white man. Smiling at length he exclaimed to the stalwart Captain of Plymouth: "Pecksuot bragged very loud, of his courage, his strength and his stature,-- Mocked the great Captain, and called him a little man; but I see now Big enough have you been to lay him speechless before you!" 815 Thus the first battle was fought, and won by the stalwart Miles Standish. When the tidings thereof were brought to the village of Plymouth, And as a trophy of war the head of the brave Wattawamat Scowled from the roof of the fort, which at once was a church and a fortress, All who beheld it rejoiced, and praised the Lord, and took courage. 820 Only Priscilla averted her face from this spectre of terror, Thanking God in her heart that she had not married Miles Standish; Shrinking, fearing almost, lest, coming home from his battles, He should lay claim to her hand, as the prize and reward of his valor. VIII THE SPINNING WHEEL. Month after month passed away, and in, autumn the ships of the merchants 825 Game with kindred and friends, with cattle and corn for the Pilgrims. All in the village was peace; the men were intent on their labors, Busy with hewing and building, with garden-plot and with merestead,[48] Busy with breaking the glebe, and mowing the grass in the meadows, Searching the sea for its fish, and hunting the deer in the forest. 830 All in the village was peace; but at times the rumor of warfare Filled the air with alarm, and the apprehension of danger. Bravely the stalwart Standish was scouring the land with his forces, Waxing valiant in fight and defeating the alien armies, Till his name had become a sound of fear to the nations. 835 Anger was still in his heart, but at times the remorse and contrition Which in all noble natures succeed the passionate outbreak, Came like a rising tide, that encounters the rush of a river, Staying its current awhile, but making it bitter and brackish.[49] Meanwhile Alden at home had built him a new habitation, 840 Solid, substantial, of timber rough-hewn from the firs of the forest. Wooden-barred was the door, and the roof was covered with rushes; Latticed the windows were, and the window-panes were of paper, Oiled to admit the light, while wind and rain were excluded. There too he dug a well, and around it planted an orchard: 845 Still may be seen to this day some trace of the well and the orchard. Close to the house was the stall, where, safe and secure from annoyance, Raghorn, the snow-white bull, that had fallen to Alden's allotment In the division of cattle, might ruminate in the night-time Over the pastures he cropped, made fragrant by sweet pennyroyal. 850 Oft when his labor was finished, with eager feet would the dreamer Follow the pathway that ran through the woods to the house of Priscilla, Led by illusions romantic and subtile deceptions of fancy, Pleasure disguised as duty, and love in the semblance of friendship. Ever of her he thought, when he fashioned the walls of his dwelling; 855 Ever of her he thought, when he delved in the soil of his garden; Ever of her he thought, when he read in his Bible on Sunday Praise of the virtuous woman, as she is described in the Proverbs,-- How the heart of her husband doth safely trust in her always, How all the days of her life she will do him good, and not evil, 860 How she seeketh the wool and the flax and worketh with gladness, How she layeth her hand to the spindle and holdeth the distaff, How she is not afraid of the snow for herself or her household, Knowing her household are clothed with the scarlet cloth of her weaving! So as she sat at her wheel one afternoon in the Autumn, 865 Alden, who opposite sat, and was watching her dexterous fingers, As if the thread she was spinning were that of his life and his fortune, After a pause in their talk, thus spake to the sound of the spindle. "Truly, Priscilla," he said, "when I see you spinning and spinning, Never idle a moment, but thrifty and thoughtful of others, 870 Suddenly you are transformed, are visibly changed in a moment; You are no longer Priscilla, but Bertha the Beautiful Spinner."[50] Here the light foot on the treadle grew swifter and swifter; the spindle Uttered an angry snarl, and the thread snapped short in her fingers; While the impetuous speaker, not heeding the mischief, continued 875 "You are the beautiful Bertha; the spinner, the queen of Helvetia;[51] She whose story I read at a stall[52] in the streets of Southampton, Who, as she rode on her palfrey, o'er valley and meadow and mountain, Ever was spinning her thread from a distaff[52] fixed to her saddle. She was so thrifty and good, that her name passed into a proverb. 880 So shall it be with your own, when the spinning-wheel shall no longer Hum in the house of the farmer, and fill its chambers with music. Then shall the mothers, reproving, relate how it was in their childhood, Praising the good old times, and the days of Priscilla the spinner!" Straight uprose from her wheel the beautiful Puritan maiden, 885 Pleased with the praise of her thrift from him whose praise was the sweetest, Drew from the reel on the table a snowy skein of her spinning, Thus making answer, meanwhile, to the flattering phrases of Alden: "Come, you must not be idle; if I am a pattern for housewives, Show yourself equally worthy of being the model of husbands. 890 Hold this skein on your hands, while I wind it, ready for knitting; Then who knows but hereafter, when fashions have changed and the manners, Fathers may talk to their sons of the good old times of John Alden!" Thus, with a jest and a laugh, the skein on his hands she adjusted, He sitting awkwardly there, with his arms extended before him, 895 She standing graceful, erect, and winding the thread from his fingers, Sometimes chiding a little his clumsy manner of holding, Sometimes touching his hands, as she disentangled expertly Twist or knot in the yarn, unawares--for how could she help it?-- Sending electrical thrills through every nerve in his body. 900 Lo! in the midst of this scene, a breathless messenger entered, Bringing in hurry and heat the terrible news from the village. Yes; Miles Standish was dead!--an Indian had brought them the tidings,-- Slain by a poisoned arrow, shot down in the front of the battle, Into an ambush beguiled, cut off with the whole of his forces; 905 All the town would be burned, and all the people be murdered! Such were the tidings of evil that burst on the hearts of the hearers. Silent and statue-like stood Priscilla, her face looking backward Still at the face of the speaker, her arms uplifted in horror; But John Alden upstarting, as if the barb of the arrow 910 Piercing the heart of his friend had struck his own, and sundered Once and forever the bonds that held him bound as a captive, Wild with excess of sensation, the awful delight of his freedom, Mingled with pain and regret, unconscious of what he was doing, Clasped, almost with a groan, the motionless form of Priscilla, 915 Pressing her close to his heart, as forever his own, and exclaiming: "Those whom the Lord hath united, let no man put them asunder!" Even as rivulets twain, from distant and separate sources, Seeing each other afar, as they leap from the rocks, and pursuing, Each one its devious path, but drawing nearer and hearer, 930 Rush together at last, at their trysting-place in the forest; So these lives that had run thus far in separate channels, Coming in sight of each other, then swerving and flowing asunder, Parted by barriers strong, but drawing nearer and nearer, Rushed together at last, and one was lost in the other. 925 IX THE WEDDING-DAY. Forth from the curtain of clouds, from the tent of purple and scarlet, Issued the sun, the great High-Priest,[54] in his garments resplendent, Holiness unto the Lord, in letters of light, on his forehead, Round the hem of his robe the golden bells and pomegranates. Blessing the world he came, and the bars of vapor beneath him 930 Gleamed like a grate of brass, and the sea at his feet was a laver![55] This was the wedding morn of Priscilla the Puritan maiden. Friends were assembled together; the Elder and Magistrate also Graced the scene with their presence, and stood like the Law and the Gospel, One with the sanction of earth and one with the blessing of heaven. 935 Simple and brief was the wedding as that of Ruth and of Boaz.[56] Softly the youth and the maiden repeated the words of betrothal, Taking each other for husband and wife in the Magistrate's presence, After the Puritan way, and the laudable custom of Holland, Fervently then and devoutly, the excellent Elder of Plymouth 940 Prayed for the hearth and the home, that were founded that day in affection, Speaking of life and of death and imploring Divine benedictions. Lo! when the service was ended, a form appeared on the threshold, Clad in armor of steel, a sombre and sorrowful figure! Why does the bridegroom start and stare at the strange apparition? 945 Why does the bride turn pale, and hide her face on his shoulder? Is it a phantom of air,--a bodiless, spectral illusion? Is it a ghost from the grave, that has come to forbid the betrothal? Long had it stood there unseen, a guest uninvited, unwelcomed; Over its clouded eyes there had passed at times an expression 950 Softening the gloom and revealing the warm heart hidden beneath them, As when across the sky the driving rack[57] of the rain cloud Grows for a moment thin, and betrays the sun by its brightness. Once it had lifted its hand, and moved its lips, but was silent, As if an iron will had mastered the fleeting intention. 955 But when were ended the troth and the prayer and the last benediction, Into the room it strode, and the people beheld, with amazement Bodily there in his armor, Miles Standish, the Captain of Plymouth! Grasping the bridegroom's hand, he said with emotion, "Forgive me! I have been angry and hurt,--too long have I cherished the feeling; 960 I have been cruel and hard, but now, thank God! it is ended. Mine is the same hot blood that leaped in the veins of Hugh Standish, Sensitive, swift to resent, but as swift in atoning for error. Never so much as now was Miles Standish the friend of John Alden." Thereupon answered the bridegroom: "Let all be forgotten between us,-- 965 All save the dear old friendship, and that shall grow older and dearer!" Then the Captain advanced, and, bowing, saluted Priscilla, Gravely, and after the manner of old-fashioned gentry in England, Something of camp and of court, of town and of country, commingled, Wishing her joy of her wedding, and loudly lauding her husband. 970 Then he said with a smile: "I should have remembered the adage,-- If you would be well served, you must serve yourself; and moreover, No man can gather cherries in Kent at the season of Christmas!"[58] Great was the people's amazement, and greater yet their rejoicing, Thus to behold once more the sunburnt face of their Captain, 975 Whom they had mourned as dead, and they gathered and crowded about him, Eager to see him, and hear him, forgetful of bride and of bridegroom, Questioning, answering, laughing, and each interrupting the other, Till the good Captain declared, being quite overpowered and bewildered, He had rather by far break into an Indian encampment, 980 Than come again to a wedding to which he had not been invited. Meanwhile the bridegroom went forth and stood with the bride at the doorway, Breathing the perfumed air of that warm and beautiful morning. Touched with autumnal tints, but lonely and sad in the sunshine, Lay extended before them the land of toil and privation; 985 There were the graves of the dead, and the barren waste of the sea-shore. There the familiar fields, the groves of pine, and the meadows; But to their eyes transfigured, it seemed as the Garden of Eden, Filled with the presence of God, whose voice was the sound of the ocean. Soon was their vision disturbed by the noise and stir of departure, 990 Friends coming forth from the house, and impatient of longer delaying, Each with his plan for the day, and the work that was left uncompleted. Then from a stall near at hand, amid exclamations of wonder, Alden the thoughtful, the careful, so happy, so proud of Priscilla, Brought out his snow-white bull, obeying the hand of its master. 995 Led by a cord that was tied to an iron ring in its nostrils, Covered with crimson cloth, and a cushion placed for a saddle. She should not walk, he said, through the dust and heat of the noonday; Nay, she should ride like a queen, not plod along like a peasant. Somewhat alarmed at first, but reassured by the others, 1000 Placing her hand on the cushion, her foot in the hand of her husband, Gayly, with joyous laugh, Priscilla mounted her palfrey. "Nothing is wanting now," he said with a smile, "but the distaff; Then you would be in truth my queen, my beautiful Bertha!" Onward the bridal procession now moved to their new habitation, 1005 Happy husband and wife, and friends conversing together. Pleasantly murmured the brook, as they crossed the ford in the forest, Pleased with the image that passed, like a dream of love through its bosom, Tremulous, floating in air, o'er the depths of the azure abysses. Down through the golden leaves the sun was pouring his splendors, 1010 Gleaming on purple grapes, that, from branches above them suspended, Mingled their odorous breath with the balm of the pine and the fir-tree. Wild and sweet as the clusters that grew in the valley of Eshcol.[59] Like a picture it seemed of the primitive, pastoral ages, Fresh with the youth of the world, and recalling Rebecca and Isaac,[60] 1015 Old and yet ever new, and simple and beautiful always, Love immortal and young in the endless succession of lovers. So through the Plymouth woods passed onward the bridal procession. --Longfellow. [1] Miles Standish was born about 1580, the son of a Lancashire gentleman of a large estate. He entered the army of Queen Elizabeth and served for some time in the Netherlands. There he met the congregation of English Puritans with their pastor, Robinson, and although he did not become a member of their Church, he sailed with them in the Mayflower in 1620. He was entrusted with the defence of the new colony, and held, besides, other offices of trust in the community. In 1830 he removed from Plymouth and settled in Duxbury, where he died in 1656. [2] The Mayflower, in which the Pilgrim Fathers set sail for America, reached Cape Cod in November, 1620. Some weeks were spent in exploring the coast, but finally, towards the end of December, the Mayflower anchored in Plymouth Harbour, and it was decided that they should make a landing and found a settlement there. The name of "Old Colony" was for a long time applied to the settlement about Plymouth. [3] doublet. A close-fitting garment for men, covering the body from the neck to the waist. [4] Cordovan leather. A goatskin leather, prepared in Cordova, Spain. [5] Cutlass. A short curved sword used by sailors. corselet. Armour for the body; breastplate. [6] Damascus. A city in Syria, famous for its steel blades. [7] mystical. Obscure and mysterious in meaning. [8] fowling-piece. A light gun used for shooting birds. matchlock. An old-fashioned gun, fired by means of a match. This "match" was generally made of twisted cord which would hold the flame. [9] John Alden had been taken aboard the vessel at Southampton, as a cooper. He was free to return to England on the Mayflower, but decided to share the fortunes of the Puritans. [10] A monk named Gregory, in the sixth century, seeing some fair-haired youths in the slave market at Rome, enquired as to their nationality. He was told that they were Angles. "Non Angli, sed Angeli," said Gregory. "They have the faces of Angels, not of Angles." [11] Flanders, part of the Netherlands, in Europe. [12] arcabucero. Literally, archer; here, musketeer, [13] howitzer. A small cannon. [14] The following is from an account of Plymouth Colony in 1627: "Upon the hill they have a large square house with a flat roof stayed with oak beams, upon the top of which they have six cannons, commanding the surrounding country. The lower part they use for their Church, where they preach on Sundays and the usual holidays. They assemble by beat of drum, each with his musket or firelock, in front of the Captain's door; they have their cloaks on and place themselves in order three abreast, and are led by a sergeant without beat of drum. Behind comes the Governor in a long robe; beside him on the right hand comes the preacher, and on the left hand the Captain, and so they march in good order, and each sets his arms down near him. Thus they are constantly on their guard night and day." [15] sagamore. An Indian chief of the second rank; sachem, a chief of the first rank; pow-wow, a conjurer or medicine-man. [16] Goldinge. A well-known translator of the Elizabethan age. [17] The Mayflower set sail for England on April 5, 1621. [18] Priscilla Mullins (or Molines) was the daughter of William Mullins, who died in the February following the landing of the Pilgrims. [19]"In his journey, as he was crossing the Alps and passing by a small village of the barbarians with but few inhabitants, and those wretchedly poor, his companions asked the question among themselves by way of mockery if there were any canvassing for offices there; any contention which should be uppermost, or feuds of great men one against another. To which Caesar made answer seriously, 'For my part I had rather be the first man among these fellows, than the second man in Rome.'" Plutarch's _Life of Caesar_, A. H. Clough's translation. [20] Genesis, ii, 18. [21] illusion. An illusion is a misleading or deceptive appearance. The happiness that he had looked forward to was turning out to be false and unreal. [22] Baal and Astaroth were the two chief divinities of the Phoenicians, male and female respectively. To worship Baal and Astaroth is to give oneself up to worldly desires and pleasures. [23] The Mayflower, in England, is the hawthorn; in the New England States, the trailing arbutus. [24] Ainsworth. A clergyman and scholar who was persecuted on account of his religious belief, and sought refuge in Holland. [25] Luke, ix, 62. [26] Terms used in heraldry. [27] See Revelation, xxi and xxii. An apocalypse is a revelation, and the term is generally applied to the Book of Revelation. [28] dulse. Coarse red seaweed, sometimes used as food. [29] II Samuel, xii, 3. [30] Districts of the Netherlands. [31] hand-grenade. A ball or shell filled with explosives, and thrown by the hand. [32] Wat Tyler. The leader of the peasant revolt in England in 1381. [33] Elder William Brewster. [34] See Acts ii, 1-4. [35] Stephen Hopkins, Richard Warren, Gilbert Winslow. [36] gunwale. The upper edge of a boat's side. [37] thwarts. Seats, crossing from one side of the boat to the other. [38] adamantine. That cannot be broken; hence _fate_ is "the wall adamantine." [39] yards. The spars supporting the sails. [40] Gurnet. A headland near Plymouth. [41] The place where the Pilgrims had their first encounter with the Indians, December 8, 1620. [42] See Genesis, i, 2. [43] See Genesis, ii, 10-14. [44] The account of the march of Miles Standish is based on the New England chronicles. [45] See I Samuel, xvii, and Numbers, xxi. [46] wampum. Beads made of shells, and used by the Indians both for money and for ornament. [47] to chaffer for peltries. To trade in skins or furs. [48] merestead. A bounded lot. [49] brackish. saltish. [50] The chief character in a German legend. [51] Helvetia. Switzerland [52] stall. A booth, or shop. [53] distaff. The staff for holding the flax or wool from which the thread is spun. [54] See Exodus xxviii, for the references in this description. [55] laver. A brazen vessel in the court or a Jewish tabernacle, where the priests washed their hands and feet. [56] Book of Ruth, chapter iv. [57] rack. vapor. [58] An English proverb. [59] Eshcol. When Moses sent spies into the land of Canaan, "they came unto the brook of Eshcol, and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between two upon a staff." [60] See Genesis, xxiv. SOHRAB AND RUSTUM. The story of Sohrab and Rustum is based on an episode related in the Shahnamah, or Book of Kings, by Firdusi, the epic poet of Persia. The chief hero of the Shahnamah is Rustum, the Hercules of Persian mythology. Rustum was the son of Zal, a renowned Persian warrior. When a mere child, he performed many wonderful deeds requiring great strength and valor. He became the champion of his people, restored the Persian king to his throne, and defeated Afrasiab, the great Turanian, or Tartar, leader, who had invaded Persia. During a hunting expedition in Turan, his renowned horse Ruksh was stolen from him, and in order to recover it, he was forced to call on the King of Samangam, a neighbouring city. The king welcomed him, and gave him his daughter Tahminah, in marriage. Before the birth of his child, however, Rustum was called back to Persia, but he left with Tahminah a charm, or amulet, by which he might be able to recognize his offspring. When Sohrab, the son, was born, the mother, fearing that Rustum would return and take him away from her to bring him up as a soldier, sent word that a daughter had been born to him. Rustum, accordingly, did not return to Samangam, but remained in ignorance of Sohrab. In the meantime, as Sohrab grew, up he became a great warrior, and having learned that the renowned Rustum was his father, he longed to meet him, that he might fight for him and help to make him king. At length the opportunity came. The army of Afrasiab, under the command of Peran-Wisa, invaded Persia once more, and Sohrab accompanied the host. The Persians prepared to meet the invaders, and the two armies met at the river Oxus, which formed the boundary between the two kingdoms. It is at this point that the story of _Sohrab and Rustum_ begins. [_Sohrab wakes in the early morning, and passes through the sleeping army to the tent of old Peran-Wisa, his chief.] And the first grey of morning fill'd the east, And the fog rose out of the Oxus[1] stream. But all the Tartar[2] camp along the stream Was hush'd, and still the men were plunged in sleep: Sohrab alone, he slept not: all night long 5 He had lain wakeful, tossing on his bed; But when the grey dawn stole into his tent, He rose, and clad himself, and girt his sword, And took his horseman's cloak, and left his tent, And went abroad into the cold wet fog, 10 Through the dim camp to Peran-Wisa's[3] tent. Through the black Tartar tents he pass'd, which stood Clustering like bee-hives on the low flat strand Of Oxus, where the summer floods o'erflow When the sun melts the snows in high Pamere:[4] 15 Through the black tents he pass'd, o'er that low strand, And to a hillock came a little back From the stream's brink, the spot where first a boat, Crossing the stream in summer, scrapes the land. The men of former times had crown'd the top 20 With a clay fort: but that was fall'n; and now The Tartars built there Peran-Wisa's tent, A dome of laths, and o'er it felts were spread. And Sohrab came there, and went in, and stood Upon the thick-pil'd carpets in the tent, 25 And found the old man sleeping on his bed Of rugs and felts, and near him lay his arms. And Peran-Wisa heard him, though the step Was dull'd; for he slept light, an old man's sleep; And he rose quickly on one arm, and said:-- 30 [Peran-Wisa wakes and asks the reason of his coming. Sohrab proposes to settle the battle by a duel with a champion selected by the Persians. By this plan Rustum would hear of it, and father and son meet at last.] "Who art thou? for it is not yet clear dawn. Speak! is there news, or any night alarm?" But Sohrab came to the bedside and said:-- "Thou know'st me, Peran-Wisa: it is I. The sun is not yet risen, and the foe 35 Sleep; but I sleep not, all night long I lie Tossing and wakeful, and I come to thee. For so did King Afrasiab[5] bid me seek Thy counsel, and to heed thee as thy son, In Samarcand,[6] before the army march'd, 40 And I will tell thee what my heart desires. Thou knowest if, since from Ader-baijan[7] first I came among the Tartars, and bore arms, I have still serv'd Afrasiab well, and shown, At my boy's years, the courage of a man. 45 This too thou know'st, that, while I still bear on The conquering Tartar ensigns through the world, And beat the Persians back on every field, I seek one man, one man, and one alone. Rustum, my father; who, I hop'd should greet, 50 Should one day greet, upon some well-fought field His not unworthy, not inglorious son. So I long hop'd, but him I never find. Come then, hear now, and grant me what I ask, Let the two armies rest to-day: but I 55 Will challenge forth the bravest Persian lords To meet me, man to man: if I prevail, Rustum will surely hear it; if I fall-- Old man, the dead need no one, claim no kin. Dim is the rumour of a common fight, 60 Where host meets host, and many names are sunk: But of a single combat Fame speaks clear." He spoke: and Peran-Wisa took the hand Of the young man in his, and sigh'd, and said:-- "O Sohrab, an unquiet heart is thine! 65 Canst thou not rest among the Tartar chiefs, And share the battle's common chance with us Who love thee, but must press forever first, In single fight incurring single risk, To find a father thou hast never seen? 70 Or, if indeed this one desire rules all, To seek out Rustum--seek him not through fight: Seek him in peace, and carry to his arms, O Sohrab, carry an unwounded son! But far hence seek him, for he is not here. 75 For now it is not as when I was young, When Rustum was in front of every fray: But now he keeps apart, and sits at home, In Seistan,[8] with Zal, his father old. Whether that his own mighty strength at last 80 Feels the abhorr'd approaches of old age; Or in some quarrel with the Persian King.[9] There go:--Thou wilt not? Yet my heart forebodes Danger or death awaits thee on this field. Fain would I know thee safe and well, though lost 85 To us: fain therefore send thee hence, in peace To seek thy father, not seek single fights In vain:--but who can keep the lion's cub From ravening? and who govern Rustum's son? Go: I will grant thee what thy heart desires." 90 [_Peran-Wisa fails to dissuade Sohrab. The sun rises, the fog clears, and the Tartar host gathers_.] So said he, and dropp'd Sohrab's hand and left His bed, and the warm rugs whereon he lay, And o'er his chilly limbs his woollen coat He pass'd, and tied his sandals on his feet, And threw a white cloak round him, and he took 95 In his right hand a ruler's staff, no sword, And on his head he plac'd his sheep-skin cap, Black, glossy, curl'd the fleece of Kara-Kill;[10] And rais'd the curtain of his tent, and call'd His herald to his side, and went abroad. 100 The sun, by this, had risen, and clear'd the fog From the broad Oxus and the glittering sands: And from their tents the Tartar horsemen fil'd, Into the open plain; so Haman bade; Haman, who next to Peran-Wisa rul'd 105 The host, and still was in his lusty prime. From their black tents, long files of horse, they stream'd: As when, some grey November morn, the files, In marching order spread, of long-neck'd cranes, Stream over Casbin,[11] and the southern slopes 110 Of Elburz,[12] from the Aralian estuaries,[13] Or some frore[14] Caspian reed-bed, southward bound For the warm Persian sea-board: so they stream'd. The Tartars of the Oxus, the King's guard, First with black sheep-skin caps and with long spears; 115 Large men, large steeds, who from Bokhara[15] come And Khiva, and ferment the milk of mares.[16] Next the more temperate Toorkmuns of the south,[17] The Tukas, and the lances of Salore, And those from Attruck[18] and the Caspian sands; 120 Light men, and on light steeds, who only drink The acrid milk of camels, and their wells. And then a swarm of wandering horse, who came From far, and a more doubtful service[19] own'd; The Tartars of Ferghana, from the banks 125 Of the Jaxartes, men with scanty beards And close-set skull-caps; and those wilder hordes Who roam o'er Kipchak and the northern waste, Kalmuks and unkemp'd Kuzzaks,[20] tribes who stray Nearest the Pole, and wandering Kirghizzes, 130 Who come on shaggy ponies from Pamere. These all fil'd out from camp into the plain, And on the other side the Persians form'd: First a light cloud of horse, Tartars they seem'd, The Ilyats of Khorassan:[21] and behind, 135 The royal troops of Persia, horse and foot, Marshall'd battalions bright in burnish'd steel. But Peran-Wisa with his herald came Threading the Tartar squadrons to the front, And with his staff kept back the foremost ranks. 140 And when Ferood, who led the Persians, saw That Peran-Wisa kept the Tartars back, He took his spear, and to the front he came, And check'd his ranks, and fix'd them where they stood. And the old Tartar came upon the sand 145 Betwixt the silent hosts, and spake, and said:-- [_Peran-Wisa calls on the Persians to find a champion, and Gudurz agrees to do so_.] "Ferood, and ye, Persians and Tartars, hear! Let there be truce between the hosts to-day. But choose a champion from the Persian lords To fight our champion Sohrab, man to man." 150 As, in the country, on a morn in June, When the dew glistens on the pearled ears, A shiver runs through the deep corn for Joy--- So, when they heard what Peran-Wisa said, A thrill through all the Tartar squadrons ran 155 Of pride and hope for Sohrab, whom they lov'd. But as a troop of pedlars, from Cabool,[22] Cross underneath the Indian Caucasus, That vast sky-neighbouring mountain of milk snow; Winding so high, that, as they mount, they pass 160 Long flocks of travelling birds dead on the snow, Chok'd by the air, and scarce can they themselves Slake their parch'd throats with sugar'd mulberries-- In single file they move, and stop their breath, For fear they should dislodge the o'erhanging snows-- 165 So the pale Persians held their breath with fear. And to Ferood his brother chiefs came up To counsel: Gudurz and Zoarrah came, And Feraburz, who rul'd the Persian host Second, and was the uncle of the king: 170 These came and counsell'd; and then Gudarz said:-- "Ferood, shame bids us take their challenge up, Yet champion have we none to match this youth. He has the wild stag's foot, the lion's heart. But Rustum came last night; aloof he sits 175 And sullen, and has pitch'd his tents apart: Him will I seek, and carry to his ear The Tartar challenge, and this young man's name Haply he will forget his wrath, and fight. Stand forth the while, and take their challenge up." 180 So spake he; and Ferood stood forth and said:-- "Old man, be it agreed as thou hast said. Let Sohrab arm, and we will find a man." [_Gudurz calls on Rustum in his tent. "Help us, Rustum, or we lose_."] He spoke; and Peran-Wisa turn'd, and strode Back through the opening squadrons to his tent. 185 But through the anxious Persians Gudurz ran, And cross'd the camp which lay behind, and reach'd, Out on the sands beyond it, Rustum's tents. Of scarlet cloth they were, and glittering gay, Just pitch'd: the high pavilion in the midst 190 Was Rustum's, and his men lay camp'd around. And Gudurz enter'd Rustum's tent, and found Rustum: his morning meal was done, but still The table stood beside him, charg'd with food; A side of roasted sheep, and cakes of bread, 195 And dark green melons; and there Rustum sate Listless, and held a falcon on his wrist, And play'd with it; but Gudurz came and stood Before him; and he look'd, and saw him stand, And with a cry sprang up, and dropp'd the bird, 200 And greeted Gudurz with both hands, and said:-- "Welcome! these eyes could see no better sight. What news! but sit down first, and eat and drink." But Gudurz stood in the tent door, and said:-- "Not now: a time will come to eat and drink, 205 But not to-day: to-day has other needs. The armies are drawn out, and stand at gaze: For from the Tartars is a challenge brought To pick a champion from the Persian lords To fight their champion--and thou know'st his name-- 210 Sohrab men call him, but his birth is hid. O Rustum, like thy might is this young man's! He has the wild stag's foot, the lion's heart. And he is young, and Iran's[23] chiefs are old, Or else too weak; and all eyes turn to thee. 215 Come down and help us, Rustum, or we lose." [_Rustum at first declines, but stung by the taunt of Gudurz he agrees to fight--to be unknown by name_.] He spoke; but Rustum answer'd with a smile:-- "Go to! if Iran's Chiefs are old, then I Am older: if the young are weak, the King Errs strangely: for the King, for Kai Khosroo, 220 Himself is young, and honours younger men, And lets the aged moulder to their graves. Rustum he loves no more, but loves the young-- The young may rise at Sohrab's vaunts, not I. For what care I, though all speak Sohrab's fame? 225 For would that I myself had such a son, And not that one slight helpless girl I have, A son so fam'd, so brave, to send to war, And I to tarry with the snow-hair'd Zal, My father, whom the robber Afghans vex, 230 And clip his borders short, and drive his herds, And he has none to guard his weak old age. There would I go, and hang my armour up, And with my great name fence that weak old man, And spend the goodly treasures I have got, 235 And rest my age, and hear of Sohrab's fame, And leave to death the hosts of thankless kings, And with these slaughterous hands draw sword no more." He spoke, and smil'd; and Gudurz made reply:-- "What then, O Rustum, will men say to this, 240 When Sohrab dares our bravest forth, and seeks Thee most of all, and thou, whom most he seeks, Hidest thy face? Take heed, lest men should say _Like some old miser, Rustum hoards his fame, And shuns to peril it with younger men_." 245 And, greatly mov'd, then Rustum made reply:-- "O Gudurz, wherefore dost thou say such words? Thou knowest better words than this to say. What is one more, one less, obscure or fam'd, Valiant or craven, young or old, to me? 250 Are not they mortal, am not I myself? But who for men of nought would do great deeds? Come, thou shalt see how Rustum hoards his fame. But I will fight unknown, and in plain arms;[24] Let not men say of Rustum, he was match'd 255 In single fight with any mortal man." [_Rustum arms; his appearance in the field brings joy to the Persians_.] He spoke, and frown'd; and Gudurz turned, and ran Back quickly through the camp in fear and joy, Fear at his wrath, but joy that Rustum came, But Rustum strode to his tent door, and call'd 260 His followers in, and bade them bring his arms, And clad himself in steel: the arms he chose Were plain, and on his shield was no device, Only his helm was rich, inlaid with gold And from the fluted spine[25] atop a plume 265 Of horsehair wav'd, a scarlet horsehair plume. So arm'd, he issued forth; and Ruksh, his horse, Followed him, like a faithful hound, at heel, Ruksh, whose renown was nois'd through all the earth, The horse, whom Rustum on a foray once 270 Did in Bokhara by the river find, A colt beneath its dam, and drove him home, And rear'd him; a bright bay, with lofty crest; Dight[26] with a saddle-cloth of broider'd green Crusted with gold, and on the ground were work'd 275 All beasts of chase, all beasts which hunters know: So follow'd, Rustum left his tents, and cross'd The camp, and to the Persian host appear'd. And all the Persians knew him, and with shouts Hail'd; but the Tartars knew not who he was. 280 And dear as the wet diver to the eyes Of his pale wife who waits and weeps on shore, By sandy Bahrein,[27] in the Persian Gulf, Plunging all day in the blue waves, at night, Having made up his tale[28] of precious pearls, 285 Rejoins her in their hut upon the sands--- So dear to the pale Persians Rustum came. [_Rustum advances; warns Sohrab. Sohrab is young; why should he court defeat and death_?] And Rustum to the Persian front advanc'd, And Sohrab arm'd in Haman's tent, and came. And as afield the reapers cut a swathe 290 Down through the middle of a rich man's corn, And on each side are squares of standing corn, And in the midst a stubble, short and bare; So on each side were squares of men, with spears Bristling, and in the midst, the open sand. 295 And Rustum came upon the sand, and cast His eyes towards the Tartar tents, and saw Sohrab come forth, and ey'd him as he came. As some rich woman, on a winter's morn, Eyes through her silken curtains the poor drudge 300 Who with numb blacken'd fingers makes her fire-- At cock-crow, on a starlit winter's morn, When the frost flowers the whiten'd window panes-- And wonders how she lives, and what the thoughts Of that poor drudge may be; so Rustum ey'd 305 The unknown adventurous youth, who from afar Came seeking Rustum, and defying forth All the most valiant chiefs: long he perus'd[29] His spirited air, and wonder'd who he was. For very young he seem'd, tenderly rear'd; 310 Like some young cypress, tall, and dark, and straight, Which in a queen's secluded garden throws Its slight dark shadow on the moonlit turf, By midnight, to a bubbling fountain's sound-- So slender Sohrab seem'd, so softly rear'd. 315 And a deep pity enter'd Rustum's soul As he beheld him coming; and he stood, And beckon'd to him with his hand, and said:-- "O thou young man, the air of Heaven is soft, And warm, and pleasant; but the grave is cold. 320 Heaven's air is better than the cold dead grave. Behold me; I am vast, and clad in iron, And tried;[30] and I have stood on many a field Of blood, and I have fought with many a foe: Never was that field lost, or that foe sav'd. 325 O Sohrab, wherefore wilt thou rush on death? Be govern'd:[31] quit the Tartar host, and come To Iran, and be as my son to me, And fight beneath my banner till I die. There are no youths in Iran brave as thou." 330 [_Sohrab has vague suspicions it is his father. Rustum, in ignorance, coldly waives aside all overtures. They fight_.] So he spake, mildly: Sohrab heard his voice, The mighty voice of Rustum; and he saw His giant figure planted on the sand, Sole, like some single tower, which a chief Has builded on the waste in former years 335 Against the robbers; and he saw that head, Streak'd with its first grey hairs: hope fill'd his soul; And he ran forwards and embrac'd his knees, And clasp'd his hand within his own and said:-- "Oh, by thy father's head! by thine own soul! 340 Art thou not Rustum? Speak! art thou not he!" But Rustum ey'd askance the kneeling youth, And turn'd away, and spoke to his own soul:-- "Ah me, I muse what this young fox may mean, False, wily, boastful, are these Tartar boys. 345 For if I now confess this thing he asks, And hide it not, but say--_Rustum is here_-- He will not yield indeed, nor quit our foes, But he will find some pretext not to fight, And praise my fame, and proffer courteous gifts. 350 A belt or sword perhaps, and go his way. And on a feast day, in Afrasiab's hall, In Samarcand, he will arise and cry-- 'I challeng'd once, when the two armies camp'd Beside the Oxus, all the Persian lords 355 To cope with me in single fight; but they Shrank; only Rustum dar'd: then he and I Chang'd gifts,[32] and went on equal terms away.' So will he speak, perhaps, while men applaud. Then were the chiefs of Iran sham'd through me." 360 And then he turn'd, and sternly spake aloud:-- "Rise! wherefore dost thou vainly question thus Of Rustum? I am here, whom thou hast call'd By challenge forth; make good thy vaunt, or yield. Is it with Rustum only thou would'st fight? 365 Rash boy, men look on Rustum's face and flee. For well I know, that did great Rustum stand Before thy face this day, and were reveal'd, There would be then no talk of fighting more. But being what I am, I tell thee this; 370 Do thou record it in thine inmost soul, Either thou shalt renounce thy vaunt, and yield; Or else thy bones shall strew this sand, till winds Bleach them, or Oxus with his summer floods, Oxus in summer wash them all away." 375 He spoke; and Sohrab answer'd, on his feet:-- "Art thou so fierce? Thou wilt not fright me so. I am no girl, to be made pale by words. Yet this thou hast said well, did Rustum stand Here on this field, there were no fighting then, 380 But Rustum is far hence, and we stand here. Begin: thou art more vast, more dread than I, And thou art prov'd, I know, and I am young,-- But yet success sways with the breath of heaven,[33] And though thou thinkest that thou knowest sure 385 Thy victory, yet thou canst not surely know. For we are all, like swimmers in the sea, Pois'd on the top of a huge wave of Fate, Which hangs uncertain to which side to fall. And whether it will heave us up to land, 390 Or whether it will roll us out to sea, Back out to sea, to the deep waves of death, We know not, and no search will make us know: Only the event will teach us in its hour." [_Sohrab avoids Rustum's blow. Rustum falls on the sand, and has his life spared by his son_.] He spoke, and Rustum answer'd not, but hurl'd 395 His spear: down from the shoulder, down it came, As on some partridge in the corn a hawk That long has tower'd in the airy clouds Drops like a plummet;[34] Sohrab saw it come, And sprang aside, quick as a flash: the spear 400 Hiss'd, and went quivering down into the sand, Which it sent flying wide: then Sohrab threw In turn, and full struck Rustum's shield: sharp rang, The iron plates rang sharp, but turn'd the spear. And Rustum seiz'd his club, which none but he 405 Could wield; an unlopp'd trunk it was, and huge, Still rough; like those which men in treeless plains To build them boats fish from the flooded rivers, Hyphasis or Hydaspes,[35] when, high up By their dark springs, the wind in winter-time 410 Has made in Himalayan forests wrack,[36] And strewn the channels with torn boughs; so huge The club which Rustum lifted now, and struck One stroke; but again Sohrab sprang aside Lithe as the glancing snake, and the club came 415 Thundering to earth and leapt from Rustum's hand. And Rustum follow'd his own blow and fell To his knees, and with his fingers clutch'd the sand: And now might Sohrab have unsheath'd his sword, And pierc'd the mighty Rustum while he lay 420 Dizzy, and on his knees, and chok'd with sand: But he look'd on, and smil'd, nor bar'd his sword, But courteously drew back, and spoke, and said:-- "Thou strik'st too hard: that club of thine will float Upon the summer floods, and not my bones, 425 But rise, and be not wroth: not wroth am I: No, when I see thee, wrath forsakes my soul. Thou say'st thou art not Rustum: be it so. Who art thou then, that canst so touch my soul? Boy as I am, I have seen battles too; 430 Have waded foremost in their bloody waves, And heard their hollow roar of dying men; But never was my heart thus touch'd before. Are they from Heaven, these softenings of the heart? O thou old warrior, let us yield to Heaven! 435 Come, plant we here in earth our angry spears, And make a truce, and sit upon this sand, And pledge each other in red wine, like friends, And thou shalt talk to me of Rustum's deeds. There are enough foes in the Persian host 440 Whom I may meet, and strike, and feel no pang, Champions enough Afrasiab has, whom thou Mayst fight, fight them, when they confront thy spear. But oh, let there be peace 'twixt thee and me!" He ceas'd: but while he spake, Rustum had risen, 445 And stood erect, trembling with rage: his club He left to lie, but had regain'd his spear, Whose fiery point now in his mail'd right hand Blaz'd bright and baleful, like that autumn star,[37] The baleful sign of fevers: dust had soil'd 450 His stately crest, and dimm'd his glittering arms. His breast heav'd; his lips foam'd; and twice his voice Was chok'd with rage: at last these words broke away:-- [_Rustum in wounded pride returns furiously to the combat. He shouts his cry of "Rustum!" Sohrab incautiously at the sound exposes his side to a wound and falls_.] "Girl! nimble with thy feet, not with thy hands! Curl'd minion,[38] dancer, coiner of sweet words! 455 Fight; let me hear thy hateful voice no more! Thou art not in Afrasiab's gardens now With Tartar girls, with whom thou art wont to dance; But on the Oxus sands, and in the dance Of battle, and with me, who make no play 460 Of war: I fight it out, and hand to hand. Speak not to me of truce, and pledge, and wine! Remember all thy valour: try thy feints And cunning: all the pity I had is gone: Because thou hast sham'd me before both the hosts 465 With thy light skipping tricks, and thy girl's wiles." He spoke; and Sohrab kindled at his taunts, And he too drew his sword: at once they rush'd Together, as two eagles on one prey Come rushing down together from the clouds, 470 One from the east, one from the west: their shields Dash'd with a clang together, and a din Rose, such as that the sinewy woodcutters Make often, in the forest's heart at morn, Of hewing axes, crashing trees: such blows 475 Rustum and Sohrab on each other hail'd. And you would say that sun and stars took part In that unnatural conflict; for a cloud Grew suddenly in heaven, and dark'd the sun Over the fighters' heads; and a wind rose 480 Under their feet, and moaning swept the plain, And in a sandy whirlwind wrapp'd the pair. In gloom they twain were wrapp'd, and they alone; For both the on-looking hosts on either hand Stood in broad daylight, and the sky was pure, 485 And the sun sparkled on the Oxus stream. But in the gloom they fought, with bloodshot eyes And labouring breath; first Rustum struck the shield Which Sohrab held stiff out: the steel-spik'd spear Rent the tough plates, but failed to reach the skin, 490 And Rustum pluck'd it back with angry groan. Then Sohrab with his sword smote Rustum's helm, Nor clove its steel quite through; but all the crest He shore away, and that proud horsehair plume, Never till now defil'd, sunk to the dust; 495 And Rustum bow'd his bead; but then the gloom Grew blacker: thunder rumbled in the air, And lightnings rent the cloud; and Ruksh, the horse, Who stood at hand, utter'd a dreadful cry: No horse's cry was that, most like the roar 500 Of some pain'd desert lion, who all day Has trail'd the hunter's javelin in his side, And comes at night to die upon the sand:-- The two hosts heard that cry, and quak'd for fear, And Oxus curdled as it cross'd his stream. 505 But Sohrab heard, and quail'd not, but rush'd on, And struck again; and again Rustum bow'd His head; but this time all the blade, like glass, Sprang in a thousand shivers on the helm, And in his hand the hilt remain'd alone. 510 Then, Rustum rais'd his head: his dreadful eyes Glar'd, and he shook on high his menacing spear, And shouted, Rustum! Sohrab heard that shout, And shrank amaz'd: back he recoil'd one step, And scann'd with blinking eyes the advancing form; 515 And then he stood bewilder'd; and he dropp'd His covering shield, and the spear pierc'd his side. He reel'd, and staggering back, sunk to the ground. And then the gloom dispers'd, and the wind fell, And the bright sun broke forth, and melted all 520 The cloud; and the two armies saw the pair; Saw Rustum standing, safe upon his feet, And Sohrab, wounded, on the bloody sand. [_Sohrab says his fall will be avenged by Rustum_.] Then, with a bitter smile, Rustum began;-- "Sohrab, thou thoughtest in thy mind to kill 525 A Persian lord this day, and strip his corpse, And bear thy trophies to Afrasiab's tent. Or else that the great Rustum would come down Himself to fight, and that thy wiles would move His heart to take a gift, and let thee go. 530 And then that all the Tartar host would praise Thy courage or thy craft, and spread thy fame, To glad thy father in his weak old age. Fool! thou art slain, and by an unknown man! Dearer to the red jackals shall thou be, 535 Than to thy friends, and to thy father old." And with a fearless mien Sohrab replied:-- "Unknown thou art; yet thy fierce vaunt is vain. Thou dost not slay me, proud and boastful man! No! Rustum slays me, and this filial heart. 540 For were I match'd with ten such men as thou, And I were he who till to-day I was, They should be lying here, I standing there. But that beloved name unnerv'd my arm-- That name, and something, I confess, in thee, 545 Which troubles all my heart, and made my shield Fall; and thy spear transfix'd an unarm'd foe. And now thou boastest, and insult'st my fate. But hear thou this, fierce man, tremble to hear! The mighty Rustum shall avenge my death! 550 My father, whom I seek through all the world, He shall avenge my death, and punish thee!" As when some hunter in the spring hath found A breeding eagle sitting on her nest, Upon the craggy isle of a hill lake, 555 And pierc'd her with an arrow as she rose, And follow'd her to find her where she fell Far off;--anon her mate comes winging back From hunting, and a great way off descries His huddling young left sole; at that, he checks 560 His pinion, and with short uneasy sweeps Circles above his eyry, with loud screams Chiding his mate back to her nest; but she Lies dying, with the arrow in her side, In some far stony gorge out of his ken, 565 A heap of fluttering feathers: never more Shall the lake glass her, flying over it; Never the black and dripping precipices Echo her stormy scream as she sails by:-- As that poor bird flies home, nor knows his loss, 570 So Rustum knew not his own loss, but stood Over his dying son, and knew him not. [_Rustum anxiously says he never had a son, but only a daughter_.] But with a cold, incredulous voice, he said:-- "What prate is this of fathers and revenge? The mighty Rustum never had a son." 575 And, with a failing voice, Sohrab replied:-- "Ah yes, he had! and that lost son am I. Surely the news will one day reach his ear, Reach Rustum, where he sits, and tarries long, Somewhere, I know not where, but far from here; 580 And pierce him like a stab, and make him leap To arms, and cry for vengeance upon thee. Fierce man, bethink thee, for an only son! What will that grief, what will that vengeance be! Oh, could I live, till I that grief had seen! 585 Yet him I pity not so much, but her, My mother, who in Ader-baijan dwells With that old king, her father, who grows grey With age, and rules over the valiant Koords.[39] Her most I pity, who no more will see 590 Sohrab returning from the Tartar camp, With spoils and honour, when the war is done. But a dark rumour will be bruited up,[40] From tribe to tribe, until it reach her ear; And then will that defenceless woman learn 595 That Sohrab will rejoice her sight no more, But that in battle with a nameless foe, By the far distant Oxus, he is slain." [_The truth breaks in upon Rustum. Again he charges Sohrab with a false tale_.] He spoke; and as he ceas'd he wept aloud, Thinking of her he left, and his own death. 600 He spoke; but Rustum listen'd, plung'd in thought. Nor did he yet believe it was his son Who spoke, although he call'd back names he knew For he had had sure tidings that the babe, Which was in Ader-baijan born to him, 605 Had been a puny girl, no boy at all: So that sad mother sent him word, for fear Rustum should take the boy, to train in arms; And so he deem'd that either Sohrab took, By a false boast, the style[41] of Rustum's son; 610 Or that men gave it him, to swell his fame. So deem'd he; yet he listen'd, plung'd in thought; And his soul set to grief, as the vast tide Of the bright rocking ocean sets to shore At the full moon: tears gathered in his eyes; 615 For he remembered his own early youth, And all its bounding rapture; as, at dawn, The shepherd from his mountain lodge descries A far bright city, smitten by the sun, Through many rolling clouds;--so Rustum saw 620 His youth; saw Sohrab's mother, in her bloom; And that old king, her father, who lov'd well His wandering guest, and gave him his fair child With joy; and all the pleasant life they led, They three, in that long-distant summer-time-- 625 The castle, and the dewy woods, and hunt And hound, and morn on those delightful hills In Ader-baijan. And he saw that youth, Of age and looks to be his own dear son, Piteous and lovely, lying on the sand, 630 Like some rich hyacinth, which by the scythe Of an unskilful gardener has been cut, Mowing the garden grass-plots near its bed, And lies, a fragrant tower of purple bloom, On the mown, dying grass;--so Sohrab lay, 635 Lovely in death, upon the common sand. And Rustum gaz'd on him with grief, and said:-- "O Sohrab, thou indeed art such a son Whom Rustum, wert thou his, might well have lov'd! Yet here thou errest, Sohrab, or else men 640 Have told thee false;--thou art not Rustum's son. For Rustum had no son: one child he had-- But one--a girl; who with her mother now Plies some light female task, nor dreams of us-- Of us she dreams not, nor of wounds, nor war." 645 But Sohrab answer'd him in wrath; for now The anguish of the deep-fix'd spear grew fierce, And he desired to draw forth the steel, And let the blood flow free, and so to die, But first he would convince his stubborn foe-- 650 And, rising sternly on one arm, he said:-- [_Sohrab discloses the mark by which he was to be known. "O boy--thy father_!"] "Man, who art thou who dost deny my words? Truth sits upon the lips of dying men, And Falsehood, while I liv'd, was far from mine. I tell thee, prick'd upon this arm I bear 655 That seal which Rustum to my mother gave, That she might prick it on the babe she bore." He spoke: and all the blood left Rustum's cheeks; And his knees totter'd, and he smote his hand, Against his breast, his heavy mailed hand, 660 That the hard iron corslet clank'd aloud; And to his heart he press'd the other hand, And in a hollow voice he spake, and said:-- "Sohrab, that were a proof which could not lie. If thou shew this, then art thou Rustum's son." 665 Then, with weak hasty fingers, Sohrab loos'd His belt, and near the shoulder bar'd his arm, And shew'd a sign in faint vermilion points Prick'd: as a cunning workman, in Pekin, Pricks with vermilion some clear porcelain vase, 670 An emperor's gift--at early morn he paints, And all day long, and, when night comes, the lamp Lights up his studious forehead and thin hands:-- So delicately prick'd the sign appear'd[42] On Sohrab's arm, the sign of Rustum's seal. 675 It was that griffin, which of old rear'd Zal,[43] Rustum's great father, whom they left to die, A helpless babe, among the mountain rocks. Him that kind creature found, and rear'd and lov'd-- Then Rustum took it for his glorious sign. 680 And Sohrab bar'd that figure on his arm, And himself scann'd it long with mournful eyes, And then he touch'd it with his hand and said:-- "How say'st thou? Is that sign the proper sign Of Rustum's son, or of some other man's?" 685 He spoke: but Rustum gaz'd, and gaz'd, and stood Speechless; and then he utter'd one sharp cry-- _O boy--thy father_!--and his voice chok'd there. And then a dark cloud pass'd before his eyes, And his head swam, and he sunk down to earth. 690 But Sohrab crawl'd to where he lay, and cast His arms about his neck, and kiss'd his lips, And with fond faltering fingers strok'd his cheeks, Trying to call him back to life: and life Came back to Rustum, and he op'd his eyes, 695 And they stood wide with horror; and he seiz'd In both his hands the dust which lay around, And threw it on his head, and smirch'd his hair, His hair, and face, and beard, and glittering arms: And strong convulsive groanings shook his breast, 700 And his sobs chok'd him; and he clutch'd his sword, To draw it, and for ever let life out. But Sohrab saw his thought, and held his hands, And with a soothing voice he spoke, and said:-- [_Father and son embrace. "Would that the Oxus were flowing over me!" says the unhappy father_.] "Father, forbear: for I but meet to-day 705 The doom that at my birth was written down In Heaven, and thou art Heaven's unconscious hand. Surely my heart cried out that it was thou, When first I saw thee; and thy heart spoke too, I know it: but fate trod those promptings down 710 Under its iron heel; fate, fate engag'd The strife, and hurl'd me on my father's spear. But let us speak no more of this: I find My father; let me feel that I have found. Come, sit beside me on this sand, and take 715 My head betwixt thy hands, and kiss my cheeks, And wash them with thy tears, and say, 'My Son!' Quick! quick! for number'd are my sands of life, And swift; for like the lightning to this field I came, and like the wind I go away-- 720 Sudden, and swift, and like a passing wind, But it was writ in Heaven that this should be." So said he: and his voice releas'd the heart Of Rustum, and his tears broke forth; he cast His arms round his son's neck, and wept aloud, 725 And kiss'd him. And awe fell on both the hosts When they saw Rustum's grief; and Ruksh, the horse, With his head bowing to the ground, and mane Sweeping the dust, came near, and in mute woe First to the one then to the other mov'd 730 His head, as if enquiring what their grief Might mean; and from his dark, compassionate eyes, The big warm tears roll'd down, and cak'd the sand. But Rustum chid him with stern voice, and said:-- "Ruksh, now thou grievest; but, O Ruksh, thy feet 735 Should then have rotted on thy nimble joints, When first they bore thy master to this field." But Sohrab look'd upon the horse and said:-- "Is this then Ruksh? How often, in past days, My mother told me of thee, thou brave steed! 740 My terrible father's terrible horse; and said, That I should one day find thy lord and thee, Come, let me lay my hand upon thy mane. O Ruksh, thou art more fortunate than I; For thou hast gone where I shall never go, 745 And snuff'd the breezes of my father's home. And thou hast trod the sands of Seistan, And seen the river of Helmund,[44] and the lake Of Zirrah; and the aged Zal himself Has often strok'd thy neck, and given thee food, 750 Corn in a golden platter soak'd with wine, And said--'O Ruksh! bear Rustum well!'--but I Have never known my grandsire's furrow'd face, Nor seen his lofty house in Seistan, Nor slak'd my thirst at the clear Helmund stream; 755 But lodg'd among my father's foes, and seen Afrasiab's cities only, Samarcand, Bokhara, and lone Khiva in the waste, And the black Toorkmun tents; and only drunk The desert rivers, Moorghab and Tejend, 760 Kohik, and where the Kalmuks feed their sheep, The northern Sir;[45] and this great Oxus stream-- The yellow Oxus, by whose brink I die." And, with a heavy groan, Rustum replied:-- "Oh that its waves were flowing over me! 765 Oh that I saw its grains of yellow silt[46] Roll tumbling in the current o'er my head!" [_Sohrab's dying wish. "Draw off your forces; build for me a memorial pillar in Seistan." He foretells the death of Rustum_.] And, with a grave mild voice, Sohrab replied:-- "Desire not that, my father; thou must live. For some are born to do great deeds, and live, 770 As some are born to be obscur'd, and die. Do thou the deeds I die too young to do, And reap a second glory in thine age. Thou art my father, and thy gain is mine, But come: thou seest this great host of men 775 Which follow me; I pray thee, slay not these: Let me entreat for them: what have they done? They follow'd me, my hope, my fame, my star. Let them all cross the Oxus back in peace. But me thou must bear hence, not send with them, 780 But carry me with thee to Seistan, And place me on a bed and mourn for me, Thou, and the snow-hair'd Zal, and all thy friends. And thou must lay me in that lovely earth, And heap a stately mound above my bones, 785 And plant a far-seen pillar over all: That so the passing horseman on the waste May see my tomb a great way off, and say-- _Sohrab, the mighty Rustum's son, lies there, Whom his great father did in ignorance kill_-- 790 And I be not forgotten in my grave." And with a mournful voice, Rustum replied:-- "Fear not; as thou hast said, Sohrab, my son, So shall it be: for I will burn my tents, And quit the host, and bear thee hence with me, 795 And carry thee away to Seistan, And place thee on a bed, and mourn for thee, With the snow-headed Zal, and all my friends. And I will lay thee in that lovely earth, And heap a stately mound above thy bones, 800 And plant a far-seen pillar over all; And men shall not forget thee in thy grave, And I will spare thy host: yea, let them go: Let them all cross the Oxus back in peace. What should I do with slaying any more? 805 For would that all whom I have ever slain Might be once more alive; my bitterest foes, And they who were call'd champions in their time, And through whose death I won that fame I have; And I were nothing but a common man, 810 A poor, mean soldier, and without renown; So thou mightest live too, my son, my son! Or rather would that I, even I myself, Might now be lying on this bloody sand, Near death, and by an ignorant stroke of thine, 815 Not thou of mine; and I might die, not thou; And I, not thou, be borne to Seistan; And Zal might weep above my grave, not thine, And say--_O son, I weep thee not too sore, For willingly, I know, thou met'st thine end_.-- 820 But now in blood and battles was my youth, And full of blood and battles is my age; And I shall never end this life of blood." Then, at the point of death, Sohrab replied:-- "A life of blood indeed, thou dreadful man! 825 But thou shall yet have peace; only not now; Not yet: but thou shalt have it on that day,[47] When thou shalt sail in a high-masted ship, Thou and the other peers of Kai-Khosroo,[48] Returning home over the salt blue sea, 830 From laying thy dear master in his grave." [_Rustum is left by the body of his son. The river Oxus flows on under the starlight into the Sea of Aral_.] And Rustum gaz'd on Sohrab's face, and said:-- "Soon be that day, my son, and deep that sea! Till then, if fate so wills, let me endure." He spoke; and Sohrab smil'd on him, and took 835 The spear, and drew it from his side, and eas'd His wound's imperious[49] anguish: but the blood Came welling from the open gash, and life Flow'd with the stream: all down his cold white side The crimson torrent pour'd, dim now, and soil'd, 840 Like the soil'd tissue of white violets Left, freshly gather'd, on their native bank, By romping children, whom their nurses call From the hot fields at noon: his head droop'd low, His limbs grew slack; motionless, white, he lay-- 845 White, with eyes clos'd; only when heavy gasps, Deep, heavy gasps, quivering through all his frame, Convuls'd him back to life, he open'd them, And fix'd them feebly on his father's face: Till now all strength was ebb'd, and from his limbs 850 Unwillingly the spirit fled away, Regretting the warm mansion which it left, And youth and bloom, and this delightful world. So, on the bloody sand, Sohrab lay dead. And the great Rustum drew his horseman's cloak 855 Down o'er his face, and sate by his dead son. As those black granite pillars, once high-rear'd By Jemshid in Persepolis,[50] to bear His house, now, mid their broken flights of steps, Lie prone, enormous, down the mountain side-- 860 So in the sand lay Rustum by his son. And night came down over the solemn waste, And the two gazing hosts, and that sole pair, And darken'd all; and a cold fog, with night, Crept from the Oxus. Soon a hum arose, 865 As of a great assembly loos'd, and fires Began to twinkle through the fog: for now Both armies mov'd to camp, and took their meal: The Persians took it on the open sands Southward; the Tartars by the river marge: 870 And Rustum and his son were left alone. But the majestic river floated on Out of the mist and hum of that low land; Into the frosty starlight, and there mov'd, Rejoicing, through the hush'd Chorasmian[51] waste 875 Under the solitary moon: he flow'd Right for the polar star, past Orgunje,[52] Brimming, and bright, and large: then sands begin To hem his watery march, and dam his streams, And split his currents; that for many a league 880 The shorn and parcell'd Oxus strains along Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles-- Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had In his high mountain cradle in Pamere, A foil'd circuitous wanderer:--till at last 885 The long'd-for dash of waves is heard, and wide His luminous home of waters[53] opens, bright And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bath'd stars Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea. --Arnold. [1] Oxus. One of the great rivers of central Asia, forming the boundary between Persia and Turan, or Tartary. [2] Tartar. A general name given to the tribes in central Asia east of the Oxus. [3] Peran-Wisa (Pe'ran-We'sa). The commander of the Tartar tribes which formed the army of King Afrasiab. [4] Pamere. A plateau in central Asia. [5] King Afrasiab (Afra'-siab). King of the Tartars. [6] Samarcand. A city in Turkestan. [7] Ader-baijan (Ader-bi'-yan). A province of Persia. [8] Seistan (Sa-es-tan'). A district of eastern Persia. [9] Perhaps because he is beginning to feel old, or on account of some quarrel with the Persian king. [10] Kara-Kul. A district in Persia. [11] Casbin. A city in Persia. [12] Elburz. A mountain range in northern Persia. [13] Aralian estuaries. The mouth of the rivers flowing into the sea of Aral. [14] frore. frozen. [15] Bokhara and Khiva. Districts of central Asia. [16] The Tartars use an intoxicating liquor called koumiss, made from mare's or camel's milk. [17] Lines 118-134 mention various nomadic tribes; the names are of no great importance. [18] Attruck and Jaxartes (l. 126). Names of rivers. [19] more doubtful service. Their allegiance was doubtful; they were not bound to follow the army of King Afrasiab. [20] Kuzzaks. Cossacks. [21] Khorassan. A province of north-eastern Persia. [22] Cabool. Cabul, the capital of Afghanistan. The trade route between Cabul and Hindustan crosses the mountains at a great height. [23] Iran. The original came of Persia. [24] in plain arms. Without any device on his shield. [25] fluted spine. The hollow spike at the top of the helmet, in which the helmet-feather or crest is fitted. [26] Dight. decked. [27] Bahrein. An island. [28] tale. number. [29] perus'd. scanned. [30] tried. experienced. [31] Be govern'd. Take my advice. [32] Chang'd gifts. Exchanged gifts, as a sign of friendship. [33] Success is changeable as the wind. [34] plummet. The lead used for sounding the depth of the sea. [35] Hyphasis or Hydaspes. Two great rivers in northern India. [36] wrack. ruin, destruction. [37] that autumn star. Sirius, the dog star. [38] minion. darling, or favorite. The word is generally used to express contempt. [39] Koords. The people of Kurdistan. [40] It will be rumoured, or bruited, abroad. [41] style. title or name. [42] According to the original legend, Rustum left an amulet, or charm, with the mother of Sohrab. Arnold has altered this detail of the story, and substituted a seal for the amulet. [43] griffin. A mythical creature, half-lion, half-eagle, which was supposed to keep guard over hidden treasure. Just as in Roman mythology, Romulus and Remus were reared by a she-wolf, so in Persian mythology, Zal was reared by a griffin. [44] Helmund. A river in Afghanistan. [45] Sir. Another name for the river Jaxartes. [46] silt. A deposit of mud or fine earth. [47] This prophecy waa not fulfilled. Rustum, according to the legend, met his death by treachery at the hand of his half-brother Shughad. [48] Kai Khosroo. The King of Persia, see line 220. [49] imperious. demanding relief. [50] Persepolis. An ancient city supposed to have been built by Jemshid, or Jamshid, a mythical king of Persia. [51] Chorasmian waste. A desert land, on the lower Oxus. [52] Orgunje. A village on the Oxus. [53] home of waters. The Aral Sea, or "Sea of Islands." 
14955	----	Proofreading Team. [Inscription: I will add a few words respecting my kings and Queens. They were hastily written from the impulse of the moment, for my own entertainment, and that of my youngest grand-daughter, without the remotest idea of printing them. This is my apology for the careless, familiar style in which they were composed. At the request of my children I concluded to print them, when it would have been highly proper to have furnished my royal personages with a dress more befitting the occasion. But the state of my eyes rendered it very inconvenient, if not hazardous to attempt it. And as they are only intended to visit a few of my friends, I trust to their good nature to excuse the homely garb in which they are presented.] THE KINGS AND QUEENS OF ENGLAND WITH OTHER POEMS BY MARY ANN H.T. BIGELOW PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR MDCCCLIII. TO THE COMPANION OF HER YOUTH, MIDDLE AGE, AND DECLINING YEARS, THE FOLLOWING POEMS ARE INSCRIBED BY HIS AFFECTIONATE WIFE, MARY ANN H.T. BIGELOW. PREFACE. I must claim the indulgence of my friends for the many defects they will find in my poems, which they will please wink at, remembering that I was sixty years old when I commenced rhyming; and this by way of experiment, while on a visit to my daughter, in Brooklyn. My first essay, was The Monarchs of England. I took it up for my amusement, wishing to ascertain how much of that history I could recollect without help from any other source than memory. The rhyme is in many places far from smooth, and there are many redundances that might with advantage be lopped off; and were it to come under the critic's eye to be reviewed, I should feel it quite necessary to improve it, (the poetry, I mean.) But as it would require quite too much exertion for my eyes in their present state, and as the history, dates, &c., I believe, are correct, I send it to the press "with all its imperfections on its head." CONTENTS. Kings and Queens of England To my Daughter Elizabeth Acrostic The Evening of Life An Acrostic An Acrostic Written upon receiving a New Year's Gift Lines to the Memory of Patrick Kelley My S.S. Class For my Grandsons, Eddie and Allie For my Granddaughters, M. and L., an Acrostic To my Friend, Mrs.R. To my Niece, Angeline An Acrostic An Acrostic She slumbers still To a Friend in the City Reply Rejoinder to the foregoing Reply To my Friend, Mr.J. Ellis A Pastoral The Jessamine For the Sabbath School Concert Feed my Lambs God is Love To my Friend, Mrs. Lloyd Escape of the Israelites Ordination Hymn Margaret's Remembrance of Lightfoot The Clouds return after the Rain The Nocturnal Visit Sovereignty and Free Agency Autumn and Sunset "My times are in thy hand" November Winter Life's Changes "They will not frame their doings" "Take no thought for the morrow" Reminiscences of the Departed "Let me die the death of the righteous" The Great Physician To my Niece, Mrs. M.A. Caldwell The Morning Drive, for my Daughter Margaret Reply to a Toast To Mr. C.R. To my Missionary Friends To my Husband POEMS. THE KINGS AND QUEENS OF ENGLAND, FROM THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS OR THE NORMAN CONQUEST, TO THE PRESENT REIGN, INCLUSIVE. First, William the Norman lays claim to the crown And retains it till death; then follows his son The red headed William, whose life is cut short By a shot from his friend, when hunting for sport. Then Henry his brother takes quiet possession, As Henry the first, of the great English nation. Next Stephen, a kinsman gets the crown by his might, But no one pretends to say he had a right. Then comes Hal the second, who cuts a great figure With Becket, fair Rosamond and Queen Eliner. The Lion-hearted _Richard_, first of that name, Succeeded his father in power and in fame; He joined the Crusade to a far distant land But his life was cut short by a murderous hand. Next comes the _cruel_ and _cowardly_ John, From whose hand, reluctant, Magna Charta was won. Then his son Henry third, deny it who can? Though unfit for a King, was yet a good man, And his reign though a long one of fifty-six years Was full of perplexities, sorrows, and fears. His son Edward first next governs the nation, Much respected and feared, in holding that station. The Principality of Wales was annexed in his reign, And his son Edward second, first Prince of that name. But what shall I say of King Edward the third, The most remarkable reign, that yet had occurred; Fire arms in the war, were _first_ used in his reign, And the battle of _Cressy_ of great note and fame, To their introduction has the right to lay claim. The knights of the Garter, first made in his reign In honor it seems of a fair English dame, The Duchess of Salisbury to whom it is said, From Edward _peculiar_ attentions were paid. Of Richard the second we have little to say, And take up the fourth Henry, the next on our way, Who reigned fourteen years, when death cut him down And left his good Kingdom to Henry his son; But ere nine years had past, the fifth Henry was borne To the region of darkness from whence none return. The next reign is full of commotion and strife, And Henry the sixth is seen flying for life; For though King of England, we cannot but see He's but the shadow of a king--that _should_ be; And during the thirty-nine years that he reigned His crown and his sceptre were feebly retained. It was in this reign on her mission intent, That Joan of Arc to the battle field went: The French troops were elated, the English dismayed At the wonderful victories achieved by her aid; At length fortune turns, and 'tis needless to tell Of the fate of this maiden--it is all known too well. Of Edward the fourth it seems proper to say That he fancied Dame Shore, when wed to Bess Gray. But the fate of Jane Shore, should be warning to all Who from love, or ambition, are tempted to fall. When Edward the fourth departed this earth, He left two little sons, both Royal by birth; But ere three years had pass'd, both met with their doom, By a most cruel uncle, cut down in their bloom Of youth, love, and beauty, and laid in the tomb. King Edward the fifth was the eldest one's name, Though never permitted by his uncle to reign. Next comes cruel Richard, the third of that name, Whose vices surpassing put others to shame. When unhorsed in battle, he's so anxious to live, That he cries "for a horse, my kingdom I'll give." But in the same battle he had his last fall-- Lamented by none, but detested by all. In the next reign the wars of the roses, all ended, And the red rose and white, forever were blended; For when Henry the seventh took Bessy his bride, The knot of the roses forever was tied; And when the sceptre descended from father to son, The red and the white leaves all mingled in one. King Henry the eighth had quite a long reign Mixed up with his Anne's, his Katy's and Jane. But from this King we turn with disgust and with shame, And greet with delight, the sixth Edward by name. But only six years did this King fill the throne, When called to resign it and lay his crown down. A worthier we think, has never set On the throne of Great Britain--at least not as yet. With pleasure we love to contemplate him now, With a bright crown of Glory, encircling his brow, In the region of _light, love, peace_, and of joy, Where pleasures eternal can have no alloy. Sin, sickness, and death, never find entrance there, For the air is all balm, and the skies ever fair; The clouds of his young life have all passed away And he enjoys the full light of an endless day-- For all who find footing on that peaceful shore, Shall hunger, and thirst, and sorrow no more. But once more we return to this "dim speck of earth," And revisit the clime that gave Edward his birth. Bloody Mary his sister, next mounted the throne, But when five years had pass'd, was obliged to lay down, Notwithstanding reluctance, her Sceptre and Crown. For death to whom she had sent many a one, Now called for his victim, and made her his own. Not by _fire_ and by _faggot_ was _she_ hurried away, But by painful sickness and loathsome decay. Now commences the reign of the "Good Queen Bess," But _why_ she's called _good_ I never could guess: Yet justice constrains me to allow in the main, That her's was a glorious and most prosperous reign. She had the good sense to know whom to admit To her private councils, as men the most fit; And by their advice, good sense and discretion, She managed with _fitness_ to govern the nation. As a Queen she seems great, though _weak_ as a woman, And when praised as a _Goddess_, was no more than human; At the age of threescore, she loved to be compared As a beauty to Venus, though crook'd and red haired. Of lovers she had full many a one, Who sought, through her hand, a pass to the throne, But chose to remain single; for full well she knew, That in giving her hand, she gave away her power too. In this reign we find ineffacible blots, In the treatment of Essex, and Mary of Scots; The death of the former, the Queen sorely repents, And for her lost Essex she deeply laments. The remorse of a Countess, in keeping his ring, I leave to some rhymer, more able to sing. Next James sixth of Scotland, _first_ of England became-- In peace and security permitted to reign. In the person of James, two crowns were united, And England and Scotland remain undivided. With this king the reign of the Stuarts began, And continued to the end of the reign of Queen Ann. In the reign of Charles first, commences a strife Between King and Parliament, that ends but with life; This poor King was beheaded, his son had to flee, And in his place Oliver Cromwell we see. Now in Cromwell the ruler of England we find; Right or wrong, I never could make up my mind; Still all must allow (for deny it who can?) That this same Oliver was a very great man. In eleven years the days of the Commonwealth ended. And gay Charles the second, the throne then ascended. This second king Charles king of hearts might be call'd, For many a fair one he seems t' have enthrall'd. James second, brother of Charles second succeeded, But after a reign of four years, he seceded; When quitting his throne, and his country he flies Over the channel to France, where he dies. Next the Prince of Orange, (from Holland he came,) For the crown of old England, asserted his claim Through right of his wife, Princess Mary by name. And William the third with Mary his wife Are crowned King and Queen of England for life. This princess was lovely in person and mind, As a wife most devoted, a _friend ever_ kind. Queen Ann's is the next reign that in order appears And it covers the space of thirteen full years. Her death brought the reign of the Stuarts to a close, But firm on their ruins, the House of Hanover rose. With this house the reign of the Georges begins-- And four in succession we count up as Kings. George the third, grandson of the second, so called, Was for virtues and goodness of heart much extolled. His reign the longest of any appears, Bearing title of king for sixty-two years. But when aged four score, this good king we find Bereft of his senses and hearing, and blind. In this reign America declared herself free, And independent of rulers over the sea. At length death relieved him, and he was cut down, To make way for his eldest and libertine son. But though of talent acknowledged the son possessed more, The _sire's heart was good_, the _son's corrupt at the core_; Though admired for his beauty, and manners, and wit, As a husband and father he never was fit. But before we pass on to the next reign in course, We have a most sorrowful tale to rehearse, Of the young princess Charlotte, next heir to the crown, In the spring time of life, scarce with warning cut down. If ever the nation were mourners sincere, 'Twas when they united around the sad bier Of this youthful princess so deservedly dear; And stout-hearted men unaccustomed to mourn, Let bitter tears fall, as they gazed on her urn. But who can describe the anguish of one, The heart-stricken husband apart and alone. As the sun of his happiness rose to its height, Death enters his dwelling, and lo! it is night; The light of his house forever has fled, For his loved one, his dearest, lies low with the dead. In the _same_ day all his fair prospects were crossed, When a _wife_, and a _son_, and a _kingdom_ he lost. Next William the fourth, is proclaimed Britain's king, For between him and his brother two deaths intervene. No _legitimate_ child did he leave in possession Of the Crown of old England, in right of succession; So the diadem passed to the youthful brow Of his niece Queen Victoria, who honors it now; And for her we wish, as our rhyming we close, A _long, peaceful reign_--an old age of repose. Written while on a visit at Brooklyn, N.Y., 1851. TO MY DAUGHTER ELIZABETH. Two flowers upon one parent stem Together bloomed for many days. At length a storm arose, and _one_ Was blighted, and cut down at noon. The other hath transplanted been, And flowers _fair_ as _herself_ hath borne; She too has felt the withering storm, Her strength's decayed, wasted her form. May he who hears the mourner's prayer, Renew her strength for years to come; Long may He our Lilly spare, Long delay to call her home. But when the summons shall arrive To bear this lovely flower away, Again may she transplanted be To blossom in eternity. There may these sisters meet again, Both freed from sorrow, sin, and pain; There with united voices raise, In sweet accord their hymns of praise; Eternally his name t' adore, Who died, yet _lives forevermore_. Weston, Jan. 3, 1852. ACROSTIC. For thee, my son, a mother's earnest prayer Rises to Heaven each day from heart sincere, Anxiously seeking what concerns thee most; Not merely earthly good for thee she prays, Knowledge, or wealth, or fame, or length of days, What shall these profit, if the soul be lost. In this life we find alternate day and night, Not always darkness, _sure not always_ light; 'Tis well it should be so, we're travellers here, Home, _that_ "sweet home," the Christian's place of rest, Rises by faith to view when most distressed: Oh! this life past--mayst thou find entrance there. Perplexed, distressed, sick, or by friends betrayed, Beset with snares, deprived of human aid, In all thy sorrows whatsoe'er they be, Go to the Saviour, tell him all thy need, Entreat his pity, he's a friend indeed; Lay hold by faith on _Him_, and he will succor thee. Oh, do not live for this dull world alone, When with the _Angels_ thou mayst find a home. Jan. 1853. THE EVENING OF LIFE. As the shadows of evening around me are falling, With its dark sombre curtain outspread, And night's just at hand, chilly night so appalling, And day's brilliant sunshine hath fled, It is e'en so with me, for the eve of my day Has arrived, yet I scarcely know how; Bright morn hath departed, and noon passed away, And 'tis evening, _pale_ eve with me now. Oh! where are the friends who in life's early morn, With me did their journey commence; Some are estranged, while some few still remain, And others departed long since. And when I too, like them, shall be summoned away, And the shadows of death on me fall, Be thou the Great Shepherd of Israel but near, My Saviour, my God, and my all. And though the "dark valley" we all must pass through, Yet surely no evil can harm The _sheep_, when the Shepherd is walking there too, And supports them by his mighty arm. Oh! my Redeemer, wilt thou be with me then, And food for my journey provide, Divide the dark waters of Jordan again, And safe in thy bosom me hide. Though wild beasts of the desert may roar long and loud, And the billows of ocean rise high, With thy rod and thy staff for my strength and support, I shall pass them in safety all by. And having crossed Jordan, on Canaan's bright shore With what joy shall I take a survey, And reflect that the dangers of life are all o'er, And with unclouded vision enjoy evermore The bright sun of an endless day. Weston, Feb. 4, 1852. AN ACROSTIC. Merry, merry little child, Active, playful, sometimes wild; Rosy cheeks, and ringlets rare, Glossy black, with eyes compare. _All, all_ these belong to thee, Right pleasant little Margerie. Every good, dear child, be given Thee on earth, and rest in heaven. But who thy future lot can see? All, _every_ page is hid from me; Xtended through eternity, Thy life so late begun will be. Earnest seek to know the truth, Remember God in early youth; When in his sacred courts thou art, Engage in worship thy _whole heart_; Listen to what the preacher says, Listen to prayers, and list to praise, In nothing see thou dost offend, Nor fail the Sabbath _well_ to spend. Give to thy parents honor due, Thy sisters love, and brothers too; Oh! good and happy mayst thou be, Now and ever, Margerie. AN ACROSTIC. Cannot happiness perfect be found on this earth? How absurd to expect it--sin comes with our birth. As soon from spring bitter, sweet water procure, Rich clusters of grapes from the thorn; Look for figs upon thistles, when seeking for food, Or bread from the cold flinty stone. The wealth of the Indies, _true_ peace can't bestow, The Crown Royal oft presses an aching brow, E'en in laughter there's madness--mirth coupled with woe. As true peace in this world, then, can never be found, Until deep in the heart Christian graces abound, Give diligent heed to the keeping thy heart; Unwearied in effort, repel every dart So dextrously pointed by Satan's black art. True peace is from Heaven--a child of the skies, And feeble exertions secure not the prize. Never falter in duty, but trust in that power Engaged to support you in each trying hour; When sinking like Peter amidst the dark wave, Ever look unto Jesus, almighty to save. Look _to_ him, live _like_ him, be strong in his might, Lay thy _burden_ on him, and thy _cross_ he'll make light. WRITTEN UPON RECEIVING A NEW YEAR'S GIFT. I have a little Grandchild dear, Who sends to me on each new year A valuable present: Not costly gift from store-house bought, But one that her own hands have wrought, Therefore to me more pleasant. Accept, dear child, the wish sincere, For you much happiness this year, And length of days be given; Here may you act well your part, Serving the Lord with all your heart, And find your rest in heaven. Jan. 1852. LINES TO THE MEMORY OF PATRICK KELLEY, WHO BY HIS MANY GOOD QUALITIES DURING SOME YEARS' RESIDENCE IN MY FAMILY, GREATLY ENDEARED HIMSELF TO ME AND MINE. From Erin's fair Isle to this country he came, And found brothers and sisters to welcome him here; Though then but a youth, yet robust seemed his frame, And life promised fair for many a long year. A place was soon found where around the same board, He with two of his sisters did constantly meet; And when his day's work had all been performed, At the _same_ fireside he found a third seat. His faithfulness such, so true-hearted was he, That love in return could not be denied; _As one of the family_--he soon ceased to be The stranger, who lately for work had applied. Youth passed into manhood, and with it there came New duties to fill, new plans to pursue; But a fatal disease now seizes his frame, And with health is his strength fast leaving him too. From his home in the country to the city he went, Where kind brothers procured him good medical aid; But all was in vain--Death commissioned was sent, And soon his remains in the cold grave were laid. The broad waves of Atlantic lie rolling between His brothers and sisters and parents on earth; And never by parents may those children be seen, Or the latter revisit the land of their birth. But sooner or later they all must be borne To that region of darkness from whence none return; Oh! then may they meet on Canaan's bright shore, An _unbroken household_ to part nevermore. Weston, Jan. 1852. MY S.S. CLASS. I now will endeavor, while fresh in my mind, My Sabbath School Class to portray; The theme's furnished for me, I've only to find Colors to blend, their forms to display. And first on the canvass we'll Adeline place, With her full and expressive dark eye; Decision of purpose is stamped on that face, And good scholarship too we descry. Next in order comes Alice, with bright sunny smile, That does one's heart good to behold; May the sorrows of life ne'er that young spirit blight, Nor that heart be less cheerful when old. But who's this that we see, with that mild pensive air, And a look so expressively kind? It is Ann, gentle Ann, before whom we pass by, We will add--'t would be useless in any to try Disposition more lovely to find. The next is a bright noble face we espy, 'Tis a boy of ten years we shall find; There's a spice of the rogue in that merry young eye, With good sense and good nature combined. It's young master Alpheus--we never have found One more punctual at school hour than he; He's now but a lad, yet who knows when a _man_, But a _Judge in our land_ he may be. Next comes little Moggy, our dear little Moggy, But before she is brought out to view, We'll new colors select, add fresh tints to the whole, And spread all on our pallet anew. And now she appears in her own proper size, Her cheeks colored by nature's warm glow; With her full lustrous and speaking black eyes, And rich ringlets that grace her young brow. Walter's the last on the painting we see, Little Walter, the youngest of all; Look! he's repeating his lesson just now, Mark the expression on that infant brow, He's a _wonder_, for scholar so small. But there's one in this grouping we look for in vain, Whose image we often recall; How mournfully sweet is the sound of thy name, Dear Elbridge, the loved one of all. Thou wert called in the freshness of morning away, By him who all things doeth well; The rest for brief periods are suffered to stay, How long, we may none of us tell. May the Holy Book studied in this Sabbath School, Be more precious than silver or gold; Be its doctrines received, and its precepts obeyed, And _rich treasures_ it still will unfold. And when one by one we shall all pass away, To me, oh! my Father, be given The joy that no heart upon earth can conceive, To meet all in the kingdom of Heaven. Weston, Feb. 17, 1852. FOR MY GRANDSONS, EDDY AND ALLY. I here engage Upon this page A picture to portray, Of two of an age Yet neither a sage, But right honest hearts have they. Each loves to play And have his own way, Yet I'm happy to say They quarrel, if ever, but seldom. Though competent quite To maintain their own right, And even to fight, Yet peace to their bosom is welcome. Both go to school, And learn by rule That in neither a dunce we may find; Both read and spell And like it well; Thus with pleasure is profit combined. One's eyes are black, The other's blue; They both have honest hearts and true, And love each other dearly: One's father, is brother To the other one's mother, So cousins german are they most clearly; Each has a father, And each has a mother, And both do dearly love him; But neither a sister, And neither a brother, To _play_ with, or to _plague_ him. And here I propose, Ere I come to a close, A little advice to give; To which if they heed, They'll be better indeed, And happier as long as they live. Be sure to mind Your parents kind, And do nothing to vex or tease them; But through each day Heed what they say, And strive to obey and please them. Take not in vain God's holy name, Do not work, Do not play On God's holy day, Nor from church stay away; Always bear it in mind To be gentle and kind, And friends you will find, And hearts to you bind, I am sure I may venture to say. And when you're men, Who sees you then I hope in you models will see, Of _good_ and _great_, In _Church_ and _State_, Whose lips with your lives agree. Weston, Feb. 1852. FOR MY GRAND-DAUGHTERS, M. AND L.--AN ACROSTIC. Mary and Lily--how sweet are those names, Allied as they are to my heart and my home; Recalling with freshness the days that are past, Yielding buds of sweet promise for days yet to come. Links are these names to the chain that hath bound In fetters my heart, to which still they lay claim; Loved ones and lovely, still close by me found, Years past, and time present, whose names are the same. Enshrined in this bosom, is living one now, Still youthful and truthful, and talented too, Though years have elapsed since she passed from our view; E'en in Summer midst roses in beauty and bloom, She faded away, and was borne to the tomb. Weston, March 5, 1852. FOR MY FRIEND MRS. R. When writing to you, friend, a subject I'd find In which there's both pleasure and profit combined, And though what I've chosen may pain in review, Yet still there's strange mingling of pleasure there too. Then let us go back many years that are past, And glance at those days _much too happy to last_. I have seen thee, my friend, when around thy bright hearth Not a seat was found vacant, but gladness and mirth Kept high holiday there, and many a time Were mingled in pastime my children with thine. I've looked in again, the destroyer had come, And changed the whole aspect of that happy home. He entered that dwelling, and rudely he tore From the arms of his mother, her most cherished flower. Thy heart seemed then broken, oh! how couldst thou bear To live in this world, and thy idol not here? Oh! heart-stricken mother, thou didst not then know All the bitter ingredients in thy cup of woe. The hand of thy father that cup had prepared, Each drop needful for thee, not one could be spared. Ere thy first wound had healed, while bleeding and sore, Death entered again, and a fair daughter bore From home of her childhood, to return never more. How painful the shock, for in striking that blow A child, parent, sister, and wife was laid low. Thy strength seemed unequal that shock to sustain, But death was not satiate, he soon called again, And tears and entreaties were powerless to save Another dear daughter from death and the grave. Like a fair lily when droops its young head, With little of suffering her mild spirit fled. She was thy namesake, to her young friends most dear; So many thy trials, so heavy to bear, It seemed that much longer thou couldst not survive; _How much can the human heart bear and yet live_. Up to this time there had always been one Who shared in thy trials and made them his own; Many years his strong arm had support been to thee, The friend of thy youth, thy kind husband was he. He's ever been with thee in weal and in woe, But the time's just at hand when he too must go. The bolt fell not single, it pierced the slight form Of a child, too fragile to weather the storm; The summons that took her dear father away Seemed her young heart to break, she could not here stay, And now in deep slumber they side by side lay. I have felt, my dear friend, as I've witnessed thy grief, How inadequate language to give thee relief; And that _real relief_ could never be found Except from the hand that inflicted the wound. In the furnace of fire thou wert not alone, For walking beside thee had ever been one, The kindest of friends, though thou could'st not him see, For the scales on thine eyes weighed them down heavily. Those scales have now fallen; look up, thou canst see That look of compassion, it's fixed upon thee. Raise thine eyes once again, see that head crowned with thorns; In those feet, hands, and side, see the deep bleeding wounds. You now know full well why such suffering was borne, 'Twas for thee, and for me, and for every one Who trusts in his merits and on him alone. Thy day is just passed, 'tis now evening with thee, But the faith of the Christian is given to see The star of bright promise, amid the dark gloom Which shall light all thy footsteps and gild the lone tomb; And at the last day mayst thou and thine stand An _unbroken household_ at Jesus' right hand. March 27, 1852. FOR MY NIECE ANGELINE. In the morning of life, when all things appear bright, And far in the distance the shadows of night, With kind parents still spared thee, and health to enjoy, What period more fitting thy powers to employ In the service of him, who his own life has given To procure thee a crown and a mansion in Heaven. As a dream that is gone at the breaking of day, And a tale that's soon told, so our years pass away. "Then count that day lost, whose low setting sun Can see from thy hand no worthy act done." Midst the roses of life many thorns thou wilt find, "But the cloud that is darkest, with silver is lined." As the children of Israel were led on their way By the bright cloud at night, and the dark cloud by day, So the Christian is led through the straight narrow road That brings him direct to his home and his God; And when the last stage of life's journey is o'er, And Jordan's dark waves can affright him no more, When safely arrived in his own promised land, He's permitted with Saints and with Angels to stand, Then weighed in the balance how light will appear All the sorrows of life, with his blissful state there. Oh! let us by faith take a view of him now, See the crown of bright jewels encircling his brow; His old tattered robe swept away by the flood, Is replaced by a new one, the gift of his Lord; The hand of his Saviour that garment hath wrought, It is pure stainless white, free from wrinkle and spot. The streets that he walks in are pavëd with gold, And yet it's transparent as glass we are told; The pure river of water of life is in view, And for healing the nations, the tree of life too. There's no need of a candle or sun there, for night Is excluded forever--the Lord God is their light. But here we will stop, for no tongue can declare, No heart may conceive what the Saints enjoy there. And these joys may be ours--oh! how blissful the thought, Ours without money, without price may be bought. For us they've been purchased by the Son of God, At an infinite price--_his own precious blood_. They wait our acceptance, may be ours if we choose, 'Tis _life_ to accept them,--'tis _death_ to refuse. Weston, May 15, 1862. AN ACROSTIC. Ah! what is this life? It's a dream, is the reply; Like a dream that's soon ended, so life passes by. Pursue the thought further, still there's likeness in each, How constant our aim is at what we can't reach. E'en so in a dream, we've some object in view Unceasingly aimed at, but the thing we pursue Still eludes our fond grasp, and yet lures us on too. How analagous this to our waking day hours, Unwearied our efforts, we tax all our powers; Betimes in the morning the prize we pursue, By the pale lamp of midnight we're seeking it too; At all times and seasons, this _same fancied good_ Repels our advances, yet still is pursued, Depriving us oft, of rest needful, and food. But there's a pearl of great price, whose worth is untold, It can never he purchased with silver or gold; Great peace it confers upon all to whom given, Ever cheering their pathway, and pointing to heaven. Look not to this world for a prize of such worth, Or hope _that_ to obtain from this perishing earth Whose essence is spiritual, and heavenly its birth. Weston, June 6, 1862. ACROSTIC. Even now I seem to see thee, Lovely boy, with thy sweet smile, Bright and beautiful as when Reading that holy book, the while I listened to thee, little dreaming, Docile, gentle, pleasant child, God who gave, _so soon would take thee_, Even thee, so _sweet_, so _mild_. But how merciful in chastening Our father is--oh! bless his name-- Your little face was decked with smiles, Dear child, just when the summons came. Escaped from lingering sickness, thou hadst Nought to mar thy little frame. While ye mourn the dear departed, Each bitter feeling disallow; Look to heaven, ye broken hearted, Look, and with submission bow. In thy hour of deepest sorrow, Never murmur, dare not blame; God, who wounds, alone can heal thee; Trust his power and praise his name. Oh! may we say, _each_, every one, "Not my will, but thine be done." SHE SLUMBERS STILL. On a midsummer's eve she lay down to sleep, Wearied and toil-worn the maiden was then; How deep was that slumber, how quiet that rest, 'Twas the sleep from which no one awakens again. Morn returned in its freshness, and flowers that she loved In beauty and fragrance were blooming around; The birds caroled sweetly the whole live-long day, But that strange mystic sleep all her senses had bound. Day followed day until summer was gone, And autumn still found her alone and asleep; Stern winter soon followed, but its loud blasts and shrill, Were powerless to rouse her from slumber so deep. Again spring returns, and all nature revives, And birds fill the groves with their music again; But the eyes and the ears of that loved one are closed, And on her these rich treasures are lavished in vain. Unheeded by her the winter snow falls, Its beautiful garment spring puts on in vain; Many _summers_ the birds her sad requiem have sung, But to sound of sweet music she'll ne'er wake again. There is _but one voice_ that deep slumber can break, 'Tis the same one that loudly called, "Lazarus, come forth!" At the sound of that voice all the dead shall arise, And before God shall stand all the nations on earth. Then shall this dear one, our first born, awake, Her mortal put on immortality then; And oh! blissful thought, that we once more may meet In that home where's no parting, death, sorrow, or pain. Weston, May 29, 1852. TO A FRIEND IN THE CITY, FROM HER FRIEND IN THE COUNTRY. By especial request I take up my pen, To write a few lines to my dear Mrs. N.; And though nothing of depth she has right to expect; Yet the _will_ for the _deed_ she will not reject The task, on reflection, is a heavy one quite, As here in the country we've no news to write; For what is to _us_ very _new_, rich, and rare, To you in the city is stale and thread bare. Should I write of Hungary, Kossuth, or the Swede, They are all out of date, antiquated indeed. I might ask you with me the New Forest to roam, But it's stript of its foliage, quite leafless become; N.P. Willis and rival have each had their day, And of rappings and knockings there's nought new to say. Yet do not mistake me, or think I would choose, A home in the city, the country to lose; The music of birds, with rich fruits and sweet flowers, We all in the country lay claim to as ours. A bird that's imprisoned, I hate to hear sing, Let me catch its glad note as it soars on the wing; Its carol so sweet as it's floating along, It seems the Creator to praise in its song. With the sweetest of poets I often exclaim, "God made the country,"--let the pride of man claim The town with its buildings, its spires, and its domes, But leave us in the country our sweet quiet homes. The scenery around us is lovely to view, It charmed when a _child_, and at three-score charms too. Then leave me the country with its birds, fruits, and flowers, And the _town_, with its pleasures and crowds, may be yours. E'en in winter the country has right to the claim Of charms equal to summer; to be sure, not the same. See winter, stern monarch, as borne on the gale, He comes armed _cap-a-pie_ in his white coat of mail; Behold what a change he hath wrought in _one_ night, He has robed the whole country in _pure spotless white_. He fails not to visit us once every year, But finds us _prepared for him_--meets with good cheer, And a most cordial welcome from all of us here. When with us he's quite civil and very polite, In manners most courtly, and dignified quite; But I'm told were he goes unexpected he's rough, Chills all by his presence, and savage enough. _Hark, hear how it storms!_ blowing high and yet higher; But then we've books, music, and a brilliant wood fire, Where logs piled on logs give one warmth e'en to see; Oh! these evenings in winter are charming to me. In good keeping these logs are with wind and the hail, Everything in the country is on a _grand scale_. You have nought in the city I think can compare, To the bright glowing hearth from a good _country_ fire. To be sure, now and then, one is cheered by the sight Of wood fire in the city, but when at its height Compared to _our fires_, Lilliputianal quite. But here I will stop, for I think it quite time To have done with my boasting, and finish my rhyme. M.A.H.T. BIGELOW. Weston, April 6, 1852. P.S. And now, my dear friend, it is certainly fair, Your city advantages you should compare With ours in the country, let me know what they are. REPLY: WHICH I AM GRATEFUL FOR PERMISSION TO INSERT. Dear Madam, Many thanks for your missive so charming in verse, So kind and descriptive, so friendly and terse; It came opportune on a cold stormy day, And scattered ennui and "blue devils" away; For though in the city, where "all's on the go," We often aver we feel only "so so," And sigh for a change--then _here_ comes a letter! What could I desire more welcome and better? But how to reply? I'm lost in dismay, I cannot in rhyme my feelings portray. The _nine_ they discard me, I'm not of _their_ train, They entreatingly beg, "I'll ne'er woo them again;" But I'll brave their displeasure, and e'en write to _you_ A few lines of doggrel, then rhyming adieu. My errors do "wink at," for hosts you'll descry, And spare all rebuff, and the keen critic's eye. I appreciate all of your calm country life, And feel you are happy as mother and wife; Surrounded by taste, and _the friend_ so refined, Who with sterling good sense, loves the delicate mind; Who with _you_ can admire the "bird on the wing," With _you_ welcome back the return of the spring; Enjoying the promise of fruits and sweet flowers, With music to cheer and beguile evening hours; Then _long_, very long, may such hours be given-- They whisper content, and the foretaste of heaven. I was born in the city, the city's my home, Yet oft in the country with pleasure I roam; For _there_, I confess, the heart finds repose In its pleasures and sorrows, which _here_ it ne'er knows. _There_ no fashion, no nonsense, intrude on your walk, But rational moments of rational talk, Asserting that soiries, with jewels and dress, Make a very small part of life's happiness. Ah! this I believe, most _sincerely_ I do, And sympathize freely, most truly with you. Now Kossuth is coming, pray what's to be done? No pageant to welcome, to children no fun? Some "turn a cold shoulder," and look with disdain, Yet many there'll be who will follow his train. He's "sure missed a figure," and "bit his own nose," Ah, many the thorn he'll find 'mid life's rose. Then we've concerts, fine readings, museum and halls, With disputes, and debates, in legislative halls, Ethiopian Minstrels, Shakesperian plays; And yet, my dear friend, I'm told in these days, Religion's blessed joys are most faithfully felt, With devotion's pure prayers the proud heart to melt; That many have turned to the straight narrow road, Which leadeth to peace and communion with God. To _you_ this assurance a welcome will find, A subject of vital concern to the mind. When hither you come, do enter our door, I'll give you my hand, perhaps something more. Let me urge, if inclined, to this you'll reply, I'll again do my best, yes, surely I'll try; The fair one who brings it ought sure to inspire Some poetical lay from Genius' sweet lyre. But Genius repels me, she "turns a deaf ear," And frowns on me scornful, the year after year; Perhaps if I sue, in the "sere yellow leaf," She'll open her heart, and yield me relief. But wayward my pen, I must now bid adieu, My friendship, dear madam, I offer to you, And beg with your friends, you'll please place my name, The privilege grant me of doing the same. S. NICHOLSON. Boston, April 16, 1862. REJOINDER TO THE FOREGOING REPLY. Many, many thanks my friend, For those sweet verses thou didst send, So good they were and witty; And now I will confess to thee, Mixed up with bad, much good I see Within the crowded city. Boston, "with all thy faults I love Thee still," though much I disapprove-- See much in thee to blame; Yet to be candid, I'll allow Thy equal no one can me show From Mexico to Maine. It is my boast, perhaps my pride, To be to English blood allied, Warm in my veins it's flowing; And when I see the homage given To foreign men and foreign _women_,[1] _That blood with shame is glowing_. I hope when Kossuth fever's cool And we have put our wits to school, And sober senses found; When the Hungarian's out of sight And shattered brains collected quite, We may be safe and sound. But what simpletons, should we choose, With nought to gain and much to loose, 'Gainst Austria to war; What greater folly, when we know By doing this, we'll get a blow From the ambitious Czar. But you may not with me agree, And I am getting warm I see, So here I bid adieu To Kossuth and to Hungary, To Russia and to Germany, And the great Emperor too. And now my friend a word I'd say Before I throw my pen away, On subject most important; In doing this I need not fear I shall offend the nicest ear, Or strike a note discordant. Oh! had I true poetic fire, With boldness would I strike the lyre So loud that all might hear; But ah! my harp is tuned so low, Its feeble strains I full well know Can reach no distant ear. Yet I rejoice that harps on high, And voices of sweet harmony, Are raised to bless the name Of Him who sits upon the throne, Rejoicing over souls new born, Who soon will join with them, Eternally His name to adore Who died, yet lives forevermore. Weston, May 8, 1852. [1] By this I do not mean to include all foreigners, for some of them I consider among the very best of our population, but dancers, &c., &c. TO MY FRIEND MR. J. ELLIS. To thee, the guardian of my youthful days, Fain would I pay some tribute of respect; And though it falls far short of thy desert, The _will_ to do thee justice thou'lt accept. As I recall the days of former years, Thy many acts of kindness bring to mind, Tears fill my eyes, in thee I've ever found A friend most faithful, uniformly kind. Thou art the earliest friend of mine that's left-- The rest have long departed, every one; They've long years since the debt of nature paid, But thou remainest still, and thou alone. The snow of four score winters thou has seen, And life's long pilgrimage may soon be o'er; Respected, loved, and happy hast thou been, With ample means to relieve the suffering poor, Thou ever hadst the will, as well as power. Temperate in habit, and of temper even, Calm and unruffled as the peaceful lake, To thee the satisfaction has been given Much to enjoy, and others happy make. And when thy days on earth shall all be past, And thou before the Saviour's bar appear, Mayst thou be found clothed in his righteousness And from his lips the joyful sentence hear-- "Well done, thou good and faithful servant; thou Hast over few things faithful been, and now I'll make thee ruler over many things, And place a crown of glory on thy brow." Such will be thy reward, my friend, and mine, If trusting in Christ's merits, _not our own_, We at the last great day in him be found; _He_ is the ark of safety--_He alone_. Weston, April 24, 1852. A PASTORAL. Oh! tell me ye shepherds, tell me I pray, Have you seen the fair Jessie pass by this way? You ne'er could forget her, if once you had seen, She's fair as the morning, she moves like a Queen. My sheep are neglected, my crook's thrown aside, In pursuit of dear Jessie, sweet Jessie, my bride; I hear nothing of her, no tidings can glean, To _see_ is to _know_ her, she moves like a Queen. Say, have you seen her? oh, pity my grief! Speak _quick_, and impart me the needful relief; You cannot forget her, if once you have seen, She's lovely as Venus, she moves like a Queen. Have you not seen her?--then listen I pray, Oh! listen to what a poor shepherd can say In the praise of one ne'er so lovely was seen; She's youthful as Hebe, she moves like a Queen. She's fair as the Spring in the mild month of May, She's brilliant as June decked in flowerets so gay; You ne'er could forget her if once you had seen, She's charming as Flora, she moves like a Queen. Oh! tell me not Damon, that yours can compare To Jessie, sweet Jessie, with beauty so rare; With a face of such sweetness, so modest a mien, She's like morn in its freshness, she moves like a Queen. You tell me your Sylvia is beautiful quite; She may be, when Jessie is kept out of sight; She is not to be mentioned with Jessie, I ween, Her voice is sweet music, she moves like a Queen. Then name not your Sylvia with Jessie I pray, 'Tis comparing dark night with the fair light of day; Sylvia's movements are clumsy, and awkwardly seen, But Jessie is graceful, she moves like a Queen. Menalaus' fair wife, for beauty far famed, By the side of my Jessie is not to be named; Paris ne'er had woo'd Helen, if Jessie he'd seen, She's chaste as Diana, she moves like a Queen. Oh! aid me, do aid me, ye shepherds, I pray! The time is fast flying, no longer I'll stay; You cannot mistake her, there's none like her seen, She's lovely as Venus, she moves like a Queen. Do help me to find her, I'm wild with affright, The day passes swiftly, it soon will be night; There's none to compare with her, none like her seen, _More_ lovely than Venus, she moves like a Queen. THE JESSAMINE. EDDIE TO JESSIE. There are many flowers famous for fragrance and hue, Sweet Roses and Lilies, Geraniums too; And though decked in gay colors they look very fine, They are not to my fancy like _sweet Jessie mine_. FOR THE S.S. CONCERT, IN THE WAYLAND ORTHODOX CHURCH. Feed my lambs! the Saviour said, Near two thousand years ago; If we truly love the Lord, By obedience, love we'll show. What was said to Peter then, In that distant age and clime, Sure is binding on us now, Here and to the end of time. If our Shepherd then we love, His commandments we'll obey; Let us true disciples prove, Feed his lambs as best we may. Twice twelve years have passed this day,[2] Since our Sabbath School commenced; Countless lessons have been learned, Much instruction been dispensed. Let us up and doing be, Sow the seed all times and hours; Cast our bread on water even, Tax with vigor all our powers. May the teachers now engaged, Courage take, and persevere; They'll not fail of their reward, Though they may not meet it here. God is faithful, who hath said, (Let the thought allay your fears,) "They with joy shall surely reap, Who have sown in prayers and tears." Then sow the seed with prayers and tears; Never doubt, but faithful be; Though thou reapest not for years, A rich harvest thou wilt see. Happy faces now we miss, Who were wont these seats to fill; Loved and lovely passed away, Yet they're fresh in memory still. Soon their earthly race was run, In the morning called away; Others soon may follow them, May all hear the Saviour say, "Well done, faithful servant; thou Hast o'er few things faithful been, I will make the ruler now Over many--enter in." [2] June 13, 1852. FEED MY LAMBS. Just before the bright cloud the Saviour received, When about to return to his father in Heaven; His mission accomplished, his work on earth done, 'Twas then that this parting injunction was given: "Feed my lambs!" this was said to one of the twelve, Whom he called to be with him while sojourning here; "Feed my lambs!" Oh, what love was evinced by those words, What tender compassion, what fatherly care. Three times at this meeting the question was asked, "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?" And though grieved, yet how truly could Peter reply, "Lord thou knowest all things, thou know'st I love thee." Thrice this same Peter his Lord had denied, And had he not reason reproaches to fear? Oh, no! for his Saviour had all this forgiven, He saw his repentance, he knew it sincere. That disciple soon followed his Lord whom he loved, And many long ages have since passed away; But the parting command still remains in full force, And will ever remain so till time's latest day. Many wolves in sheep's clothing are still to be found, Whom Satan fails not to instruct and employ; They enter the fold, and with most specious wiles, Seek the young of the flock to ensnare and destroy. And shall we dare call ourselves followers of Christ, And yet his known precepts presume to evade? Ah! stop and reflect, what's the test that's required? "If ye love me, keep my commandments," he said. June 26, 1852. "GOD IS LOVE." Come blest Spirit from above, Come and fill my heart with love; Love to God, and love to man, Love to do the good I can; Love to high, and love to low, Love to friend, and love to foe. Love to rich, and love to poor, Love to beggar at my door. Love to young, and love to old, Love to hardened heart and cold. Love, true love, my heart within For the sinner, _not the sin_; Love to holy Sabbath day, Love to meditate and pray, Love for love, for _hatred_ even; _Love like this, is born of Heaven_. TO MY FRIEND MRS. LLOYD My very dear friend Should never depend Upon anything clever or witty, From a poor country wight When attempting to write, To one in your far famous city. Indeed I'm inclined, To fear that you'll find These lines heavy, and quite out of joint; And now I declare, It's no more than fair, Should this prove a dull letter, That you write me a better; And something that's quite to the point. This having premised As at present advised, I'll indulge in the thoughts that incline, Not with curious eye The dim future to spy, But glance backward to "Auld Lang Syne." If I recollect right, It was a cold day quite, And not far from night When _the Boarding School famous_ I entered. Now what could I do? Scarce above my own shoe Did I dare take a view, Or to speak, or e'en move hardly ventured. At this school I remained Till supposed to have gained Education quite good and sufficient; But one in those days, Thought deserving of praise, Would in these, be deemed very deficient. And here we will try Before the mind's eye, To bring forward a few of that household; There were the witty, Also the pretty, But some very plain, Not a few very vain, And among them the phlegmatic and cold. Though it seems out of place I will here find a space For some few in the lower apartment; Sure this must be right, They contributed quite To our comfort, in their humble department. Here's Lydia and Polly, And Peter the jolly, With teeth white as ivory And cheeks black as ebony, So from Africa doubtless was he; But we'll ascend from below, And see entering just now With a Parisian bow And all in a glow Gay Monsieur Pichon, And French teacher Faucon; Also V----, the Musician, And B----, Mathematician. Monsieur Laboltierre, So brisk and debonnair Had also been there; And there's Eggleston fair, With whom none might compare. Miss W----, romantic, Miss F----, transatlantic, And of others a score you might see. But here I propose The long list to close, With addition of only one name; Amidst the gay throng Was one lovely and young, Who brought sunshine wherever she came. She had light brown hair, Was graceful and fair, Of children many Youngest of any, And Margaret this maiden they call; A sweet smile she had That round her lips played, And with eyes bright and blue She'd a heart warm and true And disposition affectionate withal. One advantage she'll allow That I have over her now, The same in our youthful days, when On our studies intent Over school desk we bent, Her Senior I always have been. How like to a dream Do those days to me seem, When with others preparing to enter On the world's great stage, And with light heart engage Our part in the drama to venture. Of that school there's not one Except thee alone, Whom now living as friend I can claim; Some have departed, Some are false hearted, And their friendship exists but in name. But that friendship's long lived That forty years has survived, And may we not hope 'twill endure, When in flames of fire This earth will expire, And old time shall itself be no more. July 12, 1852. ESCAPE OF THE ISRAELITES, AND DESTRUCTION OF PHARAOH. Ah! short-sighted monarch, dost thou think to pursue The Israel of God, and recapture them too? Hast thou so soon forgotten the plagues on thee sent, Or so hardened thy heart that thou can'st not relent? Then make ready thy chariots, a long way they'll reach; Thou hast six hundred chosen, a captain to each. Now after them _hasten_, no time's to be lost, That God worketh for them, thou'st felt to thy cost. _Speed thee then, speed thee_, thou'lt soon them o'ertake, Thou hast so overtasked them they're powerless and weak. Ah! weak and defenceless they truly appear, But the Lord is their rock, they're his special care. See that pillar that's leading them all on their way, It's a bright cloud by night and a dark cloud by day; And now by the Red Sea behold they encamp, But _hark_! what's that sound, it's the war horse's tramp. Look up, see thy enemy close by thee now, The sea lies before thee, ah! what canst thou do? Moses bids them go forward at God's command, When the waters divide, and they walk on dry land; And the cloud that to Egypt is darkness all night, To the children of Israel, is a bright shining light. And now have the Hebrews all safely passed through The Red Sea, which Pharaoh assaying to do Is destroyed with his host, every one of them drowned, Not a man saved alive, not a _single man found_ To return to lone Egypt, the sad news to bear To the widows and orphans made desolate there. But list! hear the rescued their glad voices raise, And to timbrel and dance add the sweet song of praise, For Pharaoh hath perished beneath the dark sea, And the long enslaved Hebrews are happy and free. July 14, 1852. HYMN, SUNG AT THE ORDINATION OF THE REV. HENRY ALLEN. We meet to-day as ne'er before, To greet a pastor of our choice, Without a single jarring note, And without one dissenting voice. Oh thou who art enthroned on high, Before whom holy angels bow, Be pleased to hear us when we sing, Accept the praises offered now. Let no one present, dare to give, The service of the lip alone; Or think if they the heart withhold, 'Twill find acceptance at thy throne. But with united heart and voice, A grateful tribute we would raise; Oh bless us all assembled now, Help us to pray, and help to praise. Thou great Immanuel, who didst lead Thy Israel all the desert through; Like them we're weak and helpless quite, Oh! condescend to lead _us_ too. And when our Shepherd with his flock Before thy throne shall re-appear, May every one acceptance find, And ceaseless praises offer there. Sept. 1852. MARGARET'S REMEMBRANCE OF LIGHTFOOT. My beautiful steed, 'Tis painful indeed To think we are parted forever; That on no sunny day, With light spirits and gay, Over hills far away, We shall joyously travel together. Thy soft glossy mane I shall ne'er see again, Nor thy proudly arched neck 'gain behold; Nor admire _that_ in thee, Which so seldom we see, A kind, gentle spirit, yet bold. Thou wert pleasant indeed My darling grey steed, "In my mind's eye" thou'rt beautiful still; For when thou wert old Thy heart grew not cold, Its warm current time never could chill. Not a stone marks the spot Where they laid thee, Lightfoot, And no fence to enclose thee around; But what if there's not, _Deep engraved on my heart_ Thy loved image may ever be found. "THE CLOUDS RETURN AFTER THE RAIN." Dark and yet darker my day's clouded o'er; Are its bright joys all fled, and its sunshine no more? I look to the skies for the bright bow in vain, For constantly "clouds return after the rain." Must it always be thus, peace banished forever, And joy to this sad heart returned again never? I long for the rest that I cannot obtain, For the clouds, so much dreaded, return after rain. Is there not in this wide world one spot that is blessed With exemption from suffering, where one may find rest; Where sickness and sorrow no entranpe can gain, And the clouds do not return after the rain? Ah! deceive not thyself by a vain hope like this, Nor expect in this world to enjoy lasting peace: But bow with submission to God's holy will, For the hand that afflicts is thy kind Father's still. If my days are dark here, there are brighter above, In those pure realms of light, peace, joy, and of love; Where the air is all balm, and the skies ever fair, And the river of life, clear as crystal flows there. There also, for healing the nations, are found The leaves of the tree on which rich fruits abound; There is no need of candle, for God is their light, There never is darkness, for "_there_ is no night." Oh! may I there find, when this brief life is past, By my Saviour prepared, a sweet home at last; Where sin never enters, death, sorrow, nor care, And clouds are not feared, for it never rains there. August 19, 1852. THE NOCTURNAL VISIT. Lo the curtains of night around Palestine fall, And Jerusalem's streets into darkness are thrown; The late-busy hum of men's voices is hushed, And the city is clad in dark livery alone. But see through the dimness that half opened door, And slowly emerging a figure behold; A quick, furtive glance he has thrown all around, For what is he thirsting, for blood, or for gold? Stealthily, fearfully, onward he moves, So light are his footsteps you scarce hear their tread; Yet no midnight robber, no murderer is he, Then why dread recognition--of man why afraid? Let us follow his footsteps and learn where he goes; And now at the door of a house see him stand; But why wait so long ere admittance he seeks, In attempting to knock, why trembles that hand? He has come to the fountain of light and of life, Before whom ne'er suppliant sued humbly in vain; He has come for the knowledge that alone maketh rich, And without which we're poor, though the whole world we gain. He has come to learn wisdom of that lowly one, Who spake as "never man spake" it was said; And who, though so poor and despised among men, Is the whole world's Sustainer, creation's great Head. But list to the words of the Saviour of men, "Verily, verily I say unto thee, That no man, except he be born again, Is permitted the kingdom of heaven to see." How humbling to pride were these words of our Lord, What fears in his guest they serve to awaken; Though a ruler of Jews, he was yet in his sins; The first step towards heaven he never had taken. Ah! Nicodemus, how many like thee, Would perceive all their boasted religion was vain, Could they meet but his glance who "searcheth the heart, And trieth the reins of the children of men." Sept. 9, 1852. SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD AND FREE AGENCY OF MAN. Thou art a perfect Sovereign, oh my God! And I rejoice to think that thou art so; That all events are under thy control, And that thou knowest all I think and do. But some may ask, "then why am I to blame Because I sin, if God hath made me thus?" Stop, stop, my friend, God tempteth not to sin, Thou dost it of thy own free will and choice. Though God is Sovereign, we free agents are, Accountable to him for all we do, Feel, think, or say; and at the last great day, A most exact account must render too. With this conclusion be thou satisfied-- _For all who will accept him, Christ hath died_. Sept. 19, 1862. * * * * * God is a Sovereign, man free agent too; How these to reconcile I do not know: But _this_ I know, if _lost_, the blame is _mine_, If saved, the _praise_, oh God! be _only thine_. AUTUMN AND SUNSET. Hail, sober Autumn! thee I love, Thy healthful breeze and clear blue sky; And _more_ than flowers of Spring admire Thy falling leaves of richer dye. 'Twas even thus when life was young, I welcomed Autumn with delight; Although I knew that with it came The shorter day and lengthened night. Let others pass October by, Or dreary call its hours, or chill; Let poets always sing of Spring, My praise shall be of Autumn still. And I have loved the setting sun, E'en than his rising beams more dear; 'Tis fitting time for serious thought, It is an hour for solemn prayer. Before the evening closes in, Or night's dark curtains round us fall, See how o'er tree, and spire, and hill, That setting sun illumines all. So when my earthly race is run, When called to bid this world adieu, Like yonder cloudless orb I see, May _my_ sun set in glory too. Oct 8, 1852. "MY TIMES ARE IN THY HAND." My times are in thy hand, my God! And I rejoice that they are so; My times are in thy hand, my God, Whether it be for weal or woe. My times are in thy hand, I know; And if I'm washed in Jesus' blood, Though dark my pathway here below, It leads directly up to God. Since all thy children chastening need, And all _so called_ must feel the rod, Why for exemption should I plead, For am I not thy child, my God? Ah why go mourning all the day, Or why should I from trials shrink? Though much of sorrow's in my cup, The cup that I am called to drink. 'Tis needful medicine I know, By the most skilful hand prepared, Strictly proportioned to my wants, There's _not a drop_ that can be spared. Then why desponding, oh my soul, Because of trials here below? They're all appointed by my God, My times are in thy hand, I know. Jan. 18, 1863. NOVEMBER. Remember the poor, in the dark chilly day, When November's loud winds are fierce blowing; Remember the poor, at thy plentiful board, When the fire on thy bright hearth is glowing. Remember the poor in yon damp dismal shed, Without food, fire, or clothing to warm them; And not like the Priest or the Levite pass by, But Samaritan like stop and cheer them. Remember the slave, the poor down trodden slave, And do all in thy power to relieve him; And when from oppression he strives to be free, Do thou open thy gate to receive him. For what saith the Lord is thy duty to such, "To his master thou shalt not return him,"[3] But give him a home near thy own if he likes, And be sure not to vex or oppress him. When parents or children or brethren you meet, In our happy New England and free, Then remember the slave, the heart broken slave, For thy brother, _thy brother_ is he. Remember him also when prayer for thyself, In affliction's dark hour doth ascend; And when crying to God the father of all, Let _his_ wants with _thine own_ kindly blend. And at the last day, when the rich and the poor Shall alike by the _Judge_ be regarded; When master and slave shall appear before God, And a sentence impartial awarded,-- The cup of cold water He will not forget, But with other good acts bring to mind; "When naked ye clothed me, when hungry ye fed," Will be uttered in accents most kind. But when, blessed Saviour, ah when was the time, That we fed, clothed, or visited thee? "Such acts," He replies, "to my poor brethren done, I consider as done unto me." Nov. 1862. [3] See Deuteronomy, 23:15, 16. WINTER. His thundering car Is heard from afar, And his trumpet notes sound All the country around; Stop your ears as you will, That loud blast and shrill Is heard by you still. Borne along by the gale, In his frost coat of mail, Midst snow, sleet, and hail, He comes without fail, And drives all before him, Though men beg and implore him Just to let them take breath, Or he'll drive them to death. But he comes in great state, And for none will he wait, Though he sees their distress Yet he spares them no less, For the cold stiff limb Is nothing to him; And o'er countless blue noses, His hard heart he closes. His own children fear him And dare not come near him; E'en his favorite child[4] Has been known to run wild At his too near approach, Her fear of him such, And to shriek and to howl And return scowl for scowl. Indeed few dare him face, And _all_ shun his embrace; For though pleasant his smile, Yet one thinks all the while Of that terrible frown, Which the hardiest clown, Though a stout hearted man, Will avoid if he can. And though many maintain That he gives needless pain, I confess I admire This venerable sire. True his language is harsh, And his conduct oft rash, And we know well enough, That his manners are rough; Yet still in the main, We've no right to complain, For if we prepare for him, And show that we care for him, We may in him find A true friend and kind. With us he will stay Three months to a day, So let us prepare The snug elbow chair, Which placed by the fire For the hoary-head sire, May comfort impart And cheer his old heart. Though he seems so unkind, Yet always you'll find That his cold heart will warm, And he'll do you no harm If your _own_ can but _feel_ For your poor neighbor's weal; And with pity o'erflowing, Your free alms bestowing, Never closing your door On the suffering poor; But clothe, feed, and warm them, And see that none harm them. _E'en to others just do_ As you'd wish them by you. Let's adopt but this plan, To do good when we can, And the dark stormy day Will full quick pass away, And we never complain Of cold weather again, Or of tedious long hours, That are spent within doors; For when winter winds blow, And we're hedged up by snow, We shall find full employment, And lack no enjoyment. Thus prepared, let him come, He will find us at home; Bring wind, hail, or snow, Blow high, or blow low, We're prepared for him now. Then come winter, come, You'll find us at home. Nov. 5, 1852. [4] Spring. There is within this heart of mine, An aching void earth ne'er can fill; I've tried its joys, its friendships proved, But felt that aching void there _still_. Thy love alone, my Saviour God, True satisfaction can impart; Can fill this aching void I feel, And give contentment to my heart. Oh! cheer me by thy presence, Lord, Increase my faith an hundred fold; Be _thy name_ on my forehead found, _Mine_ in thy book of life enrolled. Dec. 19, 1862. * * * * * Forever closed that dark blue eye, Full and expressive, pensive too; Thy light brown hair, and face so fair, And graceful form are hid from view. LIFE'S CHANGES. A fair young girl was to the altar led By him she loved, the chosen of her heart; And words of solemn import there were said, And mutual vows were pledged till death should part. But life was young, and death a great way off, At least it seemed so then, on that bright morn; And they no doubt, expected years of bliss, And in their path the rose without a thorn. Cherished from infancy with tenderest care, A precious only daughter was the bride; And when that young protector's arm she took, She for the first time left her parents' side. With all a woman's tender, trustful heart, She gave herself away to him she loved; Why should she not, was he not all her own, A choice by friends and parents too approved? How rapidly with him the days now fly, With _him_ the partner of her future life; Happy and joyous as a child she'd been, Happy as daughter, _happier still as wife_. But ere eight months in quick succession passed, One to each human heart a dreaded foe, Entered her house, and by a single stroke, Blasted her hopes, and laid her idol low. Three months of bitter anguish was endured, But hope again revived, and she was blest, When pressing to her heart a darling child, Whose little head she pillowed on her breast. Not long is she permitted to enjoy, This sweetest bud of promise to her given; Short as an angel's visit was its stay, When God, who gave it, took it up to heaven. Ah, what a contrast one short year presents! Replete with happiness--replete with woe; In that brief space, a maiden called, and wife, Widow and mother written--childless too. Surely my friend, I need not say to thee, Look not to earth for what it can't bestow; 'Tis at the best a frail and brittle reed, Which trusting for support, will pierce thee through. Then let us look above this fleeting earth, To heaven and heavenly joys direct our eyes; No lasting happiness this world affords-- "He builds too low who builds below the skies." Weston, Dec. 1, 1852. LINES. "They will not frame their doings to turn unto their God. Hosea, 5:4." I would frame all my doings to please thee, my God! 'Tis from thee all my mercies proceed; I would frame all my doings to serve thee, my God! For thy service is freedom indeed. I would frame all my doings to please thee, my God! But how feeble my best efforts are; Ah! how needful for me is thy chastening rod, And a proof of thy fatherly care. I would frame all my doings to serve thee, my God! But my goodness extends not to thee; And when on well doing I'm fully intent, Alas! evil is present with me. My Creator, Preserver, Redeemer and King, I would tax all my powers to obey; But to Him let me look for the help that I need, Who is the life, the light, and the way. Weston, Jan. 21, 1853. "TAKE NO THOUGHT FOR THE MORROW." Take no thought for the morrow, the Saviour hath said, And he spake as ne'er man spake before; "He carried our sorrows," "was acquainted with grief," And knew well what the heart could endure. Let the morrow take care for the things of itself, And not by its weight crush thee down; Sufficient to-day is the evil thereof, Let the ills of to-morrow alone. Neither boast of to-morrow, for what is thy life, But a vapor that floateth away; Like a _tale_ quickly told, or a _dream_ of the night, That departs at the breaking of day. Be not like the man who once said in his heart, "I have goods that are laid by for years;" But scarce had he planned how they best might be stored, When he dies and leaves all to his heirs. Neither _dread_ then, nor _boast_ of to-morrow, my soul, But make most of the time that's now given; Be the ground well prepared, with good seed sown thereon, And 'twill yield a rich harvest in heaven. Jan. 24, 1853. REMINISCENCES OF THE DEPARTED. His mission soon accomplished, His race on earth soon run, He passed to realms of glory, Above the rising sun. So beautiful that infant, When in death's arms he lay; It seemed like peaceful slumber, That morn might chase away. But morning light was powerless, Those eyelids to unclose; And sunshine saw and left him, In undisturbed repose. The light of those blue orbs That drank the sunbeams in, Now yields to night, and darkness Holds undisputed reign. That little form so graceful, The light brown chestnut hair; Those half formed words when uttered, That face so sweet and fair; All, all his ways so winning, Were impotent to save His life, when called to yield it By _Him that_ life who gave. So soon his voyage ended, The passage home so short, Before he knew of evil, He entered safe the port. Since thee, my child, I saw, Long years have passed away; Thy mother's hair then brown, Now's intermixed with gray. Another link's been broken, By death's relentless hand; A daughter has been taken, The eldest of the band. _Thy_ little lamp of life, Was put out in a day; But _hers_ was years expiring, By slow yet sure decay. But _one_ short year of life, Was all allotted thee; But she, thy eldest sister, Was _many_ years spared me. And though long since we parted, On earth to meet no more; I'd think of thee as children "Not _lost_, but gone before." Feb. 20, 1853. "LET ME DIE THE DEATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS." By the river Euphrates the prophet abode, To whom Balak his messengers sent, Entreating his presence and curses on those Who on Moab's destruction were bent. By hundreds of thousands they're marching along, And by Moses, God's servant, they're led; The rock for their thirst, cooling water supplies, And with bread from the skies are they fed. They are felling the nations like trees on their way, And their power there is none can resist; "Come, curse me this people, oh! Balaam, I pray, For he whom _thou_ cursest is curst." With rich bribes in their hands have these messengers come, Both from Moab and Midian are they; Desiring the Prophet with them would return, And this without any delay. But the men are requested to stop over night, That the will of the Lord he may learn; And then if by Him he's permitted to go, He'll accompany them on their return. Now when earth her dark mantle of night had put on, And men's eyes in deep slumber were sealed; In that solemn hour was the voice of God heard, And his will to the Prophet revealed. "Thou shalt not go with them!" distinctly was said, "Nor to curse the Lord's people presume;" So the Princes of Moab returned as they came, And left Balaam reluctant at home. Again unto Balaam were messages sent, More in number, in _rank higher still_, With the promise if Balak's request he would grant, He may ask and receive what he will. But Balaam declared that if Balak would give Him his house full of silver and gold, The word of the Lord he could _not_ go beyond, To do _more_ or do less than he's told. Still the bait was quite tempting, and Balaam was weak, And wicked he certainly proved; E'en the Ass that he rode, _that_ man's conduct condemned, Who the gains of unrighteousness loved. In the country of Moab at length he arrives, And King Balak hath met face to face, Who requests that with him a high hill he'd ascend, And the Israelites curse from that place. Three times seven altars were raised to the Lord, And three times was the sacrifice made; But the curse was withheld, for whom _God_ pronounced blest, Even _Balaam_ to _curse_ was afraid. Poor Balaam, thy case is a hard one indeed; Like a house that's divided thou art; Both thy Maker and Mammon thou gladly would'st serve, But the former requires thy whole heart. "Let me die the death of the righteous," say'st thou, "And my last end like his let it be;" But if like the righteous _unwilling to live_, _Never hope like the righteous to die_. March 24, 1853. * * * * * Though life is young, and spirits gay, And hope thy fond heart cheers; Though friends are kind, and health is firm, And death _far off_ appears, Yet think not happiness like this, Is destined long to last; For ere to-morrow morn, perhaps, Thy sky may be o'ercast. Ah! let not pleasure blind thy eyes, Or flattery lure thy heart; But in the morning of thy life, Secure the better part. March 29, 1853. THE GREAT PHYSICIAN. "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up. "That whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal life." St. John, 3:14, 15. What means that cry of anguish, That strikes the distant ear; The loud and piercing wailing, In desert wilds we hear? From Israel's camp it cometh, For Israel hath rebelled; And these are cries of anguish, By wrath of God impelled. It is no common sorrow, Extorts that bitter groan; 'Tis from the broken hearted, And caused by sin alone. Lo! in the far off desert, Upon that tented ground, Are many hundred thousands Of weary travellers found. In desert of Arabia, Near forty years they roam; And soon they are to enter "Canaan their happy home." But come with me and visit A people so distressed; They are the seed that Jacob When dying pronounced blessed. We'll draw aside the curtain Of tent that's nearest by; Ah! what a mournful picture For stranger's curious eye. See on that couch reclining, A young and lovely girl, With brow and neck half shaded. By many a clustering curl. She was an only daughter, Nurtured with tenderest care; The idol of her parents, And fairest of the fair. In bloom of youth and beauty, But yesterday she shone; And her fond parents thought her A mine of wealth unknown. She seems like one that sleepeth, But there's no sign of breath; And coil'd 'neath her arm a serpent, Whose bite is _certain death_. Yet not alone the mourners In this sad tent are found; Shriek after shriek is echoed For many miles around. The mother, too, is bitten, With infant in her arms; And sire, in strength of manhood; And bride, with all her charms. But see on pole suspended, A serpent now appears; And hark! what blissful tidings Salute the mourner's ears. For every one that's bitten, A remedy is found; However bad the case is, However deep the wound. If but _one spark_ remaineth Of life in any soul, Just look upon this serpent, That look will make thee whole. But there's a wound that's deeper Than fiery serpent gave; And bite that's _doubly_ fatal, It kills beyond the grave. And there's a great physician, That e'en _this wound_ may cure; And those to him applying, May life and health secure. The broken heart he healeth, He cures the sin-sick soul; And all who will behold him, May _look_ and be made whole. "I am the way!" he crieth; "And all who will may come, I'll pardon their transgression, And safe conduct them home. "To cleanse from all pollution, My blood doth freely flow; And sins, though red as scarlet, Shall be as white as snow. "Thy ransom to pay for thee, E'en my own life it cost; And he such love that slighteth, Forever shall be lost." April 14, 1853. TO MY NIECE, MRS. M.A. CALDWELL. When days are dark and spirits low, And hope desponding stands, What comfort these few words bestow, "My times are in thy hands." That thought should every fear allay, And every cloud dispel; For we are in the hands of _One_ Who "doeth all things well." He clothes the lily of the field, Paints the gay tulip's leaf, Hears the young ravens when they cry, And hastes to their relief. That little sparrow in thy path, He noticed when it fell; Numbereth the hairs upon thy head, And "doeth all things well." Then say not when with cares oppressed, He hath forsaken me; For had thy father loved thee less, Would he so chasten thee? A friend he takes, a Husband too, A Child, with him to dwell; Selects the day, the place, the hour-- "He doeth all things well." His power is _heard_ when thunders roll, _Felt_ when the cold wind blows, _Seen_ in the vivid lightning's flash, And in the blushing rose. He cares for monarch on his throne, For hermit in his cell, For sailor on the mighty deep-- "He doeth all things well." He raiseth one to high estate, He brings another low; _This year_ an empire doth create The _next_ may overthrow. What he may plan for you or me, While here on earth we dwell, We know not--but of this I'm sure, "He doeth all things well." Weston, April 18, 1853. THE MORNING DRIVE. FOR MY DAUGHTER MARGARET. Very like to a dream, Doth the time to me seem, When with thee a young girl by my side, One of summer's fine days, In a one pony chaise, We commenced in the morning our ride. By the pine grove and nook, Over bridge and through brook, Quite at random we drove without fear; While the birds of the grove, In sweet harmony strove, By their concert of music to cheer. With none to molest us, No home cares to press us, Farther onward, and onward we roam; But at length the skies lower, And unhoped for the shower Finds us many miles distant from home. Even so is life's day, Like a fair morn in May, With hope's bright bow of promise it cheers; But long before night, The sun that so bright In the morning had shone, disappears. Do not then I entreat, My beloved Margaret, Be content with this world for thy portion; Let ambition soar _higher_, E'en _above_ earth aspire, And to God give thy heart's true devotion. April 29, 1853. REPLY TO A TOAST, SENT BY MR. W. TO THE LADIES OF WAYLAND, AT THEIR FAIR HELD ON MAY-DAY. Many, _many_ kind thanks from the Waylanders fair, Who are sorry, quite sorry you could not be there, To receive their warm greeting, partake of their cheer, And repaid by their smiles for your wishes sincere. That health and content may your footsteps attend, Believe me, dear sir, is the wish of your friend. May 2, 1853. TO MR. C.R. FOR MANY YEARS DEPRIVED OF SIGHT. They say the sun is shining In all his splendor now, And clouds in graceful drapery, Are sailing to an fro. That birds of brilliant plumage, Are soaring on the wing; Exulting in the daylight, Rejoicing as they sing. They tell me too that roses, E'en in _my_ pathway lie; And decked in rich apparel, Attract the passers by. They say the sun when setting, Is glorious to behold; And sheds on all at parting, A radiant crown of gold. And then the night's pale empress, With all her glittering train, The vacant throne ascending, Resumes her peaceful reign. That she in queenly beauty, Subdued yet silvery light, Makes scarcely less enchanting Than day, the sober night. But sights like these so cheering, Alas, I cannot see! The daylight and the darkness Are both alike to me. Yet there's a world above us, So beautiful and fair, That nothing here can equal, And nought with it compare. There, in a blaze of glory, Amidst a countless throng, The Saviour smiles complacent, While listening to their song. Ten thousand times ten thousand, Their cheerful voices raise, While golden harps in harmony Are tuned to sound the praise Of Him the blest deliverer, Who conquered when he fell; The man of many sorrows, The _Great Immanuel_. But stop--I dare not venture Too far on holy ground; Its _heights_ are too exalted, Its _depths_ are too profound. Yet may I be permitted, When this brief life is past, The hope in yon bright heaven, To find my home at last. When cleansed from all pollution, From sin and sorrow free, I, with unclouded vision, My Saviour God may see. Brooklyn, May, 1853. TO MY MISSIONARY FRIENDS, MR. AND MRS. I.G. BLISS. Why, dear friends, oh! tell us wherefore You're so anxious to be gone; Is the country late adopted Dearer to you than your own? Have you found a father, mother, In that distant clime to love, Or a sister, friend, or brother, Better than the long-tried prove? "Oh, no! believe us, no such motives Prompt us to tempt old ocean's wave; We go among the poor benighted, Perhaps to find an early grave. "Ah! you know not half our anguish-- Only those who _feel_ can tell-- When we think of the sad parting, And that solemn word--farewell. "But while lingering, souls are dying, Souls that Jesus came to save; And of such a priceless value, That for them his life he gave. "Trials great no doubt await us In that distant home of ours; Work requiring so much labor, As to exceed our utmost powers. "But He who said 'Go preach the gospel,' All powerful is, to aid, defend; 'Lo I am with you always,' said he, 'And will be even to the end.' "With such command, and such a promise, Sure our path of duty's plain; Do not then, dear friends, persuade us Longer with _thee_ to remain." Go then, go! we'll not detain you, We dare not ask your longer stay; And may winds and waves of ocean, Waft you safely on your way. They who all forsake for Jesus, Father, mother, country, home, Here an hundred fold are promised, And eternal life to come. Go then, go! but when far distant, Bear us sometimes on your mind; When for others interceding, Forget not those you leave behind. And when your earthly warfare's ended, And you have laid your armor down, May souls of poor benighted Asia Add _many_ stars to your bright crown. TO MY HUSBAND. Just two-and-forty years have passed[5] Since we, a youthful pair, Together at the altar stood, And mutual vows pledged there. Our lives have been a checkered scene, Since that midsummer's eve; Much good received our hearts to cheer, And much those hearts to grieve. Children confided to our care, Hath God in kindness given, Of whom five still on earth remain, And two, we trust, in heaven. How many friends of early days, Have fallen by our side; Shook by some blast, like autumn leaves They withered, drooped, and died. But still permitted, hand in hand Our journey we pursue; And when we're weary, cheered by glimpse Of "_better land_" in view. We may not hope in this low world, Much longer to remain, But oh! there's rapture in the thought, That we may meet again. [5] July 14, 1853. 
15120	----	The Broadway Anthology BY EDWARD L. BERNAYS SAMUEL HOFFENSTEIN WALTER J. KINGSLEY MURDOCK PEMBERTON NEW YORK DUFFIELD & COMPANY 1917 Copyright, 1917 BY DUFFIELD & COMPANY VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK Acknowledgment is due to the _New York Evening Post_, _Sun_, _Times_, _Tribune_, the _Boston Transcript_ and the _Wilmarth Publishing Company_ for their kind permission to reprint some of the matter in this volume. CONTENTS EDWARD L. BERNAYS ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN THE BARITONE PATRIOTISM THE PILLOW CASES BETTER INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS THE PRIMA DONNA PRESS STORIES THE DISTRIBUTION OF CREDIT TEARS PHOTOGRAPHS SAMUEL HOFFENSTEIN THE THEATRE SCRUBWOMAN DREAMS A DREAM THE STRANGE CASE OF THE MUSICAL COMEDY STAR THE STAR IS WAITING TO SEE THE MANAGER THE JESTER IN A CAFE TO A CABARET SINGER IN THE THEATRE WALTER J. KINGSLEY LO, THE PRESS AGENT FIRST NIGHTS THE DRAMATIST TYPES GEORGE M. COHAN DAVID BELASCO LO, THE HEADLINER MURDOCK PEMBERTON THE SCREEN BROADWAY--NIGHT MATINEE PAVLOWA THE OLD CHORUS MAN BLUCH LANDOLF'S TALE PRE-EMINENCE EDWARD L. BERNAYS ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN He was a burly Dutch tenor, And I patiently trailed him in his waking and sleeping hours That I might not lose a story,-- But his life was commonplace and unimaginative-- Air raids and abdications kept his activities, (A game of bridge yesterday, a ride to Tarrytown), Out of the papers. I watchfully waited, Yearning a coup that would place him on the Musical map. A coup, such as kissing a Marshal Joffre, Aeroplaning over the bay, Diving with Annette Kellerman. Then for three days I quit the city To get a simple contralto into the western papers. Returning I entered my office; the phone jangled. The burly tenor was tearfully sobbing and moaning over the wire; Tremor and emotion choked his throat. This was his ominous message: A taxicab accident almost had killed him two and one half days ago; He had escaped with his body and orchid-lined voice-- And not a line in the mornings or evenings! What could I do about it? Accidents will happen. THE BARITONE He was a wonderful Metropolitan singer. His name had been blazoned over these United States, And in Europe it was as well known. Records of him could be bought in the smallest hamlet; Nothing but praise had been shed upon the glory of his name. In May he was scheduled to sing in Chicago At a festival where thousands were to foregather To do praise to him and his voice. Two days before he left, he came to his manager's office With a sickly expression all over his rotund face And a deathly gasp in his voice. One thought he needed a doctor, Or the first aid of some Red Cross nurses. He was ushered into the private office To find out his trouble. This was his lament in short; A friend, in the hurry of the moment, Had procured tickets for him on the Twentieth Century Which demanded an extra fare of six dollars,-- And he wanted to ride on the cheapest train. So we got him tickets on another road Which takes thirty six hours to Chicago and perhaps more, And the great singer, whose name has been blazoned over these United States And was as well known in Europe, Walked out contented and smiling like a young boy. PATRIOTISM The patriotic orchestra of eighty five men Was keyed to an extraordinary patriotic pitch For these were patriotic concerts, Supported by the leading patriots of the town, (Including a Bulgarian merchant, an Austrian physician and a German lawyer), And all the musicians were getting union wages--and in the summer at that. So they were patriotic too. The Welsh conductor was also patriotic, For his name on the program was larger than that of the date or the hall, But when the manager asked him to play a number Designated as "Dixie," He disposed of it shortly with the words: "It is too trivial--that music." And, instead, he played a lullaby by an unknown Welsh composer,-- (Because he was a Welshman).... The audience left after the concert was over And complimented itself individually and collectively on "doing its bit" By attending and listening to these patriotic concerts. THE PILLOW CASES The train was due to arrive at eleven that night, But owing to the usual delay it did not arrive until one. The reporters of the leading dailies Were still waiting grouchily on the station platform for the great star. For weeks his name had blotted out every bare wall, And the date sheets of his coming had reddened the horizon. Now he steps off the train, tired and disgruntled. What cares he for the praise of the public and their prophets Awaiting him impatiently at the station? It's a bed he wants--any bed will do; The quicker he gets it, the better for the song on the morrow. But in cooking the news for the public One a.m. is the same thing as noon day. So they rushed the star with these questions: "Not conscripted yet?..." "How do you like this town?..." "Will you give any encores tomorrow?..." "When will the war end?..." Ruthlessly he plowed through them, Like a British tank at Messines. The tenor wanted a bed, But Lesville wanted a story.... On the platform patiently nestled were twenty six pieces of luggage, Twenty six pieces of luggage, containing more than their content, Twenty six pieces of luggage would get him the story, he had not given himself. Craftily, one lured the reporters to look on this bulging baggage, "Pillows and pillows and pillow...." was whispered, "Tonight he will sleep on them." Vulture-like swooped down the porters, Bearing them off to the taxis. Next morning the papers carried the story: "Singer Transports His Own Bedding," But the artist slept soundly on Ostermoors that night. The baggage held scores for the orchestra. BETTER INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS He was the head of a large real estate firm, And his avocation was seeking the good in a Better Industrial Relations Society. They were going to have an exhibit in their church building, At which it was to be proved That giving a gold watch for an invention That made millions for the factory owner Was worthwhile. But they needed a press agent To let the world and themselves Know that what they were doing was good. I was chosen for the work, But the head of the large real estate firm Thought that half a column a day was too little To record the fact that a cash register company In which he owned stock Had presented a medal to an employee who had remained with them At the same salary for fifteen years. So he had me fired. And the Better Industrial Relations Exhibit was a great success. And many of the morning and evening newspapers Ran editorials about it. THE PRIMA DONNA She had been interviewed at all possible times,-- And sometimes the interviews came at impossible ones; But it did not matter to her As long as the stories were printed and her name was spelt correctly. So we sent a photographer to the hotel one day To take pictures of her in her drawing room. He was an ungentle photographer Who had been accustomed to take pictures of young women Coming into the harbor on shipboard, and no photograph was complete Without limbs being crossed or suchwise. But she did not mind even that, If the pictures were published the next day. He took a great number of her in her salon, And departed happy at the day's bagging. A great international disturbance reduced all the white space available And no photographs were printed the next day Of the prima donna. And when I met her at rehearsal, she said very shortly: "Je vous ne parle plus" and looked at me harshly. Was I to blame for the international situation? PRESS STORIES Though bandsmen's notes from the street below resound, And the voices of jubilant masses proclaim a glorious holiday, I painstakingly pick out words on the typewriter, By fits and starts, thinking up a story about the great Metropolitan tenor. The typewriter keys now hold no rhythmic tingle. But the local manager in Iowa wants the story. He has engaged the great tenor for a date next March When the Tuesday musicale ladies give their annual benefit for the Shriners. He wants the concert to be such a success, That his Iowan town will henceforth be in the foreground Of Iowan towns, as far as music is concerned. So he has wired in for this tale about the singer, A story about his wife and baby, and what the baby eats per diem. And though the call is to the street below, Where jubilant masses proclaim the holiday, I must finish the story about the tenor's wife and baby To put the Iowan town in the foreground, as far as music is concerned. THE DISTRIBUTION OF CREDIT The Irish prize play had come back to Broadway. Where to put the credit? On the astute manager Who saw in it A year of Broadway, two of stock, eternity in the movies; Or the League of Public Spirited Women Banded together to uplift the Drama-- That was the question stirring dramatic circles and the public. It had failed in its first run of three weeks at an uptown theatre Miserably, Despite glowing reviews in all the dailies. But this come-back At a Broadway theatre, with electric lights, and transient crowds That would save it-- Was the universal verdict. During the first week there was a tremendous fight Between the two factions for the Distribution of credit, and some critics said The League of Public Spirited Women was responsible For bringing the play back, because they had bulletined it, And others said it was the astute manager. But no audience came to the play after the second week. And it went to the storehouse. No one fought any longer for The distribution of credit. TEARS Beads of perspiration on a hot summer's afternoon, A hurry call from the Ritz, Thoughts of plastering the city in half an hour, With twenty-four sheets and large heralds, And a page or two in all the dailies.... She sat in a sumptuous suite at the Ritz, Discussing with her husband, Who had just returned from the beagles in South Carolina Her new pet charity; And she had called me in at this very moment, Because she had struck a snag. This was her charity: She related with tears in her eyes, What was she to do about it? She received no response from the American public. The poor assistant stagehands of the Paris theatres They were out of work--destitute-- The theatres closed--and all the actors at the front. But what could be done for them, the poor Paris stagehands? That was her query. And tears welled up in her eyes, as she spoke While her husband chased the Angora from under the sofa-- I sat and discussed the question. And tears came to my eyes, But my tears were wept for another reason. PHOTOGRAPHS I had ordered the photographs of the prima donna. They are lovely and beautiful to behold and they are printed before me in magazine. Her madonna like face sheds radiance on the prospective box-office patron; He is dazzled by her sun-like head of hair; He loses his heart and his pocket-book when he glances on them. I felt happy that I changed photographers. I felt that my discovery of a new artisan of the sensitized plate Would bring glory and money to many. I sit by the rolltop desk and pull out again the objects of my praises. The telephone bell rings and awakens me from my reveries,-- It is the voice of the beautiful prima donna herself; But the melodious notes the critics have praised are changed. There is a raucous, strident tone in the voice; It sounds like the rasping bark of the harpies. "How dare you use those terrible photographs?" "What do you mean by insulting my beauty?" There is a slam down of the telephone receiver,-- I turn to my work of writing an advertisement about the prima donna's voice. SAMUEL HOFFENSTEIN THE THEATRE SCRUBWOMAN DREAMS A DREAM When morning mingles with the gloom On empty stage and twilit aisle, She comes with rag and pan and broom To work--and dream awhile. Illusion's laughter, fancy's tears, The mimic loves of yesternight, On empty stages of the years Awake in the dim light. She cannot sweep the phantoms out-- How sweet the sobbing violin!-- She cannot put the ghosts to rout-- How pale the heroine! Oh! valiant hero, sorely tried!-- 'Tis only dust that fills her eyes-- But he shall have his lovely bride And she her paradise! And she--the broom falls from her hands, And is it dust that fills her eyes?-- Shall go with him to golden lands And find her paradise!-- The morning wrestles with the gloom On silent stage and chilly aisle, She takes her rag and pan and broom To work--and dream awhile! THE STRANGE CASE OF THE MUSICAL COMEDY STAR The lady cannot sing a note, There is a languor in her throat Beyond all healing, She does not act at all, it seems, Except in early morning dreams-- She lacks the feeling. Her feet are pretty, but methinks, The weighty and phlegmatic Sphinx Could trip as lightly-- And yet she is a regular, Serene and well established star Who twinkles nightly. And Solomon for all his stir, Had not a single jewel on her, Nor did his capers Procure him even half the space For publication of his face In ancient papers. Her gowns, her furs, her limousines Would catch the eye of stately queens In any city-- She cannot sing, or dance or act, But then I have remarked the fact-- Her feet are pretty. THE STAR IS WAITING TO SEE THE MANAGER A moment since, the office boy, Invisible as Night itself, Reposed on some dim-curtained shelf And tasted peace, without alloy. Secure from all the day's alarms, Of boss and bell the very jinx, He gazed immobile as the Sphinx On pompous front and painted charms. Now out of interstellar space, Beyond the sunlight and the storm, Appears that lightning-laden form, That toothful smile, that cryptic face. Whence came he, who that breathes can tell?-- He was so hid from mortal eyes, Perhaps he fell from paradise, Perhaps they chased him out of hell. But now his heels show everywhere, A dozen doors are opened wide, He stands before, behind, beside, He fills the ether and the air. Far quicker than a wink or beck, Far sleeker than a juvenile, He barely tops the giant smile That wreathes his forehead and his neck. Oh! sudden gold evolved from dross! Who wrought the shining miracle? What magic cast the dazzling spell?-- The star is here to see the boss! THE JESTER All the fool's gold of the world, All your dusty pageantries, All your reeking praise of Self, All your wise men's sophistries, All that springs of golden birth, Is not half the jester's worth! Who's the jester? He is one, Who behind the scenes hath been, Caught Life with his make-up off, Found him but a harlequin Cast to play a tragic part-- And the two laughed, heart to heart! IN A CAFÈ Her face was the face of Age, with a pitiful smudge of Youth, Carmine and heavy and lined, like a jester's mask on Truth; And she laughed from the red lips outward, the laugh of the brave who die, But a ghost in her laughter murmured, "I lie--I lie!" She pressed the glass to her lips as one presses the lips of love, And I said: "Are you always merry, and what is the art thereof?" And she laughed from the red lips outward the laugh of the brave who die, But a ghost in her laughter murmured, "I lie--I lie!" TO A CABARET SINGER Painted little singer of a painted song, Painted little butterfly of a painted day, The false blooms in your tresses, the spangles on your dresses, The cold of your caresses, I'll tell you what they say-- "The glass is at my lips, but the wine is far away, The music's in my throat, but my soul no song confesses, The laughter's on my tongue, but my heart is clay." Scarlet little dreamer of a frozen dream, Whirling bit of tinsel on the troubled spray, 'Tis not your hair's dead roses (your sunless, scentless roses) 'Tis not your sham sad poses That tell your hollow day-- The glass is at _my_ lips, but the wine is far away, The music's in _my_ throat, but my soul no song discloses, The laughter's on _my_ tongue, but my heart is clay. IN THE THEATRE Weep not, fair lady, for the false, The fickle love's rememberance, What though another claim the waltz-- The curtain soon will close the dance. Grieve not, pale lover, for the sweet, Wild moment of thy vanished bliss; The longest scene as Time is fleet-- The curtain soon will close the kiss. And thou, too vain, too flattered mime, Drink deep the pleasures of thy day, No ruin is too mean for Time-- The curtain soon will close the play. WALTER J. KINGSLEY LO, THE PRESS AGENT By many names men call me-- Press agent, publicity promoter, faker; Ofttimes the short and simple liar. Charles A. Dana told me I was a buccaneer On the high seas of journalism. Many a newspaper business manager Has charged me With selling his space Over his head. Every one loves me When I get his name into print-- For this is an age of publicity And he who bloweth not his own horn The same shall not be blown. I have sired, nursed and reared Many reputations. Few men or women have I found Scornful of praise or blame In the press. The folk of the stage Live on publicity, Yet to the world they pretend to dislike it, Though wildly to me they plead for it, cry for it, Ofttimes do that for it Which must make the God Notoriety Grin at the weakness of mortals. I hold a terrible power And sometimes my own moderation Amazes me, For I can abase as well as elevate, Tear down as well as build up. I know all the ways of fair speaking And can lead my favorites To fame and golden rewards. There are a thousand channels Through which press agency can exploit Its star or its movement Never obvious but like the submarine Submersible beneath the sea Of publicity. But I know, too, of the ways That undo in Manhattan. There are bacilli of rumor That slip through the finest of filters And defy the remedial serums Of angry denial. Pin a laugh to your tale When stalking your enemy And not your exile nor your death Will stay the guffaws of merriment As the story flies Through the Wicked Forties And on to the "Road." Laughter gives the rumor strong wings. Truly the press agent, Who knows his psychology, Likewise his New York In all of its ramifications, And has a nimble wit, Can play fast and loose With the lives of many. Nevertheless he has no great reward, And most in the theatre Draw fatter returns than he. Yet is he called upon to make the show, To save the show, But never is he given credit Comparable to that which falls Upon the slightest jester or singer or dancer Who mugs, mimes, or hoofs in a hit. Yet is the press agent happy; He loves his work; It has excitement and intrigue; And to further the cause of beautiful women, To discover the wonderful girls of the theatre, And lead them in progress triumphal Till their names outface the jealous night, On Broadway, in incandescents, Is in itself a privilege. That compensates For the wisdom of the cub reporter, The amusement of the seasoned editor, Shredding the cherished story And uprooting the flourishing "plant"; Makes one forgive The ingratitude of artists arrived. They who do not love me I hope to have fear me; There is only one hell, And that is to be disregarded. FIRST NIGHTS August heat cannot weaken nor flivvers stale Our first-night expectance when the new season opens. Come on, boys and girls, the gang's all here; The Death Watch is ready in orchestra chairs Still shrouded in summer's cool slip pajamas, And the undertakers of stage reputations Are gathered to chatter about author and players, And give them and their work disrespectful interment By gleefully agreeing in that sage Broadway saying: "Oh, what an awful oil can that piece turned out to be!" It's hard when the Chanters of Death-House Blues Have to turn to each other and reluctantly murmur: "I'm afraid it's a hit--the poor fish is lucky." First-nighters are the theatre's forty-niners, Making the early rush to new dramatic gold fields, And usually finding them barren. Often must it madden the playwright to offer his ideals To an audience whose personnel would for the most part Regard an ideal as a symptom of sickness; To show sweetness and beauty and color To those whose knowledge of tints is confined To the rouge and the lip stick on dressers; To pioneer in playwrighting, to delve deep into mind, When all that the first-nighters ask is plain entertainment. How much of the great, wholesome public, hard-working and normal, To whom the final appeal must be made Frequents our first nights on Broadway? Costumers, friends of the author, and critics, Scene painters, all of the tradesmen concerned, Kinsfolk of mummers even to the third generation, Wine agents, hot-house ladies, unemployed players, Hearty laughers or ready weepers "planted." Most of them there prepare for a funeral; Their diversion is nodding to friends and acquaintances, And he or she who nods the most times Is thereby the greatest first-nighter. Some managers open to hand-picked audiences, Others strive to escape the regulars; But the majority seek for the standardized premier faces That really mean so little in the life of the play. Listen to the comments during intermission: "It doesn't get over!" "It's a flop!" "What atmosphere!" "An absolute steal!" "Such originality!" "Not a bit life-like!" "That author has a wonderful memory!" "He copped that lyric from Irving Berlin!" "He's as funny as a crutch or a cry for help!" "They grabbed that number in London!" "She's one of his tigers!" "From a Lucile model, my dear, but home-made!" "I can't hand him anything on this one!" "Some heavy-sugar papa backed the production!" "Isn't my boy wonderful!" "Yes, but my girl is running away with the piece!" "If you like this, you're not well!" "What could be sweeter!" "What large feet she has!" "His Adam's apple annoys me!" "She must get her clothes on Avenue A!" "They say she was born there!" "What an awful sunburn!" "Best thing in years!" "The storehouse for this one!" "Did you catch her going up in her lines?" "Yes, and he's fluffing all over the place!" "Splendidly produced, don't you think?" "I think the stage direction is rotten!" So I suggest the old Roman fashion of presenting, The artists, like gladiators crying: "We, who are about to die, salute you!" THE DRAMATIST I've put one over at last! My play with the surprise finish is a bear. Al Woods wants to read all of my scripts; Georgie Cohan speaks to me as an equal And the office boy swings the gate without being asked. I don't care if the manager's name is as large as the play's Or if the critics are featured all over the ash cans. I'm going to get mine and I'm going to live. A Rolls-Royce for me and trips "up the road," Long Beach and pretty girls, big eats at the Ritz And the ice pitcher for the fellows who snubbed me. How the other reporters laughed When I showed my first script and started to peddle! "Stick to the steady job," they advised. "Play writing is too big a gamble; It will never keep your nose in the feed bag." I wrote a trunkful of junk; did a play succeed, I immediately copied the fashion; Like a pilfering tailor I stole the new models. Kind David Belasco, with his face in the gloom, And mine brightly lighted, said ministerially: "Rather crude yet, my boy, but the way to write a play Is to write plays from sunrise to sunset And rewrite them long after midnight. Try, try, try, my boy, and God bless you." Broke and disgusted, I became a play reader And the "yessir man" to a manager. I was a play doctor, too. A few of my patients lived And I learned about drama from them. How we gutted the scripts! Grabbing a wonderful line, a peach of a scene, A gem of a finish Out of the rubbish that struggling poor devils Borrowed money to typewrite and mail to us. It's like opening oysters looking for pearls, But pearls are to be found and out of the shell heaps Come jewels that, polished and set by a clever artificer, Are a season's theatrical wonder. Finally came my own big idea. I wrote and rewrote and cast and recast, Convinced the manager, got a production. Here am I young and successful, And Walter and Thomas and Selwyn have nothing on me. Press agents are hired to praise me. Watch for my next big sensation, But meanwhile I hope that that play-writing plumber, Who had an idea and nothing else, Never sees this one. TYPES They've got me down for a hick, bo, Sam Harris says I'm the best boob in the biz, And that no manager will cast me for anything else. Curses on my hit in "'Way Down East" That handcuffs me forever to yokels, And me a better character actor than Corse Payton! That's how it is they're stuck on types, And the wise guy who plays anything Isn't given a look-in. Listen to me, young feller, and don't ever Let 'em tab you for keeps as a type. It's curtains for a career as sure as you're born. Why, there's actors sentenced to comedy dog parts, To Chinks, to Wops, to Frenchmen and fluffs. There ain't no release for them. The producers and managers can see only one angle, And you may be a Mansfield or Sothern. It's outrageous that's what it is, that make-up And character acting should be thrown in the discard. You can sit in an agent's office for months Before a part comes along that you fit without fixin'. This natural stuff puts the kibosh on art And a stock training ain't what it used to be. Say, if ever I rise to be hind legs of a camel Or a bloodhound chasing Eliza, I'll kick or I'll bite The type-choosing manager. GEORGE M. COHAN Blessed be Providence That gave us our Cohan; Irreverent, Resourceful, prolific, steady-advancing George M. Nothing in life Better becomes him Than his earliest choice Of Jerry and Helen For father and mother; Bred in the wings and the dressing room, The theatre alley his playground, Hotels his home and his schoolhouse, Blessed with a wonderful sister, And in love with a violin. From baby days used to the footlights, With infrequent teachers of book lore In the cities of lengthy engagements Showing him pages of learning That he turned from to life's open volume, Acquiring indelible lessons, Loyalty, candor, clear seeing, Sincerity, plain speaking, love of his own, Passion for all things American. From Jerry, his father, Came Celtic humor, delight in the dance, And devotion to things of the theatre; From Helen, his mother, Depth, Celtic devotion to things of the spirit, Fineness of soul. Early he turned from his fiddle To write popular songs And tunes so whistly and catchy That the music of a child Enraptured the nation. Then followed comedy sketches, Gay little pieces that made public And player-folk chatter of Cohan. Later, essaying the musical comedy, He wrote "Running for Office," To be followed by that impudent Classic of fresh young America, "Little Johnnie Jones." One followed another in rapid succession; His name grew a cherished possession, And ever his dancing delighted. His manner of singing and speaking Provoked to endless imitation. His personality became better known Then the President's. Always he soared in ambition And, becoming a lord of the theatre, He ventured on serious drama, And out of his wisdom and watching Wrote masterful plays, Envisaging the types of our natives. Truly a genius, Genius in friendship, genius in stagecraft, Genius in life! Even in choosing a partner He fattened his average, Batting four hundred By taking a kindred irreverent soul, Graduated out of the whirlpool That wrecks all but the strongest, Born on the eastern edge Of Manhattan, Sam H. Harris, man of business, Who to the skill of the trader Adds the joy in life And the sense of humor, Coupled with pleasure in giving And helping That Cohan demands of his pals. Together they plan wonderful projects, And the artist soul And the soul of commerce Are an unbeatable union. Best of all about Cohan Is his congenital manliness. He sees Americans As our soil and our air and our water Have made them; Types as distinct as the Indian. He follows no school, Knows little of movements artistic. A lonely creator, His friends are not writing men, Reformers, uplifters or zealots. He writes the life he has lived So fully and zestfully, And over it all plays like sheet lightning A beneficent humor. Growth is his hall-mark, Hard work his chief recreation; Not Balzac could toil with labor titanic More terribly. George M. Cohan, Excelling in everything-- Beloved son, brother, father, partner, friend, Our best-beloved man of the theatre. DAVID BELASCO King David of old slew the Philistines; Our David has made them admirers and patrons; He has numbered the people Night after night in his theatres. Will he ever, I wonder, send forth for the Shunammite? Many there be who would answer his calling, For he has shown ambitious fair women To acting's high places. As Rodin in marble saw wondrous creations To be freed by the chisel, So Belasco in immature genius and beauty Sees the resplendent star to be kindled At his own steady beacon. Too varied a mind for our comprehension, Too big and too broad and too subtle To be understood of the bourgeois American Whom he has led decade after decade By a nose ring artistic. Capable of everything, he has worked With the ease of a master, giving the public Marvelous detail, unfailing sensation and poses pictorial; Preferring the certain success to arduous striving For the more excellent things of the future. Like David his forebear, a king but no prophet, Amazingly wise in his own generation. A wizard in art of the everyday, Lord of the spotlight and dimmer, But nursing the unconquerable hope, the inviolable shade Of what in his dreams Oriental He fain would do, did not necessity drive him. His the fascination of a great personality. Who knoweth not him of the clerical collar? Hair of the sage and eyes of the poet, Features perfectly drawn and as mobile As those of the inspired actor; With speech so much blander than honey And insight that maketh his staged stumbling in bargains Cover the shrewdness of a masterly trader. None better than he knoweth the crowd and its likings, As to using the patter of drama artistic, That's where he lives. With incense and color and scenery He refilleth the bottle of art so that the contents Go twice better than in the original package. Thanks be to David for joy in the playhouse. Wizard, magician, necromancer of switchboards, He hath woven spells from the actual, Keeping ideals and ideas well in the background. Like Gautier, these things delight him: Gold, marble and purple; brilliance, solidity, color. He can stage Tiffany's jewels but not Maeterlinck's bees. Deep in his soul there are tempests Revealed in the storms of his dramas-- Sandstorm and snowstorm, rainstorm and hurricane. That nature revealed in its subtle reactions Would show in its deeps the soul of an Angelo Subdued to success and dyed by democracy. Opportunism hath made him An artistic materialist. One work remains for David Belasco, And that is to stage with patient precision A cross section in drama of his own self-surprising, Making the world sit up and take notice With what "masterly detail," "unfailing atmosphere," "Startling reality" he can star David Belasco. LO, THE HEADLINER I was not raised for vaudeville. Father and mother were veteran legits; They loved the Bard and the "Lady of Lyons." I was born on a show boat on the Cumberland; I was carried on as a child When the farm girl revealed her shame On the night of the snowstorm. The old folks died with grease paint on their faces. I did a little of everything Even to staking out a pitch in a street fair. Hiram Grafter taught me to ballyhoo And to make openings. I stole the business of Billy Sunday And imitated William Jennings Bryan. I became famous in the small towns. One day Poli heard me-- He's the head of the New England variety circuit.-- "Cul," he said, "you are a born monologist. Where you got that stuff I don't know, But you would be a riot in the two-a-day. Quit this hanky-panky And I'll make you a headliner." Well, I fell for his line of talk Like the sod busters had fallen for mine. Aaron Hoffman wrote me a topical monologue; Max Marx made me a suit of clothes; And Lew Dockstader wised me up On how to jockey my laughs. I opened in Hartford; Believe me, I was some scream. I gave them gravy, and hokum, And when they ate it up I came through With the old jasbo, Than which there is nothing so efficacious In vaudeville, polite or otherwise. The first thing I did I hollered for more dough, And Poli says: "That's what I get for feeding you meat, But you are a riot all right, all right, So I guess you are on for more kale." I kept getting better. I got so's I could follow any act at all And get my laughs. And he who getteth his laughs Is greater than he who taketh a city. At last the Palace Theatre sent for me And I signed up for a week. They kept me two. I am a headliner; I stand at the corner of Forty-seventh Street And Little Old Broadway; Throw out my chest, Call the agents and vaudeville magnates By their first names. I am a HEADLINER with a home in Freeport. MURDOCK PEMBERTON THE SCREEN From midnight till the following noon I stand in shadow, Just a splotch of white, Unnoted by the cleaning crew Who've spent their hours of toil That I might live again. Yet they hold no reverence for my charms, And if they pause amid their work They do not glance at me; All their admiration, all their awe, Is for the gold and scarlet trappings of the home That's built to house my wonders; Or for the gorgeous murals all around, Which really, after all, Were put in place as most lame substitutes, Striving to soothe the patron's ire For those few moments when my face is dark. Yes, men have built a palace sheltering me, And as the endless ocean washes on its stretch of beach The tides of people flow to me. All things I am to everyone; The newsboys, shopgirls, And all starved souls Who've clutched at life and missed, See in my magic face, The lowly rise to fame and palaces, See virtue triumph every time And rich and wicked justly flayed. Old men are tearful When I show them what they might have been. And others, not so old, Bask in the sunshine of my fairy tales. The lovers see new ways to woo; And wives see ways to use old brooms. Some nights I see the jeweled opera crowd Who seem aloof but inwardly are fond of me Because I've caught the gracious beauty of their pets. Then some there are who watch my changing face To catch new history's shadow As it falls from day to day. And at the noiseless tramp of soldier feet, In time to music of the warring tribes, The shadow men across my face Seem living with the hope or dread Of those who watch them off to wars. In sordid substance I am but a sheet, A fabric of some fireproof stuff. And yet, in every port where ships can ride, In every nook where there is breath of life, Intrepid men face death To catch for me the fleeting phases of the world Lest I lose some charming facet of my face. And all the masters of all time Have thrummed their harps And bowed their violins To fashion melodies that might be played The while I tell my tales. O you who hold the mirror up to nature, Behold my cosmic scope: I am the mirror of the whirling globe. BROADWAY--NIGHT I saw the rich in motor cars Held in long lines Until cross-streams of cars flowed by; I saw young boys in service clothes And flags flung out from tradesmen's doors; I saw some thousand drifting men Some thousand aimless women; I saw some thousand wearied eyes That caught no sparkle from the myriad lights Which blazoned everywhere; I saw a man stop in his walk To pet an old black cat. MATINEE They pass the window Where I sit at work, In silks and furs And boots and hats All of the latest mode. They chatter as they pass Of various things But hardly hear the words they speak So tense are they Upon a life they know begins for them At 2:15. Within the theatre The air is pungent with the mixed perfumes, More scents than ever blew from Araby. And there's a rapid hum Of some six hundred secrets; Then sudden hush As tongues and violins cease. The play is on. There is a hastening of the beat Of some six hundred hearts. There're twitches soon about the lips, And later copious tears From waiting eyes; But all this time There are six hundred separate souls The playwright's puppet has to woo, To win, to humor, or to cajole, Until, with master stroke Of Devil knowledge, Or old Adam's, He crushes in his manful arms The languid heroine And forcing back her golden head Implants the kiss. And then against his heaving breast The hero feels the beatings of six hundred hearts In mighty unison, And on his lips there is the pulse Of that one lingering kiss Returned six-hundred fold. PAVLOWA I was working on _The Daily News_ When I first heard of her, And from that time Until the day she came to town I longed to see her dance. The night the dancer and her ballet came The Desk assigned me to my nightly run Of hotels, clubs, and undertakers' shops; I was so green I had not learned The art of using telephones To make it seem That I was hot upon the trail of news While loafing otherwhere. How could I do my trick And also see her dance? So I left bread and butter flat, To feast my eyes, which had been prairie-fed, Upon this vision from another world. I'd seen the wind Go rippling over seas of wheat; I'd stood at night within a wood And felt the pulse of growing things Upon the April air; I'd seen the hawks arise and soar; And dragon-flies At sunrise over misty pools-- But all these things had never known a name Until I saw Pavlowa dance. Next day the editor explained That although art was--art, He'd found a boy to take my place. The days that followed When I walked the town Seeking for some sort of work, The haze of Indian Summer Blended with the dream Of that one night's magic. And though I needed work to keep alive My thoughts would go no further Than Pavlowa as the maid Giselle ... Then cold days came, And found the dream a fabric much too thin; And finally a job, And I was back to stomach fare. But through the years I've nursed the sacrifice, Counting it a tribute Unlike all the things That Kings and Queens have laid before her feet; And wishing somehow she might know About the price The cub reporter paid To see Pavlowa dance. And then by trick of time, We came together at the Hippodrome; And every day I saw her dance. One morning in the darkened wings I saw a big-eyed woman in a filmy thing Go through the exercises Athletes use when training for a team; And from a stage-hand learned That this Pavlowa, incomparable one, Out of every day spent hours On elementary practice steps. And now somehow I can not find the heart To tell Pavlowa of the price I paid To see her dance. THE OLD CHORUS MAN He's played with Booth, He's shared applause with Jefferson, He's run the gamut of the soul Imparting substance to the shadow men Masters have fashioned with their quills And set upon the boards. Great men-of-iron were his favored rôles, (Once he essayed Napoleon). And now, unknowing, he plays his greatest tragedy: Dressed in a garb to look like service clothes, Cheeks lit by fire--of make-up box, He marches with a squad of sallow youths And bare-kneed girls, Keeping step to tattoo of the drums Beat by some shapely maids in tights, While close by in the silent streets There march long files of purposed men Who go to death, perhaps, For the same cause he travesties Within the playhouse walls. BLUCH LANDOLF'S TALE When I was old enough to walk I rode a circus horse; My first teeth held me swinging from a high trapeze. About the age young men go out to colleges I trudged the sanded vasts of Northern Africa, Top-mounter in a nomad Arab tumbling troupe. I was Christian, that is white and Infidel, So old Abdullah took me in his tent And stripping off my white man's clothes Painted me with dye made from the chestnut hulls, Laughing the while about the potency of juice That would prove armour 'gainst some zealot's scimitar. Four camels made our caravan And these we also used for "props." When we played a Morocco town The chieftain met us at the hamlet's edge Asked of Abdullah what his mission there, Then let us enter He leading our caravan to the chieftain's hut, Where we sat upon the sand The thirty odd of us Surrounded by as many lesser chiefs. The hookah solemnly was passed around And then the hamlet chief would speak; "Stranger, why have you forsaken home And drawn believers after you, You bear no spices, oil, or woven cloth, No jewels nor any merchantry?" And then Abdullah: "True, Allah's precious son, We trade in naught men feed their bellies on But we have wares to thrill brave men, To make your youth see what use bodies are, To make your women blush That they have no such men." "What are these magic wares?" "Why we have here an Arab youth Who seems possessed of wings, Jumping three camels in a row." "So! In this very village there's a lad Who jumps four camels With half the wind it takes you, telling of your boy." Scoff followed boast and back again Until the chief arose, Saying to the lesser chiefs That they should call the local tribe To meet beside the caravanserai Before another sun went down To see if these vain wandering men Could do one half the deeds they boasted. So we met at sundown, Our brown men stripped Except for linen clouts. We tumbled, jumped, made human pyramids, And whirled as only Dervish whirl. Then as a climax the village boy essayed To span the four trained camels Who at Abdullah's soft-spoke word Moved just enough apart to make the boy fall short. And then our sinewed lad would make the leap, The camels crowding close together At another soft command. Our lad making good his jump, The populace would grant our greater skill; A goatskin filled with wine, And honey mixed with melted butter Was offered us within the caravanserai. Then we moved out beyond the town And pitched our tents of camels' hair, Rising before the sun to face the friendless desert wastes Until we reached another habitation on the camel trail, I (who played the dumb boy of the tribe Lest my Christian tongue betray me) Trudging behind with all the salary-- Chasing the desert after two new sheep, Our net receipts for that Moroccan one-night stand. Now twice each day within the Hippodrome I, a buffoon in absurd clothes, Strive to make the thousands laugh; And when my act is done There comes the tread of camels' feet, Followed by Slayman Ali and his Arab troupe, Who tumble, jump and build pyramids Before a canvas Sphinx upon a painted desert.... When I saw Slayman last He was a boy Chasing the sheep with me Beneath Morocco's moon. Tell me, where dwells romance, anyway? In Manhattan, or Arabian, nights? PRE-EMINENCE I once knew a man Who'd met Duse, (Or so he said) And talked with her; As she came down a windy street He turned a corner Headlong into her. "I am so sorry," Duse said, "I was looking at the stars." My envy of that man Withstood the years Until one day I met a Dane Who'd talked with Henrik Ibsen: This man, with head bowed to the wind, Was walking up a Stockholm way When 'round the corner came the seer, And he plumped into him. And that great mind Whose thinking moved the world Surveyed my friend Through his big eyes And slowly spoke: "Since when have codfish come to land?" With all the awe One has for those who've known the great, These two I've envied Until the other day When blundering 'round behind the scenes I stepped upon Pavlowa's toe. 
15390	----	[Illustration: EVANGELINE.] EVANGELINE A TALE OF ACADIE BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW Edited with Introduction, Notes and a Plan of Study BY W.F. CONOVER. A. FLANAGAN CO., PUBLISHERS, CHICAGO Copyright 1899 by W.F. CONOVER NOTE. The distinctive feature of this edition of Evangeline is the PLAN OF STUDY which forms the latter part of the volume. This Plan for the study of "Evangeline" is the outgrowth of several years' teaching of this delightful poem. It has proved successful in securing very satisfactory work from classes varying greatly in ability. It has resulted, in a considerable majority of cases, in (1) in awakening an interest in and a love for good literature; (2) opening up the field of literature in a new way, and showing that much wealth may be gotten by digging below the surface; (3) developing a considerable power of discrimination; (4) enlarging the pupil's working vocabulary. See "Argument" on page 113. THE AUTHOR. CONTENTS. NOTE Page 5 INTRODUCTION. THE AUTHOR 7 THE POEM 9 ACADIA AND THE ACADIANS 12 EVANGELINE: A TALE OF ACADIE. PART THE FIRST 20 PART THE SECOND 60 NOTES ON EVANGELINE. PART ONE 107 PART TWO 110 A PLAN OF STUDY. PART I 119 PART II 124 PART III 142 INTRODUCTION. THE AUTHOR. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, February 27, 1807. His father and mother were of English stock, his mother being a descendant of "John Alden and Priscilla." Stephen Longfellow, his father, was a lawyer and statesman. Henry's school life began at the age of three. When he was six years old he could read, spell and multiply, and at the age of seven was half way through his Latin grammar. He early showed a taste for reading, and read not only his father's small stock of books, but frequented the Portland Library and book stores. "The Battle of Lovell's Pond" was his first poem, written when he was thirteen. He entered Bowdoin College at the age of fourteen, graduating in 1825. During the latter part of his student life there he began to show a considerable literary bent. Shortly after graduating from Bowdoin, Longfellow was elected Professor of Modern Languages in that institution. Before entering upon his work, he spent three years in study and travel in Europe, returning to America in 1829. For five and one-half years he taught in Bowdoin, during which time he began serious work as an author. In 1834, Harvard called him to the chair of Modern Languages. He again made a trip to Europe for further study. Longfellow was connected with Harvard for nineteen years, resigning his position in 1854 to devote his whole time to literature. His two principal prose works are "Outre Mer" and "Hyperion." The latter was followed by a volume of poems entitled "Voices of the Night." "Ballads and Other Poems" appeared in 1841, and showed much more talent. "Evangeline" was written in 1847; "Hiawatha" in 1855, and the "Courtship of Miles Standish" in 1857. "Evangeline" and "Hiawatha" are considered the best of his longer poems. "The Building of the Ship" and "Excelsior" are perhaps the best known of his shorter poems. Longfellow died at Cambridge in 1882. THE POEM. "Evangeline" is considered Longfellow's masterpiece among his longer poems. It is said to have been the author's favorite. It has a universal popularity, having been translated into many languages. E.C. Stedman styles it the "Flower of American Idyls." "Evangeline" is a Narrative poem, since it tells a story. Some of the world's greatest poems have been of this kind, notably the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" of Homer, and the "Aeneid," of Virgil. It may be also classified as an Idyl, which is a simple, pastoral poem of no great length. Poetry has been defined as "impassioned expression in verse or metrical form." All modern English poetry has metre, and much of it rhyme. By metre is meant a regular recurrence of accented syllables among unaccented syllables. "Evangeline" is written in what is called hexameter, having six accents to the line. An accented syllable is followed by one or two unaccented. A line must begin with an accented syllable, the last accent but one be followed by two unaccented syllables, and the last by one. Representing an accented syllable by O and an unaccented syllable by a -, the first line of the poem would be as follows: O - - O - - O - - O - - O - - O - This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks, "The measure lends itself easily to the lingering melancholy which marks a greater part of the poem." "In reading there should be a gentle labor of the former half of the line and gentle acceleration of the latter half."--_Scudder_. [Illustration: NOVA SCOTIA AND VICINITY.] ACADIA AND THE ACADIANS. Acadia, now known as Nova Scotia, was settled by the French in 1607. Many of the colonists settled in the fertile region about the Bay of Minas, an arm of the Bay of Fundy. One of these settlements was called Grand Pre, meaning Great Meadow. The people were industrious and thrifty and they soon attained a considerable prosperity. During the early period of American History, France and England were almost continually at war with one another, and in these wars the colonists were concerned. At the close of what is known as Queen Anne's war, in 1713, France ceded Acadia to the English, and it has since remained in their possession. Some thirty-five years passed before an English settlement was made at Halifax, the Acadians in the meantime remaining in undisturbed possession of the country. Soon after the settlement of Halifax trouble began between the rival colonists. The Acadians were, as a whole, a quiet and peaceable people, content to till their farms and let the mother countries settle any disputes. Some of them were not thus minded and they succeeded in causing considerable trouble. Frequent attacks were made upon Halifax by the Indians who were supposed to have been aided and encouraged by the Acadians. The Acadians had refused to take the oath of allegiance to the English and this caused them to be regarded with suspicion and fear. They had sworn fidelity on the condition that they should not be required to bear arms against the French, with whom they naturally sympathized, being of the same blood and religion. They persistently refused to go further and swear allegiance. The English were not without blame since it must be admitted they had covetous eyes upon the rich farms of the Acadians and an opportunity to take possession of them would not be unwelcome. [Illustration: Map of Annapolis and Kings Counties.] The strife that had so long been going on between France and England to determine which should rule in the New World was now at a critical point. England's power seemed to be trembling in the balance. Her defeat meant great disaster to the Colonies. Alarmed by Braddock's failure, the Colonists determined something must be done to prevent the Acadians giving assistance to the French. To send them to Canada would be to strengthen the enemy, while to transport them to any one of the Colonies would be equally unwise since they would there be a source of danger. It was finally decided to scatter them among the different settlements. An order was issued requiring all the males of Grand Pre and vicinity ten years old and upwards to assemble in the church to hear a Proclamation of the King. Failure to attend would result in a forfeiture of all property of the individual. On the appointed day the men gathered in the church and heard the Mandate directing that all their property, excepting household goods and money, should be forfeited to the Crown and they with their families should be transported to other lands. They were held prisoners until the time of sailing, the women and the children gathering their belongings on the beach. The expected transports failed to arrive on time and fear of trouble led the English to hurry their prisoners aboard the few ships in the harbor. These were so crowded nearly all the goods had to be left behind, and in the haste of embarking many families, lovers and friends were parted, being carried aboard different ships bound for different ports. On October 29th, 1755, the Acadians sailed away into exile, an "exile without an end, and without an example in story." There is a considerable difference of opinion as to whether such extreme measures were justified. The English Colonists evidently felt that it was a necessary act, an act of self-preservation. It is, perhaps, no worse than many of the horrors of war. On the other hand the Acadians had, as a whole, committed no overt act of disloyalty, though a few of them had done so. Should a whole community thus suffer for the wrong doing of a few? This is certainly a difficult question. Those interested in the subject should read an article by Parkman in "Harper's Magazine" for November, 1884, where he justifies the action. For the opposite view, see "Acadia" by Edouard Richards, vol. I, chap. IV. The following quotations will be found of interest. The first is from Edouard Richards; the second and third from two of contemporaries of the exiled Acadians, Moses de les Derniers and Brook Watson. "All that vast bay, around which but lately an industrious people worked like a swarm of bees, was now deserted. In the silent village, where the doors swung idly in the wind, nothing was heard but the tramp of soldiery and the lowing of cattle, wandering anxiously around the stables as if looking for their masters....The total amount of live-stock owned by the Acadians at the time of the deportation has been variously estimated by different historians, or to speak more correctly, very few have paid any attention to this subject....Rameau, who has made a much deeper study than any other historian of the Acadians, sets the total at 130,000, comprising horned cattle, horses, sheep, and pigs." Edouard Richard quotes the following from two contemporaries of the exiled Acadians. "The Acadians were the most innocent and virtuous people I have ever known or read of in any history. They lived in a state of perfect equality, without distinction of rank in society. The title of 'Mister' was unknown among them. Knowing nothing of luxury, or even the conveniences of life, they were content with a simple manner of living, which they easily compassed by the tillage of their lands. Very little ambition or avarice was to be seen among them; they anticipated each other's wants by kindly liberality; they demanded no interest for loans of money or other property. They were humane and hospitable to strangers, and very liberal toward those who embraced their religion. They were very remarkable for their inviolable purity of morals. If any disputes arose in their transactions, they always submitted to the decision of an arbitrator, and their final appeal was to their priest."--_Moses de les Derniers_. "Young men were not encouraged to marry unless the young girl could weave a piece of cloth, and the young man make a pair of wheels. These accomplishments were deemed essential for their marriage settlement, and they hardly needed anything else; for every time there was a wedding the whole village contributed to set up the newly married couple. They built a house for them, and cleared enough land for their immediate needs; they gave them live stock and poultry; and nature, seconded by their own labor, soon put them in a position to help others."--_Brook Watson_. [Illustration: Village of Grand Pré. Rivers Gaspereau and Avon in the distance.] EVANGELINE. PRELUDE. This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic, Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean 5 Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest. This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman? Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers-- Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands, 10 Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven? Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed! Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of October Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o'er the ocean. Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of Grand-Pre. 15 Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient, Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman's devotion. List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest; List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy. PART THE FIRST. SECTION I. In the Acadian land, on the shores of the Basin of Minas, 20 Distant, secluded, still, the little village of Grand-Pre Lay in the fruitful valley. Vast meadows stretched to the eastward, Giving the village its name and pasture to flocks without number. Dikes, that the hands of the farmers had raised with labor incessant, Shut out the turbulent tides; but at stated seasons the flood-gates 25 Opened and welcomed the sea to wander at will o'er the meadows. West and south there were fields of flax, and orchards and cornfields Spreading afar and unfenced o'er the plain; and away to the northward Blomidon rose, and the forests old, and aloft on the mountains Sea-fogs pitched their tents, and mists from the mighty Atlantic 30 Looked on the happy valley, but ne'er from their station descended. There, in the midst of its farms, reposed the Acadian village. Strongly built were the houses, with frames of oak and of hemlock, Such as the peasants of Normandy built in the reign of the Henries. Thatched were the roofs, with dormer-windows; and gables projecting 35 Over the basement below protected and shaded the doorway. There in the tranquil evenings of summer, when brightly the sunset Lighted the village street, and gilded the vanes on the chimneys, Matrons and maidens sat in snow-white caps and in kirtles Scarlet and blue and green, with distaffs spinning the golden 40 Flax for the gossiping looms, whose noisy shuttles within doors Mingled their sound with the whir of the wheels and the songs of the maidens. Solemnly down the street came the parish priest, and the children Paused in their play to kiss the hand he extended to bless them. Reverend walked he among them; and up rose matrons and maidens, 45 Hailing his slow approach with words of affectionate welcome. Then came the laborers home from the field, and serenely the sun sank Down to his rest, and twilight prevailed. Anon from the belfry Softly the Angelus sounded, and over the roofs of the village Columns of pale blue smoke, like clouds of incense ascending, 50 Rose from a hundred hearths, the homes of peace and contentment. Thus dwelt together in love these simple Acadian farmers,-- Dwelt in the love of God and of man. Alike were they free from Fear, that reigns with the tyrant, and envy, the vice of republics. Neither locks had they to their doors, nor bars to their windows; 55 But their dwellings were open as day and the hearts of the owners; There the richest was poor, and the poorest lived in abundance. Somewhat apart from the village, and nearer the Basin of Minas, Benedict Bellefontaine, the wealthiest farmer of Grand-Pre, Dwelt on his goodly acres; and with him, directing his household, 60 Gentle Evangeline lived, his child, and the pride of the village. Stalworth and stately in form was the man of seventy winters; Hearty and hale was he, an oak that is covered with snow-flakes; White as the snow were his locks, and his cheeks as brown as the oak-leaves. Fair was she to behold, that maiden of seventeen summers; 65 Black were her eyes as the berry that grows on the thorn by the wayside, Black, yet how softly they gleamed beneath the brown shade of her tresses! Sweet was her breath as the breath of kine that feed in the meadows. When in the harvest heat she bore to the reapers at noontide Flagons of home-brewed ale, ah! fair in sooth was the maiden. 70 Fairer was she, when on Sunday morn, while the bell from its turret Sprinkled with holy sounds the air, as the priest with his hyssop Sprinkles the congregation, and scatters blessings upon them Down the long street she passed, with her chaplet of beads and her missal, Wearing her Norman cap and her kirtle of blue, and the ear-rings 75 Brought in the olden time from France, and since, as an heirloom, Handed down from mother to child, through long generations. But a celestial brightness--a more ethereal beauty-- Shone on her face and encircled her form, when, after confession, Homeward serenely she walked with God's benediction upon her. 80 When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music. Firmly builded with rafters of oak, the house of the farmer Stood on the side of a hill commanding the sea; and a shady Sycamore grew by the door, with a woodbine wreathing around it. Rudely carved was the porch, with seats beneath; and a footpath 85 Led through an orchard wide, and disappeared in the meadow. Under the sycamore-tree were hives overhung by a penthouse, Such as the traveler sees in regions remote by the roadside, Built o'er a box for the poor, or the blessed image of Mary. Farther down, on the slope of the hill, was the well with its moss-grown 90 Bucket, fastened with iron, and near it a trough for the horses. Shielding the house from storms, on the north, were the barns and the farmyard; There stood the broad-wheeled wains and the antique plows and harrows; There were the folds for the sheep, and there in his feathered seraglio, Strutted the lordly turkey, and crowed the cock, with the selfsame 95 Voice that in ages of old had startled the penitent Peter. Bursting with hay were the barns, themselves a village. In each one Far o'er the gable projected a roof of thatch; and a staircase, Under the sheltering eaves, led up to the odorous cornloft. There too the dove-cot stood, with its meek and innocent inmates 100 Murmuring ever of love; while above in the variant breezes Numberless noisy weathercocks rattled and sang of mutation. Thus, at peace with God and the world, the farmer of Grand-Pre Lived on his sunny farm, and Evangeline governed his household. Many a youth, as he knelt in the church and opened his missal, 105 Fixed his eyes upon her as the saint of his deepest devotion; Happy was he who might touch her hand or the hem of her garment! Many a suitor came to her door, by the darkness befriended, And, as he knocked and waited to hear the sound of her footsteps, Knew not which beat the louder, his heart or the knocker of iron; 110 Or, at the joyous feast of the Patron Saint of the village, Bolder grew, and pressed her hand in the dance as he whispered Hurried words of love, that seemed a part of the music. But among all who came young Gabriel only was welcome; Gabriel Lajeunesse, the son of Basil the blacksmith, 115 Who was a mighty man in the village, and honored of all men; For since the birth of time, throughout all ages and nations, Has the craft of the smith been held in repute by the people. Basil was Benedict's friend. Their children from earliest childhood Grew up together as brother and sister; and Father Felician, 120 Priest and pedagogue both in the village, had taught them their letters Out of the selfsame book, with the hymns of the church and the plain-song. But when the hymn was sung, and the daily lesson completed, Swiftly they hurried away to the forge of Basil the blacksmith. There at the door they stood, with wondering eyes to behold him 125 Take in his leathern lap the hoof of the horse as a plaything, Nailing the shoe in its place; while near him the tire of the cart-wheel Lay like a fiery snake, coiled round in a circle of cinders. Oft on autumnal eves, when without in the gathering darkness Bursting with light seemed the smithy, through every cranny and crevice, 130 Warm by the forge within they watched the laboring bellows, And as its panting ceased, and the sparks expired in the ashes, Merrily laughed, and said they were nuns going into the chapel. Oft on sledges in winter, as swift as the swoop of the eagle, Down the hillside bounding, they glided away o'er the meadow. 135 Oft in the barns they climbed to the populous nests on the rafters, Seeking with eager eyes that wondrous stone, which the swallow Brings from the shore of the sea to restore the sight of its fledglings; Lucky was he who found that stone in the nest of the swallow! Thus passed a few swift years, and they no longer were children. 140 He was a valiant youth, and his face, like the face of the morning, Gladdened the earth with its light, and ripened thought into action. She was a woman now, with the heart and hopes of a woman. "Sunshine of St. Eulalie" was she called; for that was the sunshine Which, as the farmers believed, would load their orchards with apples; 145 She too would bring to her husband's house delight and abundance, Filling it full of love and ruddy faces of children. SECTION II. Now had the season returned, when the nights grow colder and longer, And the retreating sun the sign of the Scorpion enters. Birds of passage sailed through the leaden air, from the ice-bound, 150 Desolate northern bays to the shores of tropical islands. Harvests were gathered in; and wild with the winds of September Wrestled the trees of the forest, as Jacob of old with the angel. All the signs foretold a winter long and inclement. Bees, with prophetic instinct of want, had hoarded their honey 155 Till the hives overflowed; and the Indian hunters asserted Cold would the winter be, for thick was the fur of the foxes. Such was the advent of autumn. Then followed that beautiful season, Called by the pious Acadian peasants the Summer of All-Saints! Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscape 160 Lay as if new-created in all the freshness of childhood. Peace seemed to reign upon earth, and the restless heart of the ocean Was for a moment consoled. All sounds were in harmony blended. Voices of children at play, the crowing of cocks in the farm-yards, Whir of wings in the drowsy air, and the cooing of pigeons 165 All were subdued and low as the murmurs of love, and the great sun Looked with the eye of love through the golden vapors around him; While arrayed in its robes of russet and scarlet and yellow, Bright with the sheen of the dew, each glittering tree of the forest Flashed like the plane-tree the Persian adorned with mantles and jewels. 170 Now recommenced the reign of rest and affection and stillness. Day with its burden and heat had departed, and twilight descending Brought back the evening star to the sky, and the herds to the homestead. Pawing the ground they came, and resting their necks on each other, And with their nostrils distended inhaling the freshness of evening. 175 Foremost, bearing the bell, Evangeline's beautiful heifer, Proud of her snow-white hide, and the ribbon that waved from her collar, Quietly paced and slow, as if conscious of human affection. Then came the shepherd back with his bleating flocks from the seaside, Where was their favorite pasture. Behind them followed the watch-dog, 180 Patient, full of importance, and grand in the pride of his instinct, Walking from side to side with a lordly air, and superbly Waving his bushy tail, and urging forward the stragglers; Regent of flocks was he when the shepherd slept; their protector, When from the forest at night, through the starry silence, the wolves howled. 185 Late, with the rising moon, returned the wains from the marshes, Laden with briny hay, that filled the air with its odor. Cheerily neighed the steeds, with dew on their manes and their fetlocks, While aloft on their shoulders the wooden and ponderous saddles, Painted with brilliant dyes, and adorned with tassels of crimson, 190 Nodded in bright array, like hollyhocks heavy with blossoms. Patiently stood the cows meanwhile, and yielded their udders Unto the milkmaid's hand; whilst loud and in regular cadence Into the sounding pails the foaming streamlets descended. Lowing of cattle and peals of laughter were heard in the farm-yard, 195 Echoed back by the barns. Anon they sank into stillness; Heavily closed, with a jarring sound, the valves of the barn-doors, Rattled the wooden bars, and all for a season was silent. In-doors, warm by the wide-mouthed fireplace, idly the farmer Sat in his elbow-chair, and watched how the flames and the smoke-wreaths 200 Struggled together like foes in a burning city. Behind him, Nodding and mocking along the wall with gestures fantastic, Darted his own huge shadow, and vanished away into darkness. Faces, clumsily carved in oak, on the back of his arm-chair, Laughed in the flickering light, and the pewter plates on the dresser 205 Caught and reflected the flame, as shields of armies the sunshine. Fragments of song the old man sang, and carols of Christmas, Such as at home, in the olden time, his fathers before him Sang in their Norman orchards and bright Burgundian vineyards. Close at her father's side was the gentle Evangeline seated, 210 Spinning flax for the loom that stood in the corner behind her. Silent awhile were its treadles, at rest was its diligent shuttle, While the monotonous drone of the wheel, like the drone of a bagpipe, Followed the old man's song, and united the fragments together. As in a church, when the chant of the choir at intervals ceases, 215 Footfalls are heard in the aisles, or words of priest at the altar, So, in each pause of the song, with measured motion the clock clicked. Thus as they sat, there were footsteps heard, and, suddenly lifted, Sounded the wooden latch, and the door swung back on its hinges. Benedict knew by the hob-nailed shoes it was Basil the blacksmith, 220 And by her beating heart Evangeline knew who was with him. "Welcome!" the farmer exclaimed, as their footsteps paused on the threshold, "Welcome, Basil, my friend! Come, take thy place on the settle Close by the chimney-side, which is always empty without thee; Take from the shelf overhead thy pipe and the box of tobacco; 225 Never so much thyself art thou as when, through the curling Smoke of the pipe or the forge, thy friendly and jovial face gleams Round and red as the harvest moon through the mist of the marshes." Then, with a smile of content, thus answered Basil the blacksmith, Taking with easy air the accustomed seat by the fireside:-- 230 "Benedict Bellefontaine, thou hast ever thy jest and thy ballad! Ever in cheerfullest mood art thou, when others are filled with Gloomy forebodings of ill, and see only ruin before them. Happy art thou, as if every day thou hadst picked up a horseshoe." Pausing a moment, to take the pipe that Evangeline brought him, 235 And with a coal from the embers had lighted, he slowly continued:-- "Four days now are passed since the English ships at their anchors Ride in the Gaspereau's mouth, with their cannon pointed against us. What their design may be is unknown; but all are commanded On the morrow to meet in the church, where his Majesty's mandate 240 Will be proclaimed as law in the land. Alas! in the mean time Many surmises of evil alarm the hearts of the people." Then made answer the farmer:--"Perhaps some friendlier purpose Brings these ships to our shores. Perhaps the harvests in England By untimely rains or untimelier heat have been blighted, 245 And from our bursting barns they would feed their cattle and children." "Not so thinketh the folk in the village," said warmly the blacksmith, Shaking his head as in doubt; then, heaving a sigh, he continued:-- "Louisburg is not forgotten, nor Beau Sejour, nor Port Royal. Many already have fled to the forest, and lurk on its outskirts, 250 Waiting with anxious hearts the dubious fate of to-morrow. Arms have been taken from us, and warlike weapons of all kinds; Nothing is left but the blacksmith's sledge and the scythe of the mower." Then with a pleasant smile made answer the jovial farmer:-- "Safer are we unarmed, in the midst of our flocks and our cornfields, 255 Safer within these peaceful dikes besieged by the ocean, Than our fathers in forts, besieged by the enemy's cannon. Fear no evil, my friend, and to-night may no shadow of sorrow Fall on this house and hearth; for this is the night of the contract. Built are the house and the barn. The merry lads of the village 260 Strongly have built them and well; and, breaking the glebe round about them, Filled the barn with hay, and the house with food for a twelvemonth. Rene Leblanc will be here anon, with his papers and inkhorn. Shall we not then be glad, and rejoice in the joy of our children?" As apart by the window she stood, with her hand in her lover's, 265 Blushing Evangeline heard the words that her father had spoken, And, as they died on his lips, the worthy notary entered. SECTION III. Bent like a laboring oar, that toils in the surf of the ocean, Bent, but not broken, by age was the form of the notary public; Shocks of yellow hair, like the silken floss of the maize, hung 270 Over his shoulders; his forehead was high; and glasses with horn bows Sat astride on his nose, with a look of wisdom supernal. Father of twenty children was he, and more than a hundred Children's children rode on his knee, and heard his great watch tick. Four long years in the times of the war had he languished a captive, 275 Suffering much in an old French fort as the friend of the English. Now, though warier grown, without all guile or suspicion, Ripe in wisdom was he, but patient, and simple, and childlike. He was beloved by all, and most of all by the children; For he told them tales of the Loup-garou in the forest, 280 And of the goblin that came in the night to water the horses, And of the white Letiche, the ghost of a child who unchristened Died, and was doomed to haunt unseen the chambers of children; And how on Christmas eve the oxen talked in the stable, And how the fever was cured by a spider shut up in a nutshell, 285 And of the marvelous powers of four-leaved clover and horseshoes, With whatsoever else was writ in the lore of the village. Then up rose from his seat by the fireside Basil the blacksmith, Knocked from his pipe the ashes, and slowly extending his right hand, "Father Leblanc," he exclaimed, "thou hast heard the talk in the village, 290 And, perchance, canst tell us some news of these ships and their errand." Then with modest demeanor made answer the notary public,-- "Gossip enough have I heard, in sooth, yet am never the wiser; And what their errand may be I know no better than others. Yet am I not of those who imagine some evil intention 295 Brings them here, for we are at peace; and why then molest us?" "God's name!" shouted the hasty and somewhat irascible blacksmith; "Must we in all things look for the how, and the why, and the wherefore? Daily injustice is done, and might is the right of the strongest!" But, without heeding his warmth, continued the notary public,-- 300 "Man is unjust, but God is just; and finally justice Triumphs; and well I remember a story, that often consoled me, When as a captive I lay in the old French fort at Port Royal." This was the old man's favorite tale, and he loved to repeat it When his neighbors complained that any injustice was done them. 305 "Once in an ancient city, whose name I no longer remember, Raised aloft on a column, a brazen statute of Justice Stood in the public square, upholding the scales in its left hand, And in its right a sword, as an emblem that justice presided Over the laws of the land, and the hearts and homes of the people. 310 Even the birds had built their nests in the scales of the balance, Having no fear of the sword that flashed in the sunshine above them. But in the course of time the laws of the land were corrupted; Might took the place of right, and the weak were oppressed, and the mighty Ruled with an iron rod. Then it chanced in a nobleman's palace 315 That a necklace of pearls was lost, and ere long a suspicion Fell on an orphan girl who lived as maid in the household. She, after form of trial condemned to die on the scaffold, Patiently met her doom at the foot of the statue of Justice. As to her Father in heaven her innocent spirit ascended, 320 Lo! o'er the city a tempest rose; and the bolts of the thunder Smote the statue of bronze, and hurled in wrath from its left hand Down on the pavement below the clattering scales of the balance, And in the hollow thereof was found the nest of a magpie, Into whose clay-built walls the necklace of pearls was inwoven." 325 Silenced, but not convinced, when the story was ended, the blacksmith Stood like a man who fain would speak, but findeth no language; All his thoughts were congealed into lines on his face, as the vapors Freeze in fantastic shapes on the window-panes in the winter. Then Evangeline lighted the brazen lamp on the table, 330 Filled, till it overflowed, the pewter tankard with home-brewed Nut-brown ale, that was famed for its strength in the village of Grand-Pre; While from his pocket the notary drew his papers and inkhorn, Wrote with a steady hand the date and the age of the parties, Naming the dower of the bride in flocks of sheep and in cattle. 335 Orderly all things proceeded, and duly and well were completed, And the great seal of the law was set like a sun on the margin. Then from his leathern pouch the farmer threw on the table Three times the old man's fee in solid pieces of silver; And the notary rising, and blessing the bride and bridegroom, 340 Lifted aloft the tankard of ale and drank to their welfare. Wiping the foam from his lip, he solemnly bowed and departed, While in silence the others sat and mused by the fireside, Till Evangeline brought the draught-board out of its corner. Soon was the game begun. In friendly contention the old men 345 Laughed at each lucky hit, or unsuccessful manoeuvre, Laughed when a man was crowned, or a breach was made in the king-row. Meanwhile, apart, in the twilight gloom of a window's embrasure, Sat the lovers and whispered together, beholding the moon rise Over the pallid sea and the silvery mist of the meadows. 350 Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels. Thus was the evening passed. Anon the bell from the belfry Rang out the hour of nine, the village curfew, and straightway Rose the guests and departed; and silence reigned in the household. 355 Many a farewell word and sweet good-night on the door-step Lingered long in Evangeline's heart, and filled it with gladness. Carefully then were covered the embers that glowed on the hearth-stone, And on the oaken stairs resounded the tread of the farmer. Soon with a soundless step the foot of Evangeline followed. 360 Up the staircase moved a luminous space in the darkness, Lighted less by the lamp than the shining face of the maiden. Silent she passed through the hall, and entered the door of her chamber. Simple that chamber was, with its curtains of white, and its clothes-press Ample and high, on whose spacious shelves were carefully folded 365 Linen and woolen stuffs, by the hand of Evangeline woven This was the precious dower she would bring to her husband in marriage, Better than flocks and herds, being proofs of her skill as a housewife. Soon she extinguished her lamp, for the mellow and radiant moonlight Streamed through the windows, and lighted the room, till the heart of the maiden 370 Swelled and obeyed its power, like the tremulous tides of the ocean. Ah! she was fair, exceeding fair to behold, as she stood with Naked snow-white feet on the gleaming floor of her chamber! Little she dreamed that below, among the trees of the orchard, Waited her lover and watched for the gleam of her lamp and her shadow. 375 Yet were her thoughts of him, and at times a feeling of sadness Passed o'er her soul, as the sailing shade of clouds in the moonlight Flitted across the floor and darkened the room for a moment. And, as she gazed from the window, she saw serenely the moon pass Forth from the folds of a cloud, and one star follow her footsteps, 380 As out of Abraham's tent young Ishmael wandered with Hagar. SECTION IV. Pleasantly rose next morn the sun on the village of Grand-Pre. Pleasantly gleamed in the soft, sweet air the Basin of Minas, Where the ships, with their wavering shadows, were riding at anchor. Life had been long astir in the village, and clamorous labor 385 Knocked with its hundred hands at the golden gates of the morning. Now from the country around, from the farms and neighboring hamlets, Came in their holiday dresses the blithe Acadian peasants. Many a glad good-morrow and jocund laugh from the young folk Made the bright air brighter, as up from the numerous meadows, 390 Where no path could be seen but the track of wheels in the greensward, Group after group appeared, and joined, or passed on the highway. Long ere noon, in the village all sounds of labor were silenced. Thronged were the streets with people; and noisy groups at the house-doors Sat in the cheerful sun, and rejoiced and gossiped together. 395 Every house was an inn, where all were welcomed and feasted; For with this simple people, who lived like brothers together, All things were held in common, and what one had was another's. Yet under Benedict's roof hospitality seemed more abundant: For Evangeline stood among the guests of her father. 400 Bright was her face with smiles, and words of welcome and gladness Fell from her beautiful lips, and blessed the cup as she gave it. Under the open sky, in the odorous air of the orchard, Stript of its golden fruit, was spread the feast of betrothal. There in the shade of the porch were the priest and the notary seated; 405 There good Benedict sat, and sturdy Basil the blacksmith. Not far withdrawn from these, by the cider press and the bee-hives, Michael the fiddler was placed, with the gayest of hearts and of waistcoats. Shadow and light from the leaves alternately played on his snow-white Hair, as it waved in the wind; and the jolly face of the fiddler 410 Glowed like a living coal when the ashes are blown from the embers. Gaily the old man sang to the vibrant sound of his fiddle, _Tous les Bourgeois de Chartres_, and _Le Carillon de Dunkerque_, And anon with his wooden shoes beat time to the music. Merrily, merrily whirled the wheels of the dizzying dances 415 Under the orchard-trees and down the path to the meadows; Old folk and young together, and children mingled among them. Fairest of all maids was Evangeline, Benedict's daughter! Noblest of all the youths was Gabriel, son of the blacksmith! So passed the morning away. And lo! with a summons sonorous 420 Sounded the bell from its tower, and over the meadows a drum beat. Thronged ere long was the church with men. Without, in the churchyard, Waited the women. They stood by the graves, and hung on the headstones Garlands of autumn-leaves and evergreens fresh from the forest. Then came the guard from the ships, and marching proudly among them 425 Entered the sacred portal. With loud and dissonant clangor Echoed the sound of their brazen drums from ceiling and casement,-- Echoed a moment only, and slowly the ponderous portal Closed, and in silence the crowd awaited the will of the soldiers. Then uprose their commander, and spake from the steps of the altar, 430 Holding aloft in his hands, with the seals, the royal commission. "You are convened this day," he said, "by his Majesty's orders. Clement and kind has he been; but how you have answered his kindness Let your own hearts reply! To my natural make and my temper Painful the task is I do, which to you I know must be grievous. 435 Yet must I bow and obey, and deliver the will of our monarch: Namely, that all your lands, and dwellings, and cattle of all kinds Forfeited be to the crown; and that you yourselves from this province Be transported to other lands. God grant you may dwell there Ever as faithful subjects, a happy and peaceable people! 440 Prisoners now I declare you, for such is his Majesty's pleasure!" As, when the air is serene in the sultry solstice of summer, Suddenly gathers a storm, and the deadly sling of the hailstones Beats down the farmer's corn in the field, and shatters his windows, Hiding the sun, and strewing the ground with thatch from the house-roofs, 445 Bellowing fly the herds, and seek to break their enclosures; So on the hearts of the people descended the words of the speaker. Silent a moment they stood in speechless wonder, and then rose Louder and ever louder a wail of sorrow and anger, And, by one impulse moved, they madly rushed to the door-way. 450 Vain was the hope of escape; and cries and fierce imprecations Rang through the house of prayer; and high o'er the heads of the others Rose, with his arms uplifted, the figure of Basil the blacksmith, As, on a stormy sea, a spar is tossed by the billows. Flushed was his face and distorted with passion; and wildly he shouted,-- 455 "Down with the tyrants of England! we never have sworn them allegiance! Death to these foreign soldiers, who seize on our homes and our harvests!" More he fain would have said, but the merciless hand of a soldier Smote him upon the mouth, and dragged him down to the pavement. In the midst of the strife and tumult of angry contention, 460 Lo! the door of the chancel opened, and Father Felician Entered, with serious mien, and ascended the steps of the altar. Raising his reverend hand, with a gesture he awed into silence All that clamorous throng; and thus he spake to his people; Deep were his tones and solemn; in accents measured and mournful 465 Spake he, as, after the tocsin's alarum, distinctly the clock strikes. "What is this that ye do, my children? what madness has seized you? Forty years of my life have I labored among you, and taught you, Not in word alone, but in deed, to love one another! Is this the fruit of my toils, of my vigils and prayers and privations? 470 Have you so soon forgotten all lessons of love and forgiveness? This is the house of the Prince of Peace, and would you profane it Thus with violent deeds and hearts overflowing with hatred? Lo! where the crucified Christ from His cross is gazing upon you! See! in those sorrowful eyes what meekness and holy compassion! 475 Hark! how those lips still repeat the prayer, 'O Father, forgive them!' Let us repeat that prayer in the hour when the wicked assail us, Let us repeat it now, and say, 'O Father, forgive them!'" Few were his words of rebuke, but deep in the hearts of his people Sank they, and sobs of contrition succeeded the passionate outbreak, 480 While they repeated his prayer and said, "O Father, forgive them!" Then came the evening service. The tapers gleamed from the altar; Fervent and deep was the voice of the priest, and the people responded, Not with their lips alone, but their hearts; and the Ave Maria Sang they, and fell on their knees, and their souls, with devotion translated, 485 Rose on the ardor of prayer, like Elijah ascending to heaven. Meanwhile had spread in the village the tidings of ill, and on all sides Wandered, wailing, from house to house the women and children. Long at her father's door Evangeline stood, with her right hand Shielding her eyes from the level rays of the sun, that, descending, 490 Lighted the village street with mysterious splendor, and roofed each Peasant's cottage with golden thatch, and emblazoned its windows. Long within had been spread the snow-white cloth on the table; There stood the wheaten loaf, and the honey fragrant with wild flowers; There stood the tankard of ale, and the cheese fresh brought from the dairy; 495 And at the head of the board the great arm-chair of the farmer. Thus did Evangeline wait at her father's door, as the sunset Threw the long shadows of trees o'er the broad ambrosial meadows. Ah! on her spirit within a deeper shadow had fallen, And from the fields of her soul a fragrance celestial ascended,-- 500 Charity, meekness, love, and hope, and forgiveness, and patience! Then, all forgetful of self, she wandered into the village, Cheering with looks and words the mournful hearts of the women, As o'er the darkening fields with lingering steps they departed, Urged by their household cares, and the weary feet of their children. 505 Down sank the great red sun, and in golden, glimmering vapors Veiled the light of his face, like the Prophet descending from Sinai. Sweetly over the village the bell of the Angelus sounded. Meanwhile, amid the gloom, by the church Evangeline lingered. All was silent within; and in vain at the door and the windows 510 Stood she, and listened and looked, until, overcome by emotion "Gabriel!" cried she aloud with tremulous voice; but no answer Came from the graves of the dead, nor the gloomier grave of the living. Slowly at length she returned to the tenantless house of her father. Smouldered the fire on the hearth, on the board was the supper untasted. 515 Empty and drear was each room, and haunted with phantoms of terror. Sadly echoed her step on the stair and the floor of her chamber. In the dead of the night she heard the disconsolate rain fall Loud on the withered leaves of the sycamore-tree by the window. Keenly the lightning flashed; and the voice of the echoing thunder 520 Told her that God was in heaven and governed the world He created! Then she remembered the tale she had heard of the justice of Heaven; Soothed was her troubled soul, and she peacefully slumbered till morning. SECTION V. Four times the sun had risen and set; and now on the fifth day Cheerily called the cock to the sleeping maids of the farm-house. 525 Soon o'er the yellow fields, in silent and mournful procession, Came from the neighboring hamlets and farms the Acadian women, Driving in ponderous wains their household goods to the sea-shore, Pausing and looking back to gaze once more on their dwellings, Ere they were shut from sight by the winding road and the woodland. 530 Close at their sides their children ran, and urged on the oxen, While in their little hands they clasped some fragments of playthings. Thus to the Gaspereau's mouth they hurried; and there on the sea-beach Piled in confusion lay the household goods of the peasants. All day long between the shore and the ships did the boats ply; 535 All day long the wains came laboring down from the village. Late in the afternoon, when the sun was near to his setting, Echoed far o'er the fields came the roll of drums from the churchyard. Thither the women and children thronged. On a sudden the church-doors Opened, and forth came the guard, and marching in gloomy procession 540 Followed the long-imprisoned, but patient, Acadian farmers. Even as pilgrims, who journey afar from their homes and their country, Sing as they go, and in singing forget they are weary and wayworn, So with songs on their lips the Acadian peasants descended Down from the church to the shore, amid their wives and their daughters. 545 Foremost the young men came; and raising together their voices, Sang with tremulous lips a chant of the Catholic Missions:-- "Sacred heart of the Saviour! O inexhaustible fountain! Fill our hearts this day with strength and submission and patience!" Then the old men, as they marched, and the women that stood by the wayside 550 Joined in the sacred psalm, and the birds in the sunshine above them Mingled their notes therewith, like voices of spirits departed. Half-way down to the shore Evangeline waited in silence, Not overcome with grief, but strong in the hour of affliction,-- Calmly and sadly she waited, until the procession approached her, 555 And she beheld the face of Gabriel pale with emotion. Tears then filled her eyes, and, eagerly running to meet him, Clasped she his hands, and laid her head on his shoulder, and whispered,-- "Gabriel! be of good cheer! for if we love one another Nothing, in truth, can harm us, whatever mischances may happen!" 560 Smiling she spake these words; then suddenly paused, for her father Saw she, slowly advancing. Alas! how changed was his aspect! Gone was the glow from his cheek, and the fire from his eye, and his footstep Heavier seemed with the weight of the heavy heart in his bosom. But with a smile and a sigh, she clasped his neck and embraced him, 565 Speaking words of endearment where words of comfort availed not. Thus to the Gasperau's mouth moved on that mournful procession. There disorder prevailed, and the tumult and stir of embarking. Busily plied the freighted boats; and in the confusion Wives were torn from their husbands, and mothers, too late, saw their children 570 Left on the land, extending their arms, with wildest entreaties. So unto separate ships were Basil and Gabriel carried, While in despair on the shore Evangeline stood with her father. Half the task was not done when the sun went down, and the twilight Deepened and darkened around; and in haste the refluent ocean 575 Fled away from the shore, and left the line of the sand-beach Covered with waifs of the tide, with kelp and the slippery sea-weed. Farther back in the midst of the household goods and the wagons, Like to a gypsy camp, or a leaguer after a battle, All escape cut off by the sea, and the sentinels near them, 580 Lay encamped for the night the houseless Acadian farmers. Back to its nethermost caves retreated the bellowing ocean, Dragging adown the beach the rattling pebbles, and leaving Inland and far up the shore the stranded boats of the sailors. Then, as the night descended, the herds returned from their pastures, 585 Sweet was the moist still air with the odor of milk from their udders Lowing they waited, and long, at the well-known bars of the farm-yard,-- Waited and looked in vain for the voice and the hand of the milkmaid. Silence reigned in the streets; from the church no Angelus sounded, Rose no smoke from the roofs, and gleamed no lights from the windows. 590 But on the shores meanwhile the evening fires had been kindled, Built of the drift-wood thrown on the sands from wrecks in the tempest. Round them shapes of gloom and sorrowful faces were gathered, Voices of women were heard, and of men, and the crying of children. Onward from fire to fire, as from hearth to hearth in his parish, 595 Wandered the faithful priest, consoling and blessing and cheering, Like unto shipwrecked Paul on Melita's desolate sea-shore. Thus he approached the place where Evangeline sat with her father, And in the flickering light beheld the face of the old man, Haggard and hollow and wan, and without either thought or emotion, 600 E'en as the face of a clock from which the hands have been taken. Vainly Evangeline strove with words and caresses to cheer him, Vainly offered him food; yet he moved not, he looked not, he spake not, But, with a vacant stare, ever gazed at the flickering fire-light. _Benedicite!_ murmured the priest, in tones of compassion. 605 More he fain would have said, but his heart was full, and his accents Faltered and paused on his lips, as the feet of a child on a threshold, Hushed by the scene he beholds, and the awful presence of sorrow. Silently, therefore, he laid his hand on the head of the maiden, Raising his tearful eyes to the silent stars that above them 610 Moved on their way, unperturbed by the wrongs and sorrows of mortals. Then sat he down at her side, and they wept together in silence. Suddenly rose from the south a light, as in autumn the blood-red Moon climbs the crystal walls of heaven, and o'er the horizon Titan-like stretches its hundred hands upon mountain and meadow, 615 Seizing the rocks and the rivers, and piling huge shadows together. Broader and ever broader it gleamed on the roofs of the village, Gleamed on the sky and the sea, and the ships that lay in the roadstead. Columns of shining smoke uprose, and flashes of flame were Thrust through their folds and withdrawn, like the quivering hands of a martyr. 620 Then, as the wind seized the gleeds and the burning thatch, and, uplifting, Whirled them aloft through the air, at once from a hundred house-tops Started the sheeted smoke with flashes of flame intermingled. These things beheld in dismay the crowd on the shore and on shipboard. Speechless at first they stood, then cried aloud in their anguish, 625 "We shall behold no more our homes in the village of Grand-Pre!" Loud on a sudden the cocks began to crow in the farmyards, Thinking the day had dawned; and anon the lowing of cattle Came on the evening breeze, by the barking of dogs interrupted. Then rose a sound of dread, such as startles the sleeping encampments 630 Far in the western prairies of forests that skirt the Nebraska, When the wild horses affrighted sweep by with the speed of the whirlwind, Or the loud bellowing herds of buffaloes rush to the river. Such was the sound that arose on the night, as the herds and the horses Broke through their folds and fences, and madly rushed o'er the meadows. 635 Overwhelmed with the sight, yet speechless, the priest and the maiden Gazed on the scene of terror that reddened and widened before them; And as they turned at length to speak to their silent companion, Lo! from his seat he had fallen, and stretched abroad on the seashore Motionless lay his form, from which the soul had departed. 640 Slowly the priest uplifted the lifeless head, and the maiden Knelt at her father's side, and wailed aloud in her terror. Then in a swoon she sank and lay with her head on his bosom. Through the long night she lay in deep, oblivious slumber; And when she woke from the trance, she beheld a multitude near her. 645 Faces of friends she beheld, that were mournfully gazing upon her, Pallid, with tearful eyes, and looks of saddest compassion. Still the blaze of the burning village illumined the landscape. Reddened the sky overhead, and gleamed on the faces around her, And like the day of doom it seemed to her wavering senses. 650 Then a familiar voice she heard, as it said to the people,-- "Let us bury him here by the sea. When a happier season Brings us again to our homes from the unknown land of our exile, Then shall his sacred dust be piously laid in the churchyard." Such were the words of the priest. And there in haste by the sea-side, 655 Having the glare of the burning village for funeral torches, But without bell or book, they buried the farmer of Grand-Pre. And as the voice of the priest repeated the service of sorrow, Lo! with a mournful sound like the voice of a vast congregation, Solemnly answered the sea, and mingled its roar with the dirges. 660 'T was the returning tide, that afar from the waste of the ocean, With the first dawn of the day, came heaving and hurrying landward. Then recommenced once more the stir and noise of embarking; And with the ebb of the tide the ships sailed out of the harbor, Leaving behind them the dead on the shore, and the village in ruins. 665 PART THE SECOND. SECTION I. Many a weary year had passed since the burning of Grand-Pre. When on the falling tide the freighted vessels departed, Bearing a nation, with all its household Gods, into exile, Exile without an end, and without an example in story. Far asunder, on separate coasts, the Acadians landed; 670 Scattered were they, like flakes of snow, when the wind from the northeast Strikes aslant through the fogs that darken the Banks of Newfoundland. Friendless, homeless, hopeless, they wandered from city to city, From the cold lakes of the North to sultry Southern savannas-- From the bleak shores of the sea to the lands where the Father of Waters 675 Seizes the hills in his hands, and drags them down to the ocean, Deep in their sands to bury the scattered bones of the mammoth. Friends they sought and homes; and many, despairing, heart-broken, Asked of the earth but a grave, and no longer a friend nor a fireside. Written their history stands on tablets of stone in the churchyards. 680 Long among them was seen a maiden who waited and wandered, Lowly and meek in spirit, and patiently suffering all things. Fair was she and young; but, alas! before her extended, Dreary and vast and silent, the desert of life, with its pathway Marked by the graves of those who had sorrowed and suffered before her, 685 Passions long extinguished, and hopes long dead and abandoned, As the emigrant's way o'er the Western desert is marked by Camp-fires long consumed, and bones that bleach in the sunshine. Something there was in her life incomplete, imperfect, unfinished; As if a morning of June, with all its music and sunshine, 690 Suddenly paused in the sky, and fading, slowly descended Into the east again, from whence it late had arisen. Sometimes she lingered in towns, till, urged by the fever within her, Urged by a restless longing, the hunger and thirst of the spirit, She would commence again her endless search and endeavor; 695 Sometimes in churchyards strayed, and gazed on the crosses and tombstones, Sat by some nameless grave, and thought that perhaps in its bosom, He was already at rest, and she longed to slumber beside him. Sometimes a rumor, a hearsay, an inarticulate whisper, Came with its airy hand to point and beckon her forward. 700 Sometimes she spake with those who had seen her beloved and known him, But it was long ago, in some far-off place or forgotten. "Gabriel Lajeunesse!" they said; "Oh, yes! we have seen him. He was with Basil the blacksmith, and both have gone to the prairies; Coureurs-des-bois are they, and famous hunters and trappers." 705 "Gabriel Lajeunesse!" said others; "Oh, yes! we have seen him. He is a voyageur in the lowlands of Louisiana." Then would they say, "Dear child! why dream and wait for him longer? Are there not other youths as fair as Gabriel? Others Who have hearts as tender and true, and spirits as loyal? 710 Here is Baptiste Leblanc, the notary's son, who has loved thee Many a tedious year; come, give him thy hand and be happy! Thou art too fair to be left to braid St. Catherine's tresses." Then would Evangeline answer, serenely but sadly, "I cannot! Whither my heart has gone, there follows my hand, and not elsewhere. 715 For when the heart goes before, like a lamp, and illumines the pathway, Many things are made clear, that else lie hidden in darkness." Thereupon the priest, her friend and father-confessor, Said, with a smile, "O daughter! thy God thus speaketh within thee! Talk not of wasted affection, affection never was wasted; 720 If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters, returning Back to their springs, like the rain, shall fill them full of refreshment; That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain. Patience; accomplish thy labor; accomplish thy work of affection! Sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is godlike. 725 Therefore accomplish thy labor of love, till the heart is made godlike, Purified, strengthened, perfected, and rendered more worthy of heaven!" Cheered by the good man's words, Evangeline labored and waited. Still in her heart she heard the funeral dirge of the ocean, But with its sound there was mingled a voice that whispered, "Despair not!" 730 Thus did that poor soul wander in want and cheerless discomfort, Bleeding, barefooted, over the shards and thorns of existence. Let me essay, O Muse! to follow the wanderer's footsteps;-- Not through each devious path, each changeful year of existence; But as a traveler follows a streamlet's course through the valley: 735 Far from its margin at times, and seeing the gleam of its water Here and there, in some open space, and at intervals only; Then drawing nearer its banks, through sylvan glooms that conceal it, Though he behold it not, he can hear its continuous murmur; Happy, at length, if he find a spot where it reaches an outlet. 740 SECTION II. It was the month of May. Far down the Beautiful River, Past the Ohio shore and past the mouth of the Wabash, Into the golden stream of the broad and swift Mississippi, Floated a cumbrous boat, that was rowed by Acadian boatmen. It was a band of exiles: a raft, as it were, from the shipwrecked 745 Nation, scattered along the coast, now floating together, Bound by the bonds of a common belief and a common misfortune; Men and women and children, who, guided by hope or by hearsay, Sought for their kith and their kin among the few-acred farmers On the Acadian coast, and the prairies of fair Opelousas. 750 With them Evangeline went, and her guide, the Father Felician. Onward o'er sunken sands, through a wilderness sombre with forests, Day after day they glided adown the turbulent river; Night after night, by their blazing fires, encamped on its borders. Now through rushing chutes, among green islands, where plumelike 755 Cotton-trees nodded their shadowy crests, they swept with the current, Then emerged into broad lagoons, where silvery sand-bars Lay in the stream, and along the wimpling waves of their margin, Shining with snow-white plumes, large flocks of pelicans waded. Level the landscape grew, and along the shores of the river, 760 Shaded by china-trees, in the midst of luxuriant gardens, Stood the houses of planters, with negro cabins and dove-cots. They were approaching the region where reigns perpetual summer, Where through the Golden Coast, and groves of orange and citron, Sweeps with majestic curve the river away to the eastward. 765 They, too, swerved from their course; and, entering the Bayou of Plaquemine, Soon were lost in a maze of sluggish and devious waters, Which, like a network of steel, extended in every direction. Over their heads the towering and tenebrous boughs of the cypress Met in a dusky arch, and trailing mosses in mid-air 770 Waved like banners that hang on the walls of ancient cathedrals. Deathlike the silence seemed, and unbroken, save by the herons Home to their roosts in the cedar-trees returning at sunset, Or by the owl, as he greeted the moon with demoniac laughter. Lovely the moonlight was as it glanced and gleamed on the water, 775 Gleamed on the columns of cypress and cedar sustaining the arches, Down through whose broken vaults it fell as through chinks in a ruin. Dreamlike, and indistinct, and strange were all things around them; And o'er their spirits there came a feeling of wonder and sadness,-- Strange forebodings of ill, unseen and that cannot be compassed. 780 As, at the tramp of a horse's hoof on the turf of the prairies, Far in advance are closed the leaves of the shrinking mimosa, So, at the hoof-beats of fate, with sad forebodings of evil, Shrinks and closes the heart, ere the stroke of doom has attained it. But Evangeline's heart was sustained by a vision, that faintly 785 Floated before her eyes, and beckoned her on through the moonlight. It was the thought of her brain that assumed the shape of a phantom. Through those shadowy aisles had Gabriel wandered before her, And every stroke of the oar now brought him nearer and nearer. Then, in his place, at the prow of the boat, rose one of the oarsmen, 790 And, as a signal sound, if others like them peradventure Sailed on those gloomy and midnight streams, blew a blast on his bugle. Wild through the dark colonnades and corridors leafy the blast rang, Breaking the seal of silence and giving tongues to the forest. Soundless above them the banners of moss just stirred to the music. 795 Multitudinous echoes awoke and died in the distance, Over the watery floor, and beneath the reverberant branches; But not a voice replied; no answer came from the darkness; And when the echoes had ceased, like a sense of pain was the silence. Then Evangeline slept; but the boatmen rowed through the midnight, 800 Silent at times, then singing familiar Canadian boat-songs, Such as they sang of old on their own Acadian rivers. While through the night were heard the mysterious sounds of the desert, Far off,--indistinct,--as of wave or wind in the forest, Mixed with the whoop of the crane and the roar of the grim alligator. 805 Thus ere another noon they emerged from the shades; and before them Lay, in the golden sun, the lakes of the Atchafalaya. Water-lilies in myriads rocked on the slight undulations Made by the passing oars, and, resplendent in beauty, the lotus Lifted her golden crown above the heads of the boatmen. 810 Faint was the air with the odorous breath of magnolia blossoms, And with the heat of noon; and numberless sylvan islands, Fragrant and thickly embowered with blossoming hedges of roses, Near to whose shores they glided along, invited to slumber. Soon by the fairest of these their weary oars were suspended. 815 Under the boughs of Wachita willows, that grew by the margin, Safely their boat was moored; and scattered about on the greensward, Tired with their midnight toil, the weary travellers slumbered. Over them vast and high extended the cope of a cedar. Swinging from its great arms, the trumpet-flower and the grapevine 820 Hung their ladder of ropes aloft like the ladder of Jacob, On whose pendulous stairs the angels ascending, descending, Were the swift humming-birds, that flitted from blossom to blossom. Such was the vision Evangeline saw as she slumbered beneath it. Filled was her heart with love, and the dawn of an opening heaven 825 Lighted her soul in sleep with the glory of regions celestial. Nearer, ever nearer, among the numberless islands, Darted a light, swift boat, that sped away o'er the water, Urged on its course by the sinewy arms of hunters and trappers. Northward its prow was turned, to the land of the bison and beaver. 830 At the helm sat a youth, with countenance thoughtful and careworn. Dark and neglected locks overshadowed his brow, and a sadness Somewhat beyond his years on his face was legibly written. Gabriel was it, who, weary with waiting, unhappy and restless, Sought in the Western wilds oblivion of self and of sorrow. 835 Swiftly they glided along, close under the lee of the island, But by the opposite bank, and behind a screen of palmettos; So that they saw not the boat, where it lay concealed in the willows; All undisturbed by the dash of their oars, and unseen, were the sleepers; Angel of God was there none to awaken the slumbering maiden. 840 Swiftly they glided away, like the shade of a cloud on the prairie. After the sound of their oars on the tholes had died in the distance, As from a magic trance the sleepers awoke, and the maiden Said with a sigh to the friendly priest, "O Father Felician! Something says in my heart that near me Gabriel wanders. 845 Is it a foolish dream, an idle and vague superstition? Or has an angel passed, and revealed the truth to my spirit?" Then, with a blush, she added, "Alas for my credulous fancy! Unto ears like thine such words as these have no meaning." But made answer the reverend man, and he smiled as he answered,-- 850 "Daughter, thy words are not idle; nor are they to me without meaning, Feeling is deep and still; and the word that floats on the surface Is as the tossing buoy, that betrays where the anchor is hidden. Therefore trust to thy heart, and to what the world calls illusions. Gabriel truly is near thee; for not far away to the southward, 855 On the banks of the Teche, are the towns of St. Maur and St. Martin. There the long-wandering bride shall be given again to her bridegroom, There the long-absent pastor regain his flock and his sheepfold. Beautiful is the land, with its prairies and forests of fruit-trees; Under the feet a garden of flowers, and the bluest of heavens 860 Bending above, and resting its dome on the walls of the forest. They who dwell there have named it the Eden of Louisiana." With these words of cheer they arose and continued their journey. Softly the evening came. The sun from the western horizon Like a magician extended his golden wand o'er the landscape; 865 Twinkling vapors arose; and sky and water and forest Seemed all on fire at the touch, and melted and mingled together. Hanging between two skies, a cloud with edges of silver, Floated the boat, with its dripping oars, on the motionless water. Filled was Evangeline's heart with inexpressible sweetness. 870 Touched by the magic spell, the sacred fountains of feeling Glowed with the light of love, as the skies and waters around her. Then from a neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of singers, Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the water, Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music 875 That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent to listen. Plaintive at first were the tones, and sad; then soaring to madness Seemed they to follow or guide the revel of frenzied Bacchantes. Single notes were then heard, in sorrowful, low, lamentation; Till, having gathered them all, he flung them abroad in derision, 880 As when, after a storm, a gust of wind through the tree-tops Shakes down the rattling rain in a crystal shower on the branches. With such a prelude as this, and hearts that throbbed with emotion, Slowly they entered the Teche, where it flows through the green Opelousas, And, through the amber air, above the crest of the woodland, 885 Saw the column of smoke that arose from a neighboring dwelling;-- Sounds of a horn they heard, and the distant lowing of cattle. SECTION III. Near to the bank of the river, o'ershadowed by oaks from whose branches Garlands of Spanish moss and of mystic mistletoe flaunted, Such as the Druids cut down with golden hatchets at Yule-tide, 890 Stood, secluded and still, the house of the herdsman. A garden Girded it round about with a belt of luxuriant blossoms, Filling the air with fragrance. The house itself was of timbers Hewn from the cypress-tree, and carefully fitted together. Large and low was the roof; and on slender columns supported, 895 Rose-wreathed, vine-encircled, a broad and spacious veranda, Haunt of the humming-bird and the bee, extended around it. At each end of the house, amid the flowers of the garden, Stationed the dove-cots were, as love's perpetual symbol, Scenes of endless wooing, and endless contentions of rivals. 900 Silence reigned o'er the place. The line of shadow and sunshine Ran near the tops of the trees; but the house itself was in shadow, And from its chimney-top, ascending and slowly expanding Into the evening air, a thin blue column of smoke rose. In the rear of the house, from the garden gate, ran a pathway 905 Through the great groves of oak to the skirts of the limitless prairie, Into whose sea of flowers the sun was slowly descending. Full in his track of light, like ships with shadowy canvas Hanging loose from their spars in a motionless calm in the tropics, Stood a cluster of trees, with tangled cordage of grapevines. 910 Just where the woodlands met the flowery surf of the prairie, Mounted upon his horse, with Spanish saddle and stirrups, Sat a herdsman, arrayed in gaiters and doublet of deerskin. Broad and brown was the face that from under the Spanish sombrero Gazed on the peaceful scene, with the lordly look of its master. 915 Round about him were numberless herds of kine that were grazing Quietly in the meadows, and breathing the vapory freshness That uprose from the river, and spread itself over the landscape. Slowly lifting the horn that hung at his side, and expanding Fully his broad, deep chest, he blew a blast, that resounded 920 Wildly and sweet and far, through the still damp air of the evening. Suddenly out of the grass the long white horns of the cattle Rose like flakes of foam on the adverse currents of ocean. Silent a moment they gazed, then bellowing rushed o'er the prairie, And the whole mass became a cloud, a shade in the distance. 925 Then, as the herdsman turned to the house, through the gate of the garden Saw he the forms of the priest and the maiden advancing to meet him. Suddenly down from his horse he sprang in amazement, and forward Pushed with extended arms and exclamations of wonder; When they beheld his face, they recognized Basil the blacksmith. 930 Hearty his welcome was, as he led his guests to the garden. There in an arbor of roses with endless question and answer Gave they vent to their hearts, and renewed their friendly embraces, Laughing and weeping by turns, or sitting silent and thoughtful. Thoughtful, for Gabriel came not; and now dark doubts and misgivings 935 Stole o'er the maiden's heart; and Basil, somewhat embarrassed, Broke the silence and said, "If you came by the Atchafalaya, How have you nowhere encountered my Gabriel's boat on the bayous?" Over Evangeline's face at the words of Basil a shade passed. Tears came into her eyes, and she said, with a tremulous accent, 940 "Gone? is Gabriel gone?" and, concealing her face on his shoulder, All her o'erburdened heart gave way, and she wept and lamented. Then the good Basil said,--and his voice grew blithe as he said it,-- "Be of good cheer, my child; it is only today he departed. Foolish boy! he has left me alone with my herds and my horses. 945 Moody and restless grown, and tried and troubled, his spirit Could no longer endure the calm of this quiet existence. Thinking ever of thee, uncertain and sorrowful ever, Ever silent, or speaking only of thee and his troubles, He at length had become so tedious to men and to maidens, 950 Tedious even to me, that at length I bethought me, and sent him Unto the town of Adayes to trade for mules with the Spaniards. Thence he will follow the Indian trails to the Ozark Mountains, Hunting for furs in the forests, on rivers trapping the beaver. Therefore be of good cheer; we will follow the fugitive lover; 955 He is not far on his way, and the Fates and the streams are against him. Up and away tomorrow, and through the red dew of the morning, We will follow him fast, and bring him back to his prison." Then glad voices were heard, and up from the banks of the river, Borne aloft on his comrades' arms, came Michael the fiddler. 960 Long under Basil's roof had he lived, like a god on Olympus, Having no other care than dispensing music to mortals. Far renowned was he for his silver locks and his fiddle. "Long live Michael," they cried, "our brave Acadian minstrel!" As they bore him aloft in triumphal procession; and straightway 965 Father Felician advanced with Evangeline, greeting the old man Kindly and oft, and recalling the past, while Basil, enraptured, Hailed with hilarious joy his old companions and gossips, Laughing loud and long, and embracing mothers and daughters. Much they marvelled to see the wealth of the ci-devant blacksmith, 970 All his domains and his herds, and his patriarchal demeanor; Much they marvelled to hear his tales of the soil and the climate, And of the prairies, whose numberless herds were his who would take them; Each one thought in his heart, that he, too, would go and do likewise. Thus they ascended the steps, and, crossing the breezy veranda, 975 Entered the hall of the house, where already the supper of Basil Waited his late return; and they rested and feasted together. Over the joyous feast the sudden darkness descended. All was silent without, and, illuming the landscape with silver, Fair rose the dewy moon and the myriad stars; but within doors, 980 Brighter than these, shone the faces of friends in the glimmering lamplight. Then from his station aloft, at the head of the table, the herdsman Poured forth his heart and his wine together in endless profusion. Lighting his pipe, that was filled with sweet Natchitoches tobacco, Thus he spake to his guests, who listened, and smiled as they listened:-- 985 "Welcome once more, my friends, who long have been friendless and homeless, Welcome once more to a home, that is better perchance than the old one! Here no hungry winter congeals our blood like the rivers; Here no stony ground provokes the wrath of the farmer; Smoothly the plowshare runs through the soil, as a keel through the water. 990 All the year round the orange-groves are in blossom; and grass grows More in a single night than a whole Canadian summer. Here, too, numberless herds run wild and unclaimed in the prairies; Here, too, lands may be had for the asking, and forests of timber With a few blows of the axe are hewn and framed into houses. 995 After your houses are built, and your fields are yellow with harvests, No King George of England shall drive you away from your homesteads, Burning your dwellings and barns, and stealing your farms and your cattle." Speaking these words, he blew a wrathful cloud from his nostrils, While his huge, brown hand came thundering down on the table, 1000 So that the guests all started; and Father Felician, astounded, Suddenly paused, with a pinch of snuff half-way to his nostrils. But the brave Basil resumed, and his words were milder and gayer:-- "Only beware of the fever, my friends, beware of the fever! For it is not like that of our cold Acadian climate, 1005 Cured by wearing a spider hung round one's neck in a nutshell!" Then there were voices heard at the door, and footsteps approaching Sounded upon the stairs and the floor of the breezy veranda. It was the neighboring Creoles and small Acadian planters, Who had been summoned all to the house of Basil the herdsman. 1010 Merry the meeting was of ancient comrades and neighbors: Friend clasped friend in his arms; and they who before were as strangers, Meeting in exile, became straightway as friends to each other, Drawn by the gentle bond of a common country together. But in the neighboring hall a strain of music, proceeding 1015 From the accordant strings of Michael's melodious fiddle, Broke up all further speech. Away, like children delighted, All things forgotten beside, they gave themselves to the maddening Whirl of the dizzy dance as it swept and swayed to the music, Dreamlike, with beaming eyes and the rush of fluttering garments. 1020 Meanwhile, apart, at the head of the hall, the priest and the herdsman Sat, conversing together of past and present and future; While Evangeline stood like one entranced, for within her Olden memories rose, and loud in the midst of the music Heard she the sound of the sea, and an irrepressible sadness 1025 Came o'er her heart, and unseen she stole forth into the garden. Beautiful was the night. Behind the black wall of the forest, Tipping its summit with silver, arose the moon. On the river Fell here and there through the branches a tremulous gleam of the moonlight, Like the sweet thoughts of love on a darkened and devious spirit. 1030 Nearer and round about her, the manifold flowers of the garden Poured out their souls in odors, that were their prayers and confessions Unto the night, as it went its way, like a silent Carthusian. Fuller of fragrance than they, and as heavy with shadows and night-dews, Hung the heart of the maiden. The calm and the magical moonlight 1035 Seemed to inundate her soul with indefinable longings, As, through the garden gate, and beneath the shade of the oak-trees, Passed she along the path to the edge of the measureless prairie. Silent it lay, with a silvery haze upon it, and fire-flies Gleaming and floating away in mingled and infinite numbers. 1040 Over her head the stars, the thoughts of God in the heavens, Shone on the eyes of man, who had ceased to marvel and worship, Save when a blazing comet was seen on the walls of that temple, As if a hand had appeared and written upon them, "Upharsin." And the soul of the maiden, between the stars and the fire-flies, 1045 Wandered alone, and she cried, "O Gabriel! O my beloved! Art thou so near unto me, and yet I cannot behold thee? Art thou so near unto me, and yet thy voice does not reach me? Ah! how often thy feet have trod this path to the prairie! Ah! how often thine eyes have looked on the woodlands around me! 1050 Ah! how often beneath this oak, returning from labor, Thou hast lain down to rest, and to dream of me in thy slumbers! When shall these eyes behold, these arms be folded about thee?" Loud and sudden and near the note of a whippoorwill sounded Like a flute in the woods; and anon, through the neighboring thickets, 1055 Farther and farther away it floated and dropped into silence. "Patience!" whispered the oaks from oracular caverns of darkness; And, from the moonlit meadow, a sigh responded, "To-morrow!" Bright rose the sun next day; and all the flowers of the garden Bathed his shining feet with their tears, and anointed his tresses 1060 With the delicious balm that they bore in their vases of crystal. "Farewell!" said the priest, as he stood at the shadowy threshold; "See that you bring us the Prodigal Son from his fasting and famine, And, too, the Foolish Virgin, who slept when the bridegroom was coming." "Farewell!" answered the maiden, and, smiling, with Basil descended 1065 Down to the river's brink, where the boatmen already were waiting. Thus beginning their journey with morning, and sunshine, and gladness, Swiftly they followed the flight of him who was speeding before them, Blown by the blast of fate like a dead leaf over the desert. Not that day, nor the next, nor yet the day that succeeded, 1070 Found they trace of his course, in lake or forest or river, Nor, after many days, had they found him; but vague and uncertain Rumors alone were their guides through a wild and desolate country; Till, at the little inn of the Spanish town of Adayes, Weary and worn, they alighted, and learned from the garrulous landlord 1075 That on the day before, with horses and guides and companions, Gabriel left the village, and took the road of the prairies. SECTION IV Far in the West there lies a desert land, where the mountains Lift, through perpetual snows, their lofty and luminous summits. Down from their jagged, deep ravines, where the gorge, like a gateway, 1080 Opens a passage rude to the wheels of the emigrant's wagon, Westward the Oregon flows and the Walleway and Owyhee. Eastward, with devious course, among the Wind-river Mountains, Through the Sweet-water Valley precipitate leaps the Nebraska; And to the south, from Fontaine-quibout and the Spanish sierras, 1085 Fretted with sands and rocks, and swept by the wind of the desert, Numberless torrents, with ceaseless sound, descend to the ocean, Like the great chords of a harp, in loud and solemn vibrations. Spreading between these streams are the wondrous, beautiful prairies, Billowy bays of grass ever rolling in shadow and sunshine, 1090 Bright with luxuriant clusters of roses and purple amorphas. Over them wandered the buffalo herds, and the elk, and the roebuck; Over them wandered the wolves, and herds of riderless horses; Fires that blast and blight, and winds that are weary with travel; Over them wander the scattered tribes of Ishmael's children, 1095 Staining the desert with blood; and above their terrible war-trails Circles and sails aloft, on pinions majestic, the vulture, Like the implacable soul of a chieftain slaughtered in battle, By invisible stairs ascending and scaling the heavens. Here and there rise smokes from the camps of these savage marauders; 1100 Here and there rise groves from the margins of swift-running rivers; And the grim, taciturn bear, the anchorite monk of the desert, Climbs down their dark ravines to dig for roots by the brook-side, And over all is the sky, the clear and crystalline heaven, Like the protecting hand of God inverted above them. 1105 Into this wonderful land, at the base of the Ozark Mountains, Gabriel far had entered, with hunters and trappers behind him. Day after day, with their Indian guides, the maiden and Basil Followed his flying steps, and thought each day to o'ertake him. Sometimes they saw, or thought they saw, the smoke of his camp-fire 1110 Rise in the morning air from the distant plain; but at nightfall, When they had reached the place, they found only embers and ashes. And, though their hearts were sad at times and their bodies were weary, Hope still guided them on, as the magic Fata Morgana Showed them her lakes of light, that retreated and vanished before them. 1115 Once, as they sat by their evening fire, there silently entered Into the little camp an Indian woman, whose features Wore deep traces of sorrow, and patience as great as her sorrow. She was a Shawnee woman returning home to her people, From the far-off hunting-grounds of the cruel Camanches, 1120 Where her Canadian husband, a coureur-des-bois, had been murdered. Touched were their hearts at her story, and warmest and friendliest welcome Gave they, the words of cheer, and she sat and feasted among them On the buffalo-meat and the venison cooked on the embers. But when their meal was done, and Basil and all his companions, 1125 Worn with the long day's march and the chase of the deer and the bison, Stretched themselves on the ground, and slept where the quivering fire-light Flashed on their swarthy cheeks, and their forms wrapped up in their blankets, Then at the door of Evangeline's tent she sat and repeated Slowly, with soft, low voice, and the charm of her Indian accent, 1130 All the tale of her love, with its pleasures, and pains, and reverses. Much Evangeline wept at the tale, and to know that another Hapless heart like her own had loved and had been disappointed. Moved to the depths of her soul by pity and woman's compassion, Yet in her sorrow pleased that one who had suffered was near her, 1135 She in turn related her love and all its disasters. Mute with wonder the Shawnee sat, and when she had ended Still was mute; but at length, as if a mysterious horror Passed through her brain, she spake, and repeated the tale of the Mowis; Mowis, the bridegroom of snow, who won and wedded a maiden. 1140 But, when the morning came, arose and passed from the wigwam, Fading and melting away and dissolving into the sunshine, Till she beheld him no more, though she followed far into the forest. Then, in those sweet, low tones, that seemed like a weird incantation, Told she the tale of the fair Lilinau, who was wooed by a phantom, 1145 That, through the pines o'er her father's lodge, in the hush of the twilight, Breathed like the evening wind, and whispered love to the maiden, Till she followed his green and waving plume through the forest, And nevermore returned, nor was seen again by her people. Silent with wonder and strange surprise, Evangeline listened 1150 To the soft flow of her magical words, till the region around her Seemed like enchanted ground, and her swarthy guest the enchantress. Slowly over the tops of the Ozark Mountains the moon rose, Lighting the little tent, and with a mysterious splendor Touching the sombre leaves, and embracing and filling the woodland. 1155 With a delicious sound the brook rushed by, and the branches Swayed and sighed overhead in scarcely audible whispers. Filled with the thoughts of love was Evangeline's heart, but a secret, Subtile sense crept in of pain and indefinite terror, As the cold, poisonous snake creeps into the nest of the swallow. 1160 It was no earthly fear. A breath from the region of spirits Seemed to float in the air of night; and she felt for a moment That, like the Indian maid, she, too, was pursuing a phantom. With this thought she slept, and the fear and the phantom had vanished. Early upon the morrow the march was resumed, and the Shawnee 1165 Said, as they journeyed along,--"On the western slope of these mountains Dwells in his little village the Black Robe chief of the Mission. Much he teaches the people, and tells them of Mary and Jesus; Loud laugh their hearts with joy, and weep with pain, as they hear him." Then, with a sudden and secret emotion, Evangeline answered, 1170 "Let us go to the Mission, for there good tidings await us!" Thither they turned their steeds; and behind a spur of the mountains, Just as the sun went down, they heard a murmur of voices, And in a meadow green and broad, by the bank of a river, Saw the tents of the Christians, the tents of the Jesuit Mission. 1175 Under a towering oak, that stood in the midst of the village, Knelt the Black Robe chief with his children. A crucifix fastened High on the trunk of the tree, and overshadowed by grapevines, Looked with its agonized face on the multitude kneeling beneath it. This was their rural chapel. Aloft, through the intricate arches 1180 Of its aerial roof, arose the chant of their vespers, Mingling its notes with the soft susurrus and sighs of the branches. Silent, with heads uncovered, the travellers, nearer approaching, Knelt on the swarded floor, and joined in the evening devotions. But when the service was done, and the benediction had fallen 1185 Forth from the hands of the priest, like seed from the hands of the sower, Slowly the reverend man advanced to the strangers, and bade them Welcome; and when they replied, he smiled with benignant expression, Hearing the homelike sounds of his mother-tongue in the forest, And with words of kindness conducted them into his wigwam. 1190 There upon mats and skins they reposed, and on cakes of the maize-ear Feasted, and slaked their thirst from the water-gourd of the teacher. Soon was their story told; and the priest with solemnity answered:-- "Not six suns have risen and set since Gabriel, seated On this mat by my side, where now the maiden reposes, 1195 Told me the same sad tale; then arose and continued his journey!" Soft was the voice of the priest, and he spake with an accent of kindness; But on Evangeline's heart fell his words as in winter the snow-flakes Fall into some lone nest from which the birds have departed. "Far to the north he has gone," continued the priest; "but in autumn, 1200 When the chase is done, will return again to the Mission." Then Evangeline said, and her voice was meek and submissive, "Let me remain with thee, for my soul is sad and afflicted." So seemed it wise and well unto all; and betimes on the morrow, Mounting his Mexican steed, with his Indian guides and companions, 1205 Homeward Basil returned, and Evangeline stayed at the Mission. Slowly, slowly, slowly the days succeeded each other,-- Days and weeks and months; and the fields of maize that were springing Green from the ground when a stranger she came, now waving about her, Lifted their slender shafts, with leaves interlacing, and forming 1210 Cloisters for mendicant crows and granaries pillaged by squirrels. Then in the golden weather the maize was husked, and the maidens Blushed at each blood-red ear, for that betokened a lover, But at the crooked laughed, and called it a thief in the corn-field. Even the blood-red ear to Evangeline brought not her lover. 1215 "Patience!" the priest would say; "have faith, and thy prayer will be answered! Look at this vigorous plant that lifts its head from the meadow, See how its leaves are turned to the north, as true as the magnet; This is the compass-flower, that the finger of God has planted Here in the houseless wild, to direct the traveller's journey 1220 Over the sea-like, pathless, limitless waste of the desert. Such in the soul of man is faith. The blossoms of passion, Gay and luxuriant flowers, are brighter and fuller of fragrance, But they beguile us, and lead us astray, and their odor is deadly. Only this humble plant can guide us here, and hereafter 1225 Crown us with asphodel flowers, that are wet with the dews of nepenthe." So came the autumn, and passed, and the winter--yet Gabriel came not; Blossomed the opening spring, and the notes of the robin and bluebird Sounded sweet upon wold and in wood, yet Gabriel came not. But on the breath of the summer winds a rumor was wafted 1230 Sweeter than the song of bird, or hue or odor of blossom. Far to the north and east, it is said, in the Michigan forests, Gabriel had his lodge by the banks of the Saginaw River. And, with returning guides, that sought the lakes of St. Lawrence, Saying a sad farewell, Evangeline went from the Mission. 1235 When over weary ways, by long and perilous marches, She had attained at length the depths of the Michigan forests, Found she the hunter's lodge deserted and fallen to ruin! Thus did the long sad years glide on, and in seasons and places Divers and distant far was seen the wandering maiden;-- 1240 Now in the Tents of Grace of the meek Moravian Missions, Now in the noisy camps and the battle-fields of the army, Now in secluded hamlets, in towns and populous cities. Like a phantom she came, and passed away unremembered. Fair was she and young, when in hope began the long journey; 1245 Faded was she and old, when in disappointment it ended. Each succeeding year stole something away from her beauty, Leaving behind it, broader and deeper, the gloom and the shadow. Then there appeared and spread faint streaks of gray o'er her forehead, Dawn of another life, that broke o'er her earthly horizon, 1250 As in the eastern sky the first faint streaks of the morning. SECTION V. In that delightful land which is washed by the Delaware's waters, Guarding in sylvan shades the name of Penn the apostle, Stands on the banks of its beautiful stream the city he founded. There all the air is balm, and the peach is the emblem of beauty. 1255 And the streets still re-echo the names of the trees of the forest, As if they fain would appease the Dryads whose haunts they molested. There from the troubled sea had Evangeline landed, an exile, Finding among the children of Penn a home and a country. There old Rene Leblanc had died; and when he departed, 1260 Saw at his side only one of all his hundred descendants. Something at least there was in the friendly streets of the city, Something that spake to her heart, and made her no longer a stranger; And her ear was pleased with the Thee and Thou of the Quakers, For it recalled the past, the old Acadian country, 1265 Where all men were equal, and all were brothers and sisters. So, when the fruitless search, the disappointed endeavor, Ended, to recommence no more upon earth, uncomplainingly, Thither, as leaves to the light, were turned her thoughts and her footsteps. As from a mountain's top the rainy mists of the morning 1270 Roll away, and afar we behold the landscape below us, Sun-illumined, with shining rivers and cities and hamlets, So fell the mists from her mind, and she saw the world far below her, Dark no longer, but all illumined with love; and the pathway Which she had climbed so far, lying smooth and fair in the distance. 1275 Gabriel was not forgotten. Within her heart was his image, Clothed in the beauty of love and youth, as last she beheld him, Only more beautiful made by his deathlike silence and absence. Into her thoughts of him time entered not, for it was not. Over him years had no power; he was not changed, but transfigured; 1280 He had become to her heart as one who is dead, and not absent; Patience and abnegation of self, and devotion to others, This was the lesson a life of trial and sorrow had taught her. So was her love diffused, but, like to some odorous spices, Suffered no waste nor loss, though filling the air with aroma. 1285 Other hope had she none, nor wish in life, but to follow, Meekly with reverent steps, the sacred feet of her Saviour. Thus many years she lived as a Sister of Mercy; frequenting Lonely and wretched roofs in the crowded lanes of the city, Where distress and want concealed themselves from the sunlight, 1290 Where disease and sorrow in garrets languished neglected. Night after night when the world was asleep, as the watchman repeated Loud, through the gusty streets, that all was well in the city, High at some lonely window he saw the light of her taper. Day after day, in the gray of the dawn, as slow through the suburbs 1295 Plodded the German farmer, with flowers and fruits for the market, Met he that meek, pale face, returning home from its watchings. Then it came to pass that a pestilence fell on the city, Presaged by wondrous signs, and mostly by flocks of wild pigeons, Darkening the sun in their flight, with naught in their craws but an acorn. 1300 And, as the tides of the sea arise in the month of September, Flooding some silver stream, till it spreads to a lake in the meadow, So death flooded life, and, o'erflowing its natural margin, Spread to a brackish lake the silver stream of existence. Wealth had no power to bribe, nor beauty to charm, the oppressor; 1305 But all perished alike beneath the scourge of his anger;-- Only, alas! the poor, who had neither friends nor attendants, Crept away to die in the almshouse, home of the homeless. Then in the suburbs it stood, in the midst of meadows and woodlands;-- Now the city surrounds it; but still, with its gateway and wicket 1310 Meek, in the midst of splendor, its humble walls seem to echo Softly the words of the Lord:--"The poor ye always have with you." Thither, by night and by day, came the Sister of Mercy. The dying Looked up into her face, and thought, indeed, to behold there Gleams of celestial light encircle her forehead with splendor, 1315 Such as the artist paints o'er the brows of saints and apostles, Or such as hangs by night o'er a city seen at a distance. Unto their eyes it seemed the lamps of the city celestial, Into whose shining gates erelong their spirits would enter. Thus, on a Sabbath morn, through the streets, deserted and silent, 1320 Wending her quiet way, she entered the door of the almshouse. Sweet on the summer air was the odor of flowers in the garden, And she paused on her way to gather the fairest among them, That the dying once more might rejoice in their fragrance and beauty. Then, as she mounted the stairs to the corridors, cooled by the east wind, 1325 Distant and soft on her ear fell the chimes from the belfry of Christ Church, While, intermingled with these, across the meadows were wafted Sounds of psalms, that were sung by the Swedes in their church at Wicaco. Soft as descending wings fell the calm of the hour on her spirit; Something within her said, "At length thy trials are ended;" 1330 And, with light in her looks, she entered the chambers of sickness. Noiselessly moved about the assiduous, careful attendants, Moistening the feverish lip, and the aching brow, and in silence Closing the sightless eyes of the dead, and concealing their faces, Where on their pallets they lay, like drifts of snow by the roadside. 1335 Many a languid head, upraised as Evangeline entered, Turned on its pillow of pain to gaze while she passed, for her presence Fell on their hearts like a ray of the sun on the walls of a prison. And, as she looked around, she saw how Death the consoler, Laying his hand upon many a heart, had healed it forever. 1340 Many familiar forms had disappeared in the night time; Vacant their places were, or filled already by strangers. Suddenly, as if arrested, by fear or a feeling of wonder, Still she stood, with her colorless lips apart, while a shudder Ran through her frame, and, forgotten, the flowerets dropped from her fingers, 1345 And from her eyes and cheeks the light and bloom of the morning. Then there escaped from her lips a cry of such terrible anguish, That the dying heard it, and started up from their pillows. On the pallet before her was stretched the form of an old man. Long, and thin, and gray were the locks that shaded his temples; 1350 But, as he lay in the morning light, his face for a moment Seemed to assume once more the forms of its earlier manhood; So are wont to be changed the faces of those who are dying. Hot and red on his lips still burned the flush of the fever, As if life, like the Hebrew, with blood had besprinkled its portals, 1355 That the Angel of Death might see the sign, and pass over. Motionless, senseless, dying, he lay, and his spirit exhausted Seemed to be sinking down through infinite depths in the darkness, Darkness of slumber and death, forever sinking and sinking. Then through those realms of shade, in multiplied reverberations, 1360 Heard he that cry of pain, and through the hush that succeeded Whispered a gentle voice, in accents tender and saint-like, "Gabriel! O my beloved!" and died away into silence. Then he beheld, in a dream, once more the home of his childhood; Green Acadian meadows, with sylvan rivers among them, 1365 Village, and mountain, and woodlands; and, walking under their shadow, As in the days of her youth, Evangeline rose in his vision. Tears came into his eyes; and as slowly he lifted his eyelids, Vanished the vision away, but Evangeline knelt by his bedside. Vainly he strove to whisper her name, for the accents unuttered 1370 Died on his lips, and their motion revealed what his tongue would have spoken. Vainly he strove to rise; and Evangeline, kneeling beside him, Kissed his dying lips, and laid his head on her bosom. Sweet was the light of his eyes; but it suddenly sank into darkness, As when a lamp is blown out by a gust of wind at a casement. 1375 All was ended now, the hope, and the fear, and the sorrow, All the aching of heart, the restless, unsatisfied longing, All the dull, deep pain, and constant anguish of patience! And, as she pressed once more the lifeless head to her bosom, Meekly she bowed her own, and murmured, "Father, I thank thee!" 1380 Still stands the forest primeval; but far away from its shadow, Side by side, in their nameless graves, the lovers are sleeping. Under the humble walls of the little Catholic churchyard, In the heart of the city, they lie, unknown and unnoticed. Daily the tides of life go ebbing and flowing beside them, 1385 Thousands of throbbing hearts, where theirs are at rest and forever, Thousands of aching brains, where theirs no longer are busy, Thousands of toiling hands, where theirs have ceased from their labors, Thousands of weary feet, where theirs have completed their journey! Still stands the forest primeval; but under the shade of its branches 1390 Dwells another race, with other customs and language. Only along the shore of the mournful and misty Atlantic Linger a few Acadian peasants, whose fathers from exile Wandered back to their native land to die in its bosom. In the fisherman's cot the wheel and the loom are still busy; 1395 Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun, And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline's story, While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced, neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest. PICTURES Perry Pictures helpful in the Study of Evangeline: Christ Church, Boston, 1357; The Sheepfold, 3049; The Blacksmith, 887; Evangeline, 23; The Wave, 3197; Spring, 484; Pasturage in the Forest, 506; Sheep-Spring, 757; Milking Time, 601; Angelus, 509; Haymaker's Rest, 605; Landscape, 490; Priscilla Spinning, 3298; Shoeing the Horse, 908; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 15; Priscilla, 1338; Autumn, 615; September, 1071; Deer by Moonlight, 1005; Winter Scene, 27-B. * * * * * We supply the above at one cent each, if twenty or more are ordered. They may be assorted, as desired. NOTES. PART ONE. I 1. A PRIMEVAL FOREST is one which has not been disturbed by the axe. 3. DRUIDS were Celtic priests. Their religious ceremonies were carried on in oak groves, the trees being regarded as sacred. 10. GRAND PRE (grän-pr[=a]) means large meadow. 20. BASIN OF MINAS, an arm of the Bay of Fundy. 25. THE TIDES in the Bay of Fundy rise to the height of 60 feet. What is the ordinary rise of the tide? 29. BLOMIDON is a promontory about four hundred feet high at the entrance of the Bay of Minas. 33. THE HENRIES were rulers of France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 34. NORMANDY, a district in northern France bordering on the English channel. 39. KIRTLE, a petticoat. 49. THE ANGELUS was a bell which called people to prayer. What do you know of the painting called "The Angelus?" 57. Real misery was wholly unknown, and benevolence anticipated the demands of poverty. Every misfortune was relieved, as it were, before it could be felt, without ostentation on the one hand and without meanness on the other. It was in short, a society of brethren. ABBE REYNAL. 72. HYSSOP, a plant. A branch of it could be used like a sponge. It was a symbol of purification from sin. 74. CHAPLET OF BEADS, a string of beads used in praying. MISSAL, a prayer book. 96. See Luke XXII, 60, 61. 111. A PATRON SAINT was a Saint who was supposed to exercise a special care over the people of a town or district. 115. Lajeunesse (lä-zhê-n[)e]s´). 144. There was a saying among the people that "If the sun shines on St. Eulalie's day there will be a good crop of apples." It was February 12th. II. 149. THE SCORPION is one of the twelve signs of the zodiac. The sun enters this sign in late October. 153. For the reference to Jacob, see Gen. XXXII, 24-30. 159. THE SUMMER OF ALL-SAINTS corresponds to our Indian Summer. All-Saints day is Nov. 1st. 170. PLANE TREE, a species of sycamore. Xerxes, a Persian, admired one of them so much he put a mantle upon it and adorned it with jewels. 209. BURGUNDY is a section of eastern France famous for its fine wines. 238. THE GASPEREAU is a river that flows into the Basin of Minas, east of Grand Pre. 242. GLEBE, soil. 249. LOUISBURG, BEAUSEJOUR (b[=o] s[=e]´ zh[=o][=o]r,) and PORT ROYAL were towns which had been taken from the French by the British. 259. THE CONTRACT was considered almost as binding as a marriage. Remember this. 260-2. As soon as a young man arrived at the proper age, the community built him a house, broke the land about it, and supplied him with all the necessaries of life for twelve months. Then he received the partner whom he had chosen, and who brought him her portion in flocks. ABBE REYNAL. III. 280. LOUP GAROU ( l[=o][=o]-ga-r[=o][=o] ) means man-wolf. There was a tradition that a man had the power to change himself into a wolf to devour children. 282. LETICHE (l[=a]-t[=e]sh´). 293. IN SOOTH, in truth. 307. A figure with scales in the left hand and a sword in the right is sometimes used to represent Justice. 354. THE CURFEW was a bell tolled in the evening as a signal to put out the fires and go to bed. 381. See Gen. XXI, 14. IV. 413. The names of two French songs. 442. The summer solstice is on the 21st of June. The sun is then farthest north, being over the Tropic of Cancer. It seems to stand still for a short time. 466. The author contrasts the clamor of the throng and the quiet words of Father Felician by referring to rapid strokes of the alarm and the quiet, measured strokes of the hour. 476. See Luke XXIII, 34. 484. AVE MARIA (äh-v[=a]-mah-r[=e]´-a), a prayer to the Virgin Mary. 486. See 2 Kings II, 11. 507. See Exodus XXIV, 29-35. V. 572-3. Parents were separated from children and husbands from wives, some of whom have not to this day met again; and we were so crowded in the transport vessels that we had not even room to lay down, and consequently were prevented from carrying with us proper necessaries, especially for the support and comfort of the aged and weak, many of whom quickly ended their lives. PETITION OF THE ACADIANS TO THE KING. 579. LEAGUER, an army camp. 589. See lines 49, 50. 597. See Acts XXVII-XXVIII. 604. BENEDICITE, bless you. 631. NEBRASKA, now known as the Platte River. 667. BELL OR BOOK, funeral bell, or book of funeral service. PART TWO. I. 674. SAVANNAHS, grassy plains. 678-9. We have already seen, in this province of Pennsylvania, two hundred and fifty of our people, which is more than half the number that were landed here, perish through misery and various diseases. PETITION OF THE ACADIANS TO THE KING. 705. COUREURS-DES-BOIS (k[=o][=o]-rur-d[=a]-bwä'), guides. 707. VOYAGEUR (vwä-yä-zh[=u]r,) river boatmen. 713. To braid St. Catherine's tresses means to remain unmarried. 733. MUSE, here the Goddess of Song. There were nine Muses in all. II. 741. THE BEAUTIFUL RIVER, the Ohio. 749. ACADIAN COAST, districts near the mouth of the Mississippi river where many Acadians had settled. OPELOUSAS, a district in Louisana. 764. GOLDEN COAST, banks of the Mississippi above New Orleans. 766. PLAQUEMINE (pl[)a]k-m[=e]n.) 782. Mimosa, a plant which closes its leaves when agitated. 807. ATCHAFALAYA ([)a]ch-[.a]-f[=a]-l[=i]'-á,) a river in Louisiana. 815. WACHITA (w[)o]sh-[=e]-täw,) a river in Louisiana. 821. See Genesis XXVIII, 10-15. 856. TECHE (t[=a]sh,) a bayou. ST. MAUR (s[)a]n-m[=o]r´.) 879. BACCHANTES, followers of Bacchus, God of wine. III. 889. MISTLETOE, a parasite plant which grows on many trees. 890. YULE-TIDE, Christmas time. 952. ADAYES (a-d[=a]´-yes) town in Texas. 956. THE FATES, three Goddesses who were supposed to control human destinies. 961. OLYMPUS, a mountain of Greece supposed by the ancient Greeks to be the home of the Gods. 970. CI-DEVANT, (s[=e]`-dè-van) former. 984. NATCHITOCHES (n[)a]ck´-é-t[)o]sh,) a district of Louisiana. 1033. CARTHUSIAN, a Monk of an order where only occasional speech is permitted. 1044. UPHARSIN, divided. See Daniel V, 5-29. 1054. This was considered a bad omen. 1063. See Luke XV, 11-32. 1064. See Matthew XXV, 1-13. IV. 1082. OREGON, the Columbia River. WALLEWAY, a branch of the Snake river. OWYHEE (Owy´-hee) river in same region. 1083. WIND RIVER MOUNTAINS, a chain of the Rocky Mountains, in Wyoming. 1084. SWEET WATER VALLEY, in Wyoming. NEBRASKA, the Platte river. 1085. FONTAINE-QUI-BOUT (f[)o]n´-t[=a]n-k[=e]-b[=o][=o]) a creek in Colorado. SPANISH SIERRAS, Mountain range in New Mexico. 1091. AMORPHAS, a shrub having clusters of blue flowers. 1095. ISHMAEL'S CHILDREN. The Arabs are considered descendents of Ishmael. Because of their warlike spirit the American Indians have been thought to be descents of Ishmael. See Genesis XXI, 14-21. 1114. FATA MORGANA (Fä-tä-Môr-gä´-nä,) mirage. 1139. MOWIS (m[=o]´-w[=e]s.) 1167. BLACK ROBE CHIEF, Jesuit priest at the head of the mission, so called because of his black robe. 1182. SUSURRUS, whisperings. 1219. HUMBLE PLANT, a plant that grows on the prairies whose leaves point north and south, thus serving as a guide. 1241. MORAVIAN MISSIONS. The Moravians are a Christian sect noted for their missionary zeal. V. 1256. A number of streets in Philadelphia have the name of trees, as Walnut, Chestnut, etc. 1257. DRYADS, Goddesses of the woods. 1288. SISTER OF MERCY, a member of an order in the Roman Catholic church. The members devote their lives to works of charity. 1355. See Exodus XII, 22-23. ARGUMENT. "Evangeline" is usually studied in the seventh school year--a time when a somewhat intensive study of a piece of literature may be undertaken with profit. This poem offers a most delightful introduction into the wider realms of literature--an introduction fraught with much consequence since the manner of it is likely to have a considerable bearing on the pupil's future in this subject. It is certainly important that the most be made of the opportunity. We believe that the common lack of interest and effort in school work is often due to an absence of definite and visible ends, and of proper directions for the reaching of those ends. Pupils do not object to work, and hard work, with something tangible. What they do object to is groping in the dark for something that may turn up--which is too frequently the case in their study of a piece of literature. Such a course may be commendable later, but at this period, suggestion and direction are necessary. These are furnished by our "Suggestive Questions," which indicate lines of study and research. In the ordinary reading class the work is largely done by a few of the brighter pupils. It is quite difficult to secure a careful preparation by the whole class. It is also difficult to ascertain how well the pupils are prepared. The "Suggestive Questions" will be found very helpful here. Care has been exercised in the division of the subject matter that each lesson may, in a sense, be complete in itself. The lessons are supposed to occupy twenty-five or thirty minutes; this, with the nature of the subject matter and the number of unfamiliar words, determining the length of the lessons. The poem is to be studied twice:-- First, a general survey to get the story and the characters clearly in mind. Second, a careful study of the text that the beauty and richness, the artistic and ethical values of the poem may be realized. It is obvious that no scheme, however carefully wrought out, can in any sense be a substitute for earnestness, enthusiasm and sympathy; and careful preparation is an absolute essential of all successful teaching. With these, it is believed, excellent results may be secured by use of this plan. W.F. CONOVER. _"B" St. School, San Diego, Cal._ PART I. A GENERAL SURVEY. _Lesson I._ The Author and the Poem. _Lesson II._ Acadia and the Acadians. _Lesson III._ Discuss the structure of the poem and how it should be read. Read. _Lessons IV-XIII._ Read a section each day to get the outlines of the story. Notice carefully the Topics given on the following pages, and be able to tell with what lines each Topic begins and ends. In the other Sections make lists of Topics, filling out the outlines. Be careful to choose the principal Topics and not subordinate ones. EVANGELINE--PART I. SEC. I. _Acadia._ 1. Grand Pre. 2. Benedict Bellefontaine. 3. Bvangeline. 4. The Home. 5. Gabriel, Basil, Father Felician. 6. Childhood of Evangeline and Gabriel. 7. Manhood and Womanhood. SEC. II. _The Home._ 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. SEC. III. _The Interview._ 1. The Notary. 2. The Argument and Story. 3. The Betrothal. 4. The Game. 5. Departure of Guests. 6. Evangeline. SEC. IV. _The Summons._ 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. SEC. V. _The Embarking._ 1. Gathering of Goods. 2. Evangeline's Message. 3. Separated. 4. The Camp. 5. Fire. 6. Death of Benedict. 7. Exiled. EVANGELINE--PART II. SEC. I. _The Search Begun._ 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. SEC. II. _On the Mississippi._ 1. The Boatmen. 2. The Journey. 3. Forebodings of Ill. 4. The Sleep. 5. The Bugle. 6. The Passing. 7. Evangeline's Dream. 8. Journey Continued. 9. Arrival. SEC. III. _Re-union. Search Again._ 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. SEC. IV. _Search Continued._ 1. The Great West. 2. Old Camp Fires. 3. The Shawnee--Confidences. 4. March Resumed. 5. The Mission. 6. Patience. 7. Rumors. On to Michigan. 8. Years of Search. SEC. V. _Search Ended._ 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. PART II. STUDY OF THE TEXT. (1.) Lessons I-XXVII. (2.) Composition Subjects. The questions on the following pages are intended to be suggestive of lines of study. Others of like or different import will occur to the teacher. Don't be confined to the written questions. Many others will be needed to bring out the artistic and spiritual values of the poem and to keep the thread of the story in mind. Pupils are expected to know the meaning of words and the particular one the author employs. The understanding of a passage often depends on the meaning of a single word. (See Part III.) SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS. EVANGELINE--PART I. SEC. I. _Introduction. Grand Pre._ Lesson I, Lines 1-57. The author gives us a hint of the nature of his narrative. In what lines does he directly refer to it? This is a story of what? What three qualities had this thing? What two pictures does the author contrast, lines 6-15? Why murmuring pines? What two parts of one picture, lines 1-5? Why compare to the roe? In what ways did their lives resemble a river? Why October leaves? Remember--this is a story of what? Its three qualities are what? What is the first picture in Section I? What quality of the people is referred to in line 24? The Acadians were engaged in what industry? Would their lives be more peaceful in this than in other lines of labor? Why use reposed, line 32? Who was intimately associated with all the life of the village? Explain lines 52-56 and 57. _Evangeline._ Lesson II, Lines 58-81. What is the topic of this lesson? Who is also introduced to us? Describe. What does the comparison with an oak suggest? What was Evangeline's age? Describe her appearance. What qualities does this description show of her? What was Benedict's most marked characteristic? Evangeline's? _Home and Childhood of Evangeline and Gabriel._ Lesson III, Lines 82-147. Why does the author describe the home so carefully? What do we learn of Evangeline, lines 104-114? What two characters are here introduced? Tell about their childhood days. Note the early attraction of these two for each other. What about the wondrous stone? Have stones such powers? Evangeline's name (line 144) indicates what? SEC. II. _Autumn. Evening Out-of-doors. In-doors._ Lesson IV, Lines 148-198. What is the season? What is the sign of the scorpion? What season follows? Signs point to what? Why should the author refer to signs of a hard winter? What idea does the author reiterate, lines 160-175? Note--the author brings up one picture after another to impress us in this way. Why? Does he picture the home clearly? Describe. What things of old time life does he mention? Give topic, lines 199-217. Where were the Norman orchards? What does the loom suggest? _Visitors. The News. Argument._ Lesson V, Lines 247-267. What relations existed between Basil and Benedict? How do you know? Note carefully how the talk shows character. How did each view the news? Does the author make many simple statements of facts, or does he use much imagery? Is this so common in prose? Which was the better way of viewing the news? Why refer to Louisburg, Beau Sejour and Port Royal? Had Basil good reasons for his suspicions? Why were the Acadians safer than their fathers? Why did Benedict wish to have no fear? What was the purpose of the call? What preparations had been made for the marriage? SEC. III. _The Notary and His Story._ Lesson VI, Lines 268-329. A new character in the story. What others have we met thus far? In what regard was the Notary held? Describe him. Why did the children like him? What was the lore of the village? Contrast the blacksmith's and the Notary's manner. Explain line 299. Does the Notary's story prove his point--that Justice finally triumphs? Why? What effect upon Basil has the story? Explain lines 328-329. _Signing the Contract. The Last Good-Night._ Lesson VII, Lines 330-381. What do you learn from line 333? What characteristic does Benedict show, line 339? Learn 351-352. Were these marriage papers that were signed? What? What three facts of old time life, lines 353-368? What are compared, lines 368-371? Why should Evangleline feel sad at this time? Was it natural? How could the star follow her footsteps? Look up reference line 381. SEC. IV. _The Betrothal Feast. The Mandate._ Lesson VIII, Lines 382-459. Was the betrothal feast an important event in Grand Pre? So much thought of now? Explain 385-386. For what purpose were the people gathering? How did Acadian life differ from that of today? Why was hospitality greater under Benedict's roof? Who were some of the principal persons at the feast? Who is now introduced? Was there a peculiar sadness in the occurances of the day? Why? We have three pictures strongly contrasted in this, the preceding and the succeeding lessons. Try to get a clear idea of each of these three scenes. Contrast the feast and the reception of the Mandate. Why refer to the solstice? What was the immediate effect of the news? Then what? Was it a time when character would show? Explain. Who shows clearly his temperament? _Father Felician's Rebuke._ Lesson IX, Lines 460-486. (To me, this selection is one of the finest in the poem. It is a fine tribute to _character_. We have in this and the preceding lesson two pictures in marked contrast. Recall the effects the Mandate must have had on the pioneers; how we of the class would feel if we now received such an order. Think of the homes made by long years of patient toil, the familiar and much loved scenes--all that made life dear--must be left behind and life begun anew amid strange scenes and among strange people. What utter despair must have possessed them.) What scene of wild passion Father Felician met when he opened the church door! Could force have quieted this mob? Could they have been _made_ quiet? Then Father Felician enters, raises his hand and stillness reigns. What causes this great change? What wisdom does the priest show? Does he say much? To what does he turn their thoughts? Why? Who is the "Prince of Peace"? What great character in history had a like power over a multitude? Was it a great thing that the people could say from their hearts "O Father, Forgive Them"? Who said it before this? The evening service is held and quiet after the storm. How were their souls translated? What is the reference to Elijah? _Evangeline's Service. Shadows._ Lesson X, Lines 487-523. What change here introduced? Why should it come in here? Any reason except a continuation of the story? (A well written play or story has a careful mixture of pathos and humor. Explain and apply.) Note lines 499-501. What was the source of Evangeline's great strength of character? Who was the prophet? Has the reference to the Angelus any suggestive sadness? Why graves of the living? Why did the thunder speak to her? What did it suggest? SEC. V. _Gathering on the Beach._ Lesson XI, lines 524-590. How long were they in the church? What was the attitude of the Acadians? What happens similarly in nature? What characteristic of woman is shown in lines 553-567? Compare Evangeline, Gabriel and Benedict at this point. Did Evangeline meet her father and Gabriel in different ways? Why? Did she show wisdom in so doing? What turning point now comes? Imagine a different circumstance--how would it affect the remainder of the story? Picture the village. Why refer to the waifs of the tide? _The Camp. Burning Village._ Lesson XII, Lines 591-635. Picture the camp. Why refer to Paul? What was the condition of Benedict? What disposition did he show in this trouble? Do you suppose Basil was affected in the same way? How do an oak and a willow take a storm? Which is the better way? Who was the oak and who the willow? What does Father Felician do? Does he show discernment? Explain 612-615. How many and what distinct pictures do you find in the lesson? Write lines 613-620 in your own words and compare. _Death. Separation._ Lesson XIII, Lines 636-665. What was the effect of the fire on Benedict? The effect of her father's death on Evangeline? What does "without bell or book" mean? What of nature seemed in harmony with the occasion? What two great sorrows came to Evangeline so closely? Review closing incidents and Part One. EVANGELINE--PART II. SEC. I. _Landing. Search Begun._ Lesson XIV, Lines 666-705. How long time has elapsed since the embarking? What were the Acadian's Household Gods? Why was the exile without an end? Why should the author use this comparison about their scattering? Explain fully about the seizing of the hills. What was the attitude of many Acadians? Of Evangeline? What is the desert of life? Why so called? What makes life a desert? Explain fully lines 683-687. What was there singular about Evangeline's life? What effect had this on her life? What was the inarticulate whisper that came to her? _Pressing On._ Lesson XV, Lines 706-740. What is a voyageur? What was Evangeline advised to do by her friends? Should she have followed their advice? Give reason. What was it to braid St. Catherine's tresses? What do you think of Evangeline's reply? Learn lines 720-727. Explain. What was the funeral dirge which she heard What was the voice that replied? What is the Muse? Who appeals to it? How is it to be followed? SEC. II. _On the River. Forebodings._ Lesson XVI, Lines 741-789. Has the author followed the wanderer's footsteps in Sec. I, Part II? Locate scene pictured in lines 741-745. How were these people bound together? How strongly? Picture the scene in lines 757-765 clearly. Why Golden Coast? What is a maze? What did the moss look like? What is demoniac laughter? What purpose does the author serve in bringing in this incident? Describe scene in lines 763-767. How did the exiles feel this night? What about the mimosa? What are the hoof-beats of fate? What effect have the hoof-beats? Was Evangeline in the same mood as the others? Read to line 863, and then consider carefully the scene and events to line 790. Study with care. _Night on the River. The Passing._ Lesson XVII, Lines 790-841. Explain lines 790-794 and lines 798-799. Why do you suppose the bugle was not heard? What if it was? Why did they row at midnight? Why does the author bring in something weird again as in line 805? Note change from night with its weird uncertainty to day with its quiet peace and beauty. Why refer to Jacob's ladder? How can you account for conditions given in lines 824-5? Note that here a calm precedes the storm. Who were in the boat speeding north? What was the last we heard of Gabriel? What changes had occurred in his appearance? How did he take his lot and disappointment? How different from Evangeline? Does the account of the passing seem reasonable? Are such occurrences common in general life? _Evangeline's Dream. Arrival._ Lesson XVIII, Lines 842-887. Does it seem reasonable that Evangeline felt Gabriel was near? Explain and learn lines 852-4. Explain 858. Why Eden of Louisiana? Has Father Felician given up to despair on any occasion? What kept him from despairing? Had he despaired how would it have affected Evangeline and the story? Note scene in lines 864-868. Does the author here give a picture of nature in harmony with a condition of mind? Where? Find like treatment in this section. The mocking bird here reminds one of what bird in another scene? Does each seem an appropriate part of the picture? What was the prelude? Why were their hearts moved with emotion? SEC. III. _Meeting Basil. Disappointment._ Lesson XIX, Lines 888-958. Find subject and predicate of first sentence. Describe house and surroundings. Would flowers grow thus in Acadia? What was love's symbol? Why sea of flowers? Explain 904-910. Why surf? Contrast Basil's home in Grand Pre and the one here. Explain lines 933. Was Basil's way of breaking the news about Gabriel a good one? Why should she be deeply disappointed? Did Gabriel bear his disappointment as did Evangeline? What was the result of Evangeline's longing? Of Gabriel's? Why a fugitive lover? Why fates and streams against him? What did Basil mean line 958? _Re-union and Feast._ Lesson XX, Lines 959-1020. Note here change of scene. Is it from pathos to humor or from humor to pathos? What do you gather from lines 959-960 and 964-965? From 961-2? Why should they marvel? Compare conditions of life in Acadia and in Louisiana. What familiar fact does Basil show, line 982? Why refer to King George? Note the very attractive picture Basil draws--almost a picture of Eden. Was there an _if_ about it, a final word that quite changed the shading of the picture? Is it usually thus? Were the Acadians naturally light-hearted? _Despair. Hope. On Again._ Lesson XXI, Lines 1021-1077. What effect had this scene on Evangeline? Why should she hear the sounds of the sea? Why desire to leave the merriment? Explain 1028-1038. Stars are here spoken of as God's thoughts--what else has the author called them? Explain 1041-1044. Was the evening in harmony with Evangeline's mood? Why was it the oaks whispered "Patience" and not the beeches or other trees? Explain 1059-1061. Who were going in quest of Gabriel? Explain references of "Prodigal Son" and "Foolish Virgin" and apply. How was Gabriel blown by fate like the dead leaf? How long before they found traces of Gabriel? What traces? What news finally? Where were they now? SEC. IV. _The Great West. The Shawnee. Confidences._ Lesson XXII, lines 1078-1164. What are amorphas? Why describe thus this territory? Who were Ishmael's children? Why bring out clearly the many dangers to be encountered here? What is Fata Morgana? Who was the anchorite monk? Why taciturn? How could they follow his footsteps? Who were _they_? How were traces of sorrow and patience visible? Were they unusually touched by the Shawnee's story? Why? Was it natural for Evangeline and the Shawnee to be drawn together? What common bond had they? What was the effect of Evangeline's story? Were the Shawnee's stories appropriate? Were they comforting or disheartening? What was the snake that crept into Evangeline's thoughts? Was it lasting? What would naturally dispell it? Are people more brave at night or in the morning? More cheerful when? Why? _At the Mission. Waiting._ Lesson XXIII, Lines 1165-1205. Why Black Robe Chief? Why expect good tidings at the Mission? What is a rural chapel? What were vespers and sussuras? What was the cause of the priest's pleasure? Look up Jesuit work in North America. Why were the priest's words like snow flakes to Evangeline? How did Evangeline receive the news? Why should she desire to remain at the Mission rather than return to Basil's home? Was there an unselfish purpose in her remaining? _A Long Search. Age._ Lesson XXIV, Lines 1206-1291. How long did Evangeline remain at the Mission? What old custom referred to in lines 1212-1214? What do you know of old husking bees? Who urged patience? The compass flower illustrates what truth? Why is life in a true sense pathless and limitless? What quality is suggested by the gay, luxuriant flower? By the humble plant? Evangeline leaves the Mission to seek Gabriel where? Result? How did she spend the following years? Would you think from the text here her life was wholly given to the thought of Gabriel and to search for him? Why? What was the dawn of another life? SEC. V. _Devotion._ Lesson XXV, Lines 1252-1297. Why was Penn an apostle? What city did he found? How do the streets echo the names of the forest? Who are the Dryads? Why did she feel at home here? Does she finally give up hope? Explain lines 1270-1275. What made the world look bright to her? Does one's state of mind determine to a large extent how the world looks? Does the world look the same at night and in the morning? When are we most likely to see it as it is? Was Gabriel forgotten? What were the lessons her life had taught her? What became of her love? How did she act practically upon her feeling? What was the word or the thing that drew her? She shows what quality 1291-1293? What is a Sister of Mercy? Why had she not joined the Order before? Had she in a true sense been a sister of mercy before joining the Order? Do you think she regretted the long struggle that fitted her so well for this work? _The Pestilence._ Lesson XXVI, Lines 1298-1342. How did death flood life? What made the lake brackish? Why silver stream? What is the usual cause of a pestilence? Why call it a scourge of his anger? Where was the almshouse? Where is the spot now? This was an opportunity for whom? What was the appearance of the sister? What occasioned it? Is what we _are_ written in our faces? What morning did she visit the almshouse? In what season? Had she a premonition that her quest was ended? Are premonitions common? What was the effect of this feeling upon her? Why was death a consoler? _The Meeting._ Lesson XXVII, Lines 1343-1400. White expecting something, was Evangeline prepared for the meeting? How did it affect her? How did Gabriel appear? What was the cause? What is the reference about sprinkling the portals? What was Gabriel's condition? What effect had the cry of Evangeline? Did he recognize Evangeline and realize she was with him? What came to his mind? Did he finally recognize Evangeline? Was this recognition a blessing for her? What effect had this meeting upon her? How did she express it? Where are the lovers supposed to be now? Do you think Evangeline's life ended here? Scene shifts to where? What has occurred? Does the author state that those old scenes of Acadian life can now be seen? Where? In lines 1399-1400 is there any suggestion as to this story? Note.--It would be well at the conclusion of this study to spend one or two periods in going over the story as a whole that the poem, in its general outline, may be better retained in the pupil's mind. COMPOSITION SUBJECTS. 1. Acadian Life. (Contrast with present.) 2. The Notary. 3. Character of Gabriel. 4. Character of Evangeline. 5. The Betrothal Feast. 6. The Scene on the Shore. 7. On the River. (Compare mode of traveling with present ones by land and water.) 8. Home of Basil. (Contrast with the home in Acadia.) 9. The Mission. 10. The Search and its Reward. Select the lines that appeal to you most. Select the lines that show the most beautiful sentiment. Select the lines that contain the best pictures. PART III. SPELLING AND DEFINING. The work of spelling and defining may be carried on with the study of the text of the poem, or at the conclusion of this study. In the former case allow a week or more to pass after using a selection as a Reading lesson before studying it as a Spelling lesson, that the reading may not degenerate into a word-study. The words selected are those which should form a part of the pupil's vocabulary. The fact that the context largely determines the meaning of a word should be made clear in this study, and the particular meaning the author employs in the poem should be required. The pupil's discrimination will at first be poor, but he soon develops considerable skill and judgment. I 1. primeval 2. Druids 3. eld 4. prophetic 5. hoar 6. caverns 7. disconsolate 8. roe 9. glided 10. reflecting 11. adopt 12. tradition 13. affliction 14. endures 15. patient II 1. incessant 2. floodgates 3. reposed 4. peasants 5. thatched 6. tranquil 7. vanes 8. distaffs 9. gossiping 10. reverend 11. hailing 12. serenely 13. belfry 14. incense 15. contentment III 1. stalworth 2. stately 3. gleamed 4. tresses 5. sooth 6. turret 7. hyssop 8. chaplet 9. missal 10. generations 11. ethereal 12. confession 13. benediction 14. exquisite 15. envy IV 1. antique 2. penitent 3. odorous 4. meek 5. innocent 6. variant 7. devotion 8. craft 9. repute 10. pedagogue 11. autumnal 12. expired 13. populous 14. wondrous 15. valiant V 1. desolate 2. tropical 3. inclement 4. mantles 5. hoarded 6. advent 7. pious 8. magical 9. landscape 10. consoled 11. blended 12. subdued 13. arrayed 14. adorned 15. surmises VI 1. instinct 2. superbly 3. ponderous 4. gestures 5. fantastic 6. fragments 7. carols 8. treadles 9. diligent 10. monotonous 11. jovial 12. content 13. accustomed 14. forebodings 15. mandate VII 1. untimely 2. blighted 3. bursting 4. lurk 5. outskirts 6. anxious 7. dubious 8. scythe 9. besieged 10. contract (_n._) 11. glebe 12. inkhorn 13. rejoice 14. worthy 15. notary VIII 1. floss 2. wisdom 3. supernal 4. languished 5. warier 6. ripe 7. unchristened 8. doomed 9. haunt 10. marvellous 11. lore 12. demeanor 13. molest 14. irascible 15. triumphs IX 1. brazen 2. emblem 3. presided 4. corrupted 5. oppressed 6. condemned 7. convinced 8. congealed 9. tankard 10. dower 11. contention 12. manoeuvre 13. pallid 14. infinite 15. breach X 1. anon 2. curfew 3. straightway 4. lingered 5. reigned 6. resounded 7. luminous 8. ample 9. spacious 10. dower 11. mellow 12. tremulous 13. serenely 14. flitted 15. Abraham XI 1. clamorous 2. hamlets 3. holiday 4. blithe 5. jocund 6. greensward 7. thronged 8. hospitality 9. betrothal 10. waistcoats 11. alternately 12. embers 13. vibrant 14. mingled 15. noblest XII 1. sonorous 2. garlands 3. sacred 4. dissonant 5. clangor 6. convened 7. clement 8. grievous 9. forfeited 10. transported 11. wail 12. imprecations 13. distorted 14. allegiance 15. merciless XIII 1. chancel 2. mien 3. awed 4. clamorous 5. solemn 6. accents 7. vigils 8. profane 9. compassion 10. assail 11. rebuke 12. contrition 13. fervent 14. translated 15. ardor XIV 1. mysterious 2. splendor 3. emblazoned 4. ambrosial 5. celestial 6. charity 7. emotion 8. meekness 9. gloomier 10. tenantless 11. haunted 12. phantoms 13. echoed 14. disconsolate 15. keenly XV 1. confusion 2. thither 3. thronged 4. imprisoned 5. wayworn 6. foremost 7. inexhaustible 8. sacred 9. strength 10. submission 11. affliction 12. procession 13. approached 14. wayside 15. mischances XVI 1. consoling 2. haggard 3. caresses 4. unperturbed 5. mortals 6. Titan-like 7. quivering 8. martyr 9. dismay 10. anguish 11. dawned 12. skirt (_v._) 13. aspect 14. affrighted 15. nethermost XVII 1. overwhelmed 2. terror 3. wailed 4. sultry 5. bleak 6. despairing 7. extended 8. desert 9. extinguished 10. consumed 11. incomplete 12. lingered 13. rumor 14. hearsay 15. inarticulate XVIII 1. freighted 2. exile 3. asunder 4. swoon 5. oblivious 6. trance 7. multitude 8. pallid 9. compassion 10. landscape 11. senses 12. sacred 13. glare 14. dirges 15. embarking XIX 1. voyageur 2. loyal 3. tedious 4. tresses 5. serenely 6. illumines 7. confession 8. enrich 9. refreshments 10. endurance 11. perfected 12. rendered 13. labored 14. despair 15. essay (_v._) XX 1. cumbrous 2. kith 3. kin 4. few-acred 5. sombre 6. turbulent 7. chutes 8. emerged 9. lagoons 10. wimpling 11. luxuriant 12. perpetual 13. citron 14. bayou 15. sluggish XXI 1. corridors 2. multitudinous 3. reverberant 4. mysterious 5. grim 6. myriads 7. resplendent 8. sylvan 9. suspended 10. moored 11. travelers 12. extended 13. pendulous 14. flitted 15. regions XXII 1. countenance 2. legibly 3. oblivion 4. screen 5. trance 6. vague 7. superstition 8. revealed 9. credulous 10. reverend 11. idle 12. buoy 13. betrays 14. illusions 15. Eden XXIII 1. magician 2. wand 3. landscape 4. mingled 5. inexpressible 6. delirious 7. plaintive 8. roaring 9. revel 10. frenzied 11. Bacchantes 12. lamentation 13. derision 14. prelude 15. amber XXIV 1. garlands 2. mystic 3. flaunted 4. Yule-tide 5. girded 6. luxuriant 7. spacious 8. symbol 9. limitless 10. cordage 11. arrayed 12. adverse 13. vent 14. misgivings 15. embarrassed XXV 1. mortals 2. renowned 3. triumphal 4. enraptured 5. hilarious 6. marvelled 7. ci-devant 8. domains 9. patriarchal 10. dispensed 11. profusion 12. congeals 13. ploughshare 14. accordant 15. melodious XXVI 1. entranced 2. irrepressible 3. devious 4. manifold 5. Carthusian 6. inundate 7. indefinable 8. measureless 9. marvel 10. comet 11. oracular 12. annointed 13. delicious 14. fasting 15. famine XXVII 1. perpetual 2. jagged 3. gorge 4. emigrant 5. precipitate 6. ceaseless 7. vibrations 8. amorphas 9. blast 10. blight 11. pinions 12. implacable 13. scaling 14. taciturn 15. anchorite XXIII 1. venison 2. companions 3. swarthy 4. reverses 5. compassion 6. mute 7. dissolving 8. weird 9. incantation 10. phantom 11. enchanted 12. enchantress 13. sombre 14. audible 15. indefinite XXIX 1. towering 2. crucifix 3. rural 4. chapel 5. intricate 6. aerial 7. vespers 8. swarded 9. benignant 10. wigwam 11. mother-tongue 12. chase (_n._) 13. submissive 14. afflicted 15. betimes XXX 1. interlacing 2. mendicant 3. granaries 4. pillage 5. vigorous 6. magnet 7. suspended 8. fragile 9. limitless 10. luxuriant 11. fragrance 12. hue 13. perilous 14. divers 15. dawn XXXI 1. sylvan 2. apostle 3. balm 4. emblem 5. fain 6. appease 7. haunts 8. molested 9. descendants 10. hamlets 11. illumined 12. transfigured 13. abnegation 14. diffused 15. aroma XXXIII 1. pestilence 2. presaged 3. naught 4. brackish 5. margin 6. oppressor 7. scourge 8. splendor 9. wending 10. corridors 11. intermingled 12. assiduous 13. pallets 14. languid 15. consolor XXXIV 1. flowerets 2. terrible 3. anguish 4. assume 5. portals 6. exhausted 7. infinite 8. reverberations 9. sylvan 10. vanished 11. vainly 12. humble 13. ebbing 14. throbbing 15. customs Transcriber's notes: 1. The poem has been compared with another version already on Gutenberg-- (vngln10). Where the two disagreed, this text was carefully re-checked to ensure the text and punctuation matched those on the scanned image. 2. The following apparent errors in the source text were corrected: Poem Line 73 'bessings' changed to blessings. 346 'manoeuvre': the oe ligature was split. 668 'goods' changed to Gods. 692 full stop added to line end. 718 'father-confessor': hyphen added. 840 'their' changed to there. 850 'reverened' changed to reverend. 909 'spar' changed to spars. 909 'tropcis' changed to tropics. 1083 'rivre' changed to river. 1256 'reecho' changed to re-echo. 2. Line 713 has been copied and inserted from vgln10. This was missing in the book, but was referenced in the notes; the line numbering also showed a missing line between 710 and 715. 3. No other (deliberate) changes have made to the poem. There remain a number of minor word and punctuation differences between this and vngln10. 4. Special characters. A number of characters used in the notes to describe pronunciation do not exist in ASCII. The following conventions have been used to represent them: [=a] 'a' + Macron; ('a' with a horizontal line above). [=o] 'o' + Macron; ('o' with a horizontal line above). [=e] 'e' + Macron; ('e' with a horizontal line above). [)a] 'a' with a curved line above - like horns. [)e] 'e' with a curved line above - like horns. [.a] 'a' with a single dot above 
16265	----	[Illustration] RILEY SONGS OF HOME JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY WITH PICTURES BY WILL VAWTER NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS 1910 BY JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY TO GEORGE A. CARR CONTENTS AS CREATED 56 AS MY UNCLE USED TO SAY 126 AT SEA 160 BACKWARD LOOK, A 155 BEST IS GOOD ENOUGH, THE 123 BOYS, THE 104 "BRAVE REFRAIN, A" 113 DREAMER, SAY 61 FEEL IN THE CHRIS'MAS AIR, A 52 FOR YOU 50 GOOD MAN, A 132 HER BEAUTIFUL HANDS 189 HIS ROOM 38 HONEY DRIPPING FROM THE COMB 125 "HOW DID YOU REST, LAST NIGHT?" 94 IN THE EVENING 115 IT'S GOT TO BE 107 JACK-IN-THE-BOX 100 JIM 117 JOHN McKEEN 165 JUST TO BE GOOD 26 KNEELING WITH HERRICK 138 LAUGHTER HOLDING BOTH HIS SIDES 81 MULBERRY TREE, THE 46 MY DANCIN' DAYS IS OVER 184 MY FRIEND 29 NATURAL PERVERSITIES 70 NOT ALWAYS GLAD WHEN WE SMILE 36 OLD DAYS, THE 135 OLD GUITAR, THE 161 OLD TRUNDLE-BED, THE 64 OUR BOYHOOD HAUNTS 182 OUR KIND OF A MAN 92 OUR OWN 63 "OUT OF REACH?" 112 OUT OF THE HITHERWHERE 98 PLAINT HUMAN, THE 43 QUEST, THE 44 RAINY MORNING, THE 141 REACH YOUR HAND TO ME 143 SCRAWL, A 75 SONG OF PARTING 90 SONG OF YESTERDAY, THE 82 SPRING SONG AND A LATER, A 137 "THEM OLD CHEERY WORDS" 172 THINKIN' BACK 31 THROUGH SLEEPY-LAND 170 TO MY OLD FRIEND, WILLIAM LEACHMAN 145 TO THE JUDGE 177 WE MUST BELIEVE 130 WE MUST GET HOME 19 WHERE-AWAY 57 WHO BIDES HIS TIME 68 WRITIN' BACK TO THE HOME-FOLKS 76 RILEY SONGS OF HOME [Illustration] WE MUST GET HOME We must get home! How could we stray like this?-- So far from home, we know not where it is,-- Only in some fair, apple-blossomy place Of children's faces--and the mother's face-- We dimly dream it, till the vision clears Even in the eyes of fancy, glad with tears. We must get home--for we have been away So long, it seems forever and a day! And O so very homesick we have grown, The laughter of the world is like a moan In our tired hearing, and its song as vain,-- We must get home--we must get home again! We must get home! With heart and soul we yearn To find the long-lost pathway, and return!... The child's shout lifted from the questing band Of old folk, faring weary, hand in hand, But faces brightening, as if clouds at last Were showering sunshine on us as we passed. We must get home: It hurts so staying here, Where fond hearts must be wept out tear by tear, And where to wear wet lashes means, at best, When most our lack, the least our hope of rest-- When most our need of joy, the more our pain-- We must get home--we must get home again! [Illustration] We must get home--home to the simple things-- The morning-glories twirling up the strings And bugling color, as they blared in blue- And-white o'er garden-gates we scampered through; The long grape-arbor, with its under-shade Blue as the green and purple overlaid. We must get home: All is so quiet there: The touch of loving hands on brow and hair-- Dim rooms, wherein the sunshine is made mild-- The lost love of the mother and the child Restored in restful lullabies of rain,-- We must get home--we must get home again! The rows of sweetcorn and the China beans Beyond the lettuce-beds where, towering, leans The giant sunflower in barbaric pride Guarding the barn-door and the lane outside; The honeysuckles, midst the hollyhocks, That clamber almost to the martin-box. We must get home, where, as we nod and drowse, Time humors us and tiptoes through the house, And loves us best when sleeping baby-wise, With dreams--not tear-drops--brimming our clenched eyes,-- Pure dreams that know nor taint nor earthly stain-- We must get home--we must get home again! We must get home! The willow-whistle's call Trills crisp and liquid as the waterfall-- Mocking the trillers in the cherry-trees And making discord of such rhymes as these, That know nor lilt nor cadence but the birds First warbled--then all poets afterwards. We must get home; and, unremembering there All gain of all ambition otherwhere, Rest--from the feverish victory, and the crown Of conquest whose waste glory weighs us down.-- Fame's fairest gifts we toss back with disdain-- We must get home--we must get home again! We must get home again--we must--we must!-- (Our rainy faces pelted in the dust) Creep back from the vain quest through endless strife To find not anywhere in all of life A happier happiness than blest us then ... We must get home--we must get home again! [Illustration] JUST TO BE GOOD Just to be good-- This is enough--enough! O we who find sin's billows wild and rough, Do we not feel how more than any gold Would be the blameless life we led of old While yet our lips knew but a mother's kiss? Ah! though we miss All else but this, To be good is enough! It is enough-- Enough--just to be good! To lift our hearts where they are understood; To let the thirst for worldly power and place Go unappeased; to smile back in God's face With the glad lips our mothers used to kiss. Ah! though we miss All else but this, To be good is enough! [Illustration] [Illustration] MY FRIEND "He is my friend," I said,-- "Be patient!" Overhead The skies were drear and dim; And lo! the thought of him Smiled on my heart--and then The sun shone out again! "He is my friend!" The words Brought summer and the birds; And all my winter-time Thawed into running rhyme And rippled into song, Warm, tender, brave and strong. And so it sings to-day.-- So may it sing alway! Though waving grasses grow Between, and lilies blow Their trills of perfume clear As laughter to the ear, Let each mute measure end With "Still he is thy friend." [Illustration] [Illustration] THINKIN' BACK I've ben thinkin' back, of late, S'prisin'!--And I'm here to state I'm suspicious it's a sign Of _age_, maybe, or decline Of my faculties,--and yit I'm not _feelin'_ old a bit-- Any more than sixty-four Ain't no _young_ man any more! Thinkin' back's a thing 'at grows On a feller, I suppose-- Older 'at he gits, i jack, More he keeps a-thinkin' back! Old as old men git to be, Er as middle-aged as me, Folks'll find us, eye and mind Fixed on what we've left behind-- Rehabilitatin'-like Them old times we used to hike Out barefooted fer the crick, 'Long 'bout _Aprile first_--to pick Out some "warmest" place to go In a-swimmin'--_Ooh! my-oh!_ Wonder now we hadn't died! Grate horseradish on my hide Jes' _a-thinkin'_ how cold then That-'ere worter must 'a' ben! Thinkin' back--W'y, goodness me! I kin call their names and see Every little tad I played With, er fought, er was afraid Of, and so made _him_ the best Friend I had of all the rest! [Illustration] Thinkin' back, I even hear Them a-callin', high and clear, Up the crick-banks, where they seem Still hid in there--like a dream-- And me still a-pantin' on The green pathway they have gone! Still they hide, by bend er ford-- Still they hide--but, thank the Lord, (Thinkin' back, as I have said), I hear laughin' on ahead! [Illustration] NOT ALWAYS GLAD WHEN WE SMILE We are not always glad when we smile: Though we wear a fair face and are gay, And the world we deceive May not ever believe We could laugh in a happier way.-- Yet, down in the deeps of the soul, Ofttimes, with our faces aglow, There's an ache and a moan That we know of alone, And as only the hopeless may know. We are not always glad when we smile,-- For the heart, in a tempest of pain, May live in the guise Of a smile in the eyes As a rainbow may live in the rain; And the stormiest night of our woe May hang out a radiant star Whose light in the sky Of despair is a lie As black as the thunder-clouds are. We are not always glad when we smile!-- But the conscience is quick to record, All the sorrow and sin We are hiding within Is plain in the sight of the Lord: And ever, O ever, till pride And evasion shall cease to defile The sacred recess Of the soul, we confess We are not always glad when we smile. [Illustration] [Illustration] HIS ROOM "I'm home again, my dear old Room, I'm home again, and happy, too, As, peering through the brightening gloom, I find myself alone with you: Though brief my stay, nor far away, I missed you--missed you night and day-- As wildly yearned for you as now.-- Old Room, how are you, anyhow? "My easy chair, with open arms, Awaits me just within the door; The littered carpet's woven charms Have never seemed so bright before,-- The old rosettes and mignonettes And ivy-leaves and violets, Look up as pure and fresh of hue As though baptized in morning dew. "Old Room, to me your homely walls Fold round me like the arms of love, And over all my being falls A blessing pure as from above-- Even as a nestling child caressed And lulled upon a loving breast, With folded eyes, too glad to weep And yet too sad for dreams or sleep. "You've been so kind to me, old Room-- So patient in your tender care, My drooping heart in fullest bloom Has blossomed for you unaware; And who but you had cared to woo A heart so dark, and heavy, too, As in the past you lifted mine From out the shadow to the shine? "For I was but a wayward boy When first you gladly welcomed me And taught me work was truer joy Than rioting incessantly: And thus the din that stormed within The old guitar and violin Has fallen in a fainter tone And sweeter, for your sake alone. "Though in my absence I have stood In festal halls a favored guest, I missed, in this old quietude, My worthy work and worthy rest-- By _this_ I know that long ago You loved me first, and told me so In art's mute eloquence of speech The voice of praise may never reach. "For lips and eyes in truth's disguise Confuse the faces of my friends, Till old affection's fondest ties I find unraveling at the ends; But as I turn to you, and learn To meet my griefs with less concern, Your love seems all I have to keep Me smiling lest I needs must weep. "Yet I am happy, and would fain Forget the world and all its woes; So set me to my tasks again, Old Room, and lull me to repose: And as we glide adown the tide Of dreams, forever side by side, I'll hold your hands as lovers do Their sweethearts' and talk love to you." [Illustration] [Illustration] THE PLAINT HUMAN Season of snows, and season of flowers, Seasons of loss and gain!-- Since grief and joy must alike be ours, Why do we still complain? Ever our failing, from sun to sun, O my intolerant brother-- We want just a little too little of one, And much too much of the other. THE QUEST I am looking for Love. Has he passed this way, With eyes as blue as the skies of May, And a face as fair as the summer dawn?-- You answer back, but I wander on,-- For you say: "Oh, yes; but his eyes were gray, And his face as dim as a rainy day." Good friends, I query, I search for Love; His eyes are as blue as the skies above, And his smile as bright as the midst of May When the truce-bird pipes: Has he passed this way? And one says: "Ay; but his face, alack! Frowned as he passed, and his eyes were black." O who will tell me of Love? I cry! His eyes are as blue as the mid-May sky, And his face as bright as the morning sun; And you answer and mock me, every one, That his eyes were dark, and his face was wan, And he passed you frowning and wandered on. But stout of heart will I onward fare, Knowing _my_ Love is beyond--somewhere,-- The Love I seek, with the eyes of blue, And the bright, sweet smile unknown of you; And on from the hour his trail is found I shall sing sonnets the whole year round. [Illustration] THE MULBERRY TREE It's many's the scenes which is dear to my mind As I think of my childhood so long left behind; The home of my birth, with it's old puncheon-floor, And the bright morning-glories that growed round the door; The warped clab-board roof whare the rain it run off Into streams of sweet dreams as I laid in the loft, Countin' all of the joys that was dearest to me, And a-thinkin' the most of the mulberry tree. And to-day as I dream, with both eyes wide-awake, I can see the old tree, and its limbs as they shake, And the long purple berries that rained on the ground Whare the pastur' was bald whare we trommpt it around. And again, peekin' up through the thick leafy shade, I can see the glad smiles of the friends when I strayed With my little bare feet from my own mother's knee To foller them off to the mulberry tree. [Illustration] Leanin' up in the forks, I can see the old rail, And the boy climbin' up it, claw, tooth, and toe-nail, And in fancy can hear, as he spits on his hands, The ring of his laugh and the rip of his pants. But that rail led to glory, as certin and shore As I'll never climb thare by that rout' any more-- What was all the green lauruls of Fame unto me, With my brows in the boughs of the mulberry tree! Then it's who can fergit the old mulberry tree That he knowed in the days when his thoughts was as free As the flutterin' wings of the birds that flew out Of the tall wavin' tops as the boys come about? O, a crowd of my memories, laughin' and gay, Is a-climbin' the fence of that pastur' to-day, And, a-pantin' with joy, as us boys ust to be, They go racin' acrost fer the mulberry tree. [Illustration] FOR YOU For you, I could forget the gay Delirium of merriment, And let my laughter die away In endless silence of content. I could forget, for your dear sake, The utter emptiness and ache Of every loss I ever knew.-- What could I not forget for you? I could forget the just deserts Of mine own sins, and so erase The tear that burns, the smile that hurts, And all that mars or masks my face. For your fair sake I could forget The bonds of life that chafe and fret, Nor care if death were false or true.-- What could I not forget for you? What could I not forget? Ah me! One thing, I know, would still abide Forever in my memory, Though all of love were lost beside-- I yet would feel how first the wine Of your sweet lips made fools of mine Until they sung, all drunken through-- "What could I not forget for you?" [Illustration] [Illustration] A FEEL IN THE CHRIS'MAS-AIR They's a kind o' _feel_ in the air, to me. When the Chris'mas-times sets in. That's about as much of a mystery As ever I've run ag'in!-- Fer instunce, now, whilse I gain in weight And gineral health, I swear They's a _goneness_ somers I can't quite state-- A kind o' _feel_ in the air. [Illustration] They's a feel in the Chris'mas-air goes right To the spot where a man _lives_ at!-- It gives a feller a' appetite-- They ain't no doubt about _that_!-- And yit they's _somepin_'--I don't know what-- That follers me, here and there, And ha'nts and worries and spares me not-- A kind o' feel in the air! They's a _feel_, as I say, in the air that's jest As blame-don sad as sweet!-- In the same ra-sho as I feel the best And am spryest on my feet, They's allus a kind o' sort of a' _ache_ That I can't lo-cate no-where;-- But it comes with _Chris'mas_, and no mistake!-- A kind o' feel in the air. Is it the racket the childern raise?-- W'y, _no_!--God bless 'em!--_no_!-- Is it the eyes and the cheeks ablaze-- Like my _own_ wuz, long ago?-- Is it the bleat o' the whistle and beat O' the little toy-drum and blare O' the horn?--_No! no!_--it is jest the sweet-- The sad-sweet feel in the air. [Illustration] AS CREATED There's a space for good to bloom in Every heart of man or woman,-- And however wild or human, Or however brimmed with gall, Never heart may beat without it; And the darkest heart to doubt it Has something good about it After all. [Illustration] WHERE-AWAY O the Lands of Where-Away! Tell us--tell us--where are they? Through the darkness and the dawn We have journeyed on and on-- From the cradle to the cross-- From possession unto loss.-- Seeking still, from day to day, For the Lands of Where-Away. When our baby-feet were first Planted where the daisies burst, And the greenest grasses grew In the fields we wandered through,-- On, with childish discontent, Ever on and on we went, Hoping still to pass, some day, O'er the verge of Where-Away. Roses laid their velvet lips On our own, with fragrant sips; But their kisses held us not, All their sweetness we forgot;-- Though the brambles in our track Plucked at us to hold us back-- "Just ahead," we used to say, "Lie the Lands of Where-Away." Children at the pasture-bars, Through the dusk, like glimmering stars, Waved their hands that we should bide With them over eventide; Down the dark their voices failed Falteringly, as they hailed, And died into yesterday-- Night ahead and--Where-Away? Twining arms about us thrown-- Warm caresses, all our own, Can but stay us for a spell-- Love hath little new to tell To the soul in need supreme, Aching ever with the dream Of the endless bliss it may Find in Lands of Where-Away! [Illustration] [Illustration] DREAMER, SAY Dreamer, say, will you dream for me A wild sweet dream of a foreign land, Whose border sips of a foaming sea With lips of coral and silver sand; Where warm winds loll on the shady deeps, Or lave themselves in the tearful mist The great wild wave of the breaker weeps O'er crags of opal and amethyst? Dreamer, say, will you dream a dream Of tropic shades in the lands of shine, Where the lily leans o'er an amber stream That flows like a rill of wasted wine,-- Where the palm-trees, lifting their shields of green, Parry the shafts of the Indian sun Whose splintering vengeance falls between The reeds below where the waters run? Dreamer, say, will you dream of love That lives in a land of sweet perfume, Where the stars drip down from the skies above In molten spatters of bud and bloom? Where never the weary eyes are wet, And never a sob in the balmy air, And only the laugh of the paroquette Breaks the sleep of the silence there? [Illustration] [Illustration] OUR OWN They walk here with us, hand-in-hand; We gossip, knee-by-knee; They tell us all that they have planned-- Of all their joys to be,-- And, laughing, leave us: And, to-day, All desolate we cry Across wide waves of voiceless graves-- Good-by! Good-by! Good-by! THE OLD TRUNDLE-BED O the old trundle-bed where I slept when a boy! What canopied king might not covet the joy? The glory and peace of that slumber of mine, Like a long, gracious rest in the bosom divine: The quaint, homely couch, hidden close from the light, But daintily drawn from its hiding at night. O a nest of delight, from the foot to the head, Was the queer little, clear little, old trundle-bed! O the old trundle-bed, where I wondering saw The stars through the window, and listened with awe To the sigh of the winds as they tremblingly crept Through the trees where the robin so restlessly slept: Where I heard the low, murmurous chirp of the wren, And the katydid listlessly chirrup again, Till my fancies grew faint and were drowsily led Through the maze of the dreams of the old trundle bed. [Illustration] O the old trundle-bed! O the old trundle-bed! With its plump little pillow, and old-fashioned spread; Its snowy-white sheets, and the blankets above, Smoothed down and tucked round with the touches of love; The voice of my mother to lull me to sleep With the old fairy-stories my memories keep Still fresh as the lilies that bloom o'er the head Once bowed o'er my own in the old trundle-bed. [Illustration] [Illustration] WHO BIDES HIS TIME Who bides his time, and day by day Faces defeat full patiently, And lifts a mirthful roundelay, However poor his fortunes be,-- He will not fail in any qualm Of poverty--the paltry clime It will grow golden in his palm, Who bides his time. Who bides his time--he tastes the sweet Of honey in the saltest tear; And though he fares with slowest feet, Joy runs to meet him, drawing near; The birds are heralds of his cause; And, like a never-ending rhyme, The roadsides bloom in his applause, Who bides his time. Who bides his time, and fevers not In the hot race that none achieves, Shall wear cool-wreathen laurel, wrought With crimson berries in the leaves; And he shall reign a goodly king, And sway his hand o'er every clime, With peace writ on his signet-ring, Who bides his time. [Illustration] [Illustration] NATURAL PERVERSITIES I am not prone to moralize In scientific doubt On certain facts that Nature tries To puzzle us about,-- For I am no philosopher Of wise elucidation, But speak of things as they occur, From simple observation. I notice _little_ things--to wit:-- I never missed a train Because I didn't _run_ for it; I never knew it rain That my umbrella wasn't lent,-- Or, when in my possession, The sun but wore, to all intent, A jocular expression. [Illustration] I never knew a creditor To dun me for a debt But I was "cramped" or "busted;" or I never knew one yet, When I had plenty in my purse, To make the least invasion,-- As I, accordingly perverse, Have courted no occasion. Nor do I claim to comprehend What Nature has in view In giving us the very friend To trust we oughtn't to.-- But so it is: The trusty gun Disastrously exploded Is always sure to be the one We didn't think was loaded. Our moaning is another's mirth,-- And what is worse by half, We say the funniest thing on earth And never raise a laugh: Mid friends that love us overwell, And sparkling jests and liquor, Our hearts somehow are liable To melt in tears the quicker. We reach the wrong when most we seek The right; in like effect, We stay the strong and not the weak-- Do most when we neglect.-- Neglected genius--truth be said-- As wild and quick as tinder, The more we seek to help ahead The more we seem to hinder. I've known the least the greatest, too-- And, on the selfsame plan, The biggest fool I ever knew Was quite a little man: We find we ought, and then we won't-- We prove a thing, then doubt it,-- Know _everything_ but when we don't Know _anything_ about it. [Illustration] [Illustration] A SCRAWL I want to sing something--but this is all-- I try and I try, but the rhymes are dull As though they were damp, and the echoes fall Limp and unlovable. Words will not say what I yearn to say-- They will not walk as I want them to, But they stumble and fall in the path of the way Of my telling my love for you. Simply take what the scrawl is worth-- Knowing I love you as sun the sod On the ripening side of the great round earth That swings in the smile of God. WRITIN' BACK TO THE HOME-FOLKS My dear old friends--It jes beats all, The way you write a letter So's ever' _last_ line beats the _first_, And ever' _next_-un's better!-- W'y, ever' fool-thing you putt down You make so inte_rest_in', A feller, readin' of 'em all, Can't tell which is the _best_-un. It's all so comfortin' and good, 'Pears-like I almost _hear_ ye And git more sociabler, you know, And hitch my cheer up near ye And jes smile on ye like the sun Acrosst the whole per-rairies In Aprile when the thaw's begun And country couples marries. [Illustration] It's all so good-old-fashioned like To _talk_ jes like we're _thinkin'_, Without no hidin' back o' fans And giggle-un and winkin', Ner sizin' how each-other's dressed-- Like some is allus doin',-- "_Is_ Marthy Ellen's basque ben _turned_ Er shore-enough a new-un!"-- Er "ef Steve's city-friend haint jes 'A _lee_tle kindo'-sorto'"-- Er "wears them-air blame eye-glasses Jes 'cause he hadn't ort to?" And so straight on, _dad-libitum_, Tel all of us feels, _some_way, Jes like our "comp'ny" wuz the best When we git up to come 'way! That's why I like _old_ friends like you,-- Jes 'cause you're so _abidin'_.-- Ef I was built to live "_fer keeps_," My principul residin' Would be amongst the folks 'at kep' Me allus _thinkin'_ of 'em, And sorto' eechin' all the time To tell 'em how I love 'em.-- Sich folks, you know, I jes love so I wouldn't live without 'em, Er couldn't even drap asleep But what I _dreamp'_ about 'em,-- And ef we minded God, I guess We'd _all_ love one-another Jes like one fam'bly,--me and Pap And Madaline and Mother. [Illustration] [Illustration] LAUGHTER HOLDING BOTH HIS SIDES Ay, thou varlet!--Laugh away! All the world's a holiday! Laugh away, and roar and shout Till thy hoarse tongue lolleth out! Bloat thy cheeks, and bulge thine eyes Unto bursting; pelt thy thighs With thy swollen palms, and roar As thou never hast before! Lustier! wilt thou! peal on peal! Stiflest? Squat and grind thy heel-- Wrestle with thy loins, and then Wheeze thee whiles, and whoop again! THE SONG OF YESTERDAY I But yesterday I looked away O'er happy lands, where sunshine lay In golden blots Inlaid with spots Of shade and wild forget-me-nots. My head was fair With flaxen hair, And fragrant breezes, faint and rare, And warm with drouth From out the south, Blew all my curls across my mouth. And, cool and sweet, My naked feet Found dewy pathways through the wheat; And out again Where, down the lane, The dust was dimpled with the rain. [Illustration] II But yesterday:-- Adream, astray, From morning's red to evening's gray, O'er dales and hills Of daffodils And lorn sweet-fluting whippoorwills. I knew nor cares Nor tears nor prayers-- A mortal god, crowned unawares With sunset--and A scepter-wand Of apple-blossoms in my hand! The dewy blue Of twilight grew To purple, with a star or two Whose lisping rays Failed in the blaze Of sudden fireflies through the haze. III But yesterday I heard the lay Of summer birds, when I, as they With breast and wing, All quivering With life and love, could only sing. My head was lent Where, with it, blent A maiden's o'er her instrument; While all the night, From vale to height, Was filled with echoes of delight. And all our dreams Were lit with gleams Of that lost land of reedy streams. Along whose brim Forever swim Pan's lilies, laughing up at him. [Illustration] IV But yesterday!... O blooms of May, And summer roses--where-away? O stars above; And lips of love, And all the honeyed sweets thereof!-- O lad and lass, And orchard pass, And briered lane, and daisied grass! O gleam and gloom, And woodland bloom, And breezy breaths of all perfume!-- No more for me Or mine shall be Thy raptures--save in memory,-- No more--no more-- Till through the Door Of Glory gleam the days of yore. [Illustration] SONG OF PARTING Say farewell, and let me go; Shatter every vow! All the future can bestow Will be welcome now! And if this fair hand I touch I have worshipped overmuch, It was my mistake--and so, Say farewell, and let me go. Say farewell, and let me go: Murmur no regret, Stay your tear-drops ere they flow-- Do not waste them yet! They might pour as pours the rain, And not wash away the pain: I have tried them and I know.-- Say farewell, and let me go. Say farewell, and let me go: Think me not untrue-- True as truth is, even so I am true to you! If the ghost of love may stay Where my fond heart dies to-day, I am with you alway--so, Say farewell, and let me go. [Illustration] OUR KIND OF A MAN I The kind of a man for you and me! He faces the world unflinchingly, And smites, as long as the wrong resists, With a knuckled faith and force like fists: He lives the life he is preaching of, And loves where most is the need of love; His voice is clear to the deaf man's ears, And his face sublime through the blind man's tears; The light shines out where the clouds were dim, And the widow's prayer goes up for him; The latch is clicked at the hovel door And the sick man sees the sun once more, And out o'er the barren fields he sees Springing blossoms and waving trees, Feeling as only the dying may, That God's own servant has come that way, Smoothing the path as it still winds on Through the Golden Gate where his loved have gone. II The kind of a man for me and you! However little of worth we do He credits full, and abides in trust That time will teach us how more is just. He walks abroad, and he meets all kinds Of querulous and uneasy minds, And, sympathizing, he shares the pain Of the doubts that rack us, heart and brain; And, knowing this, as we grasp his hand, We are surely coming to understand! He looks on sin with pitying eyes-- E'en as the Lord, since Paradise,-- Else, should we read, "Though our sins should glow As scarlet, they shall be white as snow"?-- And, feeling still, with a grief half glad, That the bad are as good as the good are bad, He strikes straight out for the Right--and he Is the kind of a man for you and me! [Illustration] "HOW DID YOU REST, LAST NIGHT?" "How did you rest, last night?"-- I've heard my gran'pap say Them words a thousand times--that's right-- Jes them words thataway! As punctchul-like as morning dast To ever heave in sight Gran'pap 'ud allus haf to ast-- "How did you rest, last night?" [Illustration] Us young-uns used to grin, At breakfast, on the sly, And mock the wobble of his chin And eyebrows belt so high And kind: _"How did you rest, last night?"_ We'd mumble and let on Our voices trimbled, and our sight Was dim, and hearin' gone. * * * * * Bad as I used to be, All I'm a-wantin' is As puore and ca'm a sleep fer me And sweet a sleep as his! And so I pray, on Jedgment Day To wake, and with its light See _his_ face dawn, and hear him say-- "How did you rest, last night?" [Illustration] [Illustration] OUT OF THE HITHERWHERE Out of the hitherwhere into the Yon-- The land that the Lord's love rests upon; Where one may rely on the friends he meets, And the smiles that greet him along the streets: Where the mother that left you years ago Will lift the hands that were folded so, And put them about you, with all the love And tenderness you are dreaming of. Out of the hitherwhere into the Yon-- Where all of the friends of your youth have gone,-- Where the old schoolmate that laughed with you, Will laugh again as he used to do, Running to meet you, with such a face As lights like a moon the wondrous place Where God is living, and glad to live, Since He is the Master and may forgive. Out of the hitherwhere into the Yon!-- Stay the hopes we are leaning on-- You, Divine, with Your merciful eyes Looking down from the far-away skies,-- Smile upon us, and reach and take Our worn souls Home for the old home's sake.-- And so Amen,--for our all seems gone Out of the hitherwhere into the Yon. [Illustration] [Illustration] JACK-IN-THE-BOX _(Grandfather, musing.)_ In childish days! O memory, You bring such curious things to me!-- Laughs to the lip--tears to the eye, In looking on the gifts that lie Like broken playthings scattered o'er Imagination's nursery floor! Did these old hands once click the key That let "Jack's" box-lid upward fly, And that blear-eyed, fur-whiskered elf Leap, as though frightened at himself, And quiveringly lean and stare At me, his jailer, laughing there? [Illustration] A child then! Now--I only know They call me very old; and so They will not let me have my way,-- But uselessly I sit all day Here by the chimney-jamb, and poke The lazy fire, and smoke and smoke, And watch the wreaths swoop up the flue, And chuckle--ay, I often do-- Seeing again, all vividly, Jack-in-the-box leap, as in glee To see how much he looks like me! ... They talk. I can't hear what they say-- But I am glad, clean through and through Sometimes, in fancying that they Are saying, "Sweet, that fancy strays In age back to our childish days!" [Illustration] THE BOYS Where are they?--the friends of my childhood enchanted-- The clear, laughing eyes looking back in my own, And the warm, chubby fingers my palms have so wanted, As when we raced over Pink pastures of clover, And mocked the quail's whir and the bumblebee's drone? Have the breezes of time blown their blossomy faces Forever adrift down the years that are flown? Am I never to see them romp back to their places, Where over the meadow, In sunshine and shadow, The meadow-larks trill, and the bumblebees drone? Where are they? Ah! dim in the dust lies the clover; The whippoorwill's call has a sorrowful tone, And the dove's--I have wept at it over and over;-- I want the glad luster Of youth, and the cluster Of faces asleep where the bumblebees drone! [Illustration] [Illustration] IT'S _GOT_ TO BE "When it's _got_ to be,"--like! always say, As I notice the years whiz past, And know each day is a yesterday, When we size it up, at last,-- Same as I said when my _boyhood_ went And I knowed _we_ had to quit,-- "It's _got_ to be, and it's _goin'_ to be!"-- So I said "Good-by" to _it_. It's _got_ to be, and it's _goin'_ to be! So at least I always try To kind o' say in a hearty way,-- "Well, it's _got_ to be. Good-by!" The time jes melts like a late, last snow,-- When it's _got_ to be, it melts! But I aim to keep a cheerful mind, Ef I can't keep nothin' else! I knowed, when I come to twenty-one, That I'd soon be twenty-two,-- So I waved one hand at the soft young man, And I said, "Good-by to _you_!" It's _got_ to be, and it's _goin'_ to be! So at least I always try To kind o' say, in a cheerful way,-- "Well, it's _got_ to be.--Good-by!" They kep' a-goin', the years and years, Yet still I smiled and smiled,-- For I'd said "Good-by" to my single life, And I now had a wife and child: Mother and son and the father--one,-- Till, last, on her bed of pain, She jes' smiled up, like she always done,-- And I said "Good-by" again. It's _got_ to be, and it's _goin'_ to be! So at least I always try To kind o' say, in a humble way,-- "Well, it's _got_ to be. Good-by!" [Illustration] And then my boy--as he growed to be Almost a man in size,-- Was more than a pride and joy to me, With his mother's smilin' eyes.-- He gimme the slip, when the War broke out, And followed me. And I Never knowed till the first right's end ... I found him, and then, ... "Good-by." It's _got_ to be, and it's _goin'_ to be! So at least I always try To kind o' say, in a patient way, "Well, it's _got_ to be. Good-by!" I have said, "Good-by!--Good-by!--Good-by!" With my very best good will, All through life from the first,--and I Am a cheerful old man still: But it's _got_ to end, and it's _goin'_ to end! And this is the thing I'll do,-- With my last breath I will laugh, O Death, And say "Good-by" to _you_!... It's _got_ to be! And again I say,-- When his old scythe circles high, I'll laugh--of course, in the kindest way,-- As I say "Good-by!--Good-by!" [Illustration] "OUT OF REACH?" You think them "out of reach," your dead? Nay, by my own dead, I deny Your "out of reach."--Be comforted: 'Tis not so far to die. O by their dear remembered smiles And outheld hands and welcoming speech, They wait for us, thousands of miles This side of "out-of-reach." [Illustration] "A BRAVE REFRAIN" When snow is here, and the trees look weird, And the knuckled twigs are gloved with frost; When the breath congeals in the drover's beard, And the old pathway to the barn is lost; When the rooster's crow is sad to hear, And the stamp of the stabled horse is vain, And the tone of the cow-bell grieves the ear-- O then is the time for a brave refrain! When the gears hang stiff on the harness-peg, And the tallow gleams in frozen streaks; And the old hen stands on a lonesome leg, And the pump sounds hoarse and the handle squeaks; When the woodpile lies in a shrouded heap, And the frost is scratched from the window-pane And anxious eyes from the inside peep-- O then is the time for a brave refrain! When the ax-helve warms at the chimney-jamb, And hob-nailed shoes on the hearth below, And the house-cat curls in a slumber calm, And the eight-day clock ticks loud and slow; When the harsh broom-handle jabs the ceil 'Neath the kitchen-loft, and the drowsy brain Sniffs the breath of the morning meal-- O then is the time for a brave refrain! ENVOI When the skillet seethes, and a blubbering hot Tilts the lid of the coffee-pot, And the scent of the buckwheat cake grows plain-- O then is the time for a brave refrain! [Illustration] IN THE EVENING I In the evening of our days, When the first far stars above Glimmer dimmer, through the haze, Than the dewy eyes of love, Shall we mournfully revert To the vanished morns and Mays Of our youth, with hearts that hurt,-- In the evening of our days? II Shall the hand that holds your own Till the twain are thrilled as now, Be withheld, or colder grown? Shall my kiss upon your brow Falter from its high estate? And, in all forgetful ways, Shall we sit apart and wait-- In the evening of our days? III Nay, my wife--my life!--the gloom Shall enfold us velvetwise, And my smile shall be the groom Of the gladness of your eyes: Gently, gently as the dew Mingles with the darkening maze, I shall fall asleep with you-- In the evening of our days. [Illustration] JIM He was jes a plain, ever'-day, all-round kind of a jour., Consumpted-lookin'--but la! The jokiest, wittiest, story-tellin', song-singin', laughin'est, jolliest Feller you ever saw! Worked at jes coarse work, but you kin bet he was fine enough in his talk, And his feelin's, too! Lordy! ef he was on'y back on his bench ag'in to-day, a-carryin' on Like he ust to do! Any shop-mate'll tell you there never was, on top o' dirt, A better feller'n Jim! You want a favor, and couldn't git it anywheres else-- You could git it o' him! Most free-heartedest man thataway in the world, I guess! Give up ever' nickel he's worth-- And, ef you'd a-wanted it, and named it to him, and it was his, He'd a-give you the earth! Allus a-reachin' out, Jim was, and a-he'ppin' some Pore feller onto his feet-- He'd a-never a-keered how hungry he was hisse'f, So's _the feller_ got somepin' to eat! Didn't make no differ'nee at all to him how _he_ was dressed, He ust to say to me,-- "You togg out a tramp purty comfortable in winter-time, a-huntin' a job, And he'll git along!" says he. [Illustration] Jim didn't have, ner never could git ahead, so overly much O' this world's goods at a time.-- 'Fore now I've saw him, more'n one't, lend a dollar, and haf to, more'n like, Turn round and borry a dime! Mebby laugh and joke about it hisse'f fer a while--then jerk his coat. And kindo' square his chin, Tie on his apern, and squat hisse'f on his old shoe-bench, And go to peggin' ag'in! Patientest feller, too, I reckon, 'at ever jes natchurly Coughed hisse'f to death! Long enough after his voice was lost he'd laugh in a whisper and say He could git ever'thing but his breath-- "_You fellers_," he'd sorto' twinkle his eyes and say, "Is a-pilin' onto me A mighty big debt fer that-air little weak-chested ghost o' mine to pack Through all Eternity!" Now there was a man 'at jes 'peared-like, to me, 'At ortn't _a-never_ a-died! "But death hain't a-showin' no favors," the old boss said-- "On'y to _Jim_!" and cried: And Wigger, who puts up the best sewed-work in the shop-- Er the whole blame neighborhood,-- He says, "When God made Jim, I bet you He didn't do anything else that day But jes set around and feel good!" [Illustration] [Illustration] THE BEST IS GOOD ENOUGH I quarrel not with Destiny, But make the best of everything-- The best is good enough for me. Leave Discontent alone, and she Will shut her month and let _you_ sing. I quarrel not with Destiny. I take some things, or let 'em be-- Good gold has always got the ring; The best is good enough for me. Since Fate insists on secrecy, I have no arguments to bring-- quarrel not with Destiny. The fellow that goes "haw" for "gee" Will find he hasn't got full swing. The best is good enough for me. One only knows our needs, and He Does all of the distributing. I quarrel not with Destiny; The best is good enough for me. [Illustration] HONEY DRIPPING FROM THE COMB How slight a thing may set one's fancy drifting Upon the dead sea of the Past!--A view-- Sometimes an odor--or a rooster lifting A far-off "_Ooh! ooh-ooh!_" And suddenly we find ourselves astray In some wood's-pasture of the Long Ago-- Or idly dream again upon a day Of rest we used to know. I bit an apple but a moment since-- A wilted apple that the worm had spurned.-- Yet hidden in the taste were happy hints Of good old days returned.-- And so my heart, like some enraptured lute, Tinkles a tune so tender and complete, God's blessing must be resting on the fruit-- So bitter, yet so sweet! AS MY UNCLE USED TO SAY I've thought a power on men and things, As my uncle ust to say,-- And ef folks don't work as they pray, i jings! W'y, they ain't no use to pray! Ef you want somepin', and jes dead-set A-pleadin' fer it with both eyes wet, And _tears_ won't bring it, w'y, you try _sweat_, As my uncle ust to say. They's some don't know their A, B, C's, As my uncle ust to say, And yit don't waste no candle-grease, Ner whistle their lives away! But ef they can't write no book, ner rhyme No singin' song fer to last all time, They can blaze the way fer the march sublime, As my uncle ust to say. [Illustration] Whoever's Foreman of all things here, As my uncle ust to say, He knows each job 'at we're best fit fer, And our round-up, night and day: And a-sizin' _His_ work, east and west, And north and south, and worst and best. I ain't got nothin' to suggest, As my uncle ust to say. [Illustration] WE MUST BELIEVE _"Lord, I believe: help Thou mine unbelief."_ We must believe-- Being from birth endowed with love and trust-- Born unto loving;--and how simply just That love--that faith!--even in the blossom-face The babe drops dreamward in its resting-place, Intuitively conscious of the sure Awakening to rapture ever pure And sweet and saintly as the mother's own, Or the awed father's, as his arms are thrown O'er wife and child, to round about them weave And wind and bind them as one harvest-sheaf Of love--to cleave to, and _forever_ cleave.... Lord, I believe: Help Thou mine unbelief. We must believe-- Impelled since infancy to seek some clear Fulfillment, still withheld all seekers here;-- For never have we seen perfection nor The glory we are ever seeking for: But we _have_ seen--all mortal souls as one-- Have seen its _promise_, in the morning sun-- Its blest assurance, in the stars of night;-- The ever-dawning of the dark to light;-- The tears down-falling from all eyes that grieve-- The eyes uplifting from all deeps of grief, Yearning for what at last we shall receive.... Lord, I believe: Help Thou mine unbelief. We must believe-- For still all unappeased our hunger goes, From life's first waking, to its last repose: The briefest life of any babe, or man Outwearing even the allotted span, Is each a life unfinished--incomplete: For these, then, of th' outworn, or unworn feet Denied one toddling step--O there must be Some fair, green, flowery pathway endlessly Winding through lands Elysian! Lord, receive And lead each as Thine Own Child--even the Chief Of us who didst Immortal life achieve.... Lord, I believe: Help Thou mine unbelief. A GOOD MAN I A good man never dies-- In worthy deed and prayer And helpful hands, and honest eyes, If smiles or tears be there: Who lives for you and me-- Lives for the world he tries To help--he lives eternally. A good man never dies. II Who lives to bravely take His share of toil and stress, And, for his weaker fellows' sake, Makes every burden less,-- He may, at last, seem worn-- Lie fallen--hands and eyes Folded--yet, though we mourn and mourn, A good man never dies. [Illustration] [Illustration] THE OLD DAYS The old days--the far days-- The overdear and fair!-- The old days--the lost days-- How lovely they were! The old days of Morning, With the dew-drench on the flowers And apple-buds and blossoms Of those old days of ours. Then was the _real_ gold Spendthrift Summer flung; Then was the _real_ song Bird or Poet sung! There was never censure then,-- Only honest praise-- And all things were worthy of it In the old days. There bide the true friends-- The first and the best; There clings the green grass Close where they rest: Would they were here? No;-- Would _we_ were _there_!... The old days--the lost days-- How lovely they were! [Illustration] [Illustration] A SPRING SONG AND A LATER She sang a song of May for me, Wherein once more I heard The mirth of my glad infancy-- The orchard's earliest bird-- The joyous breeze among the trees New-clad in leaf and bloom, And there the happy honey-bees In dewy gleam and gloom. So purely, sweetly on the sense Of heart and spirit fell Her song of Spring, its influence-- Still irresistible,-- Commands me here--with eyes ablur-- To mate her bright refrain. Though I but shed a rhyme for her As dim as Autumn rain. KNEELING WITH HERRICK Dear Lord, to Thee my knee is bent-- Give me content-- Full-pleasured with what comes to me, Whate'er it be: An humble roof--a frugal board, And simple hoard; The wintry fagot piled beside The chimney wide, While the enwreathing flames up-sprout And twine about The brazen dogs that guard my hearth And household worth: Tinge with the ember's ruddy glow The rafters low; And let the sparks snap with delight, As fingers might That mark deft measures of some tune The children croon: Then, with good friends, the rarest few Thou boldest true, Ranged round about the blaze, to share My comfort there,-- Give me to claim the service meet That makes each seat A place of honor, and each guest Loved as the rest. [Illustration] [Illustration] THE RAINY MORNING The dawn of the day was dreary, And the lowering clouds o'erhead Wept in a silent sorrow Where the sweet sunshine lay dead; And a wind came out of the eastward Like an endless sigh of pain, And the leaves fell down in the pathway And writhed in the falling rain. I had tried in a brave endeavor To chord my harp with the sun, But the strings would slacken ever, And the task was a weary one: And so, like a child impatient And sick of a discontent, I bowed in a shower of teardrops And mourned with the instrument. And lo! as I bowed, the splendor Of the sun bent over me, With a touch as warm and tender As a father's hand might be: And even as I felt its presence, My clouded soul grew bright, And the tears, like the rain of morning, Melted in mists of light. [Illustration] [Illustration] REACH YOUR HAND TO ME Reach your hand to me, my friend, With its heartiest caress-- Sometime there will come an end To its present faithfulness-- Sometime I may ask in vain For the touch of it again, When between us land or sea Holds it ever back from me. Sometime I may need it so, Groping somewhere in the night, It will seem to me as though Just a touch, however light, Would make all the darkness day, And along some sunny way Lead me through an April-shower Of my tears to this fair hour. O the present is too sweet To go on forever thus! Round the corner of the street Who can say what waits for us?-- Meeting--greeting, night and day, Faring each the selfsame way-- Still somewhere the path must end.-- Reach your hand to me, my friend! [Illustration] [Illustration] TO MY OLD FRIEND, WILLIAM LEACHMAN Fer forty year and better you have been a friend to me, Through days of sore afflictions and dire adversity, You allus had a kind word of counsul to impart, Which was like a healin' 'intment to the sorrow of my hart. When I burried my first womern, William Leachman, it was you Had the only consolation that I could listen to-- Fer I knowed you had gone through it and had rallied from the blow, And when you said I'd do the same, I knowed you'd ort to know. But that time I'll long remember; how I wundered here and thare-- Through the settin'-room and kitchen, and out in the open air-- And the snowflakes whirlin', whirlin', and the fields a frozen glare, And the neghbors' sleds and wagons congergatin' ev'rywhare. I turned my eyes to'rds heaven, but the sun was hid away; I turned my eyes to'rds earth again, but all was cold and gray; And the clock, like ice a-crackin', clickt the icy hours in two-- And my eyes'd never thawed out ef it hadn't been fer you! We set thare by the smoke-house--me and you out thare alone-- Me a-thinkin'--you a-talkin' in a soothin' undertone-- You a-talkin'--me a-thinkin' of the summers long ago, And a-writin' "Marthy--Marthy" with my finger in the snow! [Illustration] William Leachman, I can see you jest as plane as I could then; And your hand is on my shoulder, and you rouse me up again, And I see the tears a-drippin' from your own eyes, as you say: "Be rickonciled and bear it--we but linger fer a day!" At the last Old Settlers' Meetin' we went j'intly, you and me-- Your hosses and my wagon, as you wanted it to be; And sence I can remember, from the time we've neghbored here, In all sich friendly actions you have double-done your sheer. It was better than the meetin', too, that nine-mile talk we had Of the times when we first settled here and travel was so bad; When we had to go on hoss-back, and sometimes on "Shanks's mare," And "blaze" a road fer them behind that had to travel thare. And now we was a-trottin' 'long a level gravel pike, In a big two-hoss road-wagon, jest as easy as you like-- Two of us on the front seat, and our wimmern-folks behind, A-settin' in theyr Winsor-cheers in perfect peace of mind! And we pinted out old landmarks, nearly faded out of sight:-- Thare they ust to rob the stage-coach; thare Gash Morgan had the fight With the old stag-deer that pronged him--how he battled fer his life, And lived to prove the story by the handle of his knife. Thare the first griss-mill was put up in the Settlement, and we Had tuck our grindin' to it in the Fall of Forty-three-- When we tuck our rifles with us, techin' elbows all the way, And a-stickin' right together ev'ry minute, night and day. [Illustration] Thare ust to stand the tavern that they called the "Travelers' Rest," And thare, beyent the covered bridge, "The Counter-fitters' Nest"-- Whare they claimed the house was ha'nted--that a man was murdered thare, And burried underneath the floor, er 'round the place somewhare. And the old Plank-road they laid along in Fifty-one er two-- You know we talked about the times when that old road was new: How "Uncle Sam" put down that road and never taxed the State Was a problem, don't you rickollect, we couldn't _dim_-onstrate? Ways was devius, William Leachman, that me and you has past; But as I found you true at first, I find you true at last; And, now the time's a-comin' mighty nigh our jurney's end, I want to throw wide open all my soul to you, my friend. With the stren'th of all my bein', and the heat of hart and brane, And ev'ry livin' drop of blood in artery and vane, I love you and respect you, and I venerate your name, Fer the name of William Leachman and True Manhood's jest the same! [Illustration] A BACKWARD LOOK As I sat smoking, alone, yesterday, And lazily leaning back in my chair, Enjoying myself in a general way-- Allowing my thoughts a holiday From weariness, toil and care,-- My fancies--doubtless, for ventilation-- Left ajar the gates of my mind,-- And Memory, seeing the situation, Slipped out in street of "Auld Lang Syne." Wandering ever with tireless feet Through scenes of silence, and jubilee Of long-hushed voices; and faces sweet Were thronging the shadowy side of the street As far as the eye could see; Dreaming again, in anticipation, The same old dreams of our boyhood's days That never come true, from the vague sensation Of walking asleep in the world's strange ways. Away to the house where I was born! And there was the selfsame clock that ticked From the close of dusk to the burst of morn, When life-warm hands plucked the golden corn And helped when the apples were picked. And the "chany-dog" on the mantel-shelf, With the gilded collar and yellow eyes, Looked just as at first, when I hugged myself Sound asleep with the dear surprise. And down to the swing in the locust tree, Where the grass was worn from the trampled ground And where "Eck" Skinner, "Old" Carr, and three Or four such other boys used to be Doin' "sky-scrapers," or "whirlin' round:" And again Bob climbed for the bluebird's nest, And again "had shows" in the buggy-shed Of Guymon's barn, where still, unguessed, The old ghosts romp through the best days dead! And again I gazed from the old school-room With a wistful look of a long June day, When on my cheek was the hectic bloom Caught of Mischief, as I presume-- He had such a "partial" way, It seemed, toward me.--And again I thought Of a probable likelihood to be Kept in after school--for a girl was caught Catching a note from me. [Illustration] And down through the woods to the swimming-hole-- Where the big, white, hollow, old sycamore grows,-- And we never cared when the water was cold. And always "clucked" the boy that told On the fellow that tied the clothes.-- When life went so like a dreamy rhyme That it seems to me now that then The world was having a jollier time Than it ever will have again. [Illustration] [Illustration] AT SEA O we go down to sea in ships-- But Hope remains behind, And Love, with laughter on his lips, And Peace, of passive mind; While out across the deeps of night, With lifted sails of prayer, We voyage off in quest of light, Nor find it anywhere. O Thou who wroughtest earth and sea, Yet keepest from our eyes The shores of an eternity In calms of Paradise, Blow back upon our foolish quest With all the driving rain Of blinding tears and wild unrest, And waft us home again. [Illustration] THE OLD GUITAR Neglected now is the old guitar And moldering into decay; Fretted with many a rift and scar That the dull dust hides away, While the spider spins a silver star In its silent lips to-day. The keys hold only nerveless strings-- The sinews of brave old airs Are pulseless now; and the scarf that clings So closely here declares A sad regret in its ravelings And the faded hue it wears. But the old guitar, with a lenient grace, Has cherished a smile for me; And its features hint of a fairer face That comes with a memory Of a flower-and-perfume-haunted place And a moonlit balcony. Music sweeter than words confess Or the minstrel's powers invent, Thrilled here once at the light caress Of the fairy hands that lent This excuse for the kiss I press On the dear old instrument. The rose of pearl with the jeweled stem Still blooms; and the tiny sets In the circle all are here; the gem In the keys, and the silver frets; But the dainty fingers that danced o'er them-- Alas for the heart's regrets!-- Alas for the loosened strings to-day, And the wounds of rift and scar On a worn old heart, with its roundelay Enthralled with a stronger bar That Fate weaves on, through a dull decay Like that of the old guitar! [Illustration] [Illustration] JOHN McKEEN John McKeen, in his rusty dress, His loosened collar, and swarthy throat; His face unshaven, and none the less, His hearty laugh and his wholesomeness, And the wealth of a workman's vote! Bring him, O Memory, here once more, And tilt him back in his Windsor chair By the kitchen-stove, when the day is o'er And the light of the hearth is across the floor, And the crickets everywhere! And let their voices be gladly blent With a watery jingle of pans and spoons, And a motherly chirrup of sweet content, And neighborly gossip and merriment, And old-time fiddle-tunes! Tick the clock with a wooden sound, And fill the hearing with childish glee Of rhyming riddle, or story found In the Robinson Crusoe, leather-bound Old book of the Used-to-be! John McKeen of the Past! Ah, John, To have grown ambitious in worldly ways!-- To have rolled your shirt-sleeves down, to don A broadcloth suit, and, forgetful, gone Out on election days! John, ah, John! did it prove your worth To yield you the office you still maintain? To fill your pockets, but leave the dearth Of all the happier things on earth To the hunger of heart and brain? [Illustration] Under the dusk of your villa trees, Edging the drives where your blooded span Paw the pebbles and wait your ease,-- Where are the children about your knees, And the mirth, and the happy man? The blinds of your mansion are battened to; Your faded wife is a close recluse; And your "finished" daughters will doubtless do Dutifully all that is willed of you, And marry as you shall choose!-- But O for the old-home voices, blent With the watery jingle of pans and spoons, And the motherly chirrup of glad content, And neighborly gossip and merriment, And the old-time fiddle-tunes! [Illustration] [Illustration] THROUGH SLEEPY-LAND Where do you go when you go to sleep, Little Boy! Little Boy! where? 'Way--'way in where's Little Bo-Peep, And Little Boy Blue, and the Cows and Sheep A-wandering 'way in there;--in there-- A-wandering 'way in there! And what do you see when lost in dreams, Little Boy, 'way in there? Firefly-glimmers and glowworm-gleams, And silvery, low, slow-sliding streams, And mermaids, smiling out--'way in where They're a-hiding--'way in there! Where do you go when the Fairies call, Little Boy! Little Boy! where? Wade through the clews of the grasses tall, Hearing the weir and the waterfall And the Wee Folk--'way in there--in there-- And the Kelpies--'way in there! And what do you do when you wake at dawn, Little Boy! Little Boy! what? Hug my Mommy and kiss her on Her smiling eyelids, sweet and wan, And tell her everything I've forgot About, a-wandering 'way in there-- Through the blind-world 'way in there! [Illustration] "THEM OLD CHEERY WORDS" Pap he allus ust to say, "Chris'mus comes but onc't a year!" Liked to hear him that-a-way, In his old split-bottomed cheer By the fireplace here at night-- Wood all in,--and room all bright, Warm and snug, and folks all here: "Chris'mus comes but onc't a year!" Me and 'Lize, and Warr'n and Jess And Eldory home fer two Weeks' vacation; and, I guess, Old folks tickled through and through, Same as _we_ was,--"Home onc't more Fer another Chris'mus--shore!" Pap 'u'd say, and tilt his cheer,-- "Chris'mus comes but onc't a year!" Mostly Pap was ap' to be Ser'ous in his "daily walk," As he called it; giner'ly Was no hand to joke er talk. Fac's is, Pap had never be'n Rugged-like at all--and then Three years in the army had Hepped to break him purty bad. [Illustration] Never _flinched_! but frost and snow Hurt his wownd in winter. But You bet _Mother_ knowed it, though!-- Watched his feet, and made him putt On his flannen; and his knee, Where it never healed up, he Claimed was "well now--mighty near-- Chris'mus comes but onc't a year!" "Chris'mus comes but onc't a year!" Pap 'u'd say, and snap his eyes ... Row o' apples sputter'n' here Round the hearth, and me and 'Lize Crackin' hicker'-nuts; and Warr'n And Eldory parchin' corn; And whole raft o' young folks here. "Chris'mus comes but onc't a year!" Mother tuk most comfort in Jest a-heppin' Pap: She'd fill His pipe fer him, er his tin O' hard cider; er set still And read fer him out the pile O' newspapers putt on file Whilse he was with Sherman--(She Knowed the whole war-history!) Sometimes he'd git het up some.-- "Boys," he'd say, "and you girls, too, Chris'mus is about to come; So, as you've a right to do, _Celebrate_ it! Lots has died, Same as Him they crucified, That you might be happy here. Chris'mus comes but onc't a year!" Missed his voice last Chris'mus--missed Them old cheery words, you know. Mother belt up tel she kissed All of us--then had to go And break down! And I laughs: "Here! 'Chris'mus comes but onc't a year!" "Them's his very words," sobbed she, "When he asked to marry me." "Chris'mus comes but onc't a year!" "Chris'mus comes but onc't a year!" Over, over, still I hear, "Chris'mus comes but onc't a year!" Yit, like him, I'm goin' to smile And keep cheerful all the while: _Allus_ Chris'mus _There_--And here "Chris'mus comes but onc't a year!" [Illustration] TO THE JUDGE _A Voice From the Interior of Old Hoop-Pole Township_ Friend of my earliest youth, Can't you arrange to come down And visit a fellow out here in the woods-- Out of the dust of the town? Can't you forget you're a Judge And put by your dolorous frown And tan your wan face in the smile of a friend-- Can't you arrange to come down? Can't you forget for a while The arguments prosy and drear,-- To lean at full-length in indefinite rest In the lap of the greenery here? Can't you kick over "the Bench," And "husk" yourself out of your gown To dangle your legs where the fishing is good-- Can't you arrange to come down? Bah! for your office of State! And bah! for its technical lore! What does our President, high in his chair, But wish himself low as before! Pick between peasant and king,-- Poke your bald head through a crown Or shadow it here with the laurels of Spring!-- Can't you arrange to come down? "Judge it" out _here_, if you will,-- The birds are in session by dawn; You can draw, not _complaints_, but a sketch of the hill And a breath that your betters have drawn; You can open your heart, like a case, To a jury of kine, white and brown, And their verdict of "Moo" will just satisfy you!-- Can't you arrange to come down? [Illustration] Can't you arrange it, old Pard?-- Pigeonhole Blackstone and Kent!-- Here we have "Breitmann," and Ward, Twain, Burdette, Nye, and content! Can't you forget you're a Judge And put by your dolorous frown And tan your wan face in the smile of a friend-- Can't you arrange to come down? [Illustration] [Illustration] OUR BOYHOOD HAUNTS Ho! I'm going back to where We were youngsters.--Meet me there, Dear old barefoot chum, and we Will be as we used to be,-- Lawless rangers up and down The old creek beyond the town-- Little sunburnt gods at play, Just as in that far-away:-- Water nymphs, all unafraid, Shall smile at us from the brink Of the old millrace and wade Tow'rd us as we kneeling drink At the spring our boyhood knew, Pure and clear as morning-dew: And, as we are rising there, Doubly dow'rd to hear and see, We shall thus be made aware Of an eerie piping, heard High above the happy bird In the hazel: And then we, Just across the creek, shall see (Hah! the goaty rascal!) Pan Hoof it o'er the sloping green, Mad with his own melody, Aye, and (bless the beasty man!) Stamping from the grassy soil Bruiséd scents of _fleur-de-lis_, Boneset, mint and pennyroyal. [Illustration] MY DANCIN'-DAYS IS OVER What is it in old fiddle-chunes 'at makes me ketch my breath And ripples up my backbone tel I'm tickled most to death?-- Kindo' like that sweet-sick feelin', in the long sweep of a swing, The first you ever swung in, with yer first sweet-heart, i jing!-- Yer first picnic--yer first ice-cream--yer first o' _ever'thing_ 'At happened 'fore yer dancin'-days wuz over! I never understood it--and I s'pose I never can,-- But right in town here, yisterd'y, I heerd a pore blindman A-fiddlin' old "Gray Eagle"--_And_-sir! I jes stopped my load O' hay and listened at him--yes, and watched the way he "bow'd,"-- And back I went, plum forty year', with boys and girls I knowed And loved, long 'fore my dancin'-days wuz over!-- [Illustration] At high noon in yer city,--with yer blame Magnetic-Cars A-hummin' and a-screetchin' past--and bands and G.A.R.'s A-marchin'--and fire-ingines.--_All_ the noise, the whole street through, Wuz lost on me!--I only heerd a whipperwill er two, It 'peared-like, kindo' callin' 'crost the darkness and the dew, Them nights afore my dancin'-days wuz over. T'uz Chused'y-night at Wetherell's, er We'nsd'y-night at Strawn's, Er Fourth-o'-July-night at uther Tomps's house er John's!-- With old Lew Church from Sugar Crick, with that old fiddle he Had sawed clean through the Army, from Atlanty to the sea-- And yit he'd fetched, her home ag'in, so's he could play fer me One't more afore my dancin'-days wuz over! The woods 'at's all ben cut away wuz growin' same as then; The youngsters all wuz boys ag'in 'at's now all oldish men; And all the girls 'at _then_ wuz girls--I saw 'em, one and all, As _plain_ as then--the middle-sized, the short-and-fat, and tall-- And, 'peared-like, I danced "Tucker" fer 'em up and down the wall Jes like afore my dancin' days wuz over! * * * * * Yer _po_-leece they can holler "Say! _you_, Uncle! drive ahead!-- You can't use _all_ the right-o'-way!"--fer that wuz what they said!-- But, jes the same,--in spite of all 'at you call "interprise And prog-gress of _you_-folks Today," we're all of _fambly-ties_-- We're all got feelin's fittin' fer the _tears_ 'at's in our eyes Er the _smiles_ afore our dancin'-days is over. HER BEAUTIFUL HANDS O your hands--they are strangely fair! Fair--for the jewels that sparkle there,-- Fair--for the witchery of the spell That ivory keys alone can tell; But when their delicate touches rest Here in my own do I love them best, As I clasp with eager acquisitive spans My glorious treasure of beautiful hands! Marvelous--wonderful--beautiful hands! They can coax roses to bloom in the strands Of your brown tresses; and ribbons will twine. Under mysterious touches of thine, Into such knots as entangle the soul, And fetter the heart under such a control As only the strength of my love understands-- My passionate love for your beautiful hands. As I remember the first fair touch Of those beautiful hands that I love so much, I seem to thrill as I then was thrilled, Kissing the glove that I found unfilled-- When I met your gaze, and the queenly bow, As you said to me, laughingly, "Keep it now!" And dazed and alone in a dream I stand Kissing this ghost of your beautiful hand. When first I loved, in the long ago, And held your hand as I told you so-- Pressed and caressed it and gave it a kiss, And said "I could die for a hand like this!" Little I dreamed love's fulness yet Had to ripen when eyes were wet, And prayers were vain in their wild demands For one warm touch of your beautiful hands. Beautiful Hands! O Beautiful Hands! Could you reach out of the alien lands Where you are lingering, and give me, to-night, Only a touch--were it ever so light-- My heart were soothed, and my weary brain Would lull itself into rest again; For there is no solace the world commands Like the caress of your beautiful hands. [Illustration] 
15553	----	Proofreading Team. To My Mother. [Illustration] THE GOLDEN TREASURY OF AMERICAN SONGS AND LYRICS EDITED BY FREDERIC LAWRENCE KNOWLES _NEW REVISED EDITION_ [Illustration] BOSTON L.C. PAGE AND COMPANY (INCORPORATED) MDCCCXCIX Colonial Press: Electrotyped and Printed by C.H. Simonds & Co. Boston, Mass., U.S.A. PREFACE. The numerous collections of American verse share, I think, one fault in common: they include too much. Whether this has been a bid for popularity, a concession to Philistia, I cannot say; but the fact remains that all anthologies of American poetry are, so far as I know, more or less uncritical. The aim of the present book is different. In no case has a poem been included because it is widely known. The purpose of this compilation is solely that of preserving, in attractive and permanent form, about one hundred and fifty of the best lyrics of America. I am quite aware of the danger attending such exacting honor-rolls. At best, an editor's judgment is only personal, and the realization of this fact gives me no small diffidence in attempting to decide what American lyrics are best worthy of preservation. That every reader of the "American Treasury" will find some favorite poem omitted, there can be little doubt. But the effort made in this book towards a careful estimate of our lyrical poetry is at any rate, I feel sure, in a good direction. There appear in the index of Mr. Stedman's "Poets of America" the names of over three hundred native writers. American verse in the last half century has been extraordinarily prolific. It would seem that the time has come, in the course of our national literature, for proving all things and holding fast that which is good. The fact that the title of this compilation instantly calls to mind that of Mr. Palgrave's scholarly collection of English lyrics need not prove a disadvantage to the book if the purpose which led to the choice of name is understood. The verse of a single century produced in a new country should not be expected to equal the poetic wealth of an old and intellectual nation. But if American poetry cannot hope to rival the poetry of the mother country, it may at least be compared with it; and the fact of such a comparative point of view will aid rather than hinder the student of our native poetry in estimating its value. American verse has suffered at the hands both of its admirers and its enemies. Injudicious praise, no less than supercilious contempt, has reacted unfavorably on the fame of our poets. Again and again has some minor versifier been hailed as the "American Keats" or the "American Burns." Really excellent poets, though distinctly poets of second rank, have been elevated amid the blare of critical trumpets to the company of Wordsworth and Milton. All this is unprofitable and silly. But not much better is the attitude of certain critics who patronize everything in the English language which has been written outside of England. Though America has added--leaving Poe out of account--no distinctly new notes to English poetry, it has added certainly not a few true ones. A nation need never apologize for its literature when it has produced such lyrics--to go no further--as "On a Bust of Dante," "Ichabod," "The Chambered Nautilus," and the "Waterfowl." My method of arrangement is roughly chronological. The First Book, which is shorter than the others, might be called the book of Bryant; the Second, of Longfellow; and the Third, of Aldrich. Since the periods must of course overlap, this division of the poems can be at most only suggestive. I have made it no part of my design to grant to the better known poets a larger number of lyrics than those given later and younger men. I have paid no regard to that purely conventional idea of proportion, that would assign to five or six writers a dozen selections each, and to another set of poets, in proportion to their popular fame, half that number. We can safely leave the final adjustment of all rival claims to Time, the best critic; in the meanwhile having the more modest aim of selecting, irrespective of contemporary judgments, whatever is best suited to our purpose. A word more should be said about the title. I have not interpreted the term lyric so rigidly as to exclude sonnets, ballads, elegiac verse, or even pieces of almost pure description. If I had held to the strictest sense of lyric, this book would never have been compiled; for I suspect nothing will strike the reader more forcibly than the fact that, despite the excellence of the poems included, there is a notable lack of unconsciousness--of pure singing quality. Such things as Pinkney's "Health" and Holmes's "Old Ironsides" are the exception. The poems are composed cleverly, but they do not quite sing themselves to their own music. The best American verse, while not insincere, is seldom wholly spontaneous. This is not saying that much spontaneous verse has not been written in this country; much has been, but the singer's voice has too often been uncultivated, and the product inartistic. The names of many popular poets are entirely omitted. In no case, however, was this probably due to oversight. I have gone over carefully a wide field of verse, not without finding much to admire, but never quite happening upon that final touch of successful achievement where art and inspiration join. I am especially sorry to leave unrepresented a writer--more imaginative, possibly, than any American poet except Poe--whose utter contempt for technique in the ordinary sense places him wholly outside my present purpose. I wish to acknowledge various favors kindly shown by Professor C.T. Winchester, Professor Barrett Wendell, and Mr. H.E. Scudder. Thanks are also due Mr. T.B. Aldrich for the privilege of including the six poems from his pen, which were kindly selected for the book by the poet himself. The following firms deserve thanks for permitting the use of copyrighted poems: _Houghton, Mifflin & Co.:_ Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Christopher Pearse Cranch, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Annie Adams Fields, Louise Imogen Guiney, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Dean Howells, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Thomas William Parsons, John James Piatt, Lizette Woodworth Reese, Hiram Rich, Edward Rowland Sill, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Edmund Clarence Stedman, Bayard Taylor, Henry David Thoreau, Maurice Thompson, John Greenleaf Whittier, George Edward Woodberry. Selections from the works of the foregoing writers are included "by permission of and by special arrangement with Houghton, Mifflin & Co., publishers of the works of said authors." _D. Appleton & Co.:_ Fitz-Greene Halleck, William Cullen Bryant. _Lee & Shepard:_ Julia Ward Howe. _Porter & Coates:_ Charles Fenno Hoffman. _Roberts Brothers:_ Emily Dickinson, Helen Hunt Jackson, Louise Chandler Moulton. _Copeland & Day:_ John Banister Tabb, Richard Hovey. _W.A. Pond & Co.:_ Stephen Collins Foster. _Clark & Maynard:_ Nathaniel Parker Willis. _The Cassell Publishing Co.:_ John Boyle O'Reilly. _The Century Co.:_ Richard Watson Gilder, James Whitcomb Riley (Poems in the _Century Magazine_). _Estes & Lauriat:_ Lloyd Mifflin. _Lamson & Wolffe:_ Bliss Carman. _Charles Scribner's Sons:_ Henry Cuyler Bunner, Eugene Field, Sidney Lanier, Richard Henry Stoddard, Henry Van Dyke. CONTENTS. PAGE Absence of Little Wesley, The _J.W. Riley_ 280 After All _W. Winter_ 117 Aladdin _J.R. Lowell_ 128 Annabel Lee _E.A. Poe_ 10 Apart _J.J. Piatt_ 149 At Gibraltar _G.E. Woodberry_ 273 At Last _R.H. Stoddard_ 153 At Night _R.W. Gilder_ 217 Auspex _J.R. Lowell_ 192 Ballad _H.P. Spofford_ 202 Battle-field, The _W.C. Bryant_ 54 Battle-hymn of the Republic _I.W. Howe_ 108 Be Thou a Bird, My Soul _(?)_ 282 Bedouin Song _B. Taylor_ 85 Bereaved _J.W. Riley_ 263 Birds _R.H. Stoddard_ 193 Black Regiment, The _G.H. Boker_ 100 Bucket, The _S. Woodworth_ 8 Carolina _H. Timrod_ 104 Chambered Nautilus, The _O.W. Holmes_ 178 Chariot, The _E. Dickinson_ 264 Childhood _J.B. Tabb_ 230 City in the Sea, The _E.A. Poe_ 15 Concord Hymn _R.W. Emerson_ 74 Confided _J.B. Tabb_ 266 Coronation _H.H. Jackson_ 183 Crowded Street, The _W.C. Bryant_ 42 Day is Done, The _W. Longfellow_ 66 Days _R.W. Emerson_ 126 Death-bed, A _J. Aldrich_ 136 Destiny _T.B. Aldrich_ 210 Dirge for a Soldier _G.H. Boker_ 106 Discoverer, The _E.C. Stedman_ 150 Dutch Lullaby _E. Field_ 284 Eavesdropper, The _B. Carman_ 298 Evening Song _S. Lanier_ 215 Eve's Daughter _E.R. Sill_ 247 Fall of the Leaf, The _H.D. Thoreau_ 162 Farragut _W.T. Meredith_ 110 Fertility _M. Thompson_ 294 Fire of Driftwood, The _H.W. Longfellow_ 133 Flight, The _L. Mifflin_ 229 Flight of Youth, The _R.H. Stoddard_ 129 Fool's Prayer, The _E.R. Sill_ 205 Four Winds, The _C.H. Lüders_ 258 Future, The _E.R. Sill_ 219 Gondolieds _H.H. Jackson_ 155 Gravedigger, The _B. Carman_ 277 Haunted Palace _E.A. Poe_ 26 Health, A _E.C. Pinkney_ 12 Hebe _J.R. Lowell_ 64 He Made the Stars Also _L. Mifflin_ 257 Her Epitaph _T.W. Parsons_ 147 House of Death, The _L.C. Moulton_ 236 Humble-bee, The _R.W. Emerson_ 169 Hunting Song _R. Hovey_ 251 Ichabod _J.G. Whittier_ 69 In Absence _J.B. Tabb_ 267 In August _W.D. Howells_ 223 Indian Summer _E. Dickinson_ 265 In the Hospital _M.W. Howland_ 122 In the Twilight _J.R. Lowell_ 158 Israfel _E.A. Poe_ 21 Jerry an' Me _H. Rich_ 275 Katie _H. Timrod_ 140 Kings, The _L.I. Guiney_ 211 Last Leaf, The _O.W. Holmes_ 95 Little Boy Blue _E. Field_ 231 Maryland Yellow-throat, The _H. Van Dyke_ 287 Memory _T.B. Aldrich_ 241 Mood, A _T.B. Aldrich_ 242 "My Life is Like the Summer Rose" _R.H. Wilde_ 4 My Love _J.R. Lowell_ 142 My Maryland _J.R. Randall_ 113 My Playmate _J.G. Whittier_ 130 My Strawberry _H.H. Jackson_ 167 Nature _H.W. Longfellow_ 63 Nature _H.D. Thoreau_ 166 Negro Lullaby _P.L. Dunbar_ 225 Night _L. Mifflin_ 256 No More _B.F. Willson_ 197 "O Fairest of the Rural Maids" _W.C. Bryant_ 6 Old Ironsides _O.W. Holmes_ 76 Old Kentucky Home, The _S.C. Foster_ 98 On a Bust of Dante _T.W. Parsons_ 185 On an Intaglio Head of Minerva _T.B. Aldrich_ 248 On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake _F.G. Halleck_ 36 On the Life-mask of Abraham Lincoln _R.W. Gilder_ 207 Opportunity _E.R. Sill_ 283 Pan in Wall Street _E.C. Stedman_ 188 Paradisi Gloria _T.W. Parsons_ 201 Parting _E. Dickinson_ 252 Port of Ships, The _C.H. Miller_ 199 Prescience _T.B. Aldrich_ 221 Raven, The _E.A. Poe_ 45 Return, The _L.F. Tooker_ 260 Rhodora, The _R.W. Emerson_ 165 Sea's Voice, The _W.P. Foster_ 271 Secret, The _G.E. Woodberry_ 290 Serenade, A _E.C. Pinkney_ 14 Sesostris _L. Mifflin_ 300 She Came and Went _J.R. Lowell_ 145 Sigh, A _H.P. Spofford_ 196 Silence of Love, The _G.E. Woodberry_ 289 Sir Humphrey Gilbert _H.W. Longfellow_ 71 Skipper Ireson's Ride _J.G. Whittier_ 87 Sleeper, The _E.A. Poe_ 57 Song _R.W. Gilder_ 208 Song _J. Shaw_ 3 Song _R.H. Stoddard_ 127 Song of the Camp, The _B. Taylor_ 119 Song of the Chattahoochee _S. Lanier_ 268 Sparkling and Bright _C.F. Hoffman_ 32 Stanzas _C.P. Cranch_ 181 Still in Thy Love I Trust _A.A. Fields_ 218 Strong as Death _H.C. Bunner_ 233 Summer Rain, The _H.D. Thoreau_ 172 Telling the Bees _J.G. Whittier_ 137 "Thalatta" _J.B. Brown_ 154 That Day You Came _L.W. Reese_ 224 Thought _H.H. Jackson_ 180 Tide Rises, the Tide Falls, The _H.W. Longfellow_ 161 To a Dead Woman _H.C. Bunner_ 209 To America _G.H. Boker_ 75 To a Waterfowl _W.C. Bryant_ 29 To a Young Girl Dying _T.W. Parsons_ 198 To England _G.H. Boker_ 79 To Helen _E.A. Poe_ 31 To One in Paradise _E.A. Poe_ 34 To the Dandelion _J.R. Lowell_ 175 To the Fringed Gentian _W.C. Bryant_ 40 To the Past _W.C. Bryant_ 18 Toujours Amour _E.C. Stedman_ 194 Triumph _H.C. Bunner_ 213 Tropical Morning at Sea, A _E.R. Sill_ 238 Under the Violets _O.W. Holmes_ 124 Unseen Spirits _N.P. Willis_ 24 Valley of Unrest, The _E.A. Poe_ 38 Veery, The _H. Van Dyke_ 296 Village Blacksmith, The _H.W. Longfellow_ 92 Way to Arcady, The _H.C. Bunner_ 243 When the Sultan Goes to Ispahan _T.B. Aldrich_ 253 Whip-poor-will, The _H. Van Dyke_ 291 White Jessamine, The _J.B. Tabb_ 235 Wild Honeysuckle, The _P. Freneau_ 1 Woman's Thought, A _R.W. Gilder_ 227 Woods that Bring the Sunset Near, The _R.W. Gilder_ 216 Wreck of the Hesperus, The _H.W. Longfellow_ 80 BOOK FIRST. AMERICAN SONGS AND LYRICS The Wild Honeysuckle. Fair flower, that dost so comely grow, Hid in this silent, dull retreat, Untouched thy honey'd blossoms blow, Unseen thy little branches greet; No roving foot shall crush thee here, No busy hand provoke a tear. By Nature's self in white arrayed, She bade thee shun the vulgar eye, And planted here the guardian shade, And sent soft waters murmuring by; Thus quietly thy summer goes,-- Thy days declining to repose. Smit with those charms, that must decay, I grieve to see your future doom; They died--nor were those flowers more gay-- The flowers that did in Eden bloom; Unpitying frosts and Autumn's power Shall leave no vestige of this flower. From morning suns and evening dews At first thy little being came; If nothing once, you nothing lose, For when you die you are the same; The space between is but an hour, The frail duration of a flower. P. FRENEAU. Song. Who has robbed the ocean cave, To tinge thy lips with coral hue? Who from India's distant wave For thee those pearly treasures drew? Who from yonder orient sky Stole the morning of thine eye? Thousand charms, thy form to deck, From sea, and earth, and air are torn; Roses bloom upon thy cheek, On thy breath their fragrance borne. Guard thy bosom from the day, Lest thy snows should melt away. But one charm remains behind, Which mute earth can ne'er impart; Nor in ocean wilt thou find, Nor in the circling air, a heart. Fairest! wouldst thou perfect be, Take, oh, take that heart from me. J. SHAW. "My Life is Like the Summer Rose." My life is like the summer rose That opens to the morning sky, But ere the shades of evening close, Is scattered on the ground--to die! Yet on the rose's humble bed The sweetest dews of night are shed, As if she wept the waste to see,-- But none shall weep a tear for me! My life is like the autumn leaf That trembles in the moon's pale ray; Its hold is frail,--its date is brief, Restless,--and soon to pass away! Yet ere that leaf shall fall and fade, The parent tree will mourn its shade, The winds bewail the leafless tree,-- But none shall breathe a sigh for me! My life is like the prints which feet Have left on Tampa's desert strand; Soon as the rising tide shall beat, All trace will vanish from the sand; Yet, as if grieving to efface All vestige of the human race, On that lone shore loud moans the sea,-- But none, alas! shall mourn for me! R.H. WILDE. "O Fairest of the Rural Maids!" O Fairest of the rural maids! Thy birth was in the forest shades; Green boughs, and glimpses of the sky, Were all that met thine infant eye. Thy sports, thy wanderings, when a child, Were ever in the sylvan wild; And all the beauty of the place Is in thy heart and on thy face. The twilight of the trees and rocks Is in the light shade of thy locks; Thy step is as the wind, that weaves Its playful way among the leaves. Thine eyes are springs, in whose serene And silent waters heaven is seen; Their lashes are the herbs that look On their young figures in the brook. The forest depths, by foot unpressed, Are not more sinless than thy breast; The holy peace that fills the air Of those calm solitudes is there. W.C. BRYANT. The Bucket. How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood, When fond recollection presents them to view!-- The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled wild-wood, And every loved spot which my infancy knew! The wide-spreading pond, and the mill that stood by it; The bridge, and the rock where the cataract fell; The cot of my father, the dairy-house nigh it; And e'en the rude bucket that hung in the well,-- The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, The moss-covered bucket which hung in the well. That moss-covered vessel I hailed as a treasure; For often at noon, when returned from the field, I found it the source of an exquisite pleasure,-- The purest and sweetest that nature can yield. How ardent I seized it, with hands that were glowing, And quick to the white-pebbled bottom it fell! Then soon, with the emblem of truth overflowing, And dripping with coolness, it rose from the well, The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, The moss-covered bucket arose from the well. How sweet from the green, mossy brim to receive it, As, poised on the curb, it inclined to my lips! Not a full, blushing goblet could tempt me to leave it, The brightest that beauty or revelry sips. And now, far removed from the loved habitation, The tear of regret will intrusively swell, As fancy reverts to my father's plantation, And sighs for the bucket that hangs in the well,-- The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, The moss-covered bucket that hangs in the well. S. WOODWORTH. Annabel Lee. It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea, But we loved with a love that was more than love, I and my Annabel Lee; With a love that the wingèd seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me. And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee; So that her highborn kinsmen came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea. The angels, not half so happy in heaven, Went envying her and me; Yes, that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud by night, Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we, Of many far wiser than we; And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee. For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling,--my darling,--my life and my bride, In her sepulchre there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding sea. E.A. POE. A Health. I fill this cup to one made up Of loveliness alone,-- A woman, of her gentle sex The seeming paragon; To whom the better elements And kindly stars have given A form so fair, that, like the air, 'Tis less of earth than heaven. Her every tone is music's own, Like those of morning birds; And something more than melody Dwells ever in her words; The coinage of her heart are they, And from her lips each flows As one may see the burden'd bee Forth issue from the rose. Affections are as thoughts to her, The measures of her hours; Her feelings have the fragrancy, The freshness of young flowers; And lovely passions, changing oft, So fill her, she appears The image of themselves by turns,-- The idol of past years! Of her bright face one glance will trace A picture on the brain; And of her voice in echoing hearts A sound must long remain, But memory, such as mine of her, So very much endears, When death is nigh, my latest sigh Will not be life's, but hers. I fill this cup to one made up Of loveliness alone,-- A woman, of her gentle sex The seeming paragon. Her health! and would on earth there stood Some more of such a frame, That life might be all poetry, And weariness a name. E.C. PINKNEY. A Serenade. Look out upon the stars, my love, And shame them with thine eyes, On which, than on the lights above, There hang more destinies. Night's beauty is the harmony Of blending shades and light: Then, lady, up,--look out, and be A sister to the night! Sleep not!--thine image wakes for aye Within my watching breast; Sleep not!--from her soft sleep should fly, Who robs all hearts of rest. Nay, lady, from thy slumbers break, And make this darkness gay, With looks whose brightness well might make Of darker nights a day. E.C. PINKNEY. The City in the Sea. Lo! Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city lying alone Far down within the dim West, Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best Have gone to their eternal rest. There shrines and palaces and towers (Time-eaten towers that tremble not) Resemble nothing that is ours. Around, by lifting winds forgot, Resignedly beneath the sky The melancholy waters lie. No rays from the holy heaven come down On the long night-time of that town; But light from out the lurid sea Streams up the turrets silently, Gleams up the pinnacles far and free: Up domes, up spires, up kingly halls, Up fanes, up Babylon-like walls, Up shadowy, long-forgotten bowers Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers, Up many and many a marvellous shrine, Whose wreathèd friezes intertwine The viol, the violet, and the vine. Resignedly beneath the sky The melancholy waters lie. So blend the turrets and shadows there That all seem pendulous in air, While from a proud tower in the town Death looks gigantically down. There open fanes and gaping graves Yawn level with the luminous waves; But not the riches there that lie In each idol's diamond eye,-- Not the gaily-jewelled dead Tempt the waters from their bed; For no ripples curl, alas, Along that wilderness of glass; No swellings tell that winds may be Upon some far-off happier sea; No heavings hint that winds have been On seas less hideously serene! But lo, a stir is in the air! The wave--there is a movement there! As if the towers had thrust aside, In slightly sinking, the dull tide; As if their tops had feebly given A void within the filmy Heaven! The waves have now a redder glow, The hours are breathing faint and low; And when, amid no earthly moans, Down, down that town shall settle hence, Hell, rising from a thousand thrones, Shall do it reverence. E.A. POE. To The Past. Thou unrelenting Past! Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain, And fetters, sure and fast, Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign. Far in thy realm withdrawn, Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom, And glorious ages gone Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb. Childhood, with all its mirth, Youth, Manhood, Age that draws us to the ground, And last, Man's Life on earth, Glide to thy dim dominions, and are bound. Thou hast my better years; Thou hast my earlier friends, the good, the kind, Yielded to thee with tears,-- The venerable form, the exalted mind. My spirit yearns to bring The lost ones back,--yearns with desire intense, And struggles hard to wring Thy bolts apart, and pluck thy captives thence. In vain; thy gates deny All passage save to those who hence depart; Nor to the streaming eye Thou giv'st them back,--nor to the broken heart. In thy abysses hide Beauty and excellence unknown; to thee Earth's wonder and her pride Are gathered, as the waters to the sea; Labors of good to man, Unpublished charity, unbroken faith, Love, that midst grief began, And grew with years, and faltered not in death. Full many a mighty name Lurks in thy depths, unuttered, unrevered; With thee are silent fame, Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappeared. Thine for a space are they,-- Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last! Thy gates shall yet give way, Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past! All that of good and fair Has gone into thy womb from earliest time, Shall then come forth, to wear The glory and the beauty of its prime. They have not perished,--no! Kind words, remembered voices once so sweet, Smiles, radiant long ago, And features, the great soul's apparent seat; All shall come back, each tie Of pure affection shall be knit again; Alone shall Evil die, And Sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign. And then shall I behold Him, by whose kind paternal side I sprung, And her, who, still and cold, Fills the next grave,--the beautiful and young. W.C. BRYANT. Israfel. And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God's creatures. --_Koran._ In Heaven a spirit doth dwell Whose heart-strings are a lute; None sing so wildly well As the angel Israfel, And the giddy stars (so legends tell), Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell Of his voice, all mute. Tottering above In her highest noon, The enamored moon Blushes with love, While, to listen, the red levin (With the rapid Pleiads, even, Which were seven) Pauses in Heaven. And they say (the starry choir And the other listening things) That Israfeli's fire Is owing to that lyre By which he sits and sings,-- The trembling living wire Of those unusual strings. But the skies that angel trod, Where deep thoughts are a duty, Where Love's a grown-up God, Where the Houri glances are Imbued with all the beauty Which we worship in a star. Therefore thou art not wrong, Israfeli, who despisest An unimpassioned song; To thee the laurels belong, Best bard, because the wisest: Merrily live, and long! The ecstasies above With thy burning measures suit: Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love, With the fervor of thy lute: Well may the stars be mute! Yes, Heaven is thine; but this Is a world of sweets and sours; Our flowers are merely--flowers, And the shadow of thy perfect bliss Is the sunshine of ours. If I could dwell Where Israfel Hath dwelt, and he where I, He might not sing so wildly well A mortal melody, While a bolder note than this might swell From my lyre within the sky. E.A. POE. Unseen Spirits. The shadows lay along Broadway,-- 'Twas near the twilight-tide,-- And slowly there a lady fair Was walking in her pride. Alone walked she; but, viewlessly, Walked spirits at her side. Peace charmed the street beneath her feet, And Honor charmed the air; And all astir looked kind on her, And called her good as fair-- For all God ever gave to her She kept with chary care. She kept with care her beauties rare From lovers warm and true, For her heart was cold to all but gold, And the rich came not to woo; But honored well are charms to sell, If priests the selling do. Now walking there was one more fair,-- A slight girl, lily-pale; And she had unseen company To make the spirit quail,-- 'Twixt Want and Scorn she walked forlorn, And nothing could avail. No mercy now can clear her brow For this world's peace to pray; For, as love's wild prayer dissolved in air, Her woman's heart gave way! But the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven By man is cursed alway. N.P. WILLIS. The Haunted Palace. In the greenest of our valleys By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace-- Radiant palace--reared its head. In the monarch Thought's dominion, It stood there; Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair. Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow (This--all this--was in the olden Time long ago), And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A wingèd odor went away. Wanderers in that happy valley Through two luminous windows saw Spirits moving musically, To a lute's well-tunèd law, Round about a throne where, sitting, Porphyrogene, In state his glory well befitting, The ruler of the realm was seen. And all with pearl and ruby glowing Was the fair palace door, Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing, And sparkling evermore, A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty Was but to sing, In voices of surpassing beauty, The wit and wisdom of their king. But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate!) And round about his home the glory That blushed and bloomed Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed. And travellers now within that valley Through the red-litten windows see Vast forms that move fantastically To a discordant melody; While, like a ghastly rapid river, Through the pale door A hideous throng rush out forever, And laugh--but smile no more. E.A. POE. To a Waterfowl. Whither, midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths dost thou pursue Thy solitary way? Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along. Seek'st thou the plashy brink Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, Or where the rocking billows rise and sink On the chafed ocean-side? There is a Power whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast-- The desert and illimitable air-- Lone wandering, but not lost. All day thy wings have fanned, At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, Though the dark night is near. And soon that toil shall end; Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, And shall not soon depart: He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright. W.C. BRYANT. To Helen. Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicæan barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, wayworn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs, have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome. Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand! Ah, Psyche, from the regions which Are Holy Land! E.A. POE. Sparkling and Bright. Sparkling and bright in liquid light Does the wine our goblets gleam in, With hue as red as the rosy bed Which a bee would choose to dream in. Then fill to-night, with hearts as light, To loves as gay and fleeting As bubbles that swim on the beaker's brim, And break on the lips while meeting. Oh! if Mirth might arrest the flight Of Time through Life's dominions, We here awhile would now beguile The graybeard of his pinions, To drink to-night, with hearts as light, To loves as gay and fleeting As bubbles that swim on the beaker's brim, And break on the lips while meeting. But since Delight can't tempt the wight, Nor fond Regret delay him, Nor Love himself can hold the elf, Nor sober Friendship stay him, We'll drink to-night, with hearts as light, To loves as gay and fleeting As bubbles that swim on the beaker's brim, And break on the lips while meeting. C.F. HOFFMAN. To One in Paradise. Thou wast all that to me, love, For which my soul did pine: A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, And all the flowers were mine. Ah, dream too bright to last! Ah, starry Hope, that didst arise But to be overcast! A voice from out the Future cries, "On! on!"--but o'er the Past (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies Mute, motionless, aghast. For, alas! alas! with me The light of Life is o'er! No more--no more--no more-- (Such language holds the solemn sea To the sands upon the shore) Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree, Or the stricken eagle soar. And all my days are trances, And all my nightly dreams Are where thy gray eye glances, And where thy footstep gleams,-- In what ethereal dances, By what eternal streams. E.A. POE. On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake. Green be the turf above thee, Friend of my better days! None knew thee but to love thee, Nor named thee but to praise. Tears fell when thou wert dying, From eyes unused to weep, And long, where thou art lying, Will tears the cold turf steep. When hearts, whose truth was proven, Like thine, are laid in earth, There should a wreath be woven To tell the world their worth; And I, who woke each morrow To clasp thy hand in mine, Who shared thy joy and sorrow, Whose weal and woe were thine, It should be mine to braid it Around thy faded brow, But I've in vain essayed it, And feel I cannot now. While memory bids me weep thee, Nor thoughts nor words are free, The grief is fixed too deeply That mourns a man like thee. F.G. HALLECK. The Valley of Unrest. Once it smiled a silent dell Where the people did not dwell; They had gone unto the wars, Trusting to the mild-eyed stars, Nightly, from their azure towers, To keep watch above the flowers, In the midst of which all day The red sunlight lazily lay. Now each visitor shall confess The sad valley's restlessness. Nothing there is motionless, Nothing save the airs that brood Over the magic solitude. Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees That palpitate like the chill seas Around the misty Hebrides! Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven That rustle through the unquiet Heaven Uneasily, from morn to even, Over the violets there that lie In myriad types of the human eye, Over the lilies there that wave And weep above a nameless grave! They wave:--from out their fragrant tops Eternal dews come down in drops. They weep:--from off their delicate stems Perennial tears descend in gems. E.A. POE. To the Fringed Gentian. Thou blossom bright with autumn dew, And colored with the heaven's own blue, That openest when the quiet light Succeeds the keen and frosty night: Thou comest not when violets lean O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen, Or columbines, in purple dressed, Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest. Thou waitest late and com'st alone, When woods are bare and birds are flown, And frosts and shortening days portend The aged year is near his end. Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye Look through its fringes to the sky, Blue--blue--as if that sky let fall A flower from its cerulean wall. I would that thus, when I shall see The hour of death draw near to me, Hope, blossoming within my heart, May look to heaven as I depart. W.C. BRYANT. The Crowded Street. Let me move slowly through the street, Filled with an ever-shifting train, Amid the sound of steps that beat The murmuring walks like autumn rain. How fast the flitting figures come! The mild, the fierce, the stony face,-- Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some Where secret tears have left their trace. They pass--to toil, to strife, to rest; To halls in which the feast is spread; To chambers where the funeral guest In silence sits beside the dead. And some to happy homes repair, Where children, pressing cheek to cheek, With mute caresses shall declare The tenderness they cannot speak. And some, who walk in calmness here, Shall shudder as they reach the door Where one who made their dwelling dear, Its flower, its light, is seen no more. Youth, with pale cheek and slender frame, And dreams of greatness in thine eye! Go'st thou to build an early name, Or early in the task to die? Keen son of trade, with eager brow! Who is now fluttering in thy snare? Thy golden fortunes, tower they now, Or melt the glittering spires in air? Who of this crowd to-night shall tread The dance till daylight gleam again? Who sorrow o'er the untimely dead? Who writhe in throes of mortal pain? Some, famine-struck, shall think how long The cold, dark hours, how slow the light; And some, who flaunt amid the throng, Shall hide in dens of shame to-night. Each where his tasks or pleasures call, They pass, and heed each other not. There is who heeds, who holds them all In His large love and boundless thought. These struggling tides of life, that seem In wayward, aimless course to tend, Are eddies of the mighty stream That rolls to its appointed end. W.C. BRYANT. The Raven. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,-- While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping--rapping at my chamber door. "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door,-- Only this, and nothing more." Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow;--vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for the lost Lenore,-- For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore,-- Nameless here forevermore. And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating "'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door, --Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;-- This it is, and nothing more." Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, "Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping--tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you;"--here I opened wide the door:-- Darkness there, and nothing more. Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?" This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore:" Merely this, and nothing more. Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before. "Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice; Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore,-- Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;-- 'Tis the wind, and nothing more." Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore. Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door-- Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door-- Perched, and sat, and nothing more. Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore,-- Tell, me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning--little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door-- Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, With such name as "Nevermore." But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour. Nothing further then he uttered--not a feather then he fluttered-- Till I scarcely more than muttered, "Other friends have flown before-- On the morrow _he_ will leave me, as my hopes have flown before." Then the bird said, "Nevermore." Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, "Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store, Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore, Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore Of 'Never--nevermore.'" But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling, Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door; Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore-- What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore Meant in croaking "Nevermore." This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core; This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o'er, But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o'er _She_ shall press, ah, nevermore! Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor. "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee--by these angels He hath sent thee Respite--respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore! Quaff, oh, quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!--prophet still, if bird or devil!-- Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore, Desolate, yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted-- On this home by Horror haunted--tell me truly, I implore,-- Is there,--_is_ there balm in Gilead?--tell me--tell me, I implore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!--prophet still, if bird or devil! By that Heaven that bends above us--by that God we both adore-- Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore-- Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore." Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." "Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting,-- "Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken!--quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted,--nevermore! E.A. POE. The Battle-field. Once this soft turf, this rivulet's sands, Were trampled by a hurrying crowd, And fiery hearts and armèd hands Encountered in the battle-cloud. Ah! never shall the land forget How gushed the life-blood of her brave,-- Gushed, warm with hope and courage yet, Upon the soil they fought to save. Now all is calm and fresh and still; Alone the chirp of flitting bird, And talk of children on the hill, And bell of wandering kine are heard. No solemn host goes trailing by The black-mouthed gun and staggering wain; Men start not at the battle-cry; Oh, be it never heard again! Soon rested those who fought; but thou Who minglest in the harder strife For truths which men receive not now, Thy warfare only ends with life. A friendless warfare! lingering long Through weary day and weary year; A wild and many-weaponed throng Hang on thy front and flank and rear. Yet nerve thy spirit to the proof, And blench not at thy chosen lot; The timid good may stand aloof, The sage may frown,--yet faint thou not! Nor heed the shaft too surely cast, The foul and hissing bolt of scorn, For with thy side shall dwell, at last, The victory of endurance born. Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again; The eternal years of God are hers; But Error, wounded, writhes in pain, And dies among his worshippers. Yea, though thou lie upon the dust, When they who helped thee flee in fear, Die full of hope and manly trust, Like those who fell in battle here. Another hand thy sword shall wield, Another hand the standard wave, Till from the trumpet's mouth is pealed The blast of triumph o'er thy grave. W.C. BRYANT. The Sleeper. At midnight, in the month of June, I stand beneath the mystic moon. An opiate vapor, dewy, dim, Exhales from out her golden rim, And, softly dripping, drop by drop, Upon the quiet mountain-top, Steals drowsily and musically Into the universal valley. The rosemary nods upon the grave; The lily lolls upon the wave; Wrapping the fog about its breast, The ruin moulders into rest; Looking like Lethe, see! the lake A conscious slumber seems to take, And would not, for the world, awake. All beauty sleeps!--and lo! where lies Irene, with her destinies! O lady bright! can it be right, This window open to the night? The wanton airs from the tree-top Laughingly through the lattice drop; The bodiless airs, a wizard rout, Flit through thy chamber in and out, And wave the curtain canopy So fitfully, so fearfully, Above the closed and fringed lid 'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid, That, o'er the floor and down the wall, Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall. O lady dear, hast thou no fear? Why and what art thou dreaming here? Sure thou art come o'er far-off seas, A wonder to these garden trees! Strange is thy pallor; strange thy dress; Strange, above all, thy length of tress, And this all solemn silentness! The lady sleeps. Oh, may her sleep, Which is enduring, so be deep! Heaven have her in its sacred keep! This chamber changed for one more holy, This bed for one more melancholy, I pray to God that she may lie Forever with unopened eye, While the pale sheeted ghosts go by. My love, she sleeps. Oh, may her sleep, As it is lasting, so be deep! Soft may the worms about her creep! Far in the forest, dim and old, For her may some tall vault unfold: Some vault that oft hath flung its black And wingèd panels fluttering back, Triumphant, o'er the crested palls Of her grand family funerals; Some sepulchre, remote, alone, Against whose portal she hath thrown, In childhood, many an idle stone; Some tomb from out whose sounding door She ne'er shall force an echo more, Thrilling to think, poor child of sin, It was the dead who groaned within! E.A. POE. BOOK SECOND. Nature. As a fond mother, when the day is o'er, Leads by the hand her little child to bed, Half willing, half reluctant to be led, And leave his broken playthings on the floor, Still gazing at them through the open door, Nor wholly reassured and comforted By promises of others in their stead, Which, though more splendid, may not please him more,-- So Nature deals with us, and takes away Our playthings one by one, and by the hand Leads us to rest so gently, that we go Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay, Being too full of sleep to understand How far the unknown transcends the what we know. H.W. LONGFELLOW. Hebe. I saw the twinkle of white feet, I saw the flash of robes descending; Before her ran an influence fleet, That bowed my heart like barley bending. As, in bare fields, the searching bees Pilot to blooms beyond our finding, It led me on, by sweet degrees Joy's simple honey-cells unbinding. Those Graces were that seemed grim Fates; With nearer love the sky leaned o'er me; The long-sought Secret's golden gates On musical hinges swung before me. I saw the brimmed bowl in her grasp Thrilling with godhood; like a lover I sprang the proffered life to clasp;-- The beaker fell; the luck was over. The Earth has drunk the vintage up; What boots it patch the goblet's splinters? Can Summer fill the icy cup, Whose treacherous crystal is but Winter's? O spendthrift haste! await the Gods; Their nectar crowns the lips of Patience; Haste scatters on unthankful sods The immortal gift in vain libations. Coy Hebe flies from those that woo, And shuns the hands would seize upon her; Follow thy life, and she will sue To pour for thee the cup of honor. J.R. LOWELL. The Day is Done. The day is done, and the darkness Falls from the wings of Night, As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle in his flight. I see the lights of the village Gleam through the rain and the mist, And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me That my soul cannot resist: A feeling of sadness and longing, That is not akin to pain, And resembles sorrow only As the mist resembles the rain. Come, read to me some poem, Some simple and heartfelt lay, That shall soothe this restless feeling, And banish the thoughts of day. Not from the grand old masters, Not from the bards sublime, Whose distant footsteps echo Through the corridors of Time. For, like strains of martial music, Their mighty thoughts suggest Life's endless toil and endeavor; And to-night I long for rest. Read from some humbler poet, Whose songs gushed from his heart, As showers from the clouds of summer, Or tears from the eyelids start; Who, through long days of labor, And nights devoid of ease, Still heard in his soul the music Of wonderful melodies. Such songs have power to quiet The restless pulse of care, And come like the benediction That follows after prayer. Then read from the treasured volume The poem of thy choice, And lend to the rhyme of the poet The beauty of thy voice. And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares that infest the day Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, And as silently steal away. H.W. LONGFELLOW. Ichabod. So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn Which once he wore! The glory from his gray hairs gone Forevermore! Revile him not,--the Tempter hath A snare for all; And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, Befit his fall! Oh, dumb be passion's stormy rage, When he who might Have lighted up and led his age, Falls back in night. Scorn! would the angels laugh, to mark A bright soul driven, Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark, From hope and heaven! Let not the land once proud of him Insult him now, Nor brand with deeper shame his dim, Dishonored brow. But let its humbled sons, instead, From sea to lake, A long lament, as for the dead, In sadness make. Of all we loved and honored, naught Save power remains,-- A fallen angel's pride of thought, Still strong in chains. All else is gone; from those great eyes The soul has fled: When faith is lost, when honor dies. The man is dead! Then, pay the reverence of old days To his dead fame; Walk backward, with averted gaze, And hide the shame! J.G. WHITTIER. Sir Humphrey Gilbert. Southward with fleet of ice Sailed the corsair Death; Wild and fast blew the blast, And the east-wind was his breath. His lordly ships of ice Glisten in the sun; On each side, like pennons wide, Flashing crystal streamlets run. His sails of white sea-mist Dripped with silver rain; But where he passed there were cast Leaden shadows o'er the main. Eastward from Campobello Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed; Three days or more seaward he bore, Then, alas! the land-wind failed. Alas! the land-wind failed, And ice-cold grew the night; And nevermore, on sea or shore, Should Sir Humphrey see the light. He sat upon the deck, The Book was in his hand; "Do not fear! Heaven is as near," He said, "by water as by land!" In the first watch of the night, Without a signal's sound, Out of the sea, mysteriously, The fleet of Death rose all around. The moon and the evening star Were hanging in the shrouds; Every mast, as it passed, Seemed to rake the passing clouds. They grappled with their prize, At midnight black and cold! As of a rock was the shock; Heavily the ground-swell rolled. Southward through day and dark, They drift in close embrace, With mist and rain, o'er the open main; Yet there seems no change of place. Southward, forever southward, They drift through dark and day; And like a dream, in the Gulf Stream Sinking, vanish all away. H.W. LONGFELLOW. Concord Hymn. Sung at the completion of the Battle Monument, April 19, 1836. By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world. The foe long since in silence slept; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; And Time the ruined bridge has swept Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. On this green bank, by this soft stream, We set to-day a votive stone, That memory may their deed redeem, When, like our sires, our sons are gone. Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die, and leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee. R.W. EMERSON. To America. What, cringe to Europe! Band it all in one, Stilt its decrepit strength, renew its age, Wipe out its debts, contract a loan to wage Its venal battles,--and, by yon bright sun, Our God is false, and liberty undone, If slaves have power to win your heritage! Look on your country, God's appointed stage, Where man's vast mind its boundless course shall run: For that it was your stormy coast He spread-- A fear in winter; girded you about With granite hills, and made you strong and dread. Let him who fears before the foemen shout, Or gives an inch before a vein has bled, Turn on himself, and let the traitor out! G.H. BOKER. Old Ironsides. Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky; Beneath it rung the battle shout, And burst the cannon's roar;-- The meteor of the ocean air Shall sweep the clouds no more. Her deck, once red with heroes' blood, Where knelt the vanquished foe, When winds were hurrying o'er the flood, And waves were white below, No more shall feel the victor's tread, Or know the conquered knee; The harpies of the shore shall pluck The eagle of the sea! Oh, better that her shattered hulk Should sink beneath the wave! Her thunders shook the mighty deep, And there should be her grave; Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storms, The lightning, and the gale! O.W. HOLMES. To England. I. Lear and Cordelia! 'twas an ancient tale Before thy Shakespeare gave it deathless fame; The times have changed, the moral is the same. So like an outcast, dowerless and pale, Thy daughter went; and in a foreign gale Spread her young banner, till its sway became A wonder to the nations. Days of shame Are close upon thee; prophets raise their wail. When the rude Cossack with an outstretched hand Points his long spear across the narrow sea,-- "Lo! there is England!" when thy destiny Storms on thy straw-crowned head, and thou dost stand Weak, helpless, mad, a by-word in the land,-- God grant thy daughter a Cordelia be! [1852.] II. Stand, thou great bulwark of man's liberty! Thou rock of shelter, rising from the wave, Sole refuge to the overwearied brave Who planned, arose, and battled to be free, Fell, undeterred, then sadly turned to thee, Saved the free spirit from their country's grave, To rise again, and animate the slave, When God shall ripen all things. Britons, ye Who guard the sacred outpost, not in vain Hold your proud peril! Freemen undefiled, Keep watch and ward! Let battlements be piled Around your cliffs; fleets marshalled, till the main Sink under them; and if your courage wane, Through force or fraud, look westward to your child! [1853.] G.H. BOKER. The Wreck of the Hesperus. It was the schooner Hesperus, That sailed the wintry sea; And the skipper had taken his little daughtèr, To bear him company. Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax, Her cheeks like the dawn of day, And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds, That ope in the month of May. The skipper he stood beside the helm, His pipe was in his mouth, And he watched how the veering flaw did blow The smoke now West, now South. Then up and spake an old Sailòr, Had sailed to the Spanish Main, "I pray thee, put into yonder port, For I fear a hurricane. "Last night, the moon had a golden ring, And to-night no moon we see!" The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe, And a scornful laugh laughed he. Colder and louder blew the wind, A gale from the Northeast, The snow fell hissing in the brine, And the billows frothed like yeast. Down came the storm, and smote amain The vessel in its strength; She shuddered and paused, like a frightened steed, Then leaped her cable's length. "Come hither! come hither! my little daughter, And do not tremble so; For I can weather the roughest gale That ever wind did blow." He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound her to the mast. "O father! I hear the church-bells ring, Oh, say, what may it be?" "'Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!"-- And he steered for the open sea. "O father! I hear the sound of guns, Oh, say, what may it be?" "Some ship in distress, that cannot live In such an angry sea!" "O father! I see a gleaming light, Oh, say, what may it be?" But the father answered never a word, A frozen corpse was he. Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark, With his face turned to the skies, The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow On his fixed and glassy eyes. Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed That savèd she might be; And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave, On the Lake of Galilee. And fast through the midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Tow'rds the reef of Norman's Woe. And ever the fitful gusts between A sound came from the land; It was the sound of the trampling surf On the rocks and the hard sea-sand. The breakers were right beneath her bows, She drifted a dreary wreck, And a whooping billow swept the crew Like icicles from her deck. She struck where the white and fleecy waves Looked soft as carded wool, But the cruel rocks, they gored her side Like the horns of an angry bull. Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice, With the masts went by the board; Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank, Ho! ho! the breakers roared! At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach, A fisherman stood aghast, To see the form of a maiden fair, Lashed close to a drifting mast. The salt sea was frozen on her breast, The salt tears in her eyes; And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed, On the billows fall and rise. Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, In the midnight and the snow! Christ save us all from a death like this, On the reef of Norman's Woe! H.W. LONGFELLOW. Bedouin Song. From the Desert I come to thee On a stallion shod with fire, And the winds are left behind In the speed of my desire. Under thy window I stand, And the midnight hears my cry: I love thee, I love but thee, With a love that shall not die _Till the sun grows cold,_ _And the stars are old,_ _And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!_ Look from thy window and see My passion and my pain; I lie on the sands below, And I faint in thy disdain. Let the night-winds touch thy brow With the heat of my burning sigh, And melt thee to hear the vow Of a love that shall not die _Till the sun grows cold,_ _And the stars are old,_ _And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!_ My steps are nightly driven, By the fever in my breast, To hear from thy lattice breathed The word that shall give me rest. Open the door of thy heart, And open thy chamber door, And my kisses shall teach thy lips The love that shall fade no more _Till the sun grows cold,_ _And the stars are old,_ _And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!_ B. TAYLOR. Skipper Ireson's Ride. Of all the rides since the birth of time, Told in story or sung in rhyme,-- On Apuleius's Golden Ass, Or one-eyed Calendar's horse of brass, Witch astride of a human back, Islam's prophet on Al-Borak,-- The strangest ride that ever was sped Was Ireson's, out from Marblehead! Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead! Body of turkey, head of owl, Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl, Feathered and ruffled in every part, Skipper Ireson stood in the cart. Scores of women, old and young, Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue, Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane, Shouting and singing the shrill refrain: "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women o' Morble'ead!" Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips, Girls in bloom of cheek and lips, Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase Bacchus round some antique vase, Brief of skirt, with ankles bare, Loose of kerchief and loose of hair, With conch-shells blowing and fish-horns' twang, Over and over the Mænads sang: "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women o' Morble'ead!" Small pity for him!--He sailed away From a leaking ship, in Chaleur Bay,-- Sailed away from a sinking wreck, With his own town's-people on her deck! "Lay by! lay by!" they called to him. Back he answered, "Sink or swim! Brag of your catch of fish again!" And off he sailed through the fog and rain! Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead! Fathoms deep in dark Chaleur That wreck shall lie forevermore. Mother and sister, wife and maid, Looked from the rocks of Marblehead Over the moaning and rainy sea,-- Looked for the coming that might not be! What did the winds and the sea-birds say Of the cruel captain who sailed away?-- Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead! Through the street, on either side, Up flew windows, doors swung wide; Sharp-tongued spinsters, old wives gray, Treble lent the fish-horn's bray. Sea-worn grandsires, cripple-bound, Hulks of old sailors run aground, Shook head, and fist, and hat, and cane, And cracked with curses the hoarse refrain: "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women o' Morble'ead!" Sweetly along the Salem road Bloom of orchard and lilac showed. Little the wicked skipper knew Of the fields so green and the sky so blue. Riding there in his sorry trim, Like an Indian idol glum and grim, Scarcely he seemed the sound to hear Of voices shouting, far and near: "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women o' Morble'ead!" "Hear me, neighbors!" at last he cried,-- "What to me is this noisy ride? What is the shame that clothes the skin To the nameless horror that lives within? Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck, And hear a cry from a reeling deck! Hate me and curse me,--I only dread The hand of God and the face of the dead!" Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead! Then the wife of the skipper lost at sea Said, "God has touched him! Why should we?" Said an old wife, mourning her only son: "Cut the rogue's tether and let him run!" So with soft relentings and rude excuse, Half scorn, half pity, they cut him loose, And gave him a cloak to hide him in, And left him alone with his shame and sin. Poor Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead! J.G. WHITTIER. The Village Blacksmith. Under a spreading chestnut-tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands. His hair is crisp, and black, and long, His face is like the tan; His brow is wet with honest sweat, He earns whate'er he can, And looks the whole world in the face, For he owes not any man. Week in, week out, from morn till night, You can hear his bellows blow; You can hear him swing his heavy sledge, With measured beat and slow, Like a sexton ringing the village bell, When the evening sun is low. And children coming home from school Look in at the open door; They love to see the flaming forge, And hear the bellows roar, And catch the burning sparks that fly Like chaff from a threshing-floor. He goes on Sunday to the church, And sits among his boys; He hears the parson pray and preach, He hears his daughter's voice, Singing in the village choir, And it makes his heart rejoice. It sounds to him like her mother's voice, Singing in Paradise! He needs must think of her once more, How in the grave she lies; And with his hard, rough hand he wipes A tear out of his eyes. Toiling,--rejoicing,--sorrowing, Onward through life he goes; Each morning sees some task begin, Each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done. Has earned a night's repose. Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, For the lesson thou hast taught! Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each burning deed and thought. H.W. LONGFELLOW. The Last Leaf. I saw him once before, As he passed by the door, And again The pavement stones resound, As he totters o'er the ground With his cane. They say that in his prime, Ere the pruning-knife of Time Cut him down, Not a better man was found By the crier on his round Through the town. But now he walks the streets, And he looks at all he meets Sad and wan, And he shakes his feeble head, That it seems as if he said, "They are gone." The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has pressed In their bloom, And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On the tomb. My grandmamma has said-- Poor old lady, she is dead Long ago-- That he had a Roman nose, And his cheek was like a rose In the snow. But now his nose is thin, And it rests upon his chin Like a staff, And a crook is in his back, And a melancholy crack In his laugh. I know it is a sin For me to sit and grin At him here; But the old three-cornered hat, And the breeches, and all that, Are so queer! And if I should live to be The last leaf upon the tree In the spring, Let them smile, as I do now, At the old, forsaken bough Where I cling. O.W. HOLMES. The Old Kentucky Home. A NEGRO MELODY. The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky Home; 'Tis summer, the darkies are gay; The corn-top's ripe, and the meadow's in the bloom, While the birds make music all the day. The young folks roll on the little cabin floor, All merry, all happy and bright; By-'n'-by hard times comes a-knocking at the door,-- Then my old Kentucky Home, good-night! Weep no more, my lady, Oh, weep no more to-day! We will sing one song for the old Kentucky Home, For the old Kentucky Home, far away. They hunt no more for the possum and the coon, On the meadow, the hill, and the shore; They sing no more by the glimmer of the moon, On the bench by the old cabin door. The day goes by like a shadow o'er the heart, With sorrow, where all was delight; The time has come when the darkies have to part,-- Then my old Kentucky Home, good-night! The head must bow, and the back will have to bend, Wherever the darkey may go; A few more days, and the trouble all will end, In the field where the sugar-canes grow. A few more days for to tote the weary load,-- No matter, 'twill never be light; A few more days till we totter on the road,-- Then my old Kentucky Home, good-night! Weep no more, my lady, Oh, weep no more to-day! We will sing one song for the old Kentucky Home, For the old Kentucky Home, far away. S.C. FOSTER. The Black Regiment. Port Hudson, May 27, 1863. Dark as the clouds of even, Ranked in the western heaven, Waiting the breath that lifts All the dread mass, and drifts Tempest and falling brand Over a ruined land;-- So still and orderly, Arm to arm, knee to knee, Waiting the great event, Stands the black regiment. Down the long, dusky line Teeth gleam, and eyeballs shine; And the bright bayonet, Bristling and firmly set, Flashed with a purpose grand, Long ere the sharp command Of the fierce rolling drum Told them their time had come, Told them what work was sent For the black regiment. "Now," the flag-sergeant cried, "Though death and hell betide, Let the whole nation see If we are fit to be Free in this land; or bound Down, like the whining hound,-- Bound with red stripes of pain In our old chains again!" Oh, what a shout there went From the black regiment! "Charge!" Trump and drum awoke, Onward the bondmen broke; Bayonet and sabre-stroke Vainly opposed their rush. Through the wild battle's crush, With but one thought aflush, Driving their lords like chaff, In the guns' mouths they laugh; Or at the slippery brands Leaping with open hands, Down they tear man and horse, Down in their awful course; Trampling with bloody heel Over the crashing steel, All their eyes forward bent, Rushed the black regiment. "Freedom!" their battle-cry,-- "Freedom! or leave to die!" Ah! and they meant the word, Not as with us 'tis heard, Not a mere party shout; They gave their spirits out, Trusted the end to God, And on the gory sod Rolled in triumphant blood. Glad to strike one free blow, Whether for weal or woe; Glad to breathe one free breath, Though on the lips of death; Praying--alas! in vain!-- That they might fall again, So they could once more see That burst to liberty! This was what "freedom" lent To the black regiment. Hundreds on hundreds fell; But they are resting well; Scourges and shackles strong Never shall do them wrong. Oh, to the living few, Soldiers, be just and true! Hail them as comrades tried; Fight with them side by side; Never, in field or tent, Scorn the black regiment. G.H. BOKER. Carolina. The despot treads thy sacred sands, Thy pines give shelter to his bands, Thy sons stand by with idle hands, Carolina! He breathes at ease thy airs of balm, He scorns the lances of thy palm; Oh! who shall break thy craven calm, Carolina! Thy ancient fame is growing dim, A spot is on thy garment's rim; Give to the winds thy battle-hymn, Carolina! Call on thy children of the hill, Wake swamp and river, coast and rill, Rouse all thy strength and all thy skill, Carolina! Cite wealth and science, trade and art, Touch with thy fire the cautious mart, And pour thee through the people's heart, Carolina! Till even the coward spurns his fears, And all thy fields, and fens, and meres Shall bristle like thy palm with spears, Carolina! I hear a murmur as of waves That grope their way through sunless caves, Like bodies struggling in their graves, Carolina! And now it deepens; slow and grand It swells, as, rolling to the land, An ocean broke upon thy strand, Carolina! Shout! Let it reach the startled Huns! And roar with all thy festal guns! It is the answer of thy sons, Carolina! H. TIMROD. Dirge for a Soldier. Close his eyes; his work is done! What to him is friend or foeman, Rise of moon, or set of sun, Hand of man, or kiss of woman? Lay him low, lay him low, In the clover or the snow! What cares he? He cannot know; Lay him low! As man may, he fought his fight, Proved his truth by his endeavor; Let him sleep in solemn night, Sleep forever and forever. Lay him low, lay him low, In the clover or the snow! What cares he? He cannot know; Lay him low! Fold him in his country's stars, Roll the drum and fire the volley! What to him are all our wars, What but death bemocking folly? Lay him low, lay him low, In the clover or the snow! What cares he? He cannot know; Lay him low! Leave him to God's watching eye; Trust him to the hand that made him. Mortal love weeps idly by; God alone has power to aid him. Lay him low, lay him low, In the clover or the snow! What cares he? He cannot know! Lay him low! G.H. BOKER. Battle-hymn of the Republic. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fatal lightning of His terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on. I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps: His day is marching on. I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel: "As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal; Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel! Since God is marching on." He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat; Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on. In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born, across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me: As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on. J.W. HOWE. Farragut. Farragut, Farragut, Old Heart of Oak, Daring Dave Farragut, Thunderbolt stroke, Watches the hoary mist Lift from the bay, Till his flag, glory-kissed, Greets the young day. Far, by gray Morgan's walls, Looms the black fleet. Hark, deck to rampart calls With the drums' beat! Buoy your chains overboard, While the steam hums; Men! to the battlement, Farragut comes. See, as the hurricane Hurtles in wrath Squadrons of clouds amain Back from its path! Back to the parapet, To the guns' lips, Thunderbolt Farragut Hurls the black ships. Now through the battle's roar Clear the boy sings, "By the mark fathoms four," While his lead swings. Steady the wheelmen five "Nor' by east keep her," "Steady," but two alive: How the shells sweep her! Lashed to the mast that sways Over red decks, Over the flame that plays Round the torn wrecks, Over the dying lips Framed for a cheer, Farragut leads his ships, Guides the line clear. On by heights cannon-browed, While the spars quiver; Onward still flames the cloud Where the hulks shiver. See, yon fort's star is set, Storm and fire past. Cheer him, lads,--Farragut, Lashed to the mast! Oh! while Atlantic's breast Bears a white sail, While the Gulf's towering crest Tops a green vale; Men thy bold deeds shall tell, Old Heart of Oak, Daring Dave Farragut, Thunderbolt stroke! W.T. MEREDITH. My Maryland. The despot's heel is on thy shore, Maryland! His torch is at thy temple door, Maryland! Avenge the patriotic gore That flecked the streets of Baltimore, And be the battle-queen of yore, Maryland, my Maryland! Hark to an exiled son's appeal, Maryland! My Mother State, to thee I kneel, Maryland! For life and death, for woe and weal, Thy peerless chivalry reveal, And gird thy beauteous limbs with steel, Maryland, my Maryland! Thou wilt not cower in the dust, Maryland! Thy beaming sword shall never rust, Maryland! Remember Carroll's sacred trust, Remember Howard's warlike thrust, And all thy slumberers with the just, Maryland, my Maryland! Come! 'tis the red dawn of the day, Maryland! Come with thy panoplied array, Maryland! With Ringgold's spirit for the fray, With Watson's blood at Monterey, With fearless Lowe and dashing May, Maryland, my Maryland! Dear Mother, burst the tyrant's chain, Maryland! Virginia should not call in vain, Maryland! She meets her sisters on the plain,-- _"Sic semper!"_ 'tis the proud refrain That baffles minions back amain, Maryland! Arise in majesty again, Maryland, my Maryland! Come! for thy shield is bright and strong, Maryland! Come! for thy dalliance does thee wrong, Maryland! Come to thine own heroic throng Stalking with Liberty along, And chant thy dauntless slogan-song, Maryland, my Maryland! I see the blush upon thy cheek, Maryland! For thou wast ever bravely meek, Maryland! But lo! there surges forth a shriek, From hill to hill, from creek to creek, Potomac calls to Chesapeake, Maryland, my Maryland! Thou wilt not yield the Vandal toll, Maryland! Thou wilt not crook to his control, Maryland! Better the fire upon thee roll, Better the shot, the blade, the bowl, Than crucifixion of the soul, Maryland, my Maryland! I hear the distant thunder-hum, Maryland! The old Line's bugle, fife, and drum, Maryland! She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb; Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum! She breathes! She burns! She'll come! She'll come! Maryland, my Maryland! J.R. RANDALL. After All.[1] The apples are ripe in the orchard, The work of the reaper is done, And the golden woodlands redden In the blood of the dying sun. At the cottage door the grandsire Sits, pale, in his easy-chair, While a gentle wind of twilight Plays with his silver hair. A woman is kneeling beside him; A fair young head is prest, In the first wild passion of sorrow, Against his aged breast. And far from over the distance The faltering echoes come, Of the flying blast of trumpet, And the rattling roll of drum. And the grandsire speaks in a whisper: "The end no man can see; But we give him to his country, And we give our prayers to Thee." * * * * * The violets star the meadows, The rose-buds fringe the door, And over the grassy orchard The pink-white blossoms pour. But the grandsire's chair is empty, The cottage is dark and still, There's a nameless grave in the battle-field, And a new one under the hill. And a pallid, tearless woman By the cold hearth sits alone, And the old clock in the corner Ticks on with a steady drone. WILLIAM WINTER. [1] From "Wanderers," copyright, 1892, by Macmillan and Co. The Song of the Camp. "Give us a song!" the soldiers cried, The outer trenches guarding, When the heated guns of the camps allied Grew weary of bombarding. The dark Redan, in silent scoff, Lay grim and threatening under; And the tawny mound of the Malakoff No longer belch'd its thunder. There was a pause. A guardsman said: "We storm the forts to-morrow; Sing while we may, another day Will bring enough of sorrow." They lay along the battery's side, Below the smoking cannon: Brave hearts from Severn and from Clyde, And from the banks of Shannon. They sang of love, and not of fame; Forgot was Britain's glory: Each heart recall'd a different name, But all sang "Annie Laurie." Voice after voice caught up the song, Until its tender passion Rose like an anthem, rich and strong,-- Their battle-eve confession. Dear girl, her name he dared not speak, But as the song grew louder, Something upon the soldier's cheek Washed off the stains of powder. Beyond the darkening ocean burn'd The bloody sunset's embers, While the Crimean valleys learn'd How English love remembers. And once again a fire of hell Rain'd on the Russian quarters, With scream of shot, and burst of shell, And bellowing of the mortars! And Irish Nora's eyes are dim For a singer dumb and gory; And English Mary mourns for him Who sang of "Annie Laurie." Sleep, soldiers! still in honor'd rest Your truth and valor wearing: The bravest are the tenderest,-- The loving are the daring. B. TAYLOR. In the Hospital. I lay me down to sleep, With little thought or care Whether my waking find Me here or there. A bowing, burdened head, That only asks to rest, Unquestioning, upon A loving breast. My good right hand forgets Its cunning now. To march the weary march I know not how. I am not eager, bold, Nor strong--all that is past; I am ready not to do At last, at last. My half day's work is done, And this is all my part; I give a patient God My patient heart, And grasp His banner still, Though all its blue be dim; These stripes, no less than stars, Lead after Him. M.W. HOWLAND. Under the Violets. Her hands are cold; her face is white; No more her pulses come and go; Her eyes are shut to life and light;-- Fold the white vesture, snow on snow, And lay her where the violets blow. But not beneath a graven stone, To plead for tears with alien eyes; A slender cross of wood alone Shall say, that here a maiden lies In peace beneath the peaceful skies. And gray old trees of hugest limb Shall wheel their circling shadows round To make the scorching sunlight dim That drinks the greenness from the ground, And drop their dead leaves on her mound. When o'er their boughs the squirrels run, And through their leaves the robins call, And, ripening in the autumn sun, The acorns and the chestnuts fall, Doubt not that she will heed them all. For her the morning choir shall sing Its matins from the branches high, And every minstrel voice of Spring, That trills beneath the April sky, Shall greet her with its earliest cry. When, turning round their dial-track, Eastward the lengthening shadows pass, Her little mourners, clad in black, The crickets, sliding through the grass, Shall pipe for her an evening mass. At last the rootlets of the trees Shall find the prison where she lies, And bear the buried dust they seize In leaves and blossoms to the skies. So may the soul that warmed it rise! If any, born of kindlier blood, Should ask, What maiden lies below? Say only this: A tender bud, That tried to blossom in the snow, Lies withered where the violets blow. O.W. HOLMES. Days. Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. To each they offer gifts after his will, Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all. I, in my pleachèd garden, watched the pomp, Forgot my morning wishes, hastily Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day Turned and departed silent. I, too late, Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn. R.W. EMERSON. Song.[2] You know the old Hidalgo (His box is next to ours), Who threw the Prima Donna The wreath of orange-flowers; He owns the half of Aragon, With mines beyond the main; A very ancient nobleman, And gentleman of Spain. They swear that I must wed him, In spite of yea or nay, Though uglier than the Scaramouch, The spectre in the play; But I will sooner die a maid Than wear a gilded chain, For all the ancient noblemen And gentlemen of Spain! R.H. STODDARD. [2] From "The Poems of R.H. Stoddard," copyright, 1880, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Aladdin. When I was a beggarly boy, And lived in a cellar damp, I had not a friend nor a toy, But I had Aladdin's lamp; When I could not sleep for cold, I had fire enough in my brain, And builded, with roofs of gold, My beautiful castles in Spain! Since then I have toiled day and night, I have money and power good store, But I'd give all my lamps of silver bright, For the one that is mine no more; Take, Fortune, whatever you choose,-- You gave, and may snatch again; I have nothing 'twould pain me to lose, For I own no more castles in Spain! J.R. LOWELL. The Flight of Youth.[3] There are gains for all our losses, There are balms for all our pain; But when youth, the dream, departs, It takes something from our hearts, And it never comes again. We are stronger, and are better, Under manhood's sterner reign; Still, we feel that something sweet Followed youth, with flying feet, And will never come again. Something beautiful is vanished, And we sigh for it in vain; We behold it everywhere, On the earth, and in the air, But it never comes again. R.H. STODDARD. [3] From "The Poems of R.H. Stoddard," copyright, 1880, by Charles Scribner's Sons. My Playmate. The pines were dark on Ramoth hill, Their song was soft and low; The blossoms in the sweet May wind Were falling like the snow. The blossoms drifted at our feet, The orchard birds sang clear; The sweetest and the saddest day It seemed of all the year. For, more to me than birds or flowers, My playmate left her home, And took with her the laughing spring, The music and the bloom. She kissed the lips of kith and kin, She laid her hand in mine: What more could ask the bashful boy Who fed her father's kine? She left us in the bloom of May: The constant years told o'er Their seasons with as sweet May morns, But she came back no more. I walk, with noiseless feet, the round Of uneventful years; Still o'er and o'er I sow the spring And reap the autumn ears. She lives where all the golden year Her summer roses blow; The dusky children of the sun Before her come and go. There haply with her jewelled hands She smooths her silken gown,-- No more the homespun lap wherein I shook the walnuts down. The wild grapes wait us by the brook, The brown nuts on the hill, And still the May-day flowers make sweet The woods of Follymill. The lilies blossom in the pond, The bird builds in the tree, The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill The slow song of the sea. I wonder if she thinks of them, And how the old time seems, If ever the pines of Ramoth wood Are sounding in her dreams. I see her face, I hear her voice: Does she remember mine? And what to her is now the boy Who fed her father's kine? What cares she that the orioles build For other eyes than ours,-- That other hands with nuts are filled, And other laps with flowers? O playmate in the golden time! Our mossy seat is green, Its fringing violets blossom yet, The old trees o'er it lean. The winds so sweet with birch and fern A sweeter memory blow; And there in spring the veeries sing The song of long ago. And still the pines of Ramoth wood Are moaning like the sea,-- The moaning of the sea of change Between myself and thee! J.G. WHITTIER. The Fire of Driftwood. DEVEREUX FARM, NEAR MARBLEHEAD. We sat within the farmhouse old, Whose windows, looking o'er the bay, Gave to the sea-breeze, damp and cold, An easy entrance, night and day. Not far away we saw the port, The strange, old-fashioned, silent town, The lighthouse, the dismantled fort, The wooden houses, quaint and brown. We sat and talked until the night, Descending, filled the little room; Our faces faded from the sight, Our voices only broke the gloom. We spake of many a vanished scene, Of what we once had thought and said, Of what had been, and might have been, And who was changed, and who was dead; And all that fills the hearts of friends, When first they feel, with secret pain, Their lives thenceforth have separate ends, And never can be one again; The first slight swerving of the heart, That words are powerless to express, And leave it still unsaid in part, Or say it in too great excess. The very tones in which we spake Had something strange, I could but mark; The leaves of memory seemed to make A mournful rustling in the dark. Oft died the words upon our lips, As suddenly, from out the fire Built of the wreck of stranded ships, The flames would leap and then expire. And, as their splendor flashed and failed, We thought of wrecks upon the main, Of ships dismasted, that were hailed And sent no answer back again. The windows, rattling in their frames, The ocean, roaring up the beach, The gusty blast, the bickering flames, All mingled vaguely in our speech; Until they made themselves a part Of fancies floating through the brain, The long-lost ventures of the heart, That send no answers back again. O flames that glowed! O hearts that yearned! They were indeed too much akin, The driftwood fire without that burned, The thoughts that burned and glowed within. H.W. LONGFELLOW. A Death-bed. Her suffering ended with the day, Yet lived she at its close, And breathed the long, long night away In statue-like repose. But when the sun in all his state Illumed the eastern skies, She passed through Glory's morning gate And walked in Paradise. J. ALDRICH. Telling the Bees. Here is the place; right over the hill Runs the path I took; You can see the gap in the old wall still, And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook. There is the house, with the gate red-barred, And the poplars tall; And the barn's brown length, and the cattle-yard, And the white horns tossing above the wall. There are the beehives ranged in the sun; And down by the brink Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o'errun,-- Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink. A year has gone, as the tortoise goes, Heavy and slow; And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows, And the same brook sings of a year ago. There's the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze; And the June sun warm Tangles his wings of fire in the trees, Setting, as then, over Fernside farm. I mind me how with a lover's care From my Sunday coat I brushed off the burrs, and smoothed my hair, And cooled at the brookside my brow and throat. Since we parted, a month had passed,-- To love, a year; Down through the beeches I looked at last On the little red gate and the well-sweep near. I can see it all now,--the slantwise rain Of light through the leaves, The sundown's blaze on her window-pane, The bloom of her roses under the eaves. Just the same as a month before,-- The house and the trees, The barn's brown gable, the vine by the door,-- Nothing changed but the hives of bees. Before them, under the garden wall, Forward and back, Went, drearily singing, the chore-girl small, Draping each hive with a shred of black. Trembling, I listened; the summer sun Had the chill of snow; For I knew she was telling the bees of one Gone on the journey we all must go! Then I said to myself, "My Mary weeps For the dead to-day; Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps The fret and the pain of his age away." But her dog whined low; on the doorway sill, With his cane to his chin, The old man sat; and the chore-girl still Sung to the bees stealing out and in. And the song she was singing ever since In my ear sounds on: "Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence! Mistress Mary is dead and gone!" J.G. WHITTIER. Katie. It may be through some foreign grace, And unfamiliar charm of face; It may be that across the foam Which bore her from her childhood's home, By some strange spell, my Katie brought Along with English creeds and thought-- Entangled in her golden hair-- Some English sunshine, warmth, and air! I cannot tell,--but here to-day, A thousand billowy leagues away From that green isle whose twilight skies No darker are than Katie's eyes, She seems to me, go where she will, An English girl in England still! I meet her on the dusty street, And daisies spring about her feet; Or, touched to life beneath her tread, An English cowslip lifts its head; And, as to do her grace, rise up The primrose and the buttercup! I roam with her through fields of cane, And seem to stroll an English lane, Which, white with blossoms of the May, Spreads its green carpet in her way! As fancy wills, the path beneath Is golden gorse, or purple heath; And now we hear in woodlands dim Their unarticulated hymn, Now walk through rippling waves of wheat, Now sink in mats of clover sweet, Or see before us from the lawn The lark go up to greet the dawn! All birds that love the English sky Throng round my path when she is by; The blackbird from a neighboring thorn With music brims the cup of morn, And in a thick, melodious rain The mavis pours her mellow strain! But only when my Katie's voice Makes all the listening woods rejoice I hear--with cheeks that flush and pale-- The passion of the nightingale! H. TIMROD. My Love. Not as all other women are Is she that to my soul is dear; Her glorious fancies come from far, Beneath the silver evening-star, And yet her heart is ever near. Great feelings hath she of her own, Which lesser souls may never know; God giveth them to her alone, And sweet they are as any tone Wherewith the wind may choose to blow. Yet in herself she dwelleth not, Although no home were half so fair; No simplest duty is forgot; Life hath no dim and lowly spot That doth not in her sunshine share. She doeth little kindnesses, Which most leave undone, or despise; For naught that sets one heart at ease, And giveth happiness or peace, Is low-esteemèd in her eyes. She hath no scorn of common things, And, though she seem of other birth, Round us her heart intwines and clings, And patiently she folds her wings To tread the humble paths of earth. Blessing she is; God made her so, And deeds of week-day holiness Fall from her noiseless as the snow, Nor hath she ever chanced to know That aught were easier than to bless. She is most fair, and thereunto Her life doth rightly harmonize; Feeling or thought that was not true Ne'er made less beautiful the blue Unclouded heaven of her eyes. She is a woman; one in whom The spring-time of her childish years Hath never lost its fresh perfume, Though knowing well that life hath room For many blights and many tears. I love her with a love as still As a broad river's peaceful might, Which, by high tower and lowly mill, Goes wandering at its own will, And yet doth ever flow aright. And, on its full, deep breast serene, Like quiet isles my duties lie; It flows around them and between, And makes them fresh, and fair, and green, Sweet homes wherein to live and die. J.R. LOWELL. She Came and Went. As a twig trembles, which a bird Lights on to sing, then leaves unbent, So is my memory thrilled and stirred;-- I only know she came and went. As clasps some lake, by gusts unriven, The blue dome's measureless content, So my soul held that moment's heaven;-- I only know she came and went. As, at one bound, our swift spring heaps The orchards full of bloom and scent, So clove her May my wintry sleeps;-- I only know she came and went. An angel stood and met my gaze, Through the low doorway of my tent; The tent is struck, the vision stays;-- I only know she came and went. Oh, when the room grows slowly dim, And life's last oil is nearly spent, One gush of light these eyes will brim, Only to think she came and went. J.R. LOWELL. Her Epitaph. The handful here, that once was Mary's earth, Held, while it breathed, so beautiful a soul, That, when she died, all recognized her birth, And had their sorrow in serene control. "Not here! not here!" to every mourner's heart The wintry wind seemed whispering round her bier; And when the tomb-door opened, with a start We heard it echoed from within,--"Not here!" Shouldst thou, sad pilgrim, who mayst hither pass, Note in these flowers a delicater hue, Should spring come earlier to this hallowed grass, Or the bee later linger on the dew,-- Know that her spirit to her body lent Such sweetness, grace, as only goodness can; That even her dust, and this her monument, Have yet a spell to stay one lonely man, Lonely through life, but looking for the day When what is mortal of himself shall sleep, When human passion shall have passed away, And Love no longer be a thing to weep. T.W. PARSONS. Apart. At sea are tossing ships; On shore are dreaming shells, And the waiting heart and the loving lips, Blossoms and bridal bells. At sea are sails a-gleam; On shore are longing eyes, And the far horizon's haunting dream Of ships that sail the skies. At sea are masts that rise Like spectres from the deep; On shore are the ghosts of drowning cries That cross the waves of sleep. At sea are wrecks a-strand; On shore are shells that moan, Old anchors buried in barren sand, Sea-mist and dreams alone. J.J. PIATT. The Discoverer. I have a little kinsman Whose earthly summers are but three, And yet a voyager is he Greater than Drake or Frobisher, Than all their peers together! He is a brave discoverer, And, far beyond the tether Of them who seek the frozen Pole, Has sailed where the noiseless surges roll. Ay, he has travelled whither A winged pilot steered his bark Through the portals of the dark, Past hoary Mimir's well and tree, Across the unknown sea. Suddenly, in his fair young hour, Came one who bore a flower, And laid it in his dimpled hand With this command: "Henceforth thou art a rover! Thou must make a voyage far, Sail beneath the evening star, And a wondrous land discover." --With his sweet smile innocent Our little kinsman went. Since that time no word From the absent has been heard. Who can tell How he fares, or answer well What the little one has found Since he left us, outward bound? Would that he might return! Then should we learn From the pricking of his chart How the skyey roadways part. Hush! does not the baby this way bring, To lay beside this severed curl, Some starry offering Of chrysolite or pearl? Ah, no! not so! We may follow on his track, But he comes not back. And yet I dare aver He is a brave discoverer Of climes his elders do not know. He has more learning than appears On the scroll of twice three thousand years, More than in the groves is taught, Or from furthest Indies brought; He knows, perchance, how spirits fare,-- What shapes the angels wear, What is their guise and speech In those lands beyond our reach,-- And his eyes behold Things that shall never, never be to mortal hearers told. E.C. STEDMAN. At Last.[4] When first the bride and bridegroom wed, They love their single selves the best; A sword is in the marriage bed, Their separate slumbers are not rest. They quarrel, and make up again, They give and suffer worlds of pain. Both right and wrong, They struggle long, Till some good day, when they are old, Some dark day, when the bells are tolled, Death having taken their best of life, They lose themselves, and find each other; They know that they are husband, wife, For, weeping, they are Father, Mother! R.H. STODDARD. [4] From "The Poems of R.H. Stoddard," copyright 1880, by Charles Scribner's Sons. "Thalatta." CRY OF THE TEN THOUSAND. I stand upon the summit of my years. Behind, the toil, the camp, the march, the strife, The wandering and the desert; vast, afar, Beyond this weary way, behold! the Sea! The sea o'erswept by clouds and winds and wings, By thoughts and wishes manifold, whose breath Is freshness and whose mighty pulse is peace. Palter no question of the dim Beyond; Cut loose the bark; such voyage itself is rest; Majestic motion, unimpeded scope, A widening heaven, a current without care. Eternity!--Deliverance, Promise, Course! Time-tired souls salute thee from the shore. J.B. BROWN. Gondolieds. I. YESTERDAY. Dear yesterday, glide not so fast; Oh, let me cling To thy white garments floating past; Even to shadows which they cast I cling, I cling. Show me thy face Just once, once more; a single night Cannot have brought a loss, a blight Upon its grace. Nor are they dead whom thou dost bear, Robed for the grave. See what a smile their red lips wear; To lay them living wilt thou dare Into a grave? I know, I know, I left thee first; now I repent; I listen now; I never meant To have thee go. Just once, once more, tell me the word Thou hadst for me! Alas! although my heart was stirred, I never fully knew or heard It was for me. O yesterday, My yesterday, thy sorest pain Were joy couldst thou but come again,-- Sweet yesterday. _Venice, May 26._ II. TO-MORROW. All red with joy the waiting west, O little swallow, Couldst thou tell me which road is best? Cleaving high air with thy soft breast For keel, O swallow, Thou must o'erlook My seas and know if I mistake; I would not the same harbor make Which yesterday forsook. I hear the swift blades dip and plash Of unseen rowers; On unknown land the waters dash; Who knows how it be wise or rash To meet the rowers! Premì! Premì! Venetia's boatmen lean and cry; With voiceless lips I drift and lie Upon the twilight sea. The swallow sleeps. Her last low call Had sound of warning. Sweet little one, whate'er befall, Thou wilt not know that it was all In vain thy warning. I may not borrow A hope, a help. I close my eyes; Cold wind blows from the Bridge of Sighs; Kneeling I wait to-morrow. _Venice, May 30._ H.H. JACKSON. In the Twilight. Men say the sullen instrument That, from the Master's bow, With pangs of joy or woe, Feels music's soul through every fibre sent, Whispers the ravished strings More than he knew or meant; Old summers in its memory glow; The secrets of the wind it sings; It hears the April-loosened springs; And mixes with its mood All it dreamed when it stood In the murmurous pine-wood Long ago! The magical moonlight then Steeped every bough and cone; The roar of the brook in the glen Came dim from the distance blown; The wind through its glooms sang low, And it swayed to and fro With delight as it stood, In the wonderful wood, Long ago! O my life, have we not had seasons That only said, "Live and rejoice?" That asked not for causes and reasons, But made us all feeling and voice? When we went with the winds in their blowing, When Nature and we were peers, And we seemed to share in the flowing Of the inexhaustible years? Have we not from the earth drawn juices Too fine for earth's sordid uses? Have I heard, have I seen All I feel and I know? Doth my heart overween? Or could it have been Long ago? Sometimes a breath floats by me, An odor from Dreamland sent, That makes the ghost seem nigh me Of a splendor that came and went, Of a life lived somewhere, I know not In what diviner sphere, Of memories that stay not and go not, Like music heard once by an ear That cannot forget or reclaim it, A something so shy, it would shame it To make it a show, A something too vague, could I name it, For others to know, As if I had lived it or dreamed it, As if I had acted or schemed it, Long ago! And yet, could I live it over, This life that stirs in my brain, Could I be both maiden and lover, Moon and tide, bee and clover, As I seem to have been, once again, Could I but speak and show it, This pleasure more sharp than pain, That baffles and lures me so, The world should not lack a poet, Such as it had In the ages glad, Long ago! J.R. LOWELL. The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls. The tide rises, the tide falls, The twilight darkens, the curlew calls; Along the sea-sands damp and brown The traveller hastens toward the town, And the tide rises, the tide falls. Darkness settles on roofs and walls, But the sea in the darkness calls and calls; The little waves, with their soft, white hands, Efface the footprints in the sands, And the tide rises, the tide falls. The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls; The day returns, but nevermore Returns the traveller to the shore, And the tide rises, the tide falls. H.W. LONGFELLOW. The Fall of the Leaf. The evening of the year draws on, The fields a later aspect wear; Since Summer's garishness is gone, Some grains of night tincture the noontide air. Behold! the shadows of the trees Now circle wider 'bout their stem, Like sentries that by slow degrees Perform their rounds, gently protecting them. And as the year doth decline, The sun allows a scantier light; Behind each needle of the pine There lurks a small auxiliar to the night. I hear the cricket's slumbrous lay Around, beneath me, and on high; It rocks the night, it soothes the day, And everywhere is Nature's lullaby. But most he chirps beneath the sod, When he has made his winter bed; His creak grown fainter but more broad, A film of Autumn o'er the Summer spread. Small birds, in fleets migrating by, Now beat across some meadow's bay, And as they tack and veer on high, With faint and hurried click beguile the way. Far in the woods, these golden days, Some leaf obeys its Maker's call; And through their hollow aisles it plays With delicate touch the prelude of the Fall. Gently withdrawing from its stem, It lightly lays itself along Where the same hand hath pillowed them, Resigned to sleep upon the old year's throng. The loneliest birch is brown and sere, The furthest pool is strewn with leaves, Which float upon their watery bier, Where is no eye that sees, no heart that grieves. The jay screams through the chestnut wood; The crisped and yellow leaves around Are hue and texture of my mood,-- And these rough burrs my heirlooms on the ground. The threadbare trees, so poor and thin,-- They are no wealthier than I; But with as brave a core within They rear their boughs to the October sky. Poor knights they are which bravely wait The charge of Winter's cavalry, Keeping a simple Roman state, Discumbered of their Persian luxury. H.D. THOREAU. The Rhodora. ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER? In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook. The purple petals, fallen in the pool, Made the black water with their beauty gay; Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, And court the flower that cheapens his array. Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being: Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose! I never thought to ask, I never knew: But, in my simple ignorance, suppose The self-same Power that brought me there brought you. R.W. EMERSON. Nature. O nature! I do not aspire To be the highest in thy quire,-- To be a meteor in the sky, Or comet that may range on high; Only a zephyr that may blow Among the reeds by the river low; Give me thy most privy place Where to run my airy race. In some withdrawn, unpublic mead Let me sigh upon a reed, Or in the woods, with leafy din, Whisper the still evening in. Some still work give me to do,-- Only--be it near to you! For I'd rather be thy child And pupil, in the forest wild, Than be the king of men elsewhere, And most sovereign slave of care. H.D. THOREAU. My Strawberry. O marvel, fruit of fruits, I pause To reckon thee. I ask what cause Set free so much of red from heats At core of earth, and mixed such sweets With sour and spice: what was that strength Which out of darkness, length by length, Spun all thy shining thread of vine, Netting the fields in bond as thine. I see thy tendrils drink by sips From grass and clover's smiling lips; I hear thy roots dig down for wells, Tapping the meadow's hidden cells; Whole generations of green things, Descended from long lines of springs, I see make room for thee to bide A quiet comrade by their side; I see the creeping peoples go Mysterious journeys to and fro, Treading to right and left of thee, Doing thee homage wonderingly. I see the wild bees as they fare, Thy cups of honey drink, but spare. I mark thee bathe and bathe again In sweet uncalendared spring rain. I watch how all May has of sun Makes haste to have thy ripeness done, While all her nights let dews escape To set and cool thy perfect shape. Ah, fruit of fruits, no more I pause To dream and seek thy hidden laws! I stretch my hand and dare to taste, In instant of delicious waste On single feast, all things that went To make the empire thou hast spent. H.H. JACKSON. The Humble-bee. Burly, dozing humble-bee, Where thou art is clime for me. Let them sail for Porto Rique, Far-off heats through seas to seek; I will follow thee alone, Thou animated torrid-zone! Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer, Let me chase thy waving lines; Keep me nearer, me thy hearer, Singing over shrubs and vines. Insect lover of the sun, Joy of thy dominion! Sailor of the atmosphere; Swimmer through the waves of air; Voyager of light and noon; Epicurean of June; Wait, I prithee, till I come Within earshot of thy hum,-- All without is martyrdom. When the south wind, in May days, With a net of shining haze Silvers the horizon wall, And with softness touching all, Tints the human countenance With a color of romance, And infusing subtle heats, Turns the sod to violets, Thou, in sunny solitudes, Rover of the underwoods, The green silence dost displace With thy mellow, breezy bass. Hot midsummer's petted crone, Sweet to me thy drowsy tone Tells of countless sunny hours, Long days, and solid banks of flowers; Of gulfs of sweetness without bound In Indian wildernesses found; Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure, Firmest cheer, and bird-like pleasure. Aught unsavory or unclean Hath my insect never seen; But violets and bilberry bells, Maple-sap and daffodels, Grass with green flag half-mast high, Succory to match the sky, Columbine with horn of honey, Scented fern, and agrimony, Clover, catchfly, adder's-tongue, And brier-roses, dwelt among; All beside was unknown waste, All was picture as he passed. Wiser far than human seer, Yellow-breeched philosopher! Seeing only what is fair, Sipping only what is sweet, Thou dost mock at fate and care, Leave the chaff, and take the wheat. When the fierce northwestern blast Cools sea and land so far and fast, Thou already slumberest deep; Woe and want thou canst outsleep; Want and woe, which torture us, Thy sleep makes ridiculous. R.W. EMERSON. The Summer Rain. My books I'd fain cast off, I cannot read. 'Twixt every page my thoughts go stray at large Down in the meadow, where is richer feed, And will not mind to hit their proper targe. Plutarch was good, and so was Homer too, Our Shakespeare's life were rich to live again, What Plutarch read, that was not good nor true, Nor Shakespeare's books, unless his books were men. Here while I lie beneath this walnut bough, What care I for the Greeks or for Troy town, If juster battles are enacted now Between the ants upon this hummock's crown? Bid Homer wait till I the issue learn, If red or black the gods will favor most, Or yonder Ajax will the phalanx turn, Struggling to heave some rock against the host. Tell Shakespeare to attend some leisure hour, For now I've business with this drop of dew, And see you not, the clouds prepare a shower,-- I'll meet him shortly when the sky is blue. This bed of herdsgrass and wild oats was spread Last year with nicer skill than monarchs use; A clover tuft is pillow for my head, And violets quite overtop my shoes. And now the cordial clouds have shut all in, And gently swells the wind to say all's well; The scattered drops are falling fast and thin, Some in the pool, some in the flower-bell. I am well drenched upon my bed of oats; But see that globe come rolling down its stem, Now like a lonely planet there it floats, And now it sinks into my garment's hem. Drip, drip the trees for all the country round, And richness rare distills from every bough; The wind alone it is makes every sound, Shaking down crystals on the leaves below. For shame the sun will never show himself, Who could not with his beams e'er melt me so; My dripping locks,--they would become an elf, Who in a beaded coat does gayly go. H.D. THOREAU. To the Dandelion. Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, First pledge of blithesome May, Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold, High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they An Eldorado in the grass have found, Which not the rich earth's ample round May match in wealth, thou art more dear to me Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be. Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow Through the primeval hush of Indian seas, Nor wrinkled the lean brow Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease; 'Tis the Spring's largess, which she scatters now To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand, Though most hearts never understand To take it at God's value, but pass by The offered wealth with unrewarded eye. Thou art my tropics and mine Italy; To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime; The eyes thou givest me Are in the heart, and heed not space or time: Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment In the white lily's breezy tent, His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first From the dark green thy yellow circles burst. Then think I of deep shadows on the grass, Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze, Where, as the breezes pass, The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways, Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass, Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue That from the distance sparkle through Some woodland gap, and of a sky above, Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move. My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with thee; The sight of thee calls back the robin's song, Who, from the dark old tree Beside the door, sang clearly all day long, And I, secure in childish piety, Listened as if I heard an angel sing With news from heaven, which he could bring Fresh every day to my untainted ears When birds and flowers and I were happy peers. How like a prodigal doth Nature seem, When thou, for all thy gold, so common art! Thou teachest me to deem More sacredly of every human heart, Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show, Did we but pay the love we owe, And with a child's undoubting wisdom look On all these living pages of God's book. J.R. LOWELL. The Chambered Nautilus. This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main,-- The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; Wrecked is the ship of pearl! And every chambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed,-- Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed! Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap, forlorn! From thy dead lips a clearer note is born Than ever Triton blew from wreathèd horn! While on mine ear it rings, Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings: Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! O.W. HOLMES. Thought. O messenger, art thou the king, or I? Thou dalliest outside the palace gate Till on thine idle armor lie the late And heavy dews. The morn's bright scornful eye Reminds thee; then, in subtle mockery, Thou smilest at the window where I wait, Who bade thee ride for life. In empty state My days go on, while false hours prophesy Thy quick return; at last, in sad despair, I cease to bid thee, leave thee free as air; When lo, thou stand'st before me glad and fleet, And lay'st undreamed-of treasures at my feet. Ah! messenger, thy royal blood to buy I am too poor. Thou art the king, not I. H.H. JACKSON. Stanzas. Thought is deeper than all speech, Feeling deeper than all thought; Souls to souls can never teach What unto themselves was taught. We are spirits clad in veils: Man by man was never seen; All our deep communing fails To remove the shadowy screen. Heart to heart was never known; Mind with mind did never meet; We are columns left alone Of a temple once complete. Like the stars that gem the sky, Far apart, though seeming near, In our light we scattered lie; All is thus but starlight here. What is social company But a babbling summer stream? What our wise philosophy But the glancing of a dream? Only when the sun of love Melts the scattered stars of thought; Only when we live above What the dim-eyed world hath taught; Only when our souls are fed By the Fount which gave them birth, And by inspiration led, Which they never drew from earth, We, like parted drops of rain Swelling till they meet and run, Shall be all absorbed again, Melting, flowing into one. C.P. CRANCH. Coronation. At the king's gate the subtle noon Wove filmy yellow nets of sun; Into the drowsy snare too soon The guards fell one by one. Through the king's gate, unquestioned then, A beggar went, and laughed, "This brings Me chance, at last, to see if men Fare better, being kings." The king sat bowed beneath his crown, Propping his face with listless hand; Watching the hour-glass sifting down Too slow its shining sand. "Poor man, what wouldst thou have of me?" The beggar turned, and, pitying, Replied, like one in dream, "Of thee, Nothing. I want the king." Uprose the king, and from his head Shook off the crown and threw it by. "O man, thou must have known," he said, "A greater king than I." Through all the gates, unquestioned then, Went king and beggar hand in hand. Whispered the king, "Shall I know when Before _his_ throne I stand?" The beggar laughed. Free winds in haste Were wiping from the king's hot brow The crimson lines the crown had traced. "This is his presence now." At the king's gate the crafty noon Unwove its yellow nets of sun; Out of their sleep in terror soon The guards waked one by one. "Ho here! Ho there! Has no man seen The king?" The cry ran to and fro; Beggar and king, they laughed, I ween, The laugh that free men know. On the king's gate the moss grew gray; The king came not. They called him dead; And made his eldest son one day Slave in his father's stead. H.H. JACKSON. On a Bust of Dante. See, from this counterfeit of him Whom Arno shall remember long, How stern of lineament, how grim, The father was of Tuscan song: There but the burning sense of wrong, Perpetual care and scorn, abide; Small friendship for the lordly throng; Distrust of all the world beside. Faithful if this wan image be, No dream his life was,--but a fight; Could any Beatrice see A lover in that anchorite? To that cold Ghibelline's gloomy sight Who could have guessed the visions came Of Beauty, veiled with heavenly light, In circles of eternal flame? The lips as Cumæ's cavern close, The cheeks with fast and sorrow thin, The rigid front, almost morose, But for the patient hope within, Declare a life whose course hath been Unsullied still, though still severe; Which, through the wavering days of sin, Kept itself icy-chaste and clear. Not wholly such his haggard look When wandering once, forlorn, he strayed, With no companion save his book, To Corvo's hushed monastic shade; Where, as the Benedictine laid His palm upon the convent's guest, The single boon for which he prayed Was peace, that pilgrim's one request. Peace dwells not here,--this rugged face Betrays no spirit of repose; The sullen warrior sole we trace, The marble man of many woes. Such was his mien when first arose The thought of that strange tale divine, When hell he peopled with his foes, The scourge of many a guilty line. War to the last he waged with all The tyrant canker-worms of earth; Baron and duke, in hold and hall, Cursed the dark hour that gave him birth; He used Rome's harlot for his mirth; Plucked bare hypocrisy and crime; But valiant souls of knightly worth Transmitted to the rolls of Time. O Time! whose verdicts mock our own, The only righteous judge art thou; That poor old exile, sad and lone, Is Latium's other Virgil now: Before his name the nations bow; His words are parcel of mankind, Deep in whose hearts, as on his brow, The marks have sunk of Dante's mind. T.W. PARSONS. Pan in Wall Street. A.D. 1867. Just where the Treasury's marble front Looks over Wall Street's mingled nations; Where Jews and Gentiles most are wont To throng for trade and last quotations; Where, hour by hour, the rates of gold Outrival, in the ears of people, The quarter-chimes, serenely tolled From Trinity's undaunted steeple,-- Even there I heard a strange, wild strain Sound high above the modern clamor, Above the cries of greed and gain, The curbstone war, the auction's hammer; And swift, on Music's misty ways, It led, from all this strife for millions, To ancient, sweet-do-nothing days Among the kirtle-robed Sicilians. And as it stilled the multitude, And yet more joyous rose, and shriller, I saw the minstrel, where he stood At ease against a Doric pillar: One hand a droning organ played, The other held a Pan's-pipe (fashioned Like those of old) to lips that made The reeds give out that strain impassioned. 'Twas Pan himself had wandered here A-strolling through this sordid city, And piping to the civic ear The prelude of some pastoral ditty! The demigod had crossed the seas,-- From haunts of shepherd, nymph, and satyr, And Syracusan times,--to these Far shores and twenty centuries later. A ragged cap was on his head; But--hidden thus--there was no doubting That, all with crispy locks o'erspread, His gnarlèd horns were somewhere sprouting; His club-feet, cased in rusty shoes, Were crossed, as on some frieze you see them, And trousers, patched of divers hues, Concealed his crooked shanks beneath them. He filled the quivering reeds with sound, And o'er his mouth their changes shifted, And with his goat's-eyes looked around Where'er the passing current drifted; And soon, as on Trinacrian hills The nymphs and herdsmen ran to hear him, Even now the tradesmen from their tills, With clerks and porters, crowded near him. The bulls and bears together drew From Jauncey Court and New Street Alley, As erst, if pastorals be true, Came beasts from every wooded valley; The random passers stayed to list,-- A boxer Ægon, rough and merry, A Broadway Daphnis, on his tryst With Nais at the Brooklyn Ferry. A one-eyed Cyclops halted long In tattered cloak of army pattern, And Galatea joined the throng,-- A blowsy, apple-vending slattern; While old Silenus staggered out From some new-fangled lunch-house handy, And bade the piper, with a shout, To strike up Yankee Doodle Dandy! A newsboy and a peanut-girl Like little Fauns began to caper: His hair was all in tangled curl, Her tawny legs were bare and taper; And still the gathering larger grew, And gave its pence and crowded nigher, While aye the shepherd-minstrel blew His pipe, and struck the gamut higher. O heart of Nature, beating still With throbs her vernal passion taught her,-- Even here, as on the vine-clad hill, Or by the Arethusan water! New forms may fold the speech, new lands Arise within these ocean-portals, But Music waves eternal wands,-- Enchantress of the souls of mortals! So thought I,--but among us trod A man in blue, with legal baton, And scoffed the vagrant demigod, And pushed him from the step I sat on. Doubting, I mused upon the cry, "Great Pan is dead!"--and all the people Went on their ways:--and clear and high The quarter sounded from the steeple. E.C. STEDMAN. Auspex. My heart, I cannot still it, Nest that had song-birds in it; And when the last shall go, The dreary days, to fill it, Instead of lark or linnet, Shall whirl dead leaves and snow. Had they been swallows only, Without the passion stronger That skyward longs and sings,-- Woe's me, I shall be lonely When I can feel no longer The impatience of their wings! A moment, sweet delusion, Like birds the brown leaves hover; But it will not be long Before their wild confusion Fall wavering down to cover The poet and his song. J.R. LOWELL. Birds.[5] Birds are singing round my window, Tunes the sweetest ever heard, And I hang my cage there daily, But I never catch a bird. So with thoughts my brain is peopled, And they sing there all day long: But they will not fold their pinions In the little cage of Song. R.H. STODDARD. [5] From "The Poems of R.H. Stoddard," copyright, 1880, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Toujours Amour. Prithee tell me, Dimple-Chin, At what age does Love begin? Your blue eyes have scarcely seen Summers three, my fairy queen, But a miracle of sweets, Soft approaches, sly retreats, Show the little archer there, Hidden in your pretty hair; When didst learn a heart to win? Prithee tell me, Dimple-Chin! "Oh!" the rosy lips reply, "I can't tell you if I try. 'Tis so long I can't remember: Ask some younger lass than I!" Tell, oh, tell me, Grizzled-Face, Do your heart and head keep pace? When does hoary Love expire, When do frosts put out the fire? Can its embers burn below All that chill December snow? Care you still soft hands to press, Bonny heads to smooth and bless? When does Love give up the chase? Tell, oh, tell me, Grizzled-Face! "Ah!" the wise old lips reply, "Youth may pass and strength may die; But of Love I can't foretoken: Ask some older sage than I!" E.C. STEDMAN. A Sigh. It was nothing but a rose I gave her,-- Nothing but a rose Any wind might rob of half its savor, Any wind that blows. When she took it from my trembling fingers With a hand as chill,-- Ah, the flying touch upon them lingers, Stays, and thrills them still! Withered, faded, pressed between the pages, Crumpled fold on fold,-- Once it lay upon her breast, and ages Cannot make it old! H.P. SPOFFORD. No More. This is the Burden of the Heart, The Burden that it always bore: We live to love; we meet to part; And part to meet on earth No More: We clasp each other to the heart, And part to meet on earth No More. There is a time for tears to start,-- For dews to fall and larks to soar: The Time for Tears, is when we part To meet upon the earth No More: The Time for Tears, is when we part To meet on this wide earth--No More. B.F. WILLSON. To a Young Girl Dying. WITH A GIFT OF FRESH PALM-LEAVES. This is Palm Sunday: mindful of the day, I bring palm branches, found upon my way: But these will wither; thine shall never die,-- The sacred palms thou bearest to the sky! Dear little saint, though but a child in years, Older in wisdom than my gray compeers! _We_ doubt and tremble,--_we_, with bated breath, Talk of this mystery of life and death: Thou, strong in faith, art gifted to conceive Beyond thy years, and teach us to believe! Then take my palms, triumphal, to thy home, Gentle white palmer, never more to roam! Only, sweet sister, give me, ere thou go'st, Thy benediction,--for my love thou know'st! We, too, are pilgrims, travelling towards the shrine: Pray that our pilgrimage may end like thine! T.W. PARSONS. The Port of Ships.[6] Behind him lay the gray Azores, Behind the Gates of Hercules; Before him not the ghost of shores, Before him only shoreless seas. The good mate said: "Now must we pray, For lo! the very stars are gone. Brave Adm'ral speak,--what shall I say?" "Why, say, 'Sail on! Sail on! and on!'" "My men grow mutinous day by day; My men grow ghastly, wan and weak." The stout mate thought of home; a spray Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek. "What shall I say, brave Adm'ral, say, If we sight naught but seas at dawn?" "Why, you shall say, at break of day, 'Sail on! Sail on! Sail on! and on!'" They sailed, and sailed, as winds might blow, Until at last the blanched mate said: "Why, now not even God would know Should I and all my men fall dead. These very winds forget their way, For God from these dread seas is gone. Now speak, brave Adm'ral; speak, and say--" He said: "Sail on! Sail on! and on!" They sailed! They sailed! Then spake the mate: "This mad sea shows its teeth to-night; He curls his lip, he lies in wait With lifted teeth, as if to bite! Brave Adm'ral, say but one good word,-- What shall we do when hope is gone?" The words leaped as a leaping sword: "Sail on! Sail on! Sail on! and on!" C.H. MILLER. [6] From The Complete Poetical Works of Joaquin Miller. Paradisi Gloria. There is a city, builded by no hand, And unapproachable by sea or shore, And unassailable by any band Of storming soldiery for evermore. There we no longer shall divide our time By acts or pleasures,--doing petty things Of work or warfare, merchandise or rhyme; But we shall sit beside the silver springs That flow from God's own footstool, and behold Sages and martyrs, and those blessed few Who loved us once and were beloved of old, To dwell with them and walk with them anew, In alternations of sublime repose, Musical motion, the perpetual play Of every faculty that Heaven bestows Through the bright, busy, and eternal day. T.W. PARSONS. Ballad. In the summer even, While yet the dew was hoar, I went plucking purple pansies, Till my love should come to shore. The fishing-lights their dances Were keeping out at sea, And come, I sung, my true love! Come hasten home to me! But the sea, it fell a-moaning, And the white gulls rocked thereon; And the young moon dropped from heaven, And the lights hid one by one. All silently their glances Slipped down the cruel sea, And wait! cried the night and wind and storm,-- Wait, till I come to thee! H.P. SPOFFORD. BOOK THIRD. The Fool's Prayer. The royal feast was done; the King Sought some new sport to banish care, And to his jester cried: "Sir Fool, Kneel now, and make for us a prayer!" The jester doffed his cap and bells, And stood the mocking court before; They could not see the bitter smile Behind the painted grin he wore. He bowed his head, and bent his knee Upon the monarch's silken stool; His pleading voice arose: "O Lord, Be merciful to me, a fool! "No pity, Lord, could change the heart From red with wrong to white as wool; The rod must heal the sin: but, Lord, Be merciful to me, a fool! "'Tis not by guilt the onward sweep Of truth and right, O Lord, we stay; 'Tis by our follies that so long We hold the earth from heaven away. "These clumsy feet, still in the mire, Go crushing blossoms without end; These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust Among the heart-strings of a friend. "The ill-timed truth we might have kept-- Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung? The word we had not sense to say-- Who knows how grandly it had rung? "Our faults no tenderness should ask, The chastening stripes must cleanse them all; But for our blunders--oh, in shame Before the eyes of heaven we fall. "Earth bears no balsam for mistakes; Men crown the knave, and scourge the tool That did his will; but Thou, O Lord, Be merciful to me, a fool!" The room was hushed; in silence rose The King, and sought his gardens cool, And walked apart, and murmured low, "Be merciful to me, a fool!" E.R. SILL. On The Life-mask Of Abraham Lincoln. This bronze doth keep the very form and mold Of our great martyr's face. Yes, this is he: That brow all wisdom, all benignity; That human, humorous mouth; those cheeks that hold Like some harsh landscape all the summer's gold; That spirit fit for sorrow, as the sea For storms to beat on; the lone agony Those silent, patient lips too well foretold. Yes, this is he who ruled a world of men As might some prophet of the elder day,-- Brooding above the tempest and the fray With deep-eyed thought and more than mortal ken. A power was his beyond the touch of art Or armèd strength: his pure and mighty heart. R.W. GILDER. Song. Years have flown since I knew thee first, And I know thee as water is known of thirst: Yet I knew thee of old at the first sweet sight, And thou art strange to me, Love, to-night. R.W. GILDER. To A Dead Woman.[7] Not a kiss in life; but one kiss, at life's end, I have set on the face of Death in trust for thee. Through long years keep it fresh on thy lips, O friend! At the gate of Silence give it back to me. H.C. BUNNER. [7] From "The Poems of H.C. Bunner," copyright, 1884, 1892, 1896, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Destiny. Three roses, wan as moonlight, and weighed down Each with its loveliness as with a crown, Drooped in a florist's window in a town. The first a lover bought. It lay at rest, Like flower on flower, that night, on Beauty's breast. The second rose, as virginal and fair, Shrunk in the tangles of a harlot's hair. The third, a widow, with new grief made wild, Shut in the icy palm of her dead child. T.B. ALDRICH. The Kings. A man said unto his angel: "My spirits are fallen thro', And I cannot carry this battle; O brother! what shall I do? "The terrible Kings are on me, With spears that are deadly bright, Against me so from the cradle Do fate and my fathers fight." Then said to the man his angel: "Thou wavering, foolish soul, Back to the ranks! What matter To win or to lose the whole, "As judged by the little judges Who hearken not well, nor see? Not thus, by the outer issue, The Wise shall interpret thee. "Thy will is the very, the only, The solemn event of things; The weakest of hearts defying Is stronger than all these Kings. "Tho' out of the past they gather, Mind's Doubt and bodily Pain, And pallid Thirst of the Spirit That is kin to the other twain, "And Grief, in a cloud of banners, And ringletted Vain Desires, And Vice with the spoils upon him Of thee and thy beaten sires, "While Kings of eternal evil Yet darken the hills about, Thy part is with broken sabre To rise on the last redoubt; "To fear not sensible failure, Nor covet the game at all, But fighting, fighting, fighting, Die, driven against the wall!" L.I. GUINEY. Triumph.[8] The dawn came in through the bars of the blind,-- And the winter's dawn is gray,-- And said, "However you cheat your mind, The hours are flying away." A ghost of a dawn, and pale, and weak,-- "Has the sun a heart," I said, "To throw a morning flush on the cheek Whence a fairer flush has fled?" As a gray rose-leaf that is fading white Was the cheek where I set my kiss; And on that side of the bed all night Death had watched, and I on this. I kissed her lips, they were half apart, Yet they made no answering sign; Death's hand was on her failing heart, And his eyes said, "She is mine." I set my lips on the blue-veined lid, Half-veiled by her death-damp hair; And oh, for the violet depths it hid And the light I longed for there! Faint day and the fainter life awoke, And the night was overpast; And I said, "Though never in life you spoke Oh, speak with a look at last!" For the space of a heart-beat fluttered her breath, As a bird's wing spread to flee; She turned her weary arms to Death, And the light of her eyes to me. H.C. BUNNER. [8] From "The Poems of H.C. Bunner," copyright, 1884, 1892, 1896, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Evening Song.[9] Look off, dear Love, across the sallow sands, And mark yon meeting of the sun and sea, How long they kiss in sight of all the lands. Ah! longer, longer, we. Now in the sea's red vintage melts the sun, As Egypt's pearl dissolved in rosy wine, And Cleopatra night drinks all. 'Tis done, Love, lay thine hand in mine. Come forth, sweet stars, and comfort heaven's heart; Glimmer, ye waves, round else unlighted sands. O night! divorce our sun and sky apart, Never our lips, our hands. S. LANIER. [9] From "Poems of Sidney Lanier," copyright, 1884, 1891, by Mary D. Lanier, published by Charles Scribner's Sons. "The Woods That Bring the Sunset Near." The wind from out the west is blowing, The homeward-wandering cows are lowing, Dark grow the pine-woods, dark and drear,-- The woods that bring the sunset near. When o'er wide seas the sun declines, Far off its fading glory shines, Far off, sublime, and full of fear,-- The pine-woods bring the sunset near. This house that looks to east, to west, This, dear one, is our home, our rest; Yonder the stormy sea, and here The woods that bring the sunset near. R.W. GILDER. At Night. The sky is dark, and dark the bay below Save where the midnight city's pallid glow Lies like a lily white On the black pool of night. O rushing steamer, hurry on thy way Across the swirling Kills and gusty bay, To where the eddying tide Strikes hard the city's side! For there, between the river and the sea, Beneath that glow,--the lily's heart to me,-- A sleeping mother mild, And by her breast a child. R.W. GILDER. "Still in Thy Love I Trust." Still in thy love I trust, Supreme o'er death, since deathless is thy essence; For, putting off the dust, Thou hast but blest me with a nearer presence. And so, for this, for all, I breathe no selfish plaint, no faithless chiding; On me the snowflakes fall, But thou hast gained a summer all-abiding. Striking a plaintive string, Like some poor harper at a palace portal, I wait without and sing, While those I love glide in and dwell immortal. A.A. FIELDS. The Future. What may we take into the vast Forever? That marble door Admits no fruit of all our long endeavor, No fame-wreathed crown we wore, No garnered lore. What can we bear beyond the unknown portal? No gold, no gains Of all our toiling: in the life immortal No hoarded wealth remains, Nor gilds, nor stains. Naked from out that far abyss behind us We entered here: No word came with our coming, to remind us What wondrous world was near, No hope, no fear. Into the silent, starless Night before us, Naked we glide: No hand has mapped the constellations o'er us, No comrade at our side, No chart, no guide. Yet fearless toward that midnight, black and hollow, Our footsteps fare: The beckoning of a Father's hand we follow-- His love alone is there, No curse, no care. E.R. SILL. Prescience. The new moon hung in the sky, The sun was low in the west, And my betrothed and I In the churchyard paused to rest-- Happy maiden and lover, Dreaming the old dream over: The light winds wandered by, And robins chirped from the nest. And lo! in the meadow-sweet Was the grave of a little child, With a crumbling stone at the feet, And the ivy running wild-- Tangled ivy and clover Folding it over and over: Close to my sweetheart's feet Was the little mound up-piled. Stricken with nameless fears, She shrank and clung to me, And her eyes were filled with tears For a sorrow I did not see: Lightly the winds were blowing, Softly her tears were flowing-- Tears for the unknown years And a sorrow that was to be! T.B. ALDRICH. In August. All the long August afternoon, The little drowsy stream Whispers a melancholy tune, As if it dreamed of June And whispered in its dream. The thistles show beyond the brook Dust on their down and bloom, And out of many a weed-grown nook The aster-flowèrs look With eyes of tender gloom. The silent orchard aisles are sweet With smell of ripening fruit. Through the sere grass, in shy retreat, Flutter, at coming feet, The robins strange and mute. There is no wind to stir the leaves, The harsh leaves overhead; Only the querulous cricket grieves, And shrilling locust weaves A song of Summer dead. W.D. HOWELLS. That Day You Came. Such special sweetness was about That day God sent you here, I knew the lavender was out, And it was mid of year. Their common way the great winds blew, The ships sailed out to sea; Yet ere that day was spent I knew Mine own had come to me. As after song some snatch of tune Lurks still in grass or bough, So, somewhat of the end o' June Lurks in each weather now. The young year sets the buds astir, The old year strips the trees; But ever in my lavender I hear the brawling bees. L.W. REESE. Negro Lullaby. Bedtimes' come fu' little boys, Po' little lamb. Too tiahed out to make a noise, Po' little lamb. You gwine t' have to-morrer sho'? Yes, you tole me dat, befo', Don't you fool me, chile, no mo', Po' little lamb. You been bad de livelong day, Po' little lamb. Th'owin' stones an' runnin' 'way, Po' little lamb. My, but you's a-runnin' wild, Look jes' lak some po' folks' chile; Mam' gwine whup you atter while, Po' little lamb. Come hyeah! you mos' tiahed to def, Po' little lamb. Played yo'se'f clean out o' bref, Po' little lamb. See dem han's now,--sich a sight! Would you ever b'lieve dey's white! Stan' still 'twell I wash dem right, Po' little lamb. Jes' caint hol' yo' haid up straight, Po' little lamb. Hadn't oughter played so late, Po' little lamb. Mammy do' know whut she'd do, Ef de chillun's all lak you; You's a caution now fu' true, Po' little lamb. Lay yo' haid down in my lap, Po' little lamb. Y'ought to have a right good slap, Po' little lamb. You been runnin' roun' a heap. Shet dem eyes an' don't you peep, Dah now, dah now, go to sleep, Po' little lamb. P.L. DUNBAR. A Woman's Thought. I am a woman--therefore I may not Call to him, cry to him, Fly to him, Bid him delay not! And when he comes to me, I must sit quiet: Still as a stone-- All silent and cold. If my heart riot-- Crush and defy it! Should I grow bold-- Say one dear thing to him, All my life fling to him, Cling to him-- What to atone Is enough for my sinning! This were the cost to me, This were my winning-- That he were lost to me. Not as a lover At last if he part from me, Tearing my heart from me-- Hurt beyond cure,-- Calm and demure Then must I hold me-- In myself fold me-- Lest he discover; Showing no sign to him By look of mine to him What he has been to me-- How my heart turns to him, Follows him, yearns to him, Prays him to love me. Pity me, lean to me, Thou God above me! R.W. GILDER. The Flight. Upon a cloud among the stars we stood. The angel raised his hand and looked and said, "Which world, of all yon starry myriad Shall we make wing to?" The still solitude Became a harp whereon his voice and mood Made spheral music round his haloed head. I spake--for then I had not long been dead-- "Let me look round upon the vasts, and brood A moment on these orbs ere I decide ... What is yon lower star that beauteous shines And with soft splendor now incarnadines Our wings?--_There_ would I go and there abide." He smiled as one who some child's thought divines: "That is the world where yesternight you died." L. MIFFLIN. Childhood. Old Sorrow I shall meet again, And Joy, perchance--but never, never, Happy Childhood, shall we twain See each other's face forever! And yet I would not call thee back, Dear Childhood, lest the sight of me, Thine old companion, on the rack Of Age, should sadden even thee. J.B. TABB. Little Boy Blue.[10] The little toy dog is covered with dust, But sturdy and stanch he stands; And the little toy soldier is red with rust, And his musket moulds in his hands. Time was when the little toy dog was new And the soldier was passing fair, And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue Kissed them and put them there. "Now, don't you go till I come," he said, "And don't you make any noise!" So toddling off to his trundle-bed He dreampt of the pretty toys. And as he was dreaming, an angel song Awakened our Little Boy Blue,-- Oh, the years are many, the years are long, But the little toy friends are true. Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand, Each in the same old place, Awaiting the touch of a little hand, The smile of a little face. And they wonder, as waiting these long years through, In the dust of that little chair, What has become of our Little Boy Blue Since he kissed them and put them there. E. FIELD. [10] From "A Little Book of Western Verse," copyright, 1889, by Eugene Field, published by Charles Scribner's Sons. Strong as Death.[11] O death, when thou shalt come to me From out thy dark, where she is now, Come not with graveyard smell on thee, Or withered roses on thy brow. Come not, O Death, with hollow tone, And soundless step, and clammy hand-- Lo, I am now no less alone Than in thy desolate, doubtful land; But with that sweet and subtle scent That ever clung about her (such As with all things she brushed was blent); And with her quick and tender touch. With the dim gold that lit her hair, Crown thyself, Death; let fall thy tread So light that I may dream her there, And turn upon my dying bed. And through my chilling veins shall flame My love, as though beneath her breath; And in her voice but call my name, And I will follow thee, O Death. H.C. BUNNER. [11] From "The Poems of H.C. Bunner," copyright, 1884, 1892, 1896 by Charles Scribner's Sons. The White Jessamine. I knew she lay above me, Where the casement all the night Shone, softened with a phosphor glow Of sympathetic light, And that her fledgling spirit pure Was pluming fast for flight. Each tendril throbbed and quickened As I nightly climbed apace, And could scarce restrain the blossoms When, anear the destined place, Her gentle whisper thrilled me Ere I gazed upon her face. I waited, darkling, till the dawn Should touch me into bloom, While all my being panted To outpour its first perfume, When, lo! a paler flower than mine Had blossomed in the gloom! J.B. TABB. The House of Death. Not a hand has lifted the latchet Since she went out of the door-- No footstep shall cross the threshold, Since she can come in no more. There is rust upon locks and hinges, And mold and blight on the walls, And silence faints in the chambers, And darkness waits in the halls-- Waits as all things have waited Since she went, that day of spring, Borne in her pallid splendor To dwell in the Court of the King: With lilies on brow and bosom, With robes of silken sheen, And her wonderful, frozen beauty, The lilies and silk between. Red roses she left behind her, But they died long, long ago 'Twas the odorous ghost of a blossom That seemed through the dusk to glow. The garments she left mock the shadows With hints of womanly grace, And her image swims in the mirror That was so used to her face. The birds make insolent music Where the sunshine riots outside, And the winds are merry and wanton With the summer's pomp and pride. But into this desolate mansion, Where Love has closed the door, Nor sunshine nor summer shall enter, Since she can come in no more. L.C. MOULTON. A Tropical Morning at Sea. Sky in its lucent splendor lifted Higher than cloud can be; Air with no breath of earth to stain it, Pure on the perfect sea. Crests that touch and tilt each other, Jostling as they comb; Delicate crash of tinkling water, Broken in pearling foam. Plashings--or is it the pinewood's whispers, Babble of brooks unseen, Laughter of winds when they find the blossoms, Brushing aside the green? Waves that dip, and dash, and sparkle; Foam-wreaths slipping by, Soft as a snow of broken roses Afloat over mirrored sky. Off to the east the steady sun-track Golden meshes fill Webs of fire, that lace and tangle, Never a moment still. Liquid palms but clap together, Fountains, flower-like, grow-- Limpid bells on stems of silver-- Out of a slope of snow. Sea-depths, blue as the blue of violets-- Blue as a summer sky, When you blink at its arch sprung over Where in the grass you lie. Dimly an orange bit of rainbow Burns where the low west clears, Broken in air, like a passionate promise Born of a moment's tears. Thinned to amber, rimmed with silver, Clouds in the distance dwell, Clouds that are cool, for all their color, Pure as a rose-lipped shell. Fleets of wool in the upper heavens Gossamer wings unfurl; Sailing so high they seem but sleeping Over yon bar of pearl. What would the great world lose, I wonder-- Would it be missed or no-- If we stayed in the opal morning, Floating forever so? Swung to sleep by the swaying water, Only to dream all day-- Blow, salt wind from the north upstarting, Scatter such dreams away! E.R. SILL. Memory. My mind lets go a thousand things, Like dates of wars and deaths of kings, And yet recalls the very hour-- 'Twas noon by yonder village tower, And on the last blue noon in May-- The wind came briskly up this way, Crisping the brook beside the road; Then, pausing here, set down its load Of pine-scents, and shook listlessly Two petals from that wild-rose tree. T.B. ALDRICH. A Mood. A blight, a gloom, I know not what, has crept upon my gladness-- Some vague, remote ancestral touch of sorrow, or of madness; A fear that is not fear, a pain that has not pain's insistence; A tense of longing, or of loss, in some foregone existence; A subtle hurt that never pen has writ nor tongue has spoken-- Such hurt perchance as Nature feels when a blossomed bough is broken. T.B. ALDRICH. The Way to Arcady.[12] _Oh, what's the way to Arcady,_ _To Arcady, to Arcady;_ _Oh, what's the way to Arcady,_ _Where all the leaves are merry?_ Oh, what's the way to Arcady? The spring is rustling in the tree-- The tree the wind is blowing through-- It sets the blossoms flickering white. I knew not skies could burn so blue Nor any breezes blow so light. They blow an old-time way for me, Across the world to Arcady. Oh, what's the way to Arcady? Sir Poet, with the rusty coat, Quit mocking of the song-bird's note. How have you heart for any tune, You with the wayworn russet shoon? Your scrip, a-swinging by your side, Gapes with a gaunt mouth hungry-wide. I'll brim it well with pieces red, If you will tell the way to tread. _Oh, I am bound for Arcady,_ _And if you but keep pace with me_ _You tread the way to Arcady._ And where away lies Arcady, And how long yet may the journey be? _Ah, that_ (quoth he) _I do not know--_ _Across the clover and the snow--_ _Across the frost, across the flowers--_ _Through summer seconds and winter hours._ _I've trod the way my whole life long,_ _And know not now where it may be;_ _My guide is but the stir to song._ _That tells me I can not go wrong,_ _Or clear or dark the pathway be_ _Upon the road to Arcady._ But how shall I do who cannot sing? I was wont to sing, once on a time-- There is never an echo now to ring Remembrance back to the trick of rhyme. _'Tis strange you cannot sing_ (quoth he), _The folk all sing in Arcady._ But how may he find Arcady Who hath not youth nor melody? _What, know you not, old man_ (quoth he)-- _Your hair is white, your face is wise--_ _That Love must kiss that Mortal's eyes_ _Who hopes to see fair Arcady?_ _No gold can buy you entrance there;_ _But beggared Love may go all bare--_ _No wisdom won with weariness;_ _But Love goes in with Folly's dress--_ _No fame that wit could ever win;_ _But only Love may lead Love in_ _To Arcady, to Arcady._ Ah, woe is me, through all my days Wisdom and wealth I both have got, And fame and name, and great men's praise; But Love, ah, Love! I have it not. There was a time, when life was new-- But far away, and half forgot-- I only know her eyes were blue; But Love--I fear I knew it not. We did not wed, for lack of gold, And she is dead, and I am old. All things have come since then to me, Save Love, ah, Love! and Arcady. _Ah, then I fear we part_ (quoth he), _My way's for Love and Arcady_. But you, you fare alone, like me; The gray is likewise in your hair. What love have you to lead you there, To Arcady, to Arcady? _Ah, no, not lonely do I fare;_ _My true companion's Memory._ _With Love he fills the Spring-time air;_ _With Love he clothes the Winter tree._ _Oh, past this poor horizon's bound_ _My song goes straight to one who stands--_ _Her face all gladdening at the sound--_ _To lead me to the Spring-green lands,_ _To wander with enlacing hands._ _The songs within my breast that stir_ _Are all of her, are all of her._ _My maid is dead long years_ (quoth he), _She waits for me in Arcady._ _Oh, yon's the way to Arcady,_ _To Arcady, to Arcady;_ _Oh, yon's the way to Arcady,_ _Where all the leaves are merry._ H.C. BUNNER. [12] From "The Poems of H.C. Bunner," copyright, 1884, 1892, 1896, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Eve's Daughter. I waited in the little sunny room: The cool breeze waved the window-lace, at play, The white rose on the porch was all in bloom, And out upon the bay I watched the wheeling sea-birds go and come. "Such an old friend,--she would not make me stay While she bound up her hair." I turned, and lo, Danaë in her shower! and fit to slay All a man's hoarded prudence at a blow: Gold hair, that streamed away As round some nymph a sunlit fountain's flow. "She would not make me wait!"--but well I know She took a good half-hour to loose and lay Those locks in dazzling disarrangement so! E.R. SILL. On An Intaglio Head Of Minerva. Beneath the warrior's helm, behold The flowing tresses of the woman! Minerva, Pallas, what you will-- A winsome creature, Greek or Roman. Minerva? No! 'tis some sly minx In cousin's helmet masquerading; If not--then Wisdom was a dame For sonnets and for serenading! I thought the goddess cold, austere, Not made for love's despairs and blisses: Did Pallas wear her hair like that? Was Wisdom's mouth so shaped for kisses? The Nightingale should be her bird, And not the Owl, big-eyed and solemn: How very fresh she looks, and yet She's older far than Trajan's Column! The magic hand that carved this face, And set this vine-work round it running, Perhaps ere mighty Phidias wrought Had lost its subtle skill and cunning. Who was he? Was he glad or sad, Who knew to carve in such a fashion? Perchance he graved the dainty head For some brown girl that scorned his passion. Perchance, in some still garden-place, Where neither fount nor tree to-day is, He flung the jewel at the feet Of Phryne, or perhaps 'twas Laïs. But he is dust; we may not know His happy or unhappy story: Nameless, and dead these centuries, His work outlives him--there's his glory! Both man and jewel lay in earth Beneath a lava-buried city; The countless summers came and went With neither haste, nor hate, nor pity. Years blotted out the man, but left The jewel fresh as any blossom, Till some Visconti dug it up-- To rise and fall on Mabel's bosom! O nameless brother! see how Time Your gracious handiwork has guarded: See how your loving, patient art Has come, at last, to be rewarded. Who would not suffer slights of men, And pangs of hopeless passion also, To have his carven agate-stone On such a bosom rise and fall so! T.B. ALDRICH. Hunting-song. Oh, who would stay indoor, indoor, When the horn is on the hill? (_Bugle_: Tarantara!) With the crisp air stinging, and the huntsmen singing, And a ten-tined buck to kill! Before the sun goes down, goes down, We shall slay the buck of ten; (_Bugle_: Tarantara!) And the priest shall say benison, and we shall ha'e venison, When we come home again. Let him that loves his ease, his ease, Keep close and house him fair; (_Bugle_: Tarantara!) He'll still be a stranger to the merry thrill of danger And the joy of the open air. But he that loves the hills, the hills, Let him come out to-day! (_Bugle_: Tarantara!) For the horses are neighing, and the hounds are baying, And the hunt's up, and away! R. HOVEY. Parting. My life closed twice before its close; It yet remains to see If Immortality unveil A third event to me, So huge, so hopeless to conceive, As these that twice befell. Parting is all we know of heaven, And all we need of hell. E. DICKINSON. When the Sultan Goes to Ispahan. _When the Sultan Shah-Zaman_ _Goes to the city Ispahan_, Even before he gets so far As the place where the clustered palm-trees are, At the last of the thirty palace-gates, The flower of the harem, Rose-in-Bloom, Orders a feast in his favorite room-- Glittering squares of colored ice, Sweetened with syrop, tinctured with spice, Creams, and cordials, and sugared dates, Syrian apples, Othmanee quinces, Limes, and citrons, and apricots, And wines that are known to Eastern princes; And Nubian slaves, with smoking pots Of spicèd meats and costliest fish And all that the curious palate could wish, Pass in and out of the cedarn doors; Scattered over mosaic floors Are anemones, myrtles, and violets, And a musical fountain throws its jets Of a hundred colors into the air. The dusk Sultana loosens her hair, And stains with the henna-plant the tips Of her pointed nails, and bites her lips Till they bloom again; but, alas, _that_ rose Not for the Sultan buds and blows! _Not for the Sultan Shah-Zaman_ _When he goes to the city Ispahan_. Then at a wave of her sunny hand The dancing-girls of Samarcand Glide in like shapes from fairy-land, Making a sudden mist in air Of fleecy veils and floating hair And white arms lifted. Orient blood Runs in their veins, shines in their eyes. And there, in this Eastern Paradise, Filled with the breath of sandal-wood, And Khoten musk, and aloes and myrrh, Sits Rose-in-Bloom on a silk divan, Sipping the wines of Astrakhan; And her Arab lover sits with her. _That's when the Sultan Shah-Zaman_ _Goes to the city Ispahan_. Now, when I see an extra light, Flaming, flickering on the night From my neighbor's casement opposite, I know as well as I know to pray, I know as well as a tongue can say, _That the innocent Sultan Shah-Zaman_ _Has gone to the city Isfahan_. T.B. ALDRICH. Night. Chaos, of old, was God's dominion; 'Twas His belovèd child, His own first-born; And He was agèd ere the thought of morn Shook the sheer steeps of black Oblivion. Then all the works of darkness being done Through countless æons hopelessly forlorn, Out to the very utmost verge and bourn, God at the last, reluctant, made the sun. He loved His darkness still, for it was old: He grieved to see His eldest child take flight; And when His _Fiat lux_ the death-knell tolled, As the doomed Darkness backward by Him rolled, He snatched a remnant flying into light And strewed it with the stars, and called it Night. L. MIFFLIN. He Made the Stars Also. Vast hollow voids, beyond the utmost reach Of suns, their legions withering at His nod, Died into day hearing the voice of God; And seas new made, immense and furious, each Plunged and rolled forward, feeling for a beach; He walked the waters with effulgence shod. This being made, He yearned for worlds to make From other chaos out beyond our night-- For to create is still God's prime delight. The large moon, all alone, sailed her dark lake, And the first tides were moving to her might; Then Darkness trembled, and began to quake Big with the birth of stars, and when He spake A million worlds leapt into radiant light! L. MIFFLIN. The Sour Winds. Wind of the North, Wind of the Norland snows, Wind of the winnowed skies and sharp, clear stars-- Blow cold and keen across the naked hills, And crisp the lowland pools with crystal films, And blur the casement-squares with glittering ice, But go not near my love. Wind of the West, Wind of the few, far clouds, Wind of the gold and crimson sunset lands-- Blow fresh and pure across the peaks and plains, And broaden the blue spaces of the heavens, And sway the grasses and the mountain pines, But let my dear one rest. Wind of the East, Wind of the sunrise seas, Wind of the clinging mists and gray, harsh rains-- Blow moist and chill across the wastes of brine, And shut the sun out, and the moon and stars, And lash the boughs against the dripping eaves, Yet keep thou from my love. But thou, sweet wind! Wind of the fragrant South, Wind from the bowers of jasmine and of rose-- Over magnolia glooms and lilied lakes And flowering forests come with dewy wings, And stir the petals at her feet, and kiss The low mound where she lies. C.H. LÜDERS. The Return. Now at last I am at home-- Wind abeam and flooding tide, And the offing white with foam, And an old friend by my side Glad the long, green waves to ride. Strange how we've been wandering Through the crowded towns for gain, You and I who loved the sting Of the salt spray and the rain And the gale across the main! What world honors could avail Loss of this--the slanted mast, And the roaring round the rail, And the sheeted spray we cast Round us as we seaward passed? As the sad land sinks apace, With it sinks each thought of care; Think not now of aging face; Question not the whitening hair: Youth still beckons everywhere. And the light we thought had fled From the sky-line glows there now; Bends the same blue overhead; And the waves we used to plow Part in beryl at the bow. Hours like this we two have known In the old days, when we sailed Seaward ere the night had flown, Or the morning star had paled Like the shy eyes love has veiled. Round our bow the ripples purled, As the swift tide outward streamed Through a hushed and ghostly world, Where our harbor reaches seemed Like a river that we dreamed. Then we saw the black hills sway In the waters' crinkled glass, And the village wan and gray, And the startled cattle pass Through the tangled meadow-grass. Through the glooming we have run Straight into the gates of day, Seen the crimson-edgèd sun Burn the sea's gray bound away-- Leap to universal sway. Little cared we where we drove So the wind was strong and keen. Oh, what sun-crowned waves we clove! What cool shadows lurked between Those long combers pale and green! Graybeard pleasures are but toys; Sorrow shatters them at last: For this brief hour we are boys; Trim the sheet and face the blast; Sail into the happy past! L.F. TOOKER. Bereaved. Let me come in where you sit weeping,--aye, Let me, who have not any child to die, Weep with you for the little one whose love I have known nothing of. The little arms that slowly, slowly loosed Their pressure round your neck; the hands you used To kiss.--Such arms--such hands I never knew. May I not weep with you? Fain would I be of service--say some thing, Between the tears, that would be comforting,-- But ah! so sadder than yourselves am I, Who have no child to die. J.W. RILEY. The Chariot. Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality. We slowly drove, he knew no haste, And I had put away My labor, and my leisure too, For his civility. We passed the school where children played, Their lessons scarcely done; We passed the fields of gazing grain. We passed the setting sun. We paused before a house that seemed A swelling of the ground; The roof was scarcely visible, The cornice but a mound. Since then 'tis centuries; but each Feels shorter than the day I first surmised the horses' heads Were toward eternity. E. DICKINSON. Indian Summer. These are the days when birds come back, A very few, a bird or two, To take a backward look. These are the days when skies put on The old, old sophistries of June,-- A blue and gold mistake. Oh, fraud that cannot cheat the bee, Almost thy plausibility Induces my belief, Till ranks of seeds their witness bear, And softly through the altered air Hurries a timid leaf! Oh, sacrament of summer days, Oh, last communion in the haze, Permit a child to join, Thy sacred emblems to partake, Thy consecrated bread to break, Taste thine immortal wine! E. DICKINSON. Confided. Another lamb, O Lamb of God, behold, Within this quiet fold, Among Thy Father's sheep I lay to sleep! A heart that never for a night did rest Beyond its mother's breast. Lord, keep it close to Thee, Lest waking it should bleat and pine for me! J.B. TABB. In Absence. All that thou art not, makes not up the sum Of what thou art, belovèd, unto me: All other voices, wanting thine, are dumb; All vision, in thine absence, vacancy. J.B. TABB. Song of the Chattahoochee.[13] Out of the hills of Habersham, Down the valleys of Hall, I hurry amain to reach the plain, Run the rapids and leap the fall Split at the rock and together again, Accept my bed, or narrow or wide, And flee from folly on every side With a lover's pain to attain the plain Far from the hills of Habersham, Far from the valleys of Hall. All down the hills of Habersham, All through the valleys of Hall, The rushes cried _Abide, abide_, The wilful waterweeds held me thrall, The laving laurel turned my tide, The ferns and the fondling grass said _Stay_, The dewberry dipped for to work delay, And the little reeds sighed _Abide, abide_ _Here in the hills of Habersham_ _Here in the valleys of Hall_. High o'er the hills of Habersham, Veiling the valleys of Hall, The hickory told me manifold Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall Wrought me her shadowy self to hold, The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine, Overleaning, with flickering meaning and sign, Said, _Pass not, so cold, these manifold_ _Deep shades of the hills of Habersham_, _These glades in the valleys of Hall_. And oft in the hills of Habersham, And oft in the valleys of Hall, The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook-stone Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl, And many a luminous jewel lone --Crystals clear or acloud with mist, Ruby, garnet and amethyst-- Made lures with the lights of streaming stone In the clefts of the hills of Habersham, In the beds of the valleys of Hall. But oh, not the hills of Habersham, And oh, not the valleys of Hall Avail: I am fain for to water the plain. Downward the voices of Duty call-- Downward to toil and be mixed with the main. The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn, And a myriad flowers mortally yearn, And the lordly main from beyond the plain Calls o'er the hills of Habersham, Calls through the valleys of Hall. S. LANIER. [13] From "Poems of Sidney Lanier," copyright, 1884, 1891, by Mary D. Lanier, published by Charles Scribner's Sons. The Sea's Voice. I. Around the rocky headlands, far and near, The wakened ocean murmured with dull tongue Till all the coast's mysterious caverns rung With the waves' voice, barbaric, hoarse, and drear. Within this distant valley, with rapt ear, I listened, thrilled, as though a spirit sung, Or some gray god, as when the world was young, Moaned to his fellow, mad with rage or fear. Thus in the dark, ere the first dawn, methought The sea's deep roar and sullen surge and shock Broke the long silence of eternity, And echoed from the summits where God wrought, Building the world, and ploughing the steep rock With ploughs of ice-hills harnessed to the sea. II. The sea is never quiet: east and west The nations hear it, like the voice of fate; Within vast shores its strife makes desolate, Still murmuring mid storms that to its breast Return, as eagles screaming to their nest. Is it the voice of worlds and isles that wait While old earth crumbles to eternal rest, Or some hoar monster calling to his mate? O ye, that hear it moan about the shore, Be still and listen! that loud voice hath sung Where mountains rise, where desert sands are blown; And when man's voice is dumb, forevermore 'Twill murmur on its craggy shores among, Singing of gods and nations overthrown. W.P. FOSTER. At Gibraltar. I. England, I stand on thy imperial ground, Not all a stranger; as thy bugles blow, I feel within my blood old battles flow,-- The blood whose ancient founts in thee are found. Still surging dark against the Christian bound Wide Islam presses; well its peoples know Thy heights that watch them wandering below; I think how Lucknow heard their gathering sound. I turn and meet the cruel turbaned face; England, 'tis sweet to be so much thy son! I feel the conqueror in my blood and race; Last night Trafalgar awed me, and to-day Gibraltar wakened; hark, thy evening gun Startles the desert over Africa! II. Thou art the rock of empire, set mid-seas Between the East and West, that God has built; Advance thy Roman borders where thou wilt, While run thy armies true with His decrees. Law, justice, liberty,--great gifts are these; Watch that they spread where English blood is spilt, Lest, mixt and sullied with his country's guilt, The soldier's life-stream flow and Heaven displease. Two swords there are: one naked, apt to smite, Thy blade of war; and, battled-storied, one Rejoices in the sheath and hides from light American I am; would wars were done! Now westward look, my country bids Good-night,-- Peace to the world from ports without a gun! G.E. WOODBERRY. Jerry an' Me. No matter how the chances are, Nor when the winds may blow, My Jerry there has left the sea With all its luck an' woe: For who would try the sea at all, Must try it luck or no. They told him--Lor', men take no care How words they speak may fall-- They told him blunt, he was too old, Too slow with oar an' trawl, An' this is how he left the sea An' luck an' woe an' all. Take any man on sea or land Out of his beaten way, If he is young 'twill do, but then, If he is old an' gray, A month will be a year to him, Be all to him you may. He sits by me, but most he walks The door-yard for a deck, An' scans the boat a-goin' out Till she becomes a speck, Then turns away, his face as wet As if she were a wreck. I cannot bring him back again, The days when we were wed. But he shall never know--my man-- The lack o' love or bread, While I can cast a stitch or fill A needleful o' thread. God pity me, I'd most forgot How many yet there be, Whose goodmen full as old as mine Are somewhere on the sea, Who hear the breakin' bar an' think O' Jerry home an'--me. H. RICH. The Gravedigger. Oh, the shambling sea is a sexton old, And well his work is done; With an equal grave for lord and knave, He buries them every one. Then hoy and rip, with a rolling hip, He makes for the nearest shore; And God, who sent him a thousand ship, Will send him a thousand more; But some he'll save for a bleaching grave, And shoulder them in to shore,-- Shoulder them in, shoulder them in, Shoulder them in to shore. Oh, the ships of Greece and the ships of Tyre Went out, and where are they? In the port they made, they are delayed With the ships of yesterday. He followed the ships of England far As the ships of long ago; And the ships of France they led him a dance, But he laid them all arow. Oh, a loafing, idle lubber to him Is the sexton of the town; For sure and swift, with a guiding lift, He shovels the dead men down. But though he delves so fierce and grim, His honest graves are wide, As well they know who sleep below The dredge of the deepest tide. Oh, he works with a rollicking stave at lip, And loud is the chorus skirled; With the burly note of his rumbling throat He batters it down the world. He learned it once in his father's house Where the ballads of eld were sung; And merry enough is the burden rough, But no man knows the tongue. Oh, fair, they say, was his bride to see, And wilful she must have been, That she could bide at his gruesome side When the first red dawn came in. And sweet, they say, is her kiss to those She greets to his border home; And softer than sleep her hand's first sweep That beckons, and they come. Oh, crooked is he, but strong enough To handle the tallest mast; From the royal barque to the slaver dark, He buries them all at last. Then hoy and rip, with a rolling hip, He makes for the nearest shore; And God, who sent him a thousand ship, Will send him a thousand more; But some he'll save for a bleaching grave, And shoulder them in to shore,-- Shoulder them in, shoulder them in, Shoulder them in to shore. B. CARMAN. The Absence of Little Wesley. HOOSIER DIALECT. Sence little Wesley went, the place seems all so strange and still-- W'y, I miss his yell o' "Gran'pap!" as I'd miss the whipperwill! And to think I ust to _scold_ him fer his everlastin' noise, When I on'y rickollect him as the best o' little boys! I wisht a hunderd times a day 'at he'd come trompin' in, And all the noise he ever made was twic't as loud ag'in!-- It 'u'd seem like some soft music played on some fine insturment, 'Longside o' this loud lonesomeness, sence little Wesley went! Of course the clock don't tick no louder than it ust to do-- Yit now they's times it 'pears like it 'u'd bu'st itse'f in two! And let a rooster, suddent-like, crow som'er's clos't around, And seems's ef, mighty nigh it, it 'u'd lift me off the ground! And same with all the cattle when they bawl around the bars, In the red o' airly mornin', er the dusk and dew and stars, When the neighbers' boys 'at passes never stop, but jes' go on, A-whistlin' kind o' to theirse'v's--sence little Wesley's gone! And then, o' nights, when Mother's settin' up oncommon late, A-bilin' pears er somepin', and I set and smoke and wait, Tel the moon out through the winder don't look bigger'n a dime, And things keeps gittin' stiller--stiller--stiller all the time,-- I've ketched myse'f a-wishin' like--as I dumb on the cheer To wind the clock, as I hev done fer mor'n fifty year,-- A-wishin' 'at the time bed come fer us to go to bed, With our last prayers, and our last tears, sence little Wesley's dead! J.W. RILEY. Be Thou a Bird, My Soul. Be thou a bird, my soul, and mount and soar Out of thy wilderness, Till earth grows less and less, Heaven, more and more. Be thou a bird, and mount, and soar, and sing, Till all the earth shall be Vibrant with ecstasy Beneath thy wing. Be thou a bird, and trust, the autumn come, That through the pathless air Thou shalt find otherwhere Unerring, home. Opportunity. This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream:-- There spread a cloud of dust along a plain; And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince's banner Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes. A craven hung along the battle's edge, And thought, "Had I a sword of keener steel-- That blue blade that the king's son bears,--but this Blunt thing!"--he snapt and flung it from his hand, And lowering crept away and left the field. Then came the king's son, wounded, sore bestead, And weaponless, and saw the broken sword, Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand, And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shout Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down, And saved a great cause that heroic day. E.R. SILL. Dutch Lullaby.[14] Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night Sailed off in a wooden shoe,-- Sailed on a river of misty light Into a sea of dew. "Where are you going, and what do you wish?" The old moon asked the three. "We have come to fish for the herring-fish That live in this beautiful sea; Nets of silver and gold have we," Said Wynken, Blynken, And Nod. The old moon laughed and sung a song, As they rocked in the wooden shoe; And the wind that sped them all night long Ruffled the waves of dew; The little stars were the herring-fish That lived in the beautiful sea. "Now cast your nets wherever you wish, But never afeard are we!" So cried the stars to the fishermen three, Wynken, Blynken, And Nod. All night long their nets they threw For the fish in the twinkling foam, Then down from the sky came the wooden shoe, Bringing the fishermen home; 'Twas all so pretty a sail, it seemed As if it could not be; And some folk thought 'twas a dream they'd dreamed Of sailing that beautiful sea; But I shall name you the fishermen three: Wynken, Blynken, And Nod. Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes, And Nod is a little head, And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies Is a wee one's trundle-bed; So shut your eyes while Mother sings Of wonderful sights that be, And you shall see the beautiful things As you rock on the misty sea Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three,-- Wynken, Blynken, And Nod. E. FIELD. [14] From "A Little Book of Western Verse," copyright, 1889, by Eugene Field, published by Charles Scribner's Sons. The Maryland Yellow-throat.[15] While May bedecks the naked trees With tassels and embroideries, And many blue-eyed violets beam Along the edges of the stream, I hear a voice that seems to say, Now near at hand, now far away, "_Witchery--witchery--witchery_." An incantation so serene, So innocent, befits the scene: There's magic in that small bird's note-- See, there he flits--the yellow-throat: A living sunbeam, tipped with wings, A spark of light that shines and sings "_Witchery--witchery--witchery_." You prophet with a pleasant name, If out of Mary-land you came, You know the way that thither goes Where Mary's lovely garden grows: Fly swiftly back to her, I pray, And try, to call her down this way, "_Witchery--witchery--witchery_!" Tell her to leave her cockleshells, And all her little silver bells That blossom into melody, And all her maids less fair than she. She does not need these pretty things, For everywhere she comes, she brings "_Witchery--witchery--witchery_!" The woods are greening overhead, And flowers adorn each mossy bed; The waters babble as they run-- One thing is lacking, only one: If Mary were but here to-day, I would believe your charming lay, "_Witchery--witchery--witchery_!" Along the shady road I look-- Who's coming now across the brook? A woodland maid, all robed in white-- The leaves dance round her with delight, The stream laughs out beneath her feet-- Sing, merry bird, the charm's complete, "_Witchery--witchery--witchery_!" H. VAN DYKE. [15] From "The Builders and Other Poems," copyright, 1897, by Charles Scribner's Sons. The Silence of Love. Oh, inexpressible as sweet, Love takes my voice away; I cannot tell thee, when we meet, What most I long to say. But hadst thou hearing in thy heart To know what beats in mine, Then shouldst thou walk, where'er thou art, In melodies divine. So warbling birds lift higher notes Than to our ears belong; The music fills their throbbing throats, But silence steals the song. G.E. WOODBERRY. The Secret. Nightingales warble about it, All night under blossom and star; The wild swan is dying without it, And the eagle cryeth afar; The sun he doth mount but to find it, Searching the green earth o'er; But more doth a man's heart mind it, Oh, more, more, more! Over the gray leagues of ocean The infinite yearneth alone; The forests with wandering emotion The thing they know not intone; Creation arose but to see it, A million lamps in the blue; But a lover he shall be it If one sweet maid is true. G.E. WOODBERRY. The Whip-poor-will.[16] Do you remember, father,-- It seems so long ago,-- The day we fished together Along the Pocono? At dusk I waited for you, Beside the lumber-mill, And there I heard a hidden bird That chanted, "whip-poor-will," "_Whippoorwill! whippoorwill!_" Sad and shrill,--"_whippoorwill!_" The place was all deserted; The mill-wheel hung at rest; The lonely star of evening Was quivering in the west; The veil of night was falling; The winds were folded still; And everywhere the trembling air Re-echoed "whip-poor-will!" "_Whippoorwill! whippoorwill!_" Sad and shrill,--"_whippoorwill!_" You seemed so long in coming, I felt so much alone; The wide, dark world was round me, And life was all unknown; The hand of sorrow touched me, And made my senses thrill With all the pain that haunts the strain Of mournful whip-poor-will. "_Whippoorwill! whippoorwill!_" Sad and shrill,--"_whippoorwill!_" What did I know of trouble? An idle little lad; I had not learned the lessons That make men wise and sad, I dreamed of grief and parting, And something seemed to fill My heart with tears, while in my ears Resounded "whip-poor-will." "_Whippoorwill! whippoorwill!_" Sad and shrill,--"_whippoorwill!_" 'Twas but a shadowy sadness, That lightly passed away; But I have known the substance Of sorrow, since that day. For nevermore at twilight, Beside the silent mill, I'll wait for you, in the falling dew, And hear the whip-poor-will. "_Whippoorwill! whippoorwill!_" Sad and shrill,--"_whippoorwill!_" But if you still remember, In that fair land of light, The pains and fears that touch us Along this edge of night, I think all earthly grieving, And all our mortal ill, To you must seem like a boy's sad dream, Who hears the whip-poor-will. "_Whippoorwill! whippoorwill!_" A passing thrill--"_whippoorwill!_" H. VAN DYKE. [16] From "The Builders, and Other Poems," copyright, 1897, Charles Scribner's Sons. Fertility. Spirit that moves the sap in spring, When lusty male birds fight and sing, Inform my words, and make my lines As sweet as flowers, as strong as vines, Let mine be the freshening power Of rain on grass, of dew on flower; The fertilizing song be mine, Nut-flavored, racy, keen as wine. Let some procreant truth exhale From me, before my forces fail; Or ere the ecstatic impulse go, Let all my buds to blossoms blow. If quick, sound seed be wanting where The virgin soil feels sun and air, And longs to fill a higher state, There let my meanings germinate. Let not my strength be spilled for naught, But, in some fresher vessel caught, Be blended into sweeter forms, And fraught with purer aims and charms. Let bloom-dust of my life be blown To quicken hearts that flower alone; Around my knees let scions rise With heavenward-pointed destinies. And when I fall, like some old tree, And subtile change makes mould of me, There let earth show a fertile line Whence perfect wild-flowers leap and shine! M. THOMPSON. The Veery.[17] The moonbeams over Arno's vale in silver flood were pouring, When first I heard the nightingale a long-lost love deploring. So passionate, so full of pain, it sounded strange and eerie, I longed to hear a simpler strain,--the wood notes of the veery. The laverock sings a bonny lay above the Scottish heather; It sprinkles down from far away like light and love together; He drops the golden notes to greet his brooding mate, his dearie; I only know one song more sweet,--the vespers of the veery. In English gardens, green and bright and full of fruity treasure, I heard the blackbird with delight repeat his merry measure: The ballad was a pleasant one, the tune was loud and cheery, And yet, with every setting sun, I listened for the veery. But far away, and far away, the tawny thrush is singing; New England woods, at close of day, with that clear chant are ringing: And when my light of life is low, and heart and flesh are weary, I fain would hear, before I go, the wood notes of the veery. H. VAN DYKE. [17] From "The Builders, and Other Poems," copyright, 1897, by Charles Scribner's Sons. The Eavesdropper. In a still room at hush of dawn, My Love and I lay side by side And heard the roaming forest wind Stir in the paling autumn-tide. I watched her earth-brown eyes grow glad Because the round day was so fair; While memories of reluctant night Lurked in the blue dusk of her hair. Outside, a yellow maple-tree, Shifting upon the silvery blue With small innumerable sound, Rustled to let the sunlight through. The livelong day the elvish leaves Danced with their shadows on the floor; And the lost children of the wind Went straying homeward by our door. And all the swarthy afternoon We watched the great deliberate sun Walk through the crimsoned hazy world, Counting his hilltops one by one. Then as the purple twilight came And touched the vines along our eaves, Another Shadow stood without And gloomed the dancing of the leaves. The silence fell on my Love's lips; Her great brown eyes were veiled and sad With pondering some maze of dream, Though all the splendid year was glad. Restless and vague as a gray wind Her heart had grown, she knew not why. But hurrying to the open door, Against the verge of western sky I saw retreating on the hills, Looming and sinister and black, The stealthy figure swift and huge Of One who strode and looked not back. B. CARMAN. Sesostris. Sole Lord of Lords and very King of Kings, He sits within the desert, carved in stone; Inscrutable, colossal, and alone, And ancienter than memory of things. Graved on his front the sacred beetle clings; Disdain sits on his lips; and in a frown Scorn lives upon his forehead for a crown. The affrighted ostrich dare not dust her wings Anear this Presence. The long caravan's Dazed camels stop, and mute the Bedouins stare. This symbol of past power more than man's Presages doom. Kings look--and Kings despair: Their sceptres tremble in their jewelled hands And dark thrones totter in the baleful air! L. MIFFLIN. NOTES. American poetry before Bryant was considerable in amount, but, with few exceptions, it must be looked for by the curious student in the graveyard of old anthologies. Who now reads "The Simple Cobbler of Agawam in America," "The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America," "The Day of Doom," "M'Fingal," or "The Columbiad?" Skipping a generation from Barlow's death, who reads with much seriousness any one of the group of poets of which Bryant in his earliest period was the centre: Halleck, Pierpont, Sprague, Drake, Dana, Percival, Allston, Brainard, Mrs. Osgood, and Miss Brooks? A few of them, to be sure, are remembered by an occasional lyric,--Halleck by "Marco Bozzaris," a spirited ode in the manner of Campbell; Pierpont by his ringing lines, "Warren's Address to the American Soldiers;" Drake by "The American Flag," conventional but not commonplace, and marked by one very imaginative line; and Allston by two rather excellent lyrics, "Rosalie" and "America to Great Britain." The first poet to accomplish work of high sustained excellence was Bryant. His poetry, though never impassioned, is uniformly elegant. It is often as chaste as Landor at his best. But it never surprises; it is not emotional, personal, suggestively imaginative. In fact, Bryant's muse is not lyrical. With the exception of Pinkney and Hoffman, whose "Sparkling and Bright," if technically defective, is a true song, we must wait for our lyric poet till we reach Edgar Allan Poe, the greatest--one inclines to say the only--master of musical quality in verse whom America has produced. _The Wild Honeysuckle._--Philip Freneau, born in 1752, was a soldier in the American Revolution. Though never rising quite into the highest class of poets, he is our first genuine singer. "The Indian Burying-ground" and "To a Honey-bee" are only less successful than the graceful lines quoted. _A Health._--Poe was an enthusiastic admirer of this poem. He pronounced it, in his essay entitled "The Poetic Principle," "full of brilliancy and spirit," and added: "It was the misfortune of Mr. Pinkney to have been born too far south. Had he been a New Englander, it is probable that he would have been ranked as the first of American lyrists by that magnanimous cabal which has so long controlled the destinies of American Letters, in conducting the thing called _The North American Review_." This passage, very characteristic of Poe's criticisms, illustrates both his championship of favorites, and unmerciful scourging of foes. _Unseen Spirits._--The earnest sincerity, evident in every line of this poem, removes it at once from the company of those gay society verses sparkling with conceits which won for Willis the satiric comment of Lowell in "A Fable for Critics:" "There is Willis, all natty, and jaunty, and gay, Who says his best things in so foppish a way, With conceits and pet phrases so thickly o'erlaying 'em, That one hardly knows whether to thank him for saying 'em; Over-ornament ruins both poem and prose,-- Just conceive of a Muse with a ring in her nose!" Had Willis written more such lyrics as "Unseen Spirits," his fame could hardly have proved so ephemeral. Poe considered this poem Willis's best, and I see no ground for calling the critic's judgment in question. _To Helen._--This brief lyric, written in the poet's youth, is not only among the most exquisite from his pen, but it furnishes one of the most famous among current quotations: "The glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome." _On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake._--These manly lines have yielded another phrase to the world's memory. Hardly any quotation is more hackneyed than the last two verses of the first stanza. Drake was a young poet, the intimate friend and literary co-laborer of Halleck, who died September, 1820, in his twenty-fifth year. _To the Fringed Gentian._--This lyric well illustrates what Mr. Stedman has aptly termed Bryant's "Doric simplicity." Nothing of Wordsworth's is freer from ornament or from the least trace of affectation. _The Raven._--Though not belonging to the highest order of poetry, "The Raven" still maintains its position at the head of its class. No more astonishing _tour de force_ can be found in English literature. _Nature._--Generally regarded, I think, the finest of Longfellow's, if not of American, sonnets. _Ichabod._--Occasioned by the defection and fall of Daniel Webster. It is worthy a place by the side of Browning's "Lost Leader." In later years, Whittier wrote a poem on the theme, which, while not a retraction of his former position, is penned in a tenderer, more tolerant mood, "The Lost Occasion" is its title, and it is only just to the poet to read this second lyric, hardly less successful, in connection with the first. _Old Ironsides._--"Old Ironsides" was the popular name for the frigate _Constitution_. Dr. Holmes's poem appeared in the Boston _Advertiser_ "at the time when it was proposed to break up the old ship as unfit for service." _Bedouin Song._--One of the most spirited, most genuinely lyrical of American poems. _Skipper Ireson's Ride._--These lines have an easy, swinging quality that is quite inimitable. One inclines to agree with Mr. Stedman: "Of all our poets he (Whittier) is the most natural balladist." _The Village Blacksmith._--The directness and homely strength of "The Village Blacksmith" have made it deservedly popular. One questions whether the last stanza might not have been omitted with advantage both to the unity and force of the poem. _The Last Leaf._--This masterpiece of mingled humor and pathos was a favorite poem of Abraham Lincoln. _The Old Kentucky Home._--The sincere and tender sentiment of this song, no less than its popular melody, has made it for many years a favorite. Even better known is Foster's "Old Folks at Home," which is said to have had a larger sale than any other American song. _Carolina._--The concluding lines of this lyric have an imaginative vigor rare in American poetry. Four stanzas are omitted. _Dirge for a Soldier._--Boker's Dirge was written in memory of General Philip Kearney. _Battle-hymn of the Republic._--Written in December, 1861, while Mrs. Howe was on a visit to Washington. Soon after the writer's return to Boston the lines were accepted for publication in the _Atlantic Monthly_ by James T. Fields, who suggested the title of the poem. The song did not at first receive much notice, but before the Civil War was over had become very popular. _My Maryland._--A poem of great strength and beauty, though of uneven merit. It is unfortunately marred by a few rather intemperate expressions. The sincerity of feeling is everywhere so evident, however, that these must be forgiven. The lines were written by a native of Baltimore, Prof. James Randall, and were first published in April, 1861. The author of the famous song was teaching in a Louisiana college when he read in a New Orleans paper the news of the attack on the Massachusetts troops as they passed through Baltimore. This newspaper account inspired the verses. _In the Hospital._--This poem, which has enjoyed at best a newspaper immortality, deserves to be more widely known. Its simplicity, directness, and truth of feeling are quite beyond praise. According to a story which one dislikes to believe apocryphal, these lines were found under the pillow of a wounded soldier near Port Royal, South Carolina, in 1864. _Days._--Regarded from the point of view of artistic form, perhaps nothing of Emerson's is quite so flawless as "Days," a poem which for conciseness and polish is worthy to be called classic. _A Death-bed._--This is a worthy companion-piece to that other miniature classic, Thomas Hood's song, beginning, "We watched her breathing through the night." _Telling the Bees._--"A remarkable custom, brought from the Old Country, formerly prevailed in the rural districts of New England. On the death of a member of the family, the bees were at once informed of the event, and their hives dressed in mourning. The ceremonial was supposed to be necessary to prevent the swarms from leaving their hives and seeking a new home." This poem of Whittier's is almost his highest achievement. Lowell said, in writing of the Quaker poet (Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, VI.): "Many of his poems (such for example as 'Telling the Bees'), in which description and sentiment mutually inspire each other, are as fine as any in the language." I often think, however, that Whittier will live longest by his hymns and poems of purely religious devotion. I know of nothing similar in English that surpasses "The Eternal Goodness," and perhaps half a dozen other poems. _Katie._--About one-third of Timrod's graceful poem which bears this title. This is one of the few cases where I have ventured to make omissions. _Thalatta._--Regarding this poem, Thomas Wentworth Higginson says, in "The New World and the New Book:" "Who knows but that, when all else of American literature has vanished in forgetfulness, some single little masterpiece like this may remain to show the high-water mark, not merely of a single poet, but of a nation and a generation?" The author of "Thalatta" was a Dartmouth graduate, a teacher, and a disciple of Emerson. _The Fall of the Leaf._--Thoreau's prose is known universally; his verse has not won as yet the recognition it deserves. It has little lyrical quality, but for unconventionality, charming turns of phrase, and the intimate knowledge of Nature it reveals, it is almost alone in American poetry. _The Rhodora._--"The Rhodora" has a conciseness and unity too rare in Emerson's poetry, which, beautiful in details, is strangely uneven. We sigh as we think what an unrivalled lyric poet Emerson would have been had he been sustained at the heights he was capable of reaching. No one surpasses Emerson at his best; he is almost a great poet. _The Chambered Nautilus._--Many think this Holmes's finest poem. It is taken from "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," 1858. _Thought._--Helen Jackson is, perhaps, the most gifted of American women poets. Emily Dickinson is more imaginative, but her utter scorn of form in composition makes her work, unique as it is, less satisfying. Mrs. Jackson was a favorite with Emerson, and he is said to have liked best among her poems this sonnet, "Thought." _On a Bust of Dante._--Parsons, one of the best of American poets, is one of the most neglected. Stedman is inclined to think "On a Bust of Dante" the finest of American lyrics (see "The Nature of Poetry," 254). _The Port of Skips._--In a recent review of American Literature in the London _Athæneum_ occurs this sentence: "In point of power, workmanship, and feeling, among all poems written by Americans, we are inclined to give first place to the 'Port of Ships,' of Joaquin Miller." _Evening Song._--No poem of Lanier is more free from his characteristic faults. One regrets that so much of his work, highly imaginative as it is, is marred by over-elaboration and artificiality. _A Woman's Thought._--The striking reality and directness of this lyric, its immense emotional undercurrent, and its abrupt, almost gasping metre, admirably suited to the impassioned mood of the speaker,--these are a few of the qualities that combine to make "A Woman's Thought" one of the most remarkable poems in the book. _The White Jessamine._--One of the most charming of Father Tabb's lyrics. The verse of this poet is uneven in merit. He is too prone to merely fanciful conceits. But at his best Tabb is imaginative, as, for example, in the lines where he says of Angelo that he-- "From the sterile womb of stone, Raised children unto God." Always artistic, Tabb's verse usually suggests workmanship; it is more thoughtful than spontaneous. His religious poetry presents, in the main, a rather striking similarity to the work of George Herbert. _The Battle-field._--Miss Dickinson has much of the witchcraft and subtlety of William Blake. Many verses of the shy recluse, whom Mr. Higginson so happily has introduced to the world, are not only daring and unconventional, but recklessly defiant of form. But, as her editor has well said, "When a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence." Emily Dickinson had more than a message, more than the charm of unexpectedness, more than the gift of phrase,--she had (and of how many Americans can this be said?) an intense imagination. _Fertility._--This selection appears in the collected poems of Maurice Thompson (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1892), under the title of "A Prelude." _Sesostris._--Of this poem Mr. Stoddard has the high praise that in imaginative quality it is unequalled in nineteenth century literature, unless by Leigh Hunt's sonnet on the Nile. The same critic does not scruple to declare of Mr. Mifflin that he has a "glorious imagination," and to prophesy for him a distinguished future. Seldom indeed has a first book of verse won such instant and universal appreciation as Mr. Mifflin's volume of sonnets, just issued as the "American Treasury" goes to press. INDEX TO FIRST LINES. A blight, a gloom, I know not what; 242 All that thou art not, makes not up the sum; 267 All the long August afternoon; 223 A man said unto his angel; 211 Another lamb, O Lamb of God, behold; 266 Around the rocky headlands, far and near; 271 As a fond mother, when the day is o'er; 63 As a twig trembles, which a bird; 145 At midnight, in the month of June; 57 At sea are tossing ships; 149 At the king's gate the subtle noon; 183 Ay, tear her tattered ensign down; 76 Be thou a bird, my soul, and mount and soar; 282 Because I could not stop for Death; 264 Bedtime's come fu' little boys; 225 Behind him lay the gray Azores; 199 Beneath the warrior's helm, behold; 248 Birds are singing round my window; 193 Burly, dozing bumble-bee; 169 By the rude bridge that arched the flood; 74 Chaos, of old, was God's dominion; 256 Close his eyes; his work is done; 106 Dark as the clouds of even; 100 Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days; 126 Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way; 175 Dear yesterday, glide not so fast; 155 Do you remember, father; 291 England, I stand on thy imperial ground; 273 Fair flower that dost so comely grow; 1 Farragut, Farragut; 110 From the Desert I come to thee; 85 "Give us a song!" the soldiers cried; 119 Green be the turf above thee; 36 Helen, thy beauty is to me; 31 Her hands are cold; her face is white; 124 Here is the place; right over the hill; 137 Her suffering ended with the day; 136 How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood; 8 I am a woman--therefore I may not; 227 I fill this cup to one made up; 12 I have a little kinsman; 150 I knew she lay above me; 235 I lay me down to sleep; 122 I saw him once before; 95 I saw the twinkle of white feet; 64 I stand upon the summit of my years; 154 I waited in the little sunny room; 247 In a still room at hush of dawn; 298 In Heaven a spirit doth dwell; 21 In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes; 165 In the greenest of our valleys; 26 In the summer even; 202 It may be through some foreign grace; 140 It was many and many a year ago; 10 It was nothing but a rose I gave her; 196 It was the schooner Hesperus; 80 Just where the Treasury's marble front; 188 Lear and Cordelia! 'twas an ancient tale; 78 Let me come in where you sit weeping,--aye; 263 Let me move slowly through the street; 42 Lo! Death has reared himself a throne; 15 Look off, dear Love, across the sallow sands; 215 Look out upon the stars, my love; 14 Men say the sullen instrument; 158 Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; 108 My books I'd fain cast off, I cannot read; 172 My heart, I cannot still it; 192 My life closed twice before its close; 252 My life is like the summer rose; 4 My mind lets go a thousand things; 241 Nightingales warble about it; 290 No matter how the chances are; 275 Not a hand has lifted the latchet; 236 Not a kiss in life; but one kiss, at life's end; 209 Not as all other women are; 142 Now at last I am at home; 260 O Death, when thou shalt come to me; 233 O fairest of the rural maids; 6 O marvel, fruit of fruits, I pause; 167 O messenger, art thou the king, or I; 180 O Nature! I do not aspire; 166 Of all the rides since the birth of time; 87 Oh, inexpressible as sweet; 289 Oh, the shambling sea is a sexton old; 277 Oh, who would stay indoor, indoor; 251 _Oh, what's the way to Arcady_; 243 Old Sorrow I shall meet again; 230 Once it smiled a silent dell; 38 Once this soft turf, this rivulet's sands; 54 Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary; 45 Out of the hills of Habersham; 268 Prithee tell me, Dimple-Chin; 194 See, from this counterfeit of him; 185 Sence little Wesley went, the place seems all so strange and still; 280 Sky in its lucent splendor lifted; 238 So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn; 69 Sole Lord of Lords and very King of Kings; 300 Southward with fleet of ice; 71 Sparkling and bright in liquid light; 32 Spirit that moves the sap in spring; 294 Still in thy love I trust; 218 Such special sweetness was about; 224 The apples are ripe in the orchard; 117 The dawn came in through the bars of the blind; 213 The day is done, and the darkness; 66 The despot treads thy sacred sands; 104 The despot's heel is on thy shore; 113 The evening of the year draws on; 162 The handful here, that once was Mary's earth; 147 The little toy dog is covered with dust; 231 The moonbeams over Arno's vale in silver flood were pouring; 296 The new moon hung in the sky; 221 The pines were dark on Ramoth hill; 130 The royal feast was done; the King; 205 The shadows lay along Broadway; 24 The sky is dark, and dark the bay below; 217 The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky Home; 98 The tide rises, the tide falls; 161 The wind from out the west is blowing; 216 There are gains for all our losses; 129 There is a city, builded by no hand; 201 These are the days when birds come back; 265 This bronze doth keep the very form and mold; 207 This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream; 283 This is Palm Sunday; mindful of the day; 198 This is the Burden of the Heart; 197 This is the ship of pearl, which poets feign; 178 Thou blossom bright with autumn dew; 40 Thou unrelenting Past; 18 Thou wast all that to me, love; 34 Thought is deeper than all speech; 181 Three roses, wan as moonlight, and weighed down; 210 Under a spreading chestnut-tree; 92 Upon a cloud among the stars we stood; 229 Vast hollow voids, beyond the utmost reach; 257 We sat within the farmhouse old; 133 What, cringe to Europe! Band it all in one; 75 What may we take into the vast Forever?; 219 When first the bride and bridegroom wed; 153 When I was a beggarly boy; 128 _When the Sultan Shah-Zaman_; 253 While May bedecks the naked trees; 287 Whither, midst falling dew; 29 Who has robbed the ocean cave; 3 Wind of the North; 258 Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night; 284 Years have flown since I knew thee first; 208 You know the old Hidalgo; 127 INDEX TO AUTHORS. James Aldrich, 1810-1856, 136 Thomas Bailey Aldrich, 1836-; 210, 221, 241, 242, 248, 253 George Henry Boker, 1823-1890; 75, 78, 100, 106 Joseph Brownlee Brown, 1824-1888; 154 William Cullen Bryant, 1794-1878; 6, 18, 29, 40, 42, 54 Henry Cuyler Bunner, 1855-1896; 209, 213, 233, 243 Bliss Carman, 1861-; 277, 298 Christopher Pearse Cranch, 1813-1892; 181 Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886; 252, 264, 265 Paul Lawrence Dunbar, 1872-; 225 Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882; 74, 126, 165, 169 Eugene Field, 1850-1896; 231, 284 Annie Adams Fields, 1834-; 218 Stephen Collins Foster, 1826-1864; 98 William Prescott Foster, 18-; 271 Philip Freneau, 1752-1832; 1 Richard Watson Gilder, 1844-; 207, 208, 216, 217, 227 Louise Imogen Guiney, 1861-; 211 Fitz-Greene Halleck, 1790-1867; 36 Charles Fenno Hoffman, 1806-1884; 32 Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1809-1894; 76, 95, 124, 178 Richard Hovey, 1864-; 251 Julia Ward Howe, 1819-; 108 William Dean Howells, 1837-; 223 Mary Woolsey Howland, 1832-1864; 122 Helen Hunt Jackson, 1831-1885; 155, 167, 180, 183 Sidney Lanier, 1842-1881; 215, 268 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807-1882; 63, 66, 71, 80, 92, 133, 161 James Russell Lowell, 1819-1891; 64, 128, 142, 145, 158, 175, 192 Charles Henry Lüders, 1858-1891; 258 William Tuckey Meredith, 1839-; 110 Lloyd Mifflin, 18-; 229, 256, 257, 300 Cincinnatus Hiner (Joaquin) Miller, 1841-; 199 Louise Chandler Moulton, 1835-; 236 Thomas William Parsons, 1819-1892; 147, 185, 198, 201 John James Piatt, 1835-; 149 Edward Coate Pinkney, 1802-1828; 12, 14 Edgar Allan Poe, 1809-1849; 10, 15, 21, 26, 31, 34, 38, 45, 57 James Ryder Randall, 1839-; 113 Lizette Woodworth Reese, 1860-; 224 Hiram Rich, 1832-; 275 James Whitcomb Riley, 1853-; 263, 280 John Shaw, 1778-1809; 3 Edward Rowland Sill, 1841-1887; 205, 219, 238, 247, 283 Harriet Prescott Spofford, 1835-; 196, 202 Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1833-; 150, 188, 194 Richard Henry Stoddard, 1825-; 127, 129, 153, 193 John Banister Tabb, 1845-; 230, 235, 266, 267 Bayard Taylor, 1825-1878; 85, 119 Maurice Thompson, 1844-; 294 Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862; 162, 166, 172 Henry Timrod, 1829-1867; 104, 140 L. Frank Tooker, 18-; 260 Henry Van Dyke, 1852-; 287, 291, 296 John Greenleaf Whittier, 1807-1892; 69, 87, 130, 137 Richard Henry Wilde, 1789-1847; 4 Nathaniel Parker Willis, 1806-1867; 24 Byron Forceythe Willson, 1837-1867; 197 William Winter, 1836-; 117 George Edward Woodberry, 1855-; 273, 289, 290 Samuel Woodworth, 1785-1842; 8 
16776	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 16776-h.htm or 16776-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/6/7/7/16776/16776-h/16776-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/6/7/7/16776/16776-h.zip) POEMS OF PASSION Illustrated by ELLA WHEELER WILCOX W. B. Conkey Company Publishers--Chicago 1883 [Illustration: Picture of Ella Wheeler Wilcox] * * * * * * OTHER BOOKS by Ella Wheeler Wilcox THREE WOMEN POEMS OF POWER MAURINE POEMS OF PASSION POEMS OF PLEASURE KINGDOM OF LOVE AND OTHER POEMS AN ERRING WOMAN'S LOVE EVERY-DAY THOUGHTS MEN WOMEN AND EMOTIONS AN AMBITIOUS MAN THE BEAUTIFUL LAND OF NOD AROUND THE YEAR WITH ELLA WHEELER WILCOX A Birthday Book * * * * * * _Oh, you who read some song that I have sung_, _What know you of the soul from whence it sprung_? _Dost dream the poet ever speaks aloud_ _His secret thought unto the listening crowd_? _Go take the murmuring sea-shell from the shore_: _You have its shape, its color and no more_. _It tells not one of those vast mysteries_ _That lie beneath the surface of the seas_. _Our songs are shells, cast out by-waves of thought_; _Here, take them at your pleasure; but think not_ _You've seen beneath the surface of the waves_, _Where lie our shipwrecks and our coral caves_. [Illustration: THE POET'S SONG] PREFACE Among the twelve hundred poems which have emanated from my too prolific pen there are some forty or fifty which treat entirely of that emotion which has been denominated "the grand passion"--love. A few of those are of an extremely fiery character. When I issued my collection known as "Maurine, and Other Poems," I purposely omitted all save two or three of these. I had been frequently accused of writing only sentimental verses; and I took pleasure and pride in presenting to the public a volume which contained more than one hundred poems upon other than sentimental topics. But no sooner was the book published than letters of regret came to me from friends and strangers, and from all quarters of the globe, asking why this or that love poem had been omitted. These regrets were repeated to me by so many people that I decided to collect and issue these poems in a small volume to be called "Poems of Passion." By the word "Passion" I meant the "grand passion" of love. To those who take exception to the title of the book I would suggest an early reference to Webster's definitions of the word. Since this volume has caused so much agitation throughout the entire country, and even sent a tremor across the Atlantic into the Old World, I beg leave to make a few statements concerning some of the poems. The excitement of mingled horror and amaze seems to center upon four poems, namely: "Delilah," "Ad Finem," "Conversion," and "Communism." "Delilah" was written and first published in 1877. I had been reading history, and became stirred by the power of such women as Aspasia and Cleopatra over such grand men as Antony, Socrates, and Pericles. Under the influence of this feeling I dashed off "Delilah," which I meant to be an expression of the powerful fascination of such a woman upon the memory of a man, even as he neared the hour of death. If the poem is immoral, then the history which inspired it is immoral. I consider it my finest effort. "Ad Finem" was written in 1878. I think there are few women of strong character and affections who cannot, from either experience or observation, understand the violent intensity of regret and despair which sometimes takes possession of the human heart after the loss by death, fate, or the force of circumstances, of some one very dear. In "Ad Finem" I intended to give voice to this very common experience of almost every heart. Many noble women have since told me that the poem was true to life. It is not, as many people have wilfully or stupidly construed it, a bit of poetical advice to womankind to "barter the joys of Paradise" for "just one kiss." It is simply an illustration of a moment of turbulent anguish and vehement despair, such moments of unreasoning and overwhelming sorrow as the most moral people may experience during a lifetime. In "Communism" I endeavored to use a new simile in illustrating that somewhat hackneyed theme of the supremacy of Love over Reason; and simply to carry out my idea I represented the violent uprising of the Communist emotions against King Reason. "Conversion" was suggested to me by the remark of a gentleman friend. In speaking to me of the woman he loved, he said: "I have always been a skeptic regarding the existence of heaven, but I am so much happier in my love for this woman than I ever supposed it possible for me to be on earth that I begin to believe that the tales of heavenly raptures may be true." I embodied his idea in the poem which has brought, with a few others, so much censure and criticism upon this volume, although it contains nearly seventy-five other selections quite irreproachable in character, however faulty they may be in construction. It is impossible to pursue a successful literary career and follow the advice of all one's "best friends." I have received severe censure from my orthodox friends for writing liberal verses. My liberal friends condemn my devout and religious poems as "aiding superstition." My early temperance verses were pronounced "fanatical trash" by others. With all due thanks and appreciation for the kind motives which interest so many dear friends in my career, I yet feel compelled to follow the light which my own intellect and judgment cast upon my way, rather than any one of the many conflicting rays which other minds would lend me. ELLA WHEELER. [Illustration:] [Illustration:] CONTENTS POEMS OF PASSION Love's Language Impatience Communism The Common Lot Individuality Friendship after Love Queries Upon the Sand Reunited What Shall We Do? "The Beautiful Blue Danube" Answered Through the Valley But One Guilo The Duet Little Queen Wherefore? Delilah Love Song Time and Love Change Desolation Isaura The Coquette Not Quite the Same New and Old From the Grave A Waltz-Quadrille Beppo Tired The Speech of Silence Conversion Love's Coming Old and New Perfectness Attraction Gracia Ad Finem Bleak Weather An Answer You Will Forget Me The Farewell of Clarimonde The Trio MISCELLANEOUS POEMS The Lost Garden Art and Heart Mockery As by Fire If I Should Die Mésalliance Response Drought The Creed Progress My Friend Creation Red Carnations Life is Too Short A Sculptor Beyond The Saddest Hour Show Me the Way My Heritage Resolve At Eleusis Courage Solitude The Year Outgrows the Spring The Beautiful Land of Nod The Tiger Only a Simple Rhyme I Will Be Worthy of It Sonnet Regret Let Me Lean Hard Penalty Sunset The Wheel of the Breast A Meeting Earnestness A Picture Twin-Born Floods A Fable [Illustration: LOVE AND MEMORY] LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The Poets Song Love and Memory Rejoice and Men Will Seek You Loves Language Love's Impatience The Common Lot Love Triumphant Cool, Verdant Vales The Old Delight that We Cast Away They Drift Down the Hall Together Answered But One A June Rose I Love Thee; Thee Alone The Duet Happiest Days in Our Lives A Dream Delilah The Milky Way Time and Love Desolation Tired of the Oft-read Story From the Grave Silver Bell in Steeple The Waltz-Quadrille The Burden of Dear Human Ties The Sea of Silence Across the Ocean Conversion Love's Coming Love and Life Attraction Bleak Weather Woodlands and Meadows Two Warm Hearts Together Love is Cold The Trio The Path I Longed to Climb Recollections Mésalliance Day-Dreams Came, Desired and Welcomed, into Life Creation Red Carnations Beyond Across the Sea of Silence Solitude Light and Beauty Blessed the Land Beautiful Land of Nod Only a Simple Rhyme The Strife that Is Wearying Me Sunset The Wheel of the Breast A Picture A Fable POEMS OF PASSION [Illustration: "REJOICE, AND MEN WILL SEEK YOU"] LOVE'S LANGUAGE. How does Love speak? In the faint flush upon the tell-tale cheek, And in the pallor that succeeds it; by The quivering lid of an averted eye-- The smile that proves the patent to a sigh-- Thus doth Love speak. How does Love speak? By the uneven heart-throbs, and the freak Of bounding pulses that stand still and ache, While new emotions, like strange barges, make Along vein-channels their disturbing course; Still as the dawn, and with the dawn's swift force-- Thus doth Love speak. How does Love speak? In the avoidance of that which we seek-- The sudden silence and reserve when near-- The eye that glistens with an unshed tear-- The joy that seems the counterpart of fear, As the alarmed heart leaps in the breast, And knows and names and greets its godlike guest-- Thus doth Love speak. How does Love speak? In the proud spirit suddenly grown meek-- The haughty heart grown humble; in the tender And unnamed light that floods the world with splendor; In the resemblance which the fond eyes trace In all fair things to one beloved face; In the shy touch of hands that thrill and tremble; In looks and lips that can no more dissemble-- Thus doth Love speak. How does Love speak? In the wild words that uttered seem so weak They shrink ashamed to silence; in the fire Glance strikes with glance, swift flashing high and higher Like lightnings that precede the mighty storm; In the deep, soulful stillness; in the warm, Impassioned tide that sweeps through throbbing veins Between the shores of keen delight and pains; In the embrace where madness melts in bliss, And in the convulsive rapture of a kiss-- Thus doth Love speak. [Illustration: LOVE'S LANGUAGE] IMPATIENCE. How can I wait until you come to me? The once fleet mornings linger by the way, Their sunny smiles touched with malicious glee At my unrest; they seem to pause, and play Like truant children, while I sigh and say, How can I wait? How can I wait? Of old, the rapid hours Refused to pause or loiter with me long; But now they idly fill their hands with flowers, And make no haste, but slowly stroll among The summer blooms, not heeding my one song, How can I wait? How can I wait? The nights alone are kind; They reach forth to a future day, and bring Sweet dreams of you to people all my mind; And time speeds by on light and airy wing. I feast upon your face, I no more sing, How can I wait? How can I wait? The morning breaks the spell A pitying night has flung upon my soul. You are not near me, and I know full well My heart has need of patience and control; Before we meet, hours, days, and weeks must roll. How can I wait? How can I wait? Oh, love, how can I wait Until the sunlight of your eyes shall shine Upon my world that seems so desolate? Until your hand-clasp warms my blood like wine; Until you come again, oh, love of mine, How can I wait? COMMUNISM. When my blood flows calm as a purling river, When my heart is asleep and my brain has sway, It is then that I vow we must part forever, That I will forget you, and put you away Out of my life, as a dream is banished Out of the mind when the dreamer awakes; That I know it will be, when the spell has vanished, Better for both of our sakes. When the court of the mind is ruled by Reason, I know it is wiser for us to part; But Love is a spy who is plotting treason, In league with that warm, red rebel, the Heart. They whisper to me that the King is cruel, That his reign is wicked, his law a sin; And every word they utter is fuel To the flame that smoulders within. And on nights like this, when my blood runs riot With the fever of youth and its mad desires, When my brain in vain bids my heart be quiet, When my breast seems the centre of lava-fires, Oh, then is the time when most I miss you, And I swear by the stars and my soul and say That I will have you and hold you and kiss you, Though the whole world stands in the way. And like Communists, as mad, as disloyal, My fierce emotions roam out of their lair; They hate King Reason for being royal; They would fire his castle, and burn him there. Oh, Love! they would clasp you and crush you and kill you, In the insurrection of uncontrol. Across the miles, does this wild war thrill you That is raging in my soul? THE COMMON LOT. It is a common fate--a woman's lot-- To waste on one the riches of her soul, Who takes the wealth she gives him, but cannot Repay the interest, and much less the whole. As I look up into your eyes and wait For some response to my fond gaze and touch, It seems to me there is no sadder fate Than to be doomed to loving overmuch. Are you not kind? Ah, yes, so very kind-- So thoughtful of my comfort, and so true. Yes, yes, dear heart; but I, not being blind, Know that I am not loved as I love you. One tenderer word, a little longer kiss, Will fill my soul with music and with song; And if you seem abstracted, or I miss The heart-tone from your voice, my world goes wrong. And oftentimes you think me childish--weak-- When at some thoughtless word the tears will start; You cannot understand how aught you speak Has power to stir the depths of my poor heart. I cannot help it, dear,--I wish I could, Or feign indifference where I now adore; For if I seemed to love you less you would, Manlike, I have no doubt, love me the more. 'Tis a sad gift, that much applauded thing, A constant heart; for fact doth daily prove That constancy finds oft a cruel sting, While fickle natures win the deeper love. [Illustration:] [Illustration: COMMON LOT] INDIVIDUALITY. O yes, I love you, and with all my heart; Just as a weaker woman loves her own, Better than I love my beloved art, Which, till you came, reigned royally, alone, My king, my master. Since I saw your face I have dethroned it, and you hold that place. I am as weak as other women are: Your frown can make the whole world like a tomb; Your smile shines brighter than the sun, by far. Sometimes I think there is not space or room In all the earth for such a love as mine, And it soars up to breathe in realms divine. I know that your desertion or neglect Could break my heart, as women's hearts do break. If my wan days had nothing to expect From your love's splendor, all joy would forsake The chambers of my soul. Yes, this is true. And yet, and yet--one thing I keep from you. There is a subtle part of me, which went Into my long pursued and worshipped art; Though your great love fills me with such content No other love finds room now, in my heart. Yet that rare essence was my art's alone. Thank God, you cannot grasp it; 'tis mine own. Thank God, I say, for while I love you so, With that vast love, as passionate as tender, I feel an exultation as I know I have not made you a complete surrender. Here is my body; bruise it, if you will, And break my heart; I have that _something_ still. You cannot grasp it. Seize the breath of morn Or bind the perfume of the rose, as well. God put it in my soul when I was born; It is not mine to give away, or sell, Or offer up on any altar shrine. It was my art's; and when not art's, 'tis mine, For love's sake I can put the art away, Or anything which stands 'twixt me and you. But that strange essence God bestowed, I say, To permeate the work He gave to do: And it cannot be drained, dissolved, or sent Through any channel save the one He meant. FRIENDSHIP AFTER LOVE. After the fierce midsummer all ablaze Has burned itself to ashes, and expires In the intensity of its own fires, There come the mellow, mild, St. Martin days, Crowned with the calm of peace, but sad with haze. So after Love has led us, till he tires Of his own throes and torments and desires, Comes large-eyed friendship: with a restful gaze He beckons us to follow, and across Cool, verdant vales we wander free from care. Is it a touch of frost lies in the air? Why are we haunted with a sense of loss? We do not wish the pain back, or the heat; And yet, and yet, these days are incomplete. [Illustration:] [Illustration:] QUERIES. Well, how has it been with you since we met That last strange time of a hundred times? When we met to swear that we could forget-- I your caresses, and you my rhymes-- The rhyme of my lays that rang like a bell, And the rhyme of my heart with yours, as well? How has it been since we drank that last kiss, That was bitter with lees of the wasted wine, When the tattered remains of a threadbare bliss, And the worn-out shreds of a joy divine, With a year's best dreams and hopes, were cast Into the rag-bag of the Past? Since Time, the rag-buyer, hurried away, With a chuckle of glee at a bargain made, Did you discover, like me, one day, That, hid in the folds of those garments frayed, Were priceless jewels and diadems-- The soul's best treasures, the heart's best gems? Have you, too, found that you could not supply The place of those jewels so rare and chaste? Do all that you borrow or beg or buy Prove to be nothing but skilful paste? Have you found pleasure, as I found art, Not all-sufficient to fill your heart? Do you sometimes sigh for the tattered shreds Of the old delight that we cast away, And find no worth in the silken threads Of newer fabrics we wear to-day? Have you thought the bitter of that last kiss Better than sweets of a later bliss? What idle queries!--or yes or no-- Whatever your answer, I understand That there is no pathway by which we can go Back to the dead past's wonderland; And the gems he purchased from me, from you, There is no rebuying from Time, the Jew. [Illustration: "THE OLD DELIGHT THAT WE CAST AWAY"] UPON THE SAND. All love that has not friendship for its base Is like a mansion built upon the sand. Though brave its walls as any in the land, And its tall turrets lift their heads in grace; Though skilful and accomplished artists trace Most beautiful designs on every hand, And gleaming statues in dim niches stand, And fountains play in some flow'r-hidden place: Yet, when from the frowning east a sudden gust Of adverse fate is blown, or sad rains fall, Day in, day out, against its yielding wall, Lo! the fair structure crumbles to the dust. Love, to endure life's sorrow and earth's woe, Needs friendship's solid mason-work below. REUNITED. Let us begin, dear love, where we left off; Tie up the broken threads of that old dream, And go on happy as before, and seem Lovers again, though all the world may scoff. Let us forget the graves which lie between Our parting and our meeting, and the tears That rusted out the gold-work of the years, The frosts that fell upon our gardens green. Let us forget the cold, malicious Fate Who made our loving hearts her idle toys, And once more revel in the old sweet joys Of happy love. Nay, it is not too late! Forget the deep-ploughed furrows in my brow; Forget the silver gleaming in my hair; Look only in my eyes! Oh! darling, there The old love shone no warmer then than now. Down in the tender deeps of thy dear eyes I find the lost sweet memory of my youth, Bright with the holy radiance of thy truth, And hallowed with the blue of summer skies. Tie up the broken threads and let us go, Like reunited lovers, hand in hand, Back, and yet onward, to the sunny land Of our To Be, which was our Long Ago. WHAT SHALL WE DO? Here now forevermore our lives must part. My path leads there, and yours another way. What shall we do with this fond love, dear heart? It grows a heavier burden day by day. Hide it? In all earth's caverns, void and vast, There is not room enough to hide it, dear; Not even the mighty storehouse of the past Could cover it from our own eyes, I fear. Drown it? Why, were the contents of each ocean Merged into one great sea, too shallow then Would be its waters to sink this emotion So deep it could not rise to life again. Burn it? In all the furnace flames below, It would not in a thousand years expire. Nay! it would thrive, exult, expand, and grow, For from its very birth it fed on fire. Starve it? Yes, yes, that is the only way. Give it no food, of glance, or word, or sigh; No memories, even, of any bygone day; No crumbs of vain regrets--so let it die. "THE BEAUTIFUL BLUE DANUBE." They drift down the hall together; He smiles in her lifted eyes; Like waves of that mighty river, The strains of the "Danube" rise. They float on its rhythmic measure Like leaves on a summer-stream; And here, in this scene of pleasure, I bury my sweet, dead dream. Through the cloud of her dusky tresses, Like a star, shines out her face, And the form his strong arm presses Is sylph like in its grace. As a leaf on the bounding river Is lost in the seething sea, I know that forever and ever My dream is lost to me. And still the viols are playing That grand old wordless rhyme; And still those two ate swaying In perfect tune and time. If the great bassoons that mutter, If the clarinets that blow, Were given a voice to utter The secret things they know, Would the lists of the slam who slumber On the Danube's battle-plains The unknown hosts outnumber Who die 'neath the "Danube's" strains? Those fall where cannons rattle, 'Mid the rain of shot and shell; But these, in a fiercer battle, Find death in the music's swell. With the river's roar of passion Is blended the dying groan; But here, in the halls of fashion, Hearts break, and make no moan. And the music, swelling and sweeping, Like the river, knows it all; But none are counting or keeping The lists of these who fall. [Illustration: "THEY DRIFT DOWN THE HALL TOGETHER"] ANSWERED. Good-bye--yes, I am going. Sudden? Well, you are right; But a startling truth came home to me With sudden force last night. What is it? Shall I tell you? Nay, that is why I go. I am running away from the battlefield Turning my back on the foe. Riddles? You think me cruel! Have you not been most kind? Why, when you question me like that, What answer can I find? You fear you failed to amuse me, Your husband's friend and guest, Whom he bade you entertain and please-- Well, you have done your best. Then why am I going? A friend of mine abroad, Whose theories I have been acting upon, Has proven himself a fraud. You have heard me quote from Plato A thousand times no doubt; Well, I have discovered he did not know What he was talking about. You think I am speaking strangely? You cannot understand? Well, let me look down into your eyes, And let me take your hand. I am running away from danger; I am flying before I fall; I am going because with heart and soul I love you--that is all. There, now you are white with anger; I knew it would be so. You should not question a man too close When he tells you he must go. [Illustration:] THROUGH THE VALLEY. [AFTER JAMES THOMSON.] As I came through the Valley of Despair, As I came through the valley, on my sight, More awful than the darkness of the night, Shone glimpses of a Past that had been fair, And memories of eyes that used to smile, And wafts of perfume from a vanished isle, As I came through the valley. As I came through the valley I could see, As I came through the valley, fair and far, As drowning men look up and see a star, The fading shore of my lost Used-to-be; And like an arrow in my heart I heard The last sad notes of Hope's expiring bird, As I came through the valley. As I came through the valley desolate, As I came through the valley, like a beam Of lurid lightning I beheld a gleam Of Love's great eyes that now were full of hate. Dear God! Dear God! I could bear all but that; But I fell down soul-stricken, dead, thereat, As I came through the valley. BUT ONE. The year has but one June, dear friend; The year has but one June; And when that perfect month doth end, The robin's song, though loud, though long, Seems never quite in tune. The rose, though still its blushing face By bee and bird is seen, May yet have lost that subtle grace-- That nameless spell the winds know Which makes it garden's queen. Life's perfect June, love's red, red rose, Have burned and bloomed for me. Though still youth's summer sunlight glows; Though thou art kind, dear friend, I find I have no heart for thee. [Illustration:] [Illustration: A JUNE ROSE] GUILO. Yes, yes! I love thee, Guilo; thee alone. Why dost thou sigh, and wear that face of sorrow? The sunshine is to-day's, although it shone On yesterday, and may shine on to-morrow. I love but thee, my Guilo! be content; The greediest heart can claim but present pleasure. The future is thy God's. The past is spent. To-day is thine; clasp close the precious treasure. See how I love thee, Guilo! Lips and eyes Could never under thy fond gaze dissemble. I could not feign these passion-laden sighs; Deceiving thee, my pulses would not tremble. "So I loved Romney." Hush, thou foolish one-- I should forget him wholly wouldst thou let me; Or but remember that his day was done From that supremest hour when first I met thee. "And Paul?" Well, what of Paul? Paul had blue eyes, And Romney gray, and thine are darkly tender! One finds fresh feelings under change of skies-- A new horizon brings a newer splendor. _As I love thee_ I never loved before; Believe me, Guilo, for I speak most truly. What though to Romney and to Paul I swore The self-same words; my heart now worships newly. We never feel the same emotion twice: No two ships ever ploughed the self-same billow; The waters change with every fall and rise; So, Guilo, go contented to thy pillow. THE DUET. I was smoking a cigarette; Maud, my wife, and the tenor, McKey, Were singing together a blithe duet, And days it were better I should forget Came suddenly back to me-- Days when life seemed a gay masque ball, And to love and be loved was the sum of it all. As they sang together, the whole scene fled, The room's rich hangings, the sweet home air, Stately Maud, with her proud blond head, And I seemed to see in her place instead A wealth of blue-black hair, And a face, ah! your face--yours, Lisette; A face it were wiser I should forget. We were back--well, no matter when or where; But you remember, I know, Lisette. I saw you, dainty and debonair, With the very same look that you used to wear In the days I should forget. And your lips, as red as the vintage we quaffed, Were pearl-edged bumpers of wine when you laughed. Two small slippers with big rosettes Peeped out under your kilt skirt there, While we sat smoking our cigarettes (Oh, I shall be dust when my heart forgets') And singing that self-same an, And between the verses, for interlude, I kissed your throat and your shoulders nude. You were so full of a subtle file, You were so warm and so sweet, Lisette; You were everything men admire, And there were no fetters to make us tire, For you were--a pretty grisette. But you loved, as only such natures can, With a love that makes heaven or hell for a man. * * * * * They have ceased singing that old duet, Stately Maud and the tenor, McKey. "You are burning your coat with your cigarette, And _qu' avez vous_, dearest, your lids are wet," Maud says, as she leans o'er me. And I smile, and lie to her, husband-wise, "Oh, it is nothing but smoke in my eyes." [Illustration: "I LOVE THEE; THEE ALONE"] [Illustration:] LITTLE QUEEN. Do you remember the name I wore-- The old pet-name of Little Queen-- In the dear, dead days that are no more, The happiest days of our lives, I ween? For we loved with that passionate love of youth That blesses but once with its perfect bliss-- A love that, in spite of its trust and truth, Seems never to thrive in a world like this. I lived for you, and you lived for me; All was centered in "Little Queen;" And never a thought in our hearts had we That strife or trouble could come between. What utter sinking of self it was! How little we cared for the world of men! For love's fair kingdom and love's sweet laws Were all of the world and life to us then. But a love like ours was a challenge to Fate; She rang down the curtain and shifted the scene; Yet sometimes now, when the day grows late, I can hear you calling for Little Queen; For a happy home and a busy life Can never wholly crowd out our past; In the twilight pauses that come from strife, You will think of me while life shall last. And however sweet the voice of fame May sing to me of a great world's praise, I shall long sometimes for the old pet-name That you gave to me in the dear, dead days; And nothing the angel band can say, When I reach the shores of the great Unseen, Can please me so much as on that day To hear your greeting of "Little Queen." [Illustration: "THAT BLESSES BUT ONCE WITH ITS PERFECT BLISS"] WHEREFORE? Wherefore in dreams are sorrows borne anew, A healed wound opened, or the past revived? Last night in my deep sleep I dreamed of you; Again the old love woke in me, and thrived On looks of fire, and kisses, and sweet words Like silver waters purling in a stream, Or like the amorous melodies of birds: A dream--a dream! Again upon the glory of the scene There settled that dread shadow of the cross That, when hearts love too well, falls in between; That warns them of impending woe and loss. Again I saw you drifting from my life, As barques are rudely parted in a stream; Again my heart was torn with awful strife: A dream--a dream! Again the deep night settled on me there, Alone I groped, and heard strange waters roll, Lost in that blackness of supreme despair That comes but once to any living soul. Alone, afraid, I called your name aloud-- Mine eyes, unveiled, beheld white stars agleam, And lo! awake, I cried, "Thank God, thank God! A dream--a dream!" [Illustration:] DELILAH. In the midnight of darkness and terror, When I would grope nearer to God, With my back to a record of error And the highway of sin I have trod, There come to me shapes I would banish-- The shapes of the deeds I have done; And I pray and I plead till they vanish-- All vanish and leave me, save one. That one with a smile like the splendor Of the sun in the middle-day skies-- That one with a spell that is tender-- That one with a dream in her eyes-- Cometh close, in her rare Southern beauty, Her languor, her indolent grace; And my soul turns its back on its duty, To live in the light of her face. She touches my cheek, and I quiver-- I tremble with exquisite pains; She sighs--like an overcharged river My blood rushes on through my veins', She smiles--and in mad-tiger fashion, As a she-tiger fondles her own, I clasp her with fierceness and passion, And kiss her with shudder and groan. Once more, in our love's sweet beginning, I put away God and the World; Once more, in the joys of our sinning, Are the hopes of eternity hurled. There is nothing my soul lacks or misses As I clasp the dream shape to my breast; In the passion and pain of her kisses Life blooms to its richest and best. O ghost of dead sin unrelenting, Go back to the dust and the sod! Too dear and too sweet for repenting, Ye stand between me and my God. If I, by the Throne, should behold you, Smiling up with those eyes loved so well, Close, close in my arms I would fold you, And drop with you down to sweet Hell! [Illustration: DELILAH] LOVE SONG. Once in the world's first prime, When nothing lived or stirred-- Nothing but new-born Time, Nor was there even a bird-- The Silence spoke to a Star; But I do not dare repeat What it said to its love afar, It was too sweet, too sweet. But there, in the fair world's youth, Ere sorrow had drawn breath, When nothing was known but Truth, Nor was there even death, The Star to Silence was wed, And the Sun was priest that day, And they made their bridal-bed High in the Milky Way. For the great white star had heard Her silent lover's speech; It needed no passionate word To pledge them each to each. Oh, lady fair and far, Hear, oh, hear and apply! Thou, the beautiful Star-- The voiceless Silence, I. [Illustration:] TIME AND LOVE. Time flies. The swift hours hurry by And speed us on to untried ways; New seasons ripen, perish, die, And yet love stays. The old, old love--like sweet, at first, At last like bitter wine-- I know not if it blest or curst Thy life and mine. Time flies. In vain our prayers, our tears! We cannot tempt him to delays; Down to the past he bears the years, And yet love stays. Through changing task and varying dream We hear the same refrain, As one can hear a plaintive theme Run through each strain. Time flies. He steals our pulsing youth; He robs us of our care-free days; He takes away our trust and truth: And yet love stays. O Time! take love! When love is vain, When all its best joys die-- When only its regrets remain-- Let love, too, fly. [Illustration: TIME AND LOVE] CHANGE. Changed? Yes, I will confess it--I have changed. I do not love in the old fond way. I am your friend still--time has not estranged One kindly feeling of that vanished day. But the bright glamour which made life a dream, The rapture of that time, its sweet content, Like visions of a sleeper's brain they seem-- And yet I cannot tell you how they went. Why do you gaze with such accusing eyes Upon me, dear? Is it so very strange That hearts, like all things underneath God's skies Should sometimes feel the influence of change? The birds, the flowers, the foliage of the trees, The stars which seem so fixed and so sublime, Vast continents and the eternal seas-- All these do change with ever-changing time. The face our mirror shows us year on year Is not the same; our dearest aim or need, Our lightest thought or feeling, hope or fear, All, all the law of alteration heed. How can we ask the human heart to stay Content with fancies of Youth's earliest hours? The year outgrows the violets of May, Although, maybe, there are no fairer flowers. And life may hold no sweeter love than this, Which lies so cold, so voiceless, and so dumb. And shall I miss it, dear? Why, yes, we miss The violets always--till the roses come! DESOLATION. I think that the bitterest sorrow or pain Of love unrequited, or cold death's woe, Is sweet compared to that hour when we know That some grand passion is on the wane; When we see that the glory and glow and grace Which lent a splendor to night and day Are surely fading, and showing the gray And dull groundwork of the commonplace; When fond expressions on dull ears fall, When the hands clasp calmly without one thrill, When we cannot muster by force of will The old emotions that came at call; When the dream has vanished we fain would keep, When the heart, like a watch, runs out of gear, And all the savor goes out of the year, Oh, then is the time--if we can--to weep! But no tears soften this dull, pale woe; We must sit and face it with dry, sad eyes. If we seek to hold it, the swifter joy flies-- We can only be passive, and let it go. ISAURA. Dost thou not tire, Isaura, of this play? "What play?" Why, this old play of winning hearts! Nay, now, lift not thine eyes in that feigned way: 'Tis all in vain--I know thee and thine arts. Let us be frank, Isaura. I have made A study of thee; and while I admire The practised skill with which thy plans are laid, I can but wonder if thou dost not tire. Why, I tire even of Hamlet and Macbeth! When overlong the season runs, I find Those master-scenes of passion, blood, and death, After a time do pall upon my mind. Dost thou not tire of lifting up thine eyes To read the story thou hast read so oft-- Of ardent glances and deep quivering sighs, Of haughty faces suddenly grown soft? Is it not stale, oh, very stale, to thee, The scene that follows? Hearts are much the same; The loves of men but vary in degree-- They find no new expressions for the flame. Thou must know all they utter ere they speak, As I know Hamlet's part, whoever plays. Oh, does it not seem sometimes poor and weak? I think thou must grow weary of their ways. I pity thee, Isaura! I would be The humblest maiden with her dream untold Rather than live a Queen of Hearts, like thee, And find life's rarest treasures stale and old. I pity thee; for now, let come what may, Fame, glory, riches, yet life will lack all. Wherewith can salt be salted? And what way Can life be seasoned after love doth pall? [Illustration: TIRED OF THE OFT-READ STORY] THE COQUETTE. Alone she sat with her accusing heart, That, like a restless comrade frightened sleep, And every thought that found her, left a dart That hurt her so, she could not even weep. Her heart that once had been a cup well filled With love's red wine, save for some drops of gall She knew was empty; though it had not spilled Its sweets for one, but wasted them on all. She stood upon the grave of her dead truth, And saw her soul's bright armor red with rust, And knew that all the riches of her youth Were Dead Sea apples, crumbling into dust. Love that had turned to bitter, biting scorn, Hearthstones despoiled, and homes made desolate, Made her cry out that she was ever born, To loathe her beauty and to curse her fate. NEW AND OLD. I and new love, in all its living bloom, Sat vis-a-vis, while tender twilight hours Went softly by us, treading as on flowers. Then suddenly I saw within the room The old love, long since lying in its tomb. It dropped the cerecloth from its fleshless face And smiled on me, with a remembered grace That, like the noontide, lit the gloaming's gloom. Upon its shroud there hung the grave's green mould, About it hung the odor of the dead; Yet from its cavernous eyes such light was shed That all my life seemed gilded, as with gold; Unto the trembling new love '"Go," I said "I do not need thee, for I have the old." NOT QUITE THE SAME. Not quite the same the spring-time seems to me, Since that sad season when in separate ways Our paths diverged. There are no more such days As dawned for us in that lost time when we Dwelt in the realm of dreams, illusive dreams; Spring may be just as fair now, but it seems Not quite the same. Not quite the same is life, since we two parted, Knowing it best to go our ways alone. Fair measures of success we both have known, And pleasant hours, and yet something departed Which gold, nor fame, nor anything we win Can all replace. And either life has been Not quite the same. Love is not quite the same, although each heart Has formed new ties that are both sweet and true, But that wild rapture, which of old we knew, Seems to have been a something set apart With that lost dream. There is no passion, now, Mixed with this later love, which seems, somehow, Not quite the same. Not quite the same am I. My inner being Reasons and knows that all is for the best. Yet vague regrets stir always in my breast, As my soul's eyes turn sadly backward, seeing The vanished self that evermore must be, This side of what we call eternity, Not quite the same. FROM THE GRAVE. When the first sere leaves of the year were falling, I heard, with a heart that was strangely thrilled, Out of the grave of a dead Past calling, A voice I fancied forever stilled. All through winter and spring and summer, Silence hung over that grave like a pall, But, borne on the breath of the last sad comer, I listen again to the old-time call. It is only a love of a by-gone season, A senseless folly that mocked at me A reckless passion that lacked all reason, So I killed it, and hid it where none could see. I smothered it first to stop its crying, Then stabbed it through with a good sharp blade, And cold and pallid I saw it lying, And deep--ah' deep was the grave I made. But now I know that there is no killing A thing like Love, for it laughs at Death. There is no hushing, there is no stilling That which is part of your life and breath. You may bury it deep, and leave behind you The land, the people, that knew your slain; It will push the sods from its grave, and find you On wastes of water or desert plain. You may hear but tongues of a foreign people, You may list to sounds that are strange and new; But, clear as a silver bell in a steeple, That voice from the grave shall call to you. You may rouse your pride, you may use your reason. And seem for a space to slay Love so; But, all in its own good time and season, It will rise and follow wherever you go. You shall sit sometimes, when the leaves are falling, Alone with your heart, as I sit to-day, And hear that voice from your dead Past calling Out of the graves that you hid away. [Illustration:] A WALTZ-QUADRILLE. The band was playing a waltz-quadrille, I felt as light as a wind-blown feather, As we floated away, at the caller's will, Through the intricate, mazy dance together. Like mimic armies our lines were meeting, Slowly advancing, and then retreating, All decked in their bright array; And back and forth to the music's rhyme We moved together, and all the time I knew you were going away. The fold of your strong arm sent a thrill From heart to brain as we gently glided Like leaves on the wave of that waltz-quadrille; Parted, met, and again divided-- You drifting one way, and I another, Then suddenly turning and facing each other, Then off in the blithe chasse, Then airily back to our places swaying, While every beat of the music seemed saying That you were going away. I said to my heart, "Let us take our fill Of mirth and music and love and laughter; For it all must end with this waltz-quadrille, And life will be never the same life after. Oh, that the caller might go on calling, Oh, that the music might go on falling Like a shower of silver spray, While we whirled on to the vast Forever, Where no hearts break, and no ties sever, And no one goes away." A clamor, a crash, and the band was still; 'Twas the end of the dream, and the end of the measure: The last low notes of that waltz-quadrille Seemed like a dirge o'er the death of Pleasure. You said good-night, and the spell was over-- Too warm for a friend, and too cold for a lover-- There was nothing else to say; But the lights looked dim, and the dancers weary, And the music was sad, and the hall was dreary, After you went away. BEPPO. Why art thou sad, my Beppo? But last eve, Here at my feet, thy dear head on my breast, I heard thee say thy heart would no more grieve Or feel the olden ennui and unrest. What troubles thee? Am I not all thine own?-- I, so long sought, so sighed for and so dear? And do I not live but for thee alone? "_Thou hast seen Lippo, whom I loved last year_!" Well, what of that? Last year is naught to me-- 'Tis swallowed in the ocean of the past. Art thou not glad 'twas Lippo, and not thee, Whose brief bright day in that great gulf was cast. _Thy_ day is all before thee. Let no cloud, Here in the very morn of our delight, Drift up from distant foreign skies, to shroud Our sun of love whose radiance is so bright. "Thou art not first?" Nay, and he who would be Defeats his own heart's dearest purpose then. No truer truth was ever told to thee-- Who has loved most, he best can love again. If Lippo (and not he alone) has taught The arts that please thee, wherefore art thou sad? Since all my vast love-lore to thee is brought, Look up and smile, my Beppo, and be glad. TIRED. I am tired to-night, and something, The wind maybe, or the rain, Or the cry of a bird in the copse outside, Has brought back the past and its pain. And I feel, as I sit here thinking, That the hand of a dead old June Has reached out hold of my heart's loose strings, And is drawing them up in tune. I am tired to-night, and I miss you, And long for you, love, through tears; And it seems but to-day that I saw you go-- You, who have been gone for years. And I seem to be newly lonely-- I, who am so much alone; And the strings of my heart are well in tune, But they have not the same old tone. I am tired; and that old sorrow Sweeps down the bed of my soul, As a turbulent river might sudden'y break way from a dam's control. It beareth a wreck on its bosom, A wreck with a snow-white sail; And the hand on my heart strings thrums away, But they only respond with a wail. [Illustration: "THE BURDEN OF DEAR HUMAN TIES"] [Illustration:] THE SPEECH OF SILENCE. The solemn Sea of Silence lies between us; I know thou livest, and them lovest me, And yet I wish some white ship would come sailing Across the ocean, beating word from thee. The dead calm awes me with its awful stillness. No anxious doubts or fears disturb my breast; I only ask some little wave of language, To stir this vast infinitude of rest. I am oppressed with this great sense of loving; So much I give, so much receive from thee; Like subtle incense, rising from a censer, So floats the fragrance of thy love round me. All speech is poor, and written words unmeaning; Yet such I ask, blown hither by some wind, To give relief to this too perfect knowledge, The Silence so impresses on my mind. How poor the love that needeth word or message, To banish doubt or nourish tenderness! I ask them but to temper love's convictions The Silence all too fully doth express. Too deep the language which the spirit utters; Too vast the knowledge which my soul hath stirred. Send some white ship across the Sea of Silence, And interrupt its utterance with a word. [Illustration:] [Illustration:] CONVERSION. I have lived this life as the skeptic lives it; I have said the sweetness was less than the gall; Praising, nor cursing, the Hand that gives it, I have drifted aimlessly through it all. I have scoffed at the tale of a so-called heaven; I have laughed at the thought of a Supreme Friend; I have said that it only to man was given To live, to endure; and to die was the end. But I know that a good God reigneth, Generous-hearted and kind and true; Since unto a worm like me he deigneth To send so royal a gift as you. Bright as a star you gleam on my bosom, Sweet as a rose that the wild bee sips; And I know, my own, my beautiful blossom, That none but a God could mould such lips. And I believe, in the fullest measure That ever a strong man's heart could hold, In all the tales of heavenly pleasure By poets sung or by prophets told; For in the joy of your shy, sweet kisses, Your pulsing touch and your languid sigh I am filled and thrilled with better blisses Than ever were claimed for souls on high. And now I have faith in all the stories Told of the beauties of unseen lands; Of royal splendors and marvellous glories Of the golden city not made with hands For the silken beauty of falling tresses, Of lips all dewy and cheeks aglow, With--what the mind in a half trance guesses Of the twin perfection of drifts of snow; Of limbs like marble, of thigh and shoulder Carved like a statue in high relief-- These, as the eyes and the thoughts grow bolder, Leave no room for an unbelief. So my lady, my queen most royal, My skepticism has passed away; If you are true to me, true and loyal, I will believe till the Judgment-day. [Illustration:] [Illustration:] LOVE'S COMING. She had looked for his coming as warriors come, With the clash of arms and the bugle's call: But he came instead with a stealthy tread, Which she did not hear at all. She had thought how his armor would blaze in the sun, As he rode like a prince to claim his bride: In the sweet dim light of the falling night She found him at her side. She had dreamed how the gaze of his strange, bold eye Would wake her heart to a sudden glow: She found in his face the familiar grace Of a friend she used to know. She had dreamed how his coming would stir her soul, As the ocean is stirred by the wild storm's strife: He brought her the balm of a heavenly calm, And a peace which crowned her life. OLD AND NEW. Long have the poets vaunted, in their lays, Old times, old loves, old friendship, and old wine. Why should the old monopolize all praise? Then let the new claim mine. Give me strong new friends when the old prove weak Or fail me in my darkest hour of need; Why perish with the ship that springs a leak Or lean upon a reed? Give me new love, warm, palpitating, sweet, When all the grace and beauty leave the old; When like a rose it withers at my feet, Or like a hearth grows cold. Give me new times, bright with a prosperous cheer, In place of old, tear-blotted, burdened days; I hold a sunlit present far more dear, And worthy of my praise. When the old deeds are threadbare and worn through, And all too narrow for the broadening soul, Give me the fine, firm texture of the new, Fair, beautiful, and whole! PERFECTNESS. All perfect things are saddening in effect. The autumn wood robed in its scarlet clothes, The matchless tinting on the royal rose Whose velvet leaf by no least flaw is flecked, Love's supreme moment, when the soul unchecked Soars high as heaven, and its best rapture knows-- These hold a deeper pathos than our woes, Since they leave nothing better to expect. Resistless change, when powerless to improve, Can only mar. The gold will pale to gray; Nothing remains tomorrow as to-day; The lose will not seem quite so fait, and love Must find its measures of delight made less. Ah, how imperfect is all Perfectness! [Illustration: LOVE AND LIFE] ATTRACTION. The meadow and the mountain with desire Gazed on each other, till a fierce unrest Surged 'neath the meadow's seemingly calm breast, And all the mountain's fissures ran with fire. A mighty river rolled between them there. What could the mountain do but gaze and burn? What could the meadow do but look and yearn, And gem its bosom to conceal despair? Their seething passion agitated space, Till, lo! the lands a sudden earthquake shook, The river fled, the meadow leaped and took The leaning mountain in a close embrace. GRACIA. Nay, nay, Antonio! nay, thou shalt not blame her, My Gracia, who hath so deserted me. Thou art my friend, but if thou dost defame her I shall not hesitate to challenge thee. "Curse and forget her?" So I might another, One not so bounteous-natured or so fair; But she, Antonio, she was like no other-- I curse her not, because she was so rare. She was made out of laughter and sweet kisses; Not blood, but sunshine, through her blue veins ran Her soul spilled over with its wealth of blisses; She was too great for loving but a man. None but a god could keep so rare a creature: I blame her not for her inconstancy; When I recall each radiant smile and feature, I wonder she so long was true to me. Call her not false or fickle. I, who love her, Do hold her not unlike the royal sun, That, all unmated, roams the wide world over And lights all worlds, but lingers not with one. If she were less a goddess, more a woman, And so had dallied for a time with me, And then had left me, I, who am but human, Would slay her and her newer love, maybe. But since she seeks Apollo, or another Of those lost gods (and seeks him all in vain) And has loved me as well as any other Of her men loves, why, I do not complain. AD FINEM. On the white throat of the' useless passion That scorched my soul with its burning breath I clutched my fingers in murderous fashion, And gathered them close in a grip of death; For why should I fan, or feed with fuel, A love that showed me but blank despair? So my hold was firm, and my grasp was cruel-- I meant to strangle it then and there! I thought it was dead. But with no warning, It rose from its grave last night, and came And stood by my bed till the early morning, And over and over it spoke your name. Its throat was red where my hands had held it; It burned my brow with its scorching breath; And I said, the moment my eyes beheld it, "A love like this can know no death." For just one kiss that your lips have given In the lost and beautiful past to me I would gladly barter my hopes of Heaven And all the bliss of Eternity. For never a joy are the angels keeping, To lay at my feet in Paradise, Like that of into your strong arms creeping, And looking into your love-lit eyes. I know, in the way that sins are reckoned, This thought is a sin of the deepest dye; But I know, too, if an angel beckoned, Standing close by the Throne on High, And you, adown by the gates infernal, Should open your loving arms and smile, I would turn my back on things supernal, To lie on your breast a little while. To know for an hour you were mine completely-- Mine in body and soul, my own-- I would bear unending tortures sweetly, With not a murmur and not a moan. A lighter sin or a lesser error Might change through hope or fear divine; But there is no fear, and hell has no terror, To change or alter a love like mine. [Illustration:] [Illustration:] BLEAK WEATHER. Dear Love, where the red lilies blossomed and grew The white snows are falling; And all through the woods where I wandered with you The loud winds are calling; And the robin that piped to us tune upon tune, Neath the oak, you remember, O'er hill-top and forest has followed the June And left us December. He has left like a friend who is true in the sun And false in the shadows; He has found new delights in the land where he's gone, Greener woodlands and meadows. Let him go! what care we? let the snow shroud the lea, Let it drift on the heather; We can sing through it all: I have you, you have me. And we'll laugh at the weather. The old year may die and a new year be born That is bleaker and colder: It cannot dismay us; we dare it, we scorn, For our love makes us bolder. Ah, Robin! sing loud on your far distant lea, You friend in fair weather! But here is a song sung that's fuller of glee, By two warm hearts together. [Illustration:] [Illustration:] AN ANSWER. If all the year was summer time, And all the aim of life Was just to lilt on like a rhyme, Then I would be your wife. If all the days were August days, And crowned with golden weather, How happy then through green-clad ways We two could stray together! If all the nights were moonlit nights, And we had naught to do But just to sit and plan delights, Then I would wed with you. If life was all a summer fete, Its soberest pace the "glide," Then I would choose you for my mate, And keep you at my side. But winter makes full half the year, And labor half of life, And all the laughter and good cheer Give place to wearing strife. Days will grow cold, and moons wax old. And then a heart that's true Is better far than grace or gold-- And so, my love, adieu! I cannot wed with you. YOU WILL FORGET ME. You will forget me. The years are so tender, They bind up the wounds which we think are so deep; This dream of our youth will fade out as the splendor Fades from the skies when the sun sinks to sleep; The cloud of forgetfulness, over and over Will banish the last rosy colors away, And the fingers of time will weave garlands to cover The scar which you think is a life-mark to-day. You will forget me. The one boon you covet Now above all things will soon seem no prize; And the heart, which you hold not in keeping to prove it True or untrue, will lose worth in your eyes. The one drop to-day, that you deem only wanting To fill your life-cup to the brim, soon will seem But a valueless mite; and the ghost that is haunting The aisles of your heart will pass out with the dream. You will forget me; will thank me for saying The words which you think are so pointed with pain. Time loves a new lay; and the dirge he is playing Will change for you soon to a livelier strain. I shall pass from your life--I shall pass out forever, And these hours we have spent will be sunk in the past. Youth buries its dead; grief kills seldom or never, And forgetfulness covers all sorrows at last. THE FAREWELL OF CLARIMONDE. (Suggested by the "Clarimonde" OF Théophile Gautier.) Adieu, Romauld! But thou canst not forget me. Although no more I haunt thy dreams at night, Thy hungering heart forever must regret me, And starve for those lost moments of delight. Naught shall avail thy priestly rites and duties, Nor fears of Hell, nor hopes of Heaven beyond: Before the Cross shall rise my fair form's beauties--- The lips, the limbs, the eyes of Clarimonde. Like gall the wine sipped from the sacred chalice Shall taste to one who knew my red mouth's bliss, When Youth and Beauty dwelt in Love's own palace, And life flowed on in one eternal kiss. Through what strange ways I come, dear heart, to reach thee, From viewless lands, by paths no man e'er trod! I braved all fears, all dangers dared, to teach thee A love more mighty than thy love of God. Think not in all His Kingdom to discover Such joys, Romauld, as ours, when fierce yet fond I clasped thee--kissed thee--crowned thee my one lover: Thou canst not find another Clarimonde. I knew all arts of love: he who possessed me Possessed all women, and could never tire; A new life dawned for him who once caressed me; Satiety itself I set on fire. Inconstancy I chained: men died to win me; Kings cast by crowns for one hour on my breast: And all the passionate tide of love within me I gave to thee, Romauld. Wert thou not blest? Yet, for the love of God, thy hand hath riven Our welded souls. But not in prayer well conned, Not in thy dearly-purchased peace of Heaven, Canst thou forget those hours with Clarimonde. [Illustration:] THE TRIO. We love but once. The great gold orb of light From dawn to even-tide doth cast his ray; But the full splendor of his perfect might Is reached but once throughout the livelong day. We love but once. The waves, with ceaseless motion, Do day and night plash on the pebbled shore; But the strong tide of the resistless ocean Sweeps in but one hour of the twenty-four. We love but once. A score of times, perchance, We may be moved in fancy's fleeting fashion-- May treasure up a word, a tone, a glance; But only once we feel the soul's great passion. We love but once. Love walks with death and birth (The saddest, the unkindest of the three); And only once while we sojourn on earth Can that strange trio come to you or me. [Illustration:] [Illustration:] MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. THE LOST GARDEN. There was a fair green garden sloping From the south-east side of the mountain-ledge; And the earliest tint of the dawn came groping Down through its paths, from the day's dim edge. The bluest skies and the reddest roses Arched and varied its velvet sod; And the glad birds sang, as the soul supposes The angels sing on the hills of God. I wandered there when my veins seemed bursting With life's rare rapture and keen delight, And yet in my heart was a constant thirsting For something over the mountain-height. I wanted to stand in the blaze of glory That turned to crimson the peaks of snow, And the winds from the west all breathed a story Of realms and regions I longed to know. I saw on the garden's south side growing The brightest blossoms that breathe of June; I saw in the east how the sun was glowing, And the gold air shook with a wild bird's tune; I heard the drip of a silver fountain, And the pulse of a young laugh throbbed with glee But still I looked out over the mountain Where unnamed wonders awaited me. I came at last to the western gateway, That led to the path I longed to climb; But a shadow fell on my spirit straightway, For close at my side stood gray-beard Time. I paused, with feet that were fain to linger, Hard by that garden's golden gate, But Time spoke, pointing with one stern finger; "Pass on," he said, "for the day groes late." And now on the chill giay cliffs I wander, The heights recede which I thought to find, And the light seems dim on the mountain yonder, When I think of the garden I left behind. Should I stand at last on its summit's splendor, I know full well it would not repay For the fair lost tints of the dawn so tender That crept up over the edge o' day. I would go back, but the ways are winding, If ways there are to that land, in sooth, For what man succeeds in ever finding A path to the garden of his lost youth? But I think sometimes, when the June stars glisten, That a rose scent dufts from far away, And I know, when I lean from the cliffs and listen, That a young laugh breaks on the air like spray. ART AND HEART. Though critics may bow to art, and I am its own true lover, It is not art, but _heart_, which wins the wide world over. Though smooth be the heartless prayer, no ear in Heaven will mind it, And the finest phrase falls dead if there is no feeling behind it. Though perfect the player's touch, little, if any, he sways us, Unless we feel his heart throb through the music he plays us. Though the poet may spend his life in skilfully rounding a measure, Unless he writes from a full, warm heart he gives us little pleasure. So it is not the speech which tells, but the impulse which goes with the saying; And it is not the words of the prayer, but the yearning back of the praying. It is not the artist's skill which into our soul comes stealing With a joy that is almost pain, but it is the player's feeling. And it is not the poet's song, though sweeter than sweet bells chiming, Which thrills us through and through, but the heart which beats under the rhyming. And therefore I say again, though I am art's own true lover, That it is not art, but heart, which wins the wide world over. [Illustration: RECOLLECTIONS] MOCKERY. Why do we grudge our sweets so to the living Who, God knows, find at best too much of gall, And then with generous, open hands kneel, giving Unto the dead our all? Why do we pierce the warm hearts, sin or sorrow, With idle jests, or scorn, or cruel sneers, And when it cannot know, on some to-morrow, Speak of its woe through tears? What do the dead care, for the tender token-- The love, the praise, the floral offerings? But palpitating, living hearts are broken For want of just these things. AS BY FIRE. Sometimes I feel so passionate a yearning For spiritual perfection here below, This vigorous frame, with healthful fervor burning, Seems my determined foe, So actively it makes a stern resistance, So cruelly sometimes it wages war Against a wholly spiritual existence Which I am striving for. It interrupts my soul's intense devotions; Some hope it strangles, of divinest birth, With a swift rush of violent emotions Which link me to the earth. It is as if two mortal foes contended Within my bosom in a deadly strife, One for the loftier aims for souls intended, One for the earthly life. And yet I know this very war within me, Which brings out all my will-power and control, This very conflict at the last shall win me The loved and longed-for goal. The very fire which seems sometimes so cruel Is the white light that shows me my own strength. A furnace, fed by the divinest fuel, It may become at length. Ah! when in the immortal ranks enlisted, I sometimes wonder if we shall not find That not by deeds, but by what we've resisted, Our places are assigned. IF I SHOULD DIE. RONDEAU. If I should die, how kind you all would grow! In that strange hour I would not have one foe. There are no words too beautiful to say Of one who goes forevermore away Across that ebbing tide which has no flow. With what new lustre my good deeds would glow! If faults were mine, no one would call them so, Or speak of me in aught but praise that day, If I should die. Ah, friends! before my listening ear lies low, While I can hear and understand, bestow That gentle treatment and fond love, I pray, The lustre of whose late though radiant way Would gild my grave with mocking light, I know, If I should die. MÉSALLIANCE. I am troubled to-night with a curious pain; It is not of the flesh, it is not of the brain, Nor yet of a heart that is breaking: But down still deeper, and out of sight-- In the place where the soul and the body unite-- There lies the scat of the aching. They have been lovers in days gone by; But the soul is fickle, and longs to fly From the fettering mesalliance: And she tears at the bonds which are binding her so, And pleads with the body to let her go, But he will not yield compliance. For the body loves, as he loved in the past, When he wedded the soul; and he holds her fast, And swears that he will not loose her; That he will keep her and hide her away For ever and ever and for a day From the arms of Death, the seducer. Ah! this is the strife that is wearying me-- The strife 'twixt a soul that would be free And a body that will not let her. And I say to my soul, "Be calm, and wait; For I tell ye truly that soon or late Ye surely shall drop each fetter." And I say to the body, "Be kind, I pray; For the soul is not of thy mortal clay, But is formed in spirit fashion." And still through the hours of the solemn night I can hear my sad soul's plea for flight, And my body's reply of passion. [Illustration:] [Illustration: DAY DREAMS] RESPONSE. I said this morning, as I leaned and threw My shutters open to the Spring's surprise, "Tell me, O Earth, how is it that in you Year after year the same fresh feelings rise? How do you keep your young exultant glee? No more those sweet emotions come to me. "I note through all your fissures how the tide Of healthful life goes leaping as of old; Your royal dawns retain their pomp and pride; Your sunsets lose no atom of their gold. How can this wonder be?" My soul's fine ear Leaned, listening, till a small voice answered near: "My days lapse never over into night; My nights encroach not on the rights of dawn. I rush not breathless after some delight; I waste no grief for any pleasure gone. My July noons burn not the entire year. Heart, hearken well!" "Yes, yes; go on; I hear." "I do not strive to make my sunsets' gold Pave all the dim and distant realms of space. I do not bid my crimson dawns unfold To lend the midnight a fictitious grace. I break no law, for all God's laws are good. Heart, hast thou heard?" "Yes, yes; and understood." DROUTH. Why do we pity those who weep? The pain That finds a ready outlet in the flow Of salt and bitter tears is blessed woe, And does not need our sympathies. The rain But fits the shorn field for new yield of grain; While the red, brazen skies, the sun's fierce glow, The dry, hot winds that from the tropics blow Do parch and wither the unsheltered plain. The anguish that through long, remorseless years Looks out upon the world with no relief Of sudden tempests or slow-dripping tears-- The still, unuttered, silent, wordless grief That evermore doth ache, and ache, and ache-- This is the sorrow wherewith hearts do break. THE CREED. Whoever was begotten by pure love, And came desired and welcome into life, Is of immaculate conception. He Whose heart is full of tenderness and truth, Who loves mankind more than he loves himself, And cannot find room in his heart for hate, May be another Christ. We all may be The Saviours of the world if we believe In the Divinity which dwells in us And worship it, and nail our grosser selves, Our tempers, greeds, and our unworthy aims, Upon the cross. Who giveth love to all; Pays kindness for unkindness, smiles for frowns; And lends new courage to each fainting heart, And strengthens hope and scatters joy abroad-- He, too, is a Redeemer, Son of God. [Illustration: "CAME DESIRED AND WELCOMED INTO LIFE"] PROGRESS. Let there be many windows to your soul, That all the glory of the universe May beautify it. Not the narrow pane Of one poor creed can catch the radiant rays That shine from countless sources. Tear away The blinds of superstition; let the light Pour through fair windows broad as Truth itself And high as God. Why should the spirit peer Through some priest-curtained orifice, and grope Along dim corridors of doubt, when all The splendor from unfathomed seas of space Might bathe it with the golden waves of Love? Sweep up the debris of decaying faiths; Sweep down the cobwebs of worn-out beliefs, And throw your soul wide open to the light Of Reason and of Knowledge. Tune your ear To all the wordless music of the stars And to the voice of Nature, and your heart Shall turn to truth and goodness as the plant Turns to the sun. A thousand unseen hands Reach down to help you to their peace-crowned heights. And all the forces of the firmament Shall fortify your strength. Be not afraid To thrust aside half-truths and grasp the whole. MY FRIEND. When first I looked upon the face of Pain I shrank repelled, as one shrinks from a foe Who stands with dagger poised, as for a blow. I was in search of Pleasure and of Gain; I turned aside to let him pass: in vain; He looked straight in my eyes and would not go. "Shake hands," he said; "our paths are one, and so We must be comrades on the way, 'tis plain." I felt the firm clasp of his hand on mine; Through all my veins it sent a strengthening glow. I straightway linked my arm in his, and lo! He led me forth to joys almost divine; With God's great truths enriched me in the end: And now I hold him as my dearest friend. [Illustration:] CREATION. The impulse of all love is to create. God was so full of love, in his embrace He clasped the empty nothingness of space, And low! the solar system! High in state The mighty sun sat, so supreme and great With this same essence, one smile of its face Brought myriad forms of life forth; race on race, From insects up to men. Through love, not hate, All that is grand in nature or in art Sprang into being. He who would build sublime And lasting works, to stand the test of time, Must inspiration draw from his full heart. And he who loveth widely, well, and much, The secret holds of the true master touch. [Illustration:] RED CARNATIONS. One time in Arcadie's fair bowers There met a bright immortal band, To choose their emblems from the flowers That made an Eden of that land. Sweet Constancy, with eyes of hope, Strayed down the garden path alone And gathered sprays of heliotrope, To place in clusters at her zone. True Friendship plucked the ivy green, Forever fresh, forever fair. Inconstancy with flippant mien The fading primrose chose to wear. One moment Love the rose paused by; But Beauty picked it for her hair. Love paced the garden with a sigh He found no fitting emblem there. Then suddenly he saw a flame, A conflagration turned to bloom; It even put the rose to shame, Both in its beauty and perfume. He watched it, and it did not fade; He plucked it, and it brighter grew. In cold or heat, all undismayed, It kept its fragrance and its hue. "Here deathless love and passion sleep," He cried, "embodied in this flower. This is the emblem I will keep." Love wore carnations from that hour. [Illustration:] LIFE IS TOO SHORT. Life is too short for any vain regretting; Let dead delight bury its dead, I say, And let us go upon our way forgetting The joys and sorrows of each yesterday Between the swift sun's rising and its setting We have no time for useless tears or fretting: Life is too short. Life is too short for any bitter feeling; Time is the best avenger if we wait; The years speed by, and on their wings bear healing; We have no room for anything like hate. This solemn truth the low mounds seem revealing That thick and fast about our feet are stealing: Life is too short. Life is too short for aught but high endeavor-- Too short for spite, but long enough for love. And love lives on forever and forever; It links the worlds that circle on above: 'Tis God's first law, the universe's lever. In His vast realm the radiant souls sigh never "Life is too short." A SCULPTOR. As the ambitious sculptor, tireless, lifts Chisel and hammer to the block at hand, Before my half-formed character I stand And ply the shining tools of mental gifts. I'll cut away a huge, unsightly side Of selfishness, and smooth to curves of grace The angles of ill-temper. And no trace Shall my sure hammer leave of silly pride. Chip after chip must fall from vain desires, And the sharp corners of my discontent Be rounded into symmetry, and lent Great harmony by faith that never tires. Unfinished still, I must toil on and on, Till the pale critic, Death, shall say, "'Tis done." BEYOND. It seemeth such a little way to me Across to that strange country--the Beyond; And yet, not strange, for it has grown to be The home of those of whom I am so fond, They make it seem familiar and most dear, As journeying friends bring distant regions near. So close it lies that when my sight is clear I think I almost see the gleaming strand. I know I feel those who have gone from here Come near enough sometimes to touch my hand. I often think, but for our veiled eyes, We should find Heaven right round about us lies. I cannot make it seem a day to dread, When from this dear earth I shall journey out To that still dearer country of the dead, And join the lost ones, so long dreamed about. I love this world, yet shall I love to go And meet the friends who wait for me, I know. I never stand above a bier and see The seal of death set on some well-loved face But that I think, "One more to welcome me When I shall cross the intervening space Between this land and that one 'over there'; One more to make the strange Beyond seem fair." And so for me there is no sting to death, And so the grave has lost its victory. It is but crossing--with a bated breath And white, set face--a little strip of sea To find the loved ones waiting on the shore, More beautiful, more precious than before. [Illustration:] THE SADDEST HOUR. The saddest hour of anguish and of loss Is not that season of supreme despair When we can find no least light anywhere To gild the dread, black shadow of the Cross; Not in that luxury of sorrow when We sup on salt of tears, and drink the gall Of memories of days beyond recall-- Of lost delights that cannot come again. But when, with eyes that are no longer wet, We look out on the great, wide world of men, And, smiling, lean toward a bright to-morrow, Then backward shrink, with sudden keen regret, To find that we are learning to forget: Ah! then we face the saddest hour of sorrow. [Illustration: ACROSS THE SEA OF SILENCE] SHOW ME THE WAY. Show me the way that leads to the true life. I do not care what tempests may assail me, I shall be given courage for the strife; I know my strength will not desert or fail me; I know that I shall conquer in the fray: Show me the way. Show me the way up to a higher plane, Where body shall be servant to the soul. I do not care what tides of woe or pain Across my life their angry waves may roll, If I but reach the end I seek, some day: Show me the way. Show me the way, and let me bravely climb Above vain grievings for unworthy treasures; Above all sorrow that finds balm in time; Above small triumphs or belittling pleasures; Up to those heights where these things seem child's-play: Show me the way. Show me the way to that calm, perfect peace Which springs from an inward consciousness of right; To where all conflicts with the flesh shall cease, And self shall radiate with the spirit's light. Though hard the journey and the strife, I pray, Show me the way. MY HERITAGE. I into life so full of love was sent That all the shadows which fall on the way Of every human being could not stay, But fled before the light my spirit lent. I saw the world through gold and crimson dyes: Men sighed and said, "Those rosy hues will fade As you pass on into the glare and shade!" Still beautiful the way seems to mine eyes. They said, "You are too jubilant and glad; The world is full of sorrow and of wrong. Full soon your lips shall breathe forth sighs--not song." The day wears on, and yet I am not sad. They said, "You love too largely, and you must, Through wound on wound, grow bitter to your kind." They were false prophets; day by day I find More cause for love, and less cause for distrust. They said, "Too free you give your soul's rare wine; The world will quaff, but it will not repay." Yet in the emptied flagons, day by day, True hearts pour back a nectar as divine. Thy heritage! Is it not love's estate? Look to it, then, and keep its soil well tilled. I hold that my best wishes are fulfilled Because I love so much, and cannot hate. RESOLVE. Build on resolve, and not upon regret, The structure of thy future. Do not grope Among the shadows of old sins, but let Thine own soul's light shine on the path of hope And dissipate the darkness. Waste no tears Upon the blotted record of lost years, But turn the leaf and smile, oh, smile, to see The fair white pages that remain for thee. Prate not of thy repentance. But believe The spark divine dwells in thee: let it grow. That which the upreaching spirit can achieve The grand and all-creative forces know; They will assist and strengthen as the light Lifts up the acorn to the oak tree's height. Thou hast but to resolve, and lo! God's whole Great universe shall fortify thy soul. AT ELEUSIS. I, at Eleusis, saw the finest sight, When early morning's banners were unfurled. From high Olympus, gazing on the world, The ancient gods once saw it with delight. Sad Demeter had in a single night Removed her sombre garments! and mine eyes Beheld a 'broidered mantle in pale dyes Thrown o'er her throbbing bosom. Sweet and clear There fell the sound of music on mine ear. And from the South came Hermes, he whose lyre One time appeased the great Apollo's ire. The rescued maid, Persephone, by the hand He led to waiting Demeter, and cheer And light and beauty once more blessed the land. COURAGE. There is a courage, a majestic thing That springs forth from the brow of pain, full-grown, Minerva-like, and dares all dangers known, And all the threatening future yet may bring; Crowned with the helmet of great suffering; Serene with that grand strength by martyrs shown, When at the stake they die and make no moan, And even as the flames leap up are heard to sing: A courage so sublime and unafraid, It wears its sorrows like a coat of mail; And Fate, the archer, passes by dismayed, Knowing his best barbed arrows needs must fail To pierce a soul so armored and arrayed That Death himself might look on it and quail. [Illustration:] SOLITUDE. Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone; For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth, But has trouble enough of its own. Sing, and the hills will answer; Sigh, it is lost on the air; The echoes bound to a joyful sound, But shrink from voicing care. Rejoice, and men will seek you; Grieve, and they turn and go; They want full measure of all your pleasure, But they do not need your woe. Be glad, and your friends are many; Be sad, and you lose them all; There are none to decline your nectar'd wine, But alone you must drink life's gall. Feast, and your halls are crowded; Fast, and the world goes by. Succeed and give, and it helps you live, But no man can help you die. There is room in the halls of pleasure For a large and lordly train, But one by one we must all file on Through the narrow aisles of pain. THE YEAR OUTGROWS THE SPRING. The year outgrows the spring it thought so sweet, And clasps the summer with a new delight, Yet wearied, leaves her languors and her heat When cool-browed autumn dawns upon his sight. The tree outgrows the bud's suggestive grace, And feels new pride in blossoms fully blown. But even this to deeper joy gives place When bending boughs 'neath blushing burdens groan. Life's rarest moments are derived from change. The heart outgrows old happiness, old grief, And suns itself in feelings new and strange; The most enduring pleasure is but brief. Our tastes, our needs, are never twice the same. Nothing contents us long, however dear. The spirit in us, like the grosser frame, Outgrows the garments which it wore last year. Change is the watchword of Progression. When We tire of well-worn ways we seek for new. This restless craving in the souls of men Spurs them to climb, and seek the mountain view. So let who will erect an altar shrine To meek-browed Constancy, and sing her praise. Unto enlivening Change I shall build mine, Who lends new zest and interest to my days. [Illustration: "...AND LIGHT AND BEAUTY BLESSED THE LAND"] THE BEAUTIFUL LAND OF NOD. Come, cuddle your head on my shoulder, dear, Your head like the golden-rod, And we will go sailing away from here To the beautiful Land of Nod. Away from life's hurry and flurry and worry, Away from earth's shadows and gloom, To a world of fair weather we'll float off together, Where roses are always in bloom. Just shut your eyes and fold your hands, Your hands like the leaves of a rose, And we will go sailing to those fair lands That never an atlas shows. On the North and the West they are bounded by rest, On the South and the East, by dreams; 'Tis the country ideal, where nothing is real, But everything only seems. Just drop down the curtains of your dear eyes Those eyes like a bright bluebell, And we will sail out under starlit skies, To the land where the fairies dwell. Down the river of sleep our barque shall sweep, Till it reaches that mystical Isle Which no man hath seen, but where all have been, And there we will pause awhile. I will croon you a song as we float along To that shore that is blessed of God, Then, ho! for that fair land, we're off for that rare land, That beautiful Land of Nod. [Illustration:] THE TIGER. In the still jungle of the senses lay A tiger soundly sleeping, till one day A bold young hunter chanced to come that way. "How calm," he said, "that splendid creature lies! I long to rouse him into swift surprise." The well aimed arrow shot from amorous eyes, And lo! the tiger rouses up and turns, A coal of fire his glowing eyeball burns, His mighty frame with savage hunger yearns. He crouches for a spring; his eyes dilate-- Alas! bold hunter, what shall be thy fate? Thou canst not fly; it is too late, too late. Once having tasted human flesh, ah! then, Woe, woe unto the whole rash world of men. The wakened tiger will not sleep again. ONLY A SIMPLE RHYME. Only a simple rhyme of love and sorrow, Where "blisses" rhymed with "kisses," "heart," with "dart:" Yet, reading it, new strength I seemed to borrow, To live on bravely and to do my part. A little rhyme about a heart that's bleeding-- Of lonely hours and sorrow's unrelief: I smiled at first; but there came with the reading A sense of sweet companionship in grief. The selfishness of my own woe forsaking, I thought about the singer of that song. Some other breast felt this same weary aching; Another found the summer days too long. The few sad lines, my sorrow so expressing, I read, and on the singer, all unknown, I breathed a fervent though a silent blessing, And seemed to clasp his hand within my own. And though fame pass him and he never know it, And though he never sings another strain, He has performed the mission of the poet, In helping some sad heart to bear its pain. [Illustration:] I WILL BE WORTHY OF IT. I may not reach the heights I seek, My untried strength may fail me, Or, half-way up the mountain peak, Fierce tempests may assail me. But though that place I never gain, Herein lies comfort for my pain-- I will be worthy of it. I may not triumph in success, Despite my earnest labor; I may not grasp results that bless The efforts of my neighbor; But though my goal I never see, This thought shall always dwell with me-- I will be worthy of it. The golden glory of Love's light May never fall on my way; My path may always lead through night, Like some deserted by-way; But though life's dearest joy I miss There lies a nameless strength in this-- I will be worthy of it. SONNET. Methinks ofttimes my heart is like some bee That goes forth through the summer day and sings. And gathers honey from all growing things In garden plot or on the clover lea. When the long afternoon grows late, and she Would seek her hive, she cannot lift her wings. So heavily the too sweet bin den clings, From which she would not, and yet would, fly free. So with my full, fond heart; for when it tries To lift itself to peace crowned heights, above The common way where countless feet have trod, Lo! then, this burden of dear human ties, This growing weight of precious earthly love, Binds down the spirit that would soar to God. REGRET. There is a haunting phantom called Regret, A shadowy creature robed somewhat like Woe, But fairer in the face, whom all men know By her sad mien and eyes forever wet. No heart would seek her; but once having met, All take her by the hand, and to and fro They wander through those paths of long ago-- Those hallowed ways 'twere wiser to forget. One day she led me to that lost land's gate And bade me enter; but I answered "No! I will pass on with my bold comrade, Fate; I have no tears to waste on thee--no time; My strength I hoard for heights I hope to climb: No friend art thou for souls that would be great." [Illustration: "...THE STRIFE THAT IS WEARYING ME"] LET ME LEAN HARD. Let me lean hard upon the Eternal Breast: In all earth's devious ways I sought for rest And found it not. I will be strong, said I, And lean upon myself. I will not cry And importune all heaven with my complaint. But now my strength fails, and I fall, I faint: Let me lean hard. Let me lean hard upon the unfailing Arm. I said I will walk on, I fear no harm, The spark divine within my soul will show The upward pathway where my feet should go. But now the heights to which I most aspire Are lost in clouds. I stumble and I tire: Let me lean hard. Let me lean harder yet. That swerveless force Which speeds the solar systems on their course Can take, unfelt, the burden of my woe, Which bears me to the dust and hurts me so. I thought my strength enough for any fate, But lo! I sink beneath my sorrow's weight: Let me lean hard. PENALTY. Because of the fullness of what I had All that I have seems void and vain. If I had not been happy I were not sad; Though my salt is savorless, why complain? From the ripe perfection of what was mine, All that is mine seems worse than naught; Yet I know as I sit in the dark and pine, No cup could be drained which had not been fraught. From the throb and thrill of a day that was, The day that now is seems dull with gloom; Yet I bear its dullness and darkness because 'Tis but the reaction of glow and bloom. From the royal feast which of old was spread I am starved on the diet which now is mine; Yet I could not turn hungry from water and bread, If I had not been sated on fruit and wine. SUNSET. I saw the day lean o'er the world's sharp edge And peer into night's chasm, dark and damp; High in his hand he held a blazing lamp, Then dropped it and plunged headlong down the ledge. With lurid splendor that swift paled to gray, I saw the dim skies suddenly flush bright. 'Twas but the expiring glory of the light Flung from the hand of the adventurous day. [Illustration:] THE WHEEL OF THE BREAST. Through rivers of veins on the nameless quest The tide of my life goes hurriedly sweeping, Till it reaches that curious wheel o' the breast, The human heart, which is never at rest. Faster, faster, it cries, and leaping, Plunging, dashing, speeding away, The wheel and the river work night and day. I know not wherefore, I know not whither, This strange tide rushes with such mad force: It glides on hither, it slides on thither, Over and over the selfsame course, With never an outlet and never a source; And it lashes itself to the heat of passion And whirls the heart in a mill-wheel fashion. I can hear in the hush of the still, still night, The ceaseless sound of that mighty river; I can hear it gushing, gurgling, rushing, With a wild, delirious, strange delight, And a conscious pride in its sense of might, As it hurries and worries my heart forever. And I wonder oft as I lie awake, And list to the river that seethes and surges Over the wheel that it chides and urges-- I wonder oft if that wheel will break With the mighty pressure it bears, some day, Or slowly and wearily wear away. For little by little the heart is wearing, Like the wheel of the mill, as the tide goes tearing And plunging hurriedly through my breast, In a network of veins on a nameless quest, From and forth, unto unknown oceans, Bringing its cargoes of fierce emotions, With never a pause or an hour for rest. A MEETING. Quite carelessly I turned the newsy sheet; A song I sang, full many a year ago, Smiled up at me, as in a busy street One meets an old-time friend he used to know. So full it was, that simple little song, Of all the hope, the transport, and the truth, Which to the impetuous morn of life belong, That once again I seemed to grasp my youth. So full it was of that sweet, fancied pain We woo and cherish ere we meet with woe, I felt as one who hears a plaintive strain His mother sang him in the long ago. Up from the grave the years that lay between That song's birthday and my stern present came Like phantom forms and swept across the scene, Bearing their broken dreams of love and fame. Fair hopes and bright ambitions that I knew In that old time, with their ideal grace, Shone for a moment, then were lost to view Behind the dull clouds of the commonplace. With trembling hands I put the sheet away; Ah, little song! the sad and bitter truth Struck like an arrow when we met that day! My life has missed the promise of its youth. EARNESTNESS. The hurry of the times affects us so In this swift rushing hour, we crowd and press And thrust each other backward as we go, And do not pause to lay sufficient stress Upon that good, strong, true word, Earnestness. In our impetuous haste, could we but know Its full, deep meaning, its vast import, oh, Then might we grasp the secret of success! In that receding age when men were great, The bone and sinew of their purpose lay In this one word. God likes an earnest soul-- Too earnest to be eager. Soon or late It leaves the spent horde breathless by the way, And stands serene, triumphant at the goal. A PICTURE. I strolled last eve across the lonely down; One solitary picture struck my eye: A distant ploughboy stood against the sky-- How far he seemed above the noisy town! Upon the bosom of a cloud the sod Laid its bruised cheek as he moved slowly by, And, watching him, I asked myself if I In very truth stood half as near to God. [Illustration:] TWIN-BORN. He who possesses virtue at its best, Or greatness in the true sense of the word, Has one day started even with that herd Whose swift feet now speed but at sin's behest. It is the same force in the human breast Which makes men gods or demons. If we gird Those strong emotions by which we are stirred With might of will and purpose, heights unguessed Shall dawn for us; or if we give them sway We can sink down and consort with the lost. All virtue is worth just the price it cost. Black sin is oft white truth that missed its way And wandered off in paths not understood. Twin-born I hold great evil and great good. FLOODS. In the dark night, from sweet refreshing sleep I wake to hear outside my window-pane The uncurbed fury of the wild spring rain, And weird winds lashing the defiant deep, And roar of floods that gather strength and leap Down dizzy, wreck-strewn channels to the main. I turn upon my pillow and again Compose myself for slumber. Let them sweep; I once survived great floods, and do not fear, Though ominous planets congregate, and seem To foretell strange disasters. From a dream-- Ah! dear God! such a dream!--I woke to hear, Through the dense shadows lit by no star's gleam, The rush of mighty waters on my ear. Helpless, afraid, and all alone, I lay; The floods had come upon me unaware. I heard the crash of structures that were fair; The bridges of fond hopes were swept away By great salt waves of sorrow. In dismay I saw by the red lightning's lurid glare That on the rock-bound island of despair I had been cast. Till the dim dawn of day I heard my castles falling, and the roll Of angry billows bearing to the sea The broken timbers of my very soul. Were all the pent-up waters from the whole Stupendous solar system to break free, There are no floods that now can frighten me. A FABLE. Some cawing Crows, a hooting Owl, A Hawk, a Canary, an old Marsh-Fowl, One day all meet together To hold a caucus and settle the fate Of a certain bird (without a mate), A bird of another feather. "My friends," said the Owl, with a look most wise, "The Eagle is soaring too near the skies, In a way that is quite improper; Yet the world is praising her, so I'm told, And I think her actions have grown so bold That some of us ought to stop her." "I have heard it said," quoth Hawk, with a sigh, "That young lambs died at the glance of her eye, And I wholly scorn and despise her. This, and more, I am told they say, And I think that the only proper way Is never to recognize her." "I am quite convinced," said Crow, with a caw, "That the Eagle minds no moral law, She's a most unruly creature." "She's an ugly thing," piped Canary Bird; "Some call her handsome--it's so absurd-- She hasn't a decent feature." Then the old Marsh-Hen went hopping about, She said she was sure--_she_ hadn't a doubt-- Of the truth of each bird's story: And she thought it a duty to stop her flight, To pull her down from her lofty height, And take the gilt from her glory. But, lo! from a peak on the mountain grand That looks out over the smiling land And over the mighty ocean, The Eagle is spreading her splendid wings-- She rises, rises, and upward swings, With a slow, majestic motion. Up in the blue of God's own skies, With a cry of rapture, away she flies, Close to the Great Eternal: She sweeps the world with her piercing sight; Her soul is filled with the infinite And the joy of things supernal. Thus rise forever the chosen of God, The genius-crowned or the power-shod, Over the dust-world sailing; And back, like splinters blown by the winds, Must fall the missiles of silly minds, Useless and unavailing. 
16995	----	RILEY LOVE-LYRICS [Illustration: (LOVE-LYRICS)] RILEY LOVE-LYRICS JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY WITH LIFE PICTURES BY WILLIAM B. DYER [Illustration] NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1883, 1887, 1888, 1890, 1891, 1892, 1894, 1897, 1898, 1901, 1905 by James Whitcomb Riley INSCRIBED To the Elect of Love,--or side-by-side In raptest ecstasy, or sundered wide By seas that bear no message to or fro Between the loved and lost of long ago. So were I but a minstrel, deft At weaving, with the trembling strings Of my glad harp, the warp and weft Of rondels such as rapture sings,-- I'd loop my lyre across my breast, Nor stay me till my knee found rest In midnight banks of bud and flower Beneath my lady's lattice-bower. And there, drenched with the teary dews, I'd woo her with such wondrous art As well might stanch the songs that ooze Out of the mockbird's breaking heart; So light, so tender, and so sweet Should be the words I would repeat, Her casement, on my gradual sight, Would blossom as a lily might. CONTENTS PAGE BLOOMS OF MAY 185 DISCOURAGING MODEL, A 133 "DREAM" 46 FARMER WHIPPLE--BACHELOR 167 HAS SHE FORGOTTEN? 181 HE AND I 83 HE CALLED HER IN 50 HER BEAUTIFUL EYES 60 HER HAIR 128 HER FACE AND BROW 63 HER WAITING FACE 71 HOME AT NIGHT 122 HOW IT HAPPENED 95 IKE WALTON'S PRAYER 107 ILLILEO 111 JUDITH 79 LAST NIGHT AND THIS 131 LEONAINIE 68 LET US FORGET 64 LOST PATH, THE 87 MY BRIDE THAT IS TO BE 90 MY MARY 117 NOTHIN' TO SAY 103 OLD PLAYED-OUT SONG, A' 31 OLD SWEETHEART OF MINE, AN 23 OLD YEAR AND THE NEW, THE 72 OUT-WORN SAPPHO, AN 37 PASSING OF A HEART, THE 44 RIVAL, THE 148 ROSE, THE 178 SERMON OF THE ROSE, THE 189 SONG OF LONG AGO, A 160 SUSPENSE 136 THEIR SWEET SORROW 76 TO HEAR HER SING 146 TOM VAN ARDEN 139 TOUCHES OF HER HANDS, THE 157 VARIATION, A 151 VERY YOUTHFUL AFFAIR, A 36 WHEN AGE COMES ON 164 WHEN LIDE MARRIED _Him_ 125 WHEN MY DREAMS COME TRUE 99 WHEN SHE COMES HOME 67 WHERE SHALL WE LAND 154 WIFE-BLESSÉD, THE 115 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE LOVE-LYRICS FRONTISPIECE ILLUSTRATIONS--TAILPIECE xx AN OLD SWEETHEART OF MINE 23 AND I LIGHT MY PIPE IN SILENCE 24 THE VOICES OF MY CHILDREN 25 THE PINK SUNBONNET 26 WHEN FIRST I KISSED HER 27 MY WIFE IS STANDING THERE 30 A' OLD PLAYED-OUT SONG 33 A' OLD PLAYED-OUT SONG--TAILPIECE 35 A VERY YOUTHFUL AFFAIR 36 AN OUT-WORN SAPPHO 41 AN OUT-WORN SAPPHO--TAILPIECE 43 THE PASSING OF A HEART--TITLE 44 THE PASSING OF A HEART--TAILPIECE 45 "DREAM" 47 "DREAM"--TAILPIECE 49 HE CALLED HER IN--TITLE 50 A DARK AND EERIE CHILD 51 WHEN SHE FIRST CAME TO ME 57 HE CALLED HER IN--TAILPIECE 59 HER BEAUTIFUL EYES 61 HER FACE AND BROW 63 LET US FORGET--TITLE 64 OUR WORN EYES ARE WET 65 WHEN SHE COMES HOME 67 LEONAINIE--TITLE 68 LEONAINIE--TAILPIECE 70 HER WAITING FACE 71 THE OLD YEAR AND THE NEW--TITLE 72 I SAW THE OLD YEAR END 73 THEIR SWEET SORROW 77 JUDITH 79 O, HER EYES ARE AMBER-FINE 81 HE AND I 85 THE LOST PATH--TITLE 87 THE LOST PATH 89 MADONNA-LIKE AND GLORIFIED 91 HOW IT HAPPENED 97 WHEN MY DREAMS COME TRUE 101 NOTHIN' TO SAY 105 IKE WALTON'S PRAYER--TITLE 107 IKE WALTON'S PRAYER--TAILPIECE 110 ILLILEO 113 WIFE-BLESSÉD, THE 115 THE AULD TRYSTING-TREE 119 MY MARY--TAILPIECE 121 HOME AT NIGHT 123 WHEN LIDE MARRIED _Him_--TITLE 125 WHEN LIDE MARRIED _Him_--TAILPIECE 127 HER HAIR 129 LAST NIGHT AND THIS--TITLE 131 LAST NIGHT AND THIS--TAILPIECE 132 A DISCOURAGING MODEL--TITLE 133 A CAMEO FACE 135 SUSPENSE 137 TOM VAN ARDEN--TITLE 139 TOM VAN ARDEN 141 TO HEAR HER SING 146 THE RIVAL 148 A VARIATION--TITLE 151 WHERE SHALL WE LAND?--TITLE 154 WHERE SHALL WE LAND?--TAILPIECE 156 THE TOUCHES OF HER HANDS--TITLE 157 THE TOUCHES OF HER HANDS--TAILPIECE 158 O RARELY SOFT, THE TOUCHES OF HER HANDS 159 A SONG OF LONG AGO 161 WHEN AGE COMES ON 165 FARMER WHIPPLE--BACHELOR--TITLE 167 RIDIN' HOME WITH MARY 171 FARMER WHIPPLE--BACHELOR--TAILPIECE 177 THE ROSE--TITLE 178 HAS SHE FORGOTTEN? 183 BLOOMS OF MAY--TITLE 185 O LAD AND LASS 186 O GLEAM AND GLOOM AND WOODLAND BLOOM 187 THE SERMON OF THE ROSE 191 [Illustration: (ILLUSTRATIONS--TAILPIECE)] RILEY LOVE-LYRICS [Illustration: (AN OLD SWEETHEART OF MINE)] AN OLD SWEETHEART OF MINE As one who cons at evening o'er an album all alone, And muses on the faces of the friends that he has known, So I turn the leaves of fancy till, in shadowy design, I find the smiling features of an old sweetheart of mine. [Illustration: (AND I LIGHT MY PIPE IN SILENCE)] The lamplight seems to glimmer with a flicker of surprise, As I turn it low to rest me of the dazzle in my eyes, And light my pipe in silence, save a sigh that seems to yoke Its fate with my tobacco and to vanish with the smoke. 'Tis a fragrant retrospection--for the loving thoughts that start Into being are like perfume from the blossom of the heart; And to dream the old dreams over is a luxury divine-- When my truant fancy wanders with that old sweetheart of mine. Though I hear, beneath my study, like a fluttering of wings, The voices of my children, and the mother as she sings, I feel no twinge of conscience to deny me any theme When Care has cast her anchor in the harbor of a dream. In fact, to speak in earnest, I believe it adds a charm To spice the good a trifle with a little dust of harm-- For I find an extra flavor in Memory's mellow wine That makes me drink the deeper to that old sweetheart of mine. [Illustration: (THE VOICES OF MY CHILDREN)] [Illustration: (THE PINK SUNBONNET)] A face of lily-beauty, with a form of airy grace, Floats out of my tobacco as the genii from the vase; And I thrill beneath the glances of a pair of azure eyes As glowing as the summer and as tender as the skies. I can see the pink sunbonnet and the little checkered dress She wore when first I kissed her and she answered the caress With the written declaration that, "as surely as the vine Grew round the stump," she loved me--that old sweetheart of mine. [Illustration: (WHEN FIRST I KISSED HER)] And again I feel the pressure of her slender little hand, As we used to talk together of the future we had planned-- When I should be a poet, and with nothing else to do But write the tender verses that she set the music to: When we should live together in a cozy little cot Hid in a nest of roses, with a fairy garden-spot, Where the vines were ever fruited, and the weather ever fine, And the birds were ever singing for that old sweetheart of mine: [Illustration] When I should be her lover forever and a day, And she my faithful sweetheart till the golden hair was gray; And we should be so happy that when either's lips were dumb They would not smile in Heaven till the other's kiss had come. * * * * * But, ah! my dream is broken by a step upon the stair, And the door is softly opened, and--my wife is standing there; Yet with eagerness and rapture all my visions I resign To greet the living presence of that old sweetheart of mine. [Illustration: (MY WIFE IS STANDING THERE)] A' OLD PLAYED-OUT SONG It's the curiousest thing in creation, Whenever I hear that old song "Do They Miss Me at Home," I'm so bothered, My life seems as short as it's long!-- Fer ev'rything 'pears like adzackly It 'peared in the years past and gone,-- When I started out sparkin', at twenty, And had my first neckercher on! Though I'm wrinkelder, older and grayer Right now than my parents was then, You strike up that song "Do They Miss Me," And I'm jest a youngster again!-- I'm a-standin' back thare in the furries A-wishin' fer evening to come, And a-whisperin' over and over Them words "Do They Miss Me at Home?" You see, _Marthy Ellen she_ sung it The first time I heerd it; and so, As she was my very first sweetheart, It reminds me of her, don't you know;-- How her face used to look, in the twilight, As I tuck her to Spellin'; and she Kep' a-hummin' that song tel I ast her, Pine-blank, ef she ever missed _me_! I can shet my eyes now, as you sing it, And hear her low answerin' words; And then the glad chirp of the crickets, As clear as the twitter of birds; And the dust in the road is like velvet, And the ragweed and fennel and grass Is as sweet as the scent of the lilies Of Eden of old, as we pass. "_Do They Miss Me at Home?_" Sing it lower-- And softer--and sweet as the breeze That powdered our path with the snowy White bloom of the old locus'-trees! Let the whipperwills he'p you to sing it, And the echoes 'way over the hill, Tel the moon boolges out, in a chorus Of stars, and our voices is still. [Illustration: (A' OLD PLAYED-OUT SONG)] But oh! "They's a chord in the music That's missed when _her_ voice is away!" Though I listen from midnight tel morning, And dawn tel the dusk of the day! And I grope through the dark, lookin' up'ards And on through the heavenly dome, With my longin' soul singin' and sobbin' The words "Do They Miss Me at Home?" [Illustration: (A' OLD PLAYED-OUT SONG--TAILPIECE)] [Illustration: (A VERY YOUTHFUL AFFAIR)] A VERY YOUTHFUL AFFAIR I'm bin a-visitun 'bout a week To my little Cousin's at Nameless Creek, An' I'm got the hives an' a new straw hat, An' I'm come back home where my beau lives at. AN OUT-WORN SAPPHO How tired I am! I sink down all alone Here by the wayside of the Present. Lo, Even as a child I hide my face and moan-- A little girl that may no farther go; The path above me only seems to grow More rugged, climbing still, and ever briered With keener thorns of pain than these below; And O the bleeding feet that falter so And are so very tired! Why, I have journeyed from the far-off Lands Of Babyhood--where baby-lilies blew Their trumpets in mine ears, and filled my hands With treasures of perfume and honey-dew, And where the orchard shadows ever drew Their cool arms round me when my cheeks were fired With too much joy, and lulled mine eyelids to, And only let the starshine trickle through In sprays, when I was tired! Yet I remember, when the butterfly Went flickering about me like a flame That quenched itself in roses suddenly, How oft I wished that _I_ might blaze the same, And in some rose-wreath nestle with my name, While all the world looked on it and admired.-- Poor moth!--Along my wavering flight toward fame The winds drive backward, and my wings are lame And broken, bruised and tired! I hardly know the path from those old times; I know at first it was a smoother one Than this that hurries past me now, and climbs So high, its far cliffs even hide the sun And shroud in gloom my journey scarce begun. I could not do quite all the world required-- I could not do quite all I should have done, And in my eagerness I have outrun My strength--and I am tired.... Just tired! But when of old I had the stay Of mother-hands, O very sweet indeed It was to dream that all the weary way I should but follow where I now must lead-- For long ago they left me in my need, And, groping on alone, I tripped and mired Among rank grasses where the serpents breed In knotted coils about the feet of speed.-- There first it was I tired. And yet I staggered on, and bore my load Right gallantly: The sun, in summer-time, In lazy belts came slipping down the road To woo me on, with many a glimmering rhyme Rained from the golden rim of some fair clime, That, hovering beyond the clouds, inspired My failing heart with fancies so sublime I half forgot my path of dust and grime, Though I was growing tired. And there were many voices cheering me: I listened to sweet praises where the wind Went laughing o'er my shoulders gleefully And scattering my love-songs far behind;-- Until, at last, I thought the world so kind-- So rich in all my yearning soul desired-- So generous--so loyally inclined, I grew to love and trust it.... I was blind-- Yea, blind as I was tired! And yet one hand held me in creature-touch: And O, how fair it was, how true and strong, How it did hold my heart up like a crutch, Till, in my dreams, I joyed to walk along The toilsome way, contented with a song-- 'Twas all of earthly things I had acquired, And 'twas enough, I feigned, or right or wrong, Since, binding me to man--a mortal thong-- It stayed me, growing tired.... Yea, I had e'en resigned me to the strait Of earthly rulership--had bowed my head Acceptant of the master-mind--the great One lover--lord of all,--the perfected Kiss-comrade of my soul;--had stammering said My prayers to him;--all--all that he desired I rendered sacredly as we were wed.-- Nay--nay!--'twas but a myth I worshippéd.-- And--God of love!--how tired! [Illustration: (AN OUT-WORN SAPPHO)] For, O my friends, to lose the latest grasp-- To feel the last hope slipping from its hold-- To feel the one fond hand within your clasp Fall slack, and loosen with a touch so cold Its pressure may not warm you as of old Before the light of love had thus expired-- To know your tears are worthless, though they rolled Their torrents out in molten drops of gold.-- God's pity! I am tired! And I must rest.--Yet do not say "She _died_," In speaking of me, sleeping here alone. I kiss the grassy grave I sink beside, And close mine eyes in slumber all mine own: Hereafter I shall neither sob nor moan Nor murmur one complaint;--all I desired, And failed in life to find, will now be known-- So let me dream. Good night! And on the stone Say simply: She was tired. [Illustration: (AN OUT-WORN SAPPHO--TAILPIECE)] [Illustration: (THE PASSING OF A HEART--TITLE)] THE PASSING OF A HEART O Touch me with your hands-- For pity's sake! My brow throbs ever on with such an ache As only your cool touch may take away; And so, I pray You, touch me with your hands! Touch--touch me with your hands.-- Smooth back the hair You once caressed, and kissed, and called so fair That I did dream its gold would wear alway, And lo, to-day-- O touch me with your hands! Just touch me with your hands, And let them press My weary eyelids with the old caress, And lull me till I sleep. Then go your way, That Death may say: He touched her with his hands. [Illustration: (THE PASSING OF A HEART--TAILPIECE)] "DREAM" Because her eyes were far too deep And holy for a laugh to leap Across the brink where sorrow tried To drown within the amber tide; Because the looks, whose ripples kissed The trembling lids through tender mist, Were dazzled with a radiant gleam-- Because of this I called her "Dream." Because the roses growing wild About her features when she smiled Were ever dewed with tears that fell With tenderness ineffable; Because her lips might spill a kiss That, dripping in a world like this, Would tincture death's myrrh-bitter stream To sweetness--so I called her "Dream." [Illustration: ("DREAM")] Because I could not understand The magic touches of a hand That seemed, beneath her strange control, To smooth the plumage of the soul And calm it, till, with folded wings, It half forgot its flutterings, And, nestled in her palm, did seem To trill a song that called her "Dream." Because I saw her, in a sleep As dark and desolate and deep And fleeting as the taunting night That flings a vision of delight To some lorn martyr as he lies In slumber ere the day he dies-- Because she vanished like a gleam Of glory, do I call her "Dream." [Illustration: ("DREAM"--TAILPIECE)] [Illustration: (HE CALLED HER IN--TITLE)] HE CALLED HER IN I He called her in from me and shut the door. And she so loved the sunshine and the sky!-- She loved them even better yet than I That ne'er knew dearth of them--my mother dead, Nature had nursed me in her lap instead: And I had grown a dark and eerie child That rarely smiled, Save when, shut all alone in grasses high, Looking straight up in God's great lonesome sky And coaxing Mother to smile back on me. 'Twas lying thus, this fair girl suddenly Came to me, nestled in the fields beside A pleasant-seeming home, with doorway wide-- The sunshine beating in upon the floor [Illustration: (A DARK AND EERIE CHILD)] Like golden rain.-- O sweet, sweet face above me, turn again And leave me! I had cried, but that an ache Within my throat so gripped it I could make No sound but a thick sobbing. Cowering so, I felt her light hand laid Upon my hair--a touch that ne'er before Had tamed me thus, all soothed and unafraid-- It seemed the touch the children used to know When Christ was here, so dear it was--so dear,-- At once I loved her as the leaves love dew In midmost summer when the days are new. Barely an hour I knew her, yet a curl Of silken sunshine did she clip for me Out of the bright May-morning of her hair, And bound and gave it to me laughingly, And caught my hands and called me "_Little girl_," Tiptoeing, as she spoke, to kiss me there! And I stood dazed and dumb for very stress Of my great happiness. She plucked me by the gown, nor saw how mean The raiment--drew me with her everywhere: Smothered her face in tufts of grasses green: Put up her dainty hands and peeped between Her fingers at the blossoms--crooned and talked To them in strange, glad whispers, as we walked,-- Said _this_ one was her angel mother--_this_, Her baby-sister--come back, for a kiss, Clean from the Good-World!--smiled and kissed them, then Closed her soft eyes and kissed them o'er again. And so did she beguile me--so we played,-- She was the dazzling Shine--I, the dark Shade-- And we did mingle like to these, and thus, Together, made The perfect summer, pure and glorious. So blent we, till a harsh voice broke upon Our happiness.--She, startled as a fawn, Cried, "Oh, 'tis Father!"--all the blossoms gone From out her cheeks as those from out her grasp.-- Harsher the voice came:--She could only gasp Affrightedly, "Good-bye!--good-bye! good-bye!" And lo, I stood alone, with that harsh cry Ringing a new and unknown sense of shame Through soul and frame, And, with wet eyes, repeating o'er and o'er,-- "He called her in from me and shut the door!" II He called her in from me and shut the door! And I went wandering alone again-- So lonely--O so very lonely then, I thought no little sallow star, alone In all a world of twilight, e'er had known Such utter loneliness. But that I wore Above my heart that gleaming tress of hair To lighten up the night of my despair, I think I might have groped into my grave Nor cared to wave The ferns above it with a breath of prayer. And how I hungered for the sweet, sweet face That bent above me in my hiding-place That day amid the grasses there beside Her pleasant home!--"Her _pleasant_ home!" I sighed, Remembering;--then shut my teeth and feigned The harsh voice calling _me_,--then clinched my nails So deeply in my palms, the sharp wounds pained, And tossed my face toward heaven, as one who pales In splendid martyrdom, with soul serene, As near to God as high the guillotine. And I had _envied_ her? Not that--O no! But I had longed for some sweet haven so!-- Wherein the tempest-beaten heart might ride Sometimes at peaceful anchor, and abide Where those that loved me touched me with their hands, And looked upon me with glad eyes, and slipped Smooth fingers o'er my brow, and lulled the strands Of my wild tresses, as they backward tipped My yearning face and kissed it satisfied. Then bitterly I murmured as before,-- "He called her in from me and shut the door!" III He called her in from me and shut the door! After long struggling with my pride and pain-- A weary while it seemed, in which the more I held myself from her, the greater fain Was I to look upon her face again;-- At last--at last--half conscious where my feet Were faring, I stood waist-deep in the sweet Green grasses there where she First came to me.-- The very blossoms she had plucked that day, And, at her father's voice, had cast away, Around me lay, Still bright and blooming in these eyes of mine; And as I gathered each one eagerly, I pressed it to my lips and drank the wine Her kisses left there for the honey-bee. Then, after I had laid them with the tress [Illustration: (WHEN SHE FIRST CAME TO ME)] Of her bright hair with lingering tenderness, I, turning, crept on to the hedge that bound Her pleasant-seeming home--but all around Was never sign of her!--The windows all Were blinded; and I heard no rippling fall Of her glad laugh, nor any harsh voice call;-- But clutching to the tangled grasses, caught A sound as though a strong man bowed his head And sobbed alone--unloved--uncomforted!-- And then straightway before My tearless eyes, all vividly, was wrought A vision that is with me evermore:-- A little girl that lies asleep, nor hears Nor heeds not any voice nor fall of tears.-- And I sit singing o'er and o'er and o'er,-- "God called her in from him and shut the door!" [Illustration: (HE CALLED HER IN--TAILPIECE)] HER BEAUTIFUL EYES O her beautiful eyes! they are blue as the dew On the violet's bloom when the morning is new, And the light of their love is the gleam of the sun O'er the meadows of Spring where the quick shadows run As the morn shifts the mists and the clouds from the skies-- So I stand in the dawn of her beautiful eyes. And her beautiful eyes are as mid-day to me, When the lily-bell bends with the weight of the bee, And the throat of the thrush is a-pulse in the heat, And the senses are drugged with the subtle and sweet And delirious breaths of the air's lullabies-- So I swoon in the noon of her beautiful eyes. O her beautiful eyes! they have smitten mine own As a glory glanced down from the glare of the Throne; And I reel, and I falter and fall, as afar Fell the shepherds that looked on the mystical Star, And yet dazed in the tidings that bade them arise-- So I groped through the night of her beautiful eyes. [Illustration: (HER BEAUTIFUL EYES)] [Illustration: (HER FACE AND BROW)] HER FACE AND BROW Ah, help me! but her face and brow Are lovelier than lilies are Beneath the light of moon and star That smile as they are smiling now-- White lilies in a pallid swoon Of sweetest white beneath the moon-- White lilies, in a flood of bright Pure lucidness of liquid light Cascading down some plenilune, When all the azure overhead Blooms like a dazzling daisy-bed.-- So luminous her face and brow, The luster of their glory, shed In memory, even, blinds me now. [Illustration: (LET US FORGET--TITLE)] LET US FORGET Let us forget. What matters it that we Once reigned o'er happy realms of long-ago, And talked of love, and let our voices low, And ruled for some brief sessions royally? What if we sung, or laughed, or wept maybe? It has availed not anything, and so Let it go by that we may better know How poor a thing is lost to you and me. But yesterday I kissed your lips, and yet Did thrill you not enough to shake the dew From your drenched lids--and missed, with no regret, Your kiss shot back, with sharp breaths failing you: And so, to-day, while our worn eyes are wet With all this waste of tears, let us forget! [Illustration: (OUR WORN EYES ARE WET)] [Illustration: (WHEN SHE COMES HOME)] WHEN SHE COMES HOME When she comes home again! A thousand ways I fashion, to myself, the tenderness Of my glad welcome: I shall tremble--yes; And touch her, as when first in the old days I touched her girlish hand, nor dared upraise Mine eyes, such was my faint heart's sweet distress. Then silence: And the perfume of her dress: The room will sway a little, and a haze Cloy eyesight--soulsight, even--for a space: And tears--yes; and the ache here in the throat, To know that I so ill deserve the place Her arms make for me; and the sobbing note I stay with kisses, ere the tearful face Again is hidden in the old embrace. [Illustration: (LEONAINIE--TITLE)] LEONAINIE Leonainie--Angels named her; And they took the light Of the laughing stars and framed her In a smile of white; And they made her hair of gloomy Midnight, and her eyes of bloomy Moonshine, and they brought her to me In the solemn night.--- In a solemn night of summer, When my heart of gloom Blossomed up to greet the comer Like a rose in bloom; All forebodings that distressed me I forgot as Joy caressed me-- (_Lying_ Joy! that caught and pressed me In the arms of doom!) Only spake the little lisper In the Angel-tongue; Yet I, listening, heard her whisper-- "Songs are only sung Here below that they may grieve you-- Tales but told you to deceive you,-- So must Leonainie leave you While her love is young." Then God smiled and it was morning. Matchless and supreme Heaven's glory seemed adorning Earth with its esteem: Every heart but mine seemed gifted With the voice of prayer, and lifted Where my Leonainie drifted From me like a dream. [Illustration: (LEONAINIE--TAILPIECE)] [Illustration: (HER WAITING FACE)] HER WAITING FACE In some strange place Of long-lost lands he finds her waiting face-- Comes marveling upon it, unaware, Set moonwise in the midnight of her hair. [Illustration: (THE OLD YEAR AND THE NEW--TITLE)] THE OLD YEAR AND THE NEW I As one in sorrow looks upon The dead face of a loyal friend, By the dim light of New Year's dawn I saw the Old Year end. Upon the pallid features lay The dear old smile--so warm and bright Ere thus its cheer had died away In ashes of delight. The hands that I had learned to love With strength of passion half divine, Were folded now, all heedless of The emptiness of mine. [Illustration: (I SAW THE OLD YEAR END)] The eyes that once had shed their bright Sweet looks like sunshine, now were dull, And ever lidded from the light That made them beautiful. II The chimes of bells were in the air, And sounds of mirth in hall and street, With pealing laughter everywhere And throb of dancing feet: The mirth and the convivial din Of revelers in wanton glee, With tunes of harp and violin In tangled harmony. But with a sense of nameless dread, I turned me, from the merry face Of this newcomer, to my dead; And, kneeling there a space, I sobbed aloud, all tearfully:-- By this dear face so fixed and cold, O Lord, let not this New Year be As happy as the old! THEIR SWEET SORROW They meet to say farewell: Their way Of saying this is hard to say.-- He holds her hand an instant, wholly Distressed--and she unclasps it slowly. He bends _his_ gaze evasively Over the printed page that she Recurs to, with a new-moon shoulder Glimpsed from the lace-mists that enfold her. The clock, beneath its crystal cup, Discreetly clicks--"_Quick! Act! Speak up!_" A tension circles both her slender Wrists--and her raised eyes flash in splendor. Even as he feels his dazzled own.-- Then, blindingly, round either thrown, They feel a stress of arms that ever Strain tremblingly--and "_Never! Never!_" Is whispered brokenly, with half A sob, like a belated laugh,-- While cloyingly their blurred kiss closes, Sweet as the dew's lip to the rose's. [Illustration: (THEIR SWEET SORROW)] [Illustration: (JUDITH)] JUDITH O her eyes are amber-fine-- Dark and deep as wells of wine, While her smile is like the noon Splendor of a day of June. If she sorrow--lo! her face It is like a flowery space In bright meadows, overlaid With light clouds and lulled with shade. If she laugh--it is the trill Of the wayward whippoorwill Over upland pastures, heard Echoed by the mocking-bird In dim thickets dense with bloom And blurred cloyings of perfume. If she sigh--a zephyr swells Over odorous asphodels And wan lilies in lush plots Of moon-drown'd forget-me-nots. Then, the soft touch of her hand-- Takes all breath to understand What to liken it thereto!-- Never roseleaf rinsed with dew Might slip soother-suave than slips Her slow palm, the while her lips Swoon through mine, with kiss on kiss Sweet as heated honey is. [Illustration: (O, HER EYES ARE AMBER-FINE)] HE AND I Just drifting on together-- He and I-- As through the balmy weather Of July Drift two thistle-tufts imbedded Each in each--by zephyrs wedded-- Touring upward, giddy-headed, For the sky. And, veering up and onward, Do we seem Forever drifting dawnward In a dream, Where we meet song-birds that know us, And the winds their kisses blow us, While the years flow far below us Like a stream. And we are happy--very-- He and I-- Aye, even glad and merry Though on high The heavens are sometimes shrouded By the midnight storm, and clouded Till the pallid moon is crowded From the sky. My spirit ne'er expresses Any choice But to clothe him with caresses And rejoice; And as he laughs, it is in Such a tone the moonbeams glisten And the stars come out to listen To his voice. And so, whate'er the weather, He and I,-- With our lives linked thus together, Float and fly As two thistle-tufts imbedded Each in each--by zephyrs wedded-- Touring upward, giddy-headed, For the sky. [Illustration: (HE AND I)] [Illustration: (THE LOST PATH--TITLE)] THE LOST PATH Alone they walked--their fingers knit together, And swaying listlessly as might a swing Wherein Dan Cupid dangled in the weather Of some sun-flooded afternoon of Spring. Within the clover-fields the tickled cricket Laughed lightly as they loitered down the lane, And from the covert of the hazel-thicket The squirrel peeped and laughed at them again. The bumble-bee that tipped the lily-vases Along the road-side in the shadows dim, Went following the blossoms of their faces As though their sweets must needs be shared with him. Between the pasture bars the wondering cattle Stared wistfully, and from their mellow bells Shook out a welcoming whose dreamy rattle Fell swooningly away in faint farewells. And though at last the gloom of night fell o'er them And folded all the landscape from their eyes, They only know the dusky path before them Was leading safely on to Paradise. [Illustration: (THE LOST PATH)] MY BRIDE THAT IS TO BE O soul of mine, look out and see My bride, my bride that is to be! Reach out with mad, impatient hands, And draw aside futurity As one might draw a veil aside-- And so unveil her where she stands Madonna-like and glorified-- The queen of undiscovered lands Of love, to where she beckons me-- My bride--my bride that is to be. The shadow of a willow-tree That wavers on a garden-wall In summertime may never fall In attitude as gracefully As my fair bride that is to be;-- Nor ever Autumn's leaves of brown As lightly flutter to the lawn As fall her fairy-feet upon The path of love she loiters down.-- O'er drops of dew she walks, and yet Not one may stain her sandal wet-- Aye, she might _dance_ upon the way Nor crush a single drop to spray, So airy-like she seems to me,-- My bride, my bride that is to be. [Illustration: (MADONNA-LIKE AND GLORIFIED)] I know not if her eyes are light As summer skies or dark as night,-- I only know that they are dim With mystery: In vain I peer To make their hidden meaning clear, While o'er their surface, like a tear That ripples to the silken brim, A look of longing seems to swim All worn and wearylike to me; And then, as suddenly, my sight Is blinded with a smile so bright, Through folded lids I still may see My bride, my bride that is to be. Her face is like a night of June Upon whose brow the crescent-moon Hangs pendant in a diadem Of stars, with envy lighting them.-- And, like a wild cascade, her hair Floods neck and shoulder, arm and wrist, Till only through a gleaming mist I seem to see a siren there, With lips of love and melody And open arms and heaving breast Wherein I fling myself to rest, The while my heart cries hopelessly For my fair bride that is to be.... Nay, foolish heart and blinded eyes! My bride hath need of no disguise.-- But, rather, let her come to me In such a form as bent above My pillow when in infancy I knew not anything but love.-- O let her come from out the lands Of Womanhood--not fairy isles,-- And let her come with Woman's hands And Woman's eyes of tears and smiles,-- With Woman's hopefulness and grace Of patience lighting up her face: And let her diadem be wrought Of kindly deed and prayerful thought, That ever over all distress May beam the light of cheerfulness.-- And let her feet be brave to fare The labyrinths of doubt and care, That, following, my own may find The path to Heaven God designed.-- O let her come like this to me-- My bride--my bride that is to be. HOW IT HAPPENED I got to thinkin' of her--both her parents dead and gone-- And all her sisters married off, and none but her and John A-livin' all alone there in that lonesome sort o' way, And him a blame old bachelor, confirmder ev'ry day! I'd knowed 'em all from childern, and their daddy from the time He settled in the neighberhood, and hadn't airy a dime Er dollar, when he married, fer to start housekeepin' on!-- So I got to thinkin' of her--both her parents dead and gone! I got to thinkin' of her; and a-wundern what she done That all her sisters kep' a-gittin' married, one by one, And her without no chances--and the best girl of the pack-- An old maid, with her hands, you might say, tied behind her back! And Mother, too, afore she died, she ust to jes' take on, When none of 'em was left, you know, but Evaline and John, And jes' declare to goodness 'at the young men must be bline To not see what a wife they'd git if they got Evaline! I got to thinkin' of her; in my great affliction she Was sich a comfert to us, and so kind and neighberly,-- She'd come, and leave her housework, fer to he'p out little Jane, And talk of _her own_ mother 'at she'd never see again-- Maybe sometimes cry together--though, fer the most part she Would have the child so riconciled and happy-like 'at we Felt lonesomer 'n ever when she'd put her bonnet on And say she'd railly haf to be a-gittin' back to John! I got to thinkin' of her, as I say,--and more and more I'd think of her dependence, and the burdens 'at she bore,-- Her parents both a-bein' dead, and all her sisters gone And married off, and her a-livin' there alone with John-- You might say jes' a-toilin' and a-slavin' out her life Fer a man 'at hadn't pride enough to git hisse'f a wife-- 'Less some one married _Evaline_ and packed her off some day!-- So I got to thinkin' of her--and it happened thataway. [Illustration: (HOW IT HAPPENED)] WHEN MY DREAMS COME TRUE I When my dreams come true--when my dreams come true-- Shall I lean from out my casement, in the starlight and the dew, To listen--smile and listen to the tinkle of the strings Of the sweet guitar my lover's fingers fondle, as he sings? And as the nude moon slowly, slowly shoulders into view, Shall I vanish from his vision--when my dreams come true? When my dreams come true--shall the simple gown I wear Be changed to softest satin, and my maiden-braided hair Be raveled into flossy mists of rarest, fairest gold, To be minted into kisses, more than any heart can hold?-- Or "the summer of my tresses" shall my lover liken to "The fervor of his passion"--when my dreams come true? II When my dreams come true--I shall bide among the sheaves Of happy harvest meadows; and the grasses and the leaves Shall lift and lean between me and the splendor of the sun, Till the moon swoons into twilight, and the gleaners' work is done-- Save that yet an arm shall bind me, even as the reapers do The meanest sheaf of harvest--when my dreams come true. When my dreams come true! when my dreams come true! True love in all simplicity is fresh and pure as dew;-- The blossom in the blackest mold is kindlier to the eye Than any lily born of pride that looms against the sky: And so it is I know my heart will gladly welcome you, My lowliest of lovers, when my dreams come true. [Illustration: (WHEN MY DREAMS COME TRUE)] NOTHIN' TO SAY Nothin' to say, my daughter! Nothin' at all to say! Gyrls that's in love, I've noticed, ginerly has their way! Yer mother did, afore you, when her folks objected to me-- Yit here I am, and here you air; and yer mother--where is she? You look lots like yer mother: Purty much same in size; And about the same complected; and favor about the eyes: Like her, too, about _livin_' here,--because _she_ couldn't stay: It'll 'most seem like you was dead--like her!--But I hain't got nothin' to say! She left you her little Bible--writ yer name acrost the page-- And left her ear bobs fer you, ef ever you come of age. I've allus kep' 'em and gyuarded 'em, but ef yer goin' away-- Nothin' to say, my daughter! Nothin' at all to say! You don't rikollect her, I reckon? No; you wasn't a year old then! And now yer--how old _air_ you? W'y, child, not "_twenty_!" When? And yer nex' birthday's in Aprile? and you want to git married that day? ... I wisht yer mother was livin'!--But--I hain't got nothin' to say! Twenty year! and as good a gyrl as parent ever found! There's a straw ketched onto yer dress there--I'll bresh it off--turn round. (Her mother was jes' twenty when us two run away!) Nothin' to say, my daughter! Nothin' at all to say! [Illustration: (NOTHIN' TO SAY)] [Illustration: (IKE WALTON'S PRAYER--TITLE)] IKE WALTON'S PRAYER I crave, dear Lord, No boundless hoard Of gold and gear, Nor jewels fine, Nor lands, nor kine, Nor treasure-heaps of anything-- Let but a little hut be mine Where at the hearthstone I may hear The cricket sing, And have the shine Of one glad woman's eyes to make, For my poor sake, Our simple home a place divine;-- Just the wee cot--the cricket's chirr-- Love, and the smiling face of her. I pray not for Great riches, nor For vast estates, and castle-halls,-- Give me to hear the bare footfalls Of children o'er An oaken floor, New-rinsed with sunshine, or bespread With but the tiny coverlet And pillow for the baby's head; And pray Thou, may The door stand open and the day Send ever in a gentle breeze, With fragrance from the locust-trees, And drowsy moan of doves, and blur Of robin-chirps, and drone of bees, With afterhushes of the stir Of intermingling sounds, and then The good-wife and the smile of her Filling the silences again-- The cricket's call, And the wee cot, Dear Lord of all, Deny me not! I pray not that Men tremble at My power of place And lordly sway,-- I only pray for simple grace To look my neighbor in the face Full honestly from day to day-- Yield me his horny palm to hold, And I'll not pray For gold;-- The tanned face, garlanded with mirth, It hath the kingliest smile on earth-- The swart brow, diamonded with sweat, Hath never need of coronet. And so I reach, Dear Lord, to Thee, And do beseech Thou givest me The wee cot, and the cricket's chirr, Love, and the glad sweet face of her. [Illustration: (IKE WALTON'S PRAYER--TAILPIECE)] ILLILEO Illileo, the moonlight seemed lost across the vales-- The stars but strewed the azure as an armor's scattered scales; The airs of night were quiet as the breath of silken sails; And all your words were sweeter than the notes of nightingales. Illileo Legardi, in the garden there alone, With your figure carved of fervor, as the Psyche carved of stone, There came to me no murmur of the fountain's undertone So mystically, musically mellow as your own. You whispered low, Illileo--so low the leaves were mute, And the echoes faltered breathless in your voice's vain pursuit; And there died the distant dalliance of the serenader's lute: And I held you in my bosom as the husk may hold the fruit. Illileo, I listened. I believed you. In my bliss, What were all the worlds above me since I found you thus in this?-- Let them reeling reach to win me--even Heaven I would miss, Grasping earthward!--I would cling here, though I clung by just a kiss! And blossoms should grow odorless--and lilies all aghast-- And I said the stars should slacken in their paces through the vast, Ere yet my loyalty should fail enduring to the last.-- So vowed I. It is written. It is changeless as the past. Illileo Legardi, in the shade your palace throws Like a cowl about the singer at your gilded porticos, A moan goes with the music that may vex the high repose Of a heart that fades and crumbles as the crimson of a rose. [Illustration: (ILLILEO)] [Illustration: (WIFE-BLESSÉD, THE)] THE WIFE-BLESSÉD I In youth he wrought, with eyes ablur, Lorn-faced and long of hair-- In youth--in youth he painted her A sister of the air-- Could clasp her not, but felt the stir Of pinions everywhere. II She lured his gaze, in braver days, And tranced him sirenwise; And he did paint her, through a haze Of sullen paradise, With scars of kisses on her face And embers in her eyes. III And now--nor dream nor wild conceit-- Though faltering, as before-- Through tears he paints her, as is meet, Tracing the dear face o'er With lilied patience meek and sweet As Mother Mary wore. MY MARY My Mary, O my Mary! The simmer-skies are blue; The dawnin' brings the dazzle, An' the gloamin' brings the dew,-- The mirk o' nicht the glory O' the moon, an' kindles, too, The stars that shift aboon the lift.-- But nae thing brings me you! Where is it, O my Mary, Ye are biding a' the while? I ha' wended by your window-- I ha' waited by the stile, An' up an' down the river I ha' won for mony a mile, Yet never found, adrift or drown'd, Your lang-belated smile. Is it forgot, my Mary, How glad we used to be?-- The simmer-time when bonny bloomed The auld trysting-tree,-- How there I carved the name for you, An' you the name for me; An' the gloamin' kenned it only When we kissed sae tenderly. Speek ance to me, my Mary!-- But whisper in my ear As light as ony sleeper's breath, An' a' my soul will hear; My heart shall stap its beating An' the soughing atmosphere Be hushed the while I leaning smile An' listen to you, dear! My Mary, O my Mary! The blossoms bring the bees; The sunshine brings the blossoms, An' the leaves on a' the trees; The simmer brings the sunshine An' the fragrance o' the breeze,-- But O wi'out you, Mary, I care nae thing for these! [Illustration: (THE AULD TRYSTING-TREE)] We were sae happy, Mary! O think how ance we said-- Wad ane o' us gae fickle, Or ane o' us lie dead,-- To feel anither's kisses We wad feign the auld instead, An' ken the ither's footsteps In the green grass owerhead. My Mary, O my Mary! Are ye daughter o' the air, That ye vanish aye before me As I follow everywhere?-- Or is it ye are only But a mortal, wan wi' care?-- Syne I search through a' the kirkyird An' I dinna find ye there! [Illustration: (MY MARY--TAILPIECE)] HOME AT NIGHT When chirping crickets fainter cry, And pale stars blossom in the sky, And twilight's gloom has dimmed the bloom And blurred the butterfly: When locust-blossoms fleck the walk, And up the tiger-lily stalk The glow-worm crawls and clings and falls And glimmers down the garden-walls: When buzzing things, with double wings Of crisp and raspish flutterings, Go whizzing by so very nigh One thinks of fangs and stings:-- O then, within, is stilled the din Of crib she rocks the baby in, And heart and gate and latch's weight Are lifted--and the lips of Kate. [Illustration: (HOME AT NIGHT)] [Illustration: (WHEN LIDE MARRIED _Him_--TITLE)] WHEN LIDE MARRIED _HIM_ When Lide married _him_--w'y, she had to jes dee-fy The whole poppilation!--But she never bat' an eye! Her parents begged, and _threatened_--she must give him up--that _he_ Wuz jes "a common drunkard!"--And he _wuz_, appearantly.-- Swore they'd chase him off the place Ef he ever showed his face-- Long after she'd _eloped_ with him and _married_ him fer shore!-- When Lide married _him_, it wuz "_Katy, bar the door!_" When Lide married _him_--Well! she had to go and be A _hired girl_ in town somewheres--while he tromped round to see What _he_ could git that _he_ could do,--you might say, jes sawed wood From door to door!--that's what he done--'cause that wuz best he could! And the strangest thing, i jing! Wuz, he didn't _drink_ a thing,-- But jes got down to bizness, like he someway _wanted_ to, When Lide married him, like they warned her _not_ to do! When Lide married _him_--er, ruther, _had_ ben married A little up'ards of a year--some feller come and carried That _hired girl_ away with him--a ruther _stylish_ feller In a bran-new green spring-wagon, with the wheels striped red and yeller: And he whispered, as they driv Tords the country, "_Now we'll live!_"-- And _somepin' else_ she _laughed_ to hear, though both her eyes wuz dim, 'Bout "_trustin' Love and Heav'n above_, sence Lide married _him_!" [Illustration: (WHEN LIDE MARRIED _Him_--TAILPIECE)] HER HAIR The beauty of her hair bewilders me-- Pouring adown the brow, its cloven tide Swirling about the ears on either side And storming around the neck tumultuously: Or like the lights of old antiquity Through mullioned windows, in cathedrals wide, Spilled moltenly o'er figures deified In chastest marble, nude of drapery. And so I love it.--Either unconfined; Or plaited in close braidings manifold; Or smoothly drawn; or indolently twined In careless knots whose coilings come unrolled At any lightest kiss; or by the wind Whipped out in flossy ravelings of gold. [Illustration: (HER HAIR)] [Illustration: (LAST NIGHT AND THIS--TITLE)] LAST NIGHT--AND THIS Last night--how deep the darkness was! And well I knew its depths, because I waded it from shore to shore, Thinking to reach the light no more. She would not even touch my hand.-- The winds rose and the cedars fanned The moon out, and the stars fled back In heaven and hid--and all was black! But ah! To-night a summons came, Signed with a teardrop for a name,-- For as I wondering kissed it, lo, A line beneath it told me so. And _now_ the moon hangs over me A disk of dazzling brilliancy, And every star-tip stabs my sight With splintered glitterings of light! [Illustration: (LAST NIGHT AND THIS--TAILPIECE)] [Illustration: (A DISCOURAGING MODEL--TITLE)] A DISCOURAGING MODEL Just the airiest, fairiest slip of a thing, With a Gainsborough hat, like a butterfly's wing, Tilted up at one side with the jauntiest air, And a knot of red roses sown in under there Where the shadows are lost in her hair. Then a cameo face, carven in on a ground Of that shadowy hair where the roses are wound; And the gleam of a smile O as fair and as faint And as sweet as the masters of old used to paint Round the lips of their favorite saint! And that lace at her throat--and the fluttering hands Snowing there, with a grace that no art understands The flakes of their touches--first fluttering at The bow--then the roses--the hair--and then that Little tilt of the Gainsborough hat. What artist on earth, with a model like this, Holding not on his palette the tint of a kiss, Nor a pigment to hint of the hue of her hair, Nor the gold of her smile--O what artist could dare To expect a result half so fair? [Illustration: (A CAMEO FACE)] SUSPENSE A woman's figure, on a ground of night Inlaid with sallow stars that dimly stare Down in the lonesome eyes, uplifted there As in vague hope some alien lance of light Might pierce their woe. The tears that blind her sight-- The salt and bitter blood of her despair-- Her hands toss back through torrents of her hair And grip toward God with anguish infinite. And O the carven mouth, with all its great Intensity of longing frozen fast In such a smile as well may designate The slowly murdered heart, that, to the last Conceals each newer wound, and back at Fate Throbs Love's eternal lie--"Lo, I can wait!" [Illustration: (SUSPENSE)] [Illustration: (TOM VAN ARDEN--TITLE)] TOM VAN ARDEN Tom Van Arden, my old friend, Our warm fellowship is one Far too old to comprehend Where its bond was first begun: Mirage-like before my gaze Gleams a land of other days, Where two truant boys, astray, Dream their lazy lives away. There's a vision, in the guise Of Midsummer, where the Past Like a weary beggar lies In the shadow Time has cast; And as blends the bloom of trees With the drowsy hum of bees, Fragrant thoughts and murmurs blend, Tom Van Arden, my old friend. Tom Van Arden, my old friend, All the pleasures we have known Thrill me now as I extend This old hand and grasp your own-- Feeling, in the rude caress, All affection's tenderness; Feeling, though the touch be rough, Our old souls are soft enough. So we'll make a mellow hour; Fill your pipe, and taste the wine-- Warp your face, if it be sour, I can spare a smile from mine; If it sharpen up your wit, Let me feel the edge of it-- I have eager ears to lend, Tom Van Arden, my old friend. [Illustration: (TOM VAN ARDEN)] Tom Van Arden, my old friend, Are we "lucky dogs," indeed? Are we all that we pretend In the jolly life we lead?-- Bachelors, we must confess Boast of "single blessedness" To the world, but not alone-- Man's best sorrow is his own. And the saddest truth is this,-- Life to us has never proved What we tasted in the kiss Of the women we have loved: Vainly we congratulate Our escape from such a fate As their lying lips could send, Tom Van Arden, my old friend! Tom Van Arden, my old friend, Hearts, like fruit upon the stem, Ripen sweetest, I contend, As the frost falls over them: Your regard for me to-day Makes November taste of May, And through every vein of rhyme Pours the blood of summertime. When our souls are cramped with youth Happiness seems far away In the future, while, in truth, We looked back on it to-day Through our tears, nor dare to boast,-- "Better to have loved and lost!" Broken hearts are hard to mend, Tom Van Arden, my old friend. Tom Van Arden, my old friend, I grow prosy, and you tire; Fill the glasses while I bend To prod up the failing fire.... You are restless:--I presume There's a dampness in the room.-- Much of warmth our nature begs, With rheumatics in our legs!... Humph! the legs we used to fling Limber-jointed in the dance, When we heard the fiddle ring Up the curtain of Romance, And in crowded public halls Played with hearts like jugglers'-balls.-- _Feats of mountebanks, depend_!-- Tom Van Arden, my old friend. Tom Van Arden, my old friend, Pardon, then, this theme of mine: While the fire-light leaps to lend Higher color to the wine,-- I propose a health to those Who have _homes_, and home's repose, Wife and child-love without end! ... Tom Van Arden, my old friend. [Illustration: (TO HEAR HER SING)] TO HEAR HER SING To hear her sing--to hear her sing-- It is to hear the birds of Spring In dewy groves on blooming sprays Pour out their blithest roundelays. It is to hear the robin trill At morning, or the whippoorwill At dusk, when stars are blossoming To hear her sing--to hear her sing! To hear her sing--it is to hear The laugh of childhood ringing clear In woody path or grassy lane Our feet may never fare again. Faint, far away as Memory dwells, It is to hear the village bells At twilight, as the truant hears Them, hastening home, with smiles and tears. Such joy it is to hear her sing, We fall in love with everything-- The simple things of every day Grow lovelier than words can say. The idle brooks that purl across The gleaming pebbles and the moss, We love no less than classic streams-- The Rhines and Arnos of our dreams. To hear her sing--with folded eyes, It is, beneath Venetian skies, To hear the gondoliers' refrain, Or troubadours of sunny Spain.-- To hear the bulbul's voice that shook The throat that trilled for Lalla Rookh: What wonder we in homage bring Our hearts to her--to hear her sing! THE RIVAL I so loved once, when Death came by I hid Away my face, And all my sweetheart's tresses she undid To make my hiding-place. The dread shade passed me thus unheeding; and I turned me then To calm my love--kiss down her shielding hand And comfort her again. And lo! she answered not: And she did sit All fixedly, With her fair face and the sweet smile of it, In love with Death, not me. [Illustration: (THE RIVAL)] [Illustration: (A VARIATION--TITLE)] A VARIATION I am tired of this! Nothing else but loving! Nothing else but kiss and kiss, Coo, and turtle-doving! Can't you change the order some? Hate me just a little--come! Lay aside your "dears," "Darlings," "kings," and "princes!"-- Call me knave, and dry your tears-- Nothing in me winces,-- Call me something low and base-- Something that will suit the case! Wish I had your eyes And their drooping lashes! I would dry their teary lies Up with lightning-flashes-- Make your sobbing lips unsheathe All the glitter of your teeth! Can't you lift one word-- With some pang of laughter-- Louder than the drowsy bird Crooning 'neath the rafter? Just one bitter word, to shriek Madly at me as I speak! How I hate the fair Beauty of your forehead! How I hate your fragrant hair! How I hate the torrid Touches of your splendid lips, And the kiss that drips and drips! Ah, you pale at last! And your face is lifted Like a white sail to the blast, And your hands are shifted Into fists: and, towering thus, You are simply glorious! Now before me looms Something more than human; Something more than beauty blooms In the wrath of Woman-- Something to bow down before Reverently and adore. [Illustration: (WHERE SHALL WE LAND?--TITLE)] WHERE SHALL WE LAND? "Where shall we land you, sweet?"--Swinburne. All listlessly we float Out seaward in the boat That beareth Love. Our sails of purest snow Bend to the blue below And to the blue above. Where shall we land? We drift upon a tide Shoreless on every side, Save where the eye Of Fancy sweeps far lands Shelved slopingly with sands Of gold and porphyry. Where shall we land? The fairy isles we see, Loom up so mistily-- So vaguely fair, We do not care to break Fresh bubbles in our wake To bend our course for there. Where shall we land? The warm winds of the deep Have lulled our sails to sleep, And so we glide Careless of wave or wind, Or change of any kind, Or turn of any tide. Where shall we land? We droop our dreamy eyes Where our reflection lies Steeped in the sea, And, in an endless fit Of languor, smile on it And its sweet mimicry. Where shall we land? "Where shall we land?" God's grace! I know not any place So fair as this-- Swung here between the blue Of sea and sky, with you To ask me, with a kiss, "Where shall we land?" [Illustration: (WHERE SHALL WE LAND?--TAILPIECE)] [Illustration: (THE TOUCHES OF HER HANDS--TITLE)] THE TOUCHES OF HER HANDS The touches of her hands are like the fall Of velvet snowflakes; like the touch of down The peach just brushes 'gainst the garden wall; The flossy fondlings of the thistle-wisp Caught in the crinkle of a leaf of brown The blighting frost hath turned from green to crisp. Soft as the falling of the dusk at night, The touches of her hands, and the delight-- The touches of her hands! The touches of her hands are like the dew That falls so softly down no one e'er knew The touch thereof save lovers like to one Astray in lights where ranged Endymion. O rarely soft, the touches of her hands, As drowsy zephyrs in enchanted lands; Or pulse of dying fay; or fairy sighs; Or--in between the midnight and the dawn, When long unrest and tears and fears are gone-- Sleep, smoothing down the lids of weary eyes. [Illustration: (THE TOUCHES OF HER HANDS--TAILPIECE)] [Illustration: (O RARELY SOFT, THE TOUCHES OF HER HANDS)] A SONG OF LONG AGO A song of Long Ago: Sing it lightly--sing it low-- Sing it softly--like the lisping of the lips we used to know When our baby-laughter spilled From the glad hearts ever filled With music blithe as robin ever trilled! Let the fragrant summer-breeze, And the leaves of locust-trees, And the apple-buds and blossoms, and the wings of honey-bees, All palpitate with glee, Till the happy harmony Brings back each childish joy to you and me. Let the eyes of fancy turn Where the tumbled pippins burn Like embers in the orchard's lap of tangled grass and fern,-- There let the old path wind In and out and on behind The cider-press that chuckles as we grind. [Illustration: (A SONG OF LONG AGO)] Blend in the song the moan Of the dove that grieves alone, And the wild whir of the locust, and the bumble's drowsy drone; And the low of cows that call Through the pasture-bars when all The landscape fades away at evenfall. Then, far away and clear, Through the dusky atmosphere, Let the wailing of the kildee be the only sound we hear: O sad and sweet and low As the memory may know Is the glad-pathetic song of Long Ago! WHEN AGE COMES ON When Age comes on!-- The deepening dusk is where the dawn Once glittered splendid, and the dew In honey-drips, from red rose-lips Was kissed away by me and you.-- And now across the frosty lawn Black foot-prints trail, and Age comes on-- And Age comes on! And biting wild-winds whistle through Our tattered hopes--and Age comes on! When Age comes on!-- O tide of raptures, long withdrawn, Flow back in summer-floods, and fling Here at our feet our childhood sweet, And all the songs we used to sing!... Old loves, old friends--all dead and gone-- Our old faith lost--and Age comes on-- And Age comes on! Poor hearts! have we not anything But longings left when Age comes on! [Illustration: (WHEN AGE COMES ON)] [Illustration: (FARMER WHIPPLE--BACHELOR--TITLE)] FARMER WHIPPLE--BACHELOR It's a mystery to see me--a man o' fifty-four, Who's lived a cross old bachelor fer thirty year' and more-- A-lookin' glad and smilin'! And they's none o' you can say That you can guess the reason why I feel so good to-day! I must tell you all about it! But I'll have to deviate A little in beginnin', so's to set the matter straight As to how it comes to happen that I never took a wife-- Kind o' "crawfish" from the Present to the Springtime of my life! I was brought up in the country: Of a family of five-- Three brothers and a sister--I'm the only one alive,-- Fer they all died little babies; and 'twas one o' Mother's ways, You know, to want a daughter; so she took a girl to raise. The sweetest little thing she was, with rosy cheeks, and fat-- We was little chunks o' shavers then about as high as that! But someway we sort o' _suited_-like! and Mother she'd declare She never laid her eyes on a more lovin' pair Than _we_ was! So we growed up side by side fer thirteen year', And every hour of it she growed to me more dear!-- W'y, even Father's dyin', as he did, I do believe Warn't more affectin' to me than it was to see her grieve! I was then a lad o' twenty; and I felt a flash o' pride In thinkin' all depended on _me_ now to pervide Fer Mother and fer Mary; and I went about the place With sleeves rolled up--and workin', with a mighty smilin' face.-- Fer _sompin' else_ was workin'! but not a word I said Of a certain sort o' notion that was runnin' through my head,-- "Someday I'd mayby marry, and _a brother's_ love was one Thing--_a lover's_ was another!" was the way the notion run! I remember onc't in harvest, when the "cradle-in'" was done-- When the harvest of my summers mounted up to twenty-one I was ridin' home with Mary at the closin' o' the day-- A-chawin' straws and thinkin', in a lover's lazy way! And Mary's cheeks was burnin' like the sunset down the lane: I noticed she was thinkin', too, and ast her to explain. Well--when she turned and _kissed_ me, _with her arms around me--law!_ I'd a bigger load o' heaven than I had a load o' straw! I don't p'tend to learnin', but I'll tell you what's a fact, They's a mighty truthful sayin' somers in a' almanack-- Er _somers_--'bout "puore happiness"--perhaps some folks'll laugh At the idy--"only lastin' jest two seconds and a half."-- But it's jest as true as preachin'!--fer that was _a sister's_ kiss, And a sister's lovin' confidence a-tellin' to me this:-- "_She_ was happy, _bein' promised to the son o' farmer Brown_."-- And my feelin's struck a pardnership with sunset and went down! I don't know _how_ I acted--I don't know _what_ I said, Fer my heart seemed jest a-turnin' to an ice-cold lump o' lead; And the hosses kindo' glimmered before me in the road. And the lines fell from my fingers--and that was all I knowed-- Fer--well, I don't know _how_ long--They's a dim rememberence Of a sound o' snortin' hosses, and a stake-and-ridered fence A-whizzin' past, and wheat-sheaves a-dancin' in the air, And Mary screamin' "Murder!" and a-runnin' up to where [Illustration: (RIDIN' HOME WITH MARY)] _I_ was layin' by the roadside, and the wagon upside down A-leanin' on the gate-post, with the wheels a whirlin' round! And I tried to raise and meet her, but I couldn't, with a vague Sorto' notion comin' to me that I had a broken leg. Well, the women nussed me through it; but many a time I'd sigh As I'd keep a-gittin' better instid o' goin' to die, And wonder what was left _me_ worth livin' fer below, When the girl I loved was married to another, don't you know! And my thoughts was as rebellious as the folks was good and kind When Brown and Mary married--Railly must a-been my _mind_ Was kindo' out o' kilter!--fer I hated Brown, you see, Worse'n _pizen_--and the feller whittled crutches out fer _me_-- And done a thousand little ac's o' kindness and respect-- And me a-wishin' all the time that I could break his neck! My relief was like a mourner's when the funeral is done When they moved to Illinois in the Fall o' Forty-one. Then I went to work in airnest--I had nothin' much in view But to drown'd out rickollections--and it kep' me busy, too! But I slowly thrived and prospered, tel Mother used to say She expected yit to see me a wealthy man some day. Then I'd think how little _money_ was, compared to happiness-- And who'd be left to use it when I died I couldn't guess! But I've still kep' speculatin' and a-gainin' year by year, Tel I'm pay-in' half the taxes in the county, mighty near! Well!--A year ago er better, a letter comes to hand Astin' how I'd like to dicker fer some Illinois land-- "The feller that had owned it," it went ahead to state, "Had jest deceased, insolvent, leavin' chance to speculate,"-- And then it closed by sayin' that I'd "better come and see."-- I'd never been West, anyhow--a most too wild fer _me_ I'd allus had a notion; but a lawyer here in town Said I'd find myself mistakened when I come to look around. So I bids good-bye to Mother, and I jumps aboard the train, A-thinkin' what I'd bring her when I come back home again-- And ef she'd had an idy what the present was to be, I think it's more'n likely she'd a-went along with me! Cars is awful tejus ridin', fer all they go so fast! But finally they called out my stoppin'-place at last; And that night, at the tavern, I dreamp' _I_ was a train O' cars, and _skeered_ at sompin', runnin' down a country lane! Well, in the mornin' airly--after huntin' up the man-- The lawyer who was wantin' to swap the piece o' land-- We started fer the country; and I ast the history Of the farm--its former owner--and so-forth, etcetery! And--well--it was inte_rest_in'--I su-prised him, I suppose, By the loud and frequent manner in which I blowed my nose!-- But his su-prise was greater, and it made him wonder more, When I kissed and hugged the widder when she met us at the door!-- _It was Mary_: They's a feelin' a-hidin' down in here-- Of course I can't explain it, ner ever make it clear.-- It was with us in that meetin', I don't want you to fergit! And it makes me kind o' nervous when I think about it yit! I _bought_ that farm, and _deeded_ it, afore I left the town, With "title clear to mansions in the skies," to Mary Brown! And fu'thermore, I took her and _the childern_--fer, you see, They'd never seed their Grandma--and I fetched 'em home with me. So _now_ you've got an idy why a man o' fifty-four, Who's lived a cross old bachelor fer thirty year' and more, Is a-lookin' glad and smilin'!--And I've jest come into town To git a pair o' license fer to _marry_ Mary Brown. [Illustration: (FARMER WHIPPLE--BACHELOR--TAILPIECE)] [Illustration: (THE ROSE--TITLE)] THE ROSE It tossed its head at the wooing breeze; And the sun, like a bashful swain, Beamed on it through the waving trees With a passion all in vain,-- For my rose laughed in a crimson glee, And hid in the leaves in wait for me. The honey-bee came there to sing His love through the languid hours, And vaunt of his hives, as a proud old king Might boast of his palace-towers: But my rose bowed in a mockery, And hid in the leaves in wait for me. The humming-bird, like a courtier gay, Dipped down with a dalliant song, And twanged his wings through the roundelay Of love the whole day long: Yet my rose turned from his minstrelsy And hid in the leaves in wait for me. The firefly came in the twilight dim My red, red rose to woo-- Till quenched was the flame of love in him And the light of his lantern too, As my rose wept with dewdrops three And hid in the leaves in wait for me. And I said: I will cull my own sweet rose-- Some day I will claim as mine The priceless worth of the flower that knows No change, but a bloom divine-- The bloom of a fadeless constancy That hides in the leaves in wait for me! But time passed by in a strange disguise, And I marked it not, but lay In a lazy dream, with drowsy eyes, Till the summer slipped away, And a chill wind sang in a minor key: "Where is the rose that waits for thee?" * * * * * I dream to-day, o'er a purple stain Of bloom on a withered stalk, Pelted down by the autumn rain In the dust of the garden-walk, That an Angel-rose in the world to be Will hide in the leaves in wait for me. HAS SHE FORGOTTEN? I Has she forgotten? On this very May We were to meet here, with the birds and bees, As on that Sabbath, underneath the trees We strayed among the tombs, and stripped away The vines from these old granites, cold and gray-- And yet indeed not grim enough were they To stay our kisses, smiles and ecstasies, Or closer voice-lost vows and rhapsodies. Has she forgotten--that the May has won Its promise?--that the bird-songs from the tree Are sprayed above the grasses as the sun Might jar the dazzling dew down showeringly? Has she forgotten life--love--everyone-- Has she forgotten me--forgotten me? II Low, low down in the violets I press My lips and whisper to her. Does she hear, And yet hold silence, though I call her dear, Just as of old, save for the tearfulness Of the clenched eyes, and the soul's vast distress? Has she forgotten thus the old caress That made our breath a quickened atmosphere That failed nigh unto swooning with the sheer Delight? Mine arms clutch now this earthen heap Sodden with tears that flow on ceaselessly As autumn rains the long, long, long nights weep In memory of days that used to be,-- Has she forgotten these? And in her sleep, Has she forgotten me--forgotten me? III To-night, against my pillow, with shut eyes, I mean to weld our faces--through the dense Incalculable darkness make pretense That she has risen from her reveries To mate her dreams with mine in marriages Of mellow palms, smooth faces, and tense ease Of every longing nerve of indolence,-- Lift from the grave her quiet lips, and stun My senses with her kisses--drawl the glee Of her glad mouth, full blithe and tenderly, Across mine own, forgetful if is done The old love's awful dawn-time when said we, "To-day is ours!"... Ah, Heaven! can it be She has forgotten me--forgotten me! [Illustration: (HAS SHE FORGOTTEN?)] [Illustration: (BLOOMS OF MAY--TITLE)] BLOOMS OF MAY But yesterday!... O blooms of May, And summer roses--Where-away? O stars above, And lips of love And all the honeyed sweets thereof! [Illustration: (O LAD AND LASS)] O lad and lass And orchard-pass, And briered lane, and daisied grass! O gleam and gloom, And woodland bloom, And breezy breaths of all perfume!-- No more for me Or mine shall be Thy raptures--save in memory,-- No more--no more-- Till through the Door Of Glory gleam the days of yore. [Illustration: (O GLEAM AND GLOOM AND WOODLAND BLOOM)] THE SERMON OF THE ROSE Wilful we are in our infirmity Of childish questioning and discontent. Whate'er befalls us is divinely meant-- Thou Truth the clearer for thy mystery! Make us to meet what is or is to be With fervid welcome, knowing it is sent To serve us in some way full excellent, Though we discern it all belatedly. The rose buds, and the rose blooms and the rose Bows in the dews, and in its fulness, lo, Is in the lover's hand,--then on the breast Of her he loves,--and there dies.--And who knows Which fate of all a rose may undergo Is fairest, dearest, sweetest, loveliest? Nay, we are children: we will not mature. A blessed gift must seem a theft; and tears Must storm our eyes when but a joy appears In drear disguise of sorrow; and how poor We seem when we are richest,--most secure Against all poverty the lifelong years We yet must waste in childish doubts and fears That, in despite of reason, still endure! Alas! the sermon of the rose we will Not wisely ponder; nor the sobs of grief Lulled into sighs of rapture; nor the cry Of fierce defiance that again is still. Be patient--patient with our frail belief, And stay it yet a little ere we die. O opulent life of ours, though dispossessed Of treasure after treasure! Youth most fair Went first, but left its priceless coil of hair-- Moaned over sleepless nights, kissed and caressed Through drip and blur of tears the tenderest. And next went Love--the ripe rose glowing there Her very sister!... It is here; but where Is she, of all the world the first and best? And yet how sweet the sweet earth after rain-- How sweet the sunlight on the garden wall Across the roses--and how sweetly flows The limpid yodel of the brook again! And yet--and yet how sweeter after all, The smouldering sweetness of a dead red rose! [Illustration: (THE SERMON OF THE ROSE)] 
16341	----	POEMS BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. AUTHORIZED EDITION. DESSAU: KATZ BROTHERS. 1854. TO THE READER. I have been asked to consent that an edition of my poems should be published at Dessau in Germany, solely for circulation on the continent of Europe. To this request I have the more readily yielded, inasmuch as the reputation enjoyed by the gentleman under whose inspection the volume will pass through the press, assures me that the edition will be faithfully and minutely accurate. _New York_, November 2, 1853. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. CONTENTS. POEMS The Ages° Thanatopsis The Yellow Violet Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood Song.--"Soon as the glazed and gleaming snow" To a Waterfowl Green River A Winter Piece The West Wind The Burial-place.° A Fragment Blessed are they that Mourn No Man knoweth his Sepulchre A Walk at Sunset Hymn to Death The Massacre at Scio° The Indian Girl's Lament° Ode for an Agricultural Celebration Rizpah The Old Man's Funeral The Rivulet March Sonnet.--To-- An Indian Story Summer Wind An Indian at the Burial-place of his Fathers Song--"Dost thou idly ask to hear" Hymn of the Waldenses Monument Mountain° After a Tempest Autumn Woods Sonnet.--Mutation Sonnet.--November Song of the Greek Amazon To a Cloud The Murdered Traveller° Hymn to the North Star The Lapse of Time Song of the Stars A Forest Hymn "Oh fairest of the rural maids" "I broke the spell that held me long" June A Song of Pitcairn's Island The Skies "I cannot forget with what fervid devotion" To a Musquito Lines on Revisiting the Country The Death of the Flowers Romero A Meditation on Rhode Island Coal The New Moon Sonnet.--October The Damsel of Peru The African Chief° Spring in Town The Gladness of Nature The Disinterred Warrior Sonnet.--Midsummer The Greek Partisan The Two Graves The Conjunction of Jupiter and Venus° A Summer Ramble Scene on the Banks of the Hudson The Hurricane° Sonnet.--William Tell° The Hunter's Serenade° The Greek Boy The Past "Upon the mountain's distant head" The Evening Wind "When the firmament quivers with daylight's young beam" "Innocent child and snow-white flower" To the River Arve Sonnet.--To Cole, the Painter, departing for Europe To the fringed Gentian The Twenty-second of December Hymn of the City The Prairie° Song of Marion's Men° The Arctic Lover The Journey of Life TRANSLATIONS. Version of a Fragment of Simonides From the Spanish of Villegas Mary Magdalen.° (From the Spanish of Bartolome Leonardo de Argensola) The Life of the Blessed. (From the Spanish of Luis Ponce de Leon) Fatima and Raduan.° (From the Spanish) Love and Folly.° (From la Fontaine) The Siesta. (From the Spanish) The Alcayde of Molina.° (From the Spanish) The Death of Aliatar.° (From the Spanish) Love in the Age of Chivalry.° (From Peyre Vidal, the Troubadour) The Love of God.° (From the Provençal of Bernard Rascas) From The Spanish of Pedro de Castro y Añaya° Sonnet. (From the Portuguese of Semedo) Song. (From the Spanish of Iglesias) The Count of Greiers. (From the German of Uhland) The Serenade. (From the Spanish) A Northern Legend. (From the German of Uhland) LATER POEMS. To the Apennines Earth The Knight's Epitaph The Hunter of the Prairies Seventy-Six The Living Lost Catterskill Falls The Strange Lady Life° "Earth's children cleave to earth" The Hunter's Vision The Green Mountain Boys° A Presentiment The Child's Funeral° The Battlefield The Future Life The Death of Schiller° The Fountain° The Winds The Old Man's Counsel° Lines in Memory of William Leggett An Evening Revery° The Painted Cup° A Dream The Antiquity of Freedom The Maiden's Sorrow The Return of Youth A Hymn of the Sea Noon.° (From an unfinished Poem) The Crowded Street The White-footed Deer° The Waning Moon The Stream of Life NOTES (°) * * * * * POEMS. THE AGES.° I. When to the common rest that crowns our days, Called in the noon of life, the good man goes, Or full of years, and ripe in wisdom, lays His silver temples in their last repose; When, o'er the buds of youth, the death-wind blows, And blights the fairest; when our bitter tears Stream, as the eyes of those that love us close, We think on what they were, with many fears Lest goodness die with them, and leave the coming years: II. And therefore, to our hearts, the days gone by,-- When lived the honoured sage whose death we wept, And the soft virtues beamed from many an eye, And beat in many a heart that long has slept,-- Like spots of earth where angel-feet have stepped-- Are holy; and high-dreaming bards have told Of times when worth was crowned, and faith was kept, Ere friendship grew a snare, or love waxed cold-- Those pure and happy times--the golden days of old. III. Peace to the just man's memory,--let it grow Greener with years, and blossom through the flight Of ages; let the mimic canvas show His calm benevolent features; let the light Stream on his deeds of love, that shunned the sight Of all but heaven, and in the book of fame, The glorious record of his virtues write, And hold it up to men, and bid them claim A palm like his, and catch from him the hallowed flame. IV. But oh, despair not of their fate who rise To dwell upon the earth when we withdraw! Lo! the same shaft by which the righteous dies, Strikes through the wretch that scoffed at mercy's law, And trode his brethren down, and felt no awe Of Him who will avenge them. Stainless worth, Such as the sternest age of virtue saw, Ripens, meanwhile, till time shall call it forth From the low modest shade, to light and bless the earth. V. Has Nature, in her calm, majestic march Faltered with age at last? does the bright sun Grow dim in heaven? or, in their far blue arch, Sparkle the crowd of stars, when day is done, Less brightly? when the dew-lipped Spring comes on, Breathes she with airs less soft, or scents the sky With flowers less fair than when her reign begun? Does prodigal Autumn, to our age, deny The plenty that once swelled beneath his sober eye? VI. Look on this beautiful world, and read the truth In her fair page; see, every season brings New change, to her, of everlasting youth; Still the green soil, with joyous living things, Swarms, the wide air is full of joyous wings, And myriads, still, are happy in the sleep Of ocean's azure gulfs, and where he flings The restless surge. Eternal Love doth keep In his complacent arms, the earth, the air, the deep. VII. Will then the merciful One, who stamped our race With his own image, and who gave them sway O'er earth, and the glad dwellers on her face, Now that our swarming nations far away Are spread, where'er the moist earth drinks the day, Forget the ancient care that taught and nursed His latest offspring? will he quench the ray Infused by his own forming smile at first, And leave a work so fair all blighted and accursed? VIII. Oh, no! a thousand cheerful omens give Hope of yet happier days, whose dawn is nigh. He who has tamed the elements, shall not live The slave of his own passions; he whose eye Unwinds the eternal dances of the sky, And in the abyss of brightness dares to span The sun's broad circle, rising yet more high, In God's magnificent works his will shall scan-- And love and peace shall make their paradise with man. IX. Sit at the feet of history--through the night Of years the steps of virtue she shall trace, And show the earlier ages, where her sight Can pierce the eternal shadows o'er their face;-- When, from the genial cradle of our race, Went forth the tribes of men, their pleasant lot To choose, where palm-groves cooled their dwelling-place, Or freshening rivers ran; and there forgot The truth of heaven, and kneeled to gods that heard them not. X. Then waited not the murderer for the night, But smote his brother down in the bright day, And he who felt the wrong, and had the might, His own avenger, girt himself to slay; Beside the path the unburied carcass lay; The shepherd, by the fountains of the glen, Fled, while the robber swept his flock away, And slew his babes. The sick, untended then, Languished in the damp shade, and died afar from men. XI. But misery brought in love--in passion's strife Man gave his heart to mercy, pleading long, And sought out gentle deeds to gladden life; The weak, against the sons of spoil and wrong, Banded, and watched their hamlets, and grew strong. States rose, and, in the shadow of their might, The timid rested. To the reverent throng, Grave and time-wrinkled men, with locks all white, Gave laws, and judged their strifes, and taught the way of right; XII. Till bolder spirits seized the rule, and nailed On men the yoke that man should never bear, And drove them forth to battle. Lo! unveiled The scene of those stern ages! What is there! A boundless sea of blood, and the wild air Moans with the crimson surges that entomb Cities and bannered armies; forms that wear The kingly circlet rise, amid the gloom, O'er the dark wave, and straight are swallowed in its womb. XIII. Those ages have no memory--but they left A record in the desert--columns strown On the waste sands, and statues fallen and cleft, Heaped like a host in battle overthrown; Vast ruins, where the mountain's ribs of stone Were hewn into a city; streets that spread In the dark earth, where never breath has blown Of heaven's sweet air, nor foot of man dares tread The long and perilous ways--the Cities of the Dead: XIV. And tombs of monarchs to the clouds up-piled-- They perished--but the eternal tombs remain-- And the black precipice, abrupt and wild, Pierced by long toil and hollowed to a fane;-- Huge piers and frowning forms of gods sustain The everlasting arches, dark and wide, Like the night-heaven, when clouds are black with rain. But idly skill was tasked, and strength was plied, All was the work of slaves to swell a despot's pride. XV. And Virtue cannot dwell with slaves, nor reign O'er those who cower to take a tyrant's yoke; She left the down-trod nations in disdain, And flew to Greece, when Liberty awoke, New-born, amid those glorious vales, and broke Sceptre and chain with her fair youthful hands: As rocks are shivered in the thunder-stroke. And lo! in full-grown strength, an empire stands Of leagued and rival states, the wonder of the lands. XVI. Oh, Greece! thy flourishing cities were a spoil Unto each other; thy hard hand oppressed And crushed the helpless; thou didst make thy soil Drunk with the blood of those that loved thee best; And thou didst drive, from thy unnatural breast, Thy just and brave to die in distant climes; Earth shuddered at thy deeds, and sighed for rest From thine abominations; after times, That yet shall read thy tale, will tremble at thy crimes. XVII. Yet there was that within thee which has saved Thy glory, and redeemed thy blotted name; The story of thy better deeds, engraved On fame's unmouldering pillar, puts to shame Our chiller virtue; the high art to tame The whirlwind of the passions was thine own; And the pure ray, that from thy bosom came, Far over many a land and age has shone, And mingles with the light that beams from God's own throne; XVIII. And Rome--thy sterner, younger sister, she Who awed the world with her imperial frown-- Rome drew the spirit of her race from thee,-- The rival of thy shame and thy renown. Yet her degenerate children sold the crown Of earth's wide kingdoms to a line of slaves; Guilt reigned, and we with guilt, and plagues came down, Till the north broke its floodgates, and the waves Whelmed the degraded race, and weltered o'er their graves. XIX. Vainly that ray of brightness from above, That shone around the Galilean lake, The light of hope, the leading star of love, Struggled, the darkness of that day to break; Even its own faithless guardians strove to slake, In fogs of earth, the pure immortal flame; And priestly hands, for Jesus' blessed sake, Were red with blood, and charity became, In that stern war of forms, a mockery and a name. XX. They triumphed, and less bloody rites were kept Within the quiet of the convent cell: The well-fed inmates pattered prayer, and slept, And sinned, and liked their easy penance well. Where pleasant was the spot for men to dwell, Amid its fair broad lands the abbey lay, Sheltering dark orgies that were shame to tell, And cowled and barefoot beggars swarmed the way, All in their convent weeds, of black, and white, and gray. XXI. Oh, sweetly the returning muses' strain Swelled over that famed stream, whose gentle tide In their bright lap the Etrurian vales detain, Sweet, as when winter storms have ceased to chide, And all the new-leaved woods, resounding wide, Send out wild hymns upon the scented air. Lo! to the smiling Arno's classic side The emulous nations of the west repair, And kindle their quenched urns, and drink fresh spirit there. XXII. Still, Heaven deferred the hour ordained to rend From saintly rottenness the sacred stole; And cowl and worshipped shrine could still defend The wretch with felon stains upon his soul; And crimes were set to sale, and hard his dole Who could not bribe a passage to the skies; And vice, beneath the mitre's kind control, Sinned gaily on, and grew to giant size, Shielded by priestly power, and watched by priestly eyes. XXIII. At last the earthquake came--the shock, that hurled To dust, in many fragments dashed and strown, The throne, whose roots were in another world, And whose far-stretching shadow awed our own. From many a proud monastic pile, o'erthrown, Fear-struck, the hooded inmates rushed and fled; The web, that for a thousand years had grown O'er prostrate Europe, in that day of dread Crumbled and fell, as fire dissolves the flaxen thread. XXIV. The spirit of that day is still awake, And spreads himself, and shall not sleep again; But through the idle mesh of power shall break Like billows o'er the Asian monarch's chain; Till men are filled with him, and feel how vain, Instead of the pure heart and innocent hands, Are all the proud and pompous modes to gain The smile of heaven;--till a new age expands Its white and holy wings above the peaceful lands. XXV. For look again on the past years;--behold, How like the nightmare's dreams have flown away Horrible forms of worship, that, of old, Held, o'er the shuddering realms, unquestioned sway: See crimes, that feared not once the eye of day, Rooted from men, without a name or place: See nations blotted out from earth, to pay The forfeit of deep guilt;--with glad embrace The fair disburdened lands welcome a nobler race. XXVI. Thus error's monstrous shapes from earth are driven; They fade, they fly--but truth survives their flight; Earth has no shades to quench that beam of heaven; Each ray that shone, in early time, to light The faltering footsteps in the path of right, Each gleam of clearer brightness shed to aid In man's maturer day his bolder sight, All blended, like the rainbow's radiant braid, Pour yet, and still shall pour, the blaze that cannot fade. XXVII. Late, from this western shore, that morning chased The deep and ancient night, that threw its shroud O'er the green land of groves, the beautiful waste, Nurse of full streams, and lifter-up of proud Sky-mingling mountains that o'erlook the cloud. Erewhile, where yon gay spires their brightness rear, Trees waved, and the brown hunter's shouts were loud Amid the forest; and the bounding deer Fled at the glancing plume, and the gaunt wolf yelled near; XXVIII. And where his willing waves yon bright blue bay Sends up, to kiss his decorated brim, And cradles, in his soft embrace, the gay Young group of grassy islands born of him, And crowding nigh, or in the distance dim, Lifts the white throng of sails, that bear or bring The commerce of the world;--with tawny limb, And belt and beads in sunlight glistening, The savage urged his skiff like wild bird on the wing. XXIX. Then all this youthful paradise around, And all the broad and boundless mainland, lay Cooled by the interminable wood, that frowned O'er mount and vale, where never summer ray Glanced, till the strong tornado broke his way Through the gray giants of the sylvan wild; Yet many a sheltered glade, with blossoms gay, Beneath the showery sky and sunshine mild, Within the shaggy arms of that dark forest smiled. XXX. There stood the Indian hamlet, there the lake Spread its blue sheet that flashed with many an oar, Where the brown otter plunged him from the brake, And the deer drank: as the light gale flew o'er, The twinkling maize-field rustled on the shore; And while that spot, so wild, and lone, and fair, A look of glad and guiltless beauty wore, And peace was on the earth and in the air, The warrior lit the pile, and bound his captive there: XXXI. Not unavenged--the foeman, from the wood, Beheld the deed, and when the midnight shade Was stillest, gorged his battle-axe with blood; All died--the wailing babe--the shrieking maid-- And in the flood of fire that scathed the glade, The roofs went down; but deep the silence grew, When on the dewy woods the day-beam played; No more the cabin smokes rose wreathed and blue, And ever, by their lake, lay moored the light canoe. XXXII. Look now abroad--another race has filled These populous borders--wide the wood recedes, And towns shoot up, and fertile realms are tilled: The land is full of harvests and green meads; Streams numberless, that many a fountain feeds, Shine, disembowered, and give to sun and breeze Their virgin waters; the full region leads New colonies forth, that toward the western seas Spread, like a rapid flame among the autumnal trees. XXXIII. Here the free spirit of mankind, at length, Throws its last fetters off; and who shall place A limit to the giant's unchained strength, Or curb his swiftness in the forward race! Far, like the cornet's way through infinite space Stretches the long untravelled path of light, Into the depths of ages: we may trace, Distant, the brightening glory of its flight, Till the receding rays are lost to human sight. XXXIV Europe is given a prey to sterner fates, And writhes in shackles; strong the arms that chain To earth her struggling multitude of states; She too is strong, and might not chafe in vain Against them, but might cast to earth the train That trample her, and break their iron net. Yes, she shall look on brighter days and gain The meed of worthier deeds; the moment set To rescue and raise up, draws near--but is not yet. XXXV. But thou, my country, thou shalt never fall, Save with thy children--thy maternal care, Thy lavish love, thy blessings showered on all-- These are thy fetters--seas and stormy air Are the wide barrier of thy borders, where, Among thy gallant sons that guard thee well, Thou laugh'st at enemies: who shall then declare The date of thy deep-founded strength, or tell How happy, in thy lap, the sons of men shall dwell. THANATOPSIS. To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language; for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, e're he is aware. When thoughts Of the last bitter hour come like a blight Over thy spirit, and sad images Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;-- Go forth, under the open sky, and list To Nature's teachings, while from all around-- Earth and her waters, and the depths of air,-- Comes a still voice--Yet a few days, and thee The all-beholding sun shall see no more In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground, Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, And, lost each human trace, surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go To mix for ever with the elements, To be a brother to the insensible rock And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould. Yet not to thine eternal resting-place Shalt thou retire alone--nor couldst thou wish Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings, The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good, Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, All in one mighty sepulchre.--The hills Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,--the vales Stretching in pensive quietness between; The venerable woods--rivers that move In majesty, and the complaining brooks That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste,-- Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, Are shining on the sad abodes of death, Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread The globe are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in its bosom.--Take the wings Of morning--and the Barcan desert pierce, Or lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound, Save his own dashings--yet--the dead are there: And millions in those solitudes, since first The flight of years began, have laid them down In their last sleep--the dead reign there alone. So shalt thou rest---and what, if thou withdraw Unheeded by the living, and no friend Take note of thy departure? All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one as before will chase His favourite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come, And make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glide away, the sons of men, The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron, and maid, And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man,-- Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, By those, who in their turn shall follow them. So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, that moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. THE YELLOW VIOLET. When beechen buds begin to swell, And woods the blue-bird's warble know, The yellow violet's modest bell Peeps from the last year's leaves below. Ere russet fields their green resume, Sweet flower, I love, in forest bare, To meet thee, when thy faint perfume Alone is in the virgin air. Of all her train, the hands of Spring First plant thee in the watery mould, And I have seen thee blossoming Beside the snow-bank's edges cold. Thy parent sun, who bade thee view Pale skies, and chilling moisture sip, Has bathed thee in his own bright hue, And streaked with jet thy glowing lip. Yet slight thy form, and low thy seat, And earthward bent thy gentle eye, Unapt the passing view to meet, When loftier flowers are flaunting nigh. Oft, in the sunless April day, Thy early smile has stayed my walk; But midst the gorgeous blooms of May, I passed thee on thy humble stalk. So they, who climb to wealth, forget The friends in darker fortunes tried. I copied them--but I regret That I should ape the ways of pride. And when again the genial hour Awakes the painted tribes of light, I'll not o'erlook the modest flower That made the woods of April bright. INSCRIPTION FOR THE ENTRANCE TO A WOOD. Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth which needs No school of long experience, that the world Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares, To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood And view the haunts of Nature. The calm shade Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm To thy sick heart. Thou wilt find nothing here Of all that pained thee in the haunts of men And made thee loathe thy life. The primal curse Fell, it is true, upon the unsinning earth, But not in vengeance. God hath yoked to guilt Her pale tormentor, misery. Hence, these shades Are still the abodes of gladness; the thick roof Of green and stirring branches is alive And musical with birds, that sing and sport In wantonness of spirit; while below The squirrel, with raised paws and form erect, Chirps merrily. Throngs of insects in the shade Try their thin wings and dance in the warm beam That waked them into life. Even the green trees Partake the deep contentment; as they bend To the soft winds, the sun from the blue sky Looks in and sheds a blessing on the scene. Scarce less the cleft-born wild-flower seems to enjoy Existence, than the winged plunderer That sucks its sweets. The massy rocks themselves, And the old and ponderous trunks of prostrate trees That lead from knoll to knoll a causey rude Or bridge the sunken brook, and their dark roots, With all their earth upon them, twisting high, Breathe fixed tranquillity. The rivulet Sends forth glad sounds, and tripping o'er its bed Of pebbly sands, or leaping down the rocks, Seems, with continuous laughter, to rejoice In its own being. Softly tread the marge, Lest from her midway perch thou scare the wren That dips her bill in water. The cool wind, That stirs the stream in play, shall come to thee, Like one that loves thee nor will let thee pass Ungreeted, and shall give its light embrace. SONG. Soon as the glazed and gleaming snow Reflects the day-dawn cold and clear, The hunter of the west must go In depth of woods to seek the deer. His rifle on his shoulder placed, His stores of death arranged with skill, His moccasins and snow-shoes laced,-- Why lingers he beside the hill? Far, in the dim and doubtful light, Where woody slopes a valley leave, He sees what none but lover might, The dwelling of his Genevieve. And oft he turns his truant eye, And pauses oft, and lingers near; But when he marks the reddening sky, He bounds away to hunt the deer. TO A WATERFOWL. Whither, midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way? Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along. Seek'st thou the plashy brink Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, Or where the rocking billows rise and sink On the chafed ocean side? There is a Power whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,-- The desert and illimitable air,-- Lone wandering, but not lost. All day thy wings have fanned, At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, Though the dark night is near. And soon that toil shall end; Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, And shall not soon depart. He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright. GREEN RIVER. When breezes are soft and skies are fair, I steal an hour from study and care, And hie me away to the woodland scene, Where wanders the stream with waters of green, As if the bright fringe of herbs on its brink Had given their stain to the wave they drink; And they, whose meadows it murmurs through, Have named the stream from its own fair hue. Yet pure its waters--its shallows are bright With coloured pebbles and sparkles of light, And clear the depths where its eddies play, And dimples deepen and whirl away, And the plane-tree's speckled arms o'ershoot The swifter current that mines its root, Through whose shifting leaves, as you walk the hill, The quivering glimmer of sun and rill With a sudden flash on the eye is thrown, Like the ray that streams from the diamond stone. Oh, loveliest there the spring days come, With blossoms, and birds, and wild bees' hum; The flowers of summer are fairest there, And freshest the breath of the summer air; And sweetest the golden autumn day In silence and sunshine glides away. Yet fair as thou art, thou shunnest to glide, Beautiful stream! by the village side; But windest away from haunts of men, To quiet valley and shaded glen; And forest, and meadow, and slope of hill, Around thee, are lonely, lovely, and still. Lonely--save when, by thy rippling tides, From thicket to thicket the angler glides; Or the simpler comes with basket and book, For herbs of power on thy banks to look; Or haply, some idle dreamer, like me, To wander, and muse, and gaze on thee. Still--save the chirp of birds that feed On the river cherry and seedy reed, And thy own wild music gushing out With mellow murmur and fairy shout, From dawn to the blush of another day, Like traveller singing along his way. That fairy music I never hear, Nor gaze on those waters so green and clear, And mark them winding away from sight, Darkened with shade or flashing with light, While o'er them the vine to its thicket clings, And the zephyr stoops to freshen his wings, But I wish that fate had left me free To wander these quiet haunts with thee, Till the eating cares of earth should depart, And the peace of the scene pass into my heart; And I envy thy stream, as it glides along, Through its beautiful banks in a trance of song. Though forced to drudge for the dregs of men, And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen, And mingle among the jostling crowd, Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud-- I often come to this quiet place, To breathe the airs that ruffle thy face, And gaze upon thee in silent dream, For in thy lonely and lovely stream An image of that calm life appears That won my heart in my greener years. A WINTER PIECE. The time has been that these wild solitudes, Yet beautiful as wild, were trod by me Oftener than now; and when the ills of life Had chafed my spirit--when the unsteady pulse Beat with strange flutterings--I would wander forth And seek the woods. The sunshine on my path Was to me as a friend. The swelling hills, The quiet dells retiring far between, With gentle invitation to explore Their windings, were a calm society That talked with me and soothed me. Then the chant Of birds, and chime of brooks, and soft caress Of the fresh sylvan air, made me forget The thoughts that broke my peace, and I began To gather simples by the fountain's brink, And lose myself in day-dreams. While I stood In nature's loneliness, I was with one With whom I early grew familiar, one Who never had a frown for me, whose voice Never rebuked me for the hours I stole From cares I loved not, but of which the world Deems highest, to converse with her. When shrieked The bleak November winds, and smote the woods, And the brown fields were herbless, and the shades, That met above the merry rivulet, Were spoiled, I sought, I loved them still,--they seemed Like old companions in adversity. Still there was beauty in my walks; the brook, Bordered with sparkling frost-work, was as gay As with its fringe of summer flowers. Afar, The village with its spires, the path of streams, And dim receding valleys, hid before By interposing trees, lay visible Through the bare grove, and my familiar haunts Seemed new to me. Nor was I slow to come Among them, when the clouds, from their still skirts, Had shaken down on earth the feathery snow, And all was white. The pure keen air abroad, Albeit it breathed no scent of herb, nor heard Love-call of bird, nor merry hum of bee, Was not the air of death. Bright mosses crept Over the spotted trunks, and the close buds, That lay along the boughs, instinct with life, Patient, and waiting the soft breath of Spring, Feared not the piercing spirit of the North. The snow-bird twittered on the beechen bough, And 'neath the hemlock, whose thick branches bent Beneath its bright cold burden, and kept dry A circle, on the earth, of withered leaves, The partridge found a shelter. Through the snow The rabbit sprang away. The lighter track Of fox, and the racoon's broad path, were there, Crossing each other. From his hollow tree, The squirrel was abroad, gathering the nuts Just fallen, that asked the winter cold and sway Of winter blast, to shake them from their hold. But Winter has yet brighter scenes,--he boasts Splendours beyond what gorgeous Summer knows; Or Autumn with his many fruits, and woods All flushed with many hues. Come when the rains Have glazed the snow, and clothed the trees with ice; While the slant sun of February pours Into the bowers a flood of light. Approach! The incrusted surface shall upbear thy steps, And the broad arching portals of the grove Welcome thy entering. Look! the massy trunks Are cased in the pure crystal; each light spray, Nodding and tinkling in the breath of heaven, Is studded with its trembling water-drops, That stream with rainbow radiance as they move. But round the parent stem the long low boughs Bend, in a glittering ring, and arbours hide The glassy floor. Oh! you might deem the spot The spacious cavern of some virgin mine, Deep in the womb of earth--where the gems grow, And diamonds put forth radiant rods and bud With amethyst and topaz--and the place Lit up, most royally, with the pure beam That dwells in them. Or haply the vast hall Of fairy palace, that outlasts the night, And fades not in the glory of the sun;-- Where crystal columns send forth slender shafts And crossing arches; and fantastic aisles Wind from the sight in brightness, and are lost Among the crowded pillars. Raise thine eye,-- Thou seest no cavern roof, no palace vault; There the blue sky and the white drifting cloud Look in. Again the wildered fancy dreams Of spouting fountains, frozen as they rose, And fixed, with all their branching jets, in air, And all their sluices sealed. All, all is light; Light without shade. But all shall pass away With the next sun. From numberless vast trunks, Loosened, the crashing ice shall make a sound Like the far roar of rivers, and the eve Shall close o'er the brown woods as it was wont. And it is pleasant, when the noisy streams Are just set free, and milder suns melt off The plashy snow, save only the firm drift In the deep glen or the close shade of pines,-- 'Tis pleasant to behold the wreaths of smoke Roll up among the maples of the hill, Where the shrill sound of youthful voices wakes The shriller echo, as the clear pure lymph, That from the wounded trees, in twinkling drops, Falls, mid the golden brightness of the morn, Is gathered in with brimming pails, and oft, Wielded by sturdy hands, the stroke of axe Makes the woods ring. Along the quiet air, Come and float calmly off the soft light clouds, Such as you see in summer, and the winds Scarce stir the branches. Lodged in sunny cleft, Where the cold breezes come not, blooms alone The little wind-flower, whose just opened eye Is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at-- Startling the loiterer in the naked groves With unexpected beauty, for the time Of blossoms and green leaves is yet afar. And ere it comes, the encountering winds shall oft Muster their wrath again, and rapid clouds Shade heaven, and bounding on the frozen earth Shall fall their volleyed stores rounded like hail, And white like snow, and the loud North again Shall buffet the vexed forest in his rage. THE WEST WIND. Beneath the forest's skirts I rest, Whose branching pines rise dark and high, And hear the breezes of the West Among the threaded foliage sigh. Sweet Zephyr! why that sound of woe? Is not thy home among the flowers? Do not the bright June roses blow, To meet thy kiss at morning hours? And lo! thy glorious realm outspread-- Yon stretching valleys, green and gay, And yon free hill-tops, o'er whose head The loose white clouds are borne away. And there the full broad river runs, And many a fount wells fresh and sweet, To cool thee when the mid-day suns Have made thee faint beneath their heat. Thou wind of joy, and youth, and love; Spirit of the new-wakened year! The sun in his blue realm above Smooths a bright path when thou art here. In lawns the murmuring bee is heard, The wooing ring-dove in the shade; On thy soft breath, the new-fledged bird Takes wing, half happy, half afraid. Ah! thou art like our wayward race;-- When not a shade of pain or ill Dims the bright smile of Nature's face, Thou lovest to sigh and murmur still. THE BURIAL-PLACE.° A FRAGMENT. Erewhile, on England's pleasant shores, our sires Left not their churchyards unadorned with shades Or blossoms; and indulgent to the strong And natural dread of man's last home, the grave, Its frost and silence--they disposed around, To soothe the melancholy spirit that dwelt Too sadly on life's close, the forms and hues Of vegetable beauty.--There the yew, Green even amid the snows of winter, told Of immortality, and gracefully The willow, a perpetual mourner, drooped; And there the gadding woodbine crept about, And there the ancient ivy. From the spot Where the sweet maiden, in her blossoming years Cut off, was laid with streaming eyes, and hands That trembled as they placed her there, the rose Sprung modest, on bowed stalk, and better spoke Her graces, than the proudest monument. There children set about their playmate's grave The pansy. On the infant's little bed, Wet at its planting with maternal tears, Emblem of early sweetness, early death, Nestled the lowly primrose. Childless dames, And maids that would not raise the reddened eye-- Orphans, from whose young lids the light of joy Fled early,--silent lovers, who had given All that they lived for to the arms of earth, Came often, o'er the recent graves to strew Their offerings, rue, and rosemary, and flowers. The pilgrim bands who passed the sea to keep Their Sabbaths in the eye of God alone, In his wide temple of the wilderness, Brought not these simple customs of the heart With them. It might be, while they laid their dead By the vast solemn skirts of the old groves, And the fresh virgin soil poured forth strange flowers About their graves; and the familiar shades Of their own native isle, and wonted blooms, And herbs were wanting, which the pious hand Might plant or scatter there, these gentle rites Passed out of use. Now they are scarcely known, And rarely in our borders may you meet The tall larch, sighing in the burying-place, Or willow, trailing low its boughs to hide The gleaming marble. Naked rows of graves And melancholy ranks of monuments Are seen instead, where the coarse grass, between, Shoots up its dull green spikes, and in the wind Hisses, and the neglected bramble nigh, Offers its berries to the schoolboy's hand, In vain--they grow too near the dead. Yet here, Nature, rebuking the neglect of man, Plants often, by the ancient mossy stone, The brier rose, and upon the broken turf That clothes the fresher grave, the strawberry vine Sprinkles its swell with blossoms, and lays forth Her ruddy, pouting fruit. * * * * * [Transcriber's note: The above 5 asterisks are printed as in the Original. They do not represent a thought break.] "BLESSED ARE THEY THAT MOURN." Oh, deem not they are blest alone Whose lives a peaceful tenor keep; The Power who pities man, has shown A blessing for the eyes that weep. The light of smiles shall fill again The lids that overflow with tears; And weary hours of woe and pain Are promises of happier years. There is a day of sunny rest For every dark and troubled night; And grief may bide an evening guest, But joy shall come with early light. And thou, who, o'er thy friend's low bier, Sheddest the bitter drops like rain, Hope that a brighter, happier sphere Will give him to thy arms again. Nor let the good man's trust depart, Though life its common gifts deny,-- Though with a pierced and broken heart, And spurned of men, he goes to die. For God has marked each sorrowing day And numbered every secret tear, And heaven's long age of bliss shall pay For all his children suffer here. "NO MAN KNOWETH HIS SEPULCHRE." When he, who, from the scourge of wrong, Aroused the Hebrew tribes to fly, Saw the fair region, promised long, And bowed him on the hills to die; God made his grave, to men unknown, Where Moab's rocks a vale infold, And laid the aged seer alone To slumber while the world grows old. Thus still, whene'er the good and just Close the dim eye on life and pain, Heaven watches o'er their sleeping dust Till the pure spirit comes again. Though nameless, trampled, and forgot, His servant's humble ashes lie, Yet God has marked and sealed the spot, To call its inmate to the sky. A WALK AT SUNSET. When insect wings are glistening in the beam Of the low sun, and mountain-tops are bright, Oh, let me, by the crystal valley-stream, Wander amid the mild and mellow light; And while the wood-thrush pipes his evening lay, Give me one lonely hour to hymn the setting day. Oh, sun! that o'er the western mountains now Goest down in glory! ever beautiful And blessed is thy radiance, whether thou Colourest the eastern heaven and night-mist cool, Till the bright day-star vanish, or on high Climbest and streamest thy white splendours from mid-sky. Yet, loveliest are thy setting smiles, and fair, Fairest of all that earth beholds, the hues That live among the clouds, and flush the air, Lingering and deepening at the hour of dews. Then softest gales are breathed, and softest heard The plaining voice of streams, and pensive note of bird. They who here roamed, of yore, the forest wide, Felt, by such charm, their simple bosoms won; They deemed their quivered warrior, when he died, Went to bright isles beneath the setting sun; Where winds are aye at peace, and skies are fair, And purple-skirted clouds curtain the crimson air. So, with the glories of the dying day, Its thousand trembling lights and changing hues, The memory of the brave who passed away Tenderly mingled;--fitting hour to muse On such grave theme, and sweet the dream that shed Brightness and beauty round the destiny of the dead. For ages, on the silent forests here, Thy beams did fall before the red man came To dwell beneath them; in their shade the deer Fed, and feared not the arrow's deadly aim. Nor tree was felled, in all that world of woods, Save by the beaver's tooth, or winds, or rush of floods. Then came the hunter tribes, and thou didst look, For ages, on their deeds in the hard chase, And well-fought wars; green sod and silver brook Took the first stain of blood; before thy face The warrior generations came and passed, And glory was laid up for many an age to last. Now they are gone, gone as thy setting blaze Goes down the west, while night is pressing on, And with them the old tale of better days, And trophies of remembered power, are gone. Yon field that gives the harvest, where the plough Strikes the white bone, is all that tells their story now. I stand upon their ashes in thy beam, The offspring of another race, I stand, Beside a stream they loved, this valley stream; And where the night-fire of the quivered band Showed the gray oak by fits, and war-song rung, I teach the quiet shades the strains of this new tongue. Farewell! but thou shalt come again--thy light Must shine on other changes, and behold The place of the thronged city still as night-- States fallen--new empires built upon the old-- But never shalt thou see these realms again Darkened by boundless groves, and roamed by savage men. HYMN TO DEATH. Oh! could I hope the wise and pure in heart Might hear my song without a frown, nor deem My voice unworthy of the theme it tries,-- I would take up the hymn to Death, and say To the grim power: The world hath slandered thee And mocked thee. On thy dim and shadowy brow They place an iron crown, and call thee king Of terrors, and the spoiler of the world, Deadly assassin, that strik'st down the fair, The loved, the good--that breathest on the lights Of virtue set along the vale of life, And they go out in darkness. I am come, Not with reproaches, not with cries and prayers, Such as have stormed thy stern, insensible ear from the beginning. I am come to speak Thy praises. True it is, that I have wept Thy conquests, and may weep them yet again: And thou from some I love wilt take a life Dear to me as my own. Yet while the spell Is on my spirit, and I talk with thee In sight of all thy trophies, face to face, Meet is it that my voice should utter forth Thy nobler triumphs; I will teach the world To thank thee.--Who are thine accusers?--Who? The living!--they who never felt thy power, And know thee not. The curses of the wretch Whose crimes are ripe, his sufferings when thy hand Is on him, and the hour he dreads is come, Are writ among thy praises. But the good-- Does he whom thy kind hand dismissed to peace, Upbraid the gentle violence that took off His fetters, and unbarred his prison cell? Raise then the hymn to Death. Deliverer! God hath anointed thee to free the oppressed And crush the oppressor. When the armed chief, The conqueror of nations, walks the world, And it is changed beneath his feet, and all Its kingdoms melt into one mighty realm-- Thou, while his head is loftiest and his heart Blasphemes, imagining his own right hand Almighty, thou dost set thy sudden grasp Upon him, and the links of that strong chain That bound mankind are crumbled; thou dost break Sceptre and crown, and beat his throne to dust. Then the earth shouts with gladness, and her tribes Gather within their ancient bounds again. Else had the mighty of the olden time, Nimrod, Sesostris, or the youth who feigned His birth from Libyan Ammon, smitten yet The nations with a rod of iron, and driven Their chariot o'er our necks. Thou dost avenge, In thy good time, the wrongs of those who know No other friend. Nor dost thou interpose Only to lay the sufferer asleep, Where he who made him wretched troubles not His rest--thou dost strike down his tyrant too. Oh, there is joy when hands that held the scourge Drop lifeless, and the pitiless heart is cold. Thou too dost purge from earth its horrible And old idolatries;--from the proud fanes Each to his grave their priests go out, till none Is left to teach their worship; then the fires Of sacrifice are chilled, and the green moss O'ercreeps their altars; the fallen images Cumber the weedy courts, and for loud hymns, Chanted by kneeling multitudes, the wind Shrieks in the solitary aisles. When he Who gives his life to guilt, and laughs at all The laws that God or man has made, and round Hedges his seat with power, and shines in wealth,-- Lifts up his atheist front to scoff at Heaven, And celebrates his shame in open day, Thou, in the pride of all his crimes, cutt'st off The horrible example. Touched by thine, The extortioner's hard hand foregoes the gold Wrung from the o'er-worn poor. The perjurer, Whose tongue was lithe, e'en now, and voluble Against his neighbour's life, and he who laughed And leaped for joy to see a spotless fame Blasted before his own foul calumnies, Are smit with deadly silence. He, who sold His conscience to preserve a worthless life, Even while he hugs himself on his escape, Trembles, as, doubly terrible, at length, Thy steps o'ertake him, and there is no time For parley--nor will bribes unclench thy grasp. Oft, too, dost thou reform thy victim, long Ere his last hour. And when the reveller, Mad in the chase of pleasure, stretches on, And strains each nerve, and clears the path of life Like wind, thou point'st him to the dreadful goal, And shak'st thy hour-glass in his reeling eye, And check'st him in mid course. Thy skeleton hand Shows to the faint of spirit the right path, And he is warned, and fears to step aside. Thou sett'st between the ruffian and his crime Thy ghastly countenance, and his slack hand Drops the drawn knife. But, oh, most fearfully Dost thou show forth Heaven's justice, when thy shafts Drink up the ebbing spirit--then the hard Of heart and violent of hand restores The treasure to the friendless wretch he wronged. Then from the writhing bosom thou dost pluck The guilty secret; lips, for ages sealed, Are faithless to the dreadful trust at length, And give it up; the felon's latest breath Absolves the innocent man who bears his crime; The slanderer, horror-smitten, and in tears, Recalls the deadly obloquy he forged To work his brother's ruin. Thou dost make Thy penitent victim utter to the air The dark conspiracy that strikes at life, And aims to whelm the laws; ere yet the hour Is come, and the dread sign of murder given. Thus, from the first of time, hast thou been found On virtue's side; the wicked, but for thee, Had been too strong for the good; the great of earth Had crushed the weak for ever. Schooled in guile For ages, while each passing year had brought Its baneful lesson, they had filled the world With their abominations; while its tribes, Trodden to earth, imbruted, and despoiled, Had knelt to them in worship; sacrifice Had smoked on many an altar, temple roofs Had echoed with the blasphemous prayer and hymn: But thou, the great reformer of the world, Tak'st off the sons of violence and fraud In their green pupilage, their lore half learned-- Ere guilt had quite o'errun the simple heart God gave them at their birth, and blotted out His image. Thou dost mark them flushed with hope, As on the threshold of their vast designs Doubtful and loose they stand, and strik'st them down. * * * * * Alas! I little thought that the stern power Whose fearful praise I sung, would try me thus Before the strain was ended. It must cease-- For he is in his grave who taught my youth The art of verse, and in the bud of life Offered me to the muses. Oh, cut off Untimely! when thy reason in its strength, Ripened by years of toil and studious search, And watch of Nature's silent lessons, taught Thy hand to practise best the lenient art To which thou gavest thy laborious days, And, last, thy life. And, therefore, when the earth Received thee, tears were in unyielding eyes And on hard cheeks, and they who deemed thy skill Delayed their death-hour, shuddered and turned pale When thou wert gone. This faltering verse, which thou Shalt not, as wont, o'erlook, is all I have To offer at thy grave--this--and the hope To copy thy example, and to leave A name of which the wretched shall not think As of an enemy's, whom they forgive As all forgive the dead. Rest, therefore, thou Whose early guidance trained my infant steps-- Rest, in the bosom of God, till the brief sleep Of death is over, and a happier life Shall dawn to waken thine insensible dust. Now thou art not--and yet the men whose guilt Has wearied Heaven for vengeance--he who bears False witness--he who takes the orphan's bread, And robs the widow--he who spreads abroad Polluted hands of mockery of prayer, Are left to cumber earth. Shuddering I look On what is written, yet I blot not out The desultory numbers--let them stand, The record of an idle revery. THE MASSACRE AT SCIO.° Weep not for Scio's children slain; Their blood, by Turkish falchions shed, Sends not its cry to Heaven in vain For vengeance on the murderer's head. Though high the warm red torrent ran Between the flames that lit the sky, Yet, for each drop, an armed man Shall rise, to free the land, or die. And for each corpse, that in the sea Was thrown, to feast the scaly herds, A hundred of the foe shall be A banquet for the mountain birds. Stern rites and sad, shall Greece ordain To keep that day, along her shore, Till the last link of slavery's chain Is shivered, to be worn no more. THE INDIAN GIRL'S LAMENT.° An Indian girl was sitting where Her lover, slain in battle, slept; Her maiden veil, her own black hair, Came down o'er eyes that wept; And wildly, in her woodland tongue, This sad and simple lay she sung: "I've pulled away the shrubs that grew Too close above thy sleeping head, And broke the forest boughs that threw Their shadows o'er thy bed, That, shining from the sweet south-west, The sunbeams might rejoice thy rest. "It was a weary, weary road That led thee to the pleasant coast, Where thou, in his serene abode, Hast met thy father's ghost: Where everlasting autumn lies On yellow woods and sunny skies. "Twas I the broidered mocsen made, That shod thee for that distant land; 'Twas I thy bow and arrows laid Beside thy still cold hand; Thy bow in many a battle bent, Thy arrows never vainly sent. "With wampum belts I crossed thy breast, And wrapped thee in the bison's hide, And laid the food that pleased thee best, In plenty, by thy side, And decked thee bravely, as became A warrior of illustrious name. "Thou'rt happy now, for thou hast passed The long dark journey of the grave, And in the land of light, at last, Hast joined the good and brave; Amid the flushed and balmy air, The bravest and the loveliest there. "Yet, oft to thine own Indian maid Even there thy thoughts will earthward stray,-- To her who sits where thou wert laid, And weeps the hours away, Yet almost can her grief forget, To think that thou dost love her yet. "And thou, by one of those still lakes That in a shining cluster lie, On which the south wind scarcely breaks The image of the sky, A bower for thee and me hast made Beneath the many-coloured shade. "And thou dost wait and watch to meet My spirit sent to join the blessed, And, wondering what detains my feet From the bright land of rest, Dost seem, in every sound, to hear The rustling of my footsteps near." ODE FOR AN AGRICULTURAL CELEBRATION. Far back in the ages, The plough with wreaths was crowned; The hands of kings and sages Entwined the chaplet round; Till men of spoil disdained the toil By which the world was nourished, And dews of blood enriched the soil Where green their laurels flourished: --Now the world her fault repairs-- The guilt that stains her story; And weeps her crimes amid the cares That formed her earliest glory. The proud throne shall crumble, The diadem shall wane, The tribes of earth shall humble The pride of those who reign; And War shall lay his pomp away;-- The fame that heroes cherish, The glory earned in deadly fray Shall fade, decay, and perish. Honour waits, o'er all the Earth, Through endless generations, The art that calls her harvests forth, And feeds the expectant nations. RIZPAH. And he delivered them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them in the hill before the Lord; and they fell all seven together, and were put to death in the days of the harvest, in the first days, in the beginning of barley-harvest. And Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until the water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest upon them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night. 2 SAMUEL, xxi. 10. Hear what the desolate Rizpah said, As on Gibeah's rocks she watched the dead. The sons of Michal before her lay, And her own fair children, dearer than they: By a death of shame they all had died, And were stretched on the bare rock, side by side. And Rizpah, once the loveliest of all That bloomed and smiled in the court of Saul, All wasted with watching and famine now, And scorched by the sun her haggard brow, Sat mournfully guarding their corpses there, And murmured a strange and solemn air; The low, heart-broken, and wailing strain Of a mother that mourns her children slain: "I have made the crags my home, and spread On their desert backs my sackcloth bed; I have eaten the bitter herb of the rocks, And drunk the midnight dew in my locks; I have wept till I could not weep, and the pain Of my burning eyeballs went to my brain. Seven blackened corpses before me lie, In the blaze of the sun and the winds of the sky. I have watched them through the burning day, And driven the vulture and raven away; And the cormorant wheeled in circles round, Yet feared to alight on the guarded ground. And when the shadows of twilight came, I have seen the hyena's eyes of flame, And heard at my side his stealthy tread, But aye at my shout the savage fled: And I threw the lighted brand to fright The jackal and wolf that yelled in the night. "Ye were foully murdered, my hapless sons, By the hands of wicked and cruel ones; Ye fell, in your fresh and blooming prime, All innocent, for your father's crime. He sinned--but he paid the price of his guilt When his blood by a nameless hand was spilt; When he strove with the heathen host in vain, And fell with the flower of his people slain, And the sceptre his children's hands should sway From his injured lineage passed away. "But I hoped that the cottage roof would be A safe retreat for my sons and me; And that while they ripened to manhood fast, They should wean my thoughts from the woes of the past. And my bosom swelled with a mother's pride, As they stood in their beauty and strength by my side, Tall like their sire, with the princely grace Of his stately form, and the bloom of his face. "Oh, what an hour for a mother's heart, When the pitiless ruffians tore us apart! When I clasped their knees and wept and prayed, And struggled and shrieked to Heaven for aid, And clung to my sons with desperate strength, Till the murderers loosed my hold at length, And bore me breathless and faint aside, In their iron arms, while my children died. They died--and the mother that gave them birth Is forbid to cover their bones with earth. "The barley-harvest was nodding white, When my children died on the rocky height, And the reapers were singing on hill and plain, When I came to my task of sorrow and pain. But now the season of rain is nigh, The sun is dim in the thickening sky, And the clouds in sullen darkness rest Where he hides his light at the doors of the west. I hear the howl of the wind that brings The long drear storm on its heavy wings; But the howling wind and the driving rain Will beat on my houseless head in vain: I shall stay, from my murdered sons to scare The beasts of the desert, and fowls of air." THE OLD MAN'S FUNERAL. I saw an aged man upon his bier, His hair was thin and white, and on his brow A record of the cares of many a year;-- Cares that were ended and forgotten now. And there was sadness round, and faces bowed, And woman's tears fell fast, and children wailed aloud. Then rose another hoary man and said, In faltering accents, to that weeping train, "Why mourn ye that our aged friend is dead? Ye are not sad to see the gathered grain, Nor when their mellow fruit the orchards cast, Nor when the yellow woods shake down the ripened mast. "Ye sigh not when the sun, his course fulfilled, His glorious course, rejoicing earth and sky, In the soft evening, when the winds are stilled, Sinks where his islands of refreshment lie, And leaves the smile of his departure, spread O'er the warm-coloured heaven and ruddy mountain head. "Why weep ye then for him, who, having won The bound of man's appointed years, at last, Life's blessings all enjoyed, life's labours done, Serenely to his final rest has passed; While the soft memory of his virtues, yet, Lingers like twilight hues, when the bright sun is set? "His youth was innocent; his riper age Marked with some act of goodness every day; And watched by eyes that loved him, calm, and sage, Faded his late declining years away. Cheerful he gave his being up, and went To share the holy rest that waits a life well spent. "That life was happy; every day he gave Thanks for the fair existence that was his; For a sick fancy made him not her slave, To mock him with her phantom miseries. No chronic tortures racked his aged limb, For luxury and sloth had nourished none for him. "And I am glad that he has lived thus long, And glad that he has gone to his reward; Nor can I deem that nature did him wrong, Softly to disengage the vital cord. For when his hand grew palsied, and his eye Dark with the mists of age, it was his time to die." THE RIVULET. This little rill, that from the springs Of yonder grove its current brings, Plays on the slope a while, and then Goes prattling into groves again, Oft to its warbling waters drew My little feet, when life was new, When woods in early green were dressed, And from the chambers of the west The warmer breezes, travelling out, Breathed the new scent of flowers about, My truant steps from home would stray, Upon its grassy side to play, List the brown thrasher's vernal hymn, And crop the violet on its brim, With blooming cheek and open brow, As young and gay, sweet rill, as thou. And when the days of boyhood came, And I had grown in love with fame, Duly I sought thy banks, and tried My first rude numbers by thy side. Words cannot tell how bright and gay The scenes of life before me lay. Then glorious hopes, that now to speak Would bring the blood into my cheek, Passed o'er me; and I wrote, on high, A name I deemed should never die. Years change thee not. Upon yon hill The tall old maples, verdant still, Yet tell, in grandeur of decay, How swift the years have passed away, Since first, a child, and half afraid, I wandered in the forest shade. Thou ever joyous rivulet, Dost dimple, leap, and prattle yet; And sporting with the sands that pave The windings of thy silver wave, And dancing to thy own wild chime, Thou laughest at the lapse of time. The same sweet sounds are in my ear My early childhood loved to hear; As pure thy limpid waters run, As bright they sparkle to the sun; As fresh and thick the bending ranks Of herbs that line thy oozy banks; The violet there, in soft May dew, Comes up, as modest and as blue, As green amid thy current's stress, Floats the scarce-rooted watercress: And the brown ground-bird, in thy glen, Still chirps as merrily as then. Thou changest not--but I am changed, Since first thy pleasant banks I ranged; And the grave stranger, come to see The play-place of his infancy, Has scarce a single trace of him Who sported once upon thy brim. The visions of my youth are past-- Too bright, too beautiful to last. I've tried the world--it wears no more The colouring of romance it wore. Yet well has Nature kept the truth She promised to my earliest youth. The radiant beauty shed abroad On all the glorious works of God, Shows freshly, to my sobered eye, Each charm it wore in days gone by. A few brief years shall pass away, And I, all trembling, weak, and gray, Bowed to the earth, which waits to fold My ashes in the embracing mould, (If haply the dark will of fate Indulge my life so long a date) May come for the last time to look Upon my childhood's favourite brook. Then dimly on my eye shall gleam The sparkle of thy dancing stream; And faintly on my ear shall fall Thy prattling current's merry call; Yet shalt thou flow as glad and bright As when thou met'st my infant sight. And I shall sleep--and on thy side, As ages after ages glide, Children their early sports shall try, And pass to hoary age and die. But thou, unchanged from year to year, Gayly shalt play and glitter here; Amid young flowers and tender grass Thy endless infancy shalt pass; And, singing down thy narrow glen, Shalt mock the fading race of men. MARCH. The stormy March is come at last, With wind, and cloud, and changing skies, I hear the rushing of the blast, That through the snowy valley flies. Ah, passing few are they who speak, Wild stormy month! in praise of thee; Yet, though thy winds are loud and bleak, Thou art a welcome month to me. For thou, to northern lands, again The glad and glorious sun dost bring, And thou hast joined the gentle train And wear'st the gentle name of Spring. And, in thy reign of blast and storm, Smiles many a long, bright, sunny day, When the changed winds are soft and warm, And heaven puts on the blue of May. Then sing aloud the gushing rills And the full springs, from frost set free, That, brightly leaping down the hills, Are just set out to meet the sea. The year's departing beauty hides Of wintry storms the sullen threat; But in thy sternest frown abides A look of kindly promise yet. Thou bring'st the hope of those calm skies, And that soft time of sunny showers, When the wide bloom, on earth that lies, Seems of a brighter world than ours. SONNET TO ----. Ay, thou art for the grave; thy glances shine Too brightly to shine long; another Spring Shall deck her for men's eyes,--but not for thine-- Sealed in a sleep which knows no wakening. The fields for thee have no medicinal leaf, And the vexed ore no mineral of power; And they who love thee wait in anxious grief Till the slow plague shall bring the fatal hour. Glide softly to thy rest then; Death should come Gently, to one of gentle mould like thee, As light winds wandering through groves of bloom Detach the delicate blossom from the tree. Close thy sweet eyes, calmly, and without pain; And we will trust in God to see thee yet again. AN INDIAN STORY. "I know where the timid fawn abides In the depths of the shaded dell, Where the leaves are broad and the thicket hides, With its many stems and its tangled sides, From the eye of the hunter well. "I know where the young May violet grows, In its lone and lowly nook, On the mossy bank, where the larch-tree throws Its broad dark boughs, in solemn repose, Far over the silent brook. "And that timid fawn starts not with fear When I steal to her secret bower; And that young May violet to me is dear, And I visit the silent streamlet near, To look on the lovely flower." Thus Maquon sings as he lightly walks To the hunting-ground on the hills; 'Tis a song of his maid of the woods and rocks, With her bright black eyes and long black locks, And voice like the music of rills. He goes to the chase--but evil eyes Are at watch in the thicker shades; For she was lovely that smiled on his sighs, And he bore, from a hundred lovers, his prize, The flower of the forest maids. The boughs in the morning wind are stirred, And the woods their song renew, With the early carol of many a bird, And the quickened tune of the streamlet heard Where the hazels trickle with dew. And Maquon has promised his dark-haired maid, Ere eve shall redden the sky, A good red deer from the forest shade, That bounds with the herd through grove and glade, At her cabin-door shall lie. The hollow woods, in the setting sun, Ring shrill with the fire-bird's lay; And Maquon's sylvan labours are done, And his shafts are spent, but the spoil they won He bears on his homeward way. He stops near his bower--his eye perceives Strange traces along the ground-- At once to the earth his burden he heaves, He breaks through the veil of boughs and leaves, And gains its door with a bound. But the vines are torn on its walls that leant, And all from the young shrubs there By struggling hands have the leaves been rent, And there hangs on the sassafras, broken and bent, One tress of the well-known hair. But where is she who, at this calm hour, Ever watched his coming to see? She is not at the door, nor yet in the bower; He calls--but he only hears on the flower The hum of the laden bee. It is not a time for idle grief, Nor a time for tears to flow; The horror that freezes his limbs is brief-- He grasps his war-axe and bow, and a sheaf Of darts made sharp for the foe. And he looks for the print of the ruffian's feet, Where he bore the maiden away; And he darts on the fatal path more fleet Than the blast that hurries the vapour and sleet O'er the wild November day. 'Twas early summer when Maquon's bride Was stolen away from his door; But at length the maples in crimson are dyed, And the grape is black on the cabin side,-- And she smiles at his hearth once more. But far in the pine-grove, dark and cold, Where the yellow leaf falls not, Nor the autumn shines in scarlet and gold, There lies a hillock of fresh dark mould, In the deepest gloom of the spot. And the Indian girls, that pass that way, Point out the ravisher's grave; "And how soon to the bower she loved," they say, "Returned the maid that was borne away From Maquon, the fond and the brave." SUMMER WIND. It is a sultry day; the sun has drunk The dew that lay upon the morning grass; There is no rustling in the lofty elm That canopies my dwelling, and its shade Scarce cools me. All is silent, save the faint And interrupted murmur of the bee, Settling on the sick flowers, and then again Instantly on the wing. The plants around Feel the too potent fervours: the tall maize Rolls up its long green leaves; the clover droops Its tender foliage, and declines its blooms. But far in the fierce sunshine tower the hills, With all their growth of woods, silent and stern, As if the scorching heat and dazzling light Were but an element they loved. Bright clouds, Motionless pillars of the brazen heaven,-- Their bases on the mountains--their white tops Shining in the far ether--fire the air With a reflected radiance, and make turn The gazer's eye away. For me, I lie Languidly in the shade, where the thick turf, Yet virgin from the kisses of the sun, Retains some freshness, and I woo the wind That still delays its coming. Why so slow, Gentle and voluble spirit of the air? Oh, come and breathe upon the fainting earth Coolness and life. Is it that in his caves He hears me? See, on yonder woody ridge, The pine is bending his proud top, and now Among the nearer groves, chestnut and oak Are tossing their green boughs about. He comes! Lo, where the grassy meadow runs in waves! The deep distressful silence of the scene Breaks up with mingling of unnumbered sounds And universal motion. He is come, Shaking a shower of blossoms from the shrubs, And bearing on their fragrance; and he brings Music of birds, and rustling of young boughs, And sound of swaying branches, and the voice Of distant waterfalls. All the green herbs Are stirring in his breath; a thousand flowers, By the road-side and the borders of the brook, Nod gayly to each other; glossy leaves Are twinkling in the sun, as if the dew Were on them yet, and silver waters break Into small waves and sparkle as he comes. AN INDIAN AT THE BURIAL-PLACE OF HIS FATHERS. It is the spot I came to seek,-- My fathers' ancient burial-place Ere from these vales, ashamed and weak, Withdrew our wasted race. It is the spot--I know it well-- Of which our old traditions tell. For here the upland bank sends out A ridge toward the river-side; I know the shaggy hills about, The meadows smooth and wide,-- The plains, that, toward the southern sky, Fenced east and west by mountains lie. A white man, gazing on the scene, Would say a lovely spot was here, And praise the lawns, so fresh and green, Between the hills so sheer. I like it not--I would the plain Lay in its tall old groves again. The sheep are on the slopes around, The cattle in the meadows feed, And labourers turn the crumbling ground, Or drop the yellow seed, And prancing steeds, in trappings gay, Whirl the bright chariot o'er the way. Methinks it were a nobler sight To see these vales in woods arrayed, Their summits in the golden light, Their trunks in grateful shade, And herds of deer, that bounding go O'er hills and prostrate trees below. And then to mark the lord of all, The forest hero, trained to wars, Quivered and plumed, and lithe and tall, And seamed with glorious scars, Walk forth, amid his reign, to dare The wolf, and grapple with the bear. This bank, in which the dead were laid, Was sacred when its soil was ours; Hither the artless Indian maid Brought wreaths of beads and flowers, And the gray chief and gifted seer Worshipped the god of thunders here. But now the wheat is green and high On clods that hid the warrior's breast, And scattered in the furrows lie The weapons of his rest; And there, in the loose sand, is thrown Of his large arm the mouldering bone. Ah, little thought the strong and brave Who bore their lifeless chieftain forth-- Or the young wife, that weeping gave Her first-born to the earth, That the pale race, who waste us now, Among their bones should guide the plough. They waste us--ay--like April snow In the warm noon, we shrink away; And fast they follow, as we go Towards the setting day,-- Till they shall fill the land, and we Are driven into the western sea. But I behold a fearful sign, To which the white men's eyes are blind; Their race may vanish hence, like mine, And leave no trace behind, Save ruins o'er the region spread, And the white stones above the dead. Before these fields were shorn and tilled, Full to the brim our rivers flowed; The melody of waters filled The fresh and boundless wood; And torrents dashed and rivulets played, And fountains spouted in the shade. Those grateful sounds are heard no more, The springs are silent in the sun; The rivers, by the blackened shore, With lessening current run; The realm our tribes are crushed to get May be a barren desert yet. SONG. Dost thou idly ask to hear At what gentle seasons Nymphs relent, when lovers near Press the tenderest reasons? Ah, they give their faith too oft To the careless wooer; Maidens' hearts are always soft: Would that men's were truer! Woo the fair one, when around Early birds are singing; When, o'er all the fragrant ground. Early herbs are springing: When the brookside, bank, and grove, All with blossoms laden, Shine with beauty, breathe of love,-- Woo the timid maiden. Woo her when, with rosy blush, Summer eve is sinking; When, on rills that softly gush, Stars are softly winking; When, through boughs that knit the bower, Moonlight gleams are stealing; Woo her, till the gentle hour Wake a gentler feeling. Woo her, when autumnal dyes Tinge the woody mountain; When the dropping foliage lies In the weedy fountain; Let the scene, that tells how fast Youth is passing over, Warn her, ere her bloom is past, To secure her lover. Woo her, when the north winds call At the lattice nightly; When, within the cheerful hall, Blaze the fagots brightly; While the wintry tempest round Sweeps the landscape hoary, Sweeter in her ear shall sound Love's delightful story. HYMN OF THE WALDENSES. Hear, Father, hear thy faint afflicted flock Cry to thee, from the desert and the rock; While those, who seek to slay thy children, hold Blasphemous worship under roofs of gold; And the broad goodly lands, with pleasant airs That nurse the grape and wave the grain, are theirs. Yet better were this mountain wilderness, And this wild life of danger and distress-- Watchings by night and perilous flight by day, And meetings in the depths of earth to pray, Better, far better, than to kneel with them, And pay the impious rite thy laws condemn. Thou, Lord, dost hold the thunder; the firm land Tosses in billows when it feels thy hand; Thou dashest nation against nation, then Stillest the angry world to peace again. Oh, touch their stony hearts who hunt thy sons-- The murderers of our wives and little ones. Yet, mighty God, yet shall thy frown look forth Unveiled, and terribly shall shake the earth. Then the foul power of priestly sin and all Its long-upheld idolatries shall fall. Thou shalt raise up the trampled and oppressed, And thy delivered saints shall dwell in rest. MONUMENT MOUNTAIN.° Thou who wouldst see the lovely and the wild Mingled in harmony on Nature's face, Ascend our rocky mountains. Let thy foot Fail not with weariness, for on their tops The beauty and the majesty of earth, Spread wide beneath, shall make thee to forget The steep and toilsome way. There, as thou stand'st, The haunts of men below thee, and around The mountain summits, thy expanding heart Shall feel a kindred with that loftier world To which thou art translated, and partake The enlargement of thy vision. Thou shalt look Upon the green and rolling forest tops, And down into the secrets of the glens, And streams, that with their bordering thickets strive To hide their windings. Thou shalt gaze, at once, Here on white villages, and tilth, and herds, And swarming roads, and there on solitudes That only hear the torrent, and the wind, And eagle's shriek. There is a precipice That seems a fragment of some mighty wall, Built by the hand that fashioned the old world, To separate its nations, and thrown down When the flood drowned them. To the north, a path Conducts you up the narrow battlement. Steep is the western side, shaggy and wild With mossy trees, and pinnacles of flint, And many a hanging crag. But, to the east, Sheer to the vale go down the bare old cliffs,-- Huge pillars, that in middle heaven upbear Their weather-beaten capitals, here dark With the thick moss of centuries, and there Of chalky whiteness where the thunderbolt Has splintered them. It is a fearful thing To stand upon the beetling verge, and see Where storm and lightning, from that huge gray wall, Have tumbled down vast blocks, and at the base Dashed them in fragments, and to lay thine ear Over the dizzy depth, and hear the sound Of winds, that struggle with the woods below, Come up like ocean murmurs. But the scene Is lovely round; a beautiful river there Wanders amid the fresh and fertile meads, The paradise he made unto himself, Mining the soil for ages. On each side The fields swell upward to the hills; beyond, Above the hills, in the blue distance, rise The mighty columns with which earth props heaven. There is a tale about these reverend rocks, A sad tradition of unhappy love, And sorrows borne and ended, long ago, When over these fair vales the savage sought His game in the thick woods. There was a maid, The fairest of the Indian maids, bright-eyed, With wealth of raven tresses, a light form, And a gay heart. About her cabin-door The wide old woods resounded with her song And fairy laughter all the summer day. She loved her cousin; such a love was deemed, By the morality of those stern tribes, Incestuous, and she struggled hard and long Against her love, and reasoned with her heart, As simple Indian maiden might. In vain. Then her eye lost its lustre, and her step Its lightness, and the gray-haired men that passed Her dwelling, wondered that they heard no more The accustomed song and laugh of her, whose looks Were like the cheerful smile of Spring, they said, Upon the Winter of their age. She went To weep where no eye saw, and was not found When all the merry girls were met to dance, And all the hunters of the tribe were out; Nor when they gathered from the rustling husk The shining ear; nor when, by the river's side, Thay pulled the grape and startled the wild shades With sounds of mirth. The keen-eyed Indian dames Would whisper to each other, as they saw Her wasting form, and say _the girl will die_. One day into the bosom of a friend, A playmate of her young and innocent years, She poured her griefs. "Thou know'st, and thou alone," She said, "for I have told thee, all my love, And guilt, and sorrow. I am sick of life. All night I weep in darkness, and the morn Glares on me, as upon a thing accursed, That has no business on the earth. I hate The pastimes and the pleasant toils that once I loved; the cheerful voices of my friends Have an unnatural horror in mine ear. In dreams my mother, from the land of souls, Calls me and chides me. All that look on me Do seem to know my shame; I cannot bear Their eyes; I cannot from my heart root out The love that wrings it so, and I must die." It was a summer morning, and they went To this old precipice. About the cliffs Lay garlands, ears of maize, and shaggy skins Of wolf and bear, the offerings of the tribe Here made to the Great Spirit, for they deemed, Like worshippers of the elder time, that God Doth walk on the high places and affect The earth-o'erlooking mountains. She had on The ornaments with which her father loved To deck the beauty of his bright-eyed girl, And bade her wear when stranger warriors came To be his guests. Here the friends sat them down, And sang, all day, old songs of love and death, And decked the poor wan victim's hair with flowers, And prayed that safe and swift might be her way To the calm world of sunshine, where no grief Makes the heart heavy and the eyelids red. Beautiful lay the region of her tribe Below her--waters resting in the embrace Of the wide forest, and maize-planted glades Opening amid the leafy wilderness. She gazed upon it long, and at the sight Of her own village peeping through the trees, And her own dwelling, and the cabin roof Of him she loved with an unlawful love, And came to die for, a warm gush of tears Ran from her eyes. But when the sun grew low And the hill shadows long, she threw herself From the steep rock and perished. There was scooped Upon the mountain's southern slope, a grave; And there they laid her, in the very garb With which the maiden decked herself for death, With the same withering wild flowers in her hair. And o'er the mould that covered her, the tribe Built up a simple monument, a cone Of small loose stones. Thenceforward all who passed, Hunter, and dame, and virgin, laid a stone In silence on the pile. It stands there yet. And Indians from the distant West, who come To visit where their fathers' bones are laid, Yet tell the sorrowful tale, and to this day The mountain where the hapless maiden died Is called the Mountain of the Monument. AFTER A TEMPEST. The day had been a day of wind and storm;-- The wind was laid, the storm was overpast,-- And stooping from the zenith bright and warm Shone the great sun on the wide earth at last. I stood upon the upland slope, and cast My eye upon a broad and beauteous scene, Where the vast plain lay girt by mountains vast, And hills o'er hills lifted their heads of green, With pleasant vales scooped out and villages between. The rain-drops glistened on the trees around, Whose shadows on the tall grass were not stirred, Save when a shower of diamonds, to the ground, Was shaken by the flight of startled bird; For birds were warbling round, and bees were heard About the flowers; the cheerful rivulet sung And gossiped, as he hastened ocean-ward; To the gray oak the squirrel, chiding, clung, And chirping from the ground the grasshopper upsprung. And from beneath the leaves that kept them dry Flew many a glittering insect here and there, And darted up and down the butterfly, That seemed a living blossom of the air. The flocks came scattering from the thicket, where The violent rain had pent them; in the way Strolled groups of damsels frolicksome and fair; The farmer swung the scythe or turned the hay, And 'twixt the heavy swaths his children were at play. It was a scene of peace--and, like a spell, Did that serene and golden sunlight fall Upon the motionless wood that clothed the fell, And precipice upspringing like a wall, And glassy river and white waterfall, And happy living things that trod the bright And beauteous scene; while far beyond them all, On many a lovely valley, out of sight, Was poured from the blue heavens the same soft golden light. I looked, and thought the quiet of the scene An emblem of the peace that yet shall be, When o'er earth's continents, and isles between, The noise of war shall cease from sea to sea, And married nations dwell in harmony; When millions, crouching in the dust to one, No more shall beg their lives on bended knee, Nor the black stake be dressed, nor in the sun The o'erlaboured captive toil, and wish his life were done. Too long, at clash of arms amid her bowers And pools of blood, the earth has stood aghast, The fair earth, that should only blush with flowers And ruddy fruits; but not for aye can last The storm, and sweet the sunshine when 'tis past. Lo, the clouds roll away--they break--they fly, And, like the glorious light of summer, cast O'er the wide landscape from the embracing sky, On all the peaceful world the smile of heaven shall lie. AUTUMN WOODS. Ere, in the northern gale, The summer tresses of the trees are gone, The woods of Autumn, all around our vale, Have put their glory on. The mountains that infold, In their wide sweep, the coloured landscape round, Seem groups of giant kings, in purple and gold, That guard the enchanted ground. I roam the woods that crown The upland, where the mingled splendours glow, Where the gay company of trees look down On the green fields below. My steps are not alone In these bright walks; the sweet south-west, at play, Flies, rustling, where the painted leaves are strown Along the winding way. And far in heaven, the while, The sun, that sends that gale to wander here, Pours out on the fair earth his quiet smile,-- The sweetest of the year. Where now the solemn shade, Verdure and gloom where many branches meet; So grateful, when the noon of summer made The valleys sick with heat? Let in through all the trees Come the strange rays; the forest depths are bright? Their sunny-coloured foliage, in the breeze, Twinkles, like beams of light. The rivulet, late unseen, Where bickering through the shrubs its waters run, Shines with the image of its golden screen, And glimmerings of the sun. But 'neath yon crimson tree, Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame, Nor mark, within its roseate canopy, Her blush of maiden shame. Oh, Autumn! why so soon Depart the hues that make thy forests glad; Thy gentle wind and thy fair sunny noon, And leave thee wild and sad! Ah! 'twere a lot too blessed For ever in thy coloured shades to stray; Amid the kisses of the soft south-west To rove and dream for aye; And leave the vain low strife That makes men mad--the tug for wealth and power, The passions and the cares that wither life, And waste its little hour. MUTATION. A SONNET. They talk of short-lived pleasure--be it so-- Pain dies as quickly: stern, hard-featured pain Expires, and lets her weary prisoner go. The fiercest agonies have shortest reign; And after dreams of horror, comes again The welcome morning with its rays of peace; Oblivion, softly wiping out the stain, Makes the strong secret pangs of shame to cease: Remorse is virtue's root; its fair increase Are fruits of innocence and blessedness: Thus joy, o'erborne and bound, doth still release His young limbs from the chains that round him press. Weep not that the world changes--did it keep A stable, changeless state, 'twere cause indeed to weep. NOVEMBER. A SONNET. Yet one smile more, departing, distant sun! One mellow smile through the soft vapoury air, Ere, o'er the frozen earth, the loud winds run, Or snows are sifted o'er the meadows bare. One smile on the brown hills and naked trees, And the dark rocks whose summer wreaths are cast, And the blue gentian flower, that, in the breeze, Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last. Yet a few sunny days, in which the bee Shall murmur by the hedge that skirts the way, The cricket chirp upon the russet lea, And man delight to linger in thy ray. Yet one rich smile, and we will try to bear The piercing winter frost, and winds, and darkened air. SONG OF THE GREEK AMAZON. I buckle to my slender side The pistol and the scimitar, And in my maiden flower and pride Am come to share the tasks of war. And yonder stands my fiery steed, That paws the ground and neighs to go, My charger of the Arab breed,-- I took him from the routed foe. My mirror is the mountain spring, At which I dress my ruffled hair; My dimmed and dusty arms I bring, And wash away the blood-stain there. Why should I guard from wind and sun This cheek, whose virgin rose is fled? It was for one--oh, only one-- I kept its bloom, and he is dead. But they who slew him--unaware Of coward murderers lurking nigh-- And left him to the fowls of air, Are yet alive--and they must die. They slew him--and my virgin years Are vowed to Greece and vengeance now, And many an Othman dame, in tears, Shall rue the Grecian maiden's vow. I touched the lute in better days, I led in dance the joyous band; Ah! they may move to mirthful lays Whose hands can touch a lover's hand. The march of hosts that haste to meet Seems gayer than the dance to me; The lute's sweet tones are not so sweet As the fierce shout of victory. TO A CLOUD. Beautiful cloud! with folds so soft and fair, Swimming in the pure quiet air! Thy fleeces bathed in sunlight, while below Thy shadow o'er the vale moves slow; Where, midst their labour, pause the reaper train As cool it comes along the grain. Beautiful cloud! I would I were with thee In thy calm way o'er land and sea: To rest on thy unrolling skirts, and look On Earth as on an open book; On streams that tie her realms with silver bands, And the long ways that seem her lands; And hear her humming cities, and the sound Of the great ocean breaking round. Ay--I would sail upon thy air-borne car To blooming regions distant far, To where the sun of Andalusia shines On his own olive-groves and vines, Or the soft lights of Italy's bright sky In smiles upon her ruins lie. But I would woo the winds to let us rest O'er Greece long fettered and oppressed, Whose sons at length have heard the call that comes From the old battle-fields and tombs, And risen, and drawn the sword, and on the foe Have dealt the swift and desperate blow, And the Othman power is cloven, and the stroke Has touched its chains, and they are broke. Ay, we would linger till the sunset there Should come, to purple all the air, And thou reflect upon the sacred ground The ruddy radiance streaming round. Bright meteor! for the summer noontide made! Thy peerless beauty yet shall fade. The sun, that fills with light each glistening fold, Shall set, and leave thee dark and cold: The blast shall rend thy skirts, or thou mayst frown In the dark heaven when storms come down; And weep in rain, till man's inquiring eye Miss thee, for ever, from the sky. THE MURDERED TRAVELLER.° When spring, to woods and wastes around, Brought bloom and joy again, The murdered traveller's bones were found, Far down a narrow glen. The fragrant birch, above him, hung Her tassels in the sky; And many a vernal blossom sprung, And nodded careless by. The red-bird warbled, as he wrought His hanging nest o'erhead, And fearless, near the fatal spot, Her young the partridge led. But there was weeping far away, And gentle eyes, for him, With watching many an anxious day, Were sorrowful and dim. They little knew, who loved him so, The fearful death he met, When shouting o'er the desert snow, Unarmed, and hard beset;-- Nor how, when round the frosty pole The northern dawn was red, The mountain wolf and wild-cat stole To banquet on the dead;-- Nor how, when strangers found his bones, They dressed the hasty bier, And marked his grave with nameless stones, Unmoistened by a tear. But long they looked, and feared, and wept, Within his distant home; And dreamed, and started as they slept, For joy that he was come. Long, long they looked--but never spied His welcome step again, Nor knew the fearful death he died Far down that narrow glen. HYMN TO THE NORTH STAR. The sad and solemn night Hath yet her multitude of cheerful fires; The glorious host of light Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires; All through her silent watches, gliding slow, Her constellations come, and climb the heavens, and go. Day, too, hath many a star To grace his gorgeous reign, as bright as they: Through the blue fields afar, Unseen, they follow in his flaming way: Many a bright lingerer, as the eve grows dim, Tells what a radiant troop arose and set with him. And thou dost see them rise, Star of the Pole! and thou dost see them set. Alone, in thy cold skies, Thou keep'st thy old unmoving station yet, Nor join'st the dances of that glittering train, Nor dipp'st thy virgin orb in the blue western main. There, at morn's rosy birth, Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air, And eve, that round the earth Chases the day, beholds thee watching there; There noontide finds thee, and the hour that calls The shapes of polar flame to scale heaven's azure walls. Alike, beneath thine eye, The deeds of darkness and of light are done; High towards the star-lit sky Towns blaze--the smoke of battle blots the sun-- The night-storm on a thousand hills is loud-- And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea and cloud. On thy unaltering blaze The half-wrecked mariner, his compass lost, Fixes his steady gaze, And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast; And they who stray in perilous wastes, by night, Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their footsteps right. And, therefore, bards of old, Sages, and hermits of the solemn wood, Did in thy beams behold A beauteous type of that unchanging good, That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray The voyager of time should shape his heedful way. THE LAPSE OF TIME. Lament who will, in fruitless tears, The speed with which our moments fly; I sigh not over vanished years, But watch the years that hasten by. Look, how they come,--a mingled crowd Of bright and dark, but rapid days; Beneath them, like a summer cloud, The wide world changes as I gaze. What! grieve that time has brought so soon The sober age of manhood on! As idly might I weep, at noon, To see the blush of morning gone. Could I give up the hopes that glow In prospect like Elysian isles; And let the cheerful future go, With all her promises and smiles? The future!--cruel were the power Whose doom would tear thee from my heart. Thou sweetener of the present hour! We cannot--no--we will not part. Oh, leave me, still, the rapid flight That makes the changing seasons gay, The grateful speed that brings the night, The swift and glad return of day; The months that touch, with added grace, This little prattler at my knee, In whose arch eye and speaking face New meaning every hour I see; The years, that o'er each sister land Shall lift the country of my birth, And nurse her strength, till she shall stand The pride and pattern of the earth: Till younger commonwealths, for aid, Shall cling about her ample robe, And from her frown shall shrink afraid The crowned oppressors of the globe. True--time will seam and blanch my brow-- Well--I shall sit with aged men, And my good glass will tell me how A grizzly beard becomes me then. And then should no dishonour lie Upon my head, when I am gray, Love yet shall watch my fading eye, And smooth the path of my decay. Then haste thee, Time--'tis kindness all That speeds thy winged feet so fast: Thy pleasures stay not till they pall, And all thy pains are quickly past. Thou fliest and bear'st away our woes, And as thy shadowy train depart, The memory of sorrow grows A lighter burden on the heart. SONG OF THE STARS. When the radiant morn of creation broke, And the world in the smile of God awoke, And the empty realms of darkness and death Were moved through their depths by his mighty breath, And orbs of beauty and spheres of flame From the void abyss by myriads came,-- In the joy of youth as they darted away, Through the widening wastes of space to play, Their silver voices in chorus rang, And this was the song the bright ones sang: "Away, away, through the wide, wide sky, The fair blue fields that before us lie,-- Each sun with the worlds that round him roll, Each planet, poised on her turning pole; With her isles of green, and her clouds of white, And her waters that lie like fluid light. "For the source of glory uncovers his face, And the brightness o'erflows unbounded space; And we drink as we go the luminous tides In our ruddy air and our blooming sides: Lo, yonder the living splendours play; Away, on our joyous path, away! "Look, look, through our glittering ranks afar, In the infinite azure, star after star, How they brighten and bloom as they swiftly pass! How the verdure runs o'er each rolling mass! And the path of the gentle winds is seen, Where the small waves dance, and the young woods lean. "And see where the brighter day-beams pour, How the rainbows hang in the sunny shower; And the morn and eve, with their pomp of hues, Shift o'er the bright planets and shed their dews; And 'twixt them both, o'er the teeming ground, With her shadowy cone the night goes round! "Away, away! in our blossoming bowers, In the soft air wrapping these spheres of ours, In the seas and fountains that shine with morn, See, Love is brooding, and Life is born, And breathing myriads are breaking from night, To rejoice, like us, in motion and light. "Glide on in your beauty, ye youthful spheres, To weave the dance that measures the years; Glide on, in the glory and gladness sent, To the farthest wall of the firmament,-- The boundless visible smile of Him, To the veil of whose brow your lamps are dim." A FOREST HYMN. The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, And spread the roof above them,--ere he framed The lofty vault, to gather and roll back The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood, Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down, And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks And supplication. For his simple heart Might not resist the sacred influences Which, from the stilly twilight of the place, And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound Of the invisible breath that swayed at once All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed His spirit with the thought of boundless power And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore Only among the crowd, and under roofs That our frail hands have raised? Let me, at least, Here, in the shadow of this aged wood, Offer one hymn--thrice happy, if it find Acceptance in His ear. Father, thy hand Hath reared these venerable columns, thou Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down Upon the naked earth, and, forthwith, rose All these fair ranks of trees. They, in thy sun, Budded, and shook their green leaves in thy breeze, And shot towards heaven. The century-living crow, Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and died Among their branches, till, at last, they stood, As now they stand, massy, and tall, and dark, Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold Communion with his Maker. These dim vaults, These winding aisles, of human pomp or pride Report not. No fantasting carvings show The boast of our vain race to change the form Of thy fair works. But thou art here--thou fill'st The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds That run along the summit of these trees In music;--thou art in the cooler breath That from the inmost darkness of the place Comes, scarcely felt; the barky trunks, the ground, The fresh moist ground, are all instinct with thee. Here is continual worship;--nature, here, In the tranquillity that thou dost love, Enjoys thy presence. Noiselessly, around, From perch to perch, the solitary bird Passes: and yon clear spring, that, midst its herbs, Wells softly forth and visits the strong roots Of half the mighty forest, tells no tale Of all the good it does. Thou hast not left Thyself without a witness, in these shades, Of thy perfections. Grandeur, strength, and grace Are here to speak of thee. This mighty oak-- By whose immovable stem I stand and seem Almost annihilated--not a prince, In all that proud old world beyond the deep, Ere wore his crown as loftily as he Wears the green coronal of leaves with which Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his root Is beauty, such as blooms not in the glare Of the broad sun. That delicate forest flower With scented breath, and look so like a smile, Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould, An emanation of the indwelling Life, A visible token of the upholding Love, That are the soul of this wide universe. My heart is awed within me when I think Of the great miracle that still goes on, In silence, round me--the perpetual work Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed For ever. Written on thy works I read The lesson of thy own eternity. Lo! all grow old and die--but see again, How on the faltering footsteps of decay Youth presses--ever gay and beautiful youth In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees Wave not less proudly that their ancestors Moulder beneath them. Oh, there is not lost One of earth's charms: upon her bosom yet, After the flight of untold centuries, The freshness of her far beginning lies And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate Of his arch enemy Death--yea, seats himself Upon the tyrant's throne--the sepulchre, And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth From thine own bosom, and shall have no end. There have been holy men who hid themselves Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave Their lives to thought and prayer, till they outlived The generation born with them, nor seemed Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks Around them;--and there have been holy men Who deemed it were not well to pass life thus. But let me often to these solitudes Retire, and in thy presence reassure My feeble virtue. Here its enemies, The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink And tremble and are still. Oh, God! when thou Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill, With all the waters of the firmament, The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods And drowns the villages; when, at thy call, Uprises the great deep and throws himself Upon the continent, and overwhelms Its cities--who forgets not, at the sight Of these tremendous tokens of thy power, His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by? Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath Of the mad unchained elements to teach Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate In these calm shades thy milder majesty, And to the beautiful order of thy works Learn to conform the order of our lives. "OH FAIREST OF THE RURAL MAIDS." Oh fairest of the rural maids! Thy birth was in the forest shades; Green boughs, and glimpses of the sky, Were all that met thy infant eye. Thy sports, thy wanderings, when a child, Were ever in the sylvan wild; And all the beauty of the place Is in thy heart and on thy face. The twilight of the trees and rocks Is in the light shade of thy locks; Thy step is as the wind, that weaves Its playful way among the leaves. Thine eyes are springs, in whose serene And silent waters heaven is seen; Their lashes are the herbs that look On their young figures in the brook. The forest depths, by foot unpressed, Are not more sinless than thy breast; The holy peace, that fills the air Of those calm solitudes, is there. "I BROKE THE SPELL THAT HELD ME LONG." I broke the spell that held me long, The dear, dear witchery of song. I said, the poet's idle lore Shall waste my prime of years no more, For Poetry, though heavenly born, Consorts with poverty and scorn. I broke the spell--nor deemed its power Could fetter me another hour. Ah, thoughtless! how could I forget Its causes were around me yet? For wheresoe'er I looked, the while, Was nature's everlasting smile. Still came and lingered on my sight Of flowers and streams the bloom and light, And glory of the stars and sun;-- And these and poetry are one. They, ere the world had held me long, Recalled me to the love of song. JUNE. I gazed upon the glorious sky And the green mountains round, And thought that when I came to lie Within the silent ground, 'Twere pleasant, that in flowery June, When brooks send up a cheerful tune, And groves a joyous sound, The sexton's hand, my grave to make, The rich, green mountain turf should break. A cell within the frozen mould, A coffin borne through sleet, And icy clods above it rolled, While fierce the tempests beat-- Away!--I will not think of these-- Blue be the sky and soft the breeze, Earth green beneath the feet, And be the damp mould gently pressed Into my narrow place of rest. There through the long, long summer hours, The golden light should lie, And thick young herbs and groups of flowers Stand in their beauty by. The oriole should build and tell His love-tale close beside my cell; The idle butterfly Should rest him there, and there be heard The housewife bee and humming-bird. And what if cheerful shouts at noon Come, from the village sent, Or songs of maids, beneath the moon With fairy laughter blent? And what if, in the evening light, Betrothed lovers walk in sight Of my low monument? I would the lovely scene around Might know no sadder sight nor sound. I know, I know I should not see The season's glorious show, Nor would its brightness shine for me, Nor its wild music flow; But if, around my place of sleep, The friends I love should come to weep, They might not haste to go. Soft airs, and song, and light, and bloom, Should keep them lingering by my tomb. These to their softened hearts should bear The thought of what has been, And speak of one who cannot share The gladness of the scene; Whose part, in all the pomp that fills The circuit of the summer hills, Is--that his grave is green; And deeply would their hearts rejoice To hear again his living voice. A SONG OF PITCAIRN'S ISLAND. Come take our boy, and we will go Before our cabin door; The winds shall bring us, as they blow, The murmurs of the shore; And we will kiss his young blue eyes, And I will sing him, as he lies, Songs that were made of yore: I'll sing, in his delighted ear, The island lays thou lov'st to hear. And thou, while stammering I repeat, Thy country's tongue shalt teach; 'Tis not so soft, but far more sweet Than my own native speech: For thou no other tongue didst know, When, scarcely twenty moons ago, Upon Tahete's beach, Thou cam'st to woo me to be thine, With many a speaking look and sign. I knew thy meaning--thou didst praise My eyes, my locks of jet; Ah! well for me they won thy gaze,-- But thine were fairer yet! I'm glad to see my infant wear Thy soft blue eyes and sunny hair, And when my sight is met By his white brow and blooming cheek, I feel a joy I cannot speak. Come talk of Europe's maids with me, Whose necks and cheeks, they tell, Outshine the beauty of the sea, White foam and crimson shell. I'll shape like theirs my simple dress, And bind like them each jetty tress, A sight to please thee well: And for my dusky brow will braid A bonnet like an English maid. Come, for the low sunlight calls, We lose the pleasant hours; 'Tis lovelier than these cottage walls,-- That seat among the flowers. And I will learn of thee a prayer, To Him who gave a home so fair, A lot so blest as ours-- The God who made, for thee and me, This sweet lone isle amid the sea. THE SKIES. Ay! gloriously thou standest there, Beautiful, boundles firmament! That, swelling wide o'er earth and air, And round the horizon bent, With thy bright vault, and sapphire wall, Dost overhang and circle all. Far, far below thee, tall old trees Arise, and piles built up of old, And hills, whose ancient summits freeze In the fierce light and cold. The eagle soars his utmost height, Yet far thou stretchest o'er his flight. Thou hast thy frowns--with thee on high The storm has made his airy seat, Beyond that soft blue curtain lie His stores of hail and sleet. Thence the consuming lightnings break, There the strong hurricanes awake. Yet art thou prodigal of smiles-- Smiles, sweeter than thy frowns are stern: Earth sends, from all her thousand isles, A shout at thy return. The glory that comes down from thee, Bathes, in deep joy, the land and sea. The sun, the gorgeous sun is thine, The pomp that brings and shuts the day, The clouds that round him change and shine, The airs that fan his way. Thence look the thoughtful stars, and there The meek moon walks the silent air. The sunny Italy may boast The beauteous tints that flush her skies, And lovely, round the Grecian coast, May thy blue pillars rise. I only know how fair they stand Around my own beloved land. And they are fair--a charm is theirs, That earth, the proud green earth, has not-- With all the forms, and hues, and airs, That haunt her sweetest spot. We gaze upon thy calm pure sphere, And read of Heaven's eternal year. Oh, when, amid the throng of men, The heart grows sick of hollow mirth, How willingly we turn us then Away from this cold earth, And look into thy azure breast, For seats of innocence and rest! "I CANNOT FORGET WITH WHAT FERVID DEVOTION." I cannot forget with what fervid devotion I worshipped the vision of verse and of fame. Each gaze at the glories of earth, sky, and ocean, To my kindled emotions, was wind over flame. And deep were my musings in life's early blossom, Mid the twilight of mountain groves wandering long; How thrilled my young veins, and how throbbed my full bosom, When o'er me descended the spirit of song. 'Mong the deep-cloven fells that for ages had listened To the rush of the pebble-paved river between, Where the kingfisher screamed and gray precipice glistened, All breathless with awe have I gazed on the scene; Till I felt the dark power o'er my reveries stealing, From his throne in the depth of that stern solitude, And he breathed through my lips, in that tempest of feeling, Strains lofty or tender, though artless and rude. Bright visions! I mixed with the world, and ye faded; No longer your pure rural worshipper now; In the haunts your continual presence pervaded, Ye shrink from the signet of care on my brow. In the old mossy groves on the breast of the mountain, In deep lonely glens where the waters complain, By the shade of the rock, by the gush of the fountain, I seek your loved footsteps, but seek them in vain. Oh, leave not, forlorn and for ever forsaken, Your pupil and victim to life and its tears! But sometimes return, and in mercy awaken The glories ye showed to his earlier years. TO A MUSQUITO. Fair insect! that, with threadlike legs spread out, And blood-extracting bill and filmy wing, Does murmur, as thou slowly sail'st about, In pitiless ears full many a plaintive thing, And tell how little our large veins should bleed, Would we but yield them to thy bitter need. Unwillingly, I own, and, what is worse, Full angrily men hearken to thy plaint; Thou gettest many a brush, and many a curse, For saying thou art gaunt, and starved, and faint: Even the old beggar, while he asks for food, Would kill thee, hapless stranger, if he could. I call thee stranger, for the town, I ween, Has not the honour of so proud a birth,-- Thou com'st from Jersey meadows, fresh and green, The offspring of the gods, though born on earth; For Titan was thy sire, and fair was she, The ocean nymph that nursed thy infancy. Beneath the rushes was thy cradle swung, And when, at length, thy gauzy wings grew strong, Abroad to gentle airs their folds were flung, Rose in the sky and bore thee soft along; The south wind breathed to waft thee on thy way, And danced and shone beneath the billowy bay. Calm rose afar the city spires, and thence Came the deep murmur of its throng of men, And as its grateful odours met thy sense, They seemed the perfumes of thy native fen. Fair lay its crowded streets, and at the sight Thy tiny song grew shriller with delight. At length thy pinions fluttered in Broadway-- Ah, there were fairy steps, and white necks kissed By wanton airs, and eyes whose killing ray Shone through the snowy veils like stars through mist; And fresh as morn, on many a cheek and chin, Bloomed the bright blood through the transparent skin. Sure these were sights to touch an anchorite! What! do I hear thy slender voice complain? Thou wailest, when I talk of beauty's light, As if it brought the memory of pain: Thou art a wayward being--well--come near, And pour thy tale of sorrow in my ear. What sayst thou--slanderer!--rouge makes thee sick? And China bloom at best is sorry food? And Rowland's Kalydor, if laid on thick, Poisons the thirsty wretch that bores for blood? Go! 'twas a just reward that met thy crime-- But shun the sacrilege another time. That bloom was made to look at, not to touch; To worship, not approach, that radiant white; And well might sudden vengeance light on such As dared, like thee, most impiously to bite. Thou shouldst have gazed at distance and admired, Murmured thy adoration and retired. Thou'rt welcome to the town--but why come here To bleed a brother poet, gaunt like thee? Alas! the little blood I have is dear, And thin will be the banquet drawn from me. Look round--the pale-eyed sisters in my cell, Thy old acquaintance, Song and Famine, dwell. Try some plump alderman, and suck the blood Enriched by generous wine and costly meat; On well-filled skins, sleek as thy native mud, Fix thy light pump and press thy freckled feet: Go to the men for whom, in ocean's hall, The oyster breeds, and the green turtle sprawls. There corks are drawn, and the red vintage flows To fill the swelling veins for thee, and now The ruddy cheek and now the ruddier nose Shall tempt thee, as thou flittest round the brow; And when the hour of sleep its quiet brings, No angry hand shall rise to brush thy wings. LINES ON REVISITING THE COUNTRY. I stand upon my native hills again, Broad, round, and green, that in the summer sky With garniture of waving grass and grain, Orchards, and beechen forests, basking lie, While deep the sunless glens are scooped between, Where brawl o'er shallow beds the streams unseen. A lisping voice and glancing eyes are near, And ever restless feet of one, who, now, Gathers the blossoms of her fourth bright year; There plays a gladness o'er her fair young brow, As breaks the varied scene upon her sight, Upheaved and spread in verdure and in light. For I have taught her, with delighted eye, To gaze upon the mountains,--to behold, With deep affection, the pure ample sky, And clouds along its blue abysses rolled,-- To love the song of waters, and to hear The melody of winds with charmed ear. Here, I have 'scaped the city's stifling heat, Its horrid sounds, and its polluted air; And, where the season's milder fervours beat, And gales, that sweep the forest borders, bear The song of bird, and sound of running stream, Am come awhile to wander and to dream. Ay, flame thy fiercest, sun! thou canst not wake, In this pure air, the plague that walks unseen. The maize leaf and the maple bough but take, From thy strong heats, a deeper, glossier green. The mountain wind, that faints not in thy ray, Sweeps the blue steams of pestilence away. The mountain wind! most spiritual thing of all The wide earth knows; when, in the sultry time, He stoops him from his vast cerulean hall, He seems the breath of a celestial clime! As if from heaven's wide-open gates did flow Health and refreshment on the world below. THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS. The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear. Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead; They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread. The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay, And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day. Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood In brighter light, and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood? Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race, of flowers Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours. The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again. The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow; But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen. And now, when comes the calm mild day, as still such days will come, To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home; When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still, And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill, The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore, And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more. And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died, The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side: In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forest cast the leaf, And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief: Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young friend of ours, So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers. ROMERO. When freedom, from the land of Spain, By Spain's degenerate sons was driven, Who gave their willing limbs again To wear the chain so lately riven; Romero broke the sword he wore-- "Go, faithful brand," the warrior said, "Go, undishonoured, never more The blood of man shall make thee red: I grieve for that already shed; And I am sick at heart to know, That faithful friend and noble foe Have only bled to make more strong The yoke that Spain has worn so long. Wear it who will, in abject fear-- I wear it not who have been free; The perjured Ferdinand shall hear No oath of loyalty from me." Then, hunted by the hounds of power, Romero chose a safe retreat, Where bleak Nevada's summits tower Above the beauty at their feet. There once, when on his cabin lay The crimson light of setting day, When even on the mountain's breast The chainless winds were all at rest, And he could hear the river's flow From the calm paradise below; Warmed with his former fires again, He framed this rude but solemn strain: I. "Here will I make my home--for here at least I see, Upon this wild Sierra's side, the steps of Liberty; Where the locust chirps unscared beneath the unpruned lime, And the merry bee doth hide from man the spoil of the mountain thyme; Where the pure winds come and go, and the wild vine gads at will, An outcast from the haunts of men, she dwells with Nature still. II. "I see the valleys, Spain! where thy mighty rivers run, And the hills that lift thy harvests and vineyards to the sun, And the flocks that drink thy brooks and sprinkle all the green, Where lie thy plains, with sheep-walks seamed, and olive-shades between: I see thy fig-trees bask, with the fair pomegranate near, And the fragrance of thy lemon-groves can almost reach me here. III. "Fair--fair--but fallen Spain! 'tis with a swelling heart, That I think on all thou mightst have been, and look at what thou art; But the strife is over now, and all the good and brave, That would have raised thee up, are gone, to exile or the grave. Thy fleeces are for monks, thy grapes for the convent feast, And the wealth of all thy harvest-fields for the pampered lord and priest. IV. "But I shall see the day--it will come before I die-- I shall see it in my silver hairs, and with an age-dimmed eye;-- When the spirit of the land to liberty shall bound, As yonder fountain leaps away from the darkness of the ground: And to my mountain cell, the voices of the free Shall rise, as from the beaten shore the thunders of the sea." A MEDITATION ON RHODE-ISLAND COAL. Decolor, obscuris, vilis, non ille repexam Cesariem regum, non candida virginis ornat Colla, nec insigni splendet per cingula morsu. Sed nova si nigri videas miracula saxi, Tunc superat pulchros cultus et quicquid Eois Indus litoribus rubrâ scrutatur in algâ. CLAUDIAN. I sat beside the glowing grate, fresh heaped With Newport coal, and as the flame grew bright --The many-coloured flame--and played and leaped, I thought of rainbows and the northern light, Moore's Lalla Rookh, the Treasury Report, And other brilliant matters of the sort. And last I thought of that fair isle which sent The mineral fuel; on a summer day I saw it once, with heat and travel spent, And scratched by dwarf-oaks in the hollow way; Now dragged through sand, now jolted over stone-- A rugged road through rugged Tiverton. And hotter grew the air, and hollower grew The deep-worn path, and horror-struck, I thought, Where will this dreary passage lead me to? This long dull road, so narrow, deep, and hot? I looked to see it dive in earth outright; I looked--but saw a far more welcome sight. Like a soft mist upon the evening shore, At once a lovely isle before me lay, Smooth and with tender verdure covered o'er, As if just risen from its calm inland bay; Sloped each way gently to the grassy edge, And the small waves that dallied with the sedge. The barley was just reaped--its heavy sheaves Lay on the stubble field--the tall maize stood Dark in its summer growth, and shook its leaves-- And bright the sunlight played on the young wood-- For fifty years ago, the old men say, The Briton hewed their ancient groves away. I saw where fountains freshened the green land, And where the pleasant road, from door to door, With rows of cherry-trees on either hand, Went wandering all that fertile region o'er-- Rogue's Island once--but when the rogues were dead, Rhode Island was the name it took instead. Beautiful island! then it only seemed A lovely stranger--it has grown a friend. I gazed on its smooth slopes, but never dreamed How soon that bright magnificent isle would send The treasures of its womb across the sea, To warm a poet's room and boil his tea. Dark anthracite! that reddenest on my hearth, Thou in those island mines didst slumber long; But now thou art come forth to move the earth, And put to shame the men that mean thee wrong. Thou shalt be coals of fire to those that hate thee, And warm the shins of all that underrate thee. Yea, they did wrong thee foully--they who mocked Thy honest face, and said thou wouldst not burn; Of hewing thee to chimney-pieces talked, And grew profane--and swore, in bitter scorn, That men might to thy inner caves retire, And there, unsinged, abide the day of fire. Yet is thy greatness nigh. I pause to state, That I too have seen greatness--even I-- Shook hands with Adams--stared at La Fayette, When, barehead, in the hot noon of July, He would not let the umbrella be held o'er him, For which three cheers burst from the mob before him. And I have seen--not many months ago-- An eastern Governor in chapeau bras And military coat, a glorious show! Ride forth to visit the reviews, and ah! How oft he smiled and bowed to Jonathan! How many hands were shook and votes were won! 'Twas a great Governor--thou too shalt be Great in thy turn--and wide shall spread thy fame, And swiftly; farthest Maine shall hear of thee, And cold New Brunswick gladden at thy name, And, faintly through its sleets, the weeping isle That sends the Boston folks their cod shall smile. For thou shalt forge vast railways, and shalt heat The hissing rivers into steam, and drive Huge masses from thy mines, on iron feet, Walking their steady way, as if alive, Northward, till everlasting ice besets thee, And south as far as the grim Spaniard lets thee. Thou shalt make mighty engines swim the sea, Like its own monsters--boats that for a guinea Will take a man to Havre--and shalt be The moving soul of many a spinning-jenny, And ply thy shuttles, till a bard can wear As good a suit of broadcloth as the mayor. Then we will laugh at winter when we hear The grim old churl about our dwellings rave: Thou, from that "ruler of the inverted year," Shalt pluck the knotty sceptre Cowper gave, And pull him from his sledge, and drag him in, And melt the icicles from off his chin. THE NEW MOON. When, as the garish day is done, Heaven burns with the descended sun, 'Tis passing sweet to mark, Amid that flush of crimson light, The new moon's modest bow grow bright, As earth and sky grow dark. Few are the hearts too cold to feel A thrill of gladness o'er them steal, When first the wandering eye Sees faintly, in the evening blaze, That glimmering curve of tender rays Just planted in the sky. The sight of that young crescent brings Thoughts of all fair and youthful things The hopes of early years; And childhood's purity and grace, And joys that like a rainbow chase The passing shower of tears. The captive yields him to the dream Of freedom, when that virgin beam Comes out upon the air: And painfully the sick man tries To fix his dim and burning eyes On the soft promise there. Most welcome to the lover's sight, Glitters that pure, emerging light; For prattling poets say, That sweetest is the lovers' walk, And tenderest is their murmured talk, Beneath its gentle ray. And there do graver men behold A type of errors, loved of old, Forsaken and forgiven; And thoughts and wishes not of earth, Just opening in their early birth, Like that new light in heaven. OCTOBER. A SONNET. Ay, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious breath, When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf, And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief, And the year smiles as it draws near its death. Wind of the sunny south! oh still delay In the gay woods and in the golden air, Like to a good old age released from care, Journeying, in long serenity, away. In such a bright, late quiet, would that I Might wear out life like thee, mid bowers and brooks, And, dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks, And music of kind voices ever nigh; And when my last sand twinkled in the glass, Pass silently from men, as thou dost pass. THE DAMSEL OF PERU. Where olive leaves were twinkling in every wind that blew, There sat beneath the pleasant shade a damsel of Peru. Betwixt the slender boughs, as they opened to the air, Came glimpses of her ivory neck and of her glossy hair; And sweetly rang her silver voice, within that shady nook, As from the shrubby glen is heard the sound of hidden brook. 'Tis a song of love and valour, in the noble Spanish tongue, That once upon the sunny plains of old Castile was sung; When, from their mountain holds, on the Moorish rout below, Had rushed the Christians like a flood, and swept away the foe. A while that melody is still, and then breaks forth anew A wilder rhyme, a livelier note, of freedom and Peru. For she has bound the sword to a youthful lover's side, And sent him to the war the day she should have been his bride, And bade him bear a faithful heart to battle for the right, And held the fountains of her eyes till he was out of sight. Since the parting kiss was given, six weary months are fled, And yet the foe is in the land, and blood must yet be shed. A white hand parts the branches, a lovely face looks forth, And bright dark eyes gaze steadfastly and sadly toward the north Thou look'st in vain, sweet maiden, the sharpest sight would fail. To spy a sign of human life abroad in all the vale; For the noon is coming on, and the sunbeams fiercely beat, And the silent hills and forest-tops seem reeling in the heat. That white hand is withdrawn, that fair sad face is gone, But the music of that silver voice is flowing sweetly on, Not as of late, in cheerful tones, but mournfully and low,-- A ballad of a tender maid heart-broken long ago, Of him who died in battle, the youthful and the brave, And her who died of sorrow, upon his early grave. But see, along that mountain's slope, a fiery horseman ride; Mark his torn plume, his tarnished belt, the sabre at his side. His spurs are buried rowel-deep, he rides with loosened rein, There's blood upon his charger's flank and foam upon the mane; He speeds him toward the olive-grove, along that shaded hill: God shield the helpless maiden there, if he should mean her ill! And suddenly that song has ceased, and suddenly I hear A shriek sent up amid the shade, a shriek--but not of fear. For tender accents follow, and tenderer pauses speak The overflow of gladness, when words are all too weak: "I lay my good sword at thy feet, for now Peru is free, And I am come to dwell beside the olive-grove with thee." THE AFRICAN CHIEF.° Chained in the market-place he stood, A man of giant frame, Amid the gathering multitude That shrunk to hear his name-- All stern of look and strong of limb, His dark eye on the ground:-- And silently they gazed on him, As on a lion bound. Vainly, but well, that chief had fought, He was a captive now, Yet pride, that fortune humbles not, Was written on his brow. The scars his dark broad bosom wore, Showed warrior true and brave; A prince among his tribe before, He could not be a slave. Then to his conqueror he spake-- "My brother is a king; Undo this necklace from my neck, And take this bracelet ring, And send me where my brother reigns, And I will fill thy hands With store of ivory from the plains, And gold-dust from the sands." "Not for thy ivory nor thy gold Will I unbind thy chain; That bloody hand shall never hold The battle-spear again. A price thy nation never gave Shall yet be paid for thee; For thou shalt be the Christian's slave, In lands beyond the sea." Then wept the warrior chief, and bade To shred his locks away; And one by one, each heavy braid Before the victor lay. Thick were the platted locks, and long, And closely hidden there Shone many a wedge of gold among The dark and crisped hair. "Look, feast thy greedy eye with gold Long kept for sorest need: Take it--thou askest sums untold, And say that I am freed. Take it--my wife, the long, long day, Weeps by the cocoa-tree, And my young children leave their play, And ask in vain for me." "I take thy gold--but I have made Thy fetters fast and strong, And ween that by the cocoa shade Thy wife will wait thee long." Strong was the agony that shook The captive's frame to hear, And the proud meaning of his look Was changed to mortal fear. His heart was broken--crazed his brain: At once his eye grew wild; He struggled fiercely with his chain, Whispered, and wept, and smiled; Yet wore not long those fatal bands, And once, at shut of day, They drew him forth upon the sands, The foul hyena's prey. SPRING IN TOWN. The country ever has a lagging Spring, Waiting for May to call its violets forth, And June its roses--showers and sunshine bring, Slowly, the deepening verdure o'er the earth; To put their foliage out, the woods are slack, And one by one the singing-birds come back. Within the city's bounds the time of flowers Comes earlier. Let a mild and sunny day, Such as full often, for a few bright hours, Breathes through the sky of March the airs of May, Shine on our roofs and chase the wintry gloom-- And lo! our borders glow with sudden bloom. For the wide sidewalks of Broadway are then Gorgeous as are a rivulet's banks in June, That overhung with blossoms, through its glen, Slides soft away beneath the sunny noon, And they who search the untrodden wood for flowers Meet in its depths no lovelier ones than ours. For here are eyes that shame the violet, Or the dark drop that on the pansy lies, And foreheads, white, as when in clusters set, The anemones by forest fountains rise; And the spring-beauty boasts no tenderer streak Than the soft red on many a youthful cheek. And thick about those lovely temples lie Locks that the lucky Vignardonne has curled, Thrice happy man! whose trade it is to buy, And bake, and braid those love-knots of the world; Who curls of every glossy colour keepest, And sellest, it is said, the blackest cheapest. And well thou mayst--for Italy's brown maids Send the dark locks with which their brows are dressed, And Gascon lasses, from their jetty braids, Crop half, to buy a riband for the rest; But the fresh Norman girls their tresses spare, And the Dutch damsel keeps her flaxen hair. Then, henceforth, let no maid nor matron grieve, To see her locks of an unlovely hue, Frouzy or thin, for liberal art shall give Such piles of curls as nature never knew. Eve, with her veil of tresses, at the sight Had blushed, outdone, and owned herself a fright. Soft voices and light laughter wake the street, Like notes of woodbirds, and where'er the eye Threads the long way, plumes wave, and twinkling feet Fall light, as hastes that crowd of beauty by. The ostrich, hurrying o'er the desert space, Scarce bore those tossing plumes with fleeter pace. No swimming Juno gait, of languor born, Is theirs, but a light step of freest grace, Light as Camilla's o'er the unbent corn,-- A step that speaks the spirit of the place, Since Quiet, meek old dame, was driven away To Sing Sing and the shores of Tappan bay. Ye that dash by in chariots! who will care For steeds or footmen now? ye cannot show Fair face, and dazzling dress, and graceful air, And last edition of the shape! Ah no, These sights are for the earth and open sky, And your loud wheels unheeded rattle by. THE GLADNESS OF NATURE. Is this a time to be cloudy and sad, When our mother Nature laughs around; When even the deep blue heavens look glad, And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground? There are notes of joy from the hang-bird and wren, And the gossip of swallows through all the sky; The ground-squirrel gayly chirps by his den, And the wilding bee hums merrily by. The clouds are at play in the azure space, And their shadows at play on the bright green vale, And here they stretch to the frolic chase, And there they roll on the easy gale. There's a dance of leaves in that aspen bower, There's a titter of winds in that beechen tree, There's a smile on the fruit, and a smile on the flower, And a laugh from the brook that runs to the sea. And look at the broad-faced sun, how he smiles On the dewy earth that smiles in his ray, On the leaping waters and gay young isles; Ay, look, and he'll smile thy gloom away. THE DISINTERRED WARRIOR. Gather him to his grave again, And solemnly and softly lay, Beneath the verdure of the plain, The warrior's scattered bones away. Pay the deep reverence, taught of old, The homage of man's heart to death; Nor dare to trifle with the mould Once hallowed by the Almighty's breath. The soul hath quickened every part-- That remnant of a martial brow, Those ribs that held the mighty heart, That strong arm--strong no longer now. Spare them, each mouldering relic spare, Of God's own image; let them rest, Till not a trace shall speak of where The awful likeness was impressed. For he was fresher from the hand That formed of earth the human face, And to the elements did stand In nearer kindred, than our race. In many a flood to madness tossed, In many a storm has been his path; He hid him not from heat or frost, But met them, and defied their wrath. Then they were kind--the forests here, Rivers, and stiller waters, paid A tribute to the net and spear Of the red ruler of the shade. Fruits on the woodland branches lay, Roots in the shaded soil below, The stars looked forth to teach his way, The still earth warned him of the foe. A noble race! but they are gone, With their old forests wide and deep, And we have built our homes upon Fields where their generations sleep. Their fountains slake our thirst at noon, Upon their fields our harvest waves, Our lovers woo beneath their moon-- Then let us spare, at least, their graves! MIDSUMMER. A SONNET. A power is on the earth and in the air, From which the vital spirit shrinks afraid, And shelters him, in nooks of deepest shade, From the hot steam and from the fiery glare. Look forth upon the earth--her thousand plants Are smitten; even the dark sun-loving maize Faints in the field beneath the torrid blaze; The herd beside the shaded fountain pants; For life is driven from all the landscape brown; The bird has sought his tree, the snake his den, The trout floats dead in the hot stream, and men Drop by the sun-stroke in the populous town: As if the Day of Fire had dawned, and sent Its deadly breath into the firmament. THE GREEK PARTISAN. Our free flag is dancing In the free mountain air, And burnished arms are glancing, And warriors gathering there; And fearless is the little train Whose gallant bosoms shield it; The blood that warms their hearts shall stain That banner, ere they yield it. --Each dark eye is fixed on earth, And brief each solemn greeting; There is no look nor sound of mirth, Where those stern men are meeting. They go to the slaughter, To strike the sudden blow, And pour on earth, like water, The best blood of the foe; To rush on them from rock and height, And clear the narrow valley, Or fire their camp at dead of night, And fly before they rally. --Chains are round our country pressed, And cowards have betrayed her, And we must make her bleeding breast The grave of the invader. Not till from her fetters We raise up Greece again, And write, in bloody letters, That tyranny is slain,-- Oh, not till then the smile shall steal Across those darkened faces, Nor one of all those warriors feel His children's dear embraces, --Reap we not the ripened wheat, Till yonder hosts are flying, And all their bravest, at our feet, Like autumn sheaves are lying. THE TWO GRAVES. 'Tis a bleak wild hill,--but green and bright In the summer warmth and the mid-day light; There's the hum of the bee and the chirp of the wren, And the dash of the brook from the alder glen; There's the sound of a bell from the scattered flock, And the shade of the beech lies cool on the rock, And fresh from the west is the free wind's breath,-- There is nothing here that speaks of death. Far yonder, where orchards and gardens lie, And dwellings cluster, 'tis there men die. They are born, they die, and are buried near, Where the populous grave-yard lightens the bier; For strict and close are the ties that bind In death the children of human-kind; Yea, stricter and closer than those of life,-- 'Tis a neighbourhood that knows no strife. They are noiselessly gathered--friend and foe-- To the still and dark assemblies below: Without a frown or a smile they meet, Each pale and calm in his winding-sheet; In that sullen home of peace and gloom, Crowded, like guests in a banquet-room. Yet there are graves in this lonely spot, Two humble graves,--but I meet them not. I have seen them,--eighteen years are past, Since I found their place in the brambles last,-- The place where, fifty winters ago, An aged man in his locks of snow, And an aged matron, withered with years, Were solemnly laid!--but not with tears. For none, who sat by the light of their hearth, Beheld their coffins covered with earth; Their kindred were far, and their children dead, When the funeral prayer was coldly said. Two low green hillocks, two small gray stones, Rose over the place that held their bones; But the grassy hillocks are levelled again, And the keenest eye might search in vain, 'Mong briers, and ferns, and paths of sheep, For the spot where the aged couple sleep. Yet well might they lay, beneath the soil Of this lonely spot, that man of toil, And trench the strong hard mould with the spade, Where never before a grave was made; For he hewed the dark old woods away, And gave the virgin fields to the day; And the gourd and the bean, beside his door, Bloomed where their flowers ne'er opened before; And the maize stood up; and the bearded rye Bent low in the breath of an unknown sky. 'Tis said that when life is ended here, The spirit is borne to a distant sphere; That it visits its earthly home no more, Nor looks on the haunts it loved before. But why should the bodiless soul be sent Far off, to a long, long banishment? Talk not of the light and the living green! It will pine for the dear familiar scene; It will yearn, in that strange bright world, to behold The rock and the stream it knew of old. 'Tis a cruel creed, believe it not! Death to the good is a milder lot. They are here,--they are here,--that harmless pair, In the yellow sunshine and flowing air, In the light cloud-shadows that slowly pass, In the sounds that rise from the murmuring grass. They sit where their humble cottage stood, They walk by the waving edge of the wood, And list to the long-accustomed flow Of the brook that wets the rocks below. Patient, and peaceful, and passionless, As seasons on seasons swiftly press, They watch, and wait, and linger around, Till the day when their bodies shall leave the ground. THE CONJUNCTION OF JUPITER AND VENUS.° I would not always reason. The straight path Wearies us with its never-varying lines, And we grow melancholy. I would make Reason my guide, but she should sometimes sit Patiently by the way-side, while I traced The mazes of the pleasant wilderness Around me. She should be my counsellor, But not my tyrant. For the spirit needs Impulses from a deeper source than hers, And there are motions, in the mind of man, That she must look upon with awe. I bow Reverently to her dictates, but not less Hold to the fair illusions of old time-- Illusions that shed brightness over life, And glory over nature. Look, even now, Where two bright planets in the twilight meet, Upon the saffron heaven,--the imperial star Of Jove, and she that from her radiant urn Pours forth the light of love. Let me believe, Awhile, that they are met for ends of good, Amid the evening glory, to confer Of men and their affairs, and to shed down Kind influence. Lo! they brighten as we gaze, And shake out softer fires! The great earth feels The gladness and the quiet of the time. Meekly the mighty river, that infolds This mighty city, smooths his front, and far Glitters and burns even to the rocky base Of the dark heights that bound him to the west; And a deep murmur, from the many streets, Rises like a thanksgiving. Put we hence Dark and sad thoughts awhile--there's time for them Hereafter--on the morrow we will meet, With melancholy looks, to tell our griefs, And make each other wretched; this calm hour, This balmy, blessed evening, we will give To cheerful hopes and dreams of happy days, Born of the meeting of those glorious stars. Enough of drought has parched the year, and scared The land with dread of famine. Autumn, yet, Shall make men glad with unexpected fruits. The dog-star shall shine harmless: genial days Shall softly glide away into the keen And wholesome cold of winter; he that fears The pestilence, shall gaze on those pure beams, And breathe, with confidence, the quiet air. Emblems of power and beauty! well may they Shine brightest on our borders, and withdraw Towards the great Pacific, marking out The path of empire. Thus, in our own land, Ere long, the better Genius of our race, Having encompassed earth, and tamed its tribes, Shall sit him down beneath the farthest west, By the shore of that calm ocean, and look back On realms made happy. Light the nuptial torch, And say the glad, yet solemn rite, that knits The youth and maiden. Happy days to them That wed this evening!--a long life of love, And blooming sons and daughters! Happy they Born at this hour,--for they shall see an age Whiter and holier than the past, and go Late to their graves. Men shall wear softer hearts, And shudder at the butcheries of war, As now at other murders. Hapless Greece! Enough of blood has wet thy rocks, and stained Thy rivers; deep enough thy chains have worn Their links into thy flesh; the sacrifice Of thy pure maidens, and thy innocent babes, And reverend priests, has expiated all Thy crimes of old. In yonder mingling lights There is an omen of good days for thee. Thou shalt arise from midst the dust and sit Again among the nations. Thine own arm Shall yet redeem thee. Not in wars like thine The world takes part. Be it a strife of kings,-- Despot with despot battling for a throne,-- And Europe shall be stirred throughout her realms, Nations shall put on harness, and shall fall Upon each other, and in all their bounds The wailing of the childless shall not cease. Thine is a war for liberty, and thou Must fight it single-handed. The old world Looks coldly on the murderers of thy race, And leaves thee to the struggle; and the new,-- I fear me thou couldst tell a shameful tale Of fraud and lust of gain;--thy treasury drained, And Missolonghi fallen. Yet thy wrongs Shall put new strength into thy heart and hand, And God and thy good sword shall yet work out, For thee, a terrible deliverance. A SUMMER RAMBLE. The quiet August noon has come, A slumberous silence fills the sky, The fields are still, the woods are dumb, In glassy sleep the waters lie. And mark yon soft white clouds that rest Above our vale, a moveless throng; The cattle on the mountain's breast Enjoy the grateful shadow long. Oh, how unlike those merry hours In early June when Earth laughs out, When the fresh winds make love to flowers, And woodlands sing and waters shout. When in the grass sweet voices talk, And strains of tiny music swell From every moss-cup of the rock, From every nameless blossom's bell. But now a joy too deep for sound, A peace no other season knows, Hushes the heavens and wraps the ground, The blessing of supreme repose. Away! I will not be, to-day, The only slave of toil and care. Away from desk and dust! away! I'll be as idle as the air. Beneath the open sky abroad, Among the plants and breathing things, The sinless, peaceful works of God, I'll share the calm the season brings. Come, thou, in whose soft eyes I see The gentle meanings of thy heart, One day amid the woods with me, From men and all their cares apart. And where, upon the meadow's breast, The shadow of the thicket lies, The blue wild flowers thou gatherest Shall glow yet deeper near thine eyes. Come, and when mid the calm profound, I turn, those gentle eyes to seek, They, like the lovely landscape round, Of innocence and peace shall speak. Rest here, beneath the unmoving shade, And on the silent valleys gaze, Winding and widening, till they fade In yon soft ring of summer haze. The village trees their summits rear Still as its spire, and yonder flock At rest in those calm fields appear As chiselled from the lifeless rock. One tranquil mount the scene o'erlooks-- There the hushed winds their sabbath keep While a near hum from bees and brooks Comes faintly like the breath of sleep. Well may the gazer deem that when, Worn with the struggle and the strife, And heart-sick at the wrongs of men, The good forsakes the scene of life; Like this deep quiet that, awhile, Lingers the lovely landscape o'er, Shall be the peace whose holy smile Welcomes him to a happier shore. A SCENE ON THE BANKS OF THE HUDSON. Cool shades and dews are round my way, And silence of the early day; Mid the dark rocks that watch his bed, Glitters the mighty Hudson spread, Unrippled, save by drops that fall From shrubs that fringe his mountain wall; And o'er the clear still water swells The music of the Sabbath bells. All, save this little nook of land Circled with trees, on which I stand; All, save that line of hills which lie Suspended in the mimic sky-- Seems a blue void, above, below, Through which the white clouds come and go, And from the green world's farthest steep I gaze into the airy deep. Loveliest of lovely things are they, On earth, that soonest pass away. The rose that lives its little hour Is prized beyond the sculptured flower. Even love, long tried and cherished long, Becomes more tender and more strong, At thought of that insatiate grave From which its yearnings cannot save. River! in this still hour thou hast Too much of heaven on earth to last; Nor long may thy still waters lie, An image of the glorious sky. Thy fate and mine are not repose, And ere another evening close, Thou to thy tides shalt turn again, And I to seek the crowd of men. THE HURRICANE.° Lord of the winds! I feel thee nigh, I know thy breath in the burning sky! And I wait, with a thrill in every vein, For the coming of the hurricane! And lo! on the wing of the heavy gales, Through the boundless arch of heaven he sails; Silent and slow, and terribly strong, The mighty shadow is borne along, Like the dark eternity to come; While the world below, dismayed and dumb, Through the calm of the thick hot atmosphere Looks up at its gloomy folds with fear. They darken fast; and the golden blaze Of the sun is quenched in the lurid haze, And he sends through the shade a funeral ray-- A glare that is neither night nor day, A beam that touches, with hues of death, The clouds above and the earth beneath. To its covert glides the silent bird, While the hurricane's distant voice is heard, Uplifted among the mountains round, And the forests hear and answer the sound. He is come! he is come! do ye not behold His ample robes on the wind unrolled? Giant of air! we bid thee hail!-- How his gray skirts toss in the whirling gale; How his huge and writhing arms are bent, To clasp the zone of the firmament, And fold at length, in their dark embrace, From mountain to mountain the visible space. Darker--still darker! the whirlwinds bear The dust of the plains to the middle air: And hark to the crashing, long and loud, Of the chariot of God in the thunder-cloud! You may trace its path by the flashes that start From the rapid wheels where'er they dart, As the fire-bolts leap to the world below, And flood the skies with a lurid glow. What roar is that?--'tis the rain that breaks In torrents away from the airy lakes, Heavily poured on the shuddering ground, And shedding a nameless horror round. Ah! well known woods, and mountains, and skies, With the very clouds!--ye are lost to my eyes. I seek ye vainly, and see in your place The shadowy tempest that sweeps through space, A whirling ocean that fills the wall Of the crystal heaven, and buries all. And I, cut off from the world, remain Alone with the terrible hurricane. WILLIAM TELL.º A SONNET. Chains may subdue the feeble spirit, but thee, Tell, of the iron heart! they could not tame! For thou wert of the mountains; they proclaim The everlasting creed of liberty. That creed is written on the untrampled snow, Thundered by torrents which no power can hold, Save that of God, when he sends forth his cold, And breathed by winds that through the free heaven blow. Thou, while thy prison walls were dark around, Didst meditate the lesson Nature taught, And to thy brief captivity was brought A vision of thy Switzerland unbound. The bitter cup they mingled, strengthened thee For the great work to set thy country free. THE HUNTER'S SERENADE.° Thy bower is finished, fairest! Fit bower for hunter's bride-- Where old woods overshadow The green savanna's side. I've wandered long, and wandered far, And never have I met, In all this lovely western land, A spot so lovely yet. But I shall think it fairer, When thou art come to bless, With thy sweet smile and silver voice, Its silent loveliness. For thee the wild grape glistens, On sunny knoll and tree, The slim papaya ripens Its yellow fruit for thee. For thee the duck, on glassy stream, The prairie-fowl shall die, My rifle for thy feast shall bring The wild swan from the sky. The forest's leaping panther, Fierce, beautiful, and fleet, Shall yield his spotted hide to be A carpet for thy feet. I know, for thou hast told me, Thy maiden love of flowers; Ah, those that deck thy gardens Are pale compared with ours. When our wide woods and mighty lawns Bloom to the April skies, The earth has no more gorgeous sight To show to human eyes. In meadows red with blossoms, All summer long, the bee Murmurs, and loads his yellow thighs, For thee, my love, and me. Or wouldst thou gaze at tokens Of ages long ago-- Our old oaks stream with mosses, And sprout with mistletoe; And mighty vines, like serpents, climb The giant sycamore; And trunks, o'erthrown for centuries, Cumber the forest floor; And in the great savanna, The solitary mound, Built by the elder world, o'erlooks The loneliness around. Come, thou hast not forgotten Thy pledge and promise quite, With many blushes murmured, Beneath the evening light. Come, the young violets crowd my door, Thy earliest look to win, And at my silent window-sill The jessamine peeps in. All day the red-bird warbles, Upon the mulberry near, And the night-sparrow trills her song, All night, with none to hear. THE GREEK BOY. Gone are the glorious Greeks of old, Glorious in mien and mind; Their bones are mingled with the mould, Their dust is on the wind; The forms they hewed from living stone Survive the waste of years, alone, And, scattered with their ashes, show What greatness perished long ago. Yet fresh the myrtles there--the springs Gush brightly as of yore; Flowers blossom from the dust of kings, As many an age before. There nature moulds as nobly now, As e'er of old, the human brow; And copies still the martial form That braved Platæa's battle storm. Boy! thy first looks were taught to seek Their heaven in Hellas' skies: Her airs have tinged thy dusky cheek, Her sunshine lit thine eyes; Thine ears have drunk the woodland strains Heard by old poets, and thy veins Swell with the blood of demigods, That slumber in thy country's sods. Now is thy nation free--though late-- Thy elder brethren broke-- Broke, ere thy spirit felt its weight, The intolerable yoke. And Greece, decayed, dethroned, doth see Her youth renewed in such as thee: A shoot of that old vine that made The nations silent in its shade. THE PAST. Thou unrelenting Past! Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain, And fetters, sure and fast, Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign. Far in thy realm withdrawn Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom, And glorious ages gone Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb. Childhood, with all its mirth, Youth, Manhood, Age, that draws us to the ground, And last, Man's Life on earth, Glide to thy dim dominions, and are bound. Thou hast my better years, Thou hast my earlier friends--the good--the kind, Yielded to thee with tears-- The venerable form--the exalted mind. My spirit yearns to bring The lost ones back--yearns with desire intense, And struggles hard to wring Thy bolts apart, and pluck thy captives thence. In vain--thy gates deny All passage save to those who hence depart; Nor to the streaming eye Thou giv'st them back--nor to the broken heart. In thy abysses hide Beauty and excellence unknown--to thee Earth's wonder and her pride Are gathered, as the waters to the sea; Labours of good to man, Unpublished charity, unbroken faith,-- Love, that midst grief began, And grew with years, and faltered not in death. Full many a mighty name Lurks in thy depths, unuttered, unrevered; With thee are silent fame, Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappeared. Thine for a space are they-- Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last; Thy gates shall yet give way, Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past! All that of good and fair Has gone into thy womb from earliest time, Shall then come forth to wear The glory and the beauty of its prime. They have not perished--no! Kind words, remembered voices once so sweet, Smiles, radiant long ago, And features, the great soul's apparent seat. All shall come back, each tie Of pure affection shall be knit again; Alone shall Evil die, And Sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign. And then shall I behold Him, by whose kind paternal side I sprung, And her, who, still and cold, Fills the next grave--the beautiful and young. "UPON THE MOUNTAIN'S DISTANT HEAD." Upon the mountain's distant head, With trackless snows for ever white, Where all is still, and cold, and dead, Late shines the day's departing light. But far below those icy rocks, The vales, in summer bloom arrayed, Woods full of birds, and fields of flocks, Are dim with mist and dark with shade. 'Tis thus, from warm and kindly hearts, And eyes where generous meanings burn, Earliest the light of life departs, But lingers with the cold and stern. THE EVENING WIND. Spirit that breathest through my lattice, thou That cool'st the twilight of the sultry day, Gratefully flows thy freshness round my brow: Thou hast been out upon the deep at play, Riding all day the wild blue waves till now, Roughening their crests, and scattering high their spray And swelling the white sail. I welcome thee To the scorched land, thou wanderer of the sea! Nor I alone--a thousand bosoms round Inhale thee in the fulness of delight; And languid forms rise up, and pulses bound Livelier, at coming of the wind of night; And, languishing to hear thy grateful sound, Lies the vast inland stretched beyond the sight. Go forth into the gathering shade; go forth, God's blessing breathed upon the fainting earth! Go, rock the little wood-bird in his nest, Curl the still waters, bright with stars, and rouse The wide old wood from his majestic rest, Summoning from the innumerable boughs The strange, deep harmonies that haunt his breast: Pleasant shall be thy way where meekly bows The shutting flower, and darkling waters pass, And where the o'ershadowing branches sweep the grass. The faint old man shall lean his silver head To feel thee; thou shalt kiss the child asleep, And dry the moistened curls that overspread His temples, while his breathing grows more deep: And they who stand about the sick man's bed, Shall joy to listen to thy distant sweep, And softly part his curtains to allow Thy visit, grateful to his burning brow. Go--but the circle of eternal change, Which is the life of nature, shall restore, With sounds and scents from all thy mighty range Thee to thy birthplace of the deep once more; Sweet odours in the sea-air, sweet and strange, Shall tell the home-sick mariner of the shore; And, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem He hears the rustling leaf and running stream. "WHEN THE FIRMAMENT QUIVERS WITH DAYLIGHT'S YOUNG BEAM." When the firmament quivers with daylight's young beam, And the woodlands awaking burst into a hymn, And the glow of the sky blazes back from the stream, How the bright ones of heaven in the brightness grow dim. Oh! 'tis sad, in that moment of glory and song, To see, while the hill-tops are waiting the sun, The glittering band that kept watch all night long O'er Love and o'er Slumber, go out one by one: Till the circle of ether, deep, ruddy, and vast, Scarce glimmers with one of the train that were there; And their leader the day-star, the brightest and last, Twinkles faintly and fades in that desert of air. Thus, Oblivion, from midst of whose shadow we came, Steals o'er us again when life's twilight is gone; And the crowd of bright names, in the heaven of fame, Grow pale and are quenched as the years hasten on. Let them fade--but we'll pray that the age, in whose flight, Of ourselves and our friends the remembrance shall die May rise o'er the world, with the gladness and light Of the morning that withers the stars from the sky. "INNOCENT CHILD AND SNOW-WHITE FLOWER." Innocent child and snow-white flower! Well are ye paired in your opening hour. Thus should the pure and the lovely meet, Stainless with stainless, and sweet with sweet. White as those leaves, just blown apart, Are the folds of thy own young heart; Guilty passion and cankering care Never have left their traces there. Artless one! though thou gazest now O'er the white blossom with earnest brow, Soon will it tire thy childish eye; Fair as it is, thou wilt throw it by. Throw it aside in thy weary hour, Throw to the ground the fair white flower; Yet, as thy tender years depart, Keep that white and innocent heart. TO THE RIVER ARVE. SUPPOSED TO BE WRITTEN AT A HAMLET NEAR THE FOOT OF MONT BLANC. Not from the sands or cloven rocks, Thou rapid Arve! thy waters flow; Nor earth, within her bosom, locks Thy dark unfathomed wells below. Thy springs are in the cloud, thy stream Begins to move and murmur first Where ice-peaks feel the noonday beam, Or rain-storms on the glacier burst. Born where the thunder and the blast, And morning's earliest light are born, Thou rushest swoln, and loud, and fast, By these low homes, as if in scorn: Yet humbler springs yield purer waves; And brighter, glassier streams than thine, Sent up from earth's unlighted caves, With heaven's own beam and image shine. Yet stay; for here are flowers and trees; Warm rays on cottage roofs are here, And laugh of girls, and hum of bees-- Here linger till thy waves are clear. Thou heedest not--thou hastest on; From steep to steep thy torrent falls, Till, mingling with the mighty Rhone, It rests beneath Geneva's walls. Rush on--but were there one with me That loved me, I would light my hearth Here, where with God's own majesty Are touched the features of the earth. By these old peaks, white, high, and vast, Still rising as the tempests beat, Here would I dwell, and sleep, at last, Among the blossoms at their feet. TO COLE, THE PAINTER, DEPARTING FOR EUROPE. A SONNET. Thine eyes shall see the light of distant skies: Yet, COLE! thy heart shall bear to Europe's strand A living image of thy native land, Such as on thine own glorious canvas lies; Lone lakes--savannas where the bison roves-- Rocks rich with summer garlands--solemn streams-- Skies, where the desert eagle wheels and screams-- Spring bloom and autumn blaze of boundless groves. Fair scenes shall greet thee where thou goest--fair, But different--everywhere the trace of men, Paths, homes, graves, ruins, from the lowest glen To where life shrinks from the fierce Alpine air, Gaze on them, till the tears shall dim thy sight, But keep that earlier, wilder image bright. TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN. Thou blossom bright with autumn dew, And coloured with the heaven's own blue, That openest when the quiet light Succeeds the keen and frosty night. Thou comest not when violets lean O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen, Or columbines, in purple dressed, Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest. Thou waitest late and com'st alone, When woods are bare and birds are flown, And frosts and shortening days portend The aged year is near his end. Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye Look through its fringes to the sky, Blue--blue--as if that sky let fall A flower from its cerulean wall. I would that thus, when I shall see The hour of death draw near to me, Hope, blossoming within my heart, May look to heaven as I depart. THE TWENTY-SECOND OF DECEMBER. Wild was the day; the wintry sea Moaned sadly on New-England's strand, When first the thoughtful and the free, Our fathers, trod the desert land. They little thought how pure a light, With years, should gather round that day; How love should keep their memories bright, How wide a realm their sons should sway. Green are their bays; but greener still Shall round their spreading fame be wreathed, And regions, now untrod, shall thrill With reverence when their names are breathed. Till where the sun, with softer fires, Looks on the vast Pacific's sleep, The children of the pilgrim sires This hallowed day like us shall keep. HYMN OF THE CITY. Not in the solitude Alone may man commune with Heaven, or see Only in savage wood And sunny vale, the present Deity; Or only hear his voice Where the winds whisper and the waves rejoice. Even here do I behold Thy steps, Almighty!--here, amidst the crowd, Through the great city rolled, With everlasting murmur deep and loud-- Choking the ways that wind 'Mongst the proud piles, the work of human kind. Thy golden sunshine comes From the round heaven, and on their dwellings lies, And lights their inner homes; For them thou fill'st with air the unbounded skies, And givest them the stores Of ocean, and the harvests of its shores. Thy Spirit is around, Quickening the restless mass that sweeps along; And this eternal sound-- Voices and footfalls of the numberless throng-- Like the resounding sea, Or like the rainy tempest, speaks of thee. And when the hours of rest Come, like a calm upon the mid-sea brine, Hushing its billowy breast-- The quiet of that moment too is thine, It breathes of Him who keeps The vast and helpless city while it sleeps. THE PRAIRIES.° These are the gardens of the Desert, these The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful, For which the speech of England has no name-- The Prairies. I behold them for the first, And my heart swells, while the dilated sight Takes in the encircling vastness. Lo! they stretch In airy undulations, far away, As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell, Stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed, And motionless for ever.--Motionless?-- No--they are all unchained again. The clouds Sweep over with their shadows, and, beneath, The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye; Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase The sunny ridges. Breezes of the South! Who toss the golden and the flame-like flowers, And pass the prairie-hawk that, poised on high, Flaps his broad wings, yet moves not--ye have played Among the palms of Mexico and vines Of Texas, and have crisped the limpid brooks That from the fountains of Sonora glide Into the calm Pacific--have ye fanned A nobler or a lovelier scene than this? Man hath no part in all this glorious work: The hand that built the firmament hath heaved And smoothed these verdant swells, and sown their slopes With herbage, planted them with island groves, And hedged them round with forests. Fitting floor For this magnificent temple of the sky-- With flowers whose glory and whose multitude Rival the constellations! The great heavens Seem to stoop down upon the scene in love,-- A nearer vault, and of a tenderer blue, Than that which bends above the eastern hills. As o'er the verdant waste I guide my steed, Among the high rank grass that sweeps his sides The hollow beating of his footstep seems A sacrilegious sound. I think of those Upon whose rest he tramples. Are they here-- The dead of other days?--and did the dust Of these fair solitudes once stir with life And burn with passion? Let the mighty mounds That overlook the rivers, or that rise In the dim forest crowded with old oaks, Answer. A race, that long has passed away, Built them;--a disciplined and populous race Heaped, with long toil, the earth, while yet the Greek Was hewing the Pentelicus to forms Of symmetry, and rearing on its rock The glittering Parthenon. These ample fields Nourished their harvests, here their herds were fed, When haply by their stalls the bison lowed, And bowed his maned shoulder to the yoke. All day this desert murmured with their toils, Till twilight blushed, and lovers walked, and wooed In a forgotten language, and old tunes, From instruments of unremembered form, Gave the soft winds a voice. The red man came-- The roaming hunter tribes, warlike and fierce, And the mound-builders vanished from the earth. The solitude of centuries untold Has settled where they dwelt. The prairie-wolf Hunts in their meadows, and his fresh-dug den Yawns by my path. The gopher mines the ground Where stood their swarming cities. All is gone-- All--save the piles of earth that hold their bones-- The platforms where they worshipped unknown gods-- The barriers which they builded from the soil To keep the foe at bay--till o'er the walls The wild beleaguerers broke, and, one by one, The strongholds of the plain were forced, and heaped With corpses. The brown vultures of the wood Flocked to those vast uncovered sepulchres, And sat, unscared and silent, at their feast. Haply some solitary fugitive, Lurking in marsh and forest, till the sense Of desolation and of fear became Bitterer than death, yielded himself to die. Man's better nature triumphed then. Kind words Welcomed and soothed him; the rude conquerors Seated the captive with their chiefs; he chose A bride among their maidens, and at length Seemed to forget,--yet ne'er forgot,--the wife Of his first love, and her sweet little ones, Butchered, amid their shrieks, with all his race. Thus change the forms of being. Thus arise Races of living things, glorious in strength, And perish, as the quickening breath of God Fills them, or is withdrawn. The red man, too, Has left the blooming wilds he ranged so long, And, nearer to the Rocky Mountains, sought A wilder hunting-ground. The beaver builds No longer by these streams, but far away, On waters whose blue surface ne'er gave back The white man's face--among Missouri's springs, And pools whose issues swell the Oregan, He rears his little Venice. In these plains The bison feeds no more. Twice twenty leagues Beyond remotest smoke of hunter's camp, Roams the majestic brute, in herds that shake The earth with thundering steps--yet here I meet His ancient footprints stamped beside the pool. Still this great solitude is quick with life. Myriads of insects, gaudy as the flowers They flutter over, gentle quadrupeds, And birds, that scarce have learned the fear of man, Are here, and sliding reptiles of the ground, Startlingly beautiful. The graceful deer Bounds to the wood at my approach. The bee, A more adventurous colonist than man, With whom he came across the eastern deep, Fills the savannas with his murmurings, And hides his sweets, as in the golden age, Within the hollow oak. I listen long To his domestic hum, and think I hear The sound of that advancing multitude Which soon shall fill these deserts. From the ground Comes up the laugh of children, the soft voice Of maidens, and the sweet and solemn hymn Of Sabbath worshippers. The low of herds Blends with the rustling of the heavy grain Over the dark-brown furrows. All at once A fresher wind sweeps by, and breaks my dream, And I am in the wilderness alone. SONG OF MARION'S MEN.° Our band is few, but true and tried, Our leader frank and bold; The British soldier trembles When Marion's name is told. Our fortress is the good greenwood, Our tent the cypress-tree; We know the forest round us, As seamen know the sea. We know its walls of thorny vines, Its glades of reedy grass, Its safe and silent islands Within the dark morass. Wo to the English soldiery That little dread us near! On them shall light at midnight A strange and sudden fear: When waking to their tents on fire They grasp their arms in vain, And they who stand to face us Are beat to earth again; And they who fly in terror deem A mighty host behind, And hear the tramp of thousands Upon the hollow wind. Then sweet the hour that brings release From danger and from toil: We talk the battle over, And share the battle's spoil. The woodland rings with laugh and shout, As if a hunt were up, And woodland flowers are gathered To crown the soldier's cup. With merry songs we mock the wind That in the pine-top grieves, And slumber long and sweetly On beds of oaken leaves. Well knows the fair and friendly moon The band that Marion leads-- The glitter of their rifles, The scampering of their steeds. 'Tis life to guide the fiery barb Across the moonlight plain; 'Tis life to feel the night-wind That lifts his tossing mane. A moment in the British camp-- A moment--and away Back to the pathless forest, Before the peep of day. Grave men there are by broad Santee, Grave men with hoary hairs, Their hearts are all with Marion, For Marion are their prayers. And lovely ladies greet our band With kindliest welcoming, With smiles like those of summer, And tears like those of spring. For them we wear these trusty arms, And lay them down no more Till we have driven the Briton, For ever, from our shore. THE ARCTIC LOVER. Gone is the long, long winter night; Look, my beloved one! How glorious, through his depths of light, Rolls the majestic sun! The willows, waked from winter's death, Give out a fragrance like thy breath-- The summer is begun! Ay, 'tis the long bright summer day: Hark, to that mighty crash! The loosened ice-ridge breaks away-- The smitten waters flash. Seaward the glittering mountain rides, While, down its green translucent sides, The foamy torrents dash. See, love, my boat is moored for thee, By ocean's weedy floor-- The petrel does not skim the sea More swiftly than my oar. We'll go, where, on the rocky isles, Her eggs the screaming sea-fowl piles Beside the pebbly shore. Or, bide thou where the poppy blows, With wind-flowers frail and fair, While I, upon his isle of snows, Seek and defy the bear. Fierce though he be, and huge of frame, This arm his savage strength shall tame, And drag him from his lair. When crimson sky and flamy cloud Bespeak the summer o'er, And the dead valleys wear a shroud Of snows that melt no more, I'll build of ice thy winter home, With glistening walls and glassy dome, And spread with skins the floor. The white fox by thy couch shall play; And, from the frozen skies, The meteors of a mimic day Shall flash upon thine eyes. And I--for such thy vow--meanwhile Shall hear thy voice and see thy smile, Till that long midnight flies. THE JOURNEY OF LIFE. Beneath the waning moon I walk at night, And muse on human life--for all around Are dim uncertain shapes that cheat the sight, And pitfalls lurk in shade along the ground, And broken gleams of brightness, here and there, Glance through, and leave unwarmed the death-like air. The trampled earth returns a sound of fear-- A hollow sound, as if I walked on tombs! And lights, that tell of cheerful homes, appear Far off, and die like hope amid the glooms. A mournful wind across the landscape flies, And the wide atmosphere is full of sighs. And I, with faltering footsteps, journey on, Watching the stars that roll the hours away, Till the faint light that guides me now is gone, And, like another life, the glorious day Shall open o'er me from the empyreal height, With warmth, and certainty, and boundless light. * * * * * TRANSLATIONS. * * * * * TRANSLATIONS. VERSION OF A FRAGMENT OF SIMONIDES. The night winds howled--the billows dashed Against the tossing chest; And Danaë to her broken heart Her slumbering infant pressed. "My little child"--in tears she said-- "To wake and weep is mine, But thou canst sleep--thou dost not know Thy mother's lot, and thine. "The moon is up, the moonbeams smile-- They tremble on the main; But dark, within my floating cell, To me they smile in vain. "Thy folded mantle wraps thee warm, Thy clustering locks are dry, Thou dost not hear the shrieking gust, Nor breakers booming high. "As o'er thy sweet unconscious face A mournful watch I keep, I think, didst thou but know thy fate, How thou wouldst also weep. "Yet, dear one, sleep, and sleep, ye winds That vex the restless brine-- When shall these eyes, my babe, be sealed As peacefully as thine!" FROM THE SPANISH OF VILLEGAS. 'Tis sweet, in the green Spring, To gaze upon the wakening fields around; Birds in the thicket sing, Winds whisper, waters prattle from the ground; A thousand odours rise, Breathed up from blossoms of a thousand dyes. Shadowy, and close, and cool, The pine and poplar keep their quiet nook; For ever fresh and full, Shines, at their feet, the thirst-inviting brook; And the soft herbage seems Spread for a place of banquets and of dreams. Thou, who alone art fair, And whom alone I love, art far away. Unless thy smile be there, It makes me sad to see the earth so gay; I care not if the train Of leaves, and flowers, and zephyrs go again. MARY MAGDALEN.° FROM THE SPANISH OF BARTOLOME LEONARDO DE ARGENSOLA. Blessed, yet sinful one, and broken-hearted! The crowd are pointing at the thing forlorn, In wonder and in scorn! Thou weepest days of innocence departed; Thou weepest, and thy tears have power to move The Lord to pity and love. The greatest of thy follies is forgiven, Even for the least of all the tears that shine On that pale cheek of thine. Thou didst kneel down, to Him who came from heaven, Evil and ignorant, and thou shalt rise Holy, and pure, and wise. It is not much that to the fragrant blossom The ragged brier should change; the bitter fir Distil Arabian myrrh! Nor that, upon the wintry desert's bosom, The harvest should rise plenteous, and the swain Bear home the abundant grain. But come and see the bleak and barren mountains Thick to their tops with roses: come and see Leaves on the dry dead tree: The perished plant, set out by living fountains, Grows fruitful, and its beauteous branches rise, For ever, towards the skies. THE LIFE OF THE BLESSED. FROM THE SPANISH OF LUIS PONCE DE LEON. Region of life and light! Land of the good whose earthly toils are o'er! Nor frost nor heat may blight Thy vernal beauty, fertile shore, Yielding thy blessed fruits for evermore! There without crook or sling, Walks the good shepherd; blossoms white and red Round his meek temples cling; And to sweet pastures led, His own loved flock beneath his eye is fed. He guides, and near him they Follow delighted, for he makes them go Where dwells eternal May, And heavenly roses blow, Deathless, and gathered but again to grow. He leads them to the height Named of the infinite and long-sought Good, And fountains of delight; And where his feet have stood Springs up, along the way, their tender food. And when, in the mid skies, The climbing sun has reached his highest bound, Reposing as he lies, With all his flock around, He witches the still air with numerous sound. From his sweet lute flow forth Immortal harmonies, of power to still All passions born of earth, And draw the ardent will Its destiny of goodness to fulfil. Might but a little part, A wandering breath of that high melody, Descend into my heart, And change it till it be Transformed and swallowed up, oh love! in thee. Ah! then my soul should know, Beloved! where thou liest at noon of day, And from this place of woe Released, should take its way To mingle with thy flock and never stray. FATIMA AND RADUAN.° FROM THE SPANISH. Diamante falso y fingido, Engastado en pedernal, &c. "False diamond set in flint! the caverns of the mine Are warmer than the breast that holds that faithless heart of thine; Thou art fickle as the sea, thou art wandering as the wind, And the restless ever-mounting flame is not more hard to bind. If the tears I shed were tongues, yet all too few would be To tell of all the treachery that thou hast shown to me. Oh! I could chide thee sharply--but every maiden knows That she who chides her lover, forgives him ere he goes. "Thou hast called me oft the flower of all Grenada's maids, Thou hast said that by the side of me the first and fairest fades; And they thought thy heart was mine, and it seemed to every one That what thou didst to win my love, from love of me was done. Alas! if they but knew thee, as mine it is to know, They well might see another mark to which thine arrows go; But thou giv'st me little heed--for I speak to one who knows That she who chides her lover, forgives him ere he goes. "It wearies me, mine enemy, that I must weep and bear What fills thy heart with triumph, and fills my own with care. Thou art leagued with those that hate me, and ah! thou know'st I feel That cruel words as surely kill as sharpest blades of steel. 'Twas the doubt that thou wert false that wrung my heart with pain; But, now I know thy perfidy, I shall be well again. I would proclaim thee as thou art--but every maiden knows That she who chides her lover, forgives him ere he goes." Thus Fatima complained to the valiant Raduan, Where underneath the myrtles Alhambra's fountains ran: The Moor was inly moved, and blameless as he was, He took her white hand in his own, and pleaded thus his cause. "Oh, lady, dry those star-like eyes--their dimness does me wrong; If my heart be made of flint, at least 'twill keep thy image long; Thou hast uttered cruel words--but I grieve the less for those, Since she who chides her lover, forgives him ere he goes." LOVE AND FOLLY.° FROM LA FONTAINE. Love's worshippers alone can know The thousand mysteries that are his; His blazing torch, his twanging bow, His blooming age are mysteries. A charming science--but the day Were all too short to con it o'er; So take of me this little lay, A sample of its boundless lore. As once, beneath the fragrant shade Of myrtles breathing heaven's own air, The children, Love and Folly, played-- A quarrel rose betwixt the pair. Love said the gods should do him right-- But Folly vowed to do it then, And struck him, o'er the orbs of sight, So hard he never saw again. His lovely mother's grief was deep, She called for vengeance on the deed; A beauty does not vainly weep, Nor coldly does a mother plead. A shade came o'er the eternal bliss That fills the dwellers of the skies; Even stony-hearted Nemesis, And Rhadamanthus, wiped their eyes. "Behold," she said, "this lovely boy," While streamed afresh her graceful tears, "Immortal, yet shut out from joy And sunshine, all his future years. The child can never take, you see, A single step without a staff-- The harshest punishment would be Too lenient for the crime by half." All said that Love had suffered wrong, And well that wrong should be repaid; Then weighed the public interest long, And long the party's interest weighed. And thus decreed the court above-- "Since Love is blind from Folly's blow, Let Folly be the guide of Love, Where'er the boy may choose to go." THE SIESTA. FROM THE SPANISH. Vientecico murmurador, Que lo gozas y andas todo, &c. Airs, that wander and murmur round, Bearing delight where'er ye blow! Make in the elms a lulling sound, While my lady sleeps in the shade below. Lighten and lengthen her noonday rest, Till the heat of the noonday sun is o'er. Sweet be her slumbers! though in my breast The pain she has waked may slumber no more. Breathing soft from the blue profound, Bearing delight where'er ye blow, Make in the elms a lulling sound, While my lady sleeps in the shade below. Airs! that over the bending boughs, And under the shade of pendent leaves, Murmur soft, like my timid vows Or the secret sighs my bosom heaves,-- Gently sweeping the grassy ground, Bearing delight where'er ye blow, Make in the elms a lulling sound, While my lady sleeps in the shade below. THE ALCAYDE OF MOLINA.° FROM THE SPANISH. To the town of Atienza, Molina's brave Alcayde, The courteous and the valorous, led forth his bold brigade. The Moor came back in triumph, he came without a wound, With many a Christian standard, and Christian captive bound. He passed the city portals, with swelling heart and vein, And towards his lady's dwelling he rode with slackened rein; Two circuits on his charger he took, and at the third, From the door of her balcony Zelinda's voice was heard. "Now if thou wert not shameless," said the lady to the Moor, "Thou wouldst neither pass my dwelling, nor stop before my door. Alas for poor Zelinda, and for her wayward mood, That one in love with peace should have loved a man of blood! Since not that thou wert noble I chose thee for my knight, But that thy sword was dreaded in tournay and in fight. Ah, thoughtless and unhappy! that I should fail to see How ill the stubborn flint and the yielding wax agree. Boast not thy love for me, while the shrieking of the fife Can change thy mood of mildness to fury and to strife. Say not my voice is magic--thy pleasure is to hear The bursting of the carbine, and shivering of the spear. Well, follow thou thy choice--to the battle-field away, To thy triumphs and thy trophies, since I am less than they. Thrust thy arm into thy buckler, gird on thy crooked brand, And call upon thy trusty squire to bring thy spears in hand. Lead forth thy band to skirmish, by mountain and by mead, On thy dappled Moorish barb, or thy fleeter border steed. Go, waste the Christian hamlets, and sweep away their flocks, From Almazan's broad meadows to Siguënza's rocks. Leave Zelinda altogether, whom thou leavest oft and long, And in the life thou lovest forget whom thou dost wrong. These eyes shall not recall thee, though they meet no more thine own, Though they weep that thou art absent, and that I am all alone." She ceased, and turning from him her flushed and angry cheek, Shut the door of her balcony before the Moor could speak. THE DEATH OF ALIATAR.° FROM THE SPANISH. 'Tis not with gilded sabres That gleam in baldricks blue, Nor nodding plumes in caps of Fez, Of gay and gaudy hue-- But, habited in mourning weeds, Come marching from afar, By four and four, the valiant men Who fought with Aliatar. All mournfully and slowly The afflicted warriors come, To the deep wail of the trumpet, And beat of muffled drum. The banner of the Phenix, The flag that loved the sky, That scarce the wind dared wanton with, It flew so proud and high-- Now leaves its place in battle-field, And sweeps the ground in grief, The bearer drags its glorious folds Behind the fallen chief, As mournfully and slowly The afflicted warriors come, To the deep wail of the trumpet, And beat of muffled drum. Brave Aliatar led forward A hundred Moors to go To where his brother held Motril Against the leaguering foe. On horseback went the gallant Moor, That gallant band to lead; And now his bier is at the gate, From whence he pricked his steed. While mournfully and slowly The afflicted warriors come, To the deep wail of the trumpet, And beat of muffled drum. The knights of the Grand Master In crowded ambush lay; They rushed upon him where the reeds Were thick beside the way; They smote the valiant Aliatar, They smote the warrior dead, And broken, but not beaten, were The gallant ranks he led. Now mournfully and slowly The afflicted warriors come, To the deep wail of the trumpet, And beat of muffled drum. Oh! what was Zayda's sorrow, How passionate her cries! Her lover's wounds streamed not more free Than that poor maiden's eyes. Say, Love--for didst thou see her tears: Oh, no! he drew more tight The blinding fillet o'er his lids To spare his eyes the sight. While mournfully and slowly The afflicted warriors come, To the deep wail of the trumpet, And beat of muffled drum. Nor Zayda weeps him only, But all that dwell between The great Alhambra's palace walls And springs of Albaicin. The ladies weep the flower of knights, The brave the bravest here; The people weep a champion, The Alcaydes a noble peer. While mournfully and slowly The afflicted warriors come, To the deep wail of the trumpet, And beat of muffled drum. LOVE IN THE AGE OF CHIVALRY.° FROM PEYRE VIDAL, THE TROUBADOUR. The earth was sown with early flowers, The heavens were blue and bright-- I met a youthful cavalier As lovely as the light. I knew him not--but in my heart His graceful image lies, And well I marked his open brow, His sweet and tender eyes, His ruddy lips that ever smiled, His glittering teeth betwixt, And flowing robe embroidered o'er, With leaves and blossoms mixed. He wore a chaplet of the rose; His palfrey, white and sleek, Was marked with many an ebon spot, And many a purple streak; Of jasper was his saddle-bow, His housings sapphire stone, And brightly in his stirrup glanced The purple calcedon. Fast rode the gallant cavalier, As youthful horsemen ride; "Peyre Vidal! know that I am Love," The blooming stranger cried; "And this is Mercy by my side, A dame of high degree; This maid is Chastity," he said, "This squire is Loyalty." THE LOVE OF GOD.° FROM THE PROVENÇAL OF BERNARI RASCAS. All things that are on earth shall wholly pass away, Except the love of God, which shall live and last for aye. The forms of men shall be as they had never been; The blasted groves shall lose their fresh and tender green; The birds of the thicket shall end their pleasant song, And the nigthingale* shall cease to chant the evening long. The kine of the pasture shall feel the dart that kills, And all the fair white flocks shall perish from the hills. The goat and antlered stag, the wolf and the fox, The wild boar of the wood, and the chamois of the rocks, And the strong and fearless bear, in the trodden dust shall lie, And the dolphin of the sea, and the mighty whale, shall die. And realms shall be dissolved, and empires be no more, And they shall bow to death, who ruled from shore to shore; And the great globe itself, (so the holy writings tell,) With the rolling firmament, where the starry armies dwell, Shall melt with fervent heat--they shall all pass away, Except the love of God, which shall live and last for aye. (* sic) FROM THE SPANISH OF PEDRO DE CASTRO Y AÑAYA.° Stay, rivulet, nor haste to leave The lovely vale that lies around thee. Why wouldst thou be a sea at eve, When but a fount the morning found thee? Born when the skies began to glow, Humblest of all the rock's cold daughters, No blossom bowed its stalk to show Where stole thy still and scanty waters. Now on thy stream the noonbeams look, Usurping, as thou downward driftest, Its crystal from the clearest brook, Its rushing current from the swiftest. Ah! what wild haste!--and all to be A river and expire in ocean. Each fountain's tribute hurries thee To that vast grave with quicker motion. Far better 'twere to linger still In this green vale, these flowers to cherish, And die in peace, an aged rill, Than thus, a youthful Danube, perish. SONNET. FROM THE PORTUGUESE OF SEMEDO. It is a fearful night; a feeble glare Streams from the sick moon in the o'erclouded sky; The ridgy billows, with a mighty cry, Rush on the foamy beaches wild and bare; No bark the madness of the waves will dare; The sailors sleep; the winds are loud and high; Ah, peerless Laura! for whose love I die, Who gazes on thy smiles while I despair? As thus, in bitterness of heart, I cried, I turned, and saw my Laura, kind and bright, A messenger of gladness, at my side: To my poor bark she sprang with footstep light, And as we furrowed Tago's heaving tide, I never saw so beautiful a night. SONG. FROM THE SPANISH OF IGLESIAS. Alexis calls me cruel; The rifted crags that hold The gathered ice of winter, He says, are not more cold. When even the very blossoms Around the fountain's brim, And forest walks, can witness The love I bear to him. I would that I could utter My feelings without shame; And tell him how I love him, Nor wrong my virgin fame. Alas! to seize the moment When heart inclines to heart, And press a suit with passion, Is not a woman's part. If man comes not to gather The roses where they stand, They fade among their foliage; They cannot seek his hand. THE COUNT OF GREIERS. FROM THE GERMAN OF UHLAND. At morn the Count of Greiers before his castle stands; He sees afar the glory that lights the mountain lands; The horned crags are shining, and in the shade between A pleasant Alpine valley lies beautifully green. "Oh, greenest of the valleys, how shall I come to thee! Thy herdsmen and thy maidens, how happy must they be! I have gazed upon thee coldly, all lovely as thou art, But the wish to walk thy pastures now stirs my inmost heart." He hears a sound of timbrels, and suddenly appear A troop of ruddy damsels and herdsmen drawing near; They reach the castle greensward, and gayly dance across; The white sleeves flit and glimmer, the wreaths and ribands toss. The youngest of the maidens, slim as a spray of spring, She takes the young count's fingers, and draws him to the ring, They fling upon his forehead a crown of mountain flowers, "And ho, young Count of Greiers! this morning thou art ours!" Then hand in hand departing, with dance and roundelay, Through hamlet after hamlet, they lead the Count away. They dance through wood and meadow, they dance across the linn, Till the mighty Alpine summits have shut the music in. The second morn is risen, and now the third is come; Where stays the Count of Greiers? has he forgot his home? Again the evening closes, in thick and sultry air; There's thunder on the mountains, the storm is gathering there. The cloud has shed its waters, the brook comes swollen down; You see it by the lightning--a river wide and brown. Around a struggling swimmer the eddies dash and roar, Till, seizing on a willow, he leaps upon the shore. "Here am I cast by tempests far from your mountain dell. Amid our evening dances the bursting deluge fell. Ye all, in cots and caverns, have 'scaped the water-spout, While me alone the tempest o'erwhelmed and hurried out. "Farewell, with thy glad dwellers, green vale among the rocks! Farewell the swift sweet moments, in which I watched thy flocks! Why rocked they not my cradle in that delicious spot, That garden of the happy, where Heaven endures me not? "Rose of the Alpine valley! I feel, in every vein, Thy soft touch on my fingers; oh, press them not again! Bewitch me not, ye garlands, to tread that upward track, And thou, my cheerless mansion, receive thy master back." THE SERENADE. FROM THE SPANISH. If slumber, sweet Lisena! Have stolen o'er thine eyes, As night steals o'er the glory Of spring's transparent skies; Wake, in thy scorn and beauty, And listen to the strain That murmurs my devotion, That mourns for thy disdain. Here by thy door at midnight, I pass the dreary hour, With plaintive sounds profaning The silence of thy bower; A tale of sorrow cherished Too fondly to depart, Of wrong from love the flatterer, And my own wayward heart. Twice, o'er this vale, the seasons Have brought and borne away The January tempest, The genial wind of May; Yet still my plaint is uttered, My tears and sighs are given To earth's unconscious waters, And wandering winds of heaven. I saw from this fair region, The smile of summer pass, And myriad frost-stars glitter Among the russet grass. While winter seized the streamlets That fled along the ground, And fast in chains of crystal The truant murmurers bound. I saw that to the forest The nightingales had flown, And every sweet-voiced fountain Had hushed its silver tone. The maniac winds, divorcing The turtle from his mate, Raved through the leafy beeches, And left them desolate. Now May, with life and music, The blooming valley fills, And rears her flowery arches For all the little rills. The minstrel bird of evening Comes back on joyous wings, And, like the harp's soft murmur, Is heard the gush of springs. And deep within the forest Are wedded turtles seen, Their nuptial chambers seeking, Their chambers close and green. The rugged trees are mingling Their flowery sprays in love; The ivy climbs the laurel, To clasp the boughs above. They change--but thou, Lisena, Art cold while I complain: Why to thy lover only Should spring return in vain? A NORTHERN LEGEND. FROM THE GERMAN OF UHLAND. There sits a lovely maiden, The ocean murmuring nigh; She throws the hook, and watches; The fishes pass it by. A ring, with a red jewel, Is sparkling on her hand; Upon the hook she binds it, And flings it from the land. Uprises from the water A hand like ivory fair. What gleams upon its finger? The golden ring is there. Uprises from the bottom A young and handsome knight; In golden scales he rises, That glitter in the light. The maid is pale with terror-- "Nay, Knight of Ocean, nay, It was not thee I wanted; Let go the ring, I pray." "Ah, maiden, not to fishes The bait of gold is thrown; The ring shall never leave me, And thou must be my own." * * * * * LATER POEMS. * * * * * LATER POEMS TO THE APENNINES. Your peaks are beautiful, ye Apennines! In the soft light of these serenest skies; From the broad highland region, black with pines, Fair as the hills of Paradise they rise, Bathed in the tint Peruvian slaves behold In rosy flushes on the virgin gold. There, rooted to the aërial shelves that wear The glory of a brighter world, might spring Sweet flowers of heaven to scent the unbreathed air, And heaven's fleet messengers might rest the wing, To view the fair earth in its summer sleep, Silent, and cradled by the glimmering deep. Below you lie men's sepulchres, the old Etrurian tombs, the graves of yesterday; The herd's white bones lie mixed with human mould-- Yet up the radiant steeps that I survey Death never climbed, nor life's soft breath, with pain, Was yielded to the elements again. Ages of war have filled these plains with fear; How oft the hind has started at the clash Of spears, and yell of meeting, armies here, Or seen the lightning of the battle flash From clouds, that rising with the thunder's sound, Hung like an earth-born tempest o'er the ground! Ah me! what armed nations--Asian horde, And Libyan host--the Scythian and the Gaul, Have swept your base and through your passes poured, Like ocean-tides uprising at the call Of tyrant winds--against your rocky side The bloody billows dashed, and howled, and died. How crashed the towers before beleaguering foes, Sacked cities smoked and realms were rent in twain; And commonwealths against their rivals rose, Trode out their lives and earned the curse of Cain! While in the noiseless air and light that flowed Round your far brows, eternal Peace abode. Here pealed the impious hymn, and altar flames Rose to false gods, a dream-begotten throng, Jove, Bacchus, Pan, and earlier, fouler names; While, as the unheeding ages passed along, Ye, from your station in the middle skies, Proclaimed the essential Goodness, strong and wise. In you the heart that sighs for freedom seeks Her image; there the winds no barrier know, Clouds come and rest and leave your fairy peaks; While even the immaterial Mind, below, And thought, her winged offspring, chained by power, Pine silently for the redeeming hour. EARTH. A midnight black with clouds is in the sky; I seem to feel, upon my limbs, the weight Of its vast brooding shadow. All in vain Turns the tired eye in search of form; no star Pierces the pitchy veil; no ruddy blaze, From dwellings lighted by the cheerful hearth, Tinges the flowering summits of the grass. No sound of life is heard, no village hum, Nor measured tramp of footstep in the path, Nor rush of wing, while, on the breast of Earth, I lie and listen to her mighty voice: A voice of many tones--sent up from streams That wander through the gloom, from woods unseen, Swayed by the sweeping of the tides of air, From rocky chasms where darkness dwells all day, And hollows of the great invisible hills, And sands that edge the ocean, stretching far Into the night--a melancholy sound! O Earth! dost thou too sorrow for the past Like man thy offspring? Do I hear thee mourn Thy childhood's unreturning hours, thy springs Gone with their genial airs and melodies, The gentle generations of thy flowers, And thy majestic groves of olden time, Perished with all their dwellers? Dost thou wail For that fair age of which the poets tell, Ere the rude winds grew keen with frost, or fire Fell with the rains, or spouted from the hills, To blast thy greenness, while the virgin night Was guiltless and salubrious as the day? Or haply dost thou grieve for those that die-- For living things that trod thy paths awhile, The love of thee and heaven--and now they sleep Mixed with the shapeless dust on which thy herds Trample and graze? I too must grieve with thee, O'er loved ones lost. Their graves are far away Upon thy mountains; yet, while I recline Alone, in darkness, on thy naked soil, The mighty nourisher and burial-place Of man, I feel that I embrace their dust. Ha! how the murmur deepens! I perceive And tremble at its dreadful import. Earth Uplifts a general cry for guilt and wrong, And heaven is listening. The forgotten graves Of the heart-broken utter forth their plaint. The dust of her who loved and was betrayed, And him who died neglected in his age; The sepulchres of those who for mankind Laboured, and earned the recompense of scorn; Ashes of martyrs for the truth, and bones Of those who, in the strife for liberty, Were beaten down, their corses given to dogs, Their names to infamy, all find a voice. The nook in which the captive, overtoiled, Lay down to rest at last, and that which holds Childhood's sweet blossoms, crushed by cruel hands, Send up a plaintive sound. From battle-fields, Where heroes madly drave and dashed their hosts Against each other, rises up a noise, As if the armed multitudes of dead Stirred in their heavy slumber. Mournful tones Come from the green abysses of the sea-- story of the crimes the guilty sought To hide beneath its waves. The glens, the groves, Paths in the thicket, pools of running brook, And banks and depths of lake, and streets and lanes Of cities, now that living sounds are hushed, Murmur of guilty force and treachery. Here, where I rest, the vales of Italy Are round me, populous from early time, And field of the tremendous warfare waged 'Twixt good and evil. Who, alas, shall dare Interpret to man's ear the mingled voice That comes from her old dungeons yawning now To the black air, her amphitheatres, Where the dew gathers on the mouldering stones, And fanes of banished gods, and open tombs, And roofless palaces, and streets and hearths Of cities dug from their volcanic graves? I hear a sound of many languages, The utterance of nations now no more, Driven out by mightier, as the days of heaven Chase one another from the sky. The blood Of freemen shed by freemen, till strange lords Came in the hour of weakness, and made fast The yoke that yet is worn, cries out to Heaven. What then shall cleanse thy bosom, gentle Earth From all its painful memories of guilt? The whelming flood, or the renewing fire, Or the slow change of time? that so, at last, The horrid tale of perjury and strife, Murder and spoil, which men call history, May seem a fable, like the inventions told By poets of the gods of Greece. O thou, Who sittest far beyond the Atlantic deep, Among the sources of thy glorious streams, My native Land of Groves! a newer page In the great record of the world is thine; Shall it be fairer? Fear, and friendly hope, And envy, watch the issue, while the lines, By which thou shalt be judged, are written down. THE KNIGHT'S EPITAPH. This is the church which Pisa, great and free, Reared to St. Catharine. How the time-stained walls, That earthquakes shook not from their poise, appear To shiver in the deep and voluble tones Rolled from the organ! Underneath my feet There lies the lid of a sepulchral vault. The image of an armed knight is graven Upon it, clad in perfect panoply-- Cuishes, and greaves, and cuirass, with barred helm, Gauntleted hand, and sword, and blazoned shield. Around, in Gothic characters, worn dim By feet of worshippers, are traced his name, And birth, and death, and words of eulogy. Why should I pore upon them? This old tomb, This effigy, the strange disused form Of this inscription, eloquently show His history. Let me clothe in fitting words The thoughts they breathe, and frame his epitaph. "He whose forgotten dust for centuries Has lain beneath this stone, was one in whom Adventure, and endurance, and emprise Exalted the mind's faculties and strung The body's sinews. Brave he was in fight, Courteous in banquet, scornful of repose, And bountiful, and cruel, and devout, And quick to draw the sword in private feud. He pushed his quarrels to the death, yet prayed The saints as fervently on bended knees As ever shaven cenobite. He loved As fiercely as he fought. He would have borne The maid that pleased him from her bower by night, To his hill-castle, as the eagle bears His victim from the fold, and rolled the rocks On his pursuers. He aspired to see His native Pisa queen and arbitress Of cities: earnestly for her he raised His voice in council, and affronted death In battle-field, and climbed the galley's deck, And brought the captured flag of Genoa back, Or piled upon the Arno's crowded quay The glittering spoils of the tamed Saracen. He was not born to brook the stranger's yoke, But would have joined the exiles that withdrew For ever, when the Florentine broke in The gates of Pisa, and bore off the bolts For trophies--but he died before that day. "He lived, the impersonation of an age That never shall return. His soul of fire Was kindled by the breath of the rude time He lived in. Now a gentler race succeeds, Shuddering at blood; the effeminate cavalier, Turning his eyes from the reproachful past, And from the hopeless future, gives to ease, And love, and music, his inglorious life." THE HUNTER OF THE PRAIRIES. Ay, this is freedom!--these pure skies Were never stained with village smoke: The fragrant wind, that through them flies, Is breathed from wastes by plough unbroke. Here, with my rifle and my steed, And her who left the world for me, I plant me, where the red deer feed In the green desert--and am free. For here the fair savannas know No barriers in the bloomy grass; Wherever breeze of heaven may blow, Or beam of heaven may glance, I pass. In pastures, measureless as air, The bison is my noble game; The bounding elk, whose antlers tear The branches, falls before my aim. Mine are the river-fowl that scream From the long stripe of waving sedge; The bear that marks my weapon's gleam, Hides vainly in the forest's edge; In vain the she-wolf stands at bay; The brinded catamount, that lies High in the boughs to watch his prey, Even in the act of springing, dies. With what free growth the elm and plane Fling their huge arms across my way, Gray, old, and cumbered with a train Of vines, as huge, and old, and gray! Free stray the lucid streams, and find No taint in these fresh lawns and shades; Free spring the flowers that scent the wind Where never scythe has swept the glades. Alone the Fire, when frost-winds sere The heavy herbage of the ground, Gathers his annual harvest here, With roaring like the battle's sound, And hurrying flames that sweep the plain, And smoke-streams gushing up the sky: I meet the flames with flames again, And at my door they cower and die. Here, from dim woods, the aged past Speaks solemnly; and I behold The boundless future in the vast And lonely river, seaward rolled. Who feeds its founts with rain and dew; Who moves, I ask, its gliding mass, And trains the bordering vines, whose blue Bright clusters tempt me as I pass? Broad are these streams--my steed obeys, Plunges, and bears me through the tide. Wide are these woods--I thread the maze Of giant stems, nor ask a guide. I hunt till day's last glimmer dies O'er woody vale and grassy height; And kind the voice and glad the eyes That welcome my return at night. SEVENTY-SIX. What heroes from the woodland sprung, When, through the fresh awakened land, The thrilling cry of freedom rung, And to the work of warfare strung The yeoman's iron hand! Hills flung the cry to hills around, And ocean-mart replied to mart, And streams whose springs were yet unfound, Pealed far away the startling sound Into the forest's heart. Then marched the brave from rocky steep, From mountain river swift and cold; The borders of the stormy deep, The vales where gathered waters sleep, Sent up the strong and bold,-- As if the very earth again Grew quick with God's creating breath, And, from the sods of grove and glen, Rose ranks of lion-hearted men To battle to the death. The wife, whose babe first smiled that day, The fair fond bride of yestereve, And aged sire and matron gray, Saw the loved warriors haste away, And deemed it sin to grieve. Already had the strife begun; Already blood on Concord's plain Along the springing grass had run, And blood had flowed at Lexington, Like brooks of April rain. That death-stain on the vernal sward Hallowed to freedom all the shore; In fragments fell the yoke abhorred-- The footstep of a foreign lord Profaned the soil no more. THE LIVING LOST. Matron! the children of whose love, Each to his grave, in youth hath passed, And now the mould is heaped above The dearest and the last! Bride! who dost wear the widow's veil Before the wedding flowers are pale! Ye deem the human heart endures No deeper, bitterer grief than yours. Yet there are pangs of keener wo, Of which the sufferers never speak, Nor to the world's cold pity show The tears that scald the cheek, Wrung from their eyelids by the shame And guilt of those they shrink to name, Whom once they loved with cheerful will, And love, though fallen and branded, still. Weep, ye who sorrow for the dead, Thus breaking hearts their pain relieve; And reverenced are the tears ye shed, And honoured ye who grieve. The praise of those who sleep in earth, The pleasant memory of their worth, The hope to meet when life is past, Shall heal the tortured mind at last. But ye, who for the living lost That agony in secret bear, Who shall with soothing words accost The strength of your despair? Grief for your sake is scorn for them Whom ye lament and all condemn; And o'er the world of spirits lies A gloom from which ye turn your eyes. CATTERSKILL FALLS. Midst greens and shades the Catterskill leaps, From cliffs where the wood-flower clings; All summer he moistens his verdant steeps With the sweet light spray of the mountain springs; And he shakes the woods on the mountain side, When they drip with the rains of autumn-tide. But when, in the forest bare and old, The blast of December calls, He builds, in the starlight clear and cold, A palace of ice where his torrent falls, With turret, and arch, and fretwork fair, And pillars blue as the summer air. For whom are those glorious chambers wrought, In the cold and cloudless night? Is there neither spirit nor motion of thought In forms so lovely, and hues so bright? Hear what the gray-haired woodmen tell Of this wild stream and its rocky dell. 'Twas hither a youth of dreamy mood, A hundred winters ago, Had wandered over the mighty wood, When the panther's track was fresh on the snow, And keen were the winds that came to stir The long dark boughs of the hemlock fir. Too gentle of mien he seemed and fair, For a child of those rugged steeps; His home lay low in the valley where The kingly Hudson rolls to the deeps; But he wore the hunter's frock that day, And a slender gun on his shoulder lay. And here he paused, and against the trunk Of a tall gray linden leant, When the broad clear orb of the sun had sunk From his path in the frosty firmament, And over the round dark edge of the hill A cold green light was quivering still. And the crescent moon, high over the green, From a sky of crimson shone, On that icy palace, whose towers were seen To sparkle as if with stars of their own; While the water fell with a hollow sound, 'Twixt the glistening pillars ranged around. Is that a being of life, that moves Where the crystal battlements rise? A maiden watching the moon she loves, At the twilight hour, with pensive eyes? Was that a garment which seemed to gleam Betwixt the eye and the falling stream? 'Tis only the torrent tumbling o'er, In the midst of those glassy walls, Gushing, and plunging, and beating the floor Of the rocky basin in which it falls. 'Tis only the torrent--but why that start? Why gazes the youth with a throbbing heart? He thinks no more of his home afar, Where his sire and sister wait. He heeds no longer how star after star Looks forth on the night as the hour grows late. He heeds not the snow-wreaths, lifted and cast From a thousand boughs, by the rising blast. His thoughts are alone of those who dwell In the halls of frost and snow, Who pass where the crystal domes upswell From the alabaster floors below, Where the frost-trees shoot with leaf and spray, And frost-gems scatter a silvery day. "And oh that those glorious haunts were mine!" He speaks, and throughout the glen Thin shadows swim in the faint moonshine, And take a ghastly likeness of men, As if the slain by the wintry storms Came forth to the air in their earthly forms. There pass the chasers of seal and whale, With their weapons quaint and grim, And bands of warriors in glittering mail, And herdsmen and hunters huge of limb. There are naked arms, with bow and spear, And furry gauntlets the carbine rear. There are mothers--and oh how sadly their eyes On their children's white brows rest! There are youthful lovers--the maiden lies, In a seeming sleep, on the chosen breast; There are fair wan women with moonstruck air, The snow stars flecking their long loose hair. They eye him not as they pass along, But his hair stands up with dread, When he feels that he moves with that phantom throng, Till those icy turrets are over his head, And the torrent's roar as they enter seems Like a drowsy murmur heard in dreams. The glittering threshold is scarcely passed, When there gathers and wraps him round A thick white twilight, sullen and vast, In which there is neither form nor sound; The phantoms, the glory, vanish all, With the dying voice of the waterfall. Slow passes the darkness of that trance, And the youth now faintly sees Huge shadows and gushes of light that dance On a rugged ceiling of unhewn trees, And walls where the skins of beasts are hung, And rifles glitter on antlers strung. On a couch of shaggy skins he lies; As he strives to raise his head, Hard-featured woodmen, with kindly eyes, Come round him and smooth his furry bed And bid him rest, for the evening star Is scarcely set and the day is far. They had found at eve the dreaming one By the base of that icy steep, When over his stiffening limbs begun The deadly slumber of frost to creep, And they cherished the pale and breathless form, Till the stagnant blood ran free and warm. THE STRANGE LADY. The summer morn is bright and fresh, the birds are darting by, As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool clear sky; Young Albert, in the forest's edge, has heard a rustling sound, An arrow slightly strikes his hand and falls upon the ground. A dark-haired woman from the wood comes suddenly in sight; Her merry eye is full and black, her cheek is brown and bright; Her gown is of the mid-sea blue, her belt with beads is strung, And yet she speaks in gentle tones, and in the English tongue. "It was an idle bolt I sent, against the villain crow; Fair sir, I fear it harmed thy hand; beshrew my erring bow!" "Ah! would that bolt had not been spent! then, lady, might I wear A lasting token on my hand of one so passing fair!" "Thou art a flatterer like the rest, but wouldst thou take with me A day of hunting in the wilds, beneath the greenwood tree, I know where most the pheasants feed, and where the red-deer herd, And thou shouldst chase the nobler game, and I bring down the bird." Now Albert in her quiver lays the arrow in its place, And wonders as he gazes on the beauty of her face: "Those hunting-grounds are far away, and, lady, 'twere not meet That night, amid the wilderness, should overtake thy feet." "Heed not the night; a summer lodge amid the wild is mine,-- 'Tis shadowed by the tulip-tree, 'tis mantled by the vine; The wild plum sheds its yellow fruit from fragrant thickets nigh, And flowery prairies from the door stretch till they meet the sky. "There in the boughs that hide the roof the mock-bird sits and sings, And there the hang-bird's brood within its little hammock swings; A pebbly brook, where rustling winds among the hopples sweep, Shall lull thee till the morning sun looks in upon thy sleep." Away, into the forest depths by pleasant paths they go, He with his rifle on his arm, the lady with her bow, Where cornels arch their cool dark boughs o'er beds of winter-green, And never at his father's door again was Albert seen. That night upon the woods came down a furious hurricane, With howl of winds and roar of streams, and beating of the rain; The mighty thunder broke and drowned the noises in its crash; The old trees seemed to fight like fiends beneath the lightning-flash. Next day, within a mossy glen, 'mid mouldering trunks were found The fragments of a human form upon the bloody ground; White bones from which the flesh was torn, and locks of glossy hair; They laid them in the place of graves, yet wist not whose they were. And whether famished evening wolves had mangled Albert so, Or that strange dame so gay and fair were some mysterious foe, Or whether to that forest lodge, beyond the mountains blue, He went to dwell with her, the friends who mourned him never knew. LIFE.° Oh Life! I breathe thee in the breeze, I feel thee bounding in my veins, I see thee in these stretching trees, These flowers, this still rock's mossy stains. This stream of odours flowing by From clover-field and clumps of pine, This music, thrilling all the sky, From all the morning birds, are thine. Thou fill'st with joy this little one, That leaps and shouts beside me here, Where Isar's clay-white rivulets run Through the dark woods like frighted deer. Ah! must thy mighty breath, that wakes Insect and bird, and flower and tree, From the low trodden dust, and makes Their daily gladness, pass from me-- Pass, pulse by pulse, till o'er the ground These limbs, now strong, shall creep with pain, And this fair world of sight and sound Seem fading into night again? The things, oh LIFE! thou quickenest, all Strive upwards toward the broad bright sky, Upward and outward, and they fall Back to earth's bosom when they die. All that have borne the touch of death, All that shall live, lie mingled there, Beneath that veil of bloom and breath, That living zone 'twixt earth and air. There lies my chamber dark and still, The atoms trampled by my feet, There wait, to take the place I fill In the sweet air and sunshine sweet. Well, I have had my turn, have been Raised from the darkness of the clod, And for a glorious moment seen The brightness of the skirts of God; And knew the light within my breast, Though wavering oftentimes and dim, The power, the will, that never rest, And cannot die, were all from him. Dear child! I know that thou wilt grieve To see me taken from thy love, Wilt seek my grave at Sabbath eve, And weep, and scatter flowers above. Thy little heart will soon be healed, And being shall be bliss, till thou To younger forms of life must yield The place thou fill'st with beauty now. When we descend to dust again, Where will the final dwelling be Of Thought and all its memories then, My love for thee, and thine for me? "EARTH'S CHILDREN CLEAVE TO EARTH." Earth's children cleave to Earth--her frail Decaying children dread decay. Yon wreath of mist that leaves the vale, And lessens in the morning ray: Look, how, by mountain rivulet, It lingers as it upward creeps, And clings to fern and copsewood set Along the green and dewy steeps: Clings to the fragrant kalmia, clings To precipices fringed with grass, Dark maples where the wood-thrush sings, And bowers of fragrant sassafras. Yet all in vain--it passes still From hold to hold, it cannot stay, And in the very beams that fill The world with glory, wastes away, Till, parting from the mountain's brow, It vanishes from human eye, And that which sprung of earth is now A portion of the glorious sky. THE HUNTER'S VISION. Upon a rock that, high and sheer, Rose from the mountain's breast, A weary hunter of the deer Had sat him down to rest, And bared to the soft summer air His hot red brow and sweaty hair. All dim in haze the mountains lay, With dimmer vales between; And rivers glimmered on their way, By forests faintly seen; While ever rose a murmuring sound, From brooks below and bees around. He listened, till he seemed to hear A strain, so soft and low, That whether in the mind or ear The listener scarce might know. With such a tone, so sweet and mild, The watching mother lulls her child. "Thou weary huntsman," thus it said, "Thou faint with toil and heat, The pleasant land of rest is spread Before thy very feet, And those whom thou wouldst gladly see Are waiting there to welcome thee." He looked, and 'twixt the earth and sky Amid the noontide haze, A shadowy region met his eye, And grew beneath his gaze, As if the vapours of the air Had gathered into shapes so fair. Groves freshened as he looked, and flowers Showed bright on rocky bank, And fountains welled beneath the bowers, Where deer and pheasant drank. He saw the glittering streams, he heard The rustling bough and twittering bird. And friends--the dead--in boyhood dear, There lived and walked again, And there was one who many a year Within her grave had lain, A fair young girl, the hamlet's pride-- His heart was breaking when she died: Bounding, as was her wont, she came Right towards his resting-place, And stretched her hand and called his name With that sweet smiling face. Forward with fixed and eager eyes, The hunter leaned in act to rise: Forward he leaned, and headlong down Plunged from that craggy wall; He saw the rocks, steep, stern, and brown, An instant, in his fall; A frightful instant--and no more, The dream and life at once were o'er. THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS.° I. Here we halt our march, and pitch our tent On the rugged forest ground, And light our fire with the branches rent By winds from the beeches round. Wild storms have torn this ancient wood, But a wilder is at hand, With hail of iron and rain of blood, To sweep and waste the land. II. How the dark wood rings with voices shrill, That startle the sleeping bird; To-morrow eve must the voice be still, And the step must fall unheard. The Briton lies by the blue Champlain, In Ticonderoga's towers, And ere the sun rise twice again, The towers and the lake are ours. III. Fill up the bowl from the brook that glides Where the fireflies light the brake; A ruddier juice the Briton hides In his fortress by the lake. Build high the fire, till the panther leap From his lofty perch in flight, And we'll strenghten our weary arms with sleep For the deeds of to-morrow night. A PRESENTIMENT. "Oh father, let us hence--for hark, A fearful murmur shakes the air. The clouds are coming swift and dark:-- What horrid shapes they wear! A winged giant sails the sky; Oh father, father, let us fly!" "Hush, child; it is a grateful sound, That beating of the summer shower; Here, where the boughs hang close around, We'll pass a pleasant hour, Till the fresh wind, that brings the rain, Has swept the broad heaven clear again." "Nay, father, let us haste--for see, That horrid thing with horned brow,-- His wings o'erhang this very tree, He scowls upon us now; His huge black arm is lifted high; Oh father, father, let us fly!" "Hush, child;" but, as the father spoke, Downward the livid firebolt came, Close to his ear the thunder broke, And, blasted by the flame, The child lay dead; while dark and still, Swept the grim cloud along the hill. THE CHILD'S FUNERAL.° Fair is thy site, Sorrento, green thy shore, Black crags behind thee pierce the clear blue skies; The sea, whose borderers ruled the world of yore, As clear and bluer still before thee lies. Vesuvius smokes in sight, whose fount of fire, Outgushing, drowned the cities on his steeps; And murmuring Naples, spire o'ertopping spire, Sits on the slope beyond where Virgil sleeps. Here doth the earth, with flowers of every hue, Heap her green breast when April suns are bright, Flowers of the morning-red, or ocean-blue, Or like the mountain frost of silvery white. Currents of fragrance, from the orange tree, And sward of violets, breathing to and fro, Mingle, and wandering out upon the sea, Refresh the idle boatsman where they blow. Yet even here, as under harsher climes, Tears for the loved and early lost are shed; That soft air saddens with the funeral chimes, Those shining flowers are gathered for the dead. Here once a child, a smiling playful one, All the day long caressing and caressed, Died when its little tongue had just begun To lisp the names of those it loved the best. The father strove his struggling grief to quell, The mother wept as mothers use to weep, Two little sisters wearied them to tell When their dear Carlo would awake from sleep. Within an inner room his couch they spread, His funeral couch; with mingled grief and love, They laid a crown of roses on his head, And murmured, "Brighter is his crown above." They scattered round him, on the snowy sheet, Laburnum's strings of sunny-coloured gems, Sad hyacinths, and violets dim and sweet, And orange blossoms on their dark green stems. And now the hour is come, the priest is there; Torches are lit and bells are tolled; they go, With solemn rites of blessing and of prayer, To lay the little corpse in earth below. The door is opened; hark! that quick glad cry; Carlo has waked, has waked, and is at play; The little sisters laugh and leap, and try To climb the bed on which the infant lay. And there he sits alone, and gayly shakes In his full hands, the blossoms red and white, And smiles with winking eyes, like one who wakes From long deep slumbers at the morning light. THE BATTLE-FIELD. Once this soft turf, this rivulet's sands, Were trampled by a hurrying crowd, And fiery hearts and armed hands Encountered in the battle cloud. Ah! I never shall the land forget How gushed the life-blood of her brave-- Gushed, warm with hope and courage yet, Upon the soil they fought to save. Now all is calm, and fresh, and still, Alone the chirp of flitting bird, And talk of children on the hill, And bell of wandering kine are heard. No solemn host goes trailing by The black-mouthed gun and staggering wain; Men start not at the battle-cry, Oh, be it never heard again! Soon rested those who fought; but thou Who minglest in the harder strife For truths which men receive not now Thy warfare only ends with life. A friendless warfare! lingering long Through weary day and weary year. A wild and many-weaponed throng Hang on thy front, and flank, and rear. Yet nerve thy spirit to the proof, And blench not at thy chosen lot. The timid good may stand aloof, The sage may frown--yet faint thou not. Nor heed the shaft too surely cast, The foul and hissing bolt of scorn; For with thy side shall dwell, at last, The victory of endurance born. Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again; The eternal years of God are hers; But Error, wounded, writhes with pain, And dies among his worshippers. Yea, though thou lie upon the dust, When they who helped thee flee in fear, Die full of hope and manly trust, Like those who fell in battle here. Another hand thy sword shall wield, Another hand the standard wave, Till from the trumpet's mouth is pealed The blast of triumph o'er thy grave. THE FUTURE LIFE. How shall I know thee in the sphere which keeps The disembodied spirits of the dead, When all of thee that time could wither sleeps And perishes among the dust we tread? For I shall feel the sting of ceaseless pain If there I meet thy gentle presence not; Nor hear the voice I love, nor read again In thy serenest eyes the tender thought. Will not thy own meek heart demand me there? That heart whose fondest throbs to me were given? My name on earth was ever in thy prayer, Shall it be banished from thy tongue in heaven? In meadows fanned by heaven's life-breathing wind, In the resplendence of that glorious sphere, And larger movements of the unfettered mind, Wilt thou forget the love that joined us here? The love that lived through all the stormy past, And meekly with my harsher nature bore, And deeper grew, and tenderer to the last, Shall it expire with life, and be no more? A happier lot than mine, and larger light, Await thee there; for thou hast bowed thy will In cheerful homage to the rule of right, And lovest all, and renderest good for ill. For me, the sordid cares in which I dwell, Shrink and consume my heart, as heat the scroll; And wrath has left its scar--that fire of hell Has left its frightful scar upon my soul. Yet though thou wear'st the glory of the sky, Wilt thou not keep the same beloved name, The same fair thoughtful brow, and gentle eye, Lovelier in heaven's sweet climate, yet the same? Shalt thou not teach me, in that calmer home, The wisdom that I learned so ill in this-- The wisdom which is love--till I become Thy fit companion in that land of bliss? THE DEATH OF SCHILLER.° 'Tis said, when Schiller's death drew nigh, The wish possessed his mighty mind, To wander forth wherever lie The homes and haunts of human-kind. Then strayed the poet, in his dreams, By Rome and Egypt's ancient graves; Went up the New World's forest streams, Stood in the Hindoo's temple-caves; Walked with the Pawnee, fierce and stark, The sallow Tartar, midst his herds, The peering Chinese, and the dark False Malay uttering gentle words. How could he rest? even then he trod The threshold of the world unknown; Already, from the seat of God, A ray upon his garments shone;-- Shone and awoke the strong desire For love and knowledge reached not here, Till, freed by death, his soul of fire Sprang to a fairer, ampler sphere. Then--who shall tell how deep, how bright The abyss of glory opened round? How thought and feeling flowed like light, Through ranks of being without bound? THE FOUNTAIN.° Fountain, that springest on this grassy slope, Thy quick cool murmur mingles pleasantly, With the cool sound of breezes in the beach, Above me in the noontide. Thou dost wear No stain of thy dark birthplace; gushing up From the red mould and slimy roots of earth, Thou flashest in the sun. The mountain air, In winter, is not clearer, nor the dew That shines on mountain blossom. Thus doth God Bring, from the dark and foul, the pure and bright. This tangled thicket on the bank above Thy basin, how thy waters keep it green! For thou dost feed the roots of the wild vine That trails all over it, and to the twigs Ties fast her clusters. There the spice-bush lifts Her leafy lances; the viburnum there, Paler of foliage, to the sun holds up Her circlet of green berries. In and out The chipping sparrow, in her coat of brown, Steals silently, lest I should mark her nest. Not such thou wert of yore, ere yet the axe Had smitten the old woods. Then hoary trunks Of oak, and plane, and hickory, o'er thee held A mighty canopy. When April winds Grew soft, the maple burst into a flush Of scarlet flowers. The tulip-tree, high up, Opened, in airs of June, her multitude Of golden chalices to humming-birds And silken-winged insects of the sky. Frail wood-plants clustered round thy edge in Spring. The liverleaf put forth her sister blooms Of faintest blue. Here the quick-footed wolf, Passing to lap thy waters, crushed the flower Of sanguinaria, from whose brittle stem The red drops fell like blood. The deer, too, left Her delicate foot-print in the soft moist mould, And on the fallen leaves. The slow-paced bear, In such a sultry summer noon as this, Stopped at thy stream, and drank, and leaped across. But thou hast histories that stir the heart With deeper feeling; while I look on thee They rise before me. I behold the scene Hoary again with forests; I behold The Indian warrior, whom a hand unseen Has smitten with his death-wound in the woods, Creep slowly to thy well-known rivulet, And slake his death-thirst. Hark, that quick fierce cry That rends the utter silence; 'tis the whoop Of battle, and a throng of savage men With naked arms and faces stained like blood, Fill the green wilderness; the long bare arms Are heaved aloft, bows twang and arrows stream; Each makes a tree his shield, and every tree Sends forth its arrow. Fierce the fight and short, As is the whirlwind. Soon the conquerors And conquered vanish, and the dead remain Mangled by tomahawks. The mighty woods Are still again, the frighted bird comes back And plumes her wings; but thy sweet waters run Crimson with blood. Then, as the sun goes down, Amid the deepening twilight I descry Figures of men that crouch and creep unheard, And bear away the dead. The next day's shower Shall wash the tokens of the fight away. I look again--a hunter's lodge is built, With poles and boughs, beside thy crystal well, While the meek autumn stains the woods with gold, And sheds his golden sunshine. To the door The red man slowly drags the enormous bear Slain in the chestnut thicket, or flings down The deer from his strong shoulders. Shaggy fells Of wolf and cougar hang upon the walls, And loud the black-eyed Indian maidens laugh, That gather, from the rustling heaps of leaves, The hickory's white nuts, and the dark fruit That falls from the gray butternut's long boughs. So centuries passed by, and still the woods Blossomed in spring, and reddened when the year Grew chill, and glistened in the frozen rains Of winter, till the white man swung the axe Beside thee--signal of a mighty change. Then all around was heard the crash of trees, Trembling awhile and rushing to the ground, The low of ox, and shouts of men who fired The brushwood, or who tore the earth with ploughs. The grain sprang thick and tall, and hid in green The blackened hill-side; ranks of spiky maize Rose like a host embattled; the buckwheat Whitened broad acres, sweetening with its flowers The August wind. White cottages were seen With rose-trees at the windows; barns from which Came loud and shrill the crowing of the cock; Pastures where rolled and neighed the lordly horse, And white flocks browsed and bleated. A rich turf Of grasses brought from far o'ercrept thy bank, Spotted with the white clover. Blue-eyed girls Brought pails, and dipped them in thy crystal pool; And children, ruddy-cheeked and flaxen-haired, Gathered the glistening cowslip from thy edge. Since then, what steps have trod thy border! Here On thy green bank, the woodmann of the swamp Has laid his axe, the reaper of the hill His sickle, as they stooped to taste thy stream. The sportsman, tired with wandering in the still September noon, has bathed his heated brow In thy cool current. Shouting boys, let loose For a wild holiday, have quaintly shaped Into a cup the folded linden leaf, And dipped thy sliding crystal. From the wars Returning, the plumed soldier by thy side Has sat, and mused how pleasant 'twere to dwell In such a spot, and be as free as thou, And move for no man's bidding more. At eve, When thou wert crimson with the crimson sky, Lovers have gazed upon thee, and have thought Their mingled lives should flow as peacefully And brightly as thy waters. Here the sage, Gazing into thy self-replenished depth, Has seen eternal order circumscribe And bind the motions of eternal change, And from the gushing of thy simple fount Has reasoned to the mighty universe. Is there no other change for thee, that lurks Among the future ages? Will not man Seek out strange arts to wither and deform The pleasant landscape which thou makest green? Or shall the veins that feed thy constant stream Be choked in middle earth, and flow no more For ever, that the water-plants along Thy channel perish, and the bird in vain Alight to drink? Haply shall these green hills Sink, with the lapse of years, into the gulf Of ocean waters, and thy source be lost Amidst the bitter brine? Or shall they rise, Upheaved in broken cliffs and airy peaks, Haunts of the eagle and the snake, and thou Gush midway from the bare and barren steep? THE WINDS. I. Ye winds, ye unseen currents of the air, Softly ye played a few brief hours ago; Ye bore the murmuring bee; ye tossed the hair O'er maiden cheeks, that took a fresher glow; Ye rolled the round white cloud through depths of blue; Ye shook from shaded flowers the lingering dew; Before you the catalpa's blossoms flew, Light blossoms, dropping on the grass like snow. II. How are ye changed! Ye take the cataract's sound; Ye take the whirlpool's fury and its might; The mountain shudders as ye sweep the ground; The valley woods lie prone beneath your flight. The clouds before you shoot like eagles past; The homes of men are rocking in your blast; Ye lift the roofs like autumn leaves, and cast, Skyward, the whirling fragments out of sight. III. The weary fowls of heaven make wing in vain, To escape your wrath; ye seize and dash them dead. Against the earth ye drive the roaring rain; The harvest-field becomes a river's bed; And torrents tumble from the hills around, Plains turn to lakes, and villages are drowned, And wailing voices, midst the tempest's sound, Rise, as the rushing waters swell and spread. IV. Ye dart upon the deep, and straight is heard A wilder roar, and men grow pale, and pray; Ye fling its floods around you, as a bird Flings o'er his shivering plumes the fountain's spray. See! to the breaking mast the sailor clings; Ye scoop the ocean to its briny springs, And take the mountain billow on your wings, And pile the wreck of navies round the bay. V. Why rage ye thus?--no strife for liberty Has made you mad; no tyrant, strong through fear, Has chained your pinions till ye wrenched them free, And rushed into the unmeasured atmosphere; For ye were born in freedom where ye blow; Free o'er the mighty deep to come and go; Earth's solemn woods were yours, her wastes of snow, Her isles where summer blossoms all the year. VI. O ye wild winds! a mightier Power than yours In chains upon the shore of Europe lies; The sceptred throng, whose fetters he endures, Watch his mute throes with terror in their eyes: And armed warriors all around him stand, And, as he struggles, tighten every band, And lift the heavy spear, with threatening hand, To pierce the victim, should he strive to rise. VII. Yet oh, when that wronged Spirit of our race Shall break, as soon he must, his long-worn chains, And leap in freedom from his prison-place, Lord of his ancient hills and fruitful plains, Let him not rise, like these mad winds of air, To waste the loveliness that time could spare, To fill the earth with wo, and blot her fair Unconscious breast with blood from human veins. VIII. But may he like the spring-time come abroad, Who crumbles winter's gyves with gentle might, When in the genial breeze, the breath of God, Come spouting up the unsealed springs to light; Flowers start from their dark prisons at his feet, The woods, long dumb, awake to hymnings sweet, And morn and eve, whose glimmerings almost meet, Crowd back to narrow bounds the ancient night. THE OLD MAN'S COUNSEL.° Among our hills and valleys, I have known Wise and grave men, who, while their diligent hands Tended or gathered in the fruits of earth, Were reverent learners in the solemn school Of nature. Not in vain to them were sent Seed-time and harvest, or the vernal shower That darkened the brown tilth, or snow that beat On the white winter hills. Each brought, in turn, Some truth, some lesson on the life of man, Or recognition of the Eternal mind Who veils his glory with the elements. One such I knew long since, a white-haired man, Pithy of speech, and merry when he would; A genial optimist, who daily drew From what he saw his quaint moralities. Kindly he held communion, though so old, With me a dreaming boy, and taught me much That books tell not, and I shall ne'er forget. The sun of May was bright in middle heaven, And steeped the sprouting forests, the green hills And emerald wheat-fields, in his yellow light. Upon the apple-tree, where rosy buds Stood clustered, ready to burst forth in bloom, The robin warbled forth his full clear note For hours, and wearied not. Within the woods, Whose young and half transparent leaves scarce cast A shade, gay circles of anemones Danced on their stalks; the shadbush, white with flowers, Brightened the glens; the new-leaved butternut And quivering poplar to the roving breeze Gave a balsamic fragrance. In the fields I saw the pulses of the gentle wind On the young grass. My heart was touched with joy At so much beauty, flushing every hour Into a fuller beauty; but my friend, The thoughtful ancient, standing at my side, Gazed on it mildly sad. I asked him why. "Well mayst thou join in gladness," he replied, "With the glad earth, her springing plants and flowers, And this soft wind, the herald of the green Luxuriant summer. Thou art young like them, And well mayst thou rejoice. But while the flight Of seasons fills and knits thy spreading frame, It withers mine, and thins my hair, and dims These eyes, whose fading light shall soon be quenched In utter darkness. Hearest thou that bird?" I listened, and from midst the depth of woods Heard the love-signal of the grouse, that wears A sable ruff around his mottled neck; Partridge they call him by our northern streams, And pheasant by the Delaware. He beat 'Gainst his barred sides his speckled wings, and made A sound like distant thunder; slow the strokes At first, then fast and faster, till at length They passed into a murmur and were still. "There hast thou," said my friend, "a fitting type Of human life. 'Tis an old truth, I know, But images like these revive the power Of long familiar truths. Slow pass our days In childhood, and the hours of light are long Betwixt the morn and eve; with swifter lapse They glide in manhood, and in age they fly; Till days and seasons flit before the mind As flit the snow-flakes in a winter storm, Seen rather than distinguished. Ah! I seem As if I sat within a helpless bark By swiftly running waters hurried on To shoot some mighty cliff. Along the banks Grove after grove, rock after frowning rock, Bare sands and pleasant homes, and flowery nooks, And isles and whirlpools in the stream, appear Each after each, but the devoted skiff Darts by so swiftly that their images Dwell not upon the mind, or only dwell In dim confusion; faster yet I sweep By other banks, and the great gulf is near. "Wisely, my son, while yet thy days are long, And this fair change of seasons passes slow, Gather and treasure up the good they yield-- All that they teach of virtue, of pure thoughts And kind affections, reverence for thy God And for thy brethren; so when thou shalt come Into these barren years, thou mayst not bring A mind unfurnished and a withered heart." Long since that white-haired ancient slept--but still, When the red flower-buds crowd the orchard bough, And the ruffed grouse is drumming far within The woods, his venerable form again Is at my side, his voice is in my ear. LINES IN MEMORY OF WILLIAM LEGGETT. The earth may ring, from shore to shore, With echoes of a glorious name, But he, whose loss our tears deplore, Has left behind him more than fame. For when the death-frost came to lie On Leggett's warm and mighty heart, And quenched his bold and friendly eye, His spirit did not all depart. The words of fire that from his pen Were flung upon the fervent page, Still move, still shake the hearts of men, Amid a cold and coward age. His love of truth, too warm, too strong For Hope or Fear to chain or chill, His hate of tyranny and wrong, Burn in the breasts he kindled still. AN EVENING REVERY. FROM AN UNFINISHED POEM. The summer day is closed--the sun is set: Well they have done their office, those bright hours, The latest of whose train goes softly out In the red West. The green blade of the ground Has risen, and herds have cropped it; the young twig Has spread its plaited tissues to the sun; Flowers of the garden and the waste have blown And withered; seeds have fallen upon the soil, From bursting cells, and in their graves await Their resurrection. Insects from the pools Have filled the air awhile with humming wings, That now are still for ever; painted moths Have wandered the blue sky, and died again; The mother-bird hath broken for her brood Their prison shell, or shoved them from the nest, Plumed for their earliest flight. In bright alcoves, In woodland cottages with barky walls, In noisome cells of the tumultuous town, Mothers have clasped with joy the new-born babe. Graves by the lonely forest, by the shore Of rivers and of ocean, by the ways Of the thronged city, have been hollowed out And filled, and closed. This day hath parted friends That ne'er before were parted; it hath knit New friendships; it hath seen the maiden plight Her faith, and trust her peace to him who long Had wooed; and it hath heard, from lips which late Were eloquent of love, the first harsh word, That told the wedded one her peace was flown. Farewell to the sweet sunshine! One glad day Is added now to Childhood's merry days, And one calm day to those of quiet Age. Still the fleet hours run on; and as I lean, Amid the thickening darkness, lamps are lit, By those who watch the dead, and those who twine Flowers for the bride. The mother from the eyes Of her sick infant shades the painful light, And sadly listens to his quick-drawn breath. Oh thou great Movement of the Universe, Or Change, or Flight of Time--for ye are one! That bearest, silently, this visible scene Into night's shadow and the streaming rays Of starlight, whither art thou bearing me? I feel the mighty current sweep me on, Yet know not whither. Man foretells afar The courses of the stars; the very hour He knows when they shall darken or grow bright; Yet doth the eclipse of Sorrow and of Death Come unforewarned. Who next, of those I love, Shall pass from life, or, sadder yet, shall fall From virtue? Strife with foes, or bitterer strife With friends, or shame and general scorn of men-- Which who can bear?--or the fierce rack of pain, Lie they within my path? Or shall the years Push me, with soft and inoffensive pace, Into the stilly twilight of my age? Or do the portals of another life Even now, while I am glorying in my strength, Impend around me? Oh! beyond that bourne, In the vast cycle of being which begins At that broad threshold, with what fairer forms Shall the great law of change and progress clothe Its workings? Gently--so have good men taught-- Gently, and without grief, the old shall glide Into the new; the eternal flow of things, Like a bright river of the fields of heaven, Shall journey onward in perpetual peace. THE PAINTED CUP.° The fresh savannas of the Sangamon Here rise in gentle swells, and the long grass Is mixed with rustling hazels. Scarlet tufts Are glowing in the green, like flakes of fire; The wanderers of the prairie know them well, And call that brilliant flower the Painted Cup. Now, if thou art a poet, tell me not That these bright chalices were tinted thus To hold the dew for fairies, when they meet On moonlight evenings in the hazel bowers, And dance till they are thirsty. Call not up, Amid this fresh and virgin solitude, The faded fancies of an elder world; But leave these scarlet cups to spotted moths Of June, and glistening flies, and humming-birds, To drink from, when on all these boundless lawns The morning sun looks hot. Or let the wind O'erturn in sport their ruddy brims, and pour A sudden shower upon the strawberry plant, To swell the reddening fruit that even now Breathes a slight fragrance from the sunny slope. But thou art of a gayer fancy. Well-- Let then the gentle Manitou of flowers, Lingering amid the bloomy waste he loves, Though all his swarthy worshippers are gone-- Slender and small, his rounded cheek all brown And ruddy with the sunshine; let him come On summer mornings, when the blossoms wake, And part with little hands the spiky grass; And touching, with his cherry lips, the edge Of these bright beakers, drain the gathered dew. A DREAM. I had a dream--a strange, wild dream-- Said a dear voice at early light; And even yet its shadows seem To linger in my waking sight. Earth, green with spring, and fresh with dew, And bright with morn, before me stood; And airs just wakened softly blew On the young blossoms of the wood. Birds sang within the sprouting shade, Bees hummed amid the whispering grass, And children prattled as they played Beside the rivulet's dimpling glass Fast climbed the sun: the flowers were flown, There played no children in the glen; For some were gone, and some were grown To blooming dames and bearded men. 'Twas noon, 'twas summer: I beheld Woods darkening in the flush of day, And that bright rivulet spread and swelled, A mighty stream, with creek and bay. And here was love, and there was strife, And mirthful shouts, and wrathful cries, And strong men, struggling as for life, With knotted limbs and angry eyes. Now stooped the sun--the shades grew thin; The rustling paths were piled with leaves; And sunburnt groups were gathering in, From the shorn field, its fruits and sheaves. The river heaved with sullen sounds; The chilly wind was sad with moans; Black hearses passed, and burial-grounds Grew thick with monumental stones. Still waned the day; the wind that chased The jagged clouds blew chillier yet; The woods were stripped, the fields were waste, The wintry sun was near its set. And of the young, and strong, and fair, A lonely remnant, gray and weak, Lingered, and shivered to the air Of that bleak shore and water bleak. Ah! age is drear, and death is cold! I turned to thee, for thou wert near, And saw thee withered, bowed, and old, And woke all faint with sudden fear. 'Twas thus I heard the dreamer say, And bade her clear her clouded brow; "For thou and I, since childhood's day, Have walked in such a dream till now. "Watch we in calmness, as they rise, The changes of that rapid dream, And note its lessons, till our eyes Shall open in the morning beam." THE ANTIQUITY OF FREEDOM. Here are old trees, tall oaks and gnarled pines, That stream with gray-green mosses; here the ground Was never trenched by spade, and flowers spring up Unsown, and die ungathered. It is sweet To linger here, among the flitting birds And leaping squirrels, wandering brooks, and winds That shake the leaves, and scatter, as they pass, A fragrance from the cedars, thickly set With pale blue berries. In these peaceful shades-- Peaceful, unpruned, immeasurably old-- My thoughts go up the long dim path of years, Back to the earliest days of liberty. Oh FREEDOM! thou art not, as poets dream, A fair young girl, with light and delicate limbs, And wavy tresses gushing from the cap With which the Roman master crowned his slave When he took off the gyves. A bearded man, Armed to the teeth, art thou; one mailed hand Grasps the broad shield, and one the sword; thy brow, Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarred With tokens of old wars; thy massive limbs Are strong with struggling. Power at thee has launched His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee; They could not quench the life thou hast from heaven. Merciless power has dug thy dungeon deep, And his swart armorers, by a thousand fires, Have forged thy chain; yet, while he deems thee bound, The links are shivered, and the prison walls Fall outward; terribly thou springest forth, As springs the flame above a burning pile, And shoutest to the nations, who return Thy shoutings, while the pale oppressor flies. Thy birthright was not given by human hands: Thou wert twin-born with man. In pleasant fields, While yet our race was few, thou sat'st with him, To tend the quiet flock and watch the stars, And teach the reed to utter simple airs. Thou by his side, amid the tangled wood, Didst war upon the panther and the wolf, His only foes; and thou with him didst draw The earliest furrows on the mountain side, Soft with the deluge. Tyranny himself, Thy enemy, although of reverend look, Hoary with many years, and far obeyed, Is later born than thou; and as he meets The grave defiance of thine elder eye, The usurper trembles in his fastnesses. Thou shalt wax stronger with the lapse of years, But he shall fade into a feebler age; Feebler, yet subtler. He shall weave his snares, And spring them on thy careless steps, and clap His withered hands, and from their ambush call His hordes to fall upon thee. He shall send Quaint maskers, wearing fair and gallant forms, To catch thy gaze, and uttering graceful words To charm thy ear; while his sly imps, by stealth, Twine round thee threads of steel, light thread on thread That grow to fetters; or bind down thy arms With chains concealed in chaplets. Oh! not yet Mayst thou unbrace thy corslet, nor lay by Thy sword; nor yet, O Freedom! close thy lids In slumber; for thine enemy never sleeps, And thou must watch and combat till the day Of the new earth and heaven. But wouldst thou rest Awhile from tumult and the frauds of men, These old and friendly solitudes invite Thy visit. They, while yet the forest trees Were young upon the unviolated earth, And yet the moss-stains on the rock were new, Beheld thy glorious childhood, and rejoiced. THE MAIDEN'S SORROW. Seven long years has the desert rain Dropped on the clods that hide thy face; Seven long years of sorrow and pain I have thought of thy burial-place. Thought of thy fate in the distant west, Dying with none that loved thee near; They who flung the earth on thy breast Turned from the spot williout a tear. There, I think, on that lonely grave, Violets spring in the soft May shower; There, in the summer breezes, wave Crimson phlox and moccasin flower. There the turtles alight, and there Feeds with her fawn the timid doe; There, when the winter woods are bare, Walks the wolf on the crackling snow. Soon wilt thou wipe my tears away; All my task upon earth is done; My poor father, old and gray, Slumbers beneath the churchyard stone. In the dreams of my lonely bed, Ever thy form before me seems; All night long I talk with the dead, All day long I think of my dreams. This deep wound that bleeds and aches, This long pain, a sleepless pain-- When the Father my spirit takes, I shall feel it no more again. THE RETURN OF YOUTH. My friend, thou sorrowest for thy golden prime, For thy fair youthful years too swift of flight; Thou musest, with wet eyes, upon the time Of cheerful hopes that filled the world with light,-- Years when thy heart was bold, thy hand was strong, And quick the thought that moved thy tongue to speak, And willing faith was thine, and scorn of wrong Summoned the sudden crimson to thy cheek. Thou lookest forward on the coming days, Shuddering to feel their shadow o'er thee creep; A path, thick-set with changes and decays, Slopes downward to the place of common sleep; And they who walked with thee in life's first stage, Leave one by one thy side, and, waiting near, Thou seest the sad companions of thy age-- Dull love of rest, and weariness and fear. Yet grieve thou not, nor think thy youth is gone, Nor deem that glorious season e'er could die. Thy pleasant youth, a little while withdrawn, Waits on the horizon of a brighter sky; Waits, like the morn, that folds her wing and hides, Till the slow stars bring back her dawning hour; Waits, like the vanished spring, that slumbering bides Her own sweet time to waken bud and flower. There shall he welcome thee, when thou shalt stand On his bright morning hills, with smiles more sweet Than when at first he took thee by the hand, Through the fair earth to lead thy tender feet. He shall bring back, but brighter, broader still, Life's early glory to thine eyes again, Shall clothe thy spirit with new strength, and fill Thy leaping heart with warmer love than then. Hast thou not glimpses, in the twilight here, Of mountains where immortal morn prevails? Comes there not, through the silence, to thine ear A gentle rustling of the morning gales; A murmur, wafted from that glorious shore, Of streams that water banks for ever fair, And voices of the loved ones gone before, More musical in that celestial air? A HYMN OF THE SEA. The sea is mighty, but a mightier sways His restless billows. Thou, whose hands have scooped His boundless gulfs and built his shore, thy breath, That moved in the beginning o'er his face, Moves o'er it evermore. The obedient waves To its strong motion roll, and rise and fall. Still from that realm of rain thy cloud goes up, As at the first, to water the great earth, And keep her valleys green. A hundred realms Watch its broad shadow warping on the wind, And in the dropping shower, with gladness hear Thy promise of the harvest. I look forth Over the boundless blue, where joyously The bright crests of innumerable waves Glance to the sun at once, as when the hands Of a great multitude are upward flung In acclamation. I behold the ships Gliding from cape to cape, from isle to isle, Or stemming toward far lands, or hastening home From the old world. It is thy friendly breeze That bears them, with the riches of the land, And treasure of dear lives, till, in the port, The shouting seaman climbs and furls the sail. But who shall bide thy tempest, who shall face The blast that wakes the fury of the sea? Oh God! thy justice makes the world turn pale, When on the armed fleet, that royally Bears down the surges, carrying war, to smite Some city, or invade some thoughtless realm, Descends the fierce tornado. The vast hulks Are whirled like chaff upon the waves; the sails Fly, rent like webs of gossamer; the masts Are snapped asunder; downward from the decks, Downward are slung, into the fathomless gulf, Their cruel engines; and their hosts, arrayed In trappings of the battle-field, are whelmed By whirlpools, or dashed dead upon the rocks. Then stand the nations still with awe, and pause, A moment, from the bloody work of war. These restless surges eat away the shores Of earth's old continents; the fertile plain Welters in shallows, headlands crumble down, And the tide drifts the sea-sand in the streets Of the drowned city. Thou, meanwhile, afar In the green chambers of the middle sea, Where broadest spread the waters and the line Sinks deepest, while no eye beholds thy work, Creator! thou dost teach the coral worm To lay his mighty reefs. From age to age, He builds beneath the waters, till, at last, His bulwarks overtop the brine, and check The long wave rolling from the southern pole To break upon Japan. Thou bid'st the fires, That smoulder under ocean, heave on high The new-made mountains, and uplift their peaks, A place of refuge for the storm-driven bird. The birds and wafting billows plant the rifts With herb and tree; sweet fountains gush; sweet airs Ripple the living lakes that, fringed with flowers, Are gathered in the hollows. Thou dost look On thy creation and pronounce it good. Its valleys, glorious with their summer green, Praise thee in silent beauty, and its woods, Swept by the murmuring winds of ocean, join The murmuring shores in a perpetual hymn. NOON. FROM AN UNFINISHED POEM.° 'Tis noon. At noon the Hebrew bowed the knee And worshipped, while the husbandmen withdrew From the scorched field, and the wayfaring man Grew faint, and turned aside by bubbling fount, Or rested in the shadow of the palm. I, too, amid the overflow of day, Behold the power which wields and cherishes The frame of Nature. From this brow of rock That overlooks the Hudson's western marge, I gaze upon the long array of groves, The piles and gulfs of verdure drinking in The grateful heats. They love the fiery sun; Their broadening leaves grow glossier, and their sprays Climb as he looks upon them. In the midst, The swelling river, into his green gulfs, Unshadowed save by passing sails above, Takes the redundant glory, and enjoys The summer in his chilly bed. Coy flowers, That would not open in the early light, Push back their plaited sheaths. The rivulet's pool, That darkly quivered all the morning long In the cool shade, now glimmers in the sun; And o'er its surface shoots, and shoots again, The glittering dragon-fly, and deep within Run the brown water-beetles to and fro. A silence, the brief sabbath of an hour, Reigns o'er the fields; the laborer sits within His dwelling; he has left his steers awhile, Unyoked, to bite the herbage, and his dog Sleeps stretched beside the door-stone in the shade. Now the grey marmot, with uplifted paws, No more sits listening by his den, but steals Abroad, in safety, to the clover field, And crops its juicy blossoms. All the while A ceaseless murmur from the populous town Swells o'er these solitudes: a mingled sound Of jarring wheels, and iron hoofs that clash Upon the stony ways, and hammer-clang, And creak of engines lifting ponderous bulks, And calls and cries, and tread of eager feet, Innumerable, hurrying to and fro. Noon, in that mighty mart of nations, brings No pause to toil and care. With early day Began the tumult, and shall only cease When midnight, hushing one by one the sounds Of bustle, gathers the tired brood to rest. Thus, in this feverish time, when love of gain And luxury possess the hearts of men, Thus is it with the noon of human life. We, in our fervid manhood, in our strength Of reason, we, with hurry, noise, and care, Plan, toil, and strife, and pause not to refresh Our spirits with the calm and beautiful Of God's harmonious universe, that won Our youthful wonder; pause not to inquire Why we are here; and what the reverence Man owes to man, and what the mystery That links us to the greater world, beside Whose borders we but hover for a space. THE CROWDED STREET. Let me move slowly through the street, Filled with an ever-shifting train, Amid the sound of steps that beat The murmuring walks like autumn rain. How fast the flitting figures come! The mild, the fierce, the stony face; Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some Where secret tears have left their trace. They pass--to toil, to strife, to rest; To halls in which the feast is spread; To chambers where the funeral guest In silence sits beside the dead. And some to happy homes repair, Where children, pressing cheek to cheek, With mute caresses shall declare The tenderness they cannot speak. And some, who walk in calmness here, Shall shudder as they reach the door Where one who made their dwelling dear, Its flower, its light, is seen no more. Youth, with pale cheek and slender frame, And dreams of greatness in thine eye! Goest thou to build an early name, Or early in the task to die? Keen son of trade, with eager brow! Who is now fluttering in thy snare? Thy golden fortunes, tower they now, Or melt the glittering spires in air? Who of this crowd to-night shall tread The dance till daylight gleam again? Who sorrow o'er the untimely dead? Who writhe in throes of mortal pain? Some, famine-struck, shall think how long The cold dark hours, how slow the light, And some, who flaunt amid the throng, Shall hide in dens of shame to-night. Each, where his tasks or pleasures call, They pass, and heed each other not. There is who heeds, who holds them all, In his large love and boundless thought. These struggling tides of life that seem In wayward, aimless course to tend, Are eddies of the mighty stream That rolls to its appointed end. THE WHITE-FOOTED DEER.° It was a hundred years ago, When, by the woodland ways, The traveller saw the wild deer drink, Or crop the birchen sprays. Beneath a hill, whose rocky side O'erbrowed a grassy mead, And fenced a cottage from the wind, A deer was wont to feed. She only came when on the cliffs The evening moonlight lay, And no man knew the secret haunts In which she walked by day. White were her feet, her forehead showed A spot of silvery white, That seemed to glimmer like a star In autumn's hazy night. And here, when sang the whippoorwill, She cropped the sprouting leaves, And here her rustling steps were heard On still October eves. But when the broad midsummer moon Rose o'er that grassy lawn, Beside the silver-footed deer There grazed a spotted fawn. The cottage dame forbade her son To aim the rifle here; "It were a sin," she said, "to harm Or fright that friendly deer. "This spot has been my pleasant home Ten peaceful years and more; And ever, when the moonlight shines, She feeds before our door. "The red men say that here she walked A thousand moons ago; They never raise the war-whoop here, And never twang the bow. "I love to watch her as she feeds, And think that all is well While such a gentle creature haunts The place in which we dwell." The youth obeyed, and sought for game In forests far away, Where, deep in silence and in moss, The ancient woodland lay. But once, in autumn's golden time, He ranged the wild in vain, Nor roused the pheasant nor the deer, And wandered home again. The crescent moon and crimson eve Shone with a mingling light; The deer, upon the grassy mead, Was feeding full in sight. He raised the rifle to his eye, And from the cliffs around A sudden echo, shrill and sharp, Gave back its deadly sound. Away into the neighbouring wood The startled creature flew, And crimson drops at morning lay Amid the glimmering dew. Next evening shone the waxing moon As sweetly as before; The deer upon the grassy mead Was seen again no more. But ere that crescent moon was old, By night the red men came, And burnt the cottage to the ground, And slew the youth and dame. Now woods have overgrown the mead, And hid the cliffs from sight; There shrieks the hovering hawk at noon, And prowls the fox at night. THE WANING MOON. I've watched too late; the morn is near; One look at God's broad silent sky! Oh, hopes and wishes vainly dear, How in your very strength ye die! Even while your glow is on the cheek, And scarce the high pursuit begun, The heart grows faint, the hand grows weak, The task of life is left undone. See where upon the horizon's brim, Lies the still cloud in gloomy bars; The waning moon, all pale and dim, Goes up amid the eternal stars. Late, in a flood of tender light, She floated through the ethereal blue, A softer sun, that shone all night Upon the gathering beads of dew. And still thou wanest, pallid moon! The encroaching shadow grows apace; Heaven's everlasting watchers soon Shall see thee blotted from thy place. Oh, Night's dethroned and crownless queen! Well may thy sad, expiring ray Be shed on those whose eyes have seen Hope's glorious visions fade away. Shine thou for forms that once were bright, For sages in the mind's eclipse, For those whose words were spells of might, But falter now on stammering lips! In thy decaying beam there lies Full many a grave on hill and plain, Of those who closed their dying eyes In grief that they had lived in vain. Another night, and thou among The spheres of heaven shalt cease to shine, All rayless in the glittering throng Whose lustre late was quenched in thine. Yet soon a new and tender light From out thy darkened orb shall beam, And broaden till it shines all night On glistening dew and glimmering stream. THE STREAM OF LIFE. Oh silvery streamlet of the fields, That flowest full and free! For thee the rains of spring return, The summer dews for thee; And when thy latest blossoms die In autumn's chilly showers, The winter fountains gush for thee, Till May brings back the flowers. Oh Stream of Life! the violet springs But once beside thy bed; But one brief summer, on thy path, The dews of heaven are shed. Thy parent fountains shrink away, And close their crystal veins, And where thy glittering current flowed The dust alone remains. * * * * * NOTES. * * * * * NOTES. POEM OF THE AGES. In this poem, written and first printed in the year 1821, the author has endeavoured, from a survey of the past ages of the world, and of the successive advances of mankind in knowledge, virtue, and happiness, to justify and confirm the hopes of the philanthropist for the future destinies of the human race. THE BURIAL-PLACE. (A Fragment) The first half of this fragment may seem to the reader borrowed from the essay on Rural Funerals in the fourth number of the Sketch-Book. The lines were, however, written more than a year before that number appeared. The poem, unfinished as it is, would not have been admitted into this collection, had not the author been unwilling to lose what had the honour of resembling so beautiful a composition. THE MASSACRE AT SCIO. This poem, written about the time of the horrible butchery of the Sciotes by the Turks, in 1824, has been more fortunate than most poetical predictions. The independence of the Greek nation, which it foretold, has come to pass, and the massacre, by inspiring a deeper detestation of their oppressors, did much to promote that event. THE INDIAN GIRL'S LAMENT. _Her maiden veil, her own black hair_, &c. "The unmarried females have a modest falling down of the hair over the eyes."--ELIOT. MONUMENT MOUNTAIN. The mountain, called by this name, is a remarkable precipice in Great Barrington, overlooking the rich and picturesque valley of the Housatonic, in the western part of Massachusetts. At the southern extremity is, or was a few years since, a conical pile of small stones, erected, according to the tradition of the surrounding country, by the Indians, in memory of a woman of the Stockbridge tribe, who killed herself by leaping from the edge of the precipice. Until within a few years past, small parties of that tribe used to arrive from their settlement in the western part of the state of New York, on visits to Stockbridge, the place of their nativity and former residence. A young woman belonging to one of these parties related, to a friend of the author, the story on which the poem of Monument Mountain is founded. An Indian girl had formed an attachment for her cousin, which, according to the customs of the tribe, was unlawful. She was, in consequence, seized with a deep melancholy, and resolved to destroy herself. In company with a female friend, she repaired to the mountain, decked out for the occasion in all her ornaments, and, after passing the day on the summit in singing with her companion the traditional songs of her nation, she threw herself headlong from the rock, and was killed. THE MURDERED TRAVELLER. Some years since, in the month of May, the remains of a human body, partly devoured by wild animals, were found in a woody ravine, near a solitary road passing between the mountains west of the village of Stockbridge. It was supposed that the person came to his death by violence, but no traces could be discovered of his murderers. It was only recollected that one evening, in the course of the previous winter, a traveller had stopped at an inn in the village of West Stockbridge; that he had inquired the way to Stockbridge; and that, in paying the innkeeper for something he had ordered, it appeared that he had a considerable sum of money in his possession. Two ill-looking men were present, and went out about the same time that the traveller proceeded on his journey. During the winter, also, two men of shabby appearance, but plentifully supplied with money, had lingered for awhile about the village of Stockbridge. Several years afterward, a criminal, about to be executed for a capital offence in Canada, confessed that he had been concerned in murdering a traveller in Stockbridge for the sake of his money. Nothing was ever discovered respecting the name or residence of the person murdered. THE AFRICAN CHIEF. _Chained in the market place he stood_, &c. The story of the African Chief, related in this ballad, may be found in the African Repository for April, 1825. The subject of it was a warrior of majestic stature, the brother of Yarradee, king of the Solima nation. He had been taken in battle, and was brought in chains for sale to the Rio Pongas, where he was exhibited in the market-place, his ankles still adorned with the massy rings of gold which he wore when captured. The refusal of his captor to listen to his offers of ransom drove him mad, and he died a maniac. THE CONJUNCTION OF JUPITER AND VENUS. This conjunction was said in the common calendars to have taken place on the 2d of August, 1826. This, I believe, was an error, but the apparent approach of the planets was sufficiently near for poetical purposes. THE HURRICANE. This poem is nearly a translation from one by José Maria de Heredia, a native of the Island of Cuba, who published at New York, six or seven years since, a volume of poems in the Spanish language. SONNET--WILLIAM TELL. Neither this, nor any of the other sonnets in the collection, with the exception of the one from the Portuguese, is framed according to the legitimate Italian model, which, in the author's opinion, possesses no peculiar beauty for an ear accustomed only to the metrical forms of our own language. The sonnets in this collection are rather poems in fourteen lines than sonnets. THE HUNTER'S SERENADE. _The slim papaya ripens_, &c. Papaya--papaw, custard-apple. Flint, in his excellent work on the Geography and History of the Western States, thus describes this tree and its fruit:-- "A papaw shrub, hanging full of fruits, of a size and weight so disproportioned to the stem, and from under long and rich-looking leaves, of the same yellow with the ripened fruit, and of an African luxuriance of growth, is to us one of the richest spectacles that we have ever contemplated in the array of the woods. The fruit contains from two to six seeds, like those of the tamarind, except that they are double the size. The pulp of the fruit resembles egg-custard in consistence and appearance. It has the same creamy feeling in the mouth, and unites the taste of eggs, cream, sugar, and spice. It is a natural custard, too luscious for the relish of most people." Chateaubriand, in his Travels, speaks disparagingly of the fruit of the papaw; but on the authority of Mr. Flint, who must know more of the matter, I have ventured to make my western lover enumerate it among the delicacies of the wilderness. THE PRAIRIES. _The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye._ The prairies of the West, with an undulating surface, _rolling prairies_, as they are called, present to the unaccustomed eye a singular spectacle when the shadows of the clouds are passing rapidly over them. The face of the ground seems to fluctuate and toss like the billows of the sea. _The prairie-hawk that, poised on high, Flaps his broad wings, yet moves not._ I have seen the prairie-hawk balancing himself in the air for hours together, apparently over the same spot; probably watching his prey. _These ample fields Nourished their harvests._ The size and extent of the mounds in the valley of the Mississippi, indicate the existence, at a remote period, of a nation at once populous and laborious, and therefore probably subsisting by agriculture. _The rude conquerors Seated the captive with their chiefs._ Instances are not wanting of generosity like this among the North American Indians towards a captive or survivor of a hostile tribe on which the greatest cruelties had been exercised. SONG OF MARION'S MEN. The exploits of General Francis Marion, the famous partisan warrior of South Carolina, form an interesting chapter in the annals of the American revolution. The British troops were so harassed by the irregular and successful warfare which he kept up at the head of a few daring followers, that they sent an officer to remonstrate with him for not coming into the open field and fighting "like a gentleman and a Christian." MARY MAGDALEN. Several learned divines, with much appearance of reason, in particular Dr. Lardner, have maintained that the common notion respecting the dissolute life of Mary Magdalen is erroneous, and that she was always a person of excellent character. Charles Taylor, the editor of Calmet's Dictionary of the Bible, takes the same view of the subject. The verses of the Spanish poet here translated refer to the "woman who had been a sinner," mentioned in the seventh chapter of St. Luke's Gospel, and who is commonly confounded with Mary Magdalen. FATIMA AND RADUAN. This and the following poems belong to that class of ancient Spanish ballads, by unknown authors, called _Romances Moriscos_--Moriscan romances or ballads. They were composed in the 14th century, some of them, probably, by the Moors, who then lived intermingled with the Christians; and they relate the loves and achievements of the knights of Grenada. LOVE AND FOLLY.--(FROM LA FONTAINE.) This is rather an imitation than a translation of the poem of the graceful French fabulist. THE ALCAYDE OF MOLINA _These eyes shall not recall thee_, &c. This is the very expression of the original--_No te llamarán mis ojos_, &c. The Spanish poets early adopted the practice of calling a lady by the name of the most expressive feature of her countenance, her eyes. The lover styled his mistress "ojos bellos," beautiful eyes; "ojos serenos," serene eyes. Green eyes seem to have been anciently thought a great beauty in Spain, and there is a very pretty ballad by an absent lover, in which he addressed his lady by the title of "green eyes;" supplicating that he may remain in her remembrance. ¡Ay ojuelos verdes! Ay los mis ojuelos! Ay, hagan los cielos Que de mi te acuerdes! THE DEATH OF ALIATAR. _Say, Love--for thou didst see her tears_, &c. The stanza beginning with this line stands thus in the original:-- Dilo tu, amor, si lo viste; ¡Mas ay! que de lastimado Diste otro nudo á la venda, Para no ver lo que ha pasado. I am sorry to find so poor a conceit deforming so spirited a composition as this old ballad, but I have preserved it in the version. It is one of those extravagances which afterward became so common in Spanish poetry, when Gongora introduced the _estilo culto_, as it was called. LOVE IN THE AGE OF CHIVALRY. This personification of the passion of Love, by Peyre Vidal, has been referred to as a proof of how little the Provençal poets were indebted to the authors of Greece and Rome for the imagery of their poems. THE LOVE OF GOD.--(FROM THE PROVENÇAL OF BERNARD RASCAS.) The original of these lines is thus given by John of Nostradamus, in his lives of the Troubadours, in a barbarous Frenchified orthography:-- Touta kausa mortala una fes perirá, Fors que l'amour de Dieu, que tousiours durará. Tous nostres cors vendran essuchs, coma fa l'eska, Lous Aubres leyssaran lour verdour tendra e fresca, Lous Auselets del bosc perdran lour kant subtyeu, E non s'auzira plus lou Rossignol gentyeu. Lous Buols al Pastourgage, e las blankas fedettas Sent'ran lous agulhons de las mortals Sagettas, Lous crestas d'Arles fiers, Renards, e Loups espars, Kabrols, Cervys, Chamous, Senglars de toutes pars, Lous Ours hardys e forts, seran poudra, e Arena, Lou Daulphin en la Mar, lou Ton, e la Balena: Monstres impetuous, Ryaumes, e Comtas, Lous Princes, e lous Reys, seran per mort domtas. E nota ben eysso káscun: la Terra granda, (Ou l'Escritura ment) lou fermament que branda, Prendra autra figura. Enfin tout perirá, Fors que l'Amour de Dieu, que touiours durará. FROM THE SPANISH OF PEDRO DE CASTRO Y AÑAYA. _Las Auroras de Diana_, in which the original of these lines is contained, is, notwithstanding it was praised by Lope de Vega, one of the worst of the old Spanish Romances, being a tissue of riddles and affectations, with now and then a little poem of considerable beauty. LIFE. _Where Isar's clay-white rivulets run Through the dark wood's, like frighted deer._ Close to the city of Munich, in Bavaria, lies the spacious and beautiful pleasure ground, called the English Garden, in which these lines were written, originally projected and laid out by our countryman, Count Rumford, under the auspices of one of the sovereigns of the country. Winding walks of great extent, pass through close thickets and groves interspersed with lawns; and streams, diverted from the river Isar, traverse the grounds swiftly in various directions, the water of which, stained with the clay of the soil it has corroded in its descent from the upper country, is frequently of a turbid white colour. THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS. This song refers to the expedition of the Vermonters, commanded by Ethan Allen, by whom the British fort of Ticonderoga, on Lake Champlain, was surprised and taken, in May, 1775. THE CHILD'S FUNERAL. The incident on which this poem is founded was related to the author while in Europe, in a letter from an English lady. A child died in the south of Italy, and when they went to bury it they found it revived and playing with the flowers which, after the manner of that country, had been brought to grace its funeral. THE DEATH OF SCHILLER. _'Tis said, when Schiller's death drew nigh, The wish possessed his mighty mind, To wander forth wherever lie The homes and haunts of human kind._ Shortly before the death of Schiller, he was seized with a strong desire to travel in foreign countries, as if his spirit had a presentiment of its approaching enlargement, and already longed to expatiate in a wider and more varied sphere of existence. THE FOUNTAIN. _The flower Of Sanguinaria, from whose brittle stem The red drops fell like blood._ The _Sanguinaria Canadensis_, or blood-root, as it is commonly called, bears a delicate white flower of a musky scent, the stem of which breaks easily, and distils a juice of a bright red colour. THE OLD MAN'S COUNSEL. _The shad-bush, white with flowers, Whitened the glens._ The small tree, named by the botanists _Aronia Botyrapium_, is called, in some parts of our country, the shad-bush, from the circumstance that it flowers about the time that the shad ascend the rivers in early spring. Its delicate sprays, covered with white blossoms before the trees are yet in leaf, have a singularly beautiful appearance in the woods. "_There hast thou," said my friend, "a fitting type Of human life."_ I remember hearing an aged man, in the country, compare the slow movement of time in early life and its swift flight as it approaches old age, to the drumming of a partridge or ruffed grouse in the woods--the strokes falling slow and distinct at first, and following each other more and more rapidly, till they end at last in a whirring sound. AN EVENING REVERY.--FROM AN UNFINISHED POEM. This poem and that entitled the Fountain, with one or two others in blank verse, were intended by the author as portions of a larger poem, in which they may hereafter take their place. THE PAINTED CUP. _The fresh savannas of the Sangamon Here rise in gentle swells, and the long grass Is mixed with rustling hazels. Scarlet tufts Are glowing in the green, like flakes of fire._ The Painted Cup, _Euchroma Coccinea_, or _Bartsia Coccinea_, grows in great abundance in the hazel prairies of the western states, where its scarlet tufts make a brilliant appearance in the midst of the verdure. The Sangamon is a beautiful river, tributary to the Illinois, bordered with rich prairies. NOON. _At noon the Hebrew bowed the knee And worshipped_ Evening and morning, and at noon, will I pray and cry aloud, and he shall hear my voice.--PSALM LV. 17. THE WHITE-FOOTED DEER. During the stay of Long's Expedition at Engineer Cantonment, three specimens of a variety of the common deer were brought in, having all the feet white near the hoofs, and extending to those on the hind feet from a little above the spurious hoofs. This white extremity was divided, upon the sides of the foot, by the general colour of the leg, which extends down near to the hoofs, leaving a white triangle in front, of which the point was elevated rather higher than the spurious hoofs.--GODMAN'S NATURAL HISTORY, vol. ii. p 314. 
1847	----	SONGS, MERRY AND SAD by John Charles McNeill [American (North Carolina) poet. 1874-1907.] To JOSEPH P. CALDWELL ("The Old Man") Contents The Bride "Oh, Ask Me Not" Isabel To ------ To Melvin Gardner: Suicide Away Down Home For Jane's Birthday A Secret The Old Bad Woman Valentine A Photograph Jesse Covington An Idyl Home Songs M. W. Ransom Protest Oblivion Now! Tommy Smith Before Bedtime "If I Could Glimpse Him" Attraction Love's Fashion Alcestis Reminiscence Sonnet Lines An Easter Hymn A Christmas Hymn When I Go Home Odessa Trifles Sunburnt Boys Gray Days An Invalid A Caged Mocking-Bird Dawn Harvest Two Pictures October The Old Clock Tear Stains A Prayer She Being Young Paul Jones The Drudge The Wife Vision September Barefooted Pardon Time The Rattlesnake The Prisoner Sonnet Folk Song "97": The Fast Mail Sundown At Sea L'envoi SONGS, MERRY AND SAD The Bride The little white bride is left alone With him, her lord; the guests have gone; The festal hall is dim. No jesting now, nor answering mirth. The hush of sleep falls on the earth And leaves her here with him. Why should there be, O little white bride, When the world has left you by his side, A tear to brim your eyes? Some old love-face that comes again, Some old love-moment sweet with pain Of passionate memories? Does your heart yearn back with last regret For the maiden meads of mignonette And the fairy-haunted wood, That you had not withheld from love, A little while, the freedom of Your happy maidenhood? Or is it but a nameless fear, A wordless joy, that calls the tear In dumb appeal to rise, When, looking on him where he stands, You yield up all into his hands, Pleading into his eyes? For days that laugh or nights that weep You two strike oars across the deep With life's tide at the brim; And all time's beauty, all love's grace Beams, little bride, upon your face Here, looking up at him. "Oh, Ask Me Not" Love, should I set my heart upon a crown, Squander my years, and gain it, What recompense of pleasure could I own? For youth's red drops would stain it. Much have I thought on what our lives may mean, And what their best endeavor, Seeing we may not come again to glean, But, losing, lose forever. Seeing how zealots, making choice of pain, From home and country parted, Have thought it life to leave their fellows slain, Their women broken-hearted; How teasing truth a thousand faces claims, As in a broken mirror, And what a father died for in the flames His own son scorns as error; How even they whose hearts were sweet with song Must quaff oblivion's potion, And, soon or late, their sails be lost along The all-surrounding ocean: Oh, ask me not the haven of our ships, Nor what flag floats above you! I hold you close, I kiss your sweet, sweet lips, And love you, love you, love you! Isabel When first I stood before you, Isabel, I stood there to adore you, In your spell; For all that grace composes, And all that beauty knows is Your face above the roses, Isabel. You knew the charm of flowers, Isabel, Which, like incarnate hours, Rose and fell At your bosom, glowed and gloried, White and pale and pink and florid, And you touched them with your forehead, Isabel. Amid the jest and laughter, Isabel, I saw you, and thereafter, Ill or well, There was nothing else worth seeing, Worth following or fleeing, And no reason else for being, Isabel. To ------ Some time, far hence, when Autumn sheds Her frost upon your hair, And you together sit at dusk, May I come to you there? And lightly will our hearts turn back To this, then distant, day When, while the world was clad in flowers, You two were wed in May. When we shall sit about your board Three old friends met again, Joy will be with us, but not much Of jest and laughter then; For Autumn's large content and calm, Like heaven's own smile, will bless The harvest of your happy lives With store of happiness. May you, who, flankt about with flowers, Will plight your faith to-day, Hold, evermore enthroned, the love Which you have crowned in May; And Time will sleep upon his scythe, The swallow rest his wing, Seeing that you at autumntide Still clasp the hands of spring. To Melvin Gardner: Suicide A flight of doves, with wanton wings, Flash white against the sky. In the leafy copse an oriole sings, And a robin sings hard by. Sun and shadow are out on the hills; The swallow has followed the daffodils; In leaf and blade, life throbs and thrills Through the wild, warm heart of May. To have seen the sun come back, to have seen Children again at play, To have heard the thrush where the woods are green Welcome the new-born day, To have felt the soft grass cool to the feet, To have smelt earth's incense, heavenly sweet, To have shared the laughter along the street, And, then, to have died in May! A thousand roses will blossom red, A thousand hearts be gay, For the summer lingers just ahead And June is on her way; The bee must bestir him to fill his cells, The moon and the stars will weave new spells Of love and the music of marriage bells-- And, oh, to be dead in May! Away Down Home 'T will not be long before they hear The bullbat on the hill, And in the valley through the dusk The pastoral whippoorwill. A few more friendly suns will call The bluets through the loam And star the lanes with buttercups Away down home. "Knee-deep!" from reedy places Will sing the river frogs. The terrapins will sun themselves On all the jutting logs. The angler's cautious oar will leave A trail of drifting foam Along the shady currents Away down home. The mocking-bird will feel again The glory of his wings, And wanton through the balmy air And sunshine while he sings, With a new cadence in his call, The glint-wing'd crow will roam From field to newly-furrowed field Away down home. When dogwood blossoms mingle With the maple's modest red, And sweet arbutus wakes at last From out her winter's bed, 'T would not seem strange at all to meet A dryad or a gnome, Or Pan or Psyche in the woods Away down home. Then come with me, thou weary heart! Forget thy brooding ills, Since God has come to walk among His valleys and his hills! The mart will never miss thee, Nor the scholar's dusty tome, And the Mother waits to bless thee, Away down home. For Jane's Birthday If fate had held a careless knife And clipped one line that drew, Of all the myriad lines of life, From Eden up to you; If, in the wars and wastes of time, One sire had met the sword, One mother died before her prime Or wed some other lord; Or had some other age been blest, Long past or yet to be, And you had been the world's sweet guest Before or after me: I wonder how this rose would seem, Or yonder hillside cot; For, dear, I cannot even dream A world where you are not! Thus heaven forfends that I shall drink The gall that might have been, If aught had broken a single link Along the lists of men; And heaven forgives me, whom it loves, For feigning such distress: My heart is happiest when it proves Its depth of happiness. Enough to see you where you are, Radiant with maiden mirth! To bless whatever blessed star Presided o'er your birth, That, on this immemorial morn, When heaven was bending low, The gods were kind and you were born Twenty sweet years ago! A Secret A little baby went to sleep One night in his white bed, And the moon came by to take a peep At the little baby head. A wind, as wandering winds will do, Brought to the baby there Sweet smells from some quaint flower that grew Out on some hill somewhere. And wind and flower and pale moonbeam About the baby's bed Stirred and woke the funniest dream In the little sleepy head. He thought he was all sorts of things From a lion to a cat; Sometimes he thought he flew on wings, Or fell and fell, so that When morning broke he was right glad But much surprised to see Himself a soft, pink little lad Just like he used to be. I would not give this story fame If there were room to doubt it, But when he learned to talk, he came And told me all about it. The Old Bad Woman The Old Bad Woman was coming along, Busily humming a sort of song. You could barely see, below her bonnet, Her chin where her long nose rested on it. One tooth thrust out on her lower lip, And she held one hand upon her hip. Then we went to thinking mighty fast, For we knew our time had come at last. For what we had done and didn't do The Old Bad Woman would put us through. If you cried enough to fill your hat, She wouldn't care; she was used to that. Of the jam we had eaten, she would know; How we ran barefooted in the snow; How we cried when they made us take our bath; How we tied the grass across the path; How we bound together the cat and cur-- We couldn't deny these things to her. She pulled her nose up off her chin And blinked at us with an awful grin. And we almost died, becaze and because Her bony fingers looked like claws. When she came on up to where we were, How could we be polite to her? You needn't guess how she put us through. If you are bad, she'll visit you. And when she leaves and hobbles off You'll think that she has done enough; For the Old Bad Woman will and can Be just as bad as the Old Bad Man! Valentine This is the time for birds to mate; To-day the dove Will mark the ancient amorous date With moans of love; The crow will change his call to prate His hopes thereof. The starling will display the red That lights his wings; The wren will know the sweet things said By him who swings And ducks and dips his crested head And sings and sings. They are obedient to their blood, Nor ask a sign, Save buoyant air and swelling bud, At hands divine, But choose, each in the barren wood, His valentine. In caution's maze they never wait Until they die; They flock the season's open gate Ere time steals by. Love, shall we see and imitate, You, love, and I? A Photograph When in this room I turn in pondering pace And find thine eyes upon me where I stand, Led on, as by Enemo's silken strand, I come and gaze and gaze upon thy face. Framed round by silence, poised on pearl-white grace Of curving throat, too sweet for beaded band, It seems as if some wizard's magic wand Had wrought thee for the love of all the race. Dear face, that will not turn about to see The tulips, glorying in the casement sun, Or, other days, the drizzled raindrops run Down the damp walls, but follow only me, Would that Pygmalion's goddess might be won To change this lifeless image into thee! Jesse Covington If I have had some merry times In roaming up and down the earth, Have made some happy-hearted rhymes And had my brimming share of mirth, And if this song should live in fame When my brief day is dead and gone, Let it recall with mine the name Of old man Jesse Covington. Let it recall his waggish heart-- Yeke-hey, yeke-hey, hey-diddle-diddle-- When, while the fire-logs fell apart, He snatched the bow across his fiddle, And looked on, with his eyes half shut, Which meant his soul was wild with fun, At our mad capers through the hut Of old man Jesse Covington. For all the thrilling tales he told, For all the tunes the fiddle knew, For all the glorious nights of old We boys and he have rollicked through, For laughter all unknown to wealth That roared responsive to a pun, A hale, ripe age and ruddy health To old man Jesse Covington! An Idyl Upon a gnarly, knotty limb That fought the current's crest, Where shocks of reeds peeped o'er the brim, Wild wasps had glued their nest. And in a sprawling cypress' grot, Sheltered and safe from flood, Dirt-daubers each had chosen a spot To shape his house of mud. In a warm crevice of the bark A basking scorpion clung, With bright blue tail and red-rimmed eyes And yellow, twinkling tongue. A lunging trout flashed in the sun, To do some petty slaughter, And set the spiders all a-run On little stilts of water. Toward noon upon the swamp there stole A deep, cathedral hush, Save where, from sun-splocht bough and bole, Sweet thrush replied to thrush. An angler came to cast his fly Beneath a baffling tree. I smiled, when I had caught his eye, And he smiled back at me. When stretched beside a shady elm I watched the dozy heat, Nature was moving in her realm, For I could hear her feet. Home Songs The little loves and sorrows are my song: The leafy lanes and birthsteads of my sires, Where memory broods by winter's evening fires O'er oft-told joys, and ghosts of ancient wrong; The little cares and carols that belong To home-hearts, and old rustic lutes and lyres, And spreading acres, where calm-eyed desires Wake with the dawn, unfevered, fair, and strong. If words of mine might lull the bairn to sleep, And tell the meaning in a mother's eyes; Might counsel love, and teach their eyes to weep Who, o'er their dead, question unanswering skies, More worth than legions in the dust of strife, Time, looking back at last, should count my life. M. W. Ransom (Died October 8, 1904) For him, who in a hundred battles stood Scorning the cannon's mouth, Grimy with flame and red with foeman's blood, For thy sweet sake, O South; Who, wise as brave, yielded his conquered sword At a vain war's surcease, And spoke, thy champion still, the statesman's word In the calm halls of peace; Who pressed the ruddy wine to thy faint lips, Where thy torn body lay, And saw afar time's white in-sailing ships Bringing a happier day: Oh, mourn for him, dear land that gave him birth! Bow low thy sorrowing head! Let thy seared leaves fall silent on the earth Whereunder he lies dead! In field and hall, in valor and in grace, In wisdom's livery, Gentle and brave, he moved with knightly pace, A worthy son of thee! Protest Oh, I am weary, weary, weary Of Pan and oaten quills And little songs that, from the dictionary, Learn lore of streams and hills, Of studied laughter, mocking what is merry, And calculated thrills! Are we grown old and past the time of singing? Is ardor quenched in art Till art is but a formal figure, bringing A money-measured heart, Procrustean cut, and, with old echoes, ringing Its bells about the mart? The race moves on, and leaves no wildernesses Where rugged voices cry; It reads its prayer, and with set phrase it blesses The souls of men who die, And step by even step its rank progresses, An army marshalled by. If it be better so, that Babel noises, Losing all course and ken, And grief that wails and gladness that rejoices Should never wake again To shock a world of modulated voices And mediocre men, Then he is blest who wears the painted feather And may not turn about To dusks when muses romped the dewy heather In unrestricted rout And dawns when, if the stars had sung together, The sons of God would shout! Oblivion Green moss will creep Along the shady graves where we shall sleep. Each year will bring Another brood of birds to nest and sing. At dawn will go New ploughmen to the fields we used to know. Night will call home The hunter from the hills we loved to roam. She will not ask, The milkmaid, singing softly at her task, Nor will she care To know if I were brave or you were fair. No one will think What chalice life had offered us to drink, When from our clay The sun comes back to kiss the snow away. Now! Her brown hair knew no royal crest, No gems nor jeweled charms, No roses her bright cheek caressed, No lilies kissed her arms. In simple, modest womanhood Clad, as was meet, in white, The fairest flower of all, she stood Amid the softest light. It had been worth a perilous quest To see the court she drew,-- My rose, my gem, my royal crest, My lily moist with dew; Worth heaven, when, with farewells from each The gay throng let us be, To see her turn at last and reach Her white hands out to me. Tommy Smith When summer's languor drugs my veins And fills with sleep the droning times, Like sluggish dreams among my brains, There runs the drollest sort of rhymes, Idle as clouds that stray through heaven And vague as if they were a myth, But in these rhymes is always given A health for old Bluebritches Smith. Among my thoughts of what is good In olden times and distant lands, Is that do-nothing neighborhood Where the old cider-hogshead stands To welcome with its brimming gourd The canny crowd of kin and kith Who meet about the bibulous board Of old Bluebritches Tommy Smith. In years to come, when stealthy change Hath stolen the cider-press away And the gnarled orchards of the grange Have fallen before a slow decay, Were I so cunning, I would carve From some time-scorning monolith A sculpture that should well preserve The fame of old Bluebritches Smith. Before Bedtime The cat sleeps in a chimney jam With ashes in her fur, An' Tige, from on the yuther side, He keeps his eye on her. The jar o' curds is on the hearth, An' I'm the one to turn it. I'll crawl in bed an' go to sleep When maw begins to churn it. Paw bends to read his almanax An' study out the weather, An' bud has got a gourd o' grease To ile his harness leather. Sis looks an' looks into the fire, Half-squintin' through her lashes, An' I jis watch my tater where It shoots smoke through the ashes. "If I Could Glimpse Him" When in the Scorpion circles low The sun with fainter, dreamier light, And at a far-off hint of snow The giddy swallows take to flight, And droning insects sadly know That cooler falls the autumn night; When airs breathe drowsily and sweet, Charming the woods to colors gay, And distant pastures send the bleat Of hungry lambs at break of day, Old Hermes' wings grow on my feet, And, good-by, home! I'm called away! There on the hills should I behold, Sitting upon an old gray stone That humps its back up through the mold, And piping in a monotone, Pan, as he sat in days of old, My joy would bid surprise begone! Dear Pan! 'Tis he that calls me out; He, lying in some hazel copse, Where lazily he turns about And munches each nut as it drops, Well pleased to see me swamped in doubt At sound of his much-changing stops. If I could glimpse him by the vine Where purple fox-grapes hang their store, I'd tell him, in his leafy shrine, How poets say he lives no more. He'd laugh, and pluck a muscadine, And fall to piping, as of yore! Attraction He who wills life wills its condition sweet, Having made love its mother, joy its quest, That its perpetual sequence might not rest On reason's dictum, cold and too discreet; For reason moves with cautious, careful feet, Debating whether life or death were best, And why pale pain, not ruddy mirth, is guest In many a heart which life hath set to beat. But I will cast my fate with love, and trust Her honeyed heart that guides the pollened bee And sets the happy wing-seeds fluttering free; And I will bless the law which saith, Thou must! And, wet with sea or shod with weary dust, Will follow back and back and back to thee! Love's Fashion Oh, I can jest with Margaret And laugh a gay good-night, But when I take my Helen's hand I dare not clasp it tight. I dare not hold her dear white hand More than a quivering space, And I should bless a breeze that blew Her hair into my face. 'T is Margaret I call sweet names: Helen is too, too dear For me to stammer little words Of love into her ear. So now, good-night, fair Margaret, And kiss me e'er we part! But one dumb touch of Helen's hand, And, oh, my heart, my heart! Alcestis Not long the living weep above their dead, And you will grieve, Admetus, but not long. The winter's silence in these desolate halls Will break with April's laughter on your lips; The bees among the flowers, the birds that mate, The widowed year, grown gaunt with memory And yearning toward the summer's fruits, will come With lotus comfort, feeding all your veins. The vining brier will crawl across my grave, And you will woo another in my stead. Those tender, foolish names you called me by, Your passionate kiss that clung unsatisfied, The pressure of your hand, when dark night hushed Life's busy stir, and left us two alone, Will you remember? or, when dawn creeps in, And you bend o'er another's pillowed head, Seeing sleep's loosened hair about her face, Until her low love-laughter welcomes you, Will you, down-gazing at her waking eyes, Forget? So have I loved you, my Admetus, I thank the cruel fates who clip my life To lengthen yours, they tarry not for age To dim my eye and blanch my cheek, but now Take me, while my lips are sweet to you And youth hides yet amid this hair of mine, Brown in the shadow, golden in the light. Bend down and kiss me, dying for your sake, Not gratefully, but sadly, love's farewell; And if the flowering year's oblivion Lend a new passion to thy life, far down In the dim Stygian shadows wandering, I will not know, but still will cherish there, Where no change comes, thy love upon my lips. Reminiscence We sang old love-songs on the way In sad and merry snatches, Your fingers o'er the strings astray Strumming the random catches. And ever, as the skiff plied on Among the trailing willows, Trekking the darker deeps to shun The gleaming sandy shallows, It seemed that we had, ages gone, In some far summer weather, When this same faery moonlight shone, Sung these same songs together. And every grassy cape we passed, And every reedy island, Even the bank'd cloud in the west That loomed a sombre highland; And you, with dewmist on your hair, Crowned with a wreath of lilies, Laughing like Lalage the fair And tender-eyed like Phyllis: I know not if 't were here at home, By some old wizard's orders, Or long ago in Crete or Rome Or fair Provencal borders, But now, as when a faint flame breaks From out its smouldering embers, My heart stirs in its sleep, and wakes, And yet but half-remembers That you and I some other time Moved through this dream of glory, Like lovers in an ancient rhyme, A long-forgotten story. Sonnet I would that love were subject unto law! Upon his person I should lay distraint And force him thus to answer my complaint, Which I, in well-considered counts, should draw. Not free to fly, he needs must seek some flaw To mar my pleading, though his heart were faint; Declare his counsel to me, and acquaint Himself with maxim, precedent, and saw. Ah, I could win him with authorities, If suing thus in such a sober court; Could read him many an ancient rhym'd report Of such sad cases, tears would fill his eyes And he confess a judgment, or resort To some well-pleasing terms of compromise! Lines To you, dear mother heart, whose hair is gray Above this page to-day, Whose face, though lined with many a smile and care, Grows year by year more fair, Be tenderest tribute set in perfect rhyme, That haply passing time May cull and keep it for strange lips to pay When we have gone our way; And, to strange men, weary of field and street, Should this, my song, seem sweet, Yours be the joy, for all that made it so You know, dear heart, you know. An Easter Hymn The Sun has come again and fed The lily's lamp with light, And raised from dust a rose, rich red, And a little star-flower, white; He also guards the Pleiades And holds his planets true: But we--we know not which of these The easier task to do. But, since from heaven he stoops to breathe A flower to balmy air, Surely our lives are not beneath The kindness of his care; And, as he guides the blade that gropes Up from the barren sod, So, from the ashes of our hopes, Will beauty grow toward God. Whate'er thy name, O Soul of Life,-- We know but that thou art,-- Thou seest, through all our waste of strife, One groping human heart, Weary of words and broken sight, But moved with deep accord To worship where thy lilies light The altar of its Lord. A Christmas Hymn Near where the shepherds watched by night And heard the angels o'er them, The wise men saw the starry light Stand still at last before them. No armored castle there to ward His precious life from danger, But, wrapped in common cloth, our Lord Lay in a lowly manger. No booming bells proclaimed his birth, No armies marshalled by, No iron thunders shook the earth, No rockets clomb the sky; The temples builded in his name Were shapeless granite then, And all the choirs that sang his fame Were later breeds of men. But, while the world about him slept, Nor cared that he was born, One gentle face above him kept Its mother watch till morn; And, if his baby eyes could tell What grace and glory were, No roar of gun, no boom of bell Were worth the look of her. Now praise to God that ere his grace Was scorned and he reviled He looked into his mother's face, A little helpless child; And praise to God that ere men strove About his tomb in war One loved him with a mother's love, Nor knew a creed therefor. When I Go Home When I go home, green, green will glow the grass, Whereon the flight of sun and cloud will pass; Long lines of wood-ducks through the deepening gloam Will hold above the west, as wrought on brass, And fragrant furrows will have delved the loam, When I go home. When I go home, the dogwood stars will dash The solemn woods above the bearded ash, The yellow-jasmine, whence its vine hath clomb, Will blaze the valleys with its golden flash, And every orchard flaunt its polychrome, When I go home. When I go home and stroll about the farm, The thicket and the barnyard will be warm. Jess will be there, and Nigger Bill, and Tom-- On whom time's chisel works no hint of harm-- And, oh, 'twill be a day to rest and roam, When I go home! Odessa A horror of great darkness over them, No cloud of fire to guide and cover them, Beasts for the shambles, tremulous with dread, They crouch on alien soil among their dead. "Thy shield and thy exceeding great reward," This was thine ancient covenant, O Lord, Which, sealed with mirth, these many thousand years Is black with blood and blotted out with tears. Have these not toiled through Egypt's burning sun, And wept beside the streams of Babylon, Led from thy wilderness of hill and glen Into a wider wilderness of men? Life bore them ever less of gain than loss, Before and since Golgotha's piteous Cross, And surely, now, their sorrow hath sufficed For all the hate that grew from love of Christ! Thou great God-heart, heed thou thy people's cry, Bare-browed and empty-handed where they die, Sea-sundered from wall-girt Jerusalem, There being no sword that wills to succor them,-- And Miriam's song, long hushed, will rise to thee, And all thy people lift their eyes to thee, When, for the darkness' horror over them, Thou comest, a cloud of light to cover them. Trifles What shall I bring you, sweet? A posy prankt with every April hue: The cloud-white daisy, violet sky-blue, Shot with the primrose sunshine through and through? Or shall I bring you, sweet, Some ancient rhyme of lovers sore beset, Whose joy is dead, whose sadness lingers yet, That you may read, and sigh, and soon forget? What shall I bring you, sweet? Was ever trifle yet so held amiss As not to fill love's waiting heart with bliss, And merit dalliance at a long, long kiss? Sunburnt Boys Down on the Lumbee river Where the eddies ripple cool Your boat, I know, glides stealthily About some shady pool. The summer's heats have lulled asleep The fish-hawk's chattering noise, And all the swamp lies hushed about You sunburnt boys. You see the minnow's waves that rock The cradled lily leaves. From a far field some farmer's song, Singing among his sheaves, Comes mellow to you where you sit, Each man with boatman's poise, There, in the shimmering water lights, You sunburnt boys. I know your haunts: each gnarly bole That guards the waterside, Each tuft of flags and rushes where The river reptiles hide, Each dimpling nook wherein the bass His eager life employs Until he dies--the captive of You sunburnt boys. You will not--will you?--soon forget When I was one of you, Nor love me less that time has borne My craft to currents new; Nor shall I ever cease to share Your hardships and your joys, Robust, rough-spoken, gentle-hearted Sunburnt boys! Gray Days A soaking sedge, A faded field, a leafless hill and hedge, Low clouds and rain, And loneliness and languor worse than pain. Mottled with moss, Each gravestone holds to heaven a patient Cross. Shrill streaks of light Two sycamores' clean-limbed, funereal white, And low between, The sombre cedar and the ivy green. Upon the stone Of each in turn who called this land his own The gray rain beats And wraps the wet world in its flying sheets, And at my eaves A slow wind, ghostlike, comes and grieves and grieves. An Invalid I care not what his name for God may be, Nor what his wisdom holds of heaven and hell, The alphabet whereby he strives to spell His lines of life, nor where he bends his knee, Since, with his grave before him, he can see White Peace above it, while the churchyard bell Poised in its tower, poised now, to boom his knell, Seems but the waiting tongue of liberty. For names and knowledge, idle breed of breath, And cant and creed, the progeny of strife, Thronging the safe, companioned streets of life, Shrink trembling from the cold, clear eye of death, And learn too late why dying lips can smile: That goodness is the only creed worth while. A Caged Mocking-Bird I pass a cobbler's shop along the street And pause a moment at the door-step, where, In nature's medley, piping cool and sweet, The songs that thrill the swamps when spring is near, Fly o'er the fields at fullness of the year, And twitter where the autumn hedges run, Join all the months of music into one. I shut my eyes: the shy wood-thrush is there, And all the leaves hang still to catch his spell; Wrens cheep among the bushes; from somewhere A bluebird's tweedle passes o'er the fell; From rustling corn bob-white his name doth tell; And when the oriole sets his full heart free Barefooted boyhood comes again to me. The vision-bringer hangs upon a nail Before a dusty window, looking dim On marts where trade goes hot with box and bale; The sad-eyed passers have no time for him. His captor sits, with beaded face and grim, Plying a listless awl, as in a dream Of pastures winding by a shady stream. Gray bird, what spirit bides with thee unseen? For now, when every songster finds his love And makes his nest where woods are deep and green, Free as the winds, thy song should mock the dove. If I were thou, my grief in moans should move At thinking--otherwhere, by others' art Charmed and forgetful--of mine own sweetheart. But I, who weep when fortune seems unkind To prison me within a space of walls, When far-off grottoes hold my loves enshrined And every love is cruel when it calls; Who sulk for hills and fern-fledged waterfalls,-- I blush to offer sorrow unto thee, Master of fate, scorner of destiny! Dawn The hills again reach skyward with a smile. Again, with waking life along its way, The landscape marches westward mile on mile And time throbs white into another day. Though eager life must wait on livelihood, And all our hopes be tethered to the mart, Lacking the eagle's wild, high freedom, would That ours might be this day the eagle's heart! Harvest Cows in the stall and sheep in the fold; Clouds in the west, deep crimson and gold; A heron's far flight to a roost somewhere; The twitter of killdees keen in the air; The noise of a wagon that jolts through the gloam On the last load home. There are lights in the windows; a blue spire of smoke Climbs from the grange grove of elm and oak. The smell of the Earth, where the night pours to her Its dewy libation, is sweeter than myrrh, And an incense to Toil is the smell of the loam On the last load home. Two Pictures One sits in soft light, where the hearth is warm, A halo, like an angel's, on her hair. She clasps a sleeping infant in her arm. A holy presence hovers round her there, And she, for all her mother-pains more fair, Is happy, seeing that all sweet thoughts that stir The hearts of men bear worship unto her. Another wanders where the cold wind blows, Wet-haired, with eyes that sting one like a knife. Homeless forever, at her bosom close She holds the purchase of her love and life, Of motherhood, unglorified as wife; And bitterer than the world's relentless scorn The knowing her child were happier never born. Whence are the halo and the fiery shame That fashion thus a crown and curse of love? Have roted words such power to bless and blame? Ay, men have stained a raven from many a dove, And all the grace and all the grief hereof Are the two words which bore one's lips apart And which the other hoarded in her heart. He who stooped down and wrote upon the sand, The God-heart in him touched to tenderness, Saw deep, saw what we cannot understand,-- We, who draw near the shrine of one to bless The while we scourge another's sore distress, And judge like gods between the ill and good, The glory and the guilt of womanhood. October The thought of old, dear things is in thine eyes, O, month of memories! Musing on days thine heart hath sorrow of, Old joy, dead hope, dear love, I see thee stand where all thy sisters meet To cast down at thy feet The garnered largess of the fruitful year, And on thy cheek a tear. Thy glory flames in every blade and leaf To blind the eyes of grief; Thy vineyards and thine orchards bend with fruit That sorrow may be mute; A hectic splendor lights thy days to sleep, Ere the gray dusk may creep Sober and sad along thy dusty ways, Like a lone nun, who prays; High and faint-heard thy passing migrant calls; Thy lazy lizard sprawls On his gray stone, and many slow winds creep About thy hedge, asleep; The sun swings farther toward his love, the south, To kiss her glowing mouth; And Death, who steals among thy purpling bowers, Is deeply hid in flowers. Would that thy streams were Lethe, and might flow Where lotus blossoms blow, And all the sweets wherewith thy riches bless Might hold no bitterness! Would, in thy beauty, we might all forget Dead days and old regret, And through thy realm might fare us forth to roam, Having no thought for home! And yet I feel, beneath thy queen's attire, Woven of blood and fire, Beneath the golden glory of thy charm Thy mother heart beats warm, And if, mayhap, a wandering child of thee, Weary of land and sea, Should turn him homeward from his dreamer's quest To sob upon thy breast, Thine arm would fold him tenderly, to prove How thine eyes brimmed with love, And thy dear hand, with all a mother's care, Would rest upon his hair. The Old Clock All day low clouds and slanting rain Have swept the woods and dimmed the plain. Wet winds have swayed the birch and oak, And caught and swirled away the smoke, But, all day long, the wooden clock Went on, Nic-noc, nic-noc. When deep at night I wake with fear, And shudder in the dark to hear The roaring storm's unguided strength, Peace steals into my heart at length, When, calm amid the shout and shock, I hear, Nic-noc, nic-noc. And all the winter long 't is I Who bless its sheer monotony-- Its scorn of days, which cares no whit For time, except to measure it: The prosy, dozy, cosy clock, Nic-noc, nic-noc, nic-noc! Tear Stains Tear-marks stain from page to page This book my fathers left to me,-- So dull that nothing but its age Were worth its freight across the sea. But tear stains! When, by whom, and why? Thus takes my fancy to its wings; For grief is old, and one may cry About so many things! A Prayer If many years should dim my inward sight, Till, stirred with no emotion, I might stand gazing at the fall of night Across the gloaming ocean; Till storm, and sun, and night, vast with her stars, Would seem an oft-told story, And the old sorrow of heroic wars Be faded of its glory; Till, hearing, while June's roses blew their musk, The noise of field and city, The human struggle, sinking tired at dusk, I felt no thrill of pity; Till dawn should come without her old desire, And day brood o'er her stages,-- O let me die, too frail for nature's hire, And rest a million ages. She Being Young The home of love is her blue eyes, Wherein all joy, all beauty lies, More sweet than hopes of paradise, She being young. Speak of her with a miser's praise; She craves no golden speech; her ways Wind through charmed nights and magic days, She being young. She is so far from pain and death, So warm her cheek, so sweet her breath Glad words are all the words she saith, She being young. Seeing her face, it seems not far To Troy's heroic field of war, To Troy and all great things that are, She being young. Paul Jones A century of silent suns Have set since he was laid on sleep, And now they bear with booming guns And streaming banners o'er the deep A withered skin and clammy hair Upon a frame of human bones: Whose corse? We neither know nor care, Content to name it John Paul Jones. His dust were as another's dust; His bones--what boots it where they lie? What matter where his sword is rust, Or where, now dark, his eagle eye? No foe need fear his arm again, Nor love, nor praise can make him whole; But o'er the farthest sons of men Will brood the glory of his soul. Careless though cenotaph or tomb Shall tower his country's monument, Let banners float and cannon boom, A million-throated shout be spent, Until his widowed sea shall laugh With sunlight in her mantling foam, While, to his tomb or cenotaph, We bid our hero welcome home. Twice exiled, let his ashes rest At home, afar, or in the wave, But keep his great heart with us, lest Our nation's greatness find its grave; And, while the vast deep listens by, When armored wrong makes terms to right, Keep on our lips his proud reply, "Sir, I have but begun to fight!" The Drudge Repose upon her soulless face, Dig the grave and leave her; But breathe a prayer that, in his grace, He who so loved this toiling race To endless rest receive her. Oh, can it be the gates ajar Wait not her humble quest, Whose life was but a patient war Against the death that stalked from far With neither haste nor rest; To whom were sun and moon and cloud, The streamlet's pebbly coil, The transient, May-bound, feathered crowd, The storm's frank fury, thunder-browed, But witness of her toil; Whose weary feet knew not the bliss Of dance by jocund reed; Who never dallied at a kiss! If heaven refuses her, life is A tragedy indeed! The Wife They locked him in a prison cell, Murky and mean. She kissed him there a wife's farewell The bars between. And when she turned to go, the crowd, Thinking to see her shamed and bowed, Saw her pass out as calm and proud As any queen. She passed a kinsman on the street, To whose sad eyes She made reply with smile as sweet As April skies. To one who loved her once and knew The sorrow of her life, she threw A gay word, ere his tale was due Of sympathies. She met a playmate, whose red rose Had never a thorn, Whom fortune guided when she chose Her marriage morn, And, smiling, looked her in the eye; But, seeing the tears of sympathy, Her smile died, and she passed on by In quiet scorn. They could not know how, when by night The city slept, A sleepless woman, still and white, The watches kept; How her wife-loyal heart had borne The keen pain of a flowerless thorn, How hot the tears that smiles and scorn Had held unwept. Vision The wintry sun was pale On hill and hedge; The wind smote with its flail The seeded sedge; High up above the world, New taught to fly, The withered leaves were hurled About the sky; And there, through death and dearth, It went and came,-- The Glory of the earth That hath no name. I know not what it is; I only know It quivers in the bliss Where roses blow, That on the winter's breath It broods in space, And o'er the face of death I see its face, And start and stand between Delight and dole, As though mine eyes had seen A living Soul. And I have followed it, As thou hast done, Where April shadows flit Beneath the sun; In dawn and dusk and star, In joy and fear, Have seen its glory far And felt it near, And dared recall his name Who stood unshod Before a fireless flame, And called it God. September I have not been among the woods, Nor seen the milk-weeds burst their hoods, The downy thistle-seeds take wing, Nor the squirrel at his garnering. And yet I know that, up to God, The mute month holds her goldenrod, That clump and copse, o'errun with vines, Twinkle with clustered muscadines, And in deserted churchyard places Dwarf apples smile with sunburnt faces. I know how, ere her green is shed, The dogwood pranks herself with red; How the pale dawn, chilled through and through, Comes drenched and draggled with her dew; How all day long the sunlight seems As if it lit a land of dreams, Till evening, with her mist and cloud, Begins to weave her royal shroud. If yet, as in old Homer's land, Gods walk with mortals, hand in hand, Somewhere to-day, in this sweet weather, Thinkest thou not they walk together? Barefooted The girls all like to see the bluets in the lane And the saucy johnny-jump-ups in the meadow, But, we boys, we want to see the dogwood blooms again, Throwin' a sort of summer-lookin' shadow; For the very first mild mornin' when the woods are white (And we needn't even ask a soul about it) We leave our shoes right where we pulled them off at night, And, barefooted once again, we run and shout it: You may take the country over-- When the bluebird turns a rover, And the wind is soft and hazy, And you feel a little lazy, And the hunters quit the possums-- It's the time for dogwood blossoms. We feel so light we wish there were more fences here; We'd like to jump and jump them, all together! No sleds for us, no guns, nor even 'simmon beer, No nothin' but the blossoms and fair weather! The meadow is a little sticky right at first, But a few short days 'll wipe away that trouble. To feel so good and gay, I wouldn't mind the worst That could be done by any field o' stubble. O, all the trees are seemin' sappy! O, all the folks are smilin' happy! And there's joy in every little bit of room; But the happiest of them all At the Shanghai rooster's call Are we barefoots when the dogwoods burst abloom! Pardon Time Give over now; forbear. The moonlight steeps In silver silence towered castle-keeps And cottage crofts, where apples bend the bough. Peace guards us round, and many a tired heart sleeps. Let me brush back the shadow from your brow. Give over now. On such a night, how sweet, how sweet is life, Even to the insect piper with his fife! And must your troubled face still bear the blight Of strength that runs itself to waste in strife? For love's own heart should throb through all the light Of such a night. The Rattlesnake Coiled like a clod, his eyes the home of hate, Where rich the harvest bows, he lies in wait, Linking earth's death and music, mate with mate. Is 't lure, or warning? Those small bells may sing Like Ariel sirens, poised on viewless wing, To lead stark life where mailed death is king; Else nature's voice, in that cold, earthy thrill, Bids good avoid the venomed fang of ill, And life and death fight equal in her will. The Prisoner From pacing, pacing without hope or quest He leaned against his window-bars to rest And smelt the breeze that crept up from the west. It came with sundown noises from the moors, Of milking time and loud-voiced rural chores, Of lumbering wagons and of closing doors. He caught a whiff of furrowed upland sweet, And certain scents stole up across the street That told him fireflies winked among the wheat. Over the dusk hill woke a new moon's light, Shadowed the woods and made the waters white, And watched above the quiet tents of night. Alas, that the old Mother should not know How ached his heart to be entreated so, Who heard her calling and who could not go! Sonnet To-day was but a dead day in my hands. Hour by hour did nothing more than pass, Mere idle winds above the faded grass. And I, as though a captive held in bands, Who, seeing a pageant, wonders much, but stands Apart, saw the sun blaze his course with brass And sink into his fabled sea of glass With glory of farewell to many lands. Thou knowest, thou who talliest life by days, That I have suffered more than pain of toil, Ah, more than they whose wounds are soothed with oil, And they who see new light on beaten ways! The prisoner I, who grasps his iron bars And stares out into depth on depth of stars! Folk Song When merry milkmaids to their cattle call At evenfall And voices range Loud through the gloam from grange to quiet grange, Wild waif-songs from long distant lands and loves, Like migrant doves, Wake and give wing To passion dust-dumb lips were wont to sing. The new still holds the old moon in her arms; The ancient charms Of dew and dusk Still lure her nomad odors from the musk, And, at each day's millennial eclipse, On new men's lips, Some old song starts, Made of the music of millennial hearts, Whereto one listens as from long ago And learns to know That one day's tears And love and life are as a thousand years', And that some simple shepherd, singing of His pain and love, May haply find His heart-song speaks the heart of all his kind. "97": The Fast Mail Where the rails converge to the station yard She stands one moment, breathing hard, And then, with a snort and a clang of steel, She settles her strength to the stubborn wheel, And out, through the tracks that lead astray, Cautiously, slowly she picks her way, And gathers her muscle and guards her nerve, When she swings her nose to the westward curve, And takes the grade, which slopes to the sky, With a bound of speed and a conquering cry. The hazy horizon is all she sees, Nor cares for the meadows, stirred with bees, Nor the long, straight stretches of silent land, Nor the ploughman, that shades his eye with his hand, Nor the cots and hamlets that know no more Than a shriek and a flash and a flying roar; But, bearing her tidings, she trembles and throbs, And laughs in her throat, and quivers and sobs; And the fire in her heart is a red core of heat, That drives like a passion through forest and street, Till she sees the ships in their harbor at rest, And sniffs at the trail to the end of her quest. If I were the driver who handles her reins, Up hill and down hill and over the plains, To watch the slow mountains give back in the west, To know the new reaches that wait every crest, To hold, when she swerves, with a confident clutch, And feel how she shivers and springs to the touch, With the snow on her back and the sun in her face, And nothing but time as a quarry to chase, I should grip hard my teeth, and look where she led, And brace myself stooping, and give her her head, And urge her, and soothe her, and serve all her need, And exult in the thunder and thrill of her speed. Sundown Hills, wrapped in gray, standing along the west; Clouds, dimly lighted, gathering slowly; The star of peace at watch above the crest-- Oh, holy, holy, holy! We know, O Lord, so little what is best; Wingless, we move so lowly; But in thy calm all-knowledge let us rest-- Oh, holy, holy, holy! At Sea When the dim, tall sails of the ships were in motion, Ghostly, and slow, and silent-shod, We gazed where the dusk fled over the ocean, A great gray hush, like the shadow of God. The sky dome cut with its compass in sunder A circle of sea from the darkened land,-- A circle of tremulous waste and wonder, O'er which one groped with a childish hand. The true stars came to their stations in heaven, The false stars shivered deep down in the sea, And the white crests went like monsters, driven By winds that never would let them be, And there, where the elements mingled and muttered, We stood, each man with a lone dumb heart, Full of the vastness that never was uttered By symbol of words or by echo of art. L'envoi God willed, who never needed speech, "Let all things be:" And, lo, the starry firmament And land and sea And his first thought of life that lives In you and me. His circle of eternity We see in part; Our spirits are his breath, our hearts Beat from his heart; Hence we have played as little gods And called it art. Lacking his power, we shared his dream Of perfect things; Between the tents of hope and sweet Rememberings Have sat in ashes, but our souls Went forth on wings. Where life fell short of some desire In you and me, Feeling for beauty which our eyes Could never see, Behold, from out the void we willed That it should be, And sometimes dreamed our lisping songs Of humanhood Might voice his silent harmony Of waste and wood, And he, beholding his and ours, Might find it good. [End of original text.] Notes: John Charles McNeill was born in Scotland County, near Laurinburg, North Carolina, on 26 July 1874, and died on 17 October 1907 (when he was 33 years old). He only produced this one volume before he died, though he planned a second, which was published posthumously. "Songs, Merry and Sad", first published in Charlotte in 1906, went through at least five printings over more than 60 years. (This text is taken from the very first edition.) Both of McNeill's grandfathers came from Scotland. McNeill attended Wake Forest College, where he received both his Bachelor's and Master's degrees. In 1899-1900 he taught English at Mercer University. Some of his poems were published nationally as early as 1901. More of his poems were published by `The Charlotte Observer' starting in 1903, and in 1904 he joined its staff. This etext was created by entering the text (manually) twice, once from the first printing (1906) and once from the second printing (no date), and comparing the two. There were some slight differences in the two printings. A portrait of John Charles McNeill faces the title page (p. 3) in the second printing, but is absent in the first. The first printing gives the publisher as Stone & Barringer Co. and gives the date as 1906. The second printing gives the publisher as Stone Publishing Co., and gives no date. Both were printed in Charlotte, N.C. One error was corrected (the second printing also corrected this error): (p. 73) [ A holy presence hovers round here there, ] changed to: [ A holy presence hovers round her there, ] The second printing also changed the title of the poem [ To Melvin Gardner: Suicide ], on p. 19, to [ To Melvin Gardner: ]--in the text, but not in the table of Contents. This may have been done in deference to the family--attitudes on suicide were once quite different than now--but as it has been quite some time, and the original title gives more meaning to the poem, it has been retained. The Title of the poem [ Now! ] did not have the exclamation point in the table of Contents. It has been added to match the text. The Title of the poem [ "97": The Fast Mail ] appeared as such in the text, but as ["97:" The Fast Mail ] in the Contents. The latter was changed to match the text. In the original, the book's title does not separate the Contents from the first poem. It has been placed there as a sort of divider. In two places ASCII fails to provide enough characters for a correct rendering. They are the words Provencal (the c with a cedilla) and mailed (the e with an acute accent, to indicate that the word is to be said with two syllables). These occur in "Reminiscence" and "The Rattlesnake". 
17948	----	Merrill's English Texts THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL AND OTHER POEMS BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY JULIAN W. ABERNETHY, PH.D., PRINCIPAL OF THE BERKELEY INSTITUTE, BROOKLYN, N.Y. NEW YORK CHARLES E. MERRILL CO. 44-60 EAST TWENTY-THIRD STREET COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY CHARLES E. MERRILL CO. PREFACE The aim of this edition of the _Vision of Sir Launfal_ is to furnish the material that must be used in any adequate treatment of the poem in the class room, and to suggest other material that may be used in the more leisurely and fruitful method of study that is sometimes possible in spite of the restrictions of arbitrary courses of study. In interpreting the poem with young students, special emphasis should be given to the ethical significance, the broad appeal to human sympathy and the sense of a common brotherhood of men, an appeal that is in accord with the altruistic tendencies of the present time; to the intimate appreciation and love of nature expressed in the poem, feelings also in accord with the present movement of cultured minds toward the natural world; to the lofty and inspiring idealism of Lowell, as revealed in the poems included in this volume and in his biography, and also as contrasted with current materialism; and, finally, to the romantic sources of the story in the legends of King Arthur and his table round, a region of literary delight too generally unknown to present-day students. After these general topics, it is assumed that such matters as literary structure and poetic beauty will receive due attention. If the technical faults of the poem, which critics are at much pains to point out, are not discovered by the student, his knowledge will be quite as profitable. Additional reading in Lowell's works should be secured, and can be through the sympathetic interest and enthusiasm of the instructor. The following selections may be used for rapid examination and discussion: _Under the Willows, The First Snow-Fall, Under the Old Elm, Auf Wiedersehen, Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line, Jonathan to John, Mr. Hosea Biglow to the Editor of the Atlantic Monthly_, and the prose essays _My Garden Acquaintance_ and _A Good Word for Winter_. The opportunity should not be lost for making the students forever and interestedly acquainted with Lowell, with the poet and the man. The editor naturally does not assume responsibility for the character of the examination questions given, at the end of this volume. They are questions that have been used in recent years in college entrance papers by two eminent examination boards. J.W.A. _October_ 1, 1908. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: Life of Lowell Critical Appreciations The Vision of Sir Launfal The Commemoration Ode Bibliography Poets' Tributes to Lowell POEMS: The Vision of Sir Launfal The Shepherd of King Admetus An Incident in a Railroad Car Hebe To the Dandelion My Love The Changeling An Indian-Summer Reverie The Oak Beaver Brook The Present Crisis The Courtin' The Commemoration Ode NOTES: The Vision of Sir Launfal The Shepherd of King Admetus Hebe To the Dandelion My Love The Changeling An Indian-Summer Reverie The Oak Beaver Brook The Present Crisis The Courtin' The Commemoration Ode EXAMINATION QUESTIONS INTRODUCTION LIFE OF LOWELL In Cambridge there are two literary shrines to which visitors are sure to find their way soon after passing the Harvard gates, "Craigie House," the home of Longfellow and "Elmwood," the home of Lowell. Though their hallowed retirement has been profaned by the encroachments of the growing city, yet in their simple dignity these fine old colonial mansions still bespeak the noble associations of the past, and stand as memorials of the finest products of American culture. Elmwood was built before the Revolution by Thomas Oliver, the Tory governor, who signed his abdication at the invitation of a committee of "about four thousand people" who surrounded his house at Cambridge. The property was confiscated by the Commonwealth and used by the American army during the war. In 1818 it was purchased by the Rev. Charles Lowell, pastor of the West Congregational Church in Boston, and after ninety years it is still the family home. Here was born, February 22, 1819, James Russell Lowell, with surroundings most propitious for the nurturing of a poet-soul. Within the stately home there was a refined family life; the father had profited by the unusual privilege of three years' study abroad, and his library of some four thousand volumes was not limited to theology; the mother, whose maiden name was Spence and who traced her Scotch ancestry back to the hero of the ballad of _Sir Patrick Spens_, taught her children the good old ballads and the romantic stories in the _Fairie Queen_, and it was one of the poet's earliest delights to recount the adventures of Spenser's heroes and heroines to his playmates. An equally important influence upon his early youth was the out-of-door life at Elmwood. To the love of nature his soul was early dedicated, and no American poet has more truthfully and beautifully interpreted the inspired teachings of nature, whispered through the solemn tree-tops or caroled by the happy birds. The open fields surrounding Elmwood and the farms for miles around were his familiar playground, and furnished daily adventures for his curious and eager mind. The mere delight of this experience with nature, he says, "made my childhood the richest part of my life. It seems to me as if I had never seen nature again since those old days when the balancing of a yellow butterfly over a thistle bloom was spiritual food and lodging for a whole forenoon." In the _Cathedral_ is an autobiographic passage describing in a series of charming pictures some of those choice hours of childhood: "One summer hour abides, what time I perched, Dappled with noonday, under simmering leaves, And pulled the pulpy oxhearts, while aloof An oriole clattered and the robins shrilled, Denouncing me an alien and a thief." Quite like other boys Lowell was subjected to the processes of the more formal education of books. He was first sent to a "dame school," and then to the private school of William Wells, under whose rigid tuition he became thoroughly grounded in the classics. Among his schoolfellows was W.W. Story, the poet-sculptor, who continued his life-long friend. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who was one of the younger boys of the school, recalls the high talk of Story and Lowell about the _Fairie Queen_. At fifteen he entered Harvard College, then an institution with about two hundred students. The course of study in those days was narrow and dull, a pretty steady diet of Greek, Latin and Mathematics, with an occasional dessert of Paley's _Evidences of Christianity_ or Butler's _Analogy_. Lowell was not distinguished for scholarship, but he read omnivorously and wrote copiously, often in smooth flowing verse, fashioned after the accepted English models of the period. He was an editor of _Harvardiana_, the college magazine, and was elected class poet in his senior year. But his habit of lounging with the poets in the secluded alcoves of the old library, in preference to attending recitations, finally became too scandalous for official forbearance, and he was rusticated, "on account of constant neglect of his college duties," as the faculty records state. He was sent to Concord, where his exile was not without mitigating profit, as he became acquainted with Emerson and Thoreau. Here he wrote the class poem, which he was permitted to circulate in print at his Commencement. This production, which now stands at the head of the list of his published works, was curiously unprophetic of his later tendencies. It was written in the neatly, polished couplets of the Pope type and other imitative metres, and aimed to satirize the radical movements of the period, especially the transcendentalists and abolitionists, with both of whom he was soon to be in active sympathy. Lowell's first two years out of college were troubled with rather more than the usual doubts and questionings that attend a young man's choice of a profession. He studied for a bachelor's degree in law, which he obtained in two years. But the work was done reluctantly. Law books, he says, "I am reading with as few wry faces as I may." Though he was nominally practicing law for two years, there is no evidence that he ever had a client, except the fictitious one so pleasantly described in his first magazine article, entitled _My First Client_. From Coke and Blackstone his mind would inevitably slip away to hold more congenial communion with the poets. He became intensely interested in the old English dramatists, an interest that resulted in his first series of literary articles, _The Old English Dramatists_, published in the _Boston Miscellany_. The favor with which these articles were received increased, he writes, the "hope of being able one day to support myself by my pen, and to leave a calling which I hate, and for which I am not _well_ fitted, to say the least." During this struggle between law and literature an influence came into Lowell's life that settled his purposes, directed his aspirations and essentially determined his career. In 1839 he writes to a friend about a "very pleasant young lady," who "knows more poetry than any one I am acquainted with." This pleasant young lady was Maria White, who became his wife in 1844. The loves of this young couple constitute one of the most pleasing episodes in the history of our literature, idyllic in its simple beauty and inspiring in its spiritual perfectness. "Miss White was a woman of unusual loveliness," says Mr. Norton, "and of gifts of mind and heart still more unusual, which enabled her to enter with complete sympathy into her lover's intellectual life and to direct his genius to its highest aims." She was herself a poet, and a little volume of her poems published privately after her death is an evidence of her refined intellectual gifts and lofty spirit. In 1841 Lowell published his first collection of poems, entitled _A Year's Life_. The volume was dedicated to "Una," a veiled admission of indebtedness for its inspiration to Miss White. Two poems particularly, _Irene_ and _My Love_, and the best in the volume, are rapturous expressions of his new inspiration. In later years he referred to the collection as "poor windfalls of unripe experience." Only nine of the sixty-eight poems were preserved in subsequent collections. In 1843, with a young friend, Robert Carter, Lowell launched a new magazine, _The Pioneer_, with the high purpose, as the prospectus stated, of giving the public "a rational substitute" for the "namby-pamby love tales and sketches monthly poured out to them by many of our popular magazines." These young reformers did not know how strongly the great reading public is attached to its literary flesh-pots, and so the _Pioneer_ proved itself too good to live in just three months. The result of the venture to Lowell was an interesting lesson in editorial work and a debt of eighteen hundred dollars. His next venture was a second volume of _Poems_, issued in 1844, in which the permanent lines of his poetic development appear more clearly than in _A Year's Life_. The tone of the first volume was uniformly serious, but in the second his muse's face begins to brighten with the occasional play of wit and humor. The volume was heartily praised by the critics and his reputation as a new poet of convincing distinction was established. In the following year appeared _Conversations on Some of the Old Poets_, a volume of literary criticism interesting now mainly as pointing to maturer work in this field. It is generally stated that the influence of Maria White made Lowell an Abolitionist, but this is only qualifiedly true. A year before he had met her he wrote to a friend: "The Abolitionists are the only ones with whom I sympathize of the present extant parties." Freedom, justice, humanitarianism were fundamental to his native idealism. Maria White's enthusiasm and devotion to the cause served to crystallize his sentiments and to stimulate him to a practical participation in the movement. Both wrote for the _Liberty Bell_, an annual published in the interests of the anti-slavery agitation. Immediately after their marriage they went to Philadelphia where Lowell for a time was an editorial writer for the _Pennsylvania Freeman_, an anti-slavery journal once edited by Whittier. During the next six years he was a regular contributor to the _Anti-Slavery Standard_, published in New York. In all of this prose writing Lowell exhibited the ardent spirit of the reformer, although he never adopted the extreme views of Garrison and others of the ultra-radical wing of the party. But Lowell's greatest contribution to the anti-slavery cause was the _Biglow Papers_, a series of satirical poems in the Yankee dialect, aimed at the politicians who were responsible for the Mexican War, a war undertaken, as he believed, in the interests of the Southern slaveholders. Hitherto the Abolitionists had been regarded with contempt by the conservative, complacent advocates of peace and "compromise," and to join them was essentially to lose caste in the best society. But now a laughing prophet had arisen whose tongue was tipped with fire. The _Biglow Papers_ was an unexpected blow to the slave power. Never before had humor been used directly as a weapon in political warfare. Soon the whole country was ringing with the homely phrases of Hosea Biglow's satiric humor, and deriding conservatism began to change countenance. "No speech, no plea, no appeal," says George William Curtis, "was comparable in popular and permanent effect with this pitiless tempest of fire and hail, in the form of wit, argument, satire, knowledge, insight, learning, common-sense, and patriotism. It was humor of the purest strain, but humor in deadly earnest." As an embodiment of the elemental Yankee character and speech it is a classic of final authority. Says Curtis, "Burns did not give to the Scotch tongue a nobler immortality than Lowell gave to the dialect of New England." The year 1848 was one of remarkably productive results for Lowell. Besides the _Biglow Papers_ and some forty magazine articles and poems, he published a third collection of _Poems_, the _Vision of Sir Launfal_, and the _Fable for Critics_. The various phases of his composite genius were nearly all represented in these volumes. The _Fable_ was a good-natured satire upon his fellow authors, in which he touched up in rollicking rhymed couplets the merits and weaknesses of each, not omitting himself, with witty characterization and acute critical judgment; and it is still read for its delicious humor and sterling criticism. For example, the lines on Poe will always be quoted: "There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge, Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge." And so the sketch of Hawthorne: "There is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking and rare That you hardly at first see the strength that is there; A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet, So earnest, so graceful, so lithe and so fleet, Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet." Lowell was now living in happy content at Elmwood. His father, whom he once speaks of as a "Dr. Primrose in the comparative degree," had lost a large portion of his property, and literary journals in those days sent very small checks to young authors. So humble frugality was an attendant upon the high thinking of the poet couple, but this did not matter, since the richest objects of their ideal world could be had without price. But clouds suddenly gathered over their beautiful lives. Four children were born, three of whom died in infancy. Lowell's deep and lasting grief for his first-born is tenderly recorded in the poems _She Came and Went_ and the _First Snow-Fall_. The volume of poems published in 1848 was "reverently dedicated" to the memory of "our little Blanche," and in the introductory poem addressed "To M.W.L." he poured forth his sorrow like a libation of tears: "I thought our love at fall, but I did err; Joy's wreath drooped o'er mine eyes: I could not see That sorrow in our happy world must be Love's deepest spokesman and interpreter." The year 1851-52 was spent abroad for the benefit of Mrs. Lowell's health, which was now precarious. At Rome their little son Walter died, and one year after their return to Elmwood sorrow's crown of sorrow came to the poet in the death of Mrs. Lowell, October, 1853. For years after the dear old home was to him _The Dead House_, as he wrote of it: "For it died that autumn morning When she, its soul, was borne To lie all dark on the hillside That looks over woodland and corn." Before 1854 Lowell's literary success had been won mainly in verse. With the appearance in the magazines of _A Moosehead Journal_, _Fireside Travels_, and _Leaves from My Italian Journal_ his success as a prose essayist began. Henceforth, and against his will, his prose was a stronger literary force than his poetry. He now gave a course of lectures on the English poets at the Lowell Institute, and during the progress of these lectures he received notice of his appointment to succeed Longfellow in the professorship of the French and Spanish languages and Belles-Lettres in Harvard College. A year was spent in Europe in preparation for his new work, and during the next twenty years he faithfully performed the duties of the professorship, pouring forth the ripening fruits of his varied studies in lectures such as it is not often the privilege of college students to hear. That pulling in the yoke of this steady occupation was sometimes galling is shown in his private letters. To W.D. Howells he wrote regretfully of the time and energy given to teaching, and of his conviction that he would have been a better poet if he "had not estranged the muse by donning a professor's gown." But a good teacher always bears in his left hand the lamp of sacrifice. In 1857 Lowell was married to Miss Frances Dunlap, "a woman of remarkable gifts and grace of person and character," says Charles Eliot Norton. In the same year the _Atlantic Monthly_ was launched and Lowell became its first editor. This position he held four years. Under his painstaking and wise management the magazine quickly became what it has continued to be, the finest representative of true literature among periodicals. In 1864 he joined his friend, Professor Norton, in the editorship of the _North American Review_, to which he gave much of the distinction for which this periodical was once so worthily famous. In this first appeared his masterly essays on the great poets, Chaucer, Dante, Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, Dryden, and the others, which were gathered into the three volumes, _Among My Books_, first and second series, and _My Study Windows_. Variety was given to this critical writing by such charming essays as _A Good Word for Winter_ and the deliciously caustic paper _On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners_. One of the strongest elements of Lowell's character was patriotism. His love of country and his native soil was not merely a principle, it was a passion. No American author has done so much to enlarge and exalt the ideals of democracy. An intense interest in the welfare of the nation broadened the scope of his literary work and led him at times into active public life. During the Civil War he published a second series of _Biglow Papers_, in which, says Mr. Greenslet, "we feel the vital stirring of the mind of Lowell as it was moved by the great war; and if they never had quite the popular reverberation of the first series, they made deeper impression, and are a more priceless possession of our literature." When peace was declared in April, 1865, he wrote to Professor Norton: "The news, my dear Charles, is from Heaven. I felt a strange and tender exaltation. I wanted to laugh and I wanted to cry, and ended by holding my peace and feeling devoutly thankful. There is something magnificent in having a country to love." On July 21 a solemn service was held at Harvard College in memory of her sons who had died in the war, in which Lowell gave the _Commemoration Ode_, a poem which is now regarded, not as popular, but as marking the highest reach of his poetic power. The famous passage characterizing Lincoln is unquestionably the finest tribute ever paid to Lincoln by an American author. In the presidential campaign of 1876 Lowell was active, making speeches, serving as delegate to the Republican Convention, and later as Presidential Elector. There was even much talk of sending him to Congress. Through the friendly offices of Mr. Howells, who was in intimate personal relations with President Hayes, he was appointed Minister to Spain. This honor was the more gratifying to him because he had long been devoted to the Spanish literature and language, and he could now read his beloved Calderon with new joys. In 1880 he was promoted to the English mission, and during the next four years represented his country at the Court of St. James in a manner that raised him to the highest point of honor and esteem in both nations. His career in England was an extraordinary, in most respects an unparalleled success. He was our first official representative to win completely the heart of the English people, and a great part of his permanent achievement was to establish more cordial relations between the two countries. His literary reputation had prepared the ground for his personal popularity. He was greeted as "His Excellency the Ambassador of American Literature to the Court of Shakespeare." His fascinating personality won friends in every circle of society. Queen Victoria declared that during her long reign no ambassador had created so much interest or won so much regard. He had already been honored by degrees from Oxford and Cambridge, and now many similar honors were thrust upon him. He was acknowledged to be the best after-dinner speaker in England, and no one was called upon so often for addresses at dedications, the unveiling of tablets, and other civic occasions. It is not strange that he became attached to England with an increasing affection, but there was no diminution of his intense Americanism. His celebrated Birmingham address on _Democracy_ is yet our clearest and noblest exposition of American political principles and ideals. With the inauguration of Cleveland in 1885 Lowell's official residence in England came to an end. He returned to America and for a time lived with his daughter at Deerfoot Farm. Mrs. Lowell had died in England, and he could not carry his sorrow back to Elmwood alone. He now leisurely occupied himself with literary work, making an occasional address upon literature or politics, which was always distinguished by grace and dignity of style and richness of thought. In November, 1886, he delivered the oration at the 250th anniversary of the founding of Harvard University, and, rising to the requirements of this notable occasion, he captivated his hearers, among whom were many distinguished delegates from the great universities of Europe as well as of America, by the power of his thought and the felicity of his expression. During the period of his diplomatic service he added almost nothing to his permanent literary product. In 1869 he had published _Under the Willows_, a collection that contains some of his finest poems. In the same year _The Cathedral_ was published, a stately poem in blank verse, profound in thought, with many passages of great poetic beauty. In 1888 a final collection of poems was published, entitled _Heartsease and Rue_, which opened with the memorial poem, _Agassiz_, an elegy that would not be too highly honored by being bound in a golden volume with _Lycidas_, _Adonais_ and _Thyrsis_. Going back to his earliest literary studies, he again (1887) lectured at the Lowell Institute on the old dramatists, Occasionally he gave a poem to the magazines and a collection of these _Last Poems_ was made in 1895 by Professor Norton. During these years were written many of the charming _Letters_ to personal friends, which rank with the finest literary letters ever printed and must always be regarded as an important part of his prose works. It was a gracious boon of providence that Lowell was permitted to spend his last years at Elmwood, with his daughter, Mrs. Burnett, and his grandchildren. There again, as in the early days, he watched the orioles building their nests and listened to the tricksy catbird's call. To an English friend he writes: "I watch the moon rise behind the same trees through which I first saw it seventy years ago and have a strange feeling of permanence, as if I should watch it seventy years longer." In the old library by the familiar fireplace he sat, when the shadows were playing among his beloved books, communing with the beautiful past. What unwritten poems of pathos and sweetness may have ministered to his great soul we cannot know. In 1890 a fatal disease came upon him, and after long and heroic endurance of pain he died, August 12, 1891, and under the trees of Mt. Auburn he rests, as in life still near his great neighbor Longfellow. In a memorial poem Oliver Wendell Holmes spoke for the thousands who mourned: "Peace to thy slumber in the forest shade, Poet and patriot, every gift was thine; Thy name shall live while summers bloom and fade And grateful memory guard thy leafy shrine." Lowell's rich and varied personality presents a type of cultured manhood that is the finest product of American democracy. The largeness of his interests and the versatility of his intellectual powers give him a unique eminence among American authors. His genius was undoubtedly embarrassed by the diffusive tendency of his interests. He might have been a greater poet had he been less the reformer and statesman, and his creative impulses were often absorbed in the mere enjoyment of exercising his critical faculty. Although he achieved only a qualified eminence as poet, or as prose writer, yet because of the breadth and variety of his permanent achievement he must be regarded as our greatest man of letters. His sympathetic interest, always outflowing toward concrete humanity, was a quality-- "With such large range as from the ale-house bench Can reach the stars and be with both at home." With marvelous versatility and equal ease he could talk with the down-east farmer and salty seamen and exchange elegant compliments with old world royalty. In _The Cathedral_ he says significantly: "I thank benignant nature most for this,-- A force of sympathy, or call it lack Of character firm-planted, loosing me From the pent chamber of habitual self To dwell enlarged in alien modes of thought, Haply distasteful, wholesomer for that, And through imagination to possess, As they were mine, the lives of other men." In the delightful little poem, _The Nightingale in the Study_, we have a fanciful expression of the conflict between Lowell's love of books and love of nature. His friend the catbird calls him "out beneath the unmastered sky," where the buttercups "brim with wine beyond all Lesbian juice." But there are ampler skies, he answers, "in Fancy's land," and the singers though dead so long-- "Give its best sweetness to all song. To nature's self her better glory." His love of reading is manifest in all his work, giving to his style a bookishness that is sometimes excessive and often troublesome. His expression, though generally direct and clear, and happily colored by personal frankness, is often burdened with learning. To be able to read his essays with full appreciation is in itself evidence of a liberal education. His scholarship was broad and profound, but it was not scholarship in the German sense, exhaustive and exhausting. He studied for the joy of knowing, never for the purpose of being known, and he cared more to know the spirit and meaning of things than to know their causes and origins. A language he learned for the sake of its literature rather than its philology. As Mr. Brownell observes, he shows little interest in the large movements of the world's history. He seemed to prefer history as sublimated in the poet's song. The field of _belles-lettres_ was his native province; its atmosphere was most congenial to his tastes. In book-land it was always June for him-- "Springtime ne'er denied Indoors by vernal Chaucer, whose fresh woods Throb thick with merle and mavis all the year." But books could never divert his soul from its early endearments with out-of-door nature. "The older I grow," he says, "the more I am convinced that there are no satisfactions so deep and so permanent as our sympathies with outward nature." And in the preface to _My Study Windows_ he speaks of himself as "one who has always found his most fruitful study in the open air." The most charming element of his poetry is the nature element that everywhere cheers and stimulates the reader. It is full of sunshine and bird music. So genuine, spontaneous and sympathetic are his descriptions that we feel the very heart throbs of nature in his verse, and in the prose of such records of intimacies with outdoor friends as the essay, _My Garden Acquaintance_. "How I do love the earth," he exclaims. "I feel it thrill under my feet. I feel somehow as if it were conscious of my love, as if something passed into my dancing blood from it." It is this sensitive nearness to nature that makes him a better interpreter of her "visible forms" than Bryant even; moreover, unlike Bryant he always catches the notes of joy in nature's voices and feels the uplift of a happy inspiration. In the presence of the immense popularity of Mark Twain, it may seem paradoxical to call Lowell our greatest American humorist. Yet in the refined and artistic qualities of humorous writing and in the genuineness of the native flavor his work is certainly superior to any other humorous writing that is likely to compete with it for permanent interest. Indeed, Mr. Greenslet thinks that "it is as the author of the _Biglow Papers_ that he is likely to be longest remembered." The perpetual play of humor gave to his work, even to the last, the freshness of youth. We love him for his boyish love of pure fun. The two large volumes of his _Letters_ are delicious reading because he put into them "good wholesome nonsense," as he says, "keeping my seriousness to bore myself with." But this sparkling and overflowing humor never obscures the deep seriousness that is the undercurrent of all his writing. A high idealism characterizes all his work. One of his greatest services to his country was the effort to create a saner and sounder political life. As he himself realized, he often moralized his work too much with a purposeful idealism. In middle life he said, "I shall never be a poet until I get out of the pulpit, and New England was all meeting-house when I was growing up." In religion and philosophy he was conservative, deprecating the radical and scientific tendencies of the age, with its knife and glass-- "That make thought physical and thrust far off The Heaven, so neighborly with man of old," The moral impulse and the poetic impulse were often in conflict, and much of his early poetry for this reason was condemned by his later judgment. His maturer poems are filled with deep-thoughted lines, phrases of high aspiration and soul-stirring ecstasies. Though his thought is spiritual and ideal, it is always firmly rooted in the experience of common humanity. All can climb the heights with him and catch inspiring glimpses at least of the ideal and the infinite. CRITICAL APPRECIATIONS "The proportion of his poetry that can be so called is small. But a great deal of it is very fine, very noble, and at times very beautiful, and it discloses the distinctly poetic faculty of which rhythmic and figurative is native expression. It is impressionable rather than imaginative in the large sense; it is felicitous in detail rather than in design; and of a general rather than individual, a representative rather than original, inspiration. There is a field of poetry, assuredly not the highest, but ample and admirable--in which these qualities, more or less unsatisfactory in prose, are legitimately and fruitfully exercised. All poetry is in the realm of feeling, and thus less exclusively dependent on the thought that is the sole reliance of prose. Being genuine poetry, Lowell's profits by this advantage. Feeling is fitly, genuinely, its inspiration. Its range and limitations correspond to the character of his susceptibility, as those of his prose do to that of his thought. The fusion of the two in the crucible of the imagination is infrequent with him, because with him it is the fancy rather than the imagination that is luxuriant and highly developed. For the architectonics of poetry he had not the requisite reach and grasp, the comprehensive and constructing vision. Nothing of his has any large design or effective interdependent proportions. In a technical way an exception should be noted in his skilful building of the ode--a form in which he was extremely successful and for which he evidently had a native aptitude ... Lowell's constitutes, on the whole, the most admirable American contribution to the nature poetry of English literature--far beyond that of Bryant, Whittier, or Longfellow, I think, and only occasionally excelled here and there by the magic touch of Emerson."--_W. C. Brownell_, in _Scribner's Magazine_, _February,_ 1907. * * * * * "Lowell is a poet who seems to represent New England more variously than either of his comrades. We find in his work, as in theirs, her loyalty and moral purpose. She has been at cost for his training, and he in turn has read her heart, honoring her as a mother before the world, and seeing beauty in her common garb and speech.... If Lowell be not first of all an original genius, I know not where to look for one. Judged by his personal bearing, who is brighter, more persuasive, more equal to the occasion than himself,--less open to Doudan's stricture upon writers who hoard and store up their thoughts for the betterment of their printed works? Lowell's treasury can stand the drafts of both speech and composition. Judged by his works, as a poet in the end must be, he is one who might gain by revision and compression. But think, as is his due, upon the high-water marks of his abundant tide, and see how enviable the record of a poet who is our most brilliant and learned critic, and who has given us our best native idyll, our best and most complete work in dialectic verse, and the noblest heroic ode that America has produced--each and all ranking with the first of their kinds in English literature of the modern time."--_Edmund Clarence Stedman_. * * * * * "As a racy humorist and a brilliant wit using verse as an instrument of expression, he has no clear superior, probably no equal, so far at least as American readers are concerned, among writers who have employed the English language. As a satirist he has superiors, but scarcely as an inventor of _jeux d'esprit_. As a patriotic lyrist he has few equals and very few superiors in what is probably the highest function of such a poet--that of stimulating to a noble height the national instincts of his countrymen.... The rest of his poetry may fairly be said to gain on that of any of his American contemporaries save Poe in more sensuous rhythm, in choicer diction, in a more refined and subtilized imagination, and in a deeper, a more brooding intelligence."--_Prof. William P. Trent_. * * * * * "In originality, in virility, in many-sidedness, Lowell is the first of American poets. He not only possessed, at times in nearly equal measure, many of the qualities most notable in his fellow-poets, rivaling Bryant as a painter of nature, and Holmes in pathos, having a touch too of Emerson's transcendentalism, and rising occasionally to Whittier's moral fervor, but he brought to all this much beside. In one vein he produced such a masterpiece of mingled pathos and nature painting as we find in the tenth Biglow letter of the second series; in another, such a lyric gem as _The Fountain_; in another, _The First Snow-Fall_ and _After the Burial_; in another, again, the noble _Harvard Commemoration Ode_.... He had plainly a most defective ear for rhythm and verbal harmony. Except when he confines himself to simple metres, we rarely find five consecutive lines which do _not_ in some way jar on us. His blank verse and the irregular metres which he, unfortunately, so often employs, have little or no music, and are often quite intolerable. But after all the deductions which the most exacting criticism can make, it still remains that, as a serious poet Lowell stands high. As a painter of nature, he has, when at his best, few superiors, and, in his own country, none. Whatever be their esthetic and technical deficiencies, he has written many poems of sentiment and pathos which can never fail to come home to all to whom such poetry appeals. His hortatory and didactic poetry, as it expresses itself in the _Commemoration Ode_, is worthy, if not of the music and felicity of Milton and Wordsworth, at least of their tone, when that tone is most exalted. As a humorist he is inimitable. His humor is rooted in a fine sense of the becoming, and in a profounder insight into the character of his countrymen than that of any other American writer."--_John Churton Collins_. * * * * * "He was a brilliant wit and a delightful humorist; a discursive essayist of unfailing charm; the best American critic of his time; a scholar of wide learning, deep also when his interest was most engaged; a powerful writer on great public questions; a patriot passionately pure; but first, last, and always he was a poet, never so happy as when he was looking at the world from the poet's mount of vision and seeking for fit words and musical to tell what he had seen. But his emotion was not sufficiently 'recollected in tranquillity.' Had he been more an artist he would have been a better poet, for then he would have challenged the invasions of his literary memory, his humor, his animal spirits, within limits where they had no right of way. If his humor was his rarest, it was his most dangerous gift; so often did it tempt him to laugh out in some holy place.... Less charming than Longfellow, less homely than Whittier, less artistic than Holmes, less grave than Bryant, less vivid than Emerson, less unique than Poe, his qualities, intellectual, moral and esthetic, in their assemblage and coördination assign him to a place among American men of letters which is only a little lower than that which is Emerson's and his alone."--_John White Chadwick_. THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL Early in 1848 in a letter to his friend Briggs, Lowell speaks of _The Vision of Sir Launfal_ as "a sort of story, and more likely to be popular than what I write generally. Maria thinks very highly of it." And in another letter he calls it "a little narrative poem." In December, 1848, it was published in a thin volume alone, and at once justified the poet's expectations of popularity. The poem was an improvisation, like that of his "musing organist," for it was written, we are told, almost at a single sitting, entirely within two days. The theme may have been suggested by Tennyson's _Sir Galahad_, but his familiarity with the old romances and his love of the mystical and symbolic sense of these good old-time tales were a quite ample source for such suggestion. Moreover Lowell in his early years was much given to seeing visions and dreaming dreams. "During that part of my life," he says, "which I lived most alone, I was never a single night unvisited by visions, and once I thought I had a personal revelation from God Himself." The _Fairie Queen_ was "the first poem I ever read," he says, and the bosky glades of Elmwood were often transformed into an enchanted forest where the Knight of the Red Cross, and Una and others in medieval costume passed up and down before his wondering eyes. This medieval romanticism was a perfectly natural accompaniment of his intense idealism. _The Vision of Sir Launfal_ and the _Fable for Critics_, published in the same year, illustrate the two dominant and strikingly contrasted qualities of his nature, a contrast of opposites which he himself clearly perceived. "I find myself very curiously compounded of two utterly distinct characters. One half of me is clear mystic and enthusiast, and the other, humorist," and he adds that "it would have taken very little to have made a Saint Francis" of him. It was the Saint Francis of New England, the moral and spiritual enthusiast in Lowell's nature that produced the poem and gave it power. Thus we see that notwithstanding its antique style and artificial structure, it was a perfectly direct and spontaneous expression of himself. The allegory of the _Vision_ is easily interpreted, in its main significance. There is nothing original in the lesson, the humility of true charity, and it is a common criticism that the moral purpose of the poem is lost sight of in the beautiful nature pictures. But a knowledge of the events which were commanding Lowell's attention at this time and quickening his native feelings into purposeful utterance gives to the poem a much deeper significance. In 1844, when the discussion over the annexation of Texas was going on, he wrote _The Present Crisis_, a noble appeal to his countrymen to improve and elevate their principles. During the next four years he was writing editorially for the _Standard_, the official organ of the Anti-Slavery Society, at the same time he was bringing out the _Biglow Papers_. In all these forms of expression he voiced constantly the sentiment of reform, which now filled his heart like a holy zeal. The national disgrace of slavery rested heavily upon his soul. He burned with the desire to make God's justice prevail where man's justice had failed. In 1846 he said in a letter, "It seems as if my heart would break in pouring out one glorious song that should be the gospel of Reform, full of consolation and strength to the oppressed, yet falling gently and restoringly as dew on the withered youth-flowers of the oppressor. That way my madness lies, if any." This passionate yearning for reform is embodied poetically in the _Vision_. In a broad sense, therefore, the poem is an expression of ideal democracy, in which equality, sympathy, and a sense of the common brotherhood of man are the basis of all ethical actions and standards. It is the Christ-like conception of human society that is always so alluring in the poetry and so discouraging in the prose of life. The following explanation appeared in the early editions of the poem as an introductory note: "According to the mythology of the Romancers, the San Greal, or Holy Grail, was the cup out of which Jesus Christ partook of the last supper with his disciples. It was brought into England by Joseph of Arimathea, and remained there, an object of pilgrimage and adoration, for many years in the keeping of his lineal descendants. It was incumbent upon those who had charge of it to be chaste in thought, word, and deed; but, one of the keepers having broken this condition, the Holy Grail disappeared. From that time it was a favorite enterprise of the Knights of Arthur's court to go in search of it. Sir Galahad was at last successful in finding it, as may be read in the seventeenth book of the Romance of King Arthur. Tennyson has made Sir Galahad the subject of one of the most exquisite of his poems. "The plot (if I may give that name to anything so slight) of the following poem is my own, and, to serve its purposes, I have enlarged the circle of competition in search of the miraculous cup in such a manner as to include not only other persons than the heroes of the Round Table, but also a period of time subsequent to the date of King Arthur's reign." In the last sentence there is a sly suggestion of Lowell's playfulness. Of course every one may compete in the search for the Grail, and the "time subsequent to King Arthur's reign" includes the present time. The Romance of King Arthur is the _Morte Darthur_ of Sir Thomas Malory. Lowell's specific indebtedness to the medieval romances extended only to the use of the symbol of consecration to some noble purpose in the search for the Grail, and to the name of his hero. It is a free version of older French romances belonging to the Arthurian cycle. _Sir Launfal_ is the title of a poem written by Sir Thomas Chestre in the reign of Henry VI, which may be found in Ritson's _Ancient English Metrical Romances_. There is nothing suggestive of Lowell's poem except the quality of generosity in the hero, who-- "gaf gyftys largelyche, Gold and sylver; and clodes ryche, To squyer and to knight." One of Lowell's earlier poems, _The Search_, contains the germ of _The Vision of Sir Launfal_. It represents a search for Christ, first in nature's fair woods and fields, then in the "proud world" amid "power and wealth," and the search finally ends in "a hovel rude" where-- "The King I sought for meekly stood: A naked, hungry child Clung round his gracious knee, And a poor hunted slave looked up and smiled To bless the smile that set him free." And Christ, the seeker learns, is not to be found by wandering through the world. "His throne is with the outcast and the weak." A similar fancy also is embodied in a little poem entitled _A Parable_. Christ goes through the world to see "How the men, my brethren, believe in me," and he finds "in church, and palace, and judgment-hall," a disregard for the primary principles of his teaching. "Have ye founded your throne and altars, then, On the bodies and souls of living men? And think ye that building shall endure, Which shelters the noble and crushes the poor?" These early poems and passages in others written at about the same time, taken in connection with the _Vision_, show how strongly the theme had seized upon Lowell's mind. The structure of the poem is complicated and sometimes confusing. At the outset the student must notice that there is a story within a story. The action of the major story covers only a single night, and the hero of this story is the real Sir Launfal, who in his sleep dreams the minor story, the Vision. The action of this story covers the lifetime of the hero, the imaginary Sir Launfal, from early manhood to old age, and includes his wanderings in distant lands. The poem is constructed on the principles of contrast and parallelism. By holding to this method of structure throughout Lowell sacrificed the important artistic element of unity, especially in breaking the narrative with the Prelude to the second part. The first Prelude describing the beauty and inspiring joy of spring, typifying the buoyant youth and aspiring soul of Sir Launfal, corresponds to the second Prelude, describing the bleakness and desolation of winter, typifying the old age and desolated life of the hero. But beneath the surface of this wintry age there is a new soul of summer beauty, the warm love of suffering humanity, just as beneath the surface of the frozen brook there is an ice-palace of summer beauty. In Part First the gloomy castle with its joyless interior stands as the only cold and forbidding thing in the landscape, "like an outpost of winter;" so in Part Second the same castle with Christmas joys within is the only bright and gladsome object in the landscape. In Part First the castle gates never "might opened be"; in Part Second the "castle gates stand open now." And thus the student may find various details contrasted and paralleled. The symbolic meaning must be kept constantly in mind, or it will escape unobserved; for example, the cost of earthly things in comparison with the generosity of June corresponds to the churlish castle opposed to the inviting warmth of summer; and each symbolizes the proud, selfish, misguided heart of Sir Launfal in youth, in comparison with the humility and large Christian charity in old age. The student should search for these symbolic hints, passages in which "more is meant than meets the ear," but if he does not find all that the poet may or may not have intended in his dreamy design, there need be no detraction from the enjoyment of the poem. Critical judgment upon _The Vision of Sir Launfal_ is generally severe in respect to its structural faults. Mr. Greenslet declares that "through half a century, nine readers out of ten have mistaken Lowell's meaning," even the "numerous commentators" have "interpreted the poem as if the young knight actually adventured the quest and returned from it at the end of years, broken and old." This, however, must be regarded as a rather exaggerated estimate of the lack of unity and consistency in the poem. Stedman says: "I think that _The Vision of Sir Launfal_ owed its success quite as much to a presentation of nature as to its misty legend. It really is a landscape poem, of which the lovely passage, 'And what is so rare as a day in June?' and the wintry prelude to Part Second, are the specific features." And the English critic, J. Churton Collins, thinks that "_Sir Launfal_, except for the beautiful nature pictures, scarcely rises above the level of an Ingoldsby Legend." The popular judgment of the poem (which after all is the important judgment) is fairly stated by Mr. Greenslet: "There is probably no poem in American literature in which a visionary faculty like that [of Lowell] is expressed with such a firm command of poetic background and variety of music as in _Sir Launfal_ ... its structure is far from perfect; yet for all that it has stood the searching test of time: it is beloved now by thousands of young American readers, for whom it has been a first initiation to the beauty of poetic idealism." While studying _The Vision of Sir Launfal_ the student should be made familiar with Tennyson's _Sir Galahad_ and _The Holy Grail_, and the libretto of Wagner's _Parsifal_. Also Henry A. Abbey's magnificent series of mural paintings in the Boston Public Library, representing the Quest of the Holy Grail, may be utilized in the _Copley Prints_. If possible the story of Sir Galahad's search for the Grail in the seventeenth book of Sir Thomas Malory's _Morte Darthur_ should be read. It would be well also to read Longfellow's _King Robert of Sicily_, which to some extent presents a likeness of motive and treatment. THE COMMEMORATION ODE In April, 1865, the Civil War was ended and peace was declared. On July 21 Harvard College held a solemn service in commemoration of her ninety-three sons who had been killed in the war. Eight of these fallen young heroes were of Lowell's own kindred. Personal grief thus added intensity to the deep passion of his utterance upon this great occasion. He was invited to give a poem, and the ode which he presented proved to be the supreme event of the noble service. The scene is thus described by Francis H. Underwood, who was in the audience: "The services took place in the open air, in the presence of a great assembly. Prominent among the speakers were Major-General Meade, the hero of Gettysburg, and Major-General Devens. The wounds of the war were still fresh and bleeding, and the interest of the occasion was deep and thrilling. The summer afternoon was drawing to its close when the poet began the recital of the ode. No living audience could for the first time follow with intelligent appreciation the delivery of such a poem. To be sure, it had its obvious strong points and its sonorous charms; but, like all the later poems of the author, it is full of condensed thought and requires study. The reader to-day finds many passages whose force and beauty escaped him during the recital, but the effect of the poem at the time was overpowering. The face of the poet, always singularly expressive, was on this occasion almost transfigured--glowing, as if with an inward light. It was impossible to look away from it. Our age has furnished many great historic scenes, but this Commemoration combined the elements of grandeur and pathos, and produced an impression as lasting as life." Of the delivery and immediate effect of the poem Mr. Greenslet says: "Some in the audience were thrilled and shaken by it, as Lowell himself was shaken in its delivery, yet he seems to have felt with some reason that it was not a complete and immediate success. Nor is this cause for wonder. The passion of the poem was too ideal, its woven harmonies too subtle to be readily communicated to so large an audience, mastered and mellowed though it was by a single deep mood. Nor was Lowell's elocution quite that of the deep-mouthed odist capable of interpreting such organ tones of verse. But no sooner was the poem published, with the matchless Lincoln strophe inserted, than its greatness and nobility were manifest." The circumstances connected with the writing of the ode have been described by Lowell in his private letters. It appears that he was reluctant to undertake the task, and for several weeks his mind utterly refused to respond to the high duty put upon it. At last the sublime thought came to him upon the swift wings of inspiration. "The ode itself," he says, "was an improvisation. Two days before the commemoration I had told my friend Child that it was impossible--that I was dull as a door-mat. But the next day something gave me a jog, and the whole thing came out of me with a rush. I sat up all night writing it out clear, and took it on the morning of the day to Child." In another letter he says: "The poem was written with a vehement speed, which I thought I had lost in the skirts of my professor's gown. Till within two days of the celebration I was hopelessly dumb, and then it all came with a rush, literally making me lean (mi fece magro), and so nervous that I was weeks in getting over it." In a note in Scudder's biography of Lowell (Vol. II., p. 65), it is stated upon the authority of Mrs. Lowell that the poem was begun at ten o'clock the night before the commemoration day, and finished at four o'clock in the morning. "She opened her eyes to see him standing haggard, actually wasted by the stress of labor and the excitement which had carried him through a poem full of passion and fire, of five hundred and twenty-three lines, in the space of six hours." Critical estimates are essentially in accord as to the deep significance and permanent poetic worth of this poem. Greenslet, the latest biographer of Lowell, says that the ode, "if not his most perfect, is surely his noblest and most splendid work," and adds: "Until the dream of human brotherhood is forgotten, the echo of its large music will not wholly die away." Professor Beers declares it to be, "although uneven, one of the finest occasional poems in the language, and the most important contribution which our Civil War has made to song." Of its exalted patriotism, George William Curtis says: "The patriotic heart of America throbs forever in Lincoln's Gettysburg address. But nowhere in literature is there a more magnificent and majestic personification of a country whose name is sacred to its children, nowhere a profounder passion of patriotic loyalty, than in the closing lines of the Commemoration Ode. The American whose heart, swayed by that lofty music, does not thrill and palpitate with solemn joy and high resolve does not yet know what it is to be an American." With the praise of a discriminating criticism Stedman discusses the ode in his _Poets of America_: "Another poet would have composed a less unequal ode; no American could have glorified it with braver passages, with whiter heat, with language and imagery so befitting impassioned thought. Tried by the rule that a true poet is at his best with the greatest theme, Lowell's strength is indisputable. The ode is no smooth-cut verse from Pentelicus, but a mass of rugged quartz, beautiful with prismatic crystals, and deep veined here and there with virgin gold. The early strophes, though opening with a fine abrupt line, 'weak-winged is song,' are scarcely firm and incisive. Lowell had to work up to his theme. In the third division, 'Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oil,' he struck upon a new and musical intonation of the tenderest thoughts. The quaver of this melodious interlude carries the ode along, until the great strophe is reached,-- Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, in which the man, Abraham Lincoln, whose death had but just closed the national tragedy, is delineated in a manner that gives this poet a preëminence, among those who capture likeness in enduring verse, that we award to Velasquez among those who fasten it upon the canvas. 'One of Plutarch's men' is before us, face to face; an historic character whom Lowell fully comprehended, and to whose height he reached in this great strophe. Scarcely less fine is his tearful, yet transfiguring, Avete to the sacred dead of the Commemoration. The weaker divisions of the production furnish a background to these passages, and at the close the poet rises with the invocation,-- 'Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release!' a strain which shows that when Lowell determinedly sets his mouth to the trumpet, the blast is that of Roncesvalles." W.C. Brownell, the latest critic of Lowell's poetry, says of this poem: "The ode is too long, its evolution is defective, it contains verbiage, it preaches. But passages of it--the most famous having characteristically been interpolated after its delivery--are equal to anything of the kind. The temptation to quote from it is hard to withstand. It is the cap-sheaf of Lowell's achievement." In this ode "he reaches, if he does not throughout maintain, his own 'clear-ethered height' and his verse has the elevation of ecstasy and the splendor of the sublime." The versification of this poem should be studied with some particularity. Of the forms of lyric expression the ode is the most elaborate and dignified. It is adapted only to lofty themes and stately occasions. Great liberty is allowed in the choice and arrangement of its meter, rhymes, and stanzaic forms, that its varied form and movement may follow the changing phases of the sentiment and passion called forth by the theme. Lowell has given us an account of his own consideration of this matter. "My problem," he says, "was to contrive a measure which should not be tedious by uniformity, which should vary with varying moods, in which the transitions (including those of the voice) should be managed without jar. I at first thought of mixed rhymed and blank verses of unequal measures, like those in the choruses of _Samson Agonistes_, which are in the main masterly. Of course, Milton deliberately departed from that stricter form of Greek chorus to which it was bound quite as much (I suspect) by the law of its musical accompaniment as by any sense of symmetry. I wrote some stanzas of the _Commemoration Ode_ on this theory at first, leaving some verses without a rhyme to match. But my ear was better pleased when the rhyme, coming at a longer interval, as a far-off echo rather than instant reverberation, produced the same effect almost, and yet was gratified by unexpectedly recalling an association and faint reminiscence of consonance." BIBLIOGRAPHY Horace E. Scudder: _James Russell Lowell: A Biography_. 2 vols. The standard biography. Ferris Greenslet: _James Russell Lowell: His Life and Work_. The latest biography (1905) and very satisfactory. Francis H. Underwood: _James Russell Lowell: A Biographical Sketch and Lowell the Poet and the Man_. Interesting recollections of a personal friend and editorial associate. Edward Everett Hale: _Lowell and His Friends_. Edward Everett Hale, Jr.: _James Russell Lowell_. (Beacon Biographies.) Charles Eliot Norton: _Letters of James Russell Lowell_. 2 vols. Invaluable and delightful. Edmund Clarence Stedman: _Poets of America_. W.C. Brownell: _James Russell Lowell_. (Scribner's Magazine, February, 1907.) The most recent critical estimate. George William Curtis: _James Russell Lowell: An Address_. John Churton Collins. _Studies in Poetry and Criticism_, "Poetry and Poets of America." Excellent as an English estimate. Barrett Wendell: _Literary History of America_ and _Stelligeri_, "Mr. Lowell as a Teacher." Henry James: _Essays in London and Library of the World's Best Literature_. George E. Woodberry: _Makers of Literature_. William Watson: _Excursions in Criticism_. W.D. Howells: _Literary Friends and Acquaintance_. Charles E. Richardson: _American Literature_. M.A. DeWolfe Howe: _American Bookmen_. Thomas Wentworth Higginson: _Old Cambridge_. Frank Preston Stearns: _Cambridge Sketches_. 1905. Richard Burton: _Literary Leaders of America_. 1904. John White Chadwick: Chambers's _Cyclopedia of English Literature_. Hamilton Wright Mabie: _My Study Fire_. Second Series, "Lowell's Letters." Margaret Fuller: _Art, Literature and the Drama_. 1859. Richard Henry Stoddard: _Recollections, Personal and Literary_, "At Lowell's Fireside." Edwin P. Whipple: _Outlooks on Society, Literature and Politics_, "Lowell as a Prose Writer." H.R. Haweis: _American Humorists_. Bayard Taylor: _Essays and Notes_. G.W. Smalley: _London Letters_, Vol. 1., "Mr. Lowell, why the English liked him." THE POETS' TRIBUTES TO LOWELL Longfellow's _Herons of Elmwood_; Whittier's _A Welcome to Lowell_; Holmes's _Farewell to Lowell, At a Birthday Festival_, and _To James Russell Lowell_; Aldrich's _Elmwood_; Margaret J. Preston's _Home-Welcome to Lowell_; Richard Watson Gilder's _Lowell_; Christopher P. Cranch's _To J.R.L. on His Fiftieth Birthday_, and _To J.R.L. on His Homeward Voyage_; James Kenneth Stephen's _In Memoriam; James Russell Lowell_, "Lapsus Calami and Other Verses"; William W. Story's _To James Russell Lowell_, Blackwood's Magazine, Vol. 150; Eugene Field's _James Russell Lowell_; Edith Thomas's _On Reading Lowell's "Heartsease and Rue."_ THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL AND OTHER POEMS THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL PRELUDE TO PART FIRST Over his keys the musing organist, Beginning doubtfully and far away, First lets his fingers wander as they list, And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay: Then, as the touch of his loved instrument 5 Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme, First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent Along the wavering vista of his dream. Not only around our infancy 10 Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais, climb and know it not. Over our manhood bend the skies; Against our fallen and traitor lives The great winds utter prophecies; 15 With our faint hearts the mountain strives; Its arms outstretched, the druid wood Waits with its benedicite; And to our age's drowsy blood Still shouts the inspiring sea. 20 Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us; The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in, The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us, We bargain for the graves we lie in: At the Devil's booth are all things sold, 25 Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold; For a cap and bells our lives we pay, Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking 'T is heaven alone that is given away, 'T is only God may be had for the asking; 30 No price is set on the lavish summer; June may be had by the poorest comer. And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, 35 And over it softly her warm ear lays: Whether we look, or whether we listen, We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; Every clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 40 And, groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; The flush of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in meadows green, 45 The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean To be some happy creature's palace; The little bird sits at his door in the sun, Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 50 And lets his illumined being o'errun With the deluge of summer it receives; His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings; He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,-- 55 In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best? Now is the high-tide of the year And whatever of life hath ebbed away Comes flooding back, with a ripply cheer, Into every bare inlet and creek and bay; 60 Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, We are happy now, because God wills it; No matter how barren the past may have been, 'T is enough for us now that the leaves are green; We sit in the warm shade and feel right well 65 How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell; We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing That skies are clear and grass is growing: The breeze comes whispering in our ear That dandelions are blossoming near, 70 That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, That the river is bluer than the sky, That the robin is plastering his house hard by; And if the breeze kept the good news back, For other couriers we should not lack; 75 We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing,-- And hark! how clear bold chanticleer, Warmed with the new wine of the year, Tells all in his lusty crowing! Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how; 80 Everything is happy now, Everything is upward striving; 'T is as easy now for the heart to be true As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,-- 'T is the natural way of living: 85 Who knows whither the clouds have fled? In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake; And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, The heart forgets its sorrow and ache; The soul partakes the season's youth, 90 And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. What wonder if Sir Launfal now Remembered the keeping of his vow? 95 PART FIRST I "My golden spurs now bring to me. And bring to me my richest mail, For to-morrow I go over land and sea In search of the Holy Grail: Shall never a bed for me be spread, 100 Nor shall a pillow be under my head, Till I begin my vow to keep; Here on the rushes will I sleep. And perchance there may come a vision true Ere day create the world anew," 105 Slowly Sir Launfal's eyes grew dim, Slumber fell like a cloud on him, And into his soul the vision flew. II The crows flapped over by twos and threes, In the pool drowsed the cattle up to their knees, 110 The little birds sang as if it were The one day of summer in all the year, And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees: The castle alone in the landscape lay Like an outpost of winter, dull and gray; 115 'T was the proudest hall in the North Countree, And never its gates might opened be, Save to lord or lady of high degree; Summer besieged it on every side, But the churlish stone her assaults defied; 120 She could not scale the chilly wall, Though around it for leagues her pavilions tall Stretched left and right, Over the hills and out of sight; Green and broad was every tent, 125 And out of each a murmur went Till the breeze fell off at night. III The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang, And through the dark arch a charger sprang, Bearing Sir Launfal, the maiden knight, 130 In his gilded mail, that flamed so bright It seemed the dark castle had gathered all Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over its wall In his siege of three hundred summers long, And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf, 135 Had cast them forth: so, young and strong, And lightsome as a locust leaf, Sir Launfal flashed forth in his maiden mail, To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail. IV. It was morning on hill and stream and tree, 140 And morning in the young knight's heart; Only the castle moodily Rebuffed the gifts of the sunshine free, And gloomed by itself apart; The season brimmed all other things up 145 Full as the rain fills the pitcher-plant's cup. V. As Sir Launfal made morn through the darksome gate, He was 'ware of a leper, crouched by the same, Who begged with his hand and moaned as he sate; And a loathing over Sir Launfal came; 150 The sunshine went out of his soul with a thrill, The flesh 'neath his armor 'gan shrink and crawl, And midway its leap his heart stood still Like a frozen waterfall; For this man, so foul and bent of stature, 155 Rasped harshly against his dainty nature, And seemed the one blot on the summer morn,-- So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn. VI The leper raised not the gold from the dust: "Better to me the poor man's crust, Better the blessing of the poor, 160 Though I turn me empty from his door; That is no true alms which the hand can hold; He gives only the worthless gold Who gives from a sense of duty; 165 But he who gives a slender mite, And gives to that which is out of sight. That thread of the all-sustaining Beauty Which runs through, ail and doth all unite,-- The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms, 170 The heart outstretches its eager palms, For a god goes with it and makes it store To the soul that was starving in darkness before." PRELUDE TO PART SECOND Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak, From the snow five thousand summers old; 175 On open, wold and hill-top bleak It had gathered all the cold, And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek: It carried a shiver everywhere From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare; 180 The little brook heard it and built a roof 'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof; All night by the white stars' frosty gleams He groined his arches and matched his beams: Slender and clear were his crystal spars 185 As the lashes of light that trim the stars; He sculptured every summer delight In his halls and chambers out of sight; Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt, 190 Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees Bending to counterfeit a breeze; Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew But silvery mosses that downward grew; Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief 195 With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf; Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and here He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops And hung them thickly with diamond-drops, 200 That crystalled the beams of moon and sun, And made a star of every one: No mortal builder's most rare device Could match this winter-palace of ice; 'Twas as if every image that mirrored lay 205 In his depths serene through the summer day, Each fleeting shadow of earth and sky, Lest the happy model should be lost, Had been mimicked in fairy masonry By the elfin builders of the frost. 210 Within the hall are song and laughter. The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, And sprouting is every corbel and rafter With lightsome green of ivy and holly: Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide 215 Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide; The broad flame-pennons droop and flap And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, Hunted to death in its galleries blind; 220 And swift little troops of silent sparks, Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear, Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks Like herds of startled deer. But the wind without was eager and sharp, 225 Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp, And rattles and wrings The icy strings, Singing, in dreary monotone, A Christmas carol of its own, 230 Whose burden still, as he might guess, Was--"Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless!" The voice of the seneschal flared like a torch As he shouted the wanderer away from the porch, And he sat in the gateway and saw all night 235 The great hall-fire, so cheery and bold, Through the window-slits of the castle old, Build out its piers of ruddy light Against the drift of the cold. PART SECOND I There was never a leaf on bush or tree, 240 The bare boughs rattled shudderingly; The river was dumb and could not speak, For the weaver Winter its shroud had spun; A single crow on the tree-top bleak From his shining feathers shed off the cold sun; 245 Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold, As if her veins were sapless and old, And she rose up decrepitly For a last dim look at earth and sea. II Sir Launfal turned from his own hard gate, 250 For another heir in his earldom sate; An old, bent man, worn out and frail, He came back from seeking the Holy Grail: Little he recked of his earldom's loss, No more on his surcoat was blazoned the cross. 255 But deep in his soul the sign he wore, The badge of the suffering and the poor. III Sir Launfal's raiment thin and spare Was idle mail 'gainst the barbed air, For it was just at the Christmas time; 260 So he mused, as he sat, of a sunnier clime, And sought for a shelter from cold and snow In the light and warmth of long ago; He sees the snake-like caravan crawl O'er the edge of the desert, black and small, 265 Then nearer and nearer, till, one by one, He can count the camels in the sun, As over the red-hot sands they pass To where, in its slender necklace of grass, The little spring laughed and leapt in the shade, 270 And with its own self like an infant played, And waved its signal of palms. IV "For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms;" The happy camels may reach the spring, But Sir Launfal sees only the grewsome thing, 275 The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone, That cowers beside him, a thing as lone And white as the ice-isles of Northern seas In the desolate horror of his disease. V And Sir Launfal said,--"I behold in thee 280 An image of Him who died on the tree; Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns, Thou also hast had the world's buffets and scorns,-- And to thy life were not denied The wounds in the hands and feet and side; 285 Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me; Behold, through him, I give to thee!" VI Then the soul of the leper stood, up in his eyes And looked at Sir Launfal, and straightway he Remembered in what a haughtier guise 290 He had flung an alms to leprosie, When he girt his young life up in gilded mail And set forth in search of the Holy Grail. The heart within him was ashes and dust; He parted in twain his single crust. 295 He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink. And gave the leper to eat and drink; 'T was a moldy crust of coarse brown bread, 'T was water out of a wooden bowl,-- Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed, 300 And 't was red wine he drank with his thirsty soul. VII As Sir Launfal mused with a downcast face, A light shone round about the place; The leper no longer crouched at his side, But stood before him glorified, 305 Shining and tall and fair and straight As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate,-- Himself the Gate whereby men can Enter the temple of God in Man. VIII His words were shed softer than leaves from the pine, 310 And they fell on Sir Launfal as snows on the brine, That mingle their softness and quiet in one With the shaggy unrest they float down upon; And the voice that was softer than silence said, "Lo, it is I, be not afraid! 315 In many climes, without avail, Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail; Behold, it is here,--this cup which thou Didst fill at the streamlet for me but now; This crust is my body broken for thee, 320 This water his blood that died on the tree; The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, In whatso we share with another's need,-- Not what we give, but what we share,-- For the gift without the giver is bare; 325 Who gives himself with his alms feeds three,-- Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me." IX Sir Launfal awoke as from a swound:-- "The Grail in my castle here is found! Hang my idle armor up on the wall, 330 Let it be the spider's banquet-hall; He must be fenced with stronger mail Who would seek and find the Holy Grail." X The castle gate stands open now, And the wanderer is welcome to the hall 335 As the hangbird is to the elm-tree bough; No longer scowl the turrets tall, The Summer's long siege at last is o'er; When the first poor outcast went in at the door, She entered with him in disguise, 340 And mastered the fortress by surprise; There is no spot she loves so well on ground, She lingers and smiles there the whole year round; The meanest serf on Sir Launfal's land Has hall and bower at his command; 345 And there's no poor man in the North Countree But is lord of the earldom as much as he. THE SHEPHERD OF KING ADMETUS There came a youth upon the earth, Some thousand years ago, Whose slender hands were nothing worth, Whether to plow, or reap, or sow. He made a lyre, and drew therefrom 5 Music so strange and rich, That all men loved to hear,--and some Muttered of fagots for a witch. But King Admetus, one who had Pure taste by right divine, 10 Decreed his singing not too bad To hear between the cups of wine. And so, well pleased with being soothed Into a sweet half-sleep, Three times his kingly beard he smoothed. 15 And made him viceroy o'er his sheep. His words were simple words enough, And yet he used them so, That what in other mouths were rough In his seemed musical and low. 20 Men called him but a shiftless youth, In whom no good they saw; And yet, unwittingly, in truth, They made his careless words their law. They knew not how he learned at all, 25 For, long hour after hour, He sat and watched the dead leaves fall, Or mused upon a common flower. It seemed the loveliness of things Did teach him all their use, 30 For, in mere weeds, and stones, and springs, He found a healing power profuse. Men granted that his speech was wise, But, when a glance they caught Of his slim grace and woman's eyes, 35 They laughed, and called him good-for-naught. Yet after he was dead and gone, And e'en his memory dim, Earth seemed more sweet to live upon, More full of love, because of him. 40 And day by day more holy grew Each spot where he had trod, Till after-poets only knew Their first-born brother as a god. AN INCIDENT IN A RAILROAD CAR He spoke of Burns: men rude and rough Pressed round to hear the praise of one Whose heart was made of manly, simple, stuff, As homespun as their own. And, when he read, they forward leaned, 5 Drinking, with eager hearts and ears, His brook-like songs whom glory never weaned From humble smiles and tears. Slowly there grew a tender awe, Sunlike, o'er faces brown and hard. 10 As if in him who read they felt and saw Some presence of the bard. It was a sight for sin and wrong And slavish tyranny to see, A sight to make our faith more pure and strong 15 In high humanity. I thought, these men will carry hence Promptings their former life above. And something of a finer reverence For beauty, truth, and love, 20 God scatters love on every side, Freely among his children all, And always hearts are lying open wide, Wherein some grains may fall. There is no wind but soweth seeds 25 Of a more true and open life, Which burst unlocked for, into high-souled deeds, With wayside beauty rife. We find within these souls of ours Some wild germs of a higher birth, 30 Which in the poet's tropic heart bear flowers Whose fragrance fills the earth. Within the hearts of all men lie These promises of wider bliss, Which blossom into hopes that cannot die, 35 In sunny hours like this. All that hath been majestical In life or death, since time began, Is native in the simple heart of all, The angel heart of man. 40 And thus, among the untaught poor, Great deeds and feelings find a home, That cast in shadow all the golden lore Of classic Greece and Rome. O, mighty brother-soul of man. 45 Where'er thou art, in low or high, Thy skyey arches with, exulting span O'er-roof infinity! All thoughts that mould the age begin Deep down within the primitive soul, 50 And from the many slowly upward win To one who grasps the whole. In his wide brain the feeling deep That struggled on the many's tongue Swells to a tide of thought, whose surges leap 55 O'er the weak thrones of wrong. All thought begins in feeling,--wide In the great mass its base is hid, And, narrowing up to thought, stands glorified, A moveless pyramid. 60 Nor is he far astray, who deems That every hope, which rises and grows broad In the world's heart, by ordered impulse streams From the great heart of God. God wills, man hopes; in common souls 65 Hope is but vague and undefined, Till from the poet's tongue the message rolls A blessing to his kind. Never did Poesy appear So full of heaven to me, as when 70 I saw how it would pierce through pride and fear, To the lives of coarsest men. It may be glorious to write Thoughts that shall glad the two or three High souls, like those far stars that come in sight 75 Once in a century;-- But better far it is to speak One simple word, which now and then Shall waken their free nature in the weak 80 And friendless sons of men; To write some earnest verse or line Which, seeking not the praise of art. Shall make a clearer faith and manhood shine In the untutored heart. He who doth this, in verse or prose, 85 May be forgotten in his day, But surely shall be crowned at last with those Who live and speak for aye. HEBE I saw the twinkle of white feet. I saw the flash of robes descending; Before her ran an influence fleet, That bowed my heart like barley bending. As, in bare fields, the searching bees 5 Pilot to blooms beyond our finding, It led me on, by sweet degrees Joy's simple honey-cells unbinding. Those Graces were that seemed grim Fates; With nearer love the sky leaned o'er me; 10 The long-sought Secret's golden gates On musical hinges swung before me. I saw the brimmed bowl in her grasp Thrilling with godhood; like a lover I sprang the proffered life to clasp;-- 15 The beaker fell; the luck was over. The Earth has drunk the vintage up; What boots it patch the goblet's splinters? Can Summer fill the icy cup, Whose treacherous crystal is but Winter's? 20 O spendthrift Haste! await the gods; Their nectar crowns the lips of Patience; Haste scatters on unthankful sods The immortal gift in vain libations. Coy Hebe flies from those that woo, 25 And shuns the hands would seize upon her; Follow thy life, and she will sue To pour for thee the cup of honor. TO THE DANDELION Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, First pledge of blithesome May, Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold, High-hearted buccaneers, o'er joyed that they 5 An Eldorado in the grass have found, Which not the rich earth's ample round. May match in wealth--thou art more dear to me Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be. Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow 10 Through the primeval hush of Indian seas, Nor wrinkled the lean brow Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease; 'T is the Spring's largess, which she scatters now To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand, 15 Though most hearts never understand To take it at God's value, but pass by The offered wealth with unrewarded eye. Thou art my tropics and mine Italy; To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime; 20 The eyes thou givest me Are in the heart, and heed not space or time: Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee Feels a more summer-like, warm ravishment In the white lily's breezy tent, 25 His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first From the dark green thy yellow circles burst. Then think I of deep shadows on the grass,-- Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze, Where, as the breezes pass, 30 The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways,-- Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass, Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue That from the distance sparkle through Some woodland gap, and of a sky above, 35 Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move. My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with thee; The sight of thee calls back the robin's song, Who, from the dark old tree Beside the door, sang clearly all day long, 40 And I, secure in childish piety, Listened as if I heard an angel sing With news from Heaven, which he could bring Fresh every day to my untainted ears, When birds and flowers and I were happy peers. 45 Thou art the type of those meek charities Which make up half the nobleness of life, Those cheap delights the wise Pluck from the dusty wayside of earth's strife: Words of frank cheer, glances of friendly eyes, 50 Love's smallest coin, which yet to some may give The morsel that may keep alive A starving heart, and teach it to behold Some glimpse of God where all before was cold. Thy wingèd seeds, whereof the winds take care, 55 Are like the words of poet and of sage Which through the free heaven fare, And, now unheeded, in another age Take root, and to the gladdened future bear That witness which the present would not heed, 60 Bringing forth many a thought and deed, And, planted safely in the eternal sky, Bloom into stars which earth is guided by. Full of deep love thou art, yet not more full Than all thy common brethren of the ground, 65 Wherein, were we not dull, Some words of highest wisdom might be found; Yet earnest faith from day to day may cull Some syllables, which, rightly joined, can make A spell to soothe life's bitterest ache, 70 And ope Heaven's portals, which are near us still, Yea, nearer ever than the gates of Ill. How like a prodigal doth nature seem, When thou, for all thy gold, so common art! Thou teachest me to deem 75 More sacredly of every human heart, Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam Of Heaven, and could some wondrous secret show, Did we but pay the love we owe, And with a child's undoubting wisdom look 80 On all these living pages of God's book. But let me read thy lesson right or no, Of one good gift from thee my heart is sure: Old I shall never grow While thou each, year dost come to keep me pure 85 With legends of my childhood; ah, we owe Well more than half life's holiness to these Nature's first lowly influences, At thought of which the heart's glad doors burst ope, In dreariest days, to welcome peace and hope. 90 MY LOVE Not as all other women are Is she that to my soul is dear; Her glorious fancies come from far, Beneath the silver evening-star, And yet her heart is ever near. 5 Great feelings hath she of her own, Which lesser souls may never know; God giveth them to her alone, And sweet they are as any tone Wherewith the wind may choose to blow. 10 Yet in herself she dwelleth not, Although no home were half so fair; No simplest duty is forgot, Life hath no dim and lowly spot That doth not in her sunshine share. 15 She doeth little kindnesses, Which most leave undone, or despise; For naught that sets one heart at ease, And giveth happiness or peace, Is low-esteemèd in her eyes. 20 She hath no scorn of common things, And, though she seem of other birth, Round us her heart entwines and clings, And patiently she folds her wings To tread the humble paths of earth. 25 Blessing she is: God made her so, And deeds of week-day holiness Fall from her noiseless as the snow, Nor hath she ever chanced to know That aught were easier than to bless. 30 She is most fair, and thereunto Her life doth rightly harmonize; Feeling or thought that was not true Ne'er made less beautiful the blue Unclouded heaven of her eyes. 35 She is a woman: one in whom The spring-time of her childish years Hath never lost its fresh perfume, Though knowing well that life hath room For many blights and many tears. 40 I love her with a love as still As a broad river's peaceful might, Which, by high tower and lowly mill, Goes wandering at its own will, And yet doth ever flow aright. 45 And, on its full, deep breast serene, Like quiet isles my duties lie; It flows around them and between, And makes them fresh and fair and green, Sweet homes wherein to live and die. 50 THE CHANGELING I had a little daughter, And she was given to me To lead me gently backward To the Heavenly Father's knee, That I, by the force of nature, 5 Might in some dim wise divine The depth of his infinite patience To this wayward soul of mine. I know not how others saw her, But to me she was wholly fair, 10 And the light of the heaven she came from Still lingered and gleamed in her hair; For it was as wavy and golden, And as many changes took, As the shadows of sun-gilt ripples 15 On the yellow bed of a brook. To what can I liken her smiling Upon me, her kneeling lover? How it leaped from her lips to her eyelids, And dimpled her wholly over, 20 Till her outstretched hands smiled also, And I almost seemed to see The very heart of her mother Sending sun through her veins to me! She had been with us scarce a twelve-month, 25 And it hardly seemed a day, When a troop of wandering angels Stole my little daughter away; Or perhaps those heavenly Zingari But loosed the hampering strings, 30 And when they had opened her cage-door, My little bird used her wings. But they left in her stead a changeling, A little angel child, That seems like her bud in full blossom, 35 And smiles as she never smiled: When I wake in the morning, I see it Where she always used to lie, And I feel as weak as a violet Alone 'neath the awful sky. 40 As weak, yet as trustful also; For the whole year long I see All the wonders of faithful Nature Still worked for the love of me; Winds wander, and dews drip earthward, 45 Rain falls, suns rise and set, Earth whirls, and all but to prosper A poor little violet. This child is not mine as the first was, I cannot sing it to rest, 50 I cannot lift it up fatherly And bliss it upon my breast; Yet it lies in my little one's cradle And sits in my little one's chair, And the light of the heaven she's gone to 55 Transfigures its golden hair. AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE What visionary tints the year puts on, When falling leaves falter through motionless air Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone! How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare, As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills 5 The bowl between me and those distant-hills, And smiles and shakes abroad her misty, tremulous hair! No more the landscape holds its wealth apart, Making me poorer in my poverty, But mingles with my senses and my heart; 10 My own projected spirit seems to me In her own reverie the world to steep; 'T is she that waves to sympathetic sleep, Moving, as she is moved, each field and hill and tree. How fuse and mix, with what unfelt degrees, 15 Clasped by the faint horizon's languid arms, Each into each, the hazy distances! The softened season all the landscape charms; Those hills, my native village that embay, In waves of dreamier purple roll away, 20 And floating in mirage seem all the glimmering farms. Far distant sounds the hidden chickadee Close at my side; far distant sound the leaves; The fields seem fields of dream, where Memory Wanders like gleaning Ruth; and as the sheaves 25 Of wheat and barley wavered in the eye Of Boaz as the maiden's glow went by, So tremble and seem remote all things the sense receives. The cock's shrill trump that tells of scattered corn, Passed breezily on by all his flapping mates, 30 Faint and more faint, from barn to barn is borne, Southward, perhaps to far Magellan's Straits; Dimly I catch the throb of distant flails; Silently overhead the hen-hawk sails, With watchful, measuring eye, and for his quarry waits. 35 The sobered robin, hunger-silent now, Seeks cedar-berries blue, his autumn cheer; The chipmunk, on the shingly shagbark's bough, Now saws, now lists with downward eye and ear, Then drops his nut, and, cheeping, with a bound 40 Whisks to his winding fastness underground; The clouds like swans drift down the streaming atmosphere. O'er yon bare knoll the pointed cedar shadows Drowse on the crisp, gray moss; the ploughman's call Creeps faint as smoke from black, fresh-furrowed meadows; 45 The single crow a single caw lets fall; And all around me every bush and tree Says Autumn's here, and Winter soon will be, Who snows his soft, white sleep and silence over all. The birch, most shy and ladylike of trees, 50 Her poverty, as best she may, retrieves, And hints at her foregone gentilities With some saved relics of her wealth of leaves; The swamp-oak, with his royal purple on, Glares red as blood across the sinking sun, 55 As one who proudlier to a falling fortune cleaves. He looks a sachem, in red blanket wrapt, Who, 'mid some council of the sad-garbed whites, Erect and stern, in his own memories lapt, With distant eye broods over other sights, 60 Sees the hushed wood the city's flare replace, The wounded turf heal o'er the railway's trace, And roams the savage Past of his undwindled rights. The red-oak, softer-grained, yields all for lost, And, with his crumpled foliage stiff and dry, 65 After the first betrayal of the frost, Rebuffs the kiss of the relenting sky: The chestnuts, lavish of their long-hid gold, To the faint Summer, beggared now and old, Pour back the sunshine hoarded 'neath her favoring eye. 70 The ash her purple drops forgivingly And sadly, breaking not the general hush: The maple-swamps glow like a sunset sea, Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush; All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting blaze 75 Of bushes low, as when, on cloudy days, Ere the rain falls, the cautious farmer burns his brush. O'er yon low wall, which guards one unkempt zone, Where vines and weeds and scrub-oaks intertwine Safe from the plough, whose rough, discordant stone 80 Is massed to one soft gray by lichens fine, The tangled blackberry, crossed and re-crossed, weaves A prickly network of ensanguined leaves; Hard by, with coral beads, the prim black-alders shine. Pillaring with flame this crumbling boundary, 85 Whose loose blocks topple 'neath the plough-boy's foot, Who, with each sense shut fast except the eye, Creeps close and scares the jay he hoped to shoot, The woodbine up the elm's straight stem aspires, Coiling it, harmless, with autumnal fires; 90 In the ivy's paler blaze the martyr oak stands mute. Below, the Charles, a stripe of nether sky, Now hid by rounded apple-trees between, Whose gaps the misplaced sail sweeps bellying by, Now flickering golden through a woodland screen, 95 Then spreading out, at his next turn beyond, A silver circle like an inland pond-- Slips seaward silently through marshes purple and green. Dear marshes! vain to him the gift of sight Who cannot in their various incomes share, 100 From every season drawn, of shade and light, Who sees in them but levels brown and bare; Each change of storm or sunshine scatters free On them its largess of variety, For Nature with cheap means still works her wonders rare. 105 In spring they lie one broad expanse of green, O'er which the light winds run with glimmering feet: Here, yellower stripes track out the creek unseen, There, darker growths o'er hidden ditches meet; And purpler stains show where the blossoms crowd, 110 As if the silent shadow of a cloud Hung there becalmed, with the next breath to fleet. All round, upon the river's slippery edge, Witching to deeper calm the drowsy tide, Whispers and leans the breeze-entangling sedge; 115 Through emerald glooms the lingering waters slide, Or, sometimes wavering, throw back the sun, And the stiff banks in eddies melt and run Of dimpling light, and with the current seem to glide. In summer 't is a blithesome sight to see, 120 As, step by step, with measured swing, they pass, The wide-ranked mowers wading to the knee, Their sharp scythes panting through the wiry grass; Then, stretched beneath a rick's shade in a ring, Their nooning take, while one begins to sing 125 A stave that droops and dies 'neath the close sky of brass. Meanwhile that devil-may-care, the bobolink. Remembering duty, in mid-quaver stops Just ere he sweeps o'er rapture's tremulous brink, And 'twixt the winrows most demurely drops, 130 A decorous bird of business, who provides For his brown mate and fledglings six besides, And looks from right to left, a farmer 'mid his crops. Another change subdues them in the fall, But saddens not; they still show merrier tints, 135 Though sober russet seems to cover all; When the first sunshine through their dew-drops glints, Look how the yellow clearness, streamed across, Redeems with rarer hues the season's loss, As Dawn's feet there had touched and left their rosy prints. 140 Or come when sunset gives its freshened zest, Lean o 'er the bridge and let the ruddy thrill, While the shorn sun swells down the hazy west, Glow opposite;--the marshes drink their fill And swoon with purple veins, then, slowly fade 145 Through pink to brown, as eastward moves the shade, Lengthening with stealthy creep, of Simond's darkening hill. Later, and yet ere winter wholly shuts, Ere through the first dry snow the runner grates, And the loath cart-wheel screams in slippery ruts, 150 While firmer ice the eager boy awaits, Trying each buckle and strap beside the fire, And until bedtime plays with his desire, Twenty times putting on and off his new-bought skates;-- Then, every morn, the river's banks shine bright 155 With smooth plate-armor, treacherous and frail, By the frost's clinking hammers forged at night, 'Gainst which the lances of the sun prevail, Giving a pretty emblem of the day When guiltier arms in light shall melt away, 160 And states shall move free-limbed, loosed from war's cramping mail. And now those waterfalls the ebbing river Twice every day creates on either side Tinkle, as through their fresh-sparred grots they shiver In grass-arched channels to the sun denied; 165 High flaps in sparkling blue the far-heard crow, The silvered flats gleam frostily below, Suddenly drops the gull and breaks the glassy tide. But crowned in turn by vying seasons three, Their winter halo hath a fuller ring; 170 This glory seems to rest immovably,-- The others were too fleet and vanishing; When the hid tide is at its highest flow, O'er marsh and stream one breathless trance of snow With brooding fulness awes and hushes everything. 175 The sunshine seems blown off by the bleak wind, As pale as formal candles lit by day; Gropes to the sea the river dumb and blind; The brown ricks, snow-thatched by the storm in play, Show pearly breakers combing o'er their lee, 180 White crests as of some just enchanted sea, Checked in their maddest leap and hanging poised midway. But when the eastern blow, with rain aslant. From mid-sea's prairies green and rolling plains Drives in his wallowing herds of billows gaunt, 185 And the roused Charles remembers in his veins Old Ocean's blood and snaps his gyves of frost, That tyrannous silence on the shores is tost In dreary wreck, and crumbling desolation reigns. Edgewise or flat, in Druid-like device, 190 With leaden pools between or gullies bare, The blocks lie strewn, a bleak Stonehenge of ice; No life, no sound, to break the grim despair, Save sullen plunge, as through the sedges stiff Down crackles riverward some thaw-sapped cliff, 195 Or when the close-wedged fields of ice crunch here and there. But let me turn from fancy-pictured scenes To that whose pastoral calm before me lies: Here nothing harsh or rugged intervenes; The early evening with her misty dyes 200 Smooths off the ravelled edges of the nigh, Relieves the distant with her cooler sky, And tones the landscape down, and soothes the wearied eyes. There gleams my native village, dear to me, Though higher change's waves each day are seen, 205 Whelming fields famed in boyhood's history, Sanding with houses the diminished green; There, in red brick, which softening time defies, Stand square and stiff the Muses' factories;-- How with my life knit up is every well-known scene! 210 Flow on, dear river! not alone you flow To outward sight, and through your marshes wind; Fed from the mystic springs of long-ago, Your twin flows silent through my world of mind: Grow dim, dear marshes, in the evening's gray! 215 Before my inner sight ye stretch away, And will forever, though these fleshly eyes grow blind. Beyond the hillock's house-bespotted swell, Where Gothic chapels house the horse and chaise, Where quiet cits in Grecian temples dwell, 220 Where Coptic tombs resound with prayer and praise, Where dust and mud the equal year divide, There gentle Allston lived, and wrought, and died, Transfiguring street and shop with his illumined gaze. _Virgilium vidi tantum_,--I have seen 225 But as a boy, who looks alike on all, That misty hair, that fine Undine-like mien. Tremulous as down to feeling's faintest call;-- Ah, dear old homestead! count it to thy fame That thither many times the Painter came;-- 230 One elm yet bears his name, a feathery tree and tall. Swiftly the present fades in memory's glow,-- Our only sure possession is the past; The village blacksmith died a month ago, And dim to me the forge's roaring blast; 235 Soon fire-new medievals we shall see Oust the black smithy from its chestnut-tree, And that hewn down, perhaps, the bee-hive green and vast. How many times, prouder than king on throne, Loosed from the village school-dame's A's and B's, 240 Panting have I the creaky bellows blown, And watched the pent volcano's red increase, Then paused to see the ponderous sledge, brought down By that hard arm voluminous and brown, From the white iron swarm its golden vanishing bees. 245 Dear native town! whose choking elms each year With eddying dust before their time turn gray, Pining for rain,--to me thy dust is dear; It glorifies the eve of summer day, And when the westering sun half sunken burns, 250 The mote-thick air to deepest orange turns, The westward horseman rides through clouds of gold away. So palpable, I've seen those unshorn few, The six old willows at the causey's end (Such trees Paul Potter never dreamed nor drew), 255 Through this dry mist their checkering shadows send, Striped, here and there, with many a long-drawn thread, Where streamed through leafy chinks the trembling red, Past which, in one bright trail, the hang-bird's flashes blend. Yes, dearer far thy dust than all that e'er, 260 Beneath the awarded crown of victory, Gilded the blown Olympic charioteer; Though lightly prized the ribboned parchments three, Yet _collegisse juvat_, I am glad That here what colleging was mine I had,-- 265 It linked another tie, dear native town, with thee! Nearer art thou than simply native earth, My dust with thine concedes a deeper tie; A closer claim thy soil may well put forth, Something of kindred more than sympathy; 270 For in thy bounds I reverently laid away That blinding anguish of forsaken clay, That title I seemed to have in earth and sea and sky. That portion of my life more choice to me (Though brief, yet in itself so round and whole) 275 Than all the imperfect residue can be;-- The Artist saw his statue of the soul Was perfect; so, with one regretful stroke, The earthen model into fragments broke, And without her the impoverished seasons roll. 280 THE OAK What gnarlèd stretch, what depth of shade, is his! There needs no crown to mark the forest's king; How in his leaves outshines full summer's bliss! Sun, storm, rain, dew, to him their tribute bring, Which he with such benignant royalty 5 Accepts, as overpayeth what is lent; All nature seems his vassal proud to be, And cunning only for his ornament. How towers he, too, amid the billowed snows, An unquelled exile from the summer's throne, 10 Whose plain, uncinctured front more kingly shows, Now that the obscuring courtier leaves are flown. His boughs make music of the winter air, Jewelled with sleet, like some cathedral front Where clinging snow-flakes with quaint art repair 15 The dents and furrows of time's envious brunt. How doth his patient strength the rude March wind Persuade to seem glad breaths of summer breeze, And win the soil, that fain would be unkind, To swell his revenues with proud increase! 20 He is the gem; and all the landscape wide (So doth his grandeur isolate the sense) Seems but the setting, worthless all beside, An empty socket, were he fallen thence. So, from oft converse with life's wintry gales, 25 Should man learn how to clasp with tougher roots The inspiring earth; how otherwise avails The leaf-creating sap that sunward shoots? So every year that falls with noiseless flake Should fill old scars up on the stormward side, 30 And make hoar age revered for age's sake, Not for traditions of youth's leafy pride. So, from the pinched soil of a churlish fate, True hearts compel the sap of sturdier growth, So between earth and heaven stand simply great, 35 That these shall seem but their attendants both; For nature's forces with obedient zeal Wait on the rooted faith and oaken will; As quickly the pretender's cheat they feel, And turn mad Pucks to flout and mock him still. 40 Lord! all 'Thy works are lessons; each contains Some emblem of man's all-containing soul; Shall he make fruitless all thy glorious pains, Delving within thy grace an eyeless mole? Make me the least of thy Dodona-grove, 45 Cause me some message of thy truth to bring, Speak but a word through me, nor let thy love Among my boughs disdain to perch and sing. BEAVER BROOK Hushed with broad sunlight lies the hill, And, minuting the long day's loss, The cedar's shadow, slow and still, Creeps o'er its dial of gray moss. Warm noon brims full the valley's cup, 5 The aspen's leaves are scarce astir; Only the little mill sends up Its busy, never-ceasing burr. Climbing the loose-piled wall that hems The road along the mill-pond's brink, 10 From 'neath the arching barberry-stems My footstep scares the shy chewink. Beneath a bony buttonwood The mill's red door lets forth the din; The whitened miller, dust-imbued, 15 Flits past the square of dark within. No mountain torrent's strength is here; Sweet Beaver, child of forest still, Heaps its small pitcher to the ear, 20 And gently waits the miller's will. Swift slips Undine along the race Unheard, and then, with flashing bound, Floods the dull wheel with light and grace, And, laughing, hunts the loath drudge round. The miller dreams not at what cost, 25 The quivering millstones hum and whirl, Nor how for every turn are tost Armfuls of diamond and of pearl. But Summer cleared my happier eyes With drops of some celestial juice, 30 To see how Beauty underlies, Forevermore each form of use. And more; methought I saw that flood, Which now so dull and darkling steals, Thick, here and there, with human blood, 35 To turn the world's laborious wheels. No more than doth the miller there, Shut in our several cells, do we Know with what waste of beauty rare Moves every day's machinery. 40 Surely the wiser time shall come When this fine overplus of might, No longer sullen, slow, and dumb, Shall leap to music and to light. In that new childhood of the Earth 45 Life of itself shall dance and play, Fresh blood in Time's shrunk veins make mirth, And labor meet delight half-way.-- THE PRESENT CRISIS When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west, And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time. 5 Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe, When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems to and fro; At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start, Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart, And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future's heart. 10 So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill, Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill, And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his sympathies with God In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by the sod, Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the nobler clod. 15 For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along, Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right or wrong; Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's vast frame Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or shame;-- In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim. 20 Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight, Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right, And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light. 25 Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand, Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land? Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 't is Truth alone is strong, And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong. 30 Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see, That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Oblivion's sea; Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff must fly; Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by. 35 Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word; Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the Throne,-- Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own. 40 We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great, Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate, But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din, List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,-- "They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin." 45 Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellest of the giant brood, Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who have drenched the earth with blood, Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our purer day, Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable prey;-- Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless children play? 50 Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just; Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside. Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified, And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied. 55 Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes,--they were souls that stood alone, While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone, Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine, By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme design. 60 By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet I track, Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back, And these mounts of anguish number how each generation learned One new word of that grand _Credo_ which in prophet-hearts hath burned Since the first man stood God-conquered with his face to heaven upturned. 65 For Humanity sweeps onward: where to-day the martyr stands, On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands; Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn, While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn. 70 'Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves Of a legendary virtue carved upon our fathers' graves; Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a crime;-- Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men behind their time? Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, that make Plymouth Rock sublime? 75 They were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts, Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the Past's; But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath made us free, Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits flee The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove them across the sea. 80 They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires, Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's new-lit altar-fires; Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our haste to slay, From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of to-day? 85 New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth; Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be, Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea, Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key. 90 THE COURTIN' God makes sech nights, all white an' still Fur 'z you can look or listen, Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill, All silence an' all glisten. Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown 5 An' peeked in thru' the winder, An' there sot Huldy all alone, With no one nigh to hender. A fireplace filled the room's one side With half a cord o' wood in,-- 10 There warn't no stoves till comfort died, To bake ye to a puddin'. The wa'nut logs shot sparkles out Toward the pootiest, bless her! An' leetle flames danced all about 15 The chiny on the dresser. Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung, An' in amongst 'em rusted The ole queen's-arm thet gran'ther Young Fetched back from Concord busted. 20 The very room, coz she was in, Seemed warm from floor to ceilin', An' she looked full ez rosy agin Ez the apples she was peelin'. 'Twas kin' o' kingdom-come to look 25 On sech a blessed cretur, A dogrose blushin' to a brook Ain't modester nor sweeter. He was six foot o' man, A 1, Clearn grit an' human natur'; 30 None couldn't quicker pitch a ton Nor dror a furrer straighter. He'd sparked it with full twenty gals, Hed squired 'em, danced 'em, druv 'em, Fust this one, an' then thet, by spells,-- 35 All is, he couldn't love 'em. But long o' her his veins 'ould run All crinkly like curled maple, The side she breshed felt full o' sun Ez a south slope in Ap'il. 40 She thought no v'ice hed sech a swing Ez hisn in the choir; My! when he made Ole Hunderd ring, She _knowed_ the Lord was nigher. An' she'd blush scarlit, right in prayer, 45 When her new meetin'-bunnet Felt somehow thru' its crown a pair O' blue eyes sot upon it. Thet night, I tell ye, she looked _some_! She seemed to 've gut a new soul, 50 For she felt sartin-sure he'd come. Down to her very shoe-sole. She heered a foot, an' knowed it tu, A-raspin' on the scraper,-- All ways to once her feelins flew 55 Like sparks in burnt-up paper. He kin'o' l'itered on the mat, Some doubtfle o' the sekle, His heart kep' goin' pity-pat, But hern went pity Zekle. 60 An' yit she gin her cheer a jerk Ez though she wished him furder, An' on her apples kep' to work, Parin' away like murder. "You want to see my Pa, I s'pose?" 65 "Wal ... no ... I come designin'" "To see my Ma? She's sprinklin' clo'es Agin to-morrer's i'nin'." To say why gals acts so or so, Or don't, would be presumin'; 70 Mebby to mean _yes_ an' say _no_ Comes nateral to women. He stood a spell on one foot fust, Then stood a spell on t'other, An' on which one he felt the wust 75 He could n't ha' told ye nuther. Says he, "I'd better call agin;" Says she, "Think likely, Mister:" That last word pricked him like a pin, An' ... Wal, he up an' kist her. 80 When Ma bimeby upon 'em slips, Huldy sot pale ez ashes, All kin' o' smily roun' the lips An' teary roun' the lashes. For she was jist the quiet kind 85 Whose naturs never vary, Like streams that keep a summer mind Snowhid in Jenooary. The blood clost roun' her heart felt glued Too tight for all expressin', 90 Tell mother see how metters stood. An' gin 'em both her blessin'. Then her red come back like the tide Down to the Bay o' Fundy, An' all I know is they was cried 95 In meetin' come nex' Sunday. ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION JULY 21, 1865 I Weak-winged is song, Nor aims at that clear-ethered height Whither the brave deed climbs for light: We seem to do them wrong, Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their hearse 5 Who in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse, Our trivial song to honor those who come With ears attuned to strenuous trump and drum, And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire, Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and fire: 10 Yet sometimes feathered words are strong, A gracious memory to buoy up and save From Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common grave Of the unventurous throng. II To-day our Reverend Mother welcomes back 15 Her wisest Scholars, those who understood The deeper teaching of her mystic tome, And offered their fresh lives to make it good: No lore of Greece or Rome, No science peddling with the names of things, 20 Or reading stars to find inglorious fates, Can lift our life with wings Far from Death's idle gulf that for the many waits, And lengthen out our dates With that clear fame whose memory sings 25 In manly hearts to come, and nerves them and dilates: Nor such thy teaching, Mother of us all! Not such the trumpet-call Of thy diviner mood, That could thy sons entice 30 From happy homes and toils, the fruitful nest Of those half-virtues which the world calls best, Into War's tumult rude: But rather far that stern device The sponsors chose that round thy cradle stood 35 In the dim; unventured wood, The VERITAS that lurks beneath The letter's unprolific sheath, Life of whate'er makes life worth living, Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food, 40 One heavenly thing whereof earth hath the giving. III Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oil Amid the dust of books to find her, Content at last, for guerdon of their toil, With the cast mantle she hath left behind her. 45 Many in sad faith sought for her, Many with crossed hands sighed for her; But these, our brothers, fought for her, At life's dear peril wrought for her, So loved her that they died for her, 50 Tasting the raptured fleetness Of her divine completeness: Their higher instinct knew Those love her best who to themselves are true, And what they dare to dream of, dare to do; 55 They followed her and found her Where all may hope to find, Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind, But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her. Where faith made whole with deed 60 Breathes its awakening breath Into the lifeless creed, They saw her plumed and mailed, With sweet, stern face unveiled, And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death. 65 IV Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides Into the silent hollow of the past; What Is there that abides To make the next age better for the last? Is earth too poor to give us 70 Something to live for here that shall outlive us,-- Some more substantial boon Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon? The little that we see From doubt is never free; 75 The little that we do Is but half-nobly true; With our laborious hiving What men call treasure, and the gods call dross, Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving, 80 Only secure in every one's conniving, A long account of nothings paid with loss, Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires, After our little hour of strut and rave, With all our pasteboard passions and desires, 85 Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires, Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave. Ah, there is something here Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer, Something that gives our feeble light 90 A high immunity from Night, Something that leaps life's narrow bars To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven; A seed of sunshine that doth leaven Our earthly dulness with the beams of stars, 95 And glorify our clay With light from fountains elder than the Day; A conscience more divine than we, A gladness fed with secret tears, A vexing, forward-reaching sense 100 Of some more noble permanence; A light across the sea, Which haunts the soul and will not let it be, Still glimmering from the heights of undegenerate years. V Whither leads the path 105 To ampler fates that leads? Not down through flowery meads, To reap an aftermath Of youth's vainglorious weeds, But up the steep, amid the wrath 110 And shock of deadly hostile creeds, Where the world's best hope and stay By battle's flashes gropes a desperate way, And every turf the fierce foot clings to bleeds. Peace hath her not ignoble wreath, 115 Ere yet the sharp, decisive word Lights the black lips of cannon, and the sword Dreams in its easeful sheath: But some day the live coal behind the thought. Whether from Baäl's stone obscene, 120 Or from the shrine serene Of God's pure altar brought, Bursts up in flame; the war of tongue and pen Learns with what deadly purpose it was fraught, And, helpless in the fiery passion caught, 125 Shakes all the pillared state with shock of men: Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, And cries reproachful: "Was it, then, my praise, And not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth; 130 I claim of thee the promise of thy youth; Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase, The victim of thy genius, not its mate!" Life may be given in many ways, And loyalty to Truth be sealed 135 As bravely in the closet as the field, So generous is Fate; But then to stand beside her, When craven churls deride her, To front a lie in arms and not to yield,-- 140 This shows, methinks, God's plan And measure of a stalwart man, Limbed like the old heroic breeds, Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth, Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, 145 Fed from within with all the strength he needs. VI Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, Whom late the Nation he had led, With ashes on her head, Wept with the passion of an angry grief: 150 Forgive me, if from present things I turn To speak what in my heart will beat and burn, And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn. Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man 155 Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote: For him her Old-World mould aside she threw, And, choosing sweet clay from the breast Of the unexhausted West, 160 With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. How beautiful to see Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead; 165 One whose meek flock the people joyed to be, Not lured by any cheat of birth, But by his clear-grained human worth, And brave old wisdom of sincerity! They knew that outward grace is dust; 170 They could not choose but trust In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, And supple-tempered will That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust. Nothing of Europe here, 175 Or, then, of Europe fronting morn-ward still, Ere any names of Serf and Peer Could Nature's equal scheme deface; Here was a type of the true elder race, And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face. 180 I praise him not; it were too late; And some innative weakness there must be In him who condescends to victory Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait, Safe in himself as in a fate. 185 So always firmly he: He knew to bide his time, And can his fame abide, Still patient in his simple faith sublime, Till the wise years decide. 190 Great captains, with their guns and drums, Disturb our judgment for the hour, But at last silence comes; These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, Our children shall behold his fame, 195 The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, New birth of our new soil, the first American. VII Long as man's hope insatiate can discern Or only guess some more inspiring goal 200 Outside of Self, enduring as the pole, Along whose course the flying axles burn Of spirits bravely-pitched, earth's manlier brood; Long as below we cannot find The meed that stills the inexorable mind; 205 So long this faith to some ideal Good, Under whatever mortal names it masks, Freedom, Law, Country, this ethereal mood That thanks the Fates for their severer tasks, Feeling its challenged pulses leap, 210 While others skulk in subterfuges cheap, And, set in Danger's van, has all the boon it asks, Shall win man's praise and woman's love; Shall be a wisdom that we set above All other skills and gifts to culture dear, 215 A virtue round whose forehead we enwreathe Laurels that with a living passion breathe When other crowns are cold and soon grow sere. What brings us thronging these high rites to pay, And seal these hours the noblest of our year, 220 Save that our brothers found this better way? VIII We sit here in the Promised Land That flows with Freedom's honey and milk; But 'twas they won it, sword in hand, Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk. 225 We welcome back our bravest and our best:-- Ah me! not all! some come not with the rest, Who went forth brave and bright as any here! I strive to mix some gladness with my strain, But the sad strings complain, 230 And will not please the ear: I sweep them for a paean, but they wane Again and yet again Into a dirge, and die away in pain. In these brave ranks I only see the gaps, 235 Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb turf wraps, Dark to the triumph which they died to gain: Fitlier may others greet the living, For me the past is unforgiving; I with uncovered head 240 Salute the sacred dead, Who went, and who return not,--Say not so! 'Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay, But the high faith that failed not by the way; Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave; 245 No ban of endless night exiles the brave: And to the saner mind We rather seem the dead that stayed behind. Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow! For never shall their aureoled presence lack: 250 I see them muster in a gleaming row, With ever-youthful brows that nobler show; We find in our dull road their shining track; In every nobler mood We feel the orient of their spirit glow, 255 Part of our life's unalterable good, Of all our saintlier aspiration; They come transfigured back, Secure from change in their high-hearted ways, Beautiful evermore, and with the rays 260 Of morn on their white Shields of Expectation! IX Who now shall sneer? Who dare again to say we trace Our lines to a plebeian race? Roundhead and Cavalier! 265 Dreams are those names erewhile in battle loud; Forceless as is the shadow of a cloud, They live but in the ear: That is best blood that hath most iron, in 't, To edge resolve with, pouring without stint 270 For what makes manhood dear. Tell us not of Plantagenets, Hapsburgs, and Guelfs, whose thin bloods crawl Down from some victor in a border-brawl! How poor their outworn coronets, 275 Matched with one leaf of that plain civic wreath Our brave for honor's blazon shall bequeath, Through whose desert a rescued Nation sets Her heel on treason, and the trumpet hears Shout victory, tingling Europe's sullen ears 280 With vain resentments and more vain regrets! X Not in anger, not in pride, Pure from passion's mixture rude, Ever to base earth allied, But with far-heard gratitude, 285 Still with heart and voice renewed, To heroes living and dear martyrs dead, The strain should close that consecrates our brave. Lift the heart and lift the head! Lofty be its mood and grave, 290 Not without a martial ring, Not without a prouder tread And a peal of exultation: Little right has he to sing Through whose heart in such an hour 295 Beats no march of conscious power, Sweeps no tumult of elation! 'Tis no Man we celebrate, By his country's victories great, A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, 300 But the pith and marrow of a Nation Drawing force from all her men, Highest, humblest, weakest, all,-- Pulsing it again through them, Till the basest can no longer cower, 305 Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall, Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem. Come back, then, noble pride, for 'tis her dower! How could poet ever tower, If his passions, hopes, and fears, 310 If his triumphs and his tears, Kept not measure with his people? Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and waves! Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple! Banners, advance with triumph, bend your staves! 315 And from every mountain-peak Let beacon-fire to answering beacon speak, Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface he, And so leap on in light from sea to sea, Till the glad news be sent 320 Across a kindling continent, Making earth feel more firm and air breathe braver: "Be proud! for she is saved, and all have helped to save her! She that lifts up the manhood of the poor, She of the open soul and open door, 325 With room about her hearth for all mankind! The helm from her bold front she doth unbind, Sends all her handmaid armies back to spin, And bids her navies hold their thunders in. 330 No challenge sends she to the elder world, That looked askance and hated; a light scorn Plays on her mouth, as round her mighty knees She calls her children back, and waits the morn Of nobler day, enthroned between her subject seas." 335 XI Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release! Thy God, in these distempered days, Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways, And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace! Bow down in prayer and praise! 340 O Beautiful! my Country! ours once more! Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair O'er such sweet brows as never other wore, And letting thy set lips, Freed from wrath's pale eclipse, 345 The rosy edges of their smile lay bare, What words divine of lover or of poet Could tell our love and make thee know it, Among the Nations bright beyond compare? What were our lives without thee? 350 What all our lives to save thee? We reck not what we gave thee; We will not dare to doubt thee, But ask whatever else, and we will dare! NOTES _THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL_ 1. The Musing organist: There is a peculiar felicity in this musical introduction. The poem is like an improvisation, and was indeed composed much as a musician improvises, with swift grasp of the subtle suggestions of musical tones. It is a dream, an elaborate and somewhat tangled metaphor, full of hidden meaning for the accordant mind, and the poet appropriately gives it a setting of music, the most symbolic of all the arts. It is an allegory, like any one of the adventures in the _Fairie Queen_, and from the very beginning the reader must be alive to the symbolic meaning, upon which Lowell, unlike Spenser, places chief emphasis, rather than upon the narrative. Compare the similar musical device in Browning's _Abt Vogler_ and Adelaide Proctor's _Lost Chord_. 6. Theme: The theme, subject, or underlying thought of the poem is expressed in line 12 below: "We Sinais climb and know it not;" or more comprehensively in the group of four lines of which this is the conclusion. The organist's fingers wander listlessly over the keys at first; then come forms and figures from out of dreamland over the bridge of his careless melody, and gradually the vision takes consistent and expressive shape. So the poet comes upon his central subject, or theme, shaped from his wandering thought and imagination. 7. Auroral flushes: Like the first faint glimmerings of light in the East that point out the pathway of the rising sun, the uncertain, wavering outlines of the poet's vision precede the perfected theme that is drawing near. 9. Not only around our infancy, etc.: The allusion is to Wordsworth's _Ode on the Intimations of Immortality_, especially these lines: "Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy; The Youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day." As Lowell's central theme is so intimately associated with that of Wordsworth's poem, if not directly suggested by it, the two poems should be read together and compared. Lowell maintains that "heaven lies about us" not only in our infancy, but at all times, if only we have the soul to comprehend it. 12. We Sinais climb, etc.: Mount Sinai was the mountain in Arabia on which Moses talked with God (_Exodus_ xix, xx). God's miracles are taking place about us all the time, if only we can emancipate our souls sufficiently to see them. From out of our materialized daily lives we may rise at any moment, if we will, to ideal and spiritual things. In a letter to his nephew Lowell says: "This same name of God is written all over the world in little phenomena that occur under our eyes every moment, and I confess that I feel very much inclined to hang my head with Pizarro when I cannot translate those hieroglyphics into my own vernacular." (_Letters_, I, 164). Compare the following passage in the poem _Bibliolatres_: "If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness And find'st not Sinai, 't is thy soul is poor; There towers the Mountain of the Voice no less, Which whoso seeks shall find, but he who bends, Intent on manna still and mortal ends, Sees it not, neither hears its thundered lore." 15. Prophecies: Prophecy is not only prediction, but also any inspired discourse or teaching. Compare the following lines from the poem _Freedom_, written the same year: "Are we, then, wholly fallen? Can it be That thou, North wind, that from thy mountains bringest Their spirit to our plains, and thou, blue sea, Who on our rocks thy wreaths of freedom flingest, As on an altar,--can it be that ye Have wasted inspiration on dead ears, Dulled with the too familiar clank of chains?" At the end of this poem Lowell gives his view of "fallen and traitor lives." He speaks of the "boundless future" of our country-- "Ours if we be strong; Or if we shrink, better remount our ships And, fleeing God's express design, trace back The hero-freighted Mayflower's prophet-track To Europe entering her blood-red eclipse." While reading _Sir Launfal_ the fact must be kept in mind that Lowell was at the time of writing the poem filled with the spirit of freedom and reform, and was writing fiery articles in prose for the _Anti-Slavery Standard_, expressing his bitter indignation at the indifference and lukewarmness of the Northern people on the subject of slavery. 17. Druid wood: The Druids were the aged priests of the Celts, who performed their religious ceremonies in the forests, especially among oaks, which were peculiarly sacred to them. Hence the venerable woods, like the aged priests, offer their benediction. Every power of nature, the winds, the mountain, the wood, the sea, has a symbolic meaning which we should be able to interpret for our inspiration and uplifting. Read Bryant's _A Forest Hymn_. 18. Benedicite: An invocation of blessing. Imperative form of the Latin _benedicere_, to bless. Longfellow speaks of the power of songs that-- "Come like the benediction That follows after prayer." 19-20. Compare these lines with the ninth strophe of Wordsworth's _Ode_. The "inspiring sea" is Wordsworth's "immortal sea." Both poets rejoice that some of the impulses and ideals of youth are kept alive in old age. 21. Earth gets its price, etc.: Notice the special meaning given to _Earth_ here, in contrast with _heaven_ in line 29. Here again the thought is suggested by Wordsworth's _Ode_, sixth strophe: "Earth fills our lap with pleasures of her own." 23. Shrives: The priest shrives one when he hears confession and grants absolution. 25. Devil's booth: Expand this metaphor and unfold its application to every-day life. 27. Cap and bells: The conventional dress of the court fool, or jester, of the Middle Ages, and, after him, of the stage clown, consisted of the "fool's cap" and suit of motley, ornamented with little tinkling bells. 28. Bubbles we buy, etc.: This line, as first published, had "earn" for "buy." 31. This line read originally: "There is no price set," etc. The next line began with "And." 32-95. This rapturous passage descriptive of June is unquestionably the most familiar and most celebrated piece of nature poetry in our literature. It is not only beautiful and inspiring in its felicitous phrasings of external nature, but it is especially significant as a true expression of the heart and soul of the poet himself. It was always "the high-tide of the year" with Lowell in June, when his spirits were in fine accord with the universal joy of nature. Wherever in his poetry he refers to spring and its associations, he always expresses the same ecstasy of delight. The passage must be compared with the opening lines of _Under the Willows_ (which he at first named _A June Idyll_): "June is the pearl of our New England year. Still a surprisal, though expected long, Her coming startles. Long she lies in wait, Makes many a feint, peeps forth, draws coyly back, Then, from some southern ambush in the sky, With one great gush of blossom storms the world," etc. And in _Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line_ the coming of spring is delightfully pictured: "Our Spring gets everything in tune An' gives one leap from April into June," etc. In a letter written in June, 1867, Lowell says: "There never _is_ such a season, and that shows what a poet God is. He says the same thing over to us so often and always new. Here I've been reading the same poem for near half a century, and never had a notion what the buttercup in the third stanza meant before." It is worth noting that Lowell's happy June corresponds to May in the English poets, as in Wordsworth's _Ode_: "With the heart of May Doth every beast keep holiday." In New England where "Northern natur" is "slow an' apt to doubt," "May is a pious fraud of the almanac." or as Hosea Biglow says: "Half our May is so awfully like May n't, 'T would rile a Shaker or an evrige saint." 41. The original edition has "grasping" instead of "groping." 42. Climbs to a soul, etc.: In his intimate sympathy with nature, Lowell endows her forms with conscious life, as Wordsworth did, who says in _Lines Written in Early Spring_: "And 't is my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes." So Lowell in _The Cathedral_ says: "And I believe the brown earth takes delight, In the new snow-drop looking back at her, To think that by some vernal alchemy It could transmute her darkness into pearl." So again he says in _Under the Willows_: "I in June am midway to believe A tree among my far progenitors, Such sympathy is mine with all the race, Such mutual recognition vaguely sweet There is between us." It must be remembered that this humanizing of nature is an attitude toward natural objects characteristic only of modern poetry, being practically unknown in English poetry before the period of Burns and Wordsworth. 45. The cowslip startles: Surprises the eye with its bright patches of green sprinkled with golden blossoms. _Cowslip_ is the common name in New England for the marsh-marigold, which appears early in spring in low wet meadows, and furnishes not infrequently a savory "mess of greens" for the farmer's dinner-table. 46. Compare _Al Fresco_, lines 34-39: "The rich, milk-tingeing buttercup Its tiny polished urn holds up, Filled with ripe summer to the edge, The sun in his own wine to pledge." 56. Nice: Delicately discriminating. 62. This line originally read "because God so wills it." 71. Maize has sprouted: There is an anxious period for the farmer after his corn is planted, for if the spring is "backward" and the weather cold, his seed may decay in the ground before sprouting. 73. So in _Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line_, when robin-redbreast sees the "hossches'nuts' leetle hands unfold" he knows-- "Thet arter this ther' 's only blossom-snows; So, choosin' out a handy crotch an' spouse, He goes to plast'rin' his adobë house." 77. Note the happy effect of the internal rhyme in this line. 93. Healed with snow: Explain the appropriateness of the metaphor. 94-95. Is the transition here from the prelude to the story abrupt, or do the preceding lines lead up to it appropriately? Just why does Sir Launfal now remember his vow? Do these lines introduce the "theme" that the musing organist has finally found in dreamland, or the symbolic illustration of his theme? 97. Richest mail: The knight's coat of mail was usually of polished steel, often richly decorated with inlaid patterns of gold and jewels. To serve his high purpose, Sir Launfal brings forth his most precious treasures. 99. Holy Grail: According to medieval legend, the Sangreal was the cup or chalice, made of emerald, which was used by Christ, at the last supper, and in which Joseph of Arimathea caught the last drops of Christ's blood when he was taken down from the cross. The quest of the Grail is the central theme of the Arthurian Romances. Tennyson's _Holy Grail_ should be read, and the student should also be made familiar with the beautiful versions of the legend in Abbey's series of mural paintings in the Boston Public Library, and in Wagner's _Parsifal_. 103. On the rushes: In ancient halls and castles the floors were commonly strewn with rushes. In _Taming of the Shrew_, when preparing for the home-coming of Petruchio and his bride, Grumio says: "Is supper ready, the house trimmed, rushes strewed, cobwebs swept?" 109. The crows flapped, etc.: Suggestive of the quiet, heavy flight of the crow in a warm day. The beginning and the end of the stanza suggest drowsy quiet. The vision begins in this stanza. The nature pictures are continued, but with new symbolical meaning. 114. Like an outpost of winter: The cold, gloomy castle stands in strong contrast to the surrounding landscape filled with the joyous sunshine of summer. So the proud knight's heart is still inaccessible to true charity and warm human sympathy. So aristocracy in its power and pride stands aloof from democracy with its humility and aspiration for human brotherhood. This stanza is especially figurative. The poet is unfolding the main theme, the underlying moral purpose, of the whole poem, but it is still kept in vague, dreamy symbolism. 116. North Countree: The north of England, the home of the border ballads. This form of the word "countree," with accent on the last syllable, is common in the old ballads. Here it gives a flavor of antiquity in keeping with the story. 122. Pavilions tall: The trees, as in line 125, the broad green tents. Note how the military figure, beginning with "outposts," in line 115, is continued and developed throughout the stanza, and reverted to in the word "siege" in the next stanza. 130. Maiden knight: A young, untried, unpracticed knight. The expression occurs in Tennyson's _Sir Galahad_. So "maiden mail" below. 137. As a locust-leaf: The small delicate leaflets of the compound locust-leaf seem always in a "lightsome" movement. 138. The original edition has "unscarred mail." 138-139. Compare the last lines of Tennyson's _Sir Galahad_: "By bridge and ford, by park and pale, All-armed I ride, whate'er betide, Until I find the Holy Grail." 147. Made morn: Let in the morning, or came into the full morning light as the huge gate opened. 148. Leper: Why did the poet make the crouching beggar a leper? 152. For "gan shrink" the original has "did shrink." 155. Bent of stature: Criticise this phrase. 158. So he tossed ... in scorn: This is the turning-point of the moral movement of the story. Sir Launfal at the very beginning makes his fatal mistake; his noble spirit and lofty purposes break down with the first test. He refuses to see a brother in the loathsome leper; the light and warmth of human brotherhood had not yet entered his soul, just as the summer sunshine had not entered the frowning castle. The regeneration of his soul must be worked out through wandering and suffering. Compare the similar plot of the _Ancient Mariner_. 163. No true alms: The alms must also be in the heart. 164. Originally "He gives nothing but worthless gold." 166. Slender mite: An allusion to the widow's "two mites." (_Luke_ xxi, 1-4.) 168. The all-sustaining Beauty: The all-pervading spirit of God that unites all things in one sympathetic whole. This divinity in humanity is its highest beauty. In _The Oak_ Lowell says: "Lord! all thy works are lessons; each contains Some emblem of man's all-containing soul." 172. A god goes with it: The god-like quality of real charity, of heart to heart sympathy. In a letter written a little after the composition of this poem Lowell speaks of love and freedom as being "the sides which Beauty presented to him then." 172. Store: Plenty, abundance. 175. Summers: What is gained by the use of this word instead of winters? 176. Wold: A high, open and barren field that catches the full sweep of the wind. The "wolds" of north England are like the "downs" of the south. 181. The little brook: In a letter written in December, 1848, Lowell says: "Last night I walked to Watertown over the snow with the new moon before me and a sky exactly like that in Page's evening landscape. Orion was rising behind me, and, as I stood on the hill just before you enter the village, the stillness of the fields around me was delicious, broken only by the tinkle of a little brook which runs too swiftly for Frost to catch it. My picture of the brook in _Sir Launfal_ was drawn from it." See the poem _Beaver Brook_ (originally called _The Mill_), and the winter picture in _An Indian-Summer Reverie_, lines 148-196. 184. Groined: Groined arches are formed by the intersection of two arches crossing at any angle, forming a ribbed vault; a characteristic feature of Gothic architecture. 190. Forest-crypt: The crypt of a church is the basement, filled with arched pillars that sustain the building. The cavern of the brook, as the poet will have us imagine it, is like this subterranean crypt, where the pillars are like trees and the groined arches like interlacing branches, decorated with frost leaves. The poet seems to have had in mind throughout the description the interior of the Gothic cathedrals, as shown by the many suggestive terms used, "groined," "crypt," "aisles," "fretwork," and "carvings." 193. Fretwork: The ornamental work carved in intricate patterns, in oak or stone, on the ceilings of old halls and churches. 195. Sharp relief: When a figure stands out prominently from the marble or other material from which it is cut, it is said to be in "high relief," in distinction from "low relief," _bas relief_. 196. Arabesques: Complicated patterns of interwoven foliage, flowers and fruits, derived from Arabian art. Lowell had undoubtedly studied many times the frost designs on the window panes. 201. That crystalled the beams, etc.: That caught the beams of moon and sun as in a crystal. For "that" the original edition has "which." 204. Winter-palace of ice: An allusion, apparently, to the ice-palace built by the Empress of Russia, Catherine II, "most magnificent and mighty freak. The wonder of the North," Cowper called it. Compare Lowell's description of the frost work with Cowper's similar description in _The Task_, in the beginning of Book V. 205-210. 'Twas as if every image, etc.: Note the exquisite fancy in these lines. The elves have preserved in the ice the pictures of summer foliage and clouds that were mirrored in the water as models for another summer. 211. The hall: In the old castles the hall was always the large banqueting room, originally the common living room. Here all large festivities would take place. 213. Corbel: A bracket-like support projecting from a wall from which an arch springs or on which a beam rests. The poet has in mind an ancient hall in which the ceiling is the exposed woodwork of the roof. 214. This line at first read: "With the lightsome," etc. Why did Lowell's refining taste strike out "the"? 216. Yule-log: The great log, sometimes the root of a tree, burned in the huge fireplace on Christmas eve, with special ceremonies and merrymakings. It was lighted with a brand preserved from the last year's log, and connected with its burning were many quaint superstitions and customs. The celebration is a survival through our Scandinavian ancestors of the winter festival in honor of the god Thor. Herrick describes it trippingly in one of his songs: "Come, bring with a noise, My merrie, merrie boys, The Christmas log to the firing; While my good dame, she Bids ye all be free, And drink to your heart's desiring." 219. Like a locust, etc.: Only one who has heard both sounds frequently can appreciate the close truth of this simile. The metaphors and similes in this stanza are deserving of special study. 226. Harp: Prof. William Vaughn Moody questions whether "the use of Sir Launfal's hair as a 'harp' for the wind to play a Christmas carol on" is not "a bit grotesque." Does the picture of Sir Launfal in these two stanzas belong in the Prelude or in the story in Part Second? 230. Carol of its own: Contrasted with the carols that are being sung inside the castle. 231. Burden: The burden or refrain is the part repeated at the end of each stanza of a ballad or song, expressing the main theme or sentiment. _Still_ is in the sense of always, ever. 233. Seneschal: An officer of the castle who had charge of feasts and ceremonies, like the modern Lord Chamberlain of the King's palace. Note the effect of the striking figure in this line. 237. Window-slits: Narrow perpendicular openings in the wall, serving both as windows and as loopholes from which to fire at an enemy. 238. Build out its piers: The beams of light are like the piers or jetties that extend out from shore into the water to protect ships. Such piers are also built out to protect the shore from the violent wash of the ocean. The poet may possibly, however, have had in mind the piers of a bridge that support the arches and stand against the sweep of the stream. 243. In this line instead of "the weaver Winter" the original has "the frost's swift shuttles." Was the change an improvement? 244. A single crow: Note the effect of introducing this lone crow into the bleak landscape. 250. It must not be forgotten that this old Sir Launfal is only in the dream of the real Sir Launfal, who is still lying on the rushes within his own castle. As the poor had often been turned away with cold, heartless selfishness, so he is now turned away from his own "hard gate." 251. Sate: The use of this archaic form adds to the antique flavor of the poem. So with the use of the word "tree" for cross, in line 281 below. Lowell was passionately fond of the old poets and the quaint language of the early centuries of English literature, and loved to introduce into his own poetry words and phrases from these sources. Of this habit he says: "If some small savor creep into my rhyme Of the old poets, if some words I use, Neglected long, which have the lusty thews Of that gold-haired and earnest-hearted time, Whose loving joy and sorrow all sublime Have given our tongue its starry eminence,-- It is not pride, God knows, but reverence Which hath grown in me since my childhood's prime." 254. Recked: Cared for. 255. Surcoat: A long flowing garment worn over the armor, on which was "emblazoned" the coat of arms. If the knight were a crusader, a red cross was embroidered thus on the surcoat. 256. The sign: The sign of the cross, the symbol of humility and love. This is the first real intimation, the keynote, of the transformation that has taken place in Sir Launfal's soul. 259. Idle mail: Useless, ineffectual protection. This figure carries us back to the "gilded mail," line 131, in which Sir Launfal "flashed forth" at the beginning of his quest. The poem is full of these minor antitheses, which should be traced by the student. 264-272. He sees, etc.: This description is not only beautiful in itself, but it serves an important purpose in the plan of the poem. It is a kind of condensation or symbolic expression of Sir Launfal's many years of wandering in oriental lands. The hint or brief outline is given, which must be expanded by the imagination of the reader. Otherwise the story would be inconsistent and incomplete. Notice how deftly the picture is introduced. 272. Signal of palms: A group of palm trees seen afar off over the desert is a welcome signal of an oasis with water for the relief of the suffering traveler. Some critics have objected that so small a spring could not have "waved" so large a signal! 273. Notice the abruptness with which the leper is here introduced, just as before at the beginning of the story. The vision of "a sunnier clime" is quickly swept away. The shock of surprise now has a very different effect upon Sir Launfal. 275. This line at first read: "But Sir Launfal sees naught save the grewsome thing." 278. White: "And, behold, Miriam became leprous, white as snow." (_Numbers_ xii, 10.) 279. Desolate horror: The adjective suggests the outcast, isolated condition of lepers. They were permitted no contact with other people. The ten lepers who met Jesus in Samaria "stood afar off and lifted up their voices." 281. On the tree: On the cross. "Whom they slew and hanged on a tree, Him God raised up the third day." (_Acts_ x, 39.) This use of the word is common in early literature, especially in the ballads. 285. See _John_ xx, 25-27. 287. Through him: The leper. Note that the address is changed in these two lines. Compare _Matthew_ xxv, 34-40. This gift to the leper differs how from the gift in Part First? 291. Leprosie: The antiquated spelling is used for the perfect rhyme and to secure the antique flavor. 292. Girt: The original word here was "caged." 294. Ashes and dust: Explain the metaphor. Compare with "sackcloth and ashes." See _Esther_ iv, 3; _Jonah_ iii, 6; _Job_ ii, 8. 300, 301. The figurative character of the lines is emphasized by the word "soul" at the end. The miracle of Cana seems to have been in the poet's mind. 304, 305. The leper is transfigured and Christ himself appears in the vision of the sleeping Sir Launfal. 307. The Beautiful Gate: "The gate of the temple which is called Beautiful," where Peter healed the lame man. (_Acts_ iii, 2.) 308. Himself the Gate: See _John_ x, 7, 9: "I am the door." 310. Temple of God: "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you?" (_I Corinthians_ iii, 16, 17; vi, 19.) 312. This line at first began with "which." 313. Shaggy: Is this term applicable to Sir Launfal's present condition, or is the whole simile carried a little beyond the point of true likeness? 314. Softer: Lowell originally wrote "calmer" here. The change increased the effect of the alliteration. Was it otherwise an improvement? 315. Lo, it is I: _John_ vi, 20. 316. Without avail: Was Sir Launfal's long quest entirely without avail? Compare the last lines of Tennyson's _Holy Grail_, where Arthur complains that his knights who went upon the Holy Quest have followed "wandering fires, lost in the quagmire," and "leaving human wrongs to right themselves." 320, 321. _Matthew_ xxvi, 26-28; _Mark_ xiv, 22-24. 322. Holy Supper: The Last Supper of Christ and his disciples, upon which is instituted the communion service of the churches. The spirit of the Holy Supper, the communion of true brotherhood, is realized when the Christ-like spirit triumphs in the man. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me." (_Matthew_ xxv, 40.) 326. The original has "bestows" for "gives." 328. Swound: The antiquated form of _swoon_. 332, 333. Interpret the lines. Did the poet have in mind the spiritual armor described in _Ephesians_ vi, 11-17? 336. Hangbird: The oriole, so called from its hanging nest; one of Lowell's most beloved "garden acquaintances" at Elmwood. In a letter he says: "They build a pendulous nest, and so flash in the sun that our literal rustics call them fire hang-birds." See the description in _Under the Willows_ beginning: "My oriole, my glance of summer fire." See also the charming prose description in _My Garden Acquaintance_. 338. Summer's long siege at last is o'er: The return to this figure rounds out the story and serves to give unity to the plan of the poem. The siege is successful, summer has conquered and entered the castle, warming and lighting its cold, cheerless interior. 342, 343. Is Lowell expressing here his own convictions about ideal democracy? _THE SHEPHERD OF KING ADMETUS_ Apollo, the god of music, having given offense to Zeus, was condemned to serve for the space of one year as a shepherd under Admetus, King of Thessaly. This is one of the most charming of the myths of Apollo, and has been often used by the poets. Remarking upon this poem, and others of its period, Scudder says that it shows "how persistently in Lowell's mind was present this aspect of the poet which makes him a seer," a recognition of an "all-embracing, all-penetrating power which through the poet transmutes nature into something finer and more eternal, and gives him a vantage ground from which to perceive more truly the realities of life." Compare with this poem _An Incident in a Railroad Car_. 5. Lyre: According to mythology, Apollo's lyre was a tortoise-shell strung with seven strings. 8. Fagots for a witch: The introduction of this witch element into a Greek legend rather mars the consistency of the poem. Lowell finally substituted for the stanza the following: "Upon an empty tortoise-shell He stretched some chords, and drew Music that made men's bosoms swell Fearless, or brimmed their eyes with dew." _HEBE_ Lowell suggests in this dainty symbolical lyric his conception of the poet's inspiration. Hebe was cup-bearer to the gods of Olympus, in Greek mythology, and poured for them their nectar. She was also the goddess of eternal youth. By an extension of the symbolism she becomes goddess of the eternal joyousness of the poetic gift. The "influence fleet" is the divine afflatus that fills the creative mind of the poet. But Pegasus cannot be made to work in harness at will. True inspiration comes only in choice moments. Coy Hebe cannot be wooed violently. Elsewhere he says of the muse: "Harass her not; thy heat and stir But greater coyness breed in her." "Follow thy life," he says, "be true to thy best self, then Hebe will bring her choicest ambrosia." That is-- "Make thyself rich, and then the Muse Shall court thy precious interviews, Shall take thy head upon her knee, And such enchantment lilt to thee, That thou shalt hear the life-blood flow From farthest stars to grass-blades low." _TO THE DANDELION_ Four stanzas were added to this poem after its first appearance, the sixth, seventh, eighth and tenth, but in the finally revised edition these were cut out, very likely because Lowell regarded them as too didactic. Indeed the poem is complete and more artistic without them. "Of Lowell's earlier pieces," says Stedman, "the one which shows the finest sense of the poetry of nature is that addressed _To the Dandelion_. The opening phrase ranks with the selectest of Wordsworth and Keats, to whom imaginative diction came intuitively, and both thought and language are felicitous throughout. This poem contains many of its author's peculiar beauties and none of his faults; it was the outcome of the mood that can summon a rare spirit of art to express the gladdest thought and most elusive feeling." 6. Eldorado: The land of gold, supposed to be somewhere in South America, which the European adventurers, especially the Spaniards, were constantly seeking in the sixteenth century. 27. Sybaris: An ancient Greek colony in southern Italy whose inhabitants were devoted to luxury and pleasure. 52-54. Compare _Sir Launfal._ _MY LOVE_ Lowell's love for Maria White is beautifully enshrined in this little poem. He wrote it at about the time of their engagement. While it is thus personal in its origin, it is universal in its expression of ideal womanhood, and so has a permanent interest and appeal. In its strong simplicity and crystal purity of style, it is a little masterpiece. Though filled with the passion of his new and beautiful love, its movement is as calm and artistically restrained as that of one of Wordsworth's best lyrics. _THE CHANGELING_ This is one of the tender little poems that refer to the death of the poet's daughter Blanche, which occurred in March, 1847. _The First Snow-fall_ and _She Came and Went_ embody the same personal grief. When sending the former to his friend Sydney H. Gay for publication, he wrote: "May you never have the key which shall unlock the whole meaning of the poem to you." Underwood, in his _Biographical Sketch_ says that "friends of the poet, who were admitted to the study in the upper chamber, remember the pairs of baby shoes that hung over a picture-frame." The volume in which this poem first appeared contained this dedication--"To the ever fresh and happy memory of our little Blanche this volume is reverently dedicated." A changeling, according to folk-lore and fairy tale, is a fairy child that the fairies substitute for a human child that they have stolen. The changeling was generally sickly, shrivelled and in every way repulsive. Here the poet reverses the superstition, substituting the angels for the mischievous fairies, who bring an angel child in place of the lost one. Whittier has a poem on the same theme, _The Changeling._ 29. Zingari: The Gypsies--suggested by "wandering angels" above--who wander about the earth, and also sometimes steal children, according to popular belief. 52. Bliss it: A rather violent use of the word, not recognized by the dictionaries, but nevertheless felicitous. _AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE_ Lowell's love of Elmwood and its surroundings finds expression everywhere in his writings, both prose and verse, but nowhere in a more direct, personal manner than in this poem. He was not yet thirty when the poem was written, and Cambridge could still be called a "village," but the familiar scenes already had their retrospective charms, which increased with the passing years. Later in life he again celebrated his affection for this home environment in _Under the Willows._ "There are poetic lines and phrases in the poem," says Scudder, "and more than all the veil of the season hangs tremulously over the whole, so that one is gently stirred by the poetic feeling of the rambling verses; yet, after all, the most enduring impression is of the young man himself in that still hour of his life, when he was conscious, not so much of a reform to which he must put his hand, as of the love of beauty, and of the vague melancholy which mingles with beauty in the soul of a susceptible poet. The river winding through the marshes, the distant sound of the ploughman, the near chatter of the chipmunk, the individual trees, each living its own life, the march of the seasons flinging lights and shadows over the broad scene, the pictures of human life associated with his own experience, the hurried, survey of his village years--all these pictures float before his vision; and then, with an abruptness which is like the choking of the singer's voice with tears, there wells up the thought of the little life which held as in one precious drop the love and faith of his heart." 1. Visionary tints: The term Indian summer is given to almost any autumnal period of exceptionally quiet, dry and hazy weather. In America these characteristic features of late fall were especially associated with the middle West, at a time when the Indians occupied that region. 5. Hebe: Hebe was cup-bearer to the gods at their feasts on Olympus. Like Hebe, Autumn fills the sloping fields, rimmed round with distant hills, with her own delicious atmosphere of dreamy and poetic influence. 11. My own projected spirit: It seems to the poet that his own spirit goes out to the world, steeping it in reverie like his own, rather than receiving the influence from nature's mood. 25. Gleaning Ruth: For the story of Ruth's gleaning in the fields of Boaz, see the book of _Ruth_, ii. 38. Chipmunk: Lowell at first had "squirrel" here, which would be inconsistent with the "underground fastness." And yet, are chipmunks seen up in walnut trees? 40. This line originally read, "with a chipping bound." _Cheeping_ is chirping, or giving the peculiar cluck that sounds like "cheep," or "chip." 45. Faint as smoke, etc.: The farmer burns the stubble and other refuse of the season before his "fall plowing." 46. The single crow, etc.: Note the full significance of this detail of the picture. Compare Bryant's _Death of the Flowers:_ "And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day." 50. Compare with this stanza the pretty little poem, _The Birch Tree._ 68. Lavish of their long-hid gold: The chestnut leaves, it will be remembered, turn to a bright golden yellow in autumn. These descriptions of autumn foliage are all as true as beautiful. 73. Maple-swamps: We generally speak of the swamp-maple, which grows in low ground, and has particularly brilliant foliage in autumn. 82. Tangled blackberry: This is the creeping blackberry of course, which every one remembers whose feet have been caught in its prickly tangles. 91. Martyr oak: The oak is surrounded with the blazing foliage of the ivy, like a burning martyr. 99. Dear marshes: The Charles River near Elmwood winds through broad salt marshes, the characteristic features of which Lowell describes with minute and loving fidelity. 127. Bobolink: If Lowell had a favorite bird, it was the bobolink, although the oriole was a close competitor for his praises. In one of his letters he says: "I think the bobolink the best singer in the world, even undervaluing the lark and the nightingale in the comparison." And in another he writes: "That liquid tinkle of theirs is the true fountain of youth if one can only drink it with the right ears, and I always date the New Year from the day of my first draught. Messer Roberto di Lincoln, with his summer alb over his shoulders, is the true chorister for the bridals of earth and sky. There is no bird that seems to me so thoroughly happy as he, so void of all _arrière pensée_ about getting a livelihood. The robin sings matins and vespers somewhat conscientiously, it seems to me--makes a business of it and pipes as it were by the yard--but Bob squanders song like a poet." Compare the description in _Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line:_ "'Nuff said, June's bridesman, poet o' the year, Gladness on wings, the bobolink, is here; Half hid in tip-top apple-blooms he swings, Or climbs aginst the breeze with quiverin' wings, Or, givin' way to 't in a mock despair, Runs down, a brook o' laughter, thru the air." See also the opening lines of _Under the Willows_ for another description full of the ecstasy of both bird and poet. The two passages woven together appear in the essay _Cambridge Thirty Years Ago_, as a quotation. An early poem on _The Bobolink_, delightful and widely popular, was omitted from later editions of his poems by Lowell, perhaps because to his maturer taste the theme was too much moralized in his early manner. "Shelley and Wordsworth," says Mr. Brownell, "have not more worthily immortalized the skylark than Lowell has the bobolink, its New England congener." 134. Another change: The description now returns to the marshes. 147. Simond's hill: In the essay _Cambridge Thirty Years Ago_ Lowell describes the village as seen from the top of this hill. 159-161. An allusion to the Mexican War, against which Lowell was directing the satire of the _Biglow Papers_. 174-182. Compare the winter pictures in Whittier's _Snowbound_. 177. Formal candles: Candles lighted for some form or ceremony, as in a religious service. 192. Stonehenge: Stonehenge on Salisbury plain in the south of England is famous for its huge blocks of stone now lying in confusion, supposed to be the remains of an ancient Druid temple. 207. Sanding: The continuance of the metaphor in "higher waves" are "whelming." With high waves the sand is brought in upon the land, encroaching upon its limits. 209. Muses' factories: The buildings of Harvard College. 218. House-bespotted swell: Lowell notes with some resentment the change from nature's simple beauties to the pretentiousness of wealth shown in incongruous buildings. 220. Cits: Contracted from citizens. During the French Revolution, when all titles were abolished, the term _citizen_ was applied to every one, to denote democratic simplicity and equality. 223. Gentle Allston: Washington Allston, the celebrated painter, whom Lowell describes as he remembered him in the charming essay _Cambridge Thirty Years Ago_. 225. Virgilium vidi tantum: I barely saw Virgil--caught a glimpse of him--a phrase applied to any passing glimpse of greatness. 227. Undine-like: Undine, a graceful water nymph, is the heroine of the charming little romantic story by De la Motte Fouqué. 234. The village blacksmith: See Longfellow's famous poem, _The Village Blacksmith_. The chestnut was cut down in 1876. An arm-chair made from its wood still stands in the Longfellow house, a gift to Longfellow from the Cambridge school children. 254. Six old willows: These much-loved trees afforded Lowell a subject for a later poem _Under the Willows_, in which he describes particularly one ancient willow that had been spared, he "knows not by what grace" by the ruthless "New World subduers"-- "One of six, a willow Pleiades, The seventh fallen, that lean along the brink Where the steep upland dips into the marsh." In a letter written twenty years after the _Reverie_ to J.T. Fields, Lowell says: "My heart was almost broken yesterday by seeing nailed to _my_ willow a board with these words on it, 'These trees for sale.' The wretch is going to peddle them for firewood! If I had the money, I would buy the piece of ground they stand on to save them--the dear friends of a lifetime." 255. Paul Potter: One of the most famous of the Dutch painters of the seventeenth century, notable for the strong realism of his work. 264. Collegisse juvat: The full sentence, in the first ode of Horace, reads, "Curriculo pulverem Olympicum collegisse juvat." (It is a pleasure to have collected the dust of Olympus on one's chariot wheels.) The allusion is to the Olympic games, the most celebrated festival of Greece. Lowell puns upon the word _collegisse_ with his own coinage, which may have the double meaning of _going to college_ and _collecting._ 272. Blinding anguish: An allusion to the death of his little daughter Blanche. See _The Changeling, The First Snow-fall,_ and _She Came and Went_. _THE OAK_ 11. Uncinctured front: The forehead no longer encircled with a crown. 13-16. There is a little confusion in the figures here, the cathedral part of the picture being a little far fetched. 40. Mad Pucks: Puck is the frolicsome, mischief-making spirit of Shakespeare's _Midsummer Night's Dream._ 45. Dodona grove: The grove of oaks at Dodona was the seat of a famous Greek oracle, whose responses were whispered through the murmuring foliage of the trees. _BEAVER BROOK_ Beaver Brook at Waverley was a favorite resort of Lowell's and it is often mentioned in his writings. In summer and winter it was the frequent goal of his walks. The poem was at first called _The Mill_. It was first published in the _Anti-Slavery Standard_, and to the editor, Sidney H. Gay, Lowell wrote:--"Don't you like the poem I sent you last week? I was inclined to think pretty well of it, but I have not seen it in print yet. The little mill stands in a valley between one of the spurs of Wellington Hill and the main summit, just on the edge of Waltham. It is surely one of the loveliest spots in the world. It is one of my lions, and if you will make me a visit this spring, I will take you up to hear it roar, and I will show you 'the oaks'--the largest, I fancy, left in the country." 21. Undine: In mythology and romance, Undine is a water-spirit who is endowed with a soul by her marriage with a mortal. The _race_ is the watercourse conducted, from the dam in an open trough or "penstock" to the wheel. 45. In that new childhood of the Earth: This poem was written a few weeks after the _Vision of Sir Launfal_ was published, and it therefore naturally partakes of its idealism. _THE PRESENT CRISIS_ This poem was written in 1844. The discussion over the annexation of Texas was absorbing public attention. The anti-slavery party opposed annexation, believing that it would strengthen the slave-holding interests, and for the same reason the South was urging the scheme. Lowell wrote several very strong anti-slavery poems at this time, _To W.L. Garrison_, _Wendell Phillips_, _On the Death of C.T. Torrey_, and others, which attracted attention to him as a new and powerful ally of the reform party. "These poems," says George William Curtis, "especially that on _The Present Crisis,_ have a Tyrtæan resonance, a stately rhetorical rhythm, that make their dignity of thought, their intense feeling, and picturesque imagery, superbly effective in recitation. They sang themselves on every anti-slavery platform." While the poem was inspired by the political struggle of the time, which Lowell regarded as a crisis in the history of our national honor and progress, its chief strength is due to the fact that its lofty sentiment is universal in its appeal, and not applicable merely to temporal and local conditions. 17. Round the earth's electric circle, etc.: This prophetic figure was doubtless suggested by the first telegraph line, which Samuel F.B. Morse had just erected between Baltimore and Washington. 37. The Word: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (_John_ i, 1.) 44. Delphic cave: The oracle at Delphi was the most famous and authoritative among the Greeks. The priestess who voiced the answers of the god was seated in a natural fissure in the rocks. 46. Cyclops: The Cyclopes were brutish giants with one eye who lived in caverns and fed on human flesh, if the opportunity offered. Lowell is recalling in these lines the adventure of Ulysses with the Cyclops, in the ninth book of Homer's _Odyssey_. 64. Credo: Latin, I believe: the first word in the Latin version of the Apostles' Creed, hence used for _creed_. _THE COURTIN'_ This poem first appeared as "a short fragment of a pastoral," in the introduction to the First Series of the _Biglow Papers_. It is said to have been composed merely to fill a blank page, but its popularity was so great that Lowell expanded it to twice its original length, and finally printed it as a kind of introduction to the Second Series of the _Biglow Papers_. It first appeared, however, in its expanded form in a charitable publication, _Autograph Leaves of Our Country's Authors_, reproduced in facsimile from the original manuscript. "This bucolic idyl," says Stedman, "is without a counterpart; no richer juice can be pressed from the wild grape of the Yankee soil." Greenslet thinks that this poem is "perhaps the most nearly perfect of his poems." 17. Crooknecks: Crookneck squashes. 19. Ole queen's-arm: The old musket brought from the Concord fight in 1775. 32. To draw a straight furrow when plowing is regarded as evidence of a skilful farmer. 36. All is: The truth is, "all there is about it." 37. Long o' her: Along of her, on account of her. 40. South slope: The slope of a hill facing south catches the spring sunshine. 43. Ole Hunderd: Old Hundred is one of the most familiar of the old hymn tunes. 58. Somewhat doubtful as to the sequel. 94. Bay o' Fundy: The Bay of Fundy is remarkable for its high and violent tides, owing to the peculiar conformation of its banks. 96. Was cried: The "bans" were cried, the announcement of the engagement in the church, according to the custom of that day. _THE COMMEMORATION ODE_ The poem was dedicated "To the ever sweet and shining memory of the ninety-three sons of Harvard College who have died for their country in the war of nationality." The text of the poem is here given as Lowell first published it in 1865. He afterward made a few verbal changes, and added one new strophe after the eighth. There is a special interest in studying the ode in the form in which it came rushing from the poet's brain. 1-14. The deeds of the poet are weak and trivial compared with the deeds of heroes. They live their high ideals and die for them. Yet the gentle words of the poet may sometimes save unusual lives from that oblivion to which all common lives are destined. 5. Robin's-leaf: An allusion to the ballad of the _Babes in the Wood._ 9. Squadron-strophes: The term _strophe_ originally was applied to a metrical form that was repeated in a certain established way, like the _strophe_ and _antistrophe_ of the Greek ode, as sung by a divided chorus; it is now applied to any stanza form. The poem of heroism is a "battle-ode," whose successive stanzas are marching squadrons, whose verses are lines of blazing guns, and whose melody is the strenuous music of "trump and drum." 13. Lethe's dreamless ooze: Lethe is the river of oblivion in Hades; its slimy depths of forgetfulness are not even disturbed by dreams. 14. Unventurous throng: The vast majority of commonplace beings who neither achieve nor attempt deeds of "high emprise." 16. Wisest Scholars: Many students who had returned from the war were in the audience, welcomed back by their revered mother, their Alma Mater. 20. Peddling: Engaging in small, trifling interests. Lowell's attitude toward science is that of Wordsworth, when he speaks of the dry-souled scientist as one who is all eyes and no heart, "One that would peep and botanize Upon his mother's grave." 21. The pseudo-science of astrology, seeking to tell commonplace fortunes by the stars. 25-26. Clear fame: Compare Milton's _Lycidas:_ "Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise To scorn delights and live laborious days." 32. Half-virtues: Is Lowell disparaging the virtues of peace and home in comparison with the heroic virtues of war? Or are these "half-virtues" contrasted with the loftier virtue, the devotion to Truth? 34. That stern device: The seal of Harvard College, chosen by its early founders, bears the device of a shield with the word _Ve-ri-tas_ (truth) upon three open books. 46. Sad faith: Deep, serious faith, or there may be a slight touch of irony in the word, with a glance at the gloomy faith of early puritanism and its "lifeless creed" (l. 62). 62. Lifeless creed: Compare Tennyson's: "Ancient form Thro' which the spirit breathes no more." 73. The tide of the ocean in its flow and ebb is under the influence of the moon. To get the sense of the metaphor, "fickle" must be read with "Fortune"--unless, perchance, we like Juliet regard the moon as the "inconstant moon." 81. To protect one's self everyone connives against everyone else. Compare _Sir Launfal_, I. 11. Instead of climbing Sinais we "cringe and plot." 82. Compare _Sir Launfal_, I. 26. The whole passage, II. 76-87, is a distant echo of the second and third stanzas of _Sir Launfal_. 83-85. Puppets: The puppets are the pasteboard actors in the Punch and Judy show, operated by unseen wires. 84. An echo of _Macbeth_, V, 5: "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more." 97. Elder than the Day: Elder than the first Day. "And God called the light Day," etc. (_Genesis_ i, 5.) We may have light from the divine fountains. 110-114. In shaping this elaborate battle metaphor, one can easily believe the poet to have had in mind some fierce mountain struggle during the war, such as the battle of Lookout Mountain. 111. Creeds: Here used in the broad sense of convictions, principles, beliefs. 115-118. The construction is faulty in these lines. The two last clauses should be co-ordinated. The substance of the meaning is: Peace has her wreath, while the cannon are silent and while the sword slumbers. Lowell's attention was called to this defective passage by T.W. Higginson, and he replied: "Your criticism is perfectly just, and I am much obliged to you for it--though I might defend myself, I believe, by some constructions even looser in some of the Greek choruses. But on the whole, when I have my choice, I prefer to make sense." He then suggested an emendation, which somehow failed to get into the published poem: "Ere yet the sharp, decisive word Redden the cannon's lips, and while the sword." 120. Baäl's stone obscene: Human sacrifices were offered on the altars of Baäl. (_Jeremiah_ xix, 5.) 147-205. This strophe was not in the ode as delivered, but was written immediately after the occasion, and included in the published poem. "It is so completely imbedded in the structure of the ode," says Scudder, "that it is difficult to think of it as an afterthought. It is easy to perceive that while the glow of composition and of recitation was still upon him, Lowell suddenly conceived this splendid illustration, and indeed climax of the utterance, of the Ideal which is so impressive in the fifth stanza.... Into these threescore lines Lowell has poured a conception of Lincoln, which may justly be said to be to-day the accepted idea which Americans hold of their great President. It was the final expression of the judgment which had slowly been forming in Lowell's own mind." In a letter to Richard Watson Gilder, Lowell says: "The passage about Lincoln was not in the ode as originally recited, but added immediately after. More than eighteen months before, however, I had written about Lincoln in the _North American Review_--an article that pleased him. I _did_ divine him earlier than most men of the Brahmin caste." It is a singular fact that the other great New England poets, Longfellow, Whittier, and Holmes, had almost nothing to say about Lincoln. 150. Wept with the passion, etc.: An article in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for June, 1885, began with this passage: "The funeral procession of the late President of the United States has passed through the land from Washington to his final resting-place in the heart of the prairies. Along the line of more than fifteen hundred miles his remains were borne, as it were, through continued lines of the people; and the number of mourners and the sincerity and unanimity of grief was such as never before attended the obsequies of a human being; so that the terrible catastrophe of his end hardly struck more awe than the majestic sorrow of the people." 170. Outward grace is dust: An allusion to Lincoln's awkward and rather unkempt outward appearance. 173. Supple-tempered will: One of the most pronounced traits of Lincoln's character was his kindly, almost femininely gentle and sympathetic spirit. With this, however, was combined a determination of steel. 175-178. Nothing of Europe here: There was nothing of Europe in him, or, if anything, it was of Europe in her early ages of freedom before there was any distinction of slave and master, groveling Russian Serf and noble Lord or Peer. 180. One of Plutarch's men: The distinguished men of Greece and Rome whom Plutarch immortalized in his _Lives_ are accepted as types of human greatness. 182. Innative: Inborn, natural. 187. He knew to bide his time: He knew how to bide his time, as in Milton's _Lycidas_, "He knew himself to sing." Recall illustrations of Lincoln's wonderful patience and faith. 198. The first American: In a prose article, Lowell calls him "The American of Americans." Compare Tennyson's "The last great Englishman," in the _Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington_. Stanza IV of Tennyson's ode should be compared with this Lincoln stanza. 202. Along whose course, etc.: Along the course leading to the "inspiring goal." The conjunction of the words "pole" and "axles" easily leads to a confusion of metaphor in the passage. The imagery is from the ancient chariot races. 232. Paean: A paean, originally a hymn to Apollo, usually of thanksgiving, is a song of triumph, any loud and joyous song. 236. Dear ones: Underwood says in his biography of Lowell: "In the privately printed edition of the poem the names of eight of the poet's kindred are given. The nearest in blood are the nephews, General Charles Russell Lowell, killed at Winchester, Lieutenant James Jackson Lowell, at Seven Pines, and Captain William Lowell Putnam, at Ball's Bluff. Another relative was the heroic Colonel Robert G. Shaw, who fell in the assault on Fort Wagner." As a special memorial of Colonel Shaw, Lowell wrote the poem, _Memoriae Positum._ With deep tenderness he refers to his nephews in _"Mr. Hosea Biglow to the Editor of the Atlantic Monthly":_ "Why, hain't I held 'em on my knee? Didn't I love to see 'em growin', Three likely lads ez wal could be, Hahnsome an' brave an' not tu knowin'? I set an' look into the blaze Whose natur', jes' like theirn, keeps climbin', Ez long 'z it lives, in shinin' ways, An' half despise myself for rhymin'. "Wut's words to them whose faith an' truth On War's red techstone rang true metal, Who ventered life an' love an' youth For the gret prize o' death in battle? To him who, deadly hurt, agen Flashed on afore the charge's thunder, Tippin' with fire the bolt of men Thet rived the Rebel line asunder?" 243. When Moses sent men to "spy out" the Promised Land, they reported a land that "floweth with milk and honey," and they "came unto the brook of Eshcol, and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between two upon a staff; and they brought of the pomegranates and of the figs" (Numbers xiii.) 245. Compare the familiar line in Gray's _Elegy_: "The paths of glory lead but to the grave." and Tennyson's line, in the _Ode to the Duke of Wellington_: "The path of duty was the way of glory." In a letter to T.W. Higginson, who was editing the _Harvard Memorial Biographies_, in which he was to print the ode, Lowell asked to have the following passage inserted at this point: "Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave, But through those constellations go That shed celestial influence on the brave. If life were but to draw this dusty breath That doth our wits enslave, And with the crowd to hurry to and fro, Seeking we know not what, and finding death, These did unwisely; but if living be, As some are born to know, The power to ennoble, and inspire In other souls our brave desire For fruit, not leaves, of Time's immortal tree, These truly live, our thought's essential fire, And to the saner," etc. Lowell's remark in _The Cathedral_, that "second thoughts are prose," might be fairly applied to this emendation. Fortunately, the passage was never inserted in the ode. 255. Orient: The east, morning; hence youth, aspiration, hope. The figure is continued in l. 271. 262. Who now shall sneer? In a letter to Mr. J.B. Thayer, who had criticized this strophe, Lowell admits "that there is a certain narrowness in it as an expression of the popular feeling as well as my own. I confess I have never got over the feeling of wrath with which (just after the death of my nephew Willie) I read in an English paper that nothing was to be hoped of an army officered by tailors' apprentices and butcher boys." But Lowell asks his critic to observe that this strophe "leads naturally" to the next, and "that I there justify" the sentiment. 265. Roundhead and Cavalier: In a general way, it is said that New England was settled by the Roundheads, or Puritans, of England, and the South by the Cavaliers or Royalists. 272-273. Plantagenets: A line of English kings, founded by Henry II, called also the House of Anjou, from their French origin. The _House of Hapsburg_ is the Imperial family of Austria. The _Guelfs_ were one of the great political parties in Italy in the Middle Ages, at long and bitter enmity with the _Ghibelines_. 323. With this passage read the last two stanzas of _Mr. Hosea Biglow to the Editor of the Atlantic Monthly_, beginning: "Come, Peace! not like a mourner bowed For honor lost and dear ones wasted, But proud, to meet a people proud, With eyes that tell of triumphs tasted!" 328. Helm: The helmet, the part of ancient armor for protecting the head, used here as the symbol of war. 343. Upon receiving the news that the war was ended, Lowell wrote to his friend, Charles Eliot Norton: "The news, my dear Charles, is from Heaven. I felt a strange and tender exaltation. I wanted to laugh and I wanted to cry, and ended by holding my peace and feeling devoutly thankful. There is something magnificent in having a country to love." EXAMINATION QUESTIONS The following questions are taken from recent examination papers of the Examination Board established by the Association of Schools and Colleges in the Middle States and Maryland, and of the Regents of the State of New York. Generally only one question on _The Vision of Sir Launfal_ is included in the examination paper for each year. Under what circumstances did the "vision" come to Sir Launfal? What was the vision? What was the effect upon him? What connection have the preludes in the _Vision of Sir Launfal_ with the main divisions which they precede? What is their part in the poem as a whole? Contrast Sir Launfal's treatment of the leper at their first meeting with his treatment at their second. 1. Describe a scene from the _Vision of Sir Launfal_. 2. Describe the hall of the castle as Sir Launfal saw it on Christmas eve. "The soul partakes the season's youth ... What wonder if Sir Launfal now Remembered the keeping of his vow?" Give the meaning of these lines, and explain what you think is Lowell's purpose in the preface from which they are taken. Give the substance of the corresponding preface to the other part of the poem, and account for the difference between the two. Describe the scene as it might have appeared to one standing just outside the castle gate, as Sir Launfal emerged from his castle in his search for the Holy Grail. Compare the _Ancient Mariner_ and the _Vision of Sir Launfal_ with regard to the representation of a moral idea in each. Explain the meaning of Sir Launfal's vision, and show how it affected his conduct. Describe an ideal summer day as portrayed in the _Vision of Sir Launfal_. Quote at least ten lines. Discuss, with illustrations, Lowell's descriptions in the _Vision of Sir Launfal_, touching on _two_ of the following points:--(a) beauty, (b) vividness, (c) attention to details. Write a description of winter as given in Part Second. Outline in tabular form the story of Sir Launfal's search for the Holy Grail; be careful to include in your outline the time, the place, the leading characters, and the leading events in their order. Merrill's English Texts Addison, Steele, and Budgell. The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers In The Spectator. Edited by Edna H. L. Turpin. 269 pages, 12mo, cloth. Prices 30 cents. Coleridge. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and other Poems. Edited by Julian W. Abernethy, Ph.D, 156 pages, 12 mo, cloth. Price 25 cents. Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities. Edited by Julian W. Abernethy, Ph.D. 634 pages, 12mo, cloth. Price 50 cents. Emerson. Essays. (Selected.) Edited by Edna H. L. Turpin. 336 pages, 12mo, cloth. Price 40 cents. George Eliot. Silas Marner. Edited by Cornelia Beare. 336 pages, 12mo, cloth. Price 40 cents. Goldsmith. The Deserted Village, and other Poems. Edited by Edna H. L. Turpin. 153 pages, 12mo, cloth. Price 25 cents. Hawthorne. The House of the Seven Gables. Edited by J. H. Castleman, A.M. 464 pages, 12mo, cloth. Price 40 cents. Lamb. Essays of Elia. Edited by J. H. Castleman, A.M. 589 pages, 12mo, cloth. Price 50 cents. Lowell. The Vision of Sir Launfal, and other Poems. Edited by Julian W. Abernethy, Ph.D. 172 pages, 12mo, cloth. Price 25 cents. Milton. Lycidas, Comus, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and other Poems. Edited by Julian W. Abernethy, Ph.D. 198 pages, 12mo, cloth. Price 25 cents. 
19109	----	[Illustration: In Celestial realms where knowledge hath no end. HARRY HOWARD, STUDENT. "Blessed are the pure in heart."] POEMS BY HATTIE HOWARD. AUTHOR OF "POVERTY VS. PAUPERISM," "OUR GIRLS," "VIVE LA REPUBLIQUE," "KEEPING A SECRET," "LITTLE JO," AND OTHER STORIES. VOL. IV. Happy whoever writes a book On which the world shall kindly look, And who, when many a year has flown-- The volume worn, the author gone-- Revere, admire, and still read on. HARTFORD PRESS: THE CASE, LOCKWOOD & BRAINARD COMPANY. 1904. EXTRACTS FROM PRESS NOTICES OF A FORMER VOLUME. "We find these poems of sentiment by Hattie Howard entirely natural, spontaneous, direct, rhythmical, and free from ambitious pretense. Many of the fanciful verses have a laugh at the end; and the collection has altogether a sunny, hopeful spirit and will be welcome in this time of generally morbid expression." "This author's verse shows a hearty, wholesome, _human_ spirit, sometimes overflowing into downright fun, and a straightforward directness always. It is a pleasant book, sure to be welcomed by all." "These garnered gems reveal a genuine poetic faculty, and are worthy their attractive setting. We give the book a hearty welcome." "Many of the poems abound in playful humor or tender touches of sympathy which appeal to a refined feeling, and love for the good, the true, and the beautiful." "This poet's ear is so attuned to metric harmony that she must have been born within sound of some osier-fringed brook leaping and hurrying over its pebbly bed. There is a variety of subject and treatment, sufficient for all tastes, and these are poems which should be cherished." "Lovers of good poetry will herald with pleasure this new and attractive volume by the well-known authoress of Hartford. A wooing sentiment and genial spirit seem to guide her in every train of thought. Her book has received, and deserves, warm commendations of the press." Copyright, 1904, BY HATTIE HOWARD. Contents. _FRONTISPIECE._ PAGE. EXTRACTS FROM PRESS NOTICES, 2 "THE SALT OF THE EARTH," 7 NOT GONE, 9 LET US GIVE THANKS, 10 SONNET, 11 A RAINY DAY, 12 THE SUBWAY, 16 THE APPLE TREE, 18 TWO ROSES, 21 THE TAXIDERMIST, 23 EPITHALAMIUM, 25 A FOWL AFFAIR, 28 HOLIDAY HOME, 31 RUTHA, 34 THE STUDENT GONE, 36 THE TOURIST, 38 THE ANTIQUARIAN, 40 POOR HOUSEKEEPING, 45 GOING TO TOBOG, 47 "PASSER LE TEMPS," 49 THE TORPEDO, 50 MARGARET, 51 CHRISTMAS BELLS, 53 BY THE SEA, 54 A SONG, 55 IS IT APRIL? 56 CHRISTMAS-TIDE, 57 JANUARY, 1885, 59 SWEET PEAS, 61 THE SUMMER HOUSE, 62 TO DIE IN AUTUMN, 65 APPLE BLOSSOMS, 67 WITHOUT A MINISTER, 68 INDIAN SUMMER, 70 AUTUMN-TIME, 72 THE BEAUTY OF NATURE, 74 "ALL THE RAGE," 76 MY MOTHER'S HAND, 79 A LEAP YEAR EPISODE, 80 IF, 83 PERFECT CHARACTER, 84 THE MIRACLE OF SPRING, 85 BERMUDA, 86 THE CHARTER OAK, 88 BLOSSOM-TIME, 90 "ONE OF THE LEAST OF THESE," 92 LIGHTNING-BUGS, 94 OF HER WHO DIED, 96 THANKSGIVING, 98 RECEIVING SIGHT, 100 REVENGE, 102 ON THE COMMON, 104 WOMAN'S HELP, 106 TOBOGGANING, 108 THE WOODS, 110 LIKE SUMMER, 112 SHERIDAN'S LAST RIDE, 114 A BIT OF GLADNESS, 116 THE CHARITY BALL, 118 THE BELL(E) OF BALTIMORE, 120 CHRISTMAS AT CHURCH, 122 MYSTERIOUS, 124 "BE NOT ANXIOUS," 126 MOUNT VERNON, 128 A PRISONER, 130 CUBA, 131 THE SANGAMON RIVER, 133 SYRINGAS, 135 STORM-BOUND, 137 THE MASTER OF THE GRANGE, 139 A FRIEND INDEED, 142 THE NEEDED ONE, 143 "THY WILL BE DONE," 145 SNOWFLAKES, 147 MONADNOCK, 149 NEVER HAD A CHANCE, 151 SORROW AND JOY, 153 WATCH HILL, 155 SUPPLICATING, 157 "HONEST JOHN," 159 BUSHNELL PARK, 161 AT GENERAL GRANT'S TOMB, 164 "BE COURTEOUS," 166 A NEW SUIT, 168 THE LITTLE CLOCK, 170 IMPROVEMENT, 173 ON BANCROFT HEIGHT, 175 A REFORMER, 178 Poems. "The Salt of the Earth." The salt of the earth--what a meaningful phrase From the lips of the Saviour, and one that conveys A sense of the need of a substance saline This pestilent sphere to refresh and refine, And a healthful and happy condition secure By making it pure as the ocean is pure. In all the nomenclature known to the race, In all appellations of people or place, Was ever a name so befitting, so true Of those who are seeking the wrong to undo, With naught of the Pharisee's arrogant air Their badge of discipleship humbly who wear? Do beings, forsooth, fashioned out of the mold, So secretly, strangely, those elements hold That may be developed in goodness and grace To shine in demeanor, in form and in face Till they, by renewal of heavenly birth, Shall merit their title--the salt of the earth? To the landsman at home or the sailor at sea, With nausea, scurvy, or canker maybe, 'Tis never in language to overexalt The potent preservative virtue of salt-- A crystal commodity wholesome and good, A cure for disease, and a savor for food. Ah, the beasts of the wood and the fowls of the air Know all of the need of this condiment rare, Know well where the springs and the "salt-licks" abound, Where streams salinaceous flow out of the ground; And their cravings appease by sipping the brine With more than the relish of topers at wine. Our wants may be legion, our needs are but few, And every known ill hath its remedy true; 'Tis ours to discover and give to mankind Of hidden essentials the best that we find; 'Tis ours to eradicate error and sin, And help to make better the place we are in. If ever this world from corruption is free, And righteousness reign in the kingdom to be, Like salt in its simple and soluble way Infusing malodor, preventing decay. So human endeavor in action sublime Must never relax till the finale of time. To thousands discouraged this comforting truth Appeals like the promise of infinite youth: To know, as they labor like bees in the hive, Yet do little more than keep goodness alive-- To know that the Master accredits their worth As blessed disciples--"the salt of the earth." Not Gone. They are not gone whose lives in beauty so unfolding Have left their own sweet impress everywhere; Like flowers, while we linger in beholding, Diffusing fragrance on the summer air. They are not gone, for grace and goodness can not perish, But must develop in immortal bloom; The viewless soul, the real self we love and cherish, Shall live and flourish still beyond the tomb. They are not gone though lost to observation, And dispossessed of those dear forms of clay, Though dust and ashes speak of desolation; The spirit-presence--this is ours alway. Let Us Give Thanks. If we have lived another year And, counting friends by regiments Who share our love and confidence, Find no more broken ranks, For this let us give thanks. If, since the last Thanksgiving-time, Have we been blessed with strength and health, And added to our honest wealth, Nor lost by broken banks, For this would we give thanks. If through adversity we trod, Yet with serene and smiling face, And trusted more to saving grace Than charlatans and cranks, For this let us give thanks. If we have somehow worried through The ups and downs along life's track, And still undaunted can look back And smile at Fortune's pranks, For this would we give thanks. If every page in our account With God and man is fairly writ, We care not who examines it, With no suspicious blanks, For this let us give thanks. Sonnet. Upon my smile let none pass compliment If it but gleam like an enchanting ray Of sunshine caught from some sweet summer day, In atmosphere of rose and jasmine scent And breath of honeysuckles redolent, When, with the birds that sing their lives away In harmony, the treetops bend and sway, And all the world with joy is eloquent. But in that day of gloom when skies severe Portend the tempest gathering overhead, If by my face some token shall appear Inspiring hope, dispelling darksome dread, Oh, be the rapture mine that it be said, "Her smile is like the rainbow, full of cheer." A Rainy Day. Oh, what a blessed interval A rainy day may be! No lightning flash nor tempest roar, But one incessant, steady pour Of dripping melody; When from their sheltering retreat Go not with voluntary feet The storm-beleaguered family, Nor bird nor animal. When business takes a little lull, And gives the merchantman A chance to seek domestic scenes, To interview the magazines, Convoke his growing clan, The boys and girls almost unknown, And get acquainted with his own; As well the household budget scan, Or write a canticle. When farmer John ransacks the barn, Hunts up the harness old-- Nigh twenty years since it was new-- Puts in an extra thong or two, And hopes the thing will hold Without that missing martingale That bothered Dobbin, head and tail, He, gentle equine, safe controlled But by a twist of yarn. When busy fingers may provide A savory repast To whet the languid appetite, And give to eating a delight Unknown since seasons past; Avaunt, ill-cookery! whose ranks Develop dull dyspeptic cranks Who, forced to diet or to fast, Ergo, have dined and died. It is a day of rummaging, The closets to explore; To take down from the dusty shelves The books--that never read themselves-- And turning pages o'er Discover therein safely laid The bills forgot and never paid-- Somehow that of the corner store Such dunning memories bring. It gives a chance to liquidate Epistolary debts; To write in humble penitence Acknowledging the negligence, The sin that so besets, And cheer the hearts that hold us dear, Who've known and loved us many a year-- Back to the days of pantalets And swinging on the gate. It gives occasion to repair Unlucky circumstance; To intercept the ragged ends, And for arrears to make amends By mending hose and pants; The romping young ones to re-dress Without those signs of hole-y-ness That so bespeak the mendicants By every rip and tear. It is a time to gather round The old piano grand, Its dulcet harmonies unstirred Since Lucy sang so like a bird, And played with graceful hand; Like Lucy's voice in pathos sweet Repeating softly "Shall we meet?" Is only in the heavenly land Such clear soprano sound. It is a time for happy chat _En cercle tête-à-tête_; Discuss the doings of the day, The club, the sermon, or the play, Affairs of church and state; Fond reminiscence to explore The pleasant episodes of yore, And so till raindrops all abate As erst on Ararat. Ah, yes, a rainy day may be A blessed interval! A little halt for introspect, A little moment to reflect On life's discrepancy-- Our puny stint so poorly done, The larger duties scarce begun-- And so may conscience culpable Suggest a remedy. The Subway. Oh, who in creation would fail to descend That wonderful hole in the ground?-- That, feeling its way like a hypocrite-friend In sinuous fashion, seems never to end; While thunder and lightning abound. Oh, who in creation would dare to go down That great subterranean hole-- The tunnel, the terror, the talk of the town, That gives to the city a mighty renown And a shaking as never before? A serpent, a spider, its mouth at the top Where the flies are all buzzing about; Down into its maw where the populace drop, Who never know where they are going to stop, Or whether they'll ever get out. Why is it, with millions of acres untrod Where never the ploughshare hath been, That man must needs burrow miles under the sod, As if to get farther and farther from God, And deeper and deeper in sin? O Dagos and diggers, who can't understand That the planet you'll never get through-- Why, there is three times as much water as land, And but for the least little seam in the sand Your life is worth less than a _sou_. Come up out of Erebus into the day, There's plenty of room overhead; No boring or blasting of rocks in the way, No stratum of sticky, impervious clay-- All vacuous vapor instead. Oh, give us a transit, a tube or an "el--", Not leagues from the surface below; As if we were never in Heaven to dwell, As if we were all being fired to--well, The place where we don't want to go! The Apple Tree. Has ever a tree from the earth upsprung Around whose body have children clung, Whose bounteous branches the birds among Have pecked the fruit, and chirped and sung-- Was ever a tree, or shall there be, So hardy, so sturdy, so good to see, So welcome a boon to the family, Like the pride of the farmer, the apple tree? How he loves to be digging about its root, Or grafting the bud in the tender shoot, The daintiest palate that he may suit With the fairest and finest selected fruit. How he boasts of his Sweetings, so big for size; His delicate Greenings--made for pies; His Golden Pippins that take the prize, The Astrachans tempting, that tell no lies. How he learns of the squirrel a thing or two That the wise little rodents always knew, And never forget or fail to do, Of laying up store for the winter through; So he hollows a space in the mellow ground Where leaves for lining and straw abound, And well remembers his apple mound When a day of scarcity comes around. By many a token may we suppose That the knowledge apple no longer grows, That broke up Adam and Eve's repose And set the fashion of fig-leaf clothes; The story's simple and terse and crude, But still with a morsel of truth imbued: For of trees and trees by the multitude Are some that are evil, and some that are good. The more I muse on those stories old The more philosophy they unfold Of husbands docile and women bold, And Satan's purposes manifold; Ah, many a couple halve their fare With that mistaken and misfit air That the world and all are ready to swear To a mighty unapple-y mated pair. The apple's an old-fashioned tree I know, All gnarled and bored by the curculio, And loves to stand in a zigzag row; And doesn't make half so much of a show As the lovely almond that blooms like a ball, And spreads out wide like a pink parasol Set on its stem by the garden-wall; But I love the apple tree, after all. "A little more cider"--sings the bard; And who this juiciness would discard, Though holding the apple in high regard, Must be like the cider itself--very hard; For the spirit within it, as all must know, Is utterly harmless--unless we go Like the fool in his folly, and overflow By drinking a couple of barrels or so. What of that apple beyond the seas, Fruit of the famed Hesperides? But dust and ashes compared to these That grow on Columbia's apple trees; And I sigh for the apples of years agone: For Rambos streaked like the morning dawn, For Russets brown with their jackets on, And aromatic as cinnamon. Oh, the peach and cherry may have their place, And the pear is fine in its stately grace; The plum belongs to a puckery race And maketh awry the mouth and face; But I long to roam in the orchard free, The dear old orchard that used to be, And gather the beauties that dropped for me From the bending boughs of the apple tree. Two Roses. I've a friend beyond the ocean So regardful, so sincere, And he sends me in a letter Such a pretty souvenir. It is crushed to death and withered, Out of shape and very flat, But its pure, delicious odor Is the richer for all that. 'Tis a rose from Honolulu, And it bears the tropic brand, Sandwiched in this friendly missive From that far-off flower-land. It shall mingle _pot-à-pourri_ With the scents I love and keep; Some of them so very precious That remembrance makes me weep. While I dream I hear the music That of happiness foretells, Like the flourishing of trumpets And the sound of marriage bells. There's a rose upon the prairie, Chosen his by happy fate, He shall gather when he cometh Sailing through the Golden Gate. Mine, a public posy, growing Somewhere by the garden wall, Might have gone to any stranger, May have been admired by all. But the rose in beauty blushing, Tenderly and sweetly grown In the home and its affections, Blooms for him, and him alone. Speed the voyager returning; His shall be a welcome warm, With the Rose of Minnesota Gently resting on his arm. Love embraces in his kingdom Earth and sea and sky and air. Hail, Columbia! hail, Hawaii! It is Heaven everywhere. The Taxidermist. From other men he stands apart, Wrapped in sublimity of thought Where futile fancies enter not; With starlike purpose pressing on Where Agassiz and Audubon Labored, and sped that noble art Yet in its pristine dawn. Something to conquer, to achieve, Makes life well worth the struggle hard; Its petty ills to disregard, In high endeavor day by day With this incentive--that he may Somehow mankind the richer leave When he has passed away. Forest and field he treads alone, Finding companionship in birds, In reptiles, rodents, yea, in herds Of drowsy cattle fat and sleek; For these to him a language speak To common multitudes unknown As tones of classic Greek. Unthinking creatures and untaught, They to his nature answer back Something his fellow mortals lack; And oft educe from him the sigh That they unnoticed soon must die, Leaving of their existence naught To be remembered by. Man may aspire though in the slough; May dream of glory, strive for fame, Thirst for the prestige of a name. And shall these friends, that so invite The study of the erudite, Ever as he beholds them now Perish like sparks of light? Nay, 'tis his purpose and design To keep them: not like mummies old Papyrus-mantled fold on fold, But elephant, or dove, or swan, Its native hue and raiment on, In effigy of plumage fine, Or skin its native tawn. What God hath wrought thus time shall tell, And thus endowment rich and vast Be rescued from the buried past; And rare reliques that never fade Be in the manikin portrayed Till taxidermy witness well The debt to science paid. Lo! one appeareth unforetold-- This re-creator, yea, of men; Making him feel as born again Who looketh up with reverent eyes, Through wonders that his soul surprise, That great Creator to behold All-powerful, all-wise. Epithalamium. I. "Whom God hath joined"--ah, this sententious phrase A meaning deeper than the sea conveys, And of a sweet and solemn service tells With the rich resonance of wedding-bells; It speaks of vows and obligations given As if amid the harmony of heaven, While seraph lips approving seem to say, "Love, honor, and obey." II. Is Hymen then ambassador divine, His mission, matrimonial and benign, The heart to counsel, ardor to incite, Convert the nun, rebuke the eremite? As if were this his mandate from the throne: "It is not good for them to be alone; Behold the land! its fruitage and its flowers, Not mine and thine, but ours." III. Did not great Paul aver, in lucid spell, That they of conjugal intent "do well"? But hinted at a better state,--'tis one With which two loving souls have naught to do. For, in well-doing being quite content, Be there another state more excellent To which the celibate doth fain repair, They neither know nor care. IV. And does the Lord of all become High Priest, And with his presence grace the wedding-feast? Then must the whole celestial throng draw nigh, For nuptials there are none beyond the sky; So is the union sanctified and blest, For Love is host, and Love is welcome guest; So may the joyous bridal season be Like that of Galilee. V. Sweet Mary, of the blessed name so dear To all the loving Saviour who revere, Madonna-like be thou in every grace That shall adorn thee in exalted place, And thine the happy privilege to prove The depth, the tenderness of woman's love; So shall the heart that honors thee today Bow down to thee alway. VI. O radiant June, in wealth of light and air, With leaf and bud and blossom everywhere, Let all bright tokens affluent combine, And round the bridal pair in splendor shine; Let sweethearts coy and lovers fond and true On this glad day their tender vows renew, And all in wedlock's bond rejoice as they Whom God hath joined for aye. A Fowl Affair. I hope I'm not too orthodox To give a joke away, That took me like the chicken-pox And left a debt to pay. Let argument ignore the cost, If it be dear or cheap, And only claim that naught be lost When it's too good to keep. The proverb says "All flesh is grass," But this I do deny, Because of that which came to pass, But not to pass me by. A body weighing by the pound Inside of half a score, In case and cordage safely bound, Was landed at my door. What could it be? for friends are slack, And give, I rather trow, When they are sure of getting back As much as they bestow. My hair, at thought of dark design, Or dynamitish fate, Stood up like quills of porcupine, But more than twice as straight. Anon, I mused on something rare, Like duck or terrapin, But dreamed not, of the parcel, there Might be a pullet-in. A mighty jerk,--the string that broke The fowl affair revealed, The victim of a cruel choke, Its neck completely peeled. The biped in its paper cof- Fin, cramped and plump and neat, Had scratched its very toenails off In making both ends meat. The only part I always ate, That never made me ill, Had gone away decapitate And carried off the bill. I pondered o'er the sacrifice, The merry-thought, the wings, On giblet gravy, salad nice, And chicken-pie-ous things. In heat of Fahrenheit degree Two hundred twelve or more, Where its grandsire, defying me, Had crowed the year before, I thrust it with a hope forlorn,-- I knew what toughness meant, And sighed that ever I was born To die of roasting scent. But presto! what _dénouement_ grand Of cookery sublime! 'Twas done as by the second hand, The drumsticks beating thyme. And now the moral--he who buys Will comprehend its worth,-- Look not so much to weight and size As to the date of birth. In fowls there is a difference; "The good die young," they say, And for the death of innocence To make us meat, we pray. Holiday Home. Of all the sweet visions that come unto me Of happy refreshment by land or by sea, Like oases where in life's desert I roam, Is nothing so pleasant as Holiday Home. I climb to the top of the highest of hills And look to the west with affectionate thrills, And fancy I stand by the emerald side Of charming Geneva, like Switzerland's pride. In distant perspective unruffled it lies, Except for the packet that paddles and plies, And puffing its way like a pioneer makes Its daily go-round o'er this pearl of the lakes. Untroubled except for the urchins that come From many a haunt that is never a home, Instinctive as ducklings to swim and to wade, Scarce knowing aforetime why water was made. All placid except for the dip of the oar Of the skiff, or the barge striking out from the shore, While merry excursionists shout till the gale Reverberates laughter through rigging and sail. How it scallops its basin and shimmers and shines Like a salver of silver encompassed with vines, In crystal illusion reflecting the skies And the mountain that seems from its bosom to rise. There stands a great house on a summit so high, Like an eyrie of safety enroofed by the sky; And I think of the rest and the comfort up there To sleep, and to breathe that empyreal air. Oh, the charm of the glen and the stream and the wood Can never be written, nor be understood, Except by the weary and languid who come To bask in the quiet of Holiday Home. From prisonlike cellars unwholesome and drear, From attic and alley, from labor severe, For the poor and the famished doth kindness prepare A world of diversion and excellent fare. To swing in the hammock, disport in the breeze, To lie in the shade of magnificent trees-- Oh, this is like quaffing from luxury's bowl The life-giving essence for body and soul! Nor distance nor time shall efface from the mind The influence gentle, the ministry kind; While gratitude fondly enhallows the thought Of a home and a holiday never forgot. Ah, one is remembered of saintliest men To lovely Geneva who comes not again; Who left a sweet impress wherever he trod, Humanity's helper, companion of God. In the hearts of the many there sheltered and fed, As unto a hospice by Providence led, Does often a thought like a sunbeam intrude Of the bounty so free, and the donors so good? Who of their abundance have cheerfully given Wherewith to develop an embryo heaven-- To brighten conditions too hard and too sad And make the unhappy contented and glad. Be blessedness theirs, who like knights of renown Thus scatter such largesse o'er country and town, Their monument building in many a dome Like healthful and beautiful Holiday Home. Rutha. The days are long and lonely, The weary eve comes on, And the nights are filled with dreaming Of one beloved and gone. I reach out in the darkness And clasp but empty air, For Rutha dear has vanished-- I wonder, wonder where. Yet must it be: her nature So lovely, pure, and true; So nearly like the angels, Is she an angel too. The cottage is dismantled Of all that made it bright; Beyond its silent portal No love, nor life, nor light. Where are the hopes I cherished, The joys that once I knew, The dreams, the aspirations? All, all are perished too. Yes, love's dear chain is broken; From shore to shore I roam-- No comfort, no companion, No happiness, no home. Oh could I but enfold her Unto my heart once more, If aught could e'er restore me My darling as before; If God would only tell me-- Such myriads above-- Why He must needs have taken The one I loved to love; If God would only tell me Why multitudes are left, Unhappy and unlovely, And I am thus bereft; If--O my soul, be silent And some day thou shalt see Through mystery and shadow, And know why it must be. To every cry of anguish From every heart distressed, Can be no other answer Than this--God knoweth best. The Student Gone. So soon he fell, the world will never know What possibilities within him lay, What hopes irradiated his young life, With high ambition and with ardor rife; But ah! the speedy summons came, and so He passed away. So soon he fell, there lie unfinished plans By others misapplied, misunderstood; And doors are barred that wait the master-key-- That wait his magic Open Sesame!-- To that assertive power that commands The multitude. Too soon he fell! Was he not born to prove What manhood and integrity might be-- How one from all base elements apart Might walk serene, in purity of heart, His face the bright transparency of love And sympathy? The student ranks are closed, there is no gap; Of other brave aspirants is no dearth; Prowess, fidelity, and truth go on, And few shall miss or mourn the student gone, Reposing in the all-protecting lap Of Mother Earth. Too soon--O God! was it thy will that one Of such endeavor and of noble mien, Enrapt with living, should thus early go From all he loved and all who loved him so, Mid life's activities no longer known, No longer seen? Oh, not for aye should agonizing lips Quiver with questionings they dare not frame; Though in the dark penumbra of despair Seemeth no light, nor comfort anywhere-- All things enshadowed as in dense eclipse, No more the same. Could we but know, in that Elysian lore Of happy exercise still going on Could we but know of glorious heights attained, Of his reward, of mysteries explained,-- Ah! but to know were to lament no more The student gone. The Tourist. Lo! carpet-bag and bagger occupy the land, And prove the touring season actively begun; His personnel and purpose can none misunderstand, For each upon his frontlet bears his honest brand-- The fool-ish one! By caravan and car, from country and from town, A great grasshopper army fell foraging the land; Like bumblebees that know not where to settle down, Impossible it is to curb or scare or drown The tourist band. With guidebook, camera, with rod and gun, to shoot, To lure the deer, the hare, the bird, the speckled trout, The pauper or the prince unbidden they salute, And everywhere their royal right dare none dispute-- To roam about. From dark immuring walls and dingy ways of trade, From high society's luxurious stately homes, From lounging places by the park or promenade, From rural dwellings canopied in sylvan shade, The tourist comes. To every mountain peak within the antipodes, To sweet, sequestered spots no other mortal knows; To every island fair engirt by sunny seas, To forest-centers unexplored by birds or bees, The tourist goes. For Summer's fingers all the land have richly dressed, Resplendent in regalia of scent and bloom, And stirred in every heart the spirit of unrest, Like that of untamed fledglings in the parent nest For ampler room. What is it prompts the roving mania--is it love Of wild adventure fanciful, unique, and odd? Is it to be in fashion, and to others prove One's social standing, that impels the madness of The tramp abroad? The question hangs unanswered, like an unwise prayer, Importunate, but powerless response to bring; Go ask the voyagers, the rovers everywhere-- They only say it is their rest-time, outing, their Vacationing. So is the world's eccentric round of joy complete When happy tourist-traveler, no more to roam, His fascinating, thrilling story shall repeat To impecunious, luckless multitudes who greet The tourist home. The Antiquarian. Millions have been and passed from view Benignity who never knew; No aspiration theirs, nor aim; Existence soulless as the clay From whence they sprang, what right have they To eulogy or fame? So multitudes have been forgot-- But drones or dunces, good for naught; Like clinging parasites or burrs Taking from others all they dared, Yet little they for others cared Except as pilferers. Not so with that majestic man The all-round antiquarian-- No model his nor parallel; From selfishness inviolate Are his achievements good and great, And thus shall ages tell. A love for the antiquities His honest hold, his birthright is! And things unheard of or unread, Defaced by moth or rust or mold, To him are treasures more than gold, Ay, than his daily bread. At neither ghost nor ghoul aghast He echoes voices of the past, And tones like melancholy knells Of years departed to his ear Are sweeter than of kindred dear, Sweeter than Florimel's. He delves through centuries of dust To resurrect some unknown bust, A torso, or a goddess whole; Maybe like Venus, minus arms-- Haply to find those missing charms; But not the lost, lost soul. He dotes on aborigines Who lived in caves and hollow trees, And barters for their trinkets rare; Exchanging with those dusky breeds For arrow-heads and shells and beads A scalplock of his hair. Had he been born--thus he laments-- Along with other great events, Coeval say with Noah's flood, A proud relationship to trace With Hittites--or with any race Of blue archaic blood! Much he adores that Pilgrim flock, The same that split old Plymouth rock, Their "Bay Psalm" when they tried to sing. Devoid of metre, sense, and tune, Who but a Puritanic loon Could have devised the thing? He revels in a pedigree, The sprouting of a noble tree 'Way back in prehistoric times; And for the "Family Record" true Of scions all that ever grew Would give a billion dimes. There is a language fossils speak: 'Tis not like Latin, much less Greek, But quite as dead and antiquate Its silent syllables, and cold; But ah, what meanings they unfold, What histories relate! The earthquake is his best ally-- It shows up things he cannot buy, And gives him raw material For making mastodons and such, Enough to beat that ancient "Dutch Republic's Rise and Fall." A piece of bone can never lie: A rib, a femur, or a thigh Is but a dislocated sign Of something hybrid, half and half Betwixt a crocodile and calf-- Maybe a porcupine. The stately "Antiquarium" Is his emporium, his home. He wonders if when he is gone Will people look with mournful pride On him done up and classified, And the right label on. He dreams of an emblazoned page, The calendar of every age Down from Creation's primal dawn; With archetypes of spears and bones, And tons of undeciphered stones Its illustrations drawn. Labor a blessing, not a curse, His hunting ground the Universe, So much the more his nature craves To sound the fathoms of the sea: What mighty wonders there must be Down in those hidden caves! So toils this dauntless man, alert Amid the ruins and the dirt, That other men to endless day Themselves uplifted from the clod May see, and learn and know that God Is greater far than they. And thus, of mighty ken and plan, The all-round antiquarian Pursues his happy ministry; And on the world's progressive track Advances, always going back-- Back to antiquity. Poor Housekeeping. If there is one gift that I prize above others, That tinges with brightness whatever I do, And gives to the sombre a roseate hue, 'Tis a legacy mine from the nicest of mothers, Who haply the beauty of housewifery knew, And taught me her neatness and diligence too. So is my discomfort a house in disorder: The service uncleanly, the linen distained, The children like infantry rude and untrained; The portieres dusty and frayed at the border, By lavish expenses the pocketbook drained, And miseries numberless never explained. I dream not of pleasure in visions untidy, A wrapper all hole-y, a buttonless shoe, A slatternly matron with nothing to do; And all the ill-luck charged to ominous Friday Can never compare with the ills that ensue On wretched housekeeping and cookery too. There's many a husband, a patient bread-winner, Gets up from the table with look of despair, And something akin to the growl of a bear; Not the saint he might be, but a querulous sinner-- One driven to fasting but not unto prayer-- Till epitaphed thus--"Indigestible Fare." There's many a child, from the roof-tree diurnal, A scene of distraction or dullness severe, With the longing of youth for diversion and cheer, That comes like the spring-time refreshing and vernal, Goes out on a ruinous, reckless career, Returning, if ever, not many a year. O negligent female, imperfect housekeeper, Though faultless in figure and charming of face, In ruffles of ribbon and trailings of lace Usurping the part of a common street-sweeper, You never can pose as a type of your race In frowsy appearance mid things out of place. O fashion-bred damsel, with folly a-flutter, Until you have learned how to manage a broom, If never you know how to tidy a room, Manipulate bread or decide about butter, The duties of matron how dare you assume, Or ever be bride to a sensible groom? I covet no part with that army of shirkers All down at the heels in their slipper-y tread, Who hunt for the rolling-pin under the bed, Who look with disdain on intelligent workers And take to the club or the circus instead Of mending a stocking or laying the spread. Oh, I dream of a system of perfect housekeeping, Where mistress and helper together compete In excellent management, quiet and neat; And though in the bosom of earth I am sleeping, Shall somebody live to whom life will be sweet And home an ideal, idyllic retreat. Going to Tobog. Into my disappointment-cup The snowflakes fell and blocked the road, And so I thought I'd finish up The latest style of Christmas ode; When she, the charming little lass With eyes as bright as isinglass, Before a line my pen had wrought In strange attire came bounding in, As if she had with Bruno fought, And robbed him of his shaggy skin. She came to me robed _cap-à-pie_ In her bewitching "blanket-suit," In moccasin and toggery, All ready for "that icy chute," And asked me if I thought she'd do; I shake with love of mischief true: "For what?--a polar bear?--why, yes!" "No, no!" she said, with half a pout. "Why, one would think so, by your dress-- Say, does your mother know you're out?" "No, I'm not out," she said, and sighed; "Because the storm so wildly raged-- But for the first delightful ride For half a year I've been engaged." "Engaged to what?--an Esquimau? To ride a glacier, or a floe?" "Why, don't you know"--her color glowed, In expectation all agog-- "The reason why I'm glad it snowed? Because--I'm going to tobog." "Passer Le Temps." So _that's_ the way you pass your time! Indeed your charming, frank confession Betrays no sort of heinous crime, But marks a wonderful digression From puritanic views, less bold, That we were early taught to hold. "_Passer le temps_," of course, implies A little cycle of flirtations, Wherein the actors never rise To sober, serious relations, But play just for amusement's sake A harmless game of "give and take." While moments pass on pinions fleet, And youth in beauty effloresces, The joy that finds itself complete In honeyed words and soft caresses, Alas! an index seems to be Of perilous inconstancy. It may be with disdainful smile You greet this comment from a stranger, Your pleasure-paths pursuing while A siren voice discounts the danger, Until, some day, in sadder rhyme You rue your mode of "passing time." The Torpedo. Valiant sons of the sea, All the vast deep, your home, Holds no terror so dread As this novel and unseen foe, Lurking under the foam Of some dangerous channel-- As the torpedo, the scourge of ships. Through the rigging may roar Æolus' thousand gales, Yet the mariner's heart Shrinketh not from the howling blast; Though with battle-rent sails, Flames and carnage around him, Cowardice never shall pale his lips. But when powers concealed, Threatening with death the crew, Pave each eddy below, E'en the bravest are chilled with fear, Lest yon wizard in blue, Who their progress is spying, Touch but the key with his finger-tips. Lo! with thunderous boom Towers a column bright, And the vessel is gone! In that ocean of blinding spray Sink her turrets from sight, By thy potency broken, O irresistible scourge of ships! --_Harry Howard._ Margaret. I saw her for a moment, Her presence haunts me yet, In oft-recurring visions Of grace and gladness met That marked the sweet demeanor Of dainty Margaret. Like gossamer her robe was Around her lightly drawn, A filmy summer-garment That fairy maidens don To make them look like angels Croqueting on the lawn. The mallet-sport became her In hue of exercise That tinged her cheek with roses; And, dancing in her eyes, Were pantomime suggestions Of having won--a prize. No more to me a stranger Is she who occupies A place in all my musings; And brings in tender guise A thought of one so like her-- Long years in Paradise. Dear Margaret! that "pearl-name" Is thine--and may it be The synonym of goodness, Of truth and purity, And all ennobling graces Exemplified in thee. Christmas Bells. Ring out, O bells, in joyful chime! Again we hail the Christmas time; In melting, mellow atmosphere, The crown and glory of the year. When bitterness, distrust, and awe Dissolve, like ice in winter's thaw, Beneath the genial touches of Amenity, good will, and love. When flowers of affection grow, Like edelweiss mid alpine snow, In lives severe and beautiless, Unused to warmth or tenderness. Let goodness, grace, and gratitude Revive in music's interlude, And pæan notes, till time shall cease, Proclaim the blessed reign of peace. Ring, Christmas bells! for at the sound Sweet memories of Him abound Who laid aside a diadem To be the babe of Bethlehem. By the Sea. I am longing to dwell by the sea, And dip in the surf every day, And--height of subaqueous glee-- With the sharks and the porpoises play. To novelty ever inclined-- Instead of a calm evening sail, 'Twould suit my adventurous mind To ride on the back of a whale. I want to disport on the rocks Like a mythical mermaiden belle, And comb out my watery locks, Then dive to my cavernous cell. I want to discover what lends Such terror to all timid folks-- That serpent whose mystery tends To make one believe it a hoax. They say he's been captured at last; The news is too good to be true-- He's slippery, cunning, and fast, And likes notoriety too. Once had I such longings to be A sailor--those wishes are o'er, But ever in dreams of the sea My horoscope rests on the shore. Oh, give me a home by the sea-- A cottage, a cabin, a tent! Existence should ecstasy be Till summer were joyfully spent. A Song. Oh, sing me a merry song! My heart is sad tonight; The day has been so drear and long, The world has gone awry and wrong, Discouragements around me throng, And gloom surpassing night. Oh, sing again the song for me My mother used to sing When I, a child beside her knee, Looked up for her sweet sympathy, Nor ever thought how I might be Her little hindering thing. Oh, sing, as eventide draws near, The old-time lullabys Grandmother sang--forever dear, Though in her grave this many a year She lies who "read her title clear To mansions in the skies." Oh, sing till all perplexing care Has vanished with the day! And angels ever bright and fair Come down the melody to share, And on their pinions lightly bear My happy soul away. "Is It April?" No, this is January, dear, The almanac's untrue; For roaring Boreas, 'tis clear, In sleet and snow and atmosphere, Will be the monarch of the year, And terror, too. "Is it a blessing in disguise?" Of course, things always are; But Arctic blasts with ardent skies Somehow do not quite harmonize, That try to cheat by weather-lies The calendar. Old Janus must be double-faced; He promised long ago The maple syrup not to taste, Nor steal the roses from the waist Of one, a damsel fair and chaste As April snow. O winter of our discontent! Your reign was for a day; Behold! a scene of wonderment, A thousand tongues are eloquent, For spring, in bud and bloom and scent, Is on the way. Christmas-Tide. Let working-clothes be laid aside, And Industry in festal garb arrayed; Let busy brain and hand from toil and trade Relax at Christmas-tide. As moments pass by dial, so Let gifts go round the happy circle where In giving and receiving each may share, And mutual kindness show. The meaning deep, like mystery, That lies in holly-bough or mistletoe, May thousands never fathom--yet who know And hail the Christmas-tree. So strong a hold on human thought Has this glad day that seasons all the year With the rich flavoring of hearty cheer, It ne'er shall be forgot. It is the milestone on life's road Where we may lay our burdens down, and take A look at souvenirs, for love's dear sake So prettily bestowed. Upon its shining tablet we may write-- If, like the good Samaritan, in deed-- A record that the angel band shall read With impulse of delight. And this is why on Christmas morn The world should smile and wear its brightest glow: Because some nineteen hundred years ago A little child was born. January, 1885. These winter days are passing fair! As if a breath of spring Had permeated all the air, And touched each living thing With thankfulness for such a boon-- Discounting with a scoff The almanac's report that "June Is yet a long way off!" We quarrel with the calendar-- For May has been misplaced-- And doubt the tale oracular Of "Janus, double-faced;" For this "ethereal mildness" looks Toward shadowy delights Of roseate bowers, of cosy nooks, Of coming thermal nights. Let robes diaphanous succeed Dense garments made of fur, And overcoats maintain the lead-- Among the things that were! The wisely-rented sealskin sacque, By many a dame possessed, Be quickly relegated back To its moth-haunted chest! While every portly alderman, In linen suit arrayed, Manipulates the palm-leaf fan And seeks the cooling shade; And he perspires who not in vain Suggests his funny squibs, By poking his unwelcome cane In other people's ribs. Who dares to fling opprobrium On January now? As to a potentate we come With reverential bow, Because it doth not yet appear That Time hath ever seen The ruler of th' inverted year In more benignant mien. O Boreas! do not lie low-- That is, if "lie" thou must-- Upon our planet; do not blow With fierce and sudden gust, But come so gently, tenderly-- As come thou surely wilt-- That we may have sweet dreams of thee, Beneath "our crazy quilt!" Sweet Peas. By helpful fingers taught to twine Around its trellis, grew A delicate and dainty vine; The bursting bud, its blossom sign, Inlaid with honeyed-dew. Developing by every art To floriculture known, From tares exempt, and kept apart, Careful, as if in some fond heart Its legume germs were sown. So thriving, not for me alone Its beauty and perfume-- Ah, no, to rich perfection grown By flower mission loved and known In many a darkened room. And once in strange and solemn place, Mid weeping uncontrolled, Upon the crushed and snowy lace I saw them scattered 'round a face All pallid, still, and cold. Oh, some may choose, as gaudy shows, Those saucy sprigs of pride The peony, the red, red rose; But give to me the flower that grows Petite and pansy-eyed. Thus, meditation on Sweet Peas Impels the ardent thought, Would maidens all were more like these, With modesty--that true heartsease-- Tying the lover's knot. The Summer House. Midway upon the lawn it stands, So picturesque and pretty; Upreared by patient artist hands, Admired of all the city; The very arbor of my dream, A covert cool and airy, So leaf-embowered as to seem The dwelling of a fairy. It is the place to lie supine Within a hammock swinging, To watch the sunset, red as wine, To hear the crickets singing; And while the insect world around Is buzzing--by the million-- No wingèd thing above the ground Intrudes in this pavilion. It is the place, at day's decline, To tell the old, old story Behind the dark Madeira vine, Behind the morning glory; To confiscate the rustic seat And barter stolen kisses, For honey must be twice as sweet In such a spot as this is. It is the haunt where one may get Relief from petty trouble, May read the latest day's gazette About the "Klondike" bubble: How shanties rise like golden courts. Where sheep wear glittering fleeces, How gold is picked up--by the quartz-- And all get rich as Croesus. Here hid away from dust and heat, Secure from rude intrusion, While willing lips the thought repeat, So grows the fond illusion: That happiness the product is Of lazy, languid dozing, Of soft midsummer reveries, Half-waking, half-reposing. And here in restful interlude, Life's fallacies forgetting, Its frailties--such a multitude-- The fuming and the fretting, Amid the fragrance, dusk, and dew, The happy soul at even May walk abroad, and interview Bright messengers from Heaven. To Die in Autumn. The melody of autumn Is the only tune I know, And I sing it over and over Because it thrills me so; It stirs anew the happy wish, So near to perfect bliss, To live a little longer in A world like this. The sound was never sweeter, The voice so nearly mute, As beauty, dying, loses Her hold upon the lute; And like the harmonies that touch And blend with those above, Forever must an echo wake The heart of love. Her robe of brown and coral And amber glistens through Rare jewels of the morning, The opals of the dew, Like royal fabrics worn beneath The tinselry of pearls, Or diamond dust by fashion strewn On sunny curls. If I could wrap such garments In true artistic style About myself departing, And wear as sweet a smile And be as guileless as the flowers My friends would never sigh; 'Twould reconcile them to my death To see me die. And why should there be sorrow When dying is no more Than 'twixt two bright apartments The opening of a door Through which the freed, enraptured soul From this, a paradise, May pass to that supremely fair Beyond the skies? Oh, 'twere not hard to finish When earth with tender grace Prepares for her dear children So sweet a resting place; And though in dissolution's throe The melody be riven, The song abruptly ended here Goes on in Heaven. Apple Blossoms. Of all the lovely blossoms That decorate the trees, And shower down their petals With every breath of breeze, There is nothing so sweet or fair to me As the delicate blooms of the apple tree. A thousand shrubs and flow'rets Delicious pleasure bring, But beautiful Pomona Must be the queen of spring; And out of her flagon the peach and pear Their chalices fill with essence rare. Oh, is it any wonder, Devoid of blight or flaw, The peerless blooms of Eden Our primal mother saw In redolent beauty before her placed So tempted fair Eve the fruit to taste? But woman's love of apples, Involving fearful price, And Adam's love for woman That cost him Paradise, By the labor of hands and sweat of brow, Have softened the curse to a blessing now. If so those pink-eyed glories, In fields and orchards gay Develop luscious fruitage By Horticulture's way, Then, sweet as the heart of rich legumes, Shall luxury follow the apple blooms. Without a Minister. The congregation was devout, The minister inspired, Their attitude to those without By every one admired, And all things so harmonious seemed, Of no calamity we dreamed. But, just in this quiescent state A little cloud arose Portentous of our certain fate-- As everybody knows; Our pastor took it in his head His "resignation" must be read. In every eye a tear-drop stood, For we accepted it Reluctantly, but nothing could Make him recant one bit; And soon he left for distant parts, While we were left--with broken hearts. And next the "patriarch" who led For nearly three-score years Our "Sabbath school"--its worthy head-- Rekindled all our fears By saying, with a smile benign, "Since it's the fashion, I'll resign!" And so he did; but promptly came Forth one, of good report-- "Our Superintendent" is his name-- Who tries to "hold the fort" With wisdom, tact, and rare good sense, In this, his first experience. The world looks on and says, "How strange! They hang together so, These Baptists do, and never change, But right straight onward go While other flocks are scattering all, And some have strayed beyond recall!" Indian Summer. Is it not our bounden duty Harsh and bitter thoughts to quell, Wild, ambitions schemes repel, And to revel in the beauty Of this Indian summer spell, Bathing forest, field, and dell As with radiance immortelle? None can paint like nature dying; Whose dissolving struggle lent Wealth of hues so richly blent That, through weary years of trying, Artist skill pre-eminent May not copy or invent Such divine embellishment. Knights of old from castles riding Scattered largesse as they went Which, like manna heaven-sent, Cheered the poverty-abiding; But, when 'neath "that low green tent" Passed the hand benevolent, Sad were they and indigent. Monarchs, too, have thus delighted Giving unto courtiers free, Costly robes and tinselry; And, as royal guests, invited Them to sumptuous halls of glee, Banqueting and minstrelsy, Bacchus holding sovereignty. Then, perchance, in mood capricious Stripped and scorned and turned away Those who tasted for a day Pleasure sweet and food delicious; Nor might any say them nay-- Lest his head the forfeit pay Who a king dared disobey. But our own benignant Giver, Almoner impartial, true, Constantly doth gifts renew; Nor would fitfully deliver Aught unto the chosen few, But to all the wide world through, Who admire his wonders, too. Never shall the heart be poorer, Never languish in despair, That such affluence may share; For than this is nothing surer-- He hath said, and will prepare In those realms of upper air Glories infinitely fair. Autumn-Time. Like music heard in mellow chime, The charm of her transforming time Upon my senses steals As softly as from sunny walls, In day's decline, their shadow falls Across the sleeping fields. A fair, illumined book Is nature's page whereon I look While "autumn turns the leaves;" And many a thought of her designs Between those rare, resplendent lines My fancy interweaves. I dream of aborigines, Who must have copied from the trees The fashions of the day: Those gorgeous topknots for the head, Of yellow tufts and feathers red, With beads and sinews gay. I wonder if the saints behold Such pageantry of colors bold Beyond the radiant sky; And if the tints of Paradise Are heightened by the strange device Of making all things die. Yea, even so; for Nature glows Because of her expiring throes, As if around her tomb Unmeet it were,--the look severe That designates a common bier Enwreathed in deepest gloom. And so I meditate if aught Can be so fair where death is not; If Heaven's loveliness Is born of struggle and decay; And, but for funeral array, Would it be beautiless? Oh solemn, sad, sweet mystery That Earth's unrivaled brilliancy Is but her splendid pall! That Heaven were not what it is But for that crown of tragedies, The sacrifice for all. So not a charm would Zion lose Were it bereft of sparkling hues In gilded lanes and leas; It would be bright though not a flower Unclosed in its celestial bower, And void of jeweled trees. Yet, lily-like, one bloom I see, Its name is his who died for me; Whose matchless beauty shows Perfection on its bleeding stem, The blossom-bud of Bethlehem, The Resurrection Rose. The Beauty of Nature. Oh bud and leaf and blossom, How beautiful they are! Than last year's vernal season 'Tis lovelier by far; This earth was never so enchanting Nor half so bright before-- But so I've rhapsodized, in springtime, For forty years or more. What luxury of color On shrub and plant and vine, From pansies' richest purple To pink of eglantine; From buttercups to "johnny-jump-ups," With deep cerulean eyes, Responding to their modest surname In violet surprise. Sometimes I think the sunlight That gilds the emerald hills, And makes Aladdin dwellings Of dingy domiciles, Is surplus beauty overflowing That Heaven cannot hold-- The topaz glitter, or the jacinth, The glare of streets of gold. In "Cedar Hill," the city Of "low green tents" of sod, I read the solemn record Of those gone home to God; While from their hallowed dust arising The fragrant lilies grow As if their life was all the sweeter For those who sleep below. And so 'tis not in sadness I dwell upon the thought, When I am dead and buried That I shall be forgot. Because the germ of reproduction Doth this poor body hold, Perchance to add to nature's beauty A rose above the mold. "All the Rage." A common wayside flower it grew, Unhandsome and unnoticed too, Except in deprecation That such an herb unreared by toil, Prolific cumberer of the soil, Defied extermination. Its gorgeous blooms were never stirred By honey-bee nor humming-bird In their corollas dipping; But they from clover white and red Delicious nectar drew instead In dainty rounds of sipping. No place its own euphonious name Within the catalogue might claim Of any flora-lover; For, in the scores of passers-by, As yet no true artistic eye Its beauty could discover. The reaper with his sickle keen Aimed at its crest of gold and green With spiteful stroke relentless, And would have rooted from the ground The "Solidago"--blossom-crowned, But gaudy, rank, and scentless. But everything must have its day-- And since some fickle _devotée_ Or myrmidon of Fashion Declares that this obnoxious weed, From wild, uncultivated seed, Shall be the "ruling passion," Effusive schoolgirls dote on it; Whose "frontispieces" infinite That need no decoration Are hid beneath its golden dust, Till many a fine, symmetric bust Is lost to admiration. Smart dudes and ladies' men--the few Who wish they could be ladies too-- Display a sprig of yellow Conspicuous in their buttonhole, To captivate a maiden soul Or vex some other fellow. And spinsters of uncertain age Are clamoring now for "all the rage" To give a dash of color To their complexions, which appear To be the hue they hold so dear-- Except a trifle duller. That _négligée_ "blue-stocking" friend, Who never cared her time to spend On mysteries of the toilet, Now wears a sumptuous bouquet And shakes your hand a mile away For fear that you will spoil it. Delightful widows, dressed in black, Complain with modest sighs they lack That coveted expression, That sort of Indian Summer air Which "relicts" always ought to wear By general concession; And so lugubrious folds of crape Are crimped and twisted into shape With graceful heads of yellow, That give a winsome toning down To sombre hat and sable gown-- In autumn tintings mellow. Alas, we only hate the weed! And think that it must be, indeed, The ladies' last endeavor To match the gentlemen, who flaunt That odious dried tobacco plant At which they puff forever. My Mother's Hand. My head is aching, and I wish That I could feel tonight One well-remembered, tender touch That used to comfort me so much, And put distress to flight. There's not a soothing anodyne Or sedative I know, Such potency can ever hold As that which lovingly controlled My spirit long ago. How oft my burning cheek as if By Zephyrus was fanned, And nothing interdicted pain Or seemed to make me well again So quick as mother's hand. 'Tis years and years since it was laid, In her own gentle way, On tangled curls of brown and jet Above the downy coverlet 'Neath which the children lay. As bright as blessed sunlight ray The past comes back to me; Her fingers turn the sacred page For a little group of tender age Who gather at her knee. And when those hands together clasped Devout and still were we; To whom it seemed God then and there Must surely answer such a prayer, For none could pray as she. O buried love with her that passed Into the Silent Land! O haunting vision of the night! I see, encoffined, still, and white, A mother's face and hand. A Leap Year Episode. Such oranges! so fresh and sweet, So large and lovely--and so cheap! They lay in one delicious heap, And added to the sumptuous feast For each and all in taste expert The acme of all fine dessert; So, singling out the very least As in itself an ample treat, While sparkling repartee and jest Exhilarated host and guest, Of rarity so delicate In dreamy reverie I ate, By magic pinions as it were Transported from this realm of snows To be a happy sojourner Away down where the orange grows; Amid the bloom, the verdure, and The beauty of that tropic land, While redolence seemed wafted in From orchard-groves of Mandarin. In dinner costume _a la mode_, Expressing from the spongy skin The nectar that ran down her chin In little rills of lusciousness, Sat Maud, the beautiful coquette; Her dainty mouth, like "two lips" wet With morning dew, her crimson dress, A sad discoloration showed Where orange-juice--it was a sin!-- A polka-dot had painted in; Which moved the roguish girl to say Half-ruefully (half-_décolleté_)-- "I'm glad it's Leap Year now, for I--" Her voice was like a moistened lute "Shall wear the flowers, by and by-- I do not like this leaky fruit!" And looking straight and saucily At cousin Ned, her _vis-a-vis_; While Will, who never dared propose, Was blushing like a red, red rose. The company was large, and she Touched elbows with the exquisite, Gay Archibald, who took her wit And pertness all as meant for him; Who, thereby lifted some degrees Above less-favored devotees, With rainbow sails began to trim His craft of sweet felicity; So mirth in reckless afterlude Convulsed the merry multitude, Who laughed at Archie's self-esteem, And pitied Will's long-cherished dream; While all declared, for her and Ned-- His face was like a silver tray-- The wedding-banquet should be spread Before a twelvemonth passed away. But, ah, the sequel--blind were we To woman and her strategy! For he so long afraid to speak Bore off the bride within a week. If. If all the sermons good men preach And all the precepts that they teach Were gathered into one Unbroken line of silver speech, The shining filament might reach From earth unto the sun. If all the stories ever told By wild romancers, young or old, Into a thread were drawn, And from its cable coil unrolled, 'Twould span those misty hills of gold That heaven seems resting on. If every folly, every freak, From day to day, from week to week, Is written in "The Book," With all the idle words we speak, Would it not crimson many a cheek Upon the page to look? If all the good deeds that we do From honest motives pure and true Shall there recorded be, Known unto God and angels too, Is it not sad they are so few And wrought so charily? Perfect Character. He lives but half who never stood By the grave of one held dear, And out of the deep, dark loneliness Of a heart bereaved and comfortless, From sorrow's crystal plentitude, Feeling his loss severe, Dropped a regretful tear. Oh, life's divinest draught doth not In the wells of joy abound! For the purest streams are those that flow Out of the depths of crushing woe, As from the springs of love and thought Hid in some narrow mound, Making it holy ground. He hath been blessed who sometimes knelt Owning that God is just, And in the stillness of cypress shade Rosemary's tender symbol laid Upon a cherished shrine, and felt Strengthened in faith and trust Over the precious dust. So perfect character is wrought, Rounded and beautified, By the alchemy of that strange alloy, The intermingling of grief and joy; So nearer Heaven the spirit, brought Bleeding, so sorely tried, Finds its diviner side. The Miracle of Spring. What touch is like the Spring's? By dainty fingerings Such rare delight to give, 'Tis luxury to live Amid florescent things. Through weary months of snow When Boreas swept low, How many an anxious hour We watched one little flower, And tried to make it grow; And thrilled with ecstasy When, half distrustfully, A timid bud appeared, A tender scion reared In window greenery. But lo! Spring's wealth of bloom And richness of perfume Comes as by miracle; Then why not possible Within a curtained room? Ah, no! that everywhere The earth is passing fair, And strange new life hath caught, Is but the marvel wrought By sunlight, rain, and air. Bermuda. O charming blossom of the sea Atlantic waters bosomed in! Abiding-place of gayety, Elysian bower of "Cora Linn," The sprightly, lively _débiteuse_ Recounting all she sees and does. Oh, how it makes the northern heart, With sluggish current half-congealed, In ecstasy and vigor start To read about this tropic field; The garden of luxuriousness, In winter wearing summer's dress. With gelid sap and frozen gum In maple trees and hackmatack, While waiting for the spring to come Of life's necessities we lack; And sip the nectar that we find In luscious fruit with golden rind. But down the street we dread to walk, For all the teachings of our youth Receive an agonizing shock; _Do_ tempting labels lie, forsooth? For "out of Florida," she says, "Come our Bermuda oranges." To speed the penitential prayer Our rosary we finger o'er, A yellow necklace rich and rare-- 'Twas purchased at the dollar store; But oh, it makes us sigh to see That land of amber _bijouterie_! Oh, ocean wave and flying sail Shall never waft us to its shore! But if some reckless cyclone gale Should drop Bermuda at our door, 'Twould warm our February sky And bring the time of roses nigh! The Charter Oak. I seem to see the old tree stand, Its sturdy, giant form A spectacle remembered, and A pilgrim-shrine for all the land Before it met the storm. Unnumbered gales the tree defied; It towered like a king Above his courtiers, reaching wide, And sheltering scions at its side As with protecting wing. Revered as one among the trees To mark the seasons born, To watchful aborigines It told by leafy indices The time of planting corn. The landmark of the past is gone, Its site is overgrown; A mansion overlooks the lawn Where history is traced upon A parapet of stone. Shall e'er Connecticut forget What unto it we owe-- How Wadsworth coped with Andros' threat, And tyranny, in council met, Outwitted years ago? Aye, but it rouses loyal spunk To think of that old tree! Its stately stem, its spacious trunk By Nature robbed of pith and punk To guard our liberty. But of the oak long-perished, why Is earth forever full? For, like the loaf and fish supply, Its stock of fiber, tough and dry, Seems inexhaustible. Rare souvenirs the stranger sees-- Who never sees a joke-- And innocently dreams that these, From knotty, gnarly, scraggy trees, Were once the Charter Oak! Blossom-time. Yes, it is drawing nigh-- The time of blossoming; The waiting heart beats stronger With every breath of Spring, The days are growing longer; While happy hours go by As if on zephyr wing. A wealth of mellow light Reflected from the skies The hill and vale is flooding; Still in their leafless guise The Jacqueminots are budding, Creating new delight By promise of surprise. The air is redolent As ocean breezes are From spicy islands blowing, Or groves of Malabar Where sandal-wood is growing; Or sweet, diffusive scent, From fragrant attar-jar. Just so is loveliness Renewed from year to year; And thus emotions tender, Born of the atmosphere, Of bloom, and vernal splendor That words cannot express, Make Spring forever dear. Can mortal man behold So beautiful a scene, Without the innate feeling That thus, like dying sheen The sunset hues revealing, Glints pure, celestial gold On fields of living green? "One of the Least of These." 'Twas on a day of cold and sleet, A little nomad of the street With tattered garments, shoeless feet, And face with hunger wan, Great wonder-eyes, though beautiful, Hedged in by features pinched and dull, Betraying lines so pitiful By sorrow sharply drawn; Ere yet the service half was o'er, Approached the great cathedral door As choir and organ joined to pour Their sweetness on the air; Then, sudden, bold, impelled to glide With fleetness to the altar's side, Her trembling form she sought to hide Amid the shadows there, Half fearful lest some worshiper, Enveloped close in robes of fur, Had cast a scornful glance at her As she had stolen by, But soon the swelling anthem, fraught With reverence, her spirit caught As rapt she listened, heeding not The darkness drawing nigh. 'Mid novelty and sweet surprise Her soul, enraptured, seemed to rise And tread the realms of Paradise; Her shivering limbs grew warm, And as the shadows longer crept Across the chancel, angels kept Their vigils o'er her as she slept Secure from cold and storm. No sound her peaceful slumber broke, But one, whose gentle face bespoke True goodness, took her costly cloak In tender, thoughtful way, And as the sleeper sweetly smiled, Perchance by dreams of Heaven beguiled, O'erspread the passive, slumbering child, And softly stepped away. So rest thee, child! since Sorrow's dart Has touched like thine the Saviour's heart, Thou hast a nearer, dearer part In his great love for thee; And when life's shadows all are gone, May Heaven reveal a brighter dawn To thee who, unaware, hast drawn Our hearts in sympathy. Lightning-bugs. Around my vine-wreathed portico, At evening, there's a perfect glow Of little lights a-flashing-- As if the stellar bodies had From super-heat grown hyper-mad, And spend their ire in clashing. As frisky each as shooting star, These tiny electricians are The Lampyrine Linnæan-- Or lightning-bugs, that sparkling gleam Like scintillations in a dream Of something empyrean. They brush my face, light up my hair, My garments touch, dart everywhere; And if I try to catch them They're quicker than the wicked flea-- And then I wonder how 'twould be To have a _dress_ to match them. To be a "princess in disguise," And wear a robe of fireflies All strung and wove together, And be the cynosure of all At Madame Haut-ton's carnival, In fashion's gayest feather. So, sudden, falls upon the grass The overpow'ring light of gas, And through the lattice streaming; As wearily I close my eyes Brief are the moments that suffice To reach the land of dreaming. Now at the ball, superbly dressed As I suppose, to eclipse the rest, Within an alcove shady A brilliant flame I hope to be, While all admire and envy me, The "bright electric lady." But, ah, they never shine at all! My eyes _ignite_--I leave the hall, For wrathful tears have filled them; I could have crushed them on the spot-- The bugs, I mean!--and quite forgot That _stringing_ them had killed them. Of Her who Died. We look up to the stars tonight, Idolatrous of them, And dream that Heaven is in sight, And each a ray of purest light From some celestial gem In her bright diadem. Before that lonely home we wait, Ah! nevermore to see Her lovely form within the gate Where heart and hearthstone desolate And vine and shrub and tree Seem asking: "Where is she?" There is the cottage Love had planned-- Where hope in ashes lies-- A tower beautiful to stand, Her monument whose gentle hand And presence in the skies Make home of Paradise. In wintry bleakness nature glows Beneath the stellar ray; We see the mold, but not the rose, And meditate if knowledge goes Into yon mound of clay, With her who passed away. Of sighs, and tears, and joys denied Do echoes reach up there? Do seraphs know--God does--how wide And deep is sorrow's bitter tide Of dolor and despair, And darkness everywhere? Dear angel, snatched from our caress, So suddenly withdrawn, Alone are we and comfortless; As in a dome of emptiness The old routine goes on, Aimless, since thou art gone. Oh, dearer unto us than aught In all the world beside Of thee to cherish blessed thought; So early thy sweet mission wrought, As friend, as promised bride, Who lived, and loved, and died. Thanksgiving. Nature, erewhile so marvelously lovely, is bereft Of her supernal charm; And with the few dead garlands of departed splendor left, Like crape upon her arm, In boreal hints, and sudden gusts That fan the glowing ember, By multitude of ways fulfills The promise of November. Upon the path where Beauty, sylvan priestess, sped away, Lies the rich afterglow Of Indian Summer, bringing round the happy holiday That antedates the snow: The glad Thanksgiving time, the cheer, The festival commotion That stirs fraternal feeling from The mountains to the ocean. O Hospitality! unclose thy bounty-laden hand In generous dealing, where Is gathered in reunion each long-severed household band, And let no vacant chair Show where the strongest, brightest link In love's dear chain is broken-- A symbol more pathetic than By language ever spoken. Into the place held sacred to the memory of some Beloved absentee, Perchance passed to the other shore, oh, let the stranger come And in gratuity Partake of festal favors that Shall sweeten hours of labor, And strengthen amity and love Unto his friend and neighbor. Let gratitude's pure incense in warm orisons ascend, A blessing to secure, And gracious impulse bearing largesse of good gifts extend To all deserving poor; So may the day be hallowed by Unstinted thanks and giving, In sweet remembrance of the dead And kindness to the living. Receiving Sight. In hours of meditation fraught With mem'ries of departed days, Comes oft a tender, loving thought Of one who shared our youthful plays. In gayest sports and pleasures rife Whose happy nature reveled so, That on her ardent, joyous life A shadow lay, we did not know; And bade her look one summer night Up to the sky that seemed to hold, In dying sunset splendor bright, All hues of sapphire, red, and gold. How strange the spell that mystified Us all, and hushed our wonted glee, As sadly her sweet voice replied, "Why, don't you know I cannot see?" Too true! those eyes bereft of sight No blemish bare, no drop-serene, But nothing in this world of light And beauty they had ever seen. A dozen years in gentle ruth Their impress lent to brow and cheek, When precious words of sacred truth Led her the Saviour's face to seek. Responsive unto earnest prayers Commingling love and penitence, A blessing came--not unawares-- In new and strange experience. And all was light, as Faith's clear eye A brighter world than ours divined; For never clouds obscured the sky That she could see, while _we_ were blind. Oh, it must be an awful thing To be shut out from light of day!-- From summer's grace, and bloom of spring In gladness words cannot portray. But haply into every heart May enter that Celestial Light That doth to life's dark ways impart A radiance hid from mortal sight. Revenge. Beside my window day and night, Its tendrils reaching left and right, A morning glory grew; With blossoms covered, pink and white And deep, delicious blue. Its care became my daily thought, Who to the sweet diversion brought A bit of florist skill To guide its progress, till it caught The meaning of my will. When through the trellis in and out It bent and turned and climbed about And so ambitious grew, O'erleaped a chasm beyond the spout Where raindrops trickled through, Then, in caressing, graceful way, Around a door knob twined one day With modest show of pride; All unaware that danger lay Just on the other side. An awkward, verdant "maid of work," Who dearly loved her tasks to shirk, While rummaging among Unused apartments, with a jerk The door wide open flung. And lo! there lay, uprooted quite, The object of my heart's delight-- I did not weep or rant, And yet a grain or two of spite My secret thoughts would haunt. So when at night her favorite beau Beside his charmer sat below-- That is, _dans le cuisine_-- Occurred, as all the neighbors know, A semi-tragic scene. The garden hose, obscured from view, Turned on itself and drenched the two-- A hapless circumstance That lengthened out her "frizzes" new, But shrunk his Sunday pants. Remember this was years agone-- The madcap now hath sober grown And hose is better wrought, And neither now would run alone The risk of being caught. On the Common. We met on "Boston Common"-- Of course it was by chance-- A sudden, unexpected, But happy circumstance That gave the dull October day A beautiful, refulgent ray. Like wandering refugees from A city of renown, Impelled to reconnoiter This Massachusetts town, Each by a common object urged, Upon the park our paths converged. Good nature, bubbling over In healthy, hearty laughs, And little lavish speeches Like pleasant paragraphs, The kind regard, unstudied joke, His true felicity bespoke. A bit of doleful knowledge Confided unto me, About the way the doctors-- Who never could agree-- His knees had tortured, softly drew My sympathy and humor, too. I hoped he wouldn't lose them, And languish in the dumps By having to quadrille on A pair of polished stumps-- But a corky limb, though one might dread, Isn't half as bad as a wooden head. He censured those empirics Who never heal an ill, Though bound by their diplomas To either cure or kill, Who should, with ignominy crowned, Their patients follow--under ground. I left him at the foot of "The Soldiers' Monument," With incoherent mutterings-- As though 'twere his intent To turn the sod, a rod or two, And sleep beside the "boys in blue." In Hartford's charming circles His bonhommie I miss, And having never seen him From that day unto this, I think of him with much regret As lying--with the soldiers--yet. Woman's Help. Sometimes I long to write an ode And magnify his name, The man of honor, on the road To opulence and fame, On whom was never aid bestowed By any helpful dame. To all the world I fain would show That talent widely known, Rare eloquence, of burning glow To melt a heart of stone, That all his gifts, a dazzling row, Are his, and his alone. But him, of character and mind Superb, alert, and strong, I never study but to find The subject of my song, Some paragon of womankind, Has helped him all along. He may not know, he may not guess, How much to her he owes, How every scion of success That in his nature grows, Developed by her watchfulness, Becomes a blooming rose. From buffetings in humble place, And labors ill begun, To proud achievement in the race And laurels grandly won, His trials all she dares to face As friend and champion. The bars that hinder his advance And half obscure the goal, The stubborn bond of circumstance That irritates his soul, The countershafts of arrogance, All yield to her control. He builds a tower--she below Is handing up the bricks; His light is brilliant just as though Her hand had trimmed the wicks; He prays for daily bread--the dough A woman deigns to mix. Tobogganing. Oh, the rare exhilaration, Oh, the novel delectation Of a ride down the slide! Packed like ice in zero weather, Pleasure-seekers close together, On a board as thin as wafer, Barely wider, scarcely safer, At the height of recreation Find a glorious inspiration, Ere the speedy termination In the snowy meadow wide, Sloping to the river's side. Oh, such quakers we begin it, Timorous of the icy route! But to learn in half a minute What felicity is in it, As we shoot down the chute, Smothered in toboggan suit, Redingote or roquelaure, Buttoned up (and down) before, Mittens, cap, and moccasin, Just the garb to revel in; So, the signal given, lo! Over solid ice and snow, Down the narrow gauge we go Swifter than a bird o'erhead, Swifter than an arrow sped From the staunchest, strongest bow. Oh, it beats all "Copenhagen," Silly lovers' paradise! Like the frozen Androscoggin, Slippery, and smooth, and nice, Is the track of the toboggan; And there's nothing cheap about it, Everything is steep about it, The insolvent weep about it, For the biggest thing on ice Is its tip-top price; But were this three times the money, Then the game were thrice as funny. Ye who dwell in latitudes Where "the blizzard" ne'er intrudes, And the water seldom freezes; Ye of balmy Southern regions, Alabama's languid legions, From the "hot blast" of your breezes, Where the verdure of the trees is Limp, and loose, and pitiful, Come up here where branches bare Stand like spikes in frosty air; Come up here where arctic rigor Shall restore your bloom and vigor, Making life enjoyable; Come and take a jog on The unparalleled toboggan! Such the zest that he who misses Never knows what perfect bliss is. So the sport, the day's sensation, Thrills and recreates creation. The Woods. I love the woods when the magic hand Of Spring, as if sweeping the keys Of a wornout instrument, touches the earth; When beauty and song in the gladness of birth Awaken the heart of the desolate land, And carol its rapture to every breeze. In summer's still solstice my steps are drawn To the shade of the forest trees; To revel with Pan in his secret haunts, To pipe mazourkas while satyrs dance, Or lull to soft slumber some favorite faun And fascinate strange wild birds and bees. I love the woods when autumnal fires Are kindled on every hill; When dead leaves rustle in grove and field, And trees are known by the fruits they yield, And the wild grapes, sweetened by frost, inspire A mildly-desperate, bibulous thrill. There's a joy for which I would fling to the air My petty portion of wealth and fame, In tracking the rabbit o'er fresh-fallen snow, The ways of the 'coon and opossum to know, To capture squirrels when branches are bare As the cupboard shelf of that ancient dame. Oh, I long to explore the woods again In my own aboriginal way, As before I knew how culture could frown On a hoydenish gait and a homespun gown Or dreamed that the strata of proud "upper-ten" Would smile at rusticity's _naïveté_. I sigh for the pleasures of long ago In youth's sweet halcyon time; When better beloved than the thoroughfare By multitudes trod were the woodlands, where Was never a path that I did not know, Nor thrifty sapling I dared not climb. Alas for lost freedom! Alas for me! For oh, Society's lip would curl, Propriety's self with scornful eye And gilt-edged Fashion would pass me by To know that sometimes I'm dying to be The romp, the rover, the same old girl. Like Summer. November? 'tis a summer's day! For tropic airs are blowing As soft as whispered roundelay From unseen lips that seem to say To feathered songsters going To sunnier, southern climes afar, "Stay where you are--stay where you are!" And other tokens glad as these Declare that Summer lingers: Round latent buds still hum the bees, Slow fades the green from forest trees Ere Autumn's artist fingers Have touched the landscape, and instead Brought out the amber, brown, and red. The invalid may yet enjoy His favorite recreation, Gay, romping girl, unfettered boy In outdoor sports the time employ, And happy consummation Of prudent plans the farmer know Ere wintry breezes round him blow. And they by poverty controlled-- Good fortune shall betide them As scenes of beauty they behold, And seem to revel in the gold Which Plutus has denied them; For, ah! the poor from want's despair Oft covet wealth they never share. Sheridan's Last Ride. While Phoebus lent his hottest rays To signalize midsummer days, I stood in that far-famed enclosure By thousands visited, Where, in the stillness of reposure, Are grouped battalions dead. Where, round each simple burial stone, The grass for decades twain has grown, Protecting them in dreamless slumber Who perished long ago, The multitudes defying number, A part of war's tableau. Along the winding avenue A vast procession came in view; The mourners' slow, advancing column With reverent step drew near, The "Dead March" playing, sad and solemn, Above a soldier's bier. There were the colonels, brigadiers, Comrades in arms of other years, Civilians, true and loyal-hearted To him their bravest man, Who seemed to say to those departed, "Make room for Sheridan!" Anon, beside the new-made mound, The warworn veterans gathered round, And spake of Lyon and of Lander, And others ranked as high, Recalling each his old commander, One not afraid to die. Thus, silent tenants one by one Are crowding in at Arlington; Thus Sheridan, the horseman daring, Has joined the honored corps Of those, their true insignia wearing, Who battle nevermore. Potomac's wave shall placid flow, And sing his requiem soft and low, His terrace grave be sweet with clover, And daisies star his bed, For Sheridan's last ride is over-- The General is dead! A Bit of Gladness. As I near my lonely cottage, At the close of weary day, There's a little bit of gladness Comes to meet me on the way: Dimpled, tanned, and petticoated, Innocent as angels are, Like a smiling, straying sunbeam Is my Stella--like a star. Soon a hand of tissue-softness Slips confidingly in mine, And with tender look appealing Eyes of beauty sweetly shine; Like a gentle shepherd guiding Some lost lamb unto the fold, So she leads me homeward, prattling Till her stories are all told. "Papa, I'm so glad to see you-- Cousin Mabel came today-- And the gas-man brought a letter That he said you'd better pay-- Yes, and _awful_ things is happened: My poor kitty's drowned to death-- Mamma's got the 'Pigs in Clover'--" Here she stops for want of breath. I am like the bold knight-errant, From his castle who would roam, Trusting her, my faithful steward, For a strict account of home; And each day I toil, and hazard All that any man may dare, For a resting-place at even, And the love that waits me there. And sometimes I look with pity On my neighbor's mansion tall: There are chambers full of pictures, There are marbles in the hall, Yet with all the signs of splendor That may gild a pile of stone, Not a living thing about it But the owner, grim and lone. I believe that all his millions He would give without repine For a little bit of gladness In his life, like that in mine; This it is that makes my pathway Beautiful, wherever trod, Keeps my soul from wreck and ruin, Keeps me nearer to my God. The Charity Ball. There was many a token of festal display, And reveling crowds who were never so gay, And, as it were Æolus charming the hours, An orchestra hidden by foliage and flowers; There were tapestries fit for the home of a queen, And mirrors that glistened in wonderful sheen; There was feasting and mirth in the banqueting-hall, For this was the annual Charity Ball. There were pompous civilians, in wealth who abide, Displaying their purses, the source of their pride; And plethoric dealers in margins and stocks, And owners of acres of elegant blocks, And tenement-landlords who cling to a cent When from the poor widow exacting her rent-- Immovable, stern, as an adamant wall-- And yet, who "came down" to this Charity Ball. There was Beauty whose toilet, superb and unique, Cost underpaid industry many a week Of arduous labor of eye, and heartache, Its starving inadequate pittance to make; There were mischievous maidens and cavaliers bold, Whose blushes and glances and coquetry told A tale of the monarch who held them in thrall-- Who met, as by chance, at the Charity Ball. There were delicate viands the poor never taste, And dollars were lavished in prodigal waste To pamper the palate of epicures rich; Who drew from the wine cellar's cavernous niche "Excelsior" brands of the rarest champagnes To loosen their tongues--though it pilfered their brains-- Oh, sad if a step in some woeful downfall Should ever be traced to a Charity Ball! Outside of the window, pressed close to the pane, And furrowed by tears that had fallen like rain, Was the face of a woman, so spectral in hue, With great liquid eyes, like twin oceans of blue, And cheeks in whose hollows were written the lines That pitiless hunger so often defines, Who muttered, as closer she gathered the shawl, "Oh, never for me is this Charity Ball!" From liveried hirelings who bade her begone, By uniformed minions compelled to move on, Out into the street again driven to roam-- For friends she had none, neither fortune nor home; While carnival-goers in morning's dull gray As homeward returning, fatigued and _blasé_, A vision encountered their hearts to appall, And banish all thought of the Charity Ball. As if seeking warmth from the icy curb-stone, A form half-reclining, half-clad, and unknown. Dead eyes looking up with a meaningless stare, Lay close to the crowded and broad thoroughfare; A form so emaciate the spirit had fled-- But the pulpit and press and the public all said, As society's doings they sought to recall, That a "brilliant success" was the Charity Ball. The Bell(e) of Baltimore. [One of the notable features of Baltimore is the big bell that hangs in the city hall tower, to strike the hour and sound the fire alarm. It is called "Big Sam," and weighs 5,000 pounds] A million feet above the ground (For so it seemed in winding round), A million, and two more, The latter stiff and sore, While perspiration formed a part Of every reeking pore, I viewed the city like a chart Spread out upon the floor. And said: "Great guide Jehoiakin, To me is meagre pleasure in The height of spires and domes, Of walls like ancient Rome's; Nor care I for the marts of trade, Or shelves of musty tomes, Nor yet for yonder colonnade Before your palace homes; "But curiosity is keen To know the city's reigning queen, Who suiteth well the score Of suitors at her door; Oh, which of your divinities Is she whom all adore? Embodiment of truth, _who is_ The belle of Baltimore?" Veracity's revolving eyes Looked up as if to read the skies: "Why, Lor'-a-miss, see dar-- De bell is in de air! Lan' sakes! of all de missteries Yo' nebber learn before! Why, don' yo' know 'Big Sam'? _He_ is De bell of Baltimore!" Christmas at Church. 'Twas drawing near the holiday, When piety and pity met In whisp'ring council, and agreed That Christmas time, in homes of need, Should be remembered in a way They never could forget. Then noble generosity Took youth and goodness by the hand, And planned a thousand charming ways To celebrate this best of days, While hearts were held in sympathy By love's encircling band. So multitudes together came, Like wandering magi from the East With precious gifts unto the King, With every good and perfect thing To satisfy a shivering frame Or amplify a feast. The angels had looked long and far The happy scene to parallel, When through the sanctuary door Were carried gifts from shop and store, The treasures of the rich bazaar, To give--but not to sell. As once the apostolic twelve Of goods allotment made, So equity dealt out with care The widow's and the orphan's share, And of the aged forced to delve At drudging task or trade. Oh, could the joy which tears express That out of gladness come Be mirrored in its tender glow, Before the beautiful tableau Ingratitude and selfishness Would shrink abashed and dumb! If every year and everywhere Could kindness thus expand In bounteous gratuity, To all her children earth would be A flowery vale like Eden fair, A milk-and-honey land. Mysterious. The morning sun rose bright and fair Upon a lovely village where Prosperity abounded, And ceaseless hum of industry In lines of friendly rivalry From day to day resounded. Its shaded avenues were wide, And closely bordered either side With cottages or mansions, Or marked by blocks of masonry That might defy a century To loosen from their stanchions. Its peaceful dwellers daily vied To make this spot, with anxious pride, A Paradise of beauty, Recounted its attractions o'er, And its adornment held no more A pleasure than a duty. But, ere the daylight passed away, That hamlet fair in ruins lay, Its hapless people scattered Like playthings, at the cyclone's will, And scarce remained one domicile Its fury had not shattered. Few moments of the tempest's wrath Sufficed to mark one dreadful path With scenes of devastation; While over piles of wild débris Rose shrieks of dying agony Above the desolation. Oh, mystery! who can understand Why, sudden, from God's mighty hand Destructive bolts of power Without discrimination strike The evil and the good alike-- As in that dreadful hour! Alas for aching hearts that wait Today in homes made desolate By one sharp blow appalling-- For all who kneel by altars lone, And strive to say "Thy will be done," That awful day recalling! We dare not question his decrees Who seeth not as mortal sees, Nor doubt his goodness even; Nor let our hearts be dispossessed Of faith that he disposeth best All things in earth and Heaven. "Be not Anxious." "Be careful for nothing," Phil. iv. 6. Revised version, "Be not anxious." Of all the precepts in the Book By word of inspiration given, That bear the import, tone, and look Of messages direct from heaven, From Revelation back to Genesis Is nothing needed half so much as this. Ah, well the great apostle spake In admonition wise and kind, Who bade humanity forsake The petty weaknesses that bind The spirit like a bird with pinioned wings, That to a broken bough despairing clings. Were all undue anxiety Eliminated from desire, Could feverish fears and fancies be Consumèd on some funeral pyre, Like holy hecatomb or sacrifice, 'Twould be accepted up in Paradise. Could this machinery go on Without the friction caused by fret, What greater loads were lightly drawn, More easily were trials met; Then might existence be with blessings rife, And lengthened out like Hezekiah's life. Oh, be not anxious; trouble grows When cherished like a secret grief; It is the worm within the rose That eats the heart out leaf by leaf; And though the outer covering be fair, The weevil of decay is busy there. In deep despondency to pine, Or vain solicitude, Is to deny this truth divine That God is great and good; That he is Ruler over earth and Heaven, And so disposes and makes all things even. Mount Vernon. Subdued and sad, I trod the place Where he, the hero, lived and died; Where, long-entombed beneath the shade By willow bough and cypress made, The peaceful scene with verdure rife, He and the partner of his life, Beloved of every land and race, Are sleeping side by side. The summer solstice at its height Reflected from Potomac's tide A glare of light, and through the trees Intensified the Southern breeze, That dallied, in the deep ravines, With graceful ferns and evergreens, While Northern cheeks so strangely white Grew dark as Nubia's pride. What must this homestead once have been In boundless hospitality, When Greene or Putnam may have met The host who welcomed Lafayette, Or when Pulaski, honored guest, Accepted shelter, food and rest, While rank and talent gathered in Its banquet hall of luxury! What comfort, cheer, and kind intent The weary stranger oft hath known When she, its mistress, fair and good, Reigned here in peerless womanhood, When soft, shy maiden fancy gave Encouragement to soldiers brave, And Washington his presence lent To grace its bright hearthstone! O beautiful Mount Vernon home, The Mecca of our long desire; Of more than passing interest To North and South, to East and West, To all Columbia's children free A precious, priceless legacy, Thine altar-shrine, as pilgrims come, Rekindles patriot fire! A Prisoner. Where I can see him all day long And hear his wild, spontaneous song, Before my window in his cage, A blithe canary sits and swings, And circles round on golden wings; And startles all the vicinage When from his china tankard He takes a dainty drink To clear his throat For as sweet a note As ever yet was caroled By lark or bobolink. Sometimes he drops his pretty head And seems to be dispirited, And then his little mistress says: "Poor Dickie misses his chickweed, Or else I've fed him musty seed As stale as last year's oranges!" But all the time I wonder If we half comprehend In sweet song-words The thought of birds, Or why so oft their raptures In sudden silence end. They do not pine for forest wilds Within the "blue Canary isles," As exiles from their native home, For in a foreign domicile They first essayed their gamut-trill Beneath a cage's gilded dome; But maybe some sad throbbing Betimes their spirits stirs, Who love as we Dear liberty, That they, admired and petted, Are only--prisoners. Cuba. As one long struggling to be free, O suffering isle! we look to thee In sympathy and deep desire That thy fair borders yet shall hold A people happy, self-controlled, Saved and exalted--as by fire. Burning like thine own tropic heat Thousands of lips afar repeat The story of thy wrongs and woes; While argosies to thee shall bear, Of men and money everywhere, Strength to withstand thy stubborn foes. Hispaniola waves her plume Defiant over many a tomb Where sleep thy sons, the true and brave; But, lo! an army coming on The places fill of heroes gone, For liberty their lives who gave. The nations wait to hear thy shout Of "Independence!" ringing out, Chief of the Antilles, what wilt thou? Buffets and gyves from your effete Old monarchy dilapidate, Or freedom's laurels for thy brow? In man's extremity it is That Heaven's opportunities Shine forth like jewels from the mine; Then, Cuba, in thy hour of need, With vision clear the tokens read And trust for aid that power divine. The Sangamon River. O sunny Sangamon! thy name to me, Soft-syllabled like some sweet melody, Familiar is since adolescent years As household phrases ringing in my ears; Its measured cadence sounding to and fro From the dim corridors of long ago. There was a time in happy days gone by, That rosy interval of youth, when I The scholar ardent early learned to trace Great tributaries to their starting place; And thine some prairie hollow obsolete Whose name how few remember or repeat. Like thee, meandering, yet wafted back From distant hearth and lonely bivouac, From strange vicissitudes in other lands, From half-wrought labors and unfinished plans I come, in thy cool depths my brow to lave, And rest a moment by thy silver wave. But, ah! what means thy muddy, muggy hue? I thought thee limpid as yon ether blue; I thought an angel's wing might dip below Thy sparkling surface and be white as snow; And of thy current I had dared to drink If not as one imbibing draughts of ink. Has some rough element of horrid clay That spoils the earth like lava beds, they say, Come sliding down, as avalanches do, And thy fair bosom percolated through? Or some apothecary's compound vile Polluted thee so many a murky mile? Why not, proud State, beneficence insure, Selling thy soil or giving to the poor? For sad it is that dust of Illinois, With coal and compost its conjoint alloy, A morceau washed from Mississippi's mouth, Should build up acres for our neighbors south. River! I grieve, but not for loss of dirt-- Once stainless, just because of what thou wert. Thus on thy banks I linger and reflect That, surely as all waterways connect, Forever flowing onward to the sea, Shall the great billow thy redemption be. And now, dear Sangamon, farewell! I wait On that Elysian scene to meditate When, separated from the dregs of earth, Life's stream shall sweeter be, of better worth; And, like the ocean with its restless tide, By its own action cleansed and purified. Syringas. The smallest flower beside my path, In loveliness of bloom, Some element of comfort hath To rid my heart of gloom; But these, of spotless purity, And fragrant as the rose, As sad a sight recall to me As time shall e'er disclose. Oh, there are pictures on the brain Sometimes by shadows made, Till dust is blent with dust again, That never, never fade; And things supremely bright and fair As ever known in life Suggest the darkness of despair, And sanguinary strife. I shut my eyes; 'tis all in vain-- The battle-field appears, And one among the thousands slain In manhood's brilliant years; An elbow pillowing his head, And on the crimson sand Syringa-blooms, distained and dead, Within his rigid hand. Could she foresee, who from the stem Had plucked that little spray Of flowers, that he would cherish them Unto his dying day? "Give these to M----;--'tis almost night-- And tell her--that--I love--" Alas! the letter he would write Was finished up above. And so, with each recurring spring, On Decoration day, When to our heroes' graves we bring The blossom-wealth of May, While martial strains are soft and low, And music seems a prayer, Unto a hallowed spot I go, And leave syringas there. Storm-bound. My careful plans all storm-subdued, In disappointing solitude The weary hours began; And scarce I deemed when time had sped, Marked only by the passing tread Of some pedestrian. But with the morrow's tranquil dawn, A fairy scene I looked upon That filled me with delight; Far-reaching from my own abode, The world in matchless splendor glowed, Arrayed in spotless white. The surface of the hillside slope Gleamed in my farthest vision's scope Like opalescent stone; Rich jewels hung on every tree, Whose crystalline transparency Golconda's gems outshone. Beyond the line where wayside posts Stood up, like fear-inspiring ghosts Of awful form and mien, A mansion tall, my neighbor's pride, A seeming castle fortified, Uprose in wondrous sheen. The evergreens loomed up before My staunch and storm-defying door, Like snowy palaces That one dare only penetrate With reverence--as at Heaven's gate, Awed by its mysteries. The apple trees' extended arms Upheld a thousand varied charms; The curious tracery Of trellised grapevine seemed to me A rare network of filigree In silver drapery. And I no longer thought it hard From favorite pursuits debarred, Nor gazed with rueful face; For every object seemed to be Invested with the witchery Of magic art and grace. And, though a multitude of cares, Perplexing, profitless affairs, Absorbed the hours, it seems That on the golden steps of thought I mounted heavenward, and wrought Out many hopeful schemes. Thus every day, though it may span The gulf wherein some cherished plan Lies disarranged and crossed, If, ere its close, we shall have trod The path that leads us nearer God, Cannot be counted lost. The Master of the Grange. The type of enterprise is he, Of sense and thrift and toil; Who reckons less on pedigree Than rich, productive soil; And no "blue blood"--if such there be-- His veins can ever spoil. And yet on blood his heart is set; He has his sacred cow, Some Alderney or Jersey pet, The mistress of the mow; His favorite pig is (by brevet) "Lord Suffolk"--of the slough. To points of stock is he alive As keenest cattle king; A thoroughbred he deigns to drive, But not a mongrel thing; The very bees within his hive Are crossed--without a sting. If apple-boughs drop pumpkins and Tomatoes grow on trees, It is because his grafting hand Has so diverted these That alien shoots with native stand Like twin-born Siamese. No neater farm a nabob owns, Its care his chief employ, To find fertility in bones And briers to destroy, Where once he lightly skipped the stones A whistling, happy boy. The ancient plough and awkward flail He banished long ago; The zigzag fence with ponderous rail He dares to overthrow; And wields, with sinews strong and hale, The latest style of hoe. The household, founded as it were Upon the Decalogue, He classes with the minister, The rural pedagogue, And as a sort of angel-cur Regards his spotted dog. His wife reviews the magazines, His children lead the school, He tries a thousand new machines (And keeps his temper cool), But bristles at Kentucky jeans, And her impressive mule. With Science letting down the bars, Enlightening ignorance, Enigmas deeper than the stars He solves as by a glance, And raises cinnamon cigars From poor tobacco plants! By no decree of fashion dressed, And busier than Fate, The student-farmer keeps abreast With mighty men of state, And treasures, like his Sunday vest, The motto "Educate!" Beyond encircling hills of blue, Where I may never range, This monarch in his realm I view, Of title new and strange, And make profound obeisance to "The Master of the Grange." A Friend Indeed. If every friend who meditates In soft, unspoken thought With winning courtesy and tact The doing of a kindly act To cheer some lonely lot, Were like the friend of whom I dream, Then hardship but a myth would seem. If sympathy were always thus Oblivious of space, And, like the tendrils of the vine, Could just as lovingly incline To one in distant place, 'Twould draw the world together so Might none the name of stranger know. If every throb responsive that My ardent spirit thrills Could, like the skylark's ecstasy, Be vocal in sweet melody, Beyond dividing hills In octaves of the atmosphere Were music wafted to his ear. If every friendship were like one, So helpful and so true, To other hearts as sad as mine 'Twould bring the joy so near divine, And hope revive anew; So life's dull path would it illume, And radiate beyond the tomb. The Needed One. 'Twas not rare versatility, Nor gift of poesy or art, Nor piquant, sparkling _jeux d'esprit_ Which at the call of fancy come, That touched the universal heart, And won the world's encomium. It was not beauty's potent charm; For admiration followed her Unmindful of the rounded arm, The fair complexion's brilliancy, If form and features shapely were Or lacked the grace of symmetry. So not by marked, especial power She grew endeared to human thought, But just because, in trial's hour, Was loving service to be done Or sympathy and counsel sought, She made herself the needed one. Oh, great the blessedness must be Of heart and hand and brain alert In projects wise and manifold, Impending sorrow to avert That duller natures fail to see, Or stand aloof severe and cold! And who shall doubt that this is why In womanhood's florescent prime She passed the portals of the sky? As if a life thus truly given To purpose pure and act sublime Were needed also up in Heaven. "Thy Will Be Done." Sometimes the silver cord of life Is loosed at one brief stroke; As when the elements at strife, With Nature's wild contentions rife, Uproot the sturdy oak. Or fell disease, in patience borne, Attenuates the frame Till the meek sufferer, wan and worn, Of energy and beauty shorn, Death's sweet release would claim. By instant touch or long decay Is dissolution wrought; When, lost to earth, the grave and gay, The young and old who pass away, Abide in hallowed thought. In dear regard together drawn, Affection's debt to pay, Fond greetings we exchange at dawn With one who, ere the day be gone, Is bruised and lifeless clay. O thou in manhood's morning-time With health and hope elate, For whom in youth's enchanting prime The bells of promise seemed to chime, We mourn thy early fate! To us how sudden--yet to thee Perchance God kindly gave Some warning, ere the fatal key Unlocked the door of mystery That lies beyond the grave. Then let us hope that one who found Such favor, trust, and love, And cordial praise from all around, For rare fidelity renowned, Found favor, too, above. So "all is well," though swift or slow God's will be done; and we Draw near to him, for close and low Beneath his chastening hand, the blow Will fall less heavily. Snowflakes. Of specious weight like tissue freight The snowflakes are--in sparkle pure As the rich _parure_ A lovely queen were proud to wear; As volatile, as fine and rare As thistle-down dispersed in air, Or bits of filmy lace; Like nature's tear-drops strewn around That beautify and warm the ground, But melt upon my face. A ton or more against my door They lie, and look, in form and tint, Like piles of lint, When war's alarum roused the land, Wrought out by woman's loyal hand From linen rag, and robe, and band-- From garments cast aside-- In hospital, on battle-field The shattered limb that bound and healed, Or stanched life's ebbing tide. I see the gleam of lake and stream, The silver glint in frost portrayed Of the bright cascade; They bear the moisture of marshes dank, The dew of the lawn, or river bank, The river itself by sunlight drank; All these in frigid air, That strange alembic, crystallize In odd, fantastic shape and size Like gems of dazzling glare. Oh, of the snow such fancies grow, 'Till thought is lost in wandering, And wondering If portions of their drapery The angel beings, sad to see So much of earth's impurity, Have dropped from clearer skies As snowflakes, hiding stain and blot To make this world a fairer spot, And more like Paradise. Monadnock. One summer time, with love imbued, To climb the mount, explore the wood, Or rove from pole to pole, Upon Monadnock's brow I stood-- A lone, adventurous soul. Beyond the Bay State border-line A sweeping vista, grand and fine, Embraced the Berkshire hills; Embosomed hamlets, clumps of pine, And country domiciles. Afar, Mount Tom, in verdantique, And Holyoke, twin companion peak, Appeared gigantic cones; The burning sunlight scorched my cheek, And seemed to melt the stones. Beneath a gnarled and twisted root I loosed a pebble with my foot That leaped the precipice, And like an arrow seemed to shoot Adown the deep abyss. Beside the base that solstice day A city chap who chanced to stray Was shooting somewhat, too; Who, when the nugget sped that way, His firelock quickly drew. While right and left he sought the quail, Or the timid hare that crossed his trail, Rang out a wild "Ha! ha!" That might have turned the visage pale Of a red-skinned Chippewa. The game was his--for it made him quail; He flung his gun and fled the vale, The mountain-dwellers say, As though pursued by a comet's tail-- And disappeared for aye. Never Had a Chance Fresh from piano, school, and books, A happy girl with rosy looks Young Plowman wooed and won; despite Her pretty, pouting prejudice, Her deep distaste for rural bliss Or countryfied delight. Romance through all her nature ran-- Indeed, to wed a husband-man Suffused her ardent maiden thought; But lofty fancy dwelt upon A new "Queen Anne," a terraced lawn, A city's corner lot. Her lily fingers that so well Could paint a scene--in aquarelle-- Or broider plush with leaves and vines, No more of real labor knew Than waxen petals of the dew On native eglantines. Anon, with lapse of tender ways That emphasized the courting days, The housewife in her apron blue, As mistress of her new abode, By frequent lachrymations showed Her grief and blunders too. The butter-making, bread and cheese, The old folks difficult to please, The harvest hands--voracious bears!-- The infantry, a parent's pride, By duos proudly classified: So multiplied her cares. The treadmill round of duties that Makes any life inane and flat, Without diversion sandwiched in, The drudgery, the overplus Of toil and trouble arduous, Were rugged discipline. What time for books and music, when The lambs were bleating in their pen, The chickens peeping at the door; The rodent gnawing at the churn, The buckwheat wafers crisped to burn, The kettle boiling o'er? To _hers_, so far between and few, What resting-spells the farmer knew! What intervals for culture! and When intellect assumed the race, He peerless held the foremost place-- No nobler in the land. By virtue of exalted rank "The brilliant senator from----" Adorns society's expanse; While by his side with folded hands, Her beauty gone, the woman stands Who "never had a chance." Sorrow and Joy. In sad procession borne away To sound of funeral knell, Affection's tribute thus we pay, And in earth's shelt'ring bosom lay The friend to whom but yesterday We gave the sad farewell. But scarce the melancholy sound Has died upon the ear, Before the mournful dirge is drowned By wedding-anthems' glad rebound, That stir the solemn air around With merry peals and clear. Within our home doth gladness tread So closely upon grief That, in the tears of sorrow shed O'er our beloved, lamented dead, We see reflected joy instead That gives a blest relief. A father and a daughter gone Beyond our fireside-- For one we loved and leaned upon The skillful archer Death had drawn His bow; and one in life's sweet dawn Went out a happy bride. We gave to Heaven, in manhood's prime, Him whose brave strength and worth Life's rugged steeps had taught to climb; And her, for whom a tuneful rhyme The bells of promise sweetly chime, We consecrate to earth. Thus each a mystic path, untried, Has entered--God is just! We leave with him our friend who died, With him we leave our fair young bride Who shall no more with us abide, And in His goodness trust. Oh, life and death, uncertainty, Bright hopes and anxious fears, Commingle so bewilderingly, That perfect joy we may not see Till all shall reunited be Beyond this vale of tears! Watch Hill. Fair summer home peninsula, Enriched by every breeze From fragrant islands, wafted far Across the sunny seas! A profile rare! a height of land Outlined 'gainst heaven's blue With bolder touch than skillful hand Of artist ever drew. In "mountain billows" that parade The grandeur of the deep, Is His supremacy displayed Whose hands the waters keep. No sweep of waves, in broad expanse, With wild, weird melody, Shall thus an unseen world enhance-- "There shall be no more sea!" A wealth of joy-perfected days, Where glorious sunset dyes, Resplendent in declining rays, Surpass Italia's skies! Proud caravansaries that compete In studied arts to please The multitude, with restless feet, From earth's antipodes! A motley company astray: The sojourner for health, The grave, serene, the _devotée_ Of fashion and of wealth. Artistic cottages upreared In beauty, strength, and skill-- The happy, healthful homes endeared To lovers of Watch Hill! A golden crown adorns the spot; Forever blessed be The hand beneficent that wrought "A temple by the sea!" A star in some bright diadem In glory it shall be, For truly, "I will honor them," Saith God, "who honor me." When Christians meet to praise and pray, May feet that never trod The sanctuary learn the way Unto the house of God. Glad pæans down the centuries With joy the world shall thrill: "The Lord, revered and honored, is The glory of Watch Hill!" Supplicating. One morn I looked across the way, And saw you fling your window wide To welcome in the breath of May In breezes from the mountain-side, And greet the sunlight's earliest ray With happy look and satisfied. The pansies on your window-sill In terra cotta flowerpot, Like royal gold and purple frill Upon the stony casement wrought, Adorned your tasteful domicile And claimed your time and care and thought. In cherry trees the robins sang Their sweetest carol to your ear, And shouts of merry children rang Out on the dewy atmosphere, But to my heart there came a pang That my salute you did not hear. I envied then the favored breeze That dallied with your flowing hair, Begrudged the songsters in the trees And longed to be a flow'ret fair-- Some favorite blossom like heartease-- Within your miniature parterre. O heart, that finds such ample room Within thy confines broad and true, For song and sunshine and perfume And all benign impulses--go, I pray thee, dissipate my gloom-- And take in thy petitioner too! "Honest John." He was a man whose lot was cast, As some might think, in lines severe; In humble toil whose life was passed From week to week, from year to year; And yet, by wife and children blessed, He labored on with cheerful zest. As one revered and set apart, A quaint, unusual name he bore That well became the frugal heart; While plain habiliments he wore Without a tremor or a chill At thought of some uncanceled bill. A king might not disdain to wear The title so appropriate To one who never sought to share Exalted station 'mong the great, Nor cared if on the scroll of fame Were never traced his worthy name. As bound by honor's righteous law In strictest rectitude he wrought-- The man who calmly, clearly saw His duty, and who dallied not-- To garner life's necessities For those whose comfort heightened his. The parent bird its brood protects As fledglings in their downy nest, Until a Power their flight directs From trial trips to distant quest, Through trackless zones of ether blue, For bird companions strange and new. But ere his babes from prattlers grew, Upon his knee or by his side, To womanhood and manhood true-- Too soon we thought--the father died; How could we know, when Death was nigh Those little wings were taught to fly? Another name his boyhood knew, So seldom heard that lapse of years Had made it seem a thing untrue, Unmusical to friendly ears; And thus his appellation odd His passport was where'er he trod. So long, on every lip and tongue As if by universal whim, To him had his cognomen clung, And like a garment fitted him, That angels even must have heard Of one, like them, in love preferred. And when he came to Heaven's door, To Peter's self or acolyte, The holy warder looking o'er, "'Tis 'Honest John!'" he said aright; And his pilgrim spirit passed within Because his walk with God had been. Bushnell Park. Sweet resting place! that long hath been A boon Elysian 'mid the din Of city life, 'mid city smoke; Where weary ones who toil and spin Have turned aside as to an inn Whose swinging sign a welcome spoke; Where misanthropes find medicine In peals of laughter that begin With ancient, resurrected joke, Or ready wit of harlequin; Where children, free from discipline, Take on Diversion's easy yoke. Fair oasis! to view aright Its charming paths, its sloping height, Its beautiful and broad expanse, Must one approach in witching night When, like abodes of airy sprite Revealed unto the wondering glance, O'erflooded with electric light Than Luna's beams more dazzling bright, Illumined nooks the scene enhance; While zephyrs mischievous unite The timid stroller to affright By swaying boughs in shadow dance. The Capitol that crowns the hill Where Boreas sweeps with icy chill, A masterpiece of studied art Conceived by genius versatile And fashioned with unerring skill, O'erlooks the busy, crowded mart, And, like a kingly domicile, Its burnished dome and sculpture thrill With admiration every heart; And strangers pause beyond the rill To view its grandeur, lingering still, And with reluctant steps depart. O Bushnell Park, memorial soil! That marks success (though near to foil) Of one who with prophetic ken, With honest zeal and ceaseless toil, Opposed the vandal wish to spoil This lovely bit of vale and glen; Who, 'mid discussion and turmoil Of adverse minds, did not recoil From vigorous stroke of tongue and pen; And then, till passion ceased to boil, On troubled waters poured out oil And to his plans won other men. So when, fatigued and overwrought, In summer time when skies are hot We seek its verdant, velvet sward, Oh may we hold in reverent thought The debt we owe, forgetting not The spirit passed to its reward Of one whose giant soul was fraught With true benignity--who sought To touch humanity's quick chord With fire from Heaven's altar brought, That love and zeal and being caught As inspiration from the Lord. At General Grant's Tomb. Afar my loyal spirit stirred At mention of his name; Afar in ringing notes I heard The clarion voice of fame; So to his tomb, hope long deferred, With reverent step I came. The pilgrim muse revivified A half-forgotten day: A slow procession, tearful-eyed, In funeral array, And from MacGregor's lonely side A hero borne away. Here sleeps he now, where long ago Hath nature raised his mound: A mighty channel far below, Divided hills around, Where countless thousands come and go As to a shrine renowned. With awe do strangers' eyes discern A casket mid the green Luxuriance of flower and fern; Airy and cool and clean, Unchanged from spring to spring's return, This charnel chamber scene. His country's weal his care and thought, Beloved in peace was he; Magnanimous in war--shall not The nation grateful be, And render at his burial spot A testimonial free? Oh, let us, ere the days come on When energy is spent, To him, the silent soldier gone, Statesman and President, On Riverside's majestic lawn Uprear a monument. "Be Courteous." Ah, yes; why not? Is one more adventitious born Than others--shekels richer, honors fuller, and all that-- That he can pass his fellows by with lofty scorn, Nor even show this slight regard--the lifting of the hat? Why prate of social status, class, or rank when earth Is common tenting-ground, the heritage of all mankind? Except in purity is there no royal birth, No true nobility but nobleness of heart and mind. Life is so short--one journey long, a pilgrimage That we cannot retrace, nor ever pass this way again; Then why not turn for some poor soul a brighter page, And line the way with courtesies unto our fellow-men? To give a graceful word or smile, or lend a hand To one downcast and trembling on the borders of despair, May help him to look up and better understand Why God has made the sky so bright and put the rainbow there. Be courteous! is nothing helpful half so cheap As kind urbanity that doth so much of gladness bring; More precious too than all the treasures of the deep, Making the winter of discomfort seem like joyous spring. Be courteous and gentle! be serene and good! Those grand ennobling and enduring virtues all may claim; Of each may it be said, of the great multitude: Oh that my life were more like such an one of blessed fame! Is it that over-crowding, care, anxiety, Vortex of pleasure, the incessant round of toil and strife, Beget indifference, repressing love and sympathy, Till we forget the beautiful amenities of life? Then cometh a sad day, when with a poignant sting Lost opportunities shall speak to us reproachfully; And ours shall be the disapproval of the King-- "Discourteous to these, my creatures, ye have wounded Me." A New Suit. The artist and the loom unseen, In textures soft as _crepe de chine_ Spring weaves her royal robe of green, With grasses fringed and daisies dotted, With furzy tufts like mosses fine And showy clumps of eglantine, With dainty shrub and creeping vine Upon the verdant fabric knotted. Oh, winter takes our love away For ashen hues of sober gray! So when the blooming, blushing May Comes out in bodice, cap, and kirtle, With arbutus her corsage laced, And roses clinging to her waist, We crown her charming queen of taste, Her chaplet-wreath of modest myrtle. For eighteen centuries and more Her fairy hands have modeled o'er The same habiliments she wore At her primeval coronation; And still the pattern exquisite, For every age a perfect fit, In every land the favorite, Elicits world-wide admiration. Gay butterflies of fashion, you Who wear a suit a year or two, Then agitate for something new, Look at Regina, the patrician! Her cleverness is more than gold Who so transforms from fabrics old The things a marvel to behold, And glories in the exhibition. Why worry for an overdress, The acme of luxuriousness, Beyond all envy to possess, Renewed as oft as lambkin fleeces! Why flutter round in pretty pique To follow style's capricious freak, To match _pongee_ or _moire antique_, And break your peace in hopeless pieces? O mantua-maker, costumer, And fair-robed wearer! study _her_ And imitate the conjurer So prettily economizing, Without demur, regret, or pout, Who always puts the bright side out And never frets at all about The world's _penchant_ for criticizing. The Little Clock. Kind friend, you do not know how much I prize this time-ly treasure, So dainty, diligent, and such A constant source of pleasure. The man of brains who could invent So true a chrono-meter Has set a charming precedent, And made a good repeater. It speaks with clear, commanding clicks, Suggestive of the donor; And 'tends to business--never sick A bit more than the owner. It goes when I do; when I stop (As by the dial showing) It never lets a second drop, But simply keeps on going. It tells me when I am to eat, Which isn't necessary; When food with me is obsolete, I'll be a reliquary. It tells me early when to rise, And bother with _dejeuner_; To sally forth and exercise, And fill up my _porte-monnaie_. I hear it talking in the night, As if it were in clover: You've never lost your appetite, You've never been run over. It makes me wish that I might live More faithful unto duty, And unto others something give Like this bijou of beauty. It holds its hands before its face, So very modest is it; So like the people in the place Where I delight to visit. Sometimes I wonder if it cries The course I am pursuing; Because it has so many I-s And must know what I'm doing. Sometimes I fear it makes me cry-- No matter, and no pity-- Afraid at last I'll have to die In some far, foreign city. It travels with me everywhere And chirrups like a cricket; As if it said with anxious air, "Don't lose your tick-tick-ticket!" Companion of my loneliness Along my journey westward, It never leaves me comfortless, But has the last and best word. I would not spoil its lovely face, And so I go behind it, And hold it like a china vase, So careful when I wind it. A clock is always excellent That has its label on, And proves a fine advertisement For Waterbury, Conn. Those Yankees--ah! they never shun A chance to make a dime, And counterfeit the very sun In keeping "Standard Time." Ah, well! the little clock has proved The best of all bonanzas; And thus my happy heart is moved To these effusive stanzas. Improvement. Along the avenue I pass Huge piles of wood and stone, And glance at each amorphous mass, Whose cumbrous weight has crushed the grass, With half resentful groan. Say I: "O labor, to despoil Some lovely forest scene, Or at the granite stratum toil, And desecrate whole roods of soil, Is vandal-like and mean! "Than ever to disfigure thus Our prairie garden-land, Let me consort with Cerberus, Be chained to crags precipitous, Or seek an alien strand." But while this pining, pouting Muse The interval ignores, Deft industry, no time to lose, Contrives and carries, hoists and hews, And symmetry restores. Behold! of rock and pile and board A modern miracle, My neighbor's dwelling, roofed and floored, That rapid grew as Jonah's gourd, And far more beautiful. The artisan's receding gait Has brushed the chips away, Where innocence shall recreate, Or like the flowers grow, and wait The balminess of May. An arid spot, where careless feet Have long been wont to roam, Where cattle grazed, as if to eat Were life's delicious, richest treat, Becomes a charming home. O man primeval! hadst thou known, Ere rude hands scooped thy grave, Of Homestead Act, or Building Loan, Thou wouldst have quite disdained to own A rugged cliff or cave. And now I see how skill and art May cleave fair nature through, Disintegrate her breathing heart, And to the tissues torn impart A use and beauty new. And this improvement is, to turn The things which God has given To their best purpose, as we learn To make the place where we sojourn Homelike and more like Heaven. On Bancroft Height. On Bancroft height Aurora's face Shines brighter than a star, As stepping forth in dewy grace, The gates of day unbar; And lo! the firmament, the hills, And the vales that intervene-- Creation's self with gladness thrills To greet the matin queen. On Bancroft height the atmosphere Is but an endless waft Of life's elixir, pure and clear As mortal ever quaffed; And such the sweet salubrity Of air and altitude, Is banished many a malady And suffering subdued. On Bancroft height the sunset glow When day departing dies Outrivals all that tourists know Of famed Italian skies; And happy dwellers round about Who view the scene aright In admiration grow devout And laud the Lord of light. Round Bancroft height rich memories Commingle earth's affairs, Among the world's celebrities, Of him whose name it bears; The scholar-wise compatriot Who left to later men The grand achievements unforgot Of that historic pen. Fair Bancroft height revisited When all the land is white, A halo crowns its noble head Impelling fresh delight; The daring wish in winter-time The blizzard to defy Those shining slippery slopes to climb Up nearer to the sky. Though Boreas abrade the cheek With buffetings of snow, He gives a vigor that the weak And languid never know; And with rejuvenescent thrill, Like children everywhere, Bestirs the rhapsody, the will To make a snow-man there. On Bancroft height and Bancroft tower Such vistas charm the eye 'Twere life's consummate, glorious hour But to behold--and die; Yet in the sparkle and the glow Is earth so very fair The spirit lingers, loath to go, And dreams of heaven--up there. A Reformer. When I was young, my heart elate With ardent notions warm, I thirsted to inaugurate A spirit of reform; The universe was all awry, Philosophy despite, And mundane things disjointed I Was bound to set aright. My mind conceived a million plans, For Hope was brave and strong, But dared not with unaided hands Combat a giant wrong; So with caress I sought to coax Those who had humored me In infancy--the dear old folks-- And gain their sympathy. But quarreling with extant laws They would have deemed a shame Who clung to error, just because Their fathers did the same. I sought in Pleasure's gilded halls, Where grace and beauty stirred At revelry's impetuous calls, To make my projects heard. Then turned to stately palaces Of luxury and ease, Where wealth's absorbing object was The master's whim to please; And spoke of evils unredressed, Of danger yet to be-- They only answered, like the rest: "But what is that to me?" And even pious _devotées_ Whom sacred walls immure Condemned me (as by feeble praise)-- What more could I endure? Down by the stream, so pure and clear That sunbeams paused to drink, In loneliness and grief sincere I pressed its grassy brink. Thick darkness seemed to veil the day; Beyond a realm of tears Utopia's land of promise lay; And not till later years I learned this lesson--that to win Results from labor sure, "Reformers" always must begin Among the lowly poor. For they whose lot privation is And whose delights are few, Whose aggregate of miseries Is want of something new, The measure of whose happiness Is but an empty cup, For every novelty will press Alert to fill it up. Transcriber's Notes: Page 27: Changed Galiee to Galilee (Printer's Error) Page 47: Indented 1st stanza to match others Page 173: Changed prarie to prairie (Printer's Error) 
17119	----	[Illustration: James Russell Lowell.] The Riverside Literature Series THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL AND OTHER POEMS BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL _WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH AND NOTES A PORTRAIT AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS_ [Illustration: THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL] HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY Boston: 4 Park Street; New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street Chicago: 378-388 Wabash Avenue The Riverside Press, Cambridge Copyright, 1848, 1857, 1866, 1868, 1869, 1876, and 1885, By JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. Copyright, 1887, 1894, and 1896, By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. CONTENTS A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. I. ELMWOOD II. EDUCATION III. FIRST VENTURES IV. VERSE AND PROSE V. PUBLIC LIFE INTRODUCTORY NOTE THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL PRELUDE TO PART FIRST PART FIRST PRELUDE TO PART SECOND PART SECOND ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION ON BOARD THE '76 AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE THE FIRST SNOW-FALL THE OAK PROMETHEUS TO W.L. GARRISON WENDELL PHILLIPS MR. HOSEA BIGLOW TO THE EDITOR OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY VILLA FRANCA THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY ALADDIN BEAVER BROOK THE SHEPHERD OF KING ADMETUS THE PRESENT CRISIS AL FRESCO THE FOOT-PATH LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL(from a crayon by William Page in 1842, owned by Mrs. Charles F. Briggs, Brooklyn, N. Y.) _Frontispiece_ ELMWOOD, MR. LOWELL'S HOME IN CAMBRIDGE AS SIR LAUNFAL MADE MORN THROUGH THE DARKSOME GATE SO HE MUSED, AS HE SAT, OF A SUNNIER CLIME THE SEAL OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL I. ELMWOOD. About half a mile from the Craigie House in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the road leading to the old town of Watertown, is Elmwood, a spacious square house set amongst lilac and syringa bushes, and overtopped by elms. Pleasant fields are on either side, and from the windows one may look out on the Charles River winding its way among the marshes. The house itself is one of a group which before the war for independence belonged to Boston merchants and officers of the crown who refused to take the side of the revolutionary party. Tory Row was the name given to the broad winding road on which the houses stood. Great farms and gardens were attached to them, and some sign of their roomy ease still remains. The estates fell into the hands of various persons after the war, and in process of time Longfellow came to occupy Craigie House. Elmwood at that time was the property of the Reverend Charles Lowell, minister of the West Church in Boston, and when Longfellow thus became his neighbor, James Russell Lowell was a junior in Harvard College. He was born at Elmwood, February 22, 1819. Any one who will read _An Indian Summer Reverie_ will discover how affectionately Lowell dwelt on the scenes of nature and life amidst which he grew up. Indeed, it would be a pleasant task to draw from the full storehouse of his poetry the golden phrases with which he characterizes the trees, meadows, brooks, flowers, birds, and human companions that were so near to him in his youth and so vivid in his recollection. In his prose works also a lively paper, _Cambridge Thirty Years Ago_, contains many reminiscences of his early life. To know any one well it is needful to inquire into his ancestry, and two or three hints may be given of the currents that met in this poet. On his father's side he came from a succession of New England men who for the previous three generations had been in professional life. The Lowells traced their descent from Percival Lowell,--a name which survives in the family,--of Bristol, England, who settled in Newbury, Massachusetts, in 1639. The great-grandfather was a minister in Newburyport, one of those, as Dr. Hale says, "who preached sermons when young men went out to fight the French, and preached sermons again in memory of their death when they had been slain in battle." The grandfather was John Lowell, a member of the Constitutional Convention of Massachusetts in 1780. It was he who introduced into the Bill of Rights a phrase from the Bill of Rights of Virginia, "All men are created free and equal," with the purpose which it effected of setting free every man then held as a slave in Massachusetts. A son of John Lowell and brother of the Rev. Charles Lowell was Francis Cabot Lowell, who gave a great impetus to New England manufactures, and from whom the city of Lowell took its name. Another son, and thus also an uncle of the poet, was John Lowell, Jr., whose wise and far-sighted provision gave to Boston that powerful centre of intellectual influence, the Lowell Institute. Of the Rev. Charles Lowell, his son said, in a letter written in 1844, "He is Doctor Primrose in the comparative degree, the very simplest and charmingest of sexagenarians, and not without a great deal of the truest magnanimity." It was characteristic of Lowell thus to go to _The Vicar of Wakefield_ for a portrait of his father. Dr. Lowell lived till 1861, when his son was forty-two. [Illustration: Elmwood, Mr. Lowell's home in Cambridge.] Mrs. Harriet Spence Lowell, the poet's mother, was of Scotch origin, a native of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She is described as having "a great memory, an extraordinary aptitude for language, and a passionate fondness for ancient songs and ballads." It pleased her to fancy herself descended from the hero of one of the most famous ballads, Sir Patrick Spens, and at any rate she made a genuine link in the Poetic Succession. In a letter to his mother, written in 1837, Lowell says: "I am engaged in several poetical effusions, one of which I have dedicated to you, who have always been the patron and encourager of my youthful muse." The Russell in his name seems to intimate a strain of Jewish ancestry; at any rate Lowell took pride in the name on this account, for he was not slow to recognize the intellectual power of the Hebrew race. He was the youngest of a family of five, two daughters and three sons. An older brother who outlived him a short time, was the Rev. Robert Traill Spence Lowell, who wrote besides a novel, _The New Priest in Conception Bay_, which contains a delightful study of a Yankee, some poems, and a story of school-boy life. Not long before his death, Lowell wrote to an English friend a description of Elmwood, and as he was very fond of the house in which he lived and died, it is agreeable to read words which strove to set it before the eyes of one who had never seen it. "'Tis a pleasant old house, just about twice as old as I am, four miles from Boston, in what was once the country and is now a populous suburb. But it still has some ten acres of open about it, and some fine old trees. When the worst comes to the worst (if I live so long) I shall still have four and a half acres left with the house, the rest belonging to my brothers and sisters or their heirs. It is a square house, with four rooms on a floor, like some houses of the Georgian era I have seen in English provincial towns, only they are of brick, and this is of wood. But it is solid with its heavy oaken beams, the spaces between which in the four outer walls are filled in with brick, though you mustn't fancy a brick-and-timber house, for outwardly it is sheathed with wood. Inside there is much wainscot (of deal) painted white in the fashion of the time when it was built. It is very sunny, the sun rising so as to shine (at an acute angle to be sure) through the northern windows, and going round the other three sides in the course of the day. There is a pretty staircase with the quaint old twisted banisters,--which they call balusters now; but mine are banisters. My library occupies two rooms opening into each other by arches at the sides of the ample chimneys. The trees I look out on are the earliest things I remember. There you have me in my new-old quarters. But you must not fancy a large house--rooms sixteen feet square, and on the ground floor, nine high. It was large, as things went here, when it was built, and has a certain air of amplitude about it as from some inward sense of dignity." In an earlier letter he wrote: "Here I am in my garret. I slept here when I was a little curly-headed boy, and used to see visions between me and the ceiling, and dream the so often recurring dream of having the earth put into my hand like an orange. In it I used to be shut up without a lamp,--my mother saying that none of her children should be afraid of the dark,--to hide my head under the pillow, and then not be able to shut out the shapeless monsters that thronged around me, minted in my brain.... In winter my view is a wide one, taking in a part of Boston. I can see one long curve of the Charles and the wide fields between me and Cambridge, and the flat marshes beyond the river, smooth and silent with glittering snow. As the spring advances and one after another of our trees puts forth, the landscape is cut off from me piece by piece, till, by the end of May, I am closeted in a cool and rustling privacy of leaves." In two of his papers especially, _My Garden Acquaintance_ and _A Good Word for Winter_, has Lowell given glimpses of the out-door life in the midst of which he grew up. II. EDUCATION. His acquaintance with books and his schooling began early. He learned his letters at a dame school. Mr. William Wells, an Englishman, opened a classical school in one of the spacious Tory Row houses near Elmwood, and, bringing with him English public school thoroughness and severity, gave the boy a drilling in Latin, which he must have made almost a native speech to judge by the ease with which he handled it afterward in mock heroics. Of course he went to Harvard College. He lived at his father's house, more than a mile away from the college yard; but this could have been no great privation to him, for he had the freedom of his friends' rooms, and he loved the open air. The Rev. Edward Everett Hale has given a sketch of their common life in college. "He was a little older than I," he says, "and was one class in advance of me. My older brother, with whom I lived in college, and he were most intimate friends. He had no room within the college walls, and was a great deal with us. The fashion of Cambridge was then literary. Now the fashion of Cambridge runs to social problems, but then we were interested in literature. We read Byron and Shelley and Keats, and we began to read Tennyson and Browning. I first heard of Tennyson from Lowell, who had borrowed from Mr. Emerson the little first volume of Tennyson. We actually passed about Tennyson's poems in manuscript. Carlyle's essays were being printed at the time, and his _French Revolution_. In such a community--not two hundred and fifty students all told,--literary effort was, as I say, the fashion, and literary men, among whom Lowell was recognized from the very first, were special favorites. Indeed, there was that in him which made him a favorite everywhere." Lowell was but fifteen years old when he entered college in the class which graduated in 1838. He was a reader, as so many of his fellows were, and the letters which he wrote shortly after leaving college show how intent he had been on making acquaintance with the best things in literature. He began also to scribble verse, and he wrote both poems and essays for college magazines. His class chose him their poet for Class Day, and he wrote his poem; but he was careless about conforming to college regulations respecting attendance at morning prayers; and for this was suspended from college the last term of his last year, and not allowed to come back to read his poem. "I have heard in later years," says Dr. Hale, "what I did not know then, that he rode down from Concord in a canvas-covered wagon, and peeped out through the chinks of the wagon to see the dancing around the tree. I fancy he received one or two visits from his friends in the wagon; but in those times it would have been treason to speak of this." He was sent to Concord for his rustication, and so passed a few weeks of his youth amongst scenes dear to every lover of American letters. III. FIRST VENTURE. After his graduation he set about the study of law, and for a short time even was a clerk in a counting-room; but his bent was strongly toward literature. There was at that time no magazine of commanding importance in America, and young men were given to starting magazines with enthusiasm and very little other capital. Such a one was the _Boston Miscellany_, launched by Nathan Hale, Lowell's college friend, and for this Lowell wrote gaily. It lived a year, and shortly after Lowell himself, with Robert Carter, essayed _The Pioneer_ in 1843. It lived just three months; but in that time printed contributions by Lowell, Hawthorne, Whittier, Story, Poe, and Dr. Parsons,--a group which it would be hard to match in any of the little magazines that hop across the world's path to-day. Lowell had already collected, in 1841, the poems which he had written and sometimes contributed to periodicals into a volume entitled _A Year's Life_; but he retained very little of the contents in later editions of his poems. The book has a special interest, however, from its dedication in veiled phrase to Maria White. He became engaged to this lady in the fall of 1840, and the next twelve years of his life were profoundly affected by her influence. Herself a poet of delicate power, she brought into his life an intelligent sympathy with his work; it was, however, her strong moral enthusiasm, her lofty conception of purity and justice, which kindled his spirit and gave force and direction to a character which was ready to respond, and yet might otherwise have delayed active expression. They were not married until 1844; but they were not far apart in their homes, and during these years Lowell was making those early ventures in literature, and first raids upon political and moral evil, which foretold the direction of his later work, and gave some hint of its abundance. About the time of his marriage, he published two books which, by their character, show pretty well the divided interest of his life. His bent from the beginning was more decidedly literary than that of any contemporary American poet. That is to say, the history and art of literature divided his interest with the production of literature, and he carried the unusual gift of a rare critical power, joined to hearty spontaneous creation. It may indeed be guessed that the keenness of judgment and incisiveness of wit which characterize his examination of literature sometimes interfered with his poetic power, and made him liable to question his art when he would rather have expressed it unchecked. One of the two books was a volume of poems; the other was a prose work, _Conversations on Some of the Old Poets_. He did not keep this book alive; but it is interesting as marking the enthusiasm of a young scholar treading a way then almost wholly neglected in America, and intimating a line of thought and study in which he afterward made most noteworthy venture. Another series of poems followed in 1848, and in the same year _The Vision of Sir Launfal_. Perhaps it was in reaction from the marked sentiment of his poetry that he issued now a _jeu d'esprit, A Fable for Critics_, in which he hit off, with a rough and ready wit, the characteristics of the writers of the day, not forgetting himself in these lines: There is Lowell, who's striving Parnassus to climb With a whole bale of _isms_ tied together with rhyme; He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders, But he can't with that bundle he has on his shoulders; The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preaching; His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well, But he'd rather by half make a drum of the shell, And rattle away till he's old as Methusalem, At the head of a march to the last new Jerusalem. This, of course, is but a half serious portrait of himself, and it touches but a single feature; others can say better that Lowell's ardent nature showed itself in the series of satirical poems which made him famous, _The Biglow Papers_, written in a spirit of indignation and fine scorn, when the Mexican War was causing many Americans to blush with shame at the use of the country by a class for its own ignoble ends. Lowell and his wife, who brought a fervid anti-slavery temper as part of her marriage portion, were both contributors to the _Liberty Bell_; and Lowell was a frequent contributor to the _Anti-Slavery Standard_, and was, indeed, for a while a corresponding editor. In June, 1846, there appeared one day in the _Boston Courier_ a letter from Mr. Ezekiel Biglow of Jaalam to the editor, Hon. Joseph T. Buckingham, inclosing a poem of his son, Mr. Hosea Biglow. It was no new thing to seek to arrest the public attention with the vernacular applied to public affairs. Major Jack Downing and Sam Slick had been notable examples, and they had many imitators; but the reader who laughed over the racy narrative of the unlettered Ezekiel, and then took up Hosea's poem and caught the gust of Yankee wrath and humor blown fresh in his face, knew that he was in at the appearance of something new in American literature. The force which Lowell displayed in these satires made his book at once a powerful ally of an anti-slavery sentiment, which heretofore had been ridiculed. IV. VERSE AND PROSE. A year in Europe, 1851-1852, with his wife, whose health was then precarious, stimulated his scholarly interests, and gave substance to his study of Dante and Italian literature. In October, 1853, his wife died; she had borne him three children: the first-born, Blanche, died in infancy; the second, Walter, also died young; the third, a daughter, Mrs. Burnett, survived her parents. In 1855 he was chosen successor to Longfellow as Smith Professor of the French and Spanish Languages and Literature, and Professor of Belles Lettres in Harvard College. He spent two years in Europe in further preparation for the duties of his office, and in 1857 was again established in Cambridge, and installed in his academic chair. He married, also, at this time Miss Frances Dunlap, of Portland, Maine. Lowell was now in his thirty-ninth year. As a scholar, in his professional work, he had acquired a versatile knowledge of the Romance languages, and was an adept in old French and Provençal poetry; he had given a course of twelve lectures on English poetry before the Lowell Institute in Boston, which had made a strong impression on the community, and his work on the series of _British Poets_ in connection with Professor Child, especially his biographical sketch of Keats, had been recognized as of a high order. In poetry he had published the volumes already mentioned. In general literature he had printed in magazines the papers which he afterward collected into his volume, _Fireside Travels_. Not long after he entered on his college duties, _The Atlantic Monthly_ was started, and the editorship given to him. He held the office for a year or two only; but he continued to write for the magazine, and in 1862 he was associated with Mr. Charles Eliot Norton in the conduct of _The North American Review_, and continued in this charge for ten years. Much of his prose was contributed to this periodical. Any one reading the titles of the papers which comprise the volumes of his prose writings will readily see how much literature, and especially poetic literature, occupied his attention. Shakespeare, Dryden, Lessing, Rousseau, Dante, Spenser, Wordsworth, Milton, Keats, Carlyle, Percival, Thoreau, Swinburne, Chaucer, Emerson, Pope, Gray,--these are the principal subjects of his prose, and the range of topics indicates the catholicity of his taste. In these papers, when studying poetry, he was very alive to the personality of the poets, and it was the strong interest in humanity which led Lowell, when he was most diligent in the pursuit of literature, to apply himself also to history and politics. Several of his essays bear witness to this, such as _Witchcraft, New England Two Centuries Ago, A Great Public Character_ (Josiah Quincy), _Abraham Lincoln_, and his great _Political Essays_. But the most remarkable of his writings of this order was the second series of _The Biglow Papers_, published during the war for the Union. In these, with the wit and fun of the earlier series, there was mingled a deeper strain of feeling and a larger tone of patriotism. The limitations of his style in these satires forbade the fullest expression of his thought and emotion; but afterward in a succession of poems, occasioned by the honors paid to student soldiers in Cambridge, the death of Agassiz, and the celebration of national anniversaries during the years 1875 and 1876, he sang in loftier, more ardent strains. The most famous of these poems was his noble Commemoration Ode. V. PUBLIC LIFE. It was at the close of this period, when he had done incalculable service to the Republic, that Lowell was called on to represent the country, first in Madrid, where he was sent in 1877, and then in London, to which he was transferred in 1880. Eight years were thus spent by him in the foreign service of the country. He had a good knowledge of the Spanish language and literature when he went to Spain; but he at once took pains to make his knowledge fuller and his accent more perfect, so that he could have intimate relations with the best Spanish men of the time. In England he was at once a most welcome guest, and was in great demand as a public speaker. No one can read his dispatches from Madrid and London without being struck by his sagacity, his readiness in emergencies, his interest in and quick perception of the political situation in the country where he was resident, and his unerring knowledge as a man of the world. Above all, he was through and through an American, true to the principles which underlie American institutions. His address on _Democracy_, which he delivered in England, is one of the great statements of human liberty. A few years later, after his return to America, he gave another address to his own countrymen on _The Place of the Independent in Politics_. It was a noble defense of his own position, not without a trace of discouragement at the apparently sluggish movement in American self-government of recent years, but with that faith in the substance of his countrymen which gave him the right to use words of honest warning. The public life of Mr. Lowell made him more of a figure before the world. He received honors from societies and universities; he was decorated by the highest honors which Harvard could pay officially; and Oxford and Cambridge, St. Andrews and Edinburgh and Bologna, gave gowns. He established warm personal relations with Englishmen, and, after his release from public office, he made several visits to England. There, too, was buried his wife, who died in 1885. The closing years of his life in his own country, though touched with domestic loneliness and diminished by growing physical infirmities that predicted his death, were rich also with the continued expression of his large personality. He delivered the public address in commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of Harvard University; he gave a course of lectures on the Old English Dramatists before the Lowell Institute; he collected a volume of his poems; he wrote and spoke on public affairs; and, the year before his death, revised, rearranged, and carefully edited a definitive series of his writings in ten volumes. He died at Elmwood, August 12, 1891. Since his death three small volumes have been added to his collected writings, and Mr. Norton has published _Letters of James Russell Lowell_, in two volumes. THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL INTRODUCTORY NOTE Lowell was in his thirtieth year when he wrote and published _The Vision of Sir Launfal_. It appeared when he had just dashed off his _Fable for Critics_, and when he was in the thick of the anti-slavery fight, writing poetry and prose for _The Anti-Slavery Standard_, and sending out his witty _Biglow Papers_. He had married four years before, and was living in the homestead at Elmwood, walking in the country about, and full of eagerness at the prospect which lay before him. In a letter to his friend Charles F. Briggs, written in December, 1848, he says: "Last night ... I walked to Watertown over the snow, with the new moon before me and a sky exactly like that in Page's evening landscape. Orion was rising behind me, and, as I stood on the hill just before you enter the village, the stillness of the fields around me was delicious, broken only by the tinkle of a little brook which runs too swiftly for Frost to catch it. My picture of the brook in _Sir Launfal_ was drawn from it. But why do I send you this description,--like the bones of a chicken I had picked? Simply because I was so happy as I stood there, and felt so sure of doing something that would justify my friends. But why do I not say that I have done something? I believe that I have done better than the world knows yet; but the past seems so little compared with the future.... I am the first poet who has endeavored to express the American Idea, and I shall be popular by and by." It is not very likely that Lowell was thinking of _Sir Launfal_ when he wrote this last sentence, yet it is not straining language too far to say that when he took up an Arthurian story he had a different attitude toward the whole cycle of legends from that of Tennyson, who had lately been reviving the legends for the pleasure of English-reading people. The exuberance of the poet as he carols of June in the prelude to Part First is an expression of the joyous spring which was in the veins of the young American, glad in the sense of freedom and hope. As Tennyson threw into his retelling of Arthurian romance a moral sense, so Lowell, also a moralist in his poetic apprehension, made a parable of his tale, and, in the broadest interpretation of democracy, sang of the leveling of all ranks in a common divine humanity. There is a subterranean passage connecting the _Biglow Papers_ with _Sir Launfal_; it is the holy zeal which attacks slavery issuing in this fable of a beautiful charity, Christ in the guise of a beggar. The invention is a very simple one, and appears to have been suggested by Tennyson's _Sir Galahad_, though Lowell had no doubt read Sir Thomas Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_. The following is the note which accompanied _The Vision_ when first published in 1848, and retained by Lowell in all subsequent editions:-- "According to the mythology of the Romancers, the San Greal, or Holy Grail, was the cup out of which Jesus Christ partook of the last supper with his disciples. It was brought into England by Joseph of Arimathea, and remained there, an object of pilgrimage and adoration, for many years in the keeping of his lineal descendants. It was incumbent upon those who had charge of it to be chaste in thought, word, and deed; but, one of the keepers having broken this condition, the Holy Grail disappeared. From that time it was a favorite enterprise of the Knights of Arthur's court to go in search of it. Sir Galahad was at last successful in finding it, as may be read in the seventeenth book of the Romance of King Arthur. Tennyson has made Sir Galahad the subject of one of the most exquisite of his poems. "The plot (if I may give that name to anything so slight) of the following poem is my own, and, to serve its purposes, I have enlarged the circle of competition in search of the miraculous cup in such a manner as to include not only other persons than the heroes of the Round Table, but also a period of time subsequent to the date of King Arthur's reign." PRELUDE TO PART FIRST. Over his keys the musing organist, Beginning doubtfully and far away, First lets his fingers wander as they list, And builds a Bridge from Dreamland for his lay: Then, as the touch of his loved instrument 5 Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme, First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent Along the wavering vista of his dream. Not only around our infancy[1] Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; 10 Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not. Over our manhood bend the skies; Against our fallen and traitor lives The great winds utter prophecies: 15 With our faint hearts the mountain strives; Its arms outstretched, the druid wood Waits with its benedicite; And to our age's drowsy blood Still shouts the inspiring sea. 20 Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us; The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in, The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us, We bargain for the graves we lie in; [Footnote 1: In allusion to Wordsworth's "Heaven lies about us in our infancy," in his ode, _Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood_.] At the Devil's booth are all things sold, 25 Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold; For a cap and bells our lives we pay,[2] Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking: 'T is heaven alone that is given away, 'T is only God may be had for the asking; 30 No price is set on the lavish summer; June may be had by the poorest comer. And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, 35 And over it softly her warm ear lays: Whether we look, or whether we listen, We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; Every clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 40 And, groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; The flush of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in meadows green, 45 The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean To be some happy creature's palace; The little bird sits at his door in the sun, Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 50 And lets his illumined being o'errun With the deluge of summer it receives; His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings; He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,-- 55 In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best? [Footnote 2: In the Middle Ages kings and noblemen had in their courts jesters to make sport for the company; as every one then wore a dress indicating his rank or occupation, so the jester wore a cap hung with bells. The fool of Shakespeare's plays is the king's jester at his best.] Now is the high-tide of the year, And whatever of life hath ebbed away Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer, Into every bare inlet and creek and bay; 60 Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, We are happy now because God wills it; No matter how barren the past may have been, 'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green; We sit in the warm shade and feel right well 65 How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell; We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing That skies are clear and grass is growing; The breeze comes whispering in our ear, That dandelions are blossoming near, 70 That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, That the river is bluer than the sky, That the robin is plastering his house hard by; And if the breeze kept the good news back, For other couriers we should not lack; 75 We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing,-- And hark! how clear bold chanticleer, Warmed with the new wine of the year, Tells all in his lusty crowing! Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how; 80 Everything is happy now, Everything is upward striving; 'T is as easy now for the heart to be true As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,-- 'T is the natural way of living: 85 Who knows whither the clouds have fled? In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake, And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, The heart forgets its sorrow and ache; The soul partakes of the season's youth, 90 And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. What wonder if Sir Launfal now Remembered the keeping of his vow? 95 PART FIRST. I. "My golden spurs now bring to me, And bring to me my richest mail, For to-morrow I go over land and sea, In search of the Holy Grail; Shall never a bed for me be spread, 100 Nor shall a pillow be under my head, Till I begin my vow to keep; Here on the rushes will I sleep, And perchance there may come a vision true Ere day create the world anew." 105 Slowly Sir Launfal's eyes grew dim, Slumber fell like a cloud on him, And into his soul the vision flew. II. The crows flapped over by twos and threes, In the pool drowsed the cattle up to their knees, 110 The little birds sang as if it were The one day of summer in all the year, And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees: The castle alone in the landscape lay Like an outpost of winter, dull and gray: 115 'Twas the proudest hall in the North Countree, And never its gates might opened be, Save to lord or lady of high degree; Summer besieged it on every side, But the churlish stone her assaults defied; 120 She could not scale the chilly wall, Though around it for leagues her pavilions tall Stretched left and right, Over the hills and out of sight; Green and broad was every tent, 125 And out of each a murmur went Till the breeze fell off at night. III. The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang, And through the dark arch a charger sprang, Bearing Sir Launfal, the maiden knight, 130 In his gilded mail, that flamed so bright It seemed the dark castle had gathered all Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over its wall In his siege of three hundred summers long, And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf, 135 Had cast them forth: so, young and strong, And lightsome as a locust-leaf, Sir Launfal flashed forth in his unscarred mail, To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail. IV. It was morning on hill and stream and tree, 140 And morning in the young knight's heart; Only the castle moodily Rebuffed the gifts of the sunshine free, And gloomed by itself apart; The season brimmed all other things up 145 Full as the rain fills the pitcher-plant's cup. V. As Sir Launfal made morn through the darksome gate, He was 'ware of a leper, crouched by the same, Who begged with his hand and moaned as he sate; And a loathing over Sir Launfal came; 150 The sunshine went out of his soul with a thrill, The flesh 'neath his armor 'gan shrink and crawl, And midway its leap his heart stood still Like a frozen waterfall; For this man, so foul and bent of stature, 155 Rasped harshly against his dainty nature, And seemed the one blot on the summer morn,-- So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn. VI. The leper raised not the gold from the dust: "Better to me the poor man's crust, 160 Better the blessing of the poor, Though I turn me empty from his door; That is no true alms which the hand can hold; He gives nothing but worthless gold Who gives from a sense of duty; 165 But he who gives but a slender mite, And gives to that which is out of sight, That thread of the all-sustaining Beauty Which runs through all and doth all unite,-- The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms, 170 The heart outstretches its eager palms, For a god goes with it and makes it store To the soul that was starving in darkness before." PRELUDE TO PART SECOND. Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak,[3] From the snow five thousand summers old; 175 On open wold and hill-top bleak It had gathered all the cold, And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek; It carried a shiver everywhere From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare; 180 The little brook heard it and built a roof 'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof; All night by the white stars frosty gleams He groined his arches and matched his beams; Slender and clear were his crystal spars 185 As the lashes of light that trim the stars; He sculptured every summer delight In his halls and chambers out of sight; Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt, 190 Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees Bending to counterfeit a breeze; Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew But silvery mosses that downward grew; Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief 195 With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf; [Footnote 3: Note the different moods that are indicated by the two preludes. The one is of June, the other of snow and winter. By these preludes the poet, like an organist, strikes a key which he holds in the subsequent parts.] [Illustration: As Sir Launfal Made Morn Through the Darksome Gate.] Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and here He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops And hung them thickly with diamond-drops, 200 That crystalled the beams of moon and sun, And made a star of every one: No mortal builder's most rare device[4] Could match this winter-palace of ice; 'Twas as if every image that mirrored lay 205 In his depths serene through the summer day,[5] Each fleeting shadow of earth and sky, Lest the happy model should be lost, Had been mimicked in fairy masonry By the elfin builders of the frost. 210 Within the hall are song and laughter, The cheeks of Christmas grow red and jolly, And sprouting is every corbel and rafter With lightsome green of ivy and holly; Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide 215 Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide The broad flame-pennons droop and flap And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, Hunted to death in its galleries blind; 220 And swift little troops of silent sparks, Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear, Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks Like herds of startled deer. But the wind without was eager and sharp, 225 Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp, And rattles and wrings The icy strings, Singing, in dreary monotone, A Christmas carol of its own, 230 Whose burden still, as he might guess, Was--"Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless!" The voice of the seneschal flared like a torch As he shouted the wanderer away from the porch, And he sat in the gateway and saw all night 235 The great hall-fire, so cheery and bold, Through the window-slits of the castle old, Build out its piers of ruddy light Against the drift of the cold. [Footnote 4: The Empress of Russia, Catherine II., in a magnificent freak, built a palace of ice, which was a nine-days' wonder. Cowper has given a poetical description of it in _The Task_, Book V. lines 131-176.] [Footnote 5: The Yule-log was anciently a huge log burned at the feast of Juul (pronounced Yule) by our Scandinavian ancestors in honor of the god Thor. Juul-tid (Yule-time) corresponded in time to Christmas tide, and when Christian festivities took the place of pagan, many ceremonies remained. The great log, still called the Yule-log, was dragged in and burned in the fireplace after Thor had been forgotten.] PART SECOND. I. There was never a leaf on bush or tree, 240 The bare boughs rattled shudderingly; The river was dumb and could not speak, For the weaver Winter its shroud had spun, A single crow on the tree-top bleak From his shining feathers shed off the cold sun; 245 Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold, As if her veins were sapless and old, And she rose up decrepitly For a last dim look at earth and sea. II. Sir Launfal turned from his own hard gate, 250 For another heir in his earldom sate; An old, bent man, worn out and frail, He came back from seeking the Holy Grail; Little he recked of his earldom's loss, No more on his surcoat was blazoned the cross, 255 But deep in his soul the sign he wore, The badge of the suffering and the poor. III. Sir Launfal's raiment thin and spare Was idle mail 'gainst the barbed air, For it was just at the Christmas time; 260 So he mused, as he sat, of a sunnier clime, And sought for a shelter from cold and snow In the light and warmth of long-ago; He sees the snake-like caravan crawl O'er the edge of the desert, black and small, 265 Then nearer and nearer, till, one by one, He can count the camels in the sun, As over the red-hot sands they pass To where, in its slender necklace of grass, The little spring laughed and leapt in the shade, 270 And with its own self like an infant played, And waved its signal of palms. IV. "For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms;"-- The happy camels may reach the spring, But Sir Launfal sees only the grewsome thing, 275 The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone, That cowers beside him, a thing as lone And white as the ice-isles of Northern seas In the desolate horror of his disease. V. And Sir Launfal said,--"I behold in thee 280 An image of Him who died on the tree; Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns,-- Thou also hast had the world's buffets and scorns,-- And to thy life were not denied The wounds in the hands and feet and side; 285 Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me; Behold, through him, I give to Thee!" VI. Then the soul of the leper stood up in his eyes And looked at Sir Launfal, and straightway he Remembered in what a haughtier guise 290 He had flung an alms to leprosie, When he girt his young life up in gilded mail And set forth in search of the Holy Grail. The heart within him was ashes and dust; He parted in twain his single crust, 295 He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink, And gave the leper to eat and drink: 'T was a mouldy crust of coarse brown bread, 'T was water out of a wooden bowl,-- Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed, 300 And 't was red wine he drank with his thirsty soul. [Illustration: So he Mused, as he sat, of a sunnier clime.] VII. As Sir Launfal mused with a downcast face, A light shone round about the place; The leper no longer crouched at his side, But stood before him glorified, 305 Shining and tall and fair and straight As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate,-- Himself the Gate whereby men can Enter the temple of God in Man. VIII. His words were shed softer than leaves from the pine, 310 And they fell on Sir Launfal as snows on the brine, That mingle their softness and quiet in one With the shaggy unrest they float down upon; And the voice that was calmer than silence said, "Lo it is I, be not afraid! 315 In many climes, without avail, Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail; Behold, it is here,--this cup which thou Didst fill at the streamlet for Me but now; This crust is My body broken for thee, 320 This water His blood that died on the tree; The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, In whatso we share with another's need: Not what we give, but what we share,-- For the gift without the giver is bare; 325 Who gives himself with his alms feeds three,-- Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me." IX. Sir Launfal awoke as from a swound:-- "The Grail in my castle here is found! Hang my idle armor up on the wall, 330 Let it be the spider's banquet-hall; He must be fenced with stronger mail Who would seek and find the Holy Grail." X. The castle gate stands open now, And the wanderer is welcome to the hall 335 As the hangbird is to the elm-tree bough; No longer scowl the turrets tall, The Summer's long siege at last is o'er; When the first poor outcast went in at the door, She entered with him in disguise, 340 And mastered the fortress by surprise; There is no spot she loves so well on ground, She lingers and smiles there the whole year round; The meanest serf on Sir Launfal's land Has hall and bower at his command; 345 And there's no poor man in the North Countree But is lord of the earldom as much as he. ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION. [On the 21st of July, 1865, Harvard University welcomed back those of its students and graduates who had fought in the war for the Union. By exercises in the church and at the festival which followed, the services of the dead and the living were commemorated. It was on this occasion that Mr. Lowell recited the following ode.] I. Weak-winged is song, Nor aims at that clear-ethered height Whither the brave deed climbs for light: We seem to do them wrong, Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their hearse 5 Who in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse, Our trivial song to honor those who come With ears attuned to strenuous trump and drum, And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire, Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and fire: 10 Yet sometimes feathered words are strong, A gracious memory to buoy up and save From Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common grave Of the unventurous throng. II. To-day our Reverend Mother welcomes back 15 Her wisest Scholars, those who understood The deeper teaching of her mystic tome, And offered their fresh lives to make it good: No lore of Greece or Rome, No science peddling with the names of things, 20 Or reading stars to find inglorious fates, Can lift our life with wings Far from Death's idle gulf that for the many waits, And lengthen out our dates With that clear fame whose memory sings 25 In manly hearts to come, and nerves them and dilates: Nor such thy teaching, Mother of us all! Not such the trumpet-call Of thy diviner mood, That could thy sons entice 30 From happy homes and toils, the fruitful nest Of those half-virtues which the world calls best, Into War's tumult rude; But rather far that stern device The sponsors chose that round thy cradle stood 35 In the dim, unventured wood, The VERITAS that lurks beneath[6] The letter's unprolific sheath, Life of whate'er makes life worth living, Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food, 40 One heavenly thing whereof earth hath the giving. III. Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oil Amid the dust of books to find her, Content at last, for guerdon of their toil, With the cast mantle she hath left behind her. 45 Many in sad faith sought for her, Many with crossed hands sighed for her; But these, our brothers, fought for her, At life's dear peril wrought for her, So loved her that they died for her, 50 Tasting the raptured fleetness Of her divine completeness Their higher instinct knew Those love her best who to themselves are true, And what they dare to dream of, dare to do; 55 They followed her and found her Where all may hope to find, Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind, But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her. Where faith made whole with deed 60 Breathes its awakening breath Into the lifeless creed, They saw her plumed and mailed, With sweet, stern face unveiled, And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death. 65 [Footnote 6: An early emblem of Harvard College was a shield with Veritas (truth) upon three open books. This device is still used.] IV. Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides Into the silent hollow of the past; What is there that abides To make the next age better for the last? Is earth too poor to give us 70 Something to live for here that shall outlive us? Some more substantial boon Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon? The little that we see From doubt is never free; 75 The little that we do Is but half-nobly true; With our laborious hiving What men call treasure, and the gods call dross, Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving, 80 Only secure in every one's conniving, A long account of nothings paid with loss, Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires, After our little hour of strut and rave, With all our pasteboard passions and desires, 85 Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires, Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave. But stay! no age was e'er degenerate, Unless men held it at too cheap a rate, For in our likeness still we shape our fate. 90 Ah, there is something here Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer, Something that gives our feeble light A high immunity from Night, Something that leaps life's narrow bars 95 To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven; A seed of sunshine that doth leaven Our earthly dulness with the beams of stars, And glorify our clay With light from fountains elder than the Day; 100 A conscience more divine than we, A gladness fed with secret tears, A vexing, forward-reaching sense Of some more noble permanence; A light across the sea, 105 Which haunts the soul and will not let it be, Still glimmering from the heights of undegenerate years. V. Whither leads the path To ampler fates that leads? Not down through flowery meads, 110 To reap an aftermath Of youth's vainglorious weeds; But up the steep, amid the wrath And shock of deadly-hostile creeds, Where the world's best hope and stay 115 By battle's flashes gropes a desperate way, And every turf the fierce foot clings to bleeds. Peace hath her not ignoble wreath, Ere yet the sharp, decisive word Light the black lips of cannon, and the sword 120 Dreams in its easeful sheath; But some day the live coal behind the thought, Whether from Baal's stone obscene, Or from the shrine serene Of God's pure altar brought, 125 Bursts up in flame; the war of tongue and pen Learns with what deadly purpose it was fraught, And, helpless in the fiery passion caught, Shakes all the pillared state with shock of men: Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed 130 Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, And cries reproachful: "Was it, then, my praise, And not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth; I claim of thee the promise of thy youth; Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase, 135 The victim of thy genius, not its mate!" Life may be given in many ways, And loyalty to Truth be sealed As bravely in the closet as the field, So bountiful is Fate; 140 But then to stand beside her, When craven churls deride her, To front a lie in arms and not to yield, This shows, methinks, God's plan And measure of a stalwart man, 145 Limbed like the old heroic breeds, Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth; Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, Fed from within with all the strength he needs. VI. Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, 150 Whom late the Nation he had led, With ashes on her head, Wept with the passion of an angry grief: Forgive me, if from present things I turn To speak what in my heart will beat and burn, 155 And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn. Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote: 160 For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw, And, choosing sweet clay from the breast Of the unexhausted West, With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. 165 How beautiful to see Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead; One whose meek flock the people joyed to be, Not lured by any cheat of birth, 170 But by his clear-grained human worth, And brave old wisdom of sincerity! They knew that outward grace is dust; They could not choose but trust In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, 175 And supple-tempered will That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust. His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind, Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind; 180 Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined, Fruitful and friendly for all human-kind, Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars. Nothing of Europe here, Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still, 185 Ere any names of Serf and Peer Could Nature's equal scheme deface And thwart her genial will; Here was a type of the true elder race, And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face. 190 I praise him not; it were too late; And some innative weakness there must be In him who condescends to victory Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait, Safe in himself as in a fate. 195 So always firmly he: He knew to bide his time, And can his fame abide, Still patient in his simple faith sublime, Till the wise years decide. 200 Great captains, with their guns and drums, Disturb our judgment for the hour, But at last silence comes; These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, Our children shall behold his fame, 205 The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, New birth of our new soil, the first American. VII. Long as man's hope insatiate can discern Or only guess some more inspiring goal 210 Outside of Self, enduring as the pole, Along whose course the flying axles burn Of spirits bravely-pitched, earth's manlier brood; Long as below we cannot find The meed that stills the inexorable mind; 215 So long this faith to some ideal Good, Under whatever mortal name it masks, Freedom, Law, Country, this ethereal mood That thanks the Fates for their severer tasks, Feeling its challenged pulses leap, 220 While others skulk in subterfuges cheap, And, set in Danger's van, has all the boon it asks, Shall win man's praise and woman's love, Shall be a wisdom that we set above All other skills and gifts to culture dear, 225 A virtue round whose forehead we enwreathe Laurels that with a living passion breathe When other crowns grow, while we twine them, sear. What brings us thronging these high rites to pay, And seal these hours the noblest of our year, 230 Save that our brothers found this better way? VIII. We sit here in the Promised Land That flows with Freedom's honey and milk; But 't was they won it, sword in hand, Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk.[7] 235 We welcome back our bravest and our best;-- Ah me! not all! some come not with the rest, Who went forth brave and bright as any here! I strive to mix some gladness with my strain, But the sad strings complain, 240 And will not please the ear: I sweep them for a pæan, but they wane Again and yet again Into a dirge, and die away in pain. In these brave ranks I only see the gaps, 245 Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb turf wraps, Dark to the triumph which they died to gain: Fitlier may others greet the living, For me the past is unforgiving; I with uncovered head 250 Salute the sacred dead, Who went, and who return not.--Say not so! 'Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay,[8] But the high faith that failed not by the way; Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave;[9] 255 No bar of endless night exiles the brave; And to the saner mind We rather seem the dead that stayed behind. Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow! For never shall their aureoled presence lack: 260 I see them muster in a gleaming row, With ever-youthful brows that nobler show; We find in our dull road their shining track; In every nobler mood We feel the orient of their spirit glow, 265 Part of our life's unalterable good, Of all our saintlier aspiration; They come transfigured back, Secure from change in their high-hearted ways, Beautiful evermore, and with the rays 270 Of morn on their white Shields of Expectation! [Footnote 7: See Shakespeare, _King Henry IV. Pt. I_ Act II Sc. 3. "Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety."] [Footnote 8: See the _Book of Numbers_, chapter xiii.] [Footnote 9: Compare Gray's line in _Elegy in a Country Churchyard_. "The paths of glory lead but to the grave."] IX. But is there hope to save Even this ethereal essence from the grave? What ever 'scaped Oblivion's subtle wrong Save a few clarion names, or golden threads of song 275 Before my musing eye The mighty ones of old sweep by, Disvoicéd now and insubstantial things, As noisy once as we; poor ghosts of kings, Shadows of empire wholly gone to dust, 280 And many races, nameless long ago, To darkness driven by that imperious gust Of ever-rushing Time that here doth blow: O visionary world, condition strange, Where naught abiding is but only Change, 285 Where the deep-bolted stars themselves still shift and range! Shall we to more continuance make pretence? Renown builds tombs; a life-estate is Wit; And, bit by bit, The cunning years steal all from us but woe: 290 Leaves are we, whose decays no harvest sow. But, when we vanish hence, Shall they lie forceless in the dark below, Save to make green their little length of sods, Or deepen pansies for a year or two, 295 Who now to us are shining-sweet as gods? Was dying all they had the skill to do? That were not fruitless: but the Soul resents Such short-lived service, as if blind events Ruled without her, or earth could so endure; 300 She claims a more divine investiture Of longer tenure than Fame's airy rents; Whate'er she touches doth her nature share; Her inspiration haunts the ennobled air, Gives eyes to mountains blind, Ears to the deaf earth, voices to the wind, 305 And her clear trump sings succor everywhere By lonely bivouacs to the wakeful mind, For soul inherits all that soul could dare: Yea, Manhood hath a wider span And larger privilege of life than man. 310 The single deed, the private sacrifice, So radiant now through proudly-hidden tears, Is covered up ere long from mortal eyes With thoughtless drift of the deciduous years; But that high privilege that makes all men peers, 315 That leap of heart whereby a people rise Up to a noble anger's height, And, flamed on by the Fates, not shrink, but grow more bright, That swift validity in noble veins, Of choosing danger and disdaining shame, 320 Of being set on flame By the pure fire that flies all contact base, But wraps its chosen with angelic might, These are imperishable gains, Sure as the sun, medicinal as light, 325 These hold great futures in their lusty reins And certify to earth a new imperial race. X. Who now shall sneer? Who dare again to say we trace Our lines to a plebeian race? 330 Roundhead and Cavalier! Dumb are those names erewhile in battle loud; Dream-footed as the shadow of a cloud, They flit across the ear: That is best blood that hath most iron in 't. 335 To edge resolve with, pouring without stint For what makes manhood dear. Tell us not of Plantagenets, Hapsburgs, and Guelfs, whose thin bloods crawl Down from some victor in a border-brawl! 340 How poor their outworn coronets, Matched with one leaf of that plain civic wreath Our brave for honor's blazon shall bequeath, Through whose desert a rescued Nation sets Her heel on treason, and the trumpet hears 345 Shout victory, tingling Europe's sullen ears With vain resentments and more vain regrets! XI. Not in anger, not in pride, Pure from passion's mixture rude, Ever to base earth allied, 350 But with far-heard gratitude, Still with heart and voice renewed, To heroes living and dear martyrs dead, The strain should close that consecrates our brave. Lift the heart and lift the head! 355 Lofty be its mood and grave, Not without a martial ring, Not without a prouder tread And a peal of exultation: Little right has he to sing 360 Through whose heart in such an hour Beats no march of conscious power, Sweeps no tumult of elation! 'Tis no Man we celebrate, By his country's victories great, 365 A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, But the pith and marrow of a Nation Drawing force from all her men, Highest, humblest, weakest, all, For her time of need, and then 370 Pulsing it again through them, Till the basest can no longer cower, Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall, Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem. Come back, then, noble pride, for 'tis her dower! 375 How could poet ever tower, If his passions, hopes, and fears, If his triumphs and his tears, Kept not measure with his people? Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and waves! 380 Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple! Banners, adance with triumph, bend your staves! And from every mountain-peak Let beacon-fire to answering beacon speak, Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface he, 385 And so leap on in light from sea to sea, Till the glad news be sent Across a kindling continent, Making earth feel more firm and air breathe braver: "Be proud! for she is saved, and all have helped to save her! 390 She that lifts up the manhood of the poor, She of the open soul and open door, With room about her hearth for all mankind! The fire is dreadful in her eyes no more; From her bold front the helm she doth unbind, 395 Sends all her handmaid armies back to spin, And bids her navies, that so lately hurled Their crashing battle, hold their thunders in, Swimming like birds of calm along the unharmful shore. No challenge sends she to the elder world, 400 That looked askance and hated; a light scorn Plays o'er her mouth, as round her mighty knees She calls her children back, and waits the morn Of nobler day, enthroned between her subject seas." XII. Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release! 405 Thy God, in these distempered days, Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways, And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace! Bow down in prayer and praise! No poorest in thy borders but may now 410 Lift to the juster skies a man's enfranchised brow, O Beautiful! my Country! ours once more! Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair O'er such sweet brows as never other wore, And letting thy set lips, 415 Freed from wrath's pale eclipse, The rosy edges of their smile lay bare, What words divine of lover or of poet Could tell our love and make thee know it, Among the Nations bright beyond compare? 420 What were our lives without thee? What all our lives to save thee? We reck not what we gave thee; We will not dare to doubt thee, But ask whatever else, and we will dare! 425 ON BOARD THE '76. WRITTEN FOR MR. BRYANT'S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY. NOVEMBER 3, 1864. [After the disastrous battle of Bull Run, Congress authorized the creation of an army of 500,000, and the expenditure of $500,000,000. The affair of the Trent had partially indicated the temper of the English government, and the people of the United States were thoroughly roused to a sense of the great task which lay before them. Mr. Bryant, at this time, not only gave strong support to the Union through his paper _The Evening Post_ of New York, but wrote two lyrics which had a profound effect. One of these, entitled _Not Yet_, was addressed to those of the Old World who were secretly or openly desiring the downfall of the republic. The other, _Our Country's Call_, was a thrilling appeal for recruits. It is to this time and these two poems that Mr. Lowell refers in the lines that follow.] Our ship lay tumbling in an angry sea, Her rudder gone, her mainmast o'er the side; Her scuppers, from the waves' clutch staggering free, Trailed threads of priceless crimson through the tide; Sails, shrouds, and spars with pirate cannon torn, 5 We lay, awaiting morn. Awaiting morn, such morn as mocks despair; And she that bare the promise of the world Within her sides, now hopeless, helmless, bare, At random o'er the wildering waters hurled; 10 The reek of battle drifting slow alee Not sullener than we. Morn came at last to peer into our woe, When lo, a sail! Now surely help was nigh; The red cross flames aloft, Christ's pledge; but no,[10] 15 Her black guns grinning hate, she rushes by And hails us:--"Gains the leak! Ay, so we thought! Sink, then, with curses fraught!" I leaned against my gun still angry-hot, And my lids tingled with the tears held back; 20 This scorn methought was crueller than shot: The manly death-grip in the battle-wrack, Yard-arm to yard-arm, were more friendly far Than such fear-smothered war. There our foe wallowed, like a wounded brute 25 The fiercer for his hurt. What now were best? Once more tug bravely at the peril's root, Though death came with it? Or evade the test If right or wrong in this God's world of ours Be leagued with higher powers? 30 Some, faintly loyal, felt their pulses lag With the slow beat that doubts and then despairs; Some, caitiff, would have struck the starry flag That knits us with our past, and makes us heirs Of deeds high-hearted as were ever done 35 'Neath the all-seeing sun. [Footnote 10: The red cross is the British flag.] But there was one, the Singer of our crew, Upon whose head Age waved his peaceful sign, But whose red heart's-blood no surrender knew; And couchant under brows of massive line, 40 The eyes, like guns beneath a parapet, Watched, charged with lightnings yet. The voices of the hills did his obey; The torrents flashed and tumbled in his song; He brought our native fields from far away, 45 Or set us 'mid the innumerable throng Of dateless woods, or where we heard the calm Old homestead's evening psalm. But now he sang of faith to things unseen, Of freedom's birthright given to us in trust; 50 And words of doughty cheer he spoke between, That made all earthly fortune seem as dust, Matched with that duty, old as Time and new, Of being brave and true. We, listening, learned what makes the might of words,-- 55 Manhood to back them, constant as a star; His voice rammed home our cannon, edged our swords, And sent our boarders shouting; shroud and spar Heard him and stiffened; the sails heard, and wooed The winds with loftier mood. 60 In our dark hours he manned our guns again; Remanned ourselves from his own manhood's stores; Pride, honor, country, throbbed through all his strain: And shall we praise? God's praise was his before; And on our futile laurels he looks down, 65 Himself our bravest crown. AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE. [When Mr. Lowell wrote this poem he was living at Elmwood in Cambridge, at that time quite remote from town influences,--Cambridge itself being scarcely more than a village,--but now rapidly losing its rustic surroundings. The Charles River flowed near by, then a limpid stream, untroubled by factories or sewage. It is a tidal river and not far from Elmwood winds through broad salt marshes. Mr. Longfellow's old home is a short stroll nearer town, and the two poets exchanged pleasant shots, as may be seen by Lowell's _To H.W.L._, and Longfellow's _The Herons of Elmwood_. In _Under the Willows_ Mr. Lowell has, as it were, indulged in another reverie at a later period of his life, among the same familiar surroundings.] What visionary tints the year puts on, When falling leaves falter through motionless air Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone! How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare, As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills 5 The bowl between me and those distant hills, And smiles and shakes abroad her misty, tremulous hair! No more the landscape holds its wealth apart, Making me poorer in my poverty, But mingles with my senses and my heart; 10 My own projected spirit seems to me In her own reverie the world to steep; 'Tis she that waves to sympathetic sleep, Moving, as she is moved, each field and hill and tree. How fuse and mix, with what unfelt degrees, 15 Clasped by the faint horizon's languid arms, Each into each, the hazy distances! The softened season all the landscape charms; Those hills, my native village that embay, In waves of dreamier purple roll away, 20 And floating in mirage seem all the glimmering farms. Far distant sounds the hidden chickadee Close at my side; far distant sound the leaves; The fields seem fields of dream, where Memory Wanders like gleaning Ruth; and as the sheaves 25 Of wheat and barley wavered in the eye Of Boaz as the maiden's glow went by, So tremble and seem remote all things the sense receives. The cock's shrill trump that tells of scattered corn, Passed breezily on by all his flapping mates, 30 Faint and more faint, from barn to barn is borne, Southward, perhaps to far Magellan's Straits; Dimly I catch the throb of distant flails; Silently overhead the hen-hawk sails, 34 With watchful, measuring eye, and for his quarry waits. The sobered robin, hunger-silent now, Seeks cedar-berries blue, his autumn cheer; The squirrel, on the shingly shagbark's bough, Now saws, now lists with downward eye and ear, Then drops his nut, and, with a chipping bound, 40 Whisks to his winding fastness underground; The clouds like swans drift down the streaming atmosphere. O'er yon bare knoll the pointed cedar shadows Drowse on the crisp, gray moss; the ploughman's call Creeps faint as smoke from black, fresh-furrowed meadows; 45 The single crow a single caw lets fall; And all around me every bush and tree Says Autumn's here, and Winter soon will be, Who snows his soft, white sleep and silence over all. The birch, most shy and ladylike of trees, 50 Her poverty, as best she may, retrieves, And hints at her foregone gentilities With some saved relics of her wealth of leaves; The swamp-oak, with his royal purple on, Glares red as blood across the sinking sun, 55 As one who proudlier to a falling fortune cleaves. He looks a sachem, in red blanket wrapt, Who, 'mid some council of the sad-garbed whites, Erect and stern, in his own memories lapt, With distant eye broods over other sights, 60 Sees the hushed wood the city's flare replace, The wounded turf heal o'er the railway's trace, And roams the savage Past of his undwindled rights. The red-oak, softer-grained, yields all for lost, And, with his crumpled foliage stiff and dry, 65 After the first betrayal of the frost, Rebuffs the kiss of the relenting sky; The chestnuts, lavish of their long-hid gold, To the faint Summer, beggared now and old, 69 Pour back the sunshine hoarded 'neath her favoring eye. The ash her purple drops forgivingly And sadly, breaking not the general hush; The maple-swamps glow like a sunset sea, Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush; All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting blaze 75 Of bushes low, as when, on cloudy days, Ere the rain falls, the cautious farmer burns his brush. O'er yon low wall, which guards one unkempt zone, Where vines and weeds and scrub-oaks intertwine Safe from the plough, whose rough, discordant stone 80 Is massed to one soft gray by lichens fine, The tangled blackberry, crossed and recrossed, weaves A prickly network of ensanguined leaves; Hard by, with coral beads, the prim black-alders shine. Pillaring with flame this crumbling boundary, 85 Whose loose blocks topple 'neath the ploughboy's foot, Who, with each sense shut fast except the eye, Creeps close and scares the jay he hoped to shoot, The woodbine up the elm's straight stem aspires, Coiling it, harmless, with autumnal fires; 90 In the ivy's paler blaze the martyr oak stands mute. Below, the Charles--a stripe of nether sky, Now hid by rounded apple-trees between, Whose gaps the misplaced sail sweeps bellying by, Now flickering golden through a woodland screen, 95 Then spreading out, at his next turn beyond, A silver circle like an inland pond-- Slips seaward silently through marshes purple and green. Dear marshes! vain to him the gift of sight Who cannot in their various incomes share, 100 From every season drawn, of shade and light, Who sees in them but levels brown and bare; Each change of storm or sunshine scatters free On them its largess of variety, 104 For Nature with cheap means still works her wonders rare. In Spring they lie one broad expanse of green, O'er which the light winds run with glimmering feet: Here, yellower stripes track out the creek unseen, There, darker growths o'er hidden ditches meet; And purpler stains show where the blossoms crowd, 110 As if the silent shadow of a cloud Hung there becalmed, with the next breath to fleet. All round, upon the river's slippery edge, Witching to deeper calm the drowsy tide, Whispers and leans the breeze-entangling sedge; 115 Through emerald glooms the lingering waters slide, Or, sometimes wavering, throw back the sun, And the stiff banks in eddies melt and run Of dimpling light, and with the current seem to glide. In Summer 'tis a blithesome sight to see, 120 As, step by step, with measured swing, they pass, The wide-ranked mowers wading to the knee, Their sharp scythes panting through the thick-set grass; Then, stretched beneath a rick's shade in a ring, Their nooning take, while one begins to sing 125 A stave that droops and dies 'neath the close sky of brass. Meanwhile that devil-may-care, the bobolink, Remembering duty, in mid-quaver stops Just ere he sweeps o'er rapture's tremulous brink, And 'twixt the winrows most demurely drops, 130 A decorous bird of business, who provides For his brown mate and fledglings six besides, And looks from right to left, a farmer 'mid his crops. Another change subdues them in the Fall, But saddens not; they still show merrier tints, 135 Though sober russet seems to cover all; When the first sunshine through their dewdrops glints. Look how the yellow clearness, streamed across, Redeems with rarer hues the season's loss, 139 As Dawn's feet there had touched and left their rosy prints. Or come when sunset gives its freshened zest, Lean o'er the bridge and let the ruddy thrill, While the shorn sun swells down the hazy west, Glow opposite;--the marshes drink their fill And swoon with purple veins, then slowly fade 145 Through pink to brown, as eastward moves the shade, Lengthening with stealthy creep, of Simond's darkening hill. Later, and yet ere Winter wholly shuts, Ere through the first dry snow the runner grates, And the loath cart-wheel screams in slippery ruts, 150 While firmer ice the eager boy awaits, Trying each buckle and strap beside the fire, And until bedtime plays with his desire, Twenty times putting on and off his new-bought skates;-- Then, every morn, the river's banks shine bright 155 With smooth plate-armor, treacherous and frail, By the frost's clinking hammers forged at night, 'Gainst which the lances of the sun prevail, Giving a pretty emblem of the day When guiltier arms in light shall melt away, 160 And states shall move free-limbed, loosed from war's cramping mail. And now those waterfalls the ebbing river Twice every day creates on either side Tinkle, as through their fresh-sparred grots they shiver In grass-arched channels to the sun denied; 165 High flaps in sparkling blue the far-heard crow, The silvered flats gleam frostily below, Suddenly drops the gull and breaks the glassy tide. But crowned in turn by vying seasons three, Their winter halo hath a fuller ring; 170 This glory seems to rest immovably,-- The others were too fleet and vanishing; When the hid tide is at its highest flow, O'er marsh and stream one breathless trance of snow 174 With brooding fulness awes and hushes everything. The sunshine seems blown off by the bleak wind, As pale as formal candles lit by day; Gropes to the sea the river dumb and blind; The brown ricks, snow-thatched by the storm in play, Show pearly breakers combing o'er their lee, 180 White crests as of some just enchanted sea, Checked in their maddest leap and hanging poised midway. But when the eastern blow, with rain aslant, From mid-sea's prairies green and rolling plains Drives in his wallowing herds of billows gaunt, 185 And the roused Charles remembers in his veins Old Ocean's blood and snaps his gyves of frost, That tyrannous silence on the shores is tost In dreary wreck, and crumbling desolation reigns. Edgewise or flat, in Druid-like device, 190 With leaden pools between or gullies bare, The blocks lie strewn, a bleak Stonehenge of ice; No life, no sound, to break the grim despair, Save sullen plunge, as through the sedges stiff Down crackles riverward some thaw-sapped cliff, 195 Or when the close-wedged fields of ice crunch here and there. But let me turn from fancy-pictured scenes To that whose pastoral calm before me lies: Here nothing harsh or rugged intervenes; The early evening with her misty dyes 200 Smooths off the ravelled edges of the nigh, Relieves the distant with her cooler sky, And tones the landscape down, and soothes the wearied eyes. There gleams my native village, dear to me, Though higher change's waves each day are seen, 205 Whelming fields famed in boyhood's history, Sanding with houses the diminished green; There, in red brick, which softening time defies, Stand square and stiff the Muses' factories;-- 209 How with my life knit up is every well-known scene! Flow on, dear river! not alone you flow To outward sight, and through your marshes wind; Fed from the mystic springs of long-ago, Your twin flows silent through my world of mind; Grow dim, dear marshes, in the evening's gray! 215 Before my inner sight ye stretch away, And will forever, though these fleshly eyes grow blind. Beyond the hillock's house-bespotted swell, Where Gothic chapels house the horse and chaise, Where quiet cits in Grecian temples dwell, 220 Where Coptic tombs resound with prayer and praise, Where dust and mud the equal year divide, There gentle Allston lived, and wrought, and died,[11] Transfiguring street and shop with his illumined gaze. [Footnote 11: In _Cambridge Thirty Years Ago_, which treats in prose of much the same period as this poem reproduces, Mr. Lowell has given more in detail his recollections of Washington Allston, the painter. The whole paper may be read as a prose counterpart to this poem. It is published in _Fireside Travels_.] _Virgilium vidi tantum_,--I have seen[12] 225 But as a boy, who looks alike on all, That misty hair, that fine Undine-like mien,[13] Tremulous as down to feeling's faintest call;-- Ah, dear old homestead! count it to thy fame That thither many times the Painter came;-- 230 One elm yet bears his name, a feathery tree and tall. Swiftly the present fades in memory's glow,-- Our only sure possession is the past; The village blacksmith died a month ago,[14] And dim to me the forge's roaring blast; 235 Soon fire-new mediævals we shall see Oust the black smithy from its chestnut-tree, And that hewn down, perhaps, the bee-hive green and vast. How many times, prouder than king on throne, Loosed from the village school-dame's A's and B's, 240 Panting have I the creaky bellows blown, And watched the pent volcano's red increase, Then paused to see the ponderous sledge, brought down By that hard arm voluminous and brown, 224 From the white iron swarm its golden vanishing bees. [Footnote 12: _Virgilium vidi tantum_, I barely saw Virgil, a Latin phrase applied to one who has merely had a glimpse of a great man.] [Footnote 13: Undine is the heroine of a romantic tale by Baron De la Motte Fouqué. She is represented as a water-nymph who wins a human soul only by a union with mortality which brings pain and sorrow.] [Footnote 14: The village blacksmith of Longfellow's well-known poem. The prophecy came true as regards the hewing-down of the chestnut-tree which was cut down in 1876.] Dear native town! whose choking elms each year With eddying dust before their time turn gray, Pining for rain,--to me thy dust is dear; It glorifies the eve of summer day, And when the westering sun half sunken burns, 250 The mote-thick air to deepest orange turns, The westward horseman rides through clouds of gold away, So palpable, I've seen those unshorn few, The six old willows at the causey's end (Such trees Paul Potter never dreamed nor drew), 255 Through this dry mist their checkering shadows send, Striped, here and there, with many a long-drawn thread, Where streamed through leafy chinks the trembling red, Past which, in one bright trail, the hangbird's flashes blend. Yes, dearer for thy dust than all that e'er, 260 Beneath the awarded crown of victory, Gilded the blown Olympic charioteer; Though lightly prized the ribboned parchments three, Yet _collegisse juvat_, I am glad[15] That here what colleging was mine I had,-- 265 It linked another tie, dear native town, with thee! [Footnote 15: _Collegisse juvat._ Horace in his first ode says, _Curriculo pulverem Olympicum Collegisse juvat_; that is: _It's a pleasure to have collected_ the dust of Olympus on your carriage-wheels. Mr. Lowell, helping himself to the words, says, "It's a pleasure to have been at college;" for college in its first meaning is a _collection_ of men, as in the phrase "The college of cardinals."] Nearer art thou than simply native earth, My dust with thine concedes a deeper tie; A closer claim thy soil may well put forth, Something of kindred more than sympathy; 270 For in thy bounds I reverently laid away That blinding anguish of forsaken clay, That title I seemed to have in earth and sea and sky, That portion of my life more choice to me (Though brief, yet in itself so round and whole)[16] 275 Than all the imperfect residue can be;-- The Artist saw his statue of the soul Was perfect; so, with one regretful stroke, The earthen model into fragments broke, 279 And without her the impoverished seasons roll. THE FIRST SNOW-FALL. The snow had begun in the gloaming, And busily all the night Had been heaping field and highway With a silence deep and white. Every pine and fir and hemlock 5 Wore ermine too dear for an earl, And the poorest twig on the elm-tree Was ridged inch-deep with pearl. [Footnote 16: The volume containing this poem was reverently dedicated "To the ever fresh and happy memory of our little Blanche."] From sheds new-roofed with Carrara[17] Came Chanticleer's muffled crow, 10 The stiff rails were softened to swan's-down, And still fluttered down the snow. I stood and watched by the window The noiseless work of the sky, And the sudden flurries of snow-birds, 15 Like brown leaves whirling by. I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn Where a little headstone stood; How the flakes were folding it gently, As did robins the babes in the wood. 20 Up spoke our own little Mabel, Saying, "Father, who makes it snow?" And I told of the good All-father Who cares for us here below. Again I looked at the snow-fall, 25 And thought of the leaden sky That arched o'er our first great sorrow, When that mound was heaped so high. I remembered the gradual patience That fell from that cloud like snow, 30 Flake by flake, healing and hiding The scar of our deep-plunged woe. And again to the child I whispered, "The snow that husheth all, Darling, the merciful Father 35 Alone can make it fall!" [Footnote 17: The marble of Carrara, Italy, is noted for its purity.] Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her; And she, kissing back, could not know That _my_ kiss was given to her sister, Folded close under deepening snow. 40 THE OAK. What gnarlèd stretch, what depth of shade, is his! There needs no crown to mark the forest's king; How in his leaves outshines full summer's bliss! Sun, storm, rain, dew, to him their tribute bring, Which he with such benignant royalty 5 Accepts, as overpayeth what is lent; All nature seems his vassal proud to be, And cunning only for his ornament. How towers he, too, amid the billowed snows, An unquelled exile from the summer's throne, 10 Whose plain, uncinctured front more kingly shows, Now that the obscuring courtier leaves are flown. His boughs make music of the winter air, Jewelled with sleet, like some cathedral front Where clinging snow-flakes with quaint art repair 15 The dints and furrows of time's envious brunt. How doth his patient strength the rude March wind Persuade to seem glad breaths of summer breeze, And win the soil that fain would be unkind, To swell his revenues with proud increase! 20 He is the gem; and all the landscape wide (So doth his grandeur isolate the sense) Seems but the setting, worthless all beside, An empty socket, were he fallen thence. So, from oft converse with life's wintry gales, 25 Should man learn how to clasp with tougher roots The inspiring earth; how otherwise avails The leaf-creating sap that sunward shoots? So every year that falls with noiseless flake Should fill old scars up on the stormward side, 30 And make hoar age revered for age's sake, Not for traditions of youth's leafy pride. So, from the pinched soil of a churlish fate, True hearts compel the sap of sturdier growth, So between earth and heaven stand simply great, 35 That these shall seem but their attendants both; For nature's forces with obedient zeal Wait on the rooted faith and oaken will; As quickly the pretender's cheat they feel, And turn mad Pucks to flout and mock him still.[18] 40 Lord! all Thy works are lessons; each contains Some emblem of man's all-containing soul; Shall he make fruitless all Thy glorious pains, Delving within Thy grace an eyeless mole? Make me the least of thy Dodona-grove,[19] 45 Cause me some message of thy truth to bring, Speak but a word to me, nor let thy love Among my boughs disdain to perch and sing. [Footnote 18: See Shakspeare's _A Midsummer Night's Dream_.] [Footnote 19: A grove of oaks at Dodona, in ancient Greece, was the seat of a famous oracle.] PROMETHEUS. [The classic legend of Prometheus underwent various changes in successive periods of Greek thought. In its main outline the story is the same: that Prometheus, whose name signifies Forethought, stole fire from Zeus, or Jupiter, or Jove, and gave it as a gift to man. For this, the angry god bound him upon Mount Caucasus, and decreed that a vulture should prey upon his liver, destroying every day what was renewed in the night. The struggle of man's thought to free itself from the tyranny of fear and superstition and all monsters of the imagination is illustrated in the myth. The myth is one which has been a favorite with modern poets, as witness Goethe, Shelley, Mrs. Browning, and Longfellow.] One after one the stars have risen and set, Sparkling upon the hoarfrost on my chain: The Bear, that prowled all night about the fold Of the North-Star, hath shrunk into his den, Scared by the blithesome footsteps of the Dawn, 5 Whose blushing smile floods all the Orient; And now bright Lucifer grows less and less, Into the heaven's blue quiet deep-withdrawn. Sunless and starless all, the desert sky Arches above me, empty as this heart 10 For ages hath been empty of all joy, Except to brood upon its silent hope, As o'er its hope of day the sky doth now. All night have I heard voices: deeper yet The deep low breathing of the silence grew. 15 While all about, muffled in awe, there stood Shadows, or forms, or both, clear-felt at heart, But, when I turned to front them, far along Only a shudder through the midnight ran, And the dense stillness walled me closer round. 20 But still I heard them wander up and down That solitude, and flappings of dusk wings Did mingle with them, whether of those hags Let slip upon me once from Hades deep, Or of yet direr torments, if such be, 25 I could but guess; and then toward me came A shape as of a woman: very pale It was, and calm; its cold eyes did not move, And mine moved not, but only stared on them. Their fixéd awe went through my brain like ice; 30 A skeleton hand seemed clutching at my heart, And a sharp chill, as if a dank night fog Suddenly closed me in, was all I felt: And then, methought, I heard a freezing sigh, A long, deep, shivering sigh, as from blue lips 35 Stiffening in death, close to mine ear. I thought Some doom was close upon me, and I looked And saw the red moon through the heavy mist, Just setting, and it seemed as it were falling, Or reeling to its fall, so dim and dead 40 And palsy-struck it looked. Then all sounds merged Into the rising surges of the pines, Which, leagues below me, clothing the gaunt loins Of ancient Caucasus with hairy strength, Sent up a murmur in the morning wind, 45 Sad as the wail that from the populous earth All day and night to high Olympus soars, Fit incense to thy wicked throne, O Jove! Thy hated name is tossed once more in scorn From off my lips, for I will tell thy doom. 50 And are these tears? Nay, do not triumph, Jove! They are wrung from me but by the agonies Of prophecy, like those sparse drops which fall From clouds in travail of the lightning, when The great wave of the storm high-curled and black 55 Rolls steadily onward to its thunderous break. Why art thou made a god of, thou poor type Of anger, and revenge, and cunning force? True Power was never born of brutish strength, Nor sweet Truth suckled at the shaggy dugs 60 Of that old she-wolf. Are thy thunder-bolts, That quell the darkness for a space, so strong As the prevailing patience of meek Light, Who, with the invincible tenderness of peace, Wins it to be a portion of herself? 65 Why art thou made a god of, thou, who hast The never-sleeping terror at thy heart, That birthright of all tyrants, worse to bear Than this thy ravening bird on which I smile? Thou swear'st to free me, if I will unfold 70 What kind of doom it is whose omen flits Across thy heart, as o'er a troop of doves The fearful shadow of the kite. What need To know that truth whose knowledge cannot save? Evil its errand hath, as well as Good; 75 When thine is finished, thou art known no more: There is a higher purity than thou, And higher purity is greater strength; Thy nature is thy doom, at which thy heart Trembles behind the thick wall of thy might. 80 Let man but hope, and thou art straightway chilled With thought of that drear silence and deep night Which, like a dream, shall swallow thee and thine: Let man but will, and thou art god no more, More capable of ruin than the gold 85 And ivory that image thee on earth. He who hurled down the monstrous Titan-brood[20] Blinded with lightnings, with rough thunders stunned, Is weaker than a simple human thought. My slender voice can shake thee, as the breeze, 90 That seems but apt to stir a maiden's hair, Sways huge Oceanus from pole to pole; For I am still Prometheus, and foreknow In my wise heart the end and doom of all. Yes, I am still Prometheus, wiser grown 95 By years of solitude,--that holds apart The past and future, giving the soul room To search into itself,--and long commune With this eternal silence;--more a god, In my long-suffering and strength to meet 100 With equal front the direst shafts of fate, Than thou in thy faint-hearted despotism, Girt with thy baby-toys of force and wrath. Yes, I am that Prometheus who brought down The light to man, which thou, in selfish fear, 105 Hadst to thyself usurped,--his by sole right, For Man hath right to all save Tyranny,-- And which shall free him yet from thy frail throne. Tyrants are but the spawn of Ignorance, Begotten by the slaves they trample on, 110 Who, could they win a glimmer of the light, And see that Tyranny is always weakness, Or Fear with its own bosom ill at ease, Would laugh away in scorn the sand-wove chain Which their own blindness feigned for adamant. 115 Wrong ever builds on quicksands, but the Right To the firm centre lays its moveless base. The tyrant trembles, if the air but stirs The innocent ringlets of a child's free hair, And crouches, when the thought of some great spirit, 120 With world-wide murmur, like a rising gale, Over men's hearts, as over standing corn, Rushes, and bends them to its own strong will. So shall some thought of mine yet circle earth, And puff away thy crumbling altars, Jove! 125 [Footnote 20: That is, Jove himself.] And, wouldst thou know of my supreme revenge, Poor tyrant, even now dethroned in heart, Realmless in soul, as tyrants ever are, Listen! and tell me if this bitter peak, This never-glutted vulture, and these chains 130 Shrink not before it; for it shall befit A sorrow-taught, unconquered Titan-heart. Men, when their death is on them, seem to stand On a precipitous crag that overhangs The abyss of doom, and in that depth to see, 135 As in a glass, the features dim and vast Of things to come, the shadows, as it seems, Of what had been. Death ever fronts the wise; Not fearfully, but with clear promises Of larger life, on whose broad vans upborne, 140 Their outlook widens, and they see beyond The horizon of the present and the past, Even to the very source and end of things. Such am I now: immortal woe hath made My heart a seer, and my soul a judge 145 Between the substance and the shadow of Truth. The sure supremeness of the Beautiful, By all the martyrdoms made doubly sure Of such as I am, this is my revenge, Which of my wrongs builds a triumphal arch, 150 Through which I see a sceptre and a throne. The pipings of glad shepherds on the hills, Tending the flocks no more to bleed for thee,-- The songs of maidens pressing with white feet The vintage on thine altars poured no more,-- 155 The murmurous bliss of lovers, underneath Dim grapevine bowers, whose rosy bunches press Not half so closely their warm cheeks, unpaled By thoughts of thy brute lust,--the hive-like hum Of peaceful commonwealths, where sunburnt Toil 160 Reaps for itself the rich earth made its own By its own labor, lightened with glad hymns To an omnipotence which thy mad bolts Would cope with as a spark with the vast sea,-- Even the spirit of free love and peace, 165 Duty's sure recompense through life and death,-- These are such harvests as all master-spirits Reap, haply not on earth, but reap no less Because the sheaves are bound by hands not theirs; These are the bloodless daggers wherewithal 170 They stab fallen tyrants, this their high revenge: For their best part of life on earth is when, Long after death, prisoned and pent no more, Their thoughts, their wild dreams even, have become Part of the necessary air men breathe: 175 When, like the moon, herself behind a cloud, They shed down light before us on life's sea, That cheers us to steer onward still in hope. Earth with her twining memories ivies o'er Their holy sepulchres; the chainless sea, 180 In tempest or wide calm, repeats their thoughts; The lightning and the thunder, all free things, Have legends of them for the ears of men. All other glories are as falling stars, But universal Nature watches theirs: 185 Such strength is won by love of human-kind. Not that I feel that hunger after fame, Which souls of a half-greatness are beset with; But that the memory of noble deeds Cries shame upon the idle and the vile, 190 And keeps the heart of Man forever up To the heroic level of old time. To be forgot at first is little pain To a heart conscious of such high intent As must be deathless on the lips of men; 195 But, having been a name, to sink and be A something which the world can do without, Which, having been or not, would never change The lightest pulse of fate,--this is indeed A cup of bitterness the worst to taste, 200 And this thy heart shall empty to the dregs. Endless despair shall be thy Caucasus, And memory thy vulture; thou wilt find Oblivion far lonelier than this peak,-- Behold thy destiny! Thou think'st it much 205 That I should brave thee, miserable god! But I have braved a mightier than thou. Even the tempting of this soaring heart, Which might have made me, scarcely less than thou, A god among my brethren weak and blind,-- 210 Scarce less than thou, a pitiable thing To be down-trodden into darkness soon. But now I am above thee, for thou art The bungling workmanship of fear, the block That awes the swart Barbarian; but I 215 Am what myself have made,--a nature wise With finding in itself the types of all,-- With watching from the dim verge of the time What things to be are visible in the gleams Thrown forward on them from the luminous past,-- 220 Wise with the history of its own frail heart, With reverence and with sorrow, and with love, Broad as the world, for freedom and for man. Thou and all strength shall crumble, except Love, By whom, and for whose glory, ye shall cease: 225 And, when thou art but a dim moaning heard From out the pitiless gloom of Chaos, I Shall be a power and a memory, A name to fright all tyrants with, a light Unsetting as the pole-star, a great voice 230 Heard in the breathless pauses of the fight By truth and freedom ever waged with wrong, Clear as a silver trumpet, to awake Huge echoes that from age to age live on In kindred spirits, giving them a sense 235 Of boundless power from boundless suffering wrung: And many a glazing eye shall smile to see The memory of my triumph (for to meet Wrong with endurance, and to overcome The present with a heart that looks beyond, 240 Are triumph), like a prophet eagle, perch Upon the sacred banner of the Right. Evil springs up, and flowers, and bears no seed, And feeds the green earth with its swift decay, Leaving it richer for the growth of truth; 245 But Good, once put in action or in thought, Like a strong oak, doth from its boughs shed down The ripe germs of a forest. Thou, weak god, Shalt fade and be forgotten! but this soul, Fresh-living still in the serene abyss, 250 In every heaving shall partake, that grows From heart to heart among the sons of men,-- As the ominous hum before the earthquake runs Far through the �gean from roused isle to isle,-- Foreboding wreck to palaces and shrines, 255 And mighty rents in many a cavernous error That darkens the free light to man:--This heart, Unscarred by thy grim vulture, as the truth Grows but more lovely 'neath the beaks and claws Of Harpies blind that fain would soil it, shall 260 In all the throbbing exultations share That wait on freedom's triumphs, and in all The glorious agonies of martyr-spirits,-- Sharp lightning-throes to split the jagged clouds That veil the future, showing them the end,-- 265 Pain's thorny crown for constancy and truth, Girding the temples like a wreath of stars. This is a thought, that, like the fabled laurel, Makes my faith thunder-proof; and thy dread bolts Fall on me like the silent flakes of snow 270 On the hoar brows of aged Caucasus: But, O thought far more blissful, they can rend This cloud of flesh, and make my soul a star! Unleash thy crouching thunders now, O Jove! Free this high heart, which, a poor captive long, 275 Doth knock to be let forth, this heart which still, In its invincible manhood, overtops Thy puny godship, as this mountain doth The pines that moss its roots. Oh, even now, While from my peak of suffering I look down, 280 Beholding with a far-spread gush of hope The sunrise of that Beauty, in whose face, Shone all around with love, no man shall look But straightway like a god he is uplift Unto the throne long empty for his sake, 285 And clearly oft foreshadowed in wide dreams By his free inward nature, which nor thou, Nor any anarch after thee, can bind From working its great doom,--now, now set free This essence, not to die, but to become 290 Part of that awful Presence which doth haunt The palaces of tyrants, to hunt off, With its grim eyes and fearful whisperings And hideous sense of utter loneliness, All hope of safety, all desire of peace, 295 All but the loathed forefeeling of blank death,-- Part of that spirit which doth ever brood In patient calm on the unpilfered nest Of man's deep heart, till mighty thoughts grow fledged To sail with darkening shadow o'er the world, 300 Filling with dread such souls as dare not trust In the unfailing energy of Good, Until they swoop, and their pale quarry make Of some o'erbloated wrong,--that spirit which Scatters great hopes in the seed-field of man, 305 Like acorns among grain, to grow and be A roof for freedom in all coming time! But no, this cannot be; for ages yet, In solitude unbroken, shall I hear The angry Caspian to the Euxine shout, 310 And Euxine answer with a muffled roar, On either side storming the giant walls Of Caucasus with leagues of climbing foam (Less, from my height, than flakes of downy snow), That draw back baffled but to hurl again, 315 Snatched up in wrath and horrible turmoil, Mountain on mountain, as the Titans erst, My brethren, scaling the high seat of Jove, Heaved Pelion upon Ossa's shoulders broad In vain emprise. The moon will come and go 320 With her monotonous vicissitude; Once beautiful, when I was free to walk Among my fellows, and to interchange The influence benign of loving eyes, But now by aged use grown wearisome;-- 325 False thought! most false! for how could I endure These crawling centuries of lonely woe Unshamed by weak complaining, but for thee, Loneliest, save me, of all created things, Mild-eyed Astarte, my best comforter,[21] 330 With thy pale smile of sad benignity? [Footnote 21: Daughter of Heaven and Earth, and symbol of Nature.] Year after year will pass away and seem To me, in mine eternal agony, But as the shadows of dumb summer clouds, Which I have watched so often darkening o'er 335 The vast Sarmatian plain, league-wide at first, But, with still swiftness, lessening on and on Till cloud and shadow meet and mingle where The gray horizon fades into the sky, Far, far to northward. Yes, for ages yet 340 Must I lie here upon my altar huge, A sacrifice for man. Sorrow will be, As it hath been, his portion; endless doom, While the immortal with the mortal linked Dreams of its wings and pines for what it dreams, 345 With upward yearn unceasing. Better so: For wisdom is meek sorrow's patient child, And empire over self, and all the deep Strong charities that make men seem like gods; And love, that makes them be gods, from her breasts 350 Sucks in the milk that makes mankind one blood. Good never comes unmixed, or so it seems, Having two faces, as some images Are carved, of foolish gods; one face is ill; But one heart lies beneath, and that is good, 355 As are all hearts, when we explore their depths. Therefore, great heart, bear up! thou art but type Of what all lofty spirits endure, that fain Would win men back to strength and peace through love: Each hath his lonely peak, and on each heart 360 Envy, or scorn, or hatred, tears lifelong With vulture beak; yet the high soul is left; And faith, which is but hope grown wise; and love And patience, which at last shall overcome. TO W.L. GARRISON. "Some time afterward, it was reported to me by the city officers that they had ferreted out the paper and its editor; that his office was an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary a negro boy, and his supporters a few very insignificant persons of all colors."--_Letter of H.G. Otis._ In a small chamber, friendless and unseen, Toiled o'er his types one poor, unlearned young man; The place was dark, unfurnitured, and mean;-- Yet there the freedom of a race began. Help came but slowly; surely no man yet 5 Put lever to the heavy world with less:[22] What need of help? He knew how types were set, He had a dauntless spirit, and a press. Such earnest natures are the fiery pith, The compact nucleus, round which systems grow! 10 Mass after mass becomes inspired therewith, And whirls impregnate with the central glow, O Truth! O Freedom! how are ye still born In the rude stable, in the manger nursed! What humble hands unbar those gates of morn 15 Through which the splendors of the New Day burst. What! shall one monk, scarce known beyond his cell, Front Rome's far-reaching bolts, and scorn her frown? Brave Luther answered YES; that thunder's swell Rocked Europe, and discharmed the triple crown. 20 [Footnote 22: Archimedes, a great philosopher of antiquity, used to say, "Only give me a place to stand on, and I will move the world with my lever."] Whatever can be known of earth we know, Sneered Europe's wise men, in their snail-shells curled; No! said one man in Genoa, and that No Out of the dark created this New World. Who is it will not dare himself to trust? 25 Who is it hath not strength to stand alone? Who is it thwarts and bilks the inward MUST? He and his works, like sand, from earth are blown? Men of a thousand shifts and wiles, look here! See one straightforward conscience put in pawn 30 To win a world; see the obedient sphere By bravery's simple gravitation drawn! Shall we not heed the lesson taught of old, And by the Present's lips repeated still, In our own single manhood to be bold, 35 Fortressed in conscience and impregnable will? We stride the river daily at its spring, Nor, in our childish thoughtlessness, foresee, What myriad vassal streams shall tribute bring, How like an equal it shall greet the sea. 40 O small beginnings, ye are great and strong, Based on a faithful heart and weariless brain! Ye build the future fair, ye conquer wrong, Ye earn the crown, and wear it not in vain. WENDELL PHILLIPS. He stood upon the world's broad threshold; wide The din of battle and of slaughter rose; He saw God stand upon the weaker side, That sank in seeming loss before its foes: Many there were who made great haste and sold 5 Unto the cunning enemy their swords, He scorned their gifts of fame, and power, and gold, And, underneath their soft and flowery words, Heard the cold serpent hiss; therefore he went And humbly joined him to the weaker part, 10 Fanatic named, and fool, yet well content So he could be the nearer to God's heart, And feel its solemn pulses sending blood Through all the widespread veins of endless good. MR. HOSEA BIGLOW TO THE EDITOR OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY. [When the Mexican war was under discussion, Mr. Lowell began the publication in a Boston newspaper of satirical poems, written in the Yankee dialect, and purporting to come for the most part from one Hosea Biglow. The poems were the sharpest political darts that were fired at the time, and when the verses were collected and set forth, with a paraphernalia of introductions and notes professedly prepared by an old-fashioned, scholarly parson, Rev. Homer Wilbur, the book gave Mr. Lowell a distinct place as a wit and satirist, and was read with delight in England and America after the circumstance which called it out had become a matter of history and no longer of politics. When the war for the Union broke out, Mr. Lowell took up the same strain and contributed to the _Atlantic Monthly_ a second series of _Biglow Papers_, and just before the close of the war, published the poem that follows.] DEAR SIR,--Your letter come to han' Requestin' me to please be funny; But I ain't made upon a plan Thet knows wut's comin', gall or honey: Ther' 's times the world does look so queer, 5 Odd fancies come afore I call 'em; An' then agin, for half a year, No preacher 'thout a call 's more solemn. You're 'n want o' sunthin' light an' cute, Rattlin' an' shrewd an' kin' o' jingleish, 10 An' wish, pervidin' it 'ould suit, I'd take an' citify my English. I _ken_ write long-tailed, ef I please,-- But when I'm jokin', no, I thankee; Then, 'fore I know it, my idees 15 Run helter-skelter into Yankee. Sence I begun to scribble rhyme, I tell ye wut, I hain't ben foolin'; The parson's books, life, death, an' time Hev took some trouble with my schoolin'; 20 Nor th' airth don't git put out with me, Thet love her 'z though she wuz a woman; Why, th' ain't a bird upon the tree But half forgives my bein' human. An' yit I love th' unhighschooled way 25 Ol' farmers hed when I wuz younger; Their talk wuz meatier, an' 'ould stay, While book-froth seems to whet your hunger; For puttin' in a downright lick 'Twixt Humbug's eyes, ther' 's few can metch it. 30 An' then it helves my thoughts ez slick Ez stret-grained hickory doos a hetchet. But when I can't, I can't, thet's all, For Natur' won't put up with gullin'; Idees you hev to shove an' haul 35 Like a druv pig ain't wuth a mullein: Live thoughts ain't sent for; thru all rifts O' sense they pour an' resh ye onwards, Like rivers when south-lyin' drifts Feel thet th' old airth's a-wheelin' sunwards. 40 Time wuz, the rhymes come crowdin' thick Ez office-seekers arter 'lection, An' into ary place 'ould stick Without no bother nor objection; But sence the war my thoughts hang back 45 Ez though I wanted to enlist 'em, An' subs'tutes--_they_ don't never lack, But then they'll slope afore you've mist 'em. Nothin' don't seem like wut it wuz; I can't see wut there is to hender, 50 An' yit my brains jes' go buzz, buzz, Like bumblebees agin a winder; 'Fore these times come, in all airth's row, Ther' wuz one quiet place, my head in, Where I could hide an' think,--but now 55 It's all one teeter, hopin', dreadin'. Where's Peace? I start, some clear-blown night, When gaunt stone walls grow numb an' number, An', creakin' 'cross the snow-crus' white, Walk the col' starlight into summer; 60 Up grows the moon, an' swell by swell Thru the pale pasturs silvers dimmer Than the last smile thet strives to tell O' love gone heavenward in its shimmer. I hev ben gladder o' sech things, 65 Than cocks o' spring or bees o' clover, They filled my heart with livin' springs, But now they seem to freeze 'em over; Sights innercent ez babes on knee, Peaceful ez eyes o' pastur'd cattle, 70 Jes' coz they be so, seem to me To rile me more with thoughts o' battle. In-doors an' out by spells I try; Ma'am Natur' keeps her spin-wheel goin', But leaves my natur' stiff and dry 75 Ez fiel's o' clover arter mowin'; An' her jes' keepin' on the same, Calmer 'n a clock, an' never carin', An' findin' nary thing to blame, Is wus than ef she took to swearin'. 80 Snow-flakes come whisperin' on the pane, The charm makes blazin' logs so pleasant, But I can't hark to wut they're say'n', With Grant or Sherman ollers present; The chimbleys shudder in the gale, 85 Thet lulls, then suddin takes to flappin' Like a shot hawk, but all's ez stale To me ez so much sperit rappin'. Under the yaller-pines I house, When sunshine makes 'em all sweet-scented, 90 An' hear among their furry boughs The baskin' west-wind purr contented, While 'way o'erhead, ez sweet an' low Ez distant bells thet ring for meetin', The wedged wil' geese their bugles blow, 95 Further an' further South retreatin'. Or up the slippery knob I strain An' see a hundred hills like islan's Lift their blue woods in broken chain Out o' the sea o' snowy silence; 100 The farm-smokes, sweetes' sight on airth, Slow thru the winter air a-shrinkin' Seem kin' o' sad, an' roun' the hearth Of empty places set me thinkin'. Beaver roars hoarse with meltin' snows,[23] 105 An' rattles di'mon's from his granite; Time wuz, he snatched away my prose, An' into psalms or satires ran it; But he, nor all the rest thet once Started my blood to country-dances, 110 Can't set me goin' more 'n a dunce Thet hain't no use for dreams an' fancies. [Footnote 23: Beaver Brook, a tributary of the Charles.] Rat-tat-tat-tattle thru the street I hear the drummers makin' riot, An' I set thinkin' o' the feet 115 Thet follered once an' now are quiet,-- White feet ez snowdrops innercent, Thet never knowed the paths o' Satan, Whose comin' step ther' 's ears thet won't, No, not lifelong, leave off awaitin'. 120 Why, hain't I held 'em on my knee? Didn't I love to see 'em growin', Three likely lads ez wal could be, Hahnsome an' brave an' not tu knowin'? I set an' look into the blaze 125 Whose natur', jes' like theirn, keeps climbin', Ez long 'z it lives, in shinin' ways, An' half despise myself for rhymin'. Wut's words to them whose faith an' truth On War's red techstone rang true metal, 130 Who ventered life an' love an' youth For the gret prize o' death in battle? To him who, deadly hurt, agen Flashed on afore the charge's thunder, Tippin' with fire the bolt of men 135 Thet rived the Rebel line asunder? 'T ain't right to hev the young go fust, All throbbin' full o' gifts an' graces, Leavin' life's paupers dry ez dust To try an' make b'lieve fill their places: 140 Nothin' but tells us wut we miss, Ther' 's gaps our lives can't never fay in, An' _thet_ world seems so fur from this Lef' for us loafers to grow gray in! My eyes cloud up for rain; my mouth 145 Will take to twitchin' roun' the corners; I pity mothers, tu, down South, For all they sot among the scorners: I'd sooner take my chance to stan' At Jedgment where your meanest slave is, 150 Than at God's bar hol' up a han' Ez drippin' red ez yourn, Jeff Davis! Come, Peace! not like a mourner bowed For honor lost an' dear ones wasted, But proud, to meet a people proud, 155 With eyes thet tell o' triumph tasted! Come, with han' grippin' on the hilt, An' step thet proves ye Victory's daughter! Longin' for you, our sperits wilt Like shipwrecked men's on raf's for water. 160 Come, while our country feels the lift Of a gret instinct shoutin' forwards, An' knows thet freedom ain't a gift Thet tarries long in han's o' cowards! Come, sech ez mothers prayed for, when 165 They kissed their cross with lips thet quivered, An' bring fair wages for brave men, A nation saved, a race delivered! VILLA FRANCA. [The battles of Magenta and Solferino, in the early summer of 1859, had given promise of a complete emancipation of Italy from the Austrian supremacy, when Napoleon III., who was acting in alliance with Victor Emmanuel, king of Sardinia, held a meeting with the emperor Francis Joseph of Austria at Villa Franca, and agreed to terms which were very far from including the unification of Italy. There was a general distrust of Napoleon, and the war continued with the final result of a united Italy. In the poem which follows Mr. Lowell gives expression to his want of faith in the French emperor.] Wait a little: do _we_ not wait? Louis Napoleon is not Fate, Francis Joseph is not Time; There's One hath swifter feet than Crime; Cannon-parliaments settle naught; 5 Venice is Austria's,--whose is Thought? Minié is good, but, spite of change, Gutenberg's gun has the longest range. Spin, spin, Clotho, spin![24] Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! 10 In the shadow, year out, year in, The silent headsman waits forever. [Footnote 24: Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos were the three Fates of the ancient mythology; Clotho spun the thread of human destiny, Lachesis twisted it, and Atropos with shears severed it.] Wait, we say; our years are long; Men are weak, but Man is strong; Since the stars first curved their rings, 15 We have looked on many things; Great wars come and great wars go, Wolf-tracks light on polar snow; We shall see him come and gone, This second-hand Napoleon. 20 Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! In the shadow, year out, year in, The silent headsman waits forever. We saw the elder Corsican, 25 And Clotho muttered as she span, While crownèd lackeys bore the train, Of the pinchbeck Charlemagne: "Sister, stint not length of thread! Sister, stay the scissors dread! 30 On Saint Helen's granite bleak, Hark, the vulture whets his beak!" Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! In the shadow, year out, year in, 35 The silent headsman waits forever. The Bonapartes, we know their bees That wade in honey red to the knees: Their patent reaper, its sheaves sleep sound In dreamless garners underground: 40 We know false glory's spendthrift race Pawning nations for feathers and lace; It may be short, it may be long, "'Tis reckoning-day!" sneers unpaid Wrong. Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! 45 Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! In the shadow, year out, year in, The silent headsman waits forever. The Cock that wears the Eagle's skin Can promise what he ne'er could win; 50 Slavery reaped for fine words sown, System for all, and rights for none, Despots atop, a wild clan below, Such is the Gaul from long ago; Wash the black from the Ethiop's face, 55 Wash the past out of man or race! Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! In the shadow, year out, year in, The silent headsman waits forever. 60 'Neath Gregory's throne a spider swings,[25] And snares the people for the kings; "Luther is dead; old quarrels pass; The stake's black scars are healed with grass;" So dreamers prate; did man e'er live 65 Saw priest or woman yet forgive; But Luther's broom is left, and eyes Peep o'er their creeds to where it lies. Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! 70 In the shadow, year out, year in, The silent headsman waits forever. [Footnote 25: There was more than one Pope Gregory, but Gregory VII in the eleventh century brought the papacy to its supreme power, when kings humbled themselves before the Pope.] Smooth sails the ship of either realm, Kaiser and Jesuit at the helm; We look down the depths, and mark 75 Silent workers in the dark Building slow the sharp-tusked reefs, Old instincts hardening to new beliefs; Patience a little; learn to wait; Hours are long on the clock of Fate. 80 Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! Darkness is strong, and so is Sin, But only God endures forever! THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY. "Come forth!" my catbird calls to me, "And hear me sing a cavatina That, in this old familiar tree, Shall hang a garden of Alcina. "These buttercups shall brim with wine 5 Beyond all Lesbian juice or Massic; May not New England be divine? My ode to ripening summer classic? "Or, if to me you will not hark, By Beaver Brook a thrush is ringing 10 Till all the alder-coverts dark Seem sunshine-dappled with his singing. "Come out beneath the unmastered sky, With its emancipating spaces, And learn to sing as well as I, 15 Without premeditated graces. "What boot your many-volumed gains, Those withered leaves forever turning, To win, at best, for all your pains, A nature mummy-wrapt in learning? 20 "The leaves wherein true wisdom lies On living trees the sun are drinking; Those white clouds, drowsing through the skies, Grew not so beautiful by thinking. "Come out! with me the oriole cries, 25 Escape the demon that pursues you! And, hark, the cuckoo weatherwise, Still hiding, farther onward wooes you." "Alas, dear friend, that, all my days, Has poured from thy syringa thicket 30 The quaintly discontinuous lays To which I hold a season-ticket,-- "A season-ticket cheaply bought With a dessert of pilfered berries, And who so oft my soul has caught 35 With morn and evening voluntaries,-- "Deem me not faithless, if all day Among my dusty books I linger, No pipe, like thee, for June to play With fancy-led, half-conscious finger. 40 "A bird is singing in my brain And bubbling o'er with mingled fancies, Gay, tragic, rapt, right heart of Spain Fed with the sap of old romances. "I ask no ampler skies than those 45 His magic music rears above me, No falser friends, no truer foes,-- And does not Doña Clara love me? "Cloaked shapes, a twanging of guitars, A rush of feet, and rapiers clashing, 50 Then silence deep with breathless stars, And overhead a white hand flashing. "O music of all moods and climes, Vengeful, forgiving, sensuous, saintly, Where still, between the Christian chimes, 55 The moorish cymbal tinkles faintly! "O life borne lightly in the hand, For friend or foe with grace Castilian! O valley safe in Fancy's land, Not tramped to mud yet by the million! 60 "Bird of to-day, thy songs are stale To his, my singer of all weathers, My Calderon, my nightingale, My Arab soul in Spanish feathers. "Ah, friend, these singers dead so long, 65 And still, God knows, in purgatory, Give its best sweetness to all song, To Nature's self her better glory." ALADDIN. When I was a beggarly boy, And lived in a cellar damp, I had not a friend nor a toy, But I had Aladdin's lamp; When I could not sleep for cold, 5 I had fire enough in my brain, And builded with roofs of gold My beautiful castles in Spain! Since then I have toiled day and night, I have money and power good store, 10 But, I'd give all my lamps of silver bright For the one that is mine no more; Take, Fortune, whatever you choose, You gave, and may snatch again; I have nothing 't would pain me to lose, 15 For I own no more castles in Spain! BEAVER BROOK. Hushed with broad sunlight lies the hill, And, minuting the long day's loss, The cedar's shadow, slow and still, Creeps o'er its dial of gray moss. Warm noon brims full the valley's cup, 5 The aspen's leaves are scarce astir; Only the little mill sends up Its busy, never-ceasing burr. Climbing the loose-piled wall that hems The road along the mill-pond's brink, 10 From 'neath the arching barberry-stems, My footstep scares the shy chewink. Beneath a bony buttonwood The mill's red door lets forth the din; The whitened miller, dust-imbued, 15 Flits past the square of dark within. No mountain torrent's strength is here; Sweet Beaver, child of forest still,[26] Heaps its small pitcher to the ear, And gently waits the miller's will. 20 Swift slips Undine along the race Unheard, and then, with flashing bound, Floods the dull wheel with light and grace, And, laughing, hunts the loath drudge round. The miller dreams not at what cost 25 The quivering millstones hum and whirl, Nor how for every turn are tost Armfuls of diamond and of pearl. But Summer cleared my happier eyes With drops of some celestial juice, 30 To see how Beauty underlies, Forevermore each form of use. And more; methought I saw that flood, Which now so dull and darkling steals, Thick, here and there, with human blood, 35 To turn the world's laborious wheels. [Footnote 26: Beaver Brook was within walking distance of the poet's home. See _The Nightingale in the Study_.] No more than doth the miller there, Shut in our several cells, do we Know with what waste of beauty rare Moves every day's machinery. 40 Surely the wiser time shall come When this fine overplus of might, No longer sullen, slow, and dumb, Shall leap to music and to light. In that new childhood of the Earth 45 Life of itself shall dance and play, Fresh blood in Time's shrunk veins make mirth, And labor meet delight half way. THE SHEPHERD OF KING ADMETUS. There came a youth upon the earth, Some thousand years ago, Whose slender hands were nothing worth, Whether to plough, or reap, or sow. Upon an empty tortoise-shell 5 He stretched some chords, and drew Music that made men's bosoms swell Fearless, or brimmed their eyes with dew. Then King Admetus, one who had Pure taste by right divine, 10 Decreed his singing not too bad To hear between the cups of wine: And so, well pleased with being soothed Into a sweet half-sleep, Three times his kingly beard he smoothed, 15 And made him viceroy o'er his sheep. His words were simple words enough, And yet he used them so, That what in other mouths was rough In his seemed musical and low. 20 Men called him but a shiftless youth, In whom no good they saw; And yet, unwittingly, in truth, They made his careless words their law. They knew not how he learned at all, 25 For idly, hour by hour, He sat and watched the dead leaves fall, Or mused upon a common flower. It seemed the loveliness of things Did teach him all their use, 30 For, in mere weeds, and stones, and springs, He found a healing power profuse. Men granted that his speech was wise, But, when a glance they caught Of his slim grace and woman's eyes, 35 They laughed, and called him good-for-naught. Yet after he was dead and gone, And e'en his memory dim, Earth seemed more sweet to live upon, More full of love, because of him. 40 And day by day more holy grew Each spot where he had trod, Till after-poets only knew Their first-born brother as a god. THE PRESENT CRISIS. [In the year 1844, which is the date of the following poem, the question of the annexation of Texas was pending, and it was made an issue of the presidential campaign then taking place. The anti-slavery party feared and opposed annexation, on account of the added strength which it would give to slavery, and the South desired it for the same reason.] When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west, And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time. 5 Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe, When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems to and fro; At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start, Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart, And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future's heart. 10 So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill, Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill, And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his sympathies with God In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by the sod, Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the nobler clod. 15 For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along, Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right or wrong;[27] Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's vast frame Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or shame;-- In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim. 20 [Footnote 27: This figure has special force from the fact that Morse's telegraph was first put in operation a few months before the writing of this poem.] Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight, Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right, And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light. 25 Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shall stand, Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land? Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 'tis Truth alone is strong, And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng[28] Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong. 30 Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see, That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Oblivion's sea; Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff must fly; Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by. 35 [Footnote 28: Compare:-- "Truth crushed to earth shall rise again, The eternal years of God are hers." BRYANT.] Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word;[29] Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,-- Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own. 40 We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great, Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate, But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din, List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,-- "They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin." 45 [Footnote 29: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."] Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellest of the giant brood, Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who have drenched the earth with blood, Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our purer day, Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable prey;-- Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless children play?[30] 50 Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just; Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified, And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied. 55 Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes,--they were souls that stood alone, While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone, Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine, By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme design. 60 [Footnote 30: For the full story of Cyclops, which runs in suggestive phrase through these five lines, see the ninth book of the Odyssey. The translation by G.H. Palmer will be found especially satisfactory.] By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet I track, Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back, And these mounts of anguish number how each generation learned One new word of that grand _Credo_ which in prophet-hearts hath burned[31] Since the first man stood God-conquered with his face to heaven upturned. 65 For Humanity sweeps onward: where to-day the martyr stands, On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands; Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn, While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn. 70 'Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves Of a legendary virtue carved upon our fathers' graves, Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a crime;-- Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men behind their time? Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, that make Plymouth Rock sublime? 75 [Footnote 31: The creed is so named from the first word in the Latin form, _credo_, I believe.] They were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts, Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the Past's; But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath made us free, Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits flee The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove them across the sea. 80 They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires, Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's new-lit altar-fires; Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our haste to slay, From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of to-day? 85 New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth; Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be. Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea, Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key. 90 AL FRESCO. The dandelions and buttercups Gild all the lawn; the drowsy bee Stumbles among the clover-tops, And summer sweetens all but me: Away, unfruitful lore of books, 5 For whose vain idiom we reject The soul's more native dialect, Aliens among the birds and brooks, Dull to interpret or conceive What gospels lost the woods retrieve! 10 Away, ye critics, city-bred, Who springes set of thus and so, And in the first man's footsteps tread, Like those who toil through drifted snow! Away, my poets, whose sweet spell[32] 15 Can make a garden of a cell! I need ye not, for I to-day Will make one long sweet verse of play. [Footnote 32: There is a delightful pair of poems by Wordsworth, _Expostulation and Reply_, and _The Tables Turned_, which show how another poet treats books and nature.] Snap, chord of manhood's tenser strain! To-day I will be a boy again; 20 The mind's pursuing element, Like a bow slackened and unbent, In some dark corner shall be leant. The robin sings, as of old, from the limb! The catbird croons in the lilac bush! 25 Through the dim arbor, himself more dim, Silently hops the hermit-thrush, The withered leaves keep dumb for him; The irreverent buccaneering bee Hath stormed and rifled the nunnery 30 Of the lily, and scattered the sacred floor With haste-dropt gold from shrine to door; There, as of yore, The rich, milk-tingeing buttercup Its tiny polished urn holds up, 35 Filled with ripe summer to the edge, The sun in his own wine to pledge; And our tall elm, this hundredth year Doge of our leafy Venice here, Who, with an annual ring, doth wed 40 The blue Adriatic overhead, Shadows with his palatial mass The deep canals of flowing grass. O unestrangëd birds and bees! O face of Nature always true! 45 O never-unsympathizing trees! O never-rejecting roof of blue, Whose rash disherison never falls On us unthinking prodigals, Yet who convictest all our ill, 50 So grand and unappeasable! Methinks my heart from each of these Plucks part of childhood back again, Long there imprisoned, as the breeze Doth every hidden odor seize 55 Of wood and water, hill and plain; Once more am I admitted peer In the upper house of Nature here, And feel through all my pulses run The royal blood of breeze and sun. 60 Upon these elm-arched solitudes No hum of neighbor toil intrudes; The only hammer that I hear Is wielded by the woodpecker, The single noisy calling his 65 In all our leaf-hid Sybaris; The good old time, close-hidden here, Persists, a loyal cavalier, While Roundheads prim, with point of fox, Probe wainscot-chink and empty box; 70 Here no hoarse-voiced iconoclast Insults thy statues, royal Past; Myself too prone the axe to wield, I touch the silver side of the shield With lance reversed, and challenge peace, 75 A willing convert of the trees. How chanced it that so long I tost A cable's length from this rich coast, With foolish anchors hugging close The beckoning weeds and lazy ooze, 80 Nor had the wit to wreck before On this enchanted island's shore, Whither the current of the sea, With wiser drift, persuaded me? O, might we but of such rare days 85 Build up the spirit's dwelling-place! A temple of so Parian stone Would brook a marble god alone, The statue of a perfect life, Far-shrined from earth's bestaining strife. 90 Alas! though such felicity In our vext world here may not be, Yet, as sometimes the peasant's hut Shows stones which old religion cut With text inspired, or mystic sign 95 Of the Eternal and Divine, Torn from the consecration deep Of some fallen nunnery's mossy sleep, So, from the ruins of this day Crumbling in golden dust away, 100 The soul one gracious block may draw, Carved with some fragment of the law, Which, set in life's prosaic wall, Old benedictions may recall, And lure some nunlike thoughts to take 105 Their dwelling here for memory's sake. THE FOOT-PATH. It mounts athwart the windy hill Through sallow slopes of upland bare, And Fancy climbs with foot-fall still Its narrowing curves that end in air. By day, a warmer-hearted blue 5 Stoops softly to that topmost swell; Its thread-like windings seem a clew To gracious climes where all is well. By night, far yonder, I surmise An ampler world than clips my ken, 10 Where the great stars of happier skies Commingle nobler fates of men. I look and long, then haste me home, Still master of my secret rare; Once tried, the path would end in Rome, 15 But now it leads me everywhere. Forever to the new it guides, From former good, old overmuch; What Nature for her poets hides, 'Tis wiser to divine than clutch. 20 The bird I list hath never come Within the scope of mortal ear; My prying step would make him dumb, And the fair tree, his shelter, sear. Behind the hill, behind the sky, 25 Behind my inmost thought, he sings; No feet avail; to hear it nigh, The song itself must lend the wings. Sing on, sweet bird, close hid, and raise Those angel stairways in my brain, 30 That climb from these low-vaulted days To spacious sunshines far from pain. Sing when thou wilt, enchantment fleet, I leave thy covert haunt untrod, And envy Science not her feat 35 To make a twice-told tale of God. They said the fairies tript no more, And long ago that Pan was dead; 'Twas but that fools preferred to bore Earth's rind inch-deep for truth instead. 40 Pan leaps and pipes all summer long, The fairies dance each full-mooned night, Would we but doff our lenses strong, And trust our wiser eyes' delight. City of Elf-land, just without 45 Our seeing, marvel ever new, Glimpsed in fair weather, a sweet doubt Sketched-in, mirage-like, on the blue. I build thee in yon sunset cloud, Whose edge allures to climb the height; 50 I hear thy drowned bells, inly-loud, From still pools dusk with dreams of night. Thy gates are shut to hardiest will, Thy countersign of long-lost speech,-- Those fountained courts, those chambers still, 55 Fronting Time's far East, who shall reach? I know not, and will never pry, But trust our human heart for all; Wonders that from the seeker fly Into an open sense may fall. 60 Hide in thine own soul, and surprise The password of the unwary elves; Seek it, thou canst not bribe their spies; Unsought, they whisper it themselves. The Riverside Literature Series. _With Introductions, Notes, Historical Sketches, and Biographical Sketches. Each regular single number, paper, 15 cents._ 1. Longfellow's Evangeline.[33][36] 2. Longfellow's Courtship of Miles Standish; Elizabeth.[33] 3. Longfellow's Courtship of Miles Standish. DRAMATIZED. 4. Whittier's Snow-Bound, and Other Poems.[33][36][34] 5. Whittier's Mabel Martin, and Other Poems.[34] 6. Holmes's Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill Battle, etc.[34] 7, 8, 9. Hawthorne's Grandfather's Chair: True Stories from New England History. 1620-1803. In three parts.[36] 10. Hawthorne's Biographical Stories. With Questions.[34] 11. Longfellow's Children's Hour, and Other Selections.[34] 12. Studies in Longfellow. Thirty-two Topics for Study. 13, 14. Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha. In two parts.[35] 15. Lowell's Under the Old Elm, and Other Poems.[34] 16. Bayard Taylor's Lars: a Pastoral of Norway; and Other Poems. 17, 18. Hawthorne's Wonder-Book. In two parts.[35] 19, 20. Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. In two parts.[35] 21. Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac, etc. 22, 23. Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales. In two parts.[35] 24. Washington's Rules of Conduct, Letters and Addresses.[33] 25, 26. Longfellow's Golden Legend. In two parts.[35] 27. Thoreau's Succession of Forest Trees, Sounds, and Wild Apples. With a Biographical Sketch by R.W. EMERSON. 28. John Burroughs's Birds and Bees.[34] 29. Hawthorne's Little Daffydowndilly, and Other Stories.[34] 30. Lowell's Vision of Sir Launfal, and Other Pieces.[33][36][34] 31. Holmes's My Hunt after the Captain, and Other Papers.[33] 32. Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech, and Other Papers. 33, 34, 35. Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn. In three parts.[35] 36. John Burroughs's Sharp Eyes, and Other Papers.[34] 37. Charles Dudley Warner's A-Hunting of the Deer, etc.[33] 38. Longfellow's Building of the Ship, and Other Poems. 39. Lowell's Books and Libraries, and Other Papers. 40. Hawthorne's Tales of the White Hills, and Sketches.[34] 41. Whittier's Tent on the Beach, and Associated Poems. 42. Emerson's Fortune of the Republic, and Other Essays, including the American Scholar. 43. Ulysses among the Phæacians. From W.C. BRYANT'S Translation of Homer's Odyssey. 44. Edgeworth's Waste Not, Want Not; and The Barring Out. 45. Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome.[33] 46. Old Testament Stories in Scripture Language. 47, 48. Fables and Folk Stories. In two parts.[35] 49, 50. Hans Andersen's Stories. In two parts.[35] 51, 52. Washington Irving: Essays from the Sketch Book. [51.] Rip Van Winkle, and other American Essays. [52] The Voyage, and other English Essays. In two parts.[35] 53. Scott's Lady of the Lake. Edited by W.J. ROLFE. With copious notes and numerous illustrations. (_Double Number, 30 cents. Also, in Rolfe's Students' Series, cloth to Teachers, 53 cents._) Also, bound in linen: [33] 25 cents. [34] 29 and 10 in one vol., 40 cents; likewise 28 and 36, 4 and 5, 6 and 31, 15 and 36, 40 and 69, 11 and 63. [35] Also in one vol. 40 cents. [36] 1, 4, and 30 also in one vol., 50 cents; likewise 7, 8, and 9, 33, 34, and 36. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. POEMS _Cabinet Edition._ 16mo, $1.00, half calf, $2.00, tree calf, flexible calf, or flexible levant, $3.00. THE SAME. _Household Edition._ With Portrait and Illustrations. 12mo, $1.50, full gilt, $2.00, half calf, $3.00, levant or tree calf, $4.50. THE SAME. _New Cambridge Edition._ From new plates, printed from clear type on opaque paper, and attractively bound. With a Portrait and engraved Title-page, and a Vignette of Lowell's Home, Elmwood. 8vo, gilt top, $2.00. THE SAME. _Family Edition._ Illustrated. 8vo, full gilt, $2.00. THE SAME. _Illustrated Library Edition._ With Portrait and 32 full-page Illustrations. 8vo, full gilt, $3.00, half calf, $5.00, levant, padded calf, or tree calf, $7.50. PROSE AND POETRY. _New Riverside Edition._ Same style as _Riverside_. Longfellow and Whittier. With Portraits. The set, 12 vols. crown 8vo, gilt top, each (except vols. 11 and 12), $1.50, vols. 11 and 12, each, $1.25, the set, 12 vols., $17.50, half calf, $33.00, half calf, gilt top, $36.00, half levant, $48.00. Prose Works. (Vols. 1-6, 11, 12.) Separate, $11.50. Poems (Vols. 7-10) Separate, $6.00. 1-4. Literary Essays (including My Study Windows, Among my Books, Fireside Travels), 5. Political Essays, 6. Literary and Political Addresses, 7-10. Poems, 11. Latest Literary Essays and Addresses, 12. The Old English Dramatists. SEPARATE WORKS AND COMPILATIONS. The Vision of Sir Launfal. A Poem of the Search for the Holy Grail. Illustrated. 16mo, flexible leather, $1.50. THE SAME. New Edition. Illustrated with Photogravures from designs by E.H. GARRETT, and a new Portrait. 16mo, gilt top, $1.50. A Fable for Critics. With outline portraits of authors mentioned, and facsimile of title-page of First Edition. Crown 8vo, gilt top, $1.00. Heartsease and Rue. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25. The Biglow Papers. First and Second Series. New _Popular Edition_, 12mo, $1.00, in Riverside Aldine Series, 2 vols., $2.00. Odes, Lyrics, and Sonnets, from the Poetic Works of James Russell Lowell. _White and Gold Series._ 16mo, gilt top, $1.00, half levant, $3.00. Fireside Travels. 12mo, gilt top, $1.50. Among my Books. First Series, Second Series. Each, 12mo, gilt top, $2.00. My Study Windows. 12mo, gilt top, $2.00. Democracy, and Other Addresses. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25. Political Essays. 12mo, gilt top, $1.50. Lowell Birthday Book. 32mo, $1.00. Lowell Calendar Book. Containing Selections from Lowell's Writings for Every Day. 32mo, 25 cents. Last Poems. Edited by CHARLES ELIOT NORTON. With a fine new Portrait. 12mo, gilt top, $1.25. FOR SCHOOL USE. Riverside Literature Series: No. 15. Under the Old Elm, and Other Poems. With a Biographical Sketch and Notes. Paper, 15 cents, _net_. No. 30. The Vision of Sir Launfal, and Other Poems. With a Biographical Sketch, Notes, and Illustrations. Paper, 15 cents, _net_, cloth, 25 cents, _net_. (Nos. 15 and 30 also bound together in one volume, cloth, 40 cents, _net_.) No. 39. Books and Libraries, and Other Papers. With Notes. Paper, 15 cents, _net_. Extra Double No. M. A Fable for Critics. With Outline Portraits. 30 cents, _net_. Extra Double No. O. Lowell Leaflets. 30 cents, _net_; cloth, 40 cents, _net_. Modern Classics: Vol 5. The Vision of Sir Launfal, The Cathedral, Favorite Poems. Vol. 31. My Garden Acquaintance, A Good Word for Winter, A Moosehead Journal. _School Edition._ Each, 32mo, 40 cents, _net_. Riverside School Library: The Vision of Sir Launfal, and other Verse and Prose. 16mo, half leather, 60 cents, _net_. Portraits. Lowell at 24, etching, at 31, at 38, at 39, at 62, at 69. Steel, each 25 cents. On India paper, 75 cents. Lowell at 23, photogravure, 75 cents. Atlantic Life-Size Portrait, $1.00. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY. The Riverside Literature Series. (_Continued._) _Each regular single number, paper, 15 cents._ 54. Bryant's Sella, Thanatopsis, and Other Poems.[33] 55. Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. THURBER.[33][34] 56. Webster's First Bunker Hill Oration, and the Oration on Adams and Jefferson. 57. Dickens's Christmas Carol.[34] With Notes and a Biography. 58. Dickens's Cricket on the Hearth.[34] 59. Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading.[33] 60, 61. The Sir Roger de Ooverley Papers. In two parts.[35] 62. John Fiske's War of Independence. With Maps and a Biographical Sketch.[36] 63. Longfellow's Paul Revere's Ride, and Other Poems.[34] 64. 65, 66. Tales from Shakespeare. Edited by CHARLES and MARY LAMB. In three parts. [Also, in one volume, linen, 50 cents.] 67. Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar.[33][34] 68. Goldsmith's Deserted Village, The Traveller, etc.[33] 69. Hawthorne's Old Manse, and A Few Mosses.[34] 70. A Selection from Whittier's Child Life in Poetry.[34] 71. A Selection from Whittier's Child Life in Prose.[34] 72. Milton's L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Oomus, Lycidas, etc.[34] 73. Tennyson's Enoch Arden, and Other Poems. 74. Gray's Elegy, etc.: Oowper's John Gilpin, etc. 75. Scudder's George Washington.[36] 76. Wordsworth's On the Intimations of Immortality, etc. 77. Burns's Cotter's Saturday Night, and Other Poems. 78. Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield.[36] 79. Lamb's Old China, and Other assays of Elia. 80. Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and Other Poems; Campbell's Lochiel's Warning, and Other Poems. Also, bound in linen: [Footnote 33: 25 cents.] [Footnote 34: 11 and 63 in one vol., 40 cents; likewise 55 and 67, 57 and 58, 40 and 69, 70 and 71, 72 and 94.] [Footnote 35: Also in one vol., 40 cents.] [Footnote 36: Double Number, paper, 30 cents; linen, 40 cents.] _EXTRA NUMBERS_. _A_ American Authors and their Birthdays. Programmes and Suggestions for the Celebration of the Birthdays of Authors. By A.S. ROE. _B_ Portraits and Biographies of 20 American Authors. _C_ A Longfellow Night. For Catholic Schools and Societies. _D_ Literature in School. Essays by HORACE E. SCUDDER. _E_ Harriet Beecher Stowe. Dialogues and Scenes. _F_ Longfellow Leaflets.} (Each a _Double Number, 30 cents; linen,_ _G_ Whittier Leaflets. } _40 cents_.) Poems and Prose Passages _H_ Holmes Leaflets. } for Reading and Recitation. _O_ Lowell Leaflets. } _I_ The Riverside Manual for Teachers, containing Suggestions and Illustrative Lessons leading up to Primary Reading. By I.F. HALL. _K_ The Riverside Primer and Reader. (_Special Number._) In paper covers, with cloth back, 25 cents; in strong linen binding, 30 cents. _L_ The Riverside Song Book. Containing Classic American Poems set to Standard Music. (_Double Number, 30 cents; boards, 40 cents._) _M_ Lowells' Fable for Critics. (_Double Number, 30 cents._) 
16436	----	[Illustration: When the shadows are long] POEMS Every Child Should Know EDITED BY Mary E. Burt [Illustration] THE WHAT-EVERY-CHILD- SHOULD-KNOW-LIBRARY Published by DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & CO., INC., for THE PARENTS' INSTITUTE, INC. Publishers of "The Parents' Magazine" 9 EAST 40th STREET, NEW YORK COPYRIGHT. 1904, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS TO PUBLISHERS AND AUTHORS It sometimes happens that there are people who do not know that authors are protected by copyright laws. A publisher once cited to me an instance of a teacher who innocently put forth a little volume of poems that she loved and admired, without asking permission of any one. Her annoyance was boundless when she found that she had no right to the poems. Special permission has been obtained for each copyrighted poem in this volume, and the right to publish has been purchased of the author or publisher, except in those cases where the author or the publisher has, for reasons of courtesy and friendship, given the permission. In addition to the business arrangements which have been made, we wish to extend our thanks and acknowledgments to those firms which have so kindly allowed us to use their material. To HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY, of Boston, we are indebted for the use of the following poems: From the copyrighted works of Longfellow--"The Arrow and the Song," "A Fragment of Hiawatha's Childhood," "The Skeleton in Armour," "The Wreck of the _Hesperus_," "The Ship of State," "The Psalm of Life," "The Village Blacksmith." From Whittier--"Barbara Frietchie" and "The _Three Bells_ of Glasgow." From Emerson--"The Problem." From Burroughs--"My Own Shall Come to Me." From Lowell--"The Finding of the Lyre," "The Shepherd of King Admetus," and a fragment of "The Vision of Sir Launfal," From Holmes--"The Chambered Nautilus" and "Old Ironsides." From James T. Fields--"The Captain's Daughter." From Bayard Taylor--"The Song in Camp," From Celia Thaxter--"The Sandpiper." From J.T. Trowbridge--"Farm-Yard Song." From Edith M. Thomas--"The God of Music" and Hermes' "Moly." To CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS we are indebted for the use of the following poems: From the copyrighted works of Eugene Field--"Wynken Blynken, and Nod," "Krinken," and "The Duel." From Robert Louis Stevenson--"My Shadow." From James Whitcomb Riley's poems--"Little Orphant Annie." From the poems of Sidney Lanier--"Barnacles" and "The Tournament." From "The Poems of Patriotism"--"Sheridan's Ride." We are further indebted to CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, as well as to MR. GEORGE W. CABLE, for "The New Arrival," taken from "The Cable Story Book," and to MRS. KATHERINE MILLER and _Scribner's Magazine_ for "Stevenson's Birthday." To J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY we are indebted for the use of "Sheridan's Ride," from the complete works of T. Buchanan Read. To HARPER & BROTHERS for the use of "Driving Home the Cows," by Kate Putnam Osgood. To LITTLE, BROWN & COMPANY, of Boston, "How the Leaves Came Down," by Susan Coolidge. To the WHITAKER & RAY COMPANY, of San Francisco, "Columbus," by Joaquin Miller, from his complete works published and copyrighted by that company. To D. APPLETON & COMPANY for "The Planting of the Apple-Tree" and "Robert of Lincoln," from the complete works of William Cullen Bryant; also for "Marco Bozzaris," from the works of Fitz-Greene Halleck. To the MACMILLAN COMPANY for "The Forsaken Merman," by Matthew Arnold, from the complete volume of his poems published by that company. To the HOWARD UNIVERSITY PRINT, Washington, D.C., for Jeremiah Rankin's little poem, "The Babie," from "Ingleside Rhaims." To the heirs of MARY EMILY BRADLEY for "A Chrysalis." To HENRY HOLCOMB BENNETT for "The Flag Goes By." PREFACE Is this another collection of stupid poems that children cannot use? Will they look hopelessly through this volume for poems that suit them? Will they say despairingly, "This is too long," and "That is too hard," and "I don't like that because it is not interesting"? Are there three or four pleasing poems and are all the rest put in to fill up the book? Nay, verily! The poems in this collection are those that children love. With the exception of seven, they are short enough for children to commit to memory without wearying themselves or losing interest in the poem. If one boy learns "The Overland Mail," or "The Recruit," or "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod," or "The Song in Camp," or "Old Ironsides," or "I Have a Little Shadow," or "The Tournament," or "The Duel," nine boys out of ten will be eager to follow him. I know because I have tried it a dozen times. Every boy loves "Paul Revere's Ride" (alas! I have not been able to include it), and is ambitious to learn it, but only boys having a quick memory will persevere to the end. Shall the slower boy be deprived of the pleasure of reading the whole poem and getting its inspiring sentiment and learning as many stanzas as his mind will take? No, indeed. Half of such a poem is better than none. Let the slow boy learn and recite as many stanzas as he can and the boy of quick memory follow him up with the rest. It does not help the slow boy's memory to keep it down entirely or deprive it of its smaller activity because he cannot learn the whole. Some people will invariably give the slow child a very short poem. It is often better to divide a long poem among the children, letting each child learn a part. The sustained interest of a long poem is worth while. "The Merman," "The Battle of Ivry," "Horatius at the Bridge," "Krinken," "The Skeleton in Armour," "The Raven" and "Hervé Riel" may all profitably be learned that way. Nevertheless, the child enjoys most the poem that is just long enough, and there is much to be said in favour of the selection that is adapted, in length, to the average mind; for the child hesitates in the presence of quantity rather than in the presence of subtle thought. I make claim for this collection that it is made up of poems that the majority of children will learn of their own free will. There are people who believe that in the matter of learning poetry there is no "_ought_," but this is a false belief. There is a _duty_, even there; for every American citizen _ought_ to know the great national songs that keep alive the spirit of patriotism. Children should build for their future--and get, while they are children, what only the fresh imagination of the child can assimilate. They should store up an untold wealth of heroic sentiment; they should acquire the habit of carrying a literary quality in their conversation; they should carry a heart full of the fresh and delightful associations and memories, connected with poetry hours to brighten mature years. They should develop their memories while they have memories to develop. Will the boy who took every poetry hour for a whole school year to learn "Henry of Navarre" ever regret it, or will the children who listened to it? No. It was fresh every week and they brought fresh interest in listening. The boy will always love it because he used to love it. There were boys who scrambled for the right to recite "The Tournament," "The Charge of the Light Brigade," "The Star-Spangled Banner," and so on. The boy who was first to reach the front had the privilege. The triumph of getting the chance to recite added to the zest of it. Will they ever forget it? I know Lowell's "The Finding of the Lyre." Attention, Sir Knights! See who can learn it first as I say it to you. But I find that I have forgotten a line of it, so you may open your books and teach it to me. Now, I can recite every word of it. How much of it can you repeat from memory? One boy can say it all. Nearly every child has learned the most of it. Now, it will be easy for you to learn it alone. And Memory, the Goddess Beautiful, will henceforth go with you to recall this happy hour. MARY E. BURT. The John A. Browning School, 1904. POEMS CONTENTS PART I 1. The Arrow and the Song 3 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW 2. The Babie 4 JEREMIAH EAMES RANKIN 3. Let Dogs Delight to Bark and Bite 4 ISAAC WATTS 4. Little Things 5 EBENEZER COBHAM BREWER 5. He Prayeth Best 5 SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE 6. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star 6 ANONYMOUS 7. Pippa 6 ROBERT BROWNING 8. The Days of the Month 7 AN OLD SONG 9. True Royalty 7 RUDYARD KIPLING 10. Playing Robinson Crusoe 8 RUDYARD KIPLING 11. My Shadow 9 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 12. Little White Lily 10 GEORGE MACDONALD 13. How the Leaves Came Down 12 SUSAN COOLIDGE 14. Willie Winkie 13 WILLIAM MILLER 15. The Owl and the Pussy-Cat 15 EDWARD LEAR 16. Wynken, Blynken, and Nod 16 EUGENE FIELD 17. The Duel 18 EUGENE FIELD 18. The Boy Who Never Told a Lie 19 ANONYMOUS 19. Love Between Brothers and Sisters 20 ISAAC WATTS 20. The Bluebell of Scotland 20 ANONYMOUS 21. If I Had But Two Little Wings 21 SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE 22. A Farewell 21 CHARLES KINGSLEY 23. Casabianca 22 FELICIA HEMANS 24. The Captain's Daughter 23 JAMES T. FIELDS 25. The Village Blacksmith 25 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW 26. Sweet and Low 27 ALFRED TENNYSON 27. The Violet 27 JANE TAYLOR 28. The Rainbow (a fragment) 28 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 29. A Visit From St. Nicholas 29 CLEMENT CLARKE MOORE 30. The Star-Spangled Banner 31 FRANCIS SCOTT KEY 31. Father William 33 LEWIS CARROLL 32. The Nightingale and the Glow-worm 34 WILLIAM COWPER PART II 33. The Frost 39 HANNAH FLAGG GOULD 34. The Owl 40 ALFRED TENNYSON 35. Little Billee 41 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 36. The Butterfly and the Bee 42 WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES 37. An Incident of the French Camp 43 ROBERT BROWNING 38. Robert of Lincoln 44 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 39. Old Grimes 47 ALBERT GORTON GREENE 40. Song of Life 48 CHARLES MACKAY 41. Fairy Song 50 JOHN KEATS 42. A Boy's Song 50 JAMES HOGG 43. Buttercups and Daisies 51 MARY HOWITT 44. The Rainbow 53 THOMAS CAMPBELL 45. Old Ironsides 53 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 46. Little Orphant Annie 54 JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 47. O Captain! My Captain! 57 WALT WHITMAN 48. Ingratitude 58 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 49. The Ivy Green 59 CHARLES DICKENS 50. The Noble Nature 60 BEN JONSON 51. The Flying Squirrel 60 MARY E. BURT 52. Warren's Address 63 JOHN PIERPONT 53. The Song in Camp 64 BAYARD TAYLOR 54. The Bugle Song 66 ALFRED TENNYSON 55. The _Three Bells_ of Glasgow 67 JOHN G. WHITTIER 56. Sheridan's Ride 68 THOMAS BUCHANAN READ 57. The Sandpiper 71 CELIA THAXTER 58. Lady Clare 72 ALFRED TENNYSON 59. The Lord of Burleigh 75 ALFRED TENNYSON 60. Hiawatha's Childhood 79 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW 61. I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud 82 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 62. John Barleycorn 83 ROBERT BURNS 63. A Life on the Ocean Wave 85 EPES SARGENT 64. The Death of the Old Year 86 ALFRED TENNYSON 65. Abou Ben Adhem 89 LEIGH HUNT 66. Farm-Yard Song 90 J.T. TROWBRIDGE 67. To a Mouse 92 ROBERT BURNS 68. To a Mountain Daisy 94 ROBERT BURNS 69. Barbara Frietchie 96 JOHN G. WHITTIER PART III 70. Lochinvar 103 SIR WALTER SCOTT 71. Lord Ullin's Daughter 105 THOMAS CAMPBELL 72. The Charge of the Light Brigade 107 ALFRED TENNYSON 73. The Tournament 110 SIDNEY LANIER 74. The Wind and the Moon 111 GEORGE MACDONALD 75. Jesus the Carpenter 114 CATHERINE C. LIDDELL 76. Letty's Globe 115 CHARLES TENNYSON TURNER 77. A Dream 116 WILLIAM BLAKE 78. Heaven Is Not Reached at a Single Bound 117 J.G. HOLLAND 79. The Battle of Blenheim 117 ROBERT SOUTHEY 80. Fidelity 120 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 81. The Chambered Nautilus 122 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 82. Crossing the Bar 124 ALFRED TENNYSON 83. The Overland-Mail 125 RUDYARD KIPLING 84. Gathering Song of Donald Dhu 126 SIR WALTER SCOTT 85. Marco Bozzaris 128 FITZ-GREENE HALLECK 86. The Death of Napoleon 131 ISAAC MCCLELLAN 87. How Sleep the Brave 133 WILLIAM COLLINS 88. The Flag Goes By 133 HENRY HOLCOMB BENNETT 89. Hohenlinden 134 THOMAS CAMPBELL 90. My Old Kentucky Home 136 STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER 91. Old Folks at Home 137 STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER 92. The Wreck of the _Hesperus_ 138 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW 93. Bannockburn 142 ROBERT BURNS PART IV 94. The Inchcape Rock 145 ROBERT SOUTHEY 95. The Finding of the Lyre 148 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 96. A Chrysalis 149 MARY EMILY BRADLEY 97. For a' That 151 ROBERT BURNS 98. The New Arrival 152 GEORGE W. CABLE 99. The Brook 153 ALFRED TENNYSON 100. The Ballad of the _Clampherdown_ 154 RUDYARD KIPLING 101. The Destruction of Sennacherib 158 LORD BYRON 102. I Remember, I Remember 159 THOMAS HOOD 103. Driving Home the Cows 160 KATE PUTNAM OSGOOD 104. Krinken 162 EUGENE FIELD 105. Stevenson's Birthday 164 KATHERINE MILLER 106. A Modest Wit 165 SELLECK OSBORNE 107. The Legend of Bishop Hatto 166 ROBERT SOUTHEY 108. Columbus 160 JOAQUIN MILLER 109. The Shepherd of King Admetus 171 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 110. How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to 173 Aix ROBERT BROWNING 111. The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna 176 C. WOLFE 112. The Eve of Waterloo 177 LORD BYRON 113. Ivry 179 THOMAS B. MACAULAY 114. The Glove and the Lions 184 LEIGH HUNT 115. The Well of St. Keyne 186 ROBERT SOUTHEY 116. The Nautilus and the Ammonite 188 ANONYMOUS 117. The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk 190 WILLIAM COWPER 118. The Homes of England 192 FELICIA HEMANS 119. Horatius at the Bridge 193 THOMAS B. MACAULAY 120. The Planting of the Apple-Tree 211 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT PART V 121. June 217 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 122. A Psalm of Life 218 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW 123. Barnacles 219 SIDNEY LANIER 124. A Happy Life 220 SIR HENRY WOTTON 125. Home, Sweet Home 220 JOHN HOWARD PAYNE 126. From Casa Guidi Windows 222 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING 127. Woodman, Spare That Tree! 222 GEORGE POPE MORRIS 128. Abide With Me 223 HENRY FRANCIS LYTE 129. Lead, Kindly Light 224 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 130. The Last Rose of Summer 225 THOMAS MOORE 131. Annie Laurie 226 WILLIAM DOUGLAS 132. The Ship of State 227 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW 133. America 228 SAMUEL FRANCIS SMITH 134. The Landing of the Pilgrims 229 FELICIA HEMANS 135. The Lotos-Eaters 231 ALFRED TENNYSON 136. Moly 233 EDITH M. THOMAS 137. Cupid Drowned 234 LEIGH HUNT 138. Cupid Stung 234 THOMAS MOORE 139. Cupid and My Campasbe 235 JOHN LYLY 140. A Ballad for a Boy 236 ANONYMOUS 141. The Skeleton in Armour 240 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW 142. The _Revenge_ 246 ALFRED TENNYSON 143. Sir Galahad 253 ALFRED TENNYSON 144. A Name in the Sand 256 HANNAH FLAGG GOULD PART VI 145. The Voice of Spring 259 FELICIA HEMANS 146. The Forsaken Merman 260 MATTHEW ARNOLD 147. The Banks o' Doon 265 ROBERT BURNS 148. The Light of Other Days 266 THOMAS MOORE 149. My Own Shall Come to Me 267 JOHN BURROUGHS 150. Ode to a Skylark 268 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 151. The Sands of Dee 271 CHARLES KINGSLEY 152. A Wish 272 SAMUEL ROGERS 153. Lucy 272 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 154. Solitude 273 ALEXANDER POPE 155. John Anderson 274 ROBERT BURNS 156. The God of Music 275 EDITH M. THOMAS 157. A Musical Instrument 275 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING 158. The Brides of Enderby 277 JEAN INGELOW 159. The Lye 283 SIR WALTER RALEIGH 160. L'Envoi 285 RUDYARD KIPLING 161. Contentment 286 EDWARD DYER 162. The Harp That Once Through Tara's Halls 287 THOMAS MOORE 163. The Old Oaken Bucket 288 SAMUEL WOODWORTH 164. The Raven 289 EDGAR ALLAN POE 165. Arnold von Winkleried 296 JAMES MONTGOMERY 166. Life, I Know Not What Thou Art 299 A.L. BARBAULD 167. Mercy 300 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 168. Polonius' Advice 301 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 169. A Fragment from "Julius Cæsar" 301 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 170. The Skylark 302 THOMAS HOGG 171. The Choir Invisible 303 GEORGE ELIOT 172. The World Is Too Much With Us 304 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 173. On His Blindness 304 JOHN MILTON 174. She Was a Phantom of Delight 305 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 175. Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard 306 THOMAS GRAY 176. Rabbi Ben Ezra 312 ROBERT BROWNING 177. Prospice 320 ROBERT BROWNING 178. Recessional 321 RUDYARD KIPLING 179. Ozymandias of Egypt 322 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 180. Mortality 323 WILLIAM KNOX 181. On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer 326 JOHN KEATS 182. Hervé Riel 326 ROBERT BROWNING 183. The Problem 333 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 184. To America 335 ALFRED AUSTIN 185. The English Flag 337 RUDYARD KIPLING 186. The Man With the Hoe 342 EDWIN MARKHAM 187. Song of Myself 344 WALT WHITMAN Index 350 INDEX OF AUTHORS ANONYMOUS Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, 6 The Days of the Month, 7 The Boy who Never Told a Lie, 19 The Bluebell of Scotland, 20 The Nautilus and the Ammonite, 188 A Ballad for a Boy, 236 ARNOLD, MATTHEW The Forsaken Merman, 260 AUSTIN, ALFRED To America, 335 BARBAULD, A.L. Life, I Know Not What Thou Art, 299 BENNETT, HENRY HOLCOMB The Flag Goes By, 133 BLAKE, WILLIAM A Dream, 116 BOWLES, WILLIAM LISLE The Butterfly and the Bee, 42 BRADLEY, MARY EMILY A Chrysalis, 149 BREWER, EBENEZER COBHAM Little Things, 5 BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT From Casa Guidi Windows, 222 A Musical Instrument, 275 BROWNING, ROBERT Pippa, 6 An Incident of the French Camp, 43 How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, 173 Rabbi Ben Ezra, 312 Prospice, 320 Hervé Riel, 326 BRYANT, WILLIAM CULLEN Robert of Lincoln, 44 The Planting of the Apple Tree, 211 BURNS, ROBERT John Barleycorn, 83 To a Mouse, 92 To a Mountain Daisy, 94 Bannockburn, 142 For a' That, 151 The Banks o' Doon, 265 John Anderson, 274 BURROUGHS, JOHN My Own Shall Come to Me, 267 BURT, MARY E. The Flying Squirrel, 60 BYRON, LORD The Destruction of Sennacherib, 158 The Eve of Waterloo, 177 CABLE, GEORGE W. The New Arrival, 152 CAMPBELL, THOMAS The Rainbow, 53 Lord Ullin's Daughter, 105 Hohenlinden, 134 CARROLL, LEWIS Father William, 33 COLERIDGE, SAMUEL T. He Prayeth Best, 5 If I Had But Two Little Wings, 21 COLLINS, WILLIAM How Sleep the Brave, 133 COOLIDGE, SUSAN How the Leaves Came Down, 12 COWPER, WILLIAM The Nightingale and the Glow-worm, 34 The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk, 190 DICKENS, CHARLES The Ivy Green, 59 DOUGLAS, WILLIAM Annie Laurie, 226 DYER, EDWARD Contentment, 286 ELIOT, GEORGE The Choir Invisible, 303 EMERSON, RALPH WALDO The Problem, 333 FIELD, EUGENE Wynken, Blynken and Nod, 16 The Duel, 18 Krinken, 162 FIELDS, JAMES T. The Captain's Daughter, 23 FOSTER, STEPHEN COLLINS My Old Kentucky Home, 136 Old Folks at Home, 137 GOULD, HANNAH FLAGG The Frost, 39 A Name in the Sand, 256 GRAY, THOMAS Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, 306 GREENE, ALBERT GORTON Old Grimes, 47 HALLECK, FITZ-GREENE Marco Bozzaris, 128 HEMANS, FELICIA Casabianca, 22 The Homes of England, 192 The Landing of the Pilgrims, 229 The Voice of Spring, 259 HOOD, THOMAS I Remember, I Remember, 159 HOGG, JAMES A Boy's Song, 50 The Skylark, 302 HOLLAND, J.G. Heaven is Not Reached at a Single Bound, 117 HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL Old Ironsides, 53 The Chambered Nautilus, 122 HOWITT, MARY Buttercups and Daisies, 51 HUNT, LEIGH Abou Ben Adhem, 89 The Glove and the Lions, 184 Cupid Drowned, 234 INGELOW, JEAN The Brides of Enderby, 277 JONSON. BEN The Noble Nature, 60 KEATS, JOHN Fairy Song, 50 On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer, 326 KEY, FRANCIS SCOTT The Star-Spangled Banner, 31 KINGSLEY, CHARLES A Farewell, 21 The Sands of Dee, 271 KIPLING, RUDYARD True Royalty, 7 Playing Robinson Crusoe, 8 The Overland Mail, 125 The Ballad of the Clampherdown, 154 L'Envoi, 285 Recessional, 321 The English Flag, 337 KNOX, WILLIAM Mortality, 323 LANIER, SIDNEY The Tournament, 110 Barnacles, 219 LEAR, EDWARD The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, 15 LIDDELL, CATHERINE C. Jesus the Carpenter, 114 LONGFELLOW, HENRY W. The Arrow and the Song, 3 The Village Blacksmith, 25 Hiawatha's Childhood, 79 The Wreck of the Hesperus, 138 A Psalm of Life, 218 The Ship of State, 227 The Skeleton in Armour, 240 LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL The Finding of the Lyre, 148 The Shepherd of King Admetus, 171 June, 217 LYLY, JOHN Cupid and My Campasbe, 235 LYTE, HENRY FRANCIS Abide With Me, 223 MACAULAY, THOMAS B. Ivry, 179 Horatius at the Bridge, 193 MACDONALD, GEORGE Little White Lily, 10 The Wind and the Moon, 111 MACKAY, CHARLES Song of Life, 48 MARKHAM, EDWIN The Man With the Hoe, 342 MCCLELLAN, ISAAC The Death of Napoleon, 131 MILLER, JOAQUIN Columbus, 169 MILLER, KATHERINE Stevenson's Birthday, 164 MILLER, WILLIAM Willie Winkie, 13 MILTON, JOHN On His Blindness, 304 MONTGOMERY, JAMES Arnold von Winkleried, 296 MOORE, CLEMENT CLARKE A Visit from St. Nicholas, 29 MOORE, THOMAS The Last Rose of Summer, 234 Cupid Stung, 234 The Light of Other Days, 266 The Harp That Once Through Tara's Halls, 287 MORRIS, GEORGE POPE Woodman, Spare That Tree, 222 NEWMAN, JOHN HENRY Lead, Kindly Light, 224 OSBORNE, SELLECK A Modest Wit, 165 OSGOOD, KATE PUTNAM Driving Home the Cows, 160 PAYNE, JOHN HOWARD Home, Sweet Home, 220 PIERPONT, JOHN Warren's Address, 63 POE, EDGAR ALLAN The Raven, 289 POPE, ALEXANDER Solitude, 273 RALEIGH, SIR WALTER The Lye, 283 RANKIN. JEREMIAH EAMES The Babie, 4 READ, THOMAS BUCHANAN Sheridan's Ride, 68 RILEY, JAMES WHITCOMB Little Orphant Annie, 54 ROGERS, SAMUEL A Wish, 272 SARGENT, EPES A Life on the Ocean Wave, 85 SCOTT, SIR WALTER Lochinvar, 103 The Gathering Song of Donald Dhu, 126 SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM Ingratitude, 58 Mercy, 300 Polonius' Advice, 301 A Fragment from Julius Cæsar, 301 SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE Ode to a Skylark, 268 Ozymandias in the Desert, 322 SMITH, SAMUEL FRANCIS America, 228 SOUTHEY, ROBERT The Battle of Blenheim, 117 The Inchcape Rock, 145 The Legend of Bishop Hatto, 166 The Well of St. Keyne, 186 STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS My Shadow, 9 TAYLOR, BAYARD The Song in Camp, 64 TAYLOR, JANE The Violet, 27 TENNYSON, ALFRED Sweet and Low, 27 The Owl, 40 The Bugle Song, 66 Lady Clare, 72 The Lord of Burleigh, 75 The Death of the Old Year, 86 The Charge of the Light Brigade, 107 Crossing the Bar, 124 The Brook, 153 The Lotos Eaters, 231 The REVENGE, 246 Sir Galahad, 253 THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE Little Billee, 41 THAXTER, CELIA The Sandpiper, 71 THOMAS, EDITH Moly, 233 The God of Music, 275 TROWBRIDGE, J.T. Farmyard Song, 90 TURNER, CHARLES TENNYSON Letty's Globe, 115 WATTS, ISAAC Let Dogs Delight to Bark and Bite, 4 Love Between Brothers and Sisters, 20 WHITMAN, WALT O Captain! My Captain! 57 Song of Myself, 344 WHITTIER, JOHN G. The Three Bells of Glasgow, 67 Barbara Frietchie, 96 WOLFE, C. The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna, 176 WOODWORTH, SAMUEL The Old Oaken Bucket, 288 WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM The Rainbow (a fragment), 28 I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, 82 Fidelity, 120 Lucy, 272 The World is Too Much With Us, 304 She Was a Phantom of Delight, 305 WOTTON, SIR HENRY A Happy Life, 220 PART I. The Budding Moment [Illustration] Poems That Every Child Should Know THE ARROW AND THE SONG. "The Arrow and the Song," by Longfellow (1807-82), is placed first in this volume out of respect to a little girl of six years who used to love to recite it to me. She knew many poems, but this was her favourite. I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For, so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight. I breathed a song into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For who has sight so keen and strong That it can follow the flight of song? Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroke; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend. HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. THE BABIE. I found "The Babie" in Stedman's "Anthology." It is placed in this volume by permission of the poet, Jeremiah Eames Rankin, of Cleveland (1828-), because it captured the heart of a ten-year-old boy whose fancy was greatly moved by the two beautiful lines: "Her face is like an angel's face, I'm glad she has no wings." Nae shoon to hide her tiny taes, Nae stockin' on her feet; Her supple ankles white as snaw, Or early blossoms sweet. Her simple dress o' sprinkled pink, Her double, dimplit chin, Her puckered lips, and baumy mou', With na ane tooth within. Her een sae like her mither's een, Twa gentle, liquid things; Her face is like an angel's face: We're glad she has nae wings. JEREMIAH EAMES RANKIN. LET DOGS DELIGHT TO BARK AND BITE. "Let Dogs Delight to Bark and Bite," by Isaac Watts (1674-1748), and "Little Drops of Water," by Ebenezer Cobham Brewer (1810-97), are poems that the world cannot outgrow. Once in the mind, they fasten. They were not born to die. Let dogs delight to bark and bite, For God hath made them so; Let bears and lions growl and fight, For 'tis their nature too. But, children, you should never let Such angry passions rise; Your little hands were never made To tear each other's eyes. ISAAC WATTS. LITTLE THINGS. Little drops of water, Little grains of sand, Make the mighty ocean And the pleasant land. Thus the little minutes, Humble though they be, Make the mighty ages Of eternity. EBENEZER COBHAM BREWER. HE PRAYETH BEST. These two stanzas, the very heart of that great poem, "The Ancient Mariner," by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), sum up the lesson of this masterpiece--"Insensibility is a crime." Farewell, farewell! but this I tell To thee, thou Wedding-Guest! He prayeth well who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. He prayeth best who loveth best All things, both great and small: For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all. SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE. TWINKLE, TWINKLE, LITTLE STAR. Twinkle, twinkle, little star! How I wonder what you are, Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky. When the glorious sun is set, When the grass with dew is wet, Then you show your little light, Twinkle, twinkle all the night. In the dark-blue sky you keep, And often through my curtains peep, For you never shut your eye, Till the sun is in the sky. As your bright and tiny spark Guides the traveller in the dark, Though I know not what you are, Twinkle, twinkle, little star! PIPPA. "Spring's at the Morn," from "Pippa Passes," by Robert Browning (1812-89), has become a very popular stanza with little folks. "All's right with the world" is a cheerful motto for the nursery and schoolroom. The year's at the spring, The day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in His heaven-- All's right with the world! ROBERT BROWNING. THE DAYS OF THE MONTH. "The Days of the Month" is a useful bit of doggerel that we need all through life. It is anonymous. Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November; February has twenty-eight alone. All the rest have thirty-one, Excepting leap-year--that's the time When February's days are twenty-nine. OLD SONG. TRUE ROYALTY. "True Royalty" and "Playing Robinson Crusoe" are pleasing stanzas from "The Just So Stories" of Rudyard Kipling (1865-). There was never a Queen like Balkis, From here to the wide world's end; But Balkis talked to a butterfly As you would talk to a friend. There was never a King like Solomon, Not since the world began; But Solomon talked to a butterfly As a man would talk to a man. _She_ was Queen of Sabaea-- And _he_ was Asia's Lord-- But they both of 'em talked to butterflies When they took their walks abroad. RUDYARD KIPLING. (In "The Just So Stories.") PLAYING ROBINSON CRUSOE. Pussy can sit by the fire and sing, Pussy can climb a tree, Or play with a silly old cork and string To 'muse herself, not me. But I like Binkie, my dog, because He knows how to behave; So, Binkie's the same as the First Friend was, And I am the Man in the Cave. Pussy will play Man-Friday till It's time to wet her paw And make her walk on the window-sill (For the footprint Crusoe saw); Then she fluffles her tail and mews, And scratches and won't attend. But Binkie will play whatever I choose, And he is my true First Friend. Pussy will rub my knees with her head, Pretending she loves me hard; But the very minute I go to my bed Pussy runs out in the yard. And there she stays till the morning light; So I know it is only pretend; But Binkie, he snores at my feet all night, And he is my Firstest Friend! RUDYARD KIPLING. (In "The Just So Stories.") MY SHADOW. "My Shadow," by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94), is one of the most popular short poems extant. I have taught it to a great many very young boys, and not one has ever tried to evade learning it. Older pupils like it equally well. I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see. He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head; And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed. The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow-- Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow; For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball, And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all. He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play, And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way. He stays so close beside me, he's a coward, you can see; I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me! One morning, very early, before the sun was up, I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup; But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head, Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. LITTLE WHITE LILY. This poem (George Macdonald, 1828-) finds a place in this volume because, as a child, I loved it. It completely filled my heart, and has made every member of the lily family dear to me. George Macdonald's charming book, "At the Back of the North Wind," also was my wonder and delight. Little White Lily Sat by a stone, Drooping and waiting Till the sun shone. Little White Lily Sunshine has fed; Little White Lily Is lifting her head. Little White Lily Said: "It is good Little White Lily's Clothing and food." Little White Lily Dressed like a bride! Shining with whiteness, And crownèd beside! Little White Lily Drooping with pain, Waiting and waiting For the wet rain. Little White Lily Holdeth her cup; Rain is fast falling And filling it up. Little White Lily Said: "Good again, When I am thirsty To have the nice rain. Now I am stronger, Now I am cool; Heat cannot burn me, My veins are so full." Little White Lily Smells very sweet; On her head sunshine, Rain at her feet. Thanks to the sunshine, Thanks to the rain, Little White Lily Is happy again. GEORGE MACDONALD. HOW THE LEAVES CAME DOWN. "How the Leaves Came Down," by Susan Coolidge (1845-), appeals to children because it helps to reconcile them to going to bed. "I go to bed by day" is one of the crosses of childhood. "I'll tell you how the leaves came down," The great Tree to his children said: "You're getting sleepy, Yellow and Brown, Yes, very sleepy, little Red. It is quite time to go to bed." "Ah!" begged each silly, pouting leaf, "Let us a little longer stay; Dear Father Tree, behold our grief! 'Tis such a very pleasant day, We do not want to go away." So, for just one more merry day To the great Tree the leaflets clung, Frolicked and danced, and had their way, Upon the autumn breezes swung, Whispering all their sports among-- "Perhaps the great Tree will forget, And let us stay until the spring, If we all beg, and coax, and fret." But the great Tree did no such thing; He smiled to hear their whispering. "Come, children, all to bed," he cried; And ere the leaves could urge their prayer, He shook his head, and far and wide, Fluttering and rustling everywhere, Down sped the leaflets through the air. I saw them; on the ground they lay, Golden and red, a huddled swarm, Waiting till one from far away, White bedclothes heaped upon her arm, Should come to wrap them safe and warm. The great bare Tree looked down and smiled. "Good-night, dear little leaves," he said. And from below each sleepy child Replied, "Good-night," and murmured, "It is _so_ nice to go to bed!" SUSAN COOLIDGE. WILLIE WINKIE. "Wee Willie Winkie," by William Miller (1810-72), is included in this volume out of respect to an eight-year-old child who chose it from among hundreds. We had one poetry hour every week, and he studied and recited it with unabated interest to the end of the year. Wee Willie Winkie rins through the town, Up-stairs and doon-stairs, in his nicht-gown, Tirlin' at the window, cryin' at the lock, "Are the weans in their bed?--for it's now ten o'clock." Hey, Willie Winkie! are ye comin' ben? The cat's singin' gay thrums to the sleepin' hen, The doug's speldered on the floor, and disna gie a cheep; But here's a waukrife laddie that winna fa' asleep. Onything but sleep, ye rogue! glow'rin' like the moon, Rattlin' in an airn jug wi' an airn spoon, Rumblin' tumblin' roun' about, crowin' like a cock, Skirlin' like a kenna-what--wauknin' sleepin' folk. Hey, Willie Winkie! the wean's in a creel! Waumblin' aff a body's knee like a vera eel, Ruggin' at the cat's lug, and ravellin' a' her thrums,-- Hey, Willie Winkie!--See, there he comes! Wearie is the mither that has a storie wean, A wee stumpie stoussie that canna rin his lane, That has a battle aye wi' sleep before he'll close an ee; But a kiss frae aff his rosy lips gies strength anew to me. WILLIAM MILLER. THE OWL AND THE PUSSY-CAT. "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat," by Edward Lear (1812-88), is placed here because I once found that a timid child was much strengthened and developed by learning it. It is a song that appeals to the imagination of children, and they like to sing it. The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea In a beautiful pea-green boat; They took some honey, and plenty of money Wrapped up in a five-pound note. The Owl looked up to the moon above, And sang to a small guitar, "O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love! What a beautiful Pussy you are,-- You are, What a beautiful Pussy you are!" Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl! How wonderful sweet you sing! Oh, let us be married,--too long we have tarried,-- But what shall we do for a ring?" They sailed away for a year and a day To the land where the Bong-tree grows, And there in a wood a piggy-wig stood With a ring in the end of his nose,-- His nose, With a ring in the end of his nose. "Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling Your ring?" Said the piggy, "I will," So they took it away, and were married next day By the turkey who lives on the hill. They dined upon mince and slices of quince, Which they ate with a runcible spoon, And hand in hand on the edge of the sand They danced by the light of the moon,-- The moon, They danced by the light of the moon. EDWARD LEAR. WYNKEN, BLYNKEN, AND NOD. "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod," by Eugene Field (1850-95), pleases children, who are all by nature sailors and adventurers. Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night Sailed off in a wooden shoe,-- Sailed on a river of crystal light Into a sea of dew. "Where are you going, and what do you wish?" The old moon asked the three. "We have come to fish for the herring-fish That live in this beautiful sea; Nets of silver and gold have we," Said Wynken, Blynken, And Nod. The old moon laughed and sang a song, As they rocked in the wooden shoe; And the wind that sped them all night long Ruffled the waves of dew; The little stars were the herring-fish That lived in the beautiful sea. "Now cast your nets wherever you wish,-- Never afeard are we!" So cried the stars to the fishermen three, Wynken, Blynken, And Nod. All night long their nets they threw To the stars in the twinkling foam,-- Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe, Bringing the fishermen home: 'Twas all so pretty a sail, it seemed As if it could not be; And some folk thought 'twas a dream they'd dreamed Of sailing that beautiful sea; But I shall name you the fishermen three: Wynken, Blynken, And Nod. Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes, And Nod is a little head, And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies Is a wee one's trundle-bed; So shut your eyes while Mother sings Of wonderful sights that be, And you shall see the beautiful things As you rock on the misty sea Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three, Wynken, Blynken, And Nod. EUGENE FIELD. THE DUEL. "The Duel," by Eugene Field (1850-95), is almost the most popular humorous poem that has come under my notice. In making such a collection as this it is not easy to find poems at once delicate, witty, and graphic. I have taught "The Duel" hundreds of times, and children invariably love it. The gingham dog and the calico cat Side by side on the table sat; 'Twas half-past twelve, and (what do you think!) Nor one nor t'other had slept a wink! The old Dutch clock and the Chinese plate Appeared to know as sure as fate There was going to be a terrible spat. (_I wasn't there; I simply state What was told to me by the Chinese plate_!) The gingham dog went "bow-wow-wow!" And the calico cat replied "mee-ow!" The air was littered, an hour or so, With bits of gingham and calico, While the old Dutch clock in the chimney-place Up with its hands before its face, For it always dreaded a family row! (_Now mind: I'm only telling you What the old Dutch clock declares is true_!) The Chinese plate looked very blue, And wailed, "Oh, dear! what shall we do!" But the gingham dog and the calico cat Wallowed this way and tumbled that, Employing every tooth and claw In the awfullest way you ever saw-- And, oh! how the gingham and calico flew! (_Don't fancy I exaggerate! I got my views from the Chinese plate_!) Next morning where the two had sat They found no trace of the dog or cat; And some folks think unto this day That burglars stole the pair away! But the truth about the cat and the pup Is this: They ate each other up! Now what do you really think of that! (_The old Dutch clock it told me so, And that is how I came to know_.) EUGENE FIELD. THE BOY WHO NEVER TOLD A LIE. "The Boy Who Never Told a Lie" (anonymous), as well as "Whatever Brawls Disturb the Street," by Isaac Watts (1674-1748), are real gems. A few years ago they were more in favour than the poorer verse that has been put forward. But they are sure to be revived. Once there was a little boy, With curly hair and pleasant eye-- A boy who always told the truth, And never, never told a lie. And when he trotted off to school, The children all about would cry, "There goes the curly-headed boy-- The boy that never tells a lie." And everybody loved him so, Because he always told the truth, That every day, as he grew up, 'Twas said, "There goes the honest youth." And when the people that stood near Would turn to ask the reason why, The answer would be always this: "Because he never tells a lie." LOVE BETWEEN BROTHERS AND SISTERS. Whatever brawls disturb the street, There should be peace at home; Where sisters dwell and brothers meet, Quarrels should never come. Birds in their little nests agree; And 'tis a shameful sight, When children of one family Fall out and chide and fight. ISAAC WATTS. THE BLUEBELL OF SCOTLAND. Oh where! and oh where! is your Highland laddie gone? He's gone to fight the French for King George upon the throne; And it's oh! in my heart how I wish him safe at home. Oh where! and oh where! does your Highland laddie dwell? He dwells in merry Scotland at the sign of the Bluebell; And it's oh! in my heart that I love my laddie well. IF I HAD BUT TWO LITTLE WINGS. "If I Had But Two Little Wings," by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), is recommended by a number of teachers and school-girls. If I had but two little wings And were a little feathery bird, To you I'd fly, my dear! But thoughts like these are idle things And I stay here. But in my sleep to you I fly: I'm always with you in my sleep! The world is all one's own. And then one wakes, and where am I? All, all alone. SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE. A FAREWELL. "A Farewell," by Charles Kingsley (1819-75), makes it seem worth while to be good. My fairest child, I have no song to give you; No lark could pipe to skies so dull and gray; Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you For every day. Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever; Do noble things, not dream them all day long: And so make life, death, and that vast forever One grand, sweet song. CHARLES KINGSLEY. CASABIANCA. "Casabianca," by Felicia Hemans (1793-1835), is the portrait of a faithful heart, an example of unreasoning obedience. It is right that a child should obey even to the death the commands of a loving parent. The boy stood on the burning deck, Whence all but him had fled; The flame that lit the battle's wreck Shone round him o'er the dead. Yet beautiful and bright he stood, As born to rule the storm; A creature of heroic blood, A proud though childlike form. The flames rolled on--he would not go Without his father's word; That father, faint in death below, His voice no longer heard. He called aloud, "Say, father, say If yet my task is done?" He knew not that the chieftain lay Unconscious of his son. "Speak, father!" once again he cried, "If I may yet be gone!" And but the booming shots replied, And fast the flames rolled on. Upon his brow he felt their breath, And in his waving hair; And looked from that lone post of death In still, yet brave despair. And shouted but once more aloud "My father! must I stay?" While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud, The wreathing fires made way. They wrapt the ship in splendour wild, They caught the flag on high, And streamed above the gallant child Like banners in the sky. Then came a burst of thunder sound-- The boy--oh! where was he? --Ask of the winds that far around With fragments strew the sea; With mast, and helm, and pennon fair. That well had borne their part-- But the noblest thing that perished there Was that young, faithful heart. FELICIA HEMANS. THE CAPTAIN'S DAUGHTER. "The Captain's Daughter," by James T. Fields (1816-81), carries weight with every young audience. It is pointed to an end that children love--viz., trust in a higher power. We were crowded in the cabin, Not a soul would dare to sleep,-- It was midnight on the waters, And a storm was on the deep. 'Tis a fearful thing in winter To be shattered by the blast, And to hear the rattling trumpet Thunder, "Cut away the mast!" So we shuddered there in silence,-- For the stoutest held his breath, While the hungry sea was roaring And the breakers talked with Death. As thus we sat in darkness, Each one busy with his prayers, "We are lost!" the captain shouted As he staggered down the stairs. But his little daughter whispered, As she took his icy hand, "Isn't God upon the ocean, Just the same as on the land?" Then we kissed the little maiden. And we spoke in better cheer, And we anchored safe in harbour When the morn was shining clear. JAMES T. FIELDS. ["The 'village smithy' stood in Brattle Street, Cambridge. There came a time when the chestnut-tree that shaded it was cut down, and then the children of the place put their pence together and had a chair made for the poet from its wood."] THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH. Longfellow (1807-82) is truly the children's poet. His poems are as simple, pathetic, artistic, and philosophical as if they were intended to tell the plain everyday story of life to older people. "The Village Blacksmith" has been learned by thousands of children, and there is no criticism to be put upon it. The age of the child has nothing whatever to do with his learning it. Age does not grade children nor is poetry wholly to be so graded. "Time is the false reply." Under a spreading chestnut-tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands, And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands. His hair is crisp, and black, and long; His face is like the tan; His brow is wet with honest sweat, He earns whate'er he can, And looks the whole world in the face, For he owes not any man. Week in, week out, from morn till night, You can hear his bellows blow; You can hear him swing his heavy sledge, With measured beat and slow, Like a sexton ringing the village bell, When the evening sun is low. And children coming home from school Look in at the open door; They love to see the flaming forge, And hear the bellows roar, And catch the burning sparks that fly Like chaff from a threshing-floor. He goes on Sunday to the church, And sits among his boys; He hears the parson pray and preach, He hears his daughter's voice Singing in the village choir, And it makes his heart rejoice. It sounds to him like her mother's voice, Singing in Paradise! He needs must think of her once more, How in the grave she lies; And with his hard, rough hand he wipes A tear out of his eyes. Toiling,--rejoicing,--sorrowing, Onward through life he goes; Each morning sees some task begin, Each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, Has earned a night's repose. Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, For the lesson thou hast taught! Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each burning deed and thought. HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. SWEET AND LOW. Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow, Wind of the western sea! Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dropping moon and blow, Blow him again to me; While my little one, while my pretty one sleeps. Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, Father will come to thee soon; Rest, rest, on mother's breast, Father will come to thee soon; Father will come to his babe in the nest, Silver sails all out of the west Under the silver moon: Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep. ALFRED TENNYSON. THE VIOLET. "The Violet," by Jane Taylor (1783-1824), is another of those dear old-fashioned poems, pure poetry and pure violet. It is included in this volume out of respect to my own love for it when I was a child. Down in a green and shady bed A modest violet grew; Its stalk was bent, it hung its head, As if to hide from view. And yet it was a lovely flower, No colours bright and fair; It might have graced a rosy bower, Instead of hiding there. Yet there it was content to bloom, In modest tints arrayed; And there diffused its sweet perfume, Within the silent shade. Then let me to the valley go, This pretty flower to see; That I may also learn to grow In sweet humility. JANE TAYLOR. THE RAINBOW. (A FRAGMENT.) "The Rainbow," by William Wordsworth (1770-1850), accords with every child's feelings. It voices the spirit of all ages that would love to imagine it "a bridge to heaven." My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky; So was it when my life began, So is it now I am a man, So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The child is father of the man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. A VISIT FROM ST. NICHOLAS. "A Visit From St. Nicholas," by Clement Clarke Moore (1779-1863) is the most popular Christmas poem ever written. It carries Santa Claus on from year to year and the spirit of Santa Claus. 'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there; The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads; And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap, Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap, When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash, Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash. The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow Gave the luster of mid-day to objects below, When, what to my wondering eyes should appear, But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer. With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick. More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name: "Now, _Dasher_! now, _Dancer_! now, _Prancer_ and _Vixen_! On, _Comet_! on, _Cupid_! on, _Donder_ and _Blitzen_! To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall! Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!" As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky; So up to the house-top the coursers they flew, With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas, too. And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof The prancing and pawing of each little hoof. As I drew in my head, and was turning around, Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound. He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot; A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack. His eyes--how they twinkled! his dimples how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry! His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow; The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath; He had a broad face and a little round belly, That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly. He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf, And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself; A wink of his eye and a twist of his head, Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread; He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk, And laying his finger aside of his nose, And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose; He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, And away they all flew like the down on a thistle. But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight, "_Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night_." CLEMENT CLARKE MOORE. THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER. O! say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming-- Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming! And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there; O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave? On that shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, In full glory reflected now shines on the stream; 'Tis the star-spangled banner; O long may it wave O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave! And where is that band who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion A home and a country should leave us no more? Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps, pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave; And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave. O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved homes and the war's desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land Praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation. Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just, And this be our motto--"_In God is our trust_": And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave. FRANCIS SCOTT KEY. FATHER WILLIAM. "Father William" a parody by Lewis Carroll (1833-), is even more clever than the original. Harmless fun brightens the world. It takes a real genius to create wit that carries no sting. "You are old, Father William," the young man said, "And your hair has become very white; And yet you incessantly stand on your head-- Do you think, at your age, it is right?" "In my youth," Father William replied to his son, "I feared it might injure the brain; But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none, Why, I do it again and again." "You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before, And have grown most uncommonly fat; Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door-- Pray, what is the reason of that?" "In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his gray locks, "I kept all my limbs very supple By the use of this ointment--one shilling the box-- Allow me to sell you a couple." "You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak For anything tougher than suet; Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak: Pray, how did you manage to do it?" "In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law, And argued each case with my wife; And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw Has lasted the rest of my life." "You are old," said the youth; "one would hardly suppose That your eye was as steady as ever; Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose-- What made you so awfully clever?" "I have answered three questions, and that is enough," Said his father, "don't give yourself airs! Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff? Be off, or I'll kick you down-stairs!" LEWIS CARROLL. ("Alice in Wonderland.") THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE GLOW-WORM. "The Nightingale," by William Cowper (1731-1800), is a favourite with a teacher of good taste, and I include it at her request. A nightingale, that all day long Had cheered the village with his song, Nor yet at eve his note suspended, Nor yet when eventide was ended, Began to feel, as well he might, The keen demands of appetite; When, looking eagerly around, He spied far off, upon the ground, A something shining in the dark, And knew the glow-worm by his spark; So, stooping down from hawthorn top, He thought to put him in his crop. The worm, aware of his intent, Harangued him thus, right eloquent: "Did you admire my lamp," quoth he, "As much as I your minstrelsy, You would abhor to do me wrong, As much as I to spoil your song; For 'twas the self-same power divine, Taught you to sing and me to shine; That you with music, I with light, Might beautify and cheer the night." The songster heard his short oration, And warbling out his approbation, Released him, as my story tells, And found a supper somewhere else. WILLIAM COWPER. PART II. The Little Child [Illustration] THE FROST. "Jack Frost," by Hannah Flagg Gould (1789-1865), is perhaps a hundred years old, but he is the same rollicking fellow to-day as of yore. The poem puts his merry pranks to the front and prepares the way for science to give him a true analysis. The Frost looked forth, one still, clear night, And whispered, "Now I shall be out of sight; So through the valley and over the height, In silence I'll take my way: I will not go on with that blustering train, The wind and the snow, the hail and the rain, Who make so much bustle and noise in vain, But I'll be as busy as they." Then he flew to the mountain and powdered its crest; He lit on the trees, and their boughs he dressed In diamond beads--and over the breast Of the quivering lake he spread A coat of mail, that it need not fear The downward point of many a spear That hung on its margin far and near, Where a rock could rear its head. He went to the windows of those who slept, And over each pane, like a fairy, crept; Wherever he breathed, wherever he slept, By the light of the moon were seen Most beautiful things--there were flowers and trees; There were bevies of birds and swarms of bees; There were cities with temples and towers, and these All pictured in silver sheen! But he did one thing that was hardly fair; He peeped in the cupboard, and finding there That all had forgotten for him to prepare-- "Now just to set them a-thinking, I'll bite this basket of fruit," said he, "This costly pitcher I'll burst in three, And the glass of water they've left for me Shall '_tchich!_' to tell them I'm drinking." HANNAH FLAGG GOULD. THE OWL. When cats run home and light is come, And dew is cold upon the ground, And the far-off stream is dumb, And the whirring sail goes round, And the whirring sail goes round; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits. When merry milkmaids click the latch, And rarely smells the new-mown hay, And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch Twice or thrice his roundelay, Twice or thrice his roundelay; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits. ALFRED TENNYSON. LITTLE BILLEE. "Little Billee," by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63), finds a place here because it carries a good lesson good-naturedly rendered. An accomplished teacher recommends it, and I recollect two young children in Chicago who sang it frequently for years without getting tired of it. There were three sailors of Bristol city Who took a boat and went to sea. But first with beef and captain's biscuits And pickled pork they loaded she. There was gorging Jack and guzzling Jimmy, And the youngest he was little Billee. Now when they got so far as the Equator They'd nothing left but one split pea. Says gorging Jack to guzzling Jimmy, "I am extremely hungaree." To gorging Jack says guzzling Jimmy, "We've nothing left, us must eat we." Says gorging Jack to guzzling Jimmy, "With one another, we shouldn't agree! There's little Bill, he's young and tender, We're old and tough, so let's eat he." "Oh! Billy, we're going to kill and eat you, So undo the button of your chemie." When Bill received this information He used his pocket-handkerchie. "First let me say my catechism, Which my poor mammy taught to me." "Make haste, make haste," says guzzling Jimmy While Jack pulled out his snickersnee. So Billy went up to the main-topgallant mast, And down he fell on his bended knee. He scarce had come to the Twelfth Commandment When up he jumps, "There's land I see. "Jerusalem and Madagascar, And North and South Amerikee: There's the British flag a-riding at anchor, With Admiral Napier, K.C.B." So when they got aboard of the Admiral's He hanged fat Jack and flogged Jimmee; But as for little Bill, he made him The Captain of a Seventy-three. WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. THE BUTTERFLY AND THE BEE. "The Butterfly and the Bee," by William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850), is recommended by some school-girls. It carries a lesson in favour of the worker. Methought I heard a butterfly Say to a labouring bee: "Thou hast no colours of the sky On painted wings like me." "Poor child of vanity! those dyes, And colours bright and rare," With mild reproof, the bee replies, "Are all beneath my care. "Content I toil from morn to eve, And scorning idleness, To tribes of gaudy sloth I leave The vanity of dress." WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES. AN INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP. "An Incident of the French Camp," by Robert Browning (1812-89), is included in this volume out of regard to a boy of eight years who did not care for many poems, but this one stirred his heart to its depths. You know, we French storm'd Ratisbon: A mile or so away On a little mound, Napoleon Stood on our storming-day; With neck out-thrust, you fancy how, Legs wide, arms lock'd behind, As if to balance the prone brow Oppressive with its mind. Just as perhaps he mus'd "My plans That soar, to earth may fall, Let once my army leader Lannes Waver at yonder wall,"-- Out 'twixt the battery smokes there flew A rider, bound on bound Full-galloping; nor bridle drew Until he reach'd the mound. Then off there flung in smiling joy, And held himself erect By just his horse's mane, a boy: You hardly could suspect-- (So tight he kept his lips compress'd, Scarce any blood came through) You look'd twice ere you saw his breast Was all but shot in two. "Well," cried he, "Emperor, by God's grace We've got you Ratisbon! The Marshal's in the market-place, And you'll be there anon To see your flag-bird flap his vans Where I, to heart's desire, Perched him!" The chief's eye flashed; his plans Soared up again like fire. The chief's eye flashed; but presently Softened itself, as sheathes A film the mother-eagle's eye When her bruised eaglet breathes; "You're wounded!" "Nay," the soldier's pride Touched to the quick, he said: "I'm killed, Sire!" And his chief beside, Smiling the boy fell dead. ROBERT BROWNING. ROBERT OF LINCOLN. "Robert of Lincoln," by William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), is one of the finest bird poems ever written. It finds a place here because I have seen it used effectively as a memory gem in the Cook County Normal School (Colonel Parker's school), year after year, and because my own pupils invariably like to commit it to memory. With the child of six to the student of twenty years it stands a source of delight. Merrily swinging on brier and weed, Near to the nest of his little dame, Over the mountain-side or mead, Robert of Lincoln is telling his name. Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, Snug and safe is this nest of ours, Hidden among the summer flowers. Chee, chee, chee. Robert of Lincoln is gayly dressed, Wearing a bright, black wedding-coat; White are his shoulders, and white his crest, Hear him call in his merry note, Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, Look what a nice, new coat is mine; Sure there was never a bird so fine. Chee, chee, chee. Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife, Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings, Passing at home a patient life, Broods in the grass while her husband sings, Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, Brood, kind creature, you need not fear Thieves and robbers while I am here. Chee, chee, chee. Modest and shy as a nun is she; One weak chirp is her only note; Braggart, and prince of braggarts is he, Pouring boasts from his little throat, Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, Never was I afraid of man, Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you can. Chee, chee, chee. Six white eggs on a bed of hay, Flecked with purple, a pretty sight: There as the mother sits all day, Robert is singing with all his might, Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, Nice good wife that never goes out, Keeping house while I frolic about. Chee, chee, chee. Soon as the little ones chip the shell, Six wide mouths are open for food; Robert of Lincoln bestirs him well, Gathering seeds for the hungry brood: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, This new life is likely to be Hard for a gay young fellow like me. Chee, chee, chee. Robert of Lincoln at length is made Sober with work, and silent with care, Off is his holiday garment laid, Half forgotten that merry air, Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, Nobody knows but my mate and I, Where our nest and our nestlings lie. Chee, chee, chee. Summer wanes; the children are grown; Fun and frolic no more he knows; Robert of Lincoln's a hum-drum drone; Off he flies, and we sing as he goes, Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, When you can pipe that merry old strain, Robert of Lincoln, come back again. Chee, chee, chee. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. OLD GRIMES. "Old Grimes" is an heirloom, an antique gem. We learn it as a matter of course for its sparkle and glow. Old Grimes is dead; that good old man, We ne'er shall see him more; He used to wear a long, black coat, All buttoned down before. His heart was open as the day, His feelings all were true; His hair was some inclined to gray, He wore it in a queue. He lived at peace with all mankind, In friendship he was true; His coat had pocket-holes behind, His pantaloons were blue. He modest merit sought to find, And pay it its desert; He had no malice in his mind, No ruffles on his shirt. His neighbours he did not abuse, Was sociable and gay; He wore large buckles on his shoes, And changed them every day. His knowledge, hid from public gaze, He did not bring to view, Nor make a noise town-meeting days, As many people do. His worldly goods he never threw In trust to fortune's chances, But lived (as all his brothers do) In easy circumstances. Thus undisturbed by anxious cares His peaceful moments ran; And everybody said he was A fine old gentleman. ALBERT GORTON GREENE. SONG OF LIFE. A traveller on a dusty road Strewed acorns on the lea; And one took root and sprouted up, And grew into a tree. Love sought its shade at evening-time, To breathe its early vows; And Age was pleased, in heights of noon, To bask beneath its boughs. The dormouse loved its dangling twigs, The birds sweet music bore-- It stood a glory in its place, A blessing evermore. A little spring had lost its way Amid the grass and fern; A passing stranger scooped a well Where weary men might turn. He walled it in, and hung with care A ladle on the brink; He thought not of the deed he did, But judged that Toil might drink. He passed again; and lo! the well, By summer never dried, Had cooled ten thousand parchéd tongues, And saved a life beside. A nameless man, amid the crowd That thronged the daily mart, Let fall a word of hope and love, Unstudied from the heart, A whisper on the tumult thrown, A transitory breath, It raised a brother from the dust, It saved a soul from death. O germ! O fount! O word of love! O thought at random cast! Ye were but little at the first, But mighty at the last. CHARLES MACKAY. FAIRY SONG. Shed no tear! O shed no tear! The flower will bloom another year. Weep no more! O, weep no more! Young buds sleep in the root's white core. Dry your eyes! Oh! dry your eyes! For I was taught in Paradise To ease my breast of melodies-- Shed no tear. Overhead! look overhead! 'Mong the blossoms white and red-- Look up, look up. I flutter now On this flush pomegranate bough. See me! 'tis this silvery bell Ever cures the good man's ill. Shed no tear! O, shed no tear! The flowers will bloom another year. Adieu, adieu--I fly, adieu, I vanish in the heaven's blue-- Adieu, adieu! JOHN KEATS. A BOY'S SONG "A Boy's Song," by James Hogg (1770-1835), is a sparkling poem, very attractive to children. Where the pools are bright and deep, Where the gray trout lies asleep, Up the river and o'er the lea, That's the way for Billy and me. Where the blackbird sings the latest, Where the hawthorn blooms the sweetest, Where the nestlings chirp and flee, That's the way for Billy and me. Where the mowers mow the cleanest, Where the hay lies thick and greenest, There to trace the homeward bee, That's the way for Billy and me. Where the hazel bank is steepest, Where the shadow falls the deepest, Where the clustering nuts fall free. That's the way for Billy and me. Why the boys should drive away, Little sweet maidens from the play, Or love to banter and fight so well, That's the thing I never could tell. But this I know, I love to play, Through the meadow, among the hay; Up the water and o'er the lea, That's the way for Billy and me. JAMES HOGG. BUTTERCUPS AND DAISIES. Buttercups and daisies, Oh, the pretty flowers, Coming ere the spring time, To tell of sunny hours. While the tree are leafless, While the fields are bare, Buttercups and daisies Spring up here and there. Ere the snowdrop peepeth, Ere the crocus bold, Ere the early primrose Opes its paly gold, Somewhere on the sunny bank Buttercups are bright; Somewhere 'mong the frozen grass Peeps the daisy white. Little hardy flowers, Like to children poor, Playing in their sturdy health By their mother's door, Purple with the north wind, Yet alert and bold; Fearing not, and caring not, Though they be a-cold! What to them is winter! What are stormy showers! Buttercups and daisies Are these human flowers! He who gave them hardships And a life of care, Gave them likewise hardy strength And patient hearts to bear. MARY HOWITT. THE RAINBOW. Triumphal arch, that fills the sky When storms prepare to part, I ask not proud Philosophy To teach me what thou art. Still seem, as to my childhood's sight, A midway station given, For happy spirits to alight, Betwixt the earth and heaven. THOMAS CAMPBELL. OLD IRONSIDES. "Old Ironsides," by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-94), is learned readily. Children are untouched by the commercial spirit which is the reproach of this age. "Ingratitude is the vice of republics," and this poem puts to shame the love of money and the spirit of ingratitude that could let a national servant become a wreck. Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky; Beneath it rung the battle shout, And burst the cannon's roar;-- The meteor of the ocean air Shall sweep the clouds no more. Her deck, once red with heroes' blood, Where knelt the vanquished foe, When winds were hurrying o'er the flood And waves were white below. No more shall feel the victor's tread, Or know the conquered knee; The harpies of the shore shall pluck The eagle of the sea! O, better that her shattered hulk Should sink beneath the wave; Her thunders shook the mighty deep, And there should be her grave; Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storms, The lightning and the gale! OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. LITTLE ORPHANT ANNIE. "Little Orphant Annie" certainly earns her "board and keep" when she has "washed the dishes," "swept up the crumbs," "driven the chickens from the porch," and done all the other odds and ends of work on a farm. The poet, James Whitcomb Riley (1853-), has shown how truly a little child may be overtaxed and yet preserve a brave spirit and keen imagination. Children invariably love to learn this poem. Little Orphant Annie's come to our house to stay, An' wash the cups and saucers up, an' brush the crumbs away, An' shoo the chickens off the porch, an' dust the hearth, an' sweep, An' make the fire, an' bake the bread, an' earn her board-an'-keep; An' all us other children, when the supper things is done, We set around the kitchen fire an' has the mostest fun A-list'nin' to the witch-tales 'at Annie tells about, An' the Gobble-uns 'at gits you Ef you Don't Watch Out! Onc't they was a little boy wouldn't say his pray'rs-- An' when he went to bed at night, away up-stairs, His mammy heerd him holler, an' his daddy heerd him bawl, An' when they turn't the kivvers down, he wasn't there at all! An' they seeked him in the rafter-room, an' cubby hole, an' press, An' seeked him up the chimbly flue, an' ever'-wheres, I guess; But all they ever found was thist his pants an' roundabout! An' the Gobble-uns'll git you Ef you Don't Watch Out! An' one time a little girl 'ud allus laugh an' grin, An' make fun of ever' one, an' all her blood-an'-kin; An' onc't when they was "company," an' ole folks was there, She mocked 'em an' shocked 'em, an' said she didn't care! An' thist as she kicked her heels, an' turn't to run an' hide, They was two great big Black Things a-standin' by her side, An' they snatched her through the ceilin' 'fore she knowed what she's about! An' the Gobble-uns'll git you Ef you Don't Watch Out! An' little Orphant Annie says, when the blaze is blue, An' the lampwick sputters, an' the wind goes woo-oo! An' you hear the crickets quit, an' the moon is gray, An' the lightnin'-bugs in dew is all squenched away,-- You better mind yer parents, an' yer teachers fond an' dear, An' churish them 'at loves you, an' dry the orphant's tear, An' he'p the pore an' needy ones 'at clusters all about, Er the Gobble-uns'll git you Ef you Don't Watch Out! JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY. O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! "O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman (1819-92), is placed here out of compliment to a little boy aged ten who wanted to recite it once a week for a year. This song and Edwin Markham's poem on Lincoln are two of the greatest tributes ever paid to that hero. O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills, For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; Here Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck You've fallen cold and dead. My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will. The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; Exult O shores, and ring O bells! But I, with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. WALT WHITMAN. INGRATITUDE. "Ingratitude," by William Shakespeare (1564-1616), is an incisive thrust at a refined vice. It is a part of education to learn to be grateful. Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou are not so unkind As man's ingratitude; Thy tooth is not so keen Because thou are not seen, Although thy breath be rude. Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, Thou dost not bite so nigh As benefits forgot; Though thou the waters warp, Thy sting is not so sharp As friend remembered not. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. THE IVY GREEN. "The Ivy Green," by Charles Dickens (1812-70), is a hardy poem in honour of a hardy plant. There is a wonderful ivy growing at Rhudlan, in northern Wales. Its roots are so large and strong that they form a comfortable seat for many persons, and no one can remember when they were smaller. This ivy envelops a great castle in ruins. Every child in that locality loves the old ivy. It is typical of the ivy as seen all through Wales and England. O, a dainty plant is the ivy green, That creepeth o'er ruins old! Of right choice food are his meals, I ween, In his cell so lone and cold. The walls must be crumbled, the stones decayed. To pleasure his dainty whim; And the mouldering dust that years have made Is a merry meal for him. Creeping where no life is seen, A rare old plant is the ivy green. Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings, And a staunch old heart has he! How closely he twineth, how tight he clings To his friend, the huge oak tree! And slyly he traileth along the ground, And his leaves he gently waves, And he joyously twines and hugs around The rich mould of dead men's graves. Creeping where no life is seen, A rare old plant is the ivy green. Whole ages have fled, and their works decayed, And nations have scattered been; But the stout old ivy shall never fade From its hale and hearty green. The brave old plant in its lonely days Shall fatten upon the past; For the stateliest building man can raise Is the ivy's food at last. Creeping where no life is seen, A rare old plant is the ivy green. CHARLES DICKENS. THE NOBLE NATURE. "The Noble Nature," by Ben Jonson (1574-1637), needs no plea. A small virtue well polished is better than none. It is not growing like a tree In bulk doth make man better be; Or standing long an oak, three hundred year To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sear A lily of a day Is fairer far in May, Although it fall and die that night,-- It was the plant and flower of light. In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures life may perfect be. BEN JONSON. THE FLYING SQUIRREL. "The Flying Squirrel" is an honest account of a live creature that won his way into scores of hearts by his mad pranks and affectionate ways. It is enough that John Burroughs has commended the poem. Of all the woodland creatures, The quaintest little sprite Is the dainty flying squirrel In vest of shining white, In coat of silver gray, And vest of shining white. His furry Quaker jacket Is trimmed with stripe of black; A furry plume to match it Is curling o'er his back; New curved with every motion, His plume curls o'er his back. No little new-born baby Has pinker feet than he; Each tiny toe is cushioned With velvet cushions three; Three wee, pink, velvet cushions Almost too small to see. Who said, "The foot of baby Might tempt an angel's kiss"? I know a score of school-boys Who put their lips to this,-- This wee foot of the squirrel, And left a loving kiss. The tiny thief has hidden My candy and my plum; Ah, there he comes unbidden To gently nip my thumb,-- Down in his home (my pocket) He gently nips my thumb. How strange the food he covets, The restless, restless wight;-- Fred's old stuffed armadillo He found a tempting bite, Fred's old stuffed armadillo, With ears a perfect fright. The Lady Ruth's great bureau, Each foot a dragon's paw! The midget ate the nails from His famous antique claw. Oh, what a cruel beastie To hurt a dragon's claw! To autographic copies Upon my choicest shelf,-- To every dainty volume The rogue has helped himself. My books! Oh dear! No matter! The rogue has helped himself. And yet, my little squirrel, Your taste is not so bad; You've swallowed Caird completely And psychologic Ladd. Rosmini you've digested, And Kant in rags you've clad. Gnaw on, my elfish rodent! Lay all the sages low! My pretty lace and ribbons, They're yours for weal or woe! My pocket-book's in tatters Because you like it so. MARY E. BURT. WARREN'S ADDRESS TO THE AMERICAN SOLDIERS. There is never a boy who objects to learning "Warren's Address," by John Pierpont (1785-1866). To stand by one's own rights is inherent in every true American. This poem is doubtless developed from Robert Burns's "Bannockburn." (1785-1866.) Stand! the ground's your own, my braves! Will ye give it up to slaves? Will ye look for greener graves? Hope ye mercy still? What's the mercy despots feel? Hear it in that battle-peal! Read it on yon bristling steel! Ask it,--ye who will. Fear ye foes who kill for hire? Will ye to your homes retire? Look behind you! they're afire! And, before you, see Who have done it!--From the vale On they come!--And will ye quail?-- Leaden rain and iron hail Let their welcome be! In the God of battles trust! Die we may,--and die we must; But, O, where can dust to dust Be consigned so well, As where Heaven its dews shall shed On the martyred patriot's bed, And the rocks shall raise their head, Of his deeds to tell! JOHN PIERPONT. THE SONG IN CAMP. "The Song in Camp" is Bayard Taylor's best effort as far as young boys and girls are concerned. It is a most valuable poem. I once heard a clergyman in Chicago use it as a text for his sermon. Since then "Annie Laurie" has become the song of the Labour party. "The Song in Camp" voices a universal feeling. (1825-78.) "Give us a song!" the soldiers cried, The outer trenches guarding, When the heated guns of the camps allied Grew weary of bombarding. The dark Redan, in silent scoff, Lay, grim and threatening, under; And the tawny mound of the Malakoff No longer belched its thunder. There was a pause. A guardsman said, "We storm the forts to-morrow; Sing while we may, another day Will bring enough of sorrow." They lay along the battery's side, Below the smoking cannon: Brave hearts, from Severn and from Clyde, And from the banks of Shannon. They sang of love, and not of fame; Forgot was Britain's glory: Each heart recalled a different name, But all sang "Annie Laurie." Voice after voice caught up the song, Until its tender passion Rose like an anthem, rich and strong,-- Their battle-eve confession. Dear girl, her name he dared not speak, But, as the song grew louder, Something upon the soldier's cheek Washed off the stains of powder. Beyond the darkening ocean burned The bloody sunset's embers, While the Crimean valleys learned How English love remembers. And once again a fire of hell Rained on the Russian quarters, With scream of shot, and burst of shell, And bellowing of the mortars! And Irish Nora's eyes are dim For a singer, dumb and gory; And English Mary mourns for him Who sang of "Annie Laurie." Sleep, soldiers! still in honoured rest Your truth and valour wearing: The bravest are the tenderest,-- The loving are the daring. BAYARD TAYLOR. THE BUGLE SONG. "The Bugle Song" (by Alfred Tennyson, 1809-90), says Heydrick, "has for its central theme the undying power of human love. The music is notable for sweetness and delicacy." The splendour falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story: The long light shakes across the lakes And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. O hark, O hear! how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, farther going! O sweet and far from cliff and scar The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying: Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. O love, they die in yon rich sky, They faint on hill or field or river: Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow forever and forever. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying. ALFRED TENNYSON. THE "THREE BELLS" OF GLASGOW. "The Three Bells of Glasgow," by Whittier (1807-92), cannot be praised too highly for its ethical value. Children always love to learn it after hearing it read correctly and by one who understands and appreciates it. "Stand by" is the motto. My pupils teach it to me once a year and learn it themselves, too. Beneath the low-hung night cloud That raked her splintering mast The good ship settled slowly, The cruel leak gained fast. Over the awful ocean Her signal guns pealed out. Dear God! was that Thy answer From the horror round about? A voice came down the wild wind, "Ho! ship ahoy!" its cry: "Our stout _Three Bells_ of Glasgow Shall stand till daylight by!" Hour after hour crept slowly, Yet on the heaving swells Tossed up and down the ship-lights, The lights of the _Three Bells_! And ship to ship made signals, Man answered back to man, While oft, to cheer and hearten, The _Three Bells_ nearer ran: And the captain from her taffrail Sent down his hopeful cry. "Take heart! Hold on!" he shouted, "The _Three Bells_ shall stand by!" All night across the waters The tossing lights shone clear; All night from reeling taffrail The _Three Bells_ sent her cheer. And when the dreary watches Of storm and darkness passed, Just as the wreck lurched under, All souls were saved at last. Sail on, _Three Bells_, forever, In grateful memory sail! Ring on, _Three Bells_ of rescue, Above the wave and gale! Type of the Love eternal, Repeat the Master's cry, As tossing through our darkness The lights of God draw nigh! JOHN G. WHITTIER. SHERIDAN'S RIDE. There never was a boy who did not like "Sheridan's Ride," by T. Buchanan Read (1822-72). The swing and gallop in it take every boy off from his feet. The children never teach this poem to me, because they love to learn it at first sight. It is easily memorised. Up from the South at break of day, Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay, The affrighted air with a shudder bore, Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain's door, The terrible grumble, and rumble, and roar, Telling the battle was on once more, And Sheridan twenty miles away. And wider still those billows of war Thundered along the horizon's bar; And louder yet into Winchester rolled The roar of that red sea uncontrolled, Making the blood of the listener cold As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray, And Sheridan twenty miles away. But there is a road from Winchester town, A good, broad highway leading down; And there, through the flush of the morning light, A steed as black as the steeds of night Was seen to pass as with eagle flight; As if he knew the terrible need, He stretched away with his utmost speed; Hills rose and fell; but his heart was gay, With Sheridan fifteen miles away. Still sprung from those swift hoofs, thundering South, The dust, like smoke from the cannon's mouth; Or the trail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster, Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster. The heart of the steed and the heart of the master Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls, Impatient to be where the battle-field calls; Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play, With Sheridan only ten miles away. Under his spurning feet the road Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed, And the landscape sped away behind Like an ocean flying before the wind. And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace fire, Swept on, with his wild eye full of ire. But lo! he is nearing his heart's desire; He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray, With Sheridan only five miles away. The first that the General saw were the groups Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops. What was done--what to do? A glance told him both, Then striking his spurs, with a terrible oath, He dashed down the line, mid a storm of huzzas, And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because The sight of the master compelled it to pause. With foam and with dust the black charger was gray; By the flash of his eye, and the red nostrils' play, He seemed to the whole great army to say: "I have brought you Sheridan all the way From Winchester down to save the day!" Hurrah! hurrah for Sheridan! Hurrah! hurrah for horse and man! And when their statues are placed on high, Under the dome of the Union sky, The American soldiers' Temple of Fame, There with the glorious General's name Be it said, in letters both bold and bright: "Here is the steed that saved the day, By carrying Sheridan into the fight From Winchester, twenty miles away!" THOMAS BUCHANAN READ. THE SANDPIPER. "The Sandpiper," by Celia Thaxter (1836-94), is placed here because a goodly percentage of the children who read it want to learn it. Across the lonely beach we flit, One little sandpiper and I, And fast I gather, bit by bit, The scattered driftwood, bleached and dry. The wild waves reach their hands for it, The wild wind raves, the tide runs high, As up and down the beach we flit, One little sandpiper and I. Above our heads the sullen clouds Scud, black and swift, across the sky; Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds Stand out the white lighthouses high. Almost as far as eye can reach I see the close-reefed vessels fly, As fast we flit along the beach, One little sandpiper and I. I watch him as he skims along, Uttering his sweet and mournful cry; He starts not at my fitful song, Nor flash of fluttering drapery. He has no thought of any wrong, He scans me with a fearless eye; Stanch friends are we, well tried and strong, The little sandpiper and I. Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night, When the loosed storm breaks furiously? My driftwood fire will burn so bright! To what warm shelter canst thou fly? I do not fear for thee, though wroth The tempest rushes through the sky; For are we not God's children both, Thou, little sandpiper, and I? CELIA THAXTER. LADY CLARE. Girls always love "Lady Clare" and "The Lord of Burleigh." They like to think that it is enough to be a splendid woman without title or wealth. They want to be loved, if they are loved at all, for their good hearts and graces of mind. Tennyson (1809-92) makes this point repeatedly through his poems. It was the time when lilies blow And clouds are highest up in air; Lord Ronald brought a lily-white doe To give his cousin, Lady Clare. I trow they did not part in scorn: Lovers long-betroth'd were they: They too will wed the morrow morn: God's blessing on the day! "He does not love me for my birth, Nor for my lands so broad and fair; He loves me for my own true worth, And that is well," said Lady Clare. In there came old Alice the nurse; Said: "Who was this that went from thee?" "It was my cousin," said Lady Clare; "To-morrow he weds with me." "O God be thank'd!" said Alice the nurse, "That all comes round so just and fair: Lord Ronald is heir of all your lands, And you are not the Lady Clare." "Are ye out of your mind, my nurse, my nurse," Said Lady Clare, "that ye speak so wild?" "As God's above," said Alice the nurse, "I speak the truth: you are my child. "The old Earl's daughter died at my breast; I speak the truth, as I live by bread! I buried her like my own sweet child, And put my child in her stead." "Falsely, falsely have ye done, O mother," she said, "if this be true, To keep the best man under the sun So many years from his due." "Nay now, my child," said Alice the nurse, "But keep the secret for your life, And all you have will be Lord Ronald's When you are man and wife." "If I'm a beggar born," she said, "I will speak out, for I dare not lie. Pull off, pull off the brooch of gold, And fling the diamond necklace by." "Nay now, my child," said Alice the nurse, "But keep the secret all ye can." She said: "Not so: but I will know If there be any faith in man." "Nay now, what faith?" said Alice the nurse, "The man will cleave unto his right," "And he shall have it," the lady replied, "Tho' I should die to-night." "Yet give one kiss to your mother dear! Alas! my child, I sinn'd for thee." "O mother, mother, mother," she said, "So strange it seems to me. "Yet here's a kiss for my mother dear, My mother dear, if this be so, And lay your hand upon my head, And bless me, mother, ere I go." She clad herself in a russet gown, She was no longer Lady Clare: She went by dale, and she went by down, With a single rose in her hair. The lily-white doe Lord Ronald had brought Leapt up from where she lay, Dropt her head in the maiden's hand, And follow'd her all the way. Down stept Lord Ronald from his tower: "O Lady Clare, you shame your worth! Why come you drest like a village maid, That are the flower of the earth?" "If I come drest like a village maid, I am but as my fortunes are: I am a beggar born," she said, "And not the Lady Clare." "Play me no tricks," said Lord Ronald, "For I am yours in word and in deed. Play me no tricks," said Lord Ronald, "Your riddle is hard to read." O and proudly stood she up! Her heart within her did not fail: She look'd into Lord Ronald's eyes, And told him all her nurse's tale. He laugh'd a laugh of merry scorn: He turn'd and kiss'd her where she stood: "If you are not the heiress born? And I," said he, "the next in blood-- "If you are not the heiress born, And I," said he, "the lawful heir, We two will wed to-morrow morn, And you shall still be Lady Clare." ALFRED TENNYSON. THE LORD OF BURLEIGH. In her ear he whispers gaily, "If my heart by signs can tell, Maiden, I have watched thee daily, And I think thou lov'st me well." She replies, in accents fainter, "There is none I love like thee." He is but a landscape-painter, And a village maiden she. He to lips, that fondly falter, Presses his without reproof; Leads her to the village altar, And they leave her father's roof. "I can make no marriage present; Little can I give my wife. Love will make our cottage pleasant, And I love thee more than life." They by parks and lodges going See the lordly castles stand; Summer woods, about them blowing, Made a murmur in the land. From deep thought himself he rouses, Says to her that loves him well, "Let us see these handsome houses Where the wealthy nobles dwell." So she goes by him attended, Hears him lovingly converse, Sees whatever fair and splendid Lay betwixt his home and hers. Parks with oak and chestnut shady, Parks and order'd gardens great, Ancient homes of lord and lady, Built for pleasure and for state. All he shows her makes him dearer; Evermore she seems to gaze On that cottage growing nearer, Where they twain will spend their days. O but she will love him truly! He shall have a cheerful home; She will order all things duly When beneath his roof they come. Thus her heart rejoices greatly Till a gateway she discerns With armorial bearings stately, And beneath the gate she turns; Sees a mansion more majestic Than all those she saw before; Many a gallant gay domestic Bows before him at the door. And they speak in gentle murmur When they answer to his call, While he treads with footstep firmer, Leading on from hall to hall. And while now she wanders blindly, Nor the meaning can divine, Proudly turns he round and kindly, "All of this is mine and thine." Here he lives in state and bounty, Lord of Burleigh, fair and free. Not a lord in all the county Is so great a lord as he. All at once the colour flushes Her sweet face from brow to chin; As it were with same she blushes, And her spirit changed within. Then her countenance all over Pale again as death did prove: But he clasp'd her like a lover, And he cheer'd her soul with love. So she strove against her weakness, Tho' at times her spirits sank; Shaped her heart with woman's meekness To all duties of her rank; And a gentle consort made he, And her gentle mind was such That she grew a noble lady, And the people loved her much. But a trouble weigh'd upon her And perplex'd her, night and morn, With the burden of an honour Unto which she was not born. Faint she grew and ever fainter. As she murmur'd, "Oh, that he Were once more that landscape-painter Which did win my heart from me!" So she droop'd and droop'd before him, Fading slowly from his side; Three fair children first she bore him, Then before her time she died. Weeping, weeping late and early, Walking up and pacing down, Deeply mourn'd the Lord of Burleigh, Burleigh-house by Stamford-town. And he came to look upon her, And he look'd at her and said, "Bring the dress and put it on her That she wore when she was wed." Then her people, softly treading, Bore to earth her body, drest In the dress that she was wed in, That her spirit might have rest. ALFRED TENNYSON. HIAWATHA'S CHILDHOOD. "Hiawatha" needs no commendation. Hundreds of thousands of children in our land know snatches of it It is a child's poem, every line of it. One summer in Boston more than 50,000 people went to take a peep at the poet's house. (1807-82.) By the shores of Gitche Gumee, By the shining Big-Sea-Water, Stood the wigwam of Nokomis, Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis. Dark behind it rose the forest, Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees, Rose the firs with cones upon them; Bright before it beat the water, Beat the clear and sunny water, Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water. There the wrinkled old Nokomis Nursed the little Hiawatha, Rocked him in his linden cradle, Bedded soft in moss and rushes, Safely bound with reindeer sinews; Stilled his fretful wail by saying, "Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!" Lulled him into slumber, singing, "Ewa-yea! my little owlet! Who is this that lights the wigwam? With his great eyes lights the wigwam? Ewa-yea! my little owlet!" Many things Nokomis taught him Of the stars that shine in heaven; Showed him Ishkoodah, the comet, Ishkoodah, with fiery tresses; Showed the Death-Dance of the spirits, Warriors with their plumes and war-clubs, Flaring far away to northward In the frosty nights of winter; Showed the broad, white road in heaven, Pathway of the ghosts, the shadows, Running straight across the heavens, Crowded with the ghosts, the shadows. At the door, on summer evenings, Sat the little Hiawatha; Heard the whispering of the pine-trees, Heard the lapping of the water, Sounds of music, words of wonder; "Minnie-wawa!" said the pine-trees, "Mudway-aushka!" said the water; Saw the fire-fly, Wah-wah-taysee, Flitting through the dusk of evening, With the twinkle of its candle Lighting up the brakes and bushes, And he sang the song of children. Sang the song Nokomis taught him: "Wah-wah-taysee, little fire-fly, Little, flitting, white-fire insect, Little, dancing, white-fire creature, Light me with your little candle, Ere upon my bed I lay me, Ere in sleep I close my eyelids!" Saw the moon rise from the water Rippling, rounding from the water, Saw the flecks and shadows on it, Whispered, "What is that, Nokomis?" And the good Nokomis answered: "Once a warrior, very angry, Seized his grandmother, and threw her Up into the sky at midnight; Right against the moon he threw her; 'Tis her body that you see there." Saw the rainbow in the heaven, In the eastern sky, the rainbow, Whispered, "What is that, Nokomis?" And the good Nokomis answered: "Tis the heaven of flowers you see there; All the wild-flowers of the forest, All the lilies of the prairie, When on earth they fade and perish, Blossom in that heaven above us." When he heard the owls at midnight, Hooting, laughing in the forest, "What is that?" he cried, in terror; "What is that," he said, "Nokomis?" And the good Nokomis answered: "That is but the owl and owlet, Talking in their native language, Talking, scolding at each other." Then the little Hiawatha Learned of every bird its language, Learned their names and all their secrets, How they built their nests in summer, Where they hid themselves in winter, Talked with them whene'er he met them, Called them "Hiawatha's Chickens." Of all beasts he learned the language, Learned their names and all their secrets, How the beavers built their lodges, Where the squirrels hid their acorns, How the reindeer ran so swiftly, Why the rabbit was so timid, Talked with them whene'er he met them, Called them "Hiawatha's Brothers." HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD. "The Daffodil" is here out of compliment to a splendid school and a splendid teacher at Poughkeepsie. I found the pupils learning the poem, the teacher having placed a bunch of daffodils in a vase before them. It was a charming lesson. (1770-96.) I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden daffodils: Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay; Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced, but they Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:-- A poet could not but be gay In such a jocund company; I gazed--and gazed--but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought. For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. JOHN BARLEYCORN. "John Barleycorn" is a favourite with boys because it pictures a successful struggle. One editor has made a temperance poem of it, mistaking its true intent. The poem is a strong expression of a plow-man's love for a hardy, food-giving grain which has sprung to life through his efforts. (1759-96.) There were three kings into the East, Three kings both great and high; And they ha'e sworn a solemn oath John Barleycorn should die. They took a plow and plowed him down, Put clods upon his head; And they ha'e sworn a solemn oath John Barleycorn was dead. But the cheerful spring came kindly on, And showers began to fall; John Barleycorn got up again, And sore surprised them all. The sultry suns of summer came, And he grew thick and strong; His head well arm'd wi' pointed spears, That no one should him wrong. The sober autumn entered mild, And he grew wan and pale; His bending joints and drooping head Showed he began to fail. His colour sickened more and more, He faded into age; And then his enemies began To show their deadly rage. They took a weapon long and sharp, And cut him by the knee, Then tied him fast upon a cart, Like a rogue for forgery. They laid him down upon his back, And cudgelled him full sore; They hung him up before the storm, And turn'd him o'er and o'er. They filled up then a darksome pit With water to the brim, And heaved in poor John Barleycorn, To let him sink or swim. They laid him out upon the floor, To work him further woe; And still as signs of life appeared, They tossed him to and fro. They wasted o'er a scorching flame The marrow of his bones; But a miller used him worst of all-- He crushed him 'tween two stones. And they have taken his very heart's blood, And drunk it round and round; And still the more and more they drank, Their joy did more abound. ROBERT BURNS. A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE. "A Life on the Ocean Wave," by Epes Sargent (1813-80), gives the swing and motion of the water of the great ocean. Children remember it almost unconsciously after hearing it read several times. A life on the ocean wave, A home on the rolling deep, Where the scattered waters rave, And the winds their revels keep! Like an eagle caged, I pine On this dull, unchanging shore: Oh! give me the flashing brine, The spray and the tempest's roar! Once more on the deck I stand Of my own swift-gliding craft: Set sail! farewell to the land! The gale follows fair abaft. We shoot through the sparkling foam Like an ocean-bird set free;-- Like the ocean-bird, our home We'll find far out on the sea. The land is no longer in view, The clouds have begun to frown; But with a stout vessel and crew, We'll say, Let the storm come down! And the song of our hearts shall be, While the winds and the waters rave, A home on the rolling sea! A life on the ocean wave! EPES SARGENT. THE DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR. It is customary, every New Year's eve in America, to ring bells, fire guns, send up rockets, and, in many other ways, to show joy and gratitude that the old year has been so kind, and that the new year is so auspicious. The emphasis in Tennyson's poem is laid on gratitude for past benefits so easily forgotten rather than upon the possible advantages of the unknown and untried future. Full knee-deep lies the winter snow, And the winter winds are wearily sighing: Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow, And tread softly and speak low, For the old year lies a-dying. Old year, you must not die; You came to us so readily, You lived with us so steadily, Old year, you shall not die. He lieth still: he doth not move: He will not see the dawn of day. He hath no other life above. He gave me a friend, and a true true-love, And the New-year will take 'em away. Old year, you must not go; So long as you have been with us, Such joy as you have seen with us, Old year, you shall not go. He froth'd his bumpers to the brim; A jollier year we shall not see. But tho' his eyes are waxing dim, And tho' his foes speak ill of him, He was a friend to me. Old year, you shall not die; We did so laugh and cry with you, I've half a mind to die with you, Old year, if you must die. He was full of joke and jest, But all his merry quips are o'er. To see him die, across the waste His son and heir doth ride post-haste, But he'll be dead before. Every one for his own. The night is starry and cold, my friend, And the New-year blithe and bold, my friend, Comes up to take his own. How hard he breathes! over the snow I heard just now the crowing cock. The shadows flicker to and fro: The cricket chirps: the light burns low: 'Tis nearly twelve o'clock. Shake hands, before you die. Old year, we'll dearly rue for you: What is it we can do for you? Speak out before you die. His face is growing sharp and thin. Alack! our friend is gone. Close up his eyes: tie up his chin: Step from the corpse, and let him in That standeth there alone, And waiteth at the door. There's a new foot on the floor, my friend, And a new face at the door, my friend, A new face at the door. ALFRED TENNYSON. ABOU BEN ADHEM. "Abou Ben Adhem" has won its way to the popular heart because the "Brotherhood of Man" is the motto of this age. (1784-1859.) Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!) Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, And saw within the moonlight in his room, Making it rich and like a lily in bloom, An angel writing in a book of gold. Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold; And to the presence in the room he said, "What writest thou?" The vision raised its head, And, with a look made of all sweet accord, Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord." "And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so," Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low, But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee, then, Write me as one that loves his fellow-men." The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night It came again, with a great wakening light, And showed the names whom love of God had blessed; And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest. LEIGH HUNT. FARM-YARD SONG. "A Farm-Yard Song" was popular years ago with Burbank, the great reader. How the boys and girls loved it! The author, J.T. Trowbridge (1827-still living), "is a boy-hearted man," says John Burroughs. The poem is just as popular as it ever was. Over the hill the farm-boy goes, His shadow lengthens along the land, A giant staff in a giant hand; In the poplar-tree, above the spring, The katydid begins to sing; The early dews are falling;-- Into the stone-heap darts the mink; The swallows skim the river's brink; And home to the woodland fly the crows, When over the hill the farm-boy goes, Cheerily calling,-- "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'! co'!" Farther, farther over the hill, Faintly calling, calling still,-- "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'!" Into the yard the farmer goes, With grateful heart, at the close of day; Harness and chain are hung away; In the wagon-shed stand yoke and plow; The straw's in the stack, the hay in the mow; The cooling dews are falling;-- The friendly sheep his welcome bleat, The pigs come grunting to his feet, The whinnying mare her master knows, When into the yard the farmer goes, His cattle calling,-- "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'! co'!" While still the cow-boy, far away, Goes seeking those that have gone astray,-- "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'!" Now to her task the milkmaid goes. The cattle come crowding through the gate, Lowing, pushing, little and great; About the trough, by the farm-yard pump, The frolicsome yearlings frisk and jump, While the pleasant dews are falling;-- The new-milch heifer is quick and shy, But the old cow waits with tranquil eye; And the white stream into the bright pail flows, When to her task the milkmaid goes, Soothingly calling,-- "So, boss! so, boss! so! so! so!" The cheerful milkmaid takes her stool, And sits and milks in the twilight cool, Saying, "So! so, boss! so! so!" To supper at last the farmer goes. The apples are pared, the paper read, The stories are told, then all to bed. Without, the crickets' ceaseless song Makes shrill the silence all night long; The heavy dews are falling. The housewife's hand has turned the lock; Drowsily ticks the kitchen clock; The household sinks to deep repose; But still in sleep the farm-boy goes. Singing, calling,-- "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'! co'!" And oft the milkmaid, in her dreams, Drums in the pail with the flashing streams, Murmuring, "So, boss! so!" J.T. TROWBRIDGE. TO A MOUSE, ON TURNING UP HER NEST WITH THE PLOW, NOVEMBER, 1785 "To a Mouse" and "To a Mountain Daisy," by Robert Burns (1759-96), are the ineffable touches of tenderness that illumine the sturdy plowman. The contrast between the strong man and the delicate flower or creature at his mercy makes tenderness in man a vital point in character. The lines "To a Mouse" seem by report to have been composed while Burns was actually plowing. One of the poet's first editors wrote: "John Blane, who had acted as gaudsman to Burns, and who lived sixty years afterward, had a distinct recollection of the turning up of the mouse. Like a thoughtless youth as he was, he ran after the creature to kill it, but was checked and recalled by his master, who he observed became thereafter thoughtful and abstracted. Burns, who treated his servants with the familiarity of fellow-labourers, soon afterward read the poem to Blane." Wee, sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie, Oh, what a panic's in thy breastie! Thou needna start awa' sae hasty, Wi' bickering brattle! I wad be laith to rin and chase thee, Wi' murd'ring pattle! I'm truly sorry man's dominion Has broken Nature's social union, And justifies that ill opinion, Which makes thee startle At me, thy poor earth-born companion And fellow-mortal! I doubtna, whiles, but thou may thieve; What then? poor beastie, thou maun live! A daimen icker in a thrave 'S a sma' request: I'll get a blessin' wi' the lave, And never miss 't! Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin! Its silly wa's the win's are strewin'! And naething now to big a new ane O' foggage green, And bleak December's winds ensuin', Baith snell and keen! Thou saw the fields laid bare and waste, And weary winter comin' fast, And cozie here, beneath the blast, Thou thought to dwell, Till, crash! the cruel coulter passed Out through thy cell. That wee bit heap o' leaves and stibble Has cost thee monie a weary nibble! Now thou's turned out for a' thy trouble, But house or hald, To thole the winter's sleety dribble, And cranreuch cauld! But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane, In proving foresight may be vain: The best-laid schemes o' mice and men Gang aft a-gley, And lea'e us naught but grief and pain, For promised joy. Still thou art blest, compared wi' me! The present only toucheth thee: But, och! I backward cast my e'e On prospects drear! And forward, though I canna see, I guess and fear. ROBERT BURNS. TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY, ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOW IN APRIL, 1786 Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower, Thou's met me in an evil hour; For I maun crush amang the stoure Thy slender stem: To spare thee now is past my power, Thou bonny gem. Alas! it's no thy neebor sweet, The bonny lark, companion meet, Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet, Wi' speckled breast, When upward-springing, blithe, to greet The purpling east! Cauld blew the bitter biting north Upon thy early, humble birth; Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth Amid the storm, Scarce reared above the parent earth Thy tender form. The flaunting flowers our gardens yield, High sheltering woods and wa's maun shield, But thou, beneath the random bield O' clod or stane, Adorns the histie stibble-field, Unseen, alane. There, in thy scanty mantle clad, Thy snawie bosom sunward spread, Thou lifts thy unassuming head In humble guise; But now the share uptears thy bed, And low thou lies! Such is the fate of artless maid, Sweet floweret of the rural shade! By love's simplicity betrayed, And guileless trust, Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid Low i' the dust. Such is the fate of simple bard, On life's rough ocean luckless starr'd! Unskilful he to note the card Of prudent lore, Till billows rage, and gales blow hard, And whelm him o'er! Such fate to suffering worth is given, Who long with wants and woes has striven, By human pride or cunning driven To misery's brink, Till wrenched of every stay but Heaven, He, ruined, sink! Even thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate, That fate is thine--no distant date; Stern Ruin's plowshare drives, elate, Full on thy bloom, Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight Shall be thy doom. ROBERT BURNS. BARBARA FRIETCHIE. "Barbara Frietchie" will be beloved of all times because she was an old woman (not necessarily an old lady) _worthy of her years_. Old age is honourable if it carries a head that has a halo. (1807-92.) Up from the meadows rich with corn, Clear in the cool September morn, The clustered spires of Frederick stand Green-walled by the hills of Maryland. Roundabout them orchards sweep, Apple and peach tree fruited deep, Fair as the garden of the Lord To the eyes of the famished rebel horde, On that pleasant morn of the early fall When Lee marched over the mountain-wall, Over the mountains winding down, Horse and foot, into Frederick town. Forty flags with their silver stars, Forty flags with their crimson bars, Flapped in the morning wind: the sun Of noon looked down, and saw not one. Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then, Bowed with her fourscore years and ten, Bravest of all in Frederick town, She took up the flag the men hauled down. In her attic window the staff she set, To show that one heart was loyal yet. Up the street came the rebel tread, Stonewall Jackson riding ahead. Under his slouched hat left and right He glanced: the old flag met his sight. "Halt!"--the dust-brown ranks stood fast. "Fire!"--out blazed the rifle-blast. It shivered the window, pane and sash; It rent the banner with seam and gash. Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf. She leaned far out on the window-sill, And shook it forth with a royal will. "Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, But spare your country's flag," she said. A shade of sadness, a blush of shame, Over the face of the leader came; The nobler nature within him stirred To life at that woman's deed and word: "Who touches a hair of yon gray head Dies like a dog! March on!" he said. All day long through Frederick street Sounded the tread of marching feet: All day long that free flag tost Over the heads of the rebel host. Even its torn folds rose and fell On the loyal winds that loved it well; And through the hill-gaps sunset light Shone over it with a warm good-night. Barbara Frietchie's work is o'er, And the rebel rides on his raids no more. Honour to her! and let a tear Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier. Over Barbara Frietchie's grave, Flag of Freedom and Union, wave! Peace and order and beauty draw Round thy symbol of light and law; And ever the stars above look down On thy stars below in Frederick town! JOHN G. WHITTIER. PART III. The Day's at the Morn LOCHINVAR. "Lochinvar" and "Lord Ullin's Daughter," the first by Scott (1771-1832) and the second by Campbell (1777-1844), are companions in sentiment and equally popular with boys who love to win anything desirable by heroic effort. Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the west. Through all the wide Border his steed was the best, And save his good broadsword he weapons had none; He rode all unarmed, and he rode all alone. So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war, There never was knight like the young Lochinvar. He stayed not for brake, and he stopped not for stone, He swam the Eske River where ford there was none; But ere he alighted at Netherby gate The bride had consented, the gallant came late: For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar. So boldly he entered the Netherby Hall, Among bridesmen and kinsmen and brothers and all: Then spoke the bride's father, his hand on his sword (For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word), "Oh, come ye in peace here, or come ye in war, Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?" "I long woo'd your daughter, my suit you denied;-- Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide-- And now am I come, with this lost love of mine, To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine. There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far, That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar." The bride kissed the goblet; the knight took it up; He quaffed of the wine, and he threw down the cup. She looked down to blush, and she looked up to sigh, With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye. He took her soft hand ere her mother could bar,-- "Now tread we a measure!" said young Lochinvar. So stately his form, and so lovely her face, That never a hall such a galliard did grace; While her mother did fret, and her father did fume, And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume, And the bridemaidens whispered, "'Twere better by far To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar." One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear, When they reached the hall door, and the charger stood near; So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung, So light to the saddle before her he sprung! "She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur; They'll have fleet steeds that follow," quoth young Lochinvar. There was mounting 'mong Græmes of the Netherby clan; Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran: There was racing and chasing, on Cannobie Lee, But the lost bride of Netherby ne'er did they see. So daring in love, and so dauntless in war, Have ye e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar? SIR WALTER SCOTT. LORD ULLIN'S DAUGHTER. A chieftain, to the Highlands bound, Cries, "Boatman, do not tarry! And I'll give thee a silver pound, To row us o'er the ferry." "Now who be ye, would cross Lochgyle, This dark and stormy water?" "O, I'm the chief of Ulva's isle, And this Lord Ullin's daughter. "And fast before her father's men Three days we've fled together, For should he find us in the glen, My blood would stain the heather. "His horsemen hard behind us ride; Should they our steps discover, Then who will cheer my bonny bride When they have slain her lover?" Outspoke the hardy Highland wight, "I'll go, my chief--I'm ready; It is not for your silver bright, But for your winsome lady: "And by my word! the bonny bird In danger shall not tarry; So though the waves are raging white, I'll row you o'er the ferry." By this the storm grew loud apace, The water-wraith was shrieking; And in the scowl of heaven each face Grew dark as they were speaking. But still as wilder blew the wind, And as the night grew drearer, Adown the glen rode armèd men, Their trampling sounded nearer. "O haste thee, haste!" the lady cries, "Though tempests round us gather; I'll meet the raging of the skies, But not an angry father." The boat has left a stormy land, A stormy sea before her,-- When, oh! too strong for human hand, The tempest gathered o'er her. And still they row'd amid the roar Of waters fast prevailing: Lord Ullin reach'd that fatal shore, His wrath was changed to wailing. For sore dismay'd through storm and shade, His child he did discover:-- One lovely hand she stretch'd for aid, And one was round her lover. "Come back! come back!" he cried in grief, "Across this stormy water: And I'll forgive your Highland chief, My daughter!--oh my daughter!" 'Twas vain the loud waves lashed the shore, Return or aid preventing;-- The waters wild went o'er his child,-- And he was left lamenting. THOMAS CAMPBELL. THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE. "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (1809-92) unlike "Casabianca" shows obedience under stern necessity. Obedience is the salvation of any army. John Burroughs says: "I never hear that poem but what it thrills me through and through." Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. "Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!" he said: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. "Forward, the Light Brigade!" Was there a man dismay'd? Not tho' the soldier knew Some one had blunder'd: Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why. Theirs but to do and die: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them Volley'd and thunder'd; Storm'd at with shot and shell Boldly they rode and well, Into the jaws of Death, Into the mouth of Hell Rode the six hundred. Flash'd all their sabers bare, Flash'd as they turn'd in air Sab'ring the gunners there, Charging an army, while All the world wonder'd: Plunged in the battery-smoke Right thro' the line they broke; Cossack and Russian Reel'd from the saber-stroke Shatter'd and sunder'd. Then they rode back, but not Not the six hundred. Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon behind them Volleyed and thundered: Stormed at with shot and shell, While horse and hero fell, They that had fought so well Came through the jaws of death Back from the mouth of hell, All that was left of them-- Left of six hundred. When can their glory fade? Oh, the wild charge they made! All the world wondered. Honour the charge they made! Honour the Light Brigade-- Noble six hundred! ALFRED TENNYSON. THE TOURNAMENT. There are several of Sidney Lanier's (1842-81) poems that children love to learn. "Tampa Robins," "The Tournament" (Joust 1.), "Barnacles," "The Song of the Chattahoochee," and "The First Steamboat Up the Alabama" are among them. At our "poetry contests" the children have plainly demonstrated that this great poet has reached his hand down to the youngest. The time will doubtless come when it will be a part of education to be acquainted with Lanier, as it is now to be acquainted with Longfellow or Tennyson. I. Bright shone the lists, blue bent the skies, And the knights still hurried amain To the tournament under the ladies' eyes, Where the jousters were Heart and Brain. II. Flourished the trumpets, entered Heart, A youth in crimson and gold; Flourished again; Brain stood apart, Steel-armoured, dark and cold. III. Heart's palfrey caracoled gaily round, Heart tra-li-ra'd merrily; But Brain sat still, with never a sound, So cynical-calm was he. IV. Heart's helmet-crest bore favours three From his lady's white hand caught; While Brain wore a plumeless casque; not he Or favour gave or sought. V. The trumpet blew; Heart shot a glance To catch his lady's eye. But Brain gazed straight ahead, his lance To aim more faithfully. VI. They charged, they struck; both fell, both bled; Brain rose again, ungloved; Heart, dying, smiled and faintly said, "My love to my beloved." SIDNEY LANIER. THE WIND AND THE MOON. Little Laddie, do you remember learning "The Wind and the Moon"? You were eight or nine years old, and you shut your eyes and puffed out your cheeks when you came to the line "He blew and He blew." The saucy wind made a great racket and the calm moon never noticed it. That gave you a great deal of pleasure, didn't it? We did not care much for the noisy, conceited wind. (1824-.) Said the Wind to the Moon, "I will blow you out, You stare In the air Like a ghost in a chair, Always looking what I am about-- I hate to be watched; I'll blow you out." The Wind blew hard, and out went the Moon. So, deep On a heap Of clouds to sleep, Down lay the Wind, and slumbered soon, Muttering low, "I've done for that Moon." He turned in his bed; she was there again! On high In the sky, With her one ghost eye, The Moon shone white and alive and plain. Said the Wind, "I will blow you out again." The Wind blew hard, and the Moon grew dim. "With my sledge, And my wedge, I have knocked off her edge! If only I blow right fierce and grim, The creature will soon be dimmer than dim." He blew and he blew, and she thinned to a thread. "One puff More's enough To blow her to snuff! One good puff more where the last was bred, And glimmer, glimmer, glum will go the thread." He blew a great blast, and the thread was gone In the air Nowhere Was a moonbeam bare; Far off and harmless the shy stars shone-- Sure and certain the Moon was gone! The Wind he took to his revels once more; On down, In town, Like a merry-mad clown, He leaped and hallooed with whistle and roar-- "What's that?" The glimmering thread once more! He flew in a rage--he danced and blew; But in vain Was the pain Of his bursting brain; For still the broader the Moon-scrap grew, The broader he swelled his big cheeks and blew. Slowly she grew--till she filled the night, And shone On her throne In the sky alone, A matchless, wonderful silvery light, Radiant and lovely, the queen of the night. Said the Wind: "What a marvel of power am I With my breath, Good faith! I blew her to death-- First blew her away right out of the sky-- Then blew her in; what strength have I!" But the Moon she knew nothing about the affair; For high In the sky, With her one white eye, Motionless, miles above the air, She had never heard the great Wind blare. GEORGE MACDONALD. JESUS THE CARPENTER. "Jesus the Carpenter"--"same trade as me"--strikes a high note in favour of honest toil. (1848-.) "Isn't this Joseph's son?"--ay, it is He; Joseph the carpenter--same trade as me-- I thought as I'd find it--I knew it was here-- But my sight's getting queer. I don't know right where as His shed must ha' stood-- But often, as I've been a-planing my wood, I've took off my hat, just with thinking of He At the same work as me. He warn't that set up that He couldn't stoop down And work in the country for folks in the town; And I'll warrant He felt a bit pride, like I've done, At a good job begun. The parson he knows that I'll not make too free, But on Sunday I feels as pleased as can be, When I wears my clean smock, and sits in a pew, And has taught a few. I think of as how not the parson hissen, As is teacher and father and shepherd o' men, Not he knows as much of the Lord in that shed, Where He earned His own bread. And when I goes home to my missus, says she, "Are ye wanting your key?" For she knows my queer ways, and my love for the shed (We've been forty years wed). So I comes right away by mysen, with the book, And I turns the old pages and has a good look For the text as I've found, as tells me as He Were the same trade as me. Why don't I mark it? Ah, many say so, But I think I'd as lief, with your leaves, let it go: It do seem that nice when I fall on it sudden-- Unexpected, you know! CATHERINE C. LIDDELL. LETTY'S GLOBE. "Letty's Globe" gives us the picture of a little golden-haired girl who covers all Europe with her dainty hands and tresses while giving a kiss to England, her own dear native land. (1808-79.) When Letty had scarce pass'd her third glad year, And her young, artless words began to flow, One day we gave the child a colour'd sphere Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know, By tint and outline, all its sea and land. She patted all the world; old empires peep'd Between her baby fingers; her soft hand Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leap'd, And laugh'd and prattled in her world-wide bliss! But when we turn'd her sweet unlearned eye On our own isle, she rais'd a joyous cry, "Oh! yes, I see it! Letty's home is there!" And, while she hid all England with a kiss, Bright over Europe fell her golden hair! CHARLES TENNYSON TURNER. A DREAM. Once a dream did wave a shade O'er my angel-guarded bed, That an emmet lost its way When on grass methought I lay. Troubled, 'wildered, and forlorn, Dark, benighted, travel-worn, Over many a tangled spray, All heart-broke, I heard her say: "Oh, my children! do they cry? Do they hear their father sigh? Now they look abroad to see. Now return and weep for me." Pitying, I dropped a tear; But I saw a glow-worm near, Who replied, "What wailing wight Calls the watchman of the night? "I am set to light the ground While the beetle goes his round. Follow now the beetle's hum-- Little wanderer, hie thee home!" WILLIAM BLAKE. HEAVEN IS NOT REACHED AT A SINGLE BOUND. (A FRAGMENT.) "We build the ladder by which we climb" is a line worthy of any poet. J.G. Holland (1819-81) has immortalised himself in this line, at least. Heaven is not reached at a single bound, But we build the ladder by which we rise From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, And we mount to its summit round by round. I count this thing to be grandly true: That a noble deed is a step toward God,-- Lifting the soul from the common clod To a purer air and a broader view. J.G. HOLLAND. THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM. Have you been to Woodstock, near Oxford, England? If so, you have seen the palace of the Duke of Marlborough, who won the battle of Blenheim. The main point of the poem is the doubtful honour in killing in our great wars. Southey, the poet, lived from 1774 to 1843. It was a summer's evening, Old Kaspar's work was done, And he before his cottage door Was sitting in the sun; And by him sported on the green His little grandchild Wilhelmine. She saw her brother Peterkin Roll something large and round, Which he, beside the rivulet, In playing there, had found. He came to ask what he had found, That was so large, and smooth, and round. Old Kaspar took it from the boy, Who stood expectant by; And then the old man shook his head, And, with a natural sigh, "'Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he, "Who fell in the great victory! "I find them in the garden, For there's many hereabout; And often when I go to plow, The plowshare turns them out; For many thousand men," said he, "Were slain in that great victory!" "Now tell us what 'twas all about," Young Peterkin he cries; And little Wilhelmine looks up With wonder-waiting eyes; "Now tell us all about the war, And what they killed each other for." "It was the English," Kaspar cried, "Who put the French to rout; But what they killed each other for I could not well make out. But everybody said," quoth he, "That 'twas a famous victory! "My father lived at Blenheim then, Yon little stream hard by: They burned his dwelling to the ground And he was forced to fly; So with his wife and child he fled, Nor had he where to rest his head. "With fire and sword the country round Was wasted far and wide; And many a childing mother then And new-born baby died. But things like that, you know, must be At every famous victory. "They say it was a shocking sight After the field was won; For many thousand bodies here Lay rotting in the sun. But things like that, you know, must be After a famous victory. "Great praise the Duke of Marlborough won, And our good Prince Eugene." "Why, 'twas a very wicked thing!" Said little Wilhelmine. "Nay, nay, my little girl," quoth he, "It was a famous victory! "And everybody praised the Duke Who this great fight did win." "But what good came of it at last?" Quoth little Peterkin. "Why, that I cannot tell," said he, "But 'twas a famous victory." ROBERT SOUTHEY. FIDELITY. "Fidelity," by William Wordsworth (1770-1850), is placed here out of respect to a boy of eleven years who liked the poem well enough to recite it frequently. The scene is laid on Helvellyn, to me the most impressive mountain of the Lake District of England. Wordsworth is a part of this country. I once heard John Burroughs say: "I went to the Lake District to see what kind of a country it could be that would produce a Wordsworth." A barking sound the Shepherd hears, A cry as of a dog or fox; He halts--and searches with his eyes Among the scattered rocks; And now at distance can discern A stirring in a brake of fern; And instantly a Dog is seen, Glancing through that covert green. The Dog is not of mountain breed; Its motions, too, are wild and shy; With something, as the Shepherd thinks, Unusual in its cry: Nor is there any one in sight All round, in hollow or on height; Nor shout, nor whistle strikes his ear; What is the Creature doing here? It was a cove, a huge recess, That keeps, till June, December's snow. A lofty precipice in front, A silent tarn below! Far in the bosom of Helvellyn, Remote from public road or dwelling, Pathway, or cultivated land; From trace of human foot or hand. There sometimes doth a leaping fish Send through the tarn a lonely cheer; The crags repeat the raven's croak, In symphony austere; Thither the rainbow comes--the cloud-- And mists that spread the flying shroud; And sunbeams; and the sounding blast, That, if it could, would hurry past, But that enormous barrier binds it fast. Not free from boding thoughts, a while The Shepherd stood: then makes his way Toward the Dog, o'er rocks and stones, As quickly as he may; Nor far had gone, before he found A human skeleton on the ground; The appalled discoverer with a sigh Looks round, to learn the history. From those abrupt and perilous rocks The Man had fallen, that place of fear! At length upon the Shepherd's mind It breaks, and all is clear: He instantly recalled the name, And who he was, and whence he came; Remembered, too, the very day On which the traveller passed this way. But hear a wonder, for whose sake This lamentable tale I tell! A lasting monument of words This wonder merits well. The Dog, which still was hovering nigh, Repeating the same timid cry, This Dog had been through three months space A dweller in that savage place. Yes, proof was plain that, since the day When this ill-fated traveller died, The Dog had watched about the spot, Or by his master's side: How nourished here through such long time He knows, who gave that love sublime; And gave that strength of feeling, great Above all human estimate. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS. People are more and more coming to recognise the fact that each individual soul has a right to its own stages of development. "The Chambered Nautilus" is for that reason beloved of the masses. It is one of the grandest poems ever written. "Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul!" This line alone would make the poem immortal. (1809-94.) This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sailed the unshadowed main,-- The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; Wrecked is the ship of pearl! And every chambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed,-- Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed! Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap, forlorn! From thy dead lips a clearer note is born Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn! While on mine ear it rings, Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:-- Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. CROSSING THE BAR Tennyson's (1809-92) "Crossing the Bar" is one of the noblest death-songs ever written. I include it in this volume out of respect to a young Philadelphia publisher who recited it one stormy night before the passengers of a ship when I was crossing the Atlantic, and also because so many young people have the good taste to love it. It has been said that next to Browning's "Prospice" it is the greatest death-song ever written. Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea, But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home. Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark; For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have cross'd the bar. ALFRED TENNYSON. THE OVERLAND-MAIL. "The Overland-Mail" is a most desirable poem for children to learn. When one boy learns it the others want to follow. It takes as a hero the man who gives common service--the one who does not lead or command, but follows the line of duty. (1865-.) In the name of the Empress of India, make way, O Lords of the Jungle wherever you roam, The woods are astir at the close of the day-- We exiles are waiting for letters from Home-- Let the robber retreat; let the tiger turn tail, In the name of the Empress the Overland-Mail! With a jingle of bells as the dusk gathers in, He turns to the foot-path that leads up the hill-- The bags on his back, and a cloth round his chin, And, tucked in his belt, the Post-Office bill;-- "Despatched on this date, as received by the rail, _Per_ runner, two bags of the Overland-Mail." Is the torrent in spate? He must ford it or swim. Has the rain wrecked the road? He must climb by the cliff. Does the tempest cry "Halt"? What are tempests to him? The service admits not a "but" or an "if"; While the breath's in his mouth, he must bear without fail, In the name of the Empress the Overland-Mail. From aloe to rose-oak, from rose-oak to fir, From level to upland, from upland to crest, From rice-field to rock-ridge, from rock-ridge to spur, Fly the soft-sandalled feet, strains the brawny brown chest. From rail to ravine--to the peak from the vale-- Up, up through the night goes the Overland-Mail. There's a speck on the hillside, a dot on the road-- A jingle of bells on the foot-path below-- There's a scuffle above in the monkeys' abode-- The world is awake, and the clouds are aglow-- For the great Sun himself must attend to the hail;-- In the name of the Empress the Overland-Mail. RUDYARD KIPLING. GATHERING SONG OF DONALD DHU. Jon, do you remember when you used to spout "Pibroch of Donald Dhu"? I think you were ten years old. Sir Walter Scott's men all have a genius for standing up to their guns, and boys gather up the man's genius when reciting his verse. (1771-1832.) Pibroch of Donuil Dhu, Pibroch of Donuil, Wake thy wild voice anew, Summon Clan Conuil. Come away, come away, Hark to the summons! Come in your war-array, Gentles and commons. Come from deep glen, and From mountain so rocky, The war-pipe and pennon Are at Inverlochy. Come every hill-plaid, and True heart that wears one, Come every steel blade, and Strong hand that bears one. Leave untended the herd, The flock without shelter; Leave the corpse uninterr'd, The bride at the altar; Leave the deer, leave the steer, Leave nets and barges: Come with your fighting gear, Broadswords and targes. Come as the winds come, when Forests are rended; Come as the waves come, when Navies are stranded: Faster come, faster come, Faster and faster, Chief, vassal, page, and groom, Tenant and master. Fast they come, fast they come; See how they gather! Wide waves the eagle plume Blended with heather, Cast your plaids, draw your blades, Forward each man set! Pibroch of Donuil Dhu Knell for the onset! SIR WALTER SCOTT. MARCO BOZZARIS. "Marco Bozzaris," by Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790-1867), was in my old school-reader. Boys and girls liked it then and they like it now. This is another of the poems that was not born to die. At midnight, in his guarded tent, The Turk was dreaming of the hour When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent, Should tremble at his power: In dreams, through camp and court, he bore The trophies of a conqueror; In dreams his song of triumph heard; Then wore his monarch's signet ring: Then pressed that monarch's throne--a king; As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing, As Eden's garden bird. At midnight, in the forest shades, Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band, True as the steel of their tried blades, Heroes in heart and hand. There had the Persian's thousands stood, There had the glad earth drunk their blood On old Platæa's day; And now there breathed that haunted air The sons of sires who conquered there, With arm to strike and soul to dare, As quick, as far as they. An hour passed on--the Turk awoke; That bright dream was his last; He woke--to hear his sentries shriek, "To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!" He woke--to die midst flame, and smoke, And shout, and groan, and sabre-stroke, And death-shots falling thick and fast As lightnings from the mountain-cloud; And heard, with voice as trumpet loud, Bozzaris cheer his band: "Strike--till the last armed foe expires; Strike--for your altars and your fires; Strike--for the green graves of your sires; God--and your native land!" They fought--like brave men, long and well; They piled that ground with Moslem slain, They conquered--but Bozzaris fell, Bleeding at every vein. His few surviving comrades saw His smile when rang their proud hurrah, And the red field was won; Then saw in death his eyelids close Calmly, as to a night's repose, Like flowers at set of sun. Come to the bridal-chamber, Death! Come to the mother's, when she feels, For the first time, her first-born's breath; Come when the blessed seals That close the pestilence are broke, And crowded cities wail its stroke; Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake shock, the ocean storm; Come when the heart beats high and warm With banquet-song, and dance, and wine; And thou art terrible--the tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, And all we know, or dream, or fear Of agony, are thine. But to the hero, when his sword Has won the battle for the free, Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word; And in its hollow tones are heard The thanks of millions yet to be. Come, when his task of fame is wrought-- Come, with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought-- Come in her crowning hour--and then Thy sunken eye's unearthly light To him is welcome as the sight Of sky and stars to prisoned men; Thy grasp is welcome as the hand Of brother in a foreign land; Thy summons welcome as the cry That told the Indian isles were nigh To the world-seeking Genoese, When the land wind, from woods of palm, And orange-groves, and fields of balm, Blew o'er the Haytian seas. Bozzaris! with the storied brave Greece nurtured in her glory's time, Rest thee--there is no prouder grave, Even in her own proud clime. She wore no funeral-weeds for thee, Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume Like torn branch from death's leafless tree In sorrow's pomp and pageantry, The heartless luxury of the tomb; But she remembers thee as one Long loved and for a season gone; For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed, Her marble wrought, her music breathed; For thee she rings the birthday bells; Of thee her babe's first lisping tells; For thine her evening prayer is said At palace-couch and cottage-bed; Her soldier, closing with the foe, Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow, His plighted maiden, when she fears For him the joy of her young years, Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears; And she, the mother of thy boys, Though in her eye and faded cheek Is read the grief she will not speak, The memory of her buried joys, And even she who gave thee birth, Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth, Talk of thy doom without a sigh; For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's: One of the few, the immortal names, That were not born to die. FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. THE DEATH OF NAPOLEON. "The Death of Napoleon," by Isaac McClellan (1806-99), was yet another of the good old reader songs taught us by a teacher of good taste. We love those teachers more the older we grow. Wild was the night, yet a wilder night Hung round the soldier's pillow; In his bosom there waged a fiercer fight Than the fight on the wrathful billow. A few fond mourners were kneeling by, The few that his stern heart cherished; They knew, by his glazed and unearthly eye, That life had nearly perished. They knew by his awful and kingly look, By the order hastily spoken, That he dreamed of days when the nations shook, And the nations' hosts were broken. He dreamed that the Frenchman's sword still slew, And triumphed the Frenchman's eagle, And the struggling Austrian fled anew, Like the hare before the beagle. The bearded Russian he scourged again, The Prussian's camp was routed, And again on the hills of haughty Spain His mighty armies shouted. Over Egypt's sands, over Alpine snows, At the pyramids, at the mountain, Where the wave of the lordly Danube flows, And by the Italian fountain, On the snowy cliffs where mountain streams Dash by the Switzer's dwelling, He led again, in his dying dreams, His hosts, the proud earth quelling. Again Marengo's field was won, And Jena's bloody battle; Again the world was overrun, Made pale at his cannon's rattle. He died at the close of that darksome day, A day that shall live in story; In the rocky land they placed his clay, "And left him alone with his glory." ISAAC MCCLELLAN. HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE. How sleep the brave, who sink to rest By all their country's wishes blest! When Spring, with dewy fingers cold, Returns to deck their hallow'd mould, She there shall dress a sweeter sod Than Fancy's feet have ever trod. By fairy hands their knell is rung, By forms unseen their dirge is sung: There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay; And Freedom shall a while repair To dwell a weeping hermit there! WILLIAM COLLINS. THE FLAG GOES BY. "The Flag Goes By" is included out of regard to a boy of eleven years who pleased me by his great appreciation of it. It teaches the lesson of reverence to our great national symbol. It is published by permission of the author, Henry Holcomb Bennett, of Ohio. (1863-.) Hats off! Along the street there comes A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums, A flash of colour beneath the sky: Hats off! The flag is passing by! Blue and crimson and white it shines Over the steel-tipped, ordered lines. Hats off! The colours before us fly; But more than the flag is passing by. Sea-fights and land-fights, grim and great, Fought to make and to save the State: Weary marches and sinking ships; Cheers of victory on dying lips; Days of plenty and years of peace; March of a strong land's swift increase; Equal justice, right, and law, Stately honour and reverend awe; Sign of a nation, great and strong Toward her people from foreign wrong: Pride and glory and honour,--all Live in the colours to stand or fall. Hats off! Along the street there comes A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums; And loyal hearts are beating high: Hats off! The flag is passing by! HENRY HOLCOMB BENNETT. HOHENLINDEN. On Linden, when the sun was low, All bloodless lay th' untrodden snow; And dark as winter was the flow Of Iser, rolling rapidly. But Linden saw another sight, When the drum beat, at dead of night, Commanding fires of death to light The darkness of her scenery. By torch and trumpet fast array'd Each horseman drew his battle-blade, And furious every charger neigh'd To join the dreadful revelry. Then shook the hills with thunder riven, Then rush'd the steed to battle driven, And louder than the bolts of Heaven, Far flashed the red artillery. But redder yet that light shall glow On Linden's hills or stainèd snow; And bloodier yet the torrent flow Of Iser, rolling rapidly. 'Tis morn, but scarce yon level sun Can pierce the war-clouds, rolling dun, Where furious Frank, and fiery Hun, Shout in their sulphurous canopy. The combat deepens. On, ye brave Who rush to glory or the grave! Wave, Munich! all thy banners wave, And charge with all thy chivalry! Few, few shall part, where many meet! The snow shall be their winding-sheet, And every turf beneath their feet Shall be a soldier's sepulcher. THOMAS CAMPBELL. MY OLD KENTUCKY HOME. The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home; 'Tis summer, the darkeys are gay; The corn-top's ripe, and the meadow's in the bloom, While the birds make music all the day. The young folks roll on the little cabin floor, All merry, all happy and bright; By-'n'-by hard times comes a-knocking at the door:-- Then my old Kentucky home, good-night! Weep no more, my lady, O, weep no more to-day! We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home, For the old Kentucky home, far away. They hunt no more for the 'possum and the coon, On the meadow, the hill, and the shore; They sing no more by the glimmer of the moon, On the bench by the old cabin door. The day goes by like a shadow o'er the heart, With sorrow, where all was delight; The time has come when the darkeys have to part:-- Then my old Kentucky home, good-night! The head must bow, and the back will have to bend, Wherever the darkey may go; A few more days, and the trouble all will end, In the field where the sugar-canes grow. A few more days for to tote the weary load,-- No matter, 'twill never be light; A few more days till we totter on the road:-- Then my old Kentucky home, good-night! Weep no more, my lady, O, weep no more to-day! We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home, For the old Kentucky home, far away. STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER. OLD FOLKS AT HOME. Way down upon de Swanee Ribber, Far, far away, Dere's wha my heart is turning ebber, Dere's wha de old folks stay. All up and down de whole creation Sadly I roam, Still longing for de old plantation, And for de old folks at home. All de world am sad and dreary, Eberywhere I roam; Oh, darkeys, how my heart grows weary, Far from de old folks at home! All round de little farm I wandered When I was young, Den many happy days I squandered, Many de songs I sung. When I was playing wid my brudder Happy was I; Oh, take me to my kind old mudder! Dere let me live and die. One little hut among de bushes, One dat I love, Still sadly to my memory rushes, No matter where I rove. When will I see de bees a-humming All round de comb? When will I hear de banjo tumming, Down in my good old home? All de world am sad and dreary, Eberywhere I roam; Oh, darkeys, how my heart grows weary, Far from de old folks at home! STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER. THE WRECK OF THE "HESPERUS." "The Wreck of the _Hesperus_," by Longfellow (1807-82), on "Norman's Woe," off the coast near Cape Ann, is a historic poem as well as an imaginative composition. It was the schooner _Hesperus_, That sailed the wintry sea; And the skipper had taken his little daughter, To bear him company. Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax, Her cheeks like the dawn of day, And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds That ope in the month of May. The skipper he stood beside the helm, His pipe was in his mouth, And he watched how the veering flaw did blow The smoke now west, now south. Then up and spake an old sailor, Had sailed the Spanish Main, "I pray thee put into yonder port, For I fear a hurricane. "Last night the moon had a golden ring, And to-night no moon we see!" The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe, And a scornful laugh laughed he. Colder and louder blew the wind, A gale from the northeast, The snow fell hissing in the brine, And the billows frothed like yeast. Down came the storm, and smote amain The vessel in its strength; She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed, Then leaped her cable's length. "Come hither! come hither! my little daughter, And do not tremble so; For I can weather the roughest gale That ever wind did blow." He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound her to the mast. "O father! I hear the church-bells ring, O say, what may it be?" "Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!"-- And he steered for the open sea. "O father! I hear the sound of guns, O say, what may it be?" "Some ship in distress, that cannot live In such an angry sea!" "O father! I see a gleaming light, O say, what may it be?" But the father answered never a word, A frozen corpse was he. Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark, With his face turned to the skies, The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow On his fixed and glassy eyes. Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed That savèd she might be; And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave On the Lake of Galilee. And fast through the midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost the vessel swept Toward the reef of Norman's Woe. And ever the fitful gusts between A sound came from the land; It was the sound of the trampling surf On the rocks and the hard sea-sand. The breakers were right beneath her bows, She drifted a dreary wreck, And a whooping billow swept the crew Like icicles from her deck. She struck where the white and fleecy waves Looked soft as carded wool, But the cruel rocks they gored her side Like the horns of an angry bull. Her rattling shrouds all sheathed in ice, With the masts went by the board; Like a vessel of glass she stove and sank,-- Ho! ho! the breakers roared! At daybreak on the bleak sea-beach A fisherman stood aghast, To see the form of a maiden fair Lashed close to a drifting mast. The salt sea was frozen on her breast, The salt tears in her eyes; And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed, On the billows fall and rise. Such was the wreck of the _Hesperus_, In the midnight and the snow! Christ save us all from a death like this, On the reef of Norman's Woe! HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. BANNOCKBURN. ROBERT BRUCE'S ADDRESS TO HIS ARMY. You can look down on the battle-field of Bannockburn from Stirling Castle, Scotland, near which stands a magnificent statue of Robert, the Bruce. How often have I trodden over the old battle-field. The monument of William Wallace, too, looms up on the Ochil Hills, not far away. (1759-96.) Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled, Scots, wham Bruce has aften led; Welcome to your gory bed, Or to victorie. Now's the day, and now's the hour; See the front o' battle lower; See approach proud Edward's power-- Chains and slaverie! Wha will be a traitor knave? Wha can fill a coward's grave? Wha sae base as be a slave? Let him turn and flee! Wha for Scotland's King and law Freedom's sword will strongly draw, Freeman stand, or freeman fa'? Let him follow me! By oppression's woes and pains! By your sons in servile chains! We will drain our dearest veins, But they shall be free! Lay the proud usurpers low! Tyrants fall in every foe! Liberty's in every blow! Let us do, or die! ROBERT BURNS. PART IV. Lad and Lassie [Illustration] THE INCHCAPE ROCK. The man is wrecked and his ship is sunken before he ever steps on board or sees the water if his heart is hard and his estimate of human beings low. "The Inchcape Rock" is a thrust at hard-heartedness. "What is the use of life?" To bear one another's burdens, to develop a genius for pulling people through hard places--that's the use of life. It is the last resort of a mean mind to crack jokes that wreck innocent voyagers on life's sea. (1774-1843.) No stir in the air, no stir in the sea, The ship was still as she could be; Her sails from heaven received no motion; Her keel was steady in the ocean. Without either sign or sound of their shock, The waves flowed over the Inchcape Rock; So little they rose, so little they fell, They did not move the Inchcape Bell. The Abbot of Aberbrothok Had placed that Bell on the Inchcape Rock; On a buoy in the storm it floated and swung, And over the waves its warning rung. When the Rock was hid by the surge's swell, The mariners heard the warning Bell; And then they knew the perilous Rock, And blest the Abbot of Aberbrothok. The sun in heaven was shining gay; All things were joyful on that day; The sea-birds screamed as they wheeled round, And there was joyance in their sound. The buoy of the Inchcape Bell was seen, A dark spot on the ocean green; Sir Ralph the Rover walked his deck, And he fixed his eye on the darker speck. He felt the cheering power of spring; It made him whistle, it made him sing: His heart was mirthful to excess, But the Rover's mirth was wickedness. His eye was on the Inchcape float. Quoth he, "My men, put out the boat And row me to the Inchcape Rock, And I'll plague the Abbot of Aberbrothok." The boat is lowered, the boatmen row, And to the Inchcape Rock they go; Sir Ralph bent over from the boat, And he cut the Bell from the Inchcape float. Down sank the Bell with a gurgling sound; The bubbles rose and burst around. Quoth Sir Ralph, "The next who comes to the Rock Won't bless the Abbot of Aberbrothok." Sir Ralph the Rover sailed away; He scoured the sea for many a day; And now grown rich with plundered store, He steers his course for Scotland's shore. So thick a haze o'erspread the sky, They cannot see the sun on high: The wind hath blown a gale all day, At evening it hath died away. On the deck the Rover takes his stand; So dark it is they see no land. Quoth Sir Ralph, "It will be brighter soon, For there is the dawn of the rising moon." "Canst hear," said one, "the broken roar? For methinks we should be near the shore." "Now where we are I cannot tell, But I wish I could hear the Inchcape Bell." They hear no sound; the swell is strong; Though the wind hath fallen, they drift along Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock: "O Christ! it is the Inchcape Rock!" Sir Ralph the Rover tore his hair, He curst himself in his despair: The waves rush in on every side, The ship is sinking beneath the tide. But, even in his dying fear, One dreadful sound could the Rover hear,-- A sound as if with the Inchcape Bell The Devil below was ringing his knell. ROBERT SOUTHEY. THE FINDING OF THE LYRE. Once a year my pupils teach me "The Finding of the Lyre." By the time I have learned it they know the meaning of every line and have caught the spirit of the verse. There is an ancient "lyre," or violin, made in northern Africa, in the possession of a Boston lady, and I have found the mud-turtle rattle among the Indians on the Indian reservation at Syracuse, New York. They use it as a musical instrument in their Thanksgiving dances. The poem helps to build an interest in history and mythology while it develops a child's reverence and insight. (1819-91.) There lay upon the ocean's shore What once a tortoise served to cover; A year and more, with rush and roar, The surf had rolled it over, Had played with it, and flung it by, As wind and weather might decide it, Then tossed it high where sand-drifts dry Cheap burial might provide it. It rested there to bleach or tan, The rains had soaked, the sun had burned it; With many a ban the fisherman Had stumbled o'er and spurned it; And there the fisher-girl would stay, Conjecturing with her brother How in their play the poor estray Might serve some use or other. So there it lay, through wet and dry, As empty as the last new sonnet, Till by and by came Mercury, And, having mused upon it, "Why, here," cried he, "the thing of things In shape, material, and dimension! Give it but strings, and, lo, it sings, A wonderful invention!" So said, so done; the chords he strained, And, as his fingers o'er them hovered, The shell disdained a soul had gained, The lyre had been discovered. O empty world that round us lies, Dead shell, of soul and thought forsaken, Brought we but eyes like Mercury's, In thee what songs should waken! JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. A CHRYSALIS. "A Chrysalis" is a favourite poem with John Burroughs, and is found, too, in Stedman's collection. We all come to a point in life where we need to burst the shell and fly away into the new realm. (1835-98.) My little Mädchen found one day A curious something in her play, That was not fruit, nor flower, nor seed; It was not anything that grew, Or crept, or climbed, or swam, or flew; Had neither legs nor wings, indeed; And yet she was not sure, she said, Whether it was alive or dead. She brought it in her tiny hand To see if I would understand, And wondered when I made reply, "You've found a baby butterfly." "A butterfly is not like this," With doubtful look she answered me. So then I told her what would be Some day within the chrysalis: How, slowly, in the dull brown thing Now still as death, a spotted wing, And then another, would unfold, Till from the empty shell would fly A pretty creature, by and by, All radiant in blue and gold. "And will it, truly?" questioned she-- Her laughing lips and eager eyes All in a sparkle of surprise-- "And shall your little Mädchen see?" "She shall!" I said. How could I tell That ere the worm within its shell Its gauzy, splendid wings had spread, My little Mädchen would be dead? To-day the butterfly has flown,-- She was not here to see it fly,-- And sorrowing I wonder why The empty shell is mine alone. Perhaps the secret lies in this: I too had found a chrysalis, And Death that robbed me of delight Was but the radiant creature's flight! MARY EMILY BRADLEY. FOR A' THAT. Robert Burns, the plowman and poet, "dinnered wi' a lord." The story goes that he was put at the second table. That lord is dead, but Robert Burns still lives. He is immortal. It is "the survival of the fittest" "For a' That and a' That" is a poem that wipes out the superficial value put on money and other externalities. This poem is more valuable in education than good penmanship or good spelling. (1759-96.) Is there, for honest poverty, That hangs his head, and a' that? The coward slave, we pass him by, We dare be poor for a' that; For a' that, and a' that, Our toils obscure, and a' that; The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The man's the gowd for a' that! What though on hamely fare we dine, Wear hoddin-gray,[1] and a' that; Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine, A man's a man for a' that! For a' that, and a' that, Their tinsel show, and a' that; The honest man, though e'er sae poor, Is king o' men for a' that! Ye see yon birkie[2] ca'd a lord, Wha struts, and stares, and a' that; Though hundreds worship at his word, He's but a coof[3] for a' that; For a' that, and a' that, His riband, star, and a' that, The man of independent mind, He looks and laughs at a' that. A prince can make a belted knight, A marquis, duke, and a' that; But an honest man's aboon his might. Guid faith he maunna fa' that! For a' that, and a' that, Their dignities, and a' that, The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth, Are higher rank than a' that. Then let us pray that come it may-- As come it will for a' that-- That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth, May bear the gree, and a' that; For a' that, and a' that, It's coming yet for a' that, That man to man, the warld o'er, Shall brothers be for a' that! FOOTNOTES: [1] Coarse woolen clothes. [2] Impudent fellow. [3] Fool: blockhead. ROBERT BURNS. A NEW ARRIVAL. "The New Arrival" is a valuable poem because it expresses the joy of a young father over his new baby. If girls should be educated to be good mothers, so should boys be taught that fatherhood is the highest and holiest joy and right of man. The child is educator to the man. He teaches him how to take responsibility, how to give unbiased judgments, and how to be fatherly like "Our Father who is in Heaven." (1844-.) There came to port last Sunday night The queerest little craft, Without an inch of rigging on; I looked and looked and laughed. It seemed so curious that she Should cross the Unknown water, And moor herself right in my room, My daughter, O my daughter! Yet by these presents witness all She's welcome fifty times, And comes consigned to Hope and Love And common-meter rhymes. She has no manifest but this, No flag floats o'er the water, She's too new for the British Lloyds-- My daughter, O my daughter! Ring out, wild bells, and tame ones too! Ring out the lover's moon! Ring in the little worsted socks! Ring in the bib and spoon! Ring out the muse! ring in the nurse! Ring in the milk and water! Away with paper, pen, and ink-- My daughter, O my daughter! GEORGE W. CABLE. THE BROOK. Tennyson's "The Brook" is included out of love to a dear old schoolmate in Colorado. The real brook, near Cambridge, England, is tame compared to your Colorado streams, O beloved comrade. This poem is well liked by the majority of pupils. (1809-92.) I chatter, chatter, as I flow To join the brimming river; For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever. I wind about, and in and out, With here a blossom sailing, And here and there a lusty trout, And here and there a grayling. I steal by lawns and grassy plots, I slide by hazel covers; I move the sweet forget-me-nots That grow for happy lovers. I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance, Among my skimming swallows; I make the netted sunbeams dance Against my sandy shallows. I murmur under moon and stars In brambly wildernesses; I linger by my shingly bars; I loiter round my cresses. And out again I curve and flow To join the brimming river; For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever. ALFRED TENNYSON. THE BALLAD OF THE "CLAMPHERDOWN." "The Ballad of the _Clampherdown_," by Rudyard Kipling, is included because my boys always like it. It needs a great deal of explanation, and few boys will hold out to the end in learning it. But "it pays." (1865-.) It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_ Would sweep the Channel clean, Wherefore she kept her hatches close When the merry Channel chops arose, To save the bleached marine. She had one bow-gun of a hundred ton, And a great stern-gun beside; They dipped their noses deep in the sea, They racked their stays and stanchions free In the wash of the wind-whipped tide. It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_, Fell in with a cruiser light That carried the dainty Hotchkiss gun And a pair o' heels wherewith to run, From the grip of a close-fought fight. She opened fire at seven miles-- As ye shoot at a bobbing cork-- And once she fired and twice she fired, Till the bow-gun drooped like a lily tired That lolls upon the stalk. "Captain, the bow-gun melts apace, The deck-beams break below, 'Twere well to rest for an hour or twain, And botch the shattered plates again." And he answered, "Make it so." She opened fire within the mile-- As ye shoot at the flying duck-- And the great stern-gun shot fair and true, With the heave of the ship, to the stainless blue, And the great stern-turret stuck. "Captain, the turret fills with steam, The feed-pipes burst below-- You can hear the hiss of helpless ram, You can hear the twisted runners jam." And he answered, "Turn and go!" It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_, And grimly did she roll; Swung round to take the cruiser's fire As the White Whale faces the Thresher's ire, When they war by the frozen Pole. "Captain, the shells are falling fast, And faster still fall we; And it is not meet for English stock, To bide in the heart of an eight-day clock, The death they cannot see." "Lie down, lie down, my bold A.B., We drift upon her beam; We dare not ram, for she can run; And dare ye fire another gun, And die in the peeling steam?" It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_ That carried an armour-belt; But fifty feet at stern and bow, Lay bare as the paunch of the purser's sow, To the hail of the Nordenfeldt. "Captain, they lack us through and through; The chilled steel bolts are swift! We have emptied the bunkers in open sea, Their shrapnel bursts where our coal should be." And he answered, "Let her drift." It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_, Swung round upon the tide. Her two dumb guns glared south and north, And the blood and the bubbling steam ran forth, And she ground the cruiser's side. "Captain, they cry the fight is done, They bid you send your sword." And he answered, "Grapple her stern and bow. They have asked for the steel. They shall have it now; Out cutlasses and board!" It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_, Spewed up four hundred men; And the scalded stokers yelped delight, As they rolled in the waist and heard the fight, Stamp o'er their steel-walled pen. They cleared the cruiser end to end, From conning-tower to hold. They fought as they fought in Nelson's fleet; They were stripped to the waist, they were bare to the feet, As it was in the days of old. It was the sinking _Clampherdown_ Heaved up her battered side-- And carried a million pounds in steel, To the cod and the corpse-fed conger-eel, And the scour of the Channel tide. It was the crew of the _Clampherdown_ Stood out to sweep the sea, On a cruiser won from an ancient foe, As it was in the days of long-ago, And as it still shall be. RUDYARD KIPLING. THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB. "The Destruction of Sennacherib," by Lord Byron, finds a place in this collection because Johnnie, a ten-year-old, and many of his friends say, "It's great." (1788-1824.) The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. Like the leaves of the forest when the Summer is green, That host with their banners at sunset were seen: Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown, That host on the morrow lay withered and strown. For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed; And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still! And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide, But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride; And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf, And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf. And there lay the rider distorted and pale, With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail, And the tents were all silent, the banners alone, The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown. And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail, And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal; And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord! LORD BYRON. I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER. I remember, I remember The house where I was born, The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn; He never came a wink too soon Nor brought too long a day; But now, I often wish the night Had borne my breath away. I remember, I remember The roses, red and white, The violets, and the lily-cups-- Those flowers made of light! The lilacs where the robin built, And where my brother set The laburnum on his birthday,-- The tree is living yet! I remember, I remember Where I was used to swing, And thought the air must rush as fresh To swallows on the wing; My spirit flew in feathers then That is so heavy now, And summer pools could hardly cool The fever on my brow. I remember, I remember The fir trees dark and high; I used to think their slender tops Were close against the sky: It was a childish ignorance, But now 'tis little joy To know I'm farther off from Heaven Than when I was a boy. THOMAS HOOD. DRIVING HOME THE COWS. Out of the clover and blue-eyed grass He turned them into the river lane; One after another he let them pass, Then fastened the meadow bars again. Under the willows and over the hill, He patiently followed their sober pace; The merry whistle for once was still, And something shadowed the sunny face. Only a boy! and his father had said He never could let his youngest go: Two already were lying dead, Under the feet of the trampling foe. But after the evening work was done, And the frogs were loud in the meadow-swamp, Over his shoulder he slung his gun, And stealthily followed the footpath damp. Across the clover, and through the wheat, With resolute heart and purpose grim: Though the dew was on his hurrying feet, And the blind bat's flitting startled him. Thrice since then had the lanes been white, And the orchards sweet with apple-bloom; And now, when the cows came back at night, The feeble father drove them home. For news had come to the lonely farm That three were lying where two had lain; And the old man's tremulous, palsied arm Could never lean on a son's again. The summer day grew cool and late: He went for the cows when the work was done; But down the lane, as he opened the gate, He saw them coming one by one: Brindle, Ebony, Speckle, and Bess, Shaking their horns in the evening wind; Cropping the buttercups out of the grass, But who was it following close behind? Loosely swung in the idle air The empty sleeve of army blue; And worn and pale, from the crisping hair, Looked out a face that the father knew. For close-barred prisons will sometimes yawn, And yield their dead unto life again; And the day that comes with a cloudy dawn, In golden glory at last may wane. The great tears sprang to their meeting eyes; For the heart must speak when the lips are dumb, And under the silent evening skies Together they followed the cattle home. KATE PUTNAM OSGOOD. KRINKEN. "Krinken" is the dearest of poems. "Krinken was a little child. It was summer when he smiled!" Eugene Field, above all other poets, paid the finest tribute to children. This poet only, could make the whole ocean warm because a child's heart was there to warm it. Krinken was a little child,-- It was summer when he smiled. Oft the hoary sea and grim Stretched its white arms out to him, Calling, "Sun-child, come to me; Let me warm my heart with thee!" But the child heard not the sea Calling, yearning evermore For the summer on the shore. Krinken on the beach one day Saw a maiden Nis at play; On the pebbly beach she played In the summer Krinken made. Fair, and very fair, was she, Just a little child was he. "Krinken," said the maiden Nis, "Let me have a little kiss,-- Just a kiss, and go with me To the summer-lands that be Down within the silver sea." Krinken was a little child-- By the maiden Nis beguiled, Hand in hand with her went he And 'twas summer in the sea. And the hoary sea and grim To its bosom folded him-- Clasped and kissed the little form, And the ocean's heart was warm. Now the sea calls out no more; It is winter on the shore,-- Winter where that little child Made sweet summer when he smiled; Though 'tis summer on the sea Where with maiden Nis went he,-- It is winter on the shore, Winter, winter evermore. Of the summer on the deep Come sweet visions in my sleep; _His_ fair face lifts from the sea, _His_ dear voice calls out to me,-- These my dreams of summer be. Krinken was a little child, By the maiden Nis beguiled; Oft the hoary sea and grim Reached its longing arms to him, Crying, "Sim-child, come to me; Let me warm my heart with thee!" But the sea calls out no more; It is winter on the shore,-- Winter, cold and dark and wild. Krinken was a little child,-- It was summer when he smiled; Down he went into the sea, And the winter bides with me, Just a little child was he. EUGENE FIELD. STEVENSON'S BIRTHDAY. "How I should like a birthday!" said the child, "I have so few, and they so far apart." She spoke to Stevenson--the Master smiled-- "Mine is to-day; I would with all my heart That it were yours; too many years have I! Too swift they come, and all too swiftly fly" So by a formal deed he there conveyed All right and title in his natal day, To have and hold, to sell or give away,-- Then signed, and gave it to the little maid. Joyful, yet fearing to believe too much, She took the deed, but scarcely dared unfold. Ah, liberal Genius! at whose potent touch All common things shine with transmuted gold! A day of Stevenson's will prove to be Not part of Time, but Immortality. KATHERINE MILLER. A MODEST WIT. I learned "A Modest Wit" as a reading-lesson when I was a child. It has clung to me and so I cling to it. It is just as good as it ever was. It is a sharp thrust at power that depends on externalities. Selleck Osborne. (----.) A supercilious nabob of the East-- Haughty, being great--purse-proud, being rich-- A governor, or general, at the least, I have forgotten which-- Had in his family a humble youth, Who went from England in his patron's suit, An unassuming boy, in truth A lad of decent parts, and good repute. This youth had sense and spirit; But yet with all his sense, Excessive diffidence Obscured his merit. One day, at table, flushed with pride and wine, His honour, proudly free, severely merry, Conceived it would be vastly fine To crack a joke upon his secretary. "Young man," he said, "by what art, craft, or trade, Did your good father gain a livelihood?"-- "He was a saddler, sir," Modestus said, "And in his time was reckon'd good." "A saddler, eh! and taught you Greek, Instead of teaching you to sew! Pray, why did not your father make A saddler, sir, of you?" Each parasite, then, as in duty bound, The joke applauded, and the laugh went round. At length Modestus, bowing low, Said (craving pardon, if too free he made), "Sir, by your leave, I fain would know Your father's trade!" "My father's trade! by heaven, that's too bad! My father's trade? Why, blockhead, are you mad? My father, sir, did never stoop so low-- He was a gentleman, I'd have you know." "Excuse the liberty I take," Modestus said, with archness on his brow, "Pray, why did not your father make A gentleman of you?" SELLECK OSBORNE. THE LEGEND OF BISHOP HATTO. "The Legend of Bishop Hatto" is doubtless a myth (Robert Southey, 1774-1843). But "The Mouse-Tower on the Rhine" is an object of interest to travellers, and the story has a point The summer and autumn had been so wet, That in winter the corn was growing yet: 'Twas a piteous sight to see, all around, The grain lie rotting on the ground. Every day the starving poor Crowded around Bishop Hatto's door; For he had a plentiful last-year's store, And all the neighbourhood could tell His granaries were furnished well. At last Bishop Hatto appointed a day To quiet the poor without delay: He bade them to his great barn repair, And they should have food for winter there. Rejoiced such tidings good to hear, The poor folk flocked from far and near; The great barn was full as it could hold Of women and children, and young and old. Then, when he saw it could hold no more, Bishop Hatto, he made fast the door; And while for mercy on Christ they call, He set fire to the barn and burned them all. "I' faith, 'tis an excellent bonfire!" quoth he; "And the country is greatly obliged to me For ridding it in these times forlorn Of Rats that only consume the corn." So then to his palace returnèd he, And he sat down to supper merrily, And he slept that night like an innocent man; But Bishop Hatto never slept again. In the morning as he entered the hall, Where his picture hung against the wall, A sweat-like death all over him came; For the Rats had eaten it out of the frame. As he looked, there came a man from his farm; He had a countenance white with alarm: "My Lord, I opened your granaries this morn, And the Rats had eaten all your corn." Another came running presently, And he was pale as pale could be: "Fly, my Lord Bishop, fly!" quoth he, "Ten thousand Rats are coming this way; The Lord forgive you yesterday!" "I'll go to my town on the Rhine," replied he; "'Tis the safest place in Germany; The walls are high, and the shores are steep, And the stream is strong, and the water deep." Bishop Hatto fearfully hastened away, And he crossed the Rhine without delay, And reached his tower, and barred with care All windows, doors, and loop-holes there. He laid him down, and closed his eyes; But soon a scream made him arise: He started and saw two eyes of flame On his pillow, from whence the screaming came. He listened and looked; it was only the cat: But the Bishop he grew more fearful for that; For she sat screaming, mad with fear At the army of Rats that was drawing near. For they have swum over the river so deep, And they have climbed the shore so steep; And up the tower their way is bent, To do the work for which they were sent. They are not to be told by the dozen or score; By thousands they come, and by myriads and more; Such numbers had never been heard of before, Such a judgment had never been witnessed of yore. Down on his knees the Bishop fell, And faster and faster his beads did tell, As, louder and louder drawing near, The gnawing of their teeth he could hear. And in at the windows and in at the door, And through the walls, helter-skelter they pour, And down from the ceiling and up through the floor, From the right and the left, from behind and before, And all at once to the Bishop they go. They have whetted their teeth against the stones; And now they pick the Bishop's bones: They gnawed the flesh from every limb; For they were sent to do judgment on him! ROBERT SOUTHEY. COLUMBUS. We are greatly indebted to Joaquin Miller for his "Sail On! Sail On!" Endurance is the watchword of the poem and the watchword of our republic. Every man to his gun! Columbus discovered America in his own mind before he realised it or proved its existence. I have often drawn a chart of Columbus's life and voyages to show what need he had of the motto "Sail On!" to accomplish his end. This is one of our greatest American poems. The writer still lives in California. Behind him lay the gray Azores, Behind the gates of Hercules; Before him not the ghost of shores, Before him only shoreless seas. The good mate said: "Now must we pray, For lo! the very stars are gone; Speak, Admiral, what shall I say?" "Why say, sail on! and on!" "My men grow mut'nous day by day; My men grow ghastly wan and weak." The stout mate thought of home; a spray Of salt wave wash'd his swarthy cheek. "What shall I say, brave Admiral, If we sight naught but seas at dawn?" "Why, you shall say, at break of day: 'Sail on! sail on! and on!'" They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow, Until at last the blanch'd mate said; "Why, now, not even God would know Should I and all my men fall dead. These very winds forget their way, For God from these dread seas is gone. Now speak, brave Admiral, and say----" He said: "Sail on! and on!" They sailed, they sailed, then spoke his mate: "This mad sea shows his teeth to-night, He curls his lip, he lies in wait, With lifted teeth as if to bite! Brave Admiral, say but one word; What shall we do when hope is gone?" The words leaped as a leaping sword: "Sail on! sail on! and on!" Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck, And thro' the darkness peered that night. Ah, darkest night! and then a speck,-- A light! a light! a light! a light! It grew--a star-lit flag unfurled! It grew to be Time's burst of dawn; He gained a world! he gave that world Its watch-word: "On! and on!" JOAQUIN MILLER. THE SHEPHERD OF KING ADMETUS. Once a year the children learn "The Shepherd of King Admetus," which is one of the finest poems ever written as showing the possible growth of real history into mythology, the tendency of mankind to deify what is fine or sublime in human action. Not every child will learn this entire poem, because it is too long. But every child will learn the best lines in it while the children are teaching it to me and when I take my turn in teaching it to them. No child fails to catch the spirit and intent of the poem and to become entirely familiar with it. (1819-91.) There came a youth upon the earth, Some thousand years ago, Whose slender hands were nothing worth, Whether to plow, or reap, or sow. Upon an empty tortoise-shell He stretched some chords, and drew Music that made men's bosoms swell Fearless, or brimmed their eyes with dew. Then King Admetus, one who had Pure taste by right divine, Decreed his singing not too bad To hear between the cups of wine: And so, well pleased with being soothed Into a sweet half-sleep, Three times his kingly beard he smoothed, And made him viceroy o'er his sheep. His words were simple words enough, And yet he used them so, That what in other mouths was rough In his seemed musical and low. Men called him but a shiftless youth, In whom no good they saw; And yet, unwittingly, in truth, They made his careless words their law. They knew not how he learned at all, For idly, hour by hour, He sat and watched the dead leaves fall, Or mused upon a common flower. It seemed the loveliness of things Did teach him all their use, For, in mere weeds, and stones, and springs, He found a healing power profuse. Men granted that his speech was wise, But, when a glance they caught Of his slim grace and woman's eyes, They laughed, and called him good-for-naught. Yet after he was dead and gone, And e'en his memory dim, Earth seemed more sweet to live upon, More full of love, because of him. And day by day more holy grew Each spot where he had trod, Till after-poets only knew Their first-born brother as a god. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX. I have an old essay written by a lad of fourteen years on "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix." I should judge from this essay that any boy at that age would like the poem, even if he had not himself been over the ground as this boy had. (1812-89.) I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he; I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three; "Good speed!" cried the watch as the gate-bolts undrew; "Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through; Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest, And into the midnight we galloped abreast. Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place; I turned in my saddle and made its girth tight, Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right, Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit, Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit. 'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear; At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see; At Düffeld, 'twas morning as plain as could be; And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime, So Joris broke silence with, "Yet there is time!" At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun, And against him the cattle stood black every one, To stare through the mist at us galloping past, And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last, With resolute shoulders, each butting away The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray: And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track; And one eye's black intelligence,--ever that glance O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance! And the thick, heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon His fierce lips shook upward in galloping on. By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, "Stay spur! Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her, We'll remember at Aix"--for one heard the quick wheeze Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees, And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank, As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank. So, we were left galloping, Joris and I, Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky; The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh, 'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff; Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white, And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix is in sight!" "How they'll greet us!"--and all in a moment his roan Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone; And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate, With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim, And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim. Then I cast loose my buff-coat, each holster let fall, Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all, Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear, Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer; Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good, Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood. And all I remember is--friends flocking round As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground; And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine, As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine, Which (the burgesses voting by common consent) Was no more than his due who brought the good news from Ghent. ROBERT BROWNING. THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE AT CORUNNA. "The Burial of Sir John Moore" was one of my reading-lessons when I was a child. A distinguished teacher says: "It has become a part of popular education," as has also "The Eve of Waterloo" and "The Death of Napoleon." They are all poems of great rhythmical swing, intense and graphic. (1791-1823.) Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O'er the grave where our hero we buried. We buried him darkly at dead of night, The sods with our bayonets turning; By the struggling moonbeam's misty light, And the lantern dimly burning. No useless coffin enclosed his breast, Not in sheet nor in shroud we wound him; But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him. Few and short were the prayers we said, And we spoke not a word of sorrow; But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead, And we bitterly thought of the morrow. We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed, And smoothed down his lonely pillow, That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head, And we far away on the billow! Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone, And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him,-- But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on In the grave where a Briton has laid him. But half of our heavy task was done When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the distant and random gun That the foe was sullenly firing. Slowly and sadly we laid him down, From the field of his fame fresh and gory; We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone-- But we left him alone with his glory! C. WOLFE. THE EVE OF WATERLOO. "The Eve of Waterloo," by Lord Byron (1788-1824). Here is another old reading-book gem that will always be dear to every boy's heart if he only reads it a few times. There was a sound of revelry by night, And Belgium's capital had gathered then Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men. A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a marriage-bell: But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell! Did ye not hear it? No; 'twas but the wind, Or the car rattling o'er the stony street. On with the dance! let joy be unconfined! No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet To chase the glowing hours with flying feet! But hark!--that heavy sound breaks in once more, As if the clouds its echo would repeat; And nearer, clearer, deadlier, than before! Arm! arm! it is--it is the cannon's opening roar! Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro, And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress And cheeks all pale, which, but an hour ago, Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness; And there were sudden partings, such as press The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs Which ne'er might be repeated: who could guess If ever more should meet those mutual eyes, Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise? And there was mounting in hot haste: the steed, The mustering squadron, and the clattering car, Went pouring forward with impetuous speed, And swiftly forming in the ranks of war; And the deep thunder peal on peal afar; And near, the beat of the alarming drum Roused up the soldier ere the morning star; While thronged the citizens with terror dumb, Or whispering with white lips, "The foe! They come! They come!" And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves, Dewy with Nature's tear-drops, as they pass, Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves, Over the unreturning brave--alas! Ere evening to be trodden like the grass Which, now beneath them, but above shall grow In its next verdure, when this fiery mass Of living valour, rolling on the foe, And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold and low. Last noon beheld them full of lusty life, Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay; The midnight brought the signal-sound of strife, The morn the marshalling in arms,--the day, Battle's magnificently stern array! The thunder-clouds close o'er it, which, when rent, The earth is covered thick with other clay, Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent, Rider, and horse--friend, foe--in one red burial blent! LORD BYRON. IVRY. A SONG OF THE HUGUENOTS. Laddie, aged eleven, do you remember how you studied and recited "King Henry of Navarre" every poetry hour for a year? It was a long poem, but you stuck to it to the end. We did not know the meaning of a certain word, but I found it up in Switzerland. It is the name of a little town. (1800-59.) Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are! And glory to our Sovereign Liege, King Henry of Navarre! Now let there be the merry sound of music and of dance, Through thy corn-fields green, and sunny vines, O pleasant land of France! And thou, Rochelle, our own Rochelle, proud city of the waters, Again let rapture light the eyes of all thy mourning daughters. As thou wert constant in our ills, be joyous in our joy, For cold, and stiff, and still are they who wrought thy walls annoy. Hurrah! Hurrah! a single field hath turned the chance of war, Hurrah! Hurrah! for Ivry, and Henry of Navarre. Oh! how our hearts were beating, when, at the dawn of day, We saw the army of the League drawn out in long array; With all its priest-led citizens, and all its rebel peers, And Appenzel's stout infantry, and Egmont's Flemish spears. There rode the brood of false Lorraine, the curses of our land; And dark Mayenne was in the midst, a truncheon in his hand; And, as we looked on them, we thought of Seine's empurpled flood, And good Coligni's hoary hair all dabbled with his blood; And we cried unto the living God, who rules the fate of war, To fight for His own holy name, and Henry of Navarre. The King is come to marshal us, in all his armour drest, And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant crest. He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye; He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern and high. Right graciously he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing, Down all our line, a deafening shout, "God save our Lord the King!" "And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may, For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray, Press where ye see my white plume shine, amid the ranks of war, And be your oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre." Hurrah! the foes are moving. Hark to the mingled din Of fife, and steed, and trump, and drum, and roaring culverin. The fiery Duke is pricking fast across St. André's plain, With all the hireling chivalry of Guelders and Almayne. Now by the lips of those ye love, fair gentlemen of France, Charge for the golden lilies,--upon them with the lance. A thousand spurs are striking deep, a thousand spears in rest, A thousand knights are pressing close behind the snow-white crest; And in they burst, and on they rushed, while like a guiding star, Amid the thickest carnage blazed the helmet of Navarre. Now, God be praised, the day is ours. Mayenne hath turned his rein. D'Aumale hath cried for quarter. The Flemish count is slain. Their ranks are breaking like thin clouds before a Biscay gale; The field is heaped with bleeding steeds, and flags, and cloven mail. And then we thought on vengeance, and, all along our van, "Remember St. Bartholomew!" was passed from man to man. But out spake gentle Henry, "No Frenchman is my foe: Down, down with every foreigner, but let your brethren go." Oh! was there ever such a knight, in friendship or in war, As our Sovereign Lord, King Henry, the soldier of Navarre? Right well fought all the Frenchmen who fought for France to-day; And many a lordly banner God gave them for a prey. But we of the Religion have borne us best in fight; And the good lord of Rosny has ta'en the cornet white. Our own true Maximilian the cornet white hath ta'en, The cornet white with crosses black, the flag of false Lorraine. Up with it high; unfurl it wide; that all the host may know How God hath humbled the proud house which wrought His church such woe. Then on the ground, while trumpets sound their loudest points of war, Fling the red shreds, a footcloth meet for Henry of Navarre. Ho! maidens of Vienna; Ho! matrons of Lucerne; Weep, weep, and rend your hair for those who never shall return. Ho! Philip, send, for charity, thy Mexican pistoles, That Antwerp monks may sing a mass for thy poor spearman's souls. Ho! gallant nobles of the League, look that your arms be bright; Ho! burghers of Saint Genevieve, keep watch and ward to-night. For our God hath crushed the tyrant, our God hath raised the slave, And mocked the counsel of the wise, the valour of the brave. Then glory to His holy name, from whom all glories are; And glory to our Sovereign Lord, King Henry of Navarre. THOMAS B. MACAULAY. THE GLOVE AND THE LIONS. "The Glove and the Lions" was one of my early reading-lessons. It is an incisive thrust at the vanity of "fair" women. A woman be a "true knight" as well as a man. Leigh Hunt (1784-1859.) King Francis was a hearty king, and loved a royal sport, And one day as his lions fought, sat looking on the court; The nobles filled the benches, with the ladies in their pride, And 'mong them sat the Count de Lorge with one for whom he sighed: And truly 'twas a gallant thing to see that crowning show, Valour, and love, and a king above, and the royal beasts below. Ramp'd and roar'd the lions, with horrid laughing jaws; They bit, they glared, gave blows like beams, a wind went with their paws; With wallowing might and stifled roar they rolled on one another, Till all the pit with sand and mane was in a thunderous smother; The bloody foam above the bars came whisking through the air; Said Francis then, "Faith, gentlemen, we're better here than there." De Lorge's love o'erheard the King,--a beauteous lively dame With smiling lips and sharp, bright eyes, which always seem'd the same: She thought, "The Count, my lover, is brave as brave can be; He surely would do wondrous things to show his love of me; King, ladies, lovers, all look on; the occasion is divine; I'll drop my glove, to prove his love; great glory will be mine." She dropped her glove, to prove his love, then look'd at him and smiled; He bowed, and in a moment leapt among the lions wild: His leap was quick, return was quick, he has regain'd his place, Then threw the glove, but not with love, right in the lady's face. "Well done!" cried Francis, "bravely done!" and he rose from where he sat: "No love," quoth he, "but vanity, sets love a task like that." LEIGH HUNT. THE WELL OF ST. KEYNE. I found the Well of St. Keyne in Cornwall, England--not the poem, but the real well. The poem is of the great body of world-lore. Southey (1774-1843). A well there is in the west country, And a clearer one never was seen; There is not a wife in the west-country But has heard of the Well of St. Keyne. An oak and an elm tree stand beside, And behind does an ash tree grow, And a willow from the bank above Droops to the water below. A traveller came to the Well of St. Keyne: Pleasant it was to his eye, For from cock-crow he had been travelling And there was not a cloud in the sky. He drank of the water so cool and clear, For thirsty and hot was he, And he sat down upon the bank, Under the willow tree. There came a man from the neighbouring town At the well to fill his pail; On the well-side he rested it, And bade the stranger hail. "Now, art thou a bachelor, stranger?" quoth he, "For an if thou hast a wife, The happiest draught thou hast drunk this day That ever thou didst in thy life. "Or has your good woman, if one you have, In Cornwall ever been? For an if she have, I'll venture my life She has drunk of the Well of St. Keyne." "I have left a good woman who never was here," The stranger he made reply; "But that my draught should be better for that, I pray you answer me why," "St. Keyne," quoth the countryman, "many a time Drank of this crystal well, And before the angel summoned her She laid on the water a spell. "If the husband of this gifted well Shall drink before his wife, A happy man thenceforth is he, For he shall be master for life. "But if the wife should drink of it first, God help the husband then!" The stranger stoop'd to the Well of St. Keyne, And drank of the waters again. "You drank of the well, I warrant, betimes?" He to the countryman said; But the countryman smiled as the stranger spake, And sheepishly shook his head. "I hastened as soon as the wedding was done, And left my wife in the porch, But i' faith she had been wiser than me, For she took a bottle to church," ROBERT SOUTHEY. THE NAUTILUS AND THE AMMONITE. "The Nautilus and the Ammonite" finds a place here out of respect to a twelve-year-old girl who recited it at one of our poetry hours years ago. It made a profound impression on the fifty pupils assembled, I never read it without feeling that it stands test. Anonymous. The nautilus and the ammonite Were launched in friendly strife, Each sent to float in its tiny boat On the wide, wide sea of life. For each could swim on the ocean's brim, And, when wearied, its sail could furl, And sink to sleep in the great sea-deep, In its palace all of pearl. And theirs was a bliss more fair than this Which we taste in our colder clime; For they were rife in a tropic life-- A brighter and better clime. They swam 'mid isles whose summer smiles Were dimmed by no alloy; Whose groves were palm, whose air was balm, And life one only joy. They sailed all day through creek and bay, And traversed the ocean deep; And at night they sank on a coral bank, In its fairy bowers to sleep. And the monsters vast of ages past They beheld in their ocean caves; They saw them ride in their power and pride, And sink in their deep-sea graves. And hand in hand, from strand to strand, They sailed in mirth and glee; These fairy shells, with their crystal cells, Twin sisters of the sea. And they came at last to a sea long past, But as they reached its shore, The Almighty's breath spoke out in death, And the ammonite was no more. So the nautilus now in its shelly prow, As over the deep it strays, Still seems to seek, in bay and creek, Its companion of other days. And alike do we, on life's stormy sea, As we roam from shore to shore, Thus tempest-tossed, seek the loved, the lost, And find them on earth no more. Yet the hope how sweet, again to meet, As we look to a distant strand, Where heart meets heart, and no more they part Who meet in that better land. ANONYMOUS. THE SOLITUDE OF ALEXANDER SELKIRK. I am monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute, From the center all round to the sea, I am lord of the fowl and the brute. O Solitude! where are the charms That sages have seen in thy face? Better dwell in the midst of alarms Than reign in this horrible place. I am out of humanity's reach, I must finish my journey alone, Never hear the sweet music of speech,-- I start at the sound of my own. The beasts that roam over the plain My form with indifference see; They are so unacquainted with man, Their tameness is shocking to me. Society, Friendship, and Love, Divinely bestow'd upon man, Oh, had I the wings of a dove, How soon would I taste you again! My sorrows I then might assuage In the ways of religion and truth, Might learn from the wisdom of age, And be cheer'd by the sallies of youth. Ye winds that have made me your sport, Convey to this desolate shore Some cordial endearing report Of a land I shall visit no more! My friends--do they now and then send A wish or a thought after me? Oh, tell me I yet have a friend, Though a friend I am never to see. How fleet is a glance of the mind! Compared with the speed of its flight, The tempest itself lags behind, And the swift-wingèd arrows of light. When I think of my own native land, In a moment I seem to be there; But alas! recollection at hand Soon hurries me back to despair. But the seafowl is gone to her nest, The beast is laid down in his lair, Even here is a season of rest, And I to my cabin repair. There's mercy in every place, And mercy, encouraging thought! Gives even affliction a grace, And reconciles man to his lot. WILLIAM COWPER. THE HOMES OF ENGLAND. I wonder if the English people appreciate "The Homes of England." It is a stately poem worthy of a Goethe or a Shakespeare. England is distinctively a country of homes, pretty, little, humble homes as well as stately palaces and castles, homes well made of stone or brick for the most part, and clad with ivy and roses. Who would not be proud to have had such a home as Ann Hathaway's humble cottage or one of the little huts in the Lake District? The homes of America are often more palatial, especially in small cities, but the use of wood in America makes them less substantial than the slate-and-brick houses of England. (1749-1835.) The stately homes of England! How beautiful they stand, Amidst their tall ancestral trees, O'er all the pleasant land! The deer across their greensward bound Through shade and sunny gleam, And the swan glides past them with the sound Of some rejoicing stream. The merry homes of England! Around their hearths by night What gladsome looks of household love Meet in the ruddy light! There woman's voice flows forth in song, Or childish tale is told, Or lips move tunefully along Some glorious page of old. The blessèd homes of England! How softly on their bowers Is laid the holy quietness That breathes from Sabbath hours! Solemn, yet sweet, the church-bell's chime Floats through their woods at morn; All other sounds, in that still time, Of breeze and leaf are born. The cottage homes of England! By thousands on her plains, They are smiling o'er the silvery brooks, And round the hamlets' fanes. Through glowing orchards forth they peep, Each from its nook of leaves; And fearless there the lowly sleep, As the bird beneath their eaves. The free, fair homes of England! Long, long, in hut and hall May hearts of native proof be reared To guard each hallowed wall! And green forever be the groves, And bright the flowery sod, Where first the child's glad spirit loves Its country and its God! FELICIA HEMANS. HORATIUS AT THE BRIDGE. "Horatius at the Bridge" is too long a poem for children to memorise. But I never saw a boy who did not want some stanzas of it. "Hold the bridge with me!" Boys like that motto instinctively. T.B. Macaulay (1800-59). Lars Porsena of Clusium, By the Nine Gods he swore That the great house of Tarquin Should suffer wrong no more. By the Nine Gods he swore it, And named a trysting-day, And bade his messengers ride forth, East and west and south and north, To summon his array. East and west and south and north The messengers ride fast, And tower and town and cottage Have heard the trumpet's blast. Shame on the false Etruscan Who lingers in his home When Porsena of Clusium Is on the march for Rome! The horsemen and the footmen Are pouring in amain, From many a stately market-place, From many a fruitful plain; From many a lonely hamlet, Which, hid by beech and pine, Like an eagle's nest, hangs on the crest Of purple Apennine. The harvests of Arretium, This year, old men shall reap; This year, young boys in Umbro Shall plunge the struggling sheep; And in the vats of Luna, This year, the must shall foam Round the white feet of laughing girls Whose sires have marched to Rome. There be thirty chosen prophets, The wisest of the land, Who alway by Lars Porsena Both morn and evening stand: Evening and morn the Thirty Have turned the verses o'er, Traced from the right on linen white By mighty seers of yore. And with one voice the Thirty Have their glad answer given: "Go forth, go forth, Lars Porsena; Go forth, beloved of Heaven; Go, and return in glory To Clusium's royal dome; And hang round Nurscia's altars The golden shields of Rome." And now hath every city Sent up her tale of men; The foot are fourscore thousand, The horse are thousands ten. Before the gates of Sutrium Is met the great array. A proud man was Lars Porsena Upon the trysting-day. For all the Etruscan armies Were ranged beneath his eye, And many a banished Roman, And many a stout ally; And with a mighty following To join the muster came The Tusculan Mamilius, Prince of the Latian name. But by the yellow Tiber Was tumult and affright: From all the spacious champaign To Rome men took their flight. A mile around the city, The throng stopped up the ways; A fearful sight it was to see Through two long nights and days. Now, from the rock Tarpeian, Could the wan burghers spy The line of blazing villages Red in the midnight sky. The Fathers of the City, They sat all night and day, For every hour some horseman came With tidings of dismay. To eastward and to westward Have spread the Tuscan bands; Nor house, nor fence, nor dovecot, In Crustumerium stands. Verbenna down to Ostia Hath wasted all the plain; Astur hath stormed Janiculum, And the stout guards are slain. I wis, in all the Senate, There was no heart so bold, But sore it ached, and fast it beat, When that ill news was told. Forthwith up rose the Consul, Up rose the Fathers all; In haste they girded up their gowns, And hied them to the wall. They held a council standing Before the River Gate; Short time was there, ye well may guess, For musing or debate. Out spoke the Consul roundly: "The bridge must straight go down; For, since Janiculum is lost, Naught else can save the town." Just then a scout came flying, All wild with haste and fear: "To arms! to arms! Sir Consul; Lars Porsena is here." On the low hills to westward The Consul fixed his eye, And saw the swarthy storm of dust Rise fast along the sky. And nearer, fast, and nearer Doth the red whirlwind come; And louder still, and still more loud, From underneath that rolling cloud, Is heard the trumpet's war-note proud, The trampling and the hum. And plainly and more plainly Now through the gloom appears, Far to left and far to right, In broken gleams of dark-blue light, The long array of helmets bright, The long array of spears. And plainly and more plainly, Above the glimmering line, Now might ye see the banners Of twelve fair cities shine; But the banner of proud Clusium Was the highest of them all, The terror of the Umbrian, The terror of the Gaul. Fast by the royal standard, O'erlooking all the war, Lars Porsena of Clusium Sat in his ivory car. By the right wheel rode Mamilius, Prince of the Latian name, And by the left false Sextus, That wrought the deed of shame. But when the face of Sextus Was seen among the foes, A yell that rent the firmament From all the town arose. On the house-tops was no woman But spat toward him and hissed, No child but screamed out curses, And shook its little fist. But the Consul's brow was sad, And the Consul's speech was low, And darkly looked he at the wall, And darkly at the foe. "Their van will be upon us Before the bridge goes down; And if they once may win the bridge, What hope to save the town?" Then out spake brave Horatius, The Captain of the Gate: "To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late; And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers, And the temples of his gods. "And for the tender mother Who dandled him to rest, And for the wife who nurses His baby at her breast, And for the holy maidens Who feed the eternal flame, To save them from false Sextus That wrought the deed of shame? "Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul, With all the speed ye may; I, with two more to help me, Will hold the foe in play. In yon straight path a thousand May well be stopped by three. Now who will stand on either hand, And keep the bridge with me?" Then out spake Spurius Lartius-- A Ramnian proud was he-- I will stand at thy right hand, And keep the bridge with thee." And out spake strong Herminius-- Of Titian blood was he-- "I will abide on thy left side, And keep the bridge with thee." "Horatius," quoth the Consul, "As thou say'st, so let it be," And straight against that great array Forth went the dauntless Three. For Romans in Rome's quarrel Spared neither land nor gold, Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life, In the brave days of old. Now while the Three were tightening Their harness on their backs, The Consul was the foremost man To take in hand an ax; And Fathers mixed with Commons Seized hatchet, bar, and crow, And smote upon the planks above, And loosed the props below. Meanwhile the Tuscan army, Right glorious to behold, Came flashing back the noonday light, Rank behind rank, like surges bright Of a broad sea of gold. Four hundred trumpets sounded A peal of warlike glee, As that great host, with measured tread, And spears advanced, and ensigns spread, Rolled slowly toward the bridge's head, Where stood the dauntless Three. The Three stood calm and silent, And looked upon the foes, And a great shout of laughter From all the vanguard rose: And forth three chiefs came spurring Before that deep array; To earth they sprang, their swords they drew, And lifted high their shields, and flew To win the narrow way; Aunus from green Tifernum, Lord of the Hill of Vines; And Seius, whose eight hundred slaves Sicken in Ilva's mines; And Picus, long to Clusium Vassal in peace and war, Who led to fight his Umbrian powers From that gray crag where, girt with towers, The fortress of Nequinum lowers O'er the pale waves of Nar. Stout Lartius hurled down Aunus Into the stream beneath; Herminius struck at Seius, And clove him to the teeth; At Picus brave Horatius Darted one fiery thrust; And the proud Umbrian's gilded arms Clashed in the bloody dust. Then Ocnus of Falerii Rushed on the Roman Three; And Lausulus of Urgo, The rover of the sea; And Aruns of Volsinium, Who slew the great wild boar, The great wild boar that had his den Amid the reeds of Cosa's fen. And wasted fields and slaughtered men Along Albinia's shore. Herminius smote down Aruns; Lartius laid Ocnus low; Right to the heart of Lausulus Horatius sent a blow. "Lie there," he cried, "fell pirate! No more, aghast and pale, From Ostia's walls the crowd shall mark The tracks of thy destroying bark, No more Campania's hinds shall fly To woods and caverns when they spy Thy thrice accurséd sail." But now no sound of laughter Was heard among the foes. A wild and wrathful clamour From all the vanguard rose. Six spears' length from the entrance Halted that deep array, And for a space no man came forth To win the narrow way. But hark! the cry is Astur: And lo! the ranks divide; And the great Lord of Luna Comes with his stately stride. Upon his ample shoulders Clangs loud the fourfold shield, And in his hand he shakes the brand Which none but he can wield. He smiled on those bold Romans, A smile serene and high; He eyed the flinching Tuscans, And scorn was in his eye. Quoth he: "The she-wolf's litter Stand savagely at bay; But will ye dare to follow, If Astur clears the way?" Then, whirling up his broadsword With both hands to the height, He rushed against Horatius, And smote with all his might. With shield and blade Horatius Right deftly turned the blow. The blow, though turned, came yet too nigh; It missed his helm, but gashed his thigh: The Tuscans raised a joyful cry To see the red blood flow. He reeled, and on Herminius He leaned one breathing space; Then, like a wildcat mad with wounds, Sprang right at Astur's face. Through teeth, and skull, and helmet, So fierce a thrust he sped, The good sword stood a handbreadth out Behind the Tuscan's head. And the great Lord of Luna Fell at the deadly stroke, As falls on Mount Alvernus A thunder-smitten oak. Far o'er the crashing forest The giant arms lie spread; And the pale augurs, muttering low, Gaze on the blasted head. On Astur's throat Horatius Right firmly pressed his heel, And thrice and four times tugged amain Ere he wrenched out the steel. "And see," he cried, "the welcome, Fair guests, that waits you here! What noble Lucumo comes next To taste our Roman cheer?" But at his haughty challenge A sullen murmur ran, Mingled of wrath, and shame, and dread, Along that glittering van. There lacked not men of prowess, Nor men of lordly race; For all Etruria's noblest Were round the fatal place. But all Etruria's noblest Felt their hearts sink to see On the earth the bloody corpses, In the path the dauntless Three: And, from the ghastly entrance Where those bold Romans stood, All shrank, like boys who unaware, Ranging the woods to start a hare, Come to the mouth of the dark lair Where, growling low, a fierce old bear Lies amid bones and blood. Was none who would be foremost To lead such dire attack? But those behind cried "Forward!" And those before cried "Back!" And backward now and forward Wavers the deep array; And on the tossing sea of steel To and fro the standards reel; And the victorious trumpet peal Dies fitfully away. Yet one man for one moment Strode out before the crowd; Well known was he to all the Three, And they gave him greeting loud: "Now welcome, welcome, Sextus! Now welcome to thy home! Why dost thou stay, and turn away? Here lies the road to Rome." Thrice looked he at the city; Thrice looked he at the dead; And thrice came on in fury, And thrice turned back in dread: And, white with fear and hatred, Scowled at the narrow way Where, wallowing in a pool of blood, The bravest Tuscans lay. But meanwhile ax and lever Have manfully been plied, And now the bridge hangs tottering Above the boiling tide. "Come back, come back, Horatius!" Loud cried the Fathers all. "Back, Lartius! Back, Herminius! Back, ere the ruin fall!" Back darted Spurius Lartius; Herminius darted back: And, as they passed, beneath their feet They felt the timbers crack. But when they turned their faces, And on the farther shore Saw brave Horatius stand alone, They would have crossed once more. But with a crash like thunder Fell every loosened beam, And, like a dam, the mighty wreck Lay right athwart the stream; And a long shout of triumph Rose from the walls of Rome, As to the highest turret tops Was splashed the yellow foam. And, like a horse unbroken When first he feels the rein, The furious river struggled hard, And tossed his tawny mane; And burst the curb, and bounded, Rejoicing to be free, And whirling down, in fierce career, Battlement, and plank, and pier, Rushed headlong to the sea. Alone stood brave Horatius, But constant still in mind; Thrice thirty thousand foes before, And the broad flood behind. "Down with him!" cried false Sextus, With a smile on his pale face. "Now yield thee," cried Lars Porsena, "Now yield thee to our grace." Round turned he, as not deigning Those craven ranks to see; Naught spake he to Lars Porsena, To Sextus naught spake he; But he saw on Palatinus The white porch of his home; And he spake to the noble river That rolls by the towers of Rome: "O Tiber! Father Tiber! To whom the Romans pray, A Roman's life, a Roman's arms, Take thou in charge this day!" So he spake, and speaking sheathed The good sword by his side, And, with his harness on his back, Plunged headlong in the tide. No sound of joy or sorrow Was heard from either bank; But friends and foes in dumb surprise, With parted lips and straining eyes, Stood gazing where he sank; And when above the surges They saw his crest appear, All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry, And even the ranks of Tuscany Could scarce forbear to cheer. And fiercely ran the current, Swollen high by months of rain; And fast his blood was flowing, And he was sore in pain, And heavy with his armour, And spent with changing blows: And oft they thought him sinking, But still again he rose. Never, I ween, did swimmer, In such an evil case, Struggle through such a raging flood Safe to the landing place; But his limbs were borne up bravely By the brave heart within, And our good Father Tiber Bore bravely up his chin. "Curse on him!" quoth false Sextus; "Will not the villain drown? But for this stay, ere close of day We should have sacked the town!" "Heaven help him!" quoth Lars Porsena, "And bring him safe to shore; For such a gallant feat of arms Was never seen before." And now he feels the bottom; Now on dry earth he stands; Now round him throng the Fathers To press his gory hands; And now with shouts and clapping, And noise of weeping loud, He enters through the River Gate, Borne by the joyous crowd. They gave him of the corn land, That was of public right. As much as two strong oxen Could plow from morn till night: And they made a molten image, And set it up on high, And there it stands unto this day To witness if I lie. It stands in the Comitium, Plain for all folk to see,-- Horatius in his harness, Halting upon one knee: And underneath is written, In letters all of gold, How valiantly he kept the bridge In the brave days of old. And still his name sounds stirring Unto the men of Rome, As the trumpet blast that cries to them To charge the Volscian home; And wives still pray to Juno For boys with hearts as bold As his who kept the bridge so well In the brave days of old. And in the nights of winter, When the cold north winds blow, And the long howling of the wolves Is heard amid the snow; When round the lonely cottage Roars loud the tempest's din, And the good logs of Algidus Roar louder yet within; When the oldest cask is opened, And the largest lamp is lit; When the chestnuts glow in the embers, And the kid turns on the spit; When young and old in circle Around the firebrands close; When the girls are weaving baskets, And the lads are shaping bows; When the goodman mends his armour, And trims his helmet's plume; When the goodwife's shuttle merrily Goes flashing through the loom,-- With weeping and with laughter Still is the story told, How well Horatius kept the bridge In the brave days of old. THOMAS B. MACAULAY. THE PLANTING OF THE APPLE-TREE. "The Planting of the Apple-Tree" has become a favourite for "Arbour Day" exercises. The planting of trees as against their destruction is a vital point in our political and national welfare. William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878). Come, let us plant the apple-tree. Cleave the tough greensward with the spade; Wide let its hollow bed be made; There gently lay the roots, and there Sift the dark mould with kindly care, And press it o'er them tenderly, As round the sleeping infant's feet We softly fold the cradle sheet; So plant we the apple-tree. What plant we in this apple-tree? Buds, which the breath of summer days Shall lengthen into leafy sprays; Boughs where the thrush, with crimson breast, Shall haunt, and sing, and hide her nest; We plant, upon the sunny lea, A shadow for the noontide hour, A shelter from the summer shower, When we plant the apple-tree. What plant we in this apple-tree? Sweets for a hundred flowery springs, To load the May wind's restless wings, When, from the orchard row, he pours Its fragrance through our open doors; A world of blossoms for the bee, Flowers for the sick girl's silent room, For the glad infant sprigs of bloom, We plant with the apple-tree. What plant we in this apple-tree? Fruits that shall swell in sunny June, And redden in the August noon, And drop, when gentle airs come by, That fan the blue September sky, While children come, with cries of glee, And seek them where the fragrant grass Betrays their bed to those who pass, At the foot of the apple-tree. And when, above this apple-tree, The winter stars are quivering bright, The winds go howling through the night, Girls, whose eyes o'erflow with mirth, Shall peel its fruit by cottage hearth, And guests in prouder homes shall see, Heaped with the grape of Cintra's vine, And golden orange of the line, The fruit of the apple-tree. The fruitage of this apple-tree, Winds and our flag of stripe and star Shall bear to coasts that lie afar, Where men shall wonder at the view, And ask in what fair groves they grew; And sojourners beyond the sea Shall think of childhood's careless day, And long, long hours of summer play, In the shade of the apple-tree. Each year shall give this apple-tree A broader flush of roseate bloom, A deeper maze of verdurous gloom, And loosen, when the frost-clouds lower, The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower. The years shall come and pass, but we Shall hear no longer, where we lie, The summer's songs, the autumn's sigh, In the boughs of the apple-tree. And time shall waste this apple-tree. Oh, when its aged branches throw Thin shadows on the ground below, Shall fraud and force and iron will Oppress the weak and helpless still! What shall the tasks of mercy be, Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears Of those who live when length of years Is wasting this apple-tree? "Who planted this old apple-tree?" The children of that distant day Thus to some aged man shall say; And, gazing on its mossy stem, The gray-haired man shall answer them: "A poet of the land was he, Born in the rude but good old times; 'Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes On planting the apple-tree." WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. [Illustration] PART V. On and On JUNE. "June" (by James Russell Lowell, 1819-91), is a fragment from "The Vision of Sir Launfal." It finds a place in this volume because it is the most perfect description of a charming day ever written. What is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays: Whether we look, or whether we listen, We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; Every clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers, And, groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; The flush of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in meadows green. The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean To be some happy creature's palace; The little bird sits at his door in the sun, Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, And lets his illumined being o'errun With the deluge of summer it receives; His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings; He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,-- In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best? JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. A PSALM OF LIFE. WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST. "A Psalm of Life," by Henry W. Longfellow (1807-82), is like a treasure laid up in heaven. It should be learned for its future value to the child, not necessarily because the child likes it. Its value will dawn on him. Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream!-- For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul. Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way; But to act, that each to-morrow Find us farther than to-day. Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave. In the world's broad field of battle, In the bivouac of Life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle! Be a hero in the strife! Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act,--act in the living Present! Heart within, and God o'erhead! Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time; Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again. Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labour and to wait. HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. BARNACLES. "Barnacles" (by Sidney Lanier, 1842-81), is a poem that I teach in connection with my lessons on natural history. We have a good specimen of a barnacle, and the children see them on the shells on the coast. The ethical point is invaluable. My soul is sailing through the sea, But the Past is heavy and hindereth me. The Past hath crusted cumbrous shells That hold the flesh of cold sea-mells About my soul. The huge waves wash, the high waves roll, Each barnacle clingeth and worketh dole And hindereth me from sailing! Old Past, let go, and drop i' the sea Till fathomless waters cover thee! For I am living, but thou art dead; Thou drawest back, I strive ahead The Day to find. Thy shells unbind! Night comes behind; I needs must hurry with the wind And trim me best for sailing. SIDNEY LANIER. A HAPPY LIFE. How happy is he born and taught That serveth not another's will; Whose armour is his honest thought, And simple truth his utmost skill! Whose passions not his master's are, Whose soul is still prepared for death, Not tied unto the world with care Of public fame, or private breath. SIR HENRY WOTTON. HOME, SWEET HOME! "Home, Sweet Home" (John Howard Payne, 1791-1852) is a poem that reaches into the heart. What is home? A place where we experience independence, safety, privacy, and where we can dispense hospitality. "The family is the true unit." 'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home; A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there, Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere. Home! Home! sweet, sweet Home! There's no place like Home! there's no place like Home! An exile from Home, splendour dazzles in vain; O, give me my lowly thatched cottage again! The birds singing gaily, that came at my call,-- Give me them,--and the peace of mind, dearer than all! Home! Home! sweet, sweet Home! There's no place like Home! there's no place like Home! How sweet 'tis to sit 'neath a fond father's smile, And the cares of a mother to soothe and beguile! Let others delight 'mid new pleasures to roam, But give me, oh, give me, the pleasures of Home! Home! Home! sweet, sweet Home! There's no place like Home! there's no place like Home! To thee I'll return, overburdened with care; The heart's dearest solace will smile on me there; No more from that cottage again will I roam; Be it ever so humble, there's no place like Home. Home! Home! sweet, sweet Home! There's no place like Home! there's no place like Home! JOHN HOWARD PAYNE. FROM CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. JULIET OF NATIONS. I heard last night a little child go singing 'Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church, _O bella libertà, O bella!_--stringing The same words still on notes he went in search So high for, you concluded the upspringing Of such a nimble bird to sky from perch Must leave the whole bush in a tremble green, And that the heart of Italy must beat, While such a voice had leave to rise serene 'Twixt church and palace of a Florence street; A little child, too, who not long had been By mother's finger steadied on his feet, And still _O bella libertà_ he sang. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. WOODMAN, SPARE THAT TREE! "Woodman, Spare That Tree" (by George Pope Morris, 1802-64) is included in this collection because I have loved it all my life, and I never knew any one who could or would offer a criticism upon it. Its value lies in its recognition of childhood's pleasures. Woodman, spare that tree! Touch not a single bough! In youth it sheltered me, And I'll protect it now. 'Twas my forefather's hand That placed it near his cot; There, woodman, let it stand, Thy ax shall harm it not. That old familiar tree, Whose glory and renown Are spread o'er land and sea-- And wouldst thou hew it down? Woodman, forbear thy stroke! Cut not its earth-bound ties; Oh, spare that agèd oak Now towering to the skies! When but an idle boy, I sought its grateful shade; In all their gushing joy Here, too, my sisters played. My mother kissed me here; My father pressed my hand-- Forgive this foolish tear, But let that old oak stand. My heart-strings round thee cling, Close as thy bark, old friend! Here shall the wild-bird sing, And still thy branches bend. Old tree! the storm still brave! And, woodman, leave the spot; While I've a hand to save, Thy ax shall harm it not. GEORGE POPE MORRIS. ABIDE WITH ME. "Abide With Me" (Henry Francis Lyte, 1793-1847) appeals to our natural longing for the unchanging and to our love of security. Abide with me! fast falls the eventide; The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide! When other helpers fail, and comforts flee, Help of the helpless, O abide with me. Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day; Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away; Change and decay in all around I see: O Thou who changest not, abide with me! HENRY FRANCIS LYTE. LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT "Lead, Kindly Light," by John Henry Newman (1801-90), was written when Cardinal Newman was in the stress and strain of perplexity and mental distress and bodily pain. The poem has been a star in the darkness to thousands. It was the favourite poem of President McKinley. Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom, Lead Thou me on, The night is dark, and I am far from home, Lead Thou me on. Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me. I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou Shouldst lead me on; I loved to choose and see my path; but now Lead Thou me on. I loved the garish day; and, spite of fears, Pride ruled my will: remember not past years. So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still Will lead me on O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till The night is gone, And with the morn those angel faces smile, Which I have loved long since, and lost a while. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER. 'Tis the last rose of summer Left blooming alone; All her lovely companions Are faded and gone; No flower of her kindred, No rose-bud is nigh, To reflect back her blushes, Or give sigh for sigh. I'll not leave thee, thou lone one! To pine on the stem; Since the lovely are sleeping, Go, sleep thou with them. Thus kindly I scatter Thy leaves o'er the bed Where thy mates of the garden Lie scentless and dead. So soon may I follow, When friendships decay, And from Love's shining circle The gems drop away. When true hearts lie withered, And fond ones are flown, O! who would inhabit This bleak world alone? THOMAS MOORE. ANNIE LAURIE. "Annie Laurie" finds a place in this collection because it is the most popular song on earth. Written by William Douglas, (----). Maxwelton braes are bonnie Where early fa's the dew, And it's there that Annie Laurie Gie'd me her promise true-- Gie'd me her promise true, Which ne'er forgot will be; And for bonnie Annie Laurie I'd lay me doune and dee. Her brow is like the snawdrift, Her throat is like the swan, Her face it is the fairest That e'er the sun shone on-- That e'er the sun shone on; And dark blue is her e'e; And for bonnie Annie Laurie I'd lay me doune and dee. Like dew on the gowan lying Is the fa' o' her fairy feet; Like the winds in summer sighing, Her voice is low and sweet-- Her voice is low and sweet; And she's a' the world to me; And for bonnie Annie Laurie I'd lay me doune and dee. WILLIAM DOUGLAS. THE SHIP OF STATE. A president of a well-known college writes me that "The Ship of State" was his favourite poem when he was a boy, and did more than any other to shape his course in life. Longfellow (1807-82). Sail on, sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great! Humanity, with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate! We know what Master laid thy keel, What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, Who made each mast, and sail, and rope; What anvils rang, what hammers beat, In what a forge and what a heat Were forged the anchors of thy hope! Fear not each sudden sound and shock-- 'Tis of the wave, and not the rock; 'Tis but the flapping of the sail, And not a rent made by the gale! In spite of rock, and tempest roar, In spite of false lights on the shore, Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee. Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith, triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee, are all with thee! HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. The Constitution and Laws are here personified, and addressed as "The Ship of State." AMERICA. "America" (Samuel Francis Smith, 1808-95) is a good poem to learn as a poem, regardless of the fact that every American who can sing it ought to know it, that he may join in the chorus when patriotic celebrations call for it. My boys love to repeat the entire poem, but I often find masses of people trying to sing it, knowing only one stanza. It is our national anthem, and a part of our education to know every word of it. My country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing; Land where my fathers died, Land of the Pilgrims' pride; From every mountain side, Let freedom ring. My native country, thee-- Land of the noble free-- Thy name I love; I love thy rocks and rills, Thy woods and templed hills; My heart with rapture thrills, Like that above. Let music swell the breeze, And ring from all the trees Sweet freedom's song; Let mortal tongues awake; Let all that breathe partake; Let rocks their silence break-- The sound prolong. Our fathers' God, to Thee, Author of liberty, To Thee we sing: Long may our land be bright With freedom's holy light: Protect us by Thy might, Great God, our King. S.F. SMITH. THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS. "The Landing of the Pilgrims," by Felicia Hemans (1749-1835), is a poem that children want when they study the early history of America. The breaking waves dashed high On a stern and rock-bound coast, And the woods against a stormy sky Their giant branches tossed. And the heavy night hung dark The hills and waters o'er, When a band of exiles moored their bark On the wild New England shore. Not as the conqueror comes, They, the true-hearted, came; Not with the roll of the stirring drums, And the trumpet that sings of fame. Not as the flying come, In silence and in fear; They shook the depths of the desert gloom With their hymns of lofty cheer. Amid the storm they sang, And the stars heard, and the sea, And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang To the anthem of the free! The ocean eagle soared From his nest by the white wave's foam; And the rocking pines of the forest roared,-- This was their welcome home! There were men with hoary hair, Amid that pilgrim band; Why had _they_ come to wither there, Away from their childhood's land? There was woman's fearless eye, Lit by her deep love's truth; There was manhood's brow serenely high, And the fiery heart of youth. What sought they thus afar? Bright jewels of the mine? The wealth of seas, the spoils of war?-- They sought a faith's pure shrine! Ay! call it holy ground, The soil where first they trod: They have left unstained what there they found, Freedom to worship God. FELICIA HEMANS. THE LOTOS-EATERS. The main idea in "The Lotos-Eaters" is, are we justified in running away from unpleasant duties? Or, is insensibility justifiable? Laddie, do you recollect learning this poem after we had read the story of "Odysseus"? "The struggle of the soul urged to action, but held back by the spirit of self-indulgence." These were the points we discussed. Alfred Tennyson (1809-92). "Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land, "This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon." In the afternoon they came unto a land In which it seemed always afternoon. All round the coast the languid air did swoon, Breathing like one that hath a weary dream. Full-faced above the valley stood the moon; And like a downward smoke, the slender stream Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem. A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke, Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go; And some thro' wavering lights and shadows broke, Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below. They saw the gleaming river seaward flow From the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops, Three silent pinnacles of agèd snow, Stood sunset-flush'd: and, dew'd with showery drops, Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse. The charmèd sunset linger'd low adown In the red West: thro' mountain clefts the dale Was seen far inland, and the yellow down Border'd with palm, and many a winding vale And meadow, set with slender galingale; A land where all things always seem'd the same! And round about the keel with faces pale, Dark faces pale against that rosy flame, The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came. Branches they bore of that enchanted stem, Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave To each, but whoso did receive of them, And taste, to him the gushing of the wave Far, far away did seem to mourn and rave On alien shores; and if his fellow spake, His voice was thin, as voices from the grave; And deep-asleep he seem'd, yet all awake, And music in his ears his beating heart did make. They sat them down upon the yellow sand, Between the sun and moon upon the shore; And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland, Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore Most weary seem'd the sea, weary the oar, Weary the wandering fields of barren foam. Then some one said, "We will return no more;" And all at once they sang, "Our island home Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam." ALFRED TENNYSON. MOLY. "Moly" (mo'ly), by Edith M. Thomas (1850-), in the best possible presentation of the value of integrity. This poem ranks with "Sir Galahad," if not above it. It is a stroke of genius, and every American ought to be proud of it. Every time my boys read "Odysseus" or the story of Ulysses with me we read or learn "Moly." The plant moly grows in the United States as well as in Europe. Traveller, pluck a stem of moly, If thou touch at Circe's isle,-- Hermes' moly, growing solely To undo enchanter's wile! When she proffers thee her chalice,-- Wine and spices mixed with malice,-- When she smites thee with her staff To transform thee, do thou laugh! Safe thou art if thou but bear The least leaf of moly rare. Close it grows beside her portal, Springing from a stock immortal, Yes! and often has the Witch Sought to tear it from its niche; But to thwart her cruel will The wise God renews it still. Though it grows in soil perverse, Heaven hath been its jealous nurse, And a flower of snowy mark Springs from root and sheathing dark; Kingly safeguard, only herb That can brutish passion curb! Some do think its name should be Shield-Heart, White Integrity. Traveller, pluck a stem of moly, If thou touch at Circe's isle,-- Hermes' moly, growing solely To undo enchanter's wile! EDITH M. THOMAS. CUPID DROWNED. "Cupid Drowned" (1784-1859), "Cupid Stung" (1779-1852), and "Cupid and My Campasbe" (1558-1606) are three dainty poems recommended by Mrs. Margaret Mooney, of the Albany Teachers' College, in her "Foundation Studies in Literature." Children are always delighted with them. T'other day as I was twining Roses, for a crown to dine in, What, of all things, 'mid the heap, Should I light on, fast asleep, But the little desperate elf, The tiny traitor, Love, himself! By the wings I picked him up Like a bee, and in a cup Of my wine I plunged and sank him, Then what d'ye think I did?--I drank him. Faith, I thought him dead. Not he! There he lives with tenfold glee; And now this moment with his wings I feel him tickling my heart-strings. LEIGH HUNT. CUPID STUNG. Cupid once upon a bed Of roses laid his weary head; Luckless urchin, not to see Within the leaves a slumbering bee. The bee awak'd--with anger wild The bee awak'd, and stung the child. Loud and piteous are his cries; To Venus quick he runs, he flies; "Oh, Mother! I am wounded through-- I die with pain--in sooth I do! Stung by some little angry thing, Some serpent on a tiny wing-- A bee it was--for once, I know, I heard a rustic call it so." Thus he spoke, and she the while Heard him with a soothing smile; Then said, "My infant, if so much Thou feel the little wild bee's touch, How must the heart, ah, Cupid! be, The hapless heart that's stung by thee!" THOMAS MOORE. CUPID AND MY CAMPASBE. Cupid and my Campasbe played At cards for kisses. Cupid paid. He stakes his quiver, bow and arrows, His mother's doves and team of sparrows. Loses them, too; then down he throws The coral of his lips, the rose Growing on his cheek, but none knows how; With them the crystal of his brow, And then the dimple of his chin. All these did my Campasbe win. At last he set her both his eyes; She won and Cupid blind did rise. Oh, Love, hath she done this to thee! What shall, alas, become of me! JOHN LYLY. A BALLAD FOR A BOY. Violo Roseboro, one of our good authors, brought to me "A Ballad for a Boy," saying: "I believe it is one of the poems that every child ought to know." It is included in this compilation out of respect to her opinion and also because the boys to whom I have read it said it was "great," The lesson in it is certainly fine. Men who are true men want to settle their own disputes by a hand-to-hand fight, but they will always help each other when a third party or the elements interfere. Humanity is greater than human interests. When George the Third was reigning, a hundred years ago, He ordered Captain Farmer to chase the foreign foe, "You're not afraid of shot," said he, "you're not afraid of wreck, So cruise about the west of France in the frigate called _Quebec_. "Quebec was once a Frenchman's town, but twenty years ago King George the Second sent a man called General Wolfe, you know, To clamber up a precipice and look into Quebec, As you'd look down a hatchway when standing on the deck. "If Wolfe could beat the Frenchmen then, so you can beat them now. Before he got inside the town he died, I must allow. But since the town was won for us it is a lucky name, And you'll remember Wolfe's good work, and you shall do the same." Then Farmer said, "I'll try, sir," and Farmer bowed so low That George could see his pigtail tied in a velvet bow. George gave him his commission, and that it might be safer, Signed "King of Britain, King of France," and sealed it with a wafer. Then proud was Captain Farmer in a frigate of his own, And grander on his quarter-deck than George upon his throne. He'd two guns in his cabin, and on the spar-deck ten, And twenty on the gun-deck, and more than ten-score men. And as a huntsman scours the brakes with sixteen brace of dogs, With two-and-thirty cannon the ship explored the fogs. From Cape la Hogue to Ushant, from Rochefort to Belleisle, She hunted game till reef and mud were rubbing on her keel. The fogs are dried, the frigate's side is bright with melting tar, The lad up in the foretop sees square white sails afar; The east wind drives three square-sailed masts from out the Breton bay, And "Clear for action!" Farmer shouts, and reefers yell "Hooray!" The Frenchmen's captain had a name I wish I could pronounce; A Breton gentleman was he, and wholly free from bounce, One like those famous fellows who died by guillotine For honour and the fleur-de-lys, and Antoinette the Queen. The Catholic for Louis, the Protestant for George, Each captain drew as bright a sword as saintly smiths could forge; And both were simple seamen, but both could understand How each was bound to win or die for flag and native land. The French ship was _La Surveillante_, which means the watchful maid; She folded up her head-dress and began to cannonade. Her hull was clean, and ours was foul; we had to spread more sail. On canvas, stays, and topsail yards her bullets came like hail. Sore smitten were both captains, and many lads beside, And still to cut our rigging the foreign gunners tried. A sail-clad spar came flapping down athwart a blazing gun; We could not quench the rushing flames, and so the Frenchman won. Our quarter-deck was crowded, the waist was all aglow; Men hung upon the taffrail half scorched, but loth to go; Our captain sat where once he stood, and would not quit his chair. He bade his comrades leap for life, and leave him bleeding there. The guns were hushed on either side, the Frenchmen lowered boats, They flung us planks and hen-coops, and everything that floats. They risked their lives, good fellows! to bring their rivals aid. Twas by the conflagration the peace was strangely made. _La Surveillante_ was like a sieve; the victors had no rest; They had to dodge the east wind to reach the port of Brest. And where the waves leapt lower and the riddled ship went slower, In triumph, yet in funeral guise, came fisher-boats to tow her. They dealt with us as brethren, they mourned for Farmer dead; And as the wounded captives passed each Breton bowed the head. Then spoke the French Lieutenant, "Twas fire that won, not we. You never struck your flag to us; you'll go to England free." Twas the sixth day of October, seventeen hundred seventy-nine, A year when nations ventured against us to combine, _Quebec_ was burned and Farmer slain, by us remembered not; But thanks be to the French book wherein they're not forgot. Now you, if you've to fight the French, my youngster, bear in mind Those seamen of King Louis so chivalrous and kind; Think of the Breton gentlemen who took our lads to Brest, And treat some rescued Breton as a comrade and a guest. THE SKELETON IN ARMOUR. "The Skeleton in Armour" (Longfellow, 1807-82) is a "boy's poem." It it pure literature and good history. "Speak! speak! thou fearful guest! Who, with thy hollow breast Still in rude armour drest, Comest to daunt me! Wrapt not in Eastern balms, But with thy fleshless palms Stretched, as if asking alms, Why dost thou haunt me?" Then from those cavernous eyes Pale flashes seemed to rise, As when the Northern skies Gleam in December; And, like the water's flow Under December's snow, Came a dull voice of woe From the heart's chamber. "I was a Viking old! My deeds, though manifold, No Skald in song has told, No Saga taught thee! Take heed that in thy verse Thou dost the tale rehearse, Else dread a dead man's curse; For this I sought thee. "Far in the Northern Land, By the wild Baltic's strand, I, with my childish hand, Tamed the gerfalcon; And, with my skates fast-bound, Skimmed the half-frozen Sound, That the poor whimpering hound Trembled to walk on. "Oft to his frozen lair Tracked I the grizzly bear, While from my path the hare Fled like a shadow; Oft through the forest dark Followed the were-wolf's bark, Until the soaring lark Sang from the meadow. "But when I older grew, Joining a corsair's crew, O'er the dark sea I flew With the marauders. Wild was the life we led; Many the souls that sped, Many the hearts that bled, By our stern orders. "Many a wassail-bout Wore the long Winter out; Often our midnight shout Set the cocks crowing, As we the Berserk's tale Measured in cups of ale, Draining the oaken pail Filled to overflowing. "Once as I told in glee Tales of the stormy sea, Soft eyes did gaze on me, Burning yet tender; And as the white stars shine On the dark Norway pine, On that dark heart of mine Fell their soft splendour. "I wooed the blue-eyed maid, Yielding, yet half afraid, And in the forest's shade Our vows were plighted. Under its loosened vest Fluttered her little breast, Like birds within their nest By the hawk frighted. "Bright in her father's hall Shields gleamed upon the wall, Loud sang the minstrels all, Chanting his glory; When of old Hildebrand I asked his daughter's hand, Mute did the minstrels stand To hear my story. "While the brown ale he quaffed, Loud then the champion laughed, And as the wind-gusts waft The sea-foam brightly, So the loud laugh of scorn, Out of those lips unshorn, From the deep drinking-horn Blew the foam lightly. "She was a Prince's child, I but a Viking wild, And though she blushed and smiled, I was discarded! Should not the dove so white Follow the sea-mew's flight? Why did they leave that night Her nest unguarded? "Scarce had I put to sea, Bearing the maid with me,-- Fairest of all was she Among the Norsemen!-- When on the white sea-strand, Waving his armed hand, Saw we old Hildebrand, With twenty horsemen. "Then launched they to the blast, Bent like a reed each mast, Yet we were gaining fast, When the wind failed us; And with a sudden flaw Came round the gusty Skaw, So that our foe we saw Laugh as he hailed us. "And as to catch the gale Round veered the flapping sail, 'Death!' was the helmsman's hail, 'Death without quarter!' Midships with iron keel Struck we her ribs of steel; Down her black hulk did reel Through the black water! "As with his wings aslant, Sails the fierce cormorant, Seeking some rocky haunt, With his prey laden, So toward the open main, Beating to sea again, Through the wild hurricane, Bore I the maiden. "Three weeks we westward bore, And when the storm was o'er, Cloud-like we saw the shore Stretching to leeward; There for my lady's bower Built I the lofty tower Which to this very hour Stands looking seaward. "There lived we many years; Time dried the maiden's tears; She had forgot her fears, She was a mother; Death closed her mild blue eyes; Under that tower she lies; Ne'er shall the sun arise On such another. "Still grew my bosom then, Still as a stagnant fen! Hateful to me were men, The sunlight hateful! In the vast forest here, Clad in my warlike gear, Fell I upon my spear, Oh, death was grateful! "Thus, seamed with many scars, Bursting these prison bars, Up to its native stars My soul ascended! There from the flowing bowl Deep drinks the warrior's soul, _Skoal_! to the Northland! _skoal_!" Thus the tale ended. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. THE REVENGE. A BALLAD OF THE FLEET Tennyson's (1807-92) "The _Revenge_" finds a welcome here because it is a favourite with teachers of elocution and their audiences. It teaches us to hold life cheap when the nation's safety is at stake. At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay, And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from away: "Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fifty-three!" Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: "'Fore God, I am no coward; But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear, And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick. We are six ships of the line; can we fight with fifty-three?" Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: "I know you are no coward; You fly them for a moment, to fight with them again. But I've ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore. I should count myself the coward if I left them, my Lord Howard, To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain." So Lord Howard passed away with five ships of war that day, Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven; But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick men from the land Very carefully and slow, Men of Bideford in Devon, And we laid them on the ballast down below; For we brought them all aboard, And they blest him in their pain that they were not left to Spain, To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory of the Lord. He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight, And he sail'd away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight, With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather bow. "Shall we fight or shall we fly? Good Sir Richard, tell us now, For to fight is but to die! "There'll be little of us left by the time this sun be set" And Sir Richard said again: "We be all good Englishmen. Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil, For I never turn'd my back upon Don or devil yet." Sir Richard spoke and he laugh'd, and we roar'd a hurrah, and so The little _Revenge_ ran on sheer into the heart of the foe, With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below; For half of their fleet to the right and half to the left were seen, And the little _Revenge_ ran on thro' the long sea-lane between. Thousands of their soldiers looked down from their decks and laugh'd, Thousands of their seamen made mock at the mad little craft Running on and on, till delay'd By their mountain-like _San Philip_ that, of fifteen hundred tons, And up-shadowing high above us with her yawning tiers of guns, Took the breath from our sails, and we stay'd. And while now the great _San Philip_ hung above us like a cloud Whence the thunderbolt will fall Long and loud. Four galleons drew away From the Spanish fleet that day, And two upon the larboard and two upon the starboard lay, And the battle-thunder broke from them all. But anon the great _San Philip_, she bethought herself and went, Having that within her womb that had left her ill content; And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand, For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqueteers, And a dozen times we shook 'em off as a dog that shakes his ears When he leaps from the water to the land. And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea, But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three; Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came, Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder and flame; Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her shame. For some were sunk and many were shatter'd, and so could fight us no more-- God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world before? For he said, "Fight on! fight on!" Tho' his vessel was all but a wreck; And it chanced that, when half of the short summer night was gone, With a grisly wound to be drest he had left the deck, But a bullet struck him that was dressing it suddenly dead, And himself he was wounded again in the side and the head, And he said, "Fight on! Fight on!" And the night went down, and the sun smiled out far over the summer sea, And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay round us all in a ring; But they dared not touch us again, for they fear'd that we still could sting, So they watched what the end would be. And we had not fought them in vain, But in perilous plight were we, Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain, And half of the rest of us maim'd for life In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife; And the sick men down in the hold were most of them stark and cold, And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the powder was all of it spent; And the masts and the rigging were lying over the side; But Sir Richard cried in his English pride: "We have fought such a fight for a day and a night As may never be fought again! We have won great glory, my men! And a day less or more At sea or ashore, We die--does it matter when? Sink me the ship, Master Gunner--sink her, split her in twain! Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!" And the gunner said. "Ay, ay," but the seamen made reply: "We have children, we have wives, And the Lord hath spared our lives. We will make the Spaniard promise, if we yield, to let us go; We shall live to fight again, and to strike another blow." And the lion there lay dying, and they yielded to the foe. And the stately Spanish men to their flagship bore him then, Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir Richard caught at last, And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign grace; But he rose upon their decks, and he cried: "I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true; I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do. With a joyful spirit I, Sir Richard Grenville, die!" And he fell upon their decks, and he died. And they stared at the dead that had been so valiant and true, And had holden the power and glory of Spain so cheap That he dared her with one little ship and his English few. Was he devil or man? He was devil for aught they knew, But they sank his body with honour down into the deep, And they mann'd the _Revenge_ with a swarthier alien crew, And away she sail'd with her loss and long'd for her own; When a wind from the lands they had ruin'd awoke from sleep, And the water began to heave and the weather to moan, And or ever that evening ended a great gale blew, And a wave like the wave that is raised by an earthquake grew, Till it smote on their hulls, and their sails, and their masts, and their flags, And the whole sea plunged and fell on the shot-shatter'd navy of Spain, And the little _Revenge_ herself went down by the island crags, To be lost evermore in the main. ALFRED TENNYSON. SIR GALAHAD. Sir Galahad is the most moral and upright of all the Knights of the Round Table. The strong lines of the poem (Tennyson, 1809-92) are the strong lines of human destiny-- "My strength is as the strength of ten Because my heart is pure." My good blade carves the casques of men, My tough lance thrusteth sure, My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure. The shattering trumpet shrilleth high, The hard brands shiver on the steel, The splintered spear-shafts crack and fly, The horse and rider reel: They reel, they roll in clanging lists, And when the tide of combat stands, Perfume and flowers fall in showers, That lightly rain from ladies' hands. How sweet are looks that ladies bend On whom their favours fall! For them I battle till the end, To save from shame and thrall: But all my heart is drawn above, My knees are bow'd in crypt and shrine: I never felt the kiss of love, Nor maiden's hand in mine. More bounteous aspects on me beam, Me mightier transports move and thrill; So keep I fair thro' faith and prayer A virgin heart in work and will. When down the stormy crescent goes, A light before me swims, Between dark stems the forest glows, I hear a noise of hymns: Then by some secret shrine I ride; I hear a voice, but none are there; The stalls are void, the doors are wide, The tapers burning fair. Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth, The silver vessels sparkle clean, The shrill bell rings, the censer swings, And solemn chaunts resound between. Sometimes on lonely mountain-meres I find a magic bark; I leap on board: no helmsman steers, I float till all is dark. A gentle sound, an awful light! Three angels bear the holy Grail: With folded feet, in stoles of white, On sleeping wings they sail. Ah, blessèd vision! blood of God! My spirit beats her mortal bars, As down dark tides the glory slides, And star-like mingles with the stars. When on my goodly charger borne Thro' dreaming towns I go, The cock crows ere the Christmas morn, The streets are dumb with snow. The tempest crackles on the leads, And, ringing, springs from brand and mail; But o'er the dark a glory spreads, And gilds the driving hail. I leave the plain, I climb the height; No branchy thicket shelter yields; But blessèd forms in whistling storms Fly o'er waste fens and windy fields. A maiden knight--to me is given Such hope, I know not fear; I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven That often meet me here. I muse on joy that will not cease, Pure spaces cloth'd in living beams, Pure lilies of eternal peace, Whose odours haunt my dreams; And, stricken by an angel's hand, This mortal armour that I wear, This weight and size, this heart and eyes, Are touch'd, are turn'd to finest air. The clouds are broken in the sky, And thro' the mountain-walls A rolling organ-harmony Swells up, and shakes and falls. Then move the trees, the copses nod, Wings flutter, voices hover clear: "O just and faithful knight of God! Ride on! the prize is near." So pass I hostel, hall, and grange; By bridge and ford, by park and pale, All-arm'd I ride, whate'er betide, Until I find the holy Grail. ALFRED TENNYSON. A NAME IN THE SAND. "A Name in the Sand," by Hannah Flagg Gould (1789-1865), is a poem to correct our ready overestimate of our own importance. Alone I walked the ocean strand; A pearly shell was in my hand: I stooped and wrote upon the sand My name--the year--the day. As onward from the spot I passed, One lingering look behind I cast; A wave came rolling high and fast, And washed my lines away. And so, methought, 'twill shortly be With every mark on earth from me: A wave of dark oblivion's sea Will sweep across the place Where I have trod the sandy shore Of time, and been, to be no more, Of me--my day--the name I bore, To leave nor track nor trace. And yet, with Him who counts the sands And holds the waters in His hands, I know a lasting record stands Inscribed against my name, Of all this mortal part has wrought, Of all this thinking soul has thought, And from these fleeting moments caught For glory or for shame. HANNAH FLAGG GOULD. [Illustration] PART VI. "Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be,-- The last of life, for which the first was made." THE VOICE OF SPRING. "The Voice of Spring," by Felicia Hemans (1749-1835), becomes attractive as years go on. The line in this poem that captivated my youthful fancy was: "The larch has hung all his tassels forth," The delight with which trees hang out their new little tassels every year is one of the charms of "the pine family." John Burroughs sent us down a tiny hemlock, that grew in our window-box at school for five years, and every spring it was a new joy on account of the fine, tender tassels. Mrs. Hemans had a vivid imagination backed up by an abundant information. I come, I come! ye have called me long; I come o'er the mountains, with light and song. Ye may trace my step o'er the waking earth By the winds which tell of the violet's birth, By the primrose stars in the shadowy grass, By the green leaves opening as I pass. I have breathed on the South, and the chestnut-flowers By thousands have burst from the forest bowers, And the ancient graves and the fallen fanes Are veiled with wreaths on Italian plains; But it is not for me, in my hour of bloom, To speak of the ruin or the tomb! I have looked o'er the hills of the stormy North, And the larch has hung all his tassels forth; The fisher is out on the sunny sea, And the reindeer bounds o'er the pastures free, And the pine has a fringe of softer green, And the moss looks bright, where my step has been. I have sent through the wood-paths a glowing sigh, And called out each voice of the deep blue sky, From the night-bird's lay through the starry time, In the groves of the soft Hesperian clime, To the swan's wild note by the Iceland lakes, When the dark fir-branch into verdure breaks. From the streams and founts I have loosed the chain; They are sweeping on to the silvery main, They are flashing down from the mountain brows, They are flinging spray o'er the forest boughs, They are bursting fresh from their sparry caves, And the earth resounds with the joy of waves. FELICIA HEMANS. THE FORSAKEN MERMAN. "The Forsaken Merman," by Matthew Arnold (1822-88), is a poem that I do not expect children to appreciate fully, even when they care enough for it to learn it. It is too long for most children to commit to memory, and I generally assign one stanza to one pupil and another to another pupil until it is divided up among them. The poem is a masterpiece. Doubtless the poet meant to show that the forsaken merman had a greater soul to save than the woman who sought to save her soul by deserting natural duty. Salvation does not come through the faith that builds itself at the expense of love. Come, dear children, let us away; Down and away below! Now my brothers call from the bay, Now the great winds shoreward blow, Now the salt tides seaward flow; Now the wild white horses play, Champ and chafe and toss in the spray. Children dear, let us away! This way, this way! Call her once before you go-- Call once yet! In a voice that she will know: "Margaret! Margaret!" Children's voices should be dear (Call once more) to a mother's ear; Children's voices, wild with pain-- Surely she will come again! Call her once and come away; This way, this way! "Mother dear, we cannot stay! The wild white horses foam and fret." Margaret! Margaret! Come, dear children, come away down; Call no more! One last look at the white-wall'd town, And the little gray church on the windy shore; Then come down! She will not come though you call all day; Come away, come away! Children dear, was it yesterday We heard the sweet bells over the bay? In the caverns where we lay, Through the surf and through the swell, The far-off sound of a silver bell? Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep, Where the winds are all asleep; Where the spent lights quiver and gleam, Where the salt weed sways in the stream, Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round, Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground; Where the sea-snakes coil and twine, Dry their mail and bask in the brine; Where great whales come sailing by, Sail and sail, with unshut eye, Round the world forever and aye? When did music come this way? Children dear, was it yesterday? Children dear, was it yesterday (Call yet once) that she went away? Once she sate with you and me, On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea, And the youngest sate on her knee. She comb'd its bright hair, and she tended it well, When down swung the sound of a far-off bell. She sigh'd, she look'd up through the clear green sea; She said: "I must go, for my kinsfolk pray In the little gray church on the shore to-day. 'Twill be Easter-time in the world--ah me! And I lose my poor soul, Merman! here with thee." I said: "Go up, dear heart, through the waves; Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves!" She smil'd, she went up through the surf in the bay. Children dear, was it yesterday? Children dear, were we long alone? "The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan; Long prayers," I said, "in the world they say; Come!" I said; and we rose through the surf in the bay. We went up the beach, by the sandy down Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the white-wall'd town; Through the narrow pav'd streets, where all was still, To the little gray church on the windy hill. From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers, But we stood without in the cold blowing airs. We climb'd on the graves, on the stones worn with rains, And we gaz'd up the aisle through the small leaded panes. She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear: "Margaret, hist! come quick, we are here! Dear heart," I said, "we are long alone; The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan." But, ah, she gave me never a look, For her eyes were seal'd to the holy book! Loud prays the priest: shut stands the door. Come away, children, call no more! Come away, come down, call no more! Down, down, down! Down to the depths of the sea! She sits at her wheel in the humming town, Singing most joyfully. Hark what she sings: "O joy, O joy, For the humming street, and the child with its toy! For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well; For the wheel where I spun, And the blessèd light of the sun!" And so she sings her fill, Singing most joyfully, Till the spindle drops from her hand, And the whizzing wheel stands still. She steals to the window, and looks at the sand, And over the sand at the sea; And her eyes are set in a stare; And anon there breaks a sigh, And anon there drops a tear, From a sorrow-clouded eye, And a heart sorrow-laden, A long, long sigh; For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden, And the gleam of her golden hair. Come away, away, children; Come, children, come down! The hoarse wind blows colder; Lights shine in the town. She will start from her slumber When gusts shake the door; She will hear the winds howling, Will hear the waves roar. We shall see, while above us The waves roar and whirl, A ceiling of amber, A pavement of pearl. Singing: "Here came a mortal, But faithless was she! And alone dwell forever The kings of the sea." But, children, at midnight, When soft the winds blow, When clear falls the moonlight, When spring-tides are low; When sweet airs come seaward From heaths starr'd with broom, And high rocks throw mildly On the blanch'd sands a gloom; Up the still, glistening beaches, Up the creeks we will hie, Over banks of bright seaweed The ebb-tide leaves dry. We will gaze, from the sand-hills, At the white, sleeping town; At the church on the hill-side-- And then come back down. Singing: "There dwells a lov'd one, But cruel is she! She left lonely forever The kings of the sea." MATTHEW ARNOLD. THE BANKS O' DOON. "The Banks o' Doon," by Robert Burns (1759-96). Bonnie Doon is in the southwestern part of Scotland. Robert Burns's old home it close to it. The house has low walls, a thatched roof, and only two rooms. Alloway Kirk and the two bridges so famous in Robert Burns's verse are near by. This is an enchanted land, and the Scotch people for miles around Ayr speak of the poet with sincere affection. Burns, more than any other poet, has thrown the enchantment of poetry over his own locality. Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon, How can ye blume sae fair! How can ye chant, ye little birds, And I sae fu' o' care. Thou'lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird That sings upon the bough; Thou minds me o' the happy days When my fause luve was true. Thou'lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird That sings beside thy mate; For sae I sat, and sae I sang, And wist na o' my fate. Aft hae I rov'd by bonnie Doon, To see the woodbine twine, And ilka bird sang o' its love, And sae did I o' mine. Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose Frae off its thorny tree; And my fause luver staw the rose, But left the thorn wi' me. ROBERT BURNS. THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS. Oft in the stilly night Ere slumber's chain has bound me, Fond Memory brings the light Of other days around me: The smiles, the tears Of boyhood's years, The words of love then spoken; The eyes that shone, Now dimmed and gone, The cheerful hearts now broken! Thus in the stilly night Ere slumber's chain has bound me, Sad Memory brings the light Of other days around me. When I remember all The friends so link'd together I've seen around me fall Like leaves in wintry weather, I feel like one Who treads alone Some banquet-hall deserted, Whose lights are fled, Whose garlands dead, And all but he departed! Thus in the stilly night Ere slumber's chain has bound me, Sad Memory brings the light Of other days around me. THOMAS MOORE. MY OWN SHALL COME TO ME. If John Burroughs (1837-) had never written any other poem than "My Own Shall Come to Me," he would have stood to all ages as one of the greatest of American poets. The poem is most characteristic of the tall, majestic, slow-going poet and naturalist. There is no greater line in Greek or English literature than "I stand amid the eternal ways." Serene I fold my hands and wait, Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea. I rave no more 'gainst time or fate, For lo! my own shall come to me. I stay my haste, I make delays, For what avails this eager pace? I stand amid the eternal ways, And what is mine shall know my face. Asleep, awake, by night or day The friends I seek are seeking me; No wind can drive my bark astray, Nor change the tide of destiny. What matter if I stand alone? I wait with joy the coming years; My heart shall reap when it has sown, And gather up its fruit of tears. The stars come nightly to the sky; The tidal wave comes to the sea; Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high, Can keep my own away from me. The waters know their own and draw The brook that springs in yonder heights; So flows the good with equal law Unto the soul of pure delights. JOHN BURROUGHS. ODE TO A SKYLARK. "Ode to a Skylark," by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), is usually assigned to "grammar grades" of schools. It is included here out of respect to a boy of eleven years who was more impressed with these lines than with any other lines in any poem: "Like a poet hidden, In the light of thought Singing songs unbidden Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not." Hail to thee, blithe spirit-- Bird thou never wert-- That from heaven or near it Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest, Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar and soaring ever singest. In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are brightening, Thou dost float and run, Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. The pale purple even Melts around thy flight; Like a star of heaven, In the broad daylight Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight. All the earth and air With thy voice is loud, As, when night is bare, From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed. What thou art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow-clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see As from thy presence showers a rain of melody:-- Like a poet hidden In the light of thought; Singing hymns unbidden, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not. Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. Chorus hymeneal Or triumphal chaunt, Matched with thine, would be all But an empty vaunt-- A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains? What shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow, The world should listen then, as I am listening now! PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. THE SANDS OF DEE. I have often had the pleasure of riding across the coast from Chester, England, to Rhyl, on the north coast of Wales, where stretch "The Sands of Dee" (Charles Kingsley, 1819-75). These purple sands at low tide stretch off into the sea miles away, and are said to be full of quicksands. "O Mary, go and call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, Across the sands of Dee." The western wind was wild and dark with foam And all alone went she. The western tide crept up along the sand, And o'er and o'er the sand, And round and round the sand, As far as eye could see. The rolling mist came down and hid the land; And never home came she. Oh! is it weed, or fish, or floating hair,-- A tress of golden hair, A drownèd maiden's hair, Above the nets at sea? Was never salmon yet that shone so fair Among the stakes on Dee. They rowed her in across the rolling foam, The cruel crawling foam, The cruel hungry foam, To her grave beside the sea. But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home Across the sands of Dee. CHARLES KINGSLEY. A WISH. "A Wish" (by Samuel Rogers, 1763-1855) and "Lucy" (by Wordsworth, 1770-1850) are two gems that can be valued only for the spirit of quiet and modesty diffused by them. Mine be a cot beside the hill; A bee-hive's hum shall soothe my ear; A willowy brook that turns a mill With many a fall shall linger near. The swallow, oft, beneath my thatch Shall twitter from her clay-built nest; Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch, And share my meal, a welcome guest. Around my ivied porch shall spring Each fragrant flower that drinks the dew; And Lucy, at her wheel, shall sing In russet gown and apron blue. The village church among the trees, Where first our marriage-vows were given, With merry peals shall swell the breeze And point with taper spire to Heaven. S. ROGERS. LUCY. She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove; A maid whom there were none to praise, And very few to love. A violet by a mossy stone Half-hidden from the eye! Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky. She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and, oh, The difference to me! WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. SOLITUDE. Happy the man, whose wish and care A few paternal acres bound, Content to breathe his native air In his own ground. Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, Whose flocks supply him with attire; Whose trees in summer yield him shade, In winter fire. Blest, who can unconcern'dly find Hours, days, and years slide soft away In health of body, peace of mind, Quiet by day, Sound sleep by night; study and ease Together mixt, sweet recreation, And innocence, which most does please With meditation. Thus let me live, unseen, unknown; Thus unlamented let me die; Steal from the world, and not a stone Tell where I lie. ALEXANDER POPE. JOHN ANDERSON "John Anderson," by Robert Burns (1759-96). This poem is included to please several teachers. John Anderson, my jo, John, When we were first acquent Your locks were like the raven, Your bonnie brow was brent; But now your brow is bald, John, Your locks are like the snow; But blessings on your frosty pow, John Anderson, my jo. John Anderson, my jo, John, We clamb the hill thegither, And mony a canty day, John, We've had wi' ane anither; Now we maun totter down, John, But hand in hand we'll go, And sleep thegither at the foot, John Anderson, my jo. ROBERT BURNS. THE GOD OF MUSIC. "The God of Music," by Edith M. Thomas, an Ohio poetess now living. In this sonnet the poetess has touched the power of Wordsworth or Keats and placed herself among the immortals. The God of Music dwelleth out of doors. All seasons through his minstrelsy we meet, Breathing by field and covert haunting-sweet From organ-lofts in forests old he pours: A solemn harmony: on leafy floors To smooth autumnal pipes he moves his feet, Or with the tingling plectrum of the sleet In winter keen beats out his thrilling scores. Leave me the reed unplucked beside the stream. And he will stoop and fill it with the breeze; Leave me the viol's frame in secret trees, Unwrought, and it shall wake a druid theme; Leave me the whispering shell on Nereid shores. The God of Music dwelleth out of doors. EDITH M. THOMAS. A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT. "A Musical Instrument" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61). This poem is the supreme masterpiece of Mrs. Browning. The prime thought in it is the sacrifice and pain that must go to make a poet of any genius. "The great god sighed for the cost and the pain." What was he doing, the great god Pan, Down in the reeds by the river? Spreading ruin and scattering ban, Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, And breaking the golden lilies afloat With the dragon-fly on the river. He tore out a reed, the great god Pan, From the deep cool bed of the river: The limpid water turbidly ran, And the broken lilies a-dying lay, And the dragon-fly had fled away, Ere he brought it out of the river. High on the shore sat the great god Pan, While turbidly flow'd the river; And hack'd and hew'd as a great god can, With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed, Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed To prove it fresh from the river. He cut it short, did the great god Pan (How tall it stood in the river!), Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man, Steadily from the outside ring, And notched the poor dry empty thing In holes, as he sat by the river. "This is the way," laugh'd the great god Pan (Laugh'd while he sat by the river), "The only way, since gods began To make sweet music, they could succeed." Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed He blew in power by the river. Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan! Piercing sweet by the river! Blinding sweet, O great god Pan! The sun on the hill forgot to die, And the lilies reviv'd, and the dragon-fly Came back to dream on the river. Yet half a beast is the great god Pan, To laugh as he sits by the river, Making a poet out of a man: The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,-- For the reed which grows nevermore again As a reed with the reeds in the river. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. THE BRIDES OF ENDERBY. "The Brides of Enderby," by Jean Ingelow (1830-97). This poem is very dramatic, and the music of the refrain has done much to make it popular. But the pathos is that which endears it. The old mayor climb'd the belfry tower, The ringers ran by two, by three; "Pull, if ye never pull'd before; Good ringers, pull your best," quoth he. "Play uppe, play uppe, O Boston bells! Ply all your changes, all your swells, Play uppe, 'The Brides of Enderby.'" Men say it was a stolen tyde-- The Lord that sent it, He knows all; But in myne ears doth still abide The message that the bells let fall: And there was naught of strange, beside The flight of mews and peewits pied By millions crouch'd on the old sea wall. I sat and spun within the doore, My thread brake off, I raised myne eyes; The level sun, like ruddy ore, Lay sinking in the barren skies; And dark against day's golden death She moved where Lindis wandereth, My sonne's faire wife, Elizabeth. "Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!" calling, Ere the early dews were falling, Farre away I heard her song, "Cusha! Cusha!" all along; Where the reedy Lindis floweth, Floweth, floweth, From the meads where melick groweth Faintly came her milking song-- "Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!" calling, "For the dews will soone be falling; Leave your meadow grasses mellow, Mellow, mellow; Quit your cowslips, cowslips yellow; Come uppe, Whitefoot, come uppe, Lightfoot; Quit the stalks of parsley hollow, Hollow, hollow; Come uppe, Jetty, rise and follow, From the clovers lift your head; Come uppe, Whitefoot, come uppe, Lightfoot, Come uppe, Jetty, rise and follow, Jetty, to the milking shed." If it be long ay, long ago, When I beginne to think howe long, Againe I hear the Lindis flow, Swift as an arrowe, sharpe and strong; And all the aire, it seemeth mee, Bin full of floating bells (sayth shee), That ring the tune of Enderby. Alle fresh the level pasture lay, And not a shadowe mote be seene, Save where full fyve good miles away The steeple tower'd from out the greene; And lo! the great bell farre and wide Was heard in all the country side That Saturday at eventide. The swanherds where their sedges are Mov'd on in sunset's golden breath, The shepherde lads I heard afarre, And my sonne's wife, Elizabeth; Till floating o'er the grassy sea Came downe that kyndly message free, The "Brides of Mavis Enderby." Then some look'd uppe into the sky, And all along where Lindis flows To where the goodly vessels lie, And where the lordly steeple shows. They sayde, "And why should this thing be? What danger lowers by land or sea? They ring the tune of Enderby! "For evil news from Mablethorpe, Of pyrate galleys warping down; For shippes ashore beyond the scorpe, They have not spar'd to wake the towne: But while the west bin red to see, And storms be none, and pyrates flee, Why ring 'The Brides of Enderby'?" I look'd without, and lo! my sonne Came riding downe with might and main; He rais'd a shout as he drew on, Till all the welkin rang again, "Elizabeth! Elizabeth!" (A sweeter woman ne'er drew breath Than my sonne's wife, Elizabeth.) "The olde sea wall," he cried, "is downe, The rising tide comes on apace, And boats adrift in yonder towne Go sailing uppe the market-place." He shook as one that looks on death: "God save you, mother!" straight he saith "Where is my wife, Elizabeth?" "Good sonne, where Lindis winds her way With her two bairns I marked her long; And ere yon bells beganne to play Afar I heard her milking song." He looked across the grassy lea, To right, to left, "Ho, Enderby!" They rang "The Brides of Enderby!" With that he cried and beat his breast; For, lo! along the river's bed A mighty eygre rear'd his crest, And uppe the Lindis raging sped. It swept with thunderous noises loud; Shap'd like a curling snow-white cloud, Or like a demon in a shroud. And rearing Lindis backward press'd Shook all her trembling bankes amaine; Then madly at the eygre's breast Flung uppe her weltering walls again. Then bankes came downe with ruin and rout-- Then beaten foam flew round about-- Then all the mighty floods were out. So farre, so fast the eygre drave, The heart had hardly time to beat Before a shallow seething wave Sobb'd in the grasses at oure feet: The feet had hardly time to flee Before it brake against the knee, And all the world was in the sea. Upon the roofe we sate that night, The noise of bells went sweeping by; I mark'd the lofty beacon light Stream from the church tower, red and high-- A lurid mark and dread to see; And awsome bells they were to mee, That in the dark rang "Enderby." They rang the sailor lads to guide From roofe to roofe who fearless row'd; And I--my sonne was at my side, And yet the ruddy beacon glow'd: And yet he moan'd beneath his breath, "O come in life, or come in death! O lost! my love, Elizabeth." And didst thou visit him no more? Thou didst, thou didst, my daughter deare The waters laid thee at his doore, Ere yet the early dawn was clear. Thy pretty bairns in fast embrace, The lifted sun shone on thy face, Downe drifted to thy dwelling-place. That flow strew'd wrecks about the grass, That ebbe swept out the flocks to sea; A fatal ebbe and flow, alas! To manye more than myne and mee; But each will mourn his own (she saith); And sweeter woman ne'er drew breath Than my sonne's wife, Elizabeth. I shall never hear her more By the reedy Lindis shore, "Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!" calling, Ere the early dews be falling; I shall never hear her song, "Cusha! Cusha!" all along Where the sunny Lindis floweth, Goeth, floweth; From the meads where melick groweth, When the water winding down, Onward floweth to the town. I shall never see her more Where the reeds and rushes quiver, Shiver, quiver; Stand beside the sobbing river, Sobbing, throbbing, in its falling To the sandy lonesome shore; I shall never hear her calling, "Leave your meadow grasses mellow, Mellow, mellow; Quit your cowslips, cowslips yellow; "Come uppe, Whitefoot, come uppe, Lightfoot; Quit your pipes of parsley hollow, Hollow, hollow; Come uppe, Lightfoot, rise and follow; Lightfoot, Whitefoot, From your clovers lift the head; Come uppe, Jetty, follow, follow, Jetty, to the milking shed." JEAN INGELOW. THE LYE. "The Lye," by Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618), is one of the strongest and most appealing poems a teacher can read to her pupils when teaching early American history. The poem is full of magnificent lines, such as "Go, soul, the body's guest." The poem never lacks an attentive audience of young people when correlated with the study of North Carolina and Sir Walter Raleigh. The solitary, majestic character of Sir Walter Raleigh, his intrepidity while undergoing tortures inflicted by a cowardly king, the ring of indignation--- all these make a weapon for him stronger than the ax that beheaded him. In this poem he "has the last word." Goe, soule, the bodie's guest, Upon a thanklesse arrant; Feare not to touche the best-- The truth shall be thy warrant! Goe, since I needs must dye, And give the world the lye. Goe tell the court it glowes And shines like rotten wood; Goe tell the church it showes What's good, and doth no good; If church and court reply, Then give them both the lye. Tell potentates they live Acting by others' actions-- Not loved unlesse they give, Not strong but by their factions; If potentates reply, Give potentates the lye. Tell men of high condition, That rule affairs of state, Their purpose is ambition, Their practice only hate; And if they once reply, Then give them all the lye. Tell zeale it lacks devotion; Tell love it is but lust; Tell time it is but motion; Tell flesh it is but dust; And wish them not reply, For thou must give the lye. Tell wit how much it wrangles In tickle points of nicenesse; Tell wisdome she entangles Herselfe in over-wisenesse; And if they do reply, Straight give them both the lye. Tell physicke of her boldnesse; Tell skill it is pretension; Tell charity of coldnesse; Tell law it is contention; And as they yield reply, So give them still the lye. Tell fortune of her blindnesse; Tell nature of decay; Tell friendship of unkindnesse; Tell justice of delay; And if they dare reply, Then give them all the lye. Tell arts they have no soundnesse, But vary by esteeming; Tell schooles they want profoundnesse, And stand too much on seeming; If arts and schooles reply, Give arts and schooles the lye. So, when thou hast, as I Commanded thee, done blabbing-- Although to give the lye Deserves no less than stabbing-- Yet stab at thee who will, No stab the soule can kill. SIR WALTER RALEIGH. L'ENVOI. "L'Envoi," by Rudyard Kipling, is a favourite on account of its sweeping assertion of the individual's right to self-development. When Earth's last picture is painted, and the tubes are twisted and dried, When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died, We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it--lie down for an æon or two, Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall set us to work anew! And those who were good shall be happy: they shall sit in a golden chair; They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comet's hair; They shall find real saints to draw from--Magdalene, Peter, and Paul; They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all! And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame; And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame; But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star, Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They Are! RUDYARD KIPLING CONTENTMENT "Contentment," by Edward Dyer (1545-1607). This poem holds much to comfort and control people who are shut up to the joys of meditation--people to whom the world of activity is closed. To be independent of things material--this is the soul's pleasure. My mind to me a kingdom is; Such perfect joy therein I find As far excels all earthly bliss That God or Nature hath assigned; Though much I want that most would have, Yet still my mind forbids to crave. Content I live; this is my stay,-- I seek no more than may suffice. I press to bear no haughty sway; Look, what I lack my mind supplies. Lo, thus I triumph like a king, Content with that my mind doth bring. I laugh not at another's loss, I grudge not at another's gain; No worldly wave my mind can toss; I brook that is another's bane. I fear no foe, nor fawn on friend; I loathe not life, nor dread mine end. My wealth is health and perfect ease; My conscience clear my chief defense; I never seek by bribes to please Nor by desert to give offense. Thus do I live, thus will I die; Would all did so as well as I! EDWARD DYER. THE HARP THAT ONCE THROUGH TARA'S HALLS. The harp that once through Tara's halls The soul of music shed, Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls As if that soul were fled. So sleeps the pride of former days, So glory's thrill is o'er, And hearts, that once beat high for praise, Now feel that pulse no more. No more to chiefs and ladies bright The harp of Tara swells; The chord alone, that breaks at night, Its tale of ruin tells. Thus Freedom now so seldom wakes, The only throb she gives Is when some heart indignant breaks, To show that still she lives. THOMAS MOORE. THE OLD OAKEN BUCKET "The Old Oaken Bucket," by Samuel Woodworth (1785-1848), is a poem we love because it is an elegant expression of something very dear and homely. How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood, When fond recollection presents them to view! The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled wild-wood, And every loved spot which my infancy knew! The wide-spreading pond, and the mill that stood by it, The bridge, and the rock where the cataract fell, The cot of my father, the dairy-house nigh it, And e'en the rude bucket that hung in the well-- The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, The moss-covered bucket which hung in the well. That moss-covered vessel I hailed as a treasure, For often at noon, when returned from the field, I found it the source of an exquisite pleasure, The purest and sweetest that nature can yield. How ardent I seized it, with hands that were glowing, And quick to the white-pebbled bottom it fell; Then soon, with the emblem of truth overflowing, And dripping with coolness, it rose from the well-- The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, The moss-covered bucket arose from the well. How sweet from the green mossy brim to receive it As poised on the curb it inclined to my lips! Not a full blushing goblet could tempt me to leave it, The brightest that beauty or revelry sips. And now, far removed from the loved habitation, The tear of regret will intrusively swell. As fancy reverts to my father's plantation, And sighs for the bucket that hangs in the well-- The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, The moss-covered bucket that hangs in the well! SAMUEL WOODWORTH. THE RAVEN. "The Raven," by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49), is placed here because so many college men speak of it at once as the great poem of their boyhood. The poem caught me when a child by its refrain and weird picturesqueness. It has never outgrown its mechanical charm. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore-- While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door" 'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door-- Only this, and nothing more." Ah! distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor; Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for the lost Lenore-- For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore-- Nameless here for evermore. And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, "'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door-- Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door: This it is, and nothing more." Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, "Sir," said I, "or madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is, I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you." Here I opened wide the door: Darkness there, and nothing more. Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore!" This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" Merely this, and nothing more. Back into my chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon again I heard a rapping, something louder than before: "Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice; Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore-- Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore. 'Tis the wind, and nothing more." Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately Raven, of the saintly days of yore; Not the least obeisance made he, not a minute stopped or stayed he; But with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door-- Perched above a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door-- Perched, and sat, and nothing more. Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore; "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure, no craven; Ghastly, grim, and ancient Raven, wandering from the nightly shore, Tell me what thy lordly name is on the night's Plutonian shore?" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer, little meaning, little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door-- Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door With such a name as "Nevermore." But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour; Nothing further then he uttered, not a feather then he fluttered, Till I scarcely more than muttered--"Other friends have flown before, On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before." Then the bird said, "Nevermore." Startled by the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, "Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store, Caught from some unhappy master, whom unmerciful disaster Followed fast and followed faster, till his songs one burden bore-- Till the dirges of his hope this melancholy burden bore-- Of 'Never, nevermore,'" But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling, Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust, and door; Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy into fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore-- What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore Meant in croaking "Nevermore." Thus I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core; This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining On the cushion's velvet lining, that the lamp-light gloated o'er, But whose velvet violet lining, with the lamp-light gloating o'er, She shall press, ah, nevermore! Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer Swung by seraphim, whose footfalls twinkled on the tufted floor. "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee--by these angels He hath sent thee Respite--respite and nepenthe from my memories of Lenore! Quaff, oh, quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." "Prophet," said I, "thing of evil--prophet still, if bird or devil! Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore Desolate, yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted, On this home by horror haunted--tell me truly, I implore, Is there--_is_ there balm in Gilead?--tell me, tell me, I implore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." "Prophet," said I, "thing of evil!--prophet still if bird or devil! By that heaven that bends above us--by that God we both adore-- Tell this soul, with sorrow laden, if, within the distant Aiden It shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom the angels name Lenore! Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore?" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." "Be that our sign of parting, bird or fiend," I shrieked, upstarting-- "Get thee back into the tempest and the night's Plutonian shore; Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken, Leave my loneliness unbroken--quit the bust above my door, Take thy beak from out my heart and take thy form from off my door!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting, On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamp-light o'er him streaming, throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul from out that shadow, that lies floating on the floor, Shall be lifted--nevermore! EDGAR ALLAN POE. ARNOLD VON WINKLERIED. "Make way for liberty!" he cried, Make way for liberty, and died. In arms the Austrian phalanx stood, A living wall, a human wood,-- A wall, where every conscious stone Seemed to its kindred thousands grown. A rampart all assaults to bear, Till time to dust their frames should wear; So still, so dense the Austrians stood, A living wall, a human wood. Impregnable their front appears, All horrent with projected spears. Whose polished points before them shine, From flank to flank, one brilliant line, Bright as the breakers' splendours run Along the billows to the sun. Opposed to these a hovering band Contended for their fatherland; Peasants, whose new-found strength had broke From manly necks the ignoble yoke, And beat their fetters into swords, On equal terms to fight their lords; And what insurgent rage had gained, In many a mortal fray maintained; Marshalled, once more, at Freedom's call, They came to conquer or to fall, Where he who conquered, he who fell, Was deemed a dead or living Tell, Such virtue had that patriot breathed, So to the soil his soul bequeathed, That wheresoe'er his arrows flew, Heroes in his own likeness grew, And warriors sprang from every sod, Which his awakening footstep trod. And now the work of life and death Hung on the passing of a breath; The fire of conflict burned within, The battle trembled to begin; Yet, while the Austrians held their ground, Point for attack was nowhere found; Where'er the impatient Switzers gazed, The unbroken line of lances blazed; That line 'twere suicide to meet, And perish at their tyrant's feet; How could they rest within their graves, And leave their homes, the homes of slaves! Would not they feel their children tread, With clanging chains, above their head? It must not be; this day, this hour, Annihilates the invader's power; All Switzerland is in the field; She will not fly,--she cannot yield,-- She must not fall; her better fate Here gives her an immortal date. Few were the numbers she could boast, But every freeman was a host, And felt as 'twere a secret known That one should turn the scale alone, While each unto himself was he On whose sole arm hung victory. It did depend on one indeed; Behold him,--Arnold Winkelried; There sounds not to the trump of fame The echo of a nobler name. Unmarked he stood amid the throng, In rumination deep and long, Till you might see, with sudden grace, The very thought come o'er his face; And, by the motion of his form, Anticipate the bursting storm, And, by the uplifting of his brow, Tell where the bolt would strike, and how. But 'twas no sooner thought than done! The field was in a moment won; "Make way for liberty!" he cried, Then ran, with arms extended wide, As if his dearest friend to clasp; Ten spears he swept within his grasp. "Make way for liberty!" he cried. Their keen points crossed from side to side; He bowed amidst them like a tree, And thus made way for liberty. Swift to the breach his comrades fly, "Make way for liberty!" they cry, And through the Austrian phalanx dart, As rushed the spears through Arnold's heart. While instantaneous as his fall, Rout, ruin, panic, seized them all; An earthquake could not overthrow A city with a surer blow. Thus Switzerland again was free; Thus Death made way for Liberty! JAMES MONTGOMERY. LIFE, I KNOW NOT WHAT THOU ART. Life! I know not what thou art. But know that thou and I must part; And when, or how, or where we met, I own to me's a secret yet. Life! we've been long together Through pleasant and through cloudy weather; Tis hard to part when friends are dear-- Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear; --Then steal away, give little warning, Choose thine own time; Say not Good Night,--but in some brighter clime Bid me Good Morning. A.L. BARBAULD. MERCY. "Mercy," an excerpt from "The Merchant of Venice," "Polonius' Advice," from "Hamlet," and "Antony's Speech," from "Julius Cæsar" (all fragments from Shakespeare, 1564-1616), find a place in this book because a well-known New York teacher--one who is unremitting in his efforts to raise the good taste and character of his pupils--says: "A book of poetry could not be complete without these extracts." The quality of mercy is not strain'd; It droppeth as the gentle rain from Heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless'd; It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes: 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown: His scepter shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above his sceptered sway; It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God's When mercy seasons justice. SHAKESPEARE ("Merchant of Venice"). POLONIUS' ADVICE. See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportion'd thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar: The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, Bear 't that th' opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice: Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy: For the apparel oft proclaims the man. Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all: to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. SHAKESPEARE ("Hamlet"). A FRAGMENT FROM MARK ANTONY'S SPEECH. This was the noblest Roman of them all: All the conspirators, save only he, Did that they did in envy of great Cæsar; He only, in a general honest thought And common good to all, made one of them. His life was gentle; and the elements So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up, And say to all the world, "This was a man!" SHAKESPEARE ("Julius Cæsar"). THE SKYLARK. Bird of the wilderness, Blithesome and cumberless, Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea! Emblem of happiness, Blest is thy dwelling-place-- Oh, to abide in the desert with thee! Wild is thy lay and loud, Far in the downy cloud, Love gives it energy, love gave it birth. Where, on thy dewy wing, Where art thou journeying? Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth. O'er fell and fountain sheen, O'er moor and mountain green, O'er the red streamer that heralds the day, Over the cloudlet dim, Over the rainbow's rim, Musical cherub, soar, singing, away! Then, when the gloaming comes, Low in the heather blooms Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be! Emblem of happiness, Blest is thy dwelling-place-- Oh, to abide in the desert with thee! THOMAS HOGG. THE CHOIR INVISIBLE. "The Choir Invisible" (by George Eliot, 1819-80) is a fitting exposition in poetry of this "Shakespeare of prose." O, may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence; live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn Of miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge men's minds To vaster issues. May I reach That purest heaven,--be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony, Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love, Beget the smiles that have no cruelty, Be the sweet presence of good diffused, And in diffusion ever more intense! So shall I join the choir invisible, Whose music is the gladness of the world. GEORGE ELIOT. THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US. "The World Is Too Much With Us," by Wordsworth (1770-1850), is perhaps the greatest sonnet ever written. It is true that "the eyes of the soul" are blinded by a surfeit of worldly "goods." "I went to the Lake District" (England), said John Burroughs, "to see what kind of a country could produce a Wordsworth." Of course he found simple houses, simple people, barren moors, heather-clad mountains, wild flowers, calm lakes, plain, rugged simplicity. The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours. We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This sea, that bares her bosom to the moon, The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers-- For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn, So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus, rising from the sea, Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. ON HIS BLINDNESS. "Sonnet on His Blindness" (by John Milton, 1608-74). This is the most stately and pathetic sonnet in existence. The soul enduring enforced idleness and loss of power without repining. Inactivity made to serve a higher end. "All service ranks the same with God! There is no first or last." When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide, Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest He, returning, chide; Doth God exact day-labour, light denied? I fondly ask: but Patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need Either man's work, or His own gifts; who best Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best; His state Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest; They also serve who only stand and wait. JOHN MILTON. SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT. "She Was a Phantom of Delight" (by William Wordsworth, 1770-1850) is included here because it is a picture of woman as she should be, not made dainty by finery, but by fine ideals-- "And not too good For human nature's daily food." She was a Phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight; A lovely Apparition, sent To be a moment's ornament; Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair; Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair: But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful Dawn. A dancing Shape, an Image gay, To haunt, to startle, and waylay. I saw her upon nearer view, A Spirit, yet a Woman too! Her household motions light and free, And steps of virgin liberty; A countenance in which did meet Sweet records, promises as sweet; A Creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food; For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles. And now I see with eye serene The very pulse of the machine; A Being breathing thoughtful breath, A Traveller between life and death: The reason firm, the temperate will, Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; A perfect Woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command; And yet a Spirit still, and bright, With something of angelic light. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (Gray, 1716-71). I once drove from Windsor Castle through Eton, down the long hedge-bound road which passes the estate of William Penn's descendants to Stoke Pogis, the little churchyard where this poem was written. They were trimming a great yew-tree under which Gray was said to have written this poem. The scene is one of peace and quiet. The "elegy" was a favourite form of poem with the ancients, but Gray is said to have reached the climax among poets in this style of verse. The great line of the poem is: "The path of glory leads but to the grave." It would almost seem that poetry has for its greatest mission the lesson of a proper humility. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds. Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r The moping owl does to the moon complain Of such as, wandering near her secret bow'r, Molest her ancient solitary reign. Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap, Each in his narrow cell forever laid, The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep. The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care: No children run to lisp their sire's return, Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share. Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke; How jocund did they drive their team afield! How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke! Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the Poor. The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike th' inevitable hour. The paths of glory lead but to the grave. Forgive, ye Proud, th' involuntary fault If Memory to these no trophies raise, Where thro' the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. Can storied urn or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust, Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death? Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire, Hands that the rod of empire might have sway'd, Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre. But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll; Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage, And froze the genial current of the soul. Full many a gem of purest ray serene, The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear: Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air. Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood; Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood. Th' applause of listening senates to command, The threats of pain and ruin to despise, To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, And read their history in a nation's eyes, Their lot forbad: nor circumscribed alone Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined Forbad to wade through slaughter to a throne, And shut the gates of mercy on mankind, The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride With incense, kindled at the Muse's flame. Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray; Along the cool sequester'd vale of life They kept the noiseless tenour of their way. Yet e'en those bones from insult to protect Some frail memorial still erected nigh, With uncouth rhimes and shapeless sculpture deck'd, Implores the passing tribute of a sigh. Their name, their years, spelt by th' unlettered Muse, The place of fame and elegy supply. And many a holy text around she strews That teach the rustic moralist to die. For who to dumb forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing, ling'ring look behind? On some fond breast the parting soul relies, Some pious drops the closing eye requires; E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries, E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires. For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonour'd dead, Dost in these lines their artless tale relate; If chance, by lonely Contemplation led, Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate, Haply some hoary-headed swain may say, "Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn Brushing with hasty steps the dews away, To meet the sun upon the upland lawn. "There at the foot of yonder nodding beech That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high, His listless length at noon-tide would he stretch, And pore upon the brook that babbles by. "Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove; Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn, Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love. "One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill, Along the heath, and near his favourite tree; Another came; nor yet beside the rill, Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he. "The next with dirges due in sad array Slow thro' the church-way path we saw him borne. Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay, Graved on the stone beneath yon agèd thorn." THE EPITAPH. Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth A Youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown; Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth, And Melancholy mark'd him for her own. Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere, Heaven did a recompense as largely send: He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear: He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a friend. No farther seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose,) The bosom of his Father and his God. THOMAS GRAY. RABBI BEN EZRA "Rabbi Ben Ezra" (by Robert Browning, 1812-89). Youth is for dispute and age for counsel; each year, each period of a man's life is but the necessary step to the next. Youth is an uncertain thing to bank on. "Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life for which the first was made." "Rabbi Ben Ezra" is a plea for each period in life. Aspiration is the keynote. " ... Trust God; see all, nor be afraid!" Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made: Our times are in His hand Who saith, "A whole I plann'd, Youth shows but half; trust God: see all nor be afraid!" Not that, amassing flowers, Youth sigh'd, "Which rose make ours, Which lily leave and then as best recall?" Not that, admiring stars, It yearn'd, "Nor Jove, nor Mars; Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!" Not for such hopes and fears Annulling youth's brief years, Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark! Rather I prize the doubt Low kinds exist without, Finish'd and finite clods, untroubled by a spark. Poor vaunt of life indeed, Were man but formed to feed On joy, to solely seek and find and feast: Such feasting ended, then As sure an end to men; Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-cramm'd beast? Rejoice we are allied To That which doth provide And not partake, effect and not receive! A spark disturbs our clod; Nearer we hold of God Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe. Then, welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting, that bids nor sit nor stand, but go! Be our joys three parts pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe! For thence,--a paradox Which comforts while it mocks,-- Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail: What I aspired to be, And was not, comforts me: A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale. What is he but a brute Whose flesh has soul to suit, Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play? To man, propose this test-- Thy body at its best, How far can that project thy soul on its lone way? Yet gifts should prove their use: I own the Past profuse Of power each side, perfection every turn: Eyes, ears took in their dole, Brain treasured up the whole: Should not the heart beat once "How good to live and learn?" Not once beat "Praise be Thine! I see the whole design, I, who saw power, see now love perfect too: Perfect I call Thy plan: Thanks that I was a man! Maker, remake, complete,--I trust what Thou shalt do!" For pleasant is this flesh, Our soul, in its rose-mesh Pull'd ever to the earth, still yearns for rest; Would we some prize might hold To match those manifold Possessions of the brute,--gain most, as we did best! Let us not always say, "Spite of this flesh to-day I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!" As the bird wings and sings, Let us cry, "All good things Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!" Therefore I summon age To grant youth's heritage, Life's struggle having so far reached its term: Thence shall I pass, approved A man, for aye removed From the developed brute; a god though in the germ. And I shall thereupon Take rest, ere I be gone Once more on my adventure brave and new: Fearless and unperplex'd, When I wage battle next, What weapons to select, what armour to indue. Youth ended, I shall try My gain or loss thereby; Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold: And I shall weigh the same, Give life its praise or blame: Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old. For note, when evening shuts, A certain moment cuts The deed off, calls the glory from the gray: A whisper from the west Shoots--"Add this to the rest, Take it and try its worth: here dies another day." So, still within this life, Though lifted o'er its strife, Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last, "This rage was right i' the main, That acquiescence vain: The Future I may face now I have proved the Past" For more is not reserved To man, with soul just nerved To act to-morrow what he learns to-day: Here, work enough to watch The Master work, and catch Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play. As it was better, youth Should strive, through acts uncouth, Toward making, than repose on aught found made: So, better, age, exempt From strife, should know, than tempt Further. Thou waitedest age: wait death nor be afraid! Enough now, if the Right And Good and Infinite Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own, With knowledge absolute, Subject to no dispute From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone. Be there, for once and all, Sever'd great minds from small, Announced to each his station in the Past! Was I, the world arraigned, Were they, my soul disdain'd, Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last! Now, who shall arbitrate? Ten men love what I hate, Shun what I follow, slight what I receive; Ten, who in ears and eyes Match me: we all surmise, They this thing, and I that: whom shall my soul believe? Not on the vulgar mass Call'd "work," must sentence pass, Things done, that took the eye and had the price; O'er which, from level stand, The low world laid its hand, Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice: But all, the world's coarse thumb And finger fail'd to plumb, So pass'd in making up the main account; All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weigh'd not as his work, yet swell'd the man's amount: Thoughts hardly to be pack'd Into a narrow act, Fancies that broke through language and escaped, All I could never be, All, men ignored in me, This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped. Ay, note that Potter's wheel, That metaphor! and feel Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,-- Thou, to whom fools propound, When the wine makes its round, "Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!" Fool! All that is, at all, Lasts ever, past recall; Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure; What enter'd into thee, _That_ was, is, and shall be: Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure. He fix'd thee 'mid this dance Of plastic circumstance, This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest Machinery just meant To give thy soul its bent, Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impress'd. What though the earlier grooves Which ran the laughing loves Around thy base, no longer pause and press? What though, about thy rim, Scull-things in order grim Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress? Look not thou down but up! To uses of a cup, The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal, The new wine's foaming flow, The master's lips aglow! Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what need'st thou with earth's wheel? But I need, now as then, Thee, God, who mouldest men; And since, not even while the whirl was worst Did I,--to the wheel of life With shapes and colours rife, Bound dizzily,--mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst: So, take and use Thy work: Amend what flaws may lurk, What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim! My times be in Thy hand! Perfect the cup as plann'd! Lest age approve of youth, and death complete the same! ROBERT BROWNING. PROSPICE. "Prospice," by Robert Browning (1812-89), is the greatest death song ever written. It is a battle-song and a pæan of victory. "The journey is done, the summit attained, And the strong man must go." "I would hate that Death bandaged my eyes and forebore, And bade me creep past." "No! let me taste the whole of it" "The reward of all." This poem is included in this book because these lines are enough to reconcile any one to any fate. Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat, The mist in _my_ face, When the snows begin, and the blasts denote I am nearing the place, The power of the night, the press of the storm, The post of the foe; Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form, Yet the strong man must go: For the journey is done and the summit attained, And the barriers fall, Though a battle's to fight ere a guerdon be gained, The reward of it all. I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more. The best and the last! I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forebore, And bade me creep past. No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers The heroes of old, Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears Of pain, darkness, and cold. For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, The black minute's at end. And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave Shall dwindle, shall blend, Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, Then a light, then thy breast, O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, And with God be the rest! ROBERT BROWNING. RECESSIONAL. The "Recessional" (by Rudyard Kipling, 1865-) is one of the most popular poems of this century. It is a warning to an age and a nation drunk with power, a rebuke to materialistic tendencies and boastfulness, a protest against pride. "Reverence is the master-key of knowledge." God of our fathers, known of old-- Lord of our far-flung battle-line-- Beneath whose awful Hand we hold Dominion over palm and pine-- Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget--lest we forget! The tumult and the shouting dies-- The captains and the kings depart-- Still stands Thine ancient Sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart. Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget--lest we forget! Far-called our navies melt away-- On dune and headland sinks the fire-- Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, Lest we forget--lest we forget! If, drunk with sight of power, we loose Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe-- Such boasting as the Gentiles use Or lesser breeds without the Law-- Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget--lest we forget! For heathen heart that puts her trust In reeking tube and iron shard-- All valiant dust that builds on dust, And guarding calls not Thee to guard-- For frantic boast and foolish word, Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord! Amen. RUDYARD KIPLING. OZYMANDIAS OF EGYPT. "Ozymandias of Egypt," by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). This sonnet is a rebuke to the insolent pride of kings and empires. It is extremely picturesque. It finds a place here because more elderly scholars of good judgment are pleased with it. I remember an old gray-haired scholar in Chicago who often recited it to his friends merely because it touched his fancy. I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away;" PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. MORTALITY. "Mortality" (by William Knox, 1789-1825) is always quoted as Lincoln's favourite poem. O why should the spirit of mortal be proud? Like a fast-flitting meteor, a fast-flying cloud, A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, He passes from life to his rest in the grave. The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade, Be scattered around and together be laid; And the young and the old, and the low and the high, Shall moulder to dust and together shall lie. The child that a mother attended and loved, The mother that infant's affection that proved, The husband that mother and infant that blessed, Each, all, are away to their dwelling of rest. The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye, Shone beauty and pleasure,--her triumphs are by; And the memory of those that beloved her and praised Are alike from the minds of the living erased. The hand of the king that the scepter hath borne, The brow of the priest that the miter hath worn, The eye of the sage, and the heart of the brave, Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave. The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap, The herdsman who climbed with his goats to the steep, The beggar that wandered in search of his bread, Have faded away like the grass that we tread. The saint that enjoyed the communion of heaven, The sinner that dared to remain unforgiven, The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just, Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust. So the multitude goes, like the flower and the weed That wither away to let others succeed; So the multitude comes, even those we behold, To repeat every tale that hath often been told. For we are the same that our fathers have been; We see the same sights that our fathers have seen,-- We drink the same stream, and we feel the same sun, And we run the same course that our fathers have run. The thoughts we are thinking, our fathers would think; From the death we are shrinking from, they too would shrink; To the life we are clinging to, they too would cling; But it speeds from the earth like a bird on the wing. They loved, but their story we cannot unfold; They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold; They grieved, but no wail from their slumbers may come; They enjoyed, but the voice of their gladness is dumb. They died, ay! they died! and we things that are now, Who walk on the turf that lies over their brow, Who make in their dwellings a transient abode, Meet the changes they met on their pilgrimage road. Yea! hope and despondence, and pleasure and pain, Are mingled together like sunshine and rain; And the smile and the tear, and the song and the dirge, Still follow each other, like surge upon surge. 'Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath, From the blossom of health to the paleness of death, From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud,-- O why should the spirit of mortal be proud? WILLIAM KNOX. ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S "HOMER." "On First Looking Into Chapman's 'Homer,'" by John Keats (1795-1821). The last four lines of this sonnet form the most tremendous climax in literature. The picture is as vivid as if done with a brush. Every great book, every great poem is a new world, an undiscovered country. Every learned person is a whole territory, a universe of new thought. Every one who does anything with a heart for it, every specialist every one, however simple, who is strenuous and genuine, is a "new discovery." Let us give credit to the smallest planet that is true to its own orbit. Much have I travelled in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne: Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific--and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise-- Silent, upon a peak in Darien. JOHN KEATS. HERVÉ RIEL. "Hervé Riel" (by Robert Browning, 1812-89) is a poem for older boys. Here is a hero who does a great deed simply as a part of his day's work. He puts no value on what he has done, because he could have done no other way. On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two, Did the English fight the French--woe to France! And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter through the blue, Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue, Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the Rance, With the English fleet in view. 'Twas the squadron that escaped, with the victor in full chase, First and foremost of the drove, in his great ship, Damfreville; Close on him fled, great and small, Twenty-two good ships in all; And they signalled to the place, "Help the winners of a race! Get us guidance, give us harbour, take us quick--or, quicker still, Here's the English can and will!" Then the pilots of the place put out brisk and leaped on board: "Why, what hope or chance have ships like these to pass?" laughed they; "Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the passage scarred and scored, Shall the _Formidable_ here, with her twelve and eighty guns, Think to make the river-mouth by the single narrow way, Trust to enter where 'tis ticklish for a craft of twenty tons. And with flow at full beside? Now 'tis slackest ebb of tide. Reach the mooring! Rather say, While rock stands or water runs, Not a ship will leave the bay!" Then was called a council straight; Brief and bitter the debate: "Here's the English at our heels; would you have them take in tow All that's left us of the fleet, linked together stern and bow, For a prize to Plymouth Sound?-- Better run the ships aground!" (Ended Damfreville his speech.) "Not a minute more to wait! Let the captains all and each Shove ashore, then blow up, burn the vessels on the beach! France must undergo her fate. "Give the word!"--But no such word Was ever spoke or heard; For up stood, for out stepped, for in struck amid all these-- A captain? A lieutenant? A mate--first, second, third? No such man of mark, and meet With his betters to compete! But a simple Breton sailor pressed by Tourville for the fleet-- A poor coasting pilot he, Hervé Riel, the Croisiekese. And "What mockery or malice have we here?" cries Hervé Riel: "Are you mad, you Malouins? Are you cowards, fools, or rogues? Talk to me of rocks and shoals, me who took the soundings, tell On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every swell, 'Twixt the offing here and Grève where the river disembogues? Are you bought by English gold? Is it love the lying's for? Morn and eve, night and day. Have I piloted your bay, Entered free and anchored fast at the foot of Solidor. Burn the fleet and ruin France? That were worse than fifty Hogues! Sirs, they know I speak the truth! Sirs, believe me there's a way! Only let me lead the line, Have the biggest ship to steer, Get this _Formidable_ clear, Make the others follow mine, And I lead them, most and least, by a passage I know well, Right to Solidor past Grève, And there lay them safe and sound; And if one ship misbehave, --Keel so much as grate the ground, Why, I've nothing but my life,--here's my head!" cries Hervé Riel. Not a minute more to wait "Steer us in, then, small and great! Take the helm, lead the line, save the squadron!" cried its chief. Captains, give the sailor place! He is Admiral, in brief. Still the north wind, by God's grace! See the noble fellow's face As the big ship, with a bound, Clears the entry like a hound, Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide sea's profound! See, safe through shoal and rock, How they follow in a flock, Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the ground, Not a spar that comes to grief! The peril, see, is past, All are harboured to the last, And just as Hervé Riel hollas "Anchor!"--sure as fate, Up the English come--too late! So, the storm subsides to calm: They see the green trees wave On the heights o'erlooking Grève. Hearts that bled are stanched with balm, "Just our rapture to enhance, Let the English rake the bay, Gnash their teeth and glare askance As they cannonade away! 'Neath rampired Solidor pleasant riding on the Rance!" How hope succeeds despair on each Captain's countenance! Out burst all with one accord, "This is Paradise for Hell! Let France, let France's King Thank the man that did the thing!" What a shout, and all one word, "Hervé Riel!" As he stepped in front once more, Not a symptom of surprise In the frank blue Breton eyes, Just the same man as before. Then said Damfreville, "My friend, I must speak out at the end, Though I find the speaking hard. Praise is deeper than the lips: You have saved the King his ships, You must name your own reward. 'Faith, our sun was near eclipse! Demand whate'er you will, France remains your debtor still. Ask to heart's content and have! or my name's not Damfreville." Then a beam of fun outbroke On the bearded mouth that spoke, As the honest heart laughed through Those frank eyes of Breton blue: "Since I needs must say my say, Since on board the duty's done, And from Malo Roads to Croisic Point, what is it but a run?-- Since 'tis ask and have, I may-- Since the others go ashore-- Come! A good whole holiday! Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the Belle Aurore!" That he asked and that he got,--nothing more. Name and deed alike are lost: Not a pillar nor a post In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell; Not a head in white and black On a single fishing smack, In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack All that France saved from the fight whence England bore the bell. Go to Paris: rank on rank Search the heroes flung pell-mell On the Louvre, face and flank! You shall look long enough ere you come to Hervé Riel. So, for better and for worse, Hervé Riel, accept my verse! In my verse, Hervé Riel, do thou once more Save the squadron, honour France, love thy wife the Belle Aurore! ROBERT BROWNING. THE PROBLEM. "The Problem" (by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-80) is quoted from one end of the world to the other. Emerson teaches one lesson above all others, that each soul must work out for itself its latent force, its own individual expression, and that with a "sad sincerity." "The bishop of the soul" can do no more. I like a church; I like a cowl; I love a prophet of the soul; And on my heart monastic aisles Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles: Yet not for all his faith can see Would I that cowlèd churchman be. Why should the vest on him allure, Which I could not on me endure? Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought; Never from lips of cunning fell The thrilling Delphic oracle; Out from the heart of nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old; The litanies of nations came, Like the volcano's tongue of flame, Up from the burning core below,-- The canticles of love and woe: The hand that rounded Peter's dome And groined the aisles of Christian Rome Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew; The conscious stone to beauty grew. Knowst thou what wove yon woodbird's nest Of leaves and feathers from her breast? Or how the fish outbuilt her shell, Painting with morn each annual cell? Or how the sacred pine-tree adds To her old leaves new myriads? Such and so grew these holy piles, While love and terror laid the tiles. Earth proudly wears the Parthenon, As the best gem upon her zone, And Morning opes with haste her lids To gaze upon the Pyramids; O'er England's abbeys bends the sky, As on its friends, with kindred eye; For out of Thought's interior sphere These wonders rose to upper air; And Nature gladly gave them place, Adopted them into her race, And granted them an equal date With Andes and with Ararat. These temples grew as grows the grass; Art might obey, but not surpass. The passive Master lent his hand To the vast soul that o'er him planned; And the same power that reared the shrine Bestrode the tribes that knelt within. Ever the fiery Pentecost Girds with one flame the countless host, Trances the heart through chanting choirs, And through the priest the mind inspires. The word unto the prophet spoken Was writ on tables yet unbroken; The word by seers or sibyls told, In groves of oak, or fanes of gold. Still floats upon the morning wind, Still whispers to the willing mind. One accent of the Holy Ghost The heedless world hath never lost. I know what say the fathers wise,-- The Book itself before me lies, Old Chrysostom, best Augustine, And he who blent both in his line, The younger Golden Lips or mines, Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines. His words are music in my ear, I see his cowlèd portrait dear; And yet, for all his faith could see, I would not the good bishop be. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. TO AMERICA. "To America," included by permission of the Poet Laureate, is a good poem and a great poem. It is a keen thrust at the common practice of teaching American children to hate the English of these days on account of the actions of a silly old king dead a hundred years. Alfred Austin deserves great credit for this poem. What is the voice I hear On the winds of the western sea? Sentinel, listen from out Cape Clear And say what the voice may be. 'Tis a proud free people calling loud to a people proud and free. And it says to them: "Kinsmen, hail! We severed have been too long. Now let us have done with a worn-out tale-- The tale of an ancient wrong-- And our friendship last long as our love doth and be stronger than death is strong." Answer them, sons of the self-same race, And blood of the self-same clan; Let us speak with each other face to face And answer as man to man, And loyally love and trust each other as none but free men can. Now fling them out to the breeze, Shamrock, Thistle, and Rose, And the Star-spangled Banner unfurl with these-- A message to friends and foes Wherever the sails of peace are seen and wherever the war-wind blows-- A message to bond and thrall to wake, For wherever we come, we twain, The throne of the tyrant shall rock and quake, And his menace be void and vain; For you are lords of a strong land and we are lords of the main. Yes, this is the voice of the bluff March gale; We severed have been too long, But now we have done with a worn-out tale-- The tale of an ancient wrong-- And our friendship last long as love doth last and stronger than death is strong. ALFRED AUSTIN. THE ENGLISH FLAG. It is quite true that the English flag stands for freedom the world over. Wherever it floats almost any one is safe, whether English or not. [Above the portico the Union Jack remained fluttering in the flames for some time, but ultimately when it fell the crowds rent the air with shouts, and seemed to see significance in the incident.--_Daily Papers_.] Winds of the World, give answer? They are whimpering to and fro-- And what should they know of England who only England know?-- The poor little street-bred people that vapour and fume and brag, They are lifting their heads in the stillness to yelp at the English Flag! Must we borrow a clout from the Boer--to plaster anew with dirt? An Irish liar's bandage, or an English coward's shirt? We may not speak of England; her Flag's to sell or share. What is the Flag of England? Winds of the World, declare! The North Wind blew:--"From Bergen my steel-shod van-guards go; I chase your lazy whalers home from the Disko floe; By the great North Lights above me I work the will of God, That the liner splits on the ice-field or the Dogger fills with cod. "I barred my gates with iron, I shuttered my doors with flame, Because to force my ramparts your nutshell navies came; I took the sun from their presence, I cut them down with my blast, And they died, but the Flag of England blew free ere the spirit passed. "The lean white bear hath seen it in the long, long Arctic night, The musk-ox knows the standard that flouts the Northern Light: What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my bergs to dare, Ye have but my drifts to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!" The South Wind sighed:--"From The Virgins my mid-sea course was ta'en Over a thousand islands lost in an idle main, Where the sea-egg flames on the coral and the long-backed breakers croon Their endless ocean legends to the lazy, locked lagoon. "Strayed amid lonely islets, mazed amid outer keys, I waked the palms to laughter--I tossed the scud in the breeze-- Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone, But over the scud and the palm-trees an English flag was flown. "I have wrenched it free from the halliard to hang for a wisp on the Horn; I have chased it north to the Lizard--ribboned and rolled and torn; I have spread its fold o'er the dying, adrift in a hopeless sea; I have hurled it swift on the slaver, and seen the slave set free. "My basking sunfish know it, and wheeling albatross, Where the lone wave fills with fire beneath the Southern Cross. What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my reefs to dare, Ye have but my seas to furrow. Go forth, for it is there!" The East Wind roared:--"From the Kuriles, the Bitter Seas, I come, And me men call the Home-Wind, for I bring the English home. Look--look well to your shipping! By the breath of my mad typhoon I swept your close-packed Praya and beached your best at Kowloon! "The reeling junks behind me and the racing seas before, I raped your richest roadstead--I plundered Singapore! I set my hand on the Hoogli; as a hooded snake she rose, And I flung your stoutest steamers to roost with the startled crows. "Never the lotos closes, never the wild-fowl wake, But a soul goes out on the East Wind that died for England's sake-- Man or woman or suckling, mother or bride or maid-- Because on the bones of the English the English Flag is stayed. "The desert-dust hath dimmed it, the flying wild-ass knows. The scared white leopard winds it across the taintless snows. What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my sun to dare, Ye have but my sands to travel. Go forth, for it is there!" The West Wind called:--"In squadrons the thoughtless galleons fly That bear the wheat and cattle lest street-bred people die. They make my might their porter, they make my house their path, Till I loose my neck from their rudder and whelm them all in my wrath. "I draw the gliding fog-bank as a snake is drawn from the hole; They bellow one to the other, the frightened ship-bells toll, For day is a drifting terror till I raise the shroud with my breath, And they see strange bows above them and the two go locked to death. "But whether in calm or wrack-wreath, whether by dark or day, I heave them whole to the conger or rip their plates away, First of the scattered legions, under a shrieking sky, Dipping between the rollers, the English Flag goes by. "The dead dumb fog hath wrapped it--the frozen dews have kissed-- The naked stars have seen it, a fellow-star in the mist. What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my breath to dare, Ye have but my waves to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!" RUDYARD KIPLING. THE MAN WITH THE HOE. "The Man With the Hoe" is purely an American product, and every American ought to be proud of it, for we want no such type allowed to be developed in this country as the low-browed peasant of France. This poem is a stroke of genius. The story goes that it so offended a modern plutocrat that he offered a reward of $10,000 to any one who could write an equally good poem in rebuttal. "The Man With the Hoe" has won for Edwin Markham the title of "Poet Laureate of the Labouring Classes." WRITTEN AFTER SEEING THE PAINTING BY MILLET. God made man in His own image, in the image of God made He him.--GENESIS. Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, The emptiness of ages in his face, And on his back the burden of the world. Who made him dead to rapture and despair, A thing that grieves not and that never hopes, Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox? Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw? Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow? Whose breath blew out the light within this brain? Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave To have dominion over sea and land; To trace the stars and search the heavens for power; To feel the passion of Eternity? Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns And marked their ways upon the ancient deep? Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf There is no shape more terrible than this-- More tongued with censure of the world's blind greed-- More filled with signs and portents for the soul-- More fraught with menace to the universe. What gulfs between him and the seraphim! Slave of the wheel of labour, what to him Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades? What the long reaches of the peaks of song, The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose? Through this dread shape the suffering ages look; Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop; Through this dread shape humanity betrayed, Plundered, profaned, and disinherited, Cries protest to the Judges of the World, A protest that is also prophecy. O masters, lords, and rulers in all lands, Is this the handiwork you give to God, This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched? How will you ever straighten up this shape; Touch it again with immortality; Give back the upward looking and the light; Rebuild in it the music and the dream; Make right the immemorial infamies, Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes? O masters, lords, and rulers in all lands, How will the future reckon with this Man? How answer his brute question in that hour When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world? How will it be with kingdoms and with kings-- With those who shaped him to the thing he is-- When this dumb Terror shall reply to God, After the silence of the centuries? EDWIN MARKHAM. SONG OF MYSELF. "The Song of Myself" is one of Walt Whitman's (1819-92) most characteristic poems. I love the swing and the stride of his great long lines. I love his rough-shod way of trampling down and kicking out of the way the conventionalities that spring up like poisonous mushrooms to make the world a vast labyrinth of petty "proprieties" until everything is nasty. I love the oxygen he pours on the world. I love his genius for brotherliness, his picture of the Negro with rolling eyes and the firelock in the corner. These excerpts are some of his best lines. I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death. I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy. Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much? Have you practised so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun (there are millions of suns left), You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the specters in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself. A child said, "_What is the grass?_" fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Or, I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrance designedly dropt, Bearing the owner's name some way in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say, "_Whose?_" Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt, Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee, In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night, Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill'd game, Falling asleep on the gathered leaves with my dog and gun by my side. The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, she cuts the sparkle and scud, My eyes settle the land, I bend at her prow or shout joyously from the deck. The boatman and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me, I tucked my trouser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time; You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle. The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside, I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile, Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and weak, And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him, And brought water and fill'd a tub for his sweated body and bruis'd feet, And gave him a room that entered from my own, and gave him some coarse clean clothes, And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness, And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles; He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and passed north, I had him sit next me at table, my firelock lean'd in the corner. I am the poet of the woman the same as the man, And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man, And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men. I understand the large hearts of heroes, The courage of present times and all times, How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steamship, and Death chasing it up and down the storm, How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch and was faithful of days and faithful of nights, And chalked in large letters on a board, "_Be of good cheer, we will not desert you_"; How he followed with them and tack'd with them three days and would not give it up, How he saved the drifting company at last, How the lank loose-gown'd women looked when boated from the side of their prepared graves, How the silent old-faced infants and the lifted sick, and the sharp-lipp'd unshaved men; All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine, I am the man, I suffered, I was there. The disdain and calmness of martyrs, The mother of old, condemned for a witch, burned with dry wood, her children gazing on, The hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence blowing, covered with sweat. I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs, Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen, I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn'd with the ooze of my skin, I fall on the weeds and stones, The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close, Taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently over the head with whip-stocks. Old age superbly rising! O welcome, ineffable grace of dying days! See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that, Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that. My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain, The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms. The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be there. And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud. And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times, And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero, And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel'd universe. And I say to any man or woman, "Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes." I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then, In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass, I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign'd by God's name, And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er I go, Others will punctually come forever and ever. Listener up there! What have you to confide in me? Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening. (Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.) Who has done his day's work? Who will soonest be through with his supper? Who wishes to walk with me? I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. INDEX A barking sound the shepherd hears, 120 Abide with me! fast falls the eventide, 223 Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase), 89 A chieftain to the Highlands bound, 105 Across the lonely beach, 71 A life on the ocean wave, 85 Alone I walked the ocean strand, 256 A nightingale that all day long, 34 A supercilious nabob of the East, 165 At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay, 246 At midnight in his guarded tent, 128 A traveller on the dusty road, 48 A well there is in the west country, 180 Ay, tear her tattered ensign down, 53 Behind him lay the gray Azores, 169 Beneath the low-hung night cloud, 67 Bird of the wilderness, 302 Blow, blow, thou winter wind, 58 Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans, 342 Bright shone the lists, blue bent the skies, 110 Buttercups and daisies, 51 By the shores of Gitche Gumee, 79 Come, let us plant the apple-tree, 211 Come, dear children, let us away, 260 "Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land, 231 Cupid and my Campasbe played, 235 Cupid once upon a bed, 234 Down in a green and shady bed, 27 Farewell! Farewell! But this I tell, 5 Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat, 320 "Give us a song!" the soldiers cried, 64 God of our fathers, known of old, 321 Goe, soule, the bodie's guest, 283 Grow old along with me, 312 Hail to thee, blithe spirit, 268 Half a league, half a league, 107 Happy the man whose wish and care, 273 Hats off! 133 Heaven is not reached at a single bound, 117 How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood, 288 "How I should like a birthday!" said the child, 164 How happy is he born and taught, 220 How sleep the brave, who sing to rest, 133 I am monarch of all I survey, 190 I celebrate myself, and sing myself, 344 I chatter, chatter, as I flow, 153 I come, I come! ye have called me long, 259 If I had but two little wings, 21 I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, 9 I heard last night a little child go singing, 222 I like a church: I like a cowl, 333 "I'll tell you how the leaves came down," 12 I met a traveller from an antique land, 322 In her ear he whispers gaily, 75 In the name of the Empress of India, make way, 125 I remember, I remember, 159 I shot an arrow into the air, 3 "Isn't this Joseph's son?"--ay, it is He, 114 I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he, 173 Is there, for honest poverty, 151 It is not growing like a tree, 60 It was a summer's evening, 117 It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_, 154 It was the schooner _Hesperus_, 138 It was the time when lilies blow, 72 I wandered lonely as a cloud, 82 John Anderson, my jo, John, 274 King Francis was a hearty king and loved a royal sport, 184 Krinken was a little child, 162 Lars Porsena of Clusium, 193 Lead kindly light, amid th' encircling gloom, 224 Let dogs delight to bark and bite, 4 Life! I know not what thou art, 299 Little drops of water, 5 Little orphant Annie's come to our house to stay, 54 Little white lily, 10 "Make way for liberty!" he cried, 296 Maxwelton braes are bonnie, 226 Merrily swinging on brier and weed, 44 Methought I heard a butterfly, 42 'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, 220 Mine be a cot beside the hill, 272 My country 'tis of thee, 228 My fairest child, I have no song to give you, 21 My good blade carves the casques of men, 253 My heart leaps up when I behold, 28 My little Mädchen found one day, 149 My mind to me a kingdom is, 286 My soul is sailing through the sea, 219 Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, 326 Nae shoon to hide her tiny taes, 4 No stir in the air, no stir in the sea, 145 Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, 176 Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are, 179 O, a dainty plant is the ivy green, 59 O Captain! my Captain, our fearful trip is done, 57 Of all the woodland creatures, 60 Oft in the stilly night, 266 Oh where! and oh where! is your Highland laddie gone, 20 Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the West, 103 Old Grimes is dead; that good old man, 47 "O Mary, go and call the cattle home, 271 O, may I join the choir invisible, 303 Once a dream did wave a shade, 116 Once there was a little boy, 19 Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, 289 On Linden, when the sun was low, 134 On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two, 326 Out of the clover and blue-eyed grass, 160 Over the hill the farm-boy goes, 90 O! say can you see, by the dawn's early light, 31 O why should the spirit of mortal be proud, 323 Pussy can sit by the fire and sing, 8 Pibroch of Donuil Dhu, 126 Said the wind to the moon, "I will blow you out," 111 Sail on, sail on, O Ship of State, 227 Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled, 142 See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, 301 Serene I fold my hands and wait, 267 Shed no tear! O shed no tear, 50 She dwelt among the untrodden ways, 272 She was a phantom of delight, 305 Speak! speak! thou fearful guest, 240 Stand! the ground's your own, my braves!, 63 Sunset and evening star, 124 Sweet and low, sweet and low, 27 Tell me not in mournful numbers, 218 The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, 158 The boy stood on the burning deck, 22 The breaking waves dashed high, 229 The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 306 The Frost looked forth, one still, clear night, 39 The gingham dog and the calico cat, 18 The God of Music dwelleth out of doors, 275 The harp that once through Tara's halls, 287 The nautilus and the ammonite, 188 The old mayor climb'd the belfry tower, 277 The Owl and the Pussy Cat went to sea, 15 The quality of mercy is not strained, 300 There came a youth upon the earth, 171 There came to port last Sunday night, 152 There lay upon the ocean's shore, 148 There was a sound of revelry by night, 177 There was never a Queen like Balkis, 7 There were three kings into the East, 83 There were three sailors of Bristol City, 41 The splendour falls on castle walls, 66 The stately homes of England, 192 The summer and autumn had been so wet, 166 The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home, 136 The world is too much with us; late and soon, 304 The year's at the spring, 6 Thirty days hath September, 7 This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, 122 This was the noblest Roman of them all, 301 'Tis the last rose of summer, 225 T'other day as I was twining, 234 Traveller, pluck a stem of moly, 233 Triumphal arch that fills the sky, 53 'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, 29 Twinkle, twinkle little star, 6 Under a spreading chestnut tree, 25 Up from the meadows rich with corn, 96 Up from the South at break of day, 68 Way down upon de Swanee ribber, 137 Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower, 94 Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie, 92 Wee Willie Winkie rins through the town, 13 We were crowded in the cabin, 23 Whatever brawls disturb the street, 20 What is so rare as a day in June, 217 What is the voice I hear, 335 What was he doing, the great god Pan, 275 When cats run home and light is come, 40 When earth's last picture is painted, 285 When George the Third was reigning, a hundred years ago, 236 When I consider how my light is spent, 304 When Letty had scarce pass'd her third glad year, 115 Where the pools are bright and deep, 50 Wild was the night, yet a wilder night, 131 Winds of the world, give answer, 337 Woodman, spare that tree, 222 Wynken, Blynken and Nod one night, 16 Ye banks and braes of bonnie Doon, 265 "You are old, Father William," the young man said, 33 You know, we French storm'd Ratisbon, 43 
17189	----	generously provided by the Wright American Fiction Project (http://www.letrs.indiana.edu/web/w/wright2/) of the Library Electronic Text Service of Indiana University Note: Images of the original pages are available through the Wright American Fiction Project (http://www.letrs.indiana.edu/web/w/wright2/) of the Library Electronic Text Service of Indiana University. AUTUMN LEAVES. Original Pieces in Prose and Verse. (ANNA WALES ABBOT, Ed.) "Our wits are so diversely colored."--Shakespeare. Cambridge: John Bartlett. 1853. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by John Bartlett, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. Cambridge: Metcalf and Company, Printers to the University. NOTE. The pieces gathered into this volume were, with two exceptions, written for the entertainment of a private circle, without any view to publication. The editor would express her thanks to the writers, who, at her solicitation, have allowed them to be printed. They are published with the hope of aiding a work of charity,--the establishment of an Agency for the benefit of the poor in Cambridge,--to which the proceeds of the sale will be devoted. ANNE W. ABBOT. CONTENTS. Christmas Revived. In the Churchyard at Cambridge. A Legend of Lady Lee.--H.W.L. The Little South-Wind. Lines Written at the Close of Dr. Holmes's Lectures on English Poetry. Aunt Molly. A Reminiscence of Old Cambridge. The Sounds of Morning in Cambridge. The Sounds of Evening in Cambridge. To the Near-Sighted. Flowers from a Student's Walks. Miseries. No. 1. Miseries. No. 2. A Dark Night. Miseries. No. 3. Twine. Miseries. No. 4. Fresh Air. Farewell. Innocent Surprises. The Old Sailor. Laughter. To Stephen. The Old Church. "Something than beauty dearer." A Tale found in the Repositories of the Abbots of the Middle Ages. The Sea. Fashion. A Growl. To Jenny Lind. My Herbarium. The Ostrich. Cows. The Home-Beacon. The Fourth of July. From the Papers of Reginald Ratcliffe, Esq. AUTUMN LEAVES. CHRISTMAS REVIVED. It was six o'clock in the morning of last Thursday (Christmas morning), when Nathan Stoddard, a young saddler, strode through the vacant streets of one of our New England towns, hastening to begin his work. The town is an old-fashioned one, and although the observance of the ancient church festival is no longer frowned upon, as in years past, yet it has been little regarded, especially in the church of which Nathan is a member. As the saddler mounted the steps of his shop, he felt the blood so rush along his limbs, and tingle in his fingers, that he could not forbear standing without the door for a moment, as if to enjoy the triumph of the warmth within him over the cold morning air. The little stone church which Nathan attends stands in the same square with his shop, and nearly opposite. It was closed, as usual on Christmas day, and a recent snow had heaped the steps and roof, and loaded the windows. Nathan thought that it looked uncommonly beautiful in the softening twilight of the morning. While Nathan stood musing, with his eyes fixed upon the church, he became suddenly conscious that another figure had entered the square upon the opposite side, and was walking hastily along. He turned his eyes upon it, and was greatly surprised by its appearance. He saw a tall old man, although a good deal stooping, with long, straight, and very white hair falling over his shoulders, which was the more conspicuous from the black velvet cap, as it appeared, that he wore, and the close-fitting suit of pure black in which he was dressed, and which seemed to Nathan almost to glisten and flash as the old man tripped along. He had hardly begun to speculate as to who the stranger could be, when he beheld him turn in between the posts by the path that leads to the church, tread lightly over the snow, and up the steps, and knock hastily and vigorously at the church-door. But half recovered from his wonder, he was just raising his voice to utter a remonstrance, when, to his sevenfold amazement, the door was opened to the knock, and the old man disappeared within. It was not without a creeping feeling of awe, mingled with his astonishment, that Nathan gazed upon the door through which this silent figure had vanished. But he was not easily to be daunted. He did not care to follow the steps of the stranger into the church; but he remembered a shed so placed against the building, near the farther end, that he had often, when a child, at some peril indeed, climbed upon its top, and looked into the church through a little window at one side of the pulpit. For this he started; but he did not fail to run across the square and leap over the church-gate at the top of his speed, in order to gather warmth and courage for the attempt. When Nathan Stoddard climbed upon the old shed and pressed his face against the glass of the little church-window, he had at first only a confused impression of many lamps and many figures in all parts of the church. But as his vision grew more clear, he beheld a sight which could not amaze him less than the apparition that startled Tam o' Shanter as he glared through the darkness into the old Kirk of Alloway. The great chandelier of the church was partly lighted, and there were, besides, many candles and lanterns burning in different parts of the room, and casting their light upon a large party of young men and women, who were dressed in breeches and ruffled shirts, and hooped petticoats and towering head-dresses, such as he had only seen in old pictures. They were mounted upon benches and ladders, and boards laid along the tops of the pews, and were apparently just completing the decoration of the church, which was already dressed with green, with little trees in the corners, and with green letters upon the walls, and great wreaths about the pillars. The whole party appeared full of life and cheerfulness, while the old man whom Nathan had seen enter stood near the door, looking quietly on, with a little girl holding his hand. It was not until Nathan Stoddard had looked for some little time upon this spectacle that he began to feel that he was witness of any thing more than natural. The whole party had so home-like an air, and appeared so engaged with their pleasant occupation, that, notwithstanding their quaint dress, Nathan only thought how much he should like to share their company. But the more he studied their faces, the more he was filled, for all their appearance of youth and their simple manners, with a strange sort of veneration. The sweet and cheerful faces of the young women seemed to grow awfully calm and beautiful as they brought their task to a close, and their foreheads, with the hair brought back in the old-fashioned way, to become more and more serene and high. There was a strange beauty, too, about the old man's face. He appeared to Nathan as if he felt that the group before him only waited his command to fade away in the morning light that struggled among the candles, but he could not bear to give the word; and so they kept playing with the festoons, and stepping about the pews to please him. Nathan felt a cold thrill, partly from pleasure, and partly from awe, running up his back, and a strong pain across his forehead, seldom known to one of his temperament. Again and again he drew his hand across his brows, until he felt that he was near swooning, and like to fall; and he clung desperately to his hold. When the fit was over, he dared venture no more, but hastened to the ground. It was no fear of ridicule or of incredulity that led Nathan Stoddard to keep secret what he had witnessed. But it was like some deep and holy experience that would lose its charm if it were spoken of to another. So he went back to his shop, and sat looking upon the church, and watching, almost with dread, the doves that lighted upon its roof, and fluttered about, and beat their wings against its windows. The minister of Nathan's parish was a young man by the name of Dudley; and it so happened that he had driven out, before light, on the morning we have spoken of, to visit a sick man at some distance. In returning home, he had to pass along the rather unfrequented street which runs in the rear of his church, and close to it. As he was driving rapidly along, his ear caught what seemed the peal of an organ. He stopped his horse to listen, and a moment convinced him that the sound both of the instrument and of singing voices came from his own church; and it was music of a depth and beauty such as he had never before heard within it. Filled with astonishment, he put his horse upon its fastest trot, and drove round into the square, to the shop of Nathan Stoddard. "There is music to-day in our church, Nathan!" he cried to the young saddler. "What can it mean?" But Nathan answered not a word. He caught the horse by the head, and fastened him to a post before the door. Then stepping to the side of the sleigh, he said to Mr. Dudley, "Come with me, Sir." Mr. Dudley looked upon the pale face and trembling lips of his parishioner, and followed in silence. Nathan sprang upon the shed at the side of the church, and scrambled up to the little window. Mr. Dudley followed, and, with Nathan's help, gained the same precarious foothold. "Look in, Sir," said Nathan, not venturing a glance himself. Mr. Dudley looked, and had not Nathan's arm been about his body he would have lost his hold, in sheer amazement. The building was crowded, as he had never known it before; and crowded with people whom his eye, versed in the dress and manners of our forefathers, recognized as the church-goers of a century and a half ago. The singers' gallery was filled by a choir of girls and boys, while his own place in the pulpit was occupied by a white-haired figure, whom he recognized as the original of a portrait which he had purchased and hung in his parlor at home for its singular beauty. It was said to be a portrait of a minister in the town, who lived in the last century, and is still remembered for his virtues. The sight of this old man's face completely stilled the agitation of the young minister. He was leaning over the great Bible, with his hands folded upon it, and his eyes seemingly filled with tears of pleasure and gratitude, and bent upon the choir. Mr. Dudley listened intently, and could catch what seemed the words of some old Christmas carol: "Thou mak'st my cup of joy run o'er." And he was so rapt with the sights and the sounds within, that it needed all Nathan's endeavors to uphold him. By this time the sound of a gathering crowd below, which he had not heeded at first, was forced more and more upon his notice; and the anxious voice of his oldest deacon calling, "Mr. Dudley! Mr. Dudley!" rose high and loud; while a great thundering at the front door of the church announced that the people below had also caught the sound of the music, and were clamorous for admission. Mr. Dudley hastened round to prevent their causing any disturbance to the congregation within; but he came only in time to see the door burst open, and to be borne in with the crowd. All gazed about in wonder. The congregation, indeed, were gone, and the preacher, and the choir; and the room was cold. But there was a great green cross over the pulpit, and words along the walls, and festoons upon the galleries, and great wreaths, like vast green serpents, coiled about the cold pillars. The church of the Orthodox parish of ---- had been fairly dressed for Christmas by spirit hands. When Mr. Dudley reached his home, after the wonder had in part spent itself, he found that an enormous Christmas pie had been left at his door by a white-haired old man dressed in black, about six in the morning, just after he had gone to visit his sick parishioner. The girl who received it reported the old man as saying, in a tremulous, but very kind voice, "Give your master the Christmas blessing of an old Puritan minister." How the meaning of this message would have been known to Mr. Dudley, had not the events we have told disclosed it, who can say? Need I add, that my friend, Mr. Dudley, from whose lips I have taken down the above narrative, has directed the decorations to remain in his church during the coming month, and that he avows the intention of observing the Christmas of the following year with public services, unless, indeed, he should be anticipated by his ancient predecessor. It may not be impertinent to observe, that I am invited to dine and spend the day with the Dudleys on that occasion, and I shall not fail to make an accurate report of whatever glimpse I may obtain into the mysterious ceremonies of a Puritan Christmas. IN THE CHURCHYARD AT CAMBRIDGE. A LEGEND OF LADY LEE. In the village churchyard she lies, Dust is in her beautiful eyes, No more she breathes, nor feels, nor stirs; At her feet and at her head Lies a slave to attend the dead, But their dust is white as hers. Was she, a lady of high degree, So much in love with the vanity And foolish pomp of this world of ours? Or was it Christian charity, And lowliness and humility, The richest and rarest of all dowers? Who shall tell us? No one speaks; No color shoots into those cheeks, Either of anger or of pride, At the rude question we have asked;-- Nor will the mystery be unmasked By those who are sleeping at her side. Hereafter?--And do you think to look On the terrible pages of that Book To find her failings, faults, and errors? Ah, you will then have other cares, In your own short-comings and despairs, In your own secret sins and terrors! H.W.L. THE LITTLE SOUTH-WIND. The little south-wind had been shut up for many days, while his cousin from the northeast had been abroad, and the clouds had been heavy and dark; but now all was bright and clear, and the little south-wind was to have a holiday. O, how happy he would be! He sallied forth to amuse himself;--and hear what he did. He came whistling down the chimney, until the nervous old lady was ready to fly with vexation: then away he flew, laughing in triumph,--the naughty south-wind! He played with the maiden's work: away the pieces flew, some here, some there, and away ran the maiden after. What cared _she_ for the wind? She tossed back her curls and laughed merrily, and the wind laughed merrily too,--the silly south-wind! Onward he stole, and lifting the curtain,--curious south-wind!--what did he see? On the sofa lay a young man: a heavy book was in his hand. The little south-wind rustled through the leaves, but the young man stirred not; he was asleep; hot and weary, he slept. The wind fanned his brow awhile, lifted his dark locks, and, leaving a kiss behind, stole out at the casement,--the gentle south-wind! Then he met a little child: away he whirled the little boy's hat, away ran the child, but his little feet were tired, and he wept,--poor child! The wind looked back, and felt sad, then hung the hat on a bush, and went on. He had played too hard,--the thoughtless south-wind! A sick child lay tossing to and fro: its hands and face were hot and dry. The mother raised the window. The wind heard her as he was creeping by, and stepping in, he cooled the burning face: then, playing among the flowers until their fragrance filled the room, away he flew,--the kind south-wind! He went out into the highway, and played with the dust; but that was not so pleasant, and onward he sped to the meadow. The dust could not follow on the green grass, and the little south-wind soon outstripped it, and onward and onward he sped, over mountain and valley, dancing among the flowers, and frolicking round, until the trees lifted up their arms and bent their heads and shook their sides with glee,--the happy south-wind! At last he came to a quiet dell, where a little brook lay, just stirring among his white pebbles. The wind said, "Kind brook, will you play with me?" And the brook answered with a sparkling smile, and a gentle murmur. Then the wind rose up, and, sporting among the dark pines, whistled and sung through the lofty branches, while the pretty brook danced along, and warbled songs to the music of its merry companion,--the merry south-wind! But the sun had gone down and the stars were peeping forth, and the day was done. The happy south-wind was still, and the moon looked down on the world below, and watched among the trees and hills, but all was still: the little south-wind slumbered, and the moon and the stars kept guard,--poor, tired south-wind! Old lady and maiden, young man and child, the dust and the flowers, were forgotten, and he slept,--dear little south-wind! LINES WRITTEN AT THE CLOSE OF DR. HOLMES'S LECTURES ON ENGLISH POETRY. [Footnote: The Poets are metaphorically introduced as follows. ROGERS, _The Beech_; CAMPBELL, _The Fir_; BYRON, _The Oak_; MOORE, _The Elm_; SCOTT, _The Chestnut_; SOUTHEY, _The Holly_; COLERIDGE, _The Magnolia_; KEATS, _The Orange_; WORDSWORTH, _The Pine_; TENNYSON, _The Palm_; FELICIA HEMANS, _The Locust_; ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, _The Laurel_.] Farewell! farewell! The hours we've stolen From scenes of worldly strife and stir, To live with poets, and with thee, Their brother and interpreter, Have brought us wealth;--as thou hast reaped, We have not followed thee in vain, But gathered, in one precious sheaf, The pearly flower and golden grain. For twelve bright hours, with thee we walked Within a magic garden's bound, Where trees, whose birth owned various climes, Beneath one sky were strangely found. First in the group, an ancient BEECH His shapely arms abroad did fling, Wearing old Autumn's russet crown Among the lively tints of Spring. Those pale brown leaves the winds of March Made vocal 'mid the silent trees, And spread their faint perfume abroad, Like sad, yet pleasant memories. Near it, the vigorous, noble FIR Arose, with firm yet graceful mien; Welcome for shelter or for shade, A pyramid of living green. And from the tender, vernal spray The sunny air such fragrance drew, As breathes from fields of strawberries wild, All bathed in morning's freshest dew. The OAK his branches richly green Broad to the winds did wildly fling;-- The first in beauty and in power, All bowed before the forest-king. But ere its brilliant leaves were sere, Or scattered by the Autumn wind, Fierce lightnings struck its glories down, And left a blasted trunk behind. A youthful ELM its drooping boughs In graceful beauty bent to earth, As if to touch, with reverent love, The kindly soil that gave it birth;-- And round it, in such close embrace, Sweet honeysuckles did entwine, We knew not if the south wind caught Its odorous breath from tree or vine. The CHESTNUT tall, with shining leaves And yellow tassels covered o'er, The sunny Summer's golden pride, And pledge of Autumn's ruddy store,-- Though grander forms might near it rise, And sweeter blossoms scent the air,-- Was still a favorite 'mongst the trees That flourished in that garden fair. All brightly clad in glossy green, And scarlet berries gay to see, We welcome next a constant friend, The brilliant, cheerful HOLLY-TREE. But twilight falls upon the scene; Rich odors fill the evening air; And, lighting up the dusky shades, Gleam the MAGNOLIA'S blossoms fair. The fire-fly, with its fairy lamp, Flashes within its soft green bower; The humming sphinx flits in and out, To sip the nectar of its flower. Now the charmed air, more richly fraught, To steep our senses in delight, Comes o'er us, as the ORANGE-TREE In beauty beams upon our sight; And, glancing through its emerald leaves, White buds and golden fruits are seen; Fit flowers to deck the bride's pale brow, Fit fruit to offer to a queen. But let me rest beneath the PINE, And listen to the low, sad tone Its music breathes, that o'er my soul Comes like the ocean's solemn moan. Erect it stands in graceful strength; Its spire points upward to the sky; And nestled in its sheltering arms The birds of heaven securely lie. And though no gaily painted bells, Nor odor-bearing urns, are there, When the west wind sighs through its boughs, Let me inhale the balmy air! The stately PALM in conscious pride Lifts its tall column to the sky, While round it fragrant air-plants cling, Deep-stained with every gorgeous dye. Linger with me a moment, where The LOCUST trembles in the breeze, In soft, transparent verdure drest, Contrasting with the darker trees. The humming-bird flies in among Its boughs, with pure white clusters hung, And honey-bees come murmuring, where Its perfume on the air is flung. A noble LAUREL meets our gaze, Ere yet we leave these alleys green. 'Mongst many stately, fair, and sweet, The DAPHNE ODORA stands a queen. May 2, 1853. AUNT MOLLY. A REMINISCENCE OF OLD CAMBRIDGE. In looking back upon my early days, one of the images that rises most vividly to my mind's eye is that of Miss Molly ----, or Aunt Molly, as she was called by some of her little favorites, that is to say, about a dozen girls, and (not complimentary to the _un_fair sex, to be sure) one boy. There was one, who, even to Miss Molly, was not a torment and a plague; and I must confess he was a pleasant specimen of the genus. At the time of which I speak, the great awkward barn of a school-house on the Common, near the Appian Way, had not reared its imposing front. In its place, in the centre of a grass-plot that was one of the very first to look green in spring, and kept its verdure through the heats of July, stood the brown, one-storied cottage which she owned, and in which the aged woman lived, alone. Her garden and clothes-yard behind the house were fenced in; but in front, the visitor to the cottage, unimpeded by gate or fence, turned up the pretty green slope directly from the street to the lowly door. As I have started for a walk into the old times, and am not bound by any rule to stick to the point, I will here digress to say that the Episcopal Church (_the Church_, as it was simply called, when all the rest were "meeting-houses"), that tells the traveller what a pure and true taste was once present in Cambridge, and, by the contrast it presents to the architectural blunders that abound in the place, tells also what a want of it there is now,--this beautiful church stood most appropriately and tastefully surrounded by the green turf, unbroken by stiff gravel walks or coach sweep, and undivided from the public walk by a fence. Behind the church, and forming a part of its own grounds, (where now exist the elegances of School Court,) was an unappropriated field; and that spot was considered, by a certain little group of children, of six or seven years old, the most solitary, gloomy, mysterious place in their little world. When the colors of sunset had died out in the west, and the stillness and shadow of twilight were coming on, they used to "snatch a fearful joy" in seeing one of their number (whose mother had kindly omitted the first lesson usually taught to little girls, to be afraid of every thing) perform the feat of going slowly around the church, alone, stopping behind it to count a hundred. Her wonderful courage in actually protecting the whole group from what they called a "flock of cows," and in staking and patting the "mad dogs" that they were for ever meeting, was nothing to this _going round the church!_ But to return to the cottage, from which the pretty, rural trait of its standing in its unfenced green door-yard led me away to notice the same sort of rustic beauty where the church stood. We did not stop to knock at the outside door,--for Aunt Molly was very deaf, and if we had knocked our little knuckles off she would not have heard us,--but went in, and, passing along the passage, rapped at the door of the "common room," half sitting-room, half kitchen, and were admitted. Those who saw her for the first time, whether children or grown people, were generally afraid of her; for her voice, unmodulated, of course, by the ear, was naturally harsh, strong, and high-toned; and the sort of half laugh, half growl, that she uttered when pleased, might have suggested to an imaginative child the howl of a wolf. She had very large features, and sharp, penetrating black eyes, shaded by long, gray lashes, and surmounted by thick, bushy, gray eyebrows. I think that when she was scolding the school-boys, with those eyes fiercely "glowering" at them from under the shaggy gray thatch, she must have appeared to those who in their learned page had got as far as the Furies, like a living illustration of classic lore. Her cap and the make of her dress were peculiar, and suggestive of those days before, and at the time of, the Revolution, of which she loved to speak. But we, her little favorites, were not afraid of her. To go into her garden in summer, and eat currants, larger and sweeter than any we found at home,--to look up at the enormous old damson-tree, when it was white with blossoms, and the rich honey-comb smell was diffused over the whole garden,--was a pleasant little excursion to us. She took great care and pains to save the plums from the plundering boys, because it was the only real damson there was anywhere in the neighborhood, and she found a ready sale for them, for preserves. She seemed to think that the _real damsons_ went out with the _real gentry_ of the olden time; and perhaps they did, _as_ damsons, though, for aught I know, they may figure now in our fruit catalogues as "The Duke of Argyle's New Seedling Acidulated Drop of Damascus,"--which would be something like a translation of Damson into the modern terminology. But more pleasant still was it to go into Aunt Molly's "best room." The walls she had papered herself, with curious stripes and odd pieces, of various shapes and patterns, ornamented with a border of figures of little men and women joining hands, cut from paper of all colors; and they were adorned, besides, with several prints in shining black frames. There was no carpet on the snow-white, unpainted floor, but various mats and rugs, of all the kinds into which ingenuity has transformed woollen rags, were disposed about it. The bed was the pride and glory of the room, however; for on it was spread a silk patchwork quilt, made of pieces of the brocade and damask and elegant silks, of which the ladies belonging to the grand old Tory families had their gowns and cardinals, and other paraphernalia, made. Aunt Molly had been a mantuamaker to the old "quality," and she could show us a piece of Madam Vassall's gown on that wonderful and brilliant piece of work, the bed-quilt. "On that hint" she would speak. "A-haw-awr! They were _real gentle_ folks that lived in _them_ days. A-haw-awr! I declare, I could e'en-amost kneel down and kiss the very airth they trod on, as they went by my house to church. Polite, _they wor!_ Yes, they knew what true politeness was; and to my thinking true politeness is next to saving grace." Once a year, or so, Aunt Molly would dress up in her best gown, a black silk, trimmed with real black lace, and a real lace cap, relics of the good old days of Toryism and brocade and the real gentry, and go to make an afternoon visit to one of her neighbors. After the usual salutations, the lady would ask her visitor to take off her bonnet and stay the afternoon, knowing by the "rig" that such was her intention. But she liked to be urged a little, so she would say, "O, I only came out for a little walk, it was so pleasant, and stopped in to see how little Henry did, since his sickness. You know I always call him _my boy_." (Yes, Aunt Molly, the only boy in the universe that, for you, had any good in him.) After the proper amount of urging, she would lay aside her bonnet and black satin mantle, saying, "Well, I didn't come here to get my tea, but you are so urgent, I believe I will stay." Aunt Molly's _asides_ were often amusing. She was so very deaf that she could not hear her own voice, and often imagined she was whispering, when she could be heard across the room. On one occasion she saw a gentleman who was a stranger to her, in the parlor, when she went to visit one of the ladies who were kind and attentive to her. She sat a few minutes looking keenly at him, and then whispered, "Who's that?" "Mr. Jay." "Who?" "MR. JAY." "Who?" "MR. JAY." "Oh-o-oh! Mr. Jay. Well, what does he do for a living?" "He's a tutor, Ma'am." "What?" "A TUTOR." "What?" "A TUTOR." "Oh-o-oh! I thought you said a suitor!" Aunt Molly owned the little brown cottage, where her widowed mother, she said, had lived, and there she died. As soon as she was laid in her grave, it was torn down, and the precious damson-tree was felled. I was rather glad that the school-house was so ugly, that I might have a double reason for hating the usurper. If Nemesis cared for school-boys, she doubtless looks on with a grin, now, to see them scampering at their will round the precincts of the former enemy of their race, and listens with pleasure while they "make _day_ hideous" where once the bee and the humming-bird only broke the quiet of the little garden. Aunt Molly had a vigorous, active mind, and a strong, tenacious memory; and her love of the departed grandeur and Toryism of Court Row, as she called that part of Brattle Street from Ash Street to Mount Auburn, was pleasant and entertaining to those who listened to her tales of other times. Peace to her memory! THE SOUNDS OF MORNING IN CAMBRIDGE. I sing the melodies of early morn. Hark!--'t is the distant roar of iron wheels, First sound of busy life, and the shrill neigh Of vapor-steed, the vale of Brighton threading, Region of lowing kine and perfumed breeze. Echoes the shore of blue meandering Charles. Straightway the chorus of glad chanticleers Proclaims the dawn. First comes one clarion note, Loud, clear, and long drawn out; and hark! again Rises the jocund song, distinct, though distant; Now faint and far, like plaintive cry for help Piercing the ear of Sleep. Each knight o' the spur, Watchful as brave, and emulous in noise, With mighty pinions beats a glad _reveille_. All feathered nature wakes. Man's drowsy sense Heeds not the trilling band, but slumbrous waits The tardy god of day. Ah! sluggard, wake! Open thy blind, and rub thy heavy eyes! For once behold a sunrise. Is there aught In thy dream-world more splendid, or more fair? With crimson glory the horizon streams, And ghostly Dian hides her face ashamed. Now to the ear of him who lingers long On downy couch, "falsely luxurious," Comes the unwelcome din of college-bell Fast tolling. . . . . . "'T is but the earliest, the warning peal!" He sleeps again. Happy if bustling chum, Footsteps along the entry, or perchance, In the home bower, maternal knock and halloo, Shall break the treacherous slumber. For behold The youth collegiate sniff the morning zephyrs, Breezes of brisk December, frosty and keen, With nose incarnadine, peering above Each graceful shepherd's plaid the chin enfolding. See how the purple hue of youth and health Glows in each cheek; how the sharp wind brings pearls From every eye, brightening those dimmed with study, And waste of midnight oil, o'er classic page Long poring. Boreas in merry mood Plays with each unkempt lock, and vainly strives To make a football of the Freshman's beaver, Or the sage Sophomore's indented felt. Behold the foremost, with deliberate stride And slow, approach the chapel, tree-embowered, Entering composedly its gaping portal; Then, as the iron tongue goes on to rouse The mocking echoes with its call, arrive Others, with hastier step and heaving chest. Anon, some bound along divergent paths Which scar the grassy plain, and, with no pause For breath, press up the rocky stair. Straightway, A desperate few, with headlong, frantic speed, Swifter than arrow-flight or Medford whirlwind, Sparks flying from iron-shod heels at every footfall, Over stone causeway and tessellated pavement,-- They come--they come--they leap--they scamper in, Ere, grating on its hinges, slams the door Inexorable. . . . . . Pauses the sluggard, at Wood and Hall's just crossing, The chime melodious dying on his ear. Embroidered sandals scarce maintain their hold Upon his feet, shuffling, with heel exposed, And 'neath his upper garment just appears A many-colored robe; about his throat No comfortable scarf, but crumpled _gills_ Shrink from the scanning eye of passenger The omnibus o'erhauling. List! 't was the last, Last stroke! it dies away, like murmuring wave. Bootless he came,--and bootless wends he back, Gnawing his gloveless thumb, and pacing slow. Bright eyes might gaze on him, compassionate, But that yon rosy maiden, early afoot, Is o'er her shoulder watching, with wild fear, A horned host that rushes by amain, Bellowing bassoon-like music. Angry shouts Of drovers, horrid menace, and dire curse, Shrill scream of imitative boy, and crack Of cruel whip, the tread of clumsy feet Are hurrying on:--but now, with instinct sure, Madly those doomed ones bolt from the dread road That leads to Brighton and to death. They charge Up Brattle Street. Screaming the maiden flies, Nor heeds the loss of fluttering veil, upborne On sportive breeze, and sailing far away. And now a flock of sheep, bleating, bewildered, With tiny footprints fret the dusty square, And huddling strive to elude relentless fate. And hark! with snuffling grunt, and now and then A squeak, a squad of long-nosed gentry run The gutters to explore, with comic jerk Of the investigating snout, and wink At passer-by, and saucy, lounging gait, And independent, lash-defying course. And now the baker, with his steaming load, Hums like the humble-bee from door to door, And thoughts of breakfast rise; and harmonies Domestic, song of kettle, and hissing urn, Glad voices, and the sound of hurrying feet, Clatter of chairs, and din of knife and fork, Bring to a close the Melodies of Morn. THE SOUNDS OF EVENING IN CAMBRIDGE. The Melodies of Morning late I sang. Recall we now those Melodies of Even Which charmed our ear, the summer-day o'erpast; Full of the theme, O Phoebus, hear me sing. What time thy golden car draws near its goal,-- Mount Auburn's pillared summit,--chorus loud Of mud-born songsters fills the dewy air. Hark! in yon shallow pool, what melody Is poured from swelling throats, liquid and bubbling, As if the plaintive notes thrilled struggling through The stagnant waters and the waving reeds. Monotonous the melancholy strain, Save when the bull-frog, from some slimy depth Profound, sends up his deep "Poo-toob!" "Poo-toob!" Like a staccato note of double bass Marking the cadence. The unwearied crickets Fill up the harmony; and the whippoorwill His mournful solo sings among the willows. The tree-toad's pleasant trilling croak proclaims A coming rain; a welcome evil, sure, When streets are one long ash-heap, and the flowers Fainting or crisp in sun-baked borders stand. Mount Auburn's gate is closed. The latest 'bus Down Brattle Street goes rumbling. Laborers Hie home, by twos and threes; homeliest phizzes, Voices high-pitched, and tongues with telltale burr-r-r-r, The short-stemmed pipe, diffusing odors vile, Garments of comic and misfitting make, And steps which tend to Curran's door, (a man Ignoble, yet quite worthy of the name Of Fill-pot Curran,) all proclaim the race Adopted by Columbia, grumblingly, When their step-mother country casts them off. Here with a creaking barrow, piled with tools Keen as the wit that wields them, hurries by A man of different stamp. His well-trained limbs Move with a certain grace and readiness, Skilful intelligence every muscle swaying. Rapid his tread, yet firm; his scheming brain Teems with broad plans, and hopes of future wealth, And time and life move all too slow for him. Will he industrious gains and home renounce To grow more quickly rich in lands unblest? Hear'st thou that gleeful shout? Who opes the gate, The neatly painted gate, and runs before With noisy joy? Now from the trellised door Toddles another bright-haired boy. And now Captive they lead the father; strong their grasp; He cannot break away. Dreamily quiet The dewy twilight of a summer eve. Tired mortals lounge at casement or at door, While deepening shadows gather round. No lamp Save in yon shop, whose sable minister His evening customers attends. Anon, With squeaking bucket on his arm, emerges The errand-boy, slow marching to the tune Of "Uncle Ned" or "Norma," whistled shrill. Hark! heard you not against the window-pane The dash of horny skull in mad career, And a loud buzz of terror? He'll be in, This horrid beetle; yes,--and in my hair! Close all the blinds; 't is dismal, but 't is safe. Listen! Methought I heard delicious music, Faint and afar. Pray, is the Boat-Club out? Do the Pierian minstrels meet to-night? Or chime the bells of Boston, or the Port? Nearer now, nearer--Ah! bloodthirsty villain, Is 't you? Too late I closed the blind! Alas! List! there's another trump!--There, _two_ of 'em!-- Two? A quintette at least. Mosquito chorus! A--ah! my cheek! And oh! again, my eyelid! I gave myself a stunning cuff on the ear And all in vain. Flap we our handkerchief; Flap, flap! (A smash.) Quick, quick, bring in a lamp! I've switched a flower-vase from the shelf. Ah me! Splash on my head, and then upon my feet, The water poured;--I'm drowned! my slipper's full! My dickey--ah! 't is cruel! Flowers are nonsense! I'd have them amaranths all, or made of paper. Here, wring my neckcloth, and rub down my hair! Now Mr. Brackett, punctual man, is ringing The curfew bell; 't is nine o'clock already. 'T is early bedtime, yet methinks 't were joy On mattress cool to stretch supine. At midnight, Were it winter, I were less fatigued, less sleepy. Sleep! I invoke thee, "comfortable bird, That broodest o'er the troubled waves of life, And hushest them to peace." All hail the man Who first invented bed! O, wondrous soft This pillow to my weary head! right soon My dizzy thoughts shall o'er the brink of sleep Fall into chaos and be lost. I dream. Now comes mine enemy, not silently, But with insulting and defiant warning; Come, banquet, if thou wilt; I offer thee My cheek, my arm. Tease me not, hovering high With that continuous hum; I fain would rest. Come, do thy worst at once. Bite, scoundrel, bite! Thou insect vulture, seize thy helpless prey! No ceremony! (I'd have none with thee, Could I but find thee.) Fainter now and farther The tiny war-whoop; now I hear it not. A cowardly assassin he; he waits, Full well aware that I am on the alert, With murderous intent. Perchance he's gone, Hawk-eye and nose of hound not serving him To find me in the dark. With a long sigh, I beat my pillow, close my useless eyes, And soon again my thoughts whirl giddily, Verging towards dreams. Starting, I shake my bed;-- Loud thumps my heart,--rises on end my hair! A murder-screech, and yells of frantic fury, Under my very window,--a duet Of fiendish hatred, battle to the death,-- 'T is enough to enrage a man! Missile I seize, Not caring what, and with a savage "Scat!" That scrapes my throat, let drive. I would it were A millstone! Swiftly through the garden beds And o'er the fence on either side they fly; I to my couch return, but not to sleep. Weary I toss, and think 't is almost dawn, So still the streets; but now the latest train, Whistling melodiously, comes in; the tramp Of feet, and hum of voices, echo far In the still night air. Now with joy I feel My eyelids droop once more. To sleep and dream Is bliss unspeakable;--I'm going off;-- What was I thinking last?--slowly I rise On downy pinions; dreaming, I fly, I soar;-- Through the clouds my way I'm winging, Angels to their harps are singing, Strains of unearthly sweetness lull me, And thrilling harmonies----"Yelp! Bow-wow-wow!" "Get out!"--"The dog has got me by the leg!" "Stave him off! Will you? See, he's rent my pants, My newest plaid!--Kick him!"--"Yow, yow!"--"This house I'll never serenade again!--A dog Should know musicians from suspicious chaps, And gentlemen from rowdies, even at night!" "Beat him again!" "No, no! Perhaps 't is HERS! A _lady's pet!_ Methinks the curtain moves! She's looking out! Let's sing once more! Just once!" "Not I.--I'll sing no more to-night!" and steps Limping unequally, and grumbling voice, Pass round the corner, and are heard no more. TO THE NEAR-SIGHTED. Purblind and short-sighted friends! You will listen to me,--_you_ will sympathize with me; for you know by painful experience what I mean when I say that we near-sighted people do not receive from our hawk-eyed neighbors that sympathy and consideration to which we are justly entitled. If we were blind, we should be abundantly pitied, but as we are only half-blind, such comments as these are all the consolation we get. "Oh! _near-sighted_, is she? Yes, it is very fashionable now-a-days for young ladies to carry eye-glasses, and call themselves near-sighted!" Or, "Pooh! It's all affectation. She can see as well as any body, if she chooses. She thinks it is pretty to half shut her eyes, and cut her acquaintances." I meet my friend A----, some morning, who returns my salutation with cold politeness, and says, "How cleverly you managed to cut me at the concert last night!" "At the concert! I did not see you." "O no! You could see well enough to bow to pretty Miss B----, and her handsome cousin; but as for seeing your old schoolmate, two seats behind her,--of course you are too near-sighted!" In vain I protest that I could not see her,--that three yards is a great distance to my eyes. She leaves me with an incredulous smile, and that most provoking phrase, "O yes! I _suppose_ so!" and distrusts me ever afterwards. Alas! we see just enough to seal our own condemnation. Who is free from this malady? As I look around in society, I see staring glassy ellipses on every side "in the place where eyes ought to grow,"--and perhaps most of the unfortunate owls get along very comfortably with their artificial eyes. But imagine a bashful youth, awkward and near-sighted, whose friends dissuade him from wearing glasses. Is there in the universe an individual more unlucky, more blundering, more sincerely to be pitied? See that little boy, who, having put on his father's spectacles, is enjoying for the first time a clear and distinct view of the evening sky. "Oh! is that pretty little yellow dot a star?" exclaims the delighted child. Poor innocent! a star had always been to him a dim, cloudy spot, a little nebula, which the magic glass has now resolved; and he can hardly believe that this brilliant point is not an optical illusion. But when his mother assures him that the stars always appear so to her, and he turns to look in her face, he says, "Why, mother! how beautiful you look! Please to give me some little spectacles, _all my own!_" She could not resist this entreaty,--(who could?)--and little "Squire Specs" does not mind the shouts of his companions or the high-sounding nicknames they give him, he so rejoices in what seems to him a new sense, a _second sight_. I was summoned, the other day, to welcome a family of cousins from a distant State, whom I had not seen for a very long time. They were accompanied, I was told, by a Boston lady, a stranger to us. I entered the room with considerable _empressement_, but when my eye detected the dim outline of a circle of bonneted figures, I stopped in despair in the middle of the room, not knowing which was which, or whom I ought to speak to first, and at last made an embarrassed half-bow, half-courtesy, to the company in general. A confused murmur of greetings and introductions followed, and, throwing aside my air of stiff, ceremonious politeness, I rushed, with a smiling face, to the nearest lady, shook hands with her in the most cordial manner, and then, in passing, bowed formally to the next, who I concluded was the stranger. What then was my surprise and utter confusion when she caught me by the hand, and, drawing me towards her, kissed me emphatically several times. "How _do_ you do, dear? Have you quite forgotten me? Ah! You don't remember the times when you used to ride a cock-horse, on my knee, to Banbury Cross, to see the old lady get on her white horse!" What could I say? I was petrified. I could not smile, I could not speak. My only feeling was mortification at my most awkward mistake. Yet I ought to have become accustomed to such embarrassments, for they are of very frequent occurrence. "Why, Julia! what is the matter? How strangely your eyes look!" My sister at this exclamation turns round, and I discover that from the other end of the room I have been gazing at the unexpressive features of her "back hair," which is twisted in a "pug," or "bob,"--which is the correct term?--and surmounted by a tortoise-shell comb. But in the whole course of my numerous mistakes and blunders, whether ludicrous, serious, or embarrassing, I believe I have never mistaken a cow for a human being, as was done by old Dr. E----. It was many years ago, when Boston Common was still used as a pasture, and cows were daily to be met in the crooked streets of the city, that this gentleman, distinguished for the courtesy and old-school politeness of his manner, no less than for his extreme near-sightedness, was walking at a brisk pace, one winter's day, and saw, just before him, a lady, as he thought, richly dressed in furs. As he was passing her, he thought he perceived that her fur boa or tippet had escaped from her neck, and, carefully lifting the end of it with one hand, he made a low bow, raising his hat with the other, and said in his blandest tone, "Madam, you are losing your tippet!" And what thanks did the worthy Doctor receive, do you think, for this truly kind and polite deed? Why, the lady merely turned her head, gave him a wondering stare with her large eyes, and said, "Moo-o-o-o!" As an offset to this instance of courtesy and good-breeding lavished on a cow, let me give you, as a parting _bon-bouche_, another cow anecdote, where, as you will see, there was no gentle politeness wasted. The Rev. Dr. H---- was an eccentric old man, near-sighted of course,--all eccentric people are,--who lived in a small country town in this neighborhood. Numerous are the traditionary accounts of his peculiarities,--of his odd manners and customs,--which I have heard; but it is only of one little incident that I am now going to speak. A favorite employment of this good man was the care of his garden, and he might be seen any pleasant afternoon in summer, rigged out in a hideous yellow calico robe, or blouse, with a dusty old black straw hat stuck on the back of his head, hoeing and digging in that beloved patch of ground. One day as he was thus occupied, his wife emerged from the house, dressed in a dark brown gingham, and bearing in her hand some "muslins," which she began to spread upon the gooseberry-bushes to whiten. She was very busily engaged, so that she was not aware that her husband was approaching her with a large stick, until she felt a smart blow across her shoulders, and heard his peculiar, sharp voice shouting in her ears, "Go 'long! old cow! Go 'long! old cow!" FLOWERS FROM A STUDENT'S WALKS. As the animal dies of inanition if fed on but one kind of food, however congenial, yet lives if he has all in succession, so is it with complex man. Learn retrenchment from the starving oyster, who spends his last energies in a new pearly layer suited to his shrunken form. As animals which have no organs of special sense know not light or sound as we do, yet shrink from a hand or candle because their whole bodies are dimly conscious, thus we have a glimmering perception of infinite truths and existences which we cannot grasp or fully know because our minds have no special organs for them. The prick in the butterfly's wing will be in the full-grown insect a great blemish. The speck in thy child's nature, if fondly overlooked now, will become a wide rent traversing all his virtues. As mineral poisons kill, because by their strong affinity they decompose the blood and form new stony substances, so the soul possessed by too strong an affinity for gold petrifies. Our principles are central forces, our desires tangential; it requires both to describe the curve of life. The slightest inclination of a standing body virtually narrows its base; the least departure from integrity lessens our foundation. The pyramid, broad-based, yet heaven-pointed, is the firmest figure. Most characters are inconsistent, unsymmetrical, and have a base wanting extent in some direction. Be not over-curious in assigning causes or predicting consequences; the same diagonal may be formed by various combining forces. Through water the musical sound is not transmitted, only the harsh material noise. In air the noise is heard very near, the musical sounds only are transmitted. Be thankful, poets and prophets, when you live in an element such that your uncomely features are known only to your own village. "Do not sing its fundamental note too loud near a delicate glass, or it will break," whispered my friend to me, as he saw me gazing at this lovely being. Seek the golden mean of life. Like the temperate regions, it has but few thorny plants. Be doubly careful of those to whom nature has been a niggard. The oak and the palm take their own forms under all circumstances; the fungi seem to owe theirs to outward influences. It is a poor plant that crisps quickly into wood. It is a meagre character which runs perpetually into prejudices. As light suffers from no change of medium when it falls perpendicularly, so the consequences of a perfectly upright action, or cause of action, are strictly fortunate. But let it be ever so little oblique, the new medium will exaggerate its obliquity; and the farther it departs from uprightness, the more frightfully it is distorted. Hoops and coins, which cannot preserve their equilibrium when in rest, keep it when set in motion. Man also in activity finds his safest position. As it takes a diamond to cut and shape a diamond, so there are faults so obstinate that they can be worn away only by life-long contact with similar faults in those we love. Learn the virtue of action. Who inquires whether momentum comes from mass or velocity? But velocity has this advantage; it depends on ourselves. The grass is green after these October rains, because in the July drought it struck deep roots. MISERIES. No. 1. Did you ever try to eat a peach elegantly and gracefully? Of course you have. Show me a man who has not tried the experiment, when under the restraint of human surveillance, and I shall look upon him as a curiosity. There is no fruit, certainly, which has so fair and alluring an exterior; but few content themselves with feasting their eyes upon it. How fresh and ripe it looks as it lies upon the plate, with its rosy cheek turned temptingly upward! How cool and soft is the downy skin to the touch! And the fragrance, so suggestive of its rich, delicious flavor, who can resist? Ah, unhappy wight! Bitterly you shall repent your rashness. Any other fruit can be eaten with comparative ease and politeness; a peach was evidently intended only to be looked at, or enjoyed beneath your own tree, where no eye may watch and criticize your motions. I see you, in imagination, at a party, standing in the middle of the room, plate in hand, regarding your peach as if it were some great natural curiosity. A sudden jog of your elbow compels you to a succession of most dexterous balancings as your heavy peach rolls from side to side, knocks down your knife, and threatens to plunge after it when you stoop to regain it. You look distractedly round for a table, but all are occupied. Even the corner of the mantel-shelf holds a plate, and you enviously see the owner thereof leaning carelessly against the chimney, and looking placidly round upon his less fortunate companions. You glance at the different groups to see if any one else is in your most unenviable predicament. Ah, yes! Yonder stands a gentleman worse off yet, for, in addition to your perplexities, he is talking with a young, laughing girl, who is watching his movements, with a merry twinkle in her bright eyes. He evidently wishes to astonish her by his dexterity, and disappoint her roguish expectations. He holds his plate firmly in his left hand, and proceeds, at once, to cut his peach in halves. Deuce take the blunt silver knife! The tough skin resists its pressure. The knife and plate clash loudly together; the peach is bounding and rolling at the very feet of the young lady, who is in an ecstasy of laughter. Ah! she herself has no small resemblance to a peach, fair, beautiful, and attractive without, and, I sadly fear, with a hard heart beneath. Are you yet more miserable than before? Turn then to yonder sober-looking gentleman, who certainly seems sufficiently composed to perform the difficult manoeuvre. He has the advantage of a table to be sure; but that is not every thing. He begins right, by deliberately removing the woolly skin. Now he lays the slippery peach in his plate, and makes a plunge at it with his knife. A sharp, prolonged screech across his plate salutes the ears of all the bystanders, and a fine slice of juicy pulp is flung unceremoniously into the face of the gentleman opposite, who certainly does not look very grateful for the unexpected gift. Every one, of course, has seen the awkward accident. O no! That pretty, animated girl upon the sofa is much too pleasantly engaged, that is evident, to be watching her neighbors. Playing carelessly with her fan, and casting many sparkling glances upward at the two gentlemen who are vying with each other in their gallant attentions, she has enough to do without noticing other people. She is happily unconscious of the mortification which is in store for her, or wilfully shuts her eyes to the peril. Alas! Her hand is resting, even now, upon the destroyer of all her present enjoyment, the beautiful, fragrant, treacherous peach. With a nonchalance really shocking to the anxious beholder, she raises it, and breaks it open, talking the while, and scarcely bestowing a thought upon what she is about. Dexterously done; but--O luckless maiden!--the fruit is ripe, and rich, and juicy, and the running drops fall, not into her plate, but upon the delicate folds of her dress. The merry repartee dies away upon her lips, as she becomes conscious of the catastrophe. It is with a forced smile that she declares, "It is nothing; O, not of the slightest consequence!" That unlucky peach! How many blunders, how many pauses, how many absent-minded remarks it occasions! She makes the most frenzied attempts to regain her former gayety, but in vain. Her gloves are stained and sticky with the flowing juice, and she is oppressed by the conviction that all her partners for the rest of the evening will hate her most heartily. An expression of real vexation steals over her pretty face, and she gives up her plate to one of the attendant beaux, with not so much as a wish that he will return to her. Where are the arch smiles, the lively tones, the quick and ready responses now? Her spirit is quenched. Her manner has become subdued, depressed,--shall I say it?--yes, even sulky. Ah! I see your courage will not brave laughter. You steal to the table, half ashamed of yourself as you set down your untasted peach. Your sudden zeal to relieve those ladies of their plates serves as a very good excuse for the relinquishment of your own. You have rescued yourself very well from your dilemma this time. Remember my advice for the future. Never accept a peach in company. MISERIES. No. 2. A DARK NIGHT. There are some people who seem to have the faculty which horses and dogs are said to possess,--of seeing in the dark. But I, alas! am blind and blundering as a beetle; I never can find my way about house in the evening, without a lamp to illumine my path. Many smarting remembrances have I of bruised nose and black eyes, the consequences of attempting to run through a partition, under the full conviction that I have arrived at an open door. My most prominent feature has been rudely assailed, also, by doors standing ajar, unexpectedly, which I have embraced with both outstretched arms. Crickets, tables, chairs (especially chairs with very sharp rockers), and other movable articles of furniture, have stationed themselves, as it would seem, with malicious intent to trip me up. Some murderous contusion makes me suddenly conscious of their presence. Then a feeling of complete bewilderment and helplessness and timidity comes over me. I have not the least idea in what part of the room I am. I am oppressed with a sense of chairs, scattered about in improbable places. I long most ardently for a lamp, or only for one gleam from a neighbor's window. It is no rare thing for me to discover, by a thrilling touch upon the cold glass, that I have been feeling my way exactly in the opposite direction from what I imagined. Strange how ideas of direction and distance are lost when the sight is powerless! _Touch_ may find out mistakes, but cannot always prevent them. Touch may convince me that I have arrived at my bureau, but it is too careless to perceive (what the poor, straining eyes would have discovered at a glance) the open upper drawer that salutes my forehead as I stoop hastily to grasp the handles beneath. Touch is clumsy. It only serves to upset valuable plants, inkstands, solar lamps, &c., with an appalling crash, and then leaves me standing aghast, in utter uncertainty as to the extent of the catastrophe. In such emergencies a rush for the stairs is the first impulse. Ah! but those stairs! I will pass over the startling plunge which begins my descent, the frantic snatch for the banisters, and the strange, momentary doubt as to which foot must move first, like what a child may feel when learning to walk. All this only serves to render me so over-careful, that, when I actually arrive at the foot of the staircase, I cannot believe it, until a loud scuff, and the shock that follows the interruption of my expected descent, assure me beyond a doubt. There is nothing more exasperating than this, unless it may be the corresponding disappointment in running up stairs, when you raise your foot high in air, and bring it down with an emphatic stamp exactly upon a level with the other. But these are mere household experiences. Sad though they are, I esteem them as nothing in comparison with my adventures out of doors. In a dark night, and especially in a night both dark and stormy, I feel myself one of the most wretched beings in existence. Imagine a vessel lost in the wide ocean, and without a compass, and you will have some faint idea of my perplexity, discouragement, and loneliness at such a time. I have a strange propensity for shooting off into the gutter, or for shouldering the fences, under the impression that I am pursuing a straight course. I go quite out of my way to trip over chance stones, or to pick out choice bits of slippery ice. I splash recklessly through deep puddles, stumble over unfortunate scrapers, walk unexpectedly into open cellars, and lay my length upon wet stone doorsteps. I start back at visions of posts looming up in the darkness, and whitewashed fences and trees, all of which would be quite unlikely to be standing in the middle of the sidewalk, and which disappear at the first reasonable thought. I run into harmless passengers as if I would knock the breath of life out of them, and tangle our umbrellas together so fearfully that they spin round and round some time after their separation. O that umbrella of mine! Sometimes I hook it in the drooping branches of trees, and, losing my hold in the suddenness of the shock, have the gratification of feeling it tip up, and go down over my shoulder into the mud behind me. Its bone tips tap and scratch at the windows as I go by, and scrape against the tall fences, like fingers trying to catch at something to hold on by, and stop my progress. It hits a low branch, and its varnished handle slips through my woollen gloves, knocking my hat over my eyes, and extinguishing me for the time being. As if the night were not dark enough without! My friends, I could go on much longer with my complaints, but I feel that I have drawn upon your sympathies sufficiently for the present. You will be as glad to leave me at my own house-door, as I am to find it. MISERIES. No. 3. TWINE. Under the general head of _string_, I might enumerate a long list of this world's miseries. Shoe-strings alone comprehend an amount of wretchedness, which is but feebly described in the tragical story of Jemmy String. Bonnet-strings and apron-strings, dickey-strings and watch-guards, curtain-cord, bed-cord, and cod-line, each and all have furnished enough discomfort to make out a long grumbling article. But I cannot linger to describe their treacherous desertions when their services are most needed, their unexpected weakness, and their obstinate entanglements when time presses. A certain pudding-bag string is commemorated in one of the beautiful couplets of Mother Goose's Melodies. I am sure you cannot have forgotten it, nor the staring spotted cat that is there represented racing away with her booty. That lamented pudding-bag string is but a type of strings in general. They are fleeting possessions, always hiding, always misplaced, never in order. You fit up a string-drawer, perhaps, with a fine assortment, and pride yourself upon its nice arrangement. Go to it a week after, and see if you can find one ball where you left it! Can you lay your hand upon a single piece that you want? No, indeed! Twine is considered common property. If any one has a use for it, he takes it without leave or license, without even inquiring who is the owner, and you may be sure he will never bring any of it back again. O the misery endured for the want of an errant piece of twine, when you are in a nervous hurry to do up a parcel, some one waiting at the door meanwhile! After an immense deal of pains, you have it at last folded to your liking, with every corner squared and even, every wrinkle smoothed. Then, clasping tightly with one hand the stiff wrapper, you search distractedly with the other for a ball of twine, which you distinctly remember tossing into the paper-drawer only the day before. In vain you surround yourself with newspaper and brown paper, and useless rubbish, tumbling your whole drawer into confusion. In vain you relinquish your nicely packed parcel, and see its contents scattered in all directions. In vain you grumble and scold. The ball is not forthcoming. Your little brother has seized it to fly his kite, or your sister is even now tying up her trailing morning-glories, or sweet peas, with the stolen booty. You plunge your hand exploringly into the drawer, and bring up a long roll wound thickly with twine of all kinds and colors. Your eyes sparkle at the prize; but, alas! the first energetic pull leaves in your hand a piece about four inches long, and a quantity of dangling ends and rough knots convince you that you have nothing to hope in that quarter. A second plunge brings up a handful of odds and ends, strong pieces clumsy and rough, coarse red quill-cord, delicate two-colored bits far too short, cotton twine breaking at a touch, fine long pieces hopelessly tangled together, so that not even an end is visible. The more you twitch at the loops, the more desperate is the snarl. Poor mortal! Your pride gives way before the urgency of haste. You send off your nice packet miserably tied together by two kinds of twine. All the rest of the day you are tormented by a superfluity of the very thing you needed so much. It was impossible to get it when you wanted it; but now it is pertinaciously in your way when you do _not_ want it. You almost break your neck tripping over a long, firm cord, which proves to be a pair of reins left hanging on a chair by some careless urchin. The carpet and furniture are strewed with long, straggling pieces of packthread. You find a white end dangling conspicuously from your waistcoat pocket. As you walk the streets you see twine flying from fences, or lying useless on the sidewalk, black with dust and age. To crown the whole, a friend comes with a piece of twine extending across two rooms, and asks you to help him twist and double it into a cord. It is a very entertaining process. You amuse yourself with watching one little rough place that whirls swiftly round, stops with a jerk, turns hesitatingly one side and the other, then, yielding to a new impulse, flies round and round again till you are dizzy. You look with great complacency at the tightening twist, now brought _almost_ to perfection. You turn it carelessly in your fingers, scarcely noticing its convulsive starts for freedom. Ah! your imprudent friend, without any warning, gives it a final pull to stretch it into shape. The twine slips from your grasp, springs away across the room, curls itself into a succession of snarls and twisted loops, and then lies motionless. Your friend looks thunderstruck. With a hasty apology, you step forward and tightly clasp the recreant end. You are in nervous expectation of dropping it again. Your fingers are benumbed at the tips with their tight compression, and the constant twitching. They give a sudden jerk. You make an involuntary clutch for the cord, but in vain. It is rapidly untwisting at the very feet of your companion, who looks at it in despair. Again you make an attempt with no success at all, the refractory twine eluding your utmost endeavors to hold it. Once more! Your fellow-twister walks off at last, with a wretchedly rough affair, which he good humoredly says "will do very well." MISERIES. No. 4. I believe the world has gone quite crazy on the subject of fresh air. In the next century people will think they must sleep on the house-tops, I suppose, or camp out in tents in primitive style. Nothing is talked about but ventilators, and air-tubes, and chimney-draughts. One would suppose that fire-places were invented expressly for cooling and airing a room, instead of heating it. There was no such fuss when I was young; in those good old times these airy notions had not come into fashion. Where the loose window-sashes rattled at every passing breeze, and the wind chased the smoke down the wide-mouthed chimney, nobody complained of being stifled. There were no furnaces then to spread a summer heat to every corner of the house. No, indeed! We ran shivering through the long, windy entries, all wrapped in shawls, and hugging ourselves to retain the friendly warmth of the fire as long as possible. Far from devising ways of letting _in_ the air, we tried hard to keep it _out_ by stuffing the cracks with cotton, and closely curtaining the windows and bed. Even then, the ice in the wash-basin, and the electricity which made our hair literally stand on end in the process of combing, and the gradual transformation of fingers into thumbs, showed but too plainly that the wintry air had penetrated our defences. When we crowded joyfully round a crackling, sparkling wood-fire, even while our faces glowed with the intense heat, cold shivers were creeping down our backs, and sudden draughts from an opening door set our teeth chattering. I often wished myself on a spit, to revolve slowly before the fire until thoroughly roasted. Not from any want of air, I assure you, we children were always breaking panes of glass on the bitterest days, and the glazier was never known to come under a week to replace them. Why people should wish to revive, and live through again, the miseries of such a frost-nipped childhood, I cannot imagine. I, for one, love a snug house, even a warm house. I am of a chilly temperament, and subject to rheumatism, horrible colds, &c. Fresh air is my bane. I banish all books on the subject from my table. I studiously avoid all notorious fresh-air lovers, or try in every way to bring over the poor, misguided mortals to my views; but it is of no use. Fresh air is the fashion, and is run to extremes, as all fashions must be. I call in a physician; lo! _fresh air_ is recommended as a tonic. I give a party; of course my windows are all thrown open, and foolish young girls, in the thinnest of white muslins, are standing in the draught; and such a whirlwind is raised by the flirting of fans, and the rush of the dancers, that I am blown, like a dry leaf, into a corner, where I stand shivering, and making rueful attempts to appear smiling and hospitable. I go out to pass a social afternoon with a friend, and am set down in a room just above the freezing-point, with a little crack opened in the window, and all the doors flying, to _change the air_. I ride in the omnibus, and am almost choked with my bonnet-strings, such a furious draught meets me in the face, and when, with infinite pains, I have secured the only tolerably warm corner, my next neighbor becomes very faint, and must have the window open. Even the poor babies are not safe from this popular insanity. You may see the little victims any day, taking an airing, with their little red noses and watery eyes peeping forth from under the cap and feathers. The old-fashioned blanket, in which the baby was done up head and all, like a bundle, is thrown aside. The child is not quite so often carried upside down. I suppose, under the new system, but what difference does it make whether the poor thing is smothered or frozen to death? I never shall forget a long journey I took once with a friend who was raving mad on the subject of fresh air and cold water. Every morning the windows were thrown wide open, and the blinds flung back with an energetic bang, while a stiff wintry wind whirled every thing about the room, and flapped the curtains against the ceiling. And there she stood, declaring herself exhilarated, while her nose and lips turned from red to blue, and the tears ran down her cheeks. I always took to flight. Afterwards the poor auto-martyr went out to walk before breakfast, scornfully rejecting all offers of furs and extra wrappings. O dear, no! _She_ never thought of muffs, tippets, snow-boots, but as encumbrances fit for extreme old age and infirmity. She always walked fast, and the more the wind blew, the warmer she felt, I might be assured. As soon as she had gone, I established myself in comfort by the side of a glowing grate, happy but for dreading her return. She came in dreadfully fresh and breezy from the outer air, very energetic, very noisy, and fully bent upon stirring me up and making me take exercise. After snapping the door open and slamming it behind her with a clap that greatly disturbed my nerves, she exclaimed in a stentorian voice, "O dear me! I shall _die_ in such an oven! My dear child, you have no idea how hot it is!" And the first thing I knew, up would go a window with a crash that made the weights rattle. It might rain or shine; weather made no difference to this inveterate air-seeker. Many a time has she come in all dripping, and tracking the carpet, brushed carelessly against me with her wet garments, and finally enveloped me with the steam arising from them as they hung around my fire. It roused my indignation that she should make herself and every body else so uncomfortable, and then glory in the deed as if it were indubitably and indisputably praiseworthy. She was so good-natured, however, and so happy in her delusion, that I could not find it in my heart to remonstrate very vehemently, except when she would make me listen to her interminable lectures upon the importance, the _necessity_, of fresh air, and the effect of a snug, cosy room upon the blood, the heart, the lungs, the head, and (as I verily believe she hinted) _the temper_. I know I lost all control of _mine_ long before she finished; but whether it was the want of fresh air in practice, or too much of it in theory, I leave you to imagine. My friend always carried a small thermometer in her trunk, which she consulted a dozen times an hour, in order to regulate the temperature of the room. Alas for me if the quicksilver rose above 60! I devoutly hoped she would leave it behind in some of our numerous stopping-places, and with an eye to that possibility, I must confess, I hung it in the most out-of-the-way corners I could find; but it seemed to be on her mind continually. She never forgot it, and always packed it very carefully, too. I asked her two or three times to let me put it in _my_ trunk, where I had slyly arranged a nice little place full of hard surfaces and sharp corners, but she always had plenty of room. I believe my zealous friend is now residing at the sea-shore, freezing in the cold sea-winds, and losing her breath every morning in the briny wave, under the strange illusion that she is improving her health. FAREWELL. They tell me my hat is old! I scarce believe it so; But since I'm uncivilly told The dear old thing must go, I bid thee farewell, old hat, Good hat! Farewell to thee, good old hat! I must soon to the city his, And trudge to some horrid store, A smart new tile to buy, With a heart exceedingly sore, For I cast off a long-tried friend, A close friend,-- I'm ashamed of a trusty old friend. Ah, let me remember with tears The day thou wast first my own, When I settled thee over my ears, Then with soap-locks overgrown. "Hurra for a beaver hat, A sleek hat! A cheer for a sleek beaver hat!" That day is in memory green Among those that were all of that hue; Sweet days of my youth! Ah! I've seen But too many since that were _blue_. How smooth was our front, my hat, My first hat! Unbent were our brows, my first hat! The first dent,--what a sorrow it was! Were it only my skull instead! Indignant I think on the cause, And pommel my stupid head. I was new to the care of a hat, A tall hat,-- Unworthy to wear a tall hat. The omnibus portal, low-browed, Had ne'er grazed my humble cap, But it knocked off my beaver so proud, Which into a puddle fell slap. Alas for my dignified hat, My proud hat! Woe to my lofty-crowned hat! It survived, but it had a weak side, And so had its wearer, perchance, Since I left it on stairs to abide, At a house where I went to a dance. A lady ran into my hat, My poor hat! She demolished my invalid hat! INNOCENT SURPRISES. I am somewhat inclined to the opinion, that, if positive legislation could be brought to bear upon this subject, making it a criminal offence for one person deliberately to concoct and designedly to spring a surprise upon another, society would derive incalculable benefit from the act. For the ordinary and inevitable surprises of every-day life are sufficiently frequent and startling to content even the most romantic disposition; entirely dispensing with the necessity of those artfully contrived, embarrassing little plots which one's friends occasionally set in motion, greatly to their own diversion and the extreme discomfort of the surprised unfortunate. For he who has ever broken his skull on a treacherous sidewalk, or received from the post a dunning missive when he expected a love-letter, or arrived one minute late at the car-station, or taken a desperately bad bill in exchange for good silver, or been caught in a thunderstorm with white pantaloons and no umbrella, knows that the unavoidable surprises of life are in themselves staggerers of quite frequent occurrence, and require not the aid of human invention. But the surprises which we most dread are not those which _naturally_ fall to us as part of the misfortune we are born to inherit; not those which result from unforeseen accidental circumstances, from carelessness on our own part or from the folly of others, from revolutions in the elements or in the affairs of nations; these we _can_ bear, by using against them the best remedies we possess, or by viewing and enduring them as wisdom and philosophy teach us to do. No; our only prayer, in this connection, is that we may be saved from our friends; not from their carelessness, but from their deliberate schemes against our security. In order to reconcile this apparent contradiction in terms, take the following instance of a friendly propensity. You walk into your house at dusky twilight, at that particular hour of evening at which your _own brother_, if he be a reasonable being, would not expect you to recognize him; one of your family extends his (or her) head from the parlor, and calls upon you at once to enter, and greet "an old friend." You obey, and are immediately confronted with an individual whose countenance wears an expression associated with some reminiscences of your youth, but so dim and undefined is it, that you cannot, for the life of you, give it its appropriate name or place. What is to be done? The recollections of early childhood are expected spontaneously to burst forth from under a heap of later and more vivid associations, and the name, residence, business, and whole history of the unwelcome guest are called upon to suggest themselves within a second's time. After a long moment of painful hesitation, during which you have in vain tried to _stare_ his name out of him, you clutch at a struggling idea, and blurt out the name of one of your former associates. You do this, not by any means because common sense or conviction suggest the course, but simply because something must instantly be done. The result, of course, is, that you hit upon the wrong name; and now your kind friends can do no more for you; even if they rush to the rescue, and formally introduce the stranger, it is of no avail. The deed is done; you are placed in a position of awkward mortification, which both the stranger and yourself will never forget, and never cease to regret. Why it is that the feeling of shame which follows upon such mishaps attaches itself exclusively to the innocent sufferers, rather than to those who are the cause of the suffering, I never could understand. This kind of diversion betrays a want of humane consideration in the contriver. It is infinitely more cruel and unamiable than Spanish bull-baitings, or the gladiatorial shows of the ancients, inasmuch as a shock to the finest feelings of human nature is harder to bear, and longer in duration, than the momentary pang induced by witnessing a merely physical suffering. THE OLD SAILOR. In my school vacations I used occasionally to visit an old sailor friend, a man of uncommon natural gifts, and that varied experience of life which does so much to supply the want of other means of education. He must have been a handsome man in his youth, and though time and hardship had done their utmost to make a ruin of his bold features, and had made it needful to braid his still jetty black locks together to cover his bald crown, his was a fine, striking head yet, to my boyish fancy. I loved to sit at his feet, and hear him tell the events of sixty years of toil and danger, suffering and well-earned joy, as he leaned with both hands upon his stout staff, his body swaying with the earnestness of his speech. His labors and perils were now ended, and in his age and infirmity he had found a quiet haven. He had built a small house by the side of the home of his childhood, and his son, who followed his father's vocation, lived under the same roof. This son and two daughters were all that remained to him of a large family. "An easterly bank and a westerly glim are certain signs of a wet skin!" said the fisherman, pointing to the heavy black masses of cloud that hung over the eastern horizon, one morning when I had risen at sunrise for a day's fishing. "'T won't do; don't go out to-day! There's soon such a breeze off shore, as, with the heavy chop, would make you sick enough! Besides, the old dory won't put up with such a storm as is coming. No fishing, my boy, to-day." His old father said, "Stephen is right. There is a blow brewing." And he came to look, leaning on his cane. "Stay in to-day." I yielded, and the sky during the morning slowly assumed a dull, leaden hue. The storm came on in the afternoon, heavily pattering, and pouring, and blowing against the windows, and obscuring the little light of an autumn twilight. I wandered through the few small rooms of the cottage, endeavoring to amuse myself, while the light lasted, with two funeral sermons and an old newspaper. Then I sat down at a window, and I well remember the gloomy landscape, seen through the rain, in the dusk:--the marsh, with the creek dividing it, the bare round eminence between the house and the beach, or rather the rocky cliffs, and on either side the wide, lonely sands, with heavy foam-capped breakers rolling in upon the shore, with a sound like a solemn dirge. At a distance on the left, half hidden by the walnut-trees, lay the ruins of a mill, which had always the air of being haunted. A high, rocky hill, very nearly perpendicular on the side next the house, was covered on the sides and top with junipers, pines, and other evergreens. As the darkness thickened, I left the lonely "best room" for the seat in the large chimney-corner, in the kitchen. The old wife tottered round, making preparations for the evening meal, and muttered recollections of shipwrecks which the storm brought to her mind. Now and then she would go to a window, turn back her cap-border from her forehead, put her face close to the glass, shading off the firelight with her hand, and gaze out into the darkness. "Asa did not go out either, thank the good Father!" she said. The dog whined piteously. "St! St! Poor Scip! Here, shall have a piece! Good dog! A fearful night indeed it is." The two men came in from the barn, shook off the wet, and drew near the fire. "Just such a night, twenty-nine years ago come August, we ran afoul of Hatteras. You remember, old woman, how they frighted ye about me, don't ye?" Amidst such reminiscences we were called to supper. I remember being solemnly impressed when that old man, bent with hardship and the weight of years, clasped his hands reverently, and in rude terms, but full of meaning, asked a blessing upon their humble board. I remember the flickering light from the logs burning on the hearth, and how it showed, upon the faces of those who sat there, a strong feeling of the words in which rose an added petition in behalf of those on the mighty deep. Supper being ended, the old man took down the tobacco-board, and, when he had cut enough to fill his pipe, handed it to his son, who, having done the same, restored it to its nail in the chimney-corner. Then they smoked, and talked of dangers braved and overcome, of pirates, and shipwrecks, and escapes, till I involuntarily drew closer into my corner, and looked over my shoulder. Suddenly the dog under the table gave a whining growl. "I never seed the like o' that dog," exclaimed the fisherman, turning to me. "I thought he was asleep. But if ever a foot comes nigh the house at night, he gives notice. Depend on it, there's some one coming." The door of the little entry opened, with a rush of the whistling wind, and a man stepped in. The dog half rose, and though he wagged his tail, in token that he knew the step to be that of a friend, he kept up a low whine. A young man, muffled to the eyes, and with the water dripping from his huge pea-jacket, opened the kitchen-door. "William Crosby, why, what brings you out in such a storm as this? Strip off your coat, and draw up to the fire, can't ye? Where are you bound, then, and the night as dark as a wolf's throat?" The young fisherman made no answer, unless by a motion of his hand. As he turned back the collar from his face, we saw by the waving light that it was pale as death. The long wet locks already lay upon his cheeks, making them more ghastly as he struggled to speak. "O Stephen Lee, it's no time to be sitting by the fire, when old Asa Osborn is rolling in the waters. A man's drownded; and who's to get the body for the wife and the children--God pity them!--afore the ebb carries it out to sea?" The old man drew his hand across his forehead, and rose. I looked at him as he drew up his tall figure, and looked the young messenger full in the eye. In a low, deep whisper, he said, "Who, William, did ye say? You said a man's drownded,--but tell me the name again." "Yes, Gran'sir, I did say it. Old Uncle Ase Flemming, he and the minister went out a fishing in the morning. The minister got his boots off in the water, and after a long time he's swum ashore. But poor Uncle Ase--. Stephen, come along. His poor wife's gone down to the beach, now." They left the house, and I shut the door after them, and came back softly to my seat by the old man's knee. Once before I had seen him, when a heavy sorrow fell upon him. It was on a beautiful summer's day, and the open window let in the cool breeze from the sea. He was sitting by it in his arm-chair, looking out upon the calm water, buried in thought. His favorite daughter had long been very low, and might sink away at any moment. The old dog was at his feet asleep. The clock ticked in the corner, and the sun was shining upon the floor. Some friends sat by in silence, with sorrowful countenances. His little grandchild came to his side, and said, "Mother says, tell Grandpa Aunt Lucy's gone home." The old man did not alter his position. For some time he sat in deep thought, looking out with unseeing gaze, and winding his thumbs, as before. Of five fair daughters, three had before died by the same disease, consumption. He had seen them slowly fade away, one by one, and had followed his children to the grave in the secluded burying-ground, where the green sod was now to be broken to receive the fourth. Rising slowly, he walked across the room, and, taking the well-worn family Bible, returned with it to his seat; and, as he turned the leaves, he said in a low tone to himself, "There's only one left now!" Then he sat entirely silent, with his eyes fixed upon the sacred page. He did not utter one word of lamentation, he did not shed a tear, but as he turned his eye on me, in passing, its expression went to my heart. Stealing softly out, I left him to the silent Comforter whose blessing is on the mourner. Now the scene was changed. One was suddenly taken from his side who had been a companion from boyhood to old age. They had played and worked in company; together they had embarked on their first voyage, and their last; and they had settled down in close neighborhood in the evening of their days. Each had preserved the other's life in some moment of peril, but took small praise to himself for so simple an act of duty. Few words of fondness had ever passed between them. They had gone along the path of life, without perhaps being conscious of any peculiarly strong tie of friendship binding them together, till they were thus torn asunder. The death of a daughter, long and slowly wasting away before his eyes, could be calmly borne. But this blow was wholly unforeseen, and his chest heavily rose and fell, and by the bright firelight I saw tears rolling over his weather-beaten cheeks. "A child will weep a bramble's smart, A maid to see her sparrow part, A stripling for a woman's heart; Talk not of grief, till thou hast seen The hard-drawn tears of bearded men." The fury of the storm being abated, I resolved to follow Stephen down to the shore. He was not in sight, and I knew not what direction to take. It was a gloomy night, the transient glimpses of the moon between driving masses of clouds only making the scene more wild and appalling. I could see the tops of the tall trees bending under the fury of the blast, ere it came to sweep the beach. The heaving billows were covered with foam, far as the eye could reach, and, rising and tumbling, seemed striving with each other as they rolled on towards the sands. I had seen storms upon the ocean before, but never had it presented so awful and majestic an appearance. As the breakers struck upon the shore, and sent a huge mass of water upon the sands, their sullen roar mingled with the howling and rushing of the wind, and filled me with awe. There were torches upon the beach, and as I drew near, I saw the fishermen run together to one point. The body had just been washed ashore, and lay stretched upon the sands. The head was bare, and long locks of white hair streamed down upon the shoulders. The heavy pea-jacket was off from one arm, as if he had endeavored to extricate himself from it in the water. The sinewy arms lay powerless and free from tension then, but they told me that, when they first drew him from the surf, both hands were grasping a broken oar with such strength that they were unable to loose his hold, till suddenly the muscles relaxed, and the arms fell upon the ground. They turned the body, and a little water ran from the mouth. Then, gently raising it upon their shoulders, they bore it home. LAUGHTER. In some individuals the risibles lie so near the surface that you may tickle them with a feather. In others, they are so deeply imbedded in phlegm, or so protected by the crust of ill-humor, that a strong thrust and a keen weapon are required to reach them. A laugh is in itself a different thing in different individuals. Some persons laugh inwardly, unsocially, bitterly. It is a pure grimace on your part when you join in their merriment, unless you are superior to the fear of ridicule. On the other hand, there is a laugh of so contagious a nature, that you are irresistibly moved to sympathy while ignorant of the exciting cause, or out of the sphere of its influence. You will laugh loud and long, and afterwards confess that you had not the least gleam of a funny idea, all the while. You doubt the power of the sympathetic laugh? Come with me into the nursery. Here is a rosy little horror, a year and a half old. Sit down and take him upon your knees. Hold his dimpled hands in yours, and look steadily into his roguish eyes. Repeat a nursery rhyme, no matter what, in a humdrum recitative; he is sober, and very attentive. Suddenly spring a mine upon him with a "Boo!" His "Hicketty-hick!" follows, and his eyes begin to shine. Repeat the experiment. "Hicketty-hick!" again, more heartily than at first, with the baby encore, "Adin!" The same process awakens the rapturous little pearls again and again, and you are quite in the spirit of the thing yourself. Now for a more ecstatic burst. You purposely prolong his suspense; he is all atilt, expecting the delightful surprise. You drawl out each word; you drone the ditty over and over again, till every tiny nerve is tense with expectation. "Boo!" at last, and over he goes, in the complete _abandon_ of baby glee; his cherry lips are wide asunder, his head hangs powerless back, and the "Hicketty-hicks" burst tumultuously from his little, beating throat. And _you_, sir; what are _you_ doing? Laughing, I declare, in full roar, till the tears run down your cheeks. You catch the boy in your arms, toss him, almost throttle him with kisses, and so enhance the merry spasms, that mamma, who has a philosophical instinct with regard to excited nerves, and dreads the reaction, comes to the rescue. Let me introduce you to another effective laughter. You shall not hear a sound, yet you cannot choose but laugh, if she does, quiet as she is about it. See how her shoulders shake,--and look at her face! Every feature is instinct with mirth; the color mounts to the roots of the hair; the curls vibrate; the eyes sparkle through tears; the white teeth glisten; the very nose and ears seem to take a part; like Nourmahal, she "laughs all over," and while you wonder what the joke may be, you are laughing too. Do you feel dismal, or anxious? You should hear L. tell a story. She is one of the very few who can undertake with impunity to talk and laugh at the same time. Look and listen, while she describes some comic occurrence. There is no unladylike, boisterous noise, but musical peals of laughter come thick and fast; and faster and thicker, preternaturally fast and thick, come the words with them. And yet each word is distinct; you do not lose a syllable. And I should like to see the man who can resist her, if she chooses he should laugh, even at his own expense. There is an odd sort of power, too, in the gravity with which B. tells a humorous anecdote. He invariably maintains a sober face while every body is in an agony of laughter around him. Just as it begins to subside, the echo of his own wit comes back to him, and, as if he had just caught the idea, he bursts into one little abrupt explosion, so genuine, so full of heartiness, that it sets every body off upon a fresh score. Nothing so melts away reserve among strangers, nothing so quickly develops the affinities in chance society, as laughter. A person might be ever so polite, and even kind, and talk sentiment a whole day, and it would not draw me so near to him as the mutual enjoyment of one heartfelt laugh. It is a perfect bond of union; for the time being, you have but one soul between you. TO STEPHEN. I saw thee only once, dear boy, and it may be, perchance, That ne'er again on earth my eyes shall meet thy gentle glance; Years have gone by since then, and thou no longer art the child, With earnest eye, and frolic laugh, and look so clear and mild; For thee, the smiles and tears and sports of infancy are gone, And youth's bright promise, gliding into manhood, has come on;-- And yet thine image, as a child, will ever stay with me, As bright as when, so long ago, I met and welcomed thee. What was the charm that lay enshrined within thy smiling eyes? What made me all thy childish, winning ways so dearly prize? It was thy likeness to another,--one whose looks of love, No longer blessing earth, were met by angel eyes above. Yet thou hadst not the golden hair, the brow of radiant white, Nor the blue eyes so soft and deep, like violets dewy bright; But the smiles that played about thy mouth, the sweetness in thine eyes, The dimpling cheek that said, "Within, a sunny spirit lies," The true and open brow, the bird-like voice, so free and clear, The glance that told, "I have not learned the meaning yet of fear," And more than all, the trusting heart, so lavish of its treasure, In simple faith, its earnest love bestowing without measure; These, more than lines and colors, made a picture, warm and bright, Of one whose face no more might cheer and bless my earthly sight. The nature, beautiful and pure, he carried to the skies, Has been trained by angel teaching, has been watched by seraph eyes. Dear boy! through this cold world _thy_ earth-bound feet have trod; and now, Is the loving heart still thine? Hast kept that true and open brow? THE OLD CHURCH. There are certain old-fashioned people who find fault with the luxuriousness of our churches, and ascribe to the warmth and comfort, which contrast so strongly with the hardships of early times, the acknowledged sleepiness of modern congregations. For my part, I see no necessary connection between discomfort and devotion. _My_ soul, at least, sympathizes so much with its physical adjunct, that, when the latter is uncomfortable, the former is never quite free and active. Let me call to remembrance the church my childhood knew, with its capacious square pews, in which half the audience turned their backs upon the minister; the seats made to rise and fall, for the convenience of standing, and which closed every prayer with a clap of thunder; its many aisles, like streets and lanes; the old men's seats, and the queer but venerable figures that were seen in them,--some with black-silk caps to protect their bald heads from the freezing draughts of air from the porchless doors; the old women's seats, on the opposite side; the elevated row of pews round the sides of the church, and the envied position of certain little children who had an extensive prospect through the open pew-top within doors, and a view of the hay-scales and the town-pump through the window besides. Those windows, in a double row, with the gallery between,--how regularly I counted the small panes, always forgetting the number, to make the same weary task necessary every Sunday! The singing-seats, projecting from the central portion of the gallery, furnished me with another hebdomadal study, in large gilt letters of antique awkwardness, which so impressed themselves on my mind that I see them now. This was the golden legend: "BUILT, 1770. ENLARGED, 1795." I remember hearing a wag propose to add as another remarkable fact, "SCOURED, 1818." Opposite to the singing-seats towered the pulpit, from which the clergyman looked down upon us like a sparrow upon the house-top. He seemed in perpetual danger of being extinguished by a huge sounding-board. Very earnestly I used to gaze at the slender point by which it hung suspended, and wished, if it _must_ come down, that I might make the gilt ornament at the apex, resembling a vase turned upside down, my prize. Under the pulpit was a closet, which some one veraciously assured me was the place where the tithingman imprisoned incautiously playful urchins. The terrors of that dark, mysterious cell had little effect on my conduct, however, as I was not entirely convinced of the existence of any such lynx-eyed functionary. The largest church in the county, it was, however, well filled, many of the congregation coming five and some even six miles, and remaining there through the noon intermission, which, on their account, was made as short as possible. But in winter the vast airy space had a peculiar and searching chill. No barn could be colder, except that the numerous footstoves made some little change in the air during service. The minister stood upon a heated slab of soap-stone. I used to watch this in its progress up the broad aisle and the pulpit stairs, under the arm of the boy from the parsonage, and the irreverent way in which he made his descent, in view of the assembly, after depositing his burden, was thus rebuked by an old lady who was always droll and quaint. "Why, Matthew, when you come down the pulpit stairs of a Sunday, you throw up your heels like a horse coming out of a stable-door." Older grew the church, and colder; and if people then staid at home on Sunday afternoons, they had a better excuse for doing so than their successors can muster. The chorister, even, was frequently among the missing, but was charitably supposed to be subject to the ague. Efforts were made to prevail upon the elderly part of the parish to permit the introduction of stoves with long funnels. They scorned the enervating luxury! Their fathers had worshipped in the cold, and their sons might. But ah! how degenerate were the descendants of the noble old Puritan church-goers! The services curtailed to half their proper length, yet finding the patience of the listeners all too short! The degenerate descendants carried the day, however, the most bigoted of their opposers becoming disabled by rheumatism. The old sexton, resignation to inevitable evils being a lesson he had had much opportunity to learn, submitted with a good grace, though very much of opinion that fires in a church were an absurdity and a waste. The stoves were provided, and an uncommonly full attendance the next Sabbath showed the very general interest the matter had excited. How would it seem? Would any one faint? There was by no means a superabundance of heat; there was something wrong, but the lack of warmth was a hundred-fold made up in smoke. No one could see across the church, and the minister loomed up, as if in a dense fog; all eyes were fountains of tears. At last the old sexton went with a slow and subdued step up to the pulpit, and, wiping his eyes, respectfully inquired, in a whisper, whether there was not a _little_ too much smoke. This suggestion being very smilingly assented to, he proceeded to extinguish the fires, and for that day the services were not indebted to artificial warmth to promote their effect. How sad are improvements in places to which our childish recollections cling! The gushing fulness of unchilled love is lavished even on inanimate and senseless things, in a happy childhood. How was my heart grieved when the old-fashioned meeting-house was converted into the modern temple! Time and decay had rendered the tall spire unsafe, yet its fall by force and premeditated purpose seemed a sacrilege. I felt affronted for the huge weathercock, reclining sulkily against a fence, no more to point his beak to the east with obstinate preference. I mourned over the broad, old-fashioned dial, on which young eyes could discern the time a mile off. The old sexton lived to see this change, and at the end of half a century of care under that venerable roof he went to his rest. The beloved minister, and many, many who sat with trustful and devoted hearts under his teachings, are gone to their reward. A board from the old pulpit, a piece of the red-damask curtain, and the long wished-for gold vase, are now in my possession. "SOMETHING THAN BEAUTY DEARER." You ask me if her eyes are fair, And touched with heaven's own blue, And if I can her cheek compare To the blush-rose's hue? Her clear eye sheds a constant gleam Of truth and purest love, And wit and reason from it beam, Like the light of the stars above. Good-humor, mirth, and fancy throng The dimples of her cheek, And to condemn the oppressor's wrong Her indignant blush doth speak. You ask me if her form is light And graceful as the fawn; You ask me if her tresses bright Are like the golden dawn? Her step is light on an errand of love, Scarce doth she touch the earth, And in graceful kindness doth she move Around her father's hearth; And when to bless his child he bends, His comfort and delight, The silver with her dark hair blends, Like a crown of holy light. A TALE FOUND IN THE REPOSITORIES OF THE ABBOTS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. Swept from his saddle by a low branch, Count Robert lay stunned upon the ground. The hunting-party swept on, the riderless steed galloping wildly among them. No man turned back; not one loved the Count better than his sport. There came to the spot a man in a woodman's garb, yet of a knightly and noble aspect. He bent over the fallen man, and bathed his temples, turning back the heavy, clustering locks. The Count, opening his eyes, gazed on him at first without surprise; he thought himself at home, however he came there, so familiar was the face. Then did the woodman embrace him with tears, crying, "My brother, O my brother! it is I! it is Richard!" "Thou in England!" cried the Count. "Art thou mad?" And he frowned gloomily. "Fear not for me," replied the exile, tenderly raising the Count from the ground. A narrow path wound through the wood to a ruined hermitage. The outlaw here prepared a bed of leaves for the Count, laid him softly thereon, and went to seek some refreshment. His loved brother might revive, and yet smile kindly on the playmate of his youth, though under a ban. When Richard returned, there followed him like a dog a horse of the North-country breed, shaggy, and in size not much greater than a stag-hound. Robert viewed him with surprise, and it seemed with derision. "Despise not him who is able to bear thee out of the wood," said Richard. "Thou art faint; here is wine, and of no mean vintage." Robert drank from the earthen bottle, and his eye grew brighter, yet looked it not the more lovingly on Richard. He ate right gladly of the store of the landless and penniless,--dried venison and oaten bread,--and was refreshed, yet thanked him not. Richard gave fragments to the neighing steed. He ate no morsel himself, nor tasted the wine. His heart was full to bursting. "Tell me of home,--of--of our father," he said, at last, with deep, strong sobs. "On the morrow, on the morrow," said Robert, disposing himself for sleep. "Thou wilt hear soon enough." But Richard seized him wildly by the shoulder, and bade him tell the worst. "Nay, then, if thou _wilt_ know, he is dead. I, thy younger brother, am now thy superior." "For that I care not. As well thou, as I, to sit in my father's seat. But oh! left he no blessing for me? Did he not at the last believe me the victim of calumny?--Alas! No word? Not one dying thought of Richard?" "He died suddenly." Richard wept long and bitterly, and when, with faltering tongue, he asked tidings of his betrothed, his face was covered; he saw not the guilty flush upon his brother's brow, for that he had spread a lying report of the exile's death. "Would Bertha still brave the king's displeasure? Was she yet true to the unfortunate?" "Bertha is a very woman. She hath forgotten the absent lover, and chosen another, and a better man." "Who, who hath supplanted me?" cried Richard fiercely, and springing upon his feet. "I tell thee not, lest thou wreak on him thy spite against thy faithless fair." "Know that Bertha's choice, though a traitor, is safe from me, even were I, as I was, a man to meet a knight on equal terms." His generous heart could not dream of fraternal treachery. And when his rival saw this, and that he suspected him not as yet, he smiled to himself, turned his face to the wall, and closed his eyes, if so be he might cut off further question. Soon, falling into slumber, he clenched his hands, and ground his teeth. The sleep of a traitor is ever haunted by uneasy dreams, and dark shadows of coming doom fell upon his spirit. Richard watched till dawn. Sometimes he started up to walk to and fro, beating his bosom, and wringing his hands in agony. Anon he threw himself prostrate in the stupor of despair. At the first carol of birds in the forest, sleep surprised his weary senses, and the peace of the innocent settled upon his features. Side by side lay the brothers, alike in form, alike even in feature. But in heart they bore no mark of the resemblance of kindred. Envy of the elder-born early possessed the soul of Robert, like a base fiend; first had it driven thence love, and lastly honor. Does no one seek for the absent lord of the castle, while the weary hunters return to be his guests? Keeps no one anxious vigil, the live-long night? The unloving is not loved. But he hath a king beneath his roof; a king and lords of high degree sit at the morning board, and shall none but vassals be hospitably proud and busy? Ladies of rank were there, and among them, pale and silent, sat Bertha, looking on the king, it seemed, with an upbraiding eye. An angry gloom sat upon his grimly compressed lips, and sadness was upon his brow; for kingly power was naught, since remorse could not undo a wrong done to one who no longer lived, and vengeance could not reach its absent object. Richard's innocence had come to light, and Robert, albeit he knew it not, was now the dishonored outlaw. Ere the clock of the distant minster rung the hour of ten, the royal cavalcade wound from the gates of the castle. At the same hour Count Robert awoke, and saw that the sun was already very high. It shone upon the calm face of Richard, tempered with quivering shadows from the leafy canopy above. "Up, brother Richard!" cried the Count; "thou wast ever a sluggard." And Richard, at his bidding, filled his hunting-pouch with provisions for the way, and went before, leading the little Northern nag, which the Count bestrode. He bore himself bravely under the weight of a rider whose feet nearly grazed the turf on each side. Slowly they wound through the tangled wood. "Stay, I will lighten thy burden for thee," said Robert, "if thou hast not left the bottle behind. Here's to the fair Bertha. What, thou wilt not drink? Then thou hast resigned her;--she is not worth a thought. Thou wilt not peril thy life to see her again, the false one who careth not for thee. Now depart, and when the king's wrath is overpast, I will beseech him for thee. Leave thy cause in a brother's hands." But Richard went not back, though, when they came to the edge of the wood, they beheld the king's train advancing in the broad highway. "Fly, Richard; escape while thou mayest!" cried Robert, yet offered he not the horse for the greater speed. "Found on English ground, thou diest a felon's death. Disgrace not thy family. Carest thou not for life?" he cried, pursuing Richard, who stinted not, nor stayed, at the sight of the king, but the rather hasted forward. "What is life to me?" said Richard. "Let the king do with me as he will." He strode onward proudly, with folded arms, offering himself to the view of Edward, who as yet saw him not, or only as a forester. "Halt at least that I may spur on and implore for thee," said Robert, for he hoped that he might deliver him a prisoner to some one in attendance, that he should not come to speech of the king. With this wily purpose, he galloped forward. A shout arose, "The traitor! The traitor!" He was made prisoner by no gentle hands, and, at a nod from the king, found himself led away to the rear, but not far removed. He looked about for Richard. Could he not yet wave him back? Should the king see that noble face, he must be moved to mercy, at least so far as to give him audience. The brothers know not yet that all is reversed. Robert sees a man in russet clothing kneel at the king's stirrup; he sees the royal hand extended to raise him; he sees many press forward eager to welcome the wanderer. He turns away, sick at the sight. One look more. Bertha has thrown herself into the arms of his hated brother. He tears his beard; he curses his own natal day, and the stars that presided over his birth and destiny. Yet must he look once more, though to an envious soul the sight of a brother's happiness is like the torment of purgatorial fire. Richard is standing with his hand extended towards him. He is pleading the cause of the mean and cowardly enemy who betrayed him. He pities and forgives him; he even loves him still, for is he not his brother? As the eyes of the king and of all the surrounding crowd are turned on him, burning shame subdues the warring passions that fill the heart of Robert, and a faint emotion of gratitude brings a tear to fall upon his hot cheek. Something of old, childish love awakes in his bosom, like dew in a dry land. The king granted Richard's prayer, the more readily because his anger was smothered by contempt. The title and inheritance returned to the heir, who was worthy his ancient name. Robert, to the day of his death, lived on his brother's bounty, harmless, the rather that the king's decree had gone forth that in no case should he be Richard's successor, or inherit aught from him. * * * * * NOTE.--Here ends the tale, but by patient research we have discovered one verse of an ancient ballad, supposed to have the same tradition for its subject. It is preserved in a curious collection of fragmentary poetry, to be found in most private libraries, and, in its more ancient and valuable editions, in the repositories of antiquaries. It stands, in the modern copy which we possess, as follows:-- Richard and Robert were two pretty men; Both laid abed till the clock struck ten. Up jumps Robert, and looks at the sky; "Oho, brother Richard, the sun's very high! You go before, with the bottle and bag, And I'll come behind, on little Jack nag." THE SEA. "We sent him to school, we set him to learn a trade, we sent him far back into the country; but it was of no use, he must go to sea."--THE GRANDMOTHER'S STORY. A child was ever haunted by a thought of mystery, Of the dark, shoreless, desolate, heaving and moaning sea, Which round about the cold, still earth goes drifting to and fro, As a mother, holding her dead child, swayeth herself with woe. In all the jar and bustle and hurrying of trade, Through the hoarse, distracting din by rattling pavements made, There sounded ever in his ear a low and solemn moan, And his soul grew sick with listening to that deep undertone. He wandered from the busy streets, he wandered far away, To where the dim old forest stands, and in its shadows lay, And listened to the song it sang; but its murmurs seemed to be The whispered echo of the sad, sweet warbling of the sea. His soul grew sick with longing, and shadowy and dim Seemed all the beauty of the land, and all its joys, to him,-- Its mountains vast, its forests old. He only longed to be Away upon the measureless, unfathomed, restless sea. Thither he went. The foam-capped waves yet beat upon the strand, With a low and solemn murmuring that none may understand; And he lieth drifting to and fro, amid the ocean's roar, With the drifting tide he loved to hear, but shall hear never more. And thus we all are haunted,--there soundeth in our ear, A low and restless moaning, that we struggle not to hear. Yet still it soundeth, the faint cry of the dark deeps of the soul,-- Dark, barren, restless, as the sea which doth for ever roll Hither and thither, bearing still some half-shaped form of good, The flickering shadow of the moon upon the "moon-led flood." And ever, 'mid all the joys and weary cares of life, Through the dull sleep of sluggishness, and clangor of the strife, We hear the low, deep murmuring of that Infinity Which stretcheth round us dim and vast, as wraps the earth the sea. And in the twilight dimness, in silence and alone, The soul is almost startled by the power of its solemn tone. When we view the fairest works of Nature and of Art, They ever fill with longings, never satisfy, the heart; But, like the lines of weed and shells that stretch along the beach, And show how far the flowing tide and the high waters reach, They seem like barriers to hold back, like weedy lines, to show How far into this busy world the waves of beauty flow. Yet when sweet strains of music rise about us, float, and play, We almost dream these barriers of sense are broken away, And that the beauty bound before is floating round us, free As the bright, glancing waters of the ever-playing sea. And for a little moment, the spirit seems to stand With naked, wave-washed feet almost upon the strand. But when she stoops to reach the wave, the waters glide away, And whisper in an unknown tongue,--she hears not what they say. FASHION. Why is it that the introduction of a really graceful fashion is generally met with ridicule and opposition, while ugly modes are adopted with grave acquiescence and reverent submission? "Seest thou not what a deformed thief this _Fashion_ is?" "I know that Deformed; he goes up and down like a gentleman." Yes, we all know _Deformed_. When any of his family come to us, from England or France or any foreign country, we recognize the hideous brotherhood, and extend our welcoming hands; but _Graceful_ must stay with us a long time to be greeted kindly, and her sisters from foreign parts are coldly looked upon, or dismissed at once. To begin at the top,--"the very head and front of the offending." A gentleman goes into a fashionable hatter's, and the shopman, holding up for admiration a hat with a crown a foot high, of the genuine stove-pipe form, and a brim an inch wide, says, "This is the newest style, Sir." The gentleman walks home with the ugly thing on his head, but no one stares or laughs. 'Tis a new fashion, but all "take it easy." A year later, perhaps, the hatter shows him a thing with a brim a half an inch wider, but rolled up at the sides, and a crown of a much greater diameter at the top than where it joins the brim,--a specimen of the bell-crown. This is solemnly donned, and the wearer has the pleasure of knowing that the head-gear of all his friends is as hideous as his own. The inverted cone is worn with a sweet, Malvolio smile. And so "Deformed" has ruled the head of man for as many years as any of us can number, only ringing the changes, from one year to another, upon the three degrees of comparison of the word _ugly_. But a change takes place; a light, graceful, low-crowned hat, with a brim wide enough for shelter or for shade, begins to appear as a fashion;--and how is it received? The clergyman thinks it would be very unclerical for him to wear it, though it may be as black, and is as modest, as the rest of his apparel. The young doctor timidly tries it on, and in his first walk meets the wealthy hypochondriac, his favorite patient, and the one who is trying to introduce him to practice, who seriously advises him, as a friend, not to wear that new-fangled thing,--if the poor hat had only been ugly, there would have been nothing bad in its _new-fangled_ quality,--as all his respectable patients will leave him if he dresses so like a fool. The young lawyer gets one, because he heard an old lady speak of "those impudent-looking hats," and he is in hopes that impudence, which he understands is all-important in his profession, and which he is conscious of not possessing, may come with the hat. A lady goes out with her son, who is just old enough to have gained a coat, and is looking for his first hat. The mother has taste and judgment, and the youth has yet some unperverted affinity with graceful forms left, and so they choose and buy one of these comfortable and elegant chapeaux. Just before they reach home, they meet one of their best friends, a person whom the lady regards most kindly, and the young man admires and respects, and _he_ greets him with, "Why, Tom! have _you_ got one of those rowdy hats?" And so the stiff, stove-pipe monstrosity keeps its place, and the only pleasant, sensible, graceful, becoming hat that the nineteenth century has known, is called all sorts of bad names, and quiet gentlemen are afraid to wear it. Has it not been the fate of the shawl, too, the most simple and elegant wrapper, and comfortable withal, that a man can throw around him, to be scouted and flouted? Yes, Deformed! Come on next winter with a white surtout in your hand that must fit so tightly that your victims can but just screw themselves into it, with a stiff, square collar touching the ears, and seven capes, one over the other, "small by degrees and beautifully less," and all respectable gentlemen will accept it, and virtuously frown down, as dandies or rowdies, those who will not sacrifice their shawls to the ugly idol. A GROWL. I know it is generally considered decidedly boorish to utter complaints against the ladies. But I am for the present a bachelor, and in that capacity claim freedom of speech as my peculiar privilege. In virtue of my unhappy position, then, I proceed to utter the first of a series of savage growls, wishing the ladies to understand me as fully in earnest in this; that when I growl _loud_, I must be supposed to _mean_ what I growl. For a month past, single gentlemen of every description have suffered in common with other fancy stocks, and have remained hopelessly below par. Those nice, trim, poetical, and polite young beaux, who, when no great undertaking agitates the female mind, are treated with kindness, and sometimes with distinction, by young ladies of discretion, are now, as it were, ruthlessly thrust and bolted out of the pale of feminine society by an awful demon who reigns supreme,--the Genius of Dress-making. The other evening, I pulled sixteen different bell-handles, in a gentlemanly manner, without obtaining admission into any house for the purpose of making a call; and when I succeeded in making an entrance at the seventeenth door by falsely representing myself as the agent of a dry-goods dealer, with a large box of patterns under my arm, I found the ladies in close conference with three dress-makers, studying a fashion-plate with an assiduity worthy of a better cause. A friend of mine, who has hitherto enjoyed the privilege of dining every day with six ladies, and has derived from their society great pleasure and profit, informed me yesterday, with a tear in each eye, that he had left the house for ever, the conversation being always turned upon topics with which he is utterly unacquainted, and conducted in a language which is about as intelligible to him as the most abstruse Japanese or the most classic Law-Latin. If we are so fortunate as to obtain, by any stratagem, admission to hall or anteroom, in the mansions of our fair friends, our olfactories are regaled with a fragrance which we instinctively associate with tailors' shops, and which, I am informed, does in fact arise from the contact of woollen substances with hot flat-irons. As we advance, our ears are greeted by the resounding clash of scissors. Entering upon the field of action, our eyes are dazzled by a thousand fragments of rich and brilliant hues, and our personal safety endangered by swiftly flying needles and unsuspected pins. Gossip is at an end, for the thread must be continually bitten off. Dancing is child's play, a folly of the past. The piano is converted into a table, or an ironing-board. No games can be suggested but Thread-my-needle, and Thimble-rig. No books are at hand but Harper, with the fashion-plate at the end; the newspapers of the day are cut into uncouth shapes; and conversation (when conducted in English) hangs the unsuccessful Bloomer reform upon the gibbet of ridicule. Now, if we would prevent utter disunion in society, something like a compromise must be effected, and to the ladies belongs the laboring oar. I use a metaphor which implies that they must do something they are little accustomed to do; they must make some concession. We have done all we could do, and I will make one statement which will convince the world that we bachelors are not obstinate without good reason. I confess (though it is not without some slight degree of shame that I own it), that I have, during the last week, consumed the greater part of every day in ineffectual study, trying to perfect myself in the terminology of the science of Fashion. I have listened attentively, and have gathered into a retentive memory sundry technicalities; but in vain have I submitted these terms of a strange dialect to the strictest etymological research. In vain have I conversed upon this subject with the most intelligent dry-goods dealers. In learning the few idiomatic phrases they employ, I have experienced only the satisfaction which young students in Greek literature feel, when they have, with infinite labor, mastered the _alphabet_ of that rich and copious language. But there is hope. Experience tells us, this state of things cannot last for ever. A few weeks, and our sufferings shall be rewarded, our forbearance repaid. Then shall gay streamers, pendent from rejuvenated bonnets, float, as of yore, across our promenades, and on the shoulders of Earth's fairest daughters the variegated mantle be again displayed. The streets, now deserted by the fair, will ere long glitter with the brilliant throng, and our sidewalks be swept once more by the gracefully flowing silk. Taper fingers shall condescendingly be extended to us, the smile of beauty beam on us, and witty speech banish our resentful remembrance of incomprehensible jargon. TO JENNY LIND, ON HEARING HER SING THE ARIA "ON MIGHTY PENS," FROM "THE CREATION." When Haydn first conceived that air divine, The voice that thrilled his inward ear was thine. The Lark, that even now to heaven's gate springs, And near the sky her earth-born carol sings, Poured on his ear a higher, purer note, And heavenly rapture seemed to swell her throat. To him, from groves of Paradise, the Dove Breathed Eden's innocence and Eden's love; And seraph-taught seemed the enchanting lay The Nightingale poured forth at close of day; For yet nor sin nor sorrow had its birth, To touch, as now, the sweetest sounds of earth. Yes! as upon his inner sense was borne The melody of that primeval morn, And all his soul was music,--O, to him The voice of Nature was an angel's hymn! But was there, _then_, one human voice that brought Unto his outward ear his own rapt thought, In tones, interpreting in worthy guise The varied notes of Eden's melodies?-- O, happier we! for unto us 'tis given To hear, through thee, the strains he caught from heaven. December 1, 1851. MY HERBARIUM. Poor, dry, musty flowers! Who would believe you ever danced in the wind, drank in the evening dews, and spread sweet fragrance on the air? A touch now breaks your brittle leaves. Your odors are like attic herbs, or green tea, or mouldy books. Your forms are bent and flattened into every ugly and distorted shape. Your lovely colors are faded,--white changed to black, yellow to dirty white, gorgeous scarlet to brick color, purple to muddy brown. Poor things! Who drew you from your native woods and brooks, to press you flat, and dry your moisture up, and paste you down helplessly upon your backs, such mocking shadows of your former grace and beauty? Ah! sorrowfully do I confess it! It was I. In my early years I searched the woods and meadows, scaled rocks, forded bogs, and scrutinized each shady thicket, with murderous intent. I bore my drooping victims home, and sacrificed them relentlessly to science. With my own hand I turned the screw that crushed out all that was lovely and graceful and delicate about them. How I wearied myself over that flower-press! How anxiously I watched over the stiff stalks and shrivelled leaves,--all that was left! How perseveringly I changed and dried the papers, jammed my fingers between the heavy boards, and blistered my hands with that obstinate screw! And how cordially I hated it all! I liked the fun of gathering the flowers, the triumph of finding new specimens, and the excitement of hazardous scrambles; but as for the rest it was drudgery, which I went through only from a stern sense of duty. Now, thanks to the busy little fingers that passed over these leaves, I have a fund of amusement laid up for me; for every page has its story, and each mutilated flower is the centre of a beautiful picture. Here the ludicrous and the pathetic are so exquisitely blended, that I laugh with a regretful feeling at my heart, and sigh even when smiles are on my face. The first few pages are light and joyous, full of a child's warm impulses and ready zeal, and enlivened here and there by some roguish caprice. That was the time when, in my simplicity, I loved dandelions and buttercups, and could see beauty even in the common white-weed of the fields. Ah! here they are, arranged in whimsical positions,--Clover and Sorrel, Violets and Blue-eyed Grass, Peppergrass and Dock (O, how hard that was to press!), Mouse-Ear and Yarrow, Shepherd's Purse, Buttercups, and full-blown Dandelion, Succory, and Chickweed, and Gill-run-over-the-ground,--with their homeliest names written in sprawling characters, all down hill, beneath them. I did not aspire to botanical names in those days. I thought nothing was unfit for my new Herbarium. Such was my zeal, that I believe I should have filled it entirely in a few days, if I had not been counselled to make a judicious selection. I had a faculty for bringing home plants impossible to press, and insisting upon making the experiment. I slept for a week with my bed-post tilted up on a huge book, wherein reposed a water-lily, obstinately refusing to lie flat. All kinds of woody plants, too, were my delight, though they invariably came out of the press as they went in, except that the leaves were in every variety of unnatural position. I never grew weary, either, of gathering stately and graceful green ferns, and finding them all "cockled up," as the phrase went, when I got home. I believe I made some experiments on a horsechestnut blossom once; but as it is not to be found in my Herbarium, I am inclined to think they were unsuccessful. How happy children are with any new possession! I thought there never was any thing quite equal to my new book. All the girls had them, with neat marbled covers, and white paper within, and each one was determined to make hers the best of the whole. When pasting day came, there was an intense excitement. We all daubed our little fingers to our heart's content, and our faces too, as to that. I remember perfectly the sensation of smiling, after the paste stiffened. We spattered our desks, and pasted the wrong side of the flowers, and stuck the leaves together, and got every thing a little one-sided, and, in short, became so worried and heated and vexed, that we did not hunt for any more flowers for a long time after the first pasting day. In the mean while my ideas had undergone a change. I had become much more ambitious. A hew page brings flowers of a higher order, and, beneath them, besides the common name, appears a sounding botanical title; ay, still more, the class and order are written in full. Poor things! How many of your species must have been pulled to pieces by inexperienced hands, to ascertain the exact number of stamens, and their relative positions! I feel, now, a tenderness for the shrinking, delicate wild flowers, that makes me hesitate even to pick them from their shady retreats; but _then_, such was my ardor for investigation, the more I loved them, and the more beautiful they seemed, the more eagerly I tore them to fragments. Let the ingenious student analyze bits of brass wire, and reduce to its simple elements as much gunpowder as he pleases, but I raise my voice against this wanton destruction of rare and beautiful flowers. No chemical process can ever restore _them_. As I glance over this new page, I see a merry troop of little girls, crowding around their kind teacher, trying to restrain their superabundant spirits, and restless activity, till they may give them free scope in the woods. Passing up the street, they are joined by fresh recruits, who come dancing out of the houses, with baskets, and trowels, and tin boxes, and delightfully mysterious suppers packed away nicely, to be eaten in the most romantic place that can be found,--provided there is no danger of snakes, or ivy. Where they are going I should find it impossible to say, until I have consulted the new leaf just turned over. Here, side by side, are the wild Columbine and the cheerful little Bethlehem Star. They grew, I remember, upon Powder-House Hill, so named from the massive granite building upon its summit, which we never dared to go near, for fear of an explosion. The hill was rough, rocky, barren, and in some places quite steep. In the clefts of the rocks, generally far above our reach, the bright red columbines stood in groups, drooping their graceful heads. Some of the rocks were worn to a perfect polish by the feet of daring sliders. It was a dangerous pastime even to the most experienced. A loss of balance, a slight deviation from the beaten track, a trip in a hollow, or a momentary entanglement in your dress,--and you are lost! I declined joining in the diversion ever after the first attempt, which was nothing but a headlong plunge from top to bottom. But though I heroically stood aloof while the girls were enjoying the sport, and making the air ring with their laughter, I was sure, afterwards, to come upon the slippery places unintentionally, and take a slide whether I would or not. I had, I remember, a most unfortunate propensity for climbing and scrambling, choosing the worst paths, and daring the others to follow my lead on precarious footholds. It was unfortunate, because I seldom came forth from these trials unscathed. I was always tearing my dresses in clambering over fences, or bumping my head in creeping under. Where others cleared brooks with a light spring, I landed in the middle. I was sure to pick out spongy, oozy, slippery grass to stand upon, in marshy land, or was yet more likely to slump through over shoes in black mud. Banks always caved in beneath my feet, unexpectedly. Brambles seemed to enter into a conspiracy to lay violent hands on me, and hidden boughs lay in wait to trip me up. Moss and bark scaled off the trunks of fallen trees, bearing me with it when I was least on my guard, or the trunks themselves, solid enough to all appearance, crushed to powder beneath my unwary tread. Even the stone walls deserted me. I made use of one as a bridge, one day, to reach a golden cowslip that grew temptingly in a swamp; but a treacherous stone rolled off with me, and a perfect avalanche of huge rocks followed, splashing the muddy water all over me as I sat, helplessly, buoyed up by the tall grass. I regret to say, I forgot the cowslip. THE OSTRICH. Of the wild and wayward Ostrich, say, have ye never heard? Of the poor, distracted, lonely, outcast, and wandering bird? Which is not a bird of heaven, nor yet a beast of earth, But ever roveth, homeless,--a creature of strange birth. Wings hath it, but it flies not. And yet within its breast Are strange and sleepless drivings, so that it may not rest; Half-formed, half-conscious impulses, with its half-formed pinions given, Too strong for rest on earth, too weak to bear to heaven;-- And madly it beats its wings, but vainly, against its side, For the light wind rusheth through them, mocking them in its pride. Then, distraught, it hurries onward, the gates of heaven shut, Flying from what it knows not,--seeking it knows not what. While in the parching desert, amid the stones and sand, Its stone-like eggs are lying, here and there, on every hand, It wanders on, unheeding; and, with funereal gloom, Trembles in every breeze each torn, dishevelled plume. And when, with startled terror, it sees its foes around, It strives to rise above them, but clingeth to the ground. Then on it madly rusheth, with idly fluttering wings; The stones in showers behind it convulsively it flings; Onward, and ever onward,--the fleetest horses tire,-- But its strength grows less and less, their tramping ever nigher. The poor distracted thing! it feels its lonely birth; It may not rise to heaven, so it cometh to the earth; To the earth, as to a mother, since to the earth it must,-- Its head in her bosom nestled, its eye veiled with her dust. But she will not receive it. From earth and heaven outcast, The Ostrich dies, as it lived, unfriended to the last. Of the wild and wayward Ostrich, say, have ye never heard? Of the poor, distracted, lonely, outcast, and wandering bird? But not alone it wandereth. My spirit stirs in me, With a sort of half-fraternal and drawing sympathy; This lonely, restless spirit, that would rise from the heavy ground To the sky of light and love that stretcheth all around. But, with all its restless longings, it too must earth-bound stay, And, with wings half formed for soaring, here hold its weary way, Hungering for food of heaven, feeding on dust and stone, While about it lie unheeded, as it hasteth on alone, Its deeds of good or evil, a fruitful mystery; But it presseth on, nor recketh what their event may be. And when doubt and fear assail it, it may not rise above To the glorious, peaceful height of fear-outcasting love; But something draws it downward, breathes of its lower birth, Prompts it to seek a refuge in the blindness of the earth. And it hides its head in earthliness; at least it will not see The blow it cannot ward off; and the foe it may not flee. But something softly whispers that these wings shall grow to soar-- Heaven grant!--in the cloudless depths of love for evermore. It whispers that again these blinded eyes shall see; Heaven grant in their yearning gaze the long-sought home may be! It whispers each word and act shall to fruition spring; Heaven grant they may joy to man, and peace to the spirit bring! Of the wild and wandering Ostrich, say, have ye never heard? The type of the restless soul of man, the weary, wingless bird. COWS. I admire cows in their proper places. They are undoubtedly useful animals; some may think them handsome and graceful: this is, as yet, an unsettled question. They certainly figure pretty extensively in all sketches of rural scenery, and may, therefore, be considered as picturesque objects; but I think that on canvas they take to themselves beauties which they do not possess in actual life. I do not object to see them at a distance, quietly grazing in a meadow by the brink of a winding stream, and all that sort of thing, provided the distance is very great, and a strong fence intervenes. For I would have you know, that I am a delicate young lady of nervous temperament and keen sensibilities, and have a mortal dread of cows. I am not used to the customs of country life, which place this animal on a level with domestic pets, and when my brother asked me to pat the side of one of these great, coarse brutes, I screamed at the mere idea. For I should be extremely unwilling to provoke one of them, because I have been told that, when heated with passion, as these beasts often are, it sometimes happens that the powder-horns on top of their heads explode, and spread ruin and desolation around. People here bestow a vast deal too much consideration on these unpleasant animals, for they are often seen--that is, those of them that are troubled with weak eyes--walking along the streets with boards over their faces, as a protection from the rays of the sun. I don't believe that is the real reason of the thing, though my brother assures me that it is. I think, myself, that it is intended as a keen satire upon those young ladies who wear veils in the streets; but I never will yield my point. I _will_ wear my veil, so long as I have a complexion worth protecting, and so long as there are gentlemen worth cutting. The Brighton Bridge Battery is a delightful promenade on a warm summer's day, it is _so_ shady; but it is closed, I may say, every Wednesday and Thursday, to accommodate these detestable pets of the public. It seems, as my brother informs me, that the drovers, from humane considerations, are in the habit of driving their cattle over to Brighton, (when the weather is pleasant,) and back again on the next day, in order that their health may be improved by the sea-air which blows up Charles River. Now I think that when the cow takes precedence of the lady, and usurps, to the utter exclusion of the latter, the most delightful promenade in Cambridge, it is time the city authorities should look to it; and so I told my brother. He considered for a moment, and then advised me not to bear it any longer, but to go upon Brighton Bridge, _in spite_ of the cows, and assert my independence. I followed his advice, as I always do, and, on one fine afternoon, took advantage of the pleasant weather to indulge in a solitary walk in that direction. As I was sauntering along on the wooden sidewalk, gazing at the noble ships which lay moored by their gaff-topsails to the abutments of the bridge, and viewing the honest sailors as they promenaded up and down the string-ladders at the command of their captains, my fears were aroused by a distant commotion. I hastily turned and looked over the railing into the street. A whole drove of infuriated cows, urged on by two fiendish boys and a savage dog, was rapidly approaching me from the Cambridge side. What should I do? I was too much fatigued to run, and I had never learned to swim. My plans were hastily formed. Flinging my red silk visite and sky-blue parasolette into the water, lest the gay colors should still more enrage the wild animals, I jumped over the outside railing towards the river, and hung by one arm over the angry flood during a moment of speechless agony! On they came, with lightning speed, in a whirlwind of dust. A rapid succession of earthquakes--bellowings--groans,--and all was over. I was safe. On inspection of the footmarks, I felt quite sure that some of them must have approached within ten yards of me, and only two railings had intervened between me and their fury. An honest tar from one of the men-of-war employed in unloading coal at Willard's Wharf took the captain's gig, and made for my parasol and visite as they floated away, and returned them with the very unintelligible remark, that I'd "better not clear the wreck next time unless it blew more of a breeze." THE HOME-BEACON. By Elkton wood, where gurgling flood Impels the foamy mill, Where quarries loom, in solemn gloom, A mansion crowns the hill. A pharos true, light ever new Streams through its friendly pane, To guide and greet benighted feet Which thread the winding lane. Lofty and lone, that light has shone, Alike o'er green or snow, Since first a pair their nest built there, Two hundred years ago. Now, as we walk, with pleasant talk To cheer the dismal way, That light shall tell of marriage-bell, Of moon and merry sleigh. The ancient home to which we come These scenes revealed one night; As the beacon true, so old, yet new, Flung wide its cheery light. Go back threescore long years, or more: Old Time the latch shall lift, And, from his urn, once more return The home of love and thrift. A noble sire, with nerves of wire, Warm heart, and open hand,-- A worthy dame, nor shrewd, nor tame,-- Lead forth the phantom band; Three girls, three boys, with fun and noise, Next gather round the hearth; Reenter, then, dear friends, again All full of life and mirth. "My pretty nuns, 't is late! My sons, Bring out the 'Sliding Car.' For one fair bride, you all must ride The snows both fast and far." First darts away the bridegroom gay, Nor waits the well-aimed jest: To shed and stall they follow, all, To speed their sire's behest. In full array, the spacious sleigh Glides through the pillared gate: Each prancing steed, straining to lead, Draws no unwilling mate. Full moon and bright loops up the night Above the starry sky. Runner and heel, well shod with steel, Cut sharply as they fly. Along they go, o'er sparkling snow, Shrill bells to song oft ringing; By oak and birch, to Gladstone church A bridal party bringing. On time-worn walls the moonbeam falls, And silvers o'er the spire, While diamond-pane and giddy vane Repeat the heavenly fire. From lofty tower to maiden's bower, And wide o'er hill and dell, Of earthly heaven, to mortals given, Sweet chimes the marriage-bell. With open book, and solemn look, All robed in priestly lawn, The Rector stands,--but counts the sands, Right willing to be gone! (The evening mail and nut-brown ale, His pipe and rocking-chair, Are waiting long, while the bridal throng Still lingers unaware.) An ancient gloom fills all the room, And dims the lamps above, Though wall and aisle in verdure smile, Through wreath and Christmas grove. By branching pines and graceful vines, Slow glides the youthful pair To the altar green, with brow serene, And kneel together there. Soft breathes the vow, responsive now, In calm but earnest tone. The wedding-ring, strange, mystic thing! Fast binds the twain in one. The solemn word no longer heard, With chastened steps and slow, And heart in heart, no more to part, To "Home, sweet Home," they go. Fresh now, again, o'er snowy main, The winged steeds return: On roughening rock, with shriek and shock, The flashing runners burn. O'er cradling drift, secure though swift,-- Now smooth, now rough, the track,-- The furious sleigh devours the way, As lash and harness crack. Through furs and wool, the air, so cool, Is felt or feared no more; Though gay the steeds with icy beads, And their flanks are frosted o'er. A fitful light, scarce yet in sight, Gleams through the opening wood: Ah! now they come to their hill-side home, In merry, merry mood. Four lovely girls, a string of pearls, Are found in place of three: Four daughters fair are gathered there Around the Christmas-tree. As roars the fire, their loving sire A warmer welcome deals; And, stooping low, on one fair brow His heart's adoption seals. A dearer bliss, a mother's kiss, Awaits the blushing bride: One look above! then smiles of love Express her joy and pride. Once more good cheer removes the tear, Returns the joyous smile; Soon laughter, poured around the board, Rings through the spacious pile. While dance and song employ them long, Steals in the cold, gray dawn! Back to your urn, ye phantoms, turn, And vanish o'er the lawn. Stern, though in tears, with Fatal shears, Time scattered all those pearls! They fell, unstrung, old graves among; O'er all the snow-wreath curls! Yet shines that light from lattice bright, Wide o'er the grass, or snow; Still all the room its rays illume, As when, so long ago, Its arrowy star recalled the car Then winding round the wood, And lime-rock gray threw back the ray Across the rapid flood. Though cold each form, their _love_, still warm, From hearth and lattice glows: Hearts kind and dear yet linger here, And bid us to repose. The skies are dark! No moonbeams mark Or wall, or traveller's way: O'er rock and wood thick storm-clouds brood, And doubts our steps delay. No beacon-light yet cheers the night: How gloomy grows the hour! Ah! there it shines, in lance-like lines, Sharp through the misty shower. Shine on, fair star, through storms, afar! Still bless the nightly way! Always the same, a vestal flame, Love shall maintain thy ray. THE FOURTH OF JULY. It was the anniversary of our Glorious Fourth. The evil genius who specially presides over the destinies of unoffending college boys put it into the heads of five of us to celebrate the day by an excursion by water to Nahant Beach. The morning was delightful,--the cool summer air just freshening into a steady and favoring breeze, the sun tempered in his ferocity by an occasional cloud above us, the sea calm and pleasant--and all that sort of thing, you know--just what you want on such occasions,--and we set sail from Braman's, resolved to have "a jolly good time." I can't describe our passage down. It was altogether too full of fun to be written on one sheet. Suffice it to say, we laughed, and sang, and joked, and ate, and drank ('t was when we were young), and so on, all the way, and in fact I felt rather disappointed at arriving so soon as we did at our destined port. Here new pleasures awaited us, in the shape of acquaintances unexpected and unexpecting, rides on the beach, bowling, and loafing in general,--much too rich to be described here and now. But there is an end to all sport, and ours came quite too soon. The shadows had begun to lengthen considerably before we thought of starting on our return, and certain ominous indications in the heavens above us warned us, that, as our passage homewards was not by land, further delay was unadvisable. Dolefully we set our sail, and made for Boston Harbor. We began to feel the reaction which always follows a season of extreme joviality, and our spirits were down. Our chief wit, Tom B----, who had before kept us in a perpetual roar all the way, sat moody and desponding, and answered gruffly every question put to him; speaking only when spoken to, and then in monosyllables rarely used in polite circles. Our _other_ joker, second only to Tom, the above named, having amused us during the whole day by long yarns spun out from a varied experience and a rich imagination, betook himself to slumber, and tried to dream that he was safe home again. The rest of us performed our duties about the boat in gloomy silence, looking occasionally with some anxiety at the clouds gathering slowly over our heads, but keeping our opinions within our own breasts. I had no apprehension of danger, for nothing indicated a gale; in fact, the breeze was gradually deserting us. All that was to be feared was a calm, steady rain, which, visiting us at a distance of several miles from home, and late at night, promised any thing but an agreeable conclusion to our day's excursion. At last it came. First, a heavy drop, then a few more, and then a regular, straight, old-fashioned pour. Our sail hung motionless, and we seemed to stand still and take it. Our companions were soon roused from their abstraction by the very unpleasant circumstances, and we hastily took counsel together. "Unship the mast," says Tom, "and over with your oars." We obeyed our captain sulkily, and soon were moving on again. We pulled away for an hour or so, drenched with the rain, which seemed to come down faster than ever, and were about as miserable and down-cast a pack of wretches as ever lived; for there is nothing like a good ducking (to use the common expression) to take the life and spirit out of a man, not to mention the other discomforts that attended our situation. Silently we rowed, and not a sound was heard above the plashing of the rain upon the surface of the sea, and the regular stroke of the oars. "It's very strange that we don't reach old Point Shirley," says Tom, who had been on the look out for this landmark during the last half-hour. "Very strange," said we, and pulled away as before. Thus passed another half-hour in silent, ceaseless occupation, when, from the mere force of habit, I dipped my hand over the boat's gunwale, with the hope of cooling my blistered palm in the salt water. Judge of my surprise, when I found my hand immersed in _thick black mud_. "By Jove, fellows," cried I, "we're floored!" There was no mistaking the fact; we were aground. At that instant the moon burst out from between the drifting clouds, and, as if in derision, threw a streak of light over our melancholy position. There we were, high and dry on a bank of mud, a scooped furrow on each side of us attesting the frantic efforts of our oarsmen to get a headway, and a long wake, ten feet in extent, marking our distance from the sea behind us. Such was our position as the moon revealed it to us. We looked dolefully in one another's faces for three minutes; then a grim smile gradually stole over Tom's expressive countenance, as he slowly ejaculated, "Point Shirley it is!" when the ludicrous side of the matter seemed to occur to each of us simultaneously, and we indulged ourselves with a roar of laughter,--the first since we had left Nahant. Of course, nothing could be done under the circumstances; but we must wait patiently for the rising of the tide to float us off. So we sat there in our wet garments until the dead of night, when our boat gradually lifted herself off and we started again, and finally arrived at Braman's early in the morning. The moral of this tale may be summed up in a single word,--TEMPERANCE. FROM THE PAPERS OF REGINALD RATCLIFFE, ESQ. In college I was the "Illustrious Lazy." In my professional studies and avocations, I have been so hard driven, in order to make up for four idle years, that I am wasted almost to a shadow, and fears are entertained that I shall wholly vanish into thin air. My physician talks gravely about my having exhausted my nervous energy, and sends me to Ratborough, as the place of all others the most favorable for entire intellectual repose. I am living with an old aunt, Tabitha Flint, who was wont to rock me, and trot me, and wash my face, in my helpless infancy, and can hardly yet be convinced that I have outgrown such endearing assiduities in the twenty-five years that have intervened. I let her pet me, so far as I find it convenient, and, indeed, farther, because I feel grateful for the kind feelings of which I am the object. There is another personage in the household, who probably thinks that in the exuberant kindness of my aunt I have a full average of civility, without the least interest on her part. Do not for a moment imagine that I am piqued at her insulting indifference of manner towards a young man who (I beg you to believe) is not wholly without claim to a glance of approbation now and then from a lady's eye. You must not suppose I care at all about the matter. But as I have not even a book allowed me to take up my thoughts, my curiosity fixes itself strangely upon this silent, sulky, meditative little person, who takes about as much notice of me as of the figure of Father Time over the clock. What can such a body have to think about the livelong day that is so absorbing that all one's bright thoughts, and one's most whimsical sallies, pass without notice? Should I see her once move a muscle of her very plain, doggedly inexpressive, provokingly composed phiz, I should jump up and cry, "Bo!" with surprise. She vanishes several hours at a time, and I hear her humming to herself, sometimes in one room, sometimes in another. I wish I knew how she amuses herself, for I find self-amusement the hardest drudgery I ever tried. I could stamp, I am so impatient of doing nothing but lounge about; I am as snappish as a chained cur, as cross as a caged bear. And while I gnaw my nails, and stretch, and yawn, I hear that contented, bee-like murmur, and now and then a light, rapid step on the stairs, or about rooms which I do not frequent. What can she find to be so busy about, the absurd little person? how can she be so happy in this dull house alone? There is a piano, but as silent as she is. I do not see her wince, though I drum upon the keys with most ingenious discords, and sing false on purpose as loud as I can bellow. I will not ask her if she can play; she can have no ear at all, or she would box mine in self-defence. There is somebody, by name Flora, who is looked for daily by stage-coach. "Flory," says my aunt, "sings like a canary-bird, and plays a sight,"--and _at sight_ too, it seems. This Miss Flora will be found to possess a tongue, I hope, and the disposition to give it exercise. I do not know certainly that Miss Etty--By the way, what is her real name? I won't condescend to ask any question about her. But really, I wish I knew whether it is Mehitable. Perhaps Henrietta. No, no, that is too pretty a name; I shall call her _Little Ugly_. Hark! I have two or three times heard a very musical laugh in the direction of the kitchen. Heigh-ho! How can any mortal laugh in Ratborough! Having nothing better to do, I will go and see who this very merry personage may be. I will inquire into this gay outbreak, in a land of stupidity. Hark, again!--how refreshing! I must and will know what caused such a gush of mirth. Irish humor, perhaps, for Norah is laughing, after her guttural fashion, too.-- As I popped my head into the kitchen, Little Ugly was just vanishing at the opposite door. I could not make Norah tell me what Miss Etty put under her arm, as she looked over her shoulder at me, and darted out of sight. O my noisy boots! I might as well wear a bell round my neck. Stage-wheels are rattling up the road. Now they run upon the grass before the door. I rush in undignified haste to the window. Shall I--will I--go and help this long-expected Miss Flora to alight? No,--for I see forty boxes on the coach-top. A very handsome girl, really! I will get out a blameless dickey,--if such there be. First impressions are important. I wish my hair was cut! I hear my aunt coming to inform me of Flora's arrival. I shall be hugely surprised! Humph!--will it be worth while to trouble myself about the lop-eared dickey? Little Ugly will be amused, if I do. She _can_ laugh, it seems. I had thought there was no fun in her mental composition. Yet I have imagined a glimmer or so in her eyes, when she thought I was not looking at them, and the shadow of a dimple in her cheek now and then. Instead of Adonizing, I will set my long locks on end, and don my slipshod slippers. "Yes, Aunt; I hear, good lady! I will presently arrive, to make my bow to _Little Handsome_." * * * * * _Journal, Sept. 23d_. Truly, the presence of Miss Flora Cooper makes Willow Valley a new place. At least six hours are taken from the length of the days, though I have given up my afternoon slumber, and play chess and backgammon instead of drumming on the table or piano. Now am I relieved from that tedious companion, my own self. I never liked him very well; I had rather do any thing than have a sober talk with a serious personage, who always takes me to do for not making more of him. He scolds me, just as a stay-at-home wife lectures a gay husband, who never returns to his better half when he finds any thing to amuse him abroad. Good-by, old fellow; I have found better company than your rememberings or hopings; to wit, Miss Flora Cooper, alias Little Handsome, alias Aunt Tabby's Canary. The first day or two after her arrival, Miss Flora pouted at me. I was exceedingly well amused, making all the saucy speeches I could think of, in the pure spirit of mischief, and taking no notice of her tossing her pretty head, and turning her back upon me. Finding that her displeasure was not producing any particular effect upon the object of it, I imagine the indignant beauty begins to plot a different revenge on me. "Ha, ha! Miss Flora! It is not because you like me better than you did, that you are all smiles, and grace, and sunshine. I shall not flatter you the more, I am determined. I am on my guard. You shall never boast of me on your list of obsequious admirers. No, no, Little Handsome! I am no lady's man, and never was flirted withal in my life. I defy your smiles, as stoutly as your frowns. I like your pretty face; yes, it is exceedingly beautiful, as far as form and coloring go to make up the beauty of a face. And the play of the features,--yes, very lively and pretty, only too much of it. You should not smile so often; and I am tired of your pretty surprise, your playful upbraidings, and the raps of your fan. I want more repose of feature, Little Handsome. Now, what a contrast you and sedate Miss Etty present! Ah, very good! I am glad you have given up following Little Ugly out of the room the moment we rise from table. You sit down to your tiny basket, and demurely take out something that passes for work. I don't see you do much at it, however. I give you warning that I never hold skeins to be wound, not I. I will not read aloud; so you need not offer me that 'Sonnet to Flora,' in manuscript, nor your pet poet in print. We will talk; it is a comfort to have my wit appreciated, after wasting so much on my aunt, who cannot, and Miss Etty, who will not understand. I am glad to have a chance to speak, and to hear a human voice in answer. I like especially to rattle on when any nonsense will do. Chat is truly agreeable when one's brains are not severely taxed to keep it going." _Sept. 24th_. Charming little Canary! I have spent the forenoon with her at the piano. I like her playing when she does not attempt my favorite tunes. It must be confessed she is apt to vary somewhat, and not for the better always. Her singing,--Aunt Tabitha well describes it as that of a canary; sweet and liquid, and clear, and sustained, but all alike. Her throat is a fine instrument; I shall teach her to use it with more expression and feeling. We will have another lesson to-morrow. I thought, though, there was a shadow over her face when I called it _practising_. Etty's eyes met mine at the moment, a rare occurrence. What was her thought? One cannot read in her immovable face. _Evening_. I am booked for a horseback ride with Little Handsome to-morrow morning. How did she make me offer? I did not mean to. All country girls ride, I believe. I often see Miss Etty cantering through the shady lanes all by herself. I saw the bars down, at the end of the track through the wood, one day. I immediately concluded that Little Ugly had paced off that way, that I need not see her from my window. I put the bars up again, and lay in wait behind the bushes. Soon I heard her approaching. I come forward as she comes near, on that rat-like pony of hers, who holds his head down as if searching for something lost in the road. I stand in doubt whether to laugh at her predicament, or advance in a gentlemanly manner to remove the obstacle I had put in her way. When lo! the absurd little nag clears it at a bound, and skims away over the green track like a swallow, till he vanishes under the leafy arch. I am left in a very foolish attitude, with mouth and eyes wide open. Now this independent young lady shall be at liberty to take care of herself, with no officious interference of mine; I will not invite her to join us to-morrow morning, as I intended. I wonder if any horses are to be procured that are not rats. I hope Miss Flora knows enough to mount her pony, for I am sure I do not know how to help her. Whew! I hope we shall meet with no disasters! I feel certain Little Handsome would scream like a sea-gull, pull the wrong rein, tangle her foot in the stirrup or riding-skirt, faint, fall, break her neck--O horrors! Will not the dear old Aunt Tabitha forbid her going? What a well-proportioned and ladylike figure it was, now I think of it! How gracefully she sat upon her flying Dobbin! _Sept. 25th_. Rainy. Glad of it. Breakfast late. Miss Etty did not appear, having been up some hours, I imagine. What for, I wonder? What can she be about? One thing pleases me in her. If Aunt Tabitha wants any little attention, a needle threaded, or a dropped stitch taken up, Miss Etty quietly comes to her aid. It is so entirely a matter of course, the old lady only smiles, but any service from Flora calls forth an acknowledgment; it being a particular effort of good nature, and generally the fruit of a direct appeal. Miss Etty talks more than she did, too. While I am talking nonsense with Little Handsome, I hear her amusing my good aunty, and I catch a few words, her utterance having a peculiar distinctness, and the lowest tones being fine and clear, like those of a good singer on a pianissimo strain. It is a peculiarly ladylike articulation; was she born and bred in Ratborough, I wonder? She never speaks while we are singing. Does she like music, then? I asked her once, but what sort of answer is "Yes!" to such a question? And that is all I elicited. Music again, the forenoon occupation. Miss Flora does not like being criticized, I find. One must not presume to set her right in the smallest particular. Singers are proverbially irritable! I am not certain _I_ could belong to a glee-club, and never get cross or unreasonable. I hate to be corrected; but I hate more to be incorrect. I could give Canary a hint or two now and then that would be serviceable, if she would permit it. I have no right, however, to take it upon me to instruct her, and it puts her in a pet. She laughed it off, but I saw the mounting color and the flashing glance. I am an impudent fellow, I suppose. Honest, to boot. I think she need not take offence at what was intended as a friendly help. I am no flatterer, at least. Really, I am hurt that I might not take so trifling a liberty in behalf of my favorite song. I'll walk off as often as she sings it. Can her temper be perfectly good? And yet, one could not expect--I ought not to be surprised. Yet I can't help thinking, suppose--just suppose I _had_ a right to find fault,--suppose I were a near friend,--would she bear it then? Supposing she were my companion for life--Humph! that startles one,--was I near thinking of it in earnest? She is beautiful; I should be proud of her abroad. But at home,--at home, where there should be confidence, would there not be constraint? Must no improvement ever be suggested, because it implies imperfection? I hope none of my friends will ever be on such terms with me; if I am touchy like a nettle, may they grasp me hard, and fear me not. _Sept. 26th_. This little sheet of water in front of the house has the greatest variety of aspects; its face is like a human face, full of varying expressions. A slight haze made it so beautiful just before sunset, I took my chair, and put it out of the window upon the grass, then followed it, and sat with it tipped back against the house, close by the window of one of those mysterious rooms where Miss Etty immures herself. I heard the Canary say in a scolding tone, "I should think you might oblige me; it is such a trifle to do, it is not worth refusing. Why should you care for him!" No answer, though I confess my ears were erected to the sharpest attitude of listening. I was wholly oblivious of _myself_, or I should have taken myself away, as in honor bound. "Won't you now, Etty? I'll only ask for one of our old duets, just one." "No, Flora," said Little Ugly, coldly enough. "Why not?" No answer. "To be sure, _he_ might hear. He would find out that you are musical. What of that? Where is the use of being _able_ to sing, to sing only when there's nobody to listen?" "I sing only to friends. I cannot sing, I have never sung, to persons in whom I have no confidence." "Afraid! What a little goose!" "Not afraid, exactly." "I don't comprehend, I am sure." "I do not expect you should." "I never did understand you." "You never will." Silence again. Flora tuned up, and, of all tunes, she must needs hum _my_ song. I was on my feet in a moment to depart, when I heard the clear tones of Etty's voice again, and stood still, with one foot advanced. "Flora, you should sharp that third note in the last line." Flora murdered it again, with the most atrocious, cold-blooded cruelty. I almost mocked the sound aloud in my passion. "I do not tell you to vex you, only I saw that Mr. Ratcliffe--" "You need not trouble yourself about _his_ opinion." "I knew you would not like it, if I told you of a mistake. But I supposed you would rectify it, and I should have done you a kindness, even against your will." "And I to hate you for it, eh?" "If you can." "Indeed I cannot, Etty, for you are my very best friend. But you are a horrid, truth-telling, formidable body. Why not let me sing on, my own way? I don't thank you a bit. I had rather sing it wrong, than be corrected. It hurts my pride. I think people should take my music as they find it. If it does not please them, they are not obliged to ask me to sing. One note wrong can surely be put up with, if the rest is worth hearing. I shall continue to sing it as I have done, I think." "No,--please don't!" "If I will mend it when I think of it, will you sing a duet?" "Yes, though it will cost me more than you know." "Poh!" And Flora sang the song, without accompaniment. The desired sharp rung upon my ears, and set my nerves at rest. "Bravo! Encore!" I cried, beneath the window, and was pelted with peach-stones. I wonder when this duet is to come off. _Sept. 27th_. Have not stirred from the house. But I have not heard any voice but Flora's. She has been uncommonly amiable and fascinating, and I--am I not rather bewitched? I cannot keep my resolution of not being flirted with. I cannot be wise, and reserved, and indifferent. Am I trifling? Or am I in earnest? Indeed I don't know. I only know I am constantly at the side of Little Handsome, without knowing how I came there. She makes me sing with her, ride with her, walk with her, at her will, and as if that was not enough for one day, to test her power over me, to-night she made me dance with her. And now I feel like a fool as I think of Etty playing a waltz for us, at Flora's request, and giving me a long, serious look as I approached the piano to compliment her playing. I could not utter a word. I answered her gaze with one as sober, and more sad, and came away to my room, to have some talk with my real self. Now for it. Says I to Myself, "A truce to your upbraidings, you old scold; tell me at once how you find yourself affected towards this charming little Flora." Says Myself, "There are no tastes in common between her and me." Says I, quickly, "Music!" and triumphed a moment or two. But the snarling old fellow asked whether I liked her singing, or her flattery? For his part, he thought we both liked to hear our own voices, and agreed in nothing else. Taste, indeed! when I would not let her sing a song I cared a fillip for. In short, my self-communion ended in some very sage resolutions. I feared the beautiful head with the shining curls was somewhat vacant. And the heart,--was that empty likewise? Or was that hidden cell the home of all the loveliest affections, the firmest and purest faith and motive, every thing that should be there to rule the life--and--my picture on the wall? A question this.--Does she love me? "O yes!" answered vanity. "O no!" said good sense, "not at all. If your picture is in her heart, it is one of a whole gallery. Don't be a fop. It is not your character. Don't let Flora make a fool of you." And I resolved-- _Sept. 27th_. A very dull day. "You are as sober as a judge," said Flora at breakfast. I caught Etty's eye,--but it said nothing. Aunt Tabitha, who yesterday evidently thought me in desperate case, and once inquired about my income very significantly, now suspected a quarrel between Flora and me. I was embarrassed, and overturned the cream. "No great loss," said Etty, seeing that I was chagrined. "As easy made up as a lovers' quarrel," said Aunt Tabitha. Silly old woman! No, silly young fellow! Flora has revenged herself on me as she meant to do, for defying her power. She has turned my head; made me act like a simpleton. But "Richard's himself again," and wiser than he was. _P.M_. I endeavored to talk more with Miss Etty, that the change in my manner might be less observed. It was all natural that I should be as grave as a judge when I addressed myself to so quiet a member of society. She seemed to divine my object, and sustained the dialogue; I never knew her to do it before. It is not diffidence, it seems, that has been the cause of this reserve; I was the more diffident of the two, failing to express my thoughts well, from a hurry and uncertainty of mind which I am not often troubled withal. It was partly astonishment, in truth, that confused me. Little Ugly and I actually exchanging ideas! I shall call her Little Ugly still, however, for I could not make her look at me as she spoke, nor answer my wit by a change of countenance. _Sept. 28th_. Little Handsome cannot be convinced that the flirtation is over,--absolutely at an end. She alternately rails at my capricious solemnity, and pretends to be grieved at it. I can see that nothing but my avoidance of a _tete-a-tete_ is my safety. Should the sentimental tone prevail, and tears come into those beautiful eyes, I am a gone man. At my earnest request, (I have grown humble or _bold_ enough to ask a favor,) Miss Etty has brought, or rather dragged, her work-basket into the parlor. A great basket it is, so great, that I imagine in her own apartment she gets into the middle of it bodily. I sat down to watch the motions of her adroit little digits in darning stockings, and mending homely garments. I imagined, rather than saw, a humorous gleam in her eye, as I did so, and there was certainly a slight contraction of her mouth in length, as if to counteract an inclination of the muscles to move in the opposite direction. Flora fluttered about the room like a bright-hued butterfly, pausing a moment at a window or a bookcase, or resting awhile to play a few capricious notes on the piano, and sometimes coming to view Miss Etty's employment, as if it were a branch of industry she was unacquainted with, and curious about. The maples are turning red already. The setting sun threw a glorious light through their tinted foliage, and the still bosom of the lake reflected it in a softened, changeable hue of mingled crimson and silver. Flora was standing at the door. I somehow found myself there also; but I talked over my shoulder to Aunt Tabitha about potatoes. "I have a fancy for a walk round the pond," said Flora. After a pause, she looked at me, as much as to say, "Don't you see, you monster, it is too late for me to go alone?" "Miss Flora, I will second your wish, if you can drum up a third party," said I, point-blank. Flora blushed, and pouted for a moment, then beckoned to Little Ugly, who disobligingly suggested that the grass would be wet. It so happened there was no dew, and Flora convinced her of the fact by running in the grass, and then presenting the sole of her shoe for her inspection. Miss Etty, her ill-chosen objection being vanquished, went for her bonnet, and we set forth, Miss Flora's arm in mine as a matter of course, and Miss Etty's in hers, save where the exigencies of the woodland path gave her an excuse to drop behind. A little boat tied to a stump, suggested to Flora a new whim. Instead of going round the pond, which I now began to like doing, I must weary myself with rowing her across. I was ready enough to do it, however, had not Miss Etty quietly observed that the pond was muddy, and the boat unseaworthy. Flora would not have yielded to twenty feet of water,--but mud! She sighed, and resumed my arm. I, offering the other to Miss Etty in so determined a way, that she could not waive accepting it, marched forward with spirits rising into high glee and loquacity. Presently, feeling a sudden irritation at the feather-like lightness with which Little Ugly's fingers just touched my elbow, as if she disdained any support from me, I caught her hand and drew it through my arm, and when I relinquished it, pressed her arm to my side with mine, thinking she would snatch it away, and walk alone in offended dignity. Whether she was too really dignified for that, or took my rebuke as it was intended, I know not, but she leaned on my arm with somewhat greater confidence during the remainder of our walk, and now and then even volunteered a remark. Before we finished the circumambulation of the pond, she had quite forgotten her sulky reserve, and talked with much earnestness and animation, Flora subsiding into a listener, with a willing interest which raised her in my estimation considerably. And now that I am alone in my room, and journalizing, it behooves me to gather up and record some of those words, precious from their rarity. Flora and I, in our merry nonsense, had a mock dispute, and referred the matter to Miss Etty for arbitration. "Etty, mind you side with me," said Flora. "Be an impartial umpire, Miss Etty," said I, "and you will be on my side." Little Ugly was obliged to confess that she had not heard a word of the matter, her thoughts being elsewhere, intently engaged. "I must request you to excuse my inattention," she said, "and to repeat what you were saying." "The latter request I scorn to grant," said I, "and the former we will consider about when we have heard what thoughts have been preferred to our most edifying conversation." "You shall tell us," said Flora. "Yes, or we till go off and leave you to your meditations, here in the dark woods, with the owls and the tree-toads, whom you probably prefer for company." Miss Etty condescended to confess she should be frightened without my manful protection.--Quite a triumph! "I must thank you," she said, "for the novelty of an evening walk in the woods. I enjoy it, I confess, very highly. Look at those dark, mysterious vistas, and those deepening shadows blending the bank with its mirror; how different from the trite daylight truth! It took strong hold of my imagination." "Go on. And so you were thinking--" "I was hardly doing so much as thinking. I was seeing it to remember." "Etty draws like an artist," said Flora, in a whisper. "I was taking a mental daguerreotype of my companions, by twilight, and of all the scene round, too, in the same grey tint, just to look at some ten or fifteen years hence, when--" "Let us all three agree," said I, "on the 28th of September, 18--, to remember this evening. I am certain _I_ shall look back to it with pleasure." "O horrid!" shrieked Flora; "how can you talk so! By that time you will be a shocking, middle-aged sort of person! I always wonder how people can be resigned to live, when they have lost youth, and with it all that makes life bearable! Fifteen years! Dismal thought! I shall have outlived every thing I care about in life!" So moaned Little Handsome. "But you may have found new sources of interest," suggested I, perhaps a little too tenderly, for I had some sympathy with her dread of that particular phase of existence, middle-agedness. "Perhaps as the mistress of a household--" "Worse and worse!" screamed Flora. "A miserable comforter you are! As if it were not enough merely to grow old, but one must be a slave and a martyr, never doing any thing one would prefer to do, nor going anywhere that one wants to go,--bound for ever to one spot, and one perpetual companion--" "Planning dinners every day for cooks hardly less ignorant than yourself," added I, laughing at her selfish horror of matronly bondage, yet provoked at it. "Miss Etty, would _you_, if you could, stand still instead of going forward?" "My happiness is altogether different from Flora's," she replied, "though we were brought up side by side. What has taught me to be independent of the world and its notice was my being continually compared with her, and assured, with compassionate regret, that I had none of those qualifications which could give me success in general society." "Which was a libel--" I began. "Without the last syllable," said Flora, catching up the word. "At any rate, I knew I was plain and shy, and made friends slowly. So I chose such pleasures as should be under my own control, and could never fail me. They make my life so much happier and more precious than it was ten years ago, that I feel certain I shall have a wider and fuller enjoyment of the same ten years hence." What they are, I partly guess, and partly drew from her, in her uncommonly frank mood. I begin to perceive that I, as well as Flora, have been cherishing most mistaken and unsatisfactory aims. My surly old inner self has often hinted as much, but I would not hear him. Etty may have _her_ mistaken views too, but she has set me thinking. Well, you crusty old curmudgeon, what has been my course since the awe of the schoolmaster ceased to be a sort of external conscience? "You told me study was none of my business," says Conscience, "and a pretty piece of work you have made of it without me. Idle in college, and, when you began to perceive the connection between study and what people call success in life, overworking yourself, here you are, and just beginning to bethink yourself that I might have furnished just the right degree of stimulus, if you had but allowed it."-- Hark! hark! It is the duet! That silvery second is Etty's. I will steal down stairs, and when they have ended, pop in, and it shall go hard but I will have another song. Parlor dark and empty. I fancied I heard Flora giggling somewhere, but I might be mistaken. Yet the voices sounded as if they came from that quarter--and--and I am sure I heard one note on the piano to give the pitch. Hark! I hear the parlor door softly shut, and now the stairs creak, and betray them stealing up, as they probably betrayed me stealing down. They only blew out the lights and kept perfectly still.--Witches!--Donkey! Etty, your voice is still with me, clear, sweet, and penetrating, as it was when you talked so eloquently to-night, in our dreamy ramble.-- What if I had early adopted her idea, that with every conscious power is bound up both the duty and the pleasure of developing it? Might I not now have reached higher ground, with health of body and mind? Ambition is an unhealthy stimulus. A wretchedly uneasy guest too, in the breast of an invalid. I would fain have a purer motive, which shall dismiss or control it. Etty,--what are the uses to be made of _her_ talents, while she lives thus withdrawn into a world of her own? Certainly, she is wrong; I shall convince her of it, when our friendship, now fairly planted, I trust, shall have taken root. Now we shall be the best friends in the world, and I will confide to her my--my--O, I am nodding over my paper, and that click says the old clock at the stair-head is making ready to announce midnight. _Sept. 29th_. Capricious are the ways of womankind! Little Ugly is more thoroughly self-occupied and undemonstrative than ever. I am chagrined,--I think I am an ill-used man. I am downright angry and have half a mind to flirt with Little Handsome, out of spite. Only Miss Etty is too indifferent to care. I did but leave my old aunt to Flora, and step back to remark that it was a pleasant Sunday, that the sermon was homely and dull, and that the singing was discordant. Miss Etty assented, but very coldly, and presently she bolted into an old red house, and left me to go home by myself. When we started for church again, she was among the missing, and we found her in the pew, on our arrival. Thus pointedly to avoid me!--It might be accident, however, for she did not refuse to sing from the same hymn-book with me, and pointed to a verse on the other page, quaint, but excellent. After all, old Watts has written the best hymns in the language. _Evening_. Without choice, I found myself walking round the pond again. It was as smooth as glass, and the leaves scarcely trembled on the trees and bushes round it. And in my heart reigned a similar calm. A strange quiet has fallen on my usually restless and anxious mind. I thought that in future I could be content not to look beyond the present duty, and, having done my best in all circumstances, that I could leave the results to follow as God wills. At that moment I could sincerely say, "Let him set me high or low, wherever he has work for me to perform." If I can remain thus quiet in mind, my health will soon return, I feel assured. "_If!_" A well-founded distrust, I fear. This peace must be only a mood, to pass away when my natural spirits return. The fever of covetousness, of rivalry, of envy, and ambitious earthly aspirations, will come back. Like waves upon the lake, these uneasy feelings will chase each other over my soul. I picked up a little linen wristband at this moment, which I recognized. "She does not deserve to have it again, sulky Little Ugly!" said I. "I will put it in my pocket-book, and keep it as a remembrancer, for--I am glad to perceive--this is the very spot where we stood when we agreed to remember it and each other fifteen years hence. We will see what I shall be then, and I shall have some aid from this funny little talisman; it will speak to me quite as intelligibly and distinctly as its owner in a _silent_ mood, at any rate."-- Heigh-ho! How lonely I feel to-night! Every human soul is--must be--a hermit, yet there might be something nearer companionship than I have found for mine as yet. No one knows me. My real self--Ha! old fellow, I like you better than I did; let us be good friends. _Sept. 30th_. A golden sunrise. How much one loses under a false idea of its being a luxury to sleep in the morning! Reclining under Farmer Puddingstone's elm, and looking upon the glassy pond, in which the glowing sky mirrored itself, my soul was fired with poetic inspiration. On the blank page of a letter, I wrote: "How holy the calm, in the stillness of morn,"-- and threw down my paper, being suddenly quenched by self-ridicule, as I was debating whether to write "To Ethelind" over the top. Returning that way after my ramble, I found the following conclusion pinned to the tree by a jackknife:-- "How holy the calm, in the stillness of morn,-- When to call 'em to breakfast Josh toots on the horn, The ducks gives a quack, and the caow gives a moo, And the childen chimes in with their plaintive boo-hoo. "How holy the calm, in the stillness of neune, When the pot is a singin its silvery teune,-- Its soft, woolly teune, jest like Aribi's Darter, While the tea-kettle plays up the simperny arter. "How holy the calm, in the stillness of night, When the moon, like a punkin, looks yaller and bright; While the aowls an' the katydids, screeching like time, Jest brings me up close to the eend o' my rhyme." And underneath was added, as if in scorn of my fruitless endeavor:-- "I wrote that are right off, as fast as you could shell corn. S.P." I suppose it is by way of thanks for my having driven the pigs from the garden, that I find a great bunch of dahlias adorning my mantelpiece. A brown earthen pitcher! And in the middle of the dahlias, a magnificent sunflower! It must be my aunt's doing, and its very homeliness pleases me, just as I love her homely sincerity of affection. Who arranges the glasses in the parlor? Etty, I would not fear to affirm, from the asters and golden-rod, cheek by jole with petunias and carnations. I wonder if she would not like some of the clematis I saw twining about a dead tree by the pond. It is more beautiful in its present state than when it was in flower. Etty loves wild flowers because she is one herself, and loves to hide here in her native nook, where no eye (I might except my own) gives her more than a casual glance.-- _Noon_. "I shall think it quite uncivil of Little Ugly if she does not volunteer to arrange my share of the booty I am bringing, now that I have almost broken my neck, and quite my cane, to obtain it." This I said to myself, as I came into the house by the kitchen entrance, and proceeded to deposit my trailing treasures on Norah's table, by the side of a yellow squash. "Do go with me to Captain Black's," said Etty's voice at the side door. "The old folks have not seen you since your return." "I can't!" said Flora with a drawl. "Yes, do! Be coaxable, for once!" "It only makes me obstinate to coax. Why not go without me, I beg?" "I am no novelty. I was in twice only yesterday. Old people like attention from such as you, because--" "Because it is unreasonable to expect it." "The old man is failing." "I can't do him any good. It is dusty, and my gown is long." "It would please him to see you. I went to sit with him yesterday, but Timothy Digfort came in, with the same intent. So I went to church, having walked in the graveyard till the bell rang." "Owl that you are! I don't envy you the lively meditations you must have had. Why don't you go? It's of no use waiting for me." "What! Will you let me carry both these baskets?" "There, put the little one on the top of the other. I don't think three or four peaches and a few flowers can add much to the weight. It is tiresome enough to do what I don't want to do, when it is really necessary." And Little Handsome danced into the parlor, without perceiving me. I laid a detaining hand on Etty's basket as she put herself in motion, on which she turned round with a look of unfeigned astonishment. "May I not be a substitute for Flora?" I inquired. "I do not require any aid," said Miss Etty shyly. "It is not on that account I was urging Flora. Please to let me have the basket.--Indeed, it is quite unnecessary you should trouble yourself," she insisted, as I persevered in carrying off my load. "It is the old red house, is it not?" said I, "with the roof sloping almost to the ground. And shall I say that _you_ sent this? A view of my strange phiz will not refresh the old people like the sight of Flora's fresh young face, but I shall go in, and make the agreeable as well as I can." "Are you really in earnest?" asked Etty, looking full in my face, with a smile of wonder that made her radiantly beautiful. She turned away blushing at my surprised and eager gaze, and, taking up her little basket, joined me, without a word of answer on my part. It was some time before I quite recovered from a strange flurry of spirits, which made my heart bump very much as it does when I hear any unexpected good news. And then I dashed away upon the subject of old age, and any thing else that came uppermost, in the hope of drawing the soul-lighted eyes to mine again, with that transfiguring smile playing upon the lips. But I was like an unskilful magician; I had lost the spell; I could not again discover the spring I had touched. In vain I said to myself, "I'll make her do it again!" Little Ugly would'nt! She answered my incoherent sallies in her usual sedate manner, and I believe it was only in my imagination that her cheek dimpled a little, with a heightened color, now and then, when I was particularly eloquent. Introduced by Miss Etty, I was cordially welcomed. I am always affected by the sight of an aged woman who at all reminds me of the grandmother so indulgent to my prankful boyhood. The old man, too, interested me; he has seen much of the world, in his seafaring life, and related his adventures in a most unhackneyed style. I'll go and see them every day. One of the Captain's anecdotes was very good. "An old salt," he said, "once--once--" Bah, what was it? How very lovely Etty looked, sitting on a cricket at the old woman's feet, and, with a half smile on her face, submitting her polished little head to be stroked by her trembling hands! This I saw out of the corner of my eye. Hark! Aunt Tabitha's call to dinner. I am glad of it. I was scribbling _such_ nonsense, when I have so much to write better worth while. _12 o'clock_. The night is beautiful, and it is a piece of self-denial to close the shutter, light my lamp, and write in my journal. Peace of mind came yesterday, positive happiness to-day, neither of which I can analyze. I only know I have not been so thoroughly content since the acquisition of my first jackknife; nor so proud since the day when I first sported a shining beaver. I have conquered Etty's distrust; she has actually promised me her friendship. I am rather surprised that I am so enchanted at this triumph over a prejudice. I am hugely delighted. Not because it is a triumph, however;--vanity has nothing to do with it. It is a worthier feeling, one in which humility mingles with a more cordial self-respect than I have hitherto been conscious of. I can, and I will, deserve Etty's good opinion. She is an uncompromising judge, but I will surprise her by going beyond what she believes me capable of. I never had a sister; I shall adopt Etty, and when I go home, we will write every week, if not every day. But how came it all about? By what blessed sunbeams can the ice have been softened, till now, as I hope, it is broken up for ever? People under the same roof cannot long mistake each other, it seems, else Etty and I should never have become friends. As we left the door of Captain Black's house, and turned into the field path to avoid the dust, Etty said, "I do not know whether you care much about it, but you have given pleasure to these good old people, who have but little variety in their daily routine, being poor, and infirm, and lonely. It is really a duty to cheer them up, if we can." I felt that it warmed my heart to have shared that duty with her, and I said so. I thought she looked doubtful and surprised. It was a good opening for egotism, and I improved it. I saw that she was no uninterested listener, but all along rather suspicious and incredulous, as if what I was claiming for myself was inconsistent with her previous notions of my disposition. I believe I had made some little impression Saturday night, but her old distrust had come back by Sunday morning. Now she was again shaken. At last, looking up with the air of one who has taken a mighty resolve, she said, "I presume such a keen observer as yourself must have noticed that the most reserved people are, on some occasions, the most frank and direct. I am going to tell you that I feel some apology due to you, if my first impressions of your character are really incorrect. I am puzzled what to think." "I am to suppose that your first impressions were not as favorable as those of Mrs. Black, whom I heard remark that I was an amiable youth, with an uncommonly pleasant smile." "Just the opposite, in fact,--pardon me! To my eye, you had a mocking, ironical cast of countenance. I felt sure at once you were the sort of person I never could make a _friend_ of, and acquaintances I leave to Flora, who wants to know every body. I thought the less I had to do with you the better." I felt hurt, and almost insulted. I had not been mistaken, then; she had disliked me, and perhaps disliked me yet. "It was not that I stood in fear of your satire," she continued; "I am indifferent to ridicule or censure in general; no one but a _friend_ has power to wound me." A flattering emphasis, truly! I felt my temper a little stirred by Miss Etty's frankness. I was sulkily silent. "_I_ had no claim to any forbearance, any consideration for peculiarities of any sort. I am perfectly resigned to being the theme of your wit in any circle, if you can find aught in _my_ country-bred ways to amuse you." Zounds! I must speak. "My conduct to Flora must have confirmed the charming impression produced by my unlucky phiz, I imagine. But don't bear malice against me in _her_ behalf; you must have seen that she was perfectly able to revenge herself." Etty's light-hearted laugh rung out, and reminded me of my once baffled curiosity when it reached my ear from Norah's domain. But though this unsuppressed mirth of hers revealed the prettiest row of teeth in the world, and made the whole face decidedly beautiful, somehow or other it gave me no pleasure, but rather a feeling of depression. My joining in it was pure pretence. Presently the brightness faded, and I found myself gazing at the cold countenance of Little Ugly again. "No, I did not refer to Flora," said she. "As you say, she can avenge her own quarrel, and we both were quite as ready to laugh at you, as you could be to laugh at us, I assure you." "No doubt of it," said I, with some pique. "But what I cannot forgive you, cannot think of with any toleration, is--" "What?" cried I, astonished. "How have I offended?" "A man of any right feeling at all could not make game of an aged woman, his own relative, at the same time that he was receiving her hearty and affectionate hospitality." "Neither have I done so," cried I, in a towering passion. "You do me a great wrong in accusing me of it. I would knock any man down who should treat my aunt with any disrespect. And if I have sometimes allowed Flora to do it unrebuked, you well know that she might once have pulled my hair, or cuffed my ears, and I should have thought it a becoming thing for a young lady to do. I have played the fool under your eye, and submit that you should entertain no high opinion of my wisdom. But you have no right to judge so unfavorably of my heart. If I have spoken to my aunt with boyish petulance when she vexed me, at least it was to her face, and regretted and atoned for to her satisfaction. I am incapable of deceiving her, much less of ridiculing her either behind her back or before her face. I respond to her love for me with sincere gratitude, and the sister of my grandmother shall never want any attention that an own grandson could render while I live. I shall find it hard to forgive you this accusation, Miss Etty," I said, haughtily, and shut my mouth as if I would never speak to her again. She made no answer, but looked up into my face with one of those wondrous smiles. It went as straight to my heart as a pistol bullet could do, my high indignation proving no defence against it. I was instantly vanquished, and as I heartily shook the hand she held out to me, I was just able to refrain from pressing it to my lips, which, now I think of it, would have been a most absurd thing for me to do. I wonder what could have made me think of doing it! _After Dinner_. I hear Flora's musical laugh in the mysterious boudoir, and a low, congratulatory little murmur of good humor on Etty's part. I believe she is afraid to laugh loud, lest I should hear her do it, and rush to the spot. The door is ajar; I'll storm the castle. Flora admitted me with a shout of welcome, the instant I tapped. Etty pushed a rocking-chair toward me, but said nothing. The little room was almost lined with books. Drawings, paintings, shells, corals, and, in the sunny window, plants, met my exploring gaze, but the great basket was nowhere to be seen. It was got up for the nonce, I imagine. Etty a rogue! "This is the pleasantest nook in the house. It is a shame you have not been let in before," said Flora, zealously. "You shall see Etty's drawings." Neither of us opened the portfolio she seized, however, but watched Etty's eyes. They were cast down with a diffident blush which gave me pain; I was indeed an intruder. She gave us the permission we waited for, however. There were many good copies of lessons: those I did not dwell upon. But the sketches, spirited though imperfect, I studied as if they had been those of an Allston. Etty was evidently in a fidget at this preference of the smallest line of original talent over the corrected performances which are like those of every body else. I drew out a full-length figure done in black chalk on brown paper. It chained Flora's wondering attention as quite new. It was a young man with his chair tipped back; his feet rested on a table, with a slipper perched on each toe. His hands were clasped upon the back of his head. The face--really, I was angry at the diabolical expression given it by eyes looking askance, and lips pressed into an arch by a contemptuous smile. It was a corner of this very brown sheet that I saw under her arm, when she vanished from the kitchen as I entered; the vociferous mirth which attracted me was at my expense. Before Flora could recognize my portrait, Little Ugly pounced upon it; it fell in a crumpled lump into the bright little wood fire, and ceased to exist. "I had totally forgotten it," said she, with a blush which avenged my wounded self-love. Ironical pleasure at having been the subject of her pencil I could not indulge myself in expressing, as I did not care to enlighten Little Handsome. Any lurking pique was banished when Etty showed me, with a smile, the twilight view by the pond. "Do you draw?" she asked; and Flora cried, "He makes caricatures of his friends with pen and ink; let him deny it if he can!" I was silent. 
19897	----	Distributed Proofreaders Europe at http://dp.rastko.net [Illustration] RILEY LOVE-LYRICS [Illustration] RILEY LOVE-LYRICS JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY ILLUSTRATED BY WILL VAWTER INDIANAPOLIS THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1883, 1887, 1888, 1890, 1891, 1892, 1894, 1897, 1898, 1901, 1905 by James Whitcomb Riley. Copyright 1921, The Bobbs-Merrill Company _Printed in the United States of America_ PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOK MANUFACTURERS BROOKLYN, N.Y. INSCRIBED TO THE ELECT OF LOVE,--OR SIDE-BY-SIDE IN RAPTEST ECSTASY, OR SUNDERED WIDE BY SEAS THAT BEAR NO MESSAGE TO OR FRO BETWEEN THE LOVED AND LOST OF LONG AGO. _So were I but a minstrel, deft At weaving, with the trembling strings Of my glad harp, the warp and weft Of rondels such as rapture sings,-- I'd loop my lyre across my breast, Nor stay me till my knee found rest In midnight banks of bud and flower Beneath my lady's lattice-bower. And there, drenched with the teary dews, I'd woo her with such wondrous art As well might stanch the songs that ooze Out of the mockbird's breaking heart; So light, so tender, and so sweet Should be the words I would repeat, Her casement, on my gradual sight, Would blossom as a lily might._ [Illustration] [Illustration] CONTENTS BLOOMS OF MAY 185 DISCOURAGING MODEL, A 132 "DREAM" 41 FARMER WHIFFLE--BACHELOR 161 HAS SHE FORGOTTEN? 183 HE AND I 79 HE CALLED HER IN 45 HER BEAUTIFUL EYES 56 HER FACE AND BROW 55 HER HAIR 129 HER WAITING FACE 67 HOME AT NIGHT 122 HOW IT HAPPENED 93 IKE WALTON'S PRAYER 107 ILLILEO 113 JUDITH 75 LAST NIGHT AND THIS 130 LEONAINIE 63 LET US FORGET 60 LOST PATH, THE 83 MY BRIDE THAT IS TO BE 87 MY MARY 117 NOTHIN' TO SAY 103 OLD PLAYED-OUT SONG, A' 26 OLD SWEETHEART OF MINE, AN 17 OLD YEAR AND THE NEW, THE 68 OUT-WORN SAPPHO, AN 32 PASSING OF A HEART, THE 39 RIVAL, THE 137 ROSE, THE 177 SERMON OF THE ROSE, THE 189 SUSPENSE 136 THEIR SWEET SORROW 72 TO HEAR HER SING 149 TOM VAN ARDEN 138 TOUCHES OF HER HANDS, THE 159 VARIATION, A 151 VERY YOUTHFUL AFFAIR, A 31 WHEN AGE COMES ON 180 WHEN LIDE MARRIED _HIM_ 125 WHEN MY DREAMS COME TRUE 98 WHEN SHE COMES HOME 59 WHERE SHALL WE LAND? 156 WIFE-BLESSÉD, THE 115 RILEY LOVE-LYRICS [Illustration] AN OLD SWEETHEART OF MINE As one who cons at evening o'er an album all alone, And muses on the faces of the friends that he has known, So I turn the leaves of fancy till, in shadowy design, I find the smiling features of an old sweetheart of mine. The lamplight seems to glimmer with a flicker of surprise, As I turn it low to rest me of the dazzle in my eyes, And light my pipe in silence, save a sigh that seems to yoke Its fate with my tobacco and to vanish with the smoke. Tis a fragrant retrospection--for the loving thoughts that start Into being are like perfume from the blossom of the heart; And to dream the old dreams over is a luxury divine-- When my truant fancy wanders with that old sweetheart of mine. Though I hear, beneath my study, like a fluttering of wings, The voices of my children, and the mother as she sings, I feel no twinge of conscience to deny me any theme When Care has cast her anchor in the harbor of a dream. [Illustration] In fact, to speak in earnest, I believe it adds a charm To spice the good a trifle with a little dust of harm-- For I find an extra flavor in Memory's mellow wine That makes me drink the deeper to that old sweetheart of mine. A face of lily-beauty, with a form of airy grace. Floats out of my tobacco as the genii from the vase; And I thrill beneath the glances of a pair of azure eyes As glowing as the summer and as tender as the skies. I can see the pink sunbonnet and the little checkered dress She wore when first I kissed her and she answered the caress With the written declaration that, "as surely as the vine Grew round the stump," she loved me--that old sweetheart of mine. And again I feel the pressure of her slender little hand, As we used to talk together of the future we had planned-- When I should be a poet, and with nothing else to do But write the tender verses that she set the music to: When we should live together in a cozy little cot Hid in a nest of roses, with a fairy garden-spot, Where the vines were ever fruited, and the weather ever fine, And the birds were ever singing for that old sweetheart of mine: When I should be her lover forever and a day, And she my faithful sweetheart till the golden hair was gray; And we should be so happy that when either's lips were dumb They would not smile in Heaven till the other's kiss had come. [Illustration] AN OLD SWEETHEART OF MINE But, ah! my dream is broken by a step upon the stair, And the door is softly opened, and--my wife is standing there; Yet with eagerness and rapture all my visions I resign To greet the living presence of that old sweetheart of mine. [Illustration] [Illustration] A' OLD PLAYED-OUT SONG It's the curiousest thing in creation, Whenever I hear that old song "Do They Miss Me at Home," I'm so bothered, My life seems as short as it's long!-- Fer ev'rything 'pears like adzackly It 'peared in the years past and gone,-- When I started out sparkin', at twenty, And had my first neckercher on! Though I'm wrinkelder, older and grayer Right now than my parents was then, You strike up that song "Do They Miss Me," And I'm jest a youngster again!-- I'm a-standin' back thare in the furries A-wishin' fer evening to come, And a-whisperin' over and over Them words "Do They Miss Me at Home?" [Illustration] You see, _Marthy Ellen she_ sung it The first time I heerd it; and so, As she was my very first sweetheart, It reminds me of her, don't you know;-- How her face used to look, in the twilight, As I tuck her to Spellin'; and she Kep' a-hummin' that song tel I ast her, Pint-blank, ef she ever missed _me!_ I can shet my eyes now, as you sing it, And hear her low answerin' words; And then the glad chirp of the crickets, As clear as the twitter of birds; And the dust in the road is like velvet, And the ragweed and fennel and grass Is as sweet as the scent of the lilies Of Eden of old, as we pass. "_Do They Miss Me at Home_?" Sing it lower-- And softer--and sweet as the breeze That powdered our path with the snowy White bloom of the old locus'-trees! Let the whipperwills he'p you to sing it, And the echoes 'way over the hill, Tel the moon boolges out, in a chorus Of stars, and our voices is still. But oh! "They's a chord in the music That's missed when _her_ voice is away!" Though I listen from midnight tel morning, And dawn tel the dusk of the day! And I grope through the dark, lookin' upwards And on through the heavenly dome, With my longin' soul singin' and sobbin' The words "Do They Miss Me at Home?" [Illustration] A VERY YOUTHFUL AFFAIR I'm bin a-visitun 'bout a week To my little Cousin's at Nameless Creek, An' I'm got the hives an' a new straw hat, An' I'm come back home where my beau lives at. [Illustration] AN OUT-WORN SAPPHO How tired I am! I sink down all alone Here by the wayside of the Present. Lo, Even as a child I hide my face and moan-- A little girl that may no farther go; The path above me only seems to grow More rugged, climbing still, and ever briered With keener thorns of pain than these below; And O the bleeding feet that falter so And are so very tired! Why, I have journeyed from the far-off Lands Of Babyhood--where baby-lilies blew Their trumpets in mine ears, and filled my hands With treasures of perfume and honey-dew, And where the orchard shadows ever drew Their cool arms round me when my cheeks were fired With too much joy, and lulled mine eyelids to, And only let the starshine trickle through In sprays, when I was tired! Yet I remember, when the butterfly Went flickering about me like a flame That quenched itself in roses suddenly, How oft I wished that _I_ might blaze the same, And in some rose-wreath nestle with my name, While all the world looked on it and admired.-- Poor moth!--Along my wavering flight toward fame The winds drive backward, and my wings are lame And broken, bruised and tired! I hardly know the path from those old times; I know at first it was a smoother one Than this that hurries past me now, and climbs So high, its far cliffs even hide the sun And shroud in gloom my journey scarce begun. I could not do quite all the world required-- I could not do quite all I should have done, And in my eagerness I have outrun My strength--and I am tired.... Just tired! But when of old I had the stay Of mother-hands, O very sweet indeed It was to dream that all the weary way I should but follow where I now must lead-- For long ago they left me in my need, And, groping on alone, I tripped and mired Among rank grasses where the serpents breed In knotted coils about the feet of speed.-- There first it was I tired. And yet I staggered on, and bore my load Right gallantly: The sun, in summer-time, In lazy belts came slipping down the road To woo me on, with many a glimmering rhyme Rained from the golden rim of some fair clime, That, hovering beyond the clouds, inspired My failing heart with fancies so sublime I half forgot my path of dust and grime, Though I was growing tired. And there were many voices cheering me: I listened to sweet praises where the wind Went laughing o'er my shoulders gleefully And scattering my love-songs far behind;-- Until, at last, I thought the world so kind-- So rich in all my yearning soul desired-- So generous--so loyally inclined, I grew to love and trust it.... I was blind-- Yea, blind as I was tired! [Illustration] And yet one hand held me in creature-touch: And O, how fair it was, how true and strong, How it did hold my heart up like a crutch, Till, in my dreams, I joyed to walk along The toilsome way, contented with a song-- 'Twas all of earthly things I had acquired, And 'twas enough, I feigned, or right or wrong, Since, binding me to man--a mortal thong-- It stayed me, growing tired.... Yea, I had e'en resigned me to the strait Of earthly rulership--had bowed my head Acceptant of the master-mind--the great One lover--lord of all,--the perfected Kiss-comrade of my soul;--had stammering said My prayers to him;--all--all that he desired I rendered sacredly as we were wed.-- Nay--nay!--'twas but a myth I worshippéd.-- And--God of love!--how tired! For, O my friends, to lose the latest grasp-- To feel the last hope slipping from its hold-- To feel the one fond hand within your clasp Fall slack, and loosen with a touch so cold Its pressure may not warm you as of old Before the light of love had thus expired-- To know your tears are worthless, though they rolled Their torrents out in molten drops of gold.-- God's pity! I am tired! And I must rest.--Yet do not say "She _died_," In speaking of me, sleeping here alone. I kiss the grassy grave I sink beside, And close mine eyes in slumber all mine own: Hereafter I shall neither sob nor moan Nor murmur one complaint;--all I desired, And failed in life to find, will now be known-- So let me dream. Good night! And on the stone Say simply: She was tired. [Illustration] [Illustration] THE PASSING OF A HEART O touch me with your hands-- For pity's sake! My brow throbs ever on with such an ache As only your cool touch may take away; And so, I pray You, touch me with your hands! Touch--touch me with your hands.-- Smooth back the hair You once caressed, and kissed, and called so fair That I did dream its gold would wear alway, And lo, to-day-- O touch me with your hands! Just touch me with your hands, And let them press My weary eyelids with the old caress, And lull me till I sleep. Then go your way, That Death may say: He touched her with his hands. [Illustration] [Illustration] "DREAM" Because her eyes were far too deep And holy for a laugh to leap Across the brink where sorrow tried To drown within the amber tide; Because the looks, whose ripples kissed The trembling lids through tender mist, Were dazzled with a radiant gleam-- Because of this I call her "Dream." Because the roses growing wild About her features when she smiled Were ever dewed with tears that fell With tenderness ineffable; Because her lips might spill a kiss That, dripping in a world like this, Would tincture death's myrrh-bitter stream To sweetness--so I called her "Dream." Because I could not understand The magic touches of a hand That seemed, beneath her strange control, To smooth the plumage of the soul And calm it, till, with folded wings, It half forgot its flutterings, And, nestled in her palm, did seem To trill a song that called her "Dream." Because I saw her, in a sleep As dark and desolate and deep And fleeting as the taunting night That flings a vision of delight To some lorn martyr as he lies In slumber ere the day he dies-- Because she vanished like a gleam Of glory, do I call her "Dream." [Illustration] [Illustration] [Illustration] HE CALLED HER IN I He called her in from me and shut the door. And she so loved the sunshine and the sky!-- She loved them even better yet than I That ne'er knew dearth of them--my mother dead, Nature had nursed me in her lap instead: And I had grown a dark and eerie child That rarely smiled, Save when, shut all alone in grasses high, Looking straight up in God's great lonesome sky And coaxing Mother to smile back on me. 'Twas lying thus, this fair girl suddenly Came to me, nestled in the fields beside A pleasant-seeming home, with doorway wide-- The sunshine beating in upon the floor Like golden rain.-- O sweet, sweet face above me, turn again And leave me! I had cried, but that an ache Within my throat so gripped it I could make No sound but a thick sobbing. Cowering so, I felt her light hand laid Upon my hair--a touch that ne'er before Had tamed me thus, all soothed and unafraid-- It seemed the touch the children used to know When Christ was here, so dear it was--so dear,-- At once I loved her as the leaves love dew In midmost summer when the days are new. Barely an hour I knew her, yet a curl Of silken sunshine did she clip for me Out of the bright May-morning of her hair, And bound and gave it to me laughingly, And caught my hands and called me _"Little girl,"_ Tiptoeing, as she spoke, to kiss me there! And I stood dazed and dumb for very stress Of my great happiness. She plucked me by the gown, nor saw how mean The raiment--drew me with her everywhere: Smothered her face in tufts of grasses green: Put up her dainty hands and peeped between [Illustration] Her fingers at the blossoms--crooned and talked To them in strange, glad whispers, as we walked,-- Said _this_ one was her angel mother--_this_, Her baby-sister--come back, for a kiss, Clean from the Good-World!--smiled and kissed them, then Closed her soft eyes and kissed them o'er again. And so did she beguile me--so we played,-- She was the dazzling Shine--I, the dark Shade-- And we did mingle like to these, and thus, Together, made The perfect summer, pure and glorious. So blent we, till a harsh voice broke upon Our happiness.--She, startled as a fawn, Cried, "Oh, 'tis Father!"--all the blossoms gone From out her cheeks as those from out her grasp.-- Harsher the voice came:--She could only gasp Affrightedly, "Good-bye!--good-bye! good-bye!" And lo, I stood alone, with that harsh cry Ringing a new and unknown sense of shame Through soul and frame, And, with wet eyes, repeating o'er and o'er,-- "He called her in from me and shut the door!" II He called her in from me and shut the door! And I went wandering alone again-- So lonely--O so very lonely then, I thought no little sallow star, alone In all a world of twilight, e'er had known Such utter loneliness. But that I wore Above my heart that gleaming tress of hair To lighten up the night of my despair, I think I might have groped into my grave Nor cared to wave The ferns above it with a breath of prayer. And how I hungered for the sweet, sweet face That bent above me in my hiding-place That day amid the grasses there beside Her pleasant home!--"Her _pleasant_ home!" I sighed, Remembering;--then shut my teeth and feigned The harsh voice calling _me_,--then clinched my nails So deeply in my palms, the sharp wounds pained, And tossed my face toward heaven, as one who pales In splendid martrydom, with soul serene, As near to God as high the guillotine. [Illustration] And I had _envied_ her? Not that--O no! But I had longed for some sweet haven so!-- Wherein the tempest-beaten heart might ride Sometimes at peaceful anchor, and abide Where those that loved me touched me with their hands, And looked upon me with glad eyes, and slipped Smooth fingers o'er my brow, and lulled the strands Of my wild tresses, as they backward tipped My yearning face and kissed it satisfied. Then bitterly I murmured as before,-- "He called her in from me and shut the door!" III He called her in from me and shut the door! After long struggling with my pride and pain-- A weary while it seemed, in which the more I held myself from her, the greater fain Was I to look upon her face again;-- At last--at last--half conscious where my feet Were faring, I stood waist-deep in the sweet Green grasses there where she First came to me.-- The very blossoms she had plucked that day, And, at her father's voice, had cast away, Around me lay, Still bright and blooming in these eyes of mine; And as I gathered each one eagerly, I pressed it to my lips and drank the wine Her kisses left there for the honey-bee. Then, after I had laid them with the tress Of her bright hair with lingering tenderness, I, turning, crept on to the hedge that bound Her pleasant-seeming home--but all around Was never sign of her!--The windows all Were blinded; and I heard no rippling fall Of her glad laugh, nor any harsh voice call;-- But clutching to the tangled grasses, caught A sound as though a strong man bowed his head And sobbed alone--unloved--uncomforted!-- And then straightway before My tearless eyes, all vividly, was wrought A vision that is with me evermore:-- A little girl that lies asleep, nor hears Nor heeds not any voice nor fall of tears.-- And I sit singing o'er and o'er and o'er,-- "God called her in from him and shut the door!" [Illustration] HER FACE AND BROW Ah, help me! but her face and brow Are lovelier than lilies are Beneath the light of moon and star That smile as they are smiling now-- White lilies in a pallid swoon Of sweetest white beneath the moon-- White lilies, in a flood of bright Pure lucidness of liquid light Cascading down some plenilune, When all the azure overhead Blooms like a dazzling daisy-bed.-- So luminous her face and brow, The luster of their glory, shed In memory, even, blinds me now. HER BEAUTIFUL EYES O her beautiful eyes! they are blue as the dew On the violet's bloom when the morning is new, And the light of their love is the gleam of the sun O'er the meadows of Spring where the quick shadows run As the morn shifts the mists and the clouds from the skies So I stand in the dawn of her beautiful eyes. And her beautiful eyes are as mid-day to me, When the lily-bell bends with the weight of the bee, And the throat of the thrush is a-pulse in the heat, And the senses are drugged with the subtle and sweet And delirious breaths of the air's lullabies-- So I swoon in the noon of her beautiful eyes. O her beautiful eyes! they have smitten mine own As a glory glanced down from the glare of the Throne; And I reel, and I falter and fall, as afar Fell the shepherds that looked on the mystical Star, And yet dazed in the tidings that bade them arise-- So I groped through the night of her beautiful eyes. [Illustration] WHEN SHE COMES HOME When she comes home again! A thousand ways I fashion, to myself, the tenderness Of my glad welcome: I shall tremble--yes; And touch her, as when first in the old days I touched her girlish hand, nor dared upraise Mine eyes, such was my faint heart's sweet distress. Then silence: And the perfume of her dress: The room will sway a little, and a haze Cloy eyesight--soulsight, even--for a space: And tears--yes; and the ache here in the throat, To know that I so ill deserve the place Her arms make for me; and the sobbing note I stay with kisses, ere the tearful face Again is hidden in the old embrace. [Illustration] LET US FORGET Let us forget. What matters it that we Once reigned o'er happy realms of long-ago, And talked of love, and let our voices low, And ruled for some brief sessions royally? What if we sung, or laughed, or wept maybe? It has availed not anything, and so Let it go by that we may better know How poor a thing is lost to you and me. But yesterday I kissed your lips, and yet Did thrill you not enough to shake the dew From your drenched lids--and missed, with no regret, Your kiss shot back, with sharp breaths failing you: And so, to-day, while our worn eyes are wet With all this waste of tears, let us forget! [Illustration] LEONAINIE Leonainie--Angels named her; And they took the light Of the laughing stars and framed her In a smile of white; And they made her hair of gloomy Midnight, and her eyes of bloomy Moonshine, and they brought her to me In the solemn night.-- In a solemn night of summer, When my heart of gloom Blossomed up to greet the comer Like a rose in bloom; All forebodings that distressed me I forgot as Joy caressed me, (_Lying_ Joy! that caught and pressed me In the arms of doom!) Only spake the little lisper In the Angel-tongue; Yet I, listening, heard her whisper-- "Songs are only sung Here below that they may grieve you, Tales but told you to deceive you,-- So must Leonainie leave you While her love is young," Then God smiled and it was morning Matchless and supreme Heaven's glory seemed adorning Earth with its esteem: Every heart but mine seemed gifted With the voice of prayer, and lifted Where my Leonainie drifted From me like a dream. [Illustration] [Illustration] HER WAITING FACE In some strange place Of long-lost lands he finds her waiting face-- Comes marveling upon it, unaware, Set moonwise in the midnight of her hair. [Illustration] THE OLD YEAR AND THE NEW I As one in sorrow looks upon The dead face of a loyal friend, By the dim light of New Year's dawn I saw the Old Year end. Upon the pallid features lay The dear old smile--so warm and bright Ere thus its cheer had died away In ashes of delight. The hands that I had learned to love With strength of passion half divine, Were folded now, all heedless of The emptiness of mine. [Illustration] The eyes that once had shed their bright Sweet looks like sunshine, now were dull, And ever lidded from the light That made them beautiful. II The chimes of bells were in the air, And sounds of mirth in hall and street, With pealing laughter everywhere And throb of dancing feet: The mirth and the convivial din Of revelers in wanton glee, With tunes of harp and violin In tangled harmony. But with a sense of nameless dread, I turned me, from the merry face Of this newcomer, to my dead; And, kneeling there a space, I sobbed aloud, all tearfully:-- By this dear face so fixed and cold, O Lord, let not this New Year be As happy as the old! THEIR SWEET SORROW They meet to say farewell: Their way Of saying this is hard to say.-- He holds her hand an instant, wholly Distressed--and she unclasps it slowly. He bends _his_ gaze evasively Over the printed page that she Recurs to, with a new-moon shoulder Glimpsed from the lace-mists that enfold her. The clock, beneath its crystal cup, Discreetly clicks--_"Quick! Act! Speak up!"_ A tension circles both her slender Wrists--and her raised eyes flash in splendor, Even as he feels his dazzled own.-- Then, blindingly, round either thrown, They feel a stress of arms that ever Strain tremblingly--and "_Never! Never!_" Is whispered brokenly, with half A sob, like a belated laugh,-- While cloyingly their blurred kiss closes, Sweet as the dew's lip to the rose's. [Illustration] JUDITH O Her eyes are amber-fine-- Dark and deep as wells of wine, While her smile is like the noon Splendor of a day of June, If she sorrow--lo! her face It is like a flowery space In bright meadows, overlaid With light clouds and lulled with shade. If she laugh--it is the trill Of the wayward whippoorwill Over upland pastures, heard Echoed by the mocking-bird In dim thickets dense with bloom And blurred cloyings of perfume. If she sigh--- a zephyr swells Over odorous asphodels And wall lilies in lush plots Of moon-drown'd forget-me-nots. Then, the soft touch of her hand-- Takes all breath to understand What to liken it thereto!-- Never roseleaf rinsed with dew Might slip soother-suave than slips Her slow palm, the while her lips Swoon through mine, with kiss on kiss Sweet as heated honey is. [Illustration] [Illustration] HE AND I Just drifting on together-- He and I-- As through the balmy weather Of July Drift two thistle-tufts imbedded Each in each--by zephyrs wedded-- Touring upward, giddy-headed, For the sky. And, veering up and onward, Do we seem Forever drifting dawnward In a dream, Where we meet song-birds that know us, And the winds their kisses blow us, While the years flow far below us Like a stream. And we are happy--very-- He and I-- Aye, even glad and merry Though on high The heavens are sometimes shrouded By the midnight storm, and clouded Till the pallid moon is crowded From the sky. My spirit ne'er expresses Any choice But to clothe him with caresses And rejoice; And as he laughs, it is in Such a tone the moonbeams glisten And the stars come out to listen To his voice. And so, whate'er the weather, He and I,-- With our lives linked thus together, Float and fly As two thistle-tufts imbedded Each in each--by zephyrs wedded-- Touring upward, giddy-headed, For the sky. [Illustration] [Illustration] THE LOST PATH Alone they walked--their fingers knit together, And swaying listlessly as might a swing Wherein Dan Cupid dangled in the weather Of some sun-flooded afternoon of Spring. Within the clover-fields the tickled cricket Laughed lightly as they loitered down the lane, And from the covert of the hazel-thicket The squirrel peeped and laughed at them again. The bumble-bee that tipped the lily-vases Along the road-side in the shadows dim, Went following the blossoms of their faces As though their sweets must needs be shared with him. Between the pasture bars the wondering cattle Stared wistfully, and from their mellow bells Shook out a welcoming whose dreamy rattle Fell swooningly away in faint farewells. And though at last the gloom of night fell o'er them And folded all the landscape from their eyes, They only knew the dusky path before them Was leading safely on to Paradise. [Illustration] [Illustration] MY BRIDE THAT IS TO BE O soul of mine, look out and see My bride, my bride that is to be! Reach out with mad, impatient hands, And draw aside futurity As one might draw a veil aside-- And so unveil her where she stands Madonna-like and glorified-- The queen of undiscovered lands Of love, to where she beckons me-- My bride--my bride that is to be. The shadow of a willow-tree That wavers on a garden-wall In summertime may never fall In attitude as gracefully As my fair bride that is to be;-- Nor ever Autumn's leaves of brown As lightly flutter to the lawn As fall her fairy-feet upon The path of love she loiters down.-- O'er drops of dew she walks, and yet Not one may stain her sandal wet-- Aye, she might _dance_ upon the way Nor crush a single drop to spray, So airy-like she seems to me,-- My bride, my bride that is to be. I know not if her eyes are light As summer skies or dark as night,-- I only know that they are dim With mystery: In vain I peer To make their hidden meaning clear, While o'er their surface, like a tear That ripples to the silken brim, A look of longing seems to swim [Illustration] All worn and wearylike to me; And then, as suddenly, my sight Is blinded with a smile so bright, Through folded lids I still may see My bride, my bride that is to be. Her face is like a night of June Upon whose brow the crescent-moon Hangs pendant in a diadem Of stars, with envy lighting them.-- And, like a wild cascade, her hair Floods neck and shoulder, arm and wrist, Till only through a gleaming mist I seem to see a siren there, With lips of love and melody And open arms and heaving breast Wherein I fling myself to rest, The while my heart cries hopelessly For my fair bride that is to be... Nay, foolish heart and blinded eyes! My bride hath need of no disguise.-- But, rather, let her come to me In such a form as bent above My pillow when in infancy I knew not anything but love.-- O let her come from out the lands Of Womanhood--not fairy isles,-- And let her come with Woman's hands And Woman's eyes of tears and smiles,-- With Woman's hopefulness and grace Of patience lighting up her face: And let her diadem be wrought Of kindly deed and prayerful thought, That ever over all distress May beam the light of cheerfulness.-- And let her feet be brave to fare The labyrinths of doubt and care, That, following, my own may find The path to Heaven God designed.-- O let her come like this to me-- My bride--my bride that is to be. HOW IT HAPPENED I got to thinkin' of her--both her parents dead and gone-- And all her sisters married off, and none but her and John A-livin' all alone there in that lonesome sort o' way, And him a blame' old bachelor, confirm'der ev'ry day! I'd knowed 'em all from childern, and their daddy from the time He settled in the neighberhood, and hadn't airy a dime Er dollar, when he married, fer to start housekeepin' on!-- So I got to thinkin' of her--both her parents dead and gone! I got to thinkin' of her; and a-wundern what she done That all her sisters kep' a-gittin' married, one by one, And her without no chances--and the best girl of the pack-- An old maid, with her hands, you might say, tied behind her back! And Mother, too, afore she died, she ust to jes' take on, When none of 'em was left, you know, but Evaline and John, And jes' declare to goodness 'at the young men must be bline To not see what a wife they'd git if they got Evaline! I got to thinkin' of her; in my great affliction she Was sich a comfert to us, and so kind and neighberly,-- She'd come, and leave her housework, fer to he'p out little Jane, And talk of _her own_ mother 'at she'd never see again-- Maybe sometimes cry together--though, fer the most part she Would have the child so riconciled and happy-like 'at we Felt lonesomer 'n ever when she'd put her bonnet on And say she'd railly haf to be a-gittin' back to John! [Illustration] I got to thinkin' of her, as I say,--and more and more I'd think of her dependence, and the burdens 'at she bore,-- Her parents both a-bein' dead, and all her sisters gone And married off, and her a-livin' there alone with John-- You might say jes' a-toilin' and a-slavin' out her life Fer a man 'at hadn't pride enough to git hisse'f a wife-- 'Less some one married _Evaline_ and packed her off some day!-- So I got to thinkin' of her--and it happened that-away. [Illustration] WHEN MY DREAMS COME TRUE I When my dreams come true--when my dreams come true-- Shall I lean from out my casement, in the starlight and the dew, [Illustration] To listen--smile and listen to the tinkle of the strings Of the sweet guitar my lover's fingers fondle, as he sings? And the nude moon slowly, slowly shoulders into view, Shall I vanish from his vision--when my dreams come true? When my dreams come true--shall the simple gown I wear Be changed to softest satin, and my maiden-braided hair Be raveled into flossy mists of rarest, fairest gold, To be minted into kisses, more than any heart can hold?-- Or "the summer of my tresses" shall my lover liken to "The fervor of his passion"--when my dreams come true? II When my dreams come true--I shall bide among the sheaves Of happy harvest meadows; and the grasses and the leaves Shall lift and lean between me and the splendor of the sun, Till the moon swoons into twilight, and the gleaners' work is done-- Save that yet an arm shall bind me, even as the reapers do The meanest sheaf of harvest--when my dreams come true. When my dreams come true! when my dreams come true! True love in all simplicity is fresh and pure as dew; The blossom in the blackest mold is kindlier to the eye Than any lily born of pride that looms against the sky: And so it is I know my heart will gladly welcome you, My lowliest of lovers, when my dreams come true. [Illustration] NOTHIN' TO SAY Nothin' to say, my daughter! Nothin' at all to say! Gyrls that's in love, I've noticed, ginerly has their way! Yer mother did afore you, when her folks objected to me-- Yit here I am, and here you air; and yer mother--where is she? You look lots like yer mother: Purty much same in size; And about the same complected; and favor about the eyes: Like her, too, about _livin'_ here,--because _she_ couldn't stay: It'll 'most seem like you was dead--like her!--But I hain't got nothin' to say! She left you her little Bible--writ yer name acrost the page-- And left her ear bobs fer you, ef ever you come of age. I've allus kep'em and gyuarded 'em, but ef yer goin' away-- Nothin' to say, my daughter! Nothin' at all to say! You don't rikollect her, I reckon? No; you wasn't a year old then! And now yer--how old _air_ you? W'y, child, not _"twenty!"_ When? And yer nex' birthday's in Aprile? and you want to git married that day? I wisht yer mother was livin'!--But--I hain't got nothin' to say! Twenty year! and as good a gyrl as parent ever found! There's a straw ketched onto yer dress there--I'll bresh it off--turn around. (Her mother was jes' twenty when us two run away!) Nothin' to say, my daughter! Nothin' at all to say! [Illustration] [Illustration] IKE WALTON'S PRAYER I crave, dear Lord, No boundless hoard Of gold and gear, Nor jewels fine, Nor lands, nor kine, Nor treasure-heaps of anything.-- Let but a little hut be mine Where at the hearthstone I may hear The cricket sing, And have the shine Of one glad woman's eyes to make, For my poor sake, Our simple home a place divine;-- Just the wee cot--the cricket's chirr-- Love, and the smiling face of her. I pray not for Great riches, nor For vast estates, and castle-halls,-- Give me to hear the bare footfalls Of children o'er An oaken floor, New-rinsed with sunshine, or bespread With but the tiny coverlet And pillow for the baby's head; And pray Thou, may The door stand open and the day Send ever in a gentle breeze, With fragrance from the locust-trees, And drowsy moan of doves, and blur Of robin-chirps, and drone of bees, [Illustration] With afterhushes of the stir Of intermingling sounds, and then The good-wife and the smile of her Filling the silences again-- The cricket's call, And the wee cot, Dear Lord of all, Deny me not! I pray not that Men tremble at My power of place And lordly sway,-- I only pray for simple grace To look my neighbor in the face Full honestly from day to day-- Yield me his horny palm to hold, And I'll not pray For gold;-- The tanned face, garlanded with mirth, It hath the kingliest smile on earth-- The swart brow, diamonded with sweat, Hath never need of coronet. And so I reach, Dear Lord, to Thee, And do beseech Thou givest me The wee cot, and the cricket's chirr, Love, and the glad sweet face of her. [Illustration] ILLILEO Illileo, the moonlight seemed lost across the vales-- The stars but strewed the azure as an armor's scattered scales; The airs of night were quiet as the breath of silken sails; And all your words were sweeter than the notes of nightingales. Illileo Legardi, in the garden there alone, With your figure carved of fervor, as the Psyche carved of stone, There came to me no murmur of the fountain's undertone So mystically, musically mellow as your own. You whispered low, Illileo--so low the leaves were mute, And the echoes faltered breathless in your voice's vain pursuit; And there died the distant dalliance of the serenader's lute: And I held you in my bosom as the husk may hold the fruit. Illileo, I listened. I believed you. In my bliss, What were all the worlds above me since I found you thus in this?-- Let them reeling reach to win me--- even Heaven I would miss, Grasping earthward!--I would cling here, though I clung by just a kiss! And blossoms should grow odorless--and lilies all aghast-- And I said the stars should slacken in their paces through the vast, Ere yet my loyalty should fail enduring to the last.-- So vowed I. It is written. It is changeless as the past. Illileo Legardi, in the shade your palace throws Like a cowl about the singer at your gilded porticos, A moan goes with the music that may vex the high repose Of a heart that fades and crumbles as the crimson of a rose. [Illustration] THE WIFE-BLESSÉD In youth he wrought, with eyes ablur Lorn-faced and long of hair-- In youth--in youth he painted her A sister of the air-- Could clasp her not, but felt the stir Of pinions everywhere. II She lured his gaze, in braver days, And tranced him sirenwise; And he did paint her, through a haze Of sullen paradise, With scars of kisses on her face And embers in her eyes. III And now--nor dream nor wild conceit-- Though faltering, as before-- Through tears he paints her, as is meet, Tracing the dear face o'er With lilied patience meek and sweet As Mother Mary wore. [Illustration] [Illustration] MY MARY My Mary, O my Mary! The simmer-skies are blue; The dawnin' brings the dazzle, An' the gloamin' brings the dew?-- The mirk o' nicht the glory O' the moon, an' kindles, too, The stars that shift aboon the lift.--- But nae thing brings me you! Where is it, O my Mary, Ye are biding a' the while? I ha' wended by your window-- I ha' waited by the stile, An' up an' down the river I ha' won for mony a mile, Yet never found, adrift or drown'd, Your lang-belated smile. Is it forgot, my Mary, How glad we used to be?-- The simmer-time when bonny bloomed The auld trysting-tree,-- How there I carved the name for you, An' you the name for me; An' the gloamin' kenned it only When we kissed sae tenderly. Speek ance to me, my Mary!--- But whisper in my ear As light as ony sleeper's breath, An' a' my soul will hear; My heart shall stap its beating An' the soughing atmosphere Be hushed the while I leaning smile An' listen to you, dear! My Mary, O my Mary! The blossoms bring the bees; The sunshine brings the blossoms, An' the leaves on a' the trees; The simmer brings the sunshine An' the fragrance o' the breeze,-- But O wi'out you, Mary, I care nae thing for these! [Illustration] We were sae happy, Mary! O think how ance we said-- Wad ane o' us gae fickle, Or are o' us lie dead,-- To feel anither's kisses We wad feign the auld instead, And ken the ither's footsteps In the green grass owerhead. My Mary, O my Mary! Are ye daughter o' the air, That ye vanish aye before me As I follow everywhere?-- Or is it ye are only But a mortal, wan wi' care?-- Syne I search through a' the kirkyird An' I dinna find ye there! [Illustration] HOME AT NIGHT When chirping crickets fainter cry, And pale stars blossom in the sky, And twilight's gloom has dimmed the bloom And blurred the butterfly: When locust-blossoms fleck the walk, And up the tiger-lily stalk The glow-worm crawls and clings and falls And glimmers down the garden-walls: When buzzing things, with double wings Of crisp and raspish flutterings, Go whizzing by so very nigh One thinks of fangs and stings:-- O then, within, is stilled the din Of crib she rocks the baby in, And heart and gate and latch's weight Are lifted--- and the lips of Kate, [Illustration] [Illustration] WHEN LIDE MARRIED _HIM_ When Lide married _him_--w'y, she had to jes dee-fy The whole poppilation!--But she never bat' an eye! Her parents begged, and _threatened_--she must give him up--that _he_ Wuz jes "a common drunkard!"--And he _wuz_, appearantly.-- Swore they'd chase him off the place Ef he ever showed his face-- Long after she'd _eloped_ with him and _married_ him fer shore!-- When Lide married _him_, it wuz _"Katy, bar the door!"_ When Lide married _him_--Well! she had to go and be A _hired girl_ in town somewheres--while he tromped round to see What _he_ could git that _he_ could do,--you might say, jes sawed wood From door to door!--that's what he done--'cause that wuz best he could! And the strangest thing, i jing! Wuz, he didn't _drink_ a thing,-- But jes got down to bizness, like he someway _wanted_ to, When Lide married _him_, like they warned her _not_ to do! When Lide married _him_--er, ruther, _had_ ben married A little up'ards of a year--some feller come and carried That _hired girl_ away with him--a ruther _stylish_ feller In a bran-new green spring-wagon, with the wheels striped red and yeller: And he whispered, as they driv Tords the country, _"Now we'll live!"_-- And _somepin' else_ she _laughed_ to hear, though both her eyes wuz dim, 'Bout _"trustin' Love and Heav'n above_, sence Lide married _him!"_ [Illustration] [Illustration] HER HAIR The beauty of her hair bewilders me-- Pouring adown the brow, its cloven tide Swirling about the ears on either side And storming around the neck tumultuously: Or like the lights of old antiquity Through mullioned windows, in cathedrals wide, Spilled moltenly o'er figures deified In chastest marble, nude of drapery. And so I love it.--Either unconfined; Or plaited in close braidings manifold; Or smoothly drawn; or indolently twined In careless knots whose coilings come unrolled At any lightest kiss; or by the wind Whipped out in flossy ravelings of gold. LAST NIGHT--AND THIS Last night--how deep the darkness was! And well I knew its depths, because I waded it from shore to shore, Thinking to reach the light no more. She would not even touch my hand.-- The winds rose and the cedars fanned The moon out, and the stars fled back In heaven and hid--and all was black! But ah! To-night a summons came, Signed with a teardrop for a name,-- For as I wondering kissed it, lo, A line beneath it told me so. And _now_ the moon hangs over me A disk of dazzling brilliancy, And every star-tip stabs my sight With splintered glitterings of light! [Illustration] [Illustration] A DISCOURAGING MODEL Just the airiest, fairiest slip of a thing, With a Gainsborough hat, like a butterfly's wing, Tilted up at one side with the jauntiest air, And a knot of red roses sown in under there Where the shadows are lost in her hair. [Illustration] Then a cameo face, carven in on a ground Of that shadowy hair where the roses are wound; And the gleam of a smile O as fair and as faint And as sweet as the masters of old used to paint Round the lips of their favorite saint! And that lace at her throat--and the fluttering hands Snowing there, with a grace that no art understands The flakes of their touches--first fluttering at The bow--then the roses--the hair--and then that Little tilt of the Gainsborough hat. What artist on earth, with a model like this, Holding not on his palette the tint of a kiss, Nor a pigment to hint of the hue of her hair, Nor the gold of her smile--O what artist could dare To expect a result so fair? [Illustration] SUSPENSE A woman's figure, on a ground of night Inlaid with sallow stars that dimly stare Down in the lonesome eyes, uplifted there As in vague hope some alien lance of light Might pierce their woe. The tears that blind her sight-- The salt and bitter blood of her despair-- Her hands toss back through torrents of her hair And grip toward God with anguish infinite. And O the carven mouth, with all its great Intensity of longing frozen fast In such a smile as well may designate The slowly murdered heart, that, to the last Conceals each newer wound, and back at Fate Throbs Love's eternal lie--"Lo, I can wait!" [Illustration] THE RIVAL I so loved once, When Death came by I hid Away my face, And all my sweetheart's tresses she undid To make my hiding-place. The dread shade passed me thus unheeding; and I turned me then To calm my love--kiss down her shielding hand And comfort her again. And lo! she answered not: And she did sit All fixedly, With her fair face and the sweet smile of it, In love with Death, not me. [Illustration] TOM VAN ARDEN Tom van Arden, my old friend, Our warm fellowship is one Far too old to comprehend Where its bond was first begun: Mirage-like before my gaze Gleams a land of other days, Where two truant boys, astray, Dream their lazy lives away. [Illustration] There's a vision, in the guise Of Midsummer, where the Past Like a weary beggar lies In the shadow Time has cast; And as blends the bloom of trees With the drowsy hum of bees, Fragrant thoughts and murmurs blend, Tom Van Arden, my old friend. Tom Van Arden, my old friend, All the pleasures we have known Thrill me now as I extend This old hand and grasp your own-- Feeling, in the rude caress, All affection's tenderness; Feeling, though the touch be rough, Our old souls are soft enough. So we'll make a mellow hour; Fill your pipe, and taste the wine-- Warp your face, if it be sour, I can spare a smile from mine; If it sharpen up your wit, Let me feel the edge of it-- I have eager ears to lend, Tom Van Arden, my old friend. Tom Van Arden, my old friend, Are we "lucky dogs," indeed? Are we all that we pretend In the jolly life we lead?-- Bachelors, we must confess Boast of "single blessedness" To the world, but not alone-- Man's best sorrow is his own. And the saddest truth is this,-- Life to us has never proved What we tasted in the kiss Of the women we have loved: Vainly we congratulate Our escape from such a fate As their lying lips could send, Tom Van Arden, my old friend! Tom Van Arden, my old friend, Hearts, like fruit upon the stem, Ripen sweetest, I contend, As the frost falls over them: [Illustration] Your regard for me to-day Makes November taste of May, And through every vein of rhyme Pours the blood of summertime. When our souls are cramped with youth Happiness seems far away In the future, while, in truth, We look back on it to-day Through our tears, nor dare to boast,-- "Better to have loved and lost!" Broken hearts are hard to mend, Tom Van Arden, my old friend. Tom Van Arden, my old friend, I grow prosy, and you tire; Fill the glasses while I bend To prod up the failing fire.... You are restless:--I presume There's a dampness in the room.-- Much of warmth our nature begs, With rheumatics in our legs!... Humph! the legs we used to fling Limber-jointed in the dance, When we heard the fiddle ring Up the curtain of Romance, And in crowded public halls Played with hearts like jugglers'-balls.-- _Feats of mountebanks, depend!_-- Tom Van Arden, my old friend. Tom Van Arden, my old friend, Pardon, then, this theme of mine: While the fire-light leaps to lend Higher color to the wine,-- I propose a health to those Who have _homes_, and home's repose, Wife and child-love without end! Tom Van Arden, my old friend. [Illustration] [Illustration] TO HEAR HER SING To hear her sing--to hear her sing-- It is to hear the birds of Spring In dewy groves on blooming sprays Pour out their blithest roundelays. It is to hear the robin trill At morning, or the whippoorwill At dusk, when stars are blossoming To hear her sing--to hear her sing! To hear her sing--it is to hear The laugh of childhood ringing clear In woody path or grassy lane Our feet may never fare again. Faint, far away as Memory dwells, It is to hear the village bells At twilight, as the truant hears Them, hastening home, with smiles and tears. Such joy it is to hear her sing, We fall in love with everything-- The simple things of every day Grow lovelier than words can say. The idle brooks that purl across The gleaming pebbles and the moss, We love no less than classic streams-- The Rhines and Arnos of our dreams. To hear her sing--with folded eyes, It is, beneath Venetian skies, To hear the gondoliers' refrain, Or troubadours of sunny Spain.-- To hear the bulbul's voice that shook The throat that trilled for Lalla Rookh: What wonder we in homage bring Our hearts to her--to hear her sing! [Illustration] A VARIATION I am tired of this! Nothing else but loving! Nothing else but kiss and kiss, Coo, and turtle-doving! Can't you change the order some? Hate me just a little--come! Lay aside your "dears," "Darlings", "kings" and "princes!"-- Call me knave, and dry your tears-- Nothing in me winces,-- Call me something low and base-- Something that will suit the case! Wish I had your eyes And their drooping lashes! I would dry their teary lies Up with lightning-flashes-- Make your sobbing lips unsheathe All the glitter of your teeth! Can't you lift one word-- With some pang of laughter-- Louder than the drowsy bird Crooning 'neath the rafter? Just one bitter word, to shriek Madly at me as I speak! How I hate the fair Beauty of your forehead! [Illustration] How I hate your fragrant hair! How I hate the torrid Touches of your splendid lips, And the kiss that drips and drips! Ah, you pale at last! And your face is lifted Like a white sail to the blast, And your hands are shifted Into fists: and, towering thus, You are simply glorious! Now before me looms Something more than human; Something more than beauty blooms In the wrath of Woman-- Something to bow down before Reverently and adore. [Illustration] WHERE SHALL WE LAND? "Where shall we land you, sweet?"--Swinburne. All listlessly we float Out seaward in the boat That beareth Love. Our sails of purest snow Bend to the blue below And to the blue above. Where shall be land? We drift upon a tide Shoreless on every side, Save where the eye Of Fancy sweeps far lands Shelved slopingly with sands Of gold and porphyry. Where shall we land? The fairy isles we see, Loom up so mistily-- So vaguely fair, We do not care to break Fresh bubbles in our wake To bend our course for there. Where shall we land? The warm winds of the deep Have lulled our sails to sleep, And so we glide Careless of wave or wind, Or change of any kind, Or turn of any tide. Where shall we land? We droop our dreamy eyes Where our reflection lies Steeped in the sea, And, in an endless fit Of languor, smile on it And its sweet mimicry. Where shall we land? "Where shall we land?" God's grace! I know not any place So fair as this-- Swung here between the blue Of sea and sky, with you To ask me, with a kiss, "Where shall we land?" THE TOUCHES OF HER HANDS The touches of her hands are like the fall Of velvet snowflakes; like the touch of down The peach just brushes 'gainst the garden wall; The flossy fondling of the thistle-wisp Caught in the crinkle of a leaf of brown The blighting frost hath turned from green to crisp. Soft as the falling of the dusk at night, The touches of her hands, and the delight-- The touches of her hands! The touches of her hands are like the dew That falls so softly down no one e'er knew The touch thereof save lovers like to one Astray in lights where ranged Endymion. O rarely soft, the touches of her hands, As drowsy zephyrs in enchanted lands; Or pulse of dying fay; or fairy sighs; Or--in between the midnight and the dawn, When long unrest and tears and fears are gone-- Sleep, smoothing down the lids of weary eyes. [Illustration] FARMER WHIPPLE--BACHELOR It's a mystery to see me--a man o' fifty-four, Who's lived a cross old bachelor fer thirty year and more-- A-lookin' glad and smilin'! And they's none o' you can say That you can guess the reason why I feel so good to-day! I must tell you all about it! But I'll have to deviate A little in beginning, so's to set the matter straight As to how it comes to happen that I never took a wife-- Kind o' "crawfish" from the Present to the Springtime of my life! I was brought up in the country: Of a family of five-- Three brothers and a sister--I'm the only one alive,-- Fer they all died little babies; and 'twas one o' Mother's ways, You know, to want a daughter; so she took a girl to raise. The sweetest little thing she was, with rosy cheeks, and fat-- We was little chunks o' shavers then about as high as that! But someway we sort o' _suited_-like! and Mother she'd declare She never laid her eyes on a more lovin' pair [Illustration] Than _we_ was! So we growed up side by side fer thirteen year', And every hour of it she growed to me more dear!-- W'y, even Father's dyin', as he did, I do believe Warn't more affectin' to me than it was to see her grieve! I was then a lad o' twenty; and I felt a flash o' pride In thinkin' all depended on _me_ now to pervide Fer Mother and fer Mary; and I went about the place With sleeves rolled up--and working with a mighty smilin' face.-- Fer _sompin' else_ was workin'! but not a word I said Of a certain sort o' notion that was runnin' through my head,-- "Someday I'd mayby marry, and _a brother's_ love was one Thing--_a lover's_ was another!" was the way the notion run! I remember one't in harvest, when the "cradle-in'" was done-- When the harvest of my summers mounted up to twenty-one I was ridin' home with Mary at the closin' o' the day-- A-chawin' straws and thinkin', in a lover's lazy way! And Mary's cheeks was burin' like the sunset down the lane: I noticed she was thinkin', too, and ast her to explain. Well--when she turned and _kissed_ me, _with her arms around me--law!_ I'd a bigger load o' heaven than I had a load o' straw! I don't p'tend to learnin', but I'll tell you what's a fact, They's a mighty truthful sayin' somers in a' almanack-- Er _somers-_--'bout "puore happiness"--- perhaps some folks'll laugh At the idy--"only lastin' jest two seconds and a half."-- But it's jest as true as preachin'!--fer that was _a sister's_ kiss, And a sister's lovin' confidence a-tellin' to me this:-- _"She_ was happy, _bein' promised to the son o' farmer Brown."_-- And my feelin's struck a pardnership with sunset and went down! [Illustration] I don't know _how_ I acted--I don't know _what_ I said, Fer my heart seemed jest a-turnin' to an ice-cold lump o' lead; And the hosses kindo' glimmered before me in the road. And the lines fell from my fingers--and that was all I knowed-- Fer--well, I don't know _how_ long--They's a dim rememberence Of a sound o' snortin' hosses, and a stake-and-ridered fence A-whizzin' past, and wheat-sheaves a-dancin' in the air, And Mary screamin' "Murder!" and a-runnin' up to where _I_ was layin' by the road-side, and the wagon upside down A-leanin' on the gate-post, with the wheels a whirlin' round! And I tried to raise and meet her, but I couldn't, with a vague Sorto' notion comin' to me that I had a broken leg. Well, the women nussed me through it; but many a time I'd sigh As I'd keep a-gittin' better instid o' goin' to die, And wonder what was left _me_ worth livin' fer below, When the girl I loved was married to another, don't you know! And my thoughts was as rebellious as the folks was good and kind When Brown and Mary married--Railly must a-been my _mind_ Was kindo' out o' kilter!--fer I hated Brown, you see, Worse'n _pizen_--and the feller whittled crutches out fer _me_-- And done a thousand little ac's o' kindness and respect-- And me a-wishin' all the time that I could break his neck! My relief was like a mourner's when the funeral is done When they moved to Illinois in the Fall o' Forty-one. [Illustration] Then I went to work in airnest--I had nothin' much in view But to drownd out rickollections--and it kep' me busy, too! But I slowly thrived and prospered, tel Mother used to say She expected yit to see me a wealthy man some day. Then I'd think how little _money_ was, compared to happiness-- And who'd be left to use it when I died I couldn't guess! But I've still kep' speculatin' and a-gainin' year by year, Tel I'm payin' half the taxes in the county, mighty near! Well!--A year ago er better, a letter comes to hand Astin' how I'd like to dicker fer some Illinois land-- "The feller that had owned it," it went ahead to state, "Had jest deceased, insolvent, leavin' chance to speculate,"-- And then it closed by sayin' that I'd "better come and see."-- I'd never been West, anyhow--a most too wild fer _me_ I'd allus had a notion; but a lawyer here in town Said I'd find myself mistakened when I come to look around. So I bids good-bye to Mother, and I jumps aboard the train, A-thinkin' what I'd bring her when I come back home again-- And ef she'd had an idy what the present was to be, I think it's more'n likely she'd a-went along with me! Cars is awful tejus ridin', fer all they go so fast! But finally they called out my stoppin'-place at last; And that night, at the tavern, I dreamp' _I_ was a train O' cars, and _skeered_ at sompin', runnin' down a country lane! Well, in the mornin' airly--after huntin' up the man-- The lawyer who was wantin' to swap the piece o' land-- We started fer the country; and I ast the history Of the farm--its former owner--and so-forth, etcetery! And--well--it was inte_rest_in'--I su'prised him, I suppose, By the loud and frequent manner in which I blowed my nose!-- But his surprise was greater, and it made him wonder more, When I kissed and hugged the widder when she met us at the door!-- _It was Mary:_ They's a feelin' a-hidin' down in here-- Of course I can't explain it, ner ever make it clear.-- It was with us in that meetin', I don't want you to fergit! And it makes me kind o' nervous when I think about it yit! I _bought_ that farm, and _deeded_ it, afore I left the town, With "title clear to mansions in the skies," to Mary Brown! And fu'thermore, I took her and _the childern_--fer, you see, They'd never seed their Grandma--and I fetched 'em home with me. So _now_ you've got an idy why a man o' fifty-four, Who's lived a cross old bachelor fer thirty year' and more, Is a-lookin' glad and smilin'!--And I've jest come into town To git a pair o' license fer to _marry_ Mary Brown. [Illustration] THE ROSE It tossed its head at the wooing breeze; And the sun, like a bashful swain, Beamed on it through the waving trees With a passion all in vain,-- For my rose laughed in a crimson glee, And hid in the leaves in wait for me. The honey-bee came there to sing His love through the languid hours, And vaunt of his hives, as a proud old king Might boast of his palace-towers: But my rose bowed in a mockery, And hid in the leaves in wait for me. The humming-bird, like a courtier gay, Dipped down with a dalliant song, And twanged his wings through the roundelay Of love the whole day long: Yet my rose returned from his minstrelsy And hid in the leaves in wait for me. The firefly came in the twilight dim My red, red rose to woo-- Till quenched was the flame of love in him And the light of his lantern too, As my rose wept with dewdrops three And hid in the leaves in wait for me. And I said: I will cull my own sweet rose-- Some day I will claim as mine The priceless worth of the flower that knows No change, but a bloom divine-- The bloom of a fadeless constancy That hides in the leaves in wait for me! But time passed by in a strange disguise, And I marked it not, but lay In a lazy dream, with drowsy eyes, Till the summer slipped away, And a chill wind sang in a minor key: "Where is the rose that waits for thee?" * * * * * I dream to-day, o'er a purple stain Of bloom on a withered stalk, Pelted down by the autumn rain In the dust of the garden-walk, That an Angel-rose in the world to be Will hide in the leaves in wait for me. WHEN AGE COMES ON When Age comes on!-- The deepening dusk is where the dawn Once glittered splendid, and the dew In honey-drips, from red rose-lips Was kissed away by me and you.-- And now across the frosty lawn Black foot-prints trail, and Age comes on-- And Age comes on! And biting wild-winds whistle through Our tattered hopes--and Age comes on! When Age comes on!-- O tide of raptures, long withdrawn, Flow back in summer-floods, and fling Here at our feet our childhood sweet, And all the songs we used to sing!... Old loves, old friends--all dead and gone-- Our old faith lost--and Age comes on-- And Age comes on! Poor hearts! have we not anything But longings left when Age comes on! [Illustration] [Illustration] HAS SHE FORGOTTEN? Has she forgotten? On this very May We were to meet here, with the birds and bees, As on that Sabbath, underneath the trees We strayed among the tombs, and stripped away The vines from these old granites, cold and gray-- And yet indeed not grim enough were they To stay our kisses, smiles and ecstasies, Or closer voice-lost vows and rhapsodies. Has she forgotten--that the May has won Its promise?--that the bird-songs from the tree Are sprayed above the grasses as the sun Might jar the dazzling dew down showeringly? Has she forgotten life--love--everyone-- Has she forgotten me--forgotten me? II Low, low down in the violets I press My lips and whisper to her. Does she hear, And yet hold silence, though I call her dear, Just as of old, save for the tearfulness Of the clenched eyes, and the soul's vast distress? Has she forgotten thus the old caress That made our breath a quickened atmosphere That failed nigh unto swooning with the sheer Delight? Mine arms clutch now this earthen heap Sodden with tears that flow on ceaselessly As autumn rains the long, long, long nights weep In memory of days that used to be,-- Has she forgotten these? And in her sleep, Has she forgotten me--forgotten me? III To-night, against my pillow, with shut eyes, I mean to weld our faces--through the dense Incalculable darkness make pretense That she has risen from her reveries To mate her dreams with mine in marriages Of mellow palms, smooth faces, and tense ease Of every longing nerve of indolence,-- Lift from the grave her quiet lips, and stun My senses with her kisses--drawl the glee Of her glad mouth, full blithe and tenderly, Across mine own, forgetful if is done The old love's awful dawn-time when said we, "To-day is ours!"... Ah, Heaven! can it be She has forgotten me--forgotten me! [Illustration] BLOOMS OF MAY But yesterday!... O blooms of May, And summer roses--Where-away? O stars above, And lips of love And all the honeyed sweets thereof! O lad and lass And orchard-pass And briered lane, and daisied grass! O gleam and gloom, And woodland bloom, And breezy breaths of all perfume!-- No more for me Or mine shall be Thy raptures--save in memory,-- No more--no more-- Till through the Door Of Glory gleam the days of yore. [Illustration] [Illustration] [Illustration] THE SERMON OF THE ROSE Wilful we are in our infirmity Of childish questioning and discontent. Whate'er befalls us is divinely meant-- Thou Truth the clearer for thy mystery! Make us to meet what is or is to be With fervid welcome, knowing it is sent To serve us in some way full excellent, Though we discern it all belatedly. The rose buds, and the rose blooms and the rose Bows in the dews, and in its fulness, lo, Is in the lover's hand,--then on the breast Of her he loves,--and there dies.--And who knows Which fate of all a rose may undergo Is fairest, dearest, sweetest, loveliest? Nay, we are children: we will not mature. A blessed gift must seem a theft; and tears Must storm our eyes when but a joy appears In drear disguise of sorrow; and how poor We seem when we are richest,--most secure Against all poverty the lifelong years We yet must waste in childish doubts and fears That, in despite of reason, still endure! Alas! the sermon of the rose we will Not wisely ponder; nor the sobs of grief Lulled into sighs of rapture; nor the cry Of fierce defiance that again is still. Be patient--patient with our frail belief, And stay it yet a little ere we die. O opulent life of ours, though dispossessed Of treasure after treasure! Youth most fair Went first, but left its priceless coil of hair-- Moaned over sleepless nights, kissed and caressed Through drip and blur of tears the tenderest. And next went Love--the ripe rose glowing there Her very sister!... It is here; but where Is she, of all the world the first and best? And yet how sweet the sweet earth after rain-- How sweet the sunlight on the garden wall Across the roses--and how sweetly flows The limpid yodel of the brook again! And yet--and yet how sweeter after all, The smouldering sweetness of a dead red rose! [Illustration] 
20174	----	FREEDOM, TRUTH AND BEAUTY SONNETS BY EDWARD DOYLE Author of Cagliostro, Moody Moments, the American Soldier, the Haunted Temple and other poems; The Comet, a play of our times and Genevra, a play of Mediaeval Florence. "He owns only his mental vision. But this is clear and broad of range--as broad, indeed, as that of Dante, Milton and Goethe, sweeping beyond the horizon of eschatology and mounting, like Francis Thompson's, even to the Throne of Grace itself when the theme demands reverential daring." --STANDARD AND TIMES, PHILADELPHIA. MANHATTAN AND BRONX ADVOCATE 1712 Amsterdam Avenue, New York. THE SECOND REVISED EDITION _Copyright, 1921_ BY EDWARD DOYLE CONTENTS PAGE NO. The Quality of Edward Doyle's Work, by Ella Wheeler Wilcox 7 True Nationalism, by David Klein, Ph.D. 9 Genevra, Review In the Independent 12 Dedication to the Daughters of the American Revolution 13 The Proem 19 The Atlantic 20 Human Freedom 20 The Stars 21 The Genesis of Freedom 21 The Pilgrim Fathers 23 Plymouth Rock 23 The Catholics in Maryland 24 A Forest for the King's Hawks 24 To Arms Shouts Freedom 25 British Soldiery 25 Amphibious Barry 26 Freedom's Triumph 26 Washington's Army and Barry's Navy 27 The Sunken Continent 27 Elisha Brown 28 Evacuation Day 28 Manhatta 29 The Burning of Washington City by the British 29 The Land of the Great Spirit 30 The Blight to Spring 30 The Scorn of Human Rights 31 Not This Our Country's Glory 31 America's Glory No Fugitive 32 Hate Thou Not Any Man 33 The Celtic Soul Cry 34 British Glory in Kipling's Boots 36 To the English People 36 Shakespeare 37 England's Righteousness 37 The Massacre of the Welsh Miners 38 A Dirty Work 38 Human Nature 39 Our Country--Soul and Character 39 Juda and Erin 41 The Easter Rising in Ireland 41 The Fight in Ireland 42 To Erin 42 The Queen of Beauty 43 Liberty the Light to Peace 43 Why Play with Words, England 44 Freedom's Wardens 44 List to Demosthenes, If Not to Hearst 45 Caledonia 45 Canada 47 Dragon Incursions 51 All Stars Merged in One 52 Nemesis 52 Lincoln's Lightening in Wilson's Hands 53 The Cataclysm 54 An Epoch's Angel Fall 54 The America of the Future 55 The Inevitable 56 Reptiles with Wings 57 The Outlaws in Our Country 58 The Press 59 The Truth 59 Our Lord's Last Prayer 60 Thought Is Truth's Echo 60 Heaven 61 Humility 61 The Night of Mysteries 62 What the Poets Show 62 The Soul's Ascension 63 Lyric Transport 63 The Sunrise 64 Two Darknesses 64 The Doom of Hate 65 The Evil in the World 65 The Earth Renewed by Memory 66 In the Dimple of Beauty's Cheek 66 The Camp Fire 67 Mother 67 In Heaven No Heart Still Heaves 68 Saint Peter's Cathedral in Rome 68 My Bugler Boy 69 Kaiser, Beware 69 Woman in Germany 70 O Thou Pale Moon 70 The Tiger 71 To Our Boys "Over There" 71 The Profiteers 72 Why the Stars Laugh 72 Prayer for the World Peace 73 Religion 73 The Golden Jubilee of Sisters of Charity 74 Winifred Holt, the Lifesaver of the Blind 75 A Choice 75 All Luminaires Have One Trend 76 Life Takes Morning Hues with the Arts of Peace 76 U. S. Senator James A. O. Gorman and the Stalwarts 77 Minister of Justice Palmer, A Bastile Builder 77 A Speck, But Not a Stain, Harvard 78 Supreme Court Justice Charles L. Guy 78 Rear Admiral Sims 79 Saint George and the Dragon 79 [Illustration] [Illustration] THE QUALITY OF THE WORKS OF EDWARD DOYLE The quality of Edward Doyle's work was appraised by Ella Wheeler Wilcox in the following article by Mrs. Wilcox which appeared in the New York Evening Journal and the San Francisco _Examiner_, in 1905: Shut your eyes and bind them with a black cloth and try for one hour to see how cheerful you can be. Then imagine yourself deprived for life of the light of day. Perhaps this experiment will make you less rebellious with your present lot. Then take the little book called "The Haunted Temple and Other Poems," by Edward Doyle, the blind poet of Harlem, and read and wonder and feel ashamed of any mood of distrust of God and discontent with life you have ever indulged. Mr. Doyle has been blind for the last thirty-seven years; he has lived a half century. Therefore he still remembers the privilege of seeing God's world when a lad, and this must augment rather than ameliorate his sorrow. He who has never known the use of eyes cannot fully understand the immensity of the loss of sight. I hear people in possession of all their senses, and with many blessings, bewail the fact that they were ever born. They have missed some aim, failed of some cherished ambition, lost some special joy or been defeated in some purpose. A GREAT SOUL And so they sit in spiritual darkness and curse life and doubt God. But here is a great soul who has found his divine self in the darkness and who sends out this wonderful song of joy and gratitude. Read it, oh, ye weak repiners, and read it again and again. It is beautiful in thought, perfect in expression and glorious with truth. CHIME, DARK BELL My life is in deep darkness; still, I cry, With joy to my Creator, "It is well!" Were worlds my words, what firmaments would tell My transport at the consciousness that I Who was not, Am! To be--oh, that is why The awful convex dark in which I dwell Is tongued with joy, and chimes a temple bell. Antiphonally to the choirs on high! Chime cheerily, dark bell! for were no more Than consciousness my gift, this were to know The Giver Good--which sums up all the lore Eternity can possibly bestow. Chime! for thy metal is the molten ore Of the great stars, and marks no wreck below. I know a gifted and brilliant man in New York who is full of charm and wit in conversation, but the moment he touches a pen he becomes, as a rule, a melancholy pessimist, crying out at the injustice of the world and the uselessness of high endeavor in the field of art. When urged to take a different mental attitude for the sake of the reading world, which needs strong tonics of hope and courage, rather than the slow poison of pessimism, however subtly sweet the brew, my friend responds that "The song and dance of literature is not my special gift." And he is obliged to "speak of the world as I find it." He is an able-bodied man, in the prime of life, with splendid years waiting on his threshold to lead him to any height he may wish to climb. But to his mental vision, nothing is really "worth while." What a rebuke this wonderful poem of Edward Doyle's should be to all such men and women. What an inspiration it should be to every mortal who reads it, to look within, and find the =Kingdom of God= as this blind poet has found it. Mr. Doyle was in St. Francis Xavier's College when his great affliction fell upon him. He started a local paper, The Advocate, in Harlem twenty-three years ago and has in the darkness of his physical vision developed his poetical talent and given the world some great lines. AN INSPIRATION Here is a poem which throbs with the keen anguish which must have been his guest through many silent hours of these thirty-seven years: TO A CHILD READING My darling, spell the words out. You may creep Across the syllables on hands and knees, And stumble often, yet pass me with ease And reach the spring upon the summit steep. Oh, I could lay me down, dear child, and weep These charr'd orbs out, but that you then might cease Your upward effort, and with inquiries Stoop down and probe my heart too deep, too deep! I thirst for Knowledge. Oh, for an endless drink Your goblet leaks the whole way from the spring-- No matter, to its rim a few drops cling, And these refresh me with the joy to think That you, my darling, have the morning's wing To cross the mountain at whose base I sink. But Edward Doyle has not sunk "at the mountain's base." He is far up its summit, and he will go higher. He has found God, and nothing can hinder his flight. He is an inspiration to all struggling, toiling souls on earth. As I read his book, with its strong clarion cry of faith and joy and courage, and ponder over the carefully finished thoughts and beautifully polished lines, I feel ashamed of my own small achievements, and am inspired to new efforts. Glory and success to you, Edward Doyle. ELLA WHEELER WILCOX. [Illustration] TRUE NATIONALISM (_From the "Maccabaein", June, 1920._) THE JEWS IN RUSSIA From town and village to a wood, stript bare, As they of their possessions, see them throng. Above them grows a cloud; it moves along, As flee they from the circling wolf pack's glare. Is it their Brocken-Shadow of despair, The looming of their life of cruel wrong For countless ages? No; their faith is strong In their Jehovah; that huge cloud is prayer. A flash of light, and black the despot lies. What thunder round the world! 'Tis transport's strain Proclaiming loud: "No righteous prayer is vain No God-imploring tears are lost; they rise Into a cloud, and in the sky remain Till they draw lightening from Jehovah's eyes." The author of this superb little gem, like Homer, is blind; but, like Homer, his mental vision is clear, and broad, and deep. President Schurman, of Cornell University, commenting on Doyle once said: "It is as true today as of yore that the genuine poet, even though blind, is the Seer and Prophet of his generation." The poem here printed illustrates the point. Did we not know that it was published some fifteen years ago in a volume entitled "The Haunted Temple," we should assume that it was written on the occasion of the fall of the Czar. In fact, however, it merely foretells this event by some dozen years. And how terribly applicable are the lines to the facts of today! The prophecy is one capable of repeated fulfillment. But it is as a prophet of nationalism that this man compels our particular attention. The prophecy is embodied in a play entitled "The Comet, a Play of Our Times," brought out as far back as 1908. The play is a microcosm of American life. The chief character is a college president, and he it is that is chosen to expound the true nature of nationalism and to give voice and utterance to the principle of self-determination. (Is it merely a coincidence that at that time Woodrow Wilson was President of Princeton, or is it a case of poetic vision. Wilson, be it remembered, was already a national figure, and there were already glimmerings that he was destined to usher in a new era in politics.) According to the protagonist, America is not "a boiling cauldron in which the elements seethe, but never settle," but rather a college where every class is taught to translate-- "Into the common speech of daily life The country's loftiest ideals--" and any body of citizens form a part of our republic only in so far-- "As they contribute to its character As leader of the nations unto Right By thought or deed, in service for mankind." We must lead the peoples of the world to freedom. And what is freedom? "'Tis intelligence Aloof from harm and hamper, grandly circling Its native sun-lit peaks, the highest hopes Heaved from the heart of man upon the earth, In ranges long as time and soul endure." What, then, is America's duty to the oppressed race or the small nation? It is to "wake and disabuse it of false hope"-- "and urge it on To the development of its own powers, The culmination of its own ideals, The star seed sown by God,--the only means By which a tribe can thrive to its perfection." To make this possible, civilization must be given a more human content. It is therefore necessary to awake human intelligence, "the godlike genius," to a realization of the fact-- "--that, on having brought This world from out the chaos dark Of waters and of woody wilderness, And shaped it into hills of hope for man, Must providence its beautiful creation With altruistic love and tenderness; So that all tribes of man, what'er their hue, Have each a hill where it can touch the star That it has followed with its mental growth." Such a program is rendered imperative by the inexorability of the law of race, which nullifies any attempts to force assimilation: "It is a foolish, futile thing To try to shape society by codes, Vetoed by Nature. Nature trumpets forth No edict, through the instinct of a race, Proclaiming certain territory hers And warning all encroaching powers therefrom, Without the ordering out of her reserves To see to it the edict is enforced. Let politics keep off forbidden shores." If any powers preserve in a policy of oppression, our duty is plain: "To teach the barbarous tribes throughout the globe, Christian or Turk, that all humanity Is territory sheltered by our flag; That butchery must cease throughout the world; That, having ended human slavery, Old glory has a mission from on high To stop the slaughter of the smiling babe, The pale, crazed mother, weak, defenseless sire, All places on the habitable globe." Finally to render feasible the ideal development of all peoples, and put an end to war, America must bring about a league of all nations. It develops on us-- "To get the races by degrees together To talk their grievance over, in a voice As gentle as a woman's.... There is no education in the world Like human contact for mankind's advance; All differences, then, adjust themselves; But when two races are estranged by hate, They grow so deaf to one another's rights, That it soon comes to pass that either has To use the trumpet of artillery In order to be heard at all." Recently, Doyle wrote the following lines. Their application is obvious: "Vault Godward, Poet. What though few may climb The mountain and the star on trail of thee? Thy wing-flash beams toward man, and if it be True inspiration--whether thought sublime, Or fervor for the truth, or liberty-- Thy light will reach the earth in goodly time." What wonder that from so lofty an outlook his searching eye should pierce the tragedy of "The Jews in Russia"--or elsewhere--should pierce even the revenges that Time would ring in, and rest on a vision of righteous peace! DAVID KLEIN, Ph.D. _AUTHOR OF LITERARY CRITICISM, from the Elizabethian Dramatist._ GENEVRA (_From the "Independent," May 30, 1912._) The scene of Mr. Edward Doyle's new play is the Florence of 1400; the atmosphere that of a plague stricken city in a time when man was helpless, authorities hopeless, social life in shreds and patches. The plot of the play founded on this state of affairs is rich in incident, varied and sufficiently complex in color, passion and character to furnish material for an exciting spectacular representation. The tragic element is strong, but supported and shaded by the company of roysterers, a jester, whose foolery is a compound of bluff of that period and bluff of modern politics and athletics. The jester, the black company and the penitents, together with the roysterers, form now the foreground, now the background, of action, which in itself is never without the dolorous sound of the death bell. The doomed city is under a spell comparable to that set forth so vividly in Manzoni's "I Promessi Sposi." Says the villain of the plot as he listens from his seat at the festive board: "It bodes ill for the black Cowled company To make a visit to a festive house. 'Tis like death looking in and whispering 'Next.' Fool, call the servants. Bid them fetch the wine-- A cask of it--the best varnaccio! Here come my friends to help me drown the Plague." Pictures like this as sharply defined are frequent and throw in shadowed blackening on shadow. The author defends the use of a meteorological phenomenon translated in the spirit of the time as supernatural by quoting Dante as recognizing it, but the authority of Dante was not necessary to justify the dramatist in introducing the "Crimson Cross." It was a part of the pyrotechnics of the church propaganda. Though the advance of scientific discovery has laid a heavy hand on thaumaturgy of the sort, it would no doubt, have its use when properly handled on a modern stage. The action of the drama is rapid and natural, the characters well drawn and individualized, the dialogue spicy, forceful and varied. Price $1.00. [Illustration] [Illustration] DEDICATION TO THE DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION I What lineage so noble as from Sires, Laureled by Freedom? For, who, but the brave Have glory to transmit? The Hero's grave Blooms ever. It is there the spring retires To dream to flowers, her heart and soul desires, When winter's whitening wind, like wash of wave, Sweeps mauseleums of the skulk and knave From mounts of glare off to Oblivion's mires. The bloom, for which mere wealth lacks length of arm, And fainting Time takes for reviving scent, Fame, with bright eyes from heart and soul content, Forms wreaths for Valor's Daughters--crowns that charm Not with death-smells from Human welfare rent But breath of Country's rescue from dire harm. II Those crowns, not cold from death sweat on the brow, At sight of apparitions with fixed stare, But warm with summer, conjuring beauties rare-- Wilt not. They are dewed daily by your vow, Daughters of sires who, to no thrall, would bow! Which, at the alter with raised hands, ye swear, Cheering the blessed spirits, gathered there, That, like their Mothers, are their daughters now. True women--and therefore, craft foilers clever-- With sons for your hearts utterance, ye sue Not, but like Barry to the British crew, Ye cry out: "What! we strike our colors? Never! Fie, shot! fie, Gold! these colors, since they drew Their first star-breath, are God's, and God's forever." Ye know the Leopard changes not his spots. The Prince of Peace, who spake eternal truth, Confirmed this fact of Nature. He, with ruth Omniscient, saw afar, the scarlet clots Of English nature, in profidious plots For conquest, mangling not alone brave youth With teeth set, but old age without a tooth, And Mothers, clutching up their bleeding tots. Oh, yea, this beast makes his own desert, still; And Ireland, India and Egypt show His spots so spread, he is one ghastly glow; Aye, as your sires saw him from Bunker Hill. Oh, vain, gold rubs the skin and press shouts, "Lo! It has not now one spot of threatening ill." IV O Daughters of the brave, well ye abjure The fiend and all his works. Ye know his smiles Are fire-fly flare at gloaming, lighting miles Of snake-boughed forests down to swamps, impure From mind and soul decay; hence are heart-sure That creed and racial hatreds are his wiles, For God is Love, and Love draws, reconsiles, And is the strength that makes our land endure. O Mothers, as you lift your babes and gaze Into their eyes, your love runs through their vains In crimson flushes--oh, your love that pains At any of God's creatures hurt! that stays; The heavens may pass away, but that remains, Being of Christ, who walks earth Mother-ways. V Oh, like your sires, you, too, know Freedom's worth To Human Spirit. For its liberation, A God unrealmed himself by tribulation, And was an out-cast on a scornful earth. Christ is no myth and, since with Human birth He forms new Heavens for blissful habitation-- There unto is the Freedom of the Nation; All other trend is down to dark and dearth. When from the darkness rainbowed birth comes pouring, Your virtue heeds the voice, Eternity-- Re-echos: "Let them come." 'Tis Nature's plea For broadening progress; Nay, 'tis God imploring The Human to take strength for Liberty, Truth, Honor, to catch up to the stars, a-soaring. VI O Daughters of brave sires, what is true glory? No marsh-ward falling star, however bright. 'Tis inspirational; its upward flight Lifts generations--such your Father's story, And also yours, for is not that, too, gory? You pour out your hearts blood in sons to fight For honor, and cease not till every right Has been set down in Triumph's inventory. Oh, into daughters, too, old noble Mothers! You pour out your hearts blood that, in your place, They may fill up the ranks and, as in case Of Molly Pitcher, man guns for their brothers, And hearten firm, the trembling human race To know, though brave men fall, there still comes others. VII If Christ's foreshadowing in Juda's haze Was of his grief, 'tis of His triumph, here, For, is not His celestrial glory clear In Freedom for all men? First, gaseous rays In Maryland, then rounded firm full blaze In the Republic, it draws every sphere Of Human welfare, whether far or near, From depths occult to nights with dawns and days. The Freedom of the Generation's longing Reflects Lord Christ in glory, hour by hour, With more distinctness, as you, with His power, Free heart and brain from every brother-wronging, And give your offspring, these, as flesh and dower, To live and lead the millions, hither thronging. VIII Oh, ever Mothers--shaping robust youth No less than infant, and as perfectly! There's life blood to their veins from when on knee To when thy battle, from your broadening ruth For Human kind and fervent love of truth. If, like their fathers, they have come to be The wonder of the world, for liberty, Your virtue, 'tis, that in their valor greweth. Oh, as the Roman Mother, when she showed For jewels, her two sons, saw each of them In Time's Tiara, glittering there a gem; So, see your offspring shine. The light, bestowed Your Fathers, in your sons is diamond flame, Encircling Freedom's ocean-walled abode. IX Is it Apocalyptic Vision, when White-winged Columbus swoops from Spain's palmed shore And, from dark depths, lifts at San Salvador, A continent, adrip with streams which, then, Become the fountain of the Psalmist's ken, Where Right the heart, from hoof to horn foam-hoar From craggy speed, slakes thirst, and, evermore, Comes Hope's whole clattering herd?--you chant, "Amen." Aye, for your sires made earth this new creation Where, from San Salvadore and Plymouth Reef To Westward Mission Trails, ascends belief In God and, therefore, in the Soul's Salvation Through Freedom, in white, spiral spray which grief Sees, spite earth-mists, or solar obscuration. [Illustration] SONNETS FREEDOM, TRUTH AND BEAUTY THE PROEM Soar thou aloft, though thou ascend alone, O Human Spirit! Thou canst not be lost. What though yon stars, the azure's nightly frost Melt dark, or mount round thee an arctic zone! Thou hast sun-warmth and star-source of thine own. If thou mount not, how bitter is the cost! What anguish, when whirled down, or tempest tossed, To know how high toward God thou mightst have flown! Vault Godward, Poet. What though few may climb The mountain and the star on trail of thee? Thy wing-flash beams toward Man, and, if it be True inspiration--whether thought sublime, Or fervor for the Truth, or Liberty-- Thy light will reach the earth in goodly time. THE ATLANTIC Forming the great Atlantic, see God take The mist from woe's white mountain, spring and stream, The breath of man in frost, the spiral lean From roof-cracked caves where, though the heart may break, The soul will not lie torpid, like the snake,-- And battle smoke. On them He breathes with dream And, Lo! an Angel with a sword agleam 'Twix the Old World and New for Justice's sake. What sea so broad, as that from Human weeping? Or Sun so flaming, as the Angel's sword Of Human and Devine Wills in accord? There, with sword-flash of myriad waves, joy-leaping, Shall loom forever, Freedom's watch and ward, With the New World in his Seraphic keeping. HUMAN FREEDOM This is thy glory, Man, that thou art free. 'Tis in thy freedom, thy resemblance lies To thy Creator. Nature, which, tide-wise, Is flood and ebb, bounds not sky flight for thee. Lo! as the sun arises from the sea, Startling all beauty God-ward, thou dost rise With mind to God in heaven, from finite ties, And there, in freedom, thou art great as He. Meeting thy God with mind, 'tis thine to choose, Wheather to follow him with love and soar, Or dream Him myth and, rather than adore, Plunge headlong into Nature's whirl and ooze. Thine is full freedom. Ah! could God do more To liken thee to Him, and love, infuse? THE STARS God loves the stars; else why star-shape the dew For the unbreathing, shy, heart-hiding rose? And when earth darkens, and the North wind blows, Why into stars, flake every cloud's black brew? What fitter forms for longings high and true, Man's hopes, ideals, than bright orbs like those Asbine from Nature's dawn to Nature's close, In clusters, prisming every dazzling hue? Nor is the Sun with harvests in its heat, And that, sky-hidden, makes the moon at night, An earth-ward cascade for its leaps of light, More real, or a world force more complete, Than Faith and Hope, that brake through clouds with sight Of evil's foil and ultimate defeat. THE GENESIS OF FREEDOM I O Freedom! Born amid resplendent spheres, And, with God-like creative power, endowed, Hast thou, to human life's blue depths, not vowed A splendor, not alone like that which 'pears At present, where the upper asure clears, But that the Nebulae will yet unshroud? I hear thy far off cry where thou art lone, A John the Baptist: "Lo! one greater nears." What is this Greater--this which is to meet The planets and ascend high, high and higher? The right of human spirit to aspire And mount, unhampered--and by act, complete Creations harmony, as by desire, Proclaimed by brain with throb, by heart with beat. II In thy descent through azures, all aglow With circling spheres, the beauty of each blaze, And grandeur, then, of all, entrance thy gaze. Thou thinkest, why not thus all life below? Perceiving, then that all the breezes blow Upward and onward, in the skyey maze, Thou wouldst go back and start with them, to raise A new creation from chaotic throe. Thou seest plainly that without that breeze, The breath of God, all that thou couldst create, Were lifeless, save to turn on thee with hate, And chase an age with grim atrocities; But with that breath, thou couldst raise life to mate The Planet's splendor, in the azures Peace. III O Freedom! as thy sister spirit, Spring, Pausing above the earth, sees every hue Of her prismatic crown, reflected true In forests and in fields, and fledgling's wing, So thou dost see thy spirit glorying With faith, that man is more than Nature's spew-- In human spirit that, from beauty drew First breath to know that soul is more than thing. O Freedom! fain we follow thee in flight From chaos to God's glory round and round, Aloft! how like an elk pursued by hound, To brinks thou springest toward the distant height And, on bent knees, then speedest without sound, Like Faith through Death, till, lo! thou dost alight. THE PILGRIM FATHERS "Ye Wreaches, who would lay proud England's head Upon the block, and raise her features, then, Bloodless and ghastly, for the scorn of men! Begone forever. Go where terrors spread Their sea and forest mouths to crush you dead. Oh, how the clouds shall crimson from each glen, A roar with blaze, and flame search out each fen, If back to us, yea e'er are vomited." To this Parental blessing and God-speed, The Pilgrim Fathers gladly made reply: "These waves are Conscience's wings along the sky; They carry us to God, whose call we heed. The further from thy coast of hate and lie, The nearer God. On! On!--that is our creed." PLYMOUTH ROCK O Sun and Stars! bear ye Earth's thanks to God; For Oh! what waters, slaking every thirst Of heart, mind, spirit, in long cascades burst From Plymouth Rock, when struck by Freedom's rod! No wanderer in the burning sand, unshod, Plods man with lolling tongue, dog-like, as erst; For lo! this fountain, deepening from the first, Floods Earth's old wells and greens Life's sand to sod. Oh, more those waters than the Font of Youth, For which, through field and swamp, the Spaniard ran! For they are clear with God's eternal truth Of fatherhood, hence brotherhood of man, And are no dream. They quench all human drouth And cleanse man's desert dust of sect and clan. THE CATHOLICS IN MARYLAND Of Expeditions in the Arctic Past, All honor to the one that reached the pole And formed a settlement where every soul Enjoyed full freedom. There above the blast, How musical the bell, by Justice cast! It welcomed all to come. It ceased to toll After a while, but why? Those, welcomed, stole And dragged it where the ice formed thick and fast. Of Arctic Expeditions there is none So profitable to the human race As that toward Freedom's pole, and hence men face All storms to reach it. If they fail, the sun Has but one joy--to thaw out wrecks, and trace Man's progress where alone it can be done. A FOREST FOR THE KING'S HAWKS Say, what is Ma-jest-y without externals? Is Burke's analysis not right--"A Jest"? Ah, but a jest, at which the poor, oft pressed To their last heart-drop, laugh not, like court journals. The King needs coin, and, where he sowed no kernels, Wants the whole forest for his hawks to nest And breed in, and became an annual pest; In this the farmers show that they discern ills. Hark! blares the tyrant's horn and, in a thrice, The Tories gather. Eagerly they band, For is the King not greater than the land? And rows with royalty, a rabble's vice? Besides, what creeping tribes at his command, And Spies and Hessians at a ferret's price! TO ARMS SHOUTS FREEDOM To Arms! shouts Freedom to her sons. Behold! How, like Job's war-horse, they gulp down the ground To battle! What care they how foes surround? Oh, joy to Celts, nigh half the true and bold! There, with the roar of all their wrongs uprolled From ancient depths, they dash with billow-bound Up rock and summit, and through cave and mound, Spurning both Tyrants' steel and Treason's gold. No tide are they to ebb in heart and spirit. If dashed back, they return with all the force Of six dark sea's momentum on its course For vengeance on the vile, who disinherit The human-being--shut off every source Of happiness, or let but Serf's draw near it! BRITISH SOLDIERY The wounded Sidney, who despite his thirst, Gave water to his comrade, shines, a lamp In the Cimerian dark of Britain's camp. Even the Raleigh, who so finely versed, Preferred to such a light, the flame accursed Of sword and torch, to please a royal vamp. Is British triumph in its world-wide tramp The Hell, still "lower than lowest"--Milton's worst? Lord Christ! is British soldiery the swine, In whose gross forms the fiends, exercised, flew? Oh! watch them through the ages, they pursue The noble and devour all things Divine. Look! they illustrate horrors, which prove true The Hell, which Milton's glimpse could not outline. AMPHIBIOUS BARRY Look! Freedom glares and pallid as a ghost, Except for gashes on her brow and breast, And faint from hunger, sits awhile to rest. Amphibious Barry, bold on sea or coast, Mounts and spurs darkness to the Tory Host, And, like an Indian rider with head prest Down to his steed's hot neck in prowess test, Plucks from the ground, a prize he well may boast. Oh, as the sun's smile passing through the rain, Shines forth a double arch, so, Barry's deed, Refleshing Freedom's bones made gaunt by need, Shines through the Ages; aye, and shines forth twain-- Both for America, from Britain Freed, And Erin, still choked black in Britain's chain! FREEDOM'S TRIUMPH With France and Erin heartening Washington, Prone Freedom rose, with head above the cloud. Beholding her transfigured, Thrall is cowed. His minions are bewildered. How they run! Some follow him against the rising sun; Others plod north. The Torries' vaster crowd Hide in dark places, and like Satan, proud, They hate the glory, that the true have won. O Milton! Thou beheldest them. Thine ear Caught their defiance and thy lightening pen, In shattering the dark in evil's den, Caught hope amphibious from leer to leer Of those grim shadows, plotting to regain Lost Paradise, or bane its atmosphere. WASHINGTON'S ARMY AND BARRY'S NAVY Who loosed our land from Britain's numbing hold? "They who had naught to loose," the Tories say; That is--not menials in the King's sure pay, Nor mongrels, chained to guard their master's gold. They were True Men. Their spirit, young and bold, With dreams played follow-master, climbing day From deepest night, to catch the Sun and stay His glory for the World, then whiteing cold. Though darkness be far vaster than the lamp, It is the beams that lead to progress, count. "To manhood, with the virtues to surmount Such darknesses as Valley Forge's camp, And seas, deep hell's sky-reaching, broadening fount, Honor!" The ages shout on Triumph's tramp. THE SUNKEN CONTINENT When hurled from heaven, 'tis thought, the fiends of pride Caught Earth to brake their fall. The regions gave And sank with all the hosts beneath the wave! 'Tis in those sunken regions which divide The new world of the resolute and brave, From the old world of king and abject slave, Where Torries, counterfeiting Satan, hide. Clinging, like lava, to a lifeless limb, They think the phosphorescence of the bark Is morning, which the long-belated lark Is hastening to welcome with his hymn; Else, they form poisons and breathe from the dark, Miasma mist to make the sun-rise dim. ELISHA BROWN Old Guard of Boston! Halt; Right Face; Attention! Order One: quell the weeds in rankest riot Where lies Elisha Brown, in conscience, quiet. This Brown was John's precursor. Ye, on pension For ancient glory, now do duty. Mention Elisha's name for countersign--and why, it? Because with him, wrong, seen, was to defy it, And act, else, was beyond his comprehension. Against his home's invasion this man held A red-coat regiment for seventeen days, Which was a spark to help start freedom's blaze And, therefore, Order Two: the weeds all quelled, Stand sentries till a statue takes your place And throngs shout, "Bravo, Brown!" as 'tis unveiled! EVACUATION DAY What is it that today we celebrate With school recital, banquet and parade Of our achievements, pageanting each trade? The ousting of the English--train and trait-- And posting, then, sharp-eyed, eternal hate To watch with Josuah's son above his head, That night come not to help them re-invade, However wide, we swing our ocean gate. If not un-Englishing America in mind And heart forever, vain the shrieks Of Freedom, eagling back to dawn's first streaks. Oh, yea, the sun stands, and the night afar Holds Thrall, whose craft would swamp our noblest peaks And leave but bubbling mud show where they are! MANHATTA Manhatta! Glory flings his arms round thee And proudly holds thee in his high caress. What charms him, Mother, is thy nobleness Of spirit. How his features beam to see Thy scorn dash in the bay the tyrant's tea, And hear thee call to Boston: "Do no less; Else on sunlight, heart, soul--all we possess-- Will tyrant's next exact their deadly fee." In thee I glory. Can the world else boast A harbor, like thy heart, for every sail In flight from sea-toss, white with horror's gale, Or icebergs from despondence Polar coast? Oh, fleets whose throngs, glad Freedom well may hail; For, landing, they became her staunchest host. THE BURNING OF WASHINGTON CITY BY THE BRITISH With what wild glee, the British set on fire Yon Capital, beholding in its flames, America, robed in her deeds and fames, In death throes at the stake of England's ire? Though that was long ago and, then no pyre, The stake still stands; 'tis Anglo-Saxon claims, And Arnolds, bearing infamy's last names, Tilt schools to raise the stake flames high and higher. Oh, sight to strike the coming ages dead, My country, were a cloud, thy mocking crown, And schools, ignited by Truth's lamps hurled down, To feed that cloud, like craters, inly red! What! mock with cloud, Thy land and sea renown And Washington, God's Holy Spirit--known By the unerring World Light, that it shed? THE LAND OF THE GREAT SPIRIT Behold Ye Here the Happy Hunting Grounds, Where the Great Spirit, called Democracy, Sets every heart and soul forever free, An Equity, not royal grant, sets bounds. No Phaeton attempting Phoebus rounds And burning up earth's grass and forestry, Is lust for power; 'tis love for liberty, With bloom and birds for wheel-sparks, here resounds. It is the land of Spirit. "Ye who enter, Abandon first all fratricidal hate," Proclaims the edict, blazoned o'er each gate. There see all tribes chase truth to joy--the center Convexing broad and broader, as more great Their numbers from where prejudice is mentor. THE BLIGHT TO SPRING Hark, 'tis the sea! How leonine its roar! But, oh, how more the lion on a height, As there he glares and listens for the night, Having devoured day's clouds from shore to shore! Now grows his mane of billows, high and hoar. What scents he? Potencies escaping sight, Till, like the cold, they icily alight Upon a land where all was spring before. The sun darts under earth and east again, What sees he? First the lion at earth's brink With head down to the stream of stars to drink; And then, arising to his zenith ken, Sees that which makes his high, warm spirit sink-- The blight to spring, blown here from England's fen. THE SCORN OF HUMAN RIGHTS What is the blight to spring that kills the seed And raises spectres, so that stars cry "See!" Aghast at forests, white or shadowy? The scorn of human rights, that can but lead The world from doom to doom! and for what mead? A bronze for rain and rust, or effigy For nibbling minutes--ah, not hours!--these flee To life's progression--truth and kindly deed. Look! How this scorn holds freemen in the dark, Except for a flare at will that, then, the throng, Reduced to dust, may rise and whirl along The lift and drop of glitter, without spark To set the spring a-crackling with bird song, Till bud and angel both come out to hark! NOT THIS OUR COUNTRY'S GLORY O Country of the Sun's warm plenteous hand To every germ of virtue, how below Thy progress, mope Gold Mongers to and fro, Who think they're vaulting from sunlight so grand, It forms thy chiefest glory. Closely scanned, They are gross worms, each with the thought to grow "The Conqueror," as staged by Edgar Poe For darking planets and a world, Last Manned. Those worms that, moving, think they move the earth, Or, under Growth's equestrian statue, think They hold the horse and hero from the brink, Are pitifully not a glance's worth, As of thy glory; they but foul the chink, If not of thee in warming Good to birth. AMERICA'S GLORY NO FUGITIVE I How weird a whisper! 'tis from Wallabout. 'Tis glory hoarse with calling: "Raise those hulks Where writhe my faithful." See! the tory skulks Behind the sun who, stooping to fill out Their throats with his god-breath, to swell the shout Of a free people, finds the brave in bulks, Strewn and held fast where Darkness, beaten, sulks That thrall has been forever put to rout. Those mangled thousands are not dead; they live, Refashioned men by freedom. Is the tory Behind the sun, to mock me, who am Glory, Being the lifted life those martyrs give? He creeps beneath the sun and, ghastly gory, Crys out: "Thou yet shall be the fugitive". II Oh, weirder grows the whisper into word, As sharp as lightening, and as broad of reach, As seas, flung down by God to every beach Where thirsts a sparrow, or a bleating herd! There is no soul through out the land, not stirred; For, oh, to glory God gives his own speech When darkness, raised by Gold, declares that each, Hulk-held, is good but for the wolf and bird. Is Gold grown conscious, now the Country's King That, at his beck, the blood for Freedom spilt Shall be accursed, and I, then, for the guilt Of dropping not with thud, as he with ring At Darkness' feet, be shut in mud and silt Forever and with stars, cease, beaconing? III Oh, as the earth in discord and in dark, When struck by Love on high with will for mace, Keeps rattling till each mote finds its true place, And mountain, fledged with groves, vies with the lark To reach the sunrise; so the madness stark Of gold, dethroning blood as God's best grace, When struck by Glory's voice drops Nadir-base, And blood for Freedom spilt, forms heaven's blue arc. The shouts of millions shake Oblivion's mire And raise Thrall's Hulks. Look! Justice's stooping sun, Seeing in agony's each, a Washington, Breaths life in them, and, over Brooklyn's spire And New York's Babel Tower, they, one by one, Hold Liberty's broading Torch of quenchless fire. HATE THOU NOT ANY MAN Hate thou not any man, for at the worst, He still is brother. Will a glance not find Whole peoples alchemied from heart and mind To steal projectiles by a craft, accursed By Human Nature? Aye, for, as they burst At dusk, or midnight, slamming Heaven behind And crashing Hell wide open, 'tis mankind Is shattered and quick-gulping grave slake thirst. Hate thou no man, but scorn all crafts, that smelt The heart and mind for huge projectiles, shattered When bursting grandly that some pride be flattered. Nature beholds not Saxon, Slav, nor Celt; She only sees the Human fragments scattered, And, covering them, her eyes to rivers melt. THE CELTIC SOUL CRY I O Freedom! Have I ever been untrue? When, to thy moan of hunger anywhere, Have I been deaf? Was I not quick to share My little, nay, give all! for oh! I knew Thy beauty, and my love such passion grew At thy distresses,--What would I not dare! So, though the bellow, like a grizzly bear, Reared up before me, on to thee I flew. O Freedom! Is thy beauty without heart, Or sense of justice? Unto whom art thou Indebted for thine arm, encircling now The world, sun-like, more than to me? My part I glory in, for I have kept my vow. I hold thee now to thine, if true thou art. II Speak Freedom! When a haggard fugitive, Thy dwelling was a swamp, who first to trace Thy crimson footprints to thy hiding place? With signs thou hadst not many days to live, I found thee. Had the sun more heart to give To warm thee, than I gave? Ah, then and there Thy heart said to my heart; "Ill would I fare Without thee. I give love for love, believe". Thy silence, when in glory, troubles me. Oh! warm blood dashed back cold, chills to the bone! What do I ask for? Only Erin's own, That which God gave her, and, if true it be, Thou art the minister of justice grown, Thy gratitude should thunder God's decree. III What! Why bemoan one island in the sea, When I can range like mountains, or, the sun, Above all clouds, and, rosy from my run To God, like morn, chant praise, since flesh of thee? Oh, yea, my pride and transport, verily, Is, thou and I eternally are one; And this god-passion which no power can stun, I owe to her, who gave her soul to me. Oh, when I see her golden hair, adrift On sorrow's sea, like weeds rent from their reef, And know she breathes with her sublime belief, It crazes me that thou, when thou mightst lift Her saintly features, and dry them of grief, Wads't not, but waitest for the tide to shift. IV America! 'Tis not thy mines of gold, Nor streams from mounts to meadows, like God's hand From out the heavens, a-flash across the land In long, deep sweeps to quicken winter's mould To reaps of ripeness,--that mine eyes behold, Invoking thee; for these are mere shore-sand To the broad ocean of thy spirit grand, Forming for man a new world for the old. 'Tis Liberty, to whose most blessed birth The stars all lead, rejoicing, which souls thee With God's compassion for humanity,-- That I invoke; and, now, when all the earth Bears palms and chants hosannas--what! shall she, The most devout, be shut from Freedom's mirth? BRITISH GLORY IN KIPLING'S "BOOTS" All English glory is in "Kipling's Boots." O English People! read that poem true, And answer,--are those maddening men not you? Oh, not yea few, who gather all the loots, But yea vast legions, lured to be recruits To march, march, march and march with naught in view But boots, boots, boots with blood and mud soaked through,-- And, after ages, with out rest, or fruits! "Boots, boots, boots, and no discharge from war,"-- That is the Empire's anthem. Brass it out, Ye Orchestras! But oh, leave not in doubt Its import, Kipling,--that 'tis maelstrom roar-- 'Tis England's streams of home-life, world about And down a gulf, for Greed and Pride on shore! TO THE ENGLISH PEOPLE If deaf to Shelley's loudest sky-lark strain, His rage at tyrants, and to Byron's thong, Nerve-proof, how wake the English to the wrong Done their true selves, no less than to the slain, When willing weapons for Ambition's gain? Aye, weapons only; for, to whom belong The minds of England, and treed fields of song-- Nay, all but grave-ground, grudged by hill and plain? O English People, whom the crafty class Has huddled into graves from sight and sound Of what God hands you, and, with pence, or pound, Lids down your wild dead stare,--wake! why so crass? See in the Celts spring-burst from underground, The Human Resurrection come to pass. SHAKESPEARE Oh, what are England's lines of lords and kings, Shakespeare, to thine, a-throb with thought and feeling? In thine, imagination shines, revealing The soul's convictions, swift on dawn-ward wings From beastly life and such Hell-smelling things, As wealth and pomp from church and abbey stealing,-- And hearts in hopes high Belfries, Heavenward pealing, As Time, his Sun and Starry censor, swings. Would thou wert England's Nature, Bard Supreme, To fashion kings and lordlings fit to rule; They would be flesh and blood, not fiend and ghoul; And would thou wert her Sun, that every beam Might not, for tally, show a youth's blood-pool, Choking blithe Spring, as, now, to earth's extreme. ENGLAND'S RIGHTEOUSNESS The righteousness of England! "Tis to kneel Full weight on weaker nations, and entone Hosannas louder than the victims groan; Then, stooping, drink their blood with gulps of zeal." What right have wounds, though wide, to throb, or feel? 'Tis blasphemy to England's crimson throne. Knee-deep in Erin's blood, she mocks Christ's moan: Forgive them, Lord! they know not their true weal. "Whose is the fault? Tis not my arrogance, But candor, Lord, that puts the blame on Thee. What right hadst Thou to make these people free And let all nature prompt them to advance?-- Oh, no such blunder, Lord, hadst Thou called me, Instead of Wisdom, to approve Thy plans!" THE MASSACRE OF THE WELSH MINERS The Bard's curse: "Ruin seize thee Ruthless King," Took bat-like form for hollow echo-flight. Though stoned and lanced at, when, at fall of night, It darted forth with ghastly--spreading wing, It found in fresh, wide, royal ravishing, New hollows, dark with horror and sad plight, To dash in and live on. Oh, to my sight, How grows its grimness, while eternaling! Deep are the minds of Wales, but far more deep The horror, gulfed out by McCreedy, firing On men defenseless and, through want, expiring. Oh, from that gulf the Bard's curse makes a sweep Up to the Sun and, from its long desiring, Grown eagle, shrieks to heaven from steep to step! A DIRTY WORK "A dirty work," said Dyer, rebuked for spilling Hundreds of lives to irrigate new lands. A dirty work, but not for British hands, Dabbling in blood to earn each day their shilling. Hark! Mohawk Valley and Wyoming, chilling With thought of Tarleton's King-serving bands, And Canada red-clayed, though high snow stands, Cry: Work for which the British are too willing! Invaded lands need terror irrigation To make them fruitful. Better flood the field, Then let the native bloom become the yield; And, so, this Dyer submerged a small whole nation With crimson death, that England might, deep-keeled, Have for display, new seas of desolation. HUMAN NATURE The ocean, holding pure the azure's blue, Laughs at the tempests, with one empire's dust After an other, to round out Earth's crust. Ah, so does Human Nature hold the hue It takes from heaven, its conscience, and laughs, too, At madness, wrecking life and with its gust Forming new islands, where Pride, Greed, or Lust, Welcomes the crater's glare, in sun-light's lieu. Look in the sea and deep, what scattered rock, The islands which at dusk, the tempest piled! Ere rose a star, they sank with crews, beguiled. O Tempests that with world formations, mock The good Creator, how, as ye grow wild, Earth quakes and no live thing survives the shock. OUR COUNTRY--SOUL AND CHARACTER I Our country is not rock and wood and stream, But soul transfusing them. What is the soul? The substance, born of God, above control And, when one, with God's love, called "Will," supreme; And Freedom is the soul in thought, and dream That Nature's beauty and harmonious whole-- God's foot-steps--followed, life attains its Goal; And soul is purpose to achieve God's scheme. The soul, then,--our true country,--is the brave Who fought and bled for Freedom, or will fight To their last pulse, last breath, for Human Right.---- Great soul! oh, how like bubbles in the wave, Are the Sierras in cerulean flight, To thy true grandeur, letting nought enslave! II O thou art Character--art only those Who formed the good and great by thought, or deed. All others are not worth a moment's heed,-- Mere prairie dogs, who raise gold hills in rows-- When gazing at thy glory; for that grows With Freedom from all foul untruths; with lead In art for weal; with science for all woes; With hate of thrall and help for all unfreed. No mere foot-shadow, on time's wall, art thou, Without eye-sparkle, swing of arm, warm flow From heart to vain, and cheeks with health of glow. Oh, 'tis eternal heights reflect thy brow And shoulders, that avert man's overthrow, Threatened all times, and never more than now. III Oh, what if lone and long thy lofty flight, My country? Is thy vision not as clear As that of Vesper, dauntless pioneer On Twilight's altitude? As from that height, He sees plain through the thick black walls of night, The stars all massing; so dost thou, his peer, Behold all peoples gathering, year by year, To scale the clouds to thy White Range of Right. How thy lone loftness, aloof from wrong, Refracting man-ward, God's enrapturing smile Of fruitful fields, leads legions! On they file And phalanx, and the vision makes thee strong: What, though God's searchlight flares the sky the while? It nears not thee, ear-close to heaven's high song. JUDAH AND ERIN From out a desert where the trails run red, Judah and Erin speed their camel pace, Sighting green palms. The flush on either face Is from the fissure where each wedged her head From sandstorms, that hurled heavens down, as they sped; It is no blush for thought, or conduct, base To the high trust to bring the Human Race, Truths, without which Time's offspring are born dead. In spirit, they are sisters; for, beyond The desert, where the vision, like a dove, Soars round the palace of Almighty Love, God hails them as "My Daughters, true and fond, Who show man, through Noon blaze, my star above, And to my will, fail never to respond." THE EASTER RISING IN IRELAND Who, in descent from Heaven's ecstatic throng, Was twin to light, and ranged from source to sea, And shore to peak, and God, drew up to thee The generations happy, pure and strong? Freedom, as Erin's was, ere ruthless wrong Caught, scourged and hanged it on the out-law's tree; And is; for lo! it proves Divinity, Transfiguring from anguish, ages long. True, they have strangled Freedom on the cross Of every Right's suppression--nay, have barred His body's tomb, and placed a host on guard! Still, He is risen; His faithful mourn no loss. He shines forth in their midst. No bolts retard His entrance, where grand aims for life engross. THE FIGHT IN IRELAND The fight in Ireland is 'twixt Man and Brute. A lion with the sea-surge for his mane, Is there hurled back by Man with proud disdain, Although heart-drained with gash from head to foot. Oh, in that Eden of Forbidden Fruit, How Satan, searching for a snake in vain, Fumed forth a monster from his heart and brain-- The Lion--as the serpent's substitute! Oh, all ye peoples of the World draw nigh! Stand on the bodies of eight centuries, Struck dead with horror; for, raised thus, one sees In Erin, torn, a soul that cannot die, And that its struggle is Humanity's Against the fiend, who would give God the lie. TO ERIN How help take pride in thee, whose golden hair Of culture trailed the earth for centuries; Whose throne was freedom and whose realm was peace; And, in strange lands, whose joy and only care Were to spread light, and who, not anywhere Thy charm made headway, planting liberties, Didst, then, by stealthy step, or creep on knees, Sow with the lilies, faster-growing tare! How help love thee, whose hand, raised to the sun, Glows rosy, and not red with murder's stain? The angels kiss it. Force can forge no chain To drag thee false-ward. Like a holy Nun, Stigmated, how thy faith grows with thy pain-- Aye, till thy Cross, like Constantine's has won. THE QUEEN OF BEAUTY In rapt, roused Erin, who does not behold A Venus, rising from the sea of tears, Up to her native, Earth-illuming spheres? Her hair, long matted, is a flow of gold Which even the Sun might wear and feel not cold; And, oh, her heavenly smile at doubts and fears, As when she, at all depths, raised to her ears, Shells of her Glory, murmuring, "Be bold!" Lo! where the green and orange morn unfurls, See Erin rise. How shine her golden tresses! They form her crown, for trailing rocks down whirls, And reaching all the under-sea recesses, They draw about her brow, the rarest pearls-- Love for what frees and hate for what oppresses! LIBERTY, THE LIGHT TO PEACE All hail to those who, through the stormy night, Make Liberty the light on Erin's coast; Who, ceaseless, send up sparks; who hold their post On each and every ledge of Human Right, Forming a beacon blaze from base to height Where Erin's hope may steer and land its host. Look, Human Nature! Where else canst thou boast To the eternal stars, so grand a sight? Look! How men there ennoble human kind By making Liberty the light to Peace! All other lights are false. Oh! who but sees In the unconquerable Celtic mind That, even in Time, there are Eternities-- Love, true to Right, and Will no wrong can bind! WHY PLAY WITH WORDS, ENGLAND? Why play with words? There never can be peace Till Ireland is set free. One might as well Expect the great Arch-angel rest in Hell And genuflect to Satan's blasphemies, As Erin's spirit that, for centuries, Has been aloft with God in virtue, sell, Like Esaw, her birthright, and not rebel, But to her home's invaders, bend her knees. Her spirit is no norbury Banshee-- To wail and, then, to vanish. She will stand With lifted flambeau, lighted by the hand That lights the stars, till she again is free, Inspiring normal man in every land With love of Freedom, by her scorn of thee. FREEDOM'S WARDENS Look! British fury that, barraging, lights Up Irish skies, like pathways down to hell, Doubles its fire to reach our land as well, Where Freedom's Wardens cry from justice' heights: "'Tis Deicide to murder Human Rights. Stop foul God-slaughter where to not rebel, In order to develop and excel, Were God in man, succumbed to age-longed blights." Where Heavenward rose the God in man of old, Staunch stand these Wardens. Sleepless, they behold Each turn of England's Evil Eye. They call, When she would form the fulminate of gold, A thumb and finger-pinch of which, let fall, Might blast Columbia's peaks to slit of thrall. LIST TO DEMOSTHENES, IF NOT TO HEARST Of all the fulminates, gold is the worst, Which England, aeroplaning, now, lets drop By day and night, in bank, press, church and shop, Timed to the minute that it is to burst. List to Demosthenes, if not to Hearst, Sublime Republic! Lest thy great heart stop, Shocked by the blast of Freedom's every prop, And bats and owls in dwellings, Human's erst. "Watch Macedon. She drops her gold, in creeping Beneath free Athens' sky-ascending stair. Watch her with glance of sword. Oh, watch, for where She sows her gold, she comes with scythes for reaping! Is Athens in ascent with sun-light flare, To come down ashes, not worth history's keeping?" CALEDONIA I In only Wallace and Paul Jones and Burns, Does Caledonia, child of Erin, show His mother's features, lit by soul to know The Right Divine of freedom, when it yearns For what exalts the human, or, it spurns What bars its flight to truth--all stars aglow, That form God's trail to joy for man below?-- Sole trail, as time, who peers through grief, discerns. O Caledonia, by thy Burn's brave song, And deeds of Wallace and Paul Jones for Right, Thy mother knows thee in the dark of night, And claps thee heart-close. She cries out: "Be strong, Soul of my soul! though not a Boswell quite, Still, be whole man! remember Glencoe's wrong." II Wake, Caledonia! though Macauley, Whigging, Would ward the flames from scarring William's face, So that, then, Cain might shriek,--here, take my place, A fugitive and outcast, with no digging To hide in, nor a rest for my fatiguing; The mark on me, is but God's finger trace; On you, 'tis God's whole hand!--Still, there's the blaze! There's England's soul of merciless intriguing! List! 'tis the bagpipes welcoming the guest. See the assembly, dance and feast. Oh, watch The open heart and flow of good old Scotch; The English come, as friends, must have the best. There, hospitality is at top notch,-- And so is treachery in Britain's breast. III The cock crows.--Is he dreaming? 'Tis dark still. He crows again and now, from farm to farm, His fellows echo far his dazed alarm And flap of wings on fences. He is shrill Because it is not dawn above the hill, That wakes him, but the English, as they arm, And murder sleep, that has no dream of harm, In couch and crib,--to further England's will. O Caledonia! with such lamp in hand As Glencoe's horror, thou hast England true. Why let Froude fiction haze thy vivid view? Put not thy light out for sound sleep, but stand And answer, when the mother, whom thou drew Thy soul from, cries "Glencoe"! when Black and Taned. CANADA I O Canada, Long red with cottage flame From Britain's torch! thy blasts milk not the cloud To nourish hope; instead, they spread the shroud On Human Spirit answering Freedom's claim. Whence comes the cold which icicles with shame, Thy heart's Niagara, that should thunder loud Unto thy far off soul in sorrow, bowed O'er Papineau, whom Thraldom could not tame? Now following the Friends, who grandly led The slave through tunnels to the Northern Star, To find, in freedom, richer bloomage far, Than the Magnolia o'er the cattle shed,-- I reach thy soul,--where now the Crawfords are, And learn the cold is not from manhood dead. II Whence comes this cold to Freedom's claim? we know Only too well,--from creatures of the King, Who had dragged Hell of every poisonous thing And, through our country, had spread waste and woe. Beaten at last, they flocked like carion crow, On the dead body of their will to sting, Which drifting Northward, and enlargening, Loomed Dante's Nimrod, 'mid the Arctic snow. There, with the reptile's hate of Man Upright, As God created him, and reptiles veins, Aflow with deaths cold blood--for that sustains The life of tyrant and of parasite-- This monster, though half sunk in Hell, remains High, still, above the Arctic's shuddering night. III The monster's inhalations empty Hell Of all deterents to Life's flow and flower; Then, its outbreathings icily devour The cataract in flight and, down the dell, The streamlets to delight, and buds, as well, Of virtue, forming bloom for Freedom's bower;-- Nay, its out breathings,--through Creed hatred's power-- Grow Boreus and face where freeman dwell. Lo! with Sun-warmth for Truth and Human Right, Is Boreus met. Who hurles him down the deep? Look close;--'tis Gladden who, on Freedom's steep, Is as inspiring, as, on Andes' height, The great Christ Statue, bidding Rancor sleep And Life's diverging rays in love, beam Light. IV The cataracts wild leap, turned glittering ice In shame's suspension, and crow souls afeeding Upon a huge dead body and fast breeding,-- Is, as a scene, not worth the railroad's price; But, oh, if, with "Excelsior" for device, Thou climb thy Alpine way, each day exceeding The other's height, what throngs would watch thy speeding And, for the thrill thou woulds't give them, come twice! O Canada! why all this sleigh-bell rhyming? 'Tis on the reindeer, hope, in speed with me To the grand morning, when thou shalt breathe free Upon the apex of thine Alpine climbing, From foulsome, choaking smells of tyranny, Thick from the Great Sea Serpent's inland sliming. V God said to Wrong: "No further shalt thou go." This, Monroe heard and held, then, in his heart. It was this he repeated, when on chart He made his markings, checking Freedom's foe. God never grants to Wrong the right to grow; Because He sets its bounds, does not impart His blessing on its growth, more than its start; His blessing goes to Right, to overthrow. Oh, let thine eyes for migratory flight Speed southward! Passing Prejudice's Lake, Green-crusted with stagnation which some take For verdure, they will see from Andes' height, How Freedom's battle forms the red day-break, And tides are swells from thrall, hurled deep from sight. VI Thine eyes returning from the Southern Cross, Will, when like Perry, they have reached the Pole, Search under it to find thy banished soul, O Canada, and tell it of thy loss In letting a foul dead body, which the moss Of the deep sea should hide, loom as thy whole And rule, as dead things rule, with death for toll, As pierced by Papineau through Glamor's gloss. From South to North, no sky is black but thine. Thy fecund brain, the Borealis, shows A swaying disc with shades of dark for glows, With but a faint salt smell of Color's brine, The pent-up billows in the disc's dark close, Which might flood midnight with rare, world-wide shine. VII We seek no annexation, but of Mind, Heart, Spirit. True, thy clear, sonorous voice At Freedom's class-call, would make us rejoice, For, then, close-coasting thrall would fail to find In the new world, one truant to mankind, Swimming out to the foreigners' decoys, Or fast asleep amid his infant toys, Instead of at the task, which God assigned. Oh, let thy spirit come, but it must be Along the star-way to the rising sun-- The way of love; not down creed hates that run, Like broken stone-steps, to a roaring sea-- The way thou oft, hast come. Rise, and be one On the new world's Star-top of Liberty. VIII "The Angels come in dreams," says Holy Writ; And Science says, "No sleep so deep, but dreams." Devine appearances with brightening gleams Toward Paradise up from the demon's pit, Ever rouse virtue; aye, for God redeems His fire, wherever hid; the tempest teems, But still his sparks fly, quick as flint is hit. Wake, Canada! and let thy Papineaus Be dreams remembered; yea, let them inspire Thy life to follow Freedom high and higher Through Rights' whole range of summits, crowned with snows Sparkling from star-moulds of the Soul's desire, On earth from Heaven where, clouds from flames, they rose. DRAGON INCURSIONS I O Freedom! whose pure soul and heart embrace Translates me into heaven, I draw for breath The joy of angels who have not known death. Child-like, I look up in thy loving face, Else gaze around and point, and curious place My hand on Mottoes, hung on high. One saith: "Beware, for he not with me scatterith." Its meaning comes to me with growth, like grace. Ah, as a youngster, on its mother's arm, Seeing a hideous thing approaching night, Will not lay down its head and shut its eye, But will with look and lung express alarm-- My mind cries out in dread--when sea and sky Show dragons, tendencies that work thee harm. II O Freedom! Up to whose raised hand the seas Leap, playful lions, or with head and main Across their paws lie couchant--it is pain To see thee whose heart beats are God's decrees, And vital breathings are infinities, Now check thy heart and hold thy breath to gain The smile and plaudit of a depths with bane In finger tips, while fawning on their knees. What! Think the tyrant, whose great soul is trade, Whose history, a crater, belching black And lurid, keeps glad Easter morning back From half the world--loves thee save to invade, As blackward planned? loves thee, along whose track March Human rights up to the stars parade? NEMESIS There where the Tyrant long has loomed, wreck-crowned, Are young and old hurled to the coast and blast. Frail are their ships; still, Sun, why glare aghast, Watching the billows monstering around? The soul of man was not born to be drowned. It mounts and mounts, till, at God's throne, at last, And freedom welcomes it with arms, sky-vast, As down it comes to meet Thrall and confound. O, deathless spirit, born of hosts sea-hurled, Who hast out soared night's stars with agony's cry For justice! Thou hast come down from the sky, Heralding doom to Thrall, whose flag unfurled By steel, or craft, shows, as 'tis hoisted high, The blood of man and ruin of the world. ALL STARS MERGED IN ONE What is the Truth? The thought, the act, or cry, Recasting the Supreme Intelligence; All else is false. Look! where are stars so dense, That each has not the freedom of the sky? And, still, what peace, what glory, reigns on high! What! with the wisdom of the heavens, dispense? The Peace, for which our longings grow intense, Comes through the stars to earth, and but thereby. What splits dark mid-night and gives earth a thrill? All stars merged into one--our Country's aim. It is a lightening, formed by God, to flame Across the ages and flash bolts to kill The stranglers, who the heart or spirit, main, Or choke black in the face, a People's Will. LINCOLN'S LIGHTENING IN WILSON'S HANDS I Who is to rise and hurl God's flame world-wide, As Lincoln hurled it, setting free a race From Sphinx-shaped wrong--a beast with human face? That shattered, how our land rose glorified And, from the stars last laggard, soared, their guide! Oh, who can take Promethean Lincoln's place, To bring light where-so-ever he can trace A Human, with his rights to soul denied? He must be one, not only to illume All ages, and not leave one region dim, But at no height, allow his senses swim, Or let mirages lure him with false bloom. Lo! Here one comes with all the virtues prim To hurl God's fire and end all human gloom. II 'Tis Wilson takes God's flame from Lincoln's hand. This Princeton man,--who has outgrown the prince, A hundred years, and, in the ocean since, Seen with delight, Eternity expand And loom in glory from the despot's strand,-- Shapes fourteen dazzling bolts without a wince. He pauses. Why not hurl them and convince The world that, hence-forth, not one thrall shall stand? What! Wilson's arm lacks strength to hurl the flame, God gave to Lincoln for the Human race? Look! Look! it falls. What! Gone? Quenched by dark space? No; it describes an orbit there, the same As comets, and regains its heavenly place For one to hurl it true, and doom Earth's Shame. THE CATACLYSM In Wilson we beheld and proudly hailed The World's Deliverer. In him, we saw A luminous being rise from earth and draw All lands above the clouds. We were regaled With justice cascades flow, long ice impaled Upon high mountains. Was not Nature's thaw From his heart heat for truth, Eternal Law? His was the heat of all the stars, he scaled. Though his ascension was like Christ's, sublime With lift of continents and every isle, He, less than Christ, succumbed to Demon Guile. Oh, God, that he should drop his mountain climb Below sea-level, and let earth the while, Fall back and settle in Primeval Slime! AN EPOCH'S ANGEL FALL Judging from Wilson's virile virtue-voice, Whose whisper hushed Earth's Hum, were we not proud To have him cross the sea to speak aloud And, with a finger raised, hush battle noise, And lift all lands to Justice's equipoise? Oh, such his truth to God,--so oft avowed,-- A spirit thund'red from a luminous cloud: "This man crowns Lincoln's work. All Men! Rejoice." Oh, had he read his bible where St. Paul, Grown man, put off child things--or, had not smiled, When told, strong Ego oft, is man grown child! Look! Who sees not an Epoch's Angel Fall From hope for earth, in Wilson's truth, beguiled By second childhood's toys to play with thrall? THE AMERICA OF THE FUTURE I Our Country still is in the womb, dark Time. It shows life by its brisk and robust turns, Which thrill the Mother, Liberty, who yearns To see her man-child born. Oh, how sublime With genius, not of one, but every climb Where art forms beauty, or the spirit spurns The foul and spurious,--her desire, that burns Prenatally in him, to form him prime! Oh People, all--Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, English, Irish, German, Jew, and Greek-- What see you, as you climb the Future's Peak? Oh! no illusion. What looms there, shall wrench From life, all monsters out from Hell, to seek Dead consciences and plague earth with their stench. II Ascend, O Land of every Creed and Race! Not thy full image, in New England's brook, Nor in the South's lagoon; though there, a look Delights us with thy chubby, infant face. 'Tis seas of joy, that shorelessly replace The Ocean which, in time of old, forsook The prairies for the cloud, or spring in nook,-- That show thee, Grown, through God's abundant grace. From East to West, how joy's high seas expand, Reflecting, not a foolish, mundane pride That, thinking it does all, sets God aside-- But Virtue which, with heart and head and hand, Works out God's purpose, with dear Christ for guide, And holy spirits Light to understand! III All Virtues from the longing of the soul; From wisdom, gained by sorrow through long ages; From inspiration of the bards, in rages That inter-marrying maniacs control A people's life, and drain its sea to shoal, And from the vision of sky-topping sages, Gasping for breath from rot in all its stages,-- Aye, these and new-born Genius loom there Whole. Look, People! Little less than God's own size, Your virtues merge and, with speed God-ward, burn, An unconsuming sun, that at no turn In spiral flight, for still a grander rise, Lets night advance where human Rights still yearn, Except with great, new stars and dawning skys! THE INEVITABLE I Behold two fleets, the one with woe for trail, The other, rapture. As they sight the strait, Through which but one can pass, Greed, urged by Hate, Drives Thraldom's crafts with help of steam and gale. They feel their way. The guns, with which they hale, Raise jets, that look tall elms from Hope, the gate, To Peace, the Palace; then, their speed is great, Manoeuvering fast to head off, or assail. Drawing the sea up for his driving steam, Greed breaks all mirrors in his grand state room, That show him dark inevitable doom, Close hovering, and exults: "I am Supreme. When seas lack water for my funnel fume, I bid life send its every crimson stream." II What! in the darkness lowers boat after boat From Freedom's fleet, and each with lightening oars? Treasons to God and country are the rowers. They are the Gold and Hireling Brain, that gloat On conscience body with face down, afloat. Why hail they Greed, to run on menial chores From deck to deck, or to and from all shores? Why? To ensure the payment of a note. Meanwhile, brisk Freedom's fleets with justice manned, And cosmic full momentum for their speed, Confront the crafts, fired up by fiendish Greed. A clash and--lo! they pass the strait and land, Leaving in smoldering heaps, like autumn's weed, The hulks of thrall along time's vultured strand. REPTILES WITH WINGS Are lust for Gold and Power not hideous spawn Of prehistoric reptiles, that had wings? Where e'er those crawled, they chawed all greening things And, when they mounted, how their lengths, full drawn, Basked barren in the sun before the dawn, Absorbing all its rays from budding Springs? These drain life's dawn and by impoverishings, Draw and reduce to pulp, frail Consciences. Oh, yea, bewinged with legislative crime, They bask in sunlight e'er the east sky greys, And drag the soul of man from God's embrace Of rights and freedom. Oh, how long a time Shall reptiles, deadly to the Human race, Be let grow wings and heavenward trail their slime? THE OUTLAWS OF OUR COUNTRY I The outlaws in our country are the wretches, Who wreck the legislatures with their gold, And with the ruins, form a high stronghold To sally from, to what good nature fetches From God to man. What though fine graphic sketches In magazines show them with shoulders bold Against the nights flood-gates of dark and cold? All effort is but life in death-throw stretches. They are the outlaws, who stop Nature's train And take its corn and coal for selfish use; Then, put their shoulders to Night's gate, to loose Its hinges for a forty-day dark rain, To drown all life, that they, like Noah, may cruise Through thick drifts of the dead in heart and brain. II O heart and brain, who see the father load His train with food, not for the few, but all, And hear train-whistlings in March winds, jay call And ground-hog sniffs! Haste out, for from the road That leads to every Industry's abode, The trust that, bat-eyed, comes out at night-fall, Now moves the tracks inside his private wall, Claiming all trains from God a debt long owed. O heart and brain, it rest with you, how long The legislative wreckers shall prevail. Ye have the power to balk them. Why then, fail? Regain your legislatures. Man them strong And drive thence all sleek hounds, trust-trained to trail Safe outlaws' paths to fastnesses of wrong. THE PRESS Was ever such unblushing harlotry, Such sale of virtue in the Market place, As by the Press? The red paint on her face Is Degradation's mark. Alas, that she, Born to bring forth the truth, still, is so base, She kills her child and, then, to hide all trace, Cracks bone by bone to dust, too fine to see. O Press, poor harlot of the tyrant, Gold, What freedom, but from truth, hast thou to boast? Hark, who now speaks is murdered Truth's pale ghost: "Conceiving life--oh, bring it forth! aye, hold Thy child on high with love, as priest, the Host! Crush not its bones, with smile and eyes set cold." THE TRUTH What is the truth? The focus of all rays Passing through Nature and the soul and mind. It is the Sun of Suns, around which wind The Heavens and all the worlds. Such is its blaze, That had it not, at intervals, a haze, Grading both Angel and the Human-kind, The bright Arch-angel would be stricken blind, To grope in Heaven, a Homer, sighing lays. What less could fitly crown Omnipotence Than Truth, the focus of all rays in Good? Lo! there it shines upon the Holy Rood, Breaking through clouds, a-massing dark and dense From countless ages, Cains to Brotherhood-- With rays of pardon for the World's offense. OUR LORD'S LAST PRAYER "Forgive them, Sire! They know not what they do."-- Ah, Christ! how at that face to face God-plea, The Demon and his legions, mocking thee With every generation, brought to view, Flashed with dismay, and, boltless lightening through The ages, thunder down Eternity, 'Till faint as the sound in shells, far from the sea; For that thy prayer would be vouchsafed, they knew. All grandeurs, gathered as a dazzling crown For thee, in barter for thy knee's least bend, The Demon dashed to fragments to Time's end. There, born anew in spirit, we look down And, in the ocean of thy prayer, Amen'd, See but earth's monsters, with the demons drown. THOUGHT IS TRUTH'S ECHO Thought is truth's echo--not her glorious eyes Beholding God, nor her white arms of light, Lifted in worship. Following truth, our flight At highest range is where our echo dies. Oh all your power and beauty, earth and skys! And, Soul and Mind! your Beauty and your Might-- Truth gathers in one flash and, catching sight Of God, lifts high in love's full sacrifice. Twixt Truth and Thought, what Truth is oft is space Wherein, with intuition for her wing, The soul mounts. It is there I hear her sing: "Lo, Truth, so swift aloft, Thought dies in chase, Turns earthward, and the gifts her white arms bring, Are outshone by God's glory in her face!" HEAVEN Ah, what is Heaven? Such Glory that Sun-light Seems darkness, and Mass Music, shell-shut sound. What we call senses here, there so abound, The soul appears a broadening heaven in flight, Feathered and downed with all the stars, whose white Is all hues mingled. Oh, the awe profound! For every moment there, new Heavens astound The myriad senses, with God's Love and Might. If "Holy, Holy, Holy, Evermore?" Be the one chant of angel and of Saint Before the Throne, it is their gaspings faint Between their transports to high Heavens from lower; For, what is love's eternal Firmament But Heaven on Heaven, that we may ceaseless soar? HUMILITY Was not humility the Earthward stair From highest Heaven, by which God came to men, To show the way aloft to human ken? Ah, by what other pass, are men to fare Through mist and cloud, except the path, aflare With his blest steps from Heaven, and up again? Steps, not from star to star, but fen to fen, That all might follow and not one despair! Oh, steps of Love! Could we reach with our eyes Their fulgence, we would shrink back with dismay; For, though 'tis through the world's contempt move they-- Hark! How the hidden choirs of countless skies Chant at all heights: "Lo, God comes by this way, And makes world-wide, His stair to Paradise!" THE NIGHT OF MYSTERIES A cataract of stars, which, with each fall Broadens and brightens, rapturing the sight Of angel hosts, that view it from the height Of knowledge of God's love for one and all His creatures--and not darkness to appal The spirit by the quench of every light, For which God grants it vision--is the night Of Life's strange mysteries, both great and small. Oh cataracts, beyond the angels' count, Pause and shine pendant over every deep Of heart, mind, spirit! Lo! how down they sweep To basic Good where, massing, they remount, Till, mid God's "Many Mansions," high they leap, Forming forever, joy's most splendent fount! WHAT THE POETS SHOW When, at God's fiat, Light flashed forth, the beam Evolved a million pigments, as it sped To every nature. Now, of all its spread, What shaft so glorious as the poet's dream Which, mote and mass, reflects the Will Supreme That life is progress, and by flight, or tread, It circles God-ward up, till perfected! For, harboring meaner thought were to blaspheme. What, if the world be chaos where it sins, Race feuds, Creed hatreds, falsehoods gross, deceit, Intrigue and greed, form swirling, blinding sleet? Honor and Truth, though buried to their chins, Look up and smile; for, though the storms still beat, The poets show 'tis Spring, not Winter, wins. THE SOUL'S ASCENSION Not mine the night that creeps beneath Life's sea, Or lurks within Hope's ruins, sunk below The desert, or the stagnant pool--oh, no! But night that mounts the heavens, till it is free Where stars, prefiguring all things that be Obscure on earth, catch sight of God and glow, And golden shadows large and larger grow, Cast by Gift-bearers to Humanity. Oh, once the cold of all the unsunn'd space Was in my reptile life of soul, wing-bound; But now, soul-free, what warmth from stars all round! 'Tis not by strength of mine, Lord, but thy grace, My soul soars from the depths of sea, or ground, Till, at star-heights, it meets Thee, face to face! LYRIC TRANSPORT What but the spirit's ladder to God's throne Is beauty? Oh, from rung to rung to climb, Till faint becomes the azure's anthem chime Of planets, multitudinous, or lone, And Inspiration, drunk with fragrance, blown From God's rare, inmost garden, wall'd from Time, Sets free the Sonnet with is wings of rhyme To carry down the transport, upward known! Mine is no swaying ladder, like he sea's, Whose rounds of rollers, raised above Sun-rise, Lean not on Heaven, hence shattered lie at noon; For 'tis set firmly on the verities, Which form God's throne. Ah, there, what joy, my prize! Would that I had a dove for every boon! THE SUNRISE The Sun is God's great joy to Human sight. Oh, up and off in chariots, Sea! and ride, All generations, up, till mountain-eyed, To welcome earth-ward, God's Supreme delight. Imagination swirls in swallow flight, Giddy with Beauty, deepening--Oh, how glide From star to star, to the haloes, season-dyed And countless! Its wings shrivel up like night. Oh, yea, the Sun in one subliming rise From Wisdom's infinite mind! This Reason knows. It has no set. There, Sense, with weals or woes For beads, or fingers, count our shuts of eyes, Excluding Knowledge. What! God's joy to close And all its goodness break and drift cloud-wise? TWO DARKNESSES There are two darknesses; one where the Lord Hides beauty--that by which men know His face. All, in that darkness, feel His fingers trace Their features gently, and their hearts record The feeling, as of one, whose eyes, restored, Would see, but for the Father's close embrace. The other is the outer dark--a place Where hate turns black the light upon it poured. O God! the only darkness that I dread, Is where Thou art not--that where Hate's black fire Surmounts the heavens, to burst with thunder dire And, in its fall forever, drag the dead Of heart and spirit--those whom Thy desire Would fain have made the halo round Thy head. THE DOOM OF HATE A spirit passed the Sun, the Moon and Star, And dwelled and dreamed in darkness all its own. The music of the spheres, though thither blown, As faint as fragrance from a flower afar, Disturbed this spirit's ear, attuned to jar Of orb with orb; for hate of light, truth known, Fashions hot worlds which, cooled to clay and stone, Clash, rising toward calm Heaven, which they would mar. Ah, if where love was not, he smiled elate, His smile at God returned, a lightening flash That shattered him. He saw his planets clash, Burst and, then, by the downward law of hate, Sink and leave not a single spark, nor ash, For the new firmament he would create. THE EVIL IN THE WORLD There are two Gods--one, Good, the other, Ill. They clash in Nature--so the Persian taught, And long a sect in Europe spread the thought. Why there is evil is a problem still To many, who see not in Human Will, A being that with beauty could have caught Up to his Maker, had he gladly wrought With light and warmth, instead of dark and chill. God said, "Let there be Light," and light was made. God made not darkness--that is light's exclusion, Forming a region where, in wild confusion, Men, Nations, each a ferret, blood-eyed shade, Worry each other, till, with disillusion For lamp, comes conscience, crying, "God Betrayed!" THE EARTH RENEWED BY MEMORY Ah, in the angel-fall from Heaven, is hope? The wing-whir discord of the legion's fall From God forever, mocks my heart's loud call. Empty of beauty from its base to cope, The Earth is hollow. Where, then, can I grope And not be met by echoes that appal? What! shouts my mind, in wonder that I crawl And, having skyey wings, in hollows mope. Does scent from bloom, or warble from the wood, Not atmosphere the un-aerial void Twixt thee and beauty, which thy youth enjoyed? Fly back to earth, by memory renewed; She fills the hollow, echoing hosts destroyed,-- With Spring, reflecting Heaven's Triumphant Good. IN THE DIMPLE OF BEAUTY'S CHEEK O beauty! in the dimple of thy cheek, My love could live forever and be blest. There, with the sun, a rose-bud on thy breast, How thou rejoicest, hastening to speak To thy fond Father! Oh, how vain to seek A sweeter refuge for the Spirit's rest, Than mid thy blushes, when thou marvelest At His great love, for, oh! thy heart is meek. Oh beauty! in thy Father's arms, thou art. Enclose me in thy dimple; for, though this Were but a bud, or molded seed, what bliss To watch bloom gather scent, or new life start, And hear our Father, bending for a kiss, Whisper to thee, the secrets of His heart! THE CAMP FIRE Beauty is love and, hence is heightening fire, Consuming Nature. All the dark can bring To quench it, feeds it. Look! how everything Is caught in the blaze, which mounts up high and higher! Oh! truly, 'tis a vision to inspire The soul with transport, more than joy can sing; For, if not for the blaze, what cold would sting Poor mortals, who crowd round it, nigh and nigher! Is beauty not the camp-fire, which one host Leaves burning for another, close behind? Yea, yea, the Powers Divine, O Human Kind! Have left their camp-fire burning on the coast, Where they embarked from glimpse of Human mind, To give you warmth and light to hold your post. MOTHER All beings, legioning celestial light, Moved in procession toward a vacant throne. Their chant was faith and hope, as, now, our own. At last, it came to pass, their faith grew sight. They saw One Star in night's down-fall, stay white And, by the Holy Spirit brighter blown, Ascend in Heaven, till there, as high and lone, As over Nature's marveling zenith height. Reaching the throne, its queen, this star became. Awed by the Triune's Honor as her crown, The legions, circling, soared with eyes cast down; But, when their wonder heard the strange, new name In Heaven, from Christ's lips, "Mother," how they shone, Reflecting Christ's child-eyes, with love aflame! IN HEAVEN NO HEART STILL HEAVES Lo! God lets drop blue doves which ground the mind Like clover; then, with drawing to the skies, His pleasure is to watch the flocks arise. Here, there, they mount; they show no cloud, no wind, Can hinder homing; and the angels find No transport, like the sight, for, to their eyes, 'Tis more souls for the joy, which glorifies The Father, traced to love by pigeon-kind. Oh, to his love, how great our spirit's worth! Each is as all. In heaven, no heart still heaves. The sun sinks with its last of lingering eves, And, then, if dearest doves of azure birth, Wife, parent, child, be missed, off mercy leaves With stars for eyes, to search the darks of earth. ST. PETER'S CATHEDRAL IN ROME This temple is soul-startling. 'Tis to me A thunder storm in stone, with Sinai flare Across the Ages. 'Tis the Fiend's despair And the Arch-angel's Triumph. It sets free The mind and soul with certitude, Christ's key Which, like the Sun, opes Heaven--the Good and Fair. Still, oft, what darkness drowns the sun's noon glare Within the Temple! 'Tis from Calvary. Oh, 'tis from Calvary's grief. 'Tis Christ's emotion, On from the Cross, that from His glory known, The German should have fled and, frantic, thrown Away his soul to Strauss or Kant's vague notion, Unhumaning, till, in the Kaiser, grown A Neitche whirl-wind in a crimson ocean. MY BUGLER BOY With heart pain and with quiver of the lip, I bid my boy "good bye," with words of cheer. I hug him to my heart to hide a tear, And hold him close so long, that no tongue-slip Could more betray my bodings for his ship, Or troop, when landed. It is when I hear My daughters' voices, that I shame off fear And take my boy's both hands with firmest grip. Go, son, and, though with thy young life 'tis blown, Blare thou the Bugle, rousing man to sweep The monsters back to Hell's profoundest deep, Where, mocking Spring and Sun-rise, they have grown On longings for the sea, the world must weep When, from its heart, the hope of Peace has flown. KAISER, BEWARE Dost thou, mad Kaiser, for historic name, Set fire to Europe? Is it joy to gaze At blacker smoke than Etna's, and a blaze That wakes up Chaos, wild to come and claim The World, since Light, God-bidden though it came, Has failed to dawn upon our human ways? O Twin of Chaos! peer thou through the haze! 'Tis Human Beings feed the crackling flame. Beware, the smoke, like Etna's, is the curse Of widows on thy people-dooming throne, And in no country, more than in thine own, Cry out all mothers: "Wherefore bear and nurse? To feed war with our sons, our flesh and bone, That chaos may reclaim the Universe?" WOMAN, IN GERMANY The German mother has too long been what A Chancellor once called the "Kingdom's Cow." Ah, as she bears the droves for slaughter, how Her dumb-beast eyes crave pity for her lot! See, there she smiles, like loving God forgot-- All His supernal patience on her brow. How long must her grand arch of brain, as now, Bear up a universe "of what should not"? There, lies she, crushed by troops in hot pursuit Of mocking shadows; for be Gain complete, What is it but twin brother to defeat? Stand up the dead on any bloody route. Stoop for no kiss from orphans, at thy feet, O Triumph! for ash-cord is all thy fruit. O THOU PALE MOON O fair, full moon! I look close at thy face. Thou must be happy, being in the skys; And, yet, thy flush grows pallor to mine eyes. Thou art as one, who breathless after chase, Would rest, but dreads to check her onward pace. O fugitive from where no fledgling flies, No bee finds bud, and where red billows rise, Engulfing down dark years, the Human Race! O thou pale moon, who hast companioned Man Through every darkness since the night's first fall! Hast thou, along thy foot-worn, azure wall, Ever seen seas so hard for hope to span, As this red surge, that in a spring so small, A bird could beak it up, its flood began? THE TIGER How glares the tiger in his desert lair-- Now half the world! Beholding with dismay That Human Freedom is the tiger's prey, A giant, down whose shoulders, broad and bare, The long, thick, crimson flow is Sampson's hair, Makes haste to clutch the beast. Oh, how the clay beneath their struggle, reddens, night and day, Till lies the beast, a shapeless carcass there! Oh! never from the long, thick crimson flow A down thy shoulders from thy noble brow, America, came such God's-strength as now, Comes to thine arm against the world's grim foe-- The beast that, sighting man, devours him, how The world may end, a wilderness of woe. TO OUR BOYS "OVER THERE" Where flies our flag is Freedom's holy ground; There, it unfurls all benisons to Man. The twin of Spring, its spread unfolds God's plan Of human happiness, by setting bound To greed, lust, powers,--all colds,--that Right be crowned. Lo! where it leads, ye youth form valor's van, Mirrored and echoed by the azure's span For ages, for Man's gain in yours is wound. Oh, justice's Hot Gulf Stream are ye, who open The sea, which fiendish craft has frozen hard! Oh, may your warmth for righteousness transform The tyrant's artic region, with no hope in, To Freedom's Temperate Zone, which they, who guard The planets, save from wreck by quake or storm. THE PROFITEERS Now and in life--not Virgil--breaks a storm Of Harpies, harsh to ear and foul to smell. It sweeps War's lengthening coast, where each sea-swell Is Humans, gasping. Hope drags each cold form From hearth to hearth, to find no ember warm; Then, their eyes glitter frost, who hear hope yell As up she climbs the rocks and falls pell-mell Back from small herbs, where monsters swoop and swarm. Oh, could the bestial birds, in Virgil's verse, See Hope's hands redden, as she rends her hair, They would grow human--would not glut, but share; Nor, then, shed human semblance for man's curse-- As ye do, who from want, hold warmth and fair, And gorge your bulks to sleep, as want writhes worse! WHY THE STARS LAUGH Hark! 'tis the laughter of the stars at Earth, And Nature's, too, with every pitch of voice. Earth's carnival of sheer grotesque and noise, Where, gagged and manacled, walk Peace and Mirth, Shows Britain now, a beast of broadening girth, Set out to crush World Freedom. He destroys, And thinks his bear-like rearing, planet poise That is to influence the world's new birth. The stars are kind, as all the ages know; The sense of humor twinkles in their eyes, At Earth's strange follies; but this beast would try To thrust aside the planets, and make woe, The fortune of World Freedom! That is why The stars laugh, and all nature jeers the show. PRAYER FOR WORLD PEACE Lord, not Thy work, the World's calamities, But Man's. If Human Will revolt from Thine, It flees Thy region, where the stars all shine With longing to let down the Azure's Peace-- To dash its hosts from summits into seas, Where Empires are the breakers. There the brine Is anguish, and there Triumph leaves no sign, Save wreck on rock, and Plague, adrift on breeze. When Nations turn from Light, in thought, or life, Their speed is brink-ward, save Thy Mercy stay; For all is precipice, except Thy way. Help, Lord, for here is heightening surge of strife; Here, clouds turn floods, coasts are wind-whirled, like spray, And lightenings, hurling back thy light, are rife. RELIGION Religion is Ascension. 'Tis the flights Of souls to summits of the true and wise. One, witnessing the generations rise, Sees them a shine at countless, different heights, Where they, responding to their inner lights, Glow, like the clouds at morn, with graded dyes. If summits, there are depths; if virtue, vice; Hence, 'tis life's rise from falls, that judgment sights. Witnessed, or not, there is no age, nor climb, But souls arise as bloom, where earth is treed; As warm, red rays, where cold from mountaining need; As burst and spread of planets, where dark crime; Nay, rise to poise above the star's top speed To God, like larks, in praise for life and time. THE GOLDEN JUBILEE OF SISTERS OF CHARITY I How thy Half Century shines over head! 'Tis an unfading rain-bow, one whose dyes Are richer and more numerous to the eyes Of Angels, than to ours. Its rays, if spread Above a flood of sin and world of dead, Give to the drowned, new life, new earth, new skies. Night counts her stars, but falters, when souls rise Bright with the Grace which God's annointed shed. Belov'd Irene, how great our joy to see Thine arch, aglow with virtue's every hue! Oh, how much more must they rejoice, who view From inner Heaven, the arch that is for thee, Triumphal! for than vows like thine, lived true, No grander arch from earth to heaven could be. II The "Church Triumphant" shines in lives like thine, Calista! 'Tis the Saints' procession, shown In Dante's vision, near Lord Jesus' throne, In greatening splendor, never to decline. Ah, if our minds grow dark, our hearts repine, How, from sweet lives, dear Sister, like thine own, Be-Mothering with mercy all who moan, A light comes, and a warmth is in its shine. We shade our eyes, as when we face the Sun On level with the earth, at lives all love-- The Church Triumphant, as in Heaven above! Aye, lives all love for Christ, in every one Who suffers wrong, or any pain thereof, As on His Throne--such lives as thine, dear Nun. WINIFRED HOLT, THE LIFESAVER OF THE BLIND Once, blindness was a burning ship at sea, With panic-stricken souls on every deck. The flame blew inward on that awful wreck, Burning the hopes that make life glad and free. Ah! then, through thee, it was, Philanthropy, Who trains her searchlight on the smallest speck And Speed out boats, like horses, neck to neck, Reached the dark hulk and thrilled its crew with glee. The flame is quenched, that burned out heart and brain. The ship where woe was mute, is loud with joy. Hark! hear the cheer on board, and cry, "Ahoy!" As fast the sails are hoisted, and the main Tides back toward hope for every girl and boy, Who, else, might reach no star of night's whole train. A CHOICE Above and under life, eternally, A subtle light and dark run parallel. One prompts men to build Beauty, cell by cell, In Home, Religion, State, Society; The other, to destroy the fair they see. Like Spring, wilt thou roof Earth with bloom and dwell Thereunder? or, with Scalping Winter's yell, Scour grove and bush? Choose--how else art thou free? If Freedom is the gift of the all-wise, It is because he will not have a slave To serve Him. Which wilt thou be, base or brave? With Morn, climb, or, with Night, skulk down the skies To grope in caverns, or beneath the wave, Creep, till aghast at monsters that arise? ALL LUMINARIES HAVE ONE TREND All luminaries have one source, one trend. The stars that calm the sailor, long sea-swirled, And canopy fond lovers from the World, And those that lead the heart and spirit, blend. Lo, only in the things and thoughts that tend Toward Love's High Harmony, is truth unfurled; All else are lies, whence heart, soul, mind are hurled Back to the Right--to Progress without end. The stars all chant as one. My soaring song Catches their flame and these few sparks reach earth: "As soon the shells forget their Ocean birth, As men forget the Right, where they belong By reason and by soul of deathless worth; Address the God in man, wouldst thou grow strong." LIFE TAKES MORNING HUES WITH THE ARTS OF PEACE America! from out the depths thy coast Was lifted skyward for Humanity. Thy Life, once finny circlings in the sea, Is now the orbits of the starry host, Encircling God with trust. Be this thy boast, When the long line of Ages, passing thee, Lifts each his heart and soul, and shouts with glee, "That Trust in Him was Sentinel on post." Night, that once boa-like hung from thy trees, Gorged with crushed tribes--with pottery, or mound, Or print of foot for trace--slinks underground; For lo, the forests, like the mist on seas, Clears, ere the Sun, at earth's edge, glows half-round, And life takes cloud-hues with the arts of Peace. U. S. SENATOR JAMES A. O'GORMAN AND THE STALWARTS On toward the Senate scuds a thunder-rack-- Nay, cyclone--and the columns--all star-straight-- Of Freedom's Temple sway with the roof's flood-weight. Ye Stalwarts who scorn off a fate, pitch-black, Holding the columns, let no sinew slack. A crash and through the roof, what floods of hate! Still, ye budge not, for "Freedom," your teeth grate, "Shall lie no wreck along the cyclone's track." Oh, not for you was dark the time to slumber, But to hold Freedom's columns all star-plumb! Yours was a watery grave, but Martyrdom And, hence, your resurrection with the number, Whose greatness greatens, as the Ages come To know why their pathway, no wrecks encumber. MINISTER OF JUSTICE PALMER, A BASTILE BUILDER O Bastile Builder! Nature, when she shaped Thy soul, was stricken, with a long attack Of sleeping sickness; nor till wheel and rack Had rusted, and man spirit had escaped The bolsted, loathesome tomb where right was raped, Did she awaken and, alack! alack! Deliver thee, who, put on Freedom's back, Would'st grab all things, at which thy Past-eyes gaped. Freedom would humor thee; so, down he flopped On Justice's floor to watch thee build with blocks. Great was thy skill with walls and dungeon locks, And with the trap, down which poor Freedom dropped To be steel-masked, or, else, put in the stocks, To writhe, then, with his tongue and ears, both lopped. A SPECK, BUT NOT A STAIN, HARVARD O Harvard of the Norton wreath of gold And pearled, Longfellow purple! wherefore frown? If Eliott is a speck upon your gown, It will wash off; it is no stain to hold, For you had let him go for being old. Your wisdom was confirmed when to the crown, A'gainst good folks who, like Elisha Brown, Fought for their homes, he gave his name's renown. Come, Agassiz! for, from the smallest bone, You reconstruct the creature, tongue to tail. Tell us what Eliott is. Phew! What! a Whale? No; tis the prehistoric monster, known As Tory, that devoured young Nathan Hale And, where it crawled, spread horror's crimson zone. SUPREME COURT JUSTICE CHARLES L. GUY Your heart is not a traitor to your mind. Who, knowing innocence in danger, dares Not turn his eye, for fear of smirk, or stares, By other courts, is Justice's statue blind, That to the wall, not Bench, should be assigned. Oft, Precedent is Folly with gray hairs; So you, recalling Junius, heard the prayers Of friendless Stilow; then, what did you find? A fellow man doomed wrongfully to die A felon's death. If such was Stilow's fate, You saw, the felon would have been the State; Hence, turned from Precedent, demanding "Why?" Justice, asleep in marble, woke and straight Unroofed the courthouse to let down the sky. REAR ADMIRAL SIMS A Dukedom, and not one the worse for wear, Has Sims well earned by service to the King. 'Tis said at court, Howe's spirit following The ocean still, found Sims his natural heir And said: "Swap souls; and, that the swap be fair, Give me to boot, the bone of Freedom's wing, To make the skyey bird a hobbling thing In marshes, where the ignisfatus flare." The Eagle with his eye and pinion, trained For mateship with the sun, twitched at a sting. Amazed to find a "cootie" on his wing, And that the insect dreamed, it was ordained By race heredity to serve the King-- He shook his plume and azured, unprofained. SAINT GEORGE AND THE DRAGON I In English nature, did Saint George prevail Over the Dragon? Maybe in the time When England knew not poverty, nor crime, Described by Cobbett, who would not go bail For falsehood, nor let truth remain in jail. It must, then, have renewed life from its slime, For, oh! through deeds, that turn the blood to chyme And eyes white inward, see him ride the gale. In English nature--oh, where now the saint-- The spirit, to sublime conceptions, true? Has good Saint George, too woundful to renew His conflict with the dragon of base taint, Been caught up by Elias from earth's view? How, else, the dragon's rage in irrestraint? II The dragon is grim greed. The Saint's long spear, That once transfixed it, can no longer touch. No land is safe from its sting, blood-drain, or clutch-- For it takes Protean shapes; 'tis, therefore, clear, Since good Saint George has failed to re-appear To mortal sight, save in the King's escutch-- Worn off at edge and blurred with Tudor smudge-- Freedom must drive the Dragon off this sphere. The Dragon's soarings cause the sun's eclypse.-- Hark! is that thunder, God's collapsing skys? No; 'tis the Eagle, with un-hooded eyes And lightening flash from beak to pinion tips, Seizing the Dragon that, despite its slips From form to form--craft, gold and false sunrise-- Can not elude his eye and talon grips. III A conflict, this, refracted, cloud to cloud! Where a white summit? Under crimson seas, And these still hightening. Through far azure, Peace Listens and, eager, peeps; then, turns headbowed. The conflict circling earth, all plains are ploughed New rows of gulches. God! can aught appease The Dragon with fiend thirst's eternities For tongue! The sun might, if it were well sloughed. The Dragon, mounting, draws aloft earth's slime With which to dim the all-producing Sun From broadening light and warmth for every one; But, look! The Eagle, with the thirst sublime Of Justice, that the right on earth be done-- Flashes and--hark! 'Tis earth's Te-Deum chime! IV Oh, yea, the Earth's Te Deums, visibling As well as voicing forth the joy of Nations, Fill up the vastest Heaven--that of God's Patience With Human Will most grossly reptiling In insincerities, worse than negations; And for what blessing are the earth's laudations? The grace to soul to scorn to be mere thing. Oh, of this grace was born the Eagle's vim To dash the Dragon down in hell so deep, It is a maggot there, which can but creep; And draw Elias' chariot to Earth's rim, Wherein Saint George stands with his heart a-leap-- As, now, in labor, we catch glimpse of him. [Illustration] 
2039	----	Evangeline. A Tale of Acadie. by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. THIS is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic, Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest. This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman? Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers,-- Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands, Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven? Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed! Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of October Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o'er the ocean. Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of Grand-Pré. Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient, Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman's devotion, List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest; List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy. PART THE FIRST. I IN the Acadian land, on the shores of the Basin of Minas, Distant, secluded, still, the little village of Grand-Pré Lay in the fruitful valley. Vast meadows stretched to the eastward, Giving the village its name, and pasture to flocks without number. Dikes, that the hands of the farmers had raised with labor incessant, Shut out the turbulent tides; but at stated seasons the flood-gates Opened, and welcomed the sea to wander at will o'er the meadows. West and south there were fields of flax, and orchards and cornfields Spreading afar and unfenced o'er the plain; and away to the northward Blomidon rose, and the forests old, and aloft on the mountains Sea-fogs pitched their tents, and mists from the mighty Atlantic Looked on the happy valley, but ne'er from their station descended. There, in the midst of its farms, reposed the Acadian village. Strongly built were the houses, with frames of oak and of chestnut, Such as the peasants of Normandy built in the reign of the Henries. Thatched were the roofs, with dormer-windows; and gables projecting Over the basement below protected and shaded the door-way. There in the tranquil evenings of summer, when brightly the sunset Lighted the village street, and gilded the vanes on the chimneys, Matrons and maidens sat in snow-white caps and in kirtles Scarlet and blue and green, with distaffs spinning the golden Flax for the gossiping looms, whose noisy shuttles within doors Mingled their sound with the whir of the wheels and the songs of the maidens. Solemnly down the street came the parish priest, and the children Paused in their play to kiss the hand he extended to bless them. Reverend walked he among them; and up rose matrons and maidens, Hailing his slow approach with words of affectionate welcome. Then came the laborers home from the field, and serenely the sun sank Down to his rest, and twilight prevailed. Anon from the belfry Softly the Angelus sounded, and over the roofs of the village Columns of pale blue smoke, like clouds of incense ascending, Rose from a hundred hearths, the homes of peace and contentment. Thus dwelt together in love these simple Acadian farmers,-- Dwelt in the love of God and of man. Alike were they free from Fear, that reigns with the tyrant, and envy, the vice of republics. Neither locks had they to their doors, nor bars to their windows; But their dwellings were open as day and the hearts of the owners; There the richest was poor, and the poorest lived in abundance. Somewhat apart from the village, and nearer the Basin of Minas, Benedict Bellefontaine, the wealthiest farmer of Grand-Pré, Dwelt on his goodly acres; and with him, directing his household, Gentle Evangeline lived, his child, and the pride of the village. Stalworth and stately in form was the man of seventy winters; Hearty and hale was he, an oak that is covered with snow-flakes; White as the snow were his locks, and his cheeks as brown as the oak-leaves. Fair was she to behold, that maiden of seventeen summers. Black were her eyes as the berry that grows on the thorn by the wayside, Black, yet how softly they gleamed beneath the brown shade of her tresses! Sweet was her breath as the breath of kine that feed in the meadows. When in the harvest heat she bore to the reapers at noontide Flagons of home-brewed ale, ah! fair in sooth was the maiden. Fairer was she when, on Sunday morn, while the bell from its turret Sprinkled with holy sounds the air, as the priest with his hyssop Sprinkles the congregation, and scatters blessings upon them, Down the long street she passed, with her chaplet of beads and her missal, Wearing her Norman cap, and her kirtle of blue, and the ear-rings, Brought in the olden time from France, and since, as an heirloom, Handed down from mother to child, through long generations. But a celestial brightness--a more ethereal beauty-- Shone on her face and encircled her form, when, after confession, Homeward serenely she walked with God's benediction upon her. When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music. Firmly builded with rafters of oak, the house of the farmer Stood on the side of a hill commanding the sea; and a shady Sycamore grew by the door, with a woodbine wreathing around it. Rudely carved was the porch, with seats beneath; and a footpath Led through an orchard wide, and disappeared in the meadow. Under the sycamore-tree were hives overhung by a penthouse, Such as the traveller sees in regions remote by the roadside, Built o'er a box for the poor, or the blessed image of Mary. Farther down, on the slope of the hill, was the well with its moss-grown Bucket, fastened with iron, and near it a trough for the horses. Shielding the house from storms, on the north, were the barns and the farm-yard, There stood the broad-wheeled wains and the antique ploughs and the harrows; There were the folds for the sheep; and there, in his feathered seraglio, Strutted the lordly turkey, and crowed the cock, with the selfsame Voice that in ages of old had startled the penitent Peter. Bursting with hay were the barns, themselves a village. In each one Far o'er the gable projected a roof of thatch; and a staircase, Under the sheltering eaves, led up to the odorous corn-loft. There too the dove-cot stood, with its meek and innocent inmates Murmuring ever of love; while above in the variant breezes Numberless noisy weathercocks rattled and sang of mutation. Thus, at peace with God and the world, the farmer of Grand-Pré Lived on his sunny farm, and Evangeline governed his household. Many a youth, as he knelt in the church and opened his missal, Fixed his eyes upon her, as the saint of his deepest devotion; Happy was he who might touch her hand or the hem of her garment! Many a suitor came to her door, by the darkness befriended, And, as he knocked and waited to hear the sound of her footsteps, Knew not which beat the louder, his heart or the knocker of iron; Or at the joyous feast of the Patron Saint of the village, Bolder grew, and pressed her hand in the dance as he whispered Hurried words of love, that seemed a part of the music. But, among all who came, young Gabriel only was welcome; Gabriel Lajeunesse, the son of Basil the blacksmith, Who was a mighty man in the village, and honored of all men; For, since the birth of time, throughout all ages and nations, Has the craft of the smith been held in repute by the people. Basil was Benedict's friend. Their children from earliest childhood Grew up together as brother and sister; and Father Felician, Priest and pedagogue both in the village, had taught them their letters Out of the selfsame book, with the hymns of the church and the plain-song. But when the hymn was sung, and the daily lesson completed, Swiftly they hurried away to the forge of Basil the blacksmith. There at the door they stood, with wondering eyes to behold him Take in his leathern lap the hoof of the horse as a plaything, Nailing the shoe in its place; while near him the tire of the cart-wheel Lay like a fiery snake, coiled round in a circle of cinders. Oft on autumnal eves, when without in the gathering darkness Bursting with light seemed the smithy, through every cranny and crevice, Warm by the forge within they watched the laboring bellows, And as its panting ceased, and the sparks expired in the ashes, Merrily laughed, and said they were nuns going into the chapel. Oft on sledges in winter, as swift as the swoop of the eagle, Down the hillside bounding, they glided away o'er the meadow. Oft in the barns they climbed to the populous nests on the rafters, Seeking with eager eyes that wondrous stone, which the swallow Brings from the shore of the sea to restore the sight of its fledglings; Lucky was he who found that stone in the nest of the swallow! Thus passed a few swift years, and they no longer were children. He was a valiant youth, and his face, like the face of the morning, Gladdened the earth with its light, and ripened through into action. She was a woman now, with the heart and hopes of a woman. "Sunshine of Saint Eulalie" was she called; for that was the sunshine Which, as the farmers believed, would load their orchards with apples; She, too, would bring to her husband's house delight and abundance, Filling it full of love and the ruddy faces of children. II. NOW had the season returned, when the nights grow colder and longer, And the retreating sun the sign of the Scorpion enters. Birds of passage sailed through the leaden air, from the ice-bound, Desolate northern bays to the shores of tropical islands. Harvests were gathered in; and wild with the winds of September Wrestled the trees of the forest, as Jacob of old with the angel. All the signs foretold a winter long and inclement. Bees, with prophetic instinct of want, had hoarded their honey Till the hives overflowed; and the Indian hunters asserted Cold would the winter be, for thick was the fur of the foxes. Such was the advent of autumn. Then followed that beautiful season, Called by the pious Acadian peasants the Summer of All-Saints! Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscape Lay as if new-created in all the freshness of childhood. Peace seemed to reign upon earth, and the restless heart of the ocean Was for a moment consoled. All sounds were in harmony blended. Voices of children at play, the crowing of cocks in the farm-yards, Whir of wings in the drowsy air, and the cooing of pigeons, All were subdued and low as the murmurs of love, and the great sun Looked with the eye of love through the golden vapors around him; While arrayed in its robes of russet and scarlet and yellow, Bright with the sheen of the dew, each glittering tree of the forest Flashed like the plane-tree the Persian adorned with mantles and jewels. Now recommenced the reign of rest and affection and stillness. Day with its burden and heat had departed, and twilight descending Brought back the evening star to the sky, and the herds to the homestead. Pawing the ground they came, and resting their necks on each other, And with their nostrils distended inhaling the freshness of evening. Foremost, bearing the bell, Evangeline's beautiful heifer, Proud of her snow-white hide, and the ribbon that waved from her collar, Quietly paced and slow, as if conscious of human affection. Then came the shepherd back with his bleating flocks from the seaside, Where was their favorite pasture. Behind them followed the watch-dog, Patient, full of importance, and grand in the pride of his instinct, Walking from side to side with a lordly air, and superbly Waving his bushy tail, and urging forward the stragglers; Regent of flocks was he when the shepherd slept; their protector, When from the forest at night, through the starry silence, the wolves howled. Late, with the rising moon, returned the wains from the marshes, Laden with briny hay, that filled the air with its odor. Cheerily neighed the steeds, with dew on their manes and their fetlocks, While aloft on their shoulders the wooden and ponderous saddles, Painted with brilliant dyes, and adorned with tassels of crimson, Nodded in bright array, like hollyhocks heavy with blossoms. Patiently stood the cows meanwhile, and yielded their udders Unto the milkmaid's hand; whilst loud and in regular cadence Into the sounding pails the foaming streamlets descended. Lowing of cattle and peals of laughter were heard in the farm-yard, Echoed back by the barns. Anon they sank into stillness; Heavily closed, with a jarring sound, the valves of the barn-doors, Rattled the wooden bars, and all for a season was silent. In-doors, warm by the wide-mouthed fireplace, idly the farmer Sat in his elbow-chair; and watched how the flames and the smoke-wreaths Struggled together like foe in a burning city. Behind him, Nodding and mocking along the wall, with gestures fantastic, Darted his own huge shadow, and vanished away into darkness. Faces, clumsily carved in oak, on the back of his arm-chair Laughed in the flickering light, and the pewter plates on the dresser Caught and reflected the flame, as shields of armies the sunshine. Fragments of song the old man sang, and carols of Christmas, Such as at home, in the olden time, his fathers before him Sang in their Norman orchards and bright Burgundian vineyards. Close at her father's side was the gentle Evangeline seated, Spinning flax for the loom, that stood in the corner behind her. Silent awhile were its treadles, at rest was its diligent shuttle, While the monotonous drone of the wheel, like the drone of a bagpipe, Followed the old man's song, and united the fragments together. As in a church, when the chant of the choir at intervals ceases, Footfalls are heard in the aisles, or words of the priest at the altar, So, in each pause of the song, with measured motion the clock clicked. Thus as they sat, there were footsteps heard, and, suddenly lifted, Sounded the wooden latch, and the door swung back on its hinges. Benedict knew by the hob-nailed shoes it was Basil the blacksmith, And by her beating heart Evangeline knew who was with him. "Welcome!" the farmer exclaimed, as their footsteps paused on the threshold, "Welcome, Basil, my friend! Come, take thy place on the settle Close by the chimney-side, which is always empty without thee; Take from the shelf overhead thy pipe and the box of tobacco; Never so much thyself art thou as when through the curling Smoke of the pipe or the forge thy friendly and jovial face gleams Round and red as the harvest moon through the mist of the marshes." Then, with a smile of content, thus answered Basil the blacksmith, Taking with easy air the accustomed seat by the fireside:-- "Benedict Bellefontaine, thou hast ever thy jest and thy ballad! Ever in cheerfullest mood art thou, when others are filled with Gloomy forebodings of ill, and see only ruin before them. Happy art thou, as if every day thou hadst picked up a horseshoe." Pausing a moment, to take the pipe that Evangeline brought him, And with a coal from the embers had lighted, he slowly continued:-- "Four days now are passed since the English ships at their anchors Ride in the Gaspereau's mouth, with their cannon pointed against us, What their design may be is unknown; but all are commanded On the morrow to meet in the church, where his Majesty's mandate Will be proclaimed as law in the land. Alas! in the mean time Many surmises of evil alarm the hearts of the people." Then made answer the farmer:--"Perhaps some friendlier purpose Brings these ships to our shores. Perhaps the harvests in England By untimely rains or untimelier heat have been blighted, And from our bursting barns they would feed their cattle and children." "Not so thinketh the folk in the village," said, warmly, the blacksmith, Shaking his head, as in doubt; then, heaving a sigh, he continued:-- "Louisburg is not forgotten, nor Beau Séjour, nor Port Royal. Many already have fled to the forest, and lurk on its outskirts, Waiting with anxious hearts the dubious fate of to-morrow. Arms have been taken from us, and warlike weapons of all kinds; Nothing is left but the blacksmith's sledge and the scythe of the mower." Then with a pleasant smile made answer the jovial farmer:-- "Safer are we unarmed, in the midst of our flocks and our cornfields, Safer within these peaceful dikes, besieged by the ocean, Than our fathers in forts, besieged by the enemy's cannon. Fear no evil, my friend, and to-night may no shadow of sorrow Fall on this house and hearth; for this is the night of the contract. Built are the house and the barn. The merry lads of the village Strongly have built them and well; and, breaking the glebe round about them, Filled the barn with hay, and the house with food for a twelvemonth. René Leblanc will be here anon, with his papers and inkhorn. Shall we not then be glad, and rejoice in the joy of our children?" As apart by the window she stood, with her hand in her lover's, Blushing Evangeline heard the words that her father had spoken, And, as they died on his lips, the worthy notary entered. III. BENT like a laboring oar, that toils in the surf of the ocean, Bent, but not broken, by age was the form of the notary public; Shocks of yellow hair, like the silken floss of the maize, hung Over his shoulders; his forehead was high; and glasses with horn bows Sat astride on his nose, with a look of wisdom supernal. Father of twenty children was he, and more than a hundred Children's children rode on his knee, and heard his great watch tick. Four long years in the times of the war had he languished a captive, Suffering much in an old French fort as the friend of the English. Now, though warier grown, without all guile or suspicion, Ripe in wisdom was he, but patient, and simple, and childlike. He was beloved by all, and most of all by the children; For he told them tales of the Loup-garou in the forest, And of the goblin that came in the night to water the horses, And of the white Létiche, the ghost of a child who unchristened Died, and was doomed to haunt unseen the chambers of children; And how on Christmas eve the oxen talked in the stable, And how the fever was cured by a spider shut up in a nutshell, And of the marvellous powers of four-leaved clover and horseshoes, With whatsoever else was writ in the lore of the village. Then up rose from his seat by the fireside Basil the blacksmith, Knocked from his pipe the ashes, and slowly extending his right hand, "Father Leblanc," he exclaimed, "thou hast heard the talk in the village, And, perchance, canst tell us some news of these ships and their errand." Then with modest demeanor made answer the notary public:-- "Gossip enough have I heard, in sooth, yet am never the wiser; And what their errand may be I know not better than others. Yet am I not of those who imagine some evil intention Brings them here, for we are at peace; and why then molest us?" "God's name!" shouted the hasty and somewhat irascible blacksmith; "Must we in all things look for the how, and the why, and the wherefore? Daily injustice is done, and might is the right of the strongest!" But, without heeding his warmth, continued the notary public:-- "Man is unjust, but God is just; and finally justice Triumphs; and well I remember a story, that often consoled me, When as a captive I lay in the old French fort at Port Royal." This was the old man's favorite tale, and he loved to repeat it When his neighbors complained that any injustice was done them. "Once in an ancient city, whose name I no longer remember, Raised aloft on a column, a brazen statue of Justice Stood in the public square, upholding the scales in its left hand, And in its right a sword, as an emblem that justice presided Over the laws of the land, and the hearts and homes of the people. Even the birds had built their nests in the scales of the balance, Having no fear of the sword that flashed in the sunshine above them. But in the course of time the laws of the land were corrupted; Might took the place of right, and the weak were oppressed, and the mighty Ruled with an iron rod. Then it chanced in a nobleman's palace That a necklace of pearls was lost, and erelong a suspicion Fell on an orphan girl who lived as maid in the household. She, after form of trial condemned to die on the scaffold, Patiently met her doom at the foot of the statue of Justice. As to her Father in heaven her innocent spirit ascended, Lo! o'er the city a tempest rose; and the bolts of the thunder Smote the statue of bronze, and hurled in wrath from its left hand Down on the pavement below the clattering scales of the balance, And in the hollow thereof was found the nest of a magpie, Into whose clay-built walls the necklace of pearls was inwoven." Silenced, but not convinced, when the story was ended, the blacksmith Stood like a man who fain would speak, but findeth no language; All his thoughts were congealed into lines on his face, as the vapors Freeze in fantastic shapes on the window-panes in the winter. Then Evangeline lighted the brazen lamp on the table, Filled, till it overflowed, the pewter tankard with home-brewed Nut-brown ale, that was famed for its strength in the village of Grand-Pré; While from his pocket the notary drew his papers and inkhorn, Wrote with a steady hand the date and the age of the parties, Naming the dower of the bride in flocks of sheep and in cattle. Orderly all things proceeded, and duly and well were completed, And the great seal of the law was set like a sun on the margin. Then from his leathern pouch the farmer threw on the table Three times the old man's fee in solid pieces of silver; And the notary rising, and blessing the bride and the bridegroom, Lifted aloft the tankard of ale and drank to their welfare. Wiping the foam from his lip, he solemnly bowed and departed, While in silence the others sat and mused by the fireside, Till Evangeline brought the draught-board out of its corner. Soon was the game begun. In friendly contention the old men Laughed at each lucky hit, or unsuccessful manoeuver, Laughed when a man was crowned, or a breach was made in the king-row. Meanwhile apart, in the twilight gloom of a window's embrasure, Sat the lovers, and whispered together, beholding the moon rise Over the pallid sea and the silvery mist of the meadows. Silently one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels. Thus passed the evening away. Anon the bell from the belfry Rang out the hour of nine, the village curfew, and straightway Rose the guests and departed; and silence reigned in the household. Many a farewell word and sweet good night on the door-step Lingered long in Evangeline's heart, and filled it with gladness. Carefully then were covered the embers that glowed on the hearth-stone; And on the oaken stairs resounded the tread of the farmer. Soon with a soundless step the foot of Evangeline followed. Up the staircase moved a luminous space in the darkness, Lighted less by the lamp than the shining face of the maiden. Silent she passed the hall, and entered the door of her chamber. Simple that chamber was, with its curtains of white, and its clothes-press Ample and high, on whose spacious shelves were carefully folded Linen and woollen stuffs, by the hand of Evangeline woven. This was the precious dower she would bring to her husband in marriage, Better than flocks and herds, being proofs of her skill as a housewife. Soon she extinguished her lamp, for the mellow and radiant moonlight Streamed through the windows, and lighted the room, till the heart of the maiden Swelled and obeyed its power, like the tremulous tides of the ocean. Ah! she was fair, exceeding fair to behold, as she stood with Naked snow-white feet on the gleaming floor of her chamber! Little she dreamed that below, among the trees of the orchard, Waited her lover and watched for the gleam of her lamp and her shadow. Yet were her thoughts of him, and at times a feeling of sadness Passed o'er her soul, as the sailing shade of clouds in the moonlight Flitted across the floor and darkened the room for a moment. And, as she gazed from the window, she saw serenely the moon pass Forth from the folds of a cloud, and one star follow her footsteps, As out of Abraham's tent young Ishmael wandered with Hagar! IV. PLEASANTLY rose next morn the sun on the village of Grand-Pré. Pleasantly gleamed in the soft, sweet air the Basin of Minas, Where the ships, with their wavering shadows, were riding at anchor. Life had long been astir in the village, and clamorous labor Knocked with its hundred hands at the golden gates of the morning. Now from the country around, from the farms and neighboring hamlets, Came in their holiday dresses the blithe Acadian peasants. Many a glad good morrow and jocund laugh from the young folk Made the bright air brighter, as up from the numerous meadows, Where no path could be seen but the track of wheels in the greensward, Group after group appeared, and joined, or passed on the highway. Long ere noon, in the village all sounds of labor were silenced. Thronged were the streets with people; and noisy groups at the house-doors Sat in the cheerful sun, and rejoiced and gossiped together, Every house was an inn, where all were welcomed and feasted; For with this simple people, who lived like brothers together, All things were held in common, and what one had was another's. Yet under Benedict's roof hospitality seemed more abundant: For Evangeline stood among the guests of her father; Bright was her face with smiles, and words of welcome and gladness Fell from her beautiful lips, and blessed the cup as she gave it. Under the open sky, in the odorous air of the orchard, Bending with golden fruit, was spread the feast of betrothal. There in the shade of the porch were the priest and the notary seated; There good Benedict sat, and sturdy Basil the blacksmith. Not far withdrawn from these, by the cider-press and the beehives, Michael the fiddler was placed, with the gayest of hearts and of waistcoats. Shadow and light from the leaves alternately played on his snow-white Hair, as it waved in the wind; and the jolly face of the fiddler Glowed like a living coal when the ashes are blown from the embers. Gayly the old man sang to the vibrant sound of his fiddle, Tous les Bourgeois de Chartres, and Le Carillon de Dunkerque, And anon with his wooden shoes beat time to the music. Merrily, merrily whirled the wheels of the dizzying dances Under the orchard-trees and down the path to the meadows; Old folk and young together, and children mingled among them. Fairest of all the maids was Evangeline, Benedict's daughter! Noblest of all the youths was Gabriel, son of the blacksmith! So passed the morning away. And lo! with a summons sonorous Sounded the bell from its tower, and over the meadows a drum beat. Thronged erelong was the church with men. Without, in the churchyard, Waited the women. They stood by the graves, and hung on the headstones Garlands of autumn-leaves and evergreens fresh from the forest. Then came the guard from the ships, and marching proudly among them Entered the sacred portal. With loud and dissonant clangor Echoed the sound of their brazen drums from ceiling and casement,-- Echoed a moment only, and slowly the ponderous portal Closed, and in silence the crowd awaited the will of the soldiers. Then uprose their commander, and spake from the steps of the altar, Holding aloft in his hands, with its seals, the royal commission. "You are convened this day," he said, "by his Majesty's orders. Clement and kind has he been; but how you have answered his kindness, Let your own hearts reply! To my natural make and my temper Painful the task is I do, which to you I know must be grievous. Yet must I bow and obey, and deliver the will of our monarch; Namely, that all your lands, and dwellings, and cattle of all kinds Forfeited be to the crown; and that you yourselves from this province Be transported to other lands. God grant you may dwell there Ever as faithful subjects, a happy and peaceable people! Prisoners now I declare you; for such is his Majesty's pleasure!" As, when the air is serene in the sultry solstice of summer, Suddenly gathers a storm, and the deadly sling of the hailstones Beats down the farmer's corn in the field and shatters his windows, Hiding the sun, and strewing the ground with thatch from the house-roofs, Bellowing fly the herds, and seek to break their enclosures; So on the hearts of the people descended the words of the speaker. Silent a moment they stood in speechless wonder, and then rose Louder and ever louder a wail of sorrow and anger, And, by one impulse moved, they madly rushed to the door-way. Vain was the hope of escape; and cries and fierce imprecations Rang through the house of prayer; and high o'er the heads of the others Rose, with his arms uplifted, the figure of Basil the blacksmith, As, on a stormy sea, a spar is tossed by the billows. Flushed was his face and distorted with passion; and wildly he shouted,-- "Down with the tyrants of England! we never have sworn them allegiance! Death to these foreign soldiers, who seize on our homes and our harvests!" More he fain would have said, but the merciless hand of a soldier Smote him upon the mouth, and dragged him down to the pavement. In the midst of the strife and tumult of angry contention, Lo! the door of the chancel opened, and Father Felician Entered, with serious mien, and ascended the steps of the altar. Raising his reverend hand, with a gesture he awed into silence All that clamorous throng; and thus he spake to his people; Deep were his tones and solemn; in accents measured and mournful Spake he, as, after the tocsin's alarum, distinctly the clock strikes. "What is this that ye do, my children? what madness has seized you? Forty years of my life have I labored among you, and taught you, Not in word alone, but in deed, to love one another! Is this the fruit of my toils, of my vigils and prayers and privations? Have you so soon forgotten all lessons of love and forgiveness? This is the house of the Prince of Peace, and would you profane it Thus with violent deeds and hearts overflowing with hatred? Lo! where the crucified Christ from his cross is gazing upon you! See! in those sorrowful eyes what meekness and holy compassion! Hark! how those lips still repeat the prayer, 'O Father, forgive them!' Let us repeat that prayer in the hour when the wicked assail us, Let us repeat it now, and say, 'O Father, forgive them!'" Few were his words of rebuke, but deep in the hearts of his people Sank they, and sobs of contrition succeeded the passionate outbreak, And they repeated his prayer, and said, "O Father, forgive them!" Then came the evening service. The tapers gleamed from the altar. Fervent and deep was the voice of the priest, and the people responded, Not with their lips alone, but their hearts; and the Ave Maria Sang they, and fell on their knees, and their souls, with devotion translated, Rose on the ardor of prayer, like Elijah ascending to heaven. Meanwhile had spread in the village the tidings of ill, and on all sides Wandered, wailing, from house to house the women and children. Long at her father's door Evangeline stood, with her right hand Shielding her eyes from the level rays of the sun, that, descending, Lighted the village street with mysterious splendor, and roofed each Peasant's cottage with golden thatch, and emblazoned its windows. Long within had been spread the snow-white cloth on the table; There stood the wheaten loaf, and the honey fragrant with wild-flowers; There stood the tankard of ale, and the cheese fresh brought from the dairy, And, at the head of the board, the great arm-chair of the farmer. Thus did Evangeline wait at her father's door, as the sunset Threw the long shadows of trees o'er the broad ambrosial meadows. Ah! on her spirit within a deeper shadow had fallen, And from the fields of her soul a fragrance celestial ascended,-- Charity, meekness, love, and hope, and forgiveness, and patience! Then, all-forgetful of self, she wandered into the village, Cheering with looks and words the disconsolate hearts of the women, As o'er the darkening fields with lingering steps they departed, Urged by their household cares, and the weary feet of their children. Down sank the great red sun, and in golden, glimmering vapors Veiled the light of his face, like the Prophet descending from Sinai. Sweetly over the village the bell of the Angelus sounded. Meanwhile, amid the gloom, by the church Evangeline lingered. All was silent within; and in vain at the door and the windows Stood she, and listened and looked, till, overcome by emotion, "Gabriel!" cried she aloud with tremulous voice; but no answer Came from the graves of the dead, nor the gloomier grave of the living. Slowly at length she returned to the tenantless house of her father. Smouldered the fire on the hearth, on the board stood the supper untasted, Empty and drear was each room, and haunted with phantoms of terror. Sadly echoed her step on the stair and the floor of her chamber. In the dead of the night she heard the whispering rain fall Loud on the withered leaves of the sycamore-tree by the window. Keenly the lightning flashed; and the voice of the echoing thunder Told her that God was in heaven, and governed the world he created! Then she remembered the tale she had heard of the justice of Heaven; Soothed was her troubled soul, and she peacefully slumbered till morning. V. FOUR times the sun had risen and set; and now on the fifth day Cheerily called the cock to the sleeping maids of the farm-house. Soon o'er the yellow fields, in silent and mournful procession, Came from the neighboring hamlets and farms the Acadian women, Driving in ponderous wains their household goods to the sea-shore, Pausing and looking back to gaze once more on their dwellings, Ere they were shut from sight by the winding road and the woodland. Close at their sides their children ran, and urged on the oxen, While in their little hands they clasped some fragments of playthings. Thus to the Gaspereau's mouth they hurried; and there on the sea-beach Piled in confusion lay the household goods of the peasants. All day long between the shore and the ships did the boats ply; All day long the wains came laboring down from the village. Late in the afternoon, when the sun was near to his setting, Echoed far o'er the fields came the roll of drums from the churchyard. Thither the women and children thronged. On a sudden the church-doors Opened, and forth came the guard, and marching in gloomy procession Followed the long-imprisoned, but patient, Acadian farmers. Even as pilgrims, who journey afar from their homes and their country, Sing as they go, and in singing forget they are weary and wayworn, So with songs on their lips the Acadian peasants descended Down from the church to the shore, amid their wives and their daughters. Foremost the young men came; and, raising together their voices, Sang they with tremulous lips a chant of the Catholic Missions:-- "Sacred heart of the Saviour! O inexhaustible fountain! Fill our hearts this day with strength and submission and patience!" Then the old men, as they marched, and the women that stood by the wayside Joined in the sacred psalm, and the birds in the sunshine above them Mingled their notes therewith, like voices of spirits departed. Half-way down to the shore Evangeline waited in silence, Not overcome with grief, but strong in the hour of affliction,-- Calmly and sadly she waited, until the procession approached her, And she beheld the face of Gabriel pale with emotion. Tears then filled her eyes, and, eagerly running to meet him, Clasped she his hands, and laid her head on his shoulder and whispered,-- "Gabriel! be of good cheer! for if we love one another, Nothing, in truth, can harm us, whatever mischances may happen!" Smiling she spake these words; then suddenly paused, for her father Saw she slowly advancing. Alas! how changed was his aspect! Gone was the glow from his cheek, and the fire from his eye, and his footstep Heavier seemed with the weight of the heavy heart in his bosom. But with a smile and a sigh, she clasped his neck and embraced him, Speaking words of endearment where words of comfort availed not. Thus to the Gaspereau's mouth moved on that mournful procession. There disorder prevailed, and the tumult and stir of embarking. Busily plied the freighted boats; and in the confusion Wives were torn from their husbands, and mothers, too late, saw their children Left on the land, extending their arms, with wildest entreaties. So unto separate ships were Basil and Gabriel carried, While in despair on the shore Evangeline stood with her father. Half the task was not done when the sun went down, and the twilight Deepened and darkened around; and in haste the refluent ocean Fled away from the shore, and left the line of the sand-beach Covered with waifs of the tide, with kelp and the slippery sea-weed. Farther back in the midst of the household goods and the wagons, Like to a gypsy camp, or a leaguer after a battle, All escape cut off by the sea, and the sentinels near them, Lay encamped for the night the houseless Acadian farmers. Back to its nethermost caves retreated the bellowing ocean, Dragging adown the beach the rattling pebbles, and leaving Inland and far up the shore the stranded boats of the sailors. Then, as the night descended, the herds returned from their pastures; Sweet was the moist still air with the odor of milk from their udders; Lowing they waited, and long, at the well-known bars of the farm-yard,-- Waited and looked in vain for the voice and the hand of the milkmaid. Silence reigned in the streets; from the church no Angelus sounded, Rose no smoke from the roofs, and gleamed no lights from the windows. But on the shores meanwhile the evening fires had been kindled, Built of the drift-wood thrown on the sands from wrecks in the tempest. Round them shapes of gloom and sorrowful faces were gathered, Voices of women were heard, and of men, and the crying of children. Onward from fire to fire, as from hearth to hearth in his parish, Wandered the faithful priest, consoling and blessing and cheering, Like unto shipwrecked Paul on Melita's desolate sea-shore. Thus he approached the place where Evangeline sat with her father, And in the flickering light beheld the face of the old man, Haggard and hollow and wan, and without either thought or emotion, E'en as the face of a clock from which the hands have been taken. Vainly Evangeline strove with words and caresses to cheer him, Vainly offered him food; yet he moved not, he looked not, he spake not, But, with a vacant stare, ever gazed at the flickering fire-light. "Benedicite!" murmured the priest; in tones of compassion. More he fain would have said, but his heart was full, and his accents Faltered and paused on his lips, as the feet of a child on a threshold, Hushed by the scene he beholds, and the awful presence of sorrow. Silently, therefore, he laid his hand on the head of the maiden, Raising his eyes full of tears to the silent stars that above them Moved on their way, unperturbed by the wrongs and sorrows of mortals. Then sat he down at her side, and they wept together in silence. Suddenly rose from the south a light, as in autumn the blood-red Moon climbs the crystal walls of heaven, and o'er the horizon Titan-like stretches its hundred hands upon mountain and meadow, Seizing the rocks and the rivers, and piling huge shadows together. Broader and ever broader it gleamed on the roofs of the village, Gleamed on the sky and the sea, and the ships that lay in the roadstead. Columns of shining smoke uprose, and flashes of flame were Thrust through their folds and withdrawn, like the quivering hands of a martyr. Then as the wind seized the gleeds and the burning thatch, and, uplifting, Whirled them aloft through the air, at once from a hundred house-tops Started the sheeted smoke with flashes of flame intermingled. These things beheld in dismay the crowd on the shore and on shipboard. Speechless at first they stood, then cried aloud in their anguish, "We shall behold no more our homes in the village of Grand-Pré!" Loud on a sudden the cocks began to crow in the farm-yards, Thinking the day had dawned; and anon the lowing of cattle Came on the evening breeze, by the barking of dogs interrupted. Then rose a sound of dread, such as startles the sleeping encampments Far in the western prairies or forests that skirt the Nebraska, When the wild horses affrighted sweep by with the speed of the whirlwind, Or the loud bellowing herds of buffaloes rush to the river. Such was the sound that arose on the night, as the herds and the horses Broke through their folds and fences, and madly rushed o'er the meadows. Overwhelmed with the sight, yet speechless, the priest and the maiden Gazed on the scene of terror that reddened and widened before them; And as they turned at length to speak to their silent companion, Lo! from his seat he had fallen, and stretched abroad on the sea-shore Motionless lay his form, from which the soul had departed. Slowly the priest uplifted the lifeless head, and the maiden Knelt at her father's side, and wailed aloud in her terror. Then in a swoon she sank, and lay with her head on his bosom. Through the long night she lay in deep, oblivious slumber; And when she woke from the trance, she beheld a multitude near her. Faces of friends she beheld, that were mournfully gazing upon her, Pallid, with tearful eyes, and looks of saddest compassion. Still the blaze of the burning village illumined the landscape, Reddened the sky overhead, and gleamed on the faces around her, And like the day of doom it seemed to her wavering senses. Then a familiar voice she heard, as it said to the people,-- "Let us bury him here by the sea. When a happier season Brings us again to our homes from the unknown land of our exile, Then shall his sacred dust be piously laid in the churchyard." Such were the words of the priest. And there in haste by the seaside, Having the glare of the burning village for funeral torches, But without bell or book, they buried the farmer of Grand-Pré. And as the voice of the priest repeated the service of sorrow, Lo! with a mournful sound, like the voice of a vast congregation, Solemnly answered the sea, and mingled its roar with the dirges. 'Twas the returning tide, that afar from the waste of the ocean, With the first dawn of the day, came heaving and hurrying landward. Then recommenced once more the stir and noise of embarking; And with the ebb of the tide the ships sailed out of the harbor, Leaving behind them the dead on the shore, and the village in ruins. PART THE SECOND. I. MANY a weary year had passed since the burning of Grand-Pré, When on the falling tide the freighted vessels departed, Bearing a nation, with all its household gods, into exile, Exile without an end, and without an example in story. Far asunder, on separate coasts, the Acadians landed; Scattered were they, like flakes of snow, when the wind from the northeast Strikes aslant through the fogs that darken the Banks of Newfoundland. Friendless, homeless, hopeless, they wandered from city to city, From the cold lakes of the North to sultry Southern savannas,-- From the bleak shores of the sea to the lands where the Father of Waters Seizes the hills in his hands, and drags them down to the ocean, Deep in their sands to bury the scattered bones of the mammoth. Friends they sought and homes; and many, despairing, heart-broken, Asked of the earth but a grave, and no longer a friend nor a fireside. Written their history stands on tablets of stone in the churchyards. Long among them was seen a maiden who waited and wandered, Lowly and meek in spirit, and patiently suffering all things. Fair was she and young; but, alas! before her extended, Dreary and vast and silent, the desert of life, with its pathway Marked by the graves of those who had sorrowed and suffered before her, Passions long extinguished, and hopes long dead and abandoned, As the emigrant's way o'er the Western desert is marked by Camp-fires long consumed, and bones that bleach in the sunshine. Something there was in her life incomplete, imperfect, unfinished; As if a morning of June, with all its music and sunshine, Suddenly paused in the sky, and, fading, slowly descended Into the east again, from whence it late had arisen. Sometimes she lingered in towns, till, urged by the fever within her, Urged by a restless longing, the hunger and thirst of the spirit, She would commence again her endless search and endeavor; Sometimes in churchyards strayed, and gazed on the crosses and tombstones, Sat by some nameless grave, and thought that perhaps in its bosom He was already at rest, and she longed to slumber beside him. Sometimes a rumor, a hearsay, an inarticulate whisper, Came with its airy hand to point and beckon her forward. Sometimes she spake with those who had seen her beloved and known him, But it was long ago, in some far-off place or forgotten. "Gabriel Lajeunesse!" they said; "O yes! we have seen him. He was with Basil the blacksmith, and both have gone to the prairies; Coureurs-des-Bois are they, and famous hunters and trappers," "Gabriel Lajeunesse!" said others; "O yes! we have seen him. He is a Voyageur in the lowlands of Louisiana." Then would they say: "Dear child! why dream and wait for him longer? Are there not other youths as fair as Gabriel? others Who have hearts as tender and true, and spirits as loyal? Here is Baptiste Leblanc, the notary's son, who has loved thee Many a tedious year; come, give him thy hand and be happy! Thou art too fair to be left to braid St. Catherine's tresses." Then would Evangeline answer, serenely but sadly, "I cannot! Whither my heart has gone, there follows my hand, and not elsewhere. For when the heart goes before, like a lamp, and illumines the pathway, Many things are made clear, that else lie hidden in darkness." Thereupon the priest, her friend and father-confessor, Said, with a smile, "O daughter! thy God thus speaketh within thee! Talk not of wasted affection, affection never was wasted; If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters, returning Back to their springs, like the rain, shall fill them full of refreshment; That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain. Patience; accomplish thy labor; accomplish thy work of affection! Sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is godlike. Therefore accomplish thy labor of love, till the heart is made godlike, Purified, strengthened, perfected, and rendered more worthy of heaven!" Cheered by the good man's words, Evangeline labored and waited. Still in her heart she heard the funeral dirge of the ocean, But with its sound there was mingled a voice that whispered, "Despair not!" Thus did that poor soul wander in want and cheerless discomfort, Bleeding, barefooted, over the shards and thorns of existence. Let me essay, O Muse! to follow the wanderer's footsteps;-- Not through each devious path, each changeful year of existence; But as a traveller follows a streamlet's course through the valley: Far from its margin at times, and seeing the gleam of its water Here and there, in some open space, and at intervals only; Then drawing nearer its banks, through sylvan glooms that conceal it, Though he behold it not, he can hear its continuous murmur; Happy, at length, if he find the spot where it reaches an outlet. II. IT was the month of May. Far down the Beautiful River, Past the Ohio shore and past the mouth of the Wabash, Into the golden stream of the broad and swift Mississippi, Floated a cumbrous boat, that was rowed by Acadian boatmen. It was a band of exiles: a raft, as it were, from the shipwrecked Nation, scattered along the coast, now floating together, Bound by the bonds of a common belief and a common misfortune; Men and women and children, who, guided by hope or by hearsay, Sought for their kith and their kin among the few-acred farmers On the Acadian coast, and the prairies of fair Opelousas. With them Evangeline went, and her guide, the Father Felician. Onward o'er sunken sands, through a wilderness somber with forests, Day after day they glided adown the turbulent river; Night after night, by their blazing fires, encamped on its borders. Now through rushing chutes, among green islands, where plumelike Cotton-trees nodded their shadowy crests, they swept with the current, Then emerged into broad lagoons, where silvery sand-bars Lay in the stream, and along the wimpling waves of their margin, Shining with snow-white plumes, large flocks of pelicans waded. Level the landscape grew, and along the shores of the river, Shaded by china-trees, in the midst of luxuriant gardens, Stood the houses of planters, with negro-cabins and dove-cots. They were approaching the region where reigns perpetual summer, Where through the Golden Coast, and groves of orange and citron, Sweeps with majestic curve the river away to the eastward. They, too, swerved from their course; and, entering the Bayou of Plaquemine, Soon were lost in a maze of sluggish and devious waters, Which, like a network of steel, extended in every direction. Over their heads the towering and tenebrous boughs of the cypress Met in a dusky arch, and trailing mosses in mid-air Waved like banners that hang on the walls of ancient cathedrals. Deathlike the silence seemed, and unbroken, save by the herons Home to their roosts in the cedar-trees returning at sunset, Or by the owl, as he greeted the moon with demoniac laughter. Lovely the moonlight was as it glanced and gleamed on the water, Gleamed on the columns of cypress and cedar sustaining the arches, Down through whose broken vaults it fell as through chinks in a ruin. Dreamlike, and indistinct, and strange were all things around them; And o'er their spirits there came a feeling of wonder and sadness,-- Strange forebodings of ill, unseen and that cannot be compassed. As, at the tramp of a horse's hoof on the turf of the prairies, Far in advance are closed the leaves of the shrinking mimosa, So, at the hoof-beats of fate, with sad forebodings of evil, Shrinks and closes the heart, ere the stroke of doom has attained it. But Evangeline's heart was sustained by a vision, that faintly Floated before her eyes, and beckoned her on through the moonlight. It was the thought of her brain that assumed the shape of a phantom. Through those shadowy aisles had Gabriel wandered before her, And every stroke of the oar now brought him nearer and nearer. Then in his place, at the prow of the boat, rose one of the oarsmen, And, as a signal sound, if others like them peradventure Sailed on those gloomy and midnight streams, blew a blast on his bugle. Wild through the dark colonnades and corridors leafy the blast rang, Breaking the seal of silence, and giving tongues to the forest. Soundless above them the banners of moss just stirred to the music. Multitudinous echoes awoke and died in the distance, Over the watery floor, and beneath the reverberant branches; But not a voice replied; no answer came from the darkness; And, when the echoes had ceased, like a sense of pain was the silence. Then Evangeline slept; but the boatmen rowed through the midnight, Silent at times, then singing familiar Canadian boat-songs, Such as they sang of old on their own Acadian rivers, And through the night were heard the mysterious sounds of the desert, Far off,--indistinct,--as of wave or wind in the forest, Mixed with the whoop of the crane and the roar of the grim alligator. Thus ere another noon they emerged from the shades; and before them Lay, in the golden sun, the lakes of the Atchafalaya. Water-lilies in myriads rocked on the slight undulations Made by the passing oars, and, resplendent in beauty, the lotus Lifted her golden crown above the heads of the boatmen. Faint was the air with the odorous breath of magnolia blossoms, And with the heat of noon; and numberless sylvan islands, Fragrant and thickly embowered with blossoming hedges of roses, Near to whose shores they glided along, invited to slumber. Soon by the fairest of these their weary oars were suspended. Under the boughs of Wachita willows, that grew by the margin, Safely their boat was moored; and scattered about on the greensward, Tired with their midnight toil, the weary travellers slumbered. Over them vast and high extended the cope of a cedar. Swinging from its great arms, the trumpet-flower and the grape-vine Hung their ladder of ropes aloft like the ladder of Jacob, On whose pendulous stairs the angels ascending, descending, Were the swift humming-birds, that flitted from blossom to blossom. Such was the vision Evangeline saw as she slumbered beneath it. Filled was her heart with love, and the dawn of an opening heaven Lighted her soul in sleep with the glory of regions celestial. Nearer and ever nearer, among the numberless islands, Darted a light, swift boat, that sped away o'er the water, Urged on its course by the sinewy arms of hunters and trappers. Northward its prow was turned, to the land of the bison and beaver. At the helm sat a youth, with countenance thoughtful and care-worn. Dark and neglected locks overshadowed his brow, and a sadness Somewhat beyond his years on his face was legibly written. Gabriel was it, who, weary with waiting, unhappy and restless, Sought in the Western wilds oblivion of self and of sorrow. Swiftly they glided along, close under the lee of the island, But by the opposite bank, and behind a screen of palmettos, So that they saw not the boat, where it lay concealed in the willows, And undisturbed by the dash of their oars, and unseen, were the sleepers, Angel of God was there none to awaken the slumbering maiden. Swiftly they glided away, like the shade of a cloud on the prairie. After the sound of their oars on the tholes had died in the distance, As from a magic trance the sleepers awoke, and the maiden Said with a sigh to the friendly priest, "O Father Felician! Something says in my heart that near me Gabriel wanders. Is it a foolish dream, an idle and vague superstition? Or has an angel passed, and revealed the truth to my spirit?" Then, with a blush, she added, "Alas for my credulous fancy! Unto ears like thine such words as these have no meaning." But made answer the reverend man, and he smiled as he answered,-- "Daughter, thy words are not idle; nor are they to me without meaning. Feeling is deep and still; and the word that floats on the surface Is as the tossing buoy, that betrays where the anchor is hidden. Therefore trust to thy heart, and to what the world calls illusions. Gabriel truly is near thee; for not far away to the southward, On the banks of the Têche are the towns of St. Maur and St. Martin. There the long-wandering bride shall be given again to her bridegroom, There the long-absent pastor regain his flock and his sheepfold. Beautiful is the land, with its prairies and forests of fruit-trees; Under the feet a garden of flowers, and the bluest of heavens Bending above, and resting its dome on the walls of the forest. They who dwell there have named it the Eden of Louisiana." With these words of cheer they arose and continued their journey. Softly the evening came. The sun from the western horizon Like a magician extended his golden wand o'er the landscape; Twinkling vapors arose; and sky and water and forest Seemed all on fire at the touch, and melted and mingled together. Hanging between two skies, a cloud with edges of silver, Floated the boat, with its dripping oars, on the motionless water. Filled was Evangeline's heart with inexpressible sweetness. Touched by the magic spell, the sacred fountains of feeling Glowed with the light of love, as the skies and waters around her. Then from a neighboring thicket the mockingbird, wildest of singers, Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the water, Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music, That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent to listen. Plaintive at first were the tones and sad; then soaring to madness Seemed they to follow or guide the revel of frenzied Bacchantes. Single notes were then heard, in sorrowful, low lamentation; Till, having gathered them all, he flung them abroad in derision, As when, after a storm, a gust of wind through the tree tops Shakes down the rattling rain in a crystal shower on the branches. With such a prelude as this, and hearts that throbbed with emotion, Slowly they entered the Têche, where it flows through the green Opelousas, And, through the amber air, above the crest of the woodland, Saw the column of smoke that arose from a neighboring dwelling;-- Sounds of a horn they heard, and the distant lowing of cattle. III. NEAR to the bank of the river, o'ershadowed by oaks, from whose branches Garlands of Spanish moss and of mystic mistletoe flaunted, Such as the Druids cut down with golden hatchets at Yule-tide, Stood, secluded and still, the house of the herdsman. A garden Girdled it round about with a belt of luxuriant blossoms, Filling the air with fragrance. The house itself was of timbers Hewn from the cypress-tree, and carefully fitted together. Large and low was the roof; and on slender columns supported, Rose-wreathed, vine-encircled, a broad and spacious veranda, Haunt of the humming-bird and the bee, extended around it. At each end of the house, amid the flowers of the garden, Stationed the dove-cots were, as love's perpetual symbol, Scenes of endless wooing, and endless contentions of rivals. Silence reigned o'er the place. The line of shadow and sunshine Ran near the tops of the trees; but the house itself was in shadow, And from its chimney-top, ascending and slowly expanding Into the evening air, a thin blue column of smoke rose. In the rear of the house, from the garden gate, ran a pathway Through the great groves of oak to the skirts of the limitless prairie, Into whose sea of flowers the sun was slowly descending. Full in his track of light, like ships with shadowy canvas Hanging loose from their spars in a motionless calm in the tropics, Stood a cluster of trees, with tangled cordage of grape-vines. Just where the woodlands met the flowery surf of the prairie, Mounted upon his horse, with Spanish saddle and stirrups, Sat a herdsman, arrayed in gaiters and doublet of deerskin. Broad and brown was the face that from under the Spanish sombrero Gazed on the peaceful scene, with the lordly look of its master. Round about him were numberless herds of kine, that were grazing Quietly in the meadows, and breathing the vapory freshness That uprose from the river, and spread itself over the landscape. Slowly lifting the horn that hung at his side, and expanding Fully his broad, deep chest, he blew a blast, that resounded Wildly and sweet and far, through the still damp air of the evening. Suddenly out of the grass the long white horns of the cattle Rose like flakes of foam on the adverse currents of ocean. Silent a moment they gazed, then bellowing rushed o'er the prairie, And the whole mass became a cloud, a shade in the distance. Then as the herdsman turned to the house, through the gate of the garden Saw he the forms of the priest and the maiden advancing to meet him. Suddenly down from his horse he sprang in amazement, and forward Rushed with extended arms and exclamations of wonder; When they beheld his face, they recognized Basil the blacksmith. Hearty his welcome was, as he led his guests to the garden. There in an arbor of roses with endless question and answer Gave they vent to their hearts, and renewed their friendly embraces, Laughing and weeping by turns, or sitting silent and thoughtful. Thoughtful, for Gabriel came not; and now dark doubts and misgivings Stole o'er the maiden's heart; and Basil, somewhat embarrassed, Broke the silence and said, "If you came by the Atchafalaya, How have you nowhere encountered my Gabriel's boat on the bayous?" Over Evangeline's face at the words of Basil a shade passed. Tears came into her eyes, and she said, with a tremulous accent, "Gone? is Gabriel gone?" and, concealing her face on his shoulder, All her o'erburdened heart gave way, and she wept and lamented. Then the good Basil said,--and his voice grew blithe as he said it,-- "Be of good cheer, my child; it is only to-day he departed. Foolish boy! he has left me alone with my herds and my horses. Moody and restless grown, and tried and troubled, his spirit Could no longer endure the calm of this quiet existence. Thinking ever of thee, uncertain and sorrowful ever, Ever silent, or speaking only of thee and his troubles, He at length had become so tedious to men and to maidens, Tedious even to me, that at length I bethought me, and sent him Unto the town of Adayes to trade for mules with the Spaniards. Thence he will follow the Indian trails to the Ozark Mountains, Hunting for furs in the forests, on rivers trapping the beaver. Therefore be of good cheer; we will follow the fugitive lover; He is not far on his way, and the Fates and the streams are against him. Up and away to-morrow, and through the red dew of the morning We will follow him fast and bring him back to his prison." Then glad voices were heard, and up from the banks of the river, Borne aloft on his comrades' arms, came Michael the fiddler. Long under Basil's roof had he lived like a god on Olympus, Having no other care than dispensing music to mortals. Far renowned was he for his silver locks and his fiddle. "Long live Michael," they cried, "our brave Acadian minstrel!" As they bore him aloft in triumphal procession; and straightway Father Felician advanced with Evangeline, greeting the old man Kindly and oft, and recalling the past, while Basil, enraptured, Hailed with hilarious joy his old companions and gossips, Laughing loud and long, and embracing mothers and daughters. Much they marvelled to see the wealth of the ci-devant blacksmith, All his domains and his herds, and his patriarchal demeanor; Much they marvelled to hear his tales of the soil and the climate, And of the prairies, whose numberless herds were his who would take them; Each one thought in his heart, that he, too, would go and do likewise. Thus they ascended the steps, and, crossing the airy veranda, Entered the hall of the house, where already the supper of Basil Waited his late return; and they rested and feasted together. Over the joyous feast the sudden darkness descended. All was silent without, and, illuming the landscape with silver, Fair rose the dewy moon and the myriad stars; but within doors, Brighter than these, shone the faces of friends in the glimmering lamplight. Then from his station aloft, at the head of the table, the herdsman Poured forth his heart and his wine together in endless profusion. Lighting his pipe, that was filled with sweet Natchitoches tobacco, Thus he spake to his guests, who listened, and smiled as they listened:-- "Welcome once more, my friends, who long have been friendless and homeless, Welcome once more to a home, that is better perchance than the old one! Here no hungry winter congeals our blood like the rivers; Here no stony ground provokes the wrath of the farmer. Smoothly the ploughshare runs through the soil, as a keel through the water. All the year round the orange-groves are in blossom; and grass grows More in a single night than a whole Canadian summer. Here, too, numberless herds run wild and unclaimed in the prairies; Here, too, lands may be had for the asking, and forests of timber With a few blows of the axe are hewn and framed into houses. After your houses are built, and your fields are yellow with harvests, No King George of England shall drive you away from your homesteads, Burning your dwellings and barns, and stealing your farms and your cattle." Speaking these words, he blew a wrathful cloud from his nostrils, While his huge, brown hand came thundering down on the table, So that the guests all started; and Father Felician, astounded, Suddenly paused, with a pinch of snuff halfway to his nostrils. But the brave Basil resumed, and his words were milder and gayer: "Only beware of the fever, my friends, beware of the fever! For it is not like that of our cold Acadian climate, Cured by wearing a spider hung round one's neck in a nutshell!" Then there were voices heard at the door, and footsteps approaching Sounded upon the stairs and the floor of the breezy veranda. It was the neighboring Creoles and small Acadian planters, Who had been summoned all to the house of Basil the Herdsman. Merry the meeting was of ancient comrades and neighbors: Friend clasped friend in his arms; and they who before were as strangers, Meeting in exile, became straightway as friends to each other, Drawn by the gentle bond of a common country together. But in the neighboring hall a strain of music, proceeding From the accordant strings of Michael's melodious fiddle, Broke up all further speech. Away, like children delighted, All things forgotten beside, they gave themselves to the maddening Whirl of the dizzy dance, as it swept and swayed to the music, Dreamlike, with beaming eyes and the rush of fluttering garments. Meanwhile, apart, at the head of the hall, the priest and the herdsman Sat, conversing together of past and present and future; While Evangeline stood like one entranced, for within her Olden memories rose, and loud in the midst of the music Heard she the sound of the sea, and an irrepressible sadness Came o'er her heart, and unseen she stole forth into the garden. Beautiful was the night. Behind the black wall of the forest, Tipping its summit with silver, arose the moon. On the river Fell here and there through the branches a tremulous gleam of the moonlight, Like the sweet thoughts of love on a darkened and devious spirit. Nearer and round about her, the manifold flowers of the garden Poured out their souls in odors, that were their prayers and confessions Unto the night, as it went its way, like a silent Carthusian. Fuller of fragrance than they, and as heavy with shadows and night-dews, Hung the heart of the maiden. The calm and the magical moonlight Seemed to inundate her soul with indefinable longings, As, through the garden gate, beneath the shade of the oak-trees, Passed she along the path to the edge of the measureless prairie. Silent it lay, with a silvery haze upon it, and the fire-flies Gleaming and floating away in mingled and infinite numbers. Over her head the stars, the thoughts of God in the heavens, Shone on the eyes of man, who had ceased to marvel and worship, Save when a blazing comet was seen on the walls of that temple, As if a hand had appeared and written upon them, "Upharsin." And the soul of the maiden, between the stars and the fire-flies, Wandered alone, and she cried, "O Gabriel! O my beloved! Art thou so near unto me, and yet I cannot behold thee? Art thou so near unto me, and yet thy voice does not reach me? Ah! how often thy feet have trod this path to the prairie! Ah! how often thine eyes have looked on the woodlands around me! Ah! how often beneath this oak, returning from labor, Thou hast lain down to rest, and to dream of me in thy slumbers! When shall these eyes behold, these arms be folded about thee?" Loud and sudden and near the note of a whippoorwill sounded Like a flute in the woods; and anon, through the neighboring thickets, Farther and farther away it floated and dropped into silence. "Patience!" whispered the oaks from oracular caverns of darkness; And, from the moonlit meadow, a sigh responded, "To-morrow!" Bright rose the sun next day; and all the flowers of the garden Bathed his shining feet with their tears, and anointed his tresses With the delicious balm that they bore in their vases of crystal. "Farewell!" said the priest, as he stood at the shadowy threshold; "See that you bring us the Prodigal Son from his fasting and famine, And, too, the Foolish Virgin, who slept when the bridegroom was coming." "Farewell!" answered the maiden, and, smiling, with Basil descended Down to the river's brink, where the boatmen already were waiting. Thus beginning their journey with morning, and sunshine, and gladness, Swiftly they followed the flight of him who was speeding before them, Blown by the blast of fate like a dead leaf over the desert. Not that day, nor the next, nor yet the day that succeeded, Found they trace of his course, in lake or forest or river, Nor, after many days, had they found him; but vague and uncertain Rumors alone were their guides through a wild and desolate country; Till, at the little inn of the Spanish town of Adayes, Weary and worn, they alighted, and learned from the garrulous landlord, That on the day before, with horses and guides and companions, Gabriel left the village, and took the road of the prairies. IV. FAR in the West there lies a desert land, where the mountains Lift, through perpetual snows, their lofty and luminous summits. Down from their jagged, deep ravines, where the gorge, like a gateway, Opens a passage rude to the wheels of the emigrant's wagon, Westward the Oregon flows and the Walleway and Owyhee. Eastward, with devious course, among the Windriver Mountains, Through the Sweet-water Valley precipitate leaps the Nebraska; And to the south, from Fontaine-qui-bout and the Spanish sierras, Fretted with sands and rocks, and swept by the wind of the desert, Numberless torrents, with ceaseless sound, descend to the ocean, Like the great chords of a harp, in loud and solemn vibrations. Spreading between these streams are the wondrous, beautiful prairies, Billowy bays of grass ever rolling in shadow and sunshine, Bright with luxuriant clusters of roses and purple amorphas. Over them wandered the buffalo herds, and the elk and the roebuck; Over them wandered the wolves, and herds of riderless horses; Fires that blast and blight, and winds that are weary with travel; Over them wander the scattered tribes of Ishmael's children, Staining the desert with blood; and above their terrible war-trails Circles and sails aloft, on pinions majestic, the vulture, Like the implacable soul of a chieftain slaughtered in battle, By invisible stairs ascending and scaling the heavens. Here and there rise smokes from the camps of these savage marauders; Here and there rise groves from the margins of swift-running rivers; And the grim, taciturn bear, the anchorite monk of the desert, Climbs down their dark ravines to dig for roots by the brookside, And over all is the sky, the clear and crystalline heaven, Like the protecting hand of God inverted above them. Into this wonderful land, at the base of the Ozark Mountains, Gabriel far had entered, with hunters and trappers behind him. Day after day, with their Indian guides, the maiden and Basil Followed his flying steps, and thought each day to o'ertake him. Sometimes they saw, or thought they saw, the smoke of his camp-fire Rise in the morning air from the distant plain; but at nightfall, When they had reached the place, they found only embers and ashes. And, though their hearts were sad at times and their bodies were weary, Hope still guided them on, as the magic Fata Morgana Showed them her lakes of light, that retreated and vanished before them. Once, as they sat by their evening fire, there silently entered Into the little camp an Indian woman, whose features Wore deep traces of sorrow, and patience as great as her sorrow. She was a Shawnee woman returning home to her people, From the far-off hunting-grounds of the cruel Camanches, Where her Canadian husband, a Coureur-des-Bois, had been murdered. Touched were their hearts at her story, and warmest and friendliest welcome Gave they, with words of cheer, and she sat and feasted among them On the buffalo-meat and the venison cooked on the embers. But when their meal was done, and Basil and all his companions, Worn with the long day's march and the chase of the deer and the bison, Stretched themselves on the ground, and slept where the quivering fire-light Flashed on their swarthy cheeks, and their forms wrapped up in their blankets, Then at the door of Evangeline's tent she sat and repeated Slowly, with soft, low voice, and the charm of her Indian accent, All the tale of her love, with its pleasures, and pains, and reverses. Much Evangeline wept at the tale, and to know that another Hapless heart like her own had loved and had been disappointed. Moved to the depths of her soul by pity and woman's compassion, Yet in her sorrow pleased that one who had suffered was near her, She in turn related her love and all its disasters. Mute with wonder the Shawnee sat, and when she had ended Still was mute; but at length, as if a mysterious horror Passed through her brain, she spake, and repeated the tale of the Mowis; Mowis, the bridegroom of snow, who won and wedded a maiden, But, when the morning came, arose and passed from the wigwam, Fading and melting away and dissolving into the sunshine, Till she beheld him no more, though she followed far into the forest. Then, in those sweet, low tones, that seemed like a weird incantation, Told she the tale of the fair Lilinau, who was wooed by a phantom, That, through the pines o'er her father's lodge, in the hush of the twilight, Breathed like the evening wind, and whispered love to the maiden, Till she followed his green and waving plume through the forest, And never more returned, nor was seen again by her people. Silent with wonder and strange surprise, Evangeline listened To the soft flow of her magical words, till the region around her Seemed like enchanted ground, and her swarthy guest the enchantress. Slowly over the tops of the Ozark Mountains the moon rose, Lighting the little tent, and with a mysterious splendor Touching the sombre leaves, and embracing and filling the woodland. With a delicious sound the brook rushed by, and the branches Swayed and sighed overhead in scarcely audible whispers. Filled with the thoughts of love was Evangeline's heart, but a secret, Subtile sense crept in of pain and indefinite terror, As the cold, poisonous snake creeps into the nest of the swallow. It was no earthly fear. A breath from the region of spirits Seemed to float in the air of night; and she felt for a moment That, like the Indian maid, she, too, was pursuing a phantom. With this thought she slept, and the fear and the phantom had vanished. Early upon the morrow the march was resumed; and the Shawnee Said, as they journeyed along, "On the western slope of these mountains Dwells in his little village the Black Robe chief of the Mission. Much he teaches the people, and tells them of Mary and Jesus; Loud laugh their hearts with joy, and weep with pain, as they hear him." Then, with a sudden and secret emotion, Evangeline answered, "Let us go to the Mission, for there good tidings await us!" Thither they turned their steeds; and behind a spur of the mountains, Just as the sun went down, they heard a murmur of voices, And in a meadow green and broad, by the bank of a river, Saw the tents of the Christians, the tents of the Jesuit Mission. Under a towering oak, that stood in the midst of the village, Knelt the Black Robe chief with his children. A crucifix fastened High on the trunk of the tree, and overshadowed by grape-vines, Looked with its agonized face on the multitude kneeling beneath it. This was their rural chapel. Aloft, through the intricate arches Of its aerial roof, arose the chant of their vespers, Mingling its notes with the soft susurrus and sighs of the branches. Silent, with heads uncovered, the travellers, nearer approaching, Knelt on the swarded floor, and joined in the evening devotions. But when the service was done, and the benediction had fallen Forth from the hands of the priest, like seed from the hands of the sower, Slowly the reverend man advanced to the strangers and bade them Welcome; and when they replied, he smiled with benignant expression, Hearing the homelike sounds of his mother-tongue in the forest, And, with words of kindness, conducted them into his wigwam. There upon mats and skins they reposed, and on cakes of the maize-ear Feasted, and slaked their thirst from the water-gourd of the teacher. Soon was their story told; and the priest with solemnity answered:-- "Not six suns have risen and set since Gabriel, seated On this mat by my side, where now the maiden reposes, Told me this same sad tale; then arose and continued his journey!" Soft was the voice of the priest, and he spake with an accent of kindness; But on Evangeline's heart fell his words as in winter the snow-flakes Fall into some lone nest from which the birds have departed. "Far to the north he has gone," continued the priest; "but in autumn, When the chase is done, will return again to the Mission." Then Evangeline said, and her voice was meek and submissive, "Let me remain with thee, for my soul is sad and afflicted." So seemed it wise and well unto all; and betimes on the morrow, Mounting his Mexican steed, with his Indian guides and companions, Homeward Basil returned, and Evangeline stayed at the Mission. Slowly, slowly, slowly the days succeeded each other,-- Days and weeks and months; and the fields of maize that were springing Green from the ground when a stranger she came, now waving above her, Lifted their slender shafts, with leaves interlacing, and forming Cloisters for mendicant crows and granaries pillaged by squirrels. Then in the golden weather the maize was husked, and the maidens Blushed at each blood-red ear, for that betokened a lover, But at the crooked laughed, and called it a thief in the cornfield. Even the blood-red ear to Evangeline brought not her lover. "Patience!" the priest would say; "have faith, and thy prayer will be answered! Look at this delicate plant that lifts its head from the meadow, See how its leaves all point to the north, as true as the magnet; This is the compass-flower, that the finger of God has suspended Here on its fragile stock, to direct the traveller's journey Over the sea-like, pathless, limitless waste of the desert. Such in the soul of man is faith. The blossoms of passion, Gay and luxuriant flowers, are brighter and fuller of fragrance, But they beguile us, and lead us astray, and their odor is deadly. Only this humble plant can guide us here, and hereafter Crown us with asphodel flowers, that are wet with the dews of nepenthe." So came the autumn, and passed, and the winter,--yet Gabriel came not; Blossomed the opening spring, and the notes of the robin and bluebird Sounded sweet upon wold and in wood, yet Gabriel came not. But on the breath of the summer winds a rumor was wafted Sweeter than song of bird, or hue or odor of blossom. Far to the north and east, it said, in the Michigan forests, Gabriel had his lodge by the banks of the Saginaw river. And, with returning guides, that sought the lakes of St. Lawrence, Saying a sad farewell, Evangeline went from the Mission. When over weary ways, by long and perilous marches, She had attained at length the depths of the Michigan forests, Found she the hunter's lodge deserted and fallen to ruin! Thus did the long sad years glide on, and in seasons and places Divers and distant far was seen the wandering maiden;-- Now in the Tents of Grace of the meek Moravian Missions, Now in the noisy camps and the battle-fields of the army, Now in secluded hamlets, in towns and populous cities. Like a phantom she came, and passed away unremembered. Fair was she and young, when in hope began the long journey; Faded was she and old, when in disappointment it ended. Each succeeding year stole something away from her beauty. Leaving behind it, broader and deeper, the gloom and the shadow. Then there appeared and spread faint streaks of gray o'er her forehead, Dawn of another life, that broke o'er her earthly horizon, As in the eastern sky the first faint streaks of the morning. V. IN that delightful land, which is washed by the Delaware's waters, Guarding in sylvan shades the name of Penn the apostle. Stands on the banks of its beautiful stream the city he founded. There all the air is balm, and the peach is the emblem of beauty, And the streets still re-echo the names of the trees of the forest, As if they fain would appease the Dryads whose haunts they molested. There from the troubled sea had Evangeline landed, an exile, Finding among the children of Penn a home and a country. There old René Leblanc had died; and when he departed, Saw at his side only one of all his hundred descendants. Something at least there was in the friendly streets of the city, Something that spake to her heart, and made her no longer a stranger; And her ear was pleased with the Thee and Thou of the Quakers, For it recalled the past, the old Acadian country, Where all men were equal, and all were brothers and sisters. So, when the fruitless search, the disappointed endeavor, Ended, to recommence no more upon earth, uncomplaining, Thither, as leaves to the light, were turned her thoughts and her footsteps. As from a mountain's top the rainy mists of the morning Roll away, and afar we behold the landscape below us, Sun-illumined, with shining rivers and cities and hamlets, So fell the mists from her mind, and she saw the world far below her, Dark no longer, but all illumined with love; and the pathway Which she had climbed so far, lying smooth and fair in the distance. Gabriel was not forgotten. Within her heart was his image, Clothed in the beauty of love and youth, as last she beheld him, Only more beautiful made by his deathlike silence and absence. Into her thoughts of him time entered not, for it was not. Over him years had no power; he was not changed, but transfigured; He had become to her heart as one who is dead, and not absent; Patience and abnegation of self, and devotion to others, This was the lesson a life of trial and sorrow had taught her. So was her love diffused, but, like to some odorous spices, Suffered no waste nor loss, though filling the air with aroma. Other hope had she none, nor wish in life, but to follow Meekly, with reverent steps, the sacred feet of her Saviour. Thus many years she lived as a Sister of Mercy; frequenting Lonely and wretched roofs in the crowded lanes of the city, Where distress and want concealed themselves from the sunlight, Where disease and sorrow in garrets languished neglected. Night after night, when the world was asleep, as the watchman repeated Loud, through the gusty streets, that all was well in the city, High at some lonely window he saw the light of her taper. Day after day, in the gray of the dawn, as slow through the suburbs Plodded the German farmer, with flowers and fruits for the market, Met he that meek, pale face, returning home from its watchings. Then it came to pass that a pestilence fell on the city, Presaged by wondrous signs, and mostly by flocks of wild pigeons, Darkening the sun in their flight, with naught in their craws but an acorn. And, as the tides of the sea arise in the month of September, Flooding some silver stream, till it spreads to a lake in the meadow, So death flooded life, and, o'erflowing its natural margin, Spread to a brackish lake, the silver stream of existence. Wealth had no power to bribe, nor beauty to charm, the oppressor; But all perished alike beneath the scourge of his anger;-- Only, alas! the poor, who had neither friends nor attendants, Crept away to die in the almshouse, home of the homeless. Then in the suburbs it stood, in the midst of meadows and woodlands;-- Now the city surrounds it; but still, with its gateway and wicket Meek, in the midst of splendor, its humble walls seem to echo Softly the words of the Lord:--"The poor ye always have with you." Thither, by night and by day, came the Sister of Mercy. The dying Looked up into her face, and thought, indeed, to behold there Gleams of celestial light encircle her forehead with splendor, Such as the artist paints o'er the brows of saints and apostles, Or such as hangs by night o'er a city seen at a distance. Unto their eyes it seemed the lamps of the city celestial, Into whose shining gates erelong their spirits would enter. Thus, on a Sabbath morn, through the streets, deserted and silent, Wending her quiet way, she entered the door of the almshouse. Sweet on the summer air was the odor of flowers in the garden; And she paused on her way to gather the fairest among them, That the dying once more might rejoice in their fragrance and beauty. Then, as she mounted the stairs to the corridors, cooled by the east wind, Distant and soft on her ear fell the chimes from the belfry of Christ Church, While, intermingled with these, across the meadows were wafted Sounds of psalms, that were sung by the Swedes in their church at Wicaco. Soft as descending wings fell the calm of the hour on her spirit; Something within her said, "At length thy trials are ended"; And, with light in her looks, she entered the chambers of sickness. Noiselessly moved about the assiduous, careful attendants, Moistening the feverish lip, and the aching brow, and in silence Closing the sightless eyes of the dead, and concealing their faces, Where on their pallets they lay, like drifts of snow by the roadside. Many a languid head, upraised as Evangeline entered, Turned on its pillow of pain to gaze while she passed, for her presence Fell on their hearts like a ray of the sun on the walls of a prison. And, as she looked around, she saw how Death, the consoler, Laying his hand upon many a heart, had healed it forever. Many familiar forms had disappeared in the night-time; Vacant their places were, or filled already by strangers. Suddenly, as if arrested by fear or a feeling of wonder, Still she stood, with her colorless lips apart, while a shudder Ran through her frame, and, forgotten, the flowerets dropped from her fingers, And from her eyes and cheeks the light and bloom of the morning. Then there escaped from her lips a cry of such terrible anguish, That the dying heard it, and started up from their pillows. On the pallet before her was stretched the form of an old man. Long, and thin, and gray were the locks that shaded his temples; But, as he lay in the morning light, his face for a moment Seemed to assume once more the forms of its earlier manhood; So are wont to be changed the faces of those who are dying. Hot and red on his lips still burned the flush of the fever, As if life, like the Hebrew, with blood had besprinkled its portals, That the Angel of Death might see the sign, and pass over. Motionless, senseless, dying, he lay, and his spirit exhausted Seemed to be sinking down through infinite depths in the darkness, Darkness of slumber and death, forever sinking and sinking. Then through those realms of shade, in multiplied reverberations, Heard he that cry of pain, and through the hush that succeeded Whispered a gentle voice, in accents tender and saint-like, "Gabriel! O my beloved!" and died away into silence. Then he beheld, in a dream, once more the home of his childhood; Green Acadian meadows, with sylvan rivers among them, Village, and mountain, and woodlands; and, walking under their shadow, As in the days of her youth, Evangeline rose in his vision. Tears came into his eyes; and as slowly he lifted his eyelids, Vanished the vision away, but Evangeline knelt by his bedside. Vainly he strove to whisper her name, for the accents unuttered Died on his lips, and their motion revealed what his tongue would have spoken. Vainly he strove to rise; and Evangeline, kneeling beside him, Kissed his dying lips, and laid his head on her bosom. Sweet was the light of his eyes; but it suddenly sank into darkness, As when a lamp is blown out by a gust of wind at a casement. All was ended now, the hope, and the fear, and the sorrow, All the aching of heart, the restless, unsatisfied longing, All the dull, deep pain, and constant anguish of patience! And, as she pressed once more the lifeless head to her bosom, Meekly she bowed her own, and murmured, "Father, I thank thee!" STILL stands the forest primeval; but far away from its shadow, Side by side, in their nameless graves, the lovers are sleeping. Under the humble walls of the little Catholic churchyard, In the heart of the city, they lie, unknown and unnoticed. Daily the tides of life go ebbing and flowing beside them, Thousands of throbbing hearts, where theirs are at rest and forever, Thousands of aching brains, where theirs no longer are busy, Thousands of toiling hands, where theirs have ceased from their labors, Thousands of weary feet, where theirs have completed their journey! Still stands the forest primeval; but under the shade of its branches Dwells another race, with other customs and language. Only along the shore of the mournful and misty Atlantic Linger a few Acadian peasants, whose fathers from exile Wandered back to their native land to die in its bosom. In the fisherman's cot the wheel and the loom are still busy; Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun, And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline's story. While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced, neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest. 
19316	----	LYRA HEROICA A BOOK OF VERSE FOR BOYS SELECTED AND ARRANGED BY WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife! To all the sensual world proclaim One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name. _Sir Walter Scott._ NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1920 COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS *** The selections from Walt Whitman are published by permission of Mr. Whitman; and those from Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, and Bret Harte, through the courtesy of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin, & Co., the publishers of their works. TO WALTER BLAIKIE ARTIST-PRINTER MY PART IN THIS BOOK W. E. H. Edinburgh, July 1891. PREFACE This book of verse for boys is, I believe, the first of its kind in English. Plainly, it were labour lost to go gleaning where so many experts have gone harvesting; and for what is rarest and best in English Poetry the world must turn, as heretofore, to the several 'Golden Treasuries' of Professor Palgrave and Mr. Coventry Patmore, and to the excellent 'Poets' Walk' of Mr. Mowbray Morris. My purpose has been to choose and sheave a certain number of those achievements in verse which, as expressing the simpler sentiments and the more elemental emotions, might fitly be addressed to such boys--and men, for that matter--as are privileged to use our noble English tongue. To set forth, as only art can, the beauty and the joy of living, the beauty and the blessedness of death, the glory of battle and adventure, the nobility of devotion--to a cause, an ideal, a passion even--the dignity of resistance, the sacred quality of patriotism, that is my ambition here. Now, to read poetry at all is to have an ideal anthology of one's own, and in that possession to be incapable of content with the anthologies of all the world besides. That is, the personal equation is ever to be reckoned withal, and I have had my preferences, as those that went before me had theirs. I have omitted much, as Aytoun's 'Lays,' whose absence many will resent; I have included much, as that brilliant piece of doggerel of Frederick Marryat's, whose presence some will regard with distress. This without reference to enforcements due to the very nature of my work. I have adopted the birth-day order: for that is the simplest. And I have begun with--not Chaucer, nor Spenser, nor the ballads, but--Shakespeare and Agincourt; for it seemed to me that a book of heroism could have no better starting-point than that heroic pair of names. As for the ballads, I have placed them, after much considering, in the gap between old and new, between classic and romantic, in English verse. The witness of Sidney and Drayton's example notwithstanding, it is not until 1765, when Percy publishes the 'Reliques,' that the ballad spirit begins to be the master influence that Wordsworth confessed it was; while as for the history of the matter, there are who hold that 'Sir Patrick Spens,' for example, is the work of Lady Wardlaw, which to others, myself among them, is a thing preposterous and distraught. It remains to add that, addressing myself to boys, I have not scrupled to edit my authors where editing seemed desirable, and that I have broken up some of the longer pieces for convenience in reading. Also, the help I have received while this book of 'Noble Numbers' was in course of growth--help in the way of counsel, suggestion, remonstrance, permission to use--has been such that it taxes gratitude and makes complete acknowledgment impossible. W. E. H. CONTENTS WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616) and MICHAEL DRAYTON (1563-1631). PAGE I. AGINCOURT Introit 1 Interlude 2 Harfleur 3 The Eve 4 The Battle 6 After 10 SIR HENRY WOTTON (1568-1639). II. LORD OF HIMSELF 11 BEN JONSON (1574-1637). III. TRUE BALM 12 IV. HONOUR IN BUD 13 JOHN FLETCHER (1576-1625). V. THE JOY OF BATTLE 13 FRANCIS BEAUMONT (1586-1616). VI. IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY 15 ROBERT HERRICK (1591-1674). VII. GOING A-MAYING 15 VIII. TO ANTHEA, WHO MAY COMMAND HIM ANYTHING 18 GEORGE HERBERT (1593-1638). IX. MEMENTO MORI 19 JAMES SHIRLEY (1594-1666). X. THE KING OF KINGS 20 JOHN MILTON (1608-1674). XI. LYCIDAS 21 XII. ARMS AND THE MUSE 27 XIII. TO THE LORD GENERAL 28 XIV. THE LATE MASSACRE 28 XV. ON HIS BLINDNESS 29 XVI. EYELESS AT GAZA 30 XVII. OUT OF ADVERSITY 31 JAMES GRAHAM, MARQUIS OF MONTROSE (1612-1650). XVIII. HEROIC LOVE 31 RICHARD LOVELACE (1618-1658). XIX. GOING TO THE WARS 32 XX. FROM PRISON 33 ANDREW MARVELL (1620-1678). XXI. TWO KINGS 34 XXII. IN EXILE 39 JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1701). XXIII. ALEXANDER'S FEAST 40 SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709-1784). XXIV. THE QUIET LIFE 45 BALLADS XXV. CHEVY CHASE The Hunting 47 The Challenge 49 The Battle 51 The Slain 54 The Tidings 56 XXVI. SIR PATRICK SPENS 57 XXVII. BRAVE LORD WILLOUGHBY 60 XXVIII. HUGHIE THE GRÆME 64 XXIX. KINMONT WILLIE The Capture 66 The Keeper's Wrath 67 The March 69 The Rescue 71 XXX. THE HONOUR OF BRISTOL 73 XXXI. HELEN OF KIRKCONNELL 77 XXXII. THE TWA CORBIES 79 THOMAS GRAY (1716-1771). XXXIII. THE BARD 80 WILLIAM COWPER (1731-1800). XXXIV. THE ROYAL GEORGE 85 XXXV. BOADICEA 86 GRAHAM OF GARTMORE (1735-1797). XXXVI. TO HIS LADY 88 CHARLES DIBDIN (1745-1814). XXXVII. CONSTANCY 89 XXXVIII. THE PERFECT SAILOR 90 JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN (1750-1817). XXXIX. THE DESERTER 91 PRINCE HOARE (1755-1834). XL. THE ARETHUSA 92 WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1823). XLI. THE BEAUTY OF TERROR 94 ROBERT BURNS (1759-1796). XLII. DEFIANCE 95 XLIII. THE GOAL OF LIFE 96 XLIV. BEFORE PARTING 97 XLV. DEVOTION 98 XLVI. TRUE UNTIL DEATH 99 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850). XLVII. VENICE 100 XLVIII. DESTINY 101 XLIX. THE MOTHER LAND 101 L. IDEAL 102 LI. TO DUTY 103 LII. TWO VICTORIES 105 SIR WALTER SCOTT (1771-1832). LIII. IN MEMORIAM 107 LIV. LOCHINVAR 112 LV. FLODDEN The March 114 The Attack 116 The Last Stand 119 LVI. THE CHASE 121 LVII. THE OUTLAW 126 LVIII. PIBROCH 129 LIX. THE OMNIPOTENT 130 LX. THE RED HARLAW 131 LXI. FAREWELL 133 LXII. BONNY DUNDEE 134 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834). LXIII. ROMANCE 136 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR (1775-1864). LXIV. SACRIFICE 138 THOMAS CAMPBELL (1777-1844). LXV. SOLDIER AND SAILOR 140 LXVI. 'YE MARINERS' 143 LXVII. THE BATTLE OF THE BALTIC 144 EBENEZER ELLIOTT (1781-1846). LXVIII. BATTLE SONG 146 ALLAN CUNNINGHAM (1785-1842). LXIX. LOYALTY 147 LXX. A SEA-SONG 148 BRYANT WALLER PROCTOR (1787-1874). LXXI. A SONG OF THE SEA 149 GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON (1788-1824). LXXII. SENNACHERIB 150 LXXIII. THE STORMING OF CORINTH The Signal 151 The Assault 153 The Magazine 156 LXXIV. ALHAMA 160 LXXV. FRIENDSHIP 164 LXXVI. THE RACE WITH DEATH 165 LXXVII. THE GLORY THAT WAS GREECE 167 LXXVIII. HAIL AND FAREWELL 171 CHARLES WOLFE (1791-1823). LXXIX. AFTER CORUNNA 172 FREDERICK MARRYAT (1792-1848). LXXX. THE OLD NAVY 174 FELICIA HEMANS (1793-1825). LXXXI. CASABIANCA 175 LXXXII. THE PILGRIM FATHERS 177 JOHN KEATS (1796-1821). LXXXIII. TO THE ADVENTUROUS 179 THOMAS BABINGTON, LORD MACAULAY (1800-1859). LXXXIV. HORATIUS The Trysting 179 The Trouble in Rome 183 The Keeping of the Bridge 189 Father Tiber 196 LXXXV. THE ARMADA 200 LXXXVI. THE LAST BUCCANEER 205 LXXXVII. A JACOBITE'S EPITAPH 206 ROBERT STEPHEN HAWKER (1803-1875). LXXXVIII. THE SONG OF THE WESTERN MEN 207 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (1807-1882). LXXXIX. THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP The Model 208 The Builders 210 In the Ship-Yard 214 The Two Bridals 217 XC. THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH CAPE 223 XCI. THE CUMBERLAND 227 XCII. A DUTCH PICTURE 228 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER (b. 1807). XCIII. BARBARA FRIETCHIE 230 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON (b. 1809). XCIV. A BALLAD OF THE FLEET 232 XCV. THE HEAVY BRIGADE 239 SIR FRANCIS HASTINGS DOYLE (1810-1888). XCVI. THE PRIVATE OF THE BUFFS 242 XCVII. THE RED THREAD OF HONOUR 244 ROBERT BROWNING (1812-1890). XCVIII. HOME THOUGHTS FROM THE SEA 248 XCIX. HERVÉ RIEL 248 WALT WHITMAN (b. 1819). C. THE DYING FIREMAN 254 CI. A SEA-FIGHT 255 CII. BEAT! BEAT! DRUMS! 257 CIII. TWO VETERANS 258 CHARLES KINGSLEY (1819-1875). CIV. THE PLEASANT ISLE OF AVÈS 260 CV. A WELCOME 262 SIR HENRY YULE (1820-1889). CVI. THE BIRKENHEAD 264 MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-1888). CVII. APOLLO 265 CVIII. THE DEATH OF SOHRAB The Duel 267 Sohrab 269 The Recognition 272 Ruksh the Horse 275 Rustum 277 Night 280 CIX. FLEE FRO' THE PRESS 282 WILLIAM CORY (b. 1823). CX. SCHOOL FENCIBLES 284 CXI. THE TWO CAPTAINS 285 GEORGE MEREDITH (b. 1828). CXII. THE HEAD OF BRAN 290 WILLIAM MORRIS (b. 1834). CXIII. THE SLAYING OF THE NIBLUNGS Hogni 293 Gunnar 297 Gudrun 301 The Sons of Giuki 304 ALFRED AUSTIN (b. 1835). CXIV. IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 308 SIR ALFRED LYALL (b. 1835). CXV. THEOLOGY IN EXTREMIS 311 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE (b. 1837). CXVI. THE OBLATION 316 CXVII. ENGLAND 317 CXVIII. THE JACOBITE IN EXILE 319 BRET HARTE (b. 1839). CXIX. THE REVEILLÉ 322 CXX. WHAT THE BULLET SANG 323 AUSTIN DOBSON (b. 1840). CXXI. A BALLAD OF THE ARMADA 324 ANDREW LANG (b. 1844). CXXII. THE WHITE PACHA 325 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON (b. 1850). CXXIII. MOTHER AND SON 326 HENRY CHARLES BEECHING (b. 1859). CXXIV. PRAYERS 328 RUDYARD KIPLING (b. 1865). CXXV. A BALLAD OF EAST AND WEST 329 CXXVI. THE FLAG OF ENGLAND 335 NOTES 341 INDEX 359 For I trust, if an enemy's fleet came yonder round by the hill, And the rushing battle-bolt sang from the three-decker out of the foam, That the smooth-faced snub-nosed rogue would leap from his counter and till, And strike, if he could, were it but with his cheating yard-wand, home. _Tennyson._ LYRA HEROICA I AGINCOURT INTROIT O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention, A kingdom for a stage, princes to act And monarchs to behold the swelling scene! Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels, Leashed in like hounds, should Famine, Sword and Fire Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all, The flat unraisèd spirits that have dared On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth So great an object. Can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt? O pardon! since a crooked figure may Attest in little place a million, And let us, ciphers to this great accompt, On your imaginary forces work. Suppose within the girdle of these walls Are now confined two mighty monarchies, Whose high uprearèd and abutting fronts The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder: Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts; Into a thousand parts divide one man, And make imaginary puissance; Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth; For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings, Carry them here and there, jumping o'er times, Turning the accomplishment of many years Into an hour-glass. INTERLUDE Now all the youth of England are on fire, And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies: Now thrive the armourers, and honour's thought Reigns solely in the breast of every man: They sell the pasture now to buy the horse, Following the mirror of all Christian kings, With wingèd heels, as English Mercuries: For now sits Expectation in the air, And hides a sword from hilts unto the point With crowns imperial, crowns and coronets, Promised to Harry and his followers. The French, advised by good intelligence Of this most dreadful preparation, Shake in their fear, and with pale policy Seek to divert the English purposes. O England! model to thy inward greatness, Like little body with a mighty heart, What mightst thou do, that honour would thee do, Were all thy children kind and natural! But see thy fault: France hath in thee found out A nest of hollow bosoms, which he fills With treacherous crowns; and three corrupted men, One, Richard Earl of Cambridge, and the second, Henry Lord Scroop of Masham, and the third, Sir Thomas Grey, knight, of Northumberland, Have for the gilt of France--O guilt indeed!-- Confirmed conspiracy with fearful France; And by their hands this grace of kings must die, If hell and treason hold their promises, Ere he take ship for France, and in Southampton!-- HARFLEUR Thus with imagined wing our swift scene flies In motion of no less celerity Than that of thought. Suppose that you have seen The well-appointed king at Hampton Pier Embark his royalty, and his brave fleet With silken streamers the young Phoebus fanning: Play with your fancies, and in them behold Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing; Hear the shrill whistle which doth order give To sounds confused; behold the threaden sails, Borne with the invisible and creeping wind Draw the huge bottoms through the furrowed sea Breasting the lofty surge. O, do but think You stand upon the rivage and behold A city on the inconstant billows dancing! For so appears this fleet majestical, Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow: Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy, And leave your England, as dead midnight still, Guarded with grandsires, babies and old women, Or passed or not arrived to pith and puissance; For who is he, whose chin is but enriched With one appearing hair, that will not follow These culled and choice-drawn cavaliers to France? Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege: Behold the ordnance on their carriages, With fatal mouths gaping on girded Harfleur. Suppose the ambassador from the French comes back; Tells Harry that the king doth offer him Katharine his daughter, and with her to dowry Some petty and unprofitable dukedoms. The offer likes not: and the nimble gunner With linstock now the devilish cannon touches, And down goes all before them! THE EVE Now entertain conjecture of a time When creeping murmur and the poring dark Fills the wide vessel of the universe. From camp to camp through the foul womb of night The hum of either army stilly sounds, That the fixed sentinels almost receive The secret whispers of each other's watch: Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames Each battle sees the other's umbered face; Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs Piercing the night's dull ear, and from the tents The armourers, accomplishing the knights, With busy hammers closing rivets up, Give dreadful note of preparation. The country cocks do crow, the clocks do toll, And the third hour of drowsy morning name. Proud of their numbers and secure in soul, The confident and over-lusty French Do the low-rated English play at dice, And chide the cripple, tardy-gaited night Who like a foul and ugly witch doth limp So tediously away. The poor condemnèd English, Like sacrifices, by their watchful fires Sit patiently and inly ruminate The morning's danger, and their gesture sad, Investing lank-lean cheeks and war-worn coats, Presenteth them unto the gazing moon So many horrid ghosts. O now, who will behold The royal captain of this ruined band Walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent, Let him cry 'Praise and glory on his head!' For forth he goes and visits all his host, Bids them good-morrow with a modest smile, And calls them brothers, friends, and countrymen. Upon his royal face there is no note How dread an army hath enrounded him; Nor doth he dedicate one jot of colour Unto the weary and all-watchèd night, But freshly looks and over-bears attaint With cheerful semblance and sweet majesty, That every wretch, pining and pale before, Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks. A largess universal like the sun His liberal eye doth give to every one, Thawing cold fear, that mean and gentle all, Behold, as may unworthiness define, A little touch of Harry in the night-- And so our scene must to the battle fly. _Shakespeare._ THE BATTLE Fair stood the wind for France, When we our sails advance, Nor now to prove our chance Longer will tarry; But putting to the main, At Caux, the mouth of Seine, With all his martial train, Landed King Harry. And taking many a fort, Furnished in warlike sort, Marched towards Agincourt In happy hour, Skirmishing day by day With those that stopped his way, Where the French gen'ral lay With all his power: Which, in his height of pride, King Henry to deride, His ransom to provide To the king sending; Which he neglects the while As from a nation vile, Yet with an angry smile Their fall portending. And turning to his men, Quoth our brave Henry then, 'Though they to one be ten, Be not amazèd. Yet have we well begun, Battles so bravely won Have ever to the sun By fame been raisèd. And for myself, quoth he, This my full rest shall be: England ne'er mourn for me, Nor more esteem me; Victor I will remain Or on this earth lie slain; Never shall she sustain Loss to redeem me. Poitiers and Cressy tell, When most their pride did swell, Under our swords they fell; No less our skill is Than when our grandsire great, Claiming the regal seat, By many a warlike feat Lopped the French lilies.' The Duke of York so dread The eager vaward led; With the main Henry sped, Amongst his henchmen; Excester had the rear, A braver man not there: O Lord, how hot they were On the false Frenchmen! They now to fight are gone, Armour on armour shone, Drum now to drum did groan, To hear was wonder; That with the cries they make The very earth did shake, Trumpet to trumpet spake, Thunder to thunder. Well it thine age became, O noble Erpingham, Which did the signal aim To our hid forces! When from the meadow by, Like a storm suddenly, The English archery Struck the French horses. With Spanish yew so strong, Arrows a cloth-yard long, That like to serpents stung, Piercing the weather; None from his fellow starts, But playing manly parts, And like true English hearts Stuck close together. When down their bows they threw, And forth their bilbos drew, And on the French they flew, Not one was tardy; Arms were from shoulders sent, Scalps to the teeth were rent, Down the French peasants went; Our men were hardy. This while our noble king, His broadsword brandishing, Down the French host did ding As to o'erwhelm it, And many a deep wound lent, His arms with blood besprent, And many a cruel dent Bruisèd his helmet. Glo'ster, that duke so good, Next of the royal blood, For famous England stood, With his brave brother; Clarence, in steel so bright, Though but a maiden knight, Yet in that furious fight Scarce such another! Warwick in blood did wade, Oxford the foe invade, And cruel slaughter made, Still as they ran up; Suffolk his axe did ply, Beaumont and Willoughby Bare them right doughtily, Ferrers and Fanhope. Upon Saint Crispin's Day Fought was this noble fray, Which fame did not delay, To England to carry. O, when shall Englishmen With such acts fill a pen, Or England breed again Such a King Harry? _Drayton._ AFTER Now we bear the king Toward Calais: grant him there; there seen, Heave him away upon your wingèd thoughts Athwart the sea. Behold, the English beach Pales in the flood with men, with wives and boys, Whose shouts and claps out-voice the deep-mouthed sea, Which like a mighty whiffler 'fore the king Seems to prepare his way: so let him land, And solemnly see him set on to London. So swift a pace hath thought that even now You may imagine him upon Blackheath; Where that his lords desire him to have borne His bruisèd helmet and his bended sword Before him through the city: he forbids it, Being free from vainness and self-glorious pride, Giving full trophy, signal and ostent, Quite from himself to God. But now behold, In the quick forge and working-house of thought, How London doth pour out her citizens! The mayor and all his brethren in best sort, Like to the senators of the antique Rome, With the plebeians swarming at their heels, Go forth and fetch their conquering Cæsar in! _Shakespeare._ II LORD OF HIMSELF How happy is he born or taught Who serveth not another's will; Whose armour is his honest thought, And simple truth his highest skill; Whose passions not his masters are; Whose soul is still prepared for death-- Not tied unto the world with care Of prince's ear or vulgar breath; Who hath his ear from rumours freed; Whose conscience is his strong retreat; Whose state can neither flatterers feed, Nor ruin make oppressors great; Who envies none whom chance doth raise, Or vice; who never understood How deepest wounds are given with praise, Nor rules of state but rules of good; Who God doth late and early pray More of his grace than gifts to lend, And entertains the harmless day With a well-chosen book or friend-- This man is free from servile bands Of hope to rise or fear to fall: Lord of himself, though not of lands, And, having nothing, yet hath all. _Wotton._ III TRUE BALM High-spirited friend, I send nor balms nor corsives to your wound; Your faith hath found A gentler and more agile hand to tend The cure of that which is but corporal, And doubtful days, which were named critical, Have made their fairest flight And now are out of sight. Yet doth some wholesome physic for the mind, Wrapped in this paper lie, Which in the taking if you misapply You are unkind. Your covetous hand, Happy in that fair honour it hath gained, Must now be reined. True valour doth her own renown commend In one full action; nor have you now more To do than be a husband of that store. Think but how dear you bought This same which you have caught-- Such thoughts will make you more in love with truth 'Tis wisdom, and that high, For men to use their fortune reverently, Even in youth. _Jonson._ IV HONOUR IN BUD It is not growing like a tree In bulk doth make man better be: A lily of a day Is fairer far in May: Although it fall and die that night, It was the plant and flower of light. _Jonson._ V THE JOY OF BATTLE Arm, arm, arm, arm! the scouts are all come in; Keep your ranks close, and now your honours win. Behold from yonder hill the foe appears; Bows, bills, glaives, arrows, shields, and spears! Like a dark wood he comes, or tempest pouring; O view the wings of horse the meadows scouring! The vanguard marches bravely. Hark, the drums! Dub, dub! They meet, they meet, and now the battle comes: See how the arrows fly That darken all the sky! Hark how the trumpets sound! Hark how the hills rebound-- Tara, tara, tara, tara, tara! Hark how the horses charge! in, boys! boys, in! The battle totters; now the wounds begin: O how they cry! O how they die! Room for the valiant Memnon, armed with thunder! See how he breaks the ranks asunder! They fly! they fly! Eumenes has the chase, And brave Polybius makes good his place: To the plains, to the woods, To the rocks, to the floods, They fly for succour. Follow, follow, follow! Hark how the soldiers hollow! Hey, hey! Brave Diocles is dead, And all his soldiers fled; The battle's won, and lost, That many a life hath cost. _Fletcher._ VI IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY Mortality, behold and fear! What a change of flesh is here! Think how many royal bones Sleep beneath this heap of stones! Here they lie had realms and lands, Who now want strength to stir their hands. Here from their pulpits sealed with dust They preach, 'In greatness is no trust.' Here is an acre sown indeed With the richest, royall'st seed That the earth did e'er suck in, Since the first man died for sin. Here the bones of birth have cried, 'Though gods they were, as men they died.' Here are sands, ignoble things, Dropt from the ruined sides of kings. Here's a world of pomp and state, Buried in dust, once dead by fate. _Beaumont._ VII GOING A-MAYING Get up, get up for shame! The blooming morn Upon her wings presents the god unshorn: See how Aurora throws her fair Fresh-quilted colours through the air: Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see The dew-bespangled herb and tree! Each flower has wept and bowed toward the east, Above an hour since, yet you not drest, Nay, not so much as out of bed? When all the birds have matins said, And sung their thankful hymns, 'tis sin, Nay, profanation, to keep in, Whenas a thousand virgins on this day Spring sooner than the lark to fetch in May. Rise, and put on your foliage, and be seen To come forth like the spring-time fresh and green, And sweet as Flora. Take no care For jewels for your gown or hair: Fear not; the leaves will strew Gems in abundance upon you: Besides, the childhood of the day has kept, Against you come, some orient pearls unwept. Come, and receive them while the light Hangs on the dew-locks of the night, And Titan on the eastern hill Retires himself, or else stands still Till you come forth! Wash, dress, be brief in praying: Few beads are best when once we go a-Maying. Come, my Corinna, come; and coming, mark How each field turns a street, each street a park, Made green and trimmed with trees! see how Devotion gives each house a bough Or branch! each porch, each door, ere this, An ark, a tabernacle is, Made up of white-thorn neatly interwove, As if here were those cooler shades of love. Can such delights be in the street And open fields, and we not see 't? Come, we'll abroad: and let's obey The proclamation made for May, And sin no more, as we have done, by staying, But, my Corinna, come, let's go a-Maying. There's not a budding boy or girl this day, But is got up and gone to bring in May. A deal of youth ere this is come Back and with white-thorn laden home. Some have despatched their cakes and cream, Before that we have left to dream: And some have wept and wooed, and plighted troth, And chose their priest, ere we can cast off sloth: Many a green-gown has been given, Many a kiss, both odd and even: Many a glance too has been sent From out the eye, love's firmament: Many a jest told of the keys betraying This night, and locks picked: yet we're not a-Maying. Come, let us go, while we are in our prime, And take the harmless folly of the time! We shall grow old apace, and die Before we know our liberty. Our life is short, and our days run As fast away as does the sun. And, as a vapour or a drop of rain, Once lost can ne'er be found again, So when or you or I are made A fable, song, or fleeting shade, All love, all liking, all delight, Lies drowned with us in endless night. Then, while time serves, and we are but decaying, Come, my Corinna, come, let's go a-Maying. _Herrick._ VIII TO ANTHEA WHO MAY COMMAND HIM ANYTHING Bid me to live, and I will live Thy Protestant to be; Or bid me love and I will give A loving heart to thee. A heart as soft, a heart as kind, A heart as sound and free, As in the whole world thou canst find, That heart I'll give to thee. Bid that heart stay, and it will stay To honour thy decree; Or bid it languish quite away, And 't shall do so for thee. Bid me to weep, and I will weep While I have eyes to see; And, having none, yet I will keep A heart to weep for thee. Bid me despair, and I'll despair Under that cypress-tree; Or bid me die, and I will dare E'en death to die for thee. Thou art my life, my love, my heart, The very eyes of me, And hast command of every part, To live and die for thee. _Herrick._ IX MEMENTO MORI Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright-- The bridal of the earth and sky-- The dew shall weep thy fall to-night, For thou must die. Sweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave, Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye, Thy root is ever in its grave, And thou must die. Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, A box where sweets compacted lie, My music shows ye have your closes, And all must die. Only a sweet and virtuous soul Like seasoned timber never gives, But, though the whole world turn to coal, Then chiefly lives. _Herbert._ X THE KING OF KINGS The glories of our birth and state Are shadows, not substantial things: There is no armour against fate: Death lays his icy hand on kings: Sceptre and crown Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made With the poor crookèd scythe and spade. Some men with swords may reap the field, And plant fresh laurels when they kill, But their strong nerves at last must yield: They tame but one another still. Early or late They stoop to fate, And must give up their murmuring breath When they, pale captives, creep to death. The garlands wither on their brow-- Then boast no more your mighty deeds! Upon Death's purple altar now See where the victor-victim bleeds! All heads must come To the cold tomb: Only the actions of the just Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust. _Shirley._ XI LYCIDAS Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more, Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, And with forced fingers rude Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, Compels me to disturb your season due: For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer: Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew Himself to sing and build the lofty rhyme. He must not float upon his watery bier Unwept, and welter to the parching wind, Without the meed of some melodious tear. Begin, then, sisters of the sacred well, That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring; Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string; Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse: So may some gentle Muse With lucky words favour my destined urn, And, as he passes, turn And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud! For we were nursed upon the selfsame hill, Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill. Together both, ere the high lawns appeared Under the opening eyelids of the morn, We drove afield, and both together heard What time the grey-fly winds her sultry horn Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night, Oft till the star that rose at evening bright Towards heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel. Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute, Tempered to the oaten flute; Rough satyrs danced, and fauns with cloven heel From the glad sound would not be absent long; And old Damoetas loved to hear our song. But O the heavy change, now thou art gone, Now thou art gone, and never must return! Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown, And all their echoes, mourn. The willows and the hazel copses green Shall now no more be seen Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays, As killing as the canker to the rose, Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze, Or frost to flowers that their gay wardrobe wear When first the white-thorn blows, Such, Lycidas, thy loss to Shepherds' ear. Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas? For neither were ye playing on the steep Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie, Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high, Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream: Ay me! I fondly dream 'Had ye been there,' ... for what could that have done? What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore, The Muse herself, for her enchanting son Whom universal nature did lament, When by the rout that made the hideous roar His gory visage down the stream was sent, Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore? Alas! what boots it with incessant care To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless Muse? Were it not better done, as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair? Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with the abhorrèd shears, And slits the thin-spun life. 'But not the praise,' Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears: 'Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glistering foil Set off to the world nor in broad rumour lies, But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes And perfect witness of all-judging Jove; As he pronounces lastly on each deed, Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed.' O fountain Arethuse, and thou honoured flood, Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds, That strain I heard was of a higher mood! But now my oat proceeds, And listens to the Herald of the Sea That came in Neptune's plea. He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds, What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain? And questioned every gust of rugged wings That blows from off each beakèd promontory: They knew not of his story, And sage Hippotades their answer brings, That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed: The air was calm, and on the level brine Sleek Panope with all her sisters played. It was that fatal and perfidious bark, Built in the eclipse and rigged with curses dark, That sunk so low that sacred head of thine. Next, Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow, His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge, Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe. 'Ah! who hath reft,' quoth he, 'my dearest pledge?' Last came, and last did go, The Pilot of the Galilean Lake; Two massy keys he bore of metals twain (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain). He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake: 'How well could I have spared for thee, young swain, Enow of such as for their bellies' sake Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold! Of other care they little reckoning make Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, And shove away the worthy bidden guest; Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook, or have learnt aught else the least That to the faithful herdman's art belongs! What recks it them? What need they? They are sped; And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw; The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread: Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw Daily devours apace, and nothing said: But that two-handed engine at the door Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.' Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse, And call the vales, and bid them hither cast Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues. Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks; Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers, And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe and pale jessamine, The white pink and the pansy freaked with jet, The glowing violet, The musk-rose and the well-attired woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every flower that sad embroidery wears: Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed, And daffadillies fill their cups with tears, To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies. For, so to interpose a little ease, Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise; Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled; Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world; Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied, Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old, Where the great vision of the guarded mount Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold; Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth: And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth. Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more, For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky: So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high, Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves, Where, other groves and other streams along, With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves, And hears the unexpressive nuptial song, In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love There entertain him all the Saints above, In solemn troops and sweet societies That sing, and singing in their glory move, And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes. Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more; Henceforth thou art the genius of the shore In thy large recompense, and shalt be good To all that wander in that perilous flood. Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills, While the still morn went out with sandals grey; He touched the tender stops of various quills, With eager thought warbling his Doric lay: And now the sun had stretched out all the hills, And now was dropt into the western bay: At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue; To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new. _Milton._ XII ARMS AND THE MUSE WHEN THE ASSAULT WAS INTENDED ON THE CITY Captain, or Colonel, or Knight in Arms, Whose chance on these defenceless doors may seize, If deed of honour did thee ever please, Guard them, and him within protect from harms. He can requite thee; for he knows the charms That call fame on such gentle acts as these, And he can spread thy name o'er land and seas, Whatever clime the sun's bright circle warms. Lift not thy spear against the Muses' bower: The great Emanthian conqueror bid spare The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower Went to the ground; and the repeated air Of sad Electra's poet had the power To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare. _Milton._ XIII TO THE LORD GENERAL Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud Not of war only, but detractions rude, Guided by faith and matchless fortitude, To peace and truth thy glorious way hast ploughed, And on the neck of crownèd Fortune proud Hast reared God's trophies, and his work pursued, While Darwen stream, with blood of Scots imbrued, And Dunbar field, resounds thy praises loud, And Worcester's laureate wreath: yet much remains To conquer still; peace hath her victories No less renowned than war: new foes arise, Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains. Help us to save free conscience from the paw Of hireling wolves whose gospel is their maw. _Milton._ XIV THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold; Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones, Forget not: in thy book record their groans Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that rolled Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans The vales redoubled to the hills, and they To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway The triple Tyrant; that from these may grow A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way, Early may fly the Babylonian woe. _Milton._ XV ON HIS BLINDNESS When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest He, returning, chide; 'Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?' I fondly ask: but patience, to prevent That murmur soon replies: 'God doth not need Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest; They also serve who only stand and wait.' _Milton._ XVI EYELESS AT GAZA This, this is he; softly a while; Let us not break in upon him. O change beyond report, thought, or belief! See how he lies at random, carelessly diffused With languished head unpropt, As one past hope, abandonèd, And by himself given over, In slavish habit, ill-fitted weeds O'er-worn and soiled. Or do my eyes misrepresent? Can this be he, That heroic, that renowned, Irresistible Samson? whom unarmed No strength of man or fiercest wild beast could withstand; Who tore the lion, as the lion tears the kid; Ran on embattled armies clad in iron, And, weaponless himself, Made arms ridiculous, useless the forgery Of brazen shield and spear, the hammered cuirass, Chalybean-tempered steel, and frock of mail Adamantéan proof: But safest he who stood aloof, When insupportably his foot advanced, In scorn of their proud arms and warlike tools, Spurned them to death by troops. The bold Ascalonite Fled from his lion ramp; old warriors turned Their plated backs under his heel, Or grovelling soiled their crested helmets in the dust. _Milton._ XVII OUT OF ADVERSITY O how comely it is, and how reviving To the spirits of just men long oppressed, When God into the hands of their deliverer Puts invincible might To quell the mighty of the earth, the oppressor, The brute and boisterous force of violent men, Hardy and industrious to support Tyrannic power, but raging to pursue The righteous and all such as honour truth! He all their ammunition And feats of war defeats, With plain heroic magnitude of mind And celestial vigour armed; Their armouries and magazines contemns, Renders them useless, while With wingèd expedition Swift as the lightning glance he executes His errand on the wicked, who, surprised, Lose their defence, distracted and amazed. _Milton._ XVIII HEROIC LOVE My dear and only love, I pray That little world of thee Be governed by no other sway But purest monarchy; For if confusion have a part, Which virtuous souls abhor, And hold a synod in thy heart, I'll never love thee more. Like Alexander I will reign, And I will reign alone: My thoughts did evermore disdain A rival on my throne. He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, Who dares not put it to the touch, To gain or lose it all. But, if thou wilt prove faithful then And constant of thy word, I'll make thee glorious by my pen, And famous by my sword; I'll serve thee in such noble ways Was never heard before; I'll crown and deck thee all with bays And love thee more and more. _Montrose._ XIX GOING TO THE WARS Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind, That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind To war and arms I fly. True, a new mistress now I chase, The first foe in the field, And with a stronger faith embrace A sword, a horse, a shield. Yet this inconstancy is such As you too shall adore: I could not love thee, Dear, so much Loved I not Honour more. _Lovelace._ XX FROM PRISON When Love with unconfinèd wings Hovers within my gates, And my divine Althea brings To whisper at the grates; When I lie tangled in her hair And fettered to her eye, The Gods that wanton in the air Know no such liberty. When flowing cups run swiftly round With no allaying Thames, Our careless heads with roses crowned, Our hearts with loyal flames; When thirsty grief in wine we steep, When healths and draughts go free, Fishes that tipple in the deep Know no such liberty. When, linnet-like confinèd, I With shriller throat shall sing The sweetness, mercy, majesty, And glories of my King; When I shall voice aloud how good He is, how great should be, Enlargèd winds that curl the flood Know no such liberty. Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage: If I have freedom in my love And in my soul am free, Angels alone that soar above Enjoy such liberty. _Lovelace._ XXI TWO KINGS The forward youth that would appear Must now forsake his Muses dear, Nor in the shadows sing His numbers languishing. 'Tis time to leave the books in dust, And oil the unusèd armour's rust, Removing from the wall The corselet of the hall. So restless Cromwell could not cease In the inglorious arts of peace, But through adventurous war Urgèd his active star; And, like the three-forked lightning, first Breaking the clouds where it was nurst, Did thorough his own side His fiery way divide; For 'tis all one to courage high, The emulous or enemy, And with such to inclose Is more than to oppose; Then burning through the air he went, And palaces and temples rent; And Cæsar's head at last Did through his laurels blast. 'Tis madness to resist or blame The face of angry Heaven's flame; And if we would speak true, Much to the man is due, Who from his private gardens, where He lived reservèd and austere, As if his highest plot To plant the bergamot, Could by industrious valour climb To ruin the great work of Time, And cast the kingdoms old Into another mould. Though Justice against Fate complain, And plead the ancient rights in vain (But those do hold or break, As men are strong or weak), Nature, that hated emptiness, Allows of penetration less, And therefore must make room Where greater spirits come. What field of all the civil war, Where his were not the deepest scar? And Hampton shows what part He had of wiser art, Where, twining subtile fears with hope, He wove a net of such a scope That Charles himself might chase To Carisbrook's narrow case, That thence the royal actor borne The tragic scaffold might adorn: While round the armèd bands, Did clap their bloody hands. He nothing common did or mean Upon that memorable scene, But with his keener eye The axe's edge did try; Nor called the gods with vulgar spite To vindicate his helpless right, But bowed his comely head Down, as upon a bed. This was that memorable hour Which first assured the forcèd power: So, when they did design The Capitol's first line, A bleeding head, where they begun, Did fright the architects to run; And yet in that the State Foresaw its happy fate! And now the Irish are ashamed To see themselves in one year tamed: So much one man can do That doth both act and know. They can affirm his praises best, And have, though overcome, confessed How good he is, how just, And fit for highest trust; Nor yet grown stiffer with command, But still in the Republic's hand (How fit he is to sway, That can so well obey!), He to the Commons' feet presents A kingdom for his first year's rents, And (what he may) forbears His fame to make it theirs: And has his sword and spoils ungirt To lay them at the public's skirt. So when the falcon high Falls heavy from the sky, She, having killed, no more doth search But on the next green bough to perch, Where, when he first does lure, The falconer has her sure. What may not then our isle presume While victory his crest does plume? What may not others fear If thus he crowns each year? As Cæsar he, ere long, to Gaul, To Italy an Hannibal, And to all states not free Shall climacteric be. The Pict no shelter now shall find Within his party-coloured mind, But from this valour sad Shrink underneath the plaid; Happy if in the tufted brake The English hunter him mistake, Nor lay his hounds in near The Caledonian deer. But thou, the war's and fortune's son, March indefatigably on, And for the last effect, Still keep the sword erect: Besides the force it has to fright The spirits of the shady night, The same arts that did gain, A power must it maintain. _Marvell._ XXII IN EXILE Where the remote Bermudas ride In the Ocean's bosom unespied, From a small boat that rowed along The listening winds received this song. 'What should we do but sing his praise That led us through the watery maze, Where he the huge sea-monsters wracks That lift the deep upon their backs, Unto an isle so long unknown, And yet far kinder than our own? He lands us on a grassy stage, Safe from the storms and prelates' rage: He gave us this eternal spring Which here enamels everything, And sends the fowls to us in care On daily visits through the air. He hangs in shades the orange bright Like golden lamps in a green night, And does in the pomegranates close Jewels more rich than Ormus shows: He makes the figs our mouths to meet, And throws the melons at our feet; But apples plants of such a price, No tree could ever bear them twice. With cedars chosen by his hand From Lebanon he stores the land, And makes the hollow seas that roar Proclaim the ambergrease on shore. He cast (of which we rather boast) The Gospel's pearl upon our coast, And in these rocks for us did frame A temple where to sound his name. O let our voice his praise exalt 'Till it arrive at heaven's vault, Which thence (perhaps) rebounding may Echo beyond the Mexique Bay!' Thus sang they in the English boat A holy and a cheerful note: And all the way, to guide their chime, With falling oars they kept the time. _Marvell._ XXIII ALEXANDER'S FEAST 'Twas at the royal feast for Persia won By Philip's warlike son: Aloft in awful state The godlike hero sate On his imperial throne; His valiant peers were placed around, Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound (So should desert in arms be crowned); The lovely Thais by his side Sate like a blooming Eastern bride In flower of youth and beauty's pride. Happy, happy, happy pair! None but the brave, None but the brave, None but the brave deserves the fair! Timotheus, placed on high Amid the tuneful quire, With flying fingers touched the lyre: The trembling notes ascend the sky And heavenly joys inspire. The song began from Jove Who left his blissful seats above, Such is the power of mighty love! A dragon's fiery form belied the god; Sublime on radiant spires he rode When he to fair Olympia pressed, And while he sought her snowy breast, Then round her slender waist he curled, And stamped an image of himself, a sovereign of the world. The listening crowd admire the lofty sound; A present deity! they shout around: A present deity! the vaulted roofs rebound: With ravished ears The monarch hears, Assumes the god; Affects to nod And seems to shake the spheres. The praise of Bacchus then the sweet musician sung, Of Bacchus ever fair and ever young: The jolly god in triumph comes; Sound the trumpets, beat the drums! Flushed with a purple grace He shows his honest face: Now give the hautboys breath; he comes, he comes! Bacchus, ever fair and young, Drinking joys did first ordain; Bacchus' blessings are a treasure, Drinking is the soldier's pleasure: Rich the treasure, Sweet the pleasure, Sweet is pleasure after pain. Soothed with the sound the king grew vain; Fought all his battles o'er again, And thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice he slew the slain! The master saw the madness rise, His glowing cheeks, his ardent eyes; And while he heaven and earth defied Changed his hand, and checked his pride. He chose a mournful Muse Soft pity to infuse: He sung Darius great and good, By too severe a fate Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen, Fallen from his high estate, And weltering in his blood; Deserted at his utmost need By those his former bounty fed, On the bare earth exposed he lies With not a friend to close his eyes. With downcast looks the joyless victor sate, Revolving in his altered soul The various turns of Chance below And now and then a sigh he stole, And tears began to flow. The mighty master smiled to see That love was in the next degree; 'Twas but a kindred-sound to move, For pity melts the mind to love. Softly sweet, in Lydian measures Soon he soothed his soul to pleasures. War, he sang, is toil and trouble, Honour but an empty bubble; Never ending, still beginning, Fighting still, and still destroying; If the world be worth thy winning, Think, O think, it worth enjoying: Lovely Thais sits beside thee, Take the good the gods provide thee. The many rend the skies with loud applause; So love was crowned, but Music won the cause. The prince, unable to conceal his pain, Gazed on the fair Who caused his care, And sighed and looked, sighed and looked, Sighed and looked, and sighed again: At length, with love and wine at once oppressed, The vanquished victor sunk upon her breast. Now strike the golden lyre again: A louder yet, and yet a louder strain! Break his bands of sleep asunder And rouse him like a rattling peal of thunder. Hark, hark! the horrid sound Has raised up his head; As awaked from the dead, And amazed he stares around. Revenge, revenge, Timotheus cries, See the Furies arise! See the snakes that they rear, How they hiss in their hair, And the sparkles that flash from their eyes! Behold a ghastly band, Each a torch in his hand! Those are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were slain And unburied remain Inglorious on the plain: Give the vengeance due To the valiant crew! Behold how they toss their torches on high, How they point to the Persian abodes And glittering temples of their hostile gods. The princes applaud with a furious joy: And the King seized a flambeau with zeal to destroy; Thais led the way To light him to his prey, And like another Helen fired another Troy! Thus long ago, Ere heaving bellows learned to blow, While organs yet were mute, Timotheus, to his breathing flute And sounding lyre, Could swell the soul to rage or kindle soft desire. At last divine Cecilia came, Inventress of the vocal frame; The sweet enthusiast from her sacred store Enlarged the former narrow bounds, And added length to solemn sounds, With Nature's mother-wit and arts unknown before Let old Timotheus yield the prize, Or both divide the crown: He raised a mortal to the skies; She drew an angel down. _Dryden._ XXIV THE QUIET LIFE Condemned to Hope's delusive mine, As on we toil from day to day, By sudden blast or slow decline Our social comforts drop away. Well tried through many a varying year, See Levett to the grave descend: Officious, innocent, sincere, Of every friendless name the friend. Yet still he fills affection's eye, Obscurely wise and coarsely kind; Nor, lettered arrogance, deny Thy praise to merit unrefined. When fainting Nature called for aid, And hovering death prepared the blow, His vigorous remedy displayed The power of art without the show. In misery's darkest caverns known, His ready help was ever nigh, Where hopeless anguish poured his groan, And lonely want retired to die. No summons mocked by chill delay, No petty gains disdained by pride: The modest wants of every day The toil of every day supplied. His virtues walked their narrow round, Nor made a pause, nor left a void; And sure the eternal Master found His single talent well employed. The busy day, the peaceful night, Unfelt, uncounted, glided by; His frame was firm, his powers were bright, Though now his eightieth year was nigh. Then, with no throbs of fiery pain, No cold gradations of decay, Death broke at once the vital chain, And freed his soul the nearest way. _Johnson._ XXV CHEVY CHACE THE HUNTING God prosper long our noble king, Our lives and safeties all; A woeful hunting once there did In Chevy-Chace befall; To drive the deer with hound and horn Erle Percy took his way; The child may rue that is unborn, The hunting of that day. The stout Erle of Northumberland A vow to God did make, His pleasure in the Scottish woods Three summer's days to take, The chiefest harts in Chevy-Chace To kill and bear away. These tydings to Erle Douglas came, In Scotland where he lay: Who sent Erle Percy present word, He wold prevent his sport. The English Erle, not fearing that, Did to the woods resort With fifteen hundred bow-men bold, All chosen men of might, Who knew full well in time of neede To ayme their shafts aright. The gallant greyhounds swiftly ran, To chase the fallow deere: On Monday they began to hunt, Ere daylight did appeare; And long before high noone they had An hundred fat buckes slaine; Then having dined, the drovyers went To rouse the deere againe. The bow-men mustered on the hills, Well able to endure; Their backsides all, with special care That day were guarded sure. The hounds ran swiftly through the woods, The nimble deere to take, And with their cryes the hills and dales An echo shrill did make. Lord Percy to the quarry went, To view the slaughtered deere: Quoth he, 'Erle Douglas promisèd This day to meet me here, But if I thought he wold not come, No longer wold I stay.' With that, a brave younge gentleman Thus to the Erle did say: 'Lo, yonder doth Erle Douglas come, His men in armour bright; Full twenty hundred Scottish speares All marching in our sight; All men of pleasant Tivydale, Fast by the river Tweede': 'O, cease your sports,' Erle Percy said, 'And take your bowes with speede; And now with me, my countrymen, Your courage forth advance, For there was never champion yet, In Scotland or in France, That ever did on horsebacke come, But if my hap it were, I durst encounter man for man, And with him break a speare.' THE CHALLENGE Erle Douglas on his milke-white steede, Most like a baron bold, Rode foremost of his company, Whose armour shone like gold. 'Show me,' said he, 'whose men ye be, That hunt so boldly here, That, without my consent, do chase And kill my fallow-deere.' The first man that did answer make, Was noble Percy he; Who sayd, 'We list not to declare, Nor shew whose men we be, Yet we will spend our dearest blood, Thy chiefest harts to slay.' Then Douglas swore a solemn oath, And thus in rage did say: 'Ere thus I will out-bravèd be, One of us two shall dye: I know thee well, an erle thou art; Lord Percy, so am I. But trust me, Percy, pittye it were, And great offence to kill Any of these our guiltlesse men, For they have done no ill. Let thou and I the battell trye, And set our men aside.' 'Accurst be he,' Erle Percy said, 'By whom this is denied.' Then stept a gallant squier forth, Witherington was his name, Who said, 'I wold not have it told To Henry our king for shame, That ere my captaine fought on foote, And I stood looking on. Ye be two erles,' said Witherington, 'And I a squier alone: Ile do the best that do I may, While I have power to stand: While I have power to wield my sword, Ile fight with heart and hand.' THE BATTLE Our English archers bent their bowes, Their hearts were good and trew, At the first flight of arrowes sent, Full fourscore Scots they slew. Yet bides Erle Douglas on the bent, As Chieftain stout and good. As valiant Captain, all unmoved The shock he firmly stood. His host he parted had in three, As leader ware and try'd, And soon his spearmen on their foes Bare down on every side. Throughout the English archery They dealt full many a wound; But still our valiant Englishmen All firmly kept their ground, And, throwing strait their bowes away, They grasped their swords so bright, And now sharp blows, a heavy shower, On shields and helmets light. They closed full fast on every side, No slackness there was found; And many a gallant gentleman Lay gasping on the ground. O Christ! it was a griefe to see, And likewise for to heare, The cries of men lying in their gore, And scattered here and there! At last these two stout erles did meet, Like captaines of great might: Like lions wode, they laid on lode, And made a cruel fight: They fought untill they both did sweat With swords of tempered steele; Until the blood like drops of rain They trickling downe did feele. 'Yield thee, Lord Percy,' Douglas said; 'In faith I will thee bringe, Where thou shalt high advancèd be By James our Scottish king: Thy ransome I will freely give, And this report of thee, Thou art the most courageous knight, That ever I did see.' 'No, Douglas,' quoth Erle Percy then, 'Thy proffer I do scorne; I will not yield to any Scot, That ever yet was borne.' With that, there came an arrow keene Out of an English bow, Which struck Erle Douglas to the heart, A deep and deadly blow: Who never spake more words than these, 'Fight on, my merry men all; For why, my life is at an end; Lord Percy sees my fall.' Then leaving life, Erle Percy tooke The dead man by the hand; And said, 'Erle Douglas, for thy life Wold I had lost my land! O Christ! my very heart doth bleed With sorrow for thy sake, For sure, a more redoubted knight Mischance could never take.' A knight amongst the Scots there was, Which saw Erle Douglas dye, Who straight in wrath did vow revenge Upon the Lord Percye. Sir Hugh Mountgomery was he called Who, with a speare most bright, Well-mounted on a gallant steed, Ran fiercely through the fight, And past the English archers all, Without or dread or feare, And through Erle Percy's body then He thrust his hateful speare. With such a vehement force and might He did his body gore, The staff ran through the other side A large cloth-yard, and more. So thus did both these nobles dye, Whose courage none could staine! An English archer then perceived The noble Erle was slaine: He had a bow bent in his hand, Made of a trusty tree; An arrow of a cloth-yard long Up to the head drew he; Against Sir Hugh Mountgomerye So right the shaft he set, The grey goose-winge that was thereon In his heart's bloode was wet. This fight did last from breake of day Till setting of the sun; For when they rung the evening-bell, The battle scarce was done. THE SLAIN With stout Erle Percy, there was slaine Sir John of Egerton, Sir Robert Ratcliff, and Sir John, Sir James, that bold baròn; And with Sir George and stout Sir James, Both knights of good account, Good Sir Ralph Raby there was slaine, Whose prowesse did surmount. For Witherington needs must I wayle, As one in doleful dumpes; For when his legs were smitten off, He fought upon his stumpes. And with Erle Douglas, there was slaine Sir Hugh Mountgomerye, Sir Charles Murray, that from the field One foote would never flee; Sir Charles Murray, of Ratcliff, too, His sister's sonne was he; Sir David Lamb, so well esteemed, Yet saved he could not be; And the Lord Maxwell in like case Did with Erle Douglas dye: Of twenty hundred Scottish speares, Scarce fifty-five did flye. Of fifteen hundred Englishmen, Went home but fifty-three: The rest were slaine in Chevy-Chace, Under the greene woode tree. Next day did many widdowes come, Their husbands to bewayle; They washt their wounds in brinish teares, But all wold not prevayle; Their bodyes, bathed in purple gore, They bore with them away; They kist them dead a thousand times, Ere they were clad in clay. THE TIDINGS The newes was brought to Eddenborrow, Where Scotland's king did raigne, That brave Erle Douglas suddenlye Was with an arrow slaine: 'O heavy newes,' King James did say, 'Scotland may witnesse be, I have not any captaine more Of such account as he.' Like tydings to King Henry came, Within as short a space, That Percy of Northumberland Was slaine in Chevy-Chace: 'Now God be with him,' said our king, 'Sith it will no better be; I trust I have, within my realme, Five hundred as good as he: Yet shall not Scots nor Scotland say, But I will vengeance take: I'll be revengèd on them all, For brave Erle Percy's sake.' This vow full well the king performed After, at Humbledowne; In one day, fifty knights were slayne, With lords of great renowne, And of the rest, of small account, Did many thousands dye. Thus endeth the hunting of Chevy-Chace, Made by the Erle Percye. God save our king, and bless this land With plentye, joy, and peace, And grant henceforth that foule debate 'Twixt noblemen may cease! XXVI SIR PATRICK SPENS The King sits in Dunfermline town, Drinking the blude-red wine: 'O whaur will I get a skeely skipper To sail this new ship o' mine?' O up and spake an eldern knight, Sat at the King's right knee: 'Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor That ever sailed the sea.' Our King has written a braid letter And sealed it wi' his hand, And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens, Was walking on the strand. 'To Noroway, to Noroway, To Noroway o'er the faem; The King's daughter to Noroway, 'Tis thou maun bring her hame.' The first word that Sir Patrick read, Sae loud, loud lauchèd he; The neist word that Sir Patrick read, The tear blinded his ee. 'O wha is this has done this deed, And tauld the King of me, To send us out at this time o' year To sail upon the sea? Be it wind, be it weet, be it hail, be it sleet, Our ship must sail the faem; The King's daughter to Noroway, 'Tis we must bring her hame.' They hoysed their sails on Monday morn Wi' a' the speed they may; They hae landed in Noroway Upon a Wodensday. They hadna been a week, a week, In Noroway but twae, When that the lords o' Noroway Began aloud to say: 'Ye Scottishmen spend a' our King's goud And a' our Queenis fee.' 'Ye lie, ye lie, ye liars loud, Fu' loud I hear ye lie! For I brought as mickle white monie As gane my men and me, And I brought a half-fou o' gude red goud Out-o'er the sea wi' me. Mak' ready, mak' ready, my merry men a'! Our gude ship sails the morn.' 'Now, ever alake, my master dear, I fear a deadly storm. I saw the new moon late yestreen Wi' the auld moon in her arm; And, if we gang to sea, master, I fear we'll come to harm.' They hadna sailed a league, a league, A league but barely three, When the lift grew dark, and the wind blew loud, And gurly grew the sea. 'O where will I get a gude sailor To tak' my helm in hand, Till I gae up to the tall topmast To see if I can spy land?' 'O here am I, a sailor gude, To tak' the helm in hand, Till you gae up to the tall topmast; But I fear you'll ne'er spy land.' He hadna gane a step, a step, A step but barely ane, When a bolt flew out o' our goodly ship, And the salt sea it came in. 'Gae fetch a web o' the silken claith, Anither o' the twine, And wap them into our ship's side, And letna the sea come in.' They fetched a web o' the silken claith, Anither o' the twine, And they wapped them round that gude ship's side, But still the sea cam' in. O laith, laith were our gude Scots lords To weet their milk-white hands; But lang ere a' the play was ower They wat their gowden bands. O laith, laith were our gude Scots lords To weet their cork-heeled shoon; But lang ere a' the play was played They wat their hats aboon. O lang, lang may the ladies sit Wi' their fans intill their hand, Before they see Sir Patrick Spens Come sailing to the strand! And lang, lang may the maidens sit Wi' their goud kaims in their hair, A' waiting for their ain dear loves! For them they'll see nae mair. Half ower, half ower to Aberdour, It's fifty fathoms deep, And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens Wi' the Scots lords at his feet. XXVII BRAVE LORD WILLOUGHBY The fifteenth day of July, With glistering spear and shield, A famous fight in Flanders Was foughten in the field: The most conspicuous officers Were English captains three, But the bravest man in battel Was brave Lord Willoughby. The next was Captain Norris, A valiant man was he: The other, Captain Turner, From field would never flee. With fifteen hundred fighting men, Alas! there were no more, They fought with forty thousand then Upon the bloody shore. 'Stand to it, noble pikeman, And look you round about: And shoot you right, you bow-men, And we will keep them out: You musquet and cailiver men, Do you prove true to me, I'll be the bravest man in fight,' Says brave Lord Willoughby. And then the bloody enemy They fiercely did assail, And fought it out most furiously, Not doubting to prevail: The wounded men on both sides fell Most piteous for to see, But nothing could the courage quell Of brave Lord Willoughby. For seven hours to all men's view This fight endurèd sore, Until our men so feeble grew That they could fight no more; And then upon dead horses Full savourly they eat, And drank the puddle water, That could no better get. When they had fed so freely, They kneelèd on the ground, And praisèd God devoutly For the favour they had found; And bearing up their colours, The fight they did renew, And cutting tow'rds the Spaniard, Five thousand more they slew. The sharp steel-pointed arrows And bullets thick did fly; Then did our valiant soldiers Charge on most furiously: Which made the Spaniards waver, They thought it best to flee: They feared the stout behaviour Of brave Lord Willoughby. Then quoth the Spanish general, 'Come, let us march away, I fear we shall be spoilèd all If that we longer stay: For yonder comes Lord Willoughby With courage fierce and fell, He will not give one inch of ground For all the devils in hell.' And when the fearful enemy Was quickly put to flight, Our men pursued courageously To rout his forces quite; And at last they gave a shout Which echoed through the sky: 'God, and St. George for England!' The conquerors did cry. This news was brought to England With all the speed might be, And soon our gracious Queen was told Of this same victory. 'O! this is brave Lord Willoughby, My love that ever won: Of all the lords of honour 'Tis he great deeds hath done!' To the soldiers that were maimèd, And wounded in the fray, The queen allowed a pension Of fifteen pence a day, And from all costs and charges She quit and set them free: And this she did all for the sake Of brave Lord Willoughby. Then courage, noble Englishmen, And never be dismayed! If that we be but one to ten, We will not be afraid To fight with foreign enemies, And set our country free. And thus I end the bloody bout Of brave Lord Willoughby. XXVIII HUGHIE THE GRÆME Good Lord Scroope to the hills is gane, Hunting of the fallow deer; And he has grippit Hughie the Græme For stealing of the Bishop's mare. 'Now, good Lord Scroope, this may not be! Here hangs a broadsword by my side; And if that thou canst conquer me, The matter it may soon be tried.' 'I ne'er was afraid of a traitor thief; Although thy name be Hughie the Græme, I'll make thee repent thee of thy deeds, If God but grant me life and time.' But as they were dealing their blows so free, And both so bloody at the time, Over the moss came ten yeomen so tall, All for to take bold Hughie the Græme. O then they grippit Hughie the Græme, And brought him up through Carlisle town: The lads and lasses stood on the walls, Crying, 'Hughie the Græme, thou'se ne'er gae down!' 'O loose my right hand free,' he says, 'And gie me my sword o' the metal sae fine, He's no in Carlisle town this day Daur tell the tale to Hughie the Græme.' Up then and spake the brave Whitefoord, As he sat by the Bishop's knee, 'Twenty white owsen, my gude lord, If ye'll grant Hughie the Græme to me.' 'O haud your tongue,' the Bishop says, 'And wi' your pleading let me be; For tho' ten Grahams were in his coat, They suld be hangit a' for me.' Up then and spake the fair Whitefoord, As she sat by the Bishop's knee, 'A peck o' white pennies, my good lord, If ye'll grant Hughie the Græme to me.' 'O haud your tongue now, lady fair, Forsooth, and so it sall na be; Were he but the one Graham of the name, He suld be hangit high for me.' They've ta'en him to the gallows knowe, He lookèd to the gallows tree, Yet never colour left his cheek, Nor ever did he blink his e'e. He lookèd over his left shoulder To try whatever he could see, And he was aware of his auld father, Tearing his hair most piteouslie. 'O haud your tongue, my father dear, And see that ye dinna weep for me! For they may ravish me o' my life, But they canna banish me fro' Heaven hie. And ye may gie my brither John My sword that's bent in the middle clear, And let him come at twelve o'clock, And see me pay the Bishop's mare. And ye may gie my brither James My sword that's bent in the middle brown, And bid him come at four o'clock, And see his brither Hugh cut down. And ye may tell my kith and kin I never did disgrace their blood; And when they meet the Bishop's cloak, To mak' it shorter by the hood.' XXIX KINMONT WILLIE THE CAPTURE O have ye na heard o' the fause Sakelde? O have ye na heard o' the keen Lord Scroope? How they hae ta'en bold Kinmont Willie, On Haribee to hang him up? Had Willie had but twenty men, But twenty men as stout as he, Fause Sakelde had never the Kinmont ta'en, Wi' eight score in his cumpanie. They band his legs beneath the steed, They tied his hands behind his back; They guarded him fivesome on each side, And they brought him ower the Liddel-rack. They led him thro' the Liddel-rack, And also thro' the Carlisle sands; They brought him on to Carlisle castle To be at my Lord Scroope's commands. 'My hands are tied, but my tongue is free, And wha will dare this deed avow? Or answer by the Border law? Or answer to the bold Buccleuch?' 'Now haud thy tongue, thou rank reiver! There's never a Scot shall set thee free: Before ye cross my castle yett, I trow ye shall take farewell o' me.' 'Fear na ye that, my lord,' quo' Willie: 'By the faith o' my body, Lord Scroope,' he said, 'I never yet lodged in a hostelrie But I paid my lawing before I gaed.' THE KEEPER'S WRATH Now word is gane to the bold Keeper, In Branksome Ha' where that he lay, That Lord Scroope has ta'en the Kinmont Willie, Between the hours of night and day. He has ta'en the table wi' his hand, He garred the red wine spring on hie: 'Now a curse upon my head,' he said, 'But avengèd of Lord Scroope I'll be! O is my basnet a widow's curch? Or my lance a wand of the willow-tree? Or my arm a lady's lily hand, That an English lord should lightly me! And have they ta'en him, Kinmont Willie, Against the truce of Border tide? And forgotten that the bold Buccleuch Is keeper here on the Scottish side? And have they e'en ta'en him, Kinmont Willie, Withouten either dread or fear? And forgotten that the bold Buccleuch Can back a steed or shake a spear? O were there war between the lands, As well I wot that there is none, I would slight Carlisle castle high, Though it were builded of marble stone. I would set that castle in a lowe, And slocken it with English blood! There's never a man in Cumberland Should ken where Carlisle castle stood. But since nae war's between the lands, And there is peace, and peace should be, I'll neither harm English lad or lass, And yet the Kinmont freed shall be!' THE MARCH He has called him forty Marchmen bold, I trow they were of his ain name, Except Sir Gilbert Elliot, called The Laird of Stobs, I mean the same. He has called him forty Marchmen bold, Were kinsmen to the bold Buccleuch; With spur on heel, and splent on spauld, And gluves of green, and feathers blue. There were five and five before them a', Wi' hunting-horns and bugles bright: And five and five cam' wi' Buccleuch, Like warden's men, arrayed for fight. And five and five like a mason gang That carried the ladders lang and hie; And five and five like broken men; And so they reached the Woodhouselee. And as we crossed the 'Bateable Land, When to the English side we held, The first o' men that we met wi', Whae suld it be but fause Sakelde? 'Where be ye gaun, ye hunters keen?' Quo' fause Sakelde; 'come tell to me!' 'We go to hunt an English stag Has trespassed on the Scots countrie.' 'Where be ye gaun, ye marshal men?' Quo' fause Sakelde; 'come tell me true!' 'We go to catch a rank reiver Has broken faith wi' the bold Buccleuch.' 'Where are ye gaun, ye mason lads, Wi' a' your ladders lang and hie?' 'We gang to herry a corbie's nest That wons not far frae Woodhouselee.' 'Where be ye gaun, ye broken men?' Quo' fause Sakelde; 'come tell to me!' Now Dickie of Dryhope led that band, And the never a word of lear had he. 'Why trespass ye on the English side? Row-footed outlaws, stand!' quo' he; The never a word had Dickie to say, Sae he thrust the lance through his fause bodie. Then on we held for Carlisle toun, And at Staneshaw-Bank the Eden we crossed; The water was great and meikle of spait, But the never a horse nor man we lost. And when we reached the Staneshaw-Bank, The wind was rising loud and hie; And there the Laird garred leave our steeds, For fear that they should stamp and neigh. And when we left the Staneshaw-Bank, The wind began full loud to blaw; But 'twas wind and weet, and fire and sleet, When we came beneath the castle wa'. We crept on knees, and held our breath, Till we placed the ladders against the wa'; And sae ready was Buccleuch himsell To mount the first before us a'. He has ta'en the watchman by the throat, He flung him down upon the lead: 'Had there not been peace between our lands, Upon the other side thou'dst gaed! Now sound out, trumpets!' quo' Buccleuch; 'Let's waken Lord Scroope right merrilie!' Then loud the warden's trumpet blew _O wha dare meddle wi' me?_ THE RESCUE Then speedilie to wark we gaed, And raised the slogan ane and a', And cut a hole through a sheet of lead, And so we wan to the castle ha'. They thought King James and a' his men Had won the house wi' bow and spear; It was but twenty Scots and ten That put a thousand in sic a stear! Wi' coulters and wi' forehammers We garred the bars bang merrilie, Until we came to the inner prison, Where Willie o' Kinmont he did lie. And when we cam' to the lower prison, Where Willie o' Kinmont he did lie: 'O sleep ye, wake ye, Kinmont Willie, Upon the morn that thou's to die?' 'O I sleep saft, and I wake aft; It's lang since sleeping was fleyed frae me! Gie my service back to my wife and bairns, And a' gude fellows that spier for me.' Then Red Rowan has hente him up, The starkest man in Teviotdale: 'Abide, abide now, Red Rowan, Till of my Lord Scroope I take farewell. Farewell, farewell, my gude Lord Scroope! My gude Lord Scroope, farewell!' he cried; 'I'll pay you for my lodging maill, When first we meet on the Border side.' Then shoulder high with shout and cry We bore him down the ladder lang; At every stride Red Rowan made, I wot the Kinmont's airns played clang. 'O mony a time,' quo' Kinmont Willie, 'I have ridden horse baith wild and wood; But a rougher beast than Red Rowan I ween my legs have ne'er bestrode. And mony a time,' quo' Kinmont Willie, 'I've pricked a horse out oure the furs; But since the day I backed a steed, I never wore sic cumbrous spurs!' We scarce had won the Staneshaw-Bank When a' the Carlisle bells were rung, And a thousand men on horse and foot Cam' wi' the keen Lord Scroope along. Buccleuch has turned to Eden Water, Even where it flowed frae bank to brim, And he has plunged in wi' a' his band, And safely swam them through the stream. He turned him on the other side, And at Lord Scroope his glove flung he: 'If ye like na my visit in merrie England, In fair Scotland come visit me!' All sore astonished stood Lord Scroope, He stood as still as rock of stane; He scarcely dared to trew his eyes, When through the water they had gane. 'He is either himsell a devil frae hell, Or else his mother a witch maun be; I wadna have ridden that wan water For a' the gowd in Christentie.' XXX THE HONOUR OF BRISTOL Attend you, and give ear awhile, And you shall understand Of a battle fought upon the seas By a ship of brave command. The fight it was so glorious Men's hearts it did ful-fill, And it made them cry, 'To sea, to sea, With the Angel Gabriel!' This lusty ship of Bristol Sailed out adventurously Against the foes of England, Her strength with them to try; Well victualled, rigged, and manned she was, With good provision still, Which made men cry, 'To sea, to sea, With the Angel Gabriel!' The Captain, famous Netherway (That was his noble name): The Master--he was called John Mines-- A mariner of fame: The Gunner, Thomas Watson, A man of perfect skill: With many another valiant heart In the Angel Gabriel. They waving up and down the seas Upon the ocean main, 'It is not long ago,' quoth they, 'That England fought with Spain: O would the Spaniard we might meet Our stomachs to fulfil! We would play him fair a noble bout With our Angel Gabriel!' They had no sooner spoken But straight appeared in sight Three lusty Spanish vessels Of warlike trim and might; With bloody resolution They thought our men to spill, And they vowed that they would make a prize Of our Angel Gabriel. Our gallant ship had in her Full forty fighting men: With twenty piece of ordnance We played about them then, With powder, shot, and bullets Right well we worked our will, And hot and bloody grew the fight With our Angel Gabriel. Our Captain to our Master said, 'Take courage, Master bold!' Our Master to the seamen said, 'Stand fast, my hearts of gold!' Our Gunner unto all the rest, 'Brave hearts, be valiant still! Fight on, fight on in the defence Of our Angel Gabriel!' We gave them such a broadside, It smote their mast asunder, And tore the bowsprit off their ship, Which made the Spaniards wonder, And causèd them in fear to cry, With voices loud and shrill, 'Help, help, or sunken we shall be By the Angel Gabriel!' So desperately they boarded us For all our valiant shot, Threescore of their best fighting men Upon our decks were got; And lo! at their first entrances Full thirty did we kill, And thus we cleared with speed the deck Of our Angel Gabriel. With that their three ships boarded us Again with might and main, But still our noble Englishmen Cried out, 'A fig for Spain!' Though seven times they boarded us At last we showed our skill, And made them feel what men we were On the Angel Gabriel. Seven hours this fight continued: So many men lay dead, With Spanish blood for fathoms round The sea was coloured red. Five hundred of their fighting men We there outright did kill, And many more were hurt and maimed By our Angel Gabriel. Then, seeing of these bloody spoils, The rest made haste away: For why, they said, it was no boot The longer there to stay. Then they fled into Calès, Where lie they must and will For fear lest they should meet again With our Angel Gabriel. We had within our English ship But only three men slain, And five men hurt, the which I hope Will soon be well again. At Bristol we were landed, And let us praise God still, That thus hath blest our lusty hearts And our Angel Gabriel. XXXI HELEN OF KIRKCONNELL I wish I were where Helen lies, Night and day on me she cries; O that I were where Helen lies, On fair Kirkconnell lea! Curst be the heart that thought the thought, And curst the hand that fired the shot, When in my arms burd Helen dropt, And died to succour me! O thinkna ye my heart was sair When my love dropt down, and spak' nae mair? There did she swoon wi' meikle care, On fair Kirkconnell lea. As I went down the water side, None but my foe to be my guide, None but my foe to be my guide On fair Kirkconnell lea; I lighted down my sword to draw, I hackèd him in pieces sma', I hackèd him in pieces sma' For her sake that died for me. O Helen fair beyond compare! I'll mak' a garland o' thy hair, Shall bind my heart for evermair, Until the day I dee! O that I were where Helen lies! Night and day on me she cries; Out of my bed she bids me rise, Says, 'Haste, and come to me!' O Helen fair! O Helen chaste! If I were with thee I were blest, Where thou lies low and takes thy rest, On fair Kirkconnell lea. I wish my grave were growing green, A winding-sheet drawn ower my e'en, And I in Helen's arms lying On fair Kirkconnell lea. I wish I were where Helen lies! Night and day on me she cries, And I am weary of the skies For her sake that died for me. XXXII THE TWA CORBIES As I was walking all alane, I heard twa corbies making a mane: The tane unto the tither say, 'Where sall we gang and dine the day?' 'In behint yon auld fail dyke I wot there lies a new-slain knight; And naebody kens that he lies there But his hawk, his hound, and his lady fair. His hound is to the hunting gane, His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame, His lady's ta'en another mate, Sae we may mak' our dinner sweet. Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane, And I'll pike out his bonny blue e'en: Wi' ae lock o' his gowden hair We'll theek our nest when it grows bare. Mony a one for him makes mane, But nane sall ken where he is gane: O'er his white banes, when they are bare, The wind sall blaw for evermair.' XXXIII THE BARD 'Ruin seize thee, ruthless King! Confusion on thy banners wait! Though fanned by Conquest's crimson wing They mock the air with idle state. Helm, nor hauberk's twisted mail, Nor e'en thy virtues, tyrant, shall avail To save thy secret soul from nightly fears, From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears!' Such were the sounds that o'er the crested pride Of the first Edward scattered wild dismay, As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side He wound with toilsome march his long array: Stout Glo'ster stood aghast in speechless trance; 'To arms!' cried Mortimer, and couched his quivering lance. On a rock, whose haughty brow Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood, Robed in the sable garb of woe With haggard eyes the Poet stood (Loose his beard and hoary hair Streamed like a meteor to the troubled air), And with a master's hand and prophet's fire Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre: 'Hark, how each giant oak and desert-cave Sighs to the torrent's awful voice beneath! O'er thee, O King! their hundred arms they wave, Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe; Vocal no more, since Cambria's fatal day, To high-born Hoel's harp or soft Llewellyn's lay. 'Cold is Cadwallo's tongue That hushed the stormy main: Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed: Mountains, ye mourn in vain Modred, whose magic song Made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-topt head. On dreary Arvon's shore they lie Smeared with gore and ghastly pale: Far, far aloof the affrighted ravens sail; The famished eagle screams, and passes by. Dear lost companions of my tuneful art, Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes, Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart, Ye died amidst your dying country's cries!-- No more I weep. They do not sleep. On yonder cliffs, a grisly band, I see them sit; they linger yet, Avengers of their native land: With me in dreadful harmony they join, And weave with bloody hands the tissue of thy line. 'Weave the warp and weave the woof The winding-sheet of Edward's race: Give ample room and verge enough The characters of hell to trace. Mark the year and mark the night When Severn shall re-echo with affright The shrieks of death through Berkeley's roof that ring, Shrieks of an agonising king! She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs, That tear'st the bowels of thy mangled mate, From thee be born, who o'er thy country hangs The scourge of Heaven! What terrors round him wait! Amazement in his van, with Flight combined, And Sorrow's faded form, and Solitude behind. 'Mighty victor, mighty lord, Low on his funeral couch he lies! No pitying heart, no eye, afford A tear to grace his obsequies. Is the sable warrior fled? Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead. The swarm that in thy noontide beam were born? Gone to salute the rising morn. Fair laughs the Morn, and soft the zephyr blows, While proudly riding o'er the azure realm In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes: Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm: Regardless of the sweeping Whirlwind's sway, That hushed in grim repose expects his evening prey. 'Fill high the sparkling bowl. The rich repast prepare; Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast: Close by the regal chair Fell Thirst and Famine scowl A baleful smile upon their baffled guest. Heard ye the din of battle bray, Lance to lance and horse to horse? Long years of havoc urge their destined course, And through the kindred squadrons mow their way. Ye towers of Julius, London's lasting shame, With many a foul and midnight murder fed, Revere his consort's faith, his father's fame, And spare the meek usurper's holy head! Above, below, the rose of snow, Twined with her blushing foe, we spread: The bristled boar in infant-gore Wallows beneath the thorny shade. Now, brothers, bending o'er the accursed loom, Stamp we our vengeance deep, and ratify his doom. 'Edward, lo! to sudden fate (Weave we the woof; the thread is spun;) Half of thy heart we consecrate. (The web is wove; the work is done.) Stay, O stay! nor thus forlorn Leave me unblessed, unpitied, here to mourn: In yon bright track that fires the western skies They melt, they vanish from my eyes. But O! what solemn scenes on Snowdon's height Descending slow their glittering skirts unroll? Visions of glory, spare my aching sight, Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul! No more our long-lost Arthur we bewail: All hail, ye genuine kings! Britannia's issue, hail! 'Girt with many a baron bold Sublime their starry fronts they rear; And gorgeous dames, and statesmen old In bearded majesty, appear. In the midst a form divine! Her eye proclaims her of the Briton-line: Her lion-port, her awe-commanding face Attempered sweet to virgin grace. What strings symphonious tremble in the air, What strains of vocal transport round her play? Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, hear; They breathe a soul to animate thy clay. Bright Rapture calls and, soaring as she sings, Waves in the eye of Heaven her many-coloured wings. 'The verse adorn again Fierce War and faithful Love And Truth severe, by fairy fiction drest. In buskined measures move Pale Grief and pleasing Pain, With Horror, tyrant of the throbbing breast. A voice as of the cherub-choir Gales from blooming Eden bear, And distant warblings lessen on my ear That lost in long futurity expire. Fond impious man, think'st thou yon sanguine cloud, Raised by thy breath, has quenched the orb of day? To-morrow he repairs the golden flood And warms the nations with redoubled ray. Enough for me: with joy I see The different doom our fates assign: Be thine Despair and sceptred Care, To triumph and to die are mine.' He spoke, and headlong from the mountain's height Deep in the roaring tide he plunged to endless night. _Gray._ XXXIV THE ROYAL GEORGE Toll for the Brave! The brave that are no more! All sunk beneath the wave Fast by their native shore! Eight hundred of the brave, Whose courage well was tried, Had made the vessel heel And laid her on her side. A land-breeze shook the shrouds And she was overset; Down went the Royal George With all her crew complete. Toll for the brave! Brave Kempenfelt is gone; His last sea-fight is fought, His work of glory done. It was not in the battle; No tempest gave the shock; She sprang no fatal leak, She ran upon no rock. His sword was in its sheath, His fingers held the pen, When Kempenfelt went down With twice four hundred men. Weigh the vessel up Once dreaded by our foes! And mingle with our cup The tear that England owes. Her timbers yet are sound, And she may float again Full charged with England's thunder, And plough the distant main: But Kempenfelt is gone, His victories are o'er; And he and his eight hundred Shall plough the wave no more. _Cowper._ XXXV BOADICEA When the British warrior queen, Bleeding from the Roman rods, Sought with an indignant mien Counsel of her country's gods, Sage beneath the spreading oak Sat the Druid, hoary chief, Every burning word he spoke Full of rage, and full of grief: 'Princess! if our aged eyes Weep upon thy matchless wrongs, 'Tis because resentment ties All the terrors of our tongues. Rome shall perish,--write that word In the blood that she has spilt; Perish hopeless and abhorred, Deep in ruin as in guilt. Rome, for empire far renowned, Tramples on a thousand states; Soon her pride shall kiss the ground, Hark! the Gaul is at her gates! Other Romans shall arise Heedless of a soldier's name; Sounds, not arms, shall win the prize, Harmony the path to fame. Then the progeny that springs From the forests of our land, Armed with thunder, clad with wings, Shall a wider world command. Regions Cæsar never knew Thy posterity shall sway; Where his eagles never flew, None invincible as they.' Such the bard's prophetic words, Pregnant with celestial fire, Bending as he swept the chords Of his sweet but awful lyre. She with all a monarch's pride Felt them in her bosom glow, Rushed to battle, fought, and died, Dying, hurled them at the foe: 'Ruffians, pitiless as proud, Heaven awards the vengeance due; Empire is on us bestowed, Shame and ruin wait for you.' _Cowper._ XXXVI TO HIS LADY If doughty deeds my lady please Right soon I'll mount my steed; And strong his arm, and fast his seat That bears frae me the meed. I'll wear thy colours in my cap Thy picture at my heart; And he that bends not to thine eye Shall rue it to his smart! Then tell me how to woo thee, Love; O tell me how to woo thee! For thy dear sake, nae care I'll take, Tho' ne'er another trow me. If gay attire delight thine eye I'll dight me in array; I'll tend thy chamber door all night, And squire thee all the day. If sweetest sounds can win thine ear These sounds I'll strive to catch; Thy voice I'll steal to woo thysell, That voice that nane can match. But if fond love thy heart can gain, I never broke a vow; Nae maiden lays her skaith to me, I never loved but you. For you alone I ride the ring, For you I wear the blue; For you alone I strive to sing, O tell me how to woo! Then tell me how to woo thee, Love; O tell me how to woo thee! For thy dear sake, nae care I'll take, Tho' ne'er another trow me. _Graham of Gartmore._ XXXVII CONSTANCY Blow high, blow low, let tempests tear The mainmast by the board; My heart, with thoughts of thee, my dear, And love well stored, Shall brave all danger, scorn all fear, The roaring winds, the raging sea, In hopes on shore to be once more Safe moored with thee! Aloft while mountains high we go, The whistling winds that scud along, And surges roaring from below, Shall my signal be to think on thee, And this shall be my song: Blow high, blow low-- And on that night, when all the crew, The memory of their former lives O'er flowing cans of flip renew, And drink their sweethearts and their wives, I'll heave a sigh and think on thee, And, as the ship rolls through the sea, The burden of my song shall be: Blow high, blow low-- _Dibdin._ XXXVIII THE PERFECT SAILOR Here, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling, The darling of our crew; No more he'll hear the tempest howling, For death has broached him to. His form was of the manliest beauty, His heart was kind and soft, Faithful, below, he did his duty, But now he's gone aloft. Tom never from his word departed, His virtues were so rare, His friends were many and true-hearted, His Poll was kind and fair; And then he'd sing so blithe and jolly, Ah, many's the time and oft! But mirth is turned to melancholy, For Tom is gone aloft. Yet shall poor Tom find pleasant weather, When He, who all commands, Shall give, to call life's crew together, The word to pipe all hands. Thus Death, who kings and tars despatches, In vain Tom's life has doffed, For, though his body's under hatches His soul has gone aloft. _Dibdin._ XXXIX THE DESERTER If sadly thinking, With spirits sinking, Could more than drinking My cares compose, A cure for sorrow From sighs I'd borrow, And hope to-morrow Would end my woes. But as in wailing There's nought availing, And Death unfailing Will strike the blow, Then for that reason, And for a season, Let us be merry Before we go. To joy a stranger, A way-worn ranger, In every danger My course I've run; Now hope all ending, And Death befriending, His last aid lending, My cares are done: No more a rover, Or hapless lover, My griefs are over, My glass runs low; Then for that reason, And for a season, Let us be merry Before we go! _Curran._ XL THE ARETHUSA Come, all ye jolly sailors bold, Whose hearts are cast in honour's mould, While English glory I unfold, Huzza for the Arethusa! She is a frigate tight and brave, As ever stemmed the dashing wave; Her men are staunch To their fav'rite launch, And when the foe shall meet our fire, Sooner than strike, we'll all expire On board of the Arethusa. 'Twas with the spring fleet she went out The English Channel to cruise about, When four French sail, in show so stout Bore down on the Arethusa. The famed Belle Poule straight ahead did lie, The Arethusa seemed to fly, Not a sheet, or a tack, Or a brace, did she slack; Though the Frenchman laughed and thought it stuff, But they knew not the handful of men, how tough, On board of the Arethusa. On deck five hundred men did dance, The stoutest they could find in France; We with two hundred did advance On board of the Arethusa. Our captain hailed the Frenchman, 'Ho!' The Frenchman then cried out 'Hallo!' 'Bear down, d'ye see, To our Admiral's lee!' 'No, no,' says the Frenchman, 'that can't be!' 'Then I must lug you along with me,' Says the saucy Arethusa. The fight was off the Frenchman's land, We forced them back upon their strand, For we fought till not a stick could stand Of the gallant Arethusa. And now we've driven the foe ashore Never to fight with Britons more, Let each fill his glass To his fav'rite lass; A health to our captain and officers true, And all that belong to the jovial crew On board of the Arethusa. _Prince Hoare._ XLI THE BEAUTY OF TERROR Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, and what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? and what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp? When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did He smile His work to see? Did He who made the lamb make thee? Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? _Blake._ XLII DEFIANCE Farewell, ye dungeons dark and strong, The wretch's destinie: M'Pherson's time will not be long On yonder gallows tree. Sae rantingly, sae wantonly, Sae dauntingly gaed he; He played a spring and danced it round, Below the gallows tree. Oh, what is death but parting breath?-- On monie a bloody plain I've dared his face, and in this place I scorn him yet again! Untie these bands from off my hands, And bring to me my sword! And there's no a man in all Scotland, But I'll brave him at a word. I've lived a life of sturt and strife; I die by treacherie: It burns my heart I must depart And not avengèd be. Now farewell light, thou sunshine bright, And all beneath the sky! May coward shame distain his name, The wretch that dares not die! Sae rantingly, sae wantonly, Sae dauntingly gaed he; He played a spring and danced it round, Below the gallows tree. _Burns._ XLIII THE GOAL OF LIFE Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to min'? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And days o' lang syne? For auld lang syne, my dear, For auld lang syne, We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet For auld lang syne. And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp, And surely I'll be mine; And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet For auld lang syne. We twa hae run about the braes, And pu'd the gowans fine; But we've wandered mony a weary foot Sin' auld lang syne. We twa hae paidled i' the burn From mornin' sun till dine; But seas between us braid hae roared Sin' auld lang syne. And here's a hand, my trusty fiere, And gie's a hand o' thine; And we'll tak a right guid-willie waught For auld lang syne. For auld lang syne, my dear, For auld lang syne, We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet For auld lang syne. _Burns._ XLIV BEFORE PARTING Go fetch to me a pint o' wine, An' fill it in a silver tassie; That I may drink before I go A service to my bonnie lassie. The boat rocks at the pier o' Leith, Fu' loud the wind blaws frae the ferry, The ship rides by the Berwick-law, And I maun leave my bonnie Mary. The trumpets sound, the banners fly, The glittering spears are rankèd ready, The shouts o' war are heard afar, The battle closes thick and bloody; But it's no the roar o' sea or shore Wad mak me langer wish to tarry, Nor shout o' war that's heard afar, It's leaving thee, my bonnie Mary. _Burns._ XLV DEVOTION O Mary, at thy window be, It is the wished, the trysted hour! Those smiles and glances let me see, That mak the miser's treasure poor. How blythely wad I bide the stoure, A weary slave frae sun to sun, Could I the rich reward secure, The lovely Mary Morison! Yestreen, when to the trembling string The dance gaed through the lighted ha', To thee my fancy took its wing, I sat, but neither heard or saw; Tho' this was fair, and that was braw, And yon the toast of a' the toun, I sighed, and said amang them a', 'Ye are na Mary Morison.' O Mary, canst thou wreck his peace, Wha for thy sake wad gladly die? Or canst thou break that heart of his Whase only faut is loving thee? If love for love thou wilt na gie, At least be pity to me shown! A thought ungentle canna be The thought o' Mary Morison. _Burns._ XLVI TRUE UNTIL DEATH It was a' for our rightfu' King, We left fair Scotland's strand; It was a' for our rightfu' King We e'er saw Irish land, My dear, We e'er saw Irish land. Now a' is done that men can do, And a' is done in vain; My love and native land farewell, For I maun cross the main, My dear, For I maun cross the main. He turned him right and round about Upon the Irish shore; And gae his bridle-reins a shake, With adieu for evermore, My dear, Adieu for evermore. The sodger from the wars returns, The sailor frae the main; But I hae parted frae my love, Never to meet again, My dear, Never to meet again. When day is gane, and night is come, And a' folk bound to sleep; I think on him that's far awa, The lee-lang night, and weep, My dear, The lee-lang night, and weep. _Burns._ XLVII VENICE Once did She hold the gorgeous East in fee And was the safeguard of the West: the worth Of Venice did not fall below her birth, Venice, the eldest Child of Liberty. She was a maiden City, bright and free; No guile seduced, no force could violate; And, when she took unto herself a Mate, She must espouse the everlasting Sea. And what if she had seen those glories fade, Those titles vanish, and that strength decay; Yet shall some tribute of regret be paid When her long life hath reached its final day: Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade Of that which once was great is passed away. _Wordsworth._ XLVIII DESTINY It is not to be thought of that the Flood Of British freedom, which, to the open sea Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity Hath flowed, 'with pomp of waters, unwithstood,' Roused though it be full often to a mood Which spurns the check of salutary bands, That this most famous Stream in bogs and sands Should perish; and to evil and to good Be lost for ever. In our halls is hung Armoury of the invincible Knights of old: We must be free or die, who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold Which Milton held. In everything we are sprung Of Earth's first blood, have titles manifold. _Wordsworth._ XLIX THE MOTHERLAND When I have borne in memory what has tamed Great Nations, how ennobling thoughts depart When men change swords for ledgers, and desert The student's bower for gold, some fears unnamed I had, my Country!--am I to be blamed? But when I think of thee, and what thou art, Verily, in the bottom of my heart, Of those unfilial fears I am ashamed. But dearly must we prize thee; we who find In thee a bulwark for the cause of men; And I by my affection was beguiled. What wonder if a Poet now and then, Among the many movements of his mind, Felt for thee as a lover or a child! _Wordsworth._ L IDEAL Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee; she is a fen Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen, Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancient English dower Of inward happiness. We are selfish men; Oh! raise us up, return to us again; And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart: Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on itself did lay. _Wordsworth._ LI TO DUTY Stern Daughter of the Voice of God! O Duty! if that name thou love Who art a light to guide, a rod To check the erring, and reprove; Thou, who art victory and law When empty terrors overawe; From vain temptations dost set free; And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity! There are who ask not if thine eye Be on them; who, in love and truth, Where no misgiving is, rely Upon the genial sense of youth: Glad Hearts! without reproach or blot; Who do thy work, and know it not: May joy be theirs while life shall last! And Thou, if they should totter, teach them to stand fast! Serene will be our days and bright, And happy will our nature be, When love is an unerring light, And joy its own security. And they a blissful course may hold Even now, who, not unwisely bold, Live in the spirit of this creed; Yet find that other strength, according to their need. I, loving freedom, and untried; No sport of every random gust, Yet being to myself a guide, Too blindly have reposed my trust: And oft, when in my heart was heard Thy timely mandate, I deferred The task, in smoother walks to stray; But thee I now would serve more strictly, if I may. Through no disturbance of my soul Or strong compunction in me wrought, I supplicate for thy control; But in the quietness of thought: Me this unchartered freedom tires; I feel the weight of chance-desires: My hopes no more must change their name, I long for a repose that ever is the same. Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear The Godhead's most benignant grace; Nor know we anything so fair As is the smile upon thy face: Flowers laugh before thee on their beds And fragrance in thy footing treads; Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong. To humbler functions, awful Power! I call thee: I myself commend Unto thy guidance from this hour; O let my weakness have an end! Give unto me, made lowly wise, The spirit of self-sacrifice; The confidence of reason give; And in the light of truth thy Bondman let me live! _Wordsworth._ LII TWO VICTORIES I said, when evil men are strong, No life is good, no pleasure long, A weak and cowardly untruth! Our Clifford was a happy Youth, And thankful through a weary time That brought him up to manhood's prime. Again, he wanders forth at will, And tends a flock from hill to hill: His garb is humble; ne'er was seen Such garb with such a noble mien; Among the shepherd grooms no mate Hath he, a Child of strength and state! Yet lacks not friends for simple glee, Nor yet for higher sympathy. To his side the fallow-deer Came, and rested without fear; The eagle, lord of land and sea, Stooped down to pay him fealty; And both the undying fish that swim Through Bowscale-Tarn did wait on him; The pair were servants of his eye In their immortality; And glancing, gleaming, dark or bright, Moved to and fro, for his delight. He knew the rocks which Angels haunt Upon the mountains visitant; He hath kenned them taking wing: And into caves where Faeries sing He hath entered; and been told By Voices how men lived of old. Among the heavens his eye can see The face of thing that is to be; And, if that men report him right, His tongue could whisper words of might. Now another day is come, Fitter hope, and nobler doom; He hath thrown aside his crook, And hath buried deep his book; Armour rusting in his halls On the blood of Clifford calls: 'Quell the Scot!' exclaims the Lance; 'Bear me to the heart of France,' Is the longing of the Shield; Tell thy name, thou trembling field; Field of death, where'er thou be, Groan thou with our victory! Happy day, and mighty hour, When our Shepherd in his power, Mailed and horsed, with lance and sword, To his ancestors restored Like a reappearing Star, Like a glory from afar, First shall head the flock of war! _Wordsworth._ LIII IN MEMORIAM NELSON: PITT: FOX To mute and to material things New life revolving summer brings; The genial call dead Nature hears, And in her glory reappears. But O my Country's wintry state What second spring shall renovate? What powerful call shall bid arise The buried warlike and the wise; The mind that thought for Britain's weal, The hand that grasped the victor steel? The vernal sun new life bestows Even on the meanest flower that blows; But vainly, vainly may he shine, Where glory weeps o'er NELSON's shrine; And vainly pierce the solemn gloom, That shrouds, O PITT, thy hallowed tomb! Deep graved in every British heart, O never let those names depart! Say to your sons,--Lo, here his grave, Who victor died on Gadite wave; To him, as to the burning levin, Short, bright, resistless course was given. Where'er his country's foes were found Was heard the fated thunder's sound, Till burst the bolt on yonder shore, Rolled, blazed, destroyed,--and was no more. Nor mourn ye less his perished worth, Who bade the conqueror go forth, And launched that thunderbolt of war On Egypt, Hafnia, Trafalgar; Who, born to guide such high emprise, For Britain's weal was early wise; Alas! to whom the Almighty gave, For Britain's sins, an early grave! His worth, who in his mightiest hour A bauble held the pride of power, Spurned at the sordid lust of pelf, And served his Albion for herself; Who, when the frantic crowd amain Strained at subjection's bursting rein, O'er their wild mood full conquest gained, The pride he would not crush restrained, Showed their fierce zeal a worthier cause, And brought the freeman's arm to aid the freeman's laws. Hadst thou but lived, though stripped of power, A watchman on the lonely tower, Thy thrilling trump had roused the land, When fraud or danger were at hand; By thee, as by the beacon-light, Our pilots had kept course aright; As some proud column, though alone, Thy strength had propped the tottering throne Now is the stately column broke, The beacon-light is quenched in smoke, The trumpet's silver sound is still, The warder silent on the hill! O think, how to his latest day, When death, just hovering, claimed his prey, With Palinure's unaltered mood Firm at his dangerous post he stood; Each call for needful rest repelled, With dying hand the rudder held, Till in his fall with fateful sway, The steerage of the realm gave way! Then, while on Britain's thousand plains One unpolluted church remains, Whose peaceful bells ne'er sent around The bloody tocsin's maddening sound, But still, upon the hallowed day, Convoke the swains to praise and pray; While faith and civil peace are dear, Grace this cold marble with a tear,-- He, who preserved them, PITT, lies here! Nor yet suppress the generous sigh, Because his rival slumbers nigh; Nor be thy _requiescat_ dumb, Lest it be said o'er FOX's tomb. For talents mourn, untimely lost, When best employed, and wanted most; Mourn genius high, and lore profound, And wit that loved to play, not wound; And all the reasoning powers divine, To penetrate, resolve, combine; And feelings keen, and fancy's glow,-- They sleep with him who sleeps below: And, if thou mourn'st they could not save From error him who owns this grave, Be every harsher thought suppressed, And sacred be the last long rest. _Here_, where the end of earthly things Lays heroes, patriots, bards, and kings; Where stiff the hand, and still the tongue, Of those who fought, and spoke, and sung; _Here_, where the fretted aisles prolong The distant notes of holy song, As if some angel spoke agen, 'All peace on earth, good-will to men'; If ever from an English heart O, _here_ let prejudice depart, And, partial feeling cast aside, Record, that FOX a Briton died! When Europe crouched to France's yoke, And Austria bent, and Prussia broke, And the firm Russian's purpose brave Was bartered by a timorous slave, Even then dishonour's peace he spurned, The sullied olive-branch returned, Stood for his country's glory fast, And nailed her colours to the mast! Heaven, to reward his firmness, gave A portion in this honoured grave, And ne'er held marble in its trust Of two such wondrous men the dust. With more than mortal powers endowed, How high they soared above the crowd! Theirs was no common party race, Jostling by dark intrigue for place; Like fabled Gods, their mighty war Shook realms and nations in its jar; Beneath each banner proud to stand, Looked up the noblest of the land, Till through the British world were known The names of PITT and FOX alone. Spells of such force no wizard grave E'er framed in dark Thessalian cave, Though his could drain the ocean dry, And force the planets from the sky. These spells are spent, and, spent with these The wine of life is on the lees. Genius, and taste, and talent gone, For ever tombed beneath the stone, Where--taming thought to human pride!-- The mighty chiefs sleep side by side. Drop upon FOX's grave the tear, 'Twill trickle to his rival's bier; O'er PITT's the mournful requiem sound, And FOX's shall the notes rebound. The solemn echo seems to cry,-- 'Here let their discord with them die. Speak not for those a separate doom Whom fate made Brothers in the tomb; But search the land of living men, Where wilt thou find their like agen?' _Scott._ LIV LOCHINVAR O, young Lochinvar is come out of the west, Through all the wide Border his steed was the best; And save his good broadsword he weapons had none, He rode all unarmed, and he rode all alone. So faithful in love and so dauntless in war, There never was knight like the young Lochinvar. He staid not for brake, and he stopped not for stone, He swam the Eske river where ford there was none; But ere he alighted at Netherby gate, The bride had consented, the gallant came late; For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war, Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar. So boldly he entered the Netherby Hall, Among bride's-men, and kinsmen, and brothers, and all: Then spoke the bride's father, his hand on his sword, (For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word,) 'O come ye in peace here, or come ye in war, Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?' 'I long wooed your daughter, my suit you denied; Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide; And now am I come with this lost love of mine To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine. There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar.' The bride kissed the goblet: the knight took it up, He quaffed off the wine, and he threw down the cup. She looked down to blush, and she looked up to sigh, With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye. He took her soft hand, ere her mother could bar, 'Now tread we a measure!' said young Lochinvar. So stately his form, and so lovely her face, That never a hall such a galliard did grace; While her mother did fret, and her father did fume, And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume; And the bride-maidens whispered, ''Twere better by far, To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar.' One touch to her hand and one word in her ear, When they reached the hall-door, and the charger stood near; So light to the croup the fair lady he swung, So light to the saddle before her he sprung! 'She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur; They'll have fleet steeds that follow,' quoth young Lochinvar. There was mounting 'mong Græmes of the Netherby clan; Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran: There was racing and chasing on Cannobie Lee, But the lost bride of Netherby ne'er did they see. So daring in love and so dauntless in war, Have ye e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar? _Scott._ LV FLODDEN THE MARCH Next morn the Baron climbed the tower, To view afar the Scottish power Encamped on Flodden edge: The white pavilions made a show, Like remnants of the winter snow, Along the dusky ridge. Long Marmion looked: at length his eye Unusual movement might descry Amid the shifting lines: The Scottish host drawn out appears, For flashing on the hedge of spears The eastern sunbeam shines. Their front now deepening, now extending; Their flank inclining, wheeling, bending, Now drawing back, and now descending, The skilful Marmion well could know, They watched the motions of some foe Who traversed on the plain below. Even so it was. From Flodden ridge The Scots beheld the English host Leave Barmore-wood, their evening post, And heedful watched them as they crossed The Till by Twisel bridge. High sight it is and haughty, while They dive into the deep defile; Beneath the caverned cliff they fall, Beneath the castle's airy wall. By rock, by oak, by hawthorn-tree, Troop after troop are disappearing; Troop after troop their banners rearing Upon the eastern bank you see. Still pouring down the rocky den, Where flows the sullen Till, And rising from the dim-wood glen, Standards on standards, men on men, In slow succession still, And sweeping o'er the Gothic arch, And pressing on in ceaseless march, To gain the opposing hill. That morn to many a trumpet clang, Twisel! thy rocks deep echo rang; And many a chief of birth and rank, Saint Helen! at thy fountain drank. Thy hawthorn glade, which now we see In spring-tide bloom so lavishly, Had then from many an axe its doom, To give the marching columns room. And why stands Scotland idly now, Dark Flodden! on thy airy brow, Since England gains the pass the while, And struggles through the deep defile? What checks the fiery soul of James? Why sits that champion of the dames Inactive on his steed, And sees between him and his land, Between him and Tweed's southern strand, His host Lord Surrey lead? What 'vails the vain knight-errant's brand? O, Douglas, for thy leading wand! Fierce Randolph, for thy speed! O for one hour of Wallace wight, Or well-skilled Bruce, to rule the fight, And cry 'Saint Andrew and our right!' Another sight had seen that morn, From Fate's dark book a leaf been torn, And Flodden had been Bannockburn! The precious hour has passed in vain, And England's host has gained the plain; Wheeling their march, and circling still, Around the base of Flodden hill. THE ATTACK 'But see! look up--on Flodden bent The Scottish foe has fired his tent.' And sudden, as he spoke, From the sharp ridges of the hill, All downward to the banks of Till Was wreathed in sable smoke. Volumed and fast, and rolling far, The cloud enveloped Scotland's war, As down the hill they broke; Nor martial shout nor minstrel tone Announced their march; their tread alone, At times one warning trumpet blown, At times a stifled hum, Told England, from his mountain-throne King James did rushing come. Scarce could they hear, or see their foes, Until at weapon-point they close. They close in clouds of smoke and dust, With sword-sway and with lance's thrust; And such a yell was there Of sudden and portentous birth, As if men fought upon the earth And fiends in upper air; O life and death were in the shout, Recoil and rally, charge and rout, And triumph and despair. Long looked the anxious squires; their eye Could in the darkness nought descry. At length the freshening western blast Aside the shroud of battle cast; And first the ridge of mingled spears Above the brightening cloud appears; And in the smoke the pennons flew, As in the storm the white sea-mew. Then marked they, dashing broad and far, The broken billows of the war, And plumèd crests of chieftains brave Floating like foam upon the wave; But nought distinct they see: Wide raged the battle on the plain; Spears shook, and falchions flashed amain; Fell England's arrow-flight like rain; Crests rose, and stooped, and rose again, Wild and disorderly. Amid the scene of tumult, high They saw Lord Marmion's falcon fly: And stainless Tunstall's banner white And Edmund Howard's lion bright Still bear them bravely in the fight: Although against them come Of gallant Gordons many a one, And many a stubborn Badenoch-man, And many a rugged Border clan, With Huntly and with Home. Far on the left, unseen the while, Stanley broke Lennox and Argyle; Though there the western mountaineer Rushed with bare bosom on the spear, And flung the feeble targe aside, And with both hands the broadsword plied. 'Twas vain: but Fortune, on the right, With fickle smile cheered Scotland's fight. Then fell that spotless banner white, The Howard's lion fell; Yet still Lord Marmion's falcon flew With wavering flight, while fiercer grew Around the battle-yell. The Border slogan rent the sky! A Home! a Gordon! was the cry: Loud were the clanging blows; Advanced, forced back, now low, now high, The pennon sank and rose; As bends the bark's mast in the gale, When rent are rigging, shrouds, and sail, It wavered 'mid the foes. THE LAST STAND By this, though deep the evening fell, Still rose the battle's deadly swell, For still the Scots, around their King, Unbroken, fought in desperate ring. Where's now their victor vaward wing, Where Huntly, and where Home? O for a blast of that dread horn, On Fontarabian echoes borne, That to King Charles did come, When Roland brave, and Olivier, And every paladin and peer, On Roncesvalles died! Such blast might warn them, not in vain, To quit the plunder of the slain, And turn the doubtful day again, While yet on Flodden side Afar the Royal Standard flies, And round it toils, and bleeds, and dies Our Caledonian pride! But as they left the dark'ning heath, More desperate grew the strife of death. The English shafts in volleys hailed, In headlong charge their horse assailed; Front, flank, and rear, the squadrons sweep To break the Scottish circle deep That fought around their King. But yet, though thick the shafts as snow, Though charging knights like whirlwinds go, Though bill-men ply the ghastly blow, Unbroken was the ring; The stubborn spear-men still made good Their dark impenetrable wood, Each stepping where his comrade stood, The instant that he fell. No thought was there of dastard flight; Linked in the serried phalanx tight, Groom fought like noble, squire like knight, As fearlessly and well; Till utter darkness closed her wing O'er their thin host and wounded King. Then skilful Surrey's sage commands Led back from strife his shattered bands; And from the charge they drew, As mountain waves from wasted lands Sweep back to ocean blue. Then did their loss his foemen know; Their King, their Lords, their mightiest low, They melted from the field, as snow, When streams are swoln and south winds blow, Dissolves in silent dew. Tweed's echoes heard the ceaseless plash, While many a broken band Disordered through her currents dash, To gain the Scottish land; To town and tower, to town and dale, To tell red Flodden's dismal tale, And raise the universal wail. Tradition, legend, tune, and song Shall many an age that wail prolong: Still from the sire the son shall hear Of the stern strife and carnage drear Of Flodden's fatal field, Where shivered was fair Scotland's spear, And broken was her shield! _Scott._ LVI THE CHASE The stag at eve had drunk his fill, Where danced the moon on Monan's rill, And deep his midnight lair had made In lone Glenartney's hazel shade; But, when the sun his beacon red Had kindled on Benvoirlich's head, The deep-mouthed bloodhound's heavy bay Resounded up the rocky way, And faint from farther distance borne Were heard the clanging hoof and horn. As Chief, who hears his warder call, 'To arms! the foemen storm the wall,' The antlered monarch of the waste Sprang from his heathery couch in haste. But, ere his fleet career he took, The dew-drops from his flanks he shook; Like crested leader proud and high, Tossed his beamed frontlet to the sky; A moment gazed adown the dale, A moment snuffed the tainted gale, A moment listened to the cry That thickened as the chase drew nigh; Then, as the headmost foes appeared, With one brave bound the copse he cleared, And, stretching forward free and far, Sought the wild heaths of Uam-Var. Yelled on the view the opening pack; Rock, glen, and cavern paid them back: To many a mingled sound at once The awakened mountain gave response. A hundred dogs bayed deep and strong, Clattered a hundred steeds along, Their peal the merry horns rang out, A hundred voices joined the shout; With hark and whoop and wild halloo No rest Benvoirlich's echoes knew. Far from the tumult fled the roe, Close in her covert cowered the doe, The falcon from her cairn on high Cast on the rout a wondering eye, Till far beyond her piercing ken The hurricane had swept the glen. Faint and more faint, its failing din Returned from cavern, cliff, and linn, And silence settled wide and still On the lone wood and mighty hill. Less loud the sounds of silvan war Disturbed the heights of Uam-Var, And roused the cavern where, 'tis told, A giant made his den of old; For ere that steep ascent was won, High in his pathway hung the sun, And many a gallant, stayed perforce, Was fain to breathe his faltering horse, And of the trackers of the deer Scarce half the lessening pack was near; So shrewdly on the mountain-side Had the bold burst their mettle tried. The noble stag was pausing now Upon the mountain's southern brow, Where broad extended, far beneath, The varied realms of fair Menteith. With anxious eye he wandered o'er Mountain and meadow, moss and moor, And pondered refuge from his toil By far Lochard or Aberfoyle. But nearer was the copsewood grey That waved and wept on Loch-Achray, And mingled with the pine-trees blue On the bold cliffs of Benvenue. Fresh vigour with the hope returned, With flying foot the heath he spurned, Held westward with unwearied race, And left behind the panting chase. 'Twere long to tell what steeds gave o'er, As swept the hunt through Cambus-more; What reins were tightened in despair, When rose Benledi's ridge in air; Who flagged upon Bochastle's heath, Who shunned to stem the flooded Teith, For twice that day from shore to shore The gallant stag swam stoutly o'er. Few were the stragglers, following far, That reached the lake of Vennachar; And when the Brigg of Turk was won, The headmost horseman rode alone. Alone, but with unbated zeal, That horseman plied the scourge and steel; For jaded now and spent with toil, Embossed with foam and dark with soil, While every gasp with sobs he drew, The labouring stag strained full in view. Two dogs of black Saint Hubert's breed, Unmatched for courage, breath, and speed, Fast on his flying traces came And all but won that desperate game; For scarce a spear's length from his haunch Vindictive toiled the bloodhounds staunch; Nor nearer might the dogs attain, Nor farther might the quarry strain. Thus up the margin of the lake, Between the precipice and brake, O'er stock and rock their race they take. The Hunter marked that mountain high, The lone lake's western boundary, And deemed the stag must turn to bay Where that huge rampart barred the way; Already glorying in the prize, Measured his antlers with his eyes; For the death-wound and death-halloo Mustered his breath, his whinyard drew; But thundering as he came prepared, With ready arm and weapon bared, The wily quarry shunned the shock, And turned him from the opposing rock; Then, dashing down a darksome glen, Soon lost to hound and hunter's ken, In the deep Trosach's wildest nook His solitary refuge took. There, while close couched, the thicket shed Cold dews and wild-flowers on his head, He heard the baffled dogs in vain Rave through the hollow pass amain, Chiding the rocks that yelled again. Close on the hounds the hunter came, To cheer them on the vanished game; But, stumbling in the rugged dell, The gallant horse exhausted fell. The impatient rider strove in vain To rouse him with the spur and rein, For the good steed, his labours o'er, Stretched his stiff limbs, to rise no more; Then touched with pity and remorse He sorrowed o'er the expiring horse. 'I little thought, when first thy rein I slacked upon the banks of Seine, That Highland eagle e'er should feed On thy fleet limbs, my matchless steed! Woe worth the chase, woe worth the day, That costs thy life, my gallant grey!' Then through the dell his horn resounds, From vain pursuit to call the hounds. Back limped with slow and crippled pace The sulky leaders of the chase; Close to their master's side they pressed, With drooping tail and humbled crest; But still the dingle's hollow throat Prolonged the swelling bugle-note. The owlets started from their dream, The eagles answered with their scream, Round and around the sounds were cast, Till echoes seemed an answering blast; And on the hunter hied his way, To join some comrades of the day. _Scott._ LVII THE OUTLAW O, Brignall banks are wild and fair, And Greta woods are green, And you may gather garlands there Would grace a summer queen. And as I rode by Dalton-hall, Beneath the turrets high, A Maiden on the castle wall Was singing merrily: 'O, Brignall banks are fresh and fair, And Greta woods are green; I'd rather rove with Edmund there Than reign our English queen.' 'If, Maiden, thou wouldst wend with me, To leave both tower and town, Thou first must guess what life lead we That dwell by dale and down. And if thou canst that riddle read, As read full well you may, Then to the greenwood shalt thou speed, As blythe as Queen of May.' Yet sang she, 'Brignall banks are fair, And Greta woods are green; I'd rather rove with Edmund there Than reign our English queen. I read you, by your bugle-horn And by your palfrey good, I read you for a Ranger sworn To keep the king's greenwood.' 'A Ranger, lady, winds his horn, And 'tis at peep of light; His blast is heard at merry morn, And mine at dead of night.' Yet sang she 'Brignall banks are fair, And Greta woods are gay; I would I were with Edmund there, To reign his Queen of May! With burnished brand and musketoon So gallantly you come, I read you for a bold Dragoon That lists the tuck of drum.' 'I list no more the tuck of drum, No more the trumpet hear; But when the beetle sounds his hum, My comrades take the spear. And O! though Brignall banks be fair, And Greta woods be gay, Yet mickle must the maiden dare Would reign my Queen of May! Maiden! a nameless life I lead, A nameless death I'll die! The fiend, whose lantern lights the mead, Were better mate than I! And when I'm with my comrades met, Beneath the Greenwood bough, What once we were we all forget, Nor think what we are now. Yet Brignall banks are fresh and fair, And Greta woods are green, And you may gather garlands there Would grace a summer queen.' _Scott._ LVIII PIBROCH Pibroch of Donuil Dhu, Pibroch of Donuil, Wake thy wild voice anew, Summon Clan-Conuil. Come away, come away, Hark to the summons! Come in your war array, Gentles and commons. Come from deep glen and From mountains so rocky, The war-pipe and pennon Are at Inverlocky. Come every hill-plaid and True heart that wears one, Come every steel blade and Strong hand that bears one. Leave untended the herd, The flock without shelter; Leave the corpse uninterred, The bride at the altar; Leave the deer, leave the steer, Leave nets and barges: Come with your fighting gear, Broadswords and targes. Come as the winds come when Forests are rended, Come as the waves come when Navies are stranded: Faster come, faster come, Faster and faster, Chief, vassal, page and groom, Tenant and master. Fast they come, fast they come; See how they gather! Wide waves the eagle plume Blended with heather. Cast your plaids, draw your blades, Forward each man set! Pibroch of Donuil Dhu, Knell for the onset! _Scott._ LIX THE OMNIPOTENT 'Why sitt'st thou by that ruined hall, Thou agèd carle so stern and grey? Dost thou its former pride recall, Or ponder how it passed away?' 'Know'st thou not me?' the Deep Voice cried; 'So long enjoyed, so often misused, Alternate, in thy fickle pride, Desired, neglected, and accused! Before my breath, like blazing flax, Man and his marvels pass away! And changing empires wane and wax, Are founded, flourish, and decay. Redeem mine hours--the space is brief-- While in my glass the sand-grains shiver, And measureless thy joy or grief, When TIME and thou shalt part for ever!' _Scott._ LX THE RED HARLAW The herring loves the merry moonlight, The mackerel loves the wind, But the oyster loves the dredging sang, For they come of a gentle kind. Now haud your tongue, baith wife and carle, And listen, great and sma', And I will sing of Glenallan's Earl That fought on the red Harlaw. The cronach's cried on Bennachie, And doun the Don and a', And hieland and lawland may mournfu' be For the sair field of Harlaw. They saddled a hundred milk-white steeds, They hae bridled a hundred black, With a chafron of steel on each horse's head And a good knight upon his back. They hadna ridden a mile, a mile, A mile, but barely ten, When Donald came branking down the brae Wi' twenty thousand men. Their tartans they were waving wide, Their glaives were glancing clear, The pibrochs rang frae side to side, Would deafen ye to hear. The great Earl in his stirrups stood, That Highland host to see: 'Now here a knight that's stout and good May prove a jeopardie: What wouldst thou do, my squire so gay, That rides beside my reyne, Were ye Glenallan's Earl the day, And I were Roland Cheyne? To turn the rein were sin and shame, To fight were wondrous peril: What would ye do now, Roland Cheyne, Were ye Glenallan's Earl?' 'Were I Glenallan's Earl this tide, And ye were Roland Cheyne, The spur should be in my horse's side, And the bridle upon his mane. If they hae twenty thousand blades, And we twice ten times ten, Yet they hae but their tartan plaids, And we are mail-clad men. My horse shall ride through ranks sae rude, As through the moorland fern, Then ne'er let the gentle Norman blude Grow cauld for Highland kerne.' _Scott._ LXI FAREWELL Farewell! Farewell! the voice you hear Has left its last soft tone with you; Its next must join the seaward cheer, And shout among the shouting crew. The accents which I scarce could form Beneath your frown's controlling check, Must give the word, above the storm, To cut the mast and clear the wreck. The timid eye I dared not raise, The hand that shook when pressed to thine, Must point the guns upon the chase, Must bid the deadly cutlass shine. To all I love, or hope, or fear, Honour or own, a long adieu! To all that life has soft and dear, Farewell! save memory of you! _Scott._ LXII BONNY DUNDEE To the Lords of Convention 'twas Claver'se who spoke, 'Ere the King's crown shall fall there are crowns to be broke; So let each Cavalier who loves honour and me, Come follow the bonnet of Bonny Dundee. Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can, Come saddle your horses, and call up your men; Come open the West Port, and let me gang free, And it's room for the bonnets of Bonny Dundee!' Dundee he is mounted, he rides up the street, The bells are rung backward, the drums they are beat; But the Provost, douce man, said, 'Just e'en let him be, The Gude Town is weel quit of that Deil of Dundee.' As he rode down the sanctified bends of the Bow, Ilk carline was flyting and shaking her pow; But the young plants of grace they looked couthie and slee, Thinking, luck to thy bonnet, thou Bonny Dundee! With sour-featured Whigs the Grassmarket was crammed, As if half the West had set tryst to be hanged; There was spite in each look, there was fear in each e'e, As they watched for the bonnets of Bonny Dundee. These cowls of Kilmarnock had spits and had spears, And lang-hafted gullies to kill Cavaliers; But they shrunk to close-heads, and the causeway was free, At the toss of the bonnet of Bonny Dundee. He spurred to the foot of the proud Castle rock, And with the gay Gordon he gallantly spoke; 'Let Mons Meg and her marrows speak twa words or three For the love of the bonnet of Bonny Dundee.' The Gordon demands of him which way he goes: 'Where'er shall direct me the shade of Montrose! Your Grace in short space shall hear tidings of me, Or that low lies the bonnet of Bonny Dundee. There are hills beyond Pentland, and lands beyond Forth, If there's lords in the Lowlands, there's chiefs in the North; There are wild Duniewassals three thousand times three, Will cry _hoigh!_ for the bonnet of Bonny Dundee. There's brass on the target of barkened bull-hide; There's steel in the scabbard that dangles beside; The brass shall be burnished, the steel shall flash free At a toss of the bonnet of Bonny Dundee. Away to the hills, to the caves, to the rocks, Ere I owe an usurper, I'll couch with the fox; And tremble, false Whigs, in the midst of your glee, You have not seen the last of my bonnet and me!' He waved his proud hand, and the trumpets were blown, The kettle-drums clashed, and the horsemen rode on, Till on Ravelston's cliffs and on Clermiston's lee Died away the wild war-notes of Bonny Dundee. Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can, Come saddle the horses and call up the men, Come open your gates, and let me gae free, For it's up with the bonnets of Bonny Dundee! _Sir Walter Scott._ LXIII ROMANCE In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round: And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. But O! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail: And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean: And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war! The shadow of the dome of pleasure Floated midway on the waves; Where was heard the mingled measure From the fountain and the caves. It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight 'twould win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise. _Coleridge._ LXIV SACRIFICE Iphigeneia, when she heard her doom At Aulis, and when all beside the King Had gone away, took his right hand, and said, 'O father! I am young and very happy. I do not think the pious Calchas heard Distinctly what the Goddess spake. Old-age Obscures the senses. If my nurse, who knew My voice so well, sometimes misunderstood While I was resting on her knee both arms And hitting it to make her mind my words, And looking in her face, and she in mine, Might he not also hear one word amiss, Spoken from so far off, even from Olympus?' The father placed his cheek upon her head, And tears dropt down it, but the king of men Replied not. Then the maiden spake once more. 'O father! say'st thou nothing? Hear'st thou not Me, whom thou ever hast, until this hour, Listened to fondly, and awakened me To hear my voice amid the voice of birds, When it was inarticulate as theirs, And the down deadened it within the nest?' He moved her gently from him, silent still, And this, and this alone, brought tears from her, Although she saw fate nearer: then with sighs, 'I thought to have laid down my hair before Benignant Artemis, and not have dimmed Her polisht altar with my virgin blood; I thought to have selected the white flowers To please the Nymphs, and to have asked of each By name, and with no sorrowful regret, Whether, since both my parents willed the change, I might at Hymen's feet bend my clipt brow; And (after those who mind us girls the most) Adore our own Athena, that she would Regard me mildly with her azure eyes. But, father! to see you no more, and see Your love, O father! go ere I am gone.' ... Gently he moved her off, and drew her back, Bending his lofty head far over hers, And the dark depths of nature heaved and burst. He turned away; not far, but silent still. She now first shuddered; for in him, so nigh, So long a silence seemed the approach of death, And like it. Once again she raised her voice. 'O father! if the ships are now detained, And all your vows move not the Gods above, When the knife strikes me there will be one prayer The less to them: and purer can there be Any, or more fervent than the daughter's prayer For her dear father's safety and success?' A groan that shook him shook not his resolve. An aged man now entered, and without One word, stept slowly on, and took the wrist Of the pale maiden. She looked up, and saw The fillet of the priest and calm cold eyes. Then turned she where her parent stood, and cried, 'O father! grieve no more: the ships can sail.' _Landor._ LXV SOLDIER AND SAILOR I love contemplating, apart From all his homicidal glory, The traits that soften to our heart Napoleon's story! 'Twas when his banners at Boulogne Armed in our island every freeman, His navy chanced to capture one Poor British seaman. They suffered him, I know not how, Unprisoned on the shore to roam; And aye was bent his longing brow On England's home. His eye, methinks, pursued the flight Of birds to Britain half-way over With envy; _they_ could reach the white Dear cliffs of Dover. A stormy midnight watch, he thought, Than this sojourn would have been dearer, If but the storm his vessel brought To England nearer. At last, when care had banished sleep, He saw one morning--dreaming--doating, An empty hogshead from the deep Come shoreward floating; He hid it in a cave, and wrought The live-long day laborious; lurking Until he launched a tiny boat By mighty working. Heaven help us! 'twas a thing beyond Description, wretched: such a wherry Perhaps ne'er ventured on a pond, Or crossed a ferry. For ploughing in the salt-sea field, It would have made the boldest shudder; Untarred, uncompassed, and unkeeled, No sail--no rudder. From neighb'ring woods he interlaced His sorry skiff with wattled willows; And thus equipped he would have passed The foaming billows-- But Frenchmen caught him on the beach, His little Argo sorely jeering; Till tidings of him chanced to reach Napoleon's hearing. With folded arms Napoleon stood, Serene alike in peace and danger; And, in his wonted attitude, Addressed the stranger:-- 'Rash man, that wouldst yon Channel pass On twigs and staves so rudely fashioned: Thy heart with some sweet British lass Must be impassioned.' 'I have no sweetheart,' said the lad; 'But--absent long from one another-- Great was the longing that I had To see my mother.' 'And so thou shalt,' Napoleon said, 'Ye've both my favour fairly won; A noble mother must have bred So brave a son.' He gave the tar a piece of gold, And, with a flag of truce, commanded He should be shipped to England Old, And safely landed. Our sailor oft could scantly shift To find a dinner, plain and hearty; But _never_ changed the coin and gift Of Bonaparté. _Campbell._ LXVI 'YE MARINERS' Ye Mariners of England! That guard our native seas; Whose flag has braved a thousand years The battle and the breeze! Your glorious standard launch again To match another foe! And sweep through the deep, While the stormy winds do blow; While the battle rages loud and long, And the stormy winds do blow. The spirits of your fathers Shall start from every wave! For the deck it was their field of fame, And Ocean was their grave: Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell Your manly hearts shall glow, As ye sweep through the deep, While the stormy winds do blow; While the battle rages loud and long, And the stormy winds do blow. Britannia needs no bulwarks, No towers along the steep; Her march is o'er the mountain-waves, Her home is on the deep. With thunders from her native oak She quells the floods below, As they roar on the shore, When the stormy winds do blow; When the battle rages loud and long, And the stormy winds do blow. The meteor flag of England Shall yet terrific burn; Till danger's troubled night depart, And the star of peace return. Then, then, ye ocean warriors! Our song and feast shall flow To the fame of your name, When the storm has ceased to blow; When the fiery fight is heard no more, And the storm has ceased to blow. _Campbell._ LXVII THE BATTLE OF THE BALTIC Of Nelson and the North Sing the glorious day's renown, When to battle fierce came forth All the might of Denmark's crown, And her arms along the deep proudly shone; By each gun the lighted brand In a bold determined hand, And the Prince of all the land Led them on. Like leviathans afloat, Lay their bulwarks on the brine; While the sign of battle flew On the lofty British line: It was ten of April morn by the chime: As they drifted on their path, There was silence deep as death; And the boldest held his breath, For a time. But the might of England flushed To anticipate the scene; And her van the fleeter rushed O'er the deadly space between. 'Hearts of oak!' our captains cried; when each gun From its adamantine lips Spread a death-shade round the ships, Like the hurricane eclipse Of the sun. Again! again! again! And the havoc did not slack, Till a feeble cheer the Dane, To our cheering sent us back;-- Their shots along the deep slowly boom:-- Then cease--and all is wail, As they strike the shattered sail; Or, in conflagration pale Light the gloom. Now joy, Old England, raise For the tidings of thy might, By the festal cities' blaze, Whilst the wine-cup shines in light; And yet amidst that joy and uproar, Let us think of them that sleep Full many a fathom deep By thy wild and stormy steep, Elsinore! _Campbell._ LXVIII BATTLE SONG Day, like our souls, is fiercely dark; What then? 'Tis day! We sleep no more; the cock crows--hark! To arms! away! They come! they come! the knell is rung Of us or them; Wide o'er their march the pomp is flung Of gold and gem. What collared hound of lawless sway, To famine dear, What pensioned slave of Attila, Leads in the rear? Come they from Scythian wilds afar Our blood to spill? Wear they the livery of the Czar? They do his will. Nor tasselled silk, nor epaulette, Nor plume, nor torse-- No splendour gilds, all sternly met, Our foot and horse. But, dark and still, we inly glow, Condensed in ire! Strike, tawdry slaves, and ye shall know Our gloom is fire. In vain your pomp, ye evil powers, Insults the land; Wrongs, vengeance, and _the cause_ are ours, And God's right hand! Madmen! they trample into snakes The wormy clod! Like fire, beneath their feet awakes The sword of God! Behind, before, above, below, They rouse the brave; Where'er they go, they make a foe, Or find a grave. _Elliott._ LXIX LOYALTY Hame, hame, hame, hame fain wad I be, O hame, hame, hame, to my ain countrie! When the flower is i' the bud and the leaf is on the tree, The lark shall sing me hame in my ain countrie; Hame, hame, hame, hame fain wad I be, O hame, hame, hame, to my ain countrie! The green leaf o' loyaltie's begun for to fa', The bonnie white rose it is withering an' a'; But I'll water 't wi' the blude of usurping tyrannie, An' green it will grow in my ain countrie. Hame, hame, hame, hame fain wad I be, O hame, hame, hame, to my ain countrie! The great are now gane, a' wha ventured to save; The new grass is springing on the tap o' their grave: But the sun thro' the mirk blinks blythe in my e'e, 'I'll shine on ye yet in yere ain countrie.' Hame, hame, hame, hame fain wad I be, Hame, hame, hame, to my ain countrie! _Cunningham._ LXX A SEA-SONG A wet sheet and a flowing sea, A wind that follows fast And fills the white and rustling sail And bends the gallant mast; And bends the gallant mast, my boys, While like the eagle free Away the good ship flies, and leaves Old England on the lee. O for a soft and gentle wind! I heard a fair one cry; But give to me the snoring breeze And white waves heaving high; And white waves heaving high, my lads, The good ship tight and free-- The world of waters is our home, And merry men are we. There's tempest in yon hornèd moon, And lightning in yon cloud; But hark the music, mariners! The wind is piping loud; The wind is piping loud, my boys, The lightning flashes free-- While the hollow oak our palace is, Our heritage the sea. _Cunningham._ LXXI A SONG OF THE SEA The Sea! the Sea! the open Sea! The blue, the fresh, the ever free! Without a mark, without a bound, It runneth the earth's wide regions 'round; It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies; Or like a cradled creature lies. I'm on the Sea! I'm on the Sea! I am where I would ever be; With the blue above, and the blue below, And silence wheresoe'er I go; If a storm should come and awake the deep, What matter? _I_ shall ride and sleep. I love (O! _how_ I love) to ride On the fierce foaming bursting tide, When every mad wave drowns the moon, Or whistles aloft his tempest tune, And tells how goeth the world below, And why the south-west blasts do blow. I never was on the dull, tame shore, But I loved the great Sea more and more, And backwards flew to her billowy breast, Like a bird that seeketh its mother's nest; And a mother she _was_, and _is_ to me; For I was born on the open Sea! The waves were white, and red the morn, In the noisy hour when I was born; And the whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled, And the dolphins bared their backs of gold; And never was heard such an outcry wild As welcomed to life the Ocean-child! I've lived since then, in calm and strife, Full fifty summers a sailor's life, With wealth to spend, and a power to range, But never have sought, nor sighed for change; And Death, whenever he come to me, Shall come on the wide unbounded Sea! _Procter._ LXXII SENNACHERIB The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green, That host with their banners at sunset were seen: Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown, That host on the morrow lay withered and strown. For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed; And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still! And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide, But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride: And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf, And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf. And there lay the rider distorted and pale, With the dew on his brow and the rust on his mail; And the tents were all silent, the banners alone, The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown. And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail, And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal; And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord! _Byron._ LXXIII THE STORMING OF CORINTH THE SIGNAL The night is past, and shines the sun As if that morn were a jocund one. Lightly and brightly breaks away The Morning from her mantle grey, And the noon will look on a sultry day. Hark to the trump, and the drum, And the mournful sound of the barbarous horn, And the flap of the banners that flit as they're borne, And the neigh of the steed, and the multitude's hum, And the clash, and the shout, 'They come! they come!' The horsetails are plucked from the ground, and the sword From its sheath; and they form, and but wait for the word. Tartar, and Spahi, and Turcoman, Strike your tents, and throng to the van; Mount ye, spur ye, skirr the plain, That the fugitive may flee in vain, When he breaks from the town; and none escape, Aged or young, in the Christian shape; While your fellows on foot, in a fiery mass, Bloodstain the breach through which they pass. The steeds are all bridled, and snort to the rein; Curved is each neck, and flowing each mane; White is the foam of their champ on the bit: The spears are uplifted; the matches are lit; The cannon are pointed, and ready to roar, And crush the wall they have crumbled before: Forms in his phalanx each janizar; Alp at their head; his right arm is bare, So is the blade of his scimitar; The khan and the pachas are all at their post; The vizier himself at the head of the host. When the culverin's signal is fired, then on; Leave not in Corinth a living one-- A priest at her altars, a chief in her halls, A hearth in her mansions, a stone on her walls. God and the prophet--Alla Hu! Up to the skies with that wild halloo! 'There the breach lies for passage, the ladder to scale; And your hands on your sabres, and how should ye fail? He who first downs with the red cross may crave His heart's dearest wish; let him ask it, and have!' Thus uttered Coumourgi, the dauntless vizier; The reply was the brandish of sabre and spear, And the shout of fierce thousands in joyous ire:-- Silence--hark to the signal--fire! THE ASSAULT As the spring-tides, with heavy plash, From the cliffs invading dash Huge fragments, sapped by the ceaseless flow, Till white and thundering down they go, Like the avalanche's snow On the Alpine vales below; Thus at length, outbreathed and worn, Corinth's sons were downward borne By the long and oft renewed Charge of the Moslem multitude. In firmness they stood, and in masses they fell, Heaped by the host of the infidel, Hand to hand, and foot to foot: Nothing there, save death, was mute: Stroke, and thrust, and flash, and cry For quarter or for victory, Mingle there with the volleying thunder, Which makes the distant cities wonder How the sounding battle goes, If with them, or for their foes; If they must mourn, or may rejoice In that annihilating voice, Which pierces the deep hills through and through With an echo dread and new: You might have heard it, on that day, O'er Salamis and Megara; (We have heard the hearers say,) Even unto Piræus' bay. From the point of encountering blades to the hilt, Sabres and swords with blood were gilt; But the rampart is won, and the spoil begun, And all but the after carnage done, Shriller shrieks now mingling come From within the plundered dome: Hark to the haste of flying feet That splash in the blood of the slippery street; But here and there, where 'vantage ground Against the foe may still be found, Desperate groups, of twelve or ten, Make a pause, and turn again-- With banded backs against the wall, Fiercely stand, or fighting fall. There stood an old man--his hairs were white, But his veteran arm was full of might: So gallantly bore he the brunt of the fray, The dead before him, on that day, In a semicircle lay; Still he combated unwounded, Though retreating, unsurrounded. Many a scar of former fight Lurked beneath his corselet bright; But of every wound his body bore, Each and all had been ta'en before: Though aged, he was so iron of limb, Few of our youth could cope with him, And the foes, whom he singly kept at bay, Outnumbered his thin hairs of silver grey. From right to left his sabre swept; Many an Othman mother wept Sons that were unborn, when dipped His weapon first in Moslem gore, Ere his years could count a score. Of all he might have been the sire Who fell that day beneath his ire: For, sonless left long years ago, His wrath made many a childless foe; And since the day, when in the strait His only boy had met his fate, His parent's iron hand did doom More than a human hecatomb. If shades by carnage be appeased, Patroclus' spirit less was pleased Than his, Minotti's son, who died Where Asia's bounds and ours divide. Buried he lay, where thousands before For thousands of years were inhumed on the shore; What of them is left, to tell Where they lie, and how they fell? Not a stone on their turf, nor a bone in their graves; But they live in the verse that immortally saves. THE MAGAZINE Darkly, sternly, and all alone, Minotti stood o'er the altar-stone: Madonna's face upon him shone, Painted in heavenly hues above, With eyes of light and looks of love; And placed upon that holy shrine To fix our thoughts on things divine, When pictured there, we kneeling see Her, and the boy-God on her knee, Smiling sweetly on each prayer To heaven, as if to waft it there. Still she smiled; even now she smiles, Though slaughter streams along her aisles: Minotti lifted his aged eye, And made the sign of a cross with a sigh, Then seized a torch which blazed thereby; And still he stood, while with steel and flame Inward and onward the Mussulman came. The vaults beneath the mosaic stone Contained the dead of ages gone; Their names were on the graven floor, But now illegible with gore; The carvèd crests, and curious hues The varied marble's veins diffuse, Were smeared, and slippery, stained, and strown With broken swords and helms o'erthrown: There were dead above, and the dead below Lay cold in many a coffined row; You might see them piled in sable state, By a pale light through a gloomy grate; But War had entered their dark caves, And stored along the vaulted graves Her sulphurous treasures, thickly spread In masses by the fleshless dead: Here, throughout the siege, had been The Christians' chiefest magazine; To these a late formed train now led, Minotti's last and stern resource Against the foe's o'erwhelming force. The foe came on, and few remain To strive, and those must strive in vain: For lack of further lives, to slake The thirst of vengeance now awake, With barbarous blows they gash the dead, And lop the already lifeless head, And fell the statues from their niche, And spoil the shrines of offerings rich, And from each other's rude hands wrest The silver vessels saints had blessed. To the high altar on they go; O, but it made a glorious show! On its table still behold The cup of consecrated gold; Massy and deep, a glittering prize, Brightly it sparkles to plunderers' eyes: That morn it held the holy wine, Converted by Christ to his blood so divine, Which his worshippers drank at the break of day, To shrive their souls ere they joined in the fray. Still a few drops within it lay; And round the sacred table glow Twelve lofty lamps, in splendid row, From the purest metal cast; A spoil--the richest, and the last. So near they came, the nearest stretched To grasp the spoil he almost reached, When old Minotti's hand Touched with the torch the train-- 'Tis fired! Spire, vaults, the shrine, the spoil, the slain, The turbaned victors, the Christian band, All that of living or dead remain, Hurl'd on high with the shivered fane, In one wild roar expired! The shattered town--the walls thrown down-- The waves a moment backward bent-- The hills that shake, although unrent, As if an earthquake passed-- The thousand shapeless things all driven In cloud and flame athwart the heaven By that tremendous blast-- Proclaimed the desperate conflict o'er On that too long afflicted shore: Up to the sky like rockets go All that mingled there below: Many a tall and goodly man, Scorched and shrivelled to a span, When he fell to earth again Like a cinder strewed the plain: Down the ashes shower like rain; Some fell in the gulf, which received the sprinkles With a thousand circling wrinkles; Some fell on the shore, but far away Scattered o'er the isthmus lay; Christian or Moslem, which be they? Let their mother say and say! When in cradled rest they lay, And each nursing mother smiled On the sweet sleep of her child, Little deemed she such a day Would rend those tender limbs away. Not the matrons that them bore Could discern their offspring more; That one moment left no trace More of human form or face Save a scattered scalp or bone: And down came blazing rafters, strown Around, and many a falling stone, Deeply dinted in the clay, All blackened there and reeking lay. All the living things that heard That deadly earth-shock disappeared: The wild birds flew; the wild dogs fled, And howling left the unburied dead; The camels from their keepers broke; The distant steer forsook the yoke-- The nearer steed plunged o'er the plain, And burst his girth, and tore his rein; The bull-frog's note from out the marsh Deep-mouthed arose, and doubly harsh; The wolves yelled on the caverned hill Where echo rolled in thunder still; The jackals' troop in gathered cry Bayed from afar complainingly, With a mixed and mournful sound, Like crying babe, and beaten hound: With sudden wing and ruffled breast The eagle left his rocky nest, And mounted nearer to the sun, The clouds beneath him seemed so dun; Their smoke assailed his startled beak, And made him higher soar and shriek-- Thus was Corinth lost and won! _Byron._ LXXIV ALHAMA The Moorish King rides up and down, Through Granada's royal town; From Elvira's gates to those Of Bivarambla on he goes. Woe is me, Alhama! Letters to the monarch tell How Alhama's city fell: In the fire the scroll he threw, And the messenger he slew. Woe is me, Alhama! He quits his mule, and mounts his horse, And through the street directs his course; Through the street of Zacatin To the Alhambra spurring in. Woe is me, Alhama! When the Alhambra walls he gained, On the moment he ordained That the trumpet straight should sound With the silver clarion round. Woe is me, Alhama! And when the hollow drums of war Beat the loud alarm afar, That the Moors of town and plain Might answer to the martial strain-- Woe is me, Alhama!-- Then the Moors, by this aware, That bloody Mars recalled them there One by one, and two by two, To a mighty squadron grew. Woe is me, Alhama! Out then spake an aged Moor In these words the king before, 'Wherefore call on us, O King? What may mean this gathering?' Woe is me, Alhama! 'Friends! ye have, alas! to know Of a most disastrous blow; That the Christians, stern and bold, Have obtained Alhama's hold.' Woe is me, Alhama! Out then spake old Alfaqui, With his beard so white to see, 'Good King! thou art justly served, Good King! this thou hast deserved. Woe is me, Alhama! By thee were slain, in evil hour, The Abencerrage, Granada's flower; And strangers were received by thee Of Cordova the Chivalry. Woe is me, Alhama! And for this, O King! is sent On thee a double chastisement: Thee and thine, thy crown and realm, One last wreck shall overwhelm. Woe is me, Alhama! He who holds no laws in awe, He must perish by the law; And Granada must be won, And thyself with her undone.' Woe is me, Alhama! Fire flashed from out the old Moor's eyes, The monarch's wrath began to rise, Because he answered, and because He spake exceeding well of laws. Woe is me, Alhama! 'There is no law to say such things As may disgust the ear of kings:' Thus, snorting with his choler, said The Moorish King, and doomed him dead. Woe is me, Alhama! Moor Alfaqui! Moor Alfaqui! Though thy beard so hoary be, The King hath sent to have thee seized, For Alhama's loss displeased. Woe is me, Alhama! And to fix thy head upon High Alhambra's loftiest stone; That this for thee should be the law, And others tremble when they saw. Woe is me, Alhama! 'Cavalier, and man of worth! Let these words of mine go forth! Let the Moorish Monarch know, That to him I nothing owe. Woe is me, Alhama! But on my soul Alhama weighs, And on my inmost spirit preys; And if the King his land hath lost, Yet others may have lost the most. Woe is me, Alhama! Sires have lost their children, wives Their lords, and valiant men their lives! One what best his love might claim Hath lost, another wealth, or fame. Woe is me, Alhama! I lost a damsel in that hour, Of all the land the loveliest flower; Doubloons a hundred I would pay, And think her ransom cheap that day.' Woe is me, Alhama! And as these things the old Moor said, They severed from the trunk his head; And to the Alhambra's wall with speed 'Twas carried, as the King decreed. Woe is me, Alhama! And men and infants therein weep Their loss, so heavy and so deep; Granada's ladies, all she rears Within her walls, burst into tears. Woe is me, Alhama! And from the windows o'er the walls The sable web of mourning falls; The King weeps as a woman o'er His loss, for it is much and sore. Woe is me, Alhama! _Byron._ LXXV FRIENDSHIP My boat is on the shore, And my bark is on the sea; But, before I go, Tom Moore, Here's a double health to thee! Here's a sigh to those who love me, And a smile to those who hate; And, whatever sky's above me, Here's a heart for every fate. Though the ocean roar around me, Yet it still shall bear me on; Though a desert should surround me, It hath springs that may be won. Were 't the last drop in the well, As I gasped upon the brink, Ere my fainting spirit fell, 'Tis to thee that I would drink. With that water, as this wine, The libation I would pour Should be, 'Peace with thine and mine, And a health to thee, Tom Moore!' _Byron._ LXXVI THE RACE WITH DEATH O Venice! Venice! when thy marble walls Are level with the waters, there shall be A cry of nations o'er thy sunken halls, A loud lament along the sweeping sea! If I, a northern wanderer, weep for thee, What should thy sons do?--anything but weep: And yet they only murmur in their sleep. In contrast with their fathers--as the slime, The dull green ooze of the receding deep, Is with the dashing of the spring-tide foam That drives the sailor shipless to his home, Are they to those that were; and thus they creep, Crouching and crab-like, through their sapping streets. O agony! that centuries should reap No mellower harvest! Thirteen hundred years Of wealth and glory turned to dust and tears, And every monument the stranger meets, Church, palace, pillar, as a mourner greets; And even the Lion all subdued appears, And the harsh sound of the barbarian drum With dull and daily dissonance repeats The echo of thy tyrant's voice along The soft waves, once all musical to song, That heaved beneath the moonlight with the throng Of gondolas and to the busy hum Of cheerful creatures, whose most sinful deeds Were but the overbeating of the heart, And flow of too much happiness, which needs The aid of age to turn its course apart From the luxuriant and voluptuous flood Of sweet sensations, battling with the blood. But these are better than the gloomy errors, The weeds of nations in their last decay, When Vice walks forth with her unsoftened terrors, And Mirth is madness, and but smiles to slay; And Hope is nothing but a false delay, The sick man's lightening half an hour ere death, When Faintness, the last mortal birth of Pain, And apathy of limb, the dull beginning Of the cold staggering race which Death is winning, Steals vein by vein and pulse by pulse away; Yet so relieving the o'er-tortured clay, To him appears renewal of his breath, And freedom the mere numbness of his chain; And then he talks of life, and how again He feels his spirits soaring--albeit weak, And of the fresher air, which he would seek: And as he whispers knows not that he gasps, That his thin finger feels not what it clasps; And so the film comes o'er him, and the dizzy Chamber swims round and round, and shadows busy, At which he vainly catches, flit and gleam, Till the last rattle chokes the strangled scream, And all is ice and blackness, and the earth That which it was the moment ere our birth. _Byron._ LXXVII THE GLORY THAT WAS GREECE The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece! Where burning Sappho loved and sung, Where grew the arts of war and peace, Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung! Eternal summer gilds them yet, But all except their sun is set. The Scian and the Teian muse, The hero's harp, the lover's lute, Have found the fame your shores refuse: Their place of birth alone is mute To sounds which echo further west Than your sires' 'Islands of the Blest.' The mountains look on Marathon-- And Marathon looks on the sea; And, musing there an hour alone, I dreamed that Greece might still be free; For, standing on the Persians' grave, I could not deem myself a slave. A king sate on the rocky brow Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis; And ships by thousands lay below, And men in nations;--all were his! He counted them at break of day, And when the sun set, where were they? And where are they? and where art thou, My country? On thy voiceless shore The heroic lay is tuneless now, The heroic bosom beats no more! And must thy lyre, so long divine, Degenerate into hands like mine? 'Tis something in the dearth of fame, Though linked among a fettered race, To feel at least a patriot's shame, Even as I sing, suffuse my face; For what is left the poet here? For Greeks a blush, for Greece a tear! Must _we_ but weep o'er days more blest? Must _we_ but blush? Our fathers bled. Earth! render back from out thy breast A remnant of our Spartan dead! Of the three hundred grant but three, To make a new Thermopylæ! What, silent still? and silent all? Ah! no: the voices of the dead Sound like a distant torrent's fall, And answer, 'Let one living head, But one arise,--we come, we come!' 'Tis but the living who are dumb. In vain--in vain: strike other chords; Fill high the cup with Samian wine! Leave battles to the Turkish hordes, And shed the blood of Scio's vine! Hark! rising to the ignoble call, How answers each bold Bacchanal! You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet; Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone? Of two such lessons, why forget The nobler and the manlier one? You have the letters Cadmus gave; Think ye he meant them for a slave? Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! We will not think of themes like these! It made Anacreon's song divine: He served--but served Polycrates: A tyrant; but our masters then Were still, at least, our countrymen. The tyrant of the Chersonese Was freedom's best and bravest friend; _That_ tyrant was Miltiades! Oh! that the present hour would lend Another despot of the kind! Such chains as his were sure to bind. Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! On Suli's rock and Parga's shore Exists the remnant of a line Such as the Doric mothers bore; And there, perhaps, some seed is sown The Heracleidan blood might own. Trust not for freedom to the Franks-- They have a king who buys and sells; In native swords and native ranks The only hope of courage dwells: But Turkish force and Latin fraud Would break your shield, however broad. Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! Our virgins dance beneath the shade-- I see their glorious black eyes shine; But, gazing on each glowing maid, My own the burning tear-drop laves, To think such breasts must suckle slaves. Place me on Sunium's marbled steep, Where nothing save the waves and I May hear our mutual murmurs sweep; There, swan-like, let me sing and die: A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine-- Dash down yon cup of Samian wine! _Byron._ LXXVIII HAIL AND FAREWELL 'Tis time this heart should be unmoved, Since others it hath ceased to move: Yet, though I cannot be beloved, Still let me love! My days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of love are gone; The worm, the canker, and the grief Are mine alone! The fire that on my bosom preys Is lone as some volcanic isle; No torch is kindled at its blaze-- A funeral pile. The hope, the fear, the jealous care, The exalted portion of the pain And power of love, I cannot share, But wear the chain. But 'tis not thus, and 'tis not here, Such thoughts should shake my soul, nor _now_ Where glory decks the hero's bier, Or binds his brow. The sword, the banner, and the field, Glory and Greece, around me see! The Spartan borne upon his shield Was not more free. Awake! (not Greece--she _is_ awake!) Awake, my spirit! Think through _whom_ Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake, And then strike home! Tread those reviving passions down, Unworthy manhood! unto thee Indifferent should the smile or frown Of beauty be. If thou regrett'st thy youth, _why live?_ The lad of honourable death Is here: up to the field, and give Away thy breath! Seek out--less often sought than found-- A soldier's grave, for thee the best; Then look around, and choose thy ground, And take thy rest. _Byron._ LXXIX AFTER CORUNNA Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O'er the grave where our hero we buried. We buried him darkly at dead of night, The sods with our bayonets turning, By the struggling moonbeam's misty light, And the lantern dimly burning. No useless coffin enclosed his breast, Nor in sheet nor in shroud we wound him; But he lay like a warrior taking his rest With his martial cloak around him. Few and short were the prayers we said, And we spoke not a word of sorrow; But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead, And we bitterly thought of the morrow. We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed And smoothed down his lonely pillow, How the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head, And we far away on the billow! Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone, And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him; But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on In the grave where a Briton has laid him. But half of our heavy task was done, When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the distant and random gun That the foe was sullenly firing. Slowly and sadly we laid him down, From the field of his fame fresh and gory; We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone-- But we left him alone with his glory. _Wolfe._ LXXX THE OLD NAVY The captain stood on the carronade: 'First lieutenant,' says he, 'Send all my merry men aft here, for they must list to me; I haven't the gift of the gab, my sons--because I'm bred to the sea; That ship there is a Frenchman, who means to fight with we. And odds bobs, hammer and tongs, long as I've been to sea, I've fought 'gainst every odds--but I've gained the victory! That ship there is a Frenchman, and if we don't take _she_, 'Tis a thousand bullets to one, that she will capture _we_; I haven't the gift of the gab, my boys; so each man to his gun; If she's not mine in half an hour, I'll flog each mother's son. For odds bobs, hammer and tongs, long as I've been to sea, I've fought 'gainst every odds--and I've gained the victory!' We fought for twenty minutes, when the Frenchman had enough; 'I little thought,' said he, 'that your men were of such stuff'; Our captain took the Frenchman's sword, a low bow made to _he_; 'I haven't the gift of the gab, monsieur, but polite I wish to be. And odds bobs, hammer and tongs, long as I've been to sea, I've fought 'gainst every odds--and I've gained the victory!' Our captain sent for all of us: 'My merry men,' said he, 'I haven't the gift of the gab, my lads, but yet I thankful be. You've done your duty handsomely, each man stood to his gun; If you hadn't, you villains, as sure as day, I'd have flogged each mother's son. For odds bobs, hammer and tongs, as long as I'm at sea, I'll fight 'gainst every odds--and I'll gain the victory!' _Marryat._ LXXXI CASABIANCA The boy stood on the burning deck Whence all but he had fled; The flame that lit the battle's wreck Shone round him o'er the dead. Yet beautiful and bright he stood, As born to rule the storm: A creature of heroic blood, A proud though child-like form. The flames rolled on--he would not go Without his father's word; That father, faint in death below, His voice no longer heard. He called aloud; 'Say, father! say If yet my task is done!' He knew not that the chieftain lay Unconscious of his son. 'Speak, father!' once again he cried, 'If I may yet be gone!' And but the booming shots replied, And fast the flames rolled on. Upon his brow he felt their breath, And in his waving hair; He looked from that lone post of death In still yet brave despair, And shouted but once more aloud, 'My father! must I stay?' While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud, The wreathing fires made way. They wrapt the ship in splendour wild, They caught the flag on high, And streamed above the gallant child Like banners in the sky. There came a burst of thunder-sound-- The boy--O! where was he? Ask of the winds that far around With fragments strewed the sea: With mast, and helm, and pennon fair, That well had borne their part! But the noblest thing which perished there Was that young faithful heart. _Hemans._ LXXXII THE PILGRIM FATHERS The breaking waves dashed high On a stern and rock-bound coast, And the woods against a stormy sky Their giant branches tossed; And the heavy night hung dark The hills and waters o'er, When a band of exiles moored their bark On the wild New England shore. Not as the conqueror comes, They, the true-hearted, came; Not with the roll of the stirring drums, And the trumpet that sings of fame; Not as the flying come, In silence and in fear;-- They shook the depths of the desert gloom With their hymns of lofty cheer. Amidst the storm they sang, And the stars heard and the sea; And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang To the anthem of the free! The ocean eagle soared From his nest by the white wave's foam; And the rocking pines of the forest roared-- This was their welcome home! There were men with hoary hair Amidst that pilgrim band; Why had _they_ come to wither there, Away from their childhood's land? There was woman's fearless eye, Lit by her deep love's truth; There was manhood's brow serenely high, And the fiery heart of youth. What sought they thus afar? Bright jewels of the mine? The wealth of seas, the spoils of war? They sought a faith's pure shrine! Ay, call it holy ground, The soil where first they trod. They have left unstained what there they found-- Freedom to worship God. _Hemans._ LXXXIII TO THE ADVENTUROUS Much have I travelled in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne: Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific--and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise-- Silent, upon a peak in Darien. _Keats._ LXXXIV HORATIUS THE TRYSTING Lars Porsena of Clusium By the Nine Gods he swore That the great house of Tarquin Should suffer wrong no more. By the Nine Gods he swore it, And named a trysting day, And bade his messengers ride forth East and west and south and north To summon his array. East and west and south and north The messengers ride fast, And tower and town and cottage Have heard the trumpet's blast. Shame on the false Etruscan Who lingers in his home, When Porsena of Clusium Is on the march for Rome. The horsemen and the footmen Are pouring in amain From many a stately market-place, From many a fruitful plain; From many a lonely hamlet Which, hid by beech and pine, Like an eagle's nest hangs on the crest Of purple Apennine; From lordly Volaterræ, Where scowls the far-famed hold Piled by the hands of giants For godlike kings of old; From sea-girt Populonia Whose sentinels descry Sardinia's snowy mountain-tops Fringing the southern sky; From the proud mart of Pisæ, Queen of the western waves, Where ride Massilia's triremes Heavy with fair-haired slaves; From where sweet Clanis wanders Through corn and vines and flowers; From where Cortona lifts to heaven Her diadem of towers. Tall are the oaks whose acorns Drop in dark Auser's rill; Fat are the stags that champ the boughs Of the Ciminian hill; Beyond all streams Clitumnus Is to the herdsman dear; Best of all pools the fowler loves The great Volsinian mere. But now no stroke of woodman Is heard by Auser's rill; No hunter tracks the stag's green path Up the Ciminian hill; Unwatched along Clitumnus Grazes the milk-white steer; Unharmed the water-fowl may dip In the Volsinian mere. The harvests of Arretium This year old men shall reap; This year young boys in Umbro Shall plunge the struggling sheep; And in the vats of Luna This year the must shall foam Round the white feet of laughing girls Whose sires have marched to Rome. There be thirty chosen prophets, The wisest of the land, Who alway by Lars Porsena Both morn and evening stand: Evening and morn the Thirty Have turned the verses o'er, Traced from the right on linen white By mighty seers of yore. And with one voice the Thirty Have their glad answer given: 'Go forth, go forth, Lars Porsena; Go forth, beloved of Heaven; Go, and return in glory To Clusium's royal dome, And hang round Nurscia's altars The golden shields of Rome.' And now hath every city Sent up her tale of men; The foot are fourscore thousand, The horse are thousands ten. Before the gates of Sutrium Is met the great array. A proud man was Lars Porsena Upon the trysting day! For all the Etruscan armies Were ranged beneath his eye, And many a banished Roman, And many a stout ally; And with a mighty following To join the muster came The Tusculan Mamilius, Prince of the Latian name. THE TROUBLE IN ROME But by the yellow Tiber Was tumult and affright: From all the spacious champaign To Rome men took their flight. A mile around the city The throng stopped up the ways; A fearful sight it was to see Through two long nights and days. For aged folk on crutches, And women great with child, And mothers sobbing over babes That clung to them and smiled, And sick men borne in litters High on the necks of slaves, And troops of sun-burned husbandmen With reaping-hooks and staves, And droves of mules and asses Laden with skins of wine, And endless flocks of goats and sheep, And endless herds of kine, And endless trains of waggons That creaked beneath the weight Of corn-sacks and of household goods, Choked every roaring gate. Now from the rock Tarpeian Could the wan burghers spy The line of blazing villages Red in the midnight sky. The Fathers of the City, They sat all night and day, For every hour some horseman came With tidings of dismay. To eastward and to westward Have spread the Tuscan bands; Nor house, nor fence, nor dovecote In Crustumerium stands. Verbenna down to Ostia Hath wasted all the plain; Astur hath stormed Janiculum, And the stout guards are slain. I wis, in all the Senate There was no heart so bold But sore it ached, and fast it beat, When that ill news was told. Forthwith up rose the Consul, Up rose the Fathers all; In haste they girded up their gowns, And hied them to the wall. They held a council standing Before the River-Gate; Short time was there, ye well may guess, For musing or debate. Out spake the Consul roundly: 'The bridge must straight go down; For, since Janiculum is lost, Nought else can save the town.' Just then a scout came flying, All wild with haste and fear: 'To arms! to arms! Sir Consul: Lars Porsena is here.' On the low hills to westward The Consul fixed his eye, And saw the swarthy storm of dust Rise fast along the sky. And nearer fast and nearer Doth the red whirlwind come; And louder still and still more loud, From underneath that rolling cloud Is heard the trumpet's war-note proud, The trampling, and the hum. And plainly and more plainly Now through the gloom appears, Far to left and far to right, In broken gleams of dark-blue light, The long array of helmets bright, The long array of spears. And plainly and more plainly Above that glimmering line Now might ye see the banners Of twelve fair cities shine; But the banner of proud Clusium Was highest of them all, The terror of the Umbrian, The terror of the Gaul. And plainly and more plainly Now might the burghers know, By port and vest, by horse and crest, Each warlike Lucumo. There Cilnius of Arretium On his fleet roan was seen; And Astur of the fourfold shield, Girt with the brand none else may wield, Tolumnius with the belt of gold, And dark Verbenna from the hold By reedy Thrasymene. Fast by the royal standard O'erlooking all the war, Lars Porsena of Clusium Sate in his ivory car. By the right wheel rode Mamilius, Prince of the Latian name; And by the left false Sextus, That wrought the deed of shame. But when the face of Sextus Was seen among the foes, A yell that rent the firmament From all the town arose. On the house-tops was no woman But spat towards him, and hissed; No child but screamed out curses, And shook its little fist. But the Consul's brow was sad, And the Consul's speech was low, And darkly looked he at the wall, And darkly at the foe. 'Their van will be upon us Before the bridge goes down; And if they once may win the bridge, What hope to save the town?' Then out spake brave Horatius, The Captain of the gate: 'To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late; And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers And the temples of his Gods, And for the tender mother Who dandled him to rest, And for the wife who nurses His baby at her breast, And for the holy maidens Who feed the eternal flame, To save them from false Sextus That wrought the deed of shame? Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul, With all the speed ye may; I, with two more to help me, Will hold the foe in play. In yon strait path a thousand May well be stopped by three. Now who will stand on either hand, And keep the bridge with me?' Then out spake Spurius Lartius, A Ramnian proud was he: 'Lo, I will stand at thy right hand, And keep the bridge with thee.' And out spake strong Heminius, Of Titian blood was he: 'I will abide on thy left side, And keep the bridge with thee.' 'Horatius,' quoth the Consul, 'As thou sayest, so let it be.' And straight against that great array Forth went the dauntless Three. For Romans in Rome's quarrel Spared neither land nor gold, Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life, In the brave days of old. Then none was for a party; Then all were for the state; Then the great man helped the poor, And the poor man loved the great: Then lands were fairly portioned; Then spoils were fairly sold: The Romans were like brothers In the brave days of old. Now Roman is to Roman More hateful than a foe, And the Tribunes beard the high, And the Fathers grind the low. As we wax hot in faction, In battle we wax cold: Wherefore men fight not as they fought In the brave days of old. THE KEEPING OF THE BRIDGE Now while the Three were tightening Their harness on their backs, The Consul was the foremost man To take in hand an axe: And Fathers mixed with Commons Seized hatchet, bar, and crow, And smote upon the planks above, And loosed the props below. Meanwhile the Tuscan army, Right glorious to behold, Came flashing back the noonday light, Rank behind rank, like surges bright Of a broad sea of gold. Four hundred trumpets sounded A peal of warlike glee, As that great host, with measured tread, And spears advanced, and ensigns spread, Rolled slowly towards the bridge's head, Where stood the dauntless Three. The Three stood calm and silent, And looked upon the foes, And a great shout of laughter From all the vanguard rose: And forth three chiefs came spurring Before that deep array; To earth they sprang, their swords they drew, And lifted high their shields, and flew To win the narrow way; Aunus from green Tifernum, Lord of the Hill of Vines; And Seius, whose eight hundred slaves Sicken in Ilva's mines; And Picus, long to Clusium Vassal in peace and war, Who led to fight his Umbrian powers From that grey crag where, girt with towers, The fortress of Nequinum lowers O'er the pale waves of Nar. Stout Lartius hurled down Aunus Into the stream beneath: Herminius struck at Seius, And clove him to the teeth: At Picus brave Horatius Darted one fiery thrust, And the proud Umbrian's gilded arms Clashed in the bloody dust. Then Ocnus of Falerii Rushed on the Roman Three; And Lausulus of Urgo, The rover of the sea; And Aruns of Volsinium, Who slew the great wild boar, The great wild boar that had his den Amidst the reeds of Cosa's fen, And wasted fields, and slaughtered men, Along Albinia's shore. Herminius smote down Aruns: Lartius laid Ocnus low: Right to the heart of Lausulus Horatius sent a blow. 'Lie there,' he cried, 'fell pirate! No more, aghast and pale, From Ostia's walls the crowd shall mark The track of thy destroying bark. No more Campania's hinds shall fly To woods and caverns when they spy Thy thrice-accursed sail.' But now no sound of laughter Was heard amongst the foes. A wild and wrathful clamour From all the vanguard rose. Six spears' lengths from the entrance Halted that deep array, And for a space no man came forth To win the narrow way. But hark! the cry is Astur: And lo! the ranks divide; And the great Lord of Luna Comes with his stately stride. Upon his ample shoulders Clangs loud the fourfold shield, And in his hand he shakes the brand Which none but he can wield. He smiled on those bold Romans A smile serene and high; He eyed the flinching Tuscans, And scorn was in his eye. Quoth he, 'The she-wolf's litter Stands savagely at bay: But will ye dare to follow, If Astur clears the way?' Then, whirling up his broadsword With both hands to the height, He rushed against Horatius, And smote with all his might. With shield and blade Horatius Right deftly turned the blow. The blow, though turned, came yet too nigh; It missed his helm, but gashed his thigh: The Tuscans raised a joyful cry To see the red blood flow. He reeled, and on Herminius He leaned one breathing-space; Then, like a wild cat mad with wounds, Sprang right at Astur's face. Through teeth, and skull, and helmet, So fierce a thrust he sped The good sword stood a handbreadth out Behind the Tuscan's head. And the great Lord of Luna Fell at that deadly stroke, As falls on Mount Alvernus A thunder-smitten oak: Far o'er the crashing forest The giant arms lie spread; And the pale augurs, muttering low, Gaze on the blasted head. On Astur's throat Horatius Right firmly pressed his heel, And thrice and four times tugged amain, Ere he wrenched out the steel. 'And see,' he cried, 'the welcome, Fair guests, that waits you here! What noble Lucumo comes next To taste our Roman cheer?' But at his haughty challenge A sullen murmur ran, Mingled of wrath and shame and dread, Along that glittering van. There lacked not men of prowess, Nor men of lordly race; For all Etruria's noblest Were round the fatal place. But all Etruria's noblest Felt their hearts sink to see On the earth the bloody corpses, In the path the dauntless Three: And, from the ghastly entrance Where those bold Romans stood, All shrank, like boys who unaware, Ranging the woods to start a hare, Come to the mouth of the dark lair Where, growling low, a fierce old bear Lies amidst bones and blood. Was none who would be foremost To lead such dire attack; But those behind cried 'Forward!' And those before cried 'Back!' And backward now and forward Wavers the deep array; And on the tossing sea of steel, To and fro the standards reel; And the victorious trumpet-peal Dies fitfully away. Yet one man for one moment Strode out before the crowd; Well known was he to all the Three, And they gave him greeting loud. 'Now welcome, welcome, Sextus! Now welcome to thy home! Why dost thou stay, and turn away? Here lies the road to Rome.' Thrice looked he at the city; Thrice looked he at the dead; And thrice came on in fury, And thrice turned back in dread: And, white with fear and hatred, Scowled at the narrow way Where, wallowing in a pool of blood, The bravest Tuscans lay. But meanwhile axe and lever Have manfully been plied; And now the bridge hangs tottering Above the boiling tide. 'Come back, come back, Horatius!' Loud cried the Fathers all. 'Back, Lartius! back, Herminius! Back, ere the ruin fall!' Back darted Spurius Lartius; Herminius darted back: And, as they passed, beneath their feet They felt the timbers crack. But, when they turned their faces, And on the farther shore Saw brave Horatius stand alone, They would have crossed once more. But with a crash like thunder Fell every loosened beam, And, like a dam, the mighty wreck Lay right athwart the stream: And a long shout of triumph Rose from the walls of Rome, As to the highest turret-tops Was splashed the yellow foam. And, like a horse unbroken When first he feels the rein, The furious river struggled hard, And tossed his tawny mane; And burst the curb, and bounded, Rejoicing to be free; And whirling down, in fierce career, Battlement, and plank, and pier, Rushed headlong to the sea. FATHER TIBER Alone stood brave Horatius, But constant still in mind; Thrice thirty thousand foes before, And the broad flood behind. 'Down with him!' cried false Sextus, With a smile on his pale face. 'Now yield thee,' cried Lars Porsena, 'Now yield thee to our grace.' Round turned he, as not deigning Those craven ranks to see; Nought spake he to Lars Porsena, To Sextus nought spake he; But he saw on Palatinus The white porch of his home; And he spake to the noble river That rolls by the towers of Rome. 'O Tiber! father Tiber! To whom the Romans pray, A Roman's life, a Roman's arms, Take thou in charge this day!' So he spake, and speaking sheathed The good sword by his side, And with his harness on his back Plunged headlong in the tide. No sound of joy or sorrow Was heard from either bank; But friends and foes in dumb surprise, With parted lips and straining eyes, Stood gazing where he sank; And when above the surges They saw his crest appear, All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry, And even the ranks of Tuscany Could scarce forbear to cheer. But fiercely ran the current, Swollen high by months of rain: And fast his blood was flowing; And he was sore in pain, And heavy with his armour, And spent with changing blows: And oft they thought him sinking, But still again he rose. Never, I ween, did swimmer, In such an evil case, Struggle through such a raging flood Safe to the landing-place: But his limbs were borne up bravely By the brave heart within, And our good father Tiber Bare bravely up his chin. 'Curse on him!' quoth false Sextus; 'Will not the villain drown? But for this stay ere close of day We should have sacked the town!' 'Heaven help him!' quoth Lars Porsena, 'And bring him safe to shore; For such a gallant feat of arms Was never seen before.' And now he feels the bottom; Now on dry earth he stands; Now round him throng the Fathers To press his gory hands; And now with shouts and clapping, And noise of weeping loud, He enters through the River-Gate, Borne by the joyous crowd. They gave him of the corn-land, That was of public right, As much as two strong oxen Could plough from morn till night; And they made a molten image, And set it up on high, And there it stands unto this day To witness if I lie. It stands in the Comitium Plain for all folk to see; Horatius in his harness, Halting upon one knee: And underneath is written, In letters all of gold, How valiantly he kept the bridge In the brave days of old. And still his name sounds stirring Unto the men of Rome, As the trumpet-blast that cries to them To charge the Volscian home; And wives still pray to Juno For boys with hearts as bold As his who kept the bridge so well In the brave days of old. And in the nights of winter, When the cold north winds blow, And the long howling of the wolves Is heard amidst the snow; When round the lonely cottage Roars loud the tempest's din, And the good logs of Algidus Roar louder yet within; When the oldest cask is opened, And the largest lamp is lit; When the chestnuts glow in the embers, And the kid turns on the spit; When young and old in circle Around the firebrands close; When the girls are weaving baskets, And the lads are shaping bows; When the goodman mends his armour And trims his helmet's plume; When the goodwife's shuttle merrily Goes flashing through the loom; With weeping and with laughter Still is the story told, How well Horatius kept the bridge In the brave days of old. _Macaulay._ LXXXV THE ARMADA Attend, all ye who list to hear our noble England's praise; I tell of the thrice famous deeds she wrought in ancient days, When that great fleet invincible against her bore in vain The richest spoils of Mexico, the stoutest hearts of Spain. It was about the lovely close of a warm summer day, There came a gallant merchant-ship full sail to Plymouth Bay; Her crew hath seen Castile's black fleet, beyond Aurigny's isle, At earliest twilight, on the waves lie heaving many a mile. At sunrise she escaped their van, by God's especial grace; And the tall Pinta, till the noon, had held her close in chase. Forthwith a guard at every gun was placed along the wall; The beacon blazed upon the roof of Edgecumbe's lofty hall; Many a light fishing-bark put out to pry along the coast, And with loose rein and bloody spur rode inland many a post. With his white hair unbonneted, the stout old sheriff comes; Behind him march the halberdiers; before him sound the drums; His yeomen round the market cross make clear an ample space; For there behoves him to set up the standard of Her Grace. And haughtily the trumpets peal, and gaily dance the bells, As slow upon the labouring wind the royal blazon swells. Look how the Lion of the sea lifts up his ancient crown, And underneath his deadly paw treads the gay lilies down! So stalked he when he turned to flight, on that famed Picard field, Bohemia's plume, and Genoa's bow, and Cæsar's eagle shield. So glared he when at Agincourt in wrath he turned to bay, And crushed and torn beneath his claws the princely hunters lay. Ho! strike the flagstaff deep, Sir Knight: ho! scatter flowers, fair maids: Ho! gunners, fire a loud salute; ho! gallants, draw your blades: Thou sun, shine on her joyously: ye breezes, waft her wide; Our glorious SEMPER EADEM, the banner of our pride. The freshening breeze of eve unfurled that banner's massy fold; The parting gleam of sunshine kissed that haughty scroll of gold; Night sank upon the dusky beach and on the purple sea, Such night in England ne'er had been, nor e'er again shall be. From Eddystone to Berwick bounds, from Lynn to Milford Bay, That time of slumber was as bright and busy as the day; For swift to east and swift to west the ghastly war-flame spread, High on St. Michael's Mount it shone: it shone on Beachy Head. Far on the deep the Spaniard saw, along each southern shire, Cape beyond cape, in endless range, those twinkling points of fire. The fisher left his skiff to rock on Tamar's glittering waves: The rugged miners poured to war from Mendip's sunless caves! O'er Longleat's towers, o'er Cranbourne's oaks, the fiery herald flew: He roused the shepherds of Stonehenge, the rangers of Beaulieu. Right sharp and quick the bells all night rang out from Bristol town, And ere the day three hundred horse had met on Clifton down; The sentinel on Whitehall gate looked forth into the night, And saw o'erhanging Richmond Hill the streak of blood-red light: Then bugle's note and cannon's roar the death-like silence broke, And with one start, and with one cry, the royal city woke. At once on all her stately gates arose the answering fires; At once the wild alarum clashed from all her reeling spires; From all the batteries of the Tower pealed loud the voice of fear; And all the thousand masts of Thames sent back a louder cheer; And from the furthest wards was heard the rush of hurrying feet, And the broad streams of pikes and flags rushed down each roaring street; And broader still became the blaze, and louder still the din, As fast from every village round the horse came spurring in. And eastward straight from wild Blackheath the warlike errand went, And roused in many an ancient hall the gallant squires of Kent. Southward from Surrey's pleasant hills flew those bright couriers forth; High on bleak Hampstead's swarthy moor they started for the north; And on, and on, without a pause, untired they bounded still: All night from tower to tower they sprang; they sprang from hill to hill: Till the proud Peak unfurled the flag o'er Darwin's rocky dales, Till like volcanoes flared to heaven the stormy huts of Wales, Till twelve fair counties saw the blaze on Malvern's lonely height, Till streamed in crimson on the wind the Wrekin's crest of light, Till broad and fierce the star came forth on Ely's stately fane, And tower and hamlet rose in arms o'er all the boundless plain; Till Belvoir's lordly terraces the sign to Lincoln sent, And Lincoln sped the message on o'er the wide vale of Trent; Till Skiddaw saw the fire that burned on Gaunt's embattled pile, And the red glare on Skiddaw roused the burghers of Carlisle. _Macaulay._ LXXXVI THE LAST BUCCANEER The winds were yelling, the waves were swelling, The sky was black and drear, When the crew with eyes of flame brought the ship without a name Alongside the last Buccaneer. 'Whence flies your sloop full sail before so fierce a gale, When all others drive bare on the seas? Say, come ye from the shore of the holy Salvador, Or the gulf of the rich Caribbees?' 'From a shore no search hath found, from a gulf no line can sound, Without rudder or needle we steer; Above, below, our bark dies the sea-fowl and the shark, As we fly by the last Buccaneer. To-night there shall be heard on the rocks of Cape de Verde A loud crash and a louder roar; And to-morrow shall the deep with a heavy moaning sweep The corpses and wreck to the shore,' The stately ship of Clyde securely now may ride In the breath of the citron shades; And Severn's towering mast securely now hies fast, Through the seas of the balmy Trades. From St Jago's wealthy port, from Havannah's royal fort, The seaman goes forth without fear; For since that stormy night not a mortal hath had sight Of the flag of the last Buccaneer. _Macaulay._ LXXXVII A JACOBITE'S EPITAPH To my true king I offered free from stain Courage and faith; vain faith, and courage vain. For him, I threw lands, honours, wealth, away, And one dear hope, that was more prized than they. For him I languished in a foreign clime, Grey-haired with sorrow in my manhood's prime; Heard on Lavernia Scargill's whispering trees, And pined by Arno for my lovelier Tees; Beheld each night my home in fevered sleep, Each morning started from the dream to weep; Till God, who saw me tried too sorely, gave The resting-place I asked--an early grave. Oh thou, whom chance leads to this nameless stone, From that proud country which was once mine own, By those white cliffs I never more must see, By that dear language which I speak like thee, Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear O'er English dust. A broken heart lies here. _Macaulay._ LXXXVIII THE SONG OF THE WESTERN MEN A good sword and a trusty hand! A merry heart and true! King James's men shall understand What Cornish lads can do. And have they fixed the where and when? And shall Trelawny die? Here's twenty thousand Cornish men Will know the reason why! Out spake their captain brave and bold, A merry wight was he: 'If London Tower were Michael's hold, We'll set Trelawny free! We'll cross the Tamar, land to land, The Severn is no stay, With "one and all," and hand in hand, And who shall bid us nay? And when we come to London Wall, A pleasant sight to view, Come forth! come forth! ye cowards all, Here's men as good as you. Trelawny he's in keep and hold, Trelawny he may die; But here's twenty thousand Cornish bold Will know the reason why!' _Hawker._ LXXXIX THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP THE MODEL 'Build me straight, O worthy Master! Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel, That shall laugh at all disaster, And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!' The merchant's word Delighted the Master heard; For his heart was in his work, and the heart Giveth grace unto every Art. A quiet smile played round his lips, As the eddies and dimples of the tide Play round the bows of ships, That steadily at anchor ride. And with a voice that was full of glee, He answered, 'Ere long we will launch A vessel as goodly, and strong, and staunch, As ever weathered a wintry sea!' And first with nicest skill and art, Perfect and finished in every part, A little model the Master wrought, Which should be to the larger plan What the child is to the man, Its counterpart in miniature; That with a hand more swift and sure The greater labour might be brought To answer to his inward thought. And as he laboured, his mind ran o'er The various ships that were built of yore, And above them all, and strangest of all, Towered the Great Harry, crank and tall, Whose picture was hanging on the wall, With bows and stern raised high in air, And balconies hanging here and there, And signal lanterns and flags afloat, And eight round towers, like those that frown From some old castle, looking down Upon the drawbridge and the moat. And he said with a smile, 'Our ship, I wis, Shall be of another form than this!' It was of another form, indeed; Built for freight, and yet for speed, A beautiful and gallant craft; Broad in the beam, that the stress of the blast, Pressing down upon sail and mast, Might not the sharp bows overwhelm; Broad in the beam, but sloping aft With graceful curve and slow degrees, That she might be docile to the helm, And that the currents of parted seas, Closing behind, with mighty force, Might aid and not impede her course. THE BUILDERS In the ship-yard stood the Master, With the model of the vessel, That should laugh at all disaster, And with wave and whirlwind wrestle! Covering many a rood of ground, Lay the timber piled around; Timber of chestnut, and elm, and oak, And scattered here and there, with these, The knarred and crooked cedar knees; Brought from regions far away, From Pascagoula's sunny bay, And the banks of the roaring Roanoke! Ah! what a wondrous thing it is To note how many wheels of toil One thought, one word, can set in motion! There's not a ship that sails the ocean, But every climate, every soil, Must bring its tribute, great or small, And help to build the wooden wall! The sun was rising o'er the sea, And long the level shadows lay, As if they, too, the beams would be Of some great, airy argosy, Framed and launched in a single day. That silent architect, the sun, Had hewn and laid them every one, Ere the work of man was yet begun. Beside the Master, when he spoke, A youth, against an anchor leaning, Listened to catch his slightest meaning. Only the long waves, as they broke In ripples on the pebbly beach, Interrupted the old man's speech. Beautiful they were, in sooth, The old man and the fiery youth! The old man, in whose busy brain Many a ship that sailed the main Was modelled o'er and o'er again;-- The fiery youth, who was to be The heir of his dexterity, The heir of his house, and his daughter's hand, When he had built and launched from land What the elder head had planned. 'Thus,' said he, 'will we build this ship! Lay square the blocks upon the slip, And follow well this plan of mine. Choose the timbers with greatest care; Of all that is unsound beware; For only what is sound and strong To this vessel shall belong. Cedar of Maine and Georgia pine Here together shall combine. A goodly frame, and a goodly fame, And the UNION be her name! For the day that gives her to the sea Shall give my daughter unto thee!' The Master's word Enrapturèd the young man heard; And as he turned his face aside, With a look of joy and a thrill of pride, Standing before Her father's door, He saw the form of his promised bride. The sun shone on her golden hair, And her cheek was glowing fresh and fair, With the breath of morn and the soft sea air. Like a beauteous barge was she, Still at rest on the sandy beach, Just beyond the billow's reach; But he Was the restless, seething, stormy sea! Ah! how skilful grows the hand That obeyeth Love's command! It is the heart, and not the brain, That to the highest doth attain, And he who followeth Love's behest Far exceedeth all the rest! Thus with the rising of the sun Was the noble task begun, And soon throughout the ship-yard's bounds Were heard the intermingled sounds Of axes and of mallets, plied With vigourous arms on every side; Plied so deftly and so well, That ere the shadows of evening fell, The keel of oak for a noble ship, Scarfed and bolted, straight and strong, Was lying ready, and stretched along The blocks, well placed upon the slip. Happy, thrice happy, every one Who sees his labour well begun, And not perplexed and multiplied, By idly waiting for time and tide! And when the hot, long day was o'er, The young man at the Master's door Sat with the maiden calm and still. And within the porch, a little more Removed beyond the evening chill, The father sat, and told them tales Of wrecks in the great September gales, Of pirates upon the Spanish Main, And ships that never came back again; The chance and change of a sailor's life, Want and plenty, rest and strife, His roving fancy, like the wind, That nothing can stay and nothing can bind: And the magic charm of foreign lands, With shadows of palms and shining sands, Where the tumbling surf, O'er the coral reefs of Madagascar, Washes the feet of the swarthy Lascar, As he lies alone and asleep on the turf. And the trembling maiden held her breath At the tales of that awful, pitiless sea, With all its terror and mystery, The dim, dark sea, so like unto Death, That divides and yet unites mankind! And whenever the old man paused, a gleam From the bowl of his pipe would awhile illume The silent group in the twilight gloom, And thoughtful faces, as in a dream; And for a moment one might mark What had been hidden by the dark, That the head of the maiden lay at rest, Tenderly, on the young man's breast! IN THE SHIP-YARD Day by day the vessel grew, With timbers fashioned strong and true, Stemson and keelson and sternson-knee, Till, framed with perfect symmetry, A skeleton ship rose up to view! And round the bows and along the side The heavy hammers and mallets plied, Till after many a week, at length, Wonderful for form and strength, Sublime in its enormous bulk, Loomed aloft the shadowy hulk! And around it columns of smoke, upwreathing, Rose from the boiling, bubbling, seething Caldron that glowed, And overflowed With the black tar, heated for the sheathing. And amid the clamours Of clattering hammers, He who listened heard now and then The song of the Master and his men:-- 'Build me straight, O worthy Master, Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel, That shall laugh at all disaster, And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!' With oaken brace and copper band, Lay the rudder on the sand, That, like a thought, should have control Over the movement of the whole; And near it the anchor, whose giant hand Would reach down and grapple with the land, And immovable and fast Hold the great ship against the bellowing blast! And at the bows an image stood, By a cunning artist carved in wood, With robes of white, that far behind Seemed to be fluttering in the wind. It was not shaped in a classic mould, Not like a Nymph or Goddess of old, Or Naiad rising from the water, But modelled from the Master's daughter! On many a dreary and misty night 'Twill be seen by the rays of the signal light, Speeding along through the rain and the dark, Like a ghost in its snow-white sark, The pilot of some phantom bark, Guiding the vessel in its flight By a path none other knows aright, Behold, at last, Each tall and tapering mast Is swung into its place; Shrouds and stays Holding it firm and fast! Long ago, In the deer-haunted forests of Maine, When upon mountain and plain Lay the snow, They fell--those lordly pines! Those grand, majestic pines! 'Mid shouts and cheers The jaded steers, Panting beneath the goad, Dragged down the weary, winding road Those captive kings so straight and tall, To be shorn of their streaming hair And, naked and bare, To feel the stress and the strain Of the wind and the reeling main, Whose roar Would remind them for evermore Of their native forest they should not see again. And everywhere The slender, graceful spars Poise aloft in the air, And at the mast head, White, blue, and red, A flag unrolls the stripes and stars, Ah! when the wanderer, lonely, friendless, In foreign harbours shall behold That flag unrolled, 'Twill be as a friendly hand Stretched out from his native land, Filling his heart with memories sweet and endless. THE TWO BRIDALS All is finished! and at length Has come the bridal day Of beauty and of strength. To-day the vessel shall be launched! With fleecy clouds the sky is blanched, And o'er the bay, Slowly, in all his splendours dight, The great sun rises to behold the sight. The ocean old, Centuries old, Strong as youth, and as uncontrolled, Paces restless to and fro Up and down the sands of gold. His beating heart is not at rest; And far and wide, With ceaseless flow, His beard of snow Heaves with the heaving of his breast. He waits impatient for his bride. There she stands, With her foot upon the sands, Decked with flags and streamers gay In honour of her marriage day, Her snow-white signals fluttering, blending, Round her like a veil descending, Ready to be The bride of the grey, old sea. On the deck another bride Is standing by her lover's side. Shadows from the flags and shrouds, Like the shadows cast by clouds, Broken by many a sunny fleck, Fall around them on the deck. The prayer is said, The service read, The joyous bridegroom bows his head, And in tears the good old Master Shakes the brown hand of his son, Kisses his daughter's glowing cheek In silence, for he cannot speak, And ever faster Down his own the tears begin to run. The worthy pastor-- The shepherd of that wandering flock, That has the ocean for its wold, That has the vessel for its fold, Leaping ever from rock to rock-- Spake, with accents mild and clear, Words of warning, words of cheer, But tedious to the bridegroom's ear. He knew the chart, Of the sailor's heart, All its pleasures and its griefs, All its shallows and rocky reefs, All those secret currents that flow With such resistless undertow, And lift and drift with terrible force, The will from its moorings and its course. Therefore he spake, and thus said he: 'Like unto ships far off at sea, Outward or homeward bound, are we. Before, behind, and all around, Floats and swings the horizon's bound, Seems at its distant rim to rise And climb the crystal wall of the skies, And then again to turn and sink, As if we could slide from its outer brink. Ah! it is not the sea, It is not the sea that sinks and shelves, But ourselves That rock and rise With endless and uneasy motion, Now touching the very skies, Now sinking into the depths of ocean. Ah! if our souls but poise and swing Like the compass in its brazen ring, Ever level, and ever true To the toil and the task we have to do, We shall sail securely, and safely reach The Fortunate Isles, on whose shining beach The sights we see, and the sounds we hear, Will be those of joy and not of fear!' Then the Master, With a gesture of command, Waved his hand; And at the word, Loud and sudden there was heard, All around them and below, The sound of hammers, blow on blow, Knocking away the shores and spurs. And see! she stirs! She starts--she moves--she seems to feel The thrill of life along her keel, And, spurning with her foot the ground, With one exulting, joyous bound, She leaps into the ocean's arms! And lo! from the assembled crowd There rose a shout, prolonged and loud, That to the ocean seemed to say,-- 'Take her, O bridegroom, old and grey, Take her to thy protecting arms, With all her youth and all her charms!' How beautiful she is! How fair She lies within those arms, that press Her form with many a soft caress Of tenderness and watchful care! Sail forth into the sea, O ship! Through wind and wave, right onward steer! The moistened eye, the trembling lip, Are not the signs of doubt or fear. Sail forth into the sea of life, O gentle, loving, trusting wife, And safe from all adversity Upon the bosom of that sea Thy comings and thy goings be! For gentleness and love and trust Prevail o'er angry wave and gust; And in the wreck of noble lives Something immortal still survives! Thou, too, sail on, O ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate! We know what Master laid thy keel, What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, What anvils rang, what hammers beat, In what a forge and what a heat Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 'Tis of the wave and not the rock; 'Tis but the flapping of the sail, And not a rent made by the gale! In spite of rock and tempest's roar, In spite of false lights on the shore, Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee,--are all with thee! _Longfellow._ XC THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH CAPE Othere, the old sea-captain, Who dwelt in Helgoland, To King Alfred, the Lover of Truth, Brought a snow-white walrus-tooth, Which he held in his brown right hand. His figure was tall and stately, Like a boy's his eye appeared; His hair was yellow as hay, But threads of a silvery grey Gleamed in his tawny beard. Hearty and hale was Othere, His cheek had the colour of oak; With a kind of laugh in his speech, Like the sea-tide on a beach, As unto the king he spoke. And Alfred, King of the Saxons, Had a book upon his knees, And wrote down the wondrous tale Of him who was first to sail Into the Arctic seas. 'So far I live to the northward, No man lives north of me; To the east are wild mountain-chains, And beyond them meres and plains; To the westward all is sea. So far I live to the northward, From the harbour of Skeringes-hale, If you only sailed by day With a fair wind all the way, More than a month would you sail. I own six hundred reindeer, With sheep and swine beside; I have tribute from the Finns, Whalebone and reindeer-skins, And ropes of walrus-hide. I ploughed the land with horses, But my heart was ill at ease, For the old seafaring men Came to me now and then, With their sagas of the seas;-- Of Iceland and of Greenland, And the stormy Hebrides, And the undiscovered deep;-- I could not eat nor sleep For thinking of those seas. To the northward stretched the desert, How far I fain would know; So at last I sallied forth, And three days sailed due north, As far as the whale-ships go. To the west of me was the ocean, To the right the desolate shore, But I did not slacken sail For the walrus or the whale, Till after three days more. The days grew longer and longer, Till they became as one, And southward through the haze I saw the sullen blaze Of the red midnight sun. And then uprose before me, Upon the water's edge, The huge and haggard shape Of that unknown North Cape, Whose form is like a wedge. The sea was rough and stormy, The tempest howled and wailed, And the sea-fog, like a ghost, Haunted that dreary coast, But onward still I sailed. Four days I steered to eastward, Four days without a night: Round in a fiery ring Went the great sun, O King, With red and lurid light.' Here Alfred, King of the Saxons, Ceased writing for a while; And raised his eyes from his book, With a strange and puzzled look, And an incredulous smile. But Othere, the old sea-captain, He neither paused nor stirred, Till the King listened, and then Once more took up his pen, And wrote down every word. 'And now the land,' said Othere, 'Bent southward suddenly, And I followed the curving shore, And ever southward bore Into a nameless sea. And there we hunted the walrus, The narwhale, and the seal; Ha! 'twas a noble game! And like the lightning's flame Flew our harpoons of steel. There were six of us all together, Norsemen of Helgoland; In two days and no more We killed of them threescore, And dragged them to the strand.' Here Alfred, the Truth-Teller, Suddenly closed his book, And lifted his blue eyes, With doubt and strange surmise Depicted in their look. And Othere, the old sea-captain, Stared at him wild and weird, Then smiled till his shining teeth Gleamed white from underneath His tawny, quivering beard. And to the King of the Saxons, In witness of the truth, Raising his noble head, He stretched his brown hand, and said, 'Behold this walrus-tooth!' _Longfellow._ XCI THE CUMBERLAND At anchor in Hampton Roads we lay, On board of the Cumberland, sloop of war; And at times from the fortress across the bay The alarum of drums swept past, Or a bugle blast From the camp on the shore. Then far away to the south uprose A little feather of snow-white smoke, And we knew that the iron ship of our foes Was steadily steering its course To try the force Of our ribs of oak. Down upon us heavily runs, Silent and sullen, the floating fort; Then comes a puff of smoke from her guns, And leaps the terrible death, With fiery breath, From each open port. We are not idle, but send her straight Defiance back in a full broadside! As hail rebounds from a roof of slate, Rebounds our heavier hail From each iron scale Of the monster's hide. 'Strike your flag!' the rebel cries, In his arrogant old plantation strain 'Never!' our gallant Morris replies; 'It is better to sink than to yield!' And the whole air pealed With the cheers of our men. Then, like a kraken huge and black, She crushed our ribs in her iron grasp! Down went the Cumberland all a wreck, With a sudden shudder of death, And the cannon's breath For her dying gasp. Next morn, as the sun rose over the bay, Still floated our flag at the mainmast head. Lord, how beautiful was thy day! Every waft of the air Was a whisper of prayer, Or a dirge for the dead. Ho! brave hearts that went down in the seas, Ye are at peace in the troubled stream! Ho! brave land! with hearts like these, Thy flag that is rent in twain Shall be one again, And without a seam! _Longfellow._ XCII A DUTCH PICTURE Simon Danz has come home again, From cruising about with his buccaneers; He has singed the beard of the King of Spain, And carried away the Dean of Jaen And sold him in Algiers. In his house by the Maes, with its roof of tiles And weathercocks flying aloft in air, There are silver tankards of antique styles, Plunder of convent and castle, and piles Of carpets rich and rare. In his tulip-garden there by the town, Overlooking the sluggish stream, With his Moorish cap and dressing-gown, The old sea-captain, hale and brown, Walks in a waking dream. A smile in his grey mustachio lurks Whenever he thinks of the King of Spain, And the listed tulips look like Turks, And the silent gardener as he works Is changed to the Dean of Jaen. The windmills on the outermost Verge of the landscape in the haze, To him are towers on the Spanish coast With whiskered sentinels at their post, Though this is the river Maes. But when the winter rains begin, He sits and smokes by the blazing brands, And old seafaring men come in, Goat-bearded, grey, and with double chin, And rings upon their hands. They sit there in the shadow and shine Of the flickering fire of the winter night; Figures in colour and design Like those by Rembrandt of the Rhine, Half darkness and half light. And they talk of their ventures lost or won, And their talk is ever and ever the same, While they drink the red wine of Tarragon, From the cellars of some Spanish Don Or convent set on flame. Restless at times, with heavy strides He paces his parlour to and fro; He is like a ship that at anchor rides, And swings with the rising and falling tides, And tugs at her anchor-tow. Voices mysterious far and near, Sound of the wind and sound of the sea, Are calling and whispering in his ear, 'Simon Danz! Why stayest thou here? Come forth and follow me!' So he thinks he shall take to the sea again For one more cruise with his buccaneers, To singe the beard of the King of Spain, And capture another Dean of Jaen And sell him in Algiers. _Longfellow._ XCIII BARBARA FRIETCHIE Up from the meadows rich with corn, Clear in the cool September morn, The clustered spires of Frederick stand Green-walled by the hills of Maryland. Round about them orchards sweep, Apple and peach tree fruited deep, Fair as a garden of the Lord To the eyes of the famished rebel horde On that pleasant morn of the early fall When Lee marched over the mountain wall, Over the mountains winding down, Horse and foot into Frederick town. Forty flags with their silver stars, Forty flags with their crimson bars, Flapped in the morning wind: the sun Of noon looked down, and saw not one. Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then, Bowed with her fourscore years and ten; Bravest of all in Frederick town, She took up the flag the men hauled down; In her attic window the staff she set, To show that one heart was loyal yet. Up the street came the rebel tread, Stonewall Jackson riding ahead. Under his slouched hat left and right He glanced; the old flag met his sight. 'Halt!'--the dust-brown ranks stood fast. 'Fire!'--out blazed the rifle-blast. It shivered the window, pane and sash; It rent the banner with seam and gash. Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf; She leaned far out on the window-sill, And shook it forth with a royal will. 'Shoot, if you must, this old grey head, But spare your country's flag,' she said. A shade of sadness, a blush of shame, Over the face of the leader came; The nobler nature within him stirred To life at that woman's deed and word: 'Who touches a hair of yon grey head Dies like a dog! March on!' he said. All day long through Frederick street Sounded the tread of marching feet: All day long that free flag tost Over the heads of the rebel host. Ever its torn folds rose and fell On the loyal winds that loved it well; And through the hill-gaps sunset light Shone over it with a warm good-night. _Whittier._ XCIV A BALLAD OF THE FLEET At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay, And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from far away: 'Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fifty-three!' Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: ''Fore God I am no coward; But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear, And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick. We are six ships of the line; can we fight with fifty-three?' Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: 'I know you are no coward; You fly them for a moment to fight with them again. But I've ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore. I should count myself the coward if I left them, my Lord Howard, To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain.' So Lord Howard passed away with five ships of war that day, Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven; But Sir Richard bore in hand all the sick men from the land Very carefully and slow, Men of Bideford in Devon, And we laid them on the ballast down below; For we brought them all aboard, And they blest him in their pain, that they were not left to Spain, To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory of the Lord. He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight, And he sailed away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight, With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather bow. 'Shall we fight or shall we fly? Good Sir Richard, tell us now, For to fight is but to die! There'll be little of us left by the time this sun be set.' And Sir Richard said again: 'We be all good English men. Let us bang those dogs of Seville, the children of the devil, For I never turned my back upon Don or devil yet.' Sir Richard spoke and he laughed, and we roared a hurrah, and so The little Revenge ran on sheer into the heart of the foe, With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below; For half their fleet to the right and half to the left were seen, And the little Revenge ran on through the long sea-lane between. Thousands of their soldiers looked down from their decks and laughed, Thousands of their seamen made mock at the mad little craft Running on and on, till delayed By their mountain-like San Philip that, of fifteen hundred tons, And up-shadowing high above us with her yawning tiers of guns, Took the breath from our sails, and we stayed. And while now the great San Philip hung above us like a cloud Whence the thunderbolt will fall Long and loud, Four galleons drew away From the Spanish fleet that day, And two upon the larboard and two upon the starboard lay, And the battle thunder broke from them all. But anon the great San Philip, she bethought herself and went, Having that within her womb that had left her ill content; And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand, For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqueteers, And a dozen times we shook 'em off as a dog that shakes his ears When he leaps from the water to the land. And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea, But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three. Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came, Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder and flame; Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her shame. For some were sunk and many were shattered, and so could fight us no more-- God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world before? For he said, 'Fight on! fight on!' Though his vessel was all but a wreck; And it chanced that, when half of the short summer night was gone, With a grisly wound to be drest he had left the deck, But a bullet struck him that was dressing it suddenly dead, And himself he was wounded again in the side and the head, And he said, 'Fight on! fight on!' And the night went down and the sun smiled out far over the summer sea, And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay round us all in a ring; But they dared not touch us again, for they feared that we still could sting, So they watched what the end would be. And we had not fought them in vain, But in perilous plight were we, Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain, And half of the rest of us maimed for life In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife; And the sick men down in the hold were most of them stark and cold, And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the powder was all of it spent; And the masts and the rigging were lying over the side; But Sir Richard cried in his English pride: 'We have fought such a fight for a day and a night As may never be fought again! We have won great glory, my men! And a day less or more At sea or ashore, We die--does it matter when? Sink me the ship, Master Gunner--sink her, split her in twain! Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!' And the gunner said, 'Ay, ay,' but the seamen made reply: 'We have children, we have wives, And the Lord hath spared our lives. We will make the Spaniard promise, if we yield, to let us go; We shall live to fight again and to strike another blow.' And the lion there lay dying, and they yielded to the foe. And the stately Spanish men to their flagship bore him then, Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir Richard caught at last, And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign grace; But he rose upon their decks, and he cried: 'I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true; I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do: With a joyful spirit I Sir Richard Grenville die!' And he fell upon their decks and he died. And they stared at the dead that had been so valiant and true, And had holden the power and glory of Spain so cheap That he dared her with one little ship and his English few; Was he devil or man? He was devil for aught they knew, But they sank his body with honour down into the deep, And they manned the Revenge with a swarthier alien crew, And away she sailed with her loss and longed for her own; When a wind from the lands they had ruined awoke from sleep, And the water began to heave and the weather to moan, And or ever that evening ended a great gale blew, And a wave like the wave that is raised by an earthquake grew, Till it smote on their hulls and their sails and their masts and their flags, And the whole sea plunged and fell on the shot-shattered navy of Spain, And the little Revenge herself went down by the island crags To be lost evermore in the main. _Tennyson._ XCV THE HEAVY BRIGADE The charge of the gallant three hundred, the Heavy Brigade! Down the hill, down the hill, thousands of Russians, Thousands of horsemen, drew to the valley--and stayed; For Scarlett and Scarlett's three hundred were riding by When the points of the Russian lances arose in the sky; And he called, 'Left wheel into line!' and they wheeled and obeyed. Then he looked at the host that had halted he knew not why, And he turned half round, and he bad his trumpeter sound To the charge, and he rode on ahead, as he waved his blade To the gallant three hundred whose glory will never die-- 'Follow,' and up the hill, up the hill, up the hill, Followed the Heavy Brigade. The trumpet, the gallop, the charge, and the might of the fight! Thousands of horsemen had gathered there on the height, With a wing pushed out to the left and a wing to the right, And who shall escape if they close? but he dashed up alone Through the great grey slope of men, Swayed his sabre, and held his own Like an Englishman there and then; All in a moment followed with force Three that were next in their fiery course, Wedged themselves in between horse and horse, Fought for their lives in the narrow gap they had made-- Four amid thousands! and up the hill, up the hill, Gallopt the gallant three hundred, the Heavy Brigade. Fell like a cannon-shot, Burst like a thunderbolt, Crashed like a hurricane, Broke through the mass from below, Drove through the midst of the foe, Plunged up and down, to and fro, Rode flashing blow upon blow, Brave Inniskillens and Greys Whirling their sabres in circles of light! And some of us, all in amaze, Who were held for a while from the fight, And were only standing at gaze, When the dark-muffled Russian crowd Folded its wings from the left and the right, And rolled them around like a cloud,-- O mad for the charge and the battle were we, When our own good redcoats sank from sight, Like drops of blood in a dark grey sea, And we turned to each other, whispering, all dismayed, 'Lost are the gallant three hundred of Scarlett's Brigade!' 'Lost one and all' were the words Muttered in our dismay; But they rode like Victors and Lords Through the forest of lances and swords In the heart of the Russian hordes, They rode, or they stood at bay-- Struck with the sword-hand and slew, Down with the bridle-hand drew The foe from the saddle and threw Underfoot there in the fray-- Ranged like a storm or stood like a rock In the wave of a stormy day; Till suddenly shock upon shock Staggered the mass from without, Drove it in wild disarray, For our men gallopt up with a cheer and a shout, And the foemen surged, and wavered and reeled Up the hill, up the hill, up the hill, out of the field, And over the brow and away. Glory to each and to all, and the charge that they made! Glory to all the three hundred, and all the Brigade! _Tennyson._ XCVI THE PRIVATE OF THE BUFFS Last night, among his fellow roughs, He jested, quaffed, and swore; A drunken private of the Buffs, Who never looked before. To-day, beneath the foeman's frown, He stands in Elgin's place, Ambassador from Britain's crown And type of all her race. Poor, reckless, rude, low-born, untaught Bewildered, and alone, A heart, with English instinct fraught, He yet can call his own. Ay, tear his body limb from limb, Bring cord, or axe, or flame: He only knows, that not through _him_ Shall England come to shame. Far Kentish hop-fields round him seemed, Like dreams, to come and go; Bright leagues of cherry-blossom gleamed, One sheet of living snow; The smoke, above his father's door, In grey soft eddyings hung: Must he then watch it rise no more, Doomed by himself, so young? Yes, honour calls!--with strength like steel He put the vision by. Let dusky Indians whine and kneel; An English lad must die. And thus, with eyes that would not shrink, With knee to man unbent, Unfaltering on its dreadful brink, To his red grave he went. Vain, mightiest fleets of iron frames; Vain, those all-shattering guns; Unless proud England keep, untamed, The strong heart of her sons. So, let his name through Europe ring-- A man of mean estate, Who died, as firm as Sparta's king, Because his soul was great. _Doyle._ XCVII THE RED THREAD OF HONOUR Eleven men of England A breastwork charged in vain; Eleven men of England Lie stripped, and gashed, and slain. Slain; but of foes that guarded Their rock-built fortress well, Some twenty had been mastered, When the last soldier fell. Whilst Napier piloted his wondrous way Across the sand-waves of the desert sea, Then flashed at once, on each fierce clan, dismay, Lord of their wild Truckee. These missed the glen to which their steps were bent, Mistook a mandate, from afar half heard, And, in that glorious error, calmly went To death without a word. The robber-chief mused deeply Above those daring dead; 'Bring here,' at length he shouted, 'Bring quick, the battle thread. Let Eblis blast for ever Their souls, if Allah will: But we must keep unbroken The old rules of the Hill. Before the Ghiznee tiger Leapt forth to burn and slay; Before the holy Prophet Taught our grim tribes to pray; Before Secunder's lances Pierced through each Indian glen; The mountain laws of honour Were framed for fearless men. Still, when a chief dies bravely, We bind with green _one_ wrist-- Green for the brave, for heroes ONE crimson thread we twist. Say ye, Oh gallant Hillmen, For these, whose life has fled, Which is the fitting colour, The green one or the red?' 'Our brethren, laid in honoured graves, may wear Their green reward,' each noble savage said; 'To these, whom hawks and hungry wolves shall tear, Who dares deny the red?' Thus conquering hate, and steadfast to the right, Fresh from the heart that haughty verdict came; Beneath a waning moon, each spectral height Rolled back its loud acclaim. Once more the chief gazed keenly Down on those daring dead; From his good sword their heart's blood Crept to that crimson thread. Once more he cried, 'The judgment, Good friends, is wise and true, But though the red _be_ given, Have we not more to do? These were not stirred by anger, Nor yet by lust made bold; Renown they thought above them, Nor did they look for gold. To them their leader's signal Was as the voice of God: Unmoved, and uncomplaining, The path it showed they trod. As, without sound or struggle, The stars unhurrying march, Where Allah's finger guides them, Through yonder purple arch, These Franks, sublimely silent, Without a quickened breath, Went in the strength of duty Straight to their goal of death. 'If I were now to ask you To name our bravest man, Ye all at once would answer, They called him Mehrab Khan. He sleeps among his fathers, Dear to our native land, With the bright mark he bled for Firm round his faithful hand. 'The songs they sing of Rustum Fill all the past with light; If truth be in their music, He was a noble knight. But were those heroes living And strong for battle still, Would Mehrab Khan or Rustum Have climbed, like these, the hill?' And they replied, 'Though Mehrab Khan was brave, As chief, he chose himself what risks to run; Prince Rustum lied, his forfeit life to save, Which these had never done.' 'Enough!' he shouted fiercely; 'Doomed though they be to hell, Bind fast the crimson trophy Round BOTH wrists--bind it well. Who knows but that great Allah May grudge such matchless men, With none so decked in heaven, To the fiends' flaming den?' Then all those gallant robbers Shouted a stern 'Amen!' They raised the slaughtered sergeant, They raised his mangled ten. And when we found their bodies Left bleaching in the wind, Around BOTH wrists in glory That crimson thread was twined. Then Napier's knightly heart, touched to the core, Rung, like an echo, to that knightly deed, He bade its memory live for evermore, That those who run may read. _Doyle._ XCVIII HOME THOUGHTS FROM THE SEA Nobly, nobly Cape St. Vincent to the North-west died away; Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay; Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay; In the dimmest North-east distance dawned Gibraltar grand and grey; 'Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?'--say, Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray, While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa. _Browning._ XCIX HERVÉ RIEL On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two, Did the English fight the French,--woe to France! And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter thro' the blue, Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue, Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the Rance, With the English fleet in view. 'Twas the squadron that escaped, with the victor in full chase; First and foremost of the drove, in his great ship, Damfreville; Close on him fled, great and small, Twenty-two good ships in all; And they signalled to the place 'Help the winners of a race! Get us guidance, give us harbour, take us quick--or, quicker still, Here's the English can and will!' Then the pilots of the place put out brisk and leapt on board; 'Why, what hope or chance have ships like these to pass?' laughed they: 'Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the passage scarred and scored, Shall the _Formidable_ here with her twelve and eighty guns Think to make the river-mouth by the single narrow way, Trust to enter where 'tis ticklish for a craft of twenty tons, And with flow at full beside? Now, 'tis slackest ebb of tide. Reach the mooring? Rather say, While rock stands or water runs, Not a ship will leave the bay!' Then was called a council straight. Brief and bitter the debate: 'Here's the English at our heels; would you have them take in tow All that's left us of the fleet, linked together stern and bow, For a prize to Plymouth Sound? Better run the ships aground!' (Ended Damfreville his speech). Not a minute more to wait! 'Let the Captains all and each Shove ashore, then blow up, burn the vessels on the beach! France must undergo her fate. Give the word!' But no such word Was ever spoke or heard; For up stood, for out stepped, for in struck amid all these --A Captain? A Lieutenant? A Mate--first, second, third? No such man of mark, and meet With his betters to compete! But a simple Breton sailor pressed by Tourville for the fleet, A poor coasting-pilot he, Hervé Riel the Croisickese. And, 'What mockery or malice have we here?' cries Hervé Riel: 'Are you mad, you Malouins? Are you cowards, fools, or rogues? Talk to me of rocks and shoals, me who took the soundings, tell On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every swell 'Twixt the offing here and Grève where the river disembogues? Are you bought by English gold? Is it love the lying's for? Morn and eve, night and day, Have I piloted your bay, Entered free and anchored fast at the foot of Solidor. Burn the fleet and ruin France? That were worse than fifty Hogues! Sirs, they know I speak the truth! Sirs, believe me there's a way! Only let me lead the line, Have the biggest ship to steer, Get this _Formidable_ clear, Make the others follow mine, And I lead them, most and least, by a passage I know well, Right to Solidor past Grève, And there lay them safe and sound; And if one ship misbehave, --Keel so much as grate the ground, Why, I've nothing but my life,--here's my head!' cries Hervé Riel. Not a minute more to wait. 'Steer us in, then, small and great! Take the helm, lead the line, save the squadron!' cried his chief. 'Captains, give the sailor place! He is Admiral, in brief.' Still the north-wind, by God's grace! See the noble fellow's face, As the big ship with a bound, Clears the entry like a hound, Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide seas profound! See, safe thro' shoal and rock, How they follow in a flock, Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the ground, Not a spar that comes to grief! The peril, see, is past, All are harboured to the last, And just as Hervé Riel hollas 'Anchor!'--sure as fate Up the English come, too late! So, the storm subsides to calm: They see the green trees wave On the o'erlooking Grève. Hearts that bled are stanched with balm. 'Just our rapture to enhance, Let the English take the bay, Gnash their teeth and glare askance, As they cannonade away! 'Neath rampired Solidor pleasant riding on the Rance!' How hope succeeds despair on each Captain's countenance! Out burst all with one accord, 'This is Paradise for Hell! Let France, let France's King Thank the man that did the thing!' What a shout, and all one word, 'Hervé Riel!' As he stepped in front once more, Not a symptom of surprise In the frank blue Breton eyes, Just the same man as before. Then said Damfreville, 'My friend, I must speak out at the end, Though I find the speaking hard. Praise is deeper than the lips: You have saved the King his ships, You must name your own reward. 'Faith our sun was near eclipse! Demand whate'er you will, France remains your debtor still. Ask to heart's content and have! or my name's not Damfreville.' Then a beam of fun outbroke On the bearded mouth that spoke, As the honest heart laughed through Those frank eyes of Breton blue: 'Since I needs must say my say, Since on board the duty's done, And from Malo Roads to Croisic Point, what is it but a run?-- Since 'tis ask and have, I may-- Since the others go ashore-- Come! A good whole holiday! Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the Belle Aurore!' That he asked and that he got,--nothing more. Name and deed alike are lost: Not a pillar nor a post In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell; Not a head in white and black On a single fishing smack, In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack All that France saved from the fight whence England bore the bell. Go to Paris: rank on rank Search the heroes flung pell-mell On the Louvre, face and flank! You shall look long enough ere you come to Hervé Riel. So, for better and for worse, Hervé Riel, accept my verse! In my verse, Hervé Riel, do thou once more Save the squadron, honour France, love thy wife, the Belle Aurore! _Browning._ C THE DYING FIREMAN I am the mashed fireman with breast-bone broken, Tumbling walls buried me in their débris, Heat and smoke I inspired, I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades, I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels, They have cleared the beams away, they tenderly lift me forth. I lie in the night air in my red shirt, the pervading hush is for my sake, Painless after all I lie, exhausted but not so unhappy, White and beautiful are the faces around me, the heads are bared of their fire-caps, The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches. _Whitman._ CI A SEA-FIGHT Would you hear of an old-time sea-fight? Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars? List to the yarn, as my grandmother's father the sailor told it to me. 'Our foe was no skulk in his ship, I tell you (said he), His was the surly English pluck, and there is no tougher or truer, and never was, and never will be; Along the lowered eve he came horribly raking us. We closed with him, the yards entangled, the cannon touched, My captain lashed fast with his own hands. We had received some eighteen-pound shots under the water, On our lower-gun-deck two large pieces had burst at the first fire, killing all around and blowing up overhead. Fighting at sun-down, fighting at dark, Ten o'clock at night, the full moon well up, our leaks on the gain, and five feet of water reported, The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in the after-hold to give them a chance for themselves. The transit to and from the magazine is now stopt by the sentinels, They see so many strange faces they do not know whom to trust. Our frigate takes fire, The other asks if we demand quarter? If our colours are struck and the fighting done? Now I laugh content, for I hear the voice of my little captain, "We have not struck," he composedly cries, "we have just begun our part of the fighting." Only three guns are in use, One is directed by the captain himself against the enemy's main-mast, Two well served with grape and canister silence his musketry and clear his decks. The tops alone second the fire of this little battery, especially the main-top, They hold out bravely during the whole of the action. Not a moment's cease, The leaks gain fast on the pumps, the fire eats toward the powder-magazine. One of the pumps had been shot away, it is generally thought we are sinking. Serene stands the little captain, He is not hurried, his voice is neither high nor low, His eyes give more light to us than our battle-lanterns. Toward twelve, there in the beams of the moon, they surrender to us.' _Whitman._ CII BEAT! BEAT! DRUMS! Beat! beat! drums!--blow! bugles! blow! Through the windows--through doors--burst like a ruthless force, Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation, Into the school where the scholar is studying; Leave not the bridegroom quiet--no happiness must he have now with his bride, Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or gathering his grain, So fierce you whirr and pound, you drums--so shrill, you bugles, blow. Beat! beat! drums!--blow! bugles! blow! Over the traffic of cities--over the rumble of wheels in the streets; Are beds prepared for sleepers at night in the houses? no sleepers must sleep in those beds, No bargainers' bargains by day--no brokers or speculators--would they continue? Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing? Would the lawyer rise in the court to state his case before the judge? Then rattle quicker, heavier, drums--you bugles, wilder blow. Beat! beat! drums!--blow! bugles! blow! Make no parley--stop for no expostulation, Mind not the timid--mind not the weeper or prayer, Mind not the old man beseeching the young man, Let not the child's voice be heard, nor the mother's entreaties, Make even the trestle to shake the dead where they lie awaiting the hearses, So strong you thump, O terrible drums--so loud, you bugles, blow. _Whitman._ CIII TWO VETERANS The last sunbeam Lightly falls from the finished Sabbath, On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking Down a new-made double grave. Lo! the moon ascending, Up from the east the silvery round moon, Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon, Immense and silent moon. I see a sad procession, And I hear the sound of coming full-keyed bugles, All the channels of the city streets they're flooding, As with voices and with tears. I hear the great drums pounding, And the small drums steady whirring, And every blow of the great convulsive drums Strikes me through and through. For the son is brought with the father, (In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell, Two veterans son and father dropt together, And the double grave awaits them). Now nearer blow the bugles, And the drums strike more convulsive, And the daylight o'er the pavement quite has faded, And the strong dead-march enwraps me. In the eastern sky up-buoying, The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumined, ('Tis some mother's large transparent face In heaven brighter growing). O strong dead-march you please me! O moon immense with your silvery face you soothe me! O my soldiers twain! O my veterans passing to burial! What I have I also give you. The moon gives you light, And the bugles and the drums give you music, And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans, My heart gives you love. _Whitman._ CIV THE PLEASANT ISLE OF AVÈS Oh England is a pleasant place for them that's rich and high, But England is a cruel place for such poor folks as I; And such a port for mariners I ne'er shall see again As the pleasant Isle of Avès, beside the Spanish main. There were forty craft in Avès that were both swift and stout, All furnished well with small arms and cannons round about; And a thousand men in Avès made laws so fair and free To choose their valiant captains and obey them loyally. Thence we sailed against the Spaniard with his hoards of plate and gold, Which he wrung with cruel tortures from Indian folk of old; Likewise the merchant captains, with hearts as hard as stone, Who flog men and keel-haul them, and starve them to the bone. O the palms grew high in Avès, and fruits that shone like gold, And the colibris and parrots they were gorgeous to behold; And the negro maids to Avès from bondage fast did flee, To welcome gallant sailors, a-sweeping in from sea. O sweet it was in Avès to hear the landward breeze, A-swing with good tobacco in a net between the trees, With a negro lass to fan you, while you listened to the roar Of the breakers on the reef outside, that never touched the shore. But Scripture saith, an ending to all fine things must be; So the King's ships sailed on Avès, and quite put down were we. All day we fought like bulldogs, but they burst the booms at night; And I fled in a piragua, sore wounded, from the fight. Nine days I floated starving, and a negro lass beside, Till, for all I tried to cheer her, the poor young thing she died; But as I lay a-gasping, a Bristol sail came by, And brought me home to England here, to beg until I die. And now I'm old and going--I'm sure I can't tell where; One comfort is, this world's so hard, I can't be worse off there: If I might but be a sea-dove, I'd fly across the main, To the pleasant Isle of Avès, to look at it once again. _Kingsley._ CV A WELCOME Welcome, wild North-easter. Shame it is to see Odes to every zephyr; Ne'er a verse to thee. Welcome, black North-easter! O'er the German foam; O'er the Danish moorlands, From thy frozen home. Tired we are of summer, Tired of gaudy glare, Showers soft and steaming, Hot and breathless air. Tired of listless dreaming, Through the lazy day: Jovial wind of winter Turns us out to play! Sweep the golden reed-beds; Crisp the lazy dyke; Hunger into madness Every plunging pike. Fill the lake with wild-fowl; Fill the marsh with snipe; While on dreary moorlands Lonely curlew pipe. Through the black fir-forest Thunder harsh and dry, Shattering down the snow-flakes Off the curdled sky. Hark! The brave North-easter! Breast-high lies the scent, On by holt and headland, Over heath and bent. Chime, ye dappled darlings, Through the sleet and snow. Who can over-ride you? Let the horses go! Chime, ye dappled darlings, Down the roaring blast; You shall see a fox die Ere an hour be past. Go! and rest to-morrow, Hunting in your dreams, While our skates are ringing O'er the frozen streams. Let the luscious South-wind Breathe in lovers' sighs, While the lazy gallants Bask in ladies' eyes. What does he but soften Heart alike and pen? 'Tis the hard grey weather Breeds hard English men. What's the soft South-wester? 'Tis the ladies' breeze, Bringing home their true-loves Out of all the seas: But the black North-easter, Through the snowstorm hurled, Drives our English hearts of oak Seaward round the world. Come, as came our fathers, Heralded by thee, Conquering from the eastward, Lords by land and sea. Come; and strong within us Stir the Vikings' blood; Bracing brain and sinew; Blow, thou wind of God! _Kingsley._ CVI THE BIRKENHEAD Amid the loud ebriety of War, With shouts of 'la Republique' and 'la Gloire,' The Vengeur's crew, 'twas said, with flying flag And broadside blazing level with the wave Went down erect, defiant, to their grave Beneath the sea.--'Twas but a Frenchman's brag, Yet Europe rang with it for many a year. Now we recount no fable; Europe, hear! And when they tell thee 'England is a fen Corrupt, a kingdom tottering to decay, Her nerveless burghers lying an easy prey For the first comer,' tell how the other day A crew of half a thousand Englishmen Went down into the deep in Simon's Bay! Not with the cheer of battle in the throat, Or cannon-glare and din to stir their blood, But, roused from dreams of home to find their boat Fast sinking, mustered on the deck they stood, Biding God's pleasure and their chief's command. Calm was the sea, but not less calm that band Close ranged upon the poop, with bated breath But flinching not though eye to eye with Death! Heroes! Who were those Heroes? Veterans steeled To face the King of Terrors mid the scaith Of many an hurricane and trenchèd field? Far other: weavers from the stocking-frame; Boys from the plough; cornets with beardless chin, But steeped in honour and in discipline! Weep, Britain, for the Cape whose ill-starred name, Long since divorced from Hope suggests but shame, Disaster, and thy Captains held at bay By naked hordes; but as thou weepest, thank Heaven for those undegenerate sons who sank Aboard the Birkenhead in Simon's Bay! _Yule._ CVII APOLLO Through the black, rushing smoke-bursts Thick breaks the red flame; All Etna heaves fiercely Her forest-clothed frame. Not here, O Apollo! Are haunts meet for thee. But, where Helicon breaks down In cliff to the sea, Where the moon-silvered inlets Send far their light voice Up the still vale of Thisbe, O speed, and rejoice! On the sward at the cliff-top Lie strewn the white flocks. On the cliff-side the pigeons Roost deep in the rocks. In the moonlight the shepherds, Soft lulled by the rills, Lie wrapt in their blankets Asleep on the hills. --What forms are these coming So white through the gloom? What garments out-glistening The gold-flowered broom? What sweet-breathing presence Out-perfumes the thyme? What voices enrapture The night's balmy prime?-- 'Tis Apollo comes leading His choir, the Nine. --The leader is fairest, But all are divine. They are lost in the hollows! They stream up again! What seeks on this mountain The glorified train?-- They bathe on this mountain, In the spring by the road; Then on to Olympus, Their endless abode. --Whose praise do they mention? Of what is it told?-- What will be for ever; What was from of old. First hymn they the Father Of all things; and then, The rest of immortals, The action of men. The day in his hotness, The strife with the palm; The night in her silence, The stars in their calm. _Arnold._ CVIII THE DEATH OF SOHRAB THE DUEL He spoke, and Sohrab kindled at his taunts, And he too drew his sword; at once they rushed Together, as two eagles on one prey Come rushing down together from the clouds, One from the east, one from the west; their shields Dashed with a clang together, and a din Rose, such as that the sinewy woodcutters Make often in the forest's heart at morn, Of hewing axes, crashing trees--such blows Rustum and Sohrab on each other hailed. And you would say that sun and stars took part In that unnatural conflict; for a cloud Grew suddenly in Heaven, and darkened the sun Over the fighters' heads; and a wind rose Under their feet, and moaning swept the plain, And in a sandy whirlwind wrapped the pair. In gloom they twain were wrapped, and they alone; For both the on-looking hosts on either hand Stood in broad daylight, and the sky was pure, And the sun sparkled on the Oxus stream. But in the gloom they fought, with bloodshot eyes And labouring breath; first Rustum struck the shield Which Sohrab held stiff out; the steel-spiked spear Rent the tough plates, but failed to reach the skin, And Rustum plucked it back with angry groan. Then Sohrab with his sword smote Rustum's helm, Nor clove its steel quite through; but all the crest He shore away, and that proud horsehair plume, Never till now defiled, sank to the dust; And Rustum bowed his head; but then the gloom Grew blacker, thunder rumbled in the air, And lightnings rent the cloud; and Ruksh, the horse, Who stood at hand, uttered a dreadful cry;-- No horse's cry was that, most like the roar Of some pained desert-lion, who all day Hath trailed the hunter's javelin in his side, And comes at night to die upon the sand. The two hosts heard that cry, and quaked for fear, And Oxus curdled as it crossed his stream. But Sohrab heard, and quailed not, but rushed on, And struck again; and again Rustum bowed His head; but this time all the blade, like glass, Sprang in a thousand shivers on the helm, And in the hand the hilt remained alone. Then Rustum raised his head; his dreadful eyes Glared, and he shook on high his menacing spear, And shouted: _Rustum!_--Sohrab heard that shout, And shrank amazed; back he recoiled one step, And scanned with blinking eyes the advancing form; And then he stood bewildered; and he dropped His covering shield, and the spear pierced his side. He reeled, and staggering back, sank to the ground; And then the gloom dispersed, and the wind fell, And the bright sun broke forth, and melted all The cloud; and the two armies saw the pair-- Saw Rustum standing, safe upon his feet, And Sohrab, wounded, on the bloody sand. SOHRAB Then with a bitter smile, Rustum began:-- 'Sohrab, thou thoughtest in thy mind to kill A Persian lord this day, and strip his corpse, And bear thy trophies to Afrasiab's tent. Or else that the great Rustum would come down Himself to fight, and that thy wiles would move His heart to take a gift, and let thee go. And then that all the Tartar host would praise Thy courage or thy craft, and spread thy fame, To glad thy father in his weak old age. Fool, thou art slain, and by an unknown man! Dearer to the red jackels shalt thou be Than to thy friends, and to thy father old,' And, with a fearless mien, Sohrab replied:-- 'Unknown thou art; yet thy fierce vaunt is vain. Thou dost not slay me, proud and boastful man! No! Rustum slays me, and this filial heart. For were I matched with ten such men as thee, And I were that which till to-day I was, They should be lying here, I standing there. But that beloved name unnerved my arm-- That name, and something, I confess, in thee, Which troubles all my heart, and made my shield Fall; and thy spear transfix an unarmed foe. And now thou boastest, and insultest my fate. But hear thou this, fierce man, tremble to hear: The mighty Rustum shall avenge my death! My father, whom I seek through all the world, He shall avenge my death, and punish thee!' As when some hunter in the spring hath found A breeding eagle sitting on her nest, Upon the craggy isle of a hill-lake, And pierced her with an arrow as she rose, And followed her to find her where she fell Far off;--anon her mate comes winging back From hunting, and a great way off decries His huddling young left-sole; at that he checks His pinion, and with short uneasy sweeps Circles above his eyry, with loud screams Chiding his mate back to her nest; but she Lies dying, with the arrow in her side, In some far stony gorge out of his ken, A heap of fluttering feathers--never more Shall the lake glass her, flying over it; Never the black and dripping precipices Echo her stormy scream as she sails by-- As that poor bird flies home, nor knows his loss, So Rustum knew not his own loss, but stood Over his dying son, and knew him not. But, with a cold, incredulous voice he said: 'What prate is this of fathers and revenge? The mighty Rustum never had a son.' And with a failing voice Sohrab replied: 'Ah yes, he had! and that lost son am I, Surely the news will one day reach his ear, Reach Rustum, where he sits, and tarries long, Somewhere, I know not where, but far from here; And pierce him like a stab, and make him leap To arms, and cry for vengeance upon thee. Fierce man, bethink thee, for an only son! What will that grief, what will that vengeance be? O could I live, till I that grief had seen! Yet him I pity not so much, but her, My mother, who in Ader-baijan dwells With that old king, her father, who grows grey With age, and rules over the valiant Koords. Her most I pity, who no more will see Sohrab returning from the Tartar camp, With spoils and honour, when the war is done. But a dark rumour will be bruited up, From tribe to tribe, until it reach her ear; And then will that defenceless woman learn That Sohrab will rejoice her sight no more, But that in battle with a nameless foe, By the far-distant Oxus, he is slain.' THE RECOGNITION He spoke, and as he ceased he wept aloud, Thinking of her he left, and his own death. He spoke; but Rustum listened plunged in thought. Nor did he yet believe it was his son Who spoke, although he called back names he knew; For he had had sure tidings that the babe, Which was in Ader-baijan born to him, Had been a puny girl, no boy at all-- So that sad mother sent him word, for fear Rustum should seek the boy, to train in arms. And as he deemed that either Sohrab took, By a false boast, the style of Rustum's son; Or that men gave it him, to swell his fame. So deemed he; yet he listened plunged in thought; And his soul set to grief, as the vast tide Of the bright rocking Ocean sets to shore At the full moon; tears gathered in his eyes; For he remembered his own early youth, And all its bounding rapture; as, at dawn, The shepherd from his mountain-lodge descries A far, bright city, smitten by the sun, Through many rolling clouds--so Rustum saw His youth; saw Sohrab's mother, in her bloom; And that old king, her father, who loved well His wandering guest, and gave him his fair child With joy; and all the pleasant life they led, They three, in that long-distant summer-time-- The castle, and the dewy woods, and hunt And hound, and morn on those delightful hills In Ader-baijan. And he saw that Youth, Of age and looks to be his own dear son, Piteous and lovely, lying on the sand, Like some rich hyacinth which by the scythe Of an unskilful gardener has been cut, Mowing the garden grass-plots near its bed, And lies, a fragrant tower of purple bloom, On the mown, dying grass--so Sohrab lay, Lovely in death, upon the common sand. And Rustum gazed on him in grief, and said: 'O Sohrab, thou indeed art such a son Whom Rustum, wert thou his, might well have loved: Yet here thou errest, Sohrab, or else men Have told thee false--thou art not Rustum's son. For Rustum had no son; one child he had-- But one--a girl; who with her mother now Plies some light female task, nor dreams of us-- Of us she dreams not, nor of wounds, nor war.' But Sohrab answered him in wrath; for now The anguish of the deep-fixed spear grew fierce, And he desirèd to draw forth the steel, And let the blood flow free, and so to die-- But first he would convince his stubborn foe; And, rising sternly on one arm, he said: 'Man, who art thou who dost deny my words? Truth sits upon the lips of dying men, And falsehood, while I lived, was far from mine. I tell thee, pricked upon this arm I bear That seal which Rustum to my mother gave, That she might prick it on the babe she bore.' He spoke; and all the blood left Rustum's cheeks, And his knees tottered, and he smote his hand Against his breast, his heavy mailèd hand, That the hard iron corselet clanked aloud; And to his heart he pressed the other hand, And in a hollow voice he spake and said: 'Sohrab, that were a proof that could not lie! If thou show this, then art thou Rustum's son.' Then with weak hasty fingers Sohrab loosed His belt, and near the shoulder bared his arm, And showed a sign in faint vermilion points Pricked; as a cunning workman, in Pekin, Pricks with vermilion some clear porcelain vase, An emperor's gift--at early morn he paints, And all day long, and, when night comes, the lamp Lights up his studious forehead and thin hands-- So delicately pricked the sign appeared On Sohrab's arm, the sign of Rustum's seal. It was that griffin, which of old reared Zal, Rustum's great father, whom they left to die, A helpless babe, among the mountain rocks; Him that kind creature found, and reared, and loved-- Then Rustum took it for his glorious sign. And Sohrab bared that image on his arm, And himself scanned it long with mournful eyes, And then he touched it with his hand and said:-- 'How sayest thou? Is that sign the proper sign Of Rustum's son, or of some other man's?' RUKSH THE HORSE He spoke; but Rustum gazed, and gazed, and stood Speechless; and then he uttered one sharp cry: _O boy--thy father!_--and his voice choked there. And then a dark cloud passed before his eyes, And his head swam, and he sank down to earth. But Sohrab crawled to where he lay, and cast His arms about his neck, and kissed his lips, And with fond faltering fingers stroked his cheeks, Trying to call him back to life; and life Came back to Rustum, and he oped his eyes, And they stood wide with horror; and he seized In both his hands the dust which lay around, And threw it on his head, and smirched his hair,-- His hair, and face, and beard, and glittering arms; And strong convulsive groanings shook his breast, And his sobs choked him; and he clutched his sword, To draw it, and for ever let life out. But Sohrab saw his thought, and held his hands, And with a soothing voice he spake, and said: 'Father, forbear! for I but meet to-day The doom which at my birth was written down In Heaven, and thou art Heaven's unconscious hand. Surely my heart cried out that it was thou, When first I saw thee; and thy heart spoke too, I know it! but fate trod these promptings down Under its iron heel; fate, fate engaged The strife, and hurled me on my father's spear. But let us speak no more of this! I find My father; let me feel that I have found! Come, sit beside me on this sand, and take My head betwixt thy hands, and kiss my cheeks, And wash them with thy tears, and say: _My son!_ Quick! quick! for numbered are my sands of life, And swift; for like the lightning to this field I came, and like the wind I go away-- Sudden, and swift, and like a passing wind. But it was writ in Heaven that this should be.' So said he, and his voice released the heart Of Rustum and his tears broke forth; he cast His arms round his son's neck, and wept aloud, And kissed him. And awe fell on both the hosts, When they saw Rustum's grief; and Ruksh the horse, With his head bowing to the ground and mane Sweeping the dust, came near, and in mute woe First to the one, then to the other moved His head, as if inquiring what their grief Might mean; and from his dark, compassionate eyes, The big warm tears rolled down, and caked the sand. But Rustum chid him with stern voice, and said:-- 'Ruksh, now thou grievest; but, O Ruksh, thy feet Should first have rotted on their nimble joints, Or ere they brought thy master to this field!' But Sohrab looked upon the horse and said: 'Is this, then, Ruksh? How often in past days, My mother told me of thee, thou brave steed, My terrible father's terrible horse! and said, That I should one day find thy lord and thee. Come, let me lay my hand upon thy mane! O Ruksh, thou art more fortunate than I; For thou hast gone where I shall never go, And snuffed the breezes of my father's home. And thou hast trod the sands of Seistan, And seen the river of Helmund, and the Lake Of Zirrah; and the aged Zal himself Has often stroked thy neck, and given thee food, Corn in a golden platter soaked with wine, And said: _O Ruksh! bear Rustum well!_--but I Have never known my grandsire's furrowed face, Nor seen his lofty house in Seistan, Nor slaked my thirst at the clear Helmund stream; But lodged among my father's foes, and seen Afrasiab's cities only, Samarcand, Bokhara, and lone Khiva in the waste, And the black Toorkman tents; and only drunk The desert rivers, Moorghab and Tejend, Kohik, and where the Kalmuks feed their sheep, The northern Sir; and this great Oxus stream, The yellow Oxus, by whose brink I die.' RUSTUM Then with a heavy groan, Rustum bewailed: 'O that its waves were flowing over me! O that I saw its grains of yellow silt Roll tumbling in the current o'er my head!' But with a grave mild voice, Sohrab replied:-- 'Desire not that, my father! thou must live. For some are born to do great deeds, and live, As some are born to be obscured, and die. Do thou the deeds I die too young to do, And reap a second glory in thine age; Thou art my father, and thy gain is mine. But come! thou seest this great host of men Which follow me; I pray thee, slay not these! Let me entreat for them; what have they done? They followed me, my hope, my fame, my star. Let them all cross the Oxus back in peace. But me thou must bear hence, not send with them, But carry me with thee to Seistan, And place me on a bed, and mourn for me, Thou, and the snow-haired Zal, and all thy friends. And thou must lay me in that lovely earth, And heap a stately mound above my bones, And plant a far-seen pillar over all. That so the passing horseman on the waste May see my tomb a great way off, and cry; _Sohrab, the mighty Rustum's son, lies here, Whom his great father did in ignorance kill!_ And I be not forgotten in my grave.' And, with a mournful voice, Rustum replied: 'Fear not! as thou hast said, Sohrab, my son, So shall it be; for I will burn my tents, And quit the host, and bear thee hence with me, And carry thee away to Seistan, And place thee on a bed, and mourn for thee, With the snow-headed Zal, and all my friends. And I will lay thee in that lovely earth, And heap a stately mound above thy bones, And plant a far-seen pillar over all, And men shall not forget thee in thy grave. And I will spare thy host; yea, let them go! Let them all cross the Oxus back in peace! What should I do with slaying any more? For would that all whom I have ever slain Might be once more alive--my bitterest foes, And they who were called champions in their time, And through whose death I won that fame I have-- And I were nothing but a common man, A poor, mean soldier, and without renown, So thou mightest live too, my son, my son! Or rather would that I, even I myself, Might now be lying on this bloody sand, Near death, and by an ignorant stroke of thine, Not thou of mine! and I might die, not thou; And I, not thou, be borne to Seistan; And Zal might weep above my grave, not thine; And say: _O Son, I weep thee not too sore, For willingly, I know, thou met'st thine end!_ But now in blood and battles was my youth, And full of blood and battles is my age, And I shall never end this life of blood.' Then at the point of death, Sohrab replied: 'A life of blood indeed, thou dreadful man! But thou shalt yet have peace; only not now, Not yet! but thou shalt have it on that day, When thou shalt sail in a high-masted ship, Thou and the other peers of Kai Khosroo Returning home over the salt blue sea, From laying thy dear master in his grave.' NIGHT And Rustum gazed in Sohrab's face, and said: 'Soon be that day, my son, and deep that sea! Till then, if fate so wills, let me endure.' He spoke; and Sohrab smiled on him, and took The spear, and drew it from his side, and eased His wound's imperious anguish; but the blood Came welling from the open gash, and life Flowed with the stream;--all down his cold white side The crimson torrent ran, dim now and soiled, Like the soiled tissue of white violets Left, freshly gathered, on their native bank, By children whom their nurses call with haste Indoors from the sun's eye; his head dropped low, His limbs grew slack; motionless, white, he lay-- White, with eyes closed; only when heavy gasps, Deep heavy gasps quivering through all his frame, Convulsed him back to life, he opened them, And fixed them feebly on his father's face; Till now all strength was ebbed, and from his limbs Unwillingly the spirit fled away, Regretting the warm mansion which it left, And youth, and bloom, and this delightful world. So, on the bloody sand, Sohrab lay dead; And the great Rustum drew his horseman's cloak Down o'er his face, and sate by his dead son. As those black granite pillars once high-reared By Jemshid in Persepolis, to bear His house, now 'mid their broken flights of steps Lie prone, enormous, down the mountain side, So in the sand lay Rustum by his son. And night came down over the solemn waste, And the two gazing hosts, and that sole pair, And darkened all; and a cold fog, with night, Crept from the Oxus. Soon a hum arose, As of a great assembly loosed, and fires Began to twinkle through the fog; for now Both armies moved to camp, and took their meal; The Persians took it on the open sands Southward, the Tartars by the river marge; And Rustum and his son were left alone. But the majestic river floated on, Out of the mist and hum of that low land, Into the frosty starlight, and there moved, Rejoicing, through the hushed Chorasmian waste, Under the solitary moon;--he flowed Right for the polar star, past Orgunjè, Brimming, and bright, and large; then sands begin To hem his watery march, and dam his streams, And split his currents; that for many a league The shorn and parcelled Oxus strains along Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles-- Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had In his high mountain cradle in Pamere A foiled circuitous wanderer--till at last The longed-for dash of waves is heard, and wide His luminous home of waters opens, bright And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea. _Arnold._ CIX FLEE FRO' THE PRESS O born in days when wits were fresh and clear And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames; Before this strange disease of modern life, With its sick hurry, its divided aims, Its heads o'ertaxed, its palsied hearts, was rife-- Fly hence, our contact fear! Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood! Averse, as Dido did with gesture stern From her false friend's approach in Hades turn, Wave us away and keep thy solitude! Still nursing the unconquerable hope, Still clutching the inviolable shade, With a free, onward impulse brushing through, By night, the silvered branches of the glade-- Far on the forest-skirts, where none pursue, On some mild pastoral slope Emerge, and resting on the moonlit pales Freshen thy flowers as in former years With dew, or listen with enchanted ears, From the dark dingles, to the nightingales! But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly! For strong the infection of our mental strife, Which, though it gives no bliss, yet spoils for rest; And we should win thee from thy own fair life, Like us distracted, and like us unblest. Soon, soon thy cheer would die, Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfixed thy powers, And thy clear aims be cross and shifting made; And then thy glad perennial youth would fade, Fade, and grow old at last, and die like ours. Then fly our greetings, fly our speech and smiles! As some grave Tyrian trader, from the sea, Descried at sunrise an emerging prow Lifting the cool-haired creepers stealthily, The fringes of a southward-facing brow Among the Ægæan isles; And saw the merry Grecian coaster come, Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine, Green, bursting figs, and tunnies steeped in brine-- And knew the intruders on his ancient home, The young light-hearted masters of the waves-- And snatched his rudder, and shook out more sail; And day and night held on indignantly O'er the blue Midland waters with the gale, Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily, To where the Atlantic raves Outside the western straits; and unbent sails There, where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam, Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come; And on the beach undid his corded bales. _Arnold._ CX SCHOOL FENCIBLES We come in arms, we stand ten score, Embattled on the castle green; We grasp our firelocks tight, for war Is threatening, and we see our Queen. And 'Will the churls last out till we Have duly hardened bones and thews For scouring leagues of swamp and sea Of braggart mobs and corsair crews?' We ask; we fear not scoff or smile At meek attire of blue and grey, For the proud wrath that thrills our isle Gives faith and force to this array. So great a charm is England's right, That hearts enlarged together flow, And each man rises up a knight To work the evil-thinkers woe. And, girt with ancient truth and grace, We do our service and our suit, And each can be, whate'er his race, A Chandos or a Montacute. Thou, Mistress, whom we serve to-day, Bless the real swords that we shall wield, Repeat the call we now obey In sunset lands, on some fair field. Thy flag shall make some Huron rock As dear to us as Windsor's keep, And arms thy Thames hath nerved shall mock The surgings of th' Ontarian deep. The stately music of thy Guards, Which times our march beneath thy ken, Shall sound, with spells of sacred bards, From heart to heart, when we are men. And when we bleed on alien earth, We'll call to mind how cheers of ours Proclaimed a loud uncourtly mirth Amongst thy glowing orange bowers. And if for England's sake we fall, So be it, so thy cross be won, Fixed by kind hands on silvered pall, And worn in death, for duty done. Ah! thus we fondle Death, the soldier's mate, Blending his image with the hopes of youth To hallow all; meanwhile the hidden fate Chills not our fancies with the iron truth. Death from afar we call, and Death is here, To choose out him who wears the loftiest mien; And Grief, the cruel lord who knows no peer, Breaks through the shield of love to pierce our Queen. _Cory._ CXI THE TWO CAPTAINS When George the Third was reigning a hundred years ago, He ordered Captain Farmer to chase the foreign foe. 'You're not afraid of shot,' said he, 'you're not afraid of wreck, So cruise about the west of France in the frigate called _Quebec_. Quebec was once a Frenchman's town, but twenty years ago King George the Second sent a man called General Wolfe, you know, To clamber up a precipice and look into Quebec, As you'd look down a hatchway when standing on the deck. If Wolfe could beat the Frenchmen then so you can beat them now. Before he got inside the town he died, I must allow. But since the town was won for us it is a lucky name, And you'll remember Wolfe's good work, and you shall do the same.' Then Farmer said, 'I'll try, sir,' and Farmer bowed so low That George could see his pigtail tied in a velvet bow. George gave him his commission, and that it might be safer, Signed 'King of Britain, King of France,' and sealed it with a wafer. Then proud was Captain Farmer in a frigate of his own, And grander on his quarter-deck than George upon the throne. He'd two guns in his cabin, and on the spar-deck ten, And twenty on the gun-deck, and more than ten score men. And as a huntsman scours the brakes with sixteen brace of dogs, With two-and-thirty cannon the ship explored the fogs. From Cape la Hogue to Ushant, from Rochefort to Belleisle, She hunted game till reef and mud were rubbing on her keel. The fogs are dried, the frigate's side is bright with melting tar, The lad up in the foretop sees square white sails afar; The east wind drives three square-sailed masts from out the Breton bay, And 'Clear for action!' Farmer shouts, and reefers yell 'Hooray!' The Frenchman's captain had a name I wish I could pronounce; A Breton gentleman was he, and wholly free from bounce, One like those famous fellows who died by guillotine For honour and the fleurs-de-lys and Antoinette the Queen. The Catholic for Louis, the Protestant for George, Each captain drew as bright a sword as saintly smiths could forge; And both were simple seamen, but both could understand How each was bound to win or die for flag and native land. The French ship was _la Surveillante_, which means the watchful maid; She folded up her head-dress and began to cannonade. Her hull was clean, and ours was foul; we had to spread more sail. On canvas, stays, and topsail yards her bullets came like hail. Sore smitten were both captains, and many lads beside, And still to cut our rigging the foreign gunners tried. A sail-clad spar came flapping down athwart a blazing gun; We could not quench the rushing flames, and so the Frenchman won. Our quarter-deck was crowded, the waist was all aglow; Men hung upon the taffrail half scorched, but loth to go; Our captain sat where once he stood, and would not quit his chair. He bade his comrades leap for life, and leave him bleeding there. The guns were hushed on either side, the Frenchmen lowered boats, They flung us planks and hencoops, and everything that floats. They risked their lives, good fellows! to bring their rivals aid. 'Twas by the conflagration the peace was strangely made. _La Surveillante_ was like a sieve; the victors had no rest, They had to dodge the east wind to reach the port of Brest, And where the waves leapt lower, and the riddled ship went slower, In triumph, yet in funeral guise, came fisher-boats to tow her. They dealt with us as brethren, they mourned for Farmer dead; And as the wounded captives passed each Breton bowed the head. Then spoke the French Lieutenant, ''Twas fire that won, not we. You never struck your flag to us; you'll go to England free.' 'Twas the sixth day of October, seventeen hundred seventy-nine, A year when nations ventured against us to combine, _Quebec_ was burnt and Farmer slain, by us remembered not; But thanks be to the French book wherein they're not forgot. Now you, if you've to fight the French, my youngster, bear in mind Those seamen of King Louis so chivalrous and kind; Think of the Breton gentlemen who took our lads to Brest, And treat some rescued Breton as a comrade and a guest. _Cory._ CXII THE HEAD OF BRAN When the head of Bran Was firm on British shoulders, God made a man! Cried all beholders. Steel could not resist The weight his arm would rattle; He with naked fist Has brained a knight in battle. He marched on the foe, And never counted numbers; Foreign widows know The hosts he sent to slumbers. As a street you scan That's towered by the steeple, So the head of Bran Rose o'er his people. 'Death's my neighbour,' Quoth Bran the blest; 'Christian labour Brings Christian rest. From the trunk sever The head of Bran, That which never Has bent to man! That which never To men has bowed Shall live ever To shame the shroud: Shall live ever To face the foe; Sever it, sever, And with one blow. Be it written, That all I wrought Was for Britain, In deed and thought: Be it written, That, while I die, "Glory to Britain!" Is my last cry. "Glory to Britain!" Death echoes me round. Glory to Britain! The world shall resound. Glory to Britain! In ruin and fall, Glory to Britain! Is heard over all.' Burn, Sun, down the sea! Bran lies low with thee. Burst, Morn, from the main! Bran so shall rise again. Blow, Wind, from the field! Bran's Head is the Briton's shield. Beam, Star, in the west! Bright burns the Head of Bran the Blest. Crimson-footed like the stork, From great ruts of slaughter, Warriors of the Golden Torque Cross the lifting water. Princes seven, enchaining hands, Bear the live Head homeward. Lo! it speaks, and still commands; Gazing far out foamward. Fiery words of lightning sense Down the hollows thunder; Forest hostels know not whence Comes the speech, and wonder. City-castles, on the steep Where the faithful Severn House at midnight, hear in sleep Laughter under heaven. Lilies, swimming on the mere, In the castle shadow, Under draw their heads, and Fear Walks the misty meadow; Tremble not, it is not Death Pledging dark espousal: 'Tis the Head of endless breath, Challenging carousal! Brim the horn! a health is drunk, Now, that shall keep going: Life is but the pebble sunk, Deeds, the circle growing! Fill, and pledge the Head of Bran! While his lead they follow, Long shall heads in Britain plan Speech Death cannot swallow. _George Meredith._ CXIII THE SLAYING OF THE NIBLUNGS HOGNI Ye shall know that in Atli's feast-hall on the side that joined the house Were many carven doorways whose work was glorious With marble stones and gold-work, and their doors of beaten brass: Lo now, in the merry morning how the story cometh to pass! --While the echoes of the trumpet yet fill the people's ears, And Hogni casts by the war-horn, and his Dwarf-wrought sword uprears, All those doors aforesaid open, and in pour the streams of steel, The best of the Eastland champions, the bold men of Atli's weal: They raise no cry of battle nor cast forth threat of woe, And their helmed and hidden faces from each other none may know: Then a light in the hall ariseth, and the fire of battle runs All adown the front of the Niblungs in the face of the mighty ones; All eyes are set upon them, hard drawn is every breath, Ere the foremost points be mingled and death be blent with death. --All eyes save the eyes of Hogni; but e'en as the edges meet, He turneth about for a moment to the gold of the kingly seat, Then aback to the front of battle; there then, as the lightning-flash Through the dark night showeth the city when the clouds of heaven clash, And the gazer shrinketh backward, yet he seeth from end to end The street and the merry market, and the windows of his friend, And the pavement where his footsteps yester'en returning trod, Now white and changed and dreadful 'neath the threatening voice of God; So Hogni seeth Gudrun, and the face he used to know, Unspeakable, unchanging, with white unknitted brow With half-closed lips untrembling, with deedless hands and cold Laid still on knees that stir not, and the linen's moveless fold. Turned Hogni unto the spear-wall, and smote from where he stood, And hewed with his sword two-handed as the axe-man in a wood: Before his sword was a champion, and the edges clave to the chin, And the first man fell in the feast-hall of those that should fall therein. Then man with man was dealing, and the Niblung host of war Was swept by the leaping iron, as the rock anigh the shore By the ice-cold waves of winter: yet a moment Gunnar stayed As high in his hand unblooded he shook his awful blade; And he cried: 'O Eastland champions, do ye behold it here, The sword of the ancient Giuki? Fall on and have no fear, But slay and be slain and be famous, if your master's will it be! Yet are we the blameless Niblungs, and bidden guests are we: So forbear, if ye wander hood-winked, nor for nothing slay and be slain; For I know not what to tell you of the dead that live again.' So he saith in the midst of the foemen with his war-flame reared on high, But all about and around him goes up a bitter cry From the iron men of Atli, and the bickering of the steel Sends a roar up to the roof-ridge, and the Niblung war-ranks reel Behind the steadfast Gunnar: but lo! have ye seen the corn, While yet men grind the sickle, by the wind-streak overborne When the sudden rain sweeps downward, and summer groweth black, And the smitten wood-side roareth 'neath the driving thunder-wrack? So before the wise-heart Hogni shrank the champions of the East, As his great voice shook the timbers in the hall of Atli's feast. There he smote, and beheld not the smitten, and by nought were his edges stopped; He smote, and the dead were thrust from him; a hand with its shield he lopped; There met him Atli's marshal, and his arm at the shoulder he shred; Three swords were upreared against him of the best of the kin of the dead; And he struck off a head to the rightward, and his sword through a throat he thrust, But the third stroke fell on his helm-crest, and he stooped to the ruddy dust, And uprose as the ancient Giant, and both his hands were wet: Red then was the world to his eyen, as his hand to the labour he set; Swords shook and fell in his pathway, huge bodies leapt and fell, Harsh grided shield and war-helm like the tempest-smitten bell, And the war-cries ran together, and no man his brother knew, And the dead men loaded the living, as he went the war-wood through; And man 'gainst man was huddled, till no sword rose to smite, And clear stood the glorious Hogni in an island of the fight, And there ran a river of death 'twixt the Niblung and his foes, And therefrom the terror of men and the wrath of the Gods arose. GUNNAR Now fell the sword of Gunnar, and rose up red in the air, And hearkened the song of the Niblung, as his voice rang glad and clear, And rejoiced and leapt at the Eastmen, and cried as it met the rings Of a Giant of King Atli and a murder-wolf of kings; But it quenched its thirst in his entrails, and knew the heart in his breast, And hearkened the praise of Gunnar, and lingered not to rest, But fell upon Atli's brother, and stayed not in his brain; Then he fell, and the King leapt over, and clave a neck atwain, And leapt o'er the sweep of a pole-axe, and thrust a lord in the throat, And King Atli's banner-bearer through shield and hauberk smote; Then he laughed on the huddled East-folk, and against their war-shields drave While the white swords tossed about him, and that archer's skull he clave Whom Atli had bought in the Southlands for many a pound of gold; And the dark-skinned fell upon Gunnar, and over his war-shield rolled, And cumbered his sword for a season, and the many blades fell on, And sheared the cloudy helm-crest and rents in his hauberk won, And the red blood ran from Gunnar; till that Giuki's sword outburst, As the fire-tongue from the smoulder that the leafy heap hath nursed, And unshielded smote King Gunnar, and sent the Niblung song Through the quaking stems of battle in the hall of Atli's wrong: Then he rent the knitted war-hedge till by Hogni's side he stood, And kissed him amidst of the spear-hail, and their cheeks were wet with blood. Then on came the Niblung bucklers, and they drave the East-folk home, As the bows of the oar-driven long-ship beat off the waves in foam: They leave their dead behind them, and they come to the doors and the wall, And a few last spears from the fleeing amidst their shield-hedge fall: But the doors clash to in their faces, as the fleeing rout they drive, And fain would follow after; and none is left alive In the feast-hall of King Atli, save those fishes of the net, And the white and silent woman above the slaughter set. Then biddeth the heart-wise Hogni, and men to the windows climb, And uplift the war-grey corpses, dead drift of the stormy time, And cast them adown to their people: thence they come aback and say That scarce shall ye see the houses, and no whit the wheel-worn way For the spears and shields of the Eastlands that the merchant city throng; And back to the Niblung burg-gate the way seemed weary-long. Yet passeth hour on hour, and the doors they watch and ward But a long while hear no mail-clash, nor the ringing of the sword; Then droop the Niblung children, and their wounds are waxen chill, And they think of the burg by the river, and the builded holy hill, And their eyes are set on Gudrun as of men who would beseech; But unlearned are they in craving, and know not dastard's speech. Then doth Giuki's first-begotten a deed most fair to be told, For his fair harp Gunnar taketh, and the warp of silver and gold; With the hand of a cunning harper he dealeth with the strings, And his voice in their midst goeth upward, as of ancient days he sings, Of the days before the Niblungs, and the days that shall be yet; Till the hour of toil and smiting the warrior hearts forget, Nor hear the gathering foemen, nor the sound of swords aloof: Then clear the song of Gunnar goes up to the dusky roof, And the coming spear-host tarries, and the bearers of the woe Through the cloisters of King Atli with lingering footsteps go. But Hogni looketh on Gudrun, and no change in her face he sees, And no stir in her folded linen and the deedless hands on her knees: Then from Gunnar's side he hasteneth; and lo! the open door, And a foeman treadeth the pavement, and his lips are on Atli's floor, For Hogni is death in the doorway: then the Niblungs turn on the foe, And the hosts are mingled together, and blow cries out on blow. GUDRUN Still the song goeth up from Gunnar, though his harp to earth be laid; But he fighteth exceeding wisely, and is many a warrior's aid, And he shieldeth and delivereth, and his eyes search through the hall, And woe is he for his fellows, as his battle-brethren fall; For the turmoil hideth little from that glorious folk-king's eyes, And o'er all he beholdeth Gudrun, and his soul is waxen wise, And he saith: 'We shall look on Sigurd, and Sigmund of old days, And see the boughs of the Branstock o'er the ancient Volsung's praise.' Woe's me for the wrath of Hogni! From the door he giveth aback That the Eastland slayers may enter to the murder and the wrack: Then he rageth and driveth the battle to the golden kingly seat, And the last of the foes he slayeth by Gudrun's very feet, That the red blood splasheth her raiment; and his own blood therewithal He casteth aloft before her, and the drops on her white hands fall: But nought she seeth or heedeth, and again he turns to fight, Nor heedeth stroke nor wounding so he a foe may smite: Then the battle opens before him, and the Niblungs draw to his side; As death in the world first fashioned, through the feast-hall doth he stride. And so once more do the Niblungs sweep that murder-flood of men From the hall of toils and treason, and the doors swing to again. Then again is there peace for a little within the fateful fold; But the Niblungs look about them, and but few folk they behold Upright on their feet for the battle: now they climb aloft no more, Nor cast the dead from the windows; but they raise a rampart of war, And its stones are the fallen East-folk, and no lowly wall is that. Therein was Gunnar the mighty: on the shields of men he sat, And the sons of his people hearkened, for his hand through the harp-strings ran, And he sang in the hall of his foeman of the Gods and the making of man, And how season was sundered from season in the days of the fashioning, And became the Summer and Autumn, and became the Winter and Spring; He sang of men's hunger and labour, and their love and their breeding of broil. And their hope that is fostered of famine, and their rest that is fashioned of toil: Fame then and the sword he sang of, and the hour of the hardy and wise, When the last of the living shall perish, and the first of the dead shall arise, And the torch shall be lit in the daylight, and God unto man shall pray, And the heart shall cry out for the hand in the fight of the uttermost day. So he sang, and beheld not Gudrun, save as long ago he saw His sister, the little maiden of the face without a flaw: But wearily Hogni beheld her, and no change in her face there was, And long thereon gazed Hogni, and set his brows as the brass, Though the hands of the King were weary, and weak his knees were grown, And he felt as a man unholpen in a waste land wending alone. THE SONS OF GIUKI Now the noon was long passed over when again the rumour arose, And through the doors cast open flowed in the river of foes: They flooded the hall of the murder, and surged round that rampart of dead; No war-duke ran before them, no lord to the onset led, But the thralls shot spears at adventure, and shot out shafts from afar, Till the misty hall was blinded with the bitter drift of war: Few and faint were the Niblung children, and their wounds were waxen acold, And they saw the Hell-gates open as they stood in their grimly hold: Yet thrice stormed out King Hogni, thrice stormed out Gunnar the King, Thrice fell they aback yet living to the heart of the fated ring; And they looked and their band was little, and no man but was wounded sore, And the hall seemed growing greater, such hosts of foes it bore, So tossed the iron harvest from wall to gilded wall; And they looked and the white-clad Gudrun sat silent over all. Then the churls and thralls of the Eastland howled out as wolves accurst, But oft gaped the Niblungs voiceless, for they choked with anger and thirst; And the hall grew hot as a furnace, and men drank their flowing blood, Men laughed and gnawed on their shield-rims, men knew not where they stood, And saw not what was before them; as in the dark men smote, Men died heart-broken, unsmitten; men wept with the cry in the throat, Men lived on full of war-shafts, men cast their shields aside And caught the spears to their bosoms; men rushed with none beside, And fell unarmed on the foemen, and tore and slew in death: And still down rained the arrows as the rain across the heath; Still proud o'er all the turmoil stood the Kings of Giuki born, Nor knit were the brows of Gunnar, nor his song-speech overworn; But Hogni's mouth kept silence, and oft his heart went forth To the long, long day of the darkness, and the end of worldly worth. Loud rose the roar of the East-folk, and the end was coming at last: Now the foremost locked their shield-rims and the hindmost over them cast, And nigher they drew and nigher, and their fear was fading away, For every man of the Niblungs on the shaft-strewn pavement lay, Save Gunnar the King and Hogni: still the glorious King up-bore The cloudy shield of the Niblungs set full of shafts of war; But Hogni's hands had fainted, and his shield had sunk adown, So thick with the Eastland spearwood was that rampart of renown; And hacked and dull were the edges that had rent the wall of foes: Yet he stood upright by Gunnar before that shielded close, Nor looked on the foeman's faces as their wild eyes drew anear, And their faltering shield-rims clattered with the remnant of their fear; But he gazed on the Niblung woman, and the daughter of his folk, Who sat o'er all unchanging ere the war-cloud over them broke. Now nothing might men hearken in the house of Atli's weal, Save the feet slow tramping onward, and the rattling of the steel, And the song of the glorious Gunnar, that rang as clearly now As the speckled storm-cock singeth from the scant-leaved hawthorn-bough, When the sun is dusking over and the March snow pelts the land. There stood the mighty Gunnar with sword and shield in hand, There stood the shieldless Hogni with set unangry eyes, And watched the wall of war-shields o'er the dead men's rampart rise, And the white blades flickering nigher, and the quavering points of war. Then the heavy air of the feast-hall was rent with a fearful roar, And the turmoil came and the tangle, as the wall together ran: But aloft yet towered the Niblungs, and man toppled over man, And leapt and struggled to tear them; as whiles amidst the sea The doomed ship strives its utmost with mid-ocean's mastery, And the tall masts whip the cordage, while the welter whirls and leaps, And they rise and reel and waver, and sink amid the deeps: So before the little-hearted in King Atli's murder-hall Did the glorious sons of Giuki 'neath the shielded onrush fall: Sore wounded, bound and helpless, but living yet, they lie Till the afternoon and the even in the first of night shall die. _William Morris._ CXIV IS LIFE WORTH LIVING Is life worth living? Yes, so long As Spring revives the year, And hails us with the cuckoo's song, To show that she is here; So long as May of April takes, In smiles and tears, farewell, And windflowers dapple all the brakes, And primroses the dell; While children in the woodlands yet Adorn their little laps With ladysmock and violet, And daisy-chain their caps; While over orchard daffodils Cloud-shadows float and fleet, And ousel pipes and laverock trills, And young lambs buck and bleat; So long as that which bursts the bud And swells and tunes the rill Makes springtime in the maiden's blood, Life is worth living still. Life not worth living! Come with me, Now that, through vanishing veil, Shimmers the dew on lawn and lea, And milk foams in the pail; Now that June's sweltering sunlight bathes With sweat the striplings lithe, As fall the long straight scented swathes Over the crescent scythe; Now that the throstle never stops His self-sufficing strain, And woodbine-trails festoon the copse, And eglantine the lane; Now rustic labour seems as sweet As leisure, and blithe herds Wend homeward with unweary feet, Carolling like the birds; Now all, except the lover's vow, And nightingale, is still; Here, in the twilight hour, allow, Life is worth living still. When Summer, lingering half-forlorn, On Autumn loves to lean, And fields of slowly yellowing corn Are girt by woods still green; When hazel-nuts wax brown and plump, And apples rosy-red, And the owlet hoots from hollow stump, And the dormouse makes its bed; When crammed are all the granary floors, And the Hunter's moon is bright, And life again is sweet indoors, And logs again alight; Ay, even when the houseless wind Waileth through cleft and chink, And in the twilight maids grow kind, And jugs are filled and clink; When children clasp their hands and pray 'Be done Thy Heavenly will!' Who doth not lift his voice, and say, 'Life is worth living still'? Is life worth living? Yes, so long As there is wrong to right, Wail of the weak against the strong, Or tyranny to fight; Long as there lingers gloom to chase, Or streaming tear to dry, One kindred woe, one sorrowing face That smiles as we draw nigh; Long as at tale of anguish swells The heart, and lids grow wet, And at the sound of Christmas bells We pardon and forget; So long as Faith with Freedom reigns, And loyal Hope survives, And gracious Charity remains To leaven lowly lives; While there is one untrodden tract For Intellect or Will, And men are free to think and act Life is worth living still. Not care to live while English homes Nestle in English trees, And England's Trident-Sceptre roams Her territorial seas! Not live while English songs are sung Wherever blows the wind, And England's laws and England's tongue Enfranchise half mankind! So long as in Pacific main, Or on Atlantic strand, Our kin transmit the parent strain, And love the Mother-land; So long as flashes English steel, And English trumpets shrill, He is dead already who doth not feel Life is worth living still. _Austin._ CXV THEOLOGY IN EXTREMIS Oft in the pleasant summer years, Reading the tales of days bygone, I have mused on the story of human tears, All that man unto man has done, Massacre, torture, and black despair; Reading it all in my easy-chair. Passionate prayer for a minute's life; Tortured crying for death as rest; Husband pleading for child or wife, Pitiless stroke upon tender breast. Was it all real as that I lay there Lazily stretched on my easy-chair? Could I believe in those hard old times, Here in this safe luxurious age? Were the horrors invented to season rhymes, Or truly is man so fierce in his rage? What could I suffer, and what could I dare? I who was bred to that easy-chair. They were my fathers, the men of yore, Little they recked of a cruel death; They would dip their hands in a heretic's gore, They stood and burnt for a rule of faith. What would I burn for, and whom not spare? I, who had faith in an easy-chair. Now do I see old tales are true, Here in the clutch of a savage foe; Now shall I know what my fathers knew, Bodily anguish and bitter woe, Naked and bound in the strong sun's glare, Far from my civilised easy-chair. Now have I tasted and understood That old-world feeling of mortal hate; For the eyes all round us are hot with blood; They will kill us coolly--they do but wait; While I, I would sell ten lives, at least, For one fair stroke at that devilish priest. Just in return for the kick he gave, Bidding me call on the prophet's name; Even a dog by this may save Skin from the knife and soul from the flame; My soul! if he can let the prophet burn it, But life is sweet if a word may earn it. A bullock's death, and at thirty years! Just one phrase, and a man gets off it; Look at that mongrel clerk in his tears Whining aloud the name of the prophet; Only a formula easy to patter, And, God Almighty, what _can_ it matter? 'Matter enough,' will my comrade say Praying aloud here close at my side, 'Whether you mourn in despair alway, Cursed for ever by Christ denied; Or whether you suffer a minute's pain All the reward of Heaven to gain.' Not for a moment faltereth he, Sure of the promise and pardon of sin; Thus did the martyrs die, I see, Little to lose and muckle to win; Death means Heaven, he longs to receive it, But what shall I do if I don't believe it? Life is pleasant, and friends may be nigh, Fain would I speak one word and be spared; Yet I could be silent and cheerfully die, If I were only sure God cared; If I had faith, and were only certain That light is behind that terrible curtain. But what if He listeth nothing at all, Of words a poor wretch in his terror may say That mighty God who created all To labour and live their appointed day; Who stoops not either to bless or ban, Weaving the woof of an endless plan. He is the Reaper, and binds the sheaf, Shall not the season its order keep? Can it be changed by a man's belief? Millions of harvests still to reap; Will God reward, if I die for a creed, Or will He but pity, and sow more seed? Surely He pities who made the brain, When breaks that mirror of memories sweet, When the hard blow falleth, and never again Nerve shall quiver nor pulse shall beat; Bitter the vision of vanishing joys; Surely He pities when man destroys. Here stand I on the ocean's brink, Who hath brought news of the further shore? How shall I cross it? Sail or sink, One thing is sure, I return no more; Shall I find haven, or aye shall I be Tossed in the depths of a shoreless sea? They tell fair tales of a far-off land, Of love rekindled, of forms renewed; There may I only touch one hand Here life's ruin will little be rued; But the hand I have pressed and the voice I have heard, To lose them for ever, and all for a word! Now do I feel that my heart must break All for one glimpse of a woman's face; Swiftly the slumbering memories wake Odour and shadow of hour and place; One bright ray through the darkening past Leaps from the lamp as it brightens last, Showing me summer in western land Now, as the cool breeze murmureth In leaf and flower--And here I stand In this plain all bare save the shadow of death; Leaving my life in its full noonday, And no one to know why I flung it away. Why? Am I bidding for glory's roll? I shall be murdered and clean forgot; Is it a bargain to save my soul? God, whom I trust in, bargains not; Yet for the honour of English race, May I not live or endure disgrace. Ay, but the word, if I could have said it, I by no terrors of hell perplext; Hard to be silent and have no credit From man in this world, or reward in the next; None to bear witness and reckon the cost Of the name that is saved by the life that is lost. I must be gone to the crowd untold Of men by the cause which they served unknown, Who moulder in myriad graves of old; Never a story and never a stone Tells of the martyrs who die like me, Just for the pride of the old countree. _Lyall._ CXVI THE OBLATION Ask nothing more of me, sweet; All I can give you I give. Heart of my heart, were it more, More would be laid at your feet: Love that should help you to live, Song that should spur you to soar. All things were nothing to give Once to have sense of you more, Touch you and taste of you, sweet, Think you and breathe you and live, Swept of your wings as they soar, Trodden by chance of your feet. I that have love and no more Give you but love of you, sweet: He that hath more, let him give; He that hath wings, let him soar; Mine is the heart at your feet Here, that must love you to live. _Swinburne._ CXVII ENGLAND England, queen of the waves, whose green inviolate girdle enrings thee round, Mother fair as the morning, where is now the place of thy foemen found? Still the sea that salutes us free proclaims them stricken, acclaims thee crowned. Time may change, and the skies grow strange with signs of treason, and fraud, and fear: Foes in union of strange communion may rise against thee from far and near: Sloth and greed on thy strength may feed as cankers waxing from year to year. Yet, though treason and fierce unreason should league and lie and defame and smite, We that know thee, how far below thee the hatred burns of the sons of night, We that love thee, behold above thee the witness written of life in light. Life that shines from thee shows forth signs that none may read not by eyeless foes: Hate, born blind, in his abject mind grows hopeful now but as madness grows: Love, born wise, with exultant eyes adores thy glory, beholds and glows. Truth is in thee, and none may win thee to lie, forsaking the face of truth: Freedom lives by the grace she gives thee, born again from thy deathless youth: Faith should fail, and the world turn pale, wert thou the prey of the serpent's tooth. Greed and fraud, unabashed, unawed, may strive to sting thee at heel in vain; Craft and fear and mistrust may leer and mourn and murmur and plead and plain: Thou art thou: and thy sunbright brow is hers that blasted the strength of Spain. Mother, mother beloved, none other could claim in place of thee England's place: Earth bears none that beholds the sun so pure of record, so clothed with grace: Dear our mother, nor son nor brother is thine, as strong or as fair of face, How shalt thou be abased? or how shalt fear take hold of thy heart? of thine, England, maiden immortal, laden with charge of life and with hopes divine? Earth shall wither, when eyes turned hither behold not light in her darkness shine. England, none that is born thy son, and lives by grace of thy glory, free, Lives and yearns not at heart and burns with hope to serve as he worships thee; None may sing thee: the sea-wind's wing beats down our songs as it hails the sea. _Swinburne._ CXVIII A JACOBITE IN EXILE The weary day rins down and dies, The weary night wears through: And never an hour is fair wi' flower, And never a flower wi' dew. I would the day were night for me, I would the night were day: For then would I stand in my ain fair land, As now in dreams I may. O lordly flow the Loire and Seine, And loud the dark Durance: But bonnier shine the braes of Tyne Than a' the fields of France; And the waves of Till that speak sae still Gleam goodlier where they glance. O weel were they that fell fighting On dark Drumossie's day: They keep their hame ayont the faem And we die far away. O sound they sleep, and saft, and deep, But night and day wake we; And ever between the sea banks green Sounds loud the sundering sea. And ill we sleep, sae sair we weep But sweet and fast sleep they: And the mool that haps them roun' and laps them Is e'en their country's clay; But the land we tread that are not dead Is strange as night by day. Strange as night in a strange man's sight, Though fair as dawn it be: For what is here that a stranger's cheer Should yet wax blithe to see? The hills stand steep, the dells lie deep, The fields are green and gold: The hill-streams sing, and the hill-sides ring, As ours at home of old. But hills and flowers are nane of ours, And ours are over sea: And the kind strange land whereon we stand, It wotsna what were we Or ever we came, wi' scathe and shame, To try what end might be. Scathe and shame, and a waefu' name, And a weary time and strange, Have they that seeing a weird for dreeing Can die, and cannot change. Shame and scorn may we thole that mourn, Though sair be they to dree: But ill may we bide the thoughts we hide, Mair keen than wind and sea. Ill may we thole the night's watches, And ill the weary day: And the dreams that keep the gates of sleep, A waefu' gift gie they; For the songs they sing us, the sights they bring us, The morn blaws all away. On Aikenshaw the sun blinks braw, The burn rins blithe and fain: There's nought wi' me I wadna gie To look thereon again. On Keilder-side the wind blaws wide: There sounds nae hunting-horn That rings sae sweet as the winds that beat Round banks where Tyne is born. The Wansbeck sings with all her springs The bents and braes give ear; But the wood that rings wi' the sang she sings I may not see nor hear; For far and far thae blithe burns are, And strange is a' thing near. The light there lightens, the day there brightens, The loud wind there lives free: Nae light comes nigh me or wind blaws by me That I wad hear or see. But O gin I were there again, Afar ayont the faem, Cauld and dead in the sweet saft bed That haps my sires at hame! We'll see nae mair the sea-banks fair, And the sweet grey gleaming sky, And the lordly strand of Northumberland, And the goodly towers thereby; And none shall know but the winds that blow The graves wherein we lie. _Swinburne._ CXIX THE REVEILLÉ Hark! I hear the tramp of thousands, And of armèd men the hum; Lo! a nation's hosts have gathered Round the quick alarming drum,-- Saying, 'Come, Freemen, come! Ere your heritage be wasted,' said the quick alarming drum. 'Let me of my heart take counsel: War is not of life the sum; Who shall stay and reap the harvest When the autumn days shall come?' But the drum Echoed, 'Come! Death shall reap the braver harvest,' said the solemn-sounding drum. 'But when won the coming battle, What of profit springs therefrom? What if conquest, subjugation, Even greater ills become?' But the drum Answered, 'Come! You must do the sum to prove it,' said the Yankee-answering drum. 'What if, 'mid the cannons' thunder, Whistling shot and bursting bomb, When my brothers fall around me, Should my heart grow cold and numb?' But the drum Answered, 'Come! Better there in death united, than in life a recreant,--Come!' Thus they answered,--hoping, fearing, Some in faith, and doubting some, Till a trumpet-voice proclaiming, Said, 'My chosen people, come!' Then the drum, Lo! was dumb, For the great heart of the nation, throbbing, answered, 'Lord, we come!' _Bret Harte._ CXX WHAT THE BULLET SANG O Joy of creation To be! O rapture to fly And be free! Be the battle lost or won Though its smoke shall hide the sun, I shall find my love--the one Born for me! I shall know him where he stands, All alone, With the power in his hands Not o'erthrown; I shall know him by his face, By his god-like front and grace; I shall hold him for a space All my own! It is he--O my love! So bold! It is I--All thy love Foretold! It is I. O love! what bliss! Dost thou answer to my kiss? O sweetheart! what is this Lieth there so cold? _Bret Harte._ CXXI A BALLAD OF THE ARMADA King Philip had vaunted his claims; He had sworn for a year he would sack us; With an army of heathenish names He was coming to fagot and stack us; Like the thieves of the sea he would track us, And shatter our ships on the main; But we had bold Neptune to back us-- And where are the galleons of Spain? His carackes were christened of dames To the kirtles whereof he would tack us; With his saints and his gilded stern-frames He had thought like an egg shell to crack us; Now Howard may get to his Flaccus, And Drake to his Devon again, And Hawkins bowl rubbers to Bacchus-- For where are the galleons of Spain? Let his Majesty hang to St. James The axe that he whetted to hack us; He must play at some lustier games Or at sea he can hope to out-thwack us; To his mines of Peru he would pack us To tug at his bullet and chain; Alas! that his Greatness should lack us!-- But where are the galleons of Spain? ENVOY Gloriana!--the Don may attack us Whenever his stomach be fain; He must reach us before he can rack us, ... And where are the galleons of Spain? _Dobson._ CXXII THE WHITE PACHA Vain is the dream! However Hope may rave, He perished with the folk he could not save, And though none surely told us he is dead, And though perchance another in his stead, Another, not less brave, when all was done, Had fled unto the southward and the sun, Had urged a way by force, or won by guile To streams remotest of the secret Nile, Had raised an army of the Desert men, And, waiting for his hour, had turned again And fallen on that False Prophet, yet we know GORDON is dead, and these things are not so! Nay, not for England's cause, nor to restore Her trampled flag--for he loved Honour more-- Nay, not for Life, Revenge, or Victory, Would he have fled, whose hour had dawned to die. He will not come again, whate'er our need, He will not come, who is happy, being freed From the deathly flesh and perishable things, And lies of statesmen and rewards of kings. Nay, somewhere by the sacred River's shore He sleeps like those who shall return no more, No more return for all the prayers of men-- Arthur and Charles--they never come again! They shall not wake, though fair the vision seem: Whate'er sick Hope may whisper, vain the dream! _Lang._ CXXIII MOTHER AND SON It is not yours, O mother, to complain, Not, mother, yours to weep, Though nevermore your son again Shall to your bosom creep, Though nevermore again you watch your baby sleep. Though in the greener paths of earth Mother and child, no more We wander; and no more the birth Of me whom once you bore, Seems still the brave reward that once it seemed of yore; Though as all passes, day and night, The seasons and the years, From you, O mother, this delight, This also disappears-- Some profit yet survives of all your pangs and tears. The child, the seed, the grain of corn, The acorn on the hill, Each for some separate end is born In season fit, and still Each must in strength arise to work the Almighty will. So from the hearth the children flee, By that Almighty hand Austerely led; so one by sea Goes forth, and one by land; Nor aught of all men's sons escapes from that command. So from the sally each obeys The unseen Almighty nod; So till the ending all their ways Blind-folded loth have trod: Nor knew their task at all, but were the tools of God. And as the fervent smith of yore Beat out the glowing blade, Nor wielded in the front of war The weapons that he made, But in the tower at home still plied his ringing trade; So like a sword the son shall roam On nobler missions sent; And as the smith remained at home In peaceful turret pent, So sits the while at home the mother well content. _Stevenson._ CXXIV PRAYERS God who created me Nimble and light of limb, In three elements free, To run, to ride, to swim: Not when the sense is dim, But now from the heart of joy, I would remember Him: Take the thanks of a boy. Jesu, King and Lord, Whose are my foes to fight, Gird me with Thy sword Swift and sharp and bright. Thee would I serve if I might; And conquer if I can, From day-dawn till night, Take the strength of a man. Spirit of Love and Truth, Breathing in grosser clay, The light and flame of youth, Delight of men in the fray, Wisdom in strength's decay; From pain, strife, wrong to be free This best gift I pray, Take my spirit to Thee. _Beeching._ CXXV A BALLAD OF EAST AND WEST Kamal is out with twenty men to raise the Border side, And he has lifted the Colonel's mare that is the Colonel's pride: He has lifted her out of the stable-door between the dawn and the day, And turned the calkins upon her feet, and ridden her far away. Then up and spoke the Colonel's son that led a troop of the Guides: 'Is there never a man of all my men can say where Kamal hides?' Then up and spoke Mahommed Khan, the son of the Ressaldar, 'If ye know the track of the morning-mist, ye know where his pickets are. At dusk he harries the Abazai--at dawn he is into Bonair-- But he must go by Fort Bukloh to his own place to fare, So if ye gallop to Fort Bukloh as fast as a bird can fly, By the favour of God ye may cut him off ere he win to the Tongue of Jagai. But if he be passed the Tongue of Jagai, right swiftly turn ye then, For the length and the breadth of that grisly plain are sown with Kamal's men.' The Colonel's son has taken a horse, and a raw rough dun was he, With the mouth of a bell and the heart of Hell and the head of the gallows-tree. The Colonel's son to the Fort has won, they bid him stay to eat-- Who rides at the tail of a Border thief, he sits not long at his meat. He's up and away from Fort Bukloh as fast as he can fly, Till he was aware of his father's mare in the gut of the Tongue of Jagai, Till he was aware of his father's mare with Kamal upon her back, And when he could spy the white of her eye, he made the pistol crack. He has fired once, he has fired twice, but the whistling ball went wide. 'Ye shoot like a soldier,' Kamal said. 'Show now if ye can ride.' It's up and over the Tongue of Jagai, as blown dust-devils go, The dun he fled like a stag of ten, but the mare like a barren doe. The dun he leaned against the bit and slugged his head above, But the red mare played with the snaffle-bars as a lady plays with a glove. They have ridden the low moon out of the sky, their hoofs drum up the dawn, The dun he went like a wounded bull, but the mare like a new-roused fawn. The dun he fell at a water-course--in a woful heap fell he,-- And Kamal has turned the red mare back, and pulled the rider free. He has knocked the pistol out of his hand--small room was there to strive-- ''Twas only by favour of mine,' quoth he, 'ye rode so long alive; There was not a rock for twenty mile, there was not a clump of tree, But covered a man of my own men with his rifle cocked on his knee. If I had raised my bridle-hand, as I have held it low, The little jackals that flee so fast were feasting all in a row; If I had bowed my head on my breast, as I have held it high, The kite that whistles above us now were gorged till she could not fly.' Lightly answered the Colonel's son:--'Do good to bird and beast, But count who come for the broken meats before thou makest a feast. If there should follow a thousand swords to carry my bones away, Belike the price of a jackal's meal were more than a thief could pay. They will feed their horse on the standing crop, their men on the garnered grain, The thatch of the byres will serve their fires when all the cattle are slain. But if thou thinkest the price be fair, and thy brethren wait to sup, The hound is kin to the jackal-spawn,--howl, dog, and call them up! And if thou thinkest the price be high, in steer and gear and stack, Give me my father's mare again, and I'll fight my own way back!' Kamal has gripped him by the hand and set him upon his feet. 'No talk shall be of dogs,' said he, 'when wolf and grey wolf meet. May I eat dirt if thou hast hurt of me in deed or breath. What dam of lances brought thee forth to jest at the dawn with Death?' Lightly answered the Colonel's son:--'I hold by the blood of my clan; Take up the mare for my father's gift--By God she has carried a man!' The red mare ran to the Colonel's son, and nuzzled her nose in his breast, 'We be two strong men,' said Kamal then, 'but she loveth the younger best. So she shall go with a lifter's dower, my turquoise studded rein, My broidered saddle and saddle-cloth, and silver stirrups twain.' The Colonel's son a pistol drew and held it muzzle-end, 'Ye have taken the one from a foe,' said he; 'will ye take the mate from a friend?' 'A gift for a gift,' said Kamal straight; 'a limb for the risk of a limb. Thy father has sent his son to me, I'll send my son to him!' With that he whistled his only son, who dropped from a mountain-crest-- He trod the ling like a buck in spring and he looked like a lance in rest. 'Now here is thy master,' Kamal said, 'who leads a troop of the Guides, And thou must ride at his left side as shield to shoulder rides. Till Death or I cut loose the tie, at camp and board and bed, Thy life is his--thy fate it is to guard him with thy head. And thou must eat the White Queen's meat, and all her foes are thine, And thou must harry thy father's hold for the peace of the Border-line, And thou must make a trooper tough and hack thy way to power-- Belike they will raise thee to Ressaldar when I am hanged in Peshawur.' They have looked each other between the eyes, and there they found no fault, They have taken the Oath of the Brother-in-Blood on leavened bread and salt; They have taken the Oath of the Brother-in-Blood on fire and fresh-cut sod, On the hilt and the haft of the Khyber knife, and the Wondrous Names of God. The Colonel's son he rides the mare and Kamal's boy the dun, And two have come back to Fort Bukloh where there went forth but one. And when they drew to the Quarter-Guard, full twenty swords flew clear-- There was not a man but carried his feud with the blood of the mountaineer. 'Ha' done! ha' done!' said the Colonel's son. 'Put up the steel at your sides! Last night ye had struck at a Border thief--to-night 'tis a man of the Guides!' Oh, east is east, and west is west, and never the two shall meet Till earth and sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat. But there is neither east nor west, border or breed or birth, When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth. _Kipling._ CXXVI THE FLAG OF ENGLAND Winds of the World, give answer! They are whimpering to and fro-- And what should they know of England who only England know?-- The poor little street-bred people that vapour and fume and brag, They are lifting their heads in the stillness to yelp at the English Flag. Must we borrow a clout from the Boer--to plaster anew with dirt? An Irish liar's bandage, or an English coward's shirt? We may not speak of England; her Flag's to sell or share. What is the Flag of England? Winds of the World, declare! The North Wind blew:--'From Bergen my steel-shod vanguards go; I chase your lazy whalers home from the Disko floe; By the great North Lights above me I work the will of God, And the liner splits on the ice-fields or the Dogger fills with cod. I barred my gates with iron, I shuttered my doors with flame, Because to force my ramparts your nutshell navies came; I took the sun from their presence, I cut them down with my blast, And they died, but the Flag of England blew free ere the spirit passed. The lean white bear hath seen it in the long, long Arctic night, The musk-ox knows the standard that flouts the Northern Light: What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my bergs to dare, Ye have but my drifts to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!' The South Wind sighed:--'From the Virgins my mid-sea course was ta'en Over a thousand islands lost in an idle main, Where the sea-egg flames on the coral and the long-backed breakers croon Their endless ocean legends to the lazy, locked lagoon. Strayed amid lonely islets, mazed amid outer keys, I waked the palms to laughter--I tossed the scud in the breeze-- Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone, But over the scud and the palm trees an English flag was flown. I have wrenched it free from the halliard to hang for a wisp on the Horn; I have chased it north to the Lizard--ribboned and rolled and torn; I have spread its fold o'er the dying, adrift in a hopeless sea; I have hurled it swift on the slaver, and seen the slave set free. My basking sunfish know it, and wheeling albatross, Where the lone wave fills with fire beneath the Southern Cross. What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my reefs to dare, Ye have but my seas to furrow. Go forth, for it is there!' The East Wind roared:--'From the Kuriles, the Bitter Seas, I come, And me men call the Home-Wind, for I bring the English home. Look--look well to your shipping! By the breath of my mad typhoon I swept your close-packed Praya and beached your best at Kowloon! The reeling junks behind me and the racing seas before, I raped your richest roadstead--I plundered Singapore! I set my hand on the Hoogli; as a hooded snake she rose, And I heaved your stoutest steamers to roost with the startled crows. Never the lotos closes, never the wild-fowl wake. But a soul goes out on the East Wind that died for England's sake-- Man or woman or suckling, mother or bride or maid-- Because on the bones of the English the English Flag is stayed. The desert-dust hath dimmed it, the flying wild-ass knows, The scared white leopard winds it across the taintless snows. What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my sun to dare, Ye have but my sands to travel. Go forth, for it is there!' The West Wind called:--'In squadrons the thoughtless galleons fly That bear the wheat and cattle lest street-bred people die. They make my might their porter, they make my house their path, And I loose my neck from their service and whelm them all in my wrath. I draw the gliding fog-bank as a snake is drawn from the hole, They bellow one to the other, the frighted ship-bells toll: For day is a drifting terror till I raise the shroud with my breath, And they see strange bows above them and the two go locked to death. But whether in calm or wrack-wreath, whether by dark or day I heave them whole to the conger or rip their plates away, First of the scattered legions, under a shrieking sky, Dipping between the rollers, the English Flag goes by. The dead dumb fog hath wrapped it--the frozen dews have kissed-- The morning stars have hailed it, a fellow-star in the mist. What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my breath to dare, Ye have but my waves to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!' _Kipling._ NOTES I This descant upon one of the most glorious feats of arms that even England has achieved is selected and pieced together from the magnificent verse assigned to the Chorus--'_Enter RUMOUR painted full of tongues_'--to _King Henry V._, the noble piece of pageantry produced in 1598, and a famous number from the _Poems Lyrick and Pastorall_ (_circ._ 1605) of Michael Drayton. 'Look,' says Ben Jonson, in his _Vision on the Muses of his Friend, Michael Drayton_:-- Look how we read the Spartans were inflamed With bold Tyrtæus' verse; when thou art named So shall our English youths urge on, and cry An AGINCOURT! an AGINCOURT! or die. This, it is true, was in respect of another _Agincourt_, but we need not hesitate to appropriate it to our own: in respect of which--'To the Cambro-Britons and their Harp, His _Ballad of Agincourt_,' is the poet's own description--it is to note that Drayton had no model for it; that it remains wellnigh unique in English letters for over two hundred years; and that, despite such lapses into doggerel as the third stanza, and some curious infelicities of diction which need not here be specified, it remains, with a certain Sonnet, its author's chief title to fame. Compare the ballads of _The Brave Lord Willoughby_ and _The Honour of Bristol_ in the seventeenth century, the song of _The Arethusa_ in the eighteenth, and in the nineteenth a choice of such Tyrtæan music as _The Battle of the Baltic_, Lord Tennyson's _Ballad of the Fleet_, and _The Red Thread of Honour_ of the late Sir Francis Doyle. II Originally _The True Character of a Happy Life_: written and printed about 1614, and reprinted by Percy (1765) from the _Reliquiæ Wottonianæ_ of 1651. Says Drummond of Ben Jonson, 'Sir Edward (_sic_) Wotton's verses of a Happy Life he hath by heart.' Of Wotton himself it was reserved for Cowley to remark that He did the utmost bounds of knowledge find, And found them not so large as was his mind; * * * * * * And when he saw that he through all had passed He died--lest he should idle grow at last. See Izaak Walton, _Lives_. III, IV From _Underwoods_ (1640). The first, _An Ode_, is addressed to an innominate not yet, I believe, identified. The second is part of that _Ode to the Immortal Memory of that Heroic Pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir Henry Morrison_, which is the first true Pindaric in the language. Gifford ascribes it to 1629, when Sir Henry died, but it seems not to have been printed before 1640. Sir Lucius Cary is the Lord Falkland of Clarendon and Horace Walpole. V From _The Mad Lover_ (produced about 1618: published in 1640). Compare the wooden imitations of Dryden in _Amboyna_ and elsewhere. VI First printed, Mr. Bullen tells me, in 1640. Compare X. (Shirley, _post_, p. 20), and the cry from Raleigh's _History of the World_: 'O Eloquent, Just, and Mighty Death! Whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the World hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the World and despised: thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched Greatness, all the Pride, Cruelty, and Ambition of Man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, "_Hic Jacet_."' VII, VIII This pair of 'noble numbers,' of brilliant and fervent lyrics, is from _Hesperides, or, The Works both Human and Divine of Robert Herrich, Esq._ (1648). IX No. 61, '_Vertue_,' in _The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations_, 1632-33. Compare Herbert to Christopher Farrer, as reported by Izaak Walton:--'Tell him that I do not repine, but am pleased with my want of health; and tell him, my heart is fixed on that place where true joy is only to be found, and that I long to be there, and do wait for my appointed change with hope and patience.' X From _The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses_, printed 1659. Compare VI. (Beaumont, _ante_, p. 15), and Bacon, _Essays_, 'On Death': 'But, above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is _Nunc dimittis_, when a man hath attained worthy ends and expectations.' XI Written in the November of 1637, and printed next year in the _Obsequies to the Memorie of Mr. Edward King_. 'In this Monody,' the title runs, 'the Author bewails a Learned Friend unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637. And by occasion foretells the ruine of our corrupted Clergie, then in their height.' King, who died at five- or six-and-twenty, was a personal friend of Milton's, but the true accents of grief are inaudible in _Lycidas_, which is, indeed, an example as perfect as exists of Milton's capacity for turning whatever he touched into pure poetry: an arrangement, that is, of 'the best words in the best order'; or, to go still further than Coleridge, the best words in the prescribed or inevitable sequence that makes the arrangement art. For the innumerable allusions see Professor Masson's edition of Milton (Macmillan, 1890), i. 187-201, and iii. 254-276. XII The Eighth Sonnet (Masson): 'When the Assault was Intended to the City.' Written in 1642, with Rupert and the King at Brentford, and printed in the edition of 1645. XIII The Sixteenth Sonnet (Masson): 'To the Lord General Cromwell, May, 1652: On the Proposals of Certain Ministers at the Committee for Propagation of the Gospel.' Printed by Philips, _Life of Milton_, 1694. In defence of the principle of Religious Voluntaryism, and against the intolerant Fifteen Proposals of John Owen and the majority of the Committee. XIV The Eighteenth Sonnet (Masson). 'Written in 1655,' says Masson, and referring 'to the persecution instituted, in the early part of the year, by Charles Emmanuel II., Duke of Savoy and Prince of Piedmont, against his Protestant subjects of the valleys of the Cottian Alps.' In January, an edict required them to turn Romanists or quit the country out of hand; it was enforced with such barbarity that Cromwell took the case of the sufferers in hand; and so vigorous was his action that the Edict was withdrawn and a convention was signed (August 1655) by which the Vaudois were permitted to worship as they would. Printed in 1673. XV The Nineteenth Sonnet (Masson) 'may have been written any time between 1652 and 1655,' the first years of Milton's blindness, 'but it follows the Sonnet on the Piedmontese Massacre in Milton's own volume of 1673.' XVI, XVII From the choric parts of _Samson Agonistes_ (i.e. the Agonist, or Wrestler), first printed in 1671. XVIII Of uncertain date; first printed by Watson 1706-11. The version given here is Emerson's (which is shorter than the original), with the exception of the last stanza, which is Napier's (_Montrose_, i. Appendices). Napier is at great pains to prove that the ballad is allegorical, and that Montrose's 'dear and only love' was that unhappy King whose Epitaph, the famous _Great, Good, and Just_, he is said--falsely--to have written with his sword. Be this as it may, the verses have a second part, which has dropped into oblivion. For the Great Marquis, who reminded De Retz of the men in Plutarch's _Lives_, was not averse from the practice of poetry, and wrote, besides these numbers, a prayer ('Let them bestow on every airth a limb'), a 'pasquil,' a pleasant string of conceits in praise of woman, a set of vehement and fiery memorial stanzas on the King, and one copy of verses more. XIX, XX _To Lucasta going to the Wars_ and _To Althea from Prison_ are both, I believe, from Lovelace's _Lucasta_ (1645). XXI First printed by Captain Thomson, _Works_ (1776), from a copy he held, on what seems excellent authority, to be in Marvell's hand. The true title is _A Horatian Ode on Cromwell's Return from Ireland_ (1650). It is always ascribed to Marvell (whose verse was first collected and printed by his widow in 1681), but there are faint doubts as to the authorship. XXII _Poems_ (1681). This elegant and romantic lyric appears to have been inspired by a passage in the life of John Oxenbridge, of whom, 'religionis causa oberrantem,' it is enough to note that, after migrating to Bermudas, where he had a church, and being 'ejected' at the Restoration from an English cure, he went to Surinam (1662-67), to Barbadoes (1667), and to New England (1669), where he was made pastor of 'the First Church of Boston' (1670), and where he died in 1674. These details are from Mr. Grosart's _Marvell_ (1875), i. 82-85, and ii. 5-8. XXIII Dryden's second Ode for Saint Cecilia's Day, _Alexander's Feast, or the Power of Sound_, as it is called, was written and printed in 1697. As it was designed for music (it was set by Jeremiah Clarke), the closing lines of every strophe are repeated by way of chorus. I have removed these repetitions as impertinent to the effect of the poem in print, and as interrupting the rushing vehemency of the narrative. The incident described is the burning of Persepolis. XXIV Written early in 1782, in memory of Robert Levett: 'an old and faithful friend,' says Johnson, and withal 'a very useful and very blameless man.' Excepting for the perfect odes of Cowper (_post_, pp. 85, 86), in these excellent and affecting verses the 'classic' note is audible for the last time in this book until we reach the _Iphigeneia_ of Walter Savage Landor, who was a lad of seven at the date of their composition. They were written seventeen years after the publication of the _Reliques_ (1765), and a full quarter century after the appearance of _The Bard_ (1757); but in style they proceed from the age of Pope. For the rest, the Augustan Muse was an utter stranger to the fighting inspiration. Her gait was pedestrian, her purpose didactic, her practice neat and formal: and she prosed of England's greatest captain, the victor of Blenheim, as tamely as himself had been 'a parson in a tye-wig'--himself, and not the amiable man of letters who acted as her amanuensis for the nonce. XXV _Chevy Chase_ is here preferred to _Otterbourne_ as appealing more directly to Englishmen. The text is Percy's, and the movement like that of all the English ballads, is jog-trot enough. Sidney's confession--that he never heard it, even from a blind fiddler, but it stirred him like the sound of a trumpet--refers, no doubt, to an earlier version than the present, which appears to date from the first quarter of the seventeenth century. Compare _The Brave Lord Willoughby_ and _The Honour of Bristol_ (_post_, pp. 60, 73). XXVI First printed by Percy. The text I give is, with some few variants, that of the vastly better version in _The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_ (1802-3). Of the 'history' of the ballad the less said the better. The argument is neatly summarised by Mr. Allingham, p. 376 of _The Ballad Book_ ('Golden Treasury,' 1879). skeely = _skilful_ white monie = _silver_ gane = _would suffice_ half-fou = _the eighth part of a peck_ gurly = _rough_ lap = _sprang_ bout = _bolt_ twine = _thread_, i.e. canvas wap = _warp_ flattered = '_fluttered_, or rather, floated' (Scott) kaims = _combs_ XXVII Printed by Percy, 'from an old black-letter copy; with some conjectural emendations.' At the suggestion of my friend, the Rev. Mr. Hunt, I have restored the original readings, as in truer consonancy with the vainglorious, insolent, and swaggering ballad spirit. As for the hero, Peregrine Bertie, Lord Willoughby of Eresby, described as 'one of the Queen's best swordsmen' and 'a great master of the art military,' he succeeded Leicester in the command in the Low Countries in 1587, distinguished himself repeatedly in fight with the Spaniards, and died in 1601. 'Both Norris and Turner were famous among the military men of that age' (Percy). In the Roxburgh Ballads the full title of the broadside--which is 'printed for S. Coles in Vine St., near Hatton Garden,'--is as follows:--'_A true relation of a famous and bloudy Battell fought in Flanders by the noble and valiant Lord Willoughby with 1500 English against 40,000 Spaniards, wherein the English obtained a notable victory for the glory and renown of our nation._ Tune: _Lord Willoughby_.' XXVIII First printed by Tom D'Urfey, _Wit and Mirth, etc._ (1720), vi. 289-91; revised by Robert Burns for _The Scots Musical Magazine_, and again by Allan Cunningham for _The Songs of Scotland_; given with many differences, 'long current in Selkirkshire,' in the _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_. The present version is a _rifaccimento_ from Burns and Scott. It is worth noting that Græme (pronounced 'Grime'), and Graham are both forms of one name, which name was originally Grimm, and that, according to some, the latter orthography is the privilege of the chief of the clan. XXIX First printed in the _Minstrelsy_. This time the 'history' is authentic enough. It happened early in 1596, when Salkeld, the Deputy Warden of the Western Marches, seized under truce the person of William Armstrong of Kinmont--elsewhere described as 'Will Kinmonde the common thieffe'--and haled him to Carlisle Castle, whence he was rescued--'with shouting and crying and sound of trumpet'--by the Laird of Buccleuch, Keeper of Liddesdale, and a troop of two hundred horse. 'The Queen of England,' says Spottiswoode, 'having notice sent her of what was done, stormed not a little'; but see the excellent summary compiled by Scott (who confesses to having touched up the ballad) for the _Minstrelsy_. Haribee = _the gallows hill at Carlisle_ reiver = _a border thief_, one of a class which lived sparely, fought stoutly, entertained the strictest sense of honour and justice, went ever on horseback, and carried the art of cattle-lifting to the highest possible point of perfection (_National Observer, 30th May, 1891_) yett = _gate_ lawing = _reckoning_ basnet = _helmet_ curch = _coif or cap_ lightly = _to scorn_ in a lowe = _on fire_ slocken = _to slake_ splent = _shoulder-piece_ spauld = _shoulder_ broken men = _outlaws_ marshal men = _officers of law_ rank reiver = _common thief_ herry = _harry_ corbie = _crow_ lear = _learning_ row-footed = _rough-shod_ spait = _flood_ garred = _made_ slogan = _battle-cry_ stear = _stir_ saft = _light_ fleyed = _frightened_ bairns = _children_ spier = _ask_ hente = _lifted_, _haled_ maill = _rent_ furs = _furrows_ trew = _trust_ Christentie = _Christendom_ XXX Communicated by Mr. Hunt,--who dates it about 1626--from Seyer's _Memoirs, Historical and Topographical, of Bristol and its Neighbourhood_ (1821-23). The full title is _The Honour of Bristol: shewing how the Angel Gabriel of Bristol fought with three ships, who boarded as many times, wherein we cleared our decks and killed five hundred of their men, and wounded many more, and made them fly into Cales, when we lost but three men, to the Honour of the Angel Gabriel of Bristol_. To the tune _Our Noble King in his Progress_. Cales (13), pronounced as a dissyllable, is of course Cadiz. It is fair to add that this spirited and amusing piece of doggerel has been severely edited. XXXI From the _Minstrelsy_, where it is 'given, without alteration or improvement, from the most accurate copy that could be recovered.' The story runs that Helen Irving (or Helen Bell), of Kirkconnell in Dumfriesshire, was beloved by Adam Fleming, and (as some say) Bell of Blacket House; that she favoured the first but her people encouraged the second; that she was thus constrained to tryst with Fleming by night in the churchyard, 'a romantic spot, almost surrounded by the river Kirtle'; that they were here surprised by the rejected suitor, who fired at his rival from the far bank of the stream; that Helen, seeking to shield her lover, was shot in his stead; and that Fleming, either there and then, or afterwards in Spain, avenged her death on the body of her slayer. Wordsworth has told the story in a copy of verses which shows, like so much more of his work, how dreary a poetaster he could be. XXXII This epic-in-little, as tremendous an invention as exists in verse, is from the _Minstrelsy_: 'as written down from tradition by a lady' (C. Kirkpatrick Sharpe). corbies = _crows_ fail-dyke = _wall of turf_ hause-bane = _breast-bone_ theek = _thatch_ XXXIII Begun in 1755, and finished and printed (with _The Progress of Poetry_) in 1757. 'Founded,' says the poet, 'on a tradition current in Wales, that Edward the First, when he concluded the conquest of that country, ordered all the bards that fell into his hands to be put to death.' The 'agonising king' (line 56) is Edward II.; the 'she-wolf of France' (57), Isabel his queen; the 'scourge of heaven' (60), Edward III.; the 'sable warrior' (67), Edward the Black Prince. Lines 75-82 commemorate the rise and fall of Richard II.; lines 83-90, the Wars of the Roses, the murders in the Tower, the 'faith' of Margaret of Anjou, the 'fame' of Henry V., the 'holy head' of Henry VI. The 'bristled boar' (93) is symbolical of Richard III.; 'half of thy heart' (99) of Eleanor of Castile, 'who died a few years after the conquest of Wales.' Line 110 celebrates the accession of the House of Tudor in fulfilment of the prophecies of Merlin and Taliessin; lines 115-20, Queen Elizabeth; lines 128-30, Shakespeare; lines 131-32, Milton; and the 'distant warblings' of line 133, 'the succession of poets after Milton's time' (Gray). XXXIV, XXXV Written, the one in September 1782 (in the August of which year the _Royal George_ (108 guns) was overset in Portsmouth Harbour with the loss of close on a thousand souls), and the other 'after reading Hume's _History_ in 1780' (Benham). XXXVI It is worth recalling that at one time Walter Scott attributed this gallant lyric, which he printed in the _Minstrelsy_, to a 'greater Graham'--the Marquis of Montrose. XXXVII, XXXVIII Of these, the first, _Blow High, Blow Low_, was sung in _The Seraglio_ (1776), a forgotten opera; the second, said to have been inspired by the death of the author's brother, a naval officer, in _The Oddities_ (1778)--a 'table-entertainment,' where Dibdin was author, actor, singer, musician, accompanist, everything but audience and candle-snuffer. They are among the first in time of his sea-ditties. XXXIX It is told (_Life_, W. H. Curran, 1819) that Curran met a deserter, drank a bottle, and talked of his chances, with him, and put his ideas and sentiments into this song. XL The _Arethusa_, Mr. Hannay tells me, being attached to Keppel's fleet at the mouth of the Channel, was sent to order the _Belle Poule_, which was cruising with some smaller craft in search of Keppel's ships, to come under his stern. The _Belle Poule_ (commanded by M. Chadeau de la Clocheterie) refusing, the _Arethusa_ (Captain Marshall) opened fire. The ships were fairly matched, and in the action which ensued the _Arethusa_ appears to have got the worst of it. In the end, after about an hour's fighting, Keppel's liners came up, and the _Belle Poule_ made off. She was afterwards driven ashore by a superior English force, and it is an odd coincidence that in 1789 the _Arethusa_ ran ashore off Brest during her action (10th March) with _l'Aigrette_. As for the French captain, he lived to command _l'Hercule_, De Grasse's leading ship in the great sea-fight (12th April 1782) with Rodney off Dominica, where he was killed. XLI From the _Songs of Experience_ (1794). XLII _Scots Musical Museum_, 1788. Adapted from, or rather suggested by, the _Farewell_, which Macpherson, a cateran 'of great personal strength and musical accomplishment,' is said to have played and sung at the gallows foot; thereafter breaking his violin across his knee and submitting his neck to the hangman. spring = _a melody in quick time_ sturt = _molestation_ XLIII _Museum_, 1796. Burns told Thomson and Mrs. Dunlop that this noble and most moving song was old; but nobody believed him then, and nobody believes him now. pint-stoup = _pint-mug_ braes = _hill-sides_ gowans = _daisies_ paidl't = _paddled_ burn = _brook_ fiere = _friend_, _companion_ guid-willie = _well-meant_, _full of good-will_ waught = _draught_ XLIV The first four lines are old. The rest were written apparently in 1788, when the poet sent this song and _Auld Lang Syne_ to Mrs. Dunlop. It appeared in the _Museum_, 1790. tassie = _a cup_; _Fr._ 'tasse' XLV About 1777-80: printed 1801. 'One of my juvenile works,' says Burns. 'I do not think it very remarkable, either for its merits or demerits.' But Hazlitt thought the world of it, and now it passes for one of Burns's masterpieces. trysted = _appointed_ stoure = _dust and din_ XLVI _Museum_, 1796. Attributed, in one shape or another, to a certain Captain Ogilvie. Sharpe, too, printed a broadside in which the third stanza (used more than once by Sir Walter) is found as here. But Scott Douglas (_Burns_, iii. 173) has 'no doubt that this broadside was printed after 1796,' and as it stands the thing is assuredly the work of Burns. The refrain and the metrical structure have been used by Scott (_Rokeby_, IV. 28), Carlyle, Charles Kingsley (_Dolcino to Margaret_), and Mr. Swinburne (_A Reiver's Neck Verse_) among others. XLVII-LII Of the first four numbers, the high-water mark of Wordsworth's achievement, all four were written in 1802; the second and third were published in 1803; the first and fourth in 1807. The _Ode to Duty_ was written in 1805, and published in 1807, to which year belongs that _Song for the Feast of Brougham Castle_, from which I have extracted the excellent verses here called _Two Victories_. LIII-LXII The first three numbers are from _Marmion_ (1808): I. Introduction; V. 12; and VI. 18-20, 25-27, and 33-34. The next is from _The Lady of the Lake_ (1810), I. 1-9: _The Outlaw_ is from _Rokeby_ (1813), III. 16; the _Pibroch_ was published in 1816; _The Omnipotent_ and _The Red Harlaw_ are from _The Antiquary_ (1816), and the _Farewell_ from _The Pirate_ (1821). As for _Bonny Dundee_, that incomparable ditty, it was written as late as 1825. 'The air of Bonny Dundee running in my head to-day,' he writes under date of 22d December (_Diary_, 1890, i. 61), 'I wrote a few verses to it before dinner, taking the key-note from the story of Clavers leaving the Scottish Convention of Estates in 1688-9. _I wonder if they are good._' See _The Doom of Devorgoil_ (1830), Note A, Act II. sc. 2. LXIII This unsurpassed piece of art, in which a music the most exquisite is used to body forth a set of suggestions that seem dictated by the very Spirit of Romance, was produced, under the influence of 'an anodyne,' as early as 1797. Coleridge, who calls it _Kubla Khan: A Vision within a Dream_, avers that, having fallen asleep in his chair over a sentence from Purchas's Pilgrimage--'Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built and a stately garden thereto; and thus ten miles of ground were enclosed with a wall,'--he remained unconscious for about three hours, 'during which time he had the most vivid confidence that he could not have composed less than three hundred lines'; 'if that,' he adds, 'can be called composition, in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort.' On awakening, he proceeded to write out his 'composition,' and had set down as much of it as is printed here, when 'he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock,' whose departure, an hour after, left him wellnigh oblivious of the rest. This confession, which is dated 1816, has been generally accepted as true; but Coleridge had a trick of dreaming dreams about himself which makes doubt permissible. LXIV From the _Hellenics_ (written in Latin, 1814-20, and translated into English at the instance of Lady Blessington), 1846. See Colvin, _Landor_ ('English Men of Letters'), pp. 189, 190. LXV-LXVII Of the first, 'Napoleon and the British Sailor' (_The Pilgrim of Glencoe_, 1842), Campbell writes that the 'anecdote has been published in several public journals, both French and English.' 'My belief,' he continues, 'in its authenticity was confirmed by an Englishman, long resident in Boulogne, lately telling me that he remembered the circumstance to have been generally talked of in the place.' Authentic or not, I have preferred the story to _Hohenlinden_, as less hackneyed, for one thing, and, for another, less pretentious and rhetorical. The second (_Gertrude of Wyoming_, 1809) is truly one of 'the glories of our birth and state.' The third (_idem_) I have ventured to shorten by three stanzas: a proceeding which, however culpable it seem, at least gets rid of the chief who gave a country's wounds relief by stopping a battle, eliminates the mermaid and her song (the song that 'condoles'), and ends the lyric on as sonorous and romantic a word as even Shakespeare ever used. LXVIII _Corn Law Rhymes_, 1831. LXIX From that famous and successful forgery, Cromek's _Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song_ (1810), written when Allan was a working mason in Dumfriesshire. I have omitted a stanza as inferior to the rest. LXXI _English Songs and other Small Poems_, 1834. LXXII-LXXVIII The first is from the _Hebrew Melodies_ (1815); the next is selected from _The Siege of Corinth_ (1816), 22-33; _Alhama_ (_idem_) is a spirited yet faithful rendering of the _Romance muy Doloroso del Sitio y Toma de Alhama_, which existed both in Spanish and in Arabic, and whose effect was such that 'it was forbidden to be sung by the Moors on the pain of death in Granada' (Byron); No. LXXV., surely one of the bravest songs in the language, was addressed (_idem_) to Thomas Moore; the tremendous _Race with Death_ is lifted out of the _Ode in Venice_ (1819); for the next number see _Don Juan_, III. (1821); the last of all, 'Stanzas inscribed _On this day I completed my Thirty-sixth year_' (1824), is the last verse that Byron wrote. LXXIX Napier has described the terrific effect of Napoleon's pursuit; but in the operations before Corunna he was distanced, if not out-generalled, by Sir John Moore, and ere the first days of 1809 he gave his command to Soult, who pressed us vainly through the hill-country between Leon and Gallicia, and got beaten at Corunna for his pains. Wolfe, who was an Irish parson and died of consumption, wrote some spirited verses on the flight of Busaco, but this admirable elegy--'I will show you,' said Byron to Shelley (Medwin, ii. 154) 'one you have never seen, that I consider little if at all inferior to the best, the present prolific age has brought forth'--remains his passport to immortality. It was printed, not by the author, in an Irish newspaper; was copied all over Britain; was claimed by liar after liar in succession; and has been reprinted more often, perhaps, than any poem of the century. LXXX From _Snarleyow, or the Dog Fiend_ (1837). Compare Nelson to Collingwood: '_Victory_, 25th June, 1805,--May God bless you and send you alongside the _Santissima Trinidad_.' LXXXI, LXXXII The story of Casabianca is, I believe, untrue; but the intention of the singer, alike in this number and in the next, is excellent. Each indeed is, in its way, a classic. The _Mayflower_ sailed from Southampton in 1626. LXXXIII This magnificent sonnet, _On First Reading Chapman's Homer_, was printed in 1817. The 'Cortez' of the eleventh verse is a mistake; the discoverer of the Pacific being Nuñez de Balboa. LXXXIV-LXXXVII The _Lays_ are dated 1824; they have passed through edition after edition; and if Matthew Arnold disliked and contemned them (see Sir F. H. Doyle, _Reminiscences and Opinions_, pp. 178-87), the general is wise enough to know them by heart. But a book that is 'a catechism to fight' (in Jonson's phrase) would have sinned against itself had it taken no account of them, and I have given _Horatius_ in its integrity: if only, as Landor puts it, To show the British youth, who ne'er Will lag behind, what Romans were, When all the Tuscans and their Lars Shouted, and shook the towers of Mars. As for _The Armada_, I have preferred it to _The Battle of Naseby_, first, because it is neither vicious nor ugly, and the other is both; and, second, because it is so brilliant an outcome of that capacity for dealing with proper names which Macaulay, whether poet or not, possesses in common with none but certain among the greater poets. For _The Last Buccaneer_ (a curious anticipation of some effects of Mr. Rudyard Kipling), and that noble thing, the _Jacobite's Epitaph_, they are dated 1839 and 1845 respectively. LXXXVIII _The Poetical Works of Robert Stephen Hawker_ (Kegan Paul, 1879). By permission of Mrs. R. S. Hawker. 'With the exception of the choral lines-- And shall Trelawney die? There's twenty thousand Cornishmen Will know the reason why!-- and which have been, ever since the imprisonment by James II. of the Seven Bishops--one of them Sir Jonathan Trelawney--a popular proverb throughout Cornwall, the whole of this song was composed by me in the year 1825. I wrote it under a stag-horned oak in Sir Beville's Walk in Stowe Wood. It was sent by me anonymously to a Plymouth paper, and there it attracted the notice of Mr. Davies Gilbert, who reprinted it at his private press at Eastbourne under the avowed impression that it was the original ballad. It had the good fortune to win the eulogy of Sir Walter Scott, who also deemed it to be the ancient song. It was praised under the same persuasion by Lord Macaulay and Mr. Dickens.'--_Author's Note._ LXXXIX-XCII From _The Sea Side and the Fire Side_, 1851; _Birds of Passage_, _Flight the First_, and _Flight the Second_; and _Flower de Luce_, 1866. Of these four examples of the picturesque and taking art of Longfellow, I need say no more than that all are printed in their integrity, with the exception of the first. This I leave the lighter by a moral and an application, both of which, superfluous or not, are remote from the general purpose of this book: a confession in which I may include the following number, Mr. Whittier's _Barbara Frietchie_ (_In War-Time_, 1863.) XCIV _Nineteenth Century_, March 1878; _Ballads and other Poems_, 1880. By permission of Messrs. Macmillan, to whom I am indebted for some of my choicest numbers. For the story of Sir Richard Grenville's heroic death, 'in the last of August,' 1591--after the Revenge had endured the onset of 'fifteen several armadas,' and received some 'eight hundred shot of great artillerie,'--see Hakluyt (1598-1600), ii. 169-176, where you will find it told with singular animation and directness by Sir Walter Raleigh, who held a brief against the Spaniards in Sir Richard's case as always. To Sir Richard's proposal to blow up the ship the master gunner 'readily condescended,' as did 'divers others'; but the captain was of 'another opinion,' and in the end Sir Richard was taken aboard the ship of the Spanish admiral, Don Alfonso de Bazan, who used him well and honourably until he died: leaving to his friends the 'comfort that being dead he hath not outlived his own honour,' and that he had nobly shown how false and vain, and therefore how contrary to God's will, the 'ambitious and bloudie practices of the Spaniards' were. XCV _Tiresias and Other Poems_, 1885. By permission of Messrs. Macmillan. Included at Lord Tennyson's own suggestion. For the noble feat of arms (25th October 1854) thus nobly commemorated, see Kinglake (v. i. 102-66). 'The three hundred of the Heavy Brigade who made this famous charge were the Scots Greys and the second squadron of Enniskillings, the remainder of the "Heavy Brigade" subsequently dashing up to their support. The "three" were Scarlett's aide-de-camp, Elliot, and the trumpeter, and Shegog the orderly, who had been close behind him.'--_Author's Note._ XCVI, XCVII _The Return of the Guards, and other Poems_, 1866. By permission of Messrs. Macmillan. As to the first, which deals with an incident of the war with China, and is presumably referred to in 1860, 'Some Seiks and a private of the Buffs (or East Kent Regiment) having remained behind with the grog-carts, fell into the hands of the Chinese. On the next morning they were brought before the authorities and commanded to perform the _Ko tou_. The Seiks obeyed; but Moyse, the English soldier, declaring that he would not prostrate himself before any Chinaman alive, was immediately knocked upon the head and his body thrown upon a dunghill.'--Quoted by the author from _The Times_. The Elgin of line 6 is Henry Bruce, eighth Lord Elgin (1811-1863), then Ambassador to China, and afterwards Governor-General of India. Compare _Theology in Extremis_ (_post_, p. 309). Of the second, which Mr. Saintsbury describes 'as one of the most lofty, insolent, and passionate things concerning this matter that our time has produced,' Sir Francis notes that the incident--no doubt a part of the conquest of Sindh--was told him by Sir Charles Napier, and that 'Truckee' (line 12) = 'a stronghold in the Desert, supposed to be unassailable and impregnable.' XCVIII, XCIX By permission of Messrs. Smith, Elder, and Co. _Dramatic Lyrics_, 1845; _Cornhill Magazine_, June 1871, and _Pacchiarotto_, 1876, Works, iv. and xiv. I can find nothing about Hervé Riel. C-CIII The two first are from the 'Song of Myself,' _Leaves of Grass_ (1855); the others from _Drum Taps_ (1865). See _Leaves of Grass_ (Philadelphia, 1884), pp. 60, 62-63, 222, and 246. CIV, CV By permission of Messrs. Macmillan. Dated severally 1857 and 1859. CVI _Edinburgh Courant_, 1852. Compare _The Loss of the 'Birkenhead'_ in _The Return of the Guards, and other Poems_ (Macmillan, 1883), pp. 256-58. Of the troopship _Birkenhead_ I note that she sailed from Queenstown on the 7th January 1852, with close on seven hundred souls on board; that the most of these were soldiers--of the Twelfth Lancers, the Sixtieth Rifles, the Second, Sixth, Forty-third, Forty-fifth, Seventy-third, Seventy-fourth, and Ninety-first Regiments; that she struck on a rock (26th February 1852) off Simon's Bay, South Africa; that the boats would hold no more than a hundred and thirty-eight, and that, the women and children being safe, the men that were left--four hundred and fifty-four, all told--were formed on deck by their officers, and went down with the ship, true to colours and discipline till the end. CVII-CIX By permission of Messrs. Macmillan. From _Empedocles on Etna_ (1853). As regards the second number, it may be noted that Sohrab, being in quest of his father Rustum, to whom he is unknown, offers battle as one of the host of the Tartar King Afrasiab, to any champion of the Persian Kai Khosroo. The challenge is accepted by Rustum, who fights as a nameless knight (like Wilfrid of Ivanhoe at the Gentle and Joyous Passage of Ashby), and so becomes the unwitting slayer of his son. For the story of the pair the poet refers his readers to Sir John Malcom's _History of Persia_. See _Poems_, by Matthew Arnold (Macmillan), i. 268, 269. CX, CXI _Ionica_ (Allen, 1891). By permission of the Author. _School Fencibles_ (1861) was 'printed, not published, in 1877.' _The Ballad for a Boy_, Mr. Cory writes, 'was never printed till this year.' CXII By permission of the Author. This ballad, which was suggested, Mr. Meredith tells me, by the story of Bendigeid Vran, the son of Llyr, in the _Mabinogion_ (iii. 121-9), is reprinted from _Modern Love_ (1862), but it originally appeared (_circ._ 1860) in _Once a Week_, a forgotten print the source of not a little unforgotten stuff--as _Evan Harrington_ and the first part of _The Cloister and the Hearth_. CXIII From the fourth and last book of _Sigurd the Volsung_, 1877. By permission of the Author. Hogni and Gunnar, being the guests of King Atli, husband to their sister Gudrun, refused to tell him the whereabouts of the treasure of Fafnir, whom Sigurd slew; and this is the manner of their taking and the beginning of King Atli's vengeance. CXIV _English Illustrated Magazine_, January 1890, and _Lyrical Poems_ (Macmillan, 1891). By permission of the Author: with whose sanction I have omitted four lines from the last stanza. CXV By permission of Sir Alfred Lyall. _Cornhill Magazine_, September 1868, and _Verses Written in India_ (Kegan Paul, 1889). The second title is: _A Soliloquy that may have been delivered in India, June 1857_; and this is further explained by the following 'extract from an Indian newspaper':--'They would have spared life to any of their English prisoners who should consent to profess Mahometanism by repeating the usual short formula; but only one half-caste cared to save himself that way.' Then comes the description, _Moriturus Loquitur_, and next the poem. CXVI-CXVIII From _Songs before Sunrise_ (Chatto and Windus, 1877), and the third series of _Poems and Ballads_ (Chatto and Windus, 1889). By permission of the Author. CXIX, CXX _The Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte_ (Chatto and Windus, 1886). By permission of Author and Publisher. _The Reveillé_ was spoken before a Union Meeting at San Francisco at the beginning of the Civil War and appeared in a volume of the Author's poems in 1867. _What the Bullet Sang_ is much later work: dating, thinks Mr. Harte, from '79 or '80. CXXI _St. James's Magazine_, October 1877, and _At the Sign of the Lyre_ (Kegan Paul, 1889). By permission of the Author. CXXII _St. James's Gazette_, 20th July 1888, and _Grass of Parnassus_ (Longmans, 1888). By permission of Author and Publisher. Written in memory of Gordon's betrayal and death, but while there were yet hopes and rumours of escape. CXXIII _Underwoods_ (Chatto and Windus, 1886). By permission of the Publishers. CXXIV _Love's Looking-Glass_ (Percival, 1891). By permission of the Author. CXXV _Macmillan's Magazine_, November 1889. By permission of the Author. Kamal Khan is a Pathan; and the scene of this exploit--which, I am told, is perfectly consonant with the history and tradition of Guides and Pathans both--is the North Frontier country in the Peshawar-Kohat region, say, between Abazai and Bonair, behind which is stationed the Punjab Irregular Frontier Force--'the steel head of the lance couched for the defence of India.' As for the Queen's Own Corps of Guides, to the general 'God's Own Guides' (from its exclusiveness and gallantry), it comprehends both horse and foot, is recruited from Sikhs, Pathans, Rajputs, Afghans, all the fighting races, is officered both by natives and by Englishmen, and in all respects is worthy of this admirable ballad. Ressaldar = _the native leader of a _ressala_ or troop of horse_ Tongue = _a barren and naked strath_--'what geologists call a fan' Gut of the Tongue = _the narrowest part of the strath_ dust-devils = _dust-clouds blown by a whirlwind_ CXXVI _National Observer_, 4th April 1891. At the burning of the Court-House at Cork, 'Above the portico a flagstaff bearing the Union Jack remained fluttering in the air for some time, but ultimately when it fell the crowds rent the air with shouts, and seemed to see significance in the incident.'--Daily Papers. _Author's Note._ INDEX PAGE A good sword and a trusty hand 207 All is finished! and at length 217 Alone stood brave Horatius 196 Amid the loud ebriety of war 264 And Rustum gazed in Sohrab's face, and said 280 Arm, arm, arm, arm! the scouts are all come in 13 As I was walking all alane 79 Ask nothing more of me, sweet 316 As the spring-tides, with heavy plash 153 At anchor in Hampton Roads we lay 227 At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay 232 Attend, all ye who list to hear our noble England's praise 200 Attend you, and give ear awhile 73 Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones 28 A wet sheet and a flowing sea 148 Beat! beat! drums!--blow! bugles! blow! 257 Bid me to live, and I will live 18 Blow high, blow low, let tempests tear 89 Build me straight, O worthy Master 208 But by the yellow Tiber 183 But see! look up--on Flodden bent 116 By this, though deep the evening fell 119 Captain, or Colonel, or Knight in Arms 27 Come, all ye jolly sailors bold 92 Condemned to Hope's delusive mine 45 Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud 28 Darkly, sternly, and all alone 156 Day by day the vessel grew 214 Day, like our souls, is fiercely dark 146 Eleven men of England 244 England, queen of the waves, whose green inviolate girdle enrings thee round 317 Erle Douglas on his milke-white steede 49 Fair stood the wind for France 6 Farewell! farewell! the voice you hear 133 Farewell, ye dungeons dark and strong 95 Get up! get up for shame! The blooming morn 15 God prosper long our noble king 47 God who created me 328 Go fetch to me a pint o' wine 97 Good Lord Scroope to the hills is gane 64 Hame, hame, hame, hame fain wad I be 147 Hark! I hear the tramp of thousands 322 He has called him forty Marchmen bold 69 Here, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling 90 He spoke, and as he ceased he wept aloud 272 He spoke, and Sohrab kindled at his taunts 267 He spoke; but Rustum gazed, and gazed, and stood 275 High-spirited friend 12 How happy is he born or taught 11 I am the mashed fireman with breast-bone broken 254 If doughty deeds my lady please 88 If sadly thinking 91 I love contemplating, apart 140 In the ship-yard stood the Master 210 In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 136 Iphigeneia, when she heard her doom 138 I said, when evil men are strong 105 Is life worth living? Yes, so long 308 It is not growing like a tree 13 It is not to be thought of that the Flood 101 It is not yours, O mother, to complain 326 It was a' for our rightfu' King 99 I wish I were where Helen lies 77 Kamal is out with twenty men to raise the Border side 329 King Philip had vaunted his claims 324 Lars Porsena of Clusium 179 Last night, among his fellow-roughs 242 Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour 102 Mortality, behold and fear 15 Much have I travelled in the realms of gold 179 My boat is on the shore 164 My dear and only love, I pray 31 Next morn the Baron climbed the tower 114 Nobly, nobly Cape St. Vincent to the north-west died away 248 Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note 172 Now all the youth of England are on fire 2 Now entertain conjecture of a time 4 Now fell the sword of Gunnar, and rose up red in the air 297 Now the noon was long passed over when again the rumour arose 304 Now we bear the king 10 Now while the Three were tightening 189 Now word is gane to the bold Keeper 67 O born in days when wits were fresh and clear 282 O Brignall banks are wild and fair 126 O England is a pleasant place for them that's rich and high 260 Of Nelson and the North 144 O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend 1 Oft in the pleasant summer years 311 O have ye na heard o' the fause Sakelde 66 O how comely it is, and how reviving 31 O joy of creation 323 O Mary, at thy window be 98 Once did She hold the gorgeous East in fee 100 On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred and ninety-two 248 Othere, the old sea-captain 223 Our English archers bent their bowes 51 O Venice! Venice! when thy marble walls 165 O, young Lochinvar is come out of the west 112 Pibroch of Donuil Dhu 129 Ruin seize thee, ruthless King 80 Should auld acquaintance be forgot 96 Simon Danz has come home again 228 Stern Daughter of the Voice of God 103 Still the song goeth up from Gunnar, though his harp to earth be laid 301 Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright 19 Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind 32 The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold 150 The boy stood on the burning deck 175 The breaking waves dashed high 177 The captain stood on the carronade: 'First Lieutenant,' says he 174 The charge of the gallant three hundred, the Heavy Brigade 239 The fifteenth day of July 60 The forward youth that would appear 34 The glories of our birth and state 20 The herring loves the merry moonlight 131 The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece 167 The King sits in Dunfermline town 57 The last sunbeam 258 The Moorish King rides up and down 160 The newes was brought to Eddenborrow 56 The night is past, and shines the sun 151 The Sea! the Sea, the open Sea 149 The stag at eve had drunk his fill 121 The weary day rins down and dies 319 The winds were yelling, the waves were swelling 205 Then speedilie to wark we gaed 71 Then with a bitter smile, Rustum began 269 Then with a heavy groan, Rustum bewailed 277 This, this is he; softly a while 30 Through the black, rushing smoke bursts 265 Thus with imagined wing our swift scene flies 3 Tiger, tiger, burning bright 94 'Tis time this heart should be unmoved 171 Toll for the Brave 85 To mute and to material things 107 To my true king I offered free from stain 206 To the Lords of Convention 'twas Claver'se who spoke 134 'Twas at the royal feast for Persia won 40 Up from the meadows rich with corn 230 Vain is the dream! However Hope may rave 325 We come in arms, we stand ten score 284 Welcome, wild north-easter 262 When George the Third was reigning a hundred years ago 285 When I consider how my light is spent 29 When I have borne in memory what has tamed 101 When Love with unconfinèd wings 33 When the British warrior queen 86 When the head of Bran 290 Where the remote Bermudas ride 39 Why sitt'st thou by that ruined hall 130 Winds of the World, give answer! They are whimpering to and fro 335 With stout Erle Percy, there was slaine 54 Would you hear of an old-time sea-fight 255 Ye Mariners of England 143 Ye shall know that in Atli's feast-hall on the side that joined the house 293 Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more 21 
20909	----	produced from images generously made available by The Kentuckiana Digital Library) UNDER THE TREE And over and over I tried to see Some of us walking under the tree, * * * * * * * And how it looks when I am there. From _On the Hill_ UNDER THE TREE BY ELIZABETH MADOX ROBERTS NEW YORK B. W. HUEBSCH, INC. MCMXXII COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY B. W. HUEBSCH, INC. PRINTED IN U. S. A. TO MY FATHER SIMPSON ROBERTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Certain of these poems have appeared in _The Atlantic Monthly_, _The University Record_ (the University of Chicago), _Poetry, a Magazine of Verse_, _Child Life_, and the _Phoenix_. The author thanks the editors of these journals for the privilege of reprinting. CONTENTS PAGE THE SKY 1 THE CORNFIELD 3 MILKING TIME 4 IN MY PILLOW 6 MISS KATE-MARIE 8 THE WOODPECKER 10 THE STAR 11 THE BUTTERBEAN TENT 12 BIG BROTHER 14 MR. WELLS 15 DICK AND WILL 16 THE PILASTER 18 FIREFLY 19 LITTLE RAIN 20 THE PULPIT 22 ON THE HILL 24 AUTUMN 26 THE RABBIT 28 CRESCENT MOON 29 FATHER'S STORY 30 CHRISTMAS MORNING 32 PEOPLE GOING BY 35 BABES IN THE WOODS 38 THE PICNIC 40 MUMPS 42 THE CIRCUS 44 STRANGE TREE 46 THE BRANCH 48 THE WORM 50 A CHILD ASLEEP 52 LITTLE BUSH 54 AT THE WATER 55 WATER NOISES 56 AMONG THE RUSHES 58 NUMBERS 59 IN THE NIGHT 60 THE PEOPLE 63 THE GRANDMOTHER 64 IN MARYLAND 66 THE SUNDAY BONNET 68 THE SUN AND A BIRCH TREE 70 A LITTLE WIND 71 AUTUMN FIELDS 72 MR. PENNYBAKER AT CHURCH 74 THE WOLVES 75 A BEAUTIFUL LADY 76 SHELLS IN ROCK 78 HORSE 80 AUGUST NIGHT 82 THREE DOMINICAN NUNS 84 MY HEART 85 THE HENS 86 THE SKY I saw a shadow on the ground And heard a bluejay going by; A shadow went across the ground, And I looked up and saw the sky. It hung up on the poplar tree, But while I looked it did not stay; It gave a tiny sort of jerk And moved a little bit away. And farther on and farther on It moved and never seemed to stop. I think it must be tied with chains And something pulls it from the top. It never has come down again, And every time I look to see, The sky is always slipping back And getting far away from me. THE CORNFIELD I went across the pasture lot When not a one was watching me. Away beyond the cattle barns I climbed a little crooked tree. And I could look down on the field And see the corn and how it grows Across the world and up and down In very straight and even rows. And far away and far away-- I wonder if the farmer man Knows all about the corn and how It comes together like a fan. MILKING TIME When supper time is almost come, But not quite here, I cannot wait, And so I take my china mug And go down by the milking gate. The cow is always eating shucks And spilling off the little silk. Her purple eyes are big and soft-- She always smells like milk. And Father takes my mug from me, And then he makes the stream come out. I see it going in my mug And foaming all about. And when it's piling very high, And when some little streams commence To run and drip along the sides, He hands it to me through the fence. IN MY PILLOW When Mother or Father turns down the light, I like to look into my pillow at night. Some people call them dreams, but for me They are things I look down in my pillow and see. I saw some birds, as many as four, That were all blue wings and nothing else more. Without any head and without any feet, Just blue wings flying over a street. And almost every night I see A little brown bowl that can talk to me, A nice little bowl that laughs and sings, And ever so many other things. Sometimes they are plainer than I can say, And while I am waking they go away. And when nobody is coming by, I feel my pillow all over and try And try to feel the pretty things, The little brown bowl and the flying wings. MISS KATE-MARIE And it was Sunday everywhere, And Father pinned a rose on me And said he guessed he'd better take Me down to see Miss Kate-Marie. And when I went it all turned out To be a Sunday school, and there Miss Kate-Marie was very good And let me stand beside her chair. Her hat was made of yellow lace; Her dress was very soft and thin, And when she talked her little tongue Was always wriggling out and in. I liked to smell my pretty rose; I liked to feel her silky dress. She held a very little book And asked the things for us to guess. She asked about Who-made-y-God, And never seemed to fuss or frown; I liked to watch her little tongue And see it wriggle up and down. THE WOODPECKER The woodpecker pecked out a little round hole And made him a house in the telephone pole. One day when I watched he poked out his head, And he had on a hood and a collar of red. When the streams of rain pour out of the sky, And the sparkles of lightning go flashing by, And the big, big wheels of thunder roll, He can snuggle back in the telephone pole. THE STAR (A Song) O little one away so far, You cannot hear me when I sing. You cannot tell me what you are, I cannot tell you anything. THE BUTTERBEAN TENT All through the garden I went and went, And I walked in under the butterbean tent. The poles leaned up like a good tepee And made a nice little house for me. I had a hard brown clod for a seat, And all outside was a cool green street. A little green worm and a butterfly And a cricket-like thing that could hop went by. Hidden away there were flocks and flocks Of bugs that could go like little clocks. Such a good day it was when I spent A long, long while in the butterbean tent. BIG BROTHER Our brother Clarence goes to school. He has a slate and a blue school-bag. He has a book and a copybook And a scholar's companion and a little slate rag. He knows a boy named Joe B. Kirk, And he learns about c-a-t cat, And how to play one-two-sky-blue, And how to make a football out of a hat. We climb up on the fence and gate And watch until he's small and dim, Far up the street, and he looks back To see if we keep on watching him. MR. WELLS On Sunday morning, then he comes To church, and everybody smells The blacking and the toilet soap And camphor balls from Mr. Wells. He wears his whiskers in a bunch, And wears his glasses on his head. I mustn't call him Old Man Wells-- No matter--that's what Father said. And when the little blacking smells And camphor balls and soap begin, I do not have to look to know That Mr. Wells is coming in. DICK AND WILL Our brother says that Will was born The very day that Dickie came; When one is four the other is, And all their birthdays are the same. Their coats and waists are just alike; They have their hats together, too. They sleep together in one bed, And Will can put on Dickie's shoe. But they are not the same at all; Two different boys they have to be, For Dick can play in Mother's room When Will is climbing in a tree. Or maybe Will is on the porch To cry because he stubbed his toe, And Dick is laughing by the gate And watching ants go in a row. THE PILASTER The church has pieces jutting out Where corners of the walls begin. I have one for my little house, And I can feel myself go in. I feel myself go in the bricks, And I can see myself in there. I'm always waiting all alone, I'm sitting on a little chair. And I am sitting very still, And I am waiting on and on For something that is never there, For something that is gone. FIREFLY (A Song) A little light is going by, Is going up to see the sky, A little light with wings. I never could have thought of it, To have a little bug all lit And made to go on wings. LITTLE RAIN When I was making myself a game Up in the garden, a little rain came. It fell down quick in a sort of rush, And I crawled back under the snowball bush. I could hear the big drops hit the ground And see little puddles of dust fly round. A chicken came till the rain was gone; He had just a very few feathers on. He shivered a little under his skin, And then he shut his eyeballs in. Even after the rain had begun to hush It kept on raining up in the bush. One big flat drop came sliding down, And a ladybug that was red and brown Was up on a little stem waiting there, And I got some rain in my hair. THE PULPIT On Sunday when I go to church I wear my dress that's trimmed with lace. I sit beside my mother and Am very quiet in my place. When Dr. Brown is reading hymns To make the people want to sing, Or when he preaches loud and makes The shivery bells begin to ring, I watch the little pulpit house-- It isn't very tall or wide-- And then I wonder all about The little ones that live inside. When Dr. Brown has preached enough, And when he is about to stop, He stands behind the little house And shuts the Bible on the top. I wonder if _they_ sit inside, And if _they_ cook and walk up stairs. I wonder if _they_ have a cat And say some kind of little prayers. I wonder if _they're_ ever scared Because the bedroom lamp goes out, And what their little dreams are like And what _they_ wonder all about. ON THE HILL Mother said that we could go Up on the hill where the strawberries grow. And while I was there I looked all down, Over the trees and over the town. I saw the field where the big boys play, And the roads that come from every way, The courthouse place where the wagons stop, And the bridge and the scales and the blacksmith shop. The church steeple looked very tall and thin, And I found the house that we live in. I saw it under the poplar tree, And I bent my head and tried to see Our house when the rain is over it, And how it looks when the lamps are lit. I saw the swing from up on the hill, The ropes were hanging very still. And over and over I tried to see Some of us walking under the tree, And the children playing everywhere, And how it looks when I am there. But Dickie said, "Come on, let's race"; And Will had found the strawberry place. AUTUMN Dick and Will and Charles and I Were playing it was election day, And I was running for president, And Dick was a band that was going to play, And Charles and Will were a street parade, But Clarence came and said that he Was going to run for president, And I could run for school-trustee. He made some flags for Charles and Will And a badge to go on Dickie's coat. He stood some cornstalks by the fence And had them for the men that vote. Then he climbed on a box and made a speech To the cornstalk men that were in a row. It was all about the dem-o-crats, And "I de-fy any man to show." And "I de-fy any man to say." And all about "It's a big disgrace." He spoke his speech out very loud And shook his fist in a cornstalk's face. THE RABBIT When they said the time to hide was mine, I hid back under a thick grape vine. And while I was still for the time to pass, A little gray thing came out of the grass. He hopped his way through the melon bed And sat down close by a cabbage head. He sat down close where I could see, And his big still eyes looked hard at me, His big eyes bursting out of the rim, And I looked back very hard at him. CRESCENT MOON And Dick said, "Look what I have found!" And when we saw we danced around, And made our feet just tip the ground. We skipped our toes and sang, "Oh-lo. Oh-who, oh-who, oh what do you know! Oh-who, oh-hi, oh-loo, kee-lo!" We clapped our hands and sang, "Oh-ee!" It made us jump and laugh to see The little new moon above the tree. FATHER'S STORY We put more coal on the big red fire, And while we are waiting for dinner to cook, Our father comes and tells us about A story that he has read in a book. And Charles and Will and Dick and I And all of us but Clarence are there. And some of us sit on Father's legs, But one has to sit on the little red chair. And when we are sitting very still, He sings us a song or tells a piece; He sings Dan Tucker Went to Town, Or he tells us about the golden fleece. He tells about the golden wool, And some of it is about a boy Named Jason, and about a ship, And some is about a town called Troy. And while he is telling or singing it through, I stand by his arm, for that is my place. And I push my fingers into his skin To make little dents in his big rough face. CHRISTMAS MORNING If Bethlehem were here today, Or this were very long ago, There wouldn't be a winter time Nor any cold or snow. I'd run out through the garden gate, And down along the pasture walk; And off beside the cattle barns I'd hear a kind of gentle talk. I'd move the heavy iron chain And pull away the wooden pin; I'd push the door a little bit And tiptoe very softly in. The pigeons and the yellow hens And all the cows would stand away; Their eyes would open wide to see A lady in the manger hay, If this were very long ago And Bethlehem were here today. And Mother held my hand and smiled-- I mean the lady would--and she Would take the woolly blankets off Her little boy so I could see. His shut-up eyes would be asleep, And he would look like our John, And he would be all crumpled too, And have a pinkish color on. I'd watch his breath go in and out. His little clothes would all be white. I'd slip my finger in his hand To feel how he could hold it tight. And she would smile and say, "Take care," The mother, Mary, would, "Take care"; And I would kiss his little hand And touch his hair. While Mary put the blankets back The gentle talk would soon begin. And when I'd tiptoe softly out I'd meet the wise men going in. PEOPLE GOING BY Before they come I hear their talk And hear their feet go on the walk. Some go fast and some go slow, And some of them I almost know. In mornings they are going down To see somebody in the town. Or Mrs. Warner hurries past; She has to go and come back fast. She walks by quick and will not stop, To go to the church with the cross on top. I think she goes there every day To take her rosary and pray. And one of them is Mr. Jim-- And the big white dog that follows him. And one is lame; that's Uncle Mells; He takes off warts by mumbling words, And he can lay on spells. Or maybe night is almost come, And Miss Jane Anne is going home. And by her side walks Mr. Paul; They go along with far-off looks And hardly ever talk at all. Or Murry's child comes up this way To carry milk to poor Miss May That lives in Wells's other house, Or Joe is driving home his cows. And some go fast and some go slow, And some of them I almost know. I can feel them almost speak to me, When they pass by our tree. BABES IN THE WOODS The two little children that died long ago Away in the woods on the top of a hill-- And a good little robin that knew all about it Came with strawberry leaves in her bill, To cover them up, and she kept very quiet And brought the leaves one at a time, I think. And some of the leaves would have little holes in them, And some would be red and pink. And these little Babes-in-the-Woods that were dead Must have lain very still, and they heard all the talk That the bees would be saying to more little bees, And maybe they even could hear the ants walk. And they could look out through a crack in the leaves And see little bushes and some of the sky. They could see robin coming with leaves in her mouth, And they watched for her when she went by. THE PICNIC They had a picnic in the woods, And Mother couldn't go that day, But the twins and Brother and I could go; We rode on the wagon full of hay. There were more little girls than ten, I guess. And the boy that is Joe B. Kirk was there. He found a toad and a katydid, And a little girl came whose name was Clare. Miss Kate-Marie made us play a song Called "Fare-you-well, says Johnny O'Brown." You dance in a ring and sing it through, And then some one kneels down. She kissed us all and Joe B. Kirk; But Joe B. didn't mind a bit. He walked around and swung his arms And seemed to be very glad of it. Then Mr. Jim said he would play, But Miss Marie, she told him then, It's a game for her and the little folks, And he could go and fish with the men. Mr. Wells was there and he had a rope To tie to a limb and make it swing. And Mrs. Wells, Mr. Wells's wife, Gave me a peach and a chicken wing. And I had a little cherry pie And a piece of bread, and after we'd played Two other songs, I had some cake And another wing and some lemonade. MUMPS I had a feeling in my neck, And on the sides were two big bumps; I couldn't swallow anything At all because I had the mumps. And Mother tied it with a piece, And then she tied up Will and John, And no one else but Dick was left That didn't have a mump rag on. He teased at us and laughed at us, And said, whenever he went by, "It's vinegar and lemon drops And pickles!" just to make us cry. But Tuesday Dick was very sad And cried because his neck was sore, And not a one said sour things To anybody any more. THE CIRCUS Friday came and the circus was there, And Mother said that the twins and I And Charles and Clarence and all of us Could go out and see the parade go by. And there were wagons with pictures on, And you never could guess what they had inside, Nobody could guess, for the doors were shut, And there was a dog that a monkey could ride. A man on the top of a sort of cart Was clapping his hands and making a talk. And the elephant came--he can step pretty far-- It made us laugh to see him walk. Three beautiful ladies came riding by, And each one had on a golden dress, And each one had a golden whip. They were queens of Sheba, I guess. A big wild man was in a cage, And he had some snakes going over his feet. And somebody said "He eats them alive!" But I didn't see him eat. STRANGE TREE Away beyond the Jarboe house I saw a different kind of tree. Its trunk was old and large and bent, And I could feel it look at me. The road was going on and on Beyond to reach some other place. I saw a tree that looked at me, And yet it did not have a face. It looked at me with all its limbs; It looked at me with all its bark. The yellow wrinkles on its sides Were bent and dark. And then I ran to get away, But when I stopped to turn and see, The tree was bending to the side And leaning out to look at me. THE BRANCH We stopped at the branch on the way to the hill. We stopped at the water a while and played. We hid our things by the osage tree And took off our shoes and stockings to wade. There is sand at the bottom that bites at your feet, And there is a rock where the waterfall goes. You can poke your foot in the foamy part And feel how the water runs over your toes. The little black spiders that walk on the top Of the water are hard and stiff and cool. And I saw some wiggletails going around, And some slippery minnows that live in the pool. And where it is smooth there is moss on a stone, And where it is shallow and almost dry The rocks are broken and hot in the sun, And a rough little water goes hurrying by. THE WORM Dickie found a broken spade And said he'd dig himself a well; And then Charles took a piece of tin, And I was digging with a shell. Then Will said he would dig one too. We shaped them out and made them wide, And I dug up a piece of clod That had a little worm inside. We watched him pucker up himself And stretch himself to walk away. He tried to go inside the dirt, But Dickie made him wait and stay. His shining skin was soft and wet. I poked him once to see him squirm. And then Will said, "I wonder if He knows that he's a worm." And then we sat back on our feet And wondered for a little bit. And we forgot to dig our wells Awhile, and tried to answer it. And while we tried to find it out, He puckered in a little wad, And then he stretched himself again And went back home inside the clod. A CHILD ASLEEP I looked for him everywhere Because I wanted him to play; And then I found him on his bed Asleep, but it was day. His eyes were shut behind the lids-- He couldn't lift them up to see. And I looked at him very long, And something in him looked at me. And he was something like a cat That is asleep, or like a dog; Or like a thing that's in the woods All day behind a log. And then I was afraid of it, Of something that was sleeping there. I didn't even say his name, But I came down the stair. LITTLE BUSH (A Song) A little bush At the picnic place, A little bush could talk to me. I ran away And hid myself, And I found a bush that could talk to me, A smooth little bush said a word to me. AT THE WATER I liked to go to the branch today; I liked to play with the wiggletails there. And five little smells and one big smell Were going round in the air. One was the water, a little cold smell, And one was mud and that was more, And one was the smell of cool wet moss, And one was some fennel up on the shore. And the one big smell came out of the mint, And one was something I couldn't tell. And the five little ones and the big one All went together very well. WATER NOISES When I am playing by myself, And all the boys are lost around, Then I can hear the water go; It makes a little talking sound. Along the rocks below the tree, I see it ripple up and wink; And I can hear it saying on, "And do you think? And do you think?" A bug shoots by that snaps and ticks, And a bird flies up beside the tree To go into the sky to sing. I hear it say, "Killdee, killdee!" Or else a yellow cow comes down To splash a while and have a drink. But when she goes I still can hear The water say, "And do you think?" AMONG THE RUSHES I saw a curly leaf and it was caught against the grassy side, And it was tangled in the watery grasses where the branch is wide; I had it for my little ark of rushes that must wait and hide. I had it for my little Moses hidden where no one could see, The little baby Moses that nobody knew about but me. And I was hiding in the flags and I was waiting all the day, And watching on the bank to see if Pharaoh's daughter came that way. NUMBERS When I can count the numbers far, And know all the figures that there are, Then I'll know everything, and I Can know about the ground and sky, And all the little bugs I see, And I'll count the leaves on the silver-leaf tree, And all the days that ever can be. I'll know all the cows and sheep that pass, And I'll know all the grass, And all the places far away, And I'll know everything some day. IN THE NIGHT The light was burning very dim, The little blaze was brown and red, And I waked just in time to see A panther going under the bed. I saw him crowd his body down To make it fit the little space. I saw the streaks along his back, And bloody bubbles on his face. Long marks of light came out of my eyes And went into the lamp--and there Was Something waiting in the room-- I saw it sitting on a chair. Its only eye was shining red, Its face was very long and gray, Its two bent teeth were sticking out, And all its jaw was torn away. Its legs were flat against the chair, Its arms were hanging like a swing. It made its eye look into me, But did not move or say a thing. I tried to call and tried to scream, But all my throat was shut and dry. My little heart was jumping fast, I couldn't talk or cry. And when I'd look outside the bed I'd see the panther going in. The streaks were moving on his back, The bubbles on his chin. I couldn't help it if they came, I couldn't save myself at all, And so I only waited there And turned my face against the wall. THE PEOPLE The ants are walking under the ground, And the pigeons are flying over the steeple, And in between are the people. THE GRANDMOTHER When Grandmother comes to our house, She sits in the chair and sews away. She cuts some pieces just alike And makes a quilt all day. I watch her bite the little thread, Or stick the needle in and out, And then she remembers her grandmother's house, And what her grandmother told about, And how a very long ago-- She tells it while she cuts and strips-- We used to live in Mary-land, And there was a water with ships. But that was long before her day, She says, and so I like to stand Beside her chair, and then I ask, "Please tell about in Mary-land." IN MARYLAND When it was Grandmother Barbara's day, We lived on a hill, and down below, Beyond the pasture and the trees, A river used to go. The water was very wide and blue And deep, and my! it was a sight To see the ships go up and down, And all the sails were white. And Grandmother Barbara used to wait Beside the window or the door. She never was too tired of it To watch the river any more. And we could hardly see across, And the water was blue, as blue as the sky, And all day long and all day long We watched the little ships go by. THE SUNDAY BONNET It happened at Grandmother Polly's house, And there was a bonnet put away For Polly to wear when she went to church. She would not wear it every day. It had some little flowers on, And it was standing on its head In a bonnet box where it was safe, Away up stairs on the company's bed. And Grandmother Polly was going to church, And she sent her Alice up the stair-- Alice was black--she was Evaline's child-- She waited on Polly and combed her hair. And Alice said, "Oh, lawsie me!" And then she cried and came running down. And everyone went to see, and the cat Had five little cats in the bonnet crown. THE SUN AND A BIRCH TREE As I came home through Howard's lane, The trees were bending down with rain. A still mist went across their tops, And my coat was powdered gray with drops. Then I looked in the woods to see The limbs of the white birch tree. It made a bright spot in the air, And I thought the sun was shining there. A LITTLE WIND (A Song) When I lay down In a clover place, With eyelids closed, In a clover place, A little wind came to my face. One gentle wind Blew on my mouth, And I said, "It will quiver by. What little wind now can it be?" And I lay still Where the clovers were. But when I raised my lids to see, Then it was a butterfly. AUTUMN FIELDS He said his legs were stiff and sore For he had gone some twenty-eight miles, And he'd walked through by watergaps And fences and gates and stiles. He said he'd been by Logan's woods, And up by Walton's branch and Simms, And there were sticktights on his clothes And little dusts of seeds and stems. And then he sat down on the steps, And he said the miles were on his feet. For some of that land was tangled brush, And some was plowed for wheat. The rabbits were thick where he had been, And he said he'd found some ripe papaws. He'd rested under a white oak tree, And for his dinner he ate red haws. Then I sat by him on the step To see the things that he had seen. And I could smell the shocks and clods, And the land where he had been. MR. PENNYBAKER AT CHURCH He holds his songbook very low, And then he stretches down his face, And Mother said, "You mustn't watch, He's only singing bass." He makes his voice go walking down, Or else he hurries twice as fast As all the rest, but even then He finishes the song the last. And when I see him singing there, I wonder if he knows it all About Leviticus and Shem And Deuteronomy and Saul. THE WOLVES When Grandmother Polly had married and gone, But before her father had given her Clem, Or Joe, or Sandy, or Evaline-- Before he had given her any of _them_, She used to live in a far-away place, In a little cabin that was her home, And all around were bushes and trees, And the wolves could come. At night they ran down out of the rocks And bristled up their trembly fur. They came and howled by Polly's door And showed their little white teeth at her. A BEAUTIFUL LADY We like to listen to her dress, It makes a whisper by her feet. Her little pointed shoes are gray; She hardly lets them touch the street. Sometimes she has a crumpled fan. Her hat is silvered on the crown. And there are roses by the brim That nod and tremble up and down. She comes along the pavement walk, And in a moment she is gone. She hardly ever looks at us, But once she smiled and looked at John. And so we run to see her pass And watch her through the fence, and I Can hear the others whispering, "Miss Josephine is going by." SHELLS IN ROCK I've been along the quarry road, And I have watched men digging wells, And everywhere it was the same-- The stones were full of little shells. And they are packed away in rock; They're under sand and under clay; And some one said that they were left When the ocean went away. I saw them in the stones that make A church, and in a bridge. They're hidden in the solid rock But they show along the edge. You see them in foundation stones; They show in creeks and waterfalls; And once I saw them on the jail-- More little shells in walls. We walk on them when we walk on roads; And they're packed under all the hills. Suppose the sea should come back here And gather up its shells. HORSE His bridle hung around the post. The sun and the leaves made spots come down; I looked close at him through the fence; The post was drab and he was brown. His nose was long and hard and still, And on his lip were specks like chalk. But once he opened up his eyes, And he began to talk. He didn't talk out with his mouth; He didn't talk with words or noise. The talk was there along his nose; It seemed and then it was. He said the day was hot and slow, And he said he didn't like the flies; They made him have to shake his skin, And they got drowned in his eyes. He said that drab was just about The same as brown, but he was not A post, he said, to hold a fence. "I'm horse," he said, "that's what!" And then he shut his eyes again. As still as they had been before. He said for me to run along And not to bother him any more. AUGUST NIGHT We had to wait for the heat to pass, And I was lying on the grass, While Mother sat outside the door, And I saw how many stars there were. Beyond the tree, beyond the air, And more and more were always there. So many that I think they must Be sprinkled on the sky like dust. A dust is coming through the sky! And I felt myself begin to cry. So many of them and so small, Suppose I cannot know them all. THREE DOMINICAN NUNS One day they came; I heard their feet. They made a tapping on the street. And as they passed before our trees, Their shawls blew out in curves like threes, And bent again in twos and L's; The wind blew on their rosaries And made them ring like little bells. MY HEART My heart is beating up and down, Is walking like some heavy feet. My heart is going every day, And I can hear it jump and beat. At night before I go to sleep, I feel it beating in my head; I hear it jumping in my neck And in the pillow on my bed. And then I make some little words To go along and say with it-- _The men are sailing home from Troy, And all the lamps are lit._ _The men are sailing home from Troy, And all the lamps are lit._ THE HENS The night was coming very fast; It reached the gate as I ran past. The pigeons had gone to the tower of the church And all the hens were on their perch, Up in the barn, and I thought I heard A piece of a little purring word. I stopped inside, waiting and staying, To try to hear what the hens were saying. They were asking something, that was plain, Asking it over and over again. One of them moved and turned around, Her feathers made a ruffled sound, A ruffled sound, like a bushful of birds, And she said her little asking words. She pushed her head close into her wing, But nothing answered anything. The end of _Under the Tree_ 
19469	----	POEMS TEACHERS ASK FOR BOOK TWO Selected by Readers of "Normal Instructor-Primary Plans" Containing More Than Two Hundred Poems Requested for Publication in That Magazine on the Page "Poems Our Readers Have Asked For" INDEX OF TITLES African Chief, The _Bryant_ 145 Annabel Lee _Poe_ 25 Annie and Willie's Prayer _Snow_ 196 April! April! Are You Here? _Goodale_ 59 April Showers _Wilkins_ 26 Armageddon _E. Arnold_ 157 Autumn _Hood_ 186 Autumn Leaves _Wray_ 65 Aux Italiens _Lytton_ 72 Awakening _Sangster_ 93 Babie, The _Miller_ 131 Ballad of East and West, The _Kipling_ 23 Ballad of the Tempest, The _Fields_ 56 Battle of Bunker's Hill, The _Cozzens_ 102 Bells of Ostend, The _Bowles_ 140 Bernardo Del Carpio _Hemans_ 160 Betty and the Bear 130 Bible My Mother Gave Me, The 117 Bill's in the Legislature 53 Billy's Rose _Sims_ 104 Bivouac of the Dead, The _O'Hara_ 15 Boy and Girl of Plymouth _Smith_ 154 Boys, The _O.W. Holmes_ 27 Boy Who Didn't Pass, The 108 Boy with the Hoe, The _Weaver_ 202 Break, Break, Break _Tennyson_ 52 "Brides of Enderby, The." See "High Tide, The" 150 Bridge Builder, The 54 Broken Pinion, The _Butterworth_ 9 Burial of Moses, The _Alexander_ 45 Casabianca _Hemans_ 164 Charge of Pickett's Brigade, The 122 Children _Longfellow_ 16 Children, The _Dickinson_ 133 Children We Keep, The _Wilson_ 146 Christmas Day in the Workhouse _Sims_ 193 Christmas Long Ago, A 47 Chums _Foley_ 206 Circling Year, The _Graham_ 208 Cleon and I _Mackay_ 37 Color in the Wheat _Garland_ 8 Columbus _Smith_ 137 Conscience and Future Judgment 81 Courting in Kentucky 67 Courtin', The _Lowell_ 59 Cradle Hymn _Watts_ 35 Dandelion _Garabrant_ 82 David's Lament for Absalom _Willis_ 191 Death of the Flowers, The _Bryant_ 21 Don't Kill the Birds _Colesworthy_ 53 Duty _Browning_ 20 Dying Newsboy, The _Thornton_ 52 Echo _Saxe_ 65 Encouragement _Dunbar_ 71 Engineer's Story, The _Hall_ 96 Ensign Bearer, The 11 Eve of Waterloo, The _Byron_ 17 Excelsior _Longfellow_ 15 Finding of the Lyre, The _Lowell_ 150 Fireman's Story, The 125 Flower of Liberty, The _O.W. Holmes_ 85 Flying Jim's Last Leap _Banks_ 128 Fortunate Isles, The _Miller_ 168 Give Them the Flowers Now _Hodges_ 84 God _Derzhavin_ 162 God's Message to Men _Emerson_ 62 God's Will Is Best _Mason_ 67 Good Shepherd, The _Howe_ 166 Grandfather's Clock _Work_ 35 Grandmother's Quilt 186 Graves of a Household, The _Hemans_ 130 Gray Swan, The _A. Cary_ 207 Gunga Din _Kipling_ 98 Hark, Hark! the Lark _Shakespeare_ 111 Harp That Once Through Tara's Halls, The _Moore_ 71 Health and Wealth 103 Heartening, The _Webb_ 103 Height of the Ridiculous, The _O.W. Holmes_ 14 Heritage, The _Lowell_ 22 He Who Has Vision _McKenzie_ 146 He Worried About It _Foss_ 203 Highland Mary _Burns_ 88 High Tide, The _Ingelow_ 150 His Mother's Song 39 Home _Guest_ 7 Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead _Tennyson_ 74 House with Nobody in It, The _Kilmer_ 8 How Did You Die? _Cooke_ 132 How Salvator Won _Wilcox_ 120 Hullo _Foss_ 123 If All the Skies _Van Dyke_ 36 "If" for Girls, An _Otis_ 153 If We Understood 29 I Got to Go to School _Waterman_ 121 I Have a Rendezvous with Death _Seeger_ 142 I Have Drank My Last Glass 87 Inasmuch _Ford_ 178 Indian Names _Sigourney_ 135 Inventor's Wife, The _Corbett_ 82 Isle of Long Ago, The _B.F. Taylor_ 51 Jamie Douglas 9 Jim Brady's Big Brother _Foley_ 206 John Maynard _Alger_ 78 John Thompson's Daughter _P. Cary_ 34 King and the Child, The _Hall_ 134 King's Ring, The _Tilton_ 159 Knight's Toast, The _W. Scott_ 57 Ladder of St. Augustine, The _Longfellow_ 33 Lamb, The _Blake_ 86 Land of Beginning Again, The _Tarkington_ 32 Land Where Hate Should Die, The _McCarthy_ 18 Last Leaf, The _O.W. Holmes_ 20 Laugh in Church, A 29 Laughing Chorus, A 59 Law and Liberty _Cutler_ 39 Leaving the Homestead 159 Legend Beautiful, The _Longfellow_ 174 Legend of the Northland, A _P. Cary_ 131 Let Me Walk with the Men in the Road _Gresham_ 28 Let Us Be Kind _Childress_ 143 Life, I Know Not What Thou Art _Barbauld_ 65 Lincoln, the Man of the People _Markham_ 118 Little Bateese _Drummond_ 80 Little Fir-Trees, The _Stein_ 203 Little Willie's Hearing 127 Loss and Gain _Longfellow_ 34 Lost Occasion, The _Whittier_ 84 Lullaby _Foley_ 205 Mad River _Longfellow_ 100 Message for the Year, A _Hardy_ 66 Minstrel-Boy, The _Moore_ 55 Minuet, The _Dodge_ 48 Mizpah 162 Monterey _Hoffman_ 165 More Cruel Than War _Hawkins_ 136 Mortgage on the Farm, The 173 Mother o' Mine _Kipling_ 70 Mothers of Men _Miller_ 64 My Prairies _Garland_ 74 Mystic Weaver, The 171 Nearer Home _P. Cary_ 48 New Leaf, A _Rice_ 202 Newsboy, The _Corbett_ 94 New Year, The _Craik_ 153 Night with a Wolf, A _Bayard Taylor_ 89 Nobody's Child _Case_ 46 No Sects in Heaven _Cleaveland_ 180 O'Grady's Goat _Hays_ 44 Old Actor's Story, The _Sims_ 106 Old Flag Forever _Stanton_ 21 Old Kitchen Floor, The 75 Old Man Dreams, The _O.W. Holmes_ 58 Old Man in the Model Church, The _Yates_ 148 Old Man's Dreams, An _Sherman_ 61 "One, Two, Three!" _Bunner_ 30 Our Flag _Sangster_ 202 Our Homestead _P. Cary_ 55 Our Own _Sangster_ 119 Our Presidents _Gilman_ 195 Out in the Snow _Moulton_ 83 Over the Hill from the Poor-House _Carleton_ 42 Papa's Letter 40 Parting of Marmion and Douglas _W. Scott_ 95 Parts of Speech, The 201 Petrified Fern, The _Branch_ 36 Picciola _Newell_ 158 Piller Fights _Ellsworth_ 80 Polish Boy, The _Stephens_ 12 Poor Little Joe _Proudfit_ 32 Prayer and Potatoes _Pettee_ 200 Prayer for a Little Home, A 87 President, The _Johnston_ 204 Pride of Battery B _Gassaway_ 176 Quangle Wangle's Hat, The _Lear_ 91 Railroad Crossing, The _Strong_ 182 Rain on the Roof _Kinney_ 97 Rainy Day, The _Longfellow_ 28 Real Riches, The _Saxe_ 12 Red Jacket, The _Baker_ 77 Reply to "A Woman's Question" _Pelham_ 155 Rhodora, The _Emerson_ 90 Ring Out, Wild Bells _Tennyson_ 63 Roll Call, The _Shepherd_ 86 Romance of Nick Van Stann _Saxe_ 156 Rustic Courtship 76 Sandman, The _Vandegrift_ 62 Santa Filomena _Longfellow_ 56 School-Master's Guest, The _Carleton_ 68 September _G. Arnold_ 75 September Days _Smith_ 153 September Gale, The _O.W. Holmes_ 137 Sermon in Rhyme, A 167 Service Flag, The _Herschell_ 127 She Was a Phantom of Delight _Wordsworth_ 89 Singing Leaves, The _Lowell_ 92 Sin of Omission, The _Sangster_ 116 Sin of the Coppenter Man _Cooke_ 139 Small Beginnings _Mackay_ 97 Solitude _Wilcox_ 139 Somebody's Darling _La Coste_ 175 Song of Marion's Men _Bryant_ 54 Song of the Chattahoochee _Lanier_ 66 "'Specially Jim" 44 Station-Master's Story, The _Sims_ 109 Stranger on the Sill, The _Read_ 147 Sunset City, The _Gilman_ 183 Teacher's "If", The _Gale_ 165 There Was a Boy _Wordsworth_ 90 Things Divine, The _Burt_ 64 Tin Gee Gee, The _Cape_ 169 "Tommy" _Kipling_ 170 Tommy's Prayer _Nicholls_ 112 Towser Shall Be Tied To-night 37 Trailing Arbutus _Whittier_ 199 Trouble in the Amen Corner _Harbaugh_ 18 Try, Try Again 135 Two Angels, The _Longfellow_ 187 Two Kinds of People, The _Wilcox_ 116 Two Little Stockings, The _Hunt_ 141 Two Pictures, The 114 Unawares _Lent_ 30 Vagabonds, The _Trowbridge_ 49 Voice of Spring, The _Hemans_ 26 Volunteer Organist, The _Foss_ 149 Warren's Address to the American Soldiers _Pierpont_ 99 Washington _Bryant_ 37 Washington's' Birthday _Butterworth_ 58 Water Mill, The _Doudney_ 143 What the Choir Sang About the New Bonnet _Morrison_ 168 When Father Carves the Duck _Wright_ 40 When My Ship Comes In _Burdette_ 138 When Papa Was a Boy _Brininstool_ 100 When the Light Goes Out _Chester_ 199 Which Shall It Be? _Beers_ 101 Who Stole the Bird's Nest? _Child_ 41 Why the Dog's Nose Is Always Cold 144 Wishing Bridge, The _Whittier_ 63 Witch's Daughter, The _Whittier_ 188 With Little Boy Blue _Kennedy_ 122 Wolsey's Farewell to His Greatness _Shakespeare_ 94 Women of Mumbles Head, The _C. Scott_ 123 Wood-Box, The _Lincoln_ 177 Work: A Song of Triumph _Morgan_ 154 Work Thou for Pleasure _Cox_ 169 You Put No Flowers on My Papa's Grave _C.E.L. Holmes_ 140 (An Index of First Lines is given on pages 209-213) PREFACE In homely phrase, this is a sort of "second helping" of a dish that has pleased the taste of thousands. Our first collection of _Poems Teachers Ask For_ was the response to a demand for such a book, and this present volume is the response to a demand for "more." In Book One it was impracticable to use all of the many poems entitled to inclusion on the basis of their being desired. We are constantly in receipt of requests that certain selections be printed in NORMAL INSTRUCTOR-PRIMARY PLANS on the page "Poems Our Readers Have Asked For." More than two hundred of these were chosen for Book One, and more than two hundred others, as much desired as those in the earlier volume, are included in Book Two. Because of copyright restrictions, we often have been unable to present, in magazine form, verse of large popular appeal. By special arrangement, a number of such poems were included in Book One of _Poems Teachers Ask For_, and many more are given in the pages that follow. Acknowledgment is made below to publishers and authors for courteous permission to reprint in this volume material which they control: THE CENTURY COMPANY--_The Minuet_, from "Poems and Verses," by Mary Mapes Dodge. W.B. CONKEY COMPANY--_Solitude_, from "Poems of Passion," and _How Salvator Won_, from "Kingdom of Love," both by Ella Wheeler Wilcox. DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.--_Encouragement_, by Paul Laurence Dunbar, copyright by Dodd, Mead & Company; _Work_, by Angela Morgan, from "The Hour Has Struck," copyright 1914 by Angela Morgan. DODGE PUBLISHING COMPANY--_How Did You Die?_ from "Impertinent Poems," and _The Sin of the Coppenter Man_, from "I Rule the House," both by Edmund Vance Cooke. GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY--_The House with Nobody in It_, from "Trees and Other Poems," by Joyce Kilmer, copyright 1914 by George H. Doran Company, publishers. HAMLIN GARLAND--_My Prairies and Color in the Wheat_. ISABEL AMBLER GILMAN--_The Sunset City_. HARPER & BROTHERS--_Over the Hill from the Poor-House_ and _The School-Master's Guests_, from "Farm Legends," by Will Carleton. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY--_The Sandman_, by Margaret Vandegrift; _The Sin of Omission_ and _Our Own_, by Margaret E. Sangster; _The Ballad of the Tempest_, by James T. Fields; also the poems by Henry W. Longfellow, John G. Whittier, James Russell Lowell, Alice Cary, Phoebe Cary, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and J.T. Trowbridge, of whose works they are the authorized publishers. CHARLES H.L. JOHNSTON--_The President_. RUDYARD KIPLING and DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY (A.P. WATT & SON, London, England)--_Mother o' Mine_. LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD COMPANY--_Hullo_ and _The Volunteer Organist_, both from "Back Country Poems," by Sam Walter Foss, and _He Worried About It_, from "Whiffs from Wild Meadows," by Sam Walter Foss. EDWIN MARKHAM--_Lincoln, the Man of the People_. REILLY & LEE CO.--_Home_, from "A Heap o' Livin'," by Edgar A. Guest. FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY--_Our Flag_, by Margaret E. Sangster. CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS--_I Have a Rendezvous with Death_, by Alan Seeger; _Song of the Chattahoochee_, by Sidney Lanier; _If All the Skies_, by Henry van Dyke. HARR WAGNER PUBLISHING COMPANY--_Mothers of Men_ and _The Fortunate Isles_, by Joaquin Miller. THE PUBLISHERS. POEMS TEACHERS ASK FOR BOOK TWO * * * * * Home It takes a heap o' livin' in a house t' make it home, A heap o' sun an' shadder, an' ye sometimes have t' roam Afore ye really 'preciate the things ye left behind, An' hunger fer 'em somehow, with 'em allus on yer mind. It don't make any differunce how rich ye get t' be, How much yer chairs an' tables cost, how great yer luxury; It ain't home t' ye, though it be the palace of a king, Until somehow yer soul is sort o' wrapped 'round everything. Home ain't a place that gold can buy or get up in a minute; Afore it's home there's got t' be a heap o' livin' in it: Within the walls there's got t' be some babies born, and then Right there ye've got t' bring 'em up t' women good, an' men; And gradjerly, as time goes on ye find ye wouldn't part With anything they ever used--they've grown into yer heart; The old high chairs, the playthings, too, the little shoes they wore Ye hoard; an' if ye could ye'd keep the thumbmarks on the door. Ye've got t' weep t' make it home, ye've got t' sit and sigh An' watch beside a loved one's bed, an' know that Death is nigh; An' in the stillness o' the night t' see Death's angel come, An' close the eyes o' her that smiled, an' leave her sweet voice dumb. Fer these are scenes that grip the heart, an' when yer tears are dried, Ye find the home is dearer than it was, an' sanctified; An' tuggin' at ye always are the pleasant memories O' her that was an' is no more--ye can't escape from these. Ye've got t' sing and dance fer years, ye've got t' romp an' play, An' learn t' love the things ye have by usin' 'em each day; Even the roses 'round the porch must blossom year by year Afore they 'come a part o' ye, suggestin' someone dear Who used t' love 'em long ago, an' trained 'em jes' t' run The way they do, so's they would get the early mornin' sun; Ye've got t' love each brick an' stone from cellar up t' dome: It takes a heap o' livin' in a house f' make it home. _Edgar A. Guest._ The House with Nobody In It Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track I go by a poor old farm-house with its shingles broken and black; I suppose I've passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it. I've never seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things; That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings. I know that house isn't haunted and I wish it were, I do, For it wouldn't be so lonely if it had a ghost or two. This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass, And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass. It needs new paint and shingles and vines should be trimmed and tied, But what it needs most of all is some people living inside. If I had a bit of money and all my debts were paid, I'd put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade. I'd buy that place and fix it up the way that it used to be, And I'd find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free. Now a new home standing empty with staring window and door Looks idle perhaps and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store, But there's nothing mournful about it, it cannot be sad and lone For the lack of something within it that it has never known. But a house that has done what a house should do, a house that has sheltered life, That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife, A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and helped up his stumbling feet, Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet. So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back, Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart, For I can't help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart. _Joyce Kilmer._ Color in the Wheat Like liquid gold the wheat field lies, A marvel of yellow and russet and green, That ripples and runs, that floats and flies, With the subtle shadows, the change, the sheen, That play in the golden hair of a girl,-- A ripple of amber--a flare Of light sweeping after--a curl In the hollows like swirling feet Of fairy waltzers, the colors run To the western sun Through the deeps of the ripening wheat. Broad as the fleckless, soaring sky, Mysterious, fair as the moon-led sea, The vast plain flames on the dazzled eye Under the fierce sun's alchemy. The slow hawk stoops To his prey in the deeps; The sunflower droops To the lazy wave; the wind sleeps-- Then swirling in dazzling links and loops, A riot of shadow and shine, A glory of olive and amber and wine, To the westering sun the colors run Through the deeps of the ripening wheat. O glorious land! My western land, Outspread beneath the setting sun! Once more amid your swells, I stand, And cross your sod-lands dry and dun. I hear the jocund calls of men Who sweep amid the ripened grain With swift, stern reapers; once again The evening splendor floods the plain, The crickets' chime Makes pauseless rhyme, And toward the sun, The colors run Before the wind's feet In the wheat! _Hamlin Garland._ The Broken Pinion I walked through the woodland meadows, Where sweet the thrushes sing; And I found on a bed of mosses A bird with a broken wing. I healed its wound, and each morning It sang its old sweet strain, But the bird with a broken pinion Never soared as high again. I found a young life broken By sin's seductive art; And touched with a Christlike pity, I took him to my heart. He lived with a noble purpose And struggled not in vain; But the life that sin had stricken Never soared as high again. But the bird with a broken pinion Kept another from the snare; And the life that sin had stricken Raised another from despair. Each loss has its compensation, There is healing for every pain; But the bird with a broken pinion Never soars as high again. _Hezekiah Butterworth._ Jamie Douglas It was in the days when Claverhouse Was scouring moor and glen, To change, with fire and bloody sword, The faith of Scottish men. They had made a covenant with the Lord Firm in their faith to bide, Nor break to Him their plighted word, Whatever might betide. The sun was well-nigh setting, When o'er the heather wild, And up the narrow mountain-path, Alone there walked a child. He was a bonny, blithesome lad, Sturdy and strong of limb-- A father's pride, a mother's love, Were fast bound up in him. His bright blue eyes glanced fearless round, His step was firm and light; What was it underneath his plaid His little hands grasped tight? It was bannocks which, that very morn, His mother made with care. From out her scanty store of meal; And now, with many a prayer, Had sent by Jamie her ane boy, A trusty lad and brave, To good old Pastor Tammons Roy, Now hid in yonder cave, And for whom the bloody Claverhouse Had hunted long in vain, And swore they would not leave that glen Till old Tam Roy was slain. So Jamie Douglas went his way With heart that knew no fear; He turned the great curve in the rock, Nor dreamed that death was near. And there were bloody Claverhouse men, Who laughed aloud with glee, When trembling now within their power, The frightened child they see. He turns to flee, but all in vain, They drag him back apace To where their cruel leader stands, And set them face to face. The cakes concealed beneath his plaid Soon tell the story plain-- "It is old Tam Roy the cakes are for," Exclaimed the angry man. "Now guide me to his hiding place And I will let you go." But Jamie shook his yellow curls, And stoutly answered--"No!" "I'll drop you down the mountain-side, And there upon the stones The old gaunt wolf and carrion crow Shall battle for your bones." And in his brawny, strong right hand He lifted up the child, And held him where the clefted rocks Formed a chasm deep and wild So deep it was, the trees below Like stunted bushes seemed. Poor Jamie looked in frightened maze, It seemed some horrid dream. He looked up at the blue sky above Then at the men near by; Had _they_ no little boys at home, That they could let him die? But no one spoke and no one stirred, Or lifted hand to save From such a fearful, frightful death, The little lad so brave. "It is woeful deep," he shuddering cried, "But oh! I canna tell, So drop me down then, if you will-- It is nae so deep as hell!" A childish scream, a faint, dull sound, Oh! Jamie Douglas true, Long, long within that lonely cave Shall Tam Roy wait for you. Long for your welcome coming Waits the mother on the moor, And watches and calls, "Come, Jamie, lad," Through the half-open door. No more adown the rocky path You come with fearless tread, Or, on moor or mountain, take The good man's daily bread. But up in heaven the shining ones A wondrous story tell, Of a child snatched up from a rocky gulf That is nae so deep as hell. And there before the great white throne, Forever blessed and glad, His mother dear and old Tam Roy Shall meet their bonny lad. The Ensign Bearer Never mind me, Uncle Jared, never mind my bleeding breast! They are charging in the valley and you're needed with the rest. All the day long from its dawning till you saw your kinsman fall, You have answered fresh and fearless to our brave commander's call; And I would not rob my country of your gallant aid to-night, Though your presence and your pity stay my spirit in its flight. All along that quivering column see the death steed trampling down Men whose deeds this day are worthy of a kingdom and a crown. Prithee hasten, Uncle Jared, what's the bullet in my breast To that murderous storm of fire raining tortures on the rest? See! the bayonets flash and falter--look! the foe begins to win; See! oh, see our falling comrades! God! the ranks are closing in. Hark! there's quickening in the distance and a thundering in the air, Like the roaring of a lion just emerging from his lair. There's a cloud of something yonder fast unrolling like a scroll-- Quick! oh, quick! if it be succor that can save the cause a soul! Look! a thousand thirsty bayonets are flashing down the vale, And a thousand thirsty riders dashing onward like a gale! Raise me higher, Uncle Jared, place the ensign in my hand! I am strong enough to float it while you cheer that flying band; Louder! louder! shout for Freedom with prolonged and vigorous breath-- Shout for Liberty and Union, and the victory over death!-- See! they catch the stirring numbers and they swell them to the breeze-- Cap and plume and starry banner waving proudly through the trees. Mark our fainting comrades rally, see that drooping column rise! I can almost see the fire newly kindled in their eyes. Fresh for conflict, nerved to conquer, see them charging on the foe-- Face to face with deadly meaning--shot and shell and trusty blow. See the thinned ranks wildly breaking--see them scatter to the sun-- I can die, Uncle Jared, for the glorious day is won! But there's something, something pressing with a numbness on my heart, And my lips with mortal dumbness fail the burden to impart. Oh I tell you, Uncle Jared, there is something back of all That a soldier cannot part with when he heeds his country's call! Ask the mother what, in dying, sends her yearning spirit back Over life's rough, broken marches, where she's pointed out the track. Ask the dear ones gathered nightly round the shining household hearth, What to them is dearer, better, than the brightest things of earth, Ask that dearer one whose loving, like a ceaseless vestal flame, Sets my very soul a-glowing at the mention of her name; Ask her why the loved in dying feels her spirit linked with his In a union death but strengthens, she will tell you what it is. And there's something, Uncle Jared, you may tell her if you will-- That the precious flag she gave me, I have kept unsullied still. And--this touch of pride forgive me--where death sought our gallant host-- Where our stricken lines were weakest, there it ever waved the most. Bear it back and tell her fondly, brighter, purer, steadier far, 'Mid the crimson tide of battle, shone my life's fast setting star. But forbear, dear Uncle Jared, when there's something more to tell, When her lips with rapid blanching bid you answer how I fell; Teach your tongue the trick of slighting, though 'tis faithful to the rest, Lest it say her brother's bullet is the bullet in my breast; But if it must be that she learn it despite your tenderest care, 'Twill soothe her bleeding heart to know my bayonet pricked the air. Life is ebbing, Uncle Jared, my enlistment endeth here; Death, the Conqueror, has drafted--I can no more volunteer,-- But I hear the roll call yonder and I go with willing feet-- Through the shadows of the valley where victorious armies meet, Raise the ensign, Uncle Jared, let its dear folds o'er me fall-- Strength and Union for my country--and God's banner over all. The Real Riches Every coin of earthly treasure We have lavished upon earth For our simple worldly pleasure May be reckoned something worth; For the spending was not losing, Tho' the purchase were but small; It has perished with the using. We have had it,--that is all! All the gold we leave behind us, When we turn to dust again, Tho' our avarice may blind us, We have gathered quite in vain; Since we neither can direct it, By the winds of fortune tost, Nor in other worlds expect it; What we hoarded we have lost. But each merciful oblation-- Seed of pity wisely sown, What we gave in self-negation, We may safely call our own; For the treasure freely given Is the treasure that we hoard, Since the angels keep in heaven, What is lent unto the Lord. _John G. Saxe._ The Polish Boy Whence come those shrieks so wild and shrill, That cut, like blades of steel, the air, Causing the creeping blood to chill With the sharp cadence of despair? Again they come, as if a heart Were cleft in twain by one quick blow, And every string had voice apart To utter its peculiar woe. Whence came they? From yon temple, where An altar, raised for private prayer, Now forms the warrior's marble bed Who Warsaw's gallant armies led. The dim funereal tapers throw A holy luster o'er his brow, And burnish with their rays of light The mass of curls that gather bright Above the haughty brow and eye Of a young boy that's kneeling by. What hand is that, whose icy press Clings to the dead with death's own grasp, But meets no answering caress? No thrilling fingers seek its clasp. It is the hand of her whose cry Rang wildly, late, upon the air, When the dead warrior met her eye Outstretched upon the altar there. With pallid lip and stony brow She murmurs forth her anguish now. But hark! the tramp of heavy feet Is heard along the bloody street; Nearer and nearer yet they come, With clanking arms and noiseless drum. Now whispered curses, low and deep, Around the holy temple creep; The gate is burst; a ruffian band Rush in, and savagely demand, With brutal voice and oath profane, The startled boy for exile's chain. The mother sprang with gesture wild, And to her bosom clasped her child; Then, with pale cheek and flashing eye, Shouted with fearful energy, "Back, ruffians, back! nor dare to tread Too near the body of my dead; Nor touch the living boy; I stand Between him and your lawless band. Take _me_, and bind these arms--these hands,-- With Russia's heaviest iron bands, And drag me to Siberia's wild To perish, if 'twill save my child!" "Peace, woman, peace!" the leader cried, Tearing the pale boy from her side, And in his ruffian grasp he bore His victim to the temple door. "One moment!" shrieked the mother; "one! Will land or gold redeem my son? Take heritage, take name, take all, But leave him free from Russian thrall! Take these!" and her white arms and hands She stripped of rings and diamond bands, And tore from braids of long black hair The gems that gleamed like starlight there; Her cross of blazing rubies, last, Down at the Russian's feet she cast. He stooped to seize the glittering store;-- Up springing from the marble floor, The mother, with a cry of joy, Snatched to her leaping heart the boy. But no! the Russian's iron grasp Again undid the mother's clasp. Forward she fell, with one long cry Of more than mortal agony. But the brave child is roused at length, And, breaking from the Russian's hold, He stands, a giant in the strength Of his young spirit, fierce and bold. Proudly he towers; his flashing eye, So blue, and yet so bright, Seems kindled from the eternal sky, So brilliant is its light. His curling lips and crimson cheeks Foretell the thought before he speaks; With a full voice of proud command He turned upon the wondering band. "Ye hold me not! no! no, nor can; This hour has made the boy a man. I knelt before my slaughtered sire, Nor felt one throb of vengeful ire. I wept upon his marble brow, Yes, wept! I was a child; but now My noble mother, on her knee, Hath done the work of years for me!" He drew aside his broidered vest, And there, like slumbering serpent's crest, The jeweled haft of poniard bright Glittered a moment on the sight. "Ha! start ye back? Fool! coward! knave! Think ye my noble father's glaive Would drink the life-blood of a slave? The pearls that on the handle flame Would blush to rubies in their shame; The blade would quiver in thy breast Ashamed of such ignoble rest. No! thus I rend the tyrant's chain, And fling him back a boy's disdain!" A moment, and the funeral light Flashed on the jeweled weapon bright; Another, and his young heart's blood Leaped to the floor, a crimson flood. Quick to his mother's side he sprang, And on the air his clear voice rang: "Up, mother, up! I'm free! I'm free! The choice was death or slavery. Up, mother, up! Look on thy son! His freedom is forever won; And now he waits one holy kiss To bear his father home in bliss; One last embrace, one blessing,--one! To prove thou knowest, approvest thy son. What! silent yet? Canst thou not feel My warm blood o'er thy heart congeal? Speak, mother, speak! lift up thy head! What! silent still? Then art thou dead: --Great God, I thank thee! Mother, I Rejoice with thee,--and thus--to die." One long, deep breath, and his pale head Lay on his mother's bosom,--dead. _Ann S. Stephens._ The Height of the Ridiculous I wrote some lines once on a time In wondrous merry mood, And thought, as usual, men would say They were exceeding good. They were so queer, so very queer, I laughed as I would die; Albeit, in the general way, A sober man am I. I called my servant, and he came; How kind it was of him To mind a slender man like me, He of the mighty limb! "These to the printer," I exclaimed, And, in my humorous way, I added (as a trifling jest), "There'll be the devil to pay." He took the paper, and I watched, And saw him peep within; At the first line he read, his face Was all upon the grin. He read the next; the grin grew broad, And shot from ear to ear; He read the third; a chuckling noise I now began to hear. The fourth; he broke into a roar; The fifth; his waistband split; The sixth; he burst five buttons off, And tumbled in a fit. Ten days and nights, with sleepless eye, I watched that wretched man, And since, I never dare to write As funny as I can. _Oliver Wendell Holmes._ Excelsior The shades of night were falling fast, As through an Alpine village passed A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice, A banner with the strange device, Excelsior! His brow was sad his eye beneath Flashed like a falchion from its sheath, And like a silver clarion rung The accents of that unknown tongue, Excelsior! In happy homes he saw the light Of household fires gleam warm and bright; Above, the spectral glaciers shone, And from his lips escaped a groan, Excelsior! "Try not the Pass!" the old man said; "Dark lowers the tempest overhead, The roaring torrent is deep and wide!" And loud the clarion voice replied, Excelsior! "O stay," the maiden said, "and rest Thy weary head upon this breast!" A tear stood in his bright blue eye, But still he answered, with a sigh, Excelsior! "Beware the pine-tree's withered branch! Beware the awful avalanche!" This was the peasant's last Good-night, A voice replied, far up the height, Excelsior! At break of day, as heavenward The pious monks of Saint Bernard Uttered the oft-repeated prayer, A voice cried through the startled air, Excelsior! A traveller, by the faithful hound, Half-buried in the snow was found, Still grasping in his hand of ice That banner with the strange device, Excelsior! There in the twilight cold and gray, Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay, And from the sky, serene and far, A voice fell, like a falling star, Excelsior! _Henry W. Longfellow._ The Bivouac of the Dead The muffled drum's sad roll has beat The soldier's last tattoo; No more on life's parade shall meet That brave and fallen few. On fame's eternal camping ground Their silent tents are spread, And Glory guards with solemn round The bivouac of the dead. No rumor of the foe's advance Now swells upon the wind; No troubled thought at midnight haunts Of loved ones left behind; No vision of the morrow's strife The warrior's dream alarms; No braying horn or screaming fife At dawn shall call to arms. Their shivered swords are red with rust; Their plumèd heads are bowed; Their haughty banner, trailed in dust, Is now their martial shroud; And plenteous funeral tears have washed The red stains from each brow; And the proud forms, by battle gashed, Are free from anguish now. The neighing troop, the flashing blade, The bugle's stirring blast, The charge, the dreadful cannonade, The din and shout are passed. Nor war's wild note, nor glory's peal, Shall thrill with fierce delight Those breasts that nevermore shall feel The rapture of the fight. Like a fierce northern hurricane That sweeps his great plateau, Flushed with the triumph yet to gain, Came down the serried foe, Who heard the thunder of the fray Break o'er the field beneath, Knew well the watchword of that day Was "Victory or Death!" Full many a mother's breath hath swept O'er Angostura's plain, And long the pitying sky hath wept Above its moulder'd slain. The raven's scream, or eagle's flight, Or shepherd's pensive lay, Alone now wake each solemn height That frowned o'er that dread fray. Sons of the "dark and bloody ground," Ye must not slumber there, Where stranger steps and tongues resound Along the heedless air! Your own proud land's heroic soil Shall be your fitter grave; She claims from war its richest spoil,-- The ashes of her brave. Thus 'neath their parent turf they rest, Far from the gory field, Borne to a Spartan mother's breast On many a bloody shield. The sunshine of their native sky Smiles sadly on them here, And kindred eyes and hearts watch by The heroes' sepulcher. Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead! Dear as the blood ye gave; No impious footsteps here shall tread The herbage of your grave; Nor shall your glory be forgot While fame her record keeps, Or honor points the hallowed spot Where Valor proudly sleeps. Yon marble minstrel's voiceless stone In deathless song shall tell, When many a vanished year hath flown, The story how ye fell. Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter's blight, Nor time's remorseless doom, Can dim one ray of holy light That gilds your glorious tomb. _Theodore O'Hara._ Children Come to me, O ye children! For I hear you at your play, And the questions that perplexed me Have vanished quite away. Ye open the eastern windows, That look towards the sun, Where thoughts are singing swallows And the brooks of morning run. In your hearts are the birds and the sunshine, In your thoughts the brooklet's flow But in mine is the wind of Autumn And the first fall of the snow. Ah! what would the world be to us If the children were no more? We should dread the desert behind us Worse than the dark before. What the leaves are to the forest, With light and air for food, Ere their sweet and tender juices Have been hardened into wood,-- That to the world are children; Through them it feels the glow Of a brighter and sunnier climate Than reaches the trunks below. Come to me, O ye children! And whisper in my ear What the birds and the winds are singing In your sunny atmosphere. For what are all our contrivings, And the wisdom of our books, When compared with your caresses, And the gladness of your looks? Ye are better than all the ballads That ever were sung or said; For ye are living poems, And all the rest are dead. _Henry W. Longfellow._ The Eve of Waterloo (The battle of Waterloo occurred June 18, 1815) There was a sound of revelry by night, And Belgium's capital had gathered then Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men. A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a marriage bell; But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell. Did ye not hear it?--No; 'twas but the wind, Or the car rattling o'er the stony street: On with the dance! let joy be unconfined; No sleep till morn, when youth and pleasure meet To chase the glowing hours with flying feet-- But, hark!--that heavy sound breaks in once more, As if the clouds its echo would repeat And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before! Arm! arm! it is--it is the cannon's opening roar. Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro, And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress, And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago Blush'd at the praise of their own loveliness; And there were sudden partings, such as press The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs Which ne'er might be repeated: who could guess If ever more should meet those mutual eyes, Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise! And there was mounting in hot haste: the steed, The mustering squadron, and the clattering car Went pouring forward with impetuous speed, And swiftly forming in the ranks of war; And the deep thunder, peal on peal afar; And near, the beat of the alarming drum Roused up the soldier ere the morning star; While thronged the citizens with terror dumb, Or whispering with white lips, "The foe! they come! they come!" Last noon beheld them full of lusty life, Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay, The midnight brought the signal sound of strife, The morn the marshaling in arms,--the day Battle's magnificently stern array! The thunder clouds close o'er it, which when rent The earth is covered thick with other clay, Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent, Rider and horse--friend, foe--in one red burial blent. _Lord Byron._ The Land Where Hate Should Die This is the land where hate should die-- No feuds of faith, no spleen of race, No darkly brooding fear should try Beneath our flag to find a place. Lo! every people here has sent Its sons to answer freedom's call, Their lifeblood is the strong cement That builds and binds the nation's wall. This is the land where hate should die-- Though dear to me my faith and shrine, I serve my country when I Respect the creeds that are not mine. He little loves his land who'd cast Upon his neighbor's word a doubt, Or cite the wrongs of ages past From present rights to bar him out. This is the land where hate should die-- This is the land where strife should cease, Where foul, suspicious fear should fly Before the light of love and peace. Then let us purge from poisoned thought That service to the state we give, And so be worthy as we ought Of this great land in which we live. _Denis A. McCarthy._ Trouble In the "Amen Corner" 'Twas a stylish congregation, that of Theophrastus Brown, And its organ was the finest and the biggest in the town, And the chorus--all the papers favorably commented on it, For 'twas said each female member had a forty-dollar bonnet. Now in the "amen corner" of the church sat Brother Eyer, Who persisted every Sabbath-day in singing with the choir; He was poor but genteel-looking, and his heart as snow was white, And his old face beamed with sweetness when he sang with all his might. His voice was cracked and broken, age had touched his vocal chords, And nearly every Sunday he would mispronounce the words Of the hymns, and 'twas no wonder, he was old and nearly blind, And the choir rattling onward always left him far behind. The chorus stormed and blustered, Brother Eyer sang too slow, And then he used the tunes in vogue a hundred years ago; At last the storm-cloud burst, and the church was told, in fine, That the brother must stop singing, or the choir would resign. Then the pastor called together in the vestry-room one day Seven influential members who subscribe more than they pay, And having asked God's guidance in a printed pray'r or two, They put their heads together to determine what to do. They debated, thought, suggested, till at last "dear Brother York," Who last winter made a million on a sudden rise in pork, Rose and moved that a committee wait at once on Brother Eyer, And proceed to rake him lively "for disturbin' of the choir." Said he: "In that 'ere organ I've invested quite a pile, And we'll sell it if we cannot worship in the latest style; Our Philadelphy tenor tells me 'tis the hardest thing Fer to make God understand him when the brother tries to sing. "We've got the biggest organ, the best-dressed choir in town, We pay the steepest sal'ry to our pastor, Brother Brown; But if we must humor ignorance because it's blind and old-- If the choir's to be pestered, I will seek another fold." Of course the motion carried, and one day a coach and four, With the latest style of driver, rattled up to Eyer's door; And the sleek, well-dress'd committee, Brothers Sharkey, York and Lamb, As they crossed the humble portal took good care to miss the jamb. They found the choir's great trouble sitting in his old arm chair, And the Summer's golden sunbeams lay upon his thin white hair; He was singing "Rock of Ages" in a cracked voice and low But the angels understood him, 'twas all he cared to know. Said York: "We're here, dear brother, with the vestry's approbation To discuss a little matter that affects the congregation"; "And the choir, too," said Sharkey, giving Brother York a nudge, "And the choir, too!" he echoed with the graveness of a judge. "It was the understanding when we bargained for the chorus That it was to relieve us, that is, do the singing for us; If we rupture the agreement, it is very plain, dear brother, It will leave our congregation and be gobbled by another. "We don't want any singing except that what we've bought! The latest tunes are all the rage; the old ones stand for naught; And so we have decided--are you list'ning, Brother Eyer?-- That you'll have to stop your singin' for it flurrytates the choir." The old man slowly raised his head, a sign that he did hear, And on his cheek the trio caught the glitter of a tear; His feeble hands pushed back the locks white as the silky snow, As he answered the committee in a voice both sweet and low: "I've sung the psalms of David nearly eighty years," said he; "They've been my staff and comfort all along life's dreary way; I'm sorry I disturb the choir, perhaps I'm doing wrong; But when my heart is filled with praise, I can't keep back a song. "I wonder if beyond the tide that's breaking at my feet, In the far-off heav'nly temple, where the Master I shall greet-- Yes, I wonder when I try to sing the songs of God up high'r, If the angel band will church me for disturbing heaven's choir." A silence filled the little room; the old man bowed his head; The carriage rattled on again, but Brother Eyer was dead! Yes, dead! his hand had raised the veil the future hangs before us, And the Master dear had called him to the everlasting chorus. The choir missed him for a while, but he was soon forgot, A few church-goers watched the door; the old man entered not. Far away, his voice no longer cracked, he sang his heart's desires, Where there are no church committees and no fashionable choirs! _T.C. Harbaugh._ Duty The sweetest lives are those to duty wed, Whose deeds, both great and small, Are close knit strands of an unbroken thread, Whose love ennobles all. The world may sound no trumpet, ring no bells; The book of life, the shining record tells. Thy love shall chant its own beatitudes, After its own life-working. A child's kiss Set on thy singing lips shall make thee glad; A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich; A sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong; Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense Of service thou renderest. _Robert Browning._ The Last Leaf I saw him once before, As he passed by the door, And again The pavement stones resound, As he totters o'er the ground With his cane. They say that in his prime, Ere the pruning-knife of Time Cut him down, Not a better man was found By the Crier on his round Through the town. But now he walks the streets, And he looks at all he meets Sad and wan, And he shakes his feeble head, That it seems as if he said "They are gone." The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has prest In their bloom, And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On the tomb. My grandmamma has said,-- Poor old lady, she is dead Long ago,-- That he had a Roman nose, And his cheek was like a rose In the snow. But now his nose is thin, And it rests upon his chin. Like a staff, And a crook is in his back, And a melancholy crack In his laugh. I know it is a sin For me to sit and grin At him here; But the old three-cornered hat, And the breeches, and all that, Are so queer! And if I should live to be The last leaf upon the tree In the spring, Let them smile, as I do now, At the old forsaken bough Where I cling. _Oliver Wendell Holmes._ Old Flag Forever She's up there--Old Glory--where lightnings are sped; She dazzles the nations with ripples of red; And she'll wave for us living, or droop o'er us dead,-- The flag of our country forever! She's up there--Old Glory--how bright the stars stream! And the stripes like red signals of liberty gleam! And we dare for her, living, or dream the last dream, 'Neath the flag of our country forever! She's up there--Old Glory--no tyrant-dealt scars, No blur on her brightness, no stain on her stars! The brave blood of heroes hath crimsoned her bars. She's the flag of our country forever! _Frank L. Stanton._ The Death of the Flowers The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear. Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the withered leaves lie dead; They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread. The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrub the jay, And from the wood-top calls the crow, through all the gloomy day. Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood? Alas! they all are in their graves; the gentle race of flowers Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours. The rain is falling where they lie; but the cold November rain Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again. The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow; But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sun-flower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile was gone from upland, glade and glen. And now, when comes the calm, mild day, as still such days will come, To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home, When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still, And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill, The south wind searches for the flowers, whose fragrance late he bore, And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more. And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died, The fair, meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side, In the cold, moist earth we laid her when the forest cast the leaf, And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief; Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young friend of ours, So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers. _W.C. Bryant._ The Heritage The rich man's son inherits lands, And piles of brick, and stone, and gold, And he inherits soft white hands, And tender flesh that fears the cold, Nor dares to wear a garment old; A heritage, it seems to me, One scarce would wish to hold in fee. The rich man's son inherits cares; The bank may break, the factory burn, A breath may burst his bubble shares, And soft white hands could hardly earn A living that would serve his turn; A heritage, it seems to me, One scarce would wish to hold in fee. The rich man's son inherits wants, His stomach craves for dainty fare; With sated heart, he hears the pants Of toiling hinds with brown arms bare, And wearies in his easy-chair; A heritage, it seems to me, One scarce would wish to hold in fee. What doth the poor man's son inherit? Stout muscles and a sinewy heart, A hardy frame, a hardier spirit; King of two hands, he does his part In every useful toil and art; A heritage, it seems to me, A king might wish to hold in fee. What doth the poor man's son inherit? Wishes o'erjoyed with humble things, A rank, adjudged by toil-won merit, Content that from employment springs, A heart that in his labor sings; A heritage, it seems to me, A king might wish to hold in fee. What doth the poor man's son inherit? A patience learned of being poor, Courage, if sorrow come, to bear it, A fellow-feeling that is sure To make the outcast bless his door; A heritage, it seems to me, A king might wish to hold in fee. O rich man's son! there is a toil That with all others level stands; Large charity doth never soil, But only whiten, soft white hands,-- This is the best crop from thy lands; A heritage it seems to me, Worth being rich to hold in fee. O poor man's son! scorn not thy state; There is worse weariness than thine, In merely being rich and great; Toil only gives the soul to shine And makes rest fragrant and benign; A heritage, it seems to me, Worth being poor to hold in fee. Both heirs to some six feet of sod, Are equal in the earth at last; Both, children of the same dear God, Prove title to your heirship vast By record of a well-filled past; A heritage, it seems to me, Well worth a life to hold in fee. _James Russell Lowell._ The Ballad of East and West Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth! Kamal is out with twenty men to raise the Border side, And he has lifted the Colonel's mare that is the Colonel's pride: He has lifted her out of the stable-door between the dawn and the day, And turned the calkins upon her feet, and ridden her far away. Then up and spoke the Colonel's son that led a troop of the Guides: "Is there never a man of all my men can say where Kamal hides?" Then up and spoke Mahommed Khan, the son of the Ressaldar, "If ye know the track of the morning-mist, ye know where his pickets are. At dust he harries the Abazai--at dawn he is into Bonair, But he must go by Fort Bukloh to his own place to fare, So if ye gallop to Fort Bukloh as fast as a bird can fly, By the favor of God ye may cut him off ere he win to the Tongue of Jagai, But if he be passed the Tongue of Jagai, right swiftly turn ye then, For the length and the breadth of that grisly plain is sown with Kamal's men. There is rock to the left, and rock to the right, and low lean thorn between, And ye may hear a breech-bolt snick where never a man is seen." The Colonel's son has taken a horse, and a raw rough dun was he, With the mouth of a bell and the heart of Hell, and the head of the gallows-tree. The Colonel's son to the Fort has won, they bid him stay to eat-- Who rides at the tail of a Border thief, he sits not long at his meat. He's up and away from Fort Bukloh as fast as he can fly, Till he was aware of his father's mare in the gut of the Tongue of Jagai, Till he was aware of his father's mare with Kamal upon her back, And when he could spy the white of her eye, he made the pistol crack. He has fired once, he has fired twice, but the whistling ball went wide. "Ye shoot like a soldier," Kamal said. "Show now if ye can ride." It's up and over the Tongue of Jagai, as blown dust-devils go, The dun he fled like a stag of ten, but the mare like a barren doe. The dun he leaned against the bit and slugged his head above, But the red mare played with the snaffle-bars, as a maiden plays with a glove. There was rock to the left and rock to the right, and low lean thorn between, And thrice he heard a breech-bolt snick tho' never a man was seen. They have ridden the low moon out of the sky, their hoofs drum up the dawn, The dun he went like a wounded bull, but the mare like a new-roused fawn. The dun he fell at a water-course--in a woful heap fell he, And Kamal has turned the red mare back, and pulled the rider free. He has knocked the pistol out of his hand--small room was there to strive, "'Twas only by favor of mine," quoth he, "ye rode so long alive: There was not a rock of twenty mile, there was not a clump of tree, But covered a man of my own men with his rifle cocked on his knee. If I had raised my bridle-hand, as I have held it low, The little jackals that flee so fast, were feasting all in a row: If I had bowed my head on my breast, as I have held it high, The kite that whistles above us now were gorged till she could not fly." Lightly answered the Colonel's son: "Do good to bird and beast, But count who come for the broken meats before thou makest a feast. If there should follow a thousand swords to carry my bones away, Belike the price of a jackal's meal were more than a thief could pay. They will feed their horse on the standing crop, their men on the garnered grain, The thatch of the byres will serve their fires when all the cattle are slain. But if thou thinkest the price be fair,--thy brethren wait to sup. The hound is kin to the jackal-spawn, howl, dog, and call them up! And if thou thinkest the price be high, in steer and gear and stack, Give me my father's mare again, and I'll fight my own way back!" Kamal has gripped him by the hand and set him upon his feet. "No talk shall be of dogs," said he, "when wolf and gray wolf meet. May I eat dirt if thou hast hurt of me in deed or breath; What dam of lances brought thee forth to jest at the dawn with Death?" Lightly answered the Colonel's son: "I hold by the blood of my clan: Take up the mare of my father's gift--by God, she has carried a man!" The red mare ran to the Colonel's son, and nuzzled against his breast, "We be two strong men," said Kamal then, "but she loveth the younger best. So she shall go with a lifter's dower, my turquoise-studded rein, My broidered saddle and saddle-cloth, and silver stirrups twain." The Colonel's son a pistol drew and held it muzzle-end, "Ye have taken the one from a foe," said he; "will ye take the mate from a friend?" "A gift for a gift," said Kamal straight; "a limb for the risk of a limb. Thy father has sent his son to me, I'll send my son to him!" With that he whistled his only son, that dropped from a mountain-crest-- He trod the ling like a buck in spring, and he looked like a lance in rest. "Now here is thy master," Kamal said, "who leads a troop of the Guides, And thou must ride at his left side as shield on shoulder rides. Till Death or I cut loose the tie, at camp and board and bed, Thy life is his--thy fate is to guard him with thy head. So thou must eat the White Queen's meat, and all her foes are thine, And thou must harry thy father's hold for the peace of the Border-line, And thou must make a trooper tough and hack thy way to power-- Belike they will raise thee to Ressaldar when I am hanged in Peshawur." They have looked each other between the eyes, and there they found no fault, They have taken the Oath of the Brother-in-Blood on leavened bread and salt: They have taken the Oath of the Brother-in-Blood on fire and fresh-cut sod, On the hilt and the haft of the Khyber knife, and the wondrous Names of God. The Colonel's son he rides the mare and Kamal's boy the dun, And two have come back to Fort Bukloh where there went forth but one. And when they drew to the Quarter-Guard, full twenty swords flew clear-- There was not a man but carried his feud with the blood of the mountaineer. "Ha' done! ha' done!" said the Colonel's son. "Put up the steel at your sides! Last night ye had struck at a Border thief--to-night 'tis a man of the Guides!" Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the two shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth. _Rudyard Kipling._ Annabel Lee It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. I was a child, and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea, But we loved with a love that was more than love, I and my Annabel Lee; With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me. And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee; So that her highborn kinsmen came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea. The angels, not half so happy in heaven, Went envying her and me; Yes! that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud by night, Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we, Of many far wiser than we; And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee: For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee: And so all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling--my darling--my life and my bride, In her sepulchre there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding sea. _Edgar Allan Poe._ April Showers There fell an April shower, one night: Next morning, in the garden-bed, The crocuses stood straight and gold: "And they have come," the children said. There fell an April shower, one night: Next morning, thro' the woodland spread The Mayflowers, pink and sweet as youth: "And they are come," the children said. There fell an April shower, one night: Next morning, sweetly, overhead, The blue-birds sung, the blue-birds sung: "And they have come," the children said. _Mary E. Wilkins._ The Voice of Spring I come, I come! ye have called me long; I come o'er the mountains, with light and song; Ye may trace my step o'er the waking earth By the winds which tell of the violet's birth, By the primrose stars in the shadowy grass, By the green leaves opening as I pass. I have breathed on the South, and the chestnut flowers By thousands have burst from the forest bowers, And the ancient graves and the fallen fanes Are veiled with wreaths as Italian plains; But it is not for me, in my hour of bloom, To speak of the ruin or the tomb! I have looked o'er the hills of the stormy North, And the larch has hung all his tassels forth; The fisher is out on the sunny sea, And the reindeer bounds o'er the pastures free, And the pine has a fringe of softer green, And the moss looks bright, where my step has been. I have sent through the wood-paths a glowing sigh, And called out each voice of the deep blue sky, From the night-bird's lay through the starry time, In the groves of the soft Hesperian clime, To the swan's wild note by the Iceland lakes, When the dark fir-branch into verdure breaks. From the streams and founts I have loosed the chain; They are sweeping on to the silvery main, They are flashing down from the mountain brows, They are flinging spray o'er the forest boughs, They are bursting fresh from their sparry caves, And the earth resounds with the joy of waves. _Felicia D. Hemans._ The Boys Has there any old fellow got mixed with the boys? If there has take him out, without making a noise. Hang the Almanac's cheat and the Catalogue's spite! Old Time is a liar! We're twenty tonight! We're twenty! We're twenty! Who says we are more? He's tipsy--young jackanapes!--show him the door! "Gray temples at twenty?"--Yes! _white_ if we please; Where the snowflakes fall thickest there's nothing can freeze! Was it snowing I spoke of? Excuse the mistake! Look close--you will see not a sign of a flake! We want some new garlands for those we have shed, And these are white roses in place of the red. We've a trick, we young fellows, you may have been told. Of talking (in public) as if we were old; That boy we call "Doctor," and this we call "Judge"; It's a neat little fiction--of course it's all fudge. That fellow's the "Speaker"--the one on the right; "Mr. Mayor," my young one, how are you to-night? That's our "Member of Congress," we say when we chaff; There's the "Reverend" What's-his-name?--don't make me laugh. That boy with the grave mathematical look Made believe he had written a wonderful book, And the ROYAL SOCIETY thought it was _true_! So they chose him right in; a good joke it was, too! There's a boy, we pretend, with a three-decker brain, That could harness a team with a logical chain; When he spoke for our manhood in syllabled fire, We called him "The Justice," but now he's "The Squire." And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith: Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith; But he shouted a song for the brave and the free-- Just read on his medal, "My country," "of thee!" You hear that boy laughing? You think he's all fun; But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done. The children laugh loud as they troop to his call, And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all! Yes, we're boys--always playing with tongue or with pen; And I sometimes have asked, Shall we ever be men? Shall we always be youthful and laughing and gay, Till the last dear companion drops smiling away? Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its gray! The stars of its winter, the dews of its May! And when we have done with our life-lasting toys, Dear Father, take care of Thy children, THE BOYS! _Oliver Wendell Holmes._ The Rainy Day The day is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains, and the wind is never weary; The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, But at every gust the dead leaves fall, And the day is dark and dreary. My life is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains, and the wind is never weary; My thoughts still cling to the mouldering past, But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast, And the days are dark and dreary. Be still, sad heart! and cease repining; Behind the clouds is the sun still shining; Thy fate is the common fate of all, Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary. _H.W. Longfellow._ Let Me Walk With the Men in the Road 'Tis only a half truth the poet has sung Of the "house by the side of the way"; Our Master had neither a house nor a home, But He walked with the crowd day by day. And I think, when I read of the poet's desire, That a house by the road would be good; But service is found in its tenderest form When we walk with the crowd in the road. So I say, let me walk with the men in the road, Let me seek out the burdens that crush, Let me speak a kind word of good cheer to the weak Who are falling behind in the rush. There are wounds to be healed, there are breaks we must mend, There's a cup of cold water to give; And the man in the road by the side of his friend Is the man who has learned to live. Then tell me no more of the house by the road. There is only one place I can live-- It's there with the men who are toiling along, Who are needing the cheer I can give. It is pleasant to live in the house by the way And be a friend, as the poet has said; But the Master is bidding us, "Bear ye their load, For your rest waiteth yonder ahead." I could not remain in the house by the road And watch as the toilers go on, Their faces beclouded with pain and with sin, So burdened, their strength nearly gone. I'll go to their side, I'll speak in good cheer, I'll help them to carry their load; And I'll smile at the man in the house by the way, As I walk with the crowd in the road. Out there in the road that goes by the house, Where the poet is singing his song, I'll walk and I'll work midst the heat of the day, And I'll help falling brothers along-- Too busy to live in the house by the way, Too happy for such an abode. And my heart sings its praise to the Master of all, Who is helping me serve in the road. _Walter J. Gresham._ If We Understood Could we but draw back the curtains That surround each other's lives, See the naked heart and spirit, Know what spur the action gives, Often we should find it better, Purer than we judged we should, We should love each other better, If we only understood. Could we judge all deeds by motives, See the good and bad within, Often we should love the sinner All the while we loathe the sin; Could we know the powers working To o'erthrow integrity, We should judge each other's errors With more patient charity. If we knew the cares and trials, Knew the effort all in vain, And the bitter disappointment, Understood the loss and gain-- Would the grim, eternal roughness Seem--I wonder--just the same? Should we help where now we hinder, Should we pity where we blame? Ah! we judge each other harshly, Knowing not life's hidden force; Knowing not the fount of action Is less turbid at its source; Seeing not amid the evil All the golden grains of good; Oh! we'd love each other better, If we only understood. A Laugh in Church She sat on the sliding cushion, The dear, wee woman of four; Her feet, in their shiny slippers, Hung dangling over the floor. She meant to be good; she had promised, And so, with her big, brown eyes, She stared at the meeting-house windows And counted the crawling flies. She looked far up at the preacher, But she thought of the honey bees Droning away at the blossoms That whitened the cherry trees. She thought of a broken basket, Where, curled in a dusky heap, _Three sleek, round puppies, with fringy ears Lay snuggled and fast asleep._ Such soft warm bodies to cuddle, Such queer little hearts to beat, Such swift, round tongues to kiss, Such sprawling, cushiony feet; She could feel in her clasping fingers The touch of a satiny skin And a cold wet nose exploring The dimples under her chin. Then a sudden ripple of laughter Ran over the parted lips So quick that she could not catch it With her rosy finger-tips. The people whispered, "Bless the child," As each one waked from a nap, But the dear, wee woman hid her face For shame in her mother's lap. "One, Two, Three!" It was an old, old, old, old lady, And a boy that was half past three; And the way that they played together Was beautiful to see. She couldn't go running and jumping, And the boy, no more could he; For he was a thin little fellow, With a thin little twisted knee, They sat in the yellow sunlight, Out under the maple-tree; And the game that they played I'll tell you, Just as it was told to me. It was Hide-and-Go-Seek they were playing, Though you'd never have known it to be-- With an old, old, old, old lady, And a boy with a twisted knee. The boy would bend his face down On his one little sound right knee, And he'd guess where she was hiding, In guesses One, Two, Three! "You are in the china-closet!" He would cry, and laugh with glee-- It wasn't the china-closet; But he still had Two and Three. "You are up in Papa's big bedroom, In the chest with the queer old key!" And she said: "You are _warm_ and _warmer_; But you're not quite right," said she. "It can't be the little cupboard Where Mamma's things used to be-- So it must be the clothes-press, Gran'ma!" And he found her with his Three. Then she covered her face with her fingers, That were wrinkled and white and wee, And she guessed where the boy was hiding, With a One and a Two and a Three. And they never had stirred from their places, Right under the maple-tree-- This old, old, old, old lady, And the boy with the lame little knee-- This dear, dear, dear old lady, And the boy who was half past three. _Henry Cuyler Bunner._ Unawares They said, "The Master is coming To honor the town to-day, And none can tell at what house or home The Master will choose to stay." And I thought while my heart beat wildly, What if He should come to mine, How would I strive to entertain And honor the Guest Divine! And straight I turned to toiling To make my house more neat; I swept, and polished, and garnished. And decked it with blossoms sweet. I was troubled for fear the Master Might come ere my work was done, And I hasted and worked the faster, And watched the hurrying sun. But right in the midst of my duties A woman came to my door; She had come to tell me her sorrows And my comfort and aid to implore, And I said, "I cannot listen Nor help you any, to-day; I have greater things to attend to." And the pleader turned away. But soon there came another-- A cripple, thin, pale and gray-- And said, "Oh, let me stop and rest A while in your house, I pray! I have traveled far since morning, I am hungry, and faint, and weak; My heart is full of misery, And comfort and help I seek." And I cried, "I am grieved and sorry, But I cannot help you to-day. I look for a great and noble Guest," And the cripple went away; And the day wore onward swiftly-- And my task was nearly done, And a prayer was ever in my heart That the Master to me might come. And I thought I would spring to meet Him, And serve him with utmost care, When a little child stood by me With a face so sweet and fair-- Sweet, but with marks of teardrops-- And his clothes were tattered and old; A finger was bruised and bleeding, And his little bare feet were cold. And I said, "I'm sorry for you-- You are sorely in need of care; But I cannot stop to give it, You must hasten otherwhere." And at the words, a shadow Swept o'er his blue-veined brow,-- "Someone will feed and clothe you, dear, But I am too busy now." At last the day was ended, And my toil was over and done; My house was swept and garnished-- And I watched in the dark--alone. Watched--but no footfall sounded, No one paused at my gate; No one entered my cottage door; I could only pray--and wait. I waited till night had deepened, And the Master had not come. "He has entered some other door," I said, "And gladdened some other home!" My labor had been for nothing, And I bowed my head and I wept, My heart was sore with longing-- Yet--in spite of it all--I slept. Then the Master stood before me, And his face was grave and fair; "Three times to-day I came to your door, And craved your pity and care; Three times you sent me onward, Unhelped and uncomforted; And the blessing you might have had was lost, And your chance to serve has fled." "O Lord, dear Lord, forgive me! How could I know it was Thee?" My very soul was shamed and bowed In the depths of humility. And He said, "The sin is pardoned, But the blessing is lost to thee; For comforting not the least of Mine You have failed to comfort Me." _Emma A. Lent._ The Land of Beginning Again I wish there were some wonderful place Called the Land of Beginning Again, Where all our mistakes and all our heartaches, And all our poor, selfish griefs Could be dropped, like a shabby old coat, at the door, And never put on again. I wish we could come on it all unaware, Like the hunter who finds a lost trail; And I wish that the one whom our blindness had done The greatest injustice of all Could be at the gate like the old friend that waits For the comrade he's gladdest to hail. We would find the things we intended to do, But forgot and remembered too late-- Little praises unspoken, little promises broken, And all of the thousand and one Little duties neglected that might have perfected The days of one less fortunate. It wouldn't be possible not to be kind. In the Land of Beginning Again; And the ones we misjudged and the ones whom we grudged Their moments of victory here, Would find the grasp of our loving handclasp More than penitent lips could explain. For what had been hardest we'd know had been best, And what had seemed loss would be gain, For there isn't a sting that will not take wing When we've faced it and laughed it away; And I think that the laughter is most what we're after, In the Land of Beginning Again. So I wish that there were some wonderful place Called the Land of Beginning Again, Where all our mistakes and all our heartaches, And all our poor, selfish griefs Could be dropped, like a ragged old coat, at the door, And never put on again. _Louisa Fletcher Tarkington._ Poor Little Joe Prop yer eyes wide open, Joey, Fur I've brought you sumpin' great. Apples? No, a derned sight better! Don't you take no int'rest? Wait! Flowers, Joe--I know'd you'd like 'em-- Ain't them scrumptious? Ain't them high? Tears, my boy? Wot's them fur, Joey? There--poor little Joe--don't cry! I was skippin' past a winder W'ere a bang-up lady sot, All amongst a lot of bushes-- Each one climbin' from a pot; Every bush had flowers on it-- Pretty? Mebbe not! Oh, no! Wish you could 'a seen 'em growin', It was such a stunnin' show. Well, I thought of you, poor feller, Lyin' here so sick and weak, Never knowin' any comfort, And I puts on lots o' cheek. "Missus," says I, "if you please, mum, Could I ax you for a rose? For my little brother, missus-- Never seed one, I suppose." Then I told her all about you-- How I bringed you up--poor Joe! (Lackin' women folks to do it) Sich a imp you was, you know-- Till you got that awful tumble, Jist as I had broke yer in (Hard work, too), to earn your livin' Blackin' boots for honest tin. How that tumble crippled of you, So's you couldn't hyper much-- Joe, it hurted when I seen you Fur the first time with yer crutch. "But," I says, "he's laid up now, mum, 'Pears to weaken every day"; Joe, she up and went to cuttin'-- That's the how of this bokay. Say! it seems to me, ole feller, You is quite yourself to-night-- Kind o' chirk--it's been a fortnit Sense yer eyes has been so bright. Better? Well, I'm glad to hear it! Yes, they're mighty pretty, Joe. Smellin' of 'em's made you happy? Well, I thought it would, you know. Never see the country, did you? Flowers growin' everywhere! Some time when you're better, Joey, Mebbe I kin take you there. Flowers in heaven? 'M--I s'pose so; Dunno much about it, though; Ain't as fly as wot I might be On them topics, little Joe. But I've heerd it hinted somewheres That in heaven's golden gates Things is everlastin' cheerful-- B'lieve that's what the Bible states. Likewise, there folks don't git hungry: So good people, w'en they dies, Finds themselves well fixed forever-- Joe my boy, wot ails yer eyes? Thought they looked a little sing'ler. Oh, no! Don't you have no fear; Heaven was made fur such as you is-- Joe, wot makes you look so queer? Here--wake up! Oh, don't look that way! Joe! My boy! Hold up yer head! Here's yer flowers--you dropped em, Joey. Oh, my God, can Joe be dead? _David L. Proudfit (Peleg Arkwright)._ The Ladder of St. Augustine Saint Augustine! well hast thou said, That of our vices we can frame A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath our feet each deed of shame! All common things, each day's events, That with the hour begin and end, Our pleasures and our discontents, Are rounds by which we may ascend. The low desire, the base design, That makes another's virtues less; The revel of the ruddy wine, And all occasions of excess; The longing for ignoble things; The strife for triumph more than truth; The hardening of the heart, that brings Irreverence for the dreams of youth; All thoughts of ill; all evil deeds, That have their root in thoughts of ill; Whatever hinders or impedes The action of the nobler will;-- All these must first be trampled down Beneath our feet, if we would gain In the bright fields of fair renown The right of eminent domain. We have not wings, we cannot soar; But we have feet to scale and climb By slow degrees, by more and more, The cloudy summits of our time. The mighty pyramids of stone That wedge-like cleave the desert airs, When nearer seen, and better known, Are but gigantic flights of stairs, The distant mountains, that uprear Their solid bastions to the skies, Are crossed by pathways, that appear As we to higher levels rise. The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight. But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night. Standing on what too long we bore With shoulders bent and downcast eyes, We may discern--unseen before-- A path to higher destinies. Nor deem the irrevocable Past As wholly wasted, wholly vain, If, rising on its wrecks, at last To something nobler we attain. _H.W. Longfellow._ Loss and Gain When I compare What I have lost with what I have gained, What I have missed with what attained, Little room do I find for pride. I am aware How many days have been idly spent; How like an arrow the good intent Has fallen short or been turned aside. But who shall dare To measure loss and gain in this wise? Defeat may be victory in disguise; The lowest ebb in the turn of the tide. _H.W. Longfellow._ John Thompson's Daughter (A Parody on "Lord Ullin's Daughter") A fellow near Kentucky's clime Cries, "Boatman, do not tarry, And I'll give thee a silver dime To row us o'er the ferry." "Now, who would cross the Ohio, This dark and stormy water?" "Oh, I am this young lady's beau, And she John Thompson's daughter. "We've fled before her father's spite With great precipitation, And should he find us here to-night, I'd lose my reputation. "They've missed the girl and purse beside, His horsemen hard have pressed me. And who will cheer my bonny bride, If yet they shall arrest me?" Out spoke the boatman then in time, "You shall not fail, don't fear it; I'll go not for your silver dime, But--for your manly spirit. "And by my word, the bonny bird In danger shall not tarry; For though a storm is coming on, I'll row you o'er the ferry." By this the wind more fiercely rose, The boat was at the landing, And with the drenching rain their clothes Grew wet where they were standing. But still, as wilder rose the wind, And as the night grew drearer, Just back a piece came the police, Their tramping sounded nearer. "Oh, haste thee, haste!" the lady cries, "It's anything but funny; I'll leave the light of loving eyes, But not my father's money!" And still they hurried in the race Of wind and rain unsparing; John Thompson reached the landing-place, His wrath was turned to swearing. For by the lightning's angry flash, His child he did discover; One lovely hand held all the cash, And one was round her lover! "Come back, come back," he cried in woe, Across the stormy water; "But leave the purse, and you may go, My daughter, oh, my daughter!" 'Twas vain; they reached the other shore, (Such dooms the Fates assign us), The gold he piled went with his child, And he was left there, minus. _Phoebe Cary._ Grandfather's Clock My grandfather's clock was too tall for the shelf, So it stood ninety years on the floor; It was taller by half than the old man himself, Though it weighed not a pennyweight more. It was bought on the morn of the day that he was born, And was always his treasure and pride, But it stopped short ne'er to go again When the old man died. In watching its pendulum swing to and fro, Many hours had he spent while a boy; And in childhood and manhood the clock seemed to know And to share both his grief and his joy, For it struck twenty-four when he entered at the door, With a blooming and beautiful bride, But it stopped short never to go again When the old man died. My grandfather said that of those he could hire, Not a servant so faithful he found, For it wasted no time and had but one desire, At the close of each week to be wound. And it kept in its place, not a frown upon its face, And its hands never hung by its side. But it stopped short never to go again When the old man died. _Henry C. Work._ A Cradle Hymn Hush! my dear, lie still and slumber, Holy angels guard thy bed! Heavenly blessings without number Gently falling on thy head. Sleep, my babe; thy food and raiment, House and home, thy friends provide; All without thy care or payment: All thy wants are well supplied. How much better thou'rt attended Than the Son of God could be, When from heaven He descended And became a child like thee! Soft and easy is thy cradle: Coarse and hard thy Saviour lay, When His birthplace was a stable And His softest bed was hay. Blessed babe! what glorious features-- Spotless fair, divinely bright! Must He dwell with brutal creatures? How could angels bear the sight? Was there nothing but a manger Cursed sinners could afford To receive the heavenly stranger? Did they thus affront their Lord? Soft, my child: I did not chide thee, Though my song might sound too hard; 'Tis thy mother sits beside thee, And her arm shall be thy guard. * * * * * See the kinder shepherds round Him, Telling wonders from the sky! Where they sought Him, there they found Him, With His Virgin mother by. See the lovely babe a-dressing; Lovely infant, how He smiled! When He wept, His mother's blessing Soothed and hush'd the holy Child, Lo, He slumbers in a manger, Where the hornèd oxen fed:-- Peace, my darling, here's no danger; There's no ox anear thy bed. * * * * * May'st thou live to know and fear Him, Trust and love Him all thy days; Then go dwell forever near Him, See His face, and sing His praise! _Isaac Watts._ If All the Skies If all the skies were sunshine, Our faces would be fain To feel once more upon them The cooling splash of rain. If all the world were music, Our hearts would often long For one sweet strain of silence, To break the endless song. If life were always merry, Our souls would seek relief, And rest from weary laughter In the quiet arms of grief. _Henry van Dyke._ The Petrified Fern In a valley, centuries ago, Grew a little fern leaf, green and slender, Veining delicate and fibers tender, Waving when the wind crept down so low; Rushes tall, and moss, and grass grew round it; Playful sunbeams darted in and found it; Drops of dew stole down by night and crowned it; But no foot of man e'er came that way; Earth was young and keeping holiday. Monster fishes swam the silent main; Stately forests waved their giant branches; Mountains hurled their snowy avalanches; Mammoth creatures stalked across the plain, Nature reveled in grand mysteries. But the little fern was not like these, Did not number with the hills and trees, Only grew and waved its sweet, wild way; No one came to note it day by day. Earth, one time, put on a frolic mood, Heaved the rocks and changed the mighty motion Of the strong, dread currents of the ocean; Moved the hills and shook the haughty wood; Crushed the little fern in soft, moist clay, Covered it, and hid it safe away. Oh, the long, long centuries since that day; Oh, the changes! Oh, life's bitter cost, Since the little useless fern was lost! Useless? Lost? There came a thoughtful man Searching Nature's secrets far and deep; From a fissure in a rocky steep He withdrew a stone, o'er which there ran Fairy pencilings, a quaint design, Leafage, veining, fibers, clear and fine, And the fern's life lay in every line. So, I think, God hides some souls away, Sweetly to surprise us the Last Day. _Mary L. Bolles Branch._ Cleon and I Cleon hath ten thousand acres, Ne'er a one have I; Cleon dwelleth in a palace, In a cottage, I; Cleon hath a dozen fortunes, Not a penny, I, Yet the poorer of the twain is Cleon, and not I. Cleon, true, possesseth acres, But the landscape, I; Half the charms to me it yieldeth Money cannot buy; Cleon harbors sloth and dullness, Freshening vigor, I; He in velvet, I in fustian-- Richer man am I. Cleon is a slave to grandeur, Free as thought am I; Cleon fees a score of doctors, Need of none have I; Wealth-surrounded, care-environed, Cleon fears to die; Death may come--he'll find me ready, Happier man am I. Cleon sees no charms in nature, In a daisy, I; Cleon hears no anthems ringing 'Twixt the sea and sky; Nature sings to me forever, Earnest listener, I; State for state, with all attendants-- Who would change?--Not I. _Charles Mackay._ Washington Great were the hearts and strong the minds Of those who framed in high debate The immortal league of love that binds Our fair, broad empire, State with State. And deep the gladness of the hour When, as the auspicious task was done, In solemn trust the sword of power Was given to Glory's Unspoiled Son. That noble race is gone--the suns Of fifty years have risen and set;-- But the bright links, those chosen ones, So strongly forged, are brighter yet. Wide--as our own free race increase-- Wide shall extend the elastic chain, And bind in everlasting peace State after State, a mighty train. _W.C. Bryant._ Towser Shall Be Tied To-Night A Parody on "Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight." Slow the Kansas sun was setting, O'er the wheat fields far away, Streaking all the air with cobwebs At the close of one hot day; And the last rays kissed the forehead Of a man and maiden fair, He with whiskers short and frowsy, She with red and glistening hair, He with shut jaws stern and silent; She, with lips all cold and white, Struggled to keep back the murmur, "Towser shall be tied to-night." "Papa," slowly spoke the daughter, "I am almost seventeen, And I have a real lover, Though he's rather young and green; But he has a horse and buggy And a cow and thirty hens,-- Boys that start out poor, dear Papa, Make the best of honest men, But if Towser sees and bites him, Fills his eyes with misty light, He will never come again, Pa; Towser must be tied to-night." "Daughter," firmly spoke the farmer, (Every word pierced her young heart Like a carving knife through chicken As it hunts the tender part)-- "I've a patch of early melons, Two of them are ripe to-day; Towser must be loose to watch them Or they'll all be stole away. I have hoed them late and early In dim morn and evening light; Now they're grown I must not lose them; Towser'll not be tied to-night." Then the old man ambled forward, Opened wide the kennel-door, Towser bounded forth to meet him As he oft had done before. And the farmer stooped and loosed him From the dog-chain short and stout; To himself he softly chuckled, "Bessie's feller must look out." But the maiden at the window Saw the cruel teeth show white; In an undertone she murmured,-- "Towser must be tied to-night." Then the maiden's brow grew thoughtful And her breath came short and quick, Till she spied the family clothesline, And she whispered, "That's the trick." From the kitchen door she glided With a plate of meat and bread; Towser wagged his tail in greeting, Knowing well he would be fed. In his well-worn leather collar, Tied she then the clothesline tight, All the time her white lips saying: "Towser shall be tied to-night," "There, old doggie," spoke the maiden, "You can watch the melon patch, But the front gate's free and open, When John Henry lifts the latch. For the clothesline tight is fastened To the harvest apple tree, You can run and watch the melons, But the front gate you can't see." Then her glad ears hear a buggy, And her eyes grow big and bright, While her young heart says in gladness, "Towser dog is tied to-night." Up the path the young man saunters With his eye and cheek aglow; For he loves the red-haired maiden And he aims to tell her so. Bessie's roguish little brother, In a fit of boyish glee, Had untied the slender clothesline, From the harvest apple tree. Then old Towser heard the footsteps, Raised his bristles, fixed for fight,-- "Bark away," the maiden whispers; "Towser, you are tied to-night." Then old Towser bounded forward, Passed the open kitchen door; Bessie screamed and quickly followed, But John Henry's gone before. Down the path he speeds most quickly, For old Towser sets the pace; And the maiden close behind them Shows them she is in the race. Then the clothesline, can she get it? And her eyes grow big and bright; And she springs and grasps it firmly: "Towser shall be tied to-night." Oftentimes a little minute Forms the destiny of men. You can change the fate of nations By the stroke of one small pen. Towser made one last long effort, Caught John Henry by the pants, But John Henry kept on running For he thought that his last chance. But the maiden held on firmly, And the rope was drawn up tight. But old Towser kept the garments, For he was not tied that night. Then the father hears the racket; With long strides he soon is there, When John Henry and the maiden, Crouching, for the worst prepare. At his feet John tells his story, Shows his clothing soiled and torn; And his face so sad and pleading, Yet so white and scared and worn, Touched the old man's heart with pity, Filled his eyes with misty light. "Take her, boy, and make her happy,-- Towser shall be tied to-night." Law and Liberty O Liberty, thou child of Law, God's seal is on thy brow! O Law, her Mother first and last, God's very self art thou! Two flowers alike, yet not alike, On the same stem that grow, Two friends who cannot live apart, Yet seem each other's foe. One, the smooth river's mirrored flow Which decks the world with green; And one, the bank of sturdy rock Which hems the river in. O Daughter of the timeless Past, O Hope the Prophets saw, God give us Law in Liberty And Liberty in Law! _E.J. Cutler._ His Mother's Song Beneath the hot midsummer sun The men had marched all day, And now beside a rippling stream Upon the grass they lay. Tiring of games and idle jest As swept the hours along, They cried to one who mused apart, "Come, friend, give us a song." "I fear I can not please," he said; "The only songs I know Are those my mother used to sing For me long years ago." "Sing one of those," a rough voice cried. "There's none but true men here; To every mother's son of us A mother's songs are dear." Then sweetly rose the singer's voice Amid unwonted calm: "Am I a soldier of the Cross, A follower of the Lamb? And shall I fear to own His cause?" The very stream was stilled, And hearts that never throbbed with fear, With tender thoughts were filled. Ended the song, the singer said, As to his feet he rose, "Thanks to you all, my friends; goodnight. God grant us sweet repose." "Sing us one more," the captain begged. The soldier bent his head, Then, glancing round, with smiling lips, "You'll join with me?" he said. "We'll sing that old familiar air Sweet as the bugle call, 'All hail the power of Jesus' name! Let angels prostrate fall.'" Ah, wondrous was the old tune's spell. As on the soldiers sang; Man after man fell into line, And loud the voices rang. The songs are done, the camp is still, Naught but the stream is heard; But, ah! the depths of every soul By those old hymns are stirred, And up from many a bearded lip, In whispers soft and low, Rises the prayer that mother taught Her boy long years ago. When Father Carves the Duck We all look on with anxious eyes When Father carves the duck, And Mother almost always sighs When Father carves the duck; Then all of us prepare to rise And hold our bibs before our eyes, And be prepared for some surprise When Father carves the duck. He braces up and grabs the fork, Whene'er he carves the duck, And won't allow a soul to talk Until he carves the duck. The fork is jabbed into the sides, Across the breast the knife he slides, While every careful person hides From flying chips of duck. The platter's always sure to slip When Father carves the duck, And how it makes the dishes skip-- Potatoes fly amuck. The squash and cabbage leap in space, We get some gravy in our face, And Father mutters Hindoo grace Whene'er he carves a duck. We then have learned to walk around The dining room and pluck From off the window-sills and walls Our share of Father's duck. While Father growls and blows and jaws, And swears the knife was full of flaws, And Mother laughs at him because He couldn't carve a duck. _E.V. Wright._ Papa's Letter I was sitting in my study, Writing letters when I heard, "Please, dear mamma, Mary told me Mamma mustn't be 'isturbed. "But I'se tired of the kitty, Want some ozzer fing to do. Witing letters, is 'ou, mamma? Tan't I wite a letter too?" "Not now, darling, mamma's busy; Run and play with kitty, now." "No, no, mamma, me wite letter; Tan if 'ou will show me how." I would paint my darling's portrait As his sweet eyes searched my face-- Hair of gold and eyes of azure, Form of childish, witching grace. But the eager face was clouded, As I slowly shook my head, Till I said, "I'll make a letter Of you, darling boy, instead." So I parted back the tresses From his forehead high and white, And a stamp in sport I pasted 'Mid its waves of golden light. Then I said, "Now, little letter, Go away and bear good news." And I smiled as down the staircase Clattered loud the little shoes. Leaving me, the darling hurried Down to Mary in his glee, "Mamma's witing lots of letters; I'se a letter, Mary--see!" No one heard the little prattler, As once more he climbed the stair, Reached his little cap and tippet, Standing on the entry stair. No one heard the front door open, No one saw the golden hair, As it floated o'er his shoulders In the crisp October air. Down the street the baby hastened Till he reached the office door. "I'se a letter, Mr. Postman; Is there room for any more? "'Cause dis letter's doin' to papa, Papa lives with God, 'ou know, Mamma sent me for a letter, Does 'ou fink 'at I tan go?" But the clerk in wonder answered, "Not to-day, my little man." "Den I'll find anozzer office, 'Cause I must go if I tan." Fain the clerk would have detained him, But the pleading face was gone, And the little feet were hastening-- By the busy crowd swept on. Suddenly the crowd was parted, People fled to left and right, As a pair of maddened horses At the moment dashed in sight. No one saw the baby figure-- No one saw the golden hair, Till a voice of frightened sweetness Rang out on the autumn air. 'Twas too late--a moment only Stood the beauteous vision there, Then the little face lay lifeless, Covered o'er with golden hair. Reverently they raised my darling, Brushed away the curls of gold, Saw the stamp upon the forehead, Growing now so icy cold. Not a mark the face disfigured, Showing where a hoof had trod; But the little life was ended-- "Papa's letter" was with God. Who Stole the Bird's Nest? "To-whit! to-whit! to-whee! Will you listen to me? Who stole four eggs I laid, And the nice nest I made?" "Not I," said the cow, "Moo-oo! Such a thing I'd never do; I gave you a wisp of hay, But didn't take your nest away. Not I," said the cow, "Moo-oo! Such a thing I'd never do." "To-whit! to-whit! to-whee! Will you listen to me? Who stole four eggs I laid, And the nice nest I made?" "Not I," said the dog, "Bow-wow! I wouldn't be so mean, anyhow! I gave the hairs the nest to make, But the nest I did not take. Not I," said the dog, "Bow-wow! I'm not so mean, anyhow." "To-whit! to-whit! to-whee! Will you listen to me? Who stole four eggs I laid, And the nice nest I made?" "Not I," said the sheep, "oh, no! I wouldn't treat a poor bird so. I gave the wool the nest to line, But the nest was none of mine. Baa! Baa!" said the sheep; "oh, no! I wouldn't treat a poor bird so." "Caw! Caw!" cried the crow; "I should like to know What thief took away A bird's nest to-day?" "I would not rob a bird," Said little Mary Green; "I think I never heard Of anything so mean." "It is very cruel, too," Said little Alice Neal; "I wonder if he knew How sad the bird would feel?" A little boy hung down his head, And went and hid behind the bed, For he stole that pretty nest From poor little yellow-breast; And he felt so full of shame, He didn't like to tell his name. _Lydia Maria Child._ Over the Hill from the Poor-House I, who was always counted, they say, Rather a bad stick anyway, Splintered all over with dodges and tricks, Known as "the worst of the Deacon's six"; I, the truant, saucy and bold, The one black sheep in my father's fold, "Once on a time," as the stories say, Went over the hill on a winter's day-- _Over the hill to the poor-house._ Tom could save what twenty could earn; But _givin'_ was somethin' he ne'er would learn; Isaac could half o' the Scriptur's speak-- Committed a hundred verses a week; Never forgot, an' never slipped; But "Honor thy father and mother," he skipped; _So over the hill to the poor-house!_ As for Susan, her heart was kind An' good--what there was of it, mind; Nothin' too big, an' nothin' too nice, Nothin' she wouldn't sacrifice For one she loved; an' that 'ere one Was herself, when all was said an' done; An' Charley an' 'Becca meant well, no doubt, But anyone could pull 'em about; An' all o' our folks ranked well, you see, Save one poor fellow, an' that was me; An' when, one dark an' rainy night, A neighbor's horse went out o' sight, They hitched on me, as the guilty chap That carried one end o' the halter-strap. An' I think, myself, that view of the case Wasn't altogether out o' place; My mother denied it, as mothers do, But I am inclined to believe 'twas true. Though for me one thing might be said-- That I, as well as the horse, was led; And the worst of whisky spurred me on, Or else the deed would have never been done. But the keenest grief I ever felt Was when my mother beside me knelt, An' cried, an' prayed, till I melted down, As I wouldn't for half the horses in town. I kissed her fondly, then an' there, An' swore henceforth to be honest and square. I served my sentence--a bitter pill Some fellows should take who never will; And then I decided to go "out West," Concludin' 'twould suit my health the best; Where, how I prospered, I never could tell, But Fortune seemed to like me well; An' somehow every vein I struck Was always bubbling over with luck. An', better than that, I was steady an' true, An' put my good resolutions through. But I wrote to a trusty old neighbor, an' said, "You tell 'em, old fellow, that I am dead, An' died a Christian; 'twill please 'em more, Than if I had lived the same as before." But when this neighbor he wrote to me, "Your mother's in the poor-house," says he, I had a resurrection straightway, An' started for her that very day. And when I arrived where I was grown, I took good care that I shouldn't be known; But I bought the old cottage, through and through, Of someone Charley had sold it to; And held back neither work nor gold To fix it up as it was of old. The same big fire-place, wide and high, Flung up its cinders toward the sky; The old clock ticked on the corner-shelf-- I wound it an' set it a-goin' myself; An' if everything wasn't just the same, Neither I nor money was to blame; _Then--over the hill to the poor-house!_ One blowin', blusterin' winter's day, With a team an' cutter I started away; My fiery nags was as black as coal; (They some'at resembled the horse I stole;) I hitched, an' entered the poor-house door-- A poor old woman was scrubbin' the floor; She rose to her feet in great surprise, And looked, quite startled, into my eyes; I saw the whole of her trouble's trace In the lines that marred her dear old face; "Mother!" I shouted, "your sorrows is done! You're adopted along o' your horse thief son, _Come over the hill from the poor-house!"_ She didn't faint; she knelt by my side, An' thanked the Lord, till I fairly cried. An' maybe our ride wasn't pleasant an' gay, An' maybe she wasn't wrapped up that day; An' maybe our cottage wasn't warm an' bright, An' maybe it wasn't a pleasant sight, To see her a-gettin' the evenin's tea, An' frequently stoppin' an' kissin' me; An' maybe we didn't live happy for years, In spite of my brothers' and sisters' sneers, Who often said, as I have heard, That they wouldn't own a prison-bird; (Though they're gettin' over that, I guess, For all of 'em owe me more or less;) But I've learned one thing; an' it cheers a man In always a-doin' the best he can; That whether on the big book, a blot Gets over a fellow's name or not, Whenever he does a deed that's white, It's credited to him fair and right. An' when you hear the great bugle's notes, An' the Lord divides his sheep and goats, However they may settle my case, Wherever they may fix my place, My good old Christian mother, you'll see, Will be sure to stand right up for me, With _over the hill from the poor-house!_ _Will Carleton._ "'Specially Jim" I was mighty good-lookin' when I was young, Peart an' black-eyed an' slim, With fellers a-courtin' me Sunday nights, 'Specially Jim. The likeliest one of 'em all was he, Chipper an' han'som' an' trim, But I tossed up my head an' made fun o' the crowds 'Specially Jim! I said I hadn't no 'pinion o' men, An' I wouldn't take stock in him! But they kep' up a-comin' in spite o' my talk, 'Specially Jim! I got so tired o' havin' 'em roun' ('Specially Jim!) I made up my mind I'd settle down An' take up with him. So we was married one Sunday in church, 'Twas crowded full to the brim; 'Twas the only way to get rid of 'em all, 'Specially Jim. O'Grady's Goat O'Grady lived in Shanty row, The neighbors often said They wished that Tim would move away Or that his goat was dead. He kept the neighborhood in fear, And the children always vexed; They couldn't tell jist whin or where The goat would pop up next. Ould Missis Casey stood wan day The dirty clothes to rub Upon the washboard, when she dived Headforemosht o'er the tub; She lit upon her back an' yelled, As she was lying flat: "Go git your goon an' kill the bashte." O'Grady's goat doon that. Pat Doolan's woife hung out the wash Upon the line to dry. She wint to take it in at night, But stopped to have a cry. The sleeves av two red flannel shirts, That once were worn by Pat, Were chewed off almost to the neck. O'Grady's goat doon that. They had a party at McCune's, An' they wor having foon, Whin suddinly there was a crash An' ivrybody roon. The iseter soup fell on the floor An' nearly drowned the cat; The stove was knocked to smithereens. O'Grady's goat doon that. Moike Dyle was coortin' Biddy Shea, Both standin' at the gate, An' they wor just about to kiss Aich oother sly and shwate. They coom togither loike two rams. An' mashed their noses flat. They niver shpake whin they goes by. O'Grady's goat doon that. O'Hoolerhan brought home a keg Av dannymite wan day To blow a cistern in his yard An' hid the stuff away. But suddinly an airthquake coom, O'Hoolerhan, house an' hat, An' ivrything in sight wint up. O'Grady's goat doon that. An' there was Dooley's Savhin's Bank, That held the byes' sphare cash. One day the news came doon the sthreet The bank had gone to smash. An' ivrybody 'round was dum Wid anger and wid fear, Fer on the dhoor they red the whords, "O'Grady's goat sthruck here." The folks in Grady's naborhood All live in fear and fright; They think it's certain death to go Around there after night. An' in their shlape they see a ghost Upon the air afloat, An' wake thimselves by shoutin' out: "Luck out for Grady's goat." _Will S. Hays._ The Burial of Moses "And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Bethpeor; but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day." By Nebo's lonely mountain, On this side Jordan's wave, In a vale in the land of Moab There lies a lonely grave, And no man knows that sepulchre, And no man saw it e'er, For the angels of God upturn'd the sod And laid the dead man there. That was the grandest funeral That ever pass'd on earth; But no man heard the trampling, Or saw the train go forth-- Noiselessly as the daylight Comes back when night is done, And the crimson streak on ocean's cheek Grows into the great sun. Noiselessly as the springtime Her crown of verdure weaves, And all the trees on all the hills Open their thousand leaves; So without sound of music, Or voice of them that wept, Silently down from the mountain's crown The great procession swept. Perchance the bald old eagle On gray Beth-peor's height, Out of his lonely eyrie Look'd on the wondrous sight; Perchance the lion, stalking, Still shuns that hallow'd spot, For beast and bird have seen and heard That which man knoweth not. But when the warrior dieth, His comrades in the war, With arms reversed and muffled drum, Follow his funeral car; They show the banners taken, They tell his battles won, And after him lead his masterless steed, While peals the minute gun. Amid the noblest of the land We lay the sage to rest, And give the bard an honor'd place, With costly marble drest, In the great minster transept Where lights like glories fall, And the organ rings, and the sweet choir sings Along the emblazon'd wall. This was the truest warrior That ever buckled sword, This was the most gifted poet That ever breathed a word; And never earth's philosopher Traced with his golden pen, On the deathless page, truths half so sage As he wrote down for men. And had he not high honor,-- The hillside for a pall, To lie in state while angels wait With stars for tapers tall, And the dark rock-pines like tossing plumes, Over his bier to wave, And God's own hand, in that lonely land, To lay him in the grave? In that strange grave without a name, Whence his uncoffin'd clay Shall break again, O wondrous thought! Before the judgment day, And stand with glory wrapt around On the hills he never trod, And speak of the strife that won our life With the Incarnate Son of God. O lonely grave in Moab's land O dark Beth-peor's hill, Speak to these curious hearts of ours, And teach them to be still. God hath His mysteries of grace, Ways that we cannot tell; He hides them deep like the hidden sleep Of him He loved so well. _Cecil F. Alexander._ Nobody's Child Alone in the dreary, pitiless street, With my torn old dress, and bare, cold feet, All day have I wandered to and fro, Hungry and shivering, and nowhere to go; The night's coming on in darkness and dread, And the chill sleet beating upon my bare head. Oh! why does the wind blow upon me so wild? Is it because I am nobody's child? Just over the way there's a flood of light, And warmth, and beauty, and all things bright; Beautiful children, in robes so fair, Are caroling songs in their rapture there. I wonder if they, in their blissful glee, Would pity a poor little beggar like me, Wandering alone in the merciless street, Naked and shivering, and nothing to eat? Oh! what shall I do when the night comes down In its terrible blackness all over the town? Shall I lay me down 'neath the angry sky, On the cold, hard pavement, alone to die, When the beautiful children their prayers have said, And their mammas have tucked them up snugly in bed? For no dear mother on me ever smiled. Why is it, I wonder, I'm nobody's child? No father, no mother, no sister, not one In all the world loves me--e'en the little dogs run When I wander too near them; 'tis wondrous to see How everything shrinks from a beggar like me! Perhaps 'tis a dream; but sometimes, when I lie Gazing far up in the dark blue sky, Watching for hours some large bright star, I fancy the beautiful gates are ajar, And a host of white-robed, nameless things Come fluttering o'er me on gilded wings; A hand that is strangely soft and fair Caresses gently my tangled hair, And a voice like the carol of some wild bird-- The sweetest voice that was ever heard-- Calls me many a dear, pet name, Till my heart and spirit are all aflame. They tell me of such unbounded love, And bid me come to their home above; And then with such pitiful, sad surprise They look at me with their sweet, tender eyes, And it seems to me, out of the dreary night I am going up to that world of light, And away from the hunger and storm so wild; I am sure I shall then be somebody's child. _Phila H. Case._ A Christmas Long Ago Like a dream, it all comes o'er me as I hear the Christmas bells; Like a dream it floats before me, while the Christmas anthem swells; Like a dream it bears me onward in the silent, mystic flow, To a dear old sunny Christmas in the happy long ago. And my thoughts go backward, backward, and the years that intervene Are but as the mists and shadows when the sunlight comes between; And all earthly wealth and splendor seem but as a fleeting show, As there comes to me the picture of a Christmas long ago. I can see the great, wide hearthstone and the holly hung about; I can see the smiling faces, I can hear the children shout; I can feel the joy and gladness that the old room seem to fill, E'en the shadows on the ceiling--I can see them dancing still. I can see the little stockings hung about the chimney yet; I can feel my young heart thrilling lest the old man should forget. Ah! that fancy! Were the world mine, I would give it, if I might, To believe in old St. Nicholas, and be a child to-night. Just to hang my little stocking where it used to hang, and feel For one moment all the old thoughts and the old hopes o'er me steal. But, oh! loved and loving faces, in the firelight's dancing glow, There will never come another like that Christmas long ago! For the old home is deserted, and the ashes long have lain In the great, old-fashioned fireplace that will never shine again. Friendly hands that then clasped ours now are folded 'neath the snow; Gone the dear ones who were with us on that Christmas long ago. Let the children have their Christmas--let them have it while they may; Life is short and childhood's fleeting, and there'll surely come a day When St. Nicholas will sadly pass on by the close-shut door, Missing all the merry faces that had greeted him of yore; When no childish step shall echo through the quiet, silent room; When no childish smile shall brighten, and no laughter lift the gloom; When the shadows that fall 'round us in the fire-light's fitful glow Shall be ghosts of those who sat there in the Christmas long ago. Nearer Home One sweetly solemn thought Comes to me o'er and o'er,-- I am nearer home to-day Than I've ever been before;-- Nearer my Father's house Where the many mansions be, Nearer the great white throne, Nearer the jasper sea;-- Nearer the bound of life Where we lay our burdens down; Nearer leaving the cross, Nearer gaining the crown. But lying darkly between, Winding down through the night, Is the dim and unknown stream That leads at last to the light. Closer and closer my steps Come to the dark abysm; Closer death to my lips Presses the awful chrism. Father, perfect my trust; Strengthen the might of my faith; Let me feel as I would when I stand On the rock of the shore of death,-- Feel as I would when my feet Are slipping o'er the brink; For it may be I am nearer home, Nearer now than I think. _Phoebe Cary._ The Minuet Grandma told me all about it, Told me so I could not doubt it, How she danced, my grandma danced, long ago! How she held her pretty head, How her dainty skirts she spread, How she turned her little toes, Smiling little human rose! Grandma's hair was bright and shining, Dimpled cheeks, too! ah! how funny! Bless me, now she wears a cap, My grandma does, and takes a nap every single day; Yet she danced the minuet long ago; Now she sits there rocking, rocking, Always knitting grandpa's stocking-- Every girl was taught to knit long ago-- But her figure is so neat, And her ways so staid and sweet, I can almost see her now, Bending to her partner's bow, long ago. Grandma says our modern jumping, Rushing, whirling, dashing, bumping, Would have shocked the gentle people long ago. No, they moved with stately grace, Everything in proper place, Gliding slowly forward, then Slowly courtesying back again. Modern ways are quite alarming, grandma says, But boys were charming-- Girls and boys I mean, of course--long ago, Sweetly modest, bravely shy! What if all of us should try just to feel Like those who met in the stately minuet, long ago. With the minuet in fashion, Who could fly into a passion? All would wear the calm they wore long ago, And if in years to come, perchance, I tell my grandchild of our dance, I should really like to say, We did it in some such way, long ago. _Mary Mapes Dodge._ The Vagabonds We are two travellers, Roger and I. Roger's my dog--Come here, you scamp! Jump for the gentleman--mind your eye! Over the table--look out for the lamp!-- The rogue is growing a little old; Five years we've tramped through wind and weather, And slept outdoors when nights were cold, And ate, and drank--and starved together. We've learned what comfort is, I tell you: A bed on the floor, a bit of rosin, A fire to thaw our thumbs (poor fellow, The paw he holds up there has been frozen), Plenty of catgut for my fiddle, (This outdoor business is bad for strings), Then a few nice buckwheats hot from the griddle, And Roger and I set up for kings! No, thank you, Sir, I never drink. Roger and I are exceedingly moral. Aren't we, Roger? see him wink. Well, something hot then, we won't quarrel. He's thirsty, too--see him nod his head? What a pity, Sir, that dogs can't talk; He understands every word that's said, And he knows good milk from water and chalk. The truth is, Sir, now I reflect, I've been so sadly given to grog, I wonder I've not lost the respect (Here's to you, Sir!) even of my dog. But he sticks by through thick and thin; And this old coat with its empty pockets And rags that smell of tobacco and gin, He'll follow while he has eyes in his sockets. There isn't another creature living Would do it, and prove, through every disaster, So fond, so faithful, and so forgiving, To such a miserable, thankless master. No, Sir! see him wag his tail and grin-- By George! it makes my old eyes water-- That is, there's something in this gin That chokes a fellow, but no matter! We'll have some music, if you're willing. And Roger (hem! what a plague a cough is, Sir!) Shall march a little.--Start, you villain! Paws up! eyes front! salute your officer! 'Bout face! attention! take your rifle! (Some dogs have arms, you see.) Now hold Your cap while the gentleman gives a trifle To aid a poor old patriot soldier! March! Halt! Now show how the Rebel shakes, When he stands up to hear his sentence; Now tell me how many drams it takes To honor a jolly new acquaintance. Five yelps--that's five; he's mighty knowing; The night's before us, fill the glasses;-- Quick, Sir! I'm ill, my brain is going!-- Some brandy,--thank you;--there,--it passes! Why not reform? That's easily said; But I've gone through such wretched treatment, Sometimes forgetting the taste of bread, And scarce remembering what meat meant, That my poor stomach's past reform; And there are times when, mad with thinking, I'd sell out heaven for something warm To prop a horrible inward sinking. Is there a way to forget to think? At your age, Sir, home, fortune, friends, A dear girl's love,--but I took to drink;-- The same old story; you know how it ends. If you could have seen these classic features,-- You needn't laugh, Sir; I was not then Such a burning libel on God's creatures; I was one of your handsome men-- If you had seen her, so fair, so young, Whose head was happy on this breast; If you could have heard the songs I sung When the wine went round, you wouldn't have guess'd That ever I, Sir, should be straying From door to door, with fiddle and dog, Ragged and penniless, and playing To you to-night for a glass of grog. She's married since,--a parson's wife, 'Twas better for her that we should part; Better the soberest, prosiest life Than a blasted home and a broken heart. I have seen her--once; I was weak and spent On the dusty road; a carriage stopped, But little she dreamed as on she went, Who kissed the coin that her fingers dropped. You've set me talking, Sir; I'm sorry; It makes me wild to think of the change! What do you care for a beggar's story? Is it amusing? you find it strange? I had a mother so proud of me! 'Twas well she died before--Do you know If the happy spirits in heaven can see The ruin and wretchedness here below? Another glass, and strong, to deaden This pain; then Roger and I will start. I wonder, has he such a lumpish, leaden, Aching thing, in place of a heart? He is sad sometimes, and would weep, if he could, No doubt, remembering things that were,-- A virtuous kennel, with plenty of food, And himself a sober, respectable cur. I'm better now; that glass was warming-- You rascal! limber your lazy feet! We must be fiddling and performing For supper and bed, or starve in the street.-- Not a very gay life to lead, you think. But soon we shall go where lodgings are free, And the sleepers need neither victuals nor drink;-- The sooner, the better for Roger and me. _J.T. Trowbridge._ The Isle of Long Ago Oh, a wonderful stream is the river of Time, As it runs through the realm of tears, With a faultless rhythm and a musical rhyme, And a boundless sweep and a surge sublime, As it blends with the ocean of Years. How the winters are drifting, like flakes of snow, And the summers, like buds between; And the year in the sheaf--so they come and they go, On the river's breast, with its ebb and flow, As it glides in the shadow and sheen. There's a magical isle up the river of Time, Where the softest of airs are playing; There's a cloudless sky and a tropical clime, And a song as sweet as a vesper chime, And the Junes with the roses are staying. And the name of that isle is the Long Ago, And we bury our treasures there; There are brows of beauty and bosoms of snow-- There are heaps of dust--but we love them so!-- There are trinkets and tresses of hair; There are fragments of song that nobody sings, And a part of an infant's prayer, There's a lute unswept, and a harp without strings; There are broken vows and pieces of rings, And the garments that she used to wear. There are hands that are waved, when the fairy shore By the mirage is lifted in air; And we sometimes hear, through the turbulent roar, Sweet voices we heard in the days gone before, When the wind down the river is fair. Oh, remembered for aye be the blessed Isle, All the day of our life till night-- When the evening comes with its beautiful smile. And our eyes are closing to slumber awhile, May that "Greenwood" of Soul be in sight! _Benjamin Franklin Taylor_. NOTE: The last line of this poem needs explanation. "Greenwood" is the name of a cemetery in Brooklyn, N.Y. "Greenwood of Soul" means the soul's resting place, or heaven. The Dying Newsboy In an attic bare and cheerless, Jim the newsboy dying lay On a rough but clean straw pallet, at the fading of the day; Scant the furniture about him but bright flowers were in the room, Crimson phloxes, waxen lilies, roses laden with perfume. On a table by the bedside open at a well-worn page, Where the mother had been reading lay a Bible stained by age, Now he could not hear the verses; he was flighty, and she wept With her arms around her youngest, who close to her side had crept. Blacking boots and selling papers, in all weathers day by day, Brought upon poor Jim consumption, which was eating life away, And this cry came with his anguish for each breath a struggle cost, "'Ere's the morning _Sun_ and _'Erald_--latest news of steamship lost. Papers, mister? Morning papers?" Then the cry fell to a moan, Which was changed a moment later to another frenzied tone: "Black yer boots, sir? Just a nickel! Shine 'em like an evening star. It grows late, Jack! Night is coming. Evening papers, here they are!" Soon a mission teacher entered, and approached the humble bed; Then poor Jim's mind cleared an instant, with his cool hand on his head, "Teacher," cried he, "I remember what you said the other day, Ma's been reading of the Saviour, and through Him I see my way. He is with me! Jack, I charge you of our mother take good care When Jim's gone! Hark! boots or papers, which will I be over there? Black yer boots, sir? Shine 'em right up! Papers! Read God's book instead, Better'n papers that to die on! Jack--" one gasp, and Jim was dead! Floating from that attic chamber came the teacher's voice in prayer, And it soothed the bitter sorrow of the mourners kneeling there, He commended them to Heaven, while the tears rolled down his face, Thanking God that Jim had listened to sweet words of peace and grace, Ever 'mid the want and squalor of the wretched and the poor, Kind hearts find a ready welcome, and an always open door; For the sick are in strange places, mourning hearts are everywhere, And such need the voice of kindness, need sweet sympathy and prayer. _Emily Thornton._ Break, Break, Break Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me. O well for the fisherman's boy That he shouts with his sister at play! O well for the sailor lad That he sings in his boat on the bay! And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still! Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, O sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me. _Alfred Tennyson._ Don't Kill the Birds Don't kill the birds, the pretty birds, That sing about your door, Soon as the joyous spring has come, And chilling storms are o'er. The little birds, how sweet they sing! Oh! let them joyous live; And never seek to take the life That you can never give. Don't kill the birds, the pretty birds, That play among the trees; 'Twould make the earth a cheerless place, Should we dispense with these. The little birds, how fond they play! Do not disturb their sport; But let them warble forth their songs, Till winter cuts them short. Don't kill the birds, the happy birds, That bless the fields and grove; So innocent to look upon, They claim our warmest love. The happy birds, the tuneful birds, How pleasant 'tis to see! No spot can be a cheerless place Where'er their presence be. _D.C. Colesworthy._ Bill's in the Legislature I've got a letter, parson, from my son away out West, An' my old heart is heavy as an anvil in my breast, To think the boy whose future I had once so nicely planned Should wander from the right and come to such a bitter end. I told him when he left us, only three short years ago, He'd find himself a-plowing in a mighty crooked row; He'd miss his father's counsel and his mother's prayers, too, But he said the farm was hateful, an' he guessed he'd have to go. I know there's big temptations for a youngster in the West, But I believed our Billy had the courage to resist; An' when he left I warned him of the ever waitin' snares That lie like hidden serpents in life's pathway everywheres. But Bill, he promised faithful to be careful, an' allowed That he'd build a reputation that'd make us mighty proud. But it seems as how my counsel sort o' faded from his mind, And now he's got in trouble of the very worstest kind! His letters came so seldom that I somehow sort o' knowed That Billy was a-trampin' of a mighty rocky road; But never once imagined he would bow my head in shame, And in the dust would woller his old daddy's honored name. He writes from out in Denver, an' the story's mighty short-- I jess can't tell his mother!--It'll crush her poor old heart! An' so I reckoned, parson, you might break the news to her-- Bill's in the Legislature but he doesn't say what fur! The Bridge Builder An old man going a lone highway, Came, at the evening cold and gray, To a chasm vast and deep and wide, The old man crossed in the twilight dim, The sullen stream had no fear for him; But he turned when safe on the other side And built a bridge to span the tide. "Old man," said a fellow pilgrim near, "You are wasting your strength with building here; Your journey will end with the ending day, Yon never again will pass this way; You've crossed the chasm, deep and wide, Why build this bridge at evening tide?" The builder lifted his old gray head; "Good friend, in the path I have come," he said, "There followed after me to-day A youth whose feet must pass this way. This chasm that has been as naught to me To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be; He, too, must cross in the twilight dim; Good friend, I am building this bridge for him!" _Anonymous._ Song of Marion's Men Our band is few, but true and tried, Our leader frank and bold; The British soldier trembles When Marion's name is told. Our fortress is the good green wood, Our tent the cypress tree; We know the forest round us As seamen know the sea; We know its walls of thorny vines, Its glades of reedy grass, Its safe and silent islands Within the dark morass. Woe to the English soldiery That little dread us near! On them shall light at midnight A strange and sudden fear: When, waking to their tents on fire, They grasp their arms in vain, And they who stand to face us Are beat to earth again; And they who fly in terror deem A mighty host behind, And hear the tramp of thousands Upon the hollow wind. Then sweet the hour that brings release From danger and from toil; We talk the battle over And share the battle's spoil. The woodland rings with laugh and shout As if a hunt were up, And woodland flowers are gathered To crown the soldier's cup. With merry songs we mock the wind That in the pine-top grieves, And slumber long and sweetly On beds of oaken leaves. Well knows the fair and friendly moon The band that Marion leads-- The glitter of their rifles, The scampering of their steeds. 'Tis life our fiery barbs to guide Across the moonlight plains; 'Tis life to feel the night wind That lifts their tossing manes. A moment in the British camp-- A moment--and away-- Back to the pathless forest Before the peep of day. Grave men there are by broad Santee, Grave men with hoary hairs; Their hearts are all with Marion, For Marion are their prayers. And lovely ladies greet our band With kindliest welcoming, With smiles like those of summer, And tears like those of spring. For them we wear these trusty arms, And lay them down no more Till we have driven the Briton Forever from our shore. _William Cullen Bryant._ The Minstrel-Boy The Minstrel-Boy to the war is gone, In the ranks of death you'll find him; His father's sword he has girded on, And his wild harp slung behind him.-- "Land of song!" said the warrior-bard, "Though all the world betrays thee, One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard, One faithful harp shall praise thee!" The Minstrel fell!--but the foeman's chain Could not bring his proud soul under; The harp he loved ne'er spoke again, For he tore its chords asunder; And said, "No chains shall sully thee, Thou soul of love and bravery! Thy songs were made for the pure and free, They shall never sound in slavery!" _Thomas Moore._ Our Homestead Our old brown homestead reared its walls, From the wayside dust aloof, Where the apple-boughs could almost cast Their fruitage on its roof: And the cherry-tree so near it grew, That when awake I've lain, In the lonesome nights, I've heard the limbs, As they creaked against the pane: And those orchard trees, O those orchard trees! I've seen my little brothers rocked In their tops by the summer breeze. The sweet-brier under the window-sill, Which the early birds made glad, And the damask rose by the garden fence Were all the flowers we had. I've looked at many a flower since then, Exotics rich and rare, That to other eyes were lovelier, But not to me so fair; O those roses bright, O those roses bright! I have twined them with my sister's locks, That are hid in the dust from sight! We had a well, a deep old well, Where the spring was never dry, And the cool drops down from the mossy stones Were falling constantly: And there never was water half so sweet As that in my little cup, Drawn up to the curb by the rude old sweep, Which my father's hand set up; And that deep old well, O that deep old well! I remember yet the splashing sound Of the bucket as it fell. Our homestead had an ample hearth, Where at night we loved to meet; There my mother's voice was always kind, And her smile was always sweet; And there I've sat on my father's knee, And watched his thoughtful brow, With my childish hand in his raven hair,-- That hair is silver now! But that broad hearth's light, O that broad hearth's light! And my father's look, and my mother's smile,-- They are in my heart to-night. _Phoebe Gary._ The Ballad of the Tempest We were crowded in the cabin, Not a soul would dare to sleep,-- It was midnight on the waters, And a storm was on the deep. 'Tis a fearful thing in winter To be shattered by the blast, And to hear the rattling trumpet Thunder, "Cut away the mast!" So we shuddered there in silence,-- For the stoutest held his breath, While the hungry sea was roaring And the breakers talked with Death. As thus we sat in darkness, Each one busy with his prayers, "We are lost!" the captain shouted, As he staggered down the stairs. But his little daughter whispered, As she took his icy hand, "Isn't God upon the ocean, Just the same as on the land?" Then we kissed the little maiden, And we spoke in better cheer, And we anchored safe in harbor, When the morn was shining clear. _James T. Fields._ Santa Filomena Whene'er a noble deed is wrought, Whene'er is spoken a noble thought, Our hearts, in glad surprise, To higher levels rise. The tidal wave of deeper souls Into our inmost being rolls And lifts us unawares Out of all meaner cares. Honor to those whose words or deeds Thus help us in our daily needs, And by their overflow, Raise us from what is low! Thus thought I, as by night I read Of the great army of the dead, The trenches cold and damp, The starved and frozen camp,-- The wounded from the battle-plain, In dreary hospitals of pain, The cheerless corridors, The cold and stony floors. Lo! in that house of misery A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom, And flit from room to room. And slow, as in a dream of bliss, The speechless sufferer turns to kiss Her shadow, as it falls Upon the darkening walls. As if a door in heaven should be Opened and then closed suddenly, The vision came and went, The light shone and was spent. On England's annals, through the long Hereafter of her speech and song, That light its rays shall cast From portals of the past. A lady with a lamp shall stand In the great history of the land A noble type of good, Heroic Womanhood. Nor even shall be wanting here The palm, the lily, and the spear, The symbols that of yore Saint Filomena bore. _Henry W. Longfellow._ The Knight's Toast The feast is o'er! Now brimming wine In lordly cup is seen to shine Before each eager guest; And silence fills the crowded hall, As deep as when the herald's call Thrills in the loyal breast. Then up arose the noble host, And, smiling, cried: "A toast! a toast! To all our ladies fair! Here before all, I pledge the name Of Staunton's proud and beauteous dame, The Ladye Gundamere!" Then to his feet each gallant sprung, And joyous was the shout that rung, As Stanley gave the word; And every cup was raised on high, Nor ceased the loud and gladsome cry Till Stanley's voice was heard. "Enough, enough," he, smiling, said, And lowly bent his haughty head; "That all may have their due, Now each in turn must play his part, And pledge the lady of his heart, Like gallant knight and true!" Then one by one each guest sprang up, And drained in turn the brimming cup, And named the loved one's name; And each, as hand on high he raised, His lady's grace or beauty praised, Her constancy and fame. 'Tis now St. Leon's turn to rise; On him are fixed those countless eyes;-- A gallant knight is he; Envied by some, admired by all, Far famed in lady's bower and hall,-- The flower of chivalry. St. Leon raised his kindling eye, And lifts the sparkling cup on high: "I drink to one," he said, "Whose image never may depart, Deep graven on this grateful heart, Till memory be dead. "To one, whose love for me shall last When lighter passions long have past,-- So holy 'tis and true; To one, whose love hath longer dwelt, More deeply fixed, more keenly felt, Than any pledged by you." Each guest upstarted at the word, And laid a hand upon his sword, With fury flashing eye; And Stanley said: "We crave the name, Proud knight, of this most peerless dame, Whose love you count so high." St. Leon paused, as if he would Not breathe her name in careless mood, Thus lightly to another; Then bent his noble head, as though To give that word the reverence due, And gently said: "My Mother!" _Sir Walter Scott._ The Old Man Dreams O for one hour of youthful joy! Give back my twentieth spring! I'd rather laugh a bright-haired boy Than reign a gray-beard king; Off with the spoils of wrinkled age! Away with learning's crown! Tear out life's wisdom-written page, And dash its trophies down! One moment let my life-blood stream From boyhood's fount of flame! Give me one giddy, reeling dream Of life all love and fame! My listening angel heard the prayer, And, calmly smiling, said, "If I but touch thy silvered hair, Thy hasty wish hath sped. "But is there nothing in thy track To bid thee fondly stay, While the swift seasons hurry back To find the wished-for day?" Ah! truest soul of womankind! Without thee what were life? One bliss I cannot leave behind: I'll take--my--precious--wife! The angel took a sapphire pen And wrote in rainbow dew, "The man would be a boy again, And be a husband, too!" "And is there nothing yet unsaid Before the change appears? Remember, all their gifts have fled With those dissolving years!" "Why, yes; for memory would recall My fond paternal joys; I could not bear to leave them all: I'll take--my--girl--and--boys!" The smiling angel dropped his pen-- "Why, this will never do; The man would be a boy again, And be a father too!" And so I laughed--my laughter woke The household with its noise-- And wrote my dream, when morning broke, To please the gray-haired boys. _Oliver Wendell Holmes._ Washington's Birthday The bells of Mount Vernon are ringing to-day, And what say their melodious numbers To the flag blooming air? List, what do they say? "The fame of the hero ne'er slumbers!" The world's monument stands the Potomac beside, And what says the shaft to the river? "When the hero has lived for his country, and died, Death crowns him a hero forever." The bards crown the heroes and children rehearse The songs that give heroes to story, And what say the bards to the children? "No verse Can yet measure Washington's glory. "For Freedom outlives the old crowns of the earth, And Freedom shall triumph forever, And Time must long wait the true song of his birth Who sleeps by the beautiful river." _Hezekiah Butterworth._ April! April! Are You Here? April! April! are you here? Oh, how fresh the wind is blowing! See! the sky is bright and clear, Oh, how green the grass is growing! April! April! are you here? April! April! is it you? See how fair the flowers are springing! Sun is warm and brooks are clear, Oh, how glad the birds are singing! April! April! is it you? April! April! you are here! Though your smiling turn to weeping, Though your skies grow cold and drear, Though your gentle winds are sleeping, April! April! you are here! _Dora Read Goodale._ A Laughing Chorus Oh, such a commotion under the ground When March called, "Ho, there! ho!" Such spreading of rootlets far and wide, Such whispering to and fro; And, "Are you ready?" the Snowdrop asked, "'Tis time to start, you know." "Almost, my dear," the Scilla replied; "I'll follow as soon as you go." Then, "Ha! ha! ha!" a chorus came Of laughter soft and low, From the millions of flowers under the ground, Yes--millions--beginning to grow. O, the pretty brave things! through the coldest days, Imprisoned in walls of brown, They never lost heart though the blast shrieked loud, And the sleet and the hail came down, But patiently each wrought her beautiful dress, Or fashioned her beautiful crown; And now they are coming to brighten the world, Still shadowed by Winter's frown; And well may they cheerily laugh, "Ha! ha!" In a chorus soft and low, The millions of flowers hid under the ground Yes--millions--beginning to grow. The Courtin' God makes sech nights, all white an' still Fur 'z you can look or listen, Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill, All silence an' all glisten. Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown An' peeked in thru the winder. An' there sot Huldy all alone, 'ith no one nigh to hender. A fireplace filled the room's one side With half a cord o' wood in-- There warn't no stoves (tell comfort died) To bake ye to a puddin'. The wa'nut logs shot sparkles out Towards the pootiest, bless her, An' leetle flames danced all about The chiny on the dresser. Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung, An' in amongst 'em rusted The ole queen's-arm thet gran'ther Young Fetched back from Concord busted. The very room, coz she was in, Seemed warm from floor to ceilin', An' she looked full ez rosy agin Ez the apples she was peelin'. 'Twas kin' o' kingdom-come to look On sech a blessed cretur, A dogrose blushin' to a brook Ain't modester nor sweeter. He was six foot o' man, A 1, Clear grit an' human natur'; None couldn't quicker pitch a ton Nor dror a furrer straighter, He'd sparked it with full twenty gals, Hed squired 'em, danced 'em, druv 'em, Fust this one, an' then thet, by spells-- All is, he couldn't love 'em, But long o' her his veins 'ould run All crinkly like curled maple, The side she breshed felt full o' sun Ez a south slope in Ap'il. She thought no v'ice hed sech a swing Ez hisn in the choir; My! when he made Ole Hunderd ring, She _knowed_ the Lord was nigher. An' she'd blush scarlet, right in prayer, When her new meetin'-bunnit Felt somehow thru its crown a pair O' blue eyes sot upun it. Thet night, I tell ye, she looked _some!_ She seemed to 've gut a new soul, For she felt sartin-sure he'd come, Down to her very shoe-sole. She heered a foot, an' knowed it tu, A-raspin' on the scraper,-- All ways to once her feelin's flew Like sparks in burnt-up paper. He kin' o' l'itered on the mat, Some doubtfle o' the sekle, His heart kep' goin' pity-pat, But hern went pity Zekle. An' yit she gin her cheer a jerk Ez though she wished him furder, An' on her apples kep' to work, Parin' away like murder. "You want to see my Pa, I s'pose?" "Wal--no--I come dasignin'"-- "To see my Ma? She's sprinklin' clo'es Agin to-morrer's i'nin'." To say why gals acts so or so, Or don't, 'ould be presumin'; Mebby to mean _yes_ an' say _no_ Comes nateral to women. He stood a spell on one foot fust, Then stood a spell on t'other, An' on which one he felt the wust He couldn't ha' told ye nuther. Says he, "I'd better call agin"; Says she, "Think likely, Mister"; Thet last work pricked him like a pin, An'--Wal, he up an' kist her. When Ma bimeby upon 'em slips, Huldy sot pale ez ashes, All kin' o' smily roun' the lips An' teary roun' the lashes. For she was jes' the quiet kind Whose naturs never vary, Like streams that keep a summer mind Snowhid in Jenooary. The blood clost roun' her heart felt glued Too tight for all expressin', Tell mother see how metters stood, An' gin 'em both her blessin'. Then her red come back like the tide Down to the Bay o' Fundy. An' all I know is they was cried In meetin' come nex' Sunday. _James Russell Lowell._ An Old Man's Dreams It was the twilight hour; Behind the western hill the sun had sunk, Leaving the evening sky aglow with crimson light. The air is filled with fragrance and with sound; High in the tops of shadowy vine-wreathed trees, Grave parent-birds were twittering good-night songs, To still their restless brood. Across the way A noisy little brook made pleasant Music on the summer air, And farther on, the sweet, faint sound Of Whippoorwill Falls rose on the air, and fell Like some sweet chant at vespers. The air is heavy With the scent of mignonette and rose, And from the beds of flowers the tall White lilies point like angel fingers upward, Casting on the air an incense sweet, That brings to mind the old, old story Of the alabaster box that loving Mary Broke upon the Master's feet. Upon his vine-wreathed porch An old white-headed man sits dreaming Happy, happy dreams of days that are no more; And listening to the quaint old song With which his daughter lulled her child to rest: "Abide with me," she says; "Fast falls the eventide; The darkness deepens,-- Lord, with me abide." And as he listens to the sounds that fill the Summer air, sweet, dreamy thoughts Of his "lost youth" come crowding thickly up; And, for a while, he seems a boy again. With feet all bare He wades the rippling brook, and with a boyish shout Gathers the violets blue, and nodding ferns, That wave a welcome from the other side. With those he wreathes The sunny head of little Nell, a neighbor's child, Companion of his sorrows and his joys. Sweet, dainty Nell, whose baby life Seemed early linked with his, And whom he loved with all a boy's devotion. Long years have flown. No longer boy and girl, but man and woman grown, They stand again beside the brook, that murmurs Ever in its course, nor stays for time nor man, And tell the old, old story, And promise to be true till life for them shall end. Again the years roll on, And they are old. The frost of age Has touched the once-brown hair, And left it white as are the chaliced lilies. Children, whose rosy lips once claimed A father's blessing and a mother's love, Have grown to man's estate, save two Whom God called early home to wait For them in heaven. And then the old man thinks How on a night like this, when faint And sweet as half-remembered dreams Old Whippoorwill Falls did murmur soft Its evening psalms, when fragrant lilies Pointed up the way her Christ had gone, God called the wife and mother home, And bade him wait. Oh! why is it so hard for Man to wait? to sit with folded hands, Apart, amid the busy throng, And hear the buzz and hum of toil around; To see men reap and bind the golden sheaves Of earthly fruits, while he looks idly on, And knows he may not join, But only wait till God has said, "Enough!" And calls him home! And thus the old man dreams, And then awakes; awakes to hear The sweet old song just dying On the pulsing evening air: "When other helpers fail, And comforts flee, Lord of the helpless, Oh, abide with me!" _Eliza M. Sherman._ God's Message to Men God said: I am tired of kings; I suffer them no more; Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor. Think ye I have made this ball A field of havoc and war, Where tyrants great and tyrants small Might harry the weak and poor? My angel--his name is Freedom-- Choose him to be your king. He shall cut pathways east and west And fend you with his wing. I will never have a noble; No lineage counted great, Fishers and choppers and plowmen Shall constitute a state, And ye shall succor man, 'Tis nobleness to serve; Help them who cannot help again; Beware from right to swerve. _Ralph Waldo Emerson._ The Sandman The rosy clouds float overhead, The sun is going down, And now the Sandman's gentle tread Comes stealing through the town. "White sand, white sand," he softly cries, And, as he shakes his hand, Straightway there lies on babies' eyes His gift of shining sand. Blue eyes, gray eyes, black eyes and brown, As shuts the rose, they softly close, when he goes through the town. From sunny beaches far away, Yes, in another land, He gathers up, at break of day, His store of shining sand. No tempests beat that shore remote, No ships may sail that way; His little boat alone may float Within that lovely bay. Blue eyes, gray eyes, black eyes and brown, As shuts the rose, they softly close, when he goes through the town. He smiles to see the eyelids close Above the happy eyes, And every child right well he knows-- Oh, he is very wise! But if, as he goes through the land, A naughty baby cries, His other hand takes dull gray sand To close the wakeful eyes. Blue eyes, gray eyes, black eyes and brown, As shuts the rose, they softly close, when he goes through the town. So when you hear the Sandman's song Sound through the twilight sweet, Be sure you do not keep him long A-waiting in the street. Lie softly down, dear little head, Rest quiet, busy hands, Till by your bed when good-night's said, He strews the shining sands. Blue eyes, gray eyes, black eyes and brown, As shuts the rose, they softly close, when he goes through the town. _Margaret Vandegrift._ Ring Out, Wild Bells Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light: The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true. Ring out the grief that saps the mind, For those that here we see no more; Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind. Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws. Ring out false pride in place and blood, The civic slander and the spite; Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good. Ring out old shapes of foul disease; Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace. Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be. _Alfred, Lord Tennyson._ The Wishing Bridge Among the legends sung or said Along our rocky shore, The Wishing Bridge of Marblehead May well be sung once more. An hundred years ago (so ran The old-time story) all Good wishes said above its span Would, soon or late, befall. If pure and earnest, never failed The prayers of man or maid For him who on the deep sea sailed, For her at home who stayed. Once thither came two girls from school And wished in childish glee: And one would be a queen and rule, And one the world would see. Time passed; with change of hopes and fears And in the selfsame place, Two women, gray with middle years, Stood wondering, face to face. With wakened memories, as they met, They queried what had been: "A poor man's wife am I, and yet," Said one, "I am a queen. "My realm a little homestead is, Where, lacking crown and throne, I rule by loving services And patient toil alone." The other said: "The great world lies Beyond me as it laid; O'er love's and duty's boundaries My feet have never strayed. "I see but common sights at home, Its common sounds I hear, My widowed mother's sick-bed room Sufficeth for my sphere. "I read to her some pleasant page Of travel far and wide, And in a dreamy pilgrimage We wander side by side. "And when, at last, she falls asleep, My book becomes to me A magic glass: my watch I keep, But all the world I see. "A farm-wife queen your place you fill, While fancy's privilege Is mine to walk the earth at will, Thanks to the Wishing Bridge." "Nay, leave the legend for the truth," The other cried, "and say God gives the wishes of our youth But in His own best way!" _John Greenleaf Whittier._ The Things Divine These are the things I hold divine: A trusting chi id's hand laid in mine, Rich brown earth and wind-tossed trees, The taste of grapes and the drone of bees, A rhythmic gallop, long June days, A rose-hedged lane and lovers' lays, The welcome smile on neighbors' faces, Cool, wide hills and open places, Breeze-blown fields of silver rye, The wild, sweet note of the plover's cry, Fresh spring showers and scent of box, The soft, pale tint of the garden phlox, Lilacs blooming, a drowsy noon, A flight of geese and an autumn moon, Rolling meadows and storm-washed heights, A fountain murmur on summer nights, A dappled fawn in the forest hush, Simple words and the song of a thrush, Rose-red dawns and a mate to share With comrade soul my gypsy fare, A waiting fire when the twilight ends, A gallant heart and the voice of friends. _Jean Brooks Burt._ Mothers of Men The bravest battle that ever was fought! Shall I tell you where and when? On the map of the world you will find it not, 'Twas fought by the mothers of men. Nay, not with cannon or battle shot, With sword or nobler pen, Nay, not with eloquent words or thought From mouths of wonderful men; But deep in the walled-up woman's heart-- Of woman that would not yield, But bravely, silently, bore her part-- Lo, there is that battle field! No marshaling troup, no bivouac song, No banner to gleam or wave, But oh! these battles, they last so long-- From babyhood to the grave. Yet, faithful as a bridge of stars, She fights in her walled-up town-- Fights on and on in the endless wars, Then, silent, unseen, goes down. Oh, ye with banner and battle shot, And soldiers to shout and praise, I tell you the kingliest victories fought Were fought in those silent ways. Oh, spotless in a world of shame, With splendid and silent scorn, Go back to God as white as you came-- The kingliest warrior born! _Joaquin Miller._ Echo "I asked of Echo, t'other day (Whose words are often few and funny), What to a novice she could say Of courtship, love and matrimony. Quoth Echo plainly,--'Matter-o'-money!' "Whom should I marry? Should it be A dashing damsel, gay and pert, A pattern of inconstancy; Or selfish, mercenary flirt? Quoth Echo, sharply,--'Nary flirt!' "What if, aweary of the strife That long has lured the dear deceiver, She promise to amend her life. And sin no more; can I believe her? Quoth Echo, very promptly;--'Leave her!' "But if some maiden with a heart On me should venture to bestow it, Pray should I act the wiser part To take the treasure or forgo it? Quoth Echo, with decision,--'Go it!' "But what if, seemingly afraid To bind her fate in Hymen's fetter, She vow she means to die a maid, In answer to my loving letter? Quoth Echo, rather coolly,--'Let her!' "What if, in spite of her disdain, I find my heart entwined about With Cupid's dear, delicious chain So closely that I can't get out? Quoth Echo, laughingly,--'Get out!' "But if some maid with beauty blest, As pure and fair as Heaven can make her, Will share my labor and my rest Till envious Death shall overtake her? Quoth Echo (sotto voce),-'Take her!'" _John G. Saxe._ Life, I Know Not What Thou Art Life! I know not what thou art, But know that thou and I must part; And when, or how, or where we met I own to me's a secret yet. Life! we've been long together Through pleasant and through cloudy weather; 'Tis hard to part when friends are dear-- Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear; Then steal away; give little warning, Choose thine own time; Say not Good Night, but in some brighter clime Bid me Good Morning. _Anna L. Barbauld._ Autumn Leaves In the hush and the lonely silence Of the chill October night, Some wizard has worked his magic With fairy fingers light. The leaves of the sturdy oak trees Are splendid with crimson and red. And the golden flags of the maple Are fluttering overhead. Through the tangle of faded grasses There are trailing vines ablaze, And the glory of warmth and color Gleams through the autumn haze. Like banners of marching armies That farther and farther go; Down the winding roads and valleys The boughs of the sumacs glow. So open your eyes, little children, And open your hearts as well, Till the charm of the bright October Shall fold you in its spell. _Angelina Wray._ A Message for the Year Not who you are, but what you are, That's what the world demands to know; Just what you are, what you can do To help mankind to live and grow. Your lineage matters not at all, Nor counts one whit your gold or gear, What can you do to show the world The reason for your being here? For just what space you occupy The world requires you pay the rent; It does not shower its gifts galore, Its benefits are only lent; And it has need of workers true, Willing of hand, alert of brain; Go forth and prove what you can do, Nor wait to count o'er loss or gain. Give of your best to help and cheer, The more you give the more you grow; This message evermore rings true, In time you reap whate'er you sow. No failure you have need to fear, Except to fail to do your best-- What have you done, what can you do? That is the question, that the test. _Elizabeth Clarke Hardy._ Song of the Chattahoochee[*] Out of the hills of Habersham, Down the valleys of Hall, I hurry amain to reach the plain, Run the rapid and leap the fall, Split at the rock and together again, Accept my bed, or narrow or wide, And flee from folly on every side With a lover's pain to attain the plain Far from the hills of Habersham, Far from the valleys of Hall. All down the hills of Habersham, All through the valleys of Hall, The rushes cried "Abide, abide," The wilful waterweeds held me thrall, The laving laurel turned my tide, The ferns and the fondling grass said "Stay," The dewberry dipped for to work delay, And the little reeds sighed "Abide, abide Here in the hills of Habersham, Here in the valleys of Hall." High o'er the hills of Habersham, Veiling the valleys of Hall, The hickory told me manifold Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall Wrought me her shadowy self to hold, The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine, O'erleaning, with flickering meaning and sign, Said, "Pass not, so cold, these manifold Deep shades of the hills of Habersham, These glades in the valleys of Hall." And oft in the hills of Habersham, And oft in the valleys of Hall, The white quartz shone, and the smooth brookstone Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl, And many a luminous jewel lone --Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist, Ruby, garnet, and amethyst-- Made lures with the lights of streaming stone, In the clefts of the hills of Habersham, In the beds of the valleys of Hall. But oh, not the hills of Habersham, And oh, not the valleys of Hall Avail: I am fain for to water the plain. Downward the voices of Duty call-- Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main. The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn, And a myriad flowers mortally yearn, And the lordly main from beyond the plain Calls o'er the hills of Habersham, Calls through the valleys of Hall. _Sidney Lanier._ [Footnote *: Used by special permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons.] Courting in Kentucky When Mary Ann Dollinger got the skule daown thar on Injun Bay I was glad, fer I like ter see a gal makin' her honest way, I heerd some talk in the village abaout her flyin' high, Tew high for busy farmer folks with chores ter dew ter fly; But I paid no sorter attention ter all the talk ontell She come in her reg-lar boardin' raound ter visit with us a spell. My Jake an' her has been cronies ever since they could walk, An' it tuk me aback ter hear her kerrectin' him in his talk. Jake ain't no hand at grammar, though he hain't his beat for work; But I sez ter myself, "Look out, my gal, yer a-foolin' with a Turk!" Jake bore it wonderful patient, an' said in a mournful way, He p'sumed he was behindhand with the doin's at Injun Bay. I remember once he was askin' for some o' my Injun buns, An' she said he should allus say, "them air," stid o' "them is" the ones. Wal, Mary Ann kep' at him stiddy mornin' an' evenin' long, Tell he dassent open his mouth for fear o' talkin' wrong. One day I was pickin' currants down by the old quince tree, When I heerd Jake's voice a-sayin', "Be ye willin' ter marry me?" An' Mary Ann kerrectin', "Air ye willin', yeou sh'd say." Our Jake he put his foot daown in a plum decided way. "No wimmen-folks is a-goin' ter be rearrangin' me, Hereafter I says 'craps,' 'them is,' 'I calk'late,' an' 'I be.' Ef folks don't like my talk they needn't hark ter what I say; But I ain't a-goin' to take no sass from folks from Injun Bay; I ask you free an' final, 'Be ye goin' to marry me?'" An' Mary Ann sez, tremblin', yet anxious-like, "I be." God's Will is Best Whichever way the wind doth blow, Some heart is glad to have it so; Then blow it east, or blow it west, The wind that blows, that wind is best. My little craft sails not alone,-- A thousand fleets, from every zone, Are out upon a thousand seas, And what for me were favoring breeze Might dash another with the shock Of doom upon some hidden rock. I leave it to a higher Will To stay or speed me, trusting still That all is well, and sure that He Who launched my bark will sail with me Through storm and calm, and will not fail, Whatever breezes may prevail, To land me, every peril past, Within His Haven at the last. Then blow it east, or blow it west, The wind that blows, that wind is best. _Caroline H. Mason._ The School-Master's Guests I The district school-master was sitting behind his great book-laden desk, Close-watching the motions of scholars, pathetic and gay and grotesque. As whisper the half-leafless branches, when autumn's brisk breezes have come, His little scrub-thicket of pupils sent upward a half-smothered hum. There was little Tom Timms on the front seat, whose face was withstanding a drouth. And jolly Jack Gibbs just behind him, with a rainy new moon for a mouth; There were both of the Smith boys, as studious as if they bore names that could bloom, And Jim Jones, a heaven-built mechanic, the slyest young knave in the room, With a countenance grave as a horse's, and his honest eyes fixed on a pin, Queer-bent on a deeply-laid project to tunnel Joe Hawkins's skin. There were anxious young novices, drilling their spelling-books into their brain, Loud-puffing each half-whispered letter, like an engine just starting its train; There was one fiercely muscular fellow, who scowled at the sums on his slate, And leered at the innocent figures a look of unspeakable hate; And set his white teeth close together, and gave his thin lips a short twist, As to say, "I could whip you, confound you! could such things be done with the fist!" There were two knowing girls in the corner, each one with some beauty possessed, In a whisper discussing the problem which one the young master likes best; A class in the front, with their readers, were telling, with difficult pains, How perished brave Marco Bozzaris while bleeding at all of his veins; And a boy on the floor to be punished, a statue of idleness stood, Making faces at all of the others, and enjoying the scene all he could. II Around were the walls, gray and dingy, which every old school-sanctum hath, With many a break on their surface, where grinned a wood-grating of lath. A patch of thick plaster, just over the school-master's rickety chair, Seemed threat'ningly o'er him suspended, like Damocles' sword, by a hair. There were tracks on the desks where the knife-blades had wandered in search of their prey; Their tops were as duskily spattered as if they drank ink every day. The square stove it puffed and it crackled, and broke out in red flaming sores, Till the great iron quadruped trembled like a dog fierce to rush out-o'-doors. White snowflakes looked in at the windows; the gale pressed its lips to the cracks; And the children's hot faces were streaming, the while they were freezing their backs. III Now Marco Bozzaris had fallen, and all of his suff'rings were o'er, And the class to their seats were retreating, when footsteps were heard at the door; And five of the good district fathers marched into the room in a row, And stood themselves up by the fire, and shook off their white cloaks of snow. And the spokesman, a grave squire of sixty, with countenance solemnly sad, Spoke thus, while the children all listened, with all of the ears that they had: "We've come here, school-master, in-tendin' to cast an inquirin' eye 'round, Concernin' complaints that's been entered, an' fault that has lately been found; To pace off the width of your doin's, an' witness what you've been about, An' see if it's paying to keep you, or whether we'd best turn ye out. "The first thing I'm bid for to mention is, when the class gets up to read You give 'em too tight of a reinin', an' touch 'em up more than they need; You're nicer than wise in the matter of holdin' the book in one han', An' you turn a stray _g_ in their _doin's_, an' tack an odd _d_ on their _an'_; There ain't no great good comes of speakin' the words so polite, as I see, Providin' you know what the facts is, an' tell 'em off jest as they be. An' then there's that readin' in corncert, is censured from first unto last; It kicks up a heap of a racket, when folks is a-travelin' past. Whatever is done as to readin', providin' things go to my say, Shan't hang on no new-fangled hinges, but swing in the old-fashioned way." And the other four good district fathers gave quick the consent that was due, And nodded obliquely, and muttered: "Them 'ere is my sentiments tew." "Then as to your spellin': I've heern tell, by the mas has looked into this, That you turn the _u_ out o' your _labour_, an' make the word shorter than 'tis; An' clip the _k_ off yer _musick_, which makes my son Ephraim perplexed, An' when he spells out as he ought'r, you pass the word on to the next. They say there's some new-grafted books here that don't take them letters along; But if it is so, just depend on 't, them new-grafted books is made wrong. You might just as well say that Jackson didn't know all there was about war, As to say that old Spellin'-book Webster didn't know what them letters was for." And the other four good district fathers gave quick the consent that was due, And scratched their heads slyly and softly, and said: "Them's my sentiments tew." "Then, also, your 'rithmetic doin's, as they are reported to me, Is that you have left Tare an' Tret out, an' also the old Rule o' Three; An' likewise brought in a new study, some high-steppin' scholars to please, With saw-bucks an' crosses and pothooks, an' _w's, x's, y's_ an' _z's_. We ain't got no time for such foolin'; there ain't no great good to be reached By tiptoein' childr'n up higher than ever their fathers was teached." And the other four good district fathers gave quick the consent that was due, And cocked one eye up to the ceiling, and said: "Them's my sentiments tew." "Another thing, I must here mention, comes into the question to-day, Concernin' some things in the grammar you're teachin' our gals for to say. My gals is as steady as clockwork, and never give cause for much fear, But they come home from school t'other evenin' a-talking such stuff as this here: 'I love,' an' 'Thou lovest,' an' 'He loves,' an' 'We love,' an' 'You love,' an' 'They--' An' they answered my questions: 'It's grammar'--'twas all I could get 'em to say. Now if, 'stead of doin' your duty, you're carryin' matters on so As to make the gals say that they love you, it's just all that I want to know." IV Now Jim, the young heaven-built mechanic, in the dusk of the evening before, Had well-nigh unjointed the stovepipe, to make it come down on the floor; And the squire bringing smartly his foot down, as a clincher to what he had said, A joint of the pipe fell upon him, and larruped him square on the head. The soot flew in clouds all about him, and blotted with black all the place And the squire and the other four fathers were peppered with black in the face. The school, ever sharp for amusement, laid down all their cumbersome books And, spite of the teacher's endeavors, laughed loud at their visitors' looks. And the squire, as he stalked to the doorway, swore oaths of a violet hue; And the four district fathers, who followed, seemed to say: "Them's my sentiments tew." _Will Carleton._ Mother o' Mine If I were hanged on the highest hill, Mother o' mine! Oh, mother o' mine! I know whose love would follow me still; Mother o' mine! Oh, mother o' mine! If I were drowned in the deepest sea, Mother o' mine! Oh, mother o' mine! I know whose tears would flow down to me, Mother o' mine! Oh, mother o' mine! If I were damned o' body and soul, Mother o' mine! Oh, mother o' mine! I know whose prayers would make me whole, Mother o' mine! Oh, mother o' mine! _Rudyard Kipling._ Encouragement Who dat knockin' at de do'? Why, Ike Johnson--yes, fu' sho'! Come in, Ike. I's mighty glad You come down. I t'ought you's mad At me 'bout de othah night, An' was stayin' 'way fu' spite. Say, now, was you mad fu' true W'en I kin' o' laughed at you? Speak up, Ike, an' 'spress yo'se'f. 'Tain't no use a-lookin' sad, An' a-mekin' out you's mad; Ef you's gwine to be so glum, Wondah why you evah come. I don't lak nobidy 'roun' Dat jes' shet dey mouf an' frown-- Oh, now, man, don't act a dunce! Cain't you talk? I tol' you once, Speak up, Ike, an' 'spress yo'se'f. Wha'd you come hyeah fu' to-night? Body'd t'ink yo' haid ain't right. I's done all dat I kin do-- Dressed perticler, jes' fu' you; Reckon I'd a' bettah wo' My ol' ragged calico. Aftah all de pains I's took, Cain't you tell me how I look? Speak up, Ike, an' 'spress yo'se'f. Bless my soul! I 'mos' fu'got Tellin' you 'bout Tildy Scott. Don't you know, come Thu'sday night, She gwine ma'y Lucius White? Miss Lize say I allus wuh Heap sight laklier 'n huh; An' she'll git me somep'n new, Ef I wants to ma'y too. Speak up, Ike, an' 'spress yo'se'f. I could ma'y in a week, If de man I wants 'ud speak. Tildy's presents 'll be fine, But dey wouldn't ekal mine. Him whut gits me fu' a wife 'll be proud, you bet yo' life. I's had offers, some ain't quit; But I hasn't ma'ied yit! Speak up, Ike, an' 'spress yo'se'f. Ike, I loves you--yes, I does; You's my choice, and allus was. Laffin' at you ain't no harm-- Go 'way, dahky, whah's yo' arm? Hug me closer--dah, da's right! Wasn't you a awful sight, Havin' me to baig you so? Now ax whut you want to know-- Speak up, Ike, an' 'spress yo'se'f. _Paul Laurence Dunbar._ The Harp That Once Through Tara's Halls The harp that once through Tara's halls The soul of music shed, Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls As if that soul were fled. So sleeps the pride of former days, So glory's thrill is o'er, And hearts, that once beat high for praise, Now feel that pulse no more. No more to chiefs and ladies bright The harp of Tara swells: The chord alone, that breaks at night, Its tale of ruin tells. Thus freedom now so seldom wakes, The only throb she gives Is when some heart indignant breaks, To show that still she lives. _Thomas Moore._ Aux Italiens At Paris it was, at the opera there;-- And she looked like a queen in a book that night, With the wreath of pearl in her raven hair, And the brooch on her breast so bright. Of all the operas that Verdi wrote, The best, to my taste, is the Trovatore; And Mario can soothe, with a tenor note, The souls in purgatory. The moon on the tower slept soft as snow; And who was not thrilled in the strangest way, As we heard him sing, while the gas burned low, _Non ti scordar di me?_[A] The emperor there, in his box of state, Looked grave, as if he had just then seen The red flag wave from the city gate, Where his eagles in bronze had been. The empress, too, had a tear in her eye, You'd have said that her fancy had gone back again, For one moment, under the old blue sky, To the old glad life in Spain. Well, there in our front-row box we sat Together, my bride betrothed and I; My gaze was fixed on my opera hat, And hers on the stage hard by. And both were silent, and both were sad. Like a queen she leaned on her full white arm, With that regal, indolent air she had; So confident of her charm! I have not a doubt she was thinking then Of her former lord, good soul that he was! Who died the richest and roundest of men. The Marquis of Carabas. I hope that, to get to the kingdom of heaven, Through a needle's eye he had not to pass; I wish him well, for the jointure given To my Lady of Carabas. Meanwhile, I was thinking of my first love, As I had not been thinking of aught for years, Till over my eyes there began to move Something that felt like tears. I thought of the dress that she wore last time, When we stood 'neath the cypress trees together, In that lost land, in that soft clime, In the crimson evening weather: Of that muslin dress (for the eve was hot); And her warm white neck in its golden chain; And her full soft hair, just tied in a knot, And falling loose again; And the jasmine flower in her fair young breast; (Oh, the faint, sweet smell of that jasmine flower!) And the one bird singing alone to his nest; And the one star over the tower. I thought of our little quarrels and strife, And the letter that brought me back my ring; And it all seemed then, in the waste of life, Such a very little thing! For I thought of her grave below the hill, Which the sentinel cypress tree stands over; And I thought, "Were she only living still, How I could forgive her and love her!" And I swear, as I thought of her thus, in that hour, And of how, after all, old things are best, That I smelt the smell of that jasmine flower Which she used to wear in her breast. It smelt so faint, and it smelt so sweet, It made me creep, and it made me cold; Like the scent that steals from the crumbling sheet Where a mummy is half unrolled. And I turned and looked: she was sitting there, In a dim box over the stage, and drest In that muslin dress, with that full, soft hair, And that jasmine in her breast! I was here, and she was there; And the glittering horse-shoe curved between:-- From my bride betrothed, with her raven hair, And her sumptuous, scornful mien, To my early love, with her eyes downcast, And over her primrose face the shade, (In short, from the future back to the past,) There was but a step to be made. To my early love from my future bride One moment I looked. Then I stole to the door, I traversed the passage; and down at her side I was sitting, a moment more. My thinking of her or the music's strain, Or something which never will be exprest, Had brought her back from the grave again, With the jasmine in her breast. She is not dead, and she is not wed! But she loves me now, and she loved me then! And the very first word that her sweet lips said, My heart grew youthful again. The marchioness there, of Carabas, She is wealthy, and young, and handsome still; And but for her--well, we'll let that pass; She may marry whomever she will. But I will marry my own first love, With her primrose face, for old things are best; And the flower in her bosom, I prize it above The brooch in my lady's breast. The world is filled with folly and sin, And love must cling where it can, I say: For beauty is easy enough to win; But one isn't loved every day, And I think in the lives of most women and men, There's a moment when all would go smooth and even, If only the dead could find out when To come back, and be forgiven. But oh the smell of that jasmine flower! And oh, that music! and oh, the way That voice rang out from the donjon tower, _Non ti scordar di me_, _Non ti scordar di me!_ _Robert Bulwer Lytton._ [Footnote A: A line in the opera "II Trovatore" meaning "Do not forget me."] My Prairies I love my prairies, they are mine From zenith to horizon line, Clipping a world of sky and sod Like the bended arm and wrist of God. I love their grasses. The skies Are larger, and my restless eyes Fasten on more of earth and air Than seashore furnishes anywhere. I love the hazel thickets; and the breeze, The never resting prairie winds. The trees That stand like spear points high Against the dark blue sky Are wonderful to me. I love the gold Of newly shaven stubble, rolled A royal carpet toward the sun, fit to be The pathway of a deity. I love the life of pasture lands; the songs of birds Are not more thrilling to me than the herd's Mad bellowing or the shadow stride Of mounted herdsmen at my side. I love my prairies, they are mine From high sun to horizon line. The mountains and the cold gray sea Are not for me, are not for me. _Hamlin Garland._ Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead (_From "The Princess"_) Home they brought her warrior dead: She nor swoon'd, nor utter'd cry: All her maidens, watching, said, "She must weep or she will die." Then they praised him, soft and low, Call'd him worthy to be loved, Truest friend and noblest foe; Yet she neither spoke nor moved. Stole a maiden from her place, Lightly to the warrior stept, Took the face-cloth from the face; Yet she neither moved nor wept. Rose a nurse of ninety years, Set his child upon her knee-- Like summer tempest came her tears-- "Sweet my child, I live for thee." _Alfred, Lord Tennyson._ September Sweet is the voice that calls From babbling waterfalls In meadows where the downy seeds are flying; And soft the breezes blow, And eddying come and go In faded gardens where the rose is dying. Among the stubbled corn The blithe quail pipes at morn, The merry partridge drums in hidden places, And glittering insects gleam Above the reedy stream, Where busy spiders spin their filmy laces. At eve, cool shadows fall Across the garden wall, And on the clustered grapes to purple turning; And pearly vapors lie Along the eastern sky, Where the broad harvest-moon is redly burning. Ah, soon on field and hill The wind shall whistle chill, And patriarch swallows call their flocks together, To fly from frost and snow, And seek for lands where blow The fairer blossoms of a balmier weather. The cricket chirps all day, "O fairest summer, stay!" The squirrel eyes askance the chestnuts browning; The wild fowl fly afar Above the foamy bar, And hasten southward ere the skies are frowning. Now comes a fragrant breeze Through the dark cedar-trees And round about my temples fondly lingers, In gentle playfulness, Like to the soft caress Bestowed in happier days by loving fingers. Yet, though a sense of grief Comes with the falling leaf, And memory makes the summer doubly pleasant, In all my autumn dreams A future summer gleams, Passing the fairest glories of the present! _George Arnold._ The Old Kitchen Floor Far back, in my musings, my thoughts have been cast To the cot where the hours of my childhood were passed. I loved all its rooms from the pantry to hall, But the blessed old kitchen was dearer than all. Its chairs and its tables no brighter could be And all its surroundings were sacred to me, From the nail in the ceiling to the latch on the door, And I loved every crack in that old kitchen floor. I remember the fireplace with mouth high and wide And the old-fashioned oven that stood by its side Out of which each Thanksgiving came puddings and pies And they fairly bewildered and dazzled our eyes. And then old St. Nicholas slyly and still Came down every Christmas our stockings to fill. But the dearest of memories laid up in store Is my mother a-sweeping that old kitchen floor. To-night those old musings come back at their will But the wheel and its music forever are still. The band is moth-eaten, the wheel laid away, And the fingers that turned it are mold'ring in clay. The hearthstone so sacred is just as 'twas then And the voices of children ring out there again. The sun at the window looks in as of yore, But it sees other feet on that old kitchen floor. Rustic Courtship The night was dark when Sam set out To court old Jones's daughter; He kinder felt as if he must, And kinder hadn't oughter. His heart against his waistcoat throbbed, His feelings had a tussle, Which nearly conquered him despite Six feet of bone and muscle. The candle in the window shone With a most doleful glimmer, And Sam he felt his courage ooze, And through his fingers simmer. Says he: "Now, Sam, don't be a fool, Take courage, shaking doubter, Go on, and pop the question right, For you can't live without her." But still, as he drew near the house, His knees got in a tremble, The beating of his heart ne'er beat His efforts to dissemble. Says he: "Now, Sam, don't be a goose, And let the female wimmin Knock all your thoughts a-skelter so, And set your heart a-swimmin'." So Sam, he kinder raised the latch, His courage also raising, And in a moment he sat inside, Cid Jones's crops a-praising. He tried awhile to talk the farm In words half dull, half witty, Not knowing that old Jones well knew His only thought was--Kitty. At last the old folks went to bed-- The Joneses were but human; Old Jones was something of a man, And Mrs. Jones--a woman. And Kitty she the pitcher took, And started for the cellar; It wasn't often that she had So promising a feller. And somehow when she came upstairs, And Sam had drank his cider, There seemed a difference in the chairs, And Sam was close beside her; His stalwart arm dropped round her waist, Her head dropped on his shoulder, And Sam--well, he had changed his tune And grown a trifle bolder. But this, if you live long enough, You surely will discover, There's nothing in this world of ours Except the loved and lover. The morning sky was growing gray As Sam the farm was leaving, His face was surely not the face Of one half grieved, or grieving. And Kitty she walked smiling back, With blushing face, and slowly; There's something in the humblest love That makes it pure and holy. And did he marry her, you ask? She stands there with the ladle A-skimming of the morning's milk-- That's Sam who rocks the cradle. The Red Jacket 'Tis a cold, bleak night! with angry roar The north winds beat and clamor at the door; The drifted snow lies heaped along the street, Swept by a blinding storm of hail and sleet; The clouded heavens no guiding starlight lend But o'er the earth in gloom and darkness bend; Gigantic shadows, by the night lamps thrown, Dance their weird revels fitfully alone. In lofty halls, where fortune takes its ease, Sunk in the treasures of all lands and seas; In happy homes, where warmth and comfort meet The weary traveler with their smiles to greet; In lowly dwellings, where the needy swarm Round starving embers, chilling limbs to warm, Rises the prayer that makes the sad heart light-- "Thank God for home, this bitter, bitter night!" But hark! above the beating of the storm Peals on the startled ear the fire alarm. Yon gloomy heaven's aflame with sudden light, And heart-beats quicken with a strange affright; From tranquil slumbers springs, at duty's call, The ready friend no danger can appall; Fierce for the conflict, sturdy, true, and brave, He hurries forth to battle and to save. From yonder dwelling, fiercely shooting out, Devouring all they coil themselves about, The flaming furies, mounting high and higher, Wrap the frail structure in a cloak of fire. Strong arms are battling with the stubborn foe In vain attempts their power to overthrow; With mocking glee they revel with their prey, Defying human skill to check their way. And see! far up above the flame's hot breath, Something that's human waits a horrid death; A little child, with waving golden hair, Stands, like a phantom, 'mid the horrid glare,-- Her pale, sweet face against the window pressed, While sobs of terror shake her tender breast. And from the crowd beneath, in accents wild, A mother screams, "O God! my child! my child!" Up goes a ladder. Through the startled throng A hardy fireman swiftly moves along; Mounts sure and fast along the slender way, Fearing no danger, dreading but delay. The stifling smoke-clouds lower in his path, Sharp tongues of flame assail him in their wrath; But up, still up he goes! the goal is won! His strong arm beats the sash, and he is gone! Gone to his death. The wily flames surround And burn and beat his ladder to the ground, In flaming columns move with quickened beat To rear a massive wall 'gainst his retreat. Courageous heart, thy mission was so pure, Suffering humanity must thy loss deplore; Henceforth with martyred heroes thou shalt live, Crowned with all honors nobleness can give. Nay, not so fast; subdue these gloomy fears; Behold! he quickly on the roof appears, Bearing the tender child, his jacket warm Flung round her shrinking form to guard from harm, Up with your ladders! Quick! 'tis but a chance! Behold, how fast the roaring flames advance! Quick! quick! brave spirits, to his rescue fly; Up! up! by heavens, this hero must not die! Silence! he comes along the burning road, Bearing, with tender care, his living load; Aha! he totters! Heaven in mercy save The good, true heart that can so nobly brave! He's up again! and now he's coming fast-- One moment, and the fiery ordeal's passed-- And now he's safe! Bold flames, ye fought in vain. A happy mother clasps her child again. _George M. Baker._ John Maynard 'Twas on Lake Erie's broad expanse One bright midsummer day, The gallant steamer Ocean Queen Swept proudly on her way. Bright faces clustered on the deck, Or, leaning o'er the side, Watched carelessly the feathery foam That flecked the rippling tide. Ah, who beneath that cloudless sky, That smiling bends serene, Could dream that danger, awful, vast, Impended o'er the scene; Could dream that ere an hour had sped That frame of sturdy oak Would sink beneath the lake's blue waves, Blackened with fire and smoke? A seaman sought the captain's side, A moment whispered low; The captain's swarthy face grew pale; He hurried down below. Alas, too late! Though quick, and sharp, And clear his orders came, No human efforts could avail To quench th' insidious flame. The bad news quickly reached the deck, It sped from lip to lip, And ghastly faces everywhere Looked from the doomed ship. "Is there no hope, no chance of life?" A hundred lips implore; "But one," the captain made reply, "To run the ship on shore." A sailor, whose heroic soul That hour should yet reveal, By name John Maynard, eastern-born, Stood calmly at the wheel. "Head her southeast!" the captain shouts, Above the smothered roar, "Head her southeast without delay! Make for the nearest shore!" No terror pales the helmsman's cheek, Or clouds his dauntless eye, As, in a sailor's measured tone, His voice responds, "Ay! ay!" Three hundred souls, the steamer's freight, Crowd forward wild with fear, While at the stern the dreaded flames Above the deck appear. John Maynard watched the nearing flames, But still with steady hand He grasped the wheel, and steadfastly He steered the ship to land. "John Maynard, can you still hold out?" He heard the captain cry; A voice from out the stifling smoke Faintly responds, "Ay! ay!" But half a mile! a hundred hands Stretch eagerly to shore. But half a mile! That distance sped Peril shall all be o'er. But half a mile! Yet stay, the flames No longer slowly creep, But gather round that helmsman bold, With fierce, impetuous sweep. "John Maynard!" with an anxious voice The captain cries once more, "Stand by the wheel five minutes yet, And we shall reach the shore." Through flame and smoke that dauntless heart Responded firmly still, Unawed, though face to face with death, "With God's good help I will!" The flames approach with giant strides, They scorch his hand and brow; One arm, disabled, seeks his side, Ah! he is conquered now. But no, his teeth are firmly set, He crushes down his pain, His knee upon the stanchion pressed, He guides the ship again. One moment yet! one moment yet! Brave heart, thy task is o'er, The pebbles grate beneath the keel, The steamer touches shore. Three hundred grateful voices rise In praise to God that He Hath saved them from the fearful fire, And from the engulfing sea. But where is he, that helmsman bold? The captain saw him reel, His nerveless hands released their task, He sank beside the wheel. The wave received his lifeless corse, Blackened with smoke and fire. God rest him! Never hero had A nobler funeral pyre! _Horatio Alger, Jr._ Piller Fights Piller fights is fun, I tell you; There isn't anything I'd rather do Than get a big piller and hold it tight, Stand up in bed and then just fight. Us boys allers have our piller fights And the best night of all is Pa's lodge night. Soon as ever he goes, we say "Good night," Then go right upstairs for a piller fight. Sometimes maybe Ma comes to the stairs And hollers up, "Boys, have you said your prayers?" And then George will holler "Yes, Mamma," for he always has; Good deal of preacher about George, Pa says. Ma says "Pleasant dreams," and shuts the door; If she's a-listenin' both of us snore, But as soon as ever she goes we light a light And pitch right into our piller fight. We play that the bed is Bunker Hill And George is Americans, so he stands still. But I am the British, so I must hit As hard as ever I can to make him git. We played Buena Vista one night-- Tell you, that was an awful hard fight! Held up our pillers like they was a flag, An' hollered, "Little more grape-juice, Captain Bragg!" That was the night that George hit the nail-- You just ought to have seen those feathers sail! I was covered as white as flour, Me and him picked them up for 'most an hour; Next day when our ma saw that there mess She was pretty mad, you better guess; And she told our pa, and he just said, "Come right on out to this here shed." Tell you, he whipped us till we were sore And made us both promise to do it no more. That was a long time ago, and now lodge nights Or when Pa's away we have piller fights, But in Buena Vista George is bound To see there aren't any nails anywhere 'round. Piller fights is fun, I tell you; There isn't anything I'd rather do Than get a big piller and hold it tight, Stand up in bed, and then just fight. _D.A. Ellsworth._ Little Bateese You bad leetle boy, not moche you care How busy you're kipin' your poor gran'pere Tryin' to stop you ev'ry day Chasin' de hen aroun' de hay. W'y don't you geev' dem a chance to lay! Leetle Bateese! Off on de fiel' you foller de plough, Den we'en you're tire, you scare de cow, Sickin' de dog till dey jamp de wall So de milk ain't good for not'ing at all, An' you're only five an' a half this fall-- Leetle Bateese! Too sleepy for sayin' de prayer tonight? Never min', I s'pose it'll be all right; Say dem to-morrow--ah! dere he go! Fas' asleep in a minute or so-- An' he'll stay lak dat till the rooster crow-- Leetle Bateese. Den wake up right away, toute suite, Lookin' for somethin' more to eat, Makin' me t'ink of dem long-lag crane, Soon as they swaller, dey start again; I wonder your stomach don't get no pain, Leetle Bateese. But see heem now lyin' dere in bed, Look at de arm onderneat' hees head; If he grow lak dat till he's twenty year, I bet he'll be stronger than Louis Cyr And beat de voyageurs leevin' here-- Leetle Bateese. Jus' feel de muscle along hees back,-- Won't geev' heem moche bodder for carry pack On de long portage, any size canoe; Dere's not many t'ings dat boy won't do, For he's got double-joint on hees body too-- Leetle Bateese. But leetle Bateese! please don't forget We rader you're stayin' de small boy yet. So chase de chicken and mak' dem scare, An' do w'at you lak wit' your ole gran'pere, For w'en you're beeg feller he won't be dere-- Leetle Bateese! _W.H. Drummond._ Conscience and Future Judgment I sat alone with my conscience, In a place where time had ceased, And we talked of my former living In the land where the years increased; And I felt I should have to answer The question it might put to me, And to face the question and answer Throughout an eternity. The ghosts of forgotten actions Came floating before my sight, And things that I thought had perished Were alive with a terrible might; And the vision of life's dark record Was an awful thing to face-- Alone with my conscience sitting In that solemnly silent place. And I thought of a far-away warning, Of a sorrow that was to be mine, In a land that then was the future, But now is the present time; And I thought of my former thinking Of the judgment day to be; But sitting alone with my conscience Seemed judgment enough for me. And I wondered if there was a future To this land beyond the grave; But no one gave me an answer And no one came to save. Then I felt that the future was present, And the present would never go by, For it was but the thought of a future Become an eternity. Then I woke from my timely dreaming, And the vision passed away; And I knew the far-away warning Was a warning of yesterday. And I pray that I may not forget it In this land before the grave, That I may not cry out in the future, And no one come to save. I have learned a solemn lesson Which I ought to have known before, And which, though I learned it dreaming, I hope to forget no more. So I sit alone with my conscience In the place where the years increase, And I try to fathom the future, In the land where time shall cease. And I know of the future judgment, How dreadful soe'er it be, That to sit alone with my conscience Will be judgment enough for me. Dandelion There's a dandy little fellow, Who dresses all in yellow, In yellow with an overcoat of green; With his hair all crisp and curly, In the springtime bright and early A-tripping o'er the meadow he is seen. Through all the bright June weather, Like a jolly little tramp, He wanders o'er the hillside, down the road; Around his yellow feather, Thy gypsy fireflies camp; His companions are the wood lark and the toad. But at last this little fellow Doffs his dainty coat of yellow, And very feebly totters o'er the green; For he very old is growing And with hair all white and flowing, A-nodding in the sunlight he is seen. Oh, poor dandy, once so spandy, Golden dancer on the lea! Older growing, white hair flowing, Poor little baldhead dandy now is he! _Nellie M. Garabrant._ The Inventor's Wife It's easy to talk of the patience of Job, Humph! Job hed nothin' to try him! Ef he'd been married to 'Bijah Brown, folks wouldn't have dared come nigh him. Trials, indeed! Now I'll tell you what--ef you want to be sick of your life, Jest come and change places with me a spell--for I'm an inventor's wife. And such inventions! I'm never sure, when I take up my coffee-pot, That 'Bijah hain't been "improvin'" it and it mayn't go off like a shot. Why, didn't he make me a cradle once, that would keep itself a-rockin'; And didn't it pitch the baby out, and wasn't his head bruised shockin'? And there was his "Patent Peeler," too--a wonderful thing, I'll say; But it hed one fault-it never stopped till the apple was peeled away. As for locks and clocks, and mowin' machines and reapers, and all such trash, Why, 'Bijah's invented heaps of 'em but they don't bring in no cash. Law! that don't worry him--not at all; he's the most aggravatin'est man-- He'll set in his little workshop there, and whistle, and think, and plan, Inventin' a jew's-harp to go by steam, or a new-fangled powder-horn, While the children's goin' barefoot to school and the weeds is chokin' our corn. When 'Bijah and me kep' company, he warn't like this, you know; Our folks all thought he was dreadful smart--but that was years ago. He was handsome as any pictur then, and he had such a glib, bright way-- I never thought that a time would come when I'd rue my weddin' day; But when I've been forced to chop wood, and tend to the farm beside, And look at Bijah a-settin' there, I've jest dropped down and cried. We lost the hull of our turnip crop while he was inventin' a gun But I counted it one of my marcies when it bu'st before 'twas done. So he turned it into a "burglar alarm." It ought to give thieves a fright-- 'Twould scare an honest man out of his wits, ef he sot it off at night. Sometimes I wonder if 'Bijah's crazy, he does sech cur'ous things. Hev I told you about his bedstead yit?--'Twas full of wheels and springs; It hed a key to wind it up, and a clock face at the head; All you did was to turn them hands, and at any hour you said, That bed got up and shook itself, and bounced you on the floor, And then shet up, jest like a box, so you couldn't sleep any more. Wa'al, 'Bijah he fixed it all complete, and he sot it at half-past five, But he hadn't mor'n got into it when--dear me! sakes alive! Them wheels began to whiz and whir! I heered a fearful snap! And there was that bedstead, with 'Bijah inside, shet up jest like a trap! I screamed, of course, but 'twan't no use, then I worked that hull long night A-trying to open the pesky thing. At last I got in a fright; I couldn't hear his voice inside, and I thought he might be dyin'; So I took a crow-bar and smashed it in.--There was 'Bijah peacefully lyin', Inventin' a way to git out agin. That was all very well to say, But I don't b'lieve he'd have found it out if I'd left him in all day. Now, sence I've told you my story, do you wonder I'm tired of life? Or think it strange I often wish I warn't an inventor's wife? _Mrs. E.T. Corbett._ Out in the Snow The snow and the silence came down together, Through the night so white and so still; And young folks housed from the bitter weather, Housed from the storm and the chill-- Heard in their dreams the sleigh-bells jingle, Coasted the hill-sides under the moon, Felt their cheeks with the keen air tingle, Skimmed the ice with their steel-clad shoon. They saw the snow when they rose in the morning, Glittering ghosts of the vanished night, Though the sun shone clear in the winter dawning, And the day with a frosty pomp was bright. Out in the clear, cold, winter weather-- Out in the winter air, like wine-- Kate with her dancing scarlet feather, Bess with her peacock plumage fine, Joe and Jack with their pealing laughter, Frank and Tom with their gay hallo, And half a score of roisterers after, Out in the witching, wonderful snow, Shivering graybeards shuffle and stumble, Righting themselves with a frozen frown, Grumbling at every snowy tumble; But young folks know why the snow came down. _Louise Chandler Moulton._ Give Them the Flowers Now Closed eyes can't see the white roses, Cold hands can't hold them, you know; Breath that is stilled cannot gather The odors that sweet from them blow. Death, with a peace beyond dreaming, Its children of earth doth endow; Life is the time we can help them, So give them the flowers now! Here are the struggles and striving, Here are the cares and the tears; Now is the time to be smoothing The frowns and the furrows and fears. What to closed eyes are kind sayings? What to hushed heart is deep vow? Naught can avail after parting, So give them the flowers now! Just a kind word or a greeting; Just a warm grasp or a smile-- These are the flowers that will lighten The burdens for many a mile. After the journey is over What is the use of them; how Can they carry them who must be carried? Oh, give them the flowers now! Blooms from the happy heart's garden, Plucked in the spirit of love; Blooms that are earthly reflections Of flowers that blossom above. Words cannot tell what a measure Of blessing such gifts will allow To dwell in the lives of many, So give them the flowers now! _Leigh M. Hodges._ The Lost Occasion (Written in memory of Daniel Webster.) Some die too late and some too soon, At early morning, heat of noon, Or the chill evening twilight. Thou, Whom the rich heavens did so endow With eyes of power and Jove's own brow, With all the massive strength that fills Thy home-horizon's granite hills, With rarest gifts of heart and head From manliest stock inherited-- New England's stateliest type of man, In port and speech Olympian; Whom no one met, at first, but took A second awed and wondering look (As turned, perchance, the eyes of Greece On Phidias' unveiled masterpiece); Whose words, in simplest home-spun clad, The Saxon strength of Caedmon's had, With power reserved at need to reach The Roman forum's loftiest speech, Sweet with persuasion, eloquent In passion, cool in argument, Or, ponderous, falling on thy foes As fell the Norse god's hammer blows. Crushing as if with Talus' flail Through Error's logic-woven mail, And failing only when they tried The adamant of the righteous side,-- Thou, foiled in aim and hope, bereaved Of old friends, by the new deceived, Too soon for us, too soon for thee, Beside thy lonely Northern sea, Where long and low the marsh-lands spread, Laid wearily down thy august head. Thou shouldst have lived to feel below Thy feet Disunion's fierce upthrow,-- The late-sprung mine that underlaid Thy sad concessions vainly made. Thou shouldst have seen from Sumter's wall The star-flag of the Union fall, And armed Rebellion pressing on The broken lines of Washington! No stronger voice than thine had then Called out the utmost might of men, To make the Union's charter free And strengthen law by liberty. How had that stern arbitrament To thy gray age youth's vigor lent, Shaming ambition's paltry prize Before thy disillusioned eyes; Breaking the spell about thee wound Like the green withes that Samson bound; Redeeming, in one effort grand, Thyself and thy imperiled land! Ah cruel fate, that closed to thee, O sleeper by the Northern sea, The gates of opportunity! God fills the gaps of human need, Each crisis brings its word and deed. Wise men and strong we did not lack; But still, with memory turning back, In the dark hours we thought of thee, And thy lone grave beside the sea. Above that grave the east winds blow, And from the marsh-lands drifting slow The sea-fog comes, with evermore The wave-wash of a lonely shore, And sea-bird's melancholy cry, As Nature fain would typify The sadness of a closing scene, The loss of that which should have been. But, where thy native mountains bare Their foreheads to diviner air, Fit emblem of enduring fame, One lofty summit keeps thy name. For thee the cosmic forces did The rearing of that pyramid, The prescient ages shaping with Fire, flood, and frost thy monolith. Sunrise and sunset lay thereon With hands of light their benison, The stars of midnight pause to set Their jewels in its coronet. And evermore that mountain mass Seems climbing from the shadowy pass To light, as if to manifest Thy nobler self, they life at best! _John G. Whittier._ The Flower of Liberty What flower is this that greets the morn, Its hues from Heaven so freshly born? With burning star and flaming band It kindles all the sunset land: O tell us what its name may be,-- Is this the Flower of Liberty? It is the banner of the free, The starry Flower of Liberty! In savage Nature's far abode Its tender seed our fathers sowed; The storm-winds rocked its swelling bud, Its opening leaves were streaked with blood, Till lo! earth's tyrants shook to see The full-blown Flower of Liberty! Then hail the banner of the free, The starry Flower of Liberty! Behold its streaming rays unite, One mingling flood of braided light-- The red that fires the Southern rose, With spotless white from Northern snows, And, spangled o'er its azure, see The sister Stars of Liberty! Then hail the banner of the free, The starry Flower of Liberty! The blades of heroes fence it round, Where'er it springs is holy ground; From tower and dome its glories spread; It waves where lonely sentries tread; It makes the land as ocean free, And plants an empire on the sea! Then hail the banner of the free, The starry Flower of Liberty! Thy sacred leaves, fair Freedom's flower, Shall ever float on dome and tower, To all their heavenly colors true, In blackening frost or crimson dew,-- And God love us as we love thee, Thrice holy Flower of Liberty! Then hail the banner of the free, The starry Flower of Liberty! _Oliver Wendell Holmes._ The Lamb Little lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee, Gave thee life, and made thee feed By the stream and o'er the mead? Gave thee clothing of delight,-- Softest clothing, woolly, bright? Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the vales rejoice? Little lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee? Little lamb, I'll tell thee; Little lamb, I'll tell thee; He is called by thy name, For he calls himself a lamb. He is meek and He is mild; He became a little child: I a child, and thou a lamb, We are called by His name. Little lamb, God bless thee! Little lamb, God bless thee! _William Blake._ The Roll Call "Corporal Green!" the orderly cried; "Here!" was the answer, loud and clear, From the lips of the soldier standing near, And "Here" was the answer the next replied. "Cyrus Drew!"--then a silence fell-- This time no answer followed the call, Only the rear man had seen him fall, Killed or wounded he could not tell. There they stood in the failing light, These men of battle, with grave dark looks, As plain to be read as open books, While slowly gathered the shades of night. The fern on the hillside was splashed with blood, And down in the corn, where the poppies grew Were redder stains than the poppies knew And crimson-dyed was the river's flood. "Herbert Kline!" At the call there came Two stalwart soldiers into the line, Bearing between them Herbert Kline, Wounded and bleeding, to answer his name. "Ezra Kerr!"--and a voice said "Here!" "Hiram Kerr!"--but no man replied. They were brothers, these two; the sad winds sighed, And a shudder crept through the cornfield near. "Ephraim Deane!" then a soldier spoke; "Deane carried our regiment's colors," he said; "Where our ensign was shot, I left him dead, Just after the enemy wavered and broke. "Close by the roadside his body lies; I paused a moment and gave him a drink, He murmured his mother's name I think, And Death came with it and closed his eyes." 'Twas a victory; yes, but it cost us dear-- For that company's roll when called that night, Of a hundred men who went into the fight, Numbered but twenty that answered "Here!" _N.G. Shepherd._ A Prayer for a Little Home God send us a little home To come back to when we roam-- Low walls and fluted tiles, Wide windows, a view for miles; Red firelight and deep chairs; Small white beds upstairs; Great talk in little nooks; Dim colors, rows of books; One picture on each wall; Not many things at all. God send us a little ground-- Tall trees standing round, Homely flowers in brown sod, Overhead, Thy stars, O God! God bless, when winds blow, Our home and all we know. _London "Spectator."_ I Have Drank My Last Glass No, comrades, I thank you--not any for me; My last chain is riven--henceforward I'm free! I will go to my home and my children to-night With no fumes of liquor their spirits to blight; And, with tears in my eyes, I will beg my poor wife To forgive me the wreck I have made of her life. _I have never refused you before?_ Let that pass, For I've drank my last glass, boys, I have drank my last glass. Just look at me now, boys, in rags and disgrace, With my bleared, haggard eyes, and my red, bloated face; Mark my faltering step and my weak, palsied hand, And the mark on my brow that is worse than Cain's brand; See my crownless old hat, and my elbows and knees, Alike, warmed by the sun, or chilled by the breeze. Why, even the children will hoot as I pass;-- But I've drank my last glass, boys, I have drank my last glass. You would hardly believe, boys, to look at me now That a mother's soft hand was pressed on my brow-- When she kissed me, and blessed me, her darling, her pride, Ere she lay down to rest by my dead father's side; But with love in her eyes, she looked up to the sky Bidding me meet her there and whispered "Good-bye." And I'll do it, God helping! Your _smile_ I let pass, For I've drank my last glass, boys, I have drank my last glass. Ah! I reeled home last night, it was not very late, For I'd spent my last sixpence, and landlords won't wait On a fellow who's left every cent in their till, And has pawned his last bed, their coffers to fill. Oh, the torments I felt, and the pangs I endured! And I begged for one glass--just one would have cured,-- But they kicked me out doors! I let that, too, pass, For I've drank my last glass, boys, I have drank my last glass. At home, my pet Susie, with her rich golden hair, I saw through the window, just kneeling in prayer; From her pale, bony hands, her torn sleeves hung down, And her feet, cold and bare, shrank beneath her scant gown, And she prayed--prayed for _bread_, just a poor crust of bread, For one crust, on her knees my pet darling plead! And I heard, with no penny to buy one, alas! For I've drank my last glass, boys, I have drank my last glass. For Susie, my darling, my wee six-year-old, Though fainting with hunger and shivering with cold, There, on the bare floor, asked God to bless _me_! And she said, "Don't cry, mamma! He will; for you see, I _believe_ what I ask for!" Then sobered, I crept Away from the house; and that night, when I slept, Next my heart lay the PLEDGE! You smile! let it pass, For I've drank my last glass, boys I have drank my last glass. My darling child saved me! Her faith and her love Are akin to my dear sainted mother's above! I will make my words true, or I'll die in the race, And sober I'll go to my last resting place; And she shall kneel there, and, weeping, thank God No _drunkard_ lies under the daisy-strewn sod! Not a drop more of poison my lips shall e'er pass, For I've drank my last glass, boys, I have drank my last glass. Highland Mary Ye banks, and braes, and streams around The castle o' Montgomery, Green be your woods, and fair your flowers, Your waters never drumlie! There simmer first unfauld her robes, And there the langest tarry; For there I took the last fareweel O' my sweet Highland Mary. How sweetly bloom'd the gay green birk, How rich the hawthorn's blossom, As, underneath their fragrant shade, I clasp'd her to my bosom! The golden hours, on angel wings, Flew o'er me and my dearie; For dear to me as light and life Was my sweet Highland Mary! Wi' mony a vow, and lock'd embrace, Our parting was fu' tender; And, pledging aft to meet again, We tore oursels asunder; But, oh, fell death's untimely frost, That nipp'd my flower sae early! Now green's the sod and cauld's the clay, That wraps my Highland Mary! Oh, pale, pale now, those rosy lips, I aft ha'e kiss'd, sae fondly! And closed for aye the sparkling glance That dwalt on me sae kindly! And mouldering now in silent dust, That heart that lo'ed me dearly; But still within my bosom's core Shall live my Highland Mary! _Robert Burns._ A Night with a Wolf Little one, come to my knee! Hark, how the rain is pouring Over the roof, in the pitch-black night, And the wind in the woods a-roaring! Hush, my darling, and listen, Then pay for the story with kisses; Father was lost in the pitch-black night, In just such a storm as this is! High up on the lonely mountains, Where the wild men watched and waited Wolves in the forest, and bears in the bush, And I on my path belated. The rain and the night together Came down, and the wind came after, Bending the props of the pine-tree roof, And snapping many a rafter. I crept along in the darkness, Stunned, and bruised, and blinded,-- Crept to a fir with thick-set boughs, And a sheltering rock behind it. There, from the blowing and raining Crouching, I sought to hide me: Something rustled, two green eyes shone, And a wolf lay down beside me. Little one, be not frightened; I and the wolf together, Side by side, through the long, long night Hid from the awful weather. His wet fur pressed against me; Each of us warmed the other; Each of us felt, in the stormy dark, That beast and man was brother. And when the falling forest No longer crashed in warning, Each of us went from our hiding-place Forth in the wild, wet morning. Darling, kiss me in payment! Hark, how the wind is roaring; Father's house is a better place When the stormy rain is pouring! _Bayard Taylor._ She Was a Phantom of Delight She was a Phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight; A lovely Apparition sent To be a moment's ornament; Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair; Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful Dawn; A dancing Shape, an Image gay, To haunt, to startle, and way-lay. I saw her upon nearer view, A Spirit, yet a Woman too! Her household motions light and free, And steps of virgin-liberty; A countenance in which did meet Sweet records, promises as sweet; A Creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food; For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles. And now I see with eye serene The very pulse of the machine; A Being breathing thoughtful breath, A Traveler between life and death; The reason firm, the temperate will, Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; A perfect Woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command; And yet a Spirit still, and bright With something of angelic light. _William Wordsworth._ The Rhodora (_On Being Asked Whence Is The Flower_) In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook. The purple petals, fallen in the pool, Made the black water with their beauty gay; Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, And court the flower that cheapens his array. Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being: Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose! I never thought to ask, I never knew: But, in my simple ignorance, suppose The self-same Power that brought me there brought you. _Ralph Waldo Emerson._ There Was a Boy There was a Boy; ye knew him well, ye cliffs And islands of Winander!--many a time, At evening, when the earliest stars began To move along the edges of the hills, Rising or setting, would he stand alone, Beneath the trees, or by the glimmering lake; And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands Pressed closely palm to palm and to his mouth Uplifted, he, as through an instrument, Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls, That they might answer him,--And they would shout Across the watery vale, and shout again, Responsive to his call,--with quivering peals, And long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud Redoubled and redoubled; concourse wild Of jocund din! and, when there came a pause Of silence such as baffled his best skill, Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise Has carried far into his heart the voice Of mountain-torrents; or the visible scene Would enter unawares into his mind With all its solemn imagery, its rocks, Its woods, and that uncertain heaven received Into the bosom of the steady lake. This boy was taken from his mates, and died In childhood, ere he was full twelve years old. Pre-eminent in beauty is the vale Where he was born and bred: the church-yard hangs Upon a slope above the village-school; And through that church-yard when my way has led On Summer-evenings, I believe, that there A long half-hour together I have stood Mute--looking at the grave in which he lies! _William Wordsworth._ The Quangle Wangle's Hat On the top of the Crumpetty Tree The Quangle Wangle sat, But his face you could not see, On account of his Beaver Hat. For his hat was a hundred and two feet wide, With ribbons and bibbons on every side, And bells, and buttons, and loops, and lace, So that nobody ever could see the face Of the Quangle Wangle Quee. The Quangle Wangle said To himself on the Crumpetty Tree, "Jam, and jelly, and bread Are the best of food for me! But the longer I live on this Crumpetty Tree The plainer than ever it seems to me That very few people come this way And that life on the whole is far from gay!" Said the Quangle Wangle Quee. But there came to the Crumpetty Tree Mr. and Mrs. Canary; And they said, "Did ever you see Any spot so charmingly airy? May we build a nest on your lovely Hat? Mr. Quangle Wangle, grant us that! Oh, please let us come and build a nest Of whatever material suits you best, Mr. Quangle Wangle Quee!" And besides, to the Crumpetty Tree Came the Stork, the Duck, and the Owl; The Snail and the Bumblebee, The Frog and the Fimble Fowl (The Fimble Fowl, with a corkscrew leg); And all of them said, "We humbly beg We may build our homes on your lovely Hat,-- Mr. Quangle Wangle, grant us that! Mr. Quangle Wangle Quee!" And the Golden Grouse came there, And the Pobble who has no toes, And the small Olympian bear, And the Dong with a luminous nose. And the Blue Baboon who played the flute, And the Orient Calf from the Land of Tute, And the Attery Squash, and the Bisky Bat,-- All came and built on the lovely Hat Of the Quangle Wangle Quee. And the Quangle Wangle said To himself on the Crumpetty Tree, "When all these creatures move What a wonderful noise there'll be!" And at night by the light of the Mulberry Moon They danced to the Flute of the Blue Baboon, On the broad green leaves of the Crumpetty Tree, And all were as happy as happy could be, With the Quangle Wangle Quee. _Edward Lear._ The Singing Leaves I "What fairings will ye that I bring?" Said the King to his daughters three; "For I to Vanity Fair am boun, Now say what shall they be?" Then up and spake the eldest daughter, That lady tall and grand: "Oh, bring me pearls and diamonds great, And gold rings for my hand." Thereafter spake the second daughter, That was both white and red: "For me bring silks that will stand alone, And a gold comb for my head." Then came the turn of the least daughter, That was whiter than thistle-down, And among the gold of her blithesome hair Dim shone the golden crown. "There came a bird this morning, And sang 'neath my bower eaves, Till I dreamed, as his music made me, 'Ask thou for the Singing Leaves.'" Then the brow of the King swelled crimson With a flush of angry scorn: "Well have ye spoken, my two eldest, And chosen as ye were born, "But she, like a thing of peasant race, That is happy binding the sheaves"; Then he saw her dead mother in her face, And said, "Thou shalt have thy leaves." II He mounted and rode three days and nights Till he came to Vanity Fair, And 'twas easy to buy the gems and the silk, But no Singing Leaves were there. Then deep in the greenwood rode he, And asked of every tree, "Oh, if you have, ever a Singing Leaf, I pray you give it me!" But the trees all kept their counsel, And never a word said they, Only there sighed from the pine-tops A music of seas far away. Only the pattering aspen Made a sound of growing rain, That fell ever faster and faster. Then faltered to silence again. "Oh, where shall I find a little foot-page That would win both hose and shoon, And will bring to me the Singing Leaves If they grow under the moon?" Then lightly turned him Walter the page, By the stirrup as he ran: "Now pledge you me the truesome word Of a king and gentleman, "That you will give me the first, first thing You meet at your castle-gate, And the Princess shall get the Singing Leaves, Or mine be a traitor's fate." The King's head dropt upon his breast A moment, as it might be; 'Twill be my dog, he thought, and said, "My faith I plight to thee." Then Walter took from next his heart A packet small and thin, "Now give you this to the Princess Anne, The Singing Leaves are therein." III As the King rode in at his castle-gate, A maiden to meet him ran, And "Welcome, father!" she laughed and cried Together, the Princess Anne. "Lo, here the Singing Leaves," quoth he, "And woe, but they cost me dear!" She took the packet, and the smile Deepened down beneath the tear. It deepened down till it reached her heart, And then gushed up again, And lighted her tears as the sudden sun Transfigures the summer rain. And the first Leaf, when it was opened, Sang: "I am Walter the page, And the songs I sing 'neath thy window Are my only heritage." And the second Leaf sang: "But in the land That is neither on earth nor sea, My lute and I are lords of more Than thrice this kingdom's fee." And the third Leaf sang, "Be mine! Be mine!" And ever it sang, "Be mine!" Then sweeter it sang and ever sweeter, And said, "I am thine, thine, thine!" At the first Leaf she grew pale enough, At the second she turned aside, At the third,'twas as if a lily flushed With a rose's red heart's tide. "Good counsel gave the bird," said she, "I have my hope thrice o'er, For they sing to my very heart," she said, "And it sings to them evermore." She brought to him her beauty and truth, But and broad earldoms three, And he made her queen of the broader lands He held of his lute in fee. _James Russell Lowell._ Awakening Never yet was a springtime, Late though lingered the snow, That the sap stirred not at the whisper Of the south wind, sweet and low; Never yet was a springtime When the buds forgot to blow. Ever the wings of the summer Are folded under the mold; Life that has known no dying Is Love's to have and to hold, Till sudden, the burgeoning Easter! The song! the green and the gold! _Margaret E. Sangster._ Wolsey's Farewell to His Greatness _(From "King Henry VIII")_ Farewell! a long farewell, to all my greatness! This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honours thick upon him: The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, And,--when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a-ripening,--nips his root, And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured, Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, This many summers in a sea of glory, But far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride At length broke under me, and now has left me Weary, and old with service, to the mercy Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me. Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye: I feel my heart new opened. O, how wretched Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours! There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to, That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, More pangs and fears than wars or women have; And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, Never to hope again. _William Shakespeare._ The Newsboy Want any papers, Mister? Wish you'd buy 'em of me-- Ten year old, an' a fam'ly, An' bizness dull, you see. Fact, Boss! There's Tom, an' Tibby, An' Dad, an' Mam, an' Mam's cat, None on 'em earning money-- What do you think of that? _Couldn't Dad work?_ Why yes, Boss, He's workin' for Gov'ment now-- They give him his board for nothin', All along of a drunken row, _An' Mam?_ well, she's in the poor-house, Been there a year or so, So I'm taking care of the others, Doing as well as I know. _Tibby my sister?_ Not much, Boss, She's a kitten, a real Maltee; I picked her up last summer-- Some boys was a drownin' of she; Throw'd her inter a hogshead; But a p'liceman came along, So I jest grabbed up the kitten And put for home, right strong. And Tom's my dog; he an' Tibby Hain't never quarreled yet-- They sleep in my bed in winter An' keeps me warm--you bet! Mam's cat sleeps in the corner, With a piller made of her paw-- Can't she growl like a tiger If anyone comes to our straw! _Oughtn't to live so?_ Why, Mister, What's a feller to do? Some nights, when I'm tired an' hungry, Seems as if each on 'em knew-- They'll all three cuddle around me, Till I get cheery, and say: Well, p'raps I'll have sisters an' brothers, An' money an' clothes, too, some day. But if I do git rich, Boss, (An' a lecturin' chap one night Said newsboys could be Presidents If only they acted right); So, if I was President, Mister, The very first thing I'd do, I'd buy poor Tom an' Tibby A dinner--an' Mam's cat, too! None o' your scraps an' leavin's, But a good square meal for all three; If you think I'd skimp my friends, Boss, That shows you don't know _me_. So 'ere's your papers--come take one, Gimme a lift if you can-- For now you've heard my story, You see I'm a fam'ly man! _E.T. Corbett._ Parting of Marmion and Douglas Not far advanced was morning day, When Marmion did his troop array To Surrey's camp to ride; He had safe conduct for his band, Beneath the royal seal and hand, And Douglas gave a guide: The ancient Earl, with stately grace, Would Clara on her palfrey place, And whispered in an undertone, "Let the hawk stoop, his prey is flown." The train from out the castle drew, But Marmion stopped to bid adieu.-- "Though something I might plain," he said, "Of cold respect to stranger guest, Sent hither by your king's behest, While in Tantallon's towers I stayed, Part we in friendship from your land, And, noble Earl, receive my hand."-- But Douglas round him drew his cloak, Folded his arms, and thus he spoke:-- "My manors, halls, and bowers shall still Be open, at my sovereign's will, To each one whom he lists, howe'er Unmeet to be the owner's peer. My castles are my king's alone, From turret to foundation-stone,-- The hand of Douglas is his own; And never shall in friendly grasp The hand of such as Marmion clasp." Burned Marmion's swarthy cheek like fire, And shook his very frame for ire, And--"This to me!" he said,-- "An't were not for thy hoary beard, Such hand as Marmion's had not spared To cleave the Douglas' head! And, first, I tell thee, haughty Peer, He who does England's message here, Even in thy pitch of pride, Here in thy hold, thy vassals near, (Nay, never look upon your lord, And lay your hands upon your sword,) I tell thee thou'rt defied! And if thou said'st I am not peer To any lord in Scotland here, Lowland or Highland, far or near, Lord Angus, thou hast lied!"-- On the Earl's cheek the flush of rage O'ercame the ashen hue of age: Fierce he broke forth,--"And dar'st thou then To beard the lion in his den, The Douglas in his hall? And hop'st thou hence unscathed to go? No, by St. Bride of Bothwell, no! Up drawbridge, grooms,--what, warder, ho! Let the portcullis fall."-- Lord Marmion turned,--well was his need!-- And dashed the rowels in his steed; Like arrow through the archway sprung; The ponderous grate behind him rung; To pass there was such scanty room, The bars, descending, razed his plume. The steed along the drawbridge flies. Just as it trembled on the rise; Not lighter does the swallow skim Along the smooth lake's level brim; And when Lord Marmion reached his band, He halts, and turns with clenched hand, And shout of loud defiance pours, And shook his gauntlet at the towers, "Horse! horse!" the Douglas cried, "and chase!" But soon he reined his fury's pace: "A royal messenger he came, Though most unworthy of the name. * * * * * St. Mary, mend my fiery mood! Old age ne'er cools the Douglas blood, I thought to slay him where he stood. 'Tis pity of him too," he cried; "Bold can he speak, and fairly ride: I warrant him a warrior tried." With this his mandate he recalls, And slowly seeks his castle halls. _Sir Walter Scott._ The Engineer's Story Han'som, stranger? Yes, she's purty an' ez peart ez she kin be. Clever? W'y! she ain't no chicken, but she's good enough for me. What's her name? 'Tis kind o' common, yit I ain't ashamed to tell, She's ole "Fiddler" Filkin's daughter, an' her dad he calls her "Nell." I wuz drivin' on the "Central" jist about a year ago On the run from Winnemucca up to Reno in Washoe. There's no end o' skeery places. 'Taint a road fur one who dreams, With its curves an' awful tres'les over rocks an' mountain streams. 'Twuz an afternoon in August, we hed got behind an hour, An' wuz tearin' up the mountain like a summer thunder-shower, Round the bends an' by the ledges, 'bout ez fast ez we could go, With the mountain peaks above us an' the river down below. Ez we come nigh to a tres'le 'crost a holler, deep an' wild, Suddenly I saw a baby, 'twuz the station-keeper's child, Toddlin' right along the timbers with a bold an' fearless tread, Right afore the locomotive, not a hundred rods ahead. I jist jumped an' grabbed the throttle an' I fa'rly held my breath, Fur I felt I couldn't stop her till the child wuz crushed to death, When a woman sprang afore me, like a sudden streak o' light. Caught the boy, an' 'twixt the timbers in a second sank from sight. I jist whis'l'd all the brakes on. An' we worked with might an' main, Till the fire flew from the drivers, but we couldn't stop the train, An' it rumbled on above her. How she screamed ez we rolled by, An' the river roared below us--I shall hear her till I die! Then we stopt; the sun wuz shinin'; I ran back along the ridge An' I found her--dead? No! livin'! She wuz hangin' to the bridge Where she dropt down thro' the crossties, with one arm about a sill, An' the other round the baby, who wuz yellin' fur to kill! So we saved 'em. She wuz gritty. She's ez peart ez she kin be-- Now we're married--she's no chicken, but she's good enough for me. An' ef eny ask who owns her, w'y, I ain't ashamed to tell-- She's my wife. Ther' ain't none better than ole Filkin's daughter "Nell." _Eugene J. Hall._ Small Beginnings A traveler on the dusty road Strewed acorns on the lea; And one took root and sprouted up, And grew into a tree. Love sought its shade, at evening time, To breathe his early vows; And age was pleased, in heats of noon, To bask beneath its boughs; The dormouse loved its dangling twigs, The birds sweet music bore; It stood a glory in its place, A blessing evermore. A little spring had lost its way Amid the grass and fern, A passing stranger scooped a well Where weary men might turn; He walled it in, and hung with care A ladle at the brink; He thought not of the deed he did, But judged that all might drink. He paused again, and lo! the well, By summer never dried, Had cooled ten thousand parching tongues And saved a life beside. A dreamer dropped a random thought; 'Twas old, and yet 'twas new; A simple fancy of the brain, But strong in being true. It shone upon a genial mind, And, lo! its light became A lamp of life, a beacon ray, A monitory flame; The thought was small, its issue great; A watch-fire on the hill; It shed its radiance far adown, And cheers the valley still. A nameless man, amid a crowd That thronged the daily mart, Let fall a word of Hope and Love, Unstudied from the heart; A whisper on the tumult thrown, A transitory breath-- It raised a brother from the dust, It saved a soul from death. O germ! O fount! O word of love! O thought at random cast! Ye were but little at the first, But mighty at the last. _Charles Mackay._ Rain on the Roof When the humid showers gather over all the starry spheres, And the melancholy darkness gently weeps in rainy tears, 'Tis a joy to press the pillow of a cottage chamber bed, And listen to the patter of the soft rain overhead. Every tinkle on the shingles has an echo in the heart, And a thousand dreamy fancies into busy being start; And a thousand recollections weave their bright hues into woof, As I listen to the patter of the soft rain on the roof. There in fancy comes my mother, as she used to years agone, To survey the infant sleepers ere she left them till the dawn. I can see her bending o'er me, as I listen to the strain Which is played upon the shingles by the patter of the rain. Then my little seraph sister, with her wings and waving hair, And her bright-eyed, cherub brother--a serene, angelic pair-- Glide around my wakeful pillow with their praise or mild reproof, As I listen to the murmur of the soft rain on the roof. And another comes to thrill me with her eyes' delicious blue, I forget, as gazing on her, that her heart was all untrue, I remember that I loved her as I ne'er may love again, And my heart's quick pulses vibrate to the patter of the rain. There is naught in art's bravuras that can work with such a spell, In the spirit's pure, deep fountains, whence the holy passions swell, As that melody of nature, that subdued, subduing strain, Which is played upon the shingles by the patter of the rain! _Coates Kinney._ Gunga Din The "bhisti," or water-carriers attached to regiments in India, is often one of the most devoted subjects of the British crown, and he is much appreciated by the men. You may talk o' gin an' beer When you're quartered safe out 'ere, An' you're sent to penny-fights an' Aldershot it; But if it comes to slaughter You will do your work on water, An' you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it. Now in Injia's sunny clime, Where I used to spend my time A-servin' of 'Er Majesty the Queen, Of all them black-faced crew The finest man I knew Was our regimental _bhisti_, Gunga Din. He was "Din! Din! Din! You limping lump o' brick-dust, Gunga Din! Hi! _Slippy hitherao!_ Water, get it! _Panee lao!_ You squidgy-nosed, old idol, Gunga Din!" The uniform 'e wore Was nothin' much before, An' rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind, For a twisty piece o' rag An' a goatskin water bag Was all the field-equipment 'e could find, When the sweatin' troop-train lay In a sidin' through the day, Where the 'eat would make your bloomin' eyebrows crawl, We shouted "Harry By!" Till our throats were bricky-dry, Then we wopped 'im 'cause 'e couldn't serve us all, It was "Din! Din! Din! You 'eathen, where the mischief 'ave you been? You put some _juldee_ in it, Or I'll _marrow_ you this minute If you don't fill up my helmet, Gunga Din!" 'E would dot an' carry one Till the longest day was done, An' 'e didn't seem to know the use o' fear. If we charged or broke or cut, You could bet your bloomin' nut, 'E'd be waitin' fifty paces right flank rear. With 'is _mussick_ on 'is back, 'E would skip with our attack, An' watch us till the bugles made "Retire." An' for all 'is dirty 'ide 'E was white, clear white, inside When 'e went to tend the wounded under fire! It was "Din! Din! Din!" With the bullets kickin' dust-spots on the green. When the cartridges ran out, You could 'ear the front-files shout: "Hi! ammunition-mules an' Gunga Din!" I sha'n't forgit the night When I dropped be'ind the fight With a bullet where my belt-plate should 'a' been. I was chokin' mad with thirst, An' the man that spied me first Was our good old grinnin', gruntin' Gunga Din. 'E lifted up my 'ead, An' 'e plugged me where I bled, An' 'e guv me arf-a-pint o' water--green: It was crawlin' and it stunk, But of all the drinks I've drunk, I'm gratefullest to one from Gunga Din. It was "Din! Din! Din! 'Ere's a beggar with a bullet through 'is spleen; 'E's chawin' up the ground an' 'e's kickin' all around: For Gawd's sake git the water, Gunga Din!" 'E carried me away To where a _dooli_ lay, An' a bullet come an' drilled the beggar clean. 'E put me safe inside, An', just before 'e died: "I 'ope you liked your drink," sez Gunga Din. So I'll meet 'im later on In the place where 'e is gone-- Where it's always double drill and no canteen; 'E'll be squattin' on the coals Givin' drink to pore damned souls, An' I'll get a swig in Hell from Gunga Din! Din! Din! Din! You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din! Tho' I've belted you an' flayed you, By the livin' Gawd that made you, You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din! _Rudyard Kipling._ "Panee lao"--Bring water swiftly. "Harry Ry"-The British soldier's equivalent of "O Brother!" "Put some juldee in it"--Be quick. "Marrow you"--Hit you. "Mussick"--Water-skin. Warren's Address to the American Soldiers (_Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775_) Stand! the ground's your own, my braves! Will ye give it up to slaves? Will ye look for greener graves? Hope ye mercy still? What's the mercy despots feel? Hear it in that battle peal! Read it on yon bristling steel! Ask it--ye who will. Fear ye foes who kill for hire? Will ye to your homes retire? Look behind you! They're afire! And, before you, see Who have done it! From the vale On they come! and will ye quail? Leaden rain and iron hail Let their welcome be! In the God of battles trust! Die we may--and die we must; But, O where can dust to dust Be consigned so well, As where Heaven its dews shall shed On the martyred patriot's bed, And the rocks shall raise their head, Of his deeds to tell! _John Pierpont._ Mad River IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS _Traveler_ Why dost thou wildly rush and roar, Mad River, O Mad River? Wilt thou not pause and cease to pour Thy hurrying, headlong waters o'er This rocky shelf forever? What secret trouble stirs thy breast? Why all this fret and flurry? Dost thou not know that what is best In this too restless world is rest From overwork and worry? _The River_ What wouldst thou in these mountains seek, O stranger from the city? Is it perhaps some foolish freak Of thine, to put the words I speak Into a plaintive ditty? _Traveler_ Yes; I would learn of thee thy song, With all its flowing numbers, And in a voice as fresh and strong As thine is, sing it all day long, And hear it in my slumbers. _The River_ A brooklet nameless and unknown Was I at first, resembling A little child, that all alone Comes venturing down the stairs of stone, Irresolute and trembling. Later, by wayward fancies led, For the wide world I panted; Out of the forest dark and dread Across the open fields I fled, Like one pursued and haunted. I tossed my arms, I sang aloud, My voice exultant blending With thunder from the passing cloud, The wind, the forest bent and bowed, The rush of rain descending. I heard the distant ocean call, Imploring and entreating; Drawn onward, o'er this rocky wall I plunged, and the loud waterfall Made answer to the greeting. And now, beset with many ills, A toilsome life I follow; Compelled to carry from the hills These logs to the impatient mills Below there in the hollow. Yet something ever cheers and charms The rudeness of my labors; Daily I water with these arms The cattle of a hundred farms, And have the birds for neighbors. Men call me Mad, and well they may, When, full of rage and trouble, I burst my banks of sand and clay, And sweep their wooden bridge away, Like withered reeds or stubble. Now go and write thy little rhyme, As of thine own creating. Thou seest the day is past its prime; I can no longer waste my time; The mills are tired of waiting. _Henry W. Longfellow._ When Papa Was a Boy When papa was a little boy you really couldn't find In all the country round about a child so quick to mind. His mother never called but once, and he was always there; He never made the baby cry or pulled his sister's hair. He never slid down banisters or made the slightest noise, And never in his life was known to fight with other boys. He always rose at six o'clock and went to bed at eight, And never lay abed till noon; and never sat up late. He finished Latin, French and Greek when he was ten year old, And knew the Spanish alphabet as soon as he was told. He never, never thought of play until his work was done, He labored hard from break of day until the set of sun. He never scraped his muddy shoes upon the parlor floor, And never answered, back his ma, and never banged the door. "But, truly, I could never see," said little Dick Molloy, "How he could never do these things and really be a boy." _E.A. Brininstool._ Which Shall It Be? "Which shall it be? which shall it be?" I looked at John,--John looked at me, (Dear, patient John, who loves me yet As well as though my locks were jet.) And when I found that I must speak, My voice seemed strangely low and weak; "Tell me again what Robert said"; And then I listening bent my head. "This is his letter: 'I will give A house and land while you shall live, If, in return, from out your seven, One child to me for aye is given.'" I looked at John's old garments worn, I thought of all that John had borne Of poverty, and work, and care, Which I, though willing, could not share; Of seven hungry mouths to feed, Of seven little children's need, And then of this. "Come John," said I, "We'll choose among them as they lie Asleep"; so walking hand in hand, Dear John and I surveyed our band. First to the cradle lightly stepped, Where Lilian, the baby, slept; Her damp curls lay, like gold alight, A glory 'gainst the pillow white; Softly her father stooped to lay His rough hand down in loving way, When dream or whisper made her stir, And huskily he said, "Not _her_." We stooped beside the trundle-bed, And one long ray of lamp-light shed Athwart the boyish faces there, In sleep so pitiful and fair. I saw on Jamie's rough red cheek A tear undried; ere John could speak, "He's but a baby too," said I, And kissed him as we hurried by. Pale, patient Robby's angel face Still in his sleep bore suffering's trace; "No, for a thousand crowns not him," He whispered, while our eyes were dim. Poor Dick! sad Dick! our wayward son, Turbulent, reckless, idle one,-- Could _he_ be spared? "Nay, He who gave Bids us befriend him to the grave; Only a mother's heart can be Patient enough for such as he; And so," said John, "I would not dare To send him from her bedside prayer." Then stole we softly up above, And knelt by Mary, child of love; "Perhaps for _her_ 'twould better be," I said to John. Quite silently He lifted up a curl, that lay Across her cheek in wilful way, And shook his head; "Nay, love, not thee"; The while my heart beat audibly. Only one more, our eldest lad, Trusty and truthful, good and glad,-- So like his father: "No, John, no; I cannot, will not, let him go!" And so we wrote, in courteous way, We could not give one child away; And afterward toil lighter seemed, Thinking of that of which we dreamed; Happy, in truth, that not one face We missed from its accustomed place; Thankful to work for all the seven, Trusting then to One in heaven. _Ethel Lynn Beers._ The Battle of Bunker's Hill It was a starry night in June, the air was soft and still, When the "minute-men" from Cambridge came, and gathered on the hill; Beneath us lay the sleeping town, around us frowned the fleet, But the pulse of freemen, not of slaves, within our bosoms beat; And every heart rose high with hope, as fearlessly we said, "We will be numbered with the free, or numbered with the dead!" "Bring out the line to mark the trench, and stretch it on the sward!" The trench is marked, the tools are brought, we utter not a word, But stack our guns, then fall to work with mattock and with spade, A thousand men with sinewy arms, and not a sound is made; So still were we, the stars beneath, that scarce a whisper fell; We heard the red-coat's musket click, and heard him cry, "All's well!" See how the morn, is breaking; the red is in the sky! The mist is creeping from the stream that floats in silence by; The "Lively's" hall looms through the fog, and they our works have spied, For the ruddy flash and round-shot part in thunder from her side; And the "Falcon" and the "Cerberus" make every bosom thrill, With gun and shell, and drum and bell, and boatswain's whistle shrill; But deep and wider grows the trench, as spade and mattock ply, For we have to cope with fearful odds, and the time is drawing nigh! Up with the pine-tree banner! Our gallant Prescott stands Amid the plunging shells and shot, and plants it with his hands; Up with the shout! for Putnam comes upon his reeking bay, With bloody spur and foaming bit, in haste to join the fray. But thou whose soul is glowing in the summer of thy years, Unvanquishable Warren, thou, the youngest of thy peers, Wert born and bred, and shaped and made, to act a patriot's part, And dear to us thy presence is as heart's blood to the heart! Hark! from the town a trumpet! The barges at the wharf Are crowded with the living freight; and now they're pushing off; With clash and glitter, trump and drum, in all its bright array, Behold the splendid sacrifice move slowly o'er the bay! And still and still the barges fill, and still across the deep, Like thunder clouds along the sky, the hostile transports sweep. And now they're forming at the Point; and now the lines advance: We see beneath the sultry sun their polished bayonets glance; We hear anear the throbbing drum, the bugle-challenge ring; Quick bursts and loud the flashing cloud, and rolls from wing to wing; But on the height our bulwark stands, tremendous in its gloom,-- As sullen as a tropic sky, and silent as a tomb. And so we waited till we saw, at scarce ten rifles' length, The old vindictive Saxon spite, in all its stubborn strength; When sudden, flash on flash, around the jagged rampart burst From every gun the livid light upon the foe accursed. Then quailed a monarch's might before a free-born people's ire; Then drank the sward the veteran's life, where swept the yeoman's fire. Then, staggered by the shot, he saw their serried columns reel, And fall, as falls the bearded rye beneath the reaper's steel; And then arose a mighty shout that might have waked the dead,-- "Hurrah! they run! the field is won! Hurrah! the foe is fled!" And every man hath dropped his gun to clutch a neighbor's hand, As his heart kept praying all the while for home and native land. Thrice on that day we stood the shock of thrice a thousand foes, And thrice that day within our lines the shout of victory rose; And though our swift fire slackened then, and, reddening in the skies, We saw from Charlestown's roofs and walls the flamy columns rise, Yet while we had a cartridge left, we still maintained the fight, Nor gained the foe one foot of ground upon that blood-stained height. What though for us no laurels bloom, and o'er the nameless brave No sculptured trophy, scroll, nor hatch records a warrior grave! What though the day to us was lost!--upon that deathless page The everlasting charter stands for every land and age! For man hath broke his felon bonds, and cast them in the dust, And claimed his heritage divine, and justified the trust; While through his rifted prison-bars the hues of freedom pour, O'er every nation, race and clime, on every sea and shore, Such glories as the patriarch viewed, when, mid the darkest skies, He saw above a ruined world the Bow of Promise rise. _F.S. Cozzens._ Health and Wealth We squander health in search of wealth; We scheme and toil and save; Then squander wealth in search of health, But only find a grave. We live, and boast of what we own; We die, and only get a stone. The Heartening It may be that the words I spoke To cheer him on his way, To him were vain, but I myself Was braver all that day. _Winifred Webb._ Billy's Rose Billy's dead, and gone to glory--so is Billy's sister Nell: There's a tale I know about them, were I poet I would tell; Soft it comes, with perfume laden, like a breath of country air Wafted down the filthy alley, bringing fragrant odors there. In that vile and filthy alley, long ago one winter's day, Dying quick of want and fever, hapless, patient Billy lay, While beside him sat his sister, in the garret's dismal gloom, Cheering with her gentle presence Billy's pathway to the tomb. Many a tale of elf and fairy did she tell the dying child, Till his eyes lost half their anguish, and his worn, wan features smiled; Tales herself had heard haphazard, caught amid the Babel roar, Lisped about by tiny gossips playing round their mothers' door. Then she felt his wasted fingers tighten feebly as she told How beyond this dismal alley lay a land of shining gold, Where, when all the pain was over,--where, when all the tears were shed,-- He would be a white-frocked angel, with a gold thing on his head. Then she told some garbled story of a kind-eyed Saviour's love, How He'd built for little children great big playgrounds up above, Where they sang and played at hopscotch and at horses all the day, And where beadles and policemen never frightened them away. This was Nell's idea of heaven,--just a bit of what she'd heard, With a little bit invented, and a little bit inferred. But her brother lay and listened, and he seemed to understand, For he closed his eyes and murmured he could see the promised land. "Yes," he whispered, "I can see it, I can see it, sister Nell, Oh, the children look so happy and they're all so strong and well; I can see them there with Jesus--He is playing with them, too! Let as run away and join them, if there's room for me and you." She was eight, this little maiden, and her life had all been spent In the garret and the alley, where they starved to pay the rent; Where a drunken father's curses and a drunken mother's blows Drove her forth into the gutter from the day's dawn to its close. But she knew enough, this outcast, just to tell this sinking boy, "You must die before you're able all the blessings to enjoy. You must die," she whispered, "Billy, and I am not even ill; But I'll come to you, dear brother,--yes, I promise that I will. "You are dying, little brother, you are dying, oh, so fast; I heard father say to mother that he knew you couldn't last. They will put you in a coffin, then you'll wake and be up there, While I'm left alone to suffer in this garret bleak and bare." "Yes, I know it," answered Billy. "Ah, but, sister, I don't mind, Gentle Jesus will not beat me; He's not cruel or unkind. But I can't help thinking, Nelly, I should like to take away Something, sister, that you gave me, I might look at every day. "In the summer you remember how the mission took us out To a great green lovely meadow, where we played and ran about, And the van that took us halted by a sweet bright patch of land, Where the fine red blossoms grew, dear, half as big as mother's hand. "Nell, I asked the good kind teacher what they called such flowers as those, And he told me, I remember, that the pretty name was rose. I have never seen them since, dear--how I wish that I had one! Just to keep and think of you, Nell, when I'm up beyond the sun." Not a word said little Nelly; but at night, when Billy slept, On she flung her scanty garments and then down the stairs she crept. Through the silent streets of London she ran nimbly as a fawn, Running on and running ever till the night had changed to dawn. When the foggy sun had risen, and the mist had cleared away, All around her, wrapped in snowdrift, there the open country lay. She was tired, her limbs were frozen, and the roads had cut her feet, But there came no flowery gardens her poor tearful eyes to greet. She had traced the road by asking, she had learnt the way to go; She had found the famous meadow--it was wrapped in cruel snow; Not a buttercup or daisy, not a single verdant blade Showed its head above its prison. Then she knelt her down and prayed; With her eyes upcast to heaven, down she sank upon the ground, And she prayed to God to tell her where the roses might be found. Then the cold blast numbed her senses, and her sight grew strangely dim; And a sudden, awful tremor seemed to seize her every limb. "Oh, a rose!" she moaned, "good Jesus,--just a rose to take to Bill!" And as she prayed a chariot came thundering down the hill; And a lady sat there, toying with a red rose, rare and sweet; As she passed she flung it from her, and it fell at Nelly's feet. Just a word her lord had spoken caused her ladyship to fret, And the rose had been his present, so she flung it in a pet; But the poor, half-blinded Nelly thought it fallen from the skies, And she murmured, "Thank you, Jesus!" as she clasped the dainty prize. Lo! that night from but the alley did a child's soul pass away, From dirt and sin and misery up to where God's children play. Lo! that night a wild, fierce snowstorm burst in fury o'er the land, And at morn they found Nell frozen, with the red rose in her hand. Billy's dead, and gone to glory--so is Billy's sister Nell; Am I bold to say this happened in the land where angels dwell,-- That the children met in heaven, after all their earthly woes, And that Nelly kissed her brother, and said, "Billy, here's your rose"? _George R. Sims._ The Old Actor's Story Mine is a wild, strange story,--the strangest you ever heard; There are many who won't believe it, but it's gospel, every word; It's the biggest drama of any in a long, adventurous life; The scene was a ship, and the actors--were myself and my new-wed wife. You musn't mind if I ramble, and lose the thread now and then; I'm old, you know, and I wander--it's a way with old women and men, For their lives lie all behind them, and their thoughts go far away, And are tempted afield, like children lost on a summer day. The years must be five-and-twenty that have passed since that awful night, But I see it again this evening, I can never shut out the sight. We were only a few weeks married, I and the wife, you know, When we had an offer for Melbourne, and made up our minds to go. We'd acted together in England, traveling up and down With a strolling band of players, going from town to town; We played the lovers together--we were leading lady and gent-- And at last we played in earnest, and straight to the church we went. The parson gave us his blessing, and I gave Nellie the ring, And swore that I'd love and cherish, and endow her with everything. How we smiled at that part of the service when I said "I thee endow"! But as to the "love and cherish," I meant to keep that vow. We were only a couple of strollers; we had coin when the show was good, When it wasn't we went without it, and we did the best we could. We were happy, and loved each other, and laughed at the shifts we made,-- Where love makes plenty of sunshine, there poverty casts no shade. Well, at last we got to London, and did pretty well for a bit; Then the business dropped to nothing, and the manager took a flit,-- Stepped off one Sunday morning, forgetting the treasury call; But our luck was in, and we managed right on our feet to fall. We got an offer for Melbourne,--got it that very week. Those were the days when thousands went over to fortune seek, The days of the great gold fever, and a manager thought the spot Good for a "spec," and took us as actors among his lot. We hadn't a friend in England--we'd only ourselves to please-- And we jumped at the chance of trying our fortune across the seas. We went on a sailing vessel, and the journey was long and rough; We hadn't been out a fortnight before we had had enough. But use is a second nature, and we'd got not to mind a storm, When misery came upon us,--came in a hideous form. My poor little wife fell ailing, grew worse, and at last so bad That the doctor said she was dying,--I thought 'twould have sent me mad,-- Dying where leagues of billows seemed to shriek for their prey, And the nearest land was hundreds--aye, thousands--of miles away. She raved one night in a fever, and the next lay still as death, So still I'd to bend and listen for the faintest sign of breath. She seemed in a sleep, and sleeping, with a smile on her thin, wan face,-- She passed away one morning, while I prayed to the throne of grace. I knelt in the little cabin, and prayer after prayer I said, Till the surgeon came and told me it was useless--my wife was dead! Dead! I wouldn't believe it. They forced me away that night, For I raved in my wild despairing, the shock sent me mad outright. I was shut in the farthest cabin, and I beat my head on the side, And all day long in my madness, "They've murdered her!" I cried. They locked me away from my fellows,--put me in cruel chains, It seems I had seized a weapon to beat out the surgeon's brains. I cried in my wild, mad fury, that he was a devil sent To gloat o'er the frenzied anguish with which my heart was rent. I spent that night with the irons heavy upon my wrists, And my wife lay dead quite near me. I beat with my fettered fists, Beat at my prison panels, and then--O God!--and then I heard the shrieks of women and the tramp of hurrying men. I heard the cry, "Ship afire!" caught up by a hundred throats, And over the roar the captain shouting to lower the boats; Then cry upon cry, and curses, and the crackle of burning wood, And the place grew hot as a furnace, I could feel it where I stood. I beat at the door and shouted, but never a sound came back, And the timbers above me started, till right through a yawning crack I could see the flames shoot upward, seizing on mast and sail, Fanned in their burning fury by the breath of the howling gale. I dashed at the door in fury, shrieking, "I will not die! Die in this burning prison!"--but I caught no answering cry. Then, suddenly, right upon me, the flames crept up with a roar, And their fiery tongues shot forward, cracking my prison door. I was free--with the heavy iron door dragging me down to death; I fought my way to the cabin, choked with the burning breath Of the flames that danced around me like man-mocking fiends at play, And then--O God! I can see it, and shall to my dying day. There lay my Nell as they'd left her, dead in her berth that night; The flames flung a smile on her features,--a horrible, lurid light. God knows how I reached and touched her, but I found myself by her side; I thought she was living a moment, I forgot that my Nell had died. In the shock of those awful seconds reason came back to my brain; I heard a sound as of breathing, and then a low cry of pain; Oh, was there mercy in heaven? Was there a God in the skies? The dead woman's lips were moving, the dead woman opened her eyes. I cursed like a madman raving--I cried to her, "Nell! my Nell!" They had left us alone and helpless, alone in that burning hell; They had left us alone to perish--forgotten me living--and she Had been left for the fire to bear her to heaven, instead of the sea. I clutched at her, roused her shrieking, the stupor was on her still; I seized her in spite of my fetters,--fear gave a giant's will. God knows how I did it, but blindly I fought through the flames and the wreck Up--up to the air, and brought her safe to the untouched deck. We'd a moment of life together,--a moment of life, the time For one last word to each other,--'twas a moment supreme, sublime. From the trance we'd for death mistaken, the heat had brought her to life, And I was fettered and helpless, so we lay there, husband and wife! It was but a moment, but ages seemed to have passed away, When a shout came over the water, and I looked, and lo, there lay, Right away from the vessel, a boat that was standing by; They had seen our forms on the vessel, as the flames lit up the sky. I shouted a prayer to Heaven, then called to my wife, and she Tore with new strength at my fetters--God helped her, and I was free; Then over the burning bulwarks we leaped for one chance of life. Did they save us? Well, here I am, sir, and yonder's my dear old wife. We were out in the boat till daylight, when a great ship passing by Took us on board, and at Melbourne landed us by and by. We've played many parts in dramas since we went on that famous trip, But ne'er such a scene together as we had on the burning ship! _George B. Sims._ The Boy Who Didn't Pass A sad-faced little fellow sits alone in deep disgrace, There's a lump arising in his throat, tears streaming down his face; He wandered from his playmates, for he doesn't want to hear Their shouts of merry laughter, since the world has lost its cheer; He has sipped the cup of sorrow, he has drained the bitter glass, And his heart is fairly breaking; he's the boy who didn't pass. In the apple tree the robin sings a cheery little song, But he doesn't seem to hear it, showing plainly something's wrong; Comes his faithful little spaniel for a romp and bit of play, But the troubled little fellow sternly bids him go away. All alone he sits in sorrow, with his hair a tangled mass, And his eyes are red with weeping; he's the boy who didn't pass. How he hates himself for failing, he can hear his playmates jeer, For they've left him with the dullards--gone ahead a half a year, And he tried so hard to conquer, oh, he tried to do his best, But now he knows, he's weaker, yes, and duller than the rest. He's ashamed to tell his mother, for he thinks she'll hate him, too-- The little boy who didn't pass, who failed of getting through. Oh, you who boast a laughing son, and speak of him as bright, And you who love a little girl who comes to you at night With smiling eyes, with dancing feet, with honors from her school, Turn to that lonely little boy who thinks he is a fool, And take him kindly by the hand, the dullest in his class, He is the one who most needs love, the boy who didn't pass. The Station-Master's Story Yes, it's a quiet station, but it suits me well enough; I want a bit of the smooth now, for I've had my share o' rough. This berth that the company gave me, they gave as the work was light; I was never fit for the signals after one awful night, I'd been in the box from a younker, and I'd never felt the strain Of the lives at my right hand's mercy in every passing train. One day there was something happened, and it made my nerves go queer, And it's all through that as you find me the station-master here. I was on at the box down yonder--that's where we turn the mails, And specials, and fast expresses, on to the center rails; The side's for the other traffic--the luggage and local slows. It was rare hard work at Christmas, when double the traffic grows. I've been in the box down yonder nigh sixteen hours a day, Till my eyes grew dim and heavy, and my thoughts went all astray; But I've worked the points half-sleeping--and once I slept outright, Till the roar of the Limited woke me, and I nearly died with fright. Then I thought of the lives in peril, and what might have been their fate Had I sprung to the points that evening a tenth of a tick too late; And a cold and ghastly shiver ran icily through my frame As I fancied the public clamor, the trial, and bitter shame. I could see the bloody wreckage--I could see the mangled slain-- And the picture was seared for ever, blood-red, on my heated brain. That moment my nerve was shattered, for I couldn't shut out the thought Of the lives I held in my keeping, and the ruin that might be wrought. That night in our little cottage, as I kissed our sleeping child, My wife looked up from her sewing, and told me, as she smiled, That Johnny had made his mind up--he'd be a pointsman, too. "He says when he's big, like daddy, he'll work in the box with you." I frowned, for my heart was heavy, and my wife she saw the look; Lord bless you! my little Alice could read me like a book. I'd to tell her of what had happened, and I said that I must leave, For a pointsman's arm ain't trusty when terror lurks in his sleeve. But she cheered me up in a minute, and that night, ere we went to sleep, She made me give her a promise, which I swore that I'd always keep-- It was always to do my duty. "Do that, and then, come what will, You'll have no worry." said Alice, "if things go well or ill. There's something that always tells us the thing that we ought to do"-- My wife was a bit religious, and in with the chapel crew. But I knew she was talking reason, and I said to myself, says I, "I won't give in like a coward, it's a scare that'll soon go by." Now, the very next day the missus had to go to the market town; She'd the Christmas things to see to, and she wanted to buy a gown. She'd be gone for a spell, for the Parley didn't come back till eight, And I knew, on a Christmas Eve, too, the trains would be extra late. So she settled to leave me Johnny, and then she could turn the key-- For she'd have some parcels to carry, and the boy would be safe with me. He was five, was our little Johnny, and quiet, and nice, and good-- He was mad to go with daddy, and I'd often promised he should. It was noon when the missus started,--her train went by my box; She could see, as she passed my window, her darling's curly locks, I lifted him up to mammy, and he kissed his little hand, Then sat, like a mouse, in the corner, and thought it was fairyland. But somehow I fell a-thinking of a scene that would not fade, Of how I had slept on duty, until I grew afraid; For the thought would weigh upon me, one day I might come to lie In a felon's cell for the slaughter of those I had doomed to die. The fit that had come upon me, like a hideous nightmare seemed, Till I rubbed my eyes and started like a sleeper who has dreamed. For a time the box had vanished--I'd worked like a mere machine-- My mind had been on the wander, and I'd neither heard nor seen, With a start I thought of Johnny, and I turned the boy to seek, Then I uttered a groan of anguish, for my lips refused to speak; There had flashed such a scene of horror swift on my startled sight That it curdled my blood in terror and sent my red lips white. It was all in one awful moment--I saw that the boy was lost: He had gone for a toy, I fancied, some child from a train had tossed; The local was easing slowly to stop at the station here, And the limited mail was coming, and I had the line to clear. I could hear the roar of the engine, I could almost feel its breath, And right on the center metals stood my boy in the jaws of death; On came the fierce fiend, tearing straight for the center line, And the hand that must wreck or save it, O merciful God, was mine! 'Twas a hundred lives or Johnny's. O Heaven! what could I do?-- Up to God's ear that moment a wild, fierce question flew-- "What shall I do, O Heaven?" and sudden and loud and clear On the wind came the words, "Your duty," borne to my listening ear. Then I set my teeth, and my breathing was fierce and short and quick. "My boy!" I cried, but he heard not; and then I went blind and sick; The hot black smoke of the engine came with a rush before, I turned the mail to the center, and by it flew with a roar. Then I sank on my knees in horror, and hid my ashen face-- I had given my child to Heaven; his life was a hundred's grace. Had I held my hand a moment, I had hurled the flying mail To shatter the creeping local that stood on the other rail! Where is my boy, my darling? O God! let me hide my eyes. How can I look--his father--on that which there mangled lies? That voice!--O merciful Heaven!--'tis the child's, and he calls my name! I hear, but I cannot see him, for my eyes are filled with flame. I knew no more that night, sir, for I fell, as I heard the boy; The place reeled round, and I fainted,--swooned with the sudden joy. But I heard on the Christmas morning, when I woke in my own warm bed With Alice's arms around me, and a strange wild dream in my head, That she'd come by the early local, being anxious about the lad, And had seen him there on the metals, and the sight nigh drove her mad-- She had seen him just as the engine of the Limited closed my view, And she leapt on the line and saved him just as the mail dashed through. She was back in the train in a second, and both were safe and sound; The moment they stopped at the station she ran here, and I was found With my eyes like a madman's glaring, and my face a ghastly white: I heard the boy, and I fainted, and I hadn't my wits that night. Who told me to do my duty? What voice was that on the wind? Was it fancy that brought it to me? or were there God's lips behind? If I hadn't 'a' done my duty--had I ventured to disobey-- My bonny boy and his mother might have died by my hand that day. _George R. Sims._ Hark, Hark! the Lark _(From "Cymbeline")_ Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings, And Phoebus 'gins arise, His steeds to water at those springs On chaliced flowers that lies; And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes: With every thing that pretty is, My lady sweet, arise! Arise, arise! _William Shakespeare._ Tommy's Prayer In a dark and dismal alley where the sunshine never came, Dwelt a little lad named Tommy, sickly, delicate, and lame; He had never yet been healthy, but had lain since he was born Dragging out his weak existence well nigh hopeless and forlorn. He was six, was little Tommy, 'twas just five years ago Since his drunken mother dropped him, and the babe was crippled so. He had never known the comfort of a mother's tender care, But her cruel blows and curses made his pain still worse to bear. There he lay within the cellar, from the morning till the night, Starved, neglected, cursed, ill-treated, nought to make his dull life bright; Not a single friend to love him, not a loving thing to love-- For he knew not of a Saviour, or a heaven up above. 'Twas a quiet, summer evening, and the alley, too, was still; Tommy's little heart was sinking, and he felt so lonely, till, Floating up the quiet alley, wafted inwards from the street, Came the sound of some one singing, sounding, oh! so clear and sweet. Eagerly did Tommy listen as the singing came-- Oh! that he could see the singer! How he wished he wasn't lame. Then he called and shouted loudly, till the singer heard the sound, And on noting whence it issued, soon the little cripple found. 'Twas a maiden rough and rugged, hair unkempt, and naked feet, All her garments torn and ragged, her appearance far from neat; "So yer called me," said the maiden, "wonder wot yer wants o' me; Most folks call me Singing Jessie; wot may your name chance to be?" "My name's Tommy; I'm a cripple, and I want to hear you sing, For it makes me feel so happy--sing me something, anything," Jessie laughed, and answered smiling, "I can't stay here very long, But I'll sing a hymn to please you, wot I calls the 'Glory Song.'" Then she sang to him of heaven, pearly gates, and streets of gold, Where the happy angel children are not starved or nipped with cold; But where happiness and gladness never can decrease or end, And where kind and loving Jesus is their Sovereign and their Friend. Oh! how Tommy's eyes did glisten as he drank in every word As it fell from "Singing Jessie"--was it true, what he had heard? And so anxiously he asked her, "Is there really such a place?" And a tear began to trickle down his pallid little face. "Tommy, you're a little heathen; why, it's up beyond the sky, And if yer will love the Saviour, yer shall go there when yer die." "Then," said Tommy, "tell me, Jessie, how can I the Saviour love, When I'm down in this 'ere cellar, and He's up in heaven above?" So the little ragged maiden who had heard at Sunday School All about the way to heaven, and the Christian's golden rule, Taught the little cripple Tommy how to love, and how to pray, Then she sang a "Song of Jesus," kissed his cheek and went away. Tommy lay within the cellar which had grown so dark and cold, Thinking all about the children in the streets of shining gold; And he heeded not the darkness of that damp and chilly room, For the joy in Tommy's bosom could disperse the deepest gloom. "Oh! if I could only see it," thought the cripple, as he lay, "Jessie said that Jesus listens and I think I'll try and pray"; So he put his hands together, and he closed his little eyes, And in accents weak, yet earnest, sent this message to the skies:-- "Gentle Jesus, please forgive me as I didn't know afore, That yer cared for little cripples who is weak and very poor, And I never heard of heaven till that Jessie came to-day And told me all about it, so I wants to try and pray. "Yer can see me, can't yer, Jesus? Jessie told me that yer could, And I somehow must believe it, for it seems so prime and good; And she told me if I loved you, I should see yer when I die, In the bright and happy heaven that is up beyond the sky. "Lord, I'm only just a cripple, and I'm no use here below, For I heard my mother whisper, she'd be glad if I could go; And I'm cold and hungry sometimes; and I feel so lonely, too, Can't yer take me, gentle Jesus, up to heaven along o' you? "Oh! I'd be so good and patient, and I'd never cry or fret, And your kindness to me, Jesus, I would surely not forget; I would love you all I know of, and would never make a noise-- Can't you find me just a corner, where I'll watch the other boys? "Oh! I think yer'll do it, Jesus, something seems to tell me so, For I feel so glad and happy, and I do so want to go, How I long to see yer, Jesus, and the children all so bright! Come and fetch me, won't yer, Jesus? Come and fetch me home tonight!" Tommy ceased his supplication, he had told his soul's desire, And he waited for the answer till his head began to tire; Then he turned towards his corner and lay huddled in a heap, Closed his little eyes so gently, and was quickly fast asleep. Oh, I wish that every scoffer could have seen his little face As he lay there in the corner, in that damp, and noisome place; For his countenance was shining like an angel's, fair and bright, And it seemed to fill the cellar with a holy, heavenly light. He had only heard of Jesus from a ragged singing girl, He might well have wondered, pondered, till his brain began to whirl; But he took it as she told it, and believed it then and there, Simply trusting in the Saviour, and his kind and tender care. In the morning, when the mother came to wake her crippled boy, She discovered that his features wore a look of sweetest joy, And she shook him somewhat roughly, but the cripple's face was cold-- He had gone to join the children in the streets of shining gold. Tommy's prayer had soon been answered, and the Angel Death had come To remove him from his cellar, to his bright and heavenly home Where sweet comfort, joy, and gladness never can decrease or end, And where Jesus reigns eternally, his Sovereign and his Friend. _John F. Nicholls._ The Two Pictures It was a bright and lovely summer's morn, Fair bloomed the flowers, the birds sang softly sweet, The air was redolent with perfumed balm, And Nature scattered, with unsparing hand, Her loveliest graces over hill and dale. An artist, weary of his narrow room Within the city's pent and heated walls, Had wandered long amid the ripening fields, Until, remembering his neglected themes, He thought to turn his truant steps toward home. These led him through a rustic, winding lane, Lined with green hedge-rows spangled close with flowers, And overarched by trees of noblest growth. But when at last he reached the farther end Of this sweet labyrinth, he there beheld A vision of such pure, pathetic grace, That weariness and haste were both obscured, It was a child--a young and lovely child With eyes of heavenly hue, bright golden hair, And dimpled hands clasped in a morning prayer, Kneeling beside its youthful mother's knee. Upon that baby brow of spotless snow, No single trace of guilt, or pain, or woe, No line of bitter grief or dark despair, Of envy, hatred, malice, worldly care, Had ever yet been written. With bated breath, And hand uplifted as in warning, swift, The artist seized his pencil, and there traced In soft and tender lines that image fair: Then, when 'twas finished, wrote beneath one word, A word of holiest import--Innocence. Years fled and brought with them a subtle change, Scattering Time's snow upon the artist's brow, But leaving there the laurel wreath of fame, While all men spake in words of praise his name; For he had traced full many a noble work Upon the canvas that had touched men's souls, And drawn them from the baser things of earth, Toward the light and purity of heaven. One day, in tossing o'er his folio's leaves, He chanced upon the picture of the child, Which he had sketched that bright morn long before, And then forgotten. Now, as he paused to gaze, A ray of inspiration seemed to dart Straight from those eyes to his. He took the sketch, Placed it before his easel, and with care That seemed but pleasure, painted a fair theme, Touching and still re-touching each bright lineament, Until all seemed to glow with life divine-- 'Twas innocence personified. But still The artist could not pause. He needs must have A meet companion for his fairest theme; And so he sought the wretched haunts of sin, Through miry courts of misery and guilt, Seeking a face which at the last was found. Within a prison cell there crouched a man-- Nay, rather say a fiend--with countenance seamed And marred by all the horrid lines of sin; Each mark of degradation might be traced, And every scene of horror he had known, And every wicked deed that he had done, Were visibly written on his lineaments; Even the last, worst deed of all, that left him here, A parricide within a murderer's cell. Here then the artist found him; and with hand Made skillful by its oft-repeated toil, Transferred unto his canvas that vile face, And also wrote beneath it just one word, A word of darkest import--it was Vice. Then with some inspiration not his own, Thinking, perchance, to touch that guilty heart, And wake it to repentance e'er too late, The artist told the tale of that bright morn, Placed the two pictured faces side by side, And brought the wretch before them. With a shriek That echoed through those vaulted corridors, Like to the cries that issue from the lips Of souls forever doomed to woe, Prostrate upon the stony floor he fell, And hid his face and groaned aloud in anguish. "I was that child once--I, yes, even I-- In the gracious years forever fled, That innocent and happy little child! These very hands were raised to God in prayer, That now are reddened with a mother's blood. Great Heaven! can such things be? Almighty power, Send forth Thy dart and strike me where I lie!" He rose, laid hold upon the artist's arm And grasped it with demoniac power, The while he cried: "Go forth, I say, go forth And tell my history to the tempted youth. I looked upon the wine when it was red, I heeded not my mother's piteous prayers, I heeded not the warnings of my friends, But tasted of the wine when it was red, Until it left a demon in my heart That led me onward, step by step, to this, This horrible place from which my body goes Unto the gallows, and my soul to hell!" He ceased as last. The artist turned and fled; But even as he went, unto his ears Were borne the awful echoes of despair, Which the lost wretch flung on the empty air, Cursing the demon that had brought him there. The Two Kinds of People There are two kinds of people on earth to-day; Just two kinds of people, no more, I say. Not the sinner and saint, for it's well understood, The good are half bad and the bad are half good. Not the rich and the poor, for to rate a man's wealth, You must first know the state of his conscience and health. Not the humble and proud, for in life's little span, Who puts on vain airs is not counted a man. Not the happy and sad, for the swift flying years Bring each man his laughter and each man his tears. No; the two kinds of people on earth I mean, Are the people who lift and the people who lean. Wherever you go, you will find the earth's masses Are always divided in just these two classes. And, oddly enough, you will find, too, I ween, There's only one lifter to twenty who lean. In which class are you? Are you easing the load Of overtaxed lifters, who toil down the road? Or are you a leaner, who lets others share Your portion of labor, and worry and care? _Ella Wheeler Wilcox._ The Sin of Omission It isn't the thing you do, dear, It's the thing you leave undone That gives you a bit of a heartache At the setting of the sun. The tender word forgotten; The letter you did not write; The flowers you did not send, dear, Are your haunting ghosts at night. The stone you might have lifted Out of a brother's way; The bit of hearthstone counsel You were hurried too much to say; The loving touch of the hand, dear, The gentle, winning tone Which you had no time nor thought for With troubles enough of your own. Those little acts of kindness So easily out of mind, Those chances to be angels Which we poor mortals find-- They come in night and silence, Each sad, reproachful wraith, When hope is faint and flagging And a chill has fallen on faith. For life is all too short, dear, And sorrow is all too great, To suffer our slow compassion That tarries until too late; And it isn't the thing you do, dear, It's the thing you leave undone Which gives you a bit of a heartache At the setting of the sun, _Margaret E. Sangster._ The Bible My Mother Gave Me Give me that grand old volume, the gift of a mother's love, Tho' the spirit that first taught me has winged its flight above. Yet, with no legacy but this, she has left me wealth untold, Yea, mightier than earth's riches, or the wealth of Ophir's gold. When a child, I've kneeled beside her, in our dear old cottage home, And listened to her reading from that prized and cherished tome, As with low and gentle cadence, and a meek and reverent mien, God's word fell from her trembling lips, like a presence felt and seen. Solemn and sweet the counsels that spring from its open page, Written with all the fervor and zeal of the prophet age; Full of the inspiration of the holy bards who trod, Caring not for the scoffer's scorn, if they gained a soul to God. Men who in mind were godlike, and have left on its blazoned scroll Food for all coming ages in its manna of the soul; Who, through long days of anguish, and nights devoid of ease, Still wrote with the burning pen of faith its higher mysteries. I can list that good man yonder, in the gray church by the brook, Take up that marvelous tale of love, of the story and the Book, How through the twilight glimmer, from the earliest dawn of time, It was handed down as an heirloom, in almost every clime. How through strong persecution and the struggle of evil days The precious light of the truth ne'er died, but was fanned to a beacon blaze. How in far-off lands, where the cypress bends o'er the laurel bough, It was hid like some precious treasure, and they bled for its truth, as now. He tells how there stood around it a phalanx none could break, Though steel and fire and lash swept on, and the cruel wave lapt the stake; How dungeon doors and prison bars had never damped the flame, But raised up converts to the creed whence Christian comfort came. That housed in caves and caverns--how it stirs our Scottish blood!-- The Convenanters, sword in hand, poured forth the crimson flood; And eloquent grows the preacher, as the Sabbath sunshine falls, Thro' cobwebbed and checkered pane, a halo on the walls! That still 'mid sore disaster, in the heat and strife of doubt, Some bear the Gospel oriflamme, and one by one march out, Till forth from heathen kingdoms, and isles beyond the sea, The glorious tidings of the Book spread Christ's salvation free. So I cling to my mother's Bible, in its torn and tattered boards, As one of the greatest gems of art, and the king of all other hoards, As in life the true consoler, and in death ere the Judgment call, The guide that will lead to the shining shore, where the Father waits for all. Lincoln, the Man of the People This poem was read by Edwin Markham at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial at Washington, D.C., May 30, 1922. Before reading, he said: "No oration, no poem, can rise to the high level of this historic hour. Nevertheless, I venture to inscribe this revised version of my Lincoln poem to this stupendous Lincoln Memorial, to this far-shining monument of remembrance, erected in immortal marble to the honor of our deathless martyr--the consecrated statesman, the ideal American, the ever-beloved friend of humanity." When the Norn Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour Greatening and darkening as it hurried on, She left the Heaven of Heroes and came down To make a man to meet the mortal need, She took the tried clay of the common road-- Clay warm yet with the genial heat of Earth, Dasht through it all a strain of prophecy; Tempered the heap with thrill of human tears; Then mixt a laughter with the serious stuff. Into the shape she breathed a flame to light That tender, tragic, ever-changing face; And laid on him a sense of the Mystic Powers, Moving--all husht--behind the mortal veil. Here was a man to hold against the world, A man to match the mountains and the sea. The color of the ground was in him, the red earth; The smack and tang of elemental things; The rectitude and patience of the cliff; The good-will of the rain that loves all leaves; The friendly welcome of the wayside well; The courage of the bird that dares the sea; The gladness of the wind that shakes the corn; The pity of the snow that hides all scars; The secrecy of streams that make their way Under the mountain to the rifted rock; The tolerance and equity of light That gives as freely to the shrinking flower As to the great oak flaring to the wind-- To the grave's low hill as to the Matterhorn That shoulders out the sky. Sprung from the West, He drank the valorous youth of a new world. The strength of virgin forests braced his mind, The hush of spacious prairies stilled his soul. His words were oaks in acorns; and his thoughts Were roots that firmly gript the granite truth. Up from log cabin to the Capitol, One fire was on his spirit, one resolve-- To send the keen ax to the root of wrong, Clearing a free way for the feet of God, The eyes of conscience testing every stroke, To make his deed the measure of a man. He built the rail-pile as he built the State, Pouring his splendid strength through every blow; The grip that swung the ax in Illinois Was on the pen that set a people free. So came the Captain with the mighty heart; And when the judgment thunders split the house, Wrenching the rafters from their ancient rest, He held the ridgepole up, and spikt again The rafters of the Home. He held his place-- Held the long purpose like a growing tree-- Held on through blame and faltered not at praise. And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs, Goes down with a great shout upon the hills, And leaves a lonesome place against the sky. _Edwin Markham._ Our Own If I had known in the morning How wearily all the day The words unkind Would trouble my mind I said when you went away, I had been more careful, darling, Nor given you needless pain; But we vex "our own" With look and tone We may never take back again. For though in the quiet evening You may give me the kiss of peace, Yet it might be That never for me, The pain of the heart should cease. How many go forth in the morning, That never come home at night! And hearts have broken For harsh words spoken That sorrow can ne'er set right. We have careful thoughts for the stranger, And smiles for the sometime guest, But oft for "our own" The bitter tone, Though we love "our own" the best. Ah, lips with the curve impatient! Ah, brow with that look of scorn! 'Twere a cruel fate, Were the night too late To undo the work of morn. _Margaret E. Sangster._ How Salvator Won The gate was thrown open, I rode out alone, More proud than a monarch, who sits on a throne. I am but a jockey, but shout upon shout Went up from the people who watched me ride out. And the cheers that rang forth from that warm-hearted crowd Were as earnest as those to which monarch e'er bowed. My heart thrilled with pleasure so keen it was pain, As I patted my Salvator's soft, silken mane; And a sweet shiver shot from his hide to my hand As we passed by the multitude down to the stand. The great wave of cheering came billowing back As the hoofs of brave Tenny ran swift down the track, And he stood there beside us, all bone and all muscle, Our noble opponent, well trained for the tussle That waited us there on the smooth, shining course. My Salvator, fair to the lovers of horse As a beautiful woman is fair to man's sight-- Pure type of the thoroughbred, clean-limbed and bright-- Stood taking the plaudits as only his due And nothing at all unexpected or new. And then there before us as the bright flag is spread, There's a roar from the grand stand, and Tenny's ahead; At the sound of the voices that shouted, "A go!" He sprang like an arrow shot straight from the bow. I tighten the reins on Prince Charlie's great son; He is off like a rocket, the race is begun. Half-way down the furlong their heads are together, Scarce room 'twixt their noses to wedge in a feather; Past grand stand, and judges, in neck-to-neck strife, Ah, Salvator, boy, 'tis the race of your life! I press my knees closer, I coax him, I urge, I feel him go out with a leap and a surge; I see him creep on, inch by inch, stride by stride, While backward, still backward, falls Tenny beside. We are nearing the turn, the first quarter is passed-- 'Twixt leader and chaser the daylight is cast; The distance elongates; still Tenny sweeps on, As graceful and free-limbed and swift as a fawn, His awkwardness vanished, his muscles all strained-- A noble opponent well born and well trained. I glanced o'er my shoulder; ha! Tenny! the cost Of that one second's flagging will be--the race lost; One second's yielding of courage and strength, And the daylight between us has doubled its length. The first mile is covered, the race is mine--no! For the blue blood of Tenny responds to a blow; He shoots through the air like a ball from a gun, And the two lengths between us are shortened to one. My heart is contracted, my throat feels a lump, For Tenny's long neck is at Salvator's rump; And now with new courage grown bolder and bolder, I see him once more running shoulder to shoulder. With knees, hands and body I press my grand steed; I urge him, I coax him, I pray him to heed! O Salvator! Salvator! List to my calls, For the blow of my whip will hurt both if it falls. There's a roar from the crowd like the ocean in storm, As close to the saddle leaps Tenny's great form; One mighty plunge, and with knee, limb and hand, I lift my horse first by a nose past the stand. We are under the string now--the great race is done-- And Salvator, Salvator, Salvator won! Cheer, hoary-headed patriarchs; cheer loud, I say; 'Tis the race of a century witnessed to-day! Though ye live twice the space that's allotted to men Ye never will see such a grand race again. Let the shouts of the populace roar like the surf, For Salvator, Salvator, king of the turf, He has rivaled the record of thirteen long years; He has won the first place in the vast line of peers. 'Twas a neck-to-neck contest, a grand, honest race, And even his enemies grant him his place. Down into the dust let old records be hurled, And hang out 2:05 to the gaze of the world! _Ella Wheeler Wilcox._ I Got to Go to School I'd like to hunt the Injuns 't roam the boundless plain! I'd like to be a pirate an' plow the ragin' main! An' capture some big island, in lordly pomp to rule; But I just can't be nothin' cause I got to go to school. 'Most all great men, so I have read, has been the ones 'at got The least amount o' learnin' by a flickerin' pitch pine knot; An' many a darin' boy like me grows up to be a fool, An' never 'mounts to nothin' 'cause he's got to go to school. I'd like to be a cowboy an' rope the Texas steer! I'd like to be a sleuth-houn' or a bloody buccaneer! An' leave the foe to welter where their blood had made a pool; But how can I git famous? 'cause I got to go to school. I don't see how my parents kin make the big mistake. O' keepin' down a boy like me 'at's got a name to make! It ain't no wonder boys is bad, an' balky as a mule; Life ain't worth livin' if you've got to waste your time in school. I'd like to be regarded as "The Terror of the Plains"! I'd like to hear my victims shriek an' clank their prison chains! I'd like to face the enemy with gaze serene an' cool, An' wipe 'em off the earth, but pshaw! I got to go to school. What good is 'rithmetic an' things, exceptin' jest for girls, Er them there Fauntleroys 'at wears their hair in pretty curls? An' if my name is never seen on hist'ry's page, why, you'll Remember 'at it's all because I got to go to school. _Nixon Waterman._ With Little Boy Blue (_Written after the death of Eugene Field._) Silent he watched them--the soldiers and dog-- Tin toys on the little armchair, Keeping their tryst through the slow going years For the hand that had stationed them there; And he said that perchance the dust and the rust Hid the griefs that the toy friends knew, And his heart watched with them all the dark years, Yearning ever for Little Boy Blue. Three mourners they were for Little Boy Blue, Three ere the cold winds had begun; Now two are left watching--the soldier and dog; But for him the vigil is done. For him too, the angel has chanted a song A song that is lulling and true. He has seen the white gates of the mansions of rest, Thrown wide by his Little Boy Blue. God sent not the Angel of Death for his soul-- Not the Reaper who cometh for all-- But out of the shadows that curtained the day He heard his lost little one call, Heard the voice that he loved, and following fast, Passed on to the far-away strand; And he walks the streets of the City of Peace, With Little Boy Blue by the hand. _Sarah Beaumont Kennedy._ The Charge of Pickett's Brigade In Gettysburg at break of day The hosts of war are held in leash To gird them for the coming fray, E'er brazen-throated monsters flame, Mad hounds of death that tear and maim. Ho, boys in blue, And gray so true, Fate calls to-day the roll of fame. On Cemetery Hill was done The clangor of four hundred guns; Through drifting smoke the morning sun Shone down a line of battled gray Where Pickett's waiting soldiers lay. Virginians all, Heed glory's call, You die at Gettysburg to-day, 'Twas Pickett's veteran brigade, Great Lee had named; he knew them well; Oft had their steel the battle stayed. O warriors of the eagle plume, Fate points for you the hour of doom. Ring rebel yell, War cry and knell! The stars, to-night, will set in gloom. O Pickett's men, ye sons of fate, Awe-stricken nations bide your deeds. For you the centuries did wait, While wrong had writ her lengthening scroll And God had set the judgment roll. A thousand years Shall wait in tears, And one swift hour bring to goal. The charge is done, a cause is lost; But Pickett's men heed not the din Of ragged columns battle tost; For fame enshrouds them on the field, And pierced, Virginia, is thy shield. But stars and bars Shall drape thy scars; No cause is lost till honor yield. Hullo W'en you see a man in woe, Walk right up and say "Hullo!" Say "Hullo" and "How d'ye do? How's the world a-usin' you?" Slap the fellow on the back; Bring your hand down with a whack; Walk right up, and don't go slow; Grin an' shake, an' say "Hullo!" Is he clothed in rags? Oh! sho; Walk right up an' say "Hullo!" Rags is but a cotton roll Jest for wrappin' up a soul; An' a soul is worth a true Hale and hearty "How d'ye do?" Don't wait for the crowd to go, Walk right up and say "Hullo!" When big vessels meet, they say They saloot an' sail away. Jest the same are you an' me Lonesome ships upon a sea; Each one sailin' his own log, For a port behind the fog; Let your speakin' trumpet blow; Lift your horn an' cry "Hullo!" Say "Hullo!" an' "How d'ye do?" Other folks are good as you. W'en you leave your house of clay Wanderin' in the far away, W'en you travel through the strange Country t'other side the range, Then the souls you've cheered will know Who ye be, an' say "Hullo." _Sam Walter Foss._ The Women of Mumbles Head Bring, novelist, your note-book! bring, dramatist, your pen! And I'll tell you a simple story of what women do for men. It's only a tale of a lifeboat, of the dying and the dead, Of the terrible storm and shipwreck that happened off Mumbles Head! Maybe you have traveled in Wales, sir, and know it north and south; Maybe you are friends with the "natives" that dwell at Oystermouth; It happens, no doubt, that from Bristol you've crossed in a casual way, And have sailed your yacht in the summer in the blue of Swansea Bay. Well! it isn't like that in the winter, when the lighthouse stands alone, In the teeth of Atlantic breakers that foam on its face of stone; It wasn't like that when the hurricane blew, and the storm-bell tolled, or when There was news of a wreck, and the lifeboat launched, and a desperate cry for men. When in the world did the coxswain shirk? a brave old salt was he! Proud to the bone of as four strong lads as ever had tasted the sea, Welshmen all to the lungs and loins, who, about that coast, 'twas said, Had saved some hundred lives apiece--at a shilling or so a head! So the father launched the lifeboat, in the teeth of the tempest's roar, And he stood like a man at the rudder, with an eye on his boys at the oar, Out to the wreck went the father! out to the wreck went the sons! Leaving the weeping of women, and booming of signal guns; Leaving the mother who loved them, and the girls that the sailors love; Going to death for duty, and trusting to God above! Do you murmur a prayer, my brothers, when cozy and safe in bed, For men like these, who are ready to die for a wreck off Mumbles Head? It didn't go well with the lifeboat! 'twas a terrible storm that blew! And it snapped the' rope in a second that was flung to the drowning crew; And then the anchor parted--'twas a tussle to keep afloat! But the father stuck to the rudder, and the boys to the brave old boat. Then at last on the poor doomed lifeboat a wave broke mountains high! "God help us now!" said the father. "It's over, my lads! Good-bye"! Half of the crew swam shoreward, half to the sheltered caves, But father and sons were fighting death in the foam of the angry waves. Up at a lighthouse window two women beheld the storm, And saw in the boiling breakers a figure--a fighting form; It might be a gray-haired father, then the women held their breath; It might be a fair-haired brother, who was having a round with death; It might be a lover, a husband, whose kisses were on the lips Of the women whose love is the life of men going down to the sea in ships. They had seen the launch of the lifeboat, they had seen the worst, and more, Then, kissing each other, these women went down from the lighthouse, straight to shore. There by the rocks on the breakers these sisters, hand in hand, Beheld once more that desperate man who struggled to reach the land, 'Twas only aid he wanted to help him across the wave, But what are a couple of women with only a man to save? What are a couple of women? well, more than three craven men Who stood by the shore with chattering teeth, refusing to stir--and then Off went the women's shawls, sir; in a second they're torn and rent, Then knotting them into a rope of love, straight into the sea they went! "Come back!" cried the lighthouse-keeper. "For God's sake, girls, come back!" As they caught the waves on their foreheads, resisting the fierce attack. "Come back!" moaned the gray-haired mother, as she stood by the angry sea, "If the waves take you, my darlings, there's nobody left to me!" "Come back!" said the three strong soldiers, who still stood faint and pale, "You will drown if you face the breakers! you will fall if you brave the gale!" "_Come back_!" said the girls, "we will not! go tell it to all the town, We'll lose our lives, God willing, before that man shall drown!" "Give one more knot to the shawls, Bess! give one strong clutch of your hand! Just follow me, brave, to the shingle, and we'll bring him safe to land! Wait for the next wave, darling! only a minute more, And I'll have him safe in my arms, dear, and we'll drag him to the shore." Up to the arms in the water, fighting it breast to breast, They caught and saved a brother alive. God bless them! you know the rest-- Well, many a heart beat stronger, and many a tear was shed, And many a glass was tossed right off to "The Women of Mumbles Head!" _Clement Scott._ The Fireman's Story "'A frightful face'? Wal, yes, yer correct; That man on the enjine thar Don't pack the han'somest countenance-- Every inch of it sportin' a scar; But I tell you, pard, thar ain't money enough Piled up in the National Banks To buy that face, nor a single scar-- (No, I never indulges. Thanks.) "Yes, Jim is an old-time engineer, An' a better one never war knowed! Bin a runnin' yar since the fust machine War put on the Quincy Road; An' thar ain't a galoot that pulls a plug From Maine to the jumpin' off place That knows more about the big iron hoss Than him with the battered-up face. "'Got hurt in a smash-up'? No,'twar done In a sort o' legitimate way; He got it a-trying to save a gal Up yar on the road last May. I heven't much time for to spin you the yarn, For we pull out at two-twenty-five-- Just wait till I climb up an' toss in some coal, So's to keep old '90' alive. "Jim war pullin' the Burlin'ton passenger then, Left Quincy a half an hour late, An' war skimmin' along purty lively, so's not To lay out No. 21 freight. The '90' war more than whoopin' 'em up An' a-quiverin' in every nerve! When all to once Jim yelled 'Merciful God!' As she shoved her sharp nose 'round a curve. "I jumped to his side o' the cab, an' ahead 'Bout two hundred paces or so Stood a gal on the track, her hands raised aloft, An' her face jist as white as the snow; It seems she war so paralyzed with the fright That she couldn't move for'ard or back, An' when Jim pulled the whistle she fainted an' fell Right down in a heap on the track! "I'll never forgit till the day o' my death The look that cum over Jim's face; He throw'd the old lever cl'r back like a shot So's to slacken the '90's' wild pace, Then let on the air brakes as quick as a flash, An' out through the window he fled, An' skinned 'long the runnin' board cla'r in front, An' lay on the pilot ahead. "Then just as we reached whar the poor creetur lay, He grabbed a tight hold, of her arm, An' raised her right up so's to throw her one side Out o' reach of danger an' harm. But somehow he slipped an' fell with his head On the rail as he throw'd the young lass, An' the pilot in strikin' him, ground up his face In a frightful and horrible mass! "As soon as we stopped I backed up the train To that spot where the poor fellow lay, An' there sot the gal with his head in her lap An' wipin' the warm blood away. The tears rolled in torrents right down from her eyes, While she sobbed like her heart war all broke-- I tell you, my friend, such a sight as that 'ar Would move the tough heart of an oak! "We put Jim aboard an' ran back to town, What for week arter week the boy lay A-hoverin' right in the shadder o' death, An' that gal by his bed every day. But nursin' an' doctorin' brought him around-- Kinder snatched him right outer the grave-- His face ain't so han'some as 'twar, but his heart Remains just as noble an' brave. * * * * * "Of course thar's a sequel--as story books say-- He fell dead in love, did this Jim; But hadn't the heart to ax her to have Sich a batter'd-up rooster as him. She know'd how he felt, and last New Year's day War the fust o' leap year as you know, So she jist cornered Jim an' proposed on the spot, An' you bet he didn't say no. "He's building a house up thar on the hill, An' has laid up a snug pile o' cash, The weddin's to be on the first o' next May-- Jist a year from the day o' the smash-- The gal says he risked his dear life to save hers, An' she'll just turn the tables about, An' give him the life that he saved--thar's the bell. Good day, sir, we're goin' to pull out." Little Willie's Hearing Sometimes w'en I am playin' with some fellers 'at I knows, My ma she comes to call me, 'cause she wants me, I surpose: An' then she calls in this way: "Willie! Willie, dear! Willee-e-ee!" An' you'd be surprised to notice how dretful deef I be; An' the fellers 'at are playin' they keeps mos' orful still, W'ile they tell me, jus' in whispers: "Your ma is callin', Bill." But my hearin' don't git better, so fur as I can see, W'ile my ma stan's there a-callin': "Willie! Willie, dear! Willee-e-ee!" An' soon my ma she gives it up, an' says: "Well, I'll allow It's mighty cur'us w'ere that boy has got to, anyhow"; An' then I keep on playin' jus' the way I did before-- I know if she was wantin' much she'd call to me some more. An' purty soon she comes agin an' says: "Willie! Willee-e-ee!" But my hearin's jus' as hard as w'at it useter be. If a feller has good judgment, an' uses it that way, He can almos' allers manage to git consid'ble play. But jus' w'ile I am playin', an' prob'ly I am "it," They's somethin' diff'rent happens, an' I have to up, an' git, Fer my pa comes to the doorway, an' he interrup's our glee; He jus' says, "William Henry!" but that's enough fer me. You'd be surprised to notice how quickly I can hear W'en my pa says, "William Henry!" but never "Willie, dear!" Fer though my hearin's middlin' bad to hear the voice of ma, It's apt to show improvement w'en the callin' comes from pa. The Service Flag Dear little flag in the window there, Hung with a tear and a woman's prayer, Child of Old Glory, born with a star-- Oh, what a wonderful flag you are! Blue is your star in its field of white, Dipped in the red that was born of fight; Born of the blood that our forebears shed To raise your mother, The Flag, o'er-head. And now you've come, in this frenzied day, To speak from a window--to speak and say: "I am the voice of a soldier son, Gone, to be gone till the victory's won. "I am the flag of The Service, sir: The flag of his mother--I speak for her Who stands by my window and waits and fears, But hides from the others her unwept tears. "I am the flag of the wives who wait For the safe return of a martial mate-- A mate gone forth where the war god thrives, To save from sacrifice other men's wives. "I am the flag of the sweethearts true; The often unthought of--the sisters, too. I am the flag of a mother's son, Who won't come home till the victory's won!" Dear little flag in the window there, Hung with a tear and a woman's prayer, Child of Old Glory, born with a star-- Oh, what a wonderful flag you are! _William Herschell._ Flying Jim's Last Leap (_The hero of this tale had once been a famous trapeze performer._) Cheeriest room, that morn, the kitchen. Helped by Bridget's willing hands, Bustled Hannah, deftly mixing pies, for ready waiting pans. Little Flossie flitted round them, and her curling, floating hair Glinted gold-like, gleamed and glistened, in the sparkling sunlit air; Slouched a figure o'er the lawn; a man so wretched and forlore, Tattered, grim, so like a beggar, ne'er had trod that path before. His shirt was torn, his hat was gone, bare and begrimed his knees, Face with blood and dirt disfigured, elbows peeped from out his sleeves. Rat-tat-tat, upon the entrance, brought Aunt Hannah to the door; Parched lips humbly plead for water, as she scanned his misery o'er; Wrathful came the dame's quick answer; made him cower, shame, and start Out of sight, despairing, saddened, hurt and angry to the heart. "_Drink_! You've had enough, you rascal. Faugh! The smell now makes me sick, Move, you thief! Leave now these grounds, sir, or our dogs will help you quick." Then the man with dragging footsteps hopeless, wishing himself dead, Crept away from sight of plenty, starved in place of being fed, Wandered farther from the mansion, till he reached a purling brook, Babbling, trilling broken music by a green and shady nook, Here sweet Flossie found him fainting; in her hands were food and drink; Pale like death lay he before her, yet the child-heart did not shrink; Then the rags from off his forehead, she with dainty hands offstripped, In the brooklet's rippling waters, her own lace-trimmed 'kerchief dipped; Then with sweet and holy pity, which, within her, did not daunt, Bathed the blood and grime-stained visage of that sin-soiled son of want. Wrung she then the linen cleanly, bandaged up the wound again Ere the still eyes opened slowly; white lips murmuring, "Am I sane?" "Look, poor man, here's food and drink. Now thank our God before you take." Paused he mute and undecided, while deep sobs his form did shake With an avalanche of feeling, and great tears came rolling down O'er a face unused to showing aught except a sullen frown; That "our God" unsealed a fountain his whole life had never known, When that human angel near him spoke of her God as his own. "Is it 'cause my aunty grieved you?" Quickly did the wee one ask. "I'll tell you my little verse then, 'tis a holy Bible task, It may help you to forgive her: 'Love your enemies and those Who despitefully may use you; love them whether friends or foes!'" Then she glided from his vision, left him prostrate on the ground Conning o'er and o'er that lesson--with a grace to him new found. Sunlight filtering through green branches as they wind-wave dance and dip, Finds a prayer his mother taught him, trembling on his crime-stained lip. Hist! a step, an angry mutter, and the owner of the place, Gentle Flossie's haughty father, and the tramp stood face to face! "Thieving rascal! you've my daughter's 'kerchief bound upon your brow; Off with it, and cast it down here. Come! be quick about it now." As the man did not obey him, Flossie's father lashed his cheek With a riding-whip he carried; struck him hard and cut him deep. Quick the tramp bore down upon him, felled him, o'er him where he lay Raised a knife to seek his life-blood. Then there came a thought to stay All his angry, murderous impulse, caused the knife to shuddering fall: "He's her father; love your en'mies; 'tis 'our God' reigns over all." At midnight, lambent, lurid flames light up the sky with fiercest beams, Wild cries, "Fire! fire!" ring through the air, and red like blood each flame now seems; They faster grow, they higher throw weird, direful arms which ever lean About the gray stone mansion old. Now roars the wind to aid the scene; The flames yet higher, wilder play. A shudder runs through all around-- Distinctly as in light of day, at topmost window from the ground Sweet Flossie stands, her golden hair enhaloed now by firelit air. Loud rang the father's cry: "O God! my child! my child! Will no one dare For her sweet sake the flaming stair?" Look, one steps forth with muffled face, Leaps through the flames with fleetest feet, on trembling ladder runs a race With life and death--the window gains. Deep silence falls on all around, Till bursts aloud a sobbing wail. The ladder falls with crashing sound-- A flaming, treacherous mass. O God! she was so young and he so brave! Look once again. See! see! on highest roof he stands--the fiery wave Fierce rolling round--his arms enclasp the child--God help him yet to save! "For life or for eternal sleep," He cries, then makes a vaulting leap, A tree branch catches, with sure aim, And by the act proclaims his name; The air was rent, the cheers rang loud, A rough voice cried from out the crowd, "Huzza, my boys, well we know him, None dares that leap but Flying Jim!" A jail-bird--outlaw--thief, indeed, Yet o'er them all takes kingly lead. "Do now your worst," his gasping cry, "Do all your worst, I'm doomed to die; I've breathed the flames, 'twill not be long"; Then hushed all murmurs through the throng. With reverent hands they bore him where The summer evening's cooling air Came softly sighing through the trees; The child's proud father on his knees Forgiveness sought of God and Jim, Which dying lips accorded him. A mark of whip on white face stirred To gleaming scarlet at his words. "Forgive them all who use you ill, She taught me that and I fulfill; I would her hand might touch my face, Though she's so pure and I so base." Low Flossie bent and kissed the brow, With smile of bliss transfigured now: Death, the angel, sealed it there, 'Twas sent to God with "mother's prayer." _Emma Dunning Banks._ Betty and the Bear In a pioneer's cabin out West, so they say, A great big black grizzly trotted one day, And seated himself on the hearths and began To lap the contents of a two gallon pan Of milk and potatoes,--an excellent meal,-- And then looked, about to see what he could steal. The lord of the mansion awoke from his sleep, And, hearing a racket, he ventured to peep Just out in the kitchen, to see what was there, And was scared to behold a great grizzly bear. So he screamed in alarm to his slumbering frau, "Thar's a bar in the kitchen as big's a cow!" "A what?" "Why, a bar!" "Well murder him, then!" "Yes, Betty, I will, if you'll first venture in." So Betty leaped up, and the poker she seized. While her man shut the door, and against it he squeezed, As Betty then laid on the grizzly her blows. Now on his forehead, and now on his nose, Her man through the key-hole kept shouting within, "Well done, my brave Betty, now hit him agin, Now poke with the poker, and' poke his eyes out." So, with rapping and poking, poor Betty alone At last laid Sir Bruin as dead as a stone. Now when the old man saw the bear was no more, He ventured to poke his nose out of the door, And there was the grizzly stretched on the floor, Then off to the neighbors he hastened, to tell All the wonderful things that that morning befell; And he published the marvellous story afar, How "me and my Betty jist slaughtered a bar! O yes, come and see, all the neighbors they seed it, Come and see what we did, me and Betty, we did it." The Graves of a Household They grew in beauty, side by side, They filled one home with glee;--- Their graves are severed, far and wide, By mount, and stream and sea. The same fond mother bent at night O'er each fair sleeping brow; She had each folded flower in sight-- Where are those dreamers now? One, 'midst the forest of the West, By a dark stream is laid-- The Indian knows his place of rest Far in the cedar shade. The sea, the blue lone sea, hath one-- He lies where pearls lie deep; _He_ was the loved of all, yet none O'er his low bed may weep. One sleeps where southern vines are drest Above the noble slain: He wrapped his colors round his breast On a blood-red field of Spain. And one--o'er _her_ the myrtle showers Its leaves, by soft winds fanned; She faded 'midst Italian flowers-- The last of that bright band. And parted thus they rest, who play'd Beneath the same green tree; Whose voices mingled as they pray'd Around the parent knee. They that with smiles lit up the hall, And cheer'd with song the hearth!-- Alas! for love, if _thou_ wert all, And naught beyond, O earth! _Felicia Dorothea Hemans._ The Babie Nae shoon to hide her tiny taes, Nae stockings on her feet; Her supple ankles white as snow, Or early blossoms sweet. Her simple dress of sprinkled pink, Her double, dimpled chin; Her pucker'd lip and bonny mou', With nae ane tooth between. Her een sae like her mither's een, Twa gentle, liquid things; Her face is like an angel's face-- We're glad she has nae wings. _Hugh Miller._ A Legend of the Northland Away, away in the Northland, Where the hours of the day are few, And the nights are so long in winter, They cannot sleep them through; Where they harness the swift reindeer To the sledges, when it snows; And the children look like bears' cubs In their funny, furry clothes: They tell them a curious story-- I don't believe 't is true; And yet you may learn a lesson If I tell the tale to you Once, when the good Saint Peter Lived in the world below, And walked about it, preaching, Just as he did, you know; He came to the door of a cottage, In traveling round the earth, Where a little woman was making cakes, And baking them on the hearth; And being faint with fasting, For the day was almost done, He asked her, from her store of cakes, To give him a single one. So she made a very little cake, But as it baking lay, She looked at it, and thought it seemed Too large to give away. Therefore she kneaded another, And still a smaller one; But it looked, when she turned it over, As large as the first had done. Then she took a tiny scrap of dough, And rolled, and rolled it flat; And baked it thin as a wafer-- But she couldn't part with that. For she said, "My cakes that seem too small When I eat of them myself, Are yet too large to give away," So she put them on the shelf. Then good Saint Peter grew angry, For he was hungry and faint; And surely such a woman Was enough to provoke a saint. And he said, "You are far too selfish To dwell in a human form, To have both food and shelter, And fire to keep you warm. "Now, you shall build as the birds do, And shall get your scanty food By boring, and boring, and boring, All day in the hard dry wood," Then up she went through the chimney, Never speaking a word, And out of the top flew a woodpecker. For she was changed to a bird. She had a scarlet cap on her head, And that was left the same, Bat all the rest of her clothes were burned Black as a coal in the flame. And every country school boy Has seen her in the wood; Where she lives in the woods till this very day, Boring and boring for food. And this is the lesson she teaches: Live not for yourself alone, Lest the needs you will not pity Shall one day be your own. Give plenty of what is given to you, Listen to pity's call; Don't think the little you give is great, And the much you get is small. Now, my little boy, remember that, And try to be kind and good, When you see the woodpecker's sooty dress, And see her scarlet hood. You mayn't be changed to a bird, though you live As selfishly as you can; But you will be changed to a smaller thing-- A mean and selfish man. _Phoebe Cary._ How Did You Die? Did you tackle the trouble that came your way With a resolute heart and cheerful? Or hide year face from the light of day With a craven soul and fearful? Oh, a trouble's a ton, or a trouble's an ounce, Or a trouble is what you make it, And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts, But only how did you take it? You are beaten to earth? Well, well, what's that? Come up with a smiling face, Its nothing against you to fall down flat, But to lie there--that's disgrace. The harder you're thrown, why, the higher the bounce; Be proud of your blackened eye! It isn't the fact that you're licked that counts; It's how did you fight--and why? And though you be done to the death, what then? If you battled the best you could, If you played your part in the world of men, Why, the Critic will call it good. Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce, And whether he's slow or spry, It isn't the fact that you're dead that counts, But only how did you die? _Edmund Vance Cooke._ The Children When the lessons and tasks are all ended, And the school for the day is dismissed, And the little ones gather around me, To bid me good-night and be kissed,-- Oh, the little white arms that encircle My neck in a tender embrace! Oh, the smiles that are halos of Heaven, Shedding sunshine and love on my face! And when they, are gone, I sit dreaming Of my childhood, too lovely to last; Of love that my heart will remember When it wakes to the pulse of the past; Ere the world and its wickedness made me A partner of sorrow and sin; When the glory of God was about me, And the glory of gladness within. Oh, my heart grows as weak as a woman's And the fountains of feeling will flow, When I think of the paths, steep and stony Where the feet of the dear ones must go. Of the mountains of sin hanging o'er them, Of the tempests of fate blowing wild-- Oh, there's nothing on earth half so holy As the innocent heart of a child! They are idols of hearts and of households, They are angels of God in disguise. His sunlight still sleeps in their tresses, His glory still beams in their eyes: Oh, those truants from earth and from heaven, They have made me more manly and mild! And I know how Jesus could liken The Kingdom of God to a child. Seek not a life for the dear ones All radiant, as others have done. But that life may have just enough shadow To temper the glare of the sun; I would pray God to guard them from evil, But my prayer would bound back to myself. Ah! A seraph may pray for a sinner, But the sinner must pray for himself. The twig is so easily bended, I have banished the rule of the rod; I have taught them the goodness of Knowledge, They have taught me the goodness of God. My heart is a dungeon of darkness, Where I shut them from breaking a rule; My frown is sufficient correction, My love is the law of the school. I shall leave the old house in the autumn To traverse the threshold no more, Ah! how I shall sigh for the dear ones That meet me each morn at the door. I shall miss the good-nights and the kisses, And the gush of their innocent glee; The group on the green and the flowers That are brought every morning to me. I shall miss them at morn and at evening. Their song in the school and the street, I shall miss the low hum of their voices And the tramp of their delicate feet. When the lessons and tasks are all ended, And death says the school is dismissed, May the little ones gather around me To bid me good-night and be kissed. _Charles M. Dickinson._ The King and the Child The sunlight shone on walls of stone, And towers sublime and tall, King Alfred sat upon his throne Within his council hall. And glancing o'er the splendid throng, With grave and solemn face, To where his noble vassals stood, He saw a vacant place. "Where is the Earl of Holderness?" With anxious look, he said. "Alas, O King!" a courtier cried, "The noble Earl is dead!" Before the monarch could express The sorrow that he felt, A soldier, with a war-worn face, Approached the throne, and knelt. "My sword," he said, "has ever been, O King, at thy command, And many a proud and haughty Dane Has fallen by my hand. "I've fought beside thee in the field, And 'neath the greenwood tree; It is but fair for thee to give Yon vacant place to me." "It is not just," a statesman cried, "This soldier's prayer to hear, My wisdom has done more for thee Than either sword or spear. "The victories of thy council hall Have made thee more renown Than all the triumphs of the field Have given to thy crown. "My name is known in every land, My talents have been thine, Bestow this Earldom, then, on me, For it is justly mine." Yet, while before the monarch's throne These men contending stood, A woman crossed the floor, who wore The weeds of widowhood. And slowly to King Alfred's feet A fair-haired boy she led-- "O King, this is the rightful heir Of Holderness," she said. "Helpless, he comes to claim his own, Let no man do him wrong, For he is weak and fatherless, And thou art just and strong." "What strength or power," the statesman cried, "Could such a judgement bring? Can such a feeble child as this Do aught for thee, O King? "When thou hast need of brawny arms To draw thy deadly bows, When thou art wanting crafty men To crush thy mortal foes." With earnest voice the fair young boy Replied: "I cannot fight, But I can pray to God, O King, And God can give thee might!" The King bent down and kissed the child, The courtiers turned away, "The heritage is thine," he said, "Let none thy right gainsay. "Our swords may cleave the casques of men, Our blood may stain the sod, But what are human strength and power Without the help of God?" _Eugene J. Hall._ Try, Try Again 'Tis a lesson you should heed, Try, try again; If at first you don't succeed, Try, try again; Then your courage shall appear, For if you will persevere, You will conquer, never fear, Try, try again. Once or twice though you should fail, Try, try again; If at last you would prevail, Try, try again; If we strive 'tis no disgrace Tho' we may not win the race, What should you do in that case? Try, try again. If you find your task is hard, Try, try again; Time will bring you your reward, Try, try again; All that other folks can do, Why, with patience, may not you? Only keep this rule in view, Try, try again. Indian Names Ye say they all have passed away--that noble race and brave, That their light canoes have vanished from off the crested wave; That,'mid the forests where they roamed, there rings no hunter's shout, But their name is on your waters--ye may not wash it out. 'Tis where Ontario's billow like ocean's surge is curled, Where strong Niagara's thunders wake the echo of the world; Where red Missouri bringeth rich tribute from the west, And Rappahannock sweetly sleeps on green Virginia's breast. Ye say their cone-like cabins, that clustered o'er the vale, Have fled away like withered leaves, before the autumn's gale; But their memory liveth on your hills, their baptism on your shore, Your everlasting rivers speak their dialect of yore. Old Massachusetts wears it upon her lordly crown, And broad Ohio bears it amid his young renown; Connecticut hath wreathed it where her quiet foliage waves, And bold Kentucky breathes it hoarse through all her ancient caves. Wachusett hides its lingering voice within his rocky heart, And Alleghany graves its tone throughout his lofty chart; Monadnock on his forehead hoar doth seal the sacred trust; Your mountains build their monument, though ye destroy their dust. Ye call those red-browed brethren the insects of an hour, Crushed like the noteless worm amid the regions of their power; Ye drive them from their fathers' lands, ye break of faith the seal, But can ye from the court of heaven exclude their last appeal? Ye see their unresisting tribes, with toilsome steps and slow, On through the trackless desert pass, a caravan of woe. Think ye the Eternal Ear is deaf? His sleepless vision dim? Think ye the soul's blood may not cry from that far land to Him? _Lydia H. Sigourney._ More Cruel Than War (During the Civil War, a Southern prisoner at Camp Chase in Ohio lay sick in the hospital. He confided to a friend, Colonel Hawkins of Tennessee, that he was grieving because his fiancee, a Nashville girl, had not written to him. The soldier died soon afterward, Colonel Hawkins having promised to open and answer any mail that came for him. This poem is in reply to a letter from his friend's fiancee, in which she curtly broke the engagement.) Your letter, lady, came too late, For heaven had claimed its own; Ah, sudden change--from prison bars Unto the great white throne; And yet I think he would have stayed, To live for his disdain, Could he have read the careless words Which you have sent in vain. So full of patience did he wait, Through many a weary hour, That o'er his simple soldier-faith Not even death had power; And you--did others whisper low Their homage in your ear, As though among their shallow throng His spirit had a peer? I would that you were by me now, To draw the sheet aside And see how pure the look he wore The moment when he died. The sorrow that you gave to him Had left its weary trace, As 'twere the shadow of the cross Upon his pallid face. "Her love," he said, "could change for me The winter's cold to spring." Ah, trust of fickle maiden's love, Thou art a bitter thing! For when these valleys, bright in May, Once more with blossoms wave, The northern violets shall blow Above his humble grave. Your dole of scanty words had been But one more pang to bear For him who kissed unto the last Your tress of golden hair; I did not put it where he said, For when the angels come, I would not have them find the sign Of falsehood in the tomb. I've read your letter, and I know The wiles that you have wrought To win that trusting heart of his, And gained it--cruel thought! What lavish wealth men sometimes give For what is worthless all! What manly bosoms beat for them In folly's falsest thrall! You shall not pity him, for now His sorrow has an end; Yet would that you could stand with me Beside my fallen friend! And I forgive you for his sake, As he--if he be forgiven-- May e'en be pleading grace for you Before the court of Heaven. To-night the cold winds whistle by, As I my vigil keep Within the prison dead-house, where Few mourners come to weep. A rude plank coffin holds his form; Yet death exalts his face, And I would rather see him thus Than clasped in your embrace. To-night your home may shine with light And ring with merry song, And you be smiling as your soul Had done no deadly wrong; Your hand so fair that none would think It penned these words of pain; Your skin so white--would God your heart Were half as free from stain. I'd rather be my comrade dead Than you in life supreme; For yours the sinner's waking dread, And his the martyr's dream! Whom serve we in this life we serve In that which is to come; He chose his way, you--yours; let God Pronounce the fitting doom. _W.S. Hawkins._ Columbus A harbor in a sunny, southern city; Ships at their anchor, riding in the lee; A little lad, with steadfast eyes, and dreamy, Who ever watched the waters lovingly. A group of sailors, quaintly garbed and bearded; Strange tales, that snared the fancy of the child: Of far-off lands, strange beasts, and birds, and people, Of storm and sea-fight, danger-filled and wild. And ever in the boyish soul was ringing The urging, surging challenge of the sea, To dare,--as these men dared, its wrath and danger, To learn,--as they, its charm and mystery. Columbus, by the sunny, southern harbor, You dreamed the dreams that manhood years made true; Thank God for men--their deeds have crowned the ages-- Who once were little dreamy lads like you. _Helen L. Smith._ The September Gale I'm not a chicken; I have seen Full many a chill September, And though I was a youngster then, That gale I well remember; The day before, my kite-string snapped, And I, my kite pursuing, The wind whisked off my palm-leaf hat;-- For me two storms were brewing! It came as quarrels sometimes do, When married folks get clashing; There was a heavy sigh or two, Before the fire was flashing,-- A little stir among the clouds, Before they rent asunder,-- A little rocking of the trees, And then came on the thunder. Lord! how the ponds and rivers boiled, And how the shingles rattled! And oaks were scattered on the ground, As if the Titans battled; And all above was in a howl, And all below a clatter,-- The earth was like a frying-pan. Or some such hissing matter. It chanced to be our washing-day, And all our things were drying: The storm came roaring through the lines, And set them all a-flying; I saw the shirts and petticoats Go riding off like witches; I lost, ah! bitterly I wept,-- I lost my Sunday breeches! I saw them straddling through the air, Alas! too late to win them; I saw them chase the clouds, as if The devil had been in them; They were my darlings and my pride, My boyhood's only riches,-- "Farewell, farewell," I faintly cried,-- "My breeches! O my breeches!" That night I saw them in my dreams, How changed from what I knew them! The dews had steeped their faded threads, The winds had whistled through them! I saw the wide and ghastly rents Where demon claws had torn them; A hole was in their amplest part, As if an imp had worn them. I have had many happy years And tailors kind and clever, But those young pantaloons have gone Forever and forever! And not till fate has cut the last Of all my earthly stitches, This aching heart shall cease to mourn My loved, my long-lost breeches! _O.W. Holmes_ When My Ship Comes In Somewhere, out on the blue sea sailing, Where the winds dance and spin; Beyond the reach of my eager hailing, Over the breakers' din; Out where the dark storm-clouds are lifting, Out where the blinding fog is drifting, Out where the treacherous sand is shifting, My ship is coming in. O, I have watched till my eyes were aching, Day after weary day; O, I have hoped till my heart was breaking While the long nights ebbed away; Could I but know where the waves had tossed her, Could I but know what storms had crossed her, Could I but know where the winds had lost her, Out in the twilight gray! But though the storms her course have altered, Surely the port she'll win, Never my faith in my ship has faltered, I know she is coming in. For through the restless ways of her roaming, Through the mad rush of the wild waves foaming, Through the white crest of the billows combing, My ship is coming in. Beating the tides where the gulls are flying, Swiftly she's coming in: Shallows and deeps and rocks defying, Bravely she's coming in. Precious the love she will bring to bless me, Snowy the arms she will bring to caress me, In the proud purple of kings she will dress me-- My ship that is coming in. White in the sunshine her sails will be gleaming, See, where my ship comes in; At masthead and peak her colors streaming, Proudly she's sailing in; Love, hope and joy on her decks are cheering, Music will welcome her glad appearing, And my heart will sing at her stately nearing, When my ship comes in. _Robert Jones Burdette._ Solitude Laugh, and the world laughs with you, Weep, and you weep alone; For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth, But has trouble enough of its own. Sing, and the hills will answer, Sigh, it is lost on the air; The echoes bound to a joyful sound, But shirk from voicing care. Rejoice and men will seek you; Grieve, and they turn and go; They want full measure of all your pleasure, But they do not need your woe. Be glad, and your friends are many; Be sad, and you lose them all, There are none to decline your nectar'd wine, But alone you must drink life's gall. Feast, and your halls are crowded; Fast, and the world goes by; Succeed and give, and it helps you live, But no man can help you die. There is room in the halls of pleasure For a large and lordly train, But one by one we must all file on Through the narrow aisle of pain. _Ella Wheeler Wilcox._ Sin of the Coppenter Man The coppenter man said a wicked word, When he hitted his thumb one day, En I know what it was, because I heard, En it's somethin' I dassent say. He growed us a house with rooms inside it, En the rooms is full of floors It's my papa's house, en when he buyed it, It was nothin' but just outdoors. En they planted stones in a hole for seeds, En that's how the house began, But I guess the stones would have just growed weeds, Except for the coppenter man. En the coppenter man took a board and said He'd skin it and make some curls, En I hung 'em onto my ears en head, En they make me look like girls. En he squinted along one side, he did, En he squinted the other side twice, En then he told me, "You squint it, kid," 'Cause the coppenter man's reel nice. But the coppenter man said a wicked word, When he hitted 'his thumb that day; He said it out loud, too, 'cause I heard, En it's something I dassent say. En the coppenter man said it wasn't bad, When you hitted your thumb, kerspat! En there'd be no coppenter men to be had, If it wasn't for words like that. _Edmund Vance Cooke_. The Bells of Ostend No, I never, till life and its shadows shall end, Can forget the sweet sound of the bells of Ostend! The day set in darkness, the wind it blew loud, And rung as it passed through each murmuring shroud. My forehead was wet with the foam of the spray, My heart sighed in secret for those far away; When slowly the morning advanced from the east, The toil and the noise of the tempest had ceased; The peal from a land I ne'er saw, seemed to say, "Let the stranger forget every sorrow to-day!" Yet the short-lived emotion was mingled with pain, I thought of those eyes I should ne'er see again; I thought of the kiss, the last kiss which I gave, And a tear of regret fell unseen on the wave; I thought of the schemes fond affection had planned, Of the trees, of the towers, of my own native land. But still the sweet sounds, as they swelled to the air, Seemed tidings of pleasure, though mournful to bear, And I never, till life and its shadows shall end, Can forget the sweet sound of the bells of Ostend! _W.L. Bowles._ You Put No Flowers on My Papa's Grave With sable-draped banners and slow measured tread, The flower laden ranks pass the gates of the dead; And seeking each mound where a comrade's form rests Leave tear-bedewed garlands to bloom, on his breast. Ended at last is the labor of love; Once more through the gateway the saddened lines move-- A wailing of anguish, a sobbing of grief, Falls low on the ear of the battle-scarred chief; Close crouched by the portals, a sunny-haired child Besought him in accents with grief rendered wild: "Oh! sir, he was good, and they say he died brave-- Why, why, did you pass by my dear papa's grave? I know he was poor, but as kind and as true As ever marched into the battle with you; His grave is so humble, no stone marks the spot, You may not have seen it. Oh, say you did not! For my poor heart will break if you knew he was there, And thought him too lowly your offerings to share. He didn't die lowly--he poured his heart's blood In rich crimson streams, from the top-crowning sod Of the breastworks which stood in front of the fight-- And died shouting, 'Onward! for God and the right!' O'er all his dead comrades your bright garlands wave, But you haven't put _one_ on _my_ papa's grave. If mamma were here--but she lies by his side, Her wearied heart broke when our dear papa died!" "Battalion! file left! countermarch!" cried the chief, "This young orphaned maid hath full cause for her grief." Then up in his arms from the hot, dusty street, He lifted the maiden, while in through the gate The long line repasses, and many an eye Pays fresh tribute of tears to the lone orphan's sigh. "This way, it is--here, sir, right under this tree; They lie close together, with just room for me." "Halt! Cover with roses each lowly green mound; A love pure as this makes these graves hallowed ground." "Oh! thank you, kind sir! I ne'er can repay The kindness you've shown little Daisy to-day; But I'll pray for you here, each day while I live, 'Tis all that a poor soldier's orphan can give. I shall see papa soon and dear mamma, too-- I dreamed so last night, and I know 'twill come true; And they will both bless you, I know, when I say How you folded your arms round their dear one to-day; How you cheered her sad heart and soothed it to rest, And hushed its wild throbs on your strong, noble breast; And when the kind angels shall call _you_ to come We'll welcome you there to our beautiful home Where death never comes his black banners to wave, And the beautiful flowers ne'er weep o'er a grave." _C.E.L. Holmes._ The Two Little Stockings Two little stockings hung side by side, Close to the fireside broad and wide. "Two?" said Saint Nick, as down he came, Loaded with toys and many a game. "Ho, ho!" said he, with a laugh of fun, "I'll have no cheating, my pretty one. "I know who dwells in this house, my dear, There's only one little girl lives here." So he crept up close to the chimney place, And measured a sock with a sober face; Just then a wee little note fell out And fluttered low, like a bird, about. "Aha! What's this?" said he, in surprise, As he pushed his specs up close to his eyes, And read the address in a child's rough plan. "Dear Saint Nicholas," so it began, "The other stocking you see on the wall I have hung up for a child named Clara Hall. "She's a poor little girl, but very good, So I thought, perhaps, you kindly would Fill up her stocking, too, to-night, And help to make her Christmas bright. If you've not enough for both stockings there, Please put all in Clara's, I shall not care." Saint Nicholas brushed a tear from his eye, And, "God bless you, darling," he said with a sigh; Then softly he blew through the chimney high A note like a bird's, as it soars on high, When down came two of the funniest mortals That ever were seen this side earth's portals. "Hurry up," said Saint Nick, "and nicely prepare All a little girl wants where money is rare." Then, oh, what a scene there was in that room! Away went the elves, but down from the gloom Of the sooty old chimney came tumbling low A child's whole wardrobe, from head to toe. How Santa Clans laughed, as he gathered them in, And fastened each one to the sock with a pin; Right to the toe he hung a blue dress,-- "She'll think it came from the sky, I guess," Said Saint Nicholas, smoothing the folds of blue, And tying the hood to the stocking, too. When all the warm clothes were fastened on, And both little socks were filled and done, Then Santa Claus tucked a toy here and there, And hurried away to the frosty air, Saying, "God pity the poor, and bless the dear child Who pities them, too, on this night so wild." The wind caught the words and bore them on high Till they died away in the midnight sky; While Saint Nicholas flew through the icy air, Bringing "peace and good will" with him everywhere. _Sara Keables Hunt._ I Have a Rendezvous with Death I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade, When Spring comes back with rustling shade And apple-blossoms fill the air-- I have a rendezvous with Death When Spring brings back blue days and fair. It may be he shall take my hand And lead me into his dark land And close my eyes and quench my breath-- It may be I shall pass him still. I have a rendezvous with Death On some scarred slope of battered hill, When Spring comes round again this year And the first meadow-flowers appear. God knows't were better to be deep Pillowed in silk and scented down, Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep, Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath-- Where hushed awakenings are dear.... But I've a rendezvous with Death At midnight in some flaming town, When Spring trips north again this year, And I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous. _Alan Seeger._ Let Us Be Kind Let us be kind; The way is long and lonely, And human hearts are asking for this blessing only-- That we be kind. We cannot know the grief that men may borrow, We cannot see the souls storm-swept by sorrow, But love can shine upon the way to-day, to-morrow-- Let us be kind. Let us be kind; This is a wealth that has no measure, This is of Heaven and earth the highest treasure-- Let us be kind. A tender word, a smile of love in meeting, A song of hope and victory to those retreating, A glimpse of God and brotherhood while life is fleeting-- Let us be kind. Let us be kind; Around the world the tears of time are falling, And for the loved and lost these human hearts are calling-- Let us be kind. To age and youth let gracious words be spoken; Upon the wheel of pain so many lives are broken, We live in vain who give no tender token-- Let us be kind. Let us be kind; The sunset tints will soon be in the west, Too late the flowers are laid then on the quiet breast-- Let us be kind. And when the angel guides have sought and found us, Their hands shall link the broken ties of earth that bound us, And Heaven and home shall brighten all around us-- Let us be kind. _W. Lomax Childress._ The Water Mill Oh! listen to the water mill, through all the livelong day, As the clicking of the wheels wears hour by hour away; How languidly the autumn wind does stir the withered leaves As in the fields the reapers sing, while binding up their sheaves! A solemn proverb strikes my mind, and as a spell is cast, "The mill will never grind again with water that is past." The summer winds revive no more leaves strewn o'er earth and main, The sickle nevermore will reap the yellow garnered grain; The rippling stream flows on--aye, tranquil, deep and still, But never glideth back again to busy water mill; The solemn proverb speaks to all with meaning deep and vast, "The mill will never grind again with water that is past." Ah! clasp the proverb to thy soul, dear loving heart and true, For golden years are fleeting by and youth is passing too; Ah! learn to make the most of life, nor lose one happy day, For time will ne'er return sweet joys neglected, thrown away; Nor leave one tender word unsaid, thy kindness sow broadcast-- "The mill will never grind again with water that is past." Oh! the wasted hours of life, that have swiftly drifted by, Alas! the good we might have done, all gone without a sigh; Love that we might once have saved by a single kindly word, Thoughts conceived, but ne'er expressed, perishing unpenned, unheard. Oh! take the lesson to thy soul, forever clasp it fast-- "The mill will never grind again with water that is past." Work on while yet the sun doth shine, thou man of strength and will, The streamlet ne'er doth useless glide by clicking water mill; Nor wait until to-morrow's light beams brightly on thy way, For all that thou canst call thine own lies in the phrase "to-day." Possession, power and blooming health must all be lost at last-- "The mill will never grind again with water that is past." Oh! love thy God and fellowman, thyself consider last, For come it will when thou must scan dark errors of the past; Soon will this fight of life be o'er and earth recede from view, And heaven in all its glory shine, where all is pure and true. Ah! then thou'lt see more clearly still the proverb deep and vast, "The mill will never grind again with water that is past." _Sarah Doudney._ Why the Dog's Nose Is Always Cold What makes the dog's nose always cold? I'll try to tell you, Curls of Gold, If you will good and quiet be, And come and stand by mamma's knee. Well, years and years and years ago-- How many I don't really know-- There came a rain on sea and shore, Its like was never seen before Or since. It fell unceasing down, Till all the world began to drown; But just before it began to pour, An old, old man--his name was Noah-- Built him an Ark, that he might save His family from a wat'ry grave; And in it also he designed To shelter two of every kind Of beast. Well, dear, when it was done, And heavy clouds obscured the sun, The Noah folks to it quickly ran, And then the animals began To gravely march along in pairs; The leopards, tigers, wolves and bears, The deer, the hippopotamuses, The rabbits, squirrels, elks, walruses, The camels, goats, cats and donkeys, The tall giraffes, the beavers, monkeys, The rats, the big rhinoceroses, The dromedaries and the horses, The sheep, and mice and kangaroos, Hyenas, elephants, koodoos, And hundreds more-'twould take all day, My dear, so many names to say-- And at the very, very end Of the procession, by his friend And master, faithful dog was seen; The livelong time he'd helping been, To drive the crowd of creatures in; And now, with loud, exultant bark, He gaily sprang abroad the Ark. Alas! so crowded was the space He could not in it find a place; So, patiently, he turned about, Stood half way in, half way out, And those extremely heavy showers Descended through nine hundred hours And more; and, darling, at the close, 'Most frozen was his honest nose; And never could it lose again The dampness of that dreadful rain. And that is what, my Curls of Gold, Made all the doggies' noses cold. The African Chief Chained in the market-place he stood, A man of giant frame, Amid the gathering multitude That shrunk to hear his name-- All stern of look and strong of limb, His dark eye on the ground:-- And silently they gazed on him, As on a lion bound. Vainly, but well, that chief had fought, He was a captive now, Yet pride, that fortune humbles not, Was written on his brow. The scars his dark broad bosom wore Showed warrior true and brave; A prince among his tribe before, He could not be a slave. Then to his conqueror he spake: "My brother is a king; Undo this necklace from my neck, And take this bracelet ring, And send me where my brother reigns, And I will fill thy hands With store of ivory from the plains, And gold-dust from the sands." "Not for thy ivory nor thy gold Will I unbind thy chain; That bloody hand shall never hold The battle-spear again. A price thy nation never gave Shall yet be paid for thee; For thou shalt be the Christian's slave, In lands beyond the sea." Then wept the warrior chief and bade To shred his locks away; And one by one, each heavy braid Before the victor lay. Thick were the platted locks, and long, And deftly hidden there Shone many a wedge of gold among The dark and crispèd hair. "Look, feast thy greedy eye with gold Long kept for sorest need: Take it--thou askest sums untold, And say that I am freed. Take it--my wife, the long, long day Weeps by the cocoa-tree, And my young children leave their play, And ask in vain for me." "I take thy gold--but I have made Thy fetters fast and strong, And ween that by the cocoa shade Thy wife will wait thee long," Strong was the agony that shook The captive's frame to hear, And the proud meaning of his look Was changed to mortal fear. His heart was broken--crazed his brain; At once his eye grew wild; He struggled fiercely with his chain, Whispered, and wept, and smiled; Yet wore not long those fatal bands, And once, at shut of day, They drew him forth upon the sands, The foul hyena's prey. _William Cullen Bryant._ He Who Has Vision _Where there is no vision the people perish.--Prov. 29:17._ He who has the vision sees more than you or I; He who lives the golden dream lives fourfold thereby; Time may scoff and worlds may laugh, hosts assail his thought, But the visionary came ere the builders wrought; Ere the tower bestrode the dome, ere the dome the arch, He, the dreamer of the dream, saw the vision march! He who has the vision hears more than you may hear, Unseen lips from unseen worlds are bent unto his ear; From the hills beyond the clouds messages are borne, Drifting on the dews of dream to his heart of morn; Time awaits and ages stay till he wakes and shows Glimpses of the larger life that his vision knows! He who has the vision feels more than you may feel, Joy beyond the narrow joy in whose realm we reel-- For he knows the stars are glad, dawn and middleday, In the jocund tide that sweeps dark and dusk away, He who has the vision lives round and all complete, And through him alone we draw dews from combs of sweet. _Folger McKinsey._ The Children We Keep The children kept coming one by one, Till the boys were five and the girls were three. And the big brown house was alive with fun, From the basement floor to the old roof-tree, Like garden flowers the little ones grew, Nurtured and trained with tenderest care; Warmed by love's sunshine, bathed in dew, They blossomed into beauty rare. But one of the boys grew weary one day, And leaning his head on his mother's breast, He said, "I am tired and cannot play; Let me sit awhile on your knee and rest." She cradled him close to her fond embrace, She hushed him to sleep with her sweetest song, And rapturous love still lightened his face When his spirit had joined the heavenly throng. Then the eldest girl, with her thoughtful eyes, Who stood where the "brook and the river meet," Stole softly away into Paradise E'er "the river" had reached her slender feet. While the father's eyes on the graves were bent, The mother looked upward beyond the skies: "Our treasures," she whispered, "were only lent; Our darlings were angels in earth's disguise." The years flew by, and the children began With longings to think of the world outside, And as each in turn became a man, The boys proudly went from the father's side. The girls were women so gentle and fair, That lovers were speedy to woo and to win; And with orange-blooms in their braided hair, Their old home they left, new homes to begin. So, one by one the children have gone-- The boys were five, the girls were three; And the big brown house is gloomy and alone, With but two old folks for its company. They talk to each other about the past, As they sit together at eventide, And say, "All the children we keep at last Are the boy and girl who in childhood died." _Mrs. E.V. Wilson._ The Stranger on the Sill Between broad fields of wheat and corn Is the lowly home where I was born; The peach-tree leans against the wall, And the woodbine wanders over all; There is the shaded doorway still,-- But a stranger's foot has crossed the sill. There is the barn--and, as of yore, I can smell the hay from the open door, And see the busy swallows throng, And hear the pewee's mournful song; But the stranger comes--oh! painful proof-- His sheaves are piled to the heated roof. There is the orchard--the very trees Where my childhood knew long hours of ease, And watched the shadowy moments run Till my life imbibed more shade than sun: The swing from the bough still sweeps the air,-- But the stranger's children are swinging there. There bubbles the shady spring below, With its bulrush brook where the hazels grow; 'Twas there I found the calamus root, And watched the minnows poise and shoot, And heard the robin lave his wing:-- But the stranger's bucket is at the spring. Oh, ye who daily cross the sill, Step lightly, for I love it still! And when you crowd the old barn eaves, Then think what countless harvest sheaves Have passed within' that scented door To gladden eyes that are no more. Deal kindly with these orchard trees; And when your children crowd your knees, Their sweetest fruit they shall impart, As if old memories stirred their heart: To youthful sport still leave the swing, And in sweet reverence hold the spring. _Thomas Buchanan Read._ The Old Man In the Model Church Well, wife, I've found the _model_ church! I worshiped there to-day! It made me think of good old times before my hair was gray; The meetin'-house was fixed up more than they were years ago. But then I felt, when I went in, it wasn't built for show. The sexton didn't seat me away back by the door; He knew that I was old and deaf, as well as old and poor; He must have been a Christian, for he led me boldly through The long aisle of that crowded church to find a pleasant pew. I wish you'd heard that singin'; it had the old-time ring; The preacher said, with trumpet voice: "Let all the people sing!" The tune was "Coronation," and the music upward rolled, Till I thought I heard the angels striking all their harps of gold. My deafness seemed to melt away; my spirit caught the fire; I joined my feeble, trembling voice with that melodious choir, And sang as in my youthful days: "Let angels prostrate fall, Bring forth the royal diadem, and crown Him Lord of all." I tell you, wife, it did me good to sing that hymn once more; I felt like some wrecked mariner who gets a glimpse of shore; I almost wanted to lay down this weatherbeaten form, And anchor in that blessed port forever from the storm. _The preachin'_? Well, I can't just tell all that the preacher said; I know it wasn't written; I know it wasn't read; He hadn't time to read it, for the lightnin' of his eye Went flashin' long from pew to pew, nor passed a sinner by. The sermon wasn't flowery; 'twas simple Gospel truth; It fitted poor old men like me; it fitted hopeful youth; 'Twas full of consolation, for weary hearts that bleed; 'Twas full of invitations, to Christ and not to creed. The preacher made sin hideous in Gentiles and in Jews; He shot the golden sentences down in the finest pews; And--though I can't see very well--I saw the falling tear That told me hell was some ways off, and heaven very near. How swift the golden moments fled within that holy place! How brightly beamed the light of heaven from every happy face! Again I longed for that sweet time when friend shall meet with friend-- "When congregations ne'er break up, and Sabbaths have no end." I hope to meet that minister--that congregation, too-- In that dear home beyond the stars that shine from heaven's blue; I doubt not I'll remember, beyond life's evenin' gray, The happy hour of worship in that model church today. Dear wife, the fight will soon be fought; the vict'ry soon be won; The shinin' goal is just ahead; the race is nearly run; O'er the river we are nearin', they are throngin' to the shore, To shout our safe arrival where the weary weep no more. _John H. Yates._ The Volunteer Organist The gret big church wuz crowded full uv broadcloth an' of silk, An' satins rich as cream thet grows on our ol' brindle's milk; Shined boots, biled shirts, stiff dickeys, an' stove-pipe hats were there, An' doodes 'ith trouserloons so tight they couldn't kneel down in prayer. The elder in his poolpit high, said, as he slowly riz: "Our organist is kept' to hum, laid up 'ith roomatiz, An' as we hev no substitoot, as brother Moore ain't here, Will some 'un in the congregation be so kind's to volunteer?" An' then a red-nosed, blear-eyed tramp, of low-toned, rowdy style, Give an interductory hiccup, an' then swaggered up the aisle. Then thro' that holy atmosphere there crep' a sense er sin, An' thro' thet air of sanctity the odor uv ol' gin. Then Deacon Purington he yelled, his teeth all set on edge: "This man perfanes the house of God! W'y, this is sacrilege!" The tramp didn' hear a word he said, but slouched 'ith stumblin' feet, An' stalked an' swaggered up the steps, an' gained the organ seat. He then went pawin' thro' the keys, an' soon there rose a strain Thet seemed to jest bulge out the heart, an' 'lectrify the brain; An' then he slapped down on the thing 'ith hands an' head an' knees, He slam-dashed his hull body down kerflop upon the keys. The organ roared, the music flood went sweepin' high an' dry, It swelled into the rafters, an' bulged out into the sky; The ol' church shook and staggered, an' seemed to reel an' sway, An' the elder shouted "Glory!" an' I yelled out "Hooray!!" An' then he tried a tender strain that melted in our ears, Thet brought up blessed memories and drenched 'em down 'ith tears; An' we dreamed uv ol' time kitchens, 'ith Tabby on the mat, Uv home an' luv an' baby days, an' Mother, an' all that! An' then he struck a streak uv hope--a song from souls forgiven-- Thet burst from prison bars uv sin, an' stormed the gates uv heaven; The morning stars together sung--no soul wuz left alone-- We felt the universe wuz safe, an' God was on His throne! An' then a wail of deep despair an' darkness come again, An' long, black crape hung on the doors uv all the homes uv men; No luv, no light, no joy, no hope, no songs of glad delight, An' then--the tramp, he swaggered down an' reeled out into the night! But we knew he'd tol' his story, tho' he never spoke a word, An' it was the saddest story thet our ears had ever heard; He had tol' his own life history, an' no eye was dry thet day, W'en the elder rose an' simply said: "My brethren, let up pray." _Sam Walter Foss._ The Finding of the Lyre There lay upon the ocean's shore What once a tortoise served to cover; A year and more, with rush and roar, The surf had rolled it over, Had played with it, and flung it by, As wind and weather might decide it, Then tossed it high where sand-drifts dry Cheap burial might provide it. It rested there to bleach or tan, The rains had soaked, the suns had burned it; With many a ban the fisherman Had stumbled o'er and spurned it; And there the fisher-girl would stay, Conjecturing with her brother How in their play the poor estray Might serve some use or other. So there it lay, through wet and dry, As empty as the last new sonnet, Till by and by came Mercury, And, having mused upon it, "Why, here," cried he, "the thing of things In shape, material, and dimension! Give it but strings, and, lo, it sings, A wonderful invention!" So said, so done; the chords he strained, And, as his fingers o'er them hovered, The shell disdained a soul had gained, The lyre had been discovered. O empty world that round us lies, Dead shell, of soul and thought forsaken, Brought we but eyes like Mercury's, In thee what songs should waken! _James Russel Lowell._ The High Tide (1571) (_Or "The Brides of Enderby"_) The old mayor climbed the belfry tower, The ringers rang by two, by three; "Pull, if ye never pulled before; Good ringers, pull your best," quoth he. "Play uppe, play uppe O Boston bells! Play all your changes, all your swells, Play uppe 'The Brides of Enderby.'" Men say it was a stolen tyde-- The Lord that sent it, He knows all; But in myne ears doth still abide The message that the bells let fall: And there was naught of strange, beside The flight of mews ans peewits pied By millions crouched on the old sea-wall. I sat and spun within the doore, My thread break off, I raised myne eyes; The level sun, like ruddy ore, Lay sinking in the barren skies, And dark against day's golden death She moved where Lindis wandereth, My sonne's faire wife, Elizabeth. "Cusha! Cusha!" all along; Ere the early dews were falling, Farre away I heard her song. "Cusha! Cusha!" all along; Where the reedy Lindis floweth, Floweth, floweth, From the meads where melick groweth Faintly came her milking song: "Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!" calling, "For the dews will soone be falling; Leave your meadow grasses mellow, Mellow, mellow; Quit your cowslips, cowslips yellow; Come uppe Whitefoot, come uppe Lightfoot, Quit the stalks of parsley hollow, Hollow, hollow; Come uppe Jetty, rise and follow, From the clovers lift your head; Come uppe Whitefoot, come uppe Lightfoot, Come uppe Jetty, rise and follow, Jetty, to the milking shed." If it be long, ay, long ago, When I beginne to think howe long, Againe I hear the Lindis flow, Swift as an arrowe, sharp and strong; And all the aire, it seemeth mee, Bin full of floating bells (sayeth she), That ring the tune of Enderby. Alle fresh the level pasture lay, And not a shadowe mote be seene, Save where full fyve good miles away The steeple towered from out the greene; And lo! the great bell farre and wide Was heard in all the country side That Saturday at eventide. The swanherds where there sedges are Moved on in sunset's golden breath, The shepherde lads I heard affare, And my sonne's wife, Elizabeth; Till floating o'er the grassy sea Came down that kindly message free, The "Brides of Mavis Enderby." Then some looked uppe into the sky, And all along where Lindis flows To where the goodly vessels lie, And where the lordly steeple shows, They sayde, "And why should this thing be? What danger lowers by land or sea? They ring the tune of Enderby! "For evil news from Mablethorpe, Of pyrate galleys warping downe; For shippes ashore beyond the scorpe, They have not spared to wake the towne; But while the west bin red to see, And storms be none, and pyrates flee, Why ring 'The Brides of Enderby'?" I looked without, and lo! my sonne Came riding down with might and main: He raised a shout as he drew on, Till all the welkin rang again, "Elizabeth! Elizabeth!" (A sweeter woman ne'er drew breath Than my sonne's wife, Elizabeth.) "The old sea wall (he cried) is downe, The rising tide comes on apace, And boats adrift in yonder towne Go sailing uppe the market-place." He shook as one that looks on death: "God save you, mother!" straight he saith, "Where is my wife, Elizabeth?" "Good sonne, where Lindis winds away, With her two bairns I marked her long; And ere yon bells beganne to play Afar I heard her milking song." He looked across the grassy lea, To right, to left, "Ho, Enderby!" They rang "The Brides of Enderby"! With that he cried and beat his breast; For, lo! along the river's bed A mighty eygre reared his crest, And uppe the Lindis raging sped. It swept with thunderous noises loud; Shaped like a curling snow-white cloud, Or like a demon in a shroud. And rearing Lindis backward pressed, Shook all her trembling bankes amaine, Then madly at the eygre's breast Flung uppe her weltering walls again. Then bankes came downe with ruin and rout-- Then beaten foam flew round about-- Then all the mighty floods were out. So farre, so fast the eygre drave, The heart had hardly time to beat, Before a shallow seething wave Sobbed in the grasses at oure feet. The feet had hardly time to flee Before it brake against the knee, And all the world was in the sea. Upon the roofe we sat that night, The noise of bells went sweeping by; I marked the lofty beacon light Stream from the church tower, red and high,-- A lurid mark and dread to see; And awesome bells they were to mee, That in the dark rang "Enderby." They rang the sailor lads to guide From roofe to roofe who fearless rowed; And I--my sonne was at my side, And yet the ruddy beacon glowed; And yet he moaned beneath his breath, "Oh, come in life, or come in death! Oh, lost! my love, Elizabeth." And didst thou visit him no more? Thou didst, thou didst, my daughter deare; The waters laid thee at his doore, Ere yet the early dawn was clear; Thy pretty bairns in fast embrace, The lifted sun shone on thy face, Downe drifted to thy dwelling-place. That flow strewed wrecks about the grass, That ebbe swept out the flocks to sea; A fatal ebbe and flow, alas! To manye more than myne and me: But each will mourn his own (she saith), And sweeter woman ne'er drew breath Than my sonne's wife, Elizabeth. I shall never hear her more By the reedy Lindis shore, "Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!" calling Ere the early dews be falling; I shall never hear her song, "Cusha! Cusha!" all along, Where the sunny Lindis floweth, Goeth, floweth; From the meads where melick groweth, When the water winding down, Onward floweth to the town. I shall never see her more Where the reeds and rushes quiver, Shiver, quiver; Stand beside the sobbing river, Sobbing, throbbing, in its falling To the sandy lonesome shore; I shall never hear her calling, "Leave your meadow grasses mellow, Mellow, mellow; Quit your cowslips, cowslips yellow; Come uppe Whitefoot, come uppe Lightfoot; Quit your pipes of parsley hollow, Hollow, hollow; Come uppe Lightfoot, rise and follow; Lightfoot, Whitefoot, From your clovers lift the head; Come uppe Jetty, follow, follow, Jetty, to the milking-shed." _Jean Ingelow._ September Days O month of fairer, rarer days Than Summer's best have been; When skies at noon are burnished blue, And winds at evening keen; When tangled, tardy-blooming things From wild waste places peer, And drooping golden grain-heads tell That harvest-time is near. Though Autumn tints amid the green Are gleaming, here and there, And spicy Autumn odors float Like incense on the air, And sounds we mark as Autumn's own Her nearing steps betray, In gracious mood she seems to stand And bid the Summer stay. Though 'neath the trees, with fallen leaves The sward be lightly strown, And nests deserted tell the tale Of summer bird-folk flown; Though white with frost the lowlands lie When lifts the morning haze, Still there's a charm in every hour Of sweet September days. _Helen L. Smith_ The New Year Who comes dancing over the snow, His soft little feet all bare and rosy? Open the door, though the wild wind blow, Take the child in and make him cozy, Take him in and hold him dear, Here is the wonderful glad New Year. _Dinah M. Craik_ An "If" For Girls (_With apologies to Mr. Rudyard Kipling_.) If you can dress to make yourself attractive, Yet not make puffs and curls your chief delight; If you can swim and row, be strong and active, But of the gentler graces lose not sight; If you can dance without a craze for dancing, Play without giving play too strong a hold, Enjoy the love of friends without romancing, Care for the weak, the friendless and the old; If you can master French and Greek and Latin, And not acquire, as well, a priggish mien, If you can feel the touch of silk and satin Without despising calico and jean; If you can ply a saw and use a hammer, Can do a man's work when the need occurs, Can sing when asked, without excuse or stammer, Can rise above unfriendly snubs and slurs; If you can make good bread as well as fudges, Can sew with skill and have an eye for dust, If you can be a friend and hold no grudges, A girl whom all will love because they must; If sometime you should meet and love another And make a home with faith and peace enshrined, And you its soul--a loyal wife and mother-- You'll work out pretty nearly to my mind The plan that's been developed through the ages, And win the best that life can have in store, You'll be, my girl, the model for the sages-- A woman whom the world will bow before. _Elizabeth Lincoln Otis._ Boy and Girl of Plymouth Little lass of Plymouth,--gentle, shy, and sweet; Primly, trimly tripping down the queer old street; Homespun frock and apron, clumsy buckled shoe; Skirts that reach your ankles, just as Mother's do; Bonnet closely clinging over braid and curl; Modest little maiden,--Plymouth's Pilgrim girl! Little lad of Plymouth, stanchly trudging by; Strong your frame, and sturdy; kind and keen your eye; Clad in belted doublet, buckles at your knee; Every garment fashioned as a man's might be; Shoulder-cloak and breeches, hat with bell-shaped crown; Manly little Pilgrim,--boy of Plymouth town! Boy and girl of Plymouth, brave and blithe, and true; Finer task than yours was, children never knew; Sharing toil and hardship in the strange, new land; Hope, and help, and promise of the weary band; Grave the life around you, scant its meed of joy; Yours to make it brighter,--Pilgrim girl and boy! _Helen L. Smith_. Work: A Song of Triumph Work! Thank God for the might of it, The ardor, the urge, the delight of it, Work that springs from the heart's desire, Setting the brain and the soul on fire-- Oh, what is so good as the heat of it, And what is so glad as the beat of it, And what is so kind as the stern command, Challenging brain and heart and hand? Work! Thank God for the pride of it, For the beautiful, conquering tide of it, Sweeping the life in its furious flood, Thrilling the arteries, cleansing the blood, Mastering stupor and dull despair, Moving the dreamer to do and dare-- Oh, what is so good as the urge of it, And what is so glad as the surge of it, And what is so strong as the summons deep, Rousing the torpid soul from sleep? Work! Thank God for the pace of it, For the terrible, swift, keen race of it, Fiery steeds in full control, Nostrils a-quiver to reach the goal. Work, the power that drives behind, Guiding the purposes, taming the mind, Holding the runaway wishes back, Reining the will to one steady track, Speeding the energies, faster, faster, Triumphing ever over disaster; Oh, what is so good as the pain of it, And what is so great as the gain of it, And what is so kind as the cruel goad, Forcing us on through the rugged road? Work! Thank God for the swing of it, For the clamoring, hammering ring of it, Passion of labor daily hurled On the mighty anvils of the world. Oh, what is so fierce as the flame of it? And what is so huge as the aim of it? Thundering on through dearth and doubt, Calling the plan of the Maker out, Work, the Titan; Work, the friend, Shaping the earth to a glorious end, Draining the swamps and blasting hills, Doing whatever the Spirit wills-- Rending a continent apart, To answer the dream of the Master heart. Thank God for a world where none may shirk-- Thank God for the splendor of Work! _Angela Morgan._ Reply to "A Woman's Question" (_"A Woman's Question" is given on page 129 of Book I, "Poems Teachers Ask For_.") You say I have asked for the costliest thing Ever made by the Hand above-- A woman's heart and a woman's life, And a woman's wonderful love. That I have written your duty out, And, man-like, have questioned free-- You demand that I stand at the bar of your soul, While you in turn question me. And when I ask you to be my wife, The head of my house and home, Whose path I would scatter with sunshine through life, Thy shield when sorrow shall come-- You reply with disdain and a curl of the lip, And point to my coat's missing button, And haughtily ask if I want a _cook_, To serve up my _beef_ and my _mutton_. 'Tis a _king_ that you look for. Well, I am not he, But only a plain, earnest man, Whose feet often shun the hard path they should tread, Often shrink from the gulf they should span. 'Tis hard to believe that the rose will fade From the cheek so full, so fair; 'Twere harder to think that a heart proud and cold Was ever reflected there. True, the rose will fade, and the leaves will fall, And the Autumn of life will come; But the heart that I give thee will be true as in May, Should I make it thy shelter, thy home. Thou requir'st "all things that are good and true; All things that a man should be"; Ah! lady, my _truth_, in return, doubt not, For the rest, I leave it to thee. _Nettie H. Pelham._ The Romance of Nick Van Stann I cannot vouch my tale is true, Nor say, indeed, 'tis wholly new; But true or false, or new or old, I think you'll find it fairly told. A Frenchman, who had ne'er before Set foot upon a foreign shore, Weary of home, resolved to go And see what Holland had to show. He didn't know a word of Dutch, But that could hardly grieve him much; He thought, as Frenchmen always do, That all the world could "parley-voo." At length our eager tourist stands Within the famous Netherlands, And, strolling gaily here and there, In search of something rich or rare, A lordly mansion greets his eyes; "How beautiful!" the Frenchman cries, And, bowing to the man who sate In livery at the garden gate, "Pray, Mr. Porter, if you please, Whose very charming grounds are these? And, pardon me, be pleased to tell Who in this splendid house may dwell." To which, in Dutch, the puzzled man Replied what seemed like "Nick Van Stann,"[*] "Thanks!" said the Gaul; "the owner's taste Is equally superb and chaste; So fine a house, upon my word, Not even Paris can afford. With statues, too, in every niche; Of course Monsieur Van Stann is rich, And lives, I warrant, like a king,-- Ah! wealth mast be a charming thing!" In Amsterdam the Frenchman meets A thousand wonders in the streets, But most he marvels to behold A lady dressed in silk and gold; Gazing with rapture on the dame, He begs to know the lady's name, And hears, to raise his wonders more, The very words he heard before! "Mercie!" he cries; "well, on my life, Milord has got a charming wife; 'Tis plain to see, this Nick Van Stann Must be a very happy man." Next day our tourist chanced to pop His head within a lottery shop, And there he saw, with staring eyes, The drawing of the mammoth prize. "Ten millions! 'tis a pretty sum; I wish I had as much at home: I'd like to know, as I'm a sinner, What lucky fellow is the winner?" Conceive our traveler's amaze To hear again the hackneyed phrase. "What? no! not Nick Van Stann again? Faith! he's the luckiest of men. You may be sure we don't advance So rapidly as that in France: A house, the finest in the land; A lovely garden, nicely planned; A perfect angel of a wife, And gold enough to last a life; There never yet was mortal man So blest--as Monsieur Nick Van Stann!" Next day the Frenchman chanced to meet A pompous funeral in the street; And, asking one who stood close by What nobleman had pleased to die, Was stunned to hear the old reply. The Frenchman sighed and shook his head, "Mon Dieu! poor Nick Van Stann is dead; With such a house, and such a wife, It must be hard to part with life; And then, to lose that mammoth prize,-- He wins, and, pop,--the winner dies! Ah, well! his blessings came so fast, I greatly feared they could not last: And thus, we see, the sword of Fate Cuts down alike the small and great." [Footnote *: Nicht verstehen:--"I don't understand."] _John G. Saxe._ Armageddon Marching down to Armageddon-- Brothers, stout and strong! Let us cheer the way we tread on, With a soldier's song! Faint we by the weary road, Or fall we in the rout, Dirge or Pæan, Death or Triumph!-- Let the song ring out! We are they who scorn the scorners-- Love the lovers--hate None within the world's four corners-- All must share one fate; We are they whose common banner Bears no badge nor sign, Save the Light which dyes it white-- The Hope that makes it shine. We are they whose bugle rings, That all the wars may cease; We are they will pay the Kings Their cruel price for Peace; We are they whose steadfast watchword Is what Christ did teach-- "Each man for his Brother first-- And Heaven, then, for each." We are they who will not falter-- Many swords or few-- Till we make this Earth the altar Of a worship new; We are they who will not take From palace, priest or code, A meaner Law than "Brotherhood"-- A lower Lord than God. Marching down to Armageddon-- Brothers, stout and strong! Ask not why the way we tread on Is so rough and long! God will tell us when our spirits Grow to grasp His plan! Let us do our part to-day-- And help Him, helping Man! Shall we even curse the madness Which for "ends of State" Dooms us to the long, long sadness Of this human hate? Let us slay in perfect pity Those that must not live; Vanquish, and forgive our foes-- Or fall--and still forgive! We are those whose unpaid legions, In free ranks arrayed, Massacred in many regions-- Never once were stayed: We are they whose torn battalions, Trained to bleed, not fly, Make our agonies a triumph,-- Conquer, while we die! Therefore, down to Armageddon-- Brothers, bold and strong; Cheer the glorious way we tread on, With this soldier song! Let the armies of the old Flags March in silent dread! Death and Life are one to us, Who fight for Quick and Dead! _Edwin Arnold._ Picciola It was a sergeant old and gray, Well singed and bronzed from siege and pillage. Went tramping in an army's wake Along the turnpike of the village. For days and nights the winding host Had through the little place been marching, And ever loud the rustics cheered, Till every throat was hoarse and parching. The squire and farmer, maid and dame, All took the sight's electric stirring, And hats were waved and staves were sung, And kerchiefs white were countless whirring. They only saw a gallant show Of heroes stalwart under banners, And, in the fierce heroic glow, 'Twas theirs to yield but wild hosannas. The sergeant heard the shrill hurrahs, Where he behind in step was keeping; But, glancing down beside the road, He saw a little maid sit weeping. "And how is this?" he gruffly said, A moment pausing to regard her;-- "Why weepest thou, my little chit?" And then she only cried the harder. "And how is this, my little chit?" The sturdy trooper straight repeated, "When all the village cheers us on, That you, in tears, apart are seated? "We march two hundred thousand strong, And that's a sight, my baby beauty, To quicken silence into song And glorify the soldier's duty." "It's very, very grand, I know," The little maid gave soft replying; "And father, mother, brother too, All say 'Hurrah' while I am crying; "But think, oh, Mr. Soldier, think, How many little sisters' brothers Are going all away to fight, And may be killed, as well as others!" "Why, bless thee, child," the sergeant said, His brawny hand her curls caressing, "'Tis left for little ones like thee To find that war's not all a blessing." And "Bless thee!" once again he cried, Then cleared his throat and looked indignant And marched away with wrinkled brow To stop the struggling tear benignant. And still the ringing shouts went up From doorway, thatch, and fields of tillage; The pall behind the standard seen By one alone of all the village. The oak and cedar bend and writhe When roars the wind through gap and braken; But 'tis the tenderest reed of all That trembles first when Earth is shaken. _Robert Henry Newell._ The King's Ring Once in Persia reigned a king Who upon his signet ring Graved a maxim true and wise Which, if held before his eyes, Gave him counsel at a glance Fit for every change and chance. Solemn words; and these are they: "Even this shall pass away." Trains of camels through the sand Brought him gems from Samarcand, Fleets of galleys through the seas Brought him pearls to match with these; But he counted not his gain-- Treasurer of the mine and main, "What is wealth?" the king would say; "Even this shall pass away." In the revels of his court At the zenith of the sport, When the palms of all his guests Burned with clapping at his jests, He, amid his figs and wine, Cried: "O loving friends of mine! Pleasures come, but not to stay, Even this shall pass away." Fighting on a furious field Once a javelin pierced his shield; Soldiers with loud lament Bore him bleeding to his tent, Groaning with his tortured side. "Pain is hard to bear," he cried; "But with patience day by day, Even this shall pass away." Struck with palsy, sere and old, Waiting at the gates of gold, Spake he with his dying breath: "Life is done, but what is death?" Then, in answer to the king, Fell a sunbeam on his ring, Showing by a heavenly ray: "Even this shall pass away." _Theodore Tilton._ Leaving the Homestead You're going to leave the homestead, John, You're twenty-one to-day: And very sorry am I, John, To see you go away. You've labored late and early, John, And done the best you could; I ain't going to stop you, John, I wouldn't if I could. Yet something of your feelings, John, I s'pose I'd ought to know, Though many a day has passed away-- 'Twas forty years ago-- When hope was high within me, John, And life lay all before, That I, with strong and measured stroke, "Cut loose" and pulled from shore. The years they come and go, my boy, The years they come and go; And raven locks and tresses brown Grow white as driven snow. My life has known its sorrows, John, Its trials and troubles sore; Yet God withal has blessed me, John, "In basket and in store." But one thing let me tell you, John, Before you make a start, There's more in being honest, John, Twice o'er than being smart. Though rogues may seem to flourish, John, And sterling worth to fail, Oh! keep in view the good and true; 'Twill in the end prevail. Don't think too much of money, John, And dig and delve and plan, And rake and scrape in every shape, To hoard up all you can. Though fools may count their riches, John, In dollars and in cents, The best of wealth is youth and health, And good sound common sense. And don't be mean and stingy, John, But lay a little by Of what you earn; you soon will learn How fast 'twill multiply. So when old age comes creeping on, You'll have a goodly store Of wealth to furnish all your needs-- And maybe something more. There's shorter cuts to fortune, John, We see them every day; But those who save their self-respect Climb up the good old way. "All is not gold that glitters," John, And makes the vulgar stare, And those we deem the richest, John, Have oft the least to spare. Don't meddle with your neighbors, John, Their sorrows or their cares; You'll find enough to do, my boy, To mind your own affairs. The world is full of idle tongues-- You can afford to shirk! There's lots of people ready, John, To do such dirty work. And if amid the race for fame You win a shining prize, The humbler work of honest men You never should despise; For each one has his mission, John, In life's unchanging plan-- Though lowly be his station, John, He is no less a man. Be good, be pure, be noble, John; Be honest, brave, be true; And do to others as you would That they should do to you; And put your trust in God, my boy, Though fiery darts be hurled; Then you can smile at Satan's rage, And face a frowning world. Good-by! May Heaven guard and bless Your footsteps day by day; The old house will be lonesome, John, When you are gone away. The cricket's song upon the hearth Will have a sadder tone; The old familiar spots will be So lonely when you're gone. Bernardo Del Carpio King Alphonso of Asturias had imprisoned the Count Saldana, about the time of the birth of the Count's son Bernardo. In an effort to secure his father's release, Bernardo, when old enough, took up arms. Finally the King offered Bernardo possession of his father's person, in exchange for the Castle of Carpio and all the King's subjects there imprisoned. The cruel trick played by the King on Bernardo is here described. The warrior bowed his crested head, and tamed his heart of fire, And sued the haughty king to free his long-imprisoned sire; "I bring thee here my fortress-keys, I bring my captive train, I pledge thee faith, my liege, my lord!--oh break my father's chain!" "Rise, rise! even now thy father comes, a ransomed man this day; Mount thy good horse; and thou and I will meet him on his way." Then lightly rose that loyal son, and bounded on his steed, And urged, as if with lance in rest, the charger's foamy speed. And lo! from far, as on they pressed, there came a glittering band, With one that midst them stately rode, as leader in the land: "Now haste, Bernardo, haste! for there, in very truth, is he, The father whom thy faithful heart hath yearned so long to see." His dark eye flashed, his proud breast heaved, his cheek's hue came and went; He reached that gray-haired chieftain's side, and there, dismounting, bent; A lowly knee to earth he bent, his father's hand he took-- What was there in its touch that all his fiery spirit shook? That hand was cold,--a frozen thing,--it dropped from his like lead! He looked up to the face above,--the face was of the dead! A plume waved o'er the noble brow,--the brow was fixed and white, He met, at last, his father's eyes, but in them was no sight! Up from the ground he sprang and gazed, but who could paint that gaze? They hushed their very hearts that saw its horror and amaze. They might have chained him, as before that stony form he stood, For the power was stricken from his arm, and from his lip the blood. "Father!" at length he murmured low, and wept like childhood then; Talk not of grief till thou hast seen the tears of warlike men! He thought on all his glorious hopes, and all his young renown; He flung the falchion from his side, and in the dust sat down. Then covering with his steel-gloved hands his darkly mournful brow: "No more, there is no more," he said, "to lift the sword for now; My king is false, my hope betrayed, my father--oh, the worth, The glory, and the loveliness, are passed away from earth! I thought to stand where banners waved, my sire, beside thee, yet! I would that there our kindred blood on Spain's free soil had met! Thou wouldst have known my spirit then;--for thee my fields were won; And thou hast perished in thy chains, as though thou hadst no son!" Then, starting from the ground once more, he seized the monarch's rein, Amidst the pale and 'wildered looks of all the courtier train; And, with a fierce, o'ermastering grasp, the rearing war-horse led, And sternly set them face to face, the king before the dead: "Came I not forth, upon thy pledge, my father's hand to kiss? Be still, and gaze thou on, false king! and tell me what is this? The voice, the glance, the heart I sought--give answer, where are they? If thou wouldst clear thy perjured soul, send life through this cold clay! Into these glassy eyes put light; be still! keep down thine ire; Bid these white lips a blessing speak, this earth is not my sire. Give me back him for whom I strove, for whom my blood was shed! Thou canst not?--and a king!--his dust be mountains on thy head." He loosed the steed--his slack hand fell; upon the silent face He cast one long, deep, troubled look, then turned from that sad place. His hope was crushed, his after fate untold in martial strain; His banner led the spears no more, amidst the hills of Spain. _Felicia Hemans._ Mizpah Go thou thy way, and I go mine, Apart--but not afar. Only a thin veil hangs between The pathways where we are, And God keep watch 'tween thee and me This is my prayer. He looks thy way--He looketh mine And keeps us near. I know not where thy road may lie Nor which way mine will be, If thine will lead through parching sands And mine beside the sea. Yet God keeps watch 'tween thee and me, So never fear. He holds thy hand--He claspeth mine And keeps us near. Should wealth and fame perchance be thine And my lot lowly be, Or you be sad and sorrowful And glory be for me, Yet God keep watch 'tween thee and me, Both are his care. One arm round me and one round thee Will keep us near. I sigh sometimes to see thy face But since this may not be I leave thee to the love of Him Who cares for thee and me. "I'll keep ye both beneath My wings," This comforts--dear. One wing o'er thee--and one o'er me, So we are near. And though our paths be separate And thy way be not mine-- Yet coming to the mercy seat My soul shall meet with thine. And "God keep watch 'tween thee and me" I'll whisper there. He blesses me--He blesses thee And we are near. God O Thou eternal One! whose presence bright All space doth occupy, all motion guide-- Unchanged through time's all-devastating flight! Thou only God--there is no God beside! Being above all beings! Mighty One, Whom none can comprehend and none explore, Who fill'st existence with Thyself alone-- Embracing all, supporting, ruling o'er,-- Being whom we call God, and know no more! In its sublime research, philosophy May measure out the ocean-deep--may count The sands or the sun's rays--but, God! for Thee There is no weight nor measure; none can mount Up to thy mysteries:* Reason's brightest spark, Though kindled by Thy light, in vain would try To trace Thy counsels, infinite and dark: And thought is lost ere thought can soar so high, Even like past moments in eternity. Thou from primeval nothingness didst call First chaos, then existence--Lord! in Thee Eternity had its foundation; all Sprung forth from Thee--of light, joy, harmony, Sole Origin--all life, all beauty Thine; Thy word created all, and doth create; Thy splendor fills all space with rays divine; Thou art and wert and shalt be! Glorious! Great! Light-giving, life-sustaining Potentate! Thy chains the unmeasured universe surround-- Upheld by Thee, by Thee inspired with breath! Thou the beginning with the end hast bound, And beautifully mingled life and death! As sparks mount upward from the fiery blaze, So suns are born, so worlds spring forth from Thee; And as the spangles in the sunny rays Shine round the silver snow, the pageantry Of heaven's bright army glitters in Thy praise. A million torches, lighted by Thy hand, Wander unwearied through the blue abyss-- They own Thy power, accomplish Thy command, All gay with life, all eloquent with bliss. What shall we call them? Piles of crystal light-- A glorious company of golden streams-- Lamps of celestial ether burning bright-- Suns lighting systems with their joyous beams? But Thou to these art as the noon to night. Yes! as a drop of water in the sea, All this magnificence in Thee is lost:-- What are ten thousand worlds compared to Thee? And what am I then?--Heaven's unnumbered host, Though multiplied by myriads, and arrayed In all the glory of sublimest thought, Is but an atom in the balance, weighed Against Thy greatness--is a cipher brought Against infinity! What am I then? Naught! Naught! But the effluence of Thy light divine, Pervading worlds, hath reached my bosom too; Yes! in my spirit doth Thy spirit shine As shines the sunbeam in a drop of dew. Naught! but I live, and on hope's pinions fly Eager toward Thy presence; for in Thee I live, and breathe, and dwell; aspiring high, Even to the throne of Thy divinity. I am, O God! and surely Thou must be! Thou art!--directing, guiding all--Thou art! Direct my understanding then to Thee; Control my spirit, guide my wandering heart; Though but an atom midst immensity, Still I am something, fashioned by Thy hand! I hold a middle rank 'twixt heaven and earth-- On the last verge of mortal being stand. Close to the realm where angels have their birth, Just on the boundaries of the spirit-land! The chain of being is complete in me-- In me is matter's last gradation lost, And the next step is spirit--Deity! I can command the lightning, and am dust! A monarch and a slave--a worm, a god! Whence came I here, and how? so marvelously Constructed and conceived? unknown! this clod Lives surely through some higher energy; For from itself alone it could not be! Creator, yes! Thy wisdom and Thy word Created me! Thou source of life and good! Thou spirit of my spirit, and my Lord! Thy light, Thy love, in their bright plenitude Filled me with an immortal soul, to spring Over the abyss of death; and bade it wear The garments of eternal day, and wing Its heavenly flight beyond this little sphere, Even to its source--to Thee--its Author there. O thoughts ineffable! O visions blest! Though worthless our conceptions all of Thee, Yet shall Thy shadowed image fill our breast. And waft its homage to Thy Deity. God! thus alone my lowly thoughts can soar, Thus seek thy presence--Being wise and good! Midst Thy vast works admire, obey, adore; And when the tongue is eloquent no more The soul shall speak in tears of gratitude. _Gabriel Somanovitch Derzhavin._ Casabianca The boy stood on the burning deck, Whence all but him had fled; The flame that lit the battle's wreck Shone round him o'er the dead. Yet beautiful and bright he stood, As born to rule the storm; A creature of heroic blood, A proud, though childlike form. The flames roll'd on--he would not go Without his father's word; That father, faint in death below, His voice no longer heard. He called aloud: "Say, father, say If yet my task is done?" He knew not that the chieftain lay Unconscious of his son. "Speak, father!" once again he cried, "If I may yet be gone!" And but the booming shots replied, And fast the flames roll'd on. Upon his brow he felt their breath, And in his waving hair; And looked from that lone post of death In still, yet brave despair. And shouted but once more aloud, "My father! must I stay?" While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud, The wreathing fires made way. They wrapt the ship in splendor wild, They caught the flag on high, And streamed above the gallant child, Like banners in the sky. There came a burst of thunder sound-- The boy--oh! where was he? Ask of the winds that far around With fragments strewed the sea! With mast, and helm, and pennon fair, That well had borne their part-- But the noblest thing that perished there Was that young, faithful heart. _Felicia Hemans._ Monterey We were not many,--we who stood Before the iron sleet that day; Yet many a gallant spirit would Give half his years if he but could Have been with us at Monterey. Now here, now there, the shot it hailed In deadly drifts of fiery spray, Yet not a single soldier quailed When wounded comrades round them wailed Their dying shout at Monterey. And on, still on our column kept, Through walls of flame, its withering way; Where fell the dead, the living stept, Still charging on the guns which swept The slippery streets of Monterey. The foe himself recoiled aghast, When, striking where he strongest lay, We swooped his flanking batteries past, And braving full their murderous blast, Stormed home the towers of Monterey. Our banners on those turrets wave, And there our evening bugles play; Where orange boughs above their grave Keep green the memory of the brave Who fought and fell at Monterey. We are not many, we who pressed Beside the brave who fell that day; But who of us has not confessed He'd rather share their warrior rest, Than not have been at Monterey? _Charles Fenno Hoffman._ The Teacher's "If" If you can take your dreams into the classroom, And always make them part of each day's work-- If you can face the countless petty problems Nor turn from them nor ever try to shirk-- If you can live so that the child you work with Deep in his heart knows you to be a man-- If you can take "I can't" from out his language And put in place a vigorous "I can"-- If you can take Love with you to the classroom, And yet on Firmness never shut the door-- If you can teach a child the love of Nature So that he helps himself to all her store-- If you can teach him life is what we make it, That he himself can be his only bar-- If you can tell him something of the heavens, Or something of the wonder of a star-- If you, with simple bits of truth and honor, His better self occasionally reach-- And yet not overdo nor have him dub you As one who is inclined to ever preach-- If you impart to him a bit of liking For all the wondrous things we find in print-- Yet have him understand that to be happy, Play, exercise, fresh air he must not stint-- If you can give of all the best that's in you, And in the giving always happy be-- If you can find the good that's hidden somewhere Deep in the heart of every child you see-- If you can do these things and all the others That teachers everywhere do every day-- You're in the work that you were surely meant for; Take hold of it! Know it's your place and stay! _R.J. Gale._ The Good Shepherd There were ninety and nine Of a flock, sleek and fine In a sheltering cote in the vale; But a lamb was away, On the mountain astray, Unprotected within the safe pale. Then the sleet and the rain On the mountain and plain, And the wind fiercely blowing a gale, And the night's growing dark, And the wolf's hungry bark Stir the soul of the shepherd so hale. And he says, "Hireling, go; For a lamb's in the snow And exposed to the wild hungry beast; 'Tis no time to keep seat, Nor to rest weary feet, Nor to sit at a bounteous feast." Then the hireling replied, "Here you have at your side All your flock save this one little sheep. Are the ninety and nine, All so safe and so fine, Not enough for the shepherd to keep?" Then the shepherd replied, "Ah! this lamb from my side Presses near, very near, to my heart. Not its value in pay Makes me urge in this way, But the longings and achings of heart." "Let me wait till the day, O good shepherd, I pray; For I shudder to go in the dark On the mountain so high And its precipice nigh 'Mong the wolves with their frightening bark." Then the shepherd said, "No; Surely some one must go Who can rescue my lamb from the cold, From the wolf's hungry maw And the lion's fierce paw And restore it again to the fold." Then the shepherd goes out With his cloak girt about And his rod and his staff in his hand. What cares he for the cold If his sheep to the fold He can bring from the dark mountain land? You can hear his clear voice As the mountains rejoice, "Sheepy sheep, sheepy sheep, sheepy sheep!" Up the hillside so steep, Into caverns so deep, "Sheepy sheep, sheepy sheep, sheepy sheep!" Now he hears its weak "baa," And he answers it, "Ah! Sheepy sheep, sheepy sheep, sheepy sheep!" Then its answering bleat Hurries on his glad feet, And his arms gather up his lost sheep. Wet and cold on his breast The lost lamb found its rest As he bore it adown to the fold. And the ninety and nine Bleat for joy down the line, That it's safe from the wolf and the cold. Then he said to his friends, "Now let joy make amends For the steeps and the deeps I have crossed-- For the pelting of sleet And my sore, weary feet, For I've found the dear lamb that was lost." Let the hirelings upbraid For the nights that He stayed On the mountains so rugged and high. Surely never a jeer From my lips shall one hear, For--that poor lonely lambkin--was--I. While the eons shall roll O'er my glad ransomed soul I will praise the Good Shepherd above, For a place on His breast, For its comfort and rest, For His wonderful, wonderful love. _D. N. Howe._ A Sermon in Rhyme If you have a friend worth loving, Love him. Yes, and let him know That you love him ere life's evening Tinge his brow with sunset glow; Why should good words ne'er be said Of a friend--till he is dead? If you hear a song that thrills you, Sung by any child of song, Praise it. Do not let the singer Wait deserved praises long; Why should one that thrills your heart Lack that joy it may impart? If you hear a prayer that moves you By its humble pleading tone, Join it. Do not let the seeker Bow before his God alone; Why should not your brother share The strength of "two or three" in prayer? If you see the hot tears falling From a loving brother's eyes, Share them, and by sharing, Own your kinship with the skies; Why should anyone be glad, When his brother's heart is sad? If a silver laugh goes rippling Through the sunshine on his face, Share it. 'Tis the wise man's saying, For both grief and joy a place; There's health and goodness in the mirth In which an honest laugh has birth. If your work is made more easy By a friendly helping hand, Say so. Speak out brave and truly, Ere the darkness veil the land. Should a brother workman dear Falter for a word of cheer? Scatter thus your seed of kindness, All enriching as you go-- Leave them, trust the Harvest-Giver; He will make each seed to grow. So, until its happy end, Your life shall never lack a friend. The Fortunate Isles You sail and you seek for the Fortunate Isles, The old Greek Isles of the yellow bird's song? Then steer right on through the watery miles, Straight on, straight on, and you can't go wrong. Nay, not to the left, nay, not to the right; But on, straight on, and the Isles are in sight, The Fortunate Isles, where the yellow birds sing And life lies girt with a golden ring. These Fortunate Isles, they are not far; They lie within reach of the lowliest door; You can see them gleam by the twilight star; You can hear them sing by the moon's white shore, Nay, never look back! Those leveled gravestones, They were landing steps; they were steps unto thrones Of glory for souls that have sailed before And have set white feet on the fortunate shore. And what are the names of the Fortunate Isles? Why, Duty and Love and a large content. Lo! there are the isles of the watery miles That God let down from the firmament; Lo! Duty and Love, and a true man's trust; Your forehead to God and your feet in the dust; Lo! Duty and Love, and a sweet babe's smiles, And there, O friend, are the Fortunate Isles. _Joaquin Miller._ What the Choir Sang About the New Bonnet A foolish little maiden bought a foolish little bonnet, With a ribbon, and a feather, and a bit of lace upon it; And that the other maidens of the little town might know it, She thought she'd go to meeting the next Sunday just to show it. But though the little bonnet was scarce larger than a dime, The getting of it settled proved to be a work of time; So when 'twas fairly tied, all the bells had stopped their ringing, And when she came to meeting, sure enough the folks were singing. So this foolish little maiden stood and waited at the door; And she shook her ruffles out behind and smoothed them down before. "Hallelujah! hallelujah!" sang the choir above her head. "Hardly knew you! hardly knew you!" were the words she thought they said. This made the little maiden feel so very, very cross, That she gave her little mouth a twist, her little head a toss; For she thought the very hymn they sang was all about her bonnet, With the ribbon, and the feather, and the bit of lace upon it. And she would not wait to listen to the sermon or the prayer, But pattered down the silent street, and hurried up the stair, Till she reached her little bureau, and in a band-box on it, Had hidden, safe from critics' eyes, her foolish little bonnet. Which proves, my little maidens, that each of you will find In every Sabbath service but an echo of your mind; And the silly little head, that's filled with silly little airs, Will never get a blessing from sermon or from prayers. _M. T. Morrison._ Work Thou for Pleasure Work thou for pleasure; paint or sing or carve The thing thou lovest, though the body starve. Who works for glory misses oft the goal; Who works for money coins his very soul. Work for work's sake then, and it well may be That these things shall be added unto thee. _Kenyon Cox._ The Tin Gee Gee I was strolling one day down the Lawther Arcade, That place for children's toys, Where you can purchase a dolly or spade For your good little girls and boys. And as I passed a certain stall, said a wee little voice to me: O, I am a Colonel in a little cocked hat, and I ride on a tin Gee Gee; O, I am a Colonel in a little cocked hat, and I ride on a tin Gee Gee. Then I looked and a little tin soldier I saw, In his little cocked hat so fine. He'd a little tin sword that shone in the light As he led a glittering line of tin hussars, Whose sabers flashed in a manner à la military. And that little tin soldier he rode at their head, So proud on his tin Gee Gee. Then that little tin soldier he sobbed and he sighed, So I patted his little tin head. What vexes your little tin soul? said I, And this is what he said: I've been on this stall a very long time, And I'm marked twenty-nine, as you see; Whilst just on the shelf above my head, There's a fellow marked sixty-three. Now he hasn't got a sword and he hasn't got a horse, And I'm quite as good as he. So why mark me at twenty-nine, And him at sixty-three? There's a pretty little dolly girl over there, And I'm madly in love with she. But now that I'm only marked twenty-nine, She turns up her nose at me, She turns up her little wax nose at me, And carries on with sixty-three. And, oh, she's dressed in a beautiful dress; It's a dress I do admire, She has pearly blue eyes that open and shut When worked inside by a wire, And once on a time when the folks had gone, She used to ogle at me. But now that I'm only marked twenty-nine, She turns up her nose at me. She turns up her little snub nose at me, And carries on with sixty-three. Cheer up, my little tin man, said I, I'll see what I can do. You're a fine little fellow, and it's a shame That she should so treat you. So I took down the label from the shelf above, And I labeled him sixty-three, And I marked the other one twenty-nine, Which was _very, very_ wrong of me, But I felt so sorry for that little tin soul, As he rode on his tin Gee Gee. Now that little tin soldier he puffed with pride, At being marked sixty-three, And that saucy little dolly girl smiled once more, For he'd risen in life, do you see? And it's so in this world; for I'm in love With a maiden of high degree; But I am only marked twenty-nine, And the other chap's sixty-three-- And a girl never looks at twenty-nine With a possible sixty-three! _Fred Cape._ "Tommy" I went into a public-'ouse to get a pint o' beer, The publican 'e up an' sez, "We serve no red-coats here." The girls be'ind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die, I outs into the street again, an' to myself sez I: O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy go away"; But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins," when the band begins to play, The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play, O it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins," when the band begins to play. I went into a theater as sober as could be, They give a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me; They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls, But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls. For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy wait outside"; But it's "Special train for Atkins," when the trooper's on the tide, The troopship's on the tide, my boys, etc. O makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap; An' hustlin' drunken sodgers when they're goin' large a bit Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit. Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?" But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll, The drums begin to roll, my boys, etc. We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too, But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you; An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints, Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints. While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy fall be'ind"; But it's "Please to walk in front, sir," when there's trouble in the wind. There's trouble in the wind, my boys, etc. You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all: We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational. Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face, The Widow's uniform[1] is not the soldierman's disgrace. For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!" But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot; An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please; An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool--you bet that Tommy sees! _Rudyard Kipling._ [Footnote 1: "Widow's uniform"--i. e., uniform of a soldier of Queen Victoria, who was often affectionately called "the Widow of Windsor."] The Mystic Weaver The weaver at his loom is sitting, Throws his shuttle to and fro; Foot and treadle, Hand and pedal, Upward, downward, hither, thither, How the weaver makes them go: As the weaver wills they go. Up and down the web is plying, And across the woof is flying; What a rattling! What a battling! What a shuffling! What a scuffling! As the weaver makes his shuttle Hither, thither, scud and scuttle. Threads in single, threads in double; How they mingle, what a trouble! Every color, what profusion! Every motion, what confusion! While the web and woof are mingling, Signal bells above are jingling,-- Telling how each figure ranges, Telling when the color changes, As the weaver makes his shuttle Hither, thither, scud and scuttle. The weaver at his loom is sitting, Throws his shuttle to and fro; 'Mid the noise and wild confusion, Well the weaver seems to know, As he makes his shuttle go, What each motion And commotion, What each fusion And confusion, In the grand result will show. Weaving daily, Singing gaily, As he makes his busy shuttle Hither, thither, scud and scuttle. The weaver at his loom is sitting, Throws his shuttle to and fro; See you not how shape and order From the wild confusion grow, As he makes his shuttle go?-- As the web and woof diminish, Grows beyond the beauteous finish,-- Tufted plaidings, Shapes, and shadings; All the mystery Now is history;-- And we see the reason subtle, Why the weaver makes his shuttle Hither, thither, scud and scuttle. See the Mystic Weaver sitting High in heaven--His loom below; Up and down the treadles go; Takes for web the world's long ages, Takes for woof its kings and sages, Takes the nobles and their pages, Takes all stations and all stages,-- Thrones are bobbins in His shuttle; Armies make them scud and scuttle; Web into the woof must flow, Up and down the nations go, As the weaver wills they go; Men are sparring, Powers are jarring, Upward, downward, hither, thither Just like puppets in a show. Up and down the web is plying, And across the woof is flying, What a battling! What a rattling! What a shuffling! What a scuffling! As the weaver makes his shuttle Hither, thither, scud and scuttle. Calmly see the Mystic Weaver Throw His shuttle to and fro; 'Mid the noise and wild confusion. Well the Weaver seems to know What each motion And commotion, What each fusion And confusion, In the grand result will show, As the nations, Kings and stations, Upward, downward, hither, thither, As in mystic dances, go. In the present all is mystery; In the past, 'tis beauteous history. O'er the mixing and the mingling, How the signal bells are jingling! See you not the Weaver leaving Finished work behind, in weaving? See you not the reason subtle, As the web and woof diminish, Changing into beauteous finish, _Why_ the Weaver makes his shuttle, Hither, thither, scud and scuttle? Glorious wonder! what a weaving! To the dull beyond believing! Such, no fabled ages know. Only _Faith_ can see the mystery, How, along the aisle of history Where the feet of sages go, Loveliest to the purest eyes, Grand the mystic tapet lies,-- Soft and smooth, and even spreading Every figure has its plaidings, As if made for angels' treading; Tufted circles touching ever, Inwrought figures fading never; Brighter form and softer shadings; Each illumined,--what a riddle From a cross that gems the middle. 'Tis a saying--some reject it-- That its light is all reflected; That the tapet's hues are given By a sun that shines in heaven! 'Tis believed, by all believing, That great God himself is weaving,-- Bringing out the world's dark mystery, In the light of truth and history; And as web and woof diminish, Comes the grand and glorious finish; When begin the golden ages Long foretold by seers and sages. The Mortgage on the Farm 'Tis gone at last, and I am glad; it stayed a fearful while, And when the world was light and gay, I could not even smile; It stood before me like a giant, outstretched its iron arm; No matter where I looked, I saw the mortgage on the farm. I'll tell you how it happened, for I want the world to know How glad I am this winter day whilst earth is white with snow; I'm just as happy as a lark. No cause for rude alarm Confronts us now, for lifted is the mortgage on the farm. The children they were growing up and they were smart and trim. To some big college in the East we'd sent our youngest, Jim; And every time he wrote us, at the bottom of his screed He tacked some Latin fol-de-rol which none of us could read. The girls they ran to music, and to painting, and to rhymes, They said the house was out of style and far behind the times; They suddenly diskivered that it didn't keep'm warm-- Another step of course towards a mortgage on the farm. We took a cranky notion, Hannah Jane and me one day, While we were coming home from town, a-talking all the way; The old house wasn't big enough for us, although for years Beneath its humble roof we'd shared each other's joys and tears. We built it o'er and when 'twas done, I wish you could have seen it, It was a most tremendous thing--I really didn't mean it; Why, it was big enough to hold the people of the town And not one half as cosy as the old one we pulled down. I bought a fine pianner and it shortened still the pile, But, then, it pleased the children and they banged it all the while; No matter what they played for me, their music had no charm, For every tune said plainly: "There's a mortgage on the farm!" I worked from morn till eve, and toiled as often toils the slave To meet that grisly interest; I tried hard to be brave, And oft when I came home at night with tired brain and arm, The chickens hung their heads, they felt the mortgage on the farm.-- But we saved a penny now and then, we laid them in a row, The girls they played the same old tunes, and let the new ones go; And when from college came our Jim with laurels on his brow, I led him to the stumpy field and put him to the plow. He something said in Latin which I didn't understand, But it did me good to see his plow turn up the dewy land; And when the year had ended and empty were the cribs, We found we'd hit the mortgage, sir, a blow between the ribs. To-day I harnessed up the team and thundered off to town, And in the lawyer's sight I planked the last bright dollar down; And when I trotted up the lanes a-feeling good and warm, The old red rooster crowed his best: "No mortgage on the farm!" I'll sleep almighty good to-night, the best for many a day, The skeleton that haunted us has passed fore'er away. The girls can play the brand-new tunes with no fears to alarm, And Jim can go to Congress, with no mortgage on the farm! The Legend Beautiful "Hadst thou stayed, I must have fled!" That is what the vision said. In his chamber all alone, Kneeling on the floor of stone, Prayed the Monk in deep contrition For his sins of indecision, Prayed for greater self-denial In temptation and in trial; It was noonday by the dial, And the Monk was all alone. Suddenly, as if it lightened, An unwonted splendor brightened All within him and without him In that narrow cell of stone; And he saw the blessed vision Of our Lord, with light Elysian Like a vesture wrapped about Him, Like a garment round Him thrown. Not as crucified and slain Not in agonies of pain, Not with bleeding hands and feet, Did the Monk his Master see; But as in the village street, In the house or harvest field, Halt and lame and blind He healed, When He walked in Galilee. In as attitude imploring, Hands upon his bosom crossed, Wondering, worshiping, adoring, Knelt the Monk, in rapture lost, Lord, he thought, in heaven that reignest, Who am I that thus Thou deignest To reveal Thyself to me? Who am I, that from the center Of Thy glory Thou shouldst enter This poor cell, my guest to be? Then amid his exaltation, Loud the convent bell appalling, From its belfrey calling, calling, Rang through court and corridor With persistent iteration, He had never heard before. It was now the appointed hour When alike in shine or shower, Winter's cold or summer's heat, To the convent portals came All the blind and halt and lame, All the beggars of the street, For their daily dole of food Dealt them by the brotherhood; And their almoner was he Who upon his bended knees Rapt in silent ecstasy Of divinest self-surrender, Saw the vision and the splendor. Deep distress and hesitation Mingled with his adoration; Should he go, or should he stay? Should he leave the poor to wait Hungry at the convent gate, Till the vision passed away? Should he slight his radiant guest, Slight this visitant celestial For a crowd of ragged, bestial Beggars at the convent gate? Would the vision there remain? Would the vision come again? Then a voice within his breast Whispered audible and clear, As if to the outward ear: "Do thy duty; that is best; Leave unto thy Lord the rest!" Straightway to his feet he started, And with longing look intent On the blessed vision bent, Slowly from his cell departed, Slowly on his errand went. At the gate the poor were waiting, Looking through the iron grating, With that terror in the eye That is only seen in those Who amid their wants and woes Hear the sound of doors that close. And of feet that pass them by: Grown familiar with disfavor, Grown familiar with the savor Of the bread by which men die; But to-day, they knew not why, Like the gate of Paradise Seemed the convent gate to rise, Like a sacrament divine Seemed to them the bread and wine. In his heart the Monk was praying, Thinking of the homeless poor, What they suffer and endure; What we see not, what we see; And the inward voice was saying: "Whatsoever thing thou doest To the least of mine and lowest, That thou doest unto me." Unto me! but had the vision Come to him in beggar's clothing, Come a mendicant imploring, Would he then have knelt adoring, Or have listened with derision, And have turned away with loathing? Thus his conscience put the question, Full of troublesome suggestion, As at length, with hurried pace, Toward his cell he turned his face, And beheld the convent bright With a supernatural light, Like a luminous cloud expanding Over floor and wall and ceiling. But he paused with awe-struck feeling At the threshold of his door, For the vision still was standing As he left it there before, When the convent bell appalling, From its belfry calling, calling, Summoned him to feed the poor. Through the long hour intervening It had waited his return, And he felt his bosom burn, Comprehending all the meaning, When the blessed vision said: "Hadst thou stayed, I must have fled." _Henry W. Longfellow._ Somebody's Darling Into a ward of the whitewashed halls, Where the dead and dying lay, Wounded by bayonets, shells, and balls, Somebody's Darling was borne one day-- Somebody's Darling, so young and so brave, Wearing yet on his pale, sweet face, Soon to be hid by the dust of the grave, The lingering light of his boyhood's grace. Matted and damp are the curls of gold, Kissing the snow of the fair young brow, Pale are the lips of delicate mold-- Somebody's Darling is dying now. Back from his beautiful blue-veined brow Brush all the wandering waves of gold, Cross his hands on his bosom now-- Somebody's Darling is still and cold. Kiss him once for somebody's sake, Murmur a prayer both soft and low; One bright curl from its fair mates take-- They were somebody's pride, you know. Somebody's hand hath rested there-- Was it a mother's, soft and white? And have the lips of a sister fair Been baptized in their waves of light? God knows best! he was somebody's love; Somebody's heart enshrined him there; Somebody wafted his name above, Night and morn on the wings of prayer. Somebody wept when he marched away, Looking so handsome, brave, and grand; Somebody's kiss on his forehead lay, Somebody clung to his parting hand. Somebody's waiting and watching for him-- Yearning to hold him again to her heart; And there he lies with his blue eyes dim, And the smiling, child-like lips apart. Tenderly bury the fair young dead, Pausing to drop on his grave a tear; Carve in the wooden slab at his head, "Somebody's Darling slumbers here." _Maria La Coste._ The Pride of Battery B South Mountain towered upon our right, far off the river lay, And over on the wooded height we held their lines at bay. At last the muttering guns were still; the day died slow and wan; At last the gunners pipes did fill, the sergeant's yarns began. When, as the wind a moment blew aside the fragrant flood Our brierwoods raised, within our view a little maiden stood. A tiny tot of six or seven, from fireside fresh she seemed, (Of such a little one in heaven one soldier often dreamed.) And as we stared, her little hand went to her curly head In grave salute. "And who are _you_?" at length the sergeant said. "And where's your home?" he growled again. She lisped out, "Who is me? Why, don't you know? I'm little Jane, the Pride of Battery B. My home? Why, that was burned away, and pa and ma are dead; And so I ride the guns all day along with Sergeant Ned. And I've a drum that's not a toy, a cap with feathers, too; And I march beside the drummer boy on Sundays at review. But now our 'bacca's all give out, the men can't have their smoke, And so they're cross--why, even Ned won't play with me and joke. And the big colonel said to-day--I hate to hear him swear-- He'd give a leg for a good pipe like the Yanks had over there. And so I thought when beat the drum, and the big guns were still, I'd creep beneath the tent and come out here across the hill And beg, good Mister Yankee men, you'd give me some 'Lone Jack.' Please do: when we get some again, I'll surely bring it back. Indeed I will, for Ned--says he,--if I do what I say, I'll be a general yet, maybe, and ride a prancing bay." We brimmed her tiny apron o'er; you should have heard her laugh As each man from his scanty store shook out a generous half. To kiss the little mouth stooped down a score of grimy men, Until the sergeant's husky voice said,"'Tention squad!" and then We gave her escort, till good-night the pretty waif we bid, And watched her toddle out of sight--or else 'twas tears that hid Her tiny form--nor turned about a man, nor spoke a word, Till after awhile a far, hoarse shout upon the wind we heard! We sent it back, then cast sad eyes upon the scene around; A baby's hand had touched the ties that brothers once had bound. That's all--save when the dawn awoke again the work of hell, And through the sullen clouds of smoke the screaming missiles fell, Our general often rubbed his glass, and marveled much to see Not a single shell that whole day fell in the camp of Battery B. _Frank H. Gassaway._ The Wood-Box It was kept out in the kitchen, and 'twas long and deep and wide, And the poker hung above it and the shovel stood beside, And the big, black cookstove, grinnin' through its grate from ear to ear, Seemed to look as if it loved it like a brother, pretty near. Flowered oilcloth tacked around it kept its cracks and knot-holes hid, And a pair of leather hinges fastened on the heavy lid, And it hadn't any bottom--or, at least, it seemed that way When you hurried in to fill it, so's to get outside and play. When the noons was hot and lazy and the leaves hung dry and still, And the locust in the pear tree started up his planin'-mill, And the drum-beat of the breakers was a soothin', temptin' roll, And you knew the "gang" was waitin' by the brimmin' "swimmin' hole"-- Louder than the locust's buzzin,' louder than the breakers' roar, You could hear the wood-box holler, "Come and fill me up once more!" And the old clock ticked and chuckled as you let each armful drop, Like it said, "Another minute, and you're nowheres near the top!" In the chilly winter mornin's when the bed was snug and warm, And the frosted winders tinkled 'neath the fingers of the storm, And your breath rose off the piller in a smoky cloud of steam-- Then that wood-box, grim and empty, came a-dancin' through your dream, Came and pounded at your conscience, screamed in aggravatin' glee, "Would you like to sleep this mornin'? You git up and 'tend to me!" Land! how plain it is this minute--shed and barn and drifted snow, And the slabs of oak a-waitin!, piled and ready, in a row. Never was a fishin' frolic, never was a game of ball, But that mean, provokin' wood-box had to come and spoil it all; You might study at your lessons and 'twas full and full to stay, But jest start an Injun story, and 'twas empty right away. Seemed as if a spite was in it, and although I might forgit All the other chores that plagued me, I can hate that wood-box yit: And when I look back at boyhood--shakin' off the cares of men-- Still it comes to spoil the picture, screamin', "Fill me up again!" _Joseph C. Lincoln._ Inasmuch Good Deacon Roland--"may his tribe increase!"-- Awoke one Sabbath morn feeling at peace With God and all mankind. His wants supplied, He read his Bible and then knelt beside The family altar, and uplifted there His voice to God in fervent praise and prayer; In praise for blessings past, so rich and free, And prayer for benedictions yet to be. Then on a stile, which spanned the dooryard fence, He sat him down complacently, and thence Surveyed with pride, o'er the far-reaching plain, His flocks and herds and fields of golden grain; His meadows waving like the billowy seas, And orchards filled with over-laden trees, Quoth he: "How vast the products of my lands; Abundance crowns the labor of my hands, Great is my substance; God indeed is good, Who doth in love provide my daily food." While thus he sat in calm soliloquy, A voice aroused him from his reverie,-- A childish voice from one whose shoeless feet Brought him unnoticed to the deacon's seat; "Please mister, I have eaten naught to-day; If I had money I would gladly pay For bread; but I am poor, and cannot buy My breakfast; mister, would you mind if I Should ask for something, just for what you call Cold pieces from your table, that is all?" The deacon listened to the child's request, The while his penetrating eye did rest On him whose tatters, trembling, quick revealed The agitation of the heart concealed Within the breast of one unskilled in ruse, Who asked not alms like one demanding dues. Then said the deacon: "I am not inclined To give encouragement to those who find It easier to beg for bread betimes, Than to expend their strength in earning dimes Wherewith to purchase it. A parent ought To furnish food for those whom he has brought Into this world, where each one has his share Of tribulation, sorrow, toil and care. I sympathize with you, my little lad, Your destitution makes me feel so sad; But, for the sake of those who should supply Your wants, I must your earnest plea deny; And inasmuch as giving food to you Would be providing for your parents, too, Thus fostering vagrancy and idleness, I cannot think such charity would bless Who gives or takes; and therefore I repeat, I cannot give you anything to eat." Before this "vasty deep" of logic stood The child nor found it satisfying food. Nor did he tell the tale he might have told Of parents slumbering in the grave's damp mould, But quickly shrank away to find relief In giving vent to his rekindled grief, While Deacon Roland soon forgot the appeal In meditating on his better weal. Ere long the Sabbath bells their peals rang out To summon worshippers, with hearts devout, To wait on God and listen to His word; And then the deacon's pious heart was stirred; And in the house of God he soon was found Engaged in acts of worship most profound. Wearied, however, with his week-day care, He fell asleep before the parson's prayer Was ended; then he dreamed he died and came To heaven's grand portal, and announced his name: "I'm Deacon Roland, called from earth afar, To join the saints; please set the gates ajar, That I may 'join the everlasting song,' And mingle ever with the ransomed throng." Then lo! "a horror of great darkness" came Upon him, as he heard a voice exclaim: "Depart from me! you cannot enter here! I never knew you, for indeed, howe'er You may have wrought on earth, the sad, sad fact Remains, that life's sublimest, worthiest act--" The deacon woke to find it all a dream Just as the minister announced his theme: "My text," said he, "doth comfort only such As practice charity; for 'inasmuch As ye have done it to the least of these My little ones' saith He who holds the keys Of heaven, 'ye have done it unto me,' And I will give you immortality." Straightway the deacon left his cushioned pew, And from the church in sudden haste withdrew, And up the highway ran, on love's swift feet To overtake the child of woe, and greet Him as the worthy representative Of Christ the Lord and to him freely give All needful good, that thus he might atone For the neglect which he before had shown. Thus journeying, God directed all his way, O'er hill and dale, to where the outcast lay Beside the road bemoaning his sad fate. And then the deacon said, "My child, 'tis late; Make haste and journey with me to my home; To guide you thither, I myself have come; And you shall have the food you asked in vain, For God himself hath made my duty plain; If he demand it, all I have is thine; Shrink not, but trust me; place thy hand in mine." And as they journeyed toward the deacon's home, The child related how he came to roam, Until the listening deacon understood The touching story of his orphanhood. Then, finding in the little waif a gem Worthy to deck the Saviour's diadem, He drew him to his loving breast, and said, "My child, you shall by me be clothed and fed; Nor shall you go from hence again to roam While God in love provides for us a home." And as the weeks and months roll on apace, The deacon held the lad in love's embrace; And being childless did on him confer The boon of sonship. Thus the almoner Of God's great bounty to the destitute The deacon came to be; and as the fruit Of having learned to keep the golden rule His charity became all-bountiful; And from thenceforth he lived to benefit Mankind; and when in life's great book were writ Their names who heeded charity's request, Lo! Deacon Roland's "name led all the rest." _S.V.R. Ford._ No Sects in Heaven Talking of sects quite late one eve, What one and another of saints believe, That night I stood in a troubled dream By the side of a darkly-flowing stream. And a "churchman" down to the river came, When I heard a strange voice call his name, "Good father, stop; when you cross this tide You must leave your robes on the other side." But the aged father did not mind, And his long gown floated out behind As down to the stream his way he took, His hands firm hold of a gilt-edged book. "I'm bound for heaven, and when I'm there I shall want my book of Common Prayer, And though I put on a starry crown, I should feel quite lost without my gown." Then he fixed his eye on the shining track, But his gown was heavy and held him back, And the poor old father tried in vain, A single step in the flood to gain. I saw him again on the other side, But his silk gown floated on the tide, And no one asked, in that blissful spot, If he belonged to "the church" or not. Then down to the river a Quaker strayed; His dress of a sober hue was made, "My hat and coat must be all of gray, I cannot go any other way." Then he buttoned his coat straight up to his chin And staidly, solemnly, waded in, And his broad-brimmed hat he pulled down tight Over his forehead, so cold and white. But a strong wind carried away his hat, And he sighed a few moments over that, And then, as he gazed to the farther shore The coat slipped off and was seen no more. Poor, dying Quaker, thy suit of gray Is quietly sailing--away--away, But thou'lt go to heaven, as straight as an arrow, Whether thy brim be broad or narrow. Next came Dr. Watts with a bundle of psalms Tied nicely up in his aged arms, And hymns as many, a very wise thing, That the people in heaven, "all round," might sing. But I thought that he heaved an anxious sigh, As he saw that the river ran broad and high, And looked rather surprised, as one by one, The psalms and hymns in the wave went down. And after him, with his MSS., Came Wesley, the pattern of godliness, But he cried, "Dear me, what shall I do? The water has soaked them through and through." And there, on the river, far and wide, Away they went on the swollen tide, And the saint, astonished, passed through alone, Without his manuscripts, up to the throne. Then gravely walking, two saints by name, Down to the stream together came, But as they stopped at the river's brink, I saw one saint from the other shrink. "Sprinkled or plunged--may I ask you, friend, How you attained to life's great end?" "_Thus_, with a few drops on my brow"; "But I have been _dipped_, as you'll see me now. "And I really think it will hardly do, As I'm 'close communion,' to cross with you. You're bound, I know, to the realms of bliss, But you must go that way, and I'll go this." And straightway plunging with all his might, Away to the left--his friend at the right, Apart they went from this world of sin, But how did the brethren "enter in"? And now where the river was rolling on, A Presbyterian church went down; Of women, there seemed an innumerable throng, But the men I could count as they passed along. And concerning the road they could never agree, The _old_ or the _new_ way, which it could be; Nor ever a moment paused to think That both would lead to the river's brink. And a sound of murmuring long and loud Came ever up from the moving crowd, "You're in the old way, and I'm in the new, That is the false, and this is the true": Or, "I'm in the old way, and you're in the new, _That_ is the false, and _this_ is the true." But the brethren only seemed to speak, Modest the sisters walked, and meek, And if ever one of them chanced to say What troubles she met with on the way, How she longed to pass to the other side, Nor feared to cross over the swelling tide, A voice arose from the brethren then, "Let no one speak but the 'holy men,' For have ye not heard the words of Paul? 'Oh, let the women keep silence all.'" I watched them long in my curious dream. Till they stood by the border of the stream, Then, just as I thought, the two ways met. But all the brethren were talking yet, And would talk on, till the heaving tide Carried them over, side by side; Side by side, for the way was one, The toilsome journey of life was done, And priest and Quaker, and all who died, Came out alike on the other side; No forms or crosses, or books had they, No gowns of silk, or suits of gray, No creeds to guide them, or MSS., For all had put on "Christ's righteousness." _Elizabeth H. Jocelyn Cleaveland._ The Railroad Crossing I can't tell much about the thing, 'twas done so powerful quick; But 'pears to me I got a most outlandish heavy lick: It broke my leg, and tore my skulp, and jerked my arm 'most out. But take a seat: I'll try and tell jest how it kem about. You see, I'd started down to town, with that 'ere team of mine, A-haulin' down a load o' corn to Ebenezer Kline, And drivin' slow; for, jest about a day or two before, The off-horse run a splinter in his foot, and made it sore. You know the railroad cuts across the road at Martin's Hole: Well, thar I seed a great big sign, raised high upon a pole; I thought I'd stop and read the thing, and find out what it said, And so I stopped the hosses on the railroad-track, and read. I ain't no scholar, rekollect, and so I had to spell, I started kinder cautious like, with R-A-I and L; And that spelt "rail" as clear as mud; R-O-A-D was "road." I lumped 'em: "railroad" was the word, and that 'ere much I knowed. C-R-O and double S, with I-N-G to boot, Made "crossing" jest as plain as Noah Webster dared to do't. "Railroad crossing"--good enough!--L double-O-K, "look"; And I wos lookin' all the time, and spellin' like a book. O-U-T spelt "out" just right; and there it was, "look out," I's kinder cur'us like, to know jest what't was all about; F-O-R and T-H-E; 'twas then "look out for the--" And then I tried the next word; it commenced with E-N-G. I'd got that fur, when suddintly there came an awful whack; A thousand fiery thunderbolts just scooped me off the track; The hosses went to Davy Jones, the wagon went to smash, And I was histed seven yards above the tallest ash. I didn't come to life ag'in fur 'bout a day or two; But, though I'm crippled up a heap, I sorter struggled through; It ain't the pain, nor 'taint the loss o' that 'ere team of mine; But, stranger, how I'd like to know the rest of that 'ere sign! _Hezekiah Strong._ The Sunset City I Turn back the leaves of history. On yon Pacific shore A world-known city's fall and rise shall thrill your hearts once more. 'Twas April; nineteen-six the year; old San Francisco lay Effulgent in the splendor of the dying orb of day That bathed in flood of crimson light Mount Tamalpais' lonely height And kissed the sister towns "goodnight" across the misty bay. It burst in glory on the hills, lit up the princely homes, And gleamed from lofty towers and spires and flashed from gilded domes; It glorified the massive blocks caught in its widening flow, Engulfed the maze of streets and parks that stretched away below, Till marble white and foliage green and vales of gray, and silvery sheen Of ocean's surface vast, serene, were tinted by its glow. The tranquil murmurs of the deep were borne on balmy air All odorous with lily breath and roses sweet and rare. The zephyrs sang a lullaby as the slow, fiery ball Ended its trail of gorgeousness behind horizon's wall. Then gray absorbed each rainbow hue and dark the beauteous landscape grew As shadowy Evening softly drew her curtain over all. II That night around the festal board, 'mid incandescence gay, Sat Pomp and Pride and Wealth and Power, in sumptuous array, That night the happy, careless throng were all on pleasure bent, And Beauty in her jewelled robes to ball and opera went. 'Mid feasting, laughter, song and jest; by music's soothing tones caressed; The Sunset City sank to rest in peace, secure, content. III Unconscious of approaching doom, old San Francisco sleeps While from the east, all smilingly, the April morning creeps. See! Playful sunbeams tinge with gold the mountains in the sky, And hazy clouds of gray unfold--but, hark! What means that cry? The ground vibrates with sadden shock. The buildings tremble, groan and rock. Wild fears the waking senses mock, and some wake but to die. A frightful subterranean force the earth's foundation shakes; The city quivers in the throes of fierce, successive quakes, And massive structures thrill like giant oaks before the blast; Into the streets with deafening crash the frailer ones are cast. Half garbed, the multitude rush out in frantic haste, with prayer and shout, To join the panic stricken rout. Ho! DEATH is marching past. A rumbling noise! The streets upheave, and sink again, like waves; And shattered piles and shapeless wrecks are strewn with human graves. Danger at every corner lurks. Destruction fills the air. Death-laden showers of mortar, bricks, are falling everywhere. IV "_Fire! Fire!_" And lo! the dread fiend starts. Mothers with babes clasped to their hearts Are struggling for the open parts in frenzy of despair. A hundred tiny tongues of flame forth from the ruins burst. No water! God! what shall we do to slake their quenchless thirst? The shocks have broken all the mains! "_Use wine!_" the people cry. The red flames laugh like drunken fiends; they stagger as to die, Then up again in fury spring, on high their crimson draperies fling; From block to block they leap and swing, and smoke clouds hide the sky. Ha! from the famed Presidio that guards the Golden Gate Come Funston and his regulars to match their strength with Fate. The soldiers and the citizens are fighting side by side To check that onslaught of red wrath, to stem destruction's tide. With roar, and boom, and blare, and blast, an open space is cleared at last. The fiends of fury gallop past with flanks outstretched and wide; Around the city's storehouses they wreathe and twine and dance, And wealth and splendor shrivel up before their swift advance. Before their devastating breath the stricken people flee. "Mine, mine your treasures are!" cried Death, and laughs in fiendish glee. Into that vortex of red hell sink church and theatre, store, hotel. With thunderous roar and hissing yell on sweeps the crimson sea. Again with charge of dynamite the lurid clouds are riven; Again with heat and sulphur smoke the troops are backward driven. All day, all night, all day again, with that infernal host They strive in vain for mastery. Each vantage gained is lost,-- On comes the bellowing flood of flame in furious wrath its own to claim; Resistless in its awful aim each space is bridged and crossed. Ah God! the miles and miles of waste! One half the city gone! And westward now--toward Van Ness--the roaring flames roll on. "Blow up that mile of palaces!" It is the last command, And there, at broad Van Ness, the troops make their heroic stand. The fight is now for life--sweet life, for helpless babe and homeless wife-- The culmination of the strife spectacularly grand. On sweeps the hurricane of fire. The fatal touch is given. The detonation of the blast goes shrieking up to heaven. The mansions of bonanza kings are tottering to their doom; That swirling tide of fiery fate halts at the gaping tomb. Beyond the cataclysm's brink, the multitude, too dazed to think, Behold the red waves rise and--sink into the smoldering gloom. V The fire has swept the waterfront and burned the Mission down, The business section--swallowed up, and wiped out Chinatown-- Full thirty thousand homes destroyed, Nob Hill in ashes lies, And ghastly skeletons of steel on Market Street arise. A gruesome picture everywhere! 'Tis desolation grim and bare Waits artisan and millionaire beneath rank sulphurous skies. To-night, within the city parks, famished, benumbed and mute, Two hundred thousand refugees, homeless and destitute! Upon the hard, cold ground they crouch--the wrecks of Pomp and Pride; Milady and the city waifs are huddled side by side. And there, 'neath shelter rude and frail, we hear the new-born infants wail, While' nations read the tragic tale--how San Francisco died. VI PROPHECY--1906 Not dead! Though maimed, her Soul yet lives--indomitable will-- The Faith, the Hope, the Spirit bold nor quake nor fire can kill. To-morrow hearts shall throb again with western enterprise, And from the ruins of to-day a city shall arise-- A monument of beauty great reared by the Conquerors of Fate-- The City of the Golden Gate and matchless sunset skies! VII FULFILLMENT--1915 Reborn, rebuilt, she rose again, far vaster in expanse-- A radiant city smiling from the ashes of romance! A San Francisco glorified, more beauteous than of yore, Enthroned upon her splendid hills, queen of the sunset shore; Her flags of industry unfurled, her portals open to the world! Thus, in the Book of Destiny, she lives for evermore. _Isabel Ambler Gilman._ Autumn A DIRGE The autumn is old; The sere leaves are flying; He hath gathered up gold, And now he is dying: Old age, begin sighing! The vintage is ripe; The harvest is heaping; But some that have sowed Have no riches for reaping:-- Poor wretch, fall a-weeping! The year's in the wane; There is nothing adorning; The night has no eve, And the day has no morning; Cold winter gives warning. The rivers run chill; The red sun is sinking; And I am grown old, And life is fast shrinking; Here's enow for sad thinking! _Thomas Hood_. Grandmother's Quilt Why, yes, dear, we can put it by. It does seem out of place On top of these down comforts and this spread of silk and lace, You see, I'm used to having it lie so, across my feet, But maybe I won't need it here, with this nice furnace heat; I made it? Yes, dear, long ago. 'Twas lots of work, you think? Oh, not so much. My rose quilt, now, all white and green and pink, Is really handsome. This is just a plain, log cabin block, Pieced out of odds and ends; but still--now that's your papa's frock Before he walked, and this bit here is his first little suit. I trimmed it up with silver braid. My, but he did look cute! That red there in the centers, was your Aunt Ruth's for her name, Her grandmother almost clothed the child, before the others came. Those plaids? The younger girls', they were. I dressed them just alike. And this was baby Winnie's sack--the precious little tyke! Ma wore this gown to visit me (they drove the whole way then). And little Edson wore this waist. He never came again. This lavender par'matta was your Great-aunt Jane's--poor dear! Mine was a sprig, with the lilac ground; see, in the corner here. Such goods were high in war times. Ah, that scrap of army blue; Your bright eyes spied it! Yes, dear child, that has its memories, too. They sent him home on furlough once--our soldier brother Ned; But somewhere, now, the dear boy sleeps among the unknown dead. That flowered patch? Well, now, to think you'd pick that from the rest! Why, dearie--yes, it's satin ribbed--that's grandpa's wedding vest! Just odds and ends! no great for looks. My rose quilt's nicer, far, Or the one in basket pattern, or the double-pointed star. But, somehow--What! We'll leave it here? The bed won't look so neat, But I think I would sleep better with it so, across my feet. The Two Angels Two angels, one of Life and one of Death, Passed o'er our village as the morning broke; The dawn was on their faces, and beneath, The sombre houses hearsed with plumes of smoke. Their attitude and aspect were the same, Alike their features and their robes of white; But one was crowned with amaranth, as with flame, And one with asphodels, like flakes of light. I saw them pause on their celestial way; Then said I, with deep fear and doubt oppressed, "Beat not so loud, my heart, lest thou betray The place where thy beloved are at rest!" And he who wore the crown of asphodels, Descending, at my door began to knock, And my soul sank within me, as in wells The waters sink before an earthquake's shock. I recognized the nameless agony, The terror and the tremor and the pain, That oft before had filled or haunted me, And now returned with threefold strength again. The door I opened to my heavenly guest, And listened, for I thought I heard God's voice; And, knowing whatsoe'er he sent was best, Dared neither to lament nor to rejoice. Then with a smile, that filled the house with light, "My errand is not Death, but Life," he said; And ere I answered, passing out of sight, On his celestial embassy he sped. 'Twas at thy door, O friend! and not at mine, The angel with the amaranthine wreath, Pausing, descended, and with, voice divine, Whispered a word that had a sound like Death. Then fell upon the house a sudden gloom, A shadow on those features fair and thin; And softly, from that hushed and darkened room, Two angels issued, where but one went in. All is of God! If he but waves his hand, The mists collect, the rain falls thick and loud, Till, with a smile of light on sea and land, Lo! he looks back from the departing cloud. Angels of Life and Death alike are his; Without his leave they pass no threshold o'er; Who, then, would wish or dare, believing this, Against his messengers to shut the door? _Henry W. Longfellow._ The Witch's Daughter It was the pleasant harvest-time, When cellar-bins are closely stowed, And garrets bend beneath their load, And the old swallow-haunted barns-- Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams Through which the moted sunlight streams-- And winds blow freshly in, to shake The red plumes of the roosted cocks, And the loose hay-mow's scented locks-- Are filled with summer's ripened stores, Its odorous grass and barley sheaves, From their low scaffolds to their eaves. On Esek Harden's oaken floor, With many an autumn threshing worn, Lay the heaped ears of unhusked corn. And thither came young men and maids, Beneath a moon that, large and low, Lit that sweet eve of long ago, They took their places; some by chance, And others by a merry voice Or sweet smile guided to their choice. How pleasantly the rising moon, Between the shadow of the mows, Looked on them through the great elm-boughs!-- On sturdy boyhood, sun-embrowned, On girlhood with its solid curves Of healthful strength and painless nerves! And jests went round, and laughs that made The house-dog answer with his howl, And kept astir the barn-yard fowl. And quaint old songs their fathers sung, In Derby dales and Yorkshire moors, Ere Norman William trod their shores; And tales, whose merry license shook The fat sides of the Saxon thane, Forgetful of the hovering Dane! But still the sweetest voice was mute That river-valley ever heard From lip of maid or throat of bird; For Mabel Martin sat apart, And let the hay-mow's shadow 'fall Upon the loveliest face of all. She sat apart, as one forbid, Who knew that none would condescend To own the Witch-wife's child a friend. The seasons scarce had gone their round, Since curious thousands thronged to see Her mother on the gallows-tree; And mocked the palsied limbs of age, That faltered on the fatal stairs, And wan lip trembling with its prayers! Few questioned of the sorrowing child, Or, when they saw the mother die, Dreamed of the daughter's agony. They went up to their homes that day, As men and Christians justified: God willed it, and the wretch had died! Dear God and Father of us all, Forgive our faith in cruel lies,-- Forgive the blindness that denies! Forgive Thy creature when he takes, For the all-perfect love Thou art, Some grim creation of his heart. Cast down our idols, overturn Our bloody altars; let us see Thyself in Thy humanity! Poor Mabel from her mother's grave Crept to her desolate hearth-stone, And wrestled with her fate alone; With love, and anger, and despair, The phantoms of disordered sense, The awful doubts of Providence! The school-boys jeered her as they passed, And, when she sought the house of prayer, Her mother's curse pursued her there. And still o'er many a neighboring door She saw the horseshoe's curved charm, To guard against her mother's harm;-- That mother, poor, and sick, and lame, Who daily, by the old arm-chair, Folded her withered hands in prayer;-- Who turned, in Salem's dreary jail, Her worn old Bible o'er and o'er, When her dim eyes could read no more! Sore tried and pained, the poor girl kept Her faith, and trusted that her way, So dark, would somewhere meet the day. And still her weary wheel went round, Day after day, with no relief: Small leisure have the poor for grief. So in the shadow Mabel sits; Untouched by mirth she sees and hears, Her smile is sadder than her tears. But cruel eyes have found her out, And cruel lips repeat her name, And taunt her with her mother's shame. She answered not with railing words, But drew her apron o'er her face, And, sobbing, glided from the place. And only pausing at the door, Her sad eyes met the troubled gaze Of one who, in her better days, Had been her warm and steady friend, Ere yet her mother's doom had made Even Esek Harden half afraid. He felt that mute appeal of tears, And, starting, with an angry frown Hushed all the wicked murmurs down, "Good neighbors mine," he sternly said, "This passes harmless mirth or jest; I brook no insult to my guest. "She is indeed her mother's child; But God's sweet pity ministers Unto no whiter soul than hers. Let Goody Martin rest in peace; I never knew her harm a fly, And witch or not, God knows,--not I. I know who swore her life away; And, as God lives, I'd not condemn An Indian dog on word of them." Poor Mabel, in her lonely home, Sat by the window's narrow pane, White in the moonlight's silver rain. The river, on its pebbled rim, Made music such as childhood knew; The door-yard tree was whispered through By voices such as childhood's ear Had heard in moonlights long ago; And through the willow boughs below She saw the rippled waters shine; Beyond, in waves of shade and light The hills rolled off into the night. Sweet sounds and pictures mocking so The sadness of her human lot, She saw and heard, but heeded not. She strove to drown her sense of wrong, And, in her old and simple way, To teach, her bitter heart to pray. Poor child! the prayer, began in faith, Grew to a low, despairing cry Of utter misery: "Let me die! Oh! take me from the scornful eyes, And hide me where the cruel speech And mocking finger may not reach! "I dare not breathe my mother's name; A daughter's right I dare not crave To weep above her unblest grave! Let me not live until my heart, With few to pity, and with none To love me, hardens into stone. O God! have mercy on thy child, Whose faith in Thee grows weak and small, And take me ere I lose it all." The broadest lands in all the town, The skill to guide, the power to awe, Were Harden's; and his word was law. None dared withstand him to his face, But one sly maiden spake aside: "The little witch is evil-eyed! Her mother only killed a cow, Or witched a churn or dairy-pan; But she, forsooth, must charm a man!" A shadow on the moonlight fell, And murmuring wind and wave became A voice whose burden was her name. Had then God heard her? Had he sent His angel down? In flesh and blood, Before her Esek Harden stood! He laid his hand upon her arm: "Dear Mabel, this no more shall be; Who scoffs at you, must scoff at me. You know rough Esek Harden well; And if he seems no suitor gay, And if his hair is mixed with gray, The maiden grown shall never find His heart less warm than when she smiled Upon his knees, a little child!" Her tears of grief were tears of joy, As folded in his strong embrace, She looked in Esek Harden's face. "O truest friend of all!" she said, "God bless you for your kindly thought, And make me worthy of my lot!" He led her through his dewy fields, To where the swinging lanterns glowed, And through the doors the huskers showed. "Good friends and neighbors!" Esek said, "I'm weary of this lonely life; In Mabel see my chosen wife! "She greets you kindly, one and all: The past is past, and all offence Falls harmless from her innocence. Henceforth she stands no more alone; You know what Esek Harden is;-- He brooks no wrong to him or his." Now let the merriest tales be told, And let the sweetest songs be sung, That ever made the old heart young! For now the lost has found a home; And a lone hearth shall brighter burn, As all the household joys return! Oh, pleasantly the harvest moon, Between the shadow of the mows, Looked on them through the great elm-boughs! On Mabel's curls of golden hair, On Esek's shaggy strength it fell; And the wind whispered, "It is well!" _John G. Whittier._ David's Lament for Absalom King David's limbs were weary. He had fled From far Jerusalem; and now he stood With his faint people for a little rest Upon the shore of Jordan. The light wind Of morn was stirring, and he bared his brow To its refreshing breath; for he had worn The mourner's covering, and he had not felt That he could see his people until now. They gathered round him on the fresh green bank And spoke their kindly words, and as the sun Rose up in heaven he knelt among them there, And bowed his head upon his hands to pray. Oh! when the heart is full--where bitter thoughts Come crowding thickly up for utterance, And the poor common words of courtesy,-- Are such a mockery--how much The bursting heart may pour itself in prayer! He prayed for Israel--and his voice went up Strongly and fervently. He prayed for those Whose love had been his shield--and his deep tones Grew tremulous. But, oh! for Absalom, For his estranged, misguided Absalom-- The proud, bright being who had burst away In all his princely beauty to defy The heart that cherished him--for him he prayed, In agony that would not be controll'd, Strong supplication, and forgave him there Before his God for his deep sinfulness. The pall was settled. He who slept beneath Was straightened for the grave, and as the folds Sank to their still proportions, they betrayed The matchless symmetry of Absalom, The mighty Joab stood beside the bier And gazed upon the dark pall steadfastly, As if he feared the slumberer might stir. A slow step startled him. He grasped his blade As if a trumpet rang, but the bent form Of David entered; and he gave command In a low tone to his few followers, And left him with the dead. The King stood still Till the last echo died; then, throwing off The sackcloth from his brow, and laying back The pall from the still features of his child. He bowed his head upon him and broke forth In the resistless eloquence of woe: "Alas! my noble boy; that thou shouldst die! Thou who were made so beautifully fair! That death should settle in thy glorious eye, And leave his stillness in this clustering hair! How could he mark thee for the silent tomb, My proud boy, Absalom! "Cold is thy brow, my son! and I am chill As to my bosom I have tried to press thee! How was I wont to feel my pulses thrill Like a rich harp-string yearning to caress thee, And hear thy sweet 'my father!' from those dumb And cold lips, Absalom! "But death is on thee! I shall hear the gush Of music, and the voices of the young; And life will pass me in the mantling blush, And the dark tresses to the soft winds flung;-- But thou no more, with thy sweet voice, shalt come To meet me, Absalom! "And oh! when I am stricken, and my heart, Like a bruised reed, is waiting to be broken, How will its love for thee, as I depart, Yearn for thine ear to drink its last deep token! It were so sweet, amid death's gathering gloom, To see thee, Absalom! "And now, farewell! 'Tis hard to give thee up, With death so like a gentle slumber on thee!-- And thy dark sin! Oh! I could drink the cup, If from this woe its bitterness had won thee. May God have called thee, like a wanderer, home, My lost boy, Absalom!" He covered up his face, and bowed himself A moment on his child; then, giving him A look of melting tenderness, he clasped His hands convulsively, as if in prayer, And, as if strength were given him of God, He rose up calmly, and composed the pall Firmly and decently--and left him there, As if his rest had been a breathing sleep. _N.P. Willis_. Christmas Day in the Workhouse It is Christmas day in the workhouse, And the cold bare walls are bright With garlands of green and holly, And the place is a pleasant sight: For with clean-washed hands and faces, In a long and hungry line The paupers sit at the tables, For this is the hour they dine. And the guardians and their ladies, Although the wind is east, Have come in their furs and wrappers To watch their charges feast; To smile and be condescending, Put pudding on pauper plates, To be hosts at the workhouse banquet They've paid for--with the rates. Oh, the paupers are meek and lowly With their "Thank'ee kindly, mum's"; So long as they fill their stomachs, What matter whence it comes? But one of the old men mutters, And pushes his plate aside: "Great God!" he cries; "but it chokes me; For this is the day _she_ died." The guardians gazed in horror, The master's face went white: "Did a pauper refuse their pudding?" "Could their ears believe aright?" Then the ladies clutched their husbands Thinking the man would die, Struck by a bolt, or something, By the outraged One on high. But the pauper sat for a moment, Then rose 'mid a silence grim, For the others had ceased to chatter, And trembled in every limb. He looked at the guardians' ladies, Then, eyeing their lords, he said: "I eat not the food of villains Whose hands are foul and red, "Whose victims cry for vengeance From their dark unhallowed graves." "He's drunk!" said the workhouse master, "Or else he's mad, and raves." "Not drunk or mad," cried the pauper, "But only a hunted beast, Who, torn by the hounds and mangled, Declines the vulture's feast. "I care not a curse for the guardians, And I won't be dragged away. Just let me have the fit out, It's only on Christmas day That the black past comes to goad me, And prey on my burning brain, I'll tell you the rest in a whisper,-- I swear I won't shout again, "Keep your hands off me, curse you! Hear me right out to the end, You come here to see how paupers The season of Christmas spend. You come here to watch us feeding, As they watch the captured beast, Hear why a penniless pauper Spits on your palfry feast. "Do you think I will take your bounty, And let you smile and think You're doing a noble action With the parish's meat and drink? Where is my wife, you traitors-- The poor old wife you slew? Yes, by the God above us, My Nance was killed by you! "Last winter my wife lay dying, Starved in a filthy den; I had never been to the parish,-- I came to the parish then. I swallowed my pride in coming, For, ere the ruin came. I held up my head as a trader, And I bore a spotless name. "I came to the parish, craving Bread for a starving wife, Bread for the woman who'd loved me Through fifty years of life; And what do you think they told me, Mocking my awful grief? That 'the House' was open to us, But they wouldn't give 'out relief.' "I slunk to the filthy alley-- 'Twas a cold, raw Christmas eve-- And the bakers' shops were open, Tempting a man to thieve: But I clenched my fists together, Holding my head awry, So I came to her empty-handed And mournfully told her why. "Then I told her 'the House' was open; She had heard of the ways of _that_, For her bloodless cheeks went crimson, And up in her rags she sat, Crying, 'Bide the Christmas here, John, We've never had one apart; I think I can bear the hunger,-- The other would break my heart.' "All through that eve I watched her, Holding her hand in mine, Praying the Lord, and weeping Till my lips were salt as brine. I asked her once if she hungered, And as she answered 'No,' The moon shone in at the window Set in a wreath of snow. "Then the room was bathed in glory, And I saw in my darling's eyes The far-away look of wonder That comes when the spirit flies; And her lips were parched and parted, And her reason came and went, For she raved of our home in Devon Where our happiest years were spent. "And the accents, long forgotten, Came back to the tongue once more, For she talked like the country lassie I woo'd by the Devon shore. Then she rose to her feet and trembled, And fell on the rags and moaned, And, 'Give me a crust--I'm famished-- For the love of God!' she groaned. "I rushed from the room like a madman, And flew to the workhouse gate, Crying 'Food for a dying woman?' And the answer came, 'Too late.' They drove me away with curses; Then I fought with a dog in the street, And tore from the mongrel's clutches A crust he was trying to eat. "Back, through the filthy by-lanes! Back, through the trampled slush! Up to the crazy garret, Wrapped in an awful hush. My heart sank down at the threshold, And I paused with a sudden thrill, For there in the silv'ry moonlight My Nance lay, cold and still. "Up to the blackened ceiling The sunken eyes were cast-- I knew on those lips all bloodless My name had been the last: She'd called for her absent husband-- O God! had I but known!-- Had called in vain, and in anguish Had died in that den--_alone_. "Yes, there, in a land of plenty, Lay a loving woman dead, Cruelly starved and murdered For a loaf of the parish bread. At yonder gate, last Christmas, I craved for a human life. You, who would feast us paupers, _What of my murdered wife!_ * * * * * "There, get ye gone to you dinners; Don't mind me in the least; Think of the happy paupers Eating your Christmas feast; And when you recount their blessings In your snug, parochial way, Say what you did for _me_, too, Only last Christmas Day." _George R. Sims._ Our Presidents--A Memory Rhyme First on the list is Washington, Virginia's proudest name; John Adams next, the Federalist, from Massachusetts came; Three sons of old Virginia into the White House go-- 'Twas Jefferson, and Madison, and then came James Monroe. Massachusetts for one term sent Adams called John Q., And Tennessee a Democrat, brave Jackson staunch and true. Martin Van Buren of New York, and Harrison we see, And Tyler of Virginia, and Polk of Tennessee. Louisiana Taylor sent; New York Millard Fillmore; New Hampshire gave us Franklin Pierce; when his term was o'er The keystone state Buchanan sent. War thunders shook the realm Abe Lincoln wore a martyr's crown, and Johnson took the helm. Then U.S. Grant of Illinois who ruled with sword and pen; And Hayes, and Garfield who was shot, two noble Buckeye men. Chester Arthur from New York, and Grover Cleveland came; Ben Harrison served just four years, then Cleveland ruled again. McKinley--shot at Buffalo--the nation plunged in grief, And "Teddy" Roosevelt of New York served seven years as chief. Taft of Ohio followed him. Then Woodrow Wilson came-- New Jersey's learned Democrat; war set the world aflame; And when the tide of strife and hate its baneful course had run, The country went Republican and Warren Harding won. No duty would he shirk,--he died while on a western trip; Coolidge of Massachusetts then assumed the leadership. _Isabel Ambler Gilman._ Annie and Willie's Prayer 'Twas the eve before Christmas; "Good night" had been said, And Annie and Willie had crept into bed; There were tears on their pillows, and tears in their eyes, And each little bosom was heaving with sighs, For to-night their stern father's command had been given That they should retire precisely at seven Instead of at eight; for they troubled him more With questions unheard of than ever before; He had told them he thought this delusion a sin, No such being as Santa Claus ever had been, And he hoped, after this, he should never more hear How he scrambled down chimneys with presents, each year, And this was the reason that two little heads So restlessly tossed on their soft downy beds. Eight, nine, and the clock on the steeple tolled ten; Not a word had been spoken by either till then; When Willie's sad face from the blanket did peep, And whispered, "Dear Annie, is oo fast asleep?" "Why, no, brother Willie," a sweet voice replies, "I've tried it in vain, but I can't shut my eyes; For somehow, it makes me so sorry because Dear papa has said there is no Santa Claus; Now we know there is, and it can't be denied, For he came every year before mamma died; But then I've been thinking that she used to pray, And God would hear everything mamma would say; And perhaps she asked him to send Santa Claus here With the sacks full of presents he brought every year." "Well, why tant we pray dest as mamma did then, And ask Him to send him with presents aden?" "I've been thinking so, too," and, without a word more, Four little bare feet bounded out on the floor, And four little knees the soft carpet pressed, And two tiny hands were clasped close to each breast. "Now, Willie, you know we must firmly believe That the presents we ask for we're sure to receive; You must wait just as still till I say the 'Amen,' And by that you will know that your turn has come then. Dear Jesus, look down on my brother and me. And grant as the favor we are asking of Thee! I want a wax dolly, a tea-set and ring, And an ebony work-box that shuts with a spring. Bless papa, dear Jesus, and cause him to see That Santa Claus loves us far better than he; Don't let him get fretful and angry again At dear brother Willie, and Annie, Amen!" "Peas Desus 'et Santa Taus tum down to-night, And bing us some pesents before it is 'ight; I want he should div me a nice ittle sed, With bight, shiny unners, and all painted yed; A box full of tandy, a book and a toy-- Amen--and then Desus, I'll be a dood boy." Their prayers being ended they raised up their heads, And with hearts light and cheerful again sought their beds; They were soon lost in slumber both peaceful and deep, And with fairies in dreamland were roaming in sleep. Eight, nine, and the little French clock had struck ten Ere the father had thought of his children again; He seems now to hear Annie's half suppressed sighs, And to see the big tears stand in Willie's blue eyes. "I was harsh with my darlings," he mentally said, "And should not have sent them so early to bed; But then I was troubled,--my feelings found vent, For bank-stock to-day has gone down ten per cent. But of course they've forgotten their troubles ere this, And that I denied them the thrice asked-for kiss; But just to make sure I'll steal up to their door, For I never spoke harsh to my darlings before." So saying, he softly ascended the stairs, And arrived at the door to hear both of their prayers. His Annie's "bless papa" draws forth the big tears, And Willie's grave promise falls sweet on his ears. "Strange, strange I'd forgotten," said he with a sigh, "How I longed when a child to have Christmas draw nigh. I'll atone for my harshness," he inwardly said, "By answering their prayers, ere I sleep in my bed." Then he turned to the stairs, and softly went down, Threw off velvet slippers and silk dressing-gown; Donned hat, coat, and boots, and was out in the street, A millionaire facing the cold driving sleet, Nor stopped he until he had bought everything, From the box full of candy to the tiny gold ring. Indeed he kept adding so much to his store That the various presents outnumbered a score; Then homeward he turned with his holiday load And with Aunt Mary's aid in the nursery 'twas stowed. Miss Dolly was seated beneath a pine-tree, By the side of a table spread out for a tea; A work-box well filled in the centre was laid, And on it the ring for which Annie had prayed; A soldier in uniform stood by a sled With bright shining runners, and all painted red; There were balls, dogs and horses, books pleasing to see, And birds of all colors--were perched in the tree, While Santa Claus, laughing, stood up in the top, As if getting ready more presents to drop. And as the fond father the picture surveyed, He thought for his trouble he had amply been paid; And he said to himself as he brushed off a tear, "I'm happier to-night than I've been for a year, I've enjoyed more true pleasure than ever before-- What care I if bank-stocks fall ten per cent more. Hereafter I'll make it a rule, I believe, To have Santa Claus visit us each Christmas eve." So thinking he gently extinguished the light, And tripped down the stairs to retire for the night. As soon as the beams of the bright morning sun Put the darkness to flight, and the stars, one by one, Four little blue eyes out of sleep opened wide, And at the same moment the presents espied; Then out of their beds they sprang with a bound, And the very gifts prayed for were all of them found; They laughed and they cried in their innocent glee, And shouted for papa to come quick and see What presents old Santa Claus brought in the night (Just the things that they wanted) and left before light; "And now," added Annie, in a voice soft and low, "You'll believe there's a Santa, Clans, papa, I know"; While dear little Willie climbed up on his knee, Determined no secret between them should be, And told in soft whispers how Annie had said That their blessed mamma, so long ago dead, Used to kneel down and pray by the side of her chair, And that God, up in heaven, had answered her prayer! "Then we dot up, and payed dust as well as we tould, And Dod answered our payers; now wasn't he dood?" "I should say that he was if he sent you all these, And knew just what presents my children would please. Well, well, let him think so, the dear little elf, 'Twould be cruel to tell him I did it myself." Blind father! who caused your proud heart to relent, And the hasty word spoken so soon to repent? 'Twas the Being who made you steal softly upstairs, And made you His agent to answer their prayers. _Sophia P. Snow._ Trailing Arbutus I wandered lonely where the pine-trees made Against the bitter East their barricade, And, guided by its sweet Perfume, I found, within a narrow dell, The trailing spring flower tinted like a shell Amid dry leaves and mosses at my feet. From under dead boughs, for whose loss the pines Moaned ceaseless overhead, the blossoming vines Lifted their glad surprise, While yet the bluebird smoothed in leafless trees His feathers ruffled by the chill sea-breeze, And snow-drifts lingered under April skies. As, pausing, o'er the lonely flower I bent, I thought of lives thus lowly clogged and pent, Which yet find room, Through care and cumber, coldness and decay, To lend a sweetness to the ungenial day And make the sad earth happier for their bloom. _J.G. Whittier._ When the Light Goes Out Tho' yer lamp o' life is burnin' with a clear and steady light, An' it never seems ter flicker, but it's allers shinin' bright; Tho' it sheds its rays unbroken for a thousand happy days-- Father Time is ever turnin' down the wick that feeds yer blaze. So it clearly is yer duty ef you've got a thing to do Ter put yer shoulder to ther wheel an' try to push her through; Ef yer upon a wayward track you better turn about-- You've lost ther chance to do it When the Light Goes Out. Speak kindly to the woman who is working fer yer praise, Ther same way as you used ter in those happy courtin' days; She likes appreciation just the same ez me an' you, And it's only right and proper that yer give her what is due. Don't wait until her lamp o' life is burnin' dim an' low, Afore you tell her what you orter told her long ago-- Now's ther time ter cheer her up an' put her blues to rout-- You've lost ther chance to do it When the Light Goes Out. Don't keep a-puttin' matters off an' settin' dates ahead-- To-morrow's sun'll find a hundred thousand of us dead; Don't think because yer feelin well you won't be sick no more-- Sometimes the reddest pippin has a worm-hole to the core. Don't let a killin' habit grow upon you soft and still Because you think thet you ken throw it from you at your will-- Now's ther time ter quit it when yer feelin' brave an' stout-- You've lost ther chance to do it When the Light Goes Out. I'd rather die with nothin' then ter hev ther people say That I had got my money in a robbin', graspin' way; No words above my restin' place from any tongue or pen Would hev a deeper meanin' than "He helped his fellow-men." So ef you hev a fortune and you want to help the poor, Don't keep a-stavin' off until yon get a little more; Ef yer upon a miser's track you better turn about-- Yer record keeps on burnin' When the Light Goes Out. _Harry S. Chester._ Prayer and Potatoes An old lady sat in her old arm-chair, With wrinkled visage and disheveled hair, And pale and hunger-worn features; For days and for weeks her only fare, As she sat there in her old arm-chair, Had been potatoes. But now they were gone; of bad or good. Not one was left for the old lady's food Of those potatoes; And she sighed and said, "What shall I do? Where shall I send, and to whom shall I go For more potatoes?" And she thought of the deacon over the way, The deacon so ready to worship and pray, Whose cellar was full of potatoes; And she said: "I will send for the deacon to come; He'll not mind much to give me some Of such a store of potatoes." And the deacon came over as fast as he could, Thinking to do the old lady some good, But never thought of potatoes; He asked her at once what was her chief want, And she, simple soul, expecting a grant, Immediately answered, "Potatoes." But the deacon's religion didn't lie that way; He was more accustomed to preach and pray Than to give of his hoarded potatoes; So, not hearing, of course, what the old lady said, He rose to pray with uncovered head, But _she_ only thought of potatoes. He prayed for patience, and wisdom, and grace, But when he prayed, "Lord, give her peace," She audibly sighed "Give potatoes"; And at the end of each prayer which he said, He heard, or thought that he heard in its stead, The same request for potatoes. The deacon was troubled; knew not what to do; 'Twas very embarrassing to have her act so About "those carnal potatoes." So, ending his prayer, he started for home; As the door closed behind him, he heard a deep groan, "Oh, give to the hungry, potatoes!" And that groan followed him all the way home; In the midst of the night it haunted his room-- "Oh, give to the hungry, potatoes!" He could bear it no longer; arose and dressed; From his well-filled cellar taking in haste A bag of his best potatoes. Again he went to the widow's lone hut; Her sleepless eyes she had not shut; But there she sat in that old arm-chair, With the same wan features, the same sad air, And, entering in, he poured on the floor A bushel or more from his goodly store Of choicest potatoes. The widow's cup was running o'er, Her face was haggard and wan no more. "Now," said the deacon, "shall we pray?" "Yes," said the widow, "_now_ you may." And he kneeled him down on the sanded floor, Where he had poured his goodly store, And such a prayer the deacon prayed As never before his lips essayed; No longer embarrassed, but free and full, He poured out the voice of a liberal soul, And the widow responded aloud "Amen!" But spake no more of potatoes. And would you, who hear this simple tale, Pray for the poor, and praying, "prevail"? Then preface your prayers with alms and good deeds; Search out the poor, their wants and their needs; Pray for peace, and grace, and spiritual food, For wisdom and guidance,-for all these are good,-- _But don't forget the potatoes_. _J.T. Pettee._ The Parts of Speech Three little words you often see Are articles _a_, _an_, and _the_. A noun's the name of anything, As _house_ or _garden_, _hoop_ or _swing_. Instead of nouns the pronouns stand-- _Her_ head, _your_ face, _his_ arm, _my_ hand. Adjectives tell the kind of noun, As _great_, _small_, _pretty_, _white_ or _brown_. Verbs tell something to be done-- To _read_, _count_, _sing_, _laugh_ or _run_. How things are done the adverbs tell, As _slowly_, _quickly_, _ill_ or _well_. Conjunctions join the words together, As men _and_ women, wind _or_ weather. The preposition stands before A noun, as _in_ or _through_ a door. The interjection shows surprise, As _oh!_ how pretty, _ah!_ how wise. The whole are called nine parts of speech, Which reading, writing, speaking teach. A New Leaf He came to my desk with, quivering lip-- The lesson was done. "Dear Teacher, I want a new leaf," he said, "I have spoiled this one." I took the old leaf, stained and blotted, And gave him a new one all unspotted, And into his sad eyes smiled, "Do better, now, my child." I went to the throne with a quivering soul-- The old year was done. "Dear Father, hast Thou a new leaf for me? I have spoiled this one." He took the old leaf, stained and blotted, And gave me a new one all unspotted, And into my sad heart smiled, "Do better, now, my child." _Carrie Shaw Rice._ The Boy With the Hoe How are you hoeing your row, my boy? Say, how are you hoeing your row? Do you hoe it fair? Do you hoe it square? Do you hoe it the best that you know? Do you cut out the weeds as you ought to do? Do you plant what is beautiful there? For the harvest, you know, Will be just what you sow; Are you working it on the square? Say, are you killing the weeds, my boy? Are you hoeing your row neat and clean? Are you going straight At a hustling gait? Are you cutting out all that is mean? Do you whistle and sing as you toil along? Are you finding your work a delight? If you do it this way You will gladden the day, And your row will be tended right. Hoeing your row with a will, my boy, And giving it thought and care, Will insure success And your efforts bless, As the crop to the garner you bear; For the world will look on as you hoe your row, And will judge you by that which you do; Therefore, try for first prize, Though your utmost it tries, For the harvest depends on you. _T.B. Weaver._ Our Flag Fling it from mast and steeple, Symbol o'er land and sea Of the life of a happy people, Gallant and strong and free. Proudly we view its colors, Flag of the brave and true, With the clustered stars and the steadfast bars, The red, the white, and the blue. Flag of the fearless-hearted, Flag of the broken chain, Flag in a day-dawn started, Never to pale or wane. Dearly we prize its colors, With the heaven light breaking through, The clustered stars and the steadfast bars, The red, the white, and the blue. Flag of the sturdy fathers, Flag of the loyal sons, Beneath its folds it gathers Earth's best and noblest ones. Boldly we wave its colors, Our veins are thrilled anew By the steadfast bars, the clustered stars, The red, the white, and the blue. _Margaret E. Sangster._ The Little Fir-Trees Hey! little evergreens, Sturdy and strong, Summer and autumn-time Hasten along. Harvest the sunbeams, then, Bind them in sheaves, Range them and change them To tufts of green leaves. Delve in the mellow-mold, Far, far below. And so, Little evergreens, grow! Grow! Grow! Grow, little evergreens, grow! Up, up so airily, To the blue sky, Lift up your leafy tips Stately and high; Clasp tight your tiny cones, Tawny and brown, By and by buffeting Rains will pelt down. By and by bitterly Chill winds will blow, And so, Little evergreens, grow! Grow! Grow! Grow, little evergreens, grow! Gather all uttermost Beauty, because,-- Hark, till I tell it now! How Santa Claus, Out of the northern land, Over the seas, Soon shall come seeking you, Evergreen trees! Seek you with reindeer soon, Over the snow: And so, Little evergreens, grow! Grow! Grow! Grow, little evergreens, grow! What if the maple flare Flaunting and red, You shall wear waxen white Taper instead. What if now, otherwhere, Birds are beguiled, You shall yet nestle The little Christ-Child. Ah! the strange splendor The fir-trees shall know! And so, Little evergreens, grow! Grow! Grow! Grow, little evergreens, grow! _Evaleen Stein._ He Worried About It The sun's heat will give out in ten million years more-- And he worried about it. It will sure give out then, if it doesn't before-- And he worried about it. It will surely give out, so the scientists said In all scientifical books he had read, And the whole boundless universe then will be dead-- And he worried about it. And some day the earth will fall into the sun-- And he worried about it-- Just as sure and as straight as if shot from a gun-- And he worried about it. When strong gravitation unbuckles her straps, "Just picture," he said, "what a fearful collapse! It will come in a few million ages, perhaps"-- And he worried about it. And the earth will become much too small for the race-- And he worried about it-- When we'll pay thirty dollars an inch for pure space-- And he worried about it. The earth will be crowded so much, without doubt, That there won't be room for one's tongue to stick out, Nor room for one's thought to wander about-- And he worried about it. And the Gulf Stream will curve, and New England grow torrider-- And he worried about it-- Than was ever the climate of southernmost Florida-- And he worried about it. Our ice crop will be knocked into small smithereens, And crocodiles block up our mowing-machines, And we'll lose our fine crops of potatoes and beans-- And he worried about it. And in less than ten thousand years, there's no doubt-- And he worried about it-- Our supply of lumber and coal will give out-- And he worried about it. Just then the ice-age will return cold and raw, Frozen men will stand stiff with arms outstretched in awe, As if vainly beseeching a general thaw-- And he worried about it. His wife took in washing--half a dollar a day-- He didn't worry about it-- His daughter sewed shirts the rude grocer to pay-- He didn't worry about it. While his wife beat her tireless rub-a-dub-dub On the washboard drum of her old wooden tub, He sat by the stoves and he just let her rub-- He didn't worry about it. _Sam Walter Foss._ The President No gilt or tinsel taints the dress Of him who holds the natal power, No weighty helmet's fastenings press On brow that shares Columbia's dower, No blaring trumpets mark the step Of him with mind on peace intent, And so--HATS OFF! Here comes the State, A modest King: THE PRESIDENT. No cavalcade with galloping squads Surrounds this man, whose mind controls The actions of the million minds Whose hearts the starry banner folds; Instead, in simple garb he rides, The King to whom grim Fate has lent Her dower of righteousness and faith To guide his will: THE PRESIDENT. The ancient lands are struck with awe, Here stands a power at which they scoffed, Kings, rulers, scribes of pristine states. Are dazed,--at Columbia they mocked; Yet human wills have forged new states, Their wills on justice full intent, And fashioned here a lowly King, The People's choice: THE PRESIDENT. War-ravaged, spent, and torn--old worlds With hatred rent, turn to the West, "Give help!" they cry--"our souls are wracked, On every side our kingdom's pressed." And see! Columbia hastens forth, Her healing hand to peace is lent, Her sword unsheathed has forged the calm, Her sons sent by THE PRESIDENT. Full many a storm has tossed the barque Since first it had its maiden trip, Full many a conflagration's spark Has scorched and seared the laboring ship; And yet it ploughs a straightway course, Through wrack of billows; wind-tossed, spent, On sails the troubled Ship of State, Steered forward by THE PRESIDENT. STAND UP! HATS OFF! He's coming by, No roll of drums peals at his course, NOW GIVE A CHEER! He's part of you, Your will with his: the nation's force. And--as he passes--breathe a prayer, May justice to his mind be lent, And may the grace of Heaven be with The man who rules: OUR PRESIDENT. _Charles H.L. Johnston._ Lullaby Sleepy little, creepy little goblins in the gloaming, With their airy little, fairy little faces all aglow, Winking little, blinking little brownies gone a-roaming, Hear the rustling little, bustling little footfalls as they go. Laughing little, chaffing little voices sweetly singing In the dearest little, queerest little baby lullabies, Creep! Creep! Creep! Time to go to sleep! Baby playing 'possum with his big brown eyes! Cricket in the thicket with the oddest little clatter Sings his rattling little, prattling little, tattling little tune; Fleet the feet of tiny stars go patter, patter, patter, As they scamper from the heavens at the rising of the moon. Beaming little, gleaming little fireflies go dreaming To the dearest little, queerest little baby lullabies. Creep! Creep! Creep! Time to go to sleep! Baby playing 'possum with his big brown eyes! Quaking little, shaking little voices all a-quiver In the mushy little, rushy little, weedy, reedy bogs, Droning little, moaning little chorus by the river, In the croaking little, joking little cadence of the frogs. Eerie little, cheery little glowworms in the gloaming Where the clover heads like fairy little nightcaps rise, Creep! Creep! Creep! Time to go to sleep! Baby playing 'possum with his big brown eyes! _J.W. Foley._ Chums If we should be shipwrecked together And only had water for one, And it was the hottest of weather Right out in the boiling sun, He'd tell me--no matter how bad he Might want it--to take a drink first; And then he would smile--oh, so glad he Had saved me!--and perish from thirst! Or, if we were lost on the prairie And only had food for a day, He'd come and would give me the share he Had wrapped up and hidden away; And after I ate it with sadness He'd smile with his very last breath, And lay himself down full of gladness To save me--and starve right to death. And if I was wounded in battle And out where great danger might be, He'd come through the roar and the rattle Of guns and of bullets to me, He'd carry me out, full of glory, No matter what trouble he had, And then he would fall down, all gory With wounds, and would die--but be glad! We're chums--that's the reason he'd do it; And that's what a chum ought to be. And if it was fire he'd go through it, If I should call him to me. You see other fellows may know you, And friends that you have go and come; But a boy has one boy he can go to, For help all the time--that's his chum. _J.W. Foley._ Jim Brady's Big Brother Jim Brady's big brother's a wonderful lad, And wonderful, wonderful muscles he had; He swung by one arm from the limb of a tree And hung there while Jim counted up forty-three Just as slow as he could; and he leaped at a bound Across a wide creek and lit square on the ground Just as light as a deer; and the things he can do, So Jimmy told us, you would hardly think true. Jim Brady's big brother could throw a fly ball From center to home just like nothing at all; And often while playing a game he would stand And take a high fly with just only one hand; Jim Brady showed us where he knocked a home run And won the big game when it stood three to one Against the home team, and Jim Brady, he showed The place where it lit in the old wagon road! Jim Brady's big brother could bat up a fly That you hardly could see, for it went up so high; He'd bring up his muscle and break any string That you tied on his arm like it wasn't a thing! He used to turn handsprings, and cartwheels, and he Could jump through his hands just as slick as could be, And circuses often would want him to go And be in the ring, but his mother said no. Jim Brady's big brother would often make bets With boys that he'd turn two complete summersets From off of the spring-board before he would dive, And you'd hardly think he would come up alive; And nobody else who went there to swim Could do it, but it was just easy for him; And they'd all be scared, so Jim said, when he'd stay In under and come up a half mile away. Jim Brady's big brother, so Jim said, could run Five miles in a race just as easy as one. Right often he walked on his hands half a block And could have walked more if he'd wanted to walk! And Jimmy says wait till he comes home from school, Where he is gone now, and some day, when it's cool, He'll get him to prove everything to be true That Jimmy told us his big brother could do! _J.W. Foley._ The Gray Swan "Oh tell me, sailor, tell me true, Is my little lad, my Elihu, A-sailing with your ship?" The sailor's eyes were dim with dew,-- "Your little lad, your Elihu?" He said with trembling lip,-- "What little lad? what ship?" "What little lad! as if there could be Another such a one as he! What little lad, do you say? Why, Elihu, that took to the sea The moment I put him off my knee! It was just the other day The _Gray Swan_ sailed away." "The other day?" the sailor's eyes Stood open with a great surprise,-- "The other day? the _Swan?_" His heart began in his throat to rise. "Ay, ay, sir, here in the cupboard lies The jacket he had on." "And so your lad is gone?" "Gone with the _Swan_." "And did she stand With her anchor clutching hold of the sand, For a month, and never stir?" "Why, to be sure! I've seen from the land, Like a lover kissing his lady's hand, The wild sea kissing her,-- A sight to remember, sir." "But, my good mother, do you know All this was twenty years ago? I stood on the _Gray Swan's_ deck, And to that lad I saw you throw, Taking it off, as it might be, so, The kerchief from your neck." "Ay, and he'll bring it back!" "And did the little lawless lad That has made you sick and made you sad, Sail with the _Gray Swan's_ crew?" "Lawless! the man is going mad! The best boy ever mother had,-- Be sure he sailed with the crew! What would you have him do?" "And he has never written line, Nor sent you word, nor made you sign To say he was alive?" "Hold! if 'twas wrong, the wrong is mine; Besides, he may be in the brine, And could he write from the grave? Tut, man, what would you have?" "Gone twenty years,--a long, long cruise, 'Twas wicked thus your love to abuse; But if the lad still live, And come back home, think you you can Forgive him?"--"Miserable man, You're mad as the sea,--you rave,-- What have I to forgive?" The sailor twitched his shirt so blue, And from within his bosom drew The kerchief. She was wild. "My God! my Father! is it true My little lad, My Elihu? My blessed boy, my child! My dead,--my living child!" _Alice Cary._ The Circling Year SPRING The joys of living wreathe my face, My heart keeps time to freshet's race; Of balmy airs I drink my fill-- Why, there's a yellow daffodil! Along the stream a soft green tinge Gives hint of feathery willow fringe; Methinks I heard a Robin's "Cheer"-- I'm glad Spring's here! SUMMER An afternoon of buzzing flies. Heat waves that sear, and quivering rise; The long white road, the plodding team, The deep, cool grass in which to dream; The distant cawing of the crows, Tall, waving grain, long orchard rows; The peaceful cattle in the stream-- Midsummer's dream! AUTUMN A cold, gray day, a lowering sky, A lonesome pigeon wheeling by; The soft, blue smoke that hangs and fades, The shivering crane that flaps and wades; Dead leaves that, whispering, quit their tree, The peace the river sings to me; The chill aloofness of the Fall-- I love it all! WINTER A sheet of ice, the ring of steel, The crunch of snow beneath the heel; Loud, jingling bells, the straw-lined sleigh, A restless pair that prance and neigh; The early coming of the night, Red glowing logs, a shaded light; The firelit realm of books is mine-- Oh, Winter's fine! _Ramona Graham._ INDEX OF FIRST LINES A fellow near Kentucky's clime 34 A foolish little maiden bought a foolish little bonnet 168 'A frightful face'? Wal, yes, yer correct 125 A harbor in a sunny, southern city 137 Alone in the dreary, pitiless street 46 Among the legends sung or said 63 An old lady sat in her old arm-chair 200 An old man going a lone highway 54 April! April! are you here? 59 A sad-faced little fellow sits alone in deep disgrace 108 At Paris it was, at the opera there 72 A traveler on the dusty road 97 Away, away in the Northland 131 Beneath the hot midsummer sun 39 Between broad fields of wheat and corn 147 Billy's dead, and gone to glory--so is Billy's sister Nell 104 Break, break, break 52 Bring, novelist, your note-book! bring, dramatist, your pen! 123 By Nebo's lonely mountain 45 Chained in the market-place he stood 145 Cheeriest room, that morn, the kitchen 128 Cleon hath ten thousand acres 37 Closed eyes can't see the white roses 84 Come to me, O ye children! 16 "Corporal Green!" the orderly cried 86 Could we but draw back the curtains 29 Dear little flag in the window there 127 Did you tackle the trouble that came your way 132 Don't kill the birds, the pretty birds 53 Every coin of earthly treasure 12 Far back, in my musings, my thoughts have been cast 75 Farewell! a long farewell, to all my greatness! 94 First on the list is Washington, Virginia's proudest name 195 Fling it from mast and steeple 202 Give me that grand old volume, the gift of a mother's love 117 God makes sech nights, all white an' still 59 God said: I am tired of kings 62 God send us a little home 87 Good Deacon Roland--"May his tribe increase!" 178 Go thou thy way, and I go mine 162 Grandma told me all about it 48 Great were the hearts and strong the minds 37 "Hadst thou stayed, I must have fled!" 174 Han'some, stranger? Yes, she's purty an' ez peart as she kin be 96 Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings 111 Has there any old fellow got mixed with the boys? 27 He came to my desk with quivering lip 202 He who has the vision sees more than you or I 146 Hey! little evergreens 203 Home they brought her warrior dead 74 How are you hoeing your row, my boy? 202 Hush! my dear, lie still and slumber 35 I asked of Echo, t'other day 65 I cannot vouch my tale is true 156 I can't tell much about the thing, 'twas done so powerful quick 182 I come, I come! ye have called me long 26 I'd like to hunt the Injuns 't roam the boundless plain! 121 If all the skies were sunshine 36 If I had known in the morning 119 If I were hanged on the highest hill 70 If we should be shipwrecked together 206 If you can dress to make yourself attractive 153 If you can take your dreams into the classroom 165 If you have a friend worth loving 167 I have a rendezvous with Death 142 I love my prairies, they are mine 74 I'm not a chicken; I have seen 137 In a dark and dismal alley where the sunshine never came 112 In an attic bare and cheerless, Jim the newsboy dying lay 52 In a pioneer's cabin out West, so they say 130 In a valley, centuries ago 36 In Gettysburg at break of day 122 In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes 90 In the hush and the lonely silence 65 Into a ward of the whitewashed halls 175 I sat alone with my conscience 81 I saw him once before 20 It is Christmas day in the workhouse 193 It isn't the thing you do, dear 116 It may be that the words I spoke 103 It's easy to talk of the patience of Job 82 It takes a heap o' livin' in a houst t' make it home 7 It was a bright and lovely summer's morn 114 It was an old, old, old, old lady 30 It was a sergeant old and gray 158 It was a starry night in June, the air was soft and still 102 It was in the days when Claverhouse 9 It was kept out in the kitchen, and 'twas long and deep and wide 177 It was many and many a year ago 25 It was the pleasant harvest-time 188 It was the twilight hour 61 I've got a letter, parson, from my son away out West 53 I walked through the woodland meadows 9 I wandered lonely where the pine-trees made 199 I was mighty good-lookin' when I was young 44 I was sitting in my study 40 I was strolling one day down the Lawther Arcade 169 I went into a public 'ouse to get a pint of beer 170 I, who was always counted, they say 42 I wish there were some wonderful place 32 I wrote some lines once on a time 14 Jim Brady's big brother's a wonderful lad 206 King David's limbs were weary. He had fled 191 Laugh, and the world laughs with you 139 Let us be kind 143 Life! I know not what thou art 65 Like a dream, it all comes o'er me as I hear the Christmas bells 47 Like liquid gold the wheat field lies 8 Little lamb, who made thee? 86 Little lass of Plymouth,--gentle, shy, and sweet 154 Little one, come to my knee! 89 Marching down to Armageddon 157 Mine is a wild, strange story,--the strangest you ever heard 106 My grandfather's clock was too tall for the shelf 35 Nae shoon to hide her tiny taes 131 Never mind me, Uncle Jared, never mind my bleeding breast 11 Never yet was a springtime 93 No, comrades, I thank you--not any for me 87 No gilt or tinsel taints the dress 204 No, I never, till life and its shadows shall end 140 Not far advanced was morning day 95 Not who you are, but what you are 66 O for one hour of youthful joy! 58 O'Grady lived in Shanty row 44 Oh, a wonderful stream is the river of Time 51 Oh, East is East, and West is West 23 Oh! listen to the water mill through all the livelong day 143 Oh, such a commotion under the ground 59 "Oh tell me, sailor, tell me true" 207 O Liberty, thou child of Law 39 O month of fairer, rarer days 153 Once in Persia reigned a king 159 One sweetly solemn thought 48 On the top of the Crumpetty Tree 91 O Thou eternal One! whose presence bright 162 Our band is few, but true and tried 54 Our old brown homestead reared its walls 55 Out of the hills of Habersham 66 Piller fights is fun, I tell you 80 Prop yer eyes wide open, Joey 32 Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky 63 Saint Augustine! well hast thou said 33 She sat on the sliding cushion 29 She's up there--Old Glory--where lightnings are sped 21 She was a Phantom of delight 89 Silent he watched them--the soldiers and dog 122 Sleepy little, creepy little goblins in the gloaming 205 Slow the Kansas sun was setting 37 Some die too late and some too soon 84 Sometimes w'en I am playin' with some fellers 'at I knows 127 Somewhere, out on the blue sea sailing 138 South mountain towered upon our right, far off the river lay 176 Stand! the ground's your own, my braves! 99 Sweet is the voice that called 75 Talking of sects quite late one eve 180 The autumn is old 186 The bells of Mount Vernon are ringing to-day 58 The boy stood on the burning deck 164 The bravest battle that ever was fought 64 The children kept coming one by one 146 The coppenter man said a wicked word 139 The day is cold, and dark, and dreary 28 The district school-master was sitting behind his great book-laden desk 68 The feast is o'er! Now brimming wine 57 The gate was thrown open, I rode out alone 120 The gret big church wuz crowded full uv broadcloath an' of silk 149 The harp that once through Tara's halls 71 The joys of living wreathe my face 208 The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year 21 The Minstrel-Boy to the war is gone 55 The muffled drum's sad roll has beat 15 The night was dark when Sam set out 76 The old mayor climbed the belfry tower 150 There are two kinds of people on earth to-day 116 There fell an April shower, one night 26 There lay upon the ocean's shore 150 There's a dandy little fellow 82 There was a Boy; you knew him well, ye cliffs 90 There was a sound of revelry by night 17 There were ninety and nine 166 The rich man's son inherits lands 22 The rosy clouds float overhead 62 These are the things I hold divine 64 The shades of night were falling fast 15 The snow and the silence came down together 83 The sunlight shone on walls of stone 134 The sun's heat will give out in ten million years more 203 The sweetest lives are those to duty wed 20 The warrior bowed his crested head, and tamed his heart of fire 160 The weaver at this loom is sitting 171 They grew in beauty, side by side 130 They said, "The Master is coming" 30 This is the land where hate should die 18 Tho' yer lamp o' life is burnin' with a clear and steady light 199 Three little words you often see 201 'Tis a cold, bleak night! with angry roar 77 'Tis a lesson you should heed 135 'Tis gone at last, and I am glad; it stayed a fearful while 173 'Tis only a half truth the poet has sung 28 "To-whit! to-whit! to-whee!" 41 Turn back the leaves of history. On yon Pacific shore 183 'Twas a stylish congregation, that of Theophrastus Brown 18 'Twas on Lake Erie's broad expanse 78 'Twas the eve before Christmas; "Good-night" had been said 196 Two angels, one of Life and one of Death 187 Two little stockings hung side by side 141 Want any papers, Mister? 94 We all look on with anxious eyes 40 We are two travellers, Roger and I 49 Well, wife, I found the _model_ church! I worshipped there to-day 148 W'en you see a man in woe 123 We squander health in search of wealth 103 We were crowded in the cabin 56 We were not many,--we who stood 165 "What fairings will ye that I bring?" 92 What flower is this that greets the morn 85 What makes the dog's nose always cold? 144 Whence come those shrieks so wild and shrill 12 Whene'er a noble deed is wrought 56 Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track 8 When I compare 34 When Mary Ann Dollinger got the skule daown thar on Injun Bay 67 When papa was a little boy you really couldn't find 100 When the humid showers gather over all the starry spheres 97 When the lessons and tasks are all ended 133 When the Norn Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour 118 Whichever way the wind doth blow 67 "Which shall it be? which shall it be?" 101 Who comes dancing over the snow 153 Who dat knockin' at de do'? 71 Why dost thou wildly rush and roar 100 Why, yes, dear, we can put it by. It does seem out of place 186 With sable-draped banners and slow measured tread 140 Work! Thank God for the might of it 154 Work thou for pleasure; paint or sing or carve 169 Ye banks, and braes, and streams around 88 Ye say that all have passed away--that noble race and brave 135 Yes, it's a quiet station, but it suits me well enough 109 You bad leetle boy, not moche you care 80 You may talk o' gin an' beer 98 You're going to leave the homestead, John 159 Your letter, lady, came too late 136 You sail and you seek for the Fortunate Isles 168 You say I have asked for the costliest thing 155 Transcriber's note: The poem "Try Try Again" is not credited with an author in the table of contents. The author of this poem is _William E. Hickerson_. 
21890	----	Transcriber's Note: A few minor irregularities of punctuation have been corrected in this text. The Path to Home By Edgar A. Guest Author of "Just Folks"--"Over Here" "A Heap o' Livin'" The Reilly & Lee Co. Chicago Copyright, 1919 by The Reilly & Lee Co. _All Rights Reserved._ Printed in The United States of America. To F. K. R. A friend who had faith INDEX Alone 145 Along the Paths o' Glory 61 Apple Tree in France, An 60 Approach of Christmas, The 56 At Dawn 165 At the Peace Table 40 Aunty 88 Back Home 82 Becoming a Dad 124 Being Dad on Christmas Eve 102 Best Way to Read a Book 122 Boy at Christmas, A 120 Bread and Jam 90 Bride, The 58 Bud Discusses Cleanliness 72 Burden Bearer, The 112 Change-Worker, The 174 Children, The 108 Choice, A 79 Cliffs of Scotland 63 Comedian, The 109 Common Joys, The 171 Compensation 36 Convalescin' Woman, A 176 Cookie-Lady, The 67 Cut-Down Trousers, The 147 Daddies 52 Dead Return, The 84 Different 117 Dinner-Time 149 Doctor, The 26 Dr. Johnson's Picture Cow 34 Doubtful To-morrow, The 178 Evening-Prayer, The 152 Faces 22 Faith 111 Father's Chore 186 Father of the Man, The 94 Fatherhood 77 Fine 13 Finest Fellowship, The 116 First Name Friends 44 Fun of Forgiving, The 162 Furnace Door, The 46 Gift of Play, The 98 Good Name, A 143 His Dog 157 His Example 172 It Couldn't Be Done 37 "It's a Boy" 114 Kindness 31 Lesson from Golf, A 184 Lines for a Flag Raising Ceremony 28 Little Fishermen 66 Little Girls 103 Little Woman, The 92 Living Flowers 170 Lonely Garden, The 134 Lost Opportunities 130 Lost Purse, The 24 Lullaby 158 March o' Man, The 188 Mother's Job 55 Mother's Party Dress 64 Mother Watch, The 20 Mrs. Malone and the Censor 41 My Job 142 My Soul and I 86 Names and Faces 166 Old-Fashioned Parents, The 160 Old-Fashioned Welcome, An 15 Old Wooden Tub, The 128 Our Country 76 Our House 16 Out Fishin' 48 Path to Home, The 11 Patriotism 131 Pay Envelope, The 150 Picture Books 53 Plea, A 17 Pleasing Dad 168 Pleasure's Signs 69 Right Family, The 182 Selling the Old Home 50 Service 38 Shut-Ins 146 Silver Stripes, The 136 Snooping 'Round 70 Song of Loved Ones, The 123 Spoiling Them 14 St. Valentine's Day 33 Story-Time 18 Test, The 126 There Will Always Be Something to Do 119 Thoughts of a Father 153 Tied Down 74 Tinkerin' at Home 138 To the Boy 156 Tommy Atkins' Way 180 Tonsils 163 Toys and Life 100 Toy-Strewn Home, The 30 Tramp, The 133 Under the Roof Where the Laughter Rings 32 United States 105 Unknown Friends, The 43 What Father Knows 80 When a Little Baby Dies 155 When an Old Man Gets to Thinking 140 When Mother Made an Angel Cake 96 When My Ship Comes In 106 The Path to Home There's the mother at the doorway, and the children at the gate, And the little parlor windows with the curtains white and straight. There are shaggy asters blooming in the bed that lines the fence, And the simplest of the blossoms seems of mighty consequence. Oh, there isn't any mansion underneath God's starry dome That can rest a weary pilgrim like the little place called home. Men have sought for gold and silver; men have dreamed at night of fame; In the heat of youth they've struggled for achievement's honored name; But the selfish crowns are tinsel, and their shining jewels paste, And the wine of pomp and glory soon grows bitter to the taste. For there's never any laughter, howsoever far you roam, Like the laughter of the loved ones in the happiness of home. There is nothing so important as the mother's lullabies, Filled with peace and sweet contentment, when the moon begins to rise-- Nothing real except the beauty and the calm upon her face And the shouting of the children as they scamper round the place. For the greatest of man's duties is to keep his loved ones glad And to have his children glory in the father they have had. So where'er a man may wander, and whatever be his care, You'll find his soul still stretching to the home he left somewhere. You'll find his dreams all tangled up with hollyhocks in bloom, And the feet of little children that go racing through a room, With the happy mother smiling as she watches them at play-- These are all in life that matter, when you've stripped the sham away. Fine Isn't it fine when the day is done, And the petty battles are lost or won, When the gold is made and the ink is dried, To quit the struggle and turn aside To spend an hour with your boy in play, And let him race all of your cares away? Isn't it fine when the day's gone well, When you have glorious tales to tell, And your heart is light and your head is high. For nothing has happened to make you sigh, To hurry homewards to share the joy That your work has won with a little boy? Isn't it fine, whether good or bad Has come to the hopes and the plans you had, And the day is over, to find him there, Thinking you splendid and just and fair, Ready to chase all your griefs away, And soothe your soul with an hour of play? Oh, whether the day's been long or brief, Whether it's brought to me joy or grief, Whether I've failed, or whether I've won, It shall matter not when the work is done; I shall count it fine if I end each day With a little boy in an hour of play. Spoiling Them "You're spoiling them!" the mother cries When I give way to weepy eyes And let them do the things they wish, Like cleaning up the jelly dish, Or finishing the chocolate cake, Or maybe let the rascal take My piece of huckleberry pie, Because he wants it more than I. "You're spoiling them!" the mother tells, When I am heedless to their yells, And let them race and romp about And do not put their joy to rout. I know I should be firm, and yet I tried it once to my regret; I will remember till I'm old The day I started in to scold. I stamped my foot and shouted: "Stop!" And Bud just let his drum sticks drop, And looked at me, and turned away; That night there was no further play. The girls were solemn-like and still, Just as girls are when they are ill, And when unto his cot I crept, I found him sobbing as he slept. That was my first attempt and last To play the scold. I'm glad it passed So quickly and has left no trace Of memory on each little face; But now when mother whispers low: "You're spoiling them," I answer, "No! But it is plain, as plain can be, Those little tykes are spoiling me." An Old-Fashioned Welcome There's nothing cheers a fellow up just like a hearty greeting, A handclasp and an honest smile that flash the joy of meeting; And when at friendly doors you ring, somehow it seems to free you From all life's doubts to hear them say: "Come in! We're glad to see you!" At first the portal slips ajar in answer to your ringing, And then your eyes meet friendly eyes, and wide the door goes flinging; And something seems to stir the soul, however troubled be you, If but the cheery host exclaims: "Come in! We're glad to see you!" Our House We play at our house and have all sorts of fun, An' there's always a game when the supper is done; An' at our house there's marks on the walls an' the stairs, An' some terrible scratches on some of the chairs; An' ma says that our house is really a fright, But pa and I say that our house is all right. At our house we laugh an' we sing an' we shout, An' whirl all the chairs an' the tables about, An' I rassle my pa an' I get him down too, An' he's all out of breath when the fightin' is through; An' ma says that our house is surely a sight, But pa an' I say that our house is all right. I've been to houses with pa where I had To sit in a chair like a good little lad, An' there wasn't a mark on the walls an' the chairs, An' the stuff that we have couldn't come up to theirs; An' pa said to ma that for all of their joy He wouldn't change places an' give up his boy. They never have races nor rassles nor fights, Coz they have no children to play with at nights; An' their walls are all clean an' their curtains hang straight, An' everything's shiny an' right up to date; But pa says with all of its racket an' fuss, He'd rather by far live at our house with us. A Plea God grant me these: the strength to do Some needed service here; The wisdom to be brave and true; The gift of vision clear, That in each task that comes to me Some purpose I may plainly see. God teach me to believe that I Am stationed at a post, Although the humblest 'neath the sky, Where I am needed most. And that, at last, if I do well My humble services will tell. God grant me faith to stand on guard, Uncheered, unspoke, alone, And see behind such duty hard My service to the throne. Whate'er my task, be this my creed: I am on earth to fill a need. Story-Time "Tell us a story," comes the cry From little lips when nights are cold, And in the grate the flames leap high. "Tell us a tale of pirates bold, Or fairies hiding in the glen, Or of a ship that's wrecked at sea." I fill my pipe, and there and then Gather the children round my knee. I give them all a role to play-- No longer are they youngsters small, And I, their daddy, turning gray; We are adventurers, one and all. We journey forth as Robin Hood In search of treasure, or to do Some deed of daring or of good; Our hearts are ever brave and true. We take a solemn oath to be Defenders of the starry flag; We brave the winter's stormy sea, Or climb the rugged mountain crag, To battle to the death with those Who would defame our native land; We pitch our camp among the snows Or on the tropics' burning sand. We rescue maidens, young and fair, Held captive long in prison towers; We slay the villain in his lair, For we're possessed of magic powers. And though we desperately fight, When by our foes are we beset, We always triumph for the right; We have not lost a battle yet. It matters not how far we stray, Nor where our battle lines may be, We never get so far away That we must spend a night at sea. It matters not how high we climb, How many foes our pathway block, We always conquer just in time To go to bed at 9 o'clock. The Mother Watch She never closed her eyes in sleep till we were all in bed; On party nights till we came home she often sat and read. We little thought about it then, when we were young and gay, How much the mother worried when we children were away. We only knew she never slept when we were out at night, And that she waited just to know that we'd come home all right. Why, sometimes when we'd stayed away till one or two or three, It seemed to us that mother heard the turning of the key; For always when we stepped inside she'd call and we'd reply, But we were all too young back then to understand just why. Until the last one had returned she always kept a light, For mother couldn't sleep until she'd kissed us all good night. She had to know that we were safe before she went to rest; She seemed to fear the world might harm the ones she loved the best. And once she said: "When you are grown to women and to men, Perhaps I'll sleep the whole night through; I may be different then." And so it seemed that night and day we knew a mother's care-- That always when we got back home we'd find her waiting there. Then came the night that we were called to gather round her bed: "The children all are with you now," the kindly doctor said. And in her eyes there gleamed again the old-time tender light That told she had been waiting just to know we were all right. She smiled the old-familiar smile, and prayed to God to keep Us safe from harm throughout the years, and then she went to sleep. Faces I look into the faces of the people passing by, The glad ones and the sad ones, and the lined with misery, And I wonder why the sorrow or the twinkle in the eye; But the pale and weary faces are the ones that trouble me. I saw a face this morning, and time was when it was fair; Youth had brushed it bright with color in the distant long ago, And the goddess of the lovely once had kept a temple there, But the cheeks were pale with grieving and the eyes were dull with woe. Who has done this thing I wondered; what has wrought the ruin here? Why these sunken cheeks and pallid where the roses once were pink? Why has beauty fled her palace; did some vandal hand appear? Did her lover prove unfaithful or her husband take to drink? Once the golden voice of promise whispered sweetly in her ears; She was born to be a garden where the smiles of love might lurk; Now the eyes that shone like jewels are but gateways for her tears, And she takes her place among us, toilers early bound for work. Is it fate that writes so sadly, or the cruelty of man? What foul deed has marred the parchment of a life so fair as this? Who has wrecked this lovely temple and destroyed the Maker's plan, Raining blows on cheeks of beauty God had fashioned just to kiss? Oh, the pale and weary faces of the people that I see Are the ones that seem to haunt me, and I pray to God above That such cruel desolation shall not ever come to be Stamped forever in the future on the faces that I love. The Lost Purse I remember the excitement and the terrible alarm That worried everybody when William broke his arm; An' how frantic Pa and Ma got only jes' the other day When they couldn't find the baby coz he'd up an' walked away; But I'm sure there's no excitement that our house has ever shook Like the times Ma can't remember where she's put her pocketbook. When the laundry man is standin' at the door an' wants his pay Ma hurries in to get it, an' the fun starts right away. She hustles to the sideboard, coz she knows exactly where She can put her hand right on it, but alas! it isn't there. She tries the parlor table an' she goes upstairs to look, An' once more she can't remember where she put her pocketbook. She tells us that she had it just a half an hour ago, An' now she cannot find it though she's hunted high and low; She's searched the kitchen cupboard an' the bureau drawers upstairs, An' it's not behind the sofa nor beneath the parlor chairs. She makes us kids get busy searching every little nook, An' this time says she's certain that she's lost her pocketbook. She calls Pa at the office an' he laughs I guess, for then She always mumbles something 'bout the heartlessness of men. She calls to mind a peddler who came to the kitchen door, An' she's certain from his whiskers an' the shabby clothes he wore An' his dirty shirt an' collar that he must have been a crook, An' she's positive that feller came and got her pocketbook. But at last she allus finds it in some queer an' funny spot, Where she'd put it in a hurry, an' had somehow clean forgot; An' she heaves a sigh of gladness, an' she says, "Well, I declare, I would take an oath this minute that I never put it there." An' we're peaceable an' quiet till next time Ma goes to look An' finds she can't remember where she put her pocketbook. The Doctor I don't see why Pa likes him so, And seems so glad to have him come; He jabs my ribs and wants to know If here and there it's hurting some. He holds my wrist, coz there are things In there, which always jump and jerk, Then, with a telephone he brings, He listens to my breather work. He taps my back and pinches me, Then hangs a mirror on his head And looks into my throat to see What makes it hurt and if it's red. Then on his knee he starts to write And says to mother, with a smile: "This ought to fix him up all right, We'll cure him in a little while." I don't see why Pa likes him so. Whenever I don't want to play He says: "The boy is sick, I know! Let's get the doctor right away." And when he comes, he shakes his hand, And hustles him upstairs to me, And seems contented just to stand Inside the room where he can see. Then Pa says every time he goes: "That's money I am glad to pay; It's worth it, when a fellow knows His pal will soon be up to play." But maybe if my Pa were me, And had to take his pills and all, He wouldn't be so glad to see The doctor come to make a call. Lines For a Flag Raising Ceremony Full many a flag the breeze has kissed; Through ages long the morning sun Has risen o'er the early mist The flags of men to look upon. And some were red against the sky, And some with colors true were gay, And some in shame were born to die, For Flags of hate must pass away. Such symbols fall as men depart, Brief is the reign of arrant might; The vicious and the vile at heart Give way in time before the right. A flag is nothing in itself; It but reflects the lives of men; And they who lived and toiled for pelf Went out as vipers in a den. God cleans the sky from time to time Of every tyrant flag that flies, And every brazen badge of crime Falls to the ground and swiftly dies. Proud kings are mouldering in the dust; Proud flags of ages past are gone; Only the symbols of the just Have lived and shall keep living on. So long as we shall serve the truth, So long as honor stamps us fair, Each age shall pass unto its youth Old Glory proudly flying there! But if we fail our splendid past, If we prove faithless, weak and base, That age shall be our banner's last; A fairer flag shall take its place. This flag we fling unto the skies Is but an emblem of our hearts, And when our love of freedom dies, Our banner with our race departs. Full many a flag the breezes kiss, Full many a flag the sun has known, But none so bright and fair as this; None quite so splendid as our own! This tells the world that we are men Who cling to manhood's ways and truth; It is our soul's great voice and pen, The strength of age, the guide of youth, And it shall ever hold the sky So long as we shall keep our trust; But if our love of right shall die Our Flag shall sink into the dust. The Toy-Strewn Home Give me the house where the toys are strewn, Where the dolls are asleep in the chairs, Where the building blocks and the toy balloon And the soldiers guard the stairs. Let me step in a house where the tiny cart With the horses rules the floor, And rest comes into my weary heart, For I am at home once more. Give me the house with the toys about, With the battered old train of cars, The box of paints and the books left out, And the ship with her broken spars. Let me step in a house at the close of day That is littered with children's toys, And dwell once more in the haunts of play, With the echoes of by-gone noise. Give me the house where the toys are seen, The house where the children romp, And I'll happier be than man has been 'Neath the gilded dome of pomp. Let me see the litter of bright-eyed play Strewn over the parlor floor, And the joys I knew in a far-off day Will gladden my heart once more. Whoever has lived in a toy-strewn home, Though feeble he be and gray, Will yearn, no matter how far he roam, For the glorious disarray Of the little home with its littered floor That was his in the by-gone days; And his heart will throb as it throbbed before, When he rests where a baby plays. Kindness One never knows How far a word of kindness goes; One never sees How far a smile of friendship flees. Down, through the years, The deed forgotten reappears. One kindly word The souls of many here has stirred. Man goes his way And tells with every passing day, Until life's end: "Once unto me he played the friend." We cannot say What lips are praising us to-day. We cannot tell Whose prayers ask God to guard us well. But kindness lives Beyond the memory of him who gives. Under the Roof Where the Laughter Rings Under the roof where the laughter rings, That's where I long to be; There are all of the glorious things, Meaning so much to me. There is where striving and toiling ends; There is where always the rainbow bends. Under the roof where the children shout, There is the perfect rest; There is the clamor of greed shut out, Ended the ceaseless quest. Battles I fight through the heat of to-day Are only to add to their hours of play. Under the roof where the eyes are bright, There I would build my fame; There my record of life I'd write; There I would sign my name. There in laughter and true content Let me fashion my monument. Under the roof where the hearts are true, There is my earthly goal; There I am pledged till my work is through, Body and heart and soul. Think you that God will my choice condemn If I have never played false to them? St. Valentine's Day Let loose the sails of love and let them fill With breezes sweet with tenderness to-day; Scorn not the praises youthful lovers say; Romance is old, but it is lovely still. Not he who shows his love deserves the jeer, But he who speaks not what she longs to hear. There is no shame in love's devoted speech; Man need not blush his tenderness to show; 'Tis shame to love and never let her know, To keep his heart forever out of reach. Not he the fool who lets his love go on, But he who spurns it when his love is won. Men proudly vaunt their love of gold and fame, High station and accomplishments of skill, Yet of life's greatest conquest they are still, And deem it weakness, or an act of shame, To seem to place high value on the love Which first of all they should be proudest of. Let loose the sails of love and let them take The tender breezes till the day be spent; Only the fool chokes out life's sentiment. She is a prize too lovely to forsake. Be not ashamed to send your valentine; She has your love, but needs its outward sign. Dr. Johnson's Picture Cow Got a sliver in my hand An' it hurt t' beat the band, An' got white around it, too; Then the first thing that I knew It was all swelled up, an' Pa Said: "There's no use fussin', Ma, Jes' put on his coat an' hat; Doctor Johnson must see that." I was scared an' yelled, because One time when the doctor was At our house he made me smell Something funny, an' I fell Fast asleep, an' when I woke Seemed like I was goin' t' choke; An' the folks who stood about Said I'd had my tonsils out. An' my throat felt awful sore An' I couldn't eat no more, An' it hurt me when I'd talk, An' they wouldn't let me walk. So when Pa said I must go To the doctor's, I said: "No, I don't want to go to-night, 'Cause my hand will be all right." Pa said: "Take him, Ma," an' so I jes' knew I had t' go. An' the doctor looked an' said: "It is very sore an' red-- Much too sore to touch at all. See that picture on the wall, That one over yonder, Bud, With the old cow in the mud? "Once I owned a cow like that, Jes' as brown an' big an' fat, An' one day I pulled her tail An' she kicked an' knocked the pail Full o' milk clean over me." Then I looked up there t' see His old cow above the couch, An' right then I hollered "ouch." "Bud," says he, "what's wrong with you; Did the old cow kick you, too?" An' he laughed, an' Ma said: "Son, Never mind, now, it's all done." Pretty soon we came away An' my hand's all well to-day. But that's first time that I knew Picture cows could kick at you. Compensation I'd like to think when life is done That I had filled a needed post, That here and there I'd paid my fare With more than idle talk and boast; That I had taken gifts divine, The breath of life and manhood fine, And tried to use them now and then In service for my fellow men. I'd hate to think when life is through That I had lived my round of years A useless kind, that leaves behind No record in this vale of tears; That I had wasted all my days By treading only selfish ways, And that this world would be the same If it had never known my name. I'd like to think that here and there, When I am gone, there shall remain A happier spot that might have not Existed had I toiled for gain; That some one's cheery voice and smile Shall prove that I had been worth while; That I had paid with something fine My debt to God for life divine. It Couldn't Be Done Somebody said that it couldn't be done, But he with a chuckle replied That "maybe it couldn't," but he would be one Who wouldn't say so till he'd tried. So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin On his face. If he worried he hid it. He started to sing as he tackled the thing That couldn't be done, and he did it. Somebody scoffed: "Oh, you'll never do that; At least no one ever has done it"; But he took off his coat and he took off his hat, And the first thing we knew he'd begun it. With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin, Without any doubting or quiddit, He started to sing as he tackled the thing That couldn't be done, and he did it. There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done, There are thousands to prophesy failure; There are thousands to point out to you one by one, The dangers that wait to assail you. But just buckle in with a bit of a grin, Just take off your coat and go to it; Just start in to sing as you tackle the thing That "cannot be done," and you'll do it. Service You never hear the robins brag about the sweetness of their song, Nor do they stop their music gay whene'er a poor man comes along. God taught them how to sing an' when they'd learned the art He sent them here To use their talents day by day the dreary lives o' men to cheer. An' rich or poor an' sad or gay, the ugly an' the fair to see, Can stop most any time in June an' hear the robins' melody. I stand an' watch them in the sun, usin' their gifts from day to day, Swellin' their little throats with song, regardless of man's praise or pay; Jes' bein' robins, nothing else, nor claiming greatness for their deeds, But jes' content to gratify one of the big world's many needs, Singin' a lesson to us all to be ourselves and scatter cheer By usin' every day the gifts God gave us when He sent us here. Why should we keep our talents hid, or think we favor men because We use the gifts that God has given? The robins never ask applause, Nor count themselves remarkable, nor strut in a superior way, Because their music sweeter is than that God gave unto the jay. Only a man conceited grows as he makes use of talents fine, Forgetting that he merely does the working of the Will Divine. Lord, as the robins, let me serve! Teach me to do the best I can To make this world a better place, an' happier for my fellow man. If gift o' mine can cheer his soul an' hearten him along his way Let me not keep that talent hid; I would make use of it to-day. An' since the robins ask no praise, or pay for all their songs o' cheer, Let me in humbleness rejoice to do my bit o' service here. At the Peace Table Who shall sit at the table, then, when the terms of peace are made-- The wisest men of the troubled lands in their silver and gold brocade? Yes, they shall gather in solemn state to speak for each living race, But who shall speak for the unseen dead that shall come to the council place? Though you see them not and you hear them not, they shall sit at the table, too; They shall throng the room where the peace is made and know what it is you do; The innocent dead from the sea shall rise to stand at the wise man's side, And over his shoulder a boy shall look--a boy that was crucified. You may guard the doors of that council hall with barriers strong and stout, But the dead unbidden shall enter there, and never you'll shut them out. And the man that died in the open boat, and the babes that suffered worse, Shall sit at the table when peace is made by the side of a martyred nurse. You may see them not, but they'll all be there; when they speak you may fail to hear; You may think that you're making your pacts alone, but their spirits will hover near; And whatever the terms of the peace you make with the tyrant whose hands are red, You must please not only the living here, but must satisfy your dead. Mrs. Malone and the Censor When Mrs. Malone got a letter from Pat She started to read it aloud in her flat. "Dear Mary," it started, "I can't tell you much, I'm somewhere in France, and I'm fightin' the Dutch; I'm chokin' wid news thot I'd like to relate, But it's little a soldier's permitted t' state. Do ye mind Red McPhee--well, he fell in a ditch An' busted an arrm, but I can't tell ye which. "An' Paddy O'Hara was caught in a flame An' rescued by--Faith, I can't tell ye his name. Last night I woke up wid a terrible pain; I thought for awhile it would drive me insane. Oh, the suff'rin, I had was most dreadful t' bear! I'm sorry, my dear, but I can't tell ye where. The doctor he gave me a pill, but I find It's conthrary to rules t' disclose here the kind. "I've been t' the dintist an' had a tooth out. I'm sorry t' leave you so shrouded in doubt But the best I can say is that one tooth is gone, The censor won't let me inform ye which one. I met a young fellow who knows ye right well, An' ye know him, too, but his name I can't tell. He's Irish, red-headed, an' there with th' blarney, His folks once knew your folks back home in Killarney." "By gorry," said Mrs. Malone in her flat, "It's hard t' make sinse out av writin' like that, But I'll give him as good as he sends, that I will." So she went right to work with her ink well an' quill, An' she wrote, "I suppose ye're dead eager fer news-- You know when ye left we were buyin' the shoes; Well, the baby has come, an' we're both doin' well; It's a ----. Oh, but that's somethin' they won't let me tell." The Unknown Friends We cannot count our friends, nor say How many praise us day by day. Each one of us has friends that he Has yet to meet and really know, Who guard him, wheresoe'er they be, From harm and slander's cruel blow. They help to light our path with cheer, Although they pass as strangers here. These friends, unseen, unheard, unknown, Our lasting gratitude should own. They serve us in a thousand ways Where we perhaps should friendless be; They tell our worth and speak our praise And for their service ask no fee; They choose to be our friends, although We have not learned to call them so. We cannot guess how large the debt We owe to friends we have not met. We only know, from day to day, That we discover here and there How one has tried to smooth our way, And ease our heavy load of care, Then passed along and left behind His friendly gift for us to find. First Name Friends Though some may yearn for titles great, and seek the frills of fame, I do not care to have an extra handle to my name. I am not hungry for the pomp of life's high dignities, I do not sigh to sit among the honored LL. D.'s. I shall be satisfied if I can be unto the end, To those I know and live with here, a simple, first-name friend. There's nothing like the comradeship which warms the lives of those Who make the glorious circle of the Jacks and Bills and Joes. With all his majesty and power, Old Caesar never knew The joy of first-name fellowship, as all the Eddies do. Let them who will be "mistered" here and raised above the rest; I hold a first-name greeting is by far the very best. Acquaintance calls for dignity. You never really know The man on whom the terms of pomp you feel you must bestow. Professor William Joseph Wise may be your friend, but still You are not certain of the fact till you can call him Bill. But hearts grow warm and lips grow kind, and all the shamming ends, When you are in the company of good old first-name friends. The happiest men on earth are not the men of highest rank; That joy belongs to George, and Jim, to Henry and to Frank; With them the prejudice of race and creed and wealth depart, And men are one in fellowship and always light of heart. So I would live and laugh and love until my sun descends, And share the joyous comradeship of honest first-name friends. The Furnace Door My father is a peaceful man; He tries in every way he can To live a life of gentleness And patience all the while. He says that needless fretting's vain, That it's absurd to be profane, That nearly every wrong can be Adjusted with a smile. Yet try no matter how he will, There's one thing that annoys him still, One thing that robs him of his calm And leaves him very sore; He cannot keep his self-control When with a shovel full of coal He misses where it's headed for, And hits the furnace door. He measures with a careful eye The space for which he's soon to try, Then grabs his trusty shovel up And loads it in the bin, Then turns and with a healthy lunge, That's two parts swing and two parts plunge, He lets go at the furnace fire, Convinced it will go in! And then we hear a sudden smack, The cellar air turns blue and black; Above the rattle of the coal We hear his awful roar. From dreadful language upward hissed We know that father's aim has missed, And that his shovel full of coal Went up against the door. The minister was here one day For supper, and Pa went away To fix the furnace fire, and soon We heard that awful roar. And through the furnace pipes there came Hot words that made Ma blush for shame. "It strikes me," said the minister, "He hit the furnace door." Ma turned away and hung her head; "I'm so ashamed," was all she said. And then the minister replied: "Don't worry. I admit That when I hit the furnace door, And spill the coal upon the floor, I quite forget the cloth I wear And--er--swear a little bit." Out Fishin' A feller isn't thinkin' mean, Out fishin'; His thoughts are mostly good an' clean, Out fishin'. He doesn't knock his fellow men, Or harbor any grudges then; A feller's at his finest when Out fishin'. The rich are comrades to the poor, Out fishin'; All brothers of a common lure, Out fishin'. The urchin with the pin an' string Can chum with millionaire an' king; Vain pride is a forgotten thing, Out fishin'. A feller gits a chance to dream, Out fishin'; He learns the beauties of a stream, Out fishin'; An' he can wash his soul in air That isn't foul with selfish care, An' relish plain and simple fare, Out fishin'. A feller has no time fer hate, Out fishin'; He isn't eager to be great, Out fishin'. He isn't thinkin' thoughts of pelf, Or goods stacked high upon a shelf, But he is always just himself, Out fishin'. A feller's glad to be a friend, Out fishin'; A helpin' hand he'll always lend, Out fishin'. The brotherhood of rod an' line An' sky and stream is always fine; Men come real close to God's design, Out fishin'. A feller isn't plotting schemes, Out fishin'; He's only busy with his dreams, Out fishin'. His livery is a coat of tan, His creed--to do the best he can; A feller's always mostly man, Out fishin'. Selling the Old Home The little house has grown too small, or rather we have grown Too big to dwell within the walls where all our joys were known. And so, obedient to the wish of her we love so well, I have agreed for sordid gold the little home to sell. Now strangers come to see the place, and secretly I sigh, And deep within my breast I hope that they'll refuse to buy. "This bedroom's small," one woman said; up went her nose in scorn! To me that is the splendid room where little Bud was born. "The walls are sadly finger-marked," another stranger said. A lump came rising in my throat; I felt my cheeks grow red. "Yes, yes," I answered, "so they are. The fingermarks are free But I'd not leave them here if I could take them all with me." "The stairway shows the signs of wear." I answered her in heat, "That's but the glorious sign to me of happy little feet. Most anyone can have a flight of shiny stairs and new But those are steps where joy has raced, and love and laughter, too." "This paper's ruined! Here are scrawled some pencil marks, I note." I'd treasured them for years. They were the first he ever wrote. Oh I suppose we'll sell the place; it's right that we should go; The children must have larger rooms in which to live and grow. But all my joys were cradled here; 'tis here I've lived my best, 'Tis here, whatever else shall come, we've been our happiest; And though into a stranger's hands this home I shall resign, And take his gold in pay for it, I still shall call it mine. Daddies I would rather be the daddy Of a romping, roguish crew, Of a bright-eyed chubby laddie And a little girl or two, Than the monarch of a nation, In his high and lofty seat, Taking empty adoration From the subjects at his feet. I would rather own their kisses, As at night to me they run, Than to be the king who misses All the simpler forms of fun. When his dreary day is ending He is dismally alone, But when my sun is descending There are joys for me to own. He may ride to horns and drumming; I must walk a quiet street, But when once they see me coming, Then on joyous, flying feet They come racing to me madly And I catch them with a swing, And I say it proudly, gladly, That I'm happier than a king. You may talk of lofty places; You may boast of pomp and power; Men may turn their eager faces To the glory of an hour, But give me the humble station With its joys that long survive, For the daddies of the nation Are the happiest men alive. Picture Books I hold the finest picture books Are woods an' fields an' runnin' brooks; An' when the month o' May has done Her paintin', an' the mornin' sun Is lightin' just exactly right Each gorgeous scene for mortal sight, I steal a day from toil an' go To see the springtime's picture show. It's everywhere I choose to tread-- Perhaps I'll find a violet bed Half hidden by the larger scenes, Or group of ferns, or living greens, So graceful an' so fine, I'll swear That angels must have placed them there To beautify the lonely spot That mortal man would have forgot. What hand can paint a picture book So marvelous as a runnin' brook? It matters not what time o' day You visit it, the sunbeams play Upon it just exactly right, The mysteries of God to light. No human brush could ever trace A droopin' willow with such grace! Page after page, new beauties rise To thrill with gladness an' surprise The soul of him who drops his care And seeks the woods to wander there. Birds, with the angel gift o' song, Make music for him all day long; An' nothin' that is base or mean Disturbs the grandeur of the scene. There is no hint of hate or strife; The woods display the joy of life, An' answer with a silence fine The scoffer's jeer at power divine. When doubt is high an' faith is low, Back to the woods an' fields I go, An' say to violet and tree: "No mortal hand has fashioned thee." Mother's Job I'm just the man to make things right, To mend a sleigh or make a kite, Or wrestle on the floor and play Those rough and tumble games, but say! Just let him get an ache or pain, And start to whimper and complain, And from my side he'll quickly flee To clamber on his mother's knee. I'm good enough to be his horse And race with him along the course. I'm just the friend he wants each time There is a tree he'd like to climb, And I'm the pal he's eager for When we approach a candy store; But for his mother straight he makes Whene'er his little stomach aches. He likes, when he is feeling well, The kind of stories that I tell, And I'm his comrade and his chum And I must march behind his drum. To me through thick and thin he'll stick, Unless he happens to be sick. In which event, with me he's through-- Only his mother then will do. The Approach of Christmas There's a little chap at our house that is being mighty good-- Keeps the front lawn looking tidy in the way we've said he should; Doesn't leave his little wagon, when he's finished with his play, On the sidewalk as he used to; now he puts it right away. When we call him in to supper, we don't have to stand and shout; It is getting on to Christmas and it's plain he's found it out. He eats the food we give him without murmur or complaint; He sits up at the table like a cherub or a saint; He doesn't pinch his sister just to hear how loud she'll squeal; Doesn't ask us to excuse him in the middle of the meal, And at eight o'clock he's willing to be tucked away in bed. It is getting close to Christmas; nothing further need be said. I chuckle every evening as I see that little elf, With the crooked part proclaiming that he brushed his hair himself. And I chuckle as I notice that his hands and face are clean, For in him a perfect copy of another boy is seen-- A little boy at Christmas, who was also being good, Never guessing that his father and his mother understood. There's a little boy at our house that is being mighty good; Doing everything that's proper, doing everything he should. But besides him there's a grown-up who has learned life's bitter truth, Who is gladly living over all the joys of vanished youth. And although he little knows it (for it's what I never knew), There's a mighty happy father sitting at the table, too. The Bride Little lady at the altar, Vowing by God's book and psalter To be faithful, fond and true Unto him who stands by you, Think not that romance is ended, That youth's curtain has descended, And love's pretty play is done; For it's only just begun. Marriage, blushing little lady, Is love's sunny path and shady, Over which two hearts should wander, Of each other growing fonder. As you stroll to each to-morrow, You will come to joy and sorrow, And as faithful man and wife Read the troubled book of life. Bitter cares will some day find you; Closer, closer they will bind you; If together you will bear them, Cares grow sweet when lovers share them. Love unites two happy mortals, Brings them here to wedlock's portals And then blithely bids them go, Arm in arm, through weal and woe. Little lady, just remember Every year has its December, Every rising sun its setting, Every life its time of fretting; And the honeymoon's sweet beauty Finds too soon the clouds of duty; But keep faith, when trouble-tried, And in joy you shall abide. Little lady at the altar, Never let your courage falter, Never stoop to unbelieving, Even when your heart is grieving. To what comes of wintry weather Or disaster, stand together; Through life's fearful hours of night Love shall bring you to the light. An Apple Tree in France An apple tree beside the way, Drinking the sunshine day by day According to the Master's plan, Had been a faithful friend to man. It had been kind to all who came, Nor asked the traveler's race or name, But with the peasant boy or king Had shared its blossoms in the spring, And from the summer's dreary heat To all had offered sweet retreat. When autumn brought the harvest time, Its branches all who wished might climb, And take from many a tender shoot Its rosy-cheeked, delicious fruit. Good men, by careless speech or deed, Have caused a neighbor's heart to bleed; Wrong has been done by high intent; Hate has been born where love was meant, Yet apple trees of field or farm Have never done one mortal harm. Then came the Germans into France And found this apple tree by chance. They shared its blossoms in the spring; They heard the songs the thrushes sing; They rested in the cooling shade Its old and friendly branches made, And in the fall its fruit they ate. And then they turn on it in hate, Like beasts, on blood and passion drunk, They hewed great gashes in its trunk. Beneath its roots, with hell's delight, They placed destruction's dynamite And blew to death, with impish glee, An old and friendly apple tree. Men may rebuild their homes in time; Swiftly cathedral towers may climb, And hearts forget their weight of woe, As over them life's currents flow, But this their lasting shame shall be: They put to death an apple tree! Along the Paths o' Glory Along the paths o' glory there are faces new to-day, There are youthful hearts and sturdy that have found the westward way. From the rugged roads o' duty they have turned without a sigh, To mingle with their brothers who were not afraid to die. And they're looking back and smiling at the loved ones left behind, With the Old Flag flying o'er them, and they're calling "Never mind. "Never mind, oh, gentle mothers, that we shall not come again; Never mind the years of absence, never mind the days of pain, For we've found the paths o' glory where the flags o' freedom fly, And we've learned the things we died for are the truths that never die. Now there's never hurt can harm us, and the years will never fade The memory of the soldiers of the legions unafraid." Along the paths o' glory there are faces new to-day, And the heavenly flags are flying as they march along the way; For the world is safe from hatred; men shall know it at its best By the sacrifice and courage of the boys who go to rest. Now they've claimed eternal splendor and they've won eternal youth, And they've joined the gallant legions of the men who served the truth. Cliffs of Scotland Sixteen Americans who died on the Tuscania are buried at the water's edge at the base of the rocky cliffs at a Scottish port.--(News Dispatch.) Cliffs of Scotland, guard them well, Shield them from the blizzard's rage; Let your granite towers tell That those sleeping heroes fell In the service of their age. Cliffs of Scotland, they were ours! Now forever they are thine! Guard them with your mighty powers! Barren are your rocks of flowers, But their splendor makes them fine. Cliffs of Scotland, at your base Freedom's finest children lie; Keep them in your strong embrace! Tell the young of every race Such as they shall never die. Cliffs of Scotland, never more Men shall think you stern and cold; Splendor now has found your shore; Unto you the ocean bore Freedom's precious sons to hold. Mother's Party Dress "Some day," says Ma, "I'm goin' to get A party dress all trimmed with jet, An' hire a seamstress in, an' she Is goin' to fit it right on me; An' then, when I'm invited out To teas an' socials hereabout, I'll put it on an' look as fine As all th' women friends of mine." An' Pa looked up: "I sold a cow," Says he, "go down an' get it now." An' Ma replied: "I guess I'll wait, We've other needs that's just as great. The children need some clothes to wear, An' there are shoes we must repair; It ain't important now to get A dress fer me, at least not yet; I really can't afford it." Ma's talked about that dress fer years; How she'd have appliqued revers; The kind o' trimmin' she would pick; How 't would be made to fit her slick; The kind o' black silk she would choose, The pattern she would like to use. An' I can mind the time when Pa Give twenty dollars right to Ma, An' said: "Now that's enough, I guess, Go buy yourself that party dress." An' Ma would take th' bills an' smile, An' say: "I guess I'll wait awhile; Aunt Kitty's poorly now with chills, She needs a doctor and some pills; I'll buy some things fer her, I guess; An' anyhow, about that dress, I really can't afford it." An' so it's been a-goin' on, Her dress fer other things has gone; Some one in need or some one sick Has always touched her to th' quick; Or else, about th' time 'at she Could get th' dress, she'd always see The children needin' somethin' new; An' she would go an' get it, too. An' when we frowned at her, she'd smile An' say: "The dress can wait awhile." Although her mind is set on laces, Her heart goes out to other places; An' somehow, too, her money goes In ways that only mother knows. While there are things her children lack She won't put money on her back; An' that is why she hasn't got A party dress of silk, an' not Because she can't afford it. Little Fishermen A little ship goes out to sea As soon as we have finished tea; Off yonder where the big moon glows This tiny little vessel goes, But never grown-up eyes have seen The ports to which this ship has been; Upon the shore the old folks stand Till morning brings it back to land. In search of smiles this little ship Each evening starts upon a trip; Just smiles enough to last the day Is it allowed to bring away; So nightly to some golden shore It must set out alone for more, And sail the rippling sea for miles Until the hold is full of smiles. By gentle hands the sails are spread; The stars are glistening overhead And in that hour when tiny ships Prepare to make their evening trips The sea becomes a wondrous place, As beautiful as mother's face; And all the day's disturbing cries Give way to soothing lullabies. No clang of bell or warning shout Is heard on shore when they put out; The little vessels slip away As silently as does the day. And all night long on sands of gold They cast their nets, and fill the hold With smiles and joys beyond compare, To cheer a world that's sad with care. The Cookie-Lady She is gentle, kind and fair, And there's silver in her hair; She has known the touch of sorrow, But the smile of her is sweet; And sometimes it seems to me That her mission is to be The gracious cookie-lady To the youngsters of the street. All the children in the block Daily stand beside the crock, Where she keeps the sugar cookies That the little folks enjoy; And no morning passes o'er That a tapping at her door Doesn't warn her of the visit Of a certain little boy. She has made him feel that he Has a natural right to be In her kitchen when she's baking Pies and cakes and ginger bread; And each night to me he brings All the pretty, tender things About little by-gone children That the cookie-lady said. Oh, dear cookie-lady sweet, May you beautify our street With your kind and gentle presence Many more glad years, I pray; May the skies be bright above you, As you've taught our babes to love you; You will scar their hearts with sorrow If you ever go away. Life is strange, and when I scan it, I believe God tries to plan it, So that where He sends his babies In that neighborhood to dwell, One of rare and gracious beauty Shall abide, whose sweetest duty Is to be the cookie-lady That the children love so well. Pleasure's Signs There's a bump on his brow and a smear on his cheek That is plainly the stain of his tears; At his neck there's a glorious sun-painted streak, The bronze of his happiest years. Oh, he's battered and bruised at the end of the day, But smiling before me he stands, And somehow I like to behold him that way. Yes, I like him with dirt on his hands. Last evening he painfully limped up to me His tale of adventure to tell; He showed me a grime-covered cut on his knee, And told me the place where he fell. His clothing was stained to the color of clay, And he looked to be nobody's lad, But somehow I liked to behold him that way, For it spoke of the fun that he'd had. Let women-folk prate as they will of a boy Who is heedless of knickers and shirt; I hold that the badge of a young fellow's joy Are cheeks that are covered with dirt. So I look for him nightly to greet me that way, His joys and misfortunes to tell, For I know by the signs that he wears of his play That the lad I'm so fond of is well. Snooping 'Round Last night I caught him on his knees and looking underneath the bed, And oh, the guilty look he wore, and oh, the stammered words he said, When I, pretending to be cross, said: "Hey, young fellow, what's your game?" As if, back in the long ago, I hadn't also played the same; As if, upon my hands and knees, I hadn't many a time been found When, thinking of the Christmas Day, I'd gone upstairs to snoop around. But there he stood and hung his head; the rascal knew it wasn't fair. "I jes' was wonderin'," he said, "jes' what it was that's under there. It's somepin' all wrapped up an' I thought mebbe it might be a sled, Becoz I saw a piece of wood 'at's stickin' out all painted red." "If mother knew," I said to him, "you'd get a licking, I'll be bound, But just clear out of here at once, and don't you ever snoop around." And as he scampered down the stairs I stood and chuckled to myself, As I remembered how I'd oft explored the topmost closet shelf. It all came back again to me--with what a shrewd and cunning way I, too, had often sought to solve the mysteries of Christmas Day. How many times my daddy, too, had come upstairs without a sound And caught me, just as I'd begun my clever scheme to snoop around. And oh, I envied him his plight; I envied him the joy he feels Who knows that every drawer that's locked some treasure dear to him conceals; I envied him his Christmas fun and wished that it again were mine To seek to solve the mysteries by paper wrapped and bound by twine. Some day he'll come to understand that all the time I stood and frowned, I saw a boy of years ago who also used to snoop around. Bud Discusses Cleanliness First thing in the morning, last I hear at night, Get it when I come from school: "My, you look a sight! Go upstairs this minute, an' roll your sleeves up high An' give your hands a scrubbing and wipe 'em till they're dry! Now don't stand there and argue, and never mind your tears! And this time please remember to wash your neck and ears." Can't see why ears grow on us, all crinkled like a shell, With lots of fancy carvings that make a feller yell Each time his Ma digs in them to get a speck of dirt, When plain ones would be easy to wash and wouldn't hurt. And I can't see the reason why every time Ma nears, She thinks she's got to send me to wash my neck and ears. I never wash to suit her; don't think I ever will. If I was white as sister, she'd call me dirty still. At night I get a scrubbing and go to bed, and then The first thing in the morning, she makes me wash again. That strikes me as ridiklus; I've thought of it a heap. A feller can't get dirty when he is fast asleep. When I grow up to be a man like Pa, and have a wife And kids to boss around, you bet they'll have an easy life. We won't be at them all the time, the way they keep at me, And kick about a little dirt that no one else can see. And every night at supper time as soon as he appears, We will not chase our boy away to wash his neck and ears. Tied Down "They tie you down," a woman said, Whose cheeks should have been flaming red With shame to speak of children so. "When babies come you cannot go In search of pleasure with your friends, And all your happy wandering ends. The things you like you cannot do, For babies make a slave of you." I looked at her and said: "'Tis true That children make a slave of you, And tie you down with many a knot, But have you never thought to what It is of happiness and pride That little babies have you tied? Do you not miss the greater joys That come with little girls and boys? "They tie you down to laughter rare, To hours of smiles and hours of care, To nights of watching and to fears; Sometimes they tie you down to tears And then repay you with a smile, And make your trouble all worth while. They tie you fast to chubby feet, And cheeks of pink and kisses sweet. "They fasten you with cords of love To God divine, who reigns above. They tie you, whereso'er you roam, Unto the little place called home; And over sea or railroad track They tug at you to bring you back. The happiest people in the town Are those the babies have tied down. "Oh, go your selfish way and free, But hampered I would rather be, Yes rather than a kingly crown I would be, what you term, tied down; Tied down to dancing eyes and charms, Held fast by chubby, dimpled arms, The fettered slave of girl and boy, And win from them earth's finest joy." Our Country God grant that we shall never see Our country slave to lust and greed; God grant that here all men shall be United by a common creed. Here Freedom's Flag has held the sky Unstained, untarnished from its birth; Long may it wave to typify The happiest people on the earth. Beneath its folds have mothers smiled To see their little ones at play; No tyrant hand, by shame defiled, To them has barred life's rosy way. No cruel wall of caste or class Has bid men pause or turn aside; Here looms no gate they may not pass-- Here every door is opened wide. Here at the wells of Freedom all Who are athirst may drink their fill. Here fame and fortune wait to call The toiler who has proved his skill. Here wisdom sheds afar its light As every morn the school bells ring, And little children read and write And share the knowledge of a king. God grant that we shall never see Our country slave to lust and greed; God grant that men shall always be United for our nation's need. Here selfishness has never reigned, Here freedom all who come may know; By tyranny our Flag's unstained! God grant that we may keep it so. Fatherhood Before you came, my little lad, I used to think that I was good; Some vicious habits, too, I had, But wouldn't change them if I could. I held my head up high and said: "I'm all that I have need to be, It matters not what path I tread--" But that was ere you came to me. I treated lightly sacred things, And went my way in search of fun; Upon myself I kept no strings, And gave no heed to folly done. I gave myself up to the fight For worldly wealth and earthly fame, And sought advantage, wrong or right-- But that was long before you came. But now you sit across from me, Your big brown eyes are opened wide, And every deed I do you see, And, O, I dare not step aside. I've shaken loose from habits bad, And what is wrong I've come to dread, Because I know, my little lad, That you will follow where I tread. I want those eyes to glow with pride; In me I want those eyes to see, The while we wander side by side, The sort of man I'd have you be. And so I'm striving to be good With all my might, that you may know, When this great world is understood, What pleasures are worth while below. I see life in a different light From what I did before you came; Then anything that pleased seemed right-- But you are here to bear my name, And you are looking up to me With those big eyes from day to day, And I'm determined not to be The means of leading you astray. A Choice Sure, they get stubborn at times; they worry and fret us a lot, But I'd rather be crossed by a glad little boy and frequently worried than not. There are hours when they get on my nerves and set my poor brain all awhirl, But I'd rather be troubled that way than to be the man who has no little girl. There are times they're a nuisance, that's true, with all of their racket and noise, But I'd rather my personal pleasures be lost than to give up my girls and my boys. Not always they're perfectly good; there are times when they're wilfully bad, But I'd rather be worried by youngsters of mine than lonely and childless and sad. So I try to be patient and calm whenever they're having their fling; For the sum of their laughter and love is more than the worry they bring. And each night when sweet peace settles down and I see them asleep in their cot, I chuckle and say: "They upset me to-day, but I'd rather be that way than not." What Father Knows My father knows the proper way The nation should be run; He tells us children every day Just what should now be done. He knows the way to fix the trusts, He has a simple plan; But if the furnace needs repairs We have to hire a man. My father, in a day or two, Could land big thieves in jail; There's nothing that he cannot do, He knows no word like "fail." "Our confidence" he would restore, Of that there is no doubt; But if there is a chair to mend We have to send it out. All public questions that arise He settles on the spot; He waits not till the tumult dies, But grabs it while it's hot. In matters of finance he can Tell Congress what to do; But, O, he finds it hard to meet His bills as they fall due. It almost makes him sick to read The things law-makers say; Why, father's just the man they need; He never goes astray. All wars he'd very quickly end, As fast as I can write it; But when a neighbor starts a fuss 'Tis mother has to fight it. In conversation father can Do many wondrous things; He's built upon a wiser plan Than presidents or kings. He knows the ins and outs of each And every deep transaction; We look to him for theories, But look to ma for action. Back Home Glad to get back home again, Where abide the friendly men; Glad to see the same old scenes And the little house that means All the joys the soul has treasured-- Glad to be where smiles aren't measured, Where I've blended with the gladness All the heart has known of sadness, Where some long-familiar steeple Marks my town of friendly people. Though it's fun to go a-straying Where the bands are nightly playing And the throngs of men and women Drain the cup of pleasure brimmin', I am glad when it is over That I've ceased to play the Rover. And when once the train starts chugging Towards the children I'd be hugging, All my thoughts and dreams are set there; Fast enough I cannot get there. Guess I wasn't meant for bright lights, For the blaze of red and white lights, For the throngs that seems to smother In their selfishness, each other; For whenever I've been down there, Tramped the noisy, blatant town there, Always in a week I've started Yearning, hungering, heavy-hearted, For the home town and its spaces Lit by fine and friendly faces. Like to be where men about me Do not look on me to doubt me; Where I know the men and women, Know why tears some eyes are dimmin', Know the good folks an' the bad folks An' the glad folks an' the sad folks; Where we live with one another, Meanin' something to each other. An' I'm glad to see the steeple, Where the crowds aren't merely people. The Dead Return The dead return. I know they do; The glad smile may have passed from view, The ringing voice that cheered us so In that remembered long ago Be stilled, and yet in sweeter ways It speaks to us throughout our days. The kindly father comes again To guide us through the haunts of men, And always near, their sons to greet Are lingering the mothers sweet. About us wheresoe'er we tread Hover the spirits of our dead; We cannot see them as we could In bygone days, when near they stood And shared the joys and griefs that came, But they are with us just the same. They see us as we plod along, And proudly smile when we are strong, And sigh and grieve the self-same way When thoughtlessly we go astray. I sometimes think it hurts the dead When into sin and shame we're led, And that they feel a thrill divine When we've accomplished something fine. And sometimes thoughts that come at night Seem more like messages that might Have whispered been by one we love, Whose spirit has been called above. So wise the counsel, it must be That all we are the dead can see. The dead return. They come to share Our laughter and our bit of care; They glory, as they used to do, When we are splendid men and true, In all the joy that we have won, And they are proud of what we've done. They suffer when we suffer woe; All things about us here they know. And though we never see them here Their spirits hover very near. My Soul and I When winter shuts a fellow in and turns the lock upon his door, There's nothing else for him to do but sit and dream his bygones o'er. And then before an open fire he smokes his pipe, while in the blaze He seems to see a picture show of all his happy yesterdays. No ordinary film is that which memory throws upon the screen, But one in which his hidden soul comes out and can be plainly seen. Now, I've been dreaming by the grate. I've seen myself the way I am, Stripped bare of affectation's garb and wisdom's pose and folly's sham. I've seen my soul and talked with it, and learned some things I never knew. I walk about the world as one, but I express the wish of two. I've come to see the soul of me is wiser than my selfish mind, For it has safely led me through the tangled paths I've left behind. I should have sold myself for gold when I was young long years ago, But for my soul which whispered then: "You love your home and garden so, You never could be quite content in palace walls. Once rise to fame And you will lose the gentler joys which now so eagerly you claim. I want to walk these lanes with you and keep the comradeship of trees, Let you and I be happy here, nor seek life's gaudy luxuries." Mine is a curious soul, I guess; it seemed so, smiling in my dreams; It keeps me close to little folks and birds and flowers and running streams, To Mother and her friends and mine; and though no fortune we possess, The years that we have lived and loved have all been rich with happiness. I'm glad the snowdrifts shut me in, for I have had a chance to see How fortunate I've been to have that sort of soul to counsel me. Aunty I'm sorry for a feller if he hasn't any aunt, To let him eat and do the things his mother says he can't. An aunt to come a visitin' or one to go and see Is just about the finest kind of lady there could be. Of course she's not your mother, an' she hasn't got her ways, But a part that's most important in a feller's life she plays. She is kind an' she is gentle, an' sometimes she's full of fun, An' she's very sympathetic when some dreadful thing you've done. An' she likes to buy you candy, an' she's always gettin' toys That you wish your Pa would get you, for she hasn't any boys. But sometimes she's over-loving, an' your cheeks turn red with shame When she smothers you with kisses, but you like her just the same. One time my father took me to my aunty's, an' he said: "You will stay here till I get you, an' be sure you go to bed When your aunty says it's time to, an' be good an' mind her, too, An' when you come home we'll try to have a big surprise for you." I did as I was told to, an' when Pa came back for me He said there was a baby at the house for me to see. I've been visitin' at aunty's for a week or two, an' Pa Has written that he's comin' soon to take me home to Ma. He says they're gettin' lonely, an' I'm kind o' lonely, too, Coz an aunt is not exactly what your mother is to you. I am hungry now to see her, but I'm wondering to-day If Pa's bought another baby in the time I've been away. Bread and Jam I wish I was a poet like the men that write in books The poems that we have to learn on valleys, hills an' brooks; I'd write of things that children like an' know an' understand, An' when the kids recited them the folks would call them grand. If I'd been born a Whittier, instead of what I am, I'd write a poem now about a piece of bread an' jam. I'd tell how hungry children get all afternoon in school, An' sittin' at attention just because it is the rule, An' lookin' every now an' then up to the clock to see If that big hand an' little hand would ever get to three. I'd tell how children hurry home an' give the door a slam An' ask their mothers can they have a piece of bread an' jam. Some poets write of things to eat an' sing of dinners fine, An' praise the dishes they enjoy, an' some folks sing of wine, But they've forgotten, I suppose, the days when they were small An' hurried home from school to get the finest food of all; They don't remember any more how good it was to cram Inside their hungry little selves a piece of bread an' jam. I wish I was a Whittier, a Stevenson or Burns, I wouldn't write of hills an' brooks, or mossy banks or ferns, I wouldn't write of rolling seas or mountains towering high, But I would sing of chocolate cake an' good old apple pie, An' best of all the food there is, beyond the slightest doubt, Is bread an' jam we always get as soon as school is out. The Little Woman The little woman, to her I bow And doff my hat as I pass her by; I reverence the furrows that mark her brow, And the sparkling love light in her eye. The little woman who stays at home, And makes no bid for the world's applause; Who never sighs for a chance to roam, But toils all day in a grander cause. The little woman, who seems so weak, Yet bears her burdens day by day; And no one has ever heard her speak In a bitter or loud complaining way. She sings a snatch of a merry song, As she toils in her home from morn to night. Her work is hard and the hours are long But the little woman's heart is light. A slave to love is that woman small, And yearly her burdens heavier grow, But somehow she seems to bear them all, As the deep'ning lines in her white cheeks show. Her children all have a mother's care, Her home the touch of a good wife knows; No burden's too heavy for her to bear, But, patiently doing her best, she goes. The little woman, may God be kind To her wherever she dwells to-day; The little woman who seems to find Her joy in toiling along life's way. May God bring peace to her work-worn breast And joy to her mother-heart at last; May love be hers when it's time to rest, And the roughest part of the road is passed. The little woman--how oft it seems God chooses her for the mother's part; And many a grown-up sits and dreams To-day of her with an aching heart. For he knows well how she toiled for him And he sees it now that it is too late; And often his eyes with tears grow dim For the little woman whose strength was great. The Father of the Man I can't help thinkin' o' the lad! Here's summer bringin' trees to fruit, An' every bush with roses clad, An' nature in her finest suit, An' all things as they used to be In days before the war came on. Yet time has changed both him an' me, An' I am here, but he is gone. The orchard's as it was back then When he was just a little tyke; The lake's as calm an' fair as when We used to go to fish for pike. There's nothing different I can see That God has made about the place, Except the change in him an' me, An' that is difficult to trace. I only know one day he came An' found me in the barn alone. To some he might have looked the same, But he was not the lad I'd known. His soul, it seemed, had heard the call As plainly as a mortal can. Before he spoke to me at all, I saw my boy become a man. I can't explain just what occurred; I sat an' talked about it there; The dinner-bell I never heard, Or if I did, I didn't care. But suddenly it seemed to me Out of the dark there came a light, An' in a new way I could see That I was wrong an' he was right. I can't help thinkin' o' the lad! He's fightin' hate an' greed an' lust, An' here am I, his doting dad, Believin' in a purpose just. Time was I talked the joy o' play, But now life's goal is all I see; The petty thoughts I've put away-- My boy has made a man o' me. When Mother Made An Angel Cake When mother baked an angel cake we kids would gather round An' watch her gentle hands at work, an' never make a sound; We'd watch her stir the eggs an' flour an' powdered sugar, too, An' pour it in the crinkled tin, an' then when it was through She'd spread the icing over it, an' we knew very soon That one would get the plate to lick, an' one would get the spoon. It seemed no matter where we were those mornings at our play, Upstairs or out of doors somewhere, we all knew right away When Ma was in the kitchen, an' was gettin' out the tin An' things to make an angel cake, an' so we scampered in. An' Ma would smile at us an' say: "Now you keep still an' wait An' when I'm through I'll let you lick the spoon an' icing plate." We watched her kneel beside the stove, an' put her arm so white Inside the oven just to find if it was heatin' right. An' mouths an' eyes were open then, becoz we always knew The time for us to get our taste was quickly comin' due. Then while she mixed the icing up, she'd hum a simple tune, An' one of us would bar the plate, an' one would bar the spoon. Could we catch a glimpse of Heaven, and some snow-white kitchen there, I'm sure that we'd see mother, smiling now, and still as fair; And I know that gathered round her we should see an angel brood That is watching every movement as she makes an angel food; For I know that little angels, as we used to do, await The moment when she lets them lick the icing spoon and plate. The Gift of Play Some have the gift of song and some possess the gift of silver speech, Some have the gift of leadership and some the ways of life can teach. And fame and wealth reward their friends; in jewels are their splendors told, But in good time their favorites grow very faint and gray and old. But there are men who laugh at time and hold the cruel years at bay; They romp through life forever young because they have the gift of play. They walk with children, hand in hand, through daisy fields and orchards fair, Nor all the dignity of age and power and pomp can follow there; They've kept the magic charm of youth beneath the wrinkled robe of Time, And there's no friendly apple tree that they have grown too old to climb. They have not let their boyhood die; they can be children for the day; They have not bartered for success and all its praise, the gift of play. They think and talk in terms of youth; with love of life their eyes are bright; No rheumatism of the soul has robbed them of the world's delight; They laugh and sing their way along and join in pleasures when they can, And in their glad philosophy they hold that mirth becomes a man. They spend no strength in growing old. What if their brows be crowned with gray? The spirits in their breasts are young. They still possess the gift of play. The richest men of life are not the ones who rise to wealth and fame-- Not the great sages, old and wise, and grave of face and bent of frame, But the glad spirits, tall and straight, who 'spite of time and all its care, Have kept the power to laugh and sing and in youth's fellowship to share. They that can walk with boys and be a boy among them, blithe and gay, Defy the withering blasts of Age because they have the gift of play. Toys and Life You can learn a lot from boys By the way they use their toys; Some are selfish in their care, Never very glad to share Playthings with another boy; Seem to want to hoard their joy. And they hide away the drum For the days that never come; Hide the train of cars and skates, Keeping them from all their mates, And run all their boyhood through With their toys as good as new. Others gladly give and lend, Heedless that the tin may bend, Caring not that drum-heads break, Minding not that playmates take To themselves the joy that lies In the little birthday prize. And in homes that house such boys Always there are broken toys, Symbolizing moments glad That the youthful lives have had. There you'll never find a shelf Dedicated unto self. Toys are made for children's fun, Very frail and quickly done, And who keeps them long to view, Bright of paint and good as new, Robs himself and other boys Of their swiftly passing joys. So he looked upon a toy When our soldier was a boy; And somehow to-day we're glad That the tokens of our lad And the trinkets that we keep Are a broken, battered heap. Life itself is but a toy Filled with duty and with joy; Not too closely should we guard Our brief time from being scarred; Never high on musty shelves Should we hoard it for ourselves. It is something we should share In another's hour of care-- Something we should gladly give That another here may live; We should never live it through Keeping it as good as new. Being Dad on Christmas Eve They've hung their stockings up with care, And I am in my old arm chair, And mother's busy dragging out The parcels hidden all about. Within a corner, gaunt to see, There stands a barren Christmas tree, But soon upon its branches green A burst of splendor will be seen. And when the busy tongues grow still, That now are wagging with a will Above me as I sit and rest, I shall be at my happiest. The greatest joy man can receive Is being Dad on Christmas eve. Soon I shall toil with tinsel bright; Place here and there a colored light, And wheresoe'er my fingers lie To-morrow shall a youngster spy Some wonder gift or magic toy, To fill his little soul with joy. The stockings on the mantle piece I'll bulge with sweets, till every crease That marks them now is stretched away. There will be horns and drums to play And dolls to love. For it's my task To get for them the joys they ask. What greater charm can fortune weave Than being Dad on Christmas eve? With all their pomp, great monarchs miss The happiness of scenes like this. Rich halls to-night are still and sad, Because no little girl or lad Shall wake upon the morn to find The joys that love has left behind. Oh, I have had my share of woe-- Known what it is to bear a blow-- Shed sorrow's tears and stood to care When life seemed desolate and bare, Yet here to-night I smile and say Worth while was all that came my way. For this one joy, all else I'd leave: To be their Dad on Christmas eve. Little Girls God made the little boys for fun, for rough and tumble times of play; He made their little legs to run and race and scamper through the day. He made them strong for climbing trees, he suited them for horns and drums, And filled them full of revelries so they could be their father's chums. But then He saw that gentle ways must also travel from above. And so, through all our troubled days He sent us little girls to love. He knew that earth would never do, unless a bit of Heaven it had. Men needed eyes divinely blue to toil by day and still be glad. A world where only men and boys made merry would in time grow stale, And so He shared His Heavenly joys that faith in Him should never fail. He sent us down a thousand charms, He decked our ways with golden curls And laughing eyes and dimpled arms. He let us have His little girls. They are the tenderest of His flowers, the little angels of His flock, And we may keep and call them ours, until God's messenger shall knock. They bring to us the gentleness and beauty that we sorely need; They soothe us with each fond caress and strengthen us for every deed. And happy should that mortal be whom God has trusted, through the years, To guard a little girl and see that she is kept from pain and tears. United States He shall be great who serves his country well. He shall be loved who ever guards her fame. His worth the starry banner long shall tell, Who loves his land too much to stoop to shame. Who shares the splendor of these sunny skies Has freedom as his birthright, and may know Rich fellowship with comrades brave and wise; Into the realms of manhood he may go. Who writes, "United States" beside his name Offers a pledge that he himself is true; Gives guarantee that selfishness or shame Shall never mar the work he finds to do. He is received world-wide as one who lives Above the sordid dreams of petty gain, And is reputed as a man who gives His best to others in their hours of pain. This is the heritage of Freedom's soil: High purposes and lofty goals to claim. And he shall be rewarded for his toil Who loves his land too much to stoop to shame. When My Ship Comes In You shall have satin and silk to wear, When my ship comes in; And jewels to shine in your raven hair, When my ship comes in. Oh, the path is dreary to-day and long, And little I've brought to your life of song, But the dream still lives and the faith is strong, When my ship comes in. Gold and silver are pledged to you, When my ship comes in; I pay with this promise for all you do, When my ship comes in. Oh, fairest partner man ever had, It's little I've brought you to make you glad Save the whispered suggestion in moments sad, When my ship comes in. Though crowded with treasures should be her hold, When my ship comes in, I never can pay for the charms of old, When my ship comes in. The strength I have taken from you has fled, The time for the joys that you craved has sped, I must pay for your gold with the dullest lead, When my ship comes in. Too late, too late will the treasures be, When my ship comes in. For Age shall stand with us on the quay, When my ship comes in. For the love you've given and the faith you've shown, But a glimpse of the joys that you might have known Will it then be yours on that day to own, When my ship comes in. The Children The children bring us laughter, and the children bring us tears; They string our joys, like jewels bright, upon the thread of years; They bring the bitterest cares we know, their mothers' sharpest pain, Then smile our world to loveliness, like sunshine after rain. The children make us what we are; the childless king is spurned; The children send us to the hills where glories may be earned; For them we pledge our lives to strife, for them do mothers fade, And count in new-born loveliness their sacrifice repaid. The children bring us back to God; in eyes that dance and shine Men read from day to day the proof of love and power divine; For them are fathers brave and good and mothers fair and true, For them is every cherished dream and every deed we do. For children are the furnace fires of life kept blazing high; For children on the battle fields are soldiers pleased to die; In every place where humans toil, in every dream and plan, The laughter of the children shapes the destiny of man. The Comedian Whatever the task and whatever the risk, wherever the flag's in air, The funny man with his sunny ways is sure to be laughing there. There are men who fret, there are men who dream, men making the best of it, But whether it's hunger or death they face, Or burning thirst in a desert place, There is always one, by the good Lord's grace, Who is making a jest of it. He travels wherever his brothers go and he leaves his home behind him, The need for smiles he seems to know; in the ranks of death you'll find him. When some are weary and sick and faint, and all with the dust are choking, He dances there with a spirit gay, And tints with gold what is drab and gray, And into the gloom of the night and day He scatters his mirthful joking. He wins to courage the soul-tried men; he lightens their hours of sorrow; He turns their thoughts from the grief that is to the joy that may come to-morrow. He mocks at death and he jests at toil, as one that is never weary; He japes at danger and discipline, Or the muddy trench that he's standing in; There's nothing can banish his merry grin, Or dampen his spirits cheery. The honors of war to its heroes go; for them are the pomp and glory, But seldom it is that the types relate a victory's inside story. And few shall know when the strife is done and the history's made hereafter, How much depended on him who stirred The souls of men with a cheerful word, And kept them brave by a jest absurd, And brightened their days with laughter. Faith It is faith that bridges the land of breath To the realms of the souls departed, That comforts the living in days of death, And strengthens the heavy-hearted. It is faith in his dreams that keeps a man Face front to the odds about him, And he shall conquer who thinks he can, In spite of the throngs who doubt him. Each must stand in the court of life And pass through the hours of trial; He shall tested be by the rules of strife, And tried for his self-denial. Time shall bruise his soul with the loss of friends, And frighten him with disaster, But he shall find when the anguish ends That of all things faith is master. So keep your faith in the God above, And faith in the righteous truth, It shall bring you back to the absent love, And the joys of a vanished youth. You shall smile once more when your tears are dried, Meet trouble and swiftly rout it, For faith is the strength of the soul inside, And lost is the man without it. The Burden Bearer Oh, my shoulders grow aweary of the burdens I am bearin', An' I grumble when I'm footsore at the rough road I am farin', But I strap my knapsack tighter till I feel the leather bind me, An' I'm glad to bear the burdens for the ones who come behind me. It's for them that I am ploddin', for the children comin' after; I would strew their path with roses and would fill their days with laughter. Oh, there's selfishness within me, there are times it gets to talkin', Times I hear it whisper to me, "It's a dusty road you're walkin'; Why not rest your feet a little; why not pause an' take your leisure? Don't you hunger in your strivin' for the merry whirl of pleasure?" Then I turn an' see them smilin' an' I grip my burdens tighter, For the joy that I am seekin' is to see their eyes grow brighter. Oh, I've sipped the cup of sorrow an' I've felt the gad of trouble, An' I know the hurt of trudgin' through a field o'errun with stubble; But a rougher road to travel had my father good before me, An' I'm owin' all my gladness to the tasks he shouldered for me. Oh, I didn't understand it, when a lad I played about him, But he labored for my safety in the days I'd be without him. Oh, my kindly father never gave himself a year of leisure-- Never lived one selfish moment, never turned aside for pleasure-- Though he must have grown aweary of the burdens he was bearin'; He was tryin' hard to better every road I'd soon be farin'. Now I turn an' see them smilin' an' I hear their merry laughter, An' I'm glad to bear the burdens for the ones that follow after. "It's a Boy" The doctor leads a busy life, he wages war with death; Long hours he spends to help the one who's fighting hard for breath; He cannot call his time his own, nor share in others' fun, His duties claim him through the night when others' work is done. And yet the doctor seems to be God's messenger of joy, Appointed to announce this news of gladness: "It's a boy!" In many ways unpleasant is the doctor's round of cares, I should not like to have to bear the burdens that he bears; His eyes must look on horrors grim, unmoved he must remain, Emotion he must master if he hopes to conquer pain; Yet to his lot this duty falls, his voice he must employ To speak to man the happiest phrase that's sounded: "It's a boy!" I wish 'twere given me to speak a message half so glad As that the doctor brings unto the fear-distracted dad. I wish that simple words of mine could change the skies to blue, And lift the care from troubled hearts, as those he utters do. I wish that I could banish all the thoughts that man annoy, And cheer him as the doctor does, who whispers: "It's a boy." Whoever through the hours of night has stood outside her door, And wondered if she'd smile again; whoe'er has paced the floor, And lived those years of fearful thoughts, and then been swept from woe Up to the topmost height of bliss that's given man to know, Will tell you there's no phrase so sweet, so charged with human joy As that the doctor brings from God--that message: "It's a boy!" The Finest Fellowship There may be finer pleasures than just tramping with your boy, And better ways to spend a day; there may be sweeter joy; There may be richer fellowship than that of son and dad, But if there is, I know it not; it's one I've never had. Oh, some may choose to walk with kings and men of pomp and pride, But as for me, I choose to have my youngster at my side. And some may like the rosy ways of grown-up pleasures glad, But I would go a-wandering with just a little lad. Yes, I would seek the woods with him and talk to him of trees, And learn to know the birds a-wing and hear their melodies; And I would drop all worldly care and be a boy awhile; Then hand-in-hand come home at dusk to see the mother smile. Grown men are wearisome at times, and selfish pleasures jar, But sons and dads throughout the world the truest comrades are. So when I want a perfect day with every joy that's fine, I spend it in the open with that little lad o' mine. Different The kids at our house number three, As different as they can be; And if perchance they numbered six Each one would have particular tricks, And certain little whims and fads Unlike the other girls and lads. No two glad rascals can you name Whom God has fashioned just the same. Bud's tough and full of life and fun And likes to race about and run, And tease the girls; the rascal knows The slyest ways to pinch a nose, And yank a curl until it hurts, And disarrange their Sunday skirts. Sometimes he trips them, heads o'er heels, To glory in their frenzied squeals. And Marjorie: She'd have more joy, She thinks, if she'd been born a boy; She wants no ribbons on her hair, No fancy, fussy things to wear. The things in which Sylvia delights To Marjorie are dreadful frights. They're sisters, yet I'd swear the name Is all they own that is the same. Proud Sylvia, beautiful to see, A high-toned lady wants to be; She'll primp and fuss and deck her hair And gorgeous raiment wants to wear; She'll sit sedately by the light And read a fairy tale at night; And she will sigh and sometimes wince At all the trials of the prince. If God should send us children nine To follow our ancestral line, I'd vow that in the lot we'd strike No two among them just alike. And that's the way it ought to be; The larger grows the family, The more we own of joy and bliss, For each brings charms the others miss. There Will Always Be Something to Do There will always be something to do, my boy; There will always be wrongs to right; There will always be need for a manly breed And men unafraid to fight. There will always be honor to guard, my boy; There will always be hills to climb, And tasks to do, and battles new From now to the end of time. There will always be dangers to face, my boy; There will always be goals to take; Men shall be tried, when the roads divide, And proved by the choice they make. There will always be burdens to bear, my boy; There will always be need to pray; There will always be tears through the future years, As loved ones are borne away. There will always be God to serve, my boy, And always the Flag above; They shall call to you until life is through For courage and strength and love. So these are things that I dream, my boy, And have dreamed since your life began: That whatever befalls, when the old world calls, It shall find you a sturdy man. A Boy at Christmas If I could have my wish to-night it would not be for wealth or fame, It would not be for some delight that men who live in luxury claim, But it would be that I might rise at three or four a. m. to see, With eager, happy, boyish eyes, my presents on the Christmas tree. Throughout this world there is no joy, I know now I am growing gray, So rich as being just a boy, a little boy on Christmas Day. I'd like once more to stand and gaze enraptured on a tinseled tree, With eyes that know just how to blaze, a heart still tuned to ecstasy; I'd like to feel the old delight, the surging thrills within me come; To love a thing with all my might, to grasp the pleasure of a drum; To know the meaning of a toy--a meaning lost to minds blase; To be just once again a boy, a little boy on Christmas Day. I'd like to see a pair of skates the way they looked to me back then, Before I'd turned from boyhood's gates and marched into the world of men; I'd like to see a jackknife, too, with those same eager, dancing eyes That couldn't fault or blemish view; I'd like to feel the same surprise, The pleasure, free from all alloy, that has forever passed away, When I was just a little boy and had my faith in Christmas Day. Oh, little, laughing, roguish lad, the king that rules across the sea Would give his scepter if he had such joy as now belongs to thee! And beards of gray would give their gold, and all the honors they possess, Once more within their grasp to hold thy present fee of happiness. Earth sends no greater, surer joy, as, too soon, thou, as I, shall say, Than that of him who is a boy, a little boy on Christmas Day. Best Way to Read a Book Best way to read a book I know Is get a lad of six or so, And curl him up upon my knee Deep in a big arm chair, where we Can catch the warmth of blazing coals, And then let two contented souls Melt into one, old age and youth, Sharing adventure's marvelous truth. I read a page, and then we sit And talk it over, bit by bit; Just how the pirates looked, and why They flung a black flag to the sky. We pass no paragraph without First knowing what it's all about, And when the author starts a fight We join the forces that are right. We're deep in Treasure Island, and From Spy Glass Hill we've viewed the land; Through thickets dense we've followed Jim And shared the doubts that came to him. We've heard Cap. Smollett arguing there With Long John Silver, gaunt and spare, And mastering our many fears We've battled with those buccaneers. Best way to read a book I've found Is have a little boy around And take him up upon your knee; Then talk about the tale, till he Lives it and feels it, just as you, And shares the great adventure, too. Books have a deep and lasting joy For him who reads them to his boy. The Song of Loved Ones The father toils at his work all day, And he hums this song as he plods away: "Heigho! for the mother and babe of three Who watch at the window each night for me. Their smiles are ever before my eyes, And never the sound of their voices dies, But ever and ever they seem to say, 'Love waits for you at the close of day.'" At home, a mother is heard to croon To a little babe, this simple tune: "Heigho! for the father who toils to-day, He thinks of us, though he's far away; He soon will come with a happy tread, And stooping over your trundle bed, Your little worries he'll kiss away; Love comes to us at the close of day." Becoming a Dad Old women say that men don't know The pain through which all mothers go, And maybe that is true, and yet I vow I never shall forget The night he came. I suffered, too, Those bleak and dreary long hours through; I paced the floor and mopped my brow And waited for his glad wee-ow! I went upstairs and then came down, Because I saw the doctor frown And knew beyond the slightest doubt He wished to goodness I'd clear out. I walked into the yard for air And back again to hear her there, And met the nurse, as calm as though My world was not in deepest woe, And when I questioned, seeking speech Of consolation that would reach Into my soul and strengthen me For dreary hours that were to be: "Progressing nicely!" that was all She said and tip-toed down the hall; "Progressing nicely!" nothing more, And left me there to pace the floor. And once the nurse came out in haste For something that had been misplaced, And I that had been growing bold Then felt my blood grow icy cold; And fear's stern chill swept over me. I stood and watched and tried to see Just what it was she came to get. I haven't learned that secret yet. I half-believe that nurse in white Was adding fuel to my fright And taking an unholy glee, From time to time, in torturing me. Then silence! To her room I crept And was informed the doctor slept! The doctor slept! Oh, vicious thought, While she at death's door bravely fought And suffered untold anguish deep, The doctor lulled himself to sleep. I looked and saw him stretched out flat And could have killed the man for that. Then morning broke, and oh, the joy; With dawn there came to us our boy, And in a glorious little while I went in there and saw her smile! I must have looked a human wreck, My collar wilted at the neck, My hair awry, my features drawn With all the suffering I had borne. She looked at me and softly said, "If I were you, I'd go to bed." Hers was the bitterer part, I know; She traveled through the vale of woe, But now when women folks recall The pain and anguish of it all I answer them in manner sad: "It's no cinch to become a dad." The Test You can brag about the famous men you know; You may boast about the great men you have met, Parsons, eloquent and wise; stars in histrionic skies; Millionaires and navy admirals, and yet Fame and power and wealth and glory vanish fast; They are lusters that were never made to stick, And the friends worth-while and true, are the happy smiling few Who come to call upon you when you're sick. You may think it very fine to know the great; You may glory in some leader's words of praise; You may tell with eyes aglow of the public men you know, But the true friends seldom travel glory's ways, And the day you're lying ill, lonely, pale and keeping still, With a fevered pulse, that's beating double quick, Then it is you must depend on the old-familiar friend To come to call upon you when you're sick. It is pleasing to receive a great man's nod, And it's good to know the big men of the land, But the test of friendship true, isn't merely: "Howdy-do?" And a willingness to shake you by the hand. If you want to know the friends who love you best, And the faithful from the doubtful you would pick, It is not a mighty task; of yourself you've but to ask: "Does he come to call upon me when I'm sick?" The Old Wooden Tub I like to get to thinking of the old days that are gone, When there were joys that never more the world will look upon, The days before inventors smoothed the little cares away And made, what seemed but luxuries then, the joys of every day; When bathrooms were exceptions, and we got our weekly scrub By standing in the middle of a little wooden tub. We had no rapid heaters, and no blazing gas to burn, We boiled the water on the stove, and each one took his turn. Sometimes to save expenses we would use one tub for two; The water brother Billy used for me would also do, Although an extra kettle I was granted, I admit, On winter nights to freshen and to warm it up a bit. We carried water up the stairs in buckets and in pails, And sometimes splashed it on our legs, and rent the air with wails, But if the nights were very cold, by closing every door We were allowed to take our bath upon the kitchen floor. Beside the cheery stove we stood and gave ourselves a rub, In comfort most luxurious in that old wooden tub. But modern homes no more go through that joyous weekly fun, And through the sitting rooms at night no half-dried children run; No little flying forms go past, too swift to see their charms, With shirts and underwear and things tucked underneath their arms; The home's so full of luxury now, it's almost like a club, I sometimes wish we could go back to that old wooden tub. Lost Opportunities "When I am rich," he used to say, "A thousand joys I'll give away; I'll walk among the poor I find And unto one and all be kind. I'll place a wreath of roses red Upon the bier of all my dead; I'll help the struggling youth to climb; In doing good I'll spend my time; To all in need I'll friendly be The day that fortune smiles on me." He never guessed that being kind Depends upon the heart and mind And not upon the purse at all; That poor men's gifts, however small, Make light some weary traveler's load And smooth for him his troubled road. He never knew or understood The fellowship of doing good. Because he had not much to spare He thought it vain to give his share. Yet many passed him, day by day, He might have helped along the way. He fancied kindness something which Belongs entirely to the rich. And so he lived and toiled for gold, Unsympathetic, harsh and cold, Intending all the time to share The burdens that his brothers bear When he possessed great wealth, and he Could well afford a friend to be. His fortune came, but, oh, too late; The poor about him could not wait. They never guessed and never knew The things that he had meant to do. Few knew how much he'd planned to give If God had only let him live. And when at last his form was cold, All that he'd left on earth was gold. A kindly name is something which A man must earn before he's rich. Patriotism I think my country needs my vote, I know it doesn't need my throat, My lungs and larynx, too; And so I sit at home at night And teach my children what is right And wise for them to do; And when I'm on the job by day I do my best to earn my pay. Though arguments may rage and roar; I grease the hinges on my door And paint the porches blue; I love this splendid land of ours, And so I plant the seeds and flowers And watch them bursting through. I never stand upon a box To say we're headed for the rocks. My notion of a patriot Is one who guards his little cot, And keeps it up to date; Who pays his taxes when they're due, And pays his bills for groc'ries, too, And dresses well his mate; He keeps his children warmly clad And lets them know they have a dad. The nation's safe as long as men Get to their work and back again Each day with cheerful smile; So long as there are fathers who Rejoice in what they have to do And find their homes worth while, The Stars and Stripes will wave on high And liberty will never die. The Tramp Eagerly he took my dime, Then shuffled on his way, Thick with sin and filth and grime, But I wondered all that day How the man had gone astray. Not to him the dime I gave; Not unto the man of woe, Not to him who should be brave, Not to him who'd sunk so low, But the boy of long ago. Passed his years of sin and shame Through the filth that all could see, Out of what he is there came One more pitiful to me: Came the boy that used to be. Smiling, full of promise glad, Stood a baby, like my own; I beheld a glorious lad, Someone once had loved and known Out of which this wreck had grown! Where, thought I, must lie the blame? Who has failed in such a way? As all children come he came, There's a soul within his clay; Who has led his feet astray? As he shuffled down the hall With the coin I'd never miss, What, thought I, were fame and all Man may gain of earthly bliss, If my child should come to this! The Lonely Garden I wonder what the trees will say, The trees that used to share his play, An' knew him as the little lad Who used to wander with his dad. They've watched him grow from year to year Since first the good Lord sent him here. This shag-bark hick'ry, many a time, The little fellow tried t' climb, An' never a spring has come but he Has called upon his favorite tree. I wonder what they all will say When they are told he's marched away. I wonder what the birds will say, The swallow an' the chatterin' jay, The robin, an' the kill-deer, too. For every one o' them, he knew, An' every one o' them knew him, An' hoppin' there from limb t' limb, Waited each spring t' tell him all They'd done an' seen since 'way last fall. He was the first to greet 'em here As they returned from year t' year; An' now I wonder what they'll say When they are told he's marched away. I wonder how the roses there Will get along without his care, An' how the lilac bush will face The loneliness about th' place; For ev'ry spring an' summer, he Has been the chum o' plant an' tree, An' every livin' thing has known A comradeship that's finer grown, By havin' him from year t' year. Now very soon they'll all be here, An' I am wonderin' what they'll say When they find out he's marched away. The Silver Stripes When we've honored the heroes returning from France And we've mourned for the heroes who fell, When we've done all we can for the homecoming man Who stood to the shot and the shell, Let us all keep in mind those who lingered behind-- The thousands who waited to go-- The brave and the true, who did all they could do, Yet have only the silver to show. They went from their homes at the summons for men, They drilled in the heat of the sun, They fell into line with a pluck that was fine; Each cheerfully shouldered a gun. They were ready to die for Old Glory on high, They were eager to meet with the foe; They were just like the rest of our bravest and best, Though they've only the silver to show. Their bodies stayed here, but their spirits were there; And the boys who looked death in the face, For the cause had no fear--for they knew, waiting here, There were many to fill up each place. Oh, the ships came and went, till the battle was spent And the tyrant went down with the blow! But he still might have reigned but for those who remained And have only the silver to show. So here's to the soldiers who never saw France, And here's to the boys unafraid! Let us give them their due; they were glorious, too, And it isn't their fault that they stayed. They were eager to share in the sacrifice there; Let them share in the peace that we know. For we know they were brave, by the service they gave, Though they've only the silver to show. Tinkerin' at Home Some folks there be who seem to need excitement fast and furious, An' reckon all the joys that have no thrill in 'em are spurious. Some think that pleasure's only found down where the lights are shining, An' where an orchestra's at work the while the folks are dining. Still others seek it at their play, while some there are who roam, But I am happiest when I am tinkerin' 'round the home. I like to wear my oldest clothes, an' fuss around the yard, An' dig a flower bed now an' then, and pensively regard The mornin' glories climbin' all along the wooden fence, An' do the little odds an' ends that aren't of consequence. I like to trim the hedges, an' touch up the paint a bit, An' sort of take a homely pride in keepin' all things fit. An' I don't envy rich folks who are sailin' o'er the foam When I can spend a day or two in tinkerin' 'round the home. If I were fixed with money, as some other people are, I'd take things mighty easy; I'd not travel very far. I'd jes' wear my oldest trousers an' my flannel shirt, an' stay An' guard my vine an' fig tree in an old man's tender way. I'd bathe my soul in sunshine every mornin', and I'd bend My back to pick the roses; Oh, I'd be a watchful friend To everything around the place, an' in the twilight gloam I'd thank the Lord for lettin' me jes' tinker 'round the home. But since I've got to hustle in the turmoil of the town, An' don't expect I'll ever be allowed to settle down An' live among the roses an' the tulips an' the phlox, Or spend my time in carin' for the noddin' hollyhocks, I've come to the conclusion that perhaps in Heaven I may Get a chance to know the pleasures that I'm yearnin' for to-day; An' I'm goin' to ask the good Lord, when I've climbed the golden stair, If he'll kindly let me tinker 'round the home we've got up there. When An Old Man Gets to Thinking When an old man gets to thinking of the years he's traveled through, He hears again the laughter of the little ones he knew. He isn't counting money, and he isn't planning schemes; He's at home with friendly people in the shadow of his dreams. When he's lived through all life's trials and his sun is in the west, When he's tasted all life's pleasures and he knows which ones were best, Then his mind is stored with riches, not of silver and of gold, But of happy smiling faces and the joys he couldn't hold. Could we see what he is seeing as he's dreaming in his chair, We should find no scene of struggle in the distance over there. As he counts his memory treasures, we should see some shady lane Where's he walking with his sweetheart, young, and arm in arm again. We should meet with friendly people, simple, tender folk and kind, That had once been glad to love him. In his dreaming we should find All the many little beauties that enrich the lives of men That the eyes of youth scarce notice and the poets seldom pen. Age will tell you that the memory is the treasure-house of man. Gold and fleeting fame may vanish, but life's riches never can; For the little home of laughter and the voice of every friend And the joys of real contentment linger with us to the end. My Job I wonder where's a better job than buying cake and meat, And chocolate drops and sugar buns for little folks to eat? And who has every day to face a finer round of care Than buying frills and furbelows for little folks to wear? Oh, you may brag how much you know and boast of what you do, And think an all-important post has been assigned to you, But I've the greatest job on earth, a task I'll never lose; I've several pairs of little feet to keep equipped with shoes. I rather like the job I have, though humble it may be, And little gold or little fame may come from it to me; It seems to me that life can give to man no finer joy Than buying little breeches for a sturdy little boy. My job is not to run the world or pile up bonds and stocks; It's just to keep two little girls in plain and fancy frocks; To dress and feed a growing boy whose legs are brown and stout, And furnish stockings just as fast as he can wear them out. I would not for his crown and throne change places with a king, I've got the finest job on earth and unto it I'll cling; I know no better task than mine, no greater chance for joys, Than serving day by day the needs of little girls and boys. A Good Name Men talk too much of gold and fame, And not enough about a name; And yet a good name's better far Than all earth's glistening jewels are. Who holds his name above all price And chooses every sacrifice To keep his earthly record clear, Can face the world without a fear. Who never cheats nor lies for gain, A poor man may, perhaps, remain, Yet, when at night he goes to rest, No little voice within his breast Disturbs his slumber. Conscience clear, He falls asleep with naught to fear And when he wakes the world to face He is not tainted by disgrace. Who keeps his name without a stain Wears no man's brand and no man's chain; He need not fear to speak his mind In dread of what the world may find. He then is master of his will; None may command him to be still, Nor force him, when he would stand fast, To flinch before his hidden past. Not all the gold that men may claim Can cover up a deed of shame; Not all the fame of victory sweet Can free the man who played the cheat; He lives a slave unto the last Unto the shame that mars his past. He only freedom here may own Whose name a stain has never known. Alone Strange thoughts come to the man alone; 'Tis then, if ever, he talks with God, And views himself as a single clod In the soil of life where the souls are grown. 'Tis then he questions the why and where, The start and end of his years and days, And what is blame and what is praise, And what is ugly and what is fair. When a man has drawn from the busy throng To the sweet retreat of the silent hours, Low voices whisper of higher powers. He catches the strain of some far-off song, And the sham fades out and his eyes can see, Not the man he is in the day's hot strife And the greed and grind of a selfish life, But the soul of the man he is to be. He feels the throbbing of life divine, And catches a glimpse of the greater plan; He questions the purpose and work of man. In the hours of silence his mind grows fine; He seeks to learn what is kept unknown; He turns from self and its garb of clay And dwells on the soul and the higher way. Strange thoughts come when a man's alone. Shut-Ins We're gittin' so we need again To see the sproutin' seed again. We've been shut up all winter long Within our narrow rooms; We're sort o' shriveled up an' dry-- Ma's cranky-like an' quick to cry; We need the blue skies overhead, The garden with its blooms. I'm findin' fault with this an' that! I threw my bootjack at the cat Because he rubbed against my leg-- I guess I'm all on edge; I'm fidgety an' fussy too, An' Ma finds fault with all I do; It seems we need to see again The green upon the hedge. We've been shut up so long, it seems We've lost the glamour of our dreams. We've narrowed down as people will Till fault is all we see. We need to stretch our souls in air Where there is room enough to spare; We need the sight o' something green On every shrub an' tree. But soon our petulance will pass-- Our feet will tread the dew-kissed grass; Our souls will break their narrow cells, An' swell with love once more. And with the blue skies overhead, The harsh an' hasty words we've said Will vanish with the snow an' ice, When spring unlocks the door. The sun will make us sweet again With blossoms at our feet again; We'll wander, arm in arm, the ways Where beauty reigns supreme. An' Ma an' I shall smile again, An' be ourselves awhile again, An' claim, like prisoners set free, The charm of every dream. The Cut-Down Trousers When father couldn't wear them mother cut them down for me; She took the slack in fore and aft, and hemmed them at the knee; They fitted rather loosely, but the things that made me glad Were the horizontal pockets that those good old trousers had. They shone like patent leather just where well-worn breeches do, But the cloth in certain portions was considered good as new, And I know that I was envied by full many a richer lad For the horizontal pockets that those good old knickers had. They were cut along the waist line, with the opening straight and wide, And there wasn't any limit to what you could get inside; They would hold a peck of marbles, and a knife and top and string, And snakes and frogs and turtles; there was room for everything. Then our fortune changed a little, and my mother said that she Wouldn't bother any longer fitting father's duds on me, But the store clothes didn't please me; there were times they made me sad, For I missed those good old pockets that my father's trousers had. Dinner-Time Tuggin' at your bottle, An' it's O, you're mighty sweet! Just a bunch of dimples From your top-knot to your feet, Lying there an' gooin' In the happiest sort o' way, Like a rosebud peekin' at me In the early hours o' day; Gloating over goodness That you know an' sense an' clutch, An' smilin' at your daddy, Who loves you, O, so much! Tuggin' at your bottle, As you nestle in your crib, With your daddy grinnin' at you 'Cause you've dribbled on your bib, An' you gurgle an' you chortle Like a brook in early Spring; An' you kick your pink feet gayly, An' I think you'd like to sing. All you wanted was your dinner, Daddy knew it too, you bet! An' the moment that you got it Then you ceased to fuss an' fret. Tuggin' at your bottle, Not a care, excepting when You lose the rubber nipple, But you find it soon again; An' the gurglin' an' the gooin' An' the chortlin' start anew, An' the kickin' an' the squirmin' Show the wondrous joy o' you. But I'll bet you're not as happy At your dinner, little tot, As the weather-beaten daddy Who is bendin' o'er your cot! The Pay Envelope Is it all in the envelope holding your pay? Is that all you're working for day after day? Are you getting no more from your toil than the gold That little enclosure of paper will hold? Is that all you're after; is that all you seek? Does that close the deal at the end of the week? Is it all in the envelope holding his pay? Is that all you offer him day after day? Is that all he wins by his labor from you? Is that the reward for the best he can do? Would you say of your men, when the week has been turned, That all they've received is the money they've earned? Is it all in the envelope, workman and chief? Then loyalty's days must be fleeting and brief; If you measure your work by its value in gold The sum of your worth by your pay shall be told; And if something of friendship your men do not find Outside of their envelopes, you're the wrong kind. If all that you offer is silver and gold, You haven't a man in your plant you can hold. If all that you're after each week is your pay, You are doing your work in a short-sighted way; For the bigger rewards it is useless to hope If you never can see past the pay envelope. The Evening Prayer Little girlie, kneeling there, Speaking low your evening prayer, In your cunning little nightie With your pink toes peeping through, With your eyes closed and your hands Tightly clasped, while daddy stands In the doorway, just to hear the "God bless papa," lisped by you, You don't know just what I feel, As I watch you nightly kneel By your trundle bed and whisper Soft and low your little prayer! But in all I do or plan, I'm a bigger, better man Every time I hear you asking God to make my journey fair. Little girlie, kneeling there, Lisping low your evening prayer, Asking God above to bless me At the closing of each day, Oft the tears come to my eyes, And I feel a big lump rise In my throat, that I can't swallow, And I sometimes turn away. In the morning, when I wake, And my post of duty take, I go forth with new-born courage To accomplish what is fair; And, throughout the live-long day, I am striving every way To come back to you each evening And be worthy of your prayer. Thoughts of a Father We've never seen the Father here, but we have known the Son, The finest type of manhood since the world was first begun. And, summing up the works of God, I write with reverent pen, The greatest is the Son He sent to cheer the lives of men. Through Him we learned the ways of God and found the Father's love; The Son it was who won us back to Him who reigns above. The Lord did not come down himself to prove to men His worth, He sought our worship through the Child He placed upon the earth. How can I best express my life? Wherein does greatness lie? How can I long remembrance win, since I am born to die? Both fame and gold are selfish things; their charms may quickly flee, But I'm the father of a boy who came to speak for me. In him lies all I hope to be; his splendor shall be mine; I shall have done man's greatest work if only he is fine. If some day he shall help the world long after I am dead, In all that men shall say of him my praises shall be said. It matters not what I may win of fleeting gold or fame, My hope of joy depends alone on what my boy shall claim. My story must be told through him, for him I work and plan, Man's greatest duty is to be the father of a man. When a Little Baby Dies When a little baby dies And its wee form silent lies, And its little cheeks seem waxen And its little hands are still, Then your soul gives way to treason, And you cry: "O, God, what reason, O, what justice and what mercy Have You shown us by Your will? "There are, O, so many here Of the yellow leaf and sere, Who are anxious, aye, and ready To respond unto Your call; Yet You pass them by unheeding, And You set our hearts to bleeding! "O," you mutter, "God, how cruel Do Your vaunted mercies fall!" Yet some day, in after years, When Death's angel once more nears, And the unknown, silent river Looms as darkly as a pall, You will hear your baby saying, "Mamma, come to me, I'm staying With my arms outstretched to greet you," And you'll understand it all. To the Boy I have no wish, my little lad, To climb the towering heights of fame. I am content to be your dad And share with you each pleasant game. I am content to hold your hand And walk along life's path with you, And talk of things we understand-- The birds and trees and skies of blue. Though some may seek the smiles of kings, For me your laughter's joy enough; I have no wish to claim the things Which lure men into pathways rough. I'm happiest when you and I, Unmindful of life's bitter cares, Together watch the clouds drift by, Or follow boyhood's thoroughfares. I crave no more of life than this: Continuance of such a trust; Your smile, whate'er the morning is, Until my clay returns to dust. If but this comradeship may last Until I end my earthly task-- Your hand and mine by love held fast-- Fame has no charm for which I'd ask. I would not trade one day with you To wear the purple robes of power, Nor drop your hand from mine to do Some great deed in a selfish hour. For you have brought me joy serene And made my soul supremely glad. In life rewarded I have been; 'Twas all worth while to be your dad. His Dog Pete bristles when the doorbell rings. Last night he didn't act the same. Dogs have a way of knowin' things, An' when the dreaded cable came, He looked at mother an' he whined His soft, low sign of somethin' wrong, As though he knew that we should find The news that we had feared so long. He's followed me about the place An' hasn't left my heels to-day; He's rubbed his nose against my face As if to kiss my grief away. There on his plate beside the door You'll see untouched his mornin' meal. I never understood before That dogs share every hurt you feel. We've got the pride o' service fine As consolation for the blow; We know by many a written line He went the way he wished to go. We know that God an' Country found Our boy a servant brave an' true-- But Pete must sadly walk around An' miss the master that he knew. The mother's bearing up as well As such a noble mother would; The hurt I feel I needn't tell-- I guess by all it's understood. But Pete--his dog--that used to wait Each night to hear his cheery call, An' romped about him at the gate, Has felt the blow the worst of all. Lullaby The golden dreamboat's ready, all her silken sails are spread, And the breeze is gently blowing to the fairy port of Bed, And the fairy's captain's waiting while the busy sandman flies With the silver dust of slumber, closing every baby's eyes. Oh, the night is rich with moonlight and the sea is calm with peace, And the angels fly to guard you and their watch shall never cease, And the fairies there await you; they have splendid dreams to spin; You shall hear them gayly singing as the dreamboat's putting in. Like the ripple of the water does the dreamboat's whistle blow, Only baby ears can catch it when it comes the time to go, Only little ones may journey on so wonderful a ship, And go drifting off to slumber with no care to mar the trip. Oh, the little eyes are heavy but the little soul is light; It shall never know a sorrow or a terror through the night. And at last when dawn is breaking and the dreamboat's trip is o'er, You shall wake to find the mother smiling over you once more. The Old-Fashioned Parents The good old-fashioned mothers and the good old-fashioned dads, With their good old-fashioned lassies and their good old-fashioned lads, Still walk the lanes of loving in their simple, tender ways, As they used to do back yonder in the good old-fashioned days. They dwell in every city and they live in every town, Contentedly and happy and not hungry for renown; On every street you'll find 'em in their simple garments clad, The good old-fashioned mother and the good old-fashioned dad. There are some who sigh for riches, there are some who yearn for fame, And a few misguided people who no longer blush at shame; But the world is full of mothers, and the world is full of dads; Who are making sacrifices for their little girls and lads. They are growing old together, arm in arm they walk along, And their hearts with love are beating and their voices sweet with song; They still share their disappointments and they share their pleasures, too, And whatever be their fortune, to each other they are true. They are watching at the bedside of a baby pale and white, And they kneel and pray together for the care of God at night; They are romping with their children in the fields of clover sweet, And devotedly they guard them from the perils of the street. They are here in countless numbers, just as they have always been, And their glory is untainted by the selfish and the mean. And I'd hate to still be living, it would dismal be and sad, If we'd no old-fashioned mother and we'd no old-fashioned dad. The Fun of Forgiving Sometimes I'm almost glad to hear when I get home that they've been bad; And though I try to look severe, within my heart I'm really glad When mother sadly tells to me the list of awful things they've done, Because when they come tearfully, forgiving them is so much fun. I like to have them all alone, with no one near to hear or see, Then as their little faults they own, I like to take them on my knee And talk it over and pretend the whipping soon must be begun; And then to kiss them at the end--forgiving them is so much fun. Within the world there's no such charm as children penitent and sad, Who put two soft and chubby arms around your neck, when they've been bad. And as you view their trembling lips, away your temper starts to run, And from your mind all anger slips--forgiving them is so much fun. If there were nothing to forgive I wonder if we'd love them so; If they were wise enough to live as grown-ups do, and always go Along the pleasant path of right, with ne'er a fault from sun to sun, A lot of joys we'd miss at night--forgiving them is so much fun. Tonsils One day the doctor came because my throat was feeling awful sore, And when he looked inside to see he said: "It's like it was before; It's tonserlitis, sure enough. You'd better tell her Pa to-day To make his mind up now to have that little party right away." I'd heard him talk that way before when Bud was sick, and so I knew That what they did to him that time, to me they planned to come and do. An' when my Pa came home that night Ma said: "She can't grow strong and stout Until the doctor comes an' takes her addynoids an' tonsils out." An' then Pa took me on his knee and kissed me solemn-like an' grave, An' said he guessed it was the best, an' then he asked me to be brave. Ma said: "Don't look at her like that, it's nothing to be scared about"; An' Pa said: "True, but still I wish she needn't have her tonsils out." Next morning when I woke, Ma said I couldn't have my breakfast then, Because the doctors and the nurse had said they would be here by ten. When they got here the doctor smiled an' gave me some perfume to smell, An' told me not to cry at all, coz pretty soon I would be well. When I woke up Ma smiled an' said: "It's all right now"; but in my head It seemed like wheels were buzzing round and everywhere I looked was red. An' I can't eat hard cookies yet, nor use my voice at all to shout, But Pa an' Ma seem awful glad that I have had my tonsils out. At Dawn They come to my room at the break of the day, With their faces all smiles and their minds full of play; They come on their tip-toes and silently creep To the edge of the bed where I'm lying asleep, And then at a signal, on which they agree, With a shout of delight they jump right onto me. They lift up my eyelids and tickle my nose, And scratch at my cheeks with their little pink toes; And sometimes to give them a laugh and a scare I snap and I growl like a cinnamon bear; Then over I roll, and with three kids astride I gallop away on their feather-bed ride. I've thought it all over. Man's biggest mistake Is in wanting to sleep when his babes are awake; When they come to his room for that first bit of fun He should make up his mind that his sleeping is done; He should share in the laughter they bring to his side And start off the day with that feather-bed ride. Oh they're fun at their breakfast and fun at their lunch; Any hour of the day they're a glorious bunch! When they're togged up for Sundays they're certainly fine, And I'm glad in my heart I can call them all mine, But I think that the time that I like them the best Is that hour in the morning before they are dressed. Names and Faces I do not ask a store of wealth, Nor special gift of power; I hope always for strength and health To brave each troubled hour. But life would be distinctly good, However low my place is, Had I a memory that could Remember names and faces. I am not troubled by the fact That common skill is mine; I care not that my life has lacked The glory of the fine. But, oh, when someone speaks to me, My cheeks grow red with shame Because I'm sure that he must see That I have lost his name. Embarrassment, where'er I go, Pursues me night and day; I hear some good friend's glad "Hello," And stop a word to say. His voice melodiously may ring, But that's all lost on me, For all the time I'm wondering Whoever can he be. I envy no man's talent rare Save his who can repeat The names of men, no matter where It is they chance to meet. For he escapes the bitter blow, The sorrow and regret, Of greeting friends he ought to know As though they'd never met. I do not ask a store of gold, High station here, or fame; I have no burning wish to hold The popular acclaim; Life's lanes I'd gladly journey through, Nor mind the stony places, Could I but do as others do And know men's names and faces! Pleasing Dad When I was but a little lad, not more than two or three, I noticed in a general way my dad was proud of me. He liked the little ways I had, the simple things I said; Sometimes he gave me words of praise, sometimes he stroked my head; And when I'd done a thing worth while, the thought that made me glad Was always that I'd done my best, and that would please my dad. I can look back to-day and see how proud he used to be When I'd come home from school and say they'd recommended me. I didn't understand it then, for school boys never do, But in a vague and general way it seems to me I knew That father took great pride in me, and wanted me to shine, And that it meant a lot to him when I'd done something fine. Then one day out of school I went, amid the great world's hum, An office boy, and father watched each night to see me come. And I recall how proud he was of me that wondrous day When I could tell him that, unasked, the firm had raised my pay. I still can feel that hug he gave, I understand the joy It meant to him to learn that men were trusting in his boy. I wonder will it please my dad? How oft the thought occurs When I am stumbling on the paths, beset with briars and burrs! He isn't here to see me now, alone my race I run, And yet some day I'll go to him and tell him all I've done. And oh I pray that when we meet beyond life's stormy sea That he may claim the old-time joy of being proud of me. Living Flowers "I'm never alone in the garden," he said. "I'm never alone with the flowers. It seems like I'm meeting the wonderful dead out here with these blossoms of ours. An' there's never a bush or a plant or a tree, but somebody loved it of old. An' the souls of the angels come talkin' to me through the petals of crimson an' gold. "The lilacs in spring bring the mother once more, an' she lives in the midsummer rose. She smiles in the peony clump at the door, an' sings when the four o'clocks close. She loved every blossom God gave us to own, an' daily she gave it her care. So never I walk in the garden alone, for I feel that the mother's still there. "These are the pinks that a baby once kissed, still spicy with fragrance an' fair. The years have been long since her laughter I've missed, but her spirit is hovering there. The roses that ramble and twine on the wall were planted by one that was kind An' I'm sure as I stand here an' gaze on them all, that his soul has still lingered behind. "I'm never alone in the garden," he said, "I have many to talk with an' see, For never a flower comes to bloom in its bed, but it brings back a loved one to me. An' I fancy whenever I'm bendin' above these blossoms of crimson an' gold, That I'm seein' an' hearin' the ones that I love, who lived in the glad days of old." The Common Joys These joys are free to all who live, The rich and poor, the great and low: The charms which kindness has to give, The smiles which friendship may bestow, The honor of a well-spent life, The glory of a purpose true, High courage in the stress of strife, And peace when every task is through. Nor class nor caste nor race nor creed, Nor greater might can take away The splendor of an honest deed. Who nobly serves from day to day Shall walk the road of life with pride, With friends who recognize his worth, For never are these joys denied Unto the humblest man on earth. Not all may rise to world-wide fame, Not all may gather fortune's gold, Not all life's luxuries may claim; In differing ways success is told. But all may know the peace of mind Which comes from service brave and true; The poorest man can still be kind, And nobly live till life is through. These joys abound for one and all: The pride of fearing no man's scorn, Of standing firm, where others fall, Of bearing well what must be borne. He that shall do an honest deed Shall win an honest deed's rewards; For these, no matter race or creed, Life unto every man affords. His Example There are little eyes upon you, and they're watching night and day; There are little ears that quickly take in every word you say; There are little hands all eager to do everything you do, And a little boy that's dreaming of the day he'll be like you. You're the little fellow's idol, you're the wisest of the wise; In his little mind about you no suspicions ever rise; He believes in you devoutly, holds that all you say and do He will say and do in your way when he's grown up just like you. Oh, it sometimes makes me shudder when I hear my boy repeat Some careless phrase I've uttered in the language of the street; And it sets my heart to grieving when some little fault I see And I know beyond all doubting that he picked it up from me. There's a wide-eyed little fellow who believes you're always right, And his ears are always open and he watches day and night; You are setting an example every day in all you do For the little boy who's waiting to grow up to be like you. The Change-Worker A feller don't start in to think of himself, an' the part that he's playin' down here, When there's nobody lookin' to him fer support, an' he don't give a thought to next year. His faults don't seem big an' his habits no worse than a whole lot of others he knows, An' he don't seem to care what his neighbors may say, as heedlessly forward he goes. He don't stop to think if it's wrong or it's right; with his speech he is careless or glib, Till the minute the nurse lets him into the room to see what's asleep in the crib. An' then as he looks at that bundle o' red, an' the wee little fingers an' toes, An' he knows it's his flesh an' his blood that is there, an' will be just like him when it grows, It comes in a flash to a feller right then, there is more here than pleasure or pelf, An' the sort of a man his baby will be is the sort of a man he's himself. Then he kisses the mother an' kisses the child, an' goes out determined that he Will endeavor to be just the sort of a man that he's wantin' his baby to be. A feller don't think that it matters so much what he does till a baby arrives; He sows his wild oats an' he has his gay fling an' headlong in pleasure he dives; An' a drink more or less doesn't matter much then, for life is a comedy gay, But the moment a crib is put in the home, an' a baby has come there to stay, He thinks of the things he has done in the past, an' it strikes him as hard as a blow, That the path he has trod in the past is a path that he don't want his baby to go. I ain't much to preach, an' I can't just express in the way that your clever men can The thoughts that I think, but it seems to me now that when God wants to rescue a man From himself an' the follies that harmless appear, but which, under the surface, are grim, He summons the angel of infancy sweet, an' sends down a baby to him. For in that way He opens his eyes to himself, and He gives him the vision to see That his duty's to be just the sort of a man that he's wantin' his baby to be. A Convalescin' Woman A convalescin' woman does the strangest sort o' things, An' it's wonderful the courage that a little new strength brings; O, it's never safe to leave her for an hour or two alone, Or you'll find th' doctor's good work has been quickly overthrown. There's that wife o' mine, I reckon she's a sample of 'em all; She's been mighty sick, I tell you, an' to-day can scarcely crawl, But I left her jes' this mornin' while I fought potater bugs, An' I got back home an' caught her in the back yard shakin' rugs. I ain't often cross with Nellie, an' I let her have her way, But it made me mad as thunder when I got back home to-day An' found her doin' labor that'd tax a big man's strength; An' I guess I lost my temper, for I scolded her at length, 'Til I seen her teardrops fallin' an' she said: "I couldn't stand To see those rugs so dirty, so I took 'em all in hand, An' it ain't hurt me nuther--see, I'm gettin' strong again--" An' I said: "Doggone it! can't ye leave sich work as that fer men?" Once I had her in a hospittle fer weeks an' weeks an' weeks, An' she wasted most to nothin', an' th' roses left her cheeks; An' one night I feared I'd lose her; 'twas the turnin' point, I guess, Coz th' next day I remember that th' doctor said: "Success!" Well, I brought her home an' told her that for two months she must stay A-sittin' in her rocker an' jes' watch th' kids at play. An' th' first week she was patient, but I mind the way I swore On th' day when I discovered 'at she'd scrubbed th' kitchen floor. O, you can't keep wimmin quiet, an' they ain't a bit like men; They're hungerin' every minute jes' to get to work again; An' you've got to watch 'em allus, when you know they're weak an' ill, Coz th' minute that yer back is turned they'll labor fit to kill. Th' house ain't cleaned to suit 'em an' they seem to fret an' fume 'Less they're busy doin' somethin' with a mop or else a broom; An' it ain't no use to scold 'em an' it ain't no use to swear, Coz th' next time they will do it jes' the minute you ain't there. The Doubtful To-Morrow Whenever I walk through God's Acres of Dead I wonder how often the mute voices said: "I will do a kind deed or will lighten a sorrow Or rise to a sacrifice splendid--to-morrow." I wonder how many fine thoughts unexpressed Were lost to the world when they went to their rest; I wonder what beautiful deeds they'd have done If they had but witnessed to-morrow's bright sun. Oh, if the dead grieve, it is not for their fate, For death comes to all of us early or late, But their sighs of regret and their burdens of sorrow Are born of the joys they'd have scattered to-morrow. Do the friends they'd have cheered know the thoughts of the dead? Do they treasure to-day the last words that were said? What mem'ries would sweeten, what hearts cease to burn, If but for a day the dead friends could return! We know not the hour that our summons shall come; We know not the time that our voice shall be dumb, Yet even as they, to our ultimate sorrow, We leave much that's fine for that doubtful to-morrow. Tommy Atkins' Way He was battle-scarred and ugly with the marks of shot and shell, And we knew that British Tommy had a stirring tale to tell, So we asked him where he got it and what disarranged his face, And he answered, blushing scarlet: "In a nawsty little place." There were medals on his jacket, but he wouldn't tell us why. "A bit lucky, gettin' this one," was the sum of his reply. He had fought a horde of Prussians with his back against the wall, And he told us, when we questioned: "H'it was nothing arfter h'all." Not a word of what he'd suffered, not a word of what he'd seen, Not a word about the fury of the hell through which he'd been. All he said was: "When you're cornered, h'and you've got no plyce to go, You've just got to stand up to it! You cawn't 'elp yourself, you know. "H'it was just a bit unpleasant, when the shells were droppin' thick," And he tapped his leather leggins with his little bamboo stick. "What did H'I do? Nothing, really! Nothing more than just my share; Some one h'else would gladly do it, but H'I 'appened to be there." When this sturdy British Tommy quits the battlefields of earth And St. Peter asks his spirit to recount his deeds of worth, I fancy I can hear him, with his curious English drawl, Saying: "Nothing, nothing really, that's worth mentioning at h'all." The Right Family With time our notions allus change, An' years make old idees seem strange-- Take Mary there--time was when she Thought one child made a family, An' when our eldest, Jim, was born She used to say, both night an' morn': "One little one to love an' keep, To guard awake, an' watch asleep; To bring up right an' lead him through Life's path is all we ought to do." Two years from then our Jennie came, But Mary didn't talk the same; "Now that's just right," she said to me, "We've got the proper family-- A boy an' girl, God sure is good; It seems as though He understood That I've been hopin' every way To have a little girl some day; Sometimes I've prayed the whole night through-- One ain't enough; we needed two." Then as the months went rollin' on, One day the stork brought little John, An' Mary smiled an' said to me; "The proper family is three; Two boys, a girl to romp an' play-- Jus' work enough to fill the day. I never had enough to do, The months that we had only two; Three's jus' right, pa, we don't want more." Still time went on an' we had four. An' that was years ago, I vow, An' we have six fine children now; An' Mary's plumb forgot the day She used to sit an' sweetly say That one child was enough for her To love an' give the proper care; One, two or three or four or five-- Why, goodness gracious, sakes alive, If God should send her ten to-night, She'd vow her fam'ly was jus' right! A Lesson from Golf He couldn't use his driver any better on the tee Than the chap that he was licking, who just happened to be me; I could hit them with a brassie just as straight and just as far, But I piled up several sevens while he made a few in par; And he trimmed me to a finish, and I know the reason why: He could keep his temper better when he dubbed a shot than I. His mashie stroke is choppy, without any follow through; I doubt if he will ever, on a short hole, cop a two, But his putts are straight and deadly, and he doesn't even frown When he's tried to hole a long one and just fails to get it down. On the fourteenth green I faded; there he put me on the shelf, And it's not to his discredit when I say I licked myself. He never whined or whimpered when a shot of his went wrong; Never kicked about his troubles, but just plodded right along. When he flubbed an easy iron, though I knew that he was vexed, He merely shrugged his shoulders, and then coolly played the next, While I flew into a frenzy over every dub I made And was loud in my complaining at the dismal game I played. Golf is like the game of living; it will show up what you are; If you take your troubles badly you will never play to par. You may be a fine performer when your skies are bright and blue But disaster is the acid that shall prove the worth of you; So just meet your disappointments with a cheery sort of grin, For the man who keeps his temper is the man that's sure to win. Father's Chore My Pa can hit his thumbnail with a hammer and keep still; He can cut himself while shaving an' not swear; If a ladder slips beneath him an' he gets a nasty spill He can smile as though he really didn't care. But the pan beneath the ice-box--when he goes to empty that-- Then a sound-proof room the children have to hunt; For we have a sad few minutes in our very pleasant flat When the water in it splashes down his front. My Pa believes his temper should be all the time controlled; He doesn't rave at every little thing; When his collar-button underneath the chiffonier has rolled A snatch of merry ragtime he will sing. But the pan beneath the ice box--when to empty that he goes-- As he stoops to drag it out we hear a grunt; From the kitchen comes a rumble, an' then everybody knows That he splashed the water in it down his front. Now the distance from the ice box to the sink's not very far-- I'm sure it isn't over twenty feet-- But though very short the journey, it is long enough for Pa As he travels it disaster grim to meet. And it's seldom that he makes it without accident, although In the summer time it is his nightly stunt; And he says a lot of language that no gentleman should know When the water in it splashes down his front. The March o' Man Down to work o' mornings, an' back to home at nights, Down to hours o' labor, an' home to sweet delights; Down to care an' trouble, an' home to love an' rest, With every day a good one, an' every evening blest. Down to dreary dollars, an' back to home to play, From love to work an' back to love, so slips the day away. From babies back to business an' back to babes again, From parting kiss to welcome kiss, this marks the march o' men. Some care between our laughter, a few hours filled with strife, A time to stand on duty, then home to babes and wife; The bugle sounds o' mornings to call us to the fray, But sweet an' low 'tis love that calls us home at close o' day. INDEX OF FIRST LINES A convalescin' woman does the strangest sort o' things, 176 A feller don't start in to think of himself, 174 A feller isn't thinkin' mean out fishin', 48 A little ship goes out to sea, 66 Along the paths o' glory there are faces new to-day, 61 An apple tree beside the way, 60 Before you came, my little lad, 77 Best way to read a book I know, 122 Cliffs of Scotland, guard them well, 63 Down to work o' mornings an' back to home at nights, 188 Eagerly he took my dime, 133 First thing in the morning, last I hear at night, 72 Full many a flag the breeze has kissed, 28 Give me the house where the toys are strewn, 30 Glad to get back home again, 82 God grant me these: the strength to do, 17 God grant that we shall never see, 76 God made the little boys for fun, 103 Got a sliver in my hand, 34 He couldn't use his driver any better on the tee, 184 He shall be great who serves his country well, 105 He was battle-scarred and ugly, 180 I can't help thinkin' o' the lad, 94 I do not ask a store of wealth, 166 I don't see why Pa likes him so, 26 I have no wish, my little lad, 156 I hold the finest picture books, 53 I like to get to thinking of the old days that are gone, 128 I look into the faces of the people passing by, 22 I remember the excitement and the terrible alarm, 24 I think my country needs my vote, 131 I wish I was a poet like the men that write in books, 90 I wonder what the trees will say, 134 I wonder where's a better job than buying cake and meat, 142 I would rather be the daddy, 52 I'd like to think when life is done, 36 If I could have my wish to-night, 120 I'm just the man to make things right, 55 "I'm never alone in the garden," he said, 170 I'm sorry for a feller if he hasn't any aunt, 88 Is it all in the envelope holding your pay? 150 Isn't it fine when the day is done, 13 It is faith that bridges the land of breath, 111 Last night I caught him on his knees, 70 Let loose the sails of love and let them fill, 33 Little girlie, kneeling there, 152 Little lady at the altar, 58 Men talk too much of gold and fame, 143 My father is a peaceful man, 46 My father knows the proper way, 80 My Pa can hit his thumbnail, 186 Oh, my shoulders grow aweary, 112 Old women say that men don't know, 124 One day the doctor came because my throat was feeling awful sore, 163 One never knows how far a word of kindness goes, 31 Pete bristles when the doorbell rings, 157 She is gentle, kind and fair, 67 She never closed her eyes in sleep, 20 "Some day," says Ma, "I'm goin' to get, 64 Some folks there be who seem to need excitement, 138 Some have the gift of song, 98 Somebody said that it couldn't be done, 37 Sometimes I'm almost glad to hear, 162 Strange thoughts come to the man alone, 145 Sure, they get stubborn at times, 79 "Tell us a story," comes the cry, 18 The children bring us laughter, 108 The dead return; I know they do, 84 The doctor leads a busy life, 114 The father toils at his work all day, 123 The golden dreamboat's ready, 158 The good old-fashioned mothers, 160 The kids at our house number three, 117 The little house has grown too small, 50 The little woman, to her I bow, 92 There are little eyes upon you, 172 There may be finer pleasures than just tramping with your boy, 116 There will always be something to do, 119 There's a bump on his brow, 69 There's a little chap at our house, 56 There's nothing cheers a fellow up just like a hearty greeting, 15 There's the mother at the doorway, 11 These joys are free to all who live, 171 They come to my room at the break of day, 165 "They tie you down," a woman said, 74 They've hung their stockings up with care, 102 Though some may yearn for titles great, 44 Tuggin' at your bottle, 149 Under the roof where the laughter rings, 32 We cannot count our friends, nor say, 43 We play at our house and have all sorts of fun, 16 We're gittin' so we need again, 146 We've never seen the Father here, 153 Whatever the task and whatever the risk, 109 When a little baby dies, 155 When an old man gets to thinking, 140 When father couldn't wear them, 147 "When I am rich," he used to say, 130 When I was but a little lad, 168 When mother baked an angel cake, 96 When Mrs. Malone got a letter from Pat, 41 When we've honored the heroes returning from France, 136 When winter shuts a fellow in, 86 Whenever I walk through God's Acres of Dead, 178 Who shall sit at the table, then, 40 With time our notions allus change, 182 You can brag about the famous men you know, 126 You can learn a lot from boys, 100 You never hear the robins brag, 38 You shall have satin and silk to wear, 106 "You're spoiling them!" the mother cries, 14 
18909	----	POEMS TEACHERS ASK FOR Selected by READERS OF "NORMAL INSTRUCTOR-PRIMARY PLANS" COMPRISING THE POEMS MOST FREQUENTLY REQUESTED FOR PUBLICATION IN THAT MAGAZINE ON THE PAGE "POEMS OUR READERS HAVE ASKED FOR" INDEX Abou Ben Adhem _Hunt_ 30 Abraham Lincoln _T. Taylor_ 16 All Things Bright and Beautiful _Alexander_ 41 American Flag, The _Drake_ 133 Answer to "Rock Me to Sleep" 103 Arrow and the Song, The _Longfellow_ 74 Asleep at the Switch _Hoey_ 56 At School-Close _Whittier_ 65 Aunt Tabitha 45 Autumn Woods _Bryant_ 48 Baby, The _Macdonald_ 22 Barbara Frietchie _Whittier_ 71 Barefoot Boy, The _Whittier_ 176 Bay Billy _Gassaway_ 104 Be Strong _Babcock_ 174 Better Than Gold _Smart_ 143 Bingen on the Rhine _Norton_ 121 Blue and the Gray, The _Finch_ 183 Bluebird's Song, The _E.H. Miller_ 73 Bobby Shaftoe 8 Boy and His Stomach, A 93 Boy's Song, A _Hogg_ 172 "Breathes There the Man" _Scott_ 185 Brier-Rose _Boyesen_ 144 Brook, The _Tennyson_ 162 Brown Thrush, The _Larcom_ 181 Bugle Song, The _Tennyson_ 183 Builders, The _Longfellow_ 181 Building of the Ship, The _Longfellow_ 63 Burial of Sir John Moore, The _Wolfe_ 190 Calf Path, The _Foss_ 110 Casey at the Bat _Thayer_ 100 Casey's Revenge _Wilson_ 101 Chambered Nautilus, The _Holmes_ 169 Character of the Happy Warrior _Wordsworth_ 165 Charge of the Light Brigade, The _Tennyson_ 166 Children's Hour, The _Longfellow_ 70 Children, The _Dickinson_ 53 Child's Thought of God, A _E.B. Browning_ 183 Christ in Flanders 18 Christmas Everywhere _Brooks_ 158 Cloud, The _Shelley_ 159 College Oil Cans _McGuire_ 122 Columbus _Joaquin Miller_ 83 Concord Hymn, The _Emerson_ 99 Corn Song, The _Whittier_ 171 Crossing the Bar _Tennyson_ 186 Curfew Must Not Ring To-night _Thorpe_ 24 Custer's Last Charge _Whittaker_ 91 Daffodils _Wordsworth_ 179 Darius Green and His Flying Machine _Trowbridge_ 153 Day Well Spent, A 38 Dead Pussy Cat, The _Short_ 64 Diffidence 23 Don't Give Up _P. Cary_ 182 Driving Home the Cows _Osgood_ 88 Drummer Boy of Mission Ridge 49 Each in His Own Tongue _Carruth_ 58 Echo _Saxe_ 20 Engineers Making Love _Burdette_ 21 Eternal Goodness, The _Whittier_ 87 Fable, A _Emerson_ 177 Face Upon the Floor, The _D'Arcy_ 108 Fairies, The _Allingham_ 173 Fence or an Ambulance, A _Malins_ 127 First Settler's Story, The _Carleton_ 197 First Snow-fall, The _Lowell_ 99 Flag Goes By, The _Bennett_ 45 Fountain, The _Lowell_ 186 Four-leaf Clover, The _Higginson_ 134 Frost, The _Gould_ 171 Give Us Men _Holland_ 33 God's Judgment on a Wicked Bishop _Southey_ 124 Golden Keys 134 Good Night and Good Morning _Houghton_ 184 Gradatim _Holland_ 96 Green Mountain Justice, The _Reeves_ 74 Guilty or Not Guilty 22 Hand That Rules the World, The _Wallace_ 113 House by the Side of the Road, The _Foss_ 56 How Cyrus Laid the Cable _Saxe_ 58 How He Saved St. Michael's _Stansbury_ 119 Huskers, The _Whittier_ 152 If-- _Kipling_ 51 I Like Little Pussy _J. Taylor_ 178 Incident of the French Camp _R. Browning_ 182 In Flanders Fields _McCrae_ 195 In Flanders Fields: An Answer _Galbreath_ 195 In School-Days _Whittier_ 31 Inventor's Wife, An _Ewing_ 13 Invictus _Henley_ 29 Is It Worth While? _Joachim Miller_ 36 I Want to Go to Morrow 72 Jane Conquest _Milne_ 76 Jane Jones _King_ 59 Johnny's Hist'ry Lesson _Waterman_ 62 June _Lowell_ 163 Kate Ketchem _P. Cary_ 81 Kate Shelly _Hall_ 25 Katie Lee and Willie Grey 30 Kentucky Belle _Woolson_ 10 Kentucky Philosophy _Robertson_ 32 Kid Has Gone to the Colors, The _Herschell_ 9 King Robert of Sicily _Longfellow_ 147 Lady Moon _Houghton_ 185 Landing of the Pilgrims, The _Hemans_ 8 Lasca _Desprez_ 129 Last Hymn, The _Faringham_ 126 Leak in the Dike, The _P. Cary_ 187 Leap for Life, A _Morris_ 74 Leap of Roushan Beg, The _Longfellow_ 60 Leedle Yawcob Strauss _Adams_ 35 Legend of Bregenz, A _Procter_ 141 Legend of the Organ-Builder, The _Dorr_ 106 L'Envoi _Kipling_ 67 Life's Mirror _Bridges_ 37 Lips That Touch Liquor, The _Young_ 79 Little Birdie _Tennyson_ 173 Little Black-Eyed Rebel, The _Carleton_ 37 Little Boy Blue _Field_ 195 Little Brown Hands _Krout_ 71 Little Plant, The _Brown_ 192 Lost Chord, The _Procter_ 69 Love of Country _Scott_ 185 ("Breathes There the Man") Main Truck, The _Morris_ 74 Mandalay _Kipling_ 82 Man With the Hoe, The _Markham_ 115 Maud Muller _Whittier_ 205 Miller of the Dee, The _Mackay_ 39 Moo Cow Moo, The _Cooke_ 40 Mother's Fool 31 Mothers of Men _Joaquin Miller_ 43 Mount Vernon's Bells _Slade_ 95 Mr. Finney's Turnip 96 My Love Ship _Wilcox_ 114 My Mother 138 Nathan Hale _Finch_ 78 Never Trouble Trouble _Windsor_ 33 Nobility _A. Cary_ 169 "Not Understood" 136 November _A. Cary_ 173 O Captain! My Captain _Whitman_ 7 October's Bright Blue Weather _Jackson_ 144 Old Clock on the Stairs, The _Longfellow_ 17 Old Ironsides _Holmes_ 61 Old Red Cradle, The _Grannies_ 39 O Little Town of Bethlehem _Brooks_ 168 On His Blindness _Milton_ 172 On the Shores of Tennessee _Beers_ 93 Opportunity _Ingalls_ 175 Opportunity _Malone_ 175 Order for a Picture, An _A. Cary_ 41 Our Folks _Beers_ 107 Out in the Fields _E.B. Browning_ 73 Over the Hill to the Poorhouse _Carleton_ 131 Overworked Elocutionist, The 9 Owl and the Pussy-Cat, The _Lear_ 170 Owl Critic, The _Fields_ 64 Paul Revere's Ride _Longfellow_ 193 Penny Ye Mean to Gie, The 34 Perfect Day, A _Bond_ 80 Pippa's Song _R. Browning_ 185 Plain Bob and a Job _Foley_ 44 Planting of the Apple-Tree _Bryant_ 164 Poet's Prophecy, A _Tennyson_ 7 Polonius' Advice to Laertes _Shakespeare_ 177 Poorhouse Nan _Blinn_ 116 Psalm of Life, A _Longfellow_ 61 Quality of Mercy, The _Shakespeare_ 181 Raggedy Man, The _Riley_ 203 Recessional, The _Kipling_ 86 Ride of Jennie M'Neal, The _Carleton_ 111 Riding on the Rail _Saxe_ 62 Rivers of France, The 46 Robert of Lincoln _Bryant_ 189 Robert Reese (The Overworked Elocutionist) 9 Rock Me to Sleep _Allen_ 102 Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth _Clough_ 39 Second Table _Waterman_ 52 Seein' Things _Field_ 203 Seven Times One _Ingelow_ 46 Seven Times Two _Ingelow_ 47 Seven Times Three _Ingelow_ 47 Seven Times Four _Ingelow_ 48 Sheridan's Ride _Read_ 167 She Walks in Beauty _Byron_ 180 Sister and I 207 Sister's Best Feller _Lincoln_ 84 Sleep, Baby, Sleep _Elizabeth Prentiss_ 69 Smack in School, The _Palmer_ 128 Somebody's Mother _Brine_ 136 Song of Our Flag, A _Nesbit_ 89 Song of the Camp, The _B. Taylor_ 180 Song of the Sea _Cornwall_ 23 Song of the Shirt _Hood_ 157 Song: The Owl _Tennyson_ 174 So Was I _Smiley_ 36 Suppose _P. Cary_ 178 Sweet and Low _Tennyson_ 175 Tapestry Weavers, The _Chester_ 85 Teacher's Dream, The _Venable_ 140 Telling the Bees _Whittier_ 135 Thanatopsis _Bryant_ 196 Thanksgiving-Day _Child_ 178 There's But One Pair of Stockings 27 To a Butterfly _Wordsworth_ 179 To a Skylark _Shelley_ 160 To a Waterfowl _Bryant_ 137 To-day _Carlyle_ 191 To-day _Waterman_ 35 To the Fringed Gentian _Bryant_ 179 Tree, The _Bjornson_ 186 Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star _J. Taylor_ 185 Two Glasses, The _Wilcox_ 15 Village Blacksmith, The _Longfellow_ 97 Visit from St. Nicholas, A _Moore_ 54 Walrus and the Carpenter, The _Carroll_ 138 We Are Seven _Wordsworth_ 19 What I Live For _Banks_ 114 What is Good _O'Reilly_ 34 When the Cows Come Home _Mitchell_ 90 When the Minister Comes to Tea _Lincoln_ 89 When the Teacher Gets Cross 86 Where the West Begins _Chapman_ 85 Whistling in Heaven 67 White-Footed Deer, The _Bryant_ 94 Who Won the War? _Pulsifer_ 43 Why Should the Spirit of Mortal Be Proud! _Knox_ 118 Wild White Rose, The _Willis_ 66 Wind and the Moon, The _Macdonald_ 191 Wind, The _Rossetti_ 170 Wishing _Allingham_ 190 Woman's Question, A _Lathrop_ 129 Wonderful World, The _Rands_ 174 Woodman, Spare That Tree _Morris_ 70 You and You _Wharton_ 97 Young Man Waited, The _Cooke_ 28 Your Mission _Gates_ 55 PREFACE Seldom does a book of poems appear that is definitely a response to demand and a reflection of readers' preferences. Of this collection that can properly be claimed. For a decade NORMAL INSTRUCTOR-PRIMARY PLANS has carried monthly a page entitled "Poems Our Readers Have Asked For." The interest in this page has been, and is, phenomenal. Occasionally space considerations or copyright restrictions have prevented compliance with requests, but so far as practicable poems asked for have been printed. Because it has become impossible to furnish many of the earlier issues of the magazine, the publishers decided to select the poems most often requested and, carefully revising these for possible errors, to include them in the present collection. In some cases the desired poems are old favorite dramatic recitations, but many of them are poems that are required or recommended for memorizing in state courses of study. This latter feature will of itself make the book extremely valuable to teachers throughout the country. We are glad to offer here certain poems, often requested, but too long for insertion on our magazine Poetry Page. We are pleased also to be able to include a number of popular copyright poems. Special permission to use these has been granted through arrangement with the authorized publishers, whose courtesy is acknowledged below in detail: THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY--_The Raggedy Man_, from "The Biographical Edition of the Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley," copyright 1918. CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS--_Seein' Things_ and _Little Boy Blue_, by Eugene Field; _Gradatim_ and _Give Us Men_, from "The Poetical Works of J.G. Holland"; and _You and You_, by Edith Wharton, copyright 1919. HARPER AND BROTHERS--_Over the Hill to the Poor-House_, _The Ride of Jennie M'Neal_, _The Little Black-Eyed Rebel_, and _The First Settler's Story_, by Will Carleton. THE DODGE PUBLISHING COMPANY--_The Moo Cow Moo_ and _The Young Man Waited_, by Edmund Vance Cooke. LOTHROP, LEE AND SHEPARD COMPANY--_The House by the Side of the Road_ and _The Calf Path_, by Sam Walter Foss. LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY--_October's Bright Blue Weather_, by Helen Hunt Jackson. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY--Poems by John G. Whittier, Alice Cary, Phoebe Cary, James T. Fields, and Lucy Larcom. THE PUBLISHERS. POEMS TEACHERS ASK FOR * * * * * O Captain! My Captain! (_This poem was written in memory of Abraham Lincoln._) O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won; The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; But, O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen, cold and dead. O Captain! My Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills, For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; Here Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck You've fallen cold and dead. My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still; My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse or will; The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done; From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; Exult, O shores! and ring, O bells! But I, with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen, cold and dead. _Walt Whitman._ A Poet's Prophecy For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be; Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales; Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue; Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm, With the standards of the peoples plunging through the thunderstorm; Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battleflags were furl'd In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law. _Tennyson, "Locksley Hall," 1842._ The Landing of the Pilgrims The breaking waves dashed high On a stern and rock-bound coast, And the woods against a stormy sky Their giant branches tossed; And the heavy night hung dark The hills and waters o'er, When a band of exiles moored their bark On the wild New England shore. Not as the conqueror comes, They, the true-hearted, came,-- Not with the roll of the stirring drums, And the trumpet that sings of fame; Not as the flying come, In silence and in fear; They shook the depths of the desert's gloom With their hymns of lofty cheer. Amidst the storms they sang; And the stars heard, and the sea; And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang To the anthem of the free. The ocean eagle soared From his nest by the white wave's foam; And the rocking pines of the forest roared-- This was their welcome home! There were men with hoary hair Amidst that pilgrim band: Why had they come to wither there Away from their childhood's land? There was woman's fearless eye, Lit by her deep love's truth; There was manhood's brow serenely high, And the fiery heart of youth. What sought they thus afar? Bright jewels of the mine? The wealth of seas, the spoils of war?-- They sought a faith's pure shrine. Ay, call it holy ground,-- The soil where first they trod! They have left unstained what there they found-- Freedom to worship God! _Felicia Hemans._ Bobby Shaftoe "Marie, will you marry me? For you know how I love thee! Tell me, darling, will you be The wife of Bobby Shaftoe?" "Bobby, pray don't ask me more, For you've asked me twice before; Let us be good friends, no more, No more, Bobby Shaftoe." "If you will not marry me, I will go away to sea; And you ne'er again shall be A friend of Bobby Shaftoe." "Oh, you will not go away For you've said so twice to-day. Stop! He's gone! Dear Bobby, stay! Dearest Bobby Shaftoe! "Bobby Shaftoe's gone to sea, Silver buckles on his knee, But he'll come back and marry me, Pretty Bobby Shaftoe. "He will soon come back to me, And how happy I shall be, He'll come back and marry me, Dearest Bobby Shaftoe." "Bobby Shaftoe's lost at sea, He cannot come back to thee. And you ne'er again will see Your dear Bobby Shaftoe. "Oh, we sadly mourn for thee, And regret we ne'er shall see Our friend Bobby, true and free, Dearest Bobby Shaftoe." "Bobby Shaftoe's lost at sea. And can ne'er come back to me, But I'll ever faithful be, True to Bobby Shaftoe." "Darling, I've come home from sea, I've come back to marry thee, For I know you're true to me, True to Bobby Shaftoe." "Yes, I always cared for thee, And now you've come back to me, And we will always happy be, Dearest Bobby Shaftoe." "Bobby Shaftoe's come from sea, And we will united be, Heart and hand in unity, Mr. and Mrs. Shaftoe." The Overworked Elocutionist (Or "ROBERT REESE") Once there was a little boy Whose name was Robert Reese, And every Friday afternoon He had to speak a piece. So many poems thus he learned That soon he had a store Of recitations in his head And still kept learning more. Now this it is what happened: He was called upon one week And totally forgot the piece He was about to speak. His brain he vainly cudgeled But no word was in his head, And so he spoke at random, And this is what he said; My beautiful, my beautiful, Who standest proudly by, It was the schooner Hesperus The breaking waves dashed high. Why is the Forum crowded? What means this stir in Rome? Under a spreading chestnut tree There is no place like home. When Freedom from her mountain height Cried, "Twinkle, little star," Shoot if you must this old gray head, King Henry of Navarre. If you're waking, call me early To be or not to be, Curfew must not ring to-night, Oh, woodman, spare that tree. Charge, Chester, Charge! On, Stanley, on! And let who will be clever, The boy stood on the burning deck But I go on for ever. The Kid Has Gone to the Colors The Kid has gone to the Colors And we don't know what to say; The Kid we have loved and cuddled Stepped out for the Flag to-day. We thought him a child, a baby With never a care at all, But his country called him man-size And the Kid has heard the call. He paused to watch the recruiting, Where, fired by the fife and drum, He bowed his head to Old Glory And thought that it whispered: "Come!" The Kid, not being a slacker, Stood forth with patriot-joy To add his name to the roster-- And God, we're proud of the boy! The Kid has gone to the Colors; It seems but a little while Since he drilled a schoolboy army In a truly martial style, But now he's a man, a soldier, And we lend him a listening ear, For his heart is a heart all loyal, Unscourged by the curse of fear. His dad, when he told him, shuddered, His mother--God bless her!--cried; Yet, blest with a mother-nature, She wept with a mother-pride, But he whose old shoulders straightened Was Granddad--for memory ran To years when he, too, a youngster, Was changed by the Flag to a man! _W.M. Herschell._ Kentucky Belle Summer of 'sixty-three, sir, and Conrad was gone away-- Gone to the county-town, sir, to sell our first load of hay-- We lived in the log house yonder, poor as ever you've seen; Roschen there was a baby, and I was only nineteen. Conrad, he took the oxen, but he left Kentucky Belle. How much we thought of Kentuck, I couldn't begin to tell-- Came from the Blue-Grass country; my father gave her to me When I rode north with Conrad, away from the Tennessee. Conrad lived in Ohio--a German he is, you know-- The house stood in broad cornfields, stretching on, row after row. The old folks made me welcome; they were kind as kind could be; But I kept longing, longing, for the hills of the Tennessee. Oh, for a sight of water, the shadowed slope of a hill! Clouds that hang on the summit, a wind that never is still! But the level land went stretching away to meet the sky-- Never a rise, from north to south, to rest the weary eye! From east to west, no river to shine out under the moon, Nothing to make a shadow in the yellow afternoon: Only the breathless sunshine, as I looked out, all forlorn; Only the rustle, rustle, as I walked among the corn. When I fell sick with pining, we didn't wait any more, But moved away from the cornlands, out to this river shore-- The Tuscarawas it's called, sir--off there's a hill, you see-- And now I've grown to like it next best to the Tennessee. I was at work that morning. Some one came riding like mad Over the bridge and up the road--Farmer Rouf's little lad. Bareback he rode; he had no hat; he hardly stopped to say, "Morgan's men are coming, Frau; they're galloping on this way. "I'm sent to warn the neighbors. He isn't a mile behind; He sweeps up all the horses--every horse that he can find. Morgan, Morgan the raider, and Morgan's terrible men, With bowie knives and pistols, are galloping up the glen!" The lad rode down the valley, and I stood still at the door; The baby laughed and prattled, playing with spools on the floor; Kentuck was out in the pasture; Conrad, my man, was gone. Nearer, nearer, Morgan's men were galloping, galloping on! Sudden I picked up baby, and ran to the pasture bar. "Kentuck!" I called--"Kentucky!" She knew me ever so far! I led her down the gully that turns off there to the right, And tied her to the bushes; her head was just out of sight. As I ran back to the log house, at once there came a sound-- The ring of hoofs, galloping hoofs, trembling over the ground-- Coming into the turnpike out from the White Woman Glen-- Morgan, Morgan the raider, and Morgan's terrible men. As near they drew and nearer, my heart beat fast in alarm; But still I stood in the doorway with baby on my arm. They came, they passed; with spur and whip in haste they sped along-- Morgan, Morgan the raider, and his band, six hundred strong. Weary they looked and jaded, riding through night and through day; Pushing on east to the river, many long miles away, To the border strip where Virginia runs up into the West, And fording the Upper Ohio before they could stop to rest. On like the wind they hurried, and Morgan rode in advance; Bright were his eyes like live coals, as he gave me a sideways glance. And I was just breathing freely, after my choking pain, When the last one of the troopers suddenly drew his rein. Frightened I was to death, sir; I scarce dared look in his face, As he asked for a drink of water, and glanced around the place. I gave him a cup, and he smiled--'twas only a boy, you see; Faint and worn, with dim blue eyes; and he'd sailed on the Tennessee. Only sixteen he was, sir--a fond mother's only son-- Off and away with Morgan before his life had begun! The damp drops stood on his temples; drawn was the boyish mouth; And I thought me of the mother waiting down in the South. Oh! pluck was he to the backbone, and clear grit through and through; Boasted and bragged like a trooper; but the big words wouldn't do;-- The boy was dying, sir, dying as plain as plain could be, Worn out by his ride with Morgan up from the Tennessee. But when I told the laddie that I too was from the South, Water came in his dim eyes, and quivers around his mouth. "Do you know the Blue-Grass country?" he wistful began to say; Then swayed like a willow sapling, and fainted dead away. I had him into the log house, and worked and brought him to; I fed him, and I coaxed him, as I thought his mother'd do; And when the lad got better, and the noise in his head was gone, Morgan's men--were miles; away, galloping, galloping on. "Oh, I must go," he muttered; "I must be up and away! Morgan--Morgan is waiting for me; Oh, what will Morgan say?" But I heard a sound of tramping and kept him back from the door-- The ringing sound of horses' hoofs that I had heard before. And on, on, came the soldiers--the Michigan cavalry-- And fast they rode, and black they looked, galloping rapidly,-- They had followed hard on Morgan's track; they had followed day and night; But of Morgan and Morgan's raiders they had never caught a sight. And rich Ohio sat startled through all those summer days; For strange, wild men were galloping over her broad highways-- Now here, now there, now seen, now gone, now north, now east, now west, Through river-valleys and cornland farms, sweeping away her best. A bold ride and a long ride; but they were taken at last. They almost reached the river by galloping hard and fast; But the boys in blue were upon them ere ever they gained the ford, And Morgan, Morgan the raider, laid down his terrible sword. Well, I kept the boy till evening--kept him against his will-- But he was too weak to follow, and sat there pale and still. When it was cool and dusky--you'll wonder to hear me tell-- But I stole down to that gully, and brought up Kentucky Belle. I kissed the star on her forehead--my pretty gentle lass-- But I knew that she'd be happy back in the old Blue-Grass. A suit of clothes of Conrad's, with all the money I had, And Kentuck, pretty Kentuck, I gave to the worn-out lad. I guided him to the southward as well as I know how; The boy rode off with many thanks, and many a backward bow; And then the glow it faded, and my heart began to swell, As down the glen away she went, my lost Kentucky Belle! When Conrad came in the evening, the moon was shining high; Baby and I were both crying--I couldn't tell him why-- But a battered suit of rebel gray was hanging on the wall, And a thin old horse, with drooping head, stood in Kentucky's stall. Well, he was kind, and never once said a hard word to me; He knew I couldn't help it--'twas all for the Tennessee, But, after the war was over, just think what came to pass-- A letter, sir; and the two were safe back in the old Blue-Grass. The lad had got across the border, riding Kentucky Belle; And Kentuck, she was thriving, and fat, and hearty, and well; He cared for her, and kept her, nor touched her with whip or spur. Ah! we've had many horses since, but never a horse like her! _Constance F. Woolson._ An Inventor's Wife I remember it all so very well, the first of my married life, That I can't believe it was years ago--it doesn't seem true at all; Why, I just can see the little church where they made us man and wife, And the merry glow of the first wood-fire that danced on our cottage wall. _We were happy?_ Yes; and we prospered, too; the house belonged to Joe, And then, he worked in the planing mill, and drew the best of pay; And our cup was full when Joey came,--our baby-boy, you know; So, all went well till that mill burned down and the owner moved away. It wasn't long till Joe found work, but 'twas never quite the same,-- Never steady, with smaller pay; so to make the two ends meet He fell to inventin' some machine--I don't recall the name, But he'd sit for hours in his little shop that opens toward the street,-- Sit for hours, bent over his work, his tools all strewn about. I used to want to go in there to dust and sweep the floor, But 'twas just as if 'twas the parson there, writing his sermon out; Even the baby--bless the child!--learned never to slam that door! People called him a clever man, and folks from the city came To look at his new invention and wish my Joe success; And Joe would say, "Little woman,"--for that was my old pet-name,-- "If my plan succeeds, you shall have a coach and pair, and a fine silk dress!" I didn't want 'em, the grand new things, but it made the big tears start To see my Joe with his restless eyes, his fingers worn away To the skin and bone, for he wouldn't eat; and it almost broke my heart When he tossed at night from side to side, till the dawning of the day. Of course, with it all he lost his place. I couldn't blame the man, The foreman there at the factory, for losing faith in Joe, For his mind was never upon his work, but on some invention-plan, As with folded arms and his head bent down he wandered to and fro. Yet, he kept on workin' at various things, till our little money went For wheels and screws and metal casts and things I had never seen; And I ceased to ask, "Any pay, my dear?" with the answer, "Not a cent!" When his lock and his patent-saw had failed, he clung to that great machine. I remember one special thing that year. He had bought some costly tool, When we wanted our boy to learn to read--he was five years old, you know; He went to his class with cold, bare feet, till at last he came from school And gravely said, "Don't send me back; the children tease me so!" I hadn't the heart to cross the child, so, while I sat and sewed He would rock his little sister in the cradle at my side; And when the struggle was hardest and I felt keen hunger's goad Driving me almost to despair--the little baby died. Her father came to the cradle-side, as she lay, so small and white; "Maggie," he said, "I have killed this child, and now I am killing you! I swear by heaven, I will give it up!" Yet, like a thief, that night He stole to the shop and worked; his brow all wet with a clammy dew. I cannot tell how I lived that week, my little boy and I, Too proud to beg; too weak to work; and the weather cold and wild. I can only think of one dark night when the rain poured from the sky, And the wind went wailing round the house, like the ghost of my buried child. Joe still toiled in the little shop. Somebody clicked the gate; A neighbor-lad brought in the mail and laid it on the floor, But I sat half-stunned by my heavy grief crouched over the empty grate, Till I heard--the crack of a pistol-shot; and I sprang to the workshop door. That door was locked and the bolt shut fast. I could not cry, nor speak, But I snatched my boy from the corner there, sick with a sudden dread, And carried him out through the garden plot, forgetting my arms were weak, Forgetting the rainy torrent that beat on my bare young head; The front door yielded to my touch. I staggered faintly in, Fearing--_what_? He stood unharmed, though the wall showed a jagged hole. In his trembling hand, his aim had failed, and the great and deadly sin Of his own life's blood was not yet laid on the poor man's tortured soul. But the pistol held another charge, I knew; and like something mad I shook my fist in my poor man's face, and shrieked at him, fierce and wild, "How can you dare to rob us so?"--and I seized the little lad; "How can you dare to rob your wife and your little helpless child?" All of a sudden, he bowed his head, while from his nerveless hand That hung so limp, I almost feared to see the pistol fall. "Maggie," he said in a low, low voice, "you see me as I stand A hopeless man. My plan has failed. That letter tells you all." Then for a moment the house was still as ever the house of death; Only the drip of the rain outside, for the storm was almost o'er; But no;--there followed another sound, and I started, caught my breath; As a stalwart man with a heavy step came in at the open door. I shall always think him an angel sent from heaven in a human guise; He must have guessed our awful state; he couldn't help but see There was something wrong; but never a word, never a look in his eyes Told what he thought, as in kindly way he talked to Joe and me. He was come from a thriving city firm, and they'd sent him here to say That _one_ of Joe's inventions was a great, successful thing; And which do you think? His window-catch that he'd tinkered up one day; And we were to have a good per cent on the sum that each would bring. And then the pleasant stranger went, and we wakened as from a dream. My man bent down his head and said, "Little woman, you've saved my life!" The worn look gone from his dear gray eyes, and in its place, a gleam From the sun that has shone so brightly since, on Joe and his happy wife! _Jeannie Pendleton Ewing._ The Two Glasses There sat two glasses filled to the brim On a rich man's table, rim to rim, One was ruddy and red as blood, And one was clear as the crystal flood. Said the Glass of Wine to his paler brother: "Let us tell tales of the past to each other; I can tell of banquet and revel and mirth, Where I was king, for I ruled in might; For the proudest and grandest souls of earth Fell under my touch, as though struck with blight. From the heads of kings I have torn the crown; From the heights of fame I have hurled men down. I have blasted many an honored name; I have taken virtue and given shame; I have tempted youth with a sip, a taste, That has made his future a barren waste. Far greater than any king am I, Or than any army beneath the sky. I have made the arm of the driver fail, And sent the train from the iron rail. I have made good ships go down at sea. And the shrieks of the lost were sweet to me. Fame, strength, wealth, genius before me fall; And my might and power are over all! Ho, ho, pale brother," said the Wine, "Can you boast of deeds as great as mine?" Said the Water Glass: "I cannot boast Of a king dethroned, or a murdered host; But I can tell of hearts that were sad, By my crystal drops made bright and glad; Of thirsts I have quenched and brows I have laved, Of hands I have cooled, and souls I have saved. I have leaped through the valley, dashed down the mountain, Slipped from the sunshine, and dripped from the fountain, I have burst my cloud-fetters, and dropped from the sky, And everywhere gladdened the prospect and eye; I have eased the hot forehead of fever and pain, I have made the parched meadows grow fertile with grain. I can tell of the powerful wheel of the mill, That ground out the flour, and turned at my will. I can tell of manhood debased by you That I have uplifted and crowned anew; I cheer, I help, I strengthen and aid, I gladden the heart of man and maid; I set the wine-chained captive free, And all are better for knowing me." These are the tales they told each other, The Glass of Wine, and its paler brother, As they sat together, filled to the brim, On a rich man's table, rim to rim. _Ella Wheeler Wilcox._ Abraham Lincoln (_Written after Lincoln's death by Tom Taylor, famous cartoonist of the London "Punch."_) _You_ lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier! _You_, who with mocking pencil wont to trace, Broad for the self-complacent British sneer, His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face, His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair, His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease, His lack of all we prize as debonair, Of power or will to shine, of art to please! _You_, whose smart pen backed up the pencil's laugh, Judging each step, as though the way were plain; Reckless, so it could point its paragraph, Of chief's perplexity, or people's pain! Beside this corpse, that bears for winding-sheet The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew, Between the mourners at his head and feet-- Say, scurril jester, is there room for you? Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer-- To lame my pencil and confute my pen-- To make me own this hind, of princes peer, This rail-splitter, a true-born king of men. My shallow judgment I had learned to rue, Noting how to occasion's height he rose; How his quaint wit made home-truth seem more true, How, iron-like, his temper grew by blows; How humble, yet how hopeful he could be; How in good fortune and in ill the same; Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he, Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame. He went about his work--such work as few Ever had laid on head, and heart, and hand-- As one who knows where there's a task to do, Man's honest will must Heaven's good grace command; Who trusts the strength will with the burden grow, That God makes instruments to work His will, If but that will we can arrive to know, Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill. So he went forth to battle, on the side That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's, As in his peasant boyhood he had plied His warfare with rude nature's thwarting mights;-- The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil, The iron bark that turns the lumberer's axe, The rapid, that o'erbears the boatman's toil, The prairie, hiding the mazed wanderer's tracks, The ambushed Indian and the prowling bear-- Such were the needs that helped his youth to train: Rough culture--but such trees large fruit may bear, If but their stocks be of right girth and grain. So he grew up, a destined work to do, And lived to do it: four long, suffering years Ill-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report, lived through, And then he heard the hisses change to cheers, The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise, And took both with the same unwavering mood; Till, as he came on light, from darkling days, And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood, A felon hand, between the goal and him, Beached from behind his back, a trigger prest-- And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim, Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest! The words of mercy were upon his lips, Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen, When this vile murderer brought swift eclipse To thoughts of peace on earth, goodwill to men. The Old World and the New, from sea to sea, Utter one voice of sympathy and shame! Sore heart, so stopped when it at last beat high; Sad life, cut short as its triumph came! The Old Clock on the Stairs Somewhat back from the village street Stands the old-fashioned country-seat; Across its antique portico Tall poplar trees their shadows throw; And, from its station in the hall, An ancient timepiece says to all, "Forever--never! Never--forever!" Half-way up the stairs it stands, And points and beckons with its hands, From its case of massive oak, Like a monk who, under his cloak, Crosses himself, and sighs, alas! With sorrowful voice to all who pass, "Forever--never! Never--forever!" By day its voice is low and light; But in the silent dead of night, Distinct as a passing footstep's fall, It echoes along the vacant hall, Along the ceiling, along the floor, And seems to say at each chamber door, "Forever--never! Never--forever!" Through days of sorrow and of mirth, Through days of death and days of birth, Through every swift vicissitude Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood, And as if, like God, it all things saw, It calmly repeats those words of awe, "Forever--never! Never--forever!" In that mansion used to be Free-hearted Hospitality; His great fires up the chimney roared; The stranger feasted at his board; But, like the skeleton at the feast, That warning timepiece never ceased,-- "Forever--never! Never--forever!" There groups of merry children played; There youths and maidens dreaming strayed; Oh, precious hours! oh, golden prime And affluence of love and time! Even as a miser counts his gold, Those hours the ancient timepiece told,-- "Forever--never! Never--forever!" From that chamber, clothed in white, The bride came forth on her wedding night; There, in that silent room below, The dead lay, in his shroud of snow; And, in the hush that followed the prayer, Was heard the old clock on the stair,-- "Forever--never! Never--forever!" All are scattered, now, and fled,-- Some are married, some are dead; And when I ask, with throbs of pain, "Ah! when shall they all meet again?" As in the days long since gone by, The ancient timepiece makes reply,-- "Forever--never! Never-forever!" Never here, forever there, Where all parting, pain, and care, And death, and time, shall disappear,-- Forever there, but never here! The horologe of Eternity Sayeth this incessantly,-- "Forever--never! Never--forever!" _H.W. Longfellow._ Christ in Flanders We had forgotten You, or very nearly-- You did not seem to touch us very nearly-- Of course we thought about You now and then; Especially in any time of trouble-- We knew that you were good in time of trouble-- But we were very ordinary men. And there were always other things to think of-- There's lots of things a man has got to think of-- His work, his home, his pleasure, and his wife; And so we only thought of You on Sunday-- Sometimes, perhaps, not even on a Sunday-- Because there's always lots to fill one's life. And, all the while, in street or lane or byway-- In country lane, in city street, or byway-- You walked among us, and we did not see. Your feet were bleeding as You walked our pavements-- How did we miss Your footprints on our pavements?-- Can there be other folk as blind as we? Now we remember; over here in Flanders-- (It isn't strange to think of You in Flanders)-- This hideous warfare seems to make things clear. We never thought about You much in England-- But now that we are far away from England-- We have no doubts, we know that You are here. You helped us pass the jest along the trenches-- Where, in cold blood, we waited in the trenches-- You touched its ribaldry and made it fine. You stood beside us in our pain and weakness-- We're glad to think You understand our weakness-- Somehow it seems to help us not to whine. We think about You kneeling in the Garden-- Ah, God, the agony of that dread Garden-- We know You prayed for us upon the cross. If anything could make us glad to bear it-- 'Twould be the knowledge that You willed to bear it-- Pain--death--the uttermost of human loss. Though we forgot You--You will not forget us-- We feel so sure that You will not forget us-- But stay with us until this dream is past. And so we ask for courage, strength, and pardon-- Especially, I think, we ask for pardon-- And that You'll stand beside us to the last. _L.W. in London "Spectator."_ We Are Seven --A simple Child, That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death? I met a little cottage Girl: She was eight years old, she said; Her hair was thick with many a curl That clustered round her head. She had a rustic, woodland air, And she was wildly clad: Her eyes were fair, and very fair; --Her beauty made me glad. "Sisters and brothers, little Maid, How many may you be?" "How many? Seven in all," she said, And wondering looked at me. "And where are they? I pray you tell." She answered, "Seven are we; And two of us at Conway dwell, And two are gone to sea. "Two of us in the church-yard lie, My sister and my brother; And, in the church-yard cottage, I Dwell near them with my mother." "You say that two at Conway dwell, And two are gone to sea, Yet ye are seven!--I pray you tell, Sweet Maid, how this may be." Then did the little Maid reply, "Seven boys and girls are we; Two of us in the church-yard lie, Beneath the church-yard tree." "You run about, my little Maid, Your limbs they are alive; If two are in the church-yard laid, Then ye are only five." "Their graves are green, they may be seen," The little Maid replied, "Twelve steps or more from my mother's door, And they are side by side. "My stockings there I often knit, My kerchief there I hem; And there upon the ground I sit, And sing a song to them. "And often after sunset, Sir, When it is light and fair, I take my little porringer, And eat my supper there. "The first that died was sister Jane; In bed she moaning lay, Till God released her of her pain; And then she went away. "So in the church-yard she was laid; And, when the grass was dry, Together round her grave we played, My brother John and I. "And when the ground was white with snow, And I could run and slide, My brother John was forced to go, And he lies by her side." "How many are you, then," said I, "If they two are in heaven?" Quick was the little Maid's reply, "O Master! we are seven." "But they are dead; those two are dead! Their spirits are in heaven!" 'T was throwing words away; for still The little Maid would have her will, And said, "Nay, we are seven!" _William Wordsworth._ Echo "I asked of Echo, t'other day (Whose words are often few and funny), What to a novice she could say Of courtship, love and matrimony. Quoth Echo plainly,--'Matter-o'-money!' "Whom should I marry? Should it be A dashing damsel, gay and pert, A pattern of inconstancy; Or selfish, mercenary flirt? Quoth Echo, sharply,--'Nary flirt!' "What if, aweary of the strife That long has lured the dear deceiver, She promise to amend her life, And sin no more; can I believe her? Quoth Echo, very promptly,--'Leave her!' "But if some maiden with a heart On me should venture to bestow it, Pray should I act the wiser part To take the treasure or forego it? Quoth Echo, with decision,--'Go it!' "But what if, seemingly afraid To bind her fate in Hymen's fetter, She vow she means to die a maid, In answer to my loving letter? Quoth Echo, rather coolly,-'Let her!' "What if, in spite of her disdain, I find my heart entwined about With Cupid's dear, delicious chain So closely that I can't get out? Quoth Echo, laughingly,--'Get out!' "But if some maid with beauty blest, As pure and fair as Heaven can make her, Will share my labor and my rest Till envious Death shall overtake her? Quoth Echo (sotto voce),--'Take her!'" _John G. Saxe._ Engineers Making Love It's noon when Thirty-five is due, An' she comes on time like a flash of light, An' you hear her whistle "Too-tee-too!" Long 'fore the pilot swings in sight. Bill Madden's drivin' her in to-day, An' he's calling his sweetheart far away-- Gertrude Hurd lives down by the mill; You might see her blushin'; she knows it's Bill. "Tudie, tudie! Toot-ee! Tudie, tudie! Tu!" Six-five, A.M. there's a local comes, Makes up at Bristol, runnin' east; An' the way her whistle sings and hums Is a livin' caution to man and beast. Every one knows who Jack White calls,-- Little Lou Woodbury, down by the falls; Summer or Winter, always the same, She hears her lover callin' her name-- "Lou-ie! Lou-ie! Lou-iee!" But at one fifty-one, old Sixty-four-- Boston express, runs east, clear through-- Drowns her rattle and rumble and roar With the softest whistle that ever blew. An' away on the furthest edge of town Sweet Sue Winthrop's eyes of brown Shine like the starlight, bright and clear, When she hears the whistle of Abel Gear, "You-oo! Su-u-u-u-u-e!" Along at midnight a freight comes in, Leaves Berlin sometime--I don't know when; But it rumbles along with a fearful din Till it reaches the Y-switch there and then The clearest notes of the softest bell That out of a brazen goblet fell Wake Nellie Minton out of her dreams; To her like a wedding-bell it seems-- "Nell, Nell, Nell! Nell, Nell, Nell!" Tom Willson rides on the right-hand side, Givin' her steam at every stride; An' he touches the whistle, low an' clear, For Lulu Gray on the hill, to hear-- "Lu-Lu! Loo-Loo! Loo-oo!" So it goes all day an' all night Till the old folks have voted the thing a bore; Old maids and bachelors say it ain't right For folks to do courtin' with such a roar. But the engineers their kisses will blow From a whistle valve to the girls they know, An' stokers the name of their sweethearts tell; With the "Too-too-too" and the swinging bell. _R.J. Burdette._ Guilty or Not Guilty She stood at the bar of justice, A creature wan and wild, In form too small for a woman, In features too old for a child; For a look so worn and pathetic Was stamped on her pale young face, It seemed long years of suffering Must have left that silent trace. "Your name?" said the judge, as he eyed her With kindly look yet keen,-- "Is Mary McGuire, if you please, sir." And your age?"--"I am turned fifteen." "Well, Mary," and then from a paper He slowly and gravely read, "You are charged here--I'm sorry to say it-- With stealing three loaves of bread. "You look not like an offender, And I hope that you can show The charge to be false. Now, tell me, Are you guilty of this, or no?" A passionate burst of weeping Was at first her sole reply. But she dried her eyes in a moment, And looked in the judge's eye. "I will tell you just how it was, sir: My father and mother are dead, And my little brothers and sisters Were hungry and asked me for bread. At first I earned it for them By working hard all day, But somehow, times were bad, sir, And the work all fell away. "I could get no more employment. The weather was bitter cold, The young ones cried and shivered-- (Little Johnny's but four years old)-- So what was I to do, sir? I am guilty, but do not condemn. I _took_--oh, was it _stealing?_-- The bread to give to them." Every man in the court-room-- Gray-beard and thoughtless youth-- Knew, as he looked upon her, That the prisoner spake the truth; Out from their pockets came kerchiefs, Out from their eyes sprung tears, And out from their old faded wallets Treasures hoarded for years. The judge's face was a study, The strangest you ever saw, As he cleared his throat and murmured _Something_ about the _law_; For one so learned in such matters, So wise in dealing with men, He seemed, on a simple question, Sorely puzzled, just then. But no one blamed him or wondered, When at last these words he heard, "The sentence of this young prisoner Is, for the present, deferred." And no one blamed him or wondered When he went to her and smiled And tenderly led from the court-room, Himself, the "guilty" child. The Baby Where did you come from, baby dear? _Out of the everywhere into the here._ Where did you get your eyes so blue? _Out of the sky as I came through._ What makes the light in them sparkle and spin? _Some of the starry spikes left in._ Where did you get that little tear? _I found it waiting when I got here._ What makes your forehead so smooth and high? _A soft hand stroked it as I went by._ What makes your cheek like a warm white rose? _Something better than anyone knows._ Whence that three-cornered smile of bliss? _Three angels gave me at once a kiss._ Where did you get that pearly ear? _God spoke, and it came out to hear._ Where did you get those arms and hands? _Love made itself into hooks and bands._ Feet, whence did you come, you darling things? _From the same box as the cherubs' wings._ How did they all just come to be you? _God thought about me, and so I grew._ But how did you come to us, you dear? _God thought of you, and so I am here._ _George Macdonald._ Song of the Sea The sea! the sea! the open sea! The blue, the fresh, the ever free! Without a mark, without a bound, It runneth the earth's wide regions round; It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies, Or like a cradled creature lies. I'm on the sea! I'm on the sea! I am where I would ever be; With the blue above and the blue below, And silence wheresoe'er I go. If a storm should come and awake the deep What matter? _I_ shall ride and sleep. I love, oh, how I love to ride On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide, When every mad wave drowns the moon, Or whistles aloud his tempest tune, And tells how goeth the world below, And why the southwest blasts do blow. I never was on the dull, tame shore, But I loved the great sea more and more, And back I flew to her billowy breast, Like a bird that seeketh its mother's nest; And a mother she _was_, and _is_, to me, For I was born on the open sea! I've lived, since then, in calm and strife, Full fifty summers a sailor's life, With wealth to spend and a power to range, But never have sought nor sighed for change; And Death, whenever he comes to me, Shall come on the wild, unbounded sea. _Barry Cornwall._ Diffidence "I'm after axin', Biddy dear--" And here he paused a while To fringe his words the merest mite With something of a smile-- A smile that found its image In a face of beauteous mold, Whose liquid eyes were peeping From a broidery of gold. "I've come to ax ye, Biddy dear, If--" then he stopped again, As if his heart had bubbled o'er And overflowed his brain. His lips were twitching nervously O'er what they had to tell, And timed the quavers with the eyes That gently rose and fell. "I've come--" and then he took her hands And held them in his own, "To ax--" and then he watched the buds That on her cheeks had blown,-- "Me purty dear--" and then he heard The throbbing of her heart, That told how love had entered in And claimed its every part. "Och! don't be tazin' me," said she, With just the faintest sigh, "I've sinse enough to see you've come, But what's the reason why?" "To ax--" and once again the tongue Forbore its sweets to tell, "To ax--_if Mrs. Mulligan, Has any pigs to sell_." Curfew Must Not Ring To-night Slowly England's sun was setting o'er the hilltops far away, Filling all the land with beauty at the close of one sad day, And the last rays kissed the forehead of a man and maiden fair,-- He with footsteps slow and weary, she with sunny floating hair; He with bowed head, sad and thoughtful, she with lips all cold and white, Struggling to keep back the murmur, "Curfew must not ring to-night." "Sexton," Bessie's white lips faltered, pointing to the prison old, With its turrets tall and gloomy, with its walls dark, damp and cold, "I've a lover in that prison, doomed this very night to die At the ringing of the curfew, and no earthly help is nigh; Cromwell will not come till sunset," and her lips grew strangely white As she breathed the husky whisper: "Curfew must not ring to-night." "Bessie," calmly spoke the sexton--every word pierced her young heart Like the piercing of an arrow, like a deadly poisoned dart,-- "Long, long years I've rung the curfew from that gloomy shadowed tower; Every evening, just at sunset, it has told the twilight hour; I have done my duty ever, tried to do it just and right; Now I'm old I will not falter,--curfew, it must ring to-night." Wild her eyes and pale her features, stern and white her thoughtful brow. As within her secret bosom Bessie made a solemn vow. She had listened while the judges read without a tear or sigh: "At the ringing of the curfew, Basil Underwood must die." And her breath came fast and faster, and her eyes grew large and bright; In an undertone she murmured, "Curfew must not ring to-night." With quick step she bounded forward, sprung within the old church door, Left the old man treading slowly paths so oft he'd trod before; Not one moment paused the maiden, but with eye and cheek aglow Mounted up the gloomy tower, where the bell swung to and fro,-- As she climbed the dusty ladder on which fell no ray of light, Up and up,--her white lips saying: "Curfew must not ring to-night." She has reached the topmost ladder; o'er her hangs the great, dark bell; Awful is the gloom beneath her, like the pathway down to hell. Lo, the ponderous tongue is swinging--'tis the hour of curfew now, And the sight has chilled her bosom, stopped her breath and paled her brow. Shall she let it ring? No, never! flash her eyes with sudden light, As she springs and grasps it firmly--"Curfew shall not ring to-night!" Out she swung--far out; the city seemed a speck of light below, There 'twixt heaven and earth suspended as the bell swung to and fro; And the sexton at the bell-rope, old and deaf, heard not the bell, Sadly thought, "That twilight curfew rang young Basil's funeral knell." Still the maiden clung more firmly, and with trembling lips so white, Said, to hush her heart's wild throbbing: "Curfew shall not ring to-night." It was o'er; the bell ceased swaying, and the maiden stepped once more Firmly on the dark old ladder where, for hundred years before Human foot had not been planted. The brave deed that she had done Should be told long ages after; as the rays of setting sun Crimson all the sky with beauty, aged sires with heads of white, Tell the eager, listening children, "Curfew did not ring that night." O'er the distant hills came Cromwell; Bessie sees him, and her brow, Lately white with fear and anguish, has no anxious traces now. At his feet she tells her story, shows her hands all bruised and torn; And her face so sweet and pleading, yet with sorrow pale and worn, Touched his heart with sudden pity, lit his eyes with misty light: "Go! your lover lives," said Cromwell, "Curfew shall not ring to-night." Wide they flung the massive portal; led the prisoner forth to die,-- All his bright young life before him. 'Neath the darkening English sky Bessie comes with flying footsteps, eyes aglow with love-light sweet; Kneeling on the turf beside him, lays his pardon at his feet. In his brave, strong arms he clasped her, kissed the face upturned and white, Whispered, "Darling, you have saved me--curfew will not ring to-night." _Rose Hartwick Thorpe._ Kate Shelly Have you heard how a girl saved the lightning express-- Of Kate Shelly, whose father was killed on the road? Were he living to-day, he'd be proud to possess Such a daughter as Kate. Ah! 'twas grit that she showed On that terrible evening when Donahue's train Jumped the bridge and went down, in the darkness and rain. She was only eighteen, but a woman in size, With a figure as graceful and lithe as a doe, With peach-blossom cheeks, and with violet eyes, And teeth and complexion like new-fallen snow; With a nature unspoiled and unblemished by art-- With a generous soul, and a warm, noble heart! 'Tis evening--the darkness is dense and profound; Men linger at home by their bright-blazing fires; The wind wildly howls with a horrible sound, And shrieks through the vibrating telegraph wires; The fierce lightning flashes along the dark sky; The rain falls in torrents; the river rolls by. The scream of a whistle; the rush of a train! The sound of a bell! a mysterious light That flashes and flares through the fast falling rain! A rumble! a roar! shrieks of human affright! The falling of timbers! the space of a breath! A splash in the river; then darkness and death! Kate Shelly recoils at the terrible crash; The sounds of destruction she happens to hear; She springs to the window--she throws up the sash, And listens and looks with a feeling of fear. The tall tree-tops groan, and she hears the faint cry Of a drowning man down in the river near by. Her heart feebly flutters, her features grow wan, And then through her soul in a moment there flies A forethought that gives her the strength of a man-- She turns to her trembling old mother and cries: "I must save the express--'twill be here in an hour!" Then out through the door disappears in the shower. She flies down the track through the pitiless rain; She reaches the river--the water below Whirls and seethes through the timbers. She shudders again; "The bridge! To Moingona, God help me to go!" Then closely about her she gathers her gown And on the wet ties with a shiver sinks down. Then carefully over the timbers she creeps On her hands and knees, almost holding her breath. The loud thunder peals and the wind wildly sweeps, And struggles to hurry her downward to death; But the thought of the train to destruction so near Removes from her soul every feeling of fear. With the blood dripping down from each torn, bleeding limb, Slowly over the timbers her dark way she feels; Her fingers grow numb and her head seems to swim; Her strength is fast failing--she staggers! she reels! She falls--Ah! the danger is over at last, Her feet touch the earth, and the long bridge is passed! In an instant new life seems to come to her form; She springs to her feet and forgets her despair. On, on to Moingona! she faces the storm, She reaches the station--the keeper is there, "Save the lightning express! No--hang out the red light! There's death on the bridge at the river to-night!" Out flashes the signal-light, rosy and red; Then sounds the loud roar of the swift-coming train, The hissing of steam, and there, brightly ahead, The gleam of a headlight illumines the rain. "Down brakes!" shrieks the whistle, defiant and shrill; She heeds the red signal--she slackens, she's still! Ah! noble Kate Shelly, your mission is done; Your deed that dark night will not fade from our gaze; An endless renown you have worthily won; Let the nation be just, and accord you its praise, Let your name, let your fame, and your courage declare What a _woman_ can do, and a _woman_ can dare! _Eugene J. Hall._ There's But One Pair of Stockings to Mend To-Night An old wife sat by her bright fireside, Swaying thoughtfully to and fro In an easy chair, whose creaky craw Told a tale of long ago; While down by her side, on the kitchen floor, Stood a basket of worsted balls--a score. The good man dozed o'er the latest news Till the light in his pipe went out; And, unheeded, the kitten with cunning paws Rolled and tangled the balls about; Yet still sat the wife in the ancient chair, Swaying to and fro in the fire-light glare. But anon, a misty teardrop came In her eyes of faded blue, Then trickled down in a furrow deep Like a single drop of dew; So deep was the channel--so silent the stream-- That the good man saw naught but the dimmed eye-beam. Yet marveled he much that the cheerful light Of her eye had heavy grown, And marveled he more at the tangled balls, So he said in a gentle tone: "I have shared thy joys since our marriage vow, Conceal not from me thy sorrows now." Then she spoke of the time when the basket there Was filled to the very brim; And now, there remained of the goodly pile But a single pair--for him; "Then wonder not at the dimmed eye-light, There's but one pair of stockings to mend to-night. "I cannot but think of the busy feet Whose wrappings were wont to lay In the basket, awaiting the needle's time-- Now wandering so far away; How the sprightly steps to a mother dear, Unheeded fell on the careless ear. "For each empty nook in the basket old By the hearth there's a vacant seat; And I miss the shadows from off the wall, And the patter of many feet; 'Tis for this that a tear gathered over my sight, At the one pair of stockings to mend to-night. "'Twas said that far through the forest wild, And over the mountains bold, Was a land whose rivers and darkening caves Were gemmed with the rarest gold; Then my first-born turned from the oaken door-- And I knew the shadows were only four. "Another went forth on the foaming wave, And diminished the basket's store; But his feet grew cold--so weary and cold, They'll never be warm any more. And this nook, in its emptiness, seemeth to me To give forth no voice but the moan of the sea. "Two others have gone toward the setting sun, And made them a home in its light, And fairy fingers have taken their share, To mend by the fireside bright; Some other baskets their garments will fill-- But mine, ah, mine is emptier still. "Another--the dearest, the fairest, the best-- Was taken by angels away, And clad in a garment that waxeth not old, In a land of continual day; Oh! wonder no more at the dimmed eye-light, When I mend the one pair of stockings to-night." The Young Man Waited In the room below the young man sat, With an anxious face and a white cravat, A throbbing heart and a silken hat, And various other things like that Which he had accumulated. And the maid of his heart was up above Surrounded by hat and gown and glove, And a thousand things which women love, But no man knoweth the names thereof-- And the young man sat and--waited. You will scarce believe the things I tell, But the truth thereof I know full well, Though how may not be stated; But I swear to you that the maiden took A sort of half-breed, thin stove-hook, And heated it well in the gaslight there. And thrust it into her head, or hair. Then she took something off the bed, And hooked it onto her hair, or head, And piled it high, and piled it higher, And drove it home with staples of wire! And the young man anxiously--waited. Then she took a thing she called a "puff" And some very peculiar whitish stuff, And using about a half a peck, She spread it over her face and neck, (Deceit was a thing she hated!) And she looked as fair as a lilied bower, Or a pound of lard or a sack of flour;-- And the young man wearily--waited. Then she took a garment of awful shape And it wasn't a waist, nor yet a cape, But it looked like a piece of ancient mail, Or an instrument from a Russian jail, And then with a fearful groan and gasp, She squeezed herself in its deathly clasp-- So fair and yet so fated! And then with a move like I don't know what, She tied it on with a double knot;-- And the young man wofully--waited. Then she put on a dozen different things, A mixture of buttons and hooks and strings, Till she strongly resembled a notion store; Then, taking some seventeen pins or more, She thrust them into her ruby lips, Then stuck them around from waist to hips, And never once hesitated. And the maiden didn't know, perhaps, That the man below had had seven naps, And that now he sleepily--waited. And then she tried to put on her hat, Ah me, a trying ordeal was that! She tipped it high and she tried it low, But every way that the thing would go Only made her more agitated. It wouldn't go straight and it caught her hair, And she wished she could hire a man to swear, But alas, the only man lingering there Was the one who wildly--waited. And then before she could take her leave, She had to puff up her monstrous sleeve. Then a little dab here and a wee pat there. And a touch or two to her hindmost hair, Then around the room with the utmost care She thoughtfully circulated. Then she seized her gloves and a chamoiskin, Some breath perfume and a long stickpin, A bonbon box and a cloak and some Eau-de-cologne and chewing-gum, Her opera glass and sealskin muff, A fan and a heap of other stuff; Then she hurried down, but ere she spoke, Something about the maiden broke. So she scurried back to the winding stair, And the young man looked in wild despair, And then he--evaporated. _Edmund Vance Cooke._ Invictus Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul. _William E. Henley._ Katie Lee and Willie Grey Two brown heads with tossing curls, Red lips shutting over pearls, Bare feet, white and wet with dew, Two eyes black, and two eyes blue; Little girl and boy were they, Katie Lee and Willie Grey. They were standing where a brook, Bending like a shepherd's crook, Flashed its silver, and thick ranks Of willow fringed its mossy banks; Half in thought, and half in play, Katie Lee and Willie Grey. They had cheeks like cherries red; He was taller--'most a head; She, with arms like wreaths of snow, Swung a basket to and fro As she loitered, half in play, Chattering to Willie Grey. "Pretty Katie," Willie said-- And there came a dash of red Through the brownness of his cheek-- "Boys are strong and girls are weak, And I'll carry, so I will, Katie's basket up the hill." Katie answered with a laugh, "You shall carry only half"; And then, tossing back her curls, "Boys are weak as well as girls." Do you think that Katie guessed Half the wisdom she expressed? Men are only boys grown tall; Hearts don't change much, after all; And when, long years from that day, Katie Lee and Willie Grey Stood again beside the brook, Bending like a shepherd's crook,-- Is it strange that Willie said, While again a dash of red Crossed the brownness of his cheek, "I am strong and you are weak; Life is but a slippery steep, Hung with shadows cold and deep. "Will you trust me, Katie dear,-- Walk beside me without fear? May I carry, if I will, All your burdens up the hill?" And she answered, with a laugh, "No, but you may carry half." Close beside the little brook, Bending like a shepherd's crook, Washing with its silver hands Late and early at the sands, Is a cottage, where to-day Katie lives with Willie Grey. In a porch she sits, and lo! Swings a basket to and fro-- Vastly different from the one That she swung in years agone, _This_ is long and deep and wide, And has--_rockers at the side_. Abou Ben Adhem Abou Ben Adhem--may his tribe increase!-- Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, And saw, within the moonlight in his room, Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom, An angel, writing in a book of gold. Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold, And to the Presence in the room he said, "What writest thou?" The vision raised its head, And, with a look made all of sweet accord, Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord." "And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so," Replied the angel.--Abou spoke more low, But cheerily still; and said, "I pray thee, then, Write me as one that loves his fellow-men." The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night It came again, with a great wakening light, And showed the names whom love of God had blessed: And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest. _Leigh Hunt._ In School-Days Still sits the school-house by the road, A ragged beggar sunning; Around it still the sumachs grow, And blackberry vines are running. Within, the master's desk is seen, Deep scarred by raps official; The warping floor, the battered seats, The jack-knife's carved initial; The charcoal frescoes on its wall; Its door's worn sill, betraying The feet that, creeping slow to school, Went storming out to playing! Long years ago a winter sun Shone over it at setting; Lit up its western window-panes, And low eaves' icy fretting. It touched the tangled golden curls, And brown eyes full of grieving, Of one who still her steps delayed When all the school were leaving. For near her stood the little boy Her childish favor singled: His cap pulled low upon a face Where pride and shame were mingled. Pushing with restless feet the snow To right and left, he lingered;-- As restlessly her tiny hands The blue-checked apron fingered. He saw her lift her eyes; he felt The soft hand's light caressing, And heard the tremble of her voice, As if a fault confessing. "I'm sorry that I spelt the word: I hate to go above you, Because,"--the brown eyes lower fell,-- "Because, you see, I love you!" Still memory to a gray-haired man That sweet child-face is showing. Dear girl: the grasses on her grave Have forty years been growing! He lives to learn, in life's hard school, How few who pass above him Lament their triumph and his loss, Like her,--because they love him. _John Greenleaf Whittier._ Mother's Fool "Tis plain to see," said a farmer's wife, "These boys will make their mark in life; They were never made to handle a hoe, And at once to a college ought to go; There's Fred, he's little better than a fool, But John and Henry must go to school." "Well, really, wife," quoth Farmer Brown, As he set his mug of cider down, "Fred does more work in a day for me Than both his brothers do in three. Book larnin' will never plant one's corn, Nor hoe potatoes, sure's you're born; Nor mend a rod of broken fence-- For my part, give me common sense." But his wife was bound the roost to rule, And John and Henry were sent to school, While Fred, of course, was left behind, Because his mother said he had no mind. Five years at school the students spent; Then into business each one went. John learned to play the flute and fiddle, And parted his hair, of course, in the middle; While his brother looked rather higher than he, And hung out a sign, "H. Brown, M.D." Meanwhile, at home, their brother Fred Had taken a notion into his head; But he quietly trimmed his apple trees, And weeded onions and planted peas, While somehow or other, by hook or crook, He managed to read full many a book; Until at last his father said He was getting "book larnin'" into his head; "But for all that," added Farmer Brown, "He's the smartest boy there is in town." The war broke out, and Captain Fred A hundred men to battle led, And when the rebel flag came down, Went marching home as General Brown. But he went to work on the farm again, And planted corn and sowed his grain; He shingled the barn and mended the fence, Till people declared he had common sense. Now common sense was very rare, And the State House needed a portion there; So the "family dunce" moved into town-- The people called him Governor Brown; And the brothers who went to the city school Came home to live with "mother's fool." Kentucky Philosophy You Wi'yam, cum 'ere, suh, dis instunce. Wu' dat you got under dat box? I do' want no foolin'--you hear me? Wut you say? Ain't nu'h'n but _rocks_? 'Peah ter me you's owdashus p'ticler. S'posin' dey's uv a new kine. I'll des take a look at dem rocks. Hi yi! der you think dat I's bline? _I_ calls dat a plain water-million, you scamp, en I knows whah it growed; It come fum de Jimmerson cawn fiel', dah on ter side er de road. You stole it, you rascal--you stole it! I watched you fum down in de lot. En time I gets th'ough wid you, nigger, you won't eb'n be a grease spot! I'll fix you. Mirandy! Mir_an_dy! go cut me a hick'ry--make 'ase! En cut me de toughes' en keenes' you c'n fine anywhah on de place. I'll larn you, Mr. Wi'yam Joe Vetters, ter steal en ter lie, you young sinner, Disgracin' yo' ole Christian mammy, en makin' her leave cookin' dinner! Now ain't you ashamed er yo'se'lf sur? I is, I's 'shamed you's my son! En de holy accorjan angel he's 'shamed er wut you has done; En he's tuk it down up yander in coal-black, blood-red letters-- "One water-million stoled by Wi'yam Josephus Vetters." En wut you s'posen Brer Bascom, yo' teacher at Sunday school, 'Ud say ef he knowed how you's broke de good Lawd's Gol'n Rule? Boy, whah's de raisin' I give you? Is you boun' fuh ter be a black villiun? I's s'prised dat a chile er yo mammy 'ud steal any man's water-million. En I's now gwinter cut it right open, en you shain't have nary bite, Fuh a boy who'll steal water-millions--en dat in de day's broad light-- Ain't--_Lawdy!_ it's _green!_ Mirandy! Mi-ran-dy! come on wi' dat switch! Well, stealin' a g-r-e-e-n water-million! who ever yeered tell er des sich? Cain't tell w'en dey's ripe? W'y you thump 'um, en w'en dey go pank dey is green; But w'en dey go _punk_, now you mine me, dey's ripe--en dat's des wut I mean. En nex' time you hook water-millions--_you_ heered me, you ign'ant, you hunk, Ef you do' want a lickin' all over, be sho dat dey allers go "punk"! _Harrison Robertson._ Give Us Men God give us men; a time like this demands Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands. Men whom the lust of office cannot kill; Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy; Men who possess opinions and a will; Men who have honor; men who will not lie; Men who can stand before a demagogue, And brave his treacherous flatteries without winking; Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog, In public duty and in private thinking; For while the rabble, with its thumb-worn creeds, Its large professions, and its little deeds, Mingle in selfish strife--lo! Freedom weeps, Wrong rules the land, and waiting Justice sleeps. _J.G. Holland._ Never Trouble Trouble My good man is a clever man, which no one will gainsay; He lies awake to plot and plan 'gainst lions in the way, While I, without a thought of ill, sleep sound enough for three, For I never trouble trouble till trouble troubles me. A holiday we never fix but he is sure 'twill rain; And when the sky is clear at six he knows it won't remain. He is always prophesying ill to which I won't agree, For I never trouble trouble till trouble troubles me. The wheat will never show a top--but soon how green the field! We will not harvest half a crop--yet have a famous yield! It will not sell, it never will! but I will wait and see, For I never trouble trouble till trouble troubles me. We have a good share of worldly gear, and fortune seems secure, Yet my good man is full of fear--misfortune's coming sure! He points me out the almshouse hill, but cannot make me see, For I never trouble trouble till trouble troubles me. He has a sort of second sights and when the fit is strong, He sees beyond the good and right the evil and the wrong. Heaven's cop of joy he'll surely spill unless I with him be, For I never trouble trouble till trouble troubles me. _Fannie Windsor._ What is Good "What is the real good?" I asked in musing mood. Order, said the law court; Knowledge, said the school; Truth, said the wise man; Pleasure, said the fool; Love, said the maiden; Beauty, said the page; Freedom, said the dreamer; Home, said the sage; Fame, said the soldier; Equity, the seer. Spake my heart full sadly: "The answer is not here." Then within my bosom Softly this I heard: "Each heart holds the secret: Kindness is the word." _John Boyle O'Reilly._ The Penny Ye Mean to Gie There's a funny tale 'of a stingy man, Who was none too good but might have been worse, Who went to his church, on a Sunday night And carried along his well-filled purse. When the sexton came with the begging plate, The church was but dim with the candle's light; The stingy man fumbled all thro' his purse, And chose a coin by touch and not by sight. It's an odd thing now that guineas should be So like unto pennies in shape and size. "I'll gie a penny," the stingy man said: "The poor must not gifts of pennies despise." The penny fell down with a clatter and ring! And back in his seat leaned the stingy man. "The world is full of the poor," he thought, "I can't help them all--I give what I can." Ha! ha! how the sexton smiled, to be sure, To see the gold guinea fall in the plate; Ha! ha! how the stingy man's heart was wrung, Perceiving his blunder--but just too late! "No matter," he said; "in the Lord's account That guinea of gold is set down to me-- They lend to him who give to the poor; It will not so bad an investment be." "Na, na, mon," the chuckling sexton cried out, "The Lord is na cheated--he kens thee well; He knew it was only by accident That out o' thy fingers the guinea fell! "He keeps an account, na doubt, for the puir; But in that account He'll set down to thee Na mair o' that golden guinea, my mon, Than the one bare penny ye mean to gie!" There's comfort, too, in the little tale-- A serious side as well as a joke-- A comfort for all the generous poor In the comical words the sexton spoke; A comfort to think that the good Lord knows How generous we really desire to be, And will give us credit in his account, For all the pennies we long "to gie." Leedle Yawcob Strauss I haf von funny leedle poy Vot gomes shust to my knee,-- Der queerest schap, der createst rogue As efer you dit see. He runs, und schumps, und schmashes dings In all barts off der house. But vot off dot? He vas mine son, Mine leedle Yawcob Strauss. He gets der measels und der mumbs, Und eferyding dot's oudt; He sbills mine glass off lager bier, Poots schnuff indo mine kraut; He fills mine pipe mit Limburg cheese-- Dot vas der roughest chouse; I'd dake dot vrom no oder poy But leedle Yawcob Strauss. He dakes der milkban for a dhrum, Und cuts mine cane in dwo To make der schticks to beat it mit-- Mine cracious, dot vas drue! I dinks mine hed vas schplit abart He kicks oup sooch a touse; But nefer mind der poys vas few Like dot young Yawcob Strauss. He asks me questions sooch as dese: Who baints mine nose so red? Who vos it cuts dot schmoodth blace oudt Vrom der hair ubon mine hed? Und vhere der plaze goes vrom der lamp Vene'er der glim I douse? How gan I all dese dings eggsblain To dot schmall Yawcob Strauss? I somedimes dink I schall go vild Mit sooch a grazy poy, Und vish vonce more I gould haf rest Und beaceful dimes enshoy. But ven he vas asleep in ped, So quiet as a mouse, I prays der Lord, "Dake any dings, But leaf dot Yawcob Strauss." _Charles F. Adams._ To-day We shall do so much in the years to come, But what have we done to-day? We shall give out gold in princely sum, But what did we give to-day? We shall lift the heart and dry the tear, We shall plant a hope in the place of fear, We shall speak with words of love and cheer, But what have we done to-day? We shall be so kind in the after while, But what have we been to-day? We shall bring to each lonely life a smile, But what have we brought to-day? We shall give to truth a grander birth, And to steadfast faith a deeper worth, We shall feed the hungering souls of earth, But whom have we fed to-day? _Nixon Waterman._ So Was I My name is Tommy, an' I hates That feller of my sister Kate's, He's bigger'n I am an' you see He's sorter lookin' down on me, An' I resents it with a vim; I think I am just as good as him. He's older, an' he's mighty fly, But's he's a kid, an' so am I. One time he came,--down by the gate, I guess it must have been awful late,-- An' Katie, she was there, an' they Was feelin' very nice and gay, An' he was talkin' all the while About her sweet an' lovin' smile, An' everythin' was as nice as pie, An' they was there, an' so was I. They didn't see me, 'cause I slid Down underneath a bush, an' hid, An' he was sayin' that his love Was greater'n all the stars above Up in the glorious heavens placed; An' then His arms got 'round her waist, An' clouds were floatin' in the sky, And they was there, an' so was I. I didn't hear just all they said, But by an' by my sister's head Was droopin' on his shoulder, an' I seen him holdin' Katie's hand, An' then he hugged her closer, some, An' then I heerd a kiss--yum, yum; An' Katie blushed an' drew a sigh, An' sorter coughed,--an' so did I. An' then that feller looked around An' seed me there, down on the ground, An'--was he mad? well, betcher boots I gets right out of there an' scoots. An' he just left my sister Kate A-standin' right there by the gate; An' I seen blood was in his eye, An' he runned fast--an' so did I. I runned the very best I could, But he cotched up--I's 'fraid he would-- An' then he said he'd teach me how To know my manners, he'd allow; An' then he shaked me awful. Gee! He jest--he frashed the ground with me. An' then he stopped it by and by, 'Cause he was tired--an' so was I, An' then he went back to the gate An' couldn't find my sister Kate 'Cause she went in to bed, while he Was runnin' 'round an' thumpin' me. I got round in a shadder dim, An' made a face, an' guffed at him; An' then the moon larfed, in the sky, 'Cause he was there, an' so was I. _Joseph Bert Smiley._ Is It Worth While? Is it worth while that we jostle a brother. Bearing his load on the rough road of life? Is it worth while that we jeer at each other In blackness of heart that we war to the knife? God pity us all in our pitiful strife. God pity as all as we jostle each other; God pardon us all for the triumph we feel When a fellow goes down 'neath his load on the heather, Pierced to the heart: Words are keener than steel, And mightier far for woe than for weal, Were it not well, in this brief little journey On over the isthmus, down into the tide, We give him a fish instead of a serpent, Ere folding the hands to be and abide Forever and aye in dust at his side? Look at the roses saluting each other; Look at the herds all at peace on the plain; Man, and man only, makes war on his brother, And laughs in his heart at his peril and pain, Shamed by the beasts that go down on the plain. Is it worth while that we battle to humble Some poor fellow down into the dust? God pity us all! Time too soon will tumble All of us together, like leaves in a gust, Humbled, indeed, down into the dust. _Joaquin Miller._ Life's Mirror There are loyal hearts, there are spirits brave, There are souls that are pure and true; Then give to the world the best you have, And the best will come back to you. Give love, and love to your life will flow, A strength in your utmost need; Have faith, and a score of hearts will show Their faith in your work and deed. Give truth, and your gift will be paid in kind; And honor will honor meet, And the smile which is sweet will surely find A smile that is just as sweet. Give pity and sorrow to those who mourn; You will gather in flowers again The scattered seeds from your thought outborne, Though the sowing seemed in vain. For life is the mirror of king and slave; 'Tis just what we are and do; Then give to the world the best you have, And the best will come back to you. _Madeline S. Bridges._ The Little Black-Eyed Rebel A boy drove into the city, his wagon loaded down With food to feed the people of the British-governed town; And the little black-eyed rebel, so cunning and so sly, Was watching for his coming from the corner of her eye. His face was broad and honest, his hands were brown and tough, The clothes he wore upon him were homespun, coarse, and rough; But one there was who watched him, who long time lingered nigh, And cast at him sweet glances from the corner of her eye. He drove up to the market, he waited in the line-- His apples and potatoes were fresh and fair and fine. But long and long he waited, and no one came to buy, Save the black-eyed rebel, watching from the corner of her eye. "Now, who will buy my apples?" he shouted, long and loud; And, "Who wants my potatoes?" he repeated to the crowd. But from all the people round him came no word of reply, Save the black-eyed rebel, answering from the corner of her eye. For she knew that 'neath the lining of the coat he wore that day Were long letters from the husbands and the fathers far away, Who were fighting for the freedom that they meant to gain, or die; And a tear like silver glistened in the corner of her eye. But the treasures--how to get them? crept the question through her mind, Since keen enemies were watching for what prizes they might find; And she paused a while and pondered, with a pretty little sigh, Then resolve crept through her features, and a shrewdness fired her eye. So she resolutely walked up to the wagon old and red-- "May I have a dozen apples for a kiss?" she sweetly said; And the brown face flushed to scarlet, for the boy was somewhat shy, And he saw her laughing at him from the corner of her eye. "You may have them all for nothing, and more, if you want," quoth he. "I will have them, my good fellow, but can pay for them," said she. And she clambered on the wagon, minding not who all were by, With a laugh of reckless romping in the corner of her eye. Clinging round his brawny neck, she clasped her fingers white and small, And then whispered, "Quick! the letters! thrust them underneath my shawl! Carry back again _this_ package, and be sure that you are spry!" And she sweetly smiled upon him from the corner of her eye. Loud the motley crowd was laughing at the strange, ungirlish freak; And the boy was scared and panting, and so dashed he could not speak. And "Miss, I have good apples," a bolder lad did cry; But she answered, "No, I thank you," from the corner of her eye. With the news from loved ones absent to the dear friends they would greet, Searching them who hungered for them, swift she glided through the street. "There is nothing worth the doing that it does not pay to try," Thought the little black-eyed rebel with a twinkle in her eye. _Will Carleton._ A Day Well Spent If you sit down at set of sun And count the deeds that you have done, And, counting, find One self-denying act, one word that eased the heart of him that heard; One glance most kind, which felt like sunshine where it went, Then you may count that day well spent. But if through, all the livelong day You've eased no heart by yea or nay, If through it all you've nothing done that you can trace That brought the sunshine to one face, No act most small that helped some soul and nothing cost, Then count that day as worse than lost. Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth Say not the struggle nought availeth, The labor and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not, nor faileth, And as things have been they remain. If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars; It may be, in yon smoke concealed, Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers, And, but for you, possess the field. For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, Seem here no painful inch to gain, Far back, through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in, the main, And not by eastern windows only, When daylight comes, comes in the light, In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly, But westward, look, the land is bright. _A.H. Clough._ The Miller of the Dee There dwelt a miller, hale and bold, Beside the river Dee; He worked and sang from morn till night-- No lark more blithe than he; And this the burden of his song Forever used to be: "I envy nobody--no, not I-- And nobody envies me!" "Thou'rt wrong, my friend," said good King Hal, "As wrong as wrong can be; For could my heart be light as thine, I'd gladly change with thee. And tell me now, what makes thee sing, With voice so loud and free, While I am sad, though I'm a king, Beside the river Dee?" The miller smiled and doffed his cap, "I earn my bread," quoth he; "I love my wife, I love my friend, I love my children three; I owe no penny I cannot pay, I thank the river Dee That turns the mill that grinds the corn That feeds my babes and me." "Good friend," said Hal, and sighed the while, "Farewell, and happy be; But say no more, if thou'dst be true That no one envies thee; Thy mealy cap is worth my crown, Thy mill my kingdom's fee; Such men as thou art England's boast, O miller of the Dee!" _Charles Mackay._ The Old Red Cradle Take me back to the days when the old red cradle rocked, In the sunshine of the years that are gone; To the good old trusty days, when the door was never locked, And we slumbered unmolested till the dawn. I remember of my years I had numbered almost seven, And the old cradle stood against the wall-- I was youngest of the five, and two were gone to heaven, But the old red cradle rocked us all. And if ever came a day when my cheeks were flushed and hot, When I did not mind my porridge or my play, I would clamber up its side and the pain would be forgot, When the old red cradle rocked away. It has been a hallowed spot where I've turned through all the years, Which have brought me the evil with the good, And I turn again to-night, aye, and see it through my tears, The place where the dear old cradle stood. By its side my father paused with a little time to spare. And the care-lines would soften on his brow, Ah! 't was but a little while that I knew a father's care, But I fancy in my dreams I see him now. By my mother it was rocked when the evening meal was laid, And again I seem to see her as she smiled; When the rest were all in bed, 'twas there she knelt and prayed, By the old red cradle and her child. Aye, it cradled one and all, brothers, sisters in it lay, And it gave me the sweetest rest I've known; But to-night the tears will flow, and I let them have their way, For the passing years are leaving me alone. And it seems of those to come, I would gladly give them all For a slumber as free from care as then, Just to wake to-morrow morn where the rising sun would fall Round the old red cradle once again. But the cradle long has gone and the burdens that it bore, One by one, have been gathered to the fold; Still the flock is incomplete, for it numbers only four, With one left out straying in the cold. Heaven grant again we may in each other's arms be locked, Where no sad tears of parting ever fall; God forbid that one be lost that the old red cradle rocked; And the dear old cradle rocked us all. _Annie J. Granniss._ The Moo Cow Moo My papa held me up to the Moo Cow Moo So close I could almost touch, And I fed him a couple of times or so, And I wasn't a fraid-cat, much. But if my papa goes in the house, And my mamma she goes in too, I keep still like a little mouse For the Moo Cow Moo might Moo. The Moo Cow's tail is a piece of rope All raveled out where it grows; And it's just like feeling a piece of soap All over the Moo Cow's nose. And the Moo Cow Moo has lots of fun Just switching his tail about, But if he opens his mouth, why then I run, For that's where the Moo comes out. The Moo Cow Moo has deers on his head, And his eyes stick out of their place, And the nose of the Moo Cow Moo is spread All over the Moo Cow's face. And his feet are nothing but fingernails, And his mamma don't keep them cut, And he gives folks milk in water pails, When he don't keep his handles shut. But if you or I pull his handles, why The Moo Cow Moo says it hurts, But the hired man sits down close by And squirts, and squirts, and squirts. _Edmund Vance Cooke._ All Things Bright and Beautiful All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful,-- The Lord God made them all. Each little flower that opens, Each little bird that sings,-- He made their glowing colors, He made their tiny wings. The rich man in his castle, The poor man at his gate, God made them, high or lowly, And ordered their estate. The purple-headed mountain, The river running by, The morning, and the sunset That lighteth up the sky, The cold wind in the winter, The pleasant summer sun, The ripe fruits in the garden,-- He made them, every one. The tall trees in the greenwood, The meadows where we play, The rushes by the water We gather every day,-- He gave us eyes to see them, And lips that we might tell How great is God Almighty, Who hath made all things well. _Cecil Frances Alexander._ An Order for a Picture Oh, good painter, tell me true, Has your hand the cunning to draw Shapes of things that you never saw? Aye? Well, here is an order for you. Woods and cornfields, a little brown,-- The picture must not be over-bright,-- Yet all in the golden and gracious light Of a cloud, when the summer sun is down. Alway and alway, night and morn, Woods upon woods, with fields of corn Lying between them, not quite sere, And not in the full, thick, leafy bloom, When the wind can hardly find breathing-room, Under their tassels,--cattle near, Biting shorter the short green grass, And a hedge of sumach and sassafras, With bluebirds twittering all around,-- (Ah, good painter, you can't paint sound!)-- These, and the little house where I was born, Low and little, and black and old, With children, many as it can hold, All at the windows, open wide,-- Heads and shoulders clear outside, And fair young faces all ablush: Perhaps you have seen, some day, Roses crowding the self-same way, Out of a wilding, wayside bush. Listen closer. When you have done With woods and cornfields and grazing herds, A lady, the loveliest ever the sun Looked down upon you must paint for me: Oh, if I could only make you see The clear blue eyes, the tender smile, The sovereign sweetness, the gentle grace, The woman's soul, and the angel's face That are beaming on me all the while, I need not speak these foolish words: Yet one word tells you all I would say,-- She is my mother: you will agree That all the rest may be thrown away. Two little urchins at her knee You must paint, sir: one like me,-- The other with a clearer brow, And the light of his adventurous eyes Flashing with boldest enterprise: At ten years old he went to sea,-- God knoweth if he be living now; He sailed in the good ship "Commodore,"-- Nobody ever crossed her track To bring us news, and she never came back. Ah, it is twenty long years and more Since that old ship went out of the bay With my great-hearted brother on her deck: I watched him till he shrank to a speck, And his face was toward me all the way. Bright his hair was, a golden brown, The time we stood at our mother's knee: That beauteous head, if it did go down, Carried sunshine into the sea! Out in the fields one summer night We were together, half afraid Of the corn-leaves' rustling, and of the shade Of the high hills, stretching so still and far,-- Loitering till after the low little light Of the candle shone through the open door, And over the hay-stack's pointed top, All of a tremble and ready to drop, The first half-hoar, the great yellow star, That we, with staring, ignorant eyes, Had often and often watched to see Propped and held in its place in the skies By the fork of a tall red mulberry-tree, Which close in the edge of our flax-field grew,-- Dead at the top, just one branch full Of leaves, notched round, and lined with wool, From which it tenderly shook the dew Over our heads, when we came to play In its hand-breadth of shadow, day after day. Afraid to go home, sir; for one of us bore A nest full of speckled and thin-shelled eggs,-- The other, a bird, held fast by the legs, Not so big as a straw of wheat: The berries we gave her she wouldn't eat, But cried and cried, till we held her bill, So slim and shining, to keep her still. At last we stood at our mother's knee. Do you think, sir, if you try, You can paint the look of a lie? If you can, pray have the grace To put it solely in the face Of the urchin that is likest me: I think 'twas solely mine, indeed: But that's no matter,--paint it so; The eyes of our mother--(take good heed)-- Looking not on the nestful of eggs, Nor the fluttering bird, held so fast by the legs, But straight through our faces down to our lies, And, oh, with such injured, reproachful surprise! I felt my heart bleed where that glance went, as though A sharp blade struck through it. You, sir, know That you on the canvas are to repeat Things that are fairest, things most sweet,-- Woods and cornfields and mulberry-tree,-- The mother,--the lads, with their bird at her knee: But, oh, that look of reproachful woe! High as the heavens your name I'll shout, If you paint me the picture, and leave that out. _Alice Cary._ Who Won the War? Who won the war? 'T was little Belgium stemmed the tide Of ruthless hordes who thought to ride Her borders through and prostrate France Ere yet she'd time to raise her lance. 'T was plucky Belgium. Who won the war? Italia broke the galling chain Which bound her to the guilty twain; Then fought 'gainst odds till one of these Lay prone and shattered at her knees. 'T was gallant Italy. Who won the war? Old England's watch dogs of the main Their vigil kept, and not in vain; For not a ship their wrath dared brave Save those which skulked beneath the wave. 'T was mighty England. Who won the war? 'T was France who wrote in noble rage The grandest words on history's page, "They shall not pass"--the devilish Hun; And he could never pass Verdun. 'T was sturdy France. Who won the war? In darkest hour there rose a cry, "Liberty, sweet Liberty, thou shalt not die!" Thank God! they came across the sea, Two million men and victory! 'T was glorious America. Who won the war? No one of these; not one, but all Who answered Freedom's clarion call. Each humble man who did his bit In God's own book of fame is writ. These won the war. _Woodbury Pulsifer._ Mothers of Men The bravest battle that ever was fought! Shall I tell you where and when? On the map of the world you will find it not, 'Twas fought by the mothers of men. Nay, not with cannon or battle shot, With sword or nobler pen, Nay, not with eloquent words or thought From mouths of wonderful men; But deep in the walled-up woman's heart-- Of woman that would not yield, But bravely, silently, bore her part-- Lo, there is the battle field! No marshaling troup, no bivouac song, No banner to gleam or wave, But oh, these battles, they last so long-- From babyhood to the grave. Yet, faithful as a bridge of stars, She fights in her walled-up town-- Fights on and on in the endless wars, Then, silent, unseen, goes down. Oh, ye with banner and battle shot, And soldiers to shout and praises I tell you the kingliest victories fought Were fought in those silent ways. Oh, spotless in a world of shame, With splendid and silent scorn, Go back to God as white as you came-- The kingliest warrior born! _Joaquin Miller._ Plain Bob and a Job Bob went lookin' for a job-- Didn't want a situation; didn't ask a lofty station: Didn't have a special mission for a topnotcher's position; Didn't have such fine credentials--but he had the real essentials-- Had a head that kept on workin' and two hands that were not shirkin'; Wasn't either shirk or snob; Wasn't Mister--just plain Bob, Who was lookin' for a job. Bob went lookin' for a job; And he wasn't scared or daunted when he saw a sign--"Men Wanted," Walked right in with manner fittin' up to where the Boss was sittin', And he said: "My name is Bob, and I'm lookin' for a job; And if you're the Boss that hires 'em, starts 'em working and that fires 'em, Put my name right down here, Neighbor, as a candidate for labor; For my name is just plain 'Bob, And my pulses sort o' throb For that thing they call a job." Bob kept askin' for a job, And the Boss, he says: "What kind?" And Bob answered: "Never mind; For I am not a bit partic'ler and I never was a stickler For proprieties in workin'--if you got some labor lurkin' Anywhere around about kindly go and trot it out. It's, a job I want, you see-- Any kind that there may be Will be good enough for me." Well, sir, Bob he got a job. But the Boss went 'round all day in a dreamy sort of way; And he says to me: "By thunder, we have got the world's Eighth Wonder! Got a feller name of Bob who just asked me for a job-- Never asks when he engages about overtime in wages; Never asked if he'd get pay by the hour or by the day; Never asked me if it's airy work and light and sanitary; Never asked me for my notion of the chances of promotion; Never asked for the duration of his annual vacation; Never asked for Saturday half-a-holiday with pay; Never took me on probation till he tried the situation; Never asked me if it's sittin' work or standin', or befittin' Of his birth and inclination--he just filed his application, Hung his coat up on a knob, Said his name was just plain Bob-- And went workin' at a job!" _James W. Foley._ Aunt Tabitha Whatever I do and whatever I say, Aunt Tabitha tells me it isn't the way When _she_ was a girl (forty summers ago); Aunt Tabitha tells me they never did so. Dear aunt! If I only would take her advice! But I like my own way, and I find it _so_ nice! And besides, I forget half the things I am told; But they all will come back to me--when I am old. If a youth passes by, it may happen, no doubt, He may chance to look in as I chance to look out; _She_ would never endure an impertinent stare-- It is _horrid_, she says, and I mustn't sit there. A walk in the moonlight has pleasures, I own, But it isn't quite safe to be walking alone; So I take a lad's arm--just for safety you know-- But Aunt Tabitha tells me _they_ didn't do so. How wicked we are, and how good they were then! They kept at arm's length those detestable men; What an era of virtue she lived in!--But stay-- Were the _men_ all such rogues in Aunt Tabitha's day? If the men _were_ so wicked, I'll ask my papa How he dared to propose to my darling mamma; Was he like the rest of them? Goodness! Who knows? And what shall _I_ say, if a wretch should propose? I am thinking if aunt knew so little of sin, What a wonder Aunt Tabitha's aunt must have been! And her grand-aunt--it scares me--how shockingly sad That we girls of to-day are so frightfully bad! A martyr will save us, and nothing else can, Let _me perish_--to rescue some wretched young man! Though when to the altar a victim I go, Aunt Tabitha'll tell me _she_ never did so! The Flag Goes By Hats off! Along the street there comes A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums, A flash of color beneath the sky: Hats off! The flag is passing by! Blue and crimson and white it shines, Over the steel-tipped, ordered lines. Hats off! The colors before us fly; But more than the flag is passing by. Sea-fights and land-fights, grim and great, Fought to make and to save the State; Weary marches and sinking ships; Cheers of victory on dying lips; Days of plenty and years of peace, March of a strong land's swift increase: Equal justice, right and law, Stately honor and reverent awe; Sign of a nation, great and strong, To ward her people from foreign wrong; Pride and glory and honor, all Live in the colors to stand or fall. Hats off! Along the street there comes A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums, And loyal hearts are beating high: Hats off! The flag is passing by! _H.H. Bennett._ The Rivers of France The rivers of France are ten score and twain, But five are the names that we know: The Marne, the Vesle, the Oureq and the Aisne, And the Somme of the swampy flow. The rivers of France, from source to sea, Are nourished by many a rill, But these five, if ever a drouth there be The fountains of sorrow would fill. The rivers of France shine silver white, But the waters of five are red With the richest blood, in the fiercest fight For freedom that ever was shed. The rivers of France sing soft as they run, But five have a song of their own, That hymns the fall of the arrogant one And the proud cast down from his throne. The rivers of France all quietly take To sleep in the house of their birth, But the carnadined wave of five shall break On the uttermost strands of earth. Five rivers of France--see! their names are writ On a banner of crimson and gold, And the glory of those who fashioned it Shall nevermore cease to be told. _H.J.M., in London "Times."_ Seven Times One There's no dew left on the daisies and clover, There's no rain left in heaven; I've said my "seven times" over and over: Seven times one are seven. I am old, so old I can write a letter; My birthday lessons are done; The lambs play always, they know no better, They are only one times one. O Moon! in the night I have seen you sailing And shining so round and low; You were bright! but your light is failing, You are nothing now but a bow. You Moon, have you done something wrong in heaven, That God has hidden your face? I hope if you have, you'll soon be forgiven, And shine again in your place. O velvet Bee, you're a dusty fellow; You've powdered your legs with gold! O brave Marshmary buds, rich and yellow, Give me your money to hold! O Columbine, open your folded wrapper Where two twin turtle-doves dwell! O Cuckoo-pint, toll me the purple clapper That hangs in your clear green bell! And show me your nest, with the young ones in it, I will not steal them away; I am old! you may trust me, linnet, linnet, I am seven times one to-day. _Jean Ingelow._ Seven Times Two You bells in the steeple, ring, ring out your changes, How many soever they be, And let the brown meadow-lark's note as he ranges, Come over, come over to me. Yet birds' clearest carol by fall or by swelling No magical sense conveys, And bells have forgotten their old art of telling The fortune of future days. "Turn again, turn again," once they rang cheerily. While a boy listened alone; Made his heart yearn again, musing so wearily All by himself on a stone. Poor bells! I forgive you; your good days are over, And mine, they are yet to be; No listening, no longing shall aught, aught discover: You leave the story to me. The foxglove shoots out of the green matted heather, Preparing her hoods of snow: She was idle, and slept till the sunshiny weather: Oh, children take long to grow. I wish and I wish that the spring would go faster, Nor long summer bide so late; And I could grow on like the foxglove and aster, For some things are ill to wait. I wait for the day when dear hearts shall discover, While dear hands are laid on my head: "The child is a woman, the book may close over, For all the lessons are said." I wait for my story--the birds cannot sing it, Not one, as he sits on the tree; The bells cannot ring it, but long years, oh bring it! Such as I wish it to be. _Jean Ingelow._ Seven Times Three LOVE I leaned out of window, I smelt the white clover, Dark, dark was the garden, I saw not the gate; "Now, if there be footsteps, he comes, my one lover-- Hush, nightingale, hush! O sweet nightingale, wait Till I listen and hear If a step draweth near, For my love he is late! "The skies in the darkness stoop nearer and nearer, A cluster of stars hangs like fruit in the tree, The fall of the water comes sweeter, comes clearer: To what art thou listening, and what dost thou see? Let the star-clusters grow, Let the sweet waters flow. And cross quickly to me. "You night-moths that hover where honey brims over From sycamore blossoms, or settle or sleep; You glowworms, shine out, and the pathway discover To him that comes darkling along the rough steep. Ah, my sailor, make haste, For the time runs to waste, And my love lieth deep, "Too deep for swift telling; and yet, my one lover, I've conned thee an answer, it waits thee to-night." By the sycamore passed he, and through the white clover; Then all the sweet speech I had fashioned took flight; But I'll love him more, more Than e'er wife loved before, Be the days dark or bright. _Jean Ingelow._ Seven Times Four MATERNITY Heigh-ho! daisies and buttercups, Fair yellow daffodils, stately and tall! When the wind wakes, how they rock in the grasses, And dance with the cuckoo-buds slender and small! Here's two bonny boys, and here's mother's own lasses Eager to gather them all. Heigh-ho! daisies and buttercups! Mother shall thread them a daisy chain; Sing them a song of the pretty hedge-sparrow, That loved her brown little ones, loved them full fain; Sing, "Heart, thou art wide though the house be but narrow,"-- Sing once, and sing it again. Heigh-ho! daisies and buttercups, Sweet wagging cowslips, they bend and they bow; A ship sails afar over warm ocean waters, And haply one musing doth stand at her prow, O bonny brown son, and O sweet little daughters, Maybe he thinks on you now! Heigh-ho! daisies and buttercups, Fair yellow daffodils, stately and tall! A sunshiny world full of laughter and leisure, And fresh hearts unconscious of sorrow and thrall! Send down on their pleasure smiles passing its measure, God that is over us all! _Jean Ingelow._ Autumn Woods Ere, in the northern gale, The summer tresses of the trees are gone, The woods of Autumn, all around our vale, Have put their glory on. The mountains that infold, In their wide sweep, the colored landscape round, Seem groups of giant kings, in purple and gold, That guard the enchanted ground. I roam the woods that crown The upland, where the mingled splendors glow, Where the gay company of trees look down On the green fields below. My steps are not alone In these bright walks; the sweet southwest, at play, Flies, rustling, where the painted leaves are strown Along the winding way. And far in heaven, the while, The sun, that sends that gale to wander here, Pours out on the fair earth his quiet smile,-- The sweetest of the year. Where now the solemn shade, Verdure and gloom where many branches meet; So grateful, when the noon of summer made The valleys sick with heat? Let in through all the trees Come the strange rays; the forest depths are bright; Their sunny-colored foliage, in the breeze, Twinkles, like beams of light. The rivulet, late unseen, Where bickering through the shrubs its waters run, Shines with the image of its golden screen And glimmerings of the sun. But 'neath yon crimson tree, Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame, Nor mark, within its roseate canopy, Her blush of maiden shame. Oh, Autumn! why so soon Depart the hues that make thy forests glad; Thy gentle wind and thy fair sunny noon, And leave thee wild and sad? Ah! 'twere a lot too blessed Forever in thy colored shades to stray; Amid the kisses of the soft southwest To rove and dream for aye; And leave the vain low strife That makes men mad--the tug for wealth and power, The passions and the cares that wither life, And waste its little hour. _William Cullen Bryant._ The Drummer Boy of Mission Ridge Did you ever hear of the Drummer Boy of Mission Ridge, who lay With his face to the foe, 'neath the enemy's guns, in the charge of that terrible day? They were firing above him and firing below, and the tempest of shot and shell Was raging like death, as he moaned in his pain, by the breastworks where he fell. "Go back with your corps," our colonel had said, but he waited the moment when He might follow the ranks and shoulder a gun with the best of us bearded men; And so when the signals from old Fort Wood set an army of veterans wild, He flung down his drum, which spun down the hill like the ball of a wayward child. And then he fell in with the foremost ranks of brave old company G, As we charged by the flank, with our colors ahead, and our columns closed up like a V, In the long, swinging lines of that splendid advance, when the flags of our corps floated out, Like the ribbons that dance in the jubilant lines of the march of a gala day rout. He charged with the ranks, though he carried no gun, for the colonel had said him nay, And he breasted the blast of the bristling guns, and the shock of the sickening fray; And when by his side they were falling like hail he sprang to a comrade slain, And shouldered his musket and bore it as true as the hand that was dead in pain. 'Twas dearly we loved him, our Drummer Boy, with a fire in his bright, black eye, That flashed forth a spirit too great for his form--he only was just so high, As tall, perhaps, as your little lad who scarcely reaches your shoulder-- Though his heart was the heart of a veteran then, a trifle, it may be, bolder. He pressed to the front, our lad so leal, and the works were almost won, A moment more and our flags had swung o'er the muzzle of murderous gun; But a raking fire swept the van, and he fell 'mid the wounded and slain, With his wee wan face turned up to Him who feeleth His children's pain. Again and again our lines fell back, and again with shivering shocks They flung themselves on the rebels' works as ships are tossed on rocks; To be crushed and broken and scattered amain, as the wrecks of the surging storm. Where none may rue and none may reck of aught that has human form. So under the ridge we were lying for the order to charge again, And we counted our comrades missing, and we counted our comrades slain; And one said, "Johnny, our Drummer Boy, is grievously shot and lies Just under the enemy's breastwork; if left on the field he dies." Then all the blood that was in me surged up to my aching brow, And my heart leaped up like a ball in my throat--I can feel it even now, And I said I would bring that boy from the field, if God would spare my breath, If all the guns in Mission Ridge should thunder the threat of death. I crept and crept up the ghastly ridge, by the wounded and the dead, With the moans of my comrades right and left, behind me and yet ahead, Till I came to the form of our Drummer Boy, in his blouse of dusty blue, With his face to the foe, 'neath the enemy's guns, where the blast of the battle blew. And his gaze as he met my own just there would have melted a heart of stone, As he tried like a wounded bird to rise, and placed his hand in my own; And he said in a voice half smothered, though its whispering thrills me yet, "I think in a moment more that I would have stood on that parapet. "But now I nevermore will climb, and, Sergeant, when you see The men go up those breastworks there, just stop and waken me; For though I cannot make the charge and join the cheers that rise, I may forget my pain to see the old flag kiss the skies." Well, it was hard to treat him so, his poor limb shattered sore, But I raised him on my shoulder and to the surgeon bore; And the boys who saw us coming each gave a shout of joy, And uttered fervent prayers for him, our valiant Drummer Boy. When sped the news that "Fighting Joe" had saved the Union right, With his legions fresh from Lookout; and that Thomas massed his might And forced the rebel center; and our cheering ran like wild; And Sherman's heart was happy as the heart of a little child; When Grant from his lofty outlook saw our flags by the hundred fly Along the slopes of Mission Ridge, where'er he cast his eye; And when we heard the thrilling news of the mighty battle done, The fearful contest ended, and the glorious victory won; Then his bright black eyes so yearning grew strangely rapt and wide, And in that hour of conquest our little hero died. But ever in our hearts he dwells, with a grace that ne'er is old, For him the heart to duty wed can nevermore grow cold! And when they tell of heroes, and the laurels they have won, Of the scars they are doomed to carry, of the deeds that they have done; Of the horror to be biding among the ghastly dead, The gory sod beneath them, the bursting shell o'erhead, My heart goes back to Mission Ridge and the Drummer Boy who lay With his face to the foe, 'neath the enemy's guns, in the charge of that terrible day; And I say that the land that bears such sons is crowned and dowered with all The dear God giveth nations to stay them lest they fall. Oh, glory of Mission Ridge, stream on, like the roseate light of morn, On the sons that now are living, on the sons that are yet unborn! And cheers for our comrades living, and tears as they pass away! And three times three for the Drummer Boy who fought at the front that day! If-- If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about don't deal in lies, Or being hated don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; If you can dream and not make dreams your master; If you can think and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to broken, And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools; If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch and toss. And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!" If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings nor lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son! _Rudyard Kipling._ Second Table Some boys are mad when comp'ny comes to stay for meals. They hate To have the other people eat while boys must wait and wait, But I've about made up my mind I'm different from the rest, For as for me, I b'lieve I like the second table best. To eat along with comp'ny is so trying, for it's tough To sit and watch the victuals when you dassent touch the stuff. You see your father serving out the dark meat and the light Until a boy is sure he'll starve before he gets a bite. And when, he asks you what you'll have,--you've heard it all before,-- You know you'll get just what you get and won't get nothing more; For, when you want another piece, your mother winks her eye, And so you say, "I've plenty, thanks!" and tell a whopping lie. When comp'ny is a-watching you, you've got to be polite, And eat your victuals with a fork and take a little bite. You can't have nothing till you're asked and, 'cause a boy is small, Folks think he isn't hungry, and he's never asked at all. Since I can first remember I've been told that when the cake Is passed around, the proper thing is for a boy to take The piece that's nearest to him, and so all I ever got, When comp'ny's been to our house, was the smallest in the lot. It worries boys like everything to have the comp'ny stay A-setting round the table, like they couldn't get away. But when they've gone, and left the whole big shooting match to me, Say! ain't it fun to just wade in and help myself? Oh, gee! With no one round to notice what you're doing--bet your life!-- Boys don't use forks to eat with when they'd rather use a knife, Nor take such little bites as when they're eating with the rest And so, for lots of things, I like the second table best _Nixon Waterman._ The Children When the lessons and tasks are all ended, And the school for the day is dismissed, And the little ones gather around me, To bid me good night and be kissed; Oh, the little white arms that encircle My neck in their tender embrace! Oh, the smiles that are halos of heaven, Shedding sunshine of love on my face! And when they are gone, I sit dreaming Of my childhood, too lovely to last; Of love that my heart will remember When it wakes to the pulse of the past, Ere the world and its wickedness made me A partner of sorrow and sin,-- When the glory of God was about me, And the glory of gladness within. All my heart grows weak as a woman's And the fountains of feeling will flow, When I think of the paths steep and stony, Where the feet of the dear ones must go; Of the mountains of sin hanging o'er them, Of the tempest of Fate blowing wild; Oh, there's nothing on earth half so holy As the innocent heart of a child! They are idols of hearts and of households; They are angels of God in disguise; His sunlight still sleeps in their tresses, His glory still gleams in their eyes; Oh, these truants from home and from heaven,-- They have made me more manly and mild; And I know now how Jesus could liken The kingdom of God to a child! I ask not a life for the dear ones All radiant, as others have done, But that life may have just enough shadow To temper the glare of the sun; I would pray God to guard them from evil, But my prayer would bound back to myself; Ah! a seraph may pray for a sinner, But a sinner must pray for himself. The twig is so easily bended, I have banished the rule and the rod; I have taught them the goodness of knowledge, They have taught me the goodness of God. My heart is the dungeon of darkness, Where I shut them for breaking a rule; My frown is sufficient correction; My love is the law of the school. I shall leave the old house in the autumn, To traverse its threshold no more; Ah! how shall I sigh for the dear ones That meet me each morn at the door! I shall miss the "good nights" and the kisses, And the gush of their innocent glee. The group on its green, and the flowers That are brought every morning to me. I shall miss them at morn and at even, Their song in the school and the street; I shall miss the low hum of their voices, And the tread of their delicate feet. When the lessons of life are all ended, And death says, "The school is dismissed!" May the little ones gather around me To bid me good night and be kissed! _Charles M. Dickinson._ A Visit from St. Nicholas 'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there; The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads; And mamma in her kerchief, and I in my cap, Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap,-- When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash, Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash. The moon, on the breast of the new-fallen snow, Gave a luster of midday to objects below: When what to my wondering eyes should appear, But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer, With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick. More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled and shouted, and called them by name: "Now, Dasher! now Dancer! now, Prancer! now Vixen! On, Comet, on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!-- To the top of the porch, to the top of the wall! Now, dash away, dash sway, dash away all!" As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky, So, up to the house-top the coursers they flew, With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too, And then in a twinkling I heard on the roof The prancing and pawing of each little hoof. As I drew in my head, and was turning around, Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound. He was dressed all in fur from his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot; A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack. His eyes how they twinkled; his dimples how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry; His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow. The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath. He had a broad face and a little round belly That shook, when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly. He was chubby and plump--a right jolly old elf-- And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself. A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head, Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread. He spake not a word, but went straight to his work, And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk, And laying his finger aside of his nose And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose. He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, And away they all flew like the down of a thistle; But I heard him exclaim, ere they drove out of sight, "Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!" _Clement C. Moore._ Your Mission If you cannot on the ocean Sail among the swiftest fleet, Rocking on the highest billows, Laughing at the storms you meet, You can stand among the sailors, Anchored yet within the bay, You can lend a hand to help them, As they launch their boats away. If you are too weak to journey Up the mountain steep and high, You can stand within the valley, While the multitudes go by; You can chant in happy measure, As they slowly pass along; Though they may forget the singer, They will not forget the song. If you have not gold and silver Ever ready to command, If you cannot towards the needy Reach an ever-open hand, You can visit the afflicted, O'er the erring you can weep, You can be a true disciple, Sitting at the Savior's feet. If you cannot in the conflict, Prove yourself a soldier true, If where fire and smoke are thickest, There's no work for you to do, When the battle-field is silent, You can go with careful tread, You can bear away the wounded, You can cover up the dead. Do not then stand idly waiting For some greater work to do, Fortune is a lazy goddess, She will never come to you. Go and toil in any vineyard, Do not fear to do or dare, If you want a field of labor, You can find it anywhere. _Ellen H. Gates._ The House by the Side of the Road There are hermit souls that live withdrawn In the peace of their self-content; There are souls, like stars, that dwell apart, In a fellowless firmament; There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths Where highways never ran; But let me live by the side of the road And be a friend to man. Let me live in a house by the side of the road, Where the race of men go by, The men who are good and the men who are bad, As good and as bad as I. I would not sit in the scorner's seat, Or hurl the cynic's ban; Let me live in a house by the side of the road And be a friend to man. I see from my house by the side of the road, By the side of the highway of life, The men who press with the ardor of hope, The men who are faint with the strife. But I turn not away from their smiles nor their tears, Both parts of an infinite plan; Let me live in my house by the side of the road And be a friend to man. I know there are brook-gladdened meadows ahead And mountains of wearisome height; That the road passes on through the long afternoon And stretches away to the night. But still I rejoice when the travelers rejoice, And weep with the strangers that moan. Nor live in my house by the side of the road Like a man who dwells alone. Let me live in my house by the side of the road Where the race of men go by; They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong, Wise, foolish--so am I. Then why should I sit in the scorner's seat, Or hurl the cynic's ban? Let me live in my house by the side of the road And be a friend to man. _Sam Walter Foss._ Asleep at the Switch The first thing that I remember was Carlo tugging away, With the sleeve of my coat fast in his teeth, pulling, as much as to say: "Come, master, awake, attend to the switch, lives now depend upon you. Think of the souls in the coming train, and the graves you are sending them to. Think of the mother and the babe at her breast, think of the father and son, Think of the lover and the loved one too, think of them doomed every one To fall (as it were by your very hand) into yon fathomless ditch, Murdered by one who should guard them from harm, who now lies asleep at the switch." I sprang up amazed--scarce knew where I stood, sleep had o'ermastered me so; I could hear the wind hollowly howling, and the deep river dashing below, I could hear the forest leaves rustling, as the trees by the tempest were fanned, But what was that noise in the distance? That, I could not understand. I heard it at first indistinctly, like the rolling of some muffled drum, Then nearer and nearer it came to me, till it made my very ears hum; What is this light that surrounds me and seems to set fire to my brain? What whistle's that, yelling so shrill? Ah! I know now; it's the train. We often stand facing some danger, and seem to take root to the place; So I stood--with this demon before me, its heated breath scorching my face; Its headlight made day of the darkness, and glared like the eyes of some witch,-- The train was almost upon me before I remembered the switch. I sprang to it, seizing it wildly, the train dashing fast down the track; The switch resisted my efforts, some devil seemed holding it back; On, on came the fiery-eyed monster, and shot by my face like a flash; I swooned to the earth the next moment, and knew nothing after the crash. How long I lay there unconscious 'twas impossible for me to tell; My stupor was almost a heaven, my waking almost a hell,-- For then I heard the piteous moaning and shrieking of husbands and wives, And I thought of the day we all shrink from, when I must account for their lives; Mothers rushed by me like maniacs, their eyes glaring madly and wild; Fathers, losing their courage, gave way to their grief like a child; Children searching for parents, I noticed, as by me they sped, And lips, that could form naught but "Mamma," were calling for one perhaps dead. My mind was made up in a moment, the river should hide me away, When, under the still burning rafters I suddenly noticed there lay A little white hand; she who owned it was doubtless an object of love To one whom her loss would drive frantic, though she guarded him now from above; I tenderly lifted the rafters and quietly laid them one side; How little she thought of her journey when she left for this dark, fatal ride! I lifted the last log from off her, and while searching for some spark of life, Turned her little face up in the starlight, and recognized--Maggie, my wife! O Lord! my scourge is a hard one, at a blow thou hast shattered my pride; My life will be one endless nightmare, with Maggie away from my side. How often I'd sat down and pictured the scenes in our long, happy life; How I'd strive through all my lifetime, to build up a home for my wife; How people would envy us always in our cozy and neat little nest; How I should do all the labor, and Maggie should all the day rest; How one of God's blessings might cheer us, how some day I perhaps should be rich:-- But all of my dreams had been shattered, while I lay there asleep at the switch! I fancied I stood on my trial, the jury and judge I could see; And every eye in the court room was steadily fixed upon me; And fingers were pointed in scorn, till I felt my face blushing blood-red, And the next thing I heard were the words, "Hanged by the neck until dead." Then I felt myself pulled once again, and my hand caught tight hold of a dress, And I heard, "What's the matter, dear Jim? You've had a bad nightmare, I guess!" And there stood Maggie, my wife, with never a scar from the ditch, I'd been taking a nap in my bed, and had not been "asleep at the switch." _George Hoey._ Each in His Own Tongue A fire-mist and a planet, A crystal and a cell, A jellyfish and a saurian, And caves where the cavemen dwell; Then a sense of law and beauty, And a face turned from the clod,-- Some call it Evolution, And others call it God. A haze in the far horizon, The infinite, tender sky; The ripe, rich tints of the cornfields, And the wild geese sailing high; And all over upland and lowland The charm of the goldenrod,-- Some of us call it Nature, And others call it God. Like tides on a crescent sea-beach, When the moon is new and thin, Into our hearts high yearnings Come welling and surging in,-- Come from the mystic ocean. Whose rim no foot has trod,-- Some of us call it Longing, And others call it God. A picket frozen on duty, A mother starved for her brood, Socrates drinking the hemlock, And Jesus on the rood; The millions who, humble and nameless, The straight, hard pathway trod,-- Some call it Consecration, And others call it God. _William Herbert Carruth._ How Cyrus Laid the Cable Come, listen all unto my song; It is no silly fable; 'Tis all about the mighty cord They call the Atlantic Cable. Bold Cyrus Field he said, says he, I have a pretty notion That I can run the telegraph Across the Atlantic Ocean. Then all the people laughed, and said They'd like to see him do it; He might get half-seas over, but He never could go through it; To carry out his foolish plan He never would be able; He might as well go hang himself With his Atlantic Cable. But Cyrus was a valiant man, A fellow of decision; And heeded not their mocking words, Their laughter and derision. Twice did his bravest efforts fail, And yet his mind was stable; He wa'n't the man to break his heart Because he broke his cable. "Once more, my gallant boys!" he cried; "_Three times!_--you know the fable,-- (_I'll make it thirty_," muttered he, "But I will lay this cable!") Once more they tried--hurrah! hurrah! What means this great commotion? The Lord be praised! the cable's laid Across the Atlantic Ocean. Loud ring the bells,--for, flashing through Six hundred leagues of water, Old Mother England's benison Salutes her eldest daughter. O'er all the land the tidings speed, And soon, in every nation, They'll hear about the cable with Profoundest admiration! * * * * * And may we honor evermore The manly, bold, and stable; And tell our sons, to make them brave, How Cyrus laid the cable. _John G. Saxe._ Jane Jones Jane Jones keeps talkin' to me all the time, An' says you must make it a rule To study your lessons 'nd work hard 'nd learn, An' never be absent from school. Remember the story of Elihu Burritt, An' how he clum up to the top, Got all the knowledge 'at he ever had Down in a blacksmithing shop? Jane Jones she honestly said it was so! Mebbe he did-- I dunno! O' course what's a-keepin' me 'way from the top, Is not never havin' no blacksmithing shop. She said 'at Ben Franklin was awfully poor, But full of ambition an' brains; An' studied philosophy all his hull life, An' see what he got for his pains! He brought electricity out of the sky, With a kite an' a bottle an' key, An' we're owing him more'n any one else For all the bright lights 'at we see. Jane Jones she honestly said it was so! Mebbe he did-- I dunno! O' course what's allers been hinderin' me Is not havin' any kite, lightning er key. Jane Jones said Abe Lincoln had no books at all, An' used to split rails when a boy; An' General Grant was a tanner by trade An' lived 'way out in Illinois. So when the great war in the South first broke out He stood on the side o' the right, An' when Lincoln called him to take charge o' things, He won nearly every blamed fight. Jane Jones she honestly said it was so! Mebbe he did-- I dunno! Still I ain't to blame, not by a big sight, For I ain't never had any battles to fight. She said 'at Columbus was out at the knees When he first thought up his big scheme, An' told all the Spaniards 'nd Italians, too, An' all of 'em said 'twas a dream. But Queen Isabella jest listened to him, 'Nd pawned all her jewels o' worth, 'Nd bought him the Santa Maria 'nd said, "Go hunt up the rest o' the earth!" Mebbe he did-- I dunno! O' course that may be, but then you must allow They ain't no land to discover jest now! _Ben King._ The Leap of Roushan Beg Mounted on Kyrat strong and fleet, His chestnut steed with four white feet, Roushan Beg, called Kurroglou, Son of the road and bandit chief, Seeking refuge and relief, Up the mountain pathway flew. Such was Kyrat's wondrous speed, Never yet could any steed Reach the dust-cloud in his course. More than maiden, more than wife, More than gold and next to life Roushan the Robber loved his horse. In the land that lies beyond Erzeroum and Trebizond, Garden-girt his fortress stood; Plundered khan, or caravan Journeying north from Koordistan, Gave him wealth and wine and food. Seven hundred and fourscore Men at arms his livery wore, Did his bidding night and day, Now, through regions all unknown, He was wandering, lost, alone, Seeking without guide his way. Suddenly the pathway ends, Sheer the precipice descends, Loud the torrent roars unseen; Thirty feet from side to side Yawns the chasm; on air must ride He who crosses this ravine, Following close in his pursuit, At the precipice's foot Reyhan the Arab of Orfah Halted with his hundred men, Shouting upward from the glen, "La Illah illa Allah!" Gently Roushan Beg caressed Kyrat's forehead, neck, and breast, Kissed him upon both his eyes; Sang to him in his wild way, As upon the topmost spray Sings a bird before it flies. "O my Kyrat, O my steed, Round and slender as a reed, Carry me this peril through! Satin housings shall be thine, Shoes of gold, O Kyrat mine, O thou soul of Kurroglou! "Soft thy skin as silken skein, Soft as woman's hair thy mane, Tender are thine eyes and true; All thy hoofs like ivory shine, Polished bright; O life of mine, Leap, and rescue Kurroglou!" Kyrat, then, the strong and fleet, Drew together his four white feet, Paused a moment on the verge, Measured with his eye the space, And into the air's embrace Leaped, as leaps the ocean surge. As the ocean surge o'er sand Bears a swimmer safe to land, Kyrat safe his rider bore; Rattling down the deep abyss, Fragments of the precipice Rolled like pebbles on a shore. Roushan's tasseled cap of red Trembled not upon his head, Careless sat he and upright; Neither hand nor bridle shook, Nor his head he turned to look, As he galloped out of sight. Flash of harness in the air, Seen a moment like the glare Of a sword drawn from its sheath; Thus the phantom horseman passed, And the shadow that he cast Leaped the cataract underneath. Reyhan the Arab held his breath While this vision of life and death Passed above him. "Allahu!" Cried he. "In all Koordistan Lives there not so brave a man As this Robber Kurroglou!" _Henry W. Longfellow._ Old Ironsides Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky; Beneath it rung the battle shout, And burst the cannon's roar;-- The meteor of the ocean air Shall sweep the clouds no more! Her deck, once red with heroes' blood, Where knelt the vanquished foe, When winds were hurrying o'er the flood, And waves were white below, No more shall feel the victor's tread, Or know the conquered knee;-- The harpies of the shore shall pluck The eagle of the sea! Oh, better that her shattered hulk Should sink beneath the wave! Her thunders shook the mighty deep, And there should be her grave; Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storms, The lightning and the gale! _Oliver Wendell Holmes._ A Psalm of Life Tell me not, in mournful numbers, "Life is but an empty dream!" For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; "Dust thou art, to dust returnest," Was not spoken of the soul. Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way; But to act that each to-morrow Finds us farther than to-day. Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave. In the world's broad field of battle, In the bivouac of Life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle! Be a hero in the strife! Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act, act in the living Present! Heart within, and God o'erhead! Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time; Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again. Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait. _Henry W. Longfellow._ Johnny's Hist'ry Lesson I think, of all the things at school A boy has got to do, That studyin' hist'ry, as a rule, Is worst of all, don't you? Of dates there are an awful sight, An' though I study day an' night, There's only one I've got just right-- That's fourteen ninety-two. Columbus crossed the Delaware In fourteen ninety-two; We whipped the British, fair an' square, In fourteen ninety-two. At Concord an' at Lexington. We kept the redcoats on the run, While the band played Johnny Get Your Gun, In fourteen ninety-two. Pat Henry, with his dyin' breath-- In fourteen ninety-two-- Said, "Gimme liberty or death!" In fourteen ninety-two. An' Barbara Frietchie, so 'tis said, Cried, "Shoot if you must this old, gray head, But I'd rather 'twould be your own instead!" In fourteen ninety-two. The Pilgrims came to Plymouth Rock In fourteen ninety-two, An' the Indians standin' on the dock Asked, "What are you goin' to do?" An' they said, "We seek your harbor drear That our children's children's children dear May boast that their forefathers landed here In fourteen ninety-two." Miss Pocahontas saved the life-- In fourteen ninety-two-- Of John Smith, an' became his wife In fourteen ninety-two. An' the Smith tribe started then an' there, An' now there are John Smiths ev'rywhere, But they didn't have any Smiths to spare In fourteen ninety-two. Kentucky was settled by Daniel Boone In fourteen ninety-two, An' I think the cow jumped over the moon In fourteen ninety-two. Ben Franklin flew his kite so high He drew the lightnin' from the sky, An' Washington couldn't tell a lie, In fourteen ninety-two. _Nixon Waterman._ Riding on the Rail Singing through the forests, rattling over ridges, Shooting under arches, rumbling over bridges, Whizzing through the mountains, buzzing o'er the vale,-- Bless me! this is pleasant, riding on the rail! Men of different stations in the eye of Fame, Here are very quickly coming to the same; High and lowly people, birds of every feather, On a common level, traveling together! Gentlemen in shorts, blooming very tall; Gentlemen at large, talking very small; Gentlemen in tights, with a loosish mien; Gentlemen in gray, looking very green! Gentlemen quite old, asking for the news; Gentlemen in black, with a fit of blues; Gentlemen in claret, sober as a vicar; Gentlemen in tweed, dreadfully in liquor! Stranger on the right looking very sunny, Obviously reading something very funny. Now the smiles are thicker--wonder what they mean? Faith, he's got the Knickerbocker Magazine! Stranger on the left, closing up his peepers; Now he snores again, like the Seven Sleepers; At his feet a volume gives the explanation, How the man grew stupid from "association"! Ancient maiden lady anxiously remarks That there must be peril 'mong so many sparks; Roguish-looking fellow, turning to the stranger, Says 'tis his opinion _she_ is out of danger! Woman with her baby, sitting _vis a vis_; Baby keeps a-squalling, woman looks at me; Asks about the distance--says 'tis tiresome talking, Noises of the cars are so very shocking! Market woman, careful of the precious casket, Knowing eggs are eggs, tightly holds her basket; Feeling that a smash, if it came, would surely Send her eggs to pot rather prematurely. Singing through the forests, rattling over ridges, Shooting under arches, rumbling over bridges, Whizzing through the mountains, buzzing o'er the vale,-- Bless me! this is pleasant, riding on the rail! _J.G. Saxe._ The Building of the Ship EXTRACT Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate! We know what Master laid thy keel, What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, What anvils rang, what hammers beat, In what a forge and what a heat Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 'Tis of the wave and not the rock; 'Tis but the flapping of the sail, And not a rent made by the gale! In spite of rock and tempest's roar, In spite of false lights on the shore, Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith truiumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee,--are all with thee! _H.W. Longfellow._ The Dead Pussy Cat You's as stiff an' as cold as a stone, Little cat! Dey's done frowed you out an' left you alone, Little cat! I's a-strokin' you's fur, But you don't never purr Nor hump up anywhere, Little cat. W'y is dat? Is you's purrin' an' humpin'-up done? An' w'y fer is you's little foot tied, Little cat? Did dey pisen you's tummick inside, Little cat? Did dey pound you wif bricks, Or wif big nasty sticks, Or abuse you wif kicks, Little cat? Tell me dat, Did dey holler at all when you cwied? Did it hurt werry bad w'en you died, Little cat? Oh, w'y didn't yo wun off and hide, Little cat? I is wet in my eyes, 'Cause I most always cwies W'en a pussy cat dies, Little cat, Tink of dat, An' I's awfully solly besides! Dest lay still dere in de sof gwown', Little cat, W'ile I tucks de gween gwass all awoun', Little cat. Dey can't hurt you no more W'en you's tired an' so sore, Dest sleep twiet, you pore Little cat, Wif a pat, An' fordet all de kicks of de town. _Marion Short._ The Owl Critic "Who stuffed that white owl?" No one spoke in the shop; The barber was busy, and he couldn't stop; The customers, waiting their turns, were all reading The _Daily_, the _Herald_, the _Post_, little heeding The young man who blurted out such a blunt question; Not one raised a head, or even made a suggestion; And the barber kept on shaving. "Don't you see, Mister Brown," Cried the youth, with a frown, "How wrong the whole thing is, How preposterous each wing is. How flattened the head is, how jammed down the neck is-- In short, the whole owl, what an ignorant wreck 'tis! I make no apology; I've learned owleology. I've passed days and nights in a hundred collections, And cannot be blinded to any deflections Arising from unskilful fingers that fail To stuff a bird right, from his beak to his tail. Mister Brown! Mister Brown! Do take that bird down, Or you'll soon be the laughing-stock all over town!" And the barber kept on shaving. "I've _studied_ owls, And other night fowls, And I tell you What I know to be true: An owl cannot roost With his limbs so unloosed; No owl in this world Ever had his claws curled, Ever had his legs slanted, Ever had his bill canted, Ever had his neck screwed Into that attitude. He can't _do_ it, because 'Tis against all bird laws. Anatomy teaches, Ornithology preaches, An owl has a toe That _can't_ turn out so! I've made the white owl my study for years, And to see such a job almost moves me to tears! Mister Brown, I'm amazed You should be so gone crazed As to put up a bird In that posture absurd! To _look_ at that owl really brings on a dizziness; The man who stuffed him don't half know his business!" And the barber kept on shaving. "Examine those eyes. I'm filled with surprise Taxidermists should pass Off on you such poor glass; So unnatural they seem They'd make Audubon scream, And John Burroughs laugh To encounter such chaff. Do take that bird down; Have him stuffed again, Brown!" And the barber kept on shaving. "With some sawdust and bark I could stuff in the dark An owl better than that. I could make an old hat Look more like an owl Than that horrid fowl, Stuck up here so stiff like a side of coarse leather. In fact, about _him _there's not one natural feather." Just then, with a wink and a sly normal lurch, The owl, very gravely, got down from his perch, Walked round, and regarded his fault-finding critic (Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance analytic, And then fairly hooted, as if he should say: "Your learning's at fault this time, anyway; Don't waste it again on a live bird, I pray. I'm an owl; you're another. Sir Critic, good-day!" And the barber kept on shaving. _James T. Fields._ At School-Close The end has come, as come it must To all things; in these sweet June days The teacher and the scholar trust Their parting feet to separate ways. They part: but in the years to be Shall pleasant memories cling to each, As shells bear inland from the sea The murmur of the rhythmic beach. One knew the joys the sculptor knows When, plastic to his lightest touch, His clay-wrought model slowly grows To that fine grace desired so much. So daily grew before her eyes The living shapes whereon she wrought, Strong, tender, innocently wise, The child's heart with the woman's thought. And one shall never quite forget The voice that called from dream and play, The firm but kindly hand that set Her feet in learning's pleasant way,-- The joy of Undine soul-possessed, The wakening sense, the strange delight That swelled the fabled statue's breast And filled its clouded eyes with sight! O Youth and Beauty, loved of all! Ye pass from girlhood's gate of dreams; In broader ways your footsteps fall, Ye test the truth of all that seems. Her little realm the teacher leaves, She breaks her wand of power apart, While, for your love and trust, she gives The warm thanks of a grateful heart. Hers is the sober summer noon Contrasted with your morn of spring; The waning with the waxing moon, The folded with the outspread wing. Across the distance of the years She sends her God-speed back to you; She has no thought of doubts or fears; Be but yourselves, be pure, be true, And prompt in duty; heed the deep, Low voice of conscience; through the ill And discord round about you, keep Your faith in human nature still. Be gentle: unto griefs and needs Be pitiful as woman should, And, spite of all the lies of creeds, Hold fast the truth that God is good. Give and receive; go forth and bless The world that needs the hand and heart Of Martha's helpful carefulness No less than Mary's better part. So shall the stream of time flow by And leave each year a richer good, And matron loveliness outvie The nameless charm of maidenhood. And, when the world shall link your names With gracious lives and manners fine, The teacher shall assert her claims, And proudly whisper, "These were mine!" _John G. Whittier._ The Wild White Rose Oh, that I might have my request, and that God would grant me the thing that I long for.--_Job 6:8._ It was peeping through the brambles, that little wild white rose, Where the hawthorn hedge was planted, my garden to enclose. All beyond was fern and heather, on the breezy, open moor; All within was sun and shelter, and the wealth of beauty's store. But I did not heed the fragrance of flow'ret or of tree, For my eyes were on that rosebud, and it grew too high for me. In vain I strove to reach it through the tangled mass of green, It only smiled and nodded behind its thorny screen. Yet through that summer morning I lingered near the spot: Oh, why do things seem sweeter if we possess them not? My garden buds were blooming, but all that I could see Was that little mocking wild rose, hanging just too high for me. So in life's wider garden there are buds of promise, too, Beyond our reach to gather, but not beyond our view; And like the little charmer that tempted me astray, They steal out half the brightness of many a summer's day. Oh, hearts that fail with longing for some forbidden tree, Look up and learn a lesson from my white rose and me. 'Tis wiser far to number the blessings at my feet, Than ever to be sighing for just one bud more sweet. My sunbeams and my shadows fall from a pierced Hand, I can surely trust His wisdom since His heart I understand; And maybe in the morning, when His blessed face I see, He will tell me why my white rose grew just too high for me. _Ellen H. Willis._ L'Envoi When Earth's last picture is painted, and the tubes are twisted and dried, When the oldest colors have faded, and the youngest critic has died, We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it--lie down for an aeon or two, Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall set us to work anew! And those who were good shall be happy: they shall sit in a golden chair; They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comet's hair; They shall find real saints to draw from--Magdalene, Peter and Paul; They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all. And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame; And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame; But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star, Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They Are! _Rudyard Kipling._ Whistling in Heaven You're surprised that I ever should say so? Just wait till the reason I've given Why I say I sha'n't care for the music, Unless there is whistling in heaven. Then you'll think it no very great wonder, Nor so strange, nor so bold a conceit, That unless there's a boy there a-whistling, Its music will not be complete. It was late in the autumn of '40; We had come from our far Eastern home Just in season to build us a cabin, Ere the cold of the winter should come; And we lived all the while in our wagon That husband was clearing the place Where the house was to stand; and the clearing And building it took many days. So that our heads were scarce sheltered In under its roof when our store Of provisions was almost exhausted, And husband must journey for more; And the nearest place where he could get them Was yet such a distance away, That it forced him from home to be absent At least a whole night and a day. You see, we'd but two or three neighbors, And the nearest was more than a mile; And we hadn't found time yet to know them, For we had been busy the while. And the man who had helped at the raising Just staid till the job was well done; And as soon as his money was paid him Had shouldered his axe and had gone. Well, husband just kissed me and started-- I could scarcely suppress a deep groan At the thought of remaining with baby So long in the house alone; For, my dear, I was childish and timid, And braver ones might well have feared, For the wild wolf was often heard howling. And savages sometimes appeared. But I smothered my grief and my terror Till husband was off on his ride, And then in my arms I took Josey, And all the day long sat and cried, As I thought of the long, dreary hours When the darkness of night should fall, And I was so utterly helpless, With no one in reach of my call. And when the night came with its terrors, To hide ev'ry ray of light, I hung up a quilt by the window, And, almost dead with affright, I kneeled by the side of the cradle, Scarce daring to draw a full breath, Lest the baby should wake, and its crying Should bring us a horrible death. There I knelt until late in the evening And scarcely an inch had I stirred, When suddenly, far in the distance, A sound as of whistling I heard. I started up dreadfully frightened, For fear 'twas an Indian's call; And then very soon I remembered The red man ne'er whistles at all. And when I was sure 'twas a white man, I thought, were he coming for ill, He'd surely approach with more caution-- Would come without warning, and still. Then the sound, coming nearer and nearer, Took the form of a tune light and gay, And I knew I needn't fear evil From one who could whistle that way. Very soon I heard footsteps approaching, Then came a peculiar dull thump, As if some one was heavily striking An ax in the top of a stump; And then, in another brief moment, There came a light tap on the door, When quickly I undid the fast'ning, And in stepped a boy, and before There was either a question or answer Or either had time to speak, I just threw my glad arms around him, And gave him a kiss on the cheek. Then I started back, scared at my boldness. But he only smiled at my fright, As he said, "I'm your neighbor's boy, Ellick, Come to tarry with you through the night. "We saw your husband go eastward, And made up our minds where he'd gone, And I said to the rest of our people, 'That woman is there all alone, And I venture she's awfully lonesome, And though she may have no great fear, I think she would feel a bit safer If only a boy were but near.' "So, taking my axe on my shoulder, For fear that a savage might stray Across my path and need scalping, I started right down this way; And coming in sight of the cabin, And thinking to save you alarm, I whistled a tune, just to show you I didn't intend any harm. "And so here I am, at your service; But if you don't want me to stay, Why, all you need do is to say so, And should'ring my axe, I'll away." I dropped in a chair and near fainted, Just at thought of his leaving me then, And his eye gave a knowing bright twinkle As he said, "I guess I'll remain." And then I just sat there and told him How terribly frightened I'd been, How his face was to me the most welcome Of any I ever had seen; And then I lay down with the baby, And slept all the blessed night through, For I felt I was safe from all danger Near so brave a young fellow, and true. So now, my dear friend, do you wonder, Since such a good reason I've given, Why I say I sha'n't care for the music, Unless there is whistling in heaven? Yes, often I've said so in earnest, And now what I've said I repeat, That unless there's a boy there a-whistling, Its music will not be complete. Sleep, Baby, Sleep Sleep, baby, sleep! Thy father's watching the sheep, Thy mother's shaking the dreamland tree, And down drops a little dream for thee. Sleep, baby, sleep! Sleep, baby, sleep! The large stars are the sheep, The little stars are the lambs, I guess, The bright moon is the shepherdess. Sleep, baby, sleep! Sleep, baby, sleep! Thy Savior loves His sheep; He is the Lamb of God on high Who for our sakes came down to die. Sleep, baby, sleep! _Elizabeth Prentiss._ The Lost Chord Seated one day at the organ, I was weary and ill at ease, And my fingers wandered idly Over the noisy keys. I do not know what I was playing, Or what I was dreaming then; But I struck one chord of music, Like the sound of a great Amen. It flooded the crimson twilight, Like the close of an angel's psalm; And it lay on my fevered spirit With a touch of infinite calm. It quieted pain and sorrow, Like love overcoming strife; It seemed the harmonious echo From our discordant life. It linked all perplexing meanings Into one perfect peace, And trembled away into silence As if it were loth to cease. I have sought, but I seek it vainly, That one lost chord divine, That came from the soul of the organ, And entered into mine. It may be that Death's bright angel Will speak in that chord again; It may be that only in Heaven I shall hear that grand Amen. _Adelaide A. Procter._ The Children's Hour Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupations, That is known as the Children's Hour. I hear in the chamber above me The patter of little feet, The sound of a door that is opened, And voices soft and sweet. From my study I see in the lamplight, Descending the broad hall stair, Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, And Edith with golden hair. A whisper, and then a silence: Yet I know by their merry eyes They are plotting and planning together To take me by surprise. A sudden rush from the stairway, A sudden raid from the hall! By three doors left unguarded They enter my castle wall! They climb up into my turret O'er the arms and back of my chair; If I try to escape, they surround me; They seem to be everywhere. They almost devour me with kisses, Their arms about me entwine, Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen In his Mouse-tower on the Rhine! Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti, Because you have scaled the wall, Such an old mustache as I am Is not a match for you all! I have you fast in my fortress, And will not let you depart, But put you down into the dungeon In the round-tower of my heart. And there will I keep you forever, Yes, forever and a day, Till the walls shall crumble to ruin, And moulder in dust away! _Henry W. Longfellow._ Woodman, Spare That Tree! Woodman, spare that tree! Touch not a single bough! In youth it sheltered me, And I'll protect it now. 'T was my forefather's hand That placed it near his cot; There, woodman, let it stand. Thy ax shall harm it not! That old familiar tree, Whose glory and renown Are spread o'er land and sea-- And wouldst thou hew it down? Woodman, forbear thy stroke! Cut not its earth-bound ties; Oh, spare that aged oak, Now towering to the skies! When but an idle boy, I sought its grateful shade; In all their gushing joy Here, too, my sisters played. My mother kissed me here; My father pressed my hand-- Forgive this foolish tear, But let that old oak stand! My heart-strings round thee cling, Close as thy bark, old friend! Here shall the wild-bird sing, And still thy branches bend. Old tree! the storm still brave! And, woodman, leave the spot; While I've a hand to save, Thy ax shall harm it not! _George Pope Morris_. Little Brown Hands They drive home the cows from the pasture, Up through the long shady lane, Where the quail whistles loud in the wheat-fields, That are yellow with ripening grain. They find, in the thick waving grasses, Where the scarlet-lipped strawberry grows. They gather the earliest snowdrops, And the first crimson buds of the rose. They toss the new hay in the meadow, They gather the elder-bloom white, They find where the dusky grapes purple In the soft-tinted October light. They know where the apples hang ripest, And are sweeter than Italy's wines; They know where the fruit hangs the thickest On the long, thorny blackberry vines. They gather the delicate sea-weeds, And build tiny castles of sand; They pick up the beautiful sea shells-- Fairy barks that have drifted to land. They wave from the tall, rocking tree-tops, Where the oriole's hammock-nest swings, And at night time are folded in slumber By a song that a fond mother sings. Those who toil bravely are strongest; The humble and poor become great; And so from these brown-handed children Shall grow mighty rulers of state. The pen of the author and statesman,-- The noble and wise of the land,-- The sword, and the chisel, and palette, Shall be held in the little brown hand. _Mary H. Krout._ Barbara Frietchie Up from the meadows rich with corn Clear in the cool September morn, The clustered spires of Frederick stand Green-walled by the hills of Maryland. Round about them orchards sweep, Apple and peach tree fruited deep, Fair as the garden of the Lord To the eyes of the famished rebel horde, On that pleasant morn of the early fall When Lee marched over the mountain-wall,-- Over the mountains winding down, Horse and foot, into Frederick town. Forty flags with their silver stars, Forty flags with their crimson bars, Flapped in the morning wind; the sun Of noon looked down, and saw not one. Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then, Bowed with her fourscore years and ten; Bravest of all in Frederick town, She took up the flag the men hauled down; In her attic window the staff she set, To show that one heart was loyal yet. Up the street came the rebel tread, Stonewall Jackson riding ahead. Under his slouched hat left and right He glanced; the old flag met his sight. "Halt!"--the dust-brown ranks stood fast. "Fire!"--out blazed the rifle-blast. It shivered the window, pane and sash; It rent the banner with seam and gash. Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf; She leaned far out on the window-sill, And shook it forth with a royal will. "Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, But spare your country's flag," she said. A shade of sadness, a blush of shame, Over the face of the leader came; The nobler nature within him stirred To life at that woman's deed and word: "Who touches a hair of yon gray head Dies like a dog; march on!" he said. All day long through Frederick street Sounded the tread of marching feet; All day long that free flag tost Over the heads of the rebel host. Ever its torn folds rose and fell On the loyal winds that loved it well; And through the hill-gaps sunset light Shone over it a warm good night. Barbara Frietchie's work is o'er. And the Rebel rides on his raids no more. Honor to her! and let a tear Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier. Over Barbara Frietchie's grave, Flag of freedom and Union wave! Peace and order and beauty draw Round thy symbol of light and law; And ever the stars above look down On thy stars below in Frederick town. _John G. Whittier._ I Want to Go to Morrow I started on a journey just about a week ago, For the little town of Morrow, in the State of Ohio. I never was a traveler, and really didn't know That Morrow had been ridiculed a century or so. I went down to the depot for my ticket and applied For the tips regarding Morrow, not expecting to be guyed. Said I, "My friend, I want to go to Morrow and return Not later than to-morrow, for I haven't time to burn." Said he to me, "Now let me see if I have heard you right, You want to go to Morrow and come back to-morrow night. You should have gone to Morrow yesterday and back to-day, For if you started yesterday to Morrow, don't you see, You could have got to Morrow and returned to-day at three. The train that started yesterday--now understand me right-- To-day it gets to Morrow, and returns to-morrow night." Said I, "My boy, it seems to me you're talking through your hat, Is there a town named Morrow on your line? Now tell me that." "There is," said he, "and take from me a quiet little tip-- To go from here to Morrow is a fourteen-hour trip. The train that goes to Morrow leaves to-day eight-thirty-five; Half after ten to-morrow is the time it should arrive. Now if from here to Morrow is a fourteen-hour jump, Can you go to-day to Morrow and come back to-day, you chump?" Said I, "I want to go to Morrow; can I go to-day And get to Morrow by to-night, if there is no delay?" "Well, well," said he, "explain to me and I've no more to say; Can you go anywhere to-morrow and come back from there to-day?" For if to-day you'd get to Morrow, surely you'll agree You should have started not to-day, but yesterday, you see. So if you start to Morrow, leaving here to-day, you're flat, You won't get to Morrow till the day that follows that. "Now if you start to-day to Morrow, it's a cinch you'll land To-morrow into Morrow, not to-day, you understand. For the train to-day to Morrow, if the schedule is right, Will get you into Morrow by about to-morrow night." Said I, "I guess you know it all, but kindly let me say, How can I go to Morrow, if I leave the town to-day?" Said he, "You cannot go to Morrow any more to-day, For the train that goes to Morrow is a mile upon its way." FINALE I was so disappointed I was mad enough to swear; The train had gone to Morrow and had left me standing there. The man was right in telling me I was a howling jay; I didn't go to Morrow, so I guess I'll go to-day. Out in the Fields The little cares that fretted me, I lost them yesterday Among the fields above the seas, Among the winds at play; Among the lowing of the herds, The rustling of the trees, Among the singing of the birds, The humming of the bees. The foolish fears of what might happen,-- I cast them all away Among the clover-scented grass, Among the new-mown hay; Among the husking of the corn, Where drowsy poppies nod, Where ill thoughts die and good are born, Out in the fields with God. _Elizabeth Barrett Browning._ The Bluebird's Song I know the song that the bluebird is singing, Out in the apple tree where he is swinging. Brave little fellow! the skies may be dreary-- Nothing cares he while his heart is so cheery. Hark! how the music leaps out from his throat! Hark! was there ever so merry a note? Listen a while, and you'll hear what he's saying, Up in the apple tree swinging and swaying. "Dear little blossoms down under the snow, You must be weary of winter I know. Listen, I'll sing you a message of cheer! Summer is coming! and springtime is here! "Little white snowdrop! I pray you arise; Bright yellow crocus! please open your eyes; Sweet little violets, hid from the cold, Put on your mantles of purple and gold; Daffodils! Daffodils! say, do you hear?-- Summer is coming, and springtime is here!" _Emily Huntington Miller._ The Main Truck, or a Leap for Life Old Ironsides at anchor lay, In the harbor of Mahon; A dead calm rested on the bay,-- The waves to sleep had gone; When little Hal, the Captain's son, A lad both brave and good, In sport, up shroud and rigging ran, And on the main truck stood! A shudder shot through every vein,-- All eyes were turned on high! There stood the boy, with dizzy brain, Between the sea and sky; No hold had he above, below; Alone he stood in air: To that far height none dared to go,-- No aid could reach him there. We gazed, but not a man could speak,-- With horror all aghast,-- In groups, with pallid brow and cheek,-- We watched the quivering mast. The atmosphere grew thick and hot, And of a lurid hue;-- As riveted unto the spot, Stood officers and crew. The father came on deck:--he gasped, "Oh, God; thy will be done!" Then suddenly a rifle grasped, And aimed it at his son. "Jump, far out, boy, into the wave! Jump, or I fire," he said; "That only chance your life can save; Jump, jump, boy!" He obeyed. He sunk,--he rose,--he lived,--he moved,-- And for the ship struck out. On board we hailed the lad beloved, With many a manly shout. His father drew, in silent joy, Those wet arms round his neck, And folded to his heart his boy,-- Then fainted on the deck. _Morris._ The Arrow and the Song I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For, so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight. I breathed a song into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For who has sight so keen and strong, That it can follow the flight of song? Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroke; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend. _H.W. Longfellow._ The Green Mountain Justice "The snow is deep," the Justice said; "There's mighty mischief overhead." "High talk, indeed!" his wife exclaimed; "What, sir! shall Providence be blamed?" The Justice, laughing, said, "Oh no! I only meant the loads of snow Upon the roofs. The barn is weak; I greatly fear the roof will break. So hand me up the spade, my dear, I'll mount the barn, the roof to clear." "No!" said the wife; "the barn is high, And if you slip, and fall, and die, How will my living be secured?-- Stephen, your life is not insured. But tie a rope your waist around, And it will hold you safe and sound." "I will," said he. "Now for the roof-- All snugly tied, and danger-proof! Excelsior! Excel--But no! The rope is not secured below!" Said Rachel, "Climb, the end to throw Across the top, and I will go And tie that end around my waist." "Well, every woman to her taste; You always would be tightly laced. Rachel, when you became my bride, I thought the knot securely tied; But lest the bond should break in twain, I'll have it fastened once again." Below the arm-pits tied around, She takes her station on the ground, While on the roof, beyond the ridge, He shovels clear the lower edge. But, sad mischance! the loosened snow Comes sliding down, to plunge below. And as he tumbles with the slide, Up Rachel goes on t'other side. Just half-way down the Justice hung; Just half-way up the woman swung. "Good land o' Goshen!" shouted she; "Why, do you see it?" answered he. The couple, dangling in the breeze, Like turkeys hung outside to freeze, At their rope's end and wits' end, too, Shout back and forth what best to do. Cried Stephen, "Take it coolly, wife; All have their ups and downs in life." Quoth Rachel, "What a pity 'tis To joke at such a thing as this! A man whose wife is being hung Should know enough to hold his tongue." "Now, Rachel, as I look below, I see a tempting heap of snow. Suppose, my dear, I take my knife, And cut the rope to save my life?" She shouted, "Don't! 'twould be my death-- I see some pointed stones beneath. A better way would be to call, With all our might, for Phebe Hall." "Agreed!" he roared. First he, then she Gave tongue; "O Phebe! Phebe! _Phe-e-be_ Hall!" in tones both fine and coarse. Enough to make a drover hoarse. Now Phebe, over at the farm, Was sitting, sewing, snug and warm; But hearing, as she thought, her name, Sprang up, and to the rescue came; Beheld the scene, and thus she thought: "If now a kitchen chair were brought, And I could reach the lady's foot, I'd draw her downward by the boot, Then cut the rope, and let him go; He cannot miss the pile of snow." He sees her moving toward his wife. Armed with a chair and carving-knife, And, ere he is aware, perceives His head ascending to the eaves; And, guessing what the two are at, Screams from beneath the roof, "Stop that! You make me fall too far, by half!" But Phebe answers, with a laugh, "Please tell a body by what right You've brought your wife to such a plight!" And then, with well-directed blows, She cuts the rope and down he goes. The wife untied, they walk around When lo! no Stephen can be found. They call in vain, run to and fro; They look around, above, below; No trace or token can they see, And deeper grows the mystery. Then Rachel's heart within her sank; But, glancing at the snowy bank, She caught a little gleam of hope,-- A gentle movement of the rope. They scrape away a little snow; What's this? A hat! Ah! he's below; Then upward heaves the snowy pile, And forth he stalks in tragic style, Unhurt, and with a roguish smile; And Rachel sees, with glad surprise, The missing found, the fallen rise. _Rev. Henry Reeves._ Jane Conquest About the time of Christmas (Not many months ago), When the sky was black With wrath and rack, And the earth was white with snow, When loudly rang the tumult Of winds and waves of strife, In her home by the sea, With her babe on her knee, Sat Harry Conquest's wife. And he was on the ocean, Although she knew not where, For never a lip Could tell of the ship, To lighten her heart's despair. And her babe was fading and dying; The pulse in the tiny wrist Was all but still, And the brow was chill, And pale as the white sea mist. Jane Conquest's heart was hopeless; She could only weep and pray That the Shepherd mild Would take her child Without a pain away. The night was dark and darker, And the storm grew stronger still, And buried in deep And dreamless sleep Lay the hamlet under the hill. The fire was dead on the hearthstone Within Jane Conquest's room, And still sat she, With her babe on her knee, At prayer amid the gloom. When, borne above the tempest, A sound fell on her ear, Thrilling her through, For well she knew 'Twas the voice of mortal fear. And a light leaped in at the lattice, Sudden and swift and red; Crimsoning all, The whited wall, And the floor, and the roof o'erhead. For one brief moment, heedless Of the babe upon her knee, With the frenzied start Of a frightened heart, Upon her feet rose she. And through the quaint old casement She looks upon the sea; Thank God that the sight She saw that night So rare a sight should be! Hemmed in by many a billow With mad and foaming lip, A mile from shore, Or hardly more, She saw a gallant ship. And to her horror she beheld it Aflame from stem to stern; For there seemed no speck On all that wreck Where the fierce fire did not burn; Till the night was like a sunset, And the sea like a sea of blood, And the rocks and shore Were bathed all o'er And drenched with the gory flood. She looked and looked, till the terror Went creeping through every limb; And her breath came quick, And her heart grew sick, And her sight grew dizzy and dim; And her lips had lost their utterance, For she tried but could not speak; And her feelings found No channel of sound In prayer, or sob, or shriek. Once more that cry of anguish Thrilled through the tempest's strife, And it stirred again In heart and brain The active thinking life; And the light of an inspiration Leaped to her brightened eye, And on lip and brow Was written now A purpose pure and high. Swiftly she turns, and softly She crosses the chamber floor, And faltering not, In his tiny cot She laid the babe she bore. And then with a holy impulse, She sank to her knees, and made A lowly prayer, In the silence there, And this was the prayer she prayed: "O Christ, who didst bear the scourging, And who now dost wear the crown, I at Thy feet, O True and Sweet, Would lay my burden down. Thou bad'st me love and cherish The babe Thou gavest me, And I have kept Thy word, nor stept Aside from following Thee. "And lo! my boy is dying! And vain is all my care; And my burden's weight Is very great, Yea, greater than I can bear! O Lord, Thou know'st what peril Doth threat these poor men's lives, And I, a woman, Most weak and human, Do plead for their waiting wives. "Thou canst not let them perish; Up, Lord, in Thy strength, and save From the scorching breath Of this terrible death On this cruel winter wave. Take Thou my babe and watch it, No care is like to Thine; And let Thy power In this perilous hour Supply what lack is mine." And so her prayer she ended, And rising to her feet, Gave one long look At the cradle nook Where the child's faint pulses beat; And then with softest footsteps Retrod the chamber floor, And noiselessly groped For the latch, and oped, And crossed the cottage door. And through the tempest bravely Jane Conquest fought her way, By snowy deep And slippery steep To where her duty lay. And she journeyed onward, breathless, And weary and sore and faint, Yet forward pressed With the strength, and the zest, And the ardor of a saint. Solemn, and weird, and lonely Amid its countless graves, Stood the old gray church On its tall rock perch, Secure from the sea and its waves; And beneath its sacred shadow Lay the hamlet safe and still; For however the sea And the wind might be, There was quiet under the hill. Jane Conquest reached the churchyard, And stood by the old church door, But the oak was tough And had bolts enough, And her strength was frail and poor; So she crept through a narrow window, And climbed the belfry stair, And grasped the rope, Sole cord of hope, For the mariners in despair. And the wild wind helped her bravely, And she wrought with an earnest will, And the clamorous bell Spoke out right well To the hamlet under the hill. And it roused the slumbering fishers, Nor its warning task gave o'er Till a hundred fleet And eager feet Were hurrying to the shore. And then it ceased its ringing, For the woman's work was done, And many a boat That was now afloat Showed man's work had begun. But the ringer in the belfry Lay motionless and cold, With the cord of hope. The church-bell rope, Still in her frozen hold. How long she lay it boots not, But she woke from her swoon at last In her own bright room. To find the gloom, And the grief, and the peril past, With the sense of joy within her, And the Christ's sweet presence near; And friends around, And the cooing sound Of her babe's voice in her ear. And they told her all the story, How a brave and gallant few O'ercame each check, And reached the wreck, And saved the hopeless crew. And how the curious sexton Had climbed the belfry stair, And of his fright When, cold and white, He found her lying there; And how, when they had borne her Back to her home again, The child she left With a heart bereft Of hope, and weary with pain, Was found within his cradle In a quiet slumber laid; With a peaceful smile On his lips the while, And the wasting sickness stayed. And she said "Twas the Christ who watched it, And brought it safely through"; And she praised His truth And His tender ruth Who had saved her darling too. Nathan Hale To drum beat and heart beat, A soldier marches by, There is color in his cheek, There is courage in his eye; Yet to drum beat and heart beat, In a moment he must die. By starlight and moonlight, He seeks the Britons' camp; He hears the rustling flag, And the armed sentry's tramp; And the starlight and moonlight His silent wanderings lamp. With a slow tread and still tread, He scans the tented line, And he counts the battery guns By the gaunt and shadowy pine, And his slow tread and still tread Gives no warning sign. The dark wave, the plumed wave, It meets his eager glance; And it sparkles 'neath the stars, Like the glimmer of a lance-- A dark wave, a plumed wave, On an emerald expanse. A sharp clang, a steel clang, And terror in the sound! For the sentry, falcon-eyed, In the camp a spy has found; With a sharp clang, a steel clang, The patriot is bound. With calm brow, steady brow, He listens to his doom. In his look there is no fear, Nor a shadow trace of gloom, But with calm brow, steady brow, He robes him for the tomb. In the long night, the still night, He kneels upon the sod; And the brutal guards withhold E'en the solemn word of God! In the long night, the still night, He walks where Christ hath trod. 'Neath the blue morn, the sunny morn, He dies upon the tree; And he mourns that he can give But one life for liberty; And in the blue morn, the sunny morn His spent wings are free. But his last words, his message words, They burn, lest friendly eye Should read how proud and calm A patriot could die. With his last words, his dying words, A soldier's battle cry. From Fame-leaf and Angel-leaf, From monument and urn, The sad of earth, the glad of Heaven, His tragic fate shall learn; And on Fame-leaf and Angel-leaf, The name of Hale shall burn. _Francis M. Finch._ The Lips That Touch Liquor Must Never Touch Mine You are coming to woo me, but not as of yore, When I hastened to welcome your ring at the door; For I trusted that he who stood waiting me then, Was the brightest, the truest, the noblest of men. Your lips on my own when they printed "Farewell," Had never been soiled by "the beverage of hell"; But they come to me now with the bacchanal sign, And the lips that touch liquor must never touch mine. I think of that night in the garden alone, When in whispers you told me your heart was my own, That your love in the future should faithfully be Unshared by another, kept only for me. Oh, sweet to my soul is the memory still Of the lips which met mine, when they murmured "I will"; But now to their pressure no more they incline, For the lips that touch liquor must never touch mine! O John! how it crushed me, when first in your face The pen of the "Rum Fiend" had written "disgrace"; And turned me in silence and tears from that breath All poisoned and foul from the chalice of death. It scattered the hopes I had treasured to last; It darkened the future and clouded the past; It shattered my idol, and ruined the shrine, For the lips that touch liquor must never touch mine. I loved you--Oh, dearer than language can tell, And you saw it, you proved it, you knew it too well! But the man of my love was far other than he Who now from the "Tap-room" comes reeling to me; In manhood and honor so noble and right-- His heart was so true, and his genius so bright-- And his soul was unstained, unpolluted by wine; But the lips that touch liquor must never touch mine. You promised reform, but I trusted in vain; Your pledge was but made to be broken again: And the lover so false to his promises now, Will not, as a husband, be true to his vow. The word must be spoken that bids you depart-- Though the effort to speak it should shatter my heart-- Though in silence, with blighted affection, I pine, Yet the lips that touch liquor must never touch mine! If one spark in your bosom of virtue remain, Go fan it with prayer till it kindle again; Resolved, with "God helping," in future to be From wine and its follies unshackled and free! And when you have conquered this foe of your soul,-- In manhood and honor beyond his control-- This heart will again beat responsive to thine, And the lips free from liquor be welcome to mine. _George W. Young._ A Perfect Day When you come to the end of a perfect day And you sit alone with your thought While the chimes ring out with a carol gay For the joy that the day has brought, Do you think what the end of a perfect day Can mean to a tired heart? When the sun goes down with a flaming ray And the dear friends have to part? Well, this is the end of a perfect day, Near the end of a journey, too; But it leaves a thought that is big and strong, With a wish that is kind and true; For mem'ry has painted this perfect day With colors that never fade, And we find, at the end of a perfect day, The soul of a friend we've made. _Carrie Jacobs Bond._ _Kate Ketchem_ Kate Ketchem on a winter's night Went to a party dressed in white. Her chignon in a net of gold, Was about as large as they ever sold. Gayly she went, because her "pap" Was supposed to be a rich old chap. But when by chance her glances fell On a friend who had lately married well, Her spirits sunk, and a vague unrest And a nameless longing filled her breast-- A wish she wouldn't have had made known, To have an establishment of her own. Tom Fudge came slowly through the throng, With chestnut hair, worn pretty long. He saw Kate Ketchem in the crowd, And knowing her slightly, stopped and bowed; Then asked her to give him a single flower, Saying he'd think it a priceless dower. Out from those with which she was decked, She took the poorest she could select. And blushed as she gave it, looking down To call attention to her gown. "Thanks," said Fudge, and he thought how dear Flowers must be at that time of year. Then several charming remarks he made, Asked if she sang, or danced, or played; And being exhausted, inquired whether She thought it was going to be pleasant weather. And Kate displayed her "jewelry," And dropped her lashes becomingly; And listened, with no attempt to disguise The admiration in her eyes. At last, like one who has nothing to say, He turned around and walked away. Kate Ketchem smiled, and said, "You bet. I'll catch that Fudge and his money yet. He's rich enough to keep me in clothes, And I think I could manage him as I chose. He could aid my father as well as not, And buy my brother a splendid yacht. My mother for money should never fret, And all it cried for the baby should get; And after that, with what he could spare, I'd make a show at a charity fair." Tom Fudge looked back as he crossed the sill, And saw Kate Ketchem standing still. "A girl more suited to my mind It isn't an easy thing to find; And every thing that she has to wear Proves her as rich as she is fair. Would she were mine, and I to-day Had the old man's cash my debts to pay! No creditors with a long account, No tradesmen wanting 'that little amount'; But all my scores paid up when due By a father-in-law as rich as a Jew!" But he thought of her brother, not worth a straw, And her mother, that would be his, in law; So, undecided, he walked along, And Kate was left alone in the throng. But a lawyer smiled, whom he sought by stealth, To ascertain old Ketchem's wealth; And as for Kate, she schemed and planned Till one of the dancers claimed her hand. He married her for her father's cash; She married him to cut a dash, But as to paying his debts, do you know, The father couldn't see it so; And at hints for help, Kate's hazel eyes Looked out in their innocent surprise. And when Tom thought of the way he had wed He longed for a single life instead, And closed his eyes in a sulky mood, Regretting the days of his bachelorhood; And said, in a sort of reckless vein, "I'd like to see her catch me again, If I were free, as on that night When I saw Kate Ketchem dressed in white!" She wedded him to be rich and gay; But husband and children didn't pay, He wasn't the prize she hoped to draw, And wouldn't live with his mother-in-law. And oft when she had to coax and pout In order to get him to take her out, She thought how very attentive and bright He seemed at the party that winter's night; Of his laugh, as soft as a breeze of the south, ('Twas now on the other side of his mouth); How he praised her dress and gems in his talk, As he took a careful account of stock. Sometimes she hated the very walls-- Hated her friends, her dinners, and calls; Till her weak affection, to hatred turned, Like a dying tallow-candle burned. And for him who sat there, her peace to mar, Smoking his everlasting cigar-- He wasn't the man she thought she saw, And grief was duty, and hate was law. So she took up her burden with a groan, Saying only, "I might have known!" Alas for Kate! and alas for Fudge! Though I do not owe them any grudge; And alas for any who find to their shame That two can play at their little game! For of all hard things to bear and grin, The hardest is knowing you're taken in. Ah, well! as a general thing, we fret About the one we didn't get; But I think we needn't make a fuss, If the one we don't want didn't get us. _Phoebe Cary._ Mandalay By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea, There's a Burma girl a-settin', an' I know she thinks o' me; For the wind is in the palm-trees, an' the temple-bells they say: "Come you back, you British soldier: come you back to Mandalay!" Come you back to Mandalay, Where the old flotilla lay: Can't you 'ear their paddles chunkin' from Rangoon to Mandalay? On the road to Mandalay, Where the flyin'-fishes play, An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay! 'Er petticut was yaller an' 'er little cap was green, An' 'er name was Supi-yaw-lat--jes' the same as Theebaw's Queen, An' I seed her fust a-smokin' of a whackin' white cheroot, An' a-wastin' Christian kisses on an 'eathen idol's foot; Bloomin' idol made o' mud-- Wot they called the Great Gawd Budd-- Plucky lot she cared for idols when I kissed 'er where she stud! On the road to Mandalay-- When the mist was on the rice-fields an' the sun was droppin' low, She'd git 'er little banjo an' she'd sing "_Kul-la-lo-lo_!" With 'er arm upon my shoulder an' her cheek agin my cheek We useter watch the steamers and the _hathis_ pilin' teak. Elephints a-pilin' teak In the sludgy, squdgy creek, Where the silence 'ung that 'eavy you was arf afraid to speak! On the road to Mandalay-- But that's all shove be'ind me--long ago an' fur away, An' there ain't no 'buses runnin' from the Benk to Mandalay; An' I'm learnin' 'ere in London what the ten-year sodger tells: "If you've 'eard the East a-callin', why, you won't 'eed nothin' else." No! you won't 'eed nothin' else But them spicy garlic smells An' the sunshine an' the palm-trees an' the tinkly temple-bells! On the road to Mandalay-- I am sick o' wastin' leather on these gutty pavin'-stones, An' the blasted Henglish drizzle wakes the fever in my bones; Tho' I walks with fifty 'ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand, An' they talk a lot o' lovin', but wot do they understand? Beefy face an' grubby 'and-- Law! wot _do_ they understand? I've a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land! On the road to Mandalay-- Ship me somewheres east of Suez where the best is like the worst, Where there aren't no Ten Commandments, an' a man can raise a thirst; For the temple-bells are callin', an' it's there that I would be-- By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' lazy at the sea-- On the road to Mandalay, Where the old Flotilla lay, With our sick beneath the awnings when we went to Mandalay! On the road to Mandalay! Where the flyin'-fishes play, An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay! _Rudyard Kipling._ Columbus Behind him lay the gray Azores, Behind the Gates of Hercules; Before him not the ghost of shores, Before him only shoreless seas. The good mate said: "Now must we pray, For lo! the very stars are gone. Brave Adm'r'l, speak; what shall I say?" "Why, say: 'Sail on! sail on! and on!'" "My men grow mutinous day by day; My men grow ghastly wan and weak." The stout mate thought of home; a spray Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek, "What shall I say, brave Adm'r'l, say, If we sight naught but seas at dawn?" "Why, you shall say at break of day: 'Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!'" They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow, Until at last the blanched mate said: "Why, now not even God would know Should I and all my men fall dead. These very winds forget their way, For God from these dread seas is gone. Now speak, brave Adm'r'l, speak and say--" He said: "Sail on! Sail on! and on!" They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate: "This mad sea shows his teeth tonight. He curls his lips, he lies in wait With lifted teeth, as if to bite! Brave Adm'r'l, say but one good word: What shall we do when hope is gone? The words leapt like a leaping sword; "Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!" Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck, And peered through darkness. Ah, that night Of all dark nights! And then a speck-- A light! a light! a light! a light! It grew, a starlit flag unfurled! It grew to be Time's burst of dawn. He gained a world; he gave that world Its grandest lesson; "On! sail on!" _Joaquin Miller._ "Sister's Best Feller" My sister's best feller is 'most six-foot-three, And handsome and strong as a feller can be; And Sis, she's so little, and slender, and small, You never would think she could boss him at all; But, my jing! She don't do a thing But make him jump 'round, like he worked with a string! It jest made me 'shamed of him sometimes, you know, To think that he'll let a girl bully him so. He goes to walk with her and carries her muff And coat and umbrella, and that kind of stuff; She loads him with things that must weigh 'most a ton; And, honest, he _likes_ it,--as if it was fun! And, oh, say! When they go to a play, He'll sit in the parlor and fidget away, And she won't come down till it's quarter past eight, And then she'll scold _him_ 'cause they get there so late. He spends heaps of money a-buyin' her things, Like candy, and flowers, and presents, and rings; And all he's got for 'em's a handkerchief case-- A fussed-up concern, made of ribbons and lace; But, my land! He thinks it's just grand, "'Cause she made it," he says, "with her own little hand"; He calls her "an angel"--I heard him--and "saint," And "beautif'lest bein' on earth"--but she ain't, 'Fore I go on an errand for her any time, I just make her coax me, and give me a dime; But that great big silly--why, honest and true-- He'd run forty miles if she wanted him to. Oh, gee whiz! I tell you what 'tis! I jest think it's _awful_--those actions of his. I won't fall in love, when I'm grown--no sir-ee! My sister's best feller's a warnin' to me! _Joseph C. Lincoln._ Where the West Begins Out where the handclasp's a little stronger, Out where a smile dwells a little longer, That's where the West begins. Out where the sun's a little brighter, Where the snow that falls is a trifle whiter, Where the bonds of home are a wee bit tighter, That's where the West begins. Out where the skies are a trifle bluer, Out where friendship's a little truer, That's where the West begins. Out where a fresher breeze is blowing, Where there is laughter in every streamlet flowing, Where there's more of reaping and less of sowing, That's where the West begins. Out where the world is in the making, Where fewer hearts with despair are aching; That's where the West begins. Where there is more of singing and less of sighing, Where there is more of giving and less of buying, And a man makes friends without half trying-- That's where the West begins. _Arthur Chapman._ The Tapestry Weavers Let us take to our hearts a lesson--no lesson can braver be-- From the ways of the tapestry weavers on the other side of the sea. Above their heads the pattern hangs, they study it with care, The while their fingers deftly move, their eyes are fastened there. They tell this curious thing, besides, of the patient, plodding weaver: He works on the wrong side evermore, but works for the right side ever. It is only when the weaving stops, and the web is loosed and turned, That he sees his real handiwork--that his marvelous skill is learned. Ah, the sight of its delicate beauty, how it pays him for all his cost! No rarer, daintier work than his was ever done by the frost. Then the master bringeth him golden hire, and giveth him praise as well, And how happy the heart of the weaver is, no tongue but his can tell. The years of man are the looms of God, let down from the place of the sun, Wherein we are weaving ever, till the mystic web is done. Weaving blindly but weaving surely each for himself his fate-- We may not see how the right side looks, we can only weave and wait. But, looking above for the pattern, no weaver hath to fear; Only let him look clear into heaven, the Perfect Pattern is there. If he keeps the face of the Savior forever and always in sight His toil shall be sweeter than honey, his weaving sure to be right. And when the work is ended, and the web is turned and shown, He shall hear the voice of the Master, it shall say unto him, "Well done!" And the white-winged Angels of Heaven, to bear him shall come down; And God shall give him gold for his hire--not a coin--but a glowing crown. When the Teacher Gets Cross When the teacher gets cross, and her blue eyes gets black, And the pencil comes down on the desk with a whack, We chillen all sit up straight in a line, As if we had rulers instead of a spine, And it's scary to cough, and it a'n't safe to grin, When the teacher gets cross, and the dimples goes in. When the teacher gets cross, the tables get mixed, The ones and the twos begins to play tricks. The pluses and minuses is just little smears, When the cry babies cry their slates full of tears, And the figgers won't add,--but just act up like sin, When the teacher gets cross, and the dimples goes in. When the teacher gets cross, the reading gets bad. The lines jingle round till the' chillen is sad. And Billy boy puffs and gets red in the face, As if he and the lesson were running a race, Until she hollers out, "Next!" as sharp as a pin, When the teacher gets cross, and the dimples goes in. When the teacher gets good, her smile is so bright, That the tables gets straight, and the reading gets right. The pluses and minuses comes trooping along, And the figgers add up and stop being wrong, And we chillen would like, but we dassent, to shout, When the teacher gets good, and the dimples comes out. Recessional God of our fathers, known of old, Lord of our far-flung battle line, Beneath whose awful Hand we hold Dominion over palm and pine-- Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget--lest we forget! The tumult and the shouting dies; The captains and the kings depart: Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart. Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget--lest we forget! Far-called, our navies melt away; On dune and headland sinks the fire: Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, Lest we forget--lest we forget! If, drunk with sight of power, we loose Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe-- Such boasting as the Gentiles use, Or lesser breeds without the Law-- Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget--lest we forget! For heathen heart that puts her trust In reeking tube and iron shard, All valiant dust that builds on dust, And guarding, calls not Thee to guard, For frantic boast and foolish word, Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord! Amen. _Rudyard Kipling._ The Eternal Goodness O Friends! with whom my feet have trod The quiet aisles of prayer, Glad witness to your zeal for God And love of man I bear. I trace your lines of argument; Your logic linked and strong I weigh as one who dreads dissent, And fears a doubt as wrong. But still my human hands are weak To hold your iron creeds: Against the words ye bid me speak My heart within me pleads. Who fathoms the Eternal Thought? Who talks of scheme and plan? The Lord is God! He needeth not The poor device of man. I walk with bare, hushed feet the ground Ye tread with boldness shod; I dare not fix with mete and bound The love and power of God. Ye praise His justice; even such His pitying love I deem; Ye seek a king; I fain would touch The robe that hath no seam. Ye see the curse which overbroods A world of pain and loss; I hear our Lord's beatitudes And prayer upon the cross. More than your schoolmen teach, within Myself, alas! I know; Too dark ye cannot paint the sin, Too small the merit show. I bow my forehead to the dust, I veil mine eyes for shame, And urge, in trembling self-distrust, A prayer without a claim. I see the wrong that round me lies, I feel the guilt within; I hear, with groan and travail-cries, The world confess its sin. Yet, in the maddening maze of things, And tossed by storm and flood, To one fixed stake my spirit clings; I know that God is good! Not mine to look where cherubim And seraphs may not see, But nothing can be good in Him Which evil is in me. The wrong that pains my soul below I dare not throne above; I know not of His hate,--I know His goodness and His love. I dimly guess from blessings known Of greater out of sight, And, with the chastened Psalmist, own His judgments too are right. I long for household voices gone, For vanished smiles I long, But God hath led my dear ones on, And he can do no wrong. I know not what the future hath Of marvel or surprise, Assured alone that life and death His mercy underlies. And if my heart and flesh are weak To bear an untried pain, The bruised reed He will not break, But strengthen and sustain. No offering of my own I have, Nor works my faith to prove; I can but give the gifts He gave, And plead His love for love. And so beside the Silent Sea, I wait the muffled oar; No harm from Him can come to me On ocean or on shore. I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care. O brothers! if my faith is vain, If hopes like these betray, Pray for me that my feet may gain The sure and safer way. And Thou, O Lord! by whom are seen Thy creatures as they be, Forgive me if too close I lean My human heart on Thee! _John G. Whittier._ Driving Home the Cows Out of the clover and blue-eyed grass He turned them into the river-lane; One after another he let them pass. Then fastened the meadow-bars again. Under the willows and over the hill, He patiently followed their sober pace; The merry whistle for once was still, And something shadowed the sunny face. Only a boy! and his father had said He never could let his youngest go; Two already were lying dead Under the feet of the trampling foe. But after the evening work was done, And the frogs were loud in the meadow swamp, Over his shoulder he slung his gun, And stealthily followed the footpath damp,-- Across the clover and through the wheat. With resolute heart and purpose grim, Though cold was the dew on his hurrying feet, And the blind bat's flitting startled him. Thrice since then had the lanes been white, And the orchards sweet with apple bloom; And now, when the cows came back at night, The feeble father drove them home. For news had come to the lonely farm That three were lying where two had lain; And the old man's tremulous, palsied arm Could never lean on a son's again. The summer day grew cool and late; He went for the cows when the work was done; But down the lane, as he opened the gate, He saw them coming, one by one,-- Brindle, Ebony, Speckle, and Bess, Shaking their horns in the evening wind, Cropping the buttercups out of the grass-- But who was it following close behind? Loosely swung in the idle air The empty sleeve of army blue; And worn and pale, from the crisping hair, Looked out a face that the father knew. For southern prisons will sometimes yawn, And yield their dead unto life again; And the day that comes with a cloudy dawn In golden glory at last may wane. The great tears sprang to their meeting eyes; For the heart must speak when the lips are dumb, And under the silent evening skies Together they followed the cattle home. _Kate P. Osgood._ A Song of Our Flag Your Flag and my Flag! And, oh, how much it holds-- Your land and my land-- Secure within its folds! Your heart and my heart Beat quicker at the sight; Sun-kissed and wind-tossed, Red and blue and white. The one Flag--the great Flag--the Flag for me and you-- Glorified all else beside--the red and white and blue! Your Flag and my Flag! To every star and stripe The drums beat as hearts beat And fifers shrilly pipe! Your Flag and my Flag-- A blessing in the sky; Your hope and my hope-- It never hid a lie! Home land and far land and half the world around, Old Glory hears our glad salute and ripples to the sound! _Wilbur D. Nesbit._ When the Minister Comes to Tea Oh! they've swept the parlor carpet, and they've dusted every chair, And they've got the tidies hangin' jest exactly on the square; And the what-not's fixed up lovely, and the mats have all been beat, And the pantry's brimmin' over with the bully things ter eat; Sis has got her Sunday dress on, and she's frizzin' up her bangs; Ma's got on her best alpacky, and she's askin' how it hangs; Pa has shaved as slick as can be, and I'm rigged way up in G,-- And it's all because we're goin' ter have the minister ter tea. Oh! the table's fixed up gaudy, with the gilt-edged chiny set, And we'll use the silver tea-pot and the comp'ny spoons, you bet; And we're goin' ter have some fruitcake and some thimbleberry jam, And "riz biscuits," and some doughnuts, and some chicken, and some ham. Ma, she'll 'polergize like fury and say everything is bad, And "Sich awful luck with cookin'," she is sure she never had; But, er course, she's only bluffin,' for it's as prime as it can be, And she's only talkin' that way 'cause the minister's ter tea. Everybody'll be a-smilin' and as good as ever was, Pa won't growl about the vittles, like he generally does. And he'll ask me would I like another piece er pie; but, sho! That, er course, is only manners, and I'm s'posed ter answer "No." Sis'll talk about the church-work and about the Sunday-school, Ma'll tell how she liked that sermon that was on the Golden Rule, And if I upset my tumbler they won't say a word ter me:-- Yes, a boy can eat in comfort with the minister ter tea! Say! a minister, you'd reckon, never'd say what wasn't true; But that isn't so with ours, and I jest can prove it, too; 'Cause when Sis plays on the organ so it makes yer want ter die, Why, he sets and says it's lovely; and that, seems ter me,'s a lie: But I like him all the samey, and I only wish he'd stay At our house fer good and always, and eat with us every day; Only think of havin' goodies _every_ evenin'! Jimmin_ee_! And I'd _never_ git a scoldin' with the minister ter tea! _Joseph C. Lincoln._ When the Cows Come Home When klingle, klangle, klingle, Far down the dusty dingle, The cows are coming home; Now sweet and clear, now faint and low, The airy tinklings come and go, Like chimings from the far-off tower, Or patterings of an April shower That makes the daisies grow; Ko-ling, ko-lang, kolinglelingle Far down the darkening dingle, The cows come slowly home. And old-time friends, and twilight plays, And starry nights and sunny days, Come trooping up the misty ways When the cows come home, With jingle, jangle, jingle, Soft tones that sweetly mingle-- The cows are coming home; Malvine, and Pearl, and Florimel, DeKamp, Red Rose, and Gretchen Schell. Queen Bess and Sylph, and Spangled Sue, Across the fields I hear her "loo-oo" And clang her silver bell; Go-ling, go-lang, golingledingle, With faint, far sounds that mingle, The cows come slowly home. And mother-songs of long-gone years, And baby-joys and childish fears, And youthful hopes and youthful tears, When the cows come home. With ringle, rangle, ringle, By twos and threes and single, The cows are coming home. Through violet air we see the town, And the summer sun a-sliding down, And the maple in the hazel glade Throws down the path a longer shade, And the hills are growing brown; To-ring, to-rang, toringleringle, By threes and fours and single, The cows come slowly home. The same sweet sound of wordless psalm, The same sweet June-day rest and calm, The same sweet smell of buds and balm, When the cows come home. With tinkle, tankle, tinkle, Through fern and periwinkle, The cows are coming home. A-loitering in the checkered stream, Where the sun-rays glance and gleam, Clarine, Peach-bloom and Phebe Phillis Stand knee-deep in the creamy lilies, In a drowsy dream; To-link, to-lank, tolinklelinkle, O'er banks with buttercups a-twinkle, The cows come slowly home. And up through memory's deep ravine Come the brook's old song and its old-time sheen, And the crescent of the silver queen, When the cows come home. With klingle, klangle, klingle, With loo-oo, and moo-oo and jingle, The cows are coming home. And over there on Merlin Hill Sounds the plaintive cry of the whip-poor-will, And the dew-drops lie on the tangled vines, And over the poplars Venus shines, And over the silent mill. Ko-ling, ko-lang, kolinglelingle, With ting-a-ling and jingle, The cows come slowly home. Let down the bars; let in the train Of long-gone songs, and flowers, and rain; For dear old times come back again, When the cows come home. _Agnes E. Mitchell._ Custer's Last Charge Dead! Is it possible? He, the bold rider, Custer, our hero, the first in the fight, Charming the bullets of yore to fly wider, Shunning our battle-king's ringlets of light! Dead! our young chieftain, and dead all forsaken! No one to tell us the way of his fall! Slain in the desert, and never to waken, Never, not even to victory's call! Comrades, he's gone! but ye need not be grieving; No, may my death be like his when I die! No regrets wasted on words I am leaving, Falling with brave men, and face to the sky. Death's but a journey, the greatest must take it: Fame is eternal, and better than all; Gold though the bowl be, 'tis fate that must break it, Glory can hallow the fragments that fall. Proud for his fame that last day that he met them! All the night long he had been on their track, Scorning their traps and the men that had set them, Wild for a charge that should never give back. There, on the hilltop he halted and saw them-- Lodges all loosened and ready to fly; Hurrying scouts with the tidings to awe them, Told of his coming before he was nigh. All the wide valley was full of their forces, Gathered to cover the lodges' retreat,-- Warriors running in haste to their horses, Thousands of enemies close to his feet! Down in the valleys the ages had hollowed, There lay the Sitting Bull's camp for a prey! Numbers! What recked he? What recked those who followed? Men who had fought ten to one ere that day? Out swept the squadrons, the fated three hundred, Into the battle-line steady and full; Then down the hillside exultingly thundered Into the hordes of the Old Sitting Bull! Wild Ogalallah, Arapahoe, Cheyenne, Wild Horse's braves, and the rest of their crew, Shrank from that charge like a herd from a lion. Then closed around the great hell of wild Sioux. Right to their center he charged, and then, facing-- Hark to those yells and around them, Oh, see! Over the hilltops the devils come racing, Coming as fast as the waves of the sea! Red was the circle of fire about them, No hope of victory, no ray of light, Shot through that terrible black cloud about them, Brooding in death over Custer's last fight. THEN DID HE BLENCH? Did he die like a craven, Begging those torturing fiends for his life? Was there a soldier who carried the Seven Flinched like a coward or fled from the strife? No, by the blood of our Custer, no quailing! There in the midst of the devils they close, Hemmed in by thousands, but ever assailing, Fighting like tigers, all bayed amid foes! Thicker and thicker the bullets came singing; Down go the horses and riders and all; Swiftly the warriors round them were ringing, Circling like buzzards awaiting their fall. See the wild steeds of the mountain and prairie, Savage eyes gleaming from forests of mane; Quivering lances with pennons so airy; War-painted warriors charging amain. Backward again and again they were driven, Shrinking to close with the lost little band; Never a cap that had worn the bright Seven Bowed till its wearer was dead on the strand. Closer and closer the death-circle growing, Even the leader's voice, clarion clear, Rang out his words of encouragement glowing, "We can but die once, boys, but SELL YOUR LIVES DEAR!" Dearly they sold them, like Berserkers raging, Facing the death that encircled them round; Death's bitter pangs by their vengeance assuaging, Marking their tracks by their dead on the ground. Comrades, our children shall yet tell their story,-- Custer's last charge on the Old Sitting Bull; And ages shall swear that the cup of his glory Needed but that death to render it full. _Frederick Whitttaker._ A Boy and His Stomach What's the matter, stummick? Ain't I always been your friend? Ain't I always been a pardner to you? All my pennies don't I spend In getting nice things for you? Don't I give you lots of cake? Say, stummick, what's the matter, You had to go an' ache? Why, I loaded you with good things yesterday; I gave you more corn an' chicken than you'd ever had before; I gave you fruit an' candy, apple pie an' chocolate cake, An' last night when I got to bed you had to go an' ache. Say, what's the matter with you? Ain't you satisfied at all? I gave you all you wanted; you was hard jes' like a ball, An' you couldn't hold another bit of puddin'; yet last night You ached most awful, stummick! That ain't treatin' me jest right. I've been a friend to you, I have! Why ain't you a friend o' mine? They gave me castor oil becoz you made me whine. I'm feelin' fine this mornin'; yes it's true; But I tell you, stummick, you better appreciate things I do for you. On the Shores of Tennessee "Move my arm-chair, faithful Pompey, In the sunshine bright and strong, For this world is fading, Pompey-- Massa won't be with you long; And I fain would hear the south wind Bring once more the sound to me, Of the wavelets softly breaking On the shores of Tennessee. "Mournful though the ripples murmur As they still the story tell, How no vessels float the banner That I've loved so long and well, I shall listen to their music, Dreaming that again I see Stars and Stripes on sloop and shallop Sailing up the Tennessee; "And Pompey, while old Massa's waiting For Death's last dispatch to come, If that exiled starry banner Should come proudly sailing home, You shall greet it, slave no longer-- Voice and hand shall both be free That shout and point to Union colors On the waves of Tennessee." "Massa's berry kind to Pompey; But old darkey's happy here, Where he's tended corn and cotton For dese many a long-gone year. Ober yonder, Missis' sleeping-- No one tends her grave like me; Mebbe she would miss the flowers She used to love in Tennessee. "'Pears like, she was watching Massa-- If Pompey should beside him stay, Mebbe she'd remember better How for him she used to pray; Telling him that way up yonder White as snow his soul would be, If he served the Lord of Heaven While he lived in Tennessee." Silently the tears were rolling Down the poor old dusky face, As he stepped behind his master, In his long-accustomed place. Then a silence fell around them, As they gazed on rock and tree Pictured in the placid waters Of the rolling Tennessee;-- Master, dreaming of the battle Where he fought by Marion's side, Where he bid the haughty Tarleton Stoop his lordly crest of pride:-- Man, remembering how yon sleeper Once he held upon his knee. Ere she loved the gallant soldier, Ralph Vervair of Tennessee. Still the south wind fondly lingers 'Mid the veteran's silver hair; Still the bondman, close beside him Stands behind the old arm-chair. With his dark-hued hand uplifted, Shading eyes, he bends to see Where the woodland, boldly jutting, Turns aside the Tennessee. Thus he watches cloud-born shadows Glide from tree to mountain-crest, Softly creeping, aye and ever To the river's yielding breast. Ha! above the foliage yonder Something flutters wild and free! "Massa! Massa! Hallelujah! The flag's come back to Tennessee!" "Pompey, hold me on your shoulder, Help me stand on foot once more, That I may salute the colors As they pass my cabin door. Here's the paper signed that frees you, Give a freeman's shout with me-- 'God and Union!' be our watchword Evermore in Tennessee!" Then the trembling voice grew fainter, And the limbs refused to stand; One prayer to Jesus--and the soldier Glided to the better land. When the flag went down the river Man and master both were free; While the ring-dove's note was mingled With the rippling Tennessee. _Ethel Lynn Beers._ The White-Footed Deer It was a hundred years ago, When, by the woodland ways, The traveler saw the wild deer drink, Or crop the birchen sprays. Beneath a hill, whose rocky side O'er-browed a grassy mead, And fenced a cottage from the wind, A deer was wont to feed. She only came when on the cliffs The evening moonlight lay, And no man knew the secret haunts In which she walked by day. White were her feet, her forehead showed A spot of silvery white, That seemed to glimmer like a star In autumn's hazy night. And here, when sang the whippoorwill, She cropped the sprouting leaves, And here her rustling steps were heard On still October eves. But when the broad midsummer moon Rose o'er the grassy lawn, Beside the silver-footed deer There grazed a spotted fawn. The cottage dame forbade her son To aim the rifle here; "It were a sin," she said, "to harm Or fright that friendly deer. "This spot has been my pleasant home Ten peaceful years and more; And ever, when the moonlight shines, She feeds before our door, "The red men say that here she walked A thousand moons ago; They never raise the war whoop here, And never twang the bow. "I love to watch her as she feeds, And think that all is well While such a gentle creature haunts The place in which we dwell." The youth obeyed, and sought for game In forests far away, Where, deep in silence and in moss, The ancient woodland lay. But once, in autumn's golden time, He ranged the wild in vain, Nor roused the pheasant nor the deer, And wandered home again. The crescent moon and crimson eve Shone with a mingling light; The deer, upon the grassy mead, Was feeding full in sight. He raised the rifle to his eye, And from the cliffs around A sudden echo, shrill and sharp, Gave back its deadly sound. Away, into the neighboring wood, The startled creature flew, And crimson drops at morning lay Amid the glimmering dew. Next evening shone the waxing moon As sweetly as before; The deer upon the grassy mead Was seen again no more. But ere that crescent moon was old, By night the red men came, And burnt the cottage to the ground, And slew the youth and dame. Now woods have overgrown the mead, And hid the cliffs from sight; There shrieks the hovering hawk at noon, And prowls the fox at night. _W.C. Bryant._ Mount Vernon's Bells Where Potomac's stream is flowing Virginia's border through, Where the white-sailed ships are going Sailing to the ocean blue; Hushed the sound of mirth and singing, Silent every one! While the solemn bells are ringing By the tomb of Washington. Tolling and knelling, With a sad, sweet sound, O'er the waves the tones are swelling By Mount Vernon's sacred ground. Long ago the warrior slumbered-- Our country's father slept; Long among the angels numbered They the hero soul have kept. But the children's children love him, And his name revere, So where willows wave above him, Sweetly still his knell you hear. Sail, oh ships, across the billows, And bear the story far; How he sleeps beneath the willows,-- "First in peace and first in war," Tell while sweet adieus are swelling, Till you come again, He within the hearts is dwelling, Of his loving countrymen. _M.B.C. Slade._ Gradatim Heaven is not reached at a single bound; But we build the ladder by which we rise From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, And we mount to the summit round by round, I count this thing to be grandly true: That a noble deed is a step toward God, Lifting a soul from the common sod To a purer air and a broader view. We rise by things that are under our feet; By what we have mastered of good and gain, By the pride deposed and the passion slain, And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet. We hope, we aspire, we resolve, we trust, When the morning calls us to life and light; But our hearts grow weary, and ere he night Our lives are trailing the sordid dust. We hope, we resolve, we aspire, we pray, And we think that we mount the air on wings, Beyond the recall of sensual things, While our feet still cling to the heavy clay. Only in dreams is a ladder thrown From the weary earth to the sapphire walls; But the dreams depart, and the vision falls, And the sleeper awakes on his pillow of stone. Heaven is not reached at a single bound; But we build the ladder by which we rise From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, And we mount to the summit round by round. _J.G. Holland._ Mr. Finney's Turnip Mr. Finney had a turnip And it grew behind the barn; It grew there, and it grew there, And the turnip did no harm, It grew and it grew, Till it could get no taller; Mr. Finney pulled it up And put it in his cellar. It lay there and it lay there, Till it began to rot; His daughter Sallie took it up, And put it in the pot. She boiled it, and she boiled it, As long as she was able; His daughter Peggy fished it out. And put it on the table. Mr. Finney and his wife. They sat down to sup, And they ate, and they ate, Until they ate the turnip up. The Village Blacksmith Under a spreading chestnut tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands. His hair is crisp, and black and long, His face is like the tan; His brow is wet with honest sweat, He earns whate'er he can, And looks the whole world in the face, For he owes not any man. Week in, week out, from morn till night, You can hear his bellows blow; You can hear him swing his heavy sledge, With measured beat and slow, Like a sexton ringing the village bell, When the evening sun is low. And children coming home from school Look in at the open door; They love to see the flaming forge, And hear the bellows roar, And catch the burning sparks that fly Like chaff from a threshing floor. He goes on Sunday to the church, And sits among his boys; He hears the parson pray and preach, He hears his daughter's voice, Singing in the village choir, And it makes his heart rejoice. It sounds to him like her mother's voice, Singing in Paradise! He needs must think of her once more, How in the grave she lies; And with his hard, rough hand he wipes A tear out of his eyes. Toiling,--rejoicing,--sorrowing, Onward through life he goes; Each morning sees some task begun, Each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, Has earned a night's repose. Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, For the lesson thou hast taught! Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each burning deed and thought. _H. W. Longfellow._ You and You _To the American Private in the Great War_ Every one of you won the war-- You and you and you-- Each one knowing what it was for, And what was his job to do. Every one of you won the war, Obedient, unwearied, unknown, Dung in the trenches, drift on the shore, Dust to the world's end blown; Every one of you, steady and true, You and you and you-- Down in the pit or up in the blue, Whether you crawled or sailed or flew, Whether your closest comrade knew Or you bore the brunt alone-- All of you, all of you, name after name, Jones and Robinson, Smith and Brown, You from the piping prairie town, You from the Fundy fogs that came, You from the city's roaring blocks, You from the bleak New England rocks With the shingled roof in the apple boughs, You from the brown adobe house-- You from the Rockies, you from the Coast, You from the burning frontier-post And you from the Klondyke's frozen flanks, You from the cedar-swamps, you from the pine, You from the cotton and you from the vine, You from the rice and the sugar-brakes, You from the Rivers and you from the Lakes, You from the Creeks and you from the Licks And you from the brown bayou-- You and you and you-- You from the pulpit, you from the mine, You from the factories, you from the banks, Closer and closer, ranks on ranks, Airplanes and cannon, and rifles and tanks, Smith and Robinson, Brown and Jones, Ruddy faces or bleaching bones, After the turmoil and blood and pain Swinging home to the folks again Or sleeping alone in the fine French rain-- Every one of you won the war. Every one of you won the war-- You and you and you-- Pressing and pouring forth, more and more, Toiling and straining from shore to shore To reach the flaming edge of the dark Where man in his millions went up like a spark, You, in your thousands and millions coming, All the sea ploughed with you, all the air humming, All the land loud with you, All our hearts proud with you, All our souls bowed with the awe of your coming! Where's the Arch high enough, Lads, to receive you, Where's the eye dry enough, Dears, to perceive you, When at last and at last in your glory you come, Tramping home? Every one of you won the war, You and you and you-- You that carry an unscathed head, You that halt with a broken tread, And oh, most of all, you Dead, you Dead! Lift up the Gates for these that are last, That are last in the great Procession. Let the living pour in, take possession, Flood back to the city, the ranch, the farm, The church and the college and mill, Back to the office, the store, the exchange, Back to the wife with the babe on her arm, Back to the mother that waits on the sill, And the supper that's hot on the range. And now, when the last of them all are by, Be the Gates lifted up on high To let those Others in, Those Others, their brothers, that softly tread, That come so thick, yet take no ground, That are so many, yet make no sound, Our Dead, our Dead, our Dead! O silent and secretly-moving throng, In your fifty thousand strong, Coming at dusk when the wreaths have dropt, And streets are empty, and music stopt, Silently coming to hearts that wait Dumb in the door and dumb at the gate, And hear your step and fly to your call-- Every one of you won the war, But you, you Dead, most of all! _Edith Wharton (Copyright 1919 by Charles Scrihner's, Sons)._ The First Snow-fall The snow had begun in the gloaming, And busily all the night Had been heaping field and highway With a silence deep and white. Every pine and fir and hemlock Wore ermine too dear for an earl, And the poorest twig on the elm tree Was ridged inch-deep with pearl. From sheds new-roofed with Carrara Came Chanticleer's muffled crow, The stiff rails were softened to swan's-down, And still fluttered down the snow. I stood and watched by the window The noiseless work of the sky, And the sudden flurries of snow-birds, Like brown leaves whirling by. I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn Where a little headstone stood; How the flakes were folding it gently, As did robins the babes in the wood. Up spoke our own little Mabel, Saying, "Father, who makes it snow?" And I told of the good All-father Who cares for us here below. Again I looked at the snow-fall, And thought of the leaden sky That arched o'er our first great sorrow, When that mound was heaped so high. I remembered the gradual patience That fell from that cloud like snow, Flake by flake, healing and hiding The scar of our deep-plunged woe. And again to the child I whispered, "The snow that husheth all, Darling, the merciful Father Alone can make it fall!" Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her; And she, kissing back, could not know That _my_ kiss was given to her sister, Folded close under deepening snow. _James Russell Lowell._ The Concord Hymn _Sung at the completion of the Concord Monument, April 19, 1836_. By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world. The foe long since in silence slept; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; And Time the ruined bridge has swept Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. On this green bank, by this soft stream, We set to-day a votive stone, That memory may their deed redeem, When, like our sires, our sons are gone. Spirit, that made these heroes dare To die, to leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee. _Ralph Waldo Emerson._ Casey at the Bat It looked extremely rocky for the Mudville nine that day; The score stood two to four with but an inning left to play; So, when Cooney died at second, and Burrows did the same, A pallor wreathed the features of the patrons of the game. A straggling few got up to go, leaving there the rest, With that hope which springs eternal within the human breast, For they thought: "If only Casey could get a whack at that," They'd put up even money now, with Casey at the bat. But Flynn preceded Casey, and likewise so did Blake, And the former was a puddin', and the latter was a fake; So on that stricken multitude a deathlike silence sat. For there seemed but little chance of Casey's getting to the bat, But Flynn let drive a "single," to the wonderment of all, And the much-despised Blakey "tore the cover off the ball"; And when the dust had lifted and they saw what had occurred, There was Blakey safe at second, and Flynn a-huggin' third. Then, from the gladdened multitude went up a joyous yell, It rumbled in the mountain-tops, it rattled in the dell; It struck upon the hillside and rebounded on the flat; For Casey, mighty Casey, was advancing to the bat. There was ease in Casey's manner as he stepped into his place, There was pride in Casey's bearing, and a smile on Casey's face. And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat, No stranger in the crowd could doubt 'twas Casey at the bat. Ten thousand eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt, Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt; Then while the New York pitcher ground the ball into his hip, Defiance gleamed in Casey's eye, a sneer curled Casey's lip. And now the leather-covered sphere came hurtling through the air, And Casey stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there. Close by the sturdy batsman the ball unheeded sped-- "That ain't my style," said Casey. "Strike one," the umpire said. From the benches, black with people, there went up a muffled roar, Like the beating of great storm waves on a stern and distant shore. "Kill him! Kill the umpire!" shouted someone on the stand. And it's likely they'd have killed him had not Casey raised a hand. With a smile of Christian charity great Casey's visage shone; He stilled the rising tumult; he bade the game go on; He signaled to Sir Timothy, once more the spheroid flew; But Casey still ignored it, and the umpire said, "Strike two." "Fraud," cried the maddened thousands, and echo answered "Fraud!" But one scornful look from Casey and the audience was awed. They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his muscles strain, And they knew that Casey wouldn't let that ball go by again. The sneer is gone from Casey's lip, his teeth are clenched in hate; He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate; And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go, And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey's blow. Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright; The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light; And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout: But there is no joy in Mudville--mighty Casey has struck out. _Phineas Thayer._ Casey's Revenge _(Being a reply to "Casey at the Bat.")_ There were saddened hearts in Mudville for a week or even more; There were muttered oaths and curses--every fan in town was sore. "Just think," said one, "how soft it looked with Casey at the bat! And then to think he'd go and spring a bush league trick like that." All his past fame was forgotten; he was now a hopeless "shine." They called him "Strike-out Casey" from the mayor down the line. And as he came to bat each day his bosom heaved a sigh, While a look of hopeless fury shone in mighty Casey's eye. The lane is long, someone has said, that never turns again, And Fate, though fickle, often gives another chance to men. And Casey smiled--his rugged face no longer wore a frown; The pitcher who had started all the trouble came to town. All Mudville has assembled; ten thousand fans had come To see the twirler who had put big Casey on the bum; And when he stepped into the box the multitude went wild. He doffed his cap in proud disdain--but Casey only smiled. "Play ball!" the umpire's voice rang out, and then the game began; But in that throng of thousands there was not a single fan Who thought that Mudville had a chance; and with the setting sun Their hopes sank low--the rival team was leading "four to one." The last half of the ninth came round, with no change in the score; But when the first man up hit safe the crowd began to roar. The din increased, the echo of ten thousand shouts was heard When the pitcher hit the second and gave "four balls" to the third. Three men on base--nobody out--three runs to tie the game! A triple meant the highest niche in Mudville's hall of fame. But here the rally ended and the gloom was deep as night When the fourth one "fouled to catcher," and the fifth "flew out to right." A dismal groan in chorus came--a scowl was on each face-- When Casey walked up, bat in hand, and slowly took his place; His bloodshot eyes in fury gleamed; his teeth were clinched in hate; He gave his cap a vicious hook and pounded on the plate. But fame is fleeting as the wind, and glory fades away; There were no wild and woolly cheers, no glad acclaim this day. They hissed and groaned and hooted as they clamored, "Strike him out!" But Casey gave no outward sign that he had heard the shout. The pitcher smiled and cut one loose; across the plate it spread; Another hiss, another groan--"Strike one!" the umpire said. Zip! Like a shot, the second curve broke just below his knee-- "Strike two!" the umpire roared aloud; but Casey made no plea. No roasting for the umpire now--his was an easy lot. But here the pitcher twirled again--was that a rifle shot? A whack; a crack; and out through space the leather pellet flew-- A blot against the distant sky, a speck against the blue. Above the fence in center field, in rapid whirling flight The sphere sailed on; the blot grew dim and then was lost to sight. Ten thousand hats were thrown in air, ten thousand threw a fit; But no one ever found the ball that mighty Casey hit! Oh, somewhere in this favored land dark clouds may hide the sun, And somewhere bands no longer play and children have no fun; And somewhere over blighted lives there hangs a heavy pall, But Mudville hearts are happy now--for Casey hit the ball! _James Wilson._ Rock Me to Sleep Backward, turn backward, O time, in your flight, Make me a child again just for tonight! Mother, come back from the echoless shore, Take me again to your heart as of yore; Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care, Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair; Over my slumbers your loving watch keep;-- Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep. Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years! I am so weary of toil and of tears,-- Toil without recompense, tears all in vain,-- Take them, and give me my childhood again! I have grown weary of dust and decay,-- Weary of flinging my soul-wealth away; Weary of sowing for others to reap;-- Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep. Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue, Mother, O mother, my heart calls for you! Many a summer the grass has grown green, Blossomed and faded, our faces between; Yet with strong yearning and passionate pain Long I to-night for your presence again. Come from the silence so long and so deep;-- Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep. Over my heart, in the days that are flown, No love like mother-love ever has shone; No other worship abides and endures-- Faithful, unselfish and patient, like yours; None like a mother can charm away pain From the sick soul and the world-weary brain. Slumber's soft calms o'er my heavy lids creep;-- Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep. Come, let your brown hair, just lighted with gold, Fall on your shoulders again as of old; Let it drop over my forehead to-night, Shading my faint eyes away from the light; For with its sunny-edged shadows once more Haply will throng the sweet visions of yore; Lovingly, softly, its bright billows sweep;-- Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep. Mother, dear mother, the years have been long Since I last listened your lullaby song; Sing, then, and unto my soul it shall seem Womanhood's years have been only a dream. Clasped to your breast in a loving embrace, With your light lashes just sweeping my face, Never hereafter to wake or to weep;-- Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep. _Elizabeth Akers Allen._ An Answer to "Rock Me to Sleep" My child, ah, my child; thou art weary to-night, Thy spirit is sad, and dim is the light; Thou wouldst call me back from the echoless shore To the trials of life, to thy heart as of yore; Thou longest again for my fond loving care, For my kiss on thy cheek, for my hand on thy hair; But angels around thee their loving watch keep, And angels, my darling, will rock thee to sleep. "Backward?" Nay, onward, ye swift rolling years! Gird on thy armor, keep back thy tears; Count not thy trials nor efforts in vain, They'll bring thee the light of thy childhood again. Thou shouldst not weary, my child, by the way, But watch for the light of that brighter day; Not tired of "Sowing for others to reap," For angels, my darling, will rock thee to sleep. Tired, my child, of the "base, the untrue!" I have tasted the cup they have given to you; I've felt the deep sorrow in the living green Of a low mossy grave by the silvery stream. But the dear mother I then sought for in vain Is an angel presence and with me again; And in the still night, from the silence deep, Come the bright angels to rock me to sleep. Nearer thee now than in days that are flown, Purer the love-light encircling thy home; Far more enduring the watch for tonight Than ever earth worship away from the light; Soon the dark shadows will linger no more. Nor come to thy call from the opening door; But know thou, my child, that the angels watch keep, And soon, very soon, they'll rock thee to sleep. They'll sing thee to sleep with a soothing song; And, waking, thou'lt be with a heavenly throng; And thy life, with its toil and its tears and pain, Thou wilt then see has not been in vain. Thou wilt meet those in bliss whom on earth thou didst love, And whom thou hast taught of the "Mansions above." "Never hereafter to suffer or weep," The angels, my darling, will rock thee to sleep. Bay Billy (_December 15, 1862_) 'Twas the last fight at Fredericksburg,-- Perhaps the day you reck, Our boys, the Twenty-second Maine, Kept Early's men in check. Just where Wade Hampton boomed away The fight went neck and neck. All day the weaker wing we held, And held it with a will. Five several stubborn times we charged The battery on the hill, And five times beaten back, re-formed, And kept our column still. At last from out the center fight Spurred up a general's aide, "That battery must silenced be!" He cried, as past he sped. Our colonel simply touched his cap, And then, with measured tread, To lead the crouching line once more, The grand old fellow came. No wounded man but raised his head And strove to gasp his name, And those who could not speak nor stir, "God blessed him" just the same. For he was all the world to us, That hero gray and grim; Right well we knew that fearful slope We'd climb with none but him, Though while his white head led the way We'd charge hell's portals in. This time we were not half way up When, midst the storm of shell, Our leader, with his sword upraised, Beneath our bayonets fell, And as we bore him back, the foe Set up a joyous yell. Our hearts went with him. Back we swept, And when the bugle said, "Up, charge again!" no man was there But hung his dogged head. "We've no one left to lead us now," The sullen soldiers said. Just then before the laggard line The colonel's horse we spied-- Bay Billy, with his trappings on, His nostrils swelling wide, As though still on his gallant back The master sat astride. Right royally he took the place That was of old his wont, And with a neigh that seemed to say, Above the battle's brunt, "How can the Twenty-second charge If I am not in front?" Like statues rooted there we stood, And gazed a little space; Above that floating mane we missed The dear familiar face, But we saw Bay Billy's eye of fire, And it gave us heart of grace. No bugle-call could rouse us all As that brave sight had done. Down all the battered line we felt A lightning impulse run. Up, up the hill we followed Bill,-- And we captured every gun! And when upon the conquered height Died out the battle's hum, Vainly 'mid living and the dead We sought our leader dumb. It seemed as if a spectre steed To win that day had come. And then the dusk and dew of night Fell softly o'er the plain, As though o'er man's dread work of death The angels wept again, And drew night's curtain gently round A thousand beds of pain. All night the surgeons' torches went The ghastly rows between,-- All night with solemn step I paced The torn and bloody green. But who that fought in the big war Such dread sights have not seen? At last the morning broke. The lark Sang in the merry skies, As if to e'en the sleepers there It said "Awake, arise!" Though naught but that last trump of all Could ope their heavy eyes. And then once more, with banners gay, Stretched out the long brigade. Trimly upon the furrowed field The troops stood on parade, And bravely 'mid the ranks were closed The gaps the fight had made. Not half the Twenty-second's men Were in their place that morn; And Corporal Dick, who yester-noon Stood six brave fellows on, Now touched my elbow in the ranks, For all between were gone. Ah! who forgets that weary hour When, as with misty eyes, To call the old familiar roll The solemn sergeant tries,-- One feels that thumping of the heart As no prompt voice replies. And as in faltering tone and slow The last few names were said, Across the field some missing horse Toiled up with weary tread. It caught the sergeant's eye, and quick Bay Billy's name he read. Yes! there the old bay hero stood, All safe from battle's harms, And ere an order could be heard, Or the bugle's quick alarms, Down all the front, from end to end, The troops presented arms! Not all the shoulder-straps on earth Could still our mighty cheer; And ever from that famous day, When rang the roll-call clear, Bay Billy's name was read, and then The whole line answered, "Here!" _Frank H. Gassaway._ The Legend of the Organ-Builder Day by day the Organ-builder in his lonely chamber wrought; Day by day the soft air trembled to the music of his thought; Till at last the work was ended; and no organ voice so grand Ever yet had soared responsive to the master's magic hand. Ay, so rarely was it builded that whenever groom and bride, Who, in God's sight were well-pleasing, in the church stood side by side, Without touch or breath the organ of itself began to play, And the very airs of heaven through the soft gloom seemed to stray. He was young, the Organ-builder, and o'er all the land his fame Ran with fleet and eager footsteps, like a swiftly rushing flame. All the maidens heard the story; all the maidens blushed and smiled, By his youth and wondrous beauty and his great renown beguiled. So he sought and won the fairest, and the wedding-day was set Happy day--the brightest jewel in the glad year's coronet! But when they the portal entered, he forgot his lovely bride-- Forgot his love, forgot his God, and his heart swelled high with pride. "Ah!" thought he, "how great a master am I! When the organ plays, How the vast cathedral-arches will re-echo with my praise!" Up the aisle the gay procession moved. The altar shone afar, With every candle gleaming through soft shadows like a star. But he listened, listened, listened, with no thought of love or prayer, For the swelling notes of triumph from his organ standing there. All was silent. Nothing heard he save the priest's low monotone, And the bride's robe trailing softly o'er the floor of fretted stone. Then his lips grew white with anger. Surely God was pleased with him, Who had built the wondrous organ for His temple vast and dim! Whose the fault then? Hers--the maiden standing meekly at his side! Flamed his jealous rage, maintaining she was false to him--his bride. Vain were all her protestations, vain her innocence and truth; On that very night he left her to her anguish and her ruth. Far he wandered to a country wherein no man knew his name: For ten weary years he dwelt there, nursing still his wrath and shame. Then his haughty heart grew softer, and he thought by night and day Of the bride he had deserted, till he hardly dared to pray; Thought of her, a spotless maiden, fair and beautiful and good; Thought of his relentless anger, that had cursed her womanhood; Till his yearning grief and penitence at last were all complete, And he longed, with bitter longing, just to fall down at her feet. Ah! how throbbed his heart when, after many a weary day and night, Rose his native towers before him, with the sunset glow alight! Through the gates into the city on he pressed with eager tread; There he met a long procession--mourners following the dead. "Now why weep ye so, good people? And whom bury ye today? Why do yonder sorrowing maidens scatter flowers along the way? "Has some saint gone up to heaven?" "Yes," they answered, weeping sore; "For the Organ-builder's saintly wife our eyes shall see no more; And because her days were given to the service of God's poor, From His church we mean to bury her. See! yonder is the door." No one knew him; no one wondered when he cried out, white with pain; No one questioned when, with pallid lips, he poured his tears like rain. "'Tis someone she has comforted, who mourns with us," they said, As he made his way unchallenged, and bore the coffin's head; Bore it through the open portal, bore it up the echoing aisle, Let it down before the altar, where the lights burned clear the while. When, oh, hark; the wondrous organ of itself began to play Strains of rare, unearthly sweetness never heard until that day! All the vaulted arches rang with music sweet and clear; All the air was filled with glory, as of angels hovering near; And ere yet the strain was ended, he who bore the coffin's head, With the smile of one forgiven, gently sank beside it--dead. They who raised the body knew him, and they laid him by his bride; Down the aisle and o'er the threshold they were carried, side by side; While the organ played a dirge that no man ever heard before, And then softly sank to silence--silence kept forevermore. _Julia C. R. Dorr._ Our Folks "Hi! Harry Holly! Halt; and tell A fellow just a thing or two; You've had a furlough, been to see How all the folks in Jersey do. It's months ago since I was there-- I, and a bullet from Fair Oaks. When you were home, old comrade, say, Did you see any of our folks? "You did? Shake hands--Oh, ain't I glad! For if I do look grim and rough, I've got some feelin'-- People think A soldier's heart is mighty tough; But, Harry, when the bullets fly, And hot saltpetre flames and smokes, While whole battalions lie afield, One's apt to think about his folks. "And so you saw them--when? and where? The old man--is he hearty yet? And mother--does she fade at all? Or does she seem to pine and fret For me? And Sis?--has she grown tall? And did you see her friend--you know-- That Annie Moss-- (How this pipe chokes!) Where did you see her?--Tell: me, Hal, A lot of news about our folks, "You saw them in the church--you say, It's likely, for they're always there. Not Sunday? No? A funeral? Who? Who, Harry? how you shake and stare! All well, you say, and all were out. What ails you, Hal? Is this a hoax? Why don't you tell me like a man: What is the matter with our folks?" "I said all well, old comrade, true; I say all well, for He knows best Who takes the young ones in his arms, Before the sun goes to the west. The axe-man Death deals right and left, And flowers fall as well as oaks; And so-- Fair Annie blooms no more! And that's the matter with your folks. "See, this long curl was kept for you; And this white blossom from her breast; And here--your sister Bessie wrote A letter telling all the rest. Bear up, old friend." Nobody speaks; Only the old camp-raven croaks, And soldiers whisper, "Boys, be still; There's some bad news from Granger's folks." He turns his back--the only foe That ever saw it--on this grief, And, as men will, keeps down the tears Kind nature sends to woe's relief. Then answers he: "Ah, Hal, I'll try; But in my throat there's something chokes, Because, you see, I've thought so long To count her in among our folks. "I s'pose she must be happy now, But still I will keep thinking, too, I could have kept all trouble off, By being tender, kind and true. But maybe not. She's safe up there, And when the Hand deals other strokes, She'll stand by Heaven's gate, I know, And wait to welcome in our folks." _Ethel Lynn Beers._ The Face upon the Floor 'Twas a balmy summer evening, and a goodly crowd was there, Which well-nigh filled Joe's bar-room on the corner of the square; And as songs and witty stories came through the open door, A vagabond crept slowly in and posed upon the floor. "Where did it come from?" someone said. "The wind has blown it in." "What does it want?" another cried. "Some whisky, rum or gin?" "Here, Toby, seek him, if your stomach's equal to the work-- I wouldn't touch him with a fork, he's as filthy as a Turk." This badinage the poor wretch took with stoical, good grace; In fact, he smiled as though he thought he'd struck the proper place. "Come, boys, I know there's kindly hearts among so good a crowd-- To be in such good company would make a deacon proud. "Give me a drink--that's what I want--I'm out of funds, you know; When I had cash to treat the gang, this hand was never slow. What? You laugh as though you thought this pocket never held a sou; I once was fixed as well, my boys, as any one of you. "There, thanks; that's braced me nicely; God bless you one and all; Next time I pass this good saloon, I'll make another call. _Give you a song?_ No, I can't do that, my singing days are past; My voice is cracked, my throat's worn out, and my lungs are going fast. "Say! give me another whisky, and I'll tell you what I'll do-- I'll tell you a funny story, and a fact, I promise, too. That I was ever a decent man, not one of you would think; But I was, some four or five years back. Say, give me another drink. "Fill her up, Joe, I want to put some life into my frame-- Such little drinks, to a bum like me, are miserably tame; Five fingers--there, that's the scheme--and corking whisky, too. Well, here's luck, boys; and landlord, my best regards to you. "You've treated me pretty kindly, and I'd like to tell you how I came to be the dirty sot you see before you now. As I told you, once I was a man, with muscle, frame and health, And but for a blunder, ought to have made considerable wealth. "I was a painter--not one that daubed on bricks and wood, But an artist, and, for my age, was rated pretty good. I worked hard at my canvas, and was bidding fair to rise, For gradually I saw the star of fame before my eyes. "I made a picture, perhaps you've seen, 'tis called the 'Chase of Fame.' It brought me fifteen hundred pounds, and added to my name. And then I met a woman--now comes the funny part-- With eyes that petrified my brain and sunk into my heart. "Why don't you laugh? 'Tis funny that the vagabond you see Could ever love a woman, and expect her love for me; But 'twas so, and for a month or two her smiles were freely given, And when her loving lips touched mine it carried me to heaven. "Did you ever see a woman for whom your soul you'd give, With a form like the Milo Venus, too beautiful to live; With eyes that would beat the Koh-i-noor, and a wealth of chestnut hair? If so, 'twas she, for there never was another half so fair. "I was working on a portrait, one afternoon in May, Of a fair-haired boy, a friend of mine, who lived across the way; And Madeline admired it, and, much to my surprise, Said that she'd like to know the man that had such dreamy eyes. "It didn't take long to know him, and before the month had flown, My friend had stolen my darling, and I was left alone; And ere a year of misery had passed above my head, The jewel I had treasured so had tarnished, and was dead. "That's why I took to drink, boys. Why, I never saw you smile,-- I thought you'd be amused, and laughing all the while. Why, what's the mattter, friend? There's a teardrop in your eye, Come, laugh, like me; 'tis only babes and women that should cry. "Say, boys, if you give me just another whisky, I'll be glad, And I'll draw right here a picture of the face that drove me mad. Give me that piece of chalk with which you mark the baseball score-- You shall see the lovely Madeline upon the bar-room floor." Another drink, and, with chalk in hand, the vagabond began To sketch a face that well might buy the soul of any man. Then as he placed another lock upon the shapely head, With a fearful shriek, he leaped, and fell across the picture dead. _H. Antoine D'Arcy._ The Calf Path One day through the primeval wood, A calf walked home, as good calves should; But made a trail all bent askew, A crooked trail, as all calves do. Since then three hundred years have fled, And, I infer, the calf is dead. But still he left behind his trail, And thereby hangs a moral tale. The trail was taken up next day By a lone dog that passed that way, And then the wise bell-wether sheep Pursued the trail o'er vale and steep, And drew the flock behind him, too, As good bell-wethers always do. And from that day, o'er hill and glade, Through those old woods a path was made. And many men wound in and out, And turned and dodged and bent about, And uttered words of righteous wrath Because 'twas such a crooked path: But still they followed--do not laugh-- The first migrations of that calf, And through this winding woodway stalked Because he wabbled when he walked. This forest path became a lane, That bent and turned and turned again; This crooked path became a road. Where many a poor horse, with his load, Toiled on beneath the burning sun, And traveled some three miles in one. And thus a century and a half They trod the footsteps of that calf. The years passed on in swiftness fleet, The road became a village street; And this, before men were aware, A city's crowded thoroughfare. And soon the central street was this Of a renowned metropolis. And men two centuries and a half Trod in the footsteps of that calf! Each day a hundred thousand rout Followed the zigzag calf about; And o'er his crooked journey went The traffic of a continent. A hundred thousand men were led By a calf near three centuries dead. They followed still his crooked way And lost one hundred years a day; For thus such reverence is lent To well-established precedent. A moral lesson this might teach Were I ordained and called to preach; For men are prone to go it blind, Along the calf-paths of the mind, And work away from sun to sun To do what other men have done. They follow in the beaten track, And out and in, and forth and back, And still their devious course pursue, To keep the path that others do. But how the wise wood-gods must laugh, Who saw the first primeval calf; Ah, many things this tale might teach-- But I am not ordained to preach. _Sam Walter Foss._ The Ride of Jennie M'Neal Paul Revere was a rider bold-- Well has his valorous deed been told; Sheridan's ride was a glorious one-- Often it has been dwelt upon; But why should men do all the deeds On which the love of a patriot feeds? Hearken to me, while I reveal The dashing ride of Jennie M'Neal. On a spot as pretty as might be found In the dangerous length of the Neutral Ground, In a cottage, cozy, and all their own, She and her mother lived alone. Safe were the two, with their frugal store, From all of the many who passed their door; For Jennie's mother was strange to fears, And Jennie was large for fifteen years; With vim her eyes were glistening, Her hair was the hue of a blackbird's wing; And while the friends who knew her well The sweetness of her heart could tell, A gun that hung on the kitchen wall Looked solemnly quick to heed her call; And they who were evil-minded knew Her nerve was strong and her aim was true. So all kind words and acts did deal To generous, black-eyed Jennie M'Neal. One night, when the sun had crept to bed, And rain-clouds lingered overhead, And sent their surly drops for proof To drum a tune on the cottage roof, Close after a knock at the outer door There entered a dozen dragoons or more. Their red coats, stained by the muddy road, That they were British soldiers showed; The captain his hostess bent to greet, Saying, "Madam, please give us a bit to eat; We will pay you well, and, if may be, This bright-eyed girl for pouring our tea; Then we must dash ten miles ahead, To catch a rebel colonel abed. He is visiting home, as doth appear; We will make his pleasure cost him dear." And they fell on the hasty supper with zeal, Close-watched the while by Jennie M'Neal. For the gray-haired colonel they hovered near Had been her true friend, kind and dear; And oft, in her younger days, had he Right proudly perched her upon his knee, And told her stories many a one Concerning the French war lately done. And oft together the two friends were, And many the arts he had taught to her; She had hunted by his fatherly side, He had shown her how to fence and ride; And once had said, "The time may be, Your skill and courage may stand by me." So sorrow for him she could but feel, Brave, grateful-hearted Jennie M'Neal. With never a thought or a moment more, Bare-headed she slipped from the cottage door, Ran out where the horses were left to feed, Unhitched and mounted the captain's steed, And down the hilly and rock-strewn way She urged the fiery horse of gray. Around her slender and cloakless form Pattered and moaned the ceaseless storm; Secure and tight a gloveless hand Grasped the reins with stern command; And full and black her long hair streamed, Whenever the ragged lightning gleamed. And on she rushed for the colonel's weal, Brave, lioness-hearted Jennie M'Neal. Hark! from the hills, a moment mute, Came a clatter of hoofs in hot pursuit; And a cry from the foremost trooper said, "Halt! or your blood be on your head"; She heeded it not, and not in vain She lashed the horse with the bridle-rein. So into the night the gray horse strode; His shoes hewed fire from the rocky road; And the high-born courage that never dies Flashed from his rider's coal-black eyes. The pebbles flew from the fearful race: The raindrops grasped at her glowing face. "On, on, brave beast!" with loud appeal, Cried eager, resolute Jennie M'Neal. "Halt!" once more came the voice of dread; "Halt! or your blood be on your head!" Then, no one answering to the calls, Sped after her a volley of balls. They passed her in her rapid flight, They screamed to her left, they screamed to her right; But, rushing still o'er the slippery track, She sent no token of answer back, Except a silvery laughter-peal, Brave, merry-hearted Jennie M'Neal. So on she rushed, at her own good will, Through wood and valley, o'er plain and hill; The gray horse did his duty well, Till all at once he stumbled and fell, Himself escaping the nets of harm, But flinging the girl with a broken arm. Still undismayed by the numbing pain, She clung to the horse's bridle-rein And gently bidding him to stand, Petted him with her able hand; Then sprung again to the saddle bow, And shouted, "One more trial now!" As if ashamed of the heedless fall, He gathered his strength once more for all, And, galloping down a hillside steep, Gained on the troopers at every leap; No more the high-bred steed did reel, But ran his best for Jennie M'Neal. They were a furlong behind, or more, When the girl burst through the colonel's door, Her poor arm helpless hanging with pain, And she all drabbled and drenched with rain, But her cheeks as red as fire-brands are, And her eyes as bright as a blazing star, And shouted, "Quick! be quick, I say! They come! they come! Away! away!" Then, sunk on the rude white floor of deal, Poor, brave, exhausted Jennie M'Neal. The startled colonel sprung, and pressed The wife and children to his breast, And turned away from his fireside bright, And glided into the stormy night; Then soon and safely made his way To where the patriot army lay. But first he bent in the dim firelight, And kissed the forehead broad and white, And blessed the girl who had ridden so well To keep him out of a prison-cell. The girl roused up at the martial din, Just as the troopers came rushing in, And laughed, e'en in the midst of a moan, Saying, "Good sirs, your bird has flown. 'Tis I who have scared him from his nest; So deal with me now as you think best." But the grand young captain bowed, and said, "Never you hold a moment's dread. Of womankind I must crown you queen; So brave a girl I have never seen. Wear this gold ring as your valor's due; And when peace comes I will come for you." But Jennie's face an arch smile wore, As she said, "There's a lad in Putnam's corps, Who told me the same, long time ago; You two would never agree, I know. I promised my love to be as true as steel," Said good, sure-hearted Jennie M'Neal. _Will Carleton._ The Hand That Rules the World They say that man is mighty, he governs land and sea; He wields a mighty scepter o'er lesser powers that be; By a mightier power and stronger, man from his throne is hurled, And the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world. Blessings on the hand of woman! angels guard its strength and grace, In the palace, cottage, hovel, oh, no matter where the place! Would that never storms assailed it, rainbows ever gently curled; For the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world. Infancy's the tender fountain, power may with beauty flow; Mother's first to guide the streamlets, from them souls unresting grow; Grow on for the good or evil, sunshine streamed or darkness hurled; For the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world. Woman, how divine your mission here upon our natal sod! Keep, oh, keep the young heart open always to the breath of God! All true trophies of the ages are from mother-love impearled, For the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world. Blessings on the hand of woman! fathers, sons and daughters cry, And the sacred song is mingled with the worship in the sky-- Mingles where no tempest darkens, rainbows evermore are curled; For the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world. _William Ross Wallace._ What I Live For I live for those who love me, Whose hearts are kind and true, For the heaven that smiles above me, And awaits my spirit, too; For the human ties that bind me, For the task by God assigned me, For the bright hopes left behind me, And the good that I can do. I live to learn their story Who've suffered for my sake, To emulate their glory, And to follow in their wake; Bards, patriots, martyrs, sages, The noble of all ages, Whose deeds crowd history's pages, And Time's great volume make. I live to hold communion With all that is divine, To feel there is a union 'Twixt Nature's heart and mine; To profit by affliction, Reap truths from fields of fiction, Grow wiser from conviction, And fulfill each grand design. I live to hail that season, By gifted minds foretold, When men shall rule by reason, And not alone by gold; When man to man united, And every wrong thing righted, The whole world shall be lighted As Eden was of old. I live for those who love me, For those who know me true, For the heaven that smiles above me, And awaits my spirit, too; For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that I can do. _George Linnaeus Banks._ My Love Ship If all the ships I have at sea Should come a-sailing home to me, Weighed down with gems, and silk and gold, Ah! well, the harbor would not hold So many ships as there would be, If all my ships came home from sea. If half my ships came home from sea, And brought their precious freight to me, Ah! well, I should have wealth as great As any king that sits in state, So rich the treasure there would be In half my ships now out at sea. If but one ship I have at sea Should come a-sailing home to me, Ah! well, the storm clouds then might frown, For, if the others all went down, Still rich and glad and proud I'd be If that one ship came home to me. If that one ship went down at sea And all the others came to me Weighed down with gems and wealth untold, With honor, riches, glory, gold, The poorest soul on earth I'd be If that one ship came not to me. O skies, be calm; O winds, blow free! Blow all my ships safe home to me, But if thou sendest some awrack, To nevermore come sailing back, Send any, all that skim the sea, But send my love ship home to me. _Ella Wheeler Wilcox._ The Man With the Hoe _(Written after seeing Millet's famous painting.)_ God made man in His own image; in the image of God made he him.--GENESIS. Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, The emptiness of ages in his face, And on his back the burden of the world. Who made him dead to rapture and despair, A thing that grieves not and that never hopes, Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox? Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw? Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow? Whose breath blew out the light within this brain? Is this the Thing, the Lord God made and gave To have dominion over sea and land; To trace the stars and search the heavens for power; To feel the passion of Eternity? Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns And pillared the blue firmament with light? Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf There is no shape more terrible than this-- More tongued with censure of the world's blind greed-- More filled with signs and portents for the soul-- More fraught with menace to the universe. What gulfs between him and the seraphim! Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades? What the long reaches of the peaks of song, The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose? Through this dread shape the suffering ages look; Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop; Through this dread shape humanity betrayed, Plundered, profaned and disinherited, Cries protest to the judges of the world, A protest that is also prophecy. O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, Is this the handiwork you give to God, This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched? How will you ever straighten up this shape; Touch it again with immortality; Give back the upward looking and the light, Rebuild it in the music and the dream; Make right the immemorial infamies, perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes? O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, How will the Future reckon with this man? How answer his brute question in that hour When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world? How will it be with kingdom and with kings-- With those who shaped him to the thing he is-- When this dumb Terror shall reply to God, After the silence of the centuries? _Edwin Markham._ Poorhouse Nan Did you say you wished to see me, sir? Step in; 'tis a cheerless place, But you're heartily welcome all the same; to be poor is no disgrace. Have I been here long? Oh, yes, sir! 'tis thirty winters gone Since poor Jim took to crooked ways and left me all alone! Jim was my son, and a likelier lad you'd never wish to see, Till evil counsels won his heart and led him away from me. 'Tis the old, sad, pitiful story, sir, of the devil's winding stair, And men go down--and down--and down--to blackness and despair; Tossing about like wrecks at sea, with helm and anchor lost, On and on, through the surging waves, nor caring to count the cost; I doubt sometimes if the Savior sees, He seems so far away, How the souls He loved and died for, are drifting--drifting astray! Indeed,'tis little wonder, sir, if woman shrinks and cries When the life-blood on Rum's altar spilled is calling to the skies; Small wonder if her own heart feels each sacrificial blow, For isn't each life a part of hers? each pain her hurt and woe? Read all the records of crime and shame--'tis bitterly, sadly true; Where manliness and honor die, there some woman's heart dies, too. I often think, when I hear folks talk so prettily and so fine Of "alcohol as needful food"; of the "moderate use of wine"; How "the world couldn't do without it, there was clearly no other way But for a man to drink, or let it alone, as his own strong will might say"; That "to use it, but not abuse it, was the proper thing to do," How I wish they'd let old Poorhouse Nan preach her little sermon, too! I would give them scenes in a woman's life that would make their pulses stir, For I was a drunkard's child and wife--aye, a drunkard's mother, sir! I would tell of childish terrors, of childish tears and pain. Of cruel blows from a father's hand when rum had crazed his brain; He always said he could drink his fill, or let it alone as well; Perhaps he might, he was killed one night in a brawl--in a grog-shop hell! I would tell of years of loveless toil the drunkard's child had passed, With just one gleam of sunshine, too beautiful to last. When I married Tom I thought for sure I had nothing more to fear, That life would come all right at last; the world seemed full of cheer. But he took to moderate drinking--he allowed 'twas a harmless thing, So the arrow sped, and my bird of Hope came down with a broken wing. Tom was only a moderate drinker; ah, sir, do you bear in mind How the plodding tortoise in the race left the leaping hare behind? 'Twas because he held right on and on, steady and true, if slow, And that's the way, I'm thinking, that the moderate drinkers go! Step over step--day after day--with sleepless, tireless pace, While the toper sometimes looks behind and tarries in the race! Ah, heavily in the well-worn path poor Tom walked day by day, For my heart-strings clung about his feet and tangled up the way; The days were dark, and friends were gone, and life dragged on full slow, And children came, like reapers, and to a harvest of want and woe! Two of them died, and I was glad when they lay before me dead; I had grown so weary of their cries--their pitiful cries for bread. There came a time when my heart was stone; I could neither hope nor pray; Poor Tom lay out in the Potter's Field, and my boy had gone astray; My boy who'd been my idol, while, like hound athirst for blood, Between my breaking heart and him the liquor seller stood, And lured him on with pleasant words, his pleasures and his wine; Ah, God have pity on other hearts as bruised and hurt as mine. There were whispers of evil-doing, of dishonor, and of shame, That I cannot bear to think of now, and would not dare to name! There was hiding away from the light of day, there was creeping about at night, A hurried word of parting--then a criminal's stealthy flight! His lips were white with remorse and fright when he gave me a good-by kiss; And I've never seen my poor lost boy from that black day to this. Ah, none but a mother can tell you, sir, how a mother's heart will ache, With the sorrow that comes of a sinning child, with grief for a lost one's sake, When she knows the feet she trained to walk have gone so far astray, And the lips grown bold with curses that she taught to sing and pray; A child may fear--a wife may weep, but of all sad things, none other Seems half so sorrowful to me as being a drunkard's mother. They tell me that down in the vilest dens of the city's crime and murk, There are men with the hearts of angels, doing the angels' work; That they win back the lost and the straying, that they help the weak to stand, By the wonderful power of loving words--and the help of God's right hand! And often and often, the dear Lord knows, I've knelt and prayed to Him, That somewhere, somehow, 'twould happen that they'd find and save my Jim! You'll say 'tis a poor old woman's whim; but when I prayed last night, Right over yon eastern window there shone a wonderful light! (Leastways it looked that way to me) and out of the light there fell The softest voice I had ever heard: it rung like a silver bell; And these were the words, "The prodigal turns, so tired by want and sin, He seeks his father's open door--he weeps--and enters in." Why, sir, you're crying as hard as I; what--is it really done? Have the loving voice and the Helping Hand brought back my wandering son? Did you kiss me and call me "Mother"--and hold me to your breast, Or is it one of the taunting dreams that come to mock my rest? No--no! thank God, 'tis a dream come true! I can die, for He's saved my boy! And the poor old heart that had lived on grief was broken at last by joy! _Lucy M. Blinn._ Why Should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud! Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud! Like a swift fleeting meteor, a fast flying cloud, A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, He passes from life to his rest in the grave. The leaves of the oak and the willows shall fade, Be scattered around, and together be laid; And the young and the old, and the low and the high Shall moulder to dust, and together shall die. The child whom a mother attended and loved, The mother that infant's affection who proved, The husband that mother and infant who blessed, Each--all are away to their dwelling of rest. The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye Shone beauty and pleasure--her triumphs are by; And the memory of those who loved her and praised Are alike from the minds of the living erased. The hand of the king who the scepter hath borne, The brow of the priest who the mitre hath worn, The eye of the sage and the heart of the brave Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave. The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap, The herdsman who climbed with his goats to the steep, The beggar who wandered in search of his bread Have faded away like the grass that we tread. The saint who enjoyed the communion of heaven, The sinner who dared to remain unforgiven, The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust. So the multitude goes--like the flower and the weed That wither away to let others succeed; So the multitude comes--even those we behold, To repeat every tale that has often been told. For we are the same things that our fathers have been, We see the same sights that our fathers have seen; We drink the same stream, and we feel the same sun, And we run the same course that our fathers have run. The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think, From the death we are shrinking from, they too would shrink, To the life we are clinging to, they too would cling, But it speeds from the earth like a bird on the wing. They loved--but their story we cannot enfold, They scorned--but the heart of the haughty is cold, They grieved--but no wail from their slumbers may come, They joy'd--but the voice of their gladness--is dumb. They died, ay, they died! and we things that are now, Who walk on the turf that lies over their brow, Who make in their dwellings a transient abode Meet the changes they met on their pilgrimage road. Yea, hope and despondence, and pleasure and pain, Are mingled together in sunshine and rain; And the smile, and the tear, and the song and the dirge Still follow each other like surge upon surge. 'Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath From the blossoms of health to the paleness of death; From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud-- Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud! _William Knox._ How He Saved St. Michael's 'Twas long ago--ere ever the signal gun That blazed before Fort Sumter had wakened the North as one; Long ere the wondrous pillar of battle-cloud and fire Had marked where the unchained millions marched on to their heart's desire. On roofs and glittering turrets, that night, as the sun went down, The mellow glow of the twilight shone like a jeweled crown, And, bathed in the living glory, as the people lifted their eyes, They saw the pride of the city, the spire of St. Michael's rise High over the lesser steeples, tipped with a golden ball That hung like a radiant planet caught in its earthward fall; First glimpse of home to the sailor who made the harbor round, And last slow-fading vision dear to the outward bound. The gently gathering shadows shut out the waning light; The children prayed at their bedsides as they were wont each night; The noise of buyer and seller from the busy mart was gone, And in dreams of a peaceful morrow the city slumbered on. But another light than sunrise aroused the sleeping street, For a cry was heard at midnight, and the rush of trampling feet; Men stared in each other's faces, thro' mingled fire and smoke, While the frantic bells went clashing clamorous, stroke on stroke. By the glare of her blazing roof-tree the houseless mother fled, With the babe she pressed to her bosom shrieking in nameless dread; While the fire-king's wild battalions scaled wall and cap-stone high, And painted their glaring banners against an inky sky. From the death that raged behind them, and the crush of ruin loud, To the great square of the city, were driven the surging crowd, Where yet firm in all the tumult, unscathed by the fiery flood, With its heavenward pointing finger the church of St. Michael's stood. But e'en as they gazed upon it there rose a sudden wail, A cry of horror blended with the roaring of the gale, On whose scorching wings updriven, a single flaming brand, Aloft on the towering steeple clung like a bloody hand, "Will it fade?" the whisper trembled from a thousand whitening lips; Far out on the lurid harbor they watched it from the ships. A baleful gleam, that brighter and ever brighter shone, Like a flickering, trembling will-o'-the-wisp to a steady beacon grown. "Uncounted gold shall be given to the man whose brave right hand, For the love of the periled city, plucks down yon burning brand!" So cried the Mayor of Charleston, that all the people heard, But they looked each one at his fellow, and no man spoke a word, Who is it leans from the belfry, with face upturned to the sky-- Clings to a column and measures the dizzy spire with his eye? Will he dare it, the hero undaunted, that terrible, sickening height, Or will the hot blood of his courage freeze in his veins at the sight? But see! he has stepped on the railing, he climbs with his feet and his hands, And firm on a narrow projection, with the belfry beneath him, he stands! Now once, and once only, they cheer him--a single tempestuous breath, And there falls on the multitude gazing a hush like the stillness of death. Slow, steadily mounting, unheeding aught save the goal of the fire, Still higher and higher, an atom, he moves on the face of the spire: He stops! Will he fall? Lo! for answer, a gleam like a meteor's track, And, hurled on the stones of the pavement, the red brand lies shattered and black! Once more the shouts of the people have rent the quivering air; At the church door mayor and council wait with their feet on the stair, And the eager throng behind them press for a touch of his hand-- The unknown savior whose daring could compass a deed so grand. But why does a sudden tremor seize on them as they gaze? And what meaneth that stifled murmur of wonder and amaze? He stood in the gate of the temple he had periled his life to save, And the face of the unknown hero was the sable face of a slave! With folded arms he was speaking in tones that were clear, not loud, And his eyes, ablaze in their sockets, burnt into the eyes of the crowd. "Ye may keep your gold, I scorn it! but answer me, ye who can, If the deed I have done before you be not the deed of a _man?_" He stepped but a short space backward, and from all the women and men There were only sobs for answer, and the mayor called for a pen, And the great seal of the city, that he might read who ran, And the slave who saved St. Michael's went out from its door a man. _Mary A.P. Stansbury._ Bingen on the Rhine A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, There was lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of woman's tears; But a comrade stood beside him, while his life-blood ebbed away, And bent, with pitying glances, to hear what he might say. The dying soldier faltered, as he took that comrade's hand, And he said, "I never more shall see my own, my native land; Take a message, and a token, to some distant friends of mine, For I was born at Bingen--at Bingen on the Rhine! "Tell my brothers and companions, when they meet and crowd around To hear my mournful story in the pleasant vineyard ground, That we fought the battle bravely, and when the day was done, Full many a corpse lay ghastly pale, beneath the setting sun. And 'midst the dead and dying, were some grown old in wars, The death-wound on their gallant breasts the last of many scars: But some were young--and suddenly beheld life's morn decline; And one had come from Bingen--fair Bingen on the Rhine! "Tell my mother that her other sons shall comfort her old age, And I was aye a truant bird, that thought his home a cage: For my father was a soldier, and even as a child My heart leaped forth to hear him tell of struggles fierce and wild; And when he died, and left us to divide his scanty hoard, I let them take whate'er they would, but kept my father's sword, And with boyish love I hung it where the bright light used to shine, On the cottage-wall at Bingen--calm Bingen on the Rhine! "Tell my sister not to weep for me, and sob with drooping head, When the troops are marching home again with glad and gallant tread; But to look upon them proudly, with a calm and steadfast eye, For her brother was a soldier too, and not afraid to die. And if a comrade seek her love, I ask her in my name To listen to him kindly, without regret or shame; And to hang the old sword in its place (my father's sword and mine), For the honor of old Bingen--dear Bingen on the Rhine! "There's another--not a sister; in the happy days gone by, You'd have known her by the merriment that sparkled in her eye; Too innocent for coquetry--too fond for idle scorning-- Oh, friend! I fear the lightest heart makes sometimes heaviest mourning; Tell her the last night of my life (for ere the moon be risen My body will be out of pain--my soul be out of prison), I dreamed I stood with her, and saw the yellow sunlight shine On the vine-clad hills of Bingen--fair Bingen on the Rhine! "I saw the blue Rhine sweep along--I heard, or seemed to hear. The German songs we used to sing, in chorus sweet and clear; And down the pleasant river, and up the slanting hill, The echoing chorus sounded, through the evening calm and still; And her glad blue eyes were on me as we passed with friendly talk Down many a path beloved of yore, and well-remembered walk, And her little hand lay lightly, confidingly in mine: But we'll meet no more at Bingen--loved Bingen on the Rhine!" His voice grew faint and hoarser,--his grasp was childish weak,-- His eyes put on a dying look,--he sighed and ceased to speak; His comrade bent to lift him, but the spark of life had fled,-- The soldier of the Legion, in a foreign land--was dead! And the soft moon rose up slowly, and calmly she looked down On the red sand of the battle-field, with bloody corpses strown; Yea, calmly on that dreadful scene her pale light seemed to shine As it shone on distant Bingen--fair Bingen on the Rhine! _Caroline Norton._ College Oil Cans On a board of bright mosaic wrought in many a quaint design, Gleam a brace of silver goblets wreathed with flowers and filled with wine. Round the board a group is seated; here and there are threads of white Which their dark locks lately welcomed; but they're only boys tonight. Some whose words have thrilled the senate, some who win the critic's praise-- All are "chums" to-night, with voices redolent of college days. "Boys," said one, "do you remember that old joke--about the wine-- How we used to fill our oil cans and repair to 'No. 9'? But at last the old professor--never long was he outdone-- Opened up our shining oil cans and demolished all our fun!" In the laugh that rings so gayly through the richly curtained room, Join they all, save one; Why is it? Does he see the waxen bloom Tremble in its vase of silver? Does he see the ruddy wine Shiver in its crystal goblet, or do those grave eyes divine Something sadder yet? He pauses till their mirth has died away, Then in measured tones speaks gravely: "Boys, a story, if I may, I will tell you, though it may not merit worthily your praise, It is bitter fruitage ripened from our pranks of college days," Eagerly they claim the story, for they know the LL.D. With his flexible voice would garnish any tale, whate'er it be. "Just a year ago to-night, boys, I was in my room alone, At the San Francisco L---- House, when I heard a plaintive moan Sounding from the room adjoining. Hoping to give some relief To the suffering one, I entered; but it thrilled my heart with grief Just to see that wreck of manhood--bloated face, disheveled hair-- Wildly tossing, ever moaning, while his thin hands beat the air. Broken prayers, vile oaths and curses filled the air as I drew near; Then in faint and piteous accents, these words I could plainly hear: 'Give me one more chance--one only--let me see my little Belle-- Then I'll follow where they lead me, be it to the depths of hell!' When he saw me he grew calmer, started strangely--looked me o'er-- Oh, the glory of expression! I had seen those eyes before! Yes, I knew him; it was Horace, he who won the college prize; Naught remained of his proud beauty but the splendor of his eyes. He whom we were all so proud of, lay there in the fading light. If my years should number fourscore, I shall ne'er forget that sight. And he knew me--called me 'Albert,' ere a single word I'd said-- We were comrades in the old days; I sat down beside the bed. "Horace seemed to grow more quiet, but he would not go to sleep; He kept talking of our boyhood while my hand he still would keep In his own so white and wasted, and with burning eyes would gaze On my face, still talking feebly of the dear old college days. 'Ah,' he said, 'life held such promise; but, alas! I am to-day But a poor degraded outcast--hopes, ambition swept away, And it dates back to those oil cans that we filled in greatest glee. Little did I think in those days what the harvest now would be!' "For a moment he was silent, then a cry whose anguish yet Wrings my heart, burst from his white lips, though his teeth were tightly set, And with sudden strength he started--sprang from my detaining arm, Shrieking wildly, 'Curse the demons; do they think to do me harm? Back! I say, ye forked-tongued serpents reeking with the filth of hell! Don't ye see I have her with me--my poor sainted little Belle?' "When I'd soothed him into quiet, with a trembling arm he drew My head down, 'Oh, Al,' he whispered, 'such remorse you never knew.' And again I tried to soothe him, but my eyes o'erbrimmed with tears; His were dry and clear, as brilliant as they were in college years. All the flush had left his features, he lay white as marble now; Tenderly I smoothed his pillow, wiped the moisture from his brow. Though I begged him to be quiet, he would talk of those old days, Brokenly at times, but always of 'the boys' with loving praise. "Once I asked him of Lorena--the sweet girl whom he had wed-- You remember Rena Barstow. When I asked if she were dead, 'No,' he said, his poor voice faltering, 'she is far beyond the Rhine, But I wish, to God, it were so, and I still might call her mine. She's divorced--she's mine no longer,' here his voice grew weak and hoarse 'But although I am a drunkard, _I have one they can't divorce_. I've a little girl in heaven, playing round the Savior's knee, Always patient and so faithful that at last she died for me. "'I had drank so much, so often, that my brain was going wild; Every one had lost hope in me but my faithful little child. She would say, "Now stop, dear papa, for I know you can stop _now_." I would promise, kiss my darling, and the next day break my vow. So it went until one Christmas, dark and stormy, cold and drear; Out I started, just as usual, for the cursed rum shop near, And my darling followed after, in the storm of rain and sleet, With no covering wrapped about her, naught but slippers on her feet; No one knew it, no one missed her, till there came with solemn tread, Stern-faced men unto our dwelling, bringing back our darling--_dead!_ They had found her cold and lifeless, like, they said, an angel fair, Leaning 'gainst the grog shop window--oh, she thought that _I was there!_ Then he raised his arms toward heaven, called aloud unto the dead, For his mind again was wandering: 'Belle, my precious Belle!' he said, 'Papa's treasure--papa's darling! oh, my baby--did--you--come All the way--alone--my darling--just to lead--poor--papa--home?' And he surely had an answer, for a silence o'er him fell. And I sat alone and lonely--death had come with little Belle." Silence in that princely parlor--head of every guest is bowed. They still see the red wine sparkle, but 'tis through a misty cloud. Said the host at last, arising, "I have scorned the pledge to sign, Laughed at temperance all my life long. Never more shall drop of wine Touch my lips. The fruit _was_ bitter, boys; 'twas I proposed it first-- That foul joke from which poor Horace ever bore a life accurst! Let us pledge ourselves to-night, boys, never more by word, or deed, In our own fair homes, or elsewhere, help to plant the poison seed." Silence once again, but only for a moment's space, and then, In one voice they all responded with a low and firm "Amen." _Will Victor McGuire._ God's Judgment on a Wicked Bishop The summer and autumn had been so wet, That in winter the corn was growing yet. 'Twas a piteous sight to see all round The grain lie rotting on the ground. Every day the starving poor Crowded round Bishop Hatto's door, For he had a plentiful last year's store, And all the neighborhood could tell His granaries were furnish'd well. At last Bishop Hatto appointed a day To quiet the poor without delay; He bade them to his great barn repair, And they should have food for the winter there. Rejoiced the tidings good to hear, The poor folk flock'd from far and near; The great barn was full as it could hold Of women and children, and young and old. Then, when he saw it could hold no more, Bishop Hatto he made fast the door, And while for mercy on Christ they call, He set fire to the barn and burnt them all. "I' faith, 'tis an excellent bonfire!" quoth he, "And the country is greatly obliged to me For ridding it, in these times forlorn, Of rats that only consume the corn." So then to his palace returned he, And he sat down to supper merrily, And he slept that night like an innocent man; But Bishop Hatto never slept again. In the morning, as he enter'd the hall Where his picture hung against the wall, A sweat like death all over him came, For the rats had eaten it out of the frame. As he look'd, there came a man from his farm, He had a countenance white with alarm: "My lord, I open'd your granaries this morn, And the rats had eaten all your corn." Another came running presently, And he was pale as pale could be. "Fly, my lord bishop, fly!" quoth he, "Ten thousand rats are coming this way, The Lord forgive you for yesterday!" "I'll go to my tower on the Rhine," replied he; "'Tis the safest place in Germany; The walls are high, and the shores are steep And the stream is strong, and the water deep." Bishop Hatto fearfully hasten'd away, And he cross'd the Rhine without delay, And reach'd his tower and barr'd with care All the windows, doors, and loopholes there. He laid him down and closed his eyes, But soon a scream made him arise; He started, and saw two eyes of flame On his pillow, from whence the screaming came. He listen'd and look'd,--it was only the cat, But the bishop he grew more fearful for that, For she sat screaming, mad with fear At the army of rats that were drawing near. For they have swum over the river so deep, And they have climb'd the shores so steep, And up the tower their way is bent, To do the work for which they were sent. They are not to be told by the dozen or score; By thousands they come, and by myriads and more; Such numbers had never been heard of before, Such a judgment had never been witness'd of yore. | Down on his knees the bishop fell, And faster and faster his beads did he tell, As louder and louder, drawing near, The gnawing of their teeth he could hear. And in at the windows and in at the door, And through the walls helter-skelter they pour; And down from the ceiling and up through the floor, From the right and the left, from behind and before, From within and without, from above and below,-- And all at once to the bishop they go. They have whetted their teeth against the stones, And now they pick the bishop's bones; They gnaw'd the flesh from every limb, For they were sent to do judgment on him! _Robert Southey._ The Last Hymn The Sabbath day was ending in a village by the sea, The uttered benediction touched the people tenderly, And they rose to face the sunset in the glowing, lighted west, And then hastened to their dwellings for God's blessed boon of rest. Bat they looked across the waters, and a storm was raging there; A fierce spirit moved above them--the wild spirit of the air-- And it lashed and shook and tore them till they thundered, groaned and boomed, And, alas! for any vessel in their yawning gulfs entombed. Very anxious were the people on that rocky coast of Wales, Lest the dawn of coming morrow should be telling awful tales, When the sea had spent its passion and should cast upon the shore Bits of wreck and swollen victims as it had done heretofore. With the rough winds blowing round her, a brave woman strained her eyes, As she saw along the billows a large vessel fall and rise. Oh, it did not need a prophet to tell what the end must be, For no ship could ride in safety near that shore on such a sea! Then the pitying people hurried from their homes and thronged the beach. Oh, for power to cross the waters and the perishing to reach! Helpless hands were wrung in terror, tender hearts grew cold with dread, And the ship, urged by the tempest, to the fatal rock-shore sped. "She's parted in the middle! Oh, the half of her goes down!" "God have mercy! Is his heaven far to seek for those who drown?" Lo! when next the white, shocked faces looked with terror on the sea, Only one last clinging figure on a spar was seen to be. Nearer to the trembling watchers came the wreck tossed by the wave, And the man still clung and floated, though no power on earth could save. "Could we send him a short message? Here's a trumpet. Shout away!" 'Twas the preacher's hand that took it, and he wondered what to say. Any memory of his sermon? Firstly? Secondly? Ah, no! There was but one thing to utter in that awful hour of woe. So he shouted through the trumpet, "Look to Jesus! Can you hear?" And "Aye, aye, sir," rang the answer o'er the waters loud and clear. Then they listened,--"He is singing, 'Jesus, lover of my soul.'" And the winds brought back the echo, "While the nearer waters roll." Strange, indeed, it was to hear him,--"Till the storm of life is past," Singing bravely o'er the waters, "Oh, receive my soul at last!" He could have no other refuge,--"Hangs my helpless soul on thee." "Leave, ah! leave me not"--the singer dropped at last into the sea. And the watchers, looking homeward, through their eyes by tears made dim, Said, "He passed to be with Jesus in the singing of that hymn." _Marianne Faringham._ A Fence or an Ambulance 'Twas a dangerous cliff, as they freely confessed, Though to walk near its crest was so pleasant; But over its terrible edge there had slipped A duke and full many a peasant. So the people said something would have to be done, But their projects did not at all tally; Some said, "Put a fence around the edge of the cliff," Some, "An ambulance down in the valley." But the cry for the ambulance carried the day, For it spread through the neighboring city; A fence may be useful or not, it is true, But each heart became brimful of pity For those who slipped over that dangerous cliff; And the dwellers in highway and alley Gave pounds or gave pence, not to put up a fence, But an ambulance down in the valley. "For the cliff is all right, if you're careful," they said, "And, if folks even slip and are dropping, It isn't the slipping that hurts them so much, As the shock down below when they're stopping." So day after day, as these mishaps occurred, Quick forth would these rescuers sally To pick up the victims who fell off the cliff, With their ambulance down in the valley. Then an old sage remarked: "It's a marvel to me That people give far more attention To repairing results than to stopping the cause, When they'd much better aim at prevention. Let us stop at its source all this mischief," cried he, "Come, neighbors and friends, let us rally, If the cliff we will fence, we might almost dispense With the ambulance down in the valley." "Oh, he's a fanatic," the others rejoined, "Dispense with the ambulance? Never. He'd dispense with all charities, too, if he could; No! No! We'll support them forever. Aren't we picking up folks just as fast as they fall? And shall this man dictate to us? Shall he? Why should people of sense stop to put up a fence, While the ambulance works in the valley?" But a sensible few, who are practical too, Will not bear with such nonsense much longer; They believe that prevention is better than cure, And their party will soon be the stronger. Encourage them then, with your purse, voice, and pen, And while other philanthropists dally, They will scorn all pretense and put up a stout fence On the cliff that hangs over the valley. Better guide well the young than reclaim them when old, For the voice of true wisdom is calling, "To rescue the fallen is good, but 'tis best To prevent other people from falling." Better close up the source of temptation and crime, Than deliver from dungeon or galley; Better put a strong fence 'round the top of the cliff Than an ambulance down in the valley." _Joseph Malins._ The Smack in School A district school, not far away, 'Mid Berkshire hills, one winter's day, Was humming with its wonted noise Of three-score mingled girls and boys; Some few upon their tasks intent, But more on furtive mischief bent. The while the master's downward look Was fastened on a copy-book; When suddenly, behind his back, Rose sharp and clear a rousing smack! As 'twere a battery of bliss Let off in one tremendous kiss! "What's that?" the startled master cries; "That, thir," a little imp replies, "Wath William Willith, if you pleathe, I thaw him kith Thuthanna Peathe!" With frown to make a statue thrill, The master thundered, "Hither, Will!" Like wretch o'ertaken in his track With stolen chattels on his back, Will hung his head in fear and shame, And to the awful presence came,-- A great, green, bashful simpleton, The butt of all good-natured fun, With smile suppressed, and birch upraised The threatener faltered, "I'm amazed That you, my biggest pupil, should Be guilty of an act so rude-- Before the whole set school to boot-- What evil genius put you to 't?" "'Twas she, herself, sir," sobbed the lad; "I did not mean to be so bad; But when Susanna shook her curls, And whispered I was 'fraid of girls, And dursn't kiss a baby's doll, I couldn't stand it, sir, at all, But up and kissed her on the spot! I know--boo-hoo--I ought to not, But, somehow, from her looks--boo-hoo-- I thought she kind o' wished me to!" _William Pitt Palmer._ A Woman's Question Do you know you have asked for the costliest thing Ever made by the Hand above-- A woman's heart and a woman's life, And a woman's wonderful love? Do you know you have asked for this priceless thing As a child might ask for a toy; Demanding what others have died to win, With the reckless dash of a boy? You have written my lesson of duty out, Man-like you have questioned me-- Now stand at the bar of my woman's soul, Until I shall question thee. You require your mutton shall always be hot, Your socks and your shirts shall be whole. I require your heart to be true as God's stars, And pure as heaven your soul. You require a cook for your mutton and beef; I require a far better thing-- A seamstress you're wanting for stockings and shirts-- I look for a man and a king. A king for a beautiful realm called home, And a man that the Maker, God, Shall look upon as He did the first, And say, "It is very good." I am fair and young, but the rose will fade From my soft, young cheek one day-- Will you love then, 'mid the falling leaves, As you did 'mid the bloom of May? Is your heart an ocean so strong and deep I may launch my all on its tide? A loving woman finds heaven or hell On the day she is made a bride. I require all things that are grand and true, All things that a man should be; If you give this all, I would stake my life To be all you demand of me. If you cannot do this, a laundress and cook You can hire with little to pay; But a woman's heart and a woman's life Are not to be won that way. _Lena Lathrop._ Lasca I want free life and I want fresh air; And I sigh for the canter after the cattle, The crack of the whips like shots in battle, The mellay of horns, and hoofs, and heads That wars, and wrangles, and scatters, and spreads; The green beneath and the blue above, And dash and danger, and life and love; And Lasca! Lasca used to ride On a mouse-gray mustang, close to my side, With blue _serape_ and bright-belled spur; I laughed with joy as I looked at her! Little knew she of books or creeds; An _Ave Maria_ sufficed her needs; Little she cared, save to be by my side, To ride with me, and ever to ride, From San Saba's shore to Lavaca's tide. She was as bold as the billows that beat, She was as wild as the breezes that blow; From her little head to her little feet She was swayed, in her suppleness, to and fro By each gust of passion; a sapling pine, That grows on the edge of a Kansas bluff And wars with the wind when the weather is rough, Is like this Lasca, this love of mine. She would hunger that I might eat, Would take the bitter and leave me the sweet; But once, when I made her jealous for fun, At something I'd whispered, or looked, or done, One Sunday, in San Antonio, To a glorious girl on the Alamo, She drew from her girdle a dear little dagger, And--sting of a wasp!--it made me stagger! An inch to the left or an inch to the right, And I shouldn't be maundering here to-night; But she sobbed, and, sobbing, so swiftly bound Her torn _rebosa_ about the wound That I quite forgave her. Scratches don't count In Texas, down by the Rio Grande. Her eye was brown,--a deep, deep brown; Her hair was darker than her eye; And something in her smile and frown, Curled crimson lip, and instep high, Showed that there ran in each blue vein, Mixed with the milder Aztec strain, The vigorous vintage of old Spain. She was alive in every limb With feeling, to the finger tips; And when the sun is like a fire, And sky one shining, soft sapphire, One does not drink in little sips. The air was heavy, the night was hot, I sat by her side, and forgot--forgot; Forgot the herd that were taking their rest; Forgot that the air was close opprest; That the Texas norther comes sudden and soon, In the dead of night or the blaze of noon; That once let the herd at its breath take fright, That nothing on earth can stop the flight; And woe to the rider, and woe to the steed, Who falls in front of their mad stampede! Was that thunder? No, by the Lord! I sprang to my saddle without a word, One foot on mine, and she clung behind. Away on a hot chase down the wind! But never was fox-hunt half so hard, And never was steed so little spared, For we rode for our lives. You shall hear how we fared In Texas, down by the Rio Grande. The mustang flew, and we urged him on; There was one chance left, and you have but one; Halt, jump to the ground, and shoot your horse; Crouch under his carcass, and take your chance; And if the steers, in their frantic course, Don't batter you both to pieces at once, You may thank your star; if not, good-by To the quickening kiss and the long-drawn sigh, And the open air and the open sky, In Texas, down by the Rio Grande. The cattle gained on us, and just as I felt For my old six-shooter, behind in my belt, Down came the mustang, and down came we, Clinging together, and--what was the rest? A body that spread itself on my breast, Two arms that shielded my dizzy head, Two lips that hard on my lips were pressed; Then came thunder in my ears, As over us surged the sea of steers, Blows that beat blood into my eyes, And when I could rise, Lasca was dead! I gouged out a grave a few feet deep, And there in Earth's arms I laid her to sleep! And there she is lying, and no one knows, And the summer shines and the winter snows; For many a day the flowers have spread A pall of petals over her head; And the little gray hawk hangs aloft in the air, And the sly coyote trots here and there, And the black snake glides, and glitters, and slides Into the rift in a cotton-wood tree; And the buzzard sails on, And comes and is gone, Stately and still like a ship at sea; And I wonder why I do not care For the things that are like the things that were. Does half my heart lie buried there In Texas, down by the Rio Grande? _Frank Desprez._ Over the Hill to the Poor-House Over the hill to the poor-house I'm trudgin' my weary way-- I, a woman of seventy, and only a trifle gray-- I, who am smart an' chipper, for all the years I've told, As many another woman that's only half as old. Over the hill to the poor-house--I can't quite make it clear! Over the hill to the poor-house-it seems so horrid queer! Many a step I've taken a-toiling to and fro, But this is a sort of journey I never thought to go. What is the use of heapin' on me a pauper's shame? Am I lazy or crazy? Am I blind or lame? True, I am not so supple, nor yet so awful stout; But charity ain't no favor, if one can live without. I am willin' and anxious an' ready any day To work for a decent livin', an' pay my honest way; For I can earn my victuals, an' more too, I'll be bound, If anybody only is willin' to have me round. Once I was young an' han'some--I was upon my soul-- Once my cheeks was roses, my eyes as black as coal; And I can't remember, in them days, of hearin' people say, For any kind of a reason, that I was in their way. 'Tain't no use of boastin', or talkin' over-free, But many a house an' home was open then to me; Many a han'some offer I had from likely men, And nobody ever hinted that I was a burden then. And when to John I was married, sure he was good and smart, But he and all the neighbors would own I done my part; For life was all before me, an' I was young an' strong, And I worked the best that I could in tryin' to get along. And so we worked together: and life was hard, but gay, With now and then a baby for to cheer us on our way; Till we had half a dozen, an' all growed clean an' neat, An' went to school like others, an' had enough to eat. So we worked for the childr'n, and raised 'em every one, Worked for 'em summer and winter just as we ought to've done; Only, perhaps, we humored 'em, which some good folks condemn-- But every couple's childr'n's a heap the best to them. Strange how much we think of our blessed little ones! I'd have died for my daughters, I'd have died for my sons; And God he made that rule of love; but when we're old and gray, I've noticed it sometimes, somehow, fails to work the other way. Strange, another thing: when our boys an' girls was grown, And when, exceptin' Charley, they'd left us there alone; When John he nearer an' nearer come, an' dearer seemed to be, The Lord of Hosts he come one day, an' took him away from me. Still I was bound to struggle, an' never to cringe or fall-- Still I worked for Charley, for Charley was now my all; And Charley was pretty good to me, with scarce a word or frown, Till at last he went a-courtin', and brought a wife from town. She was somewhat dressy, an' hadn't a pleasant smile-- She was quite conceity, and carried a heap o' style; But if ever I tried to be friends, I did with her, I know; But she was hard and proud, an' I couldn't make it go. She had an edication, an' that was good for her; But when she twitted me on mine, 'twas carryin' things too fur; An' I told her once, 'fore company (an' it almost made her sick), That I never swallowed a grammar, or eat a 'rithmetic. So 'twas only a few days before the thing was done-- They was a family of themselves, and I another one; And a very little cottage one family will do, But I never have seen a house that was big enough for two. An' I never could speak to suit her, never could please her eye, An' it made me independent, an' then I didn't try; But I was terribly staggered, an' felt it like a blow, When Charley turn'd agin me, an' told me I could go. I went to live with Susan, but Susan's house was small, And she was always a-hintin' how snug it was for us all; And what with her husband's sisters, and what with childr'n three, 'Twas easy to discover that there wasn't room for me. An' then I went to Thomas, the oldest son I've got, For Thomas's buildings'd cover the half of an acre lot; But all the childr'n was on me--I couldn't stand their sauce-- And Thomas said I needn't think I was comin' there to boss. An' then I wrote Rebecca, my girl who lives out West, And to Isaac, not far from her--some twenty miles, at best; And one of 'em said 'twas too warm there for any one so old, And t'other had an opinion the climate was too cold. So they have shirked and slighted me, an' shifted me about-- So they have well-nigh soured me, an' wore my old heart out; But still I've borne up pretty well, an' wasn't much put down, Till Charley went to the poor-master, an' put me on the town. Over the hill to the poor-house--my childr'n dear, good-by! Many a night I've watched you when only God was nigh; And God'll judge between us; but I will always pray That you shall never suffer the half I do to-day. _Will Carleton._ The American Flag When Freedom from her mountain height Unfurled her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of night, And set the stars of glory there. She mingled with its gorgeous dyes The milky baldric of the skies, And striped its pure celestial white With streakings of the morning light; Then from his mansion in the sun She called her eagle bearer down, And gave into his mighty hand The symbol of her chosen land. Majestic monarch of the cloud, Who rear'st aloft thy regal form, To hear the tempest trumpings loud And see the lightning lances driven, When strive the warriors of the storm, And rolls the thunder-drum of heaven, Child of the sun! to thee 'tis given To guard the banner of the free, To hover in the sulphur smoke, To ward away the battle stroke, And bid its blendings shine afar, Like rainbows on the cloud of War, The harbingers of victory! Flag of the brave! thy folds shall fly, The sign of hope and triumph high, When speaks the signal trumpet tone, And the long line comes gleaming on. Ere yet the lifeblood, warm and wet, Has dimmed the glistening bayonet, Each soldier eye shall brightly turn To where thy sky-born glories burn, And, as his springing steps advance, Catch war and vengeance from the glance. And when the cannon-mouthings loud Heave in wild wreaths the battle shroud, And gory sabres rise and fall Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall, Then shall thy meteor glances glow, And cowering foes shall shrink beneath Each gallant arm that strikes below That lovely messenger of death. Flag of the seas! on ocean wave Thy stars shall glitter o'er the brave; When death, careering on the gale, Sweeps darkly 'round the bellied sail, And frighted waves rush wildly back Before the broadside's reeling rack, Each dying wanderer of the sea Shall look at once to heaven and thee, And smile to see thy splendors fly In triumph o'er his closing eye. Flag of the free heart's hope and home! By angel hands to valor given; Thy stars have lit the welkin dome, And all thy hues were born in heaven. Forever float that standard sheet! Where breathes the foe but falls before us, With Freedom's soil beneath our feet, And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us? _Joseph Rodman Drake._ Golden Keys A bunch of golden keys is mine To make each day with gladness shine. "Good morning!" that's the golden key That unlocks every door for me. When evening comes, "Good night!" I say, And close the door of each glad day. When at the table "If you please" I take from off my bunch of keys. When friends give anything to me, I'll use the little "Thank you" key. "Excuse me," "Beg your pardon," too, When by mistake some harm I do. Or if unkindly harm I've given, With "Forgive me" key I'll be forgiven. On a golden ring these keys I'll bind, This is its motto: "Be ye kind." I'll often use each golden key, And so a happy child I'll be. The Four-leaf Clover I know a place where the sun is like gold, And the cherry blooms burst like snow; And down underneath is the loveliest nook, Where the four-leaf clovers grow. One leaf is for faith, and one is for hope, And one is for love, you know; And God put another one in for luck-- If you search, you will find where they grow. But you must have faith and you must have hope, You must love and be strong, and so If you work, if you wait, you will find the place Where the four-leaf clovers grow. _Ella Higginson._ Telling the Bees NOTE: A remarkable custom, brought from the Old Country, formerly prevailed in the rural districts of New England. On the death of a member of the family, the bees were at once informed of the event, and their hives dressed in mourning. This ceremonial was supposed to be necessary to prevent the swarms from leaving their hives and seeking a new home. Here is the place; right over the hill Runs the path I took; You can see the gap in the old wall still. And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook. There is the house, with the gate red-barred, And the poplars tall; And the barn's brown length, and the cattle-yard, And the white horns tossing above the wall. There are the beehives ranged in the sun; And down by the brink Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o'errun, Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink. A year has gone, as the tortoise goes, Heavy and slow; And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows, And the same brook sings of a year ago. There's the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze; And the June sun warm Tangles his wings of fire in the trees, Setting, as then, over Fernside farm. I mind me how with a lover's care From my Sunday coat I brushed off the burs, and smoothed my hair, And cooled at the brookside my brow and throat. Since we parted, a month had passed,-- To love, a year; Down through the beeches I looked at last On the little red gate and the well-sweep near. I can see it all now,--the slantwise rain Of light through the leaves, The sundown's blaze on her window-pane, The bloom of her roses under the eaves. Just the same as a month before,-- The house and the trees, The barn's brown gable, the vine by the door,-- Nothing changed but the hives of bees. Before them, under the garden wall, Forward and back, Went drearily singing the chore-girl small, Draping each hive with a shred of black. Trembling, I listened; the summer sun Had the chill of snow; For I knew she was telling the bees of one Gone on the journey we all must go! Then I said to myself, "My Mary weeps For the dead to-day: Haply her blind grandsire sleeps The fret and pain of his age away." But her dog whined low; on the doorway sill, With his cane to his chin, The old man sat; and the chore-girl still Sung to the bees stealing out and in. And the song she was singing ever since In my ear sounds on:-- "Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence! Mistress Mary is dead and gone!" _John G. Whittier._ "Not Understood" Not understood, we move along asunder, Our paths grow wider as the seasons creep Along the years. We marvel and we wonder, Why life is life, and then we fall asleep, Not understood. Not understood, we gather false impressions, And hug them closer as the years go by, Till virtues often seem to us transgressions; And thus men rise and fall and live and die, Not understood. Not understood, poor souls with stunted visions Often measure giants by their narrow gauge; The poisoned shafts of falsehood and derision Are oft impelled 'gainst those who mould the age, Not understood. Not understood, the secret springs of action Which lie beneath the surface and the show Are disregarded; with self-satisfaction We judge our neighbors, and they often go Not understood. Not understood, how trifles often change us-- The thoughtless sentence or the fancied slight-- Destroy long years of friendship and estrange us, And on our souls there falls a freezing blight-- Not understood. Not understood, how many hearts are aching For lack of sympathy! Ah! day by day How many cheerless, lonely hearts are breaking, How many noble spirits pass away Not understood. O God! that men would see a little clearer, Or judge less hardly when they cannot see! O God! that men would draw a little nearer To one another! They'd be nearer Thee, And understood. Somebody's Mother The woman was old, and ragged, and gray, And bent with the chill of a winter's day; The streets were white with a recent snow, And the woman's feet with age were slow. At the crowded crossing she waited long, Jostled aside by the careless throng Of human beings who passed her by, Unheeding the glance of her anxious eye. Down the street with laughter and shout, Glad in the freedom of "school let out," Come happy boys, like a flock of sheep, Hailing the snow piled white and deep; Past the woman, so old and gray, Hastened the children on their way. None offered a helping hand to her, So weak and timid, afraid to stir, Lest the carriage wheels or the horses' feet Should trample her down in the slippery street. At last came out of the merry troop The gayest boy of all the group; He paused beside her, and whispered low, "I'll help you across, if you wish to go." Her aged hand on his strong young arm She placed, and so without hurt or harm, He guided the trembling feet along, Proud that his own were young and strong; Then back again to his friends he went, His young heart happy and well content. "She's somebody's mother, boys, you know, For all she's aged, and poor, and slow; And some one, some time, may lend a hand To help my mother--you understand?-- If ever she's poor, and old, and gray, And her own dear boy is far away." "Somebody's mother" bowed low her head, In her home that 'night, and the prayer she said Was: "God, be kind to that noble boy, Who is somebody's son, and pride and joy." Faint was the voice, and worn and weak, But the Father hears when His children speak; Angels caught the faltering word, And "Somebody's Mother's" prayer was heard. To a Waterfowl Whither, midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way? Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly seen against the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along. Seek'st thou the plashy brink Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, Or where the rocking billows rise and sink On the chafed ocean-side? There is a Power whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast-- The desert and illimitable air-- Lone wandering, but not lost. All day thy wings have fanned, At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere; Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, Though the dark night is near. And soon that toil shall end; Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, And shall not soon depart. He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright. _William Cullen Bryant._ My Mother Who fed me from her gentle breast And hushed me in her arms to rest, And on my cheek sweet kisses prest? My mother. When sleep forsook my open eye, Who was it sung sweet lullaby And rocked me that I should not cry? My mother. Who sat and watched my infant head When sleeping in my cradle bed, And tears of sweet affection shed? My mother. When pain and sickness made me cry, Who gazed upon my heavy eye, And wept, for fear that I should die? My mother. Who ran to help me when I fell And would some pretty story tell, Or kiss the part to make it well? My mother. Who taught my infant lips to pray, To love God's holy word and day, And walk in wisdom's pleasant way? My mother. And can I ever cease to be Affectionate and kind to thee Who wast so very kind to me,-- My mother. Oh, no, the thought I cannot bear; And if God please my life to spare I hope I shall reward thy care, My mother. When thou art feeble, old and gray, My healthy arms shall be thy stay, And I will soothe thy pains away, My mother. And when I see thee hang thy head, 'Twill be my turn to watch thy bed, And tears of sweet affection shed,-- My mother. The Walrus and the Carpenter The sun was shining on the sea, Shining with all his might: He did his very best to make The billows smooth and bright-- And this was odd, because it was The middle of the night. The moon was shining sulkily, Because she thought the sun Had got no business to be there After the day was done-- "It's very rude of him," she said, "To come and spoil the fun!" The sea was wet as wet could be, The sands were dry as dry. You could not see a cloud, because No cloud was in the sky: No birds were flying overhead-- There were no birds to fly. The Walrus and the Carpenter Were walking close at hand: They wept like anything to see Such quantities of sand: "If this were only cleared away," They said, "it would be grand!" "If seven maids with seven mops Swept it for half a year, Do you suppose," the Walrus said, "That they could get it clear?" "I doubt it," said the Carpenter, And shed a bitter tear. "O Oysters, come and walk with us!" The Walrus did beseech. "A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk, Along the briny beach: We cannot do with more than four, To give a hand to each." The eldest Oyster looked at him, But never a word he said: The eldest Oyster winked his eye, And shook his heavy head-- Meaning to say he did not choose To leave the oyster-bed. But four young Oysters hurried up, All eager for the treat: Their coats were brushed, their faces washed, Their shoes were clean and neat-- And this was odd, because, you know, They hadn't any feet. Four other Oysters followed them, And yet another four; And thick and fast they came at last, And more, and more, and more-- All hopping through the frothy waves, And scrambling to the shore. The Walrus and the Carpenter Walked on a mile or so, And then they rested on a rock Conveniently low: And all the little Oysters stood And waited in a row. "The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax-- Of cabbages and kings-- And why the sea is boiling hot-- And whether pigs have wings." "But wait a bit," the Oysters cried, "Before we have our chat; For some of us are out of breath, And all of us are fat!" "No hurry!" said the Carpenter. They thanked him much for that. "A loaf of bread," the Walrus said, "Is what we chiefly need: Pepper and vinegar besides Are very good indeed-- Now, if you're ready, Oysters dear, We can begin to feed." "But not on us!" the Oysters cried, Turning a little blue. "After such kindness, that would be A dismal thing to do!" "The night is fine," the Walrus said, "Do you admire the view? "It was so kind of you to come! And you are very nice!" The Carpenter said nothing but "Cut us another slice. I wish you were not quite so deaf-- I've had to ask you twice!" "It seems a shame," the Walrus said, "To play them such a trick. After we've brought them out so far, And made them trot so quick!" The Carpenter said nothing but "The butter's spread too thick!" "I weep for you," the Walrus said; "I deeply sympathize." With sobs and tears he sorted out Those of the largest size, Holding his pocket-handkerchief Before his streaming eyes. "O Oysters," said the Carpenter, "You've had a pleasant run! Shall we be trotting home again?" But answer came there none-- And this was scarcely odd, because They'd eaten every one. _Lewis Carroll._ The Teacher's Dream The weary teacher sat alone While twilight gathered on: And not a sound was heard around,-- The boys and girls were gone. The weary teacher sat alone; Unnerved and pale was he; Bowed 'neath a yoke of care, he spoke In sad soliloquy: "Another round, another round Of labor thrown away, Another chain of toil and pain Dragged through a tedious day. "Of no avail is constant zeal, Love's sacrifice is lost. The hopes of morn, so golden, turn, Each evening, into dross. "I squander on a barren field My strength, my life, my all: The seeds I sow will never grow,-- They perish where they fall." He sighed, and low upon his hands His aching brow he pressed; And o'er his frame ere long there came A soothing sense of rest. And then he lifted up his face, But started back aghast,-- The room, by strange and sudden change, Assumed proportions vast. It seemed a Senate-hall, and one Addressed a listening throng; Each burning word all bosoms stirred, Applause rose loud and long. The 'wildered teacher thought he knew The speaker's voice and look, "And for his name," said he, "the same Is in my record book." The stately Senate-hall dissolved, A church rose in its place, Wherein there stood a man of God, Dispensing words of grace. And though he spoke in solemn tone, And though his hair was gray, The teacher's thought was strangely wrought-- "I whipped that boy to-day." The church, a phantom, vanished soon; What saw the teacher then? In classic gloom of alcoved room An author plied his pen. "My idlest lad!" the teacher said, Filled with a new surprise; "Shall I behold his name enrolled Among the great and wise?" The vision of a cottage home The teacher now descried; A mother's face illumed the place Her influence sanctified. "A miracle! a miracle! This matron, well I know, Was but a wild and careless child, Not half an hour ago. "And when she to her children speaks Of duty's golden rule, Her lips repeat in accents sweet, My words to her at school." The scene was changed again, and lo! The schoolhouse rude and old; Upon the wall did darkness fall, The evening air was cold. "A dream!" the sleeper, waking, said, Then paced along the floor, And, whistling slow and soft and low, He locked the schoolhouse door. And, walking home, his heart was full Of peace and trust and praise; And singing slow and soft and low, Said, "After many days." _W.H. Venable._ A Legend of Bregenz Girt round with rugged mountains, the fair Lake Constance lies; In her blue heart reflected shine back the starry skies; And watching each white cloudlet float silently and slow, You think a piece of heaven lies on our earth below! Midnight is there: and silence, enthroned in heaven, looks down Upon her own calm mirror, upon a sleeping town: For Bregenz, that quaint city upon the Tyrol shore, Has stood above Lake Constance a thousand years and more. Her battlement and towers, from off their rocky steep, Have cast their trembling shadow for ages on the deep; Mountain, and lake, and valley, a sacred legend know, Of how the town was saved, one night three hundred years ago. Far from her home and kindred, a Tyrol maid had fled, To serve in the Swiss valleys, and toil for daily bread; And every year that fleeted so silently and fast, Seemed to bear farther from her the memory of the past. She served kind, gentle masters, nor asked for rest or change; Her friends seemed no more new ones, their speech seemed no more strange; And when she led her cattle to pasture every day, She ceased to look and wonder on which side Bregenz lay. She spoke no more of Bregenz, with longing and with tears; Her Tyrol home seemed faded in a deep mist of years; She heeded not the rumors of Austrian war and strife; Each day she rose, contented, to the calm toils of life. Yet when her master's children would clustering round her stand, She sang them ancient ballads of her own native land; And when at morn and evening she knelt before God's throne, The accents of her childhood rose to her lips alone. And so she dwelt: the valley more peaceful year by year; When suddenly strange portents of some great deed seemed near. The golden corn was bending upon its fragile stock, While farmers, heedless of their fields, paced up and down in talk. The men seemed stern and altered, with looks cast on the ground; With anxious faces, one by one, the women gathered round; All talk of flax, or spinning, or work, was put away; The very children seemed afraid to go alone to play. One day, out in the meadow with strangers from the town, Some secret plan discussing, the men walked up and down, Yet now and then seemed watching a strange uncertain, gleam, That looked like lances 'mid the trees that stood below the stream. At eve they all assembled, then care and doubt were fled; With jovial laugh they feasted; the board was nobly spread. The elder of the village rose up, his glass in hand, And cried, "We drink the downfall of an accursed land! "The night is growing darker,--ere one more day is flown, Bregenz, our foeman's stronghold, Bregenz shall be our own!" The women shrank in terror, (yet Pride, too, had her part,) But one poor Tyrol maiden felt death within her heart. Before her stood fair Bregenz, once more her towers arose; What were the friends beside her? Only her country's foes! The faces of her kinsfolk, the days of childhood flown, The echoes of her mountains, reclaimed her as their own! Nothing she heard around her, (though shouts rang forth again,) Gone were the green Swiss valleys, the pasture, and the plain; Before her eyes one vision, and in her heart one cry, That said, "Go forth, save Bregenz, and then, if need be, die!" With trembling haste and breathless, with noiseless step, she sped; Horses and weary cattle were standing in the shed; She loosed the strong white charger, that fed from out her hand, She mounted, and she turned his head towards her native land. Out--out into the darkness--faster, and still more fast; The smooth grass flies behind her, the chestnut wood is past; She looks up; clouds are heavy: Why is her steed so slow?-- Scarcely the wind beside them can pass them as they go. "Faster!" she cries. "Oh, faster!" Eleven the church-bells chime; "O God," she cries, "help Bregenz, and bring me there in time!" But louder than bells' ringing, or lowing of the kine, Grows nearer in the midnight the rushing of the Rhine. Shall not the roaring waters their headlong gallop check? The steed draws back in terror, she leans upon his neck To watch the flowing darkness,--the bank is high and steep; One pause--he staggers forward, and plunges in the deep. She strives to pierce the blackness, and looser throws the rein; Her steed must breast the waters that dash above his mane. How gallantly, how nobly, he struggles through the foam, And see--in the far distance shine out the lights of home! Up the steep bank he bears her, and now they rush again Toward the heights of Bregenz, that tower above the plain. They reach the gate of Bregenz, just as the midnight rings, And out come serf and soldier to meet the news she brings. Bregenz is saved! Ere daylight her battlements are manned; Defiance greets the army that marches on the land. And if to deeds heroic should endless fame be paid, Bregenz does well to honor the noble Tyrol maid. Three hundred years are vanished, and yet upon the hill An old stone gateway rises, to do her honor still. And there, when Bregenz women sit spinning in the shade, They see in quaint old carving the charger and the maid. And when, to guard old Bregenz, by gateway, street, and tower, The warder paces all night long, and calls each passing hour: "Nine," "ten," "eleven," he cries aloud, and then (O crown of fame!) When midnight pauses in the skies he calls the maiden's name! _Adelaide A. Procter._ Better Than Gold Better than grandeur, better than gold, Than rank and title a thousand fold, Is a healthy body, a mind at ease, And simple pleasures that always please; A heart that can feel for a neighbor's woe And share his joys with a genial glow,-- With sympathies large enough to enfold All men as brothers,--is better than gold. Better than gold is a conscience clear, Though toiling for bread in an humble sphere: Doubly blest with content and health, Untried by the lusts or cares of wealth. Lowly living and lofty thought Adorn and ennoble a poor man's cot; For mind and morals, in Nature's plan, Are the genuine test of a gentleman. Better than gold is the sweet repose Of the sons of toil when their labors close; Better than gold is the poor man's sleep, And the balm that drops on his slumbers deep. Bring sleeping draughts to the downy bed, Where luxury pillows his aching head; His simple opiate labor deems A shorter road to the land of dreams. Better than gold is a thinking mind That in the realm of books can find A treasure surpassing Australian ore, And live with the great and good of yore. The sage's lore and the poet's lay, The glories of empires pass'd away, The world's great drama will thus unfold And yield a pleasure better than gold. Better than gold is a peaceful home, Where all the fireside charities come;-- The shrine of love and the heaven of life, Hallowed by mother, or sister, or wife. However humble the home may be, Or tried with sorrow by Heaven's decree, The blessings that never were bought or sold, And center there, are better than gold. _Alexander Smart._ October's Bright Blue Weather O suns and skies and clouds of June, And flowers of June together, Ye cannot rival for one hour October's bright blue weather; When loud the bumblebee makes haste, Belated, thriftless vagrant, And goldenrod is dying fast, And lanes with grapes are fragrant; When gentians roll their fringes tight To save them for the morning, And chestnuts fall from satin burrs Without a sound of warning; When on the ground red apples lie In piles like jewels shining, And redder still on old stone walls Are leaves of woodbine twining; When all the lovely wayside things Their white-winged seeds are sowing, And in the fields, still green and fair, Late aftermaths are growing; When springs run low, and on the brooks, In idle, golden freighting, Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush Of woods, for winter waiting; When comrades seek sweet country haunts, By twos and threes together, And count like misers hour by hour, October's bright blue weather. O suns and skies and flowers of June, Count all your boasts together, Love loveth best of all the year October's bright blue weather. _Helen Hunt Jackson._ Brier-Rose Said Brier-Rose's mother to the naughty Brier-Rose: "What _will_ become of you, my child, the Lord Almighty knows. You will not scrub the kettles, and you will not touch the broom; You never sit a minute still at spinning-wheel or loom." Thus grumbled in the morning, and grumbled late at eve, The good-wife as she bustled with pot and tray and sieve; But Brier-Rose, she laughed and she cocked her dainty head: "Why, I shall marry, mother dear," full merrily she said. "_You_ marry; saucy Brier-Rose! The man, he is not found To marry such a worthless wench, these seven leagues around." But Brier-Rose, she laughed and she trilled a merry lay: "Perhaps he'll come, my mother dear, from eight leagues away." The good-wife with a "humph" and a sigh forsook the battle, And flung her pots and pails about with much vindictive rattle; "O Lord, what sin did I commit in youthful days, and wild, That thou hast punished me in age with such a wayward child?" Up stole the girl on tiptoe, so that none her step could hear, And laughing pressed an airy kiss behind the good-wife's ear. And she, as e'er relenting, sighed: "Oh, Heaven only knows Whatever will become of you, my naughty Brier-Rose!" The sun was high and summer sounds were teeming in the air; The clank of scythes, the cricket's whir, and swelling woodnotes rare, From fields and copse and meadow; and through the open door Sweet, fragrant whiffs of new-mown hay the idle breezes bore. Then Brier-Rose grew pensive, like a bird of thoughtful mien, Whose little life has problems among the branches green. She heard the river brawling where the tide was swift and strong, She heard the summer singing its strange, alluring song. And out she skipped the meadows o'er and gazed into the sky; Her heart o'erbrimmed with gladness, she scarce herself knew why, And to a merry tune she hummed, "Oh, Heaven only knows Whatever will become of the naughty Brier-Rose!" Whene'er a thrifty matron this idle maid espied, She shook her head in warning, and scarce her wrath could hide; For girls were made for housewives, for spinning-wheel and loom, And not to drink the sunshine and wild flower's sweet perfume. And oft the maidens cried, when the Brier-Rose went by, "You cannot knit a stocking, and you cannot make a pie." But Brier-Rose, as was her wont, she cocked her curly head: "But I can sing a pretty song," full merrily she said. And oft the young lads shouted, when they saw the maid at play: "Ho, good-for-nothing Brier-Rose, how do you do to-day?" Then she shook her tiny fist; to her cheeks the color flew: "However much you coax me, I'll _never_ dance with you." * * * * * Thus flew the years light winged over Brier-Rose's head, Till she was twenty summers old and yet remained unwed. And all the parish wondered: "The Lord Almighty knows Whatever will become of that naughty Brier-Rose!" And while they wondered came the spring a-dancing o'er the hills; Her breath was warmer than of yore, and all the mountain rills, With their tinkling and their rippling and their rushing, filled the air, And the misty sounds of water forth-welling everywhere. And in the valley's depth, like a lusty beast of prey, The river leaped and roared aloud and tossed its mane of spray; Then hushed again its voice to a softly plashing croon, As dark it rolled beneath the sun and white beneath the moon. It was a merry sight to see the lumber as it whirled Adown the tawny eddies that hissed and seethed and swirled, Now shooting through the rapids and, with a reeling swing, Into the foam-crests diving like an animated thing. But in the narrows of the rocks, where o'er a steep incline The waters plunged, and wreathed in foam the dark boughs of the pine, The lads kept watch with shout and song, and sent each straggling beam A-spinning down the rapids, lest it should lock the stream. * * * * * And yet--methinks I hear it now--wild voices in the night, A rush of feet, a dog's harsh bark, a torch's flaring light, And wandering gusts of dampness, and round us far and nigh, A throbbing boom of water like a pulse-beat in the sky. The dawn just pierced the pallid east with spears of gold and red. As we, with boat-hooks in our hands, toward the narrows sped. And terror smote us; for we heard the mighty tree-tops sway, And thunder, as of chariots, and hissing showers of spray. "Now, lads," the sheriff shouted, "you are strong, like Norway's rock: A hundred crowns I give to him who breaks the lumber lock! For if another hour go by, the angry waters' spoil Our homes will be, and fields, and our weary years of toil." We looked each at the other; each hoped his neighbor would Brave death and danger for his home, as valiant Norsemen should. But at our feet the brawling tide expanded like a lake, And whirling beams came shooting on, and made the firm rock quake. "Two hundred crowns!" the sheriff cried, and breathless stood the crowd. "Two hundred crowns, my bonny lads!" in anxious tones and loud. But not a man came forward, and no one spoke or stirred, And nothing save the thunder of the cataract was heard. But as with trembling hands and with fainting hearts we stood, We spied a little curly head emerging from the wood. We heard a little snatch of a merry little song, And saw the dainty Brier-Rose come dancing through the throng. An angry murmur rose from the people round about. "Fling her into the river," we heard the matrons shout; "Chase her away, the silly thing; for God himself scarce knows Why ever he created that worthless Brier-Rose." Sweet Brier-Rose, she heard their cries; a little pensive smile Across her fair face flitted that might a stone beguile; And then she gave her pretty head a roguish little cock: "Hand me a boat-hook, lads," she said; "I think I'll break the lock." Derisive shouts of laughter broke from throats of young and old: "Ho! good-for-nothing Brier-Rose, your tongue was ever bold." And, mockingly, a boat-hook into her hands was flung, When, lo! into the river's midst with daring leaps she sprung! We saw her dimly through a mist of dense and blinding spray; From beam to beam she skipped, like a water-sprite at play. And now and then faint gleams we caught of color through the mist: A crimson waist, a golden head, a little dainty wrist. In terror pressed the people to the margin of the hill, A hundred breaths were bated, a hundred hearts stood still. For, hark! from out the rapids came a strange and creaking sound, And then a crash of thunder which shook the very ground. The waters hurled the lumber mass down o'er the rocky steep. We heard a muffled rumbling and a rolling in the deep; We saw a tiny form which the torrent swiftly bore And flung into the wild abyss, where it was seen no more. Ah, little naughty Brier-Rose, thou couldst not weave nor spin; Yet thou couldst do a nobler deed than all thy mocking kin; For thou hadst courage e'en to die, and by thy death to save A thousand farms and lives from the fury of the wave. And yet the adage lives, in the valley of thy birth, When wayward children spend their days in heedless play and mirth, Oft mothers say, half smiling, half sighing, "Heaven knows Whatever will become of the naughty Brier-Rose!" _Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen._ King Robert of Sicily Robert of Sicily, brother of Pope Urbane And Valmond, Emperor of Allemaine, Appareled in magnificent attire With retinue of many a knight and squire, On St. John's eve, at vespers, proudly sat And heard the priests chant the Magnificat. And as he listened, o'er and o'er again Repeated, like a burden or refrain, He caught the words, _"Deposuit potentes De sede, et exaltavit humiles"_; And slowly lifting up his kingly head, He to a learned clerk beside him said, "What mean those words?" The clerk made answer meet, "He has put down the mighty from their seat, And has exalted them of low degree." Thereat King Robert muttered scornfully, "'Tis well that such seditious words are sung Only by priests, and in the Latin tongue; For unto priests, and people be it known, There is no power can push me from my throne," And leaning back he yawned and fell asleep, Lulled by the chant monotonous and deep. When he awoke, it was already night; The church was empty, and there was no light, Save where the lamps, that glimmered few and faint, Lighted a little space before some saint. He started from his seat and gazed around, But saw no living thing and heard no sound. He groped towards the door, but it was locked; He cried aloud, and listened, and then knocked, And uttered awful threatenings and complaints, And imprecations upon men and saints. The sounds re-echoed from the roof and walls As if dead priests were laughing in their stalls. At length the sexton, hearing from without The tumult of the knocking and the shout, And thinking thieves were in the house of prayer, Came with his lantern, asking "Who is there?" Half choked with rage, King Robert fiercely said, "Open; 'tis I, the king! Art thou afraid?" The frightened sexton, muttering with a curse, "This is some drunken vagabond, or worse!" Turned the great key and flung the portal wide; A man rushed by him at a single stride, Haggard, half-naked, without hat or cloak, Who neither turned, nor looked at him, nor spoke, But leaped into the blackness of the night, And vanished like a spectre from his sight. Robert of Sicily, brother of Pope Urbane And Valmond, Emperor of Allemaine, Despoiled of his magnificent attire, Bare-headed, breathless, and besprent with mire, With sense of wrong and outrage desperate, Strode on and thundered at the palace gate; Rushed through the court-yard, thrusting in his rage To right and left each seneschal and page, And hurried up the broad and sounding stair, His white face ghastly in the torches' glare. From hall to hall he passed with breathless speed; Voices and cries he heard, but did not heed, Until at last he reached the banquet-room, Blazing with light, and breathing with perfume. There on the dais sat another king, Wearing his robes, his crown, his signet ring-- King Robert's self in features, form, and height, But all transfigured with angelic light! It was an angel; and his presence there With a divine effulgence filled the air, An exaltation, piercing the disguise, Though none the hidden angel recognize. A moment speechless, motionless, amazed, The throneless monarch on the angel gazed, Who met his look of anger and surprise With the divine compassion of his eyes! Then said, "Who art thou, and why com'st thou here?" To which King Robert answered with a sneer, "I am the king, and come to claim my own From an impostor, who usurps my throne!" And suddenly, at these audacious words, Up sprang the angry guests, and drew their swords; The angel answered with unruffled brow, "Nay, not the king, but the king's jester; thou Henceforth shalt wear the bells and scalloped cape And for thy counselor shalt lead an ape; Thou shalt obey my servants when they call, And wait upon my henchmen in the hall!" Deaf to King Robert's threats and cries and prayers, They thrust him from the hall and down the stairs; A group of tittering pages ran before, And as they opened wide the folding door, His heart failed, for he heard, with strange alarms, The boisterous laughter of the men-at-arms, And all the vaulted chamber roar and ring With the mock plaudits of "Long live the king!" Next morning, waking with the day's first beam, He said within himself, "It was a dream!" But the straw rustled as he turned his head, There were the cap and bells beside his bed; Around him rose the bare, discolored walls, Close by, the steeds were champing in their stalls, And in the corner, a revolting shape, Shivering and chattering, sat the wretched ape. It was no dream; the world he loved so much Had turned to dust and ashes at his touch! Days came and went; and now returned again To Sicily the old Saturnian reign; Under the angel's governance benign The happy island danced with corn and wine, And deep within the mountain's burning breast Enceladus, the giant, was at rest. Meanwhile King Robert yielded to his fate, Sullen and silent and disconsolate. Dressed in the motley garb that jesters wear, With look bewildered, and a vacant stare, Close shaven above the ears, as monks are shorn, By courtiers mocked, by pages laughed to scorn, His only friend the ape, his only food What others left--he still was unsubdued. And when the angel met him on his way, And half in earnest, half in jest, would say, Sternly, though tenderly, that he might feel The velvet scabbard held a sword of steel, "Art thou the king?" the passion of his woe Burst from him in resistless overflow. And lifting high his forehead, he would fling The haughty answer back, "I am, I am the king!" Almost three years were ended, when there came Ambassadors of great repute and name From Valmond, Emperor of Allemaine, Unto King Robert, saying that Pope Urbane By letter summoned them forthwith to come On Holy Thursday to his City of Rome. The angel with great joy received his guests, And gave them presents of embroidered vests, And velvet mantles with rich ermine lined, And rings and jewels of the rarest kind. Then he departed with them o'er the sea Into the lovely land of Italy, Whose loveliness was more resplendent made By the mere passing of that cavalcade With plumes, and cloaks, and housings, and the stir Of jeweled bridle and of golden spur. And lo! among the menials, in mock state, Upon a piebald steed, with shambling gait, His cloak of foxtails flapping in the wind, The solemn ape demurely perched behind, King Robert rode, making huge merriment In all the country towns through which they went. The Pope received them with great pomp, and blare Of bannered trumpets, on St. Peter's Square, Giving his benediction and embrace, Fervent, and full of apostolic grace. While with congratulations and with prayers He entertained the angel unawares, Robert, the jester, bursting through the crowd, Into their presence rushed, and cried aloud: "I am the king! Look and behold in me Robert, your brother, King of Sicily! This man, who wears my semblance to your eyes, Is an impostor in a king's disguise. Do you not know me? Does no voice within Answer my cry, and say we are akin?" The Pope in silence, but with troubled mien, Gazed at the angel's countenance serene; The Emperor, laughing, said, "It is strange sport To keep a mad man for thy fool at court!" And the poor, baffled jester, in disgrace Was hustled back among the populace. In solemn state the holy week went by, And Easter Sunday gleamed upon the sky; The presence of the angel, with its light, Before the sun rose, made the city bright, And with new fervor filled the hearts of men, Who felt that Christ indeed had risen again. Even the jester, on his bed of straw, With haggard eyes the unwonted splendor saw; He felt within a power unfelt before, And kneeling humbly on his chamber floor, He heard the rustling garments of the Lord Sweep through the silent air, ascending heavenward. And now the visit ending, and once more Valmond returning to the Danube's shore, Homeward the angel journeyed, and again The land was made resplendent with his train, Flashing along the towns of Italy Unto Salerno, and from thence by sea. And when once more within Palermo's wall, And, seated on the throne in his great hall, He heard the Angelus from convent towers, As if the better world conversed with ours, He beckoned to King Robert to draw nigher, And with a gesture bade the rest retire. And when they were alone, the angel said, "Art thou the king?" Then, bowing down his head, King Robert crossed both hands upon his breast, And meekly answered him, "Thou knowest best! My sins as scarlet are; let me go hence, And in some cloister's school of penitence, Across those stones that pave the way to heaven Walk barefoot till my guilty soul be shriven!" The angel smiled, and from his radiant face A holy light illumined all the place, And through the open window, loud and clear, They heard the monks chant in the chapel near, Above the stir and tumult of the street, "He has put down the mighty from their seat, And has exalted them of low degree!" And through the chant a second melody Rose like the throbbing of a single string: "I am an angel, and thou art the king!" King Robert, who was standing near the throne, Lifted his eyes, and lo! he was alone! But all appareled as in days of old, With ermined mantle and with cloth of gold; And when his courtiers came they found him there, Kneeling upon the floor, absorbed in silent prayer. _H.W. Longfellow._ The Huskers It was late in mild October, and the long autumnal rain Had left the summer harvest-fields all green with grass again; The first sharp frosts had fallen, leaving all the woodlands gay With the hues of summer's rainbow, or the meadow-flowers of May. Through a thin, dry mist, that morning, the sun rose broad and red, At first a rayless disk of fire, he brightened as he sped; Yet, even his noontide glory fell chastened and subdued, On the cornfields and the orchards, and softly pictured wood. And all that quiet afternoon, slow sloping to the night, He wove with golden shuttle the haze with yellow light; Slanting through the painted beeches, he glorified the hill; And beneath it, pond and meadow lay brighter, greener still. And shouting boys in woodland haunts caught glimpses of that sky, Flecked by the many-tinted leaves, and laughed, they knew not why; And schoolgirls, gay with aster-flowers, beside the meadow brooks, Mingled the glow of autumn with the sunshine of sweet looks. From spire and ball looked westerly the patient weathercock, But even the birches on the hill stood motionless as rocks. No sound was in the woodlands, save the squirrel's dropping shell, And the yellow leaves among the boughs, low rustling as they fell. The summer grains were harvested; the stubble-fields lay dry, Where June winds rolled, in light and shade, the pale green waves of rye; But still, on gentle hill-slopes, in valleys fringed with wood, Ungathered, bleaching in the sun, the heavy corn crop stood. Bent low, by autumn's wind and rain, through husks that, dry and sere, Unfolded by their ripened charge, shone out the yellow ear; Beneath, the turnip lay concealed, in many a verdant fold, And glistened in the slanting light the pumpkin's sphere of gold. There wrought the busy harvesters; and many a creaking wain Bore slowly to the long barn-floor its load of husk and grain; Till broad and red, as when he rose, the sun sank down, at last, And like a merry guest's farewell, the day in brightness passed. And lo! as through the western pines on meadow, stream, and pond, Flamed the red radiance of a sky, set all afire beyond, Slowly o'er the eastern sea-bluffs a milder glory shone, And the sunset and the moonrise were mingled into one! As thus into the quiet night the twilight lapsed away, And deeper in the brightening moon the tranquil shadows lay; From many a brown old farm-house, and hamlet without name, Their milking and their home-tasks done, the merry huskers came. Swung o'er the heaped-up harvest, from pitchforks in the mow, Shone dimly down the lanterns on the pleasant scene below; The growing pile of husks behind, the golden ears before, And laughing eyes and busy hands and brown cheeks glimmering o'er. Half hidden in a quiet nook, serene of look and heart, Talking their old times over, the old men sat apart; While, up and down the unhusked pile, or nestling in its shade, At hide-and-seek, with laugh and shout, the happy children played. Urged by the good host's daughter, a maiden young and fair, Lifting to light her sweet blue eyes and pride of soft brown hair, The master of the village school, sleek of hair and smooth of tongue, To the quaint tune of some old psalm, a husking-ballad sung. _John G. Whittier._ Darius Green and His Flying Machine If ever there lived a Yankee lad, Wise or otherwise, good or bad, Who, seeing the birds fly, didn't jump With flapping arms from stake or stump, Or, spreading the tail Of his coat for a sail, Take a soaring leap from post or rail, And wonder why He couldn't fly, And flap and flutter and wish and try-- If ever you knew a country dunce Who didn't try that as often as once, All I can say is, that's a sign He never would do for a hero of mine. An aspiring genius was D. Green: The son of a farmer,--age fourteen; His body was long and lank and lean,-- Just right for flying, as will be seen; He had two eyes, each bright as a bean, And a freckled nose that grew between, A little awry,--for I must mention That he had riveted his attention Upon his wonderful invention, Twisting his tongue as he twisted the strings, Working his face as he worked the wings, And with every turn of gimlet and screw Turning and screwing his mouth round, too, Till his nose seemed bent To catch the scent, Around some corner, of new-baked pies, And his wrinkled cheeks and his squinting eyes Grew puckered into a queer grimace, That made him look very droll in the face, And also very wise. And wise he must have been, to do more Than ever a genius did before, Excepting Daedalus of yore And his son Icarus, who wore Upon their backs Those wings of wax He had read of in the old almanacs. Darius was clearly of the opinion That the air is also man's dominion, And that, with paddle or fin or pinion, We soon or late Shall navigate The azure as now we sail the sea. The thing looks simple enough to me; And if you doubt it, Hear how Darius reasoned about it. "Birds can fly, An' why can't I? Must we give in," Says he with a grin, "'T the bluebird an' phoebe Are smarter'n we be? Jest fold our hands an' see the swaller, An' blackbird an' catbird beat us holler? Does the leetle, chatterin', sassy wren, No bigger'n my thumb, know more than men? Jest show me that! Er prove 't the bat Has got more brains than's in my hat, An' I'll back down, an' not till then!" He argued further: "Ner I can't see What's ta' use o' wings to a bumblebee, Fer to git a livin' with, more'n to me;-- Ain't my business Important's his'n is? That Icarus Was a silly cuss,-- Him an' his daddy Daedalus. They might 'a' knowed wings made o' wax Wouldn't stan' sun-heat an' hard whacks. I'll make mine o' luther, Er suthin' er other." And he said to himself, as he tinkered and planned: "But I ain't goin' to show my hand To mummies that never can understand The fust idee that's big an' grand. They'd 'a' laft an' made fun O' Creation itself afore't was done!" So he kept his secret from all the rest Safely buttoned within his vest; And in the loft above the shed Himself he locks, with thimble and thread And wax and hammer and buckles and screws, And all such things as geniuses use;-- Two bats for patterns, curious fellows! A charcoal-pot and a pair of bellows; An old hoop-skirt or two, as well as Some wire and several old umbrellas; A carriage-cover, for tail and wings; A piece of harness; and straps and strings; And a big strong boxs In which he locks These and a hundred other things. His grinning brothers, Reuben and Burke And Nathan and Jotham and Solomon, lurk Around the corner to see him work,-- Sitting cross-legged, like a Turk, Drawing the waxed end through with a jerk, And boring the holes with a comical quirk Of his wise old head, and a knowing smirk. But vainly they mounted each other's backs, And poked through knot-holes and pried through cracks; With wood from the pile and straw from the stacks He plugged the knot-holes and calked the cracks; And a bucket of water, which one would think He had brought up into the loft to drink When he chanced to be dry, Stood always nigh, For Darius was sly! And whenever at work he happened to spy At chink or crevice a blinking eye, He let a dipper of water fly. "Take that! an' ef ever ye get a peep, Guess ye'll ketch a weasel asleep!" And he sings as he locks His big strong box:-- "The weasel's head is small an' trim, An' he is leetle an' long an' slim, An' quick of motion an' nimble of limb, An' ef yeou'll be Advised by me Keep wide awake when ye're ketchin' him!" So day after day He stitched and tinkered and hammered away, Till at last 'twas done,-- The greatest invention under the sun! "An' now," says Darius, "hooray fer some fun!" 'Twas the Fourth of July, And the weather was dry, And not a cloud was on all the sky, Save a few light fleeces, which here and there, Half mist, half air, Like foam on the ocean went floating by: Just as lovely a morning as ever was seen For a nice little trip in a flying-machine. Thought cunning Darius: "Now I sha'n't go Along 'ith the fellers to see the show. I'll say I've got sich a terrible cough! An' then, when the folks 'ave all gone off I'll hev full swing For to try the thing, An' practyse a leetle on the wing." "Ain't goin' to see the celebration?" Says Brother Nate. "No; botheration! I've got sich a cold--a toothache--I-- My gracious!--feel's though I should fly!" Said Jotham, "Sho! Guess ye better go." But Darius said, "No! Shouldn't wonder 'f yeou might see me, though, 'Long 'bout noon, ef I git red O' this jumpin', thumpin' pain 'n my head." For all the while to himself he said:-- "I'll tell ye what! I'll fly a few times around the lot, To see how 't seems, then soon's I've got The hang o' the thing, ez likely's not, I'll astonish the nation, And all creation, By flyin' over the celebration! Over their heads I'll sail like an eagle; I'll balance myself on my wings like a sea-gull; I'll dance on the chimbleys; I'll stan' on the steeple; I'll flop up to winders an' scare the people! I'll light on the libbe'ty-pole, an' crow; An' I'll say to the gawpin' fools below, 'What world's this 'ere That I've come near?' Fer I'll make 'em believe I'm a chap f'm the moon! An' I'll try a race 'ith their ol' bulloon." He crept from his bed; And, seeing the others were gone, he said, I'm a-gittin' over the cold 'n my head." And away he sped, To open the wonderful box in the shed. His brothers had walked but a little way When Jotham to Nathan chanced to say, "What on airth is he up to, hey?" "Don'o,--the' 's suthin' er other to pay, Er he wouldn't 'a' stayed to hum to-day." Says Burke, "His toothache's all 'n his eye! _He_ never'd miss a Fo'th-o'-July, Ef he hedn't some machine to try. Le's hurry back and hide in the barn, An' pay him fer tellin' us that yarn!" "Agreed!" Through the orchard they creep back, Along by the fences, behind the stack, And one by one, through a hole in the wall, In under the dusty barn they crawl, Dressed in their Sunday garments all; And a very astonishing sight was that, When each in his cobwebbed coat and hat Came up through the floor like an ancient rat. And there they hid; And Reuben slid The fastenings back, and the door undid. "Keep dark!" said he, "While I squint an' see what the' is to see." As knights of old put on their mail,-- From head to foot An iron suit, Iron jacket and iron boot, Iron breeches, and on the head No hat, but an iron pot instead, And under the chin the bail,-- I believe they called the thing a helm; And the lid they carried they called a shield; And, thus accoutred, they took the field, Sallying forth to overwhelm The dragons and pagans that plagued the realm:-- So this modern knight Prepared for flight, Put on his wings and strapped them tight; Jointed and jaunty, strong and light; Buckled them fast to shoulder and hip,-- Ten feet they measured from tip to tip! And a helm had he, but that he wore, Not on his head like those of yore, But more like the helm of a ship. "Hush!" Reuben said, "He's up in the shed! He's opened the winder,--I see his head! He stretches it out, An' pokes it about, Lookin' to see 'f the coast is clear, An' nobody near;-- Guess he don'o' who's hid in here! He's riggin' a spring-board over the sill! Stop laffin', Solomon! Burke, keep still! He's a climbin' out now--of all the things! What's he got on? I van, it's wings! An' that t'other thing? I vum, it's a tail! An' there he sets like a hawk on a rail! Steppin' careful, he travels the length Of his spring-board, and teeters to try its strength. Now he stretches his wings, like a monstrous bat; Peeks over his shoulder, this way an' that, Fer to see 'f the' 's anyone passin' by; But the' 's on'y a ca'f an' a goslin' nigh. _They_ turn up at him a wonderin' eye, To see--The dragon! he's goin' to fly! Away he goes! Jimmmy! what a jump! Flop-flop-an' plump To the ground with a thump! Flutt'rin an' flound'rin', all in a lump!" As a demon is hurled by an angel's spear, Heels over head, to his proper sphere,-- Heels over head, and head over heels, Dizzily down the abyss he wheels,-- So fell Darius. Upon his crown, In the midst of the barnyard, he came down, In a wonderful whirl of tangled strings, Broken braces and broken springs, Broken tail and broken wings, Shooting-stars, and various things! Away with a bellow fled the calf, And what was that? Did the gosling laugh? 'Tis a merry roar From the old barn-door, And he hears the voice of Jotham crying, "Say, D'rius! how de yeou like flyin'? Slowly, ruefully, where he lay, Darius just turned and looked that way, As he stanched his sorrowful nose with his cuff. "Wall, I like flyin' well enough," He said; "but the' ain't sich a thunder-in' sight O' fun in 't when ye come to light." MORAL I just have room for the moral here: And this is the moral,--Stick to your sphere. Or if you insist, as you have the right, On spreading your wings for a loftier flight, The moral is,--Take care how you light. _John T. Trowbridge._ Song of the Shirt With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat, in unwomanly rags, Plying her needle and thread-- Stitch! stitch! stitch! In poverty, hunger and dirt, And still with a voice of dolorous pitch She sang the "Song of the Shirt!" "Work! work! work! While the cock is crowing aloof! And work--work--work, Till the stars shine through the roof! It's oh! to be a slave Along with the barbarous Turk, Where a woman has never a soul to save, If this is Christian work! "Work--work--work, Till the brain begins to swim; Work--work--work, Till the eyes are heavy and dim! Seam, and gusset, and band, Band, and gusset, and seam, Till over the buttons I fall asleep, And sew them on in a dream! "O men, with sisters dear! O men, with mothers and wives! It is not linen you're wearing out, But human creatures' lives! Stitch--stitch--stitch! In poverty, hunger, and dirt,-- Sewing at once, with a double thread, A shroud as well as a shirt! "But why do I talk of Death,-- That phantom of grisly bone? I hardly fear his terrible shape, It seems so like my own,-- It seems so like my own, Because of the fasts I keep; O God! that bread should be so dear, And flesh and blood so cheap! "Work! work! work! My labor never flags; And what are its wages? A bed of straw, A crust of bread--and rags, That shattered roof--this naked floor-- A table--a broken chair-- And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank For sometimes falling there! "Work--work--work! From weary chime to chime! Work--work--work As prisoners work for crime! Band, and gusset, and seam, Seam, and gusset, and band,-- Till the heart is sick and the brain benumbed, As well as the weary hand. "Work--work--work! In the dull December light! And Work--work--work! When the weather is warm, and bright! While underneath the eaves The brooding swallows cling, As if to show me their sunny backs, And twit me with the spring. "Oh, but to breathe the breath Of the cowslip and primrose sweet,-- With the sky above my head, And the grass beneath my feet! For only one short hour To feel as I used to feel, Before I knew the woes of want And the walk that costs a meal! "Oh, but for one short hour,-- A respite, however brief! No blessed leisure for love or hope, But only time for grief! A little weeping would ease my heart; But in their briny bed My tears must stop, for every drop Hinders needle and thread!" With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat, in unwomanly rags, Plying her needle and thread,-- Stitch! stitch! stitch! In poverty, hunger and dirt; And still with a voice of dolorous pitch-- Would that its tone could reach the rich!-- She sang this "Song of the Shirt." _Thomas Hood._ Christmas Everywhere Everywhere, everywhere, Christmas to-night! Christmas in lands of the fir-tree and pine, Christmas in lands of the palm-tree and vine, Christmas where snow-peaks stand solemn and white, Christmas where corn-fields lie sunny and bright, Everywhere, everywhere, Christmas to-night! Christmas where children are hopeful and gay, Christmas where old men are patient and gray, Christmas where peace, like a dove in its flight, Broods o'er brave men in the thick of the fight; Everywhere, everywhere, Christmas tonight! For the Christ-child who comes is the Master of all, No palace too great and no cottage too small, The angels who welcome Him sing from the height: "In the city of David, a King in his might." Everywhere, everywhere, Christmas tonight! Then let every heart keep its Christmas within, Christ's pity for sorrow, Christ's hatred of sin, Christ's care for the weakest, Christ's courage for right, Christ's dread of the darkness, Christ's love of the light. Everywhere, everywhere, Christmas tonight! So the stars of the midnight which compass us round Shall see a strange glory, and hear a sweet sound, And cry, "Look! the earth is aflame with delight, O sons of the morning, rejoice at the sight." Everywhere, everywhere, Christmas tonight! _Philllips Brooks._ The Cloud I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noon-day dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, As she dances about the sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under, And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder. I sift the snow on the mountains below, And their great pines groan aghast; And all the night 'tis my pillow white, While I sleep in the arms of the blast. Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers, Lightning my pilot sits, In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, It struggles and howls at fits; Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion, This pilot is guiding me, Lured by the love of the genii that move In the depths of the purple sea; Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, Over the lakes and the plains, Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, The Spirit he loves remains; And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, Whilst he is dissolving in rains. The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes, And his burning plumes outspread, Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, When the morning star shines dead; As on the jag of a mountain crag, Which an earthquake rocks and swings, An eagle alit one moment may sit In the light of its golden wings. And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath, Its ardors of rest and of love, And the crimson pall of eve may fall From the depth of heaven above, With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest, As still as a brooding dove. That orbed maiden, with white fire laden, Whom mortals call the moon, Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor, By the midnight breezes strewn; And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, Which only the angels hear, May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, The stars peep behind her and peer; And I laugh to see them whirl and flee, Like a swarm of golden bees, When I widen the rent in my windbuilt tent, Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, Like strips of the sky fallen thro' me on high, Are each paved with the moon and these. I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone, And the moon's with a girdle of pearl; The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim, When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, Over a torrent sea, Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof, The mountains its columns be. The triumphal arch thro' which I march, With hurricane, fire, and snow, When the powers of the air are chained to my chair, Is the million-colored bow; The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove, Whilst the moist earth was laughing below. I am the daughter of earth and water, And the nursling of the sky; I pass thro' the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die. For after the rain, when, with never a stain The pavilion of heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again, _Percy Bysshe Shelley._ To a Skylark Hail to thee, blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert, That from heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. In the golden lightning of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are bright'ning, Thou dost float and run, Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. The pale purple even Melts around thy flight; Like a star of heaven, In the broad daylight Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight: Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear. Until we hardly see, we feel, that it is there. All the earth and air With thy voice is loud, As, when night is bare, From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed. What thou art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see, As from thy presence showers a rain of melody:-- Like a poet hidden In the light of thought, Singing hymns unbidden, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: Like a high-born maiden In a palace-tower, Soothing her love-laden Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower: Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aerial hue Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view: Like a rose embowered In its own green leaves, By warm winds deflowered, Till the scent it gives Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves: Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain-awakened flowers, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. Chorus Hymeneal, Or triumphal chaunt, Matched with thine would be all But an empty vaunt, A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains? What shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? With thy clear keen joyance Languor cannot be: Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee: Thou lovest: but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. Waking or asleep, Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? We look before and after And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. Yet if we could scorn Hate, and pride, and fear; If we were things born Not to a shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures That in books are found. Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow, The world should listen then, as I am listening now, _Percy Bysshe Shelley._ The Brook I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally, And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down a valley. By thirty hills I hurry down, Or slip between the ridges, By twenty thorps, a little town, And half a hundred bridges. Till last by Philip's farm I flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever. I chatter over stony ways, In little sharps and trebles, I bubble into eddying bays, I babble on the pebbles. With many a curve my banks I fret By many a field and fallow, And many a fairy foreland set With willow-weed and mallow. I chatter, chatter as I flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever. I wind about, and in and out, With here a blossom sailing, And here and there a lusty trout, And here and there a grayling, And here and there a foamy flake Upon me as I travel With many a silvery waterbreak Above the golden gravel, And draw them all along, and flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever. I steal by lawns and grassy plots, I slide by hazel covers; I move the sweet forget-me-nots That grow for happy lovers. I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance, Among my skimming swallows; I make the netted sunbeam dance Against my sandy shallows. I murmur under moon and stars, In brambly wildernesses; I linger by my shingly bars; I loiter round my cresses; And out again I curve and flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever. _Alfred, Lord Tennyson._ June (_From "The Vision of Sir Launfal"_) No price is set on the lavish summer, June may be had by the poorest comer. And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays; Whether we look, or whether we listen, We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; Every clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers, And, groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; The flush of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in meadows green, The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean To be some happy creature's palace; The little bird sits at his door in the sun, Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, And lets his illumined being o'errun With the deluge of summer it receives; His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings; He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,-- In the nice ear of Nature, which song is the best? Now is the high-tide of the year, And whatever of life hath ebbed away Comes flooding back, with a ripply cheer, Into every bare inlet and creek and bay; Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, We are happy now because God wills it; No matter how barren the past may have been, 'T is enough for us now that the leaves are green; We sit in the warm shade and feel right well How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell; We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing That skies are clear and grass is growing; The breeze comes whispering in our ear, That dandelions are blossoming near, That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, That the river is bluer than the sky, That the robin is plastering his house hard by; And if the breeze kept the good news back, For other couriers we should not lack; We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing,-- And hark! how clear bold chanticleer, Warmed with the new wine of the year, Tells all in his lusty crowing! Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how; Everything is happy now, Everything is upward striving; 'T is as easy now for the heart to be true As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,-- 'T is the natural way of living. Who knows whither the clouds have fled? In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake, And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, The heart forgets its sorrow and ache; The soul partakes the season's youth, And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. _James Russell Lowell._ The Planting of the Apple-Tree Come, let us plant the apple-tree. Cleave the tough greensward with the spade; Wide let its hollow bed be made; There gently lay the roots, and there Sift the dark mould with kindly care. And press it o'er them tenderly, As round the sleeping infant's feet We softly fold the cradle-sheet; So plant we the apple tree. What plant we in this apple-tree? Buds, which the breath of summer days Shall lengthen into leafy sprays; Boughs where the thrush with crimson breast Shall haunt, and sing, and hide her nest; We plant, upon the sunny lea, A shadow for the noontide hour, A shelter from the summer shower, When we plant the apple-tree. What plant we in this apple-tree? Sweets for a hundred flowery springs, To load the May-wind's restless wings, When, from the orchard row, he pours Its fragrance through our open doors; A world of blossoms for the bee, Flowers for the sick girl's silent room, For the glad infant sprigs of bloom, We plant with the apple-tree. What plant we in this apple-tree? Fruits that shall swell in sunny June, And redden in the August noon, And drop, when gentle airs come by, That fan the blue September sky. While children come, with cries of glee, And seek them where the fragrant grass Betrays their bed to those who pass, At the foot of the apple tree. And when, above this apple tree, The winter stars are quivering bright, And winds go howling through the night, Girls, whose young eyes o'erflow with mirth, Shall peel its fruit by cottage hearth, And guests in prouder homes shall see, Heaped with the grape of Cintra's vine, And golden orange of the Line, The fruit of the apple-tree. The fruitage of this apple-tree Winds, and our flag of stripe and star Shall bear to coasts that lie afar, Where men shall wonder at the view, And ask in what fair groves they grew; And sojourners beyond the sea Shall think of childhood's careless day And long, long hours of summer play, In the shade of the apple-tree. Each year shall give this apple-tree A broader flush of roseate bloom, A deeper maze of verdurous gloom, And loosen, when the frost-clouds lower, The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower. The years shall come and pass, but we Shall hear no longer, where we lie, The summer's songs, the autumn's sigh, In the boughs of the apple-tree. And time shall waste this apple tree. Oh, when its aged branches throw Thin shadows on the ground below, Shall fraud and force and iron will Oppress the weak and helpless still? What shall the tasks of mercy be, Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears Of those who live when length of years Is wasting this apple-tree? "Who planted this old apple-tree?" The children of that distant day Thus to some aged man shall say; And, gazing on its mossy stem, The gray-haired man shall answer them: "A poet of the land was he, Born in the rude but good old times; 'Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes On planting the apple-tree." _William Cullen Bryant._ Character of the Happy Warrior Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he That every man in arms should wish to be? --It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought: Whose high endeavors are an inward light That makes the path before him always bright: Who, with a natural instinct to discern What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn; Abides by this resolve, and stops not there, But makes his moral being his prime care; Who, doomed to go in company with Pain, And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train! Turns his necessity to glorious gain; In face of these doth exercise a power Which is our human nature's highest dower; Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves Of their bad influence, and their good receives: By objects, which might force the soul to abate Her feeling, rendered more compassionate; Is placable--because occasions rise So often that demand such sacrifice; More skillful in self-knowledge, even more pure, As tempted more; more able to endure, As more exposed to suffering and distress; Thence also, more alive to tenderness. --'Tis he whose law is reason; who depends Upon that law as on the best of friends; Whence, in a state where men are tempted still To evil for a guard against worse ill, And what in quality or act is best Doth seldom on a right foundation rest, He labors good on good to fix, and owes To virtue every triumph that he knows: --Who, if he rise to station of command, Rises by open means; and there will stand On honorable terms, or else retire, And in himself possess his own desire; Who comprehends his trust, and to the same Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim; And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait For wealth, or honors, or for worldly state; Whom they must follow; on whose head must fall, Like showers of manna, if they come at all; Whose powers shed round him in the common strife, Or mild concerns of ordinary life, A constant influence, a peculiar grace; But who, if he be called upon to face Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined Great issues, good or bad for human kind, Is happy as a Lover; and attired With sudden brightness, like a Man inspired; And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw; Or if an unexpected call succeed, Come when it will, is equal to the need: --He who, though thus endued as with a sense And faculty for storm and turbulence, Is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes; Sweet images! which, wheresoe'er he be, Are at his heart; and such fidelity It is his darling passion to approve; More brave for this, that he hath much to love:-- 'Tis, finally, the Man who lifted high, Conspicuous object in a Nation's eye, Or left unthought-of in obscurity,-- Who, with a toward or untoward lot, Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not-- Plays, in the many games of life, that one Where what he most doth value must be won: Whom neither shape of danger can dismay, Nor thought of tender happiness betray; Who, not content that former worth stand fast, Looks forward, persevering to the last, From well to better, daily self-surpast: Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth Forever, and to noble deeds give birth, Or he must fall, to sleep without his fame, And leave a dead unprofitable name-- Finds comfort in himself and in his cause; And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause: This is the happy Warrior; this is He That every Man in arms should wish to be. _William Wordsworth._ The Charge of the Light Brigade Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. "Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns," he said: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. "Forward, the Light Brigade!" Was there a man dismay'd? Not tho' the soldier knew Some one had blunder'd: Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them Volley'd and thunder'd; Storm'd at with shot and shell, Boldly they rode and well, Into the jaws of Death, Into the mouth of Hell Rode the six hundred, Flash'd all their sabres bare, Flash'd as they turn'd in air, Sabring the gunners there, Charging an army, while All the world wonder'd: Plung'd in the battery-smoke Right thro' the line they broke; Cossack and Russian Reel'd from the sabre-stroke Shatter'd and sunder'd. Then they rode back, but not,-- Not the six hundred. Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon behind them Volley'd and thunder'd; Storm'd at with shot and shell, While horse and hero fell, They that had fought so well Came thro' the jaws of Death, Back from the mouth of Hell, All that was left of them, Left of six hundred. When can their glory fade? O the wild charge they made! All the world wonder'd. Honor the charge they made! Honor the Light Brigade, Noble six hundred! _Alfred, Lord Tennyson._. Sheridan's Ride October 19, 1864 Up from the South at break of day, Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay, The affrighted air with a shudder bore, Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain's door, The terrible grumble, and rumble, and roar, Telling the battle was on once more, And Sheridan--twenty miles away. And wider still those billows of war Thundered along the horizon's bar; And louder yet into Winchester rolled The roar of that red sea uncontrolled, Making the blood of the listener cold As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray, And Sheridan--twenty miles away. But there is a road from Winchester town, A good broad highway leading down; And there, through the flush of the morning light, A steed, as black as the steeds of night, Was seen to pass, as with eagle flight; As if he knew the terrible need, He stretched away with the utmost speed; Hills rose and fell--but his heart was gay, With Sheridan fifteen miles away. Still sprung from those swift hoofs, thundering South, The dust, like smoke from the cannon's mouth; Or the trail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster, Foreboding to foemen the doom of disaster. The heart of the steed and the heart of the master Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls, Impatient to be where the battle-field calls; Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play, With Sheridan only ten miles away. Under his spurning feet the road Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed, And the landscape sped away behind Like an ocean flying before the wind; And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace ire, Swept on, with his wild eyes full of fire. But lo! he is nearing his heart's desire-- He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray, With Sheridan only five miles away. The first that the General saw were the groups Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops. What was done? what to do? a glance told him both, Then striking his spurs, with a terrible oath, He dashed down the line 'mid a storm of huzzas, And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because The sight of the master compelled it to pause. With foam and with dust the black charger was gray; By the flash of his eye and the red nostril's play He seemed to the whole great army to say, "I have brought you Sheridan all the way From Winchester down to save the day!" Hurrah, hurrah for Sheridan! Hurrah, hurrah for horse and man! And when their statues are placed on high, Under the dome of the Union sky-- The American soldier's Temple of Fame-- There, with the glorious General's name, Be it said in letters both bold and bright: "Here is the steed that saved the day, By carrying Sheridan into the fight, From Winchester--twenty miles away!" _Thomas Buchanan Read._ O Little Town of Bethlehem O little town of Bethlehem, How still we see thee lie! Above thy deep and dreamless sleep The silent stars go by; Yet in thy dark streets shineth The everlasting Light; The hopes and fears of all the years Are met in thee to-night. For Christ is born of Mary, And, gathered all above, While mortals sleep, the angels keep Their watch of wondering love. O morning stars, together Proclaim the holy birth! And praises sing to God the King, And peace to men on earth. How silently, how silently, The wondrous gift is given! So God imparts to human hearts The blessings of His heaven. No ear may hear His coming, But in this world of sin, Where meek souls will receive Him still, The dear Christ enters in. O holy Child of Bethlehem! Descend to us, we pray; Cast out our sin, and enter in, Be born in us to-day. We hear the Christmas angels The great glad tidings tell; Oh, come to us, abide with us, Our Lord Emmanuel! _Phillips Brooks._ The Chambered Nautilus This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main,-- The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; Wrecked is the ship of pearl! And every chambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed,-- Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed! Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap, forlorn! From thy dead lips a clearer note is born Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn! While on mine ear it rings, Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:-- Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! _Oliver Wendell Holmes._ Nobility True worth is in _being_, not _seeming_,-- In doing, each day that goes by, Some little good--not in dreaming Of great things to do by and by. For whatever men say in their blindness, And spite of the fancies of youth, There's nothing so kingly as kindness, And nothing so royal as truth. We get back our mete as we measure-- We cannot do wrong and feel right, Nor can we give pain and gain pleasure, For justice avenges each slight. The air for the wing of the sparrow, The bush for the robin and wren, But alway the path that is narrow And straight, for the children of men. 'Tis not in the pages of story The heart of its ills to beguile, Though he who makes courtship to glory Gives all that he hath for her smile. For when from her heights he has won her, Alas! it is only to prove That nothing's so sacred as honor, And nothing so loyal as love! We cannot make bargains for blisses, Nor catch them like fishes in nets; And sometimes the thing our life misses Helps more than the thing which it gets. For good lieth not in pursuing, Nor gaining of great nor of small, But just in the doing, and doing As we would be done by, is all. Through envy, through malice, through hating, Against the world, early and late, No jot of our courage abating-- Our part is to work and to wait. And slight is the sting of his trouble Whose winnings are less than his worth; For he who is honest is noble, Whatever his fortunes or birth. _Alice Cary._ The Wind Who has seen the wind? Neither I nor you: But when the leaves hang trembling, The wind is passing through. Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I: But when the trees bow down their heads, The wind is passing by. _Christina G. Rosetti._ The Owl and The Pussy-Cat The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea In a beautiful pea-green boat; They took some honey, and plenty of money, Wrapped up in a five-pound note. The Owl looked up to the moon above And sang to a small guitar, "O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love! What a beautiful Pussy you are,-- You are, What a beautiful Pussy you are!" Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl! How wonderful sweet you sing! Oh, let us be married,--too long we have tarried,-- But what shall we do for a ring?" They sailed away for a year and a day To the land where the Bong-tree grows, And there in a wood, a piggy-wig stood With a ring in the end of his nose,-- His nose, With a ring in the end of his nose. "Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling Your ring?" Said the Piggy, "I will." So they took it away, and were married next day By the turkey who lives on the hill. They dined upon mince and slices of quince Which they ate with a runcible spoon, And hand in hand on the edge of the sand They danced by the light of the moon,-- The moon, They danced by the light of the moon. _Edward Lear._ The Frost The Frost looked forth one still, clear night, And whispered, "Now I shall be out of sight; So through the valley and over the height In silence I'll take my way. I will not go on like that blustering train, The wind and the snow, the hail and the rain, That make so much bustle and noise in vain, But I'll be as busy as they!" So he flew to the mountain, and powdered its crest; He lit on the trees, and their boughs he drest In diamond beads--and over the breast Of the quivering lake he spread A coat of mail, that it need not fear The downward point of many a spear That he hung on its margin, far and near, Where a rock could rear its head. He went to the windows of those who slept, And over each pane like a fairy crept; Wherever he breathed, wherever he stepped, By the light of the morn were seen Most beautiful things; there were flowers and trees; There were bevies of birds and swarms of bees; There were cities with temples and towers; and these All pictured in silver sheen! But he did one thing that was hardly fair,-- He peeped in the cupboard, and finding there That all had forgotten for him to prepare, "Now, just to set them a-thinking, I'll bite this basket of fruit," said he; "This costly pitcher I'll burst in three; And the glass of water they've left for me Shall 'tchick!' to tell them I'm drinking!" _Hannah F. Gould._ The Corn Song Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard! Heap high the golden corn! No richer gift has Autumn poured From out her lavish horn! Let other lands, exulting, glean The apple from the pine, The orange from its glossy green, The cluster from the vine; We better love the hardy gift Our rugged vales bestow, To cheer us when the storm shall drift Our harvest-fields with snow. Through vales of grass and meads of flowers, Our plows their furrows made, While on the hills the sun and showers Of changeful April played. We dropped the seed o'er hill and plain, Beneath the sun of May, And frightened from our sprouting grain The robber crows away. All through the long, bright days of June, Its leaves grew green and fair, And waved in hot midsummer's noon Its soft and yellow hair. And now, with Autumn's moonlit eyes, Its harvest time has come, We pluck away the frosted leaves And bear the treasure home. There, richer than the fabled gift Apollo showered of old, Fair hands the broken grain shall sift, And knead its meal of gold. Let vapid idlers loll in silk, Around their costly board; Give us the bowl of samp and milk, By homespun beauty poured! Where'er the wide old kitchen hearth Sends up its smoky curls, Who will not thank the kindly earth, And bless our farmer girls! Then shame on all the proud and vain, Whose folly laughs to scorn The blessing of our hardy grain, Our wealth of golden corn! Let earth withhold her goodly root, Let mildew blight her rye, Give to the worm the orchard's fruit, The wheat-field to the fly: But let the good old crop adorn The hills our fathers trod; Still let us, for His golden corn, Send up our thanks to God! _John G. Whittier._ On His Blindness When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide, Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest He, returning, chide; "Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?" I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need Either man's work or His own gifts. Who best Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest; They also serve who only stand and wait." _John Milton._ A Boy's Song Where the pools are bright and deep, Where the gray trout lies asleep, Up the river and o'er the lea, That's the way for Billy and me. Where the blackbird sings the latest, Where the hawthorn blooms the sweetest, Where the nestlings chirp and flee. That's the way for Billy and me. Where the mowers mow the cleanest, Where the hay lies thick and greenest; There to trace the homeward bee, That's the way for Billy and me. Where the hazel bank is steepest, Where the shadow falls the deepest, Where the clustering nuts fall free, That's the way for Billy and me. Why the boys should drive away Little sweet maidens from their play, Or love to banter and fight so well, That's the thing I never could tell. But this I know, I love to play, Through the meadow, among the hay, Up the water and o'er the lea, That's the way for Billy and me. _James Hogg._ November The leaves are fading and falling, The winds are rough and wild, The birds have ceased their calling, But let me tell you, my child, Though day by day, as it closes, Doth darker and colder grow, The roots of the bright red roses Will keep alive in the snow. And when the winter is over, The boughs will get new leaves, The quail come back to the clover, And the swallow back to the eaves. There must be rough, cold weather, And winds and rains so wild; Not all good things together Come to us here, my child. So, when some dear joy loses Its beauteous summer glow, Think how the roots of the roses Are kept alive in the snow. _Alice Gary._ Little Birdie What does little birdie say, In her nest at peep of day? "Let me fly," says little birdie-- "Mother, let me fly away." "Birdie, rest a little longer, Till the little wings are stronger." So she rests a little longer, Then she flies away. What does little baby say In her bed at peep of day? Baby says, like little birdie, "Let me rise and fly away." "Baby, sleep a little longer, Till the little limbs are stronger. If she sleeps a little longer, Baby, too, shall fly away." _Alfred, Lord Tennyson._ The Fairies Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren't go a-hunting For fear of little men; Wee folk, good folk, Trooping all together; Green jacket, red cap, And white owl's feather! Down along the rocky shore Some make their home; They live on crispy pancakes Of yellow tide foam; Some in the reeds Of the black mountain-lake, With frogs for their watch dogs, All night awake. High on the hill-top The old King sits; He is now so old and gray He's nigh lost his wits. With a bridge of white mist Columbkill he crosses, On his stately journeys From Slieveleague to Rosses; Or going up with music On cold, starry nights, To sup with the Queen Of the gay Northern Lights. By the craggy hillside, Through the mosses bare, They have planted thorn trees For pleasure here and there; Is any man so daring, As dig them up in spite? He shall find their sharpest thorns In his bed at night. Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren't go a-hunting For fear of little men; Wee folk, good folk, Trooping all together; Green jacket, red cap, And white owl's feather, _William Allingham._ The Wonderful World Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful World, With the wonderful water round you curled, And the wonderful grass upon your breast, World, you are beautifully drest. The wonderful air is over me. And the wonderful wind is shaking the tree-- It walks on the water, and whirls the mills, And talks to itself on the top of the hills. You friendly Earth, how far do you go, With the wheat-fields that nod and the rivers that flow, With cities and gardens, and cliffs and isles, And people upon you for thousands of miles? Ah! you are so great, and I am so small, I hardly can think of you, World, at all; And yet, when I said my prayers today, A whisper within me seemed to say: "You are more than the Earth, though you are such a dot! You can love and think, and the Earth can not." _William Brighty Rands._ Be Strong Be strong! We are not here to play, to dream, to drift; We have hard work to do, and loads to lift; Shun not the struggle--face it; 'tis God's gift. Be strong! Say not, "The days are evil. Who's to blame?" And fold the hands and acquiesce--oh shame! Stand up, speak out, and bravely, in God's name. Be strong! It matters not how deep intrenched the wrong. How hard the battle goes, the day how long; Faint not--fight on! To-morrow comes the song. _Maltbie Davenport Babcock._ Song: The Owl When cats run home and light is come, And dew is cold upon the ground, And the far-off stream is dumb, And the whirring sail goes round, And the whirring sail goes round, Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits. When merry milkmaids click the latch, And rarely smells the new-mown hay, And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch Twice or thrice his roundelay, Twice or thrice his roundelay; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits. _Alfred, Lord Tennyson._ Opportunity Master of human destinies am I! Fame, love and fortune on my footsteps wait. Cities and fields I walk: I penetrate Deserts and fields remote, and, passing by Hovel and mart and palace, soon or late I knock unbidden once at every gate! If sleeping, wake: if feasting, rise before I turn away. It is the hour of fate, And they who follow me reach every state Mortals desire, and conquer every foe Save death; but those who doubt or hesitate, Condemned to failure, penury and woe, Seek me in vain and uselessly implore-- I answer not, and I return no more. _John J. Ingalls._ Opportunity They do me wrong who say I come no more When once I knock and fail to find you in; For every day I stand outside your door And bid you wake and rise to fight and win. Wail not for precious chances passed away! Weep not for golden ages on the wane! Each night I burn the records of the day; At sunrise every soul is born again. Laugh like a boy at splendors that have sped; To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb; My judgments seal the dead past with its dead, But never bind a moment yet to come. Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep; I lend an arm to all who say: "I can!" No shamefac'd outcast ever sank so deep But yet might rise and be again a man. Dost thou behold thy lost youth all aghast? Dost reel from righteous retribution's blow? Then turn from blotted archives of the past And find the future's pages white as snow! Art thou a mourner? Rouse thee from thy spell; Art thou a sinner? Sins may be forgiven! Each morning gives thee wings to flee from hell; Each night a star to guide thy feet to Heaven. _Walter Malone._ Sweet and Low (_From "The Princess"_) Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow, Wind of the western sea! Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon, and blow, Blow him again to me; While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps. Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, Father will come to thee soon; Rest, rest, on mother's breast, Father will come to thee soon; Father will come to his babe in the nest, Silver sails all out of the west Under the silver moon; Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep. _Alfred, Lord Tennyson._ The Barefoot Boy Blessings on thee, little man, Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan! With thy turned-up pantaloons, And thy merry whistled tunes; With thy red lip, redder still Kissed by strawberries on the hill; With the sunshine on thy face, Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace: From, my heart I give thee joy,-- I was once a barefoot boy! Prince thou art,--the grown-up man Only is republican. Let the million-dollared ride! Barefoot, trudging at his side, Thou hast more than he can buy In the reach of ear and eye,-- Outward sunshine, inward joy: Blessings on thee, barefoot boy! O for boyhood's painless play, Sleep that wakes in laughing day, Health that mocks the doctor's rules, Knowledge never learned of schools, Of the wild bee's morning chase, Of the wild-flower's time and place. Flight of fowl and habitude Of the tenants of the wood; How the tortoise bears his shell, How the woodchuck digs his cell, And the ground-mole sinks his well; How the robin feeds her young, How the oriole's nest is hung; Where the whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries grow, Where the groundnut trails its vine, Where the wood-grape's clusters shine; Of the black wasp's cunning way, Mason of his walls of clay, And the architectural plans Of gray hornet artisans!-- For, eschewing books and tasks, Nature answers all he asks; Hand in hand with her he walks, Face to face with her he talks, Part and parcel of her joy,-- Blessings on the barefoot boy! O for boyhood's time of June, Crowding years in one brief moon, When all things I heard or saw, Me, their master, waited for. I was rich in flowers and trees, Humming-birds and honey-bees; For my sport the squirrel played, Plied the snouted mole his spade; For my taste the blackberry cone Purpled over hedge and stone; Laughed the brook for my delight Through the day and through the night Whispering at the garden wall, Talked with me from fall to fall; Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond, Mine the walnut slopes beyond, Mine, on bending orchard trees, Apples of Hesperides! Still as my horizon grew, Larger grew my riches too; All the world I saw or knew Seemed a complex Chinese toy, Fashioned for a barefoot boy! O for festal dainties spread, Like my bowl of milk and bread,-- Pewter spoon and bowl of wood, On the door-stone, gray and rude! O'er me, like a regal tent, Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent, Purple-curtained, fringed with gold. Looped in many a wind-swung fold; While for music came the play Of the pied frogs' orchestra; And, to light the noisy choir, Lit the fly his lamp of fire. I was monarch: pomp and joy Waited on the barefoot boy! Cheerily, then, my little man, Live and laugh, as boyhood can! Though the flinty slopes be hard, Stubble-speared the new-mown sward, Every morn shall lead thee through Fresh baptisms of the dew; Every evening from thy feet Shall the cool wind kiss the heat: All too soon these feet must hide In the prison cells of pride, Lose the freedom of the sod, Like a colt's for work be shod, Made to tread the mills of toil, Up and down in ceaseless moil: Happy if their track be found Never on forbidden ground, Happy if they sink not in Quick and treacherous sands of sin. Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy, Ere it passes, barefoot boy! _John Greenleaf Whittier._ Polonius' Advice to Laertes (_From "Hamlet"_) There,--my blessing with you! And these few precepts in thy memory See thou character.--Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportion'd thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in, Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice: Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy: For the apparel oft proclaims the man. Neither a borrower nor a lender be, For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. _William Shakespeare._ A Fable The mountain and the squirrel Had a quarrel, And the former called the latter "Little Prig." Bun replied, "You are doubtless very big; But all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together, To make up a year And a sphere. And I think it no disgrace To occupy my place. If I'm not so large as you, You are not so small as I, And not half as spry. I'll not deny you make A very pretty squirrel track; Talents differ; all is well and wisely put; If I cannot carry forests on my back, Neither can you crack a nut." _Ralph Waldo Emerson._ Suppose Suppose, my little lady, Your doll should break her head, Could you make it whole by crying Till your eyes and nose are red? And wouldn't it be pleasanter To treat it as a joke, And say you're glad "'Twas Dolly's And not your head that broke"? Suppose you're dressed for walking, And the rain comes pouring down, Will it clear off any sooner Because you scold and frown? And wouldn't it be nicer For you to smile than pout, And so make sunshine in the house When there is none without? Suppose your task, my little man, Is very hard to get, Will it make it any easier For you to sit and fret? And wouldn't it be wiser Than waiting like a dunce, To go to work in earnest And learn the thing at once? Suppose that some boys have a horse, And some a coach and pair, Will it tire you less while walking To say, "It isn't fair"? And wouldn't it be nobler To keep your temper sweet, And in your heart be thankful You can walk upon your feet? And suppose the world don't please you, Nor the way some people do, Do you think the whole creation Will be altered just for you? And isn't it, my boy or girl, The wisest, bravest plan, Whatever comes, or doesn't come, To do the best you can? _Phoebe Cary._ I Like Little Pussy I like little Pussy, Her coat is so warm; And if I don't hurt her She'll do me no harm. So I'll not pull her tail, Nor drive her away, But Pussy and I Very gently will play; She shall sit by my side, And I'll give her some food; And she'll love me because I am gentle and good. I'll pat little Pussy, And then she will purr, And thus show her thanks For my kindness to her; I'll not pinch her ears, Nor tread on her paw, Lest I should provoke her To use her sharp claw; I never will vex her, Nor make her displeased, For Pussy don't like To be worried or teased. _Jane Taylor._ Thanksgiving-Day Over the river and through the wood, To Grandfather's house we go; The horse knows the way To carry the sleigh Through the white and drifted snow. Over the river and through the wood,-- Oh, how the wind does blow! It stings the toes, And bites the nose, As over the ground we go. Over the river and through the wood, Trot fast, my dapple gray! Spring over the ground, Like a hunting hound, For this is Thanksgiving-Day. Over the river and through the wood, And straight through the barnyard gate! We seem to go Extremely slow,-- It is so hard to wait! Over the river and through the wood; Now Grandmother's cap I spy! Hurrah for the fun! Is the pudding done? Hurrah for the pumpkin pie! _Lydia Maria Child._ Daffodils I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay; Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they Outdid the sparkling waves in glee; A poet could not but be gay In such a jocund company; I gazed--and gazed--but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought. For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. _William Wordsworth._ To a Butterfly I've watched you now a full half-hour, Self-poised upon that yellow flower; And, little Butterfly! indeed I know not if you sleep or feed. More motionless! and then How motionless!--not frozen seas What joy awaits you, when the breeze Hath found you out among the trees, And calls you forth again; This plot of orchard-ground is ours; My trees they are, my Sister's flowers; Here rest your wings when they are weary; Here lodge as in a sanctuary! Come often to us, fear no wrong; Sit near us on the bough! We'll talk of sunshine and of song, And summer days when we were young; Sweet childish days, that were as long As twenty days are now. _William Wordsworth._ To The Fringed Gentian Thou blossom bright with autumn dew, And colored with the heaven's own blue, That openest when the quiet light Succeeds the keen and frosty night, Thou comest not when violets lean O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen, Or columbines, in purple dressed, Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest. Thou waitest late and com'st alone, When woods are bare and birds are flown, And frosts and shortening days portend The aged Year is near his end. Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye Look through its fringes to the sky, Blue--blue--as if that sky let fall A flower from its cerulean wall. I would that thus, when I shall see The hour of death draw near to me, Hope, blossoming within my heart, May look to heaven as I depart. _William Cullen Bryant._ The Song of the Camp "Give us a song!" the soldiers cried, The outer trenches guarding, When the heated guns of the camps allied Grew weary of bombarding. The dark Redan, in silent scoff, Lay, grim and threatening, under; And the tawny mound of the Malakoff No longer belched its thunder. There was a pause. A guardsman said, "We storm the forts to-morrow; Sing while we may, another day Will bring enough of sorrow." They lay along the battery's side Below the smoking cannon: Brave hearts, from Severn and from Clyde, And from the banks of Shannon. They sang of love, and not of fame; Forgot was Britain's glory: Each heart recalled a different name, But all sang "Annie Laurie." Voice after voice caught up the song, Until its tender passion Rose like an anthem, rich and strong,-- Their battle-eve confession. Dear girl, her name he dared not speak, But, as the song grew louder, Something upon the soldier's cheek Washed off the stains of powder. Beyond the darkening ocean burned The bloody sunset's embers, While the Crimean valleys learned How English love remembers. And once again a fire of hell Rained on the Russian quarters, With scream of shot, and burst of shell, And bellowing of the mortars! And Irish Nora's eyes are dim For a singer, dumb and gory; And English Mary mourns for him Who sang of "Annie Laurie." Sleep, soldiers! still in honored rest Your truth and valor wearing: The bravest are the tenderest,-- The loving are the daring. _Bayard Taylor._ She Walks in Beauty She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies. One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impaired the nameless grace Which waves in every raven tress, Or softly lightens o'er her face; Where thoughts serenely sweet express How pure, how dear their dwelling-place. And on that cheek, and o'er that brow, So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, The smiles that win, the tints that glow, But tell of days in goodness spent, A mind at peace with all below, A heart whose love is innocent! _Lord Byron._ The Builders All are architects of Fate, Working in these walls of Time; Some with massive deeds and great, Some with ornaments of rhyme. Nothing useless is, or low; Each thing in its place is best; And what seems but idle show Strengthens and supports the rest. For the structure that we raise, Time is with materials filled; Our to-days and yesterdays Are the blocks with which we build. Truly shape and fashion these; Leave no yawning gaps between; Think not, because no man sees, Such things will remain unseen. In the elder days of Art, Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part; For the Gods see everywhere. Let us do our work as well, Both the unseen and the seen! Make the house, where Gods may dwell, Beautiful, entire, and clean. Else our lives are incomplete, Standing in these walls of Time, Broken stairways, where the feet Stumble as they seek to climb. Build to-day, then, strong and sure, With a firm and ample base; And ascending and secure Shall to-morrow find its place. Thus alone can we attain To those turrets, where the eye Sees the world as one vast plain, And one boundless reach of sky. _Henry W. Longfellow._ The Brown Thrush There's a merry brown thrush sitting up in the tree, He's singing to me! He's singing to me! And what does he say, little girl, little boy? "Oh, the world's running over with joy! Don't you hear? don't you see? Hush! Look! In my tree, I'm as happy as happy can be!" And the brown thrush keeps singing, "A nest do you see, And five eggs hid by me in the juniper tree? Don't meddle! don't touch! little girl, little boy, Or the world will lose some of its joy! Now I'm glad! now I'm free! And I always shall be, If you never bring sorrow to me." So the merry brown thrush sings away in the tree, To you and to me, to you and to me; And he sings all the day, little girl, little boy, "Oh, the world's running over with joy; But long it won't be, Don't you know? don't you see? Unless we are as good as can be!" _Lucy Larcom._ The Quality of Mercy (_From, "The Merchant of Venice"_) The quality of mercy is not strain'd. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice bless'd: It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown. His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway; It is enthroned in the hearts of kings; It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God's When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, Though justice be thy plea, consider this, That, in the course of justice, none of us Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy; And that same prayer doth teach us all to render The deeds of mercy. _William Shakespeare._ Don't Give Up If you've tried and have not won, Never stop for crying; All's that's great and good is done Just by patient trying. Though young birds, in flying, fall, Still their wings grow stronger; And the next time they can keep Up a little longer. Though the sturdy oak has known Many a blast that bowed her, She has risen again, and grown Loftier and prouder. If by easy work you beat, Who the more will prize you? Gaining victory from defeat,-- That's the test that tries you! _Phoebe Cary._ Incident of the French Camp You know we French stormed Ratisbon: A mile or so away On a little mound, Napoleon Stood on our storming-day; With neck out-thrust, you fancy how, Legs wide, arms locked behind, As if to balance the prone brow, Oppressive with its mind. Just as perhaps he mused, "My plans That soar, to earth may fall, Let once my army-leader Lannes Waver at yonder wall,"-- Out 'twixt the battery-smokes there flew A rider, bound on bound Full-galloping; nor bridle drew Until he reached the mound. Then off there flung in smiling joy, And held himself erect By just his horse's mane, a boy: You hardly could suspect-- (So tight he kept his lips compressed, Scarce any blood came through) You looked twice ere you saw his breast Was all but shot in two. "Well," cried he, "Emperor, by God's grace We've got you Ratisbon! The Marshall's in the market-place, And you'll be there anon To see your flag-bird flap his vans Where I, to heart's desire, Perched him!" The chief's eye flashed; his plans Soared up again like fire. The chief's eye flashed; but presently Softened itself, as sheathes A film the mother-eagle's eye When her bruised eaglet breathes; "You're wounded!" "Nay," his soldier's pride Touched to the quick, he said: "I'm killed, Sire!" And his chief beside, Smiling, the boy fell dead. _Robert Browning._ The Bugle Song (_From "The Princess"_) The splendor falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story: The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. O hark, O hear! how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, farther going! O sweet and far from cliff and scar[A] The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying: Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. O love, they die in yon rich sky, They faint on hill or field or river: Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow for ever and for ever. Blow bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying. _Alfred, Lord Tennyson._ [Footnote A: Scar, a deep bank.] A Child's Thought of God They say that God lives very high; But if you look above the pines You cannot see our God; and why? And if you dig down in the mines, You never see him in the gold, Though from Him all that's glory shines. God is so good, He wears a fold Of heaven and earth across His face, Like secrets kept for love untold. But still I feel that His embrace Slides down by thrills through all things made, Through sight and sound of every place; As if my tender mother laid On my shut lips her kisses' pressure, Half waking me at night, and said, "Who kissed you through the dark, dear guesser?" _Elizabeth Barrett Browning._ The Blue and The Gray By the flow of the inland river, Where the fleets of iron have fled, Where the blades of grave grass quiver, Asleep are the ranks of the dead; Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment day-- Under the one, the Blue; Under the other, the Gray. These in the robings of glory, Those in the gloom of defeat, All, with the battle blood gory, In the dusk of eternity meet; Under the sod and the dew,-- Waiting the judgment day-- Under the laurel, the Blue; Under the willow, the Gray. From the silence of sorrowful hours The desolate mourners go, Lovingly laden with flowers Alike for the friend and the foe; Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment day-- Under the roses, the Blue; Under the lilies, the Gray. So with an equal splendor The morning sun-rays fall, With a touch impartially tender, On the blossoms blooming for all; Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment day-- 'Broidered with gold, the Blue; Mellowed with gold, the Gray. So, when the summer calleth, On forest and field of grain With an equal murmur falleth The cooling drip of the rain; Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment day-- Wet with the rain, the Blue; Wet with the rain, the Gray. Sadly, but not with upbraiding, The generous deed was done; In the storm of the years that are fading. No braver battle was won; Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment day-- Under the blossoms, the Blue; Under the garlands, the Gray. No more shall the war-cry sever, Or the winding rivers be red; They banish our anger forever When they laurel the graves of our dead! Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment day-- Love and tears for the Blue; Tears and love for the Gray. _Francis Miles Finch._ Good Night and Good Morning A fair little girl sat under a tree, Sewing as long as her eyes could see, Then smoothed her work, and folded it right, And said, "Dear work, good night, good night!" Such a number of rooks came over her head, Crying "Caw, caw," on their way to bed; She said, as she watched their curious flight, "Little black things, good night, good night!" The horses neighed, and the oxen lowed, The sheep's "bleat, bleat" came over the road, And all seemed to say, with a quiet delight, "Good little girl, good night, good night!" She did not say to the sun "Good night," Tho' she saw him there like a ball of light; For she knew he had God's own time to keep All over the world, and never could sleep. The tall pink foxglove bowed his head, The violets curtseyed and went to bed; And good little Lucy tied up her hair, And said, on her knees, her favorite prayer. And, while on her pillow she softly lay, She knew nothing more till again it was day; And all things said to the beautiful sun, "Good morning, good morning, our work is begun!" _Lord Houghton._ Lady Moon "Lady Moon, Lady Moon, where are you roving?" "Over the sea." "Lady Moon, Lady Moon, whom are you loving?" "All that love me." "Are you not tired with rolling and never Resting to sleep? Why look so pale and so sad, as for ever Wishing to weep?" "Ask me not this, little child, if you love me; You are too bold I must obey my dear Father above me, And do as I'm told." "Lady Moon, Lady Moon, where are you roving?" "Over the sea." "Lady Moon, Lady Moon, whom are you loving?" "All that love me." _Lord Houghton._ Breathes There the Man With Soul So Dead? _(From "The Lay of the Last Minstrel")_ Breathes there the man with soul so dead Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land? Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned, As home his footsteps he hath turned From wandering on a foreign strand? If such there breathe, go, mark him well; For him no minstrel raptures swell; High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,-- Despite those titles, power, and pelf, The wretch, concentred all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust from whence he sprung, Unwept, unhonored and unsung. _Sir Walter Scott._ Pippa's Song The year's at the spring, And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in His heaven-- All's right with the world! _Robert Browning._ Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star Twinkle, twinkle, little star; How I wonder what you are! Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky. When the glorious sun is set, When the grass with dew is wet, Then you show your little light, Twinkle, twinkle, all the night. In the dark blue sky you keep, And often through my curtains peep; For you never shut your eye Till the sun is in the sky. As your bright and tiny spark Lights the traveler in the dark, Though I know not what you are, Twinkle, twinkle, little star. _Jane Taylor._ Crossing the Bar Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea, But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home. Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark; For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crost the bar. _Alfred, Lord Tennyson._ The Tree The Tree's early leaf buds were bursting their brown; "Shall I take them away?" said the Frost, sweeping down. "No, leave them alone Till the blossoms have grown," Prayed the Tree, while he trembled from rootlet to crown. The Tree bore his blossoms, and all the birds sung: "Shall I take them away?" said the Wind, as he swung, "No, leave them alone Till the blossoms have grown," Said the Tree, while his leaflets quivering hung. The Tree bore his fruit in the midsummer glow: Said the child, "May I gather thy berries now?" "Yes, all thou canst see: Take them; all are for thee," Said the Tree, while he bent down his laden boughs low. _Bjorrstjerne Bjornson._ The Fountain Into the sunshine, Full of the light, Leaping and flashing From morn till night; Into the moonlight, Whiter than snow, Waving so flower-like When the winds blow; Into the starlight Rushing in spray, Happy at midnight, Happy by day; Ever in motion, Blithesome and cheery, Still climbing heavenward, Never aweary; Glad of all weathers, Still seeming best, Upward or downward, Motion thy rest; Full of a nature Nothing can tame, Changed every moment, Ever the same; Ceaseless aspiring, Ceaseless content, Darkness or sunshine Thy element; Glorious fountain, Let my heart be Fresh, changeful, constant, Upward, like thee! _James Russell Lowell._ The Leak in the Dike The good dame looked from her cottage At the close of the pleasant day, And cheerily called to her little son, Outside the door at play: "Come, Peter, come! I want you to go, While there is light to see. To the hut of the blind old man who lives Across the dike, for me; And take these cakes I made for him-- They are hot and smoking yet; You have time enough to go and come Before the sun is set." Then the good-wife turned to her labor, Humming a simple song, And thought of her husband, working hard At the sluices all day long; And set the turf a-blazing, And brought the coarse black bread, That he might find a fire at night And find the table spread. And Peter left the brother With whom all day he had played, And the sister who had watched their sports In the willow's tender shade; And told them they'd see him back before They saw a star in sight, Though he wouldn't be afraid to go In the very darkest night! For he was a brave, bright fellow, With eye and conscience clear; He could do whatever a boy might do, And he had not learned to fear. Why, he wouldn't have robbed a bird's nest, Nor brought a stork to harm, Though never a law in Holland Had stood to stay his arm! And now with his face all glowing, And eyes as bright as the day With the thoughts of his pleasant errand, He trudged along the way; And soon his joyous prattle Made glad a lonesome place-- Alas! if only the blind old man, Could have seen that happy face! Yet he somehow caught the brightness Which his voice and presence lent; And he felt the sunshine come and go As Peter came and went. And now, as the day was sinking, And the winds began to rise, The mother looked from her door again, Shading her anxious eyes, And saw the shadows deepen And birds to their homes come back, But never a sign of Peter Along the level track. But she said, "He will come at morning, So I need not fret nor grieve-- Though it isn't like my boy at all To stay without my leave." But where was the child delaying? On the homeward way was he, Across the dike while the sun was up An hour above the sea. He was stopping now to gather flowers, Now listening to the sound, As the angry waters dashed themselves Against their narrow bound. "Ah! well for us," said Peter, "That the gates are good and strong, And my father tends them carefully, Or they would not hold you long! You're a wicked sea," said Peter," "I know why you fret and chafe; You would like to spoil our lands and homes, But our sluices keep you safe! But hark! Through the noise of waters Comes a low, clear, trickling sound; And the child's face pales with terror, And his blossoms drop to the ground, He is up the bank in a moment, And, stealing through the sand, He sees a stream not yet so large As his slender, childish hand. 'Tis a leak in the dike! He is but a boy, Unused to fearful scenes; But, young as he is, he has learned to know The dreadful thing that means. A leak in the dike! The stoutest heart Grows faint that cry to hear, And the bravest man in all the land Turns white with mortal fear; For he knows the smallest leak may grow To a flood in a single night; And he knows the strength of the cruel sea When loosed in its angry might. And the boy! He has seen the danger And shouting a wild alarm, He forces back the weight of the sea With the strength of his single arm! He listens for the joyful sound Of a footstep passing nigh; And lays his ear to the ground, to catch The answer to his cry. And he hears the rough winds blowing, And the waters rise and fall, But never an answer comes to him Save the echo of his call. He sees no hope, no succor, His feeble voice is lost; Yet what shall he do but watch and wait, Though he perish at his post! So, faintly calling and crying Till the sun is under the sea; Crying and moaning till the stars Come out for company; He thinks of his brother and sister, Asleep in their safe warm bed; He thinks of his father and mother, Of himself as dying--and dead; And of how, when the night is over, They must come and find him at last; But he never thinks he can leave the place Where duty holds him fast. The good dame in the cottage Is up and astir with the light, For the thought of her little Peter Has been with her all night. And now she watches the pathway, As yester eve she had done; But what does she see so strange and black Against the rising sun? Her neighbors are bearing between them Something straight to her door; Her child is coming home, but not As he ever came before! "He is dead!" she cries, "my darling!" And the startled father hears. And comes and looks the way she looks, And fears the thing she fears; Till a glad shout from the bearers Thrills the stricken man and wife-- "Give thanks, for your son, has saved our land, And God has saved his life!" So, there in the morning sunshine They knelt about the boy; And every head was bared and bent In tearful, reverent joy. 'Tis many a year since then, but still, When the sea roars like a flood, Their boys are taught what a boy can do Who is brave and true and good; For every man in that country Takes his son by the hand, And tells him of little Peter Whose courage saved the land. They have many a valiant hero Remembered through the years; But never one whose name so oft Is named with loving tears; And his deed shall be sung by the cradle, And told to the child on the knee, So long as the dikes of Holland Divide the land from the sea! _Phoebe Cary._ Robert of Lincoln Merrily swinging on briar and weed, Near to the nest of his little dame, Over the mountain-side or mead, Robert of Lincoln is telling his name: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; Snug and safe is that nest of ours, Hidden among the summer flowers. Chee, chee, chee. Robert of Lincoln is gaily drest, Wearing a bright black wedding coat; White are his shoulders and white his crest, Hear him call in his merry note: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; Look, what a nice new coat is mine, Sure there was never a bird so fine. Chee, chee, chee. Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife, Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings, Passing at home a patient life, Broods in the grass while her husband sings: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; Brood, kind creature; you need not fear Thieves and robbers while I am here. Chee, chee, chee. Modest and shy as a nun is she; One weak chirp is her only note. Braggart and prince of braggarts is he, Pouring boasts from his little throat: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; Never was I afraid of man; Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you can. Chee, chee, chee. Six white eggs on a bed of hay, Flecked with purple, a pretty sight! There as the mother sits all day, Robert is singing with all his might: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; Nice, good wife, that never goes out, Keeping the house while I frolic about. Chee, chee, chee. Soon as the little ones chip the shell Six wide mouths are open for food; Robert of Lincoln bestirs him well, Gathering seeds for the hungry brood. Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; This new life is likely to be Hard for a gay young fellow like me. Chee, chee, chee. Robert of Lincoln at length is made Sober with work, and silent with care; Off is his holiday garment laid, Half forgotten that merry air, Bob-o'-link, Bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; Nobody knows but my mate and I Where our nest and our nestlings lie. Chee, chee, chee. Summer wanes; the children are grown; Fun and frolic no more he knows; Robert of Lincoln's a humdrum crone; Off he flies, and we sing as he goes: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; When you can pipe that merry old strain, Robert of Lincoln, come back again. Chee, chee, chee, _William Cullen Bryant._ Wishing Ring-Ting! I wish I were a Primrose, A bright yellow Primrose, blowing in the spring! The stooping boughs above me, The wandering bee to love me, The fern and moss to creep across, And the Elm tree for our king! Nay--stay! I wish I were an Elm tree, A great, lofty Elm tree, with green leaves gay! The winds would set them dancing, The sun and moonshine glance in, The birds would house among the boughs, And sweetly sing. Oh no! I wish I were a Robin, A Robin or a little Wren, everywhere to go; Through forest, field, or garden, And ask no leave or pardon, Till winter comes with icy thumbs To ruffle up our wing! Well--tell! Where should I fly to, Where go to sleep in the dark wood or dell? Before a day was over, Home comes the rover. For mother's kiss--sweeter this Than any other thing. _William Allingham._ The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O'er the grave where our hero we buried. We buried him darkly at dead of night, The sods with our bayonets turning; By struggling moonbeam's misty light, And the lantern dimly burning. No useless coffin enclosed his breast, Nor in sheet nor in shroud we wound him; But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him. Few and short were the prayers we said, And we spoke not a word of sorrow; But we steadfastly gazed on the face of the dead, And we bitterly thought of the morrow. We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed, And smoothed down his lonely pillow, That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head; And we far away on the billow! Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone, And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him; But little he'll reck; if they let him sleep on In the grave where a Briton has laid him. But half of our heavy task was done, When the clock tolled the hour for retiring; And we heard the distant and random gun That the foe was sullenly firing. Slowly and sadly we laid him down. From the field of his fame fresh and gory; We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone, But we left him alone with his glory! _Charles Wolfe._ How Many Seconds in a Minute? How many seconds in a minute? Sixty, and no more in it. How many minutes in an hour? Sixty for sun and shower. How many hours in a day? Twenty-four for work and play. How many days in a week? Seven both to hear and speak. How many weeks in a month? Four, as the swift moon runn'th. How many months in a year? Twelve, the almanack makes clear. How many years in an age? One hundred, says the sage. How many ages in time? No one knows the rhyme. _Christina G. Rossetti._ To-day Here hath been dawning another blue day: Think, wilt thou let it slip useless away? Out of Eternity this new day was born; Into Eternity, at night, will return. Behold it aforetime no eye ever did; So soon it forever from all eyes is hid. Here hath been dawning another blue day: Think, wilt thou let it slip useless away? _Thomas Carlyle._ The Wind and the Moon Said the Wind to the Moon, "I will blow you out. You stare In the air Like a ghost in a chair, Always looking what I am about; I hate to be watched--I will blow you out." The Wind blew hard, and out went the Moon. So deep, On a heap Of clouds, to sleep, Down lay the Wind, and slumbered soon-- Muttering low, "I've done for that Moon." He turned in his bed; she was there again! On high In the sky With her one clear eye, The Moon shone white and alive and plain. Said the Wind--"I will blow you out again." The Wind blew hard, and the Moon grew dim. "With my sledge And my wedge I have knocked off her edge! If only I blow right fierce and grim, The creature will soon be dimmer than dim." He blew and blew, and she thinned to a thread. "One puff More's enough To blow her to snuff! One good puff more where the last was bred, And glimmer, glimmer, glum will go the thread!" He blew a great blast, and the thread was gone; In the air Nowhere Was a moonbeam bare; Far off and harmless the shy stars shone; Sure and certain the Moon was gone. The Wind, he took to his revels once more; On down In town, Like a merry-mad clown, He leaped and halloed with whistle and roar, "What's that?" The glimmering thread once more! He flew in a rage--he danced and blew; But in vain Was the pain Of his bursting brain; For still the broader the Moon-scrap grew, The broader he swelled his big cheeks and blew. Slowly she grew--till she filled the night, And shone On her throne In the sky alone, A matchless, wonderful, silvery light, Radiant and lovely, the Queen of the Night. Said the Wind--"What a marvel of power am I! With my breath, Good faith! I blew her to death-- First blew her away right out of the sky-- Then blew her in; what a strength have I!" But the Moon, she knew nothing about the affair, For, high In the sky, With her one white eye Motionless, miles above the air, She had never heard the great Wind blare. _George Macdonald._ The Little Plant In the heart of a seed, Buried deep, so deep, A dear little plant Lay fast asleep! "Wake!" said the sunshine, "And creep to the light!" "Wake!" said the voice Of the raindrop bright. The little plant heard And it rose to see What the wonderful Outside world might be. _Kate L. Brown._ Paul Revere's Ride Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year. He said to his friend, "If the British march By land or sea from the town tonight, Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch Of the North Church tower, as a signal light,-- One, if by land, and two, if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm, For the country folk to be up and to arm." Then he said, "Good-night"; and with muffled oar Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, Just as the moon rose over the bay, Where, swinging wide at her moorings, lay The Somerset, British man-of-war, A phantom ship, with each mast and spar Across the moon like a prison bar, And a huge black hulk, that was magnified By its own reflection in the tide. Meanwhile, his friend through alley and street Wanders and watches with eager ears, Till, in the silence around him, he hears The muster of men at the barrack door, The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet, And the measured tread of the grenadiers Marching down to their boats on the shore. Then he climbed to the tower of the old North Church, By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread, To the belfry chamber overhead, And startled the pigeons from their perch On the sombre rafters, that round him made Masses and moving shapes of shade; By the trembling ladder, steep and tall, To the highest window in the wall, Where he paused to listen, and look down A moment on the roofs of the town, And the moonlight flowing over all. Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead In their night encampment on the hill, Wrapped in silence so deep and still That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread, The watchful night wind, as it went, Creeping along from tent to tent, And seeming to whisper, "All is well!" A moment only he feels the spell Of the place and hour, and the secret dread Of the lonely belfry and the dead, For suddenly all his thoughts are bent On a shadowy something far away, Where the river widens to meet the bay, A line of black, that bends and floats On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats. Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride, Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere. Now he patted his horse's side, Now gazed on the landscape far and near, Then impetuous stamped the earth, And turned and tightened his saddle girth; But mostly he watched with eager search The belfry tower of the old North Church, As it rose above the graves on the hill, Lonely and spectral, and sombre and still. And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height A glimmer, and then a gleam of light! He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns, But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight A second lamp in the belfry burns. A harry of hoofs in a village street, A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark, And beneath from the pebbles, in passing, a spark Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet; That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light, The fate of a nation was riding that night; And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight, Kindled the land into flame with its heat. He has left the village and mounted the steep, And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep, Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides; And under the alders, that skirt its edge, Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge, Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides. It was twelve by the village clock When he crossed the bridge into Medford town. He heard the crowing of the cock, And the barking of the farmer's dog, And felt the damp of the river fog, That rises after the sun goes down. It was one by the village clock When he galloped into Lexington, He saw the gilded weathercock Swim in the moonlight as he passed, And the meeting house windows, blank and bare, Gaze at him with a spectral glare As if they already stood aghast At the bloody work they would look upon. It was two by the village clock When he came to the bridge in Concord town. He heard the bleating of the flock, And the twittering of birds among the trees, And felt the breath of the morning breeze Blowing over the meadows brown. And one was safe and asleep in his bed Who at the bridge would be first to fall, Who that day would be lying dead, Pierced by a British musket ball. You know the rest. In the books you have read How the British regulars fired and fled-- How the farmers gave them ball for ball, From behind each fence and farmyard wall, Chasing the red coats down the lane, Then crossing the fields to emerge again Under the trees at the turn of the road, And only pausing to fire and load. So through the night rode Paul Revere; And so through the night went his cry of alarm To every Middlesex village and farm-- A cry of defiance, and not of fear-- A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, And a word that shall echo forever-more; For borne on the night wind of the past, Through all our history to the last, In the hour of darkness and peril and need, The people will waken and listen to hear The hurrying hoof beats of that steed, And the midnight message of Paul Revere. _Henry W. Longfellow._ In Flanders Fields In Flanders fields the poppies grow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly, Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved; and now we lie In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe! To you, from failing hands, we throw The torch. Be yours to hold it high! If ye break faith with us who die, We shall not sleep, though poppies blow In Flanders fields. _John McCrae._ In Flanders Fields: An Answer In Flanders fields the cannon boom And fitful flashes light the gloom, While up above, like eagles, fly The fierce destroyers of the sky; With stains the earth wherein you lie Is redder than the poppy bloom, In Flanders fields. Sleep on, ye brave. The shrieking shell, The quaking trench, the startled yell, The fury of the battle hell Shall wake you not; for all is well. Sleep peacefully; for all is well. Your flaming torch aloft we bear, With burning heart an oath we swear To keep the faith, to fight it through, To crush the foe, or sleep with you In Flanders fields. _C.B. Galbreath._ Little Boy Blue The little toy dog is covered with dust, But sturdy and stanch he stands; And the little toy soldier is red with rust, And his musket moulds in his hands. Time was when the little toy dog was new And the soldier was passing fair, And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue Kissed them and put them there. "Now, don't you go till I come," he said, "And don't you make any noise!" So toddling off to his trundle-bed He dreamt of the pretty toys. And as he was dreaming, an angel song Awakened our Little Boy Blue,-- Oh, the years are many, the years are long, But the little toy friends are true. Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand, Each in the same old place, Awaiting the touch of a little hand, The smile of a little face. And they wonder, as waiting these long years through, In the dust of that little chair, What has become of our little Boy Blue Since he kissed them and put them there. _Eugene Field._ Thanatopsis To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language; for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts Of the last bitter hoar come like a blight Over thy spirit, and sad images Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;-- Go forth, under the open sky, and list To Nature's teachings, while from all around-- Earth and her waters, and the depths of air,-- Comes a still voice--Yet a few days, and thee The all-beholding sun shall see no more In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground, Where thy pale form was laid with many tears. Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, And, lost each human trace, surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go To mix forever with the elements, To be a brother to the insensible rock And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould. Yet not to thine eternal resting-place Shalt thou retire alone--nor couldst thou wish Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings. The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good, Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills, Rock-ribbed, and ancient as the sun,--the vales Stretching in pensive quietness between; The venerable woods--rivers that move In majesty, and the complaining brooks That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste,-- Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, Are shining on the sad abodes of death, Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread The globe are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness, Or lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound, Save his own dashings--yet, the dead are there; And millions in those solitudes, since first The flight of years began, have laid them down In their last sleep--the dead reign there alone. So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw In silence from the living, and no friend Take note of thy departure? All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one as before will chase His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come And make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glide away, the sons of men,-- The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron, and maid, And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man,-- Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, By those who in their turn shall follow them. So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan which moves To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. _William Cullen Bryant._ The First Settler's Story It ain't the funniest thing a man can do-- Existing in a country when it's new; Nature, who moved in first--a good long while-- Has things already somewhat her own style, And she don't want her woodland splendors battered, Her rustic furniture broke up and scattered, Her paintings, which long years ago were done By that old splendid artist-king, the sun, Torn down and dragged in civilization's gutter, Or sold to purchase settlers' bread and butter. She don't want things exposed from porch to closet, And so she kind o' nags the man who does it. She carries in her pockets bags of seeds, As general agent of the thriftiest weeds; She sends her blackbirds, in the early morn, To superintend his fields of planted corn; She gives him rain past any duck's desire-- Then maybe several weeks of quiet fire; She sails mosquitoes--leeches perched on wings-- To poison him with blood-devouring stings; She loves her ague-muscle to display, And shake him up--say every other day; With, thoughtful, conscientious care she makes Those travelin' poison-bottles, rattlesnakes; She finds time, 'mongst her other family cares, To keep in stock good wild-cats, wolves, and bears. Well, when I first infested this retreat, Things to my view looked frightful incomplete; But I had come with heart-thrift in my song, And brought my wife and plunder right along; I hadn't a round trip ticket to go back, And if I had there wasn't no railroad track; And drivin' East was what I couldn't endure: I hadn't started on a circular tour. My girl-wife was as brave as she was good, And helped me every blessed way she could; She seemed to take to every rough old tree, As sing'lar as when first she took to me. She kep' our little log-house neat as wax, And once I caught her fooling with my axe. She learned a hundred masculine things to do: She aimed a shot-gun pretty middlin' true, Although in spite of my express desire, She always shut her eyes before she'd fire. She hadn't the muscle (though she _had_ the heart) In out-door work to take an active part; Though in our firm of Duty and Endeavor She wasn't no silent partner whatsoever. When I was logging, burning, choppin' wood, She'd linger round and help me all she could, And keep me fresh-ambitious all the while, And lifted tons just with her voice and smile. With no desire my glory for to rob, She used to stan' around and boss the job; And when first-class success my hands befell, Would proudly say, "_We_ did that pretty well!" She _was_ delicious, both to hear and see-- That pretty wife-girl that kep' house for me. Well, neighborhoods meant counties in those days; The roads didn't have accommodating ways; And maybe weeks would pass before she'd see-- And much less talk with--any one but me. The Indians sometimes showed their sun-baked faces, But they didn't teem with conversational graces; Some ideas from the birds and trees she stole, But 'twasn't like talking with a human soul; And finally I thought that I could trace A half heart-hunger peering from her face. Then she would drive it back and shut the door; Of course that only made me see it more. 'Twas hard to see her give her life to mine, Making a steady effort not to pine; 'Twas hard to hear that laugh bloom out each minute, And recognize the seeds of sorrow in it. No misery makes a close observer mourn Like hopeless grief with hopeful courage borne; There's nothing sets the sympathies to paining Like a complaining woman uncomplaining. It always draws my breath out into sighs To see a brave look in a woman's eyes. Well, she went on, as plucky as could be, Fighting the foe she thought I did not see, And using her heart-horticultural powers To turn that forest to a bed of flowers. You cannot check an unadmitted sigh, And so I had to soothe her on the sly, And secretly to help her draw her load; And soon it came to be an up-hill road. Hard work bears hard upon the average pulse, Even with satisfactory results; But when effects are scarce, the heavy strain Falls dead and solid on the heart and brain. And when we're bothered, it will oft occur We seek blame-timber; and I lit on her; And looked at her with daily lessening favor, For what I knew she couldn't help, to save her. And Discord, when he once had called and seen us, Came round quite often, and edged in between us. One night, when I came home unusual late, Too hungry and too tired to feel first-rate, Her supper struck me wrong (though I'll allow She hadn't much to strike with, anyhow); And when I went to milk the cows, and found They'd wandered from their usual feeding ground, And maybe'd left a few long miles behind 'em, Which I must copy, if I meant to find 'em, Flash-quick the stay-chains of my temper broke, And in a, trice these hot words I had spoke: "You ought to've kept the animals in view, And drove 'em in; you'd nothing else to do. The heft of all our life on me must fall; You just lie round and let me do it all." That speech--it hadn't been gone a half a minute Before I saw the cold black poison in it; And I'd have given all I had, and more, To've only safely got it back in-door. I'm now what most folks "well-to-do" would call I feel to-day as if I'd give it all, Provided I through fifty years might reach And kill and bury that half-minute speech. She handed back no words, as I could hear; She didn't frown; she didn't shed a tear; Half proud, half crushed, she stood and looked me o'er, Like some one she had never seen before! But such a sudden anguish-lit surprise I never viewed before in human eyes. (I've seen it oft enough since in a dream; It sometimes wakes me like a midnight scream.) Next morning, when, stone-faced, but heavy-hearted, With dinner pail and sharpened axe I started Away for my day's work--she watched the door. And followed me half way to it or more; And I was just a-turning round at this, And asking for my usual good-by kiss; But on her lip I saw a proudish curve, And in her eye a shadow of reserve; And she had shown--perhaps half unawares-- Some little independent breakfast airs; And so the usual parting didn't occur, Although her eyes invited me to her! Or rather half invited me, for she Didn't advertise to furnish kisses free; You always had--that is, I had--to pay Full market price, and go more'n half the way. So, with a short "Good-by," I shut the door, And left her as I never had before. But when at noon my lunch I came to eat. Put up by her so delicately neat-- Choicer, somewhat, than yesterday's had been, And some fresh, sweet-eyed pansies she'd put in-- "Tender and pleasant thoughts," I knew they meant-- It seemed as if her kiss with me she'd sent; Then I became once more her humble lover, And said, "To-night I'll ask forgiveness of her." I went home over-early on that eve, Having contrived to make myself believe, By various signs I kind o' knew and guessed, A thunder-storm was coming from the west. ('Tis strange, when one sly reason fills the heart, How many honest ones will take its part: A dozen first-class reasons said 'twas right That I should strike home early on that night.) Half out of breath, the cabin door I swung, With tender heart-words trembling on my tongue; But all within looked desolate and bare: My house had lost its soul,--she was not there! A penciled note was on the table spread, And these are something like the words it said: "The cows have strayed away again, I fear; I watched them pretty close; don't scold me, dear. And where they are, I think I nearly know: I heard the bell not very long ago.... I've hunted for them all the afternoon; I'll try once more--I think I'll find them soon. Dear, if a burden I have been to you, And haven't helped you as I ought to do. Let old-time memories my forgiveness plead; I've tried to do my best--I have indeed. Darling, piece out with love the strength I lack, And have kind words for me when I get back." Scarce did I give this letter sight and tongue-- Some swift-blown rain-drops to the window clung, And from the clouds a rough, deep growl proceeded: My thunder-storm had come, now 'twasn't needed. I rushed out-door. The air was stained with black: Night had come early, on the storm-cloud's back: And everything kept dimming to the sight, Save when the clouds threw their electric light; When for a flash, so clean-cut was the view, I'd think I saw her--knowing 'twas not true. Through my small clearing dashed wide sheets of spray, As if the ocean waves had lost their way; Scarcely a pause the thunder-battle made, In the bold clamor of its cannonade. And she, while I was sheltered, dry, and warm, Was somewhere in the clutches of this storm! She who, when storm-frights found her at her best, Had always hid her white face on my breast! My dog, who'd skirmished round me all the day, Now crouched and whimpering, in a corner lay; I dragged him by the collar to the wall, I pressed his quivering muzzle to a shawl-- "Track her, old boy!" I shouted; and he whined, Matched eyes with me, as if to read my mind, Then with a yell went tearing through the wood, I followed him, as faithful as I could. No pleasure-trip was that, through flood and flame; We raced with death: we hunted noble game. All night we dragged the woods without avail; The ground got drenched--we could not keep the trail, Three times again my cabin home I found, Half hoping she might be there, safe and sound; But each time 'twas an unavailing care: My house had lost its soul; she was not there! When, climbing--the wet trees, next morning-sun. Laughed at the ruin that the night had done, Bleeding and drenched, by toil and sorrow bent, Back to what used to be my home I went. But as I neared our little clearing-ground-- Listen!--I heard the cow-bell's tinkling sound. The cabin door was just a bit ajar; It gleamed upon my glad eyes like a star, "Brave heart," I said, "for such a fragile form! She made them guide her homeward through the storm!" Such pangs of joy I never felt before. "You've come!" I shouted and rushed through the door. Yes, she had come--and gone again. She lay With all her young life crushed and wrenched away-- Lay, the heart-ruins of oar home among, Not far from where I killed her with my tongue. The rain-drops glittered 'mid her hair's long strands, The forest thorns had torn her feet and hands, And 'midst the tears--brave tears--that one could trace Upon the pale but sweetly resolute face, I once again the mournful words could read, "I have tried to do my best--I have, indeed." And now I'm mostly done; my story's o'er; Part of it never breathed the air before. 'Tisn't over-usual, it must be allowed, To volunteer heart-history to a crowd, And scatter 'mongst them confidential tears, But you'll protect an old man with his years; And wheresoe'er this story's voice can reach, This is the sermon I would have it preach: Boys flying kites haul in their white-winged birds: You can't do that way when you're flying words. "Careful with fire," is good advice we know: "Careful with words," is ten times doubly so. Thoughts unexpressed may sometimes fall back dead, But God himself can't kill them when they're said! Yon have my life-grief: do not think a minute 'Twas told to take up time. There's business in it. It sheds advice: whoe'er will take and live it, Is welcome to the pain it cost to give it. _Will Carleton._ Seein' Things I ain't afeard uv snakes, or toads, or bugs, or worms, or mice, An' things 'at girls are skeered uv I think are awful nice! I'm pretty brave, I guess; an' yet I hate to go to bed, For, when I'm tucked up warm an' snug an' when my prayers are said, Mother tells me "Happy dreams!" and takes away the light, An' leaves me lying all alone an' seein' things at night! Sometimes they're in the corner, sometimes they're by the door, Sometimes they're all a-standin' in the middle uv the floor; Sometimes they are a-sittin' down, sometimes they're walkin' round So softly an' so creepylike they never make a sound! Sometimes they are as black as ink, an' other times they're white-- But the color ain't no difference when you see things at night! Once, when I licked a feller 'at had just moved on our street, An' father sent me up to bed without a bite to eat, I woke up in the dark an' saw things standin' in a row, A-lookin' at me cross-eyed an' p'intin' at me--so! Oh, my! I was so skeered that time I never slep' a mite-- It's almost alluz when I'm bad I see things at night! Lucky thing I ain't a girl, or I'd be skeered to death! Bein' I'm a boy, I duck my head an' hold my breath; An' I am, oh! so sorry I'm a naughty boy, an' then I promise to be better an' I say my prayers again! Gran'ma tells me that's the only way to make it right When a feller has been wicked an' sees things at night! An' so, when other naughty boys would coax me into sin, I try to skwush the Tempter's voice 'at urges me within; An' when they's pie for supper, or cakes 'at's big an' nice, I want to--but I do not pass my plate f'r them things twice! No, ruther let Starvation wipe me slowly out o' sight Than I should keep a-livin' on an' seein' things at night! _Eugene Field._ The Raggedy Man Oh, The Raggedy Man! He works fer Pa; An' he's the goodest man ever you saw! He comes to our house every day, An' waters the horses, an' feeds 'em hay; An' he opens the shed--an' we all ist laugh When he drives out our little old wobblely calf; An' nen--ef our hired girl says he can-- He milks the cows fer 'Lizabuth Ann.-- Ain't he a' awful good Raggedy Man? Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man! W'y, The Raggedy Man--he's ist so good, He splits the kindlin' an' chops the wood; An' nen he spades in our garden, too, An' does most things 'at _boys_ can't do.-- He clumbed clean up in our big tree An' shocked a' apple down fer me-- An' 'nother 'n', too, fer 'Lizabuth Ann-- An' 'nother 'n', too, fer The Raggedy Man.-- Ain't he a' awful kind Raggedy Man? Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man! An' The Raggedy Man one time say he Pick' roast' rambos from a' orchard-tree, An' et 'em--all ist roas' an' hot! An' it's so, too!--'cause a corn-crib got Afire one time an' all burn' down On "The Smoot Farm," 'bout four mile from town-- On "The Smoot Farm"! Yes--an' the hired han' 'At worked there nen 'uz The Raggedy Man! Ain't he the beanin'est Raggedy Man? Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man! The Raggedy Man's so good an' kind He'll be our "horsey," an' "Haw" an' mind Ever'thing 'at you make him do-- An' won't run off--'less you want him to! I drived him wunst 'way down our lane An' he got skeered, when it 'menced to rain, An' ist rared up an' squealed and run Purt' nigh away!--An' it's all in fun! Nen he skeered ag'in at a' old tin can. Whoa! y' old runaway Raggedy Man! Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man! An' The Raggedy Man, he knows most rhymes, An' tells 'em, ef I be good, sometimes: Knows 'bout Giants, an' Griffuns, an' Elves, An' the Squidgicum-Squees 'at swallers the'rselves! An', wite by the pump la our pasture-lot, He showed me the hole 'at the Wunks is got, 'At lives 'way deep in the ground, an' can Turn into me, er 'Lizabuth Ann! Er Ma, er Pa, er The Raggedy Man! Ain't he a funny old Raggedy Man? Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man! An' wunst when The Raggedy Man come late, An' pigs ist root' thue the garden-gate, He 'tend like the pigs 'uz bears an' said, "Old Bear-shooter'll shoot 'em dead!" An' race' an' chase' em, an' they'd ist run When he pint his hoe at 'em like it's a gun An' go "Bang!-Bang!" nen 'tend he stan' An' load up his gun ag'in! Raggedy Man! He's an old Bear-Shooter Raggedy Man! Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man! An' sometimes The Raggedy Man lets on We're little prince-children, an' old king's gone To get more money, an' lef us there-- And Robbers is ist thick ever'where; An' nen-ef we all won't cry, fer shore-- The Raggedy Man he'll come and "splore The Castul-halls," an' steal the "gold"-- And steal us, too, an' grab an' hold An' pack us off to his old "Cave"!-An' Haymow's the "Cave" o' The Raggedy Man!-- Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man! The Raggedy Man--one time, when he Wuz makin' a little bow-'n'-orry fer me, Says "When you're big like your Pa is, Air you go' to keep a fine store like his-- An' be a rich merchunt--an' wear fine clothes?-- Er what air you go' to be, goodness knows?" An' nen he laughed at 'Lizabuth Ann, An' I says "'M go' to be a Raggedy Man!-- I'm ist go' to be a nice Raggedy Man!" Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man! _James Whitcomb Riley._ Maud Muller Maud Muller, on a summer's day, Raked the meadow sweet with hay. Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth Of simple beauty and rustic health. Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee The mock-bird echoed from his tree. But when she glanced to the far-off town, White from its hill-slope looking down, The sweet song died, and a vague unrest And a nameless longing filled her breast,-- A wish, that she hardly dared to own, For something better than she had known. The Judge rode slowly down the lane, Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane. He drew his bridle in the shade Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid, And asked a draught from the spring that flowed Through the meadow across the road. She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up, And filled for him her small tin cup, And blushed as she gave it, looking down On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown. "Thanks!" said the Judge; "a sweeter draught From a fairer hand was never quaffed." He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees, Of the singing birds and the humming' bees; Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether The cloud in the west would bring foul weather. And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown, And her graceful ankles bare and brown; And listened, while a pleased surprise Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes. At last, like one who for delay Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away. Maud Muller looked and sighed: "Ah, me! That I the Judge's bride might be! "He would dress me up in silks so fine, And praise and toast me at his wine. "My father should wear a broadcloth coat; My brother should sail a painted boat. "I'd dress my mother, so grand and gay, And the baby should have a new toy each day. "And I'd feed the hungry and clothe the poor, And all should bless me who left our door." The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill, And saw Maud Muller standing still. "A form more fair, a face more sweet. Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet, "And her modest answer and graceful air Show her wise and good as she is fair. "Would she were mine, and I to-day, Like her, a harvester of hay: "No doubtful balance of rights and, wrongs Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues, "But low of cattle and song of birds, And health and quiet and loving words." But he thought of his sisters proud and cold, And his mother vain of her rank and gold. So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on, And Maud was left in the field alone. But the lawyers smiled that afternoon, When he hummed in court an old love-tune; And the young girl mused beside the well Till the rain on the unraked clover fell. He wedded a wife of richest dower, Who lived for fashion, as he for power. Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow, He watched a picture come and go; And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes Looked out in their innocent surprise. Oft, when the wine in his glass was red, He longed for the wayside well instead; And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms To dream of meadows and clover-blooms. And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain, "Ah, that I were free again! "Free as when I rode that day, Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay." She wedded a man unlearned and poor, And many children played round her door. But care and sorrow, and childbirth pain, Left their traces on heart and brain. And oft, when the summer sun shone hot On the new-mown hay in the meadow lot, And she heard the little spring brook fall Over the roadside, through the wall, In the shade of the apple-tree again She saw a rider draw his rein. And, gazing down with timid grace, She felt his pleased eyes read her face. Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls Stretched away into stately halls; The weary wheel to a spinnet turned, The tallow candle an astral burned, And for him who sat by the chimney lug, Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug, A manly form at her side she saw, And joy was duty and love was law. Then she took up her burden of life again, Saying only, "It might have been." Alas for maiden, alas for Judge, For rich repiner and household drudge! God pity them both! and pity us all, Who vainly the dreams of youth recall. For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: "It might have been!" Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies Deeply buried from human eyes; And, in the hereafter, angels may Roll the stone from its grave away! _John G. Whittier._ Sister and I We were hunting for wintergreen berries, One May-day, long gone by, Out on the rocky cliff's edge, Little sister and I. Sister had hair like the sunbeams; Black as a crow's wing, mine; Sister had blue, dove's eyes; Wicked, black eyes are mine. Why, see how my eyes are faded-- And my hair, it is white as snow! And thin, too! don't you see it is? I tear it sometimes; so! There, don't hold my hands, Maggie, I don't feel like tearing it now; But--where was I in my story? Oh, I was telling you how We were looking for wintergreen berries; 'Twas one bright morning in May, And the moss-grown rocks were slippery With the rains of yesterday. But I was cross that morning, Though the sun shone ever so bright-- And when sister found the most berries, I was angry enough to fight! And when she laughed at my pouting-- We were little things, you know-- I clinched my little fist up tight, And struck her the biggest blow! I struck her--I tell you--I struck her, And she fell right over below-- There, there, Maggie, I won't rave now; You needn't hold me so-- She went right over, I tell you, Down, down to the depths below! 'Tis deep and dark and horrid There where the waters flow! She fell right over, moaning, "Bessie, oh, Bessie!" so sad, That, when I looked down affrighted, It drove me _mad--mad_! Only her golden hair streaming Out on the rippling wave, Only her little hand reaching Up, for someone to save; And she sank down in the darkness, I never saw her again, And this is a chaos of blackness And darkness and grief since then. No more playing together Down on the pebbly strand; Nor building our dolls stone castles With halls and parlors grand; No more fishing with bent pins, In the little brook's clear waves; No more holding funerals O'er dead canaries' graves; No more walking together To the log schoolhouse each morn; No more vexing the master With putting his rules to scorn; No more feeding of white lambs With milk from the foaming pail; No more playing "see-saw" Over the fence of rail; No more telling of stories After we've gone to bed; Nor talking of ghosts and goblins Till we fairly shiver with dread; No more whispering fearfully And hugging each other tight, When the shutters shake and the dogs howl In the middle of the night; No more saying "Our Father," Kneeling by mother's knee-- For, Maggie, I _struck_ sister! And mother is dead, you see. Maggie, sister's an angel, Isn't she? Isn't it true? For angels have golden tresses And eyes like sister's, blue? Now _my_ hair isn't golden, My eyes aren't blue, you see-- Now tell me, Maggie, if I were to die, Could they make an angel of me? You say, "Oh, yes"; you think so? Well, then, when I come to die, We'll play up there, in God's garden-- We'll play there, sister and I. Now, Maggie, you needn't eye me Because I'm talking so queer; Because I'm talking so strangely; You needn't have the least fear, Somehow I'm feeling to-night, Maggie, As I never felt before-- I'm sure, I'm sure of it, Maggie, I never shall rave any more. Maggie, you know how these long years I've heard her calling, so sad, "Bessie, oh, Bessie!" so mournful? It always drives me _mad_! How the winter wind shrieks down the chimney, "Bessie, oh, Bessie!" oh! oh! How the south wind wails at the casement, "Bessie, oh, Bessie!" so low, But most of all when the May-days Come back, with the flowers and the sun, How the night-bird, singing, all lonely, "Bessie, oh, Bessie!" doth moan; You know how it sets me raving-- For _she_ moaned, "_Oh, Bessie!_" just so, That time I _struck_ little sister, On the May-day long ago! Now, Maggie, I've something to tell you-- You know May-day is here-- Well, this very morning, at sunrise, The robins chirped "Bessie!" so clear-- All day long the wee birds singing, Perched on the garden wall, Called "Bessie, oh, Bessie!" so sweetly, I couldn't feel sorry at all. Now, Maggie, I've something to tell you-- Let me lean up to you close-- Do you see how the sunset has flooded The heavens with yellow and rose? Do you see o'er the gilded cloud mountains Sister's golden hair streaming out? Do you see her little hand beckoning? Do you hear her little voice calling out "Bessie, oh, Bessie!" so gladly, "Bessie, oh, Bessie! Come, haste"? Yes, sister, I'm coming; I'm coming, To play in God's garden at last! 
13310	----	[Transcriber's Note: The text contains non-English words using diacritical marks not contained in the standard ASCII character set. Characters accented by those marks, and the corresponding text representations are as follows (where x represents the character being accented). All diacritical marks in this text are above the character being accented: breve (u-shaped symbol): [)x] macron (straight line): [=x]] THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL Cabinet Edition BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY THE RIVERSIDE PRESS, CAMBRIDGE M DCCCC II PUBLISHERS' NOTE Mr. Lowell, the year before he died, edited a definitive edition of his works, known as the Riverside edition. Subsequently, his literary executor, Mr. C.E. Norton, issued a final posthumous collection, and the Cambridge edition followed, including all the poems in the Riverside edition, and the poems edited by Mr. Norton. The present Cabinet edition contains all the poems in the Cambridge edition. It is made from new plates, and for the convenience of the student the longer poems have their lines numbered, and indexes of titles and first lines are added. _Autumn, 1899_. TABLE OF CONTENTS EARLIER POEMS. THRENODIA THE SIRENS IRENÉ SERENADE WITH A PRESSED FLOWER THE BEGGAR MY LOVE SUMMER STORM LOVE TO PERDITA, SINGING THE MOON REMEMBERED MUSIC SONG. TO M.L. ALLEGRA THE FOUNTAIN ODE THE FATHERLAND THE FORLORN MIDNIGHT A PRAYER THE HERITAGE THE ROSE: A BALLAD SONG, 'VIOLET! SWEET VIOLET!' ROSALINE A REQUIEM A PARABLE SONG, 'O MOONLIGHT DEEP AND TENDER' SONNETS. I. TO A.C.L. II. 'WHAT WERE I, LOVE, IF I WERE STRIPPED OF THEE?' III. 'I WOULD NOT HAVE THIS PERFECT LOVE OF OURS' IV. 'FOR THIS TRUE NOBLENESS I SEEK IN VAIN' V. TO THE SPIRIT OF KEATS VI. 'GREAT TRUTHS ARE PORTIONS OF THE SOUL OF MAN' VII. 'I ASK NOT FOR THOSE THOUGHTS, THAT SUDDEN LEAP' VIII. TO M.W., ON HER BIRTHDAY IX. 'MY LOVE, I HAVE NO FEAR THAT THOU SHOULDST DIE' X. 'I CANNOT THINK THAT THOU SHOULDST PASS AWAY' XI. 'THERE NEVER YET WAS FLOWER FAIR IN VAIN' XII. SUB PONDERE CRESCIT XIII. 'BELOVED, IN THE NOISY CITY HERE' XIV. ON READING WORDSWORTH'S SONNETS IN DEFENCE OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT XV. THE SAME CONTINUED. XVI. THE SAME CONTINUED. XVII. THE SAME CONTINUED. XVIII. THE SAME CONTINUED. XIX. THE SAME CONCLUDED. XX. TO M.O.S. XXI. 'OUR LOVE IS NOT A FADING, EARTHLY FLOWER' XXII. IN ABSENCE XXIII. WENDELL PHILLIPS XXIV. THE STREET XXV. 'I GRIEVE NOT THAT RIPE KNOWLEDGE TAKES AWAY' XXVI. TO J.R. GIDDINGS XXVII. 'I THOUGHT OUR LOVE AT FULL, BUT I DID ERR' L'ENVOI MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. A LEGEND OF BRITTANY PROMETHEUS THE SHEPHERD OF KING ADMETUS THE TOKEN AN INCIDENT IN A RAILROAD CAR RHOECUS THE FALCON TRIAL A GLANCE BEHIMD THE CURTAIN A CHIPPEWA LEGEND STANZAS ON FREEDOM COLUMBUS AN INCIDENT OF THE FIRE AT HAMBURG THE SOWER HUNGER AND COLD THE LANDLORD TO A PINE-TREE SI DESCENDERO IN INFERNUM, ADES TO THE PAST TO THE FUTURE HEBE THE SEARCH THE PRESENT CRISIS AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE THE GROWTH OF THE LEGEND A CONTRAST EXTREME UNCTION THE OAK AMBROSE ABOVE AND BELOW THE CAPTIVE THE BIRCH-TREE AN INTERVIEW WITH MILES STANDISH ON THE CAPTURE OF FUGITIVE SLAVES NEAR WASHINGTON TO THE DANDELION THE GHOST-SEER STUDIES FOR TWO HEADS ON A PORTRAIT OF DANTE BY GIOTTO ON THE DEATH OF A FRIEND'S CHILD EURYDICE SHE CAME AND WENT THE CHANGELING THE PIONEER LONGING ODE TO FRANCE. February, 1848 ANTI-APIS A PARABLE ODE WRITTEN FOR THE CELEBRATION OF THE INTRODUCTION OF THE COCHITUATE WATER INTO THE CITY OF BOSTON LINES SUGGESTED BY THE GRAVES OF TWO ENGLISH SOLDIERS ON CONCORD BATTLE-GROUND TO---- FREEDOM BIBLIOLATRES BEAVER BROOK MEMORIAL VERSES. KOSSUTH TO LAMARTINE. 1848 TO JOHN GORHAM PALFREY TO W.L. GARRISON ON THE DEATH OF CHARLES TURNER TORREY ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF DR. CHANNING TO THE MEMORY OF HOOD THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL LETTER FROM BOSTON. December, 1846 A FABLE FOR CRITICS THE UNHAPPY LOT OF MR. KNOTT FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED POEM AN ORIENTAL APOLOGUE THE BIGLOW PAPERS. FIRST SERIES. NOTICES OF AN INDEPENDENT PRESS NOTE TO TITLE-PAGE INTRODUCTION NO. I. A LETTER FROM MR. EZEKIEL BIGLOW OF JAALAM TO THE HON. JOSEPH T. BUCKINGHAM NO. II. A LETTER FROM MR. HOSEA BIGLOW TO THE HON. J.T. BUCKINGHAM NO. III. WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS NO. IV. REMARKS OF INCREASE D. O'PHACE, ESQ. NO. V. THE DEBATE IN THE SENNIT NO. VI. THE PIOUS EDITOR'S CREED NO. VII. A LETTER FROM A CANDIDATE IN THE PRESIDENCY IN ANSWER TO SUTTIN QUESTIONS PROPOSED BY Mr. HOSEA BIGLOW NO. VIII. A SECOND LETTER FROM B. SAWIN, ESQ. NO. IX. A THIRD LETTER FROM B. SAWIN, ESQ. SECOND SERIES. THE COURTIN' NO. I. BIRDOFREDUM SAWIN ESQ., TO MR. HOSEA BIGLOW NO. II. MASON AND SLIDELL: A YANKEE IDYLL JONATHAN TO JOHN NO. III. BIRDOFREDUM SAWIN, ESQ., TO MR. HOSEA BIGLOW NO. IV. A MESSAGE OF JEFF DAVIS IN SECRET SESSION NO. V. SPEECH OF HONOURABLE PRESERVED DOE IN SECRET CAUCUS NO. VI. SUNTHIN' IN THE PASTORAL LINE NO. VII. LATEST VIEWS OF MR. BIGLOW NO. VIII. KETTELOPOTOMACHIA NO. IX. SOME MEMORIALS OF THE LATE REVEREND H. WILBUR NO. X. MR. HOSEA BIGLOW TO THE EDITOR OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY NO. XI. MR. HOSEA BIGLOW'S SPEECH IN MARCH MEETING UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS. TO CHARLES ELIOT NORTON UNDER THE WILLOWS DARA THE FIRST SNOW-FALL THE SINGING LEAVES SEAWEED THE FINDING OF THE LYRE NEW-YEAR'S EVE, 1850 FOR AN AUTOGRAPH AL FRESCO MASACCIO WITHOUT AND WITHIN GODMINSTER CHIMES THE PARTING OF THE WAYS ALADDIN AN INVITATION. TO JOHN FRANCIS HEATH THE NOMADES SELF-STUDY PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE THE WIND-HARP AUF WIEDERSEHEN PALINODE AFTER THE BURIAL THE DEAD HOUSE A MOOD THE VOYAGE TO VINLAND MAHMOOD THE IMAGE-BREAKER INVITA MINERVA THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH YUSSOUF THE DARKENED MIND WHAT RABBI JEHOSHA SAID ALL-SAINTS A WINTER-EVENING HYMN TO MY FIRE FANCY'S CASUISTRY TO MR. JOHN BARTLETT ODE TO HAPPINESS VILLA FRANCA. 1859 THE MINER GOLD EGG: A DREAM-FANTASY A FAMILIAR EPISTLE TO A FRIEND AN EMBER PICTURE TO H.W.L. THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY IN THE TWILIGHT THE FOOT-PATH POEMS OF THE WAR. THE WASHERS OF THE SHROUD TWO SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF BLONDEL MEMORIAE POSITUM ON BOARD THE '76 ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION L'ENVOI: TO THE MUSE THE CATHEDRAL THREE MEMORIAL POEMS. ONE READ AT THE ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FIGHT AT CONCORD BRIDGE UNDER THE OLD ELM AN ODE FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1876 HEARTSEASE AND RUE. I. FRIENDSHIP. AGASSIZ TO HOLMES, ON HIS SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY IN A COPY OF OMAR KHAYYÁM ON RECEIVING A COPY OF MR. AUSTIN DOBSON'S 'OLD WORLD IDYLLS' TO C.F. BRADFORD BANKSIDE JOSEPH WINLOCK SONNET, TO FANNY ALEXANDER JEFFRIES WYMAN TO A FRIEND WITH AN ARMCHAIR E.G. DE R. BON VOYAGE TO WHITTIER, ON HIS SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY ON AN AUTUMN SKETCH OF H.G. WILD TO MISS D.T. WITH A COPY OF AUCASSIN AND NICOLETTE ON PLANTING A TREE AT INVERARAY AN EPISTLE TO GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS II. SENTIMENT. ENDYMION THE BLACK PREACHER ARCADIA REDIVIVA THE NEST A YOUTHFUL EXPERIMENT IN ENGLISH HEXAMETERS BIRTHDAY VERSES ESTRANGEMENT PHOEBE DAS EWIG-WEIBLICHE THE RECALL ABSENCE MONNA LISA THE OPTIMIST ON BURNING SOME OLD LETTERS THE PROTEST THE PETITION FACT OR FANCY? AGRO-DOLCE THE BROKEN TRYST CASA SIN ALMA A CHRISTMAS CAROL MY PORTRAIT GALLERY PAOLO TO FRANCESCA SONNET, SCOTTISH BORDER SONNET, ON BEING ASKED FOR AN AUTOGRAPH IN VENICE THE DANCING BEAR THE MAPLE NIGHTWATCHES DEATH OF QUEEN MERCEDES PRISON OF CERVANTES TO A LADY PLAYING ON THE CITHERN THE EYE'S TREASURY PESSIMOPTIMISM THE BRAKES A FOREBODING III. FANCY UNDER THE OCTOBER MAPLES LOVE'S CLOCK ELEANOR MAKES MACAROONS TELEPATHY SCHERZO 'FRANCISCUS DE VERULAMIO SIC COGITAVIT' AUSPEX THE PREGNANT COMMENT THE LESSON SCIENCE AND POETRY A NEW YEAR'S GREETING THE DISCOVERY WITH A SEASHELL THE SECRET IV. HUMOR AND SATIRE. FITZ ADAM'S STORY THE ORIGIN OF DIDACTIC POETRY THE FLYING DUTCHMAN CREDIDIMUS JOVEM REGNARE TEMPORA MUTANTUR IN THE HALF-WAY HOUSE AT THE BURNS CENTENNIAL IN AN ALBUM AT THE COMMENCEMENT DINNER, 1866 A PARABLE V. EPIGRAMS. SAYINGS INSCRIPTIONS A MISCONCEPTION THE BOSS SUN-WORSHIP CHANGED PERSPECTIVE WITH A PAIR OF GLOVES LOST IN A WAGER SIXTY-EIGHTH BIRTHDAY INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT LAST POEMS. HOW I CONSULTED THE ORACLE OF THE GOLDFISHES TURNER'S OLD TÉMÉRAIRE ST. MICHAEL THE WEIGHER A VALENTINE AN APRIL BIRTHDAY--AT SEA LOVE AND THOUGHT THE NOBLER LOVER ON HEARING A SONATA OF BEETHOVEN'S PLAYED IN THE NEXT ROOM VERSES, INTENDED TO GO WITH A POSSET DISH ON A BUST OF GENERAL GRANT APPENDIX. I. INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND SERIES OF BIGLOW PAPERS II. GLOSSARY TO THE BIGLOW PAPERS III. INDEX TO BIGLOW PAPERS INDEX OF FIRST LINES INDEX OF TITLES EARLIER POEMS THRENODIA Gone, gone from us! and shall we see Those sibyl-leaves of destiny, Those calm eyes, nevermore? Those deep, dark eyes so warm and bright, Wherein the fortunes of the man Lay slumbering in prophetic light, In characters a child might scan? So bright, and gone forth utterly! Oh stern word--Nevermore! The stars of those two gentle eyes 10 Will shine no more on earth; Quenched are the hopes that had their birth, As we watched them slowly rise, Stars of a mother's fate; And she would read them o'er and o'er, Pondering, as she sate, Over their dear astrology, Which she had conned and conned before, Deeming she needs must read aright 19 What was writ so passing bright. And yet, alas! she knew not why. Her voice would falter in its song, And tears would slide from out her eye, Silent, as they were doing wrong. Oh stern word--Nevermore! The tongue that scarce had learned to claim An entrance to a mother's heart By that dear talisman, a mother's name, Sleeps all forgetful of its art! I loved to see the infant soul 30 (How mighty in the weakness Of its untutored meekness!) Peep timidly from out its nest, His lips, the while, Fluttering with half-fledged words, Or hushing to a smile That more than words expressed, When his glad mother on him stole And snatched him to her breast! Oh, thoughts were brooding in those eyes, 40 That would have soared like strong-winged birds Far, far into the skies, Gladding the earth with song, And gushing harmonies, Had he but tarried with us long! Oh stern word--Nevermore! How peacefully they rest, Crossfolded there Upon his little breast, Those small, white hands that ne'er were still before, 50 But ever sported with his mother's hair, Or the plain cross that on her breast she wore! Her heart no more will beat To feel the touch of that soft palm, That ever seemed a new surprise Sending glad thoughts up to her eyes To bless him with their holy calm,-- Sweet thoughts! they made her eyes as sweet. How quiet are the hands That wove those pleasant bands! But that they do not rise and sink 61 With his calm breathing, I should think That he were dropped asleep. Alas! too deep, too deep Is this his slumber! Time scarce can number The years ere he shall wake again. Oh, may we see his eyelids open then! Oh stern word--Nevermore! As the airy gossamere, 70 Floating in the sunlight clear, Where'er it toucheth clingeth tightly, Bound glossy leal or stump unsightly, So from his spirit wandered out Tendrils spreading all about, Knitting all things to its thrall With a perfect love of all: Oh stern word--Nevermore! He did but float a little way Adown the stream of time, 80 With dreamy eyes watching the ripples play, Or hearkening their fairy chime; His slender sail Ne'er felt the gale; He did but float a little way, And, putting to the shore While yet 't was early day, Went calmly on his way, To dwell with us no more! No jarring did he feel, 90 No grating on his shallop's keel; A strip of silver sand Mingled the waters with the land Where he was seen no more: Oh stern word--Nevermore! Full short his journey was; no dust Of earth unto his sandals clave; The weary weight that old men must, He bore not to the grave. He seemed a cherub who had lost his way 100 And wandered hither, so his stay With us was short, and 't was most meet That he should be no delver in earth's clod, Nor need to pause and cleanse his feet To stand before his God: Oh blest word--Evermore! THE SIRENS The sea is lonely, the sea is dreary, The sea is restless and uneasy; Thou seekest quiet, thou art weary, Wandering thou knowest not whither;-- Our little isle is green and breezy, Come and rest thee! Oh come hither, Come to this peaceful home of ours, Where evermore The low west-wind creeps panting up the shore 9 To be at rest among the flowers; Full of rest, the green moss lifts, As the dark waves of the sea Draw in and out of rocky rifts, Calling solemnly to thee With voices deep and hollow,-- 'To the shore Follow! Oh, follow! To be at rest forevermore! Forevermore!' Look how the gray old Ocean 20 From the depth of his heart rejoices, Heaving with a gentle motion, When he hears our restful voices; List how he sings in an undertone, Chiming with our melody; And all sweet sounds of earth and air Melt into one low voice alone, That murmurs over the weary sea, And seems to sing from everywhere,-- 'Here mayst thou harbor peacefully, 30 Here mayst thou rest from the aching oar; Turn thy curved prow ashore, And in our green isle rest forevermore! Forevermore!' And Echo half wakes in the wooded hill, And, to her heart so calm and deep, Murmurs over in her sleep, Doubtfully pausing and murmuring still, 'Evermore!' Thus, on Life's weary sea, 40 Heareth the marinere Voices sweet, from far and near, Ever singing low and clear, Ever singing longingly. Is it not better here to be, Than to be toiling late and soon? In the dreary night to see Nothing but the blood-red moon Go up and down into the sea; Or, in the loneliness of day, 50 To see the still seals only Solemnly lift their faces gray, Making it yet more lonely? Is it not better than to hear Only the sliding of the wave Beneath the plank, and feel so near A cold and lonely grave, A restless grave, where thou shalt lie Even in death unquietly? Look down beneath thy wave-worn bark, 60 Lean over the side and see The leaden eye of the sidelong shark Upturnèd patiently, Ever waiting there for thee: Look down and see those shapeless forms, Which ever keep their dreamless sleep Far down within the gloomy deep, And only stir themselves in storms, Rising like islands from beneath, And snorting through the angry spray, 70 As the frail vessel perisheth In the whirls of their unwieldy play; Look down! Look down! Upon the seaweed, slimy and dark, That waves its arms so lank and brown, Beckoning for thee! Look down beneath thy wave-worn bark Into the cold depth of the sea! Look down! Look down! Thus, on Life's lonely sea, 80 Heareth the marinere Voices sad, from far and near, Ever singing full of fear, Ever singing drearfully. Here all is pleasant as a dream; The wind scarce shaketh down the dew, The green grass floweth like a stream Into the ocean's blue; Listen! Oh, listen! Here is a gush of many streams, A song of many birds, 91 And every wish and longing seems Lulled to a numbered flow of words,-- Listen! Oh, listen! Here ever hum the golden bees Underneath full-blossomed trees, At once with glowing fruit and flowers crowned;-- So smooth the sand, the yellow sand, That thy keel will not grate as it touches the land; All around with a slumberous sound, 100 The singing waves slide up the strand, And there, where the smooth, wet pebbles be, The waters gurgle longingly, As If they fain would seek the shore, To be at rest from the ceaseless roar, To be at rest forevermore,-- Forevermore. Thus, on Life's gloomy sea, Heareth the marinere Voices sweet, from far and near, 110 Ever singing in his ear, 'Here is rest and peace for thee!' IRENÉ Hers is a spirit deep, and crystal-clear; Calmly beneath her earnest face it lies, Free without boldness, meek without a fear, Quicker to look than speak its sympathies; Far down into her large and patient eyes I gaze, deep-drinking of the infinite, As, in the mid-watch of a clear, still night, I look into the fathomless blue skies. So circled lives she with Love's holy light, That from the shade of self she walketh free; 10 The garden of her soul still keepeth she An Eden where the snake did never enter; She hath a natural, wise sincerity, A simple truthfulness, and these have lent her A dignity as moveless as the centre; So that no influence of our earth can stir Her steadfast courage, nor can take away The holy peacefulness, which night and day, Unto her queenly soul doth minister. Most gentle is she; her large charity 20 (An all unwitting, childlike gift in her) Not freer is to give than meek to bear; And, though herself not unacquaint with care, Hath in her heart wide room for all that be,-- Her heart that hath no secrets of its own, But open is as eglantine full blown. Cloudless forever is her brow serene, Speaking calm hope and trust within her, whence Welleth a noiseless spring of patience, That keepeth all her life so fresh, so green 30 And full of holiness, that every look, The greatness of her woman's soul revealing, Unto me bringeth blessing, and a feeling As when I read in God's own holy book. A graciousness in giving that doth make The small'st gift greatest, and a sense most meek Of worthiness, that doth not fear to take From others, but which always fears to speak Its thanks in utterance, for the giver's sake;-- The deep religion of a thankful heart, 40 Which rests instinctively in Heaven's clear law With a full peace, that never can depart From its own steadfastness;--a holy awe For holy things,--not those which men call holy, But such as are revealèd to the eyes Of a true woman's soul bent down and lowly Before the face of daily mysteries;-- A love that blossoms soon, but ripens slowly To the full goldenness of fruitful prime, Enduring with a firmness that defies 50 All shallow tricks of circumstance and time, By a sure insight knowing where to cling, And where it clingeth never withering;-- These are Irené's dowry, which no fate Can shake from their serene, deep-builded state. In-seeing sympathy is hers, which chasteneth No less than loveth, scorning to be bound With fear of blame, and yet which ever hasteneth To pour the balm of kind looks on the wound, If they be wounds which such sweet teaching makes, 60 Giving itself a pang for others' sakes; No want of faith, that chills with sidelong eye, Hath she; no jealousy, no Levite pride That passeth by upon the other side; For in her soul there never dwelt a lie. Right from the hand of God her spirit came Unstained, and she hath ne'er forgotten whence It came, nor wandered far from thence, But laboreth to keep her still the same, Near to her place of birth, that she may not 70 Soil her white raiment with an earthly spot. Yet sets she not her soul so steadily Above, that she forgets her ties to earth, But her whole thought would almost seem to be How to make glad one lowly human hearth; For with a gentle courage she doth strive In thought and word and feeling so to live As to make earth next heaven; and her heart Herein doth show its most exceeding worth, That, bearing in our frailty her just part, 80 She hath not shrunk from evils of this life, But hath gone calmly forth into the strife, And all its sins and sorrows hath withstood With lofty strength of patient womanhood: For this I love her great soul more than all, That, being bound, like us, with earthly thrall, She walks so bright and heaven-like therein,-- Too wise, too meek, too womanly, to sin. Like a lone star through riven storm-clouds seen By sailors, tempest-tost upon the sea, 90 Telling of rest and peaceful heavens nigh, Unto my soul her star-like soul hath been, Her sight as full of hope and calm to me;-- For she unto herself hath builded high A home serene, wherein to lay her head, Earth's noblest thing, a Woman perfected. SERENADE From the close-shut windows gleams no spark, The night is chilly, the night is dark, The poplars shiver, the pine-trees moan, My hair by the autumn breeze is blown, Under thy window I sing alone, Alone, alone, ah woe! alone! The darkness is pressing coldly around, The windows shake with a lonely sound, The stars are hid and the night is drear, The heart of silence throbs in thine ear, In thy chamber thou sittest alone, Alone, alone, ah woe! alone! The world is happy, the world is wide. Kind hearts are beating on every side; Ah, why should we lie so coldly curled Alone in the shell of this great world? Why should we any more be alone? Alone, alone, ah woe! alone! Oh, 'tis a bitter and dreary word, The saddest by man's ear ever heard! We each are young, we each have a heart, Why stand we ever coldly apart? Must we forever, then, be alone? Alone, alone, ah woe! alone! WITH A PRESSED FLOWER This little blossom from afar Hath come from other lands to thine; For, once, its white and drooping star Could see its shadow in the Rhine. Perchance some fair-haired German maid Hath plucked one from the selfsame stalk, And numbered over, half afraid, Its petals in her evening walk. 'He loves me, loves me not,' she cries; 'He loves me more than earth or heaven!' And then glad tears have filled her eyes To find the number was uneven. And thou must count its petals well, Because it is a gift from me; And the last one of all shall tell Something I've often told to thee. But here at home, where we were born, Thou wilt find blossoms just as true, Down-bending every summer morn, With freshness of New England dew. For Nature, ever kind to love, Hath granted them the same sweet tongue, Whether with German skies above, Or here our granite rocks among. THE BEGGAR A beggar through the world am I, From place to place I wander by. Fill up my pilgrim's scrip for me, For Christ's sweet sake and charity! A little of thy steadfastness, Bounded with leafy gracefulness, Old oak, give me, That the world's blasts may round me blow, And I yield gently to and fro, While my stout-hearted trunk below And firm-set roots unshaken be. Some of thy stern, unyielding might, Enduring still through day and night Rude tempest-shock and withering blight, That I may keep at bay The changeful April sky of chance And the strong tide of circumstance,-- Give me, old granite gray. Some of thy pensiveness serene, Some of thy never-dying green, Put in this scrip of mine, That griefs may fall like snowflakes light, And deck me in a robe of white, Ready to be an angel bright, O sweetly mournful pine. A little of thy merriment, Of thy sparkling, light content, Give me, my cheerful brook, That I may still be full of glee And gladsomeness, where'er I be, Though fickle fate hath prisoned me In some neglected nook. Ye have been very kind and good To me, since I've been in the wood; Ye have gone nigh to fill my heart; But good-by, kind friends, every one, I've far to go ere set of sun; Of all good things I would have part, The day was high ere I could start, And so my journey's scarce begun. Heaven help me! how could I forget To beg of thee, dear violet! Some of thy modesty, That blossoms here as well, unseen, As if before the world thou'dst been, Oh, give, to strengthen me. MY LOVE Not as all other women are Is she that to my soul is dear; Her glorious fancies come from far, Beneath the silver evening-star, And yet her heart is ever near. Great feelings hath she of her own, Which lesser souls may never know; God giveth them to her alone, And sweet they are as any tone Wherewith the wind may choose to blow. Yet in herself she dwelleth not. Although no home were half so fair; No simplest duty is forgot, Life hath no dim and lowly spot That doth not in her sunshine share. She doeth little kindnesses, Which most leave undone, or despise: For naught that sets one heart at ease, And giveth happiness or peace, Is low-esteemèd in her eyes. She hath no scorn of common things, And, though she seem of other birth, Round us her heart intwines and clings, And patiently she folds her wings To tread the humble paths of earth. Blessing she is: God made her so, And deeds of week-day holiness Fall from her noiseless as the snow, Nor hath she ever chanced to know That aught were easier than to bless. She is most fair, and thereunto Her life doth rightly harmonize; Feeling or thought that was not true Ne'er made less beautiful the blue Unclouded heaven of her eyes. She is a woman: one in whom The spring-time of her childish years Hath never lost its fresh perfume, Though knowing well that life hath room For many blights and many tears. I love her with a love as still As a broad river's peaceful might, Which, by high tower and lowly mill, Seems following its own wayward will, And yet doth ever flow aright. And, on its full, deep breast serene, Like quiet isles my duties lie; It flows around them and between, And makes them fresh and fair and green, Sweet homes wherein to live and die. SUMMER STORM Untremulous in the river clear, Toward the sky's image, hangs the imaged bridge; So still the air that I can hear The slender clarion of the unseen midge; Out of the stillness, with a gathering creep, Like rising wind in leaves, which now decreases, Now lulls, now swells, and all the while increases, The huddling trample of a drove of sheep Tilts the loose planks, and then as gradually ceases In dust on the other side; life's emblem deep, 10 A confused noise between two silences, Finding at last in dust precarious peace. On the wide marsh the purple-blossomed grasses Soak up the sunshine; sleeps the brimming tide, Save when the wedge-shaped wake in silence passes Of some slow water-rat, whose sinuous glide Wavers the sedge's emerald shade from side to side; But up the west, like a rock-shivered surge, Climbs a great cloud edged with sun-whitened spray; Huge whirls of foam boil toppling o'er its verge, 20 And falling still it seems, and yet it climbs alway. Suddenly all the sky is hid As with the shutting of a lid, One by one great drops are falling Doubtful and slow, Down the pane they are crookedly crawling, And the wind breathes low; Slowly the circles widen on the river, Widen and mingle, one and all; Here and there the slenderer flowers shiver, 30 Struck by an icy rain-drop's fall. Now on the hills I hear the thunder mutter, The wind is gathering in the west; The upturned leaves first whiten and flutter, Then droop to a fitful rest; Up from the stream with sluggish flap Struggles the gull and floats away; Nearer and nearer rolls the thunder-clap,-- We shall not see the sun go down to-day: Now leaps the wind on the sleepy marsh, 40 And tramples the grass with terrified feet, The startled river turns leaden and harsh, You can hear the quick heart of the tempest beat. Look! look! that livid flash! And instantly follows the rattling thunder, As if some cloud-crag, split asunder, Fell, splintering with a ruinous crash, On the Earth, which crouches in silence under; And now a solid gray wall of rain Shuts off the landscape, mile by mile; 50 For a breath's space I see the blue wood again, And ere the next heart-beat, the wind-hurled pile, That seemed but now a league aloof, Bursts crackling o'er the sun-parched roof; Against the windows the storm comes dashing, Through tattered foliage the hail tears crashing, The blue lightning flashes, The rapid hail clashes, The white waves are tumbling, And, in one baffled roar, 60 Like the toothless sea mumbling A rock-bristled shore, The thunder is rumbling And crashing and crumbling,-- Will silence return nevermore? Hush! Still as death, The tempest holds his breath As from a sudden will; The rain stops short, but from the eaves You see it drop, and hear it from the leaves, 70 All is so bodingly still; Again, now, now, again Plashes the rain in heavy gouts, The crinkled lightning Seems ever brightening, And loud and long Again the thunder shouts His battle-song,-- One quivering flash, One wildering crash, 80 Followed by silence dead and dull, As if the cloud, let go, Leapt bodily below To whelm the earth in one mad overthrow. And then a total lull. Gone, gone, so soon! No more my half-dazed fancy there, Can shape a giant In the air, No more I see his streaming hair, The writhing portent of his form;-- 90 The pale and quiet moon Makes her calm forehead bare, And the last fragments of the storm, Like shattered rigging from a fight at sea, Silent and few, are drifting over me. LOVE True Love is but a humble, low-born thing, And hath its food served up in earthen ware; It is a thing to walk with, hand in hand, Through the everydayness of this workday world, Baring its tender feet to every flint, Yet letting not one heart-beat go astray From Beauty's law of plainness and content; A simple, fireside thing, whose quiet smile Can warm earth's poorest hovel to a home; Which, when our autumn cometh, as it must, And life in the chill wind shivers bare and leafless, Shall still be blest with Indian-summer youth In bleak November, and, with thankful heart, Smile on its ample stores of garnered fruit, As full of sunshine to our aged eyes As when it nursed the blossoms of our spring. Such is true Love, which steals into the heart With feet as silent as the lightsome dawn That kisses smooth the rough brows of the dark, And hath its will through blissful gentleness, Not like a rocket, which, with passionate glare, Whirs suddenly up, then bursts, and leaves the night Painfully quivering on the dazèd eyes; A love that gives and takes, that seeth faults, Not with flaw-seeking eyes like needle points, But loving-kindly ever looks them down With the o'ercoming faith that still forgives; A love that shall be new and fresh each hour, As is the sunset's golden mystery, Or the sweet coming of the evening-star, Alike, and yet most unlike, every day, And seeming ever best and fairest _now_; A love that doth not kneel for what it seeks, But faces Truth and Beauty as their peer, Showing its worthiness of noble thoughts By a clear sense of inward nobleness; A love that in its object findeth not All grace and beauty, and enough to sate Its thirst of blessing, but, in all of good Found there, sees but the Heaven-implanted types Of good and beauty in the soul of man, And traces, in the simplest heart that beats, A family-likeness to its chosen one, That claims of it the rights of brotherhood. For love is blind but with the fleshly eye, That so its inner sight may be more clear; And outward shows of beauty only so Are needful at the first, as is a hand To guide and to uphold an infant's steps: Fine natures need them not: their earnest look Pierces the body's mask of thin disguise, And beauty ever is to them revealed, Behind the unshapeliest, meanest lump of clay, With arms outstretched and eager face ablaze, Yearning to be but understood and loved. TO PERDITA, SINGING Thy voice is like a fountain, Leaping up in clear moonshine; Silver, silver, ever mounting, Ever sinking, Without thinking, To that brimful heart of thine. Every sad and happy feeling, Thou hast had in bygone years, Through thy lips comes stealing, stealing, Clear and low; 10 All thy smiles and all thy tears In thy voice awaken, And sweetness, wove of joy and woe, From their teaching it hath taken: Feeling and music move together, Like a swan and shadow ever Floating on a sky-blue river In a day of cloudless weather. It hath caught a touch of sadness, Yet it is not sad; 20 It hath tones of clearest gladness, Yet it is not glad; A dim, sweet twilight voice it is Where to-day's accustomed blue Is over-grayed with memories, With starry feelings quivered through. Thy voice is like a fountain Leaping up in sunshine bright, And I never weary counting Its clear droppings, lone and single, 30 Or when in one full gush they mingle, Shooting in melodious light. Thine is music such as yields Feelings of old brooks and fields, And, around this pent-up room, Sheds a woodland, free perfume; Oh, thus forever sing to me! Oh, thus forever! The green, bright grass of childhood bring to me, 39 Flowing like an emerald river, And the bright blue skies above! Oh, sing them back, as fresh as ever, Into the bosom of my love,-- The sunshine and the merriment, The unsought, evergreen content, Of that never cold time, The joy, that, like a clear breeze, went Through and through the old time! Peace sits within thine eyes, With white hands crossed in joyful rest, 50 While, through thy lips and face, arise The melodies from out thy breast; She sits and sings, With folded wings And white arms crost, 'Weep not for bygone things, They are not lost: The beauty which the summer time O'er thine opening spirit shed, The forest oracles sublime 60 That filled thy soul with joyous dread, The scent of every smallest flower That made thy heart sweet for an hour, Yea, every holy influence, Flowing to thee, thou knewest not whence, In thine eyes to-day is seen, Fresh as it hath ever been; Promptings of Nature, beckonings sweet, Whatever led thy childish feet, Still will linger unawares 70 The guiders of thy silver hairs; Every look and every word Which thou givest forth to-day, Tell of the singing of the bird Whose music stilled thy boyish play.' Thy voice is like a fountain, Twinkling up in sharp starlight, When the moon behind the mountain Dims the low East with faintest white, Ever darkling, 80 Ever sparkling, We know not if 'tis dark or bright; But, when the great moon hath rolled round, And, sudden-slow, its solemn power Grows from behind its black, clear-edgèd bound, No spot of dark the fountain keepeth, But, swift as opening eyelids, leapeth Into a waving silver flower. THE MOON My soul was like the sea. Before the moon was made, Moaning in vague immensity, Of its own strength afraid, Unresful and unstaid. Through every rift it foamed in vain, About its earthly prison, Seeking some unknown thing in pain, And sinking restless back again, For yet no moon had risen: Its only voice a vast dumb moan, Of utterless anguish speaking, It lay unhopefully alone, And lived but in an aimless seeking. So was my soul; but when 'twas full Of unrest to o'erloading, A voice of something beautiful Whispered a dim foreboding, And yet so soft, so sweet, so low, It had not more of joy than woe; And, as the sea doth oft lie still, Making its waters meet, As if by an unconscious will, For the moon's silver feet, So lay my soul within mine eyes When thou, its guardian moon, didst rise. And now, howe'er its waves above May toss and seem uneaseful, One strong, eternal law of Love, With guidance sure and peaceful, As calm and natural as breath, Moves its great deeps through life and death. REMEMBERED MUSIC A FRAGMENT Thick-rushing, like an ocean vast Of bisons the far prairie shaking, The notes crowd heavily and fast As surfs, one plunging while the last Draws seaward from its foamy breaking. Or in low murmurs they began, Rising and rising momently, As o'er a harp Æolian A fitful breeze, until they ran Up to a sudden ecstasy. And then, like minute-drops of rain Ringing in water silvery, They lingering dropped and dropped again, Till it was almost like a pain To listen when the next would be. SONG TO M.L. A lily thou wast when I saw thee first, A lily-bud not opened quite, That hourly grew more pure and white, By morning, and noontide, and evening nursed: In all of nature thou hadst thy share; Thou wast waited on By the wind and sun; The rain and the dew for thee took care; It seemed thou never couldst be more fair. A lily thou wast when I saw thee first, A lily-bud; but oh, how strange, How full of wonder was the change, When, ripe with all sweetness, thy full bloom burst! How did the tears to my glad eyes start, When the woman-flower Reached its blossoming hour, And I saw the warm deeps of thy golden heart! Glad death may pluck thee, but never before The gold dust of thy bloom divine Hath dropped from thy heart into mine, To quicken its faint germs of heavenly lore; For no breeze comes nigh thee but carries away Some impulses bright Of fragrance and light, Which fall upon souls that are lone and astray, To plant fruitful hopes of the flower of day. ALLEGRA I would more natures were like thine, That never casts a glance before, Thou Hebe, who thy heart's bright wine So lavishly to all dost pour, That we who drink forget to pine, And can but dream of bliss in store. Thou canst not see a shade in life; With sunward instinct thou dost rise, And, leaving clouds below at strife, Gazest undazzled at the skies, With all their blazing splendors rife, A songful lark with eagle's eyes. Thou wast some foundling whom the Hours Nursed, laughing, with the milk of Mirth; Some influence more gay than ours Hath ruled thy nature from its birth, As if thy natal stars were flowers That shook their seeds round thee on earth. And thou, to lull thine infant rest, Wast cradled like an Indian child; All pleasant winds from south and west With lullabies thine ears beguiled, Rocking thee in thine oriole's nest, Till Nature looked at thee and smiled. Thine every fancy seems to borrow A sunlight from thy childish years, Making a golden cloud of sorrow, A hope-lit rainbow out of tears,-- Thy heart is certain of to-morrow, Though 'yond to-day it never peers. I would more natures were like thine, So innocently wild and free, Whose sad thoughts, even, leap and shine, Like sunny wavelets in the sea, Making us mindless of the brine, In gazing on the brilliancy. THE FOUNTAIN Into the sunshine, Full of the light, Leaping and flashing From morn till night; Into the moonlight, Whiter than snow, Waving so flower-like When the winds blow; Into the starlight Rushing in spray, Happy at midnight, Happy by day; Ever in motion, Blithesome and cheery, Still climbing heavenward, Never aweary; Glad of all weathers, Still seeming best, Upward or downward. Motion thy rest; Full of a nature Nothing can tame, Changed every moment, Ever the same; Ceaseless aspiring, Ceaseless content, Darkness or sunshine Thy element; Glorious fountain. Let my heart be Fresh, changeful, constant, Upward, like thee! ODE I In the old days of awe and keen-eyed wonder, The Poet's song with blood-warm truth was rife; He saw the mysteries which circle under The outward shell and skin of daily life. Nothing to him were fleeting time and fashion, His soul was led by the eternal law; There was in him no hope of fame, no passion, But with calm, godlike eyes he only saw. He did not sigh o'er heroes dead and buried, Chief-mourner at the Golden Age's hearse, 10 Nor deem that souls whom Charon grim had ferried Alone were fitting themes of epic verse: He could believe the promise of to-morrow, And feel the wondrous meaning of to-day; He had a deeper faith in holy sorrow Than the world's seeming loss could take away. To know the heart of all things was his duty, All things did sing to him to make him wise, And, with a sorrowful and conquering beauty, The soul of all looked grandly from his eyes. 20 He gazed on all within him and without him, He watched the flowing of Time's steady tide, And shapes of glory floated all about him And whispered to him, and he prophesied. Than all men he more fearless was and freer, And all his brethren cried with one accord,-- 'Behold the holy man! Behold the Seer! Him who hath spoken with the unseen Lord!' He to his heart with large embrace had taken The universal sorrow of mankind, 30 And, from that root, a shelter never shaken, The tree of wisdom grew with sturdy rind. He could interpret well the wondrous voices Which to the calm and silent spirit come; He knew that the One Soul no more rejoices In the star's anthem than the insect's hum. He in his heart was ever meek and humble. And yet with kingly pomp his numbers ran, As he foresaw how all things false should crumble Before the free, uplifted soul of man; 40 And, when he was made full to overflowing With all the loveliness of heaven and earth, Out rushed his song, like molten iron glowing, To show God sitting by the humblest hearth. With calmest courage he was ever ready To teach that action was the truth of thought, And, with strong arm and purpose firm and steady, An anchor for the drifting world he wrought. So did he make the meanest man partaker Of all his brother-gods unto him gave; 50 All souls did reverence him and name him Maker, And when he died heaped temples on his grave. And still his deathless words of light are swimming Serene throughout the great deep infinite Of human soul, unwaning and undimming, To cheer and guide the mariner at night. II But now the Poet is an empty rhymer Who lies with idle elbow on the grass, And fits his singing, like a cunning timer, To all men's prides and fancies as they pass. 60 Not his the song, which, in its metre holy, Chimes with the music of the eternal stars, Humbling the tyrant, lifting up the lowly, And sending sun through the soul's prison-bars. Maker no more,--oh no! unmaker rather, For he unmakes who doth not all put forth The power given freely by our loving Father To show the body's dross, the spirit's worth. Awake! great spirit of the ages olden! Shiver the mists that hide thy starry lyre, 70 And let man's soul be yet again beholden To thee for wings to soar to her desire. Oh, prophesy no more to-morrow's splendor, Be no more shamefaced to speak out for Truth, Lay on her altar all the gushings tender, The hope, the fire, the loving faith of youth! Oh, prophesy no more the Maker's coming, Say not his onward footsteps thou canst hear In the dim void, like to the awful humming Of the great wings of some new-lighted sphere! 80 Oh, prophesy no more, but be the Poet! This longing was but granted unto thee That, when all beauty thou couldst feel and know it, That beauty in its highest thou shouldst be. O thou who moanest tost with sealike longings, Who dimly hearest voices call on thee, Whose soul is overfilled with mighty throngings Of love, and fear, and glorious agony. Thou of the toil-strung hands and iron sinews And soul by Mother Earth with freedom fed, 90 In whom the hero-spirit yet continues, The old free nature is not chained or dead, Arouse! let thy soul break in music-thunder, Let loose the ocean that is in thee pent, Pour forth thy hope, thy fear, thy love, thy wonder, And tell the age what all its signs have meant. Where'er thy wildered crowd of brethren jostles, Where'er there lingers but a shadow of wrong, There still is need of martyrs and apostles, There still are texts for never-dying song: 100 From age to age man's still aspiring spirit Finds wider scope and sees with clearer eyes, And thou in larger measure dost inherit What made thy great forerunners free and wise. Sit thou enthronèd where the Poet's mountain Above the thunder lifts its silent peak, And roll thy songs down like a gathering fountain, They all may drink and find the rest they seek. Sing! there shall silence grow in earth and heaven, A silence of deep awe and wondering; 110 For, listening gladly, bend the angels, even, To hear a mortal like an angel sing. III Among the toil-worn poor my soul is seeking For who shall bring the Maker's name to light, To be the voice of that almighty speaking Which every age demands to do it right. Proprieties our silken bards environ; He who would be the tongue of this wide land Must string his harp with chords of sturdy iron And strike it with a toil-imbrownèd hand; 120 One who hath dwelt with Nature well attended, Who hath learnt wisdom from her mystic books, Whose soul with all her countless lives hath blended, So that all beauty awes us in his looks: Who not with body's waste his soul hath pampered, Who as the clear northwestern wind is free, Who walks with Form's observances unhampered, And follows the One Will obediently; Whose eyes, like windows on a breezy summit, Control a lovely prospect every way; 130 Who doth not sound God's sea with earthly plummet, And find a bottom still of worthless clay; Who heeds not how the lower gusts are working, Knowing that one sure wind blows on above, And sees, beneath the foulest faces lurking, One God-built shrine of reverence and love; Who sees all stars that wheel their shining marches Around the centre fixed of Destiny, Where the encircling soul serene o'erarches The moving globe of being like a sky; 140 Who feels that God and Heaven's great deeps are nearer Him to whose heart his fellow-man is nigh, Who doth not hold his soul's own freedom dearer Than that of all his brethren, low or high; Who to the Right can feel himself the truer For being gently patient with the wrong, Who sees a brother in the evildoer, And finds in Love the heart's-blood of his song;-- This, this is he for whom the world is waiting To sing the beatings of its mighty heart, 150 Too long hath it been patient with the grating Of scrannel-pipes, and heard it misnamed Art. To him the smiling soul of man shall listen, Laying awhile its crown of thorns aside, And once again in every eye shall glisten The glory of a nature satisfied. His verse shall have a great commanding motion, Heaving and swelling with a melody Learnt of the sky, the river, and the ocean, And all the pure, majestic things that be. 160 Awake, then, thou! we pine for thy great presence To make us feel the soul once more sublime, We are of far too infinite an essence To rest contented with the lies of Time. Speak out! and lo! a hush of deepest wonder Shall sink o'er all this many-voicèd scene, As when a sudden burst of rattling thunder Shatters the blueness of a sky serene. THE FATHERLAND Where is the true man's fatherland? Is it where he by chance is born? Doth not the yearning spirit scorn In such scant borders to be spanned? Oh yes! his fatherland must be As the blue heaven wide and free! Is it alone where freedom is, Where God is God and man is man? Doth he not claim a broader span For the soul's love of home than this? Oh yes! his fatherland must be As the blue heaven wide and free! Where'er a human heart doth wear Joy's myrtle-wreath or sorrow's gyves, Where'er a human spirit strives After a life more true and fair, There is the true man's birthplace grand, His is a world-wide fatherland! Where'er a single slave doth pine, Where'er one man may help another,-- Thank God for such a birthright, brother,-- That spot of earth is thine and mine! There is the true man's birthplace grand, His is a world-wide fatherland! THE FORLORN The night is dark, the stinging sleet, Swept by the bitter gusts of air, Drives whistling down the lonely street, And glazes on the pavement bare. The street-lamps flare and struggle dim Through the gray sleet-clouds as they pass, Or, governed by a boisterous whim, Drop down and rustle on the glass. One poor, heart-broken, outcast girl Faces the east-wind's searching flaws, And, as about her heart they whirl, Her tattered cloak more tightly draws. The flat brick walls look cold and bleak, Her bare feet to the sidewalk freeze; Yet dares she not a shelter seek, Though faint with hunger and disease. The sharp storm cuts her forehead bare, And, piercing through her garments thin, Beats on her shrunken breast, and there Makes colder the cold heart within. She lingers where a ruddy glow Streams outward through an open shutter, Adding more bitterness to woe, More loneliness to desertion utter. One half the cold she had not felt Until she saw this gush of light Spread warmly forth, and seem to melt Its slow way through the deadening night. She hears a woman's voice within, Singing sweet words her childhood knew, And years of misery and sin Furl off, and leave her heaven blue. Her freezing heart, like one who sinks Outwearied in the drifting snow. Drowses to deadly sleep and thinks No longer of its hopeless woe; Old fields, and clear blue summer days, Old meadows, green with grass, and trees That shimmer through the trembling haze And whiten in the western breeze. Old faces, all the friendly past Rises within her heart again, And sunshine from her childhood cast Makes summer of the icy rain. Enhaloed by a mild, warm glow, From man's humanity apart, She hears old footsteps wandering slow Through the lone chambers of the heart. Outside the porch before the door, Her cheek upon the cold, hard stone, She lies, no longer foul and poor, No longer dreary and alone. Next morning something heavily Against the opening door did weigh, And there, from sin and sorrow free, A woman on the threshold lay. A smile upon the wan lips told That she had found a calm release, And that, from out the want and cold, The song had borne her soul in peace. For, whom the heart of man shuts out, Sometimes the heart of God takes in, And fences them all round about With silence mid the world's loud din; And one of his great charities Is Music, and it doth not scorn To close the lids upon the eyes Of the polluted and forlorn; Far was she from her childhood's home, Farther in guilt had wandered thence, Yet thither it had bid her come To die in maiden innocence. MIDNIGHT The moon shines white and silent On the mist, which, like a tide Of some enchanted ocean, O'er the wide marsh doth glide, Spreading its ghost-like billows Silently far and wide. A vague and starry magic Makes all things mysteries, And lures the earth's dumb spirit Up to the longing skies: I seem to hear dim whispers, And tremulous replies. The fireflies o'er the meadow In pulses come and go; The elm-trees' heavy shadow Weighs on the grass below; And faintly from the distance The dreaming cock doth crow. All things look strange and mystic, The very bushes swell And take wild shapes and motions, As if beneath a spell; They seem not the same lilacs From childhood known so well. The snow of deepest silence O'er everything doth fall, So beautiful and quiet, And yet so like a pall; As if all life were ended, And rest were come to all. O wild and wondrous midnight, There is a might in thee To make the charmèd body Almost like spirit be, And give it some faint glimpses Of immortality! A PRAYER God! do not let my loved one die, But rather wait until the time That I am grown in purity Enough to enter thy pure clime, Then take me, I will gladly go, So that my love remain below! Oh, let her stay! She is by birth What I through death must learn to be; We need her more on our poor earth Than thou canst need in heaven with thee: She hath her wings already, I Must burst this earth-shell ere I fly. Then, God, take me! We shall be near, More near than ever, each to each: Her angel ears will find more clear My heavenly than my earthly speech; And still, as I draw nigh to thee, Her soul and mine shall closer be. THE HERITAGE The rich man's son inherits lands, And piles of brick and stone, and gold, And he inherits soft white hands, And tender flesh that fears the cold, Nor dares to wear a garment old; A heritage, it seems to me, One scarce would wish to hold in fee. The rich man's son inherits cares; The bank may break, the factory burn, A breath may burst his bubble shares, And soft white hands could hardly earn A living that would serve his turn; A heritage, it seems to me, One scarce would wish to hold in fee. The rich man's son inherits wants, His stomach craves for dainty fare; With sated heart, he hears the pants Of toiling hinds with brown arms bare, And wearies in his easy-chair; A heritage, it seems to me, One scarce would wish to hold in fee. What doth the poor man's son inherit? Stout muscles and a sinewy heart, A hardy frame, a hardier spirit; King of two hands, he does his part In every useful toil and art; A heritage, it seems to me, A king might wish to hold in fee. What doth the poor man's son inherit? Wishes o'erjoyed with humble things, A rank adjudged by toil-won merit, Content that from employment springs, A heart that in his labor sings; A heritage, it seems to me, A king might wish to hold in fee. What doth the poor man's son inherit? A patience learned of being poor, Courage, if sorrow come, to bear it, A fellow-feeling that is sure To make the outcast bless his door; A heritage, it seems to me, A king might wish to hold in fee. O rich man's son! there is a toil That with all others level stands: Large charity doth never soil, But only whiten, soft white hands: This is the best crop from thy lands, A heritage, it seems to me, Worth being rich to hold in fee. O poor man's son! scorn not thy state; There is worse weariness than thine, In merely being rich and great; Toil only gives the soul to shine, And make rest fragrant and benign; A heritage, it seems to me, Worth being poor to hold in fee. Both, heirs to some six feet of sod, Are equal in the earth at last; Both, children of the same dear God, Prove title to your heirship vast By record of a well-filled past; A heritage, it seems to me, Well worth a life to hold in fee. THE ROSE: A BALLAD I In his tower sat the poet Gazing on the roaring sea, 'Take this rose,' he sighed, 'and throw it Where there's none that loveth me. On the rock the billow bursteth And sinks back into the seas, But in vain my spirit thirsteth So to burst and be at ease. Take, O sea! the tender blossom That hath lain against my breast; On thy black and angry bosom It will find a surer rest. Life is vain, and love is hollow, Ugly death stands there behind, Hate and scorn and hunger follow Him that toileth for his kind.' Forth into the night he hurled it, And with bitter smile did mark How the surly tempest whirled it Swift into the hungry dark. Foam and spray drive back to leeward, And the gale, with dreary moan, Drifts the helpless blossom seaward, Through the breakers all alone. II Stands a maiden, on the morrow, Musing by the wave-beat strand, Half in hope and half in sorrow, Tracing words upon the sand: 'Shall I ever then behold him Who hath been my life so long, Ever to this sick heart told him, Be the spirit of his song? Touch not, sea, the blessed letters I have traced upon thy shore, Spare his name whose spirit fetters Mine with love forevermore!' Swells the tide and overflows it, But, with omen pure and meet, Brings a little rose, and throws it Humbly at the maiden's feet. Full of bliss she takes the token, And, upon her snowy breast, Soothes the ruffled petals broken With the ocean's fierce unrest. 'Love is thine, O heart! and surely Peace shall also be thine own, For the heart that trusteth purely Never long can pine alone.' III In his tower sits the poet, Blisses new and strange to him Fill his heart and overflow it With a wonder sweet and dim. Up the beach the ocean slideth With a whisper of delight, And the moon in silence glideth Through the peaceful blue of night. Rippling o'er the poet's shoulder Flows a maiden's golden hair, Maiden lips, with love grown bolder, Kiss his moon-lit forehead bare. 'Life is joy, and love is power, Death all fetters doth unbind, Strength and wisdom only flower When we toil for all our kind. Hope is truth,--the future giveth More than present takes away, And the soul forever liveth Nearer God from day to day.' Not a word the maiden uttered, Fullest hearts are slow to speak, But a withered rose-leaf fluttered Down upon the poet's cheek. SONG Violet! sweet violet! Thine eyes are full of tears; Are they wet Even yet With the thought of other years? Or with gladness are they full, For the night so beautiful, And longing for those far-off spheres? Loved one of my youth thou wast, Of my merry youth, And I see, Tearfully, All the fair and sunny past, All its openness and truth, Ever fresh and green in thee As the moss is in the sea. Thy little heart, that hath with love Grown colored like the sky above, On which thou lookest ever,-- Can it know All the woe Of hope for what returneth never, All the sorrow and the longing To these hearts of ours belonging? Out on it! no foolish pining For the sky Dims thine eye, Or for the stars so calmly shining; Like thee let this soul of mine Take hue from that wherefor I long, Self-stayed and high, serene and strong, Not satisfied with hoping--but divine. Violet! dear violet! Thy blue eyes are only wet With joy and love of Him who sent thee, And for the fulfilling sense Of that glad obedience Which made thee all that Nature meant thee! ROSALINE Thou look'dst on me all yesternight, Thine eyes were blue, thy hair was bright As when we murmured our troth-plight Beneath the thick stars, Rosaline! Thy hair was braided on thy head, As on the day we two were wed, Mine eyes scarce knew if thou wert dead, But my shrunk heart knew, Rosaline! The death-watch ticked behind the wall, The blackness rustled like a pall, 10 The moaning wind did rise and fall Among the bleak pines, Rosaline! My heart beat thickly in mine ears: The lids may shut out fleshly fears, But still the spirit sees and hears. Its eyes are lidless, Rosaline! A wildness rushing suddenly, A knowing some ill shape is nigh, A wish for death, a fear to die, Is not this vengeance, Rosaline? 20 A loneliness that is not lone, A love quite withered up and gone, A strong soul ousted from its throne, What wouldst thou further, Rosaline? 'Tis drear such moonless nights as these, Strange sounds are out upon the breeze, And the leaves shiver in the trees, And then thou comest, Rosaline! I seem to hear the mourners go, With long black garments trailing slow, 30 And plumes anodding to and fro, As once I heard them, Rosaline! Thy shroud is all of snowy white, And, in the middle of the night, Thou standest moveless and upright, Gazing upon me, Rosaline! There is no sorrow in thine eyes, But evermore that meek surprise,-- O God! thy gentle spirit tries To deem me guiltless, Rosaline! 40 Above thy grave the robin sings, And swarms of bright and happy things Flit all about with sunlit wings, But I am cheerless, Rosaline! The violets in the hillock toss, The gravestone is o'ergrown with moss; For nature feels not any loss, But I am cheerless, Rosaline! I did not know when thou wast dead; A blackbird whistling overhead 50 Thrilled through my brain; I would have fled, But dared not leave thee, Rosaline! The sun rolled down, and very soon, Like a great fire, the awful moon Rose, stained with blood, and then a swoon Crept chilly o'er me, Rosaline! The stars came out; and, one by one, Each angel from his silver throne Looked down and saw what I had done: I dared not hide me, Rosaline! 60 I crouched; I feared thy corpse would cry Against me to God's silent sky, I thought I saw the blue lips try To utter something, Rosaline! I waited with a maddened grin To hear that voice all icy thin Slide forth and tell my deadly sin To hell and heaven, Rosaline! But no voice came, and then it seemed, That, if the very corpse had screamed, 70 The sound like sunshine glad had streamed Through that dark stillness, Rosaline! And then, amid the silent night, I screamed with horrible delight, And in my brain an awful light Did seem to crackle, Rosaline! It is my curse! sweet memories fall From me like snow, and only all Of that one night, like cold worms, crawl My doomed heart over, Rosaline! 80 Why wilt thou haunt me with thine eyes, Wherein such blessed memories, Such pitying forgiveness lies, Than hate more bitter, Rosaline! Woe's me! I know that love so high As thine, true soul, could never die, And with mean clay in churchyard lie,-- Would it might be so, Rosaline! A REQUIEM Ay, pale and silent maiden, Cold as thou liest there, Thine was the sunniest nature That ever drew the air; The wildest and most wayward, And yet so gently kind, Thou seemedst but to body A breath of summer wind. Into the eternal shadow That girds our life around, Into the infinite silence Wherewith Death's shore is bound, Thou hast gone forth, beloved! And I were mean to weep, That thou hast left Life's shallows And dost possess the Deep. Thou liest low and silent, Thy heart is cold and still. Thine eyes are shut forever, And Death hath had his will; He loved and would have taken; I loved and would have kept. We strove,--and he was stronger, And I have never wept. Let him possess thy body, Thy soul is still with me, More sunny and more gladsome Than it was wont to be: Thy body was a fetter That bound me to the flesh, Thank God that it is broken, And now I live afresh! Now I can see thee clearly; The dusky cloud of clay, That hid thy starry spirit, Is rent and blown away: To earth I give thy body, Thy spirit to the sky, I saw its bright wings growing, And knew that thou must fly. Now I can love thee truly, For nothing comes between The senses and the spirit, The seen and the unseen; Lifts the eternal shadow, The silence bursts apart, And the soul's boundless future Is present in my heart. A PARABLE Worn and footsore was the Prophet, When he gained the holy hill; 'God has left the earth,' he murmured, 'Here his presence lingers still. 'God of all the olden prophets, Wilt thou speak with men no more? Have I not as truly served thee As thy chosen ones of yore? 'Hear me, guider of my fathers, Lo! a humble heart is mine; By thy mercy I beseech thee Grant thy servant but a sign!' Bowing then his head, he listened For an answer to his prayer; No loud burst of thunder followed, Not a murmur stirred the air: But the tuft of moss before him Opened while he waited yet, And, from out the rock's hard bosom, Sprang a tender violet. 'God! I thank thee,' said the Prophet; 'Hard of heart and blind was I, Looking to the holy mountain For the gift of prophecy. 'Still thou speakest with thy children Freely as in eld sublime; Humbleness, and love, and patience, Still give empire over time. 'Had I trusted in my nature, And had faith in lowly things, Thou thyself wouldst then have sought me. And set free my spirit's wings. 'But I looked for signs and wonders, That o'er men should give me sway; Thirsting to be more than mortal, I was even less than clay. 'Ere I entered on my journey, As I girt my loins to start, Ran to me my little daughter, The beloved of my heart; 'In her hand she held a flower, Like to this as like may be, Which, beside my very threshold, She had plucked and brought to me.' SONG O moonlight deep and tender, A year and more agone, Your mist of golden splendor Round my betrothal shone! O elm-leaves dark and dewy, The very same ye seem, The low wind trembles through ye, Ye murmur in my dream! O river, dim with distance, Flow thus forever by, A part of my existence Within your heart doth lie! O stars, ye saw our meeting, Two beings and one soul, Two hearts so madly beating To mingle and be whole! O happy night, deliver Her kisses back to me, Or keep them all, and give her A blisslul dream of me! SONNETS I TO A.C.L. Through suffering and sorrow thou hast passed To show us what a woman true may be: They have not taken sympathy from thee, Nor made thee any other than thou wast, Save as some tree, which, in a sudden blast, Sheddeth those blossoms, that are weakly grown, Upon the air, but keepeth every one Whose strength gives warrant of good fruit at last: So thou hast shed some blooms of gayety, But never one of steadfast cheerfulness; Nor hath thy knowledge of adversity Robbed thee of any faith in happiness, But rather cleared thine inner eyes to see How many simple ways there are to bless. II What were I, Love, if I were stripped of thee, If thine eyes shut me out whereby I live. Thou, who unto my calmer soul dost give Knowledge, and Truth, and holy Mystery, Wherein Truth mainly lies for those who see Beyond the earthly and the fugitive, Who in the grandeur of the soul believe, And only in the Infinite are free? Without thee I were naked, bleak, and bare As yon dead cedar on the sea-cliff's brow; And Nature's teachings, which come to me now, Common and beautiful as light and air, Would be as fruitless as a stream which still Slips through the wheel of some old ruined mill. III I would not have this perfect love of ours Grow from a single root, a single stem, Bearing no goodly fruit, but only flowers That idly hide life's iron diadem: It should grow alway like that Eastern tree Whose limbs take root and spread forth constantly; That love for one, from which there doth not spring Wide love for all, is but a worthless thing. Not in another world, as poets prate, Dwell we apart above the tide of things, High floating o'er earth's clouds on faery wings; But our pure love doth ever elevate Into a holy bond of brotherhood All earthly things, making them pure and good. IV 'For this true nobleness I seek in vain, In woman and in man I find it not; I almost weary of my earthly lot, My life-springs are dried up with burning pain.' Thou find'st it not? I pray thee look again, Look _inward_ through the depths of thine own soul. How is it with thee? Art thou sound and whole? Doth narrow search show thee no earthly stain? BE NOBLE! and the nobleness that lies In other men, sleeping, but never dead, Will rise in majesty to meet thine own; Then wilt thou see it gleam in many eyes, Then will pure light around thy path be shed, And thou wilt nevermore be sad and lone. V TO THE SPIRIT OF KEATS Great soul, thou sittest with me in my room, Uplifting me with thy vast, quiet eyes, On whose full orbs, with kindly lustre, lies The twilight warmth of ruddy ember-gloom: Thy clear, strong tones will oft bring sudden bloom Of hope secure, to him who lonely cries, Wrestling with the young poet's agonies, Neglect and scorn, which seem a certain doom: Yes! the few words which, like great thunder-drops, Thy large heart down to earth shook doubtfully, Thrilled by the inward lightning of its might, Serene and pure, like gushing joy of light, Shall track the eternal chords of Destiny, After the moon-led pulse of ocean stops. VI Great Truths are portions of the soul of man; Great souls are portions of Eternity; Each drop of blood that e'er through true heart ran With lofty message, ran for thee and me; For God's law, since the starry song began, Hath been, and still forevermore must be, That every deed which shall outlast Time's span Must spur the soul to be erect and free; Slave is no word of deathless lineage sprung; Too many noble souls have thought and died, Too many mighty poets lived and sung, And our good Saxon, from lips purified With martyr-fire, throughout the world hath rung Too long to have God's holy cause denied. VII I ask not for those thoughts, that sudden leap From being's sea, like the isle-seeming Kraken, With whose great rise the ocean all is shaken And a heart-tremble quivers through the deep; Give me that growth which some perchance deem sleep, Wherewith the steadfast coral-stems uprise, Which, by the toil of gathering energies, Their upward way into clear sunshine keep, Until, by Heaven's sweetest influences, Slowly and slowly spreads a speck of green Into a pleasant island in the seas, Where, mid fall palms, the cane-roofed home is seen, And wearied men shall sit at sunset's hour, Hearing the leaves and loving God's dear power. VIII TO M.W., ON HER BIRTHDAY Maiden, when such a soul as thine is born, The morning-stars their ancient music make, And, joyful, once again their song awake, Long silent now with melancholy scorn; And thou, not mindless of so blest a morn, By no least deed its harmony shalt break, But shalt to that high chime thy footsteps take, Through life's most darksome passes unforlorn; Therefore from thy pure faith thou shalt not fall, Therefore shalt thou be ever fair and free, And in thine every motion musical As summer air, majestic as the sea, A mystery to those who creep and crawl Through Time, and part it from Eternity. IX My Love, I have no fear that thou shouldst die; Albeit I ask no fairer life than this, Whose numbering-clock is still thy gentle kiss, While Time and Peace with hands enlockèd fly; Yet care I not where in Eternity We live and love, well knowing that there is No backward step for those who feel the bliss Of Faith as their most lofty yearnings high: Love hath so purified my being's core, Meseems I scarcely should be startled even, To find, some morn, that thou hadst gone before; Since, with thy love, this knowledge too was given, Which each calm day doth strengthen more and more, That they who love are but one step from Heaven. X I cannot think that thou shouldst pass away, Whose life to mine is an eternal law, A piece of nature that can have no flaw, A new and certain sunrise every day: But, if thou art to be another ray About the Sun of Life, and art to live Free from what part of thee was fugitive, The debt of Love I will more fully pay, Not downcast with the thought of thee so high, But rather raised to be a nobler man, And more divine in my humanity, As knowing that the waiting eyes which scan My life are lighted by a purer being, And ask high, calm-browed deeds, with it agreeing. XI There never yet was flower fair in vain, Let classic poets rhyme it as they will; The seasons toil that it may blow again, And summer's heart doth feel its every ill; Nor is a true soul ever born for naught; Wherever any such hath lived and died, There hath been something for true freedom wrought, Some bulwark levelled on the evil side: Toil on, then, Greatness! thou art in the right, However narrow souls may call thee wrong; Be as thou wouldst be in thine own clear sight, And so thou shalt be in the world's erelong; For worldlings cannot, struggle as they may, From man's great soul one great thought hide away. XII SUB PONDERE CRESCIT The hope of Truth grows stronger, day by day; I hear the soul of Man around me waking, Like a great sea, its frozen fetters breaking, And flinging up to heaven its sunlit spray, Tossing huge continents in scornful play, And crushing them, with din of grinding thunder, That makes old emptinesses stare in wonder; The memory of a glory passed away Lingers in every heart, as, in the shell, Resounds the bygone freedom of the sea, And every hour new signs of promise tell, That the great soul shall once again be free, For high, and yet more high, the murmurs swell Of inward strife for truth and liberty. XIII Beloved, in the noisy city here, The thought of thee can make all turmoil cease; Around my spirit, folds thy spirit clear Its still, soft arms, and circles it with peace; There is no room for any doubt or fear In souls so overfilled with love's increase, There is no memory of the bygone year But growth in heart's and spirit's perfect ease: How hath our love, half nebulous at first, Rounded itself into a full-orbed sun! How have our lives and wills (as haply erst They were, ere this forgetfulness begun) Through all their earthly distances outburst, And melted, like two rays of light in one! XIV ON READING WORDSWORTH'S SONNETS IN DEFENCE OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT As the broad ocean endlessly upheaveth, With the majestic beating of his heart, The mighty tides, whereof its rightful part Each sea-wide bay and little weed receiveth. So, through his soul who earnestly believeth, Life from the universal Heart doth flow, Whereby some conquest of the eternal Woe, By instinct of God's nature, he achieveth; A fuller pulse of this all-powerful beauty Into the poet's gulf-like heart doth tide, And he more keenly feels the glorious duty Of serving Truth, despised and crucified,-- Happy, unknowing sect or creed, to rest, And feel God flow forever through his breast. XV THE SAME CONTINUED Once hardly in a cycle blossometh A flower-like soul ripe with the seeds of song, A spirit foreordained to cope with wrong, Whose divine thoughts are natural as breath, Who the old Darkness thickly scattereth With starry words, that shoot prevailing light Into the deeps, and wither, with the blight Of serene Truth, the coward heart of Death: Woe, if such spirit thwart its errand high, And mock with lies the longing soul of man! Yet one age longer must true Culture lie, Soothing her bitter fetters as she can, Until new messages of love out-start At the next beating of the infinite Heart. XVI THE SAME CONTINUED The love of all things springs from love of one; Wider the soul's horizon hourly grows, And over it with fuller glory flows The sky-like spirit of God; a hope begun In doubt and darkness 'neath a fairer sun Cometh to fruitage, if it be of Truth: And to the law of meekness, faith, and ruth, By inward sympathy, shall all be won: This thou shouldst know, who, from the painted feature Of shifting Fashion, couldst thy brethren turn Unto the love of ever-youthful Nature, And of a beauty fadeless and eterne; And always 'tis the saddest sight to see An old man faithless in Humanity. XVII THE SAME CONTINUED A poet cannot strive for despotism; His harp falls shattered; for it still must be The instinct of great spirits to be free, And the sworn foes of cunning barbarism: He who has deepest searched the wide abysm Of that life-giving Soul which men call fate, Knows that to put more faith in lies and hate Than truth and love is the true atheism: Upward the soul forever turns her eyes: The next hour always shames the hour before; One beauty, at its highest, prophesies That by whose side it shall seem mean and poor; No Godlike thing knows aught of less and less, But widens to the boundless Perfectness. XVIII THE SAME CONTINUED Therefore think not the Past is wise alone, For Yesterday knows nothing of the Best, And thou shalt love it only as the nest Whence glory-wingèd things to Heaven have flown: To the great Soul only are all things known; Present and future are to her as past, While she in glorious madness doth forecast That perfect bud, which seems a flower full-blown To each new Prophet, and yet always opes Fuller and fuller with each day and hour, Heartening the soul with odor of fresh hopes, And longings high, and gushings of wide power, Yet never is or shall be fully blown Save in the forethought of the Eternal One. XIX THE SAME CONCLUDED Far 'yond this narrow parapet of Time, With eyes uplift, the poet's soul should look Into the Endless Promise, nor should brook One prying doubt to shake his faith sublime; To him the earth is ever in her prime And dewiness of morning; he can see Good lying hid, from all eternity, Within the teeming womb of sin and crime; His soul should not be cramped by any bar, His nobleness should be so Godlike high, That his least deed is perfect as a star, His common look majestic as the sky, And all o'erflooded with a light from far, Undimmed by clouds of weak mortality. XX TO M.O.S. Mary, since first I knew thee, to this hour, My love hath deepened, with my wiser sense Of what in Woman is to reverence; Thy clear heart, fresh as e'er was forest-flower, Still opens more to me its beauteous dower;-- But let praise hush,--Love asks no evidence To prove itself well-placed: we know not whence It gleans the straws that thatch its humble bower: We can but say we found it in the heart, Spring of all sweetest thoughts, arch foe of blame, Sower of flowers in the dusty mart, Pure vestal of the poet's holy flame,-- This is enough, and we have done our part If we but keep it spotless as it came. XXI Our love is not a fading, earthly flower: Its wingèd seed dropped down from Paradise, And, nursed by day and night, by sun and shower, Doth momently to fresher beauty rise: To us the leafless autumn is not bare, Nor winter's rattling boughs lack lusty green. Our summer hearts make summer's fulness, where No leaf, or bud, or blossom may be seen: For nature's life in love's deep life doth lie, Love,--whose forgetfulness is beauty's death, Whose mystic key these cells of Thou and I Into the infinite freedom openeth, And makes the body's dark and narrow grate The wide-flung leaves of Heaven's own palace-gate. XXII IN ABSENCE These rugged, wintry days I scarce could bear, Did I not know that, in the early spring, When wild March winds upon their errands sing, Thou wouldst return, bursting on this still air, Like those same winds, when, startled from their lair, They hunt up violets, and free swift brooks From icy cares, even as thy clear looks Bid my heart bloom, and sing, and break all care; When drops with welcome rain the April day, My flowers shall find their April in thine eyes, Save there the rain in dreamy clouds doth stay, As loath to fall out of those happy skies; Yet sure, my love, thou art most like to May, That comes with steady sun when April dies. XXIII WENDELL PHILLIPS He stood upon the world's broad threshold; wide The din of tattle and of slaughter rose; He saw God stand upon the weaker side, That sank in seeming loss before its foes: Many there were who made great haste and sold Unto the cunning enemy their swords, He scorned their gifts of fame, and power, and gold, And, underneath their soft and flowery words, Heard the cold serpent hiss; therefore he went And humbly joined him to the weaker part, Fanatic named, and fool, yet well content So he could he the nearer to God's heart, And feel its solemn pulses sending blood Through all the widespread veins of endless good. XXIV THE STREET They pass me by like shadows, crowds on crowds, Dim ghosts of men, that hover to and fro, Hugging their bodies round them like thin shrouds Wherein their souls were buried long ago: They trampled on their youth, and faith, and love, They cast their hope of human kind away, With Heaven's clear messages they madly strove, And conquered,--and their spirits turned to clay: Lo! how they wander round the world, their grave, Whose ever-gaping maw by such is fed, Gibbering at living men, and idly rave, 'We only truly live, but ye are dead.' Alas! poor fools, the anointed eye may trace A dead soul's epitaph in every face! XXV I grieve not that ripe Knowledge takes away The charm that Nature to my childhood wore, For, with that insight, cometh, day by day, A greater bliss than wonder was before; The real doth not clip the poet's wings,-- To win the secret of a weed's plain heart Reveals some clue to spiritual things, And stumbling guess becomes firm-footed art: Flowers are not flowers unto the poet's eyes, Their beauty thrills him by an inward sense; He knows that outward seemings are but lies, Or, at the most, but earthly shadows, whence The soul that looks within for truth may guess The presence of some wondrous heavenliness. XXVI TO J.R. GIDDINGS Giddings, far rougher names than thine have grown Smoother than honey on the lips of men; And thou shalt aye be honorably known, As one who bravely used his tongue and pen. As best befits a freeman,--even for those To whom our Law's unblushing front denies A right to plead against the lifelong woes Which are the Negro's glimpse of Freedom's skies: Fear nothing, and hope all things, as the Right Alone may do securely; every hour The thrones of Ignorance and ancient Night Lose somewhat of their long-usurpèd power, And Freedom's lightest word can make them shiver With a base dread that clings to them forever. XXVII I thought our love at full, but I did err; Joy's wreath drooped o'er mine eyes; I could not see That sorrow in our happy world must be Love's deepest spokesman and interpreter; But, as a mother feels her child first stir Under her heart, so felt I instantly Deep in my soul another bond to thee Thrill with that life we saw depart from her; O mother of our angel child! twice dear! Death knits as well as parts, and still, I wis, Her tender radiance shall infold us here, Even as the light, borne up by inward bliss, Threads the void glooms of space without a fear, To print on farthest stars her pitying kiss. L'ENVOI Whether my heart hath wiser grown or not, In these three years, since I to thee inscribed, Mine own betrothed, the firstlings of my muse.-- Poor windfalls of unripe experience, Young buds plucked hastily by childish hands Not patient to await more full-blown flowers,-- At least it hath seen more of life and men, And pondered more, and grown a shade more sad; Yet with no loss of hope or settled trust In the benignness of that Providence 10 Which shapes from out our elements awry The grace and order that we wonder at, The mystic harmony of right and wrong, Both working out his wisdom and our good: A trust, Beloved, chiefly learned of thee, Who hast that gift of patient tenderness, The instinctive wisdom of a woman's heart. They tell us that our land was made for song, With its huge rivers and sky-piercing peaks, Its sealike lakes and mighty cataracts, 20 Its forests vast and hoar, and prairies wide, And mounds that tell of wondrous tribes extinct. But Poesy springs not from rocks and woods; Her womb and cradle are the human heart, And she can find a nobler theme for song In the most loathsome man that blasts the sight Than in the broad expanse of sea and shore Between the frozen deserts of the poles. All nations have their message from on high, Each the messiah of some central thought, 30 For the fulfilment and delight of Man: One has to teach that labor is divine; Another Freedom; and another Mind; And all, that God is open-eyed and just, The happy centre and calm heart of all. Are, then, our woods, our mountains, and our streams, Needful to teach our poets how to sing? O maiden rare, far other thoughts were ours, When we have sat by ocean's foaming marge, And watched the waves leap roaring on the rocks, 40 Than young Leander and his Hero had, Gazing from Sestos to the other shore. The moon looks down and ocean worships her, Stars rise and set, and seasons come and go Even as they did in Homer's elder time, But we behold them not with Grecian eyes: Then they were types of beauty and of strength, But now of freedom, unconflned and pure, Subject alone to Order's higher law. What cares the Russian serf or Southern slave 50 Though we should speak as man spake never yet Of gleaming Hudson's broad magnificence, Or green Niagara's never-ending roar? Our country hath a gospel of her own To preach and practise before all the world,-- The freedom and divinity of man, The glorious claims of human brotherhood,-- Which to pay nobly, as a freeman should, Gains the sole wealth that will not fly away,-- And the soul's fealty to none but God. 60 These are realities, which make the shows Of outward Nature, be they ne'er so grand, Seem small, and worthless, and contemptible. These are the mountain-summits for our bards, Which stretch far upward into heaven itself, And give such widespread and exulting view Of hope, and faith, and onward destiny, That shrunk Parnassus to a molehill dwindles. Our new Atlantis, like a morning-star, Silvers the mirk face of slow-yielding Night, 70 The herald of a fuller truth than yet Hath gleamed upon the upraised face of Man Since the earth glittered in her stainless prime,-- Of a more glorious sunrise than of old Drew wondrous melodies from Memnon huge, Yea, draws them still, though now he sit waist-deep In the ingulfing flood of whirling sand, And look across the wastes of endless gray, Sole wreck, where once his hundred-gated Thebes Pained with her mighty hum the calm, blue heaven: 80 Shall the dull stone pay grateful orisons, And we till noonday bar the splendor out, Lest it reproach and chide our sluggard hearts, Warm-nestled in the down of Prejudice, And be content, though clad with angel-wings, Close-clipped, to hop about from perch to perch, In paltry cages of dead men's dead thoughts? Oh, rather, like the skylark, soar and sing, And let our gushing songs befit the dawn And sunrise, and the yet unshaken dew 90 Brimming the chalice of each full-blown hope, Whose blithe front turns to greet the growing day! Never had poets such high call before, Never can poets hope for higher one, And, if they be but faithful to their trust, Earth will remember them with love and joy, And oh, far better, God will not forget. For he who settles Freedom's principles Writes the death-warrant of all tyranny; Who speaks the truth stabs Falsehood to the heart, 100 And his mere word makes despots tremble more Than ever Brutus with his dagger could. Wait for no hints from waterfalls or woods, Nor dream that tales of red men, brute and fierce, Repay the finding of this Western World, Or needed half the globe to give them birth: Spirit supreme of Freedom! not for this Did great Columbus tame his eagle soul To jostle with the daws that perch in courts; Not for this, friendless, on an unknown sea, 110 Coping with mad waves and more mutinous spirits, Battled he with the dreadful ache at heart Which tempts, with devilish subtleties of doubt, The hermit, of that loneliest solitude, The silent desert of a great New Thought; Though loud Niagara were to-day struck dumb, Yet would this cataract of boiling life Rush plunging on and on to endless deeps, And utter thunder till the world shall cease,-- A thunder worthy of the poet's song, 120 And which alone can fill it with true life. The high evangel to our country granted Could make apostles, yea, with tongues of fire, Of hearts half-darkened back again to clay! 'Tis the soul only that is national, And he who pays true loyalty to that Alone can claim the wreath of patriotism. Beloved! if I wander far and oft From that which I believe, and feel, and know, Thou wilt forgive, not with a sorrowing heart, 130 But with a strengthened hope of better things; Knowing that I, though often blind and false To those I love, and oh, more false than all Unto myself, have been most true to thee, And that whoso in one thing hath been true Can be as true in all. Therefore thy hope May yet not prove unfruitful, and thy love Meet, day by day, with less unworthy thanks, Whether, as now, we journey hand in hand, Or, parted in the body, yet are one 140 In spirit and the love of holy things. MISCELLANEOUS POEMS A LEGEND OF BRITTANY PART FIRST I Fair as a summer dream was Margaret, Such dream as in a poet's soul might start, Musing of old loves while the moon doth set: Her hair was not more sunny than her heart, Though like a natural golden coronet It circled her dear head with careless art, Mocking the sunshine, that would fain have lent To its frank grace a richer ornament. II His loved one's eyes could poet ever speak, So kind, so dewy, and so deep were hers,-- 10 But, while he strives, the choicest phrase, too weak, Their glad reflection in his spirit blurs; As one may see a dream dissolve and break Out of his grasp when he to tell it stirs, Like that sad Dryad doomed no more to bless The mortal who revealed her loveliness. III She dwelt forever in a region bright, Peopled with living fancies of her own, Where naught could come but visions of delight, Far, far aloof from earth's eternal moan: 20 A summer cloud thrilled through with rosy light, Floating beneath the blue sky all alone, Her spirit wandered by itself, and won A golden edge from some unsetting sun. IV The heart grows richer that its lot is poor, God blesses want with larger sympathies, Love enters gladliest at the humble door, And makes the cot a palace with his eyes; So Margaret's heart a softer beauty wore, And grew in gentleness and patience wise, 30 For she was but a simple herdsman's child, A lily chance-sown in the rugged wild. V There was no beauty of the wood or field But she its fragrant bosom-secret knew, Nor any but to her would freely yield Some grace that in her soul took root and grew; Nature to her shone as but now revealed, All rosy-fresh with innocent morning dew, And looked into her heart with dim, sweet eyes That left it full of sylvan memories. 40 VI Oh, what a face was hers to brighten light, And give back sunshine with an added glow, To wile each moment with a fresh delight, And part of memory's best contentment grow! Oh, how her voice, as with an inmate's right, Into the strangest heart would welcome go, And make it sweet, and ready to become Of white and gracious thoughts the chosen home! VII None looked upon her but he straightway thought Of all the greenest depths of country cheer, 50 And into each one's heart was freshly brought What was to him the sweetest time of year, So was her every look and motion fraught With out-of-door delights and forest lere; Not the first violet on a woodland lea Seemed a more visible gift of Spring than she. VIII Is love learned only out of poets' books? Is there not somewhat in the dropping flood, And in the nunneries of silent nooks, And in the murmured longing of the wood, 60 That could make Margaret dream of lovelorn looks, And stir a thrilling mystery in her blood More trembly secret than Aurora's tear Shed in the bosom of an eglatere? IX Full many a sweet forewarning hath the mind, Full many a whispering of vague desire, Ere comes the nature destined to unbind Its virgin zone, and all its deeps inspire,-- 70 Low stirrings in the leaves, before the wind Wake all the green strings of the forest lyre, Faint heatings in the calyx, ere the rose Its warm voluptuous breast doth all unclose. X Long in its dim recesses pines the spirit, Wildered and dark, despairingly alone; Though many a shape of beauty wander near it, And many a wild and half-remembered tone Tremble from the divine abyss to cheer it, Yet still it knows that there is only one Before whom it can kneel and tribute bring. At once a happy vassal and a king. 80 XI To feel a want, yet scarce know what it is, To seek one nature that is always new, Whose glance is warmer than another's kiss, Whom we can bare our inmost beauty to, Nor feel deserted afterwards,--for this But with our destined co-mate we can do,-- Such longing instinct fills the mighty scope Of the young soul with one mysterious hope. XII So Margaret's heart grew brimming with the lore Of love's enticing secrets; and although 90 She had found none to cast it down before, Yet oft to Fancy's chapel she would go To pay her vows--and count the rosary o'er Of her love's promised graces:--haply so Miranda's hope had pictured Ferdinand Long ere the gaunt wave tossed him on the strand. XIII A new-made star that swims the lonely gloom, Unwedded yet and longing for the sun, Whose beams, the bride-gifts of the lavish groom, Blithely to crown the virgin planet run, 100 Her being was, watching to see the bloom Of love's fresh sunrise roofing one by one Its clouds with gold, a triumph-arch to be For him who came to hold her heart in fee. XIV Not far from Margaret's cottage dwelt a knight Of the proud Templars, a sworn celibate, Whose heart in secret fed upon the light And dew of her ripe beauty, through the grate Of his close vow catching what gleams he might Of the free heaven, and cursing all too late 110 The cruel faith whose black walls hemmed him in And turned life's crowning bliss to deadly sin. XV For he had met her in the wood by chance, And, having drunk her beauty's wildering spell, His heart shook like the pennon of a lance That quivers in a breeze's sudden swell, And thenceforth, in a close-infolded trance, From mistily golden deep to deep he fell; Till earth did waver and fade far away Beneath the hope in whose warm arms he lay. 120 XVI A dark, proud man he was, whose half-blown youth Had shed its blossoms even in opening, Leaving a few that with more winning ruth Trembling around grave manhood's stem might cling, More sad than cheery, making, in good sooth, Like the fringed gentian, a late autumn spring: A twilight nature, braided light and gloom, A youth half-smiling by an open tomb. XVII Fair as an angel, who yet inly wore A wrinkled heart foreboding his near fall; 130 Who saw him alway wished to know him more, As if he were some fate's defiant thrall And nursed a dreaded secret at his core; Little he loved, but power the most of all, And that he seemed to scorn, as one who knew By what foul paths men choose to crawl thereto. XVIII He had been noble, but some great deceit Had turned his better instinct to a vice: He strove to think the world was all a cheat, That power and fame were cheap at any price, 140 That the sure way of being shortly great Was even to play life's game with loaded dice, Since he had tried the honest play and found That vice and virtue differed but in sound. XIX Yet Margaret's sight redeemed him for a space From his own thraldom; man could never be A hypocrite when first such maiden grace Smiled in upon his heart; the agony Of wearing all day long a lying face Fell lightly from him, and, a moment free, 150 Erect with wakened faith his spirit stood And scorned the weakness of his demon-mood. XX Like a sweet wind-harp to him was her thought, Which would not let the common air come near, Till from its dim enchantment it had caught A musical tenderness that brimmed his ear With sweetness more ethereal than aught Save silver-dropping snatches that whilere Rained down from some sad angel's faithful harp To cool her fallen lover's anguish sharp. 160 XXI Deep in the forest was a little dell High overarchèd with the leafy sweep Of a broad oak, through whose gnarled roots there fell A slender rill that sung itself to sleep, Where its continuous toil had scooped a well To please the fairy folk; breathlessly deep The stillness was, save when the dreaming brook From its small urn a drizzly murmur shook. XXII The wooded hills sloped upward all around With gradual rise, and made an even rim, 170 So that it seemed a mighty casque unbound From some huge Titan's brow to lighten him, Ages ago, and left upon the ground. Where the slow soil had mossed it to the brim, Till after countless centuries it grew Into this dell, the haunt of noontide dew. XXIII Dim vistas, sprinkled o'er with sun-flecked green, Wound through the thickset trunks on every side, And, toward the west, in fancy might be seen A Gothic window in its blazing pride, 180 When the low sun, two arching elms between, Lit up the leaves beyond, which, autumn-dyed With lavish hues, would into splendor start, Shaming the labored panes of richest art. XXIV Here, leaning once against the old oak's trunk, Mordred, for such was the young Templar's name, Saw Margaret come; unseen, the falcon shrunk From the meek dove; sharp thrills of tingling flame Made him forget that he was vowed a monk, And all the outworks of his pride o'ercame: 190 Flooded he seemed with bright delicious pain, As if a star had burst within his brain. XXV Such power hath beauty and frank innocence: A flower bloomed forth, that sunshine glad to bless, Even from his love's long leafless stem; the sense Of exile from Hope's happy realm grew less, And thoughts of childish peace, he knew not whence, Thronged round his heart with many an old caress, Melting the frost there into pearly dew That mirrored back his nature's morning-blue. 200 XXVI She turned and saw him, but she felt no dread, Her purity, like adamantine mail. Did so encircle her; and yet her head She drooped, and made her golden hair her veil, Through which a glow of rosiest lustre spread, Then faded, and anon she stood all pale, As snow o'er which a blush of northern light Suddenly reddens, and as soon grows white. XXVII She thought of Tristrem and of Lancilot, Of all her dreams, and of kind fairies' might, 210 And how that dell was deemed a haunted spot, Until there grew a mist before her sight. And where the present was she half forgot, Borne backward through the realms of old delight,-- Then, starting up awake, she would have gone, Yet almost wished it might not be alone. XXVIII How they went home together through the wood, And how all life seemed focussed into one Thought-dazzling spot that set ablaze the blood, What need to tell? Fit language there is none 220 For the heart's deepest things. Who ever wooed As in his boyish hope he would have done? For, when the soul is fullest, the hushed tongue Voicelessly trembles like a lute unstrung. XXIX But all things carry the heart's messages And know it not, nor doth the heart well know, But Nature hath her will; even as the bees, Blithe go-betweens, fly singing to and fro With the fruit-quickening pollen;--hard if these Found not some all unthought-of way to show 230 Their secret each to each; and so they did, And one heart's flower-dust into the other slid. XXX Young hearts are free; the selfish world it is That turns them miserly and cold as stone, And makes them clutch their fingers on the bliss Which but in giving truly is their own;-- She had no dreams of barter, asked not his, But gave hers freely as she would have thrown A rose to him, or as that rose gives forth Its generous fragrance, thoughtless of its worth. 240 XXXI Her summer nature felt a need to bless, And a like longing to be blest again; So, from her sky-like spirit, gentleness Dropt ever like a sunlit fall of rain, And his beneath drank in the bright caress As thirstily as would a parched plain, That long hath watched the showers of sloping gray For ever, ever, falling far away. XXXII How should she dream of ill? the heart filled quite With sunshine, like the shepherd's-clock at noon, 250 Closes its leaves around its warm delight; Whate'er in life is harsh or out of tune Is all shut out, no boding shade of blight Can pierce the opiate ether of its swoon: Love is but blind as thoughtful justice is, But naught can be so wanton-blind as bliss. XXXIII All beauty and all life he was to her; She questioned not his love, she only knew That she loved him, and not a pulse could stir In her whole frame but quivered through and through 260 With this glad thought, and was a minister To do him fealty and service true, Like golden ripples hasting to the land To wreck their freight of sunshine on the strand. XXXIV O dewy dawn of love! that are Hung high, like the cliff-swallow's perilous nest, Most like to fall when fullest, and that jar With every heavier billow! O unrest Than balmiest deeps of quiet sweeter far! How did ye triumph now in Margaret's breast, 270 Making it readier to shrink and start Than quivering gold of the pond-lily's heart! XXXV Here let us pause: oh, would the soul might ever Achieve its immortality in youth, When nothing yet hath damped its high endeavor After the starry energy of truth! Here let us pause, and for a moment sever This gleam of sunshine from the sad unruth That sometime comes to all, for it is good To lengthen to the last a sunny mood. 280 PART SECOND I As one who, from the sunshine and the green, Enters the solid darkness of a cave, Nor knows what precipice or pit unseen May yawn before him with its sudden grave, And, with hushed breath, doth often forward lean, Dreaming he hears the plashing of a wave Dimly below, or feels a damper air From out some dreary chasm, he knows not where; II So, from the sunshine and the green of love, We enter on our story's darker part; 290 And, though the horror of it well may move An impulse of repugnance in the heart, Yet let us think, that, as there's naught above The all-embracing atmosphere of Art, So also there is naught that falls below Her generous reach, though grimed with guilt and woe. III Her fittest triumph is to show that good Lurks in the heart of evil evermore, That love, though scorned, and outcast, and withstood, Can without end forgive, and yet have store; 300 God's love and man's are of the selfsame blood, And He can see that always at the door Of foulest hearts the angel-nature yet Knocks to return and cancel all its debt. IV It ever is weak falsehood's destiny That her thick mask turns crystal to let through The unsuspicious eyes of honesty; But Margaret's heart was too sincere and true Aught but plain truth and faithfulness to see, And Mordred's for a time a little grew 310 To be like hers, won by the mild reproof Of those kind eyes that kept all doubt aloof. V Full oft they met, as dawn and twilight meet In northern climes; she full of growing day As he of darkness, which before her feet Shrank gradual, and faded quite away, Soon to return; for power had made love sweet To him, and when his will had gained full sway, The taste began to pall; for never power Can sate the hungry soul beyond an hour. 320 VI He fell as doth the tempter ever fall, Even in the gaining of his loathsome end; God doth not work as man works, but makes all The crooked paths of ill to goodness tend; Let Him judge Margaret! If to be the thrall Of love, and faith too generous to defend Its very life from him she loved, be sin, What hope of grace may the seducer win? VII Grim-hearted world, that look'st with Levite eyes On those poor fallen by too much faith in man, 330 She that upon thy freezing threshold lies, Starved to more sinning by thy savage ban, Seeking that refuge because foulest vice More godlike than thy virtue is, whose span Shuts out the wretched only, is more free To enter heaven than thou shalt ever be! VIII Thou wilt not let her wash thy dainty feet With such salt things as tears, or with rude hair Dry them, soft Pharisee, that sit'st at meat With him who made her such, and speak'st him fair. 340 Leaving God's wandering lamb the while to bleat Unheeded, shivering in the pitiless air: Thou hast made prisoned virtue show more wan And haggard than a vice to look upon. IX Now many months flew by, and weary grew To Margaret the sight of happy things; Blight fell on all her flowers, instead of dew; Shut round her heart were now the joyous wings Wherewith it wont to soar; yet not untrue, Though tempted much, her woman's nature clings 350 To its first pure belief, and with sad eyes Looks backward o'er the gate of Paradise. X And so, though altered Mordred came less oft, And winter frowned where spring had laughed before In his strange eyes, yet half her sadness doffed, And in her silent patience loved him more: Sorrow had made her soft heart yet more soft, And a new life within her own she bore Which made her tenderer, as she felt it move Beneath her breast, a refuge for her love. 360 XI This babe, she thought, would surely bring him back, And be a bond forever them between; Before its eyes the sullen tempest-rack Would fade, and leave the face of heaven serene; And love's return doth more than fill the lack, Which in his absence withered the heart's green: And yet a dim foreboding still would flit Between her and her hope to darken it. XII She could not figure forth a happy fate, Even for this life from heaven so newly come; 370 The earth must needs be doubly desolate To him scarce parted from a fairer home: Such boding heavier on her bosom sate One night, as, standing in the twilight gloam, She strained her eyes beyond that dizzy verge At whose foot faintly breaks the future's surge. XIII Poor little spirit! naught but shame and woe Nurse the sick heart whose life-blood nurses thine: Yet not those only; love hath triumphed so, As for thy sake makes sorrow more divine: 380 And yet, though thou be pure, the world is foe To purity, if born in such a shrine; And, having trampled it for struggling thence, Smiles to itself, and calls it Providence. XIV As thus she mused, a shadow seemed to rise From out her thought, and turn to dreariness All blissful hopes and sunny memories, And the quick blood would curdle up and press About her heart, which seemed to shut its eyes And hush itself, as who with shuddering guess 390 Harks through the gloom and dreads e'en now to feel Through his hot breast the icy slide of steel. XV But, at that heart-beat, while in dread she was, In the low wind the honeysuckles gleam, A dewy thrill flits through the heavy grass, And, looking forth, she saw, as in a dream, Within the wood the moonlight's shadowy mass: Night's starry heart yearning to hers doth seem, And the deep sky, full-hearted with the moon, Folds round her all the happiness of June. 400 XVI What fear could face a heaven and earth like this? What silveriest cloud could hang 'neath such a sky? A tide of wondrous and unwonted bliss Rolls back through all her pulses suddenly, As if some seraph, who had learned to kiss From the fair daughters of the world gone by, Had wedded so his fallen light with hers, Such sweet, strange joy through soul and body stirs. XVII Now seek we Mordred; he who did not fear The crime, yet fears the latent consequence: 410 If it should reach a brother Templar's ear, It haply might be made a good pretence To cheat him of the hope he held most dear; For he had spared no thought's or deed's expense, That by and by might help his wish to clip Its darling bride,--the high grandmastership. XVIII The apathy, ere a crime resolved is done, Is scarce less dreadful than remorse for crime; By no allurement can the soul be won From brooding o'er the weary creep of time: 420 Mordred stole forth into the happy sun, Striving to hum a scrap of Breton rhyme, But the sky struck him speechless, and he tried In vain to summon up his callous pride. XIX In the courtyard a fountain leaped alway, A Triton blowing jewels through his shell Into the sunshine; Mordred turned away, Weary because the stone face did not tell Of weariness, nor could he bear to-day, Heartsick, to hear the patient sink and swell 430 Of winds among the leaves, or golden bees Drowsily humming in the orange-trees. XX All happy sights and sounds now came to him Like a reproach: he wandered far and wide, Following the lead of his unquiet whim, But still there went a something at his side That made the cool breeze hot, the sunshine dim; It would not flee, it could not be defied, He could not see it, but he felt it there, By the damp chill that crept among his hair. 440 XXI Day wore at last; the evening-star arose, And throbbing in the sky grew red and set; Then with a guilty, wavering step he goes To the hid nook where they so oft had met In happier season, for his heart well knows That he is sure to find poor Margaret Watching and waiting there with love-lorn breast Around her young dream's rudely scattered nest. XXII Why follow here that grim old chronicle Which counts the dagger-strokes and drops of blood? 450 Enough that Margaret by his mad steel fell, Unmoved by murder from her trusting mood, Smiling on him as Heaven smiles on Hell, With a sad love, remembering when he stood Not fallen yet, the unsealer of her heart, Of all her holy dreams the holiest part. XXIII His crime complete, scarce knowing what he did, (So goes the tale,) beneath the altar there In the high church the stiffening corpse he hid, And then, to 'scape that suffocating air, 460 Like a scared ghoul out of the porch he slid; But his strained eyes saw blood-spots everywhere, And ghastly faces thrust themselves between His soul and hopes of peace with blasting mien. XXIV His heart went out within him like a spark Dropt in the sea; wherever he made bold To turn his eyes, he saw, all stiff and stark, Pale Margaret lying dead; the lavish gold Of her loose hair seemed in the cloudy dark To spread a glory, and a thousand-fold 470 More strangely pale and beautiful she grew: Her silence stabbed his conscience through and through. XXV Or visions of past days,--a mother's eyes That smiled down on the fair boy at her knee, Whose happy upturned face to hers replies.-- He saw sometimes: or Margaret mournfully Gazed on him full of doubt, as one who tries To crush belief that does love injury; Then she would wring her hands, but soon again Love's patience glimmered out through cloudy pain. 480 XXVI Meanwhile he dared, not go and steal away The silent, dead-cold witness of his sin; He had not feared the life, but that dull clay, Those open eyes that showed the death within, Would surely stare him mad; yet all the day A dreadful impulse, whence his will could win No refuge, made him linger in the aisle, Freezing with his wan look each greeting smile. XXVII Now, on the second day there was to be A festival in church: from far and near 490 Came flocking in the sunburnt peasantry, And knights and dames with stately antique cheer, Blazing with pomp, as if all faerie Had emptied her quaint halls, or, as it were, The illuminated marge of some old book, While we were gazing, life and motion took. XXVIII When all were entered, and the roving eyes Of all were stayed, some upon faces bright, Some on the priests, some on the traceries That decked the slumber of a marble knight, 500 And all the rustlings over that arise From recognizing tokens of delight, When friendly glances meet,--then silent ease Spread o'er the multitude by slow degrees. XXIX Then swelled the organ: up through choir and nave The music trembled with an inward thrill Of bliss at its own grandeur; wave on wave Its flood of mellow thunder rose, until The hushed air shivered with the throb it gave, Then, poising for a moment, it stood still, 510 And sank and rose again, to burst in spray That wandered into silence far away. XXX Like to a mighty heart the music seemed, That yearns with melodies it cannot speak, Until, in grand despair of what it dreamed, In the agony of effort it doth break, Yet triumphs breaking; on it rushed and streamed And wantoned in its might, as when a lake, Long pent among the mountains, bursts its walls And in one crowding gash leaps forth and falls. 520 XXXI Deeper and deeper shudders shook the air, As the huge bass kept gathering heavily, Like thunder when it rouses in its lair, And with its hoarse growl shakes the low-hung sky, It grew up like a darkness everywhere, Filling the vast cathedral;--suddenly, From the dense mass a boy's clear treble broke Like lightning, and the full-toned choir awoke. XXXII Through gorgeous windows shone the sun aslant, Brimming the church with gold and purple mist, 530 Meet atmosphere to bosom that rich chant. Where fifty voices in one strand did twist Their varicolored tones, and left no want To the delighted soul, which sank abyssed In the warm music cloud, while, far below, The organ heaved its surges to and fro. XXXIII As if a lark should suddenly drop dead While the blue air yet trembled with its song, So snapped at once that music's golden thread, Struck by a nameless fear that leapt along 540 From heart to heart, and like a shadow spread With instantaneous shiver through the throng, So that some glanced behind, as half aware A hideous shape of dread were standing there. XXXIV As when a crowd of pale men gather round, Watching an eddy in the leaden deep, From which they deem the body of one drowned Will be cast forth, from face to face doth creep An eager dread that holds all tongues fast bound Until the horror, with a ghastly leap, 550 Starts up, its dead blue arms stretched aimlessly, Heaved with the swinging of the careless sea,-- XXXV So in the faces of all these there grew, As by one impulse, a dark, freezing awe, Which with a fearful fascination drew All eyes toward the altar; damp and raw The air grew suddenly, and no man knew Whether perchance his silent neighbor saw The dreadful thing which all were sure would rise To scare the strained lids wider from their eyes. 560 XXXVI The incense trembled as it upward sent Its slow, uncertain thread of wandering blue, As't were the only living element In all the church, so deep the stillness grew; It seemed one might have heard it, as it went, Give out an audible rustle, curling through The midnight silence of that awestruck air, More hushed than death, though so much life was there. XXXVII Nothing they saw, but a low voice was heard Threading the ominous silence of that fear, 570 Gentle and terrorless as if a bird, Wakened by some volcano's glare, should cheer The murk air with his song; yet every word In the cathedral's farthest arch seemed near, As if it spoke to every one apart, Like the clear voice of conscience in each heart. XXXVIII 'O Rest, to weary hearts thou art most dear! O Silence, after life's bewildering din, Thou art most welcome, whether in the sear Days of our age thou comest, or we win 580 Thy poppy-wreath in youth! then wherefore here Linger I yet, once free to enter in At that wished gate which gentle Death doth ope, Into the boundless realm of strength and hope? XXXIX 'Think not in death my love could ever cease; If thou wast false, more need there is for me Still to be true; that slumber were not peace, If't were unvisited with dreams of thee: And thou hadst never heard such words as these, Save that in heaven I must forever be 590 Most comfortless and wretched, seeing this Our unbaptized babe shut out from bliss. XL 'This little spirit with imploring eyes Wanders alone the dreary wild of space; The shadow of his pain forever lies Upon my soul in this new dwelling-place; His loneliness makes me in Paradise More lonely, and, unless I see his face, Even here for grief could I lie down and die, 599 Save for my curse of immortality. XLI 'World after world he sees around him swim Crowded with happy souls, that take no heed Of the sad eyes that from the night's faint rim Gaze sick with longing on them as they speed With golden gates, that only shut on him; And shapes sometimes from hell's abysses freed Flap darkly by him, with enormous sweep Of wings that roughen wide the pitchy deep. XLII 'I am a mother,--spirits do not shake This much of earth from them,--and I must pine 610 Till I can feel his little hands, and take His weary head upon this heart of mine; And, might it be, full gladly for his sake Would I this solitude of bliss resign And be shut out of heaven to dwell with him Forever in that silence drear and dim. XLIII 'I strove to hush my soul, and would not speak At first, for thy dear sake; a woman's love Is mighty, but a mother's heart is weak, And by its weakness overcomes; I strove 620 To smother bitter thoughts with patience meek, But still in the abyss my soul would rove, Seeking my child, and drove me here to claim The rite that gives him peace in Christ's dear name. XLIV 'I sit and weep while blessed spirits sing; I can but long and pine the while they praise, And, leaning o'er the wall of heaven, I fling My voice to where I deem my infant strays, Like a robbed bird that cries in vain to bring Her nestlings back beneath her wings' embrace; 630 But still he answers not, and I but know That heaven and earth are both alike in woe.' XLV Then the pale priests, with ceremony due, Baptized the child within its dreadful tomb Beneath that mother's heart, whose instinct true Star-like had battled down the triple gloom Of sorrow, love, and death: young maidens, too. Strewed the pale corpse with many a milkwhite bloom, And parted the bright hair, and on the breast Crossed the unconscious hands in sign of rest. 640 XLVI Some said, that, when the priest had sprinkled o'er The consecrated drops, they seemed to hear A sigh, as of some heart from travail sore Released, and then two voices singing clear, _Misereatur Deus_, more and more Fading far upward, and their ghastly fear Fell from them with that sound, as bodies fall From souls upspringing to celestial hall. PROMETHEUS One after one the stars have risen and set, Sparkling upon the hoarfrost on my chain: The Bear, that prowled all night about the fold Of the North-star, hath shrunk into his den. Scared by the blithesome footsteps of the Dawn, Whose blushing smile floods all the Orient; And now bright Lucifer grows less and less, Into the heaven's blue quiet deep-withdrawn. Sunless and starless all, the desert sky Arches above me, empty as this heart 10 For ages hath been empty of all joy, Except to brood upon its silent hope, As o'er its hope of day the sky doth now. All night have I heard voices: deeper yet The deep low breathing of the silence grew, While all about, muffled in awe, there stood Shadows, or forms, or both, clear-felt at heart, But, when I turned to front them, far along Only a shudder through the midnight ran, And the dense stillness walled me closer round. 20 But still I heard them wander up and down That solitude, and flappings of dusk wings Did mingle with them, whether of those hags Let slip upon me once from Hades deep, Or of yet direr torments, if such be, I could but guess; and then toward me came A shape as of a woman: very pale It was, and calm; its cold eyes did not move, And mine moved not, but only stared on them. Their fixed awe went through my brain like ice; 30 A skeleton hand seemed clutching at my heart, And a sharp chill, as if a dank night fog Suddenly closed me in, was all I felt: And then, methought, I heard a freezing sigh, A long, deep, shivering sigh, as from blue lips Stiffening in death, close to mine ear. I thought Some doom was close upon me, and I looked And saw the red moon through the heavy mist, Just setting, and it seemed as it were falling, Or reeling to its fall, so dim and dead 40 And palsy-struck it looked. Then all sounds merged Into the rising surges of the pines, Which, leagues below me, clothing the gaunt loins Of ancient Caucasus with hairy strength, Sent up a murmur in the morning wind, Sad as the wail that from the populous earth All day and night to high Olympus soars. Fit incense to thy wicked throne, O Jove! Thy hated name is tossed once more in scorn From off my lips, for I will tell thy doom. 50 And are these tears? Nay, do not triumph, Jove! They are wrung from me but by the agonies Of prophecy, like those sparse drops which fall From clouds in travail of the lightning, when The great wave of the storm high-curled and black Rolls steadily onward to its thunderous break. Why art thou made a god of, thou poor type Of anger, and revenge, and cunning force? True Power was never born of brutish Strength, Nor sweet Truth suckled at the shaggy dugs 60 Of that old she-wolf. Are thy thunderbolts, That quell the darkness for a space, so strong As the prevailing patience of meek Light, Who, with the invincible tenderness of peace, Wins it to be a portion of herself? Why art thou made a god of, thou, who hast The never-sleeping terror at thy heart, That birthright of all tyrants, worse to bear Than this thy ravening bird on which I smile? Thou swear'st to free me, if I will unfold 70 What kind of doom it is whose omen flits Across thy heart, as o'er a troop of doves The fearful shadow of the kite. What need To know that truth whose knowledge cannot save? Evil its errand hath, as well as Good; When thine is finished, thou art known no more: There is a higher purity than thou, And higher purity is greater strength; Thy nature is thy doom, at which thy heart Trembles behind the thick wall of thy might. 80 Let man but hope, and thou art straightway chilled With thought of that drear silence and deep night Which, like a dream, shall swallow thee and thine: Let man but will, and thou art god no more, More capable of ruin than the gold And ivory that image thee on earth. He who hurled down the monstrous Titan-brood Blinded with lightnings, with rough thunders stunned, Is weaker than a simple human thought. My slender voice can shake thee, as the breeze, 90 That seems but apt to stir a maiden's hair, Sways huge Oceanus from pole to pole; For I am still Prometheus, and foreknow In my wise heart the end and doom of all. Yes, I am still Prometheus, wiser grown By years of solitude,--that holds apart The past and future, giving the soul room To search into itself,--and long commune With this eternal silence;--more a god, In my long-suffering and strength to meet 100 With equal front the direst shafts of fate, Than thou in thy faint-hearted despotism, Girt with thy baby-toys of force and wrath. Yes, I am that Prometheus who brought down The light to man, which thou, in selfish fear, Hadst to thy self usurped,--his by sole right, For Man hath right to all save Tyranny,-- And which shall free him yet from thy frail throne. Tyrants are but the spawn of Ignorance, Begotten by the slaves they trample on, 110 Who, could they win a glimmer of the light, And see that Tyranny is always weakness, Or Fear with its own bosom ill at ease, Would laugh away in scorn the sand-wove chain Which their own blindness feigned for adamant. Wrong ever builds on quicksands, but the Right To the firm centre lays its moveless base. The tyrant trembles, if the air but stir The innocent ringlets of a child's free hair, And crouches, when the thought of some great spirit, 120 With world-wide murmur, like a rising gale. Over men's hearts, as over standing corn, Rushes, and bends them to its own strong will. So shall some thought of mine yet circle earth, And puff away thy crumbling altars, Jove! And, wouldst thou know of my supreme revenge, Poor tyrant, even now dethroned in heart, Realmless in soul, as tyrants ever are, Listen! and tell me if this bitter peak, This never-glutted vulture, and these chains 130 Shrink not before it; for it shall befit A sorrow-taught, unconquered Titan-heart. Men, when their death is on them, seem to stand On a precipitous crag that overhangs The abyss of doom, and in that depth to see, As in a glass, the features dim and vast Of things to come, the shadows, as it seems, Of what have been. Death ever fronts the wise; Not fearfully, but with clear promises Of larger life, on whose broad vans upborne, 140 Their outlook widens, and they see beyond The horizon of the Present and the Past, Even to the very source and end of things. Such am I now: immortal woe hath made My heart a seer, and my soul a judge Between the substance and the shadow of Truth. The sure supremeness of the Beautiful, By all the martyrdoms made doubly sure Of such as I am, this is my revenge, Which of my wrongs builds a triumphal arch, 150 Through which I see a sceptre and a throne. The pipings of glad shepherds on the hills, Tending the flocks no more to bleed for thee; The songs of maidens pressing with white feet The vintage on thine altars poured no more; The murmurous bliss of lovers underneath Dim grapevine bowers whose rosy bunches press Not half so closely their warm cheeks, unpaled By thoughts of thy brute lust; the hive-like hum Of peaceful commonwealths, where sunburnt Toil 160 Reaps for itself the rich earth made its own By its own labor, lightened with glad hymns To an omnipotence which thy mad bolts Would cope with as a spark with the vast sea,-- Even the spirit of free love and peace, Duty's sure recompense through life and death,-- These are such harvests as all master-spirits Reap, haply not on earth, but reap no less Because the sheaves are bound by hands not theirs; These are the bloodless daggers wherewithal 170 They stab fallen tyrants, this their high revenge: For their best part of life on earth is when, Long after death, prisoned and pent no more, Their thoughts, their wild dreams even, have become Part of the necessary air men breathe: When, like the moon, herself behind a cloud, They shed down light before us on life's sea, That cheers us to steer onward still in hope. Earth with her twining memories ivies o'er Their holy sepulchres; the chainless sea, 180 In tempest or wide calm, repeats their thoughts; The lightning and the thunder, all free things, Have legends of them for the ears of men. All other glories are as falling stars, But universal Nature watches theirs: Such strength is won by love of humankind. Not that I feel that hunger after fame, Which souls of a half-greatness are beset with; But that the memory of noble deeds Cries shame upon the idle and the vile, 190 And keeps the heart of Man forever up To the heroic level of old time. To be forgot at first is little pain To a heart conscious of such high intent As must be deathless on the lips of men; But, having been a name, to sink and be A something which the world can do without, Which, having been or not, would never change The lightest pulse of fate,--this is indeed A cup of bitterness the worst to taste, 200 And this thy heart shall empty to the dregs. Endless despair shall be thy Caucasus, And memory thy vulture; thou wilt find Oblivion far lonelier than this peak. Behold thy destiny! Thou think'st it much That I should brave thee, miserable god! But I have braved a mightier than thou, Even the sharp tempting of this soaring heart, Which might have made me, scarcely less than thou, A god among my brethren weak and blind, 210 Scarce less than thou, a pitiable thing To be down-trodden into darkness soon. But now I am above thee, for thou art The bungling workmanship of fear, the block That awes the swart Barbarian; but I Am what myself have made,--a nature wise With finding in itself the types of all, With watching from the dim verge of the time What things to be are visible in the gleams Thrown forward on them from the luminous past, 220 Wise with the history of its own frail heart, With reverence and with sorrow, and with love, Broad as the world, for freedom and for man. Thou and all strength shall crumble, except Love, By whom, and for whose glory, ye shall cease: And, when thou'rt but a weary moaning heard From out the pitiless gloom of Chaos, I Shall be a power and a memory, A name to fright all tyrants with, a light Unsetting as the pole-star, a great voice 230 Heard in the breathless pauses of the fight By truth and freedom ever waged with wrong, Clear as a silver trumpet, to awake Far echoes that from age to age live on In kindred spirits, giving them a sense Of boundless power from boundless suffering wrung: And many a glazing eye shall smile to see The memory of my triumph (for to meet Wrong with endurance, and to overcome The present with a heart that looks beyond, 240 Are triumph), like a prophet eagle, perch Upon the sacred banner of the Right. Evil springs up, and flowers, and bears no seed, And feeds the green earth with its swift decay, Leaving it richer for the growth of truth; But Good, once put in action or in thought, Like a strong oak, doth from its boughs shed down The ripe germs of a forest. Thou, weak god, Shalt fade and be forgotten! but this soul, Fresh-living still in the serene abyss, 250 In every heaving shall partake, that grows From heart to heart among the sons of men,-- As the ominous hum before the earthquake runs Far through the Ægean from roused isle to isle,-- Foreboding wreck to palaces and shrines, And mighty rents in many a cavernous error That darkens the free light to man:--This heart, Unscarred by thy grim vulture, as the truth Grows but more lovely 'neath the beaks and claws Of Harpies blind that fain would soil it, shall 260 In all the throbbing exultations, share That wait on freedom's triumphs, and in all The glorious agonies of martyr-spirits, Sharp lightning-throes to split the jagged clouds That veil the future, snowing them the end, Pain's thorny crown for constancy and truth, Girding the temples like a wreath of stars. This is a thought, that, like the fabled laurel, Makes my faith thunder-proof; and thy dread bolts Fall on me like the silent flakes of snow 270 On the hoar brows of aged Caucasus: But, oh, thought far more blissful, they can rend This cloud of flesh, and make my soul a star! Unleash thy crouching thunders now, O Jove! Free this high heart, which, a poor captive long, Doth knock to be let forth, this heart which still, In its invincible manhood, overtops Thy puny godship, as this mountain doth The pines that moss its roots. Oh, even now, While from my peak of suffering I look down, 280 Beholding with a far-spread gush of hope The sunrise of that Beauty, in whose face, Shone all around with love, no man shall look But straightway like a god he be uplift Unto the throne long empty for his sake, And clearly oft foreshadowed in brave dreams By his free inward nature, which nor thou, Nor any anarch after thee, can bind From working its great doom,--now, now set free This essence, not to die, but to become 290 Part of that awful Presence which doth haunt The palaces of tyrants, to scare off, With its grim eyes and fearful whisperings And hideous sense of utter loneliness, All hope of safety, all desire of peace, All but the loathed forefeeling of blank death,-- Part of that spirit which doth ever brood In patient calm on the unpilfered nest Of man's deep heart, till mighty thoughts grow fledged To sail with darkening shadow o'er the world, 300 Filling with dread such souls as dare not trust In the unfailing energy of Good, Until they swoop, and their pale quarry make Of some o'erbloated wrong,--that spirit which Scatters great hopes in the seed-field of man, Like acorns among grain, to grow and be A roof for freedom in all coming time! But no, this cannot be; for ages yet, In solitude unbroken, shall I hear The angry Caspian to the Euxine shout, 310 And Euxine answer with a muffled roar, On either side storming the giant walls Of Caucasus with leagues of climbing foam (Less, from my height, than flakes of downy snow), That draw back baffled but to hurl again, Snatched up in wrath and horrible turmoil, Mountain on mountain, as the Titans erst, My brethren, scaling the high seat of Jove, Heaved Pelion upon Ossa's shoulders broad In vain emprise. The moon will come and go 320 With her monotonous vicissitude; Once beautiful, when I was free to walk Among my fellows, and to interchange The influence benign of loving eyes, But now by aged use grows wearisome;-- False thought! most false! for how could I endure These crawling centuries of lonely woe Unshamed by weak complaining, but for thee, Loneliest, save me, of all created things, Mild-eyed Astarte, my best comforter, 330 With thy pale smile of sad benignity? Year after year will pass away and seem To me, in mine eternal agony, But as the shadows of dumb summer clouds, Which I have watched so often darkening o'er The vast Sarmatian plain, league-wide at first, But, with still swiftness, lessening on and on Till cloud and shadow meet and mingle where The gray horizon fades into the sky, Far, far to northward. Yes, for ages yet 340 Must I lie here upon my altar huge, A sacrifice for man. Sorrow will be, As it hath been, his portion; endless doom, While the immortal with the mortal linked Dreams of its wings and pines for what it dreams, With upward yearn unceasing. Better so: For wisdom is stern sorrow's patient child, And empire over self, and all the deep Strong charities that make men seem like gods; And love, that makes them be gods, from her breasts 350 Sucks in the milk that makes mankind one blood. Good never comes unmixed, or so it seems, Having two faces, as some images Are carved, of foolish gods; one face is ill; But one heart lies beneath, and that is good, As are all hearts, when we explore their depths. Therefore, great heart, bear up; thou art but type Of what all lofty spirits endure, that fain Would win men back to strength and peace through love: Each hath his lonely peak, and on each heart 360 Envy, or scorn, or hatred, tears lifelong With vulture beak; yet the high soul is left; And faith, which is but hope grown wise, and love And patience which at last shall overcome. THE SHEPHERD OF KING ADMETUS There came a youth upon the earth, Some thousand years ago, Whose slender hands were nothing worth, Whether to plough, or reap, or sow. Upon an empty tortoise-shell He stretched some chords, and drew Music that made men's bosoms swell Fearless, or brimmed their eyes with dew. Then King Admetus, one who had Pure taste by right divine, Decreed his singing not too bad To hear between the cups of wine: And so, well pleased with being soothed Into a sweet half-sleep, Three times his kingly beard he smoothed, And made him viceroy o'er his sheep. His words were simple words enough, And yet he used them so, That what in other mouths was rough In his seemed musical and low. Men called him but a shiftless youth, In whom no good they saw; And yet, unwittingly, in truth, They made his careless words their law. They knew not how he learned at all, For idly, hour by hour, He sat and watched the dead leaves fall, Or mused upon a common flower. It seemed the loveliness of things Did teach him all their use, For, in mere weeds, and stones, and springs, He found a healing power profuse. Men granted that his speech was wise, But, when a glance they caught Of his slim grace and woman's eyes, They laughed, and called him good-for-naught. Yet after he was dead and gone, And e'en his memory dim, Earth seemed more sweet to live upon, More full of love, because of him. And day by day more holy grew Each spot where he had trod, Till after-poets only knew Their first-born brother as a god. THE TOKEN It is a mere wild rosebud, Quite sallow now, and dry, Yet there's something wondrous in it, Some gleams of days gone by, Dear sights and sounds that are to me The very moons of memory, And stir my heart's blood far below Its short-lived waves of joy and woe. Lips must fade and roses wither, All sweet times be o'er; They only smile, and, murmuring 'Thither!' Stay with us no more: And yet ofttimes a look or smile, Forgotten in a kiss's while, Years after from the dark will start, And flash across the trembling heart. Thou hast given me many roses, But never one, like this, O'erfloods both sense and spirit With such a deep, wild bliss; We must have instincts that glean up Sparse drops of this life in the cup, Whose taste shall give us all that we Can prove of immortality. Earth's stablest things are shadows, And, in the life to come. Haply some chance-saved trifle May tell of this old home: As now sometimes we seem to find, In a dark crevice of the mind, Some relic, which, long pondered o'er, Hints faintly at a life before. AN INCIDENT IN A RAILROAD CAR He spoke of Burns: men rude and rough Pressed round to hear the praise of one Whose heart was made of manly, simple stuff, As homespun as their own. And, when he read, they forward leaned, Drinking, with thirsty hearts and ears, His brook-like songs whom glory never weaned From humble smiles and tears. Slowly there grew a tender awe, Sun-like, o'er faces brown and hard, As if in him who read they felt and saw Some presence of the bard. It was a sight for sin and wrong And slavish tyranny to see, A sight to make our faith more pure and strong In high humanity. I thought, these men will carry hence Promptings their former life above, And something of a finer reverence For beauty, truth, and love. God scatters love on every side Freely among his children all, And always hearts are lying open wide, Wherein some grains may fall. There is no wind but soweth seeds Of a more true and open life, Which burst, unlooked for, into high-souled deeds, With wayside beauty rife. We find within these souls of ours Some wild germs of a higher birth, Which in the poet's tropic heart bear flowers Whose fragrance fills the earth. Within the hearts of all men lie These promises of wider bliss, Which blossom into hopes that cannot die, In sunny hours like this. All that hath been majestical In life or death, since time began, Is native in the simple heart of all, The angel heart of man. And thus, among the untaught poor, Great deeds and feelings find a home, That cast in shadow all the golden lore Of classic Greece and Rome. O mighty brother-soul of man, Where'er thou art, in low or high, Thy skyey arches with exulting span O'er-roof infinity! All thoughts that mould the age begin Deep down within the primitive soul, And from the many slowly upward win To one who grasps the whole: In his wide brain the feeling deep That struggled on the many's tongue Swells to a tide of thought, whose surges leap O'er the weak thrones of wrong. All thought begins in feeling,--wide In the great mass its base is hid, And, narrowing up to thought, stands glorified, A moveless pyramid. Nor is he far astray, who deems That every hope, which rises and grows broad In the world's heart, by ordered impulse streams From the great heart of God. God wills, man hopes: in common souls Hope is but vague and undefined, Till from the poet's tongue the message rolls A blessing to his kind. Never did Poesy appear So full of heaven to me, as when I saw how it would pierce through pride and fear To the lives of coarsest men. It may be glorious to write Thoughts that shall glad the two or three High souls, like those far stars that come in sight Once in a century;-- But better far it is to speak One simple word, which now and then Shall waken their free nature in the weak And friendless sons of men; To write some earnest verse or line, Which, seeking not the praise of art, Shall make a clearer faith and manhood shine In the untutored heart. He who doth this, in verse or prose, May be forgotten in his day, But surely shall be crowned at last with those Who live and speak for aye. RHOECUS God sends his teachers unto every age, To every clime, and every race of men, With revelations fitted to their growth And shape of mind, nor gives the realm of Truth Into the selfish rule of one sole race: Therefore each form of worship that hath swayed The life of man, and given it to grasp The master-key of knowledge, reverence, Infolds some germs of goodness and of right; Else never had the eager soul, which loathes 10 The slothful down of pampered ignorance, Found in it even a moment's fitful rest. There is an instinct in the human heart Which makes that all the fables it hath coined, To justify the reign of its belief And strengthen it by beauty's right divine, Veil in their inner cells a mystic gift, Which, like the hazel twig, in faithful hands, Points surely to the hidden springs of truth. For, as in nature naught is made in vain, 20 But all things have within their hull of use A wisdom and a meaning which may speak Of spiritual secrets to the ear Of spirit; so, in whatsoe'er the heart Hath fashioned for a solace to itself, To make its inspirations suit its creed, And from the niggard hands of falsehood wring Its needful food of truth, there ever is A sympathy with Nature, which reveals, Not less than her own works, pure gleams of light 30 And earnest parables of inward lore. Hear now this fairy legend of old Greece, As full of gracious youth, and beauty still As the immortal freshness of that grace Carved for all ages on some Attic frieze. A youth named Rhoecus, wandering in the wood, Saw an old oak just trembling to its fall, And, feeling pity of so fair a tree, He propped its gray trunk with admiring care, And with a thoughtless footstep loitered on. 40 But, as he turned, he heard a voice behind That murmured 'Rhoecus!' 'Twas as if the leaves, Stirred by a passing breath, had murmured it, And, while he paused bewildered, yet again It murmured 'Rhoecus!' softer than a breeze. He started and beheld with dizzy eyes What seemed the substance of a happy dream Stand there before him, spreading a warm glow Within the green glooms of the shadowy oak. It seemed a woman's shape, yet far too fair 50 To be a woman, and with eyes too meek For any that were wont to mate with gods. All naked like a goddess stood she there, And like a goddess all too beautiful To feel the guilt-born earthliness of shame. 'Rhoecus, I am the Dryad of this tree,' Thus she began, dropping her low-toned words Serene, and full, and clear, as drops of dew, 'And with it I am doomed to live and die; The rain and sunshine are my caterers, 60 Nor have I other bliss than simple life; Now ask me what thou wilt, that I can give, And with a thankful joy it shall be thine.' Then Rhoecus, with a flutter at the heart, Yet by the prompting of such beauty bold, Answered: 'What is there that can satisfy The endless craving of the soul but love? Give me thy love, or but the hope of that Which must be evermore my nature's goal.' After a little pause she said again, But with a glimpse of sadness in her tone, 71 'I give it, Rhoecus, though a perilous gift; An hour before the sunset meet me here.' And straightway there was nothing he could see But the green glooms beneath the shadowy oak, And not a sound came to his straining ears But the low trickling rustle of the leaves, And far away upon an emerald slope The falter of an idle shepherd's pipe. Now, in those days of simpleness and faith, 80 Men did not think that happy things were dreams Because they overstepped the narrow bourn Of likelihood, but reverently deemed Nothing too wondrous or too beautiful To be the guerdon of a daring heart. So Rhoecus made no doubt that he was blest, And all along unto the city's gate Earth seemed to spring beneath him as he walked, The clear, broad sky looked bluer than its wont, And he could scarce believe he had not wings, 90 Such sunshine seemed to glitter through his veins Instead of blood, so light he felt and strange. Young Rhoecus had a faithful heart enough, But one that in the present dwelt too much, And, taking with blithe welcome whatsoe'er Chance gave of joy, was wholly bound in that, Like the contented peasant of a vale, Deemed it the world, and never looked beyond. So, haply meeting in the afternoon Some comrades who were playing at the dice, 100 He joined them, and forgot all else beside. The dice were rattling at the merriest, And Rhoecus, who had met but sorry luck, Just laughed in triumph at a happy throw, When through the room there hummed a yellow bee That buzzed about his ear with down-dropped legs As if to light. And Rhoecus laughed and said, Feeling how red and flushed he was with loss, 'By Venus! does he take me for a rose?' And brushed him off with rough, impatient hand. 110 But still the bee came back, and thrice again Rhoecus did beat him off with growing wrath. Then through the window flew the wounded bee, And Rhoecus, tracking him with angry eyes, Saw a sharp mountain-peak of Thessaly Against the red disk of the setting sun,-- And instantly the blood sank from his heart, As if its very walls had caved away. Without a word he turned, and, rushing forth, Ran madly through the city and the gate, 120 And o'er the plain, which now the wood's long shade, By the low sun thrown forward broad and dim, Darkened wellnigh unto the city's wall. Quite spent and out of breath he reached the tree, And, listening fearfully, he heard once more The low voice murmur 'Rhoecus!' close at hand: Whereat he looked around him, but could see Naught but the deepening glooms beneath the oak. Then sighed the voice, 'O Rhoecus! nevermore Shalt thou behold me or by day or night, 130 Me, who would fain have blessed thee with a love More ripe and bounteous than ever yet Filled up with nectar any mortal heart: But thou didst scorn my humble messenger, And sent'st him back to me with bruised wings, We spirits only show to gentle eyes, We ever ask an undivided love, And he who scorns the least of Nature's works Is thenceforth exiled and shut out from all. Farewell! for thou canst never see me more.' 140 Then Rhoecus beat his breast, and groaned aloud, And cried, 'Be pitiful! forgive me yet This once, and I shall never need it more!' 'Alas!' the voice returned, 'tis thou art blind, Not I unmerciful; I can forgive, But have no skill to heal thy spirit's eyes; Only the soul hath power o'er itself.' With that again there murmured 'Nevermore!' And Rhoecus after heard no other sound, Except the rattling of the oak's crisp leaves, 150 Like the long surf upon a distant shore, Raking the sea-worn pebbles up and down. The night had gathered round him: o'er the plain The city sparkled with its thousand lights, And sounds of revel fell upon his ear Harshly and like a curse; above, the sky, With all its bright sublimity of stars, Deepened, and on his forehead smote the breeze: Beauty was all around him and delight, But from that eve he was alone on earth. 160 THE FALCON I know a falcon swift and peerless As e'er was cradled In the pine; No bird had ever eye so fearless, Or wing so strong as this of mine. The winds not better love to pilot A cloud with molten gold o'er run, Than him, a little burning islet, A star above the coming sun. For with a lark's heart he doth tower, By a glorious upward instinct drawn; No bee nestles deeper in the flower Than he in the bursting rose of dawn. No harmless dove, no bird that singeth, Shudders to see him overhead; The rush of his fierce swooping bringeth To innocent hearts no thrill of dread. Let fraud and wrong and baseness shiver, For still between them and the sky The falcon Truth hangs poised forever And marks them with his vengeful eye. TRIAL I Whether the idle prisoner through his grate Watches the waving of the grass-tuft small, Which, having colonized its rift i' th' wall, Accepts God's dole of good or evil fate, And from the sky's just helmet draws its lot Daily of shower or sunshine, cold or hot;-- Whether the closer captive of a creed, Cooped up from birth to grind out endless chaff, Sees through his treadmill-bars the noonday laugh, And feels in vain, his crumpled pinions breed;-- Whether the Georgian slave look up and mark, With bellying sails puffed full, the tall cloud-bark Sink northward slowly,--thou alone seem'st good, Fair only thou, O Freedom, whose desire Can light in muddiest souls quick seeds of fire, And strain life's chords to the old heroic mood. II Yet are there other gifts more fair than thine, Nor can I count him happiest who has never Been forced with his own hand his chains to sever, And for himself find out the way divine; He never knew the aspirer's glorious pains, He never earned the struggle's priceless gains. Oh, block by block, with sore and sharp endeavor, Lifelong we build these human natures up Into a temple fit for Freedom's shrine, And, Trial ever consecrates the cup Wherefrom we pour her sacrificial wine. A GLANCE BEHIND THE CURTAIN We see but half the causes of our deeds, Seeking them wholly in the outer life, And heedless of the encircling spirit-world, Which, though unseen, is felt, and sows in us All germs of pure and world-wide purposes. From one stage of our being to the next We pass unconscious o'er a slender bridge, The momentary work of unseen hands, Which crumbles down behind us; looking back, We see the other shore, the gulf between, 10 And, marvelling how we won to where we stand, Content ourselves to call the builder Chance. We trace the wisdom to the apple's fall, Not to the birth-throes of a mighty Truth Which, for long ages in blank Chaos dumb, Yet yearned to be incarnate, and had found At last a spirit meet to be the womb From which it might be born to bless mankind,-- Not to the soul of Newton, ripe with all The hoarded thoughtfulness of earnest years, 20 And waiting but one ray of sunlight more To blossom fully. But whence came that ray? We call our sorrows Destiny, but ought Rather to name our high successes so. Only the instincts of great souls are Fate, And have predestined sway: all other things, Except by leave of us, could never be. For Destiny is but the breath of God Still moving in us, the last fragment left Of our unfallen nature, waking oft 30 Within our thought, to beckon us beyond The narrow circle of the seen and known, And always tending to a noble end, As all things must that overrule the soul, And for a space unseat the helmsman, Will. The fate of England and of freedom once Seemed wavering in the heart of one plain man: One step of his, and the great dial-hand, That marks the destined progress of the world In the eternal round from wisdom on 40 To higher wisdom, had been made to pause A hundred years. That step he did not take,-- He knew not why, nor we, but only God,-- And lived to make his simple oaken chair More terrible and soberly august, More full of majesty than any throne, Before or after, of a British king. Upon the pier stood two stern-visaged men, Looking to where a little craft lay moored, Swayed by the lazy current of the Thames, 50 Which weltered by in muddy listlessness. Grave men they were, and battlings of fierce thought Had trampled out all softness from their brows, And ploughed rough furrows there before their time, For other crop than such as home-bred Peace Sows broadcast in the willing soil of Youth. Care, not of self, but for the common-weal, Had robbed their eyes of youth, and left instead A look of patient power and iron will, And something fiercer, too, that gave broad hint 60 Of the plain weapons girded at their sides. The younger had an aspect of command,-- Not such as trickles down, a slender stream, In the shrunk channel of a great descent, But such as lies entowered in heart and head, And an arm prompt to do the 'hests of both. His was a brow where gold were out of place, And yet it seemed right worthy of a crown (Though he despised such), were it only made Of iron, or some serviceable stuff That would have matched his brownly rugged face 71 The elder, although such he hardly seemed (Care makes so little of some five short years), Had a clear, honest face, whose rough-hewn strength Was mildened by the scholar's wiser heart To sober courage, such as best befits The unsullied temper of a well-taught mind, Yet so remained that one could plainly guess The hushed volcano smouldering underneath. He spoke: the other, hearing, kept his gaze 80 Still fixed, as on some problem in the sky. 'O CROMWELL we are fallen on evil times! There was a day when England had a wide room For honest men as well as foolish kings: But now the uneasy stomach of the time Turns squeamish at them both. Therefore let us Seek out that savage clime, where men as yet Are free: there sleeps the vessel on the tide, Her languid canvas drooping for the wind; Give us but that, and what need we to fear 90 This Order of the Council? The free waves Will not say No to please a wayward king, Nor will the winds turn traitors at his beck: All things are fitly cared for, and the Lord Will watch us kindly o'er the exodus Of us his servants now, as in old time. We have no cloud or fire, and haply we May not pass dry-shod through the ocean-stream; But, saved or lost, all things are in His hand.' So spake he, and meantime the other stood 100 With wide gray eyes still reading the blank air. As if upon the sky's blue wall he saw Some mystic sentence, written by a hand, Such as of old made pale the Assyrian king, Girt with his satraps in the blazing feast. 'HAMPDEN! a moment since, my purpose was To fly with thee,--for I will call it flight, Nor flatter it with any smoother name,-- But something in me bids me not to go; And I am one, thou knowest, who, unmoved 110 By what the weak deem omens, yet give heed And reverence due to whatsoe'er my soul Whispers of warning to the inner ear. Moreover, as I know that God brings round His purposes in ways undreamed by us, And makes the wicked but his instruments To hasten their own swift and sudden fall, I see the beauty of his providence In the King's order: blind, he will not let His doom part from him, but must bid it stay 120 As 't were a cricket, whose enlivening chirp He loved to hear beneath his very hearth. Why should we fly? Nay, why not rather stay And rear again our Zion's crumbled walls, Not, as of old the walls of Thebes were built, By minstrel twanging, but, if need should be, With the more potent music of our swords? Think'st thou that score of men beyond the sea Claim more God's care than all of England here? No; when He moves his arm, it is to aid 130 Whole peoples, heedless if a few be crushed, As some are ever, when the destiny Of man takes one stride onward nearer home. Believe me, 'tis the mass of men He loves; And, where there is most sorrow and most want, Where the high heart of man is trodden down The most, 'tis not because He hides his face From them in wrath, as purblind teachers prate: Not so: there most is He, for there is He Most needed. Men who seek for Fate abroad 140 Are not so near his heart as they who dare Frankly to face her where she faces them, On their own threshold, where their souls are strong To grapple with and throw her; as I once, Being yet a boy, did cast this puny king, Who now has grown so dotard as to deem That he can wrestle with an angry realm, And throw the brawned Antæus of men's rights. No, Hampden! they have half-way conquered Fate Who go half-way to meet her,--as will I. 150 Freedom hath yet a work for me to do; So speaks that inward voice which never yet Spake falsely, when it urged the spirit on To noble emprise for country and mankind. And, for success, I ask no more than this,-- To bear unflinching witness to the truth. All true whole men succeed; for what is worth Success's name, unless it be the thought, The inward surety, to have carried out A noble purpose to a noble end, 160 Although it be the gallows or the block? 'Tis only Falsehood that doth ever need These outward shows of gain to bolster her. Be it we prove the weaker with our swords; Truth only needs to be for once spoke out, And there's such music in her, such strange rhythm, As makes men's memories her joyous slaves, And clings around the soul, as the sky clings Round the mute earth, forever beautiful, And, if o'erclouded, only to burst forth 170 More all-embracingly divine and clear: Get but the truth once uttered, and 'tis like A star new-born, that drops into its place, And which, once circling in its placid round, Not all the tumult of the earth can shake. 'What should we do in that small colony Of pinched fanatics, who would rather choose Freedom to clip an inch more from their hair, Than the great chance of setting England free? Not there, amid the stormy wilderness, 180 Should we learn wisdom; or if learned, what room To put it into act,--else worse than naught? We learn our souls more, tossing for an hour Upon this huge and ever-vexed sea Of human thought, where kingdoms go to wreck Like fragile bubbles yonder in the stream, Than in a cycle of New England sloth, Broke only by a petty Indian war, Or quarrel for a letter more or less In some hard word, which, spelt in either way, 190 Not their most learned clerks can understand. New times demand new measures and new men; The world advances, and in time outgrows The laws that in our fathers' day were best; And, doubtless, after us, some purer scheme Will be shaped out by wiser men than we, Made wiser by the steady growth of truth. We cannot hale Utopia on by force; But better, almost, be at work in sin, Than in a brute inaction browse and sleep. 200 No man is born into the world whose work Is not born with him; there is always work, And tools to work withal, for those who will; And blessed are the horny hands of toil! The busy world stoves angrily aside The man who stands with arms akimbo set, Until occasion tells him what to do; And he who waits to have his task marked out Shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled. Our time is one that calls for earnest deeds; 210 Season and Government, like two broad seas, Yearn for each other with outstretched arms Across this narrow isthmus of the throne, And roll their white surf higher every day. One age moves onward, and the next builds up Cities and gorgeous palaces, where stood The rude log-huts of those who tamed the wild, Rearing from out the forests they had felled The goodly framework of a fairer state; The builder's trowel and the settler's axe 220 Are seldom wielded by the selfsame hand; Ours is the harder task, yet not the less Shall we receive the blessing for our toil From the choice spirits of the aftertime. My soul is not a palace of the past, Where outworn creeds, like Rome's gray senate, quake, Hearing afar the Vandal's trumpet hoarse, That shakes old systems with a thunder-fit. That time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change; Then let it come: I have no dread of what 230 Is called for by the instinct of mankind; Nor think I that God's world will fall apart Because we tear a parchment more or less. Truth Is eternal, but her effluence, With endless change, is fitted to the hour; Her mirror is turned forward to reflect The promise of the future, not the past. He who would win the name of truly great Must understand his own age and the next, And make the present ready to fulfil 240 Its prophecy, and with the future merge Gently and peacefully, as wave with wave. The future works out great men's purposes; The present is enough, for common souls, Who, never looking forward, are indeed Mere clay, wherein the footprints of their age Are petrified forever; better those Who lead the blind old giant by the hand From out the pathless desert where he gropes, And set him onward in his darksome way, 250 I do not fear to follow out the truth, Albeit along the precipice's edge. Let us speak plain: there is more force in names Than most men dream of; and a lie may keep Its throne a whole age longer, if it skulk Behind the shield of some fair-seeming name. Let us call tyrants _tyrants_, and maintain That only freedom comes by grace of God, And all that comes not by his grace must fail; For men in earnest have no time to waste 260 In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth. 'I will have one more grapple with the man Charles Stuart: whom the boy o'ercame, The man stands not in awe of. I, perchance, Am one raised up by the Almighty arm To witness some great truth to all the world. Souls destined to o'erleap the vulgar lot, And mould the world unto the scheme of God, Have a fore-consciousness of their high doom, As men are known to shiver at the heart 270 When the cold shadow of some coming ill Creeps slowly o'er their spirits unawares. Hath Good less power of prophecy than Ill? How else could men whom God hath called to sway Earth's rudder, and to steer the bark of Truth, Beating against the tempest tow'rd her port, Bear all the mean and buzzing grievances, The petty martyrdoms, wherewith Sin strives To weary out the tethered hope of Faith? The sneers, the unrecognizing look of friends, 280 Who worship the dead corpse of old king Custom, Where it doth lie In state within the Church, Striving to cover up the mighty ocean With a man's palm, and making even the truth Lie for them, holding up the glass reversed, To make the hope of man seem farther off? My God! when I read o'er the bitter lives Of men whose eager heart's were quite too great To beat beneath the cramped mode of the day, And see them mocked at by the world they love, 290 Haggling with prejudice for pennyworths Of that reform which their hard toil will make The common birthright of the age to come,-- When I see this, spite of my faith in God, I marvel how their hearts bear up so long; Nor could they but for this same prophecy, This inward feeling of the glorious end. 'Deem me not fond; but in my warmer youth, Ere my heart's bloom was soiled and brushed away, I had great dreams of mighty things to come; 300 Of conquest, whether by the sword or pen I knew not; but some Conquest I would have, Or else swift death: now wiser grown in years, I find youth's dreams are but the flutterings Of those strong wings whereon the soul shall soar In after time to win a starry throne; And so I cherish them, for they were lots, Which I, a boy, cast in the helm of Fate. Now will I draw them, since a man's right hand, A right hand guided by an earnest soul, 310 With a true instinct, takes the golden prize From out a thousand blanks. What men call luck Is the prerogative of valiant souls, The fealty life pays its rightful kings. The helm is shaking now, and I will stay To pluck my lot forth; it were sin to flee!' So they two turned together; one to die, Fighting for freedom on the bloody field; The other, far more happy, to become A name earth wears forever next her heart; 320 One of the few that have a right to rank With the true Makers: for his spirit wrought Order from Chaos; proved that right divine Dwelt only in the excellence of truth; And far within old Darkness' hostile lines Advanced and pitched the shining tents of Light. Nor shall the grateful Muse forget to tell, That--not the least among his many claims To deathless honor--he was MILTON'S friend, A man not second among those who lived 330 To show us that the poet's lyre demands An arm of tougher sinew than the sword. A CHIPPEWA LEGEND [Greek: algeina men moi kaalegein estin tade, algos de sigan.] AESCHYLUS, _Prom. Vinct._ 197, 198. For the leading incidents in this tale I am indebted to the very valuable _Algic Researches_ of Henry R. Schoolcraft, Esq. J.R.L. The old Chief, feeling now wellnigh his end, Called his two eldest children to his side, And gave them, in few words, his parting charge! 'My son and daughter, me ye see no more; The happy hunting-grounds await me, green With change of spring and summer through the year: But, for remembrance, after I am gone, Be kind to little Sheemah for my sake: Weakling he is and young, and knows not yet To set the trap, or draw the seasoned bow; 10 Therefore of both your loves he hath more need, And he, who needeth love, to love hath right; It is not like our furs and stores of corn, Whereto we claim sole title by our toil, But the Great Spirit plants it in our hearts, And waters it, and gives it sun, to be The common stock and heritage of all: Therefore be kind to Sheemah, that yourselves May not be left deserted in your need.' Alone, beside a lake, their wigwam stood, 20 Far from the other dwellings of their tribe: And, after many moons, the loneliness Wearied the elder brother, and he said, 'Why should I dwell here far from men, shut out From the free, natural joys that fit my age? Lo, I am tall and strong, well skilled to hunt, Patient of toil and hunger, and not yet Have seen the danger which I dared not look Full in the face; what hinders me to be A mighty Brave and Chief among my kin?' 30 So, taking up his arrows and his bow, As if to hunt, he journeyed swiftly on, Until he gained the wigwams of his tribe, Where, choosing out a bride, he soon forgot, In all the fret and bustle of new life, The little Sheemah and his father's charge. Now when the sister found her brother gone, And that, for many days, he came not back, She wept for Sheemah more than for herself; For Love bides longest in a woman's heart, 40 And flutters many times before he flies, And then doth perch so nearly, that a word May lure him back to his accustomed nest; And Duty lingers even when Love is gone, Oft looking out in hope of his return; And, after Duty hath been driven forth, Then Selfishness creeps in the last of all, Warming her lean hands at the lonely hearth, And crouching o'er the embers, to shut out Whatever paltry warmth and light are left, 50 With avaricious greed, from all beside. So, for long months, the sister hunted wide, And cared for little Sheemah tenderly; But, daily more and more, the loneliness Grew wearisome, and to herself she sighed, 'Am I not fair? at least the glassy pool, That hath no cause to flatter, tells me so; But, oh, how flat and meaningless the tale, Unless it tremble on a lover's tongue! Beauty hath no true glass, except it be 60 In the sweet privacy of loving eyes.' Thus deemed she idly, and forgot the lore Which she had learned of nature and the woods, That beauty's chief reward is to itself, And that Love's mirror holds no image long Save of the inward fairness, blurred and lost Unless kept clear and white by Duty's care. So she went forth and sought the haunts of men, And, being wedded, in her household cares, Soon, like the elder brother, quite forgot 70 The little Sheemah and her father's charge. But Sheemah, left alone within the lodge, Waited and waited, with a shrinking heart, Thinking each rustle was his sister's step, Till hope grew less and less, and then went out, And every sound was changed from hope to fear. Few sounds there were:--the dropping of a nut, The squirrel's chirrup, and the jay's harsh scream, Autumn's sad remnants of blithe Summer's cheer, Heard at long intervals, seemed but to make 80 The dreadful void of silence silenter. Soon what small store his sister left was gone, And, through the Autumn, he made shift to live On roots and berries, gathered in much fear Of wolves, whose ghastly howl he heard ofttimes, Hollow and hungry, at the dead of night. But Winter came at last, and, when the snow, Thick-heaped for gleaming leagues o'er hill and plain, Spread its unbroken silence over all, Made bold by hunger, he was fain to glean 90 (More sick at heart than Ruth, and all alone) After the harvest of the merciless wolf, Grim Boaz, who, sharp-ribbed and gaunt, yet feared A thing more wild and starving than himself; Till, by degrees, the wolf and he grew friends, And shared together all the winter through. Late in the Spring, when all the ice was gone, The elder brother, fishing in the lake, Upon whose edge his father's wigwam stood, Heard a low moaning noise upon the shore: 100 Half like a child it seemed, half like a wolf, And straightway there was something in his heart That said, 'It is thy brother Sheemah's voice.' So, paddling swiftly to the bank, he saw, Within a little thicket close at hand, A child that seemed fast clinging to a wolf, From the neck downward, gray with shaggy hair, That still crept on and upward as he looked. The face was turned away, but well he knew That it was Sheemah's, even his brother's face. 110 Then with his trembling hands he hid his eyes, And bowed his head, so that he might not see The first look of his brother's eyes, and cried, 'O Sheemah! O my brother, speak to me! Dost thou not know me, that I am thy brother? Come to me, little Sheemah, thou shall dwell With me henceforth, and know no care or want!' Sheemah was silent for a space, as if 'T were hard to summon up a human voice, And, when he spake, the voice was as a wolf's: 120 'I know thee not, nor art thou what thou say'st; I have none other brethren than the wolves, And, till thy heart be changed from what it is, Thou art not worthy to be called their kin.' Then groaned the other, with a choking tongue, 'Alas! my heart is changed right bitterly; 'Tis shrunk and parched within me even now!' And, looking upward fearfully, he saw Only a wolf that shrank away, and ran, Ugly and fierce, to hide among the woods. 130 STANZAS ON FREEDOM Men! whose boast it is that ye Come of fathers brave and free, If there breathe on earth a slave, Are ye truly free and brave? If ye do not feel the chain, When it works a brother's pain, Are ye not base slaves indeed, Slaves unworthy to be freed? Women! who shall one day bear Sons to breathe New England air, If ye hear, without a blush, Deeds to make the roused blood rush Like red lava through your veins, For your sisters now in chains,-- Answer! are ye fit to be Mothers of the brave and free? Is true Freedom but to break Fetters for our own dear sake, And, with leathern hearts, forget That we owe mankind a debt? No! true freedom is to share All the chains our brothers wear And, with heart and hand, to be Earnest to make others free! They are slaves who fear to speak For the fallen and the weak; They are slaves who will not choose Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, Rather than in silence shrink From the truth they needs must think; They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three. COLUMBUS The cordage creaks and rattles in the wind, With whims of sudden hush; the reeling sea Now thumps like solid rock beneath the stern, Now leaps with clumsy wrath, strikes short, and, falling Crumbled to whispery foam, slips rustling down The broad backs of the waves, which jostle and crowd To fling themselves upon that unknown shore. Their used familiar since the dawn of time, Whither this foredoomed life is guided on To sway on triumph's hushed, aspiring poise 10 One glittering moment, then to break fulfilled. How lonely is the sea's perpetual swing, The melancholy wash of endless waves, The sigh of some grim monster undescried, Fear-painted on the canvas of the dark, Shifting on his uneasy pillow of brine! Yet, night brings more companions than the day To this drear waste; new constellations burn, And fairer stars, with whose calm height my soul Finds nearer sympathy than with my herd 20 Of earthen souls, whose vision's scanty ring Makes me its prisoner to beat my wings Against the cold bars of their unbelief, Knowing in vain my own free heaven beyond. O God! this world, so crammed with eager life, That comes and goes and wanders back to silence Like the idle wind, which yet man's shaping mind Can make his drudge to swell the longing sails Of highest endeavor,--this mad, unthrift world, Which, every hour, throws life enough away 30 To make her deserts kind and hospitable, Lets her great destinies be waved aside By smooth, lip-reverent, formal infidels, Who weigh the God they not believe with gold, And find no spot in Judas, save that he, Driving a duller bargain than he ought, Saddled his guild with too cheap precedent. O Faith! if thou art strong, thine opposite Is mighty also, and the dull fool's sneer Hath ofttimes shot chill palsy through the arm 40 Just lifted to achieve its crowning deed, And made the firm-based heart, that would have quailed The rack or fagot, shudder like a leaf Wrinkled with frost, and loose upon its stem, The wicked and the weak, by some dark law, Have a strange power to shut and rivet down Their own horizon round us, to unwing Our heaven-aspiring visions, and to blur With surly clouds the Future's gleaming peaks, Far seen across the brine of thankless years. 50 If the chosen soul could never be alone In deep mid-silence, open-doored to God, No greatness ever had been dreamed or done; Among dull hearts a prophet never grew; The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude. The old world is effete; there man with man Jostles, and, in the brawl for means to live, Life is trod underfoot,--Life, the one block Of marble that's vouchsafed wherefrom to carve Our great thoughts, white and godlike, to shine down 60 The future, Life, the irredeemable block, Which one o'er-hasty chisel-dint oft mars, Scanting our room to cut the features out Of our full hope, so forcing us to crown With a mean head the perfect limbs, or leave The god's face glowing o'er a satyr's trunk, Failure's brief epitaph. Yes, Europe's world Reels on to judgment; there the common need, Losing God's sacred use, to be a bond 'Twixt Me and Thee, sets each one scowlingly 70 O'er his own selfish hoard at bay; no state, Knit strongly with eternal fibres up Of all men's separate and united weals, Self-poised and sole as stars, yet one as light, Holds up a shape of large Humanity To which by natural instinct every man Pays loyalty exulting, by which all Mould their own lives, and feel their pulses filled With the red, fiery blood of the general life, Making them mighty in peace, as now in war 80 They are, even in the flush of victory, weak, Conquering that manhood which should them subdue. And what gift bring I to this untried world? Shall the same tragedy be played anew, And the same lurid curtain drop at last On one dread desolation, one fierce crash Of that recoil which on its makers God Lets Ignorance and Sin and Hunger make, Early or late? Or shall that commonwealth Whose potent unity and concentric force 90 Can draw these scattered joints and parts of men Into a whole ideal man once more, Which sucks not from its limbs the life away, But sends it flood-tide and creates itself Over again in every citizen, Be there built up? For me, I have no choice; I might turn back to other destinies, For one sincere key opes all Fortune's doors; But whoso answers not God's earliest call Forfeits or dulls that faculty supreme 100 Of lying open to his genius Which makes the wise heart certain of its ends. Here am I; for what end God knows, not I; Westward still points the inexorable soul: Here am I, with no friend but the sad sea, The beating heart of this great enterprise, Which, without me, would stiffen in swift death; This have I mused on, since mine eye could first Among the stars distinguish and with joy Rest on that God-fed Pharos of the north, 110 On some blue promontory of heaven lighted That juts far out into the upper sea; To this one hope my heart hath clung for years, As would a foundling to the talisman Hung round his neck by hands he knew not whose; A poor, vile thing and dross to all beside, Yet he therein can feel a virtue left By the sad pressure of a mother's hand, And unto him it still is tremulous With palpitating haste and wet with tears, 120 The key to him of hope and humanness, The coarse shell of life's pearl, Expectancy. This hope hath been to me for love and fame, Hath made me wholly lonely on the earth, Building me up as in a thick-ribbed tower, Wherewith enwalled my watching spirit burned, Conquering its little island from the Dark, Sole as a scholar's lamp, and heard men's steps, In the far hurry of the outward world, Pass dimly forth and back, sounds heard in dream, 130 As Ganymede by the eagle was snatched up From the gross sod to be Jove's cup-bearer, So was I lifted by my great design: And who hath trod Olympus, from his eye Fades not that broader outlook of the gods; His life's low valleys overbrow earth's clouds, And that Olympian spectre of the past Looms towering up in sovereign memory, Beckoning his soul from meaner heights of doom. Had but the shadow of the Thunderer's bird, 140 Flashing athwart my spirit, made of me A swift-betraying vision's Ganymede, Yet to have greatly dreamed precludes low ends; Great days have ever such a morning-red, On such a base great futures are built up, And aspiration, though not put in act, Comes back to ask its plighted troth again, Still watches round its grave the unlaid ghost Of a dead virtue, and makes other hopes, Save that implacable one, seem thin and bleak 150 As shadows of bare trees upon the snow, Bound freezing there by the unpitying moon. While other youths perplexed their mandolins, Praying that Thetis would her fingers twine In the loose glories of her lover's hair, And wile another kiss to keep back day, I, stretched beneath the many-centuried shade Of some writhed oak, the wood's Laocoön, Did of my hope a dryad mistress make, Whom I would woo to meet me privily, 160 Or underneath the stars, or when the moon Flecked all the forest floor with scattered pearls. O days whose memory tames to fawning down The surly fell of Ocean's bristled neck! I know not when this hope enthralled me first, But from my boyhood up I loved to hear The tall pine-forests of the Apennine Murmur their hoary legends of the sea, Which hearing, I in vision clear beheld The sudden dark of tropic night shut down 170 O'er the huge whisper of great watery wastes, The while a pair of herons trailingly Flapped inland, where some league-wide river hurled The yellow spoil of unconjectured realms Far through a gulf's green silence, never scarred, By any but the Northwind's hurrying keels. And not the pines alone; all sights and sounds To my world-seeking heart paid fealty, And catered for it as the Cretan bees Brought honey to the baby Jupiter, Who in his soft hand crushed a violet, 181 Godlike foremusing the rough thunder's gripe; Then did I entertain the poet's song, My great Idea's guest, and, passing o'er That iron bridge the Tuscan built to hell, I heard Ulysses tell of mountain-chains Whose adamantine links, his manacles, The western main shook growling, and still gnawed. I brooded on the wise Athenian's tale. Of happy Atlantis, and heard Björne's keel 190 Crunch the gray pebbles of the Vinland shore: I listened, musing, to the prophecy Of Nero's tutor-victim; lo, the birds Sing darkling, conscious of the climbing dawn. And I believed the poets; it is they Who utter wisdom from the central deep, And, listening to the inner flow of things, Speak to the age out of eternity. Ah me! old hermits sought for solitude In caves and desert places of the earth, 200 Where their own heart-beat was the only stir Of living thing that comforted the year; But the bald pillar-top of Simeon, In midnight's blankest waste, were populous, Matched with the isolation drear and deep Of him who pines among the swarm of men, At once a new thought's king and prisoner, Feeling the truer life within his life, The fountain of his spirit's prophecy, Sinking away and wasting, drop by drop, 210 In the ungrateful sands of sceptic ears. He in the palace-aisles of untrod woods Doth walk a king; for him the pent-up cell Widens beyond the circles of the stars, And all the sceptred spirits of the past Come thronging in to greet him as their peer; But in the market-place's glare and throng He sits apart, an exile, and his brow Aches with the mocking memory of its crown. Yet to the spirit select there is no choice; 220 He cannot say, This will I do, or that, For the cheap means putting Heaven's ends in pawn, And bartering his bleak rocks, the freehold stern Of destiny's first-born, for smoother fields That yield no crop of self-denying will; A hand is stretched to him from out the dark, Which grasping without question, he is led Where there is work that he must do for God. The trial still is the strength's complement, And the uncertain, dizzy path that scales 230 The sheer heights of supremest purposes Is steeper to the angel than the child. Chances have laws as fixed as planets have, And disappointment's dry and bitter root, Envy's harsh berries, and the choking pool Of the world's scorn, are the right mother-milk To the tough hearts that pioneer their kind, And break a pathway to those unknown realms That in the earth's broad shadow lie enthralled; 239 Endurance is the crowning quality, And patience all the passion of great hearts; These are their stay, and when the leaden world Sets its hard face against their fateful thought, And brute strength, like the Gaulish conqueror, Clangs his huge glaive down in the other scale, The inspired soul but flings his patience in, And slowly that outweighs the ponderous globe,-- One faith against a whole earth's unbelief, One soul against the flesh of all mankind. Thus ever seems it when my soul can hear 250 The voice that errs not; then my triumph gleams, O'er the blank ocean beckoning, and all night My heart flies on before me as I sail; Far on I see my lifelong enterprise. That rose like Ganges mid the freezing snows Of a world's solitude, sweep broadening down, And, gathering to itself a thousand streams, Grow sacred ere it mingle with the sea; I see the ungated wall of chaos old, With blocks Cyclopean hewn of solid night, 260 Fade like a wreath of unreturning mist Before the irreversible feet of light;-- And lo, with what clear omen in the east On day's gray threshold stands the eager dawn, Like young Leander rosy from the sea Glowing at Hero's lattice! One day more These muttering shoalbrains leave the helm to me: God, let me not in their dull ooze be stranded: Let not this one frail bark, to hollow which I have dug out the pith and sinewy heart 270 Of my aspiring life's fair trunk, be so Cast up to warp and blacken in the sun, Just as the opposing wind 'gins whistle off His cheek-swollen pack, and from the leaning mast Fortune's full sail strains forward! One poor day!-- Remember whose and not how short it is! It is God's day, it is Columbus's. A lavish day! One day, with life and heart, Is more than time enough to find a world. AN INCIDENT OF THE FIRE AT HAMBURG The tower of old Saint Nicholas soared upward to the skies, Like some huge piece of Nature's make, the growth of centuries; You could not deem its crowding spires a work of human art, They seemed to struggle lightward from a sturdy living heart. Not Nature's self more freely speaks in crystal or in oak, Than, through the pious builder's hand, in that gray pile she spoke; And as from acorn springs the oak, so, freely and alone, Sprang from his heart this hymn to God, sung in obedient stone. It seemed a wondrous freak of chance, so perfect, yet so rough, A whim of Nature crystallized slowly in granite tough; The thick spires yearned towards the sky in quaint harmonious lines, And in broad sunlight basked and slept, like a grove of blasted pines. Never did rock or stream or tree lay claim with better right To all the adorning sympathies of shadow and of light; And, in that forest petrified, as forester there dwells Stout Herman, the old sacristan, sole lord of all its bells. Surge leaping after surge, the fire roared onward red as blood, Till half of Hamburg lay engulfed beneath the eddying flood; For miles away the fiery spray poured down its deadly rain, And back and forth the billows sucked, and paused, and burst again. From square to square with tiger leaps panted the lustful fire, The air to leeward shuddered with the gasps of its desire; And church and palace, which even now stood whelmed but to the knee. Lift their black roofs like breakers lone amid the whirling sea. Up in his tower old Herman sat and watched with quiet look; His soul had trusted God too long to be at last forsook; He could not fear, for surely God a pathway would unfold Through this red sea for faithful hearts, as once He did of old. But scarcely can he cross himself, or on his good saint call, Before the sacrilegious flood o'erleaped the churchyard wall; And, ere a _pater_ half was said, mid smoke and crackling glare, His island tower scarce juts its head above the wide despair. Upon the peril's desperate peak his heart stood up sublime; His first thought was for God above, his next was for his chime; 'Sing now and make your voices heard in hymns of praise,' cried he, 'As did the Israelites of old, safe walking through the sea! 'Through this red sea our God hath made the pathway safe to shore; Our promised land stands full in sight; shout now as ne'er before! And as the tower came crashing down, the bells, in clear accord, Pealed forth the grand old German hymn,--'All good souls, praise the Lord!' THE SOWER I saw a Sower walking slow Across the earth, from east to west; His hair was white as mountain snow, His head drooped forward on his breast. With shrivelled hands he flung his seed, Nor ever turned to look behind; Of sight or sound he took no heed; It seemed, he was both deaf and blind. His dim face showed no soul beneath, Yet in my heart I felt a stir, As if I looked upon the sheath, That once had held Excalibur. I heard, as still the seed he cast, How, crooning to himself, he sung. 'I sow again the holy Past, The happy days when I was young. 'Then all was wheat without a tare, Then all was righteous, fair, and true; And I am he whose thoughtful care Shall plant the Old World in the New. 'The fruitful germs I scatter free, With busy hand, while all men sleep; In Europe now, from sea to sea, The nations bless me as they reap.' Then I looked back along his path. And heard the clash of steel on steel, Where man faced man, in deadly wrath, While clanged the tocsin's hurrying peal. The sky with burning towns flared red, Nearer the noise of fighting rolled. And brothers' blood, by brothers shed, Crept curdling over pavements cold. Then marked I how each germ of truth Which through the dotard's fingers ran Was mated with a dragon's tooth Whence there sprang up an armèd man. I shouted, but he could not hear; Made signs, but these he could not see; And still, without a doubt or fear, Broadcast he scattered anarchy. Long to my straining ears the blast Brought faintly back the words he sung: 'I sow again the holy Past, The happy days when I was young.' HUNGER AND COLD Sisters two, all praise to you, With your faces pinched and blue; To the poor man you've been true From of old: You can speak the keenest word, You are sure of being heard, From the point you're never stirred, Hunger and Cold! Let sleek statesmen temporize; Palsied are their shifts and lies When they meet your bloodshot eyes, Grim and bold; Policy you set at naught, In their traps you'll not be caught, You're too honest to be bought, Hunger and Cold! Bolt and bar the palace door; While the mass of men are poor, Naked truth grows more and more Uncontrolled; You had never yet, I guess, Any praise for bashfulness, You can visit sans court-dress, Hunger and Cold! While the music fell and rose, And the dance reeled to its close, Where her round of costly woes Fashion strolled, I beheld with shuddering fear Wolves' eyes through the windows peer; Little dream they you are near, Hunger and Cold! When the toiler's heart you clutch, Conscience is not valued much, He recks not a bloody smutch On his gold: Everything to you defers, You are potent reasoners, At your whisper Treason stirs, Hunger and Cold! Rude comparisons you draw, Words refuse to sate your maw, Your gaunt limbs the cobweb law Cannot hold: You're not clogged with foolish pride, But can seize a right denied: Somehow God is on your side, Hunger and Cold! You respect no hoary wrong More for having triumphed long; Its past victims, haggard throng, From the mould You unbury: swords and spears Weaker are than poor men's tears, Weaker than your silent years, Hunger and Cold! Let them guard both hall and bower; Through the window you will glower, Patient till your reckoning hour Shall be tolled; Cheeks are pale, but hands are red, Guiltless blood may chance be shed, But ye must and will be fed, Hunger and Cold! God has plans man must not spoil, Some were made to starve and toil, Some to share the wine and oil, We are told: Devil's theories are these, Stifling hope and love and peace, Framed your hideous lusts to please, Hunger and Cold! Scatter ashes on thy head, Tears of burning sorrow shed, Earth! and be by Pity led To Love's fold; Ere they block the very door With lean corpses of the poor, And will hush for naught but gore, Hunger and Cold! THE LANDLORD What boot your houses and your lands? In spite of close-drawn deed and fence, Like water, twixt your cheated hands, They slip into the graveyard's sands, And mock your ownership's pretence. How shall you speak to urge your right, Choked with that soil for which you lust? The bit of clay, for whose delight You grasp, is mortgaged, too; Death might Foreclose this very day in dust. Fence as you please, this plain poor man, Whose only fields are in his wit, Who shapes the world, as best he can, According to God's higher plan, Owns you, and fences as is fit. Though yours the rents, his incomes wax By right of eminent domain; From factory tall to woodman's axe, All things on earth must pay their tax, To feed his hungry heart and brain. He takes you from your easy-chair, And what he plans that you must do; You sleep in down, eat dainty fare,-- He mounts his crazy garret-stair And starves, the landlord over you. Feeding the clods your idlesse drains, You make more green six feet of soil; His fruitful word, like suns and rains, Partakes the seasons' bounteous pains, And toils to lighten human toil. Your lands, with force or cunning got, Shrink to the measure of the grave; But Death himself abridges not The tenures of almighty thought, The titles of the wise and brave. TO A PINE-TREE Far up on Katahdin thou towerest, Purple-blue with the distance and vast; Like a cloud o'er the lowlands thou lowerest, That hangs poised on a lull in the blast, To its fall leaning awful. In the storm, like a prophet o'er-maddened, Thou singest and tossest thy branches; Thy heart with the terror is gladdened, Thou forebodest the dread avalanches, When whole mountains swoop valeward. In the calm thou o'erstretchest the valleys With thine arms, as if blessings imploring, Like an old king led forth from his palace, When his people to battle are pouring From the city beneath him. To the lumberer asleep 'neath thy glooming Thou dost sing of wild billows in motion, Till he longs to be swung mid their booming In the tents of the Arabs of ocean, Whose finned isles are their cattle. For the gale snatches thee for his lyre, With mad hand crashing melody frantic, While he pours forth his mighty desire To leap down on the eager Atlantic, Whose arms stretch to his playmate. The wild storm makes his lair in thy branches, Swooping thence on the continent under; Like a lion, crouched close on his haunches, There awaiteth his leap the fierce thunder, Growling low with impatience. Spite of winter, thou keep'st thy green glory, Lusty father of Titans past number! The snow-flakes alone make thee hoary, Nestling close to thy branches in slumber, And thee mantling with silence. Thou alone know'st the splendor of winter, Mid thy snow-silvered, hushed precipices, Hearing crags of green ice groan and splinter, And then plunge down the muffled abysses In the quiet of midnight. Thou alone know'st the glory of summer Gazing down on thy broad seas of forest, On thy subjects that send a proud murmur Up to thee, to their sachem, who towerest From thy bleak throne to heaven. SI DESCENDERO IN INFERNUM, ADES O wandering dim on the extremest edge Of God's bright providence, whose spirits sigh Drearily in you, like the winter sedge That shivers o'er the dead pool stiff and dry, A thin, sad voice, when the bold wind roars by From the clear North of Duty,-- Still by cracked arch and broken shaft I trace That here was once a shrine and holy place Of the supernal Beauty, A child's play-altar reared of stones and moss, With wilted flowers for offering laid across, Mute recognition of the all-ruling Grace. How far are ye from the innocent, from those Whose hearts are as a little lane serene, Smooth-heaped from wall to wall with unbroke snows, Or in the summer blithe with lamb-cropped green, Save the one track, where naught more rude is seen Than the plump wain at even Bringing home four months' sunshine bound in sheaves! How far are ye from those! yet who believes That ye can shut out heaven? Your souls partake its influence, not in vain Nor all unconscious, as that silent lane Its drift of noiseless apple-blooms receives. Looking within myself, I note how thin A plank of station, chance, or prosperous fate, Doth fence me from the clutching waves of sin; In my own heart I find the worst man's mate, And see not dimly the smooth-hingèd gate That opes to those abysses Where ye grope darkly,--ye who never knew On your young hearts love's consecrating dew, Or felt a mother's kisses, Or home's restraining tendrils round you curled; Ah, side by side with heart's-ease in this world The fatal nightshade grows and bitter rue! One band ye cannot break,--the force that clips And grasps your circles to the central light; Yours is the prodigal comet's long ellipse, Self-exiled to the farthest verge of night; Yet strives with you no less that inward might No sin hath e'er imbruted; The god in you the creed-dimmed eye eludes; The Law brooks not to have its solitudes By bigot feet polluted; Yet they who watch your God-compelled return May see your happy perihelion burn Where the calm sun his unfledged planets broods. TO THE PAST Wondrous and awful are thy silent halls, O kingdom of the past! There lie the bygone ages in their palls, Guarded by shadows vast; There all is hushed and breathless, Save when some image of old error falls Earth worshipped once as deathless. There sits drear Egypt, mid beleaguering sands, Half woman and half beast, The burnt-out torch within her mouldering hands 10 That once lit all the East; A dotard bleared and hoary, There Asser crouches o'er the blackened brands Of Asia's long-quenched glory. Still as a city buried 'neath the sea Thy courts and temples stand; Idle as forms on wind-waved tapestry Of saints and heroes grand, Thy phantasms grope and shiver, Or watch the loose shores crumbling silently 20 Into Time's gnawing river. Titanic shapes with faces blank and dun, Of their old godhead lorn, Gaze on the embers of the sunken sun, Which they misdeem for morn; And yet the eternal sorrow In their unmonarched eyes says day is done Without the hope of morrow. O realm of silence and of swart eclipse, The shapes that haunt thy gloom 30 Make signs to us and move their withered lips Across the gulf of doom; Yet all their sound and motion Bring no more freight to us than wraiths of ships On the mirage's ocean. And if sometimes a moaning wandereth From out thy desolate halls, If some grim shadow of thy living death Across our sunshine falls And scares the world to error, 40 The eternal life sends forth melodious breath To chase the misty terror. Thy mighty clamors, wars, and world-noised deeds Are silent now in dust, Gone like a tremble of the huddling reeds Beneath some sudden gust; Thy forms and creeds have vanished, Tossed out to wither like unsightly weeds From the world's garden banished. Whatever of true life there was in thee 50 Leaps in our age's veins; Wield still thy bent and wrinkled empery, And shake thine idle chains;-- To thee thy dross is clinging, For us thy martyrs die, thy prophets see, Thy poets still are singing. Here, mid the bleak waves of our strife and care, Float the green Fortunate Isles Where all thy hero-spirits dwell, and share Our martyrdoms and toils; 60 The present moves attended With all of brave and excellent and fair That made the old time splendid. TO THE FUTURE O Land of Promise! from what Pisgah's height Can I behold thy stretch of peaceful bowers, Thy golden harvests flowing out of sight, Thy nestled homes and sun-illumined towers? Gazing upon the sunset's high-heaped gold, Its crags of opal and of chrysolite, Its deeps on deeps of glory, that unfold Still brightening abysses, And blazing precipices, Whence but a scanty leap it seems to heaven, 10 Sometimes a glimpse is given Of thy more gorgeous realm, thy more unstinted blisses. O Land of Quiet! to thy shore the surf Of the perturbèd Present rolls and sleeps; Our storms breathe soft as June upon thy turf And lure out blossoms; to thy bosom leaps, As to a mother's, the o'erwearied heart, Hearing far off and dim the toiling mart, The hurrying feet, the curses without number, And, circled with the glow Elysian 20 Of thine exulting vision, Out of its very cares wooes charms for peace and slumber. To thee the earth lifts up her fettered hands And cries for vengeance; with a pitying smile Thou blessest her, and she forgets her bands, And her old woe-worn face a little while Grows young and noble; unto thee the Oppressor Looks, and is dumb with awe; The eternal law, Which makes the crime its own blindfold redresser, 30 Shadows his heart with perilous foreboding, And he can see the grim-eyed Doom From out the trembling gloom Its silent-footed steeds towards his palace goading. What promises hast thou for Poets' eyes, A-weary of the turmoil and the wrong! To all their hopes what overjoyed replies! What undreamed ecstasies for blissful song! Thy happy plains no war-trump's brawling clangor Disturbs, and fools the poor to hate the poor; 40 The humble glares not on the high with anger; Love leaves no grudge at less, no greed for more; In vain strives Self the godlike sense to smother; From the soul's deeps It throbs and leaps; The noble 'neath foul rags beholds his long-lost brother. To thee the Martyr looketh, and his fires Unlock their fangs and leave his spirit free; To thee the Poet mid his toil aspires, And grief and hunger climb about his knee, 50 Welcome as children; thou upholdest The lone Inventor by his demon haunted; The Prophet cries to thee when hearts are coldest, And gazing o'er the midnight's bleak abyss, Sees the drowsed soul awaken at thy kiss, And stretch its happy arms and leap up disenchanted. Thou bringest vengeance, but so loving-kindly The guilty thinks it pity; taught by thee, Fierce tyrants drop the scourges wherewith blindly Their own souls they were scarring; conquerors see 60 With horror in their hands the accursed spear That tore the meek One's side on Calvary, And from their trophies shrink with ghastly fear; Thou, too, art the Forgiver, The beauty of man's soul to man revealing; The arrows from thy quiver Pierce Error's guilty heart, but only pierce for healing. Oh, whither, whither, glory-wingèd dreams, From out Life's, sweat and turmoil would ye bear me? Shut, gates of Fancy, on your golden gleams,-- 70 This agony of hopeless contrast spare me! Fade, cheating glow, and leave me to my night! He is a coward, who would borrow A charm against the present sorrow From the vague Future's promise of delight: As life's alarums nearer roll, The ancestral buckler calls, Self-clanging from the walls In the high temple of the soul; Where are most sorrows, there the poet's sphere is, 80 To feed the soul with patience, To heal its desolations With words of unshorn truth, with love that never wearies. HEBE I saw the twinkle of white feet, I saw the flush of robes descending; Before her ran an influence fleet, That bowed my heart like barley bending. As, in bare fields, the searching bees Pilot to blooms beyond our finding, It led me on, by sweet degrees Joy's simple honey-cells unbinding. Those Graces were that seemed grim Fates; With nearer love the sky leaned o'er me; The long-sought Secret's golden gates On musical hinges swung before me. I saw the brimmed bowl in her grasp Thrilling with godhood; like a lover I sprang the proffered life to clasp;-- The beaker fell; the luck was over. The Earth has drunk the vintage up; What boots it patch the goblet's splinters? Can Summer fill the icy cup, Whose treacherous crystal is but Winter's? O spendthrift haste! await the Gods; The nectar crowns the lips of Patience; Haste scatters on unthankful sods The immortal gift in vain libations. Coy Hebe flies from those that woo, And shuns the hands would seize upon her; Follow thy life, and she will sue To pour for thee the cup of honor. THE SEARCH I went to seek for Christ, And Nature seemed so fair That first the woods and fields my youth enticed, And I was sure to find him there: The temple I forsook, And to the solitude Allegiance paid; but winter came and shook The crown and purple from my wood; His snows, like desert sands, with scornful drift, Besieged the columned aisle and palace-gate; My Thebes, cut deep with many a solemn rift, But epitaphed her own sepulchered state: Then I remembered whom I went to seek, And blessed blunt Winter for his counsel bleak. Back to the world I turned, For Christ, I said, is King; So the cramped alley and the hut I spurned, As far beneath his sojourning: Mid power and wealth I sought, But found no trace of him, And all the costly offerings I had brought With sudden rust and mould grew dim: I found his tomb, indeed, where, by their laws, All must on stated days themselves imprison, Mocking with bread a dead creed's grinning jaws, Witless how long the life had thence arisen; Due sacrifice to this they set apart, Prizing it more than Christ's own living heart. So from my feet the dust Of the proud World I shook; Then came dear Love and shared with me his crust. And half my sorrow's burden took. After the World's soft bed, Its rich and dainty fare, Like down seemed Love's coarse pillow to my head, His cheap food seemed as manna rare; Fresh-trodden prints of bare and bleeding feet, Turned to the heedless city whence I came, Hard by I saw, and springs of worship sweet Gushed from my cleft heart smitten by the same; Love looked me in the face and spake no words, But straight I knew those footprints were the Lord's. I followed where they led, And in a hovel rude, With naught to fence the weather from his head, The King I sought for meekly stood; A naked, hungry child Clung round his gracious knee, And a poor hunted slave looked up and smiled To bless the smile that set him free: New miracles I saw his presence do,-- No more I knew the hovel bare and poor, The gathered chips into a woodpile grew, The broken morsel swelled to goodly store; I knelt and wept: my Christ no more I seek, His throne is with the outcast and the weak. THE PRESENT CRISIS When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west, And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time. Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe, When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems to and fro; At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start, Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart, And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future's heart. 10 So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill, Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill, And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his sympathies with God In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by the sod, Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the nobler clod. For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along, Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right or wrong; Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's vast frame Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or shame;-- In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim. 20 Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight, Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right, And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light. Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand, Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land? Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 'tis Truth alone is strong, And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong. 30 Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see, That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Oblivion's sea; Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff must fly; Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by. Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word; Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,-- Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own. 40 We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great. Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate, But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din. List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,-- 'They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin.' Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellest of the giant brood, Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who have drenched the earth with blood, Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our purer day, Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable prey;-- Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless children play? 50 Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just; Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified, And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied. Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes,--they were souls that stood alone, While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone, Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine, By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme design. 60 By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet I track, Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back, And these mounts of anguish number how each generation learned One new word of that grand Credo which in prophet-hearts hath burned Since the first man stood God-conquered with his face to heaven upturned. For Humanity sweeps onward: where to-day the martyr stands, On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands; Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn, While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn. 70 'Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves Of a legendary virtue carved upon our fathers' graves, Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a crime;-- Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men behind their time? Turn those tracks toward Past or Future that make Plymouth Rock sublime? They were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts, Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the Past's; But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath made us free. Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits flee 70 The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove them across the sea. They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires, Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's new-lit altar-fires; Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our haste to slay, From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of to-day? New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth; Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be, Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea, Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key. 90 AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE What visionary tints the year puts on, When falling leaves falter through motionless air Or humbly cling and shiver to be gone! How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare, As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills The bowl between me and those distant hills, And smiles and shakes abroad her misty, tremulous hair! No more the landscape holds its wealth apart, Making me poorer in my poverty, But mingles with my senses and my heart; 10 My own projected spirit seems to me In her own reverie the world to steep; 'Tis she that waves to sympathetic sleep, Moving, as she is moved, each field and hill and tree. How fuse and mix, with what unfelt degrees, Clasped by the faint horizon's languid arms, Each into each, the hazy distances! The softened season all the landscape charms; Those hills, my native village that embay, In waves of dreamier purple roll away, 20 And floating in mirage seem all the glimmering farms. Far distant sounds the hidden chickadee Close at my side; far distant sound the leaves; The fields seem fields of dream, where Memory Wanders like gleaning Ruth; and as the sheaves Of wheat and barley wavered in the eye Of Boaz as the maiden's glow went by, So tremble and seem remote all things the sense receives. The cock's shrill trump that tells of scattered corn, Passed breezily on by all his flapping mates, 30 Faint and more faint, from barn to barn is borne, Southward, perhaps to far Magellan's Straits; Dimly I catch the throb of distant flails; Silently overhead the hen-hawk sails, With watchful, measuring eye, and for his quarry waits. The sobered robin, hunger-silent now. Seeks cedar-berries blue, his autumn cheer; The chipmunk, on the shingly shag-bark's bough Now saws, now lists with downward eye and ear, Then drops his nut, and, cheeping, with a bound 40 Whisks to his winding fastness underground; The clouds like swans drift down the streaming atmosphere. O'er yon bare knoll the pointed cedar shadows Drowse on the crisp, gray moss; the ploughman's call Creeps faint as smoke from black, fresh-furrowed meadows; The single crow a single caw lets fall; And all around me every bush and tree Says Autumn's here, and Winter soon will be, Who snows his soft, white sleep and silence over all. The birch, most shy and ladylike of trees, 50 Her poverty, as best she may, retrieves, And hints at her foregone gentilities With some saved relics of her wealth of leaves; The swamp-oak, with his royal purple on, Glares red as blood across the sinking sun, As one who proudlier to a falling fortune cleaves. He looks a sachem, in red blanket wrapt, Who, mid some council of the sad-garbed whites, Erect and stern, in his own memories lapt, With distant eye broods over other sights, 60 Sees the hushed wood the city's flare replace, The wounded turf heal o'er the railway's trace, And roams the savage Past of his undwindled rights. The red-oak, softer-grained, yields all for lost, And, with his crumpled foliage stiff and dry, After the first betrayal of the frost, Rebuffs the kiss of the relenting sky; The chestnuts, lavish of their long-hid gold, To the faint Summer, beggared now and old, Pour back the sunshine hoarded 'neath her favoring eye. 70 The ash her purple drops forgivingly And sadly, breaking not the general hush; The maple-swamps glow like a sunset sea, Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush; All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting blaze Of bushes low, as when, on cloudy days, Ere the rain fall, the cautious farmer burns his brush. O'er yon low wall, which guards one unkempt zone, Where vines and weeds and scrub-oaks intertwine Safe from the plough, whose rough, discordant stone 80 Is massed to one soft gray by lichens fine, The tangled blackberry, crossed and recrossed, weaves A prickly network of ensanguined leaves; Hard by, with coral beads, the prim black-alders shine. Pillaring with flame this crumbling boundary, Whose loose blocks topple 'neath the ploughboy's foot, Who, with each sense shut fast except the eye, Creeps close and scares the jay he hoped to shoot, The woodbine up the elm's straight stem aspires, Coiling it, harmless, with autumnal fires; 90 In the ivy's paler blaze the martyr oak stands mute. Below, the Charles, a stripe of nether sky, Now hid by rounded apple-trees between, Whose gaps the misplaced sail sweeps bellying by, Now flickering golden through a woodland screen, Then spreading out, at his next turn beyond, A silver circle like an inland pond-- Slips seaward silently through marshes purple and green. Dear marshes! vain to him the gift of sight Who cannot in their various incomes share, 100 From every season drawn, of shade and light, Who sees in them but levels brown and bare; Each change of storm or sunshine scatters free On them its largess of variety, For Nature with cheap means still works her wonders rare. In Spring they lie one broad expanse of green, O'er which the light winds run with glimmering feet: Here, yellower stripes track out the creek unseen, There, darker growths o'er hidden ditches meet; And purpler stains show where the blossoms crowd, 110 As if the silent shadow of a cloud Hung there becalmed, with the next breath to fleet. All round, upon the river's slippery edge, Witching to deeper calm the drowsy tide, Whispers and leans the breeze-entangling sedge; Through emerald glooms the lingering waters slide, Or, sometimes wavering, throw back the sun, And the stiff banks in eddies melt and run Of dimpling light, and with the current seem to glide. In Summer 'tis a blithesome sight to see, 120 As, step by step, with measured swing, they pass, The wide-ranked mowers wading to the knee, Their sharp scythes panting through the wiry grass; Then, stretched beneath a rick's shade in a ring, Their nooning take, while one begins to sing A stave that droops and dies 'neath the close sky of brass. Meanwhile that devil-may-care, the bobolink, Remembering duty, in mid-quaver stops Just ere he sweeps o'er rapture's tremulous brink. And 'twixt the winrows most demurely drops, 130 A decorous bird of business, who provides For his brown mate and fledglings six besides, And looks from right to left, a farmer mid his crops. Another change subdues them in the Fall, But saddens not; they still show merrier tints, Though sober russet seems to cover all; When the first sunshine through their dew-drops glints, Look how the yellow clearness, streamed across, Redeems with rarer hues the season's loss, As Dawn's feet there had touched and left their rosy prints. 140 Or come when sunset gives its freshened zest, Lean o'er the bridge and let the ruddy thrill, While the shorn sun swells down the hazy west, Glow opposite;--the marshes drink their fill And swoon with purple veins, then slowly fade Through pink to brown, as eastward moves the shade, Lengthening with stealthy creep, of Simonds' darkening hill. Later, and yet ere Winter wholly shuts, Ere through the first dry snow the runner grates, And the loath cart-wheel screams in slippery ruts, 150 While firmer ice the eager boy awaits, Trying each buckle and strap beside the fire, And until bedtime plays with his desire, Twenty times putting on and off his new-bought skates;-- Then, every morn, the river's banks shine bright With smooth plate-armor, treacherous and frail, By the frost's clinking hammers forged at night, 'Gainst which the lances of the sun prevail, Giving a pretty emblem of the day When guiltier arms in light shall melt away, 160 And states shall move free-limbed, loosed from war's cramping mail. And now those waterfalls the ebbing river Twice every day creates on either side Tinkle, as through their fresh-sparred grots they shiver In grass-arched channels to the sun denied; High flaps in sparkling blue the far-heard crow, The silvered flats gleam frostily below, Suddenly drops the gull and breaks the glassy tide. But crowned in turn by vying seasons three, Their winter halo hath a fuller ring; 170 This glory seems to rest immovably,-- The others were too fleet and vanishing; When the hid tide is at its highest flow. O'er marsh and stream one breathless trance of snow With brooding fulness awes and hushes everything. The sunshine seems blown off by the bleak wind, As pale as formal candles lit by day; Gropes to the sea the river dumb and blind; The brown ricks, snow-thatched by the storm in play, Show pearly breakers combing o'er their lee, 180 White crests as of some just enchanted sea, Checked in their maddest leap and hanging poised midway. But when the eastern blow, with rain aslant, From mid-sea's prairies green and rolling plains Drives in his wallowing herds of billows gaunt, And the roused Charles remembers in his veins Old Ocean's blood and snaps his gyves of frost, That tyrannous silence on the shores is tost In dreary wreck, and crumbling desolation reigns. Edgewise or flat, in Druid-like device, 190 With leaden pools between or gullies bare, The blocks lie strewn, a bleak Stonehenge of ice; No life, no sound, to break the grim despair, Save sullen plunge, as through the sedges stiff Down crackles riverward some thaw-sapped cliff, Or when the close-wedged fields of ice crunch here and there. But let me turn from fancy-pictured scenes To that whose pastoral calm before me lies: Here nothing harsh or rugged intervenes; The early evening with her misty dyes 200 Smooths off the ravelled edges of the nigh, Relieves the distant with her cooler sky, And tones the landscape down, and soothes the wearied eyes. There gleams my native village, dear to me, Though higher change's waves each day are seen, Whelming fields famed in boyhood's history, Sanding with houses the diminished green; There, in red brick, which softening time defies, Stand square and stiff the Muses' factories:-- How with my life knit up is every well-known scene! 210 Flow on, dear river! not alone you flow To outward sight, and through your marshes wind; Fed from the mystic springs of long-ago, Your twin flows silent through my world of mind: Grow dim, dear marshes, in the evening's gray! Before my inner sight ye stretch away, And will forever, though these fleshly eyes grow blind. Beyond the hillock's house-bespotted swell, Where Gothic chapels house the horse and chaise, Where quiet cits in Grecian temples dwell, 220 Where Coptic tombs resound with prayer and praise, Where dust and mud the equal year divide, There gentle Allston lived, and wrought, and died, Transfiguring street and shop with his illumined gaze. _Virgilium vidi tantum_,--I have seen But as a boy, who looks alike on all, That misty hair, that fine Undine-like mien, Tremulous as down to feeling's faintest call;-- Ah, dear old homestead! count it to thy fame That thither many times the Painter came;-- 230 One elm yet bears his name, a feathery tree and tall. Swiftly the present fades in memory's glow,-- Our only sure possession is the past; The village blacksmith died a month ago, And dim to me the forge's roaring blast; Soon fire-new mediævals we shall see Oust the black smithy from its chestnut-tree, And that hewn down, perhaps, the beehive green and vast. How many times, prouder than king on throne, Loosed from the village school-dame's A's and B's, 240 Panting have I the creaky bellows blown, And watched the pent volcano's red increase, Then paused to see the ponderous sledge, brought down By that hard arm voluminous and brown, From the white iron swarm its golden vanishing bees. Dear native town! whose choking elms each year With eddying dust before their time turn gray, Pining for rain,--to me thy dust is dear; It glorifies the eve of summer day, And when the westering sun half sunken burns, 250 The mote-thick air to deepest orange turns, The westward horseman rides through clouds of gold away. So palpable, I've seen those unshorn few, The six old willows at the causey's end (Such trees Paul Potter never dreamed nor drew), Through this dry mist their checkering shadows send, Striped, here and there, with many a long-drawn thread, Where streamed through leafy chinks the trembling red, Past which, in one bright trail, the hangbird's flashes blend. Yes, dearer far thy dust than all that e'er, 260 Beneath the awarded crown of victory, Gilded the blown Olympic charioteer; Though lightly prized the ribboned parchments three, Yet _collegisse juvat_, I am glad That here what colleging was mine I had,-- It linked another tie, dear native town, with thee! Nearer art thou than simply native earth, My dust with thine concedes a deeper tie; A closer claim thy soil may well put forth, Something of kindred more than sympathy; 270 For in thy bounds I reverently laid away That blinding anguish of forsaken clay, That title I seemed to have in earth and sea and sky, That portion of my life more choice to me (Though brief, yet in itself so round and whole) Than all the imperfect residue can be;-- The Artist saw his statue of the soul Was perfect; so, with one regretful stroke, The earthen model into fragments broke, And without her the impoverished seasons roll. 280 THE GROWTH OF THE LEGEND A FRAGMENT A legend that grew in the forest's hush Slowly as tear-drops gather and gush, When a word some poet chanced to say Ages ago, in his careless way, Brings our youth back to us out of its shroud Clearly as under yon thunder-cloud I see that white sea-gull. It grew and grew, From the pine-trees gathering a sombre hue, Till it seems a mere murmur out of the vast Norwegian forests of the past; 10 And it grew itself like a true Northern pine, First a little slender line, Like a mermaid's green eyelash, and then anon A stem that a tower might rest upon, Standing spear-straight in the waist-deep moss, Its bony roots clutching around and across, As if they would tear up earth's heart in their grasp Ere the storm should uproot them or make them unclasp; Its cloudy boughs singing, as suiteth the pine, To snow-bearded sea-kings old songs of the brine, 20 Till they straightened and let their staves fall to the floor, Hearing waves moan again on the perilous shore Of Vinland, perhaps, while their prow groped its way 'Twixt the frothed gnashing tusks of some ship-crunching bay. So, pine-like, the legend grew, strong-limbed and tall, As the Gypsy child grows that eats crusts in the hall; It sucked the whole strength of the earth and the sky, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, all brought it supply; 'Twas a natural growth, and stood fearlessly there, True part of the landscape as sea, land, and air; 30 For it grew in good times, ere the fashion it was To force these wild births of the woods under glass, And so, if 'tis told as it should be told, Though 'twere sung under Venice's moonlight of gold, You would hear the old voice of its mother, the pine, Murmur sealike and northern through every line, And the verses should grow, self-sustained and free, Round the vibrating stem of the melody, Like the lithe moonlit limbs of the parent tree. Yes, the pine is the mother of legends; what food 40 For their grim roots is left when the thousand-yeared wood, The dim-aisled cathedral, whose tall arches spring Light, sinewy, graceful, firm-set as the wing From Michael's white shoulder, is hewn and defaced By iconoclast axes in desperate waste, And its wrecks seek the ocean it prophesied long, Cassandra-like, crooning its mystical song? Then the legends go with them,--even yet on the sea A wild virtue is left in the touch of the tree, And the sailor's night-watches are thrilled to the core 50 With the lineal offspring of Odin and Thor. Yes, wherever the pine-wood has never let in, Since the day of creation, the light and the din Of manifold life, but has safely conveyed From the midnight primeval its armful of shade, And has kept the weird Past with its child-faith alive Mid the hum and the stir of To-day's busy hive. There the legend takes root in the age-gathered gloom, And its murmurous boughs for their sagas find room. Where Aroostook, far-heard, seems to sob as he goes 60 Groping down to the sea 'neath his mountainous snows; Where the lake's frore Sahara of never-tracked white, When the crack shoots across it, complains to the night With a long, lonely moan, that leagues northward is lost, As the ice shrinks away from the tread of the frost; Where the lumberers sit by the log-fires that throw Their own threatening shadows far round o'er the snow, When the wolf howls aloof, and the wavering glare Flashes out from the blackness the eyes of the bear, When the wood's huge recesses, half-lighted, supply 70 A canvas where Fancy her mad brush may try, Blotting in giant Horrors that venture not down Through the right-angled streets of the brisk, whitewashed town, But skulk in the depths of the measureless wood Mid the Dark's creeping whispers that curdle the blood, When the eye, glanced in dread o'er the shoulder, may dream, Ere it shrinks to the camp-fire's companioning gleam, That it saw the fierce ghost of the Red Man crouch back To the shroud of the tree-trunk's invincible black; There the old shapes crowd thick round the pine-shadowed camp, 80 Which shun the keen gleam of the scholarly lamp, And the seed of the legend finds true Norland ground, While the border-tale's told and the canteen flits round. A CONTRAST Thy love thou sendest oft to me, And still as oft I thrust it back; Thy messengers I could not see In those who everything did lack, The poor, the outcast and the black. Pride held his hand before mine eyes, The world with flattery stuffed mine ears; I looked to see a monarch's guise, Nor dreamed thy love would knock for years, Poor, naked, fettered, full of tears. Yet, when I sent my love to thee, Thou with a smile didst take it in, And entertain'dst it royally, Though grimed with earth, with hunger thin, And leprous with the taint of sin. Now every day thy love I meet, As o'er the earth it wanders wide, With weary step and bleeding feet, Still knocking at the heart of pride And offering grace, though still denied. EXTREME UNCTION Go! leave me, Priest; my soul would be Alone with the consoler, Death; Far sadder eyes than thine will see This crumbling clay yield up its breath; These shrivelled hands have deeper stains Than holy oil can cleanse away, Hands that have plucked the world's coarse gains As erst they plucked the flowers of May. Call, if thou canst, to these gray eyes Some faith from youth's traditions wrung; 10 This fruitless husk which dustward dries Hath been a heart once, hath been young; On this bowed head the awful Past Once laid its consecrating hands; The Future in its purpose vast Paused, waiting my supreme commands. But look! whose shadows block the door? Who are those two that stand aloof? See! on my hands this freshening gore Writes o'er again its crimson proof! 20 My looked-for death-bed guests are met; There my dead Youth doth wring its hands, And there, with eyes that goad me yet, The ghost of my Ideal stands! God bends from out the deep and says, 'I gave thee the great gift of life; Wast thou not called in many ways? Are not my earth and heaven at strife? I gave thee of my seed to sow, Bringest thou me my hundredfold?' 30 Can I look up with face aglow, And answer, 'Father, here is gold'? I have been innocent; God knows When first this wasted life began, Not grape with grape more kindly grows, Than I with every brother-man: Now here I gasp; what lose my kind, When this fast ebbing breath shall part? What bands of love and service bind This being to a brother heart? 40 Christ still was wandering o'er the earth Without a place to lay his head; He found free welcome at my hearth, He shared my cup and broke my bread: Now, when I hear those steps sublime, That bring the other world to this, My snake-turned nature, sunk in slime, Starts sideway with defiant hiss. Upon the hour when I was born, God said, 'Another man shall be,' 50 And the great Maker did not scorn Out of himself to fashion me: He sunned me with his ripening looks, And Heaven's rich instincts in me grew, As effortless as woodland nooks Send violets up and paint them blue. Yes, I who now, with angry tears, Am exiled back to brutish clod, Have borne unqueached for fourscore years A spark of the eternal God; 60 And to what end? How yield I back The trust for such high uses given? Heaven's light hath but revealed a track Whereby to crawl away from heaven. Men think it is an awful sight To see a soul just set adrift On that drear voyage from whose night The ominous shadows never lift; But 'tis more awful to behold A helpless infant newly born, 70 Whose little hands unconscious hold The keys of darkness and of morn. Mine held them once; I flung away Those keys that might have open set The golden sluices of the day, But clutch the keys of darkness yet; I hear the reapers singing go Into God's harvest; I, that might With them have chosen, here below Grope shuddering at the gates of night. 80 O glorious Youth, that once wast mine! O high Ideal! all in vain Ye enter at this ruined shrine Whence worship ne'er shall rise again; The bat and owl inhabit here, The snake nests in the altar-stone, The sacred vessels moulder near, The image of the God is gone. THE OAK What gnarlèd stretch, what depth of shade, is his! There needs no crown to mark the forest's king; How in his leaves outshines full summer's bliss! Sun, storm, rain, dew, to him their tribute bring, Which he with such benignant royalty Accepts, as overpayeth what is lent; All nature seems his vassal proud to be, And cunning only for his ornament. How towers he, too, amid the billowed snows, An unquelled exile from the summer's throne, Whose plain, uncinctured front more kingly shows, Now that the obscuring courtier leaves are flown. His boughs make music of the winter air, Jewelled with sleet, like some cathedral front Where clinging snow-flakes with quaint art repair The dints and furrows of time's envious brunt. How doth his patient strength the rude March wind Persuade to seem glad breaths of summer breeze, And win the soil that fain would be unkind, To swell his revenues with proud increase! He is the gem; and all the landscape wide (So doth his grandeur isolate the sense) Seems but the setting, worthless all beside, An empty socket, were he fallen thence. So, from oft converse with life's wintry gales, Should man learn how to clasp with tougher roots The inspiring earth; how otherwise avails The leaf-creating sap that sunward shoots? So every year that falls with noiseless flake Should fill old scars up on the stormward side, And make hoar age revered for age's sake, Not for traditions of youth's leafy pride. So, from the pinched soil of a churlish fate, True hearts compel the sap of sturdier growth, So between earth and heaven stand simply great, That these shall seem but their attendants both; For nature's forces with obedient zeal Wait on the rooted faith and oaken will; As quickly the pretender's cheat they feel, And turn mad Pucks to flout and mock him still. Lord! all thy works are lessons; each contains Some emblem of man's all-containing soul; Shall he make fruitless all thy glorious pains, Delving within thy grace an eyeless mole? Make me the least of thy Dodona-grove, Cause me some message of thy truth to bring, Speak but a word through me, nor let thy love Among my boughs disdain to perch and sing. AMBROSE Never, surely, was holier man Than Ambrose, since the world began; With diet spare and raiment thin He shielded himself from the father of sin; With bed of iron and scourgings oft, His heart to God's hand as wax made soft. Through earnest prayer and watchings long He sought to know 'tween right and wrong, Much wrestling with the blessed Word To make it yield the sense of the Lord, 10 That he might build a storm-proof creed To fold the flock in at their need. At last he builded a perfect faith, Fenced round about with _The Lord thus saith_; To himself he fitted the doorway's size, Meted the light to the need of his eyes, And knew, by a sure and inward sign, That the work of his fingers was divine. Then Ambrose said, 'All those shall die The eternal death who believe not as I;' 20 And some were boiled, some burned in fire, Some sawn in twain, that his heart's desire, For the good of men's souls might be satisfied By the drawing of all to the righteous side. One day, as Ambrose was seeking the truth In his lonely walk, he saw a youth Resting himself in the shade of a tree; It had never been granted him to see So shining a face, and the good man thought 'Twere pity he should not believe as he ought. 30 So he set himself by the young man's side, And the state of his soul with questions tried; But the heart of the stranger was hardened indeed, Nor received the stamp of the one true creed; And the spirit of Ambrose waxed sore to find Such features the porch of so narrow a mind. 'As each beholds in cloud and fire The shape that answers his own desire, So each,' said the youth, 'in the Law shall find The figure and fashion of his mind; 40 And to each in his mercy hath God allowed His several pillar of fire and cloud.' The soul of Ambrose burned with zeal And holy wrath for the young man's weal: 'Believest thou then, most wretched youth,' Cried he, 'a dividual essence in Truth? I fear me thy heart is too cramped with sin To take the Lord in his glory in.' Now there bubbled beside them where they stood A fountain of waters sweet and good: 50 The youth to the streamlet's brink drew near Saying, 'Ambrose, thou maker of creeds, look here!' Six vases of crystal then he took, And set them along the edge of the brook. 'As into these vessels the water I pour, There shall one hold less, another more, And the water unchanged, in every case, Shall put on the figure of the vase; O thou, who wouldst unity make through strife, Canst thou fit this sign to the Water of Life?' 60 When Ambrose looked up, he stood alone, The youth and the stream and the vases were gone; But he knew, by a sense of humbled grace, He had talked with an angel face to face, And felt his heart change inwardly, As he fell on his knees beneath the tree. ABOVE AND BELOW I O dwellers in the valley-land, Who in deep twilight grope and cower, Till the slow mountain's dial-hand Shorten to noon's triumphal hour, While ye sit idle, do ye think The Lord's great work sits idle too? That light dare not o'erleap the brink Of morn, because 'tis dark with you? Though yet your valleys skulk in night, In God's ripe fields the day is cried, And reapers, with their sickles bright, Troop, singing, down the mountain-side: Come up, and feel what health there is In the frank Dawn's delighted eyes, As, bending with a pitying kiss, The night-shed tears of Earth she dries! The Lord wants reapers: oh, mount up, Before night comes, and says, 'Too late!' Stay not for taking scrip or cup, The Master hungers while ye wait; 'Tis from these heights alone your eyes The advancing spears of day can see, That o'er the eastern hill-tops rise, To break your long captivity. II Lone watcher on the mountain-height, It is right precious to behold The first long surf of climbing light Flood all the thirsty east with gold; But we, who in the shadow sit, Know also when the day is nigh, Seeing thy shining forehead lit With his inspiring prophecy. Thou hast thine office; we have ours; God lacks not early service here, But what are thine eleventh hours He counts with us for morning cheer; Our day, for Him, is long enough, And when He giveth work to do, The bruisèd reed is amply tough To pierce the shield of error, through. But not the less do thou aspire Light's earlier messages to preach; Keep back no syllable of fire, Plunge deep the rowels of thy speech. Yet God deems not thine aeried sight More worthy than our twilight dim; For meek Obedience, too, is Light, And following that is finding Him. THE CAPTIVE It was past the hour of trysting, But she lingered for him still; Like a child, the eager streamlet Leaped and laughed adown the hill, Happy to be free at twilight From its toiling at the mill. Then the great moon on a sudden Ominous, and red as blood, Startling as a new creation, O'er the eastern hilltop stood, Casting deep and deeper shadows Through the mystery of the wood. Dread closed fast and vague about her, And her thoughts turned fearfully To her heart, if there some shelter From the silence there might be, Like bare cedars leaning inland From the blighting of the sea. Yet he came not, and the stillness Dampened round her like a tomb; She could feel cold eyes of spirits Looking on her through the gloom, She could hear the groping footsteps Of some blind, gigantic doom. Suddenly the silence wavered Like a light mist in the wind, For a voice broke gently through it, Felt like sunshine by the blind, And the dread, like mist in sunshine, Furled serenely from her mind. 'Once my love, my love forever, Flesh or spirit, still the same, If I failed at time of trysting, Deem then not my faith to blame; I, alas, was made a captive, As from Holy Land I came. 'On a green spot in the desert, Gleaming like an emerald star, Where a palm-tree, in lone silence, Yearning for its mate afar, Droops above a silver runnel, Slender as a scimitar, 'There thou'lt find the humble postern To the castle of my foe; If thy love burn clear and faithful, Strike the gateway, green and low, Ask to enter, and the warder Surely will not say thee no.' Slept again the aspen silence, But her loneliness was o'er; Bound her soul a motherly patience Clasped its arms forevermore; From her heart ebbed back the sorrow, Leaving smooth the golden shore. Donned she now the pilgrim scallop, Took the pilgrim staff in hand; Like a cloud-shade flitting eastward, Wandered she o'er sea and land; And her footsteps in the desert Fell like cool rain on the sand. Soon, beneath the palm-tree's shadow, Knelt she at the postern low; And thereat she knocked full gently, Fearing much the warder's no; All her heart stood still and listened, As the door swung backward slow. There she saw no surly warder With an eye like bolt and bar; Through her soul a sense of music Throbbed, and, like a guardian Lar, On the threshold stood an angel, Bright and silent as a star. Fairest seemed he of God's seraphs, And her spirit, lily-wise, Opened when he turned upon her The deep welcome of his eyes, Sending upward to that sunlight All its dew for sacrifice. Then she heard a voice come onward Singing with a rapture new, As Eve heard the songs in Eden, Dropping earthward with the dew; Well she knew the happy singer, Well the happy song she knew. Forward leaped she o'er the threshold, Eager as a glancing surf; Fell from her the spirit's languor, Fell from her the body's scurf; 'Neath the palm next day some Arabs Found a corpse upon the turf. THE BIRCH-TREE Rippling through thy branches goes the sunshine, Among thy leaves that palpitate forever; Ovid in thee a pining Nymph had prisoned, The soul once of some tremulous inland river, Quivering to tell her woe, but, ah! dumb, dumb forever! While all the forest, witched with slumberous moonshine, Holds up its leaves in happy, happy stillness, Waiting the dew, with breath and pulse suspended, I hear afar thy whispering, gleamy islands, And track thee wakeful still amid the wide-hung silence. On the brink of some wood-nestled lakelet, Thy foliage, like the tresses of a Dryad, Dripping round thy slim white stem, whose shadow Slopes quivering down the water's dusky quiet, Thou shrink'st as on her bath's edge would some startled Naiad. Thou art the go-between of rustic lovers; Thy white bark has their secrets in its keeping; Reuben writes here the happy name of Patience, And thy lithe boughs hang murmuring and weeping Above her, as she steals the mystery from thy keeping. Thou art to me like my beloved maiden, So frankly coy, so full of trembly confidences; Thy shadow scarce seems shade, thy pattering leaflets Sprinkle their gathered sunshine o'er my senses, And Nature gives me all her summer confidences. Whether my heart with hope or sorrow tremble, Thou sympathizest still; wild and unquiet, I fling me down; thy ripple, like a river, Flows valleyward, where calmness is, and by it My heart is floated down into the land of quiet. AN INTERVIEW WITH MILES STANDISH I sat one evening in my room, In that sweet hour of twilight When blended thoughts, half light, half gloom, Throng through the spirit's skylight; The flames by fits curled round the bars, Or up the chimney crinkled, While embers dropped like falling stars, And in the ashes tinkled. I sat, and mused; the fire burned low, And, o'er my senses stealing, 10 Crept something of the ruddy glow That bloomed on wall and ceiling; My pictures (they are very few, The heads of ancient wise men) Smoothed down their knotted fronts, and grew As rosy as excisemen. My antique high-backed Spanish chair Felt thrills through wood and leather, That had been strangers since whilere, Mid Andaluslan heather, 20 The oak that built its sturdy frame His happy arms stretched over The ox whose fortunate hide became The bottom's polished cover. It came out in that famous bark, That brought our sires intrepid, Capacious as another ark For furniture decrepit; For, as that saved of bird and beast A pair for propagation, 30 So has the seed of these increased And furnished half the nation. Kings sit, they say, in slippery seats; But those slant precipices Of ice the northern voyager meets Less slippery are than this is; To cling therein would pass the wit Of royal man or woman, And whatsoe'er can stay in it Is more or less than human. 40 I offer to all bores this perch, Dear well-intentioned people With heads as void as week-day church, Tongues longer than the steeple; To folks with missions, whose gaunt eyes See golden ages rising,-- Salt of the earth! in what queer Guys Thou'rt fond of crystallizing! My wonder, then, was not unmixed With merciful suggestion, 50 When, as my roving eyes grew fixed Upon the chair in question, I saw its trembling arms enclose A figure grim and rusty, Whose doublet plain and plainer hose Were something worn and dusty. Now even such men as Nature forms Merely to fill the street with, Once turned to ghosts by hungry worms, 59 Are serious things to meet with; Your penitent spirits are no jokes, And, though I'm not averse to A quiet shade, even they are folks One cares not to speak first to. Who knows, thought I, but he has come, By Charon kindly ferried, To tell me of a mighty sum Behind my wainscot buried? There is a buccaneerish air About that garb outlandish-- 70 Just then the ghost drew up his chair And said, 'My name is Standish. 'I come from Plymouth, deadly bored With toasts, and songs, and speeches, As long and flat as my old sword, As threadbare as my breeches: _They_ understand us Pilgrims! they, Smooth men with rosy faces. Strength's knots and gnarls all pared away, And varnish in their places! 80 'We had some toughness in our grain, The eye to rightly see us is Not just the one that lights the brain Of drawing-room Tyrtæuses: _They_ talk about their Pilgrim blood, Their birthright high and holy! A mountain-stream that ends in mud Methinks is melancholy. 'He had stiff knees, the Puritan, That were not good at bending; The homespun dignity of man 91 He thought was worth defending; He did not, with his pinchbeck ore, His country's shame forgotten, Gild Freedom's coffin o'er and o'er, When all within was rotten. 'These loud ancestral boasts of yours, How can they else than vex us? Where were your dinner orators When slavery grasped at Texas? 100 Dumb on his knees was every one That now is bold as Cæsar; Mere pegs to hang an office on Such stalwart men as these are.' 'Good sir,' I said, 'you seem much stirred; The sacred compromises'-- 'Now God confound the dastard word! My gall thereat arises: Northward it hath this sense alone That you, your conscience blinding, 110 Shall bow your fool's nose to the stone, When slavery feels like grinding. ''Tis shame to see such painted sticks In Vane's and Winthrop's places, To see your spirit of Seventy-Six Drag humbly in the traces, With slavery's lash upon her back, And herds, of office-holders To shout applause, as, with a crack, 119 It peels her patient shoulders. '_We_ forefathers to such a rout!-- No, by my faith in God's word!' Half rose the ghost, and half drew out The ghost of his old broadsword, Then thrust it slowly back again, And said, with reverent gesture, 'No, Freedom, no! blood should not stain The hem of thy white vesture. 'I feel the soul in me draw near The mount of prophesying; 130 In this bleak wilderness I hear A John the Baptist crying; Far in the east I see upleap The streaks of first forewarning, And they who sowed the light shall reap The golden sheaves of morning. 'Child of our travail and our woe, Light in our day of sorrow, Through my rapt spirit I foreknow The glory of thy morrow; 140 I hear great steps, that through the shade Draw nigher still and nigher, And voices call like that which bade The prophet come up higher.' I looked, no form mine eyes could find, I heard the red cock crowing, And through my window-chinks the wind A dismal tune was blowing; Thought I, My neighbor Buckingham Hath somewhat in him gritty, 150 Some Pilgrim-stuff that hates all sham, And he will print my ditty. ON THE CAPTURE OF FUGITIVE SLAVES NEAR WASHINGTON Look on who will in apathy, and stifle they who can, The sympathies, the hopes, the words, that make man truly man; Let those whose hearts are dungeoned up with interest or with ease Consent to hear with quiet pulse of loathsome deeds like these! I first drew in New England's air, and from her hardy breast Sucked in the tyrant-hating milk that will not let me rest; And if my words seem treason to the dullard and the tame, 'Tis but my Bay-State dialect,--our fathers spake the same! Shame on the costly mockery of piling stone on stone To those who won our liberty, the heroes dead and gone, While we look coldly on and see law-shielded ruffians slay The men who fain would win their own, the heroes of to-day! Are we pledged to craven silence? Oh, fling it to the wind, The parchment wall that bars us from the least of human kind, That makes us cringe and temporize, and dumbly stand at rest, While Pity's burning flood of words is red-hot in the breast! Though we break our fathers' promise, we have nobler duties first; The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most accursed; Man is more than Constitutions; better rot beneath the sod, Than be true to Church and State while we are doubly false to God! We owe allegiance to the State; but deeper, truer, more, To the sympathies that God hath set within our spirit's core; Our country claims our fealty; we grant it so, but then Before Man made us citizens, great Nature made us men. He's true to God who's true to man; wherever wrong is done, To the humblest and the weakest, 'neath the all-beholding sun, That wrong is also done to us; and they are slaves most base, Whose love of right is for themselves, and not for all their race. God works for all. Ye cannot hem the hope of being free With parallels of latitude, with mountain-range or sea. Put golden padlocks on Truth's lips, be callous as ye will, From soul to soul, o'er all the world, leaps one electric thrill. Chain down your slaves with ignorance, ye cannot keep apart, With all your craft of tyranny, the human heart from heart: When first the Pilgrims landed on the Bay State's iron shore, The word went forth that slavery should one day be no more. Out from the land of bondage 'tis decreed our slaves shall go, And signs to us are offered, as erst to Pharaoh; If we are blind, their exodus, like Israel's of yore, Through a Red Sea is doomed to be, whose surges are of gore. 'Tis ours to save our brethren, with peace and love to win Their darkened hearts from error, ere they harden it to sin; But if before his duty man with listless spirit stands, Erelong the Great Avenger takes the work from out his hands. TO THE DANDELION Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, First pledge of blithesome May, Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold, High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they An Eldorado in the grass have found, Which not the rich earth's ample round May match in wealth, thou art more dear to me Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be. Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow Through the primeval hush of Indian seas, Nor wrinkled the lean brow Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease; 'Tis the Spring's largess, which she scatters now To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand, Though most hearts never understand To take it at God's value, but pass by The offered wealth with unrewarded eye. Thou art my tropics and mine Italy; To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime; The eyes thou givest me Are in the heart, and heed not space or time: Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment In the white lily's breezy tent, His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first From the dark green thy yellow circles burst. Then think I of deep shadows on the grass, Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze, Where, as the breezes pass, The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways, Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass, Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue That from the distance sparkle through Some woodland gap, and of a sky above, Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move. My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with thee; The sight of thee calls back the robin's song, Who, from the dark old tree Beside the door, sang clearly all day long, And I, secure in childish piety, Listened as if I heard an angel sing With news from heaven, which he could bring Fresh every day to my untainted ears When birds and flowers and I were happy peers. How like a prodigal doth nature seem, When thou, for all thy gold, so common art! Thou teachest me to deem More sacredly of every human heart, Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show, Did we but pay the love we owe, And with a child's undoubting wisdom look On all these living pages of God's book. THE GHOST-SEER Ye who, passing graves by night, Glance not to the left or right, Lest a spirit should arise, Cold and white, to freeze your eyes, Some weak phantom, which your doubt Shapes upon the dark without From the dark within, a guess At the spirit's deathlessness, Which ye entertain with fear In your self-built dungeon here, 10 Where ye sell your God-given lives Just for gold to buy you gyves,-- Ye without a shudder meet In the city's noonday street, Spirits sadder and more dread Than from out the clay have fled, Buried, beyond hope of light, In the body's haunted night! See ye not that woman pale? There are bloodhounds on her trail! 20 Bloodhounds two, all gaunt and lean, (For the soul their scent is keen,) Want and Sin, and Sin is last. They have followed far and fast; Want gave tongue, and, at her howl, Sin awakened with a growl. Ah, poor girl! she had a right To a blessing from the light; Title-deeds to sky and earth God gave to her at her birth; 30 But, before they were enjoyed, Poverty had made them void, And had drunk the sunshine up From all nature's ample cup, Leaving her a first-born's share In the dregs of darkness there. Often, on the sidewalk bleak, Hungry, all alone, and weak, She has seen, in night and storm, Rooms o'erflow with firelight warm, 40 Which, outside the window-glass, Doubled all the cold, alas! Till each ray that on her fell Stabbed her like an icicle, And she almost loved the wail Of the bloodhounds on her trail. Till the floor becomes her bier, She shall feel their pantings near, Close upon her very heels, Spite of all the din of wheels; 50 Shivering on her pallet poor, She shall hear them at the door Whine and scratch to be let in, Sister bloodhounds, Want and Sin! Hark! that rustle of a dress, Stiff with lavish costliness! Here comes one whose cheek would flush But to have her garment brush 'Gainst the girl whose fingers thin Wove the weary broidery in, 60 Bending backward from her toil, Lest her tears the silk might soil, And, in midnights chill and murk, Stitched her life into the work, Shaping from her bitter thought Heart's-ease and forget-me-not, Satirizing her despair With the emblems woven there. Little doth the wearer heed Of the heart-break in the brede; 70 A hyena by her side Skulks, down-looking,--it is Pride. He digs for her in the earth, Where lie all her claims of birth, With his foul paws rooting o'er Some long-buried ancestor, Who perhaps a statue won By the ill deeds he had done, By the innocent blood he shed, By the desolation spread 80 Over happy villages, Blotting out the smile of peace. There walks Judas, he who sold Yesterday his Lord for gold, Sold God's presence in his heart For a proud step in the mart; He hath dealt in flesh and blood: At the bank his name is good; At the bank, and only there, 'Tis a marketable ware. 90 In his eyes that stealthy gleam Was not learned of sky or stream, But it has the cold, hard glint Of new dollars from the mint. Open now your spirit's eyes, Look through that poor clay disguise Which has thickened, day by day, Till it keeps all light at bay, And his soul in pitchy gloom Gropes about its narrow tomb, 100 From whose dank and slimy walls Drop by drop the horror falls. Look! a serpent lank and cold Hugs his spirit fold on fold; From his heart, all day and night, It doth suck God's blessed light. Drink it will, and drink it must, Till the cup holds naught but dust; All day long he hears it hiss, Writhing in its fiendish bliss; 110 All night long he sees its eyes Flicker with foul ecstasies, As the spirit ebbs away Into the absorbing clay. Who is he that skulks, afraid Of the trust he has betrayed, Shuddering if perchance a gleam Of old nobleness should stream Through the pent, unwholesome room, Where his shrunk soul cowers in gloom, 120 Spirit sad beyond the rest By more Instinct for the best? 'Tis a poet who was sent For a bad world's punishment, By compelling it to see Golden glimpses of To Be, By compelling it to hear Songs that prove the angels near; Who was sent to be the tongue Of the weak and spirit-wrung, 130 Whence the fiery-winged Despair In men's shrinking eyes might flare. 'Tis our hope doth fashion us To base use or glorious: He who might have been a lark Of Truth's morning, from the dark Raining down melodious hope Of a freer, broader scope, Aspirations, prophecies, Of the spirit's full sunrise, 140 Chose to be a bird of night, That, with eyes refusing light, Hooted from some hollow tree Of the world's idolatry. 'Tis his punishment to hear Sweep of eager pinions near, And his own vain wings to feel Drooping downward to his heel, All their grace and import lost, Burdening his weary ghost: 150 Ever walking by his side He must see his angel guide, Who at intervals doth turn Looks on him so sadly stern, With such ever-new surprise Of hushed anguish in her eyes, That it seems the light of day From around him shrinks away, Or drops blunted from the wall Built around him by his fall. 160 Then the mountains, whose white peaks Catch the morning's earliest streaks, He must see, where prophets sit, Turning east their faces lit, Whence, with footsteps beautiful, To the earth, yet dim and dull, They the gladsome tidings bring Of the sunlight's hastening: Never can these hills of bliss 169 Be o'erclimbed by feet like his! But enough! Oh, do not dare From the next the veil to tear, Woven of station, trade, or dress, More obscene than nakedness, Wherewith plausible culture drapes Fallen Nature's myriad shapes! Let us rather love to mark How the unextingnished spark Still gleams through the thin disguise 179 Of our customs, pomps, and lies, And, not seldom blown to flame, Vindicates its ancient claim. STUDIES FOR TWO HEADS I Some sort of heart I know is hers,-- I chanced to feel her pulse one night; A brain she has that never errs, And yet is never nobly right; It does not leap to great results, But, in some corner out of sight Suspects a spot of latent blight, And, o'er the impatient infinite, She hargains, haggles, and consults. Her eye,--it seems a chemic test And drops upon you like an acid; 11 It bites you with unconscious zest, So clear and bright, so coldly placid; It holds you quietly aloof, It holds,--and yet it does not win you; It merely puts you to the proof And sorts what qualities are in you: It smiles, but never brings you nearer, It lights,--her nature draws not nigh; 'Tis but that yours is growing clearer 20 To her assays;--yes, try and try, You'll get no deeper than her eye. There, you are classified: she's gone Far, far away into herself; Each with its Latin label on, Your poor components, one by one, Are laid upon their proper shelf In her compact and ordered mind, And what of you is left behind Is no more to her than the wind; In that clear brain, which, day and night, 31 No movement of the heart e'er jostles, Her friends are ranged on left and right,-- Here, silex, hornblende, sienite; There, animal remains and fossils. And yet, O subtile analyst, That canst each property detect Of mood or grain, that canst untwist Each tangled skein of intellect, And with thy scalpel eyes lay bare 40 Each mental nerve more fine than air,-- O brain exact, that in thy scales Canst weigh the sun and never err, For once thy patient science fails, One problem still defies thy art;-- Thou never canst compute for her The distance and diameter Of any simple human heart. II Hear him but speak, and you will feel The shadows of the Portico 50 Over your tranquil spirit steal, To modulate all joy and woe To one subdued, subduing glow; Above our squabbling business-hours, Like Phidian Jove's, his beauty lowers, His nature satirizes ours; A form and front of Attic grace, He shames the higgling market-place, And dwarfs our more mechanic powers. What throbbing verse can fitly render 60 That face so pure, so trembling-tender? Sensation glimmers through its rest, It speaks unmanacled by words, As full of motion as a nest That palpitates with unfledged birds; 'Tis likest to Bethesda's stream, Forewarned through all its thrilling springs, White with the angel's coming gleam, And rippled with his fanning wings. Hear him unfold his plots and plans, 70 And larger destinies seem man's; You conjure from his glowing face The omen of a fairer race; With one grand trope he boldly spans The gulf wherein so many fall, 'Twixt possible and actual; His first swift word, talaria-shod, Exuberant with conscious God, Out of the choir of planets blots The present earth with all its spots. 80 Himself unshaken as the sky, His words, like whirlwinds, spin on high Systems and creeds pellmell together; 'Tis strange as to a deaf man's eye, While trees uprooted splinter by, The dumb turmoil of stormy weather; Less of iconoclast than shaper, His spirit, safe behind the reach Of the tornado of his speech, Burns calmly as a glowworm's taper. 90 So great in speech, but, ah! in act So overrun with vermin troubles, The coarse, sharp-cornered, ugly fact Of life collapses all his bubbles: Had he but lived in Plato's day, He might, unless my fancy errs, Have shared that golden voice's sway O'er barefooted philosophers. Our nipping climate hardly suits The ripening of ideal fruits: 100 His theories vanquish us all summer, But winter makes him dumb and dumber; To see him mid life's needful things Is something painfully bewildering; He seems an angel with clipt wings Tied to a mortal wife and children, And by a brother seraph taken In the act of eating eggs and bacon. Like a clear fountain, his desire Exults and leaps toward the light, 110 In every drop it says 'Aspire!' Striving for more ideal height; And as the fountain, falling thence, Crawls baffled through the common gutter, So, from his speech's eminence, He shrinks into the present tense, Unkinged by foolish bread and butter. Yet smile not, worldling, for in deeds Not all of life that's brave and wise is; He strews an ampler future's seeds, 120 'Tis your fault if no harvest rises; Smooth back the sneer; for is it naught That all he is and has is Beauty's? By soul the soul's gains must be wrought, The Actual claims our coarser thought, The Ideal hath its higher duties. ON A PORTRAIT OF DANTE BY GIOTTO Can this be thou who, lean and pale, With such immitigable eye Didst look upon those writhing souls in bale, And note each vengeance, and pass by Unmoved, save when thy heart by chance Cast backward one forbidden glance, And saw Francesca, with child's glee, Subdue and mount thy wild-horse knee And with proud hands control its fiery prance? With half-drooped lids, and smooth, round brow, And eye remote, that inly sees Fair Beatrice's spirit wandering now In some sea-lulled Hesperides, Thou movest through the jarring street, Secluded from the noise of feet By her gift-blossom in thy hand, Thy branch of palm from Holy Land;-- No trace is here of ruin's fiery sleet. Yet there is something round thy lips That prophesies the coming doom, The soft, gray herald-shadow ere the eclipse Notches the perfect disk with gloom; A something that would banish thee, And thine untamed pursuer be, From men and their unworthy fates, Though Florence had not shut her gates, And Grief had loosed her clutch and let thee free. Ah! he who follows fearlessly The beckonings of a poet-heart Shall wander, and without the world's decree, A banished man in field and mart; Harder than Florence' walls the bar Which with deaf sternness holds him far From home and friends, till death's release, And makes his only prayer for peace, Like thine, scarred veteran of a lifelong war! ON THE DEATH OF A FRIEND'S CHILD Death never came so nigh to me before, Nor showed me his mild face: oft had I mused Of calm and peace and safe forgetfulness, Of folded hands, closed eyes, and heart at rest, And slumber sound beneath a flowery turf, Of faults forgotten, and an inner place Kept sacred for us in the heart of friends; But these were idle fancies, satisfied With the mere husk of this great mystery, And dwelling in the outward shows of things. 10 Heaven is not mounted to on wings of dreams, Nor doth the unthankful happiness of youth Aim thitherward, but floats from bloom to bloom, With earth's warm patch of sunshine well content: 'Tis sorrow builds the shining ladder up, Whose golden rounds are our calamities, Whereon our firm feet planting, nearer God The spirit climbs, and hath its eyes unsealed. True is it that Death's face seems stern and cold, When he is sent to summon those we love, 20 But all God's angels come to us disguised; Sorrow and sickness, poverty and death, One after other lift their frowning masks, And we behold the seraph's face beneath, All radiant with the glory and the calm Of having looked upon the front of God. With every anguish of our earthly part The spirit's sight grows clearer; this was meant When Jesus touched the blind man's lids with clay. Life is the jailer, Death the angel sent 30 To draw the unwilling bolts and set us free. He flings not ope the ivory gate of Rest,-- Only the fallen spirit knocks at that,-- But to benigner regions beckons us, To destinies of more rewarded toil. In the hushed chamber, sitting by the dead, It grates on us to hear the flood of life Whirl rustling onward, senseless of our loss. The bee hums on; around the blossomed vine Whirs the light humming-bird; the cricket chirps; 40 The locust's shrill alarum stings the ear; Hard by, the cock shouts lustily; from farm to farm, His cheery brothers, telling of the sun, Answer, till far away the joyance dies: We never knew before how God had filled The summer air with happy living sounds; All round us seems an overplus of life, And yet the one dear heart lies cold and still. It is most strange, when the great miracle Hath for our sakes been done, when we have had 50 Our inwardest experience of God, When with his presence still the room expands, And is awed after him, that naught is changed, That Nature's face looks unacknowledging, And the mad world still dances heedless on After its butterflies, and gives no sign. 'Tis hard at first to see it all aright: In vain Faith blows her trump to summon back Her scattered troop: yet, through the clouded glass Of our own bitter tears, we learn to look 60 Undazzled on the kindness of God's face; Earth is too dark, and Heaven alone shines through. It is no little thing, when a fresh soul And a fresh heart, with their unmeasured scope For good, not gravitating earthward yet, But circling in diviner periods, Are sent into the world,--no little thing, When this unbounded possibility Into the outer silence is withdrawn. Ah, in this world, where every guiding thread 70 Ends suddenly in the one sure centre, death, The visionary hand of Might-have-been Alone can fill Desire's cup to the brim! How changed, dear friend, are thy part and thy child's! He bends above _thy_ cradle now, or holds His warning finger out to be thy guide; Thou art the nursling now; he watches thee Slow learning, one by one, the secret things Which are to him used sights of every day; He smiles to see thy wondering glances con 80 The grass and pebbles of the spirit-world, To thee miraculous; and he will teach Thy knees their due observances of prayer. Children are God's apostles, day by day Sent forth to preach of love, and hope, and peace; Nor hath thy babe his mission left undone. To me, at least, his going hence hath given Serener thoughts and nearer to the skies, And opened a new fountain in my heart For thee, my friend, and all: and oh, if Death 90 More near approaches meditates, and clasps Even now some dearer, more reluctant hand, God, strengthen thou my faith, that I may see That 'tis thine angel, who, with loving haste, Unto the service of the inner shrine, Doth waken thy beloved with a kiss. EURYDICE Heaven's cup held down to me I drain, The sunshine mounts and spurs my brain; Bathing in grass, with thirsty eye I suck the last drop of the sky; With each hot sense I draw to the lees The quickening out-door influences, And empty to each radiant comer A supernaculum of summer: Not, Bacchus, all thy grosser juice Could bring enchantment so profuse, 10 Though for its press each grape-bunch had The white feet of an Oread. Through our coarse art gleam, now and then, The features of angelic men: 'Neath the lewd Satyr's veiling paint Glows forth the Sibyl, Muse, or Saint; The dauber's botch no more obscures The mighty master's portraitures. And who can say what luckier beam The hidden glory shall redeem, 20 For what chance clod the soul may wait To stumble on its nobler fate, Or why, to his unwarned abode, Still by surprises comes the God? Some moment, nailed on sorrow's cross, May meditate a whole youth's loss, Some windfall joy, we know not whence, Redeem a lifetime's rash expense, And, suddenly wise, the soul may mark, 29 Stripped of their simulated dark, Mountains of gold that pierce the sky, Girdling its valleyed poverty. I feel ye, childhood's hopes, return, With olden heats my pulses burn,-- Mine be the self-forgetting sweep, The torrent impulse swift and wild, Wherewith Taghkanic's rockborn child Dares gloriously the dangerous leap. And, in his sky-descended mood, Transmutes each drop of sluggish blood, 40 By touch of bravery's simple wand, To amethyst and diamond, Proving himself no bastard slip, But the true granite-cradled one, Nursed with the rock's primeval drip, The cloud-embracing mountain's son! Prayer breathed in vain I no wish's sway Rebuilds the vanished yesterday; For plated wares of Sheffield stamp We gave the old Aladdin's lamp; 'Tis we are changed; ah, whither went 51 That undesigned abandonment, That wise, unquestioning content, Which could erect its microcosm Out of a weed's neglected blossom, Could call up Arthur and his peers By a low moss's clump of spears, Or, in its shingle trireme launched, Where Charles in some green inlet-branched, Could venture for the golden fleece 60 And dragon-watched Hesperides, Or, from its ripple-shattered fate, Ulysses' chances re-create? When, heralding life's every phase, There glowed a goddess-veiling haze, A plenteous, forewarning grace, Like that more tender dawn that flies Before the full moon's ample rise? Methinks thy parting glory shines Through yonder grove of singing pines; 70 At that elm-vista's end I trace Dimly thy sad leave-taking face, Eurydice! Eurydice! The tremulous leaves repeat to me Eurydice! Eurydice! No gloomier Orcus swallows thee Than the unclouded sunset's glow; Thine is at least Elysian woe; Thou hast Good's natural decay, And fadest like a star away 80 Into an atmosphere whose shine With fuller day o'ermasters thine, Entering defeat as 't were a shrine; For us,--we turn life's diary o'er To find but one word,--Nevermore. SHE CAME AND WENT As a twig trembles, which a bird Lights on to sing, then leaves unbent, So is my memory thrilled and stirred;-- I only know she came and went. As clasps some lake, by gusts unriven, The blue dome's measureless content,-- So my soul held, that moment's heaven;-- I only know she came and went. As, at one bound, our swift spring heaps The orchards full of bloom and scent, So clove her May my wintry sleeps;-- I only know she came and went. An angel stood and met my gaze, Through the low doorway of my tent; The tent is struck, the vision stays;-- I only know she came and went Oh, when the room grows slowly dim, And life's last oil is nearly spent, One gush of light these eyes will brim, Only to think she came and went. THE CHANGELING I had a little daughter, And she was given to me To lead me gently backward To the Heavenly Father's knee, That I, by the force of nature. Might in some dim wise divine The depth of his infinite patience To this wayward soul of mine. I know not how others saw her, But to me she was wholly fair, And the light of the heaven she came from Still lingered and gleamed in her hair; For it was as wavy and golden, And as many changes took, As the shadows of sun-gilt ripples On the yellow bed of a brook. To what can I liken her smiling Upon me, her kneeling lover, How it leaped from her lips to her eyelids, And dimpled her wholly over, Till her outstretched hands smiled also, And I almost seemed to see The very heart of her mother Sending sun through her veins to me! She had been with us scarce a twelvemonth, And it hardly seemed a day, When a troop of wandering angels Stole my little daughter away; Or perhaps those heavenly Zingari But loosed the hampering strings, And when they had opened her cage-door. My little bird used her wings. But they left in her stead a changeling A little angel child, That seems like her bud in full blossom, And smiles as she never smiled: When I wake in the morning, I see it Where she always used to lie, And I feel as weak as a violet Alone 'neath the awful sky. As weak, yet as trustful also; For the whole year long I see All the wonders of faithful Nature Still worked for the love of me; Winds wander, and dews drip earthward, Rain falls, suns rise and set, Earth whirls, and all but to prosper A poor little violet. This child is not mine as the first was, I cannot sing it to rest, I cannot lift it up fatherly And bliss it upon my breast: Yet it lies in my little one's cradle And sits in my little one's chair, And the light of the heaven she's gone to Transfigures its golden hair. THE PIONEER What man would live coffined with brick and stone, Imprisoned from the healing touch of air, And cramped with selfish landmarks everywhere, When all before him stretches, furrowless and lone, The unmapped prairie none can fence or own? What man would read and read the self-same faces, And, like the marbles which the windmill grinds, Rub smooth forever with the same smooth minds, This year retracing last year's, every year's, dull traces, When there are woods and unpenfolded spaces? What man o'er one old thought would pore and pore, Shut like a book between its covers thin For every fool to leave his dog's ears in, When solitude is his, and God forevermore, Just for the opening of a paltry door? What man would watch life's oozy element Creep Letheward forever, when he might Down some great river drift beyond men's sight, To where the undethroned forest's royal tent Broods with its hush o'er half a continent? What man with men would push and altercate, Piecing out crooked means to crooked ends, When he can have the skies and woods for friends, Snatch back the rudder of his undismantled fate, And in himself be ruler, church, and state? Cast leaves and feathers rot in last year's nest, The wingèd brood, flown thence, new dwellings plan; The serf of his own Past is not a man; To change and change is life, to move and never rest;-- Not what we are, but what we hope, is best. The wild, free woods make no man halt or blind; Cities rob men of eyes and hands and feet, Patching one whole of many incomplete; The general preys upon the individual mind, And each alone is helpless as the wind. Each man is some man's servant; every soul Is by some other's presence quite discrowned; Each owes the next through all the imperfect round, Yet not with mutual help; each man is his own goal, And the whole earth must stop to pay him toll. Here, life the undiminished man demands; New faculties stretch out to meet new wants; What Nature asks, that Nature also grants; Here man is lord, not drudge, of eyes and feet and hands, And to his life is knit with hourly bands. Come out, then, from the old thoughts and old ways, Before you harden to a crystal cold Which the new life can shatter, but not mould; Freedom for you still waits, still looking backward, stays, But widens still the irretrievable space. LONGING Of all the myriad moods of mind That through the soul come thronging, Which one was e'er so dear, so kind, So beautiful as Longing? The thing we long for, that we are For one transcendent moment, Before the Present poor and bare Can make its sneering comment. Still, through our paltry stir and strife, Glows down the wished ideal, And Longing moulds in clay what Life Carves in the marble Real; To let the new life in, we know, Desire must ope the portal; Perhaps the longing to be so Helps make the soul immortal. Longing is God's fresh heavenward will. With our poor earthward striving; We quench it that we may be still Content with merely living; But, would we learn that heart's full scope Which we are hourly wronging, Our lives must climb from hope to hope And realize our longing. Ah! let us hope that to our praise Good God not only reckons The moments when we tread his ways, But when the spirit beckons,-- That some slight good is also wrought Beyond self-satisfaction, When we are simply good in thought, Howe'er we fail in action. ODE TO FRANCE FEBRUARY, 1848 I As, flake by flake, the beetling avalanches Build up their imminent crags of noiseless snow, Till some chance thrill the loosened ruin launches In unwarned havoc on the roofs below, So grew and gathered through the silent years The madness of a People, wrong by wrong. There seemed no strength in the dumb toiler's tears, No strength in suffering; but the Past was strong: The brute despair of trampled centuries Leaped up with one hoarse yell and snapped its bands, 10 Groped for its right with horny, callous hands, And stared around for God with bloodshot eyes. What wonder if those palms were all too hard For nice distinctions,--if that mænad throng-- They whose thick atmosphere no bard Had shivered with the lightning of his song, Brutes with the memories and desires of men, Whose chronicles were writ with iron pen, In the crooked shoulder and the forehead low, Set wrong to balance wrong, 20 And physicked woe with woe? II They did as they were taught; not theirs the blame, If men who scattered firebrands reaped the flame: They trampled Peace beneath their savage feet, And by her golden tresses drew Mercy along the pavement of the street. O Freedom! Freedom! is thy morning-dew So gory red? Alas, thy light had ne'er Shone in upon the chaos of their lair! They reared to thee such symbol as they knew, 30 And worshipped it with flame and blood, A Vengeance, axe in hand, that stood Holding a tyrant's head up by the clotted hair. III What wrongs the Oppressor suffered, these we know; These have found piteous voice in song and prose; But for the Oppressed, their darkness and their woe, Their grinding centuries,--what Muse had those? Though hall and palace had nor eyes nor ears, Hardening a people's heart to senseless stone, Thou knewest them, O Earth, that drank their tears, 40 O Heaven, that heard their inarticulate moan! They noted down their fetters, link by link; Coarse was the hand that scrawled, and red the ink; Rude was their score, as suits unlettered men, Notched with a headsman's axe upon a block: What marvel if, when came the avenging shock, 'Twas Atë, not Urania, held the pen? IV With eye averted, and an anguished frown, Loathingly glides the Muse through scenes of strife, Where, like the heart of Vengeance up and down, 50 Throbs in its framework the blood-muffled knife; Slow are the steps of Freedom, but her feet Turn never backward: hers no bloody glare; Her light is calm, and innocent, and sweet, And where it enters there is no despair: Not first on palace and cathedral spire Quivers and gleams that unconsuming fire; While these stand black against her morning skies, The peasant sees it leap from peak to peak Along his hills; the craftsman's burning eyes 60 Own with cool tears its influence mother-meek; It lights the poet's heart up like a star; Ah! while the tyrant deemed it still afar, And twined with golden threads his futile snare. That swift, convicting glow all round him ran; 'Twas close beside him there, Sunrise whose Memnon is the soul of man. V O Broker-King, is this thy wisdom's fruit? A dynasty plucked out as 't were a weed Grown rankly in a night, that leaves no seed! 70 Could eighteen years strike down no deeper root? But now thy vulture eye was turned on Spain; A shout from Paris, and thy crown falls off, Thy race has ceased to reign, And thou become a fugitive and scoff: Slippery the feet that mount by stairs of gold, And weakest of all fences one of steel; Go and keep school again like him of old, The Syracusan tyrant;--thou mayst feel Royal amid a birch-swayed commonweal! 80 VI Not long can he be ruler who allows His time to run before him; thou wast naught Soon as the strip of gold about thy brows Was no more emblem of the People's thought: Vain were thy bayonets against the foe Thou hadst to cope with; thou didst wage War not with Frenchmen merely;--no, Thy strife was with the Spirit of the Age, The invisible Spirit whose first breath divine 89 Scattered thy frail endeavor, And, like poor last year's leaves, whirled thee and thine Into the Dark forever! VII Is here no triumph? Nay, what though The yellow blood of Trade meanwhile should pour Along its arteries a shrunken flow, And the idle canvas droop around the shore? These do not make a state, Nor keep it great; I think God made The earth for man, not trade; 100 And where each humblest human creature Can stand, no more suspicious or afraid, Erect and kingly in his right of nature, To heaven and earth knit with harmonious ties,-- Where I behold the exultation Of manhood glowing in those eyes That had been dark for ages, Or only lit with bestial loves and rages, There I behold a Nation: The France which lies 110 Between the Pyrenees and Rhine Is the least part of France; I see her rather in the soul whose shine Burns through the craftsman's grimy countenance, In the new energy divine Of Toil's enfranchised glance. VIII And if it be a dream, If the great Future be the little Past 'Neath a new mask, which drops and shows at last The same weird, mocking face to balk and blast, 120 Yet, Muse, a gladder measure suits the theme, And the Tyrtæan harp Loves notes more resolute and sharp, Throbbing, as throbs the bosom, hot and fast: Such visions are of morning, Theirs is no vague forewarning, The dreams which nations dream come true. And shape the world anew; If this be a sleep, 129 Make it long, make it deep, O Father, who-sendest the harvests men reap! While Labor so sleepeth, His sorrow is gone, No longer he weepeth, But smileth and steepeth His thoughts in the dawn; He heareth Hope yonder Rain, lark-like, her fancies, His dreaming hands wander Mid heart's-ease and pansies; 140 ''Tis a dream! 'Tis a vision!' Shrieks Mammon aghast; 'The day's broad derision Will chase it at last; Ye are mad, ye have taken A slumbering kraken For firm land of the Past!' Ah! if he awaken, God shield us all then, 149 If this dream rudely shaken Shall cheat him again! IX Since first I heard our Northwind blow, Since first I saw Atlantic throw On our grim rocks his thunderous snow, I loved thee, Freedom; as a boy The rattle of thy shield at Marathon Did with a Grecian joy Through all my pulses run; But I have learned to love thee now Without the helm upon thy gleaming brow, 160 A maiden mild and undefiled Like her who bore the world's redeeming child; And surely never did thine altars glance With purer fires than now in France; While, in their clear white flashes, Wrong's shadow, backward cast, Waves cowering o'er the ashes Of the dead, blaspheming Past, O'er the shapes of fallen giants, His own unburied brood, 170 Whose dead hands clench defiance At the overpowering Good: And down the happy future runs a flood Of prophesying light; It shows an Earth no longer stained with blood, Blossom and fruit where now we see the bud Of Brotherhood and Right. ANTI-APIS Praisest Law, friend? We, too, love it much as they that love it best; 'Tis the deep, august foundation, whereon Peace and Justice rest; On the rock primeval, hidden in the Past its bases be, Block by block the endeavoring Ages built it up to what we see. But dig down: the Old unbury; thou shalt find on every stone That each Age hath carved the symbol of what god to them was known, Ugly shapes and brutish sometimes, but the fairest that they knew; If their sight were dim and earthward, yet their hope and aim were true. Surely as the unconscious needle feels the far-off loadstar draw, So strives every gracious nature to at-one itself with law; 10 And the elder Saints and Sages laid their pious framework right By a theocratic instinct covered from the people's sight. As their gods were, so their laws were; Thor the strong could reave and steal, So through many a peaceful inlet tore the Norseman's eager keel; But a new law came when Christ came, and not blameless, as before, Can we, paying him our lip-tithes, give our lives and faiths to Thor. Law is holy: ay, but what law? Is there nothing more divine Than the patched-up broils of Congress, venal, full of meat and wine? Is there, say you, nothing higher? Naught, God save us! that transcends Laws of cotton texture, wove by vulgar men for vulgar ends? 20 Did Jehovah ask their counsel, or submit to them a plan, Ere He filled with loves, hopes, longings, this aspiring heart of man? For their edict does the soul wait, ere it swing round to the pole Of the true, the free, the God-willed, all that makes it be a soul? Law is holy; but not your law, ye who keep the tablets whole While ye dash the Law to pieces, shatter it in life and soul; Bearing up the Ark is lightsome, golden Apis hid within, While we Levites share the offerings, richer by the people's sin. Give to Cæsar what is Cæsar's? yes, but tell me, if you can, Is this superscription Cæsar's here upon our brother man? 30 Is not here some other's image, dark and sullied though it be, In this fellow-soul that worships, struggles Godward even as we? It was not to such a future that the Mayflower's prow was turned, Not to such a faith the martyrs clung, exulting as they burned; Not by such laws are men fashioned, earnest, simple, valiant, great In the household virtues whereon rests the unconquerable state. Ah! there is a higher gospel, overhead the God-roof springs, And each glad, obedient planet like a golden shuttle sings Through the web which Time is weaving in his never-resting loom, Weaving seasons many-colored, bringing prophecy to doom. 40 Think you Truth a farthing rushlight, to be pinched out when you will With your deft official fingers, and your politicians' skill? Is your God a wooden fetish, to be hidden out of sight That his block eyes may not see you do the thing that is not right? But the Destinies think not so; to their judgment-chamber lone Comes no noise of popular clamor, there Fame's trumpet is not blown; Your majorities they reck not; that you grant, but then you say That you differ with them somewhat,--which is stronger, you or they? Patient are they as the insects that build islands in the deep; They hurl not the bolted thunder, but their silent way they keep; 50 Where they have been that we know; where empires towered that were not just; Lo! the skulking wild fox scratches in a little heap of dust. A PARABLE Said Christ our Lord, 'I will go and see How the men, my brethren, believe in me.' He passed not again through the gate of birth, But made himself known to the children of earth. Then said the chief priests, and rulers, and kings, 'Behold, now, the Giver of all good things; Go to, let us welcome with pomp and state Him who alone is mighty and great.' With carpets of gold the ground they spread Wherever the Son of Man should tread, And in palace-chambers lofty and rare They lodged him, and served him with kingly fare. Great organs surged through arches dim Their jubilant floods in praise of him; And in church, and palace, and judgment-hall, He saw his own image high over all. But still, wherever his steps they led, The Lord in sorrow bent down his head, And from under the heavy foundation-stones, The son of Mary heard bitter groans. And in church, and palace, and judgment-hall, He marked great fissures that rent the wall, And opened wider and yet more wide As the living foundation heaved and sighed. 'Have ye founded your thrones and altars, then, On the bodies and souls of living men? And think ye that building shall endure, Which shelters the noble and crushes the poor? 'With gates of silver and bars of gold Ye have fenced my sheep from their Father's fold; I have heard the dropping of their tears In heaven these eighteen hundred years.' 'O Lord and Master, not ours the guilt, We build but as our fathers built; Behold thine images, how they stand, Sovereign and sole, through all our land. 'Our task is hard,--with sword and flame To hold thine earth forever the same, And with sharp crooks of steel to keep Still, as thou leftest them, thy sheep.' Then Christ sought out an artisan, A low-browed, stunted, haggard man, And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin Pushed from her faintly want and sin. These set he in the midst of them, And as they drew back their garment-hem, For fear of defilement, 'Lo, here,' said he, 'The images ye have made of me!' ODE WRITTEN FOR THE CELEBRATION OF THE INTRODUCTION OF THE COCHITUATE WATER INTO THE CITY OF BOSTON My name is Water: I have sped Through strange, dark ways, untried before, By pure desire of friendship led, Cochituate's ambassador; He sends four royal gifts by me: Long life, health, peace, and purity. I'm Ceres' cup-bearer; I pour, For flowers and fruits and all their kin, Her crystal vintage, from of yore Stored in old Earth's selectest bin, Flora's Falernian ripe, since God The wine-press of the deluge trod. In that far isle whence, iron-willed, The New World's sires their bark unmoored, The fairies' acorn-cups I filled Upon the toadstool's silver board, And, 'neath Herne's oak, for Shakespeare's sight, Strewed moss and grass with diamonds bright. No fairies in the Mayflower came, And, lightsome as I sparkle here, For Mother Bay State, busy dame, I've toiled and drudged this many a year, Throbbed in her engines' iron veins, Twirled myriad spindles for her gains. I, too, can weave: the warp I set Through which the sun his shuttle throws, And, bright as Noah saw it, yet For you the arching rainbow glows, A sight in Paradise denied To unfallen Adam and his bride. When Winter held me in his grip, You seized and sent me o'er the wave, Ungrateful! in a prison-ship; But I forgive, not long a slave, For, soon as summer south-winds blew, Homeward I fled, disguised as dew. For countless services I'm fit, Of use, of pleasure, and of gain, But lightly from all bonds I flit, Nor lose my mirth, nor feel a stain; From mill and wash-tub I escape, And take in heaven my proper shape. So, free myself, to-day, elate I come from far o'er hill and mead, And here, Cochituate's envoy, wait To be your blithesome Ganymede, And brim your cups with nectar true That never will make slaves of you. LINES SUGGESTED BY THE GRAVES OF TWO ENGLISH SOLDIERS ON CONCORD BATTLE-GROUND The same good blood that now refills The dotard Orient's shrunken veins, The same whose vigor westward thrills, Bursting Nevada's silver chains, Poured here upon the April grass, Freckled with red the herbage new; On reeled the battle's trampling mass, Back to the ash the bluebird flew. Poured here in vain;--that sturdy blood Was meant to make the earth more green, But in a higher, gentler mood Than broke this April noon serene; Two graves are here: to mark the place, At head and foot, an unhewn stone, O'er which the herald lichens trace The blazon of Oblivion. These men were brave enough, and true To the hired soldier's bull-dog creed; What brought them here they never knew, They fought as suits the English breed: They came three thousand miles, and died, To keep the Past upon its throne: Unheard, beyond the ocean tide, Their English mother made her moan. The turf that covers them no thrill Sends up to fire the heart and brain; No stronger purpose nerves the will, No hope renews its youth again: From farm to farm the Concord glides, And trails my fancy with its flow; O'erhead the balanced hen-hawk slides, Twinned in the river's heaven below. But go, whose Bay State bosom stirs, Proud of thy birth and neighbor's right, Where sleep the heroic villagers Borne red and stiff from Concord fight; Thought Reuben, snatching down his gun, Or Seth, as ebbed the life away, What earthquake rifts would shoot and run World-wide from that short April fray? What then? With heart and hand they wrought, According to their village light; 'Twas for the Future that they fought, Their rustic faith in what was right. Upon earth's tragic stage they burst Unsummoned, in the humble sock; Theirs the fifth act; the curtain first Rose long ago on Charles's block. Their graves have voices; if they threw Dice charged with fates beyond their ken, Yet to their instincts they were true, And had the genius to be men. Fine privilege of Freedom's host, Of humblest soldiers for the Right!-- Age after age ye hold your post, Your graves send courage forth, and might. TO---- We, too, have autumns, when our leaves Drop loosely through the dampened air, When all our good seems bound in sheaves, And we stand reaped and bare. Our seasons have no fixed returns, Without our will they come and go; At noon our sudden summer burns, Ere sunset all is snow. But each day brings less summer cheer, Crimps more our ineffectual spring, And something earlier every year Our singing birds take wing. As less the olden glow abides, And less the chillier heart aspires, With drift-wood beached in past spring-tides We light our sullen fires. By the pinched rushlight's starving beam We cower and strain our wasted sight, To stitch youth's shroud up, seam by seam, In the long arctic night. It was not so--we once were young When Spring, to womanly Summer turning, Her dew-drops on each grass-blade strung, In the red sunrise burning. We trusted then, aspired, believed That earth could be remade to-morrow; Ah, why be ever undeceived? Why give up faith for sorrow? O thou, whose days are yet all spring, Faith, blighted one, is past retrieving; Experience is a dumb, dead thing; The victory's in believing. FREEDOM Are we, then, wholly fallen? Can it be That thou, North wind, that from thy mountains bringest Their spirit to our plains, and thou, blue sea, Who on our rocks thy wreaths of freedom flingest, As on an altar,--can it be that ye Have wasted inspiration on dead ears, Dulled with the too familiar clank of chains? The people's heart is like a harp for years Hung where some petrifying torrent rains Its slow-incrusting spray: the stiffened chords 10 Faint and more faint make answer to the tears That drip upon them: idle are all words: Only a golden plectrum wakes the tone Deep buried 'neath that ever-thickening stone. We are not free: doth Freedom, then, consist In musing with our faces toward the Past, While petty cares and crawling interests twist Their spider-threads about us, which at last Grow strong as iron chains, to cramp and bind In formal narrowness heart, soul and mind? 20 Freedom is re-created year by year, In hearts wide open on the Godward side, In souls calm-cadenced as the whirling sphere, In minds that sway the future like a tide. He broadest creeds can hold her, and no codes; She chooses men for her august abodes, Building them fair and fronting to the dawn; Yet, when we seek her, we but find a few Light footprints, leading mornward through the dew: Before the day had risen, she was gone. 30 And we must follow: swiftly runs she on, And, if our steps should slacken in despair, Half turns her face, half smiles through golden hair, Forever yielding, never wholly won: That is not love which pauses in the race Two close-linked names on fleeting sand to trace; Freedom gained yesterday is no more ours; Men gather but dry seeds of last year's flowers; Still there's a charm uugranted, still a grace, Still rosy Hope, the free, the unattained, 40 Makes us Possession's languid hand let fall; 'Tis but a fragment of ourselves is gained, The Future brings us more, but never all. And, as the finder of some unknown realm, Mounting a summit whence he thinks to see On either side of him the imprisoning sea, Beholds, above the clouds that overwhelm The valley-land, peak after snowy peak Stretch out of sight, each like a silver helm Beneath its plume of smoke, sublime and bleak, 50 And what he thought an island finds to be A continent to him first oped,--so we Can from our height of Freedom look along A boundless future, ours if we be strong; Or if we shrink, better remount our ships And, fleeing God's express design, trace back The hero-freighted Mayflower's prophet-track To Europe entering her blood-red eclipse. * * * * * Therefore of Europe now I will not doubt, For the broad foreheads surely win the day, 60 And brains, not crowns or soul-gelt armies, weigh In Fortune's scales: such dust she brushes out. Most gracious are the conquests of the Word, Gradual and silent as a flower's increase, And the best guide from old to new is Peace-- Yet, Freedom, than canst sanctify the sword! Bravely to do whate'er the time demands, Whether with pen or sword, and not to flinch, This is the task that fits heroic hands; So are Truth's boundaries widened inch by inch. 70 I do not love the Peace which tyrants make; The calm she breeds let the sword's lightning break! It is the tyrants who have beaten out Ploughshares and pruning-hooks to spears and swords, And shall I pause and moralize and doubt? Whose veins run water let him mete his words! Each fetter sundered is the whole world's gain! And rather than humanity remain A pearl beneath the feet of Austrian swine, Welcome to me whatever breaks a chain. 80 _That_ surely is of God, and all divine! BIBLIOLATRES Bowing thyself in dust before a Book, And thinking the great God is thine alone, O rash iconoclast, thou wilt not brook What gods the heathen carves in wood and stone, As if the Shepherd who from the outer cold Leads all his shivering lambs to one sure fold Were careful for the fashion of his crook. There is no broken reed so poor and base, No rush, the bending tilt of swamp-fly blue, But He therewith the ravening wolf can chase, And guide his flock to springs and pastures new; Through ways unloosed for, and through many lands, Far from the rich folds built with human hands, The gracious footprints of his love I trace. And what art thou, own brother of the clod, That from his hand the crook wouldst snatch away And shake instead thy dry and sapless rod, To scare the sheep out of the wholesome day? Yea, what art thou, blind, unconverted Jew, That with thy idol-volume's covers two Wouldst make a jail to coop the living God? Thou hear'st not well the mountain organ-tone By prophet ears from Hor and Sinai caught, Thinking the cisterns of those Hebrew brains Drew dry the springs of the All-knower's thought, Nor shall thy lips be touched with living fire, Who blow'st old altar-coals with sole desire To weld anew the spirit's broken chains. God is not dumb, that He should speak no more; If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness And find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor; There towers the Mountain of the Voice no less, Which whoso seeks shall find, but he who bends, Intent on manna still and mortal ends, Sees it not, neither hears its thundered lore. Slowly the Bible of the race is writ, And not on paper leaves nor leaves of stone; Each age, each kindred, adds a verse to it, Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan. While swings the sea, while mists the mountains shroud, While thunder's surges burst on cliffs and cloud, Still at the prophets' feet the nations sit. BEAVER BROOK Hushed with broad sunlight lies the hill, And, minuting the long day's loss, The cedar's shadow, slow and still, Creeps o'er its dial of gray moss. Warm noon brims full the valley's cup, The aspen's leaves are scarce astir; Only the little mill sends up Its busy, never-ceasing burr. Climbing the loose-piled wall that hems The road along the mill-pond's brink, From 'neath the arching barberry-stems, My footstep scares the shy chewink. Beneath a bony buttonwood The mill's red door lets forth the din; The whitened miller, dust-imbued, Flits past the square of dark within. No mountain torrent's strength is here; Sweet Beaver, child of forest still, Heaps its small pitcher to the ear, And gently waits the miller's will. Swift slips Undine along the race Unheard, and then, with flashing bound, Floods the dull wheel with light and grace, And, laughing, hunts the loath drudge round. The miller dreams not at what cost The quivering millstones hum and whirl, Nor how for every turn are tost Armfuls of diamond and of pearl. But Summer cleared my happier eyes With drops of some celestial juice, To see how Beauty underlies Forevermore each form of use. And more; methought I saw that flood, Which now so dull and darkling steals, Thick, here and there, with human blood, To turn the world's laborious wheels. No more than doth the miller there, Shut in our several cells, do we Know with what waste of beauty rare Moves every day's machinery. Surely the wiser time shall come When this fine overplus of might, No longer sullen, slow, and dumb, Shall leap to music and to light. In that new childhood of the Earth Life of itself shall dance and play, Fresh blood in Time's shrunk veins make mirth, And labor meet delight halfway. MEMORIAL VERSES KOSSUTH A race of nobles may die out, A royal line may leave no heir; Wise Nature sets no guards about Her pewter plate and wooden ware. But they fail not, the kinglier breed, Who starry diadems attain; To dungeon, axe, and stake succeed Heirs of the old heroic strain. The zeal of Nature never cools, Nor is she thwarted of her ends; When gapped and dulled her cheaper tools, Then she a saint and prophet spends. Land of the Magyars! though it be The tyrant may relink his chain, Already thine the victory, As the just Future measures gain. Thou hast succeeded, thou hast won The deathly travail's amplest worth; A nation's duty thou hast done, Giving a hero to our earth. And he, let come what will of woe Hath saved the land he strove to save; No Cossack hordes, no traitor's blow, Can quench the voice shall haunt his grave. 'I Kossuth am: O Future, thou That clear'st the just and blott'st the vile, O'er this small dust in reverence bow, Remembering what I was erewhile. 'I was the chosen trump wherethrough Our God sent forth awakening breath; Came chains? Came death? The strain He blew Sounds on, outliving chains and death.' TO LAMARTINE 1848 I did not praise thee when the crowd, 'Witched with the moment's inspiration, Vexed thy still ether with hosannas loud, And stamped their dusty adoration; I but looked upward with the rest, And, when they shouted Greatest, whispered Best. They raised thee not, but rose to thee, Their fickle wreaths about thee flinging; So on some marble Phoebus the swol'n sea Might leave his worthless seaweed clinging, But pious hands, with reverent care, Make the pure limbs once more sublimely bare. Now thou'rt thy plain, grand self again, Thou art secure from panegyric, Thou who gav'st politics an epic strain, And actedst Freedom's noblest lyric; This side the Blessed Isles, no tree Grows green enough to make a wreath for thee. Nor can blame cling to thee; the snow From swinish footprints takes no staining, But, leaving the gross soils of earth below, Its spirit mounts, the skies regaining, And unresentful falls again, To beautify the world with dews and rain. The highest duty to mere man vouchsafed Was laid on thee,--out of wild chaos, When the roused popular ocean foamed and chafed And vulture War from his Imaus Snuffed blood, to summon homely Peace, And show that only order is release. To carve thy fullest thought, what though Time was not granted? Aye in history, Like that Dawn's face which baffled Angelo Left shapeless, grander for its mystery, Thy great Design shall stand, and day Flood its blind front from Orients far away. Who says thy day is o'er? Control, My heart, that bitter first emotion; While men shall reverence the steadfast soul, The heart in silent self-devotion Breaking, the mild, heroic mien, Thou'lt need no prop of marble, Lamartine. If France reject thee, 'tis not thine, But her own, exile that she utters; Ideal France, the deathless, the divine, Will be where thy white pennon flutters, As once the nobler Athens went With Aristides into banishment. No fitting metewand hath To-day For measuring spirits of thy stature; Only the Future can reach up to lay The laurel on that lofty nature, Bard, who with some diviner art Hast touched the bard's true lyre, a nation's heart. Swept by thy hand, the gladdened chords, Crashed now in discords fierce by others, Gave forth one note beyond all skill of words, And chimed together, We are brothers. O poem unsurpassed! it ran All round the world, unlocking man to man. France is too poor to pay alone The service of that ample spirit; Paltry seem low dictatorship and throne, Weighed with thy self-renouncing merit; They had to thee been rust and loss; Thy aim was higher,--thou hast climbed a Cross! TO JOHN GORHAM PALFREY There are who triumph in a losing cause, Who can put on defeat, as 'twere a wreath Unwithering in the adverse popular breath, Safe from the blasting demagogue's applause; 'Tis they who stand for Freedom and God's laws. And so stands Palfrey now, as Marvell stood, Loyal to Truth dethroned, nor could be wooed To trust the playful tiger's velvet paws: And if the second Charles brought in decay Of ancient virtue, if it well might wring Souls that had broadened 'neath a nobler day, To see a losel, marketable king Fearfully watering with his realm's best blood Cromwell's quenched bolts, that erst had cracked and flamed, Scaring, through all their depths of courtier mud, Europe's crowned bloodsuckers,--how more ashamed Ought we to be, who see Corruption's flood Still rise o'er last year's mark, to mine away Our brazen idol's feet of treacherous clay! O utter degradation! Freedom turned Slavery's vile bawd, to cozen and betray To the old lecher's clutch a maiden prey, If so a loathsome pander's fee be earned! And we are silent,--we who daily tread A soil sublime, at least, with heroes' graves!-- Beckon no more, shades of the noble dead! Be dumb, ye heaven-touched lips of winds and waves! Or hope to rouse some Coptic dullard, hid Ages ago, wrapt stiffly, fold on fold, With cerements close, to wither in the cold, Forever hushed, and sunless pyramid! Beauty and Truth, and all that these contain, Drop not like ripened fruit about our feet; We climb to them through years of sweat and pain; Without long struggle, none did e'er attain The downward look from Quiet's blissful seat: Though present loss may be the hero's part, Yet none can rob him of the victor heart Whereby the broad-realmed future is subdued, And Wrong, which now insults from triumph's car, Sending her vulture hope to raven far, Is made unwilling tributary of Good. O Mother State, how quenched thy Sinai fires! Is there none left of thy stanch Mayflower breed? No spark among the ashes of thy sires, Of Virtue's altar-flame the kindling seed? Are these thy great men, these that cringe and creep, And writhe through slimy ways to place and power?-- How long, O Lord, before thy wrath shall reap Our frail-stemmed summer prosperings in their flower? Oh for one hour of that undaunted stock That went with Vane and Sidney to the block! Oh for a whiff of Naseby, that would sweep, With its stern Puritan besom, all this chaff From the Lord's threshing-floor! Yet more than half The victory is attained, when one or two, Through the fool's laughter and the traitor's scorn, Beside thy sepulchre can bide the morn, Crucified Truth, when thou shalt rise anew. TO W.L. GARRISON 'Some time afterward, it was reported to me by the city officers that they had ferreted out the paper and its editor; that his office was an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary a negro boy, and his supporters a few very insignificant persons of all colors.'--_Letter of H.G. Otis_. In a small chamber, friendless and unseen, Toiled o'er his types one poor, unlearned young man; The place was dark, unfurnitured, and mean; Yet there the freedom of a race began. Help came but slowly; surely no man yet Put lever to the heavy world with less: What need of help? He knew how types were set, He had a dauntless spirit, and a press. Such earnest natures are the fiery pith, The compact nucleus, round which systems grow; Mass after mass becomes inspired therewith, And whirls impregnate with the central glow. O Truth! O Freedom! how are ye still born In the rude stable, in the manger nurst! What humble hands unbar those gates of morn Through which the splendors of the New Day burst! What! shall one monk, scarce known beyond his cell, Front Rome's far-reaching bolts, and scorn her frown? Brave Luther answered YES; that thunder's swell Rocked Europe, and discharmed the triple crown. Whatever can be known of earth we know, Sneered Europe's wise men, in their snail-shells curled; No! said one man in Genoa, and that No Out of the darkness summoned this New World. Who is it will not dare himself to trust? Who is it hath not strength to stand alone? Who is it thwarts and bilks the inward MUST? He and his works, like sand, from earth are blown. Men of a thousand shifts and wiles, look here! See one straightforward conscience put in pawn To win a world; see the obedient sphere By bravery's simple gravitation drawn! Shall we not heed the lesson taught of old, And by the Present's lips repeated still, In our own single manhood to be bold, Fortressed in conscience and impregnable will? We stride the river daily at its spring, Nor, in our childless thoughtlessness, foresee What myriad vassal streams shall tribute bring, How like an equal it shall greet the sea. O small beginnings, ye are great and strong, Based on a faithful heart and weariless brain! Ye build the future fair, ye conquer wrong, Ye earn the crown, and wear it not in vain. ON THE DEATH OF CHARLES TURNER TORREY Woe worth the hour when it is crime To plead the poor dumb bondman's cause, When all that makes the heart sublime, The glorious throbs that conquer time, Are traitors to our cruel laws! He strove among God's suffering poor One gleam of brotherhood to send; The dungeon oped its hungry door To give the truth one martyr more, Then shut,--and here behold the end! O Mother State! when this was done, No pitying throe thy bosom gave; Silent thou saw'st the death-shroud spun, And now thou givest to thy son The stranger's charity,--a grave. Must it be thus forever? No! The hand of God sows not in vain, Long sleeps the darkling seed below, The seasons come, and change, and go, And all the fields are deep with grain. Although our brother lie asleep, Man's heart still struggles, still aspires; His grave shall quiver yet, while deep Through the brave Bay State's pulses leap Her ancient energies and fires. When hours like this the senses' gush Have stilled, and left the spirit room, It hears amid the eternal hush The swooping pinions' dreadful rush, That bring the vengeance and the doom;-- Not man's brute vengeance, such as rends What rivets man to man apart,-- God doth not so bring round his ends, But waits the ripened time, and sends His mercy to the oppressor's heart. ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF DR. CHANNING I do not come to weep above thy pall, And mourn the dying-out of noble powers, The poet's clearer eye should see, in all Earth's seeming woe, seed of immortal flowers. Truth needs no champions: in the infinite deep Of everlasting Soul her strength abides, From Nature's heart her mighty pulses leap, Through Nature's veins her strength, undying, tides. Peace is more strong than war, and gentleness, Where force were vain, makes conquest o'er the wave; 10 And love lives on and hath a power to bless, When they who loved are hidden in the grave. The sculptured marble brags of deathstrewn fields, And Glory's epitaph is writ in blood; But Alexander now to Plato yields, Clarkson will stand where Wellington hath stood. I watch the circle of the eternal years, And read forever in the storied page One lengthened roll of blood, and wrong, and tears, One onward step of Truth from age to age. 20 The poor are crushed: the tyrants link their chain; The poet sings through narrow dungeon-grates; Man's hope lies quenched; and, lo! with steadfast gain Freedom doth forge her mail of adverse fates. Men slay the prophets; fagot, rack, and cross Make up the groaning record of the past; But Evil's triumphs are her endless loss, And sovereign Beauty wins the soul at last. No power can die that ever wrought for Truth; Thereby a law of Nature it became, 30 And lives unwithered in its blithesome youth, When he who called it forth is but a name. Therefore I cannot think thee wholly gone; The better part of thee is with us still; Thy soul its hampering clay aside hath thrown, And only freer wrestles with the ill. Thou livest in the life of all good things; What words thou spak'st for Freedom shall not die; Thou sleepest not, for now thy Love hath wings To soar where hence thy Hope could hardly fly. 40 And often, from that other world, on this Some gleams from great souls gone before may shine, To shed on struggling hearts a clearer bliss, And clothe the Right with lustre more divine. Thou art not idle: in thy higher sphere Thy spirit bends itself to loving tasks, And strength to perfect what it dreamed of here Is all the crown and glory that it asks. For sure, in Heaven's wide chambers, there is room For love and pity, and for helpful deeds; 50 Else were our summons thither but a doom To life more vain than this in clayey weeds. From off the starry mountain-peak of song, Thy spirit shows me, in the coming time, An earth unwithered by the foot of wrong, A race revering its own soul sublime. What wars, what martyrdoms, what crimes, may come, Thou knowest not, nor I; but God will lead The prodigal soul from want and sorrow home, And Eden ope her gates to Adam's seed. 60 Farewell! good man, good angel now! this hand Soon, like thine own, shall lose its cunning too; Soon shall this soul, like thine, bewildered stand, Then leap to thread the free, unfathomed blue: When that day comes, oh, may this hand grow cold, Busy, like thine, for Freedom and the Right; Oh, may this soul, like thine, be ever bold To face dark Slavery's encroaching blight! This laurel-leaf I cast upon thy bier; Let worthier hands than these thy wreath intwine; 70 Upon thy hearse I shed no useless tear,-- For us weep rather thou in calm divine! TO THE MEMORY OF HOOD Another star 'neath Time's horizon dropped, To gleam o'er unknown lands and seas; Another heart that beat for freedom stopped,-- What mournful words are these! O Love Divine, that claspest our tired earth, And lullest it upon thy heart, Thou knowest how much a gentle soul is worth To teach men what thou art! His was a spirit that to all thy poor Was kind as slumber after pain: Why ope so soon thy heaven-deep Quiet's door And call him home again? Freedom needs all her poets: it is they Who give her aspirations wings, And to the wiser law of music sway Her wild imaginings. Yet thou hast called him, nor art thou unkind, O Love Divine, for 'tis thy will That gracious natures leave their love behind To work for Mercy still. Let laurelled marbles weigh on other tombs, Let anthems peal for other dead, Rustling the bannered depth of minster-glooms With their exulting spread. His epitaph shall mock the short-lived stone, No lichen shall its lines efface, He needs these few and simple lines alone To mark his resting-place: 'Here lies a Poet. Stranger, if to thee His claim to memory be obscure, If thou wouldst learn how truly great was he, Go, ask it of the poor.' THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL According to the mythology of the Romancers, the San Greal, or Holy Grail, was the cup out of which Jesus partook of the Last Supper with his disciples. It was brought into England by Joseph of Arimathea, and remained there, an object of pilgrimage and adoration, for many years in the keeping of his lineal descendants. It was incumbent upon those who had charge of it to be chaste in thought, word, and deed; but one of the keepers having broken this condition, the Holy Grail disappeared. From that time it was a favorite enterprise of the knights of Arthur's court to go in search of it. Sir Galahad was at last successful in finding it, as may be read in the seventeenth book of the Romance of King Arthur. Tennyson has made Sir Galahad the subject of one of the most exquisite of his poems. The plot (if I may give that name to anything so slight) of the following poem is my own, and, to serve its purposes, I have enlarged the circle of competition in search of the miraculous cup in such a manner as to include, not only other persons than the heroes of the Round Table, but also a period of time subsequent to the supposed date of King Arthur's reign. PRELUDE TO PART FIRST Over his keys the musing organist, Beginning doubtfully and far away, First lets his fingers wander as they list, And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay: Then, as the touch of his loved instrument Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme, First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent Along the wavering vista of his dream. * * * * * Not only around our infancy Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; 10 Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not. Over our manhood bend the skies; Against our fallen and traitor lives The great winds utter prophecies; With our faint hearts the mountain strives; Its arms outstretched, the druid wood Waits with its benedicite; And to our age's drowsy Wood Still shouts the inspiring sea. 20 Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us; The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in, The priest hath his lee who comes and shrives us, We bargain for the graves we lie in; At the devil's booth are all things sold, Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold; For a cap and bells our lives we pay, Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking: 'Tis heaven alone that is given away, 'Tis only God may be had for the asking 30 No price is set on the lavish summer; June may be had by the poorest comer. And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays; Whether we look, or whether we listen, We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; Every clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 40 And, groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; The flush of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in meadows green, The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean To be some happy creature's palace; The little bird sits at his door in the sun, Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 50 And lets his illumined being o'errun With the deluge of summer it receives; His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings; He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,-- In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best? Now is the high-tide of the year, And whatever of life hath ebbed away Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer, Into every bare inlet and creek and bay; 60 Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, We are happy now because God wills it; No matter how barren the past may have been, 'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green; We sit in the warm shade and feel right well How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell; We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing That skies are clear and grass is growing; The breeze comes whispering in our ear, That dandelions are blossoming near, 70 That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, That the river is bluer than the sky, That the robin is plastering his house hard by; And if the breeze kept the good news back, For other couriers we should not lack; We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing,-- And hark! how clear bold chanticleer, Warmed with the new wine of the year, Tells all in his lusty crowing! Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how; 80 Everything is happy now, Everything is upward striving; 'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,-- 'Tis the natural way of living: Who knows whither the clouds have fled? In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake; And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, The heart forgets its sorrow and ache; The soul partakes the season's youth, 90 And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. What wonder if Sir Launfal now Remembered the keeping of his vow? PART FIRST I 'My golden spurs now bring to me, And bring to me my richest mail, For to-morrow I go over land and sea In search of the Holy Grail; Shall never a bed for me be spread, 100 Nor shall a pillow be under my head, Till I begin my vow to keep; Here on the rushes will I sleep, And perchance there may come a vision true Ere day create the world anew.' Slowly Sir Launfal's eyes grew dim, Slumber fell like a cloud on him, And into his soul the vision flew. II The crows flapped over by twos and threes, In the pool drowsed the cattle up to their knees, 110 The little birds sang as if it were The one day of summer in all the year, And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees: The castle alone in the landscape lay Like an outpost of winter, dull and gray: 'Twas the proudest hall in the North Countree, And never its gates might opened be, Save to lord or lady of high degree; Summer besieged it on every side, But the churlish stone her assaults defied; 120 She could not scale the chilly wall, Though around it for leagues her pavilions tall Stretched left and right, Over the hills and out of sight; Green and broad was every tent, And out of each a murmur went Till the breeze fell off at night. III The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang, And through the dark arch a charger sprang, Bearing Sir Launfal, the maiden knight, 130 In his gilded mail, that flamed so bright It seemed the dark castle had gathered all Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over its wall In his siege of three hundred summers long, And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf, Had cast them forth: so, young and strong, And lightsome as a locust-leaf, Sir Launfal flashed forth in his maiden mail, To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail. IV It was morning on hill and stream and tree, 140 And morning in the young knight's heart; Only the castle moodily Rebuffed the gifts of the sunshine free, And gloomed by itself apart; The season brimmed all other things up Full as the rain fills the pitcher-plant's cup. V As Sir Launfal made morn through the darksome gate, He was 'ware of a leper, crouched by the same, Who begged with his hand and moaned as he sate; And a loathing over Sir Launfal came; 150 The sunshine went out of his soul with a thrill, The flesh 'neath his armor 'gan shrink and crawl, And midway its leap his heart stood still Like a frozen waterfall; For this man, so foul and bent of stature, Rasped harshly against his dainty nature, And seemed the one blot on the summer morn,-- So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn. VI The leper raised not the gold from the dust: 'Better to me the poor man's crust, 160 Better the blessing of the poor, Though I turn me empty from his door; That is no true alms which the hand can hold; He gives only the worthless gold Who gives from a sense of duty; But he who gives but a slender mite, And gives to that which is out of sight, That thread of the all-sustaining Beauty Which runs through all and doth all unite,-- The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms, 170 The heart outstretches its eager palms, For a god goes with it and makes it store To the soul that was starving in darkness before.' PRELUDE TO PART SECOND Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak, From the snow five thousand summers old; On open wold and hilltop bleak It had gathered all the cold, And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek; It carried a shiver everywhere From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare; 180 The little brook heard it and built a roof 'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof; All night by the white stars' frosty gleams He groined his arches and matched his beams; Slender and clear were his crystal spars As the lashes of light that trim the stars: He sculptured every summer delight In his halls and chambers out of sight; Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt, 190 Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees Bending to counterfeit a breeze; Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew But silvery mosses that downward grew; Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf; Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and here He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops And hung them thickly with diamond drops, 200 That crystalled the beams of moon and sun, And made a star of every one: No mortal builder's most rare device Could match this winter-palace of ice; 'Twas as if every image that mirrored lay In his depths serene through the summer day, Each fleeting shadow of earth and sky, Lest the happy model should be lost, Had been mimicked in fairy masonry By the elfin builders of the frost. 210 Within the hall are song and laughter, The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, And sprouting is every corbel and rafter With lightsome green of ivy and holly; Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide; The broad flame-pennons droop and flap And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, Hunted to death in its galleries blind; 220 And swift little troops of silent sparks, Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear, Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks Like herds of startled deer. But the wind without was eager and sharp, Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp, And rattles and wrings The icy strings, Singing, in dreary monotone, A Christmas carol of its own, 230 Whose burden still, as he might guess, Was 'Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless!' The voice of the seneschal flared like a torch As he shouted the wanderer away from the porch, And he sat in the gateway and saw all night The great hall-fire, so cheery and bold, Through the window-slits of the castle old, Build out its piers of ruddy light Against the drift of the cold. PART SECOND I There was never a leaf on bush or tree, 240 The bare boughs rattled shudderingly; The river was dumb and could not speak, For the weaver Winter its shroud had spun; A single crow on the tree-top bleak From his shining feathers shed off the cold sun; Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold, As if her veins were sapless and old, And she rose up decrepitly For a last dim look at earth and sea. II Sir Launfal turned from his own hard gate, 250 For another heir in his earldom sate; An old, bent man, worn out and frail, He came back from seeking the Holy Grail; Little he recked of his earldom's loss, No more on his surcoat was blazoned the cross, But deep in his soul the sign he wore, The badge of the suffering and the poor. III Sir Launfal's raiment thin and spare Was idle mail 'gainst the barbèd air, For it was just at the Christmas time; 260 So he mused, as he sat, of a sunnier clime, And sought for a shelter from cold and snow In the light and warmth of long-ago; He sees the snake-like caravan crawl O'er the edge of the desert, black and small, Then nearer and nearer, till, one by one, He can count the camels in the sun, As over the red-hot sands they pass To where, in its slender necklace of grass, The little spring laughed and leapt in the shade, 270 And with its own self like an infant played, And waved its signal of palms. IV 'For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms;' The happy camels may reach the spring, But Sir Launfal sees only the grewsome thing, The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone, That cowers beside him, a thing as lone And white as the ice-isles of Northern seas In the desolate horror of his disease. V And Sir Launfal said, 'I behold in thee 280 An image of Him who died on the tree; Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns, Thou also hast had the world's buffets and scorns, And to thy life were not denied The wounds in the hands and feet and side: Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me; Behold, through him, I give to thee!' VI Then the soul of the leper stood up in his eyes And looked at Sir Launfal, and straightway he Remembered in what a haughtier guise 290 He had flung an alms to leprosie, When he girt his young life up in gilded mail And set forth in search of the Holy Grail. The heart within him was ashes and dust; He parted in twain his single crust, He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink, And gave the leper to eat and drink. 'Twas a mouldy crust of coarse brown bread, 'Twas water out of a wooden bowl,-- Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed, 300 And 'twas red wine he drank with his thirsty soul. VII As Sir Launfal mused with a downcast face, A light shone round about the place; The leper no longer crouched at his side, But stood before him glorified, Shining and tall and fair and straight As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate,-- Himself the Gate whereby men can Enter the temple of God in Man. VIII His words were shed softer than leaves from the pine, 310 And they fell on Sir Launfal as snows on the brine, That mingle their softness and quiet in one With the shaggy unrest they float down upon; And the voice that was softer than silence said, 'Lo, it is I, be not afraid! In many climes, without avail, Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail; Behold, it is here,--this cup which thou Didst fill at the streamlet for me but now; This crust is my body broken for thee, 320 This water his blood that died on the tree; The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, In whatso we share with another's need; Not what we give, but what we share, For the gift without the giver is bare; Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me.' IX Sir Launfal awoke as from a swound: 'The Grail in my castle here is found! Hang my idle armor up on the wall, 330 Let it be the spider's banquet hall; He must be fenced with stronger mail Who would seek and find the Holy Grail.' X The castle gate stands open now, And the wanderer is welcome to the hall As the hangbird is to the elm-tree bough; No longer scowl the turrets tall, The Summer's long siege at last is o'er; When the first poor outcast went in at the door, She entered with him in disguise, And mastered the fortress by surprise; 341 There is no spot she loves so well on ground, She lingers and smiles there the whole year round; The meanest serf on Sir Launfal's land Has hall and bower at his command; And there's no poor man in the North Countree But is lord of the earldom as much as he. LETTER FROM BOSTON _December, 1846._ Dear M---- By way of saving time, I'll do this letter up in rhyme, Whose slim stream through four pages flows Ere one is packed with tight-screwed prose, Threading the tube of an epistle, Smooth as a child's breath through a whistle. The great attraction now of all Is the 'Bazaar' at Faneuil Hall, Where swarm the anti-slavery folks As thick, dear Miller, as your jokes. 10 There's GARRISON, his features very Benign for an incendiary, Beaming forth sunshine through his glasses On the surrounding lads and lasses, (No bee could blither be, or brisker,)-- A Pickwick somehow turned John Ziska, His bump of firmness swelling up Like a rye cupcake from its cup. And there, too, was his English tea-set, 19 Which in his ear a kind of flea set, His Uncle Samuel for its beauty Demanding sixty dollars duty, ('Twas natural Sam should serve his trunk ill; For G., you know, has cut his uncle,) Whereas, had he but once made tea in't, His uncle's ear had had the flea in't, There being not a cent of duty On any pot that ever drew tea. There was MARIA CHAPMAN, too, With her swift eyes of clear steel-blue, 30 The coiled-up mainspring of the Fair, Originating everywhere The expansive force without a sound That whirls a hundred wheels around, Herself meanwhile as calm and still As the bare crown of Prospect Hill; A noble woman, brave and apt, Cumæan sibyl not more rapt, Who might, with those fair tresses shorn, The Maid of Orleans' casque have worn, 40 Herself the Joan of our Ark, For every shaft a shining mark. And there, too, was ELIZA FOLLEN, Who scatters fruit-creating pollen Where'er a blossom she can find Hardy enough for Truth's north wind, Each several point of all her face Tremblingly bright with the inward grace, As if all motion gave it light Like phosphorescent seas at night. There jokes our EDMUND, plainly son 51 Of him who bearded Jefferson, A non-resistant by conviction, But with a bump in contradiction, So that whene'er it gets a chance His pen delights to play the lance, And--you may doubt it, or believe it-- Full at the head of Joshua Leavitt The very calumet he'd launch, And scourge him with the olive branch. 60 A master with the foils of wit, 'Tis natural he should love a hit; A gentleman, withal, and scholar, Only base things excite his choler, And then his satire's keen and thin As the lithe blade of Saladin. Good letters are a gift apart, And his are gems of Flemish art, True offspring of the fireside Muse, Not a rag-gathering of news 70 Like a new hopfield which is all poles, But of one blood with Horace Walpole's. There, with cue hand behind his back, Stands PHILLIPS buttoned in a sack, Our Attic orator, our Chatham; Old fogies, when he lightens at 'em, Shrivel like leaves; to him 'tis granted Always to say the word that's wanted, So that he seems but speaking clearer The tiptop thought of every hearer; 80 Each flash his brooding heart lets fall Fires what's combustible in all, And sends the applauses bursting in Like an exploded magazine. His eloquence no frothy show, The gutter's street-polluted flow, No Mississippi's yellow flood Whose shoalness can't be seen for mud;-- So simply clear, serenely deep, 89 So silent-strong its graceful sweep, None measures its unrippling force Who has not striven to stem its course; How fare their barques who think to play With smooth Niagara's mane of spray, Let Austin's total shipwreck say. He never spoke a word too much-- Except of Story, or some such, Whom, though condemned by ethics strict, The heart refuses to convict. Beyond; a crater in each eye, 100 Sways brown, broad-shouldered PILLSBURY, Who tears up words like trees by the roots, A Theseus in stout cow-hide boots, The wager of eternal war Against that loathsome Minotaur To whom we sacrifice each year The best blood of our Athens here, (Dear M., pray brush up your Lempriere.) A terrible denouncer he, Old Sinai burns unquenchably 110 Upon his lips; he well might be a Hot-blazing soul from fierce Judea, Habakkuk, Ezra, or Hosea. His words are red hot iron searers, And nightmare-like he mounts his hearers, Spurring them like avenging Fate, or As Waterton his alligator. Hard by, as calm as summer even, Smiles the reviled and pelted STEPHEN, The unappeasable Boanerges 120 To all the Churches and the Clergies, The grim _savant_ who, to complete His own peculiar cabinet, Contrived to label 'mong his kicks One from the followers of Hicks; Who studied mineralogy Not with soft book upon the knee, But learned the properties of stones By contact sharp of flesh and bones, And made the _experimentum crucis_ 130 With his own body's vital juices; A man with caoutchouc endurance, A perfect gem for life insurance, A kind of maddened John the Baptist, To whom the harshest word comes aptest, Who, struck by stone or brick ill-starred, Hurls back an epithet as hard, Which, deadlier than stone or brick, Has a propensity to stick. His oratory is like the scream 140 Of the iron-horse's frenzied steam Which warns the world to leave wide space For the black engine's swerveless race. Ye men with neckcloths white, I warn you-- _Habet_ a whole haymow _in cornu_. A Judith, there, turned Quakeress, Sits ABBY in her modest dress, Serving a table quietly, As if that mild and downcast eye Flashed never, with its scorn intense, 150 More than Medea's eloquence. So the same force which shakes its dread Far-blazing blocks o'er Ætna's head, Along the wires in silence fares And messages of commerce bears. No nobler gift of heart and brain, No life more white from spot or stain, Was e'er on Freedom's altar laid Than hers, the simple Quaker maid. These last three (leaving in the lurch 160 Some other themes) assault the Church, Who therefore writes them in her lists As Satan's limbs and atheists; For each sect has one argument Whereby the rest to hell are sent, Which serve them like the Graiæ's tooth, Passed round in turn from mouth to mouth;-- If any _ism_ should arise, Then look on it with constable's eyes, 169 Tie round its neck a heavy _athe-_, And give it kittens' hydropathy. This trick with other (useful very) tricks Is laid to the Babylonian _meretrix_, But 'twas in vogue before her day Wherever priesthoods had their way, And Buddha's Popes with this struck dumb The followers of Fi and Fum. Well, if the world, with prudent fear Pay God a seventh of the year, And as a Farmer, who would pack All his religion in one stack, 181 For this world works six days in seven And idles on the seventh for Heaven, Expecting, for his Sunday's sowing, In the next world to go a-mowing The crop of all his meeting-going;-- If the poor Church, by power enticed, Finds none so infidel as Christ, Quite backward reads his Gospel meek, (As 'twere in Hebrew writ, not Greek,) 190 Fencing the gallows and the sword With conscripts drafted from his word, And makes one gate of Heaven so wide That the rich orthodox might ride Through on their camels, while the poor Squirm through the scant, unyielding door, Which, of the Gospel's straitest size, Is narrower than bead-needles' eyes, What wonder World and Church should call The true faith atheistical? 200 Yet, after all, 'twixt you and me, Dear Miller, I could never see That Sin's and Error's ugly smirch Stained the walls only of the Church; There are good priests, and men who take Freedom's torn cloak for lucre's sake; I can't believe the Church so strong, As some men do, for Right or Wrong, But, for this subject (long and vext) I must refer you to my next, 210 As also for a list exact Of goods with which the Hall was packed. READER! _walk up at once (it will soon be too late), and buy at a perfectly ruinous rate._ A FABLE FOR CRITICS; OR, BETTER-- _I like, as a thing that the reader's first fancy may strike, an old fashioned title-page, such as presents a tabular view of the volumes contents_,-- A GLANCE AT A FEW OF OUR LITERARY PROGENIES (Mrs. Malaprop's Word) FROM THE TUB OF DIOGENES; A VOCAL AND MUSICAL MEDLEY, THAT IS, A SERIES OF JOKES BY A WONDERFUL QUIZ _Who accompanies himself with a rub-a-dub-dub, full of spirit and grace, on the top of the tub._ SET FORTH IN _October, the 21st day, in the year '48._ G.P. PUTNAM, BROADWAY. It being the commonest mode of procedure, I premise a few candid remarks TO THE READER:-- This trifle, begun to please only myself and my own private fancy, was laid on the shelf. But some friends, who had seen it, induced me, by dint of saying they liked it, to put it in print. That is, having come to that very conclusion, I asked their advice when 'twould make no confusion. For though (in the gentlest of ways) they had hinted it was scarce worth the while, I should doubtless have printed it. I began it, intending a Fable, a frail, slender thing, rhymeywinged, with a sting in its tail. But, by addings and alterings not previously planned, digressions chance-hatched, like birds' eggs in the sand, and dawdlings to suit every whimsey's demand (always freeing the bird which I held In my hand, for the two perched, perhaps out of reach, in the tree),--it grew by degrees to the size which you see. I was like the old woman that carried the calf, and my neighbors, like hers, no doubt, wonder and laugh; and when, my strained arms with their grown burthen full, I call it my Fable, they call it a bull. Having scrawled at full gallop (as far as that goes) in a style that is neither good verse nor bad prose, and being a person whom nobody knows, some people will say I am rather more free with my readers than it is becoming to be, that I seem to expect them to wait on my leisure in following wherever I wander at pleasure, that, in short, I take more than a young author's lawful ease, and laugh in a queer way so like Mephistopheles, that the Public will doubt, as they grope through my rhythm, if in truth I am making fun _of_ them or _with_ them. So the excellent Public is hereby assured that the sale of my book is already secured. For there is not a poet throughout the whole land but will purchase a copy or two out of hand, in the fond expectation of being amused in it, by seeing his betters cut up and abused in it. Now, I find, by a pretty exact calculation, there are something like ten thousand bards in the nation, of that special variety whom the Review and Magazine critics call _lofty_ and _true_, and about thirty thousand (_this_ tribe is increasing) of the kinds who are termed _full of promise_ and _pleasing_. The Public will see by a glance at this schedule, that they cannot expect me to be over-sedulous about courting _them_, since it seems I have got enough fuel made sure of for boiling my pot. As for such of our poets as find not their names mentioned once in my pages, with praises or blames, let them SEND IN THEIR CARDS, without further DELAY, to my friend G.P. PUTNAM, Esquire, in Broadway, where a LIST will be kept with the strictest regard to the day and the hour of receiving the card. Then, taking them up as I chance to have time (that is, if their names can be twisted in rhyme), I will honestly give each his PROPER POSITION, at the rate of ONE AUTHOR to each NEW EDITION. Thus a PREMIUM is offered sufficiently HIGH (as the magazines say when they tell their best lie) to induce bards to CLUB their resources and buy the balance of every edition, until they have all of them fairly been run through the mill. One word to such readers (judicious and wise) as read books with something behind the mere eyes, of whom in the country, perhaps, there are two, including myself, gentle reader, and you. All the characters sketched in this slight _jeu d'esprit_, though, it may be, they seem, here and there, rather free, and drawn from a somewhat too cynical standpoint, are _meant_ to be faithful, for that is the grand point, and none but an owl would feel sore at a rub from a jester who tells you, without any subterfuge, that he sits in Diogenes' tub. A PRELIMINARY NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION. Though it well may be reckoned, of all composition, the species at once most delightful and healthy, is a thing which an author, unless he be wealthy and willing to pay for that kind of delight, is not, in all instances, called on to write, though there are, it is said, who, their spirits to cheer, slip in a new title-page three times a year, and in this way snuff up an imaginary savor of that sweetest of dishes, the popular favor,--much as if a starved painter should fall to and treat the Ugolino inside to a picture of meat. You remember (if not, pray turn, backward and look) that, in writing the preface which ushered my book, I treated you, excellent Public, not merely with a cool disregard, but downright cavalierly. Now I would not take back the least thing I then said, though I thereby could butter both sides of my bread, for I never could see that an author owed aught to the people he solaced, diverted, or taught; and, as for mere fame, I have long ago learned that the persons by whom it is finally earned are those with whom _your_ verdict weighed not a pin, unsustained by the higher court sitting within. But I wander from what I intended to say,--that you have, namely, shown such a liberal way of thinking, and so much æsthetic perception of anonymous worth in the handsome reception you gave to my book, spite of some private piques (having bought the first thousand in barely two weeks), that I think, past a doubt, if you measured the phiz of yours most devotedly, Wonderful Quiz, you would find that its vertical section was shorter, by an inch and two tenths, or 'twixt that and a quarter. You have watched a child playing--in those wondrous years when belief is not bound to the eyes and the ears, and the vision divine is so clear and unmarred, that each baker of pies in the dirt is a bard? Give a knife and a shingle, he fits out a fleet, and, on that little mud-puddle over the street, his fancy, in purest good faith, will make sail round the globe with a puff of his breath for a gale, will visit, in barely ten minutes, all climes, and do the Columbus-feat hundreds of times. Or, suppose the young poet fresh stored with delights from that Bible of childhood, the Arabian Nights, he will turn to a crony and cry, 'Jack, let's play that I am a Genius!' Jacky straightway makes Aladdin's lamp out of a stone, and, for hours, they enjoy each his own supernatural powers. This is all very pretty and pleasant, but then suppose our two urchins, have grown into men, and both have turned authors,--one says to his brother, 'Let's play we're the American somethings or other,--say Homer or Sophocles, Goethe or Scott (only let them be big enough, no matter what). Come, you shall be Byron or Pope, which you choose: I'll be Coleridge, and both shall write mutual reviews.' So they both (as mere strangers) before many days send each other a cord of anonymous bays. Each piling his epithets, smiles in his sleeve to see what his friend can be made to believe; each, reading the other's unbiased review, thinks--Here's pretty high praise, but no more than my due. Well, we laugh at them both, and yet make no great fuss when the same farce is acted to benefit us. Even I, who, it asked, scarce a month since, what Fudge meant, should have answered, the dear Public's critical judgment, begin to think sharp-witted Horace spoke sooth when he said that the Public _sometimes_ hit the truth. In reading these lines, you perhaps have a vision of a person in pretty good health and condition; and yet, since I put forth my primary edition, I have been crushed, scorched, withered, used up and put down (by Smith with the cordial assistance of Brown), in all, if you put any faith in my rhymes, to the number of ninety-five several times, and, while I am writing,--I tremble to think of it, for I may at this moment be just on the brink of it,--Molybdostom, angry at being omitted, has begun a critique,--am I not to be pitied?[1] Now I shall not crush _them_ since, indeed, for that matter, no pressure I know of could render them flatter; nor wither, nor scorch them,--no action of fire could make either them or their articles drier; nor waste time in putting them down--I am thinking not their own self-inflation will keep them from sinking; for there's this contradiction about the whole bevy,--though without the least weight, they are awfully heavy. No, my dear honest bore, _surdo fabulam narras_, they are no more to me than a rat in the arras. I can walk with the Doctor, get facts from the Don, or draw out the Lambish quintessence of John, and feel nothing more than a half-comic sorrow, to think that they all will be lying to-morrow tossed carelessly up on the waste-paper shelves, and forgotten by all but their half-dozen selves. Once snug in my attic, my fire in a roar, I leave the whole pack of them outside the door. With Hakluyt or Purchas I wander away to the black northern seas or barbaric Cathay; get _fou_ with O'Shanter, and sober me then with that builder of brick-kilnish dramas, rare Ben; snuff Herbert, as holy as a flower on a grave; with Fletcher wax tender, o'er Chapman grow brave; with Marlowe or Kyd take a fine poet-rave; in Very, most Hebrew of Saxons, find peace; with Lycidas welter on vext Irish seas; with Webster grow wild, and climb earthward again, down by mystical Browne's Jacob's-ladder-like brain, to that spiritual Pepys (Cotton's version) Montaigne; find a new depth in Wordsworth, undreamed of before, that marvel, a poet divine who can bore. Or, out of my study, the scholar thrown off, Nature holds up her shield 'gainst the sneer and the scoff; the landscape, forever consoling and kind, pours her wine and her oil on the smarts of the mind. The waterfall, scattering its vanishing gems; the tall grove of hemlocks, with moss on their stems, like plashes of sunlight; the pond in the woods, where no foot but mine and the bittern's intrudes, where pitcher-plants purple and gentians hard by recall to September the blue of June's sky; these are all my kind neighbors, and leave me no wish to say aught to you all, my poor critics, but--pish! I've buried the hatchet: I'm twisting an allumette out of one of you now, and relighting my calumet. In your private capacities, come when you please, I will give you my hand and a fresh pipe apiece. As I ran through the leaves of my poor little book, to take a fond author's first tremulous look, it was quite an excitement to hunt the _errata_, sprawled in as birds' tracks are in some kinds of strata (only these made things crookeder). Fancy an heir that a father had seen born well-featured and fair, turning suddenly wry-nosed, club-footed, squint-eyed, hair-lipped, wapper-jawed, carrot-haired, from a pride become an aversion,--my case was yet worse. A club-foot (by way of a change) in a verse, I might have forgiven, an _o_'s being wry, a limp in an _e_, or a cock in an _i_,--but to have the sweet babe of my brain served in _pi!_ I am not queasy-stomached, but such a Thyestean banquet as that was quite out of the question. In the edition now issued no pains are neglected, and my verses, as orators say, stand corrected. Yet some blunders remain of the public's own make, which I wish to correct for my personal sake. For instance, a character drawn in pure fun and condensing the traits of a dozen in one, has been, as I hear, by some persons applied to a good friend of mine, whom to stab in the side, as we walked along chatting and joking together, would not be _my_ way. I can hardly tell whether a question will ever arise in which he and I should by any strange fortune agree, but meanwhile my esteem for him grows as I know him, and, though not the best judge on earth of a poem, he knows what it is he is saying and why, and is honest and fearless, two good points which I have not found so rife I can easily smother my love for them, whether on my side or t'other. For my other _anonymi_, you may be sure that I know what is meant by a caricature, and what by a portrait. There _are_ those who think it is capital fun to be spattering their ink on quiet, unquarrelsome folk, but the minute the game changes sides and the others begin it, they see something savage and horrible in it. As for me I respect neither women nor men for their gender, nor own any sex in a pen. I choose just to hint to some causeless unfriends that, as far as I know, there are always two ends (and one of them heaviest, too) to a staff, and two parties also to every good laugh. A FABLE FOR CRITICS Phoebus, sitting one day in a laurel-tree's shade, Was reminded of Daphne, of whom it was made, For the god being one day too warm in his wooing, She took to the tree to escape his pursuing; Be the cause what it might, from his offers she shrunk, And, Ginevra-like, shut herself up in a trunk; And, though 'twas a step into which he had driven her, He somehow or other had never forgiven her; Her memory he nursed as a kind of a tonic, Something bitter to chew when he'd play the Byronic, 10 And I can't count the obstinate nymphs that he brought over By a strange kind of smile he put on when he thought of her. 'My case is like Dido's,' he sometimes remarked; 'When I last saw my love, she was fairly embarked In a laurel, as _she_ thought--but (ah, how Fate mocks!) She has found it by this time a very bad box; Let hunters from me take this saw when they need it,-- You're not always sure of your game when you've treed it. Just conceive such a change taking place in one's mistress! What romance would be left?--who can flatter or kiss trees? 20 And, for mercy's sake, how could one keep up a dialogue With a dull wooden thing that will live and will die a log,-- Not to say that the thought would forever intrude That you've less chance to win her the more she is wood? Ah! it went to my heart, and the memory still grieves, To see those loved graces all taking their leaves; Those charms beyond speech, so enchanting but now, As they left me forever, each making its bough! If her tongue _had_ a tang sometimes more than was right, Her new bark is worse than ten times her old bite.' 30 Now, Daphne--before she was happily treeified-- Over all other blossoms the lily had deified, And when she expected the god on a visit ('Twas before he had made his intentions explicit), Some buds she arranged with a vast deal of care, To look as if artlessly twined in her hair, Where they seemed, as he said, when he paid his addresses, Like the day breaking through, the long night of her tresses; So whenever he wished to be quite irresistible, Like a man with eight trumps in his hand at a whist-table 40 (I feared me at first that the rhyme was untwistable, Though I might have lugged in an allusion to Cristabel),-- He would take up a lily, and gloomily look in it, As I shall at the----, when they cut up my book in it. Well, here, after all the bad rhyme I've been spinning, I've got back at last to my story's beginning: Sitting there, as I say, in the shade of his mistress, As dull as a volume of old Chester mysteries, Or as those puzzling specimens which, in old histories, We read of his verses--the Oracles, namely,-- 50 (I wonder the Greeks should have swallowed them tamely, For one might bet safely whatever he has to risk, They were laid at his door by some ancient Miss Asterisk, And so dull that the men who retailed them out-doors Got the ill name of augurs, because they were bores,--) First, he mused what the animal substance or herb is Would induce a mustache, for you know he's _imberbis;_ Then he shuddered to think how his youthful position Was assailed by the age of his son the physician; At some poems he glanced, had been sent to him lately, 60 And the metre and sentiment puzzled him greatly; 'Mehercle! I'd make such proceeding felonious,-- Have they all of them slept in the cave of Trophonius? Look well to your seat, 'tis like taking an airing On a corduroy road, and that out of repairing; It leads one, 'tis true, through the primitive forest, Grand natural features, but then one has no rest; You just catch a glimpse of some ravishing distance, When a jolt puts the whole of it out of existence,-- Why not use their ears, if they happen to have any?' 70 --Here the laurel leaves murmured the name of poor Daphne. 'Oh, weep with me, Daphne,' he sighed, 'for you know it's A terrible thing to be pestered with poets! But, alas, she is dumb, and the proverb holds good, She never will cry till she's out of the wood! What wouldn't I give if I never had known of her? 'Twere a kind of relief had I something to groan over: If I had but some letters of hers, now, to toss over, I might turn for the nonce a Byronic philosopher, And bewitch all the flats by bemoaning the loss of her. 80 One needs something tangible, though, to begin on,-- A loom, as it were, for the fancy to spin on; What boots all your grist? it can never be ground Till a breeze makes the arms of the windmill go round; (Or, if 'tis a water-mill, alter the metaphor, And say it won't stir, save the wheel be well wet afore, Or lug in some stuff about water "so dreamily,"-- It is not a metaphor, though, 'tis a simile); A lily, perhaps, would set _my_ mill a-going, For just at this season, I think, they are blowing. 90 Here, somebody, fetch one; not very far hence They're in bloom by the score, 'tis but climbing a fence; There's a poet hard by, who does nothing but fill his Whole garden, from one end to t'other, with lilies; A very good plan, were it not for satiety, One longs for a weed here and there, for variety; Though a weed is no more than a flower in disguise, Which is seen through at once, if love give a man eyes.' Now there happened to be among Phoebus's followers, A gentleman, one of the omnivorous swallowers, 100 Who bolt every book that comes out of the press, Without the least question of larger or less, Whose stomachs are strong at the expense of their head,-- For reading new books is like eating new bread, One can bear it at first, but by gradual steps he Is brought to death's door of a mental dyspepsy. On a previous stage of existence, our Hero Had ridden outside, with the glass below zero; He had been, 'tis a fact you may safely rely on, Of a very old stock a most eminent scion,-- 110 A stock all fresh quacks their fierce boluses ply on, Who stretch the new boots Earth's unwilling to try on, Whom humbugs of all shapes and sorts keep their eye on, Whose hair's in the mortar of every new Zion, Who, when whistles are dear, go directly and buy one, Who think slavery a crime that we must not say fie on, Who hunt, if they e'er hunt at all, with the lion (Though they hunt lions also, whenever they spy one), Who contrive to make every good fortune a wry one, And at last choose the hard bed of honor to die on, 120 Whose pedigree, traced to earth's earliest years, Is longer than anything else but their ears,-- In short, he was sent into life with the wrong key, He unlocked the door, and stept forth a poor donkey. Though kicked and abused by his bipedal betters Yet he filled no mean place in the kingdom of letters; Far happier than many a literary hack, He bore only paper-mill rags on his back (For It makes a vast difference which side the mill One expends on the paper his labor and skill); 130 So, when his soul waited a new transmigration, And Destiny balanced 'twixt this and that station, Not having much time to expend upon bothers, Remembering he'd had some connection with authors, And considering his four legs had grown paralytic,-- She set him on two, and he came forth a critic. Through his babyhood no kind of pleasure he took In any amusement but tearing a book; For him there was no intermediate stage From babyhood up to straight-laced middle age; 140 There were years when he didn't wear coat-tails behind, But a boy he could never be rightly defined; like the Irish Good Folk, though in length scarce a span, From the womb he came gravely, a little old man; While other boys' trousers demanded the toil Of the motherly fingers on all kinds of soil, Red, yellow, brown, black, clayey, gravelly, loamy, He sat in the corner and read Viri Romæ. He never was known to unbend or to revel once In base, marbles, hockey, or kick up the devil once; 150 He was just one of those who excite the benevolence Of your old prigs who sound the soul's depths with a ledger, And are on the lookout for some young men to 'edger- cate,' as they call it, who won't be too costly, And who'll afterward take to the ministry mostly; Who always wear spectacles, always look bilious, Always keep on good terms with each _mater-familias_ Throughout the whole parish, and manage to rear Ten boys like themselves, on four hundred a year: Who, fulfilling in turn the same fearful conditions, 160 Either preach through their noses, or go upon missions. In this way our Hero got safely to college, Where he bolted alike both his commons and knowledge; A reading-machine, always wound up and going, He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing, Appeared in a gown, with black waistcoat of satin, To spout such a Gothic oration in Latin That Tully could never have made out a word in it (Though himself was the model the author preferred in it), And grasping the parchment which gave him in fee 170 All the mystic and-so-forths contained in A.B., He was launched (life is always compared to a sea) With just enough learning, and skill for the using it, To prove he'd a brain, by forever confusing it. So worthy St. Benedict, piously burning With the holiest zeal against secular learning, _Nesciensque scienter_, as writers express it, _Indoctusque sapienter a Roma recessit_. 'Twould be endless to tell you the things that he knew, Each a separate fact, undeniably true, 180 But with him or each other they'd nothing to do; No power of combining, arranging, discerning, Digested the masses he learned into learning; There was one thing in life he had practical knowledge for (And this, you will think, he need scarce go to college for),-- Not a deed would he do, nor a word would he utter, Till he'd weighed its relations to plain bread and butter. When he left Alma Mater, he practised his wits In compiling the journals' historical bits,-- Of shops broken open, men falling in fits, 190 Great fortunes in England bequeathed to poor printers, And cold spells, the coldest for many past winters,-- Then, rising by industry, knack, and address, Got notices up for an unbiased press, With a mind so well poised, it seemed equally made for Applause or abuse, just which chanced to be paid for: From this point his progress was rapid and sure, To the post of a regular heavy reviewer. And here I must say he wrote excellent articles On Hebraical points, or the force of Greek particles; 200 They filled up the space nothing else was prepared for, And nobody read that which nobody cared for; If any old book reached a fiftieth edition, He could fill forty pages with safe erudition: He could gauge the old books by the old set of rules, And his very old nothings pleased very old fools; But give him a new book, fresh out of the heart, And you put him at sea without compass or chart,-- His blunders aspired to the rank of an art; For his lore was engraft, something foreign that grew in him, 210 Exhausting the sap of the native and true in him, So that when a man came with a soul that was new in him, Carving new forms of truth out of Nature's old granite, New and old at their birth, like Le Verrier's planet, Which, to get a true judgment, themselves must create In the soul of their critic the measure and weight, Being rather themselves a fresh standard of grace, To compute their own judge, and assign him his place, Our reviewer would crawl all about it and round it, And, reporting each circumstance just as he found it, 220 Without the least malice,--his record would be Profoundly æsthetic as that of a flea, Which, supping on Wordsworth, should print for our sakes, Recollections of nights with the Bard of the Lakes, Or, lodged by an Arab guide, ventured to render a Comprehensive account of the ruins at Denderah. As I said, he was never precisely unkind. The defect in his brain was just absence of mind; If he boasted, 'twas simply that he was self-made, A position which I, for one, never gainsaid, 230 My respect for my Maker supposing a skill In his works which our Hero would answer but ill; And I trust that the mould which he used may be cracked, or he, Made bold by success, may enlarge his phylactery, And set up a kind of a man-manufactory,-- An event which I shudder to think about, seeing That Man is a moral, accountable being. He meant well enough, but was still in the way, As dunces still are, let them be where they may; Indeed, they appear to come into existence 240 To impede other folks with their awkward assistance; If you set up a dunce on the very North pole All alone with himself, I believe, on my soul, He'd manage to get betwixt somebody's shins, And pitch him down bodily, all in his sins, To the grave polar bears sitting round on the ice, All shortening their grace, to be in for a slice; Or, if he found nobody else there to pother, Why, one of his legs would just trip up the other, For there's nothing we read of in torture's inventions, 250 Like a well-meaning dunce, with the best of intentions. A terrible fellow to meet in society, Not the toast that he buttered was ever so dry at tea; There he'd sit at the table and stir in his sugar, Crouching close for a spring, all the while, like a cougar; Be sure of your facts, of your measures and weights, Of your time,--he's as fond as an Arab of dates; You'll be telling, perhaps, in your comical way, Of something you've seen in the course of the day; And, just as you're tapering out the conclusion, 260 You venture an ill-fated classic allusion,-- The girls have all got their laughs ready, when, whack! The cougar comes down on your thunderstruck back! You had left out a comma,--your Greek's put in joint, And pointed at cost of your story's whole point. In the course of the evening, you find chance for certain Soft speeches to Anne, in the shade of the curtain: You tell her your heart can be likened to _one_ flower, 'And that, O most charming of women, 's the sunflower, Which turns'--here a clear nasal voice, to your terror, 270 From outside the curtain, says, 'That's all an error.' As for him, he's--no matter, he never grew tender, Sitting after a ball, with his feet on the fender, Shaping somebody's sweet features out of cigar smoke (Though he'd willingly grant you that such doings are smoke); All women he damns with _mutabile semper_, And if ever he felt something like love's distemper, 'Twas tow'rds a young lady who spoke ancient Mexican, And assisted her father in making a lexicon; Though I recollect hearing him get quite ferocious 280 About Mary Clausum, the mistress of Grotius, Or something of that sort,--but, no more to bore ye With character-painting, I'll turn to my story. Now, Apollo, who finds it convenient sometimes To get his court clear of the makers of rhymes, The _genus_, I think it is called, _irritabile_, Every one of whom thinks himself treated most shabbily, And nurses a--what is it?--_immedicabile_, Which keeps him at boiling-point, hot for a quarrel, As bitter as wormwood, and sourer than sorrel, 290 If any poor devil but look at a laurel;-- Apollo, I say, being sick of their rioting (Though he sometimes acknowledged their verse had a quieting Effect after dinner, and seemed to suggest a Retreat to the shrine of a tranquil siesta), Kept our Hero at hand, who, by means of a bray, Which he gave to the life, drove the rabble away; And if that wouldn't do, he was sure to succeed, If he took his review out and offered to read; Or, failing in plans of this milder description, 300 He would ask for their aid to get up a subscription, Considering that authorship wasn't a rich craft, To print the 'American drama of Witchcraft.' 'Stay, I'll read you a scene,'--but he hardly began, Ere Apollo shrieked 'Help!' and the authors all ran: And once, when these purgatives acted with less spirit, And the desperate case asked a remedy desperate, He drew from his pocket a foolscap epistle As calmly as if 'twere a nine-barrelled pistol, And threatened them all with the judgment to come, 310 Of 'A wandering Star's first impressions of Rome.' 'Stop! stop!' with their hands o'er their ears, screamed the Muses, 'He may go off and murder himself, if he chooses, 'Twas a means self-defence only sanctioned his trying, 'Tis mere massacre now that the enemy's flying; If he's forced to 't again, and we happen to be there, Give us each a large handkerchief soaked in strong ether.' I called this a 'Fable for Critics;' you think it's More like a display of my rhythmical trinkets; My plot, like an icicle's slender and slippery, 320 Every moment more slender, and likely to slip awry, And the reader unwilling _in loco desipere_ Is free to jump over as much of my frippery As he fancies, and, if he's a provident skipper, he May have like Odysseus control of the gales, And get safe to port, ere his patience quite fails; Moreover, although 'tis a slender return For your toil and expense, yet my paper will burn, And, if you have manfully struggled thus far with me, You may e'en twist me up, and just light your cigar with me: 330 If too angry for that, you can tear me in pieces, And my _membra disjecta_ consign to the breezes, A fate like great Ratzau's, whom one of those bores, Who beflead with bad verses poor Louis Quatorze, Describes (the first verse somehow ends with _victoire_), As _dispersant partout et ses membres et sa gloire;_ Or, if I were over-desirous of earning A repute among noodles for classical learning, I could pick you a score of allusions, i-wis, As new as the jests of _Didaskalos tis;_ 340 Better still, I could make out a good solid list From authors recondite who do not exist,-- But that would be naughty: at least, I could twist Something out of Absyrtus, or turn your inquiries After Milton's prose metaphor, drawn from Osiris; But, as Cicero says he won't say this or that (A fetch, I must say, most transparent and flat), After saying whate'er he could possibly think of,-- I simply will state that I pause on the brink of A mire, ankle-deep, of deliberate confusion, 350 Made up of old jumbles of classic allusion: So, when you were thinking yourselves to be pitied, Just conceive how much harder your teeth you'd have gritted, An 'twere not for the dulness I've kindly omitted. I'd apologize here for my many digressions. Were it not that I'm certain to trip into fresh ones ('Tis so hard to escape if you get in their mesh once); Just reflect, if you please, how 'tis said by Horatius, That Mæonides nods now and then, and, my gracious! It certainly does look a little bit ominous 360 When he gets under way with _ton d'apameibomenos_. (Here a something occurs which I'll just clap a rhyme to, And say it myself, ere a Zoilus have time to,-- Any author a nap like Van Winkle's may take, If he only contrive to keep readers awake, But he'll very soon find himself laid on the shelf, If _they_ fall a-nodding when he nods himself.) Once for all, to return, and to stay, will I, nill I-- When Phoebus expressed his desire for a lily, Our Hero, whose homoeopathic sagacity 370 With an ocean of zeal mixed his drop of capacity, Set off for the garden as fast as the wind (Or, to take a comparison more to my mind, As a sound politician leaves conscience behind). And leaped the low fence, as a party hack jumps O'er his principles, when something else turns up trumps. He was gone a long time, and Apollo, meanwhile, Went over some sonnets of his with a file, For, of all compositions, he thought that the sonnet Best repaid all the toil you expended upon it; 380 It should reach with one impulse the end of its course, And for one final blow collect all of its force; Not a verse should be salient, but each one should tend With a wave-like up-gathering to break at the end; So, condensing the strength here, there smoothing a wry kink, He was killing the time, when up walked Mr. D----, At a few steps behind him, a small man in glasses Went dodging about, muttering, 'Murderers! asses!' From out of his pocket a paper he'd take, With a proud look of martyrdom tied to its stake, 390 And, reading a squib at himself, he'd say, 'Here I see 'Gainst American letters a bloody conspiracy, They are all by my personal enemies written; I must post an anonymous letter to Britain, And show that this gall is the merest suggestion Of spite at my zeal on the Copyright question, For, on this side the water, 'tis prudent to pull O'er the eyes of the public their national wool, By accusing of slavish respect to John Bull All American authors who have more or less 400 Of that anti-American humbug--success, While in private we're always embracing the knees Of some twopenny editor over the seas, And licking his critical shoes, for you know 'tis The whole aim of our lives to get one English notice; My American puffs I would willingly burn all (They're all from one source, monthly, weekly, diurnal) To get but a kick from a transmarine journal!' So, culling the gibes of each critical scorner As if they were plums, and himself were Jack Horner, 410 He came cautiously on, peeping round every corner, And into each hole where a weasel might pass in, Expecting the knife of some critic assassin, Who stabs to the heart with a caricature. Not so bad as those daubs of the Sun, to be sure, Yet done with a dagger-o'-type, whose vile portraits Disperse all one's good and condense all one's poor traits. Apollo looked up, hearing footsteps approaching, And slipped out of sight the new rhymes he was broaching,-- 'Good day, Mr. D----, I'm happy to meet 420 With a scholar so ripe, and a critic so neat, Who through Grub Street the soul of a gentleman carries; What news from that suburb of London and Paris Which latterly makes such shrill claims to monopolize The credit of being the New World's metropolis?' 'Why, nothing of consequence, save this attack On my friend there, behind, by some pitiful hack, Who thinks every national author a poor one, That isn't a copy of something that's foreign, 429 And assaults the American Dick--' Nay, 'tis clear That your Damon there's fond of a flea in his ear, And, if no one else furnished them gratis, on tick He would buy some himself, just to hear the old click; Why, I honestly think, if some fool in Japan Should turn up his nose at the "Poems on Man," (Which contain many verses as fine, by the bye, As any that lately came under my eye,) Your friend there by some inward instinct would know it, Would get it translated, reprinted, and show it; As a man might take off a high stock to exhibit 440 The autograph round his own neck of the gibbet; Nor would let it rest so, but fire column after column, Signed Cato, or Brutus, or something as solemn, By way of displaying his critical crosses, And tweaking that poor transatlantic proboscis, His broadsides resulting (this last there's no doubt of) In successively sinking the craft they're fired out of. Now nobody knows when an author is hit, If he have not a public hysterical fit; Let him only keep close in his snug garret's dim ether, 450 And nobody'd think of his foes--or of him either; If an author have any least fibre of worth in him, Abuse would but tickle the organ of mirth in him; All the critics on earth cannot crush with their ban One word that's in tune with the nature of man.' 'Well, perhaps so; meanwhile I have brought you a book, Into which if you'll just have the goodness to look, You may feel so delighted (when once you are through it) As to deem it not unworth your while to review it, And I think I can promise your thoughts, if you do, 460 A place in the next Democratic Review.' 'The most thankless of gods you must surely have thought me, For this is the forty-fourth copy you've brought me; I have given them away, or at least I have tried, But I've forty-two left, standing all side by side (The man who accepted that one copy died),-- From one end of a shelf to the other they reach, "With the author's respects" neatly written in each. The publisher, sure, will proclaim a Te Deum, When he hears of that order the British Museum 470 Has sent for one set of what books were first printed In America, little or big,--for 'tis hinted That this is the first truly tangible hope he Has ever had raised for the sale of a copy. I've thought very often 'twould be a good thing In all public collections of books, if a wing Were set off by itself, like the seas from the dry lands, Marked _Literature suited to desolate islands_, And filled with such books as could never be read Save by readers of proofs, forced to do it for bread,-- 480 Such books as one's wrecked on in small country taverns, Such as hermits might mortify over in caverns, Such as Satan, if printing had then been invented, As the climax of woe, would to Job have presented. Such as Crusoe might dip in, although there are few so Outrageously cornered by fate as poor Crusoe; And since the philanthropists just now are banging And gibbeting all who're in favor of hanging (Though Cheever has proved that the Bible and Altar Were let down from Heaven at the end of a halter. 490 And that vital religion would dull and grow callous, Unrefreshed, now and then, with a sniff of the gallows),-- And folks are beginning to think it looks odd, To choke a poor scamp for the glory of God; And that He who esteems the Virginia reel A bait to draw saints from their spiritual weal, And regards the quadrille as a far greater knavery Than crushing his African children with slavery,-- Since all who take part in a waltz or cotillon Are mounted for hell on the Devil's own pillion, 500 Who, as every true orthodox Christian well knows, Approaches the heart through the door of the toes,-- That He, I was saying, whose judgments are stored For such as take steps in despite of his word, Should look with delight on the agonized prancing Of a wretch who has not the least ground for his dancing, While the State, standing by, sings a verse from the Psalter About offering to God on his favorite halter, And, when the legs droop from their twitching divergence, Sells the clothes to a Jew, and the corpse to the surgeons;-- Now, instead of all this, I think I can direct you all 511 To a criminal code both humane and effectual;-- I propose to shut up every doer of wrong With these desperate books, for such term, short or long, As, by statute in such cases made and provided, Shall be by your wise legislators decided: Thus: Let murderers be shut, to grow wiser and cooler, At hard labor for life on the works of Miss----; Petty thieves, kept from flagranter crimes by their fears, Shall peruse Yankee Doodle a blank term of years,-- 520 That American Punch, like the English, no doubt,-- Just the sugar and lemons and spirit left out. 'But stay, here comes Tityrus Griswold, and leads on The flocks whom he first plucks alive, and then feeds on,-- A loud-cackling swarm, in whose leathers warm drest, He goes for as perfect a--swan as the rest. 'There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one, Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on, Whose prose is grand verse, while his verse, the Lord knows, Is some of it pr---- No, 'tis not even prose; 530 I'm speaking of metres; some poems have welled From those rare depths of soul that have ne'er been excelled; They're not epics, but that doesn't matter a pin, In creating, the only hard thing's to begin; A grass-blade's no easier to make than an oak; If you've once found the way, you've achieved the grand stroke; In the worst of his poems are mines of rich matter, But thrown in a heap with a crash and a clatter; Now it is not one thing nor another alone Makes a poem, but rather the general tone, 540 The something pervading, uniting the whole, The before unconceived, unconceivable soul, So that just in removing this trifle or that, you Take away, as it were, a chief limb of the statue; Roots, wood, bark, and leaves singly perfect may be, But, clapt hodge-podge together, they don't make a tree. 'But, to come back to Emerson (whom, by the way, I believe we left waiting),--his is, we may say, A Greek head on right Yankee shoulders, whose range Has Olympus for one pole, for t'other the Exchange; 550 He seems, to my thinking (although I'm afraid The comparison must, long ere this, have been made), A Plotinus-Montaigne, where the Egyptian's gold mist And the Gascon's shrewd wit cheek-by-jowl coexist; All admire, and yet scarcely six converts he's got To I don't (nor they either) exactly know what; For though he builds glorious temples, 'tis odd He leaves never a doorway to get in a god. 'Tis refreshing to old-fashioned people like me To meet such a primitive Pagan as he, 560 In whose mind all creation is duly respected As parts of himself--just a little projected; And who's willing to worship the stars and the sun, A convert to--nothing but Emerson. So perfect a balance there is in his head, That he talks of things sometimes as if they were dead; Life, nature, love, God, and affairs of that sort, He looks at as merely ideas; in short, As if they were fossils stuck round in a cabinet, Of such vast extent that our earth's a mere dab in it; 570 Composed just as he is inclined to conjecture her, Namely, one part pure earth, ninety-nine parts pure lecturer; You are filled with delight at his clear demonstration, Each figure, word, gesture, just fits the occasion, With the quiet precision of science he'll sort 'em, But you can't help suspecting the whole a _post mortem_. 'There are persons, mole-blind to the soul's make and style, Who insist on a likeness 'twixt him and Carlyle; To compare him with Plato would be vastly fairer, Carlyle's the more burly, but E. is the rarer; 580 He sees fewer objects, but clearlier, truelier, If C.'s as original, E.'s more peculiar; That he's more of a man you might say of the one, Of the other he's more of an Emerson; C.'s the Titan, as shaggy of mind as of limb,-- E. the clear-eyed Olympian, rapid and slim; The one's two thirds Norseman, the other half Greek, Where the one's most abounding, the other's to seek; C.'s generals require to be seen in the mass,-- E.'s specialties gain if enlarged by the glass; 590 C. gives nature and God his own fits of the blues, And rims common-sense things with mystical hues,-- E. sits in a mystery calm and intense, And looks coolly around him with sharp common-sense; C. shows you how every-day matters unite With the dim transdiurnal recesses of night,-- While E., in a plain, preternatural way, Makes mysteries matters of mere every day; C. draws all his characters quite _à la_ Fuseli,-- Not sketching their bundles of muscles and thews illy, 600 He paints with a brush so untamed and profuse, They seem nothing but bundles of muscles and thews; E. is rather like Flaxman, lines strait and severe, And a colorless outline, but full, round, and clear;-- To the men he thinks worthy he frankly accords The design of a white marble statue in words. C. labors to get at the centre, and then Take a reckoning from there of his actions and men; E. calmly assumes the said centre as granted, And, given himself, has whatever is wanted. 610 'He has imitators in scores, who omit No part of the man but his wisdom and wit,-- Who go carefully o'er the sky-blue of his brain, And when he has skimmed it once, skim it again; If at all they resemble him, you may be sure it is Because their shoals mirror his mists and obscurities, As a mud-puddle seems deep as heaven for a minute, While a cloud that floats o'er is reflected within it. 'There comes----, for instance; to see him's rare sport, Tread in Emerson's tracks with legs painfully short; 620 How he jumps, how he strains, and gets red in the face. To keep step with the mystagogue's natural pace! He follows as close as a stick to a rocket, His fingers exploring the prophet's each pocket. Fie, for shame, brother bard; with good fruit of your own, Can't you let Neighbor Emerson's orchards alone? Besides, 'tis no use, you'll not find e'en a core,-- ---- has picked up all the windfalls before. They might strip every tree, and E. never would catch 'em, His Hesperides have no rude dragon to watch 'em; 630 When they send him a dishful, and ask him to try 'em, He never suspects how the sly rogues came by 'em; He wonders why 'tis there are none such his trees on, And thinks 'em the best he has tasted this season. 'Yonder, calm as a cloud, Alcott stalks in a dream, And fancies himself in thy groves, Academe, With the Parthenon nigh, and the olive-trees o'er him, And never a fact to perplex him or bore him, With a snug room at Plato's when night comes, to walk to, And people from morning till midnight to talk to, 640 And from midnight till morning, nor snore in their listening;-- So he muses, his face with the joy of it glistening, For his highest conceit of a happiest state is Where they'd live upon acorns, and hear him talk gratis; And indeed, I believe, no man ever talked better,-- Each sentence hangs perfectly poised to a letter; He seems piling words, but there's royal dust hid In the heart of each sky-piercing pyramid. While he talks he is great, but goes out like a taper, If you shut him up closely with pen, ink, and paper; 650 Yet his fingers itch for 'em from morning till night, And he thinks he does wrong if he don't always write; In this, as in all things, a lamb among men, He goes to sure death when he goes to his pen. 'Close behind him is Brownson, his mouth very full With attempting to gulp a Gregorian bull; Who contrives, spite of that, to pour out as he goes A stream of transparent and forcible prose; He shifts quite about, then proceeds to expound That 'tis merely the earth, not himself, that turns round, And wishes it clearly impressed on your mind 661 That the weathercock rules and not follows the wind; Proving first, then as deftly confuting each side, With no doctrine pleased that's not somewhere denied, He lays the denier away on the shelf, And then--down beside him lies gravely himself. He's the Salt River boatman, who always stands willing To convey friend or foe without charging a shilling, And so fond of the trip that, when leisure's to spare, He'll row himself up, if he can't get a fare. 670 The worst of it is, that his logic's so strong, That of two sides he commonly chooses the wrong; If there is only one, why, he'll split it in two, And first pummel this half, then that, black and blue. That white's white needs no proof, but it takes a deep fellow To prove it jet-black, and that jet-black is yellow. He offers the true faith to drink in a sieve,-- When it reaches your lips there's naught left to believe But a few silly-(syllo-, I mean,)-gisms that squat 'em Like tadpoles, o'erjoyed with the mud at the bottom. 680 'There is Willis, all _natty_ and jaunty and gay, Who says his best things in so foppish a way, With conceits and pet phrases so thickly o'erlaying 'em, That one hardly knows whether to thank him for saying 'em; Over-ornament ruins both poem and prose, Just conceive of a Muse with a ring in her nose! His prose had a natural grace of its own, And enough of it, too, if he'd let it alone; But he twitches and jerks so, one fairly gets tired, And is forced to forgive where one might have admired; 690 Yet whenever it slips away free and unlaced, It runs like a stream with a musical waste, And gurgles along with the liquidest sweep;-- 'Tis not deep as a river, but who'd have it deep? In a country where scarcely a village is found That has not its author sublime and profound, For some one to be slightly shallow's a duty, And Willis's shallowness makes half his beauty. His prose winds along with a blithe, gurgling error, And reflects all of Heaven it can see in its mirror: 700 'Tis a narrowish strip, but it is not an artifice; 'Tis the true out-of-doors with its genuine hearty phiz; It is Nature herself, and there's something in that, Since most brains reflect but the crown of a hat. Few volumes I know to read under a tree, More truly delightful than his A l'Abri, With the shadows of leaves flowing over your book, Like ripple-shades netting the bed of a brook; With June coming softly your shoulder to look over, Breezes waiting to turn every leaf of your book over, 710 And Nature to criticise still as you read,-- The page that bears that is a rare one indeed. 'He's so innate a cockney, that had he been born Where plain bare-skin's the only full-dress that is worn, He'd have given his own such an air that you'd say 'T had been made by a tailor to lounge in Broadway. His nature's a glass of champagne with the foam on 't, As tender as Fletcher, as witty as Beaumont; So his best things are done in the flush of the moment; If he wait, all is spoiled; he may stir it and shake it, 720 But, the fixed air once gone, he can never re-make it. He might be a marvel of easy delightfulness, If he would not sometimes leave the _r_ out of sprightfulness; And he ought to let Scripture alone--'tis self-slaughter, For nobody likes inspiration-and-water. He'd have been just the fellow to sup at the Mermaid, Cracking jokes at rare Ben, with an eye to the barmaid, His wit running up as Canary ran down,-- The topmost bright bubble on the wave of The Town. 'Here comes Parker, the Orson of parsons, a man 730 Whom the Church undertook to put under her ban (The Church of Socinus, I mean),--his opinions Being So-(ultra)-cinian, they shocked the Socinians: They believed--faith, I'm puzzled--I think I may call Their belief a believing in nothing at all, Or something of that sort; I know they all went For a general union of total dissent: He went a step farther; without cough or hem, He frankly avowed he believed not in them; And, before he could be jumbled up or prevented, 740 From their orthodox kind of dissent he dissented. There was heresy here, you perceive, for the right Of privately judging means simply that light Has been granted to _me_, for deciding on _you;_ And in happier times, before Atheism grew, The deed contained clauses for cooking you too: Now at Xerxes and Knut we all laugh, yet our foot With the same wave is wet that mocked Xerxes and Knut, And we all entertain a secure private notion, That our _Thus far!_ will have a great weight with the ocean, 'Twas so with our liberal Christians: they bore 751 With sincerest conviction their chairs to the shore; They brandished their worn theological birches, Bade natural progress keep out of the Churches, And expected the lines they had drawn to prevail With the fast-rising tide to keep out of their pale; They had formerly dammed the Pontifical See, And the same thing, they thought, would do nicely for P.; But he turned up his nose at their mumming and shamming, And cared (shall I say?) not a d---- for their damming; 760 So they first read him out of their church, and next minute Turned round and declared he had never been in it. But the ban was too small or the man was too big, For he recks not their bells, books, and candles a fig (He scarce looks like a man who would _stay_ treated shabbily, Sophroniscus' son's head o'er the features of Rabelais);-- He bangs and bethwacks them,--their backs he salutes With the whole tree of knowledge torn up by the roots; His sermons with satire are plenteously verjuiced, And he talks in one breath of Confutzee, Cass, Zerduscht, 770 Jack Robinson, Peter the Hermit, Strap, Dathan, Cush, Pitt (not the bottomless, _that_ he's no faith in), Pan, Pillicock, Shakespeare, Paul, Toots, Monsieur Tonson, Aldebaran, Alcander, Ben Khorat, Ben Jonson, Thoth, Richter, Joe Smith, Father Paul, Judah Monis, Musæus, Muretus, _hem_,--[Greek: m] Scorpionis, Maccabee, Maccaboy, Mac--Mac--ah! Machiavelli, Condorcet, Count d'Orsay, Conder, Say, Ganganelli, Orion, O'Connell, the Chevalier D'O, (See the Memoirs of Sully,) [Greek: to pan], the great toe 780 Of the statue of Jupiter, now made to pass For that of Jew Peter by good Romish brass, (You may add for yourselves, for I find it a bore, All the names you have ever, or not, heard before, And when you've done that--why, invent a few more). His hearers can't tell you on Sunday beforehand, If in that day's discourse they'll be Bibled or Koraned, For he's seized the idea (by his martyrdom fired) That all men (not orthodox) _may be_ inspired; Yet though wisdom profane with his creed he may weave in, He makes it quite clear what he _doesn't_ believe in, 791 While some, who decry him, think all Kingdom Come Is a sort of a, kind of a, species of Hum, Of which, as it were, so to speak, not a crumb Would be left, if we didn't keep carefully mum, And, to make a clean breast, that 'tis perfectly plain That _all_ kinds of wisdom are somewhat profane; Now P.'s creed than this may be lighter or darker, But in one thing, 'tis clear, he has faith, namely--Parker; And this is what makes him the crowd-drawing preacher, 800 There's a background of god to each hard-working feature, Every word that he speaks has been fierily furnaced In the blast of a life that has struggled in earnest: There he stands, looking more like a ploughman than priest, If not dreadfully awkward, not graceful at least, His gestures all downright and same, if you will, As of brown-fisted Hobnail in hoeing a drill; But his periods fall on you, stroke after stroke, Like the blows of a lumberer felling an oak, You forget the man wholly, you're thankful to meet 810 With a preacher who smacks of the field and the street, And to hear, you're not over-particular whence, Almost Taylor's profusion, quite Latimer's sense. 'There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified, As a smooth, silent iceberg, that never is ignified, Save when by reflection 'tis kindled o' nights With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights. He may rank (Griswold says so) first bard of your nation (There's no doubt that he stands in supreme iceolation), Your topmost Parnassus he may set his heel on, 820 But no warm applauses come, peal following peal on,-- He's too smooth and too polished to hang any zeal on: Unqualified merits, I'll grant, if you choose, he has 'em, But he lacks the one merit of kindling enthusiasm; If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul, Like being stirred up with the very North Pole. 'He is very nice reading in summer, but _inter Nos_, we don't want _extra_ freezing in winter; Take him up in the depth of July, my advice is, When you feel an Egyptian devotion to ices. 830 But, deduct all you can, there's enough that's right good in him, He has a true soul for field, river, and wood in him; And his heart, in the midst of brick walls, or where'er it is, Glows, softens, and thrills with the tenderest charities-- To you mortals that delve in this trade-ridden planet? No, to old Berkshire's hills, with their limestone and granite. If you're one who _in loco_ (add _foco_ here) _desipis_, You will get out of his outermost heart (as I guess) a piece; But you'd get deeper down if you came as a precipice, And would break the last seal of its inwardest fountain, 840 If you only could palm yourself off for a mountain. Mr. Quivis, or somebody quite as discerning, Some scholar who's hourly expecting his learning, Calls B. the American Wordsworth; but Wordsworth May be rated at more than your whole tuneful herd's worth. No, don't be absurd, he's an excellent Bryant; But, my friends, you'll endanger the life of your client, By attempting to stretch him up into a giant; If you choose to compare him, I think there are two per- -sons fit for a parallel--Thomson and Cowper;[2] 850 I don't mean exactly,--there's something of each, There's T.'s love of nature, C.'s penchant to preach; Just mix up their minds so that C.'s spice of craziness Shall balance and neutralize T.'s turn for laziness, And it gives you a brain cool, quite frictionless, quiet, Whose internal police nips the buds of all riot,-- A brain like a permanent strait-jacket put on The heart that strives vainly to burst off a button,-- A brain which, without being slow or mechanic, Does more than a larger less drilled, more volcanic; 860 He's a Cowper condensed, with no craziness bitten, And the advantage that Wordsworth before him had written. 'But, my dear little bardlings, don't prick up your ears Nor suppose I would rank you and Bryant as peers; If I call him an iceberg, I don't mean to say There is nothing in that which is grand in its way; He is almost the one of your poets that knows How much grace, strength, and dignity lie in Repose; If he sometimes fall short, he is too wise to mar His thought's modest fulness by going too far; 870 'T would be well if your authors should all make a trial Of what virtue there is in severe self-denial, And measure their writings by Hesiod's staff, Which teaches that all has less value than half. 'There is Whittier, whose swelling and vehement heart Strains the strait-breasted drab of the Quaker apart, And reveals the live Man, still supreme and erect, Underneath the bemummying wrappers of sect; There was ne'er a man born who had more of the swing Of the true lyric bard and all that kind of thing; 880 And his failures arise (though he seem not to know it) From the very same cause that has made him a poet,-- A fervor of mind which knows no separation 'Twixt simple excitement and pure inspiration, As my Pythoness erst sometimes erred from not knowing If 'twere I or mere wind through her tripod was blowing; Let his mind once get head in its favorite direction And the torrent of verse bursts the dams of reflection, While, borne with the rush of the metre along, The poet may chance to go right or go wrong, 890 Content with the whirl and delirium of song; Then his grammar's not always correct, nor his rhymes, And he's prone to repeat his own lyrics sometimes, Not his best, though, for those are struck off at white-heats When the heart in his breast like a trip-hammer beats, And can ne'er be repeated again any more Than they could have been carefully plotted before: Like old what's-his-name there at the battle of Hastings (Who, however, gave more than mere rhythmical bastings), Our Quaker leads off metaphorical fights 900 For reform and whatever they call human rights, Both singing and striking in front of the war, And hitting his foes with the mallet of Thor; _Anne haec_, one exclaims, on beholding his knocks, _Vestis filii tui_, O leather-clad Fox? Can that be thy son, in the battle's mid din, Preaching brotherly love and then driving it in To the brain of the tough old Goliath of sin, With the smoothest of pebbles from Castaly's spring Impressed on his hard moral sense with a sling? 910 'All honor and praise to the right-hearted bard Who was true to The Voice when such service was hard, Who himself was so free he dared sing for the slave When to look but a protest in silence was brave; All honor and praise to the women and men Who spoke out for the dumb and the down-trodden then! It needs not to name them, already for each I see History preparing the statue and niche; They were harsh, but shall _you_ be so shocked at hard words Who have beaten your pruning-hooks up into swords, 920 Whose rewards and hurrahs men are surer to gain By the reaping of men and of women than grain? Why should _you_ stand aghast at their fierce wordy war, if You scalp one another for Bank or for Tariff? Your calling them cut-throats and knaves all day long Doesn't prove that the use of hard language is wrong; While the World's heart beats quicker to think of such men As signed Tyranny's doom with a bloody steel-pen, While on Fourth-of-Julys beardless orators fright one With hints at Harmodius and Aristogeiton, 930 You need not look shy at your sisters and brothers Who stab with sharp words for the freedom of others;-- No, a wreath, twine a wreath for the loyal and true Who, for sake of the many, dared stand with the few, Not of blood-spattered laurel for enemies braved, But of broad, peaceful oak-leaves for citizens saved! 'Here comes Dana, abstractedly loitering along, Involved in a paulo-post-future of song, Who'll be going to write what'll never be written Till the Muse, ere he think of it, gives him the mitten,-- 940 Who is so well aware of how things should be done, That his own works displease him before they're begun,-- Who so well all that makes up good poetry knows, That the best of his poems is written in prose; All saddled and bridled stood Pegasus waiting, He was booted and spurred, but he loitered debating; In a very grave question his soul was immersed,-- Which foot in the stirrup he ought to put first: And, while this point and that he judicially dwelt on, He, somehow or other, had written Paul Felton, 950 Whose beauties or faults, whichsoever you see there, You'll allow only genius could hit upon either. That he once was the Idle Man none will deplore, But I fear he will never be anything more; The ocean of song heaves and glitters before him, The depth and the vastness and longing sweep o'er him. He knows every breaker and shoal on the chart, He has the Coast Pilot and so on by heart, Yet he spends his whole life, like the man in the fable, In learning to swim on his library table. 960 'There swaggers John Neal, who has wasted in Maine The sinews and cords of his pugilist brain, Who might have been poet, but that, in its stead, he Preferred to believe that he was so already; Too hasty to wait till Art's ripe fruit should drop, He must pelt down an unripe and colicky crop; Who took to the law, and had this sterling plea for it, It required him to quarrel, and paid him a fee for it; A man who's made less than he might have, because He always has thought himself more than he was,-- 970 Who, with very good natural gifts as a bard, Broke the strings of his lyre out by striking too hard, And cracked half the notes of a truly fine voice, Because song drew less instant attention than noise. Ah, men do not know how much strength is in poise, That he goes the farthest who goes far enough, And that all beyond that is just bother and stuff. No vain man matures, he makes too much new wood; His blooms are too thick for the fruit to be good; 'Tis the modest man ripens, 'tis he that achieves, 980 Just what's needed of sunshine and shade he receives; Grapes, to mellow, require the cool dark of their leaves; Neal wants balance; he throws his mind always too far, Whisking out flocks of comets, but never a star; He has so much muscle, and loves so to show it, That he strips himself naked to prove he's a poet, And, to show he could leap Art's wide ditch, if he tried, Jumps clean o'er it, and into the hedge t'other side. He has strength, but there's nothing about him in keeping; One gets surelier onward by walking than leaping; 990 He has used his own sinews himself to distress, And had done vastly more had he done vastly less; In letters, too soon is as bad as too late; Could he only have waited he might have been great; But he plumped into Helicon up to the waist, And muddied the stream ere he took his first taste. 'There is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking and rare That you hardly at first see the strength that is there; A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet, So earnest, so graceful, so lithe and so fleet, 1000 Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet; 'Tis as if a rough oak that for ages had stood, With his gnarled bony branches like ribs of the wood, Should bloom, after cycles of struggle and scathe, With a single anemone trembly and rathe; His strength is so tender, his wildness so meek, That a suitable parallel sets one to seek,-- He's a John Bunyan Fouque, a Puritan Tieck; When Nature was shaping him, clay was not granted For making so full-sized a man as she wanted, 1010 So, to fill out her model, a little she spared From some finer-grained stuff for a woman prepared, And she could not have hit a more excellent plan For making him fully and perfectly man. The success of her scheme gave her so much delight, That she tried it again, shortly after, in Dwight; Only, while she was kneading and shaping the clay, She sang to her work in her sweet childish way, And found, when she'd put the last touch to his soul, That the music had somehow got mixed with the whole. 1020 'Here's Cooper, who's written six volumes to show He's as good as a lord: well, let's grant that he's so; If a person prefer that description of praise, Why, a coronet's certainly cheaper than bays; But he need take no pains to convince us he's not (As his enemies say) the American Scott. Choose any twelve men, and let C. read aloud That one of his novels of which he's most proud, And I'd lay any bet that, without ever quitting Their box, they'd be all, to a man, for acquitting. 1030 He has drawn you one character, though, that is new, One wildflower he's plucked that is wet with the dew Of this fresh Western world, and, the thing not to mince, He has done naught but copy it ill ever since; His Indians, with proper respect be it said, Are just Natty Bumppo, daubed over with red, And his very Long Toms are the same useful Nat, Rigged up in duck pants and a sou'wester hat (Though once in a Coffin, a good chance was found To have slipped the old fellow away underground). 1040 All his other men-figures are clothes upon sticks, The _dernière chemise_ of a man in a fix (As a captain besieged, when his garrison's small, Sets up caps upon poles to be seen o'er the wall); And the women he draws from one model don't vary. All sappy as maples and flat as a prairie. When a character's wanted, he goes to the task As a cooper would do in composing a cask; He picks out the staves, of their qualities heedful, Just hoops them together as tight as is needful, 1050 And, if the best fortune should crown the attempt, he Has made at the most something wooden and empty. 'Don't suppose I would underrate Cooper's abilities; If I thought you'd do that, I should feel very ill at ease; The men who have given to _one_ character life And objective existence are not very rife; You may number them all, both prose-writers and singers, Without overrunning the bounds of your fingers, And Natty won't go to oblivion quicker Than Adams the parson or Primrose the vicar. 1060 'There is one thing in Cooper I like, too, and that is That on manners he lectures his countrymen gratis; Not precisely so either, because, for a rarity, He is paid for his tickets in unpopularity. Now he may overcharge his American pictures, But you'll grant there's a good deal of truth in his strictures; And I honor the man who is willing to sink Half his present repute for the freedom to think, And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, Will risk t'other half for the freedom to speak, 1070 Caring naught for what vengeance the mob has in store, Let that mob be the upper ten thousand or lower. 'There are truths you Americans need to be told, And it never'll refute them to swagger and scold; John Bull, looking o'er the Atlantic, in choler At your aptness for trade, says you worship the dollar; But to scorn such eye-dollar-try's what very few do, And John goes to that church as often as you do, No matter what John says, don't try to outcrow him, 'Tis enough to go quietly on and outgrow him; 1080 Like most fathers, Bull hates to see Number One Displacing himself in the mind of his son, And detests the same faults in himself he'd neglected When he sees them again in his child's glass reflected; To love one another you're too like by half; If he is a bull, you're a pretty stout calf, And tear your own pasture for naught but to show What a nice pair of horns you're beginning to grow. 'There are one or two things I should just like to hint, For you don't often get the truth told you in print; 1090 The most of you (this is what strikes all beholders) Have a mental and physical stoop in the shoulders; Though you ought to be free as the winds and the waves, You've the gait and the manners of runaway slaves; Though you brag of your New World, you don't half believe in it; And as much of the Old as is possible weave in it; Your goddess of freedom, a tight, buxom girl, With lips like a cherry and teeth like a pearl, With eyes bold as Herë's, and hair floating free, And full of the sun as the spray of the sea, 1100 Who can sing at a husking or romp at a shearing, Who can trip through the forests alone without fearing, Who can drive home the cows with a song through the grass, Keeps glancing aside into Europe's cracked glass. Hides her red hands in gloves, pinches up her lithe waist, And makes herself wretched with transmarine taste; She loses her fresh country charm when she takes Any mirror except her own rivers and lakes. 'You steal Englishmen's books and think Englishmen's thought, With their salt on her tail your wild eagle is caught; 1110 Your literature suits its each whisper and motion To what will be thought of it over the ocean; The cast clothes of Europe your statesmanship tries And mumbles again the old blarneys and lies;-- Forget Europe wholly, your veins throb with blood, To which the dull current in hers is but mud: Let her sneer, let her say your experiment fails, In her voice there's a tremble e'en now while she rails, And your shore will soon be in the nature of things Covered thick with gilt drift-wood of castaway kings, 1120 Where alone, as it were in a Longfellow's Waif, Her fugitive pieces will find themselves safe. O my friends, thank your god, if you have one, that he 'Twixt the Old World and you set the gulf of a sea; Be strong-backed, brown-handed, upright as your pines, By the scale of a hemisphere shape your designs, Be true to yourselves and this new nineteenth age, As a statue by Powers, or a picture by Page, Plough, sail, forge, build, carve, paint, make all over new, To your own New-World instincts contrive to be true, 1130 Keep your ears open wide to the Future's first call, Be whatever you will, but yourselves first of all, Stand fronting the dawn on Toil's heaven-scaling peaks, And become my new race of more practical Greeks.-- Hem! your likeness at present, I shudder to tell o't, Is that you have your slaves, and the Greek had his helot.' Here a gentleman present, who had in his attic More pepper than brains, shrieked, 'The man's a fanatic, I'm a capital tailor with warm tar and feathers, And will make him a suit that'll serve in all weathers; 1140 But we'll argue the point first, I'm willing to reason 't, Palaver before condemnation's but decent: So, through my humble person, Humanity begs Of the friends of true freedom a loan of bad eggs.' But Apollo let one such a look of his show forth As when [Greek: aeie nukti eoikios], and so forth, And the gentleman somehow slunk out of the way, But, as he was going, gained courage to say,-- 'At slavery in the abstract my whole soul rebels, I am as strongly opposed to 't as any one else.' 1150 'Ay, no doubt, but whenever I've happened to meet With a wrong or a crime, it is always concrete,' Answered Phoebus severely; then turning to us, 'The mistake of such fellows as just made the fuss Is only in taking a great busy nation For a part of their pitiful cotton-plantation.-- But there comes Miranda, Zeus! where shall I flee to? She has such a penchant for bothering me too! She always keeps asking if I don't observe a Particular likeness 'twixt her and Minerva; 1160 She tells me my efforts in verse are quite clever;-- She's been travelling now, and will be worse than ever; One would think, though, a sharp-sighted noter she'd be Of all that's worth mentioning over the sea, For a woman must surely see well, if she try, The whole of whose being's a capital I: She will take an old notion, and make it her own, By saying it o'er in her Sibylline tone, Or persuade you 'tis something tremendously deep, By repeating it so as to put you to sleep; 1170 And she well may defy any mortal to see through it, When once she has mixed up her infinite _me_ through it. There is one thing she owns in her own single right, It is native and genuine--namely, her spite; Though, when acting as censor, she privately blows A censer of vanity 'neath her own nose.' Here Miranda came up, and said, 'Phoebus! you know That the Infinite Soul has its infinite woe, As I ought to know, having lived cheek by jowl, Since the day I was born, with the Infinite Soul; 1180 I myself introduced, I myself, I alone, To my Land's better life authors solely my own, Who the sad heart of earth on their shoulders have taken, Whose works sound a depth by Life's quiet unshaken, Such as Shakespeare, for instance, the Bible, and Bacon, Not to mention my own works; Time's nadir is fleet, And, as for myself, I'm quite out of conceit'-- 'Quite out of conceit! I'm enchanted to hear it,' Cried Apollo aside. 'Who'd have thought she was near it? To be sure, one is apt to exhaust those commodities 1190 One uses too fast, yet in this case as odd it is As if Neptune should say to his turbots and whitings, "I'm as much out of salt as Miranda's own writings" (Which, as she in her own happy manner has said, Sound a depth, for 'tis one of the functions of lead). She often has asked me if I could not find A place somewhere near me that suited her mind; I know but a single one vacant, which she, With her rare talent that way, would fit to a T. And it would not imply any pause or cessation 1200 In the work she esteems her peculiar vocation,-- She may enter on duty to-day, if she chooses, And remain Tiring-woman for life to the Muses.' Miranda meanwhile has succeeded in driving Up into a corner, in spite of their striving, A small flock of terrified victims, and there, With an I-turn-the-crank-of-the-Universe air And a tone which, at least to _my_ fancy, appears Not so much to be entering as boxing your ears, Is unfolding a tale (of herself, I surmise, 1210 For 'tis dotted as thick as a peacock's with I's), _Apropos_ of Miranda, I'll rest on my oars And drift through a trifling digression on bores, For, though not wearing ear-rings _in more majorum_, Our ears are kept bored just as if we still wore 'em. There was one feudal custom worth keeping, at least, Roasted bores made a part of each well-ordered feast, And of all quiet pleasures the very _ne plus_ Was in hunting wild bores as the tame ones hunt us. Archæologians, I know, who have personal fears 1220 Of this wise application of hounds and of spears, Have tried to make out, with a zeal more than wonted, 'Twas a kind of wild swine that our ancestors hunted; But I'll never believe that the age which has strewn Europe o'er with cathedrals, and otherwise shown That it knew what was what, could by chance not have known (Spending, too, its chief time with its buff on, no doubt) Which beast 'twould improve the world most to thin out. I divide bores myself, in the manner of rifles, Into two great divisions, regardless of trifles:-- 1230 There's your smooth-bore and screw-bore, who do not much vary In the weight of cold lead they respectively carry. The smooth-bore is one in whose essence the mind Not a corner nor cranny to cling by can find; You feel as in nightmares sometimes, when you slip Down a steep slated roof, where there's nothing to grip; You slide and you slide, the blank horror increases,-- You had rather by far be at once smashed to pieces; You fancy a whirlpool below white and frothing, And finally drop off and light upon--nothing. 1240 The screw-bore has twists in him, faint predilections For going just wrong in the tritest directions; When he's wrong he is flat, when he's right he can't show it, He'll tell you what Snooks said about the new poet,[3] Or how Fogrum was outraged by Tennyson's Princess; He has spent all his spare time and intellect since his Birth in perusing, on each art and science, Just the books in which no one puts any reliance, And though _nemo_, we're told, _horis omnibus sapit_, The rule will not fit him, however you shape it, 1250 For he has a perennial foison of sappiness; He has just enough force to spoil half your day's happiness, And to make him a sort of mosquito to be with, But just not enough to dispute or agree with. These sketches I made (not to be too explicit) From two honest fellows who made me a visit, And broke, like the tale of the Bear and the Fiddle, My reflections on Halleck short off by the middle; I sha'n't now go into the subject more deeply, For I notice that some of my readers look sleep'ly; 1260 I will barely remark that, 'mongst civilized nations, There's none that displays more exemplary patience Under all sorts of boring, at all sorts of hours, From all sorts of desperate persons, than ours. Not to speak of our papers, our State legislatures, And other such trials for sensitive natures, Just look for a moment at Congress,--appalled, My fancy shrinks back from the phantom it called; Why, there's scarcely a member unworthy to frown 'Neath what Fourier nicknames the Boreal crown; 1270 Only think what that infinite bore-pow'r could do If applied with a utilitarian view; Suppose, for example, we shipped it with care To Sahara's great desert and let it bore there; If they held one short session and did nothing else, They'd fill the whole waste with Artesian wells. But 'tis time now with pen phonographic to follow Through some more of his sketches our laughing Apollo:-- 'There comes Harry Franco, and, as he draws near, You find that's a smile which you took for a sneer; 1280 One half of him contradicts t'other; his wont Is to say very sharp things and do very blunt; His manner's as hard as his feelings are tender, And a _sortie_ he'll make when he means to surrender; He's in joke half the time when he seems to be sternest, When he seems to be joking, be sure he's in earnest; He has common sense in a way that's uncommon, Hates humbug and cant, loves his friends like a woman, Builds his dislikes of cards and his friendships of oak, Loves a prejudice better than aught but a joke, 1290 Is half upright Quaker, half downright Come-outer, Loves Freedom too well to go stark mad about her, Quite artless himself, is a lover of Art, Shuts you out of his secrets, and into his heart, And though not a poet, yet all must admire In his letters of Pinto his skill on the liar. 'There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge, Three fifths of him genius and two fifths sheer fudge, Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters, In a way to make people of common sense damn metres, 1300 Who has written some things quite the best of their kind, But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the mind, Who--But hey-day! What's this? Messieurs Mathews and Poe, You mustn't fling mud-balls at Longfellow so, Does it make a man worse that his character's such As to make his friends love him (as you think) too much? Why, there is not a bard at this moment alive More willing than he that his fellows should thrive; While you are abusing him thus, even now He would help either one of you out of a slough; 1310 You may say that he's smooth and all that till you're hoarse, But remember that elegance also is force; After polishing granite as much as you will, The heart keeps its tough old persistency still; Deduct all you can, _that_ still keeps you at bay; Why, he'll live till men weary of Collins and Gray. I'm not over-fond of Greek metres in English, To me rhyme's a gain, so it be not too jinglish, And your modern hexameter verses are no more Like Greek ones than sleek Mr. Pope is like Homer; 1320 As the roar of the sea to the coo of a pigeon is, So, compared to your moderns, sounds old Melesigenes; I may be too partial, the reason, perhaps, o't is That I've heard the old blind man recite his own rhapsodies, And my ear with that music impregnate may be, Like the poor exiled shell with the soul of the sea, Or as one can't bear Strauss when his nature is cloven To its deeps within deeps by the stroke of Beethoven; But, set that aside, and 'tis truth that I speak, Had Theocritus written in English, not Greek, 1330 I believe that his exquisite sense would scarce change a line In that rare, tender, virgin-like pastoral Evangeline. That's not ancient nor modern, its place is apart Where time has no sway, in the realm of pure Art, 'Tis a shrine of retreat from Earth's hubbub and strife As quiet and chaste as the author's own life. There comes Philothea, her face all aglow, She has just been dividing some poor creature's woe, And can't tell which pleases her most, to relieve His want, or his story to hear and believe; 1340 No doubt against many deep griefs she prevails, For her ear is the refuge of destitute tales; She knows well that silence is sorrow's best food, And that talking draws off from the heart its black blood, So she'll listen with patience and let you unfold Your bundle of rags as 'twere pure cloth of gold, Which, indeed, it all turns to as soon as she's touched it, And (to borrow a phrase from the nursery) _muched_ it; She has such a musical taste, she will go Any distance to hear one who draws a long bow; 1350 She will swallow a wonder by mere might and main, And thinks it Geometry's fault if she's fain To consider things flat, inasmuch as they're plain; Facts with her are accomplished, as Frenchmen would say-- They will prove all she wishes them to either way,-- And, as fact lies on this side or that, we must try, If we're seeking the truth, to find where it don't lie; I was telling her once of a marvellous aloe That for thousands of years had looked spindling and sallow, And, though nursed by the fruitfullest powers of mud, 1360 Had never vouchsafed e'en so much as a bud, Till its owner remarked (as a sailor, you know, Often will in a calm) that it never would blow, For he wished to exhibit the plant, and designed That its blowing should help him in raising the wind; At last it was told him that if he should water Its roots with the blood of his unmarried daughter (Who was born, as her mother, a Calvinist, said, With William Law's serious caul on her head), It would blow as the obstinate breeze did when by a 1370 Like decree of her father died Iphigenia; At first he declared he himself would be blowed Ere his conscience with such a foul crime he would load, But the thought, coming oft, grew less dark than before, And he mused, as each creditor knocked at his door, If _this_ were but done they would dun me no more; I told Philothea his struggles and doubts, And how he considered the ins and the outs Of the visions he had, and the dreadful dyspepsy, How he went to the seër that lives at Po'keepsie, 1380 How the seër advised him to sleep on it first, And to read his big volume in case of the worst, And further advised he should pay him five dollars For writing [Old English: Hum Hum] on his wristbands and collars; Three years and ten days these dark words he had studied When the daughter was missed, and the aloe had budded; I told how he watched it grow large and more large, And wondered how much for the show he should charge,-- She had listened with utter indifference to this, till I told how it bloomed, and, discharging its pistil 1390 With an aim the Eumenides dictated, shot The botanical filicide dead on the spot; It had blown, but he reaped not his horrible gains, For it blew with such force as to blow out his brains, And the crime was blown also, because on the wad, Which was paper, was writ "Visitation of God," As well as a thrilling account of the deed Which the coroner kindly allowed me to read. 'Well, my friend took this story up just, to be sure, 1399 As one might a poor foundling that's laid at one's door; She combed it and washed it and clothed it and fed it, And as if 'twere her own child most tenderly bred it, Laid the scene (of the legend, I mean) far away a- -mong the green vales underneath Himalaya, And by artist-like touches, laid on here and there, Made the whole thing so touching, I frankly declare I have read it all thrice, and, perhaps I am weak, But I found every time there were tears on my cheek. 'The pole, science tells us, the magnet controls, But she is a magnet to emigrant Poles, 1410 And folks with a mission that nobody knows Throng thickly about her as bees round a rose; She can fill up the _carets_ in such, make their scope Converge to some focus of rational hope, And, with sympathies fresh as the morning, their gall Can transmute into honey,--but this is not all; Not only for those she has solace, oh say, Vice's desperate nursling adrift in Broadway, Who clingest, with all that is left of thee human, To the last slender spar from the wreck of the woman, 1420 Hast thou not found one shore where those tired drooping feet Could reach firm mother-earth, one full heart on whose beat The soothed head in silence reposing could hear The chimes of far childhood throb back on the ear? Ah, there's many a beam from the fountain of day That, to reach us unclouded, must pass, on its way, Through the soul of a woman, and hers is wide ope To the influence of Heaven as the blue eyes of Hope; Yes, a great heart is hers, one that dares to go in To the prison, the slave-hut, the alleys of sin, 1430 And to bring into each, or to find there, some line Of the never completely out-trampled divine; If her heart at high floods swamps her brain now and then, 'Tis but richer for that when the tide ebbs agen, As, after old Nile has subsided, his plain Overflows with a second broad deluge of grain; What a wealth would it tiring to the narrow and sour Could they be as a Child but for one little hour! 'What! Irving? thrice welcome, warm heart and fine brain, You bring back the happiest spirit from Spain, 1440 And the gravest sweet humor, that ever were there Since Cervantes met death in his gentle despair; Nay, don't be embarrassed, nor look so beseeching, I sha'n't run directly against my own preaching, And, having just laughed at their Raphaels and Dantes, Go to setting you up beside matchless Cervantes; But allow me to speak what I honestly feel,-- To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele, Throw in all of Addison, _minus_ the chill, 1449 With the whole of that partnership's stock and good-will, Mix well, and while stirring, hum o'er, as a spell, The fine _old_ English Gentleman, simmer it well, Sweeten just to your own private liking, then strain, That only the finest and clearest remain, Let it stand out of doors till a soul it receives From the warm lazy sun loitering down through green leaves, And you'll find a choice nature, not wholly deserving A name either English or Yankee,--just Irving. 'There goes,--but _stet nominis umbra_,--his name You'll be glad enough, some day or other, to claim, 1460 And will all crowd about him and swear that you knew him If some English critic should chance to review him. The old _porcos ante ne projiciatis_ MARGARITAS, for him you have verified gratis; What matters his name? Why, it may be Sylvester, Judd, Junior, or Junius, Ulysses, or Nestor, For aught _I_ know or care; 'tis enough that I look On the author of "Margaret," the first Yankee book With the _soul_ of Down East in 't, and things farther East, As far as the threshold of morning, at least, 1470 Where awaits the fair dawn of the simple and true, Of the day that comes slowly to make all things new. 'T has a smack of pine woods, of bare field and bleak hill, Such as only the breed of the Mayflower could till; The Puritan's shown in it, tough to the core, Such as prayed, smiting Agag on red Marston Moor: With an unwilling humor, half choked by the drouth In brown hollows about the inhospitable mouth; With a soul full of poetry, though it has qualms About finding a happiness out of the Psalms; 1480 Full of tenderness, too, though it shrinks in the dark, Hamadryad-like, under the coarse, shaggy bark; That sees visions, knows wrestlings of God with the Will, And has its own Sinais and thunderings still.' Here, 'Forgive me, Apollo,' I cried, 'while I pour My heart out to my birthplace: O loved more and more Dear Baystate, from whose rocky bosom thy sons Should suck milk, strong-will-giving, brave, such as runs In the veins of old Greylock--who is it that dares 1489 Call thee pedler, a soul wrapped in bank-books and shares? It is false! She's a Poet! I see, as I write, Along the far railroad the steam-snake glide white, The cataract-throb of her mill-hearts, I hear, The swift strokes of trip-hammers weary my ear, Sledges ring upon anvils, through logs the saw screams, Blocks swing to their place, beetles drive home the beams:-- It is songs such as these that she croons to the din Of her fast-flying shuttles, year out and year in, While from earth's farthest corner there comes not a breeze But wafts her the buzz of her gold-gleaning bees: 1500 What though those horn hands have as yet found small time For painting and sculpture and music and rhyme? These will come in due order; the need that pressed sorest Was to vanquish the seasons, the ocean, the forest, To bridle and harness the rivers, the steam, Making those whirl her mill-wheels, this tug in her team, To vassalize old tyrant Winter, and make Him delve surlily for her on river and lake;-- When this New World was parted, she strove not to shirk Her lot in the heirdom, the tough, silent Work, 1510 The hero-share ever from Herakles down To Odin, the Earth's iron sceptre and crown: Yes, thou dear, noble Mother! if ever men's praise Could be claimed for creating heroical lays, Thou hast won it; if ever the laurel divine Crowned the Maker and Builder, that glory is thine! Thy songs are right epic, they tell how this rude Rock-rib of our earth here was tamed and subdued; Thou hast written them plain on the face of the planet In brave, deathless letters of iron and granite; 1520 Thou hast printed them deep for all time; they are set From the same runic type-fount and alphabet With thy stout Berkshire hills and the arms of thy Bay,-- They are staves from the burly old Mayflower lay. If the drones of the Old World, in querulous ease, Ask thy Art and thy Letters, point proudly to these, Or, if they deny these are Letters and Art, Toil on with the same old invincible heart; Thou art rearing the pedestal broad-based and grand Whereon the fair shapes of the Artist shall stand, 1530 And creating, through labors undaunted and long, The theme for all Sculpture and Painting and Song! 'But my good mother Baystate wants no praise of mine, She learned from _her_ mother a precept divine About something that butters no parsnips, her _forte_ In another direction lies, work is her sport (Though she'll curtsey and set her cap straight, that she will, If you talk about Plymouth and red Bunker's hill). Dear, notable goodwife! by this time of night, Her hearth is swept neatly, her fire burning bright, 1540 And she sits in a chair (of home plan and make) rocking, Musing much, all the while, as she darns on a stocking, Whether turkeys will come pretty high next Thanksgiving, Whether flour'll be so dear, for, as sure as she's living, She will use rye-and-injun then, whether the pig By this time ain't got pretty tolerable big, And whether to sell it outright will be best, Or to smoke hams and shoulders and salt down the rest,-- At this minute, she'd swop all my verses, ah, cruel! For the last patent stove that is saving of fuel; 1550 So I'll just let Apollo go on, for his phiz Shows I've kept him awaiting too long as it is.' 'If our friend, there, who seems a reporter, is done With his burst of emotion, why, I will go on,' Said Apollo; some smiled, and, indeed, I must own There was something sarcastic, perhaps, in his tone;-- 'There's Holmes, who is matchless among you for wit; A Leyden-jar always full-charged, from which flit The electrical tingles of hit after hit; In long poems 'tis painful sometimes, and invites 1560 A thought of the way the new Telegraph writes, Which pricks down its little sharp sentences spitefully As if you got more than you'd title to rightfully, And you find yourself hoping its wild father Lightning Would flame in for a second and give you a fright'ning. He has perfect sway of what I call a sham metre, But many admire it, the English pentameter, And Campbell, I think, wrote most commonly worse, With less nerve, swing, and fire in the same kind of verse, Nor e'er achieved aught in't so worthy of praise 1570 As the tribute of Holmes to the grand _Marseillaise_. You went crazy last year over Bulwer's New Timon;-- Why, if B., to the day of his dying, should rhyme on, Heaping verses on verses and tomes upon tomes, He could ne'er reach the best point and vigor of Holmes. His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satiric In a measure so kindly, you doubt if the toes That are trodden upon are your own or your foes'. 'There is Lowell, who's striving Parnassus to climb 1580 With a whole bale of _isms_ tied together with rhyme, He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders, But he can't with that bundle he has on his shoulders, The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preaching; His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well, But he'd rather by half make a drum of the shell, And rattle away till he's old as Methusalem, At the head of a march to the last new Jerusalem. 1589 'There goes Halleck, whose Fanny's a pseudo Don Juan, With the wickedness out that gave salt to the true one, He's a wit, though, I hear, of the very first order, And once made a pun on the words soft Recorder; More than this, he's a very great poet, I'm told, And has had his works published in crimson and gold, With something they call "Illustrations," to wit, Like those with which Chapman obscured Holy Writ,[4] Which are said to illustrate, because, as I view it, Like _lucus a non_, they precisely don't do it; Let a man who can write what himself understands 1600 Keep clear, if he can, of designing men's hands, Who bury the sense, if there's any worth having, And then very honestly call it engraving, But, to quit _badinage_, which there isn't much wit in, Halleck's better, I doubt not, than all he has written; In his verse a clear glimpse you will frequently find, If not of a great, of a fortunate mind, Which contrives to be true to its natural loves In a world of back-offices, ledgers, and stoves. When his heart breaks away from the brokers and banks, 1610 And kneels in his own private shrine to give thanks, There's a genial manliness in him that earns Our sincerest respect (read, for instance, his "Burns"), And we can't but regret (seek excuse where we may) That so much of a man has been peddled away. 'But what's that? a mass-meeting? No, there come in lots The American Bulwers, Disraelis, and Scotts, And in short the American everything elses, Each charging the others with envies and jealousies;-- By the way, 'tis a fact that displays what profusions 1620 Of all kinds of greatness bless free institutions, That while the Old World has produced barely eight Of such poets as all men agree to call great, And of other great characters hardly a score (One might safely say less than that rather than more), With you every year a whole crop is begotten, They're as much of a staple as corn is, or cotton; Why, there's scarcely a huddle of log-huts and shanties That has not brought forth its own Miltons and Dantes; 1629 I myself know ten Byrons, one Coleridge, three Shelleys, Two Raphaels, six Titians (I think), one Apelles, Leonardos and Rubenses plenty as lichens, One (but that one is plenty) American Dickens, A whole flock of Lambs, any number of Tennysons,-- In short, if a man has the luck to have any sons, He may feel pretty certain that one out of twain Will be some very great person over again. There is one inconvenience in all this, which lies In the fact that by contrast we estimate size,[5] And, where there are none except Titans, great stature 1640 Is only the normal proceeding of nature. What puff the strained sails of your praise will you furl at, if The calmest degree that you know is superlative? At Rome, all whom Charon took into his wherry must, As a matter of course, be well _issimust_ and _errimust_, A Greek, too, could feel, while in that famous boat he tost, That his friends would take care he was [Greek: istost] and [Greek: otatost], And formerly we, as through graveyards we past, Thought the world went from bad to worst fearfully fast; Let us glance for a moment, 'tis well worth the pains, 1650 And note what an average graveyard contains; There lie levellers levelled, duns done up themselves, There are booksellers finally laid on their shelves, Horizontally there lie upright politicians, Dose-a-dose with their patients sleep faultless physicians, There are slave-drivers quietly whipped under ground, There bookbinders, done up in boards, are fast bound, There card-players wait till the last trump be played, There all the choice spirits get finally laid, There the babe that's unborn is supplied with a berth, 1660 There men without legs get their six feet of earth, There lawyers repose, each wrapped up in his case, There seekers of office are sure of a place, There defendant and plaintiff get equally cast, There shoemakers quietly stick to the last, There brokers at length become silent as stocks, There stage-drivers sleep without quitting their box, And so forth and so forth and so forth and so on, With this kind of stuff one might endlessly go on; To come to the point, I may safely assert you 1670 Will find in each yard every cardinal virtue;[6] Each has six truest patriots: four discoverers of ether, Who never had thought on 't nor mentioned it either; Ten poets, the greatest who ever wrote rhyme: Two hundred and forty first men of their time: One person whose portrait just gave the least hint Its original had a most horrible squint: One critic, most (what do they call it?) reflective, Who never had used the phrase ob-or subjective: Forty fathers of Freedom, of whom twenty bred 1680 Their sons for the rice-swamps, at so much a head, And their daughters for--faugh! thirty mothers of Gracchi: Non-resistants who gave many a spiritual blackeye: Eight true friends of their kind, one of whom was a jailer: Four captains almost as astounding as Taylor: Two dozen of Italy's exiles who shoot us his Kaisership daily, stern pen-and-ink Brutuses, Who, in Yankee back-parlors, with crucified smile,[7] Mount serenely their country's funereal pile: Ninety-nine Irish heroes, ferocious rebellers 1690 'Gainst the Saxon in cis-marine garrets and cellars, Who shake their dread fists o'er the sea and all that,-- As long as a copper drops into the hat: Nine hundred Teutonic republicans stark From Vaterland's battle just won--in the Park, Who the happy profession of martyrdom take Whenever it gives them a chance at a steak; Sixty-two second Washingtons: two or three Jacksons: And so many everythings else that it racks one's Poor memory too much to continue the list, 1700 Especially now they no longer exist;-- I would merely observe that you've taken to giving The puffs that belong to the dead to the living, And that somehow your trump-of-contemporary-doom's tones Is tuned after old dedications and tombstones.' Here the critic came in and a thistle presented--[8] From a frown to a smile the god's features relented, As he stared at his envoy, who, swelling with pride, To the god's asking look, nothing daunted, replied,-- 'You're surprised, I suppose, I was absent so long, 1710 But your godship respecting the lilies was wrong; I hunted the garden from one end to t'other, And got no reward but vexation and bother, Till, tossed out with weeds in a corner to wither, This one lily I found and made haste to bring hither.' 'Did he think I had given him a book to review? I ought to have known what the fellow would do,' Muttered Phoebus aside, 'for a thistle will pass Beyond doubt for the queen of all flowers with an ass; He has chosen in just the same way as he'd choose 1720 His specimens out of the books he reviews; And now, as this offers an excellent text, I'll give 'em some brief hints on criticism next.' So, musing a moment, he turned to the crowd, And, clearing his voice, spoke as follows aloud:-- 'My friends, in the happier days of the muse, We were luckily free from such things as reviews; Then naught came between with its fog to make clearer The heart of the poet to that of his hearer; Then the poet brought heaven to the people, and they 1730 Felt that they, too, were poets in hearing his lay; Then the poet was prophet, the past in his soul Precreated the future, both parts of one whole; Then for him there was nothing too great or too small, For one natural deity sanctified all; Then the bard owned no clipper and meter of moods Save the spirit of silence that hovers and broods O'er the seas and the mountains, the rivers and woods; He asked not earth's verdict, forgetting the clods, His soul soared and sang to an audience of gods; 1740 'Twas for them that he measured the thought and the line, And shaped for their vision the perfect design, With as glorious a foresight, a balance as true, As swung out the worlds in the infinite blue; Then a glory and greatness invested man's heart, The universal, which now stands estranged and apart, In the free individual moulded, was Art; Then the forms of the Artist seemed thrilled with desire For something as yet unattained, fuller, higher, As once with her lips, lifted hands, and eyes listening, 1750 And her whole upward soul in her countenance glistening, Eurydice stood--like a beacon unfired, Which, once touched with flame, will leap heav'nward inspired-- And waited with answering kindle to mark The first gleam of Orpheus that pained the red Dark. Then painting, song, sculpture did more than relieve The need that men feel to create and believe, And as, in all beauty, who listens with love Hears these words oft repeated--"beyond and above," So these seemed to be but the visible sign 1760 Of the grasp of the soul after things more divine; They were ladders the Artist erected to climb O'er the narrow horizon of space and of time, And we see there the footsteps by which men had gained To the one rapturous glimpse of the never-attained, As shepherds could erst sometimes trace in the sod The last spurning print of a sky-cleaving god. 'But now, on the poet's dis-privacied moods With _do this_ and _do that_ the pert critic intrudes; While he thinks he's been barely fulfilling his duty 1770 To interpret 'twixt men and their own sense of beauty. And has striven, while others sought honor or pelf, To make his kind happy as he was himself, He finds he's been guilty of horrid offences In all kinds of moods, numbers, genders, and tenses; He's been _ob_ and _sub_jective, what Kettle calls Pot, Precisely, at all events, what he ought not, _You have done this,_ says one judge; _done that,_ says another; _You should have done this,_ grumbles one; _that,_ says t'other; Never mind what he touches, one shrieks out _Taboo!_ 1780 And while he is wondering what he shall do, Since each suggests opposite topics for song, They all shout together _you're right!_ and _you're wrong!_ 'Nature fits all her children with something to do, He who would write and can't write can surely review, Can set up a small booth as critic and sell us his Petty conceit and his pettier jealousies; Thus a lawyer's apprentice, just out of his teens, Will do for the Jeffrey of six magazines; Having read Johnson's lives of the poets half through, 1790 There's nothing on earth he's not competent to; He reviews with as much nonchalance as he whistles,-- He goes through a book and just picks out the thistles; It matters not whether he blame or commend, If he's bad as a foe, he's far worse as a friend: Let an author but write what's above his poor scope, He goes to work gravely and twists up a rope, And, inviting the world to see punishment done, Hangs himself up to bleach in the wind and the sun; 'Tis delightful to see, when a man comes along 1800 Who has anything in him peculiar and strong, Every cockboat that swims clear its fierce (pop) gundeck at him, And make as he passes its ludicrous Peck at him--' Here Miranda came up and began, 'As to that--' Apollo at once seized his gloves, cane, and hat, And, seeing the place getting rapidly cleared, I too snatched my notes and forthwith disappeared. THE UNHAPPY LOT OF MR. KNOTT PART I SHOWING HOW HE BUILT HIS HOUSE AND HIS WIFE MOVED INTO IT My worthy friend, A. Gordon Knott, From business snug withdrawn, Was much contented with a lot That would contain a Tudor cot 'Twixt twelve feet square of garden-plot, And twelve feet more of lawn. He had laid business on the shelf To give his taste expansion, And, since no man, retired with pelf, The building mania can shun, 10 Knott, being middle-aged himself, Resolved to build (unhappy elf!) A mediæval mansion. He called an architect in counsel; 'I want,' said he, 'a--you know what, (You are a builder, I am Knott) A thing complete from chimney-pot Down to the very grounsel; Here's a half-acre of good land; Just have it nicely mapped and planned 20 And make your workmen drive on; Meadow there is, and upland too, And I should like a water-view, D'you think you could contrive one? (Perhaps the pump and trough would do, If painted a judicious blue?) The woodland I've attended to;' [He meant three pines stuck up askew, Two dead ones and a live one.] 'A pocket-full of rocks 'twould take 30 To build a house of freestone, But then it is not hard to make What nowadays is _the_ stone; The cunning painter in a trice Your house's outside petrifies, And people think it very gneiss Without inquiring deeper; _My_ money never shall be thrown Away on such a deal of stone, When stone of deal is cheaper.' 40 And so the greenest of antiques Was reared for Knott to dwell in: The architect worked hard for weeks In venting all his private peaks Upon the roof, whose crop of leaks Had satisfied Fluellen; Whatever anybody had Out of the common, good or bad, Knott had it all worked well in; A donjon-keep, where clothes might dry, 50 A porter's lodge that was a sty, A campanile slim and high, Too small to hang a bell in; All up and down and here and there, With Lord-knows-whats of round and square Stuck on at random everywhere,-- It was a house to make one stare, All corners and all gables; Like dogs let loose upon a bear, Ten emulous styles _staboyed_ with care, 60 The whole among them seemed to tear, And all the oddities to spare Were set upon the stables. Knott was delighted with a pile Approved by fashion's leaders: (Only he made the builder smile, By asking every little while, Why that was called the Twodoor style, Which certainly had _three_ doors?) Yet better for this luckless man 70 If he had put a downright ban Upon the thing _in limine;_ For, though to quit affairs his plan, Ere many days, poor Knott began Perforce accepting draughts, that ran All ways--except up chimney; The house, though painted stone to mock, With nice white lines round every block, Some trepidation stood in, When tempests (with petrific shock, 80 So to speak,) made it really rock, Though not a whit less wooden; And painted stone, howe'er well done, Will not take in the prodigal sun Whose beams are never quite at one With our terrestrial lumber; So the wood shrank around the knots, And gaped in disconcerting spots, And there were lots of dots and rots And crannies without number, 90 Wherethrough, as you may well presume, The wind, like water through a flume, Came rushing in ecstatic, Leaving, in all three floors, no room That was not a rheumatic; And, what with points and squares and rounds Grown shaky on their poises, The house at nights was full of pounds, Thumps, bumps, creaks, scratchings, raps--till--'Zounds!' Cried Knott, 'this goes beyond all bounds; 100 I do not deal in tongues and sounds, Nor have I let my house and grounds To a family of Noyeses!' But, though Knott's house was full of airs, _He_ had but one,--a daughter; And, as he owned much stocks and shares, Many who wished to render theirs Such vain, unsatisfying cares, And needed wives to sew their tears, In matrimony sought her; 110 They vowed her gold they wanted not, Their faith would never falter, They longed to tie this single Knott In the Hymeneal halter; So daily at the door they rang, Cards for the belle delivering, Or in the choir at her they sang, Achieving such a rapturous twang As set her nerves ashivering. Now Knott had quite made up his mind 120 That Colonel Jones should have her; No beauty he, but oft we find Sweet kernels 'neath a roughish rind, So hoped his Jenny'd be resigned And make no more palaver; Glanced at the fact that love was blind, That girls were ratherish inclined To pet their little crosses, Then nosologically defined The rate at which the system pined 130 In those unfortunates who dined Upon that metaphoric kind Of dish--their own proboscis. But she, with many tears and moans, Besought him not to mock her. Said 'twas too much for flesh and bones To marry mortgages and loans, That fathers' hearts were stocks and stones. And that she'd go, when Mrs. Jones, To Davy Jones's locker; 140 Then gave her head a little toss That said as plain as ever was, If men are always at a loss Mere womankind to bridle-- To try the thing on woman cross Were fifty times as idle; For she a strict resolve had made And registered in private, That either she would die a maid, Or else be Mrs. Doctor Slade, 150 If a woman could contrive it; And, though the wedding-day was set, Jenny was more so, rather, Declaring, in a pretty pet, That, howsoe'er they spread their net, She would out-Jennyral them yet, The colonel and her father. Just at this time the Public's eyes Were keenly on the watch, a stir Beginning slowly to arise 160 About those questions and replies. Those raps that unwrapped mysteries So rapidly at Rochester, And Knott, already nervous grown By lying much awake alone. And listening, sometimes to a moan, And sometimes to a clatter, Whene'er the wind at night would rouse The gingerbread-work on his house, Or when some, hasty-tempered mouse, 170 Behind the plastering, made a towse About a family matter, Began to wonder if his wife, A paralytic half her life. Which made it more surprising, Might not, to rule him from her urn, Have taken a peripatetic turn For want of exorcising. This thought, once nestled in his head, Erelong contagious grew, and spread 180 Infecting all his mind with dread, Until at last he lay in bed And heard his wife, with well-known tread, Entering the kitchen through the shed, (Or was't his fancy, mocking?) Opening the pantry, cutting bread, And then (she'd been some ten years dead) Closets and drawers unlocking; Or, in his room (his breath grew thick) 189 He heard the long-familiar click Of slender needles flying quick, As if she knit a stocking; For whom?--he prayed that years might flit With pains rheumatic shooting, Before those ghostly things she knit Upon his unfleshed sole might fit, He did not fancy it a bit, To stand upon that footing: At other times, his frightened hairs 199 Above the bedclothes trusting, He heard her, full of household cares, (No dream entrapped in supper's snares, The foal of horrible nightmares, But broad awake, as he declares), Go bustling up and down the stairs, Or setting back last evening's chairs, Or with the poker thrusting The raked-up sea-coal's hardened crust-- And--what! impossible! it must! He knew she had returned to dust, 210 And yet could scarce his senses trust, Hearing her as she poked and fussed About the parlor, dusting! Night after night he strove to sleep And take his ease in spite of it; But still his flesh would chill and creep, And, though two night-lamps he might keep, He could not so make light of it. At last, quite desperate, he goes And tells his neighbors all his woes, 220 Which did but their amount enhance; They made such mockery of his fears That soon his days were of all jeers. His nights of the rueful countenance; 'I thought most folks,' one neighbor said, 'Gave up the ghost when they were dead?' Another gravely shook his head, Adding, 'From all we hear, it's Quite plain poor Knott is going mad-- For how can he at once be sad 230 And think he's full of spirits?' A third declared he knew a knife Would cut this Knott much quicker, 'The surest way to end all strife, And lay the spirit of a wife, Is just to take and lick her!' A temperance man caught up the word, 'Ah yes,' he groaned, 'I've always heard Our poor friend somewhat slanted 239 Tow'rd taking liquor overmuch; I fear these spirits may be Dutch, (A sort of gins, or something such,) With which his house is haunted; I see the thing as clear as light,-- If Knott would give up getting tight, Naught farther would be wanted:' So all his neighbors stood aloof And, that the spirits 'neath his roof Were not entirely up to proof, Unanimously granted. 250 Knott knew that cocks and sprites were foes, And so bought up, Heaven only knows How many, for he wanted crows To give ghosts caws, as I suppose, To think that day was breaking; Moreover what he called his park, He turned into a kind of ark For dogs, because a little bark Is a good tonic in the dark, If one is given to waking; 260 But things went on from bad to worse, His curs were nothing but a curse, And, what was still more shocking, Foul ghosts of living fowl made scoff And would not think of going off In spite of all his cocking. Shanghais, Bucks-counties, Dominiques, Malays (that didn't lay for weeks), Polanders, Bantams, Dorkings, (Waiving the cost, no trifling ill, Since each brought in his little bill,) 271 By day or night were never still, But every thought of rest would kill With cacklings and with quorkings; Henry the Eighth of wives got free By a way he had of axing; But poor Knott's Tudor henery Was not so fortunate, and he Still found his trouble waxing; As for the dogs, the rows they made, 280 And how they howled, snarled, barked and bayed, Beyond all human knowledge is; All night, as wide awake as gnats, The terriers rumpused after rats, Or, just for practice, taught their brats To worry cast-off shoes and hats, The bull-dogs settled private spats, All chased imaginary cats, Or raved behind the fence's slats At real ones, or, from their mats, With friends, miles off, held pleasant chats, 291 Or, like some folks in white cravats, Contemptuous of sharps and flats, Sat up and sang dogsologies. Meanwhile the cats set up a squall, And, safe upon the garden-wall, All night kept cat-a-walling, As if the feline race were all. In one wild cataleptic sprawl, Into love's tortures falling. 300 PART II SHOWING WHAT IS MEANT BY A FLOW OF SPIRITS At first the ghosts were somewhat shy, Coming when none but Knott was nigh, And people said 'twas all their eye, (Or rather his) a flam, the sly Digestion's machination: Some recommended a wet sheet, Some a nice broth of pounded peat, Some a cold flat-iron to the feet, Some a decoction of lamb's-bleat, Some a southwesterly grain of wheat; 310 Meat was by some pronounced unmeet, Others thought fish most indiscreet, And that 'twas worse than all to eat Of vegetables, sour or sweet, (Except, perhaps, the skin of beet,) In such a concatenation: One quack his button gently plucks And murmurs, 'Biliary ducks!' Says Knott, 'I never ate one;' But all, though brimming full of wrath, 320 Homoeo, Allo, Hydropath, Concurred in this--that t'other's path To death's door was the straight one. Still, spite of medical advice, The ghosts came thicker, and a spice Of mischief grew apparent; Nor did they only come at night, But seemed to fancy broad daylight, Till Knott, in horror and affright, His unoffending hair rent; 330 Whene'er with handkerchief on lap, He made his elbow-chair a trap, To catch an after-dinner nap, The spirits, always on the tap, Would make a sudden _rap, rap, rap,_ The half-spun cord of sleep to snap, (And what is life without its nap But threadbareness and mere mishap?) 338 As 'twere with a percussion cap The trouble's climax capping; It seemed a party dried and grim Of mummies had come to visit him, Each getting off from every limb Its multitudinous wrapping; Scratchings sometimes the walls ran round, The merest penny-weights of sound; Sometimes 'twas only by the pound They carried on their dealing, A thumping 'neath the parlor floor, Thump-bump-thump-bumping o'er and o'er, 350 As if the vegetables in store (Quiet and orderly before) Were all together peeling; You would have thought the thing was done By the spirit of some son of a gun, And that a forty-two-pounder, Or that the ghost which made such sounds Could be none other than John Pounds, Of Ragged Schools the founder. Through three gradations of affright, 360 The awful noises reached their height; At first they knocked nocturnally, Then, for some reason, changing quite, (As mourners, after six months' flight, Turn suddenly from dark to light,) Began to knock diurnally, And last, combining all their stocks, (Scotland was ne'er so full of Knox,) Into one Chaos (father of Nox,) _Nocte pluit_--they showered knocks, 370 And knocked, knocked, knocked, eternally; Ever upon the go, like buoys, (Wooden sea-urchins,) all Knott's joys, They turned to troubles and a noise That preyed on him internally. Soon they grew wider in their scope; Whenever Knott a door would ope, It would ope not, or else elope And fly back (curbless as a trope Once started down a stanza's slope 380 By a bard that gave it too much rope--) Like a clap of thunder slamming: And, when kind Jenny brought his hat, (She always, when he walked, did that,) Just as upon his heart it sat, Submitting to his settling pat, Some unseen hand would jam it flat, Or give it such a furious bat That eyes and nose went cramming Up out of sight, and consequently, 390 As when in life it paddled free, His beaver caused much damning; If these things seem o'erstrained to be, Read the account of Doctor Dee, 'Tis in our college library: Read Wesley's circumstantial plea, And Mrs. Crowe, more like a bee, Sucking the nightshade's honeyed fee, And Stilling's Pneumatology; Consult Scot, Glanvil, grave Wie- 400 rus and both Mathers; further see, Webster, Casaubon, James First's trea- tise, a right royal Q.E.D. Writ with the moon in perigee, Bodin de la Demonomanie-- (Accent that last line gingerly) All full of learning as the sea Of fishes, and all disagree, Save in _Sathanas apage!_ Or, what will surely put a flea 410 In unbelieving ears--with glee, Out of a paper (sent to me By some friend who forgot to P ... A ... Y ...--I use cryptography Lest I his vengeful pen should dree-- His P ...O ...S ...T ...A ...G ...E ...) Things to the same effect I cut, About the tantrums of a ghost, Not more than three weeks since, at most, Near Stratford, in Connecticut. 420 Knott's Upas daily spread its roots, Sent up on all sides livelier shoots, And bore more pestilential fruits; The ghosts behaved like downright brutes, They snipped holes in his Sunday suits, Practised all night on octave flutes, Put peas (not peace) into his boots, Whereof grew corns in season, They scotched his sheets, and, what was worse, Stuck his silk nightcap full of burrs, 430 Till he, in language plain and terse, (But much unlike a Bible verse,) Swore he should lose his reason. The tables took to spinning, too, Perpetual yarns, and arm-chairs grew To prophets and apostles; One footstool vowed that only he Of law and gospel held the key, That teachers of whate'er degree To whom opinion bows the knee 440 Weren't fit to teach Truth's _a b c_, And were (the whole lot) to a T Mere fogies all and fossils; A teapoy, late the property Of Knox's Aunt Keziah, (Whom Jenny most irreverently Had nicknamed her aunt-tipathy) With tips emphatic claimed to be The prophet Jeremiah; The tins upon the kitchen-wall, 450 Turned tintinnabulators all, And things that used to come to call For simple household services Began to hop and whirl and prance, Fit to put out of countenance The _Commís_ and _Grisettes_ of France Or Turkey's dancing Dervises. Of course such doings, far and wide, With rumors filled the countryside, And (as it is our nation's pride 460 To think a Truth not verified Till with majorities allied) Parties sprung up, affirmed, denied, And candidates with questions plied, Who, like the circus-riders, tried At once both hobbies to bestride, And each with his opponent vied In being inexplicit. Earnest inquirers multiplied; Folks, whose tenth cousins lately died, 470 Wrote letters long, and Knott replied; All who could either walk or ride Gathered to wonder or deride, And paid the house a visit; Horses were to his pine-trees tied, Mourners in every corner sighed, Widows brought children there that cried. Swarms of lean Seekers, eager-eyed, (People Knott never could abide,) Into each hole and cranny pried 480 With strings of questions cut and dried From the Devout Inquirer's Guide, For the wise spirits to decide-- As, for example, is it True that the damned are fried or boiled? Was the Earth's axis greased or oiled? Who cleaned the moon when it was soiled? How baldness might be cured or foiled? How heal diseased potatoes? Did spirits have the sense of smell? 490 Where would departed spinsters dwell? If the late Zenas Smith were well? If Earth were solid or a shell? Were spirits fond of Doctor Fell? _Did_ the bull toll Cock-Robin's knell? What remedy would bugs expel? If Paine's invention were a sell? Did spirits by Webster's system spell? Was it a sin to be a belle? Did dancing sentence folks to hell? 500 If so, then where most torture fell? On little toes or great toes? If life's true seat were in the brain? Did Ensign mean to marry Jane? By whom, in fact, was Morgan slain? Could matter ever suffer pain? What would take out a cherry-stain? Who picked the pocket of Seth Crane, Of Waldo precinct, State, of Maine? Was Sir John Franklin sought in vain? 510 Did primitive Christians ever train? What was the family-name of Cain? Them spoons, were they by Betty ta'en? Would earth-worm poultice cure a sprain? Was Socrates so dreadful plain? What teamster guided Charles's wain? Was Uncle Ethan mad or sane, And could his will in force remain? If not, what counsel to retain? Did Le Sage steal Gil Blas from Spain? 520 Was Junius writ by Thomas Paine? Were ducks discomforted by rain? _How_ did Britannia rule the main? Was Jonas coming back again? Was vital truth upon the wane? Did ghosts, to scare folks, drag a chain? Who was our Huldah's chosen swain? Did none have teeth pulled without payin', Ere ether was invented? Whether mankind would not agree, 530 If the universe were tuned in C? What was it ailed Lucindy's knee? Whether folks eat folks in Feejee? Whether _his_ name would end with T? If Saturn's rings were two or three, And what bump in Phrenology They truly represented? These problems dark, wherein they groped, Wherewith man's reason vainly coped, Now that the spirit-world was oped, 540 In all humility they hoped Would be resolved _instanter_; Each of the miscellaneous rout Brought his, or her, own little doubt. And wished to pump the spirits out, Through his or her own private spout, Into his or her decanter. PART III WHEREIN IT IS SHOWN THAT THE MOST ARDENT SPIRITS ARE MORE ORNAMENTAL THAN USEFUL Many a speculating wight Came by express-trains, day and night, To see if Knott would 'sell his right,' 550 Meaning to make the ghosts a sight-- What they call a 'meenaygerie;' One threatened, if he would not 'trade,' His run of custom to invade, (He could not these sharp folks persuade That he was not, in some way, paid,) And stamp him as a plagiary, By coming down, at one fell swoop, With THE ORIGINAL KNOCKING TROUPE, Come recently from Hades, 560 Who (for a quarter-dollar heard) Would ne'er rap out a hasty word Whence any blame might be incurred From the most fastidious ladies; The late lamented Jesse Soule, To stir the ghosts up with a pole And be director of the whole, Who was engaged the rather For the rare merits he'd combine, Having been in the spirit line, 570 Which trade he only did resign, With general applause, to shine, Awful in mail of cotton fine, As ghost of Hamlet's father! Another a fair plan reveals Never yet hit on, which, he feels, To Knott's religious sense appeals-- 'We'll have your house set up on wheels, A speculation pious; For music, we can shortly find 580 A barrel-organ that will grind Psalm-tunes--an instrument designed For the New England tour--refined From secular drosses, and inclined To an unworldly turn, (combined With no sectarian bias;) Then, travelling by stages slow, Under the style of Knott & Co., I would accompany the show As moral lecturer, the foe 590 Of Rationalism; while you could throw The rappings in, and make them go Strict Puritan principles, you know, (How _do_ you make 'em? with your toe?) And the receipts which thence might flow, We could divide between us; Still more attractions to combine, Beside these services of mine, I will throw in a very fine (It would do nicely for a sign) 600 Original Titian's Venus.' Another offered handsome fees If Knott would get Demosthenes (Nay, his mere knuckles, for more ease) To rap a few short sentences; Or if, for want of proper keys, His Greek might make confusion, Then just to get a rap from Burke, To recommend a little work On Public Elocution. 610 Meanwhile, the spirits made replies To all the reverent _whats_ and _whys_, Resolving doubts of every size, And giving seekers grave and wise, Who came to know their destinies, A rap-turous reception; When unbelievers void of grace Came to investigate the place, (Creatures of Sadducistic race, With grovelling intellects and base,) 620 They could not find the slightest trace To indicate deception; Indeed, it is declared by some That spirits (of this sort) are glum, Almost, or wholly, deaf and dumb, And (out of self-respect) quite mum To skeptic natures cold and numb Who of _this_ kind of Kingdom Come Have not a just conception: True, there were people who demurred 630 That, though the raps no doubt were heard Both under them and o'er them, Yet, somehow, when a search they made, They found Miss Jenny sore afraid, Or Jenny's lover, Doctor Slade, Equally awestruck and dismayed, Or Deborah, the chambermaid, Whose terrors not to be gainsaid In laughs hysteric were displayed, Was always there before them; This had its due effect with some Who straight departed, muttering, Hum! 642 Transparent hoax! and Gammon! But these were few: believing souls, Came, day by day, in larger shoals, As the ancients to the windy holes 'Neath Delphi's tripod brought their doles, Or to the shrine of Ammon. The spirits seemed exceeding tame, Call whom you fancied, and he came; 650 The shades august of eldest fame You summoned with an awful ease; As grosser spirits gurgled out From chair and table with a spout, In Auerbach's cellar once, to flout The senses of the rabble rout, Where'er the gimlet twirled about Of cunning Mephistopheles, So did these spirits seem in store, Behind the wainscot or the door, Ready to thrill the being's core Of every enterprising bore 662 With their astounding glamour; Whatever ghost one wished to hear, By strange coincidence, was near To make the past or future clear (Sometimes in shocking grammar) By raps and taps, now there, now here-- It seemed as if the spirit queer Of some departed auctioneer 670 Were doomed to practise by the year With the spirit of his hammer: Whate'er you asked was answered, yet One could not very deeply get Into the obliging spirits' debt, Because they used the alphabet In all communications, And new revealings (though sublime) Rapped out, one letter at a time, With boggles, hesitations, 680 Stoppings, beginnings o'er again, And getting matters into train, Could hardly overload the brain With too excessive rations, Since just to ask _if two and two Really make four? or, How d' ye do_? And get the fit replies thereto In the tramundane rat-tat-too, Might ask a whole day's patience. 'Twas strange ('mongst other things) to find 690 In what odd sets the ghosts combined, Happy forthwith to thump any Piece of intelligence inspired, The truth whereof had been inquired By some one of the company; For instance, Fielding, Mirabeau, Orator Henley, Cicero, Paley, John Ziska, Marivaux, Melancthon, Robertson, Junot, 699 Scaliger, Chesterfield, Rousseau, Hakluyt, Boccaccio, South, De Foe, Diaz, Josephus, Richard Roe, Odin, Arminius, Charles _le gros_, Tiresias, the late James Crow, Casabianca, Grose, Prideaux, Old Grimes, Young Norval, Swift, Brissot, Malmonides, the Chevalier D'O, Socrates, Fénelon, Job, Stow. The inventor of _Elixir pro_, Euripides, Spinoza, Poe, 710 Confucius, Hiram Smith, and Fo, Came (as it seemed, somewhat _de trop_) With a disembodied Esquimaux, To say that it was so and so, With Franklin's expedition; One testified to ice and snow, One that the mercury was low, One that his progress was quite slow, One that he much desired to go, One that the cook had frozen his toe, 720 (Dissented from by Dandolo, Wordsworth, Cynaegirus, Boileau, La Hontan, and Sir Thomas Roe,) One saw twelve white bears in a row, One saw eleven and a crow, With other things we could not know (Of great statistic value, though,) By our mere mortal vision. Sometimes the spirits made mistakes, And seemed to play at ducks and drakes. 730 With bold inquiry's heaviest stakes In science or in mystery: They knew so little (and that wrong) Yet rapped it out so bold and strong, One would have said the unnumbered throng Had been Professors of History; What made it odder was, that those Who, you would naturally suppose, Could solve a question, if they chose, As easily as count their toes, 740 Were just the ones that blundered; One day, Ulysses happening down, A reader of Sir Thomas Browne And who (with him) had wondered What song it was the Sirens sang, Asked the shrewd Ithacan--_bang! bang!_ With this response the chamber rang, 'I guess it was Old Hundred.' And Franklin, being asked to name The reason why the lightning came, 750 Replied, 'Because it thundered.' On one sole point the ghosts agreed One fearful point, than which, indeed, Nothing could seem absurder; Poor Colonel Jones they all abused And finally downright accused The poor old man of murder; 'Twas thus; by dreadful raps was shown Some spirit's longing to make known A bloody fact, which he alone 760 Was privy to, (such ghosts more prone In Earth's affairs to meddle are;) _Who are you?_ with awe-stricken looks, All ask: his airy knuckles he crooks, And raps, 'I _was_ Eliab Snooks, That used to be a pedler; Some on ye still are on my books!' Whereat, to inconspicuous nooks, (More fearing this than common spooks) Shrank each indebted meddler; Further the vengeful ghost declared 771 That while his earthly life was spared, About the country he had fared, A duly licensed follower Of that much-wandering trade that wins Slow profit from the sale of tins And various kinds of hollow-ware; That Colonel Jones enticed him in, Pretending that he wanted tin, There slew him with a rolling-pin, Hid him in a potato-bin, 781 And (the same night) him ferried Across Great Pond to t'other shore, And there, on land of Widow Moore, Just where you turn to Larkin's store, Under a rock him buried; Some friends (who happened to be by) He called upon to testify That what he said was not a lie, And that he did not stir this 790 Foul matter, out of any spite But from a simple love of right;-- Which statements the Nine Worthies, Rabbi Akiba, Charlemagne, Seth, Golley Gibber, General Wayne, Cambyses, Tasso, Tubal-Cain, The owner of a castle in Spain, Jehanghire, and the Widow of Nain, (The friends aforesaid,) made more plain And by loud raps attested; 800 To the same purport testified Plato, John Wilkes, and Colonel Pride Who knew said Snooks before he died, Had in his wares invested, Thought him entitled to belief And freely could concur, in brief, In everything the rest did. Eliab this occasion seized, (Distinctly here the spirit sneezed,) To say that he should ne'er be eased 810 Till Jenny married whom she pleased, Free from all checks and urgin's, (This spirit dropt his final g's) And that, unless Knott quickly sees This done, the spirits to appease, They would come back his life to tease, As thick as mites in ancient cheese, And let his house on an endless lease To the ghosts (terrific rappers these And veritable Eumenides) 820 Of the Eleven Thousand Virgins! Knott was perplexed and shook his head, He did not wish his child to wed With a suspected murderer, (For, true or false, the rumor spread,) But as for this roiled life he led, 'It would not answer,' so he said, 'To have it go no furderer.' At last, scarce knowing what it meant, Reluctantly he gave consent 830 That Jenny, since 'twas evident That she _would_ follow her own bent, Should make her own election; For that appeared the only way These frightful noises to allay Which had already turned him gray And plunged him in dejection. Accordingly, this artless maid Her father's ordinance obeyed, 839 And, all in whitest crape arrayed, (Miss Pulsifer the dresses made And wishes here the fact displayed That she still carries on the trade, The third door south from Bagg's Arcade,) A very faint 'I do' essayed And gave her hand to Hiram Slade, From which time forth, the ghosts were laid, And ne'er gave trouble after; But the Selectmen, be it known, Dug underneath the aforesaid stone, 850 Where the poor pedler's corpse was thrown, And found thereunder a jaw-bone, Though, when the crowner sat thereon, He nothing hatched, except alone Successive broods of laughter; It was a frail and dingy thing, In which a grinder or two did cling, In color like molasses, Which surgeons, called from far and wide. Upon the horror to decide, 860 Having put on their glasses, Reported thus: 'To judge by looks, These bones, by some queer hooks or crooks, May have belonged to Mr. Snooks, But, as men deepest read in books Are perfectly aware, bones, If buried fifty years or so, Lose their identity and grow From human bones to bare bones.' Still, if to Jaalam you go down, You'll find two parties in the town, 871 One headed by Benaiah Brown, And one by Perez Tinkham; The first believe the ghosts all through And vow that they shall never rue The happy chance by which they knew That people in Jupiter are blue, And very fond of Irish stew, Two curious facts which Prince Lee Boo 879 Rapped clearly to a chosen few-- Whereas the others think 'em A trick got up by Doctor Slade With Deborah the chambermaid And that sly cretur Jinny. That all the revelations wise, At which the Brownites made big eyes, Might have been given by Jared Keyes, A natural fool and ninny, And, last week, didn't Eliab Snooks Come back with never better looks, 890 As sharp as new-bought mackerel hooks, And bright as a new pin, eh? Good Parson Wilbur, too, avers (Though to be mixed in parish stirs Is worse than handling chestnut-burrs) That no case to his mind occurs Where spirits ever did converse, Save in a kind of guttural Erse, (So say the best authorities;) And that a charge by raps conveyed 900 Should be most scrupulously weighed And searched into, before it is Made public, since it may give pain That cannot soon be cured again, And one word may infix a stain Which ten cannot gloss over, Though speaking for his private part, He is rejoiced with all his heart Miss Knott missed not her lover. FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED POEM I am a man of forty, sirs, a native of East Haddam, And have some reason to surmise that I descend from Adam; But what's my pedigree to you? That I will soon unravel; I've sucked my Haddam-Eden dry, therefore desire to travel, And, as a natural consequence, presume I needn't say, I wish to write some letters home and have those letters p---- [I spare the word suggestive of those grim Next Morns that mount _Clump, Clump_, the stairways of the brain with--'_Sir, my small account_,' And, after every good we gain--Love, Fame, Wealth, Wisdom--still, As punctual as a cuckoo clock, hold up their little bill, 10 The _garçons_ in our Café of Life, by dreaming us forgot-- Sitting, like Homer's heroes, full and musing God knows what,-- Till they say, bowing, _S'il vous plait, voila, Messieurs, la note!_] I would not hint at this so soon, but in our callous day, The Tollman Debt, who drops his bar across the world's highway, Great Cæsar in mid-march would stop, if Cæsar could not pay; Pilgriming's dearer than it was: men cannot travel now Scot-free from Dan to Beersheba upon a simple vow; Nay, as long back as Bess's time,--when Walsingham went over Ambassador to Cousin France, at Canterbury and Dover 20 He was so fleeced by innkeepers that, ere he quitted land, He wrote to the Prime Minister to take the knaves in hand. If I with staff and scallop-shell should try my way to win, Would Bonifaces quarrel as to who should take me in? Or would my pilgrim's progress end where Bunyan started his on, And my grand tour be round and round the backyard of a prison? I give you here a saying deep and therefore, haply true; 'Tis out of Merlin's prophecies, but quite as good as new: The question boath for men and meates longe voyages yt beginne Lyes in a notshell, rather saye lyes in a case of tinne. 20 But, though men may not travel now, as in the Middle Ages, With self-sustaining retinues of little gilt-edged pages, Yet one may manage pleasantly, where'er he likes to roam, By sending his small pages (at so much per small page) home; And if a staff and scallop-shell won't serve so well as then, Our outlay is about as small--just paper, ink, and pen. Be thankful! Humbugs never die, more than the wandering Jew; Bankrupt, they publish their own deaths, slink for a while from view, Then take an _alias_, change the sign, and the old trade renew; Indeed, 'tis wondrous how each Age, though laughing at the Past, 40 Insists on having its tight shoe made on the same old last; How it is sure its system would break up at once without The bunion which it _will_ believe hereditary gout; How it takes all its swans for geese, nay, stranger yet and sadder, Sees in its treadmill's fruitless jog a heavenward Jacob's-ladder, Shouts, _Lo, the Shining Heights are reached! One moment, more aspire!_ Trots into cramps its poor, dear legs, gets never an inch the higher, And like the others, ends with pipe and mug beside the fire. There, 'tween each doze, it whiffs and sips and watches with a sneer The green recruits that trudge and sweat where it had swinked whilere, 50 And sighs to think this soon spent zeal should be in simple truth, The only interval between old Fogyhood and Youth: 'Well,' thus it muses, 'well, what odds? 'Tis not for us to warn; 'Twill be the same when we are dead, and was ere we were born; Without the Treadmill, too, how grind our store of winter's corn? Had we no stock, nor twelve per cent received from Treadmill shares, We might ... but these poor devils at last will get our easy chairs. High aims and hopes have great rewards, they, too, serene and snug, Shall one day have their soothing pipe and their enlivening mug; From Adam, empty-handed Youth hath always heard the hum 60 Of Good Times Coming, and will hear until the last day come; Young ears Hear forward, old ones back, and, while the earth rolls on, Full-handed Eld shall hear recede the steps of Good Times Gone; Ah what a cackle we set up whene'er an egg was laid! _Cack-cack-cack-cackle!_ rang around, the scratch for worms was stayed, _Cut-cut-ca-dah-cut!_ from _this_ egg the coming cock shall stalk! The great New Era dawns, the age of Deeds and not of Talk! And every stupid hen of us hugged close his egg of chalk, Thought,--sure, I feel life stir within, each day with greater strength, When lo, the chick! from former chicks he differed not a jot, 70 But grew and crew and scratched and went, like those before, to pot!' So muse the dim _Emeriti_, and, mournful though it be, I must confess a kindred thought hath sometimes come to me, Who, though but just of forty turned, have heard the rumorous fame Of nine and ninety Coming Men, all--coming till they came. Pure Mephistopheles all this? the vulgar nature jeers? Good friend, while I was writing it, my eyes were dim with tears; Thrice happy he who cannot see, or who his eyes can shut, Life's deepest sorrow is contained in that small word there--But! * * * * * We're pretty nearly crazy here with change and go ahead, 80 With flinging our caught bird away for two i' th' bush instead, With butting 'gainst the wall which we declare _shall_ be a portal, And questioning Deeps that never yet have oped their lips to mortal; We're growing pale and hollow-eyed, and out of all condition, With _mediums_ and prophetic chairs, and crickets with a mission, (The most astounding oracles since Balaam's donkey spoke,-- 'Twould seem our furniture was all of Dodonean oak.) Make but the public laugh, be sure 'twill take you to be somebody; 'Twill wrench its button from your clutch, my densely earnest glum body; 'Tis good, this noble earnestness, good in its place, but why 90 Make great Achilles' shield the pan to bake a penny pie? Why, when we have a kitchen-range, insist that we shall stop, And bore clear down to central fires to broil our daily chop? Excalibur and Durandart are swords of price, but then Why draw them sternly when you wish to trim your nails or pen? Small gulf between the ape and man; you bridge it with your staff; But it will be impassable until the ape can laugh;-- No, no, be common now and then, be sensible, be funny, And, as Siberians bait their traps for bears with pots of honey, From which ere they'll withdraw their snouts, they'll suffer many a club-lick, 100 So bait your moral figure-of-fours to catch the Orson public. Look how the dead leaves melt their way down through deep-drifted snow; They take the sun-warmth down with them--pearls could not conquer so; There _is_ a moral here, you see: if you would preach, you must Steep all your truths in sunshine would you have them pierce the crust; Brave Jeremiah, you are grand and terrible, a sign And wonder, but were never quite a popular divine; Fancy the figure you would cut among the nuts and wine! I, on occasion, too, could preach, but hold it wiser far To give the public sermons it will take with its cigar, 110 And morals fugitive, and vague as are these smoke-wreaths light In which ... I trace ... a ... let me see--bless me! 'tis out of sight. * * * * * There are some goodish things at sea; for instance, one can feel A grandeur in the silent man forever at the wheel, That bit of two-legged intellect, that particle of drill, Who the huge floundering hulk inspires with reason, brain, and will, And makes the ship, though skies are black and headwinds whistle loud, Obey her conscience there which feels the loadstar through the cloud; And when by lusty western gales the full-sailed barque is hurled, Towards the great moon which, setting on, the silent underworld, 120 Rounds luridly up to look on ours, and shoots a broadening line, Of palpitant light from crest to crest across the ridgy brine, Then from the bows look back and feel a thrill that never stales, In that full-bosomed, swan-white pomp of onward-yearning sails; Ah, when dear cousin Bull laments that you can't make a poem, Take him aboard a clipper-ship, young Jonathan, and show him A work of art that in its grace and grandeur may compare With any thing that any race has fashioned any where; 'Tis not a statue, grumbles John; nay, if you come to that, We think of Hyde Park Corner, and concede you beat us flat 130 With your equestrian statue to a Nose and a Cocked hat; But 'tis not a cathedral; well, e'en that we will allow, Both statues and cathedrals are anachronistic now; Your minsters, coz, the monuments of men who conquered you, You'd sell a bargain, if we'd take the deans and chapters too; No; mortal men build nowadays, as always heretofore, Good temples to the gods which they in very truth adore; The shepherds of this Broker Age, with all their willing flocks, Although they bow to stones no more, do bend the knee to stocks, And churches can't be beautiful though crowded, floor and gallery, 140 If people worship preacher, and if preacher worship salary; 'Tis well to look things in the face, the god o' the modern universe, Hermes, cares naught for halls of art and libraries of puny verse, If they don't sell, he notes them thus upon his ledger--say, _per Contra_ to a loss of so much stone, best Russia duck and paper; And, after all, about this Art men talk a deal of fudge, Each nation has its path marked out, from which it must not budge; The Romans had as little art as Noah in his ark, Yet somehow on this globe contrived to make an epic mark; 149 Religion, painting, sculpture, song--for these they ran up jolly ticks With Greece and Egypt, but they were great artists in their politics, And if we make no minsters, John, nor epics, yet the Fates Are not entirely deaf to men who _can_ build ships and states; The arts are never pioneers, but men have strength and health Who, called on suddenly, can improvise a commonwealth, Nay, can more easily go on and frame them by the dozen, Than you can make a dinner-speech, dear sympathizing cousin; And, though our restless Jonathan have not your graver bent, sure he Does represent this hand-to-mouth, pert, rapid nineteenth century; This is the Age of Scramble; men move faster than they did 160 When they pried up the imperial Past's deep-dusted coffin-lid, Searching for scrolls of precedent; the wire-leashed lightning now Replaces Delphos--men don't leave the steamer for the scow; What public, were they new to-day, would ever stop to read The Iliad, the Shanàmeh, or the Nibelungenlied? _Their_ public's gone, the artist Greek, the lettered Shah, the hairy Graf-- Folio and plesiosaur sleep well; _we_ weary o'er a paragraph; The mind moves planet-like no more, it fizzes, cracks, and bustles; From end to end with journals dry the land o'ershadowed rustles, As with dead leaves a winter-beech, and, with their breath-roused jars 170 Amused, we care not if they hide the eternal skies and stars; Down to the general level of the Board of Brokers sinking, The Age takes in the newspapers, or, to say sooth unshrinking, The newspapers take in the Age, and stocks do all the thinking. AN ORIENTAL APOLOGUE Somewhere in India, upon a time, (Read it not Injah, or you spoil the verse,) There dwelt two saints whose privilege sublime It was to sit and watch the world grow worse, Their only care (in that delicious clime) At proper intervals to pray and curse; Pracrit the dialect each prudent brother Used for himself, Damnonian for the other. One half the time of each was spent in praying For blessings on his own unworthy head, 10 The other half in fearfully portraying Where certain folks would go when they were dead; This system of exchanges--there's no saying To what more solid barter 'twould have led, But that a river, vext with boils and swellings At rainy times, kept peace between their dwellings. So they two played at wordy battledore And kept a curse forever in the air, Flying this way or that from shore to shore; Nor other labor did this holy pair, 20 Clothed and supported from the lavish store Which crowds lanigerous brought with daily care; They toiled not, neither did they spin; their bias Was tow'rd the harder task of being pious. Each from his hut rushed six score times a day, Like a great canon of the Church full-rammed With cartridge theologic, (so to say,) Touched himself off, and then, recoiling, slammed His hovel's door behind him in away That to his foe said plainly,--_you'll_ be damned; 30 And so like Potts and Wainwright, shrill and strong The two D---- D'd each other all day long. One was a dancing Dervise, a Mohammedan, The other was a Hindoo, a gymnosophist; One kept his whatd'yecallit and his Ramadan, Laughing to scorn the sacred rites and laws of his Transfluvial rival, who, in turn, called Ahmed an Old top, and, as a clincher, shook across a fist With nails six inches long, yet lifted not His eyes from off his navel's mystic knot. 40 'Who whirls not round six thousand times an hour Will go,' screamed Ahmed, 'to the evil place; May he eat dirt, and may the dog and Giaour Defile the graves of him and all his race; Allah loves faithful souls and gives them power To spin till they are purple in the face; Some folks get you know what, but he that pure is Earns Paradise and ninety thousand houris.' 'Upon the silver mountain, South by East, Sits Brahma fed upon the sacred bean; 30 He loves those men whose nails are still increased, Who all their lives keep ugly, foul, and lean; 'Tis of his grace that not a bird or beast Adorned with claws like mine was ever seen; The suns and stars are Brahma's thoughts divine, Even as these trees I seem to see are mine.' 'Thou seem'st to see, indeed!' roared Ahmed back; 'Were I but once across this plaguy stream, With a stout sapling in my hand, one whack On those lank ribs would rid thee of that dream! 60 Thy Brahma-blasphemy is ipecac To my soul's stomach; couldst thou grasp the scheme Of true redemption, thou wouldst know that Deity Whirls by a kind of blessed spontaneity. 'And this it is which keeps our earth here going With all the stars.'--'Oh, vile! but there's a place Prepared for such; to think of Brahma throwing Worlds like a juggler's balls up into Space! Why, not so much as a smooth lotos blowing Is e'er allowed that silence to efface 70 Which broods round Brahma, and our earth, 'tis known, Rests on a tortoise, moveless as this stone.' So they kept up their banning amoebæan, When suddenly came floating down the stream A youth whose face like an incarnate pæan Glowed, 'twas so full of grandeur and of gleam; 'If there _be_ gods, then, doubtless, this must be one,' Thought both at once, and then began to scream, 'Surely, whate'er immortals know, thou knowest, Decide between us twain before thou goest!' 80 The youth was drifting in a slim canoe Most like a huge white water-lily's petal, But neither of our theologians knew Whereof 'twas made; whether of heavenly metal Seldseen, or of a vast pearl split in two And hollowed, was a point they could not settle; 'Twas good debate-seed, though, and bore large fruit In after years of many a tart dispute. There were no wings upon the stranger's shoulders. And yet he seemed so capable of rising 90 That, had he soared like thistle-down, beholders Had thought the circumstance noways surprising; Enough that he remained, and, when the scolders Hailed him as umpire in their vocal prize-ring, The painter of his boat he lightly threw Around a lotos-stem, and brought her to. The strange youth had a look as if he might Have trod far planets where the atmosphere (Of nobler temper) steeps the face with light, Just as our skins are tanned and freckled here; 100 His air was that of a cosmopolite In the wide universe from sphere to sphere; Perhaps he was (his face had such grave beauty) An officer of Saturn's guards off duty. Both saints began to unfold their tales at once, Both wished their tales, like simial ones, prehensile, That they might seize his ear; _fool! knave!_ and _dunce!_ Flew zigzag back and forth, like strokes of pencil In a child's fingers; voluble as duns, They jabbered like the stones on that immense hill 110 In the Arabian Nights; until the stranger Began to think his ear-drums in some danger. In general those who nothing have to say Contrive to spend the longest time in doing it; They turn and vary it in every way, Hashing it, stewing it, mincing it, _ragouting_ it; Sometimes they keep it purposely at bay, Then let it slip to be again pursuing it; They drone it, groan it, whisper it and shout it, Refute it, flout it, swear to 't, prove it, doubt it. 120 Our saints had practised for some thirty years; Their talk, beginning with a single stem, Spread like a banyan, sending down live piers, Colonies of digression, and, in them, Germs of yet new dispersion; once by the ears, They could convey damnation in a hem, And blow the pinch of premise-priming off Long syllogistic batteries, with a cough. Each had a theory that the human ear A providential tunnel was, which led 130 To a huge vacuum (and surely here They showed some knowledge of the general head,) For cant to be decanted through, a mere Auricular canal or mill-race fed All day and night, in sunshine and in shower, From their vast heads of milk-and-water-power. The present being a peculiar case, Each with unwonted zeal the other scouted, Put his spurred hobby through its every pace, 139 Pished, pshawed, poohed, horribled, bahed, jeered, sneered, flouted, Sniffed, nonsensed, infideled, fudged, with his face Looked scorn too nicely shaded to be shouted, And, with each inch of person and of vesture, Contrived to hint some most disdainful gesture. At length, when their breath's end was come about, And both could now and then just gasp 'impostor!' Holding their heads thrust menacingly out, As staggering cocks keep up their fighting posture, The stranger smiled and said, 'Beyond a doubt 'Tis fortunate, my friends, that you have lost your 150 United parts of speech, or it had been Impossible for me to get between. 'Produce! says Nature,--what have you produced? A new strait-waistcoat for the human mind; Are you not limbed, nerved, jointed, arteried, juiced, As other men? yet, faithless to your kind, Rather like noxious insects you are used To puncture life's fair fruit, beneath the rind Laying your creed-eggs, whence in time there spring Consumers new to eat and buzz and sting. 160 'Work! you have no conception how 'twill sweeten Your views of Life and Nature, God and Man; Had you been forced to earn what you have eaten, Your heaven had shown a less dyspeptic plan; At present your whole function is to eat ten And talk ten times as rapidly as you can; Were your shape true to cosmogonic laws, You would be nothing but a pair of jaws. 'Of all the useless beings in creation The earth could spare most easily you bakers 170 Of little clay gods, formed in shape and fashion Precisely in the image of their makers; Why it would almost move a saint to passion, To see these blind and deaf, the hourly breakers Of God's own image in their brother men, Set themselves up to tell the how, where, when, 'Of God's existence; one's digestion's worse-- So makes a god of vengeance and of blood; Another,--but no matter, they reverse Creation's plan, out of their own vile mud 180 Pat up a god, and burn, drown, hang, or curse Whoever worships not; each keeps his stud Of texts which wait with saddle on and bridle To hunt down atheists to their ugly idol. 'This, I perceive, has been your occupation; You should have been more usefully employed; All men are bound to earn their daily ration, Where States make not that primal contract void By cramps and limits; simple devastation Is the worm's task, and what he has destroyed 190 His monument; creating is man's work, And that, too, something more than mist and murk.' So having said, the youth was seen no more, And straightway our sage Brahmin, the philosopher, Cried, 'That was aimed at thee, thou endless bore, Idle and useless as the growth of moss over A rotting tree-trunk!' 'I would square that score Full soon,' replied the Dervise, 'could I cross over And catch thee by the beard. Thy nails I'd trim And make thee work, as was advised by him. 200 'Work? Am I not at work from morn till night Sounding the deeps of oracles umbilical Which for man's guidance never come to light, With all their various aptitudes, until I call?' 'And I, do I not twirl from left to right For conscience' sake? Is that no work? Thou silly gull, He had thee in his eye; 'twas Gabriel Sent to reward my faith, I know him well.' 'Twas Vishnu, thou vile whirligig!' and so The good old quarrel was begun anew; 210 One would have sworn the sky was black as sloe, Had but the other dared to call it blue; Nor were the followers who fed them slow To treat each other with their curses, too, Each hating t'other (moves it tears or laughter?) Because he thought him sure of hell hereafter. At last some genius built a bridge of boats Over the stream, and Ahmed's zealots filed Across, upon a mission to (cut throats And) spread religion pure and undefiled; 220 They sowed the propagandist's wildest oats, Cutting off all, down to the smallest child, And came back, giving thanks for such fat mercies, To find their harvest gone past prayers or curses. All gone except their saint's religious hops, Which he kept up with more than common flourish; But these, however satisfying crops For the inner man, were not enough to nourish The body politic, which quickly drops Reserve in such sad junctures, and turns currish; 230 So Ahmed soon got cursed for all the famine Where'er the popular voice could edge a damn in. At first he pledged a miracle quite boldly. And, for a day or two, they growled and waited; But, finding that this kind of manna coldly Sat on their stomachs, they erelong berated The saint for still persisting in that old lie, Till soon the whole machine of saintship grated, Ran slow, creaked, stopped, and, wishing him in Tophet, They gathered strength enough to stone the prophet. 240 Some stronger ones contrived (by eatting leather, Their weaker friends, and one thing or another) The winter months of scarcity to weather; Among these was the late saint's younger brother, Who, in the spring, collecting them together, Persuaded them that Ahmed's holy pother Had wrought in their behalf, and that the place Of Saint should be continued to his race. Accordingly, 'twas settled on the spot That Allah favored that peculiar breed; 250 Beside, as all were satisfied, 'twould not Be quite respectable to have the need Of public spiritual food forgot; And so the tribe, with proper forms, decreed That he, and, failing him, his next of kin, Forever for the people's good should spin. THE BIGLOW PAPERS FIRST SERIES NOTICES OF AN INDEPENDENT PRESS [I have observed, reader (bene-or male-volent, as it may happen), that it is customary to append to the second editions of books, and to the second works of authors, short sentences commendatory of the first, under the title of _Notices of the Press_. These, I have been given to understand, are procurable at certain established rates, payment being made either in money or advertising patronage by the publisher, or by an adequate outlay of servility on the part of the author. Considering these things with myself, and also that such notices are neither intended, nor generally believed, to convey any real opinions, being a purely ceremonial accompaniment of literature, and resembling certificates to the virtues of various morbiferal panaceas, I conceived that it would be not only more economical to prepare a sufficient number of such myself, but also more immediately subservient to the end in view to prefix them to this our primary edition rather than to await the contingency of a second, when they would seem to be of small utility. To delay attaching the _bobs_ until the second attempt at flying the kite would indicate but a slender experience in that useful art. Neither has it escaped my notice nor failed to afford me matter of reflection, that, when a circus or a caravan is about to visit Jaalam, the initial step is to send forward large and highly ornamented bills of performance, to be hung in the bar-room and the post-office. These having been sufficiently gazed at, and beginning to lose their attractiveness except for the flies, and, truly, the boys also (in whom I find it impossible to repress, even during school-hours, certain oral and telegraphic communications concerning the expected show), upon some fine morning the band enters in a gayly painted wagon, or triumphal chariot, and with noisy advertisement, by means of brass, wood, and sheepskin, makes the circuit of our startled village streets. Then, as the exciting sounds draw nearer and nearer, do I desiderate those eyes of Aristarchus, 'whose looks were as a breeching to a boy.' Then do I perceive, with vain regret of wasted opportunities, the advantage of a pancratic or pantechnic education, since he is most reverenced by my little subjects who can throw the cleanest summerset or walk most securely upon the revolving cask. The story of the Pied Piper becomes for the first time credible to me (albeit confirmed by the Hameliners dating their legal instruments from the period of his exit), as I behold how those strains, without pretence of magical potency, bewitch the pupillary legs, nor leave to the pedagogic an entire self-control. For these reasons, lest my kingly prerogative should suffer diminution, I prorogue my restless commons, whom I follow into the street, chiefly lest some mischief may chance befall them. After the manner of such a band, I send forward the following notices of domestic manufacture, to make brazen proclamation, not unconscious of the advantage which will accrue, if our little craft, _cymbula sutilis_, shall seem to leave port with a clipping breeze, and to carry, in nautical phrase, a bone in her mouth. Nevertheless, I have chosen, as being more equitable, to prepare some also sufficiently objurgatory, that readers of every taste may find a dish to their palate. I have modelled them upon actually existing specimens, preserved in my own cabinet of natural curiosities. One, in particular, I had copied with tolerable exactness from a notice of one of my own discourses, which, from its superior tone and appearance of vast experience, I concluded to have been written by a man at least three hundred years of age, though I recollected no existing instance of such antediluvian longevity. Nevertheless, I afterwards discovered the author to be a young gentleman preparing for the ministry under the direction of one of my brethren in a neighboring town, and whom I had once instinctively corrected in a Latin quantity. But this I have been forced to omit, from its too great length.--H.W.] * * * * * _From the Universal Littery Universe_. Full of passages which rivet the attention of the reader.... Under a rustic garb, sentiments are conveyed which should be committed to the memory and engraven on the heart of every moral and social being.... We consider this a _unique_ performance.... We hope to see it soon introduced into our common schools.... Mr. Wilbur has performed his duties as editor with excellent taste and judgment.... This is a vein which we hope to see successfully prosecuted.... We hail the appearance of this work as a long stride toward the formation of a purely aboriginal, indigenous, native, and American literature. We rejoice to meet with an author national enough to break away from the slavish deference, too common among us, to English grammar and orthography.... Where all is so good, we are at a loss how to make extracts.... On the whole, we may call it a volume which no library, pretending to entire completeness, should fail to place upon its shelves. * * * * * _From the Higginbottomopolis Snapping-turtle_. A collection of the merest balderdash and doggerel that it was ever our bad fortune to lay eyes on. The author is a vulgar buffoon, and the editor a talkative, tedious old fool. We use strong language, but should any of our readers peruse the book, (from which calamity Heaven preserve them!) they will find reasons for it thick as the leaves of Vallum-brozer, or, to use a still more expressive comparison, as the combined heads of author and editor. The work is wretchedly got up.... We should like to know how much _British gold_ was pocketed by this libeller of our country and her purest patriots. * * * * * _From the Oldfogrumville Mentor_. We have not had time to do more than glance through this handsomely printed volume, but the name of its respectable editor, the Rev. Mr. Wilbur, of Jaalam, will afford a sufficient guaranty for the worth of its contents.... The paper is white, the type clear, and the volume of a convenient and attractive size.... In reading this elegantly executed work, it has seemed to us that a passage or two might have been retrenched with advantage, and that the general style of diction was susceptible of a higher polish.... On the whole, we may safely leave the ungrateful task of criticism to the reader. We will barely suggest, that in volumes intended, as this is, for the illustration of a provincial dialect and turns of expression, a dash of humor or satire might be thrown in with advantage.... The work is admirably got up.... This work will form an appropriate ornament to the centre table. It is beautifully printed, on paper of an excellent quality. * * * * * _From the Dekay Bulwark_. We should be wanting in our duty as the conductor of that tremendous engine, a public press, as an American, and as a man, did we allow such an opportunity as is presented to us by 'The Biglow Papers' to pass by without entering our earnest protest against such attempts (now, alas! too common) at demoralizing the public sentiment. Under a wretched mask of stupid drollery, slavery, war, the social glass, and, in short, all the valuable and time-honored institutions justly dear to our common humanity and especially to republicans, are made the butt of coarse and senseless ribaldry by this low-minded scribbler. It is time that the respectable and religious portion of our community should be aroused to the alarming inroads of foreign Jacobinism, sansculottism, and infidelity. It is a fearful proof of the widespread nature of this contagion, that these secret stabs at religion and virtue are given from under the cloak (_credite, posteri!_) of a clergyman. It is a mournful spectacle indeed to the patriot and Christian to see liberality and new ideas (falsely so called,--they are as old as Eden) invading the sacred precincts of the pulpit.... On the whole, we consider this volume as one of the first shocking results which we predicted would spring out of the late French 'Revolution' (!) * * * * * _From the Bungtown Copper and Comprehensive Tocsin (a try-weakly family journal)_. Altogether an admirable work.... Full of humor, boisterous, but delicate,--of wit withering and scorching, yet combined with a pathos cool as morning dew,--of satire ponderous as the mace of Richard, yet keen as the scymitar of Saladin.... A work full of 'mountain-mirth,' mischievous as Puck, and lightsome as Ariel.... We know not whether to admire most the genial, fresh, and discursive concinnity of the author, or his playful fancy, weird imagination, and compass of style, at once both objective and subjective.... We might indulge in some criticisms, but, were the author other than he is, he would be a different being. As it is, he has a wonderful _pose_, which flits from flower to flower, and bears the reader irresistibly along on its eagle pinions (like Ganymede) to the 'highest heaven of invention.' ... We love a book so purely objective ... Many of his pictures of natural scenery have an extraordinary subjective clearness and fidelity.... In fine, we consider this as one of the most extraordinary volumes of this or any age. We know of no English author who could have written it. It is a work to which the proud genius of our country, standing with one foot on the Aroostook and the other on the Rio Grande, and holding up the star-spangled banner amid the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds, may point with bewildering scorn of the punier efforts of enslaved Europe.... We hope soon to encounter our author among those higher walks of literature in which he is evidently capable of achieving enduring fame. Already we should be inclined to assign him a high position in the bright galaxy of our American bards. * * * * * _From the Saltriver Pilot and Flag of Freedom._ A volume in bad grammar and worse taste.... While the pieces here collected were confined to their appropriate sphere in the corners of obscure newspapers, we considered them wholly beneath contempt, but, as the author has chosen to come forward in this public manner, he must expect the lash he so richly merits.... Contemptible slanders.... Vilest Billingsgate.... Has raked all the gutters of our language.... The most pure, upright, and consistent politicians not safe from his malignant venom.... General Cushing comes in for a share of his vile calumnies.... The _Reverend_ Homer Wilbur is a disgrace to his cloth.... * * * * * _From the World-Harmonic-Æolian-Attachment_. Speech is silver: silence is golden. No utterance more Orphic than this. While, therefore, as highest author, we reverence him whose works continue heroically unwritten, we have also our hopeful word for those who with pen (from wing of goose loud-cackling, or seraph God-commissioned) record the thing that is revealed.... Under mask of quaintest irony, we detect here the deep, storm-tost (nigh ship-wracked) soul, thunder-scarred, semi-articulate, but ever climbing hopefully toward the peaceful summits of an Infinite Sorrow.... Yes, thou poor, forlorn Hosea, with Hebrew fire-flaming soul in thee, for thee also this life of ours has not been without its aspects of heavenliest pity and laughingest mirth. Conceivable enough! Through coarse Thersites-cloak, we have revelation of the heart, wild-glowing, world-clasping, that is in him. Bravely he grapples with the life-problem as it presents itself to him, uncombed, shaggy, careless of the 'nicer proprieties,' inexpert of 'elegant diction,' yet with voice audible enough to whoso hath ears, up there on the gravelly side-hills, or down on the splashy, indiarubber-like salt-marshes of native Jaalam. To this soul also the _Necessity of Creating_ somewhat has unveiled its awful front. If not Oedipuses and Electras and Alcestises, then in God's name Birdofredum Sawins! These also shall get born into the world, and filch (if so need) a Zingali subsistence therein, these lank, omnivorous Yankees of his. He shall paint the Seen, since the Unseen will not sit to him. Yet in him also are Nibelungen-lays, and Iliads, and Ulysses-wanderings, and Divine Comedies,--if only once he could come at them! Therein lies much, nay all; for what truly is this which we name _All_, but that which we do _not_ possess?... Glimpses also are given us of an old father Ezekiel, not without paternal pride, as is the wont of such. A brown, parchment-hided old man of the geoponic or bucolic species, gray-eyed, we fancy, _queued_ perhaps, with much weather-cunning and plentiful September-gale memories, bidding fair in good time to become the Oldest Inhabitant. After such hasty apparition, he vanishes and is seen no more.... Of 'Rev. Homer Wilbur, A.M., Pastor of the First Church in Jaalam,' we have small care to speak here. Spare touch in him of his Melesigenes namesake, save, haply, the--blindness! A tolerably caliginose, nephelegeretous elderly gentleman, with infinite faculty of sermonizing, muscularized by long practice and excellent digestive apparatus, and, for the rest, well-meaning enough, and with small private illuminations (somewhat tallowy, it is to be feared) of his own. To him, there, 'Pastor of the First Church in Jaalam,' our Hosea presents himself as a quite inexplicable Sphinx-riddle. A rich poverty of Latin and Greek,--so far is clear enough, even to eyes peering myopic through horn-lensed editorial spectacles,--but naught farther? O purblind, well-meaning, altogether fuscous Melesigenes-Wilbur, there are things in him incommunicable by stroke of birch! Did it ever enter that old bewildered head of thine that there was the _Possibility of the Infinite_ in him? To thee, quite wingless (and even featherless) biped, has not so much even as a dream of wings ever come? 'Talented young parishioner'? Among the Arts whereof thou art _Magister_, does that of _seeing_ happen to be one? Unhappy _Artium Magister!_ Somehow a Nemean lion, fulvous, torrid-eyed, dry-nursed in broad-howling sand-wildernesses of a sufficiently rare spirit-Libya (it may be supposed) has got whelped among the sheep. Already he stands wild-glaring, with feet clutching the ground as with oak-roots, gathering for a Remus-spring over the walls of thy little fold. In heaven's name, go not near him with that flybite crook of thine! In good time, thou painful preacher, thou wilt go to the appointed place of departed Artillery-Election Sermons, Right-hands of Fellowship, and Results of Councils, gathered to thy spiritual fathers with much Latin of the Epitaphial sort; thou too, shalt have thy reward; but on him the Eumenides have looked, not Xantippes of the pit, snake-tressed, finger-threatening, but radiantly calm as on antique gems; for him paws impatient the winged courser of the gods, champing unwelcome bit; him the starry deeps, the empyrean glooms, and far-flashing splendors await. * * * * * _From the Onion Grove Phoenix._ A talented young townsman of ours, recently returned from a Continental tour, and who is already favorably known to our readers by his sprightly letters from abroad which have graced our columns, called at our office yesterday. We learn from him, that, having enjoyed the distinguished privilege, while in Germany, of an introduction to the celebrated Von Humbug, he took the opportunity to present that eminent man with a copy of the 'Biglow Papers.' The next morning he received the following note, which he has kindly furnished us for publication. We prefer to print it _verbatim_, knowing that our readers will readily forgive the few errors into which the lllustrious writer has fallen, through ignorance of our language. 'HIGH-WORTHY MISTER! 'I shall also now especially happy starve, because I have more or less a work of one those aboriginal Red-Men seen in which have I so deaf an interest ever taken full-worthy on the self shelf with our Gottsched to be upset. 'Pardon my in the English-speech un-practice! 'Von Humbug.' He also sent with the above note a copy of his famous work on 'Cosmetics,' to be presented to Mr. Biglow; but this was taken from our friend by the English custom-house officers, probably through a petty national spite. No doubt, it has by this time found its way into the British Museum. We trust this outrage will be exposed in all our American papers. We shall do our best to bring it to the notice of the State Department. Our numerous readers will share in the pleasure we experience at seeing our young and vigorous national literature thus encouragingly patted on the head by this venerable and world-renowned German. We love to see these reciprocations of good-feeling between the different branches of the great Anglo-Saxon race. [The following genuine 'notice' having met my eye, I gladly insert a portion of it here, the more especially as it contains one of Mr. Biglow's poems not elsewhere printed.--H.W.] _From the Jaalam Independent Blunderbuss._ ... But, while we lament to see our young townsman thus mingling in the heated contests of party politics, we think we detect in him the presence of talents which, if properly directed, might give an innocent pleasure to many. As a proof that he is competent to the production of other kinds of poetry, we copy for our readers a short fragment of a pastoral by him, the manuscript of which was loaned us by a friend. The title of it is 'The Courtin'.' Zekle crep' up, quite unbeknown, An' peeked in thru the winder, An' there sot Huldy all alone, 'ith no one nigh to hender. Agin' the chimbly crooknecks hung, An' in amongst 'em rusted The ole queen's-arm thet gran'ther Young Fetched back frum Concord busted. The wannut logs shot sparkles out Towards the pootiest, bless her! An' leetle fires danced all about The chlny on the dresser. The very room, coz she wuz in, Looked warm frum floor to ceilin', An' she looked full ez rosy agin Ez th' apples she wuz peelin'. She heerd a foot an' knowed it, tu, Araspin' on the scraper,-- All ways to once her feelins flew Like sparks in burnt-up paper. He kin' o' l'itered on the mat, Some doubtfle o' the seekle; His heart kep' goin' pitypat, But hern went pity Zekle. An' yet she gin her cheer a jerk Ez though she wished him furder, An' on her apples kep' to work Ez ef a wager spurred her. 'You want to see my Pa, I spose?' 'Wall, no; I come designin'--' 'To see my Ma? She's sprinklin' clo'es Agin to-morrow's i'nin'.' He stood a spell on one foot fust, Then stood a spell on tother, An' on which one he felt the wust He couldn't ha' told ye, nuther. Sez he, 'I'd better call agin;' Sez she,'Think likely, _Mister;_' The last word pricked him like a pin, An'--wal, he up and kist her. When Ma bimeby upon 'em slips, Huldy sot pale ez ashes, All kind o'smily round the lips An' teary round the lashes. Her blood riz quick, though, like the tide Down to the Bay o' Fundy, An' all I know is they wuz cried In meetin', come nex Sunday. SATIS multis sese emptores futuros libri professis, Georgius Nichols, Cantabrigiensis, opus emittet de parte gravi sed adhuc neglecta historiæ naturalis, cum titulo sequente, videlicet: _Conatus ad Delineationem naturalem nonnihil perfectiorem Scarabæi Bombilatoris, vulgo dicti_ HUMBUG, ab HOMERO WILBUR, Artium Magistro, Societatis historico-naturalis Jaalamensis Præside (Secretario, Socioque (eheu!) singulo), multarumque aliarum Societatum eruditarum (sive ineruditarum) tam domesticarum quam transmarinarum Socio--forsitan futuro. PROEMIUM LECTORI BENEVOLO S. Toga scholastica nondum deposita, quum systemata varia entomologica, a viris ejus scientiæ cultoribus studiosissimis summa diligentia ædificata, penitus indagassem, non fuit quin luctuose omnibus in iis, quamvis aliter laude dignissimis, hiatum magni momenti perciperem. Tunc, nescio quo motu superiore impulsus, aut qua captus dulcedine operis, ad eum implendum (Curtius alter) me solemniter devovi. Nec ab isto labore, [Greek: daimonios] imposito, abstinui antequam tractatulum sufficienter inconcinnum lingua vernacula perfeceram. Inde, juveniliter tumefactus, et barathro ineptiæ [Greek: ton bibliopolon] (necnon 'Publici Legentis') nusquam explorato, me composuisse quod quasi placentas præfervidas (ut sic dicam) homines ingurgitarent credidi. Sed, quum huic et alio bibliopolæ MSS. mea submisissem et nihil solidius responsione valde negativa in Musæum meum retulissem, horror ingens atque misericordia, ob crassitudinem Lambertianam in cerebris homunculorum istius muneris coelesti quadam ira infixam, me invasere. Extemplo mei solius impensis librum edere decrevi, nihil omnino dubitans quin 'Mundus Scientificus' (ut aiunt) crumenam meam ampliter repleret. Nullam, attamen, ex agro illo meo parvulo segetem demessui præter gaudium vacuum bene de Republica merendi. Iste panis meus pretiosus super aquas literarias fæculentas præfidenter jactus, quasi Harpyiaram quarundam (scilicet bibliopolarum istorum facinorosorum supradictorum) tactu rancidus, intra perpaucos dies mihi domum rediit. Et, quum ipse tali victu ali non tolerarem, primum in mentem venit pistori (typographo nempe) nihilominus solvendum esse. Animum non idcirco demisi, imo æque ac pueri naviculas suas penes se lino retinent (eo ut e recto cursu delapsas ad ripam retrahant), sic ego Argâ meam chartaceam fluctibus laborantem a quæsitu velleris aurei, ipse potius tonsus pelleque exutus, mente solida revocavi. Metaphoram ut mutem, _boomarangam_ meam a scopo aberrantem, retraxi, dum majore vi, occasione ministrante, adversus Fortunam intorquerem. Ast mihi, talia volventi, et, sicut Saturnus ille [Greek: paidoboros], liberos intellectûs mei depascere fidenti, casus miserandus, nec antea inauditus, supervenit. Nam, ut ferunt Scythas pietatis causa et parsimoniæ, parentes suos mortuos devorâsse, sic filius hic meus primogenitus, Scythis ipsis minus mansuetus, patrem vivum totum et calcitrantem exsorbere enixus est. Nec tamen hac de causa sobolem meam esurientem exheredavi. Sed famem istam pro valido testimonio virilitatis roborisque potius habui, cibumque ad eam satiandam, salva paterna mea carne, petii. Et quia bilem illam scaturientem ad æs etiam concoquendum idoneam esse estimabam, unde æs alienum, ut minoris pretii, haberem, circumspexi. Rebus ita se habentibus, ab avunculo meo Johanne Doolittie, Armigero, impetravi ut pecunias necessarias suppeditaret, ne opus esset mihi universitatem relinquendi antequam ad gradum primum in artibus pervenissem. Tune ego, salvum facere patronum meum munificum maxime cupiens, omnes libros primæ editionis operis mei non venditos una cum privilegio in omne ævum ejusdem imprimendi et edendi avunculo meo dicto pigneravi. Ex illo die, atro lapide notando, curæ vociferantes familiæ singulis annis crescentis eo usque insultabant ut nunquam tam carum pignus e vinculis istis aheneis solvere possem. Avunculo vero nuper mortuo, quum inter alios consanguineos testamenti ejus lectionem audiendi causa advenissem, erectis auribus verba talia sequentia accepi: 'Quoniam persuasum habeo meum dilectum nepotem Homerum, longa et intima rerum angustarum domi experientia, aptissimum esse qui divitias tueatur, beneficenterque ac prudenter iis divinis creditis utatur,--ergo, motus hisce cogitationibus, exque amore meo in illum magno, do, legoque nepoti caro meo supranominato omnes singularesque istas possessiones nec ponderabiles nec computabiles meas quæ sequuntur, scilicet: quingentos libros quos mihi pigneravit dictus Homerus, anno lucis 1792, cum privilegio edendi et repetendi opus istud "scientificum" (quod dicunt) suum, si sic elegerit. Tamen D.O.M, precor oculos Homeri nepotis mei ita aperiat eumque moveat, ut libros istos in bibliotheca unius e plurimis castellis suis Hispaniensibus tuto abscondat.' His verbis vix credibilibus, auditis, cor meum in pectore exsultavit. Deinde, quoniam tractatus Anglice scriptus spem auctoris fefellerat, quippe quum studium Historiæ Naturalis in Republica nostra inter factionis strepitum languescat, Latine versum edere statui, et eo potius quia nescio quomodo disciplina academica et duo diplomata proficiant, nisi quod peritos linguarum omnino mortuarum (et damnandarum, ut dicebat iste [Greek: panourgos] Guilielmus Cobbett) nos faciant. Et mihi adhue superstes est tota illa editio prima, quam quasi crepitaculum per quod dentes caninos dentibam retineo. * * * * * OPERIS SPECIMEN (_Ad exemplum Johannis Physiophili speciminis Monachologiæ_) 12. S.B. _Militaris_, WILBUR. _Carnifex_, JABLONSK. _Profanus_, DESFONT. [Male hanece speciem _Cyclopem_ Fabricius vocat, ut qui singulo oculo ad quod sui interest distinguitur. Melius vero Isaacus Outis nullum inter S. milit. S. que Belzebul (Fabric. 152) discrimen esse defendit] Habitat civitat. Americ. austral. Aureis lineis splendidus; plerumque tamen sordidus, utpote lanienas valde frequentans, foetore sanguinis allectus. Amat quoque insuper septa apricari, neque inde, nisi maxima conatione detruditur. _Candidatus_ ergo populariter vocatus. Caput cristam quasi pennarum ostendit. Pro cibo vaccam publicam callide mulget; abdomen enorme; facultas suctus haud facile estimanda. Otiosus, fatuus; ferox nihilominus, semperque dimicare paratus. Tortuose repit. Capite sæpe maxima cum cura dissecto, ne illud rudimentum etiam cerebri commune omnibus prope insectis detegere poteram. Unam de hoc S. milit. rem singularem notavi; nam S. Guineens. (Fabric. 143) servos facit, et idcirco a multis summa in reverentia habitus, quasi scintillas rationis pæne humanæ demonstrans. 24. S.B. _Criticus_, WILBUR. _Zoilus_, FABRIC. _Pygmæus_, CARLSEN. [Stultissime Johannes Stryx cum S. punctato (Fabric. 64-109) confundit. Specimina quamplurima scrutationi microscopicæ subjeci, nunquam tamen unum ulla indicia puncti cujusvis prorsus ostendentem inveni.] Præcipue formidolosus, insectatusque, in proxima rima anonyma sese abscondit, _we, we_, creberrime stridens. Ineptus, segnipes. Habitat ubique gentium; in sicco; nidum suum terebratione indefessa ædificans. Cibus. Libros depascit; siccos præcipue. MELIBOEUS-HIPPONAX * * * * * THE Biglow Papers EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, NOTES, GLOSSARY, AND COPIOUS INDEX, BY HOMER WILBUR, A.M., PASTOR OF THE FIRST CHURCH IN JAALAM, AND (PROSPECTIVE) MEMBER OF MANY LITERARY, LEARNED, AND SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES, (_for which see page 227_.) The ploughman's whistle, or the trivial flute, Finds more respect than great Apollo's lute. _Quarles's Emblems_, B. ii. E. 8. Margaritas, munde porcine, calcasti: en, siliquas accipe. _Jac. Car. Fil. ad Pub. Leg._ Section 1. NOTE TO TITLE-PAGE It will not have escaped the attentive eye, that I have, on the title-page, omitted those honorary appendages to the editorial name which not only add greatly to the value of every book, but whet and exacerbate the appetite of the reader. For not only does he surmise that an honorary membership of literary and scientific societies implies a certain amount of necessary distinction on the part of the recipient of such decorations, but he is willing to trust himself more entirely to an author who writes under the fearful responsibility of involving the reputation of such bodies as the _S. Archæol. Dahom._ or the _Acad. Lit. et Scient. Kamtschat_. I cannot but think that the early editions of Shakespeare and Milton would have met with more rapid and general acceptance, but for the barrenness of their respective title-pages; and I believe that, even now, a publisher of the works of either of those justly distinguished men would find his account in procuring their admission to the membership of learned bodies on the Continent,--a proceeding no whit more incongruous than the reversal of the judgment against Socrates, when he was already more than twenty centuries beyond the reach of antidotes, and when his memory had acquired a deserved respectability. I conceive that it was a feeling of the importance of this precaution which induced Mr. Locke to style himself 'Gent.' on the title-page of his Essay, as who should say to his readers that they could receive his metaphysics on the honor of a gentleman. Nevertheless, finding that, without descending to a smaller size of type than would have been compatible with the dignity of the several societies to be named, I could not compress my intended list within the limits of a single page, and thinking, moreover, that the act would carry with it an air of decorous modesty, I have chosen to take the reader aside, as it were, into my private closet, and there not only exhibit to him the diplomas which I already possess, but also to furnish him with a prophetic vision of those which I may, without undue presumption, hope for, as not beyond the reach of human ambition and attainment. And I am the rather induced to this from the fact that my name has been unaccountably dropped from the last triennial catalogue of our beloved _Alma Mater_. Whether this is to be attributed to the difficulty of Latinizing any of those honorary adjuncts (with a complete list of which I took care to furnish the proper persons nearly a year beforehand), or whether it had its origin in any more culpable motives, I forbear to consider in this place, the matter being in course of painful investigation. But, however this may be, I felt the omission the more keenly, as I had, in expectation of the new catalogue, enriched the library of the Jaalam Athenæum with the old one then in my possession, by which means it has come about that my children will be deprived of a never-wearying winter evening's amusement in looking out the name of their parent in that distinguished roll. Those harmless innocents had at least committed no--but I forbear, having intrusted my reflections and animadversions on this painful topic to the safe-keeping of my private diary, intended for posthumous publication. I state this fact here, in order that certain nameless individuals, who are, perhaps, overmuch congratulating themselves upon my silence, may know that a rod is in pickle which the vigorous hand of a justly incensed posterity will apply to their memories. The careful reader will note that, in the list which I have prepared, I have included the names of several Cisatlantic societies to which a place is not commonly assigned in processions of this nature. I have ventured to do this, not only to encourage native ambition and genius, but also because I have never been able to perceive in what way distance (unless we suppose them at the end of a lever) could increase the weight of learned bodies. As far as I have been able to extend my researches among such stuffed specimens as occasionally reach America, I have discovered no generic difference between the antipodal _Fogrum Japonicum_ and the _F. Americanum_, sufficiently common in our own immediate neighborhood. Yet, with a becoming deference to the popular belief that distinctions of this sort are enhanced in value by every additional mile they travel, I have intermixed the names of some tolerably distant literary and other associations with the rest. I add here, also, an advertisement, which, that it may be the more readily understood by those persons especially interested therein, I have written in that curtailed and otherwise maltreated canine Latin, to the writing and reading of which they are accustomed. OMNIB. PER TOT. ORB. TERRAR. CATALOG. ACADEM, EDD. Minim. gent, diplom. ab inclytiss. acad. vest. orans, vir. honorand. operosiss., at sol. ut sciat. quant. glor. nom. meum (dipl. fort. concess.) catal. vest. temp. futur. affer., ill. subjec., addit. omnib. titul. honorar. qu. adh. non tant. opt. quam probab. put. *** _Litt. Uncial, distinx. ut Præs. S. Hist. Nat. Jaal_. HOMERUS WILBUR, Mr., Episc. Jaalam, S.T.D. 1850, et Yal. 1849, et Neo-Cæs. et Brun. et Gulielm. 1852, et Gul. et Mar. et Bowd. et Georgiop. et Viridimont. et Columb. Nov. Ebor. 1853, et Amherst. et Watervill. et S. Jarlath. Hib. et S. Mar. et S. Joseph, et S. And. Scot. 1854. et Nashvill. et Dart. et Dickins. et Concord. et Wash. et Columbian. et Charlest. et Jeff. et Dubl. et Oxon. et Cantab. et Cæt. 1855. P.U.N.C.H. et J.U.D. Gott. et Osnab. et Heidelb. 1860, et Acad. BORE US. Berolin. Soc., et SS. RR. Lugd. Bat. et Patav. et Lond. et Edinb. et Ins. Feejee. et Null. Terr. et Pekin. Soc. Hon. et S.H.S et S.P.A. et A.A.S. et S. Humb. Univ. et S. Omn. Rer. Quarund. q. Aliar. Promov. Passamaquod. et H.P.C. et I.O.H, et [Greek: A.D.Ph.] et [Greek: P.K.P.] et [Greek: Ph.B.K.] et Peucin. et Erosoph. et Philadelph. et Frat. in Unit. et [Greek: S.T.] et S. Archæolog. Athen. et Acad. Scient, et Lit. Panorm. et SS.R.H. Matrit. et Beeloochist. et Caffrar. et Caribb. et M.S. Reg. Paris, et S. Am. Antiserv. Soc. Hon. et P.D. Gott. et LL.D. 1852, et D.C.L. et Mus. Doc. Oxon. 1860, et M.M.S.S. et M.D. 1854, et Med. Fac. Univ. Harv. Soc. et S. pro Convers. Pollywog. Soc. Hon. et Higgl. Piggl. et LL.B. 1853, et S. pro Christianiz. Moschet. Soc. et SS. Ante-Diluv. ubiq. Gent. Soc. Hon. et Civit. Cleric. Jaalam. et S. pro Diffus. General. Tenebr. Secret. Corr. INTRODUCTION When, more than three years ago, my talented young parishioner, Mr. Biglow, came to me and submitted to my animadversions the first of his poems which he intended to commit to the more hazardous trial of a city newspaper, it never so much as entered my imagination to conceive that his productions would ever be gathered into a fair volume, and ushered into the august presence of the reading public by myself. So little are we short-sighted mortals able to predict the event! I confess that there is to me a quite new satisfaction in being associated (though only as sleeping partner) in a book which can stand by itself in an independent unity on the shelves of libraries. For there is always this drawback from the pleasure of printing a sermon, that, whereas the queasy stomach of this generation will not bear a discourse long enough to make a separate volume, those religious and godly-minded children (those Samuels, if I may call them so) of the brain must at first be buried in an undistinguished heap, and then get such resurrection as is vouchsafed to them, mummy-wrapped with a score of others in a cheap binding, with no other mark of distinction than the word '_Miscellaneous_' printed upon the back. Far be it from me to claim any credit for the quite unexpected popularity which I am pleased to find these bucolic strains have attained unto. If I know myself, I am measurably free from the itch of vanity; yet I may be allowed to say that I was not backward to recognize in them a certain wild, puckery, acidulous (sometimes even verging toward that point which, in our rustic phrase, is termed _shut-eyed_) flavor, not wholly unpleasing, nor unwholesome, to palates cloyed with the sugariness of tamed and cultivated fruit. It may be, also, that some touches of my own, here and there, may have led to their wider acceptance, albeit solely from my larger experience of literature and authorship.[9] I was at first inclined to discourage Mr. Biglow's attempts, as knowing that the desire to poetize is one of the diseases naturally incident to adolescence, which, if the fitting remedies be not at once and with a bold hand applied, may become chronic, and render one, who might else have become in due time an ornament of the social circle, a painful object even to nearest friends and relatives. But thinking, on a further experience that there was a germ of promise in him which required only culture and the pulling up of weeds from about it, I thought it best to set before him the acknowledged examples of English composition in verse, and leave the rest to natural emulation. With this view, I accordingly lent him some volumes of Pope and Goldsmith, to the assiduous study of which he promised to devote his evenings. Not long afterward, he brought me some verses written upon that model, a specimen of which I subjoin, having changed some phrases of less elegancy, and a few rhymes objectionable to the cultivated ear. The poem consisted of childish reminiscences, and the sketches which follow will not seem destitute of truth to those whose fortunate education began in a country village. And, first, let us hang up his charcoal portrait of the school-dame. 'Propped on the marsh, a dwelling now, I see The humble school-house of my A, B, C, Where well-drilled urchins, each behind his tire, Waited in ranks the wished command to fire, Then all together, when the signal came, Discharged their _a-b abs_ against the dame. Daughter of Danaus, who could daily pour In treacherous pipkins her Pierian store, She, mid the volleyed learning firm and calm, Patted the furloughed ferule on her palm, And, to our wonder, could divine at once Who flashed the pan, and who was downright dunce. 'There young Devotion learned to climb with ease The gnarly limbs of Scripture family-trees, And he was most commended and admired Who soonest to the topmost twig perspired; Each name was called as many various ways As pleased the reader's ear on different days, So that the weather, or the ferule's stings, Colds in the head, or fifty other things, Transformed the helpless Hebrew thrice a week To guttural Pequot or resounding Greek, The vibrant accent skipping here and there, Just as it pleased invention or despair; No controversial Hebraist was the Dame; With or without the points pleased her the same; If any tyro found a name too tough. And looked at her, pride furnished skill enough; She nerved her larynx for the desperate thing, And cleared the five-barred syllables at a spring. 'Ah, dear old times! there once it was my hap, Perched on a stool, to wear the long-eared cap; From books degraded, there I sat at ease, A drone, the envy of compulsory bees; Rewards of merit, too, full many a time, Each with its woodcut and its moral rhyme, And pierced half-dollars hung on ribbons gay About my neck (to be restored next day) I carried home, rewards as shining then As those that deck the lifelong pains of men, More solid than the redemanded praise With which the world beribbons later days. 'Ah, dear old times! how brightly ye return! How, rubbed afresh, your phosphor traces burn! The ramble schoolward through dewsparkling meads, The willow-wands turned Cinderella steeds, The impromptu pin-bent hook, the deep remorse O'er the chance-captured minnow's inchlong corse; The pockets, plethoric with marbles round, That still a space for ball and peg-top found, Nor satiate yet, could manage to confine Horsechestnuts, flagroot, and the kite's wound twine, Nay, like the prophet's carpet could take in, Enlarging still, the popgun's magazine; The dinner carried in the small tin pail, Shared with some dog, whose most beseeching tail And dripping tongue and eager ears belied The assumed indifference of canine pride; The caper homeward, shortened if the cart Of Neighbor Pomeroy, trundling from the mart, O'ertook me,--then, translated to the seat I praised the steed, how stanch he was and fleet, While the bluff farmer, with superior grin, Explained where horses should be thick, where thin, And warned me (joke he always had in store) To shun a beast that four white stockings wore. What a fine natural courtesy was his! His nod was pleasure, and his full bow bliss; How did his well-thumbed hat, with ardor rapt, Its curve decorous to each rank adapt! How did it graduate with a courtly ease The whole long scale of social differences, Yet so gave each his measure running o'er, None thought his own was less, his neighbor's more; The squire was flattered, and the pauper knew Old times acknowledged 'neath the threadbare blue! Dropped at the corner of the embowered lane, Whistling I wade the knee-deep leaves again, While eager Argus, who has missed all day The sharer of his condescending play, Comes leaping onward with a bark elate And boisterous tail to greet me at the gate; That I was true in absence to our love Let the thick dog's-ears in my primer prove.' I add only one further extract, which will possess a melancholy interest to all such as have endeavored to glean the materials of revolutionary history from the lips of aged persons, who took a part in the actual making of it, and, finding the manufacture profitable, continued the supply in an adequate proportion to the demand. 'Old Joe is gone, who saw hot Percy goad His slow artillery lip the Concord road, A tale which grew in wonder, year by year, As, every time he told it, Joe drew near To the main fight, till, faded and grown gray, The original scene to bolder tints gave way; Then Joe had heard the foe's scared double-quick Beat on stove drum with one un-captured stick, And, ere death came the lengthening tale to lop, Himself had fired, and seen a redcoat drop; Had Joe lived long enough, that scrambling fight Had squared more nearly with his sense of right, And vanquished Percy, to complete the tale, Had hammered stone for life in Concord jail.' I do not know that the foregoing extracts ought not to be called my own rather than Mr. Biglow's, as, indeed, he maintained stoutly that my file had left nothing of his in them. I should not, perhaps, have felt entitled to take so great liberties with them, had I not more than suspected an hereditary vein of poetry in myself, a very near ancestor having written a Latin poem in the Harvard _Gratulatio_ on the accession of George the Third. Suffice it to say, that, whether not satisfied with such limited approbation as I could conscientiously bestow, or from a sense of natural inaptitude, certain it is that my young friend could never be induced to any further essays in this kind. He affirmed that it was to him like writing in a foreign tongue,--that Mr. Pope's versification was like the regular ticking of one of Willard's clocks, in which one could fancy, after long listening, a certain kind of rhythm or tune, but which yet was only a poverty-stricken _tick, tick_, after all,--and that he had never seen a sweet-water on a trellis growing so fairly, or in forms so pleasing to his eye, as a fox-grape over a scrub-oak in a swamp. He added I know not what, to the effect that the sweet-water would only be the more disfigured by having its leaves starched and ironed out, and that Pegasus (so he called him) hardly looked right with his mane and tail in curl-papers. These and other such opinions I did not long strive to eradicate, attributing them rather to a defective education and senses untuned by too long familiarity with purely natural objects, than to a perverted moral sense. I was the more inclined to this leniency since sufficient evidence was not to seek, that his verses, wanting as they certainly were in classic polish and point, had somehow taken hold of the public ear in a surprising manner. So, only setting him right as to the quantity of the proper name Pegasus, I left him to follow the bent of his natural genius. Yet could I not surrender him wholly to the tutelage of the pagan (which, literally interpreted, signifies village) muse without yet a further effort for his conversion, and to this end I resolved that whatever of poetic fire yet burned in myself, aided by the assiduous bellows of correct models, should be put in requisition. Accordingly, when my ingenious young parishioner brought to my study a copy of verses which he had written touching the acquisition of territory resulting from the Mexican war, and the folly of leaving the question of slavery or freedom to the adjudication of chance, I did myself indite a short fable or apologue after the manner of Gay and Prior, to the end that he might see how easily even such subjects as he treated of were capable of a more refined style and more elegant expression. Mr. Biglow's production was as follows:-- THE TWO GUNNERS A FABLE Two fellers, Isrel named and Joe, One Sundy mornin' 'greed to go Agunnin' soon 'z the bells wuz done And meetin' finally begun, So'st no one wouldn't be about Ther Sabbath-breakin' to spy out. Joe didn't want to go a mite; He felt ez though 'twarn't skeercely right, But, when his doubts he went to speak on, Isrel he up and called him Deacon, An' kep' apokin' fun like sin An' then arubbin' on it in, Till Joe, less skeered o' doin' wrong Than bein' laughed at, went along. Past noontime they went trampin' round An' nary thing to pop at found, Till, fairly tired o' their spree, They leaned their guns agin a tree, An' jest ez they wuz settin' down To take their noonin', Joe looked roun' And see (acrost lots in a pond That warn't mor'n twenty rod beyond) A goose that on the water sot Ez ef awaitin' to be shot. Isrel he ups and grabs his gun; Sez he, 'By ginger, here's some fun!' 'Don't fire,' sez Joe, 'it ain't no use, Thet's Deacon Peleg's tame wil'-goose:' Sez Isrel, 'I don't care a cent. I've sighted an' I'll let her went;' _Bang!_ went queen's-arm, ole gander flopped His wings a spell, an' quorked, an' dropped. Sez Joe, 'I wouldn't ha' been hired At that poor critter to ha' fired, But since it's clean gin up the ghost, We'll hev the tallest kind o' roast; I guess our waistbands'll be tight 'Fore it comes ten o'clock ternight.' 'I won't agree to no such bender,' Sez Isrel; 'keep it tell it's tender; 'Tain't wuth a snap afore it's ripe.' Sez Joe, 'I'd jest ez lives eat tripe; You _air_ a buster ter suppose I'd eat what makes me hol' my nose!' So they disputed to an' fro Till cunnin' Isrel sez to Joe, 'Don't le's stay here an' play the fool, Le's wait till both on us git cool, Jest for a day or two le's hide it, An' then toss up an' so decide it.' 'Agreed!' sez Joe, an' so they did, An' the ole goose wuz safely hid. Now 'twuz the hottest kind o' weather, An' when at last they come together, It didn't signify which won, Fer all the mischief hed been done: The goose wuz there, but, fer his soul, Joe wouldn't ha' tetched it with a pole; But Isrel kind o' liked the smell on 't An' made _his_ dinner very well on 't. My own humble attempt was in manner and form following, and I print it here, I sincerely trust, out of no vainglory, but solely with the hope of doing good. LEAVING THE MATTER OPEN A TALE BY HOMER WILBUR, A.M. Two brothers once, an ill-matched pair, Together dwelt (no matter where), To whom an Uncle Sam, or some one, Had left a house and farm in common. The two in principles and habits Were different as rats from rabbits; Stout Farmer North, with frugal care, Laid up provision for his heir, Not scorning with hard sun-browned hands To scrape acquaintance with his lands; Whatever thing he had to do He did, and made it pay him, too; He sold his waste stone by the pound, His drains made water-wheels spin round, His ice in summer-time he sold, His wood brought profit when 'twas cold, He dug and delved from morn till night, Strove to make profit square with right, Lived on his means, cut no great dash, And paid his debts in honest cash. On tother hand, his brother South Lived very much from hand to mouth. Played gentleman, nursed dainty hands, Borrowed North's money on his lands, And culled his morals and his graces From cock-pits, bar-rooms, fights, and races; His sole work in the farming line Was keeping droves of long-legged swine, Which brought great bothers and expenses To North in looking after fences, And, when they happened to break through, Cost him both time and temper too, For South insisted it was plain He ought to drive them home again, And North consented to the work Because he loved to buy cheap pork. Meanwhile, South's swine increasing fast; His farm became too small at last; So, having thought the matter over, And feeling bound to live in clover And never pay the clover's worth, He said one day to Brother North:-- 'Our families are both increasing, And, though we labor without ceasing, Our produce soon will be too scant To keep our children out of want; They who wish fortune to be lasting Must be both prudent and forecasting; We soon shall need more land; a lot I know, that cheaply can be bo't; You lend the cash, I'll buy the acres. And we'll be equally partakers.' Poor North, whose Anglo-Saxon blood Gave him a hankering after mud, Wavered a moment, then consented, And, when the cash was paid, repented; To make the new land worth a pin, Thought he, it must be all fenced in, For, if South's swine once get the run on 't No kind of farming can be done on 't; If that don't suit the other side, 'Tis best we instantly divide.' But somehow South could ne'er incline This way or that to run the line, And always found some new pretence 'Gainst setting the division fence; At last he said:-- 'For peace's sake, Liberal concessions I will make; Though I believe, upon my soul, I've a just title to the whole, I'll make an offer which I call Gen'rous,--we'll have no fence at all; Then both of us, whene'er we choose, Can take what part we want to use; If you should chance to need it first, Pick you the best, I'll take the worst.' 'Agreed!' cried North; thought he, This fall With wheat and rye I'll sow it all; In that way I shall get the start, And South may whistle for his part. So thought, so done, the field was sown, And, winter haying come and gone, Sly North walked blithely forth to spy, The progress of his wheat and rye; Heavens, what a sight! his brother's swine Had asked themselves all out to dine; Such grunting, munching, rooting, shoving, The soil seemed all alive and moving, As for his grain, such work they'd made on 't, He couldn't spy a single blade on 't. Off in a rage he rushed to South, 'My wheat and rye'--grief choked his mouth: 'Pray don't mind me,' said South, 'but plant All of the new land that you want;' 'Yes, but your hogs,' cried North; 'The grain Won't hurt them,' answered South again; 'But they destroy my crop;' 'No doubt; 'Tis fortunate you've found it out; Misfortunes teach, and only they, You must not sow it in their way;' 'Nay, you,' says North, 'must keep them out;' 'Did I create them with a snout?' Asked South demurely; 'as agreed, The land is open to your seed, And would you fain prevent my pigs From running there their harmless rigs? God knows I view this compromise With not the most approving eyes; I gave up my unquestioned rights For sake of quiet days and nights; I offered then, you know 'tis true, To cut the piece of land in two.' 'Then cut it now,' growls North; 'Abate Your heat,' says South, 'tis now too late; I offered you the rocky corner, But you, of your own good the scorner, Refused to take it: I am sorry; No doubt you might have found a quarry, Perhaps a gold-mine, for aught I know, Containing heaps of native rhino; You can't expect me to resign My rights'-- 'But where,' quoth North, 'are mine?' '_Your_ rights,' says tother, 'well, that's funny, _I_ bought the land'-- '_I_ paid the money;' 'That,' answered South, 'is from the point, The ownership, you'll grant, is joint; I'm sure my only hope and trust is Not law so much as abstract justice, Though, you remember, 'twas agreed That so and so--consult the deed; Objections now are out of date, They might have answered once, but Fate Quashes them at the point we've got to; _Obsta principiis_ that's my motto.' So saying, South began to whistle And looked as obstinate as gristle, While North went homeward, each brown paw Clenched like a knot of natural law, And all the while, in either ear, Heard something clicking wondrous clear. To turn now to other matters, there are two things upon which it should seem fitting to dilate somewhat more largely in this place,--the Yankee character and the Yankee dialect. And, first, of the Yankee character, which has wanted neither open maligners, nor even more dangerous enemies in the persons of those unskilful painters who have given to it that hardness, angularity, and want of proper perspective, which, in truth, belonged, not to their subject, but to their own niggard and unskilful pencil. New England was not so much the colony of a mother country, as a Hagar driven forth into the wilderness. The little self-exiled band which came hither in 1620 came, not to seek gold, but to found a democracy. They came that they might have the privilege to work and pray, to sit upon hard benches and listen to painful preachers as long as they would, yea, even unto thirty-seventhly, if the spirit so willed it. And surely, if the Greek might boast his Thermopylæ, where three hundred men fell in resisting the Persian, we may well be proud of our Plymouth Rock, where a handful of men, women, and children not merely faced, but vanquished, winter, famine, the wilderness, and the yet more invincible _storge_ that drew them back to the green island far away. These found no lotus growing upon the surly shore, the taste of which could make them forget their little native Ithaca; nor were they so wanting to themselves in faith as to burn their ship, but could see the fair west-wind belly the homeward sail, and then turn unrepining to grapple with the terrible Unknown. As Want was the prime foe these hardy exodists had to fortress themselves against, so it is little wonder if that traditional feud be long in wearing out of the stock. The wounds of the old warfare were long a-healing, and an east-wind of hard times puts a new ache into every one of them. Thrift was the first lesson in their horn-book, pointed out, letter after letter, by the lean finger of the hard schoolmistress, Necessity. Neither were those plump, rosy-gilled Englishmen that came hither, but a hard-faced, atrabilious, earnest-eyed race, stiff from long wrestling with the Lord in prayer, and who had taught Satan to dread the new Puritan hug. Add two hundred years' influence of soil, climate, and exposure, with its necessary result of idiosyncrasies, and we have the present Yankee, full of expedients, half-master of all trades, inventive in all but the beautiful, full of shifts, not yet capable of comfort, armed at all points against the old enemy Hunger, longanimous, good at patching, not so careful for what is best as for what will _do_, with a clasp to his purse and a button to his pocket, not skilled to build against Time, as in old countries, but against sore-pressing Need, accustomed to move the world with no [Greek: pou sto] but his own two feet, and no lever but his own long forecast. A strange hybrid, indeed, did circumstance beget, here in the New World, upon the old Puritan stock, and the earth never before saw such mystic-practicalism, such niggard-geniality, such calculating-fanaticism, such cast-iron-enthusiasm, such sour-faced-humor, such close-fisted-generosity. This new _Græculus esuriens_ will make a living out of anything. He will invent new trades as well as tools. His brain is his capital, and he will get education at all risks. Put him on Juan Fernandez, and he would make a spelling-book first, and a salt-pan afterward. _In coelum, jusseris, ibit_,--or the other way either,--it is all one, so anything is to be got by it. Yet, after all, thin, speculative Jonathan is more like the Englishman of two centuries ago than John Bull himself is. He has lost somewhat in solidity, has become fluent and adaptable, but more of the original groundwork of character remains. He feels more at home with Fulke Greville, Herbert of Cherbury, Quarles, George Herbert, and Browne, than with his modern English cousins. He is nearer than John, by at least a hundred years, to Naseby, Marston Moor, Worcester, and the time when, if ever, there were true Englishmen. John Bull has suffered the idea of the Invisible to be very much fattened out of him. Jonathan is conscious still that he lives in the world of the Unseen as well as of the Seen. To move John you must make your fulcrum of solid beef and pudding; an abstract idea will do for Jonathan. * * * * * *** TO THE INDULGENT READER My friend, the Rev. Mr. Wilbur, having been seized with a dangerous fit of illness, before this Introduction had passed through the press, and being incapacitated for all literary exertion, sent to me his notes, memoranda, &c., and requested me to fashion them into some shape more fitting for the general eye. This, owing to the fragmentary and disjointed state of his manuscripts, I have felt wholly unable to do; yet being unwilling that the reader should be deprived of such parts of his lucubrations as seemed more finished, and not well discerning how to segregate these from the rest, I have concluded to send them all to the press precisely as they are. COLUMBUS NYE, _Pastor of a Church in Bungtown Corner._ It remains to speak of the Yankee dialect. And, first, it may be premised, in a general way, that any one much read in the writings of the early colonists need not be told that the far greater share of the words and phrases now esteemed peculiar to New England, and local there, were brought from the mother country. A person familiar with the dialect of certain portions of Massachusetts will not fail to recognize, in ordinary discourse, many words now noted in English vocabularies as archaic, the greater part of which were in common use about the time of the King James translation of the Bible. Shakespeare stands less in need of a glossary to most New-Englanders than to many a native of the Old Country. The peculiarities of our speech, however, are rapidly wearing out. As there is no country where reading is so universal and newspapers are so multitudinous, so no phrase remains long local, but is transplanted in the mail-bags to every remotest corner of the land. Consequently our dialect approaches nearer to uniformity than that of any other nation. The English have complained of us for coining new words. Many of those so stigmatized were old ones by them forgotten, and all make now an unquestioned part of the currency, wherever English is spoken. Undoubtedly, we have a right to make new words, as they are needed by the fresh aspects under which life presents itself here in the New World; and, indeed, wherever a language is alive, it grows. It might be questioned whether we could not establish a stronger title to the ownership of the English tongue than the mother-islanders themselves. Here, past all question, is to be its great home and centre. And not only is it already spoken here by greater numbers, but with a far higher popular average of correctness than in Britain. The great writers of it, too, we might claim as ours, were ownership to be settled by the number of readers and lovers. As regards the provincialisms to be met with in this volume, I may say that the reader will not find one which is not (as I believe) either native or imported with the early settlers, nor one which I have not, with my own ears, heard in familiar use. In the metrical portion of the book, I have endeavored to adapt the spelling as nearly as possible to the ordinary mode of pronunciation. Let the reader who deems me over-particular remember this caution of Martial:-- 'Quem recitas, meus est, O Fidentine, libellus; Sed male cum recitas, incipit esse tuus.' A few further explanatory remarks will not be impertinent. I shall barely lay down a few general rules for the reader's guidance. 1. The genuine Yankee never gives the rough sound to the _r_ when he can help it, and often displays considerable ingenuity in avoiding it even before a vowel. 2. He seldom sounds the final _g_, a piece of self-denial, if we consider his partiality for nasals. The same of the final _d_, as _han'_ and _stan'_ for _hand_ and _stand_. 3. The _h_ in such words as _while, when, where,_ he omits altogether. 4. In regard to _a_, he shows some inconsistency, sometimes giving a close and obscure sound, as _hev_ for _have, hendy_ for _handy, ez_ for _as, thet_ for _that_, and again giving it the broad sound it has in _father_, as _hânsome_ for _handsome._ 5. To the sound _ou_ he prefixes an _e_ (hard to exemplify otherwise than orally). The following passage in Shakespeare he would recite thus:-- 'Neow is the winta uv eour discontent Med glorious summa by this sun o'Yock, An' all the cleouds thet leowered upun eour heouse In the deep buzzum o' the oshin buried; Neow air eour breows beound 'ith victorious wreaths; Eour breused arms hung up fer monimunce; Eour starn alarums changed to merry meetins, Eour dreffle marches to delighfle masures. Grim-visaged war heth smeuthed his wrinkled front, An' neow, instid o' mountin' bare-bid steeds To fright the souls o' ferfle edverseries, He capers nimly in a lady's ch[)a]mber, To the lascivious pleasin' uv a loot.' 6. _Au_, in such words as _daughter_ and _slaughter_, he pronounces _ah_. 7. To the dish thus seasoned add a drawl _ad libitum_. [Mr. Wilbur's notes here become entirely fragmentary.--C.N.] [Greek: a]. Unable to procure a likeness of Mr. Biglow, I thought the curious reader might be gratified with a sight of the editorial effigies. And here a choice between two was offered,--the one a profile (entirely black) cut by Doyle, the other a portrait painted by a native artist of much promise. The first of these seemed wanting in expression, and in the second a slight obliquity of the visual organs has been heightened (perhaps from an over-desire of force on the part of the artist) into too close an approach to actual _strabismus_. This slight divergence in my optical apparatus from the ordinary model--however I may have been taught to regard it in the light of a mercy rather than a cross, since it enabled me to give as much of directness and personal application to my discourses as met the wants of my congregation, without risk of offending any by being supposed to have him or her in my eye (as the saying is)--seemed yet to Mrs. Wilbur a sufficient objection to the engraving of the aforesaid painting. We read of many who either absolutely refused to allow the copying of their features, as especially did Plotinus and Agesilaus among the ancients, not to mention the more modern instances of Scioppius, Palæottus, Pinellus, Velserus, Gataker, and others, or were indifferent thereto, as Cromwell. [Greek: b.] Yet was Cæsar desirous of concealing his baldness. _Per contra_, my Lord Protector's carefulness in the matter of his wart might be cited. Men generally more desirous of being _improved_ in their portraits than characters. Shall probably find very unflattered likenesses of ourselves in Recording Angel's gallery. [Greek: g.] Whether any of our national peculiarities may be traced to our use of stoves, as a certain closeness of the lips in pronunciation, and a smothered smoulderingness of disposition seldom roused to open flame? An unrestrained intercourse with fire probably conducive to generosity and hospitality of soul. Ancient Mexicans used stoves, as the friar Augustin Ruiz reports, Hakluyt, III. 468,--but Popish priests not always reliable authority. To-day picked my Isabella grapes. Crop injured by attacks of rose-bug in the spring. Whether Noah was justifiable in preserving this class of insects? [Greek: d]. Concerning Mr. Biglow's pedigree. Tolerably certain that there was never a poet among his ancestors. An ordination hymn attributed to a maternal uncle, but perhaps a sort of production not demanding the creative faculty. His grandfather a painter of the grandiose or Michael Angelo school. Seldom painted objects smaller than houses or barns, and these with uncommon expression. [Greek: e]. Of the Wilburs no complete pedigree. The crest said to be a _wild boar_, whence, perhaps, the name. (?) A connection with the Earls of Wilbraham (_quasi_ wild boar ham) might be made out. This suggestion worth following up. In 1677, John W.m. Expect----, had issue, 1. John, 2. Haggai, 3. Expect, 4. Ruhamah, 5. Desire. 'Here lyes y'e bodye of Mrs. Expect Wilber, Ye crewell salvages they kil'd her Together w'th other Christian soles eleaven, October y'e ix daye, 1707. Y'e stream of Jordan sh' as crost ore And now expeacts me on y'e other shore: I live in hope her soon to join; Her earthlye yeeres were forty and nine.' _From Gravestone in Pekussett, North Parish._ This is unquestionably the same John who afterward (1711) married Tabitha Hagg or Ragg. But if this were the case, she seems to have died early; for only three years after, namely, 1714, we have evidence that he married Winifred, daughter of Lieutenant Tipping. He seems to have been a man of substance, for we find him in 1696 conveying 'one undivided eightieth part of a salt-meadow' in Yabbok, and he commanded a sloop in 1702. Those who doubt the importance of genealogical studies _fuste potius quam argumento erudiendi_. I trace him as far as 1723, and there lose him. In that year he was chosen selectman. No gravestone. Perhaps overthrown when new hearse-house was built, 1802. He was probably the son of John, who came from Bilham Comit. Salop. circa 1642. This first John was a man of considerable importance, being twice mentioned with the honorable prefix of _Mr._ in the town records. Name spelt with two _l-s_. 'Hear lyeth y'e bod [_stone unhappily broken_.] Mr. Ihon Wilber [Esq.] [_I inclose this in brackets as doubtful. To me it seems clear_.] Ob't die [_illegible; looks like xviii_.].... iii [_prob. 1693_.] ... paynt ... deseased seinte: A friend and [fath]er untoe all y'e opreast, Hee gave y'e wicked familists noe reast, When Sat[an bl]ewe his Antinomian blaste. Wee clong to [Willber as a steadf]ast maste. [A]gaynst y'e horrid Qua[kers] ...' It is greatly to be lamented that this curious epitaph is mutilated. It is said that the sacrilegious British soldiers made a target of the stone during the war of Independence. How odious an animosity which pauses not at the grave! How brutal that which spares not the monuments of authentic history! This is not improbably from the pen of Rev. Moody Pyram, who is mentioned by Hubbard as having been noted for a silver vein of poetry. If his papers be still extant, a copy might possibly be recovered. THE BIGLOW PAPERS No. I A LETTER FROM MR. EZEKIEL BIGLOW OF JAALAM TO THE HON. JOSEPH T. BUCKINGHAM, EDITOR OF THE BOSTON COURIER, INCLOSING A POEM OF HIS SON, MR. HOSEA BIGLOW JAYLEM, june 1846. MISTER EDDYTER:--Our Hosea wuz down to Boston last week, and he see a cruetin Sarjunt a struttin round as popler as a hen with 1 chicking, with 2 fellers a drummin and fifin arter him like all nater. the sarjunt he thout Hosea hedn't gut his i teeth cut cos he looked a kindo 's though he'd jest com down, so he cal'lated to hook him in, but Hosy woodn't take none o' his sarse for all he hed much as 20 Rooster's tales stuck onto his hat and eenamost enuf brass a bobbin up and down on his shoulders and figureed onto his coat and trousis, let alone wut nater hed sot in his featers, to make a 6 pounder out on. wal, Hosea he com home considerabal riled, and arter I'd gone to bed I heern Him a thrashin round like a short-tailed Bull in fli-time. The old Woman ses she to me ses she, Zekle, ses she, our Hosee's gut the chollery or suthin anuther ses she, don't you Bee skeered, ses I, he's oney amakin pottery[10] ses i, he's ollers on hand at that ere busynes like Da & martin, and shure enuf, cum mornin, Hosy he cum down stares full chizzle, hare on eend and cote tales flyin, and sot rite of to go reed his varses to Parson Wilbur bein he haint aney grate shows o' book larnin himself, bimeby he cum back and sed the parson wuz dreffle tickled with 'em as i hoop you will Be, and said they wuz True grit. Hosea ses taint hardly fair to call 'em hisn now, cos the parson kind o' slicked off sum o' the last varses, but he told Hosee he didn't want to put his ore in to tetch to the Rest on 'em, bein they wuz verry well As thay wuz, and then Hosy ses he sed suthin a nuther about Simplex Mundishes or sum sech feller, but I guess Hosea kind o' didn't hear him, for I never hearn o' nobody o' that name in this villadge, and I've lived here man and boy 76 year cum next tater diggin, and thair aint no wheres a kitting spryer 'n I be. If you print 'em I wish you'd jest let folks know who hosy's father is, cos my ant Keziah used to say it's nater to be curus ses she, she aint livin though and he's a likely kind o' lad. EZEKIEL BIGLOW. * * * * * Thrash away, you'll _hev_ to rattle On them kittle-drums o' yourn,-- 'Taint a knowin' kind o' cattle Thet is ketched with mouldy corn; Put in stiff, you fifer feller, Let folks see how spry you be,-- Guess you'll toot till you are yeller 'Fore you git ahold o' me! Thet air flag's a leetle rotten, Hope it aint your Sunday's best;-- 10 Fact! it takes a sight o' cotton To stuff out a soger's chest: Sence we farmers hev to pay fer't, Ef you must wear humps like these, S'posin' you should try salt hay fer't, It would du ez slick ez grease. 'Twouldn't suit them Southun fellers, They're a dreffle graspin' set, We must ollers blow the bellers Wen they want their irons het; 20 May be it's all right ez preachin', But _my_ narves it kind o' grates, Wen I see the overreachin' O' them nigger-drivin' States. Them thet rule us, them slave-traders, Haint they cut a thunderin' swarth (Helped by Yankee renegaders), Thru the vartu o' the North! We begin to think it's nater To take sarse an' not be riled;-- 30 Who'd expect to see a tater All on eend at bein' biled? Ez fer war, I call it murder,-- There you hev it plain an' flat; I don't want to go no furder Than my Testyment fer that; God hez sed so plump an' fairly, It's ez long ez it is broad, An' you've gut to git up airly Ef you want to take in God. 40 'Taint your eppyletts an' feathers Make the thing a grain more right; 'Taint afollerin' your bell-wethers Will excuse ye in His sight; Ef you take a sword an' dror it, An' go stick a feller thru, Guv'ment aint to answer for it, God'll send the bill to you. Wut's the use o' meetin'-goin' Every Sabbath, wet or dry, 50 Ef it's right to go amowin' Feller-men like oats an' rye? I dunno but wut it's pooty Trainin' round in bobtail coats,-- But it's curus Christian dooty This 'ere cuttin' folks's throats. They may talk o' Freedom's airy Tell they're pupple in the face,-- It's a grand gret cemetary Fer the barthrights of our race; 60 They jest want this Californy So's to lug new slave-states in To abuse ye, an' to scorn ye, An' to plunder ye like sin. Aint it cute to see a Yankee Take sech everlastin' pains, All to get the Devil's thankee Helpin' on 'em weld their chains? Wy, it's jest ez clear ez figgers, Clear ez one an' one make two, 70 Chaps thet make black slaves o' niggers Want to make wite slaves o' you. Tell ye jest the eend I've come to Arter cipherin' plaguy smart, An' it makes a handy sum, tu. Any gump could larn by heart; Laborin' man an' laborin' woman Hev one glory an' one shame. Ev'y thin' thet's done inhuman Injers all on 'em the same. 80 'Taint by turnln' out to hack folks You're agoin' to git your right, Nor by lookin' down on black folks Coz you're put upon by wite; Slavery aint o' nary color, 'Taint the hide thet makes it wus, All it keers fer in a feller 'S jest to make him fill its pus. Want to tackle _me_ in, du ye? I expect you'll hev to wait; 90 Wen cold lead puts daylight thru ye You'll begin to kal'late; S'pose the crows wun't fall to pickin' All the carkiss from your bones, Coz you helped to give a lickin' To them poor half-Spanish drones? Jest go home an' ask our Nancy Wether I'd be sech a goose Ez to jine ye,--guess you'd fancy The etarnal bung wuz loose! 100 She wants me fer home consumption, Let alone the hay's to mow,-- Ef you're arter folks o' gumption, You've a darned long row to hoe. Take them editors thet's crowin' Like a cockerel three months old,-- Don't ketch any on 'em goin Though they _be_ so blasted bold; _Aint_ they a prime lot o' fellers? 'Fore they think on 't guess they'll sprout 110 (Like a peach thet's got the yellers), With the meanness bustin' out. Wal, go 'long to help 'em stealin' Bigger pens to cram with slaves, Help the men thet's ollers dealin' Insults on your fathers' graves; Help the strong to grind the feeble, Help the many agin the few, Help the men thet call your people Witewashed slaves an' peddlin' crew! 120 Massachusetts, God forgive her, She's akneelin' with the rest, She, thet ough' to ha' clung ferever In her grand old eagle-nest; She thet ough' to stand so fearless W'ile the wracks are round her hurled, Holdin' up a beacon peerless To the oppressed of all the world! Ha'n't they sold your colored seamen? Ha'n't they made your env'ys w'iz? 130 _Wut_'ll make ye act like freemen? _Wut_'ll git your dander riz? Come, I'll tell ye wut I'm thinkin' Is our dooty in this fix. They'd ha' done 't ez quick ez winkin' In the days o' seventy-six. Clang the bells in every steeple, Call all true men to disown The tradoocers of our people, The enslavers o' their own; 140 Let our dear old Bay State proudly Put the trumpet to her mouth, Let her ring this messidge loudly In the ears of all the South:-- 'I'll return ye good fer evil Much ez we frail mortils can, But I wun't go help the Devil Makin' man the cuss o' man; Call me coward, call me traiter, Jest ez suits your mean idees,-- Here I stand a tyrant hater, 151 An' the friend o' God an' Peace!' Ef I'd _my_ way I hed ruther We should go to work an part, They take one way, we take t'other, Guess it wouldn't break my heart; Man hed ough' to put asunder Them thet God has noways jined; An' I shouldn't gretly wonder Ef there's thousands o' my mind. 160 [The first recruiting sergeant on record I conceive to have been that individual who is mentioned in the Book of Job as _going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it._ Bishop Latimer will have him to have been a bishop, but to me that other calling would appear more congenial. The sect of Cainites is not yet extinct, who esteemed the first-born of Adam to be the most worthy, not only because of that privilege of primogeniture, but inasmuch as he was able to overcome and slay his younger brother. That was a wise saying of the famous Marquis Pescara to the Papal Legate, that _it was impossible for men to serve Mars and Christ at the same time_. Yet in time past the profession of arms was judged to be [Greek: kat exochaen] that of a gentleman, nor does this opinion want for strenuous upholders even in our day. Must we suppose, then, that the profession of Christianity was only intended for losels, or, at best, to afford an opening for plebeian ambition? Or shall we hold with that nicely metaphysical Pomeranian, Captain Vratz, who was Count Königsmark's chief instrument in the murder of Mr. Thynne, that the Scheme of Salvation has been arranged with an especial eye to the necessities of the upper classes, and that 'God would consider a _gentleman_ and deal with him suitably to the condition and profession he had placed him in'? It may be said of us all, _Exemplo plus quam ratione vivimus_.--H.W.] No. II A LETTER FROM MR. HOSEA BIGLOW TO THE HON. J.T. BUCKINGHAM, EDITOR OF THE BOSTON COURIER, COVERING A LETTER FROM MR. B. SAWIN, PRIVATE IN THE MASSACHUSETTS REGIMENT [This letter of Mr. Sawin's was not originally written in verse. Mr. Biglow, thinking it peculiarly susceptible of metrical adornment, translated it, so to speak, into his own vernacular tongue. This is not the time to consider the question, whether rhyme be a mode of expression natural to the human race. If leisure from other and more important avocations be granted, I will handle the matter more at large in an appendix to the present volume. In this place I will barely remark, that I have sometimes noticed in the unlanguaged prattlings of infants a fondness for alliteration, assonance, and even rhyme, in which natural predisposition we may trace the three degrees through which our Anglo-Saxon verse rose to its culmination in the poetry of Pope. I would not be understood as questioning in these remarks that pious theory which supposes that children, if left entirely to themselves, would naturally discourse in Hebrew. For this the authority of one experiment is claimed, and I could, with Sir Thomas Browne, desire its establishment, inasmuch as the acquirement of that sacred tongue would thereby be facilitated. I am aware that Herodotus states the conclusion of Psammetieus to have been in favor of a dialect of the Phrygian. But, beside the chance that a trial of this importance would hardly be blessed to a Pagan monarch whose only motive was curiosity, we have on the Hebrew side the comparatively recent investigation of James the Fourth of Scotland. I will add to this prefatory remark, that Mr. Sawin, though a native of Jaalam, has never been a stated attendant on the religious exercises of my congregation. I consider my humble efforts prospered in that not one of my sheep hath ever indued the wolf's clothing of war, save for the comparatively innocent diversion of a militia training. Not that my flock are backward to undergo the hardships of _defensive_ warfare. They serve cheerfully in the great army which fights, even unto death _pro aris et focis_, accoutred with the spade, the axe, the plane, the sledge, the spelling-book, and other such effectual weapons against want and ignorance and unthrift. I have taught them (under God) to esteem our human institutions as but tents of a night, to be stricken whenever Truth puts the bugle to her lips and sounds a march to the heights of wider-viewed intelligence and more perfect organization.--H.W.] MISTER BUCKINUM, the follerin Billet was writ hum by a Yung feller of our town that wuz cussed fool enuff to goe atrottin inter Miss Chiff arter a Drum and fife, it ain't Nater for a feller to let on that he's sick o' any bizness that He went intu off his own free will and a Cord, but I rather cal'late he's middlin tired o' voluntearin By this Time. I bleeve u may put dependunts on his statemence. For I never heered nothin bad on him let Alone his havin what Parson Wilbur cals a _pong shong_ for cocktales, and he ses it wuz a soshiashun of idees sot him agoin arter the Crootin Sargient cos he wore a cocktale onto his hat. his Folks gin the letter to me and i shew it to parson Wilbur and he ses it oughter Bee printed. send It to mister Buckinum, ses he, i don't ollers agree with him, ses he, but by Time,[11] ses he, I _du_ like a feller that aint a Feared. I have intusspussed a Few refleckshuns hear and thar. We're a kind o'prest with Hayin. Ewers respecfly HOSEA BIGLOW. This kind o' sogerin' aint a mite like our October trainin', A chap could clear right out from there ef 't only looked like rainin', An' th' Cunnles, tu, could kiver up their shappoes with bandanners, An' send the insines skootin' to the bar-room with their banners (Fear o' gittin' on 'em spotted), an' a feller could cry quarter Ef he fired away his ramrod arter tu much rum an' water. Recollect wut fun we hed, you 'n' I an' Ezry Hollis, Up there to Waltham plain last fall, along o' the Cornwallis?[12] This sort o' thing aint _jest_ like thet,--I wish thet I wuz furder,[13]-- Ninepunce a day fer killin' folks comes kind o' low fer murder, 10 (Wy I've worked out to slarterin' some fer Deacon Cephas Billins, An' in the hardest times there wuz I ollers tetched ten shillins.) There's sutthin' gits into my throat thet makes it hard to swaller, It comes so naturel to think about a hempen collar; It's glory,--but, in spite o' all my tryin' to git callous, I feel a kind o' in a cart, aridin' to the gallus. But wen it comes to _bein'_ killed,--I tell ye I felt streaked The fust time 't ever I found out wy baggonets wuz peaked; Here's how it wuz: I started out to go to a fandango, The sentinul he ups an' sez, 'Thet's furder 'an you can go.' 20 'None o' your sarse,' sez I; sez he, 'Stan' back!' 'Aint you a buster?' Sez I, 'I'm up to all thet air, I guess I've ben to muster; I know wy sentinuls air sot; you aint agoin' to eat us; Caleb haint no monopoly to court the seenorcetas; My folks to hum air full ez good ez his'n be, by golly!' An' so ez I wuz goin' by, not thinkin' wut would folly, The everlastin' cus he stuck his one-pronged pitchfork in me An' made a hole right thru my close ez ef I wuz an in'my. Wal, it beats all how big I felt hoorawin' in ole Funnel Wen Mister Bolles he gin the sword to our Leftenant Cunnle, 30 (It's Mister Secondary Bolles,[14] thet writ the prize peace essay. Thet's wy he didn't list himself along o' us, I dessay,) An' Rantoul, tu, talked pooty loud, but don't put _his_ foot in it, Coz human life's so sacred thet he's principled agin it,-- Though I myself can't rightly see it's any wus achokin' on 'em; Than puttin' bullets thru their lights, or with a bagnet pokin' on 'em; How dreffle slick he reeled it off (like Blitz at our lyceum Ahaulin' ribbins from his chops so quick you skeercely see 'em), About the Anglo-Saxon race (an' saxons would be handy To du the buryin' down here upon the Rio Grandy), 40 About our patriotic pas an' our star-spangled banner, Our country's bird alookin' on an' singin' out hosanner, An' how he (Mister B. himself) wuz happy fer Ameriky,-- I felt, ez sister Patience sez, a leetle mite histericky. I felt, I swon, ez though it wuz a dreffle kind o' privilege Atrampin' round thru Boston streets among the gutter's drivelage; I act'lly thought it wuz a treat to hear a little drummin', An' it did bonyfidy seem millanyum wuz acomin' Wen all on us got suits (darned like them wore in the state prison) An' every feller felt ez though all Mexico wuz hisn.[15] 50 This 'ere's about the meanest place a skunk could wal dlskiver (Saltillo's Mexican, I b'lieve, fer wut we call Salt-river); The sort o' trash a feller gits to eat doos beat all nater, I'd give a year's pay fer a smell o' one good blue-nose tater, The country here thet Mister Bolles declared to be so charmin' Throughout is swarmin' with the most alarmin' kind o' varmin. He talked about delishis froots, but then it wuz a wopper all, The holl on 't 's mud an' prickly pears, with here an' there a chapparal; You see a feller peekin' out, an', fust you know, a lariat Is round your throat an' you a copse, 'fore you can say, 'Wut air ye at?'[16] 60 You never see sech darned gret bugs (it may not be irrelevant To say I've seen a _scarabæus pilularius_[17] big ez a year old elephant), The rigiment come up one day in time to stop a red bug From runnin off with Cunnle Wright,--'twuz jest a common _cimex lectularius._ One night I started up on eend an' thought I wuz to hum agin, I heern a horn, thinks I it's Sol the fisherman hez come agin, _His_ bellowses is sound enough,--ez I'm a livin' creeter, I felt a thing go thru my leg--'twuz nothin' more 'n a skeeter! Then there's the yaller fever, tu, they call it here el vomito,-- (Come, thet wun't du, you landcrab there, I tell ye to le' _go_ my toe! 70 My gracious! it's a scorpion thet's took a shine to play with 't, I darsn't skeer the tarnal thing fer fear he'd run away with 't,) Afore I come away from hum I hed a strong persuasion Thet Mexicans worn't human beans,[18]--an ourang outang nation, A sort o' folks a chap could kill an' never dream on 't arter, No more 'n a feller'd dream o' pigs thet he hed hed to slarter; I'd an idee thet they were built arter the darkie fashion all, An' kickin' colored folks about, you know 's a kind o' national; But wen I jined I worn't so wise ez thet air queen o' Sheby, Fer, come to look at 'em, they aint much diff'rent from wut we be, 80 An' here we air ascrougin' 'em out o' thir own dominions, Ashelterin' 'em, ez Caleb sez, under our eagle's pinions, Wich means to take a feller up jest by the slack o' 's trowsis An' walk him Spanish clean right out o' all his homes an' houses; Wal, it doos seem a curus way, but then hooraw fer Jackson! It must be right, fer Caleb sez it's reg'lar Anglo-Saxon, The Mex'cans don't fight fair, they say, they piz'n all the water, An' du amazin' lots o' things thet isn't wut they ough' to; Bein' they haint no lead, they make their bullets out o' copper An' shoot the darned things at us, tu, wich Caleb sez ain proper; 90 He sez they'd ough' to stan' right up an' let us pop 'em fairly (Guess wen he ketches 'em at thet he'll hev to git up airly), Thet our nation's bigger 'n theirn an' so its rights air bigger, An' thet it's all to make 'em free thet we air pullin' trigger, Thet Anglo Saxondom's idee's abreakin' 'em to pieces, An' thet idee's thet every man doos jest wut he damn pleases; Ef I don't make his meanin' clear, perhaps in some respex I can, I know thet 'every man' don't mean a nigger or a Mexican; An' there's another thing I know, an' thet is, ef these creeters, Thet stick an Anglosaxon mask onto State-prison feeturs, 100 Should come to Jaalam Centre fer to argify an' spout on 't, The gals 'ould count the silver spoons the minnit they cleared out on 't. This goin' ware glory waits ye haint one agreeable feetur, An' ef it worn't fer wakin' snakes, I'd home agin short meter; O, wouldn't I be off, quick time, ef 't worn't thet I wuz sartin They'd let the daylight into me to pay me fer desartin! I don't approve o' tellin' tales, but jest to you I may state Our ossifers aiut wut they wuz afore they left the Bay-state; Then it wuz 'Mister Sawin, sir, you're middlin' well now, be ye? Step up an' take a nipper, sir; I'm dreffle glad to see ye:' 110 But now it's 'Ware's my eppylet? here, Sawin, step an' fetch it! An' mind your eye, be thund'rin' spry, or, damn ye, you shall ketch it!' Wal, ez the Doctor sez, some pork will bile so, but by mighty, Ef I hed some on 'em to hum, I'd give 'em linkum vity, I'd play the rogue's march on their hides an' other music follerin'-- But I must close my letter here, fer one on 'em 's ahollerin', These Anglosaxon ossifers,--wal, taint no use ajawin', I'm safe enlisted fer the war, Yourn, BIRDOFREDOM SAWIN. [Those have not been wanting (as, indeed, when hath Satan been to seek for attorneys?) who have maintained that our late inroad upon Mexico was undertaken not so much for the avenging of any national quarrel, as for the spreading of free institutions and of Protestantism. _Capita vix duabus Anticyris medenda!_ Verily I admire that no pious sergeant among these new Crusaders beheld Martin Luther riding at the front of the host upon a tamed pontifical bull, as, in that former invasion of Mexico, the zealous Gomara (spawn though he were of the Scarlet Woman) was favored with a vision of St. James of Compostella, skewering the infidels upon his apostolical lance. We read, also, that Richard of the lion heart, having gone to Palestine on a similar errand of mercy, was divinely encouraged to cut the throats of such Paynims as refused to swallow the bread of life (doubtless that they might be thereafter incapacitated for swallowing the filthy gobbets of Mahound) by angels of heaven, who cried to the king and his knights,_--Seigneurs, tuez! tuez!_ providentially using the French tongue, as being the only one understood by their auditors. This would argue for the pantoglottism of these celestial intelligences, while, on the other hand, the Devil, _teste_ Cotton Mather, is unversed in certain of the Indian dialects. Yet must he be a semeiologist the most expert, making himself intelligible to every people and kindred by signs; no other discourse, indeed, being needful, than such as the mackerel-fisher holds with his finned quarry, who, if other bait be wanting, can by a bare bit of white rag at the end of a string captivate those foolish fishes. Such piscatorial persuasion is Satan cunning in. Before one he trails a hat and feather, or a bare feather without a hat; before another, a Presidential chair or a tide-waiter's stool, or a pulpit in the city, no matter what. To us, dangling there over our heads, they seem junkets dropped out of the seventh heaven, sops dipped in nectar, but, once in our mouths, they are all one, bits of fuzzy cotton. This, however, by the way. It is time now _revocare gradum_. While so many miracles of this sort, vouched by eye-witnesses, have encouraged the arms of Papists, not to speak of Echetlæus at Marathon and those _Dioscuri_ (whom we must conclude imps of the pit) who sundry times captained the pagan Roman soldiery, it is strange that our first American crusade was not in some such wise also signalized. Yet it is said that the Lord hath manifestly prospered our armies. This opens the question, whether, when our hands are strengthened to make great slaughter of our enemies, it be absolutely and demonstratively certain that this might is added to us from above, or whether some Potentate from an opposite quarter may not have a finger in it, as there are few pies into which his meddling digits are not thrust. Would the Sanctifier and Setter-apart of the seventh day have assisted in a victory gained on the Sabbath, as was one in the late war? Do we not know from Josephus, that, careful of His decree, a certain river in Judaea abstained from flowing on the day of Rest? Or has that day become less an object of His especial care since the year 1697, when so manifest a providence occurred to Mr. William Trowbridge, in answer to whose prayers, when he and all on shipboard with him were starving, a dolphin was sent daily, 'which was enough to serve 'em; only on _Saturdays_ they still catched a couple, and on the _Lord's Days_ they could catch none at all'? Haply they might have been permitted, by way of mortification, to take some few sculpins (those banes of the salt-water angler), which unseemly fish would, moreover, have conveyed to them a symbolical reproof for their breach of the day, being known in the rude dialect of our mariners as _Cape Cod Clergymen_. It has been a refreshment to many nice consciences to know that our Chief Magistrate would not regard with eyes of approval the (by many esteemed) sinful pastime of dancing, and I own myseif to be so far of that mind, that I could not but set my face against this Mexican Polka, though danced to the Presidential piping with a Gubernatorial second. If ever the country should be seized with another such mania _pro propaganda fide_, I think it would be wise to fill our bombshells with alternate copies of the Cambridge Platform and the Thirty-nine Articles, which would produce a mixture of the highest explosive power, and to wrap every one of our cannon-balls in a leaf of the New Testament, the reading of which is denied to those who sit in the darkness of Popery. Those iron evangelists would thus be able to disseminate vital religion and Gospel truth in quarters inaccessible to the ordinary missionary. I have seen lads, unimpregnate with the more sublimated punctiliousness of Walton, secure pickerel, taking their unwary _siesta_ beneath the lily-pads too nigh the surface, with a gun and small shot. Why not, then, since gunpowder was unknown in the time of the Apostles (not to enter here upon the question whether it were discovered before that period by the Chinese), suit our metaphor to the age in which we live, and say _shooters_ as well as _fishers_ of men? I do much fear that we shall be seized now and then with a Protestant fervor, as long as we have neighbor Naboths whose wallowings in Papistical mire excite our horror in exact proportion to the size and desirableness of their vineyards. Yet I rejoice that some earnest Protestants have been made by this war,--I mean those who protested against it. Fewer they were than I could wish, for one might imagine America to have been colonized by a tribe of those nondescript African animals the Aye-Ayes, so difficult a word is _No_ to us all. There is some malformation or defect of the vocal organs, which either prevents our uttering it at all, or gives it so thick a pronunciation as to be unintelligible. A mouth filled with the national pudding, or watering in expectation thereof, is wholly incompetent to this refractory monosyllable. An abject and herpetic Public Opinion is the Pope, the Anti-Christ, for us to protest against _e corde cordium_. And by what College of Cardinals is this our God's-vicar, our binder and looser, elected? Very like, by the sacred conclave of Tag, Rag, and Bobtail, in the gracious atmosphere of the grog-shop. Yet it is of this that we must all be puppets. This thumps the pulpit-cushion, this guides the editor's pen, this wags the senator's tongue. This decides what Scriptures are canonical, and shuffles Christ away into the Apocrypha. According to that sentence fathered upon Solon, [Greek: Onto daemosion kakon erchetai oikad ekasto] This unclean spirit is skilful to assume various shapes. I have known it to enter my own study and nudge my elbow of a Saturday, under the semblance of a wealthy member of my congregation. It were a great blessing, if every particular of what in the sum we call popular sentiment could carry about the name of its manufacturer stamped legibly upon it. I gave a stab under the fifth rib to that pestilent fallacy,--'Our country, right or wrong,'--by tracing its original to a speech of Ensign Cilley at a dinner of the Bungtown Fencibles.--H.W.] No. III WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS [A few remarks on the following verses will not be out of place. The satire in them was not meant to have any personal, but only a general, application. Of the gentleman upon whose letter they were intended as a commentary Mr. Biglow had never heard, till he saw the letter itself. The position of the satirist is oftentimes one which he would not have chosen, had the election been left to himself. In attacking bad principles, he is obliged to select some individual who has made himself their exponent, and in whom they are impersonate, to the end that what he says may not, through ambiguity, be dissipated _tenues in auras._ For what says Seneca? _Longum iter per præcepta, breve et efficace per exempla_. A bad principle is comparatively harmless while it continues to be an abstraction, nor can the general mind comprehend it fully till it is printed in that large type which all men can read at sight, namely, the life and character, the sayings and doings, of particular persons. It is one of the cunningest fetches of Satan, that he never exposes himself directly to our arrows, but, still dodging behind this neighbor or that acquaintance, compels us to wound him through them, if at all. He holds our affections as hostages, the while he patches up a truce with our conscience. Meanwhile, let us not forget that the aim of the true satirist is not to be severe upon persons, but only upon falsehood, and, as Truth and Falsehood start from the same point, and sometimes even go along together for a little way, his business is to follow the path of the latter after it diverges, and to show her floundering in the bog at the end of it. Truth is quite beyond the reach of satire. There is so brave a simplicity in her, that she can no more be made ridiculous than an oak or a pine. The danger of the satirist is, that continual use may deaden his sensibility to the force of language. He becomes more and more liable to strike harder than he knows or intends. He may be careful to put on his boxing-gloves, and yet forget that, the older they grow, the more plainly may the knuckles inside be felt. Moreover, in the heat of contest, the eye is insensibly drawn to the crown of victory, whose tawdry tinsel glitters through that dust of the ring which obscures Truth's wreath of simple leaves. I have sometimes thought that my young friend, Mr. Biglow, needed a monitory hand laid on his arm,--_aliquid sufflaminandus erat_. I have never thought it good husbandry to water the tender plants of reform with _aqua fortis_, yet, where so much is to do in the beds, he were a sorry gardener who should wage a whole day's war with an iron scuffle on those ill weeds that make the garden-walks of life unsightly, when a sprinkle of Attic salt will wither them up. _Est ars etiam maledicendi_, says Scaliger, and truly it is a hard thing to say where the graceful gentleness of the lamb merges in downright sheepishness. We may conclude with worthy and wise Dr. Fuller, that 'one may be a lamb in private wrongs, but in hearing general affronts to goodness they are asses which are not lions.'--H.W.] Guvener B. is a sensible man; He stays to his home an' looks arter his folks; He draws his furrer ez straight ez he can, An' into nobody's tater-patch pokes; But John P. Robinson he Sez be wunt vote fer Guvener B. My! aint it terrible? Wut shall we du? We can't never choose him o' course,--thet's flat; Guess we shall hev to come round, (don't you?) An' go in fer thunder an' guns, an' all that; Fer John P. Robinson he Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B. Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man: He's ben on all sides thet gives places or pelf; But consistency still wuz a part of his plan,-- He's ben true to _one_ party,--an' thet is himself;-- So John P. Robinson he Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C. Gineral C. he goes in fer the war; He don't vally princerple more'n an old cud; Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer, But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an' blood? So John P. Robinson he Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C. We were gittin' on nicely up here to our village, With good old idees o' wut's right an' wut aint, We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage, An' thet eppyletts worn't the best mark of a saint; But John P. Robinson he Sez this kind o' thing's an exploded idee. The side of our country must ollers be took, An' Presidunt Polk, you know, _he_ is our country. An' the angel thet writes all our sins in a book Puts the _debit_ to him, an' to us the _per contry;_ An' John P. Robinson he Sez this is his view o' the thing to a T. Parson Wilbur he calls all these argimunts lies; Sez they're nothin' on airth but jest _fee, faw, fum;_ An' thet all this big talk of our destinies Is half on it ign'ance, an' t'other half rum; But John P. Robinson he Sez it aint no sech thing: an' of course, so must we. Parson Wilbur sez _he_ never heerd in his life Thet th' Apostles rigged out in their swaller-tail coats, An' marched round in front of a drum an' a fife, To git some on 'em office, an' some on 'em votes; But John P. Robinson he Sez they didn't know everythin' down in Judee. Wal, it's a marcy we've gut folks to tell us The rights an' the wrongs o' these matters, I vow,-- God sends country lawyers, an' other wise fellers, To start the world's team wen it gits in a slough; Fer John P. Robinson he Sez the world'll go right, ef he hollers out Gee! [The attentive reader will doubtless have perceived in the foregoing poem an allusion to that pernicious sentiment,--'Our country, right or wrong.' It is an abuse of language to call a certain portion of land, much more, certain personages, elevated for the time being to high station, our country. I would not sever nor loosen a single one of those ties by which we are united to the spot of our birth, nor minish by a tittle the respect due to the Magistrate. I love our own Bay State too well to do the one, and as for the other, I have myself for nigh forty years exercised, however unworthily, the function of Justice of the Peace, having been called thereto by the unsolicited kindness of that most excellent man and upright patriot, Caleb Strong. _Patriæ fumus igne alieno luculentior_ is best qualified with this,--_Ubi libertas, ibi patria_. We are inhabitants of two worlds, and owe a double, but not a divided, allegiance. In virtue of our clay, this little ball of earth exacts a certain loyalty of us, while, in our capacity as spirits, we are admitted citizens of an invisible and holier fatherland. There is a patriotism of the soul whose claim absolves us from our other and terrene fealty. Our true country is that ideal realm which we represent to ourselves under the names of religion, duty, and the like. Our terrestrial organizations are but far-off approaches to so fair a model, and all they are verily traitors who resist not any attempt to divert them from this their original intendment. When, therefore, one would have us to fling up our caps and shout with the multitude,--'_Our country, however bounded!_' he demands of us that we sacrifice the larger to the less, the higher to the lower, and that we yield to the imaginary claims of a few acres of soil our duty and privilege as liegemen of Truth. Our true country is bounded on the north and the south, on the east and the west, by Justice, and when she oversteps that invisible boundary-line by so much as a hair's-breadth, she ceases to be our mother, and chooses rather to be looked upon _quasi noverca_. That is a hard choice when our earthly love of country calls upon us to tread one path and our duty points us to another. We must make as noble and becoming an election as did Penelope between Icarius and Ulysses. Veiling our faces, we must take silently the hand of Duty to follow her. Shortly after the publication of the foregoing poem, there appeared some comments upon it in one of the public prints which seemed to call for animadversion. I accordingly addressed to Mr. Buckingham, of the Boston Courier, the following letter. JAALAM, November 4, 1847. '_To the Editor of the Courier:_ 'RESPECTED SIR,--Calling at the post-office this morning, our worthy and efficient postmaster offered for my perusal a paragraph in the Boston Morning Post of the 3d instant, wherein certain effusions of the pastoral muse are attributed to the pen of Mr. James Russell Lowell. For aught I know or can affirm to the contrary, this Mr. Lowell may be a very deserving person and a youth of parts (though I have seen verses of his which I could never rightly understand); and if he be such, he, I am certain, as well as I, would be free from any proclivity to appropriate to himself whatever of credit (or discredit) may honestly belong to another. I am confident, that, in penning these few lines, I am only forestalling a disclaimer from that young gentleman, whose silence hitherto, when rumor pointed to himward, has excited in my bosom mingled emotions of sorrow and surprise. Well may my young parishioner, Mr. Biglow, exclaim with the poet, "Sic vos non vobis," &c.; though, in saying this, I would not convey the impression that he is a proficient in the Latin tongue,--the tongue, I might add, of a Horace and a Tully. 'Mr. B. does not employ his pen, I can safely say, for any lucre of worldly gain, or to be exalted by the carnal plaudits of men, _digito monstrari, &c_. He does not wait upon Providence for mercies, and in his heart mean _merces_. But I should esteem myself as verily deficient in my duty (who am his friend and in some unworthy sort his spiritual _fidus Achates_, &c.), if I did not step forward to claim for him whatever measure of applause might be assigned to him by the judicious. 'If this were a fitting occasion, I might venture here a brief dissertation touching the manner and kind of my young friend's poetry. But I dubitate whether this abstruser sort of speculation (though enlivened by some apposite instances from Aristophanes) would sufficiently interest your oppidan readers. As regards their satirical tone, and their plainness of speech, I will only say, that, in my pastoral experience, I have found that the Arch-Enemy loves nothing better than to be treated as a religious, moral, and intellectual being, and that there is no _apage Sathanas!_ so potent as ridicule. But it is a kind of weapon that must have a button of good-nature on the point of it. 'The productions of Mr. B. have been stigmatized in some quarters as unpatriotic; but I can vouch that he loves his native soil with that hearty, though discriminating, attachment which springs from an intimate social intercourse of many years' standing. In the ploughing season, no one has a deeper share in the well-being of the country than he. If Dean Swift were right in saying that he who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before confers a greater benefit on the state than he who taketh a city, Mr. B. might exhibit a fairer claim to the Presidency than General Scott himself. I think that some of those disinterested lovers of the hard-handed democracy, whose fingers have never touched anything rougher than the dollars of our common country, would hesitate to compare palms with him. It would do your heart good, respected Sir, to see that young man mow. He cuts a cleaner and wider swath than any in this town. 'But it is time for me to be at my Post. It is very clear that my young friend's shot has struck the lintel, for the Post is shaken (Amos ix. 1). The editor of that paper is a strenuous advocate of the Mexican war, and a colonel, as I am given to understand. I presume, that, being necessarily absent in Mexico, he has left his journal in some less judicious hands. At any rate, the Post has been too swift on this occasion. It could hardly have cited a more incontrovertible line from any poem than that which it has selected for animadversion, namely,-- "We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage." 'If the Post maintains the converse of this proposition, it can hardly be considered as a safe guide-post for the moral and religious portions of its party, however many other excellent qualities of a post it may be blessed with. There is a sign in London on which is painted,--"The Green Man." It would do very well as a portrait of any individual who should support so unscriptural a thesis. As regards the language of the line in question, I am bold to say that He who readeth the hearts of men will not account any dialect unseemly which conveys a sound, and pious sentiment. I could wish that such sentiments were more common, however uncouthly expressed. Saint Ambrose affirms, that _veritas a quocunque_ (why not, then, _quomodocunque?) dicatur, a, spiritu sancto est_. Digest also this of Baxter: "The plainest words are the most profitable oratory in the weightiest matters." 'When the paragraph in question was shown to Mr. Biglow, the only part of it which seemed to give him any dissatisfaction was that which classed him with the Whig party. He says, that, if resolutions are a nourishing kind of diet, that party must be in a very hearty and flourishing condition; for that they have quietly eaten more good ones of their own baking than he could have conceived to be possible without repletion. He has been for some years past (I regret to say) an ardent opponent of those sound doctrines of protective policy which form so prominent a portion of the creed of that party. I confess, that, in some discussions which I have had with him on this point in my study, he has displayed a vein of obstinacy which I had not hitherto detected in his composition. He is also (_horresco referens_) infected in no small measure with the peculiar notions of a print called the Liberator, whose heresies I take every proper opportunity of combating, and of which, I thank God, I have never read a single line. 'I did not see Mr. B.'s verses until they appeared in print, and there _is_ certainly one thing in them which I consider highly improper. I allude to the personal references to myself by name. To confer notoriety on an humble individual who is laboring quietly in his vocation, and who keeps his cloth as free as he can from the dust of the political arena (though _voe mihi si non evangelizavero_), is no doubt an indecorum. The sentiments which he attributes to me I will not deny to be mine. They were embodied, though in a different form, in a discourse preached upon the last day of public fasting, and were acceptable to my entire people (of whatever political views), except the postmaster, who dissented _ex officio_. I observe that you sometimes devote a portion of your paper to a religious summary. I should be well pleased to furnish a copy of my discourse for insertion in this department of your instructive journal. By omitting the advertisements, it might easily be got within the limits of a single number, and I venture to insure you the sale of some scores of copies in this town. I will cheerfully render myself responsible for ten. It might possibly be advantageous to issue it as an _extra_. But perhaps you will not esteem it an object, and I will not press it. My offer does not spring from any weak desire of seeing my name in print; for I can enjoy this satisfaction at any time by turning to the Triennial Catalogue of the University, where it also possesses that added emphasis of Italics with which those of my calling are distinguished. 'I would simply add, that I continue to fit ingenuous youth for college, and that I have two spacious and airy sleeping apartments at this moment unoccupied. _Ingenuas didicisse_, &c. Terms, which vary according to the circumstances of the parents, may be known on application to me by letter, post-paid. In all cases the lad will be expected to fetch his own towels. This rule, Mrs. W. desires me to add, has no exceptions. 'Respectfully, your obedient servant, 'HOMER WILBUR, A.M. 'P.S. Perhaps the last paragraph may look like an attempt to obtain the insertion of my circular gratuitously. If it should appear to you in that light, I desire that you would erase it, or charge for it at the usual rates, and deduct the amount from the proceeds in your hands from the sale of my discourse, when it shall be printed. My circular is much longer and more explicit, and will be forwarded without charge to any who may desire it. It has been very neatly executed on a letter sheet, by a very deserving printer, who attends upon my ministry, and is a creditable specimen of the typographic art. I have one hung over my mantelpiece in a neat frame, where it makes a beautiful and appropriate ornament, and balances the profile of Mrs. W., cut with her toes by the young lady born without arms. 'H.W.' I have in the foregoing letter mentioned General Scott in connection with the Presidency, because I have been given to understand that he has blown to pieces and otherwise caused to be destroyed more Mexicans than any other commander. His claim would therefore be deservedly considered the strongest. Until accurate returns of the Mexicans killed, wounded, and maimed be obtained, it will be difficult to settle these nice points of precedence. Should it prove that any other officer has been more meritorious and destructive than General S., and has thereby rendered himself more worthy of the confidence and support of the conservative portion of our community, I shall cheerfully insert his name, instead of that of General S., in a future edition. It may be thought, likewise, that General S. has invalidated his claims by too much attention to the decencies of apparel, and the habits belonging to a gentleman. These abstruser points of statesmanship are beyond my scope. I wonder not that successful military achievement should attract the admiration of the multitude. Rather do I rejoice with wonder to behold how rapidly this sentiment is losing its hold upon the popular mind. It is related of Thomas Warton, the second of that honored name who held the office of Poetry Professor at Oxford, that, when one wished to find him, being absconded, as was his wont, in some obscure alehouse, he was counselled to traverse the city with a drum and fife, the sound of which inspiring music would be sure to draw the Doctor from his retirement into the street. We are all more or less bitten with this martial insanity. _Nescio qua dulcedine ... cunctos ducit_. I confess to some infection of that itch myself. When I see a Brigadier-General maintaining his insecure elevation in the saddle under the severe fire of the training-field, and when I remember that some military enthusiasts, through haste, inexperience, or an over-desire to lend reality to those fictitious combats, will sometimes discharge their ramrods, I cannot but admire, while I deplore, the mistaken devotion of those heroic officers. _Semel insanivimus omnes_. I was myself, during the late war with Great Britain, chaplain of a regiment, which was fortunately never called to active military duty. I mention this circumstance with regret rather than pride. Had I been summoned to actual warfare, I trust that I might have been strengthened to bear myself after the manner of that reverend father in our New England Israel, Dr. Benjamin Colman, who, as we are told in Turell's life of him, when the vessel in which he had taken passage for England was attacked by a French privateer, 'fought like a philosopher and a Christian, ... and prayed all the while he charged and fired.' As this note is already long, I shall not here enter upon a discussion of the question, whether Christians may lawfully be soldiers. I think it sufficiently evident, that, during the first two centuries of the Christian era, at least, the two professions were esteemed incompatible. Consult Jortin on this head,--H.W.] No. IV REMARKS OF INCREASE D. O'PHACE, ESQUIRE, AT AN EXTRUMPERY CAUCUS IN STATE STREET, REPORTED BY MR. H. BIGLOW [The ingenious reader will at once understand that no such speech as the following was ever _totidem verbis_ pronounced. But there are simpler and less guarded wits, for the satisfying of which such an explanation may be needful. For there are certain invisible lines, which as Truth successively overpasses, she becomes Untruth to one and another of us, as a large river, flowing from one kingdom into another, sometimes takes a new name, albeit the waters undergo no change, how small soever. There is, moreover, a truth of fiction more veracious than the truth of fact, as that of the Poet, which represents to us things and events as they ought to be, rather than servilely copies them as they are imperfectly imaged in the crooked and smoky glass of our mundane affairs. It is this which makes the speech of Antonius, though originally spoken in no wider a forum than the brain of Shakespeare, more historically valuable than that other which Appian has reported, by as much as the understanding of the Englishman was more comprehensive than that of the Alexandrian. Mr. Biglow, in the present instance, has only made use of a license assumed by all the historians of antiquity, who put into the mouths of various characters such words as seem to them most fitting to the occasion and to the speaker. If it be objected that no such oration could ever have been delivered, I answer, that there are few assemblages for speech-making which do not better deserve the title of _Parliamentum Indoctorum_ than did the sixth Parliament of Henry the Fourth, and that men still continue to have as much faith in the Oracle of Fools as ever Pantagruel had. Howell, in his letters, recounts a merry tale of a certain ambassador of Queen Elizabeth, who, having written two letters,--one to her Majesty, and the other to his wife,--directed them at cross-purposes, so that the Queen was beducked and bedeared and requested to send a change of hose, and the wife was beprincessed and otherwise unwontedly besuperlatived, till the one feared for the wits of her ambassador, and the other for those of her husband. In like manner it may be presumed that our speaker has misdirected some of his thoughts, and given to the whole theatre what he would have wished to confide only to a select auditory at the back of the curtain. For it is seldom that we can get any frank utterance from men, who address, for the most part, a Buncombe either in this world or the next. As for their audiences, it may be truly said of our people, that they enjoy one political institution in common with the ancient Athenians: I mean a certain profitless kind of, _ostracism_, wherewith, nevertheless, they seem hitherto well enough content. For in Presidential elections, and other affairs of the sort, whereas I observe that the _oysters_ fall to the lot of comparatively few, the _shells_ (such as the privileges of voting as they are told to do by the _ostrivori_ aforesaid, and of huzzaing at public meetings) are very liberally distributed among the people, as being their prescriptive and quite sufficient portion. The occasion of the speech is supposed to be Mr. Palfrey's refusal to vote for the Whig candidate for the Speakership.--H.W.] No? Hez he? He haint, though? Wut? Voted agin him? Ef the bird of our country could ketch him, she'd skin him; I seem 's though I see her, with wrath in each quill, Like a chancery lawyer, afilin' her bill, An' grindin' her talents ez sharp ez all nater, To pounce like a writ on the back o' the traitor. Forgive me, my friends, ef I seem to be het, But a crisis like this must with vigor be met; Wen an Arnold the star-spangled banner bestains, Holl Fourth o' Julys seem to bile in my veins. 10 Who ever'd ha' thought sech a pisonous rig Would be run by a chap thet wuz chose fer a Wig? 'We knowed wut his princerples wuz 'fore we sent him'? Wut wuz there in them from this vote to prevent him? A marciful Providunce fashioned us holler O' purpose thet we might our princerples swaller; It can hold any quantity on 'em, the belly can, An' bring 'em up ready fer use like the pelican, Or more like the kangaroo, who (wich is stranger) Puts her family into her pouch wen there's danger. 20 Aint princerple precious? then, who's goin' to use it Wen there's resk o' some chap's gittin' up to abuse it? I can't tell the wy on 't, but nothin' is so sure Ez thet princerple kind o' gits spiled by exposure;[19] A man that lets all sorts o' folks git a sight on 't Ough' to hev it all took right away, every mite on 't; Ef he cant keep it all to himself wen it's wise to, He aint one it's fit to trust nothin' so nice to. Besides, ther's a wonderful power in latitude To shift a man's morril relations an' attitude; 30 Some flossifers think thet a fakkilty's granted The minnit it's proved to be thoroughly wanted, Thet a change o' demand makes a change o' condition, An' thet everythin' 's nothin' except by position; Ez, for instance, thet rubber-trees fust begun bearin' Wen p'litikle conshunces come into wearin', Thet the fears of a monkey, whose holt chanced to fail, Drawed the vertibry out to a prehensile tail; So, wen one's chose to Congriss, ez soon ez he's in it, A collar grows right round his neck in a minnit, 40 An' sartin it is thet a man cannot be strict In bein' himself, when he gits to the Deestrict, Fer a coat thet sets wal here in ole Massachusetts, Wen it gits on to Washinton, somehow askew sets. Resolves, do you say, o' the Springfield Convention? Thet's precisely the pint I was goin' to mention; Resolves air a thing we most gen'ally keep ill, They're a cheap kind o' dust fer the eyes o' the people; A parcel o' delligits jest git together An' chat fer a spell o' the crops an' the weather, 50 Then, comin' to order, they squabble awile An' let off the speeches they're ferful'll spile; Then--Resolve,--Thet we wunt hev an inch o' slave territory; Thet President Polk's holl perceedins air very tory; Thet the war is a damned war, an' them thet enlist in it Should hev a cravat with a dreffle tight twist in it; Thet the war is a war fer the spreadin' o' slavery; Thet our army desarves our best thanks fer their bravery; Thet we're the original friends o' the nation, All the rest air a paltry an' base fabrication; 60 Thet we highly respect Messrs. A, B, an' C, An' ez deeply despise Messrs. E, F, an' G. In this way they go to the eend o' the chapter, An' then they bust out in a kind of a raptur About their own vartoo, an' folks's stone-blindness To the men thet 'ould actilly do 'em a kindness,-- The American eagle,--the Pilgrims thet landed,-- Till on ole Plymouth Rock they git finally stranded. Wal, the people they listen an' say, 'Thet's the ticket; Ez fer Mexico, 'taint no great glory to lick it, 70 But 'twould be a darned shame to go pullin' o' triggers To extend the aree of abusin' the niggers.' So they march in percession, an' git up hooraws, An' tramp thru the mud far the good o' the cause, An' think they're a kind o' fulfillin' the prophecies, Wen they're on'y jest changin' the holders of offices; Ware A sot afore, B is comf'tably seated, One humbug's victor'ous an' t' other defeated, Each honnable doughface gits jest wut he axes, An' the people,--their annooal soft-sodder an' taxes. 80 Now, to keep unimpaired all these glorious feeturs Thet characterize morril an' reasonin' creeturs, Thet give every paytriot all he can cram, Thet oust the untrustworthy Presidunt Flam, An' stick honest Presidunt Sham in his place, To the manifest gain o' the holl human race, An' to some indervidgewals on 't in partickler, Who love Public Opinion an' know how to tickle her,-- I say thet a party with gret aims like these Must stick jest ez close ez a hive full o' bees. 90 I'm willin' a man should go tollable strong Agin wrong in the abstract, fer thet kind o' wrong Is ollers unpop'lar an' never gits pitied, Because it's a crime no one never committed; But he mus'n't be hard on partickler sins, Coz then he'll be kickin' the people's own shins; On'y look at the Demmercrats, see wut they've done Jest simply by stickin' together like fun; They've sucked us right into a mis'able war Thet no one on airth aint responsible for; 100 They've run us a hundred cool millions in debt (An' fer Demmercrat Horners there's good plums left yet); They talk agin tayriffs, but act fer a high one, An' so coax all parties to build up their Zion; To the people they're ollers ez slick ez molasses, An' butter their bread on both sides with The Masses, Half o' whom they've persuaded, by way of a joke, Thet Washinton's mantlepiece fell upon Polk. Now all o' these blessin's the Wigs might enjoy, Ef they'd gumption enough the right means to imploy;[20] 110 Fer the silver spoon born in Dermoc'acy's mouth Is a kind of a scringe thet they hev to the South; Their masters can cuss 'em an' kick 'em an' wale 'em. An' they notice it less 'an the ass did to Balaam; In this way they screw into second-rate offices Wich the slaveholder thinks 'ould substract too much off his ease; The file-leaders, I mean, du, fer they, by their wiles, Unlike the old viper, grow fat on their files. Wal, the Wigs hev been tryin' to grab all this prey frum 'em An' to hook this nice spoon o' good fortin' away frum 'em, 120 An' they might ha' succeeded, ez likely ez not, In lickin' the Demmercrats all round the lot, Ef it warn't thet, wile all faithful Wigs were their knees on, Some stuffy old codger would holler out,--'Treason! You must keep a sharp eye on a dog thet hez bit you once, An' _I_ aint agoin' to cheat my constitoounts,'-- Wen every fool knows thet a man represents Not the fellers thet sent him, but them on the fence,-- Impartially ready to jump either side An' make the fust use of a turn o' the tide,-- 130 The waiters on Providunce here in the city, Who compose wut they call a State Centerl Committy, Constitoounts air hendy to help a man in, But arterwards don't weigh the heft of a pin, Wy, the people can't all live on Uncle Sam's pus, So they've nothin' to du with 't fer better or wus; It's the folks thet air kind o' brought up to depend on 't Thet hev any consarn in 't, an' thet is the end on 't. Now here wuz New England ahevin' the honor Of a chance at the Speakership showered upon her;-- 140 Do you say, 'She don't want no more Speakers, but fewer; She's hed plenty o' them, wut she wants is a _doer'_? Fer the matter o' thet, it's notorous in town Thet her own representatives du her quite brown. But thet's nothin' to du with it; wut right hed Palfrey To mix himself up with fanatical small fry? Warn't we gittin' on prime with our hot an' cold blowin', Acondemnin' the war wilst we kep' it agoin'? We'd assumed with gret skill a commandin' position. On this side or thet, no one couldn't tell wich one, 150 So, wutever side wipped, we'd a chance at the plunder An' could sue fer infringin' our paytented thunder; We were ready to vote fer whoever wuz eligible, Ef on all pints at issoo he'd stay unintelligible. Wal, sposin' we hed to gulp down our perfessions. We were ready to come out next mornin' with fresh ones; Besides, ef we did, 'twas our business alone, Fer couldn't we du wut we would with our own? An' ef a man can, wen pervisions hev riz so, Eat up his own words, it's a marcy it is so. 160 Wy, these chaps frum the North, with back-bones to 'em, darn 'em, 'Ould be wuth more 'an Gennle Tom Thumb is to Barnum: Ther's enough thet to office on this very plan grow, By exhibitin' how very small a man can grow; But an M.C. frum here ollers hastens to state he Belongs to the order called invertebraty, Wence some gret filologists judge primy fashy Thet M.C. is M.T. by paronomashy; An' these few exceptions air _loosus naytury_ Folks 'ould put down their quarters to stare at, like fury. 170 It's no use to open the door o' success, Ef a member can bolt so fer nothin' or less; Wy, all o' them grand constitootional pillers Our fore-fathers fetched with 'em over the billers, Them pillers the people so soundly hev slep' on, Wile to slav'ry, invasion, an' debt they were swep' on, Wile our Destiny higher an' higher kep' mountin' (Though I guess folks'll stare wen she hends her account in), Ef members in this way go kickin' agin 'em, They wunt hev so much ez a feather left in 'em. 180 An', ez fer this Palfrey,[21] we thought wen we'd gut him in, He'd go kindly in wutever harness we put him in; Supposin' we _did_ know thet he wuz a peace man? Does he think he can be Uncle Sammle's policeman, An' wen Sam gits tipsy an' kicks up a riot, Lead him off to the lockup to snooze till he's quiet? Wy, the war is a war thet true paytriots can bear, ef It leads to the fat promised land of a tayriff; _We_ don't go an' fight it, nor aint to be driv on, Nor Demmercrats nuther, thet hev wut to live on; 190 Ef it aint jest the thing thet's well pleasin' to God, It makes us thought highly on elsewhere abroad; The Rooshian black eagle looks blue in his eerie An' shakes both his heads wen he hears o' Monteery; In the Tower Victory sets, all of a fluster, An' reads, with locked doors, how we won Cherry Buster; An' old Philip Lewis--thet come an' kep' school here Fer the mere sake o' scorin his ryalist ruler On the tenderest part of our kings _in futuro_-- Hides his crown underneath an old shut in his bureau, 200 Breaks off in his brags to a suckle o' merry kings, How he often hed hided young native Amerrikins, An' turnin' quite faint in the midst of his fooleries, Sneaks down stairs to bolt the front door o' the Tooleries.[22] You say, 'We'd ha' seared 'em by growin' in peace, A plaguy sight more then by bobberies like these'? Who is it dares say thet our naytional eagle Won't much longer be classed with the birds thet air regal, Coz theirn be hooked beaks, an' she, arter this slaughter, 'll bring back a bill ten times longer 'n she'd ough' to? 210 Wut's your name? Come, I see ye, you up-country feller, You've put me out severil times with your beller; Out with it! Wut? Biglow? I say nothin' furder, Thet feller would like nothin' better 'n a murder; He's a traiter, blasphemer, an' wut ruther worse is, He puts all his ath'ism in dreffle bad verses; Socity aint safe till sech monsters air out on it, Refer to the Post, ef you hev the least doubt on it; Wy, he goes agin war, agin indirect taxes, Agin sellin' wild lands 'cept to settlers with axes, 220 Agin holdin' o' slaves, though he knows it's the corner Our libbaty rests on, the mis'able scorner! In short, he would wholly upset with his ravages All thet keeps us above the brute critters an' savages, An' pitch into all kinds o' briles an' confusions The holl of our civerlized, free institutions; He writes fer thet ruther unsafe print, the Courier, An' likely ez not hez a squintin' to Foorier; I'll be----, thet is, I mean I'll be blest, Ef I hark to a word frum so noted a pest; 230 I sha'nt talk with _him_, my religion's too fervent. Good mornin', my friends, I'm your most humble servant. [Into the question whether the ability to express ourselves in articulate language has been productive of more good or evil, I shall not here enter at large. The two faculties of speech and of speech-making are wholly diverse in their natures. By the first we make ourselves intelligible, by the last unintelligible, to our fellows. It has not seldom occurred to me (noting how in our national legislature everything runs to talk, as lettuces, if the season or the soil be unpropitious, shoot up lankly to seed, instead of forming handsome heads) that Babel was the first Congress, the earliest mill erected for the manufacture of gabble. In these days, what with Town Meetings, School Committees, Boards (lumber) of one kind and another, Congresses, Parliaments, Diets, Indian Councils, Palavers, and the like, there is scarce a village which has not its factories of this description driven by milk-and-water power. I cannot conceive the confusion of tongues to have been the curse of Babel, since I esteem my ignorance of other languages as a kind of Martello-tower, in which I am safe from the furious bombardments of foreign garrulity. For this reason I have ever preferred the study of the dead languages, those primitive formations being Ararats upon whose silent peaks I sit secure and watch this new deluge without fear, though it rain figures (_simulacra_, semblances) of speech forty days and nights together, as it not uncommonly happens. Thus is my coat, as it were, without buttons by which any but a vernacular wild bore can seize me. Is it not possible that the Shakers may intend to convey a quiet reproof and hint, in fastening their outer garments with hooks and eyes? This reflection concerning Babel, which I find in no Commentary, was first thrown upon my mind when an excellent deacon of my congregation (being infected with the Second Advent delusion) assured me that he had received a first instalment of the gift of tongues as a small earnest of larger possessions in the like kind to follow. For, of a truth, I could not reconcile it with my ideas of the Divine justice and mercy that the single wall which protected people of other languages from the incursions of this otherwise well-meaning propagandist should be broken down. In reading Congressional debates, I have fancied, that, after the subsidence of those painful buzzings in the brain which result from such exercises, I detected a slender residuum of valuable information. I made the discovery that _nothing_ takes longer in the saying than anything else, for as _ex nihilo nihil fit_, so from one polypus _nothing_ any number of similar ones may be produced. I would recommend to the attention of _viva voce_ debaters and controversialists the admirable example of the monk Copres, who, in the fourth century, stood for half an hour in the midst of a great fire, and thereby silenced a Manichæan antagonist who had less of the salamander in him. As for those who quarrel in print, I have no concern with them here, since the eyelids are a divinely granted shield against all such. Moreover, I have observed in many modern books that the printed portion is becoming gradually smaller, and the number of blank or fly-leaves (as they are called) greater. Should this fortunate tendency of literature continue, books will grow more valuable from year to year, and the whole Serbonian bog yield to the advances of firm arable land. The sagacious Lacedæmonians, hearing that Tesephone had bragged that he could talk all day long on any given subject, made no more ado, but forthwith banished him, whereby they supplied him a topic and at the same time took care that his experiment upon it should be tried out of earshot. I have wondered, in the Representatives' Chamber of our own Commonwealth, to mark how little impression seemed to be produced by that emblematic fish suspended over the heads of the members. Our wiser ancestors, no doubt, hung it there as being the animal which the Pythagoreans reverenced for its silence, and which certainly in that particular does not so well merit the epithet _cold blooded_, by which naturalists distinguish it, as certain bipeds, afflicted with ditch-water on the brain, who take occasion to tap themselves in Faneuil Halls, meeting-houses, and other places of public resort.--H.W.] No. V THE DEBATE IN THE SENNIT SOT TO A NUSRY RHYME [The incident which gave rise to the debate satirized in the following verses was the unsuccessful attempt of Drayton and Sayres to give freedom to seventy men and women, fellow-beings and fellow-Christians. Had Tripoli, instead of Washington, been the scene of this undertaking, the unhappy leaders in it would have been as secure of the theoretic as they now are of the practical part of martyrdom. I question whether the Dey of Tripoli is blessed with a District Attorney so benighted as ours at the seat of government. Very fitly is he named Key, who would allow himself to be made the instrument of locking the door of hope against sufferers in such a cause. Not all the waters of the ocean can cleanse the vile smutch of the jailer's fingers from off that little Key. _Ahenea clavis_, a brazen Key indeed! Mr. Calhoun, who is made the chief speaker in this burlesque, seems to think that the light of the nineteenth century is to be put out as soon as he tinkles his little cow-bell curfew. Whenever slavery is touched, he sets up his scarecrow of dissolving the Union. This may do for the North, but I should conjecture that something more than a pumpkin-lantern is required to scare manifest and irretrievable Destiny out of her path. Mr. Calhoun cannot let go the apron-string of the Past. The Past is a good nurse, but we must be weaned from her sooner or later, even though, like Plotinus, we should run home from school to ask the breast, after we are tolerably well-grown youths. It will not do for us to hide our faces in her lap, whenever the strange Future holds out her arms and asks us to come to her. But we are all alike. We have all heard it said, often enough, that little boys must not play with fire; and yet, if the matches be taken away from us, and put out of reach upon the shelf, we must needs get into our little corner, and scowl and stamp and threaten the dire revenge of going to bed without our supper. The world shall stop till we get our dangerous plaything again. Dame Earth, meanwhile, who has more than enough household matters to mind, goes bustling hither and thither as a hiss or a sputter tells her that this or that kettle of hers is boiling over, and before bedtime we are glad to eat our porridge cold, and gulp down our dignity along with it. Mr. Calhoun has somehow acquired the name of a great statesman, and, if it be great statesmanship to put lance in rest and run a tilt at the Spirit of the Age with the certainty of being next moment hurled neck and heels into the dust amid universal laughter, he deserves the title. He is the Sir Kay of our modern chivalry. He should remember the old Scandinavian mythus. Thor was the strongest of gods, but he could not wrestle with Time, nor so much as lift up a fold of the great snake which bound the universe together; and when he smote the Earth, though with his terrible mallet, it was but as if a leaf had fallen. Yet all the while it seemed to Thor that he had only been wrestling with an old woman, striving to lift a cat, and striking a stupid giant on the head. And in old times, doubtless, the giants _were_ stupid, and there was no better sport for the Sir Launcelots and Sir Gawains than to go about cutting off their great blundering heads with enchanted swords. But things have wonderfully changed. It is the giants, nowadays, that have the science and the intelligence, while the chivalrous Don Quixotes of Conservatism still cumber themselves with the clumsy armor of a bygone age. On whirls the restless globe through unsounded time, with its cities and its silences, its births and funerals, half light, half shade, but never wholly dark, and sure to swing round into the happy morning at last. With an involuntary smile, one sees Mr. Calhoun letting slip his pack-thread cable with a crooked pin at the end of it to anchor South Carolina upon the bank and shoal of the Past.--H.W.] TO MR. BUCKENAM MR. EDITER, As i wuz kinder prunin round, in a little nussry sot out a year or 2 a go, the Dbait in the sennit cum inter my mine An so i took & Sot it to wut I call a nussry rime. I hev made sum onnable Gentlemun speak thut dident speak in a Kind uv Poetikul lie sense the seeson is dreffle backerd up This way ewers as ushul HOSEA BIGLOW. 'Here we stan' on the Constitution, by thunder! It's a fact o' wich ther's bushils o' proofs; Fer how could we trample on 't so, I wonder, Ef 't worn't thet it's ollers under our hoofs?' Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he:-- 'Human rights haint no more Right to come on this floor, No more 'n the man in the moon,' sez he. 'The North haint no kind o' bisness with nothin,' An' you've no idee how much bother it saves; 10 We aint none riled by their frettin' an' frothin', We're _used_ to layin' the string on our slaves,' Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- Sez Mister Foote, 'I should like to shoot The holl gang, by the gret horn spoon!' sez he. 'Freedom's Keystone is Slavery, thet ther's no doubt on, It's sutthin' thet's--wha' d' ye call it?--divine,-- An' the slaves thet we ollers _make_ the most out on Air them north o' Mason an' Dixon's line,' 20 Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- 'Fer all that,' sez Mangum, ''Twould be better to hang 'em An' so git red on 'em soon,' sez he. 'The mass ough' to labor an' we lay on soffies, Thet's the reason I want to spread Freedom's aree; It puts all the cunninest on us in office, An' reelises our Maker's orig'nal idee,' Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- 'Thet's ez plain,' sez Cass, 30 'Ez thet some one's an ass, It's ez clear ez the sun is at noon,' sez he. 'Now don't go to say I'm the friend of oppression, But keep all your spare breath fer coolin' your broth, Fer I ollers hev strove (at least thet's my impression) To make cussed free with the rights o' the North,' Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- 'Yes,' sez Davis o' Miss., 'The perfection o' bliss Is in skinnin' thet same old coon,' sez he. 40 'Slavery's a thing thet depends on complexion, It's God's law thet fetters on black skins don't chafe; Ef brains wuz to settle it (horrid reflection!) Wich of our onnable body 'd be safe?' Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- Sez Mister Hannegan, Afore he began agin, 'Thet exception is quite oppertoon,' sez he. 'Gennle Cass, Sir, you needn't be twitchin' your collar, _Your_ merit's quite clear by the dut on your knees, 50 At the North we don't make no distinctions o' color; You can all take a lick at our shoes wen you please,' Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- Sez Mister Jarnagin, 'They wun't hev to larn agin, They all on 'em know the old toon,' sez he. 'The slavery question aint no ways bewilderin,' North an' South hev one int'rest, it's plain to a glance; No'thern men, like us patriarchs, don't sell their childrin, But they _du_ sell themselves, ef they git a good chance,' 60 Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- Sez Atherton here, 'This is gittin' severe, I wish I could dive like a loon,' sez he. 'It'll break up the Union, this talk about freedom, An' your fact'ry gals (soon ez we split) 'll make head, An' gittin' some Miss chief or other to lead 'em, 'll go to work raisin' permiscoous Ned,' Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- 'Yes, the North,' sez Colquitt, 70 'Ef we Southeners all quit, Would go down like a busted balloon,' sez he. 'Jest look wut is doin', wut annyky's brewin' In the beautiful clime o' the olive an' vine, All the wise aristoxy's atumblin' to ruin, An' the sankylots drorin' an' drinkin' their wine,' Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- 'Yes,' sez Johnson, 'in France They're beginnin' to dance Beëlzebub's own rigadoon,' sez he. 80 'The South's safe enough, it don't feel a mite skeery, Our slaves in their darkness an' dut air tu blest Not to welcome with proud hallylugers the ery Wen our eagle kicks yourn from the naytional nest,' Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- 'Oh,' sez Westcott o' Florida, 'Wut treason is horrider Then our priv'leges tryin' to proon?' sez he. 'It's 'coz they're so happy, thet, wen crazy sarpints Stick their nose in our bizness, we git so darned riled; 90 We think it's our dooty to give pooty sharp hints, Thet the last crumb of Edin on airth sha'n't be spiled,' Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- 'Ah,' sez Dixon H. Lewis, 'It perfectly true is Thet slavery's airth's grettest boon,' sez he. [It was said of old time, that riches have wings; and, though this be not applicable in a literal strictness to the wealth of our patriarchal brethren of the South, yet it is clear that their possessions have legs, and an unaccountable propensity for using them in a northerly direction. I marvel that the grand jury of Washington did not find a true bill against the North Star for aiding and abetting Drayton and Sayres. It would have been quite of a piece with the intelligence displayed by the South on other questions connected with slavery. I think that no ship of state was ever freighted with a more veritable Jonah than this same domestic institution of ours. Mephistopheles himself could not feign so bitterly, so satirically sad a sight as this of three millions of human beings crushed beyond help or hope by this one mighty argument,--_Our fathers knew no better!_ Nevertheless, it is the unavoidable destiny of Jonahs to be cast overboard sooner or later. Or shall we try the experiment of hiding our Jonah in a safe place, that none may lay hands on him to make jetsam of him? Let us, then, with equal forethought and wisdom, lash ourselves to the anchor, and await, in pious confidence, the certain result. Perhaps our suspicious passenger is no Jonah after all, being black. For it is well known that a superintending Providence made a kind of sandwich of Ham and his descendants, to be devoured by the Caucasian race. In God's name, let all, who hear nearer and nearer the hungry moan of the storm and the growl of the breakers, speak out! But, alas! we have no right to interfere. If a man pluck an apple of mine, he shall be in danger of the justice; but if he steal my brother, I must be silent. Who says this? Our Constitution, consecrated by the callous consuetude of sixty years, and grasped in triumphant argument by the left hand of him whose right hand clutches the clotted slave-whip. Justice, venerable with the undethronable majesty of countless æons, says,--SPEAK! The Past, wise with the sorrows and desolations of ages, from amid her shattered fanes and wolf-housing palaces, echoes,--SPEAK! Nature, through her thousand trumpets of freedom, her stars, her sunrises, her seas, her winds, her cataracts, her mountains blue with cloudy pines, blows jubilant encouragement, and cries,--SPEAK! From the soul's trembling abysses the still, small voice not vaguely murmurs,--SPEAK! But, alas! the Constitution and the Honorable Mr. Bagowind, M.C., say--BE DUMB! It occurs to me to suggest, as a topic of inquiry in this connection, whether, on that momentous occasion when the goats and the sheep shall be parted, the Constitution and the Honorable Mr. Bagowind, M.C., will be expected to take their places on the left as our hircine vicars. Quid sum miser tunc dicturus? Quem patronum rogaturus? There is a point where toleration sinks into sheer baseness and poltroonery. The toleration of the worst leads us to look on what is barely better as good enough, and to worship what is only moderately good. Woe to that man, or that nation, to whom mediocrity has become an ideal! Has our experiment of self-government succeeded, if it barely manage to _rub and go?_ Here, now, is a piece of barbarism which Christ and the nineteenth century say shall cease, and which Messrs. Smith, Brown, and others say shall _not_ cease. I would by no means deny the eminent respectability of these gentlemen, but I confess, that, in such a wrestling match, I cannot help having my fears for them. _Discite justitiam, moniti, et non temnere divos_. H.W.] No. VI THE PIOUS EDITOR'S CREED [At the special instance of Mr. Biglow, I preface the following satire with an extract from a sermon preached during the past summer, from Ezekiel xxxiv. 2: 'Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel.' Since the Sabbath on which this discourse was delivered, the editor of the 'Jaalam Independent Blunderbuss' has unaccountably absented himself from our house of worship. 'I know of no so responsible position as that of the public journalist. The editor of our day bears the same relation to his time that the clerk bore to the age before the invention of printing. Indeed, the position which he holds is that which the clergyman should hold even now. But the clergyman chooses to walk off to the extreme edge of the world, and to throw such seed as he has clear over into that darkness which he calls the Next Life. As if _next_ did not mean _nearest_, and as if any life were nearer than that immediately present one which boils and eddies all around him at the caucus, the ratification meeting, and the polls! Who taught him to exhort men to prepare for eternity, as for some future era of which the present forms no integral part? The furrow which Time is even now turning runs through the Everlasting, and in that must he plant, or nowhere. Yet he would fain believe and teach that we are _going_ to have more of eternity than we have now. This _going_ of his is like that of the auctioneer, on which _gone_ follows before we have made up our minds to bid,--in which manner, not three months back, I lost an excellent copy of Chappelow on Job. So it has come to pass that the preacher, instead of being a living force, has faded into an emblematic figure at christenings, weddings, and funerals. Or, if he exercise any other function, it is as keeper and feeder of certain theologic dogmas, which, when occasion offers, he unkennels with a _staboy!_ "to bark and bite as 'tis their nature to," whence that reproach of _odium theologicum_ has arisen. 'Meanwhile, see what a pulpit the editor mounts daily, sometimes with a congregation of fifty thousand within reach of his voice, and never so much as a nodder, even, among them! And from what a Bible can he choose his text,--a Bible which needs no translation, and which no priestcraft can shut and clasp from the laity,--the open volume of the world, upon which, with a pen of sunshine or destroying fire, the inspired Present is even now writing the annals of God! Methinks the editor who should understand his calling, and be equal thereto, would truly deserve that title of [Greek: poimaen laon], which Homer bestows upon princes. He would be the Moses of our nineteenth century; and whereas the old Sinai, silent now, is but a common mountain stared at by the elegant tourist and crawled over by the hammering geologist, he must find his tables of the new law here among factories and cities in this Wilderness of Sin (Numbers xxxiii. 12) called Progress of Civilization, and be the captain of our Exodus into the Canaan of a truer social order. 'Nevertheless, our editor will not come so far within even the shadow of Sinai as Mahomet did, but chooses rather to construe Moses by Joe Smith. He takes up the crook, not that the sheep may be fed, but that he may never want a warm woollen suit and a joint of mutton. _Immemor, O, fidei, pecorumque oblite tuorum!_ For which reason I would derive the name _editor_ not so much from _edo_, to publish, as from _edo_, to eat, that being the peculiar profession to which he esteems himself called. He blows up the flames of political discord for no other occasion than that he may thereby handily boil his own pot. I believe there are two thousand of these mutton-loving shepherds in the United States, and of these, how many have even the dimmest perception of their immense power, and the duties consequent thereon? Here and there, haply, one. Nine hundred and ninety-nine labor to impress upon the people the great principles of _Tweedledum_, and other nine hundred and ninety-nine preach with equal earnestness the gospel according to _Tweedledee_.'--H.W.] I du believe in Freedom's cause, Ez fur away ez Payris is; I love to see her stick her claws In them infarnal Phayrisees; It's wal enough agin a king To dror resolves an' triggers,-- But libbaty's a kind o' thing Thet don't agree with niggers. I du believe the people want A tax on teas an' coffees, 10 Thet nothin' aint extravygunt,-- Purvidin' I'm in office; For I hev loved my country sence My eye-teeth filled their sockets, An' Uncle Sam I reverence, Partic'larly his pockets. I du believe in _any_ plan O' levyin' the texes, Ez long ez, like a lumberman, I git jest wut I axes; 20 I go free-trade thru thick an' thin, Because it kind o' rouses The folks to vote,--an' keeps us in Our quiet custom-houses. I du believe it's wise an' good To sen' out furrin missions, Thet is, on sartin understood An' orthydox conditions;-- I mean nine thousan' dolls. per ann., Nine thousan' more fer outfit, 30 An' me to recommend a man The place 'ould jest about fit. I du believe in special ways O' prayin' an' convartin'; The bread comes back in many days, An' buttered, tu, fer sartin; I mean in preyin' till one busts On wut the party chooses, An' in convartin' public trusts To very privit uses. 40 I du believe hard coin the stuff Fer 'lectioneers to spout on; The people's ollers soft enough To make hard money out on; Dear Uncle Sam pervides fer his, An' gives a good-sized junk to all,-- I don't care _how_ hard money is, Ez long ez mine's paid punctooal. I du believe with all my soul In the gret Press's freedom, 50 To pint the people to the goal An' in the traces lead 'em; Palsied the arm thet forges yokes At my fat contracts squintin', An' withered be the nose thet pokes Inter the gov'ment printin'! I du believe thet I should give Wut's his'n unto Cæsar, Fer it's by him I move an' live, Frum him my bread an' cheese air; 60 I du believe thet all o' me Doth bear his superscription,-- Will, conscience, honor, honesty, An' things o' thet description. I du believe in prayer an' praise To him that hez the grantin' O' jobs,--in every thin' thet pays, But most of all in CANTIN'; This doth my cup with marcies fill, This lays all thought o' sin to rest,-- 70 I _don't_ believe in princerple, But oh, I _du_ in interest. I du believe in bein' this Or thet, ez it may happen One way or t'other hendiest is To ketch the people nappln'; It aint by princerples nor men My preudunt course is steadied,-- I scent wich pays the best, an' then Go into it baldheaded. 80 I du believe thet holdin' slaves Comes nat'ral to a Presidunt, Let 'lone the rowdedow it saves To hev a wal-broke precedunt: Fer any office, small or gret, I couldn't ax with no face, 'uthout I'd ben, thru dry an' wet, Th' unrizzest kind o' doughface. I du believe wutever trash 'll keep the people in blindness,-- 90 Thet we the Mexicuns can thrash Right inter brotherly kindness, Thet bombshells, grape, an' powder 'n' ball Air good-will's strongest magnets, Thet peace, to make it stick at all, Must be druv in with bagnets. In short, I firmly du believe In Humbug generally, Fer it's a thing thet I perceive To hev a solid vally; 100 This heth my faithful shepherd ben, In pasturs sweet heth led me, An' this'll keep the people green To feed ez they hev fed me. [I subjoin here another passage from my before-mentioned discourse. 'Wonderful, to him that has eyes to see it rightly, is the newspaper. To me, for example, sitting on the critical front bench of the pit, in my study here in Jaalam, the advent of my weekly journal is as that of a strolling theatre, or rather of a puppet-show, on whose stage, narrow as it is, the tragedy, comedy, and farce of life are played in little. Behold the whole huge earth sent to me hebdomadally in a brown-paper wrapper! 'Hither, to my obscure corner, by wind or steam, on horseback or dromedary-back, in the pouch of the Indian runner, or clicking over the magnetic wires, troop all the famous performers from the four quarters of the globe. Looked at from a point of criticism, tiny puppets they seem all, as the editor sets up his booth upon my desk and officiates as showman. Now I can truly see how little and transitory is life. The earth appears almost as a drop of vinegar, on which the solar microscope of the imagination must be brought to bear in order to make out anything distinctly. That animalcule there, in the pea-jacket, is Louis Philippe, just landed on the coast of England. That other, in the gray surtout and cocked hat, is Napoleon Bonaparte Smith, assuring France that she need apprehend no interference from him in the present alarming juncture. At that spot, where you seem to see a speck of something in motion, is an immense mass-meeting. Look sharper, and you will see a mite brandishing his mandibles in an excited manner. That is the great Mr. Soandso, defining his position amid tumultuous and irrepressible cheers. That infinitesimal creature, upon whom some score of others, as minute as he, are gazing in open-mouthed admiration, is a famous philosopher, expounding to a select audience their capacity for the Infinite. That scarce discernible pufflet of smoke and dust is a revolution. That speck there is a reformer, just arranging the lever with which he is to move the world. And lo, there creeps forward the shadow of a skeleton that blows one breath between its grinning teeth, and all our distinguished actors are whisked off the slippery stage into the dark Beyond. 'Yes, the little show-box has its solemner suggestions. Now and then we catch a glimpse of a grim old man, who lays down a scythe and hour-glass in the corner while he shifts the scenes. There, too, in the dim background, a weird shape is ever delving. Sometimes he leans upon his mattock, and gazes, as a coach whirls by, bearing the newly married on their wedding jaunt, or glances carelessly at a babe brought home from christening. Suddenly (for the scene grows larger and larger as we look) a bony hand snatches back a performer in the midst of his part, and him, whom yesterday two infinities (past and future) would not suffice, a handful of dust is enough to cover and silence forever. Nay, we see the same fleshless fingers opening to clutch the showman himself, and guess, not without a shudder, that they are lying in wait for spectator also. 'Think of it: for three dollars a year I buy a season-ticket to this great Globe Theatre, for which God would write the dramas (only that we like farces, spectacles, and the tragedies of Apollyon better), whose scene-shifter is Time, and whose curtain is rung down by Death. 'Such thoughts will occur to me sometimes as I am tearing off the wrapper of my newspaper. Then suddenly that otherwise too often vacant sheet becomes invested for me with a strange kind of awe. Look! deaths and marriages, notices of inventions, discoveries, and books, lists of promotions, of killed, wounded, and missing, news of fires, accidents, of sudden wealth and as sudden poverty;--I hold in my hand the ends of myriad invisible electric conductors, along which tremble the joys, sorrows, wrongs, triumphs, hopes, and despairs of as many men and women everywhere. So that upon that mood of mind which seems to isolate me from mankind as a spectator of their puppet-pranks, another supervenes, in which I feel that I, too, unknown and unheard of, am yet of some import to my fellows. For, through my newspaper here, do not families take pains to send me, an entire stranger, news of a death among them? Are not here two who would have me know of their marriage? And, strangest of all, is not this singular person anxious to have me informed that he has received a fresh supply of Dimitry Bruisgins? But to none of us does the Present continue miraculous (even if for a moment discerned as such). We glance carelessly at the sunrise, and get used to Orion and the Pleiades. The wonder wears off, and to-morrow this sheet, (Acts x. 11, 12) in which a vision was let down to me from Heaven, shall be the wrappage to a bar of soap or the platter for a beggar's broken victuals.'--H.W.] No. VII A LETTER FROM A CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY IN ANSWER TO SUTTIN QUESTIONS PROPOSED BY MR. HOSEA BIGLOW, INCLOSED IN A NOTE FROM MR. BIGLOW TO S.H. GAY, ESQ., EDITOR OF THE NATIONAL ANTI-SLAVERY STANDARD [Curiosity may be said to be the quality which preeminently distinguishes and segregates man from the lower animals. As we trace the scale of animated nature downward, we find this faculty (as it may truly he called) of the mind diminished in the savage, and wellnigh extinct in the brute. The first object which civilized man proposes to himself I take to be the finding out whatsoever he can concerning his neighbors. _Nihil humanum a me alienum puto;_ I am curious about even John Smith. The desire next in strength to this (an opposite pole, indeed, of the same magnet) is that of communicating the unintelligence we have carefully picked up. Men in general may be divided into the inquisitive and the communicative. To the first class belong Peeping Toms, eaves-droppers, navel-contemplating Brahmins, metaphysicians, travellers, Empedocleses, spies, the various societies for promoting Rhinothism, Columbuses, Yankees, discoverers, and men of science, who present themselves to the mind as so many marks of interrogation wandering up and down the world, or sitting in studies and laboratories. The second class I should again subdivide into four. In the first subdivision I would rank those who have an itch to tell us about themselves,--as keepers of diaries, insignificant persons generally, Montaignes, Horace Walpoles, autobiographers, poets. The second includes those who are anxious to impart information concerning other people,--as historians, barbers, and such. To the third belong those who labor to give us intelligence about nothing at all,--as novelists, political orators, the large majority of authors, preachers, lecturers, and the like. In the fourth come those who are communicative from motives of public benevolence,--as finders of mares'-nests and bringers of ill news. Each of us two-legged fowls without feathers embraces all these subdivisions in himself to a greater or less degree, for none of us so much as lays an egg, or incubates a chalk one, but straightway the whole barnyard shall know it by our cackle or our cluck. _Omnibus hoc vitium est_. There are different grades in all these classes. One will turn his telescope toward a back-yard, another toward Uranus; one will tell you that he dined with Smith, another that he supped with Plato. In one particular, all men may be considered as belonging to the first grand division, inasmuch as they all seem equally desirous of discovering the mote in their neighbor's eye. To one or another of these species every human being may safely be referred. I think it beyond a peradventure that Jonah prosecuted some inquiries into the digestive apparatus of whales, and that Noah sealed up a letter in an empty bottle, that news in regard to him might not be wanting in case of the worst. They had else been super or subter human. I conceive, also, that, as there are certain persons who continually peep and pry at the keyhole of that mysterious door through which, sooner or later, we all make our exits, so there are doubtless ghosts fidgeting and fretting on the other side of it, because they have no means of conveying back to this world the scraps of news they have picked up in that. For there is an answer ready somewhere to every question, the great law of _give and take_ runs through all nature, and if we see a hook, we may be sure that an eye is waiting for it. I read in every face I meet a standing advertisement of information wanted in regard to A.B., or that the friends of C.D. can hear something to his disadvantage by application to such a one. It was to gratify the two great passions of asking and answering that epistolary correspondence was first invented. Letters (for by this usurped title epistles are now commonly known) are of several kinds. First, there are those which are not letters at all--as letters-patent, letters dismissory, letters enclosing bills, letters of administration, Pliny's letters, letters of diplomacy, of Cato, of Mentor, of Lords Lyttelton, Chesterfield, and Orrery, of Jacob Behmen, Seneca (whom St. Jerome includes in his list of sacred writers), letters from abroad, from sons in college to their fathers, letters of marque, and letters generally, which are in no wise letters of mark. Second, are real letters, such as those of Gray, Cowper, Walpole, Howell, Lamb, D.Y., the first letters from children (printed in staggering capitals), Letters from New York, letters of credit, and others, interesting for the sake of the writer or the thing written. I have read also letters from Europe by a gentleman named Pinto, containing some curious gossip, and which I hope to see collected for the benefit of the curious. There are, besides, letters addressed to posterity,--as epitaphs, for example, written for their own monuments by monarchs, whereby we have lately become possessed of the names of several great conquerors and kings of kings, hitherto unheard of and still unpronounceable, but valuable to the student of the entirely dark ages. The letter of our Saviour to King Abgarus, that which St. Peter sent to King Pepin in the year of grace 755, that of the Virgin to the magistrates of Messina, that of the Sanhedrim of Toledo to Annas and Caiaphas, A.D. 35, that of Galeazzo Sforza's spirit to his brother Lodovico, that of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus to the D----l, and that of this last-mentioned active police-magistrate to a nun of Girgenti, I would place in a class by themselves, as also the letters of candidates, concerning which I shall dilate more fully in a note at the end of the following poem. At present _sat prata biberunt_. Only, concerning the shape of letters, they are all either square or oblong, to which general figures circular letters and round-robins also conform themselves.--H.W.] Deer Sir its gut to be the fashun now to rite letters to the candid 8s and i wus chose at a publick Meetin in Jaalam to du wut wus nessary fur that town. i writ to 271 ginerals and gut ansers to 209. tha air called candid 8s but I don't see nothin candid about 'em. this here 1 wich I send wus thought satty's factory. I dunno as it's ushle to print Poscrips, but as all the ansers I got hed the saim, I sposed it wus best. times has gretly changed. Formaly to knock a man into a cocked hat wus to use him up, but now it ony gives him a chance fur the cheef madgustracy.--H.B. Dear Sir,--You wish to know my notions On sartin pints thet rile the land; There's nothin' thet my natur so shuns Ez bein' mum or underhand; I'm a straight-spoken kind o' creetur Thet blurts right out wut's in his head. An' ef I've one pecooler feetur, It is a nose thet wunt be led. So, to begin at the beginnin' An' come direcly to the pint, 10 I think the country's underpinnin' Is some consid'ble out o' jint; I aint agoin' to try your patience By tellin' who done this or thet, I don't make no insinooations, I jest let on I smell a rat. Thet is, I mean, it seems to me so, But, ef the public think I'm wrong, I wunt deny but wut I be so,-- An' fact, it don't smell very strong; 20 My mind's tu fair to lose its balance An' say wich party hez most sense; There may be folks o' greater talence Thet can't set stiddier on the fence. I'm an eclectic; ez to choosin' 'Twixt this an' thet, I'm plaguy lawth; I leave a side thet looks like losin', But (wile there's doubt) I stick to both; I stan' upon the Constitution, Ez preudunt statesman say, who've planned 30 A way to git the most profusion O' chances ez to _ware_ they'll stand. Ez fer the war, I go agin it,-- I mean to say I kind o' du,-- Thet is, I mean thet, bein' in it, The best way wuz to fight it thru'; Not but wut abstract war is horrid, I sign to thet with all my heart,-- But civlyzation _doos_ git forrid 39 Sometimes upon a powder-cart. About thet darned Proviso matter I never hed a grain o' doubt. Nor I aint one my sense to scatter So 'st no one couldn't pick it out; My love fer North an' South is equil, So I'll jest answer plump an' frank, No matter wut may be the sequil,-- Yes, Sir, I _am_ agin a Bank. Ez to the answerin' o' questions, I'm an off ox at bein' druv, 50 Though I ain't one thet ary test shuns 'll give our folks a helpin' shove; Kind o' permiscoous I go it Fer the holl country, an' the ground I take, ez nigh ez I can show it, Is pooty gen'ally all round. I don't appruve o' givin' pledges; You'd ough' to leave a feller free, An' not go knockin' out the wedges To ketch his fingers in the tree; Pledges air awfle breachy cattle 61 Thet preudunt farmers don't turn out,-- Ez long 'z the people git their rattle, Wut is there fer 'em to grout about? Ez to the slaves, there's no confusion In _my_ idees consarnin' them,-- _I_ think they air an Institution, A sort of--yes, jest so,--ahem: Do _I_ own any? Of my merit On thet pint you yourself may jedge; 70 All is, I never drink no sperit, Nor I haint never signed no pledge. Ez to my princerples, I glory In hevin' nothin' o' the sort; I aint a Wig, I aint a Tory, I'm jest a canderdate, in short; Thet's fair an' square an' parpendicler But, ef the Public cares a fig To hev me an'thin' in particler, Wy, I'm a kind o' peri-Wig. 80 P.S. Ez we're a sort o' privateerin', O' course, you know, it's sheer an' sheer, An' there is sutthin' wuth your hearin' I'll mention in _your_ privit ear; Ef you git _me_ inside the White House, Your head with ile I'll kin' o' 'nint By gittin' _you_ inside the Lighthouse Down to the eend o' Jaalam Pint. An' ez the North hez took to brustlin' At bein' scrouged frum off the roost, 90 I'll tell ye wut'll save all tusslin' An' give our side a harnsome boost,-- Tell 'em thet on the Slavery question I'm RIGHT, although to speak I'm lawth; This gives you a safe pint to rest on, An' leaves me frontin' South by North. [And now of epistles candidatial, which are of two kinds,--namely, letters of acceptance, and letters definitive of position. Our republic, on the eve of an election, may safely enough be called a republic of letters. Epistolary composition becomes then an epidemic, which seizes one candidate after another, not seldom cutting short the thread of political life. It has come to such a pass, that a party dreads less the attacks of its opponents than a letter from its candidate. _Litera scripta manet_, and it will go hard if something bad cannot be made of it. General Harrison, it is well understood, was surrounded, during his candidacy, with the _cordon sanitaire_ of a vigilance committee. No prisoner in Spielberg was ever more cautiously deprived of writing materials. The soot was scraped carefully from the chimney-places; outposts of expert rifle-shooters rendered it sure death for any goose (who came clad in feathers) to approach within a certain limited distance of North Bend; and all domestic fowls about the premises were reduced to the condition of Plato's original man. By these precautions the General was saved. _Parva componere magnis_, I remember, that, when party-spirit once ran high among my people, upon occasion of the choice of a new deacon, I, having my preferences, yet not caring too openly to express them, made use of an innocent fraud to bring about that result which I deemed most desirable. My stratagem was no other than the throwing a copy of the Complete Letter-Writer in the way of the candidate whom I wished to defeat. He caught the infection, and addressed a short note to his constituents, in which the opposite party detected so many and so grave improprieties (he had modelled it upon the letter of a young lady accepting a proposal of marriage), that he not only lost his election, but, falling under a suspicion of Sabellianism and I know not what (the widow Endive assured me that he was a Paralipomenon, to her certain knowledge), was forced to leave the town. Thus it is that the letter killeth. The object which candidates propose to themselves in writing is to convey no meaning at all. And here is a quite unsuspected pitfall into which they successively plunge headlong. For it is precisely in such cryptographies that mankind are prone to seek for and find a wonderful amount and variety of significance. _Omne ignotum pro mirifico_. How do we admire at the antique world striving to crack those oracular nuts from Delphi, Hammon, and elsewhere, in only one of which can I so much as surmise that any kernel had ever lodged; that, namely, wherein Apollo confessed that he was mortal. One Didymus is, moreover, related to have written six thousand books on the single subject of grammar, a topic rendered only more tenebrific by the labors of his successors, and which seems still to possess an attraction for authors in proportion as they can make nothing of it. A singular loadstone for theologians, also, is the Beast in the Apocalypse, whereof, in the course of my studies, I have noted two hundred and three several interpretations, each lethiferal to all the rest. _Non nostrum est tantas componere lites_, yet I have myself ventured upon a two hundred and fourth, which I embodied in a discourse preached on occasion of the demise of the late usurper, Napoleon Bonaparte, and which quieted, in a large measure, the minds of my people. It is true that my views on this important point were ardently controverted by Mr. Shearjashub Holden, the then preceptor of our academy, and in other particulars a very deserving and sensible young man, though possessing a somewhat limited knowledge of the Greek tongue. But his heresy struck down no deep root, and, he having been lately removed by the hand of Providence, I had the satisfaction of reaffirming my cherished sentiments in a sermon preached upon the Lord's day immediately succeeding his funeral. This might seem like taking an unfair advantage, did I not add that he had made provision in his last will (being celibate) for the publication of a posthumous tractate in support of his own dangerous opinions. I know of nothing in our modern times which approaches so nearly to the ancient oracle as the letter of a Presidential candidate. Now, among the Greeks, the eating of beans was strictly forbidden to all such as had it in mind to consult those expert amphibologists, and this same prohibition on the part of Pythagoras to his disciples is understood to imply an abstinence from politics, beans having been used as ballots. That other explication, _quod videlicet sensus eo cibo obtundi existimaret_, though supported _pugnis et calcibus_ by many of the learned, and not wanting the countenance of Cicero, is confuted by the larger experience of New England. On the whole, I think it safer to apply here the rule of interpretation which now generally obtains in regard to antique cosmogonies, myths, fables, proverbial expressions, and knotty points generally, which is, to find a common-sense meaning, and then select whatever can be imagined the most opposite thereto. In this way we arrive at the conclusion, that the Greeks objected to the questioning of candidates. And very properly, if, as I conceive, the chief point be not to discover what a person in that position is, or what he will do, but whether he can be elected. _Vos exemplaria Græca nocturna versate manu, versate diurna_. But, since an imitation of the Greeks in this particular (the asking of questions being one chief privilege of freemen) is hardly to be hoped for, and our candidates will answer, whether they are questioned or not, I would recommend that these ante-electionary dialogues should be carried on by symbols, as were the diplomatic correspondences of the Scythians an Macrobii, or confined to the language of signs, like the famous interview of Panurge and Goatsnose. A candidate might then convey a suitable reply to all committees of inquiry by closing one eye, or by presenting them with a phial of Egyptian darkness to be speculated upon by their respective constituencies. These answers would be susceptible of whatever retrospective construction the exigencies of the political campaign might seem to demand, and the candidate could take his position on either side of the fence with entire consistency. Or, if letters must be written, profitable use might be made of the Dighton rock hieroglyphic or the cuneiform script, every fresh decipherer of which is enabled to educe a different meaning, whereby a sculptured stone or two supplies us, and will probably continue to supply posterity, with a very vast and various body of authentic history. For even the briefest epistle in the ordinary chirography is dangerous. There is scarce any style so compressed that superfluous words may not be detected in it. A severe critic might curtail that famous brevity of Cæsar's by two thirds, drawing his pen through the supererogatory _veni_ and _vidi_. Perhaps, after all, the surest footing of hope is to be found in the rapidly increasing tendency to demand less and less of qualification in candidates. Already have statesmanship, experience, and the possession (nay, the profession, even) of principles been rejected as superfluous, and may not the patriot reasonably hope that the ability to write will follow? At present, there may be death in pothooks as well as pots, the loop of a letter may suffice for a bowstring, and all the dreadful heresies of Antislavery may lurk in a flourish.--H.W.] No. VIII A SECOND LETTER FROM B. SAWIN, ESQ. [In the following epistle, we behold Mr. Sawin returning, a _miles emeritus_, to the bosom of his family. _Quantum mutatus!_ The good Father of us all had doubtless intrusted to the keeping of this child of his certain faculties of a constructive kind. He had put in him a share of that vital force, the nicest economy of every minute atom of which is necessary to the perfect development of Humanity. He had given him a brain and heart, and so had equipped his soul with the two strong wings of knowledge and love, whereby it can mount to hang its nest under the eaves of heaven. And this child, so dowered, he had intrusted to the keeping of his vicar, the State. How stands the account of that stewardship? The State, or Society (call her by what name you will), had taken no manner of thought of him till she saw him swept out into the street, the pitiful leavings of last night's debauch, with cigar-ends, lemon-parings, tobacco-quids, slops, vile stenches, and the whole loathsome next-morning of the bar-room,--an own child of the Almighty God! I remember him as he was brought to be christened, a ruddy, rugged babe; and now there he wallows, reeking, seething,--the dead corpse, not of a man, but of a soul,--a putrefying lump, horrible for the life that is in it. Comes the wind of heaven, that good Samaritan, and parts the hair upon his forehead, nor is too nice to kiss those parched, cracked lips; the morning opens upon him her eyes full of pitying sunshine, the sky yearns down to him,--and there he lies fermenting. O sleep! let me not profane thy holy name by calling that stertorous unconsciousness a slumber! By and by comes along the State, God's vicar. Does she say, 'My poor, forlorn foster-child! Behold here a force which I will make dig and plant and build for me'? Not so, but, 'Here is a recruit ready-made to my hand, a piece of destroying energy lying unprofitably idle.' So she claps an ugly gray suit on him, puts a musket in his grasp, and sends him off, with Gubernatorial and other godspeeds, to do duty as a destroyer. I made one of the crowd at the last Mechanics' Fair, and, with the rest, stood gazing in wonder at a perfect machine, with its soul of fire, its boiler-heart that sent the hot blood pulsing along the iron arteries, and its thews of steel. And while I was admiring the adaptation of means to end, the harmonious involutions of contrivance, and the never-bewildered complexity, I saw a grimed and greasy fellow, the imperious engine's lackey and drudge, whose sole office was to let fall, at intervals, a drop or two of oil upon a certain joint. Then my soul said within me, See there a piece of mechanism to which that other you marvel at is but as the rude first effort of a child,--a force which not merely suffices to set a few wheels in motion, but which can send an impulse all through the infinite future,--a contrivance, not for turning out pins, or stitching button-holes, but for making Hamlets and Lears. And yet this thing of iron shall be housed, waited on, guarded from rust and dust, and it shall be a crime but so much as to scratch it with a pin; while the other, with its fire of God in it, shall be buffeted hither and thither, and finally sent carefully a thousand miles to be the target for a Mexican cannon-ball. Unthrifty Mother State! My heart burned within me for pity and indignation, and I renewed this covenant with my own soul,--_In aliis mansuetus ero, at, in blasphemiis contra Christum, non ita._.--H.W.] I spose you wonder ware I be; I can't tell, fer the soul o' me, Exacly ware I be myself,--meanin' by thet the holl o' me. Wen I left hum, I hed two legs, an' they worn't bad ones neither, (The scaliest trick they ever played wuz bringin' on me hither,) Now one on 'em's I dunno ware;--they thought I wuz adyin', An' sawed it off because they said 'twuz kin' o' mortifyin'; I'm willin' to believe it wuz, an' yit I don't see, nuther, Wy one shoud take to feelin' cheap a minnit sooner 'n t'other, Sence both wuz equilly to blame; but things is ez they be; It took on so they took it off, an' thet's enough fer me: 10 There's one good thing, though, to be said about my wooden new one,-- The liquor can't git into it ez 't used to in the true one; So it saves drink; an' then, besides, a feller couldn't beg A gretter blessin' then to hev one ollers sober peg; It's true a chap's in want o' two fer follerin' a drum, But all the march I'm up to now is jest to Kingdom Come. I've lost one eye, but thet's a loss it's easy to supply Out o' the glory thet I've gut, fer thet is all my eye; An' one is big enough, I guess, by diligently usin' it, To see all I shall ever git by way o' pay fer losin' it; 20 Off'cers I notice, who git paid fer all our thumps an' kickins, Du wal by keepin' single eyes arter the fattest pickins; So, ez the eye's put fairly out, I'll larn to go without it, An' not allow _myself_ to be no gret put out about it. Now, le' me see, thet isn't all; I used, 'fore leavin' Jaalam, To count things on my finger-eends, but sutthin' seems to ail 'em: Ware's my left hand? Oh, darn it, yes, I recollect wut's come on 't; I haint no left arm but my right, an' thet's gut jest a thumb on 't; It aint so bendy ez it wuz to cal'late a sum on 't. I've hed some ribs broke,--six (I b'lieve),--I haint kep' no account on 'em; 30 Wen pensions git to be the talk, I'll settle the amount on 'em. An' now I'm speakin' about ribs, it kin' o' brings to mind One thet I couldn't never break,--the one I lef' behind; Ef you should see her, jest clear out the spout o' your invention An' pour the longest sweetnin' in about an annooal pension, An' kin' o' hint (in case, you know, the critter should refuse to be Consoled) I aint so 'xpensive now to keep ez wut I used to be; There's one arm less, ditto one eye, an' then the leg thet's wooden Can be took off an' sot away wenever ther's a puddin'. I spose you think I'm comin' back ez opperlunt ez thunder, 40 With shiploads o' gold images an' varus sorts o' plunder; Wal, 'fore I vullinteered, I thought this country wuz a sort o' Canaan, a reg'lar Promised Land flowin' with rum an' water, Ware propaty growed up like time, without no cultivation, An' gold wuz dug ez taters be among our Yankee nation, Ware nateral advantages were pufficly amazin', Ware every rock there wuz about with precious stuns wuz blazin'. Ware mill-sites filled the country up ez thick ez you could cram 'em, An' desput rivers run about a beggin' folks to dam 'em; Then there were meetinhouses, tu, chockful o' gold an' silver 50 Thet you could take, an' no one couldn't hand ye in no bill fer;-- Thet's wut I thought afore I went, thet's wut them fellers told us Thet stayed to hum an' speechified an' to the buzzards sold us; I thought thet gold-mines could be gut cheaper than Chiny asters, An' see myself acomin' back like sixty Jacob Astors; But sech idees soon melted down an' didn't leave a grease-spot; I vow my holl sheer o' the spiles wouldn't come nigh a V spot; Although, most anywares we've ben, you needn't break no locks, Nor run no kin' o' risks, to fill your pocket full o' rocks. I 'xpect I mentioned in my last some o' the nateral feeturs 60 O' this all-fiered buggy hole in th' way o' awfle creeturs, But I fergut to name (new things to speak on so abounded) How one day you'll most die o' thust, an' 'fore the next git drownded. The clymit seems to me jest like a teapot made o' pewter Our Preudence hed, thet wouldn't pour (all she could du) to suit her; Fust place the leaves 'ould choke the spout, so's not a drop 'ould dreen out, Then Prude 'ould tip an' tip an' tip, till the holl kit bust clean out, The kiver-hinge-pin bein' lost, tea-leaves an' tea an' kiver 'ould all come down _kerswosh!_ ez though the dam bust in a river. Jest so 'tis here; holl months there aint a day o' rainy weather, 70 An' jest ez th' officers 'ould be a layin' heads together Ez t' how they'd mix their drink at sech a milingtary deepot,-- 'Twould pour ez though the lid wuz off the everlastin' teapot. The cons'quence is, thet I shall take, wen I'm allowed to leave here, One piece o' propaty along, an' thet's the shakin' fever; It's reggilar employment, though, an' thet aint thought to harm one, Nor 'taint so tiresome ez it wuz with t'other leg an' arm on; An' it's a consolation, tu, although it doosn't pay, To hev it said you're some gret shakes in any kin' o' way. 'Tworn't very long, I tell ye wut, I thought o' fortin-makin',-- 80 One day a reg'lar shiver-de-freeze, an' next ez good ez bakin',-- One day abrilin' in the sand, then smoth'rin' in the mashes,-- Git up all sound, be put to bed a mess o' hacks an' smashes. But then, thinks I, at any rate there's glory to be hed,-- Thet's an investment, arter all, thet mayn't turn out so bad; But somehow, wen we'd fit an' licked, I ollers found the thanks Gut kin' o' lodged afore they come ez low down ez the ranks; The Gin'rals gut the biggest sheer, the Cunnles next, an' so on,-- _We_ never gat a blasted mite o' glory ez I know on; An' spose we hed, I wonder how you're goin' to contrive its 90 Division so's to give a piece to twenty thousand privits; Ef you should multiply by ten the portion o' the brav'st one, You wouldn't git more 'n half enough to speak of on a grave-stun; We git the licks,--we're jest the grist thet's put into War's hoppers; Leftenants is the lowest grade thet helps pick up the coppers. It may suit folks thet go agin a body with a soul in 't, An' aint contented with a hide without a bagnet hole in 't; But glory is a kin' o' thing _I_ sha'n't pursue no furder, Coz thet's the off'cers' parquisite,--yourn's on'y jest the murder. Wal, arter I gin glory up, thinks I at least there's one 100 Thing in the bills we aint bed yit, an' thet's the GLORIOUS FUN; Ef once we git to Mexico, we fairly may persume we All day an' night shall revel in the halls o' Montezumy. I'll tell ye wut _my_ revels wuz, an' see how you would like 'em; _We_ never gut inside the hall: the nighest ever _I_ come Wuz stan'in' sentry in the sun (an', fact, it _seemed_ a cent'ry) A ketchin' smells o' biled an' roast thet come out thru the entry, An' hearin' ez I sweltered thru my passes an' repasses, A rat-tat-too o' knives an' forks, a clinkty-clink o' glasses: I can't tell off the bill o' fare the Gin'rals hed inside; 110 All I know is, thet out o' doors a pair o' soles wuz fried, An' not a hunderd miles away from ware this child wuz posted, A Massachusetts citizen wuz baked an' biled an' roasted; The on'y thing like revellin' thet ever come to me Wuz bein' routed out o' sleep by thet darned revelee. They say the quarrel's settled now; for my part I've some doubt on 't, 't'll take more fish-skin than folks think to take the rile clean on 't; At any rate I'm so used up I can't do no more fightin', The on'y chance thet's left to me is politics or writin'; Now, ez the people's gut to hev a milingtary man, 120 An' I aint nothin' else jest now, I've hit upon a plan; The can'idatin' line, you know, 'ould suit me to a T, An' ef I lose, 'twunt hurt my ears to lodge another flea; So I'll set up ez can'idate fer any kin' o' office, (I mean fer any thet includes good easy-cheers an' soffies; Fer ez tu runnin' fer a place ware work's the time o' day, You know thet's wut I never did,--except the other way;) Ef it's the Presidential cheer fer wich I'd better run, Wut two legs anywares about could keep up with my one? There aint no kin' o' quality in can'idates, it's said, 130 So useful eza wooden leg,--except a wooden head; There's nothin' aint so poppylar--(wy, it 's a parfect sin To think wut Mexico hez paid fer Santy Anny's pin;)-- Then I haint gut no princerples, an', sence I wuz knee-high, I never _did_ hev any gret, ez you can testify; I'm a decided peace-man, tu, an' go agin the war,-- Fer now the holl on 't's gone an' past, wut is there to go _for_? Ef, wile you're 'lectioneerin' round, some curus chaps should beg To know my views o' state affairs, jest answer WOODEN LEG! Ef they aint settisfied with thet, an' kin' o' pry an' doubt 140 An' ax fer sutthin' deffynit, jest say ONE EYE PUT OUT! Thet kin' o' talk I guess you'll find'll answer to a charm, An' wen you're druv tu nigh the wall, hol' up my missin' arm; Ef they should nose round fer a pledge, put on a vartoous look An' tell 'em thet's precisely wut I never gin nor--took! Then you can call me 'Timbertoes,'--thet's wut the people likes; Sutthin' combinin' morril truth with phrases sech ez strikes; Some say the people's fond o' this, or thet, or wut you please,-- I tell ye wut the people want is jest correct idees; 'Old Timbertoes,' you see, 's a creed it's safe to be quite bold on, 150 There's nothin' in 't the other side can any ways git hold on; It's a good tangible idee, a sutthin' to embody Thet valooable class o' men who look thru brandy-toddy; It gives a Party Platform, tu, jest level with the mind Of all right-thinkin', honest folks thet mean to go it blind; Then there air other good hooraws to dror on ez you need 'em, Sech ez the ONE-EYED SLARTERER, the BLOODY BIRDOFREDUM: Them's wut takes hold o' folks thet think, ez well ez o' the masses, An' makes you sartin o' the aid o' good men of all classes. There's one thing I'm in doubt about: in order to be Presidunt, 160 It's absolutely ne'ssary to be a Southern residunt; The Constitution settles thet, an' also thet a feller Must own a nigger o' some sort, jet black, or brown, or yeller. Now I haint no objections agin particklar climes, Nor agin ownin' anythin' (except the truth sometimes), But, ez I haint no capital, up there among ye, maybe, You might raise funds enough fer me to buy a low-priced baby, An' then to suit the No'thern folks, who feel obleeged to say They hate an' cus the very thing they vote fer every day, Say you're assured I go full butt fer Libbaty's diffusion 170 An' make the purchis on'y jest to spite the Institootion;-- But, golly! there's the currier's hoss upon the pavement pawin'! I'll be more 'xplicit in my next. Yourn, BIRDOFREDUM SAWIN. [We have now a tolerably fair chance of estimating how the balance-sheet stands between our returned volunteer and glory. Supposing the entries to be set down on both sides of the account in fractional parts of one hundred, we shall arrive at something like the following result:-- B. SAWIN, Esq., _in account with_ (BLANK) GLORY. _Cr._ By loss of one leg............................................... 20 " do. one arm................................................ 15 " do. four fingers............................................ 5 " do. one eye................................................ 10 " the breaking of six ribs........................................ 6 " having served under Colonel Cushing one month.................. 44 ------- 100 _Dr._ To one 675th three cheers in Faneuil Hall......................... 30 " do. do. on occasion of presentation of sword to Colonel Wright.. 25 To one suit of gray clothes (ingeniously unbecoming).............. 15 " musical entertainments (drum and fife six months)............... 5 " one dinner after return......................................... 1 " chance of pension............................................... 1 " privilege of drawing longbow during rest of natural life....... 23 ------ 100 E.E. It should appear that Mr. Sawin found the actual feast curiously the reverse of the bill of fare advertised in Faneuil Hall and other places. His primary object seems to have been the making of his fortune. _Quærenda pecunia primum, virtus post nummos_. He hoisted sail for Eldorado, and shipwrecked on Point Tribulation. _Quid, non mortalia pectora cogis, auri sacra fames?_ The speculation has sometimes crossed my mind, in that dreary interval of drought which intervenes between quarterly stipendiary showers, that Providence, by the creation of a money-tree, might have simplified wonderfully the sometimes perplexing problem of human life. We read of bread-trees, the butter for which lies ready-churned in Irish bogs. Milk-trees we are assured of in South America, and stout Sir John Hawkins testifies to water-trees in the Canaries. Boot-trees bear abundantly in Lynn and elsewhere; and I have seen, in the entries of the wealthy, hat-trees with a fair show of fruit. A family-tree I once cultivated myself, and found therefrom but a scanty yield, and that quite tasteless and innutritious. Of trees bearing men we are not without examples; as those in the park of Louis the Eleventh of France. Who has forgotten, moreover, that olive-tree, growing in the Athenian's back-garden, with its strange uxorious crop, for the general propagation of which, as of a new and precious variety, the philosopher Diogenes, hitherto uninterested in arboriculture, was so zealous? In the _sylva_ of our own Southern States, the females of my family have called my attention to the china-tree. Not to multiply examples, I will barely add to my list the birch-tree, in the smaller branches of which has been implanted so miraculous a virtue for communicating the Latin and Greek languages, and which may well, therefore, be classed among the trees producing necessaries of life,--_venerabile donum fatalis virgæ_. That money-trees existed in the golden age there want not prevalent reasons for our believing. For does not the old proverb, when it asserts that money does not grow on _every_ bush, imply _a fortiori_ that there were certain bushes which did produce it? Again, there is another ancient saw to the effect that money is the _root_ of all evil. From which two adages it may be safe to infer that the aforesaid species of tree first degenerated into a shrub, then absconded underground, and finally, in our iron age, vanished altogether. In favorable exposures it may be conjectured that a specimen or two survived to a great age, as in the garden of the Hesperides; and, indeed, what else could that tree in the Sixth Æneid have been with a branch whereof the Trojan hero procured admission to a territory, for the entering of which money is a surer passport than to a certain other more profitable and too foreign kingdom? Whether these speculations of mine have any force in them, or whether they will not rather, by most readers, be deemed impertinent to the matter in hand, is a question which I leave to the determination of an indulgent posterity. That there were, in more primitive and happier times, shops where money was sold,--and that, too, on credit and at a bargain,--I take to be matter of demonstration. For what but a dealer in this article was that Æolus who supplied Ulysses with motive-power for his fleet in bags? what that Ericus, King of Sweden, who is said to have kept the winds in his cap? what, in more recent times, those Lapland Nornas who traded in favorable breezes? All which will appear the more clearly when we consider, that, even to this day, _raising the wind_ is proverbial for raising money, and that brokers and banks were invented by the Venetians at a later period. And now for the improvement of this digression. I find a parallel to Mr. Sawin's fortune in an adventure of my own. For, shortly after I had first broached to myself the before-stated natural-historical and archæological theories, as I was passing, _haec negotia penitus mecum revolvens_, through one of the obscure suburbs of our New England metropolis, my eye was attracted by these words upon a signboard,--CHEAP CASH-STORE. Here was at once the confirmation of my speculations, and the substance of my hopes. Here lingered the fragment of a happier past, or stretched out the first tremulous organic filament of a more fortunate future. Thus glowed the distant Mexico to the eyes of Sawin, as he looked through the dirty pane of the recruiting-office window, or speculated from the summit of that mirage-Pisgah which the imps of the bottle are so cunning to raise up. Already had my Alnaschar-fancy (even during that first half-believing glance) expended in various useful directions the funds to be obtained by pledging the manuscript of a proposed volume of discourses. Already did a clock ornament the tower of the Jaalam meeting-house, a gift appropriately, but modestly, commemorated in the parish and town records, both, for now many years, kept by myself. Already had my son Seneca completed his course at the University. Whether, for the moment, we may not be considered as actually lording it over those Baratarias with the viceroyalty of which Hope invests us, and whether we are ever so warmly housed as in our Spanish castles, would afford matter of argument. Enough that I found that signboard to be no other than a bait to the trap of a decayed grocer. Nevertheless, I bought a pound of dates (getting short weight by reason of immense flights of harpy flies who pursued and lighted upon their prey even in the very scales), which purchase I made not only with an eye to the little ones at home, but also as a figurative reproof of that too frequent habit of my mind, which, forgetting the due order of chronology, will often persuade me that the happy sceptre of Saturn is stretched over this Astræa-forsaken nineteenth century. Having glanced at the ledger of Glory under the title _Sawin, B._, let us extend our investigations, and discover if that instructive volume does not contain some charges more personally interesting to ourselves. I think we should be more economical of our resources, did we thoroughly appreciate the fact, that, whenever Brother Jonathan seems to be thrusting his hand into his own pocket, he is, in fact, picking ours. I confess that the late _muck_ which the country has been running has materially changed my views as to the best method of raising revenue. If, by means of direct taxation, the bills for every extraordinary outlay were brought under our immediate eye, so that, like thrifty housekeepers, we could see where and how fast the money was going, we should be less likely to commit extravagances. At present, these things are managed in such a hugger-mugger way, that we know not what we pay for; the poor man is charged as much as the rich; and, while we are saving and scrimping at the spigot, the government is drawing off at the bung. If we could know that a part of the money we expend for tea and coffee goes to buy powder and balls, and that it is Mexican blood which makes the clothes on our backs more costly, it would set some of us athinking. During the present fall, I have often pictured to myself a government official entering my study and handing me the following bill:-- WASHINGTON, Sept. 30, 1848, REV. HOMER WILBUR to _Uncle Samuel_, _Dr._ To his share of work done in Mexico on partnership account, sundry jobs, as below. "killing, maiming and wounding about 5000 Mexicans. . . . . . . . $2.00 "slaughtering one woman carrying water to wounded. . . . . . . . . . .10 "extra work on two different Sabbaths (one bombardment and one assault), whereby the Mexicans were prevented from defiling themselves with the idolatries of high mass . . . . . . 3.50 "throwing an especially fortunate and Protestant bomb-shell into the Cathedral at Vera Cruz, whereby several female Papists were slain at the altar. . . . . . . . . . . . .50 "his proportion of cash paid for conquered territory. . . . . . . . 1.75 "do. do. for conquering do . . . . . 1.50 "manuring do. with new superior compost called 'American Citizen'. .50 "extending the area of freedom and Protestantism. . . . . . . . . . . .01 "glory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .01 _____ $9.87 _Immediate payment is requested._ N.B. Thankful for former favors, U.S. requests a continuance of patronage. Orders executed with neatness and despatch. Terms as low as those of any other contractor for the same kind and style of work. I can fancy the official answering my look of horror with--'Yes, Sir, it looks like a high charge. Sir; but in these days slaughtering is slaughtering.' Verily, I would that every one understood that it was; for it goes about obtaining money under the false pretence of being glory. For me, I have an imagination which plays me uncomfortable tricks. It happens to me sometimes to see a slaughterer on his way home from his day's work, and forthwith my imagination puts a cocked-hat upon his head and epaulettes upon his shoulders, and sets him up as a candidate for the Presidency. So, also, on a recent public occasion, as the place assigned to the 'Reverend Clergy' is just behind that of 'Officers of the Army and Navy' in processions, it was my fortune to be seated at the dinner-table over against one of these respectable persons. He was arrayed as (out of his own profession) only kings, court-officers, and footmen are in Europe, and Indians in America. Now what does my over-officious imagination but set to work upon him, strip him of his gay livery, and present him to me coatless, his trousers thrust into the tops of a pair of boots thick with clotted blood, and a basket on his arm out of which lolled a gore-smeared axe, thereby destroying my relish for the temporal mercies upon the board before me! --H.W.] No. IX A THIRD LETTER FROM B. SAWIN, ESQ. [Upon the following letter slender comment will be needful. In what river Selemnus has Mr. Sawin bathed, that he has become so swiftly oblivious of his former loves? From an ardent and (as befits a soldier) confident wooer of that coy bride, the popular favor, we see him subside of a sudden into the (I trust not jilted) Cincinnatus, returning to his plough with a goodly sized branch of willow in his hand; figuratively returning, however, to a figurative plough, and from no profound affection for that honored implement of husbandry (for which, indeed, Mr. Sawin never displayed any decided predilection), but in order to be gracefully summoned therefrom to more congenial labors. It should seem that the character of the ancient Dictator had become part of the recognized stock of our modern political comedy, though, as our term of office extends to a quadrennial length, the parallel is not so minutely exact as could be desired. It is sufficiently so, however, for purposes of scenic representation. An humble cottage (if built of logs, the better) forms the Arcadian background of the stage. This rustic paradise is labelled Ashland, Jaalam, North Bend, Marshfield, Kinderhook, or Bâton Rouge, as occasion demands. Before the door stands a something with one handle (the other painted in proper perspective), which represents, in happy ideal vagueness, the plough. To this the defeated candidate rushes with delirious joy, welcomed as a father by appropriate groups of happy laborers, or from it the successful one is torn with difficulty, sustained alone by a noble sense of public duty. Only I have observed, that, if the scene be laid at Bâton Rouge or Ashland, the laborers are kept carefully in the backgrouud, and are heard to shout from behind the scenes in a singular tone resembling ululation, and accompanied by a sound not unlike vigorous clapping. This, however, may be artistically in keeping with the habits of the rustic population of those localities. The precise connection between agricultural pursuits and statesmanship I have not been able, after diligent inquiry, to discover. But, that my investigations may not be barren of all fruit, I will mention one curious statistical fact, which I consider thoroughly established, namely, that no real farmer ever attains practically beyond a seat in the General Court, however theoretically qualified for more exalted station. It is probable that some other prospect has been opened to Mr. Sawin, and that he has not made this great sacrifice without some definite understanding in regard to a seat in the cabinet or a foreign mission. It may be supposed that we of Jaalam were not untouched by a feeling of villatic pride in beholding our townsman occupying so large a space in the public eye. And to me, deeply revolving the qualifications necessary to a candidate in these frugal times, those of Mr. S. seemed peculiarly adapted to a successful campaign. The loss of a leg, an arm, an eye, and four fingers reduced him so nearly to the condition of a _vox et præterea nihil_ that I could think of nothing but the loss of his head by which his chance could have been bettered. But since he has chosen to balk our suffrages, we must content ourselves with what we can get, remembering _lactucas non esse dandas, dum cardui sufficiant_,--H.W.] I spose you recollect thet I explained my gennle views In the last billet thet I writ, 'way down frum Veery Cruze, Jest arter I'd a kin' o' ben spontanously sot up To run unannermously fer the Preserdential cup; O' course it worn't no wish o' mine, 'twuz ferflely distressin', But poppiler enthusiasm gut so almighty pressin' Thet, though like sixty all along I fumed an' fussed an' sorrered, There didn't seem no ways to stop their bringin' on me forrerd: Fact is, they udged the matter so, I couldn't help admittin' The Father o' his Country's shoes no feet but mine 'ould fit in, 10 Besides the savin' o' the soles fer ages to succeed, Seein' thet with one wannut foot, a pair'd be more 'n I need; An', tell ye wut, them shoes'll want a thund'rin sight o' patchin', Ef this ere fashion is to last we've gut into o' hatchin' A pair o' second Washintons fer every new election,-- Though, fer ez number one's consarned, I don't make no objection. I wuz agoin' on to say thet wen at fust I saw The masses would stick to 't I wuz the Country's father-'n-law, (They would ha' hed it _Father_, but I told 'em 'twouldn't du, Coz thet wuz sutthin' of a sort they couldn't split in tu, 20 An' Washinton hed hed the thing laid fairly to his door, Nor darsn't say 'tworn't his'n, much ez sixty year afore,) But 'taint no matter ez to thet; wen I wuz nomernated, 'Tworn't natur but wut I should feel consid'able elated, An' wile the hooraw o' the thing wuz kind o' noo an' fresh, I thought our ticket would ha' caird the country with a resh. Sence I've come hum, though, an' looked round, I think I seem to find Strong argimunts ez thick ez fleas to make me change my mind; It's clear to any one whose brain aint fur gone in a phthisis, Thet hail Columby's happy land is goin' thru a crisis, 30 An' 'twouldn't noways du to hev the people's mind distracted By bein' all to once by sev'ral pop'lar names attackted; 'Twould save holl haycartloads o' fuss an' three four months o' jaw, Ef some illustrous paytriot should back out an' withdraw; So, ez I aint a crooked stick, jest like--like ole (I swow, I dunno ez I know his name)--I'll go back to my plough. Wenever an Amerikin distinguished politishin Begins to try et wut they call definin' his posishin, Wal, I, fer one, feel sure he ain't gut nothin' to define; It's so nine cases out o' ten, but jest thet tenth is mine; 40 An' 'taint no more 'n proper 'n' right in sech a sitooation To hint the course you think'll be the savin' o' the nation; To funk right out o' p'lit'cal strife aint thought to be the thing, Without you deacon off the toon you want your folks should sing; So I edvise the noomrous friends thet's in one boat with me To jest up killick, jam right down their hellum hard alee, Haul the sheets taut, an', layin' out upon the Suthun tack, Make fer the safest port they can, wich, _I_ think, is Ole Zack. Next thing you'll want to know, I spose, wut argimunts I seem To see thet makes me think this ere'll be the strongest team; 50 Fust place, I've ben consid'ble round in bar-rooms an' saloons Agetherin' public sentiment, 'mongst Demmercrats and Coons, An' 'taint ve'y offen thet I meet a chap but wut goes in Fer Rough an' Ready, fair an' square, hufs, taller, horns, an' skin; I don't deny but wut, fer one, ez fur ez I could see, I didn't like at fust the Pheladelphy nomernee: I could ha' pinted to a man thet wuz, I guess, a peg Higher than him,--a soger, tu, an' with a wooden leg; But every day with more an' more o' Taylor zeal I'm burnin', Seein' wich way the tide thet sets to office is aturnin'; 60 Wy, into Bellers's we notched the votes down on three sticks,-- 'Twuz Birdofredum _one_, Cass _aught_ an Taylor _twenty-six_, An' bein' the on'y canderdate thet wuz upon the ground, They said 'twuz no more 'n right thet I should pay the drinks all round; Ef I'd expected sech a trick, I wouldn't ha' cut my foot By goin' an' votin' fer myself like a consumed coot; It didn't make no deff'rence, though; I wish I may be cust, Ef Bellers wuzn't slim enough to say he wouldn't trust! Another pint thet influences the minds o' sober jedges Is thet the Gin'ral hezn't gut tied hand an' foot with pledges; 70 He hezn't told ye wut he is, an' so there aint no knowin' But wut he may turn out to be the best there is agoin'; This, at the on'y spot thet pinched, the shoe directly eases, Coz every one is free to 'xpect percisely wut he pleases: I want free-trade; you don't; the Gin'ral isn't bound to neither;-- I vote my way; you, yourn; an' both air sooted to a T there. Ole Rough an' Ready, tu, 's a Wig, but without bein' ultry; He's like a holsome hayin' day, thet's warm, but isn't sultry; He's jest wut I should call myself, a kin' of _scratch_ ez 'tware, Thet aint exacly all a wig nor wholly your own hair; 80 I 've ben a Wig three weeks myself, jest o' this mod'rate sort, An' don't find them an' Demmercrats so defferent ez I thought; They both act pooty much alike, an' push an' scrouge an' cus; They're like two pickpockets in league fer Uncle Samwells pus; Each takes a side, an' then they squeeze the ole man in between 'em, Turn all his pockets wrong side out an' quick ez lightnin' clean 'em; To nary one on 'em I'd trust a secon'-handed rail No furder off 'an I could sling a bullock by the tail. Webster sot matters right in thet air Mashfiel' speech o' his'n; 'Taylor,' sez he, 'aint nary ways the one thet I'd a chizzen, 90 Nor he aint fittin' fer the place, an' like ez not he aint No more 'n a tough ole bullethead, an' no gret of a saint; But then,' sez he, 'obsarve my pint, he's jest ez good to vote fer Ez though the greasin' on him worn't a thing to hire Choate fer; Aint it ez easy done to drop a ballot in a box Fer one ez 'tis fer t'other, fer the bull-dog ez the fox?' It takes a mind like Dannel's, fact, ez big ez all ou' doors, To find out thet it looks like rain arter it fairly pours; I 'gree with him, it aint so dreffle troublesome to vote Fer Taylor arter all,--it's jest to go an' change your coat; 100 Wen he's once greased, you'll swaller him an' never know on 't, scurce, Unless he scratches, goin' down, with them 'ere Gin'ral's spurs. I've ben a votin' Demmercrat, ez reg'lar as a clock, But don't find goin' Taylor gives my narves no gret 'f a shock; Truth is, the cutest leadin' Wigs, ever sence fust they found Wich side the bread gut buttered on, hev kep' a edgin' round; They kin' o' slipt the planks frum out th' ole platform one by one An' made it gradooally noo, 'fore folks khow'd wut wuz done, Till, fur 'z I know, there aint an inch thet I could lay my han' on, But I, or any Demmercrat, feels comf'table to stan' on, 110 An' ole Wig doctrines act'lly look, their occ'pants bein' gone, Lonesome ez steddies on a mash without no hayricks on. I spose it's time now I should give my thoughts upon the plan, Thet chipped the shell at Buffalo, o' settin' up ole Van. I used to vote fer Martin, but, I swan, I'm clean disgusted,-- He aint the man thet I can say is fittin' to be trusted; He aint half antislav'ry 'nough, nor I aint sure, ez some be, He'd go in fer abolishin' the Deestrick o' Columby; An', now I come to recollec', it kin' o' makes me sick 'z A horse, to think o' wut he wuz in eighteen thirty-six. 120 An' then, another thing;--I guess, though mebby I am wrong, This Buff'lo plaster aint agoin' to dror almighty strong; Some folks, I know, hev gut th' idee thet No'thun dough'll rise, Though, 'fore I see it riz an 'baked, I wouldn't trust my eyes; 'Twill take more emptins, a long chalk, than this noo party's gut, To give sech heavy cakes ez them a start, I tell ye wut. But even ef they caird the day, there wouldn't be no endurin' To stan' upon a platform with sech critters ez Van Buren;-- An' his son John, tu, I can't think how thet 'ere chap should dare To speak ez he doos; wy, they say he used to cuss an' swear! 130 I spose he never read the hymn thet tells how down the stairs A feller with long legs wuz throwed thet wouldn't say his prayers. This brings me to another pint: the leaders o' the party Aint jest sech men ez I can act along with free an' hearty; They aint not quite respectable, an' wen a feller's morrils Don't toe the straightest kin' o' mark, wy, him an' me jest quarrils. I went to a free soil meetin' once, an' wut d'ye think I see? A feller was aspoutin' there thet act'lly come to me, About two year ago last spring, ez nigh ez I can jedge, An' axed me ef I didn't want to sign the Temprunce pledge! 140 He's one o' them that goes about an' sez you hedn't oughter Drink nothin', mornin', noon, or night, stronger 'an Taunton water. There's one rule I've ben guided by, in settlin' how to vote, ollers,-- I take the side thet _isn't_ took by them consarned teetotallers. Ez fer the niggers, I've ben South, an' thet hez changed my min'; A lazier, more ongrateful set you couldn't nowers fin', You know I mentioned in my last thet I should buy a nigger, Ef I could make a purchase at a pooty mod'rate figger; So, ez there's nothin' in the world I'm fonder of 'an gunnin', I closed a bargain finally to take a feller runnin'. 150 I shou'dered queen's-arm an' stumped out, an' wen I come t' th' swamp, 'Tworn't very long afore I gut upon the nest o' Pomp; I come acrost a kin' o' hut, an', playin' round the door, Some little woolly-headed cubs, ez many 'z six or more. At fust I thought o' firin', but _think twice_ is safest ollers; There aint, thinks I, not one on 'em but's wuth his twenty dollars, Or would be, ef I hed 'em back into a Christian land,-- How temptin' all on 'em would look upon an auction-stand! (Not but wut _I_ hate Slavery, in th' abstract, stem to starn,-- I leave it ware our fathers did, a privit State consarn.) 160 Soon 'z they see me, they yelled an' run, but Pomp wuz out ahoein' A leetle patch o' corn he hed, or else there aint no knowin' He wouldn't ha' took a pop at me; but I hed gut the start, An' wen he looked, I vow he groaned ez though he'd broke his heart; He done it like a wite man, tu, ez nat'ral ez a pictur, The imp'dunt, pis'nous hypocrite! wus 'an a boy constrictur. 'You can't gum _me_, I tell ye now, an' so you needn't try, I 'xpect my eye-teeth every mail, so jest shet up,' sez I. 'Don't go to actin' ugly now, or else I'll let her strip, You'd best draw kindly, seein' 'z how I've gut ye on the hip; 170 Besides, you darned ole fool, it aint no gret of a disaster To be benev'lently druv back to a contented master, Ware you hed Christian priv'ledges you don't seem quite aware on, Or you'd ha' never run away from bein' well took care on; Ez fer kin' treatment, wy, he wuz so fond on ye, he said, He'd give a fifty spot right out, to git ye, 'live or dead; Wite folks aint sot by half ez much; 'member I run away, Wen I wuz bound to Cap'n Jakes, to Mattysqumscot Bay; Don' know him, likely? Spose not; wal, the mean old codger went An' offered--wut reward, think? Wal, it worn't no _less_ 'n a cent.' 180 Wal, I jest gut 'em into line, an' druv 'em on afore me; The pis'nous brutes, I'd no idee o' the ill-will they bore me; We walked till som'ers about noon, an' then it grew so hot I thought it best to camp awile, so I chose out a spot Jest under a magnoly tree, an' there right down I sot; Then I unstrapped my wooden leg, coz it begun to chafe, An' laid it down 'longside o' me, supposin' all wuz safe; I made my darkies all set down around me in a ring, An' sot an' kin' o' ciphered up how much the lot would bring; But, wile I drinked the peaceful cup of a pure heart an' min' 190 (Mixed with some wiskey, now an' then), Pomp he snaked up behin', An' creepin' grad'lly close tu, ez quiet ez a mink, Jest grabbed my leg, an' then pulled foot, quicker 'an you could wink, An', come to look, they each on' em hed gut behin' a tree, An' Pomp poked out the leg a piece, jest so ez I could see, An' yelled to me to throw away my pistils an' my gun, Or else thet they'd cair off the leg, an' fairly cut an' run. I vow I didn't b'lieve there wuz a decent alligatur Thet hed a heart so destitoot o' common human natur; However, ez there worn't no help, I finally give in 200 An' heft my arms away to git my leg safe back agin. Pomp gethered all the weapins up, an' then he come an' grinned, He showed his ivory some, I guess, an' sez, 'You're fairly pinned; Jest buckle on your leg agin, an' git right up an' come, 'T wun't du fer fammerly men like me to be so long frum hum.' At fust I put my foot right down an' swore I wouldn't budge. 'Jest ez you choose,' sez he, quite cool, 'either be shot or trudge.' So this black-hearted monster took an' act'lly druv me back Along the very feetmarks o' my happy mornin' track, An' kep' me pris'ner 'bout six months, an' worked me, tu, like sin, 210 Till I hed gut his corn an' his Carliny taters in; He made me larn him readin', tu (although the crittur saw How much it hut my morril sense to act agin the law), So'st he could read a Bible he'd gut; an' axed ef I could pint The North Star out; but there I put his nose some out o' jint, Fer I weeled roun' about sou'west, an', lookin' up a bit, Picked out a middlin' shiny one an' tole him thet wuz it. Fin'lly he took me to the door, an' givin' me a kick, Sez, 'Ef you know wut's best fer ye, be off, now, double-quick; The winter-time's a comin' on, an' though I gut ye cheap, 220 You're so darned lazy, I don't think you're hardly woth your keep; Besides, the childrin's growin' up, an' you aint jest the model I'd like to hev 'em immertate, an' so you'd better toddle!' Now is there anythin' on airth'll ever prove to me Thet renegader slaves like him air fit fer bein' free? D' you think they'll suck me in to jine the Buff'lo chaps, an' them Rank infidels thet go agin the Scriptur'l cus o' Shem? Not by a jugfull! sooner 'n thet, I'd go thru fire an' water; Wen I hev once made up my mind, a meet'nhus aint sotter; 229 No, not though all the crows thet flies to pick my bones wuz cawin',-- I guess we're in a Christian land,-- Yourn, BIRDOFREDUM SAWIN. [Here, patient reader, we take leave of each other, I trust with some mutual satisfaction. I say _patient_, for I love not that kind which skims dippingly over the surface of the page, as swallows over a pool before rain. By such no pearls shall be gathered. But if no pearls there be (as, indeed the world is not without example of books wherefrom the longest-winded diver shall bring up no more than his proper handful of mud), yet let us hope that an oyster or two may reward adequate perseverance. If neither pearls nor oysters, yet is patience itself a gem worth diving deeply for. It may seem to some that too much space has been usurped by my own private lucubrations, and some may be fain to bring against me that old jest of him who preached all his hearers out of the meeting-house save only the sexton, who, remaining for yet a little space, from a sense of official duty, at last gave out also, and, presenting the keys, humbly requested our preacher to lock the doors, when he should have wholly relieved himself of his testimony. I confess to a satisfaction in the self act of preaching, nor do I esteem a discourse to be wholly thrown away even upon a sleeping or unintelligent auditory. I cannot easily believe that the Gospel of Saint John, which Jacques Cartier ordered to be read in the Latin tongue to the Canadian savages, upon his first meeting with them, fell altogether upon stony ground. For the earnestness of the preacher is a sermon appreciable by dullest intellects and most alien ears. In this wise did Episcopius convert many to his opinions, who yet understood not the language in which he discoursed. The chief thing is that the messenger believe that he has an authentic message to deliver. For counterfeit messengers that mode of treatment which Father John de Plano Carpini relates to have prevailed among the Tartars would seem effectual, and, perhaps, deserved enough. For my own part, I may lay claim to so much of the spirit of martyrdom as would have led me to go into banishment with those clergymen whom Alphonso the Sixth of Portugal drave out of his kingdom for refusing to shorten their pulpit eloquence. It is possible, that, I having been invited into my brother Biglow's desk, I may have been too little scrupulous in using it for the venting of my own peculiar doctrines to a congregation drawn together in the expectation and with the desire of hearing him. I am not wholly unconscious of a peculiarity of mental organization which impels me, like the railroad-engine with its train of cars, to run backward for a short distance in order to obtain a fairer start. I may compare myself to one fishing from the rocks when the sea runs high, who, misinterpreting the suction of the undertow for the biting of some larger fish, jerks suddenly, and finds that he has _caught bottom_, hauling in upon the end of his line a trail of various _algæ_, among which, nevertheless, the naturalist may haply find somewhat to repay the disappointment of the angler. Yet have I conscientiously endeavored to adapt myself to the impatient temper of the age, daily degenerating more and more from the high standard of our pristine New England. To the catalogue of lost arts I would mournfully add also that of listening to two-hour sermons. Surely we have been abridged into a race of pygmies. For, truly, in those of the old discourses yet subsisting to us in print, the endless spinal column of divisions and subdivisions can be likened to nothing so exactly as to the vertebræ of the saurians, whence the theorist may conjecture a race of Anakim proportionate to the withstanding of these other monsters. I say Anakim rather than Nephelim, because there seem reasons for supposing that the race of those whose heads (though no giants) are constantly enveloped in clouds (which that name imports) will never become extinct. The attempt to vanquish the innumerable _heads_ of one of those aforementioned discourses may supply us with a plausible interpretation of the second labor of Hercules, and his successful experiment with fire affords us a useful precedent. But while I lament the degeneracy of the age in this regard, I cannot refuse to succumb to its influence. Looking out through my study-window, I see Mr. Biglow at a distance busy in gathering his Baldwins, of which, to judge by the number of barrels lying about under the trees, his crop is more abundant than my own,--by which sight I am admonished to turn to those orchards of the mind wherein my labors may be more prospered, and apply myself diligently to the preparation of my next Sabbath's discourse.--H.W.] MELIBOEUS-HIPPONAX * * * * * THE Biglow Papers SECOND SERIES [Greek: 'Estin ar o idiotismos eniote tou kosmou parapolu emphanistkoteron.'] LONGIXUS. 'J'aimerois mieulx que mon fils apprinst aux tavernes à parler, qu'aux escholes de la parlerie.' MONTAIGNE. "Unser Sprach ist auch ein Sprach und fan so wohl ein Sad nennen als die Lateiner saccus." FISCHART. 'Vim rebus aliquando ipsa verborum humilitas affert.' QUINTILIANUS. 'O ma lengo, Plantarèy une estèlo à toun froun encrumit!' JASMIN. * * * * * 'Multos enim, quibus loquendi ratio non desit, invenias, quos curiose potius loqui dixeris quam Latine; quomodo et illa Attica anus Theophrastum, hominem alioqui disertissimum, annotata unius affectatione verbi, hospitem dixit, nec alio se id deprehendisse interrogata respondit, quam quod nimium Attice loqueretur.'--QUINTILIANUS. 'Et Anglice sermonicari solebat populo, sed secundum linguam Norfolchie ubi natus et nutritus erat.'--CRONICA JOCELINI. 'La politique est une pierre attachée an cou de la littérature, et qui en moins de six mois la submerge.... Cette politique va offenser mortellement une moitié des lecteurs, et ennuyer l'autre qui l'a trouvée bien autrement spéciale et énergique dans le journal du matin.'--HENRI BEYLE. [When the book appeared it bore a dedication to E.R. Hoar, and was introduced by an essay of the Yankee form of English speech. This Introduction is so distinctly an essay that it has been thought best to print it as an appendix to this volume, rather than allow it to break in upon the pages of verse. There is, however, one passage in it which may be repeated here, since it bears directly upon the poem which serves as a sort of prelude to the series.] 'The only attempt I had ever made at anything like a pastoral (if that may be called an attempt which was the result almost of pure accident) was in _The Courtin'_. While the introduction to the First Series was going through the press, I received word from the printer that there was a blank page left which must be filled. I sat down at once and improvised another fictitious "notice of the press," in which, because verse would fill up space more cheaply than prose, I inserted an extract from a supposed ballad of Mr. Biglow. I kept no copy of it, and the printer, as directed, cut it off when the gap was filled. Presently I began to receive letters asking for the rest of it, sometimes for the _balance_ of it. I had none, but to answer such demands, I patched a conclusion upon it in a later edition. Those who had only the first continued to importune me. Afterward, being asked to write it out as an autograph for the Baltimore Sanitary Commission Fair, I added other verses, into some of which I infused a little more sentiment in a homely way, and after a fashion completed it by sketching in the characters and making a connected story. Most likely I have spoiled it, but I shall put it at the end of this Introduction, to answer once for all those kindly importunings.' THE COURTIN' God makes sech nights, all white an' still Fur 'z you can look or listen, Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill, All silence an' all glisten. Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown An' peeked in thru' the winder, An' there sot Huldy all alone, 'ith no one nigh to hender. A fireplace filled the room's one side With half a cord o' wood in-- There warn't no stoves (tell comfort died) To bake ye to a puddin'. The wa'nut logs shot sparkles out Towards the pootiest, bless her, An' leetle flames danced all about The chiny on the dresser. Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung, An' in amongst 'em rusted The ole queen's-arm thet gran'ther Young Fetched back f'om Concord busted. The very room, coz she was in, Seemed warm f'om floor to ceilin', An' she looked full ez rosy agin Ez the apples she was peelin'. 'Twas kin' o' kingdom come to look On sech a blessed cretur, A dogrose blushin' to a brook Ain't modester nor sweeter. He was six foot o' man, A 1, Clear grit an' human natur', None couldn't quicker pitch a ton Nor dror a furrer straighter. He'd sparked it with full twenty gals, Hed squired 'em, danced 'em, druv 'em, Fust this one, an' then thet, by spells-- All is, he couldn't love 'em. But long o' her his veins 'ould run All crinkly like curled maple, The side she breshed felt full o' sun Ez a south slope in Ap'il. She thought no v'ice hed sech a swing Ez hisn in the choir; My! when he made Ole Hunderd ring, She _knowed_ the Lord was nigher. An' she'd blush scarlit, right in prayer, When her new meetin'-bunnet Felt somehow thru' its crown a pair O' blue eyes sot upon it. Thet night, I tell ye, she looked _some!_ She seemed to've gut a new soul, For she felt sartin-sure he'd come, Down to her very shoe-sole. She heered a foot, an' knowed it tu, A-raspin' on the scraper,-- All ways to once, her feelins flew Like sparks in burnt-up paper. He kin' o' l'itered on the mat, Some doubtfle o' the sekle, His heart kep' goin' pity-pat, But hern went pity Zekle. An' yit she gin her cheer a jerk Ez though she wished him furder, An' on her apples kep' to work, Parin' away like murder. 'You want to see my Pa, I s'pose?' 'Wal ... no ... I come dasignin'-- 'To see my Ma? She's sprinklin' clo'es Agin to-morrer's i'nin'.' To say why gals acts so or so, Or don't, 'ould be persumin'; Mebby to mean _yes_ an' say _no_ Comes nateral to women. He stood a spell on one foot fust, Then stood a spell on t'other, An' on which one he felt the wust He couldn't ha' told ye nuther. Says he, 'I'd better call agin:' Says she, 'Think likely, Mister:' Thet last word pricked him like a pin, An' ... Wal, he up an' kist her. When Ma bimeby upon 'em slips, Huldy sot pale ez ashes, All kin' o' smily roun' the lips An' teary roun' the lashes. For she was jes' the quiet kind Whose naturs never vary, Like streams that keep a summer mind Snowhid in Jenooary. The blood clost roun' her heart felt glued Too tight for all expressin', Tell mother see how metters stood, An' gin 'em both her blessin'. Then her red come back like the tide Down to the Bay o' Fundy, An' all I know is they was cried In meetin' come nex' Sunday. THE BIGLOW PAPERS SECOND SERIES No. I BIRDOFREDUM SAWIN, ESQ., TO MR. HOSEA BIGLOW LETTER FROM THE REVEREND HOMER WILBUR, M.A., ENCLOSING THE EPISTLE AFORESAID JAALAM, 15th Nov., 1861. * * * * * It is not from any idle wish to obtrude my humble person with undue prominence upon the publick view that I resume my pen upon the present occasion. _Juniores ad labores_. But having been a main instrument in rescuing the talent of my young parishioner from being buried in the ground, by giving it such warrant with the world as could be derived from a name already widely known by several printed discourses (all of which I may be permitted without immodesty to state have been deemed worthy of preservation in the Library of Harvard College by my esteemed friend Mr. Sibley), it seemed becoming that I should not only testify to the genuineness of the following production, but call attention to it, the more as Mr. Biglow had so long been silent as to be in danger of absolute oblivion. I insinuate no claim to any share in the authorship (_vix ea nostra voco_) of the works already published by Mr. Biglow, but merely take to myself the credit of having fulfilled toward them the office of taster (_experto crede_), who, having first tried, could afterward bear witness (_credenzen_ it was aptly named by the Germans), an office always arduous, and sometimes even dangerous, as in the case of those devoted persons who venture their lives in the deglutition of patent medicines (_dolus latet in generalibus_, there is deceit in the most of them) and thereafter are wonderfully preserved long enough to append their signatures to testimonials in the diurnal and hebdomadal prints. I say not this as covertly glancing at the authors of certain manuscripts which have been submitted to my literary judgment (though an epick in twenty-four books on the 'Taking of Jericho' might, save for the prudent forethought of Mrs. Wilbur in secreting the same just as I had arrived beneath the walls and was beginning a catalogue of the various horns and their blowers, too ambitiously emulous in longanimity of Homer's list of ships, might, I say, have rendered frustrate any hope I could entertain _vacare Musis_ for the small remainder of my days), but only the further to secure myself against any imputation of unseemly forthputting. I will barely subjoin, in this connexion, that, whereas Job was left to desire, in the soreness of his heart, that his adversary had written a book, as perchance misanthropically wishing to indite a review thereof, yet was not Satan allowed so far to tempt him as to send Bildad, Eliphaz, and Zophar each with an unprinted work in his wallet to be submitted to his censure. But of this enough. Were I in need of other excuse, I might add that I write by the express desire of Mr. Biglow himself, whose entire winter leisure is occupied, as he assures me, in answering demands for autographs, a labor exacting enough in itself, and egregiously so to him, who, being no ready penman, cannot sign so much as his name without strange contortions of the face (his nose, even, being essential to complete success) and painfully suppressed Saint-Vitus-dance of every muscle in his body. This, with his having been put in the Commission of the Peace by our excellent Governor (_O, si sic omnes!_) immediately on his accession to office, keeps him continually employed. _Haud inexpertus loquor_, having for many years written myself J.P., and being not seldom applied to for specimens of my chirography, a request to which I have sometimes over weakly assented, believing as I do that nothing written of set purpose can properly be called an autograph, but only those unpremeditated sallies and lively runnings which betray the fireside Man instead of the hunted Notoriety doubling on his pursuers. But it is time that I should bethink me of St. Austin's prayer, _libera me a meipso_, if I would arrive at the matter in hand. Moreover, I had yet another reason for taking up the pen myself. I am informed that 'The Atlantic Monthly' is mainly indebted for its success to the contributions and editorial supervision of Dr. Holmes, whose excellent 'Annals of America' occupy an honored place upon my shelves. The journal itself I have never seen; but if this be so, it might seem that the recommendation of a brother-clergyman (though _par magis quam similis_) should carry a greater weight. I suppose that you have a department for historical lucubrations, and should be glad, if deemed desirable, to forward for publication my 'Collections for the Antiquities of Jaalam,' and my (now happily complete) pedigree of the Wilbur family from its _fons et origo_, the Wild Boar of Ardennes. Withdrawn from the active duties of my profession by the settlement of a colleague-pastor, the Reverend Jeduthun Hitchcock, formerly of Brutus Four-Corners, I might find time for further contributions to general literature on similar topicks. I have made large advances towards a completer genealogy of Mrs. Wilbur's family, the Pilcoxes, not, if I know myself, from any idle vanity, but with the sole desire of rendering myself useful in my day and generation. _Nulla dies sine lineâ_. I inclose a meteorological register, a list of the births, deaths, and marriages, and a few _memorabilia_ of longevity in Jaalam East Parish for the last half-century. Though spared to the unusual period of more than eighty years, I find no diminution of my faculties or abatement of my natural vigor, except a scarcely sensible decay of memory and a necessity of recurring to younger eyesight or spectacles for the finer print in Cruden. It would gratify me to make some further provision for declining years from the emoluments of my literary labors. I had intended to effect an insurance on my life, but was deterred therefrom by a circular from one of the offices, in which the sudden death of so large a proportion of the insured was set forth as an inducement, that it seemed to me little less than a tempting of Providence. _Neque in summâ inopiâ levis esse senectus potest, ne sapienti quidem_. Thus far concerning Mr. Biglow; and so much seemed needful (_brevis esse laboro_) by way of preliminary, after a silence of fourteen years. He greatly fears lest he may in this essay have fallen below himself, well knowing that, if exercise be dangerous on a full stomach, no less so is writing on a full reputation. Beset as he has been on all sides, he could not refrain, and would only imprecate patience till he shall again have 'got the hang' (as he calls it) of an accomplishment long disused. The letter of Mr. Sawin was received some time in last June, and others have followed which will in due season be submitted to the publick. How largely his statements are to be depended on, I more than merely dubitate. He was always distinguished for a tendency to exaggeration,--it might almost be qualified by a stronger term. _Fortiter mentire, aliquid hæret_ seemed to be his favorite rule of rhetoric. That he is actually where he says he is the postmark would seem to confirm; that he was received with the publick demonstrations he describes would appear consonant with what we know of the habits of those regions; but further than this I venture not to decide. I have sometimes suspected a vein of humor in him which leads him to speak by contraries; but since, in the unrestrained intercourse of private life, I have never observed in him any striking powers of invention, I am the more willing to put a certain qualified faith in the incidents and the details of life and manners which give to his narratives some portion of the interest and entertainment which characterizes a Century Sermon. It may be expected of me that I should say something to justify myself with the world for a seeming inconsistency with my well-known principles in allowing my youngest son to raise a company for the war, a fact known to all through the medium of the publick prints. I did reason with the young man, but _expellas naturam furcâ tamen usque recurrit_. Having myself been a chaplain in 1812, I could the less wonder that a man of war had sprung from my loins. It was, indeed, grievous to send my Benjamin, the child of my old age; but after the discomfiture of Manassas, I with my own hands did buckle on his armor, trusting in the great Comforter and Commander for strength according to my need. For truly the memory of a brave son dead in his shroud were a greater staff of my declining years than a living coward (if those may be said to have lived who carry all of themselves into the grave with them), though his days might be long in the land, and he should get much goods. It is not till our earthen vessels are broken that we find and truly possess the treasure that was laid up in them. _Migravi in animam meam_, I have sought refuge in my own soul; nor would I be shamed by the heathen comedian with his _Neqwam illud verbum, bene vult, nisi bene facit_. During our dark days, I read constantly in the inspired book of Job, which I believe to contain more food to maintain the fibre of the soul for right living and high thinking than all pagan literature together, though I would by no means vilipend the study of the classicks. There I read that Job said in his despair, even as the fool saith in his heart there is no God,--'The tabernacles of robbers prosper, and they that provoke God are secure.' (Job xii. 6.) But I sought farther till I found this Scripture also, which I would have those perpend who have striven to turn our Israel aside to the worship of strange gods.--'If I did despise the cause of my manservant or of my maid-servant, when they contended with me, what then shall I do when God riseth up? and when he visiteth, what shall I answer him?' (Job xxxi. 13, 14.) On this text I preached a discourse on the last day of Fasting and Humiliation with general acceptance, though there were not wanting one or two Laodiceans who said that I should have waited till the President announced his policy. But let us hope and pray, remembering this of Saint Gregory, _Vult Deus rogari, vult cogi, vult quâdam importunitate vinci_. We had our first fall of snow on Friday last. Frosts have been unusually backward this fall. A singular circumstance occurred in this town on the 20th October, in the family of Deacon Pelatiah Tinkham. On the previous evening, a few moments before family prayers, * * * * * [The editors of the 'Atlantic' find it necessary here to cut short the letter of their valued correspondent, which seemed calculated rather on the rates of longevity in Jaalam than for less favored localities. They have every encouragement to hope that he will write again.] With esteem and respect, Your obedient servant, Homer Wilbur, A.M. It's some consid'ble of a spell sence I hain't writ no letters, An' ther' 's gret changes hez took place in all polit'cle metters: Some canderdates air dead an' gone, an' some hez ben defeated, Which 'mounts to pooty much the same; fer it's ben proved repeated A betch o' bread thet hain't riz once ain't goin' to rise agin, An' it's jest money throwed away to put the emptins in: But thet's wut folks wun't never larn; they dunno how to go, Arter you want their room, no more 'n a bullet-headed bean; Ther' 's ollers chaps a-hangin' roun' thet can't see peatime's past, Mis'ble as roosters in a rain, heads down an' tails half-mast: 10 It ain't disgraceful bein' beat, when a holl nation doos it, But Chance is like an amberill,--it don't take twice to lose it. I spose you're kin' o' cur'ous, now, to know why I hain't writ. Wal, I've ben where a litt'ry taste don't somehow seem to git Th' encouragement a feller'd think, thet's used to public schools, An' where sech things ez paper 'n' ink air clean agin the rules: A kind o' vicyvarsy house, built dreffle strong an' stout, So 's 't honest people can't get in, ner t'other sort git out. An' with the winders so contrived, you'd prob'ly like the view Better alookin' in than out, though it seems sing'lar, tu; 20 But then the landlord sets by ye, can't bear ye out o' sight, And locks ye up ez reg'lar ez an outside door at night. This world is awfle contrary: the rope may stretch your neck Thet mebby kep' another chap frum washin' off a wreck; An' you may see the taters grow in one poor feller's patch, So small no self-respectin' hen thet vallied time 'ould scratch, So small the rot can't find 'em out, an' then agin, nex' door, Ez big ez wut hogs dream on when they're 'most too fat to snore. But groutin' ain't no kin' o' use; an' ef the fust throw fails, Why, up an' try agin, thet's all,--the coppers ain't all tails, 30 Though I _hev_ seen 'em when I thought they hedn't no more head Than 'd sarve a nussin' Brigadier thet gits some Ink to shed. When I writ last, I'd ben turned loose by thet blamed nigger, Pomp, Ferlorner than a musquash, ef you'd took an' dreened his swamp; But I ain't o' the meechin' kind, thet sets an' thinks fer weeks The bottom's out o' th' univarse coz their own gillpot leaks. I hed to cross bayous an' criks, (wal, it did beat all natur',) Upon a kin' o' corderoy, fust log, then alligator; Luck'ly, the critters warn't sharp-sot; I guess 'twuz overruled They 'd done their mornin's marketin' an' gut their hunger cooled; 40 Fer missionaries to the Creeks an' runaways are viewed By them an' folks ez sent express to be their reg'lar food; Wutever 'twuz, they laid an' snoozed ez peacefully ez sinners, Meek ez disgestin' deacons be at ordination dinners; Ef any on 'em turned an' snapped, I let 'em kin' o' taste My live-oak leg, an' so, ye see, ther' warn't no gret o' waste; Fer they found out in quicker time than ef they'd ben to college 'Twarn't heartier food than though 'twuz made out o' the tree o' knowledge. But I tell _you_ my other leg hed larned wut pizon-nettle meant, An' var'ous other usefle things, afore I reached a settlement, 50 An' all o' me thet wuzn't sore an' sendin' prickles thru me Wuz jest the leg I parted with in lickin' Montezumy: A useful limb it's ben to me, an' more of a support Than wut the other hez ben,--coz I dror my pension for 't. Wal, I gut in at last where folks wuz civerlized an' white, Ez I diskivered to my cost afore 'twarn't hardly night; Fer 'z I wuz settin' in the bar a-takin' sunthin' hot, An' feelin' like a man agin, all over in one spot, A feller thet sot oppersite, arter a squint at me, Lep' up an' drawed his peacemaker, an', 'Dash it, Sir,' suz he, 60 'I'm doubledashed ef you ain't him thet stole my yaller chettle, (You're all the stranger thet's around,) so now you've gut to settle; It ain't no use to argerfy ner try to cut up frisky, I know ye ez I know the smell of ole chain-lightnin' whiskey; We're lor-abidin' folks down here, we'll fix ye so's 't a bar Wouldn' tech ye with a ten-foot pole; (Jedge, you jest warm the tar;) You'll think you'd better ha' gut among a tribe o' Mongrel Tartars, 'fore we've done showin' how we raise our Southun prize tar-martyrs; A moultin' fallen cherubim, ef he should see ye, 'd snicker, Thinkin' he warn't a suckemstance. Come, genlemun, le' 's liquor; 70 An', Gin'ral, when you've mixed the drinks an' chalked 'em up, tote roun' An' see ef ther' 's a feather-bed (thet's borryable) in town. We'll try ye fair, ole Grafted-Leg, an' ef the tar wun't stick, Th' ain't not a juror here but wut'll 'quit ye double-quick,' To cut it short, I wun't say sweet, they gi' me a good dip, (They ain't _perfessin'_ Bahptists here,) then give the bed a rip,-- The jury'd sot, an' quicker 'n a flash they hetched me out, a livin' Extemp'ry mammoth turkey-chick fer a Fejee Thanksgivin'. Thet I felt some stuck up is wut it's nat'ral to suppose, When poppylar enthusiasm hed funnished me sech clo'es; 80 (Ner 'tain't without edvantiges, this kin' o' suit, ye see, It's water-proof, an' water's wut I like kep' out o' me;) But nut content with thet, they took a kerridge from the fence An' rid me roun' to see the place, entirely free 'f expense, With forty-'leven new kines o' sarse without no charge acquainted me, Gi' me three cheers, an' vowed thet I wuz all their fahncy painted me; They treated me to all their eggs; (they keep 'em I should think, Fer sech ovations, pooty long, for they wuz mos' distinc'); They starred me thick 'z the Milky-Way with indiscrim'nit cherity, Fer wut we call reception eggs air sunthin' of a rerity; 90 Green ones is plentifle anough, skurce wuth a nigger's getherin', But your dead-ripe ones ranges high fer treatin' Nothun bretherin; A spotteder, ring-streakeder child the' warn't in Uncle Sam's Holl farm,--a cross of striped pig an' one o' Jacob's lambs; 'Twuz Dannil in the lions' den, new an' enlarged edition, An' everythin' fust-rate o' 'ts kind; the' warn't no impersition. People's impulsiver down here than wut our folks to home be, An' kin' o' go it 'ith a resh in raisin' Hail Columby: Thet's _so:_ an' they swarmed out like bees, for your real Southun men's Time isn't o' much more account than an ole settin' hen's; 100 (They jest work semioccashnally, or else don't work at all, An' so their time an' 'tention both air at saci'ty's call.) Talk about hospatality! wut Nothun town d' ye know Would take a totle stranger up an' treat him gratis so? You'd better b'lleve ther' 's nothin' like this spendin' days an' nights Along 'ith a dependent race fer civerlizin' whites. But this wuz all prelim'nary; it's so Gran' Jurors here Fin' a true bill, a hendier way than ourn, an' nut so dear; So arter this they sentenced me, to make all tight 'n' snug, Afore a reg'lar court o' law, to ten years in the Jug. 110 I didn't make no gret defence: you don't feel much like speakin', When, ef you let your clamshells gape, a quart o' tar will leak in: I _hev_ hearn tell o' winged words, but pint o' fact it tethers The spoutin' gift to hev your words _tu_ thick sot on with feathers, An' Choate ner Webster wouldn't ha' made an A 1 kin' o' speech Astride a Southun chestnut horse sharper 'n a baby's screech. Two year ago they ketched the thief, 'n' seein' I wuz innercent, They jest uncorked an' le' me run, an' in my stid the sinner sent To see how _he_ liked pork 'n' pone flavored with wa'nut saplin', An' nary social priv'ledge but a one-hoss, starn-wheel chaplin. 120 When I come out, the folks behaved mos' gen'manly an' harnsome; They 'lowed it wouldn't be more 'n right, ef I should cuss 'n' darn some: The Cunnle he apolergized; suz he, 'I'll du wut's right, I'll give ye settisfection now by shootin' ye at sight, An' give the nigger (when he's caught), to pay him fer his trickin' In gittin' the wrong man took up, a most H fired lickin',-- It's jest the way with all on 'em, the inconsistent critters, They're 'most enough to make a man blaspheme his mornin' bitters; I'll be your frien' thru thick an' thin an' in all kines o' weathers, An' all you'll hev to pay fer's jest the waste o' tar an' feathers: 130 A lady owned the bed, ye see, a widder, tu, Miss Shennon; It wuz her mite; we would ha' took another, ef ther' 'd ben one: We don't make _no_ charge for the ride an' all the other fixins. Le' 's liquor; Gin'ral, you can chalk our friend for all the mixins.' A meetin' then wuz called, where they 'RESOLVED, Thet we respec' B.S. Esquire for quallerties o' heart an' intellec' Peculiar to Columby's sile, an' not to no one else's, Thet makes European tyrans scringe in all their gilded pel'ces, An' doos gret honor to our race an' Southun institootions:' (I give ye jest the substance o' the leadin' resolootions:) 140 'RESOLVED, Thet we revere In him a soger 'thout a flor, A martyr to the princerples o' libbaty an' lor: RESOLVED, Thet other nations all, ef sot 'longside o' us, For vartoo, larnin', chivverlry, ain't noways wuth a cuss.' They got up a subscription, tu, but no gret come o' _thet;_ I 'xpect in cairin' of it roun' they took a leaky hat; Though Southun genelmun ain't slow at puttin' down their name, (When they can write,) fer in the eend it comes to jes' the same, Because, ye see, 't 's the fashion here to sign an' not to think A critter'd be so sordid ez to ax 'em for the chink: 150 I didn't call but jest on one, an' _he_ drawed tooth-pick on me, An' reckoned he warn't goin' to stan' no sech dog-gauned econ'my: So nothin' more wuz realized, 'ceptin' the good-will shown, Than ef 't had ben from fust to last a regular Cotton Loan. It's a good way, though, come to think, coz ye enjy the sense O' lendin' lib'rally to the Lord, an' nary red o' 'xpense: Sence then I've gut my name up for a gin'rous-hearted man By jes' subscribin' right an' left on this high-minded plan; I've gin away my thousans so to every Southun sort O' missions, colleges, an' sech, ner ain't no poorer for 't. 160 I warn't so bad off, arter all; I needn't hardly mention That Guv'ment owed me quite a pile for my arrears o' pension,-- I mean the poor, weak thing we _hed:_ we run a new one now, Thet strings a feller with a claim up ta the nighes' bough, An' _prectises_ the rights o' man, purtects down-trodden debtors, Ner wun't hev creditors about ascrougin' o' their betters: Jeff's gut the last idees ther' is, poscrip', fourteenth edition, He knows it takes some enterprise to run an oppersition; Ourn's the fust thru-by-daylight train, with all ou'doors for deepot; Yourn goes so slow you'd think 'twuz drawed by a las' cent'ry teapot;-- 170 Wal, I gut all on 't paid in gold afore our State seceded, An' done wal, for Confed'rit bonds warn't jest the cheese I needed: Nut but wut they're ez _good_ ez gold, but then it's hard a-breakin' on 'em, An' ignorant folks is ollers sot an' wun't git used to takin' on 'em; They're wuth ez much ez wut they wuz afore ole Mem'nger signed 'em, An' go off middlin' wal for drinks, when ther' 's a knife behind 'em; We _du_ miss silver, jes' fer thet an' ridin' in a bus, Now we've shook off the desputs thet wuz suckin' at our pus; An' it's _because_ the South's so rich; 'twuz nat'ral to expec' Supplies o' change wuz jes' the things we shouldn't recollec'; 180 We'd ough' to ha' thought aforehan', though, o' thet good rule o' Crockett's, For 't 's tiresome cairin' cotton-bales an' niggers in your pockets, Ner 'tain't quite hendy to pass off one o' your six-foot Guineas An' git your halves an' quarters back in gals an' pickaninnies: Wal, 'tain't quite all a feller'd ax, but then ther's this to say, It's on'y jest among ourselves thet we expec' to pay; Our system would ha' caird us thru in any Bible cent'ry, 'fore this onscripterl plan come up o' books by double entry; We go the patriarkle here out o' all sight an' hearin', For Jacob warn't a suckemstance to Jeff at financierin'; 190 _He_ never'd thought o' borryin' from Esau like all nater An' then cornfiscatin' all debts to sech a small pertater; There's p'litickle econ'my, now, combined 'ith morril beauty Thet saycrifices privit eends (your in'my's, tu) to dooty! Wy, Jeff 'd ha' gin him five an' won his eye-teeth 'fore he knowed it, An', stid o' wastin' pottage, he'd ha' eat it up an' owed it. But I wuz goin' on to say how I come here to dwall;-- 'Nough said, thet, arter lookin' roun', I liked the place so wal, Where niggers doos a double good, with us atop to stiddy 'em, By bein' proofs o' prophecy an' suckleatin' medium, 200 Where a man's sunthin' coz he's white, an' whiskey's cheap ez fleas, An' the financial pollercy jes' sooted my idees, Thet I friz down right where I wuz, merried the Widder Shennon, (Her thirds wuz part in cotton-land, part in the curse o' Canaan,) An' here I be ez lively ez a chipmunk on a wall, With nothin' to feel riled about much later 'n Eddam's fall. Ez fur ez human foresight goes, we made an even trade: She gut an overseer, an' I a fem'ly ready-made, The youngest on 'em 's 'mos' growed up, rugged an' spry ez weazles, So 's 't ther' 's no resk o' doctors' bills fer hoopin'-cough an' measles. Our farm's at Turkey-Buzzard Roost, Little Big Boosy River, 211 Wal located in all respex,--fer 'tain't the chills 'n' fever Thet makes my writin' seem to squirm; a Southuner'd allow I'd Some call to shake, for I've jest hed to meller a new cowhide. Miss S. is all 'f a lady; th' ain't no better on Big Boosy Ner one with more accomplishmunts 'twist here an' Tuscaloosy; She's an F.F., the tallest kind, an' prouder 'n the Gran' Turk, An' never hed a relative thet done a stroke o' work; Hern ain't a scrimpin' fem'ly sech ez _you_ git up Down East, Th' ain't a growed member on 't but owes his thousuns et the least: She _is_ some old; but then agin ther' 's drawbacks in my sheer: 221 Wut's left o' me ain't more 'n enough to make a Brigadier: Wust is, thet she hez tantrums; she's like Seth Moody's gun (Him thet wuz nicknamed from his limp Ole Dot an' Kerry One); He'd left her loaded up a spell, an' hed to git her clear, So he onhitched,--Jeerusalem! the middle o' last year Wuz right nex' door compared to where she kicked the critter tu (Though _jest_ where he brought up wuz wut no human never knew); His brother Asaph picked her up an' tied her to a tree, An' then she kicked an hour 'n' a half afore she'd let it be: 230 Wal, Miss S. _doos_ hev cuttins-up an' pourins-out o' vials, But then she hez her widder's thirds, an' all on us hez trials. My objec', though, in writin' now warn't to allude to sech, But to another suckemstance more dellykit to tech,-- I want thet you should grad'lly break my merriage to Jerushy, An' there's a heap of argymunts thet's emple to indooce ye: Fust place, State's Prison,--wal, it's true it warn't fer crime, o' course, But then it's jest the same fer her in gittin' a disvorce; Nex' place, my State's secedin' out hez leg'lly lef' me free To merry any one I please, pervidin' it's a she; 240 Fin'lly, I never wun't come back, she needn't hev no fear on 't, But then it's wal to fix things right fer fear Miss S. should hear on 't; Lastly, I've gut religion South, an' Rushy she's a pagan Thet sets by th' graven imiges o' the gret Nothun Dagon; (Now I hain't seen one in six munts, for, sence our Treashry Loan, Though yaller boys is thick anough, eagles hez kind o' flown;) An' ef J wants a stronger pint than them thet I hev stated, Wy, she's an aliun in'my now, an' I've been cornfiscated,-- For sence we've entered on th' estate o' the late nayshnul eagle, She hain't no kin' o' right but jes' wut I allow ez legle: 250 Wut _doos_ Secedin' mean, ef 'tain't thet nat'rul rights hez riz, 'n' Thet wut is mine's my own, but wut's another man's ain't his'n? Besides, I couldn't do no else; Miss S. suz she to me, 'You've sheered my bed,' [thet's when I paid my interduction fee To Southun rites,] 'an' kep' your sheer,' [wal, I allow it sticked So 's 't I wuz most six weeks in jail afore I gut me picked,] 'Ner never paid no demmiges; but thet wun't do no harm, Pervidin' thet you'll ondertake to oversee the farm; (My eldes' boy he's so took up, wut with the Ringtail Rangers An' settin' in the Jestice-Court for welcomin' o' strangers;') 260 [He sot on _me;_] 'an' so, ef you'll jest ondertake the care Upon a mod'rit sellery, we'll up an' call it square; But ef you _can't_ conclude,' suz she, an' give a kin' o' grin, 'Wy, the Gran' Jurymen, I 'xpect, 'll hev to set agin.' That's the way metters stood at fust; now wut wuz I to du, But jes' to make the best on 't an' off coat an' buckle tu? Ther' ain't a livin' man thet finds an income necessarier Than me,--bimeby I'll tell ye how I fin'lly come to merry her. She hed another motive, tu: I mention of it here T' encourage lads thet's growin' up to study 'n' persevere, 270 An' show 'em how much better 't pays to mind their winter-schoolin' Than to go off on benders 'n' sech, an' waste their time in foolin'; Ef 'twarn't for studyin' evenins, why, I never 'd ha' ben here A orn'ment o' saciety, in my approprut spear: She wanted somebody, ye see, o' taste an' cultivation, To talk along o' preachers when they stopt to the plantation; For folks in Dixie th't read an' rite, onless it is by jarks, Is skurce ez wut they wuz among th' origenle patriarchs; To fit a feller f' wut they call the soshle higherarchy, All thet you've gut to know is jes' beyond an evrage darky; 280 Schoolin' 's wut they can't seem to stan', they 're tu consarned high-pressure, An' knowin' t' much might spile a boy for hem' a Secesher. We hain't no settled preachin' here, ner ministeril taxes; The min'ster's only settlement's the carpet-bag he packs his Razor an' soap-brush intu, with his hym-book an' his Bible,-- But they _du_ preach, I swan to man, it's puf'kly indescrib'le! They go it like an Ericsson's ten-hoss-power coleric ingine, An' make Ole Split-Foot winch an' squirm, for all he's used to singein'; Hawkins's whetstone ain't a pinch o' primin' to the innards To hearin' on 'em put free grace t' a lot o' tough old sinhards! 290 But I must eend this letter now: 'fore long I'll send a fresh un; I've lots o' things to write about, perticklerly Seceshun: I'm called off now to mission-work, to let a leetle law in To Cynthy's hide: an' so, till death, Yourn, BIRDOFREDUM SAWIN. No. II MASON AND SLIDELL: A YANKEE IDYLL TO THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY JAALAM, 6th Jan., 1862. Gentlemen,--I was highly gratified by the insertion of a portion of my letter in the last number of your valuable and entertaining Miscellany, though in a type which rendered its substance inaccessible even to the beautiful new spectacles presented to me by a Committee of the Parish on New Year's Day. I trust that I was able to bear your very considerable abridgment of my lucubrations with a spirit becoming a Christian. My third granddaughter, Rebekah, aged fourteen years, and whom I have trained to read slowly and with proper emphasis (a practice too much neglected in our modern systems of education), read aloud to me the excellent essay upon 'Old Age,' the author of which I cannot help suspecting to be a young man who has never yet known what it was to have snow (_canities morosa_) upon his own roof. _Dissolve frigus, large super foco ligna reponens_, is a rule for the young, whose woodpile is yet abundant for such cheerful lenitives. A good life behind him is the best thing to keep an old man's shoulders from shivering at every breath of sorrow or ill-fortune. But methinks it were easier for an old man to feel the disadvantages of youth than the advantages of age. Of these latter I reckon one of the chiefest to be this: that we attach a less inordinate value to our own productions, and, distrusting daily more and more our own wisdom (with the conceit whereof at twenty we wrap ourselves away from knowledge as with a garment), do reconcile ourselves with the wisdom of God. I could have wished, indeed, that room might have been made for the residue of the anecdote relating to Deacon Tinkham, which would not only have gratified a natural curiosity on the part of the publick (as I have reason to know from several letters of inquiry already received), but would also, as I think, have largely increased the circulation of your Magazine in this town. _Nihil humani alienum_, there is a curiosity about the affairs of our neighbors which is not only pardonable, but even commendable. But I shall abide a more fitting season. As touching the following literary effort of Esquire Biglow, much might be profitably said on the topick of Idyllick and Pastoral Poetry, and concerning the proper distinctions to be made between them, from Theocritus, the inventor of the former, to Collins, the latest authour I know of who has emulated the classicks in the latter style. But in the time of a Civil War worthy a Milton to defend and a Lucan to sing, it may be reasonably doubted whether the publick, never too studious of serious instruction, might not consider other objects more deserving of present attention. Concerning the title of Idyll, which Mr. Biglow has adopted at my suggestion, it may not be improper to animadvert, that the name properly signifies a poem somewhat rustick in phrase (for, though the learned are not agreed as to the particular dialect employed by Theocritus, they are universanimous both as to its rusticity and its capacity of rising now and then to the level of more elevated sentiments and expressions), while it is also descriptive of real scenery and manners. Yet it must be admitted that the production now in question (which here and there bears perhaps too plainly the marks of my correcting hand) does partake of the nature of a Pastoral, inasmuch as the interlocutors therein are purely imaginary beings, and the whole is little better than [Greek: kapnou skias onar]. The plot was, as I believe, suggested by the 'Twa Brigs' of Robert Burns, a Scottish poet of the last century, as that found its prototype in the 'Mutual Complaint of Plainstanes and Causey' by Fergusson, though, the metre of this latter be different by a foot in each verse. Perhaps the Two Dogs of Cervantes gave the first hint. I reminded my talented young parishioner and friend that Concord Bridge had long since yielded to the edacious tooth of Time. But he answered me to this effect: that there was no greater mistake of an authour than to suppose the reader had no fancy of his own; that, if once that faculty was to be called into activity, it were _better_ to be in for the whole sheep than the shoulder; and that he knew Concord like a book,--an expression questionable in propriety, since there are few things with which he is not more familiar than with the printed page. In proof of what he affirmed, he showed me some verses which with others he had stricken out as too much delaying the action, but which I communicate in this place because they rightly define 'punkin-seed' (which Mr. Bartlett would have a kind of perch,--a creature to which I have found a rod or pole not to be so easily equivalent in our inland waters as in the books of arithmetic) and because it conveys an eulogium on the worthy son of an excellent father, with whose acquaintance (_eheu, fugaces anni!_) I was formerly honoured. 'But nowadays the Bridge ain't wut they show, So much ez Em'son, Hawthorne, an' Thoreau. I know the village, though; was sent there once A-schoolin', 'cause to home I played the dunce; An' I 've ben sence a visitin' the Jedge, Whose garding whispers with the river's edge, Where I 've sot mornin's lazy as the bream, Whose on'y business is to head upstream, (We call 'em punkin-seed,) or else in chat Along 'th the Jedge, who covers with his hat More wit an' gumption an' shrewd Yankee sense Than there is mosses on an ole stone fence.' Concerning the subject-matter of the verses. I have not the leisure at present to write so fully as I could wish, my time being occupied with the preparation of a discourse for the forthcoming bicentenary celebration of the first settlement of Jaalam East Parish. It may gratify the publick interest to mention the circumstance, that my investigations to this end have enabled me to verify the fact (of much historick importance, and hitherto hotly debated) that Shearjashub Tarbox was the first child of white parentage born in this town, being named in his father's will under date August 7th, or 9th, 1662. It is well known that those who advocate the claims of Mehetable Goings are unable to find any trace of her existence prior to October of that year. As respects the settlement of the Mason and Slidell question, Mr. Biglow has not incorrectly stated the popular sentiment, so far as I can judge by its expression in this locality. For myself, I feel more sorrow than resentment: for I am old enough to have heard those talk of England who still, even after the unhappy estrangement, could not unschool their lips from calling her the Mother-Country. But England has insisted on ripping up old wounds, and has undone the healing work of fifty years; for nations do not reason, they only feel, and the _spretæ injuria formæ_ rankles in their minds as bitterly as in that of a woman. And because this is so, I feel the more satisfaction that our Government has acted (as all Governments should, standing as they do between the people and their passions) as if it had arrived at years of discretion. There are three short and simple words, the hardest of all to pronounce in any language (and I suspect they were no easier before the confusion of tongues), but which no man or nation that cannot utter can claim to have arrived at manhood. Those words are, _I was wrong;_ and I am proud that, while England played the boy, our rulers had strength enough from the People below and wisdom enough from God above to quit themselves like men. The sore points on both sides have been skilfully exasperated by interested and unscrupulous persons, who saw in a war between the two countries the only hope of profitable return for their investment in Confederate stock, whether political or financial. The always supercilious, often insulting, and sometimes even brutal tone of British journals and publick men has certainly not tended to soothe whatever resentment might exist in America. 'Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love, But why did you kick me down stairs?' We have no reason to complain that England, as a necessary consequence of her clubs, has become a great society for the minding of other people's business, and we can smile good-naturedly when she lectures other nations on the sins of arrogance and conceit: but we may justly consider it a breach of the political _convenances_ which are expected to regulate the intercourse of one well-bred government with another, when men holding places in the ministry allow themselves to dictate our domestic policy, to instruct us in our duty, and to stigmatize as unholy a war for the rescue of whatever a high-minded people should hold most vital and most sacred. Was it in good taste, that I may use the mildest term, for Earl Russell to expound our own Constitution to President Lincoln, or to make a new and fallacious application of an old phrase for our benefit, and tell us that the Rebels were fighting for independence and we for empire? As if all wars for independence were by nature just and deserving of sympathy, and all wars for empire ignoble and worthy only of reprobation, or as if these easy phrases in any way characterized this terrible struggle,--terrible not so truly in any superficial sense, as from the essential and deadly enmity of the principles that underlie it. His Lordship's bit of borrowed rhetoric would justify Smith O'Brien, Nana Sahib, and the Maori chieftains, while it would condemn nearly every war in which England has ever been engaged. Was it so very presumptuous in us to think that it would be decorous in English statesmen if they spared time enough to acquire some kind of knowledge, though of the most elementary kind, in regard to this country and the questions at issue here, before they pronounced so off-hand a judgment? Or is political information expected to come Dogberry-fashion in England, like reading and writing, by nature? And now all respectable England is wondering at our irritability, and sees a quite satisfactory explanation of it in our national vanity. _Suave mari magno_, it is pleasant, sitting in the easy-chairs of Downing Street, to sprinkle pepper on the raw wounds of a kindred people struggling for life, and philosophical to find in self-conceit the cause of our instinctive resentment. Surely we were of all nations the least liable to any temptation of vanity at a time when the gravest anxiety and the keenest sorrow were never absent from our hearts. Nor is conceit the exclusive attribute of any one nation. The earliest of English travellers, Sir John Mandeville, took a less provincial view of the matter when he said, 'For fro what partie of the erthe that men duellen, other aboven or beneathen, it semethe alweys to hem that duellen that thei gon more righte than any other folke.' The English have always had their fair share of this amiable quality. We may say of them still, as the authour of the 'Lettres Cabalistiques' said of them more than a century ago, _'Ces derniers disent naturellement qu'il n'y a qu'eux qui soient estimables_'. And, as he also says,_'J'aimerois presque autant tomber entre les mains d'un Inquisiteur que d'un Anglois qui me fait sentir sans cesse combien il s'estime plus que moi, et qui ne daigne me parler que pour injurier ma Nation et pour m'ennuyer du récit des grandes qualités de la sienne_.' Of _this_ Bull we may safely say with Horace, _habet fænum in cornu._ What we felt to be especially insulting was the quiet assumption that the descendants of men who left the Old World for the sake of principle, and who had made the wilderness into a New World patterned after an Idea, could not possibly be susceptible of a generous or lofty sentiment, could have no feeling of nationality deeper than that of a tradesman for his shop. One would have thought, in listening to England, that we were presumptuous in fancying that we were a nation at all, or had any other principle of union than that of booths at a fair, where there is no higher notion of government than the constable, or better image of God than that stamped upon the current coin. It is time for Englishmen to consider whether there was nothing in the spirit of their press and of their leading public men calculated to rouse a just indignation, and to cause a permanent estrangement on the part of any nation capable of self-respect, and sensitively jealous, as ours then was, of foreign interference. Was there nothing in the indecent haste with which belligerent rights were conceded to the Rebels, nothing in the abrupt tone assumed in the Trent case, nothing in the fitting out of Confederate privateers, that might stir the blood of a people already overcharged with doubt, suspicion, and terrible responsibility? The laity in any country do not stop to consider points of law, but they have an instinctive perception of the _animus_ that actuates the policy of a foreign nation; and in our own case they remembered that the British authorities in Canada did not wait till diplomacy could send home to England for her slow official tinder-box to fire the 'Caroline.' Add to this, what every sensible American knew, that the moral support of England was equal to an army of two hundred thousand men to the Rebels, while it insured us another year or two of exhausting war. It was not so much the spite of her words (though the time might have been more tastefully chosen) as the actual power for evil in them that we felt as a deadly wrong. Perhaps the most immediate and efficient cause of mere irritation was, the sudden and unaccountable change of manner on the other side of the water. Only six months before, the Prince of Wales had come over to call us cousins; and everywhere it was nothing but 'our American brethren,' that great offshoot of British institutions in the New World, so almost identical with them in laws, language, and literature,--this last of the alliterative compliments being so bitterly true, that perhaps it will not be retracted even now. To this outburst of long-repressed affection we responded with genuine warmth, if with something of the awkwardness of a poor relation bewildered with the sudden tightening of the ties of consanguinity when it is rumored that he has come into a large estate. Then came the Rebellion, and, _presto!_ a flaw in our titles was discovered, the plate we were promised at the family table is flung at our head, and we were again the scum of creation, intolerably vulgar, at once cowardly and overbearing,--no relations of theirs, after all, but a dreggy hybrid of the basest bloods of Europe. Panurge was not quicker to call Friar John his _former_ friend. I cannot help thinking of Walter Mapes's jingling paraphrase of Petronius,-- 'Dummodo sim splendidis vestibus ornatus, Et multa familia sim circumvallatus, Prudens sum et sapiens et morigeratus, Et tuus nepos sum et tu meus cognatus,'-- which I may freely render thus:-- So long as I was prosperous, I'd dinners by the dozen, Was well-bred, witty, virtuous, and everybody's cousin; If luck should turn, as well she may, her fancy is so flexile, Will virtue, cousinship, and all return with her from exile? There was nothing in all this to exasperate a philosopher, much to make him smile rather; but the earth's surface is not chiefly inhabited by philosophers, and I revive the recollection of it now in perfect good-humour, merely by way of suggesting to our _ci-devant_ British cousins, that it would have been easier for them to hold their tongues than for us to keep our tempers under the circumstances. The English Cabinet made a blunder, unquestionably, in taking it so hastily for granted that the United States had fallen forever from their position as a first-rate power, and it was natural that they should vent a little of their vexation on the people whose inexplicable obstinacy in maintaining freedom and order, and in resisting degradation, was likely to convict them of their mistake. But if bearing a grudge be the sure mark of a small mind in the individual, can it be a proof of high spirit in a nation? If the result of the present estrangement between the two countries shall be to make us more independent of British twaddle (_Indomito nec dira ferens stipendia Tauro_), so much the better; but if it is to make us insensible to the value of British opinion in matters where it gives us the judgment of an impartial and cultivated outsider, if we are to shut ourselves out from the advantages of English culture, the loss will be ours, and not theirs. Because the door of the old homestead has been once slammed in our faces, shall we in a huff reject all future advances of conciliation, and cut ourselves foolishly off from any share in the humanizing influences of the place, with its ineffable riches of association, its heirlooms of immemorial culture, its historic monuments, ours no less than theirs, its noble gallery of ancestral portraits? We have only to succeed, and England will not only respect, but, for the first time, begin to understand us. And let us not, in our justifiable indignation at wanton insult, forget that England is not the England only of snobs who dread the democracy they do not comprehend, but the England of history, of heroes, statesmen, and poets, whose names are dear, and their influence as salutary to us as to her. Let us strengthen the hands of those in authority over us, and curb our own tongues, remembering that General Wait commonly proves in the end more than a match for General Headlong, and that the Good Book ascribes safety to a multitude, indeed, but not to a mob, of counsellours. Let us remember and perpend the words of Paulus Emilius to the people of Rome; that, 'if they judged they could manage the war to more advantage by any other, he would willingly yield up his charge; but if they confided in him, _they were not to make themselves his colleagues in his office, or raise reports, or criticise his actions, but, without talking, supply him with means and assistance necessary to the carrying on of the war; for, if they proposed to command their own commander, they would render this expedition more ridiculous than the former.' (Vide Plutarchum in Vitâ P.E._) Let us also not forget what the same excellent authour says concerning Perseus's fear of spending money, and not permit the covetousness of Brother Jonathan to be the good fortune of Jefferson Davis. For my own part, till I am ready to admit the Commander-in-Chief to my pulpit, I shall abstain from planning his battles. If courage be the sword, yet is patience the armour of a nation; and in our desire for peace, let us never be willing to surrender the Constitution bequeathed us by fathers at least as wise as ourselves (even with Jefferson Davis to help us), and, with those degenerate Romans, _tuta et præsentia quam vetera et periculosa malle_. And not only should we bridle our own tongues, but the pens of others, which are swift to convey useful intelligence to the enemy. This is no new inconvenience; for, under date, 3d June, 1745, General Pepperell wrote thus to Governor Shirley from Louisbourg: 'What your Excellency observes of the _army's being made acquainted with any plans proposed, until ready to be put in execution_, has always been disagreeable to me, and I have given many cautions relating to it. But when your Excellency considers that _our Council of War consists of more than twenty members_, I am persuaded you will think it _impossible for me to hinder it_, if any of them will persist in communicating to inferior officers and soldiers what ought to be kept secret. I am informed that the Boston newspapers are filled with paragraphs from private letters relating to the expedition. Will your Excellency permit me to say I think it may be of ill consequence? Would it not be convenient, if your Excellency should forbid the Printers' inserting such news?' Verily, if _tempora mutantur_, we may question the _et nos mutamur in illis;_ and if tongues be leaky, it will need all hands at the pumps to save the Ship of State. Our history dotes and repeats itself. If Sassycus (rather than Alcibiades) find a parallel in Beauregard, so Weakwash, as he is called by the brave Lieutenant Lion Gardiner, need not seek far among our own Sachems for his anti-type. With respect, Your ob't humble serv't Homer Wilbur, A.M. I love to start out arter night's begun, An' all the chores about the farm are done, The critters milked an' foddered, gates shet fast, Tools cleaned aginst to-morrer, supper past. An' Nancy darnin' by her ker'sene lamp,-- I love, I say, to start upon a tramp, To shake the kinkles out o' back an' legs, An' kind o' rack my life off from the dregs Thet's apt to settle in the buttery-hutch Of folks thet foller in one rut too much: 10 Hard work is good an' wholesome, past all doubt; But 't ain't so, ef the mind gits tuckered out. Now, bein' born in Middlesex, you know, There's certin spots where I like best to go: The Concord road, for instance (I, for one, Most gin'lly ollers call it _John Bull's Run_). The field o' Lexin'ton where England tried The fastest colours thet she ever dyed, An' Concord Bridge, thet Davis, when he came, Found was the bee-line track to heaven an' fame, 20 Ez all roads be by natur', ef your soul Don't sneak thru shun-pikes so's to save the toll. They're 'most too fur away, take too much time To visit of'en, ef it ain't in rhyme; But the' 's a walk thet's hendier, a sight, An' suits me fust-rate of a winter's night,-- I mean the round whale's-back o' Prospect Hill. I love to l'iter there while night grows still, An' in the twinklin' villages about, Fust here, then there, the well-saved lights goes out, 30 An' nary sound but watch-dogs' false alarms, Or muffled cock-crows from the drowsy farms, Where some wise rooster (men act jest thet way) Stands to 't thet moon-rise is the break o' day; (So Mister Seward sticks a three-months' pin Where the war'd oughto eend, then tries agin: My gran'ther's rule was safer 'n 'tis to crow: _Don't never prophesy--onless ye know_.) I love to muse there till it kind o' seems Ez ef the world went eddyin' off in dreams; 40 The northwest wind thet twitches at my baird Blows out o' sturdier days not easy scared, An' the same moon thet this December shines Starts out the tents an' booths o' Putnam's lines; The rail-fence posts, acrost the hill thet runs, Turn ghosts o' sogers should'rin' ghosts o' guns; Ez wheels the sentry, glints a flash o' light, Along the firelock won at Concord Fight, An', 'twixt the silences, now fur, now nigh, Rings the sharp chellenge, hums the low reply. 50 Ez I was settin' so, it warn't long sence, Mixin' the puffict with the present tense, I heerd two voices som'ers in the air, Though, ef I was to die, I can't tell where: Voices I call 'em: 'twas a kind o' sough Like pine-trees thet the wind's ageth'rin' through; An', fact, I thought it _was_ the wind a spell, Then some misdoubted, couldn't fairly tell, Fust sure, then not, jest as you hold an eel, I knowed, an' didn't,--fin'lly seemed to feel 60 'Twas Concord Bridge a talkin' off to kill With the Stone Spike thet's druv thru Bunker's Hill; Whether 'twas so, or ef I on'y dreamed, I couldn't say; I tell it ez it seemed. THE BRIDGE Wal, neighbor, tell us wut's turned up thet's new? You're younger 'n I be,--nigher Boston, tu: An' down to Boston, ef you take their showin', Wut they don't know ain't hardly wuth the knowin'. There's _sunthin'_ goin' on, I know: las' night The British sogers killed in our gret fight 70 (Nigh fifty year they hedn't stirred nor spoke) Made sech a coil you'd thought a dam hed broke: Why, one he up an' beat a revellee With his own crossbones on a holler tree, Till all the graveyards swarmed out like a hive With faces I hain't seen sence Seventy-five. Wut _is_ the news? 'T ain't good, or they'd be cheerin'. Speak slow an' clear, for I'm some hard o' hearin'. THE MONIMENT I don't know hardly ef it's good or bad,-- THE BRIDGE At wust, it can't be wus than wut we've had. 80 THE MONIMENT You know them envys thet the Rebbles sent, An' Cap'n Wilkes he borried o' the Trent? THE BRIDGE Wut! they ha'n't hanged 'em? Then their wits is gone! Thet's the sure way to make a goose a swan! THE MONIMENT No: England she _would_ hev 'em, _Fee, Faw, Fum!_ (Ez though she hedn't fools enough to home,) So they've returned 'em-- THE BRIDGE _Hev_ they? Wal, by heaven, Thet's the wust news I've heerd sence Seventy-seven! _By George_, I meant to say, though I declare It's 'most enough to make a deacon swear. 90 THE MONIMENT Now don't go off half-cock: folks never gains By usin' pepper-sarse instid o' brains. Come, neighbor, you don't understan'-- THE BRIDGE How? Hey? Not understan'? Why, wut's to hender, pray? Must I go huntin' round to find a chap To tell me when my face hez hed a slap? THE MONIMENT See here: the British they found out a flaw In Cap'n Wilkes's readin' o' the law: (They _make_ all laws, you know, an' so, o' course, It's nateral they should understan' their force:) 100 He'd oughto ha' took the vessel into port, An' hed her sot on by a reg'lar court; She was a mail-ship, an' a steamer, tu, An' thet, they say, hez changed the pint o' view, Coz the old practice, bein' meant for sails, Ef tried upon a steamer, kind o' fails; You _may_ take out despatches, but you mus'n't Take nary man-- THE BRIDGE You mean to say, you dus'n't! Changed pint o'view! No, no,--it's overboard With law an' gospel, when their ox is gored! 110 I tell ye, England's law, on sea an' land, Hez ollers ben, '_I've gut the heaviest hand_.' Take nary man? Fine preachin' from _her_ lips! Why, she hez taken hunderds from our ships, An' would agin, an' swear she had a right to, Ef we warn't strong enough to be perlite to. Of all the sarse thet I can call to mind, England _doos_ make the most onpleasant kind: It's you're the sinner ollers, she's the saint; Wut's good's all English, all thet isn't ain't; 120 Wut profits her is ollers right an' just, An' ef you don't read Scriptur so, you must; She's praised herself ontil she fairly thinks There ain't no light in Natur when she winks; Hain't she the Ten Comman'ments in her pus? Could the world stir 'thout she went, tu, ez nus? She ain't like other mortals, thet's a fact: _She_ never stopped the habus-corpus act, Nor specie payments, nor she never yet Cut down the int'rest on her public debt; 130 _She_ don't put down rebellions, lets 'em breed, An' 's ollers willin' Ireland should secede; She's all thet's honest, honnable, an' fair, An' when the vartoos died they made her heir. THE MONIMENT Wal, wal, two wrongs don't never make a right; Ef we're mistaken, own up, an' don't fight: For gracious' sake, ha'n't we enough to du 'thout gettin' up a fight with England, tu? She thinks we're rabble-rid-- THE BRIDGE An' so we can't Distinguish 'twixt _You oughtn't_ an' _You shan't!_ 140 She jedges by herself; she's no idear How 't stiddies folks to give 'em their fair sheer: The odds 'twixt her an' us is plain's a steeple,-- Her People's turned to Mob, our Mob's turned People. THE MONIMENT She's riled jes' now-- THE BRIDGE Plain proof her cause ain't strong,-- The one thet fust gits mad's 'most ollers wrong. Why, sence she helped in lickin' Nap the Fust, An' pricked a bubble jest agoin' to bust, With Rooshy, Prooshy, Austry, all assistin', Th' ain't nut a face but wut she's shook her fist in, 150 Ez though she done it all, an' ten times more, An' nothin' never hed gut done afore, Nor never could agin, 'thout she wuz spliced On to one eend an' gin th' old airth a hoist. She _is_ some punkins, thet I wun't deny, (For ain't she some related to you 'n' I?) But there's a few small intrists here below Outside the counter o' John Bull an' Co, An' though they can't conceit how 't should be so, I guess the Lord druv down Creation's spiles 160 'thout no _gret_ helpin' from the British Isles, An' could contrive to keep things pooty stiff Ef they withdrawed from business in a miff; I ha'n't no patience with sech swellin' fellers ez Think God can't forge 'thout them to blow the bellerses. THE MONIMENT You're ollers quick to set your back aridge, Though 't suits a tom-cat more 'n a sober bridge: Don't you get het: they thought the thing was planned; They'll cool off when they come to understand. THE BRIDGE Ef _thet_'s wut you expect, you'll _hev_ to wait; 170 Folks never understand the folks they hate: She'll fin' some other grievance jest ez good, 'fore the month's out, to git misunderstood. England cool off! She'll do it, ef she sees She's run her head into a swarm o' bees. I ain't so prejudiced ez wut you spose: I hev thought England was the best thet goes; Remember (no, you can't), when _I_ was reared, _God save the King_ was all the tune you heerd: But it's enough to turn Wachuset roun' 180 This stumpin' fellers when you think they're down. THE MONIMENT But, neighbor, ef they prove their claim at law, The best way is to settle, an' not jaw. An' don't le' 's mutter 'bout the awfle bricks We'll give 'em, ef we ketch 'em in a fix: That 'ere's most frequently the kin' o' talk Of critters can't be kicked to toe the chalk; Your 'You'll see _nex'_ time!' an' 'Look out bumby!' 'Most ollers ends in eatin' umble-pie. 'Twun't pay to scringe to England: will it pay 190 To fear thet meaner bully, old 'They'll say'? Suppose they _du_ say; words are dreffle bores, But they ain't quite so bad ez seventy-fours. Wut England wants is jest a wedge to fit Where it'll help to widen out our split: She's found her wedge, an' 'tain't for us to come An' lend the beetle thet's to drive it home. For growed-up folks like us 'twould be a scandle, When we git sarsed, to fly right off the handle. England ain't _all_ bad, coz she thinks us blind: 200 Ef she can't change her skin, she can her mind; An' we shall see her change it double-quick. Soon ez we've proved thet we're a-goin' to lick. She an' Columby's gut to be fas' friends: For the world prospers by their privit ends: 'Twould put the clock back all o' fifty years Ef they should fall together by the ears. THE BRIDGE I 'gree to thet; she's nigh us to wut France is; But then she'll hev to make the fust advances; We've gut pride, tu, an' gut it by good rights, 210 An' ketch _me_ stoopin' to pick up the mites O' condescension she'll be lettin' fall When she finds out we ain't dead arter all! I tell ye wut, it takes more'n one good week Afore _my_ nose forgits it's hed a tweak. THE MONIMENT She'll come out right bumby, thet I'll engage, Soon ez she gits to seein' we're of age; This talkin' down o' hers ain't wuth a fuss; It's nat'ral ez nut likin' 'tis to us; 220 Ef we're agoin' to prove we _be_ growed-up. 'Twun't be by barkin' like a tarrier pup, But turnin' to an' makin' things ez good Ez wut we're ollers braggin' that we could; We're boun' to be good friends, an' so we'd oughto, In spite of all the fools both sides the water. THE BRIDGE I b'lieve thet's so; but hearken in your ear,-- I'm older'n you,--Peace wun't keep house with Fear; Ef you want peace, the thing you've gut tu du Is jes' to show you're up to fightin', tu. _I_ recollect how sailors' rights was won, 230 Yard locked in yard, hot gun-lip kissin' gun; Why, afore thet, John Bull sot up thet he Hed gut a kind o' mortgage on the sea; You'd thought he held by Gran'ther Adam's will, An' ef you knuckle down, _he_'ll think so still. Better thet all our ships an' all their crews Should sink to rot in ocean's dreamless ooze, Each torn flag wavin' chellenge ez it went, An' each dumb gun a brave man's moniment, Than seek sech peace ez only cowards crave: 240 Give _me_ the peace of dead men or of brave! THE MONIMENT I say, ole boy, it ain't the Glorious Fourth: You'd oughto larned 'fore this wut talk wuz worth. It ain't _our_ nose thet gits put out o' jint; It's England thet gives up her dearest pint. We've gut, I tell ye now, enough to du In our own fem'ly fight, afore we're thru. I hoped, las' spring, jest arter Sumter's shame, When every flag-staff flapped its tethered flame, An' all the people, startled from their doubt, 250 Come must'rin' to the flag with sech a shout,-- I hoped to see things settled 'fore this fall, The Rebbles licked, Jeff Davis hanged, an' all; Then come Bull Run, an' _sence_ then I've ben waitin' Like boys in Jennooary thaw for skatin', Nothin' to du but watch my shadder's trace Swing, like a ship at anchor, roun' my base, With daylight's flood an' ebb: it's gittin' slow, An' I 'most think we'd better let 'em go. I tell ye wut, this war's a-goin' to cost-- 260 THE BRIDGE An' I tell _you_ it wun't be money lost; Taxes milks dry, but, neighbor, you'll allow Thet havin' things onsettled kills the cow: We've gut to fix this thing for good an' all; It's no use buildin' wut's a-goin' to fall. I'm older'n you, an' I've seen things an' men, An' _my_ experunce,--tell ye wut it's ben: Folks thet worked thorough was the ones thet thriv, But bad work follers ye ez long's ye live; You can't git red on 't; jest ez sure ez sin, 270 It's ollers askin' to be done agin: Ef we should part, it wouldn't be a week 'Fore your soft-soddered peace would spring aleak. We've turned our cuffs up, but, to put her thru, We must git mad an' off with jackets, tu; 'Twun't du to think thet killin' ain't perlite,-- You've gut to be to airnest, ef you fight; Why, two thirds o' the Rebbles 'ould cut dirt, Ef they once thought thet Guv'ment meant to hurt; An' I _du_ wish our Gin'rals hed in mind 280 The folks in front more than the folks behind; You wun't do much ontil you think it's God, An' not constitoounts, thet holds the rod; We want some more o' Gideon's sword, I jedge, For proclamations ha'n't no gret of edge; There's nothin' for a cancer but the knife, Onless you set by 't more than by your life. _I_'ve seen hard times; I see a war begun Thet folks thet love their bellies never'd won; Pharo's lean kine hung on for seven long year; 290 But when 'twas done, we didn't count it dear; Why, law an' order, honor, civil right, Ef they _ain't_ wuth it, wut _is_ wuth a fight? I'm older'n you: the plough, the axe, the mill, All kin's o' labor an' all kin's o' skill, Would be a rabbit in a wile-cat's claw, Ef 'twarn't for thet slow critter, 'stablished law; Onsettle _thet_, an' all the world goes whiz, A screw's gut loose in eyerythin' there is: Good buttresses once settled, don't you fret 300 An' stir 'em; take a bridge's word for thet! Young folks are smart, but all ain't good thet's new; I guess the gran'thers they knowed sunthin', tu. THE MONIMENT Amen to thet! build sure in the beginnin': An' then don't never tech the underpinnin': Th' older a guv'ment is, the better 't suits; New ones hunt folks's corns out like new boots: Change jes' for change, is like them big hotels Where they shift plates, an' let ye live on smells. THE BRIDGE Wal, don't give up afore the ship goes down: 310 It's a stiff gale, but Providence wun't drown; An' God wun't leave us yit to sink or swim, Ef we don't fail to du wut's right by Him, This land o' ourn, I tell ye, 's gut to be A better country than man ever see. I feel my sperit swellin' with a cry Thet seems to say, 'Break forth an' prophesy!' O strange New World, thet yit wast never young, Whose youth from thee by gripin' need was wrung, Brown foundlin' o' the woods, whose baby-bed 320 Was prowled roun' by the Injun's cracklin' tread, An' who grew'st strong thru shifts an' wants an' pains, Nussed by stern men with empires in their brains, Who saw in vision their young Ishmel strain With each hard hand a vassal ocean's mane, Thou, skilled by Freedom an' by gret events To pitch new States ez Old-World men pitch tents, Thou, taught by Fate to know Jehovah's plan Thet man's devices can't unmake a man, An' whose free latch-string never was drawed in 330 Against the poorest child of Adam's kin,-- The grave's not dug where traitor hands shall lay In fearful haste thy murdered corse away! I see-- Jest here some dogs begun to bark, So thet I lost old Concord's last remark: I listened long, but all I seemed to hear Was dead leaves gossipin' on some birch-trees near; But ez they hedn't no gret things to say, An' sed 'em often, I come right away, An', walkin' home'ards, jest to pass the time, 340 I put some thoughts thet bothered me in rhyme; I hain't hed time to fairly try 'em on, But here they be--it's JONATHAN TO JOHN It don't seem hardly right, John, When both my hands was full, To stump me to a fight, John,-- Your cousin, tu, John Bull! Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess We know it now,' sez he, 'The lion's paw is all the law, Accordin' to J.B., Thet's fit for you an' me!' 9 You wonder why we're hot, John? Your mark wuz on the guns, The neutral guns, thet shot, John, Our brothers an' our sons: Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess There's human blood,' sez he, 'By fits an' starts, in Yankee hearts, Though't may surprise J.B. More 'n it would you an' me.' Ef _I_ turned mad dogs loose, John, On _your_ front-parlor stairs, 20 Would it jest meet your views, John, To wait an' sue their heirs? Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess, I on'y guess,' sez he, 'Thet ef Vattel on _his_ toes fell, 'Twould kind o' rile J.B., Ez wal ez you an' me!' Who made the law thet hurts, John, _Heads I win,--ditto tails?_ 'J.B.' was on his shirts, John, 30 Onless my memory fails. Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess (I'm good at thet),' sez he, 'Thet sauce for goose ain't _jest_ the juice For ganders with J.B., No more 'n with you or me!' When your rights was our wrongs, John, You didn't stop for fuss,-- Britanny's trident prongs, John, Was good 'nough law for us. 40 Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess, Though physic's good,' sez he, 'It doesn't foller thet he can swaller Prescriptions signed "J.B.," Put up by you an' me!' We own the ocean, tu, John: You mus'n' take it hard, Ef we can't think with you, John, It's jest your own back-yard. 49 Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess, Ef _thet's_ his claim,' sez he, 'The fencin' stuff'll cost enough To bust up friend J.B., Ez wal ez you an' me!' Why talk so dreffle big, John, Of honor when it meant You didn't care a fig, John, But jest for _ten per cent?_ Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess He's like the rest,' sez he: 60 'When all is done, it's number one Thet's nearest to J.B., Ez wal ez t' you an' me!' We give the critters back, John, Cos Abram thought 'twas right; It warn't your bullyin' clack, John, Provokin' us to fight. Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess We've a hard row,' sez he, 'To hoe jest now; but thet, somehow, 70 May happen to J.B., Ez wal ez you an' me!' We ain't so weak an' poor, John, With twenty million people. An' close to every door, John, A school-house an' a steeple. Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess, It is a fact,' sez he, 'The surest plan to make a Man Is, think him so, J.B., 80 Ez much ez you or me!' Our folks believe in Law, John; An' it's for her sake, now, They've left the axe an' saw, John, The anvil an' the plough. Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess, Ef 'twarn't for law,' sez he, 'There'd be one shindy from here to Indy; An' thet don't suit J.B. (When't ain't 'twixt you an' me!) 90 We know we've got a cause, John, Thet's honest, just, an' true; We thought 'twould win applause, John, Ef nowheres else, from you. Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess His love of right,' sez he, 'Hangs by a rotten fibre o' cotton: There's natur' in J.B., Ez wal 'z in you an' me!' The South says, '_Poor folks down!_' John, 100 An' '_All men up!_' say we,-- White, yaller, black, an' brown, John: Now which is your idee? Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess, John preaches wal,' sez he; 'But, sermon thru, an' come to _du_, Why, there's the old J.B. A-crowdin' you an' me!' Shall it be love, or hate, John? It's you thet's to decide; 110 Ain't _your_ bonds held by Fate, John, Like all the world's beside? Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess Wise men forgive,' sez he, 'But not forgit; an' some time yit Thet truth may strike J.B., Ez wal ez you an' me!' God means to make this land, John, Clear thru, from sea to sea, Believe an' understand, John, 120 The _wuth_ o' bein' free. Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess, God's price is high,' sez he; 'But nothin' else than wut He sells Wears long, an' thet J.B. May larn, like you an' me!' No. III BIRDOFREDUM SAWIN, ESQ., TO MR. HOSEA BIGLOW _With the following Letter from the_ REVEREND HOMER WILBUR, A.M. TO THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY JAALAM, 7th Feb., 1862. RESPECTED FRIENDS,--If I know myself,--and surely a man can hardly be supposed to have overpassed the limit of fourscore years without attaining to some proficiency in that most useful branch of learning (_e coelo descendit_, says the pagan poet),--I have no great smack of that weakness which would press upon the publick attention any matter pertaining to my private affairs. But since the following letter of Mr. Sawin contains not only a direct allusion to myself, but that in connection with a topick of interest to all those engaged in the publick ministrations of the sanctuary, I may be pardoned for touching briefly thereupon. Mr. Sawin was never a stated attendant upon my preaching,--never, as I believe, even an occasional one, since the erection of the new house (where we now worship) in 1845. He did, indeed, for a time, supply a not unacceptable bass in the choir; but, whether on some umbrage (_omnibus hoc vitium est cantoribus_) taken against the bass-viol, then, and till his decease in 1850 (_æt._ 77,) under the charge of Mr. Asaph Perley, or, as was reported by others, on account of an imminent subscription for a new bell, he thenceforth absented himself from all outward and visible communion. Yet he seems to have preserved (_altâ mente repostum_), as it were, in the pickle of a mind soured by prejudice, a lasting _scunner_, as he would call it, against our staid and decent form of worship; for I would rather in that wise interpret his fling, than suppose that any chance tares sown by my pulpit discourses should survive so long, while good seed too often fails to root itself. I humbly trust that I have no personal feeling in the matter; though I know that, if we sound any man deep enough, our lead shall bring up the mud of human nature at last. The Bretons believe in an evil spirit which they call _ar c'houskezik_, whose office it is to make the congregation drowsy; and though I have never had reason to think that he was specially busy among my flock, yet have I seen enough to make me sometimes regret the hinged seats of the ancient meeting-house, whose lively clatter, not unwillingly intensified by boys beyond eyeshot of the tithing-man, served at intervals as a wholesome _réveil_. It is true, I have numbered among my parishioners some who are proof against the prophylactick fennel, nay, whose gift of somnolence rivalled that of the Cretan Rip Van Winkle, Epimenides, and who, nevertheless, complained not so much of the substance as of the length of my (by them unheard) discourses. Some ingenious persons of a philosophick turn have assured us that our pulpits were set too high, and that the soporifick tendency increased with the ratio of the angle in which the hearer's eye was constrained to seek the preacher. This were a curious topick for investigation. There can be no doubt that some sermons are pitched too high, and I remember many struggles with the drowsy fiend in my youth. Happy Saint Anthony of Padua, whose finny acolytes, however they might profit, could never murmur! _Quare fremuerunt gentes?_ Who is he that can twice a week be inspired, or has eloquence (_ut ita dicam_) always on tap? A good man, and, next to David, a sacred poet (himself, haply, not inexpert of evil in this particular), has said,-- 'The worst speak something good: if all want sense, God takes a text and preacheth patience.' There are one or two other points in Mr. Sawin's letter which I would also briefly animadvert upon. And first, concerning the claim he sets up to a certain superiority of blood and lineage in the people of our Southern States, now unhappily in rebellion against lawful authority and their own better interests. There is a sort of opinions, anachronisms at once and anachorisms, foreign both to the age and the country, that maintain a feeble and buzzing existence, scarce to be called life, like winter flies, which in mild weather crawl out from obscure nooks and crannies to expatiate in the sun, and sometimes acquire vigor enough to disturb with their enforced familiarity the studious hours of the scholar. One of the most stupid and pertinacious of these is the theory that the Southern States were settled by a class of emigrants from the Old World socially superior to those who founded the institutions of New England. The Virginians especially lay claim to this generosity of lineage, which were of no possible account, were it not for the fact that such superstitions are sometimes not without their effect on the course of human affairs. The early adventurers to Massachusetts at least paid their passages; no felons were ever shipped thither; and though it be true that many deboshed younger brothers of what are called good families may have sought refuge in Virginia, it is equally certain that a great part of the early deportations thither were the sweepings of the London streets and the leavings of the London stews. It was this my Lord Bacon had in mind when he wrote: 'It is a shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of people and wicked condemned men to be the people with whom you plant.' That certain names are found there is nothing to the purpose, for, even had an _alias_ been beyond the invention of the knaves of that generation, it is known that servants were often called by their masters' names, as slaves are now. On what the heralds call the spindle side, some, at least, of the oldest Virginian families are descended from matrons who were exported and sold for so many hogsheads of tobacco the head. So notorious was this, that it became one of the jokes of contemporary playwrights, not only that men bankrupt in purse and character were 'food for the Plantations' (and this before the settlement of New England), but also that any drab would suffice to wive such pitiful adventurers. 'Never choose a wife as if you were going to Virginia,' says Middleton in one of his comedies. The mule is apt to forget all but the equine side of his pedigree. How early the counterfeit nobility of the Old Dominion became a topick of ridicule in the Mother Country may be learned from a play of Mrs. Behn's, founded on the Rebellion of Bacon: for even these kennels of literature may yield a fact or two to pay the raking. Mrs. Flirt, the keeper of a Virginia ordinary, calls herself the daughter of a baronet, 'undone in the late rebellion,'--her father having in truth been a tailor,--and three of the Council, assuming to themselves an equal splendor of origin, are shown to have been, one 'a broken exciseman who came over a poor servant,' another a tinker transported for theft, and the third 'a common pickpocket often flogged at the cart's tail.' The ancestry of South Carolina will as little pass muster at the Herald's Visitation, though I hold them to have been more reputable, inasmuch as many of them were honest tradesmen and artisans, in some measure exiles for conscience' sake, who would have smiled at the high-flying nonsense of their descendants. Some of the more respectable were Jews. The absurdity of supposing a population of eight millions all sprung from gentle loins in the course of a century and a half is too manifest for confutation. But of what use to discuss the matter? An expert genealogist will provide any solvent man with a _genus et pro avos_ to order. My Lord Burleigh used to say, with Aristotle and the Emperor Frederick II. to back him, that 'nobility was ancient riches,' whence also the Spanish were wont to call their nobles _ricos hombres_, and the aristocracy of America are the descendants of those who first became wealthy, by whatever means. Petroleum will in this wise be the source of much good blood among our posterity. The aristocracy of the South, such as it is, has the shallowest of all foundations, for it is only skin-deep,--the most odious of all, for, while affecting to despise trade, it traces its origin to a successful traffick in men, women, and children, and still draws its chief revenues thence. And though, as Doctor Chamberlayne consolingly says in his 'Present State of England,' 'to become a Merchant of Foreign Commerce, without serving any Apprentisage, hath been allowed no disparagement to a Gentleman born, especially to a younger Brother,' yet I conceive that he would hardly have made a like exception in favour of the particular trade in question. Oddly enough this trade reverses the ordinary standards of social respectability no less than of morals, for the retail and domestick is as creditable as the wholesale and foreign is degrading to him who follows it. Are our morals, then, no better than _mores_ after all? I do not believe that such aristocracy as exists at the South (for I hold with Marius, _fortissimum quemque generosissimum_) will be found an element of anything like persistent strength in war,--thinking the saying of Lord Bacon (whom one quaintly called _inductionis dominus et Verulamii_) as true as it is pithy, that 'the more gentlemen, ever the lower books of subsidies.' It is odd enough as an historical precedent, that, while the fathers of New England were laying deep in religion, education, and freedom the basis of a polity which has substantially outlasted any then existing, the first work of the founders of Virginia, as may be seen in Wingfield's 'Memorial,' was conspiracy and rebellion,--odder yet, as showing the changes which are wrought by circumstance, that the first insurrection, in South Carolina was against the aristocratical scheme of the Proprietary Government. I do not find that the cuticular aristocracy of the South has added anything to the refinements of civilization except the carrying of bowie-knives and the chewing of tobacco,--a high-toned Southern gentleman being commonly not only _quadrumanous_ but _quidruminant_. I confess that the present letter of Mr. Sawin increases my doubts as to the sincerity of the convictions which he professes, and I am inclined to think that the triumph, of the legitimate Government, sure sooner or later to take place, will find him and a large majority of his newly adopted fellow-citizens (who hold with Dædalus, the primal sitter-on-the-fence, that _medium tenere tutissimum_) original Union men. The criticisms towards the close of his letter on certain of our failings are worthy to be seriously perpended; for he is not, as I think, without a spice of vulgar shrewdness. _Fas est et ab hoste doceri_: there is no reckoning without your host. As to the good-nature in us which he seems to gird at, while I would not consecrate a chapel, as they have not scrupled to do in France, to _Notre Dame de la Haine_ (Our Lady of Hate), yet I cannot forget that the corruption of good-nature is the generation of laxity of principle. Good-nature is our national characteristick; and though it be, perhaps, nothing more than a culpable weakness or cowardice, when it leads us to put up tamely with manifold impositions and breaches of implied contracts (as too frequently in our publick conveyances) it becomes a positive crime when it leads us to look unresentfully on peculation, and to regard treason to the best Government that ever existed as something with which a gentleman may shake hands without soiling his fingers. I do not think the gallows-tree the most profitable member of our _Sylva;_ but, since it continues to be planted, I would fain see a Northern limb ingrafted on it, that it may bear some other fruit than loyal Tennesseeans. A relick has recently been discovered on the east bank of Bushy Brook in North Jaalam, which I conceive to be an inscription in Runick characters relating to the early expedition of the Northmen to this continent. I shall make fuller investigations, and communicate the result in due season. Respectfully, Your obedient servant, HOMER WILBUR, A.M. P.S.--I inclose a year's subscription from Deacon Tinkham. I hed it on my min' las' time, when I to write ye started, To tech the leadin' featurs o' my gittin' me convarted; But, ez my letters hez to go clearn roun' by way o' Cuby, 'Twun't seem no staler now than then, by th' time it gits where you be. You know up North, though secs an' things air plenty ez you please, Ther' warn't nut one on 'em thet come jes' square with my idees: They all on 'em wuz too much mixed with Covenants o' Works, An' would hev answered jest ez wal for Afrikins an' Turks, Fer where's a Christian's privilege an' his rewards eusuin', Ef 'taint perfessin' right and eend 'thout nary need o' doin'? 10 I dessay they suit workin'-folks thet ain't noways pertic'lar, But nut your Southun gen'leman thet keeps his parpendic'lar; I don't blame nary man thet casts his lot along o' _his_ folks, But ef you cal'late to save _me_, 't must be with folks thet _is_ folks; Cov'nants o' works go 'ginst my grain, but down here I've found out The true fus'-fem'ly A 1 plan,--here's how it come about. When I fus' sot up with Miss S., sez she to me, sez she, 'Without you git religion, Sir, the thing can't never be; Nut but wut I respeck,' sez she, 'your intellectle part, But you wun't noways du for me athout a change o' heart; 20 Nothun religion works wal North, but it's ez soft ez spruce, Compared to ourn, for keepin' sound,' sez she, 'upon the goose; A day's experunce 'd prove to ye, ez easy 'z pull a trigger. It takes the Southun pint o' view to raise ten bales a nigger; You'll fin' thet human natur', South, ain't wholesome more 'n skin-deep, An' once 't a darkie's took with it, he wun't be wuth his keep,' 'How _shell_ I git it, Ma'am?'--sez I, 'Attend the nex' camp-meetin',' Sez she, 'an' it'll come to ye ez cheap ez onbleached sheetin'.' Wal, so I went along an' hearn most an impressive sarmon About besprinklin' Afriky with fourth-proof dew o' Harmon: 30 He didn't put no weaknin' in, but gin it tu us hot, 'Z ef he an' Satan 'd ben two bulls in one five-acre lot: I don't purtend to foller him, but give ye jes' the heads; For pulpit ellerkence, you know, 'most ollers kin' o' spreads. Ham's seed wuz gin to us in chairge, an' shouldn't we be li'ble In Kingdom Come, ef we kep' back their priv'lege in the Bible? The cusses an' the promerses make one gret chain, an' ef You snake one link out here, one there, how much on 't ud be lef'? All things wuz gin to man for 's use, his sarvice, an' delight; 39 An' don't the Greek an' Hebrew words thet mean a Man mean White? Ain't it belittlin' the Good Book in all its proudes' featurs To think 'twuz wrote for black an' brown an' 'lasses-colored creaturs, Thet couldn' read it, ef they would, nor ain't by lor allowed to, But ough' to take wut we think suits their naturs, an' be proud to? Warn't it more prof'table to bring your raw materil thru Where you can work it inta grace an' inta cotton, tu, Than sendin' missionaries out where fevers might defeat 'em, An' ef the butcher didn' call, their p'rishioners might eat 'em? An' then, agin, wut airthly use? Nor 'twarn't our fault, in so fur Ez Yankee skippers would keep on atotin' on 'em over. 50 'T improved the whites by savin' 'em from ary need o' workin', An' kep' the blacks from bein' lost thru idleness an' shirkin'; We took to 'em ez nat'ral ez a barn-owl doos to mice, An' hed our hull time on our hands to keep us out o' vice; It made us feel ez pop'lar ez a hen doos with one chicken, An' fill our place in Natur's scale by givin' 'em a lickin': For why should Cæsar git his dues more 'n Juno, Pomp, an' Cuffy? It's justifyin' Ham to spare a nigger when he's stuffy. Where'd their soles go tu, like to know, ef we should let 'em ketch Freeknowledgism an' Fourierism an' Speritoolism an' sech? 60 When Satan sets himself to work to raise his very bes' muss, He scatters roun' onscriptur'l views relatin' to Ones'mus. You'd ough' to seen, though, how his facs an' argymunce an' figgers Drawed tears o' real conviction from a lot o' pen'tent niggers! It warn't like Wilbur's meetin', where you're shet up in a pew, Your dickeys sorrin' off your ears, an' bilin' to be thru; Ther' wuz a tent clost by thet hed a kag o' sunthin' in it, Where you could go, ef you wuz dry, an' damp ye in a minute; An' ef you did dror off a spell, ther' wuzn't no occasion To lose the thread, because, ye see, he bellered like all Bashan. 70 It's dry work follerin' argymunce an' so, 'twix' this an' thet, I felt conviction weighin' down somehow inside my hat; It growed an' growed like Jonah's gourd, a kin' o' whirlin' ketched me, Ontil I fin'lly clean gin out an' owned up thet he'd fetched me; An' when nine tenths o' th' perrish took to tumblin' roun' an' hollerin', I didn' fin' no gret in th' way o' turnin' tu an' follerin'. Soon ez Miss S. see thet, sez she, '_Thet_'s wut I call wuth seein'! _Thet_'s actin' like a reas'nable an' intellectle bein'!' An' so we fin'lly made it up, concluded to hitch hosses, An' here I be 'n my ellermunt among creation's bosses; 80 Arter I'd drawed sech heaps o' blanks, Fortin at last hez sent a prize, An' chose me for a shinin' light o' missionary entaprise. This leads me to another pint on which I've changed my plan O' thinkin' so's't I might become a straight-out Southun man. Miss S. (her maiden name wuz Higgs, o' the fus' fem'ly here) On her Ma's side's all Juggernot, on Pa's all Cavileer, An' sence I've merried into her an' stept into her shoes, It ain't more 'n nateral thet I should modderfy my views: I've ben a-readin' in Debow ontil I've fairly gut So 'nlightened thet I'd full ez lives ha' ben a Dook ez nut; 90 An' when we've laid ye all out stiff, an' Jeff hez gut his crown, An' comes to pick his nobles out, _wun't_ this child be in town! We'll hev an Age o' Chivverlry surpassin' Mister Burke's, Where every fem'ly is fus'-best an' nary white man works: Our system's sech, the thing'll root ez easy ez a tater; For while your lords in furrin parts ain't noways marked by natur', Nor sot apart from ornery folks in featurs nor in figgers, Ef ourn'll keep their faces washed, you'll know 'em from their niggers. Ain't _sech_ things wuth secedin' for, an' gittin' red o' you Thet waller in your low idees, an' will tell all is blue? 100 Fact is, we _air_ a diff'rent race, an' I, for one, don't see, Sech havin' ollers ben the case, how w'ever _did_ agree. It's sunthin' thet you lab'rin'-folks up North hed ough' to think on, Thet Higgses can't bemean themselves to rulin' by a Lincoln,-- Thet men, (an' guv'nors, tu,) thet hez sech Normal names ez Pickens, Accustomed to no kin' o' work, 'thout 'tis to givin' lickins, Can't measure votes with folks thet get their living from their farms, An' prob'ly think thet Law's ez good ez hevin' coats o' arms. Sence I've ben here, I've hired a chap to look about for me To git me a transplantable an' thrifty fem'ly-tree, 110 An' he tells _me_ the Sawins is ez much o' Normal blood Ez Pickens an' the rest on 'em, an' older 'n Noah's flood. Your Normal schools wun't turn ye into Normals, for it's clear, Ef eddykatin' done the thing, they'd be some skurcer here. Pickenses, Boggses, Pettuses, Magoffins, Letchers, Polks,-- Where can you scare up names like them among your mudsill folks? Ther's nothin' to compare with 'em, you'd fin', ef you should glance, Among the tip-top femerlies in Englan', nor in France: I've hearn frum 'sponsible men whose word wuz full ez good's their note, Men thet can run their face for drinks, an' keep a Sunday coat, 120 That they wuz all on 'em come down, an' come down pooty fur, From folks thet, 'thout their crowns wuz on, ou' doors wouldn' never stir, Nor thet ther' warn't a Southun man but wut wuz _primy fashy_ O' the bes' blood in Europe, yis, an' Afriky an' Ashy: Sech bein' the case, is 't likely we should bend like cotton wickin', Or set down under anythin' so low-lived ez a lickin'? More 'n this,--hain't we the literatoor an science, tu, by gorry? Hain't we them intellectle twins, them giants, Simms an' Maury, Each with full twice the ushle brains, like nothin' thet I know, 'thout 'twuz a double-headed calf I see once to a show? 130 For all thet, I warn't jest at fust in favor o' secedin'; I wuz for layin' low a spell to find out where 'twuz leadin', For hevin' South-Carliny try her hand at sepritnationin', She takin' resks an' findin' funds, an' we co-operationin',-- I mean a kin' o' hangin' roun' an' settin' on the fence, Till Prov'dunce pinted how to jump an' save the most expense; I recollected thet 'ere mine o' lead to Shiraz Centre Thet bust up Jabez Pettibone, an' didn't want to ventur' 'Fore I wuz sartin wut come out ud pay for wut went in, For swappin' silver off for lead ain't the sure way to win; 140 (An', fact, it _doos_ look now ez though--but folks must live an' larn-- We should git lead, an' more 'n we want, out o' the Old Consarn;) But when I see a man so wise an' honest ez Buchanan A-lettin' us hev all the forts an' all the arms an' cannon, Admittin' we wuz nat'lly right an' you wuz nat'lly wrong, Coz you wuz lab'rin'-folks an' we wuz wut they call _bong-tong_, An' coz there warn't no fight in ye more 'n in a mashed potater, While two o' _us_ can't skurcely meet but wut we fight by natur', An' th' ain't a bar-room here would pay for openin' on 't a night; Without it giv the priverlege o' bein' shot at sight, 150 Which proves we're Natur's noblemen, with whom it don't surprise The British aristoxy should feel boun' to sympathize,-- Seein' all this, an' seein', tu, the thing wuz strikin' roots While Uncle Sam sot still in hopes thet some one'd bring his boots, I thought th' ole Union's hoops wuz off, an' let myself be sucked in To rise a peg an' jine the crowd thet went for reconstructin',-- Thet is to hev the pardnership under th' ole name continner Jest ez it wuz, we drorrin' pay, you findin' bone an' sinner,-- On'y to put it in the bond, an' enter 't in the journals, Thet you're the nat'ral rank an' file, an' we the nat'ral kurnels. 160 Now this I thought a fees'ble plan, thet 'ud work smooth ez grease, Suitin' the Nineteenth Century an' Upper Ten idees, An' there I meant to stick, an' so did most o' th' leaders, tu, Coz we all thought the chance wuz good o' puttin' on it thru; But Jeff he hit upon a way o' helpin' on us forrard By bein' unannermous,--a trick you ain't quite up to, Norrard. A Baldin hain't no more 'f a chance with them new apple-corers Than folks's oppersition views aginst the Ringtail Roarers; They'll take 'em out on him 'bout east,--one canter on a rail Makes a man feel unannermous ez Jonah in the whale: 170 Or ef he's a slow-moulded cuss thet can't seem quite t' 'gree, He gits the noose by tellergraph upon the nighes' tree: Their mission-work with Afrikins hez put 'em up, thet's sartin, To all the mos' across-lot ways o' preachin' an' convartin'; I'll bet my hat th' ain't nary priest, nor all on 'em together; Thet cairs conviction to the min' like Reveren' Taranfeather; Why, he sot up with me one night, an' labored to sech purpose, Thet (ez an owl by daylight 'mongst a flock o' teazin' chirpers Sees clearer 'n mud the wickedness o' eatin' little birds) I see my error an' agreed to shen it arterwurds; 180 An' I should say, (to jedge our folks by facs in my possession,) Thet three's Unannermous where one's a 'Riginal Secession; So it's a thing you fellers North may safely bet your chink on, Thet we're all water-proofed agin th' usurpin' reign o' Lincoln. Jeff's _some_. He's gut another plan thet hez pertic'lar merits, In givin' things a cheerfle look an' stiffnin' loose-hung sperits; For while your million papers, wut with lyin' an' discussin', Keep folks's tempers all on eend a-fumin' an' a-fussin', A-wondrin' this an' guessin' thet, an' dreadin' every night The breechin' o' the Univarse'll break afore it's light, 190 Our papers don't purtend to print on'y wut Guv'ment choose, An' thet insures us all to git the very best o' noose: Jeff hez it of all sorts an' kines, an' sarves it out ez wanted, So's't every man gits wut he likes an' nobody ain't scanted; Sometimes it's vict'ries (they're 'bout all ther' is that's cheap down here,) Sometimes it's France an' England on the jump to interfere. Fact is, the less the people know o' wut ther' is a-doin', The hendier 'tis for Guv'ment, sence it henders trouble brewin'; An' noose is like a shinplaster,--it's good, ef you believe it, Or, wut's all same, the other man thet's goin' to receive it: 200 Ef you've a son in th' army, wy, it's comfortin' to hear He'll hev no gretter resk to run than seein' th' in'my's rear, Coz, ef an F.F. looks at 'em, they ollers break an' run, Or wilt right down ez debtors will thet stumble on a dun, (An' this, ef an'thin', proves the wuth o' proper fem'ly pride, Fer sech mean shucks ez creditors are all on Lincoln's side); Ef I hev scrip thet wun't go off no more 'n a Belgin rifle, An' read thet it's at par on 'Change, it makes me feel deli'fle; It's cheerin', tu, where every man mus' fortify his bed, To hear thet Freedom's the one thing our darkies mos'ly dread, 210 An' thet experunce, time 'n' agin, to Dixie's Land hez shown Ther' 's nothin' like a powder-cask fer a stiddy corner-stone; Ain't it ez good ez nuts, when salt is sellin' by the ounce For its own weight in Treash'ry-bons, (ef bought in small amounts,) When even whiskey's gittin' skurce an' sugar can't be found, To know thet all the ellerments o' luxury abound? An' don't it glorify sal'-pork, to come to understand It's wut the Richmon' editors call fatness o' the land! Nex' thing to knowin' you're well off is _nut_ to know when y' ain't; An' ef Jeff says all's goin' wal, who'll ventur' t' say it ain't? 220 This cairn the Constitooshun roun' ez Jeff doos in his hat Is hendier a dreffle sight, an' comes more kin' o' pat. I tell ye wut, my jedgment is you're pooty sure to fail, Ez long 'z the head keeps turnin' back for counsel to the tail: Th' advantiges of our consarn for bein' prompt air gret, While, 'long o' Congress, you can't strike, 'f you git an iron het; They bother roun' with argooin', an' var'ous sorts o' foolin', To make sure ef it's leg'lly het, an' all the while it's coolin', So's't when you come to strike, it ain't no gret to wish ye j'y on, An' hurts the hammer 'z much or more ez wut it doos the iron, 239 Jeff don't allow no jawin'-sprees for three mouths at a stretch, Knowin' the ears long speeches suits air mostly made to metch; He jes' ropes in your tonguey chaps an' reg'lar ten-inch bores An' lets 'em play at Congress, ef they'll du it with closed doors; So they ain't no more bothersome than ef we'd took an' sunk 'em, An' yit enj'y th' exclusive right to one another's Buncombe 'thout doin' nobody no hurt, an' 'thout its costin' nothin', Their pay bein' jes' Confedrit funds, they findin' keep an' clothin'; They taste the sweets o' public life, an' plan their little jobs, An' suck the Treash'ry (no gret harm, for it's ez dry ez cobs,) 240 An' go thru all the motions jest ez safe ez in a prison, An' hev their business to themselves, while Buregard hez hisn: Ez long 'z he gives the Hessians fits, committees can't make bother 'bout whether 't's done the legle way or whether 't's done tother. An' _I_ tell _you_ you've gut to larn thet War ain't one long teeter Betwixt _I wan' to_ an' _'Twun't du_, debatin' like a skeetur Afore he lights,--all is, to give the other side a millin', An' arter thet's done, th' ain't no resk but wut the lor'll be willin'; No metter wut the guv'ment is, ez nigh ez I can hit it, A lickin' 's constitooshunal, pervidin' _We_ don't git it. 250 Jeff don't stan' dilly-dallyin', afore he takes a fort, (With no one in,) to git the leave o' the nex' Soopreme Court, Nor don't want forty-'leven weeks o' jawin' an' expoundin', To prove a nigger hez a right to save him, ef he's drowndin'; Whereas ole Abe 'ud sink afore he'd let a darkie boost him, Ef Taney shouldn't come along an' hedn't interdooced him. It ain't your twenty millions thet'll ever block Jeff's game, But one Man thet wun't let 'em jog jest ez he's takin' aim: Your numbers they may strengthen ye or weaken ye, ez 't heppens They're willin' to be helpin' hands or wuss-'n-nothin' cap'ns. 260 I've chose my side, an' 'tain't no odds ef I wuz drawed with magnets, Or ef I thought it prudenter to jine the nighes' bagnets; I've made my ch'ice, an' ciphered out, from all I see an' heard, Th' ole Constitooshun never'd git her decks for action cleared, Long 'z you elect for Congressmen poor shotes thet want to go Coz they can't seem to git their grub no otherways than so, An' let your bes' men stay to home coz they wun't show ez talkers, Nor can't be hired to fool ye an' sof'-soap ye at a caucus,-- Long 'z ye set by Rotashun more 'n ye do by folks's merits, 269 Ez though experunce thriv by change o' sile, like corn an' kerrits,-- Long 'z you allow a critter's 'claims' coz, spite o' shoves an' tippins, He's kep' his private pan jest where 'twould ketch mos' public drippin's,-- Long 'z A.'ll turn tu an' grin' B.'s exe, ef B.'ll help him grin' hisn, (An' thet's the main idee by which your leadin' men hev risen,)-- Long 'z you let _ary_ exe be groun', 'less 'tis to cut the weasan' O' sneaks thet dunno till they're told wut is an' wut ain't Treason,-- Long 'z ye give out commissions to a lot o' peddlin' drones Thet trade in whiskey with their men an' skin 'em to their bones,-- Long 'z ye sift out 'safe' canderdates thet no one ain't afeared on Coz they're so thund'rin' eminent for bein' never heard on, 280 An' hain't no record, ez it's called, for folks to pick a hole in, Ez ef it hurt a man to hev a body with a soul in, An' it wuz ostentashun to be showin' on 't about, When half his feller-citizens contrive to du without,-- Long 'z you suppose your votes can turn biled kebbage into brain, An' ary man thet's pop'lar's fit to drive a lightnin'-train,-- Long 'z you believe democracy means _I'm ez good ez you be,_ An' that a feller from the ranks can't be a knave or booby,-- Long 'z Congress seems purvided, like yer street-cars an' yer 'busses, With ollers room for jes' one more o' your spiled-in-bakin' cusses, 290 Dough 'thout the emptins of a soul, an' yit with means about 'em (Like essence-peddlers[23]) thet'll make folks long to be without 'em, Jes heavy 'nough to turn a scale thet's doubtfle the wrong way, An' make their nat'ral arsenal o' bein' nasty pay.-- Long 'z them things last, (an' _I_ don't see no gret signs of improvin',) I sha'n't up stakes, not hardly yit, nor 'twouldn't pay for movin': For, 'fore you lick us, it'll be the long'st day ever _you_ see. Yourn, (ez I 'xpec' to be nex' spring,) B., MARKISS O' BIG BOOSY. No. IV A MESSAGE OF JEFF DAVIS IN SECRET SESSION _Conjecturally reported by_ H. BIGLOW TO THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY JAALAM, 10th March, 1862. GENTLEMEN,--My leisure has been so entirely occupied with the hitherto fruitless endeavour to decypher the Runick inscription whose fortunate discovery I mentioned in my last communication, that I have not found time to discuss, as I had intended, the great problem of what we are to do with slavery,--a topick on which the publick mind in this place is at present more than ever agitated. What my wishes and hopes are I need not say, but for safe conclusions I do not conceive that we are yet in possession of facts enough on which to bottom them with certainty. Acknowledging the hand of Providence, as I do, in all events, I am sometimes inclined to think that they are wiser than we, and am willing to wait till we have made this continent once more a place where freemen can live in security and honour, before assuming any further responsibility. This is the view taken by my neighbour Habakkuk Sloansure, Esq., the president of our bank, whose opinion in the practical affairs of life has great weight with me, as I have generally found it to be justified by the event, and whose counsel, had I followed it, would have saved me from an unfortunate investment of a considerable part of the painful economies of half a century in the Northwest-Passage Tunnel. After a somewhat animated discussion with this gentleman a few days since, I expanded, on the _audi alteram partem_ principle, something which he happened to say by way of illustration, into the following fable. FESTINA LENTE Once on a time there was a pool Fringed all about with flag-leaves cool And spotted with cow-lilies garish, Of frogs and pouts the ancient parish. Alders the creaking redwings sink on, Tussocks that house blithe Bob o' Lincoln Hedged round the unassailed seclusion, Where muskrats piled their cells Carthusian; And many a moss-embroidered log, The watering-place of summer frog, Slept and decayed with patient skill, As watering-places sometimes will. Now in this Abbey of Theleme, Which realized the fairest dream That ever dozing bull-frog had, Sunned on a half-sunk lily-pad, There rose a party with a mission To mend the polliwogs' condition, Who notified the selectmen To call a meeting there and then. 'Some kind of steps,' they said, 'are needed; They don't come on so fast as we did: Let's dock their tails; if that don't make 'em Frogs by brevet, the Old One take 'em! That boy, that came the other day To dig some flag-root down this way, His jack-knife left, and 'tis a sign That Heaven approves of our design: 'Twere wicked not to urge the step on, When Providence has sent the weapon.' Old croakers, deacons of the mire, That led the deep batrachian choir, _Uk! Uk! Caronk!_ with bass that might Have left Lablache's out of sight, Shook nobby heads, and said, 'No go! You'd better let 'em try to grow: Old Doctor Time is slow, but still He does know how to make a pill.' But vain was all their hoarsest bass, Their old experience out of place, And spite of croaking and entreating, The vote was carried in marsh-meeting. 'Lord knows,' protest the polliwogs, 'We're anxious to be grown-up frogs; But don't push in to do the work Of Nature till she prove a shirk; 'Tis not by jumps that she advances, But wins her way by circumstances; Pray, wait awhile, until you know We're so contrived as not to grow; Let Nature take her own direction, And she'll absorb our imperfection; _You_ mightn't like 'em to appear with, But we must have the things to steer with.' 'No,' piped the party of reform, 'All great results are ta'en by storm; Fate holds her best gifts till we show We've strength to make her let them go; The Providence that works in history, And seems to some folks such a mystery, Does not creep slowly on _incog._, But moves by jumps, a mighty frog; No more reject the Age's chrism, Your queues are an anachronism; No more the Future's promise mock, But lay your tails upon the block, Thankful that we the means have voted To have you thus to frogs promoted.' The thing was done, the tails were cropped. And home each philotadpole hopped, In faith rewarded to exult, And wait the beautiful result. Too soon it came; our pool, so long The theme of patriot bull-frog's song, Next day was reeking, fit to smother, With heads and tails that missed each other,-- Here snoutless tails, there tailless snouts; The only gainers were the pouts. MORAL From lower to the higher next, Not to the top, is Nature's text; And embryo Good, to reach full stature, Absorbs the Evil in its nature. I think that nothing will ever give permanent peace and security to this continent but the extirpation of Slavery therefrom, and that the occasion is nigh; but I would do nothing hastily or vindictively, nor presume to jog the elbow of Providence. No desperate measures for me till we are sure that all others are hopeless,--_flectere si nequeo_ SUPEROS, _Acheronta movebo_. To make Emancipation a reform instead of a revolution is worth a little patience, that we may have the Border States first, and then the non-slaveholders of the Cotton States, with us in principle,--a consummation that seems to be nearer than many imagine. _Fiat justitia, ruat coelum_, is not to be taken in a literal sense by statesmen, whose problem is to get justice done with as little jar as possible to existing order, which has at least so much of heaven in it that it is not chaos. Our first duty toward our enslaved brother is to educate him, whether he be white or black. The first need of the free black is to elevate himself according to the standard of this material generation. So soon as the Ethiopian goes in his chariot, he will find not only Apostles, but Chief Priests and Scribes and Pharisees willing to ride with him. 'Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se Quam quod ridiculos homines facit.' I rejoice in the President's late Message, which at last proclaims the Government on the side of freedom, justice, and sound policy. As I write, comes the news of our disaster at Hampton Roads. I do not understand the supineness which, after fair warning, leaves wood to an unequal conflict with iron. It is not enough merely to have the right on our side, if we stick to the old flint-lock of tradition. I have observed in my parochial experience (_haud ignarus mali_) that the Devil is prompt to adopt the latest inventions of destructive warfare, and may thus take even such a three-decker as Bishop Butler at an advantage. It is curious, that, as gunpowder made armour useless on shore, so armour is having its revenge by baffling its old enemy at sea; and that, while gunpowder robbed land warfare of nearly all its picturesqueness to give even greater stateliness and sublimity to a sea-fight, armour bids fair to degrade the latter into a squabble between two iron-shelled turtles. Yours, with esteem and respect, HOMER WILBUR, A.M. P.S.--I had wellnigh forgotten to say that the object of this letter is to enclose a communication from the gifted pen of Mr. Biglow. I sent you a messige, my friens, t'other day, To tell you I'd nothin' pertickler to say: 'twuz the day our new nation gut kin' o' stillborn, So 'twuz my pleasant dooty t' acknowledge the corn, An' I see clearly then, ef I didn't before, Thet the _augur_ in inauguration means _bore_. I needn't tell _you_ thet my messige wuz written To diffuse correc' notions in France an' Gret Britten, An' agin to impress on the poppylar mind The comfort an' wisdom o' goin' it blind,-- 10 To say thet I didn't abate not a hooter O' my faith in a happy an' glorious futur', Ez rich in each soshle an' p'litickle blessin' Ez them thet we now hed the joy o' possessin', With a people united, an' longin' to die For wut _we_ call their country, without askin' why, An' all the gret things we concluded to slope for Ez much within reach now ez ever--to hope for. We've gut all the ellerments, this very hour, Thet make up a fus'-class, self-governin' power: 20 We've a war, an' a debt, an' a flag; an' ef this Ain't to be inderpendunt, why, wut on airth is? An' nothin' now henders our takin' our station Ez the freest, enlightenedest, civerlized nation, Built up on our bran'-new politickle thesis Thet a Gov'ment's fust right is to tumble to pieces,-- I say nothin' henders our takin' our place Ez the very fus'-best o' the whole human race, A spittin' tobacker ez proud ez you please On Victory's bes' carpets, or loaf-in' at ease 30 In the Tool'ries front-parlor, discussin' affairs With our heels on the backs o' Napoleon's new chairs, An' princes a-mixin' our cocktails an' slings,-- Excep', wal, excep' jest a very few things, Sech ez navies an' armies an' wherewith to pay, An' gettin' our sogers to run t'other way, An' not be too over-pertickler in tryin' To hunt up the very las' ditches to die in. Ther' are critters so base thet they want it explained Jes' wut is the totle amount thet we've gained, 40 Ez ef we could maysure stupenjious events By the low Yankee stan'ard o' dollars an' cents: They seem to forgit, thet, sence last year revolved, We've succeeded in gittin' seceshed an' dissolved, An' thet no one can't hope to git thru dissolootion 'thout some kin' o' strain on the best Constitootion. Who asks for a prospec' more flettrin' an' bright, When from here clean to Texas it's all one free fight? Hain't we rescued from Seward the gret leadin' featurs Thet makes it wuth while to be reasonin' creators? 50 Hain't we saved Habus Coppers, improved it in fact, By suspendin' the Unionists 'stid o' the Act? Ain't the laws free to all? Where on airth else d' ye see Every freeman improvin' his own rope an' tree? Ain't our piety sech (in our speeches an' messiges) Ez t' astonish ourselves in the bes'-composed pessiges, An' to make folks thet knowed us in th' ole state o' things Think convarsion ez easy ez drinkin' gin-slings? It's ne'ssary to take a good confident tone With the public; but here, jest amongst us, I own 60 Things look blacker 'n thunder. Ther' 's no use denyin' We're clean out o' money, an' 'most out o' lyin'; Two things a young nation can't mennage without, Ef she wants to look wal at her fust comin' out; For the fust supplies physickle strength, while the second Gives a morril advantage thet's hard to be reckoned: For this latter I'm willin' to du wut I can; For the former you'll hev to consult on a plan,-- Though our _fust_ want (an' this pint I want your best views on) Is plausible paper to print I.O.U.s on. 70 Some gennlemen think it would cure all our cankers In the way o' finance, ef we jes' hanged the bankers; An' I own the proposle 'ud square with my views, Ef their lives wuzn't all thet we'd left 'em to lose. Some say thet more confidence might be inspired, Ef we voted our cities an' towns to be fired,-- A plan thet 'ud suttenly tax our endurance, Coz 'twould be our own bills we should git for th' insurance; But cinders, no matter how sacred we think 'em, Mightn't strike furrin minds ez good sources of income, 80 Nor the people, perhaps, wouldn't like the eclaw O' bein' all turned into paytriots by law. Some want we should buy all the cotton an' burn it, On a pledge, when we've gut thru the war, to return it,-- Then to take the proceeds an' hold _them_ ez security For an issue o' bonds to be met at maturity With an issue o' notes to be paid in hard cash On the fus' Monday follerin' the 'tarnal Allsmash: This hez a safe air, an', once hold o' the gold, 'ud leave our vile plunderers out in the cold, 90 An' _might_ temp' John Bull, ef it warn't for the dip he Once gut from the banks o' my own Massissippi. Some think we could make, by arrangin' the figgers, A hendy home-currency out of our niggers; But it wun't du to lean much on ary sech staff, For they're gittin' tu current a'ready, by half. One gennleman says, ef we lef' our loan out Where Floyd could git hold on 't _he_'d take it, no doubt; But 'tain't jes' the takin', though 't hez a good look, We mus' git sunthin' out on it arter it's took, 100 An' we need now more'n ever, with sorrer I own, Thet some one another should let us a loan, Sence a soger wun't fight, on'y jes' while he draws his Pay down on the nail, for the best of all causes, 'thout askin' to know wut the quarrel's about,-- An' once come to thet, why, our game is played out. It's ez true ez though I shouldn't never hev said it, Thet a hitch hez took place in our system o' credit; I swear it's all right in my speeches an' messiges, But ther's idees afloat, ez ther' is about sessiges: 110 Folks wun't take a bond ez a basis to trade on, Without nosin' round to find out wut it's made on, An' the thought more an' more thru the public min' crosses Thet our Treshry hez gut 'mos' too many dead hosses. Wut's called credit, you see, is some like a balloon, Thet looks while it's up 'most ez harnsome 'z a moon, But once git a leak in 't, an' wut looked so grand Caves righ' down in a jiffy ez flat ez your hand. Now the world is a dreffle mean place, for our sins, Where ther' ollus is critters about with long pins 120 A-prickin' the bubbles we've blowed with sech care, An' provin' ther' 's nothin' inside but bad air: They're all Stuart Millses, poor-white trash, an' sneaks, Without no more chivverlry 'n Choctaws or Creeks, Who think a real gennleman's promise to pay Is meant to be took in trade's ornery way: Them fellers an' I couldn' never agree; They're the nateral foes o' the Southun Idee; I'd gladly take all of our other resks on me To be red o' this low-lived politikle 'con'my! 130 Now a dastardly notion is gittin' about Thet our bladder is bust an' the gas oozin' out, An' onless we can mennage in some way to stop it, Why, the thing's a gone coon, an' we might ez wal drop it. Brag works wal at fust, but it ain't jes' the thing For a stiddy inves'ment the shiners to bring, An' votin' we're prosp'rous a hundred times over Wun't change bein' starved into livin' in clover. Manassas done sunthin' tow'rds drawin' the wool O'er the green, antislavery eyes o' John Bull: 140 Oh, _warn't_ it a godsend, jes' when sech tight fixes Wuz crowdin' us mourners, to throw double-sixes! I wuz tempted to think, an' it wuzn't no wonder, Ther' wuz really a Providence,--over or under,-- When, all packed for Nashville, I fust ascertained From the papers up North wut a victory we'd gained. 'twuz the time for diffusin' correc' views abroad Of our union an' strength an' relyin' on God; An', fact, when I'd gut thru my fust big surprise, I much ez half b'lieved in my own tallest lies, 150 An' conveyed the idee thet the whole Southun popperlace Wuz Spartans all on the keen jump for Thermopperlies, Thet set on the Lincolnites' bombs till they bust, An' fight for the priv'lege o' dyin' the fust; But Roanoke, Bufort, Millspring, an' the rest Of our recent starn-foremost successes out West, Hain't left us a foot for our swellin' to stand on,-- We've showed _too_ much o' wut Buregard calls _abandon_, For all our Thermopperlies (an' it's a marcy We hain't hed no more) hev ben clean vicy-varsy, 160 An' wut Spartans wuz lef' when the battle wuz done Wuz them thet wuz too unambitious to run. Oh, ef we hed on'y jes' gut Reecognition, Things now would ha' ben in a different position! You'd ha' hed all you wanted: the paper blockade Smashed up into toothpicks; unlimited trade In the one thing thet's needfle, till niggers, I swow, Hed ben thicker'n provisional shin-plasters now; Quinine by the ton 'ginst the shakes when they seize ye; Nice paper to coin into C.S.A. specie; 170 The voice of the driver'd be heerd in our land, An' the univarse scringe, ef we lifted our hand: Wouldn't _thet_ be some like a fulfillin' the prophecies, With all the fus' fem'lies in all the fust offices? 'twuz a beautiful dream, an' all sorrer is idle,-- But _ef_ Lincoln _would_ ha' hanged Mason an' Slidell! For wouldn't the Yankees hev found they'd ketched Tartars, Ef they'd raised two sech critters as them into martyrs? Mason _wuz_ F.F.V., though a cheap card to win on, But t'other was jes' New York trash to begin on; 180 They ain't o' no good in European pellices, But think wut a help they'd ha' ben on their gallowses! They'd ha' felt they wuz truly fulfillin' their mission, An' oh, how dog-cheap we'd ha' gut Reecognition! But somehow another, wutever we've tried, Though the the'ry's fust-rate, the facs _wun't_ coincide: Facs are contrary 'z mules, an' ez hard in the mouth, An' they allus hev showed a mean spite to the South. Sech bein' the case, we hed best look about For some kin' o' way to slip _our_ necks out: 190 Le's vote our las' dollar, ef one can be found, (An', at any rate, votin' it hez a good sound,)-- Le''s swear thet to arms all our people is flyin', (The critters can't read, an' wun't know how we're lyin',)-- Thet Toombs is advancin' to sack Cincinnater, With a rovin' commission to pillage an' slahter,-- Thet we've throwed to the winds all regard for wut's lawfle, An' gone in for sunthin' promiscu'sly awfle. Ye see, hitherto, it's our own knaves an' fools Thet we've used, (those for whetstones, an' t'others ez tools,) 200 An' now our las' chance is in puttin' to test The same kin' o' cattle up North an' out West,-- Your Belmonts, Vallandighams, Woodses, an' sech, Poor shotes thet ye couldn't persuade us to tech, Not in ornery times, though we're willin' to feed 'em With a nod now an' then, when we happen to need 'em; Why, for my part, I'd ruther shake hands with a nigger Than with cusses that load an' don't darst dror a trigger; They're the wust wooden nutmegs the Yankees perdooce, Shaky everywheres else, an' jes' sound on the goose; 210 They ain't wuth a cuss, an' I set nothin' by 'em, But we're in sech a fix thet I s'pose we mus' try 'em. I--But, Gennlemen, here's a despatch jes' come in Which shows thet the tide's begun turnin' agin',-- Gret Cornfedrit success! C'lumbus eevacooated! I mus' run down an' hev the thing properly stated, An' show wut a triumph it is, an' how lucky To fin'lly git red o' thet cussed Kentucky,-- An' how, sence Fort Donelson, winnin' the day Consists in triumphantly gittin' away. 220 No. V SPEECH OF HONOURABLE PRESERVED DOE IN SECRET CAUCUS TO THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY JAALAM, 12th April, 1862. GENTLEMEN,--As I cannot but hope that the ultimate, if not speedy, success of the national arms is now sufficiently ascertained, sure as I am of the righteousness of our cause and its consequent claim on the blessing of God, (for I would not show a faith inferior to that of the Pagan historian with his _Facile evenit quod Dis cordi est_,) it seems to me a suitable occasion to withdraw our minds a moment from the confusing din of battle to objects of peaceful and permanent interest. Let us not neglect the monuments of preterite history because what shall be history is so diligently making under our eyes. _Cras ingens iterabimus æquor;_ to-morrow will be time enough for that stormy sea; to-day let me engage the attention of your readers with the Runick inscription to whose fortunate discovery I have heretofore alluded. Well may we say with the poet, _Multa renascuntur quæ jam cecidere_. And I would premise, that, although I can no longer resist the evidence of my own senses from the stone before me to the ante-Columbian discovery of this continent by the Northmen, _gens inclytissima_, as they are called in a Palermitan inscription, written fortunately in a less debatable character than that which I am about to decipher, yet I would by no means be understood as wishing to vilipend the merits of the great Genoese, whose name will never be forgotten so long as the inspiring strains of 'Hail Columbia' shall continue to be heard. Though he must be stripped also of whatever praise may belong to the experiment of the egg, which I find proverbially attributed by Castilian authors to a certain Juanito or Jack, (perhaps an offshoot of our giant-killing mythus,) his name will still remain one of the most illustrious of modern times. But the impartial historian owes a duty likewise to obscure merit, and my solicitude to render a tardy justice is perhaps quickened by my having known those who, had their own field of labour been less secluded, might have found a readier acceptance with the reading publick, I could give an example, but I forbear: _forsitan nostris ex ossibus oritur ultor_. Touching Runick inscriptions, I find that they may lie classed under three general heads; 1º. Those which are understood by the Danish Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, and Professor Rafn, their Secretary; 2º. Those which are comprehensible only by Mr. Rafn; and 3º. Those which neither the Society, Mr. Rafn, nor anybody else can be said in any definite sense to understand, and which accordingly offer peculiar temptations to enucleating sagacity. These last are naturally deemed the most valuable by intelligent antiquaries, and to this class the stone now in my possession fortunately belongs. Such give a picturesque variety to ancient events, because susceptible oftentimes of as many interpretations as there are individual archæologists; and since facts are only the pulp in which the Idea or event-seed is softly imbedded till it ripen, it is of little consequence what colour or flavour we attribute to them, provided it be agreeable. Availing myself of the obliging assistance of Mr. Arphaxad Bowers, an ingenious photographick artist, whose house-on-wheels has now stood for three years on our Meeting-House Green, with the somewhat contradictory inscription,--'_our motto is onward_,'--I have sent accurate copies of my treasure to many learned men and societies, both native and European. I may hereafter communicate their different and (_me judice_) equally erroneous solutions. I solicit also, Messrs. Editors, your own acceptance of the copy herewith enclosed. I need only premise further, that the stone itself is a goodly block of metamorphick sandstone, and that the Runes resemble very nearly the ornithichnites or fossil bird-tracks of Dr. Hitchcock, but with less regularity or apparent design than is displayed by those remarkable geological monuments. These are rather the _non bene junctarum discordia semina rerum_. Resolved to leave no door open to cavil, I first of all attempted the elucidation of this remarkable example of lithick literature by the ordinary modes, but with no adequate return for my labour. I then considered myself amply justified in resorting to that heroick treatment the felicity of which, as applied by the great Bentley to Milton, had long ago enlisted my admiration. Indeed, I had already made up my mind, that, in case good fortune should throw any such invaluable record in my way, I would proceed with it in the following simple and satisfactory method. Alter a cursory examination, merely sufficing for an approximative estimate of its length, I would write down a hypothetical inscription based upon antecedent probabilities, and then proceed to extract from the characters engraven on the stone a meaning as nearly as possible conformed to this _a priori_ product of my own ingenuity. The result more than justified my hopes, inasmuch as the two inscriptions were made without any great violence to tally in all essential particulars. I then proceeded, not without some anxiety, to my second test, which was, to read the Runick letters diagonally, and again with the same success. With an excitement pardonable under the circumstances, yet tempered with thankful humility, I now applied my last and severest trial, my _experimentum crucis_. I turned the stone, now doubly precious in my eyes, with scrupulous exactness upside down. The physical exertion so far displaced my spectacles as to derange for a moment the focus of vision. I confess that it was with some tremulousness that I readjusted them upon my nose, and prepared my mind to bear with calmness any disappointment that might ensue. But, _O albo dies notanda lapillo!_ what was my delight to find that the change of position had effected none in the sense of the writing, even by so much as a single letter! I was now, and justly, as I think, satisfied of the conscientious exactness of my interpretation. It is as follows: HERE BJARNA GRIMOLFSSON FIRST DRANK CLOUD-BROTHER THROUGH CHILD-OF-LAND-AND-WATER: that is, drew smoke through a reed stem. In other words, we have here a record of the first smoking of the herb _Nicotiana Tabacum_ by an European on this continent. The probable results of this discovery are so vast as to baffle conjecture. If it be objected, that the smoking of a pipe would hardly justify the setting up of a memorial stone, I answer, that even now the Moquis Indian, ere he takes his first whiff, bows reverently toward the four quarters of the sky in succession, and that the loftiest monuments have been read to perpetuate fame, which is the dream of the shadow of smoke. The _Saga_, it will be remembered, leaves this Bjarna to a fate something like that of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, on board a sinking ship in the 'wormy sea,' having generously given up his place in the boat to a certain Icelander. It is doubly pleasant, therefore, to meet with this proof that the brave old man arrived safely in Vinland, and that his declining years were cheered by the respectful attentions of the dusky denizens of our then uninvaded forest. Most of all was I gratified, however, in thus linking forever the name of my native town with one of the most momentous occurrences of modern times. Hitherto Jalaam, though in soil, climate, and geographical position as highly qualified to be the theatre of remarkable historical incidents as any spot on the earth's surface, has been, if I may say it without seeming to question the wisdom of Providence, almost maliciously neglected, as it might appear, by occurrences of world-wide interest in want of a situation. And in matters of this nature it must be confessed that adequate events are as necessary as the _vates sacer_ to record them. Jaalam stood always modestly ready, but circumstances made no fitting response to her generous intentions. Now, however, she assumes her place on the historick roll. I have hitherto been a zealous opponent of the Circean herb, but I shall now reëxamine the question without bias. I am aware that the Rev. Jonas Tutchel, in a recent communication to the 'Bogus Four Corners Weekly Meridian,' has endeavored to show that this is the sepulchral inscription of Thorwald Eriksson, who, as is well-known, was slain in Vinland by the natives. But I think he has been misled by a preconceived theory, and cannot but feel that he has thus made an ungracious return for my allowing him to inspect the stone with the aid of my own glasses (he having by accident left his at home) and in my own study. The heathen ancients might have instructed this Christian minister in the rites of hospitality; but much is to be pardoned to the spirit of self-love. He must indeed be ingenious who can make out the words _hèr hvilir_ from any characters in the inscription in question, which, whatever else it may be, is certainly not mortuary. And even should the reverend gentleman succeed in persuading some fantastical wits of the soundness of his views, I do not see what useful end he will have gained. For if the English Courts of Law hold the testimony of gravestones from the burial-grounds of Protestant dissenters to be questionable, even where it is essential in proving a descent, I cannot conceive that the epitaphial assertions of heathens should be esteemed of more authority by any man of orthodox sentiments. At this moment, happening to cast my eyes upon the stone, whose characters a transverse light from my southern window brings out with singular distinctness, another interpretation has occurred to me, promising even more interesting results. I hasten to close my letter in order to follow at once the clue thus providentially suggested. I inclose, as usual, a contribution from Mr. Biglow, and remain, Gentlemen, with esteem and respect, Your Obedient Humble Servant, HOMER WILBUR, A.M. I thank ye, my frien's, for the warmth o' your greetin': Ther' 's few airthly blessin's but wut's vain an' fleetin'; But ef ther' is one thet hain't _no_ cracks an' flaws, An' is wuth goin' in for, it's pop'lar applause; It sends up the sperits ez lively ez rockets, An' I feel it--wal, down to the eend o' my pockets. Jes' lovin' the people is Canaan in view, But it's Canaan paid quarterly t' hev 'em love you; It's a blessin' thet's breakin' out ollus in fresh spots; It's a-follerin' Moses 'thout losin' the flesh-pots. 10 But, Gennlemen, 'scuse me, I ain't sech a raw cus Ez to go luggin' ellerkence into a caucus,-- Thet is, into one where the call comprehen's Nut the People in person, but on'y their frien's; I'm so kin' o' used to convincin' the masses Of th' edvantage o' bein' self-governin' asses, I forgut thet _we_'re all o' the sort thet pull wires An' arrange for the public their wants an' desires, An' thet wut we hed met for wuz jes' to agree Wut the People's opinions in futur' should be. 20 Now, to come to the nub, we've ben all disappinted, An' our leadin' idees are a kind o' disjinted, Though, fur ez the nateral man could discern, Things ough' to ha' took most an oppersite turn. But The'ry is jes' like a train on the rail, Thet, weather or no, puts her thru without fail, While Fac' 's the ole stage thet gits sloughed in the ruts, An' hez to allow for your darned efs an' buts, An' so, nut intendin' no pers'nal reflections, They don't--don't nut allus, thet is,--make connections: 30 Sometimes, when it really doos seem thet they'd oughter Combine jest ez kindly ez new rum an' water, Both'll be jest ez sot in their ways ez a bagnet, Ez otherwise-minded ez th' eends of a magnet, An' folks like you 'n' me, thet ain't ept to be sold, Git somehow or 'nother left out in the cold. I expected 'fore this, 'thout no gret of a row, Jeff D. would ha' ben where A. Lincoln is now, With Taney to say 'twuz all legle an' fair, An' a jury o' Deemocrats ready to swear 40 Thet the ingin o' State gut throwed into the ditch By the fault o' the North in misplacin' the switch. Things wuz ripenin' fust-rate with Buchanan to nuss 'em; But the People--they wouldn't be Mexicans, cuss 'em! Ain't the safeguards o' freedom upsot, 'z you may say, Ef the right o' rev'lution is took clean away? An' doosn't the right primy-fashy include The bein' entitled to nut be subdued? The fect is, we'd gone for the Union so strong, When Union meant South ollus right an' North wrong, 50 Thet the People gut fooled into thinkin' it might Worry on middlin' wal with the North in the right. We might ha' ben now jest ez prosp'rous ez France, Where p'litikle enterprise hez a fair chance, An' the People is heppy an' proud et this hour, Long ez they hev the votes, to let Nap hey the power; But _our_ folks they went an' believed wut we'd told 'em An', the flag once insulted, no mortle could hold 'em. 'Twuz pervokin' jest when we wuz cert'in to win,-- And I, for one, wun't trust the masses agin: 60 For a People thet knows much ain't fit to be free In the self-cockin', back-action style o' J.D. I can't believe now but wut half on 't is lies; For who'd thought the North wuz agoin' to rise, Or take the pervokin'est kin' of a stump, 'thout 'twuz sunthin' ez pressin' ez Gabr'el's las' trump? Or who'd ha' supposed, arter _sech_ swell an' bluster 'bout the lick-ary-ten-on-ye fighters they'd muster, Raised by hand on briled lightnin', ez op'lent 'z you please In a primitive furrest ol femmily-trees,-- 70 Who'd ha' thought thet them Southuners ever 'ud show Starns with pedigrees to 'em like theirn to the foe, Or, when the vamosin' come, ever to find Nat'ral masters in front an' mean white folks behind? By ginger, ef I'd ha' known half I know now, When I wuz to Congress, I wouldn't, I swow, Hey let 'em cair on so high-minded an' sarsy, 'thout _some_ show o' wut you may call vicy-varsy. To be sure, we wuz under a contrac' jes' then To be dreffle forbearin' towards Southun men; 80 We hed to go sheers in preservin' the bellance; An' ez they seemed to feel they wuz wastin' their tellents 'thout some un to kick, 'twarn't more 'n proper, you know, Each should furnish his part; an' sence they found the toe, An' we wuzn't cherubs--wal, we found the buffer, For fear thet the Compromise System should suffer. I wun't say the plan hedn't onpleasant featurs,-- For men are perverse an' onreasonin' creaturs, An' forgit thet in this life 'tain't likely to heppen Their own privit fancy should ollus be cappen,-- 90 But it worked jest ez smooth ez the key of a safe, An' the gret Union bearin's played free from all chafe. They warn't hard to suit, ef they hed their own way, An' we (thet is, some on us) made the thing pay: 'twuz a fair give-an'-take out of Uncle Sam's heap; Ef they took wut warn't theirn, wut we give come ez cheap; The elect gut the offices down to tide-waiter, The people took skinnin' ez mild ez a tater. Seemed to choose who they wanted tu, footed the bills, An' felt kind o' 'z though they wuz havin' their wills, 100 Which kep' 'em ez harmless an' cherfle ez crickets, While all we invested wuz names on the tickets; Wal, ther' 's nothin', for folks fond o' lib'ral consumption Free o' charge, like democ'acy tempered with gumption! Now warn't thet a system wuth pains in presarvin', Where the people found jints an' their frien's done the carvin',-- Where the many done all o' their thinkin' by proxy, An' were proud on 't ez long ez 'twuz christened Democ'cy,-- Where the few let us sap all o' Freedom's foundations, Ef you call it reformin' with prudence an' patience, 110 An' were willin' Jeff's snake-egg should hetch with the rest, Ef you writ 'Constitootional' over the nest? But it's all out o' kilter, ('twuz too good to last,) An' all jes' by J.D.'s perceedin' too fast; Ef he'd on'y hung on for a month or two more, We'd ha' gut things fixed nicer 'n they hed ben before: Afore he drawed off an' lef all in confusion, We wuz safely entrenched in the ole Constitootion, With an outlyin', heavy-gun, case-mated fort To rake all assailants,--I mean th' S.J. Court. 120 Now I never'll acknowledge (nut ef you should skin me) 'twuz wise to abandon sech works to the in'my, An' let him fin' out thet wut scared him so long, Our whole line of argyments, lookin' so strong, All our Scriptur an' law, every the'ry an' fac', Wuz Quaker-guns daubed with Pro-slavery black. Why, ef the Republicans ever should git Andy Johnson or some one to lend 'em the wit An' the spunk jes' to mount Constitootion an' Court With Columbiad guns, your real ekle-rights sort, 130 Or drill out the spike from the ole Declaration Thet can kerry a solid shot clearn roun' creation, We'd better take maysures for shettin' up shop, An' put off our stock by a vendoo or swop. But they wun't never dare tu; you'll see 'em in Edom 'fore they ventur' to go where their doctrines 'ud lead 'em: They've ben takin' our princerples up ez we dropt 'em, An' thought it wuz terrible 'cute to adopt 'em; But they'll fin' out 'fore long thet their hope's ben deceivin' 'em, An' thet princerples ain't o' no good, ef you b'lieve in 'em; It makes 'em tu stiff for a party to use, 141 Where they'd ough' to be easy 'z an ole pair o' shoes. If _we_ say 'n our pletform thet all men are brothers, We don't mean thet some folks ain't more so 'n some others; An' it's wal understood thet we make a selection, An' thet brotherhood kin' o' subsides arter 'lection. The fust thing for sound politicians to larn is, Thet Truth, to dror kindly in all sorts o' harness, Mus' be kep' in the abstract,--for, come to apply it, You're ept to hurt some folks's interists by it. 150 Wal, these 'ere Republicans (some on 'em) ects Ez though gineral mexims 'ud suit speshle facts; An' there's where we'll nick 'em, there's where they'll be lost; For applyin' your princerple's wut makes it cost, An' folks don't want Fourth o' July t' interfere With the business-consarns o' the rest o' the year, No more 'n they want Sunday to pry an' to peek Into wut they are doin' the rest o' the week. A ginooine statesman should be on his guard, Ef he _must_ hev beliefs, nut to b'lieve 'em tu hard; 160 For, ez sure ez he does, he'll be blartin' 'em out 'thout regardin' the natur' o' man more 'n a spout, Nor it don't ask much gumption to pick out a flaw In a party whose leaders are loose in the jaw: An' so in our own case I ventur' to hint Thet we'd better nut air our perceedin's in print, Nor pass resserlootions ez long ez your arm Thet may, ez things heppen to turn, du us harm; For when you've done all your real meanin' to smother, The darned things'll up an' mean sunthin' or 'nother. 170 Jeff'son prob'ly meant wal with his 'born free an' ekle,' But it's turned out a real crooked stick in the sekle; It's taken full eighty-odd year--don't you see?-- From the pop'lar belief to root out thet idee, An', arter all, suckers on 't keep buddin' forth In the nat'lly onprincipled mind o' the North. No, never say nothin' without you're compelled tu, An' then don't say nothin' thet you can be held tu, Nor don't leave no friction-idees layin' loose For the ign'ant to put to incend'ary use. 180 You know I'm a feller thet keeps a skinned eye On the leetle events thet go skurryin' by, Coz it's of'ner by them than by gret ones you'll see Wut the p'litickle weather is likely to be. Now I don't think the South's more 'n begun to be licked, But I _du_ think, ez Jeff says, the wind-bag's gut pricked; It'll blow for a spell an' keep puffin' an' wheezin', The tighter our army an' navy keep, squeezin'-- For they can't help spread-eaglein' long 'z ther's a mouth To blow Enfield's Speaker thru lef' at the South. 190 But it's high time for us to be settin' our faces Towards reconstructin' the national basis, With an eye to beginnin' agin on the jolly ticks We used to chalk up 'hind the back-door o' politics; An' the fus' thing's to save wut of Slav'ry ther's lef' Arter this (I mus' call it) imprudence o' Jeff: For a real good Abuse, with its roots fur an' wide, Is the kin' o' thing _I_ like to hev on my side; A Scriptur' name makes it ez sweet ez a rose, An' it's tougher the older an' uglier it grows-- 200 (I ain't speakin' now o' the righteousness of it, But the p'litickle purchase it gives an' the profit). Things look pooty squally, it must be allowed, An' I don't see much signs of a bow in the cloud: Ther's too many Deemocrats--leaders wut's wuss-- Thet go for the Union 'thout carin' a cuss Ef it helps ary party thet ever wuz heard on, So our eagle ain't made a split Austrian bird on. But ther's still some consarvative signs to be found Thet shows the gret heart o' the People is sound: 210 (Excuse me for usin' a stump-phrase agin, But, once in the way on 't, they _will_ stick like sin:) There's Phillips, for instance, hez jes' ketched a Tartar In the Law-'n'-Order Party of ole Cincinnater; An' the Compromise System ain't gone out o' reach, Long 'z you keep the right limits on freedom o' speech. 'Twarn't none too late, neither, to put on the gag, For he's dangerous now he goes in for the flag. Nut thet I altogether approve o' bad eggs, They're mos' gin'ly argymunt on its las' legs,-- 220 An' their logic is ept to be tu indiscriminate, Nor don't ollus wait the right objecs to 'liminate; But there is a variety on 'em, you'll find, Jest ez usefle an' more, besides bein' refined,-- I mean o' the sort thet are laid by the dictionary, Sech ez sophisms an' cant, thet'll kerry conviction ary Way thet you want to the right class o' men, An' are staler than all 't ever come from a hen: 'Disunion' done wal till our resh Southun friends Took the savor all out on 't for national ends; 230 But I guess 'Abolition' 'll work a spell yit, When the war's done, an' so will 'Forgive-an'-forgit.' Times mus' be pooty thoroughly out o' all jint, Ef we can't make a good constitootional pint; An' the good time'll come to be grindin' our exes, When the war goes to seed in the nettle o' texes: Ef Jon'than don't squirm, with sech helps to assist him, I give up my faith in the free-suffrage system; Democ'cy wun't be nut a mite interestin', Nor p'litikle capital much wuth investin'; 240 An' my notion is, to keep dark an' lay low Till we see the right minute to put in our blow.-- But I've talked longer now 'n I hed any idee, An' ther's others you want to hear more 'n you du me; So I'll set down an' give thet 'ere bottle a skrimmage, For I've spoke till I'm dry ez a real graven image. No. VI SUNTHIN' IN THE PASTORAL LINE TO THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY JAALAM, 17th May, 1862. GENTLEMEN,--At the special request of Mr. Biglow, I intended to inclose, together with his own contribution, (into which, at my suggestion, he has thrown a little more of pastoral sentiment than usual,) some passages from my sermon on the day of the National Fast, from the text, 'Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them,' Heb. xiii, 3. But I have not leisure sufficient at present for the copying of them, even were I altogether satisfied with the production as it stands. I should prefer, I confess, to contribute the entire discourse to the pages of your respectable miscellany, if it should be found acceptable upon perusal, especially as I find the difficulty in selection of greater magnitude than I had anticipated. What passes without challenge in the fervour of oral delivery, cannot always stand the colder criticism of the closet. I am not so great an enemy of Eloquence as my friend Mr. Biglow would appear to be from some passages in his contribution for the current month. I would not, indeed, hastily suspect him of covertly glancing at myself in his somewhat caustick animadversions, albeit some of the phrases he girds at are not entire strangers to my lips. I am a more hearty admirer of the Puritans than seems now to be the fashion, and believe, that, if they Hebraized a little too much in their speech, they showed remarkable practical sagacity as statesmen and founders. But such phenomena as Puritanism are the results rather of great religious than of merely social convulsions, and do not long survive them. So soon as an earnest conviction has cooled into a phrase, its work is over, and the best that can be done with it is to bury it. _Ite, missa est_. I am inclined to agree with Mr. Biglow that we cannot settle the great political questions which are now presenting themselves to the nation by the opinions of Jeremiah or Ezekiel as to the wants and duties of the Jews in their time, nor do I believe that an entire community with their feelings and views would be practicable or even agreeable at the present day. At the same time I could wish that their habit of subordinating the actual to the moral, the flesh to the spirit, and this world to the other, were more common. They had found out, at least, the great military secret that soul weighs more than body.--But I am suddenly called to a sick-bed in the household of a valued parishioner. With esteem and respect, Your obedient servant, HOMER WILBUR. Once git a smell o' musk into a draw, An' it clings hold like precerdents in law: Your gra'ma'am put it there,--when, goodness knows,-- To jes' this-worldify her Sunday-clo'es; But the old chist wun't sarve her gran'son's wife, (For, 'thout new funnitoor, wut good in life?) An' so ole clawfoot, from the precinks dread O' the spare chamber, slinks into the shed, Where, dim with dust, it fust or last subsides To holdin' seeds an' fifty things besides; 10 But better days stick fast in heart an' husk, An' all you keep in 't gits a scent o' musk. Jes' so with poets: wut they've airly read Gits kind o' worked into their heart an' head, So's't they can't seem to write but jest on sheers With furrin countries or played-out ideers, Nor hev a feelin', ef it doosn't smack O' wut some critter chose to feel 'way back: This makes 'em talk o' daisies, larks, an' things, Ez though we'd nothin' here that blows an' sings,-- 20 (Why, I'd give more for one live bobolink Than a square mile o' larks in printer's ink,)-- This makes 'em think our fust o' May is May, Which 'tain't, for all the almanicks can say. O little city-gals, don't never go it Blind on the word o' noospaper or poet! They're apt to puff, an' May-day seldom looks Up in the country ez it doos in books; They're no more like than hornets'-nests an' hives, Or printed sarmons be to holy lives. 30 I, with my trouses perched on cowhide boots, Tuggin' my foundered feet out by the roots, Hev seen ye come to fling on April's hearse Your muslin nosegays from the milliner's, Puzzlin' to find dry ground your queen to choose, An' dance your throats sore in morocker shoes: I've seen ye an' felt proud, thet, come wut would, Our Pilgrim stock wuz pethed with hardihood. Pleasure doos make us Yankees kind o' winch, Ez though 'twuz sunthin' paid for by the inch; 40 But yit we du contrive to worry thru, Ef Dooty tells us thet the thing's to du, An' kerry a hollerday, ef we set out, Ez stiddily ez though 'twuz a redoubt. I, country-born an' bred, know where to find Some blooms thet make the season suit the mind, An' seem to metch the doubtin' bluebird's notes,-- Half-vent'rin' liverworts in furry coats, Bloodroots, whose rolled-up leaves ef you oncurl, Each on 'em's cradle to a baby-pearl,-- 50 But these are jes' Spring's pickets; sure ez sin, The rebble frosts'll try to drive 'em in; For half our May's so awfully like Mayn't, 'twould rile a Shaker or an evrige saint; Though I own up I like our back'ard springs Thet kind o' haggle with their greens an' things, An' when you 'most give up, 'uthout more words Toss the fields full o' blossoms, leaves, an' birds; Thet's Northun natur', slow an' apt to doubt, But when it _doos_ git stirred, ther' 's no gin-out! 60 Fust come the blackbirds clatt'rin' in tall trees, An' settlin' things in windy Congresses,-- Queer politicians, though, for I'll be skinned Ef all on 'em don't head aginst the wind, 'fore long the trees begin to show belief,-- The maple crimsons to a coral-reef. Then saffern swarms swing off from all the willers So plump they look like yaller caterpillars, Then gray hossches'nuts leetle hands unfold Softer 'n a baby's be at three days old: 70 Thet's robin-redbreast's almanick; he knows Thet arter this ther's only blossom-snows; So, choosin' out a handy crotch an' spouse, He goes to plast'rin' his adobe house. Then seems to come a hitch,--things lag behind. Till some fine mornin' Spring makes up her mind, An' ez, when snow-swelled rivers cresh their dams Heaped-up with ice thet dovetails in an' jams, A leak comes spirtin' thru some pin-hole cleft, Grows stronger, fercer, tears out right an' left, 80 Then all the waters bow themselves an' come, Suddin, in one gret slope o' shedderin' foam, Jes' so our Spring gits eyerythin' in tune An' gives one leap from Aperl into June; Then all comes crowdin' in; afore you think, Young oak-leaves mist the side-hill woods with pink; The catbird in the laylock-bush is loud; The orchards turn to heaps o' rosy cloud; Red--cedars blossom tu, though few folks know it, An' look all dipt in sunshine like a poet; 90 The lime-trees pile their solid stacks o'shade An' drows'ly simmer with the bees' sweet trade; In ellum-shrouds the flashin' hangbird clings An' for the summer vy'ge his hammock slings; All down the loose-walled lanes in archin' bowers The barb'ry droops its strings o' golden flowers, Whose shrinkin' hearts the school-gals love to try, With pins,--they'll worry yourn so, boys, bimeby! But I don't love your cat'logue style,--do you?-- Ez ef to sell off Natur' by vendoo; 100 One word with blood in 't's twice ez good ez two: 'nuff sed, June's bridesman, poet o' the year, Gladness on wings, the bobolink, is here; Half-hid in tip-top apple-blooms he swings, Or climbs aginst the breeze with quiverin' wings, Or, givin' way to 't in a mock despair, Runs down, a brook o' laughter, thru the air. I ollus feel the sap start in my veins In Spring, with curus heats an' prickly pains Thet drive me, when I git a chance to walk 110 Off by myself to hev a privit talk With a queer critter thet can't seem to 'gree Along o' me like most folks,--Mister Me. Ther' 's times when I'm unsoshle ez a stone, An' sort o' suffercate to be alone,-- I'm crowded jes' to think thet folks are nigh, An' can't bear nothin' closer than the sky; Now the wind's full ez shifty in the mind Ez wut it is ou'-doors, ef I ain't blind, An' sometimes, in the fairest sou'west weather, 120 My innard vane pints east for weeks together, My natur' gits all goose-flesh, an' my sins Come drizzlin' on my conscience sharp ez pins: Wal, et sech times I jes' slip out o' sight An' take it out in a fair stan'-up fight With the one cuss I can't lay on the shelf, The crook'dest stick in all the heap,--Myself. 'Twuz so las' Sabbath arter meetin'-time: Findin' my feelin's wouldn't noways rhyme With nobody's, but off the hendle flew 130 An' took things from an east-wind pint o' view, I started off to lose me in the hills Where the pines be, up back o' 'Siah's Mills: Pines, ef you're blue, are the best friends I know, They mope an' sigh an' sheer your feelin's so,-- They hesh the ground beneath so, tu, I swan, You half-forgit you've gut a body on. Ther' 's a small school'us' there where four roads meet, The door-steps hollered out by little feet, An' side-posts carved with names whose owners grew 140 To gret men, some on 'em, an' deacons, tu; 'tain't used no longer, coz the town hez gut A high-school, where they teach the Lord knows wut: Three-story larnin' 's pop'lar now: I guess We thriv' ez wal on jes' two stories less, For it strikes me ther' 's sech a thing ez sinnin' By overloadin' children's underpinnin': Wal, here it wuz I larned my ABC, An' it's a kind o' favorite spot with me. We're curus critters: Now ain't jes' the minute 150 Thet ever fits us easy while we're in it; Long ez 'twuz futur', 'twould be perfect bliss,-- Soon ez it's past, _thet_ time's wuth ten o' this; An' yit there ain't a man thet need be told Thet Now's the only bird lays eggs o' gold. A knee-high lad, I used to plot an' plan An' think 'twuz life's cap-sheaf to be a man: Now, gittin' gray, there's nothin' I enjoy Like dreamin' back along into a boy: So the ole school'us' is a place I choose 160 Afore all others, ef I want to muse; I set down where I used to set, an' git My boyhood back, an' better things with it,-- Faith, Hope, an' sunthin', ef it isn't Cherrity, It's want o' guile, an' thet's ez gret a rerrity,-- While Fancy's cushin', free to Prince and Clown, Makes the hard bench ez soft ez milk-weed-down. Now, 'fore I knowed, thet Sabbath arternoon When I sot out to tramp myself in tune, I found me in the school'us' on my seat, 170 Drummin' the march to No-wheres with my feet. Thinkin' o' nothin', I've heerd ole folks say Is a hard kind o' dooty in its way: It's thinkin' everythin' you ever knew, Or ever hearn, to make your feelin's blue. I sot there tryin' thet on for a spell: I thought o' the Rebellion, then o' Hell, Which some folks tell ye now is jest a metterfor (A the'ry, p'raps, it wun't _feel_ none the better for); I thought o' Reconstruction, wut we'd win 180 Patchin' our patent self-blow-up agin: I thought ef this 'ere milkin' o' the wits, So much a month, warn't givin' Natur' fits,-- Ef folks warn't druv, findin' their own milk fail, To work the cow thet hez an iron tail, An' ef idees 'thout ripenin' in the pan Would send up cream to humor ary man: From this to thet I let my worryin' creep. Till finally I must ha' fell asleep. Our lives in sleep are some like streams thet glide 190 'twixt flesh an' sperrit boundin' on each side, Where both shores' shadders kind o' mix an' mingle In sunthin' thet ain't jes' like either single; An' when you cast off moorin's from To-day, An' down towards To-morrer drift away, The imiges thet tengle on the stream Make a new upside-down'ard world o' dream: Sometimes they seem like sunrise-streaks an' warnin's O' wut'll be in Heaven on Sabbath-mornin's, An', mixed right in ez ef jest out o' spite, 200 Sunthin' thet says your supper ain't gone right. I'm gret on dreams, an' often when I wake, I've lived so much it makes my mem'ry ache. An' can't skurce take a cat-nap in my cheer 'thout hevin' 'em, some good, some bad, all queer. Now I wuz settin' where I'd ben, it seemed, An' ain't sure yit whether I r'ally dreamed, Nor, ef I did, how long I might ha' slep', When I hearn some un stompin' up the step, An' lookin' round, ef two an' two make four, 210 I see a Pilgrim Father in the door. He wore a steeple-hat, tall boots, an' spurs With rowels to 'em big ez ches'nut-burrs, An' his gret sword behind him sloped away Long 'z a man's speech thet dunno wut to say.-- 'Ef your name's Biglow, an' your given-name Hosee,' sez he, 'it's arter you I came: I'm your gret-gran'ther multiplied by three.'-- 'My _wut?_' sez I.--'Your gret-gret-gret,' sez he: 'You wouldn't ha' never ben here but for me. 220 Two hundred an' three year ago this May The ship I come in sailed up Boston Bay; I'd been a cunnle in our Civil War,-- But wut on airth hev _you_ gut up one for? Coz we du things in England, 'tain't for you To git a notion you can du 'em tu: I'm told you write in public prints: ef true, It's nateral you should know a thing or two.'-- 'Thet air's an argymunt I can't endorse,-- 'twould prove, coz you wear spurs, you kep' a horse: 230 For brains,' sez I, 'wutever you may think, Ain't boun' to cash the drafs o' pen-an'-ink,-- Though mos' folks write ez ef they hoped jes' quickenin' The churn would argoo skim-milk into thickenin'; But skim-milk ain't a thing to change its view O' wut it's meant for more 'n a smoky flue. But du pray tell me, 'fore we furder go, How in all Natur' did you come to know 'bout our affairs,' sez I, 'in Kingdom-Come?'-- 'Wal, I worked round at sperrit-rappin' some, 240 An' danced the tables till their legs wuz gone, In hopes o' larnin' wut wuz goin' on,' Sez he, 'but mejums lie so like all-split Thet I concluded it wuz best to quit. But, come now, ef you wun't confess to knowin', You've some conjectures how the thing's a-goin'.'-- 'Gran'ther,' sez I, 'a vane warn't never known Nor asked to hev a jedgment of its own; An' yit, ef 'tain't gut rusty in the jints. It's safe to trust its say on certin pints: 250 It knows the wind's opinions to a T, An' the wind settles wut the weather'll be.' 'I never thought a scion of our stock Could grow the wood to make a weather-cock; When I wuz younger 'n you, skurce more 'n a shaver, No airthly wind,' sez he, 'could make me waver!' (Ez he said this, he clinched his jaw an' forehead, Hitchin' his belt to bring his sword-hilt forrard.)-- 'Jes so it wuz with me,' sez I, 'I swow. When _I_ wuz younger 'n wut you see me now,-- 260 Nothin' from Adam's fall to Huldy's bonnet, Thet I warn't full-cocked with my jedgment on it; But now I'm gittin' on in life, I find It's a sight harder to make up my mind,-- Nor I don't often try tu, when events Will du it for me free of all expense. The moral question's ollus plain enough,-- It's jes' the human-natur' side thet's tough; 'Wut's best to think mayn't puzzle me nor you,-- The pinch comes in decidin' wut to _du;_ 270 Ef you _read_ History, all runs smooth ez grease, Coz there the men ain't nothin' more 'n idees,-- But come to _make_ it, ez we must to-day, Th' idees hev arms an' legs an' stop the way; It's easy fixin' things in facts an' figgers,-- They can't resist, nor warn't brought up with niggers; But come to try your the'ry on,--why, then Your facts and figgers change to ign'ant men Actin' ez ugly--'--'Smite 'em hip an' thigh!' Sez gran'ther, 'and let every man-child die! 280 Oh for three weeks o' Crommle an' the Lord! Up, Isr'el, to your tents an' grind the sword!'-- 'Thet kind o' thing worked wal in ole Judee, But you forgit how long it's ben A.D.; You think thet's ellerkence,--I call it shoddy, A thing,' sez I, 'wun't cover soul nor body; I like the plain all-wool o' common-sense, Thet warms ye now, an' will a twelvemonth hence, _You_ took to follerin' where the Prophets beckoned, An', fust you knowed on, back come Charles the Second; Now wut I want's to hev all _we_ gain stick, 291 An' not to start Millennium too quick; We hain't to punish only, but to keep, An' the cure's gut to go a cent'ry deep.' 'Wall, milk-an'-water ain't the best o' glue,' Sez he, 'an' so you'll find afore you're thru; Ef reshness venters sunthin', shilly-shally Loses ez often wut's ten times the vally. Thet exe of ourn, when Charles's neck gut split, Opened a gap thet ain't bridged over yit: 300 Slav'ry's your Charles, the Lord hez gin the exe'-- 'Our Charles,' sez I, 'hez gut eight million necks. The hardest question ain't the black man's right, The trouble is to 'mancipate the white; One's chained in body an' can be sot free, But t'other's chained in soul to an idee: It's a long job, but we shall worry thru it; Ef bagnets fail, the spellin'-book must du it.' 'Hosee,' sez he, 'I think you're goin' to fail: The rettlesnake ain't dangerous in the tail; 310 This 'ere rebellion's nothing but the rettle,-- You'll stomp on thet an' think you've won the bettle: It's Slavery thet's the fangs an' thinkin' head, An' ef you want selvation, cresh it dead,-- An' cresh it suddin, or you'll larn by waitin' Thet Chance wun't stop to listen to debatin'!'-- 'God's truth!' sez I,--'an' ef _I_ held the club, An' knowed jes' where to strike,--but there's the rub!'-- 'Strike soon,' sez he, 'or you'll be deadly ailin',-- Folks thet's afeared to fail are sure o' failin'; 320 God hates your sneakin' creturs thet believe He'll settle things they run away an' leave!' He brought his foot down fiercely, ez he spoke, An' give me sech a startle thet I woke. No. VII LATEST VIEWS OF MR. BIGLOW PRELIMINARY NOTE [It is with feelings of the liveliest pain that we inform our readers of the death of the Reverend Homer Wilbur, A.M., which took place suddenly, by an apoplectic stroke, on the afternoon of Christmas day, 1862. Our venerable friend (for so we may venture to call him, though we never enjoyed the high privilege of his personal acquaintance) was in his eighty-fourth year, having been born June 12, 1779, at Pigsgusset Precinct (now West Jerusha) in the then District of Maine. Graduated with distinction at Hubville College in 1805, he pursued his theological studies with the late Reverend Preserved Thacker, D.D., and was called to the charge of the First Society in Jaalam in 1809, where he remained till his death. 'As an antiquary he has probably left no superior, if, indeed, an equal,' writes his friend and colleague, the Reverend Jeduthun Hitchcock, to whom we are indebted for the above facts; 'in proof of which I need only allude to his "History of Jaalam, Genealogical, Topographical, and Ecclesiastical," 1849, which has won him an eminent and enduring place in our more solid and useful literature. It is only to be regretted that his intense application to historical studies should have so entirely withdrawn him from the pursuit of poetical composition, for which he was endowed by Nature with a remarkable aptitude. His well-known hymn, beginning "With clouds of care encompassed round," has been attributed in some collections to the late President Dwight, and it is hardly presumptuous to affirm that the simile of the rainbow in the eighth stanza would do no discredit to that polished pen.' We regret that we have not room at present for the whole of Mr. Hitchcock's exceedingly valuable communication. We hope to lay more liberal extracts from it before our readers at an early day. A summary of its contents will give some notion of its importance and interest. It contains: 1st, A biographical sketch of Mr. Wilbur, with notices of his predecessors in the pastoral office, and of eminent clerical contemporaries; 2d, An obituary of deceased, from the Punkin-Falls 'Weekly Parallel;' 3d, A list of his printed and manuscript productions and of projected works; 4th, Personal anecdotes and recollections, with specimens of table-talk; 5th, A tribute to his relict, Mrs. Dorcas (Pilcox) Wilbur; 6th, A list of graduates fitted for different colleges by Mr. Wilbur, with biographical memoranda touching the more distinguished; 7th, Concerning learned, charitable, and other societies, of which Mr. Wilbur was a member, and of those with which, had his life been prolonged, he would doubtless have been associated, with a complete catalogue of such Americans as have been Fellows of the Royal Society; 8th, A brief summary of Mr. Wilbur's latest conclusions concerning the Tenth Horn of the Beast in its special application to recent events, for which the public, as Mr. Hitchcock assures us, have been waiting with feelings of lively anticipation; 9th, Mr. Hitchcock's own views on the same topic; and, 10th, A brief essay on the importance of local histories. It will be apparent that the duty of preparing Mr. Wilbur's biography could not have fallen into more sympathetic hands. In a private letter with which the reverend gentleman has since favored us, he expresses the opinion that Mr. Wilbur's life was shortened by our unhappy civil war. It disturbed his studies, dislocated all his habitual associations and trains of thought, and unsettled the foundations of a faith, rather the result of habit than conviction, in the capacity of man for self-government. 'Such has been the felicity of my life,' he said to Mr. Hitchcock, on the very morning of the day he died, 'that, through the divine mercy, I could always say, _Summum nec metuo diem, nec opto_. It has been my habit, as you know, on every recurrence of this blessed anniversary, to read Milton's "Hymn of the Nativity" till its sublime harmonies so dilated my soul and quickened its spiritual sense that I seemed to hear that other song which gave assurance to the shepherds that there was One who would lead them also in green pastures and beside the still waters. But to-day I have been unable to think of anything but that mournful text, "I came not to send peace, but a sword," and, did it not smack of Pagan presumptuousness, could almost wish I had never lived to see this day.' Mr. Hitchcock also informs us that his friend 'lies buried in the Jaalam graveyard, under a large red-cedar which he specially admired. A neat and substantial monument is to be erected over his remains, with a Latin epitaph written by himself; for he was accustomed to say, pleasantly, "that there was at least one occasion in a scholar's life when he might show the advantages of a classical training."' The following fragment of a letter addressed to us, and apparently intended to accompany Mr. Biglow's contribution to the present number, was found upon his table after his decease.--EDITORS ATLANTIC MONTHLY.] TO THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY JAALAM, 24th Dec., 1862. RESPECTED SIRS,--- The infirm state of my bodily health would be a sufficient apology for not taking up the pen at this time, wholesome as I deem it for the mind to apricate in the shelter of epistolary confidence, were it not that a considerable, I might even say a large, number of individuals in this parish expect from their pastor some publick expression of sentiment at this crisis. Moreover, _Qui tacitus ardet magis uritur_. In trying times like these, the besetting sin of undisciplined minds is to seek refuge from inexplicable realities in the dangerous stimulant of angry partisanship or the indolent narcotick of vague and hopeful vaticination: _fortunamque suo temperat arbitrio_. Both by reason of my age and my natural temperament, I am unfitted for either. Unable to penetrate the inscrutable judgments of God, I am more than ever thankful that my life has been prolonged till I could in some small measure comprehend His mercy. As there is no man who does not at some time render himself amenable to the one,--_quum vix justus sit securus_,--so there is none that does not feel himself in daily need of the other. I confess I cannot feel, as some do, a personal consolation for the manifest evils of this war in any remote or contingent advantages that may spring from it. I am old and weak, I can bear little, and can scarce hope to see better days; nor is it any adequate compensation to know that Nature is young and strong and can bear much. Old men philosophize over the past, but the present is only a burthen and a weariness. The one lies before them like a placid evening landscape; the other is full of vexations and anxieties of housekeeping. It may be true enough that _miscet hæc illis, prohibetque Clotho fortunam stare_, but he who said it was fain at last to call in Atropos with her shears before her time; and I cannot help selfishly mourning that the fortune of our Republick could not at least stay till my days were numbered. Tibullus would find the origin of wars in the great exaggeration of riches, and does not stick to say that in the days of the beechen trencher there was peace. But averse as I am by nature from all wars, the more as they have been especially fatal to libraries, I would have this one go on till we are reduced to wooden platters again, rather than surrender the principle to defend which it was undertaken. Though I believe Slavery to have been the cause of it, by so thoroughly demoralizing Northern politicks for its own purposes as to give opportunity and hope to treason, yet I would not have our thought and purpose diverted from their true object,--the maintenance of the idea of Government. We are not merely suppressing an enormous riot, but contending for the possibility of permanent order coexisting with democratical fickleness; and while I would not superstitiously venerate form to the sacrifice of substance, neither would I forget that an adherence to precedent and prescription can alone give that continuity and coherence under a democratical constitution which are inherent in the person of a despotick monarch and the selfishness of an aristocratieal class. _Stet pro ratione voluntas_ is as dangerous in a majority as in a tyrant. I cannot allow the present production of my young friend to go out without a protest from me against a certain extremeness in his views, more pardonable in the poet than in the philosopher. While I agree with him, that the only cure for rebellion is suppression by force, yet I must animadvert upon certain phrases where I seem to see a coincidence with a popular fallacy on the subject of compromise. On the one hand there are those who do not see that the vital principle of Government and the seminal principle of Law cannot properly be made a subject of compromise at all, and on the other those who are equally blind to the truth that without a compromise of individual opinions, interests, and even rights, no society would be possible. _In medio tutissimus_. For my own part, I would gladly-- Ef I a song or two could make Like rockets druv by their own burnin', All leap an' light, to leave a wake Men's hearts an' faces skyward turnin'!-- But, it strikes me, 'tain't jest the time Fer stringin' words with settisfaction: Wut's wanted now's the silent rhyme 'Twixt upright Will an' downright Action. Words, ef you keep 'em, pay their keep, But gabble's the short cut to ruin; 10 It's gratis, (gals half-price,) but cheap At no rate, ef it henders doin'; Ther' 's nothin' wuss, 'less 'tis to set A martyr-prem'um upon jawrin': Teapots git dangerous, ef you shet Their lids down on 'em with Fort Warren. 'Bout long enough it's ben discussed Who sot the magazine afire, An' whether, ef Bob Wickliffe bust, 'Twould scare us more or blow us higher. 20 D' ye spose the Gret Foreseer's plan Wuz settled fer him in town-meetin'? Or thet ther'd ben no Fall o' Man, Ef Adam'd on'y bit a sweetin'? Oh, Jon'than, ef you want to be A rugged chap agin an' hearty, Go fer wutever'll hurt Jeff D., Nut wut'll boost up ary party. Here's hell broke loose, an' we lay flat With half the univarse a-singe-in', 30 Till Sen'tor This an' Gov'nor Thet Stop squabblin' fer the gardingingin. It's war we're in, not politics; It's systems wrastlin' now, not parties; An' victory in the eend'll fix Where longest will an' truest heart is, An' wut's the Guv'ment folks about? Tryin' to hope ther' 's nothin' doin', An' look ez though they didn't doubt Sunthin' pertickler wuz a-brewin'. 40 Ther' 's critters yit thet talk an' act Fer wut they call Conciliation; They'd hand a buff'lo-drove a tract When they wuz madder than all Bashan. Conciliate? it jest means _be kicked_, No metter how they phrase an' tone it; It means thet we're to set down licked, Thet we're poor shotes an' glad to own it! A war on tick's ez dear 'z the deuce, But it wun't leave no lastin' traces, 50 Ez 'twould to make a sneakin' truce Without no moral specie-basis: Ef greenbacks ain't nut jest the cheese, I guess ther' 's evils thet's extremer,-- Fer instance,--shinplaster idees Like them put out by Gov'nor Seymour. Last year, the Nation, at a word, When tremblin' Freedom cried to shield her, Flamed weldin' into one keen sword Waitin' an' longin' fer a wielder: A splendid flash!--but how'd the grasp 61 With sech a chance ez thet wuz tally? Ther' warn't no meanin' in our clasp,-- Half this, half thet, all shilly-shally. More men? More man! It's there we fail; Weak plans grow weaker yit by lengthenin': Wut use in addin' to the tail, When it's the head's in need o' strengthenin'? We wanted one thet felt all Chief From roots o' hair to sole o' stockin', 70 Square-sot with thousan'-ton belief In him an' us, ef earth went rockin'! Ole Hick'ry wouldn't ha' stood see-saw 'Bout doin' things till they wuz done with,-- He'd smashed the tables o' the Law In time o' need to load his gun with; He couldn't see but jest one side,-- Ef his, 'twuz God's, an' thet wuz plenty; An' so his '_Forrards!_' multiplied An army's fightin' weight by twenty. 80 But this 'ere histin', creak, creak, creak, Your cappen's heart up with a derrick, This tryin' to coax a lightnin'-streak Out of a half-discouraged hayrick, This hangin' on mont' arter mont' Fer one sharp purpose 'mongst the twitter,-- I tell ye, it doos kind o' stunt The peth and sperit of a critter. In six months where'll the People be, Ef leaders look on revolution 90 Ez though it wuz a cup o' tea,-- Jest social el'ments in solution? This weighin' things doos wal enough When war cools down, an' comes to writin'; But while it's makin', the true stuff Is pison-mad, pig-headed fightin'. Democ'acy gives every man The right to be his own oppressor; But a loose Gov'ment ain't the plan, Helpless ez spilled beans on a dresser: 100 I tell ye one thing we might larn From them smart critters, the Seceders,-- Ef bein' right's the fust consarn, The 'fore-the-fust's cast-iron leaders. But 'pears to me I see some signs Thet we're a-goin' to use our senses: Jeff druv us into these hard lines, An' ough' to bear his half th' expenses; Slavery's Secession's heart an' will, South, North, East, West, where'er you find it, 110 An' ef it drors into War's mill, D'ye say them thunder-stones sha'n't grind it? D' ye s'pose, ef Jeff giv _him_ a lick, Ole Hick'ry'd tried his head to sof'n So's 'twouldn't hurt thet ebony stick Thet's made our side see stars so of'n? 'No!' he'd ha' thundered, 'on your knees, An' own one flag, one road to glory! Soft-heartedness, in times like these, Shows sof'ness in the upper story!' 120 An' why should we kick up a muss About the Pres'dunt's proclamation? It ain't a-goin' to lib'rate us, Ef we don't like emancipation: The right to be a cussed fool Is safe from all devices human, It's common (ez a gin'l rule) To every critter born o' woman. So _we're_ all right, an' I, fer one, Don't think our cause'll lose in vally 130 By rammin' Scriptur' in our gun, An' gittin' Natur' fer an ally: Thank God, say I, fer even a plan To lift one human bein's level, Give one more chance to make a man, Or, anyhow, to spile a devil! Not thet I'm one thet much expec' Millennium by express to-morrer; They _will_ miscarry,--I rec'lec' Tu many on 'em, to my sorrer: Men ain't made angels in a day, 141 No matter how you mould an' labor 'em, Nor 'riginal ones, I guess, don't stay With Abe so of'n ez with Abraham. The'ry thinks Fact a pooty thing, An' wants the banns read right ensuin'; But fact wun't noways wear the ring, 'Thout years o' settin' up an' wooin': Though, arter all, Time's dial-plate Marks cent'ries with the minute-finger, 150 An' Good can't never come tu late, Though it does seem to try an' linger. An' come wut will, I think it's grand Abe's gut his will et last bloom-furnaced In trial-flames till it'll stand The strain o' bein' in deadly earnest: Thet's wut we want,--we want to know The folks on our side hez the bravery To b'lieve ez hard, come weal, come woe, In Freedom ez Jeff doos in Slavery. 160 Set the two forces foot to foot, An' every man knows who'll be winner, Whose faith in God hez ary root Thet goes down deeper than his dinner: _Then_ 'twill be felt from pole to pole, Without no need o' proclamation, Earth's biggest Country's gut her soul An' risen up Earth's Greatest Nation! No. VIII KETTELOPOTOMACHIA PRELIMINARY MOTE [In the month of February, 1866, the editors of the 'Atlantic Monthly' received from the Rev. Mr. Hitchcock of Jaalam a letter enclosing the macaronic verses which follow, and promising to send more, if more should be communicated. 'They were rapped out on the evening of Thursday last past,' he says, 'by what claimed to be the spirit of my late predecessor in the ministry here, the Rev. Dr. Wilbur, through the medium of a young man at present domiciled in my family. As to the possibility of such spiritual manifestations, or whether they be properly so entitled, I express no opinion, as there is a division of sentiment on that subject in the parish, and many persons of the highest respectability in social standing entertain opposing views. The young man who was improved as a medium submitted himself to the experiment with manifest reluctance, and is still unprepared to believe in the authenticity of the manifestations. During his residence with me his deportment has always been exemplary; he has been constant in his attendance upon our family devotions and the public ministrations of the Word, and has more than once privately stated to me, that the latter had often brought him under deep concern of mind. The table is an ordinary quadrupedal one, weighing about thirty pounds, three feet seven inches and a half in height, four feet square on the top, and of beech or maple, I am not definitely prepared to say which. It had once belonged to my respected predecessor, and had been, so far as I can learn upon careful inquiry, of perfectly regular and correct habits up to the evening in question. On that occasion the young man previously alluded to had been sitting with his hands resting carelessly upon it, while I read over to him at his request certain portions of my last Sabbath's discourse. On a sudden the rappings, as they are called, commenced to render themselves audible, at first faintly, but in process of time more distinctly and with violent agitation of the table. The young man expressed himself both surprised and pained by the wholly unexpected, and, so far as he was concerned, unprecedented occurrence. At the earnest solicitation, however, of several who happened to be present, he consented to go on with the experiment, and with the assistance of the alphabet commonly employed in similar emergencies, the following communication was obtained and written down immediately by myself. Whether any, and if so, how much weight should be attached to it, I venture no decision. That Dr. Wilbur had sometimes employed his leisure in Latin versification I have ascertained to be the case, though all that has been discovered of that nature among his papers consists of some fragmentary passages of a version into hexameters of portions of the Song of Solomon. These I had communicated about a week or ten days previous[ly] to the young gentleman who officiated as medium in the communication afterwards received. I have thus, I believe, stated all the material facts that have any elucidative bearing upon this mysterious occurrence.' So far Mr. Hitchcock, who seems perfectly master of Webster's unabridged quarto, and whose flowing style leads him into certain farther expatiations for which we have not room. We have since learned that the young man he speaks of was a sophomore, put under his care during a sentence of rustication from ---- College, where he had distinguished himself rather by physical experiments on the comparative power of resistance in window-glass to various solid substances, than in the more regular studies of the place. In answer to a letter of inquiry, the professor of Latin says, 'There was no harm in the boy that I know of beyond his loving mischief more than Latin, nor can I think of any spirits likely to possess him except those commonly called animal. He was certainly not remarkable for his Latinity, but I see nothing in the verses you enclose that would lead me to think them beyond his capacity, or the result of any special inspiration whether of beech or maple. Had that of _birch_ been tried upon him earlier and more faithfully, the verses would perhaps have been better in quality and certainly in quantity.' This exact and thorough scholar then goes on to point out many false quantities and barbarisms. It is but fair to say, however, that the author, whoever he was, seems not to have been unaware of some of them himself, as is shown by a great many notes appended to the verses as we received them, and purporting to be by Scaliger, Bentley, and others,--among them the _Esprit de Voltaire_! These we have omitted as clearly meant to be humorous and altogether failing therein. Though entirely satisfied that the verses are altogether unworthy of Mr. Wilbur, who seems to Slave been a tolerable Latin scholar after the fashion of his day, yet we have determined to print them here, partly as belonging to the _res gestæ_ of this collection, and partly as a warning to their putative author which may keep him from such indecorous pranks for the future.] KETTELOPOTOMACHIA P. Ovidii Nasonis carmen heroicum macaronicum perplexametrum, inter Getas getico moro compostum, denuo per medium ardentispiritualem adjuvante mensâ diabolice obsessâ, recuperatum, curâque Jo. Conradi Schwarzii umbræ, allis necnon plurimis adjuvantibus, restitutum. LIBER I Punctorum garretos colens et cellara Quinque, Gutteribus quæ et gaudes sunday-am abstingere frontem, Plerumque insidos solita fluitare liquore Tanglepedem quem homines appellant Di quoque rotgut, Pimpliidis, rubicundaque, Musa, O, bourbonolensque, Fenianas rixas procul, alma, brogipotentis Patricii cyathos iterantis et horrida bella, Backos dum virides viridis Brigitta remittit, Linquens, eximios celebrem, da, Virginienses Rowdes, præcipue et TE, heros alte, Polarde! 10 Insignes juvenesque, illo certamine lictos, Colemane, Tylere, nec vos oblivione relinquam. Ampla aquilæ invictæ fausto est sub tegmine terra, Backyfer, ooiskeo pollens, ebenoque bipede, Socors præsidum et altrix (denique quidruminantium), Duplefveorum uberrima; illis et integre cordi est Deplere assidue et sine proprio incommodo fiscum; Nunc etiam placidum hoc opus invictique secuti, Goosam aureos ni eggos voluissent immo necare Quæ peperit, saltem ac de illis meliora merentem. 20 Condidit hanc Smithius Dux, Captinus inclytus ille Regis Ulyssæ instar, docti arcum intendere longum; Condidit ille Johnsmith, Virginiamque vocavit, Settledit autem Jacobus rex, nomine primus, Rascalis implens ruptis, blagardisque deboshtis, Militibusque ex Falstaffi legione fugatis Wenchisque illi quas poterant seducere nuptas; Virgineum, ah, littus matronis talibus impar! Progeniem stirpe ex hoc non sine stigmate ducunt Multi sese qui jactant regum esse nepotes: 30 Haud omnes, Mater, genitos quæ nuper habebas Bello fortes, consilio cautos, virtute decoros, Jamque et habes, sparso si patrio in sanguine virtus, Mostrabisque iterum, antiquis sub astris reducta! De illis qui upkikitant, dicebam, rumpora tanta, Letcheris et Floydis magnisque Extra ordine Billis; Est his prisca fides jurare et breakere wordum: Poppere fellerum a tergo, aut stickere clam bowiknifo, Haud sane facinus, dignum sed victrice lauro; Larrupere et nigerum, factum præstantius ullo: 40 Ast chlamydem piciplumatam, Icariam, flito et ineptam, Yanko gratis induere, illum et valido railo Insuper acri equitare docere est hospitio uti. Nescio an ille Polardus duplefveoribus ortus, Sed reputo potius de radice poorwitemanorum; Fortuiti proles, ni fallor, Tylerus erat Præsidis, omnibus ab Whiggis nominatus a poor cuss; Et nobilem tertium evincit venerabile nomen. Ast animosi omnes bellique ad tympana ha! ha! Vociferant læti, procul et si proelia, sive 50 Hostem incautum atsito possint shootere salvi; Imperiique capaces, esset si stylus agmen, Pro dulci spoliabant et sine dangere fito. Præ ceterisque Polardus: si Secessia licta, Se nunquam licturum jurat res et unheardof, Verbo hæsit, similisque audaci roosteri invicto, Dunghilli solitus rex pullos whoppere molles, Grantum, hirelingos stripes quique et splendida tollunt Sidera, et Yankos, territum et omnem sarsuit orbem. Usque dabant operam isti omnes, noctesque diesque, 60 Samuelem demulgere avunculum, id vero siccum; Uberibus sed ejus, et horum est culpa, remotis, Parvam domi vaccam, nec mora minima, quærunt, Lacticarentem autem et droppam vix in die dantem; Reddite avunculi, et exclamabant, reddite pappam! Polko ut consule, gemens, Billy immurmurat Extra; Echo respondit, thesauro ex vacuo, pappam! Frustra explorant pocketa, ruber nare repertum; Officia expulsi aspiciunt rapta, et Paradisum Occlusum, viridesque Laud illis nascere backos; 70 Stupent tunc oculis madidis spittantque silenter. Adhibere usu ast longo vires prorsus inepti, Si non ut qui grindeat axve trabemve reuolvat, Virginiam excruciant totis nunc mightibu' matrem; Non melius, puta, nono panis dimidiumne est? Readere ibi non posse est casus commoner ullo; Tanto intentius imprimere est opus ergo statuta; Nemo propterea pejor, melior, sine doubto, Obtineat qui contractum, si et postea rhino; Ergo Polardus, si quis, inexsuperabilis heros, 80 Colemanus impavidus nondum, atque in purpure natus Tylerus Iohanides celerisque in flito Nathaniel, Quisque optans digitos in tantum stickere pium, Adstant accincti imprimere aut perrumpere leges: Quales os miserum rabidi tres ægre molossi, Quales aut dubium textum atra in veste ministri, Tales circumstabant nunc nostri inopes hoc job. Hisque Polardus voce canoro talia fatus: Primum autem, veluti est mos, præceps quisque liquorat, Quisque et Nicotianum ingens quid inserit atrum, 90 Heroûm nitidum decus et solamen avitum, Masticat ac simul altisonans, spittatque profuse: Quis de Virginia meruit præstantius unquam? Quis se pro patria curavit impigre tutum? Speechisque articulisque hominum quis fortior ullus, Ingeminans pennæ lickos et vulnera vocis? Quisnam putidius (hic) sarsuit Yankinimicos, Sæpius aut dedit ultro datam et broke his parolam? Mente inquassatus solidâque, tyranno minante, Horrisonis (hic) bombis moenia et alta quatente, 100 Sese promptum (hic) jactans Yankos lickere centum, Atque ad lastum invictus non surrendidit unquam? Ergo haud meddlite, posco, mique relinquite (hic) hoc job, Si non--knifumque enormem mostrat spittatque tremendus. Dixerat: ast alii reliquorant et sine pauso Pluggos incumbunt maxillis, uterque vicissim Certamine innocuo valde madidam inquinat assem: Tylerus autem, dumque liquorat aridus hostis, Mirum aspicit duplumque bibentem, astante Lyæo; Ardens impavidusque edidit tamen impia verba; 110 Duplum quamvis te aspicio, esses atque viginti, Mendacem dicerem totumque (hic) thrasherem acervum; Nempe et thrasham, doggonatus (hic) sim nisi faxem; Lambastabo omnes catawompositer-(hic) que chawam! Dixit et impulsus Ryeo ruitur bene titus, Illi nam gravidum caput et laterem habet in hatto. Hunc inhiat titubansque Polardus, optat et illum Stickere inermem, protegit autem rite Lyæus, Et pronos geminos, oculis dubitantibus, heros Cernit et irritus hostes, dumque excogitat utrum 120 Primum inpitchere, corruit, inter utrosque recumbit, Magno asino similis nimio sub pondere quassus: Colemanus hos moestus, triste ruminansque solamen, Inspicit hiccans, circumspittat terque cubantes; Funereisque his ritibus humidis inde solutis, Sternitur, invalidusque illis superincidit infans; Hos sepelit somnus et snorunt cornisonantes, Watchmanus inscios ast calybooso deinde reponit. No. IX [The Editors of the 'Atlantic' have received so many letters of inquiry concerning the literary remains of the late Mr. Wilbur, mentioned by his colleague and successor, Rev. Jeduthun Hitchcock, in a communication from which we made some extracts in our number for February, 1863, and have been so repeatedly urged to print some part of them for the gratification of the public, that they felt it their duty at least to make some effort to satisfy so urgent a demand. They have accordingly carefully examined the papers intrusted to them, but find most of the productions of Mr. Wilbur's pen so fragmentary, and even chaotic, written as they are on the backs of letters in an exceedingly cramped chirography,--here a memorandum for a sermon; there an observation of the weather; now the measurement of an extraordinary head of cabbage, and then of the cerebral capacity of some reverend brother deceased; a calm inquiry into the state of modern literature, ending in a method of detecting if milk be impoverished with water, and the amount thereof; one leaf beginning with a genealogy, to be interrupted halfway down with an entry that the brindle cow had calved,--that any attempts at selection seemed desperate. His only complete work, 'An Enquiry concerning the Tenth Horn of the Beast,' even in the abstract of it given by Mr. Hitchcock, would, by a rough computation of the printers, fill five entire numbers of our journal, and as he attempts, by a new application of decimal fractions, to identify it with the Emperor Julian, seems hardly of immediate concern to the general reader. Even the Table-Talk, though doubtless originally highly interesting in the domestic circle, is so largely made up of theological discussion and matters of local or preterite interest, that we have found it hard to extract anything that would at all satisfy expectation. But, in order to silence further inquiry, we subjoin a few passages as illustrations of its general character.] I think I could go near to be a perfect Christian if I were always a visitor, as I have sometimes been, at the house of some hospitable friend. I can show a great deal of self-denial where the best of everything is urged upon me with kindly importunity. It is not so very hard to turn the other cheek for a kiss. And when I meditate upon the pains taken for our entertainment in this life, on the endless variety of seasons, of human character and fortune, on the costliness of the hangings and furniture of our dwelling here, I sometimes feel a singular joy in looking upon myself as God's guest, and cannot but believe that we should all be wiser and happier, because more grateful, if we were always mindful of our privilege in this regard. And should we not rate more cheaply any honor that men could pay us, if we remembered that every day we sat at the table of the Great King? Yet must we not forget that we are in strictest bonds His servants also; for there is no impiety so abject as that which expects to be _deadheaded (ut ita dicam)_ through life, and which, calling itself trust in Providence, is in reality asking Providence to trust us and taking up all our goods on false pretences. It is a wise rule to take the world as we find it, not always to leave it so. It has often set me thinking when I find that I can always pick up plenty of empty nuts under my shagbark-tree. The squirrels know them by their lightness, and I have seldom seen one with the marks of their teeth in it. What a school-house is the world, if our wits would only not play truant! For I observe that men set most store by forms and symbols in proportion as they are mere shells. It is the outside they want and not the kernel. What stores of such do not many, who in material things are as shrewd as the squirrels, lay up for the spiritual winter-supply of themselves and their children! I have seen churches that seemed to me garners of these withered nuts, for it is wonderful how prosaic is the apprehension of symbols by the minds of most men. It is not one sect nor another, but all, who, like the dog of the fable, have let drop the spiritual substance of symbols for their material shadow. If one attribute miraculous virtues to mere holy water, that beautiful emblem of inward purification at the door of God's house, another cannot comprehend the significance of baptism without being ducked over head and ears in the liquid vehicle thereof. [Perhaps a word of historical comment may be permitted here. My late reverend predecessor was, I would humbly affirm, as free from prejudice as falls to the lot of the most highly favored individuals of our species. To be sure, I have heard Him say that 'what were called strong prejudices were in fact only the repulsion of sensitive organizations from that moral and even physical effluvium through which some natures by providential appointment, like certain unsavory quadrupeds, gave warning of their neighborhood. Better ten mistaken suspicions of this kind than one close encounter.' This he said somewhat in heat, on being questioned as to his motives for always refusing his pulpit to those itinerant professors of vicarious benevolence who end their discourses by taking up a collection. But at another time I remember his saying, 'that there was one large thing which small minds always found room for, and that was great prejudices.' This, however, by the way. The statement which I purposed to make was simply this. Down to A.D. 1830, Jaalam had consisted of a single parish, with one house set apart for religions services. In that year the foundations of a Baptist Society were laid by the labors of Elder Joash Q. Balcom, 2d. As the members of the new body were drawn from the First Parish, Mr. Wilbur was for a time considerably exercised in mind. He even went so far as on one occasion to follow the reprehensible practice of the earlier Puritan divines in choosing a punning text, and preached from Hebrews xiii, 9: 'Be not carried about with _divers_ and strange doctrines.' He afterwards, in accordance with one of his own maxims,--'to get a dead injury out of the mind as soon as is decent, bury it, and then ventilate,'--in accordance with this maxim, I say, he lived on very friendly terms with Rev. Shearjashub Scrimgour, present pastor of the Baptist Society in Jaalam. Yet I think it was never unpleasing to him that the church edifice of that society (though otherwise a creditable specimen of architecture) remained without a bell, as indeed it does to this day. So much seemed necessary to do away with any appearance of acerbity toward a respectable community of professing Christians, which might be suspected in the conclusion of the above paragraph.--J.H.] In lighter moods he was not averse from an innocent play upon words. Looking up from his newspaper one morning, as I entered his study, he said, 'When I read a debate in Congress, I feel as if I were sitting at the feet of Zeno in the shadow of the Portico.' On my expressing a natural surprise, he added, smiling, 'Why, at such times the only view which honorable members give me of what goes on in the world is through their intercalumniations.' I smiled at this after a moment's reflection, and he added gravely, 'The most punctilious refinement of manners is the only salt that will keep a democracy from stinking; and what are we to expect from the people, if their representatives set them such lessons? Mr. Everett's whole life has been a sermon from this text. There was, at least, this advantage in duelling, that it set a certain limit on the tongue. When Society laid by the rapier, it buckled on the more subtle blade of etiquette wherewith to keep obtrusive vulgarity at bay.' In this connection, I may be permitted to recall a playful remark of his upon another occasion. The painful divisions in the First Parish, A.D. 1844, occasioned by the wild notions in respect to the rights of (what Mr. Wilbur, so far as concerned the reasoning faculty, always called) the unfairer part of creation, put forth by Miss Parthenia Almira Fitz, are too well known to need more than a passing allusion. It was during these heats, long since happily allayed, that Mr. Wilbur remarked that 'the Church had more trouble in dealing with one _she_resiarch than with twenty _he_resiarchs,' and that the men's _conscia recti_, or certainty of being right, was nothing to the women's. When I once asked his opinion of a poetical composition on which I had expended no little pains, he read it attentively, and then remarked 'Unless one's thought pack more neatly in verse than in prose, it is wiser to refrain. Commonplace gains nothing by being translated into rhyme, for it is something which no hocus-pocus can transubstantiate with the real presence of living thought. You entitle your piece, "My Mother's Grave," and expend four pages of useful paper in detailing your emotions there. But, my dear sir, watering does not improve the quality of ink, even though you should do it with tears. To publish a sorrow to Tom, Dick, and Harry is in some sort to advertise its unreality, for I have observed in my intercourse with the afflicted that the deepest grief instinctively hides its face with its hands and is silent. If your piece were printed, I have no doubt it would be popular, for people like to fancy that they feel much better than the trouble of feeling. I would put all poets on oath whether they have striven to say everything they possibly could think of, or to leave out all they could not help saying. In your own case, my worthy young friend, what you have written is merely a deliberate exercise, the gymnastic of sentiment. For your excellent maternal relative is still alive, and is to take tea with me this evening, D.V. Beware of simulated feeling; it is hypocrisy's first cousin; it is especially dangerous to a preacher; for he who says one day, "Go to, let me seem to be pathetic," may be nearer than he thinks to saying, "Go to, let me seem to be virtuous, or earnest, or under sorrow for sin." Depend upon it, Sappho loved her verses more sincerely than she did Phaon, and Petrarch his sonnets better than Laura, who was indeed but his poetical stalking-horse. After you shall have once heard that muffled rattle of clods on the coffin-lid of an irreparable loss, you will grow acquainted with a pathos that will make all elegies hateful. When I was of your age, I also for a time mistook my desire to write verses for an authentic call of my nature in that direction. But one day as I was going forth for a walk, with my head full of an "Elegy on the Death of Flirtilla," and vainly groping after a rhyme for _lily_ that should not be _silly_ or _chilly_, I saw my eldest boy Homer busy over the rain-water hogshead, in that childish experiment at parthenogenesis, the changing a horse-hair into a water-snake. All immersion of six weeks showed no change in the obstinate filament. Here was a stroke of unintended sarcasm. Had I not been doing in my study precisely what my boy was doing out of doors? Had my thoughts any more chance of coming to life by being submerged in rhyme than his hair by soaking in water? I burned my elegy and took a course of Edwards on the Will. People do not make poetry; it is made out of _them_ by a process for which I do not find myself fitted. Nevertheless, the writing of verses is a good rhetorical exercitation, as teaching us what to shun most carefully in prose. For prose bewitched is like window-glass with bubbles in it, distorting what it should show with pellucid veracity.' It is unwise to insist on doctrinal points as vital to religion. The Bread of Life is wholesome and sufficing in itself, but gulped down with these kickshaws cooked up by theologians, it is apt to produce an indigestion, nay, eyen at last an incurable dyspepsia of scepticism. One of the most inexcusable weaknesses of Americans is in signing their names to what are called credentials. But for my interposition, a person who shall be nameless would have taken from this town a recommendation for an office of trust subscribed by the selectmen and all the voters of both parties, ascribing to him as many good qualities as if it had been his tombstone. The excuse was that it would be well for the town to be rid of him, as it would erelong be obliged to maintain him. I would not refuse my name to modest merit, but I would be as cautious as in signing a bond. [I trust I shall be subjected to no imputation of unbecoming vanity, if I mention the fact that Mr. W. indorsed my own qualifications as teacher of the high-school at Pequash Junction. J.H.] When I see a certificate of character with everybody's name to it, I regard it as a letter of introduction from the Devil. Never give a man your name unless you are willing to trust him with your reputation. There seem nowadays to be two sources of literary inspiration,--fulness of mind and emptiness of pocket. I am often struck, especially in reading Montaigne, with the obviousness and familiarity of a great writer's thoughts, and the freshness they gain because said by him. The truth is, we mix their greatness with all they say and give it our best attention. Johannes Faber sic cogitavit would be no enticing preface to a book, but an accredited name gives credit like the signature to a note of hand. It is the advantage of fame that it is always privileged to take the world by the button, and a thing is weightier for Shakespeare's uttering it by the whole amount of his personality. It is singular how impatient men are with overpraise of others, how patient with overpraise of themselves; and yet the one does them no injury while the other may he their ruin. People are apt to confound mere alertness of mind with attention. The one is but the flying abroad of all the faculties to the open doors and windows at every passing rumor; the other is the concentration of every one of them in a single focus, as in the alchemist over his alembic at the moment of expected projection. Attention is the stuff that memory is made of, and memory is accumulated genius. Do not look for the Millennium as imminent. One generation is apt to get all the wear it can out of the cast clothes of the last, and is always sure to use up every paling of the old fence that will hold a nail in building the new. You suspect a kind of vanity in my genealogical enthusiasm. Perhaps you are right; but it is a universal foible. Where it does not show itself in a personal and private way, it becomes public and gregarious. We flatter ourselves in the Pilgrim Fathers, and the Virginian offshoot of a transported convict swells with the fancy ef a cavalier ancestry. Pride of birth, I have noticed, takes two forms. One complacently traces himself up to a coronet; another, defiantly, to a lapstone. The sentiment is precisely the same in both cases, only that one is the positive and the other the negative pole of it. Seeing a goat the other day kneeling in order to graze with less trouble, it seemed to me a type of the common notion of prayer. Most people are ready enough to go down on their knees for material blessings, but how few for those spiritual gifts which alone are an answer to our orisons, if we but knew it! Some people, nowadays, seem to have hit upon a new moralization of the moth and the candle. They would lock up the light of Truth, lest poor Psyche should put it out in her effort to draw nigh, to it. No. X MR. HOSEA BIGLOW TO THE EDITOR OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY DEAR SIR,--Your letter come to han' Requestin' me to please be funny; But I ain't made upon a plan Thet knows wut's comin', gall or honey: Ther' 's times the world does look so queer, Odd fancies come afore I call 'em; An' then agin, for half a year, No preacher 'thout a call's more solemn. You're 'n want o' sunthin' light an' cute, Rattlin' an' shrewd an' kin' o' jingleish, 10 An' wish, pervidin' it 'ould suit, I'd take an' citify my English. I _ken_ write long-tailed, ef I please,-- But when I'm jokin', no, I thankee; Then, fore I know it, my idees Run helter-skelter into Yankee. Sence I begun to scribble rhyme, I tell ye wut, I hain't ben foolin'; The parson's books, life, death, an' time Hev took some trouble with my schoolin'; 20 Nor th' airth don't git put out with me, Thet love her 'z though she wuz a woman; Why, th' ain't a bird upon the tree But half forgives my bein' human. An' yit I love th' unhighschooled way Ol' farmers hed when I wuz younger; Their talk wuz meatier, an' 'ould stay, While book-froth seems to whet your hunger; For puttin' in a downright lick 'twixt Humbug's eyes, ther' 's few can metch it, 30 An' then it helves my thoughts ez slick Ez stret-grained hickory does a hetchet. But when I can't, I can't, thet's all, For Natur' won't put up with gullin'; Idees you hev to shove an' haul Like a druv pig ain't wuth a mullein: Live thoughts ain't sent for; thru all rifts O' sense they pour an' resh ye onwards, Like rivers when south-lyin' drifts Feel thet th' old arth's a-wheelin' sunwards. 40 Time wuz, the rhymes come crowdin' thick Ez office-seekers arter 'lection, An' into ary place 'ould stick Without no bother nor objection; But sence the war my thoughts hang back Ez though I wanted to enlist 'em, An' subs'tutes,--_they_ don't never lack, But then they'll slope afore you've mist 'em. Nothin' don't seem like wut it wuz; I can't see wut there is to hender, 50 An' yit my brains jes' go buzz, buzz, Like bumblebees agin a winder; 'fore these times come, in all airth's row, Ther' wuz one quiet place, my head in, Where I could hide an' think,--but now It's all one teeter, hopin', dreadin'. Where's Peace? I start, some clear-blown night, When gaunt stone walls grow numb an' number, An' creakin' 'cross the snow-crus' white, Walk the col' starlight into summer; 60 Up grows the moon, an' swell by swell Thru the pale pasturs silvers dimmer Than the last smile thet strives to tell O' love gone heavenward in its shimmer. I hev been gladder o' sech things Than cocks o' spring or bees o' clover, They filled my heart with livin' springs, But now they seem to freeze 'em over; Sights innercent ez babes on knee, Peaceful ez eyes o' pastur'd cattle, 70 Jes' coz they be so, seem to me To rile me more with thoughts o' battle. Indoors an' out by spells I try; Ma'am Natur' keeps her spin-wheel goin', But leaves my natur' stiff and dry Ez fiel's o' clover arter mowin'; An' her jes' keepin' on the same, Calmer 'n a clock, an' never carin' An' findin' nary thing to blame, Is wus than ef she took to swearin'. 80 Snow-flakes come whisperin' on the pane The charm makes blazin' logs so pleasant, But I can't hark to wut they're say'n', With Grant or Sherman ollers present; The chimbleys shudder in the gale, Thet lulls, then suddin takes to flappin' Like a shot hawk, but all's ez stale To me ez so much sperit-rappin'. Under the yaller-pines I house, When sunshine makes 'em all sweet-scented, 90 An' hear among their furry boughs The baskin' west-wind purr contented, While 'way o'erhead, ez sweet an' low Ez distant bells thet ring for meetin', The wedged wil' geese their bugles blow, Further an' further South retreatin'. Or up the slippery knob I strain An' see a hundred hills like islan's Lift their blue woods in broken chain Out o' the sea o' snowy silence; 100 The farm-smokes, sweetes' sight on airth, Slow thru the winter air a-shrinkin' Seem kin' o' sad, an' roun' the hearth Of empty places set me thinkin'. Beaver roars hoarse with meltin' snows, An' rattles di'mon's from his granite; Time wuz, he snatched away my prose, An' into psalms or satires ran it; But he, nor all the rest thet once Started my blood to country-dances, 110 Can't set me goin' more 'n a dunce Thet hain't no use for dreams an' fancies. Rat-tat-tat-tattle thru the street I hear the drummers makin' riot, An' I set thinkin' o' the feet Thet follered once an' now are quiet,-- White feet ez snowdrops innercent, Thet never knowed the paths o' Satan, Whose comin' step ther' 's ears thet won't, No, not lifelong, leave off awaitin', 120 Why, hain't I held 'em on my knee? Didn't I love to see 'em growin', Three likely lads ez wal could be, Hahnsome an' brave an' not tu knowin'? I set an' look into the blaze Whose natur', jes' like theirn, keeps climbin', Ez long 'z it lives, in shinin' ways, An' half despise myself for rhymin'. Wut's words to them whose faith an' truth On War's red techstone rang true metal, 130 Who ventered life an' love an' youth For the gret prize o' death in battle? To him who, deadly hurt, agen Flashed on afore the charge's thunder, Tippin' with fire the bolt of men Thet rived the Rebel line asunder? 'Tain't right to hev the young go fust, All throbbin' full o' gifts an' graces, Leavin' life's paupers dry ez dust To try an' make b'lieve fill their places: 140 Nothin' but tells us wut we miss, Ther' 's gaps our lives can't never fay in, An' _thet_ world seems so fur from this Lef' for us loafers to grow gray in! My eyes cloud up for rain; my mouth Will take to twitchin' roun' the corners; I pity mothers, tu, down South, For all they sot among the scorners: I'd sooner take my chance to stan' At Jedgment where your meanest slave is, 150 Than at God's bar hol' up a han' Ez drippin' red ez yourn, Jeff Davis! Come, Peace! not like a mourner bowed For honor lost an' dear ones wasted, But proud, to meet a people proud, With eyes thet tell o' triumph tasted! Come, with han' grippin' on the hilt, An' step thet proves ye Victory's daughter! Longin' for you, our sperits wilt Like shipwrecked men's on raf's for water. 160 Come, while our country feels the lift Of a gret instinct shoutin' 'Forwards!' An' knows thet freedom ain't a gift Thet tarries long in han's o' cowards! Come, sech ez mothers prayed for, when They kissed their cross with lips thet quivered, An' bring fair wages for brave men, A nation saved, a race delivered! No. XI MR. HOSEA BIGLOW'S SPEECH IN MARCH MEETING TO THE EDITOR OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY JAALAM, April 5, 1866. MY DEAR SIR,-- (an' noticin' by your kiver thet you're some dearer than wut you wuz, I enclose the deffrence) I dunno ez I know Jest how to interdoose this las' perduction of my mews, ez Parson Wilber allus called 'em, which is goin' to _be_ the last an' _stay_ the last onless sunthin' pertikler sh'd interfear which I don't expec' ner I wun't yield tu ef it wuz ez pressin' ez a deppity Shiriff. Sence Mr. Wilbur's disease I hevn't hed no one thet could dror out my talons. He ust to kind o' wine me up an' set the penderlum agoin' an' then somehow I seemed to go on tick as it wear tell I run down, but the noo minister ain't of the same brewin' nor I can't seem to git ahold of no kine of huming nater in him but sort of slide rite off as you du on the eedge of a mow. Minnysteeril natur is wal enough an' a site better'n most other kines I know on, but the other sort sech as Welbor hed wuz of the Lord's makin' an' naterally more wonderfle an' sweet tastin' leastways to me so fur as heerd from. He used to interdooce 'em smooth ez ile athout sayin' nothin' in pertickler an' I misdoubt he didn't set so much by the sec'nd Ceres as wut he done by the Fust, fact, he let on onct thet his mine misgive him of a sort of fallin' off in spots. He wuz as outspoken as a norwester _he_ wuz, but I tole him I hoped the fall wuz from so high up thet a feller could ketch a good many times fust afore comin' bunt onto the ground as I see Jethro C. Swett from the meetin' house steeple up to th' old perrish, an' took up for dead but he's alive now an' spry as wut you be. Turnin' of it over I recelected how they ust to put wut they called Argymunce onto the frunts of poymns, like poorches afore housen whare you could rest ye a spell whilst you wuz concludin' whether you'd go in or nut espeshully ware tha wuz darters, though I most allus found it the best plen to go in fust an' think afterwards an' the gals likes it best tu. I dno as speechis ever hez any argimunts to 'em, I never see none thet hed an' I guess they never du but tha must allus be a B'ginnin' to everythin' athout it is Etarnity so I'll begin rite away an' anybody may put it afore any of his speeches ef it soots an' welcome. I don't claim no paytent. THE ARGYMUNT Interducshin, w'ich may be skipt. Begins by talkin' about himself: thet's jest natur an' most gin'ally allus pleasin', I b'leeve I've notist, to _one_ of the cumpany, an' thet's more than wut you can say of most speshes of talkin'. Nex' comes the gittin' the goodwill of the orjunce by lettin' 'em gether from wut you kind of ex'dentally let drop thet they air about East, A one, an' no mistaik, skare 'em up an' take 'em as they rise. Spring interdooced with a fiew approput flours. Speach finally begins witch nobuddy needn't feel obolygated to read as I never read 'em an' never shell this one ag'in. Subjick staited; expanded; delayted; extended. Pump lively. Subjick staited ag'in so's to avide all mistaiks. Ginnle remarks; continooed; kerried on; pushed furder; kind o' gin out. Subjick _re_staited; dielooted; stirred up permiscoous. Pump ag'in. Gits back to where he sot out. Can't seem to stay thair. Ketches into Mr. Seaward's hair. Breaks loose ag'in an' staits his subjick; stretches it; turns it; folds it; onfolds it; folds it ag'in so's't, no one can't find it. Argoos with an imedginary bean thet ain't aloud to say nothin' in replye. Gives him a real good dressin' an' is settysfide he's rite. Gits into Johnson's hair. No use tryin' to git into his head. Gives it up. Hez to stait his subjick ag'in; doos it back'ards, sideways, eendways, criss-cross, bevellin', noways. Gits finally red on it. Concloods. Concloods more. Reads some xtrax. Sees his subjick a-nosin' round arter him ag'in. Tries to avide it. Wun't du. _Mis_states it. Can't conjectur' no other plawsable way of staytin' on it. Tries pump. No fx. Finely concloods to conclood. Yeels the flore. You kin spall an' punctooate thet as you please. I allus do, it kind of puts a noo soot of close onto a word, thisere funattick spellin' doos an' takes 'em out of the prissen dress they wair in the Dixonary. Ef I squeeze the cents out of 'em it's the main thing, an' wut they wuz made for: wut's left's jest pummis. Mistur Wilbur sez he to me onct, sez he, 'Hosee,' sez he, 'in litterytoor the only good thing is Natur. It's amazin' hard to come at,' sez he, 'but onct git it an' you've gut everythin'. Wut's the sweetest small on airth?' sez he. 'Noomone hay,' sez I, pooty bresk, for he wuz allus hankerin' round in hayin'. 'Nawthin' of the kine,' sez he. 'My leetle Huldy's breath,' sez I ag'in. 'You're a good lad,' sez he, his eyes sort of ripplin' like, for he lost a babe onct nigh about her age,--'you're a good lad; but 'tain't thet nuther,' sez he. 'Ef you want to know,' sez he, 'open your winder of a mornin' et ary season, and you'll larn thet the best of perfooms is jest fresh air, _fresh air_,' sez he, emphysizin', 'athout no mixtur. Thet's wut _I_ call natur in writin', and it bathes my lungs and washes 'em sweet whenever I git a whiff on 't.' sez he. I often think o' thet when I set down to write but the winders air so ept to git stuck, an' breakin' a pane costs sunthin'. Yourn for the last time, _Nut_ to be continooed, HOSEA BIGLOW. I don't much s'pose, hows'ever I should plen it, I could git boosted into th' House or Sennit,-- Nut while the twolegged gab-machine's so plenty, 'nablin' one man to du the talk o' twenty; I'm one o' them thet finds it ruther hard To mannyfactur' wisdom by the yard, An' maysure off, accordin' to demand, The piece-goods el'kence that I keep on hand, The same ole pattern runnin' thru an' thru, An' nothin' but the customer thet's new. 10 I sometimes think, the furder on I go, Thet it gits harder to feel sure I know, An' when I've settled my idees, I find 'twarn't I sheered most in makin' up my mind; 'twuz this an' thet an' t'other thing thet done it, Sunthin' in th' air, I couldn' seek nor shun it. Mos' folks go off so quick now in discussion, All th' ole flint-locks seems altered to percussion, Whilst I in agin' sometimes git a hint, Thet I'm percussion changin' back to flint; 20 Wal, ef it's so, I ain't agoin' to werrit, For th' ole Queen's-arm hez this pertickler merit,-- It gives the mind a hahnsome wedth o' margin To kin' o make its will afore dischargin': I can't make out but jest one ginnle rule,-- No man need go an' _make_ himself a fool, Nor jedgment ain't like mutton, thet can't bear Cookin' tu long, nor be took up tu rare. Ez I wuz say'n', I hain't no chance to speak So's't all the country dreads me onct a week, 30 But I've consid'ble o' thet sort o' head Thet sets to home an' thinks wut _might_ be said, The sense thet grows an' werrits underneath, Comin' belated like your wisdom-teeth, An' git so el'kent, sometimes, to my gardin Thet I don' vally public life a fardin'. Our Parson Wilbur (blessin's on his head!) 'mongst other stories of ole times he hed, Talked of a feller thet rehearsed his spreads Beforehan' to his rows o' kebbige-heads, 40 (Ef 'twarn't Demossenes, I guess 'twuz Sisro,) Appealin' fust to thet an' then to this row, Accordin' ez he thought thet his idees Their diff'runt ev'riges o' brains 'ould please; 'An',' sez the Parson, 'to hit right, you must Git used to maysurin' your hearers fust; For, take my word for 't, when all's come an' past, The kebbige-heads'll cair the day et last; Th' ain't ben a meetin' sence the worl' begun But they made (raw or biled ones) ten to one.' 50 I've allus foun' 'em, I allow, sence then About ez good for talkin' tu ez men; They'll take edvice, like other folks, to keep, (To use it 'ould be holdin' on 't tu cheap,) They listen wal, don' kick up when you scold 'em, An' ef they've tongues, hev sense enough to hold 'em; Though th' ain't no denger we shall lose the breed, I gin'lly keep a score or so for seed, An' when my sappiness gits spry in spring, So's't my tongue itches to run on full swing, 60 I fin' 'em ready-planted in March-meetin', Warm ez a lyceum-audience in their greetin', An' pleased to hear my spoutin' frum the fence,-- Comin', ez 't doos, entirely free 'f expense. This year I made the follerin' observations Extrump'ry, like most other tri'ls o' patience, An', no reporters bein' sent express To work their abstrac's up into a mess Ez like th' oridg'nal ez a woodcut pictur' Thet chokes the life out like a boy-constrictor, 70 I've writ 'em out, an' so avide all jeal'sies 'twixt nonsense o' my own an' some one's else's. (N.B. Reporters gin'lly git a hint To make dull orjunces seem 'live in print, An', ez I hev t' report myself, I vum, I'll put th' applauses where they'd _ough' to_ come!) MY FELLER KEBBIGE-HEADS, who look so green, I vow to gracious thet ef I could dreen The world of all its hearers but jest you, 'twould leave 'bout all tha' is wuth talkin' to, 80 An' you, my ven'able ol' frien's, thet show Upon your crowns a sprinklin' o' March snow, Ez ef mild Time had christened every sense For wisdom's church o' second innocence. Nut Age's winter, no, no sech a thing, But jest a kin' o' slippin'-back o' spring,-- [Sev'ril noses blowed.] We've gathered here, ez ushle, to decide Which is the Lord's an' which is Satan's side, Coz all the good or evil thet can heppen Is 'long o' which on 'em you choose for Cappen. [Cries o' 'Thet's so.'] Aprul's come back; the swellin' buds of oak 91 Dim the fur hillsides with a purplish smoke; The brooks are loose an', singing to be seen, (Like gals,) make all the hollers soft an' green; The birds are here, for all the season's late; They take the sun's height an' don' never wait; Soon 'z he officially declares it's spring Their light hearts lift 'em on a north'ard wing, An' th' ain't an acre, fur ez you can hear, Can't by the music tell the time o' year; 100 But thet white dove Carliny seared away, Five year ago, jes' sech an Aprul day; Peace, that we hoped 'ould come an' build last year An' coo by every housedoor, isn't here,-- No, nor wun't never be, for all our jaw, Till we're ez brave in pol'tics ez in war! O Lord, ef folks wuz made so's't they could see The begnet-pint there is to an idee! [Sensation.] Ten times the danger in 'em th' is in steel; They run your soul thru an' you never feel, 110 But crawl about an' seem to think you're livin', Poor shells o' men, nut wuth the Lord's forgivin', Tell you come bunt ag'in a real live feet, An' go to pieces when you'd ough' to ect! Thet kin' o' begnet's wut we're crossin' now, An' no man, fit to nevvigate a scow, 'ould stan' expectin' help from Kingdom Come, While t'other side druv their cold iron home. My frien's, you never gethered from my mouth, No, nut one word ag'in the South ez South, 120 Nor th' ain't a livin' man, white, brown, nor black, Gladder 'n wut I should be to take 'em back; But all I ask of Uncle Sam is fust To write up on his door, 'No goods on trust'; [Cries o' 'Thet's the ticket!'] Give us cash down in ekle laws for all, An' they'll be snug inside afore nex' fall. Give wut they ask, an' we shell hev Jamaker, Wuth minus some consid'able an acre; Give wut they need, an' we shell git 'fore long A nation all one piece, rich, peacefle, strong; 130 Make 'em Amerikin, an' they'll begin To love their country ez they loved their sin; Let 'em stay Southun, an' you've kep' a sore Ready to fester ez it done afore. No mortle man can boast of perfic' vision, But the one moleblin' thing is Indecision, An' th' ain't no futur' for the man nor state Thet out of j-u-s-t can't spell great. Some folks 'ould call thet reddikle, do you? 'Twas commonsense afore the war wuz thru; 140 _Thet_ loaded all our guns an' made 'em speak So's't Europe heared 'em clearn acrost the creek; 'They're drivin' o' their spiles down now,' sez she, 'To the hard grennit o' God's fust idee; Ef they reach thet, Democ'cy needn't fear The tallest airthquakes _we_ can git up here.' Some call 't insultin' to ask _ary_ pledge, An' say 'twill only set their teeth on edge, But folks you've jest licked, fur 'z I ever see, Are 'bout ez mad 'z they wal know how to be; 150 It's better than the Rebs themselves expected 'fore they see Uncle Sam wilt down henpected; Be kind 'z you please, but fustly make things fast, For plain Truth's all the kindness thet'll last; Ef treason is a crime, ez _some_ folks say, How could we punish it in a milder way Than sayin' to 'em, 'Brethren, lookee here, We'll jes' divide things with ye, sheer an' sheer, An' sence both come o' pooty strong-backed daddies, You take the Darkies, ez we've took the Paddies; 160 Ign'ant an' poor we took 'em by the hand, An' they're the bones an' sinners o' the land,' I ain't o' them thet fancy there's a loss on Every inves'ment thet don't start from Bos'on; But I know this: our money's safest trusted In sunthin', come wut will, thet _can't_ be busted, An' thet's the old Amerikin idee, To make a man a Man an' let him be. [Gret applause.] Ez for their l'yalty, don't take a goad to 't, But I do' want to block their only road to 't 170 By lettin' 'em believe thet they can git Mor'n wut they lost, out of our little wit: I tell ye wut, I'm 'fraid we'll drif' to leeward 'thout we can put more stiffenin' into Seward; He seems to think Columby'd better ect Like a scared widder with a boy stiff-necked Thet stomps an' swears he wun't come in to supper; She mus' set up for him, ez weak ez Tupper, Keepin' the Constitootion on to warm, Tell he'll eccept her 'pologies in form: 180 The neighbors tell her he's a cross-grained cuss Thet needs a hidin' 'fore he comes to wus; 'No,' sez Ma Seward, 'he's ez good 'z the best, All he wants now is sugar-plums an' rest;' 'He sarsed my Pa,' sez one; 'He stoned my son,' Another edds, 'Oh wal, 'twuz jes' his fun.' 'He tried to shoot our Uncle Samwell dead.' ''Twuz only tryin' a noo gun he hed.' 'Wal, all we ask's to hev it understood You'll take his gun away from him for good; 190 We don't, wal, nut exac'ly, like his play, Seem' he allus kin' o' shoots our way. You kill your fatted calves to no good eend, 'thout his fust sayin', "Mother, I hev sinned!"' ['Amen!' frum Deac'n Greenleaf] The Pres'dunt _he_ thinks thet the slickest plan 'ould be t' allow thet he's our on'y man, An' thet we fit thru all thet dreffle war Jes' for his private glory an' eclor; 'Nobody ain't a Union man,' sez he, ''thout he agrees, thru thick an' thin, with me; 200 Warn't Andrew Jackson's 'nitials jes' like mine? An' ain't thet sunthin' like a right divine To cut up ez kentenkerous ez I please, An' treat your Congress like a nest o' fleas?' Wal, I expec' the People wouldn' care, if The question now wuz techin' bank or tariff, But I conclude they've 'bout made up their min' This ain't the fittest time to go it blin', Nor these ain't metters thet with pol'tics swings, But goes 'way down amongst the roots o' things; 210 Coz Sumner talked o' whitewashin' one day They wun't let four years' war be throwed away. 'Let the South hev her rights?' They say, 'Thet's you! But nut greb hold of other folks's tu.' Who owns this country, is it they or Andy? Leastways it ough' to be the People _and_ he; Let him be senior pardner, ef he's so, But let them kin' o' smuggle in ez Co; [Laughter.] Did he diskiver it? Consid'ble numbers Think thet the job wuz taken by Columbus. 220 Did he set tu an' make it wut it is? Ef so, I guess the One-Man-power _hez_ riz. Did he put thru the rebbles, clear the docket, An' pay th' expenses out of his own pocket? Ef thet's the case, then everythin' I exes Is t' hev him come an' pay my ennooal texes. [Profoun' sensation.] Was 't he thet shou'dered all them million guns? Did he lose all the fathers, brothers, sons? Is this ere pop'lar gov'ment thet we run A kin' o' sulky, made to kerry one? 230 An' is the country goin' to knuckle down To hev Smith sort their letters 'stid o'Brown? Who wuz the 'Nited States 'fore Richmon' fell? Wuz the South needfle their full name to spell? An' can't we spell it in thet short-han' way Till th' underpinnin's settled so's to stay? Who cares for the Resolves of '61, Thet tried to coax an airthquake with a bun? Hez act'ly nothin' taken place sence then To larn folks they must hendle fects like men? 240 Ain't _this_ the true p'int? Did the Rebs accep' 'em? Ef nut, whose fault is 't thet we hevn't kep 'em? Warn't there _two_ sides? an' don't it stend to reason Thet this week's 'Nited States ain't las' week's treason? When all these sums is done, with nothin' missed, An' nut afore, this school 'll be dismissed. I knowed ez wal ez though I'd seen 't with eyes Thet when the war wuz over copper'd rise, An' thet we'd hev a rile-up in our kettle 'twould need Leviathan's whole skin to settle: 250 I thought 'twould take about a generation 'fore we could wal begin to be a nation, But I allow I never did imegine 'twould be our Pres'dunt thet 'ould drive a wedge in To keep the split from closin' ef it could. An' healin' over with new wholesome wood; For th' ain't no chance o' healin' while they think Thet law an' gov'ment's only printer's ink; I mus' confess I thank him for discoverin' The curus way in which the States are sovereign; 260 They ain't nut _quite_ enough so to rebel, But, when they fin' it's costly to raise h----, [A groan from Deac'n G.] Why, then, for jes' the same superl'tive reason, They're 'most too much so to be tetched for treason; They _can't_ go out, but ef they somehow _du_, Their sovereignty don't noways go out tu; The State goes out, the sovereignty don't stir, But stays to keep the door ajar for her. He thinks secession never took 'em out, An' mebby he's correc', but I misdoubt? 270 Ef they warn't out, then why, 'n the name o' sin, Make all this row 'bout lettin' of 'em in? In law, p'r'aps nut; but there's a diffurence, ruther, Betwixt your mother-'n-law an' real mother, [Derisive cheers.] An' I, for one, shall wish they'd all ben _som'eres_, Long 'z U.S. Texes are sech reg'lar comers. But, O my patience! must we wriggle back Into th' ole crooked, pettyfoggin' track, When our artil'ry-wheels a road hev cut Stret to our purpose ef we keep the rut? 280 War's jes' dead waste excep' to wipe the slate Clean for the cyph'rin' of some nobler fate. [Applause.] Ez for dependin' on their oaths an' thet, 'twun't bind 'em more 'n the ribbin roun' my het: I heared a fable once from Othniel Starns, That pints it slick ez weathercocks do barns; Onct on a time the wolves hed certing rights Inside the fold; they used to sleep there nights, An' bein' cousins o' the dogs, they took Their turns et watchin', reg'lar ez a book; 290 But somehow, when the dogs hed gut asleep, Their love o' mutton beat their love o' sheep, Till gradilly the shepherds come to see Things warn't agoin' ez they'd ough' to be; So they sent off a deacon to remonstrate Along 'th the wolves an' urge 'em to go on straight; They didn't seem to set much by the deacon, Nor preachin' didn' cow 'em, nut to speak on; Fin'ly they swore thet they'd go out an' stay, An' hev their fill o' mutton every day; 300 Then dogs an' shepherds, after much hard dammin', [Groan from Deac'n G.] Turned tu an' give 'em a tormented lammin', An' sez, 'Ye sha'n't go out, the murrain rot ye, To keep us wastin' half our time to watch ye!' But then the question come, How live together 'thout losin' sleep, nor nary yew nor wether? Now there wuz some dogs (noways wuth their keep) Thet sheered their cousins' tastes an' sheered the sheep; They sez, 'Be gin'rous, let 'em swear right in, An', ef they backslide, let 'em swear ag'in; 310 Jes' let 'em put on sheep-skins whilst they're swearin'; To ask for more 'ould be beyond all bearin'.' 'Be gin'rous for yourselves, where _you_'re to pay, Thet's the best prectice,' sez a shepherd gray; 'Ez for their oaths they wun't be wuth a button, Long 'z you don't cure 'em o' their taste for mutton; Th' ain't but one solid way, howe'er you puzzle: Tell they're convarted, let 'em wear a muzzle.' [Cries of 'Bully for you!'] I've noticed thet each half-baked scheme's abetters Are in the hebbit o' producin' letters 320 Writ by all sorts o' never-heared-on fellers, 'bout ez oridge'nal ez the wind in bellers; I've noticed, tu, it's the quack med'cine gits (An' needs) the grettest heaps o' stiffykits; [Two pothekeries goes out.] Now, sence I lef off creepin' on all fours, I hain't ast no man to endorse my course; It's full ez cheap to be your own endorser, An' ef I've made a cup, I'll fin' the saucer; But I've some letters here from t'other side, An' them's the sort thet helps me to decide; 330 Tell me for wut the copper-comp'nies hanker, An' I'll tell you jest where it's safe to anchor. [Faint hiss.] Fus'ly the Hon'ble B.O. Sawin writes Thet for a spell he couldn't sleep o' nights, Puzzlin' which side wuz preudentest to pin to, Which wuz th' ole homestead, which the temp'ry leanto; Et fust he jedged 'twould right-side-up his pan To come out ez a 'ridge'nal Union man, 'But now,' he sez, 'I ain't nut quite so fresh; The winnin' horse is goin' to be Secesh; 340 You might, las' spring, hev eas'ly walked the course, 'fore we contrived to doctor th' Union horse; Now _we_'re the ones to walk aroun' the nex' track: Jest you take hol' an' read the follerin' extrac', Out of a letter I received last week From an ole frien' thet never sprung a leak, A Nothun Dem'crat o' th' ole Jarsey blue, Born copper-sheathed an' copper-fastened tu.' 'These four years past it hez ben tough To say which side a feller went for; 350 Guideposts all gone, roads muddy 'n' rough, An' nothin' duin' wut 'twuz meant for; Pickets a-firin' left an' right, Both sides a lettin' rip et sight,-- Life warn't wuth hardly payin' rent for. 'Columby gut her back up so, It warn't no use a-tryin' to stop her,-- War's emptin's riled her very dough An' made it rise an' act improper; 'Twuz full ez much ez I could du 360 To jes' lay low an' worry thru, 'Thout hevin' to sell out my copper. 'Afore the war your mod'rit men, Could set an' sun 'em on the fences, Cyph'rin' the chances up, an' then Jump off which way bes' paid expenses; Sence, 'twuz so resky ary way, _I_ didn't hardly darst to say I 'greed with Paley's Evidences. [Groan from Deac'n G.] 'Ask Mac ef tryin' to set the fence 370 Warn't like bein' rid upon a rail on 't, Headin' your party with a sense O' bein' tipjint in the tail on 't, An' tryin' to think thet, on the whole, You kin' o' quasi own your soul When Belmont's gut a bill o' sale on 't? [Three cheers for Grant and Sherman.] 'Come peace, I sposed thet folks 'ould like Their pol'tics done ag'in by proxy; Give their noo loves the bag an' strike A fresh trade with their reg'lar doxy; 380 But the drag's broke, now slavery's gone, An' there's gret resk they'll blunder on, Ef they ain't stopped, to real Democ'cy. 'We've gut an awful row to hoe In this 'ere job o' reconstructin'; Folks dunno skurce which way to go, Where th' ain't some boghole to be ducked in; But one thing's clear; there _is_ a crack, Ef we pry hard, 'twixt white an' black, Where the ole makebate can be tucked in. 390 'No white man sets in airth's broad aisle Thet I ain't willin' t' own ez brother, An' ef he's happened to strike ile, I dunno, fin'ly, but I'd ruther; An' Paddies, long 'z they vote all right, Though they ain't jest a nat'ral white, I hold one on 'em good 'z another, [Applause.] 'Wut _is_ there lef I'd like to know, Ef 'tain't the defference o' color, To keep up self-respec' an' show 400 The human natur' of a fullah? Wut good in bein' white, onless It's fixed by law, nut lef' to guess, We're a heap smarter an' they duller? 'Ef we're to hev our ekle rights, 'twun't du to 'low no competition; Th' ole debt doo us for bein' whites Ain't safe onless we stop th' emission O' these noo notes, whose specie base Is human natur', thout no trace 410 O' shape, nor color, nor condition. [Continood applause.] 'So fur I'd writ an' couldn' jedge Aboard wut boat I'd best take pessige, My brains all mincemeat, 'thout no edge Upon 'em more than tu a sessige, But now it seems ez though I see Sunthin' resemblin' an idee, Sence Johnson's speech an' veto message. 'I like the speech best, I confess, The logic, preudence, an' good taste on 't; 420 An' it's so mad, I ruther guess There's some dependence to be placed on 't; [Laughter.] It's narrer, but 'twixt you an' me, Out o' the allies o' J.D. A temp'ry party can be based on 't. 'Jes' to hold on till Johnson's thru An' dug his Presidential grave is, An' _then!_--who knows but we could slew The country roun' to put in----? Wun't some folks rare up when we pull 430 Out o' their eyes our Union wool An' larn 'em wut a p'lit'cle shave is! 'Oh, did it seem 'z ef Providunce _Could_ ever send a second Tyler? To see the South all back to once, Reapin' the spiles o' the Free-siler, Is cute ez though an ingineer Should claim th' old iron for his sheer Coz 'twas himself that bust the biler!' [Gret laughter.] Thet tells the story! Thet's wut we shall git 440 By tryin' squirtguns on the burnin' Pit; For the day never comes when it'll du To kick off Dooty like a worn-out shoe. I seem to hear a whisperin' in the air, A sighin' like, of unconsoled despair, Thet comes from nowhere an' from everywhere, An' seems to say, 'Why died we? warn't it, then, To settle, once for all, thet men wuz men? Oh, airth's sweet cup snetched from us barely tasted, The grave's real chill is feelin' life wuz wasted! 450 Oh, you we lef', long-lingerin' et the door, Lovin' you best, coz we loved Her the more, Thet Death, not we, had conquered, we should feel Ef she upon our memory turned her heel, An' unregretful throwed us all away To flaunt it in a Blind Man's Holiday!' My frien's, I've talked nigh on to long enough. I hain't no call to bore ye coz ye're tough; My lungs are sound, an' our own v'ice delights Our ears, but even kebbige-heads hez rights. 460 It's the las' time thet I shell e'er address ye, But you'll soon fin' some new tormentor: bless ye! [Tumult'ous applause and cries of 'Go on!' 'Don't stop!'] UNDER THE WILLOWS AND OTHER POEMS TO CHARLES ELIOT NORTON AGRO DOLCE The wind is roistering out of doors, My windows shake and my chimney roars; My Elmwood chimneys seem crooning to me, As of old, in their moody, minor key, And out of the past the hoarse wind blows, As I sit in my arm-chair, and toast my toes. 'Ho! ho! nine-and-forty,' they seem to sing, 'We saw you a little toddling thing. We knew you child and youth and man, A wonderful fellow to dream and plan, With a great thing always to come,--who knows? Well, well! 'tis some comfort to toast one's toes. 'How many times have you sat at gaze Till the mouldering fire forgot to blaze, Shaping among the whimsical coals Fancies and figures and shining goals! What matters the ashes that cover those? While hickory lasts you can toast your toes. 'O dream-ship-builder: where are they all, Your grand three-deckers, deep-chested and tall, That should crush the waves under canvas piles, And anchor at last by the Fortunate Isles? There's gray in your beard, the years turn foes, While you muse in your arm-chair, and toast your toes.' I sit and dream that I hear, as of yore, My Elmwood chimneys' deep-throated roar; If much be gone, there is much remains; By the embers of loss I count my gains, You and yours with the best, till the old hope glows In the fanciful flame, as I toast my toes. Instead of a fleet of broad-browed ships, To send a child's armada of chips! Instead of the great gun, tier on tier, A freight of pebbles and grass-blades sere! 'Well, maybe more love with the less gift goes,' I growl, as, half moody, I toast my toes. UNDER THE WILLOWS Frank-hearted hostess of the field and wood, Gypsy, whose roof is every spreading tree, June is the pearl of our New England year. Still a surprisal, though expected long. Her coming startles. Long she lies in wait, Makes many a feint, peeps forth, draws coyly back, Then, from some southern ambush in the sky, With one great gush of blossom storms the world. A week ago the sparrow was divine; The bluebird, shifting his light load of song 10 From post to post along the cheerless fence, Was as a rhymer ere the poet come; But now, oh rapture! sunshine winged and voiced, Pipe blown through by the warm wild breath of the West Shepherding his soft droves of fleecy cloud, Gladness of woods, skies, waters, all in one, The bobolink has come, and, like the soul Of the sweet season vocal in a bird, Gurgles in ecstasy we know not what Save _June! Dear June! Now God be praised for June_. 20 May is a pious fraud of the almanac, A ghastly parody of real Spring Shaped out of snow and breathed with eastern wind; Or if, o'er-confident, she trust the date, And, with her handful of anemones, Herself as shivery, steal into the sun, The season need but turn his hour-glass round, And Winter suddenly, like crazy Lear, Reels back, and brings the dead May in his arms, Her budding breasts and wan dislustred front 30 With frosty streaks and drifts of his white beard All overblown. Then, warmly walled with books, While my wood-fire supplies the sun's defect, Whispering old forest-sagas in its dreams, I take my May down from the happy shelf Where perch the world's rare song-birds in a row, Waiting my choice to open with full breast, And beg an alms of springtime, ne'er denied Indoors by vernal Chaucer, whose fresh woods Throb thick with merle and mavis all the year. 40 July breathes hot, sallows the crispy fields, Curls up the wan leaves of the lilac-hedge, And every eve cheats us with show of clouds That braze the horizon's western rim, or hang Motionless, with heaped canvas drooping idly, Like a dim fleet by starving men besieged, Conjectured half, and half descried afar, Helpless of wind, and seeming to slip back Adown the smooth curve of the oily sea. But June is full of invitations sweet, 50 Forth from the chimney's yawn and thrice-read tomes To leisurely delights and sauntering thoughts That brook no ceiling narrower than the blue. The cherry, drest for bridal, at my pane Brushes, then listens, _Will he come?_ The bee, All dusty as a miller, takes his toll Of powdery gold, and grumbles. What a day To sun me and do nothing! Nay, I think Merely to bask and ripen is sometimes The student's wiser business; the brain 60 That forages all climes to line its cells, Ranging both worlds on lightest wings of wish, Will not distil the juices it has sucked To the sweet substance of pellucid thought, Except for him who hath the secret learned To mix his blood with sunshine, and to take The winds into his pulses. Hush! 'tis he! My oriole, my glance of summer fire, Is come at last, and, ever on the watch, Twitches the packthread I had lightly wound 70 About the bough to help his housekeeping,-- Twitches and scouts by turns, blessing his luck, Yet fearing me who laid it in his way, Nor, more than wiser we in our affairs, Divines the providence that hides and helps. _Heave, ho! Heave, ho!_ he whistles as the twine Slackens its hold; _once more, now!_ and a flash Lightens across the sunlight to the elm Where his mate dangles at her cup of felt. Nor all his booty is the thread; he trails 80 My loosened thought with it along the air, And I must follow, would I ever find The inward rhyme to all this wealth of life. I care not how men trace their ancestry, To ape or Adam: let them please their whim; But I in June am midway to believe A tree among my far progenitors, Such sympathy is mine with all the race, Such mutual recognition vaguely sweet There is between us. Surely there are times 90 When they consent to own me of their kin, And condescend to me, and call me cousin, Murmuring faint lullabies of eldest time, Forgotten, and yet dumbly felt with thrills Moving the lips, though fruitless of all words. And I have many a lifelong leafy friend, Never estranged nor careful of my soul, That knows I hate the axe, and welcomes me Within his tent as if I were a bird, Or other free companion of the earth, 100 Yet undegenerate to the shifts of men. Among them one, an ancient willow, spreads Eight balanced limbs, springing at once all round His deep-ridged trunk with upward slant diverse, In outline like enormous beaker, fit For hand of Jotun, where mid snow and mist He holds unwieldy revel. This tree, spared, I know not by what grace,--for in the blood Of our New World subduers lingers yet Hereditary feud with trees, they being 110 (They and the red-man most) our fathers' foes,-- Is one of six, a willow Pleiades, The seventh fallen, that lean along the brink Where the steep upland dips into the marsh, Their roots, like molten metal cooled in flowing, Stiffened in coils and runnels down the bank. The friend of all the winds, wide-armed he towers And glints his steely aglets in the sun, Or whitens fitfully with sudden bloom Of leaves breeze-lifted, much as when a shoal 120 Of devious minnows wheel from where a pike Lurks balanced 'neath the lily-pads, and whirl A rood of silver bellies to the day. Alas! no acorn from the British oak 'Neath which slim fairies tripping wrought those rings Of greenest emerald, wherewith fireside life Did with the invisible spirit of Nature wed, Was ever planted here! No darnel fancy Might choke one useful blade in Puritan fields; With horn and hoof the good old Devil came, 130 The witch's broomstick was not contraband, But all that superstition had of fair, Or piety of native sweet, was doomed. And if there be who nurse unholy faiths, Fearing their god as if he were a wolf That snuffed round every home and was not seen, There should be some to watch and keep alive All beautiful beliefs. And such was that,-- By solitary shepherd first surmised Under Thessalian oaks, loved by some maid 140 Of royal stirp, that silent came and vanished, As near her nest the hermit thrush, nor dared Confess a mortal name,--that faith which gave A Hamadryed to each tree; and I Will hold it true that in this willow dwells The open-handed spirit, frank and blithe, Of ancient Hospitality, long since, With ceremonious thrift, bowed out of doors. In June 'tis good to lie beneath a tree While the blithe season comforts every sense, 150 Steeps all the brain in rest, and heals the heart, Brimming it o'er with sweetness unawares, Fragrant and silent as that rosy snow Wherewith the pitying apple-tree fills up And tenderly lines some last-year robin's nest. There muse I of old times, old hopes, old friends,-- Old friends! The writing of those words has borne My fancy backward to the gracious past, The generous past, when all was possible. For all was then untried; the years between 160 Have taught some sweet, some bitter lessons, none Wiser than this,--to spend in all things else, But of old friends to be most miserly. Each year to ancient friendships adds a ring, As to an oak, and precious more and more, Without deservingness or help of ours, They grow, and, silent, wider spread, each year, Their unbought ring of shelter or of shade, Sacred to me the lichens on the bark, Which Nature's milliners would scrape away; 170 Most dear and sacred every withered limb! 'Tis good to set them early, for our faith Pines as we age, and, after wrinkles come, Few plant, but water dead ones with vain tears. This willow is as old to me as life; And under it full often have I stretched, Feeling the warm earth like a thing alive, And gathering virtue in at every pore Till it possessed me wholly, and thought ceased, Or was transfused in something to which thought 180 Is coarse and dull of sense. Myself was lost. Gone from me like an ache, and what remained Become a part of the universal joy. My soul went forth, and, mingling with the tree, Danced in the leaves; or, floating in the cloud, Saw its white double in the stream below; Or else, sublimed to purer ecstasy, Dilated in the broad blue over all. I was the wind that dappled the lush grass, The tide that crept with coolness to its roots, 190 The thin-winged swallow skating on the air; The life that gladdened everything was mine. Was I then truly all that I beheld? Or is this stream of being but a glass Where the mind sees its visionary self, As, when the kingfisher flits o'er his bay, Across the river's hollow heaven below His picture flits,--another, yet the same? But suddenly the sound of human voice Or footfall, like the drop a chemist pours, 200 Doth in opacous cloud precipitate The consciousness that seemed but now dissolved Into an essence rarer than its own. And I am narrowed to myself once more. For here not long is solitude secure, Nor Fantasy left vacant to her spell. Here, sometimes, in this paradise of shade, Rippled with western winds, the dusty Tramp, Seeing the treeless causey burn beyond, Halts to unroll his bundle of strange food 210 And munch an unearned meal. I cannot help Liking this creature, lavish Summer's bedesman, Who from the almshouse steals when nights grow warm, Himself his large estate and only charge, To be the guest of haystack or of hedge, Nobly superior to the household gear That forfeits us our privilege of nature. I bait him with my match-box and my pouch, Nor grudge the uncostly sympathy of smoke, His equal now, divinely unemployed. 220 Some smack of Robin Hood is in the man, Some secret league with wild wood-wandering things; He is our ragged Duke, our barefoot Earl, By right of birth exonerate from toil, Who levies rent from us his tenants all, And serves the state by merely being. Here The Scissors-grinder, pausing, doffs his hat, And lets the kind breeze, with its delicate fan, Winnow the heat from out his dank gray hair,-- A grimy Ulysses, a much-wandered man, 230 Whose feet are known to all the populous ways, And many men and manners he hath seen, Not without fruit of solitary thought. He, as the habit is of lonely men,-- Unused to try the temper of their mind In fence with others,--positive and shy, Yet knows to put an edge upon his speech, Pithily Saxon in unwilling talk. Him I entrap with my long-suffering knife, And, while its poor blade hums away in sparks, 240 Sharpen my wit upon his gritty mind, In motion set obsequious to his wheel, And in its quality not much unlike. Nor wants my tree more punctual visitors. The children, they who are the only rich, Creating for the moment, and possessing Whate'er they choose to feign,--for still with them Kind Fancy plays the fairy godmother, Strewing their lives with cheap material For wingèd horses and Aladdin's lamps, 250 Pure elfin-gold, by manhood's touch profane To dead leaves disenchanted,--long ago Between the branches of the tree fixed seats, Making an o'erturned box their table. Oft The shrilling girls sit here between school hours, And play at _What's my thought like?_ while the boys, With whom the age chivalric ever bides, Pricked on by knightly spur of female eyes, Climb high to swing and shout on perilous boughs, Or, from the willow's armory equipped 260 With musket dumb, green banner, edgeless sword, Make good the rampart of their tree-redoubt 'Gainst eager British storming from below, And keep alive the tale of Bunker's Hill. Here, too, the men that mend our village ways, Vexing Macadam's ghost with pounded slate, Their nooning take; much noisy talk they spend On horses and their ills; and, as John Bull Tells of Lord This or That, who was his friend, So these make boast of intimacies long 270 With famous teams, and add large estimates, By competition swelled from mouth to mouth. Of how much they could draw, till one, ill pleased To have his legend overbid, retorts: 'You take and stretch truck-horses in a string From here to Long Wharf end, one thing I know, Not heavy neither, they could never draw,-- Ensign's long bow!' Then laughter loud and long. So they in their leaf-shadowed microcosm Image the larger world; for wheresoe'er 280 Ten men are gathered, the observant eye Will find mankind in little, as the stars Glide up and set, and all the heavens revolve In the small welkin of a drop of dew. I love to enter pleasure by a postern, Not the broad popular gate that gulps the mob; To find my theatres in roadside nooks, Where men are actors, and suspect it not; Where Nature all unconscious works her will, And every passion moves with easy gait, 290 Unhampered by the buskin or the train. Hating the crowd, where we gregarious men Lead lonely lives, I love society, Nor seldom find the best with simple souls Unswerved by culture from their native bent, The ground we meet on being primal man, And nearer the deep bases of our lives. But oh, half heavenly, earthly half, my soul, Canst thou from those late ecstasies descend, Thy lips still wet with the miraculous wine 300 That transubstantiates all thy baser stuff To such divinity that soul and sense, Once more commingled in their source, are lost,-- Canst thou descend to quench a vulgar thirst With the mere dregs and rinsings of the world? Well, if my nature find her pleasure so, I am content, nor need to blush; I take My little gift of being clean from God, Not haggling for a better, holding it Good as was ever any in the world, 310 My days as good and full of miracle. I pluck my nutriment from any bush, Finding out poison as the first men did By tasting and then suffering, if I must. Sometimes my bush burns, and sometimes it is A leafless wilding shivering by the wall; But I have known when winter barberries Pricked the effeminate palate with surprise Of savor whose mere harshness seemed divine. Oh, benediction of the higher mood 320 And human-kindness of the lower! for both I will be grateful while I live, nor question The wisdom that hath made us what we are, With such large range as from the ale-house bench Can reach the stars and be with both at home. They tell us we have fallen on prosy days, Condemned to glean the leavings of earth's feast Where gods and heroes took delight of old; But though our lives, moving in one dull round Of repetition infinite, become 330 Stale as a newspaper once read, and though History herself, seen in her workshop, seem To have lost the art that dyed those glorious panes, Rich with memorial shapes of saint and sage, That pave with splendor the Past's dusky aisles,-- Panes that enchant the light of common day With colors costly as the blood of kings, Till with ideal hues it edge our thought,-- Yet while the world is left, while nature lasts, And man the best of nature, there shall be 340 Somewhere contentment for these human hearts, Some freshness, some unused material For wonder and for song. I lose myself In other ways where solemn guide-posts say, _This way to Knowledge, This way to Repose_, But here, here only, I am ne'er betrayed, For every by-path leads me to my love. God's passionless reformers, influences, That purify and heal and are not seen, Shall man say whence your virtue is, or how 350 Ye make medicinal the wayside weed? I know that sunshine, through whatever rift, How shaped it matters not, upon my walls Paints discs as perfect-rounded as its source, And, like its antitype, the ray divine, However finding entrance, perfect still, Repeats the image unimpaired of God. We, who by shipwreck only find the shores Of divine wisdom, can but kneel at first; Can but exult to feel beneath our feet, 360 That long stretched vainly down the yielding deeps, The shock and sustenance of solid earth; Inland afar we see what temples gleam Through immemorial stems of sacred groves, And we conjecture shining shapes therein; Yet for a space we love to wander here Among the shells and seaweed of the beach. So mused I once within my willow-tent One brave June morning, when the bluff northwest, Thrusting aside a dank and snuffling day 370 That made us bitter at our neighbors' sins, Brimmed the great cup of heaven with sparkling cheer And roared a lusty stave; the sliding Charles, Blue toward the west, and bluer and more blue, Living and lustrous as a woman's eyes Look once and look no more, with southward curve Ran crinkling sunniness, like Helen's hair Glimpsed in Elysium, insubstantial gold; From blossom-clouded orchards, far away The bobolink tinkled; the deep meadows flowed 380 With multitudinous pulse of light and shade Against the bases of the southern hills, While here and there a drowsy island rick Slept and its shadow slept; the wooden bridge Thundered, and then was silent; on the roofs The sun-warped shingles rippled with the heat; Summer on field and hill, in heart and brain, All life washed clean in this high tide of June. DARA When Persia's sceptre trembled in a hand Wilted with harem-heats, and all the land Was hovered over by those vulture ills That snuff decaying empire from afar, Then, with a nature balanced as a star, Dara arose, a shepherd of the hills. He who had governed fleecy subjects well Made his own village by the selfsame spell Secure and quiet as a guarded fold; Then, gathering strength by slow and wise degrees 10 Under his sway, to neighbor villages Order returned, and faith and justice old. Now when it fortuned that a king more wise Endued the realm with brain and hands and eyes, He sought on every side men brave and just; And having heard our mountain shepherd's praise, How he refilled the mould of elder days, To Dara gave a satrapy in trust. So Dara shepherded a province wide, Nor in his viceroy's sceptre took more pride 20 Than in his crook before; but envy finds More food in cities than on mountains bare; And the frank sun of natures clear and rare Breeds poisonous fogs in low and marish minds. Soon it was hissed into the royal ear, That, though wise Dara's province, year by year, Like a great sponge, sucked wealth and plenty up, Yet, when he squeezed it at the king's behest, Some yellow drops, more rich than all the rest, Went to the filling of his private cup. 30 For proof, they said, that, wheresoe'er he went, A chest, beneath whose weight the camel bent, Went with him; and no mortal eye had seen What was therein, save only Dara's own; But, when 'twas opened, all his tent was known To glow and lighten with heaped jewels' sheen. The King set forth for Dara's province straight; There, as was fit, outside the city's gate, The viceroy met him with a stately train, And there, with archers circled, close at hand, 40 A camel with the chest was seen to stand: The King's brow reddened, for the guilt was plain. 'Open me here,' he cried, 'this treasure-chest!' 'Twas done; and only a worn shepherd's vest Was found therein. Some blushed and hung the head; Not Dara; open as the sky's blue roof He stood, and 'O my lord, behold the proof That I was faithful to my trust,' he said. 'To govern men, lo all the spell I had!' My soul in these rude vestments ever clad 50 Still to the unstained past kept true and leal, Still on these plains could breathe her mountain air, And fortune's heaviest gifts serenely bear, Which bend men from their truth and make them reel. 'For ruling wisely I should have small skill, Were I not lord of simple Dara still; That sceptre kept, I could not lose my way.' Strange dew in royal eyes grew round and bright, And strained the throbbing lids; before 'twas night Two added provinces blest Dara's sway. 60 THE FIRST SNOW-FALL The snow had begun in the gloaming, And busily all the night Had been heaping field and highway With a silence deep and white. Every pine and fir and hemlock Wore ermine too dear for an earl, And the poorest twig on the elm-tree Was ridged inch deep with pearl. From sheds new-roofed with Carrara Came Chanticleer's muffled crow, The stiff rails softened to swan's-down, And still fluttered down the snow. I stood and watched by the window The noiseless work of the sky, And the sudden flurries of snowbirds, Like brown leaves whirling by. I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn Where a little headstone stood; How the flakes were folding it gently, As did robins the babes in the wood. Up spoke our own little Mabel, Saying, 'Father, who makes it snow?' And I told of the good All-father Who cares for us here below. Again I looked at the snow-fall, And thought of the leaden sky That arched o'er our first great sorrow, When that mound was heaped so high. I remembered the gradual patience That fell from that cloud like snow, Flake by flake, healing and hiding The scar that renewed our woe. And again to the child I whispered, 'The snow that husheth all, Darling, the merciful Father Alone can make it fall!' Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her: And she, kissing back, could not know That _my_ kiss was given to her sister, Folded close under deepening snow. THE SINGING LEAVES A BALLAD I 'What fairings will ye that I bring?' Said the King to his daughters three; 'For I to Vanity Fair am bound, Now say what shall they be?' Then up and spake the eldest daughter, That lady tall and grand: 'Oh, bring me pearls and diamonds great, And gold rings for my hand.' Thereafter spake the second daughter, That was both white and red: 10 'For me bring silks that will stand alone, And a gold comb for my head.' Then came the turn of the least daughter, That was whiter than thistle-down, And among the gold of her blithesome hair Dim shone the golden crown. 'There came a bird this morning, And sang 'neath my bower eaves, Till I dreamed, as his music made me, "Ask thou for the Singing Leaves."' 20 Then the brow of the King swelled crimson With a flush of angry scorn: 'Well have ye spoken, my two eldest, And chosen as ye were born; 'But she, like a thing of peasant race, That is happy binding the sheaves;' Then he saw her dead mother in her face, And said, 'Thou shalt have thy leaves.' II He mounted and rode three days and nights Till he came to Vanity Fair, 30 And 'twas easy to buy the gems and the silk, But no Singing Leaves were there. Then deep in the greenwood rode he, And asked of every tree, 'Oh, if you have ever a Singing Leaf, I pray you give it me!' But the trees all kept their counsel, And never a word said they, Only there sighed from the pine-tops A music of seas far away. 40 Only the pattering aspen Made a sound of growing rain, That fell ever faster and faster, Then faltered to silence again. 'Oh, where shall I find a little foot-page That would win both hose and shoon, And will bring to me the Singing Leaves If they grow under the moon?' Then lightly turned him Walter the page, By the stirrup as he ran: 50 'Now pledge you me the truesome word Of a king and gentleman, 'That you will give me the first, first thing You meet at your castle-gate, And the Princess shall get the Singing Leaves, Or mine be a traitor's fate.' The King's head dropt upon his breast A moment, as it might be; 'Twill be my dog, he thought, and said, 'My faith I plight to thee.' 60 Then Walter took from next his heart A packet small and thin, 'Now give you this to the Princess Anne, The Singing Leaves are therein.' III As the King rode in at his castle-gate, A maiden to meet him ran, And 'Welcome, father!' she laughed and cried Together, the Princess Anne. 'Lo, here the Singing Leaves,' quoth he, 'And woe, but they cost me dear!' 70 She took the packet, and the smile Deepened down beneath the tear. It deepened down till it reached her heart, And then gushed up again, And lighted her tears as the sudden sun Transfigures the summer rain. And the first Leaf, when it was opened, Sang: 'I am Walter the page, And the songs I sing 'neath thy window Are my only heritage.' 80 And the second Leaf sang: 'But in the land That is neither on earth nor sea, My lute and I are lords of more Than thrice this kingdom's fee.' And the third Leaf sang, 'Be mine! Be mine!' And ever it sang, 'Be mine!' Then sweeter it sang and ever sweeter, And said, 'I am thine, thine, thine!' At the first Leaf she grew pale enough, At the second she turned aside, 90 At the third, 'twas as if a lily flushed With a rose's red heart's tide. 'Good counsel gave the bird,' said she, 'I have my hope thrice o'er, For they sing to my very heart,' she said, 'And it sings to them evermore.' She brought to him her beauty and truth, But and broad earldoms three, And he made her queen of the broader lands He held of his lute in fee. 100 SEAWEED Not always unimpeded can I pray, Nor, pitying saint, thine intercession claim; Too closely clings the burden of the day, And all the mint and anise that I pay But swells my debt and deepens my self-blame. Shall I less patience have than Thou, who know That Thou revisit'st all who wait for thee, Nor only fill'st the unsounded deeps below, But dost refresh with punctual overflow The rifts where unregarded mosses be? The drooping seaweed hears, in night abyssed, Far and more far the wave's receding shocks, Nor doubts, for all the darkness and the mist, That the pale shepherdess will keep her tryst, And shoreward lead again her foam-fleeced flocks. For the same wave that rims the Carib shore With momentary brede of pearl and gold, Goes hurrying thence to gladden with its roar Lorn weeds bound fast on rocks of Labrador, By love divine on one sweet errand rolled. And, though Thy healing waters far withdraw, I, too, can wait and feed on hope of Thee And of the dear recurrence of Thy law, Sure that the parting grace my morning saw Abides its time to come in search of me. THE FINDING OF THE LYRE There lay upon the ocean's shore What once a tortoise served to cover; A year and more, with rush and roar, The surf had rolled it over, Had played with it, and flung it by, As wind and weather might decide it, Then tossed it high where sand-drifts dry Cheap burial might provide it. It rested there to bleach or tan, The rains had soaked, the suns had burned it; With many a ban the fisherman Had stumbled o'er and spurned it; And there the fisher-girl would stay, Conjecturing with her brother How in their play the poor estray Might serve some use or other. So there it lay, through wet and dry As empty as the last new sonnet, Till by and by came Mercury, And, having mused upon it, 'Why, here,' cried he, 'the thing of things In shape, material, and dimension! Give it but strings, and, lo, it sings, A wonderful invention!' So said, so done; the chords he strained, And, as his fingers o'er them hovered, The shell disdained a soul had gained, The lyre had been discovered. O empty world that round us lies, Dead shell, of soul and thought forsaken, Brought we but eyes like Mercury's, In thee what songs should waken! NEW-YEAR'S EVE, 1850 This is the midnight of the century,--hark! Through aisle and arch of Godminster have gone Twelve throbs that tolled the zenith of the dark, And mornward now the starry hands move on; 'Mornward!' the angelic watchers say, 'Passed is the sorest trial; No plot of man can stay The hand upon the dial; Night is the dark stem of the lily Day.' If we, who watched in valleys here below, Toward streaks, misdeemed of morn, our faces turned When volcan glares set all the east aglow, We are not poorer that we wept and yearned; Though earth swing wide from God's intent, And though no man nor nation Will move with full consent In heavenly gravitation, Yet by one Sun is every orbit bent. FOR AN AUTOGRAPH Though old the thought and oft exprest, 'Tis his at last who says it best,-- I'll try my fortune with the rest. Life is a leaf of paper white Whereon each one of us may write His word or two, and then comes night. 'Lo, time and space enough,' we cry, 'To write an epic!' so we try Our nibs upon the edge, and die. Muse not which way the pen to hold, Luck hates the slow and loves the bold, Soon come the darkness and the cold. Greatly begin! though thou have time But for a line, be that sublime,-- Not failure, but low aim, is crime. Ah, with what lofty hope we came! But we forget it, dream of fame, And scrawl, as I do here, a name. AL FRESCO The dandelions and buttercups Gild all the lawn; the drowsy bee Stumbles among the clover-tops, And summer sweetens all but me: Away, unfruitful lore of books, For whose vain idiom we reject The soul's more native dialect, Aliens among the birds and brooks, Dull to interpret or conceive What gospels lost the woods retrieve! 10 Away, ye critics, city-bred, Who springes set of thus and so, And in the first man's footsteps tread, Like those who toil through drifted snow! Away, my poets, whose sweet spell Can make a garden of a cell! I need ye not, for I to-day Will make one long sweet verse of play. Snap, chord of manhood's tenser strain! To-day I will be a boy again; 20 The mind's pursuing element, Like a bow slackened and unbent, In some dark corner shall be leant. The robin sings, as of old, from the limb! The cat-bird croons in the lilac-bush! Through the dim arbor, himself more dim, Silently hops the hermit-thrush, The withered leaves keep dumb for him; The irreverent buccaneering bee Hath stormed and rifled the nunnery 30 Of the lily, and scattered the sacred floor With haste-dropt gold from shrine to door; There, as of yore, The rich, milk-tingeing buttercup Its tiny polished urn holds up, Filled with ripe summer to the edge, The sun in his own wine to pledge; And our tall elm, this hundredth year Doge of our leafy Venice here, Who, with an annual ring, doth wed 40 The blue Adriatic overhead, Shadows with his palatial mass The deep canals of flowing grass. O unestrangèd birds and bees! O face of Nature always true! O never-unsympathizing trees! O never-rejecting roof of blue, Whose rash disherison never falls On us unthinking prodigals, Yet who convictest all our ill, 50 So grand and unappeasable! Methinks my heart from each of these Plucks part of childhood back again, Long there imprisoned, as the breeze Doth every hidden odor seize Of wood and water, hill and plain: Once more am I admitted peer In the upper house of Nature here, And feel through all my pulses run The royal blood of wind and sun. 60 Upon these elm-arched solitudes No hum of neighbor toil intrudes; The only hammer that I hear Is wielded by the woodpecker, The single noisy calling his In all our leaf-hid Sybaris; The good old time, close-hidden here, Persists, a loyal cavalier, While Roundheads prim, with point of fox, Probe wainscot-chink and empty box; 70 Here no hoarse-voiced iconoclast, Insults thy statues, royal Past; Myself too prone the axe to wield, I touch the silver side of the shield With lance reversed, and challenge peace, A willing convert of the trees. How chanced it that so long I tost A cable's length from this rich coast, With foolish anchors hugging close The beckoning weeds and lazy ooze, 80 Nor had the wit to wreck before On this enchanted island's shore, Whither the current of the sea, With wiser drift, persuaded me? Oh, might we but of such rare days Build up the spirit's dwelling-place! A temple of so Parian stone Would brook a marble god alone, The statue of a perfect life, Far-shrined from earth's bestaining strife. 90 Alas! though such felicity In our vext world here may not be, Yet, as sometimes the peasant's hut Shows stones which old religion cut With text inspired, or mystic sign Of the Eternal and Divine, Torn from the consecration deep Of some fallen nunnery's mossy sleep, So, from the ruins of this day Crumbling in golden dust away, 100 The soul one gracious block may draw, Carved with, some fragment of the law, Which, set in life's prosaic wall, Old benedictions may recall, And lure some nunlike thoughts to take Their dwelling here for memory's sake. MASACCIO IN THE BRANCACCI CHAPEL He came to Florence long ago, And painted here these walls, that shone For Raphael and for Angelo, With secrets deeper than his own, Then shrank into the dark again, And died, we know not how or when. The shadows deepened, and I turned Half sadly from the fresco grand; 'And is this,' mused I, 'all ye earned, High-vaulted brain and cunning hand, That ye to greater men could teach The skill yourselves could never reach?' 'And who were they,' I mused, 'that wrought Through pathless wilds, with labor long, The highways of our daily thought? Who reared those towers of earliest song That lift us from the crowd to peace Remote in sunny silences?' Out clanged the Ave Mary bells, And to my heart this message came: Each clamorous throat among them tells What strong-souled martyrs died in flame To make it possible that thou Shouldst here with brother sinners bow. Thoughts that great hearts once broke for, we Breathe cheaply in the common air; The dust we trample heedlessly Throbbed once in saints and heroes rare, Who perished, opening for their race New pathways to the commonplace. Henceforth, when rings the health to those Who live in story and in song, O nameless dead, that now repose, Safe in Oblivion's chambers strong, One cup of recognition true Shall silently be drained to you! WITHOUT AND WITHIN My coachman, in the moonlight there, Looks through the side-light of the door; I hear him with his brethren swear, As I could do,--but only more. Flattening his nose against the pane, He envies me my brilliant lot, Breathes on his aching fists in vain, And dooms me to a place more hot. He sees me in to supper go, A silken wonder by my side, Bare arms, bare shoulders, and a row Of flounces, for the door too wide. He thinks how happy is my arm 'Neath its white-gloved and jewelled load; And wishes me some dreadful harm, Hearing the merry corks explode. Meanwhile I inly curse the bore Of hunting still the same old coon, And envy him, outside the door, In golden quiets of the moon. The winter wind is not so cold As the bright smile he sees me win, Nor the host's oldest wine so old As our poor gabble sour and thin. I envy him the ungyved prance With which his freezing feet he warms, And drag my lady's chains and dance The galley-slave of dreary forms. Oh, could he have my share of din, And I his quiet!--past a doubt 'Twould still be one man bored within, And just another bored without. Nay, when, once paid my mortal fee, Some idler on my headstone grim Traces the moss-blurred name, will he Think me the happier, or I him? THE PARTING OF THE WAYS GODMINSTER CHIMES WRITTEN IN AID OF A CHIME OF BELLS FOR CHRIST CHURCH, CAMBRIDGE Godminster? Is it Fancy's play? I know not, but the word Sings in my heart, nor can I say Whether 'twas dreamed or heard; Yet fragrant in my mind it clings As blossoms after rain, And builds of half-remembered things This vision in my brain. Through aisles of long-drawn centuries My spirit walks in thought, And to that symbol lifts its eyes Which God's own pity wrought; From Calvary shines the altar's gleam, The Church's East is there, The Ages one great minster seem, That throbs with praise and prayer. And all the way from Calvary down The carven pavement shows Their graves who won the martyr's crown And safe in God repose; The saints of many a warring creed Who now in heaven have learned That all paths to the Father lead Where Self the feet have spurned. And, as the mystic aisles I pace, By aureoled workmen built, Lives ending at the Cross I trace Alike through grace and guilt; One Mary bathes the blessed feet With ointment from her eyes, With spikenard one, and both are sweet, For both are sacrifice. Moravian hymn and Roman chant In one devotion blend, To speak the soul's eternal want Of Him, the inmost friend; One prayer soars cleansed with martyr fire, One choked with sinner's tears, In heaven both meet in one desire, And God one music hears. Whilst thus I dream, the bells clash out Upon the Sabbath air, Each seems a hostile faith to shout, A selfish form of prayer: My dream is shattered, yet who knows But in that heaven so near These discords find harmonious close In God's atoning ear? O chime of sweet Saint Charity, Peal soon that Easter morn When Christ for all shall risen be, And in all hearts new-born! That Pentecost when utterance clear To all men shall be given, When all shall say _My Brother_ here, And hear _My Son_ in heaven! THE PARTING OF THE WAYS Who hath not been a poet? Who hath not, With life's new quiver full of wingèd years, Shot at a venture, and then, following on, Stood doubtful at the Parting of the Ways? There once I stood in dream, and as I paused, Looking this way and that, came forth to me The figure of a woman veiled, that said, 'My name is Duty, turn and follow me;' Something there was that chilled me in her voice; I felt Youth's hand grow slack and cold in mine, 10 As if to be withdrawn, and I exclaimed: 'Oh, leave the hot wild heart within my breast! Duty comes soon enough, too soon comes Death; This slippery globe of life whirls of itself, Hasting our youth away into the dark; These senses, quivering with electric heats, Too soon will show, like nests on wintry boughs Obtrusive emptiness, too palpable wreck, Which whistling north-winds line with downy snow Sometimes, or fringe with foliaged rime, in vain, 20 Thither the singing birds no more return.' Then glowed to me a maiden from the left, With bosom half disclosed, and naked arms More white and undulant than necks of swans; And all before her steps an influence ran Warm as the whispering South that opens buds And swells the laggard sails of Northern May. 'I am called Pleasure, come with me!' she said, Then laughed, and shook out sunshine from her hair, Nor only that, but, so it seemed, shook out 30 All memory too, and all the moonlit past, Old loves, old aspirations, and old dreams, More beautiful for being old and gone. So we two went together; downward sloped The path through yellow meads, or so I dreamed, Yellow with sunshine and young green, but I Saw naught nor heard, shut up in one close joy; I only felt the hand within my own, Transmuting all my blood to golden fire, Dissolving all my brain in throbbing mist. 40 Suddenly shrank the hand; suddenly burst A cry that split the torpor of my brain, And as the first sharp thrust of lightning loosens From the heaped cloud its rain, loosened my sense: 'Save me!' it thrilled; 'oh, hide me! there is Death! Death the divider, the unmerciful, That digs his pitfalls under Love and Youth, And covers Beauty up in the cold ground; Horrible Death! bringer of endless dark; Let him not see me! hide me in thy breast!' 50 Thereat I strove to clasp her, but my arms Met only what slipped crumbling down, and fell, A handful of gray ashes, at my feet. I would have fled, I would have followed back That pleasant path we came, but all was changed; Rocky the way, abrupt, and hard to find; Yet I toiled on, and, toiling on, I thought, 'That way lies Youth, and Wisdom, and all Good; For only by unlearning Wisdom comes And climbing backward to diviner Youth; 60 What the world teaches profits to the world, What the soul teaches profits to the soul, Which then first stands erect with Godward face, When she lets fall her pack of withered facts, The gleanings of the outward eye and ear, And looks and listens with her finer sense; Nor Truth nor Knowledge cometh from without.' After long, weary days I stood again And waited at the Parting of the Ways; Again the figure of a woman veiled 70 Stood forth and beckoned, and I followed now: Down to no bower of roses led the path, But through the streets of towns where chattering Cold Hewed wood for fires whose glow was owned and fenced, Where Nakedness wove garments of warm wool Not for itself;--or through the fields it led Where Hunger reaped the unattainable grain, Where idleness enforced saw idle lands, Leagues of unpeopled soil, the common earth, Walled round with paper against God and Man. 80 'I cannot look,' I groaned, 'at only these; The heart grows hardened with perpetual wont, And palters with a feigned necessity, Bargaining with itself to be content; Let me behold thy face.' The Form replied: 'Men follow Duty, never overtake; Duty nor lifts her veil nor looks behind.' But, as she spake, a loosened lock of hair Slipped from beneath her hood, and I, who looked To see it gray and thin, saw amplest gold; 90 Not that dull metal dug from sordid earth, But such as the retiring sunset flood Leaves heaped on bays and capes of island cloud. 'O Guide divine,' I prayed, 'although not yet I may repair the virtue which I feel Gone out at touch of untuned things and foul With draughts of Beauty, yet declare how soon!' 'Faithless and faint of heart,' the voice returned, 'Thou seest no beauty save thou make it first; Man, Woman, Nature each is but a glass 100 Where the soul sees the image of herself, Visible echoes, offsprings of herself. But, since thou need'st assurance of how soon, Wait till that angel comes who opens all, The reconciler, he who lifts the veil, The reuniter, the rest-bringer, Death.' I waited, and methought he came; but how, Or in what shape, I doubted, for no sign, By touch or mark, he gave me as he passed; Only I knew a lily that I held 110 Snapt short below the head and shrivelled up; Then turned my Guide and looked at me unveiled, And I beheld no face of matron stern, But that enchantment I had followed erst, Only more fair, more clear to eye and brain, Heightened and chastened by a household charm; She smiled, and 'Which is fairer,' said her eyes, 'The hag's unreal Florimel or mine?' ALADDIN When I was a beggarly boy And lived in a cellar damp, I had not a friend nor a toy, But I had Aladdin's lamp; When I could not sleep for the cold, I had fire enough in my brain, And builded, with roofs of gold, My beautiful castles in Spain! Since then I have toiled day and night, I have money and power good store, But I'd give all my lamps of silver bright For the one that is mine no more; Take, Fortune, whatever you choose, You gave, and may snatch again; I have nothing 'twould pain me to lose, For I own no more castles in Spain! AN INVITATION TO J[OHN] F[RANCIS] H[EATH] Nine years have slipt like hour-glass sand From life's still-emptying globe away, Since last, dear friend, I clasped your hand, And stood upon the impoverished land, Watching the steamer down the bay. I held the token which you gave, While slowly the smoke-pennon curled O'er the vague rim 'tween sky and wave, And shut the distance like a grave, Leaving me in the colder world; 10 The old, worn world of hurry and heat, The young, fresh world of thought and scope; While you, where beckoning billows fleet Climb far sky-beaches still and sweet, Sank wavering down the ocean-slope. You sought the new world in the old, I found the old world in the new, All that our human hearts can hold, The inward world of deathless mould, The same that Father Adam knew. 20 He needs no ship to cross the tide, Who, in the lives about him, sees Fair window-prospects opening wide O'er history's fields on every side, To Ind and Egypt, Rome and Greece. Whatever moulds of various brain E'er shaped the world to weal or woe, Whatever empires' wax and wane To him that hath not eyes in vain, Our village-microcosm can show. 30 Come back our ancient walks to tread, Dear haunts of lost or scattered friends, Old Harvard's scholar-factories red, Where song and smoke and laughter sped The nights to proctor-haunted ends. Constant are all our former loves, Unchanged the icehouse-girdled pond, Its hemlock glooms, its shadowy coves, Where floats the coot and never moves, Its slopes of long-tamed green beyond. 40 Our old familiars are not laid, Though snapt our wands and sunk our books; They beckon, not to be gainsaid, Where, round broad meads that mowers wade, The Charles his steel-blue sickle crooks. Where, as the cloudbergs eastward blow, From glow to gloom the hillsides shift Their plumps of orchard-trees arow, Their lakes of rye that wave and flow, Their snowy whiteweed's summer drift. 50 There have we watched the West unfurl A cloud Byzantium newly born, With flickering spires and domes of pearl, And vapory surfs that crowd and curl Into the sunset's Golden Horn. There, as the flaming occident Burned slowly down to ashes gray, Night pitched o'erhead her silent tent, And glimmering gold from Hesper sprent Upon the darkened river lay, 60 Where a twin sky but just before Deepened, and double swallows skimmed, And from a visionary shore Hung visioned trees, that more and more Grew dusk as those above were dimmed. Then eastward saw we slowly grow Clear-edged the lines of roof and spire, While great elm-masses blacken slow, And linden-ricks their round heads show Against a flush of widening fire. 70 Doubtful at first and far away, The moon-flood creeps more wide and wide; Up a ridged beach of cloudy gray, Curved round the east as round a bay, It slips and spreads its gradual tide. Then suddenly, in lurid mood, The disk looms large o'er town and field As upon Adam, red like blood, 'Tween him and Eden's happy wood, Glared the commissioned angel's shield. 80 Or let us seek the seaside, there To wander idly as we list, Whether, on rocky headlands bare, Sharp cedar-horns, like breakers, tear The trailing fringes of gray mist, Or whether, under skies full flown, The brightening surfs, with foamy din, Their breeze-caught forelocks backward blown, Against the beach's yellow zone Curl slow, and plunge forever in. 90 And, as we watch those canvas towers That lean along the horizon's rim, 'Sail on,' I'll say; 'may sunniest hours Convoy you from this land of ours, Since from my side you bear not him!' For years thrice three, wise Horace said, A poem rare let silence bind; And love may ripen to the shade, Like ours, for nine long seasons laid In deepest arches of the mind. 100 Come back! Not ours the Old World's good, The Old World's ill, thank God, not ours; But here, far better understood, The days enforce our native mood, And challenge all our manlier powers. Kindlier to me the place of birth That first my tottering footsteps trod; There may be fairer spots of earth, But all their glories are not worth The virtue in the native sod. 110 Thence climbs an influence more benign Through pulse and nerve, through heart and brain; Sacred to me those fibres fine That first clasped earth. Oh, ne'er be mine The alien sun and alien rain! These nourish not like homelier glows Or waterings of familiar skies, And nature fairer blooms bestows On the heaped hush of wintry snows, In pastures dear to childhood's eyes, 120 Than where Italian earth receives The partial sunshine's ampler boons, Where vines carve friezes 'neath the eaves, And, in dark firmaments of leaves, The orange lifts its golden moons. THE NOMADES What Nature makes in any mood To me is warranted for good, Though long before I learned to see She did not set us moral theses, And scorned to have her sweet caprices Strait-waistcoated in you or me. I, who take root and firmly cling, Thought fixedness the only thing; Why Nature made the butterflies, (Those dreams of wings that float and hover 10 At noon the slumberous poppies over,) Was something hidden from mine eyes, Till once, upon a rock's brown bosom, Bright as a thorny cactus-blossom, I saw a butterfly at rest; Then first of both I felt the beauty; The airy whim, the grim-set duty, Each from the other took its best. Clearer it grew than winter sky That Nature still had reasons why; 20 And, shifting sudden as a breeze, My fancy found no satisfaction, No antithetic sweet attraction, So great as in the Nomades. Scythians, with Nature not at strife, Light Arabs of our complex life, They build no houses, plant no mills To utilize Time's sliding river, Content that it flow waste forever, If they, like it, may have their wills. 30 An hour they pitch their shifting tents In thoughts, in feelings, and events; Beneath the palm-trees, on the grass, They sing, they dance, make love, and chatter, Vex the grim temples with their clatter, And make Truth's fount their looking-glass. A picnic life; from love to love, From faith to faith they lightly move, And yet, hard-eyed philosopher, The flightiest maid that ever hovered 40 To me your thought-webs fine discovered, No lens to see them through like her. So witchingly her finger-tips To Wisdom, as away she trips, She kisses, waves such sweet farewells To Duty, as she laughs 'To-morrow!' That both from that mad contrast borrow A perfectness found nowhere else. The beach-bird on its pearly verge Follows and flies the whispering surge, 50 While, in his tent, the rock-stayed shell Awaits the flood's star-timed vibrations, And both, the flutter and the patience, The sauntering poet loves them well. Fulfil so much of God's decree As works its problem out in thee, Nor dream that in thy breast alone The conscience of the changeful seasons, The Will that in the planets reasons With space-wide logic, has its throne. 60 Thy virtue makes not vice of mine, Unlike, but none the less divine; Thy toil adorns, not chides, my play; Nature of sameness is so chary, With such wild whim the freakish fairy Picks presents for the christening-day. SELF-STUDY A presence both by night and day, That made my life seem just begun, Yet scarce a presence, rather say The warning aureole of one. And yet I felt it everywhere; Walked I the woodland's aisles along, It seemed to brush me with its hair; Bathed I, I heard a mermaid's song. How sweet it was! A buttercup Could hold for me a day's delight, A bird could lift my fancy up To ether free from cloud or blight. Who was the nymph? Nay, I will see, Methought, and I will know her near; If such, divined, her charm can be, Seen and possessed, how triply dear! So every magic art I tried, And spells as numberless as sand, Until, one evening, by my side I saw her glowing fulness stand. I turned to clasp her, but 'Farewell,' Parting she sighed, 'we meet no more; Not by my hand the curtain fell That leaves you conscious, wise, and poor. 'Since you nave found me out, I go; Another lover I must find, Content his happiness to know, Nor strive its secret to unwind.' PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE I A heap of bare and splintery crags Tumbled about by lightning and frost, With rifts and chasms and storm-bleached jags, That wait and growl for a ship to be lost; No island, but rather the skeleton Of a wrecked and vengeance-smitten one, Where, æons ago, with half-shut eye, The sluggish saurian crawled to die, Gasping under titanic ferns; Ribs of rock that seaward jut, 10 Granite shoulders and boulders and snags, Round which, though the winds in heaven be shut, The nightmared ocean murmurs and yearns, Welters, and swashes, and tosses, and turns, And the dreary black seaweed lolls and wags; Only rock from shore to shore, Only a moan through the bleak clefts blown, With sobs in the rifts where the coarse kelp shifts, Falling and lifting, tossing and drifting, And under all a deep, dull roar, 20 Dying and swelling, forevermore,-- Rock and moan and roar alone, And the dread of some nameless thing unknown, These make Appledore. These make Appledore by night: Then there are monsters left and right; Every rock is a different monster; All you have read of, fancied, dreamed, When you waked at night because you screamed, There they lie for half a mile, 30 Jumbled together in a pile, And (though you know they never once stir) If you look long, they seem to be moving Just as plainly as plain can be, Crushing and crowding, wading and shoving Out into the awful sea, Where you can hear them snort and spout With pauses between, as if they were listening, Then tumult anon when the surf breaks glistening In the blackness where they wallow about. 40 II All this you would scarcely comprehend, Should you see the isle on a sunny day; Then it is simple enough in its way,-- Two rocky bulges, one at each end, With a smaller bulge and a hollow between; Patches of whortleberry and bay; Accidents of open green, Sprinkled with loose slabs square and gray, Like graveyards for ages deserted; a few Unsocial thistles; an elder or two, 50 Foamed over with blossoms white as spray; And on the whole island never a tree Save a score of sumachs, high as your knee. That crouch in hollows where they may, (The cellars where once stood a village, men say,) Huddling for warmth, and never grew Tall enough for a peep at the sea; A general dazzle of open blue; A breeze always blowing and playing rat-tat With the bow of the ribbon round your hat; 60 A score of sheep that do nothing but stare Up or down at you everywhere; Three or four cattle that chew the cud Lying about in a listless despair; A medrick that makes you look overhead With short, sharp scream, as he sights his prey, And, dropping straight and swift as lead, Splits the water with sudden thud;-- This is Appledore by day. A common island, you will say; 70 But stay a moment: only climb Up to the highest rock of the isle, Stand there alone for a little while, And with gentle approaches it grows sublime, Dilating slowly as you win A sense from the silence to take it in. So wide the loneness, so lucid the air, The granite beneath you so savagely bare, You well might think you were looking down From some sky-silenced mountain's crown, 80 Whose waist-belt of pines is wont to tear Locks of wool from the topmost cloud. Only be sure you go alone, For Grandeur is inaccessibly proud, And never yet has backward thrown Her veil to feed the stare of a crowd; To more than one was never shown That awful front, nor is it fit That she, Cothurnus-shod, stand bowed Until the self-approving pit 90 Enjoy the gust of its own wit In babbling plaudits cheaply loud; She hides her mountains and her sea From the harriers of scenery, Who hunt down sunsets, and huddle and bay, Mouthing and mumbling the dying day. Trust me, 'tis something to be cast Face to face with one's Self at last, To be taken out of the fuss and strife, The endless clatter of plate and knife, 100 The bore of books and the bores of the street, From the singular mess we agree to call Life, Where that is best which the most fools vote is, And planted firm on one's own two feet So nigh to the great warm heart of God, You almost seem to feel it beat Down from the sunshine and up from the sod; To be compelled, as it were, to notice All the beautiful changes and chances Through which the landscape flits and glances, 110 And to see how the face of common day Is written all over with tender histories, When you study it that intenser way In which a lover looks at his mistress. Till now you dreamed not what could be done With a bit of rock and a ray of sun: But look, how fade the lights and shades Of keen bare edge and crevice deep! How doubtfully it fades and fades, And glows again, yon craggy steep, 120 O'er which, through color's dreamiest grades, The musing sunbeams pause and creep! Now pink it blooms, now glimmers gray, Now shadows to a filmy blue, Tries one, tries all, and will not stay, But flits from opal hue to hue, And runs through every tenderest range Of change that seems not to be change, So rare the sweep, so nice the art, That lays no stress on any part, 130 But shifts and lingers and persuades; So soft that sun-brush in the west, That asks no costlier pigments' aids, But mingling knobs, flaws, angles, dints, Indifferent of worst or best, Enchants the cliffs with wraiths and hints And gracious preludings of tints, Where all seems fixed, yet all evades, And indefinably pervades Perpetual movement with perpetual rest! 140 III Away northeast is Boone Island light; You might mistake it for a ship, Only it stands too plumb upright, And like the others does not slip Behind the sea's unsteady brink; Though, if a cloud-shade chance to dip Upon it a moment, 'twill suddenly sink, Levelled and lost in the darkened main, Till the sun builds it suddenly up again, As if with a rub of Aladdin's lamp. 150 On the mainland you see a misty camp Of mountains pitched tumultuously: That one looming so long and large Is Saddleback, and that point you see Over yon low and rounded marge, Like the boss of a sleeping giant's targe Laid over his breast, is Ossipee; That shadow there may be Kearsarge; That must be Great Haystack; I love these names, Wherewith the lonely farmer tames 160 Nature to mute companionship With his own mind's domestic mood, And strives the surly world to clip In the arms of familiar habitude. 'Tis well he could not contrive to make A Saxon of Agamenticus: He glowers there to the north of us, Wrapt in his blanket of blue haze, Unconvertibly savage, and scorns to take The white man's baptism or his ways. 170 Him first on shore the coaster divines Through the early gray, and sees him shake The morning mist from his scalp-lock of pines; Him first the skipper makes out in the west, Ere the earliest sunstreak shoots tremulous, Plashing with orange the palpitant lines Of mutable billow, crest after crest, And murmurs _Agamenticus!_ As if it were the name of a saint. But is that a mountain playing cloud, 180 Or a cloud playing mountain, just there, so faint? Look along over the low right shoulder Of Agamenticus into that crowd Of brassy thunderheads behind it; Now you have caught it, but, ere you are older By half an hour, you will lose it and find it A score of times; while you look 'tis gone, And, just as you've given it up, anon It is there again, till your weary eyes Fancy they see it waver and rise, 190 With its brother clouds; it is Agiochook, There if you seek not, and gone if you look, Ninety miles off as the eagle flies. But mountains make not all the shore The mainland shows to Appledore: Eight miles the heaving water spreads To a long, low coast with beaches and heads That run through unimagined mazes, As the lights and shades and magical hazes Put them away or bring them near, 200 Shimmering, sketched out for thirty miles Between two capes that waver like threads, And sink in the ocean, and reappear, Crumbled and melted to little isles With filmy trees, that seem the mere Half-fancies of drowsy atmosphere; And see the beach there, where it is Flat as a threshing-floor, beaten and packed With the flashing flails of weariless seas, How it lifts and looms to a precipice, 210 O'er whose square front, a dream, no more, The steepened sand-stripes seem to pour, A murmurless vision of cataract; You almost fancy you hear a roar, Fitful and faint from the distance wandering; But 'tis only the blind old ocean maundering, Raking the shingle to and fro, Aimlessly clutching and letting go The kelp-haired sedges of Appledore, Slipping down with a sleepy forgetting, 220 And anon his ponderous shoulder setting, With a deep, hoarse pant against Appledore. IV Eastward as far as the eye can see, Still eastward, eastward, endlessly, The sparkle and tremor of purple sea That rises before you, a flickering hill, On and on to the shut of the sky, And beyond, you fancy it sloping until The same multitudinous throb and thrill That vibrate under your dizzy eye 230 In ripples of orange and pink are sent Where the poppied sails doze on the yard, And the clumsy junk and proa lie Sunk deep with precious woods and nard, 'Mid the palmy isles of the Orient. Those leaning towers of clouded white On the farthest brink of doubtful ocean, That shorten and shorten out of sight, Yet seem on the selfsame spot to stay, Receding with a motionless motion, 240 Fading to dubious films of gray, Lost, dimly found, then vanished wholly, Will rise again, the great world under, First films, then towers, then high-heaped clouds, Whose nearing outlines sharpen slowly Into tall ships with cobweb shrouds, That fill long Mongol eyes with wonder, Crushing the violet wave to spray Past some low headland of Cathay;-- What was that sigh which seemed so near, 250 Chilling your fancy to the core? 'Tis only the sad old sea you hear, That seems to seek forevermore Something it cannot find, and so, Sighing, seeks on, and tells its woe To the pitiless breakers of Appledore. V How looks Appledore in a storm? I have seen it when its crags seemed frantic, Butting against the mad Atlantic, When surge on surge would heap enorme, 260 Cliffs of emerald topped with snow, That lifted and lifted, and then let go A great white avalanche of thunder, A grinding, blinding, deafening ire Monadnock might have trembled under; And the island, whose rock-roots pierce below To where they are warmed with the central fire, You could feel its granite fibres racked, As it seemed to plunge with a shudder and thrill Right at the breast of the swooping hill, 270 And to rise again snorting a cataract Of rage-froth from every cranny and ledge, While the sea drew its breath in hoarse and deep, And the next vast breaker curled its edge, Gathering itself for a mightier leap. North, east, and south there are reefs and breakers You would never dream of in smooth weather, That toss and gore the sea for acres, Bellowing and gnashing and snarling together; Look northward, where Duck Island lies, 280 And over its crown you will see arise, Against a background of slaty skies, A row of pillars still and white, That glimmer, and then are gone from sight, As if the moon should suddenly kiss, While you crossed the gusty desert by night, The long colonnades of Persepolis; Look southward for White Island light, The lantern stands ninety feet o'er the tide; There is first a half-mile of tumult and fight, 290 Of dash and roar and tumble and fright, And surging bewilderment wild and wide, Where the breakers struggle left and right, Then a mile or more of rushing sea, And then the lighthouse slim and lone; And whenever the weight of ocean is thrown Full and fair on White Island head, A great mist-jotun you will see Lifting himself up silently High and huge o'er the lighthouse top, 300 With hands of wavering spray outspread, Groping after the little tower, That seems to shrink and shorten and cower, Till the monster's arms of a sudden drop, And silently and fruitlessly He sinks back into the sea. You, meanwhile, where drenched you stand, Awaken once more to the rush and roar, And on the rock-point tighten your hand, As you turn and see a valley deep, 310 That was not there a moment before, Suck rattling down between you and a heap Of toppling billow, whose instant fall Must sink the whole island once for all, Or watch the silenter, stealthier seas Feeling their way to you more and more; If they once should clutch you high as the knees, They would whirl you down like a sprig of kelp, Beyond all reach of hope or help;-- And such in a storm is Appledore. 320 VI 'Tis the sight of a lifetime to behold The great shorn sun as you see it now, Across eight miles of undulant gold That widens landward, weltered and rolled, With freaks of shadow and crimson stains; To see the solid mountain brow As it notches the disk, and gains and gains, Until there comes, you scarce know when, A tremble of fire o'er the parted lips Of cloud and mountain, which vanishes; then 330 From the body of day the sun-soul slips And the face of earth darkens; but now the strips Of western vapor, straight and thin, From which the horizon's swervings win A grace of contrast, take fire and burn Like splinters of touchwood, whose edges a mould Of ashes o'er feathers; northward turn For an instant, and let your eye grow cold On Agamenticus, and when once more You look, 'tis as if the land-breeze, growing, 340 From the smouldering brands the film were blowing, And brightening them down to the very core; Yet, they momently cool and dampen and deaden, The crimson turns golden, the gold turns leaden, Hardening into one black bar O'er which, from the hollow heaven afar, Shoots a splinter of light like diamond, Half seen, half fancied; by and by Beyond whatever is most beyond In the uttermost waste of desert sky, 350 Grows a star; And over it, visible spirit of dew,-- Ah, stir not, speak not, hold your breath, Or surely the miracle vanisheth,-- The new moon, tranced in unspeakable blue! No frail illusion; this were true, Rather, to call it the canoe Hollowed out of a single pearl, That floats us from the Present's whirl Back to those beings which were ours, 360 When wishes were wingèd things like powers! Call it not light, that mystery tender, Which broods upon the brooding ocean, That flush of ecstasied surrender To indefinable emotion, That glory, mellower than a mist Of pearl dissolved with amethyst, Which rims Square Rock, like what they paint Of mitigated heavenly splendor Round the stern forehead of a Saint! 370 No more a vision, reddened, largened, The moon dips toward her mountain nest, And, fringing it with palest argent, Slow sheathes herself behind the margent Of that long cloud-bar in the West, Whose nether edge, erelong, you see The silvery chrism in turn anoint, And then the tiniest rosy point Touched doubtfully and timidly Into the dark blue's chilly strip, As some mute, wondering thing below, 381 Awakened by the thrilling glow, Might, looking up, see Dian dip One lucent foot's delaying tip In Latmian fountains long ago. Knew you what silence was before? Here is no startle of dreaming bird That sings in his sleep, or strives to sing; Here is no sough of branches stirred, Nor noise of any living thing, 390 Such as one hears by night on shore; Only, now and then, a sigh, With fickle intervals between, Sometimes far, and sometimes nigh, Such as Andromeda might have heard, And fancied the huge sea-beast unseen Turning in sleep; it is the sea That welters and wavers uneasily. Round the lonely reefs of Appledore. THE WIND-HARP I treasure in secret some long, fine hair Of tenderest brown, but so inwardly golden I half used to fancy the sunshine there, So shy, so shifting, so waywardly rare, Was only caught for the moment and holden While I could say _Dearest!_ and kiss it, and then In pity let go to the summer again. I twisted this magic in gossamer strings Over a wind-harp's Delphian hollow; Then called to the idle breeze that swings All day in the pine-tops, and clings, and sings 'Mid the musical leaves, and said, 'Oh, follow The will of those tears that deepen my words, And fly to my window to waken these chords.' So they trembled to life, and, doubtfully Feeling their way to my sense, sang, 'Say whether They sit all day by the greenwood tree, The lover and loved, as it wont to be, When we--' But grief conquered, and all together They swelled such weird murmur as haunts a shore Of some planet dispeopled,--'Nevermore!' Then from deep in the past, as seemed to me, The strings gathered sorrow and sang forsaken, 'One lover still waits 'neath the greenwood tree, But 'tis dark,' and they shuddered, 'where lieth she, Dark and cold! Forever must one be taken?' But I groaned, 'O harp of all ruth bereft, This Scripture is sadder,--"the other left"!' There murmured, as if one strove to speak, And tears came instead; then the sad tones wandered And faltered among the uncertain chords In a troubled doubt between sorrow and words; At last with themselves they questioned and pondered, 'Hereafter?--who knoweth?' and so they sighed Down the long steps that lead to silence and died. AUF WIEDERSEHEN SUMMER The little gate was reached at last, Half hid in lilacs down the lane; She pushed it wide, and, as she past, A wistful look she backward cast, And said,--'_Auf wiedersehen!_' With hand on latch, a vision white Lingered reluctant, and again Half doubting if she did aright, Soft as the dews that fell that night, She said,--'_Auf wiedersehen!_' The lamp's clear gleam flits up the stair; I linger in delicious pain; Ah, in that chamber, whose rich air To breathe in thought I scarcely dare, Thinks she,--'_Auf wiedersehen?_' ... 'Tis thirteen years; once more I press The turf that silences the lane; I hear the rustle of her dress, I smell the lilacs, and--ah, yes, I hear '_Auf wiedersehen!_' Sweet piece of bashful maiden art! The English words had seemed too fain, But these--they drew us heart to heart, Yet held us tenderly apart; She said, '_Auf wiedersehen!_' PALINODE AUTUMN Still thirteen years: 'tis autumn now On field and hill, in heart and brain; The naked trees at evening sough; The leaf to the forsaken bough Sighs not,--'_Auf wiedersehen!_' Two watched yon oriole's pendent dome, That now is void, and dank with rain, And one,--oh, hope more frail than foam! The bird to his deserted home Sings not,--'_Auf wiedersehen!_' The loath gate swings with rusty creak; Once, parting there, we played at pain: There came a parting, when the weak And fading lips essayed to speak Vainly,--'_Auf wiedersehen!_' Somewhere is comfort, somewhere faith, Though thou in outer dark remain; One sweet sad voice ennobles death, And still, for eighteen centuries saith Softly,--'_Auf wiedersehen!_' If earth another grave must bear, Yet heaven hath won a sweeter strain, And something whispers my despair, That, from an orient chamber there, Floats down, '_Auf wiedersehen!_' AFTER THE BURIAL Yes, faith is a goodly anchor; When skies are sweet as a psalm, At the bows it lolls so stalwart, In its bluff, broad-shouldered calm. And when over breakers to leeward The tattered surges are hurled, It may keep our head to the tempest, With its grip on the base of the world. But, after the shipwreck, tell me What help in its iron thews, Still true to the broken hawser, Deep down among sea-weed and ooze? In the breaking gulfs of sorrow, When the helpless feet stretch out And find in the deeps of darkness No footing so solid as doubt, Then better one spar of Memory, One broken plank of the Past, That our human heart may cling to, Though hopeless of shore at last! To the spirit its splendid conjectures, To the flesh its sweet despair, Its tears o'er the thin-worn locket With its anguish of deathless hair! Immortal? I feel it and know it, Who doubts it of such as she? But that is the pang's very secret,-- Immortal away from me. There's a narrow ridge in the graveyard Would scarce stay a child in his race, But to me and my thought it is wider Than the star-sown vague of Space. Your logic, my friend, is perfect, Your moral most drearily true; But, since the earth clashed on _her_ coffin, I keep hearing that, and not you. Console if you will, I can bear it; 'Tis a well-meant alms of breath; But not all the preaching since Adam Has made Death other than Death. It is pagan; but wait till you feel it,-- That jar of our earth, that dull shock When the ploughshare of deeper passion Tears down to our primitive rock. Communion in spirit! Forgive me, But I, who am earthly and weak, Would give all my incomes from dreamland For a touch of her hand on my cheek. That little shoe in the corner, So worn and wrinkled and brown, With its emptiness confutes you, And argues your wisdom down. THE DEAD HOUSE Here once my step was quickened, Here beckoned the opening door, And welcome thrilled from the threshold To the foot it had known before. A glow came forth to meet me From the flame that laughed in the grate, And shadows adance on the ceiling, Danced blither with mine for a mate. 'I claim you, old friend,' yawned the arm-chair, 'This corner, you know, is your seat;' 'Best your slippers on me,' beamed the fender, 'I brighten at touch of your feet.' 'We know the practised finger,' Said the books, 'that seems like brain;' And the shy page rustled the secret It had kept till I came again. Sang the pillow, 'My down once quivered On nightingales' throats that flew Through moonlit gardens of Hafiz To gather quaint dreams for you.' Ah me, where the Past sowed heart's-ease. The Present plucks rue for us men! I come back: that scar unhealing Was not in the churchyard then. But, I think, the house is unaltered, I will go and beg to look At the rooms that were once familiar To my life as its bed to a brook. Unaltered! Alas for the sameness That makes the change but more! 'Tis a dead man I see in the mirrors, 'Tis his tread that chills the floor! To learn such a simple lesson, Need I go to Paris and Rome, That the many make the household, But only one the home? 'Twas just a womanly presence, An influence unexprest, But a rose she had worn, on my gravesod Were more than long life with the rest! 'Twas a smile, 'twas a garment's rustle, 'Twas nothing that I can phrase. But the whole dumb dwelling grew conscious, And put on her looks and ways. Were it mine I would close the shutters, Like lids when the life is fled, And the funeral fire should wind it, This corpse of a home that is dead. For it died that autumn morning When she, its soul, was borne To lie all dark on the hillside That looks over woodland and corn. A MOOD I go to the ridge in the forest I haunted in days gone by, But thou, O Memory, pourest No magical drop in mine eye, Nor the gleam of the secret restorest That hath faded from earth and sky: A Presence autumnal and sober Invests every rock and tree, And the aureole of October Lights the maples, but darkens me. Pine in the distance, Patient through sun or rain, Meeting with graceful persistence, With yielding but rooted resistance, The northwind's wrench and strain, No memory of past existence Brings thee pain; Right for the zenith heading, Friendly with heat or cold, Thine arms to the influence spreading Of the heavens, just from of old, Thou only aspirest the more, Unregretful the old leaves shedding That fringed thee with music before, And deeper thy roots embedding In the grace and the beauty of yore; Thou sigh'st not, 'Alas, I am older, The green of last summer is sear!' But loftier, hopefuller, bolder, Winnest broader horizons each year. To me 'tis not cheer thou art singing: There's a sound of the sea, O mournful tree, In thy boughs forever clinging, And the far-off roar Of waves on the shore A shattered vessel flinging. As thou musest still of the ocean On which thou must float at last, And seem'st to foreknow The shipwreck's woe And the sailor wrenched from the broken mast, Do I, in this vague emotion, This sadness that will not pass, Though the air throb with wings, And the field laughs and sings, Do I forebode, alas! The ship-building longer and wearier, The voyage's struggle and strife, And then the darker and drearier Wreck of a broken life? THE VOYAGE TO VINLAND I BIÖRN'S BECKONERS Now Biörn, the son of Heriulf, had ill days Because the heart within him seethed with blood That would not be allayed with any toil, Whether of war or hunting or the oar, But was anhungered for some joy untried: For the brain grew not weary with the limbs, But, while they slept, still hammered like a Troll, Building all night a bridge of solid dream Between him and some purpose of his soul, Or will to find a purpose. With the dawn 10 The sleep-laid timbers, crumbled to soft mist, Denied all foothold. But the dream remained, And every night with yellow-bearded kings His sleep was haunted,--mighty men of old, Once young as he, now ancient like the gods, And safe as stars in all men's memories. Strange sagas read he in their sea-blue eyes Cold as the sea, grandly compassionless; Like life, they made him eager and then mocked. Nay, broad awake, they would not let him be; 20 They shaped themselves gigantic in the mist, They rose far-beckoning in the lamps of heaven, They whispered invitation in the winds, And breath came from them, mightier than the wind, To strain the lagging sails of his resolve, Till that grew passion which before was wish, And youth seemed all too costly to be staked On the soiled cards wherewith men played their game, Letting Time pocket up the larger life, Lost with base gain of raiment, food, and roof. 30 'What helpeth lightness of the feet?' they said, 'Oblivion runs with swifter foot than they; Or strength of sinew? New men come as strong, And those sleep nameless; or renown in war? Swords grave no name on the long-memoried rock But moss shall hide it; they alone who wring Some secret purpose from the unwilling gods Survive in song for yet a little while To vex, like us, the dreams of later men, Ourselves a dream, and dreamlike all we did.' 40 II THORWALD'S LAY So Biörn went comfortless but for his thought, And by his thought the more discomforted, Till Erle Thurlson kept his Yule-tide feast: And thither came he, called among the rest, Silent, lone-minded, a church-door to mirth; But, ere deep draughts forbade such serious song As the grave Skald might chant nor after blush, Then Eric looked at Thorwald where he sat Mute as a cloud amid the stormy hall, And said: 'O Skald, sing now an olden song, 50 Such as our fathers heard who led great lives; And, as the bravest on a shield is borne Along the waving host that shouts him king, So rode their thrones upon the thronging seas!' Then the old man arose; white-haired he stood, White-bearded, and with eyes that looked afar From their still region of perpetual snow, Beyond the little smokes and stirs of men: His head was bowed with gathered flakes of years, As winter bends the sea-foreboding pine, 60 But something triumphed in his brow and eye, Which whoso saw it could not see and crouch: Loud rang the emptied beakers as he mused, Brooding his eyried thoughts; then, as an eagle Circles smooth-winged above the wind-vexed woods, So wheeled his soul into the air of song High o'er the stormy hall; and thus he sang: 'The fletcher for his arrow-shaft picks out Wood closest-grained, long-seasoned, straight as light; And from a quiver full of such as these 70 The wary bowman, matched against his peers, Long doubting, singles yet once more the best. Who is it needs such flawless shafts as Fate? What archer of his arrows is so choice, Or hits the white so surely? They are men, The chosen of her quiver; nor for her Will every reed suffice, or cross-grained stick At random from life's vulgar fagot plucked: Such answer household ends; but she will have Souls straight and clear, of toughest fibre, sound 80 Down to the heart of heart; from these she strips All needless stuff, all sapwood; seasons them; From circumstance untoward feathers plucks Crumpled and cheap; and barbs with iron will: The hour that passes is her quiver-boy: When she draws bow, 'tis not across the wind, Nor 'gainst the sun her haste-snatched arrow sings, For sun and wind have plighted faith to her: Ere men have heard the sinew twang, behold In the butt's heart her trembling messenger! 90 'The song is old and simple that I sing; But old and simple are despised as cheap, Though hardest to achieve of human things: Good were the days of yore, when men were tried By ring of shields, as now by ring of words; But while the gods are left, and hearts of men, And wide-doored ocean, still the days are good. Still o'er the earth hastes Opportunity, Seeking the hardy soul that seeks for her. Be not abroad, nor deaf with household cares 100 That chatter loudest as they mean the least; Swift-willed is thrice-willed; late means nevermore; Impatient is her foot, nor turns again.' He ceased; upon his bosom sank his beard Sadly, as one who oft had seen her pass Nor stayed her: and forthwith the frothy tide Of interrupted wassail roared along. But Biörn, the son of Heriulf, sat apart Musing, and, with his eyes upon the fire, Saw shapes of arrows, lost as soon as seen. 110 'A ship,' he muttered,'is a wingèd bridge That leadeth every way to man's desire, And ocean the wide gate to manful luck.' And then with that resolve his heart was bent, Which, like a humming shaft, through many a stripe Of day and night, across the unpathwayed seas Shot the brave prow that cut on Vinland sands The first rune in the Saga of the West. III GUDRIDA'S PROPHECY Four weeks they sailed, a speck in sky-shut seas, Life, where was never life that knew itself, 120 But tumbled lubber-like in blowing whales; Thought, where the like had never been before Since Thought primeval brooded the abyss; Alone as men were never in the world. They saw the icy foundlings of the sea, White cliffs of silence, beautiful by day, Or looming, sudden-perilous, at night In monstrous hush; or sometimes in the dark The waves broke ominous with paly gleams Crushed by the prow in sparkles of cold fire. 130 Then came green stripes of sea that promised land But brought it not, and on the thirtieth day Low in the west were wooded shores like cloud. They shouted as men shout with sudden hope; But Biörn was silent, such strange loss there is Between the dream's fulfilment and the dream, Such sad abatement in the goal attained. Then Gudrida, that was a prophetess, Rapt with strange influence from Atlantis, sang: Her words: the vision was the dreaming shore's. 140 Looms there the New Land; Locked in the shadow Long the gods shut it, Niggards of newness They, the o'er-old. Little it looks there, Slim as a cloud-streak; It shall fold peoples Even as a shepherd Foldeth his flock. 150 Silent it sleeps now; Great ships shall seek it, Swarming as salmon; Noise of its numbers Two seas shall hear. Men from the Northland, Men from the Southland, Haste empty-handed; No more than manhood Bring they, and hands. 160 Dark hair and fair hair, Red blood and blue blood, There shall be mingled; Force of the ferment Makes the New Man. Pick of all kindreds, Kings' blood shall theirs be, Shoots of the eldest Stock upon Midgard, Sons of the poor. 170 Them waits the New Land; They shall subdue it, Leaving their sons' sons Space for the body, Space for the soul. Leaving their sons' sons All things save song-craft, Plant long in growing, Thrusting its tap-root Deep in the Gone. 180 Here men shall grow up Strong from self-helping; Eyes for the present Bring they as eagles', Blind to the Past. They shall make over Creed, law, and custom: Driving-men, doughty Builders of empire, Builders of men. 190 Here is no singer; What should they sing of? They, the unresting? Labor is ugly, Loathsome is change. These the old gods hate, Dwellers in dream-land, Drinking delusion Out of the empty Skull of the Past. 200 These hate the old gods, Warring against them; Fatal to Odin, Here the wolf Fenrir Lieth in wait. Here the gods' Twilight Gathers, earth-gulfing; Blackness of battle, Fierce till the Old World Flare up in fire. 210 Doubt not, my Northmen; Fate loves the fearless; Fools, when their roof-tree Falls, think it doomsday; Firm stands the sky. Over the ruin See I the promise; Crisp waves the cornfield, Peace-walled, the homestead Waits open-doored. 220 There lies the New Land; Yours to behold it, Not to possess it; Slowly Fate's perfect Fulness shall come. Then from your strong loins Seed shall be scattered, Men to the marrow, Wilderness tamers, Walkers of waves. 230 Jealous, the old gods Shut it in shadow, Wisely they ward it, Egg of the serpent, Bane to them all. Stronger and sweeter New gods shall seek it. Fill it with man-folk Wise for the future, Wise from the past. 240 Here all is all men's, Save only Wisdom; King he that wins her; Him hail they helmsman, Highest of heart. Might makes no master Here any longer; Sword is not swayer; Here e'en the gods are Selfish no more. 250 Walking the New Earth, Lo, a divine One Greets all men godlike, Calls them his kindred, He, the Divine. Is it Thor's hammer Rays in his right hand? Weaponless walks he; It is the White Christ, Stronger than Thor. 260 Here shall a realm rise Mighty in manhood; Justice and Mercy Here set a stronghold Safe without spear. Weak was the Old World, Wearily war-fenced; Out of its ashes, Strong as the morning, Springeth the New. 270 Beauty of promise, Promise of beauty, Safe in the silence Sleep thou, till cometh Light to thy lids! Thee shall awaken Flame from the furnace, Bath of all brave ones, Cleanser of conscience, Welder of will. 280 Lowly shall love thee, Thee, open-handed! Stalwart shall shield thee, Thee, worth their best blood, Waif of the West! Then shall come singers, Singing no swan-song, Birth-carols, rather, Meet for the mail child Mighty of bone. 290 MAHMOOD THE IMAGE-BREAKER Old events have modern meanings; only that survives Of past history which finds kindred in all hearts and lives. Mahmood once, the idol-breaker, spreader of the Faith, Was at Sumnat tempted sorely, as the legend saith. In the great pagoda's centre, monstrous and abhorred, Granite on a throne of granite, sat the temple's lord, Mahmood paused a moment, silenced by the silent face That, with eyes of stone unwavering, awed the ancient place. Then the Brahmins knelt before him, by his doubt made bold, Pledging for their idol's ransom countless gems and gold. Gold was yellow dirt to Mahmood, but of precious use, Since from it the roots of power suck a potent juice. 'Were yon stone alone in question, this would please me well,' Mahmood said; 'but, with the block there, I my truth must sell. 'Wealth and rule slip down with Fortune, as her wheel turns round; He who keeps his faith, he only cannot be discrowned. 'Little were a change of station, loss of life or crown, But the wreck were past retrieving if the Man fell down.' So his iron mace he lifted, smote with might and main, And the idol, on the pavement tumbling, burst in twain. Luck obeys the downright striker; from the hollow core, Fifty times the Brahmins' offer deluged all the floor. INVITA MINERVA The Bardling came where by a river grew The pennoned reeds, that, as the west-wind blew, Gleamed and sighed plaintively, as if they knew What music slept enchanted in each stem, Till Pan should choose some happy one of them, And with wise lips enlife it through and through. The Bardling thought, 'A pipe is all I need; Once I have sought me out a clear, smooth reed, And shaped it to my fancy, I proceed To breathe such strains as, yonder mid the rocks, The strange youth blows, that tends Admetus' flocks. And all the maidens shall to me pay heed.' The summer day he spent in questful round, And many a reed he marred, but never found A conjuring-spell to free the imprisoned sound; At last his vainly wearied limbs he laid Beneath a sacred laurel's flickering shade, And sleep about his brain her cobweb wound. Then strode the mighty Mother through his dreams, Saying: 'The reeds along a thousand streams Are mine, and who is he that plots and schemes To snare the melodies wherewith my breath Sounds through the double pipes of Life and Death, Atoning what to men mad discord seems? 'He seeks not me, but I seek oft in vain For him who shall my voiceful reeds constrain, And make them utter their melodious pain; He flies the immortal gift, for well he knows His life of life must with its overflows Flood the unthankful pipe, nor come again. 'Thou fool, who dost my harmless subjects wrong, 'Tis not the singer's wish that makes the song: The rhythmic beauty wanders dumb, how long, Nor stoops to any daintiest instrument, Till, found its mated lips, their sweet consent Makes mortal breath than Time and Fate more strong.' THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH I 'Tis a woodland enchanted! By no sadder spirit Than blackbirds and thrushes, That whistle to cheer it All day in the bushes. This woodland is haunted: And in a small clearing, Beyond sight or hearing Of human annoyance, The little fount gushes, 10 First smoothly, then dashes And gurgles and flashes, To the maples and ashes Confiding its joyance; Unconscious confiding, Then, silent and glossy, Slips winding and hiding Through alder-stems mossy, Through gossamer roots Fine as nerves, 20 That tremble, as shoots Through their magnetized curves The allurement delicious Of the water's capricious Thrills, gushes, and swerves. II 'Tis a woodland enchanted! I am writing no fiction; And this fount, its sole daughter, To the woodland was granted To pour holy water 30 And win benediction; In summer-noon flushes, When all the wood hushes, Blue dragon-flies knitting To and fro in the sun, With sidelong jerk flitting Sink down on the rashes, And, motionless sitting, Hear it bubble and run, Hear its low inward singing, 40 With level wings swinging On green tasselled rushes, To dream in the sun. III 'Tis a woodland enchanted! The great August noonlight! Through myriad rifts slanted, Leaf and bole thickly sprinkles With flickering gold; There, in warm August gloaming, With quick, silent brightenings, 50 From meadow-lands roaming, The firefly twinkles His fitful heat-lightnings; There the magical moonlight With meek, saintly glory Steeps summit and wold; There whippoorwills plain in the solitudes hoary With lone cries that wander Now hither, now yonder, Like souls doomed of old 60 To a mild purgatory; But through noonlight and moonlight The little fount tinkles Its silver saints'-bells, That no sprite ill-boding May make his abode in Those innocent dells. IV 'Tis a woodland enchanted! When the phebe scarce whistles Once an hour to his fellow. 70 And, where red lilies flaunted, Balloons from the thistles Tell summer's disasters, The butterflies yellow, As caught in an eddy Of air's silent ocean, Sink, waver, and steady O'er goats'-beard and asters, Like souls of dead flowers, With aimless emotion 80 Still lingering unready To leave their old bowers; And the fount is no dumber, But still gleams and flashes, And gurgles and plashes, To the measure of summer; The butterflies hear it, And spell-bound are holden, Still balancing near it O'er the goats' beard so golden. 90 V 'Tis a woodland enchanted! A vast silver willow, I know not how planted, (This wood is enchanted, And full of surprises.) Stands stemming a billow, A motionless billow Of ankle-deep mosses; Two great roots it crosses To make a round basin. 100 And there the Fount rises; Ah, too pure a mirror For one sick of error To see his sad face in! No dew-drop is stiller In its lupin-leaf setting Than this water moss-bounded; But a tiny sand-pillar From the bottom keeps jetting, And mermaid ne'er sounded 110 Through the wreaths of a shell, Down amid crimson dulses In some cavern of ocean, A melody sweeter Than the delicate pulses, The soft, noiseless metre, The pause and the swell Of that musical motion: I recall it, not see it; Could vision be clearer? 120 Half I'm fain to draw nearer Half tempted to flee it; The sleeping Past wake not, Beware! One forward step take not, Ah! break not That quietude rare! By my step unaffrighted A thrush hops before it, And o'er it 130 A birch hangs delighted, Dipping, dipping, dipping its tremulous hair; Pure as the fountain, once I came to the place, (How dare I draw nearer?) I bent o'er its mirror, And saw a child's face Mid locks of bright gold in it; Yes, pure as this fountain once,-- Since, bow much error! 140 Too holy a mirror For the man to behold in it His harsh, bearded countenance! VI 'Tis a woodland enchanted! Ah, fly unreturning! Yet stay;-- 'Tis a woodland enchanted, Where wonderful chances Have sway; Luck flees from the cold one, 150 But leaps to the bold one Half-way; Why should I be daunted? Still the smooth mirror glances, Still the amber sand dances, One look,--then away! O magical glass! Canst keep in thy bosom Shades of leaf and of blossom When summer days pass, 160 So that when thy wave hardens It shapes as it pleases, Unharmed by the breezes, Its fine hanging gardens? Hast those in thy keeping. And canst not uncover, Enchantedly sleeping, The old shade of thy lover? It is there! I have found it! He wakes, the long sleeper! 170 The pool is grown deeper, The sand dance is ending, The white floor sinks, blending With skies that below me Are deepening and bending, And a child's face alone That seems not to know me, With hair that fades golden In the heaven-glow round it, Looks up at my own; 180 Ah, glimpse through the portal That leads to the throne, That opes the child's olden Regions Elysian! Ah, too holy vision For thy skirts to be holden By soiled hand of mortal! It wavers, it scatters, 'Tis gone past recalling! A tear's sudden falling 190 The magic cup shatters, Breaks the spell of the waters, And the sand cone once more, With a ceaseless renewing, Its dance is pursuing On the silvery floor, O'er and o'er, With a noiseless and ceaseless renewing. VII 'Tis a woodland enchanted! If you ask me, _Where is it?_ 200 I can but make answer, ''Tis past my disclosing;' Not to choice is it granted By sure paths to visit The still pool enclosing Its blithe little dancer; But in some day, the rarest Of many Septembers, When the pulses of air rest, And all things lie dreaming 210 In drowsy haze steaming From the wood's glowing embers, Then, sometimes, unheeding, And asking not whither, By a sweet inward leading My feet are drawn thither, And, looking with awe in the magical mirror, I see through my tears, Half doubtful of seeing, The face unperverted, 220 The warm golden being Of a child of five years; And spite of the mists and the error. And the days overcast, Can feel that I walk undeserted, But forever attended By the glad heavens that bended O'er the innocent past; Toward fancy or truth Doth the sweet vision win me? 230 Dare I think that I cast In the fountain of youth The fleeting reflection Of some bygone perfection That still lingers in me? YUSSOUF A stranger came one night to Yussouf's tent, Saying, 'Behold one outcast and in dread, Against whose life the bow of power is bent, Who flies, and hath not where to lay his head; I come to thee for shelter and for food, To Yussouf, called through all our tribes "The Good." 'This tent is mine,' said Yussouf, 'but no more Than it is God's come in and be at peace; Freely shall thou partake of all my store As I of His who buildeth over these Our tents his glorious roof of night and day, And at whose door none ever yet heard Nay.' So Yussouf entertained his guest that night, And, waking him ere day, said: 'Here is gold; My swiftest horse is saddled for thy flight; Depart before the prying day grow bold.' As one lamp lights another, nor grows less, So nobleness enkindleth nobleness. That inward light the stranger's face made grand, Which shines from all self-conquest; kneeling low, He bowed his forehead upon Yussouf's hand, Sobbing: 'O Sheik, I cannot leave thee so; I will repay thee; all this thou hast done Unto that Ibrahim who slew thy son!' 'Take thrice the gold,' said Yussouf 'for with thee Into the desert, never to return, My one black thought shall ride away from me; First-born, for whom by day and night I yearn, Balanced and just are all of God's decrees; Thou art avenged, my first-born, sleep in peace!' THE DARKENED MIND The fire is turning clear and blithely, Pleasantly whistles the winter wind; We are about thee, thy friends and kindred, On us all flickers the firelight kind; There thou sittest in thy wonted corner Lone and awful in thy darkened mind. There thou sittest; now and then thou moanest; Thou dost talk with what we cannot see, Lookest at us with an eye so doubtful, It doth put us very far from thee; There thou sittest; we would fain be nigh thee, But we know that it can never be. We can touch thee, still we are no nearer; Gather round thee, still thou art alone; The wide chasm of reason is between us; Thou confutest kindness with a moan; We can speak to thee, and thou canst answer, Like two prisoners through a wall of stone. Hardest heart would call it very awful When thou look'st at us and seest--oh, what? If we move away, thou sittest gazing With those vague eyes at the selfsame spot, And thou mutterest, thy hands thou wringest, Seeing something,--us thou seest not. Strange it is that, in this open brightness, Thou shouldst sit in such a narrow cell; Strange it is that thou shouldst be so lonesome Where those are who love thee all so well; Not so much of thee is left among us As the hum outliving the hushed bell. WHAT RABBI JEHOSHA SAID Rabbi Jehosha used to say That God made angels every day, Perfect as Michael and the rest First brooded in creation's nest, Whose only office was to cry _Hosanna!_ once, and then to die; Or rather, with Life's essence blent, To be led home from banishment. Rabbi Jehosha had the skill To know that Heaven is in God's will; And doing that, though for a space One heart-beat long, may win a grace As full of grandeur and of glow As Princes of the Chariot know. 'Twere glorious, no doubt, to be One of the strong-winged Hierarchy, To burn with Seraphs, or to shine With Cherubs, deathlessly divine; Yet I, perhaps, poor earthly clod, Could I forget myself in God, Could I but find my nature's clue Simply as birds and blossoms do, And but for one rapt moment know 'Tis Heaven must come, not we must go, Should win my place as near the throne As the pearl-angel of its zone. And God would listen mid the throng For my one breath of perfect song, That, in its simple human way, Said all the Host of Heaven could say. ALL-SAINTS One feast, of holy days the crest, I, though no Churchman, love to keep, All-Saints,--the unknown good that rest In God's still memory folded deep; The bravely dumb that did their deed, And scorned to blot it with a name, Men of the plain heroic breed, That loved Heaven's silence more than fame. Such lived not in the past alone, But thread to-day the unheeding street, And stairs to Sin and Famine known Sing with the welcome of their feet; The den they enter grows a shrine, The grimy sash an oriel burns, Their cup of water warms like wine, Their speech is filled from heavenly urns. About their brows to me appears An aureole traced in tenderest light, The rainbow-gleam of smiles through tears In dying eyes, by them made bright, Of souls that shivered on the edge Of that chill ford repassed no more, And in their mercy felt the pledge And sweetness of the farther shore. A WINTER-EVENING HYMN TO MY FIRE I Beauty on my hearth-stone blazing! To-night the triple Zoroaster Shall my prophet be and master; To-night will I pure Magian be, Hymns to thy sole honor raising, While thou leapest fast and faster, Wild with self-delighted glee, Or sink'st low and glowest faintly As an aureole still and saintly, Keeping cadence to my praising 10 Thee! still thee! and only thee! II Elfish daughter of Apollo! Thee, from thy father stolen and bound To serve in Vulcan's clangorous smithy, Prometheus (primal Yankee) found, And, when he had tampered with thee, (Too confiding little maid!) In a reed's precarious hollow To our frozen earth conveyed: For he swore I know not what; 20 Endless ease should be thy lot, Pleasure that should never falter, Lifelong play, and not a duty Save to hover o'er the altar, Vision of celestial beauty, Fed with precious woods and spices; Then, perfidious! having got Thee in the net of his devices, Sold thee into endless slavery, Made thee a drudge to boil the pot, 30 Thee, Helios' daughter, who dost bear His likeness in thy golden hair; Thee, by nature wild and wavery, Palpitating, evanescent As the shade of Dian's crescent, Life, motion, gladness, everywhere! III Fathom deep men bury thee In the furnace dark and still. There, with dreariest mockery, 39 Making thee eat, against thy will, Blackest Pennsylvanian stone; But thou dost avenge thy doom, For, from out thy catacomb, Day and night thy wrath is blown In a withering simoom, And, adown that cavern drear, Thy black pitfall in the floor, Staggers the lusty antique cheer, Despairing, and is seen no more! IV Elfish I may rightly name thee; 50 We enslave, but cannot tame thee; With fierce snatches, now and then, Thou pluckest at thy right again, And thy down-trod instincts savage To stealthy insurrection creep While thy wittol masters sleep, And burst in undiscerning ravage: Then how thou shak'st thy bacchant locks! While brazen pulses, far and near, Throb thick and thicker, wild with fear 60 And dread conjecture, till the drear Disordered clangor every steeple rocks! V But when we make a friend of thee, And admit thee to the hall On our nights of festival, Then, Cinderella, who could see In thee the kitchen's stunted thrall? Once more a Princess lithe and tan, Thou dancest with a whispering tread, While the bright marvel of thy head 70 In crinkling gold floats all abroad, And gloriously dost vindicate The legend of thy lineage great, Earth-exiled daughter of the Pythian god! Now in the ample chimney-place, To honor thy acknowledged race, We crown thee high with laurel good, Thy shining father's sacred wood, Which, guessing thy ancestral right, Sparkles and snaps its dumb delight, 80 And, at thy touch, poor outcast one, Feels through its gladdened fibres go The tingle and thrill and vassal glow Of instincts loyal to the sun. VI O thou of home the guardian Lar, And, when our earth hath wandered far, Into the cold, and deep snow covers The walks of our New England lovers, Their sweet secluded evening-star! 'Twas with thy rays the English Muse 90 Ripened her mild domestic hues; 'Twas by thy flicker that she conned The fireside wisdom that enrings With light from heaven familiar things; By thee she found the homely faith In whose mild eyes thy comfort stay'th When Death, extinguishing his torch, Gropes for the latch-string in the porch; The love that wanders not beyond His earliest nest, but sits and sings 100 While children smooth his patient wings; Therefore with thee I love to read Our brave old poets; at thy touch how stirs Life in the withered words: how swift recede Time's shadows; and how glows again Through its dead mass the incandescent verse, As when upon the anvils of the brain It glittering lay, cyclopically wrought By the fast-throbbing hammers of the poet's thought! Thou murmurest, too, divinely stirred, 110 The aspirations unattained, The rhythms so rathe and delicate, They bent and strained And broke, beneath the sombre weight Of any airiest mortal word. VII What warm protection dost thou bend Round curtained talk of friend with friend, While the gray snow-storm, held aloof, To softest outline rounds the roof, Or the rude North with baffled strain 120 Shoulders the frost-starred window-pane! Now the kind nymph to Bacchus born By Morpheus' daughter, she that seems Gifted opon her natal morn By him with fire, by her with dreams, Nicotia, dearer to the Muse Than all the grape's bewildering juice, We worship, unforbid of thee; And, as her incense floats and curls In airy spires and wayward whirls, 130 Or poises on its tremulous stalk A flower of frailest revery, So winds and loiters, idly free, The current of unguided talk, Now laughter-rippled, and now caught In smooth, dark pools of deeper thought. Meanwhile thou mellowest every word, A sweetly unobtrusive third; For thou hast magic beyond wine, To unlock natures each to each; 140 The unspoken thought thou canst divine; Thou fill'st the pauses of the speech With whispers that to dream-land reach And frozen fancy-springs unchain In Arctic outskirts of the brain: Sun of all inmost confidences, To thy rays doth the heart unclose Its formal calyx of pretences, That close against rude day's offences, And open its shy midnight rose! 150 VIII Thou holdest not the master key With which thy Sire sets free the mystic gates Of Past and Future: not for common fates Do they wide open fling, And, with a far heard ring, Swing back their willing valves melodiously; Only to ceremonial days, And great processions of imperial song That set the world at gaze, Doth such high privilege belong; 160 But thou a postern-door canst ope To humbler chambers of the selfsame palace Where Memory lodges, and her sister Hope, Whose being is but as a crystal chalice Which, with her various mood, the elder fills Of joy or sorrow, So coloring as she wills With hues of yesterday the unconscious morrow. IX Thou sinkest, and my fancy sinks with thee: For thee I took the idle shell, 170 And struck the unused chords again, But they are gone who listened well; Some are in heaven, and all are far from me: Even as I sing, it turns to pain, And with vain tears my eyelids throb and swell: Enough; I come not of the race That hawk their sorrows in the market-place. Earth stops the ears I best had loved to please; Then break, ye untuned chords, or rust in peace! As if a white-haired actor should come back 180 Some midnight to the theatre void and black, And there rehearse his youth's great part Mid thin applauses of the ghosts. So seems it now: ye crowd upon my heart, And I bow down in silence, shadowy hosts! FANCY'S CASUISTRY How struggles with the tempest's swells That warning of tumultuous bells! The fire is loose! and frantic knells Throb fast and faster, As tower to tower confusedly tells News of disaster. But on my far-off solitude No harsh alarums can intrude; The terror comes to me subdued And charmed by distance, To deepen the habitual mood Of my existence. Are those, I muse, the Easter chimes? And listen, weaving careless rhymes While the loud city's griefs and crimes Pay gentle allegiance To the fine quiet that sublimes These dreamy regions. And when the storm o'erwhelms the shore, I watch entranced as, o'er and o'er, The light revolves amid the roar So still and saintly, Now large and near, now more and more Withdrawing faintly. This, too, despairing sailors see Flash out the breakers 'neath their lee In sudden snow, then lingeringly Wane tow'rd eclipse, While through the dark the shuddering sea Gropes for the ships. And is it right, this mood of mind That thus, in revery enshrined, Can in the world mere topics find For musing stricture, Seeing the life of humankind Only as picture? The events in line of battle go; In vain for me their trumpets blow As unto him that lieth low In death's dark arches, And through the sod hears throbbing slow The muffled marches. O Duty, am I dead to thee In this my cloistered ecstasy, In this lone shallop on the sea That drifts tow'rd Silence? And are those visioned shores I see But sirens' islands? My Dante frowns with lip-locked mien, As who would say, ''Tis those, I ween, Whom lifelong armor-chafe makes lean That win the laurel;' But where _is_ Truth? What does it mean, The world-old quarrel? Such questionings are idle air: Leave what to do and what to spare To the inspiring moment's care, Nor ask for payment Of fame or gold, but just to wear Unspotted raiment. TO MR. JOHN BARTLETT WHO HAD SENT ME A SEVEN-POUND TROUT Fit for an Abbot of Theleme, For the whole Cardinals' College, or The Pope himself to see in dream Before his lenten vision gleam. He lies there, the sogdologer! His precious flanks with stars besprent, Worthy to swim in Castaly! The friend by whom such gifts are sent, For him shall bumpers full be spent, His health! be Luck his fast ally! I see him trace the wayward brook Amid the forest mysteries, Where at their shades shy aspens look. Or where, with many a gurgling crook, It croons its woodland histories. I see leaf-shade and sun-fleck lend Their tremulous, sweet vicissitude To smooth, dark pool, to crinkling bend,-- (Oh, stew him, Ann, as 'twere your friend, With amorous solicitude!) I see him step with caution due, Soft as if shod with moccasins, Grave as in church, for who plies you, Sweet craft, is safe as in a pew From all our common stock o' sins. The unerring fly I see him cast, That as a rose-leaf falls as soft, A flash! a whirl! he has him fast! We tyros, how that struggle last Confuses and appalls us oft. Unfluttered he: calm as the sky Looks on our tragi-comedies, This way and that he lets him fly, A sunbeam-shuttle, then to die Lands him, with cool _aplomb_, at ease. The friend who gave our board such gust, Life's care may he o'erstep it half, And, when Death hooks him, as he must, He'll do it handsomely, I trust, And John H---- write his epitaph! Oh, born beneath the Fishes' sign, Of constellations happiest, May he somewhere with Walton dine, May Horace send him Massic wine, And Burns Scotch drink, the nappiest! And when they come his deeds to weigh, And how he used the talents his, One trout-scale in the scales he'll lay (If trout had scales), and 'twill outsway The wrong side of the balances. ODE TO HAPPINESS Spirit, that rarely comest now And only to contrast my gloom, Like rainbow-feathered birds that bloom A moment on some autumn bough That, with the spurn of their farewell Sheds its last leaves,--thou once didst dwell With me year-long, and make intense To boyhood's wisely vacant days Their fleet but all-sufficing grace Of trustful inexperience, 10 While soul could still transfigure sense, And thrill, as with love's first caress, At life's mere unexpectedness. Days when my blood would leap and run As full of sunshine as a breeze, Or spray tossed up by Summer seas That doubts if it be sea or sun! Days that flew swiftly like the band That played in Grecian games at strife, And passed from eager hand to hand 20 The onward-dancing torch of life! Wing-footed! thou abid'st with him Who asks it not; but he who hath Watched o'er the waves thy waning path, Shall nevermore behold returning Thy high-heaped canvas shoreward yearning! Thou first reveal'st to us thy face Turned o'er the shoulder's parting grace, A moment glimpsed, then seen no more,-- Thou whose swift footsteps we can trace 30 Away from every mortal door. Nymph of the unreturning feet, How may I win thee back? But no, I do thee wrong to call thee so; 'Tis I am changed, not thou art fleet: The man thy presence feels again, Not in the blood, but in the brain, Spirit, that lov'st the upper air Serene and passionless and rare, Such as on mountain heights we find 40 And wide-viewed uplands of the mind; Or such as scorns to coil and sing Round any but the eagle's wing Of souls that with long upward beat Have won an undisturbed retreat Where, poised like wingèd victories, They mirror in relentless eyes. The life broad-basking 'neath their feet,-- Man ever with his Now at strife, Pained with first gasps of earthly air, 50 Then praying Death the last to spare, Still fearful of the ampler life. Not unto them dost thou consent Who, passionless, can lead at ease A life of unalloyed content, A life like that of land-locked seas, Who feel no elemental gush Of tidal forces, no fierce rush Of storm deep-grasping scarcely spent 'Twixt continent and continent. 60 Such quiet souls have never known Thy truer inspiration, thou Who lov'st to feel upon thy brow Spray from the plunging vessel thrown Grazing the tusked lee shore, the cliff That o'er the abrupt gorge holds its breath, Where the frail hair-breadth of an _if_ Is all that sunders life and death: These, too, are cared for, and round these Bends her mild crook thy sister Peace; 70 These in unvexed dependence lie, Each 'neath his strip of household sky; O'er these clouds wander, and the blue Hangs motionless the whole day through; Stars rise for them, and moons grow large And lessen in such tranquil wise As joys and sorrows do that rise Within their nature's sheltered marge; Their hours into each other flit Like the leaf-shadows of the vine 80 And fig-tree under which they sit, And their still lives to heaven incline With an unconscious habitude, Unhistoried as smokes that rise From happy hearths and sight elude In kindred blue of morning skies. Wayward! when once we feel thy lack, 'Tis worse than vain to woo thee back! Yet there is one who seems to be Thine elder sister, in whose eyes 90 A faint far northern light will rise Sometimes, and bring a dream of thee; She is not that for which youth hoped, But she hath blessings all her own, Thoughts pure as lilies newly oped, And faith to sorrow given alone: Almost I deem that it is thou Come back with graver matron brow, With deepened eyes and bated breath, Like one that somewhere hath met Death: 100 But 'No,' she answers, 'I am she Whom the gods love, Tranquillity; That other whom you seek forlorn Half earthly was; but I am born Of the immortals, and our race Wears still some sadness on its face: He wins me late, but keeps me long, Who, dowered with every gift of passion, In that fierce flame can forge and fashion Of sin and self the anchor strong; 110 Can thence compel the driving force Of daily life's mechanic course, Nor less the nobler energies Of needful toil and culture wise; Whose soul is worth the tempter's lure, Who can renounce, and yet endure, To him I come, not lightly wooed, But won by silent fortitude.' VILLA FRANCA 1859 Wait a little: do _we_ not wait? Louis Napoleon is not Fate, Francis Joseph is not Time; There's One hath swifter feet than Crime; Cannon-parliaments settle naught; Venice is Austria's,--whose is Thought? Minié is good, but, spite of change, Gutenberg's gun has the longest range. Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! In the shadow, year out, year in, The silent headsman waits forever. Wait, we say: our years are long; Men are weak, out Man is strong; Since the stars first curved their rings, We have looked on many things: Great wars come and great wars go, Wolf-tracks light on polar snow; We shall see him come and gone, This second-hand Napoleon. Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! In the shadow, year out, year in, The silent headsman waits forever. We saw the elder Corsican, And Clotho muttered as she span, While crowned lackeys bore the train, Of the pinchbeck Charlemagne: 'Sister, stint not length of thread! Sister, stay the scissors dread! On Saint Helen's granite Weak, Hark, the vulture whets his beak!' Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! In the shadow, year out, year in, The silent headsman waits forever. The Bonapartes, we know their bees That wade in honey red to the knees; Their patent reaper, its sheaves sleep sound In dreamless garners underground: We know false glory's spendthrift race Pawning nations for feathers and lace; It may be short, it may be long, ''Tis reckoning-day!' sneers unpaid Wrong. Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! In the shadow, year out, year in, The silent headsman waits forever. The Cock that wears the Eagle's skin Can promise what he ne'er could win; Slavery reaped for fine words sown, System for all, and rights for none, Despots atop, a wild clan below, Such is the Gaul from long ago; Wash the black from the Ethiop's face, Wash the past out of man or race! Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! In the shadow, year out, year in, The silent headsman waits forever. 'Neath Gregory's throne a spider swings, And snares the people for the kings; 'Luther is dead; old quarrels pass: The stake's black scars are healed with grass;' So dreamers prate; did man e'er live Saw priest or woman yet forgive? But Luther's broom is left, and eyes Peep o'er their creeds to where it lies. Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! In the shadow, year out, year in, The silent headsman waits forever. Smooth sails the ship of either realm, Kaiser and Jesuit at the helm; We look down the depths, and mark Silent workers in the dark Building slow the sharp-tusked reefs, Old instincts hardening to new beliefs; Patience a little; learn to wait; Hours are long on the clock of Fate. Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! Darkness is strong, and so is Sin, But surely God endures forever! THE MINER Down 'mid the tangled roots of things That coil about the central fire, I seek for that which giveth wings To stoop, not soar, to my desire. Sometimes I hear, as 'twere a sigh, The sea's deep yearning far above, 'Thou hast the secret not,' I cry, 'In deeper deeps is hid my Love.' They think I burrow from the sun, In darkness, all alone, and weak; Such loss were gain if He were won, For 'tis the sun's own Sun I seek. 'The earth,' they murmur, 'is the tomb That vainly sought his life to prison; Why grovel longer in the gloom? He is not here; he hath arisen.' More life for me where he hath lain Hidden while ye believed him dead, Than in cathedrals cold and vain, Built on loose sands of _It is said_. My search is for the living gold; Him I desire who dwells recluse, And not his image worn and old, Day-servant of our sordid use. If him I find not, yet I find The ancient joy of cell and church, The glimpse, the surety undefined, The unquenched ardor of the search. Happier to chase a flying goal Than to sit counting laurelled gains, To guess the Soul within the soul Than to be lord of what remains. Hide still, best Good, in subtile wise, Beyond my nature's utmost scope; Be ever absent from mine eyes To be twice present in my hope! GOLD EGG: A DREAM-FANTASY HOW A STUDENT IN SEARCH OF THE BEAUTIFUL FELL ASLEEP IN DRESDEN OVER HERR PROFESSOR DOCTOR VISCHER'S WISSENSCHAFT DES SCHÖNEN, AND WHAT CAME THEREOF I swam with undulation soft, Adrift on Vischer's ocean, And, from my cockboat up aloft, Sent down my mental plummet oft In hope to reach a notion. But from the metaphysic sea No bottom was forthcoming, And all the while (how drearily!) In one eternal note of B My German stove kept humming. 10 'What's Beauty?' mused I; 'is it told By synthesis? analysis? Have you not made us lead of gold? To feed your crucible, not sold Our temple's sacred chalices?' Then o'er my senses came a change; My book seemed all traditions, Old legends of profoundest range, Diablery, and stories strange Of goblins, elves, magicians. 20 Old gods in modern saints I found, Old creeds in strange disguises; I thought them safely underground, And here they were, all safe and sound, Without a sign of phthisis. Truth was, my outward eyes were closed, Although I did not know it; Deep into dream-land I had dozed, And thus was happily transposed From proser into poet. 30 So what I read took flesh and blood, And turned to living creatures: The words were but the dingy bud That bloomed, like Adam, from the mud, To human forms and features. I saw how Zeus was lodged once more By Baucis and Philemon; The text said, 'Not alone of yore, But every day, at every door Knocks still the masking Demon.' 40 DAIMON 'twas printed in the book And, as I read it slowly, The letters stirred and changed, and took Jove's stature, the Olympian look Of painless melancholy. He paused upon the threshold worn: 'With coin I cannot pay you; Yet would I fain make some return; The gift for cheapness do not spurn, Accept this hen, I pray you. 50 'Plain feathers wears my Hemera, And has from ages olden; She makes her nest in common hay, And yet, of all the birds that lay, Her eggs alone are golden.' He turned, and could no more be seen; Old Bancis stared a moment, Then tossed poor Partlet on the green, And with a tone, half jest, half spleen, Thus made her housewife's comment: 60 'The stranger had a queerish face, His smile was hardly pleasant, And, though he meant it for a grace, Yet this old hen of barnyard race Was but a stingy present. 'She's quite too old for laying eggs, Nay, even to make a soup of; One only needs to see her legs,-- You might as well boil down the pegs I made the brood-hen's coop of! 70 'Some eighteen score of such do I Raise every year, her sisters; Go, in the woods your fortunes try, All day for one poor earthworm pry, And scratch your toes to blisters!' Philemon found the rede was good, And, turning on the poor hen, He clapt his hands, and stamped, and shooed, Hunting the exile tow'rd the wood, To house with snipe and moorhen. 80 A poet saw and cried: 'Hold! hold! What are you doing, madman? Spurn you more wealth than can be told, The fowl that lays the eggs of gold, Because she's plainly clad, man?' To him Philemon: 'I'll not balk Thy will with any shackle; Wilt add a harden to thy walk? There! take her without further talk: You're both but fit to cackle!' 90 But scarce the poet touched the bird, It swelled to stature regal; And when her cloud-wide wings she stirred, A whisper as of doom was heard, 'Twas Jove's bolt-bearing eagle. As when from far-off cloud-bergs springs A crag, and, hurtling under, From cliff to cliff the rumor flings, So she from flight-foreboding wings Shook out a murmurous thunder. 100 She gripped the poet to her breast, And ever, upward soaring, Earth seemed a new moon in the west, And then one light among the rest Where squadrons lie at mooring. How tell to what heaven-hallowed seat The eagle bent his courses? The waves that on its bases beat, The gales that round it weave and fleet, Are life's creative forces. 110 Here was the bird's primeval nest, High on a promontory Star-pharosed, where she takes her rest To brood new æons 'neath her breast, The future's unfledged glory. I know not how, but I was there All feeling, hearing, seeing; It was not wind that stirred my hair But living breath, the essence rare Of unembodied being. 120 And in the nest an egg of gold Lay soft in self-made lustre, Gazing whereon, what depths untold Within, what marvels manifold, Seemed silently to muster! Daily such splendors to confront Is still to me and you sent? It glowed as when Saint Peter's front, Illumed, forgets its stony wont, And seems to throb translucent. 130 One saw therein the life of man, (Or so the poet found it,) The yolk and white, conceive who can, Were the glad earth, that, floating, span In the glad heaven around it. I knew this as one knows in dream, Where no effects to causes Are chained as in our work-day scheme, And then was wakened by a scream That seemed to come from Baucis. 140 'Bless Zeus!' she cried, 'I'm safe below!' First pale, then red as coral; And I, still drowsy, pondered slow, And seemed to find, but hardly know, Something like this for moral. Each day the world is born anew For him who takes it rightly; Not fresher that which Adam knew, Not sweeter that whose moonlit dew Entranced Arcadia nightly. 150 Rightly? That's simply: 'tis to see _Some_ substance casts these shadows Which we call Life and History, That aimless seem to chase and flee Like wind-gleams over meadows. Simply? That's nobly: 'tis to know That God may still be met with, Nor groweth old, nor doth bestow These senses fine, this brain aglow, To grovel and forget with. 160 Beauty, Herr Doctor, trust in me, No chemistry will win you; Charis still rises from the sea: If you can't find her, _might_ it be Because you seek within you? A FAMILIAR EPISTLE TO A FRIEND Alike I hate to be your debtor, Or write a mere perfunctory letter; For letters, so it seems to me, Our careless quintessence should be, Our real nature's truant play When Consciousness looks t'other way; Not drop by drop, with watchful skill, Gathered in Art's deliberate still, But life's insensible completeness Got as the ripe grape gets its sweetness, 10 As if it had a way to fuse The golden sunlight into juice. Hopeless my mental pump I try, The boxes hiss, the tube is dry; As those petroleum wells that spout Awhile like M.C.'s, then give out, My spring, once full as Arethusa, Is a mere bore as dry's Creusa; And yet you ask me why I'm glum, And why my graver Muse is dumb. 20 Ah me! I've reasons manifold Condensed in one,--I'm getting old! When life, once past its fortieth year, Wheels up its evening hemisphere, The mind's own shadow, which the boy Saw onward point to hope and joy, Shifts round, irrevocably set Tow'rd morning's loss and vain regret, And, argue with it as we will, The clock is unconverted still. 30 'But count the gains,' I hear you say, 'Which far the seeming loss out-weigh; Friendships built firm 'gainst flood and wind On rock foundations of the mind; Knowledge instead of scheming hope; For wild adventure, settled scope; Talents, from surface-ore profuse, Tempered and edged to tools for use; Judgment, for passion's headlong whirls; Old sorrows crystalled into pearls; 40 Losses by patience turned to gains, Possessions now, that once were pains; Joy's blossom gone, as go it must, To ripen seeds of faith and trust; Why heed a snow-flake on the roof If fire within keep Age aloof, Though blundering north-winds push and strain With palms benumbed against the pane?' My dear old Friend, you're very wise; We always are with others' eyes, 50 And see _so_ clear! (our neighbor's deck on) What reef the idiot's sure to wreck on; Folks when they learn how life has quizzed 'em Are fain to make a shift with Wisdom, And, finding she nor breaks nor bends, Give her a letter to their friends. Draw passion's torrent whoso will Through sluices smooth to turn a mill, And, taking solid toll of grist, Forget the rainbow in the mist, 60 The exulting leap, the aimless haste Scattered in iridescent waste; Prefer who likes the sure esteem To cheated youth's midsummer dream, When every friend was more than Damon, Each quicksand safe to build a fame on; Believe that prudence snug excels Youth's gross of verdant spectacles, Through which earth's withered stubble seen Looks autumn-proof as painted green,-- 70 I side with Moses 'gainst the masses, Take you the drudge, give me the glasses! And, for your talents shaped with practice, Convince me first that such the fact is; Let whoso likes be beat, poor fool, On life's hard stithy to a tool, Be whoso will a ploughshare made, Let me remain a jolly blade! What's Knowledge, with her stocks and lands, To gay Conjecture's yellow strands? 80 What's watching her slow flock's increase To ventures for the golden fleece? What her deep ships, safe under lee, To youth's light craft, that drinks the sea, For Flying Islands making sail, And failing where 'tis gain to fail? Ah me! Experience (so we're told), Time's crucible, turns lead to gold; Yet what's experience won but dross, Cloud-gold transmuted to our loss? 90 What but base coin the best event To the untried experiment! 'Twas an old couple, says the poet, That lodged the gods and did not know it; Youth sees and knows them as they were Before Olympus' top was bare; From Swampscot's flats his eye divine Sees Venus rocking on the brine, With lucent limbs, that somehow scatter a Charm that turns Doll to Cleopatra; 100 Bacchus (that now is scarce induced To give Eld's lagging blood a boost), With cymbals' clang and pards to draw him, Divine as Ariadne saw him, Storms through Youth's pulse with all his train And wins new Indies in his brain; Apollo (with the old a trope, A sort of finer Mister Pope), Apollo--but the Muse forbids: At his approach cast down thy lids, 110 And think it joy enough to hear Far off his arrows singing clear; He knows enough who silent knows The quiver chiming as he goes; He tells too much who e'er betrays The shining Archer's secret ways. Dear Friend, you're right and I am wrong; My quibbles are not worth a song, And I sophistically tease My fancy sad to tricks like these. 120 I could not cheat you if I would; You know me and my jesting mood, Mere surface-foam, for pride concealing The purpose of my deeper feeling. I have not spilt one drop of joy Poured in the senses of the boy, Nor Nature fails my walks to bless With all her golden inwardness; And as blind nestlings, unafraid, Stretch up wide-mouthed to every shade 130 By which their downy dream is stirred, Taking it for the mother-bird, So, when God's shadow, which is light, Unheralded, by day or night, My wakening instincts falls across, Silent as sunbeams over moss, In my heart's nest half-conscious things Stir with a helpless sense of wings, Lift themselves up, and tremble long With premonitions sweet of song. 140 Be patient, and perhaps (who knows?) These may be winged one day like those; If thrushes, close-embowered to sing, Pierced through with June's delicious sting; If swallows, their half-hour to run Star-breasted in the setting sun. At first they're but the unfledged proem, Or songless schedule of a poem; When from the shell they're hardly dry If some folks thrust them forth, must I? 150 But let me end with a comparison Never yet hit upon by e'er a son Of our American Apollo, (And there's where I shall beat them hollow, If he indeed's no courtly St. John, But, as West said, a Mohawk Injun.) A poem's like a cruise for whales: Through untried seas the hunter sails, His prow dividing waters known To the blue iceberg's hulk alone; 160 At last, on farthest edge of day, He marks the smoky puff of spray; Then with bent oars the shallop flies To where the basking quarry lies; Then the excitement of the strife, The crimsoned waves,--ah, this is life! But, the dead plunder once secured And safe beside the vessel moored, All that had stirred the blood before Is so much blubber, nothing more, 170 (I mean no pun, nor image so Mere sentimental verse, you know,) And all is tedium, smoke, and soil, In trying out the noisome oil. Yes, this _is_ life! And so the bard Through briny deserts, never scarred Since Noah's keel, a subject seeks, And lies upon the watch for weeks; That once harpooned and helpless lying, What follows is but weary trying. 180 Now I've a notion, if a poet Beat up for themes, his verse will show it; I wait for subjects that hunt me, By day or night won't let me be, And hang about me like a curse, Till they have made me into verse, From line to line my fingers tease Beyond my knowledge, as the bees Build no new cell till those before With limpid summer-sweet run o'er; 190 Then, if I neither sing nor shine, Is it the subject's fault, or mine? AN EMBER PICTURE How strange are the freaks of memory! The lessons of life we forget, While a trifle, a trick of color, In the wonderful web is set,-- Set by some mordant of fancy, And, spite of the wear and tear Of time or distance or trouble, Insists on its right to be there. A chance had brought us together; Our talk was of matters-of-course; We were nothing, one to the other, But a short half-hour's resource. We spoke of French acting and actors, And their easy, natural way: Of the weather, for it was raining, As we drove home from the play. We debated the social nothings We bore ourselves so to discuss; The thunderous rumors of battle Were silent the while for us. Arrived at her door, we left her With a drippingly hurried adieu, And our wheels went crunching the gravel Of the oak-darkened avenue. As we drove away through the shadow, The candle she held in the door From rain-varnished tree-trunk to tree-trunk Flashed fainter, and flashed no more;-- Flashed fainter, then wholly faded Before we had passed the wood; But the light of the face behind it Went with me and stayed for good. The vision of scarce a moment, And hardly marked at the time, It comes unbidden to haunt me, Like a scrap of ballad-rhyme. Had she beauty? Well, not what they call so; You may find a thousand as fair; And yet there's her face in my memory With no special claim to be there. As I sit sometimes in the twilight, And call back to life in the coals Old faces and hopes and fancies Long buried, (good rest to their souls!) Her face shines out in the embers; I see her holding the light, And hear the crunch of the gravel And the sweep of the rain that night. 'Tis a face that can never grow older, That never can part with its gleam, 'Tis a gracious possession forever, For is it not all a dream? TO H.W.L. ON HIS BIRTHDAY, 27TH FEBRUARY, 1867 I need not praise the sweetness of his song, Where limpid verse to limpid verse succeeds Smooth as our Charles, when, fearing lest he wrong The new moon's mirrored skiff, he slides along, Full without noise, and whispers in his reeds. With loving breath of all the winds his name Is blown about the world, but to his friends A sweeter secret hides behind his fame, And Love steals shyly through the loud acclaim To murmur a _God bless you!_ and there ends. As I muse backward up the checkered years Wherein so much was given, so much was lost, Blessings in both kinds, such as cheapen tears,-- But hush! this is not for profaner ears; Let them drink molten pearls nor dream the cost. Some suck up poison from a sorrow's core, As naught but nightshade grew upon earth's ground; Love turned all his to heart's-ease, and the more Fate tried his bastions, she but forced a door Leading to sweeter manhood and more sound. Even as a wind-waved fountain's swaying shade Seems of mixed race, a gray wraith shot with sun, So through his trial faith translucent rayed Till darkness, halt disnatured so, betrayed A heart of sunshine that would fain o'errun. Surely if skill in song the shears may stay And of its purpose cheat the charmed abyss, If our poor life be lengthened by a lay, He shall not go, although his presence may, And the next age in praise shall double this. Long days be his, and each as lusty-sweet As gracious natures find his song to be; May Age steal on with softly-cadenced feet Falling in music, as for him were meet Whose choicest verse is harsher-toned than he! THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY 'Come forth!' my catbird calls to me, 'And hear me sing a cavatina That, in this old familiar tree, Shall hang a garden of Alcina. 'These buttercups shall brim with wine Beyond all Lesbian juice or Massic; May not New England be divine? My ode to ripening summer classic? 'Or, if to me you will not hark, By Beaver Brook a thrush is ringing Till all the alder-coverts dark Seem sunshine-dappled with his singing. 'Come out beneath the unmastered sky, With its emancipating spaces, And learn to sing as well as I, Without premeditated graces. 'What boot your many-volumed gains, Those withered leaves forever turning, To win, at best, for all your pains, A nature mummy-wrapt to learning? 'The leaves wherein true wisdom lies On living trees the sun are drinking; Those white clouds, drowsing through the skies, Grew not so beautiful by thinking. '"Come out!" with me the oriole cries, Escape the demon that pursues you: And, hark, the cuckoo weather-wise, Still hiding farther onward, wooes you.' 'Alas, dear friend, that, all my days, Hast poured from that syringa thicket The quaintly discontinuous lays To which I hold a season-ticket. 'A season-ticket cheaply bought With a dessert of pilfered berries, And who so oft my soul hast caught With morn and evening voluntaries, 'Deem me not faithless, if all day Among my dusty books I linger, No pipe, like thee, for June to play With fancy-led, half-conscious finger. 'A bird is singing in my brain And bubbling o'er with mingled fancies, Gay, tragic, rapt, right heart of Spain Fed with the sap of old romances. 'I ask no ampler skies than those His magic music rears above me, No falser friends, no truer foes,-- And does not Doña Clara love me? 'Cloaked shapes, a twanging of guitars, A rush of feet, and rapiers clashing, Then silence deep with breathless stars, And overhead a white hand flashing. 'O music of all moods and climes, Vengeful, forgiving, sensuous, saintly, Where still, between the Christian chimes, The Moorish cymbal tinkles faintly! 'O life borne lightly in the hand, For friend or foe with grace Castilian! O valley safe in Fancy's land, Not tramped to mud yet by the million! 'Bird of to-day, thy songs are stale To his, my singer of all weathers, My Calderon, my nightingale, My Arab soul in Spanish feathers. 'Ah, friend, these singers dead so long, And still, God knows, in purgatory, Give its best sweetness to all song, To Nature's self her better glory.' IN THE TWILIGHT Men say the sullen instrument, That, from the Master's bow, With pangs of joy or woe, Feels music's soul through every fibre sent, Whispers the ravished strings More than he knew or meant; Old summers in its memory glow; The secrets of the wind it sings; It hears the April-loosened springs; And mixes with its mood All it dreamed when it stood In the murmurous pine-wood Long ago! The magical moonlight then Steeped every bough and cone; The roar of the brook in the glen Came dim from the distance blown; The wind through its glooms sang low, And it swayed to and fro With delight as it stood, In the wonderful wood, Long ago! O my life, have we not had seasons That only said, Live and rejoice? That asked not for causes and reasons, But made us all feeling and voice? When we went with the winds in their blowing, When Nature and we were peers, And we seemed to share in the flowing Of the inexhaustible years? Have we not from the earth drawn juices Too fine for earth's sordid uses? Have I heard, have I seen All I feel, all I know? Doth my heart overween? Or could it have been Long ago? Sometimes a breath floats by me, An odor from Dreamland sent. That makes the ghost seem nigh me Of a splendor that came and went, Of a life lived somewhere, I know not In what diviner sphere, Of memories that stay not and go not, Like music heard once by an ear That cannot forget or reclaim it, A something so shy, it would shame it To make it a show, A something too vague, could I name it, For others to know, As if I had lived it or dreamed it, As if I had acted or schemed it, Long ago! And yet, could I live it over, This life that stirs in my brain, Could I be both maiden and lover. Moon and tide, bee and clover, As I seem to have been, once again, Could I but speak it and show it, This pleasure more sharp than pain, That baffles and lures me so, The world should once more have a poet, Such as it had In the ages glad, Long ago! THE FOOT-PATH It mounts athwart the windy hill Through sallow slopes of upland bare, And Fancy climbs with foot-fall still Its narrowing curves that end in air. By day, a warmer-hearted blue Stoops softly to that topmost swell; Its thread-like windings seem a clue To gracious climes where all is well. By night, far yonder, I surmise An ampler world than clips my ken, Where the great stars of happier skies Commingle nobler fates of men. I look and long, then haste me home, Still master of my secret rare; Once tried, the path would end in Rome, But now it leads me everywhere. Forever to the new it guides, From former good, old overmuch; What Nature for her poets hides, 'Tis wiser to divine than clutch. The bird I list hath never come Within the scope of mortal ear; My prying step would make him dumb, And the fair tree, his shelter, sear. Behind the hill, behind the sky, Behind my inmost thought, he sings; No feet avail; to hear it nigh, The song itself must lend the wings. Sing on, sweet bird close hid, and raise Those angel stairways in my brain, That climb from these low-vaulted days To spacious sunshines far from pain. Sing when thou wilt, enchantment fleet, I leave thy covert haunt untrod, And envy Science not her feat To make a twice-told tale of God. They said the fairies tript no more, And long ago that Pan was dead; 'Twas but that fools preferred to bore Earth's rind inch-deep for truth instead. Pan leaps and pipes all summer long, The fairies dance each full-mooned night, Would we but doff our lenses strong, And trust our wiser eyes' delight. City of Elf-land, just without Our seeing, marvel ever new, Glimpsed in fair weather, a sweet doubt Sketched-in, mirage-like, on the blue, I build thee in yon sunset cloud, Whose edge allures to climb the height; I hear thy drowned bells, inly-loud, From still pools dusk with dreams of night. Thy gates are shut to hardiest will, Thy countersign of long-lost speech,-- Those fountained courts, those chambers still, Fronting Time's far East, who shall reach? I know not, and will never pry, But trust our human heart for all; Wonders that from the seeker fly Into an open sense may fall. Hide in thine own soul, and surprise The password of the unwary elves; Seek it, thou canst not bribe their spies; Unsought, they whisper it themselves. POEMS OF THE WAR THE WASHERS OF THE SHROUD OCTOBER, 1861 Along a river-side, I know not where, I walked one night in mystery of dream; A chill creeps curdling yet beneath my hair, To think what chanced me by the pallid gleam Of a moon-wraith that waned through haunted air. Pale fireflies pulsed within the meadow-mist Their hales, wavering thistledowns of light; The loon, that seemed to mock some goblin tryst, Laughed; and the echoes, huddling in affright, Like Odin's hounds, fled baying down the night. 10 Then all was silent, till there smote my ear A movement in the stream that checked my breath: Was it the slow plash of a wading deer? But something said, 'This water is of Death! The Sisters wash a shroud,--ill thing to hear!' I, looking then, beheld the ancient Three Known to the Greek's and to the Northman's creed, That sit in shadow of the mystic Tree, Still crooning, as they weave their endless brede, One song: 'Time was, Time is, and Time shall be.' 20 No wrinkled crones were they, as I had deemed, But fair as yesterday, to-day, to-morrow To mourner, lover, poet, ever seemed; Something too high for joy, too deep for sorrow, Thrilled in their tones, and from their faces gleamed. 'Still men and nations reap as they have strawn,' So sang they, working at their task the while; 'The fatal raiment must be cleansed ere dawn: For Austria? Italy? the Sea-Queen's isle? O'er what quenched grandeur must our shroud be drawn? 30 'Or is it for a younger, fairer corse, That gathered States like children round his knees, That tamed the wave to be his posting-horse, Feller of forests, linker of the seas, Bridge-builder, hammerer, youngest son of Thor's? 'What make we, murmur'st thou? and what are we? When empires must be wound, we bring the shroud, The time-old web of the implacable Three: Is it too coarse for him, the young and proud? Earth's mightiest deigned to wear it,--why not he?' 40 'Is there no hope?' I moaned, 'so strong, so fair! Our Fowler whose proud bird would brook erewhile No rival's swoop in all our western air! Gather the ravens, then, in funeral file For him, life's morn yet golden in his hair? 'Leave me not hopeless, ye unpitying dames! I see, half seeing. Tell me, ye who scanned The stars, Earth's elders, still must noblest aims Be traced upon oblivious ocean-sands? Must Hesper join the wailing ghosts of names?' 50 'When grass-blades stiffen with red battle-dew, Ye deem we choose the victor and the slain: Say, choose we them that shall be leal and true To the heart's longing, the high faith of brain? Yet there the victory lies, if ye but knew. 'Three roots bear up Dominion: Knowledge, Will,-- These twain are strong, but stronger yet the third,-- Obedience,--'tis the great tap-root that still, Knit round the rock of Duty, is not stirred, Though Heaven-loosed tempests spend their utmost skill. 60 'Is the doom sealed for Hesper? 'Tis not we Denounce it, but the Law before all time: The brave makes danger opportunity; The waverer, paltering with the chance sublime, Dwarfs it to peril: which shall Hesper be? 'Hath he let vultures climb his eagle's seat To make Jove's bolts purveyors of their maw? Hath he the Many's plaudits found more sweet Than Wisdom? held Opinion's wind for Law? Then let him hearken for the doomster's feet! 70 'Rough are the steps, slow-hewn in flintiest rock, States climb to power by; slippery those with gold Down which they stumble to eternal mock: No chafferer's hand shall long the sceptre hold, Who, given a Fate to shape, would sell the block. 'We sing old Sagas, songs of weal and woe, Mystic because too cheaply understood; Dark sayings are not ours; men hear and know, See Evil weak, see strength alone in Good, Yet hope to stem God's fire with walls of tow. 80 'Time Was unlocks the riddle of Time Is, That offers choice of glory or of gloom; The solver makes Time Shall Be surely his. But hasten, Sisters! for even now the tomb Grates its slow hinge and calls from the abyss.' 'But not for him,' I cried, 'not yet for him, Whose large horizon, westering, star by star Wins from the void to where on Ocean's rim The sunset shuts the world with golden bar, Not yet his thews shall fail, his eye grow dim! 90 'His shall be larger manhood, saved for those That walk unblenching through the trial-fires; Not suffering, but faint heart, is worst of woes, And he no base-born son of craven sires, Whose eye need blench confronted with his foes. 'Tears may be ours, but proud, for those who win Death's royal purple in the foe-man's lines; Peace, too, brings tears; and mid the battle-din, The wiser ear some text of God divines, For the sheathed blade may rust with darker sin. 100 'God, give us peace! not such as lulls to sleep, But sword on thigh, and brow with purpose knit! And let our Ship of State to harbor sweep, Her ports all up, her battle-lanterns lit, And her leashed thunders gathering for their leap!' So cried I with clenched hands and passionate pain, Thinking of dear ones by Potomac's side; Again the loon laughed mocking, and again The echoes bayed far down the night and died, While waking I recalled my wandering brain. 110 TWO SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF BLONDEL AUTUMN, 1863 SCENE I.--_Near a castle in Germany._ 'Twere no hard task, perchance, to win The popular laurel for my song; 'Twere only to comply with sin, And own the crown, though snatched by wrong: Rather Truth's chaplet let me wear, Though sharp as death its thorns may sting: Loyal to Loyalty, I bear No badge but of my rightful king. Patient by town and tower I wait, Or o'er the blustering moorland go; 10 I buy no praise at cheaper rate, Or what faint hearts may fancy so; For me, no joy in lady's bower, Or hall, or tourney, will I sing, Till the slow stars wheel round the hour That crowns my hero and my king. While all the land runs red with strife, And wealth is won by pedler-crimes, Let who will find content in life And tinkle in unmanly rhymes; 20 I wait and seek; through dark and light, Safe in my heart my hope I bring, Till I once more my faith may plight To him my whole soul owns her king. When power is filched by drone and dolt, And, with canght breath and flashing eye, Her knuckles whitening round the bolt, Vengeance leans eager from the sky, While this and that the people guess, And to the skirts of praters cling, 30 Who court the crowd they should compress, I turn in scorn to seek my king. Shut in what tower of darkling chance Or dungeon of a narrow doom, Dream'st thou of battle-axe and lance That for the Cross make crashing room? Come! with hushed breath the battle waits In the wild van thy mace's swing; While doubters parley with their fates, Make thou thine own and ours, my king! 40 O strong to keep upright the old, And wise to buttress with the new, Prudent, as only are the bold, Clear-eyed, as only are the true, To foes benign, to friendship stern, Intent to imp Law's broken wing, Who would not die, if death might earn The right to kiss thy hand, my king? SCENE II.--_An Inn near the Château of Chalus_. Well, the whole thing is over, and here I sit With one arm in a sling and a milk-score of gashes, 50 And this flagon of Cyprus must e'en warm my wit, Since what's left of youth's flame is a head flecked with ashes. I remember I sat in this very same inn,-- I was young then, and one young man thought I was handsome,-- I had found out what prison King Richard was in, And was spurring for England to push on the ransom. How I scorned the dull souls that sat guzzling around And knew not my secret nor recked my derision! Let the world sink or swim, John or Richard be crowned, All one, so the beer-tax got lenient revision. 60 How little I dreamed, as I tramped up and down, That granting our wish one of Fate's saddest Jokes is! I had mine with a vengeance,--my king got his crown, And made his whole business to break other folks's. I might as well join in the safe old _tum, tum_: A hero's an excellent loadstar,--but, bless ye, What infinite odds 'twixt a hero to come And your only too palpable hero _in esse!_ Precisely the odds (such examples are rife) 'Twixt the poem conceived and the rhyme we make show of, 70 'Twixt the boy's morning dream and the wake-up of life, 'Twixt the Blondel God meant and a Blondel I know of! But the world's better off, I'm convinced of it now, Than if heroes, like buns, could be bought for a penny To regard all mankind as their haltered milch-cow, And just care for themselves. Well, God cares for the many; For somehow the poor old Earth blunders along, Each son of hers adding his mite of unfitness, And, choosing the sure way of coming out wrong, Gets to port as the next generation will witness. 80 You think her old ribs have come all crashing through, If a whisk of Fate's broom snap your cobweb asunder; But her rivets were clinched by a wiser than you. And our sins cannot push the Lord's right hand from under. Better one honest man who can wait for God's mind In our poor shifting scene here though heroes were plenty! Better one bite, at forty, of Truth's bitter rind, Than the hot wine that gushed from the vintage of twenty! I see it all now: when I wanted a king, 'Twas the kingship that failed in myself I was seeking,-- 90 'Tis so much less easy to do than to sing, So much simpler to reign by a proxy than _be_ king! Yes, I think I _do_ see; after all's said and sung, Take this one rule of life and you never will rue it,-- 'Tis but do your own duty and hold your own tongue And Blondel were royal himself, if he knew it! MEMORIAE POSITUM R.G. SHAW I Beneath the trees, My lifelong friends in this dear spot, Sad now for eyes that see them not, I hear the autumnal breeze Wake the dry leaves to sigh for gladness gone, Whispering vague omens of oblivion, Hear, restless as the seas, Time's grim feet rustling through the withered grace Of many a spreading realm and strong-stemmed race, Even as my own through these. 10 Why make we moan For loss that doth enrich us yet With upward yearning of regret? Bleaker than unmossed stone Our lives were but for this immortal gain Of unstilled longing and inspiring pain! As thrills of long-hushed tone Live in the viol, so our souls grow fine With keen vibrations from the touch divine Of noble natures gone. 20 'Twere indiscreet To vex the shy and sacred grief With harsh obtrusions of relief; Yet, Verse, with noiseless feet, Go whisper: '_This_ death hath far choicer ends Than slowly to impearl to hearts of friends; These obsequies 'tis meet Not to seclude in closets of the heart, But, church-like, with wide doorways, to impart Even to the heedless street.' 30 II Brave, good, and true, I see him stand before me now. And read again on that young brow, Where every hope was new, _How sweet were life!_ Yet, by the mouth firm-set, And look made up for Duty's utmost debt, I could divine he knew That death within the sulphurous hostile lines, In the mere wreck of nobly pitched designs, Plucks heart's-ease, and not rue. 40 Happy their end Who vanish down life's evening stream Placid as swans that drift in dream Round the next river-bend! Happy long life, with honor at the close, Friends' painless tears, the softened thought of foes! And yet, like him, to spend All at a gush, keeping our first faith sure From mid-life's doubt and eld's contentment poor, What more could Fortune send? 50 Right in the van, On the red rampart's slippery swell, With heart that beat a charge, he fell Foeward, as fits a man; But the high soul burns on to light men's feet Where death for noble ends makes dying sweet; His life her crescent's span Orbs full with share in their undarkening days Who ever climbed the battailous steeps of praise Since valor's praise began. 60 III His life's expense Hath won him coeternal youth With the immaculate prime of Truth; While we, who make pretence At living on, and wake and eat and sleep, And life's stale trick by repetition keep, Our fickle permanence (A poor leaf-shadow on a brook, whose play Of busy idlesse ceases with our day) Is the mere cheat of sense. 70 We bide our chance, Unhappy, and make terms with Fate A little more to let us wait; He leads for aye the advance, Hope's forlorn-hopes that plant the desperate good For nobler Earths and days of manlier mood; Our wall of circumstance Cleared at a bound, he flashes o'er the fight, A saintly shape of fame, to cheer the right And steel each wavering glance. 80 I write of one, While with dim eyes I think of three; Who weeps not others fair and brave as he? Ah, when the fight is won, Dear Land, whom triflers now make bold to scorn, (Thee! from whose forehead Earth awaits her morn,) How nobler shall the sun Flame in thy sky, how braver breathe thy air, That thou bred'st children who for thee could dare And die as thine have done! ON BOARD THE '76 WRITTEN FOR MR. BRYANT'S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY NOVEMBER 3, 1884 Our ship lay tumbling in an angry sea, Her rudder gone, her mainmast o'er the side; Her scuppers, from the waves' clutch staggering free, Trailed threads of priceless crimson through the tide; Sails, shrouds, and spars with pirate cannon torn, We lay, awaiting morn. Awaiting morn, such morn as mocks despair; And she that bare the promise of the world. Within her sides, now hopeless, helmless, bare, At random o'er the wildering waters hurled; 10 The reek of battle drifting slow alee Not sullener than we. Morn came at last to peer into our woe, When lo, a sail! Mow surely help was nigh; The red cross flames aloft, Christ's pledge; but no, Her black guns grinning hate, she rushes by And hails us:--'Gains the leak! Ay, so we thought! Sink, then, with curses fraught!' I leaned against my gun still angry-hot, And my lids tingled with the tears held back: 20 This scorn methought was crueller than shot: The manly death-grip in the battle-wrack, Yard-arm to yard-arm, were more friendly far Than such fear-smothered war. There our foe wallowed, like a wounded brute The fiercer for his hurt. What now were best? Once more tug bravely at the peril's root, Though death came with it? Or evade the test If right or wrong in this God's world of ours Be leagued with mightier powers? 30 Some, faintly loyal, felt their pulses lag With the slow beat that doubts and then despairs; Some, caitiff, would have struck the starry flag That knits us with our past, and makes us heirs Of deeds high-hearted as were ever done 'Neath the all-seeing sun. But there was one, the Singer of our crew, Upon whose head Age waved his peaceful sign, But whose red heart's-blood no surrender knew; And couchant under brows of massive line, 40 The eyes, like guns beneath a parapet, Watched, charged with lightnings yet. The voices of the hills did his obey; The torrents flashed and tumbled in his song; He brought our native fields from far away, Or set us 'mid the innumerable throng Of dateless woods, or where we heard the calm Old homestead's evening psalm. But now he sang of faith to things unseen, Of freedom's birthright given to us in trust; 50 And words of doughty cheer he spoke between, That made all earthly fortune seem as dust, Matched with that duty, old as Time and new, Of being brave and true. We, listening, learned what makes the might of words,-- Manhood to back them, constant as a star: His voice rammed home our cannon, edged our swords, And sent our boarders shouting; shroud and spar Heard him and stiffened; the sails heard, and wooed The winds with loftier mood. 60 In our dark hours he manned our guns again; Remanned ourselves from his own manhood's stores; Pride, honor, country, throbbed through all his strain; And shall we praise? God's praise was his before; And on our futile laurels he looks down, Himself our bravest crown. ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION JULY 21, 1865 I Weak-winged is song, Nor aims at that clear-ethered height Whither the brave deed climbs for light: We seem to do them wrong, Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their hearse Who in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse, Our trivial song to honor those who come With ears attuned to strenuous trump and drum, And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire, Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and fire: 10 Yet sometimes feathered words are strong, A gracious memory to buoy up and save From Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common grave Of the unventurous throng. II To-day our Reverend Mother welcomes back Her wisest Scholars, those who understood The deeper teaching of her mystic tome, And offered their fresh lives to make it good: No lore of Greece or Rome, No science peddling with the names of things, 20 Or reading stars to find inglorious fates, Can lift our life with wings Far from Death's idle gulf that for the many waits, And lengthen out our dates With that clear fame whose memory sings In manly hearts to come, and nerves them and dilates: Nor such thy teaching, Mother of us all! Not such the trumpet-call Of thy diviner mood, That could thy sons entice 30 From happy homes and toils, the fruitful nest Of those half-virtues which the world calls best, Into War's tumult rude; But rather far that stern device The sponsors chose that round thy cradle stood In the dim, unventured wood, The VERITAS that lurks beneath The letter's unprolific sheath, Life of whate'er makes life worth living, Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food, 40 One heavenly thing whereof earth hath the giving. III Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oil Amid the dust of books to find her, Content at last, for guerdon of their toil, With the cast mantle she hath left behind her. Many in sad faith sought for her, Many with crossed hands sighed for her; But these, our brothers, fought for her, At life's dear peril wrought for her, So loved her that they died for her, 50 Tasting the raptured fleetness Of her divine completeness: Their higher instinct knew Those love her best who to themselves are true, And what they dare to dream of, dare to do; They followed her and found her Where all may hope to find, Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind, But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her. Where faith made whole with deed 60 Breathes its awakening breath Into the lifeless creed, They saw her plumed and mailed, With sweet, stern face unveiled. And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death. IV Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides Into the silent hollow of the past; What is there that abides To make the next age better for the last? Is earth too poor to give us 70 Something to live for here that shall outlive us? Some more substantial boon Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon? The little that we see From doubt is never free; The little that we do Is but half-nobly true; With our laborious hiving What men call treasure, and the gods call dross, Life seems a fest of Fate's contriving, 80 Only secure in every one's conniving, A long account of nothings paid with loss, Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires, After our little hour of strut and rave, With all our pasteboard passions and desires, Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires, Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave. But stay! no age was e'er degenerate, Unless men held it at too cheap a rate, For in our likeness still we shape our fate. 90 Ah, there is something here Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer, Something that gives our feeble light A high immunity from Night, Something that leaps life's narrow bars To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven; A seed of sunshine that can leaven Our earthly dullness with the beams of stars, And glorify our clay With light from fountains elder than the Day; 100 A conscience more divine than we, A gladness fed with secret tears, A vexing, forward-reaching sense Of some more noble permanence; A light across the sea, Which haunts the soul and will not let it be, Still beaconing from the heights of undegenerate years. V Whither leads the path To ampler fates that leads? Not down through flowery meads, 110 To reap an aftermath Of youth's vainglorious weeds, But up the steep, amid the wrath And shock of deadly-hostile creeds, Where the world's best hope and stay By battle's flashes gropes a desperate way, And every turf the fierce foot clings to bleeds. Peace hath her not ignoble wreath, Ere yet the sharp, decisive word Light the black lips of cannon, and the sword 120 Dreams in its easeful sheath; But some day the live coal behind the thought, Whether from Baäl's stone obscene, Or from the shrine serene Of God's pure altar brought, Bursts up in flame; the war of tongue and pen Learns with what deadly purpose it was fraught, And, helpless in the fiery passion caught, Shakes all the pillared state with shock of men: Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed 130 Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, And cries reproachful: 'Was it, then, my praise, And not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth; I claim of thee the promise of thy youth; Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase, The victim of thy genius, not its mate!' Life may be given in many ways, And loyalty to Truth be sealed As bravely in the closet as the field, So bountiful is Fate; 140 But then to stand beside her, When craven churls deride her, To front a lie in arms and not to yield, This shows, methinks, God's plan And measure of a stalwart man, Limbed like the old heroic breeds, Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth, Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, Fed from within with all the strength he needs. VI Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, 150 Whom late the Nation he had led. With ashes on her head, Wept with the passion of an angry grief: Forgive me, if from present things I turn To speak what in my heart will beat and burn, And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn. Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating as by rote: 160 For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw, And, choosing sweet clay from the breast Of the unexhausted West, With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true, How beautiful to see Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead; One whose meek flock the people joyed to be, Not lured by any cheat of birth, 170 But by his clear-grained human worth, And brave old wisdom of sincerity! They knew that outward grace is dust; They could not choose but trust In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, And supple-tempered will That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust. His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind. Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind; 180 Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined, Fruitful and friendly for all human kind, Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars. Nothing of Europe here, Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still, Ere any names of Serf and Peer Could Nature's equal scheme deface And thwart her genial will; Here was a type of the true elder race, And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face. 190 I praise him not; it were too late; And some innative weakness there must be In him who condescends to victory Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait, Safe in himself as in a fate, So always firmly he: He knew to bide his time, And can his fame abide, Still patient in his simple faith sublime, Till the wise years decide. Great captains, with their guns and drums, 201 Disturb our judgment for the hour, But at last silence comes; These all are gone, and, standing like a tower. Our children shall behold his fame, The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man. Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, New birth of our new soil, the first American. VII Long as man's hope insatiate can discern Or only guess some more inspiring goal 210 Outside of Self, enduring as the pole, Along whose course the flying axles burn Of spirits bravely pitched, earth's manlier brood, Long as below we cannot find The meed that stills the inexorable mind; So long this faith to some ideal Good, Under whatever mortal names it masks, Freedom, Law, Country, this ethereal mood That thanks the Fates for their severer tasks, Feeling its challenged pulses leap, 220 While others skulk in subterfuges cheap, And, set in Danger's van, has all the boon it asks, Shall win man's praise and woman's love, Shall be a wisdom that we set above All other skills and gifts to culture dear, A virtue round whose forehead we inwreathe Laurels that with a living passion breathe When other crowns grow, while we twine them, sear. What brings us thronging these high rites to pay, And seal these hours the noblest of our year, 230 Save that our brothers found this better way? VIII We sit here in the Promised Land That flows with Freedom's honey and milk; But 'twas they won it, sword in hand, Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk. We welcome back our bravest and our best;-- Ah me! not all! some come not with the rest, Who went forth brave and bright as any here! I strive to mix some gladness with my strain, But the sad strings complain, 240 And will not please the ear: I sweep them for a pæan, but they wane Again and yet again Into a dirge, and die away, in pain. In these brave ranks I only see the gaps, Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb turf wraps, Dark to the triumph which they died to gain: Fitlier may others greet the living, For me the past is unforgiving; I with uncovered head 250 Salute the sacred dead, Who went, and who return not.--Say not so! 'Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay, But the high faith that failed not by the way; Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave; No ban of endless night exiles the brave; And to the saner mind We rather seem the dead that stayed behind. Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow! For never shall their aureoled presence lack: 260 I see them muster in a gleaming row, With ever-youthful brows that nobler show; We find in our dull road their shining track; In every nobler mood We feel the orient of their spirit glow, Part of our life's unalterable good, Of all our saintlier aspiration; They come transfigured back, Secure from change in their high-hearted ways, Beautiful evermore, and with the rays 270 Of morn on their white Shields of Expectation! IX But is there hope to save Even this ethereal essence from the grave? What ever 'scaped Oblivion's subtle wrong Save a few clarion names, or golden threads of song? Before my musing eye The mighty ones of old sweep by, Disvoicèd now and insubstantial things, As noisy once as we; poor ghosts of kings, Shadows of empire wholly gone to dust, 280 And many races, nameless long ago, To darkness driven by that imperious gust Of ever-rushing Time that here doth blow: O visionary world, condition strange, Where naught abiding is but only Change, Where the deep-bolted stars themselves still shift and range! Shall we to more continuance make pretence? Renown builds tombs, a life-estate is Wit; And, bit by bit, The cunning years steal all from us but woe; 290 Leaves are we, whose decays no harvest sow. But, when we vanish hence, Shall they lie forceless in the dark below, Save to make green their little length of souls, Or deepen pansies for a year or two, Who now to us are shining-sweet as gods? Was dying all they had the skill to do? That were not fruitless: but the Soul resents Such short-lived service, as if blind events Ruled without her, or earth could so endure; 300 She claims a more divine investiture Of longer tenure than Fame's airy rents; Whate'er she touches doth her nature share; Her inspiration haunts the ennobled air, Gives eyes to mountains blind, Ears to the deaf earth, voices to the wind, And her clear trump slugs succor everywhere By lonely bivouacs to the wakeful mind; For soul inherits all that soul could dare: Yea, Manhood hath a wider span 310 And larger privilege of life than man. The single deed, the private sacrifice, So radiant now through proudly-hidden tears, Is covered up erelong from mortal eyes With thoughtless drift of the deciduous years; But that high privilege that makes all men peers, That leap of heart whereby a people rise Up to a noble anger's height, And, flamed on by the Fates, not shrink, but grow more bright, That swift validity in noble veins, 320 Of choosing danger and disdaining shame, Of being set on flame By the pure fire that flies all contact base But wraps its chosen with angelic might, These are imperishable gains, Sure as the sun, medicinal as light, These hold great futures in their lusty reins And certify to earth a new imperial race. X Who now shall sneer? Who dare again to say we trace 330 Our lines to a plebeian race? Roundhead and Cavalier! Dumb are those names erewhile in battle loud; Dream-footed as the shadow of a cloud, They flit across the ear: That is best blood that hath most iron in 't, To edge resolve with, pouring without stint For what makes manhood dear. Tell us not of Plantagenets, Hapsburgs, and Guelfs, whose thin bloods crawl 340 Down from some victor in a border-brawl! How poor their outworn coronets, Matched with one leaf of that plain civic wreath Our brave for honor's blazon shall bequeath, Through whose desert a rescued Nation sets Her heel on treason, and the trumpet hears Shout victory, tingling Europe's sullen ears With vain resentments and more vain regrets! XI Not in anger, not in pride, Pure from passion's mixture rude 350 Ever to base earth allied, But with far-heard gratitude, Still with heart and voice renewed, To heroes living and dear martyrs dead, The strain should close that consecrates our brave. Lift the heart and lift the head! Lofty be its mood and grave, Not without a martial ring, Not without a prouder tread And a peal of exultation: 360 Little right has he to sing Through whose heart in such an hour Beats no march of conscious power, Sweeps no tumult of elation! 'Tis no Man we celebrate, By his country's victories great, A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, But the pith and marrow of a Nation Drawing force from all her men, Highest, humblest, weakest, all, 370 For her time of need, and then Pulsing it again through them, Till the basest can no longer cower, Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall, Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem. Come back, then, noble pride, for 'tis her dower! How could poet ever tower, If his passions, hopes, and fears, If his triumphs and his tears, Kept not measure with his people? 380 Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and waves! Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple! Banners, adance with triumph, bend your staves! And from every mountain-peak Let beacon-fire to answering beacon speak, Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface he, And so leap on in light from sea to sea, Till the glad news be sent Across a kindling continent, Making earth feel more firm and air breathe braver: 390 'Be proud! for she is saved, and all have helped to save her! She that lifts up the manhood of the poor, She of the open soul and open door, With room about her hearth for all mankind! The fire is dreadful in her eyes no more; From her bold front the helm she doth unbind, Sends all her handmaid armies back to spin, And bids her navies, that so lately hurled Their crashing battle, hold their thunders in, Swimming like birds of calm along the unharmful shore. 400 No challenge sends she to the elder world, That looked askance and hated; a light scorn Plays o'er her mouth, as round her mighty knees She calls her children back, and waits the morn Of nobler day, enthroned between her subject seas.' XII Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release! Thy God, in these distempered days, Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of his ways, And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace! Bow down in prayer and praise! 410 No poorest in thy borders but may now Lift to the juster skies a man's enfranchised brow. O Beautiful! my Country! ours once more! Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair O'er such sweet brows as never other wore, And letting thy set lips, Freed from wrath's pale eclipse, The rosy edges of their smile lay bare, What words divine of lover or of poet Could tell our love and make thee know it, 420 Among the Nations bright beyond compare? What were our lives without thee? What all our lives to save thee? We reck not what we gave thee; We will not dare to doubt thee, But ask whatever else, and we will dare! L'ENVOI TO THE MUSE Whither? Albeit I follow fast, In all life's circuit I but find, Not where thou art, but where thou wast, Sweet beckoner, more fleet than wind! I haunt the pine-dark solitudes, With soft brown silence carpeted, And plot to snare thee in the woods: Peace I o'ertake, but thou art fled! I find the rock where thou didst rest, The moss thy skimming foot hath prest; 10 All Nature with thy parting thrills, Like branches after birds new-flown; Thy passage hill and hollow fills With hints of virtue not their own; In dimples still the water slips Where thou hast dipt thy finger-tips; Just, just beyond, forever burn Gleams of a grace without return; Upon thy shade I plant my foot, And through my frame strange raptures shoot; 20 All of thee but thyself I grasp; I seem to fold thy luring shape, And vague air to my bosom clasp, Thou lithe, perpetual Escape! One mask and then another drops, And thou art secret as before; Sometimes with flooded ear I list, And hear thee, wondrous organist, From mighty continental stops A thunder of new music pour; 30 Through pipes of earth and air and stone Thy inspiration deep is blown; Through mountains, forests, open downs, Lakes, railroads, prairies, states, and towns, Thy gathering fugue goes rolling on From Maine to utmost Oregon; The factory-wheels in cadence hum, From brawling parties concords come; All this I hear, or seem to hear, But when, enchanted, I draw near 40 To mate with words the various theme, Life seems a whiff of kitchen steam, History an organ-grinder's thrum, For thou hast slipt from it and me And all thine organ-pipes left dumb, Most mutable Perversity! Not weary yet, I still must seek, And hope for luck next day, next week; I go to see the great man ride, Shiplike, the swelling human tide 50 That floods to bear him into port, Trophied from Senate-hall and Court; Thy magnetism, I feel it there, Thy rhythmic presence fleet and rare, Making the Mob a moment fine With glimpses of their own Divine, As in their demigod they see Their cramped ideal soaring free; 'Twas thou didst bear the fire about, That, like the springing of a mine, 60 Sent up to heaven the street-long shout; Full well I know that thou wast here, It was thy breath that brushed my ear; But vainly in the stress and whirl I dive for thee, the moment's pearl. Through every shape thou well canst run, Proteus, 'twixt rise and set of sun, Well pleased with logger-camps in Maine As where Milan's pale Duomo lies A stranded glacier on the plain, 70 Its peaks and pinnacles of ice Melted in many a quaint device, And sees, above the city's din, Afar its silent Alpine kin: I track thee over carpets deep To wealth's and beauty's inmost keep; Across the sand of bar-room floors Mid the stale reek of boosing boors; Where browse the hay-field's fragrant heats, Or the flail-heart of Autumn beats; 80 I dog thee through the market's throngs To where the sea with myriad tongues Laps the green edges of the pier, And the tall ships that eastward steer, Curtsy their farewells to the town, O'er the curved distance lessening down: I follow allwhere for thy sake, Touch thy robe's hem, but ne'er o'ertake, Find where, scarce yet unmoving, lies, Warm from thy limbs, thy last disguise; 90 But thou another shape hast donned, And lurest still just, just beyond! But here a voice, I know not whence, Thrills clearly through my inward sense, Saying: 'See where she sits at home While thou in search of her dost roam! All summer long her ancient wheel Whirls humming by the open door, Or, when the hickory's social zeal Sets the wide chimney in a roar, 100 Close-nestled by the tinkling hearth, It modulates the household mirth With that sweet serious undertone Of duty, music all her own; Still as of old she sits and spins Our hopes, our sorrows, and our sins; With equal care she twines the fates Of cottages and mighty states; She spins the earth, the air, the sea, The maiden's unschooled fancy free, 110 The boy's first love, the man's first grief, The budding and the fall o' the leaf; The piping west-wind's snowy care For her their cloudy fleeces spare, Or from the thorns of evil times She can glean wool to twist her rhymes; Morning and noon and eve supply To her their fairest tints for dye, But ever through her twirling thread There spires one line of warmest red, 120 Tinged from the homestead's genial heart, The stamp and warrant of her art; With this Time's sickle she outwears, And blunts the Sisters' baffled shears. 'Harass her not: thy heat and stir But greater coyness breed in her; Yet thou mayst find, ere Age's frost, Thy long apprenticeship not lost, Learning at last that Stygian Fate Unbends to him that knows to wait. 130 The Muse is womanish, nor deigns Her love to him that pules and plains; With proud, averted face she stands To him that wooes with empty hands. Make thyself free of Manhood's guild; Pull down thy barns and greater build; The wood, the mountain, and the plain Wave breast-deep with the poet's grain; Pluck thou the sunset's fruit of gold, Glean from the heavens and ocean old; 140 From fireside lone and trampling street Let thy life garner daily wheat; The epic of a man rehearse, Be something better than thy verse; Make thyself rich, and then the Muse Shall court thy precious interviews, Shall take thy head upon her knee, And such enchantment lilt to thee, That thou shalt hear the life-blood flow From farthest stars to grass-blades low, 150 And find the Listener's science still Transcends the Singer's deepest skill!' THE CATHEDRAL * * * * * To MR. JAMES T. FIELDS MY DEAR FIELDS: Dr. Johnson's sturdy self-respect led him to invent the Bookseller as a substitute for the Patron. My relations with you have enabled me to discover how pleasantly the Friend may replace the Bookseller. Let me record my sense of many thoughtful services by associating your name with a poem which owes its appearance in this form to your partiality. Cordially yours, J.R. LOWELL. CAMBRIDGE, _November_ 29, 1869. * * * * * Far through the memory shines a happy day, Cloudless of care, down-shod to every sense, And simply perfect from its own resource, As to a bee the new campanula's Illuminate seclusion swung in air. Such days are not the prey of setting suns, Nor ever blurred with mist of afterthought; Like words made magical by poets dead, Wherein the music of all meaning is The sense hath garnered or the soul divined, 10 They mingle with our life's ethereal part, Sweetening and gathering sweetness evermore, By beauty's franchise disenthralled of time. I can recall, nay, they are present still, Parts of myself, the perfume of my mind, Days that seem farther off than Homer's now Ere yet the child had loudened to the boy, And I, recluse from playmates, found perforce Companionship in things that not denied Nor granted wholly; as is Nature's wont, 20 Who, safe in uncontaminate reserve, Lets us mistake our longing for her love, And mocks with various echo of ourselves. These first sweet frauds upon our consciousness, That blend the sensual with its imaged world, These virginal cognitions, gifts of morn, Ere life grow noisy, and slower-footed thought Can overtake the rapture of the sense, To thrust between ourselves and what we feel, Have something in them secretly divine. 30 Vainly the eye, once schooled to serve the brain, With pains deliberate studies to renew The ideal vision: second-thoughts are prose; For beauty's acme hath a term as brief As the wave's poise before it break in pearl, Our own breath dims the mirror of the sense, Looking too long and closely: at a flash We snatch the essential grace of meaning out, And that first passion beggars all behind, Heirs of a tamer transport prepossessed. 40 Who, seeing once, has truly seen again The gray vague of unsympathizing sea That dragged his Fancy from her moorings back To shores inhospitable of eldest time, Till blank foreboding of earth-gendered powers, Pitiless seignories in the elements, Omnipotences blind that darkling smite, Misgave him, and repaganized the world? Yet, by some subtler touch of sympathy, These primal apprehensions, dimly stirred, 50 Perplex the eye with pictures from within. This hath made poets dream of lives foregone In worlds fantastical, more fair than ours; So Memory cheats us, glimpsing half-revealed. Even as I write she tries her wonted spell In that continuous redbreast boding rain: The bird I hear sings not from yonder elm; But the flown ecstasy my childhood heard Is vocal in my mind, renewed by him, Haply made sweeter by the accumulate thrill 60 That threads my undivided life and steals A pathos from the years and graves between. I know not how it is with other men, Whom I but guess, deciphering myself; For me, once felt is so felt nevermore. The fleeting relish at sensation's brim Had in it the best ferment of the wine. One spring I knew as never any since: All night the surges of the warm southwest Boomed intermittent through the wallowing elms, 70 And brought a morning from the Gulf adrift, Omnipotent with sunshine, whose quick charm Startled with crocuses the sullen turf And wiled the bluebird to his whiff of song: One summer hour abides, what time I perched, Dappled with noonday, under simmering leaves, And pulled the pulpy oxhearts, while aloof An oriole clattered and the robins shrilled, Denouncing me an alien and a thief: One morn of autumn lords it o'er the rest, 80 When in the lane I watched the ash-leaves fall, Balancing softly earthward without wind, Or twirling with directer impulse down On those fallen yesterday, now barbed with frost, While I grew pensive with the pensive year: And once I learned how marvellous winter was, When past the fence-rails, downy-gray with rime, I creaked adventurous o'er the spangled crust That made familiar fields seem far and strange As those stark wastes that whiten endlessly 90 In ghastly solitude about the pole, And gleam relentless to the unsetting sun: Instant the candid chambers of my brain Were painted with these sovran images; And later visions seem but copies pale From those unfading frescos of the past, Which I, young savage, in my age of flint, Gazed at, and dimly felt a power in me Parted from Nature by the joy in her That doubtfully revealed me to myself. 100 Thenceforward I must stand outside the gate; And paradise was paradise the more, Known once and barred against satiety. What we call Nature, all outside ourselves, Is but our own conceit of what we see, Our own reaction upon what we feel; The world's a woman to our shifting mood, Feeling with us, or making due pretence And therefore we the more persuade ourselves To make all things our thought's confederates, 110 Conniving with us in whate'er we dream. So when our Fancy seeks analogies, Though she have hidden what she after finds, She loves to cheat herself with feigned surprise. I find my own complexion everywhere; No rose, I doubt, was ever, like the first, A marvel to the bush it dawned upon, The rapture of its life made visible, The mystery of its yearning realized, As the first babe to the first woman born; 120 No falcon ever felt delight of wings As when, an eyas, from the stolid cliff Loosing himself, he followed his high heart To swim on sunshine, masterless as wind; And I believe the brown earth takes delight In the new snowdrop looking back at her, To think that by some vernal alchemy It could transmute her darkness into pearl; What is the buxom peony after that, With its coarse constancy of hoyden blush? 130 What the full summer to that wonder new? But, if in nothing else, in us there is A sense fastidious hardly reconciled To the poor makeshifts of life's scenery, Where the same slide must double all its parts, Shoved in for Tarsus and hitched back for Tyre, I blame not in the soul this daintiness, Rasher of surfeit than a humming-bird, In things indifferent by sense purveyed; It argues her an immortality 140 And dateless incomes of experience, This unthrift housekeeping that will not brook A dish warmed-over at the feast of life, And finds Twice stale, served with whatever sauce. Nor matters much how it may go with me Who dwell in Grub Street and am proud to drudge Where men, my betters, wet their crust with tears; Use can make sweet the peach's shady side, That only by reflection tastes of sun. But she, my Princess, who will sometimes deign 150 My garret to illumine till the walls, Narrow and dingy, scrawled with hackneyed thought (Poor Richard slowly elbowing Plato out), Dilate and drape themselves with tapestries Nausikaa might have stooped o'er, while, between, Mirrors, effaced in their own clearness, send Her only image on through deepening deeps With endless repercussion of delight,-- Bringer of life, witching each sense to soul, That sometimes almost gives me to believe 160 I might have been a poet, gives at least A brain dasaxonized, an ear that makes Music where none is, and a keener pang Of exquisite surmise outleaping thought,-- Her will I pamper in her luxury: No crumpled rose-leaf of too careless choice Shall bring a northern nightmare to her dreams, Vexing with sense of exile; hers shall be The invitiate firstlings of experience, Vibrations felt but once and felt life long: 170 Oh, more than half-way turn that Grecian front Upon me, while with self-rebuke I spell, On the plain fillet that confines thy hair In conscious bounds of seeming unconstraint, The _Naught in overplus_, thy race's badge! One feast for her I secretly designed In that Old World so strangely beautiful To us the disinherited of eld,-- A day at Chartres, with no soul beside To roil with pedant prate my joy serene 180 And make the minster shy of confidence. I went, and, with the Saxon's pious care, First ordered dinner at the pea-green inn, The flies and I its only customers. Eluding these, I loitered through the town, With hope to take my minster unawares In its grave solitude of memory. A pretty burgh, and such as Fancy loves For bygone grandeurs, faintly rumorous now Upon the mind's horizon, as of storm 190 Brooding its dreamy thunders far aloof, That mingle with our mood, but not disturb. Its once grim bulwarks, tamed to lovers' walks, Look down unwatchful on the sliding Eure, Whose listless leisure suits the quiet place, Lisping among his shallows homelike sounds At Concord and by Bankside heard before. Chance led me to a public pleasure-ground, Where I grew kindly with the merry groups, And blessed the Frenchman for his simple art 200 Of being domestic in the light of day. His language has no word, we growl, for Home; But he can find a fireside in the sun, Play with his child, make love, and shriek his mind, By throngs of strangers undisprivacied. He makes his life a public gallery, Nor feels himself till what he feels comes back In manifold reflection from without; While we, each pore alert with consciousness, Hide our best selves as we had stolen them, 210 And each bystander a detective were, Keen-eyed for every chink of undisguise. So, musing o'er the problem which was best,-- A life wide-windowed, shining all abroad, Or curtains drawn to shield from sight profane The rites we pay to the mysterious I,-- With outward senses furloughed and head bowed I followed some fine instinct in my feet, Till, to unbend me from the loom of thought, Looking up suddenly, I found mine eyes 220 Confronted with the minster's vast repose. Silent and gray as forest-leaguered cliff Left inland by the ocean's slow retreat, That hears afar the breeze-borne rote and longs, Remembering shocks of surf that clomb and fell, Spume-sliding down the baffled decuman, It rose before me, patiently remote From the great tides of life it breasted once, Hearing the noise of men as in a dream. I stood before the triple northern port, 230 Where dedicated shapes of saints and kings, Stern faces bleared with immemorial watch, Looked down benignly grave and seemed to say, _Ye come and go incessant; we remain Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past; Be reverent, ye who flit and are forgot, Of faith so nobly realized as this._ I seem to have heard it said by learnèd folk Who drench you with æsthetics till you feel As if all beauty were a ghastly bore, 240 The faucet to let loose a wash of words, That Gothic is not Grecian, therefore worse; But, being convinced by much experiment How little inventiveness there is in man, Grave copier of copies, I give thanks For a new relish, careless to inquire My pleasure's pedigree, if so it please, Nobly, I mean, nor renegade to art. The Grecian gluts me with its perfectness, Unanswerable as Euclid, self-contained, 250 The one thing finished in this hasty world, Forever finished, though the barbarous pit, Fanatical on hearsay, stamp and shout As if a miracle could be encored. But ah! this other, this that never ends, Still climbing, luring fancy still to climb, As full of morals half-divined as life, Graceful, grotesque, with ever new surprise Of hazardous caprices sure to please, Heavy as nightmare, airy-light as fern, 260 Imagination's very self in stone! With one long sigh of infinite release From pedantries past, present, or to come, I looked, and owned myself a happy Goth. Your blood is mine, ye architects of dream, Builders of aspiration incomplete, So more consummate, souls self-confident, Who felt your own thought worthy of record In monumental pomp! No Grecian drop Rebukes these veins that leap with kindred thrill, 270 After long exile, to the mother-tongue. Ovid in Pontus, puling for his Rome Of men invirile and disnatured dames That poison sucked from the Attic bloom decayed, Shrank with a shudder from the blue-eyed race Whose force rough-handed should renew the world, And from the dregs of Romulus express Such wine as Dante poured, or he who blew Roland's vain blast, or sang the Campeador In verse that clanks like armor in the charge, 280 Homeric juice, though brimmed in Odin's horn. And they could build, if not the columned fane That from the height gleamed seaward many-hued, Something more friendly with their ruder skies: The gray spire, molten now in driving mist, Now lulled with the incommunicable blue; The carvings touched to meaning new with snow, Or commented with fleeting grace of shade; The statues, motley as man's memory, Partial as that, so mixed of true and false, 290 History and legend meeting with a kiss Across this bound-mark where their realms confine; The painted windows, freaking gloom with glow, Dusking the sunshine which they seem to cheer, Meet symbol of the senses and the soul, And the whole pile, grim with the Northman's thought Of life and death, and doom, life's equal fee,-- These were before me: and I gazed abashed, Child of an age that lectures, not creates, Plastering our swallow-nests on the awful Past, 300 And twittering round the work of larger men, As we had builded what we but deface. Far up the great bells wallowed in delight, Tossing their clangors o'er the heedless town, To call the worshippers who never came, Or women mostly, in loath twos and threes. I entered, reverent of whatever shrine Guards piety and solace for my kind Or gives the soul a moment's truce of God, And shared decorous in the ancient rite 310 My sterner fathers held idolatrous. The service over, I was tranced in thought: Solemn the deepening vaults, and most to me, Fresh from the fragile realm of deal and paint, Or brick mock-pious with a marble front; Solemn the lift of high-embowered roof, The clustered stems that spread in boughs disleaved, Through which the organ blew a dream of storm, Though not more potent to sublime with awe And shut the heart up to tranquillity, 320 Than aisles to me familiar that o'erarch The conscious silences of brooding woods, Centurial shadows, cloisters of the elk:, Yet here was sense of undefined regret, Irreparable loss, uncertain what: Was all this grandeur but anachronism, A shell divorced of its informing life, Where the priest housed him like a hermit-crab, An alien to that faith of elder days That gathered round it this fair shape of stone? 330 Is old Religion but a spectre now, Haunting the solitude of darkened minds, Mocked out of memory by the sceptic day? Is there no corner safe from peeping Doubt, Since Gutenberg made thought cosmopolite And stretched electric threads from mind to mind? Nay, did Faith build this wonder? or did Fear, That makes a fetish and misnames it God (Blockish or metaphysic, matters not), Contrive this coop to shut its tyrant in, 340 Appeased with playthings, that he might not harm? I turned and saw a beldame on her knees; With eyes astray, she told mechanic beads Before some shrine of saintly womanhood, Bribed intercessor with the far-off Judge: Such my first thought, by kindlier soon rebuked, Pleading for whatsoever touches life With upward impulse: be He nowhere else, God is in all that liberates and lifts, In all that humbles, sweetens, and consoles: 350 Blessed the natures shored on every side With landmarks of hereditary thought! Thrice happy they that wander not life long Beyond near succor of the household faith, The guarded fold that shelters, not confines! Their steps find patience In familiar paths, Printed with hope by loved feet gone before Of parent, child, or lover, glorified By simple magic of dividing Time. My lids were moistened as the woman knelt, 360 And--was it will, or some vibration faint Of sacred Nature, deeper than the will?-- My heart occultly felt itself in hers, Through mutual intercession gently leagued. Or was it not mere sympathy of brain? A sweetness intellectually conceived In simpler creeds to me impossible? A juggle of that pity for ourselves In others, which puts on such pretty masks And snares self-love with bait of charity? 370 Something of all it might be, or of none: Yet for a moment I was snatched away And had the evidence of things not seen; For one rapt moment; then it all came back, This age that blots out life with question-marks, This nineteenth century with its knife and glass That make thought physical, and thrust far off The Heaven, so neighborly with man of old, To voids sparse-sown with alienated stars. 'Tis irrecoverable, that ancient faith, 380 Homely and wholesome, suited to the time, With rod or candy for child-minded men: No theologic tube, with lens on lens Of syllogism transparent, brings it near,-- At best resolving some new nebula, Or blurring some fixed-star of hope to mist. Science was Faith once; Faith were Science now, Would she but lay her bow and arrows by And arm her with the weapons of the time. Nothing that keeps thought out is safe from thought. 390 For there's no virgin-fort but self-respect, And Truth defensive hath lost hold on God. Shall we treat Him as if He were a child That knew not his own purpose? nor dare trust The Rock of Ages to their chemic tests, Lest some day the all-sustaining base divine Should fail from under us, dissolved in gas? The armèd eye that with a glance discerns In a dry blood-speck between ox and man Stares helpless at this miracle called life, 400 This shaping potency behind the egg, This circulation swift of deity, Where suns and systems inconspicuous float As the poor blood-disks in our mortal veins. Each age must worship its own thought of God, More or less earthy, clarifying still With subsidence continuous of the dregs; Nor saint nor sage could fix immutably The fluent image of the unstable Best, Still changing in their very hands that wrought: 410 To-day's eternal truth To-morrow proved Frail as frost-landscapes on a window-pane. Meanwhile Thou smiledst, inaccessible, At Thought's own substance made a cage for Thought, And Truth locked fast with her own master-key; Nor didst Thou reck what image man might make Of his own shadow on the flowing world; The climbing instinct was enough for Thee. Or wast Thou, then, an ebbing tide that left Strewn with dead miracle those eldest shores, 420 For men to dry, and dryly lecture on, Thyself thenceforth incapable of flood? Idle who hopes with prophets to be snatched By virtue in their mantles left below; Shall the soul live on other men's report, Herself a pleasing fable of herself? Man cannot be God's outlaw if he would, Nor so abscond him in the caves of sense But Nature stall shall search some crevice out With messages of splendor from that Source 430 Which, dive he, soar he, baffles still and lures. This life were brutish did we not sometimes Have intimation clear of wider scope, Hints of occasion infinite, to keep The soul alert with noble discontent And onward yearnings of unstilled desire; Fruitless, except we now and then divined A mystery of Purpose, gleaming through The secular confusions of the world, Whose will we darkly accomplish, doing ours, 440 No man can think nor in himself perceive, Sometimes at waking, in the street sometimes, Or on the hillside, always unforwarned. A grace of being, finer than himself, That beckons and is gone,--a larger life Upon his own impinging, with swift glimpse Of spacious circles luminous with mind, To which the ethereal substance of his own Seems but gross cloud to make that visible, Touched to a sudden glory round the edge, 450 Who that hath known these visitations fleet Would strive to make them trite and ritual? I, that still pray at morning and at eve, Loving those roots that feed us from the past, And prizing more than Plato things I learned At that best academe, a mother's knee, Thrice in my life perhaps have truly prayed, Thrice, stirred below my conscious self, have felt That perfect disenthralment which is God; Nor know I which to hold worst enemy, 460 Him who on speculation's windy waste Would turn me loose, stript of the raiment warm By Faith contrived against our nakedness, Or him who, cruel-kind, would fain obscure, With painted saints and paraphrase of God, The soul's east-window of divine surprise, Where others worship I but look and long; For, though not recreant to my fathers' faith, Its forms to me are weariness, and most That drony vacuum of compulsory prayer, 470 Still pumping phrases for the Ineffable, Though all the valves of memory gasp and wheeze. Words that have drawn transcendent meanings up From the best passion of all bygone time, Steeped through with tears of triumph and remorse, Sweet with all sainthood, cleansed in martyr-fires, Can they, so consecrate and so inspired, By repetition wane to vexing wind? Alas! we cannot draw habitual breath In the thin air of life's supremer heights, 480 We cannot make each meal a sacrament, Nor with our tailors be disbodied souls,-- We men, too conscious of earth's comedy, Who see two sides, with our posed selves debate, And only for great stakes can be sublime! Let us be thankful when, as I do here, We can read Bethel on a pile of stones, And, seeing where God _has_ been, trust in Him. Brave Peter Fischer there in Nuremberg, Moulding Saint Sebald's miracles in bronze, 490 Put saint and stander-by in that quaint garb Familiar to him in his daily walk, Not doubting God could grant a miracle Then and in Nuremberg, if so He would; But never artist for three hundred years Hath dared the contradiction ludicrous Of supernatural in modern clothes. Perhaps the deeper faith that is to come Will see God rather in the strenuous doubt, Than in the creed held as an infant's hand 500 Holds purposeless whatso is placed therein. Say it is drift, not progress, none the less, With the old sextant of the fathers' creed, We shape our courses by new-risen stars, And, still lip-loyal to what once was truth, Smuggle new meanings under ancient names, Unconscious perverts of the Jesuit, Time. Change is the mask that all Continuance wears To keep us youngsters harmlessly amused; Meanwhile some ailing or more watchful child, 510 Sitting apart, sees the old eyes gleam out, Stern, and yet soft with humorous pity too. Whilere, men burnt men for a doubtful point, As if the mind were quenchable with fire, And Faith danced round them with her war-paint on, Devoutly savage as an Iroquois; Now Calvin and Servetus at one board Snuff in grave sympathy a milder roast, And o'er their claret settle Comte unread. Fagot and stake were desperately sincere: 520 Our cooler martyrdoms are done in types; And flames that shine in controversial eyes Burn out no brains but his who kindles them. This is no age to get cathedrals built: Did God, then, wait for one in Bethlehem? Worst is not yet: lo, where his coming looms, Of earth's anarchic children latest born, Democracy, a Titan who hath learned To laugh at Jove's old-fashioned thunder-bolts,-- Could he not also forge them, if he would? 530 He, better skilled, with solvents merciless, Loosened in air and borne on every wind, Saps unperceived: the calm Olympian height Of ancient order feels its bases yield, And pale gods glance for help to gods as pale. What will be left of good or worshipful, Of spiritual secrets, mysteries, Of fair religion's guarded heritage, Heirlooms of soul, passed downward unprofaned From eldest Ind? This Western giant coarse, 540 Scorning refinements which he lacks himself, Loves not nor heeds the ancestral hierarchies, Each rank dependent on the next above In ordinary gradation fixed as fate. King by mere manhood, nor allowing aught Of holier unction than the sweat of toil; In his own strength sufficient; called to solve, On the rough edges of society, Problems long sacred to the choicer few, And improvise what elsewhere men receive 550 As gifts of deity; tough foundling reared Where every man's his own Melchisedek, How make him reverent of a King of kings? Or Judge self-made, executor of laws By him not first discussed and voted on? For him no tree of knowledge is forbid, Or sweeter if forbid. How save the ark, Or holy of holies, unprofaned a day From his unscrupulous curiosity That handles everything as if to buy, 560 Tossing aside what fabrics delicate Suit not the rough-and-tumble of his ways? What hope for those fine-nerved humanities That made earth gracious once with gentler arts, Now the rude hands have caught the trick of thought And claim an equal suffrage with the brain? The born disciple of an elder time, (To me sufficient, friendlier than the new,) Who in my blood feel motions of the Past, I thank benignant nature most for this,-- 570 A force of sympathy, or call it lack Of character firm-planted, loosing me From the pent chamber of habitual self To dwell enlarged in alien modes of thought, Haply distasteful, wholesomer for that, And through imagination to possess, As they were mine, the lives of other men. This growth original of virgin soil, By fascination felt in opposites, Pleases and shocks, entices and perturbs. 580 In this brown-fisted rough, this shirt-sleeved Cid, This backwoods Charlemagne of empires new, Whose blundering heel instinctively finds out The goutier foot of speechless dignities, Who, meeting Cæsar's self, would slap his back, Call him 'Old Horse,' and challenge to a drink, My lungs draw braver air, my breast dilates With ampler manhood, and I front both worlds, Of sense and spirit, as my natural fiefs, To shape and then reshape them as I will. 590 It was the first man's charter; why not mine? How forfeit? when, deposed in other hands? Thou shudder'st, Ovid? Dost in him forebode A new avatar of the large-limbed Goth, To break, or seem to break, tradition's clue. And chase to dreamland back thy gods dethroned? I think man's soul dwells nearer to the east, Nearer to morning's fountains than the sun; Herself the source whence all tradition sprang, Herself at once both labyrinth and clue, 600 The miracle fades out of history, But faith and wonder and the primal earth Are born into the world with every child. Shall this self-maker with the prying eyes, This creature disenchanted of respect By the New World's new fiend, Publicity, Whose testing thumb leaves everywhere its smutch, Not one day feel within himself the need Of loyalty to better than himself, That shall ennoble him with the upward look? 610 Shall he not catch the Voice that wanders earth, With spiritual summons, dreamed or heard, As sometimes, just ere sleep seals up the sense, We hear our mother call from deeps of Time, And, waking, find it vision,--none the less The benediction bides, old skies return, And that unreal thing, preëminent, Makes air and dream of all we see and feel? Shall he divine no strength unmade of votes, Inward, impregnable, found soon as sought, 620 Not cognizable of sense, o'er sense supreme? Else were he desolate as none before. His holy places may not be of stone, Nor made with hands, yet fairer far than aught By artist feigned or pious ardor reared, Fit altars for who guards inviolate God's chosen seat, the sacred form of man. Doubtless his church will be no hospital For superannuate forms and mumping shams, No parlor where men issue policies 630 Of life-assurance on the Eternal Mind, Nor his religion but an ambulance To fetch life's wounded and malingerers in, Scorned by the strong; yet he, unconscious heir To the Influence sweet of Athens and of Rome, And old Judaea's gift of secret fire, Spite of himself shall surely learn to know And worship some ideal of himself, Some divine thing, large-hearted, brotherly, Not nice in trifles, a soft creditor, 640 Pleased with his world, and hating only cant. And, if his Church be doubtful, it is sure That, in a world, made for whatever else, Not made for mere enjoyment, in a world Of toil but half-requited, or, at best, Paid in some futile currency of breath, A world of incompleteness, sorrow swift And consolation laggard, whatsoe'er The form of building or the creed professed, The Cross, bold type of shame to homage turned, 650 Of an unfinished life that sways the world, Shall tower as sovereign emblem over all. The kobold Thought moves with us when we shift Our dwelling to escape him; perched aloft On the first load of household-stuff he went: For, where the mind goes, goes old furniture. I, who to Chartres came to feed my eye And give to Fancy one clear holiday, Scarce saw the minster for the thoughts it stirred Buzzing o'er past and future with vain quest. 660 Here once there stood a homely wooden church, Which slow devotion nobly changed for this That echoes vaguely to my modern steps. By suffrage universal it was built, As practised then, for all the country came From far as Rouen, to give votes for God, Each vote a block of stone securely laid Obedient to the master's deep-mused plan. Will what our ballots rear, responsible To no grave forethought, stand so long as this? 670 Delight like this the eye of after days Brightening with pride that here, at least, were men Who meant and did the noblest thing they knew? Can our religion cope with deeds like this? We, too, build Gothic contract-shams, because Our deacons have discovered that it pays, And pews sell better under vaulted roofs Of plaster painted like an Indian squaw. Shall not that Western Goth, of whom we spoke, So fiercely practical, so keen of eye, 680 Find out, some day, that nothing pays but God, Served whether on the smoke-shut battle-field, In work obscure done honestly, or vote For truth unpopular, or faith maintained To ruinous convictions, or good deeds Wrought for good's sake, mindless of heaven or hell? Shall he not learn that all prosperity, Whose bases stretch not deeper than the sense, Is but a trick of this world's atmosphere, A desert-born mirage of spire and dome, 690 Or find too late, the Past's long lesson missed, That dust the prophets shake from off their feet Grows heavy to drag down both tower and wall? I know not; but, sustained by sure belief That man still rises level with the height Of noblest opportunities, or makes Such, if the time supply not, I can wait. I gaze round on the windows, pride of France, Each the bright gift of some mechanic guild Who loved their city and thought gold well spent 700 To make her beautiful with piety; I pause, transfigured by some stripe of bloom, And my mind throngs with shining auguries, Circle on circle, bright as seraphim, With golden trumpets, silent, that await The signal to blow news of good to men. Then the revulsion came that always comes After these dizzy elations of the mind: And with a passionate pang of doubt I cried, 'O mountain-born, sweet with snow-filtered air 710 From uncontaminate wells of ether drawn And never-broken secrecies of sky, Freedom, with anguish won, misprized till lost, They keep thee not who from thy sacred eyes Catch the consuming lust of sensual good And the brute's license of unfettered will. Far from the popular shout and venal breath Of Cleon blowing the mob's baser mind To bubbles of wind-piloted conceit, Thou shrinkest, gathering up thy skirts, to hide 720 In fortresses of solitary thought And private virtue strong in self-restraint. Must we too forfeit thee misunderstood, Content with names, nor inly wise to know That best things perish of their own excess, And quality o'er-driven becomes defect? Nay, is it thou indeed that we have glimpsed, Or rather such illusion as of old Through Athens glided menadlike and Rome, A shape of vapor, mother of vain dreams 730 And mutinous traditions, specious plea Of the glaived tyrant and long-memoried priest?' I walked forth saddened; for all thought is sad, And leaves a bitterish savor in the brain, Tonic, it may be, not delectable, And turned, reluctant, for a parting look At those old weather-pitted images Of bygone struggle, now so sternly calm. About their shoulders sparrows had built nests, And fluttered, chirping, from gray perch to perch, 740 Now on a mitre poising, now a crown, Irreverently happy. While I thought How confident they were, what careless hearts Flew on those lightsome wings and shared the sun, A larger shadow crossed; and looking up, I saw where, nesting in the hoary towers, The sparrow-hawk slid forth on noiseless air, With sidelong head that watched the joy below, Grim Norman baron o'er this clan of Kelts. Enduring Nature, force conservative, 750 Indifferent to our noisy whims! Men prate Of all heads to an equal grade cashiered On level with the dullest, and expect (Sick of no worse distemper than themselves) A wondrous cure-all in equality; They reason that To-morrow must be wise Because To-day was not, nor Yesterday, As if good days were shapen of themselves, Not of the very lifeblood of men's souls; Meanwhile, long-suffering, imperturbable, 760 Thou quietly complet'st thy syllogism, And from the premise sparrow here below Draw'st sure conclusion of the hawk above, Pleased with the soft-billed songster, pleased no less With the fierce beak of natures aquiline. Thou beautiful Old Time, now hid away In the Past's valley of Avilion, Haply, like Arthur, till thy wound be healed, Then to reclaim the sword and crown again! Thrice beautiful to us; perchance less fair 770 To who possessed thee, as a mountain seems To dwellers round its bases but a heap Of barren obstacle that lairs the storm And the avalanche's silent bolt holds back Leashed with a hair,--meanwhile some far-off clown, Hereditary delver of the plain, Sees it an unmoved vision of repose, Nest of the morning, and conjectures there The dance of streams to idle shepherds' pipes, And fairer habitations softly hung 780 On breezy slopes, or hid in valleys cool, For happier men. No mortal ever dreams That the scant isthmus he encamps upon Between two oceans, one, the Stormy, passed, And one, the Peaceful, yet to venture on, Has been that future whereto prophets yearned For the fulfilment of Earth's cheated hope, Shall be that past which nerveless poets moan As the lost opportunity of song. O Power, more near my life than life itself 790 (Or what seems life to us in sense immured), Even as the roots, shut in the darksome earth, Share in the tree-top's joyance, and conceive Of sunshine and wide air and wingèd things By sympathy of nature, so do I Have evidence of Thee so far above, Yet in and of me! Rather Thou the root Invisibly sustaining, hid in light, Not darkness, or in darkness made by us. If sometimes I must hear good men debate 800 Of other witness of Thyself than Thou, As if there needed any help of ours To nurse Thy flickering life, that else must cease, Blown out, as 'twere a candle, by men's breath, My soul shall not be taken in their snare, To change her inward surety for their doubt Muffled from sight in formal robes of proof: While she can only feel herself through Thee, I fear not Thy withdrawal; more I fear, Seeing, to know Thee not, hoodwinked with dreams 810 Of signs and wonders, while, unnoticed, Thou, Walking Thy garden still, commun'st with men, Missed in the commonplace of miracle. THREE MEMORIAL POEMS 'Coscienza fusca O della propria o dell' altrui vergogna Pur sentirà la tua parola brusca.' If I let fall a word of bitter mirth When public shames more shameful pardon won, Some have misjudged me, and my service done, If small, yet faithful, deemed of little worth: Through veins that drew their life from Western earth Two hundred years and more my blood hath run In no polluted course from sire to son; And thus was I predestined ere my birth To love the soil wherewith my fibres own Instinctive sympathies; yet love it so As honor would, nor lightly to dethrone Judgment, the stamp of manhood, nor forego The son's right to a mother dearer grown With growing knowledge and more chaste than snow. * * * * * To E.L. GODKIN, IN CORDIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF HIS EMINENT SERVICE IN HEIGHTENING AND PURIFYING THE TONE OF OUR POLITICAL THOUGHT, These Three Poems ARE DEDICATED. * * * * * *** Readers, it is hoped, will remember that, by his Ode at the Harvard Commemoration, the author had precluded himself from many of the natural outlets of thought and feeling common to such occasions as are celebrated in these poems. ODE READ AT THE ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FIGHT AT CONCORD BRIDGE 19TH APRIL, 1875 I Who cometh over the hills, Her garments with morning sweet, The dance of a thousand rills Making music before her feet? Her presence freshens the air; Sunshine steals light from her face; The leaden footstep of Care Leaps to the tune of her pace, Fairness of all that is fair, Grace at the heart of all grace, 10 Sweetener of hut and of hall, Bringer of life out of naught, Freedom, oh, fairest of all The daughters of Time and Thought! II She cometh, cometh to-day: Hark! hear ye not her tread, Sending a thrill through your clay, Under the sod there, ye dead, Her nurslings and champions? Do ye not hear, as she comes, 20 The bay of the deep-mouthed guns, The gathering rote of the drums? The belts that called ye to prayer, How wildly they clamor on her, Crying, 'She cometh! prepare Her to praise and her to honor, That a hundred years ago Scattered here in blood and tears Potent seeds wherefrom should grow Gladness for a hundred years!' 30 III Tell me, young men, have ye seen Creature of diviner mien For true hearts to long and cry for, Manly hearts to live and die for? What hath she that others want? Brows that all endearments haunt, Eyes that make it sweet to dare, Smiles that cheer untimely death, Looks that fortify despair, Tones more brave than trumpet's breath; 40 Tell me, maidens, have ye known Household charm more sweetly rare, Grace of woman ampler blown, Modesty more debonair, Younger heart with wit full grown? Oh for an hour of my prime, The pulse of my hotter years, That I might praise her in rhyme Would tingle your eyelids to tears, Our sweetness, our strength, and our star, 50 Our hope, our joy, and our trust, Who lifted us out of the dust, And made us whatever we are! IV Whiter than moonshine upon snow Her raiment is, but round the hem Crimson stained; and, as to and fro Her sandals flash, we see on them, And on her instep veined with blue, Flecks of crimson, on those fair feet, High-arched, Diana-like, and fleet, 60 Fit for no grosser stain than dew: Oh, call them rather chrisms than stains, Sacred and from heroic veins! For, in the glory-guarded pass, Her haughty and far-shining head She bowed to shrive Leonidas With his imperishable dead; Her, too, Morgarten saw, Where the Swiss lion fleshed his icy paw; She followed Cromwell's quenchless star 70 Where the grim Puritan tread Shook Marston, Naseby, and Dunbar: Yea, on her feet are dearer dyes Yet fresh, nor looked on with untearful eyes. V Our fathers found her in the woods Where Nature meditates and broods, The seeds of unexampled things Which Time to consummation brings Through life and death and man's unstable moods; They met her here, not recognized, 80 A sylvan huntress clothed in furs, To whose chaste wants her bow sufficed, Nor dreamed what destinies were hers: She taught them bee-like to create Their simpler forms of Church and State; She taught them to endue The past with other functions than it knew, And turn in channels strange the uncertain stream of Fate; Better than all, she fenced them in their need With iron-handed Duty's sternest creed, 90 'Gainst Self's lean wolf that ravens word and deed. VI Why cometh she hither to-day To this low village of the plain Far from the Present's loud highway, From Trade's cool heart and seething brain? Why cometh she? She was not far away. Since the soul touched it, not in vain, With pathos of Immortal gain, 'Tis here her fondest memories stay. She loves yon pine-bemurmured ridge 100 Where now our broad-browed poet sleeps, Dear to both Englands; near him he Who wore the ring of Canace; But most her heart to rapture leaps Where stood that era-parting bridge, O'er which, with footfall still as dew, The Old Time passed into the New; Where, as your stealthy river creeps, He whispers to his listening weeds Tales of sublimest homespun deeds. 110 Here English law and English thought 'Gainst the self-will of England fought; And here were men (coequal with their fate), Who did great things, unconscious they were great. They dreamed not what a die was cast With that first answering shot; what then? There was their duty; they were men Schooled the soul's inward gospel to obey, Though leading to the lion's den. They felt the habit-hallowed world give way 120 Beneath their lives, and on went they, Unhappy who was last. When Buttrick gave the word, That awful idol of the unchallenged Past, Strong in their love, and in their lineage strong, Fell crashing; if they heard it not, Yet the earth heard, Nor ever hath forgot, As on from startled throne to throne, Where Superstition sate or conscious Wrong, 130 A shudder ran of some dread birth unknown. Thrice venerable spot! River more fateful than the Rubicon! O'er those red planks, to snatch her diadem, Man's Hope, star-girdled, sprang with them, And over ways untried the feet of Doom strode on. VII Think you these felt no charms In their gray homesteads and embowered farms? In household faces waiting at the door Their evening step should lighten up no more? 140 In fields their boyish feet had known? In trees their fathers' hands had set, And which with them had grown, Widening each year their leafy coronet? Felt they no pang of passionate regret For those unsolid goods that seem so much our own? These things are dear to every man that lives, And life prized more for what it lends than gives. Yea, many a tie, through iteration sweet, Strove to detain their fatal feet; And yet the enduring half they chose, 151 Whose choice decides a man life's slave or king, The invisible things of God before the seen and known: Therefore their memory inspiration blows With echoes gathering on from zone to zone; For manhood is the one immortal thing Beneath Time's changeful sky, And, where it lightened once, from age to age, Men come to learn, in grateful pilgrimage, That length of days is knowing when to die. 160 VIII What marvellous change of things and men! She, a world-wandering orphan then, So mighty now! Those are her streams That whirl the myriad, myriad wheels Of all that does, and all that dreams, Of all that thinks, and all that feels, Through spaces stretched from sea to sea; By idle tongues and busy brains, By who doth right, and who refrains, Here are our losses and our gains; 170 Our maker and our victim she. IX Maiden half mortal, half divine, We triumphed in thy coming; to the brinks Our hearts were filled with pride's tumultuous wine; Better to-day who rather feels than thinks. Yet will some graver thoughts intrude, And cares of sterner mood; They won thee: who shall keep thee? From the deeps Where discrowned empires o'er their ruins brood, 179 And many a thwarted hope wrings its weak hands and weeps, I hear the voice as of a mighty wind From all heaven's caverns rushing unconfined, 'I, Freedom, dwell with Knowledge: I abide With men whom dust of faction cannot blind To the slow tracings of the Eternal Mind; With men by culture trained and fortified, Who bitter duty to sweet lusts prefer, Fearless to counsel and obey. Conscience my sceptre is, and law my sword, Not to be drawn in passion or in play, 190 But terrible to punish and deter; Implacable as God's word, Like it, a shepherd's crook to them that blindly err. Your firm-pulsed sires, my martyrs and my saints, Offshoots of that one stock whose patient sense Hath known to mingle flux with permanence, Rated my chaste denials and restraints Above the moment's dear-paid paradise: Beware lest, shifting with Time's gradual creep, The light that guided shine into your eyes. 200 The envious Powers of ill nor wink nor sleep; Be therefore timely wise, Nor laugh when this one steals, and that one lies, As if your luck could cheat those sleepless spies, Till the deaf Fury comes your house to sweep!' I hear the voice, and unaffrighted bow; Ye shall not be prophetic now, Heralds of ill, that darkening fly Between my vision and the rainbowed sky, Or on the left your hoarse forebodings croak 210 From many a blasted bough On Yggdrasil's storm-sinewed oak, That once was green, Hope of the West, as thou; Yet pardon if I tremble while I boast; For I have loved as those who pardon most. X Away, ungrateful doubt, away! At least she is our own to-day. Break into rapture, my song, Verses, leap forth in the sun, Bearing the joyance along 220 Like a train of fire as ye run! Pause not for choosing of words, Let them but blossom and sing Blithe as the orchards and birds With the new coming of spring! Dance in your jollity, bells; Shout, cannon; cease not, ye drums; Answer, ye hillside and dells; Bow, all ye people! She comes, Radiant, calm-fronted, as when 230 She hallowed that April day. Stay with us! Yes, thou shalt stay. Softener and strengthener of men, Freedom, not won by the vain, Not to be courted in play, Not to be kept without pain. Stay with us! Yes, thou wilt stay, Handmaid and mistress of all, Kindler of deed and of thought, Thou that to hut and to hall 240 Equal deliverance brought! Souls of her martyrs, draw near, Touch our dull lips with your fire, That we may praise without fear Her our delight, our desire, Our faith's inextinguishable star, Our hope, our remembrance, our trust, Our present, our past, our to be, Who will mingle her life with our dust 249 And makes us deserve to be free! UNDER THE OLD ELM POEM READ AT CAMBRIDGE ON THE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF WASHINGTON'S TAKING COMMAND OF THE AMERICAN ARMY, 3D JULY, 1775 I 1. Words pass as wind, but where great deeds were done A power abides transfused from sire to son: The boy feels deeper meanings thrill his ear, That tingling through his pulse life-long shall run, With sure impulsion to keep honor clear. When, pointing down, his father whispers, 'Here, Here, where we stand, stood he, the purely great, Whose soul no siren passion could unsphere, Then nameless, now a power and mixed with fate.' Historic town, thou holdest sacred dust, 10 Once known to men as pious, learnèd, just, And one memorial pile that dares to last: But Memory greets with reverential kiss No spot in all thy circuit sweet as this, Touched by that modest glory as it past, O'er which yon elm hath piously displayed These hundred years its monumental shade. 2. Of our swift passage through this scenery Of life and death, more durable than we, What landmark so congenial as a tree 20 Repeating its green legend every spring, And, with a yearly ring, Recording the fair seasons as they flee, Type of our brief but still-renewed mortality? We fall as leaves: the immortal trunk remains, Builded with costly juice of hearts and brains Gone to the mould now, whither all that be Vanish returnless, yet are procreant still In human lives to come of good or ill, And feed unseen the roots of Destiny. 30 II 1. Men's monuments, grown old, forget their names They should eternize, but the place Where shining souls have passed imbibes a grace Beyond mere earth; some sweetness of their fames Leaves in the soil its unextinguished trace, Pungent, pathetic, sad with nobler aims, That penetrates our lives and heightens them or shames. This insubstantial world and fleet Seems solid for a moment when we stand On dust ennobled by heroic feet 40 Once mighty to sustain a tottering land, And mighty still such burthen to upbear, Nor doomed to tread the path of things that merely were: Our sense, refined with virtue of the spot, Across the mists of Lethe's sleepy stream Recalls him, the sole chief without a blot, No more a pallid image and a dream, But as he dwelt with men decorously supreme. 2. Our grosser minds need this terrestrial hint To raise long-buried days from tombs of print; 50 'Here stood he,' softly we repeat, And lo, the statue shrined and still In that gray minster-front we call the Past, Feels in its frozen veins our pulses thrill, Breathes living air and mocks at Death's deceit. It warms, it stirs, comes down to us at last, Its features human with familiar light, A man, beyond the historian's art to kill, Or sculptor's to efface with patient chisel-blight. 3. Sure the dumb earth hath memory, nor for naught 60 Was Fancy given, on whose enchanted loom Present and Past commingle, fruit and bloom Of one fair bough, inseparably wrought Into the seamless tapestry of thought. So charmed, with undeluded eye we see In history's fragmentary tale Bright clues of continuity, Learn that high natures over Time prevail, And feel ourselves a link in that entail That binds all ages past with all that are to be. 70 III 1. Beneath our consecrated elm A century ago he stood, Famed vaguely for that old fight in the wood Whose red surge sought, but could not overwhelm The life foredoomed to wield our rough-hewn helm:-- From colleges, where now the gown To arms had yielded, from the town, Our rude self-summoned levies flocked to see The new-come chiefs and wonder which was he. No need to question long; close-lipped and tall, 80 Long trained in murder-brooding forests lone To bridle others' clamors and his own, Firmly erect, he towered above them all, The incarnate discipline that was to free With iron curb that armed democracy. 2. A motley rout was that which came to stare, In raiment tanned by years of sun and storm, Of every shape that was not uniform, Dotted with regimentals here and there; An array all of captains, used to pray 90 And stiff in fight, but serious drill's despair, Skilled to debate their orders, not obey; Deacons were there, selectmen, men of note In half-tamed hamlets ambushed round with woods, Ready to settle Freewill by a vote, But largely liberal to its private moods; Prompt to assert by manners, voice, or pen, Or ruder arms, their rights as Englishmen, Nor much fastidious as to how and when: Yet seasoned stuff and fittest to create 100 A thought-staid army or a lasting state: Haughty they said he was, at first; severe; But owned, as all men own, the steady hand Upon the bridle, patient to command, Prized, as all prize, the justice pure from fear, And learned to honor first, then love him, then revere. Such power there is in clear-eyed self-restraint And purpose clean as light from every selfish taint. 3. Musing beneath the legendary tree, The years between furl off: I seem to see 110 The sun-flecks, shaken the stirred foliage through, Dapple with gold his sober buff and blue And weave prophetic aureoles round the head That shines our beacon now nor darkens with the dead. O man of silent mood, A stranger among strangers then, How art thou since renowned the Great, the Good, Familiar as the day in an the homes of men! The winged years, that winnow praise and blame, Blow many names out: they but fan to flame 120 The self-renewing splendors of thy fame. IV 1. How many subtlest influences unite, With spiritual touch of Joy or pain, Invisible as air and soft as light, To body forth that image of the brain We call our Country, visionary shape, Loved more than woman, fuller of fire than wine, Whose charm can none define, Nor any, though he flee it, can escape! All party-colored threads the weaver Time 130 Sets in his web, now trivial, now sublime, All memories, all forebodings, hopes and fears, Mountain and river, forest, prairie, sea, A hill, a rock, a homestead, field, or tree, The casual gleanings of unreckoned years, Take goddess-shape at last and there is She, Old at our birth, new as the springing hours, Shrine of our weakness, fortress of our powers, Consoler, kindler, peerless 'mid her peers, A force that 'neath our conscious being stirs, 140 A life to give ours permanence, when we Are borne to mingle our poor earth with hers, And all this glowing world goes with us on our biers. 2. Nations are long results, by ruder ways Gathering the might that warrants length of days; They may be pieced of half-reluctant shares Welded by hammer-strokes of broad-brained kings, Or from a doughty people grow, the heirs Of wise traditions widening cautious rings; At best they are computable things, 150 A strength behind us making us feel bold In right, or, as may chance, in wrong; Whose force by figures may be summed and told, So many soldiers, ships, and dollars strong, And we but drops that bear compulsory part In the dumb throb of a mechanic heart; But Country is a shape of each man's mind Sacred from definition, unconfined By the cramped walls where daily drudgeries grind; An inward vision, yet an outward birth 160 Of sweet familiar heaven and earth; A brooding Presence that stirs motions blind Of wings within our embryo being's shell That wait but her completer spell To make us eagle-natured, fit to dare Life's nobler spaces and untarnished air. 3. You, who hold dear this self-conceived ideal, Whose faith and works alone can make it real, Bring all your fairest gifts to deck her shrine Who lifts our lives away from Thine and Mine 170 And feeds the lamp of manhood more divine With fragrant oils of quenchless constancy. When all have done their utmost, surely he Hath given the best who gives a character Erect and constant, which nor any shock Of loosened elements, nor the forceful sea Of flowing or of ebbing fates, can stir From its deep bases in the living rock Of ancient manhood's sweet security: And this he gave, serenely far from pride 180 As baseness, boon with prosperous stars allied, Part of what nobler seed shall in our loins abide. 4. No bond of men as common pride so strong, In names time-filtered for the lips of song, Still operant, with the primal Forces bound Whose currents, on their spiritual round, Transfuse our mortal will nor are gainsaid: These are their arsenals, these the exhaustless mines That give a constant heart in great designs; These are the stuff whereof such dreams are made 190 As make heroic men: thus surely he Still holds in place the massy blocks he laid 'Neath our new frame, enforcing soberly The self-control that makes and keeps a people free. V 1. Oh, for a drop of that Cornelian ink Which gave Agricola dateless length of days, To celebrate him fitly, neither swerve To phrase unkempt, nor pass discretion's brink, With him so statue-like in sad reserve, So diffident to claim, so forward to deserve! 200 Nor need I shun due influence of his fame Who, mortal among mortals, seemed as now The equestrian shape with unimpassioned brow, That paces silent on through vistas of acclaim. 2. What figure more immovably august Than that grave strength so patient and so pure, Calm in good fortune, when it wavered, sure, That mind serene, impenetrably just, Modelled on classic lines so simple they endure? That soul so softly radiant and so white 210 The track it left seems less of fire than light, Cold but to such as love distemperature? And if pure light, as some deem, be the force That drives rejoicing planets on their course, Why for his power benign seek an impurer source? His was the true enthusiasm that burns long, Domestically bright, Fed from itself and shy of human sight, The hidden force that makes a lifetime strong, And not the short-lived fuel of a song. 220 Passionless, say you? What is passion for But to sublime our natures and control, To front heroic toils with late return, Or none, or such as shames the conqueror? That fire was fed with substance of the soul And not with holiday stubble, that could burn, Unpraised of men who after bonfires run, Through seven slow years of unadvancing war, Equal when fields were lost or fields were won, With breath of popular applause or blame, 230 Nor fanned nor damped, unquenchably the same, Too inward to be reached by flaws of idle fame. 3. Soldier and statesman, rarest unison; High-poised example of great duties done Simply as breathing, a world's honors worn As life's indifferent gifts to all men born; Dumb for himself, unless it were to God, But for his barefoot soldiers eloquent, Tramping the snow to coral where they trod, Held by his awe in hollow-eyed content; 240 Modest, yet firm as Nature's self; unblamed Save by the men his nobler temper shamed; Never seduced through show of present good By other than unsetting lights to steer New-trimmed in Heaven, nor than his steadfast mood More steadfast, far from rashness as from fear; Rigid, but with himself first, grasping still In swerveless poise the wave-beat helm of will; Not honored then or now because he wooed The popular voice, but that he still withstood; 250 Broad-minded, higher-souled, there is but one Who was all this and ours, and all men's,--WASHINGTON. 4. Minds strong by fits, irregularly great, That flash and darken like revolving lights, Catch more the vulgar eye unschooled to wait On the long curve of patient days and nights Bounding a whole life to the circle fair Of orbed fulfilment; and this balanced soul, So simple in its grandeur, coldly bare Of draperies theatric, standing there 260 In perfect symmetry of self-control, Seems not so great at first, but greater grows Still as we look, and by experience learn How grand this quiet is, how nobly stern The discipline that wrought through life-long throes That energetic passion of repose. 5. A nature too decorous and severe, Too self-respectful in its griefs and joys, For ardent girls and boys Who find no genius in a mind so clear 270 That its grave depths seem obvious and near, Nor a soul great that made so little noise. They feel no force in that calm-cadenced phrase, The habitual full-dress of his well-bred mind, That seems to pace the minuet's courtly maze And tell of ampler leisures, roomier length of days, His firm-based brain, to self so little kind That no tumultuary blood could blind, Formed to control men, not amaze, Looms not like those that borrow height of haze: 280 It was a world of statelier movement then Than this we fret in, he a denizen Of that ideal Rome that made a man for men. VI 1. The longer on this earth we live And weigh the various Qualities of men, Seeing how most are fugitive, Or fitful gifts, at best, of now and then, Wind-wavered corpse-lights, daughters of the fen, The more we feel the high stern-featured beauty Of plain devotedness to duty, 290 Steadfast and still, nor paid with mortal praise, But finding amplest recompense For life's ungarlanded expense In work done squarely and unwasted days. For this we honor him, that he could know How sweet the service and how free Of her, God's eldest daughter here below, And choose in meanest raiment which was she. 2. Placid completeness, life without a fall From faith or highest aims, truth's breachless wall, 300 Surely if any fame can bear the touch, His will say 'Here!' at the last trumpet's call, The unexpressive man whose life expressed so much. VII 1. Never to see a nation born Hath been given to mortal man, Unless to those who, on that summer morn, Gazed silent when the great Virginian Unsheathed the sword whose fatal flash Shot union through the incoherent clash Of our loose atoms, crystallizing them 310 Around a single will's unpliant stem, And making purpose of emotion rash. Out of that scabbard sprang, as from its womb, Nebulous at first but hardening to a star. Through mutual share of sunburst and of gloom, The common faith that made us what we are. 2. That lifted blade transformed our jangling clans, Till then provincial, to Americans, And made a unity of wildering plans; Here was the doom fixed: here is marked the date 320 When this New World awoke to man's estate, Burnt its last ship and ceased to look behind: Nor thoughtless was the choice; no love or hate Could from its poise move that deliberate mind, Weighing between too early and too late, Those pitfalls of the man refused by Fate: His was the impartial vision of the great Who see not as they wish, but as they find. He saw the dangers of defeat, nor less The incomputable perils of success; 330 The sacred past thrown by, an empty rind; The future, cloud-land, snare of prophets blind; The waste of war, the ignominy of peace; On either hand a sullen rear of woes, Whose garnered lightnings none could guess, Piling its thunder-heads and muttering 'Cease!' Yet drew not back his hand, but gravely chose The seeming-desperate task whence our new nation rose. 3. A noble choice and of immortal seed! Nor deem that acts heroic wait on chance 340 Or easy were as in a boy's romance; The man's whole life preludes the single deed That shall decide if his inheritance Be with the sifted few of matchless breed, Our race's sap and sustenance, Or with the unmotived herd that only sleep and feed. Choice seems a thing indifferent: thus or so, What matters it? The Fates with mocking face Look on inexorable, nor seem to know Where the lot lurks that gives life's foremost place. 350 Yet Duty's leaden casket holds it still, And but two ways are offered to our will, Toil with rare triumph, ease with safe disgrace, The problem still for us and all of human race. He chose, as men choose, where most danger showed, Nor ever faltered 'neath the load Of petty cares, that gall great hearts the most, But kept right on the strenuous up-hill road, Strong to the end, above complaint or boast: The popular tempest on his rock-mailed coast 360 Wasted its wind-borne spray, The noisy marvel of a day; His soul sate still in its unstormed abode. VIII Virginia gave us this imperial man Cast in the massive mould Of those high-statured ages old Which into grander forms our mortal metal ran; She gave us this unblemished gentleman: What shall we give her back but love and praise As in the dear old unestrangèd days 370 Before the inevitable wrong began? Mother of States and undiminished men, Thou gavest us a country, giving him, And we owe alway what we owed thee then: The boon thou wouldst have snatched from us agen Shines as before with no abatement dim, A great man's memory is the only thing With influence to outlast the present whim And bind us as when here he knit our golden ring. All of him that was subject to the hours 380 Lies in thy soil and makes it part of ours: Across more recent graves, Where unresentful Nature waves Her pennons o'er the shot-ploughed sod, Proclaiming the sweet Truce of God, We from this consecrated plain stretch out Our hands as free from afterthought or doubt As here the united North Poured her embrownèd manhood forth In welcome of our savior and thy son. 390 Through battle we have better learned thy worth, The long-breathed valor and undaunted will, Which, like his own, the day's disaster done, Could, safe in manhood, suffer and be still. Both thine and ours the victory hardly won; If ever with distempered voice or pen We have misdeemed thee, here we take it back, And for the dead of both don common black. Be to us evermore as thou wast then, As we forget thou hast not always been, 400 Mother of States and unpolluted men, Virginia, fitly named from England's manly queen! AN ODE FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1876 I 1. Entranced I saw a vision in the cloud That loitered dreaming in yon sunset sky, Full of fair shapes, half creatures of the eye, Half chance-evoked by the wind's fantasy In golden mist, an ever-shifting crowd: There, 'mid unreal forms that came and went In air-spun robes, of evanescent dye, A woman's semblance shone preeminent; Not armed like Pallas, not like Hera proud, But, as on household diligence intent, 10 Beside her visionary wheel she bent Like Aretë or Bertha, nor than they Less queenly in her port; about her knee Glad children clustered confident in play: Placid her pose, the calm of energy; And over her broad brow in many a round (That loosened would have gilt her garment's hem), Succinct, as toil prescribes, the hair was wound In lustrous coils, a natural diadem. The cloud changed shape, obsequious to the whim 20 Of some transmuting influence felt in me, And, looking now, a wolf I seemed to see Limned in that vapor, gaunt and hunger-bold, Threatening her charge; resolve in every limb, Erect she flamed in mail of sun-wove gold, Penthesilea's self for battle dight; One arm uplifted braced a flickering spear, And one her adamantine shield made light; Her face, helm-shadowed, grew a thing to fear, And her fierce eyes, by danger challenged, took 30 Her trident-sceptred mother's dauntless look. 'I know thee now, O goddess-born!' I cried, And turned with loftier brow and firmer stride; For in that spectral cloud-work I had seen Her image, bodied forth by love and pride, The fearless, the benign, the mother-eyed, The fairer world's toil-consecrated queen. 2. What shape by exile dreamed elates the mind Like hers whose hand, a fortress of the poor, No blood in vengeance spilt, though lawful, stains? 40 Who never turned a suppliant from her door? Whose conquests are the gains of all mankind? To-day her thanks shall fly on every wind, Unstinted, unrebuked, from shore to shore, One love, one hope, and not a doubt behind! Cannon to cannon shall repeat her praise, Banner to banner flap it forth in flame; Her children shall rise up to bless her name, And wish her harmless length of days, The mighty mother of a mighty brood, 50 Blessed in all tongues and dear to every blood, The beautiful, the strong, and, best of all, the good. 3. Seven years long was the bow Of battle bent, and the heightening Storm-heaps convulsed with the throe Of their uncontainable lightning; Seven years long heard the sea Crash of navies and wave-borne thunder; Then drifted the cloud-rack a-lee, And new stars were seen, a world's wonder; 60 Each by her sisters made bright, All binding all to their stations, Cluster of manifold light Startling the old constellations: Men looked up and grew pale: Was it a comet or star, Omen of blessing or bale. Hung o'er the ocean afar? 4. Stormy the day of her birth: 69 Was she not born of the strong. She, the last ripeness of earth, Beautiful, prophesied long? Stormy the days of her prime: Hers are the pulses that beat Higher for perils sublime, Making them fawn at her feet. Was she not born of the strong? Was she not born of the wise? Daring and counsel belong Of right to her confident eyes: Human and motherly they, 81 Careless of station or race: Hearken! her children to-day Shout for the joy of her face. II 1. No praises of the past are hers, No fanes by hallowing time caressed, No broken arch that ministers To Time's sad instinct in the breast; She has not gathered from the years Grandeur of tragedies and tears, 90 Nor from long leisure the unrest That finds repose in forms of classic grace: These may delight the coming race Who haply shall not count it to our crime That we who fain would sing are here before our time. She also hath her monuments; Not such as stand decrepitly resigned To ruin-mark the path of dead events That left no seed of better days behind, The tourist's pensioners that show their scars 100 And maunder of forgotten wars; She builds not on the ground, but in the mind, Her open-hearted palaces For larger-thonghted men with heaven and earth at ease: Her march the plump mow marks, the sleepless wheel, The golden sheaf, the self-swayed commonweal; The happy homesteads hid in orchard trees Whose sacrificial smokes through peaceful air Rise lost in heaven, the household's silent prayer; What architect hath bettered these? 110 With softened eye the westward traveller sees A thousand miles of neighbors side by side, Holding by toil-won titles fresh from God The lands no serf or seigneur ever trod, With manhood latent in the very sod, Where the long billow of the wheatfield's tide Flows to the sky across the prairie wide, A sweeter vision than the castled Rhine, Kindly with thoughts of Ruth and Bible-days benign. 2. O ancient commonwealths, that we revere 120 Haply because we could not know you near, Your deeds like statues down the aisles of Time Shine peerless in memorial calm sublime, And Athens is a trumpet still, and Rome; Yet which of your achievements is not foam Weighed with this one of hers (below you far In fame, and born beneath a milder star), That to Earth's orphans, far as curves the dome Of death-deaf sky, the bounteous West means home, With dear precedency of natural ties 130 That stretch from roof to roof and make men gently wise? And if the nobler passions wane, Distorted to base use, if the near goal Of insubstantial gain Tempt from the proper race-course of the soul That crowns their patient breath Whose feet, song-sandalled, are too fleet for Death, Yet may she claim one privilege urbane And haply first upon the civic roll, That none can breathe her air nor grow humane. 140 3. Oh, better far the briefest hour Of Athens self-consumed, whose plastic power Hid Beauty safe from Death in words or stone; Of Rome, fair quarry where those eagles crowd Whose fulgurous vans about the world had blown Triumphant storm and seeds of polity; Of Venice, fading o'er her shipless sea, Last iridescence of a sunset cloud; Than this inert prosperity, This bovine comfort in the sense alone! 150 Yet art came slowly even to such as those. Whom no past genius cheated of their own With prudence of o'ermastering precedent; Petal by petal spreads the perfect rose, Secure of the divine event; And only children rend the bud half-blown To forestall Nature in her calm intent: Time hath a quiver full of purposes Which miss not of their aim, to us unknown, And brings about the impossible with ease: 160 Haply for us the ideal dawn shall break From where in legend-tinted line The peaks of Hellas drink the morning's wine, To tremble on our lids with mystic sign Till the drowsed ichor in our veins awake And set our pulse in time with moods divine: Long the day lingered in its sea-fringed nest, Then touched the Tuscan hills with golden lance And paused; then on to Spain and France The splendor flew, and Albion's misty crest: 170 Shall Ocean bar him from his destined West? Or are we, then, arrived too late, Doomed with the rest to grope disconsolate, Foreclosed of Beauty by our modern date? III 1. Poets, as their heads grow gray, Look from too far behind the eyes, Too long-experienced to be wise In guileless youth's diviner way; Life sings not now, but prophesies; Time's shadows they no more behold, 180 But, under them, the riddle old That mocks, bewilders, and defies: In childhood's face the seed of shame, In the green tree an ambushed flame, In Phosphor a vaunt-guard of Night, They, though against their will, divine, And dread the care-dispelling wine Stored from the Muse's mintage bright, By age imbued with second-sight. From Faith's own eyelids there peeps out, 190 Even as they look, the leer of doubt; The festal wreath their fancy loads With care that whispers and forebodes: Nor this our triumph-day can blunt Megæra's goads. 2. Murmur of many voices in the air Denounces us degenerate, Unfaithful guardians of a noble fate, And prompts indifference or despair: Is this the country that we dreamed in youth, Where wisdom and not numbers should have weight, 200 Seed-field of simpler manners, braver truth, Where shams should cease to dominate In household, church, and state? Is this Atlantis? This the unpoisoned soil, Sea-whelmed for ages and recovered late, Where parasitic greed no more should coil Bound Freedom's stem to bend awry and blight What grew so fair, sole plant of love and light? Who sit where once in crowned seclusion sate The long-proved athletes of debate 210 Trained from their youth, as none thinks needful now? Is this debating club where boys dispute, And wrangle o'er their stolen fruit, The Senate, erewhile cloister of the few, Where Clay once flashed and Webster's cloudy brow Brooded those bolts of thought that all the horizon knew? 3. Oh, as this pensive moonlight blurs my pines, Here while I sit and meditate these lines, To gray-green dreams of what they are by day, So would some light, not reason's sharp-edged ray, 220 Trance me in moonshine as before the flight Of years had won me this unwelcome right To see things as they are, or shall he soon, In the frank prose of undissembling noon! 4. Back to my breast, ungrateful sigh! Whoever fails, whoever errs, The penalty be ours, not hers! The present still seems vulgar, seen too nigh; The golden age is still the age that's past: I ask no drowsy opiate 230 To dull my vision of that only state Founded on faith in man, and therefore sure to last. For, O my country, touched by thee, The gray hairs gather back their gold; Thy thought sets all my pulses free; The heart refuses to be old; The love is all that I can see. Not to thy natal-day belong Time's prudent doubt or age's wrong, But gifts of gratitude and song: Unsummoned crowd the thankful words, 241 As sap in spring-time floods the tree. Foreboding the return of birds, For all that thou hast been to me! IV 1. Flawless his heart and tempered to the core Who, beckoned by the forward-leaning wave, First left behind him the firm-footed shore, And, urged by every nerve of sail and oar, Steered for the Unknown which gods to mortals gave. Of thought and action the mysterious door, 250 Bugbear of fools, a summons to the brave: Strength found he in the unsympathizing sun, And strange stars from beneath the horizon won, And the dumb ocean pitilessly grave: High-hearted surely he; But bolder they who first off-cast Their moorings from the habitable Past And ventured chartless on the sea Of storm-engendering Liberty: For all earth's width of waters is a span, 260 And their convulsed existence mere repose, Matched with the unstable heart of man, Shoreless in wants, mist-girt in all it knows, Open to every wind of sect or clan, And sudden-passionate in ebbs and flows. 2. They steered by stars the elder shipmen knew, And laid their courses where the currents draw Of ancient wisdom channelled deep in law. The undaunted few Who changed the Old World for the New, 270 And more devoutly prized Than all perfection theorized The more imperfect that had roots and grew. They founded deep and well, Those danger-chosen chiefs of men Who still believed in Heaven and Hell, Nor hoped to find a spell, In some fine flourish of a pen, To make a better man Than long-considering Nature will or can, 280 Secure against his own mistakes, Content with what life gives or takes, And acting still on some fore-ordered plan, A cog of iron in an iron wheel, Too nicely poised to think or feel, Dumb motor in a clock-like commonweal. They wasted not their brain in schemes Of what man might be in some bubble-sphere, As if he must be other than he seems Because he was not what he should be here, 290 Postponing Time's slow proof to petulant dreams: Yet herein they were great Beyond the incredulous lawgivers of yore, And wiser than the wisdom of the shelf, That they conceived a deeper-rooted state, Of hardier growth, alive from rind to core, By making man sole sponsor of himself. 3. God of our fathers, Thou who wast, Art, and shalt be when those eye-wise who flout Thy secret presence shall be lost In the great light that dazzles them to doubt, 301 We, sprung from loins of stalwart men Whose strength was in their trust That Thou woudst make thy dwelling in their dust And walk with those a fellow-citizen Who build a city of the just, We, who believe Life's bases rest Beyond the probe of chemic test, Still, like our fathers, feel Thee near, Sure that, while lasts the immutable decree, 310 The land to Human Nature dear Shall not be unbeloved of Thee. HEARTSEASE AND RUE I. FRIENDSHIP AGASSIZ Come Dicesti _egli ebbe?_ non viv' egli ancora? Non fiere gli occhi suoi lo dolce lome? I 1. The electric nerve, whose instantaneous thrill Makes next-door gossips of the antipodes, Confutes poor Hope's last fallacy of ease,-- The distance that divided her from ill: Earth sentient seems again as when of old The horny foot of Pan Stamped, and the conscious horror ran Beneath men's feet through all her fibres cold: Space's blue walls are mined; we feel the throe From underground of our night-mantled foe: 10 The flame-winged feet Of Trade's new Mercury, that dry-shod run Through briny abysses dreamless of the sun, Are mercilessly fleet, And at a bound annihilate Ocean's prerogative of short reprieve; Surely ill news might wait, And man be patient of delay to grieve: Letters have sympathies And tell-tale faces that reveal, 20 To senses finer than the eyes. Their errand's purport ere we break the seal; They wind a sorrow round with circumstance To stay its feet, nor all unwarned displace The veil that darkened from our sidelong glance The inexorable face: But now Fate stuns as with a mace; The savage of the skies, that men have caught And some scant use of language taught, Tells only what he must,-- 30 The steel-cold fact in one laconic thrust. 2. So thought I, as, with vague, mechanic eyes, I scanned the festering news we half despise Yet scramble for no less, And read of public scandal, private fraud, Crime flaunting scot-free while the mob applaud, Office made vile to bribe unworthiness, And all the unwholesome mess The Land of Honest Abraham serves of late To teach the Old World how to wait, 40 When suddenly, As happens if the brain, from overweight Of blood, infect the eye, Three tiny words grew lurid as I read, And reeled commingling: _Agassiz is dead_. As when, beneath the street's familiar jar, An earthquake's alien omen rumbles far, Men listen and forebode, I hung my head, And strove the present to recall, As if the blow that stunned were yet to fall. 50 3. Uprooted is our mountain oak, That promised long security of shade And brooding-place for many a wingèd thought; Not by Time's softly cadenced stroke With pauses of relenting pity stayed, But ere a root seemed sapt, a bough decayed, From sudden ambush by the whirlwind caught And in his broad maturity betrayed! 4. Well might I, as of old, appeal to you, O mountains, woods, and streams, 60 To help us mourn him, for ye loved him too; But simpler moods befit our modern themes, And no less perfect birth of nature can, Though they yearn tow'rd him, sympathize with man. Save as dumb fellow-prisoners through a wall; Answer ye rather to my call, Strong poets of a more unconscious day, When Nature spake nor sought nice reasons why, Too much for softer arts forgotten since That teach our forthright tongue to lisp and mince, 70 And drown in music the heart's bitter cry! Lead me some steps in your directer way, Teach me those words that strike a solid root Within the ears of men; Ye chiefly, virile both to think and feel, Deep-chested Chapman and firm-footed Ben, For he was masculine from head to heel. Nay, let himself stand undiminished by With those clear parts of him that will not die. Himself from out the recent dark I claim 80 To hear, and, if I flatter him, to blame; To show himself, as still I seem to see, A mortal, built upon the antique plan, Brimful of lusty blood as ever ran, And taking life as simply as a tree! To claim my foiled good-by let him appear, Large-limbed and human as I saw him near, Loosed from the stiffening uniform of fame: And let me treat him largely; I should fear, (If with too prying lens I chanced to err, 90 Mistaking catalogue for character,) His wise forefinger raised in smiling blame. Nor would I scant him with judicial breath And turn mere critic in an epitaph; I choose the wheat, incurious of the chaff That swells fame living, chokes it after death, And would but memorize the shining half Of his large nature that was turned to me: Fain had I joined with those that honored him With eyes that darkened because his were dim, 100 And now been silent: but it might not be. II 1. In some the genius is a thing apart, A pillared hermit of the brain, Hoarding with incommunicable art Its intellectual gain; Man's web of circumstance and fate They from their perch of self observe, Indifferent as the figures on a slate Are to the planet's sun-swung curve Whose bright returns they calculate; 110 Their nice adjustment, part to part, Were shaken from its serviceable mood By unpremeditated stirs of heart Or jar of human neighborhood: Some find their natural selves, and only then, In furloughs of divine escape from men, And when, by that brief ecstasy left bare, Driven by some instinct of desire, They wander worldward, 'tis to blink and stare, Like wild things of the wood about a fire, 120 Dazed by the social glow they cannot share; His nature brooked no lonely lair, But basked and bourgeoned in co-partnery, Companionship, and open-windowed glee: He knew, for he had tried, Those speculative heights that lure The unpractised foot, impatient of a guide, Tow'rd ether too attenuately pure For sweet unconscious breath, though dear to pride, But better loved the foothold sure 130 Of paths that wind by old abodes of men Who hope at last the churchyard's peace secure, And follow time-worn rules, that them suffice, Learned from their sires, traditionally wise, Careful of honest custom's how and when; His mind, too brave to look on Truth askance, No more those habitudes of faith could share, But, tinged with sweetness of the old Swiss manse, Lingered around them still and fain would spare. Patient to spy a sullen egg for weeks, 140 The enigma of creation to surprise, His truer instinct sought the life that speaks Without a mystery from kindly eyes; In no self-spun cocoon of prudence wound, He by the touch of men was best inspired, And caught his native greatness at rebound From generosities itself had fired; Then how the heat through every fibre ran, Felt in the gathering presence of the man, While the apt word and gesture came unbid! 150 Virtues and faults it to one metal wrought, Fined all his blood to thought, And ran the molten man in all he said or did. All Tully's rules and all Quintilian's too He by the light of listening faces knew, And his rapt audience all unconscious lent Their own roused force to make him eloquent; Persuasion fondled in his look and tone; Our speech (with strangers prudish) he could bring To find new charm in accents not her own; 160 Her coy constraints and icy hindrances Melted upon his lips to natural ease, As a brook's fetters swell the dance of spring. Nor yet all sweetness: not in vain he wore, Nor in the sheath of ceremony, controlled By velvet courtesy or caution cold, That sword of honest anger prized of old, But, with two-handed wrath, If baseness or pretension crossed his path, Struck once nor needed to strike more. 170 2. His magic was not far to seek.-- He was so human! Whether strong or weak, Far from his kind he neither sank nor soared, But sate an equal guest at every board: No beggar ever felt him condescend, No prince presume; for still himself he bare At manhood's simple level, and where'er He met a stranger, there he left a friend. How large an aspect! nobly un-severe, With freshness round him of Olympian cheer, 180 Like visits of those earthly gods he came; His look, wherever its good-fortune fell, Doubled the feast without a miracle, And on the hearthstone danced a happier flame; Philemon's crabbed vintage grew benign; Amphitryon's gold-juice humanized to wine. III 1. The garrulous memories Gather again from all their far-flown nooks, Singly at first, and then by twos and threes, Then in a throng innumerable, as the rooks 190 Thicken their twilight files Tow'rd Tintern's gray repose of roofless aisles: Once more I see him at the table's head When Saturday her monthly banquet spread To scholars, poets, wits, All choice, some famous, loving things, not names, And so without a twinge at others' fames; Such company as wisest moods befits, Yet with no pedant blindness to the worth Of undeliberate mirth, 200 Natures benignly mixed of air and earth, Now with the stars and now with equal zest Tracing the eccentric orbit of a jest. 2. I see in vision the warm-lighted hall, The living and the dead I see again, And but my chair is empty; 'mid them all 'Tis I that seem the dead: they all remain Immortal, changeless creatures of the brain: Wellnigh I doubt which world is real most, Of sense or spirit to the truly sane; 210 In this abstraction it were light to deem Myself the figment of some stronger dream; They are the real things, and I the ghost That glide unhindered through the solid door, Vainly for recognition seek from chair to chair, And strive to speak and am but futile air, As truly most of us are little more. 3. Him most I see whom we most dearly miss, The latest parted thence, His features poised in genial armistice 220 And armed neutrality of self-defence Beneath the forehead's walled preeminence, While Tyro, plucking facts with careless reach, Settles off-hand our human how and whence; The long-trained veteran scarcely wincing hears The infallible strategy of volunteers Making through Nature's walls its easy breach, And seems to learn where he alone could teach. Ample and ruddy, the board's end he fills As he our fireside were, our light and heat, 230 Centre where minds diverse and various skills Find their warm nook and stretch unhampered feet; I see the firm benignity of face, Wide-smiling champaign, without tameness sweet, The mass Teutonic toned to Gallic grace, The eyes whose sunshine runs before the lips While Holmes's rockets, curve their long ellipse, And burst in seeds of fire that burst again To drop in scintillating rain. 4. There too the face half-rustic, half-divine, 240 Self-poised, sagacious, freaked with humor fine, Of him who taught us not to mow and mope About our fancied selves, but seek our scope In Nature's world and Man's, nor fade to hollow trope, Content with our New World and timely bold To challenge the o'ermastery of the Old; Listening with eyes averse I see him sit Pricked with the cider of the Judge's wit (Ripe-hearted homebrew, fresh and fresh again), While the wise nose's firm-built aquiline 250 Curves sharper to restrain The merriment whose most unruly moods Pass not the dumb laugh learned in listening woods Of silence-shedding pine: Hard by is he whose art's consoling spell Hath given both worlds a whiff of asphodel, His look still vernal 'mid the wintry ring Of petals that remember, not foretell, The paler primrose of a second spring. 5. And more there are: but other forms arise 260 And seen as clear, albeit with dimmer eyes: First he from sympathy still held apart By shrinking over-eagerness of heart, Cloud charged with searching fire, whose shadow's sweep Heightened mean things with sense of brooding ill, And steeped in doom familiar field and hill,-- New England's poet, soul reserved and deep, November nature with a name of May, Whom high o'er Concord plains we laid to sleep, While the orchards mocked us in their white array 270 And building robins wondered at our tears, Snatched in his prime, the shape august That should have stood unbent 'neath fourscore years, The noble head, the eyes of furtive trust, All gone to speechless dust. And he our passing guest, Shy nature, too, and stung with life's unrest, Whom we too briefly had but could not hold, Who brought ripe Oxford's culture to our board, The Past's incalculable hoard, 280 Mellowed by scutcheoned panes in cloisters old, Seclusions ivy-hushed, and pavements sweet With immemorial lisp of musing feet; Young head time-tonsured smoother than a friar's, Boy face, but grave with answerless desires, Poet in all that poets have of best, But foiled with riddles dark and cloudy aims, Who now hath found sure rest, Not by still Isis or historic Thames, Nor by the Charles he tried to love with me, 290 But, not misplaced, by Arno's hallowed brim, Nor scorned by Santa Croce's neighboring fames, Haply not mindless, wheresoe'er he be, Of violets that to-day I scattered over him, He, too, is there, After the good centurion fitly named, Whom learning dulled not, nor convention tamed, Shaking with burly mirth his hyacinthine hair, Our hearty Grecian of Homeric ways, Still found the surer friend where least he hoped the praise. 6. Yea truly, as the sallowing years 301 Fall from us faster, like frost-loosened leaves Pushed by the misty touch of shortening days, And that unwakened winter nears, 'Tis the void chair our surest guest receives, 'Tis lips long cold that give the warmest kiss, 'Tis the lost voice comes oftenest to our ears; We count our rosary by the beads we miss: To me, at least, it seemeth so, An exile in the land once found divine, 310 While my starved fire burns low, And homeless winds at the loose casement whine Shrill ditties of the snow-roofed Apennine. IV 1. Now forth into the darkness all are gone, But memory, still unsated, follows on, Retracing step by step our homeward walk, With many a laugh among our serious talk, Across the bridge where, on the dimpling tide, The long red streamers from the windows glide, Or the dim western moon Rocks her skiff's image on the broad lagoon, 321 And Boston shows a soft Venetian side In that Arcadian light when roof and tree, Hard prose by daylight, dream in Italy; Or haply in the sky's cold chambers wide Shivered the winter stars, while all below, As if an end were come of human ill, The world was wrapt in innocence of snow And the cast-iron bay was blind and still; These were our poetry; in him perhaps 330 Science had barred the gate that lets in dream, And he would rather count the perch and bream Than with the current's idle fancy lapse; And yet he had the poet's open eye That takes a frank delight in all it sees, Nor was earth voiceless, nor the mystic sky, To him the life-long friend of fields and trees: Then came the prose of the suburban street, Its silence deepened by our echoing feet, And converse such as rambling hazard finds; 340 Then he who many cities knew and many minds, And men once world-noised, now mere Ossian forms Of misty memory, bade them live anew As when they shared earth's manifold delight, In shape, in gait, in voice, in gesture true, And, with an accent heightening as he warms, Would stop forgetful of the shortening night, Drop my confining arm, and pour profuse Much worldly wisdom kept for others' use, Not for his own, for he was rash and free, 350 His purse or knowledge all men's, like the sea. Still can I hear his voice's shrilling might (With pauses broken, while the fitful spark He blew more hotly rounded on the dark To hint his features with a Rembrandt light) Call Oken back, or Humboldt, or Lamarck, Or Cuvier's taller shade, and many more Whom he had seen, or knew from others' sight, And make them men to me as ne'er before: Not seldom, as the undeadened fibre stirred 360 Of noble friendships knit beyond the sea, German or French thrust by the lagging word, For a good leash of mother-tongues had he. At last, arrived at where our paths divide, 'Good night!' and, ere the distance grew too wide, 'Good night!' again; and now with cheated ear I half hear his who mine shall never hear. 2. Sometimes it seemed as if New England air For his large lungs too parsimonious were, As if those empty rooms of dogma drear 370 Where the ghost shivers of a faith austere Counting the horns o'er of the Beast, Still scaring those whose faith to it is least, As if those snaps o' th' moral atmosphere That sharpen all the needles of the East, Had been to him like death, Accustomed to draw Europe's freer breath In a more stable element; Nay, even our landscape, half the year morose, Our practical horizon, grimly pent, 380 Our air, sincere of ceremonious haze, Forcing hard outlines mercilessly close, Our social monotone of level days, Might make our best seem banishment; But it was nothing so; Haply this instinct might divine, Beneath our drift of puritanic snow, The marvel sensitive and fine Of sanguinaria over-rash to blow And trust its shyness to an air malign; 390 Well might he prize truth's warranty and pledge In the grim outcrop of our granite edge, Or Hebrew fervor flashing forth at need In the gaunt sons of Calvin's iron breed, As prompt to give as skilled to win and keep; But, though such intuitions might not cheer, Yet life was good to him, and, there or here, With that sufficing joy, the day was never cheap; Thereto his mind was its own ample sphere, And, like those buildings great that through the year 400 Carry one temperature, his nature large Made its own climate, nor could any marge Traced by convention stay him from his bent: He had a habitude of mountain air; He brought wide outlook where he went, And could on sunny uplands dwell Of prospect sweeter than the pastures fair High-hung of viny Neufchâtel; Nor, surely, did he miss Some pale, imaginary bliss Of earlier sights whose inner landscape still was Swiss. 411 V 1. I cannot think he wished so soon to die With all his senses full of eager heat, And rosy years that stood expectant by To buckle the winged sandals on their feet, He that was friends with Earth, and all her sweet Took with both hands unsparingly: Truly this life is precious to the root, And good the feel of grass beneath the foot; To lie in buttercups and clover-bloom, 420 Tenants in common with the bees, And watch the white clouds drift through gulfs of trees, Is better than long waiting in the tomb; Only once more to feel the coming spring As the birds feel it, when it bids them sing, Only once more to see the moon Through leaf-fringed abbey-arches of the elms Curve her mild sickle in the West Sweet with the breath of haycocks, were a boon Worth any promise of soothsayer realms 430 Or casual hope of being elsewhere blest; To take December by the beard And crush the creaking snow with springy foot, While overhead the North's dumb streamers shoot, Till Winter fawn upon the cheek endeared, Then the long evening-ends Lingered by cosy chimney-nooks, With high companionship of books Or slippered talk of friends And sweet habitual looks, Is better than to stop the ears with dust: 441 Too soon the spectre comes to say, 'Thou must!' 2. When toil-crooked hands are crost upon the breast, They comfort us with sense of rest; They must be glad to lie forever still; Their work is ended with their day; Another fills their room; 't is the World's ancient way, Whether for good or ill; But the deft spinners of the brain, Who love each added day and find it gain, 450 Them overtakes the doom To snap the half-grown flower upon the loom (Trophy that was to be of life long pain), The thread no other skill can ever knit again. 'Twas so with him, for he was glad to live, 'Twas doubly so, for he left work begun; Could not this eagerness of Fate forgive Till all the allotted flax were spun? It matters not; for, go at night or noon, A friend, whene'er he dies, has died too soon, 460 And, once we hear the hopeless _He is dead,_ So far as flesh hath knowledge, all is said. VI 1. I seem to see the black procession go: That crawling prose of death too well I know, The vulgar paraphrase of glorious woe; I see it wind through that unsightly grove, Once beautiful, but long defaced With granite permanence of cockney taste And all those grim disfigurements we love: There, then, we leave him: Him? such costly waste 470 Nature rebels at: and it is not true Of those most precious parts of him we knew: Could we be conscious but as dreamers be, 'Twere sweet to leave this shifting life of tents Sunk in the changeless calm of Deity; Nay, to be mingled with the elements, The fellow-servants of creative powers, Partaker in the solemn year's events, To share the work of busy-fingered hours, To be night's silent almoner of dew, 480 To rise again in plants and breathe and grow, To stream as tides the ocean caverns through, Or with the rapture of great winds to blow About earth's shaken coignes, were not a fate To leave us all-disconsolate; Even endless slumber in the sweetening sod Of charitable earth That takes out all our mortal stains, And makes us cleanlier neighbors of the clod, Methinks were better worth Than the poor fruit of most men's wakeful pains, 491 The heart's insatiable ache: But such was not his faith, Nor mine: it may be he had trod Outside the plain old path of _God thus spake_, But God to him was very God And not a visionary wraith Skulking in murky corners of the mind, And he was sure to be Somehow, somewhere, imperishable as He, 500 Not with His essence mystically combined, As some high spirits long, but whole and free, A perfected and conscious Agassiz. And such I figure him: the wise of old Welcome and own him of their peaceful fold, Not truly with the guild enrolled Of him who seeking inward guessed Diviner riddles than the rest, And groping in the darks of thought Touched the Great Hand and knew it not; 510 Rather he shares the daily light, From reason's charier fountains won, Of his great chief, the slow-paced Stagyrite, And Cuvier clasps once more his long-lost son. 2. The shape erect is prone: forever stilled The winning tongue; the forehead's high-piled heap, A cairn which every science helped to build, Unvalued will its golden secrets keep: He knows at last if Life or Death be best: Wherever he be flown, whatever vest 520 The being hath put on which lately here So many-friended was, so full of cheer To make men feel the Seeker's noble zest, We have not lost him all; he is not gone To the dumb herd of them that wholly die; The beauty of his better self lives on In minds he touched with fire, in many an eye He trained to Truth's exact severity; He was a Teacher: why be grieved for him Whose living word still stimulates the air? 530 In endless file shall loving scholars come The glow of his transmitted touch to share, And trace his features with an eye less dim Than ours whose sense familiar wont makes dumb. TO HOLMES ON HIS SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY Dear Wendell, why need count the years Since first your genius made me thrill, If what moved then to smiles or tears, Or both contending, move me still? What has the Calendar to do With poets? What Time's fruitless tooth With gay immortals such as you Whose years but emphasize your youth? One air gave both their lease of breath; The same paths lured our boyish feet; One earth will hold us safe in death With dust of saints and scholars sweet. Our legends from one source were drawn, I scarce distinguish yours from mine, And _don't_ we make the Gentiles yawn With 'You remembers?' o'er our wine! If I, with too senescent air, Invade your elder memory's pale, You snub me with a pitying 'Where Were you in the September Gale?' Both stared entranced at Lafayette, Saw Jackson dubbed with LL.D. What Cambridge saw not strikes us yet As scarcely worth one's while to see. Ten years my senior, when my name In Harvard's entrance-book was writ, Her halls still echoed with the fame Of you, her poet and her wit. 'Tis fifty years from then to now; But your Last Leaf renews its green, Though, for the laurels on your brow (So thick they crowd), 'tis hardly seen. The oriole's fledglings fifty times Have flown from our familiar elms; As many poets with their rhymes Oblivion's darkling dust o'erwhelms. The birds are hushed, the poets gone Where no harsh critic's lash can reach, And still your wingèd brood sing on To all who love our English speech. Nay, let the foolish records he That make believe you're seventy-five: You're the old Wendell still to me,-- And that's the youngest man alive. The gray-blue eyes, I see them still, The gallant front with brown o'erhung, The shape alert, the wit at will, The phrase that stuck, but never stung. You keep your youth as yon Scotch firs, Whose gaunt line my horizon hems, Though twilight all the lowland blurs, Hold sunset in their ruddy stems. _You_ with the elders? Yes, 'tis true, But in no sadly literal sense, With elders and coevals too, Whose verb admits no preterite tense. Master alike in speech and song Of fame's great antiseptic--Style, You with the classic few belong Who tempered wisdom with a smile. Outlive us all! Who else like you Could sift the seedcorn from our chaff, And make us with the pen we knew Deathless at least in epitaph? IN A COPY OF OMAR KHAYYÁM These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred, Each softly lucent as a rounded moon; The diver Omar plucked them from their bed, Fitzgerald strung them on an English thread. Fit rosary for a queen, in shape and hue, When Contemplation tells her pensive beads Of mortal thoughts, forever old and new. Fit for a queen? Why, surely then for you! The moral? Where Doubt's eddies toss and twirl Faith's slender shallop till her footing reel, Plunge: if you find not peace beneath the whirl, Groping, you may like Omar grasp a pearl. ON RECEIVING A COPY OF MR. AUSTIN DOBSON'S 'OLD WORLD IDYLLS' I At length arrived, your book I take To read in for the author's sake; Too gray for new sensations grown, Can charm to Art or Nature known This torpor from my senses shake? Hush! my parched ears what runnels slake? Is a thrush gurgling from the brake? Has Spring, on all the breezes blown, At length arrived? Long may you live such songs to make, And I to listen while you wake, With skill of late disused, each tone Of the _Lesboum, barbiton_, At mastery, through long finger-ache, At length arrived. II As I read on, what changes steal O'er me and through, from head to heel? A rapier thrusts coat-skirt aside, My rough Tweeds bloom to silken pride,-- Who was it laughed? Your hand, Dick Steele! Down vistas long of clipt _charmille_ Watteau as Pierrot leads the reel; Tabor and pipe the dancers guide As I read on. While in and out the verses wheel The wind-caught robes trim feet reveal, Lithe ankles that to music glide, But chastely and by chance descried; Art? Nature? Which do I most feel As I read on? TO C.F. BRADFORD ON THE GIFT OF A MEERSCHAUM PIPE The pipe came safe, and welcome too, As anything must be from you; A meerschaum pure, 'twould float as light As she the girls call Amphitrite. Mixture divine of foam and clay, From both it stole the best away: Its foam is such as crowns the glow Of beakers brimmed by Veuve Clicquot; Its clay is but congested lymph Jove chose to make some choicer nymph; And here combined,--why, this must be The birth of some enchanted sea, Shaped to immortal form, the type And very Venus of a pipe. When high I heap it with the weed From Lethe wharf, whose potent seed Nicotia, big from Bacchus, bore And cast upon Virginia's shore, I'll think,--So fill the fairer bowl And wise alembic of thy soul, With herbs far-sought that shall distil, Not fumes to slacken thought and will, But bracing essences that nerve To wait, to dare, to strive, to serve. When curls the smoke in eddies soft, And hangs a shifting dream aloft, That gives and takes, though chance-designed, The impress of the dreamer's mind, I'll think,--So let the vapors bred By Passion, in the heart or head, Pass off and upward into space, Waving farewells of tenderest grace, Remembered in some happier time, To blend their beauty with my rhyme. While slowly o'er its candid bowl The color deepens (as the soul That burns in mortals leaves its trace Of bale or beauty on the face), I'll think,--So let the essence rare Of years consuming make me fair; So, 'gainst the ills of life profuse, Steep me in some narcotic juice; And if my soul must part with all That whiteness which we greenness call, Smooth back, O Fortune, half thy frown, And make me beautifully brown! Dream-forger, I refill thy cup With reverie's wasteful pittance up, And while the fire burns slow away, Hiding itself in ashes gray, I'll think,--As inward Youth retreats, Compelled to spare his wasting heats, When Life's Ash-Wednesday comes about, And my head's gray with fires burnt out, While stays one spark to light the eye, With the last flash of memory, 'Twill leap to welcome C.F.B., Who sent my favorite pipe to me. BANKSIDE (HOME OF EDMUND QUINCY) DEDHAM, MAY 21, 1877 I I christened you in happier days, before These gray forebodings on my brow were seen; You are still lovely in your new-leaved green; The brimming river soothes his grassy shore; The bridge is there; the rock with lichens hoar; And the same shadows on the water lean, Outlasting us. How many graves between That day and this! How many shadows more Darken my heart, their substance from these eyes Hidden forever! So our world is made Of life and death commingled; and the sighs Outweigh the smiles, in equal balance laid: What compensation? None, save that the Allwise So schools us to love things that cannot fade. II Thank God, he saw you last in pomp of May, Ere any leaf had felt the year's regret; Your latest image in his memory set Was fair as when your landscape's peaceful sway Charmed dearer eyes with his to make delay On Hope's long prospect,--as if They forget The happy, They, the unspeakable Three, whose debt, Like the hawk's shadow, blots our brightest day: Better it is that ye should look so fair. Slopes that he loved, and ever-murmuring pines That make a music out of silent air, And bloom-heaped orchard-trees in prosperous lines; In you the heart some sweeter hints divines, And wiser, than in winter's dull despair. III Old Friend, farewell! Your kindly door again I enter, but the master's hand in mine No more clasps welcome, and the temperate wine, That cheered our long nights, other lips must stain: All is unchanged, but I expect in vain The face alert, the manners free and fine, The seventy years borne lightly as the pine Wears its first down of snow in green disdain: Much did he, and much well; yet most of all I prized his skill in leisure and the ease Of a life flowing full without a plan; For most are idly busy; him I call Thrice fortunate who knew himself to please, Learned in those arts that make a gentleman. IV Nor deem he lived unto himself alone; His was the public spirit of his sire, And in those eyes, soft with domestic fire, A quenchless light of fiercer temper shone What time about, the world our shame was blown On every wind; his soul would not conspire With selfish men to soothe the mob's desire, Veiling with garlands Moloch's bloody stone; The high-bred instincts of a better day Ruled in his blood, when to be citizen Rang Roman yet, and a Free People's sway Was not the exchequer of impoverished men, Nor statesmanship with loaded votes to play, Nor public office a tramps' boosing-ken. JOSEPH WINLOCK DIED JUNE 11, 1875 Shy soul and stalwart, man of patient will Through years one hair's-breadth on our Dark to gain, Who, from the stars he studied not in vain, Had learned their secret to be strong and still, Careless of fames that earth's tin trumpets fill; Born under Leo, broad of build and brain, While others slept, he watched in that hushed fane Of Science, only witness of his skill: Sudden as falls a shooting-star he fell, But inextinguishable his luminous trace In mind and heart of all that knew him well. Happy man's doom! To him the Fates were known Of orbs dim hovering on the skirts of space, Unprescient, through God's mercy, of his own! SONNET TO FANNY ALEXANDER Unconscious as the sunshine, simply sweet And generous as that, thou dost not close Thyself in art, as life were but a rose To rumple bee-like with luxurious feet; Thy higher mind therein finds sure retreat, But not from care of common hopes and woes; Thee the dark chamber, thee the unfriended, knows, Although no babbling crowds thy praise repeat: Consummate artist, who life's landscape bleak Hast brimmed with sun to many a clouded eye, Touched to a brighter hue the beggar's cheek, Hung over orphaned lives a gracious sky, And traced for eyes, that else would vainly seek, Fair pictures of an angel drawing nigh! JEFFRIES WYMAN DIED SEPTEMBER 4, 1874 The wisest man could ask no more of Fate Than to be simple, modest, manly, true, Safe from the Many, honored by the Few; To count as naught in World, or Church, or State, But, inwardly in secret to be great; To feel mysterious Nature ever new; To touch, if not to grasp, her endless clue, And learn by each discovery how to wait. He widened knowledge and escaped the praise; He wisely taught, because more wise to learn; He toiled for Science, not to draw men's gaze, But for her lore of self-denial stern. That such a man could spring from our decays Fans the soul's nobler faith until it burn. TO A FRIEND WHO GAVE ME A GROUP OF WEEDS AND GRASSES, AFTER A DRAWING OF DÜRER True as the sun's own work, but more refined, It tells of love behind the artist's eye, Of sweet companionships with earth and sky, And summers stored, the sunshine of the mind. What peace! Sure, ere you breathe, the fickle wind Will break its truce and bend that grass-plume high, Scarcely yet quiet from the gilded fly That flits a more luxurious perch to find. Thanks for a pleasure that can never pall, A serene moment, deftly caught and kept To make immortal summer on my wall. Had he who drew such gladness ever wept? Ask rather could he else have seen at all, Or grown in Nature's mysteries an adept? WITH AN ARMCHAIR 1. About the oak that framed this chair, of old The seasons danced their round; delighted wings Brought music to its boughs; shy woodland things Shared its broad roof, 'neath whose green glooms grown bold, Lovers, more shy than they, their secret told; The resurrection of a thousand springs Swelled in its veins, and dim imaginings Teased them, perchance, of life more manifold. Such shall it know when its proud arms enclose My Lady Goshawk, musing here at rest, Careless of him who into exile goes, Yet, while his gift by those fair limbs is prest, Through some fine sympathy of nature knows That, seas between us, she is still his guest. 2. Yet sometimes, let me dream, the conscious wood A momentary vision may renew Of him who counts it treasure that he knew, Though but in passing, such a priceless good, And, like an elder brother, felt his mood Uplifted by the spell that kept her true, Amid her lightsome compeers, to the few That wear the crown of serious womanhood: Were he so happy, think of him as one Who in the Louvre or Pitti feels his soul Rapt by some dead face which, till then unseen, Moves like a memory, and, till life outrun, Is vexed with vague misgiving past control, Of nameless loss and thwarted might-have-been. E.G. DE R. Why should I seek her spell to decompose Or to its source each rill of influence trace That feeds the brimming river of her grace? The petals numbered but degrade to prose Summer's triumphant poem of the rose: Enough for me to watch the wavering chase, Like wind o'er grass, of moods across her face, Fairest in motion, fairer in repose. Steeped in her sunshine, let me, while I may, Partake the bounty; ample 'tis for me That her mirth cheats my temples of their gray, Her charm makes years long spent seem yet to be. Wit, goodness, grace, swift flash from grave to gay,-- All these are good, but better far is she. BON VOYAGE Ship, blest to bear such freight across the blue, May stormless stars control thy horoscope; In keel and hull, in every spar and rope, Be night and day to thy dear office true! Ocean, men's path and their divider too, No fairer shrine of memory and hope To the underworld adown thy westering slope E'er vanished, or whom such regrets pursue: Smooth all thy surges as when Jove to Crete Swam with less costly burthen, and prepare A pathway meet for her home-coming soon With golden undulations such as greet The printless summer-sandals of the moon And tempt the Nautilus his cruise to dare! TO WHITTIER ON HIS SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY New England's poet, rich in love as years, Her hills and valleys praise thee, her swift brooks Dance in thy verse; to her grave sylvan nooks Thy steps allure us, which the wood-thrush hears As maids their lovers', and no treason fears; Through thee her Merrimacs and Agiochooks And many a name uncouth win gracious looks, Sweetly familiar to both Englands' ears: Peaceful by birthright, as a virgin lake, The lily's anchorage, which no eyes behold Save those of stars, yet for thy brother's sake That lay in bonds, thou blewst a blast as bold As that wherewith the heart of Roland brake, Far heard across the New World and the Old. ON AN AUTUMN SKETCH OF H.G. WILD Thanks to the artist, ever on my wall The sunset stays: that hill in glory rolled, Those trees and clouds in crimson and in gold, Burn on, nor cool when evening's shadows fall. Not round _these_ splendors Midnight wraps her pall; _These_ leaves the flush of Autumn's vintage hold In Winter's spite, nor can the Northwind bold Deface my chapel's western window small: On one, ah me! October struck his frost, But not repaid him with those Tyrian hues; His naked boughs but tell him what is lost, And parting comforts of the sun refuse: His heaven is bare,--ah, were its hollow crost Even with a cloud whose light were yet to lose! TO MISS D.T. ON HER GIVING ME A DRAWING OF LITTLE STREET ARABS As, cleansed of Tiber's and Oblivion's slime, Glow Farnesina's vaults with shapes again That dreamed some exiled artist from his pain Back to his Athens and the Muse's clime, So these world-orphaned waifs of Want and Crime, Purged by Art's absolution from the stain Of the polluting city-flood, regain Ideal grace secure from taint of time. An Attic frieze you give, a pictured song; For as with words the poet paints, for you The happy pencil at its labor sings, Stealing his privilege, nor does him wrong, Beneath the false discovering the true, And Beauty's best in unregarded things. WITH A COPY OF AUCASSIN AND NICOLETE Leaves fit to have been poor Juliet's cradle-rhyme, With gladness of a heart long quenched in mould They vibrate still, a nest not yet grown cold From its fledged burthen. The numb hand of Time Vainly his glass turns; here is endless prime; Here lips their roses keep and locks their gold; Here Love in pristine innocency bold Speaks what our grosser conscience makes a crime. Because it tells the dream that all have known Once in their lives, and to life's end the few; Because its seeds o'er Memory's desert blown Spring up in heartsease such as Eden knew; Because it hath a beauty all its own, Dear Friend, I plucked this herb of grace for you. ON PLANTING A TREE AT INVERARAY Who does his duty is a question Too complex to be solved by me, But he, I venture the suggestion, Does part of his that plants a tree. For after he is dead and buried, And epitaphed, and well forgot, Nay, even his shade by Charon ferried To--let us not inquire to what, His deed, its author long outliving, By Nature's mother-care increased, Shall stand, his verdant almoner, giving A kindly dole to man and beast. The wayfarer, at noon reposing, Shall bless its shadow on the grass, Or sheep beneath it huddle, dozing Until the thundergust o'erpass. The owl, belated in his plundering, Shall here await the friendly night, Blinking whene'er he wakes, and wondering What fool it was invented light. Hither the busy birds shall flutter, With the light timber for their nests, And, pausing from their labor, utter The morning sunshine in their breasts. What though his memory shall have vanished, Since the good deed he did survives? It is not wholly to be banished Thus to be part of many lives. Grow, then, my foster-child, and strengthen, Bough over bough, a murmurous pile, And, as your stately stem shall lengthen, So may the statelier of Argyll! AN EPISTLE TO GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 'De prodome, Des qu'il s'atorne a grant bonte Ja n'iert tot dit ne tot conte, Que leingue ne puet pas retraire Tant d'enor com prodom set faire.' CRESTIEN DE TROIES, _Li Romans dou Chevalier au Lyon_, 784-788. 1874 Curtis, whose Wit, with Fancy arm in arm, Masks half its muscle in its skill to charm, And who so gently can the Wrong expose As sometimes to make converts, never foes, Or only such as good men must expect, Knaves sore with conscience of their own defect, I come with mild remonstrance. Ere I start, A kindlier errand interrupts my heart, And I must utter, though it vex your ears, The love, the honor, felt so many years. 10 Curtis, skilled equally with voice and pen To stir the hearts or mould the minds of men,-- That voice whose music, for I've heard you sing Sweet as Casella, can with passion ring, That pen whose rapid ease ne'er trips with haste, Nor scrapes nor sputters, pointed with good taste, First Steele's, then Goldsmith's, next it came to you, Whom Thackeray rated best of all our crew,-- Had letters kept you, every wreath were yours; Had the World tempted, all its chariest doors 20 Had swung on flattered hinges to admit Such high-bred manners, such good-natured wit; At courts, in senates, who so fit to serve? And both invited, but you would not swerve, All meaner prizes waiving that you might In civic duty spend your heat and light, Unpaid, untrammelled, with a sweet disdain Refusing posts men grovel to attain. Good Man all own you; what is left me, then, To heighten praise with but Good Citizen? 30 But why this praise to make you blush and stare, And give a backache to your Easy-Chair? Old Crestien rightly says no language can Express the worth of a true Gentleman, And I agree; but other thoughts deride My first intent, and lure my pen aside. Thinking of you, I see my firelight glow On other faces, loved from long ago, Dear to us both, and all these loves combine With this I send and crowd in every line; 40 Fortune with me was in such generous mood That all my friends were yours, and all were good; Three generations come when one I call, And the fair grandame, youngest of them all, In her own Florida who found and sips The fount that fled from Ponce's longing lips. How bright they rise and wreathe my hearthstone round, Divine my thoughts, reply without a sound, And with them many a shape that memory sees, As dear as they, but crowned with aureoles these! 50 What wonder if, with protest in my thought, Arrived, I find 'twas only love I brought? I came with protest; Memory barred the road Till I repaid you half the debt I owed. No, 'twas not to bring laurels that I came, Nor would you wish it, daily seeing fame, (Or our cheap substitute, unknown of yore,) Dumped like a load of coal at every door, Mime and hetæra getting equal weight With him whose toils heroic saved the State. 60 But praise can harm not who so calmly met Slander's worst word, nor treasured up the debt, Knowing, what all experience serves to show, No mud can soil us but the mud we throw. You have heard harsher voices and more loud, As all must, not sworn liegemen of the crowd, And far aloof your silent mind could keep As when, in heavens with winter-midnight deep, The perfect moon hangs thoughtful, nor can know What hounds her lucent calm drives mad below. 70 But to my business, while you rub your eyes And wonder how you ever thought me wise. Dear friend and old, they say you shake your head And wish some bitter words of mine unsaid: I wish they might be,--there we are agreed; I hate to speak, still more what makes the need; But I must utter what the voice within Dictates, for acquiescence dumb were sin; I blurt ungrateful truths, if so they be, That none may need to say them after me. 80 'Twere my felicity could I attain The temperate zeal that balances your brain; But nature still o'erleaps reflection's plan, And one must do his service as he can. Think you it were not pleasanter to speak Smooth words that leave unflushed the brow and cheek? To sit, well-dined, with cynic smile, unseen In private box, spectator of the scene Where men the comedy of life rehearse, Idly to judge which better and which worse 90 Each hireling actor spoiled his worthless part? Were it not sweeter with a careless heart, In happy commune with the untainted brooks, To dream all day, or, walled with silent books, To hear nor heed the World's unmeaning noise, Safe in my fortress stored with lifelong joys? I love too well the pleasures of retreat Safe from the crowd and cloistered from the street; The fire that whispers its domestic joy, Flickering on walls that knew me still a boy, 100 And knew my saintly father; the full days, Not careworn from the world's soul-squandering ways, Calm days that loiter with snow-silent tread, Nor break my commune with the undying dead; Truants of Time, to-morrow like to-day, That come unhid, and claimless glide away By shelves that sun them in the indulgent Past, Where Spanish castles, even, were built to last, Where saint and sage their silent vigil keep, And wrong hath ceased or sung itself to sleep. 110 Dear were my walks, too, gathering fragrant store Of Mother Nature's simple-minded lore: I learned all weather-signs of day or night; No bird but I could name him by his flight, No distant tree but by his shape was known, Or, near at hand, by leaf or bark alone. This learning won by loving looks I hived As sweeter lore than all from books derived. I know the charm of hillside, field, and wood, Of lake and stream, and the sky's downy brood, 120 Of roads sequestered rimmed with sallow sod, But friends with hardhack, aster, goldenrod, Or succory keeping summer long its trust Of heaven-blue fleckless from the eddying dust: These were my earliest friends, and latest too, Still unestranged, whatever fate may do. For years I had these treasures, knew their worth, Estate most real man can have on earth. I sank too deep in this soft-stuffed repose That hears but rumors of earth's wrongs and woes; 130 Too well these Capuas could my muscles waste, Not void of toils, but toils of choice and taste; These still had kept me could I but have quelled The Puritan drop that in my veins rebelled. But there were times when silent were my books As jailers are, and gave me sullen looks, When verses palled, and even the woodland path, By innocent contrast, fed my heart with wrath, And I must twist my little gift of words Into a scourge of rough and knotted cords 140 Unmusical, that whistle as they swing To leave on shameless backs their purple sting. How slow Time comes! Gone who so swift as he? Add but a year, 'tis half a century Since the slave's stifled moaning broke my sleep, Heard 'gainst my will in that seclusion deep, Haply heard louder for the silence there, And so my fancied safeguard made my snare. After that moan had sharpened to a cry, And a cloud, hand-broad then, heaped all our sky 150 With its stored vengeance, and such thunders stirred As heaven's and earth's remotest chambers heard, I looked to see an ampler atmosphere By that electric passion-gust blown clear. I looked for this; consider what I see-- But I forbear, 'twould please nor you nor me To check the items in the bitter list Of all I counted on and all I mist. Only three instances I choose from all, And each enough to stir a pigeon's gall: 160 Office a fund for ballot-brokers made To pay the drudges of their gainful trade; Our cities taught what conquered cities feel By ædiles chosen that they might safely steal; And gold, however got, a title fair To such respect as only gold can bear. I seem to see this; how shall I gainsay What all our journals tell me every day? Poured our young martyrs their high-hearted blood That we might trample to congenial mud 170 The soil with such a legacy sublimed? Methinks an angry scorn is here well-timed: Where find retreat? How keep reproach at bay? Where'er I turn some scandal fouls the way. Dear friend, if any man I wished to please, 'Twere surely you whose humor's honied ease Flows flecked with gold of thought, whose generous mind Sees Paradise regained by all mankind, Whose brave example still to vanward shines, Cheeks the retreat, and spurs our lagging lines. 180 Was I too bitter? Who his phrase can choose That sees the life-blood of his dearest ooze? I loved my Country so as only they Who love a mother fit to die for may; I loved her old renown, her stainless fame,-- What better proof than that I loathed her shame? That many blamed me could not irk me long, But, if you doubted, must I not be wrong? 'Tis not for me to answer; this I know. That man or race so prosperously low 190 Sunk in success that wrath they cannot feel, Shall taste the spurn of parting Fortune's heel; For never land long lease of empire won Whose sons sate silent when base deeds were done. POSTSCRIPT, 1887 Curtis, so wrote I thirteen years ago, Tost it unfinished by, and left it so; Found lately, I have pieced it out, or tried, Since time for callid juncture was denied. Some of the verses pleased me, it is true, And still were pertinent,--those honoring you. 200 These now I offer: take them, if you will, Like the old hand-grasp, when at Shady Hill We met, or Staten Island, in the days When life was its own spur, nor needed praise. If once you thought me rash, no longer fear; Past my next milestone waits my seventieth year. I mount no longer when the trumpets call; My battle-harness idles on the wall, The spider's castle, camping-ground of dust, Not without dints, and all in front, I trust. 210 Shivering sometimes it calls me as it hears Afar the charge's tramp and clash of spears; But 'tis such murmur only as might be The sea-shell's lost tradition of the sea, That makes me muse and wonder Where? and When? While from my cliff I watch the waves of men That climb to break midway their seeming gain, And think it triumph if they shake their chain. Little I ask of Fate; will she refuse Some days of reconcilement with the Muse? 220 I take my reed again and blow it free Of dusty silence, murmuring, 'Sing to me!' And, as its stops my curious touch retries, The stir of earlier instincts I surprise,-- Instincts, if less imperious, yet more strong, And happy in the toil that ends with song. Home am I come: not, as I hoped might be, To the old haunts, too full of ghosts for me, But to the olden dreams that time endears, And the loved books that younger grow with years; 230 To country rambles, timing with my tread Some happier verse that carols in my head, Yet all with sense of something vainly mist, Of something lost, but when I never wist. How empty seems to me the populous street, One figure gone I daily loved to meet,-- The clear, sweet singer with the crown of snow Not whiter than the thoughts that housed below! And, ah, what absence feel I at my side, Like Dante when he missed his laurelled guide, 240 What sense of diminution in the air Once so inspiring, Emerson not there! But life is sweet, though all that makes it sweet Lessen like sound of friends' departing feet, And Death is beautiful as feet of friend Coming with welcome at our journey's end; For me Fate gave, whate'er she else denied, A nature sloping to the southern side; I thank her for it, though when clouds arise Such natures double-darken gloomy skies. 250 I muse upon the margin of the sea, Our common pathway to the new To Be, Watching the sails, that lessen more and more, Of good and beautiful embarked before; With bits of wreck I patch the boat shall bear Me to that unexhausted Otherwhere, Whose friendly-peopled shore I sometimes see, By soft mirage uplifted, beckon me, Nor sadly hear, as lower sinks the sun, My moorings to the past snap one by one. 260 II. SENTIMENT ENDYMION A MYSTICAL COMMENT ON TITIAN'S 'SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE' I My day began not till the twilight fell, And, lo, in ether from heaven's sweetest well, The New Moon swam divinely isolate In maiden silence, she that makes my fate Haply not knowing it, or only so As I the secrets of my sheep may know; Nor ask I more, entirely blest if she, In letting me adore, ennoble me To height of what the Gods meant making man, As only she and her best beauty can. 10 Mine be the love that in itself can find Seed of white thoughts, the lilies of the mind, Seed of that glad surrender of the will That finds in service self's true purpose still: Love that in outward fairness sees the tent Pitched for an inmate far more excellent; Love with a light irradiate to the core, Lit at her lamp, but fed from inborn store; Love thrice-requited with the single joy Of an immaculate vision naught could cloy, 20 Dearer because, so high beyond my scope, My life grew rich with her, unbribed by hope Of other guerdon save to think she knew One grateful votary paid her all her due; Happy if she, high-radiant there, resigned To his sure trust her image in his mind. O fairer even than Peace is when she comes Hushing War's tumult, and retreating drums Fade to a murmur like the sough of bees Hidden among the noon-stilled linden-trees, 30 Bringer of quiet, thou that canst allay The dust and din and travail of the day, Strewer of Silence, Giver of the dew That doth our pastures and our souls renew, Still dwell remote, still on thy shoreless sea Float unattained in silent empery, Still light my thoughts, nor listen to a prayer Would make thee less imperishably fair! II Can, then, my twofold nature find content In vain conceits of airy blandishment? 40 Ask I no more? Since yesterday I task My storm-strewn thoughts to tell me what I ask: Faint premenitions of mutation strange Steal o'er my perfect orb, and, with the change, Myself am changed; the shadow of my earth Darkens the disk of that celestial worth Which only yesterday could still suffice Upwards to waft my thoughts in sacrifice; My heightened fancy with its touches warm Moulds to a woman's that ideal form; 50 Nor yet a woman's wholly, but divine With awe her purer essence bred in mine. Was it long brooding on their own surmise, Which, of the eyes engendered, fools the eyes, Or have I seen through that translucent air A Presence shaped in its seclusions bare, My Goddess looking on me from above As look our russet maidens when they love, But high-uplifted, o'er our human heat And passion-paths too rough for her pearl feet? 60 Slowly the Shape took outline as I gazed At her full-orbed or crescent, till, bedazed With wonder-working light that subtly wrought My brain to its own substance, steeping thought In trances such as poppies give, I saw Things shut from vision by sight's sober law, Amorphous, changeful, but defined at last Into the peerless Shape mine eyes hold fast. This, too, at first I worshipt: soon, like wine, Her eyes, in mine poured, frenzy-philtred mine; 70 Passion put Worship's priestly raiment on And to the woman knelt, the Goddess gone. Was I, then, more than mortal made? or she Less than divine that she might mate with me? If mortal merely, could my nature cope With such o'ermastery of maddening hope? If Goddess, could she feel the blissful woe That women in their self-surrender know? III Long she abode aloof there in her heaven, Far as the grape-bunch of the Pleiad seven 80 Beyond my madness' utmost leap; but here Mine eyes have feigned of late her rapture near, Moulded of mind-mist that broad day dispels, Here in these shadowy woods and brook-lulled dells. Have no heaven-habitants e'er felt a void In hearts sublimed with ichor unalloyed? E'er longed to mingle with a mortal fate Intense with pathos of its briefer date? Could she partake, and live, our human stains? Even with the thought there tingles through my veins 90 Sense of unwarned renewal; I, the dead, Receive and house again the ardor fled, As once Alcestis; to the ruddy brim Feel masculine virtue flooding every limb, And life, like Spring returning, brings the key That sets my senses from their winter free, Dancing like naked fauns too glad for shame. Her passion, purified to palest flame, Can it thus kindle? Is her purpose this? I will not argue, lest I lose a bliss 100 That makes me dream Tithonus' fortune mine, (Or what of it was palpably divine Ere came the fruitlessly immortal gift;) I cannot curb my hope's imperious drift That wings with fire my dull mortality; Though fancy-forged, 'tis all I feel or see. IV My Goddess sinks; round Latmos' darkening brow Trembles the parting of her presence now, Faint as the perfume left upon the grass By her limbs' pressure or her feet that pass 110 By me conjectured, but conjectured so As things I touch far fainter substance show. Was it mine eyes' imposture I have seen Flit with the moonbeams on from shade to sheen Through the wood-openings? Nay, I see her now Out of her heaven new-lighted, from her brow The hair breeze-scattered, like loose mists that blow Across her crescent, goldening as they go High-kirtled for the chase, and what was shown, Of maiden rondure, like the rose half-blown. 120 If dream, turn real! If a vision, stay! Take mortal shape, my philtre's spell obey! If hags compel thee from thy secret sky With gruesome incantations, why not I, Whose only magic is that I distil A potion, blent of passion, thought, and will, Deeper in reach, in force of fate more rich, Than e'er was juice wrung by Thessalian witch From moon-enchanted herbs,--a potion brewed Of my best life in each diviner mood? 130 Myself the elixir am, myself the bowl Seething and mantling with my soul of soul. Taste and be humanized: what though the cup, With thy lips frenzied, shatter? Drink it up! If but these arms may clasp, o'erquited so, My world, thy heaven, all life means I shall know. V Sure she hath heard my prayer and granted half, As Gods do who at mortal madness laugh. Yet if life's solid things illusion seem, Why may not substance wear the mask of dream? 140 In sleep she comes; she visits me in dreams, And, as her image in a thousand streams, So in my veins, that her obey, she sees, Floating and flaming there, her images Bear to my little world's remotest zone Glad messages of her, and her alone. With silence-sandalled Sleep she comes to me, (But softer-footed, sweeter-browed, than she,) In motion gracious as a seagull's wing, And all her bright limbs, moving, seem to sing. 150 Let me believe so, then, if so I may With the night's bounty feed my beggared day. In dreams I see her lay the goddess down With bow and quiver, and her crescent-crown Flicker and fade away to dull eclipse As down to mine she deigns her longed-for lips; And as her neck my happy arms enfold, Flooded and lustred with her loosened gold, She whispers words each sweeter than a kiss: Then, wakened with the shock of sudden bliss, 160 My arms are empty, my awakener fled, And, silent in the silent sky o'erhead, But coldly as on ice-plated snow, she gleams, Herself the mother and the child of dreams. VI Gone is the time when phantasms could appease My quest phantasmal and bring cheated ease; When, if she glorified my dreams, I felt Through all my limbs a change immortal melt At touch of hers illuminate with soul. Not long could I be stilled with Fancy's dole; 170 Too soon the mortal mixture in me caught Red fire from her celestial flame, and fought For tyrannous control in all my veins: My fool's prayer was accepted; what remains? Or was it some eidolon merely, sent By her who rules the shades in banishment, To mock me with her semblance? Were it thus, How 'scape I shame, whose will was traitorous? What shall compensate an ideal dimmed? How blanch again my statue virgin-limbed, 180 Soiled with the incense-smoke her chosen priest Poured more profusely as within decreased The fire unearthly, fed with coals from far Within the soul's shrine? Could my fallen star Be set in heaven again by prayers and tears And quenchless sacrifice of all my years, How would the victim to the flamen leap, And life for life's redemption paid hold cheap! But what resource when she herself descends From her blue throne, and o'er her vassal bends 190 That shape thrice-deified by love, those eyes Wherein the Lethe of all others lies? When my white queen of heaven's remoteness tires, Herself against her other self conspires, Takes woman's nature, walks in mortal ways, And finds in my remorse her beauty's praise? Yet all would I renounce to dream again The dream in dreams fulfilled that made my pain, My noble pain that heightened all my years With crowns to win and prowess-breeding tears; 200 Nay, would that dream renounce once more to see Her from her sky there looking down at me! VII Goddess, reclimb thy heaven, and be once more An inaccessible splendor to adore, A faith, a hope of such transcendent worth As bred ennobling discontent with earth; Give back the longing, back the elated mood That, fed with thee, spurned every meaner good; Give even the spur of impotent despair That, without hope, still bade aspire and dare; 210 Give back the need to worship, that still pours Down to the soul the virtue it adores! Nay, brightest and most beautiful, deem naught These frantic words, the reckless wind of thought; Still stoop, still grant,--I live but in thy will; Be what thou wilt, but be a woman still! Vainly I cried, nor could myself believe That what I prayed for I would fain receive; My moon is set; my vision set with her; No more can worship vain my pulses stir. 220 Goddess Triform, I own thy triple spell, My heaven's queen,--queen, too, of my earth and hell! THE BLACK PREACHER A BRETON LEGEND At Carnac in Brittany, close on the bay, They show you a church, or rather the gray Ribs of a dead one, left there to bleach With the wreck lying near on the crest of the beach, Roofless and splintered with thunder-stone, 'Mid lichen-blurred gravestones all alone; 'Tis the kind of ruin strange sights to see That may have their teaching for you and me. Something like this, then, my guide had to tell, Perched on a saint cracked across when he fell; 10 But since I might chance give his meaning a wrench, He talking his _patois_ and I English-French, I'll put what he told me, preserving the tone, In a rhymed prose that makes it half his, half my own. An abbey-church stood here, once on a time, Built as a death-bed atonement for crime: 'Twas for somebody's sins, I know not whose; But sinners are plenty, and you can choose. Though a cloister now of the dusk-winged bat, 'Twas rich enough once, and the brothers grew fat, 20 Looser in girdle and purpler in jowl, Singing good rest to the founder's lost soul. But one day came Northmen, and lithe tongues of fire Lapped up the chapter-house, licked off the spire, And left all a rubbish-heap, black and dreary, Where only the wind sings _miserere_. No priest has kneeled since at the altar's foot, Whose crannies are searched by the nightshade's root, Nor sound of service is ever heard, Except from throat of the unclean bird, 30 Hooting to unassoiled shapes as they pass In midnights unholy his witches' mass, Or shouting 'Ho! ho!' from the belfry high As the Devil's sabbath-train whirls by. But once a year, on the eve of All-Souls, Through these arches dishallowed the organ rolls, Fingers long fleshless the bell-ropes work, The chimes peal muffled with sea-mists mirk, The skeleton windows are traced anew On the baleful nicker of corpse-lights blue, 40 And the ghosts must come, so the legend saith, To a preaching of Reverend Doctor Death. Abbots, monks, barons, and ladies fair Hear the dull summons and gather there: No rustle of silk now, no clink of mail, Nor ever a one greets his church-mate pale; No knight whispers love in the _châtelaine's_ ear, His next-door neighbor this five-hundred year; No monk has a sleek _benedicite_ For the great lord shadowy now as he; 50 Nor needeth any to hold his breath, Lest he lose the least word of Doctor Death. He chooses his text in the Book Divine, Tenth verse of the Preacher in chapter nine: '"Whatsoever thy hand shall find thee to do, That do with thy whole might, or thou shalt rue; For no man is wealthy, or wise, or brave, In that quencher of might-be's and would-be's, the grave." Bid by the Bridegroom, "To-morrow," ye said, And To-morrow was digging a trench for your bed; 60 Ye said, "God can wait; let us finish our wine;" Ye had wearied Him, fools, and that last knock was mine!' But I can't pretend to give you the sermon, Or say if the tongue were French, Latin, or German; Whatever he preached in, I give you my word The meaning was easy to all that heard; Famous preachers there have been and be, But never was one so convincing as he; So blunt was never a begging friar, No Jesuit's tongue so barbed with fire, 70 Cameronian never, nor Methodist, Wrung gall out of Scripture with such a twist. And would you know who his hearers must be? I tell you just what my guide told me: Excellent teaching men have, day and night, From two earnest friars, a black and a white, The Dominican Death and the Carmelite Life; And between these two there is never strife, For each has his separate office and station, And each his own work in the congregation; 80 Whoso to the white brother deafens his ears, And cannot be wrought on by blessings or tears, Awake In his coffin must wait and wait, In that blackness of darkness that means _too late_, And come once a year, when the ghost-bell tolls, As till Doomsday it shall on the eve of All-Souls, To hear Doctor Death, whose words smart with the brine Of the Preacher, the tenth verse of chapter nine. ARCADIA REDIVIVA I, walking the familiar street, While a crammed horse-car jingled through it, Was lifted from my prosy feet And in Arcadia ere I knew it. Fresh sward for gravel soothed my tread, And shepherd's pipes my ear delighted; The riddle may be lightly read: I met two lovers newly plighted. They murmured by in happy care, New plans for paradise devising, 10 Just as the moon, with pensive stare, O'er Mistress Craigie's pines was rising. Astarte, known nigh threescore years, Me to no speechless rapture urges; Them in Elysium she enspheres, Queen, from of old, of thaumaturges. The railings put forth bud and bloom, The house-fronts all with myrtles twine them, And light-winged Loves in every room Make nests, and then with kisses line them. 20 O sweetness of untasted life! O dream, its own supreme fulfillment! O hours with all illusion rife, As ere the heart divined what ill meant! '_Et ego_', sighed I to myself, And strove some vain regrets to bridle, 'Though now laid dusty on the shelf, Was hero once of such an idyl! 'An idyl ever newly sweet, Although since Adam's day recited, 30 Whose measures time them to Love's feet, Whose sense is every ill requited.' Maiden, if I may counsel, drain Each drop of this enchanted season, For even our honeymoons must wane, Convicted of green cheese by Reason. And none will seem so safe from change, Nor in such skies benignant hover, As this, beneath whose witchery strange You tread on rose-leaves with your lover. 40 The glass unfilled all tastes can fit, As round its brim Conjecture dances; For not Mephisto's self hath wit To draw such vintages as Fancy's. When our pulse beats its minor key, When play-time halves and school-time doubles, Age fills the cup with serious tea, Which once Dame Clicquot starred with bubbles. 'Fie, Mr. Graybeard! Is this wise? Is this the moral of a poet, 50 Who, when the plant of Eden dies, Is privileged once more to sow it! 'That herb of clay-disdaining root, From stars secreting what it feeds on, Is burnt-out passion's slag and soot Fit soil to strew its dainty seeds on? 'Pray, why, if in Arcadia once, Need one so soon forget the way there? Or why, once there, be such a dunce As not contentedly to stay there?' 60 Dear child, 'twas but a sorry jest, And from my heart I hate the cynic Who makes the Book of Life a nest For comments staler than rabbinic. If Love his simple spell but keep, Life with ideal eyes to flatter, The Grail itself were crockery cheap To Every-day's communion-platter. One Darby is to me well known, Who, as the hearth between them blazes, 70 Sees the old moonlight shine on Joan, And float her youthward in its hazes. He rubs his spectacles, he stares,-- 'Tis the same face that witched him early! He gropes for his remaining hairs,-- Is this a fleece that feels so curly? 'Good heavens! but now 'twas winter gray, And I of years had more than plenty; The almanac's a fool! 'Tis May! Hang family Bibles! I am twenty! 80 'Come, Joan, your arm; we'll walk the room-- The lane, I mean--do you remember? How confident the roses bloom, As if it ne'er could be December! 'Nor more it shall, while in your eyes My heart its summer heat recovers, And you, howe'er your mirror lies, Find your old beauty in your lover's.' THE NEST MAY When oaken woods with buds are pink, And new-come birds each morning sing, When fickle May on Summer's brink Pauses, and knows not which to fling, Whether fresh bud and bloom again, Or hoar-frost silvering hill and plain, Then from the honeysuckle gray The oriole with experienced quest Twitches the fibrous bark away, The cordage of his hammock-nest. Cheering his labor with a note Rich as the orange of his throat. High o'er the loud and dusty road The soft gray cup in safety swings, To brim ere August with its load Of downy breasts and throbbing wings, O'er which the friendly elm-tree heaves An emerald roof with sculptured eaves. Below, the noisy World drags by In the old way, because it must, The bride with heartbreak in her eye, The mourner following hated dust: Thy duty, wingèd flame of Spring, Is but to love, and fly, and sing. Oh, happy life, to soar and sway Above the life by mortals led, Singing the merry months away, Master, not slave of daily bread, And, when the Autumn comes, to flee Wherever sunshine beckons thee! PALINODE--DECEMBER Like some lorn abbey now, the wood Stands roofless in the bitter air; In ruins on its floor is strewed The carven foliage quaint and rare, And homeless winds complain along The columned choir once thrilled with song. And thou, dear nest, whence joy and praise The thankful oriole used to pour, Swing'st empty while the north winds chase Their snowy swarms from Labrador: But, loyal to the happy past, I love thee still for what thou wast. Ah, when the Summer graces flee From other nests more dear than thou, And, where June crowded once, I see Only bare trunk and disleaved bough; When springs of life that gleamed and gushed Run chilled, and slower, and are hushed; When our own branches, naked long, The vacant nests of Spring betray, Nurseries of passion, love, and song That vanished as our year grew gray; When Life drones o'er a tale twice told O'er embers pleading with the cold,-- I'll trust, that, like the birds of Spring, Our good goes not without repair, But only flies to soar and sing Far off in some diviner air, Where we shall find it in the calms Of that fair garden 'neath the palms. A YOUTHFUL EXPERIMENT IN ENGLISH HEXAMETERS IMPRESSIONS OF HOMER Sometimes come pauses of calm, when the rapt bard, holding his heart back, Over his deep mind muses, as when o'er awe-stricken ocean Poises a heapt cloud luridly, ripening the gale and the thunder; Slow rolls onward the verse with a long swell heaving and swinging, Seeming to wait till, gradually wid'ning from far-off horizons, Piling the deeps up, heaping the glad-hearted surges before it, Gathers the thought as a strong wind darkening and cresting the tumult. Then every pause, every heave, each trough in the waves, has its meaning; Full-sailed, forth like a tall ship steadies the theme, and around it, Leaping beside it in glad strength, running in wild glee beyond it, Harmonies billow exulting and floating the soul where it lists them, Swaying the listener's fantasy hither and thither like drift-weed. BIRTHDAY VERSES WRITTEN IN A CHILD'S ALBUM 'Twas sung of old in hut and hall How once a king in evil hour Hung musing o'er his castle wall, And, lost in idle dreams, let fall Into the sea his ring of power. Then, let him sorrow as he might, And pledge his daughter and his throne To who restored the jewel bright, The broken spell would ne'er unite; The grim old ocean held its own. Those awful powers on man that wait, On man, the beggar or the king, To hovel bare or hall of state A magic ring that masters fate With each succeeding birthday bring. Therein are set four jewels rare: Pearl winter, summer's ruby blaze, Spring's emerald, and, than all more fair, Fall's pensive opal, doomed to bear A heart of fire bedreamed with haze. To him the simple spell who knows The spirits of the ring to sway, Fresh power with every sunrise flows, And royal pursuivants are those That fly his mandates to obey. But he that with a slackened will Dreams of things past or things to be, From him the charm is slipping still, And drops, ere he suspect the ill, Into the inexorable sea. ESTRANGEMENT The path from me to you that led, Untrodden long, with grass is grown, Mute carpet that his lieges spread Before the Prince Oblivion When he goes visiting the dead. And who are they but who forget? You, who my coming could surmise Ere any hint of me as yet Warned other ears and other eyes, See the path blurred without regret. But when I trace its windings sweet With saddened steps, at every spot That feels the memory in my feet, Each grass-blade turns forget-me-not, Where murmuring bees your name repeat. PHOEBE Ere pales in Heaven the morning star, A bird, the loneliest of its kind, Hears Dawn's faint footfall from afar While all its mates are dumb and blind. It is a wee sad-colored thing, As shy and secret as a maid, That, ere in choir the robins sing, Pipes its own name like one afraid. It seems pain-prompted to repeat The story of some ancient ill, But _Phoebe! Phoebe!_ sadly sweet Is all it says, and then is still. It calls and listens. Earth and sky, Hushed by the pathos of its fate, Listen: no whisper of reply Comes from its doom-dissevered mate. _Phoebe!_ it calls and calls again, And Ovid, could he but have heard, Had hung a legendary pain About the memory of the bird; A pain articulate so long, In penance of some mouldered crime Whose ghost still flies the Furies' thong Down the waste solitudes of time. Waif of the young World's wonder-hour, When gods found mortal maidens fair, And will malign was joined with power Love's kindly laws to overbear, Like Progne, did it feel the stress And coil of the prevailing words Close round its being, and compress Man's ampler nature to a bird's? One only memory left of all The motley crowd of vanished scenes, Hers, and vain impulse to recall By repetition what it means. _Phoebe!_ is all it has to say In plaintive cadence o'er and o'er, Like children that have lost their way, And know their names, but nothing more. Is it a type, since Nature's Lyre Vibrates to every note in man, Of that insatiable desire, Meant to be so since life began? I, in strange lands at gray of dawn, Wakeful, have heard that fruitless plaint Through Memory's chambers deep withdrawn Renew its iterations faint. So nigh! yet from remotest years It summons back its magic, rife With longings unappeased, and tears Drawn from the very source of life. DAS EWIG-WEIBLICHE How was I worthy so divine a loss, Deepening my midnights, kindling all my morns? Why waste such precious wood to make my cross, Such far-sought roses for my crown of thorns? And when she came, how earned I such a gift? Why spend on me, a poor earth-delving mole, The fireside sweetnesses, the heavenward lift, The hourly mercy, of a woman's soul? Ah, did we know to give her all her right, What wonders even in our poor clay were done! It is not Woman leaves us to our night, But our brute earth that grovels from her sun. Our nobler cultured fields and gracious domes We whirl too oft from her who still shines on To light in vain our caves and clefts, the homes Of night-bird instincts pained till she be gone. Still must this body starve our souls with shade; But when Death makes us what we were before, Then shall her sunshine all our depths invade, And not a shadow stain heaven's crystal floor. THE RECALL Come back before the birds are flown, Before the leaves desert the tree, And, through the lonely alleys blown, Whisper their vain regrets to me Who drive before a blast more rude, The plaything of my gusty mood, In vain pursuing and pursued! Nay, come although the boughs be bare, Though snowflakes fledge the summer's nest, And in some far Ausonian air The thrush, your minstrel, warm his breast. Come, sunshine's treasurer, and bring To doubting flowers their faith in spring, To birds and me the need to sing! ABSENCE Sleep is Death's image,--poets tell us so; But Absence is the bitter self of Death, And, you away, Life's lips their red forego, Parched in an air unfreshened by your breath. Light of those eyes that made the light of mine, Where shine you? On what happier fields and flowers? Heaven's lamps renew their lustre less divine, But only serve to count my darkened hours. If with your presence went your image too, That brain-born ghost my path would never cross Which meets me now where'er I once met you, Then vanishes, to multiply my loss. MONNA LISA She gave me all that woman can, Nor her soul's nunnery forego, A confidence that man to man Without remorse can never show. Rare art, that can the sense refine Till not a pulse rebellious stirs, And, since she never can be mine, Makes it seem sweeter to be hers! THE OPTIMIST Turbid from London's noise and smoke, Here I find air and quiet too; Air filtered through the beech and oak, Quiet by nothing harsher broke Than wood-dove's meditative coo. The Truce of God is here; the breeze Sighs as men sigh relieved from care, Or tilts as lightly in the trees As might a robin: all is ease, With pledge of ampler ease to spare. Time, leaning on his scythe, forgets To turn the hour-glass in his hand, And all life's petty cares and frets, Its teasing hopes and weak regrets, Are still as that oblivious sand. Repose fills all the generous space Of undulant plain; the rook and crow Hush; 'tis as if a silent grace, By Nature murmured, calmed the face Of Heaven above and Earth below. From past and future toils I rest, One Sabbath pacifies my year; I am the halcyon, this my nest; And all is safely for the best While the World's there and I am here. So I turn tory for the nonce, And think the radical a bore, Who cannot see, thick-witted dunce, That what was good for people once Must be as good forevermore. Sun, sink no deeper down the sky; Earth, never change this summer mood; Breeze, loiter thus forever by, Stir the dead leaf or let it lie; Since I am happy, all is good. ON BURNING SOME OLD LETTERS With what odorous woods and spices Spared for royal sacrifices, With what costly gums seld-seen, Hoarded to embalm a queen, With what frankincense and myrrh, Burn these precious parts of her, Full of life and light and sweetness As a summer day's completeness, Joy of sun and song of bird Running wild in every word, Full of all the superhuman Grace and winsomeness of woman? O'er these leaves her wrist has slid, Thrilled with veins where fire is hid 'Neath the skin's pellucid veil, Like the opal's passion pale; This her breath has sweetened; this Still seems trembling with the kiss She half-ventured on my name, Brow and cheek and throat aflame; Over all caressing lies Sunshine left there by her eyes; From them all an effluence rare With her nearness fills the air, Till the murmur I half-hear Of her light feet drawing near. Rarest woods were coarse and rough, Sweetest spice not sweet enough, Too impure all earthly fire For this sacred funeral-pyre; These rich relics must suffice For their own dear sacrifice. Seek we first an altar fit For such victims laid on it: It shall be this slab brought home In old happy days from Rome,-- Lazuli, once blest to line Dian's inmost cell and shrine. Gently now I lay them there. Pure as Dian's forehead bare, Yet suffused with warmer hue, Such as only Latmos knew. Fire I gather from the sun In a virgin lens; 'tis done! Mount the flames, red, yellow, blue, As her moods were shining through, Of the moment's impulse born,-- Moods of sweetness, playful scorn, Half defiance, half surrender, More than cruel, more than tender, Flouts, caresses, sunshine, shade, Gracious doublings of a maid Infinite in guileless art, Playing hide-seek with her heart. On the altar now, alas, There they lie a crinkling mass, Writhing still, as if with grief Went the life from every leaf; Then (heart-breaking palimpsest!) Vanishing ere wholly guessed, Suddenly some lines flash back, Traced in lightning on the black, And confess, till now denied, All the fire they strove to hide. What they told me, sacred trust, Stays to glorify my dust, There to burn through dust and damp Like a mage's deathless lamp, While an atom of this frame Lasts to feed the dainty flame. All is ashes now, but they In my soul are laid away, And their radiance round me hovers Soft as moonlight over lovers, Shutting her and me alone In dream-Edens of our own; First of lovers to invent Love, and teach men what it meant. THE PROTEST I could not bear to see those eyes On all with wasteful largess shine, And that delight of welcome rise Like sunshine strained through amber wine, But that a glow from deeper skies, From conscious fountains more divine, Is (is it?) mine. Be beautiful to all mankind, As Nature fashioned thee to be; 'Twould anger me did all not find The sweet perfection that's in thee: Yet keep one charm of charms behind,-- Nay, thou'rt so rich, keep two or three For (is it?) me! THE PETITION Oh, tell me less or tell me more, Soft eyes with mystery at the core, That always seem to melt my own Frankly as pansies fully grown, Yet waver still 'tween no and yes! So swift to cavil and deny, Then parley with concessions shy, Dear eyes, that make their youth be mine And through my inmost shadows shine, Oh, tell me more or tell me less! FACT OR FANCY? In town I hear, scarce wakened yet, My neighbor's clock behind the wall Record the day's increasing debt, And _Cuckoo! Cuckoo!_ faintly call. Our senses run in deepening grooves, Thrown out of which they lose their tact, And consciousness with effort moves From habit past to present fact. So, in the country waked to-day, I hear, unwitting of the change, A cuckoo's throb from far away Begin to strike, nor think it strange. The sound creates its wonted frame: My bed at home, the songster hid Behind the wainscoting,--all came As long association bid. Then, half aroused, ere yet Sleep's mist From the mind's uplands furl away, To the familiar sound I list, Disputed for by Night and Day. I count to learn how late it is, Until, arrived at thirty-four, I question, 'What strange world is this Whose lavish hours would make me poor?' _Cuckoo! Cuckoo!_ Still on it went, With hints of mockery in its tone; How could such hoards of time be spent By one poor mortal's wit alone? I have it! Grant, ye kindly Powers, I from this spot may never stir, If only these uncounted hours May pass, and seem too short, with Her! But who She is, her form and face, These to the world of dream belong; She moves through fancy's visioned space, Unbodied, like the cuckoo's song. AGRO-DOLCE One kiss from all others prevents me, And sets all my pulses astir, And burns on my lips and torments me: 'Tis the kiss that I fain would give her. One kiss for all others requites me, Although it is never to be, And sweetens my dreams and invites me: 'Tis the kiss that she dare not give me. Ah, could it he mine, it were sweeter Than honey bees garner in dream, Though its bliss on my lips were fleeter Than a swallow's dip to the stream. And yet, thus denied, it can never In the prose of life vanish away; O'er my lips it must hover forever, The sunshine and shade of my day. THE BROKEN TRYST Walking alone where we walked together, When June was breezy and blue, I watch in the gray autumnal weather The leaves fall inconstant as you. If a dead leaf startle behind me, I think 'tis your garment's hem, And, oh, where no memory could find me, Might I whirl away with them! CASA SIN ALMA RECUERDO DE MADRID Silencioso por la puerta Voy de su casa desierta Do siempre feliz entré, Y la encuentro en vano abierta Cual la boca de una muerta Despues que el alma se fué. A CHRISTMAS CAROL FOR THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL CHILDREN OF THE CHURCH OF THE DISCIPLES 'What means this glory round our feet,' The Magi mused, 'more bright than morn?' And voices chanted clear and sweet, 'To-day the Prince of Peace is born!' 'What means that star,' the Shepherds said, 'That brightens through the rocky glen?' And angels, answering overhead, Sang, 'Peace on earth, good-will to men!' 'Tis eighteen hundred years and more Since those sweet oracles were dumb; We wait for Him, like them of yore; Alas, He seems so slow to come! But it was said, in words of gold No time or sorrow e'er shall dim, That little children might be bold In perfect trust to come to Him. All round about our feet shall shine A light like that the wise men saw, If we our loving wills incline To that sweet Life which is the Law. So shall we learn to understand The simple faith of shepherds then, And, clasping kindly hand in hand, Sing, 'Peace on earth, good-will to men!' And they who do their souls no wrong, But keep at eve the faith of morn, Shall daily hear the angel-song, 'To-day the Prince of Peace is born!' MY PORTRAIT GALLERY Oft round my hall of portraiture I gaze, By Memory reared, the artist wise and holy, From stainless quarries of deep-buried days. There, as I muse in soothing melancholy, Your faces glow in more than mortal youth, Companions of my prime, now vanished wholly, The loud, impetuous boy, the low-voiced maiden, Now for the first time seen in flawless truth. Ah, never master that drew mortal breath Can match thy portraits, just and generous Death, Whose brush with sweet regretful tints is laden! Thou paintest that which struggled here below Half understood, or understood for woe, And with a sweet forewarning Mak'st round the sacred front an aureole glow Woven of that light that rose on Easter morning. PAOLO TO FRANCESCA I was with thee in Heaven: I cannot tell If years or moments, so the sudden bliss, When first we found, then lost, us in a kiss. Abolished Time, abolished Earth and Hell, Left only Heaven. Then from our blue there fell The dagger's flash, and did not fall amiss, For nothing now can rob my life of this,-- That once with thee in Heaven, all else is well. Us, undivided when man's vengeance came, God's half-forgives that doth not here divide; And, were this bitter whirl-blast fanged with flame, To me 'twere summer, we being side by side: This granted, I God's mercy will not blame, For, given thy nearness, nothing is denied. SONNET SCOTTISH BORDER As sinks the sun behind yon alien hills Whose heather-purple slopes, in glory rolled, Flush all my thought with momentary gold, What pang of vague regret my fancy thrills? Here 'tis enchanted ground the peasant tills, Where the shy ballad dared its blooms unfold, And memory's glamour makes new sights seem old, As when our life some vanished dream fulfils. Yet not to thee belong these painless tears, Land loved ere seen: before my darkened eyes, From far beyond the waters and the years, Horizons mute that wait their poet rise; The stream before me fades and disappears, And in the Charles the western splendor dies. SONNET ON BEING ASKED FOR AN AUTOGRAPH IN VENICE Amid these fragments of heroic days When thought met deed with mutual passion's leap, There sits a Fame whose silent trump makes cheap What short-lived rumor of ourselves we raise. They had far other estimate of praise Who stamped the signet of their souls so deep In art and action, and whose memories keep Their height like stars above our misty ways: In this grave presence to record my name Something within me hangs the head and shrinks. Dull were the soul without some joy in fame; Yet here to claim remembrance were, methinks, Like him who, in the desert's awful frame, Notches his cockney initials on the Sphinx. THE DANCING BEAR Far over Elf-land poets stretch their sway, And win their dearest crowns beyond the goal Of their own conscious purpose; they control With gossamer threads wide-flown our fancy's play, And so our action. On my walk to-day, A wallowing bear begged clumsily his toll, When straight a vision rose of Atta Troll, And scenes ideal witched mine eyes away. '_Merci, Mossieu!_' the astonished bear-ward cried, Grateful for thrice his hope to me, the slave Of partial memory, seeing at his side A bear immortal. The glad dole I gave Was none of mine; poor Heine o'er the wide Atlantic welter stretched it from his grave. THE MAPLE The Maple puts her corals on in May, While loitering frosts about the lowlands cling, To be in tune with what the robins sing, Plastering new log-huts 'mid her branches gray; But when the Autumn southward turns away, Then in her veins burns most the blood of Spring. And every leaf, intensely blossoming, Makes the year's sunset pale the set of day. O Youth unprescient, were it only so With trees you plant, and in whose shade reclined, Thinking their drifting blooms Fate's coldest snow, You carve dear names upon the faithful rind, Nor in that vernal stem the cross foreknow That Age shall bear, silent, yet unresigned! NIGHTWATCHES While the slow clock, as they were miser's gold, Counts and recounts the mornward steps of Time, The darkness thrills with conscience of each crime By Death committed, daily grown more bold. Once more the list of all my wrongs is told, And ghostly hands stretch to me from my prime Helpless farewells, as from an alien clime; For each new loss redoubles all the old. This morn 'twas May; the blossoms were astir With southern wind; but now the boughs are bent With snow instead of birds, and all things freeze. How much of all my past is dumb with her, And of my future, too, for with her went Half of that world I ever cared to please! DEATH OF QUEEN MERCEDES Hers all that Earth could promise or bestow,-- Youth, Beauty, Love, a crown, the beckoning years, Lids never wet, unless with joyous tears, A life remote from every sordid woe, And by a nation's swelled to lordlier flow. What lurking-place, thought we, for doubts or fears, When, the day's swan, she swam along the cheers Of the Alcalá, five happy months ago? The guns were shouting Io Hymen then That, on her birthday, now denounce her doom; The same white steeds that tossed their scorn of men To-day as proudly drag her to the tomb. Grim jest of fate! Yet who dare call it blind, Knowing what life is, what our human-kind? PRISON OF CERVANTES Seat of all woes? Though Nature's firm decree The narrowing soul with narrowing dungeon bind, Yet was his free of motion as the wind, And held both worlds, of spirit and sense, in fee. In charmed communion with his dual mind He wandered Spain, himself both knight and hind, Redressing wrongs he knew must ever be. His humor wise could see life's long deceit, Man's baffled aims, nor therefore both despise; His knightly nature could ill fortune greet Like an old friend. Whose ever such kind eyes That pierced so deep, such scope, save his whose feet By Avon ceased 'neath the same April's skies? TO A LADY PLAYING ON THE CITHERN So dreamy-soft the notes, so far away They seem to fall, the horns of Oberon Blow their faint Hunt's-up from the good-time gone; Or, on a morning of long-withered May, Larks tinkle unseen o'er Claudian arches gray, That Romeward crawl from Dreamland; and anon My fancy flings her cloak of Darkness on, To vanish from the dungeon of To-day. In happier times and scenes I seem to be, And, as her fingers flutter o'er the strings, The days return when I was young as she, And my fledged thoughts began to feel their wings With all Heaven's blue before them: Memory Or Music is it such enchantment sings? THE EYE'S TREASURY Gold of the reddening sunset, backward thrown In largess on my tall paternal trees, Thou with false hope or fear didst never tease His heart that hoards thee; nor is childhood flown From him whose life no fairer boon hath known Than that what pleased him earliest still should please: And who hath incomes safe from chance as these, Gone in a moment, yet for life his own? All other gold is slave of earthward laws; This to the deeps of ether takes its flight, And on the topmost leaves makes glorious pause Of parting pathos ere it yield to night: So linger, as from me earth's light withdraws, Dear touch of Nature, tremulously bright! PESSIMOPTIMISM Ye little think what toil it was to build A world of men imperfect even as this, Where we conceive of Good by what we miss, Of ill by that wherewith best days are filled; A world whose every atom is self-willed, Whose corner-stone is propt on artifice, Whose joy is shorter-lived than woman's kiss, Whose wisdom hoarded is but to be spilled. Yet this is better than a life of caves, Whose highest art was scratching on a bone, Or chipping toilsome arrowheads of flint; Better, though doomed to hear while Cleon raves, To see wit's want eterned in paint or stone, And wade the drain-drenched shoals of daily print. THE BRAKES What countless years and wealth of brain were spent To bring us hither from our caves and huts, And trace through pathless wilds the deep-worn ruts Of faith and habit, by whose deep indent Prudence may guide if genius be not lent, Genius, not always happy when it shuts Its ears against the plodder's ifs and buts, Hoping in one rash leap to snatch the event. The coursers of the sun, whose hoofs of flame Consume morn's misty threshold, are exact As bankers' clerks, and all this star-poised frame, One swerve allowed, were with convulsion rackt; This world were doomed, should Dulness fail, to tame Wit's feathered heels in the stern stocks of fact. A FOREBODING What were the whole void world, if thou wert dead, Whose briefest absence can eclipse my day, And make the hours that danced with Time away Drag their funereal steps with muffled head? Through thee, meseems, the very rose is red, From thee the violet steals its breath in May, From thee draw life all things that grow not gray, And by thy force the happy stars are sped. Thou near, the hope of thee to overflow Fills all my earth and heaven, as when in Spring, Ere April come, the birds and blossoms know, And grasses brighten round her feet to cling; Nay, and this hope delights all nature so That the dumb turf I tread on seems to sing. III. FANCY UNDER THE OCTOBER MAPLES What mean these banners spread, These paths with royal red So gaily carpeted? Comes there a prince to-day? Such footing were too fine For feet less argentine Than Dian's own or thine, Queen whom my tides obey. Surely for thee are meant These hues so orient That with a sultan's tent Each tree invites the sun; Our Earth such homage pays, So decks her dusty ways, And keeps such holidays, For one and only one. My brain shapes form and face, Throbs with the rhythmic grace And cadence of her pace To all fine instincts true; Her footsteps, as they pass, Than moonbeams over grass Fall lighter,--but, alas, More insubstantial too! LOVE'S CLOCK A PASTORAL DAPHNIS _waiting_ 'O Dryad feet, Be doubly fleet, Timed to my heart's expectant beat While I await her! "At four," vowed she; 'Tis scarcely three, Yet by _my_ time it seems to be A good hour later!' CHLOE 'Bid me not stay! Hear reason, pray! 'Tis striking six! Sure never day Was short as this is!' DAPHNIS 'Reason nor rhyme Is in the chime! It can't be five; I've scarce had time To beg two kisses!' BOTH 'Early or late, When lovers wait, And Love's watch gains, if Time a gait So snail-like chooses, Why should his feet Become more fleet Than cowards' are, when lovers meet And Love's watch loses?' ELEANOR MAKES MACAROONS Light of triumph in her eyes, Eleanor her apron ties; As she pushes back her sleeves, High resolve her bosom heaves. Hasten, cook! impel the fire To the pace of her desire; As you hope to save your soul, Bring a virgin casserole, Brightest bring of silver spoons,-- Eleanor makes macaroons! Almond-blossoms, now adance In the smile of Southern France, Leave your sport with sun and breeze, Think of duty, not of ease; Fashion, 'neath their jerkins brown, Kernels white as thistle-down, Tiny cheeses made with cream From the Galaxy's mid-stream, Blanched in light of honeymoons,-- Eleanor makes macaroons! Now for sugar,--nay, our plan Tolerates no work of man. Hurry, then, ye golden bees; Fetch your clearest honey, please, Garnered on a Yorkshire moor, While the last larks sing and soar, From the heather-blossoms sweet Where sea-breeze and sunshine meet, And the Augusts mask as Junes,-- Eleanor makes macaroons! Next the pestle and mortar find. Pure rock-crystal,--these to grind Into paste more smooth than silk, Whiter than the milkweed's milk: Spread it on a rose-leaf, thus, Cate to please Theocritus; Then the fire with spices swell, While, for her completer spell, Mystic canticles she croons,-- Eleanor makes macaroons! Perfect! and all this to waste On a graybeard's palsied taste! Poets so their verses write, Heap them full of life and light, And then fling them to the rude Mumbling of the multitude. Not so dire her fate as theirs, Since her friend this gift declares Choicest of his birthday boons,-- Eleanor's dear macaroons! _February_ 22, 1884. TELEPATHY 'And how could you dream of meeting?' Nay, how can you ask me, sweet? All day my pulse had been beating The tune of your coming feet. And as nearer and ever nearer I felt the throb of your tread, To be in the world grew clearer, And my blood ran rosier red. Love called, and I could not linger, But sought the forbidden tryst, As music follows the finger Of the dreaming lutanist And though you had said it and said it, 'We must not be happy to-day,' Was I not wiser to credit The fire in my feet than your Nay? SCHERZO When the down is on the chin And the gold-gleam in the hair, When the birds their sweethearts win And champagne is in the air, Love is here, and Love is there, Love is welcome everywhere. Summer's cheek too soon turns thin, Days grow briefer, sunshine rare; Autumn from his cannekin Blows the froth to chase Despair: Love is met with frosty stare, Cannot house 'neath branches bare. When new life is in the leaf And new red is in the rose, Though Love's Maytlme be as brief As a dragon-fly's repose, Never moments come like those, Be they Heaven or Hell: who knows? All too soon comes Winter's grief, Spendthrift Love's false friends turn foes; Softly comes Old Age, the thief, Steals the rapture, leaves the throes: Love his mantle round him throws,-- 'Time to say Good-by; it snows.' 'FRANCISCUS DE VERULAMIO SIC COGITAVIT' That's a rather bold speech, my Lord Bacon, For, indeed, is't so easy to know Just how much we from others have taken, And how much our own natural flow? Since your mind bubbled up at its fountain, How many streams made it elate, While it calmed to the plain from the mountain, As every mind must that grows great? While you thought 'twas You thinking as newly As Adam still wet with God's dew, You forgot in your self-pride that truly The whole Past was thinking through you. Greece, Rome, nay, your namesake, old Roger, With Truth's nameless delvers who wrought In the dark mines of Truth, helped to prod your Fine brain with the goad of their thought. As mummy was prized for a rich hue The painter no elsewhere could find, So 'twas buried men's thinking with which you Gave the ripe mellow tone to your mind. I heard the proud strawberry saying, 'Only look what a ruby I've made!' It forgot how the bees in their maying Had brought it the stuff for its trade. And yet there's the half of a truth in it, And my Lord might his copyright sue; For a thought's his who kindles new youth in it, Or so puts it as makes it more true. The birds but repeat without ending The same old traditional notes, Which some, by more happily blending, Seem to make over new in their throats; And we men through our old bit of song run, Until one just improves on the rest, And we call a thing his, in the long run, Who utters it clearest and best. AUSPEX My heart, I cannot still it, Nest that had song-birds in it; And when the last shall go, The dreary days, to fill it, Instead of lark or linnet, Shall whirl dead leaves and snow. Had they been swallows only, Without the passion stronger That skyward longs and sings,-- Woe's me, I shall be lonely When I can feel no longer The impatience of their wings! A moment, sweet delusion, Like birds the brown leaves hover; But it will not be long Before their wild confusion Fall wavering down to cover The poet and his song. THE PREGNANT COMMENT Opening one day a book of mine, I absent, Hester found a line Praised with a pencil-mark, and this She left transfigured with a kiss. When next upon the page I chance, Like Poussin's nymphs my pulses dance, And whirl my fancy where it sees Pan piping 'neath Arcadian trees, Whose leaves no winter-scenes rehearse, Still young and glad as Homer's verse. 'What mean,' I ask, 'these sudden joys? This feeling fresher than a boy's? What makes this line, familiar long, New as the first bird's April song? I could, with sense illumined thus, Clear doubtful texts in Æeschylus!' Laughing, one day she gave the key, My riddle's open-sesame; Then added, with a smile demure, Whose downcast lids veiled triumph sure, 'If what I left there give you pain, You--you--can take it off again; 'Twas for _my_ poet, not for him, Your Doctor Donne there!' Earth grew dim And wavered in a golden mist, As rose, not paper, leaves I kissed. Donne, you forgive? I let you keep Her precious comment, poet deep. THE LESSON I sat and watched the walls of night With cracks of sudden lightning glow, And listened while with clumsy might The thunder wallowed to and fro. The rain fell softly now; the squall, That to a torrent drove the trees, Had whirled beyond us to let fall Its tumult on the whitening seas. But still the lightning crinkled keen, Or fluttered fitful from behind The leaden drifts, then only seen, That rumbled eastward on the wind. Still as gloom followed after glare, While bated breath the pine-trees drew, Tiny Salmoneus of the air, His mimic bolts the firefly threw. He thought, no doubt, 'Those flashes grand, That light for leagues the shuddering sky, Are made, a fool could understand, By some superior kind of fly. 'He's of our race's elder branch, His family-arms the same as ours. Both born the twy-forked flame to launch, Of kindred, if unequal, powers.' And is man wiser? Man who takes His consciousness the law to be Of all beyond his ken, and makes God but a bigger kind of Me? SCIENCE AND POETRY He who first stretched his nerves of subtile wire Over the land and through the sea-depths still, Thought only of the flame-winged messenger As a dull drudge that should encircle earth With sordid messages of Trade, and tame Blithe Ariel to a bagman. But the Muse Not long will be defrauded. From her foe Her misused wand she snatches; at a touch, The Age of Wonder is renewed again, And to our disenchanted day restores The Shoes of Swiftness that give odds to Thought, The Cloak that makes invisible; and with these I glide, an airy fire, from shore to shore, Or from my Cambridge whisper to Cathay. A NEW YEAR'S GREETING The century numbers fourscore years; You, fortressed in your teens, To Time's alarums close your ears, And, while he devastates your peers, Conceive not what he means. If e'er life's winter fleck with snow Your hair's deep shadowed bowers, That winsome head an art would know To make it charm, and wear it so As 'twere a wreath of flowers. If to such fairies years must come, May yours fall soft and slow As, shaken by a bee's low hum, The rose-leaves waver, sweetly dumb, Down to their mates below! THE DISCOVERY I watched a moorland torrent run Down through the rift itself had made, Golden as honey in the sun, Of darkest amber in the shade. In this wild glen at last, methought, The magic's secret I surprise; Here Celia's guardian fairy caught The changeful splendors of her eyes. All else grows tame, the sky's one blue, The one long languish of the rose, But these, beyond prevision new, Shall charm and startle to the close. WITH A SEASHELL Shell, whose lips, than mine more cold, Might with Dian's ear make bold, Seek my Lady's; if thou win To that portal, shut from sin, Where commissioned angels' swords Startle back unholy words, Thou a miracle shalt see Wrought by it and wrought in thee; Thou, the dumb one, shalt recover Speech of poet, speech of lover. If she deign to lift you there, Murmur what I may not dare; In that archway, pearly-pink As the Dawn's untrodden brink, Murmur, 'Excellent and good, Beauty's best in every mood, Never common, never tame, Changeful fair as windwaved flame'-- Nay, I maunder; this she hears Every day with mocking ears, With a brow not sudden-stained With the flush of bliss restrained, With no tremor of the pulse More than feels the dreaming dulse In the midmost ocean's caves, When a tempest heaps the waves. Thou must woo her in a phrase Mystic as the opal's blaze, Which pure maids alone can see When their lovers constant be. I with thee a secret share, Half a hope, and half a prayer, Though no reach of mortal skill Ever told it all, or will; Say, 'He bids me--nothing more-- Tell you what you guessed before!' THE SECRET I have a fancy: how shall I bring it Home to all mortals wherever they be? Say it or sing it? Shoe it or wing it, So it may outrun or outfly ME, Merest cocoon-web whence it broke free? Only one secret can save from disaster, Only one magic is that of the Master: Set it to music; give it a tune,-- Tune the brook sings you, tune the breeze brings you, Tune the wild columbines nod to in June! This is the secret: so simple, you see! Easy as loving, easy as kissing, Easy as--well, let me ponder--as missing, Known, since the world was, by scarce two or three. IV. HUMOR AND SATIRE FITZ ADAM'S STORY The next whose fortune 'twas a tale to tell Was one whom men, before they thought, loved well, And after thinking wondered why they did, For half he seemed to let them, half forbid, And wrapped him so in humors, sheath on sheath, 'Twas hard to guess the mellow soul beneath: But, once divined, you took him to your heart, While he appeared to bear with you as part Of life's impertinence, and once a year Betrayed his true self by a smile or tear, 10 Or rather something sweetly shy and loath, Withdrawn ere fully shown, and mixed of both. A cynic? Not precisely: one who thrust Against a heart too prone to love and trust, Who so despised false sentiment he knew Scarce in himself to part the false and true, And strove to hide, by roughening-o'er the skin, Those cobweb nerves he could not dull within. Gentle by birth, but of a stem decayed, He shunned life's rivalries and hated trade; 20 On a small patrimony and larger pride, He lived uneaseful on the Other Side (So he called Europe), only coming West To give his Old-World appetite new zest; Yet still the New World spooked it in his veins, A ghost he could not lay with all his pains; For never Pilgrims' offshoot scapes control Of those old instincts that have shaped his soul. A radical in thought, he puffed away With shrewd contempt the dust of usage gray, 30 Yet loathed democracy as one who saw, In what he longed to love, some vulgar flaw, And, shocked through all his delicate reserves, Remained a Tory by his taste and nerves, His fancy's thrall, he drew all ergoes thence, And thought himself the type of common sense; Misliking women, not from cross or whim, But that his mother shared too much in him, And he half felt that what in them was grace Made the unlucky weakness of his race. 40 What powers he had he hardly cared to know, But sauntered through the world as through a show; A critic fine in his haphazard way, A sort of mild La Bruyère on half-pay. For comic weaknesses he had an eye Keen as an acid for an alkali, Yet you could feel, through his sardonic tone, He loved them all, unless they were his own. You might have called him, with his humorous twist, A kind of human entomologist; 50 As these bring home, from every walk they take, Their hat-crowns stuck with bugs of curious make, So he filled all the lining of his head With characters impaled and ticketed, And had a cabinet behind his eyes For all they caught of mortal oddities. He might have been a poet--many worse-- But that he had, or feigned, contempt of verse; Called it tattooing language, and held rhymes The young world's lullaby of ruder times. 60 Bitter in words, too indolent for gall, He satirized himself the first of all, In men and their affairs could find no law, And was the ill logic that he thought he saw. Scratching a match to light his pipe anew, With eyes half shut some musing whiffs he drew And thus began: 'I give you all my word, I think this mock-Decameron absurd; Boccaccio's garden! how bring that to pass In our bleak clime save under double glass? 70 The moral east-wind of New England life Would snip its gay luxuriance like a knife; Mile-deep the glaciers brooded here, they say, Through æons numb; we feel their chill to-day. These foreign plants are but half-hardy still, Die on a south, and on a north wall chill. Had we stayed Puritans! _They_ had some heat, (Though whence derived I have my own conceit,) But you have long ago raked up their fires; Where they had faith, you've ten sham-Gothic spires. 80 Why more exotics? Try your native vines, And in some thousand years you _may_ have wines; Your present grapes are harsh, all pulps and skins, And want traditions of ancestral bins That saved for evenings round the polished board Old lava fires, the sun-steeped hillside's hoard. Without a Past, you lack that southern wall O'er which the vines of Poesy should crawl; Still they're your only hope: no midnight oil Makes up for virtue wanting in the soil; 90 Manure them well and prune them; 'twon't be France, Nor Spain, nor Italy, but there's your chance. You have one story-teller worth a score Of dead Boccaccios,--nay, add twenty more,-- A hawthorn asking spring's most dainty breath, And him you're freezing pretty well to death. However, since you say so, I will tease My memory to a story by degrees, Though you will cry, "Enough!" I'm wellnigh sure, Ere I have dreamed through half my overture. 100 Stories were good for men who had no books, (Fortunate race!) and built their nests like rooks In lonely towers, to which the Jongleur brought His pedler's-box of cheap and tawdry thought, With here and there a fancy fit to see Wrought in quaint grace in golden filigree,-- Some ring that with the Muse's finger yet Is warm, like Aucassin and Nicolete; The morning newspaper has spoilt his trade, (For better or for worse, I leave unsaid,) 110 And stories now, to suit a public nice, Must be half epigram, half pleasant vice. 'All tourists know Shebagog County: there The summer idlers take their yearly stare, Dress to see Nature In a well-bred way, As 'twere Italian opera, or play, Encore the sunrise (if they're out of bed). And pat the Mighty Mother on the head: These have I seen,--all things are good to see.-- And wondered much at their complacency. 120 This world's great show, that took in getting-up Millions of years, they finish ere they sup; Sights that God gleams through with soul-tingling force They glance approvingly as things of course. Say, "That's a grand rock," "This a pretty fall." Not thinking, "Are we worthy?" What if all The scornful landscape should turn round and say, "This is a fool, and that a popinjay"? I often wonder what the Mountain thinks Of French boots creaking o'er his breathless brinks, 130 Or how the Sun would scare the chattering crowd, If some fine day he chanced to think aloud. I, who love Nature much as sinners can, Love her where she most grandeur shows,--in man: Here find I mountain, forest, cloud, and sun, River and sea, and glows when day is done; Nay, where she makes grotesques, and moulds in jest The clown's cheap clay, I find unfading zest. The natural instincts year by year retire, As deer shrink northward from the settler's fire, 140 And he who loves the wild game-flavor more Than city-feasts, where every man's a bore To every other man, must seek it where The steamer's throb and railway's iron blare Have not yet startled with their punctual stir The shy, wood-wandering brood of Character. 'There is a village, once the county town, Through which the weekly mail rolled dustily down, Where the courts sat, it may be, twice a year, And the one tavern reeked with rustic cheer; 150 Cheeshogquesumscot erst, now Jethro hight, Red-man and pale-face bore it equal spite. The railway ruined it, the natives say, That passed unwisely fifteen miles away, And made a drain to which, with steady ooze, Filtered away law, stage-coach, trade, and news. The railway saved it: so at least think those Who love old ways, old houses, old repose. Of course the Tavern stayed: its genial host Thought not of flitting more than did the post 160 On which high-hung the fading signboard creaks, Inscribed, "The Eagle Inn, by Ezra Weeks." 'If in life's journey you should ever find An inn medicinal for body and mind, 'Tis sure to be some drowsy-looking house Whose easy landlord has a bustling spouse: He, if he like you, will not long forego Some bottle deep in cobwebbed dust laid low, That, since the War we used to call the "Last," Has dozed and held its lang-syne memories fast: 170 From him exhales that Indian-summer air Of hazy, lazy welcome everywhere, While with her toil the napery is white, The china dustless, the keen knife-blades bright, Salt dry as sand, and bread that seems as though 'Twere rather sea-foam baked than vulgar dough. 'In our swift country, houses trim and white Are pitched like tents, the lodging of a night; Each on its bank of baked turf mounted high Perches impatient o'er the roadside dry, 180 While the wronged landscape coldly stands aloof, Refusing friendship with the upstart roof. Not so the Eagle; on a grass-green swell That toward the south with sweet concessions fell It dwelt retired, and half had grown to be As aboriginal as rock or tree. It nestled close to earth, and seemed to brood O'er homely thoughts in a half-conscious mood, As by the peat that rather fades than burns The smouldering grandam nods and knits by turns, 190 Happy, although her newest news were old Ere the first hostile drum at Concord rolled. If paint it e'er had known, it knew no more Than yellow lichens spattered thickly o'er That soft lead-gray, less dark beneath the eaves Which the slow brush of wind and weather leaves. The ample roof sloped backward to the ground, And vassal lean-tos gathered thickly round, Patched on, as sire or son had felt the need, Like chance growths sprouting from the old roofs seed, 200 Just as about a yellow-pine-tree spring Its rough-barked darlings in a filial ring. But the great chimney was the central thought Whose gravitation through the cluster wrought; For 'tis not styles far-fetched from Greece or Rome, But just the Fireside, that can make a home; None of your spindling things of modern style, Like pins stuck through to stay the card-built pile, It rose broad-shouldered, kindly, debonair, Its warm breath whitening in the October air, 210 While on its front a heart in outline showed The place it filled in that serene abode. 'When first I chanced the Eagle to explore. Ezra sat listless by the open door; One chair careened him at an angle meet, Another nursed his hugely slippered feet; Upon a third reposed a shirt-sleeved arm, And the whole man diffused tobacco's charm. "Are you the landlord?" "Wahl, I guess I be," Watching the smoke he answered leisurely. 220 He was a stoutish man, and through the breast Of his loose shirt there showed a brambly chest; Streaked redly as a wind-foreboding morn, His tanned cheeks curved to temples closely shorn; Clean-shaved he was, save where a hedge of gray Upon his brawny throat leaned every way About an Adam's-apple, that beneath Bulged like a boulder from a brambly heath. The Western World's true child and nursling he, Equipt with aptitudes enough for three: 230 No eye like his to value horse or cow, Or gauge the contents of a stack or mow; He could foretell the weather at a word, He knew the haunt of every beast and bird, Or where a two-pound trout was sure to lie, Waiting the flutter of his homemade fly; Nay, once in autumns five, he had the luck To drop at fair-play range a ten-tined buck; Of sportsmen true he favored every whim, But never cockney found a guide in him; 240 A natural man, with all his instincts fresh, Not buzzing helpless in Reflection's mesh, Firm on its feet stood his broad-shouldered mind, As bluffly honest as a northwest wind; Hard-headed and soft-hearted, you'd scarce meet A kindlier mixture of the shrewd and sweet; Generous by birth, and ill at saying "No," Yet in a bargain he was all men's foe, Would yield no inch of vantage in a trade, And give away ere nightfall all he made. 250 "Can I have lodging here?" once more I said. He blew a whiff, and, leaning back his head, "You come a piece through Bailey's woods, I s'pose, Acrost a bridge where a big swamp-oak grows? It don't grow, neither; it's ben dead ten year, Nor th' ain't a livin' creetur, fur nor near, Can tell wut killed it; but I some misdoubt 'Twas borers, there's sech heaps on 'em about. You didn' chance to run ag'inst my son, A long, slab-sided youngster with a gun? 260 He'd oughto ben back more 'n an hour ago, An' brought some birds to dress for supper--sho! There he comes now. 'Say, Obed, wut ye got? (He'll hev some upland plover like as not.) Wal, them's real nice uns, an'll eat A 1, Ef I can stop their bein' overdone; Nothin' riles _me_ (I pledge my fastin' word) Like cookin' out the natur' of a bird; (Obed, you pick 'em out o' sight an' sound, Your ma'am don't love no feathers cluttrin' round;) 270 Jes' scare 'em with the coals,--thet's _my_ idee." Then, turning suddenly about on me, "Wal, Square, I guess so. Callilate to stay? I'll ask Mis' Weeks; 'bout _thet_ it's hern to say." 'Well, there I lingered all October through, In that sweet atmosphere of hazy blue, So leisurely, so soothing, so forgiving, That sometimes makes New England fit for living. I watched the landscape, erst so granite glum, Bloom like the south side of a ripening plum, 280 And each rock-maple on the hillside make His ten days' sunset doubled in the lake; The very stone walls draggling up the hills Seemed touched, and wavered in their roundhead wills. Ah! there's a deal of sugar in the sun! Tap me in Indian summer, I should run A juice to make rock-candy of,--but then We get such weather scarce one year in ten. 'There was a parlor in the house, a room To make you shudder with its prudish gloom. 290 The furniture stood round with such an air, There seemed an old maid's ghost in every chair, Which looked as it had scuttled to its place And pulled extempore a Sunday face, Too smugly proper for a world of sin, Like boys on whom the minister comes in. The table, fronting you with icy stare, Strove to look witless that its legs were bare, While the black sofa with its horse-hair pall Gloomed like a bier for Comfort's funeral. 300 Each piece appeared to do its chilly best To seem an utter stranger to the rest, As if acquaintanceship were deadly sin, Like Britons meeting in a foreign inn. Two portraits graced the wall in grimmest truth, Mister and Mistress W. in their youth,-- New England youth, that seems a sort of pill, Half wish-I-dared, half Edwards on the Will, Bitter to swallow, and which leaves a trace Of Calvinistic colic on the face. 310 Between them, o'er the mantel, hung in state Solomon's temple, done in copperplate; Invention pure, but meant, we may presume, To give some Scripture sanction to the room. Facing this last, two samplers you might see, Each, with its urn and stiffly weeping tree, Devoted to some memory long ago More faded than their lines of worsted woe; Cut paper decked their frames against the flies, Though none e'er dared an entrance who were wise, 320 And bushed asparagus in fading green Added its shiver to the franklin clean. 'When first arrived, I chilled a half-hour there, Nor dared deflower with use a single chair; I caught no cold, yet flying pains could find For weeks in me,--a rheumatism of mind. One thing alone imprisoned there had power To hold me in the place that long half-hour: A scutcheon this, a helm-surmounted shield, Three griffins argent on a sable field; 330 A relic of the shipwrecked past was here, And Ezra held some Old-World lumber dear. Nay, do not smile; I love this kind of thing, These cooped traditions with a broken wing, This freehold nook in Fancy's pipe-blown ball, This less than nothing that is more than all! Have I not seen sweet natures kept alive Amid the humdrum of your business hive, Undowered spinsters shielded from all harms, By airy incomes from a coat of arms?' 340 He paused a moment, and his features took The flitting sweetness of that inward look I hinted at before; but, scarcely seen, It shrank for shelter 'neath his harder mien, And, rapping his black pipe of ashes clear, He went on with a self-derisive sneer: 'No doubt we make a part of God's design, And break the forest-path for feet divine; To furnish foothold for this grand prevision Is good, and yet--to be the mere transition, 350 That, you will say, is also good, though I Scarce like to feed the ogre By-and-By. Raw edges rasp my nerves; my taste is wooed By things that are, not going to be, good, Though were I what I dreamed two lustres gone, I'd stay to help the Consummation on, Whether a new Rome than the old more fair, Or a deadflat of rascal-ruled despair; But _my_ skull somehow never closed the suture That seems to knit yours firmly with the future, 360 So you'll excuse me if I'm sometimes fain To tie the Past's warm nightcap o'er my brain; I'm quite aware 'tis not in fashion here, But then your northeast winds are _so_ severe! 'But to my story: though 'tis truly naught But a few hints in Memory's sketchbook caught, And which may claim a value on the score Of calling back some scenery now no more. Shall I confess? The tavern's only Lar Seemed (be not shocked!) its homely-featured bar. 370 Here dozed a fire of beechen logs, that bred Strange fancies in its embers golden-red, And nursed the loggerhead whose hissing dip, Timed by nice instinct, creamed the mug of flip That made from mouth to mouth its genial round, Nor left one nature wholly winter-bound; Hence dropt the tinkling coal all mellow-ripe For Uncle Reuben's talk-extinguished pipe; Hence rayed the heat, as from an indoor sun, That wooed forth many a shoot of rustic fun. 380 Here Ezra ruled as king by right divine; No other face had such a wholesome shine, No laugh like his so full of honest cheer; Above the rest it crowed like Chanticleer. 'In this one room his dame you never saw, Where reigned by custom old a Salic law; Here coatless lolled he on his throne of oak, And every tongue paused midway if he spoke. Due mirth he loved, yet was his sway severe; No blear-eyed driveller got his stagger here; 390 "Measure was happiness; who wanted more, Must buy his ruin at the Deacon's store;" None but his lodgers after ten could stay, Nor after nine on eves of Sabbath-day. He had his favorites and his pensioners, The same that gypsy Nature owns for hers: Loose-ended souls, whose skills bring scanty gold, And whom the poor-house catches when they're old; Rude country-minstrels, men who doctor kine, Or graft, and, out of scions ten, save nine; 400 Creatures of genius they, but never meant To keep step with the civic regiment, These Ezra welcomed, feeling in his mind Perhaps some motions of the vagrant kind; These paid no money, yet for them he drew Special Jamaica from a tap they knew, And, for their feelings, chalked behind the door With solemn face a visionary score. This thawed to life in Uncle Reuben's throat A torpid shoal of jest and anecdote, 410 Like those queer fish that doze the droughts away, And wait for moisture, wrapped in sun-baked clay; This warmed the one-eyed fiddler to his task, Perched in the corner on an empty cask, By whose shrill art rapt suddenly, some boor Rattled a double-shuffle on the floor; "Hull's Victory" was, indeed, the favorite air, Though "Yankee Doodle" claimed its proper share. ''Twas there I caught from Uncle Reuben's lips, In dribbling monologue 'twixt whiffs and sips, 420 The story I so long have tried to tell; The humor coarse, the persons common,--well, From Nature only do I love to paint, Whether she send a satyr or a saint; To me Sincerity's the one thing good, Soiled though she be and lost to maidenhood. Quompegan is a town some ten miles south From Jethro, at Nagumscot river-mouth, A seaport town, and makes its title good With lumber and dried fish and eastern wood. 430 Here Deacon Bitters dwelt and kept the Store, The richest man for many a mile of shore; In little less than everything dealt he, From meeting-houses to a chest of tea; So dextrous therewithal a flint to skin, He could make profit on a single pin; In business strict, to bring the balance true He had been known to bite a fig in two, And change a board-nail for a shingle-nail. All that he had he ready held for sale, 440 His house, his tomb, whate'er the law allows, And he had gladly parted with his spouse. His one ambition still to get and get, He would arrest your very ghost for debt. His store looked righteous, should the Parson come, But in a dark back-room he peddled rum, And eased Ma'am Conscience, if she e'er would scold, By christening it with water ere he sold. A small, dry man he was, who wore a queue, And one white neckcloth all the week-days through,-- 450 On Monday white, by Saturday as dun As that worn homeward by the prodigal son. His frosted earlocks, striped with foxy brown, Were braided up to hide a desert crown; His coat was brownish, black perhaps of yore; In summer-time a banyan loose he wore; His trousers short, through many a season true, Made no pretence to hide his stockings blue; A waistcoat buff his chief adornment was, Its porcelain buttons rimmed with dusky brass. 460 A deacon he, you saw it in each limb, And well he knew to deacon-off a hymn, Or lead the choir through all its wandering woes With voice that gathered unction in his nose, Wherein a constant snuffle you might hear, As if with him 'twere winter all the year. At pew-head sat he with decorous pains, In sermon-time could foot his weekly gains, Or, with closed eyes and heaven-abstracted air, Could plan a new investment in long-prayer. 470 A pious man, and thrifty too, he made The psalms and prophets partners in his trade, And in his orthodoxy straitened more As it enlarged the business at his store; He honored Moses, but, when gain he planned, Had his own notion of the Promised Land. 'Soon as the winter made the sledding good, From far around the farmers hauled him wood, For all the trade had gathered 'neath his thumb. He paid in groceries and New England rum, 480 Making two profits with a conscience clear,-- Cheap all he bought, and all he paid with dear. With his own mete-wand measuring every load, Each somehow had diminished on the road; An honest cord in Jethro still would fail By a good foot upon the Deacon's scale, And, more to abate the price, his gimlet eye Would pierce to cat-sticks that none else could spy; Yet none dared grumble, for no farmer yet But New Year found him in the Deacon's debt. 490 'While the first snow was mealy under feet, A team drawled creaking down Quompegan street. Two cords of oak weighed down the grinding sled, And cornstalk fodder rustled overhead; The oxen's muzzles, as they shouldered through, Were silver-fringed; the driver's own was blue As the coarse frock that swung below his knee. Behind his load for shelter waded he; His mittened hands now on his chest he beat, Now stamped the stiffened cowhides of his feet, 500 Hushed as a ghost's; his armpit scarce could hold The walnut whipstock slippery-bright with cold. What wonder if, the tavern as he past, He looked and longed, and stayed his beasts at last, Who patient stood and veiled themselves in steam While he explored the bar-room's ruddy gleam? 'Before the fire, in want of thought profound, There sat a brother-townsman weather-bound: A sturdy churl, crisp-headed, bristly-eared, Red as a pepper; 'twixt coarse brows and beard 510 His eyes lay ambushed, on the watch for fools, Clear, gray, and glittering like two bay-edged pools; A shifty creature, with a turn for fun, Could swap a poor horse for a better one,-- He'd a high-stepper always in his stall; Liked far and near, and dreaded therewithal. To him the in-comer, "Perez, how d' ye do?" "Jest as I'm mind to, Obed; how do you?" Then, his eyes twinkling such swift gleams as run Along the levelled barrel of a gun 520 Brought to his shoulder by a man you know Will bring his game down, he continued, "So, I s'pose you're haulin' wood? But you're too late; The Deacon's off; Old Splitfoot couldn't wait; He made a bee-line las' night in the storm To where he won't need wood to keep him warm. 'Fore this he's treasurer of a fund to train Young imps as missionaries; hopes to gain That way a contract that he has in view For fireproof pitchforks of a pattern new, 530 It must have tickled him, all drawbacks weighed, To think he stuck the Old One in a trade; His soul, to start with, wasn't worth a carrot. And all he'd left 'ould hardly serve to swear at." 'By this time Obed had his wits thawed out, And, looking at the other half in doubt, Took off his fox-skin cap to scratch his head, Donned it again, and drawled forth, "Mean he's dead?" "Jesso; he's dead and t'other _d_ that follers With folks that never love a thing but dollars. 540 He pulled up stakes last evening, fair and square, And ever since there's been a row Down There. The minute the old chap arrived, you see, Comes the Boss-devil to him, and says he, 'What are you good at? Little enough, I fear; We callilate to make folks useful here.' 'Well,' says old Bitters, 'I expect I can Scale a fair load of wood with e'er a man.' 'Wood we don't deal in; but perhaps you'll suit, Because we buy our brimstone by the foot: 550 Here, take this measurin'-rod, as smooth as sin, And keep a reckonin' of what loads comes in. You'll not want business, for we need a lot To keep the Yankees that you send us hot; At firin' up they're barely half as spry As Spaniards or Italians, though they're dry; At first we have to let the draught on stronger, But, heat 'em through, they seem to hold it longer.' '"Bitters he took the rod, and pretty soon A teamster comes, whistling an ex-psalm tune. 560 A likelier chap you wouldn't ask to see, No different, but his limp, from you or me"-- "No different, Perez! Don't your memory fail? Why, where in thunder was his horns and tail?" "They're only worn by some old-fashioned pokes; They mostly aim at looking just like folks. Sech things are scarce as queues and top-boots here; 'Twould spoil their usefulness to look too queer. Ef you could always know 'em when they come, They'd get no purchase on you: now be mum. 570 On come the teamster, smart as Davy Crockett, Jinglin' the red-hot coppers in his pocket, And clost behind, ('twas gold-dust, you'd ha' sworn,) A load of sulphur yallower 'n seed-corn; To see it wasted as it is Down There Would make a Friction-Match Co. tear its hair! 'Hold on!' says Bitters, 'stop right where you be; You can't go in athout a pass from me.' 'All right,' says t'other, 'only step round smart; I must be home by noon-time with the cart.' 580 Bitters goes round it sharp-eyed as a rat, Then with a scrap of paper on his hat Pretends to cipher. 'By the public staff, That load scarce rises twelve foot and a half.' 'There's fourteen foot and over,' says the driver, 'Worth twenty dollars, ef it's worth a stiver; Good fourth-proof brimstone, that'll make 'em squirm,-- I leave it to the Headman of the Firm; After we masure it, we always lay Some on to allow for settlin' by the way. 590 Imp and full-grown, I've carted sulphur here, And gi'n fair satisfaction, thirty year.' With that they fell to quarrellin' so loud That in five minutes they had drawed a crowd, And afore long the Boss, who heard the row, Comes elbowin' in with 'What's to pay here now?' Both parties heard, the measurin'-rod he takes, And of the load a careful survey makes. 'Sence I have bossed the business here,' says he, 'No fairer load was ever seen by me.' 600 Then, turnin' to the Deacon, 'You mean cus. None of your old Quompegan tricks with us! They won't do here: we're plain old-fashioned folks, And don't quite understand that kind o' jokes. I know this teamster, and his pa afore him, And the hard-working Mrs. D. that bore him; He wouldn't soil his conscience with a lie, Though he might get the custom-house thereby. Here, constable, take Bitters by the queue. And clap him into furnace ninety-two, 610 And try this brimstone on him; if he's bright, He'll find the masure honest afore night. He isn't worth his fuel, and I'll bet The parish oven has to take him yet!'" 'This is my tale, heard twenty years ago From Uncle Reuben, as the logs burned low, Touching the walls and ceiling with that bloom That makes a rose's calyx of a room. I could not give his language, wherethrough ran The gamy flavor of the bookless man 620 Who shapes a word before the fancy cools, As lonely Crusoe improvised his tools. I liked the tale,--'twas like so many told By Rutebeuf and his Brother Trouvères bold; Nor were the hearers much unlike to theirs, Men unsophisticate, rude-nerved as bears. Ezra is gone and his large-hearted kind, The landlords of the hospitable mind; Good Warriner of Springfield was the last; An inn is now a vision of the past; 630 One yet-surviving host my mind recalls,-- You'll find him if you go to Trenton Falls.' THE ORIGIN OF DIDACTIC POETRY When wise Minerva still was young And just the least romantic, Soon after from Jove's head she flung That preternatural antic, 'Tis said, to keep from idleness Or flirting, those twin curses, She spent her leisure, more or less, In writing po----, no, verses. How nice they were! to rhyme with _far_ A kind _star_ did not tarry; The metre, too, was regular As schoolboy's dot and carry; And full they were of pious plums, So extra-super-moral,-- For sucking Virtue's tender gums Most tooth-enticing coral. A clean, fair copy she prepares, Makes sure of moods and tenses, With her own hand,--for prudence spares A man-(or woman-)-uensis; Complete, and tied with ribbons proud, She hinted soon how cosy a Treat it would be to read them loud After next day's Ambrosia. The Gods thought not it would amuse So much as Homer's Odyssees, But could not very well refuse The properest of Goddesses; So all sat round in attitudes Of various dejection, As with a _hem!_ the queen of prudes Began her grave prelection. At the first pause Zeus said, 'Well sung!-- I mean--ask Phoebus,--_he_ knows.' Says Phoebus, 'Zounds! a wolf's among Admetus's merinos! Fine! very fine! but I must go; They stand in need of me there; Excuse me!' snatched his stick, and so Plunged down the gladdened ether. With the next gap, Mars said, 'For me Don't wait,--naught could be finer, But I'm engaged at half past three,-- A fight in Asia Minor!' Then Venus lisped, 'I'm sorely tried, These duty-calls are vip'rous; But I _must_ go; I have a bride To see about in Cyprus.' Then Bacchus,--'I must say good-by, Although my peace it jeopards; I meet a man at four, to try A well-broke pair of leopards.' His words woke Hermes. 'Ah!' he said, 'I _so_ love moral theses!' Then winked at Hebe, who turned red, And smoothed her apron's creases. Just then Zeus snored,--the Eagle drew His head the wing from under; Zeus snored,--o'er startled Greece there flew The many-volumed thunder. Some augurs counted nine, some, ten; Some said 'twas war, some, famine; And all, that other-minded men Would get a precious----. Proud Pallas sighed, 'It will not do; Against the Muse I've sinned, oh!' And her torn rhymes sent flying through Olympus's back window. Then, packing up a peplus clean, She took the shortest path thence, And opened, with a mind serene, A Sunday-school in Athens. The verses? Some in ocean swilled, Killed every fish that bit to 'em; Some Galen caught, and, when distilled, Found morphine the residuum; But some that rotted on the earth Sprang up again in copies, And gave two strong narcotics birth, Didactic verse and poppies. Years after, when a poet asked The Goddess's opinion, As one whose soul its wings had tasked In Art's clear-aired dominion, 'Discriminate,' she said, 'betimes; The Muse is unforgiving; Put all your beauty in your rhymes, Your morals in your living.' THE FLYING DUTCHMAN Don't believe in the Flying Dutchman? I've known the fellow for years; My button I've wrenched from his clutch, man: I shudder whenever he nears! He's a Rip van Winkle skipper, A Wandering Jew of the sea, Who sails his bedevilled old clipper In the wind's eye, straight as a bee. Back topsails! you can't escape him; The man-ropes stretch with his weight, And the queerest old toggeries drape him, The Lord knows how long out of date! Like a long-disembodied idea, (A kind of ghost plentiful now,) He stands there; you fancy you see a Coeval of Teniers or Douw. He greets you; would have you take letters: You scan the addresses with dread, While he mutters his _donners_ and _wetters_,-- They're all from the dead to the dead! You seem taking time for reflection, But the heart fills your throat with a jam, As you spell in each faded direction An ominous ending in _dam_. Am I tagging my rhymes to a legend? That were changing green turtle to mock: No, thank you! I've found out which wedge-end Is meant for the head of a block. The fellow I have in my mind's eye Plays the old Skipper's part here on shore, And sticks like a burr, till he finds I Have got just the gauge of his bore. This postman 'twist one ghost and t'other, With last dates that smell of the mould, I have met him (O man and brother, Forgive me!) in azure and gold. In the pulpit I've known of his preaching, Out of hearing behind the time, Some statement of Balaam's impeaching, Giving Eve a due sense of her crime. I have seen him some poor ancient thrashing Into something (God save us!) more dry, With the Water of Life itself washing The life out of earth, sea, and sky. O dread fellow-mortal, get newer Despatches to carry, or none! We're as quick as the Greek and the Jew were At knowing a loaf from a stone. Till the couriers of God fail in duty, We sha'n't ask a mummy for news, Nor sate the soul's hunger for beauty With your drawings from casts of a Muse. CREDIDIMUS JOVEM REGNARE O days endeared to every Muse, When nobody had any Views, Nor, while the cloudscape of his mind By every breeze was new designed, Insisted all the world should see Camels or whales where none there be! O happy days, when men received From sire to son what all believed, And left the other world in bliss, Too busy with bedevilling this! 10 Beset by doubts of every breed In the last bastion of my creed, With shot and shell for Sabbath-chime, I watch the storming-party climb, Panting (their prey in easy reach), To pour triumphant through the breach In walls that shed like snowflakes tons Of missiles from old-fashioned guns, But crumble 'neath the storm that pours All day and night from bigger bores. 20 There, as I hopeless watch and wait The last life-crushing coil of Fate, Despair finds solace in the praise Of those serene dawn-rosy days Ere microscopes had made us heirs To large estates of doubts and snares, By proving that the title-deeds, Once all-sufficient for men's needs, Are palimpsests that scarce disguise The tracings of still earlier lies, 30 Themselves as surely written o'er An older fib erased before. So from these days I fly to those That in the landlocked Past repose, Where no rude wind of doctrine shakes From bloom-flushed boughs untimely flakes; Where morning's eyes see nothing strange, No crude perplexity of change, And morrows trip along their ways Secure as happy yesterdays. 40 Then there were rulers who could trace Through heroes up to gods their race, Pledged to fair fame and noble use By veins from Odin filled or Zeus, And under bonds to keep divine The praise of a celestial line. Then priests could pile the altar's sods, With whom gods spake as they with gods, And everywhere from haunted earth Broke springs of wonder, that had birth 50 In depths divine beyond the ken And fatal scrutiny of men; Then hills and groves and streams and seas Thrilled with immortal presences, Not too ethereal for the scope Of human passion's dream or hope. Now Pan at last is surely dead, And King No-Credit reigns instead, Whose officers, morosely strict, Poor Fancy's tenantry evict, 60 Chase the last Genius from the door, And nothing dances any more. Nothing? Ah, yes, our tables do, Dramming the Old One's own tattoo, And, if the oracles are dumb, Have we not mediums! Why be glum? Fly thither? Why, the very air Is full of hindrance and despair! Fly thither? But I cannot fly; My doubts enmesh me if I try, 70 Each Liliputian, but, combined, Potent a giant's limbs to bind. This world and that are growing dark; A huge interrogation mark, The Devil's crook episcopal. Still borne before him since the Fall, Blackens with its ill-omened sign The old blue heaven of faith benign. Whence? Whither? Wherefore? How? Which? Why? All ask at once, all wait reply. 80 Men feel old systems cracking under 'em; Life saddens to a mere conundrum Which once Religion solved, but she Has lost--has Science found?--the key. What was snow-bearded Odin, trow, The mighty hunter long ago, Whose horn and hounds the peasant hears Still when the Northlights shake their spears? Science hath answers twain, I've heard; Choose which you will, nor hope a third; 90 Whichever box the truth be stowed in, There's not a sliver left of Odin. Either he was a pinchbrowed thing, With scarcely wit a stone to fling, A creature both in size and shape Nearer than we are to the ape, Who hung sublime with brat and spouse By tail prehensile from the boughs, And, happier than his maimed descendants, The culture-curtailed _in_dependents, 100 Could pluck his cherries with both paws, And stuff with both his big-boned jaws; Or else the core his name enveloped Was from a solar myth developed, Which, hunted to its primal shoot, Takes refuge in a Sanskrit root, Thereby to instant death explaining The little poetry remaining. Try it with Zeus, 'tis just the same; The thing evades, we hug a name; 110 Nay, scarcely that,--perhaps a vapor Born of some atmospheric caper. All Lempriere's fables blur together In cloudy symbols of the weather, And Aphrodite rose from frothy seas But to illustrate such hypotheses. With years enough behind his back, Lincoln will take the selfsame track, And prove, hulled fairly to the cob, A mere vagary of Old Prob. 120 Give the right man a solar myth, And he'll confute the sun therewith. They make things admirably plain, But one hard question _will_ remain: If one hypothesis you lose, Another in its place you choose, But, your faith gone, O man and brother, Whose shop shall furnish you another? One that will wash, I mean, and wear, And wrap us warmly from despair? 130 While they are clearing up our puzzles, And clapping prophylactic muzzles On the Actæon's hounds that sniff Our devious track through But and If, Would they'd explain away the Devil And other facts that won't keep level, But rise beneath our feet or fail, A reeling ship's deck in a gale! God vanished long ago, iwis, A mere subjective synthesis; 140 A doll, stuffed out with hopes and fears, Too homely for us pretty dears, Who want one that conviction carries, Last make of London or of Paris. He gone, I felt a moment's spasm, But calmed myself, with Protoplasm, A finer name, and, what is more, As enigmatic as before; Greek, too, and sure to fill with ease Minds caught in the Symplegades 150 Of soul and sense, life's two conditions, Each baffled with its own omniscience. The men who labor to revise Our Bibles will, I hope, be wise, And print it without foolish qualms Instead of God in David's psalms: Noll had been more effective far Could he have shouted at Dunbar, 'Rise, Protoplasm!' No dourest Scot Had waited for another shot. 160 And yet I frankly must confess A secret unforgivingness, And shudder at the saving chrism Whose best New Birth is Pessimism; My soul--I mean the bit of phosphorus That fills the place of what that was for us-- Can't bid its inward bores defiance With the new nursery-tales of science. What profits me, though doubt by doubt, As nail by nail, be driven out, 170 When every new one, like the last, Still holds my coffin-lid as fast? Would I find thought a moment's truce, Give me the young world's Mother Goose With life and joy in every limb, The chimney-corner tales of Grimm! Our dear and admirable Huxley Cannot explain to me why ducks lay, Or, rather, how into their eggs Blunder potential wings and legs 180 With will to move them and decide Whether in air or lymph to glide. Who gets a hair's-breadth on by showing That Something Else set all agoing? Farther and farther back we push From Moses and his burning bush; Cry, 'Art Thou there?' Above, below, All Nature mutters _yes_ and _no!_ 'Tis the old answer: we're agreed Being from Being must proceed, 190 Life be Life's source. I might as well Obey the meeting-house's bell, And listen while Old Hundred pours Forth through the summer-opened doors, From old and young. I hear it yet, Swelled by bass-viol and clarinet, While the gray minister, with face Radiant, let loose his noble bass. If Heaven it reached not, yet its roll Waked all the echoes of the soul, 200 And in it many a life found wings To soar away from sordid things. Church gone and singers too, the song Sings to me voiceless all night long, Till my soul beckons me afar, Glowing and trembling like a star. Will any scientific touch With my worn strings achieve as much? I don't object, not I, to know My sires were monkeys, if 'twas so; 210 I touch my ear's collusive tip And own the poor-relationship. That apes of various shapes and sizes Contained their germs that all the prizes Of senate, pulpit, camp, and bar win May give us hopes that sweeten Darwin. Who knows but from our loins may spring (Long hence) some winged sweet-throated thing As much superior to us As we to Cynocephalus? 220 This is consoling, but, alas, It wipes no dimness from the glass Where I am flattening my poor nose, In hope to see beyond my toes, Though I accept my pedigree, Yet where, pray tell me, is the key That should unlock a private door To the Great Mystery, such no more? Each offers his, but one nor all Are much persuasive with the wall 230 That rises now as long ago, Between I wonder and I know, Nor will vouchsafe a pin-hole peep At the veiled Isis in its keep. Where is no door, I but produce My key to find it of no use. Yet better keep it, after all, Since Nature's economical, And who can tell but some fine day (If it occur to her) she may, 240 In her good-will to you and me, _Make_ door and lock to match the key? TEMPORA MUTANTUR The world turns mild; democracy, they say, Rounds the sharp knobs of character away, And no great harm, unless at grave expense Of what needs edge of proof, the moral sense; For man or race is on the downward path Whose fibre grows too soft for honest wrath, And there's a subtle influence that springs From words to modify our sense of things. A plain distinction grows obscure of late: Man, if he will, may pardon; but the State 10 Forgets its function if not fixed as Fate. So thought our sires: a hundred years ago, If men were knaves, why, people called them so, And crime could see the prison-portal bend Its brow severe at no long vista's end. In those days for plain things plain words would serve; Men had not learned to admire the graceful swerve Wherewith the Æsthetic Nature's genial mood Makes public duty slope to private good; No muddled conscience raised the saving doubt; 20 A soldier proved unworthy was drummed out, An officer cashiered, a civil servant (No matter though his piety were fervent) Disgracefully dismissed, and through the land Each bore for life a stigma from the brand Whose far-heard hiss made others more averse To take the facile step from bad to worse. The Ten Commandments had a meaning then, Felt in their bones by least considerate men, Because behind them Public Conscience stood, 30 And without wincing made their mandates good. But now that 'Statesmanship' is just a way To dodge the primal curse and make it pay, Since office means a kind of patent drill To force an entrance to the Nation's till, And peculation something rather less Risky than if you spelt it with an _s_; Now that to steal by law is grown an art, Whom rogues the sires, their milder sons call smart, And 'slightly irregular' dilutes the shame 40 Of what had once a somewhat blunter name. With generous curve we draw the moral line: Our swindlers are permitted to resign; Their guilt is wrapped in deferential names, And twenty sympathize for one that blames. Add national disgrace to private crime, Confront mankind with brazen front sublime, Steal but enough, the world is un-severe,-- Tweed is a statesman, Fisk a financier; Invent a mine, and he--the Lord knows what; 50 Secure, at any rate, with what you've got. The public servant who has stolen or lied, If called on, may resign with honest pride: As unjust favor put him in, why doubt Disfavor as unjust has turned him out? Even it indicted, what is that but fudge To him who counted-in the elective judge? Whitewashed, he quits the politician's strife At ease in mind, with pockets filled for life; His 'lady' glares with gems whose vulgar blaze 60 The poor man through his heightened taxes pays, Himself content if one huge Kohinoor Bulge from a shirt-front ampler than before, But not too candid, lest it haply tend To rouse suspicion of the People's Friend. A public meeting, treated at his cost, Resolves him back more virtue than he lost; With character regilt he counts his gains; What's gone was air, the solid good remains; For what is good, except what friend and foe 70 Seem quite unanimous in thinking so, The stocks and bonds which, in our age of loans, Replace the stupid pagan's stocks and stones? With choker white, wherein no cynic eye Dares see idealized a hempen tie, At parish-meetings he conducts in prayer, And pays for missions to be sent elsewhere; On 'Change respected, to his friends endeared, Add but a Sunday-school class, he's revered, And his too early tomb will not be dumb 80 To point a moral for our youth to come. IN THE HALF-WAY HOUSE I At twenty we fancied the blest Middle Ages A spirited cross of romantic and grand, All templars and minstrels and ladies and pages, And love and adventure in Outre-Mer land; But ah, where the youth dreamed of building a minster, The man takes a pew and sits reckoning his pelf, And the Graces wear fronts, the Muse thins to a spinster, When Middle-Age stares from one's glass at oneself! II Do you twit me with days when I had an Ideal, And saw the sear future through spectacles green? Then find me some charm, while I look round and see all These fat friends of forty, shall keep me nineteen; Should we go on pining for chaplets of laurel Who've paid a perruquier for mending our thatch, Or, our feet swathed in baize, with our Fate pick a quarrel, If, instead of cheap bay-leaves, she sent a dear scratch? III We called it our Eden, that small patent-baker, When life was half moonshine and half Mary Jane; But the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker!-- Did Adam have duns and slip down a back-lane? Nay, after the Fall did the modiste keep coming With the last styles of fig-leaf to Madam Eve's bower? Did Jubal, or whoever taught the girls thrumming, Make the patriarchs deaf at a dollar the hour? IV As I think what I was, I sigh _Desunt nonnulla!_ Years are creditors Sheridan's self could not bilk; But then, as my boy says, 'What right has a fullah To ask for the cream, when himself spilt the milk?' Perhaps when you're older, my lad, you'll discover The secret with which Auld Lang Syne there is gilt,-- Superstition of old man, maid, poet, and lover,-- That cream rises thickest on milk that was spilt! V We sailed for the moon, but, in sad disillusion, Snug under Point Comfort are glad to make fast, And strive (sans our glasses) to make a confusion 'Twixt our rind of green cheese and the moon of the past. Ah, Might-have-been, Could-have-been, Would-have-been! rascals, He's a genius or fool whom ye cheat at two-score, And the man whose boy-promise was likened to Pascal's Is thankful at forty they don't call him bore! VI With what fumes of fame was each confident pate full! How rates of insurance should rise on the Charles! And which of us now would not feel wisely grateful, If his rhymes sold as fast as the Emblems of Quarles? E'en if won, what's the good of Life's medals and prizes? The rapture's in what never was or is gone; That we missed them makes Helens of plain Ann Elizys, For the goose of To-day still is Memory's swan. VII And yet who would change the old dream for new treasure? Make not youth's sourest grapes the best wine of our life? Need he reckon his date by the Almanac's measure Who is twenty life-long in the eyes of his wife? Ah, Fate, should I live to be nonagenarian, Let me still take Hope's frail I.O.U.'s upon trust, Still talk of a trip to the Islands Macarian, And still climb the dream-tree for--ashes and dust! AT THE BURNS CENTENNIAL JANUARY, 1859 I A hundred years! they're quickly fled, With all their joy and sorrow; Their dead leaves shed upon the dead, Their fresh ones sprung by morrow! And still the patient seasons bring Their change of sun and shadow; New birds still sing with every spring, New violets spot the meadow. II A hundred years! and Nature's powers No greater grown nor lessened! 10 They saw no flowers more sweet than ours, No fairer new moon's crescent. Would she but treat us poets so, So from our winter free us, And set our slow old sap aflow To sprout in fresh ideas! III Alas, think I, what worth or parts Have brought me here competing, To speak what starts in myriad hearts With Burns's memory beating! 20 Himself had loved a theme like this; Must I be its entomber? No pen save his but's sure to miss Its pathos or its humor. IV As I sat musing what to say, And how my verse to number, Some elf in play passed by that way, And sank my lids in slumber; And on my sleep a vision stole. Which I will put in metre, 30 Of Burns's soul at the wicket-hole Where sits the good Saint Peter. V The saint, methought, had left his post That day to Holy Willie, Who swore, 'Each ghost that comes shall toast In brunstane, will he, nill he; There's nane need hope with phrases fine Their score to wipe a sin frae; I'll chalk a sign, to save their tryin',-- A hand ([Illustration of a hand]) and "_Vide infra!_"' 40 VI Alas! no soil's too cold or dry For spiritual small potatoes, Scrimped natures, spry the trade to ply Of _diaboli advocatus_; Who lay bent pins in the penance-stool Where Mercy plumps a cushion, Who've just one rule for knave and fool, It saves so much confusion! VII So when Burns knocked, Will knit his brows, His window gap made scanter, 50 And said, 'Go rouse the other house; We lodge no Tam O'Shanter!' '_We_ lodge!' laughed Burns. 'Now well I see Death cannot kill old nature; No human flea but thinks that he May speak for his Creator! VIII 'But, Willie, friend, don't turn me forth, Auld Clootie needs no gauger; And if on earth I had small worth, You've let in worse I'se wager!' 60 'Na, nane has knockit at the yett But found me hard as whunstane; There's chances yet your bread to get Wi Auld Nick, gaugin' brunstane.' IX Meanwhile, the Unco' Guid had ta'en Their place to watch the process, Flattening in vain on many a pane Their disembodied noses. Remember, please, 'tis all a dream; One can't control the fancies 70 Through sleep that stream with wayward gleam, Like midnight's boreal dances. X Old Willie's tone grew sharp 's a knife: '_In primis_, I indite ye, For makin' strife wi' the water o' life, And preferrin' _aqua vitæ!_' Then roared a voice with lusty din, Like a skipper's when 'tis blowy, 'If _that's_ a sin, _I_'d ne'er got in, As sure as my name's Noah!' 80 XI Baulked, Willie turned another leaf,-- 'There's many here have heard ye, To the pain and grief o' true belief, Say hard things o' the clergy!' Then rang a clear tone over all,-- 'One plea for him allow me: I once heard call from o'er me, "Saul, Why persecutest thou me?"' XII To the next charge vexed Willie turned, And, sighing, wiped his glasses: 90 'I'm much concerned to find ye yearned O'er-warmly tow'rd the lasses!' Here David sighed; poor Willie's face Lost all its self-possession: 'I leave this case to God's own grace; It baffles _my_ discretion!' XIII Then sudden glory round me broke, And low melodious surges Of wings whose stroke to splendor woke Creation's farthest verges; 100 A cross stretched, ladder-like, secure From earth to heaven's own portal, Whereby God's poor, with footing sure, Climbed up to peace immortal. XIV I heard a voice serene and low (With my heart I seemed to hear it,) Fall soft and slow as snow on snow, Like grace of the heavenly spirit; As sweet as over new-born son The croon of new-made mother, 110 The voice begun, 'Sore tempted one!' Then, pausing, sighed, 'Our brother! XV 'If not a sparrow fall, unless The Father sees and knows it, Think! recks He less his form express, The soul his own deposit? If only dear to Him the strong, That never trip nor wander, Where were the throng whose morning song Thrills his blue arches yonder? 120 XVI 'Do souls alone clear-eyed, strong-kneed, To Him true service render, And they who need his hand to lead, Find they his heart untender? Through all your various ranks and fates He opens doors to duty, And he that waits there at your gates Was servant of his Beauty. XVII 'The Earth must richer sap secrete, (Could ye in time but know it!) 130 Must juice concrete with fiercer heat, Ere she can make her poet; Long generations go and come, At last she bears a singer, For ages dumb of senses numb The compensation-bringer! XVIII 'Her cheaper broods in palaces She raises under glasses, But souls like these, heav'n's hostages, Spring shelterless as grasses: 140 They share Earth's blessing and her bane, The common sun and shower; What makes your pain to them is gain, Your weakness is their power. XIX 'These larger hearts must feel the rolls Of stormier-waved temptation; These star-wide souls between their poles Bear zones of tropic passion. He loved much!--that is gospel good, Howe'er the text you handle; 150 From common wood the cross was hewed, By love turned priceless sandal. XX 'If scant his service at the kirk, He _paters_ heard and _aves_ From choirs that lurk in hedge and birk, From blackbird and from mavis; The cowering mouse, poor unroofed thing, In him found Mercy's angel; The daisy's ring brought every spring To him love's fresh evangel! 160 XXI 'Not he the threatening texts who deals Is highest 'mong the preachers, But he who feels the woes and weals Of all God's wandering creatures. He doth good work whose heart can find The spirit 'neath the letter; Who makes his kind of happier mind, Leaves wiser men and better. XXII 'They make Religion be abhorred Who round with darkness gulf her, 170 And think no word can please the Lord Unless it smell of sulphur, Dear Poet-heart, that childlike guessed The Father's loving kindness, Come now to rest! Thou didst his hest, If haply 'twas in blindness!' XXIII Then leapt heaven's portals wide apart, And at their golden thunder With sudden start I woke, my heart Still throbbing-full of wonder. 180 'Father,' I said, ''tis known to Thee How Thou thy Saints preparest; But this I see,--Saint Charity Is still the first and fairest!' XXIV Dear Bard and Brother! let who may Against thy faults be railing, (Though far, I pray, from us be they That never had a failing!) One toast I'll give, and that not long, Which thou wouldst pledge if present, 190 To him whose song, in nature strong, Makes man of prince and peasant! IN AN ALBUM The misspelt scrawl, upon the wall By some Pompeian idler traced, In ashes packed (ironic fact!) Lies eighteen centuries uneffaced, While many a page of bard and sage, Deemed once mankind's immortal gain, Lost from Time's ark, leaves no more mark Than a keel's furrow through the main. O Chance and Change! our buzz's range Is scarcely wider than a fly's; Then let us play at fame to-day, To-morrow be unknown and wise; And while the fair beg locks of hair, And autographs, and Lord knows what, Quick! let us scratch our moment's match, Make our brief blaze, and be forgot! Too pressed to wait, upon her slate Fame writes a name or two in doubt; Scarce written, these no longer please, And her own finger rubs them out: It may ensue, fair girl, that you Years hence this yellowing leaf may see, And put to task, your memory ask In vain, 'This Lowell, who was he?' AT THE COMMENCEMENT DINNER, 1866 IN ACKNOWLEDGING A TOAST TO THE SMITH PROFESSOR I rise, Mr. Chairman, as both of us know, With the impromptu I promised you three weeks ago, Dragged up to my doom by your might and my mane, To do what I vowed I'd do never again: And I feel like your good honest dough when possest By a stirring, impertinent devil of yeast. 'You must rise,' says the leaven. 'I can't,' says the dough; 'Just examine my bumps, and you'll see it's no go.' 'But you must,' the tormentor insists, ''tis all right; You must rise when I bid you, and, what's more, be light.' 10 'Tis a dreadful oppression, this making men speak What they're sure to be sorry for all the next week; Some poor stick requesting, like Aaron's, to bud Into eloquence, pathos, or wit in cold blood, As if the dull brain that you vented your spite on Could be got, like an ox, by mere poking, to Brighton. They say it is wholesome to rise with the sun, And I dare say it may be if not overdone; (I think it was Thomson who made the remark 'Twas an excellent thing in its way--for a lark;) 20 But to rise after dinner and look down the meeting On a distant (as Gray calls it) prospect of Eating, With a stomach half full and a cerebrum hollow As the tortoise-shell ere it was strung for Apollo, Undercontract to raise anerithmon gelasma With rhymes so hard hunted they gasp with the asthma, And jokes not much younger than Jethro's phylacteries, Is something I leave you yourselves to characterize. I've a notion, I think, of a good dinner speech, Tripping light as a sandpiper over the beach, 30 Swerving this way and that as the wave of the moment Washes out its slight trace with a dash of whim's foam on 't, And leaving on memory's rim just a sense Something graceful had gone by, a live present tense; Not poetry,--no, not quite that, but as good, A kind of winged prose that could fly if it would. 'Tis a time for gay fancies as fleeting and vain As the whisper of foam-beads on fresh-poured champagne, Since dinners were not perhaps strictly designed For manoeuvring the heavy dragoons of the mind. 40 When I hear your set speeches that start with a pop, Then wander and maunder, too feeble to stop, With a vague apprehension from popular rumor There used to be something by mortals called humor, Beginning again when you thought they were done, Respectable, sensible, weighing a ton, And as near to the present occasions of men As a Fast Day discourse of the year eighteen ten, I--well, I sit still, and my sentiments smother, For am I not also a bore and a brother? 50 And a toast,--what should that, be? Light, airy, and free, The foam-Aphrodite of Bacchus's sea, A fancy-tinged bubble, an orbed rainbow-stain, That floats for an instant 'twixt goblet and brain; A breath-born perfection, half something, half naught, And breaks if it strike the hard edge of a thought. Do you ask me to make such? Ah no, not so simple; Ask Apelles to paint you the ravishing dimple Whose shifting enchantment lights Venus's cheek, And the artist will tell you his skill is to seek; 60 Once fix it, 'tis naught, for the charm of it rises From the sudden bopeeps of its smiling surprises. I've tried to define it, but what mother's son Could ever yet do what he knows should be done? My rocket has burst, and I watch in the air Its fast-fading heart's-blood drop back in despair; Yet one chance is left me, and, if I am quick, I can palm off, before you suspect me, the stick. Now since I've succeeded--I pray do not frown-- To Ticknor's and Longfellow's classical gown, 70 And profess four strange languages, which, luckless elf, I speak like a native (of Cambridge) myself, Let me beg, Mr. President, leave to propose A sentiment treading on nobody's toes, And give, in such ale as with pump-handles _we_ brew, Their memory who saved us from all talking Hebrew,-- A toast that to deluge with water is good, For in Scripture they come in just after the flood: I give you the men but for whom, as I guess, sir, Modern languages ne'er could have had a professor, 80 The builders of Babel, to whose zeal the lungs Of the children of men owe confusion of tongues; And a name all-embracing I couple therewith, Which is that of my founder--the late Mr. Smith. A PARABLE An ass munched thistles, while a nightingale From passion's fountain flooded all the vale. 'Hee-haw!' cried he, 'I hearken,' as who knew For such ear-largess humble thanks were due. 'Friend,' said the wingèd pain, 'in vain you bray, Who tunnels bring, not cisterns, for my lay; None but his peers the poet rightly hear, Nor mete we listeners by their length of ear.' V. EPIGRAMS SAYINGS 1. In life's small things be resolute and great To keep thy muscle trained: know'st thou when Fate Thy measure takes, or when she'll say to thee, 'I find thee worthy; do this deed for me'? 2. A camel-driver, angry with his drudge, Beating him, called him hunchback; to the hind Thus spake a dervish: 'Friend, the Eternal Judge Dooms not his work, but ours, the crooked mind.' 3. Swiftly the politic goes: is it dark?--he borrows a lantern; Slowly the statesman and sure, guiding his steps by the stars. 4. 'Where lies the capital, pilgrim, seat of who governs the Faithful?' 'Thither my footsteps are bent: it is where Saadi is lodged.' INSCRIPTIONS FOR A BELL AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY I call as fly the irrevocable hours, Futile as air or strong as fate to make Your lives of sand or granite; awful powers, Even as men choose, they either give or take. FOR A MEMORIAL WINDOW TO SIR WALTER RALEIGH, SET UP IN ST. MARGARET'S, WESTMINSTER, BY AMERICAN CONTRIBUTORS The New World's sons, from England's breasts we drew Such milk as bids remember whence we came; Proud of her Past, wherefrom our Present grew, This window we inscribe with Raleigh's name. PROPOSED FOR A SOLDIERS' AND SAILORS' MONUMENT IN BOSTON To those who died for her on land and sea, That she might have a country great and free, Boston builds this: build ye her monument In lives like theirs, at duty's summons spent. A MISCONCEPTION B, taught by Pope to do his good by stealth, 'Twixt participle and noun no difference feeling, In office placed to serve the Commonwealth, Does himself all the good he can by stealing. THE BOSS Skilled to pull wires, he baffles Nature's hope, Who sure intended him to stretch a rope. SUN-WORSHIP If I were the rose at your window, Happiest rose of its crew, Every blossom I bore would bend inward, _They'd_ know where the sunshine grew. CHANGED PERSPECTIVE Full oft the pathway to her door I've measured by the selfsame track, Yet doubt the distance more and more, 'Tis so much longer coming back! WITH A PAIR OF GLOVES LOST IN A WAGER We wagered, she for sunshine, I for rain, And I should hint sharp practice if I dared; For was not she beforehand sure to gain Who made the sunshine we together shared? SIXTY-EIGHTH BIRTHDAY As life runs on, the road grows strange With faces new, and near the end The milestones into headstones change, 'Neath every one a friend. INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT In vain we call old notions fudge, And bend our conscience to our dealing; The Ten Commandments will not budge, And stealing will continue stealing. LAST POEMS HOW I CONSULTED THE ORACLE OF THE GOLDFISHES What know we of the world immense Beyond the narrow ring of sense? What should we know, who lounge about The house we dwell in, nor find out, Masked by a wall, the secret cell Where the soul's priests in hiding dwell? The winding stair that steals aloof To chapel-mysteries 'neath the roof? It lies about us, yet as far From sense sequestered as a star 10 New launched its wake of fire to trace In secrecies of unprobed space, Whose beacon's lightning-pinioned spears Might earthward haste a thousand years Nor reach it. So remote seems this World undiscovered, yet it is A neighbor near and dumb as death, So near, we seem to feel the breath Of its hushed habitants as they Pass us unchallenged, night and day. 20 Never could mortal ear nor eye By sound or sign suspect them nigh, Yet why may not some subtler sense Than those poor two give evidence? Transfuse the ferment of their being Into our own, past hearing, seeing, As men, if once attempered so, Far off each other's thought can know? As horses with an instant thrill Measure their rider's strength of will? 30 Comes not to all some glimpse that brings Strange sense of sense-escaping things? Wraiths some transfigured nerve divines? Approaches, premonitions, signs, Voices of Ariel that die out In the dim No Man's Land of Doubt? Are these Night's dusky birds? Are these Phantasmas of the silences Outer or inner?--rude heirlooms From grovellers in the cavern-glooms, 40 Who in unhuman Nature saw Misshapen foes with tusk and claw, And with those night-fears brute and blind Peopled the chaos of their mind, Which, in ungovernable hours, Still make their bestial lair in ours? Were they, or were they not? Yes; no; Uncalled they come, unbid they go, And leave us fumbling in a doubt Whether within us or without 50 The spell of this illusion be That witches us to hear and see As in a twi-life what it will, And hath such wonder-working skill That what we deemed most solid-wrought Turns a mere figment of our thought, Which when we grasp at in despair Our fingers find vain semblance there, For Psyche seeks a corner-stone Firmer than aught to matter known. 60 Is it illusion? Dream-stuff? Show Made of the wish to have it so? 'Twere something, even though this were all: So the poor prisoner, on his wall Long gazing, from the chance designs Of crack, mould, weather-stain, refines New and new pictures without cease, Landscape, or saint, or altar-piece: But these are Fancy's common brood Hatched in the nest of solitude; 70 This is Dame Wish's hourly trade, By our rude sires a goddess made. Could longing, though its heart broke, give Trances in which we chiefly live? Moments that darken all beside, Tearfully radiant as a bride? Beckonings of bright escape, of wings Purchased with loss of baser things? Blithe truancies from all control Of Hylë, outings of the soul? 80 The worm, by trustful instinct led, Draws from its womb a slender thread, And drops, confiding that the breeze Will waft it to unpastured trees: So the brain spins itself, and so Swings boldly off in hope to blow Across some tree of knowledge, fair With fruitage new, none else shall share: Sated with wavering in the Void, It backward climbs, so best employed, 90 And, where no proof is nor can be, Seeks refuge with Analogy; Truth's soft half-sister, she may tell Where lurks, seld-sought, the other's well, With metaphysic midges sore, My Thought seeks comfort at her door, And, at her feet a suppliant cast, Evokes a spectre of the past. Not such as shook the knees of Saul, But winsome, golden-gay withal,-- 100 Two fishes in a globe of glass, That pass, and waver, and re-pass, And lighten that way, and then this, Silent as meditation is. With a half-humorous smile I see In this their aimless industry, These errands nowhere and returns Grave as a pair of funeral urns, This ever-seek and never-find, A mocking image of my mind. 110 But not for this I bade you climb Up from the darkening deeps of time: Help me to tame these wild day-mares That sudden on me unawares. Fish, do your duty, as did they Of the Black Island far away In life's safe places,--far as you From all that now I see or do. You come, embodied flames, as when I knew you first, nor yet knew men; 120 Your gold renews my golden days, Your splendor all my loss repays. 'Tis more than sixty years ago Since first I watched your to-and-fro; Two generations come and gone From silence to oblivion, With all their noisy strife and stress Lulled in the grave's forgivingness, While you unquenchably survive Immortal, almost more alive. 130 I watched you then a curious boy, Who in your beauty found full joy, And, by no problem-debts distrest, Sate at life's board a welcome guest. You were my sister's pets, not mine; But Property's dividing line No hint of dispossession drew On any map my simplesse knew; O golden age, not yet dethroned! What made me happy, that I owned; 140 You were my wonders, you my Lars, In darkling days my sun and stars, And over you entranced I hung, Too young to know that I was young. Gazing with still unsated bliss, My fancies took some shape like this: 'I have my world, and so have you, A tiny universe for two, A bubble by the artist blown, Scarcely more fragile than our own, 150 Where you have all a whale could wish, Happy as Eden's primal fish. Manna is dropt you thrice a day From some kind heaven not far away, And still you snatch its softening crumbs, Nor, more than we, think whence it comes. No toil seems yours but to explore Your cloistered realm from shore to shore; Sometimes you trace its limits round, Sometimes its limpid depths you sound, 160 Or hover motionless midway, Like gold-red clouds at set of day; Erelong you whirl with sudden whim Off to your globe's most distant rim, Where, greatened by the watery lens, Methinks no dragon of the fens Flashed huger scales against the sky, Roused by Sir Bevis or Sir Guy, And the one eye that meets my view, Lidless and strangely largening, too, 170 Like that of conscience in the dark, Seems to make me its single mark. What a benignant lot is yours That have an own All-out-of-doors, No words to spell, no sums to do, No Nepos and no parlyvoo! How happy you without a thought Of such cross things as Must and Ought,-- I too the happiest of boys To see and share your golden joys!' 180 So thought the child, in simpler words, Of you his finny flocks and herds; Now, an old man, I bid you rise To the fine sight behind the eyes, And, lo, you float and flash again In the dark cistern of my brain. But o'er your visioned flames I brood With other mien, in other mood; You are no longer there to please, But to stir argument, and tease 190 My thought with all the ghostly shapes From which no moody man escapes. Diminished creature, I no more Find Fairyland beside my door, But for each moment's pleasure pay With the _quart d'heure_ of Rabelais! I watch you in your crystal sphere, And wonder if you see and hear Those shapes and sounds that stir the wide Conjecture of the world outside; 200 In your pent lives, as we in ours, Have you surmises dim of powers, Of presences obscurely shown, Of lives a riddle to your own, Just on the senses' outer verge, Where sense-nerves into soul-nerves merge, Where we conspire our own deceit Confederate in deft Fancy's feat, And the fooled brain befools the eyes With pageants woven of its own lies? 210 But _are_ they lies? Why more than those Phantoms that startle your repose, Half seen, half heard, then flit away, And leave you your prose-bounded day? The things ye see as shadows I Know to be substance; tell me why My visions, like those haunting you, May not be as substantial too. Alas, who ever answer heard From fish, and dream-fish too? Absurd! 220 Your consciousness I half divine, But you are wholly deaf to mine. Go, I dismiss you; ye have done All that ye could; our silk is spun: Dive back into the deep of dreams, Where what is real is what, seems! Yet I shall fancy till my grave Your lives to mine a lesson gave; If lesson none, an image, then, Impeaching self-conceit in men 230 Who put their confidence alone In what they call the Seen and Known. How seen? How known? As through your glass Our wavering apparitions pass Perplexingly, then subtly wrought To some quite other thing by thought. Here shall my resolution be: The shadow of the mystery Is haply wholesomer for eyes That cheat us to be overwise, 240 And I am happy in my right To love God's darkness as His light. TURNER'S OLD TÉMÉRAIRE UNDER A FIGURE SYMBOLIZING THE CHURCH Thou wast the fairest of all man-made things; The breath of heaven bore up thy cloudy wings, And, patient in their triple rank, The thunders crouched about thy flank, Their black lips silent with the doom of kings. The storm-wind loved to rock him in thy pines, And swell thy vans with breath of great designs; Long-wildered pilgrims of the main By thee relaid their course again, Whose prow was guided by celestial signs. How didst thou trample on tumultuous seas, Or, like some basking sea-beast stretched at ease, Let the bull-fronted surges glide Caressingly along thy side, Like glad hounds leaping by the huntsman's knees! Heroic feet, with fire of genius shod, In battle's ecstasy thy deck have trod, While from their touch a fulgor ran Through plank and spar, from man to man, Welding thee to a thunderbolt of God. Now a black demon, belching fire and steam, Drags thee away, a pale, dismantled dream, And all thy desecrated bulk Must landlocked lie, a helpless hulk, To gather weeds in the regardless stream. Woe's me, from Ocean's sky-horizoned air To this! Better, the flame-cross still aflare, Shot-shattered to have met thy doom Where thy last lightnings cheered the gloom, Than here be safe in dangerless despair. Thy drooping symbol to the flag-staff clings, Thy rudder soothes the tide to lazy rings, Thy thunders now but birthdays greet, Thy planks forget the martyrs' feet, Thy masts what challenges the sea-wind brings. Thou a mere hospital, where human wrecks, Like winter-flies, crawl, those renowned decks, Ne'er trodden save by captive foes, And wonted sternly to impose God's will and thine on bowed imperial necks! Shall nevermore, engendered of thy fame, A new sea-eagle heir thy conqueror name. And with commissioned talons wrench From thy supplanter's grimy clench His sheath of steel, his wings of smoke and flame? This shall the pleased eyes of our children see; For this the stars of God long even as we; Earth listens for his wings; the Fates Expectant lean; Faith cross-propt waits, And the tired waves of Thought's insurgent sea. ST. MICHAEL THE WEIGHER Stood the tall Archangel weighing All man's dreaming, doing, saying, All the failure and the pain, All the triumph and the gain, In the unimagined years, Full of hopes, more full of tears, Since old Adam's hopeless eyes Backward searched for Paradise, And, instead, the flame-blade saw Of inexorable Law. Waking, I beheld him there, With his fire-gold, flickering hair, In his blinding armor stand, And the scales were in his hand: Mighty were they, and full well They could poise both heaven and hell. 'Angel,' asked I humbly then, 'Weighest thou the souls of men? That thine office is, I know.' 'Nay,' he answered me, 'not so; But I weigh the hope of Man Since the power of choice began, In the world, of good or ill.' Then I waited and was still. In one scale I saw him place All the glories of our race, Cups that lit Belsbazzar's feast, Gems, the lightning of the East, Kublai's sceptre, Cæsar's sword, Many a poet's golden word, Many a skill of science, vain To make men as gods again. In the other scale he threw Things regardless, outcast, few, Martyr-ash, arena sand, Of St Francis' cord a strand, Beechen cups of men whose need Fasted that the poor might feed, Disillusions and despairs Of young saints with, grief-grayed hairs, Broken hearts that brake for Man. Marvel through my pulses ran Seeing then the beam divine Swiftly on this hand decline, While Earth's splendor and renown Mounted light as thistle-down. A VALENTINE Let others wonder what fair face Upon their path shall shine, And, fancying half, half hoping, trace Some maiden shape of tenderest grace To be their Valentine. Let other hearts with tremor sweet One secret wish enshrine That Fate may lead their happy feet Fair Julia in the lane to meet To be their Valentine. But I, far happier, am secure; I know the eyes benign, The face more beautiful and pure Than fancy's fairest portraiture That mark my Valentine. More than when first I singled, thee, This only prayer is mine,-- That, in the years I yet shall see. As, darling, in the past, thou'll be My happy Valentine. AN APRIL BIRTHDAY--AT SEA On this wild waste, where never blossom came, Save the white wind-flower to the billow's cap, Or those pale disks of momentary flame, Loose petals dropped from Dian's careless lap, What far fetched influence all my fancy fills, With singing birds and dancing daffodils? Why, 'tis her day whom jocund April brought, And who brings April with her in her eyes; It is her vision lights my lonely thought, Even as a rose that opes its hushed surprise In sick men's chambers, with its glowing breath Plants Summer at the glacier edge of Death. Gray sky, sea gray as mossy stones on graves;-- Anon comes April in her jollity; And dancing down the bleak vales 'tween the waves, Makes them green glades for all her flowers and me. The gulls turn thrushes, charmed are sea and sky By magic of my thought, and know not why. Ah, but I know, for never April's shine, Nor passion gust of rain, nor all her flowers Scattered in haste, were seen so sudden fine As she in various mood, on whom the powers Of happiest stars in fair conjunction smiled To bless the birth, of April's darling child. LOVE AND THOUGHT What hath Love with Thought to do? Still at variance are the two. Love is sudden, Love is rash, Love is like the levin flash, Comes as swift, as swiftly goes, And his mark as surely knows. Thought is lumpish, Thought is slow, Weighing long 'tween yes and no; When dear Love is dead and gone, Thought comes creeping in anon, And, in his deserted nest, Sits to hold the crowner's quest. Since we love, what need to think? Happiness stands on a brink Whence too easy 'tis to fall Whither's no return at all; Have a care, half-hearted lover, Thought would only push her over! THE NOBLER LOVER If he be a nobler lover, take him! You in you I seek, and not myself; Love with men's what women choose to make him, Seraph strong to soar, or fawn-eyed elf: All I am or can, your beauty gave it, Lifting me a moment nigh to you, And my bit of heaven, I fain would save it-- Mine I thought it was, I never knew. What you take of me is yours to serve you, All I give, you gave to me before; Let him win you! If I but deserve you, I keep all you grant to him and more: You shall make me dare what others dare not, You shall keep my nature pure as snow, And a light from you that others share not Shall transfigure me where'er I go. Let me be your thrall! However lowly Be the bondsman's service I can do, Loyalty shall make it high and holy; Naught can be unworthy, done for you. Men shall say, 'A lover of this fashion Such an icy mistress well beseems.' Women say, 'Could we deserve such passion, We might be the marvel that he dreams.' ON HEARING A SONATA OF BEETHOVEN'S PLAYED IN THE NEXT ROOM Unseen Musician, thou art sure to please, For those same notes in happier days I heard Poured by dear hands that long have never stirred Yet now again for me delight the keys: Ah me, to strong illusions such as these What are Life's solid things? The walls that gird Our senses, lo, a casual scent or word Levels, and it is the soul that hears and sees! Play on, dear girl, and many be the years Ere some grayhaired survivor sit like me And, for thy largess pay a meed of tears Unto another who, beyond the sea Of Time and Change, perhaps not sadly hears A music in this verse undreamed by thee! VERSES INTENDED TO GO WITH A POSSET DISH TO MY DEAR LITTLE GODDAUGHTER, 1882 In good old times, which means, you know, The time men wasted long ago, And we must blame our brains or mood If that we squander seems less good, In those blest days when wish was act And fancy dreamed itself to fact, Godfathers used to fill with guineas The cups they gave their pickaninnies, Performing functions at the chrism Not mentioned in the Catechism. No millioner, poor I fill up With wishes my more modest cup, Though had I Amalthea's horn It should be hers the newly born. Nay, shudder not! I should bestow it So brimming full she couldn't blow it. Wishes aren't horses: true, but still There are worse roadsters than goodwill. And so I wish my darling health, And just to round my couplet, wealth, With faith enough to bridge the chasm 'Twixt Genesis and Protoplasm, And bear her o'er life's current vext From this world to a better next, Where the full glow of God puts out Poor reason's farthing candle, Doubt. I've wished her healthy, wealthy, wise, What more can godfather devise? But since there's room for countless wishes In these old-fashioned posset dishes, I'll wish her from my plenteous store Of those commodities two more, Her father's wit, veined through and through With tenderness that Watts (but whew! Celia's aflame, I mean no stricture On his Sir Josh-surpassing picture)-- I wish her next, and 'tis the soul Of all I've dropt into the bowl, Her mother's beauty--nay, but two So fair at once would never do. Then let her but the half possess, Troy was besieged ten years for less. Now if there's any truth in Darwin, And we from what was, all we are win, I simply wish the child to be A sample of Heredity, Enjoying to the full extent Life's best, the Unearned Increment Which Fate her Godfather to flout Gave _him_ in legacies of gout. Thus, then, the cup is duly filled; Walk steady, dear, lest all be spilled. ON A BUST OF GENERAL GRANT Strong, simple, silent are the [steadfast] laws That sway this universe, of none withstood, Unconscious of man's outcries or applause, Or what man deems his evil or his good; And when the Fates ally them with a cause That wallows in the sea-trough and seems lost, Drifting in danger of the reefs and sands Of shallow counsels, this way, that way, tost, Strength, silence, simpleness, of these three strands They twist the cable shall the world hold fast To where its anchors clutch the bed-rock of the Past. Strong, simple, silent, therefore such was he Who helped us in our need; the eternal law That who can saddle Opportunity Is God's elect, though many a mortal flaw May minish him in eyes that closely see, Was verified in him: what need we say Of one who made success where others failed, Who, with no light save that of common day, Struck hard, and still struck on till Fortune quailed, But that (so sift the Norns) a desperate van Ne'er fell at last to one who was not wholly man. A face all prose where Time's [benignant] haze Softens no raw edge yet, nor makes all fair With the beguiling light of vanished days; This is relentless granite, bleak and bare, Roughhewn, and scornful of æsthetic phrase; Nothing is here for fancy, naught for dreams, The Present's hard uncompromising light Accents all vulgar outlines, flaws, and seams, Yet vindicates some pristine natural right O'ertopping that hereditary grace Which marks the gain or loss of some time-fondled race. So Marius looked, methinks, and Cromwell so, Not in the purple born, to those they led Nearer for that and costlier to the foe, New moulders of old forms, by nature bred The exhaustless life of manhood's seeds to show, Let but the ploughshare of portentous times Strike deep enough to reach them where they lie; Despair and danger are their fostering climes, And their best sun bursts from a stormy sky: He was our man of men, nor would abate The utmost due manhood could claim of fate. Nothing Ideal, a plain-people's man At the first glance, a more deliberate ken Finds type primeval, theirs in whose veins ran Such blood as quelled the dragon In his den, Made harmless fields, and better worlds began: He came grim-silent, saw and did the deed That was to do; in his master-grip Our sword flashed joy; no skill of words could breed Such sure conviction as that close-clamped lip; He slew our dragon, nor, so seemed it, knew He had done more than any simplest man might do. Yet did this man, war-tempered, stern as steel Where steel opposed, prove soft in civil sway; The hand hilt-hardened had lost tact to feel The world's base coin, and glozing knaves made prey Of him and of the entrusted Commonweal; So Truth insists and will not be denied. We turn our eyes away, and so will Fame, As if in his last battle he had died Victor for us and spotless of all blame, Doer of hopeless tasks which praters shirk, One of those still plain men that do the world's rough work. APPENDIX I. INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND SERIES OF BIGLOW PAPERS [Lowell took occasion, when collecting in a book the several numbers of the second series of 'Biglow Papers,' which had appeared In the 'Atlantic Monthly,' to prefix an essay which not only gave a personal narrative of the origin of the whole scheme, but particularly dwelt upon the use in literature of the homely dialect in which the poems were couched. In this Cabinet Edition it has seemed expedient to print the Introduction here rather than in immediate connection with the poems themselves.] Though prefaces seem of late to have fallen under some reproach, they have at least this advantage, that they set us again on the feet of our personal consciousness and rescue us from the gregarious mock-modesty or cowardice of that _we_ which shrills feebly throughout modern literature like the shrieking of mice in the walls of a house that has passed its prime. Having a few words to say to the many friends whom the 'Biglow Papers' have won me, I shall accordingly take the freedom of the first person singular of the personal pronoun. Let each of the good-natured unknown who have cheered me by the written communication of their sympathy look upon this Introduction as a private letter to himself. When, more than twenty years ago, I wrote the first of the series, I had no definite plan and no intention of ever writing another. Thinking the Mexican war, as I think it still, a national crime committed in behoof of Slavery, our common sin, and wishing to put the feeling of those who thought as I did in a way that would tell, I imagined to myself such an up-country man as I had often seen at antislavery gatherings capable of district-school English, but always instinctively falling back into the natural stronghold of his homely dialect when heated to the point of self-forgetfulness. When I began to carry out my conception and to write in my assumed character, I found myself in a strait between two perils. On the one hand, I was in danger of being carried beyond the limit of my own opinions, or at least of that temper with which every man should speak his mind in print, and on the other I feared the risk of seeming to vulgarize a deep and sacred conviction. I needed on occasion to rise above the level of mere _patois_, and for this purpose conceived the Rev. Mr. Wilbur, who should express the more cautious element of the New England character and its pedantry, as Mr. Biglow should serve for its homely common-sense vivified and heated by conscience. The parson was to be the complement rather than the antithesis of his parishioner, and I felt or fancied a certain humorous element in the real identity of the two under a seeming incongruity. Mr. Wilbur's fondness for scraps of Latin, though drawn from the life, I adopted deliberately to heighten the contrast. Finding soon after that I needed some one as a mouth-piece of the mere drollery, for I conceive that true humor is never divorced from moral conviction, I invented Mr. Sawin for the clown of my little puppet-show. I meant to embody in him that half-conscious _un_morality which I had noticed as the recoil in gross natures from a puritanism that still strove to keep in its creed the intense savor which had long gone out of its faith and life. In the three I thought I should find room enough to express, as it was my plan to do, the popular feeling and opinion of the time. For the names of two of my characters, since I have received some remonstrances from very worthy persons who happen to bear them, I would say that they were purely fortuitous, probably mere unconscious memories of sign-boards or directories. Mr. Sawin's sprang from the accident of a rhyme at the end of his first epistle, and I purposely christened him by the impossible surname of Birdofredum not more to stigmatize him as the incarnation of 'Manifest Destiny,' in other words, of national recklessness as to right and wrong, than to avoid the chance of wounding any private sensitiveness. The success of my experiment soon began not only to astonish me, but to make me feel the responsibility of knowing that I held in my hand a weapon instead of the mere fencing-stick I had supposed. Very far from being a popular author under my own name, so far, indeed, as to be almost unread, I found the verses of my pseudonym copied everywhere; saw them pinned up in workshops; I heard them quoted and their authorship debated; I once even, when rumor had at length caught up my name in one of its eddies, had the satisfaction of overhearing it demonstrated, in the pauses of a concert, that _I_ was utterly incompetent to have written anything of the kind. I had read too much not to know the utter worthlessness of contemporary reputation, especially as regards satire, but I knew also that by giving a certain amount of influence it also had its worth, if that influence were used on the right side. I had learned, too, that the first requisite of good writing is to have an earnest and definite purpose, whether æsthetic or moral, and that even good writing, to please long, must have more than an average amount either of imagination or common-sense. The first of these falls to the lot of scarcely one in several generations; the last is within the reach of many in every one that passes; and of this an author may fairly hope to become in part the mouthpiece. If I put on the cap and bells and made myself one of the court-fools of King Demos, it was less to make his majesty laugh than to win a passage to his royal ears for certain serious things which I had deeply at heart. I say this because there is no imputation that could be more galling to any man's self-respect than that of being a mere jester. I endeavored, by generalising my satire, to give it what value _I_ could beyond the passing moment and the immediate application. How far I have succeeded I cannot tell, but I have had better luck than I ever looked for in seeing my verses survive to pass beyond their nonage. In choosing the Yankee dialect, I did not act without forethought. It had long seemed to me that the great vice of American writing and speaking was a studied want of simplicity, that we were in danger of coming to look on our mother-tongue as a dead language, to be sought in the grammar and dictionary rather than in the heart, and that our only chance of escape was by seeking it at its living sources among those who were, as Scottowe says of Major-General Gibbons, 'divinely illiterate.' President Lincoln, the only really great public man whom these latter days have seen, was great also in this, that he was master--witness his speech at Gettysburg--of a truly masculine English, classic, because it was of no special period, and level at once to the highest and lowest of his countrymen. I learn from the highest authority that his favorite reading was in Shakespeare and Milton, to which, of course, the Bible should be added. But whoever should read the debates in Congress might fancy himself present at a meeting of the city council of some city of Southern Gaul in the decline of the Empire, where barbarians with a Latin varnish emulated each other in being more than Ciceronian. Whether it be want of culture, for the highest outcome of that is simplicity, or for whatever reason, it is certain that very few American writers or speakers wield their native language with the directness, precision, and force that are common as the day in the mother country. We use it like Scotsmen, not as if it belonged to us, but as if we wished to prove that we belonged to it, by showing our intimacy with its written rather than with its spoken dialect. And yet all the while our popular idiom is racy with life and vigor and originality, bucksome (as Milton used the word) to our new occasions, and proves itself no mere graft by sending up new suckers from the old root in spite of us. It is only from its roots in the living generations of men that a language can be reinforced with fresh vigor for its needs; what may be called a literate dialect grows ever more and more pedantic and foreign, till it becomes at last as unfitting a vehicle for living thought as monkish Latin. That we should all be made to talk like books is the danger with which we are threatened by the Universal Schoolmaster, who does his best to enslave the minds and memories of his victims to what he esteems the best models of English composition, that is to say, to the writers whose style is faultily correct and has no blood-warmth in it. No language after it has faded into _diction_, none that cannot suck up the feeding juices secreted for it in the rich mother-earth of common folk, can bring forth a sound and lusty book. True vigor and heartiness of phrase do not pass from page to page, but from man to man, where the brain is kindled and the lips suppled by downright living interests and by passion in its very throe. Language is the soil of thought, and our own especially is a rich leaf-mould, the slow deposit of ages, the shed foliage of feeling, fancy, and imagination, which has suffered an earth-change, that the vocal forest, as Howell called it, may clothe itself anew with living green. There is death in the dictionary; and, where language is too strictly limited by convention, the ground for expression to grow in is limited also; and we get a _potted_ literature, Chinese dwarfs instead of healthy trees. But while the schoolmaster has been busy starching our language and smoothing it flat with the mangle of a supposed classical authority, the newspaper reporter has been doing even more harm by stretching and swelling it to suit his occasions. A dozen years ago I began a list, which I have added to from time to time, of some of the changes which may be fairly laid at his door. I give a few of them as showing their tendency, all the more dangerous that their effect, like that of some poisons, is insensibly cumulative, and that they are sure at last of effect among a people whose chief reading is the daily paper. I give in two columns the old style and its modern equivalent. _Old Style._ _New Style._ Was hanged. Was launched into eternity. When the halter When the fatal was put round noose was adjusted his neck. about the neck of the unfortunate victim of his own unbridled passions. A great crowd A vast concourse came to see. was assembled to witness. Great fire. Disastrous conflagration. The fire spread. The conflagration extended its devastating career. House burned. Edifice consumed. The fire was got The progress of under. the devouring element was arrested. Man fell. Individual was precipitated. A horse and wagon A valuable horse ran against. attached to a vehicle driven by J.S., in the employment of J.B., collided with. The frightened The infuriated animal. horse. Sent for the doctor. Called into requisition the services of the family physician. The mayor of the The chief magistrate city in a short of the metropolis, in well- speech welcomed. chosen and eloquent language, frequently interrupted by the plaudits of the surging multitude, officially tendered the hospitalities. I shall say a few I shall, with your words. permission, beg leave to offer some brief observations. Began his answer. Commenced his rejoinder. Asked him to dine. Tendered him a banquet. A bystander advised. One of those omnipresent characters who, as if in pursuance of some previous arrangement, are certain to be encountered in the vicinity when an accident occurs, ventured the suggestion. He died. He deceased, he passed out of existence, his spirit quitted its earthly habitation, winged its way to eternity, shook off its burden, etc. In one sense this is nothing new. The school of Pope in verse ended by wire-drawing its phrase to such thinness that it could bear no weight of meaning whatever. Nor is fine writing by any means confined to America. All writers without imagination fall into it of necessity whenever they attempt the figurative. I take two examples from Mr. Merivale's 'History of the Romans under the Empire,' which, indeed, is full of such. 'The last years of the age familiarly styled the Augustan were singularly barren of the literary glories from which its celebrity was chiefly derived. One by one the stars in its firmament had been lost to the world; Virgil and Horace, etc., had long since died; the charm which the imagination of Livy had thrown over the earlier annals of Rome had ceased to shine on the details of almost contemporary history; and if the flood of his eloquence still continued flowing, we can hardly suppose that the stream was as rapid, as fresh, and as clear as ever.' I will not waste time in criticising the bad English or the mixture of metaphor in these sentences, but will simply cite another from the same author which is even worse. 'The shadowy phantom of the Republic continued to flit before the eyes of the Cæsar. There was still, he apprehended, a germ of sentiment existing, on which a scion of his own house, or even a stranger, might boldly throw himself and raise the standard of patrician independence.' Now a ghost may haunt a murderer, but hardly, I should think, to scare him with the threat of taking a new lease of its old tenement. And fancy the _scion_ of a _house_ in the act of _throwing itself_ upon a _germ of sentiment_ to _raise a standard!_ I am glad, since we have so much in the same kind to answer for, that this bit of horticultural rhetoric is from beyond sea. I would not be supposed to condemn truly imaginative prose. There is a simplicity of splendor, no less than of plainness, and prose would be poor indeed if it could not find a tongue for that meaning of the mind which is behind the meaning of the words. It has sometimes seemed to me that in England there was a growing tendency to curtail language into a mere convenience, and to defecate it of all emotion as thoroughly as algebraic signs. This has arisen, no doubt, in part from that healthy national contempt of humbug which is characteristic of Englishmen, in part from that sensitiveness to the ludicrous which makes them so shy of expressing feeling, but in part also, it is to be feared, from a growing distrust, one might almost say hatred, of whatever is super-material. There is something sad in the scorn with which their journalists treat the notion of there being such a thing as a national ideal, seeming utterly to have forgotten that even in the affairs of this world the imagination is as much matter-of-fact as the understanding. If we were to trust the impression made on us by some of the cleverest and most characteristic of their periodical literature, we should think England hopelessly stranded on the good-humored cynicism of well-to-do middle-age, and should fancy it an enchanted nation, doomed to sit forever with its feet under the mahogany in that after-dinner mood which follows conscientious repletion, and which it is ill-manners to disturb with any topics more exciting than the quality of the wines. But there are already symptoms that a large class of Englishmen are getting weary of the dominion of consols and divine common-sense, and to believe that eternal three per cent. is not the chief end of man, nor the highest and only kind of interest to which the powers and opportunities of England are entitled. The quality of exaggeration has often been remarked on as typical of American character, and especially o£ American humor. In Dr. Petri's _Gedrängtes Handbuch der Fremdwörter_, we are told that the word _humbug_ is commonly used for the exaggerations of the North-Americans. To be sure, one would be tempted to think the dream of Columbus half fulfilled, and that Europe had found in the West a nearer way to Orientalism, at least in diction. But it seems tome that a great deal of what is set down as mere extravagance is more fitly to be called intensity and picturesqueness, symptoms ol the imaginative faculty in full health and strength, though producing, as yet, only the raw and formless material in which poetry is to work. By and by, perhaps, the world will see it fashioned into poem and picture, and Europe, which will be hard pushed for originality erelong, may have to thank us for a new sensation. The French continue to find Shakespeare exaggerated because he treated English just as our country-folk do when they speak of a 'steep price,' or say that they 'freeze to' a thing. The first postulate of an original literature is that a people should use their language instinctively and unconsciously, as if it were a lively part of their growth and personality, not as the mere torpid boon of education or inheritance. Even Burns contrived to write very poor verse and prose in English. Vulgarisms are often only poetry in the egg. The late Mr. Horace Mann, in one of his public addresses, commented at some length on the beauty and moral significance ol the French phrase _s'orienter_ and called on his young friends to practise upon it in life. There was not a Yankee in his audience whose problem had not always been to find out what was _about east_, and to shape his course accordingly. This charm which a familiar expression gains by being commented, as it were, and. set in a new light by a foreign language, is curious and instructive. I cannot help thinking that Mr. Matthew Arnold forgets this a little too much sometimes when he writes of the beauties of French style. It would not be hard to find in the works of French Academicians phrases as coarse as those he cites from Burke, only they are veiled by the unfamiliarity of the language. But, however this may be, it is certain that poets and peasants please us in the same way by translating words back again to their primal freshness, and infusing them with a delightful strangeness which is anything but alienation. What, for example, is Milton's '_edge_ of battle' but a doing into English of the Latin _acies? Was die Gans gedacht das der Schwan vollbracht_, what the goose but thought, that the swan full brought (or, to de-Saxonize it a little, what the goose conceived, that the swan achieved), and it may well be that the life, invention, and vigor shown by our popular speech, and the freedom with which it is shaped to the instant want of those who use it, are of the best omen for our having a swan at last. The part I have taken on myself is that of the humbler bird. But it is affirmed that there is something innately vulgar in the Yankee dialect. M. Sainte-Beuve says, with his usual neatness: '_Je définis un patois une ancienne langue qui a eu des malheurs, ou encore une langue toute jeune st qui n'a pas fait fortune._' The first part of his definition applies to a dialect like the Provençal, the last to the Tuscan before Dante had lifted it into a classic, and neither, it seems to me, will quite fit a _patois/_, which is not properly a dialect, but rather certain archaisms, proverbial phrases, and modes of pronunciation, which maintain themselves among the uneducated side by side with the finished and universally accepted language. Norman French, for example, or Scotch down to the time of James VI., could hardly be called _patois_, while I should be half inclined to name the Yankee a _lingo_ rather than a dialect. It has retained a few words now fallen into disuse in the mother country, like to _tarry_, to _progress_, _fleshy_, _fall_, and some others; it has changed the meaning of some, as in _freshet_; and it has clung to what I suspect to have been the broad Norman pronunciation of _e_ (which Molière puts into the mouth of his rustics) in such words as _sarvant_, _parfect_, _vartoo_, and the like. It maintains something of the French sound of _a_ also in words like _ch[)a]mber_, _d[)a]nger_ (though the latter had certainly begun to take its present sound so early as 1636, when I find it sometimes spelt _dainger_). But in general it may be said that nothing can be found in it which does not still survive in some one or other of the English provincial dialects. There is, perhaps, a single exception in the verb to _sleeve_. To _sleeve_ silk means to divide or ravel out a thread of silk with the point of a needle till it becomes _floss_. (A.S. _sléfan_, to _cleave_=divide.) This, I think, explains the '_sleeveless_ errand' in 'Troilus and Cressida' so inadequately, sometimes so ludicrously darkened by the commentators. Is not a 'sleeveless errand' one that cannot be unravelled, incomprehensible, and therefore bootless? I am not speaking now of Americanisms properly so called, that is, of words or phrases which have grown into use here either through necessity, invention, or accident, such as a _carry_, a _one-horse affair_, a _prairie_, to _vamose_. Even these are fewer than is sometimes taken for granted. But I think some fair defence may be made against the charge of vulgarity. Properly speaking, vulgarity is in the thought, and not in the word or the way of pronouncing it. Modern French, the most polite of languages, is barbarously vulgar if compared with the Latin out of which it has been corrupted, or even with Italian. There is a wider gap, and one implying greater boorishness, between _ministerium_ and _métier_, or _sapiens_ and _sachant_, than between _druv_ and _drove_ or _agin_ and _against_, which last is plainly an arrant superlative. Our rustic _coverlid_ is nearer its French original than the diminutive cover_let_, into which it has been ignorantly corrupted in politer speech. I obtained from three cultivated Englishmen at different times three diverse pronunciations of a single word,--_cowcumber_, _coocumber_, and _cucumber_. Of these the first, which is Yankee also, comes nearest to the nasality of _concombre_. Lord Ossory assures us that Voltaire saw the best society in England, and Voltaire tells his countrymen that _handkerchief_ was pronounced _hankercher_. I find it so spelt in Hakluyt and elsewhere. This enormity the Yankee still persists in, and as there is always a reason for such deviations from the sound as represented by the spelling, may we not suspect two sources of derivation, and find an ancestor for _kercher_ in _couverture_ rather than in _couvrechef_? And what greater phonetic vagary (which Dryden, by the way, called _fegary_) in our _lingua rustica_ than this _ker_ for _couvre_? I copy from the fly-leaves of my books, where I have noted them from time to time, a few examples of pronunciation and phrase which will show that the Yankee often has antiquity and very respectable literary authority on his side. My list might be largely increased by referring to glossaries, but to them eyery one can go for himself, and I have gathered enough for my purpose. I will take first those cases in which something like the French sound has been preserved in certain single letters and diphthongs. And this opens a curious question as to how long this Gallicism maintained itself in England. Sometimes a divergence in pronunciation has given as two words with different meanings, as in _genteel_ and _jaunty_, which I find coming in toward the close of the seventeenth century, and wavering between _genteel_ and _jantee_. It is usual in America to drop the _u_ in words ending in _our_--a very proper change recommended by Howell two centuries ago, and carried out by him so far as his printers would allow. This and the corresponding changes in _musique_, _musick_, and the like, which he also advocated, show that in his time the French accent indicated by the superfluous letters (for French had once nearly as strong an accent as Italian) had gone out of use. There is plenty of French accent down to the end of Elizabeth's reign. In Daniel we have _riches'_ and _counsel'_, in Bishop Hall _comet'_, _chapëlain_, in Donne _pictures'_, _virtue'_, _presence'_, _mortal'_, _merit'_, _hainous'_, _giant'_, with many more, and Marston's satires are full of them. The two latter, however, are not to be relied on, as they may be suspected of Chaucerizing. Herrick writes _baptime_. The tendency to throw the accent backward began early. But the incongruities are perplexing, and perhaps mark the period of transition. In Warner's 'Albion's England' we have _creator'_ and _crëature'_ side by side with the modern _creator_ and _creature_. _E'nvy_ and _e'nvying_ occur in Campion (1602), and yet _envy'_ survived Milton. In some cases we have gone back again nearer to the French, as in _rev'enue_ for _reven'ue_, I had been so used to hearing _imbecile_ pronounced with the accent on the first syllable, which is in accordance with the general tendency in such matters, that I was surprised to find _imbec'ile_ in a verse of Wordsworth. The dictionaries all give it so. I asked a highly cultivated Englishman, and he declared for _imbeceel'_. In general it may be assumed that accent will finally settle on the syllable dictated by greater ease and therefore quickness of utterance. _Blas'-phemous_, for example, is more rapidly pronounced than _blasphem'ous_, to which our Yankee clings, following in this the usage of many of the older poets. _Amer'ican_ is easier than _Ameri'can_, and therefore the false quantity has carried the day, though the true one may be found in George Herbert, and even so late as Cowley. To come back to the matter in hand. Our 'uplandish man' retains the soft or thin sound of the _u_ in some words, such as _rule_, _truth_ (sometimes also pronounced _tr[)u]th_, not _trooth_), while he says _noo_ for _new_, and gives to _view_ and _few_ so indescribable a mixture of the two sounds with a slight nasal tincture that it may be called the Yankee shibboleth. Voltaire says that the English pronounce _true_ as if it rhymed with _view_, and this is the sound our rustics give to it. Spenser writes _deow_ (_dew_) which can only be pronounced with the Yankee nasality. In _rule_ the least sound of _a_ precedes the _u_. I find _reule_ in Pecock's 'Repressor.' He probably pronounced it _rayoolë_, as the old French word from which it is derived was very likely to be sounded at first, with a reminiscence of its original _regula_. Tindal has _reuler_, and the Coventry Plays have _preudent_. In the 'Parlyament of Byrdes' I find _reule_. As for _noo_, may it not claim some sanction in its derivation, whether from _nouveau_ or _neuf_, the ancient sound of which may very well have been _noof_, as nearer _novus_? _Beef_ would seem more like to have come from _buffe_ than from _boeuf_, unless the two were mere varieties of spelling. The Saxon _few_ may have caught enough from its French cousin _peu_ to claim the benefit of the same doubt as to sound; and our slang phrase _a few_ (as 'I licked him a few') may well appeal to _un peu_ for sense and authority. Nay, might not _lick_ itself turn out to be the good old word _lam_ in an English disguise, it the latter should claim descent as, perhaps, he fairly might, from the Latin _lambere_? The New England _ferce_ for _fierce_, and _perce_ for _pierce_ (sometimes heard as _fairce_ and _pairce_), are also Norman. For its antiquity I cite the rhyme of _verse and pierce_ in Chapman and Donne, and in some commendatory verses by a Mr. Berkenhead before the poems of Francis Beaumont. Our _pairlous_ for _perilous_ is of the same kind, and is nearer Shakespeare's _parlous_ than the modern pronunciation. One other Gallicism survives in our pronunciation. Perhaps I should rather call it a semi-Gallicism, for it is the result of a futile effort to reproduce a French sound with English lips. Thus for _joint_, _employ_, _royal_, we have _jynt_, _emply_, _r[)y]le_, the last differing only from _rile_ (_roil_) in a prolongation of the _y_ sound. I find _royal_ so pronounced in the 'Mirror for Magistrates.' In Walter de Biblesworth I find _solives_ Englished by _gistes_. This, it is true, may have been pronounced _jeests_, but the pronunciation _jystes_ must have preceded the present spelling, which was no doubt adopted after the radical meaning was forgotten, as analogical with other words in _oi_. In the same way after Norman-French influence had softened the _l_ out of _would_ (we already find _woud_ for _veut_ in N.F. poems), _should_ followed the example, and then an _l_ was foisted into _could_, where it does not belong, to satisfy the logic of the eye, which has affected the pronunciation and even the spelling of English more than is commonly supposed. I meet with _eyster_ for _oyster_ as early as the fourteenth century. I find _viage_ in Bishop Hall and Middleton the dramatist, _bile_ for _boil_ in Donne and Chrononhotonthologos, _line_ for _loin_ in Hall, _ryall_ and _chyse_ (for choice) _dystrye_ for _destroy_, in the Coventry Plays. In Chapman's 'All Fools' is the misprint of _employ_ for _imply_, fairly inferring an identity of sound in the last syllable. Indeed, this pronunciation was habitual till after Pope, and Rogers tells us that the elegant Gray said _naise_ for _noise_ just as our rustics still do. Our _cornish_ (which I find also in Herrick) remembers the French better than _cornice_ does. While clinging more closely to the Anglo-Saxon in dropping the _g_ from the end of the present participle, the Yankee now and then pleases himself with an experiment in French nasality in words ending in _n_. It is not, so far as my experience goes, very common, though it may formerly have been more so. _Capting_, for instance, I never heard save in jest, the habitual form being _kepp'n_. But at any rate it is no invention of ours. In that delightful old volume, 'Ane Compendious Buke of Godly and Spirituall Songs,' in which I know not whether the piety itself or the simplicity of its expression be more charming, I find _burding_, _garding_, and _cousing_, and in the State Trials _uncerting_ used by a gentleman. I confess that I like the _n_ better than _ng_. Of Yankee preterites I find _risse_ and _rize_ for _rose_ in Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton and Dryden, _clim_ in Spenser, _chees_ (_chose_) in Sir John Mandevil, _give_ (_gave_) in the Coventry Plays, _shet_ (_shut_) in Golding's Ovid, _het_ in Chapman and in Weever's Epitaphs, _thriv_ and _smit_ in Drayton, _quit_ in Ben Jonson and Henry More, and _pled_ in the Paston Letters, nay, even in the fastidious Landor. _Rid_ for _rode_ was anciently common. So likewise was _see_ for _saw_, but I find it in no writer of authority (except Golding), unless Chaucer's _seie_ and Gower's _sigh_ were, as I am inclined to think, so sounded. _Shew_ is used by Hector Boece, Giles Fletcher, Drummond of Hawthornden, and in the Paston Letters. Similar strong preterites, like _snew_, _thew_, and even _mew_, are not without example. I find _sew_ for _sewed_ in 'Piers Ploughman.' Indeed, the anomalies in English preterites are perplexing. We have probably transferred _flew_ from _flow_ (as the preterite of which I have heard it) to _fly_ because we had another preterite in _fled_. Of weak preterites the Yankee retains _growed_, _blowed_, for which he has good authority, and less often _knowed_. His _sot_ is merely a broad sounding of _sat_, no more inelegant than the common _got_ for _gat_, which he further degrades into _gut_. When he says _darst_, he uses a form as old as Chaucer. The Yankee has retained something of the long sound of the _a_ in such words as _axe_, _wax_, pronouncing them _exe_, _wex_ (shortened from _aix_, _waix_). He also says _hev_ and _hed_ (_h[=a]ve_, _h[=a]d_ for _have_ and _had_). In most cases he follows an Anglo-Saxon usage. In _aix_ for _axle_ he certainly does. I find _wex_ and _aisches_ (_ashes_) in Pecock, and _exe_ in the Paston Letters. Golding rhymes _wax_ with _wexe_ and spells _challenge_ _chelenge_. Chaucer wrote _hendy_. Dryden rhymes _can_ with _men_, as Mr. Biglow would. Alexander Gill, Milton's teacher, in his 'Logonomia' cites _hez_ for _hath_ as peculiar to Lincolnshire. I find _hayth_ in Collier's 'Bibliographical Account of Early English Literature' under the date 1584, and Lord Cromwell so wrote it. Sir Christopher Wren wrote _belcony_. Our _fect_ is only the O.F. _faict_. _Thaim_ for _them_ was common in the sixteenth century. We have an example of the same thing in the double form of the verb _thrash_, _thresh_. While the New Englander cannot be brought to say _instead_ for _instid_ (commonly _'stid_ where not the last word in a sentence), he changes the _i_ into _e_ in _red_ for _rid_, _tell_ for _till_, _hender_ for _hinder_, _rense_ for _rinse_. I find _red_ in the old interlude of 'Thersytes,' _tell_ in a letter of Daborne to Henslowe, and also, I shudder to mention it, in a letter of the great Duchess of Marlborough, Atossa herself! It occurs twice in a single verse of the Chester Plays, '_Tell_ the day of dome, _tell_ the beames blow.' From the word _blow_ (in another sense) is formed _blowth_, which I heard again this summer after a long interval. Mr. Wright[24] explains it as meaning 'a blossom.' With us a single blossom is a _blow_, while _blowth_ means the blossoming in general. A farmer would say that there was a good blowth on his fruit-trees. The word retreats farther inland and away from the railways, year by year. Wither rhymes _hinder_ with _slender_, and Shakespeare and Lovelace have _renched_ for _rinsed_. In 'Gammer Gurton' and 'Mirror for Magistrates' is _sence_ for _since_; Marlborough's Duchess so writes it, and Donne rhymes _since_ with _Amiens_ and _patïence_, Bishop Hall and Otway with _pretence_, Chapman with _citizens_, Dryden with _providence_. Indeed, why should not _sithence_ take that form? Dryden's wife (an earl's daughter) has _tell_ for _till_, Margaret, mother of Henry VII., writes _seche_ for _such_, and our _ef_ finds authority in the old form _yeffe_. _E_ sometimes takes the place of _u_, as _jedge, tredge, bresh_. I find _tredge_ in the interlude of 'Jack Jugler,' _bresh_ in a citation by Collier from 'London Cries' of the middle of the seventeenth century, and _resche_ for _rush_ (fifteenth century) in the very valuable 'Volume of Vocabularies' edited by Mr. Wright. _Resce_ is one of the Anglo-Saxon forms of the word in Bosworth's A.-S. Dictionary. Golding has _shet_. The Yankee always shortens the _u_ in the ending _ture_, making _ventur, natur, pictur_, and so on. This was common, also, among the educated of the last generation. I am inclined to think it may have been once universal, and I certainly think it more elegant than the vile _vencher, naycher, pickcher_, that have taken its place, sounding like the invention of a lexicographer to mitigate a sneeze. Nash in his 'Pierce Penniless' has _ventur_, and so spells it, and I meet it also in Spenser, Drayton, Ben Jonson, Herrick, and Prior. Spenser has _tort'rest_, which can be contracted only from _tortur_ and not from _torcher_. Quarles rhymes _nature_ with _creator_, and Dryden with _satire_, which he doubtless pronounced according to its older form of _satyr_. Quarles has also _torture_ and _mortar_. Mary Boleyn writes _kreatur_. I find _pikter_ in Izaak Walton's autograph will. I shall now give some examples which cannot so easily be ranked under any special head. Gill charges the Eastern counties with _kiver_ for _cover_, and _ta_, for _to_. The Yankee pronounces both _too_ and _to_ like _ta_ (like the _tou_ in _touch_) where they are not emphatic. When they are, both become _tu_. In old spelling, _to_ is the common (and indeed correct) form of _too_, which is only _to_ with the sense of _in addition_. I suspect that the sound of our _too_ has caught something from the French _tout_, and it is possible that the old _too too_ is not a reduplication, but a reminiscence of the feminine form of the same word (_toute_) as anciently pronounced, with the _e_ not yet silenced. Gill gives a Northern origin to _geaun_ for _gown_ and _waund_ for _wound_ (_vulnus_). Lovelace has _waund_, but there is something too dreadful in suspecting Spenser (who _borealised_ in his pastorals) of having ever been guilty of _geaun!_ And yet some delicate mouths even now are careful to observe the Hibernicism of _ge-ard_ for _guard_, and _ge-url_ for _girl_. Sir Philip Sidney (_credite posteri!_) wrote _furr_ for _far_. I would hardly have believed it had I not seen it in _facsimile_. As some consolation, I find _furder_ in Lord Bacon and Donne, and Wittier rhymes _far_ with _cur_. The Yankee, who omits the final _d_ in many words, as do the Scotch, makes up for it by adding one in _geound_. The purist does not feel the loss of the _d_ sensibly in _lawn_ and _yon_, from the former of which it has dropped again after a wrongful adoption (retained in _laundry_), while it properly belongs to the latter. But what shall we make of _git, yit_, and _yis_? I find _yis_ and _git_ in Warner's 'Albion's England,' _yet_ rhyming with _wit, admit_, and _fit_ in Donne, with _wit_ in the 'Revenger's Tragedy,' Beaumont, and Suckling, with _writ_ in Dryden, and latest of all with _wit_ in Sir Hanbury Williams. Prior rhymes _fitting_ and _begetting_. Worse is to come. Among others, Donne rhymes _again_ with _sin_, and Quarles repeatedly with _in_. _Ben_ for _been_, of which our dear Whittier is so fond, has the authority of Sackville, 'Gammer Gurton' (the work of a bishop), Chapman, Dryden, and many more, though _bin_ seems to have been the common form. Whittier's accenting the first syllable of _rom'ance_ finds an accomplice in Drayton among others, and, though manifestly wrong, is analogous with _Rom'ans_. Of other Yankeeisms, whether of form or pronunciation, which I have met with I add a few at random. Pecock writes _sowdiers (sogers, soudoyers)_, and Chapman and Gill _sodder_. This absorption of the _l_ is common in various dialects, especially in the Scottish. Pecock writes also _biyende_, and the authors of 'Jack Jugler' and 'Gammer Gurton' _yender_. The Yankee includes '_yon_' in the same catagory, and says 'hither an' yen,' for 'to and fro.' (Cf. German _jenseits_.) Pecock and plenty more have _wrastle_. Tindal has _agynste, gretter, shett, ondone, debyte_, and _scace_. 'Jack Jugler' has _scacely_ (which I have often heard, though _skurce_ is the common form), and Donne and Dryden make _great_ rhyme with _set_. In the inscription on Caxton's tomb I find _ynd_ for _end_, which the Yankee more often makes _eend_, still using familiarly the old phrase 'right anend' for 'continuously.' His 'stret (straight) along' in the same sense, which I thought peculiar to him, I find in Pecock. Tindal's _debytë_ for _deputy_ is so perfectly Yankee that I could almost fancy the brave martyr to have been deacon of the First Parish at Jaalam Centre. 'Jack Jugler' further gives us _playsent_ and _sartayne_. Dryden rhymes _certain_ with _parting_, and Chapman and Ben Jonson use _certain_, as the Yankee always does, for _certainly_. The 'Coventry Mysteries' have _occapied, massage, nateralle, materal (material),_ and _meracles_,--all excellent Yankeeisms. In the 'Quatre fils, Aymon' (1504),[25] is _vertus_ for _virtuous_. Thomas Fuller called _volume vollum_, I suspect, for he spells it _volumne_. However, _per contra_, Yankees habitually say _colume_ for _column_. Indeed, to prove that our ancestors brought their pronunciation with them from the Old Country, and have not wantonly debased their mother tongue, I need only to cite the words _scriptur_, _Israll_, _athists_, and _cherfulness_ from Governor Bradford's 'History.' So the good man wrote them, and so the good descendants of his fellow-exiles still pronounce them. Brampton Gurdon writes _shet_ in a letter to Winthrop. _Purtend_ (_pretend_) has crept like a serpent into the 'Paradise Of Dainty Devices;' _purvide_, which is not so bad, is in Chaucer. These, of course, are universal vulgarisms, and not peculiar to the Yankee. Butler has a Yankee phrase, and pronunciation too, in 'To which these _carr'ings-on_ did tend.' Langham or Laneham, who wrote an account of the festivities at Kenilworth in honor of Queen Bess, and who evidently tried to spell phonetically, makes _sorrows_ into _sororz_. Herrick writes _hollow_ for _halloo_, and perhaps pronounced it (_horresco suggerens_!) _holló_, as Yankees do. Why not, when it comes from _holà_? I find _ffelaschyppe_ (fellowship) in the Coventry Plays. Spenser and his queen neither of them scrupled to write _afore_, and the former feels no inelegance even in _chaw_ and _idee_. _'Fore_ was common till after Herrick. Dryden has _do's_ for _does_, and his wife spells _worse_ _wosce_. _Afeared_ was once universal. Warner has _ery_ for _ever a_; nay, he also has illy, with which we were once ignorantly reproached by persons more familiar with Murray's Grammar than with English literature. And why not _illy_? Mr. Bartlett says it is 'a word used by writers of an inferior class, who do not seem to perceive that _ill_ is itself an adverb, without the termination _ly_,' and quotes Dr. Mosser, President of Brown University, as asking triumphantly, 'Why don't you say '_welly_?' I should like to have had Dr. Messer answer his own question. It would be truer to say that it was used by people who still remembered that _ill_ was an adjective, the shortened form of _evil_, out of which Shakespeare and the translators of the Bible ventured to make _evilly_. This slurred _evil_ is 'the dram of _eale_' in 'Hamlet.' I find, _illy_ in Warner. The objection to _illy_ is not an etymological one, but simply that it is contrary to good usage,--a very sufficient reason. _Ill_ as an adverb was at first a vulgarism, precisely like the rustic's when he says, 'I was treated _bad_.' May not the reason of this exceptional form be looked for in that tendency to dodge what is hard to pronounce, to which I have already alluded? If the letters were distinctly uttered, as they should be, it would take too much time to say _ill-ly_, _well-ly_, and it is to be observed that we have avoided _smally_[26] and _tally_ in the same way, though we add _ish_ to them without hesitation in _smallish_ and _tallish_. We have, to be sure, _dully_ and _fully_, but for the one we prefer _stupidly_, and the other (though this may have come from eliding the _y_ before _a_s) is giving way to _full_. The uneducated, whose utterance is slower, still make adverbs when they will by adding _like_ to all manner of adjectives. We have had _big_ charged upon us, because we use it where an Englishman would now use _great_. I fully admit that it were better to distinguish between them, allowing to _big_ a certain contemptuous quality; but as for authority, I want none better than that of Jeremy Taylor, who, in his noble sermon 'On the Return of Prayer,' speaks of 'Jesus, whose spirit was meek and gentle up to the greatness of the _biggest_ example.' As for our double negative, I shall waste no time in quoting instances of it, because it was once as universal in English as it still is in the neo-Latin languages, where it does not strike us as vulgar. I am not sure that the loss of it is not to be regretted. But surely I shall admit the vulgarity of slurring or altogether eliding certain terminal consonants? I admit that a clear and sharp-cut enunciation is one of the crowning charms and elegances of speech. Words so uttered are like coins fresh from the mint, compared with the worn and dingy drudges of long service,--I do not mean American coins, for those look less badly the more they lose of their original ugliness. No one is more painfully conscious than I of the contrast between the rifle-crack of an Englishman's _yes_ and _no_, and the wet-fuse drawl of the same monosyllables in the mouths of my countrymen. But I do not find the dropping of final consonants disagreeable in Allan Ramsay or Burns, nor do I believe that our literary ancestors were sensible of that inelegance in the fusing them together of which we are conscious. How many educated men pronounce the _t_ in _chestnut_? how many say _pentise_ for _penthouse_, as they should. When a Yankee skipper says that he is "boun' for Gloster" (not Gloucester, with the leave of the Universal Schoolmaster),[27] he but speaks like Chaucer or an old ballad-singer, though they would have pronounced it _boon_. This is one of the cases where the _d_ is surreptitious, and has been added in compliment to the verb _bind_, with which it has nothing to do. If we consider the root of the word (though of course I grant that every race has a right to do what it will with what is so peculiarly its own as its speech), the _d_ has no more right there than at the end of _gone_, where it is often put by children, who are our best guides to the sources of linguistic corruption, and the best teachers of its processes. Cromwell, minister of Henry VIII., writes _worle_ for world. Chapman has _wan_ for _wand_, and _lawn_ has rightfully displaced _laund_, though with no thought, I suspect, of etymology. Rogers tells us that Lady Bathurst sent him some letters written to William III. by Queen Mary, in which she addresses him as '_Dear Husban_.' The old form _expoun'_, which our farmers use, is more correct than the form with a barbarous _d_ tacked on which has taken its place. Of the kind opposite to this, like our _gownd_ for _gown_, and the London cockney's _wind_ for _wine_, I find _drownd_ for _drown_ in the 'Misfortunes of Arthur' (1584) and in Swift. And, by the way, whence came the long sound of wind which our poets still retain, and which survives in 'winding' a horn, a totally different word from 'winding' a kite-string? We say _beh[=i]nd_ and _h[=i]nder_ (comparative) and yet to _h[)i]nder_. Shakespeare pronounced _kind_ _k[)i]nd_, or what becomes of his play on that word and _kin_ in 'Hamlet'? Nay, did he not even (shall I dare to hint it?) drop the final _d_ as the Yankee still does? John Lilly plays in the same way on _kindred_ and _kindness_. But to come to some other ancient instances. Warner rhymes _bounds_ with _crowns_, _grounds_ with _towns_, _text_ with _sex_, _worst_ with _crust_, _interrupts_ with _cups_; Drayton, _defects_ with _sex_; Chapman, _amends_ with _cleanse_; Webster, _defects_ with _checks_; Ben Jonson, _minds_ with _combines_; Marston, _trust_ and _obsequious_, _clothes_ and _shows_; Dryden gives the same sound to _clothes_, and has also _minds_ with _designs_. Of course, I do not affirm that their ears may not have told them that these were imperfect rhymes (though I am by no means sure even of that), but they surely would never have tolerated any such had they suspected the least vulgarity in them. Prior has the rhyme _first_ and _trust_, but puts it into the mouth of a landlady. Swift has _stunted_ and _burnt_ it, an intentionally imperfect rhyme, no doubt, but which I cite as giving precisely the Yankee pronunciation of _burned_. Donne couples in unhallowed wedlock _after_ and _matter_, thus seeming to give to both the true Yankee sound; and it is not uncommon to find _after_ and _daughter_. Worse than all, in one of Dodsley's Old Plays we have _onions_ rhyming with _minions_,--I have tears in my eyes while I record it. And yet what is viler than the universal _Misses_ (_Mrs._) for _Mistress_? This was once a vulgarism, and in 'The Miseries of Inforced Marriage' the rhyme (printed as prose in Dodsley's Old Plays by Collier), 'To make my young _mistress_ Delighting in _kisses_,' is put into the mouth of the clown. Our people say _Injun_ for _Indian_. The tendency to make this change where _i_ follows _d_ is common. The Italian _giorno_ and French _jour_ from _diurnus_ are familiar examples. And yet _Injun_ is one of those depravations which the taste challenges peremptorily, though it have the authority of Charles Cotton--who rhymes '_Indies_' with '_cringes_'--and four English lexicographers, beginning with Dr. Sheridan, bid us say _invidgeous_. Yet after all it is no worse than the debasement which all our terminations in _tion_ and _tience_ have undergone, which yet we hear with _resignashun_ and _payshunce_, though it might have aroused both _impat-i-ence_ and _in-dig-na-ti-on_ in Shakespeare's time. When George Herbert tells us that if the sermon be dull, 'God takes a text and preacheth patience,' the prolongation of the word seems to convey some hint at the longanimity of the virtue. Consider what a poor curtal we have made of Ocean. There was something of his heave and expanse in _o-ce-an_, and Fletcher knew how to use it when he wrote so fine a verse as the second of these, the best deep-sea verse I know,-- 'In desperate storms stem with a little rudder The tumbling ruins of the oceän.' Oceanus was not then wholly shorn of his divine proportions, and our modern _oshun_ sounds like the gush of small-beer in comparison. Some other contractions of ours have a vulgar air about them. _More 'n_ for _more than_, as one of the worst, may stand for a type of such. Yet our old dramatists are full of such obscurations (elisions they can hardly be called) of the _th_, making _whe'r_ of _whether_, _where_ of _whither_, _here_ of _hither_, _bro'r_ of _brother_, _smo'r_ of _smother_, _mo'r_ of _mother_, and so on. And dear Brer Rabbit, can I forget him? Indeed, it is this that explains the word _rare_ (which has Dryden's support), and which we say of meat where an Englishman would use _underdone_. I do not believe, with the dictionaries, that it had ever anything to do with the Icelandic _hrar_ (_raw_), as it plainly has not in _rareripe_, which means earlier ripe,--President Lincoln said of a precocious boy that 'he was a _rareripe_.' And I do not believe it, for this reason, that the earliest form of the word with us was, and the commoner now in the inland parts still is, so far as I can discover, _raredone_. Golding has 'egs reere-rosted,' which, whatever else it mean, cannot mean _raw_-roasted, I find _rather_ as a monosyllable in Donne, and still better, as giving the sound, rhyming with _fair_ in Warner. There is an epigram of Sir Thomas Browne in which the words _rather than_ make a monosyllable;-- 'What furie is't to take Death's part And rather than by Nature, die by Art!' The contraction _more'n_ I find in the old play 'Fuimus Troes,' in a verse where the measure is so strongly accented as to leave it beyond doubt,-- 'A golden crown whose heirs More than half the world subdue.' It may be, however, that the contraction is in 'th'orld.' It is unmistakable in the 'Second Maiden's Tragedy:'-- 'It were but folly, Dear soul, to boast of _more than_ I can perform.' Is our _gin_ for _given_ more violent than _mar'l_ for _marvel_, which was once common, and which I find as late as Herrick? Nay, Herrick has _gin_ (spelling it _gen_), too, as do the Scotch, who agree with us likewise in preferring _chimly_ to _chimney_. I will now leave pronunciation and turn to words or phrases which have been supposed peculiar to us, only pausing to pick up a single dropped stitch, in the pronunciation of the word _súpreme_, which I had thought native till I found it in the well-languaged Daniel. I will begin with a word of which I have never met with any example in any English writer of authority. We express the first stage of withering in a green plant suddenly cut down by the verb _to wilt_. It is, of course, own cousin of the German _welken_, but I have never come upon it in literary use, and my own books of reference give me faint help. Graff gives _welhèn_, _marcescere_, and refers to _weih_ (_weak_), and conjecturally to A.-S, _hvelan_. The A.-S. _wealwian_ (_to wither_) is nearer, but not so near as two words in the Icelandic, which perhaps put us on the track of its ancestry,--_velgi_, _tepefacere_, (and _velki_, with the derivative) meaning _contaminare_. _Wilt_, at any rate, is a good word, filling, as it does, a sensible gap between drooping and withering, and the imaginative phrase 'he wilted right down,' like 'he caved right in,' is a true Americanism. _Wilt_ occurs in English provincial glossaries, but is explained by _wither_, which with us it does not mean. We have a few words such as _cache_, _cohog_, _carry_ (_portage_), _shoot_ (_chute_), _timber_ (_forest_), _bushwhack_ (to pull a boat along by the bushes on the edge of a stream), _buckeye_ (a picturesque word for the horse-chestnut); but how many can we be said to have fairly brought into the language, as Alexander Gill, who first mentions Americanisms, meant it when he said, '_Sed et ab Americanis nonnulla mutuamur ut_ MAIZ _et_ CANOA'? Very few, I suspect, and those mostly by borrowing from the French, German, Spanish, or Indian.[28] 'The Dipper,' for the 'Great Bear,' strikes me as having a native air. _Bogus_, in the sense of _worthless_, is undoubtedly ours, but is, I more than suspect, a corruption of the French _bagasse_ (from low Latin _bagasea_), which travelled up the Mississippi from New Orleans, where it was used for the refuse of the sugar-cane. It is true, we have modified the meaning of some words. We use _freshet_ in the sense of _flood_, for which I have not chanced upon any authority. Our New England cross between Ancient Pistol and Dugald Dalgetty, Captain Underhill, uses the word (1638) to mean a _current_, and I do not recollect it elsewhere in that sense. I therefore leave it with a? for future explorers. _Crick_ for _creek_ I find in Captain John Smith and in the dedication of Fuller's 'Holy Warre,' and _run_, meaning a _small stream_, in Waymouth's 'Voyage' (1605). _Humans_ for _men_, which Mr. Bartlett includes in his 'Dictionary of Americanisms,' is Chapman's habitual phrase in his translation of Homer. I find it also in the old play of 'The Hog hath lost his Pearl.' _Dogs_ for _andirons_ is still current in New England, and in Walter de Biblesworth I find _chiens_ glossed in the margin by _andirons_. _Gunning_ for _shooting_ is in Drayton. We once got credit for the poetical word _fall_ for _autumn_, but Mr. Bartlett and the last edition of Webster's Dictionary refer us to Dryden. It is even older, for I find it in Drayton, and Bishop Hall has _autumn fall_. Middleton plays upon the word: 'May'st thou have a reasonable good _spring_, for thou art like to have many dangerous foul _falls_.' Daniel does the same, and Coleridge uses it as we do. Gray uses the archaism _picked_ for _peaked_, and the word _smudge_ (as our backwoodsmen do) for a smothered fire. Lord Herbert of Cherbury (more properly perhaps than even Sidney, the last _preux chevalier_) has 'the Emperor's folks' just as a Yankee would say it. _Loan_ for _lend_, with which we have hitherto been blackened, I must retort upon the mother island, for it appears so long ago as in 'Albion's England.' _Fleshy_, in the sense of _stout_, may claim Ben Jonson's warrant, and I find it also so lately as in Francklin's 'Lucian.' _Chore_ is also Jonson's word, and I am inclined to prefer it to _chare_ and _char_, because I think that I see a more natural origin for it in the French _jour_--whence it might come to mean a day's work, and thence a job--than anywhere else.[29] _At onst_ for _at once_ I thought a corruption of our own, till I found it in the Chester Plays. I am now inclined to suspect it no corruption at all, but only an erratic and obsolete superlative _at onest_. _To progress_ was flung in our teeth till Mr. Pickering retorted with Shakespeare's 'doth prógress down thy cheeks.' I confess that I was never satisfied with this answer, because the accent was different, and because the word might here be reckoned a substantive quite as well as a verb. Mr. Bartlett (in his dictionary above cited) adds a surrebutter in a verse from Ford's 'Broken Heart.' Here the word is clearly a verb, but with the accent unhappily still on the first syllable. Mr. Bartlett says that he 'cannot say whether the word was used in Bacon's time or not.' It certainly was, and with the accent we give to it. Ben Jonson, in the 'Alchemist,' had this verse, 'Progress so from extreme unto extreme,' and Sir Philip Sidney, 'Progressing then from fair Turias' golden place.' Surely we may now sleep in peace, and our English cousins will forgive us, since we have cleared ourselves from any suspicion of originality in the matter! Even after I had convinced myself that the chances were desperately against our having invented any of the _Americanisms_ with which we are _faulted_ and which we are in the habit of _voicing_, there were one or two which had so prevailingly indigenous an accent as to stagger me a little. One of these was 'the biggest _thing out_.' Alas, even this slender comfort is denied me. Old Gower has 'So harde an herte was none _oute_,' and 'That such merveile was none _oute_.' He also, by the way, says 'a _sighte_ of flowres' as naturally as our up-country folk would say it. _Poor_ for _lean_, _thirds_ for _dower_, and _dry_ for _thirsty_ I find in Middleton's plays. _Dry_ is also in Skelton and in the 'World' (1754). In a note on Middleton, Mr. Dyce thinks it needful to explain the phrase _I can't tell_ (universal in America) by the gloss _I could not say_. Middleton also uses _sneeked_, which I had believed an Americanism till I saw it there. It is, of course, only another form of _snatch_, analogous to _theek_ and _thatch_ (cf. the proper names Dekker and Thacher), _break_ (_brack_) and _breach_, _make_ (still common with us) and _match_. _'Long on_ for _occasioned by_ ('who is this 'long on?') occurs constantly in Gower and likewise in Middleton. _'Cause why_ is in Chaucer. _Raising_ (an English version of the French _leaven_) for _yeast_ is employed by Gayton in his 'Festivous Notes on Don Quixote.' I have never seen an instance of our New England word _emptins_ in the same sense, nor can I divine its original. Gayton has _limekill_; also _shuts_ for _shutters_, and the latter is used by Mrs. Hutchinson in her 'Life of Colonel Hutchinson.' Bishop Hall, and Purchas in his 'Pilgrims,' have _chist_ for _chest_, and it is certainly nearer _cista_, as well as to its form in the Teutonic languages, whence probably we got it. We retain the old sound from _cist_, but _chest_ is as old as Chaucer. Lovelace says _wropt_ for _wrapt_. 'Musicianer' I had always associated with the militia-musters of my boyhood, and too hastily concluded it an abomination of our own, but Mr. Wright calls it a Norfolk word, and I find it to be as old as 1642 by an extract in Collier. 'Not worth the time of day,' had passed with me for native till I saw it in Shakespeare's 'Pericles.' For _slick_ (which is only a shorter sound of _sleek_, like _crick_ and the now universal _britches_ for _breeches_) I will only call Chapman and Jonson. 'That's a sure card!' and 'That's a stinger!' both sound like modern slang, but you will find the one in the old interlude of 'Thersytes' (1537), and the other in Middleton. 'Right here,' a favorite phrase with our orators and with a certain class of our editors, turns up _passim_ in the Chester and Coventry plays. Mr. Dickens found something very ludicrous in what he considered our neologism _right away_. But I find a phrase very like it, and which I would gladly suspect to be a misprint for it, in 'Gammer Gurton:'-- 'Lyght it and bring it _tite away_.' But _tite_ is the true word in this case. After all, what is it but another form of _straightway_? _Cussedness_, meaning _wickedness, malignity_, and _cuss_, a sneaking, ill-natured fellow, in such phrases as 'He done it out o' pure cussedness,' and 'He is a nateral cuss,' have been commonly thought Yankeeisms. To vent certain contemptuously indignant moods they are admirable in their rough-and-ready way. But neither is our own. _Cursydnesse_, in the same sense of malignant wickedness, occurs in the Coventry Plays, and _cuss_ may perhaps claim to have come in with the Conqueror. At least the term is also French. Saint Simon uses it and confesses its usefulness. Speaking of the Abbé Dubois, he says, 'Qui étoit en plein ce qu'un mauvais françois appelle un _sacre_, mais qui ne se peut guere exprimer autrement.' 'Not worth a cuss,' though supported by 'not worth a damn,' may be a mere corruption, since 'not worth a _cress_' is in 'Piers Ploughman.' 'I don't see it,' was the popular slang a year or two ago, and seemed to spring from the soil; but no, it is in Cibber's 'Careless Husband.' _Green sauce_ for _vegetables_ I meet in Beaumont and Fletcher, Gayton, and elsewhere. Our rustic pronunciation _sahce_ (for either the diphthong _au_ was anciently pronounced _ah_, or else we have followed abundant analogy in changing it to the latter sound, as we have in _chance, dance_, and so many more) may be the older one, and at least gives some hint at its ancestor _salsa_. _Warn_, in the sense of _notify_, is, I believe, now peculiar to us, but Pecock so employs it. I find _primmer_ (_primer_, as we pronounce it) in Beaumont and Fletcher, and a 'square eater' too (compare our '_square_ meal'), _heft_ for _weight_, and 'muchness' in the 'Mirror for Magistrates,' _bankbill_ in Swift and Fielding, and _as_ for _that_ I might say _passim_. _To cotton to_ is, I rather think, an Americanism. The nearest approach to it I have found is _cotton together_, in Congreve's 'Love for Love.' To _cotton_ or _cotten_, in another sense, is old and common. Our word means to _cling_, and its origin, possibly, is to be sought in another direction, perhaps in A.S. _cvead_, which means _mud, clay_ (both proverbially clinging), or better yet, in the Icelandic _qvoda_ (otherwise _kód_), meaning _resin_ and _glue_, which are [Greek: kat' exochaen], sticky substances. To _spit cotton_ is, I think, American, and also, perhaps, to _flax_ for to _beat_. _To the halves_ still survives among us, though apparently obsolete in England. It means either to let or to hire a piece of land, receiving half the profit in money or in kind (_partibus locare_). I mention it because in a note by some English editor, to which I have lost my reference, I have seen it wrongly explained. The editors of Nares cite Burton. _To put_, in the sense of _to go_, as _Put!_ for _Begone!_ would seem our own, and yet it is strictly analogous to the French _se mettre à la voie_, and the Italian _mettersi in via_. Indeed, Dante has a verse, '_Io sarei_ [for _mi sarei_] _già messo per lo sentiero_,' which, but for the indignity, might be translated, 'I should, ere this, have _put_ along the way,' I deprecate in advance any share in General Banks's notions of international law, but we may all take a just pride in his exuberant eloquence as something distinctively American. When he spoke a few years ago of 'letting the Union slide,' even those who, for political purposes, reproached him with the sentiment, admired the indigenous virtue of his phrase. Yet I find 'let the world slide' in Heywood's Edward IV.;' and in Beaumont and Fletcher's 'Wit without Money,' Valentine says, 'Will you go drink, And let the world slide?' So also in Sidney's 'Arcadia,' 'Let his dominion slide.' In the one case it is put into the mouth of a clown, in the other, of a gentleman, and was evidently proverbial. It has even higher sanction, for Chaucer writes, 'Well nigh all other curës _let he slide_.' Mr. Bartlett gives 'above one's bend' as an Americanism; but compare Hamlet's 'to the top of my bent.' _In his tracks_ for _immediately_ has acquired an American accent, and passes where he can for a native, but is an importation nevertheless; for what is he but the Latin _e vestigio_, or at best the Norman French _eneslespas_, both which have the same meaning? _Hotfoot_ (provincial also in England), I find in the old romance of 'Tristan,' '_Si s'en parti_ CHAUT PAS' _Like_ for _as_ is never used in New England, but is universal in the South and West. It has on its side the authority of two kings (_ego sum rex Romanorum et supra grammaticam_), Henry VIII. and Charles I. This were ample, without throwing into the scale the scholar and poet Daniel. _Them_ was used as a nominative by the majesty of Edward VI., by Sir P. Hoby, and by Lord Paget (in Froude's 'History'). I have never seen any passage adduced where _guess_ was used as the Yankee uses it. The word was familiar in the mouths of our ancestors, but with a different shade of meaning from that we have given it, which is something like _rather think_, though the Yankee implies a confident certainty by it when he says, 'I guess I _du!_' There are two examples in Otway, one of which ('So in the struggle, I guess the note was lost') perhaps might serve our purpose, and Coleridge's 'I guess 'twas fearful there to see' certainly comes very near. But I have a higher authority than either in Selden, who, in one of his notes to the 'Polyolbion,' writes, 'The first inventor of them (I _guess_ you dislike not the addition) was one Berthold Swartz.' Here he must mean by it, 'I take it for granted.' Robert Greene, in his 'Quip for an Upstart Courtier,' makes Cloth-breeches say, 'but I _gesse_ your maistership never tried what true honor meant.' In this case the word seems to be used with a meaning precisely like that which we give it. Another peculiarity almost as prominent is the beginning sentences, especially in answer to questions, with 'well.' Put before such a phrase as 'How d'e do?' it is commonly short, and has the sound of it _wul_, but in reply it is deliberative, and the various shades of meaning which can be conveyed by difference of intonation, and by prolonging or abbreviating, I should vainly attempt to describe. I have heard _ooa-ahl_, _wahl_, _ahl_, _wal_ and something nearly approaching the sound of the _le_ in _able_. Sometimes before 'I' it dwindles to a mere _l_, as ''l _I_ dunno.' A friend of mine (why should I not please myself, though I displease him, by brightening my page with the initials of the most exquisite of humorists, J.H.?) told me that he once heard five 'wells,' like pioneers, precede the answer to an inquiry about the price of land. The first was the ordinary _wul_, in deference to custom; the second, the long, perpending _ooahl_, with a falling inflection of the voice; the third, the same, but with the voice rising, as if in despair of a conclusion, into a plaintively nasal whine; the fourth, _wulh_, ending in the aspirate of a sigh; and then, fifth, came a short, sharp _wal_, showing that a conclusion had been reached. I have used this latter form in the 'Biglow Papers,' because, if enough nasality be added, it represents most nearly the average sound of what I may call the interjection. A locution prevails in the Southern and Middle States which is so curious that, though never heard in New England, I will give a few lines to its discussion, the more readily because it is extinct elsewhere. I mean the use of _allow_ in the sense of _affirm_, as 'I allow that's a good horse.' I find the word so used in 1558 by Anthony Jenkinson in Hakluyt: 'Corne they sowe not, neither doe eate any bread, mocking the Christians for the same, and disabling our strengthe, saying we live by eating the toppe of a weede, and drinke a drinke made of the same, _allowing_ theyr great devouring of flesh and drinking of milke to be the increase of theyr strength.' That is, they undervalued our strength, and affirmed their own to be the result of a certain diet. In another passage of the same narrative the word has its more common meaning of approving or praising: 'The said king, much allowing this declaration, said.' Ducange quotes Bracton _sub voce_ ADLOCARE for the meaning 'to admit as proved,' and the transition from this to 'affirm,' is by no means violent. Izaak Walton has 'Lebault _allows_ waterfrogs to be good meat,' and here the word is equivalent to _affirms_. At the same time, when we consider some of the meanings of _allow_ in old English, and of _allouer_ in old French, and also remember that the verbs _prize_ and _praise_ are from one root, I think we must admit _allaudare_ to a share in the paternity of _allow_. The sentence from Hakluyt would read equally well, 'contemning our strengthe, ... and praising (or valuing) their great eating of flesh as the cause of their increase in strength.' After all, if we confine ourselves to _allocare_, it may turn out that the word was somewhere and somewhen used for _to bet_, analogously to _put up, put down, post_ (cf. Spanish _apostar_), and the like. I hear boys in the street continually saying, 'I bet that's a good horse,' or what not, meaning by no means to risk anything beyond their opinion in the matter. The word _improve_, in the sense of to 'occupy, make use of, employ,' as Dr. Pickering defines it, he long ago proved to be no neologism. He would have done better, I think, had he substituted _profit by_ for _employ_. He cites Dr. Franklin as saying that the word had never, so far as he knew, been used in New England before he left it in 1723, except in Dr. Mather's 'Bemarkable Providences,' which he oddly calls a 'very old book.' Franklin, as Dr. Pickering goes on to show, was mistaken. Mr. Bartlett in his 'Dictionary' merely abridges Pickering. Both of them should have confined the application of the word to material things, its extension to which is all that is peculiar in the supposed American use of it. For surely 'Complete Letter-Writers' have been '_improving_ this opportunity' time out of mind. I will illustrate the word a little further, because Pickering cites no English authorities. Skelton has a passage in his 'Phyllyp Sparowe,' which I quote the rather as it contains also the word _allowed_ and as it distinguishes _improve_ from _employ:_-- 'His [Chaucer's] Englysh well alowed, So as it is _emprowed_ For as it is employd, There is no English voyd.' Here the meaning is to _profit by_. In Fuller's 'Holy Warre' (1647), we have 'The Egyptians standing on the firm ground, were thereby enabled to _improve_ and enforce their darts to the utmost.' Here the word might certainly mean _to make use of_. Mrs. Hutchison (Life of Colonel H.) uses the word in the same way: 'And therefore did not _emproove_ his interest to engage the country in the quarrel.' Swift in one of his letters says: 'There is not an acre of land in Ireland turned to half its advantage; yet it is better _improved_ than the people.' I find it also in 'Strength out of Weakness' (1652), and Plutarch's 'Morals'(1714), but I know of only one example of its use in the purely American sense, and that is 'a very good _improvement_ for a mill' in the 'State Trials' (Speech of the Attorney. General in the Lady Ivy's case, 1864). In the sense of _employ_, I could cite a dozen old English authorities. In running over the fly-leaves of those delightful folios for this reference, I find a note which reminds me of another word, for our abuse of which we have been deservedly ridiculed. I mean _lady,_ It is true I might cite the example of the Italian _donna_[30] (_domina_), which has been treated in the same way by a whole nation, and not, as _lady_ among us, by the uncultivated only. It perhaps grew into use in the half-democratic republics of Italy in the same way and for the same reasons as with us. But I admit that our abuse of the word is villainous. I know of an orator who once said in a public meeting where bonnets preponderated, that 'the ladies were last at the cross and first at the tomb'! But similar sins were committed before our day and in the mother country. In the 'Harleian Miscellany' (vol. v. p. 455) I find 'this _lady_ is my servant; the hedger's daughter Ioan.' in the 'State Trials' I learn of 'a _gentlewoman_ that lives cook with' such a one, and I hear the Lord High Steward speaking of the wife of a waiter at a bagnio as a _gentlewoman_! From the same authority, by the way, I can state that our vile habit of chewing tobacco had the somewhat unsavory example of Titus Oates, and I know by tradition from an eye-witness that the elegant General Burgoyne partook of the same vice. Howell, in one of his letters (dated 26 August, 1623), speaks thus of another 'institution' which many have thought American: 'They speak much of that boisterous Bishop of Halverstadt (for so they term him here), that, having taken a place where ther were two Monasteries of Nuns and Friers, he caus'd divers feather-beds to be rip'd, and all the feathers to be thrown in a great Hall, whither the Nuns and Friers were thrust naked with their bodies oil'd and pitch'd, and to tumble among the feathers.' Howell speaks as if the thing were new to him, and I know not if the 'boisterous' Bishop was the inventor of it, but I find it practised in England before our Revolution. Before leaving the subject, I will add a few comments made from time to time on the margin of Mr. Bartlett's excellent 'Dictionary,' to which I am glad thus publicly to acknowledge my many obligations. 'Avails' is good old English, and the _vails_ of Sir Joshua Reynolds's porter are famous. Averse _from_, averse _to_, and in connection with them the English vulgarism 'different _to_;' the corrupt use of _to_ in these cases, as well as in the Yankee 'he lives to Salem,' 'to home,' and others, must be a very old one, for in the one case it plainly arose from confounding the two French prepositions _à_, (from Latin _ad_ and _ab_), and in the other from translating the first of them. I once thought 'different to' a modern vulgarism, and Mr. Thackeray, on my pointing it out to him in 'Henry Esmond,' confessed it to be an anachronism. Mr. Bartlett refers to 'the old writers quoted in Richardson's Dictionary' for 'different to,' though in my edition of that work all the examples are with _from_. But I find _to_ used invariably by Sir R. Hawkins in Hakluyt. _Banjo_ is a negro corruption of O.E. _bandore_. _Bind-weed_ can hardly be modern, for _wood-bind_ is old and radically right, intertwining itself through _bindan_ and _windan_ with classic stems. _Bobolink_: is this a contraction for Bob o' Lincoln? I find _bobolynes_, in one of the poems attributed to Skelton, where it may be rendered _giddy-pate_, a term very fit for the bird in his ecstasies. _Cruel_ for _great_ is in Hakluyt. _Bowling-alley_ is in Nash's 'Pierce Pennilesse.' _Curious_, meaning _nice_, occurs continually in old writers, and is as old as Pecock's 'Repressor.' _Droger_ is O.E. _drugger_. _Educational_ is in Burke. _Feeze_ is only a form of _fizz_. _To fix_, in the American sense, I find used by the Commissioners of the United Colonies so early as 1675, 'their arms well _fixed_ and fit for service.' _To take the foot in the hand_ is German; so is to _go under_. _Gundalow_ is old; I find _gundelo_ in Hakluyt, and _gundello_ in Booth's reprint of the folio Shakespeare of 1623. _Gonoff_ is O.E. _gnoffe_. _Heap_ is in 'Piers Ploughman' ('and other names _an heep_'), and in Hakluyt ('seeing such a _heap_ of their enemies ready to devour them'). _To liquor_ is in the 'Puritan' ('call 'em in, and liquor 'em a little'). _To loaf_: this, I think, is unquestionably German. _Laufen_ is pronounced _lofen_ in some parts of Germany, and I once heard one German student say to another, _Ich lauf_ (lofe) _hier bis du wiederkehrest_, and he began accordingly to saunter up and down, in short, to _loaf_. _To mull_, Mr. Bartlett says, means 'to soften, to dispirit,' and quotes from 'Margaret,'--'There has been a pretty considerable _mullin_ going on among the doctors,'--where it surely cannot mean what he says it does. We have always heard _mulling_ used for _stirring, bustling_, sometimes in an underhand way. It is a metaphor derived probably from _mulling_ wine, and the word itself must be a corruption of _mell_, from O.F. _mesler_. _Pair_ of stairs is in Hakluyt. _To pull up stakes_ is in Curwen's Journal, and therefore pre-Revolutionary. I think I have met with it earlier. _Raise_: under this word Mr. Bartlett omits 'to raise a house,' that is, the frame of a wooden one, and also the substantive formed from it, a _raisin'_. _Retire_ for _go to bed_ is in Fielding's 'Amelia.' _Setting-poles_ cannot be new, for I find 'some _set_ [the boats] with long _poles_' in Hakluyt. _Shoulder-hitters_: I find that _shoulder-striker_ is old, though I have lost the reference to my authority. _Snag_ is no new word, though perhaps the Western application of it is so; but I find in Gill the proverb, 'A bird in the bag is worth two on the snag.' Dryden has _swop_ and _to rights_. _Trail_: Hakluyt has 'many wayes _traled_ by the wilde beastes.' I subjoin a few phrases not in Mr. Bartlett's book which I have heard. _Bald-headed_: 'to go it bald-beaded;' in great haste, as where one rushes out without his hat. _Bogue_: 'I don't git much done 'thout I _bogue_ right in along 'th my men.' _Carry_: a _portage_. _Cat-nap_: a short doze. _Cat-stick_: a small stick. _Chowder-head_: a muddle-brain. _Cling-john_: a soft cake of rye. _Cocoanut_; the head. _Cohees_: applied to the people of certain settlements in Western Pennsylvania, from their use of the archaic form _Quo' he_. _Dunnow'z I know_: the nearest your true Yankee ever comes to acknowledging ignorance. _Essence-pedler_: a skunk. _First-rate and a half_. _Fish flakes_, for drying fish: O.E. _fleck_ (_cratis_). _Gander-party_: a social gathering of men only. _Gawnicus_: a dolt. _Hawkin's whetstone_: rum; in derision of one Hawkins, a well-known temperance-lecturer. _Hyper_: to bustle: 'I mus' _hyper_ about an' git tea.' _Keeler-tub_: one in which dishes are washed. ('And Greasy Joan doth _keel_ the pot.') _Lap-tea_: where the guests are too many to sit at table. _Last of pea-time_: to be hard-up. _Lose-laid_ (_loose-laid_): a weaver's term, and probably English; weak-willed. _Malahack_: to cut up hastily or awkwardly. _Moonglade_: a beautiful word: for the track of moonlight on the water. _Off-ox_: an unmanageable, cross-grained fellow. _Old Driver, Old Splitfoot_: the Devil. _On-hitch_: to pull trigger (cf. Spanish _disparar_). _Popular_: conceited, _Rote_: sound of surf before a storm. _Rot-gut_: cheap whiskey; the word occurs in Heywood's 'English Traveller' and Addison's 'Drummer,' for a poor kind of drink. _Seem_: it is habitual with the New-Englander to put this verb to strange uses, as 'I can't _seem_ to be suited,' 'I couldn't _seem_ to know him.' _Sidehill_, for _hillside_. _State-house_: this seems an Americanism, whether invented or derived from the Dutch _Stad-huys_, I know not. _Strike_ and _string_; from the game of ninepins; to make a _strike_ is to knock down all the pins with one ball, hence it has come to mean fortunate, successful. _Swampers_: men who break out roads for lumberers. _Tormented_: euphemism for damned, as, 'not a tormented cent.' _Virginia fence, to make a_: to walk like a drunken man. It is always worth while to note down the erratic words or phrases which one meets with in any dialect. They may throw light on the meaning of other words, on the relationship of languages, or even on history itself. In so composite a language as ours they often supply a different form to express a different shade of meaning, as in _viol_ and _fiddle_, _thrid_ and _thread_, _smother_ and _smoulder_, where the _l_ has crept in by a false analogy with _would_. We have given back to England the excellent adjective _lengthy_, formed honestly like _earthy, drouthy_, and others, thus enabling their journalists to characterize our President's messages by a word civilly compromising between _long_ and _tedious_, so as not to endanger the peace of the two countries by wounding our national sensitiveness to British criticism. Let me give two curious examples of the antiseptic property of dialects at which I have already glanced. Dante has _dindi_ as a childish or low word for _danari_ (money), and in Shropshire small Roman coins are still dug up which the peasants call _dinders_. This can hardly be a chance coincidence, but seems rather to carry the word back to the Roman soldiery. So our farmers say _chuk, chuk_, to their pigs, and _ciacco_ is one of the Italian words for _hog_. When a countryman tells us that he 'fell _all of a heap_,' I cannot help thinking that he unconsciously points to an affinity between our word _tumble_, and the Latin _tumulus_, that is older than most others. I believe that words, or even the mere intonation of them, have an astonishing vitality and power of propagation by the root, like the gardener's pest, quitch-grass,[31] while the application or combination of them may be new. It is in these last that my countrymen seem to me full of humor, invention, quickness of wit, and that sense of subtle analogy which needs only refining to become fancy and imagination. Prosaic as American life seems in many of its aspects to a European, bleak and bare as it is on the side of tradition, and utterly orphaned of the solemn inspiration of antiquity, I cannot help thinking that the ordinary talk of unlettered men among us is fuller of metaphor and of phrases that suggest lively images than that of any other people I have seen. Very many such will be found in Mr. Bartlett's book, though his short list of proverbs at the end seem to me, with one or two exceptions, as un-American as possible. Most of them have no character at all but coarseness, and are quite too long-skirted for working proverbs, in which language always 'takes off its coat to it,' as a Yankee would say. There are plenty that have a more native and puckery flavor, seedlings from the old stock often, and yet new varieties. One hears such not seldom among us Easterners, and the West would yield many more. 'Mean enough to steal acorns from a blind hog;' 'Cold as the north side of a Jenooary gravestone by starlight;' 'Hungry as a graven image;' 'Pop'lar as a hen with one chicken;' 'A hen's time ain't much;' 'Quicker 'n greased lightnin';' 'Ther's sech a thing ez bein' _tu_' (our Yankee paraphrase of [Greek: maeden agan]); hence the phrase _tooin' round_, meaning a supererogatory activity like that of flies; 'Stingy enough to skim his milk at both eends;' 'Hot as the Devil's kitchen;' 'Handy as a pocket in a shirt;' 'He's a whole team and the dog under the wagon;' 'All deacons are good, but there's odds in deacons' (to _deacon_ berries is to put the largest atop); 'So thievish they hev to take in their stone walls nights;'[32] may serve as specimens. 'I take my tea _barfoot_,' said a backwoodsman when asked if he would have cream and sugar. (I find _barfoot_, by the way, in the Coventry Plays.) A man speaking to me once of a very rocky clearing said, 'Stone's got a pretty heavy mortgage on that land,' and I overheard a guide in the woods say to his companions who were urging him to sing, 'Wal, I _did_ sing once, but toons gut invented, an' thet spilt my trade.' Whoever has driven over a stream by a bridge made of _slabs_ will feel the picturesque force of the epithet _slab-bridged_ applied to a fellow of shaky character. Almost every county has some good die-sinker in phrase, whose mintage passes into the currency of the whole neighborhood. Such a one described the county jail (the one stone building where all the dwellings are of wood) as 'the house whose underpinnin' come up to the eaves,' and called hell 'the place where they didn't rake up their fires nights.' I once asked a stage-driver if the other side of a hill were as steep as the one we were climbing: 'Steep? chain lightnin' couldn' go down it 'thout puttin' the shoe on!' And this brings me back to the exaggeration of which I spoke before. To me there is something very taking in the negro 'so black that charcoal made a chalk-mark on him,' and the wooden shingle 'painted so like marble that it sank in water,' as if its very consciousness or its vanity had been overpersuaded by the cunning of the painter. I heard a man, in order to give a notion of some very cold weather, say to another that a certain Joe, who had been taking mercury, found a lump of quicksilver in each boot, when he went home to dinner. This power of rapidly dramatizing a dry fact into flesh and blood and the vivid conception of Joe as a human thermometer strike me as showing a poetic sense that may be refined into faculty. At any rate there is humor here, and not mere quickness of wit,--the deeper and not the shallower quality. The _tendency_ of humor is always towards overplus of expression, while the very essence of wit is its logical precision. Captain Basil Hall denied that our people had any humor, deceived, perhaps, by their gravity of manner. But this very seriousness is often the outward sign of that humorous quality of the mind which delights in finding an element of identity in things seemingly the most incongruous, and then again in forcing an incongruity upon things identical. Perhaps Captain Hall had no humor himself, and if so he would never find it. Did he always feel the point of what was said to himself? I doubt it, because I happen to know a chance he once had given him in vain. The Captain was walking up and down the veranda of a country tavern in Massachusetts while the coach changed horses. A thunder-storm was going on, and, with that pleasant European air of indirect self-compliment in condescending to be surprised by American merit, which we find so conciliating, he said to a countryman lounging against the door, 'Pretty heavy thunder you have here.' The other, who had divined at a glance his feeling of generous concession to a new country, drawled gravely, 'Waal, we _du_, considerin' the number of inhabitants.' This, the more I analyze it, the more humorous does it seem. The same man was capable of wit also, when he would. He was a cabinet-maker, and was once employed to make some commandment-tables for the parish meeting-house. The parson, a very old man, annoyed him by looking into his workshop every morning, and cautioning him to be very sure to pick out 'clear mahogany without any _knots_ in it.' At last, wearied out, he retorted one day: 'Wal, Dr. B., I guess ef I was to leave the _nots_ out o' some o' the c'man'ments, 't'ould soot you full ez wal!' If I had taken the pains to write down the proverbial or pithy phrases I have heard, or if I had sooner thought of noting the Yankeeisms I met with in my reading, I might have been able to do more justice to my theme. But I have done all I wished in respect to pronunciation, if I have proved that where we are vulgar, we have the countenance of very good company. For, as to the _jus et norma loquendi_, I agree with Horace and those who have paraphrased or commented him, from Boileau to Gray. I think that a good rule for style is Galiani's definition of sublime oratory,--'l'art de tout dire sans être mis à la Bastille dans un pays où il est defendu de rien dire.' I profess myself a fanatical purist, but with a hearty contempt for the speech-gilders who affect purism without any thorough, or even pedagogic knowledge of the engendure, growth, and affinities of the noble language about whose _mésalliances_ they profess (like Dean Alford) to be so solicitous. If _they_ had their way--! 'Doch es sey,' says Lessing, 'dass jene gotbische Höflichkeit eine unentbehrliche Tugend des heutigen Umganges ist. Soll sie darum unsere Schriften eben so schaal und falsch machen als unsern Umgang?' And Drayton was not far wrong in affirming that 'Tis possible to climb, To kindle, or to slake, Although in Skelton's rhyme.' Cumberland in his Memoirs tells us that when, in the midst of Admiral Rodney's great sea-fight, Sir Charles Douglas said to him, 'Behold, Sir George, the Greeks and Trojans contending for the body of Patroclus!' the Admiral answered, peevishly, 'Damn the Greeks and damn the Trojans! I have other things to think of.' After the battle was won, Rodney thus to Sir Charles, 'Now, my dear friend, I am at the service of your Greeks and Trojans, and the whole of Homer's Iliad, or as much of it as you please!' I had some such feeling of the impertinence of our pseudo-classicality when I chose our homely dialect to work in. Should we be nothing, because somebody had contrived to be something (and that perhaps in a provincial dialect) ages ago? and to be nothing by our very attempt to be that something, which they had already been, and which therefore nobody could be again without being a bore? Is there no way left, then, I thought, of being natural, of being _naïf_, which means nothing more than native, of belonging to the age and country in which you are born? The Yankee, at least, is a new phenomenon; let us try to be _that_. It is perhaps a _pis aller_, but is not _No Thoroughfare_ written up everywhere else? In the literary world, things seemed to me very much as they were in the latter half of the last century. Pope, skimming the cream of good sense and expression wherever he could find it, had made, not exactly poetry, but an honest, salable butter of worldly wisdom which pleasantly lubricated some of the drier morsels of life's daily bread, and, seeing this, scores of harmlessly insane people went on for the next fifty years coaxing his buttermilk with the regular up and down of the pentameter churn. And in our day do we not scent everywhere, and even carry away in our clothes against our will, that faint perfume of musk which Mr. Tennyson has left behind him, or worse, of Heine's _patchouli_? And might it not be possible to escape them by turning into one of our narrow New England lanes, shut in though it were by bleak stone walls on either hand, and where no better flowers were to be gathered than goldenrod and hardhack? Beside the advantage of getting out of the beaten track, our dialect offered others hardly inferior. As I was about to make an endeavor to state them, I remembered something that the clear-sighted Goethe had said about Hebel's 'Allemannische Gedichte,' which, making proper deduction for special reference to the book under review, expresses what I would have said far better than I could hope to do: 'Allen diesen innern guten Eigenschaften kommt die behagliche naive Sprache sehr zu statten. Man findet mehrere sinnlich bedeutende and wohlklingende Worte ... von einem, zwei Buchstaben, Abbreviationen, Contractionen, viele kurze, leichte Sylben, neue Reime, welches, mehr als man glaubt, ein Vortheil für den Dichter ist. Diese Elemente werden durch glückliche Constructionen und lebhafte Formen zu einem Styl zusammengedrängt der zu diesem Zwecke vor unserer Büchersprache grosse Vorzüge hat.' Of course I do not mean to imply that _I_ have come near achieving any such success as the great critic here indicates, but I think the success is _there_, and to be plucked by some more fortunate hand. Nevertheless, I was encouraged by the approval of many whose opinions I valued. With a feeling too tender and grateful to be mixed with any vanity, I mention as one of these the late A.H. Clough, who more than any one of those I have known (no longer living), except Hawthorne, impressed me with the constant presence of that indefinable thing we call genius. He often suggested that I should try my hand at some Yankee Pastorals, which would admit of more sentiment and a higher tone without foregoing the advantage offered by the dialect. I have never completed anything of the kind, but, in this Second Series, both my remembrance of his counsel and the deeper feeling called up by the great interests at stake, led me to venture some passages nearer to what is called poetical than could have been admitted without incongruity into the former series. The time seemed calling to me, with the old poet,-- 'Leave, then, your wonted prattle, The oaten reed forbear; For I hear a sound of battle, And trumpets rend the air!' The only attempt I had ever made at anything like a pastoral (if that may be called an attempt which was the result almost of pure accident) was in 'The Courtin'.' While the introduction to the First Series was going through the press, I received word from the printer that there was a blank page left which must be filled. I sat down at once and improvised another fictitious 'notice of the press,' in which, because verse would fill up space more cheaply than prose, I inserted an extract from a supposed ballad of Mr. Biglow. I kept no copy of it, and the printer, as directed, cut it off when the gap was filled. Presently I began to receive letters asking for the rest of it, sometimes for the _balance_ of it. I had none, but to answer such demands, I patched a conclusion upon it in a later edition. Those who had only the first continued to importune me. Afterward, being asked to write it out as an autograph for the Baltimore Sanitary Commission Fair, I added other verses, into some of which I fused a little more sentiment in a homely way, and after a fashion completed it by sketching in the characters' and making a connected story. Most likely I have spoiled it, but I shall put it at the end of this Introduction, to answer once for all those kindly importunings. As I have seen extracts from what purported to be writings of Mr. Biglow, which were not genuine, I may properly take this opportunity to say, that the two volumes now published contain every line I ever printed under that pseudonyme, and that I have never, so far as I can remember, written an anonymous article (elsewhere than in the 'North American Review' and the 'Atlantic Monthly,' during my editorship of it) except a review of Mrs. Stowe's 'Minister's Wooing,' and, some twenty years ago, a sketch of the antislavery movement in America for an English journal. A word more on pronunciation. I have endeavored to express this so far as I could by the types, taking such pains as, I fear, may sometimes make the reading harder than need be. At the same time, by studying uniformity I have sometimes been obliged to sacrifice minute exactness. The emphasis often modifies the habitual sound. For example, _for_ is commonly _fer_ (a shorter sound than _fur_ for _far_), but when emphatic it always becomes _for_, as 'wut _for!_' So _too_ is pronounced like _to_ (as it was anciently spelt), and _to_ like _ta_ (the sound as in the _tou_ of _touch_), but _too_, when emphatic, changes into _tue_, and _to_, sometimes, in similar cases, into _toe_, as 'I didn' hardly know wut _toe_ du!' Where vowels come together, or one precedes another following an aspirate, the two melt together, as was common with the older poets who formed their versification on French or Italian models. Drayton is thoroughly Yankee when he says 'I 'xpect,' and Pope when he says, 't' inspire.' _With_ becomes sometimes _'ith_, _'[)u]th_, or _'th_, or even disappears wholly where it comes before _the_, as, 'I went along _th'_ Square' (along with the Squire), the _are_ sound being an archaism which I have noticed also in _choir_, like the old Scottish _quhair_.[33] (Herrick has, 'Of flowers ne'er sucked by th' theeving bee.') _Without_ becomes _athout_ and _'thout_. _Afterwards_ always retains its locative _s_, and is pronounced always _ahterwurds'_, with a strong accent on the last syllable. This oddity has some support in the erratic _towards'_ instead of _to'wards_, which we find in the poets and sometimes hear. The sound given to the first syllable of _to'wards_, I may remark, sustains the Yankee lengthening of the _o_ in _to_. At the beginning of a sentence, _ahterwurds_ has the accent on the first syllable; at the end of one, on the last; as, '_ah'terwurds_ he tol' me,' 'he tol' me _ahterwurds'_.' The Yankee never makes a mistake in his aspirates. _U_ changes in many words to _e_, always in _such, brush, tush, hush, rush, blush_, seldom in _much_, oftener in _trust_ and _crust_, never in _mush, gust, bust, tumble_, or (?) _flush_, in the latter case probably to avoid confusion with _flesh_. I have heard _flush_ with the _e_ sound, however. For the same reason, I suspect, never in _gush_ (at least, I never heard it), because we have already one _gesh_ for _gash_. _A_ and _i_ short frequently become _e_ short. _U_ always becomes _o_ in the prefix _un_ (except _unto_), and _o_ in return changes to _u_ short in _uv_ for _of_, and in some words beginning with _om_. _T_ and _d_, _b_ and _p_, _v_ and _w_, remain intact. So much occurs to me in addition to what I said on this head in the preface to the former volume. Of course in what I have said I wish to be understood as keeping in mind the difference between provincialisms properly so called and _slang_. _Slang_ is always vulgar, because it is not a natural but an affected way of talking, and all mere tricks of speech or writing are offensive. I do not think that Mr. Biglow can be fairly charged with vulgarity, and I should have entirely failed in my design, if I had not made it appear that high and even refined sentiment may coexist with the shrewder and more comic elements of the Yankee character. I believe that what is essentially vulgar and mean-spirited in politics seldom has its source in the body of the people, but much rather among those who are made timid by their wealth or selfish by their love of power. A democracy can _afford_ much better than an aristocracy to follow out its convictions, and is perhaps better qualified to build those convictions on plain principles of right and wrong, rather than on the shifting sands of expediency. I had always thought 'Sam Slick' a libel on the Yankee character, and a complete falsification of Yankee modes of speech, though, for aught I know, it may be true in both respects so far as the British provinces are concerned. To me the dialect was native, was spoken all about me when a boy, at a time when an Irish day-laborer was as rare as an American one now. Since then I have made a study of it so far as opportunity allowed. But when I write in it, it is as in a mother tongue, and I am carried back far beyond any studies of it to long-ago noonings in my father's hay-fields, and to the talk of Sam and Job over their jug of _blackstrap_ under the shadow of the ash-tree which still dapples the grass whence they have been gone so long. But life is short, and prefaces should be. And so, my good friends, to whom this introductory epistle is addressed, farewell. Though some of you have remonstrated with me, I shall never write any more 'Biglow Papers,' however great the temptation,--great especially at the present time,--unless it be to complete the original plan of this Series by bringing out Mr. Sawin as an 'original Union man.' The very favor with which they have been received is a hindrance to me, by forcing on me a self-consciousness from which I was entirely free when I wrote the First Series. Moreover, I am no longer the same careless youth, with nothing to do but live to myself, my books, and my friends, that I was then. I always hated politics, in the ordinary sense of the word, and I am not likely to grow, fonder of them, now that I have learned how rare it is to find a man who can keep principle clear from party and personal prejudice, or can conceive the possibility of another's doing so. I feel as if I could in some sort claim to be an _emeritus_, and I am sure that political satire will have full justice done it by that genuine and delightful humorist, the Rev. Petroleum V. Nasby. I regret that I killed off Mr. Wilbur so soon, for he would have enabled me to bring into this preface a number of learned quotations, which must now go a-begging, and also enabled me to dispersonalize myself into a vicarious egotism. He would have helped me likewise in clearing myself from a charge which I shall briefly touch on, because my friend Mr. Hughes has found it needful to defend me in his preface to one of the English editions of the 'Biglow Papers.' I thank Mr. Hughes heartily for his friendly care of my good name, and were his Preface accessible to my readers here (as I am glad it is not, for its partiality makes me blush), I should leave the matter where he left it. The charge is of profanity, brought in by persons who proclaimed African slavery of Divine institution, and is based (so far as I have heard) on two passages in the First Series-- 'An' you've gut to git up airly, Ef you want to take in God,' and, 'God'll send the bill to you,' and on some Scriptural illustrations by Mr. Sawin. Now, in the first place, I was writing under an assumed character, and must talk as the person would whose mouthpiece I made myself. Will any one familiar with the New England countryman venture to tell me that he does _not_ speak of sacred things familiarly? that Biblical allusions (allusions, that is, to the single book with whose language, from his church-going habits, he is intimate) are _not_ frequent on his lips? If so, he cannot have pursued his studies of the character on so many long-ago muster-fields and at so many cattle-shows as I. But I scorn any such line of defence, and will confess at once that one of the things I am proud of in my countrymen is (I am not speaking now of such persons as I have assumed Mr. Sawin to be) that they do not put their Maker away far from them, or interpret the fear of God into being afraid of Him. The Talmudists had conceived a deep truth when they said, that 'all things were in the power of God, save the fear of God;' and when people stand in great dread of an invisible power, I suspect they mistake quite another personage for the Deity. I might justify myself for the passages criticised by many parallel ones from Scripture, but I need not. The Reverend Homer Wilbur's note-books supply me with three apposite quotations. The first is from a Father of the Roman Church, the second from a Father of the Anglican, and the third from a Father of Modern English poetry. The Puritan divines would furnish me with many more such. St. Bernard says, _Sapiens nummularius est Deus: nummum fictum non recipiet_; 'A cunning money-changer is God: he will take in no base coin.' Latimer says, 'You shall perceive that God, by this example, shaketh us by the noses and taketh us by the ears.' Familiar enough, both of them, one would say! But I should think Mr. Biglow had verily stolen the last of the two maligned passages from Dryden's 'Don Sebastian,' where I find 'And beg of Heaven to charge the bill on me!' And there I leave the matter, being willing to believe that the Saint, the Martyr, and even the Poet, were as careful of God's honor as my critics are ever likely to be. II. GLOSSARY TO THE BIGLOW PAPERS Act'lly, _actually_. Air, _are_. Airth, _earth_. Airy, _area_. Aree, _area_. Arter, _after_. Ax, _ask_. Beller, _bellow_. Bellowses, _lungs_. Ben, _been_. Bile, _boil_. Bimeby, _by and by_. Blurt out, _to speak bluntly_. Bust, _burst_. Buster, _a roistering blade_; used also as a general superlative. Caird, _carried_. Cairn, _carrying_. Caleb, _a turncoat_. Cal'late, _calculate_. Cass, _a person with two lives_. Close, _clothes_. Cockerel, _a young cock_. Cocktail, _a kind of drink_; also, _an ornament peculiar to soldiers_. Convention, _a place where people are imposed on; a juggler's show_. Coons, _a cant term for a now defunct party_; derived, perhaps, from the fact of their being commonly _up a tree_. Cornwallis, _a sort of muster in masquerade_; supposed to have had its origin soon after the Revolution, and to commemorate the surrender of Lord Cornwallis. It took the place of the old Guy Fawkes procession. Crooked stick, _a perverse, froward person_. Cunnle, _a colonel_. Cus, _a curse_; also, _a pitiful fellow_. Darsn't, used indiscriminately, either in singular or plural number, for _dare not, dares not_, and _dared not_. Deacon off, _to give the cue to_; derived from a custom, once universal, but now extinct, in our New England Congregational churches. An important part of the office of deacon was to read aloud the hymns _given out_ by the minister, one line at a time, the congregation singing each line as soon as read. Demmercrat, leadin', _one in favor of extending slavery; a free-trade lecturer maintained in the custom-house_. Desput, _desperate_. D[=o]', _don't_. Doos, _does_. Doughface, _a contented lick-spittle_; a common variety of Northern politician. Dror, _draw_. Du, _do_. Dunno, dno, _do not_ or _does not know_. Dut, _dirt_. Eend, _end_. Ef, _if_. Emptins, _yeast_. Env'y, _envoy_. Everlasting, an intensive, without reference to duration. Ev'y, _every_. Ez, _as_. Fence, on the; said of one who halts between two opinions; a trimmer. Fer, _for_. Ferfle, ferful, _fearful_; also an intensive. Fin', _find_. Fish-skin, used in New England to clarify coffee. Fix, _a difficulty, a nonplus_. Foller, folly, _to follow_. Forrerd, _forward_. Frum, _from_. Fur, _for_ Furder, _farther_. Furrer, _furrow_. Metaphorically, _to draw a straight furrow_ is to live uprightly or decorously. Fust, _first_. Gin, _gave_. Git, _get_. Gret, _great_. Grit, _spirit, energy, pluck_. Grout, _to sulk_. Grouty, _crabbed, surly_. Gum, _to impose on_. Gump, _a foolish fellow, a dullard_. Gut, _got_. Hed, _had_. Heern, _heard_. Hellum, _helm_. Hendy, _handy_. Het, _heated_. Hev, _have_. Hez, _has_. Holl, _whole_. Holt, _hold_. Huf, _hoof_. Hull, _whole_. Hum, _home_. Humbug, _General Taylor's antislavery_. Hut, _hurt_. Idno, _I do not know_. In'my, _enemy_. Insines, _ensigns_; used to designate both the officer who carries the standard, and the standard itself. Inter, intu, _into_. Jedge, _judge_. Jest, _just_. Jine, _join_. Jint, _joint_. Junk, _a fragment of any solid substance_. Keer, _care_. Kep', _kept_. Killock, _a small anchor_. Kin', kin' o', kinder, _kind, kind of_. Lawth, _loath_. Less, _let's, let us_. Let daylight into, _to shoot_. Let on, _to hint, to confess, to own_. Lick, _to beat, to overcome_. Lights, _the bowels_. Lily-pads, _leaves of the water-lily_. Long-sweetening, _molasses_. Mash, _marsh_. Mean, _stingy, ill-natured_. Min', _mind_. Nimepunce, _ninepence, twelve and a half cents_. Nowers, _nowhere_. Offen, _often_. Ole, _old_. Ollers, olluz, _always_. On, _of_; used before _it_ or _them,_ or at the end of a sentence, as _on 't, on 'em, nut ez ever I heerd on_. On'y, _only_. Ossifer, _officer_ (seldom heard). Peaked, _pointed_. Peek, _to peep_. Pickerel, _the pike, a fish_. Pint, _point_. Pocket full of rocks, _plenty of money_. Pooty, _pretty_. Pop'ler, _conceited, popular_. Pus, _purse_. Put out, _troubled, vexed_. Quarter, _a quarter-dollar_. Queen's-arm, _a musket_. Resh, _rush_. Revelee, _the réveille_. Rile, _to trouble_. Riled, _angry; disturbed,_ as the sediment in any liquid. Riz, _risen_. Row, a long row to hoe, _a difficult task_. Rugged, _robust_. Sarse, _abuse, impertinence_. Sartin, _certain_. Saxon, _sacristan, sexton_. Scaliest, _worst_. Scringe, _cringe_. Scrouge, _to crowd_. Sech, _such_. Set by, _valued_. Shakes, great, _of considerable consequence_. Shappoes, _chapeaux, cocked-hats_. Sheer, _share_. Shet, _shut_. Shut, _shirt_. Skeered, _scared_. Skeeter, _mosquito_. Skooting, _running,_ or _moving swiftly_. Slarterin', _slaughtering_. Slim, _contemptible_. Snake, _crawled like a snake_; but _to snake any one out_ is to track him to his hiding-place; _to snake a thing out_ is to snatch it out. Soffies, _sofas_. Sogerin', _soldiering_; a barbarous amusement common among men in the savage state. Som'ers, _somewhere_. So'st, _so as that_. Sot, _set, obstinate, resolute_. Spiles, _spoils; objects of political ambition_. Spry, _active_. Steddles, _stout stakes driven into the salt marshes_, on which the hay-ricks are set, and thus raised out of the reach of high tides. Streaked, _uncomfortable, discomfited_. Suckle, _circle_. Sutthin', _something_. Suttin, _certain_. Take on, _to sorrow_. Talents, _talons_. Taters, _potatoes_. Tell, _till_. Tetch, _touch_. Tetch tu, _to be able_; used always after a negative in this sense. Tollable, _tolerable_. Toot, used derisively for _playing on any wind instrument_. Thru, _through_. Thundering, a euphemism common in New England for the profane English expression _devilish_. Perhaps derived from the belief, common formerly, that thunder was caused by the Prince of the Air, for some of whose accomplishments consult Cotton Mather. Tu, _to, too_; commonly has this sound when used emphatically, or at the end of a sentence. At other times it has the sound of _t_ in _tough_, as _Ware ye gain' tu? Goin' ta Boston_. Ugly, _ill-tempered, intractable_. Uncle Sam, _United States_; the largest boaster of liberty and owner of slaves. Unrizzest, applied to dough or bread; _heavy, most unrisen, or most incapable of rising_. V-spot, _a five-dollar bill_. Vally, _value_. Wake snakes, _to get into trouble_. Wal, _well_; spoken with great deliberation, and sometimes with the _a_ very much flattened, sometimes (but more seldom) very much broadened. Wannut, _walnut (hickory)_. Ware, _where_. Ware, _were_. Whopper, _an uncommonly large lie_; as, that General Taylor is in favor of the Wilmot Proviso. Wig, _Whig_; a party now dissolved. Wunt, _will not_. Wus, _worse_. Wut, _what_. Wuth, _worth_; _as, Antislavery perfessions 'fore 'lection aint wuth a Bungtown copper_. Wuz, _was_, sometimes _were_. Yaller, _yellow_. Yeller, _yellow_. Yellers, _a disease of peach-trees_. Zack, Ole, _a second Washington, an antislavery slaveholder; a humane buyer and seller of men and women, a Christian hero generally_. III. INDEX TO BIGLOW PAPERS A. A. wants his axe ground. A.B., Information wanted concerning. Abraham (Lincoln), his constitutional scruples. Abuse, an, its usefulness. Adam, eldest son of, respected, his fall, how if he had bitten a sweet apple? Adam, Grandfather, forged will of. Æeneas goes to hell. Æeolus, a seller of money, as is supposed by some. Æeschylus, a saying of. Alligator, a decent one conjectured to be, in some sort, humane. Allsmash, the eternal. Alphonso the Sixth of Portugal, tyrannical act of. Ambrose, Saint, excellent (but rationalistic) sentiment of. 'American Citizen,' new compost so called. American Eagle, a source of inspiration, hitherto wrongly classed, long bill of. Americans bebrothered. Amos cited. Anakim, that they formerly existed, shown. Angels providentially speak French, conjectured to be skilled in all tongues. Anglo-Saxondom, its idea, what. Anglo-Saxon mask. Anglo-Saxon race. Anglo-Saxon verse, by whom carried to perfection. Antiquaries, Royal Society of Northern. Antonius, a speech of, by whom best reported. Antony of Padua, Saint, happy in his hearers. Apocalypse, beast in, magnetic to theologians. Apollo, confessed mortal by his own oracle. Apollyon, his tragedies popular. Appian, an Alexandrian, not equal to Shakespeare as an orator. Applause, popular, the _summum bonum_. Ararat, ignorance of foreign tongues is an. Arcadian background. Ar c'houskezik, an evil spirit. Ardennes, Wild Boar of, an ancestor of Rev. Mr. Wilbur. Aristocracy, British, their natural sympathies. Aristophanes. Arms, profession of, once esteemed, especially that of gentlemen. Arnold. Ashland. Astor, Jacob, a rich man. Astræa, nineteenth century forsaken by. Athenians, ancient, an institution of. Atherton, Senator, envies the loon. 'Atlantic,' editors of. See _Neptune_. Atropos, a lady skilful with the scissors. Austin, Saint, prayer of. Austrian eagle split. Aye-aye, the, an African animal, America supposed to be settled by. B., a Congressman, _vide_ A. Babel, probably the first Congress, gabble-mill. Baby, a low-priced one. Bacon, his rebellion. Bacon, Lord, quoted. Bagowind, Hon. Mr., whether to be damned. Balcom, Elder Joash Q., 2d, founds a Baptist society in Jaalam, A.D. 1830. Baldwin apples. Baratarias, real or imaginary, which most pleasant. Barnum, a great natural curiosity recommended to. Barrels, an inference from seeing. Bartlett, Mr., mistaken. Bâton Rouge, strange peculiarities of laborers at. Baxter, R., a saying of, Bay, Mattysqumscot. Bay State, singular effect produced on military officers by leaving it. Beast, in Apocalypse, a loadstone for whom, tenth horn of, applied to recent events. Beaufort. Beauregard real name Toutant. Beaver brook. Beelzebub, his rigadoon. Behmen, his letters not letters. Behn, Mrs. Aphra, quoted. Sellers, a saloon-keeper, inhumanly refuses credit to a presidential candidate. Belmont. See Woods. Bentley, his heroic method with Milton. Bible, not composed for use of colored persons. Biglow, Ezekiel, his letter to Hon. J.T. Buckingham, never heard of any one named Mandishes, nearly fourscore years old, his aunt Keziah, a notable saying of. Biglow, Hosea, Esquire, excited by composition, a poem by, his opinion of war, wanted at home by Nancy, recommends a forcible enlistment of warlike editors, would not wonder, if generally agreed with, versifies letter of Mr. Sawin, a letter from, his opinion of Mr. Sawin, does not deny fun at Cornwallis, his idea of militia glory, a pun of, is uncertain in regard to people of Boston, had never heard of Mr. John P. Robinson, _aliquid sufflaminandus_, his poems attributed to a Mr. Lowell, is unskilled in Latin, his poetry maligned by some, his disinterestedness, his deep share in commonweal, his claim to the presidency, his mowing, resents being called Whig, opposed to tariff, obstinate, infected with peculiar notions, reports a speech, emulates historians of antiquity, his character sketched from a hostile point of view, a request of his complied with, appointed at a public meeting in Jaalam, confesses ignorance, in one minute particular, of propriety, his opinion of cocked hats, letter to, called 'Dear Sir,' by a general, probably receives same compliment from two hundred and nine, picks his apples, his crop of Baldwins conjecturally large, his labors in writing autographs, visits the Judge and has a pleasant time, born in Middlesex County, his favorite walks, his gifted pen, born and bred in the country, feels his sap start in spring, is at times unsocial, the school-house where he learned his a b c, falls asleep, his ancestor a Cromwellian colonel, finds it harder to make up his mind as he grows older, wishes he could write a song or two, liable to moods, loves nature and is loved in return, describes some favorite haunts of his, his slain kindred, his speech in March meeting, does not reckon on being sent to Congress, has no eloquence, his own reporter, never abused the South, advises Uncle Sam, is not Boston-mad, bids farewell. Billings, Dea. Cephas. _Billy, Extra, demagogus._ Birch, virtue of, in instilling certain of the dead languages. Bird of our country sings hosanna. Bjarna Grímólfsson invents smoking. Blind, to go it. Blitz pulls ribbons from his mouth. Bluenose potatoes, smell of, eagerly desired. Bobolink, the. Bobtail obtains a cardinal's hat. Boggs, a Norman name. Bogus Four-Corners Weekly Meridian. Bolles, Mr. Secondary, author of prize peace essay, presents sword to Lieutenant-Colonel, a fluent orator, found to be in error. Bonaparte, N., a usurper. Bonds, Confederate, their specie basis cutlery, when payable (attention, British stockholders!). Boot-trees, productive, where. Boston, people of, supposed educated, has a good opinion of itself. Bowers, Mr. Arphaxad, an ingenious photographic artist. Brahmins, navel-contemplating. Brains, poor substitute for. Bread-trees. Bream, their only business. Brigadier-Generals in militia, devotion of. Brigadiers, nursing ones, tendency in, to literary composition. _Brigitta, viridis_. Britannia, her trident. Brotherhood, subsides after election. Brown, Mr., engages in an unequal contest. Browne, Sir T., a pious and wise sentiment of, cited and commended. Brutus Four-Corners. Buchanan, a wise and honest man. Buckingham, Hon. J.T., editor of the Boston Courier, letters to, not afraid. Buffalo, a plan hatched there, plaster, a prophecy in regard to. Buffaloes, herd of, probable influence of tracts upon. Bull, John, prophetic allusion to, by Horace, his 'Run,' his mortgage, unfortunate dip of, wool pulled over his eyes. Buncombe, in the other world supposed, mutual privilege, in. Bung, the eternal, thought to be loose. Bungtown Fencibles, dinner of. Burke, Mr., his age of chivalry surpassed. Burleigh, Lord, quoted for something said in Latin long before. Burns, Robert, a Scottish poet. Bushy Brook. Butler, Bishop. Butter in Irish bogs. C., General, commended for parts, for ubiquity, for consistency, for fidelity, is in favor of war, his curious valuation of principle. Cabbage-heads, the, always in majority. Cabinet, English, makes a blunder. Cæsar, tribute to, his veni, vidi, vici, censured for undue prolixity. Cainites, sect of, supposed still extant. Caleb, a monopoly of his denied, curious notions of, as to meaning of 'shelter,' his definition of Anglo-Saxon, charges Mexicans (not with bayonets but) with improprieties. Calhoun, Hon. J.C., his cow-bell curfew, light of the nineteenth century to be extinguished at sound of, cannot let go apron-string of the Past, his unsuccessful tilt at Spirit of the Age, the Sir Kay of modern chivalry, his anchor made of a crooked pin, mentioned. _Calyboosus, carcer_. Cambridge Platform, use discovered for. Canaan in quarterly instalments. Canary Islands. Candidate, presidential, letter from, smells a rat, against a bank, takes a revolving position, opinion of pledges, is a periwig, fronts south by north, qualifications of, lessening, wooden leg (and head) useful to. Cape Cod clergyman, what, Sabbath-breakers, perhaps, reproved by. Captains, choice of, important. Carolina, foolish act of. Caroline, case of. Carpini, Father John de Piano, among the Tartars. Cartier, Jacques, commendable zeal of. Cass, General, clearness of his merit, limited popularity at 'Bellers's.' Castles, Spanish, comfortable accommodations in. Cato, letters of, so called, suspended _naso adunco_. C.D., friends of, can hear of him. Century, nineteenth. Chalk egg, we are proud of incubation of. Chamberlayne, Doctor, consolatory citation from. Chance, an apothegm concerning, is impatient. Chaplain, a one-horse, stern-wheeled variety of. Chappelow on Job, a copy of, lost. Charles I., accident to his neck. Charles II., his restoration, how brought about. Cherubusco, news of, its effects on English royalty. Chesterfield no letter-writer. Chief Magistrate, dancing esteemed sinful by. Children naturally speak Hebrew. China-tree. Chinese, whether they invented gunpowder before the Christian era not considered. Choate hired. Christ, shuffled into Apocrypha, conjectured to disapprove of slaughter and pillage, condemns a certain piece of barbarism. Christianity, profession of, plebeian, whether. Christian soldiers, perhaps inconsistent whether. Cicero, an opinion of, disputed. Cilley, Ensign, author of nefarious sentiment. _Cimex lectularius_. Cincinnati, old, law and order party of. Cincinnatus, a stock character in modern comedy. Civilization, progress of, an alias, rides upon a powder-cart. Clergymen, their ill husbandry, their place in processions, some, cruelly banished for the soundness of their lungs. Clotho, a Grecian lady. Cocked-hat, advantages of being knocked into. College of Cardinals, a strange one. Colman, Dr. Benjamin, anecdote of. Colored folks, curious national diversion of kicking. Colquitt, a remark of, acquainted with some principles of aerostation. Columbia, District of, its peculiar climatic effects, not certain that Martin is for abolishing it. Columbiads, the true fifteen-inch ones. Columbus, a Paul Pry of genius, will perhaps be remembered, thought by some to have discovered America. Columby. Complete Letter-Writer, fatal gift of. Compostella, Saint James of, seen. Compromise system, the, illustrated. Conciliation, its meaning. Congress, singular consequence of getting into, a stumbling-block. Congressional debates found instructive. Constituents, useful for what, 194. Constitution, trampled on, to stand upon what. Convention, what. Convention, Springfield. Coon, old, pleasure in skinning. Co-operation defined. Coppers, _caste_ in picking up of. Copres, a monk, his excellent method of arguing. Corduroy-road, a novel one. Corner-stone, patent safety. Cornwallis, a, acknowledged entertaining. Cotton loan, its imaginary nature. Cotton Mather, summoned as witness. Country, our, its boundaries more exactly defined, right or wrong, nonsense about, exposed, lawyers, sent providentially. Earth's biggest, gets a soul. Courier, The Boston, an unsafe print. Court, General, farmers sometimes attain seats in. Court, Supreme. Courts of law, English, their orthodoxy. Cousins, British, our _ci-devant_. Cowper, W., his letters commended. Credit defined. Creditors all on Lincoln's side. Creed, a safe kind of. Crockett, a good rule of. Cruden, Alexander, his Concordance. Crusade, first American. Cuneiform script recommended. Curiosity distinguishes man from brutes. Currency, Ethiopian, inconveniences of. Cynthia, her hide as a means of conversion. Dædalus first taught men to sit on fences. Daniel in the lion's den. Darkies dread freedom. Davis, Captain Isaac, finds out something to his advantage. Davis, Jefferson (a new species of martyr), has the latest ideas on all subjects, superior in financiering to patriarch Jacob, is _some_, carries Constitution in his hat, knows how to deal with his Congress, astonished at his own piety, packed up for Nashville, tempted to believe his own lies, his snake egg, blood on his hands. Davis, Mr., of Mississippi, a remark of his. Day and Martin, proverbially "on hand." Death, rings down curtain. De Bow (a famous political economist). Delphi, oracle of, surpassed, alluded to. Democracy, false notion of, its privileges. Demosthenes. Destiny, her account. Devil, the, unskilled in certain Indian tongues, letters to and from. Dey of Tripoli. Didymus, a somewhat voluminous grammarian. Dighton rock character might be usefully employed in some emergencies. Dimitry Bruisgins, fresh supply of. Diogenes, his zeal for propagating certain variety of olive. Dioscuri, imps of the pit. District-Attorney, contemptible conduct of one. Ditchwater on brain, a too common ailing. Dixie, the land of. Doctor, the, a proverbial saying of. Doe, Hon. Preserved, speech of. Donatus, profane wish of. Doughface, yeast-proof. Downing Street. Drayton, a martyr, north star, culpable for aiding, whether. Dreams, something about. Dwight, President, a hymn unjustly attributed to. D.Y., letter of. Eagle, national, the late, his estate administered upon. Earth, Dame, a peep at her housekeeping. Eating words, habit of, convenient in time of famine. Eavesdroppers. Echetlæus. Editor, his position, commanding pulpit of, large congregation of, name derived from what, fondness for mutton, a pious one, his creed, a showman, in danger of sudden arrest, without bail. Editors, certain ones who crow like cockerels. Edwards, Jonathan. Eggs, bad, the worst sort of. Egyptian darkness, phial of, use for. Eldorado, Mr. Sawin sets sail for. Elizabeth, Queen, mistake of her ambassador. Emerson. Emilius, Paulus. Empedocles. Employment, regular, a good thing. Enfield's Speaker, abuse of. England, late Mother-Country, her want of tact, merits as a lecturer, her real greatness not to be forgotten, not contented (unwisely) with her own stock of fools, natural maker of international law, her theory thereof, makes a particularly disagreeable kind of sarse, somewhat given to bullying, has respectable relations, ought to be Columbia's friend, anxious to buy an elephant. Epaulets, perhaps no badge of saintship. Epimenides, the Cretan Rip Van Winkle. Episcopius, his marvellous oratory. Eric, king of Sweden, his cap. Ericsson, his caloric engine. Eriksson, Thorwald, slain by natives. Essence-peddlers. Ethiopian, the, his first need. Evangelists, iron ones. Eyelids, a divine shield against authors. Ezekiel, text taken from. Ezekiel would make a poor figure at a caucus. Faber, Johannes. Factory-girls, expected rebellion of. Facts, their unamiability, compared to an old-fashioned stage-coach. _Falstaffii, legio_. Family-trees, fruit of jejune, a primitive forest of. Faneuil Hall, a place where persons tap themselves for a species of hydrocephalus, a bill of fare mendaciously advertised in. Father of country, his shoes. Female Papists, cut off in the midst of idolatry. _Fenianorum, rixæ_. Fergusson, his 'Mutual Complaint,' etc. F.F., singular power of their looks. Fire, we all like to play with it. Fish, emblematic, but disregarded, where. Fitz, Miss Parthenia Almira, a sheresiarch. Flam, President, untrustworthy. Flirt, Mrs. Flirtilla, elegy on death of. Floyd, a taking character. _Floydus, furcifer_. Fly-leaves, providential increase of. Fool, a cursed, his inalienable rights. Foote, Mr., his taste for field-sports. Fourier, a squinting toward. Fourth of July ought to know its place. Fourth of Julys, boiling. France, a strange dance begun in, about to put her foot in it. Friar John. Fuller, Dr. Thomas, a wise saying of. Funnel, old, hurraing in. Gabriel, his last trump, its pressing nature. Gardiner, Lieutenant Lion. Gawain, Sir, his amusements. Gay, S.H., Esquire, editor of National Antislavery Standard, letter to. Geese, how infallibly to make swans of. Gentleman, high-toned Southern, scientifically classed. Getting up early. Ghosts, some, presumed fidgety, (but see Stilling's Pneumatology.) Giants formerly stupid. Gideon, his sword needed. Gift of tongues, distressing case of. Gilbert, Sir Humphrey. Globe Theatre, cheap season-ticket to. Glory, a perquisite of officers, her account with B. Sawin, Esq. Goatsnose, the celebrated interview with. God, the only honest dealer. Goings, Mehetable, unfounded claim of, disproved. Gomara, has a vision, his relationship to the Scarlet Woman. Governor, our excellent. Grandfather, Mr. Biglow's, safe advice of. Grandfathers, the, knew something. Grand jurors, Southern, their way of finding a true bill. _Grantus, Dux_. Gravestones, the evidence of Dissenting ones held doubtful. Gray's letters are letters. Great horn spoon, sworn by. Greeks, ancient, whether they questioned candidates. Green Man, sign of. Habeas corpus, new mode of suspending it. Hail Columbia, raised. Ham, sandwich, an orthodox (but peculiar) one, his seed, their privilege in the Bible, immoral justification of. Hamlets, machine for making. Hammon. Hampton Roads, disaster in. Hannegan, Mr., something said by. Harrison, General, how preserved. Hat, a leaky one. Hat-trees in full bearing. Hawkins, his whetstone. Hawkins, Sir John, stout, something he saw. Hawthorne. Hay-rick, electrical experiments with. Headlong, General. Hell, the opinion of some concerning, breaks loose. Henry the Fourth of England, a Parliament of, how named. Hens, self-respect attributed to. Herb, the Circean. Herbert, George, next to David. Hercules, his second labor probably what. Hermon, fourth-proof dew of. Herodotus, story from. Hesperides, an inference from. Hessians, native American soldiers. Hickory, Old, his method. Higgses, their natural aristocracy of feeling. Hitchcock, Doctor. Hitchcock, the Rev. Jeduthun, colleague of Mr. Wilbur, letter from, containing notices of Mr. Wilbur, ditto, enclosing macaronic verses, teacher of high-school. Hogs, their dreams. Holden, Mr. Shearjashub, Preceptor of Jaalam Academy, his knowledge of Greek limited, a heresy of his, leaves a fund to propagate it. Holiday, blind man's. Hollis, Ezra, goes to Cornwallis. Hollow, why men providentially so constructed. Holmes, Dr., author of 'Annals of America.,' Homer, a phrase of, cited. Homer, eldest son of Mr. Wilbur. Homers, democratic ones, plums left for. Hotels, big ones, humbugs. House, a strange one described. Howell, James, Esq., story told by, letters of, commended. Huldah, her bonnet. Human rights out of order on the floor of Congress. Humbug, ascription of praise to, generally believed in. Husbandry, instance of bad. Icarius, Penelope's father. Icelander, a certain uncertain. Idea, the Southern, its natural foes, the true American. Ideas, friction ones unsafe. Idyl defined. Indecision, mole-blind. Infants, prattlings of, curious observation concerning. Information wanted (universally, but especially at page). Ishmael, young. Jaalam, unjustly neglected by great events. Jaalam Centre, Anglo-Saxons unjustly suspected by the young ladies there "Independent Blunderbuss," strange conduct of editor of, public meeting at, meeting-house ornamented with imaginary clock. Jaalam, East Parish of. Jaalam Point, lighthouse on, charge of, prospectively offered to Mr. H. Biglow. _Jacobus, rex_. Jakes, Captain, reproved for avarice. Jamaica. James the Fourth, of Scots, experiment by. Jarnagin, Mr., his opinion of the completeness of Northern education. Jefferson, Thomas, well-meaning, but injudicious. Jeremiah, hardly the best guide in modern politics. Jerome, Saint, his list of sacred writers. Jerusha, ex-Mrs. Sawin. Job, Book of, Chappelow on. Johnson, Andrew, as he used to be, as he is: see Arnold, Benedict. Johnson, Mr., communicates some intelligence. Jonah, the inevitable destiny of, probably studied internal economy of the cetacea, his gourd, his unanimity in the whale. Jonathan to John. Jortin, Dr., cited. Journals, British, their brutal tone. Juanito. Judea, everything not known there, not identical with A.D. Judge, the, his garden, his hat covers many things. Juvenal, a saying of. Kay, Sir, the, of modern chivalry. Key, brazen one. Keziah, Aunt, profound observation of. Kinderhook. Kingdom Come, march to, easy. Königsmark, Count. Lablache surpassed. Lacedæmonians banish a great talker. Lamb, Charles, his epistolary excellence. Latimer, Bishop, episcopizes Satan. Latin tongue, curious information concerning. Launcelot, Sir, a trusser of giants formerly, perhaps would find less sport therein now. Laura, exploited. Learning, three-story. Letcher, _de la vieille roche_. _Letcherus, nebulo_. Letters, classed, their shape, of candidates, often fatal. Lettres Cabalistiques, quoted. Lewis, Dixon H., gives his view of slavery. Lewis Philip, a scourger of young native Americans, commiserated (though not deserving it). Lexington. Liberator, a newspaper, condemned by implication. Liberty, unwholesome for men of certain complexions. Licking, when constitutional. Lignum vitæ, a gift of this valuable wood proposed. Lincoln, too shrewd to hang Mason and Slidell. Literature, Southern, its abundance. Little Big Boosy River. Longinus recommends swearing, note (Fuseli did same thing). Long-sweetening recommended. Lord, inexpensive way of lending to. Lords, Southern, prove _pur sang_ by ablution. Lost arts, one sorrowfully added to list of. Louis the Eleventh of France, some odd trees of his. Lowell, Mr. J.R., unaccountable silence of. Luther, Martin, his first appearance as Europa. Lyæus. Lyttelton, Lord, his letters an imposition. Macrobii, their diplomacy. Magoffin, a name naturally noble. Mahomet, got nearer Sinai than some. Mahound, his filthy gobbets. Mandeville, Sir John, quoted. Mangum, Mr., speaks to the point. Manichæan, excellently confuted. Man-trees, grow where. Maori chieftains. Mapes, Walter, quoted, paraphrased. Mares'-nests, finders of, benevolent. Marius, quoted. Marshfield. Martin, Mr. Sawin used to vote for him. Mason and Dixon's line, slaves north of. Mason an F.F.V. Mason and Slidell, how they might have been made at once useful and ornamental. Mass, the, its duty defined. Massachusetts, on her knees, something mentioned in connection with, worthy the attention of tailors, citizen of, baked, boiled, and roasted (_nefandum!_). Masses, the, used as butter by some. Maury, an intellectual giant, twin birth with Simms (which see). Mayday a humbug. M.C., an invertebrate animal. Me, Mister, a queer creature. Mechanics' Fair, reflections suggested at. _Medium, ardentispirituale_. Mediums, spiritual, dreadful liars. Memminger, old. Mentor, letters of, dreary. Mephistopheles at a nonplus. Mexican blood, its effect in raising price of cloth. Mexican polka. Mexicans, charged with various breaches of etiquette, kind feelings beaten into them. Mexico, no glory in overcoming. Middleton, Thomas, quoted. Military glory spoken disrespectfully of, militia treated still worse. Milk-trees, growing still. Mill, Stuart, his low ideas. Millenniums apt to miscarry. Millspring. Mills for manufacturing gabble, how driven. Mills, Josiah's. Milton, an unconscious plagiary, a Latin verse of, cited, an English poet, his 'Hymn of the Nativity.' Missionaries, useful to alligators, culinary liabilities of. Missions, a profitable kind of. Monarch, a pagan, probably not favored in philosophical experiments. Money-trees, desirable, that they once existed shown to be variously probable. Montaigne. Montaigne, a communicative old Gascon. Monterey, battle of, its singular chromatic effect on a species of two-headed eagle. Montezuma, licked. Moody, Seth, his remarkable gun, his brother Asaph. Moquis Indians, praiseworthy custom of. Moses, held up vainly as an example, construed by Joe Smith, (not, A.J. Moses) prudent way of following. Muse invoked. Myths, how to interpret readily. Naboths, Popish ones, how distinguished. Nana Sahib. Nancy, presumably Mrs. Biglow. Napoleon III., his new chairs. Nation, rights of, proportionate to size, young, its first needs. National pudding, its effect on the organs of speech, a curious physiological fact. Negroes, their double usefulness, getting too current. Nephelim, not yet extinct. New England, overpoweringly honored, wants no more speakers, done brown by whom, her experience in beans beyond Cicero's. Newspaper, the, wonderful, a strolling theatre, thoughts suggested by tearing wrapper of, a vacant sheet, a sheet in which a vision was let down, wrapper to a bar of soap, a cheap impromptu platter. New World, apostrophe to. New York, letters from, commended. Next life, what. Nicotiana Tabacum, a weed. Niggers, area of abusing, extended, Mr. Sawin's opinions of. Ninepence a day low for murder. No, a monosyllable, hard to utter. Noah enclosed letter in bottle, probably. Noblemen, Nature's. Nornas, Lapland, what. North, the, has no business, bristling, crowded off roost, its mind naturally unprincipled. North Bend, geese inhumanly treated at, mentioned. North star, a proposition to indict. Northern Dagon. Northmen, _gens inclytissima_. Nôtre Dame de la Haine. Now, its merits. Nowhere, march to. O'Brien, Smith. Off ox. Officers, miraculous transformation in character of, Anglo-Saxon, come very near being anathematized. Old age, an advantage of. Old One, invoked. Onesimus made to serve the cause of impiety. O'Phace, Increase D., Esq., speech of. Opinion, British, its worth to us. Opinions, certain ones compared to winter flies. Oracle of Fools, still respectfully consulted. Orion becomes commonplace. Orrery, Lord, his letters (lord!). Ostracism, curious species of. _Ovidii Nasonis, carmen supposititium_. Palestine. Paley, his Evidences. Palfrey, Hon. J.G., (a worthy representative of Massachusetts). Pantagruel, recommends a popular oracle. Panurge, his interview with Goatsnose. Paper, plausible-looking, wanted. Papists, female, slain by zealous Protestant bomb-shell. Paralipomenon, a man suspected of being. Paris, liberal principles safe as far away as. _Parliamentum Indoctorum_ sitting in permnence. Past, the, a good nurse. Patience, sister, quoted. Patriarchs, the, illiterate. _Patricius, brogipotens_. Paynims, their throats propagandistically cut. Penelope, her wise choice. People, soft enough, want correct ideas, the, decline to be Mexicanized. Pepin, King. Pepperell General, quoted. Pequash Junction. Periwig. Perley, Mr. Asaph, has charge of bass-viol. Perseus, King, his avarice. Persius, a pithy saying of. Pescara, Marquis, saying of. Peter, Saint, a letter of (_post-mortem_). Petrarch, exploited Laura. Petronius. Pettibone, Jabez, bursts up. Pettus came over with Wilhelmus Conquistor. Phaon. Pharaoh, his lean kine. Pharisees, opprobriously referred to. Philippe, Louis, in pea-jacket. Phillips, Wendell, catches a Tartar. Phlegyas quoted. Phrygian language, whether Adam spoke it. Pickens, a Norman name. Pilcoxes, genealogy of. Pilgrim Father, apparition of. Pilgrims, the. Pillows, constitutional. Pine-trees, their sympathy. Pinto, Mr., some letters of his commended. Pisgah, an impromptu one. Platform, party, a convenient one. Plato, supped with, his man. Pleiades, the, not enough esteemed. Pliny, his letters not admired. Plotinus, a story of. Plymouth Rock, Old, a Convention wrecked on. Poets apt to become sophisticated. Point Tribulation, Mr. Sawin wrecked on. Poles, exile, whether crop of beans depends on. Polk, _nomen gentile_. Polk, President, synonymous with our country, censured, in danger of being crushed. Polka, Mexican. Pomp, a runaway slave, his nest, hypocritically groans like white man, blind to Christian privileges, his society valued at fifty dollars, his treachery, takes Mr. Sawin prisoner, cruelly makes him work, puts himself illegally under his tuition, dismisses him with contumelious epithets, a negro. Pontifical bull, a tamed one. Pope, his verse excellent. Pork, refractory in boiling. Portico, the. Portugal, Alphonso the Sixth of, a monster. Post, Boston, shaken visibly, bad guide-post, too swift, edited by a colonel, who is presumed officially in Mexico, referred to. Pot-hooks, death in. Power, a first-class, elements of. Preacher, an ornamental symbol, a breeder of dogmas, earnestness of, important. Present, considered as an annalist, not long wonderful. President, slaveholding natural to, must be a Southern resident, must own a nigger, the, his policy, his resemblance to Jackson. Princes mix cocktails. Principle, exposure spoils it. Principles, bad, when less harmful, when useless. Professor, Latin, in College, Scaliger. Prophecies, fulfilment of. Prophecy, a notable one. Prospect Hill. Providence has a natural life-preserver. Proviso, bitterly spoken of. Prudence, sister, her idiosyncratic teapot. Psammeticus, an experiment of. Psyche, poor. Public opinion, a blind and drunken guide, nudges Mr. Wilbur's elbow, ticklers of. Punkin Falls 'Weekly Parallel.' Putnam, General Israel, his lines. Pythagoras a bean-hater, why. Pythagoreans, fish reverenced by, why. _Quid, ingens nicotianum_. Quixote, Don. Rafn, Professor. Rag, one of sacred college. Rantoul, Mr., talks loudly, pious reason for not enlisting. Recruiting sergeant, Devil supposed the first. Religion, Southern, its commercial advantages. Representatives' Chamber. Rhinothism, society for promoting. Rhyme, whether natural not considered. Rib, an infrangible one. Richard the First of England, his Christian fervor. Riches conjectured to have legs as well as wings. Ricos Hombres. Ringtail Rangers. Roanoke Island. Robinson, Mr. John P., his opinions fully stated. Rocks, pocket full of. Roosters in rainy weather, their misery. Rotation insures mediocrity and inexperience. Rough and ready, a Wig, a kind of scratch. Royal Society, American fellows of. Rum and water combine kindly. Runes resemble bird-tracks. Runic inscriptions, their different grades of unintelligibility and consequent value. Russell, Earl, is good enough to expound our Constitution for us. Russian eagle turns Prussian blue. _Ryeus, Bacchi epitheton_. Sabbath, breach of. Sabellianism, one accused of. Sailors, their rights how won. Saltillo, unfavorable view of. Salt-river, in Mexican, what. _Samuel, avunculus_, 271. Samuel, Uncle, riotous, yet has qualities demanding reverence, a good provider for his family, an exorbitant bill of, makes some shrewd guesses, expects his boots, 245. Sansculottes, draw their wine before drinking. Santa Anna, his expensive leg. Sappho, some human nature in. Sassycus, an impudent Indian. Satan, never wants attorneys, an expert talker by signs, a successful fisherman with little or no bait, cunning fetch of, dislikes ridicule, ought not to have credit of ancient oracles, his worst pitfall. Satirist, incident to certain dangers. Savages, Canadian, chance of redemption offered to. Sawin, B., Esquire, his letter not written in verse, a native of Jaalam not regular attendant on Rev. Mr. Wilbur's preaching, a fool, his statements trustworthy, his ornithological tastes, letters from, his curious discovery in regard to bayonets, displays proper family pride, modestly confesses himself less wise than the Queen of Sheba, the old Adam in, peeps out, a _miles emeritus_, is made text for a sermon, loses a leg, an eye, left hand, four fingers of right hand, has six or more ribs broken, a rib of his infrangible, allows a certain amount of preterite greenness in himself, his share of spoil limited, his opinion of Mexican climate, acquires property of a certain sort, his experience of glory, stands sentry, and puns thereupon, undergoes martyrdom in some of its most painful forms, enters the candidating business, modestly states the (avail) abilities which qualify him for high political station, has no principles, a peace-man, unpledged, has no objections to owning peculiar property, but would not like to monopolize the truth, his account with glory, a selfish motive hinted in, sails for Eldorado, shipwrecked on a metaphorical promontory, parallel between, and Rev. Mr. Wilbur (not Plutarchian), conjectured to have bathed in river Selemnus, loves plough wisely, but not too well, a foreign mission probably expected by, unanimously nominated for presidency, his country's father-in-law, nobly emulates Cincinnatus, is not a crooked stick, advises his adherents, views of, on present state of politics, popular enthusiasm for, at Bellers's, and its disagreeable consequences, inhuman treatment of, by Bellers, his opinion of the two parties, agrees with Mr. Webster, his antislavery zeal, his proper self respect, his unaffected piety, his not intemperate temperance, a thrilling adventure of, his prudence and economy, bound to Captain Jakes, but regains his freedom, is taken prisoner, ignominiously treated, his consequent resolution. Sawin, Honorable B. O'F., a vein of humor suspected in, gets into an enchanted castle, finds a wooden leg better in some respects than a living one, takes something hot, his experience of Southern hospitality, water-proof internally, sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, his liberal-handedness, gets his arrears of pension, marries the widow Shannon, confiscated, finds in himself a natural necessity of income, his missionary zeal, never a stated attendant on Mr. Wilbur's preaching, sang bass in choir, prudently avoided contribution toward bell, abhors a covenant of works, if saved at all, must be saved genteelly, reports a sermon, experiences religion, would consent to a dukedom, converted to unanimity, sound views of, makes himself an extempore marquis, extract of letter from, his opinion of Paddies, of Johnson. Sayres, a martyr. Scaliger, saying of. _Scarabæus pilularius_. Scott, General, his claims to the presidency. Scrimgour, Rev. Shearjashub. Scythians, their diplomacy commended. Sea, the wormy. Seamen, colored, sold. _Secessia, licta_. Secession, its legal nature defined. Secret, a great military. Selemnus, a sort of Lethean river. Senate, debate in, made readable. Seneca, saying of, another, overrated by a saint (but see Lord Bolingbroke's opinion of, in a letter to Dean Swift), his letters not commended, a son of Rev. Mr. Wilbur, quoted. Serbonian bog of literature. Sermons, some pitched too high. Seward, Mister, the late, his gift of prophecy, needs stiffening, misunderstands parable of fatted calf. Sextons, demand for, heroic official devotion of one. Seymour, Governor. Shakespeare, a good reporter. Shaking fever, considered as an employment. Sham, President, honest. Shannon, Mrs., a widow, her family and accomplishments, has tantrums, her religious views, her notions of a moral and intellectual being, her maidan name, her blue blood. Sheba, Queen of. Sheep, none of Rev. Mr. Wilbur's turned wolves. Shem, Scriptural curse of. Shiraz Centre, lead-mine at. Shirley, Governor. Shoddy, poor covering for outer or inner man. Shot at sight, privilege of being. Show, natural to love it. Silver spoon born in Democracy's mouth, what. Simms, an intellectual giant, twin-birth with Maury (which see). Sin, wilderness of, modern, what. Sinai suffers outrages. Skim-milk has its own opinions. Skin, hole in, strange taste of some for. Skippers, Yankee, busy in the slave-trade. Slaughter, whether God strengthen us for. Slaughterers and soldiers compared. Slaughtering nowadays _is_ slaughtering. Slavery, of no color, corner-stone of liberty, also keystone, last crumb of Eden, a Jonah, an institution, a private State concern. Slidell, New York trash. Sloanshure, Habakkuk, Esquire, President of Jaalam Bank. Smith, Joe, used as a translation. Smith, John, an interesting character. Smith, Mr., fears entertained for, dined with. Smith, N.B., his magnanimity. _Smithius, dux_. Soandso, Mr., the great, defines his position. Soft-heartedness, misplaced, is soft-headedness. Sol, the fisherman, soundness of respiratory organs hypothetically attributed to. Soldiers, British, ghosts of, insubordinate. Solomon, Song of, portions of it done into Latin verse by Mr. Wilbur. Solon, a saying of. Soul, injurious properties of. South, its natural eloquence, facts have a mean spite against. South Carolina, futile attempt to anchor, her pedigrees. Southern men, their imperfect notions of labor, of subscriptions, too high pressure, prima facie noble. Spanish, to walk, what. Speech-making, an abuse of gift of speech. Spirit-rapping does not repay the spirits engaged in it. Split-Foot, Old, made to squirm. Spring, described. Star, north, subject to indictment, whether. Statesman, a genuine, defined. Stearns, Othniel, fable by. Stone Spike, the. Store, cheap cash, a wicked fraud. Strong, Governor Caleb, a patriot. Style, the catalogue. Sumter, shame of. Sunday should mind its own business. Swearing commended as a figure of speech. Swett, Jethro C., his fall. Swift, Dean, threadbare saying of. Tag, elevated to the Cardinalate. Taney, C.J. Tarandfeather, Rev. Mr. Tarbox, Shearjashub, first white child born in Jaalam. Tartars, Mongrel. Taxes, direct, advantages of. Taylor, General, greased by Mr. Choate. Taylor zeal, its origin. Teapots, how made dangerous. Ten, the upper. Tesephone, banished for long-windedness. Thacker, Rev. Preserved, D.D. Thanks get lodged. Thanksgiving, Feejee. Thaumaturgus, Saint Gregory, letter of, to the Devil. Theleme, Abbey of. Theocritus, the inventor of idyllic poetry Theory, defined. Thermopylæs, too many. 'They'll say' a notable bully. Thirty-nine articles might be made serviceable. Thor, a foolish attempt of. Thoreau. Thoughts, live ones characterized. Thumb, General Thomas, a valuable member of society. Thunder, supposed in easy circumstances. Thynne, Mr., murdered. Tibullus. Time, an innocent personage to swear by, a scene-shifter. Tinkham, Deacon Pelatiah, story concerning, not told, alluded to, does a very sensible thing. Toms, Peeping. Toombs, a doleful sound from. Trees, various kinds of extraordinary ones. Trowbridge, William, mariner, adventure of. Truth and falsehood start from same point, truth invulnerable to satire, compared to a river, of fiction sometimes truer than fact, told plainly, _passim_. Tuileries, exciting scene at, front parlor of. Tully, a saying of. Tunnel, Northwest-Passage, a poor investment. Turkey-Buzzard Boost. Tuscaloosa. Tutchel, Rev. Jonas, a Sadducee. Tweedledee, gospel according to. Tweedledum, great principles of. _Tylerus, juvenis insignis, porphyrogenitus, Iohanides, flito celeris, bene titus_. Tyrants, European, how made to tremble. Ulysses, husband of Penelope, borrows money, (for full particulars of, see Homer and Dante) _rex_. Unanimity, new ways of producing. Union, its hoops off, its good old meaning. Universe, its breeching. University, triennial catalogue of. Us, nobody to be compared with, and see _World, passim_. Van Buren, fails of gaining Mr. Sawin's confidence, his son John reproved. Van, Old, plan to set up. Vattel, as likely to fall on _your_ toes as on mine. Venetians invented something once. Vices, cardinal, sacred conclave of. Victoria, Queen, her natural terror, her best carpets. Vinland. Virgin, the, letter of, to Magistrates of Messina. _Virginia, descripta_. Virginians, their false heraldry. Voltaire, _esprit de_. Vratz, Captain, a Pomeranian, singular views of. Wachuset Mountain. Wait, General. Wales, Prince of, calls Brother Jonathan _consanguineus noster_, but had not, apparently, consulted the Garter King at Arms. Walpole, Horace, classed, his letters praised. Waltham Plain, Cornwallis at. Walton, punctilious in his intercourse with fishes. War, abstract, horrid, its hoppers, grist of, what. Warren, Fort. Warton, Thomas, a story of. Washington, charge brought against. Washington, city of, climatic influence of, on coats, mentioned, grand jury of. Washingtons, two hatched at a time by improved machine. _Watchmanus, noctivagus_. Water, Taunton, proverbially weak. Water-trees. Weakwash, a name fatally typical. Webster, his unabridged quarto, its deleteriousness. Webster, some sentiments of, commended by Mr. Sawin. Westcott, Mr., his horror. Whig party has a large throat, but query as to swallowing spurs. White-house. Wickliffe, Robert, consequences of his bursting. Wife-trees. Wilbur, Mrs. Dorcas (Pilcox), an invariable rule of, her profile, tribute to. Wilbur, Rev. Homer, A.M., consulted, his instructions to his flock, a proposition of his for Protestant bomb-shells, his elbow nudged, his notions of satire, some opinions of his quoted with apparent approval by Mr. Biglow, geographical speculations of, a justice of the peace, a letter of, a Latin pun of, runs against a post without injury, does not seek notoriety (whatever some malignants may affirm), fits youths for college, a chaplain during late war with England, a shrewd observation of, some curious speculations of, his Martello-tower, forgets he is not in pulpit, extracts from sermon of, interested in John Smith, his views concerning present state of letters, a stratagem of, ventures two hundred and fourth interpretation of Beast in Apocalypse, christens Hon. B. Sawin, then an infant, an addition to our _sylva_ proposed by, curious and instructive adventure of, his account with an unnatural uncle, his uncomfortable imagination, speculations concerning Cincinnatus, confesses digressive tendency of mind, goes to work on sermon (not without fear that his readers will dub him with a reproachful epithet like that with which Isaac Allerton, a Mayflower man, revenges himself on a delinquent debtor of his, calling him in his will, and thus holding him up to posterity, as 'John Peterson, THE BORE'), his modesty, disclaims sole authorship of Mr. Biglow's writings, his low opinion of prepensive autographs, a chaplain in 1812, cites a heathen comedian, his fondness for the Book of Job, preaches a Fast-Day discourse, is prevented from narrating a singular occurrence, is presented with a pair of new spectacles, his church services indecorously sketched by Mr. Sawin, hopes to decipher a Runic inscription, a fable by, deciphers Runic inscription, his method therein, is ready to reconsider his opinion of tobacco, his opinion of the Puritans, his death, born in Pigsgusset, letter of Rev. Mr. Hitchcock concerning, fond of Milton's Christmas hymn, his monument (proposed), his epitaph, his last letter, his supposed disembodied spirit, table belonging to, sometimes wrote Latin verses, his table-talk, his prejudices, against Baptists, his sweet nature, his views of style, a story of his. Wildbore, a vernacular one, how to escape. Wilkes, Captain, borrows rashly. Wind, the, a good Samaritan. Wingfield, his 'Memorial'. Wooden leg, remarkable for sobriety, never eats pudding. Woods, the. See _Belmont_. Works, covenants of, condemned. World, this, its unhappy temper. Wright, Colonel, providentially rescued. Writing, dangerous to reputation. Wrong, abstract, safe to oppose. Yankees, their worst wooden nutmegs. Zack, Old. INDEX OF FIRST LINES A beggar through the world am I, A camel-driver, angry with his drudge, A heap of bare and splintery crags, A hundred years! they're quickly fled, A legend that grew in the forest's hush, A lily thou wast when I saw thee first, A poet cannot strive for despotism, A presence both by night and day, A race of nobles may die out, A stranger came one night to Yussouf's tent, About the oak that framed this chair, of old, Alike I hate to be your debtor, Along a river-side, I know not where, Amid these fragments of heroic days, An ass munched thistles, while a nightingale, 'And how could you dream of meeting?' Another star 'neath Time's horizon dropped, Are we, then, wholly fallen? Can it be, As a twig trembles, which a bird, As, cleansed of Tiber's and Oblivion's slime, As, flake by flake, the beetling avalanches, As life runs on, the road grows strange, As sinks the sun behind yon alien hills, As the broad ocean endlessly upheaveth, At Carnac in Brittany, close on the bay, At length arrived, your book I take, At twenty we fancied the blest Middle Ages, Ay, pale and silent maiden, B, taught by Pope to do his good by stealth, Beauty on my hearth-stone blazing! Beloved, in the noisy city here, Beneath the trees, Bowing thyself in dust before a Book, Can this be thou who, lean and pale, Come back before the birds are flown, 'Come forth!' my catbird calls to me, Curtis, whose Wit, with Fancy arm in arm, Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, Dear M. ---- By way of saving time, Dear Sir,--You wish to know my notions, Dear Sir,--Your letter come to han', Dear Wendell, why need count the years, Death never came so nigh to me before, Don't believe in the Flying Dutchman? Down 'mid the tangled roots of things, Ef I a song or two could make, Entranced I saw a vision in the cloud, Ere pales in Heaven the morning star, Fair as a summer dream was Margaret, Far over Elf-land poets stretch their sway, Far through the memory shines a happy day, Far up on Katahdin thou towerest, Far 'yond this narrow parapet of Time, Fit for an Abbot of Theleme, For this true nobleness I seek in vain, Frank-hearted hostess of the field and wood, From the close-shut windows gleams no spark, Full oft the pathway to her door, Giddings, far rougher names than thine have grown, Go! leave me, Priest; my soul would be, God! do not let my loved one die, God makes sech nights, all white an' still, God sends his teachers unto every age, Godminster? Is it Fancy's play? Gold of the reddening sunset, backward thrown, Gone, gone from us! and shall we see, Great soul, thou sittest with me in my room, Great truths are portions of the soul of man, Guvener B. is a sensible man, He came to Florence long ago, He spoke of Burns: men rude and rough, He stood upon the world's broad threshold; wide, He who first stretched his nerves of subtile wire, Heaven's cup held down to me I drain, Here once my step was quickened, Here we stan' on the Constitution, by thunder! Hers all that Earth could promise or bestow, Hers is a spirit deep, and crystal-clear, How strange are the freaks of memory! How struggles with the tempest's swells, How was I worthy so divine a loss, Hushed with broad sunlight lies the hill, I am a man of forty, sirs, a native of East Haddam, I ask not for those thoughts, that sudden leap, I call as fly the irrevocable hours, I cannot think that thou shouldst pass away, I christened you in happier days, before, I could not bear to see those eyes, I did not praise thee when the crowd, I do not come to weep above thy pall, I don't much s'pose, hows'ever I should plen it, I du believe in Freedom's cause, I go to the ridge in the forest, I grieve not that ripe knowledge takes away, I had a little daughter, I have a fancy: how shall I bring it, I hed it on my min' las' time, when I to write ye started, I know a falcon swift and peerless, I love to start out arter night's begun, I need not praise the sweetness of his song, I rise, Mr. Chairman, as both of us know, I sat and watched the walls of night, I sat one evening in my room, I saw a Sower walking slow, I saw the twinkle of white feet, I sent you a message, my friens, t'other day, I spose you recollect thet I explained my gennle views, I spose you wonder ware I be; I can't tell, fer the soul o' me, I swam with undulation soft, I thank ye, my frien's, for the warmth o' your greetin', I thought our love at full, but I did err, I treasure in secret some long, fine hair, I, walking the familiar street, I was with thee in Heaven: I cannot tell, I watched a moorland torrent run, I went to seek for Christ, I would more natures were like thine, I would not have this perfect love of ours, If he be a nobler lover, take him! If I let fall a word of bitter mirth, If I were the rose at your window, In a small chamber, friendless and unseen, In good old times, which means, you know, In his tower sat the poet, In life's small things be resolute and great, In the old days of awe and keen-eyed wonder, In town I hear, scarce wakened yet, In vain we call old notions fudge, Into the sunshine, It don't seem hardly right, John, It is a mere wild rosebud, It mounts athwart the windy hill, It was past the hour of trysting, It's some consid'ble of a spell sence I hain't writ no letters, Leaves fit to have been poor Juliet's cradle-rhyme, Let others wonder what fair face, Light of triumph in her eyes, Look on who will in apathy, and stifle they who can, Looms there the New Land, Maiden, when such a soul as thine is born, Mary, since first I knew thee, to this hour, Men say the sullen instrument, Men! whose boast it is that ye, My coachman, in the moonlight there, My day began not till the twilight fell, My heart, I cannot still it, My Love, I have no fear that thou shouldst die, My name is Water: I have sped, My soul was like the sea, My worthy friend, A. Gordon Knott, Never, surely, was holier man, New England's poet, rich in love as years, Nine years have slipt like hour-glass sand, No? Hez he? He haint, though? Wut? Voted agin him? Nor deemed he lived unto himself alone, Not always unimpeded can I pray, Not as all other women are, Now Biörn, the son of Heriulf, had ill days, O days endeared to every Muse, 'O Dryad feet,' O dwellers in the valley-land, O Land of Promise! from what Pisgah's height, O moonlight deep and tender, O wandering dim on the extremest edge, Of all the myriad moods of mind, Oft round my hall of portraiture I gaze, Oh, tell me less or tell me more, Old events have modern meanings; only that survives, Old Friend, farewell! Your kindly door again, On this wild waste, where never blossom came, Once git a smell o' musk into a draw, Once hardly in a cycle blossometh, Once on a time there was a pool, One after one the stars have risen and set, One feast, of holy days the crest, One kiss from all others prevents me, Opening one day a book of mine, Our love is not a fading, earthly flower, Our ship lay tumbling in an angry sea, Over his keys the musing organist, Phoebus, sitting one day in a laurel-tree's shade, Praisest Law, friend? We, too, love it much as they that love it best, Propped on the marsh, a dwelling now, I see, Punctorum garretos colens et cellara Quinque, Rabbi Jehosha used to say, Reader! Walk up at once (it will soon be too late), Rippling through thy branches goes the sunshine, Said Christ our Lord, I will go and see, Seat of all woes? Though Nature's firm decree, She gave me all that woman can, Shell, whose lips, than mine more cold, Ship, blest to bear such freight across the blue, Shy soul and stalwart, man of patient will, Silencioso por la puerta, Sisters two, all praise to you, Skilled to pull wires, he baffles Nature's hope, Sleep is Death's image,--poets tell us so, So dreamy-soft the notes, so far away, Some sort of heart I know is hers, Sometimes come pauses of calm, when the rapt bard, holding his heart back, Somewhere in India, upon a time, Spirit, that rarely comest now, Still thirteen years: 'tis autumn now, Stood the tall Archangel weighing, Strong, simple, silent are the [steadfast] laws, Swiftly the politic goes: is it dark?--he borrows a lantern, Thank God, he saw you last in pomp of May, Thanks to the artist, ever on my wall, That's a rather bold speech, my Lord Bacon, The Bardling came where by a river grew, The century numbers fourscore years, The cordage creaks and rattles in the wind, The dandelions and buttercups, The electric nerve, whose instantaneous thrill, The fire is burning clear and blithely, The hope of Truth grows stronger, day by day, The little gate was reached at last, The love of all things springs from love of one, The Maple puts her corals on in May, The misspelt scrawl, upon the wall, The moon shines white and silent, The New World's sons, from England's breasts we drew, The next whose fortune 'twas a tale to tell, The night is dark, the stinging sleet, The old Chief, feeling now wellnigh his end, The path from me to you that led, The pipe came safe, and welcome too, The rich man's son inherits lands, The same good blood that now refills, The sea is lonely, the sea is dreary, The snow had begun in the gloaming, The tower of old Saint Nicholas soared upward to the skies, The wind is roistering out of doors, The wisest man could ask no more of Fate, The world turns mild; democracy, they say, There are who triumph in a losing cause, There came a youth upon the earth, There lay upon the ocean's shore, There never yet was flower fair in vain, Therefore think not the Past is wise alone, These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred, These rugged, wintry days I scarce could bear, They pass me by like shadows, crowds on crowds, Thick-rushing, like an ocean vast, This is the midnight of the century,--hark! This kind o' sogerin' aint a mite like our October trainin', This little blossom from afar, Thou look'dst on me all yesternight, Thou wast the fairest of all man-made things, Though old the thought and oft exprest, Thrash away, you'll _hev_ to rattle, Through suffering and sorrow thou hast passed, Thy love thou sentest oft to me, Thy voice is like a fountain, 'Tis a woodland enchanted! To those who died for her on land and sea, True as the sun's own work but more refined, True Love is a humble, low-born thing, Turbid from London's noise and smoke, 'Twas sung of old in hut and hall, 'Twere no hard task, perchance, to win, Two brothers once, an ill-matched pair, Two fellers, Isrel named and Joe, Unconscious as the sunshine, simply sweet, Unseen Musician, thou art sure to please, Untremulous in the river clear, Violet! sweet violet! Wait a little: do _we_ not wait? Walking alone where we walked together, We see but half the causes of our deeds, We, too, have autumns, when our leaves, We wagered, she for sunshine, I for rain, Weak-winged is song, What boot your houses and your lands? What countless years and wealth of brain were spent, 'What fairings will ye that I bring?' What gnarled stretch, what depth of shade, is his! What hath Love with Thought to do? What know we of the world immense, What man would live coffined with brick and stone, What mean these banners spread, 'What means this glory round our feet,' What Nature makes in any mood, What visionary tints the year puts on, What were I, Love, if I were stripped of thee, What were the whole void world, if thou wert dead, When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast, When I was a beggarly boy, When oaken woods with buds are pink, When Persia's sceptre trembled in a hand, When the down is on the chin, When wise Minerva still was young, Where is the true man's fatherland? 'Where lies the capital, pilgrim, seat of who governs the Faithful?' Whether my heart hath wiser grown or not, Whether the idle prisoner through his grate, While the slow clock, as they were miser's gold, Whither? Albeit I follow fast, Who cometh over the hills, Who does his duty is a question, Who hath not been a poet? Who hath not, Why should I seek her spell to decompose, With what odorous woods and spices, Woe worth the hour when it is crime, Wondrous and awful are thy silent halls, Words pass as wind, but where great deeds were done, Worn and footsore was the Prophet, Ye little think what toil it was to build, Ye who, passing graves by night, Yes, faith is a goodly anchor, Zekle crep' up, quite unbeknown, INDEX OF TITLES The titles of major works and of general divisions are set in SMALL CAPITALS. A.C.L., To. Above and Below. Absence. After the Burial. Agassiz. Agro-Dolce. Al Fresco. Aladdin. Alexander, Fanny, To. All-Saints. Allegra. Ambrose. Anti-Apis. Appledore, Pictures from. April Birthday, An--at Sea. Arcadia Rediviva. At the Burns Centennial. At the Commencement Dinner, 1866. Auf Wiedersehen. Auspex. Bankside. Bartlett, Mr. John, To. Beaver Brook. Beggar, The. Bibliolatres. Biglow, Mr. Hosea, to the Editor of the Atlantic Monthly. Biglow, Mr., Latest Views of. BIGLOW PAPERS, THE. Biglow's, Mr. Hosea, Speech in March Meeting. Birch-Tree, The. Birdofredum Sawin, Esq., to Mr. Hosea Biglow. Birdofredum Sawin, Esq., to Mr. Hosea Biglow. Birthday Verses. Black Preacher, The. Blondel, Two Scenes from the Life of. Bon Voyage. Boss, The. Boston, Letter from. Bradford, C.F., To. Brakes, The. Brittany, A Legend of. Broken Tryst, The. Burns Centennial, At the. Captive, The. Capture of Fugitive Slaves near Washington, On the. Casa sin Alma. CATHEDRAL, THE. Cervantes, Prison of. Changed Perspective. Changeling, The. Channing, Dr., Elegy on the Death of. Chippewa Legend, A. Christmas Carol, A. Cochituate Water, Ode written for the Celebration of the Introduction of the, into the City of Boston. Columbus. Commemoration, Ode recited at the Harvard. Concord Bridge, Ode read at the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Fight at. Contrast, A. Courtin', The. Credidimus Jovem regnare. Curtis, George William, An Epistle to. Dancing Bear, The. Dandelion, To the. Dante, On a Portrait of, by Giotto. Dara. Darkened Mind, The. Dead House, The. Death of a Friend's Child, On the. Death of Queen Mercedes. Debate in the Sennit, The. Discovery, The. Dobson's, Mr. Austin, 'Old World Idylls,' Receiving a Copy of. E.G. de R. EARLIER POEMS. Eleanor makes Macaroons. Elegy on the Death of Dr. Channing. Ember Picture, An. Endymion. Epistle to George William Curtis, An. Estrangement. Eurydice. Ewig-Weibliche, Das. Extreme Unction. Eye's Treasury, The. FABLE FOR CRITICS, A. Fact or Fancy? Falcon, The. Familiar Epistle to a Friend, A. Fancy's Casuistry. Fatherland, The. Festina Lente. Finding of the Lyre, The. First Snow-Fall, The. Fitz Adam's Story. Flying Dutchman, The. Foot-Path, The. For an Autograph. Foreboding, A. Forlorn, The. Fountain, The. Fountain of Youth, The. Fourth of July, 1876, An Ode for the. FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED POEM. France, Ode to. 'Franciscus de Verulamio sic cogitavit.' Freedom. Future, To the. Garrison, W.L., To. Ghost-Seer, The. Giddings, J.R., To. Glance behind the Curtain, A. Godminster Chimes. Gold Egg: A Dream-Fantasy. Grant, General, On a Bust of. Graves of Two English Soldiers on Concord Battle-Ground, Lines suggested by the. Growth of the Legend, The. H.W.L., To. Hamburg, An Incident of the Fire at. Happiness, Ode to. Harvard Commemoration, Ode recited at the. HEARTSEASE AND RUE. Hebe. Heritage, The. Holmes, To. Hood, To the Memory of. How I consulted the Oracle of the Goldfishes. Hunger and Cold. In a Copy of Omar Khayydm. In Absence. In an Album. In the Half-Way House. In the Twilight. Incident in a Railroad Car, An. Incident of the Fire at Hamburg, An. Indian-Summer Reverie, An. Inscriptions. For a Bell at Cornell University. For a Memorial Window to Sir Walter Raleigh, set up in St. Margaret's, Westminster, by American Contributors. Proposed for a Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Boston. International Copyright. Interview with Miles Standish, An. Inveraray, On Planting a Tree at. Invita Minerva. Invitation, An. Irené. Jonathan to John. Keats, To the Spirit of. Kettelopotomachia. Kossuth. Lamartine, To. Landlord, The. LAST POEMS. Latest Views of Mr. Biglow. Leaving the Matter open. Legend of Brittany, A. L'ENVOi (To the Muse). L'Envoi (Whether my heart hath wiser grown or not). Lesson, The. Letter, A, from a candidate for the presidency in answer to suttin questions proposed by Mr. Hosea Biglow, inclosed in a note from Mr. Biglow to S.H. Gay, Esq., editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard. Letter, A, from Mr. Ezekiel Biglow of Jaalam to the Hon. Joseph T. Buckingham, editor of the Boston Courier, inclosing a poem of his son, Mr. Hosea Biglow. Letter, A, from Mr. Hosea Biglow to the Hon. J.T. Buckingham, editor of the Boston Courier, covering a letter from Mr. B. Sawin, private in the Massachusetts Regiment. Letter, A Second, from B. Sawin, Esq. Letter, A Third, from B. Sawin, Esq. LETTER FROM BOSTON. Lines (suggested by the Graves of Two English Soldiers on Concord Battle-Ground). Longing. Love. Love and Thought. Love's Clock. M.O.S., To. Mahmood the Image-Breaker. Maple, The. Masaccio. Mason and Slidell: a Yankee Idyll. Memoriæ Positum. MEMORIAL VERSES. Message of Jeff Davis in Secret Session, A. Midnight. Miner, The. MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. Misconception, A. Miss D.T., To. Monna Lisa. Mood, A. Moon, The. My Love. My Portrait Gallery. Nest, The. New-Year's Eve, 1850. New Year's Greeting, A. Nightingale in the Study, The. Nightwatches. Nobler Lover, The. Nomades, The. Norton, Charles Eliot, To. Oak, The. Ode, An (for the Fourth of July, 1876). Ode (In the old days of awe and keen-eyed wonder). Ode (read at the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Fight at Concord Bridge). Ode recited at the Harvard Commemoration. Ode to France. Ode to Happiness. Ode (written for the Celebration of the Introduction of the Cochituate Water into the City of Boston). Omar Khayyám, In a Copy of. On a Bust of General Grant. On a Portrait of Dante by Giotto. On an Autumn Sketch of H.G. Wild. On being asked for an Autograph in Venice. On Board the '76. On burning some Old Letters. On hearing a Sonata of Beethoven's played in the Next Room. On planting a Tree at Inveraray. On reading Wordsworth's Sonnets in Defence of Capital Punishment. On receiving a Copy of Mr. Austin Dobson's 'Old World Idylls.' On the Capture of Fugitive Slaves near Washington. On the Death of a Friend's Child. On the Death of Charles Turner Torrey. Optimist, The. Oracle of the Goldfishes, How I consulted the. ORIENTAL APOLOGUE, AN. Origin of Didactic Poetry, The. Palfrey, John Gorham, To. Palinode. Paolo to Francesca. Parable, A (An ass munched thistles, while a nightingale). Parable, A (Said Christ our Lord, I will go and see). Parable, A (Worn and footsore was the Prophet). Parting of the Ways, The. Past, To the. Perdita, singing. To. Pessimoptimism. Petition, The. Phillips, Wendell. Phoebe. Pictures from Appledore. Pine-Tree, To a. Pioneer, The. Pious Editor's Creed, The. POEMS OF THE WAR. Portrait Gallery, My. Portrait of Dante by Giotto, On a. Prayer, A. Pregnant Comment, The. Present Crisis, The. Prison of Cervantes. Prometheus. Protest, The. Recall, The. Remarks of Increase D. O'Phace, Esquire, at an extrumpery caucus in State Street, reported by Mr. H. Biglow. Remembered Music. Requiem, A. Rhoecus. Rosaline. Rose, The: a Ballad. St. Michael the Weigher. Sayings. Scherzo. Science and Poetry. Scottish Border. Search, The. Seaweed. Secret, The. Self-Study. Serenade. She came and went. Shepherd of King Admetus, The. Si descendero in Infernum, ades. Singing Leaves, The. Sirens, The. Sixty-Eighth Birthday. Song (O moonlight deep and tender). Song (to M.L.). Song (Violet! sweet violet!). SONNETS. Bankside. 'Beloved, in the noisy city here'. Bon Voyage! Brakes, The. Dancing Bear, The. Death of Queen Mercedes. E.G. de R. Eye's Treasury, The. 'For this true nobleness I seek in vain.' Foreboding, A. 'Great truths are portions of the soul of man.' 'I ask not for those thoughts, that sudden leap.' 'I cannot think that thou shouldst pass away.' 'I grieve not that ripe knowledge takes away.' 'I thought our love at full, but I did err.' 'I would not have this perfect love of ours.' In Absence. Maple, The. 'My Love, I have no fear that thou shouldst die.' Nightwatches. On an Autumn Sketch of H.G. Wild. On being asked for an Autograph in Venice. On reading Wordsworth's Sonnets in Defence of Capital Punishment. 'Our love is not a fading, earthly flower.' Paolo to Francesca. Pessimoptimism. Phillips, Wendell. Prison of Cervantes. Scottish Border. Street, The. Sub Pondere crescit. 'There never yet was flower fair in vain.' To A.C.L. To a Friend. To a Lady playing on the Cithern. To Fanny Alexander. To J.R. Giddings. To M.O.S. To M.W., on her Birthday. To Miss D.T. To the Spirit of Keats. To Whittier. 'What were I, Love, if I were stripped of thee.' Winlock, Joseph. With a copy of Aucassin and Nicolete. With an Armchair. Wyman, Jeffries. Sower, The. Speech of Honourable Preserved Doe in Secret Caucus. Standish, Miles, An Interview with. Stanzas on Freedom. Street, The. Studies for Two Heads. Sub Pondere crescit. Summer Storm. Sun-Worship. Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line. Telepathy. Tempora Mutantur. THREE MEMORIAL POEMS. Threnodia. To----. To A.C.L. To a Friend. To a Lady playing on the Cithern. To a Pine-Tree. To C.F. Bradford. To Charles Eliot Norton. To H.W.L. To Holmes. To J.R. Giddings. To John Gorham Palfrey. To Lamartine. To M.O.S. To M.W., on her Birthday. To Miss D.T. To Mr. John Bartlett. To Perdita, singing. To the Dandelion. To the Future. To the Memory of Hood. To the Past. To the Spirit of Keats. To W.L. Garrison. To Whittier. Token, The. Torrey, Charles Turner, On the Death of. Trial. Turner's Old Téméraire. Two Gunners, The. Two Scenes from the Life of Blondel. Under the October Maples. Under the Old Elm. UNDER THE WILLOWS, AND OTHER POEMS. Under the Willows. UNHAPPY LOT OF MR. KNOTT, THE. Valentine, A. Verses, intended to go with a Posset Dish. Villa Franca. VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL, THE. Voyage to Vinland, The. Washers of the Shroud, The. What Mr. Robinson thinks. What Rabbi Jehosha said. Whittier, To. Wild, H.G., On an Autumn Sketch of. Wind-Harp, The. Winlock, Joseph. Winter-Evening Hymn to my Fire, A. With a Copy of Aucassin and Nicolete. With a Pair of Gloves lost in a Wager. With a Pressed Flower. With a Seashell. With an Armchair. Without and Within. Wordsworth's Sonnets in Defence of Capital Punishment, On reading. Wyman, Jeffries. Youthful Experiment in English Hexameters, A. Yussouf. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: The wise Scandinavians probably called their bards by the queer-looking title of Scald in a delicate way, as it were, just to hint to the world the hot water they always get into.] [Footnote 2: To demonstrate quickly and easily how per- -versely absurd 'tis to sound this name _Cowper_, As people in general call him named _super_, I remark that he rhymes it himself with horse-trooper.] [Footnote 3: (If you call Snooks an owl, he will show by his looks That he's morally certain you're jealous of Snooks.)] [Footnote 4:(Cuts rightly called wooden, as all must admit.)] [Footnote 5: That is in most cases we do, but not all, Past a doubt, there are men who are innately small, Such as Blank, who, without being 'minished a tittle, Might stand for a type of the Absolute Little.] [Footnote 6: (And at this just conclusion will surely arrive, That the goodness of earth is more dead than alive.)] [Footnote 7: Not forgetting their tea and their toast, though, the while.] [Footnote 8: Turn back now to page--goodness only knows what, And take a fresh hold on the thread of my plot.] [Footnote 9: The reader curious in such matters may refer (if he can find them) to _A sermon preached on the Anniversary of the Dark Day, An Artillery Election Sermon, A Discourse on the Late Eclipse, Dorcas, A Funeral Sermon on the Death of Madam Submit Tidd, Relict of the late Experience Tidd, Esq., &c., &c._] [Footnote 10: Aut insanit, aut versos facit. --H.W.] [Footnote 11: In relation to this expression, I cannot but think that Mr. Biglow has been too hasty in attributing it to me. Though Time be a comparatively innocent personage to swear by, and though Longinus in his discourse [Greek: Peri 'Upsous] have commended timely oaths as not only a useful but sublime figure of speech, yet I have always kept my lips free from that abomination. _Odi profanum vulgus_, I hate your swearing and hectoring fellows.--H.W.] [Footnote 12: i hait the Site of a feller with a muskit as I du pizn But their _is_ fun to a cornwallis I aint agoin' to deny it.--H.B.] [Footnote 13: he means Not quite so fur I guess.--H.B.] [Footnote 14: the ignerant creeter means Sekketary; but he ollers stuck to his books like cobbler's wax to an ile-stone.--H.B.] [Footnote 15: it must be aloud that thare's a streak of nater in lovin' sho, but it sartinly is 1 of the curusest things in nater to see a rispecktable dri goods dealer (deekon off a chutch maybe) a riggin' himself out in the Weigh they du and struttin' round in the Reign aspilin' his trowsis and makin' wet goods of himself. Ef any thin's foolisher and moor dicklus than militerry gloary it is milishy gloary.--H.B.] [Footnote 16: these fellers are verry proppilly called Rank Heroes, and the more tha kill the ranker and more Herowick tha becum.--H.B.] [Footnote 17: it wuz 'tumblebug' as he Writ it, but the parson put the Latten instid. i sed tother maid better meeter, but he said tha was eddykated peepl to Boston and tha wouldn't stan' it no how. idnow as tha _wood_ and idnow _as_ tha wood.--H.B.] [Footnote 18: he means human beins, that's wut he means. i spose he kinder thought tha wuz human beans ware the Xisle Poles comes from.--H.B.] [Footnote 19: The speaker is of a different mind from Tully, who, in his recently discovered tractate _De Republica_, tells us, _Nec vero habere virtutem satis est, quasi artem aliquam, nisi utare_, and from our Milton, who says: 'I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, _not without dust and heat.'--Areop_. He had taken the words out of the Roman's mouth, without knowing it, and might well exclaim with Donatus (if Saint Jerome's tutor may stand sponsor for a curse), _Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerint!_--H.W.] [Footnote 20: That was a pithy saying of Persius, and fits our politicians without a wrinkle,--_Magister artis, ingeniique largitor venter_.--H.W.] [Footnote 21: There is truth yet in this of Juvenal,-- 'Dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas.'--H.W.] [Footnote 22: Jortin is willing to allow of other miracles besides those recorded in Holy Writ, and why not of othere prophecies? It is granting too much to Satan to suppose him, as divers of the learned have done, the inspirer of the ancient oracles. Wiser, I esteem it, to give chance the credit of the successful ones. What is said here of Louis Phillippe was verified in some of its minute particulars within a few months' time. Enough to have made the fortune of Delphi or Hammon, and no thanks to Beelzebub neither! That of Seneca in Medea will suit here:-- 'Rapida fortuna ac levis Præcepsque regno eripuit, exsilio dedit.' Let us allow, even to richly deserved misfortune, our commiseration, and be not over-hasty meanwhile in our censure of the French people, left for the first time to govern themselves, remembering that wise sentence of Æschylus,-- [Greek: Apas de trachus hostis han neon kratae.] --H.W.] [Footnote 23: A rustic euphemism for the American variety of the _Mephitis_.--H.W.] [Footnote 24: _Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English_.] [Footnote 25: Cited in Collier. (I give my authority where I do not quote from the original book.)] [Footnote 26: The word occurs in a letter of Mary Boleyn, in Golding, and Warner. Milton also was fond of the word.] [Footnote 27: Though I find Worcëster in the _Mirror for Magistrates_.] [Footnote 28: This was written twenty years ago, and now (1890) I cannot open an English journal without coming upon an Americanism.] [Footnote 29: The Rev. A.L. Mayhew of Wadham College, Oxford, has convinced me that I was astray in this.] [Footnote 30: _Dame_, in English, is a decayed gentlewoman of the same family.] [Footnote 31: Which, whether in that form, or under its aliases _witch_-grass and _cooch_-grass, points us back to its original Saxon _quick_.] [Footnote 32: And, by the way, the Yankee never says 'o'nights,' but uses the older adverbial form, analogous to the German _nachts_.] [Footnote 33: Greene in his _Quip for an Upstart Courtier_ says, 'to _square_ it up and downe the streetes before his mistresse.'] 
22922	----	THE POSY RING _The Posy Ring is a companion volume to Golden Numbers A Book of Verse for Youth Edited by Kate Douglas Wiggin and Nora Archibald Smith_ THE POSY RING A BOOK OF VERSE FOR CHILDREN CHOSEN AND CLASSIFIED BY Kate Douglas Wiggin AND Nora Archibald Smith [Illustration] _"A box of jewels, shop of rarities, A ring whose posy was 'My pleasure'"_ GEORGE HERBERT MCCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. NEW YORK MCMVI _Copyright, 1903, by_ McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. Published, February, 1903, N Fifth Impression. A NOTE [Illustration] _THANKS are due to the following publishers for permission to reprint poems on which they hold copyright:_ _Charles Scribner's Sons, for permission to use the following poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: "Windy Nights," "Where Go the Boats?" "The Little Land," "The Land of Story Books" and "Bed Time"; for the following poems by Mary Mapes Dodge: "Nearly Ready," "Now the Noisy Winds are Still," "Snowflakes," "Birdies with Broken Wings," and "Night and Day"; for the following poems by Eugene Field: "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod," and "Nightfall in Dordrecht"; for "Rockaby, Lullaby," by J. G. Holland; and for "One, Two, Three," by H. C. Bunner. G. P. Putnam's Sons, for permission to use "High and Low," by Dora Goodale. D. Appleton & Son, publishers of Bryant's Complete Poetical Works, for permission to reprint "Robert of Lincoln," by W. C. Bryant. E. P. Dutton & Co., for permission to reprint "The Birds in Spring," by Thomas Nashe. A. C. McClurg & Co., for permission to reprint "Baby Seed Song" and "Bird's Song in Spring," by E. Nesbit. The Century Company, for permission to reprint the "Seal Lullaby," by Rudyard Kipling. The "Independent," for permission to reprint "Baby Corn," Anon. Dana, Estes & Co., for permission to reprint "The Blue Jay," by Susan Hartley Swett. Small, Maynard & Co., for permission to reprint the following poems by John B. Tabb: "The Fern Song," "A Bunch of Roses," "The Child at Bethlehem." George Routledge & Sons, for permission to reprint the following poems by W. B. Rands: "The Child's World," "The Wonderful World," "Love and the Child," "Dolladine," "Dressing the Doll," "The Pedlar's Caravan," and "Little Christel"; also for "Little White Lily" and "What Would You See?" by George Macdonald, and "The Wind," by L. E. Landon. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., for the right to reprint the following poems: "Marjorie's Almanac," by T. B. Aldrich; "Dandelion," by Helen Grey Cone; "The Fairies' Shopping" and "The Christmas Silence," by Margaret Deland; "The Titmouse" and "Fable," by Ralph Waldo Emerson; "Hiawatha's Chickens" and "Hiawatha's Brothers," by Henry W. Longfellow; "The Fountain," by James Russell Lowell; "The Rivulet," by Lucy Larcom; "The Coming of Spring," by Nora Perry; "May," "The Waterfall," "Clouds," and "Bells of Christmas," by Frank Dempster Sherman; "What the Winds Bring" and "The Singer," by E. C. Stedman; "Spring," "Wild Geese," "Chanticleer," and "Little Gustava," by Celia Thaxter. Little, Brown & Co., for the right to reprint "September," by Helen Hunt Jackson; "When the Leaves Come Down," by Susan Coolidge; and "Summer Days," "A Year's Windfalls," "The Flower Folk," "There's Nothing Like the Rose," "Milking Time," "A Chill," and "A Birthday Gift," by Christina G. Rossetti. St. Nicholas, for permission to reprint "The Little Elf," by John Kendrick Bangs. The Macmillan Company, for permission to reprint "O Lady Moon," by Christina G. Rossetti. Frederick Warne & Co., for permission to reprint "By Cool Siloam's Shady Rill," by Reginald Heber. Cassell & Co., Ltd., for permission to reprint "The Last Voyage of the Fairies," by W. H. Davenport Adams._ [Illustration] PUBLIC NOTICE.--_This is to state, That these are the specimens left at the gate Of Pinafore Palace, exact to date, In the hands of the porter, Curlypate, Who sits in his plush on a chair of state, By somebody who is a candidate For the office of Lilliput Laureate._ _William Brighty Rands._ CONTENTS [Illustration] Page LILLIPUT NOTICE. By _William Brighty Rands_ ix A YEAR'S WINDFALLS Marjorie's Almanac. By _Thomas Bailey Aldrich_ 3 In February. By _John Addington Symonds_ 5 March. By _William Wordsworth_ 6 Nearly Ready. By _Mary Mapes Dodge_ 7 Spring Song. By _George Eliot_ 7 In April. By _Elizabeth Akers_ 8 Spring. By _Celia Thaxter_ 9 The Voice of Spring. By _Mary Howitt_ 10 The Coming of Spring. By _Nora Perry_ 11 May. By _Frank Dempster Sherman_ 13 Spring and Summer. By "_A._" 14 Summer Days. By _Christina G. Rossetti_ 15 September. By _H. H._ 16 How the Leaves Came Down. By _Susan Coolidge_ 17 Winter Night. By _Mary F. Butts_ 19 A Year's Windfalls. By _Christina G. Rossetti_ 20 THE CHILD'S WORLD The Wonderful World. By _William Brighty Rands_ 27 A Day. By _Emily Dickinson_ 28 Good-Morning. By _Robert Browning_ 29 What the Winds Bring. By _Edmund Clarence Stedman_ 29 Lady Moon. By _Lord Houghton_ 30 O Lady Moon. By _Christina G. Rossetti_ 31 Windy Nights. By _Robert Louis Stevenson_ 31 Wild Winds. By _Mary F. Butts_ 32 Now the Noisy Winds are Still. By _Mary Mapes Dodge_ 33 The Wind. _Letitia E. Landon_ 33 The Fountain. By _James Russell Lowell_ 34 The Waterfall. By _Frank Dempster Sherman_ 35 The Voice of the Grass. By _Sarah Roberts Boyle_ 36 The Wind in a Frolic. By _William Howitt_ 38 Clouds. By _Frank Dempster Sherman_ 40 Signs of Rain. By _Edward Jenner_ 41 A Sudden Shower. By _James Whitcomb Riley_ 43 Strange Lands. By _Laurence Alma Tadema_ 44 Guessing Song. By _Henry Johnstone_ 45 The Rivulet. By _Lucy Larcom_ 46 Jack Frost. By _Hannah F. Gould_ 47 Snowflakes. By _Mary Mapes Dodge_ 49 The Water! The Water. By _William Motherwell_ 49 HIAWATHA'S CHICKENS The Swallows. By _Edwin Arnold_ 53 The Swallow's Nest. By _Edwin Arnold_ 53 The Birds in Spring. By _Thomas Nashe_ 54 Robin Redbreast. By _William Allingham_ 54 The Lark and the Rook. _Unknown_ 56 The Snowbird. By _Hezekiah Butterworth_ 57 Who Stole the Bird's Nest? By _Lydia Maria Child_ 59 Answer to a Child's Question. By _Samuel Taylor Coleridge_ 62 The Burial of the Linnet. By _Juliana H. Ewing_ 63 The Titmouse. By _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ 64 Birds in Summer. By _Mary Howitt_ 65 An Epitaph on a Robin Redbreast. By _Samuel Rogers_ 67 The Bluebird. By _Emily Huntington Miller_ 68 Song. By _John Keats_ 69 What Does Little Birdie Say? By _Alfred, Lord Tennyson_ 69 The Owl. By _Alfred, Lord Tennyson_ 70 Wild Geese. By _Celia Thaxter_ 71 Chanticleer. By _Celia Thaxter_ 72 The Singer. By _Edmund Clarence Stedman_ 73 The Blue Jay. By _Susan Hartley Swett_ 74 Robert of Lincoln. By _William Cullen Bryant_ 75 White Butterflies. By _Algernon C. Swinburne_ 78 The Ant and the Cricket. _Unknown_ 78 THE FLOWER FOLK Little White Lily. By _George Macdonald_ 83 Violets. By _Dinah Maria Mulock_ 85 Young Dandelion. By _Dinah Maria Mulock_ 86 Baby Seed Song. By _E. Nesbit_ 88 A Violet Bank. By _William Shakespeare_ 88 There's Nothing Like the Rose. By _Christina G. Rossetti_ 89 Snowdrops. By _Laurence Alma Tadema_ 89 Fern Song. By _John B. Tabb_ 90 The Violet. By _Jane Taylor_ 90 Daffy-Down-Dilly. By _Anna B. Warner_ 91 Baby Corn. _Unknown_ 93 A Child's Fancy. By "_A._" 95 Little Dandelion. By _Helen B. Bostwick_ 97 Dandelions. By _Helen Gray Cone_ 98 The Flax Flower. By _Mary Howitt_ 99 Dear Little Violets. By _John Moultrie_ 101 Bird's Song in Spring. By _E. Nesbit_ 102 The Tree. By _Björnstjerne Björnson_ 102 The Daisy's Song. By _John Keats_ 103 Song. By _Thomas Love Peacock_ 104 For Good Luck. By _Juliana Horatia Ewing_ 105 HIAWATHA'S BROTHERS My Pony. By "_A._" 109 On a Spaniel, Called Beau, Killing a Young Bird. By _William Cowper_ 111 Beau's Reply. By _William Cowper_ 112 Seal Lullaby. By _Rudyard Kipling_ 113 Milking Time. By _Christina G. Rossetti_ 113 Thank You, Pretty Cow. By _Jane Taylor_ 114 The Boy and the Sheep. By _Ann Taylor_ 114 Lambs in the Meadow. By _Laurence Alma Tadema_ 115 The Pet Lamb. By _William Wordsworth_ 116 The Kitten, and Falling Leaves. By _William Wordsworth_ 121 OTHER LITTLE CHILDREN Where Go the Boats? By _Robert Louis Stevenson_ 125 Cleanliness. By _Charles and Mary Lamb_ 126 Wishing. By _William Allingham_ 127 The Boy. By _William Allingham_ 128 Infant Joy. By _William Blake_ 129 A Blessing for the Blessed. By _Laurence Alma Tadema_ 129 Piping Down the Valleys Wild. By _William Blake_ 131 A Sleeping Child. By _Arthur Hugh Clough_ 132 Birdies with Broken Wings. By _Mary Mapes Dodge_ 133 Seven Times One. By _Jean Ingelow_ 133 I Remember, I Remember. By _Thomas Hood_ 135 Good-Night and Good-Morning. By _Lord Houghton_ 136 Little Children. By _Mary Howitt_ 137 The Angel's Whisper. By _Samuel Lover_ 139 Little Garaine. By _Sir Gilbert Parker_ 140 A Letter. By _Matthew Prior_ 141 Love and the Child. By _William Brighty Rands_ 142 Polly. By _William Brighty Rands_ 143 A Chill. By _Christina G. Rossetti_ 144 A Child's Laughter. By _Algernon C. Swinburne_ 145 The World's Music. By _Gabriel Setoun_ 146 The Little Land. By _Robert Louis Stevenson_ 148 In a Garden. By _Algernon C. Swinburne_ 151 Little Gustava. By _Celia Thaxter_ 152 A Bunch of Roses. By _John B. Tabb_ 155 The Child at Bethlehem. By _John B. Tabb_ 155 After the Storm. By _W. M. Thackeray_ 156 Lucy Gray. By _William Wordsworth_ 156 Deaf and Dumb. By "_A_." 159 The Blind Boy. By _Colley Cibber_ 160 PLAY-TIME A Boy's Song. By _James Hogg_ 165 The Lost Doll. By _Charles Kingsley_ 166 Dolladine. By _William Brighty Rands_ 167 Dressing the Doll. By _William Brighty Rands_ 167 The Pedlar's Caravan. By _William Brighty Rands_ 170 A Sea-Song from the Shore. _James Whitcomb Riley_ 171 The Land of Story-Books. By _Robert Louis Stevenson_ 172 The City Child. By _Alfred, Lord Tennyson_ 173 Going into Breeches. By _Charles and Mary Lamb_ 174 Hunting Song. By _Samuel Taylor Coleridge_ 176 Hie Away. By _Sir Walter Scott_ 176 STORY TIME The Fairy Folk. By _Robert Bird_ 181 A Fairy in Armor. By _Joseph Rodman Drake_ 183 The Last Voyage of the Fairies. By _W. H. Davenport Adams_ 184 A New Fern. By "_A_." 186 The Child and the Fairies. By "_A_." 187 The Little Elf. By _John Kendrick Bangs_ 188 "One, Two, Three." By _Henry C. Bunner_ 188 What May Happen to a Thimble. By "_B_." 190 Discontent. By _Sarah Orne Jewett_ 193 The Nightingale and the Glowworm. By _William Cowper_ 195 Thanksgiving Day. By _Lydia Maria Child_ 196 A Thanksgiving Fable. By _Oliver Herford_ 197 The Magpie's Nest. By _Charles and Mary Lamb_ 198 The Owl and the Pussy-Cat. By _Edward Lear_ 201 A Lobster Quadrille. By _Lewis Carroll_ 202 The Fairies' Shopping. By _Margaret Deland_ 204 Fable. By _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ 206 A Midsummer Song. By _Richard Watson Gilder_ 207 The Fairies of the Caldon-Low. By _Mary Howitt_ 209 The Elf and the Dormouse. By _Oliver Herford_ 213 Meg Merrilies. By _John Keats_ 214 Romance. By _Gabriel Setoun_ 215 The Cow-Boy's Song. By _Anna M. Wells_ 217 BED TIME Auld Daddy Darkness. By _James Ferguson_ 221 Wynken, Blynken, and Nod. By _Eugene Field_ 222 Rockaby, Lullaby. By _Josiah Gilbert Holland_ 224 Sleep, My Treasure. By _E. Nesbit_ 225 Lullaby of an Infant Chief. By _Sir Walter Scott_ 226 Sweet and Low. By _Alfred, Lord Tennyson_ 227 Old Gaelic Lullaby. _Unknown_ 228 The Sandman. By _Margaret Vandegrift_ 228 The Cottager to Her Infant. By _Dorothy Wordsworth_ 230 A Charm to Call Sleep. By _Henry Johnstone_ 231 Night. By _Mary F. Butts_ 232 Bed-Time. By _Lord Rosslyn_ 232 Nightfall in Dordrecht. By _Eugene Field_ 233 FOR SUNDAY'S CHILD All Things Bright and Beautiful. By _Cecil F. Alexander_ 237 The Still Small Voice. By _Alexander Smart_ 238 The Camel's Nose. By _Lydia H. Sigourney_ 240 A Child's Grace. By _Robert Burns_ 241 A Child's Thought of God. By _Elizabeth B. Browning_ 241 The Lamb. By _William Blake_ 242 Night and Day. By _Mary Mapes Dodge_ 243 High and Low. By _Dora Read Goodale_ 244 By Cool Siloam's Shady Rill. By _Reginald Heber_ 244 Sheep and Lambs. By _Katharine Tynan Hinkson_ 245 To His Saviour, a Child; A Present by a Child. By _Robert Herrick_ 246 What Would You See? By _George Macdonald_ 247 Corn-Fields. By _Mary Howitt_ 248 Little Christel. By _William Brighty Rands_ 250 A Child's Prayer. By _M. Betham Edwards_ 252 BELLS OF CHRISTMAS The Adoration of the Wise Men. By _Cecil F. Alexander_ 257 Cradle Hymn. By _Isaac Watts_ 258 The Christmas Silence. By _Margaret Deland_ 260 An Offertory. By _Mary Mapes Dodge_ 261 Christmas Song. By _Lydia Avery Coonley Ward_ 261 A Visit from St. Nicholas. By _Clement C. Moore_ 262 The Christmas Trees. By _Mary F. Butts_ 265 A Birthday Gift. By _Christina G. Rossetti_ 267 A Christmas Lullaby. By _John Addington Symonds_ 267 I Saw Three Ships. _Old Carol_ 268 Santa Claus. _Unknown_ 269 Neighbors of the Christ Night. By _Nora Archibald Smith_ 271 Cradle Hymn. By _Martin Luther_ 272 The Christmas Holly. By _Eliza Cook_ 273 LILLIPUT NOTICE. By _William Brighty Rands_ 274 THE POSY RING I A YEAR'S WINDFALLS _Who comes dancing over the snow, His soft little feet all bare and rosy? Open the door, though the wild winds blow, Take the child in and make him cosy. Take him in and hold him dear, He is the wonderful glad New Year._ _Dinah M. Mulock._ A YEAR'S WINDFALLS _Marjorie's Almanac_ Robins in the tree-top, Blossoms in the grass, Green things a-growing Everywhere you pass; Sudden little breezes, Showers of silver dew, Black bough and bent twig Budding out anew; Pine-tree and willow-tree, Fringèd elm and larch,-- Don't you think that May-time's Pleasanter than March? Apples in the orchard Mellowing one by one; Strawberries upturning Soft cheeks to the sun; Roses faint with sweetness, Lilies fair of face, Drowsy scents and murmurs Haunting every place; Lengths of golden sunshine, Moonlight bright as day,-- Don't you think that summer's Pleasanter than May? Roger in the corn-patch Whistling negro songs; Pussy by the hearth-side Romping with the tongs; Chestnuts in the ashes Bursting through the rind; Red leaf and gold leaf Rustling down the wind; Mother "doin' peaches" All the afternoon,-- Don't you think that autumn's Pleasanter than June? Little fairy snow-flakes Dancing in the flue; Old Mr. Santa Claus, What is keeping you? Twilight and firelight Shadows come and go; Merry chime of sleigh-bells Tinkling through the snow; Mother knitting stockings (Pussy's got the ball),-- Don't you think that winter's Pleasanter than all? Thomas Bailey Aldrich. _In February_ The birds have been singing to-day, And saying: "The spring is near! The sun is as warm as in May, And the deep blue heavens are clear." The little bird on the boughs Of the sombre snow-laden pine Thinks: "Where shall I build me my house, And how shall I make it fine? "For the season of snow is past; The mild south wind is on high; And the scent of the spring is cast From his wing as he hurries by." The little birds twitter and cheep To their loves on the leafless larch; But seven feet deep the snow-wreaths sleep, And the year hath not worn to March. John Addington Symonds. _March_ The cock is crowing, The stream is flowing, The small birds twitter, The lake doth glitter, The green field sleeps in the sun; The oldest and youngest Are at work with the strongest; The cattle are grazing, Their heads never raising; There are forty feeding like one. Like an army defeated The snow hath retreated, And now doth fare ill On the top of the bare hill; The ploughboy is whooping--anon--anon! There's joy on the mountains; There's life in the fountains; Small clouds are sailing, Blue sky prevailing; The rain is over and gone. William Wordsworth. _Nearly Ready_[A] In the snowing and the blowing, In the cruel sleet, Little flowers begin their growing Far beneath our feet. Softly taps the Spring, and cheerly, "Darlings, are you here?" Till they answer, "We are nearly, Nearly ready, dear." "Where is Winter, with his snowing? Tell us, Spring," they say. Then she answers, "He is going, Going on his way. Poor old Winter does not love you; But his time is past; Soon my birds shall sing above you,-- Set you free at last." Mary Mapes Dodge. _Spring Song_ Spring comes hither, Buds the rose; Roses wither, Sweet spring goes. Summer soars,-- Wide-winged day; White light pours, Flies away. Soft winds blow, Westward born; Onward go, Toward the morn. George Eliot FOOTNOTE: [A] _From "Rhymes and Jingles," by Mary Mapes Dodge. By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons._ _In April_ The poplar drops beside the way Its tasselled plumes of silver-gray; The chestnut pouts its great brown buds Impatient for the laggard May. The honeysuckles lace the wall, The hyacinths grow fair and tall; And mellow sun and pleasant wind And odorous bees are over all. Elizabeth Akers. _Spring_ The alder by the river Shakes out her powdery curls; The willow buds in silver For little boys and girls. The little birds fly over, And oh, how sweet they sing! To tell the happy children That once again 'tis spring. The gay green grass comes creeping So soft beneath their feet; The frogs begin to ripple A music clear and sweet. And buttercups are coming, And scarlet columbine; And in the sunny meadows The dandelions shine. And just as many daisies As their soft hands can hold The little ones may gather, All fair in white and gold. Here blows the warm red clover, There peeps the violet blue; O happy little children, God made them all for you! Celia Thaxter. _The Voice of Spring_ I am coming, I am coming! Hark! the little bee is humming; See, the lark is soaring high In the blue and sunny sky; And the gnats are on the wing, Wheeling round in airy ring. See, the yellow catkins cover All the slender willows over! And on the banks of mossy green Star-like primroses are seen; And, their clustering leaves below, White and purple violets blow. Hark! the new-born lambs are bleating, And the cawing rooks are meeting In the elms,--a noisy crowd; All the birds are singing loud; And the first white butterfly In the sunshine dances by. Look around thee, look around! Flowers in all the fields abound; Every running stream is bright; All the orchard trees are white; And each small and waving shoot Promises sweet flowers and fruit. Turn thine eyes to earth and heaven: God for thee the spring has given, Taught the birds their melodies, Clothed the earth, and cleared the skies, For thy pleasure or thy food: Pour thy soul in gratitude. Mary Howitt. _The Coming of Spring_ There's something in the air That's new and sweet and rare-- A scent of summer things, A whir as if of wings. There's something, too, that's new In the color of the blue That's in the morning sky, Before the sun is high. And though on plain and hill 'Tis winter, winter still, There's something seems to say That winter's had its day. And all this changing tint, This whispering stir and hint Of bud and bloom and wing, Is the coming of the spring. And to-morrow or to-day The brooks will break away From their icy, frozen sleep, And run, and laugh, and leap. And the next thing, in the woods, The catkins in their hoods Of fur and silk will stand, A sturdy little band. And the tassels soft and fine Of the hazel will entwine, And the elder branches show Their buds against the snow. So, silently but swift, Above the wintry drift, The long days gain and gain, Until on hill and plain,-- Once more, and yet once more, Returning as before, We see the bloom of birth Make young again the earth. Nora Perry. _May_ May shall make the world anew; Golden sun and silver dew, Money minted in the sky, Shall the earth's new garments buy. May shall make the orchards bloom; And the blossoms' fine perfume Shall set all the honey-bees Murmuring among the trees. May shall make the bud appear Like a jewel, crystal clear, 'Mid the leaves upon the limb Where the robin lilts his hymn. May shall make the wild flowers tell Where the shining snowflakes fell; Just as though each snow-flake's heart, By some secret, magic art, Were transmuted to a flower In the sunlight and the shower. Is there such another, pray, Wonder-making month as May? Frank Dempster Sherman. _Spring and Summer_ Spring is growing up, Is not it a pity? She was such a little thing, And so very pretty! Summer is extremely grand, We must pay her duty, (But it is to little Spring That she owes her beauty!) All the buds are blown, Trees are dark and shady, (It was Spring who dress'd them, though, Such a little lady!) And the birds sing loud and sweet Their enchanting hist'ries, (It was Spring who taught them, though, Such a singing mistress!) From the glowing sky Summer shines above us; Spring was such a little dear, But will Summer love us? She is very beautiful, With her grown-up blisses, Summer we must bow before; Spring we coaxed with kisses! Spring is growing up, Leaving us so lonely, In the place of little Spring We have Summer only! Summer with her lofty airs, And her stately faces, In the place of little Spring, With her childish graces! "A." _Summer Days_ Winter is cold-hearted; Spring is yea and nay; Autumn is a weathercock, Blown every way: Summer days for me, When every leaf is on its tree, When Robin's not a beggar, And Jenny Wren's a bride, And larks hang, singing, singing, singing, Over the wheat-fields wide, And anchored lilies ride, And the pendulum spider Swings from side to side, And blue-black beetles transact business, And gnats fly in a host, And furry caterpillars hasten That no time be lost, And moths grow fat and thrive, And ladybirds arrive. Before green apples blush, Before green nuts embrown, Why, one day in the country Is worth a month in town-- Is worth a day and a year Of the dusty, musty, lag-last fashion That days drone elsewhere. Christina G. Rossetti. _September_ The goldenrod is yellow, The corn is turning brown, The trees in apple orchards With fruit are bending down; The gentian's bluest fringes Are curling in the sun; In dusty pods the milkweed Its hidden silk has spun; The sedges flaunt their harvest In every meadow nook, And asters by the brookside Make asters in the brook; From dewy lanes at morning The grapes' sweet odors rise; At noon the roads all flutter With yellow butterflies-- By all these lovely tokens September days are here, With summer's best of weather And autumn's best of cheer. H. H. _How the Leaves Came Down_ I'll tell you how the leaves came down. The great Tree to his children said, "You're getting sleepy, Yellow and Brown, Yes, very sleepy, little Red; It is quite time you went to bed." "Ah!" begged each silly, pouting leaf, "Let us a little longer stay; Dear Father Tree, behold our grief, 'Tis such a very pleasant day We do not want to go away." So, just for one more merry day To the great Tree the leaflets clung, Frolicked and danced and had their way, Upon the autumn breezes swung, Whispering all their sports among, "Perhaps the great Tree will forget And let us stay until the spring, If we all beg and coax and fret." But the great Tree did no such thing; He smiled to hear their whispering. "Come, children all, to bed," he cried; And ere the leaves could urge their prayer He shook his head, and far and wide, Fluttering and rustling everywhere, Down sped the leaflets through the air. I saw them; on the ground they lay, Golden and red, a huddled swarm, Waiting till one from far away, White bed-clothes heaped upon her arm, Should come to wrap them safe and warm. The great bare Tree looked down and smiled. "Good-night, dear little leaves," he said; And from below each sleepy child Replied "Good-night," and murmured, "It is _so_ nice to go to bed." Susan Coolidge. _Winter Night_ Blow, wind, blow! Drift the flying snow! Send it twirling, whirling overhead! There's a bedroom in a tree Where, snug as snug can be, The squirrel nests in his cosey bed. Shriek, wind, shriek! Make the branches creak! Battle with the boughs till break o' day! In a snow-cave warm and tight, Through the icy winter night The rabbit sleeps the peaceful hours away. Call, wind, call, In entry and in hall, Straight from off the mountain white and wild! Soft purrs the pussy-cat On her little fluffy mat, And beside her nestles close her furry child. Scold, wind, scold, So bitter and so bold! Shake the windows with your tap, tap, tap! With half-shut, dreamy eyes The drowsy baby lies Cuddled closely in his mother's lap. Mary F. Butts. A Year's Windfalls On the wind of January Down flits the snow, Travelling from the frozen North As cold as it can blow. Poor robin redbreast, Look where he comes; Let him in to feel your fire, And toss him of your crumbs. On the wind in February Snowflakes float still, Half inclined to turn to rain, Nipping, dripping, chill. Then the thaws swell the streams, And swollen rivers swell the sea:-- If the winter ever ends How pleasant it will be. In the wind of windy March The catkins drop down, Curly, caterpillar-like, Curious green and brown. With concourse of nest-building birds And leaf-buds by the way, We begin to think of flowers And life and nuts some day. With the gusts of April Rich fruit-tree blossoms fall, On the hedged-in orchard-green, From the southern wall. Apple-trees and pear-trees Shed petals white or pink, Plum-trees and peach-trees; While sharp showers sink and sink. Little brings the May breeze Beside pure scent of flowers, While all things wax and nothing wanes In lengthening daylight hours. Across the hyacinth beds The wind lags warm and sweet, Across the hawthorn tops, Across the blades of wheat. In the wind of sunny June Thrives the red rose crop, Every day fresh blossoms blow While the first leaves drop; White rose and yellow rose And moss rose choice to find, And the cottage cabbage-rose Not one whit behind. On the blast of scorched July Drives the pelting hail, From thunderous lightning-clouds, that blot Blue heaven grown lurid-pale. Weedy waves are tossed ashore, Sea-things strange to sight Gasp upon the barren shore And fade away in light. In the parching August wind Corn-fields bow the head, Sheltered in round valley depths, On low hills outspread. Early leaves drop loitering down Weightless on the breeze, First fruits of the year's decay From the withering trees. In brisk wind of September The heavy-headed fruits Shake upon their bending boughs And drop from the shoots; Some glow golden in the sun, Some show green and streaked, Some set forth a purple bloom, Some blush rosy-cheeked. In strong blast of October At the equinox, Stirred up in his hollow bed Broad ocean rocks; Plunge the ships on his bosom, Leaps and plunges the foam, It's oh! for mothers' sons at sea, That they were safe at home. In slack wind of November The fog forms and shifts; All the world comes out again When the fog lifts. Loosened from their sapless twigs Leaves drop with every gust; Drifting, rustling, out of sight In the damp or dust. Last of all, December, The year's sands nearly run, Speeds on the shortest day, Curtails the sun; With its bleak raw wind Lays the last leaves low, Brings back the nightly frosts, Brings back the snow. Christina G. Rossetti. II THE CHILD'S WORLD _Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful World, With the wonderful water round you curled, And the wonderful grass upon your breast, World, you are beautifully drest._ _William Brighty Rands._ THE CHILD'S WORLD _The Wonderful World_ Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful World, With the wonderful water round you curled, And the wonderful grass upon your breast, World, you are beautifully drest. The wonderful air is over me, And the wonderful wind is shaking the tree-- It walks on the water, and whirls the mills, And talks to itself on the top of the hills. You friendly Earth, how far do you go, With the wheat-fields that nod and the rivers that flow, With cities and gardens, and cliffs and isles, And people upon you for thousands of miles? Ah! you are so great, and I am so small, I hardly can think of you, World, at all; And yet, when I said my prayers to-day, My mother kissed me, and said, quite gay, "If the wonderful World is great to you, And great to father and mother, too, You are more than the Earth, though you are such a dot! You can love and think, and the Earth cannot!" William Brighty Rands. _A Day_ I'll tell you how the sun rose, A ribbon at a time. The steeples swam in amethyst, The news like squirrels ran. The hills untied their bonnets, The bobolinks begun. Then I said softly to myself, "That must have been the sun!" * * * * * But how he set, I know not. There seemed a purple stile Which little yellow boys and girls Were climbing all the while Till when they reached the other side, A dominie in gray Put gently up the evening bars, And led the flock away. Emily Dickinson. _Good-Morning_ The year's at the Spring, And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hill-side's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in his heaven-- All's right with the world. Robert Browning. _What the Winds Bring_ Which is the Wind that brings the cold? The North-Wind, Freddy, and all the snow; And the sheep will scamper into the fold When the North begins to blow. Which is the Wind that brings the heat? The South-Wind, Katy; and corn will grow, And peaches redden for you to eat, When the South begins to blow. Which is the Wind that brings the rain? The East-Wind, Arty; and farmers know The cows come shivering up the lane, When the East begins to blow. Which is the Wind that brings the flowers? The West-Wind, Bessy; and soft and low The birdies sing in the summer hours, When the West begins to blow. Edmund Clarence Stedman. _Lady Moon_ Lady Moon, Lady Moon, where are you roving? "Over the sea." Lady Moon, Lady Moon, whom are you loving? "All that love me." Are you not tired with rolling, and never Resting to sleep? Why look so pale and so sad, as forever Wishing to weep? "Ask me not this, little child, if you love me: You are too bold: I must obey my dear Father above me, And do as I'm told." Lady Moon, Lady Moon, where are you roving? "Over the sea." Lady Moon, Lady Moon, whom are you loving? "All that love me." Lord Houghton. _O Lady Moon_[A] O Lady Moon, your horns point toward the east: Shine, be increased; O Lady Moon, your horns point toward the west: Wane, be at rest. Christina G. Rossetti. _Windy Nights_[B] Whenever the moon and stars are set, Whenever the wind is high, All night long in the dark and wet, A man goes riding by, Late at night when the fires are out, Why does he gallop and gallop about? Whenever the trees are crying aloud, And ships are tossed at sea, By, on the highway, low and loud, By at the gallop goes he. By at the gallop he goes, and then By he comes back at the gallop again. Robert Louis Stevenson. FOOTNOTE: [A] _From "Sing-Song," by Christina G. Rossetti. By permission of the Macmillan Company._ [B] _From "A Child's Garden of Verses," by Robert Louis Stevenson. By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons._ _Wild Winds_ Oh, oh, how the wild winds blow! Blow high, Blow low, And whirlwinds go, To chase the little leaves that fly-- Fly low and high, To hollow and to steep hill-side; They shiver in the dreary weather, And creep in little heaps together, And nestle close and try to hide. Oh, oh, how the wild winds blow! Blow low, Blow high, And whirlwinds try To find a crevice--to find a crack, They whirl to the front; they whirl to the back. But Tommy and Will and the baby together Are snug and safe from the wintry weather. All the winds that blow Cannot touch a toe-- Cannot twist or twirl One silken curl. They may rattle the doors in a noisy pack, But the blazing fires will drive them back. Mary F. Butts. _Now the Noisy Winds Are Still_[A] Now the noisy winds are still; April's coming up the hill! All the spring is in her train, Led by shining ranks of rain; Pit, pat, patter, clatter, Sudden sun, and clatter, patter!-- First the blue, and then the shower; Bursting bud, and smiling flower; Brooks set free with tinkling ring; Birds too full of song to sing; Crisp old leaves astir with pride, Where the timid violets hide,-- All things ready with a will,-- April's coming up the hill! Mary Mapes Dodge. _The Wind_ The wind has a language, I would I could learn; Sometimes 'tis soothing, and sometimes 'tis stern; Sometimes it comes like a low, sweet song, And all things grow calm, as the sound floats along; And the forest is lulled by the dreamy strain; And slumber sinks down on the wandering main; And its crystal arms are folded in rest, And the tall ship sleeps on its heaving breast. Letitia Elizabeth Landon. FOOTNOTE: [A] _From "Along the Way," by Mary Mapes Dodge. By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons._ _The Fountain_ Into the sunshine, Full of the light, Leaping and flashing From morn till night! Into the moonlight, Whiter than snow, Waving so flower-like When the winds blow! Into the starlight, Rushing in spray, Happy at midnight, Happy by day; Ever in motion, Blithesome and cheery, Still climbing heavenward, Never aweary; Glad of all weathers; Still seeming best, Upward or downward; Motion thy rest; Full of a nature Nothing can tame, Changed every moment, Ever the same; Ceaseless aspiring, Ceaseless content, Darkness or sunshine Thy element; Glorious fountain! Let my heart be Fresh, changeful, constant, Upward like thee! James Russell Lowell. _The Waterfall_ _Tinkle, tinkle!_ Listen well! Like a fairy silver bell In the distance ringing, Lightly swinging In the air; 'Tis the water in the dell Where the elfin minstrels dwell, Falling in a rainbow sprinkle, Dropping stars that brightly twinkle, Bright and fair, On the darkling pool below, Making music so; 'Tis the water elves who play On their lutes of spray. _Tinkle, tinkle!_ Like a fairy silver bell; Like a pebble in a shell; _Tinkle, tinkle!_ Listen well! Frank Dempster Sherman. _The Voice of the Grass_ Here I come creeping, creeping everywhere; By the dusty roadside, On the sunny hill-side, Close by the noisy brook, In every shady nook, I come creeping, creeping everywhere. Here I come creeping, smiling everywhere; All around the open door, Where sit the aged poor; Here where the children play, In the bright and merry May, I come creeping, creeping everywhere. Here I come creeping, creeping everywhere; In the noisy city street My pleasant face you'll meet, Cheering the sick at heart Toiling his busy part,-- Silently creeping, creeping everywhere. Here I come creeping, creeping everywhere; You cannot see me coming, Nor hear my low sweet humming; For in the starry night, And the glad morning light, I come quietly creeping everywhere. Here I come creeping, creeping everywhere; More welcome than the flowers In summer's pleasant hours; The gentle cow is glad, And the merry bird not sad, To see me creeping, creeping everywhere. * * * * * Here I come creeping, creeping everywhere; My humble song of praise Most joyfully I raise To him at whose command I beautify the land, Creeping, silently creeping everywhere. Sarah Roberts Boyle. _The Wind in a Frolic_ The wind one morning sprang up from sleep, Saying, "Now for a frolic! Now for a leap! Now for a madcap, galloping chase! I'll make a commotion in every place!" So it swept with a bustle right through a great town, Creaking the signs, and scattering down Shutters, and whisking, with merciless squalls, Old women's bonnets and gingerbread stalls. There never was heard a much lustier shout, As the apples and oranges tumbled about; And the urchins that stand with their thievish eyes Forever on watch, ran off with each prize. Then away to the field it went blustering and humming, And the cattle all wondered whatever was coming. It plucked by their tails the grave matronly cows, And tossed the colts' manes all about their brows, Till offended at such a familiar salute, They all turned their backs and stood silently mute. So on it went capering and playing its pranks; Whistling with reeds on the broad river-banks; Puffing the birds as they sat on the spray, Or the traveller grave on the king's highway. It was not too nice to bustle the bags Of the beggar and flutter his dirty rags. 'Twas so bold that it feared not to play its joke With the doctor's wig and the gentleman's cloak. Through the forest it roared, and cried gayly, "Now, You sturdy old oaks, I'll make you bow!" And it made them bow without more ado, Or it cracked their branches through and through. Then it rushed like a monster o'er cottage and farm, Striking their inmates with sudden alarm; And they ran out like bees in a midsummer swarm. There were dames with their kerchiefs tied over their caps, To see if their poultry were free from mishaps; The turkeys they gobbled, the geese screamed aloud, And the hens crept to roost in a terrified crowd; There was rearing of ladders, and logs laying on, Where the thatch from the roof threatened soon to be gone. But the wind had passed on, and had met in a lane With a schoolboy, who panted and struggled in vain, For it tossed him, and twirled him, then passed, and he stood With his hat in a pool and his shoe in the mud. William Howitt. _Clouds_ The sky is full of clouds to-day, And idly to and fro, Like sheep across the pasture, they Across the heavens go. I hear the wind with merry noise-- Around the housetops sweep, And dream it is the shepherd boys, They're driving home their sheep. The clouds move faster now; and see! The west is red and gold. Each sheep seems hastening to be The first within the fold. I watch them hurry on until The blue is clear and deep, And dream that far beyond the hill The shepherds fold their sheep. Then in the sky the trembling stars Like little flowers shine out, While Night puts up the shadow bars, And darkness falls about. I hear the shepherd wind's good-night-- "Good-night and happy sleep!" And dream that in the east, all white, Slumber the clouds, the sheep. Frank Dempster Sherman. _Signs of Rain_ The hollow winds begin to blow, The clouds look black, the glass is low, The soot falls down, the spaniels sleep, The spiders from their cobwebs peep: Last night the sun went pale to bed, The moon in halos hid her head; The boding shepherd heaves a sigh, For, see, a rainbow spans the sky: The walls are damp, the ditches smell, Closed is the pink-eyed pimpernel. Hark how the chairs and tables crack! Old Betty's joints are on the rack; Loud quack the ducks, the peacocks cry, The distant hills are seeming nigh. How restless are the snorting swine; The busy flies disturb the kine; Low o'er the grass the swallow wings, The cricket too, how sharp he sings; Puss on the hearth, with velvet paws, Sits wiping o'er her whiskered jaws. Through the clear stream the fishes rise, And nimbly catch the incautious flies. The glow-worms, numerous and bright, Illumed the dewy dell last night. At dusk the squalid toad was seen, Hopping and crawling o'er the green; The whirling wind the dust obeys, And in the rapid eddy plays; The frog has changed his yellow vest, And in a russet coat is dressed. Though June, the air is cold and still, The mellow blackbird's voice is shrill. My dog, so altered in his taste, Quits mutton-bones on grass to feast; And see yon rooks, how odd their flight, They imitate the gliding kite, And seem precipitate to fall, As if they felt the piercing ball. 'Twill surely rain, I see with sorrow, Our jaunt must be put off to-morrow. Edward Jenner. _A Sudden Shower_ Barefooted boys scud up the street, Or scurry under sheltering sheds; And school-girl faces, pale and sweet, Gleam from the shawls about their heads. Doors bang; and mother-voices call From alien homes; and rusty gates Are slammed; and high above it all The thunder grim reverberates. And then abrupt,--the rain, the rain! The earth lies gasping; and the eyes Behind the streaming window-panes Smile at the trouble of the skies. The highway smokes, sharp echoes ring; The cattle bawl and cow-bells clank; And into town comes galloping The farmer's horse, with steaming flank. The swallow dips beneath the eaves, And flirts his plumes and folds his wings; And under the catawba leaves The caterpillar curls and clings. The bumble-bee is pelted down The wet stem of the hollyhock; And sullenly in spattered brown The cricket leaps the garden walk. Within, the baby claps his hands And crows with rapture strange and vague; Without, beneath the rosebush stands A dripping rooster on one leg. James Whitcomb Riley. _Strange Lands_ Where do you come from, Mr. Jay? "From the land of Play, from the land of Play." And where can that be, Mr. Jay? "Far away--far away." Where do you come from, Mrs. Dove? "From the land of Love, from the land of Love." And how do you get there, Mrs. Dove? "Look above--look above." Where do you come from, Baby Miss? "From the land of Bliss, from the land of Bliss." And what is the way there, Baby Miss? "Mother's kiss--mother's kiss." Laurence Alma Tadema. _Guessing Song_ Oh ho! oh ho! Pray, who can I be? I sweep o'er the land, I scour o'er the sea; I cuff the tall trees till they bow down their heads, And I rock the wee birdies asleep in their beds. Oh ho! oh ho! And who can I be, That sweep o'er the land and scour o'er the sea? I rumple the breast of the gray-headed daw, I tip the rook's tail up and make him cry "caw"; But though I love fun, I'm so big and so strong, At a puff of my breath the great ships sail along. Oh ho! oh ho! And who can I be, That sweep o'er the land and sail o'er the sea? I swing all the weather-cocks this way and that, I play hare-and-hounds with a runaway hat; But however I wander, I never can stray, For go where I will, I've a free right of way! Oh ho! oh ho! And who can I be, That sweep o'er the land and scour o'er the sea? I skim o'er the heather, I dance up the street, I've foes that I laugh at, and friends that I greet; I'm known in the country, I'm named in the town, For all the world over extends my renown. Oh ho! oh ho! And who can I be, That sweep o'er the land and scour o'er the sea? Henry Johnstone. _The Rivulet_ Run, little rivulet, run! Summer is fairly begun. Bear to the meadow the hymn of the pines, And the echo that rings where the waterfall shines; Run, little rivulet, run! Run, little rivulet, run! Sing to the fields of the sun That wavers in emerald, shimmers in gold, Where you glide from your rocky ravine, crystal-cold; Run, little rivulet, run! Run, little rivulet, run! Sing of the flowers, every one,-- Of the delicate harebell and violet blue; Of the red mountain rose-bud, all dripping with dew; Run, little rivulet, run! Run, little rivulet, run! Carry the perfume you won From the lily, that woke when the morning was gray, To the white waiting moonbeam adrift on the bay; Run, little rivulet, run! Run, little rivulet, run! Stay not till summer is done! Carry the city the mountain-birds' glee; Carry the joy of the hills to the sea; Run, little rivulet, run! Lucy Larcom. _Jack Frost_ The Frost looked forth on a still, clear night, And whispered, "Now, I shall be out of sight; So, through the valley, and over the height, In silence I'll take my way. I will not go on like that blustering train, The wind and the snow, the hail and the rain, That make such a bustle and noise in vain; But I'll be as busy as they!" So he flew to the mountain, and powdered its crest. He lit on the trees, and their boughs he dressed With diamonds and pearls; and over the breast Of the quivering lake, he spread A coat of mail, that it need not fear The glittering point of many a spear Which he hung on its margin, far and near, Where a rock could rear its head. He went to the window of those who slept, And over each pane like a fairy crept: Wherever he breathed, wherever he stepped, By the light of the morn were seen Most beautiful things!--there were flowers and trees, There were bevies of birds, and swarms of bees; There were cities and temples and towers; and these All pictured in silvery sheen! But he did one thing that was hardly fair-- He peeped in the cupboard: and finding there That all had forgotten for him to prepare. "Now, just to set them a-thinking, I'll bite this basket of fruit," said he, "This costly pitcher I'll burst in three! And the glass of water they've left for me, Shall 'tchick' to tell them I'm drinking." Hannah F. Gould. _Snowflakes_[A] Whenever a snowflake leaves the sky, It turns and turns to say "Good-by! Good-by, dear clouds, so cool and gray!" Then lightly travels on its way. And when a snowflake finds a tree, "Good-day!" it says--"Good-day to thee! Thou art so bare and lonely, dear, I'll rest and call my comrades here." But when a snowflake, brave and meek, Lights on a rosy maiden's cheek, It starts--"How warm and soft the day! 'Tis summer!"--and it melts away. Mary Mapes Dodge. _The Water! the Water!_ The Water! the Water! The joyous brook for me, That tuneth through the quiet night Its ever-living glee. The Water! the Water! That sleepless, merry heart, Which gurgles on unstintedly, And loveth to impart, To all around it, some small measure Of its own most perfect pleasure. The Water! the Water! The gentle stream for me, That gushes from the old gray stone Beside the alder-tree. The Water! the Water! That ever-bubbling spring I loved and look'd on while a child, In deepest wondering,-- And ask'd it whence it came and went, And when its treasures would be spent. The Water! the Water! The merry, wanton brook That bent itself to pleasure me, Like mine old shepherd crook. The Water! the Water! That sang so sweet at noon, And sweeter still all night, to win Smiles from the pale proud moon, And from the little fairy faces That gleam in heaven's remotest places. * * * * * William Motherwell. FOOTNOTE: [A] _From "Along the Way," by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons._ III HIAWATHA'S CHICKENS _Then the little Hiawatha Learned of every bird its language, Learned their names and all their secrets, How they built their nests in Summer, Where they hid themselves in Winter, Talked with them whene'er he met them, Called them "Hiawatha's Chickens."_ _Henry Wadsworth Longfellow._ HIAWATHA'S CHICKENS _The Swallows_ Gallant and gay in their doublets gray, All at a flash like the darting of flame, Chattering Arabic, African, Indian-- Certain of springtime, the swallows came! Doublets of gray silk and surcoats of purple, And ruffs of russet round each little throat, Wearing such garb they had crossed the waters, Mariners sailing with never a boat. Edwin Arnold. _The Swallow's Nest_ Day after day her nest she moulded, Building with magic, love and mud, A gray cup made by a thousand journeys, And the tiny beak was trowel and hod. Edwin Arnold. _The Birds in Spring_ Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year's pleasant king; Then blooms each thing, then Maids dance in a ring, Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing-- Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo! The Palm and May make country houses gay, Lambs frisk and play, the Shepherds pipe all day, And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay-- Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo! The Fields breathe sweet, the Daisies kiss our feet, Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit, In every Street these Tunes our ears do greet-- Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo! Spring, the sweet Spring! Thomas Nashe. _Robin Redbreast_ (A Child's Song) Good-bye, good-bye to Summer! For Summer's nearly done; The garden smiling faintly, Cool breezes in the sun; Our Thrushes now are silent, Our Swallows flown away,-- But Robin's here, in coat of brown, With ruddy breast-knot gay. Robin, Robin Redbreast, O Robin dear! Robin singing sweetly In the falling of the year. Bright yellow, red, and orange, The leaves come down in hosts; The trees are Indian Princes, But soon they'll turn to Ghosts; The scanty pears and apples Hang russet on the bough, It's Autumn, Autumn, Autumn late, 'Twill soon be Winter now. Robin, Robin Redbreast, O Robin dear! And welaway! my Robin, For pinching times are near. The fireside for the Cricket, The wheatstack for the Mouse, When trembling night-winds whistle And moan all round the house; The frosty ways like iron, The branches plumed with snow,-- Alas! in Winter, dead and dark, Where can poor Robin go? Robin, Robin Redbreast, O Robin dear! And a crumb of bread for Robin, His little heart to cheer. William Allingham. _The Lark and the Rook_ "Good-night, Sir Rook!" said a little lark. "The daylight fades; it will soon be dark; I've bathed my wings in the sun's last ray; I've sung my hymn to the parting day; So now I haste to my quiet nook In yon dewy meadow--good-night, Sir Rook!" "Good-night, poor Lark," said his titled friend With a haughty toss and a distant bend; "I also go to my rest profound, But not to sleep on the cold, damp ground. The fittest place for a bird like me Is the topmost bough of yon tall pine-tree. "I opened my eyes at peep of day And saw you taking your upward way, Dreaming your fond romantic dreams, An ugly speck in the sun's bright beams; Soaring too high to be seen or heard; And I said to myself: 'What a foolish bird!' "I trod the park with a princely air, I filled my crop with the richest fare; I cawed all day 'mid a lordly crew, And I made more noise in the world than you! The sun shone forth on my ebon wing; I looked and wondered--good-night, poor thing!" "Good-night, once more," said the lark's sweet voice. "I see no cause to repent my choice; You build your nest in the lofty pine, But is your slumber more sweet than mine? You make more noise in the world than I, But whose is the sweeter minstrelsy?" Unknown. _The Snowbird_ In the rosy light trills the gay swallow, The thrush, in the roses below; The meadow-lark sings in the meadow, But the snowbird sings in the snow. Ah me! Chickadee! The snowbird sings in the snow! The blue martin trills in the gable, The wren, in the gourd below; In the elm flutes the golden robin, But the snowbird sings in the snow. Ah me! Chickadee! The snowbird sings in the snow! High wheels the gray wing of the osprey, The wing of the sparrow drops low; In the mist dips the wing of the robin, And the snowbird's wing in the snow. Ah me! Chickadee! The snowbird sings in the snow. I love the high heart of the osprey, The meek heart of the thrush below, The heart of the lark in the meadow, And the snowbird's heart in the snow. But dearest to me, Chickadee! Chickadee! Is that true little heart in the snow. Hezekiah Butterworth. _Who Stole the Bird's Nest?_ "To-whit! to-whit! to-whee! Will you listen to me? Who stole four eggs I laid, And the nice nest I made?" "Not I," said the cow, "Moo-oo! Such a thing I'd never do. I gave you a wisp of hay, But didn't take your nest away. Not I," said the cow, "Moo-oo! Such a thing I'd never do." "To-whit! to-whit! to-whee! Will you listen to me? Who stole four eggs I laid, And the nice nest I made?" "Bob-o'-link! Bob-o'-link! Now what do you think? Who stole a nest away From the plum-tree, to-day?" "Not I," said the dog, "Bow-wow! I wouldn't be so mean, anyhow! I gave hairs the nest to make, But the nest I did not take. Not I," said the dog, "Bow-wow! I'm not so mean, anyhow." "To-whit! to-whit! to-whee! Will you listen to me? Who stole four eggs I laid, And the nice nest I made?" "Bob-o'-link! Bob-o'-link! Now what do you think? Who stole a nest away From the plum-tree, to-day?" "Coo-coo! Coo-coo! Coo-coo! Let me speak a word, too! Who stole that pretty nest From little yellow-breast?" "Not I," said the sheep; "Oh, no! I wouldn't treat a poor bird so. I gave wool the nest to line, But the nest was none of mine. Baa! Baa!" said the sheep, "Oh, no I wouldn't treat a poor bird so." "To-whit! to-whit! to-whee! Will you listen to me? Who stole four eggs I laid, And the nice nest I made?" "Bob-o'-link! Bob-o'-link! Now what do you think? Who stole a nest away From the plum-tree, to-day?" "Coo-coo! Coo-coo! Coo-coo! Let me speak a word, too! Who stole that pretty nest From little yellow-breast?" "Caw! Caw!" cried the crow; "I should like to know What thief took away A bird's nest, to-day?" "Cluck! Cluck!" said the hen; "Don't ask me again, Why I haven't a chick Would do such a trick. We all gave her a feather, And she wove them together. I'd scorn to intrude On her and her brood. Cluck! Cluck!" said the hen, "Don't ask me again." "Chirr-a-whirr! Chirr-a-whirr! All the birds make a stir! Let us find out his name, And all cry 'For shame!'" "I would not rob a bird," Said little Mary Green; "I think I never heard Of anything so mean." "It is very cruel, too," Said little Alice Neal; "I wonder if he knew How sad the bird would feel?" A little boy hung down his head, And went and hid behind the bed, For he stole that pretty nest From poor little yellow-breast; And he felt so full of shame, He didn't like to tell his name. Lydia Maria Child. _Answer to a Child's Question_ Do you ask what the birds say? The sparrow, the dove, The linnet, and thrush say, "I love and I love!" In the winter they're silent, the wind is so strong; What it says I don't know, but it sings a loud song. But green leaves and blossoms, and sunny warm weather, And singing and loving, all come back together; Then the lark is so brimful of gladness and love, The green fields below him, the blue sky above, That he sings, and he sings, and forever sings he, "I love my Love, and my Love loves me." Samuel Taylor Coleridge. _The Burial of the Linnet_ Found in the garden dead in his beauty-- Oh that a linnet should die in the spring! Bury him, comrades, in pitiful duty, Muffle the dinner-bell, solemnly ring. Bury him kindly, up in the corner; Bird, beast, and goldfish are sepulchred there Bid the black kitten march as chief mourner, Waving her tail like a plume in the air. Bury him nobly--next to the donkey; Fetch the old banner, and wave it about; Bury him deeply--think of the monkey, Shallow his grave, and the dogs got him out. Bury him softly--white wool around him, Kiss his poor feathers--the first kiss and last; Tell his poor widow kind friends have found him: Plant his poor grave with whatever grows fast. Farewell, sweet singer! dead in thy beauty, Silent through summer, though other birds sing, Bury him, comrades, in pitiful duty, Muffle the dinner-bell, mournfully ring. Juliana Horatia Ewing. _The Titmouse_ . . . . Piped a tiny voice hard by, Gay and polite, a cheerful cry, _Chic-chicadeedee!_ saucy note Out of sound heart and merry throat, As if it said, "Good-day, good sir! Fine afternoon, old passenger! Happy to meet you in these places, Where January brings few faces." This poet, though he live apart, Moved by his hospitable heart, Sped, when I passed his sylvan fort, To do the honors of his court, As fits a feathered lord of land; Flew near, with soft wing grazed my hand; Hopped on the bough, then, darting low, Prints his small impress on the snow, Shows feats of his gymnastic play, Head downward, clinging to the spray, * * * * * Here was this atom in full breath, Hurling defiance at vast death. This scrap of valor, just for play, Fronts the north wind in waistcoat gray. * * * * * Ralph Waldo Emerson. _Birds in Summer_ How pleasant the life of a bird must be, Flitting about in each leafy tree; In the leafy trees so broad and tall, Like a green and beautiful palace hall, With its airy chambers, light and boon, That open to sun, and stars, and moon; That open unto the bright blue sky, And the frolicsome winds as they wander by! They have left their nests in the forest bough; Those homes of delight they need not now; And the young and old they wander out, And traverse the green world round about; And hark at the top of this leafy hall, How, one to another, they lovingly call! "Come up, come up!" they seem to say, "Where the topmost twigs in the breezes play!" "Come up, come up, for the world is fair, Where the merry leaves dance in the summer air!" And the birds below give back the cry, "We come, we come to the branches high!" How pleasant the life of the birds must be, Living above in a leafy tree! And away through the air what joy to go, And to look on the green, bright earth below! How pleasant the life of a bird must be, Skimming about on the breezy sea, Cresting the billows like silvery foam, Then wheeling away to its cliff-built home! What joy it must be to sail, upborne, By a strong free wing, through the rosy morn, To meet the young sun, face to face, And pierce, like a shaft, the boundless space! To pass through the bowers of the silver cloud; To sing in the thunder halls aloud: To spread out the wings for a wild, free flight With the upper cloud-winds,--oh, what delight! Oh, what would I give, like a bird, to go, Right on through the arch of the sun-lit bow, And see how the water-drops are kissed Into green and yellow and amethyst. How pleasant the life of a bird must be, Wherever it listeth, there to flee; To go, when a joyful fancy calls, Dashing down 'mong the waterfalls; Then wheeling about, with its mate at play, Above and below, and among the spray, Hither and thither, with screams as wild As the laughing mirth of a rosy child. What joy it must be, like a living breeze, To flutter about 'mid the flowering trees; Lightly to soar and to see beneath, The wastes of the blossoming purple heath, And the yellow furze, like fields of gold, That gladden some fairy region old! On mountain-tops, on the billowy sea, On the leafy stems of the forest-tree, How pleasant the life of a bird must be! Mary Howitt. _An Epitaph on a Robin Redbreast_ Tread lightly here; for here, 'tis said, When piping winds are hush'd around, A small note wakes from underground, Where now his tiny bones are laid. No more in lone or leafless groves, With ruffled wing and faded breast, His friendless, homeless spirit roves; Gone to the world where birds are blest! Where never cat glides o'er the green, Or school-boy's giant form is seen; But love, and joy, and smiling Spring Inspire their little souls to sing! Samuel Rogers. _The Bluebird_ I know the song that the bluebird is singing, Out in the apple-tree where he is swinging. Brave little fellow! the skies may be dreary, Nothing cares he while his heart is so cheery. Hark! how the music leaps out from his throat! Hark! was there ever so merry a note? Listen awhile, and you'll hear what he's saying, Up in the apple-tree, swinging and swaying: "Dear little blossoms, down under the snow, You must be weary of winter, I know; Hark! while I sing you a message of cheer, Summer is coming and spring-time is here! "Little white snowdrop, I pray you arise; Bright yellow crocus, come, open your eyes; Sweet little violets hid from the cold, Put on your mantles of purple and gold; Daffodils, daffodils! say, do you hear? Summer is coming, and spring-time is here!" Mrs. Emily Huntington Miller. _Song_ I had a dove and the sweet dove died; And I have thought it died of grieving: O, what could it grieve for? Its feet were tied With a silken thread of my own hand's weaving; Sweet little red feet! why should you die-- Why should you leave me, sweet bird! why? You lived alone in the forest-tree, Why, pretty thing! would you not live with me? I kiss'd you oft and gave you white peas; Why not live sweetly, as in the green trees? John Keats. _What Does Little Birdie Say?_ What does little birdie say, In her nest at peep of day? "Let me fly," says little birdie, "Mother, let me fly away." Birdie, rest a little longer, Till the little wings are stronger So she rests a little longer, Then she flies away. What does little baby say, In her bed at peep of day? Baby says, like little birdie, "Let me rise and fly away." Baby, sleep a little longer, Till the little limbs are stronger. If she sleeps a little longer, Baby, too, shall fly away. Alfred, Lord Tennyson. _The Owl_ When cats run home and light is come, And dew is cold upon the ground, And the far-off stream is dumb, And the whirring sail goes round; And the whirring sail goes round; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits. When merry milkmaids click the latch, And rarely smells the new-mown hay, And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch Twice or thrice his roundelay, Twice or thrice his roundelay; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits. Alfred, Lord Tennyson. _Wild Geese_ The wild wind blows, the sun shines, the birds sing loud, The blue, blue sky is flecked with fleecy dappled cloud, Over earth's rejoicing fields the children dance and sing, And the frogs pipe in chorus, "It is spring! It is spring!" The grass comes, the flower laughs where lately lay the snow, O'er the breezy hill-top hoarsely calls the crow, By the flowing river the alder catkins swing, And the sweet song-sparrow cries, "Spring! It is spring!" Hark, what a clamor goes winging through the sky! Look, children! Listen to the sound so wild and high! Like a peal of broken bells,--kling, klang, kling,-- Far and high the wild geese cry, "Spring! It is spring!" Bear the winter off with you, O wild geese dear! Carry all the cold away, far away from here; Chase the snow into the north, O strong of heart and wing, While we share the robin's rapture, crying "Spring! It is spring!" Celia Thaxter. _Chanticleer_ I wake! I feel the day is near; I hear the red cock crowing! He cries "'Tis dawn!" How sweet and clear His cheerful call comes to my ear, While light is slowly growing. The white snow gathers flake on flake; I hear the red cock crowing! Is anybody else awake To see the winter morning break, While thick and fast 'tis snowing? I think the world is all asleep; I hear the red cock crowing! Out of the frosty pane I peep; The drifts are piled so wide and deep, And wild the wind is blowing! Nothing I see has shape or form; I hear the red cock crowing! But that dear voice comes through the storm To greet me in my nest so warm, As if the sky were glowing! A happy little child, I lie And hear the red cock crowing. The day is dark. I wonder why His voice rings out so brave and high, With gladness overflowing. Celia Thaxter. _The Singer_ O Lark! sweet lark! Where learn you all your minstrelsy? What realms are those to which you fly? While robins feed their young from dawn till dark, You soar on high-- Forever in the sky. O child! dear child! Above the clouds I lift my wing To hear the bells of Heaven ring; Some of their music, though my flights be wild, To Earth I bring; Then let me soar and sing! Edmund Clarence Stedman. _The Blue Jay_ O Blue Jay up in the maple-tree, Shaking your throat with such bursts of glee, How did you happen to be so blue? Did you steal a bit of the lake for your crest, And fasten blue violets into your vest? Tell me, I pray you,--tell me true! Did you dip your wings in azure dye, When April began to paint the sky, That was pale with the winter's stay? Or were you hatched from a bluebell bright, 'Neath the warm, gold breast of a sunbeam light, By the river one blue spring day? O Blue Jay up in the maple-tree, A-tossing your saucy head at me, With ne'er a word for my questioning, Pray, cease for a moment your "ting-a-link," And hear when I tell you what I think,-- You bonniest bit of the spring. I think when the fairies made the flowers, To grow in these mossy fields of ours, Periwinkles and violets rare, There was left of the spring's own color, blue, Plenty to fashion a flower whose hue Would be richer than all and as fair. So, putting their wits together, they Made one great blossom so bright and gay, The lily beside it seemed blurred; And then they said, "We will toss it in air; So many blue blossoms grow everywhere, Let this pretty one be a bird!" Susan Hartley Swett. _Robert of Lincoln_[A] Merrily swinging on brier and weed, Near to the nest of his little dame, Over the mountain-side or mead, Robert of Lincoln is telling his name: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, Snug and safe is this nest of ours, Hidden among the summer flowers, Chee, chee, chee. Robert of Lincoln is gayly drest, Wearing a bright, black wedding-coat; White are his shoulders and white his crest, Hear him call, in his merry note, Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, Look what a nice new coat is mine, Sure there was never a bird so fine! Chee, chee, chee. Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife, Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings, Passing at home a patient life, Broods in the grass while her husband sings Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, Brood, kind creature; you need not fear Thieves and robbers while I am here, Chee, chee, chee. Modest and shy as a nun is she; One weak chirp is her only note. Braggart, and prince of braggarts is he, Pouring boasts from his little throat: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, Never was I afraid of man; Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you can, Chee, chee, chee. Six white eggs on a bed of hay, Flecked with purple, a pretty sight: There as the mother sits all day, Robert is singing with all his might, Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, Nice good wife, that never goes out, Keeping house while I frolic about, Chee, chee, chee. Soon as the little ones chip the shell, Six wide mouths are open for food; Robert of Lincoln bestirs him well, Gathering seeds for the hungry brood. Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, This new life is likely to be Hard for a gay young fellow like me, Chee, chee, chee. Robert of Lincoln at length is made Sober with work, and silent with care; Off is his holiday garment laid, Half forgotten that merry air: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, Nobody knows but my mate and I Where our nest and our nestlings lie, Chee, chee, chee. Summer wanes; the children are grown; Fun and frolic no more he knows, Robert of Lincoln's a humdrum crone; Off he flies, and we sing as he goes: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, When you can pipe that merry old strain, Robert of Lincoln, come back again, Chee, chee, chee. William Cullen Bryant. FOOTNOTE: [A] _Courtesy of D. Appleton & Co., Publishers of Bryant's Complete Poetical Works._ _White Butterflies_ Fly, white butterflies, out to sea, Frail, pale wings for the wind to try, Small white wings that we scarce can see, Fly! Some fly light as a laugh of glee, Some fly soft as a long, low sigh; All to the haven where each would be, Fly! Algernon Charles Swinburne. _The Ant and the Cricket_ A silly young cricket, accustomed to sing Through the warm, sunny months of gay summer and spring, Began to complain, when he found that at home His cupboard was empty and winter was come. Not a crumb to be found On the snow-covered ground; Not a flower could he see, Not a leaf on a tree: "Oh, what will become," says the cricket, "of me?" At last by starvation and famine made bold, All dripping with wet and all trembling with cold, Away he set off to a miserly ant, To see if, to keep him alive, he would grant Him shelter from rain: A mouthful of grain He wished only to borrow, He'd repay it to-morrow: If not, he must die of starvation and sorrow. Says the ant to the cricket, "I'm your servant and friend, But we ants never borrow, we ants never lend; But tell me, dear sir, did you lay nothing by When the weather was warm?" Said the cricket, "Not I. My heart was so light That I sang day and night, For all nature looked gay." "You _sang_, sir, you say? Go then," said the ant, "and _dance_ winter away." Thus ending, he hastily lifted the wicket And out of the door turned the poor little cricket. Though this is a fable, the moral is good: If you live without work, you must live without food. Unknown. IV THE FLOWER FOLK _Hope is like a harebell, trembling from its birth, Love is like a rose, the joy of all the earth; Faith is like a lily, lifted high and white, Love is like a lovely rose, the world's delight; Harebells and sweet lilies show a thornless growth, But the rose with all its thorns excels them both._ _Christina G. Rossetti._ THE FLOWER FOLK _Little White Lily_ Little white Lily Sat by a stone, Drooping and waiting Till the sun shone. Little white Lily Sunshine has fed; Little white Lily Is lifting her head. Little white Lily Said, "It is good-- Little white Lily's Clothing and food." Little white Lily Drest like a bride! Shining with whiteness, And crowned beside! Little white Lily Droopeth with pain, Waiting and waiting For the wet rain. Little white Lily Holdeth her cup; Rain is fast falling And filling it up. Little white Lily Said, "Good again-- When I am thirsty To have fresh rain! Now I am stronger; Now I am cool; Heat cannot burn me, My veins are so full." Little white Lily Smells very sweet: On her head sunshine, Rain at her feet. "Thanks to the sunshine, Thanks to the rain! Little white Lily Is happy again!" George Macdonald. _Violets_ Violets, violets, sweet March violets, Sure as March comes, they'll come too, First the white and then the blue-- Pretty violets! White, with just a pinky dye, Blue as little baby's eye,-- So like violets. Though the rough wind shakes the house, Knocks about the budding boughs, There are violets. Though the passing snow-storms come, And the frozen birds sit dumb, Up spring violets. One by one among the grass, Saying "Pluck me!" as we pass,-- Scented violets. By and by there'll be so many, We'll pluck dozens nor miss any: Sweet, sweet violets! Children, when you go to play, Look beneath the hedge to-day:-- Mamma likes violets. Dinah Maria Mulock. _Young Dandelion_ Young Dandelion On a hedge-side, Said young Dandelion, "Who'll be my bride? "I'm a bold fellow As ever was seen, With my shield of yellow, In the grass green. "You may uproot me From field and from lane, Trample me, cut me,-- I spring up again. "I never flinch, Sir, Wherever I dwell; Give me an inch, Sir, I'll soon take an ell. "Drive me from garden In anger and pride, I'll thrive and harden By the road-side. "Not a bit fearful, Showing my face, Always so cheerful In every place." Said young Dandelion, With a sweet air, "I have my eye on Miss Daisy fair. "Though we may tarry Till past the cold, Her I will marry Ere I grow old. "I will protect her From all kinds of harm, Feed her with nectar, Shelter her warm. "Whate'er the weather, Let it go by; We'll hold together, Daisy and I. "I'll ne'er give in,--no! Nothing I fear: All that I win, oh! I'll keep for my dear." Said young Dandelion On his hedge-side, "Who'll me rely on? Who'll be my bride?" Dinah Maria Mulock. _Baby Seed Song_ Little brown brother, oh! little brown brother, Are you awake in the dark? Here we lie cosily, close to each other: Hark to the song of the lark-- "Waken!" the lark says, "waken and dress you; Put on your green coats and gay, Blue sky will shine on you, sunshine caress you-- Waken! 'tis morning--'tis May!" Little brown brother, oh! little brown brother, What kind of flower will you be? I'll be a poppy--all white, like my mother; Do be a poppy like me. What! you're a sun-flower? How I shall miss you When you're grown golden and high! But I shall send all the bees up to kiss you; Little brown brother, good-bye. E. Nesbit. _A Violet Bank_ I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows: Quite over-canopied with lush woodbine, With sweet musk roses and with eglantine. William Shakespeare. _There's Nothing Like the Rose_ The lily has an air, And the snowdrop a grace, And the sweet-pea a way, And the hearts-ease a face,-- Yet there's nothing like the rose When she blows. Christina G. Rossetti. _Snowdrops_ Little ladies, white and green, With your spears about you, Will you tell us where you've been Since we lived without you? You are sweet, and fresh, and clean, With your pearly faces; In the dark earth where you've been, There are wondrous places: Yet you come again, serene, When the leaves are hidden; Bringing joy from where you've been, You return unbidden-- Little ladies, white and green, Are you glad to cheer us? Hunger not for where you've been, Stay till Spring be near us! Laurence Alma Tadema. _Fern Song_ Dance to the beat of the rain, little Fern, And spread out your palms again, And say, "Tho' the sun Hath my vesture spun, He had laboured, alas, in vain, But for the shade That the Cloud hath made, And the gift of the Dew and the Rain," Then laugh and upturn All your fronds, little Fern, And rejoice in the beat of the rain! John B. Tabb. _The Violet_ Down in a green and shady bed A modest violet grew; Its stalk was bent, it hung its head, As if to hide from view. And yet it was a lovely flower, Its color bright and fair; It might have graced a rosy bower Instead of hiding there. Yet there it was content to bloom, In modest tints arrayed; And there diffused its sweet Perfume Within the silent shade. Then let me to the valley go, This pretty flower to see, That I may also learn to grow In sweet humility. Jane Taylor. _Daffy-Down-Dilly_ Daffy-down-dilly Came up in the cold, Through the brown mould, Although the March breezes Blew keen on her face, Although the white snow Lay on many a place. Daffy-down-dilly Had heard under ground, The sweet rushing sound Of the streams, as they broke From their white winter chains, Of the whistling spring winds And the pattering rains. "Now then," thought Daffy, Deep down in her heart, "It's time I should start." So she pushed her soft leaves Through the hard frozen ground, Quite up to the surface, And then she looked round. There was snow all about her, Gray clouds overhead; The trees all looked dead: Then how do you think Poor Daffy-down felt, When the sun would not shine, And the ice would not melt? "Cold weather!" thought Daffy, Still working away; "The earth's hard to-day! There's but a half inch Of my leaves to be seen, And two thirds of that Is more yellow than green. "I can't do much yet; But I'll do what I can: It's well I began! For, unless I can manage To lift up my head, The people will think That the Spring herself's dead." So, little by little, She brought her leaves out, All clustered about; And then her bright flowers Began to unfold, Till Daffy stood robed In her spring green and gold. O Daffy-down-dilly, So brave and so true! I wish all were like you!-- So ready for duty In all sorts of weather, And loyal to courage And duty together. Anna B. Warner. _Baby Corn_ A happy mother stalk of corn Held close a baby ear, And whispered: "Cuddle up to me, I'll keep you warm, my dear. I'll give you petticoats of green, With many a tuck and fold To let out daily as you grow; For you will soon be old." A funny little baby that, For though it had no eye, It had a hundred mouths; 'twas well It did not want to cry. The mother put in each small mouth A hollow thread of silk, Through which the sun and rain and air Provided baby's milk. The petticoats were gathered close Where all the threadlets hung. And still as summer days went on To mother-stalk it clung; And all the time it grew and grew-- Each kernel drank the milk By day, by night, in shade, in sun, From its own thread of silk. And each grew strong and full and round, And each was shining white; The gores and seams were all let out, The green skirts fitted tight. The ear stood straight and large and tall, And when it saw the sun, Held up its emerald satin gown To say: "Your work is done." "You're large enough," said Mother Stalk, "And now there's no more room For you to grow." She tied the threads Into a soft brown plume-- It floated out upon the breeze To greet the dewy morn, And then the baby said: "Now I'm A full-grown ear of corn!" Unknown. _A Child's Fancy_ O little flowers, you love me so, You could not do without me; O little birds that come and go, You sing sweet songs about me; O little moss, observed by few, That round the tree is creeping, You like my head to rest on you, When I am idly sleeping. O rushes by the river side, You bow when I come near you; O fish, you leap about with pride, Because you think I hear you; O river, you shine clear and bright, To tempt me to look in you; O water-lilies, pure and white, You hope that I shall win you. O pretty things, you love me so, I see I must not leave you; You'd find it very dull, I know, I should not like to grieve you. Don't wrinkle up, you silly moss; My flowers, you need not shiver; My little buds, don't look so cross; Don't talk so loud, my river. And I will make a promise, dears, That will content you, maybe; I'll love you through the happy years, Till I'm a nice old lady! True love (like yours and mine) they say Can never think of ceasing, But year by year, and day by day, Keeps steadily increasing. "A." _Little Dandelion_ Gay little Dandelion Lights up the meads, Swings on her slender foot, Telleth her beads, Lists to the robin's note Poured from above: Wise little Dandelion Asks not for love. Cold lie the daisy banks Clothed but in green, Where, in the days agone, Bright hues were seen. Wild pinks are slumbering; Violets delay: True little Dandelion Greeteth the May. Brave little Dandelion! Fast falls the snow, Bending the daffodil's Haughty head low. Under that fleecy tent, Careless of cold, Blithe little Dandelion Counteth her gold. Meek little Dandelion Groweth more fair, Till dies the amber dew Out from her hair. High rides the thirsty sun, Fiercely and high; Faint little Dandelion Closeth her eye. Pale little Dandelion, In her white shroud, Heareth the angel breeze Call from the cloud! Tiny plumes fluttering Make no delay! Little winged Dandelion Soareth away. Helen B. Bostwick. _Dandelions_ Upon a showery night and still, Without a sound of warning, A trooper band surprised the hill, And held it in the morning. We were not waked by bugle notes, No cheer our dreams invaded, And yet, at dawn their yellow coats On the green slopes paraded. We careless folk the deed forgot; 'Till one day, idly walking, We marked upon the self-same spot A crowd of vet'rans talking. They shook their trembling heads and gray With pride and noiseless laughter; When, well-a-day! they blew away, And ne'er were heard of after! Helen Gray Cone. The Flax Flower Oh, the little flax flower! It groweth on the hill, And, be the breeze awake or 'sleep It never standeth still. It groweth, and it groweth fast; One day it is a seed And then a little grassy blade Scarce better than a weed. But then out comes the flax flower As blue as is the sky; And "'Tis a dainty little thing," We say as we go by. Ah! 'tis a goodly little thing, It groweth for the poor, And many a peasant blesseth it Beside his cottage door. He thinketh how those slender stems That shimmer in the sun Are rich for him in web and woof And shortly shall be spun. He thinketh how those tender flowers Of seed will yield him store, And sees in thought his next year's crop Blue shining round his door. Oh, the little flax flower! The mother then says she, "Go, pull the thyme, the heath, the fern, But let the flax flower be! It groweth for the children's sake, It groweth for our own; There are flowers enough upon the hill, But leave the flax alone! The farmer hath his fields of wheat, Much cometh to his share; We have this little plot of flax That we have tilled with care." Oh, the goodly flax flower! It groweth on the hill, And, be the breeze awake or 'sleep, It never standeth still. It seemeth all astir with life As if it loved to thrive, As if it had a merry heart Within its stem alive. Then fair befall the flax-field, And may the kindly showers Give strength unto its shining stem, Give seed unto its flowers! Mary Howitt. _Dear Little Violets_ Under the green hedges after the snow, There do the dear little violets grow, Hiding their modest and beautiful heads Under the hawthorn in soft mossy beds. Sweet as the roses, and blue as the sky, Down there do the dear little violets lie; Hiding their heads where they scarce may be seen, By the leaves you may know where the violet hath been. John Moultrie. _Bird's Song in Spring_ The silver birch is a dainty lady, She wears a satin gown; The elm tree makes the old churchyard shady, She will not live in town. The English oak is a sturdy fellow, He gets his green coat late; The willow is smart in a suit of yellow, While brown the beech trees wait. Such a gay green gown God gives the larches-- As green as He is good! The hazels hold up their arms for arches When Spring rides through the wood. The chestnut's proud, and the lilac's pretty, The poplar's gentle and tall, But the plane tree's kind to the poor dull city-- I love him best of all! E. Nesbit. _The Tree_ The Tree's early leaf-buds were bursting their brown; "Shall I take them away?" said the Frost, sweeping down. "No, leave them alone Till the blossoms have grown," Prayed the Tree, while he trembled from rootlet to crown. The Tree bore his blossoms, and all the birds sung: "Shall I take them away?" said the Wind, as he swung. "No, leave them alone Till the berries have grown," Said the Tree, while his leaflets quivering hung. The Tree bore his fruit in the mid-summer glow: Said the girl, "May I gather thy berries now?" "Yes, all thou canst see: Take them; all are for thee," Said the Tree, while he bent down his laden boughs low. Björnstjerne Björnson. _The Daisy's Song_ (A Fragment) The sun, with his great eye, Sees not so much as I; And the moon, all silver-proud Might as well be in a cloud. And O the spring--the spring! I lead the life of a king! Couch'd in the teeming grass, I spy each pretty lass. I look where no one dares, And I stare where no one stares, And when the night is nigh Lambs bleat my lullaby. John Keats. _Song_ For the tender beech and the sapling oak, That grow by the shadowy rill, You may cut down both at a single stroke, You may cut down which you will. But this you must know, that as long as they grow, Whatever change may be, You can never teach either oak or beech To be aught but a greenwood tree. Thomas Love Peacock. _For Good Luck_ Little Kings and Queens of the May If you want to be, Every one of you, very good, In this beautiful, beautiful, beautiful wood, Where the little birds' heads get so turned with delight That some of them sing all night: Whatever you pluck, Leave some for good luck! Picked from the stalk or pulled by the root, From overhead or under foot, Water-wonders of pond or brook-- Wherever you look, And whatever you find, Leave something behind: Some for the Naiads, Some for the Dryads, And a bit for the Nixies and Pixies! Juliana Horatia Ewing. V HIAWATHA'S BROTHERS _Of all beasts he learned the language, Learned their names and all their secrets, How the beavers built their lodges, Where the squirrels hid their acorns, How the reindeer ran so swiftly, Why the rabbit was so timid, Talked with them whene'er he met them, Called them "Hiawatha's Brothers."_ _Henry Wadsworth Longfellow._ HIAWATHA'S BROTHERS _My Pony_ My pony toss'd his sprightly head, And would have smiled, if smile he could, To thank me for the slice of bread He thinks so delicate and good; His eye is very bright and wild, He looks as if he loved me so, Although I only am a child And he's a real horse, you know. How charming it would be to rear, And have hind legs to balance on; Of hay and oats within the year To leisurely devour a ton; To stoop my head and quench my drouth With water in a lovely pail; To wear a snaffle in my mouth, Fling back my ears, and slash my tail! To gallop madly round a field,-- Who tries to catch me is a goose, And then with dignity to yield My stately back for rider's use; To feel as only horses can, When matters take their proper course, And no one notices the man, While loud applauses greet the horse! He canters fast or ambles slow, And either is a pretty game; His duties are but pleasures--oh, I wish that mine were just the same! Lessons would be another thing If I might turn from book and scroll, And learn to gallop round a ring, As he did when a little foal. It must be charming to be shod, And beautiful beyond my praise, When tired of rolling on the sod, To stand upon all-fours and graze! Alas! my dreams are weak and wild, I must not ape my betters so; Alas! I only am a child, And he's a real horse, you know. "A." _On a Spaniel, called Beau, Killing a Young Bird_ (July 15, 1793) A Spaniel, Beau, that fares like you, Well fed, and at his ease, Should wiser be than to pursue Each trifle that he sees. But you have kill'd a tiny bird, Which flew not till to-day, Against my orders, whom you heard Forbidding you the prey. Nor did you kill that you might eat, And ease a doggish pain, For him, though chas'd with furious heat You left where he was slain. Nor was he of the thievish sort, Or one whom blood allures, But innocent was all his sport Whom you have torn for yours. My dog! What remedy remains, Since, teach you all I can, I see you, after all my pains, So much resemble Man? William Cowper. _Beau's Reply_ Sir, when I flew to seize the bird In spite of your command, A louder voice than yours I heard, And harder to withstand. You cried--forbear!--but in my breast A mightier cried--proceed-- 'Twas Nature, Sir, whose strong behest Impell'd me to the deed. Yet much as Nature I respect, I ventur'd once to break, (As you, perhaps, may recollect) Her precept for your sake; And when your linnet on a day, Passing his prison door, Had flutter'd all his strength away, And panting press'd the floor, Well knowing him a sacred thing, Not destin'd to my tooth, I only kiss'd his ruffled wing, And lick'd the feathers smooth. Let my obedience _then_ excuse My disobedience _now_, Nor some reproof yourself refuse From your aggriev'd Bow-wow; If killing birds be such a crime, (Which I can hardly see,) What think you, Sir, of killing Time With verse address'd to me? William Cowper. _Seal Lullaby_ Oh, hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us, And black are the waters that sparkled so green, The moon o'er the combers, looks downward to find us At rest in the hollows that rustle between. Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow; Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease! The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee, Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas. Rudyard Kipling. _Milking Time_ When the cows come home the milk is coming; Honey's made while the bees are humming; Duck and drake on the rushy lake, And the deer live safe in the breezy brake; And timid, funny, pert little bunny Winks his nose, and sits all sunny. Christina G. Rossetti. _Thank You, Pretty Cow_ Thank you, pretty cow, that made Pleasant milk to soak my bread, Every day and every night, Warm, and fresh, and sweet, and white. Do not chew the hemlock rank, Growing on the weedy bank; But the yellow cowslip eat, That will make it very sweet. Where the purple violet grows, Where the bubbling water flows, Where the grass is fresh and fine, Pretty cow, go there and dine. Jane Taylor. _The Boy and the Sheep_ "Lazy sheep, pray tell me why In the pleasant field you lie, Eating grass and daisies white, From the morning till the night: Everything can something do; But what kind of use are you?" "Nay, my little master, nay, Do not serve me so, I pray! Don't you see the wool that grows On my back to make your clothes? Cold, ah, very cold you'd be, If you had not wool from me. "True, it seems a pleasant thing Nipping daisies in the spring; But what chilly nights I pass On the cold and dewy grass, Or pick my scanty dinner where All the ground is brown and bare! "Then the farmer comes at last, When the merry spring is past, Cuts my woolly fleece away, For your coat in wintry day. Little master, this is why In the pleasant fields I lie." Ann Taylor. _Lambs in the Meadow_ O little lambs! the month is cold, The sky is very gray; You shiver in the misty grass And bleat at all the winds that pass; Wait! when I'm big--some day-- I'll build a roof to every fold. But now that I am small I'll pray At mother's knee for you; Perhaps the angels with their wings; Will come and warm you, little things; I'm sure that, if God knew, He'd let the lambs be born in May. Laurence Alma Tadema. _The Pet Lamb_ The dew was falling fast, the stars began to blink; I heard a voice; it said, "Drink, pretty creature, drink!" And, looking o'er the hedge, before me I espied A snow-white mountain-lamb, with a maiden at its side. Nor sheep nor kine were near; the lamb was all alone, And by a slender cord was tethered to a stone. With one knee on the grass did the little maiden kneel, While to that mountain-lamb she gave its evening meal. The lamb, while from her hand he thus his supper took, Seemed to feast, with head and ears, and his tail with pleasure shook. "Drink, pretty creature, drink!" she said, in such a tone That I almost received her heart into my own. 'Twas little Barbara Lewthwaite, a child of beauty rare! I watched them with delight; they were a lovely pair. Now with her empty can the maiden turned away, But ere ten yards were gone her footsteps did she stay. Right toward the lamb she looked; and from a shady place, I, unobserved, could see the workings of her face. If nature to her tongue could measured numbers bring, Thus, thought I, to her lamb that little maid might sing:-- "What ails thee, young one? what? Why pull so at thy cord? Is it not well with thee? well both for bed and board? Thy plot of grass is soft, and green as grass can be; Rest, little young one, rest; what is't that aileth thee? "What is it thou would'st seek? What is wanting to thy heart? Thy limbs, are they not strong? and beautiful thou art. This grass is tender grass, these flowers they have no peers, And that green corn all day is rustling in thy ears. "If the sun be shining hot, do but stretch thy woollen chain,-- This beech is standing by,--its covert thou canst gain. For rain and mountain storms, the like thou need'st not fear; The rain and storm are things that scarcely can come here. "Rest, little young one, rest; thou hast forgot the day When my father found thee first, in places far away. Many flocks were on the hills, but thou wert owned by none, And thy mother from thy side forevermore was gone. "He took thee in his arms, and in pity brought thee home,-- A blessed day for thee!--Then whither would'st thou roam? A faithful nurse thou hast; the dam that did thee yean Upon the mountain-tops no kinder could have been. "Thou know'st that twice a day I have brought thee in this can Fresh water from the brook, as clear as ever ran; And twice in the day, when the ground was wet with dew, I bring thee draughts of milk,--warm milk it is, and new. "Thy limbs will shortly be twice as stout as they are now; Then I'll yoke thee to my cart, like a pony to the plough, My playmate thou shalt be, and when the wind is cold, Our hearth shall be thy bed, our house shall be thy fold. "It will not, will not rest! Poor creature, can it be That 'tis thy mother's heart which is working so in thee? Things that I know not of belike to thee are dear, And dreams of things which thou canst neither see nor hear. "Alas, the mountain-tops that look so green and fair! I've heard of fearful winds and darkness that come there. The little brooks, that seem all pastime and all play, When they are angry roar like lions for their prey. "Here thou need'st not dread the raven in the sky; Night and day thou art safe--our cottage is hard by. Why bleat so after me? why pull so at thy chain? Sleep,--and at break of day I will come to thee again!" As homeward through the lane I went with lazy feet, This song to myself did I oftentimes repeat; And it seemed, as I retraced the ballad line by line, That but half of it was hers and one half of it was mine. Again and once again did I repeat the song: "Nay," said I, "more than half to the damsel must belong; For she looked with such a look, and she spake with such a tone, That I almost received her heart into my own." William Wordsworth. _The Kitten, and Falling Leaves_ See the kitten on the wall, Sporting with the leaves that fall, Withered leaves--one--two--and three-- From the lofty elder tree! Through the calm and frosty air Of this morning bright and fair, Eddying round and round they sink Softly, slowly: one might think From the motions that are made, Every little leaf conveyed Sylph or fairy hither tending, To this lower world descending, Each invisible and mute, In his wavering parachute. But the kitten, how she starts, Crouches, stretches, paws and darts! First at one and then its fellow, Just as light and just as yellow; There are many now--now one-- Now they stop and there are none: What intenseness of desire In her upward eye of fire! With a tiger-leap, half-way, Now she meets the coming prey; Lets it go as fast and then Has it in her power again. Now she works with three or four, Like an Indian conjuror; Quick as he in feats of art, Far beyond in joy of heart. * * * * * William Wordsworth. VI OTHER LITTLE CHILDREN _If thou couldst know thine own sweetness, O little one, perfect and sweet, Thou wouldst be a child forever; Completer whilst incomplete._ _Francis Turner Palgrave._ OTHER LITTLE CHILDREN _Where Go the Boats?_[A] Dark brown is the river, Golden is the sand. It flows along forever With trees on either hand. Green leaves a-floating, Castles of the foam, Boats of mine a-boating-- Where will all come home? On goes the river And out past the mill, Away down the valley, Away down the hill. Away down the river, A hundred miles or more, Other little children Shall bring my boats ashore. Robert Louis Stevenson. FOOTNOTE: [A] _From "A Child's Garden of Verses." By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons._ _Cleanliness_ Come, my little Robert, near-- Fie! what filthy hands are here! Who, that e'er could understand The rare structure of a hand, With its branching fingers fine, Work itself of hands divine, Strong, yet delicately knit, For ten thousand uses fit, Overlaid with so clear skin You may see the blood within,-- Who this hand would choose to cover With a crust of dirt all over, Till it look'd in hue and shape Like the forefoot of an ape! Man or boy that works or plays In the fields or the highways, May, without offence or hurt, From the soil contract a dirt Which the next clear spring or river Washes out and out for ever-- But to cherish stains impure, Soil deliberate to endure, On the skin to fix a stain Till it works into the grain, Argues a degenerate mind, Sordid, slothful, ill-inclined, Wanting in that self-respect Which does virtue best protect. All-endearing cleanliness, Virtue next to godliness, Easiest, cheapest, needfull'st duty, To the body health and beauty; Who that's human would refuse it, When a little water does it? Charles and Mary Lamb. _Wishing_ Ring-ting! I wish I were a Primrose, A bright yellow Primrose, blowing in the spring! The stooping bough above me, The wandering bee to love me, The fern and moss to creep across, And the Elm-tree for our king! Nay,--stay! I wish I were an Elm-tree, A great lofty Elm-tree, with green leaves gay! The winds would set them dancing, The sun and moonshine glance in, And birds would house among the boughs, And sweetly sing. Oh--no! I wish I were a Robin,-- A Robin, or a little Wren, everywhere to go, Through forest, field, or garden, And ask no leave or pardon, Till winter comes with icy thumbs To ruffle up our wing! Well,--tell! where should I fly to, Where go sleep in the dark wood or dell? Before the day was over, Home must come the rover, For mother's kiss,--sweeter this Than any other thing. William Allingham. _The Boy_ The Boy from his bedroom window Look'd over the little town, And away to the bleak black upland Under a clouded moon. The moon came forth from her cavern. He saw the sudden gleam Of a tarn in the swarthy moorland; Or perhaps the whole was a dream. For I never could find that water In all my walks and rides: Far-off, in the Land of Memory, That midnight pool abides. Many fine things had I glimpse of, And said, "I shall find them one day." Whether within or without me They were, I cannot say. William Allingham. _Infant Joy_ "I have no name, I am but two days old." What shall I call thee? "I happy am, Joy is my name." Sweet joy befall thee! Pretty joy! Sweet joy but two days old! Sweet joy I call thee. Thou dost smile, I sing the while. Sweet joy befall thee! William Blake _A Blessing for the Blessed_ When the sun has left the hill-top And the daisy fringe is furled, When the birds from wood and meadow In their hidden nests are curled, Then I think of all the babies That are sleeping in the world. There are babies in the high lands And babies in the low, There are pale ones wrapped in furry skins On the margin of the snow, And brown ones naked in the isles Where all the spices grow. And some are in the palace On a white and downy bed, And some are in the garret With a clout beneath their head, And some are on the cold hard earth, Whose mothers have no bread. O little men and women, Dear flowers yet unblown-- O little kings and beggars Of the pageant yet unshown-- Sleep soft and dream pale dreams now, To-morrow is your own. Laurence Alma Tadema. _Piping Down the Valleys Wild_ Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he, laughing, said to me: "Pipe a song about a lamb." So I piped with merry cheer. "Piper, pipe that song again." So I piped; he wept to hear. "Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe, Sing thy songs of happy cheer." So I sang the same again, While he wept with joy to hear. "Piper, sit thee down and write, In a book, that all may read."-- So he vanished from my sight, And I plucked a hollow reed, And I made a rural pen; And I stained the water clear And I wrote my happy songs Every child may joy to hear. William Blake. _A Sleeping Child_ Lips, lips, open! Up comes a little bird that lives inside, Up comes a little bird, and peeps, and out he flies. All the day he sits inside, and sometimes he sings; Up he comes and out he goes at night to spread his wings. Little bird, little bird, whither will you go? Round about the world while nobody can know. Little bird, little bird, whither do you flee? Far away round the world while nobody can see. Little bird, little bird, how long will you roam? All round the world and around again home. Round the round world, and back through the air, When the morning comes, the little bird is there. Back comes the little bird, and looks, and in he flies. Up wakes the little boy, and opens both his eyes. Sleep, sleep, little boy, little bird's away, Little bird will come again by the peep of day; Sleep, sleep, little boy, little bird must go Round about the world, while nobody can know. Sleep, sleep sound, little bird goes round, Round and round he goes,--sleep, sleep sound! Arthur Hugh Clough. _Birdies with Broken Wings_[A] Birdies with broken wings, Hide from each other; But babies in trouble Can run home to mother. Mary Mapes Dodge. _Seven Times One_ _Exultation_ There's no dew left on the daisies and clover, There's no rain left in heaven; I've said my "seven times" over and over-- Seven times one are seven. I am old! so old I can write a letter; My birthday lessons are done: The lambs play always, they know no better; They are only one times one. O Moon! in the night I have seen you sailing, And shining so round and low; You were bright! ah, bright! but your light is failing; You are nothing now but a bow. You Moon! have you done something wrong in heaven, That God has hidden your face? I hope, if you have, you will soon be forgiven, And shine again in your place. O velvet Bee! you're a dusty fellow, You've powdered your legs with gold; O brave marsh Mary-buds, rich and yellow! Give me your money to hold. O Columbine! open your folded wrapper Where two twin turtle-doves dwell; O Cuckoo-pint! toll me the purple clapper, That hangs in your clear, green bell. And show me your nest with the young ones in it-- I will not steal them away, I am old! you may trust me, Linnet, Linnet,-- I am seven times one to-day. Jean Ingelow. FOOTNOTE: [A] _From "Rhymes and Jingles." By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons._ _I Remember, I Remember_ I remember, I remember, The house where I was born; The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn; He never came a wink too soon, Nor brought too long a day; But now I often wish the night Had borne my breath away! I remember, I remember, The roses, red and white, The violets, and the lily-cups-- Those flowers made of light! The lilacs where the robin built, And where my brother set The laburnum, on his birthday,-- The tree is living yet! I remember, I remember, Where I was used to swing, And thought the air must rush as fresh To swallows on the wing; My spirit flew in feathers then, That is so heavy now. And summer pools could hardly cool The fever on my brow! I remember, I remember, The fir trees dark and high; I used to think their slender tops Were close against the sky; It was a childish ignorance, But now 'tis little joy To know I'm farther off from heav'n Than when I was a boy. Thomas Hood. _Good-night and Good-morning_ A fair little girl sat under a tree Sewing as long as her eyes could see; Then smoothed her work and folded it right, And said, "Dear work, good-night, good-night!" Such a number of rooks came over her head Crying, "Caw, caw!" on their way to bed; She said, as she watched their curious flight, "Little black things, good-night, good-night!" The horses neighed, and the oxen lowed; The sheep's "Bleat, bleat!" came over the road. All seeming to say, with a quiet delight, "Good little girl, good-night, good-night!" She did not say to the sun, "Good-night!" Though she saw him there like a ball of light; For she knew he had God's own time to keep All over the world, and never could sleep. The tall, pink Fox-glove bowed his head-- The Violets curtsied, and went to bed; And good little Lucy tied up her hair, And said, on her knees, her favorite prayer. And while on her pillow she softly lay, She knew nothing more till again it was day, And all things said to the beautiful sun, "Good-morning, good-morning! our work is begun." Lord Houghton. (Richard Monckton Milnes.) _Little Children_ Sporting through the forest wide; Playing by the waterside; Wandering o'er the heathy fells; Down within the woodland dells; All among the mountains wild, Dwelleth many a little child! In the baron's hall of pride; By the poor man's dull fireside: 'Mid the mighty, 'mid the mean, Little children may be seen, Like the flowers that spring up fair, Bright and countless everywhere! In the far isles of the main; In the desert's lone domain; In the savage mountain-glen, 'Mong the tribes of swarthy men; Whereso'er the sun hath shone On a league of people'd ground, Little children may be found! Blessings on them! they in me Move a kindly sympathy, With their wishes, hopes, and fears; With their laughter and their tears; With their wonder so intense, And their small experience! Little children, not alone On the wide earth are ye known, 'Mid its labours and its cares, 'Mid its sufferings and its snares; Free from sorrow, free from strife, In the world of love and life, Where no sinful thing hath trod-- In the presence of your God, Spotless, blameless, glorified-- Little children, ye abide! Mary Howitt. _The Angel's Whisper_ A baby was sleeping; Its mother was weeping; For her husband was far on the wild raging sea; And the tempest was swelling Round the fisherman's dwelling, And she cried, "Dermot, darling, Oh, come back to me!" Her beads while she numbered The baby still slumbered, And smiled in her face as she bended her knee. "Oh, blest be that warning, Thy sweet sleep adorning, For I know that the angels are whispering to thee! "And while they are keeping Bright watch o'er thy sleeping, Oh, pray to them softly, my baby, with me! And say thou would'st rather They'd watch o'er thy father, For I know that the angels are whispering to thee." The dawn of the morning Saw Dermot returning, And the wife wept with joy her babe's father to see; And closely caressing Her child with a blessing, Said, "I knew that the angels were whispering to thee." Samuel Lover. _Little Garaine_ "Where do the stars grow, little Garaine? The garden of moons is it far away? The orchard of suns, my little Garaine, Will you take us there some day?" "If you shut your eyes," quoth little Garaine, "I will show you the way to go To the orchard of suns and the garden of moons And the field where the stars do grow. "But you must speak soft," quoth little Garaine "And still must your footsteps be, For a great bear prowls in the field of stars, And the moons they have men to see. "And the suns have the Children of Signs to guard, And they have no pity at all---- You must not stumble, you must not speak, When you come to the orchard wall. "The gates are locked," quoth little Garaine, "But the way I am going to tell! The key of your heart it will open them all And there's where the darlings dwell!" Sir Gilbert Parker. _A Letter_ _(To Lady Margaret Cavendish Holles-Harley, when a Child)_ My noble, lovely, little Peggy, Let this my First Epistle beg ye, At dawn of morn, and close of even, To lift your heart and hands to Heaven. In double duty say your prayer: _Our Father_ first, then _Notre Père_. And, dearest child, along the day, In every thing you do and say, Obey and please my lord and lady, So God shall love and angels aid ye. If to these precepts you attend, No second letter need I send, And so I rest your constant friend. Matthew Prior. _Love and the Child_ Toys, and treats, and pleasures pass Like a shadow in a glass, Like the smoke that mounts on high, Like a noonday's butterfly. Quick they come and quick they end, Like the money that I spend; Some to-day, to-morrow more, Short, like those that went before. Mother, fold me to your knees! How much should I care for these-- Little joys that come and go! If you did not love me so? And when things are sad or wrong, Then I know that love is strong; When I ache, or when I weep, Then I know that love is deep. Father, now my prayer is said, Lay your hand upon my head! Pleasures pass from day to day, But I know that love will stay. While I sleep it will be near; I shall wake and find it here; I shall feel it in the air When I say my morning prayer. Maker of this little heart! Lord of love I know thou art! Little heart! though thou forget, Still the love is round thee set. William Brighty Rands. _Polly_ Brown eyes, straight nose; Dirt pies, rumpled clothes. Torn books, spoilt toys: Arch looks, unlike a boy's; Little rages, obvious arts; (Three her age is), cakes, tarts; Falling down off chairs; Breaking crown down stairs; Catching flies on the pane; Deep sighs--cause not plain; Bribing you with kisses For a few farthing blisses. Wide-a-wake; as you hear, "Mercy's sake, quiet, dear!" New shoes, new frock; Vague views of what's o'clock When it's time to go to bed, And scorn sublime for what is said. Folded hands, saying prayers, Understands not nor cares-- Thinks it odd, smiles away; Yet may God hear her pray! Bed gown white, kiss Dolly; Good night!--that's Polly, Fast asleep, as you see, Heaven keep my girl for me! William Brighty Rands. _A Chill_ What can lambkins do All the keen night through? Nestle by their woolly mother The careful ewe. What can nestlings do In the nightly dew? Sleep beneath their mother's wing Till day breaks anew. If in field or tree There might only be Such a warm soft sleeping-place Found for me! Christina G. Rossetti. _A Child's Laughter_ All the bells of heaven may ring, All the birds of heaven may sing, All the wells on earth may spring, All the winds on earth may bring All sweet sounds together; Sweeter far than all things heard, Hand of harper, tone of bird, Sound of woods at sundawn stirred, Welling water's winsome word, Wind in warm, wan weather. One thing yet there is that none Hearing, ere its chime be done Knows not well the sweetest one Heard of man beneath the sun, Hoped in heaven hereafter; Soft and strong and loud and light, Very sound of very light, Heard from morning's rosiest height, When the soul of all delight Fills a child's clear laughter. Golden bells of welcome rolled Never forth such note, nor told Hours so blithe in tones so bold, As the radiant month of gold Here that rings forth heaven. If the golden-crested wren Were a nightingale--why, then Something seen and heard of men Might be half as sweet as when Laughs a child of seven. Algernon C. Swinburne. _The World's Music_ The world's a very happy place, Where every child should dance and sing, And always have a smiling face, And never sulk for anything. I waken when the morning's come, And feel the air and light alive With strange sweet music like the hum Of bees about their busy hive. The linnets play among the leaves At hide-and-seek, and chirp and sing; While, flashing to and from the eaves, The swallows twitter on the wing. And twigs that shake, and boughs that sway; And tall old trees you could not climb; And winds that come, but cannot stay, Are singing gayly all the time. From dawn to dark the old mill-wheel Makes music, going round and round; And dusty-white with flour and meal, The miller whistles to its sound. The brook that flows beside the mill, As happy as a brook can be, Goes singing its old song until It learns the singing of the sea. For every wave upon the sands Sings songs you never tire to hear, Of laden ships from sunny lands Where it is summer all the year. And if you listen to the rain Where leaves and birds and bees are dumb, You hear it pattering on the pane Like Andrew beating on his drum. The coals beneath the kettle croon, And clap their hands and dance in glee; And even the kettle hums a tune To tell you when it's time for tea. The world is such a happy place That children, whether big or small, Should always have a smiling face And never, never sulk at all. Gabriel Setoun. _The Little Land_[A] When at home alone I sit And am very tired of it, I have just to shut my eyes To go sailing through the skies-- To go sailing far away To the pleasant Land of Play; To the fairy land afar Where the Little People are; Where the clover-tops are trees, And the rain-pools are the seas, And the leaves like little ships Sail about on tiny trips; And above the daisy tree Through the grasses, High o'erhead the Bumble Bee Hums and passes. In that forest to and fro I can wander, I can go; See the spider and the fly, And the ants go marching by Carrying parcels with their feet Down the green and grassy street. I can in the sorrel sit Where the ladybird alit. I can climb the jointed grass; And on high See the greater swallows pass In the sky, And the round sun rolling by Heeding no such thing as I. Through the forest I can pass Till, as in a looking-glass, Humming fly and daisy tree And my tiny self I see, Painted very clear and neat On the rain-pool at my feet. Should a leaflet come to land Drifting near to where I stand, Straight I'll board that tiny boat Round the rain-pool sea to float. Little thoughtful creatures sit On the grassy coasts of it; Little things with lovely eyes See me sailing with surprise. Some are clad in armour green-- (These have sure to battle been!) Some are pied with ev'ry hue, Black and crimson, gold and blue; Some have wings and swift are gone:-- But they all look kindly on. When my eyes I once again Open and see all things plain; High bare walls, great bare floor; Great big knobs on drawer and door; Great big people perched on chairs, Stitching tucks and mending tears, Each a hill that I could climb, And talking nonsense all the time-- O dear me, That I could be A sailor on the rain-pool sea, A climber in the clover-tree, And just come back, a sleepy-head, Late at night to go to bed. Robert Louis Stevenson. FOOTNOTE: [A] _From "A Child's Garden of Verses." By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons._ _In a Garden_ Baby, see the flowers! Baby sees Fairer things than these, Fairer though they be than dreams of ours. Baby, hear the birds! Baby knows Better songs than those, Sweeter though they sound than sweetest words. Baby, see the moon! Baby's eyes Laugh to watch it rise, Answering light with love and night with noon. Baby, hear the sea! Baby's face Takes a graver grace, Touched with wonder what the sound may be. Baby, see the star! Baby's hand Opens, warm and bland, Calm in claim of all things fair that are. Baby, hear the bells! Baby's head Bows as ripe for bed, Now the flowers curl round and close their cells. Baby, flower of light, Sleep and see Brighter dreams than we, Till good day shall smile away good night. Algernon Charles Swinburne _Little Gustava_ I Little Gustava sits in the sun, Safe in the porch, and the little drops run From the icicles under the eaves so fast, For the bright spring sun shines warm at last, And glad is little Gustava. II She wears a quaint little scarlet cap, And a little green bowl she holds in her lap, Filled with bread and milk to the brim, And a wreath of marigolds round the rim. "Ha! ha!" laughs little Gustava. III Up comes her little gray coaxing cat With her little pink nose, and she mews, "What's that?" Gustava feeds her,--she begs for more; And a little brown hen walks in at the door "Good day!" cries little Gustava. IV She scatters crumbs for the little brown hen. There comes a rush and a flutter, and then Down fly her little white doves so sweet, With their snowy wings and crimson feet: "Welcome!" cries little Gustava. V So dainty and eager they pick up the crumbs. But who is this through the doorway comes? Little Scotch terrier, little dog Rags, Looks in her face, and his funny tail wags: "Ha, ha!" laughs little Gustava. VI "You want some breakfast too?" and down She sets her bowl on brick floor brown; And little dog Rags drinks up her milk, While she strokes his shaggy locks like silk: "Dear Rags!" says little Gustava. VII Waiting without stood sparrow and crow, Cooling their feet in the melting snow: "Won't you come in, good folk?" she cried. But they were too bashful, and stood outside Though "Pray come in!" cried Gustava. VIII So the last she threw them, and knelt on the mat With doves and biddy and dog and cat. And her mother came to the open house-door "Dear little daughter, I bring you some more. My merry little Gustava!" IX Kitty and terrier, biddy and doves, All things harmless Gustava loves. The shy, kind creatures 'tis joy to feed, And oh her breakfast is sweet indeed To happy little Gustava! Celia Thaxter. _A Bunch of Roses_ The rosy mouth and rosy toe Of little baby brother, Until about a month ago Had never met each other; But nowadays the neighbours sweet, In every sort of weather, Half way with rosy fingers meet, To kiss and play together. John B. Tabb. _The Child_ _At Bethlehem_ Long, long before the Babe could speak, When he would kiss his mother's cheek And to her bosom press, The brightest angels standing near Would turn away to hide a tear-- For they are motherless. John B. Tabb _After the Storm_ And when,--its force expended, The harmless storm was ended, And as the sunrise splendid Came blushing o'er the sea-- I thought, as day was breaking, My little girls were waking, And smiling and making A prayer at home for me. William Makepeace Thackeray. _Lucy Gray_ Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray; And, when I crossed the wild, I chanced to see at break of day The solitary child. No mate, no comrade, Lucy knew; She dwelt on a wide moor,-- The sweetest thing that ever grew Beside a human door! You yet may spy the fawn at play, The hare upon the green; But the sweet face of Lucy Gray Will never more be seen. "To-night will be a stormy night-- You to the town must go: And take a lantern, child, to light Your mother through the snow." "That, father, will I gladly do: 'Tis scarcely afternoon-- The minster-clock has just struck two; And yonder is the moon." At this the father raised his hook, And snapped a faggot-band; He plied his work;--and Lucy took The lantern in her hand. Not blither is the mountain roe: With many a wanton stroke Her feet disperse the powdery snow, That rises up like smoke. The storm came on before its time She wandered up and down; And many a hill did Lucy climb, But never reached the town. The wretched parents all that night Went shouting far and wide; But there was neither sound nor sight To serve them for a guide. At daybreak on a hill they stood That overlooked the moor; And thence they saw the bridge of wood, A furlong from their door. They wept--and, turning homeward, cried, "In heaven we all shall meet!" When in the snow the mother spied The print of Lucy's feet. Then downwards from the steep hill's edge They tracked the footmarks small; And through the broken hawthorn hedge, And by the low stone wall: And then an open field they crossed; The marks were still the same; They tracked them on, nor ever lost; And to the bridge they came. They follow from the snowy bank Those footmarks, one by one, Into the middle of the plank; And further there were none! --Yet some maintain that to this day She is a living child; That you may see sweet Lucy Gray Upon the lonesome wild. O'er rough and smooth she trips along, And never looks behind; And sings a solitary song That whistles in the wind. William Wordsworth _Deaf and Dumb_ He lies on the grass, looking up to the sky; Blue butterflies pass like a breath or a sigh, The shy little hare runs confidingly near, And wise rabbits stare with inquiry, not fear: Gay squirrels have found him and made him their choice; All creatures flock round him, and seem to rejoice. Wild ladybirds leap on his cheek fresh and fair, Young partridges creep, nestling under his hair, Brown honey-bees drop something sweet on his lips, Rash grasshoppers hop on his round finger-tips, Birds hover above him with musical call; All things seem to love him, and he loves them all. Is nothing afraid of the boy lying there? Would all nature aid if he wanted its care? Things timid and wild with soft eagerness come. Ah, poor little child!--he is deaf--he is dumb. But what can have brought them? but how can they know? What instinct has taught them to cherish him so? Since first he could walk they have served him like this. His lips could not talk, but they found they could kiss. They made him a court, and they crowned him a king; Ah, who could have thought of so lovely a thing? They found him so pretty, they gave him their hearts, And some divine pity has taught them their parts! "A." _The Blind Boy_ O, say, what is that thing called Light, Which I must ne'er enjoy? What are the blessings of the sight? O tell your poor blind boy! You talk of wondrous things you see; You say the sun shines bright; I feel him warm, but how can he Make either day or night? My day and night myself I make, Whene'er I sleep or play, And could I always keep awake, With me 'twere always day. With heavy sighs I often hear You mourn my hapless woe; But sure with patience I can bear A loss I ne'er can know. Then let not what I cannot have My peace of mind destroy; Whilst thus I sing, I am a king, Although a poor blind boy! Colley Cibber. VII PLAY-TIME _The world's a very happy place, Where every child should dance and sing, And always have a smiling face, And never sulk for anything._ _Gabriel Setoun._ PLAY-TIME _A Boy's Song_ Where the pools are bright and deep, Where the gray trout lies asleep, Up the river and o'er the lea, That's the way for Billy and me. Where the blackbird sings the latest, Where the hawthorn blooms the sweetest, Where the nestlings chirp and flee, That's the way for Billy and me. Where the mowers mow the cleanest, Where the hay lies thick and greenest, There to trace the homeward bee, That's the way for Billy and me. Where the hazel bank is steepest, Where the shadow falls the deepest, Where the clustering nuts fall free, That's the way for Billy and me. Why the boys should drive away Little sweet maidens from the play, Or love to banter and fight so well, That's the thing I never could tell. But this I know, I love to play, Through the meadow, among the hay, Up the water and o'er the lea, That's the way for Billy and me. James Hogg (The Ettrick Shepherd). _The Lost Doll_ I once had a sweet little doll, dears, The prettiest doll in the world; Her cheeks were so red and white, dears, And her hair was so charmingly curled. But I lost my poor little doll, dears, As I played on the heath one day; And I cried for her more than a week, dears, But I never could find where she lay. I found my poor little doll, dears, As I played on the heath one day; Folks say she is terribly changed, dears, For her paint is all washed away, And her arms trodden off by the cows, dears, And her hair not the least bit curled; Yet for old sake's sake, she is still, dears, The prettiest doll in the world. Charles Kingsley _Dolladine_ This is her picture--Dolladine-- The beautifullest doll that ever was seen! Oh, what nosegays! Oh, what sashes! Oh, what beautiful eyes and lashes! Oh, what a precious perfect pet! On each instep a pink rosette; Little blue shoes for her little blue tots; Elegant ribbons in bows and knots. Her hair is powdered; her arms are straight, Only feel, she is quite a weight! Her legs are limp, though;--stand up, miss!-- What a beautiful buttoned-up mouth to kiss! William Brighty Rands. _Dressing the Doll_ This is the way we dress the Doll:-- You may make her a shepherdess, the Doll, If you give her a crook with a pastoral hook, But this is the way we dress the Doll. CHORUS. Bless the Doll, you may press the Doll, But do not crumple and mess the Doll! This is the way we dress the Doll. First, you observe her little chemise, As white as milk, with ruches of silk; And the little drawers that cover her knees. As she sits or stands, with golden bands, And lace in beautiful filagrees. CHORUS. Bless the Doll, you may press the Doll, But do not crumple or mess the Doll! This is the way we dress the Doll. Now these are the bodies: she has two, One of pink, with ruches of blue, And sweet white lace; be careful, do! And one of green, with buttons of sheen, Buttons and bands of gold, I mean, With lace on the border in lovely order, The most expensive we can afford her! CHORUS. Bless the Doll, you may press the Doll, But do not crumple or mess the Doll! This is the way we dress the Doll. Then, with black at the border, jacket And this--and this--she will not lack it; Skirts? Why, there are skirts, of course, And shoes and stockings we shall enforce, With a proper bodice, in the proper place (Stays that lace have had their days And made their martyrs); likewise garters, All entire. But our desire Is to show you her night attire, At least a part of it. Pray admire This sweet white thing that she goes to bed in! It's not the one that's made for her wedding; _That_ is special, a new design, Made with a charm and a countersign, Three times three and nine times nine: These are only her usual clothes: Look, _there's_ a wardrobe! gracious knows It's pretty enough, as far as it goes! So you see the way we dress the Doll: You might make her a shepherdess, the Doll, If you gave her a crook with a pastoral hook, With sheep, and a shed, and a shallow brook, And all that, out of the poetry-book. CHORUS. Bless the Doll, you may press the Doll, But do not crumple and mess the Doll! This is the way we dress the Doll; If you had not seen, could you guess the Doll? William Brighty Rands. _The Pedlar's Caravan_ I wish I lived in a caravan, With a horse to drive, like a pedlar-man! Where he comes from nobody knows, Or where he goes to, but on he goes! His caravan has windows two, And a chimney of tin, that the smoke comes through; He has a wife, with a baby brown, And they go riding from town to town. Chairs to mend, and delf to sell! He clashes the basins like a bell; Tea-trays, baskets ranged in order, Plates with the alphabet round the border! The roads are brown, and the sea is green, But his house is just like a bathing-machine; The world is round, and he can ride, Rumble and splash, to the other side! With the pedlar-man I should like to roam, And write a book when I came home; All the people would read my book, Just like the Travels of Captain Cook! William Brighty Rands. _A Sea-Song from the Shore_ Hail! Ho! Sail! Ho! Ahoy! Ahoy! Ahoy! Who calls to me, So far at sea? Only a little boy! Sail! Ho! Hail! Ho! The sailor he sails the sea: I wish he would capture a little sea-horse And send him home to me. I wish, as he sails Through the tropical gales, He would catch me a sea-bird, too, With its silver wings And the song it sings, And its breast of down and dew! I wish he would catch me a Little mermaid, Some island where he lands, With her dripping curls, And her crown of pearls, And the looking-glass in her hands! Hail! Ho! Sail! Ho! Sail far o'er the fabulous main! And if I were a sailor, I'd sail with you, Though I never sailed back again. James Whitcomb Riley. _The Land of Story-Books_[A] At evening when the lamp is lit, Around the fire my parents sit; They sit at home and talk and sing, And do not play at anything. Now, with my little gun, I crawl All in the dark along the wall, And follow round the forest track Away behind the sofa back. There, in the night, where none can spy, All in my hunter's camp I lie, And play at books that I have read Till it is time to go to bed. These are the hills, these are the woods, These are my starry solitudes; And there the river by whose brink The roaring lions come to drink. I see the others far away As if in firelit camp they lay, And I, like to an Indian scout, Around their party prowled about. So, when my nurse comes in for me, Home I return across the sea, And go to bed with backward looks At my dear land of Story-books. Robert Louis Stevenson. FOOTNOTE: [A] _From "A Child's Garden of Verses," by Robert Louis Stevenson. By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons._ _The City Child_ Dainty little maiden, whither would you wander? Whither from this pretty home, the home where mother dwells? "Far and far away," said the dainty little maiden, "All among the gardens, auriculas, anemones, Roses and lilies and Canterbury bells." Dainty little maiden, whither would you wander? Whither from this pretty house, this city-house of ours? "Far and far away," said the dainty little maiden, "All among the meadows, the clover and the clematis, Daisies and kingcups and honeysuckle-flowers." Alfred, Lord Tennyson. _Going into Breeches_ Joy to Philip! he this day Has his long coats cast away, And (the childish season gone) Put the manly breeches on. Officer on gay parade, Red-coat in his first cockade, Bridegroom in his wedding-trim, Birthday beau surpassing him, Never did with conscious gait Strut about in half the state Or the pride (yet free from sin) Of my little MANIKIN: Never was there pride or bliss Half so rational as his. Sashes, frocks, to those that need 'em, Philip's limbs have got their freedom-- He can run, or he can ride, And do twenty things beside, Which his petticoats forbade; Is he not a happy lad? Now he's under other banners He must leave his former manners; Bid adieu to female games And forget their very names; Puss-in-corners, hide-and-seek, Sports for girls and punies weak! Baste-the-bear he now may play at; Leap-frog, foot-ball sport away at; Show his skill and strength at cricket, Mark his distance, pitch his wicket; Run about in winter's snow Till his cheeks and fingers glow; Climb a tree or scale a wall Without any fear to fall. If he get a hurt or bruise, To complain he must refuse, Though the anguish and the smart Go unto his little heart; He must have his courage ready, Keep his voice and visage steady; Brace his eyeballs stiff as drum, That a tear may never come; And his grief must only speak From the colour in his cheek. This and more he must endure, Hero he in miniature. This and more must now be done, Now the breeches are put on. Charles and Mary Lamb. _Hunting Song_ Up, up! ye dames and lasses gay! To the meadows trip away. 'Tis you must tend the flocks this morn, And scare the small birds from the corn, Not a soul at home may stay: For the shepherds must go With lance and bow To hunt the wolf in the woods to-day. Leave the hearth and leave the house To the cricket and the mouse: Find grannam out a sunny seat, With babe and lambkin at her feet. Not a soul at home may stay: For the shepherds must go With lance and bow To hunt the wolf in the woods to-day. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. _Hie Away_ Hie away, hie away! Over bank and over brae, Where the copsewood is the greenest, Where the fountains glisten sheenest, Where the lady fern grows strongest, Where the morning dew lies longest, Where the blackcock sweetest sips it, Where the fairy latest trips it: Hie to haunts right seldom seen, Lovely, lonesome, cool, and green, Over bank and over brae, Hie away, hie away! Sir Walter Scott. VIII STORY TIME _And I made a rural pen; And I stained the water clear And I wrote my happy songs Every child may joy to hear._ _William Blake._ STORY TIME _The Fairy Folk_ Come cuddle close in daddy's coat Beside the fire so bright, And hear about the fairy folk That wander in the night. For when the stars are shining clear And all the world is still, They float across the silver moon From hill to cloudy hill. Their caps of red, their cloaks of green, Are hung with silver bells, And when they're shaken with the wind Their merry ringing swells. And riding on the crimson moth, With black spots on his wings, They guide them down the purple sky With golden bridle rings. They love to visit girls and boys To see how sweet they sleep, To stand beside their cosy cots And at their faces peep. For in the whole of fairy land They have no finer sight Than little children sleeping sound With faces rosy bright. On tip-toe crowding round their heads, When bright the moonlight beams, They whisper little tender words That fill their minds with dreams; And when they see a sunny smile, With lightest finger tips They lay a hundred kisses sweet Upon the ruddy lips. And then the little spotted moths Spread out their crimson wings, And bear away the fairy crowd With shaking bridle rings. Come bairnies, hide in daddy's coat, Beside the fire so bright-- Perhaps the little fairy folk Will visit you to-night. Robert Bird. _A Fairy in Armor_ He put his acorn helmet on; It was plumed of the silk of the thistle down; The corslet plate that guarded his breast Was once the wild bee's golden vest; His cloak, of a thousand mingled dyes, Was formed of the wings of butterflies; His shield was the shell of a lady-bug green, Studs of gold on a ground of green; And the quivering lance which he brandished bright, Was the sting of a wasp he had slain in fight. Swift he bestrode his fire-fly steed; He bared his blade of the bent-grass blue; He drove his spurs of the cockle-seed, And away like a glance of thought he flew, To skim the heavens, and follow far The fiery trail of the rocket-star. Joseph Rodman Drake. _The Last Voyage of the Fairies_ Down the bright stream the Fairies float,-- A water-lily is their boat. Long rushes they for paddles take, Their mainsail of a bat's wing make; The tackle is of cobwebs neat,-- With glow-worm lantern all's complete. So down the broad'ning stream they float, With Puck as pilot of the boat. The Queen on speckled moth-wings lies, And lifts at times her languid eyes To mark the green and mossy spots Where bloom the blue forget-me-nots: Oberon, on his rose-bud throne, Claims the fair valley as his own: And elves and fairies, with a shout Which may be heard a yard about, Hail him as Elfland's mighty King; And hazel-nuts in homage bring, And bend the unreluctant knee, And wave their wands in loyalty. Down the broad stream the Fairies float, An unseen power impels their boat; The banks fly past--each wooded scene-- The elder copse--the poplars green-- And soon they feel the briny breeze With salt and savour of the seas-- Still down the stream the Fairies float, An unseen power impels their boat; Until they mark the rushing tide Within the estuary wide. And now they're tossing on the sea, Where waves roll high, and winds blow free,-- Ah, mortal vision nevermore Shall see the Fairies on the shore, Or watch upon a summer night Their mazy dances of delight! Far, far away upon the sea, The waves roll high, the breeze blows free! The Queen on speckled moth-wings lies, Slow gazing with a strange surprise Where swim the sea-nymphs on the tide Or on the backs of dolphins ride: The King, upon his rose-bud throne, Pales as he hears the waters moan; The elves have ceased their sportive play, Hushed by the slowly sinking day: And still afar, afar they float, The Fairies in their fragile boat,-- Further and further from the shore, And lost to mortals evermore! W. H. Davenport Adams. _A New Fern_ A Fairy has found a new fern! A lovely surprise of the May! She stamps her wee foot, looks uncommonly stern, And keeps other fairies at bay. She watches it flourish and grow-- What exquisite pleasure is hers! She kisses it, strokes it and fondles it so-- I almost believe that she purrs! Of all the most beautiful things, None brighter than this I discern, To be a young fairy, with glittering wings, And then--to discover a fern! "A." _The Child and the Fairies_ The woods are full of fairies! The trees are all alive: The river overflows with them, See how they dip and dive! What funny little fellows! What dainty little dears! They dance and leap, and prance and peep, And utter fairy cheers! * * * * * I'd like to tame a fairy, To keep it on a shelf, To see it wash its little face, And dress its little self. I'd teach it pretty manners, It always should say "Please;" And then you know I'd make it sew, And curtsey with its knees! "A." _The Little Elf_ I met a little Elf-man, once, Down where the lilies blow. I asked him why he was so small And why he didn't grow. He slightly frowned, and with his eye He looked me through and through. "I'm quite as big for me," said he, "As you are big for you." John Kendrick Bangs. _"One, Two, Three"_[A] It was an old, old, old, old lady And a boy that was half-past three, And the way that they played together Was beautiful to see. She couldn't go romping and jumping, And the boy, no more could he; For he was a thin little fellow, With a thin little twisted knee. They sat in the yellow sunlight, Out under the maple tree, And the game that they played I'll tell you, Just as it was told to me. It was Hide-and-Go-Seek they were playing. Though you'd never have known it to be-- With an old, old, old, old lady And a boy with a twisted knee. The boy would bend his face down On his little sound right knee. And he guessed where she was hiding In guesses One, Two, Three. "You are in the china closet!" He would cry and laugh with glee-- It wasn't the china closet, But he still had Two and Three. "You are up in papa's big bedroom, In the chest with the queer old key," And she said: "You are warm and warmer; But you are not quite right," said she. "It can't be the little cupboard Where mamma's things used to be-- So it must be in the clothes press, Gran'ma," And he found her with his Three. Then she covered her face with her fingers, That were wrinkled and white and wee, And she guessed where the boy was hiding, With a One and a Two and a Three. And they never had stirred from their places Right under the maple tree-- This old, old, old, old lady And the boy with the lame little knee-- This dear, dear, dear old lady And the boy who was half-past three. Henry C. Bunner. FOOTNOTE: [A] _From "The Poems of H. C. Bunner." Copyright, 1889, by Charles Scribner's Sons._ _What May Happen to a Thimble_ Come about the meadow, Hunt here and there, Where's mother's thimble? Can you tell where? Jane saw her wearing it, Fan saw it fall, Ned isn't sure That she dropp'd it at all. Has a mouse carried it Down to her hole-- Home full of twilight, Shady, small soul? Can she be darning there, Ere the light fails, Small ragged stockings-- Tiny torn tails? Did a finch fly with it Into the hedge, Or a reed-warbler Down in the sedge? Are they carousing there, All the night through? Such a great goblet, Brimful of dew! Have beetles crept with it Where oak roots hide? There have they settled it Down on its side? Neat little kennel, So cosy and dark, Has one crept into it, Trying to bark? Have the ants cover'd it With straw and sand? Roomy bell-tent for them, So tall and grand; Where the red soldier-ants Lie, loll, and lean-- While the blacks steadily Build for their queen. Has a huge dragon-fly Borne it (how cool!) To his snug dressing-room, By the clear pool? There will he try it on, For a new hat-- Nobody watching But one water-rat? Did the flowers fight for it, While, undecried, One selfish daisy Slipp'd it aside; Now has she plunged it in Close to her feet-- Nice private water-tank For summer heat? Did spiders snatch at it Wanting to look At the bright pebbles Which lie in the brook? Now are they using it (Nobody knows!) Safe little diving-bell, Shutting so close? Hunt for it, hope for it, All through the moss; Dip for it, grope for it-- 'Tis such a loss! Jane finds a drop of dew, Fan finds a stone; I find the thimble, Which is mother's own! Run with it, fly with it-- Don't let it fall; All did their best for it-- Mother thanks all. Just as we give it her,-- Think what a shame!-- Ned says he's sure That it isn't the same! "B." _Discontent_ Down in a field, one day in June, The flowers all bloomed together, Save one, who tried to hide herself, And drooped that pleasant weather. A robin, who had flown too high, And felt a little lazy, Was resting near a buttercup Who wished she were a daisy. For daisies grew so trig and tall! She always had a passion For wearing frills around her neck, In just the daisies' fashion. And buttercups must always be The same old tiresome color; While daisies dress in gold and white, Although their gold is duller. "Dear robin," said the sad young flower, "Perhaps you'd not mind trying To find a nice white frill for me, Some day when you are flying?" "You silly thing!" the robin said, "I think you must be crazy: I'd rather be my honest self, Than any made-up daisy. "You're nicer in your own bright gown; The little children love you: Be the best buttercup you can, And think no flower above you. "Though swallows leave me out of sight, We'd better keep our places: Perhaps the world would all go wrong With one too many daisies. "Look bravely up into the sky, And be content with knowing That God wished for a buttercup Just here, where you are growing." Sarah Orne Jewett. _The Nightingale and the Glowworm_ A nightingale that all day long Had cheered the village with his song, Nor yet at eve his note suspended, Nor yet when eventide was ended, Began to feel, as well he might, The keen demands of appetite; When looking eagerly around, He spied far off, upon the ground, A something shining in the dark, And knew the glowworm by his spark; So, stooping down from hawthorn top, He thought to put him in his crop. The worm, aware of his intent, Harangued him thus, right eloquent: "Did you admire my lamp," quoth he, "As much as I your minstrelsy, You would abhor to do me wrong, As much as I to spoil your song: For 'twas the self-same Power Divine Taught you to sing, and me to shine; That you with music, I with light, Might beautify and cheer the night." The songster heard this short oration, And warbling out his approbation, Released him, as my story tells, And found a supper somewhere else. William Cowper. _Thanksgiving Day_ Over the river and through the wood, To grandfather's house we go; The horse knows the way To carry the sleigh Through the white and drifted snow. Over the river and through the wood-- Oh, how the wind does blow! It stings the toes And bites the nose, As over the ground we go. Over the river and through the wood, To have a first-rate play. Hear the bells ring, "Ting-a-ling-ding!" Hurrah for Thanksgiving Day! Over the river and through the wood Trot fast, my dapple-gray! Spring over the ground, Like a hunting-hound! For this is Thanksgiving Day. Over the river and through the wood, And straight through the barn-yard gate. We seem to go Extremely slow,-- It is so hard to wait! Over the river and through the wood-- Now grandmother's cap I spy! Hurrah for the fun! Is the pudding done? Hurrah for the pumpkin-pie! Lydia Maria Child. _A Thanksgiving Fable_ It was a hungry pussy cat, upon Thanksgiving morn, And she watched a thankful little mouse, that ate an ear of corn. "If I ate that thankful little mouse, how thankful he should be, When he has made a meal himself, to make a meal for me! "Then with his thanks for having fed, and his thanks for feeding me, With all _his_ thankfulness inside, how thankful I shall be!" Thus mused the hungry pussy cat, upon Thanksgiving Day; But the little mouse had overheard and declined (with thanks) to stay. Oliver Herford. _The Magpie's Nest_ A Fable When the Arts in their infancy were, In a fable of old 'tis express'd A wise magpie constructed that rare Little house for young birds, call'd a nest. This was talk'd of the whole country round; You might hear it on every bough sung, "Now no longer upon the rough ground Will fond mothers brood over their young: "For the magpie with exquisite skill Has invented a moss-cover'd cell Within which a whole family will In the utmost security dwell." To her mate did each female bird say, "Let us fly to the magpie, my dear; If she will but teach us the way, A nest we will build us up here. "It's a thing that's close arch'd overhead, With a hole made to creep out and in; We, my bird, might make just a bed If we only knew how to begin." * * * * * To the magpie soon every bird went And in modest terms made their request, That she would be pleased to consent To teach them to build up a nest. She replied, "I will show you the way, So observe everything that I do: First two sticks 'cross each other I lay--" "To be sure," said the crow, "why I knew "It must be begun with two sticks, And I thought that they crossed should be." Said the pie, "Then some straw and moss mix In the way you now see done by me." "O yes, certainly," said the jackdaw, "That must follow, of course, I have thought; Though I never before building saw, I guess'd that, without being taught." "More moss, straw, and feathers, I place In this manner," continued the pie. "Yes, no doubt, madam, that is the case; Though no builder myself, so thought I." * * * * * Whatever she taught them beside, In his turn every bird of them said, Though the nest-making art he ne'er tried He had just such a thought in his head. Still the pie went on showing her art, Till a nest she had built up half-way; She no more of her skill would impart, But in her anger went fluttering away. And this speech in their hearing she made, As she perch'd o'er their heads on a tree: "If ye all were well skill'd in my trade, Pray, why came ye to learn it of me?" When a scholar is willing to learn, He with silent submission should hear; Too late they their folly discern, The effect to this day does appear. For whenever a pie's nest you see, Her charming warm canopy view, All birds' nests but hers seem to be A magpie's nest just cut in two. Charles and Mary Lamb. _The Owl and the Pussy-Cat_ The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea In a beautiful pea-green boat; They took some honey, and plenty of money Wrapped up in a five-pound note. The Owl looked up to the moon above, And sang to a small guitar, "O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love, What a beautiful Pussy you are,-- You are, What a beautiful Pussy you are!" Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl! How wonderful sweet you sing! O let us be married,--too long we have tarried,-- But what shall we do for a ring?" They sailed away for a year and a day To the land where the Bong tree grows And there in a wood, a piggy-wig stood With a ring at the end of his nose,-- His nose, With a ring at the end of his nose. "Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling Your ring?" Said the piggy, "I will." So they took it away, and were married next day By the turkey who lives on the hill. They dined upon mince and slices of quince, Which they ate with a runcible spoon, And hand in hand on the edge of the sand They danced by the light of the moon,-- The moon, They danced by the light of the moon. Edward Lear. _A Lobster Quadrille_ "Will you walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail, "There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail. See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance! They are waiting on the shingle--will you come and join the dance? Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance? Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance? "You can really have no notion how delightful it will be When they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea!" But the snail replied, "Too far, too far!" and gave a look askance-- Said he thanked the whiting kindly, but he would not join the dance. Would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join the dance, Would not, could not, would not, could not, could not join the dance. "What matters it how far we go?" his scaly friend replied, "There is another shore, you know, upon the other side. The further off from England the nearer is to France-- Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance. Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance? Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?" Lewis Carroll. _The Fairies' Shopping_ Where do you think the Fairies go To buy their blankets ere the snow? When Autumn comes, with frosty days The sorry shivering little Fays Begin to think it's time to creep Down to their caves for Winter sleep. But first they come from far and near To buy, where shops are not too dear. (The wind and frost bring prices down, So Fall's their time to come to town!) Where on the hill-side rough and steep Browse all day long the cows and sheep, The mullein's yellow candles burn Over the heads of dry sweet fern: All summer long the mullein weaves His soft and thick and woolly leaves. Warmer blankets were never seen Than these broad leaves of fuzzy green-- (The cost of each is but a shekel Made from the gold of honeysuckle!) To buy their sheets and fine white lace (With which to trim a pillow-case), They only have to go next door, Where stands a sleek brown spider's store, And there they find the misty threads Ready to cut into sheets and spreads; Then for a pillow, pluck with care Some soft-winged seeds as light as air; Just what they want the thistle brings, But thistles are such surly things-- And so, though it is somewhat high, The clematis the Fairies buy. The only bedsteads that they need Are silky pods of ripe milk-weed, With hangings of the dearest things-- Autumn leaves, or butterflies' wings! And dandelions' fuzzy heads They use to stuff their feather beds; And yellow snapdragons supply The nightcaps that the Fairies buy, To which some blades of grass they pin, And tie them 'neath each little chin. Then, shopping done, the Fairies cry, "Our Summer's gone! oh sweet, good-bye!" And sadly to their caves they go, To hide away from Winter's snow-- And then, though winds and storms may beat, The Fairies' sleep is warm and sweet! Margaret Deland. _Fable_ The mountain and the squirrel Had a quarrel, And the former called the latter "Little Prig." Bun replied: "You are doubtless very big; But all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together To make up a year And a sphere; And I think it no disgrace To occupy my place. If I'm not so large as you, You are not so small as I, And not half so spry. I'll not deny you make A very pretty squirrel track; Talents differ; all is well and wisely put; If I cannot carry forests on my back Neither can you crack a nut!" Ralph Waldo Emerson. _A Midsummer Song_ Oh, father's gone to market-town: he was up before the day, And Jamie's after robins, and the man is making hay, And whistling down the hollow goes the boy that minds the mill, While mother from the kitchen-door is calling with a will, "Polly!--Polly!--The cows are in the corn! Oh, where's Polly?" From all the misty morning air there comes a summer sound, A murmur as of waters, from skies and trees and ground. The birds they sing upon the wing, the pigeons bill and coo; And over hill and hollow rings again the loud halloo: "Polly!--Polly!--The cows are in the corn! Oh, where's Polly?" Above the trees, the honey-bees swarm by with buzz and boom, And in the field and garden a thousand blossoms bloom. Within the farmer's meadow a brown-eyed daisy blows, And down at the edge of the hollow a red and thorny rose. But Polly!--Polly!--The cows are in the corn! Oh, where's Polly? How strange at such a time of day the mill should stop its clatter! The farmer's wife is listening now, and wonders what's the matter. Oh, wild the birds are singing in the wood and on the hill, While whistling up the hollow goes the boy that minds the mill. But Polly!--Polly!--The cows are in the corn! Oh, where's Polly! Richard Watson Gilder. _The Fairies of the Caldon-Low_ "And where have you been, my Mary, And where have you been from me?" "I've been to the top of the Caldon-Low, The midsummer night to see!" "And what did you see, my Mary, All up on the Caldon-Low?" "I saw the blithe sunshine come down, And I saw the merry winds blow." "And what did you hear, my Mary, All up on the Caldon Hill?" "I heard the drops of water made, And I heard the corn-ears fill." "Oh, tell me all, my Mary-- All, all that ever you know; For you must have seen the fairies Last night on the Caldon-Low." "Then take me on your knee, mother, And listen, mother of mine: A hundred fairies danced last night, And the harpers they were nine; "And merry was the glee of the harp-strings, And their dancing feet so small; But oh! the sound of their talking Was merrier far than all!" "And what were the words, my Mary, That you did hear them say?" "I'll tell you all, my mother, But let me have my way. "And some they played with the water And rolled it down the hill; 'And this,' they said, 'shall speedily turn The poor old miller's mill; "'For there has been no water Ever since the first of May; And a busy man shall the miller be By the dawning of the day! "'Oh, the miller, how he will laugh, When he sees the mill-dam rise! The jolly old miller, how he will laugh, Till the tears fill both his eyes!' "And some they seized the little winds, That sounded over the hill, And each put a horn into his mouth, And blew so sharp and shrill! "'And there,' said they, 'the merry winds go, Away from every horn; And those shall clear the mildew dank From the blind old widow's corn: "'Oh, the poor blind widow-- Though she has been blind so long, She'll be merry enough when the mildew's gone, And the corn stands stiff and strong!' "And some they brought the brown linseed, And flung it down from the Low: 'And this,' said they, 'by the sunrise, In the weaver's croft shall grow! "'Oh, the poor lame weaver! How will he laugh outright When he sees his dwindling flax-field All full of flowers by night!' "And then upspoke a brownie, With a long beard on his chin; 'I have spun up all the tow,' said he, 'And I want some more to spin. "'I've spun a piece of hempen cloth, And I want to spin another-- A little sheet for Mary's bed And an apron for her mother.' "And with that I could not help but laugh, And I laughed out loud and free; And then on the top of the Caldon-Low, There was no one left but me. "And all on the top of the Caldon-Low The mists were cold and gray, And nothing I saw but the mossy stones That round about me lay. "But, as I came down from the hill-top, I heard, afar below, How busy the jolly old miller was, And how merry the wheel did go! "And I peeped into the widow's field, And, sure enough, was seen The yellow ears of the mildewed corn All standing stiff and green! "And down by the weaver's croft I stole, To see if the flax were high; But I saw the weaver at his gate With the good news in his eye! "Now, this is all that I heard, mother, And all that I did see; So, prithee, make my bed, mother, For I'm tired as I can be!" Mary Howitt. _The Elf and the Dormouse_ Under a toadstool Crept a wee Elf, Out of the rain, To shelter himself. Under the toadstool Sound asleep, Sat a big Dormouse All in a heap. Trembled the wee Elf, Frightened, and yet Fearing to fly away Lest he get wet. To the next shelter-- Maybe a mile! Sudden the wee Elf Smiled a wee smile, Tugged till the toadstool Toppled in two. Holding it over him, Gayly he flew. Soon he was safe home, Dry as could be. Soon woke the Dormouse-- "Good gracious me! "Where is my toadstool?" Loud he lamented. --And that's how umbrellas First were invented. Oliver Herford. _Meg Merrilies_ Old Meg she was a gipsy, And lived upon the moors; Her bed it was the brown heath turf, And her house was out of doors. Her apples were swart blackberries, Her currants pods o' broom; Her wine was dew of the wild white rose, Her book a churchyard tomb. Her brothers were the craggy hills, Her sisters larchen-trees; Alone with her great family She lived as she did please. No breakfast had she many a morn, No dinner many a noon, And 'stead of supper she would stare Full hard against the moon. But every morn of woodbine fresh She made her garlanding, And every night the dark glen yew She wore; and she would sing, And with her fingers old and brown She plaited mats of rushes, And gave them to the cottagers She met among the bushes. Old Meg was brave as Margaret Queen, And tall as Amazon; An old red blanket cloak she wore, A ship-hat had she on; God rest her aged bones somewhere! She died full long agone! John Keats. _Romance_ I saw a ship a-sailing, A-sailing on the sea; Her masts were of the shining gold, Her deck of ivory; And sails of silk, as soft as milk, And silvern shrouds had she. And round about her sailing, The sea was sparkling white, The waves all clapped their hands and sang To see so fair a sight. They kissed her twice, they kissed her thrice, And murmured with delight. Then came the gallant captain, And stood upon the deck; In velvet coat, and ruffles white, Without a spot or speck; And diamond rings, and triple strings Of pearls around his neck. And four-and-twenty sailors Were round him bowing low; On every jacket three times three Gold buttons in a row; And cutlasses down to their knees; They made a goodly show. And then the ship went sailing, A-sailing o'er the sea; She dived beyond the setting sun, But never back came she, For she found the lands of the golden sands, Where the pearls and diamonds be. Gabriel Setoun. _The Cow-Boy's Song_ "Mooly cow, mooly cow, home from the wood They sent me to fetch you as fast as I could. The sun has gone down: it is time to go home. Mooly cow, mooly cow, why don't you come? Your udders are full, and the milkmaid is there, And the children are waiting their supper to share. I have let the long bars down,--why don't you pass through?" The mooly cow only said, "Moo-o-o!" "Mooly cow, mooly cow, have you not been Regaling all day where the pastures are green? No doubt it was pleasant, dear mooly, to see The clear running brook and the wide-spreading tree, The clover to crop and the streamlet to wade, To drink the cool water and lie in the shade; But now it is night: they are waiting for you." The mooly cow only said, "Moo-o-o!" "Mooly cow, mooly cow, where do you go, When all the green pastures are covered with snow? You go to the barn and we feed you with hay, And the maid goes to milk you there, every day; She speaks to you kindly and sits by your side, She pats you, she loves you, she strokes your sleek hide: Then come along home, pretty mooly cow, do." But the mooly cow only said, "Moo-o-o!" "Mooly cow, mooly cow, whisking your tail, The milkmaid is waiting, I say, with her pail; She tucks up her petticoats, tidy and neat, And places the three-leggéd stool for her seat:-- What can you be staring at, mooly? You know That we ought to have gone home an hour ago. How dark it is growing! O, what shall I do?" The mooly cow only said, "Moo-o-o!" Anna M. Wells. IX BED TIME[A] _When the golden day is done, Through the closing portal, Child and garden, flower and sun, Vanish all things mortal._ _Robert Louis Stevenson._ FOOTNOTE: [A] _From "A Child's Garden of Verses," by Robert Louis Stevenson. By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons._ BED-TIME _Auld Daddy Darkness_ Auld Daddy Darkness creeps frae his hole, Black as a blackamoor, blin' as a mole: Stir the fire till it lowes, let the bairnie sit, Auld Daddy Darkness is no wantit yet. See him in the corners hidin' frae the licht, See him at the window gloomin' at the nicht; Turn up the gas licht, close the shutters a', An' Auld Daddy Darkness will flee far awa'. Awa' to hide the birdie within its cosy nest, Awa' to lap the wee flooers on their mither's breast, Awa' to loosen Gaffer Toil frae his daily ca', For Auld Daddy Darkness is kindly to a'. He comes when we're weary to wean's frae oor waes, He comes when the bairnies are getting aff their claes; To cover them sae cosy, an' bring bonnie dreams, So Auld Daddy Darkness is better than he seems. Steek yer een, my wee tot, ye'll see Daddy then; He's in below the bed claes, to cuddle ye he's fain; Noo nestle in his bosie, sleep and dream yer fill, Till Wee Davie Daylicht comes keekin' owre the hill. James Ferguson. _Wynken, Blynken, and Nod_[A] Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night Sailed off in a wooden shoe-- Sailed on a river of crystal light, Into a sea of dew. "Where are you going, and what do you wish?" The old moon asked the three. "We have come to fish for the herring fish That live in this beautiful sea; Nets of silver and gold have we!" Said Wynken, Blynken, And Nod. The old moon laughed and sang a song, As they rocked in the wooden shoe, And the wind that sped them all night long Ruffled the waves of dew. The little stars were the herring fish That lived in that beautiful sea-- "Now cast your nets wherever you wish-- Never afeard are we"; So cried the stars to the fishermen three: Wynken, Blynken, And Nod. All night long their nets they threw To the stars in the twinkling foam-- Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe, Bringing the fishermen home; 'Twas all so pretty a sail it seemed As if it could not be, And some folks thought 'twas a dream they'd dreamed Of sailing that beautiful sea-- But I shall name you the fishermen three: Wynken, Blynken, And Nod. Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes, And Nod is a little head, And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies Is a wee one's trundle-bed. So shut your eyes while mother sings Of wonderful sights that be, And you shall see the beautiful things As you rock in the misty sea, Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three, Wynken, Blynken, And Nod. Eugene Field. FOOTNOTE: [A] _From "With Trumpet and Drum," by Eugene Field. Copyright, 1892, by Charles Scribner's Sons._ _Rockaby, Lullaby_[A] Rockaby, lullaby, bees on the clover!-- Crooning so drowsily, crying so low-- Rockaby, lullaby, dear little rover! Down into wonderland-- Down to the under-land-- Go, oh go! Down into wonderland go! Rockaby, lullaby, rain on the clover! Tears on the eyelids that struggle and weep! Rockaby, lullaby--bending it over! Down on the mother world, Down on the other world! Sleep, oh sleep! Down on the mother-world sleep! Rockaby, lullaby, dew on the clover! Dew on the eyes that will sparkle at dawn! Rockaby, lullaby, dear little rover! Into the stilly world! Into the lily world, Gone! oh gone! Into the lily world, gone! Josiah Gilbert Holland. FOOTNOTE: [A] _From "The Poetical Works of J. G. Holland." Copyright, 1881, by Charles Scribner's Sons._ _Sleep, My Treasure_ Sleep, sleep, my treasure, The long day's pleasure Has tired the birds, to their nests they creep; The garden still is Alight with lilies, But all the daisies are fast asleep. Sleep, sleep, my darling, Dawn wakes the starling, The sparrow stirs when he sees day break; But all the meadow Is wrapped in shadow, And you must sleep till the daisies wake! E. Nesbit. _Lullaby of an Infant Chief_ Oh, hush thee, my babie, thy sire was a knight, Thy mother a lady, both lovely and bright; The woods and the glens from the tower which we see, They all are belonging, dear babie, to thee. Oh, fear not the bugle, though loudly it blows, It calls but the warders that guard thy repose; Their bows would be bended, their blades would be red, Ere the step of a foeman draws near to thy bed. Oh, hush thee, my babie, the time will soon come, When thy sleep shall be broken by trumpet and drum; Then hush thee, my darling, take rest while you may, For strife comes with manhood, and waking with day. Sir Walter Scott. _Sweet and Low_ Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow, Wind of the western sea! Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon, and blow, Blow him again to me: While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps. Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, Father will come to thee soon; Rest, rest, on mother's breast, Father will come to thee soon; Father will come to his babe in the nest, Silver sails all out of the west Under the silver moon: Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep. Alfred, Lord Tennyson. _Old Gaelic Lullaby_ Hush! the waves are rolling in, White with foam, white with foam; Father toils amid the din; But baby sleeps at home. Hush! the winds roar hoarse and deep,-- On they come, on they come! Brother seeks the wandering sheep: But baby sleeps at home. Hush! the rain sweeps o'er the knowes, Where they roam, where they roam; Sister goes to seek the cows; But baby sleeps at home. Unknown. _The Sandman_ The rosy clouds float overhead, The sun is going down; And now the sandman's gentle tread Comes stealing through the town. "White sand, white sand," he softly cries, And as he shakes his hand, Straightway there lies on babies' eyes His gift of shining sand. Blue eyes, gray eyes, black eyes, and brown, As shuts the rose, they softly close, when he goes through the town. From sunny beaches far away-- Yes, in another land-- He gathers up at break of day His store of shining sand. No tempests beat that shore remote, No ships may sail that way; His little boat alone may float Within that lovely bay. Blue eyes, gray eyes, black eyes, and brown, As shuts the rose, they softly close, when he goes through the town. He smiles to see the eyelids close Above the happy eyes; And every child right well he knows,-- Oh, he is very wise! But if, as he goes through the land, A naughty baby cries, His other hand takes dull gray sand To close the wakeful eyes. Blue eyes, gray eyes, black eyes, and brown, As shuts the rose, they softly close, when he goes through the town. So when you hear the sandman's song Sound through the twilight sweet, Be sure you do not keep him long A-waiting on the street. Lie softly down, dear little head, Rest quiet, busy hands, Till, by your bed his good-night said, He strews the shining sands. Blue eyes, gray eyes, black eyes, and brown, As shuts the rose, they softly close, when he goes through the town. Margaret Vandegrift. _The Cottager to Her Infant_ The days are cold, the nights are long, The north-wind sings a doleful song; Then hush again upon my breast; All merry things are now at rest, Save thee, my pretty Love! The kitten sleeps upon the hearth, The crickets long have ceased their mirth; There's nothing stirring in the house Save one wee, hungry nibbling mouse, Then why so busy thou? Nay! start not at that sparkling light, 'Tis but the moon that shines so bright On the window-pane bedropped with rain; There, little darling! sleep again, And wake when it is day. Dorothy Wordsworth. _A Charm to Call Sleep_ Sleep, Sleep, come to me, Sleep, Come to my blankets and come to my bed, Come to my legs and my arms and my head, Over me, under me, into me creep. Sleep, Sleep, come to me, Sleep, Blow on my face like a soft breath of air, Lay your cool hand on my forehead and hair, Carry me down through the dream-waters deep. Sleep, Sleep, come to me, Sleep, Tell me the secrets that you alone know, Show me the wonders none other can show, Open the box where your treasures you keep. Sleep, Sleep, come to me, Sleep: Softly I call you; as soft and as slow Come to me, cuddle me, stay with me so, Stay till the dawn is beginning to peep. Henry Johnstone. _Night_ The snow is white, the wind is cold-- The king has sent for my three-year-old. Bring the pony and shoe him fast With silver shoes that were made to last. Bring the saddle trimmed with gold; Put foot in stirrup, my three-year-old; Jump in the saddle, away, away! And hurry back by the break of day; By break of day, through dale and down, And bring me the news from Slumbertown. Mary F. Butts. _Bed-Time_ 'Tis bed-time; say your hymn, and bid "Good night, "God bless mamma, papa, and dear ones all." Your half-shut eyes beneath your eye-lids fall; Another minute you will shut them quite. Yes, I will carry you, put out the light, And tuck you up, although you are so tall. What will you give me, Sleepy One, and call My wages, if I settle you all right? I laid her golden curls upon my arm, I drew her little feet within my hand; Her rosy palms were joined in trustful bliss, Her heart next mine, beat gently, soft and warm; She nestled to me, and, by Love's command, Paid me my precious wages,--Baby's kiss. Lord Rosslyn. _Nightfall in Dordrecht_[A] The mill goes toiling slowly around With steady and solemn creak, And my little one hears in the kindly sound The voice of the old mill speak. While round and round those big white wings Grimly and ghostlike creep, My little one hears that the old mill sings: "Sleep, little tulip, sleep!" The sails are reefed and the nets are drawn, And, over his pot of beer, The fisher, against the morrow's dawn, Lustily maketh cheer; He mocks at the winds that caper along From the far-off clamorous deep-- But we--we love their lullaby song Of "Sleep, little tulip, sleep!" Old dog Fritz in slumber sound Groans of the stony mart-- To-morrow how proudly he'll trot you round, Hitched to our new milk-cart! And you shall help me blanket the kine And fold the gentle sheep And set the herring a-soak in brine-- But now, little tulip, sleep! A Dream-One comes to button the eyes That wearily droop and blink, While the old mill buffets the frowning skies And scolds at the stars that wink; Over your face the misty wings Of that beautiful Dream-One sweep, And rocking your cradle she softly sings: "Sleep, little tulip, sleep!" Eugene Field. FOOTNOTE: [A] _From "With Trumpet and Drum," by Eugene Field. Copyright, 1892, by Charles Scribner's Sons._ X FOR SUNDAY'S CHILD _Sunday's child is full of grace._ _Old Proverb._ FOR SUNDAY'S CHILD _All Things Bright and Beautiful_ All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful, The Lord God made them all. Each little flower that opens, Each little bird that sings, He made their glowing colours, He made their tiny wings. The rich man in his castle, The poor man at his gate, God made them, high or lowly, And order'd their estate. The purple-headed mountain, The river running by, The sunset and the morning, That brightens up the sky;-- The cold wind in the winter, The pleasant summer sun, The ripe fruits in the garden,-- He made them every one; The tall trees in the greenwood, The meadows where we play, The rushes by the water We gather every day;-- He gave us eyes to see them, And lips that we might tell, How great is God Almighty, Who has made all things well. Cecil Frances Alexander. _The Still Small Voice_ Wee Sandy in the corner Sits greeting on a stool, And sair the laddie rues Playing truant frae the school; Then ye'll learn frae silly Sandy, Wha's gotten sic a fright, To do naething through the day That may gar ye greet at night. He durstna venture hame now, Nor play, though e'er so fine, And ilka ane he met wi' He thought them sure to ken, And started at ilk whin bush, Though it was braid daylight-- Sae do nothing through the day That may gar ye greet at night. Wha winna be advised Are sure to rue ere lang; And muckle pains it costs them To do the thing that's wrang, When they wi' half the fash o't Might aye be in the right, And do naething through the day That would gar them greet at night. What fools are wilfu' bairns, Who misbehave frae hame! There's something in the breast aye That tells them they're to blame; And then when comes the gloamin', They're in a waefu' plight! Sae do naething through the day That may gar ye greet at night. Alexander Smart. _The Camel's Nose_ Once in his shop a workman wrought, With languid head and listless thought, When, through the open window's space, Behold, a camel thrust his face! "My nose is cold," he meekly cried; "Oh, let me warm it by thy side!" Since no denial word was said, In came the nose, in came the head: As sure as sermon follows text, The long and scraggy neck came next; And then, as falls the threatening storm, In leaped the whole ungainly form. Aghast the owner gazed around, And on the rude invader frowned, Convinced, as closer still he pressed, There was no room for such a guest; Yet more astonished, heard him say, "If thou art troubled, go away, For in this place I choose to stay." O youthful hearts to gladness born, Treat not this Arab lore with scorn! To evil habits' earliest wile Lend neither ear, nor glance, nor smile. Choke the dark fountain ere it flows, Nor e'en admit the camel's nose! Lydia H. Sigourney. _A Child's Grace_ Some hae meat and canna eat, And some wad eat that want it; But we hae meat and we can eat, And sae the Lord be thankit. Robert Burns. _A Child's Thought of God_ They say that God lives very high! But if you look above the pines You cannot see our God. And why? And if you dig down in the mines You never see Him in the gold, Though from Him all that's glory shines. God is so good, He wears a fold Of heaven and earth across His face-- Like secrets kept, for love, untold. But still I feel that His embrace Slides down by thrills, through all things made, Through sight and sound of every place: As if my tender mother laid On my shut lids, her kisses' pressure, Half-waking me at night; and said "Who kissed you through the dark, dear guesser?" Elizabeth Barrett Browning. _The Lamb_ Little lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee, Gave thee life and bade thee feed By the stream and o'er the mead; Gave thee clothing of delight, Softest clothing, woolly, bright; Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the vales rejoice? Little lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee? Little lamb, I'll tell thee; Little lamb, I'll tell thee. He is callèd by thy name, For He calls himself a Lamb. He is meek and He is mild, He became a little child. I a child and thou a lamb, We are called by His name. Little lamb, God bless thee! Little lamb, God bless thee! William Blake. _Night and Day_[A] When I run about all day, When I kneel at night to pray, God sees. When I'm dreaming in the dark, When I lie awake and hark, God sees. Need I ever know a fear? Night and day my Father's near:-- God sees. Mary Mapes Dodge. FOOTNOTE: [A] _From "Rhymes and Jingles," by Mary Mapes Dodge. By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons._ _High and Low_[A] The showers fall as softly Upon the lowly grass As on the stately roses That tremble as they pass. The sunlight shines as brightly On fern-leaves bent and torn As on the golden harvest, The fields of waving corn. The wild birds sing as sweetly To rugged, jagged pines, As to the blossomed orchards, And to the cultured vines. * * * * * Dora Read Goodale. _By Cool Siloam's Shady Rill_ By cool Siloam's shady rill How sweet the lily grows! How sweet the breath beneath the hill Of Sharon's dewy rose! Lo, such the child whose early feet The paths of peace have trod; Whose secret heart, with influence sweet, Is upward drawn to God. Reginald Heber. FOOTNOTE: [A] _From "Apple Blossoms," by Dora Read Goodale. By permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons._ _Sheep and Lambs_ All in the April morning, April airs were abroad; The sheep with their little lambs Pass'd me by on the road. The sheep with their little lambs Pass'd me by on the road; All in an April evening I thought on the Lamb of God. The lambs were weary, and crying With a weak human cry, I thought on the Lamb of God Going meekly to die. Up in the blue, blue mountains Dewy pastures are sweet: Rest for the little bodies, Rest for the little feet. * * * * * All in the April evening, April airs were abroad; I saw the sheep with their lambs, And thought on the Lamb of God. Katharine Tynan Hinkson. _To His Saviour, a Child; A Present by a Child_ Go, pretty child, and bear this flower Unto thy little Saviour; And tell him, by that bud now blown, He is the Rose of Sharon known. When thou hast said so, stick it there Upon his bib or stomacher; And tell him, for good hansel too, That thou hast brought a whistle new, Made of a clean strait oaten reed, To charm his cries at time of need. Tell him, for coral thou hast none, But if thou hadst, he should have one; But poor thou art, and known to be Even as moneyless as he. Lastly, if thou canst win a kiss From those mellifluous lips of his; Then never take a second on, To spoil the first impression. Robert Herrick. _What Would You See?_ What would you see if I took you up To my little nest in the air? You would see the sky like a clear blue cup Turned upside downwards there. What would you do if I took you there To my little nest in the tree? My child with cries would trouble the air, To get what she could but see. What would you get in the top of the tree For all your crying and grief? Not a star would you clutch of all you see-- You could only gather a leaf. But when you had lost your greedy grief, Content to see from afar, You would find in your hand a withering leaf, In your heart a shining star. George Macdonald. _Corn-Fields_ When on the breath of Autumn's breeze, From pastures dry and brown, Goes floating, like an idle thought, The fair, white thistle-down,-- Oh, then what joy to walk at will Upon the golden harvest-hill! What joy in dreaming ease to lie Amid a field new shorn; And see all round, on sunlit slopes, The piled-up shocks of corn; And send the fancy wandering o'er All pleasant harvest-fields of yore! I feel the day; I see the field; The quivering of the leaves; And good old Jacob, and his horse,-- Binding the yellow sheaves! And at this very hour I seem To be with Joseph in his dream! I see the fields of Bethlehem, And reapers many a one Bending unto their sickles' stroke, And Boaz looking on; And Ruth, the Moabitess fair, Among the gleaners stooping there! Again, I see a little child, His mother's sole delight,-- God's living gift of love unto The kind, good Shunamite; To mortal pangs I see him yield, And the lad bear him from the field. The sun-bathed quiet of the hills, The fields of Galilee, That eighteen hundred years ago Were full of corn, I see; And the dear Saviour take his way 'Mid ripe ears on the Sabbath-day. Oh golden fields of bending corn, How beautiful they seem! The reaper-folk, the piled-up sheaves, To me are like a dream; The sunshine, and the very air Seem of old time, and take me there! Mary Howitt. _Little Christel_ I Slowly forth from the village church,-- The voice of the choristers hushed overhead,-- Came little Christel. She paused in the porch, Pondering what the preacher had said. _Even the youngest, humblest child Something may do to please the Lord;_ "Now, what," thought she, and half-sadly smiled, "Can I, so little and poor, afford?-- _"Never, never a day should pass, Without some kindness, kindly shown,_ The preacher said"--Then down to the grass A skylark dropped, like a brown-winged stone. "Well, a day is before me now; Yet, what," thought she, "can I do, if I try? If an angel of God would show me how! But silly am I, and the hours they fly." Then the lark sprang singing up from the sod, And the maiden thought, as he rose to the blue, "He says he will carry my prayer to God; But who would have thought the little lark knew?" II Now she entered the village street, With book in hand and face demure, And soon she came, with sober feet, To a crying babe at a cottage door. It wept at a windmill that would not move, It puffed with round red cheeks in vain, One sail stuck fast in a puzzling groove, And baby's breath could not stir it again. So baby beat the sail and cried, While no one came from the cottage door; But little Christel knelt down by its side, And set the windmill going once more. Then babe was pleased, and the little girl Was glad when she heard it laugh and crow; Thinking, "Happy windmill, that has but to whirl, To please the pretty young creature so." III No thought of herself was in her head, As she passed out at the end of the street, And came to a rose-tree tall and red, Drooping and faint with the summer heat. She ran to a brook that was flowing by, She made of her two hands a nice round cup, And washed the roots of the rose-tree high, Till it lifted its languid blossoms up. "O happy brook!" thought little Christel, "You have done some good this summer's day, You have made the flowers look fresh and well!" Then she rose and went on her way. * * * * * William Brighty Rands. _A Child's Prayer_ God make my life a little light, Within the world to glow-- A tiny flame that burneth bright, Wherever I may go. God make my life a little flower, That bringeth joy to all, Content to bloom in native bower, Although its place be small. God make my life a little song, That comforteth the sad, That helpeth others to be strong, And makes the singer glad. M. Betham Edwards XI BELLS OF CHRISTMAS _Then let the holly red be hung,_ _And all the sweetest carols sung,_ _While we with joy remember them--_ _The journeyers to Bethlehem._ _Frank Dempster Sherman._ BELLS OF CHRISTMAS _The Adoration of the Wise Men_ Saw you never in the twilight, When the sun had left the skies, Up in heaven the clear stars shining, Through the gloom like silver eyes? So of old the wise men watching, Saw a little stranger star, And they knew the King was given, And they follow'd it from far. Heard you never of the story, How they cross'd the desert wild, Journey'd on by plain and mountain, Till they found the Holy Child? How they open'd all their treasure, Kneeling to that Infant King, Gave the gold and fragrant incense, Gave the myrrh in offering? Know ye not that lowly Baby Was the bright and morning star, He who came to light the Gentiles, And the darken'd isles afar? And we too may seek his cradle, There our heart's best treasures bring, Love, and Faith, and true devotion, For our Saviour, God, and King. Cecil Frances Alexander. _Cradle Hymn_ Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber; Holy angels guard thy bed; Heavenly blessings without number Gently falling on thy head. Sleep, my babe, thy food and raiment, House and home, thy friends provide; All without thy care, or payment, All thy wants are well supplied. How much better thou'rt attended Than the Son of God could be, When from heaven He descended, And became a child like thee! Soft and easy is thy cradle; Coarse and hard thy Saviour lay, When His birthplace was a stable, And His softest bed was hay. See the kindly shepherds round him, Telling wonders from the sky! When they sought Him, there they found Him, With his Virgin-Mother by. See the lovely babe a-dressing; Lovely infant, how He smiled! When He wept, the mother's blessing Soothed and hushed the holy child. Lo, He slumbers in His manger, Where the honest oxen fed; --Peace, my darling! here's no danger! Here's no ox a-near thy bed! Mayst thou live to know and fear Him, Trust and love Him all thy days; Then go dwell forever near Him, See His face, and sing His praise! I could give thee thousand kisses, Hoping what I most desire; Not a mother's fondest wishes Can to greater joys aspire. Isaac Watts. _The Christmas Silence_ Hushed are the pigeons cooing low On dusty rafters of the loft; And mild-eyed oxen, breathing soft, Sleep on the fragrant hay below. Dim shadows in the corner hide; The glimmering lantern's rays are shed Where one young lamb just lifts his head, Then huddles 'gainst his mother's side. Strange silence tingles in the air; Through the half-open door a bar Of light from one low-hanging star Touches a baby's radiant hair. No sound: the mother, kneeling, lays Her cheek against the little face. Oh human love! Oh heavenly grace! 'Tis yet in silence that she prays! Ages of silence end to-night; Then to the long-expectant earth Glad angels come to greet His birth In burst of music, love, and light! Margaret Deland. An Offertory Oh, the beauty of the Christ Child, The gentleness, the grace, The smiling, loving tenderness, The infantile embrace! All babyhood he holdeth, All motherhood enfoldeth-- Yet who hath seen his face? Oh, the nearness of the Christ Child, When, for a sacred space, He nestles in our very homes-- Light of the human race! We know him and we love him, No man to us need prove him-- Yet who hath seen his face? Mary Mapes Dodge. _Christmas Song_ Why do bells for Christmas ring? Why do little children sing? Once a lovely, shining star, Seen by shepherds from afar, Gently moved until its light Made a manger-cradle bright. There a darling baby lay Pillowed soft upon the hay. And his mother sang and smiled, "This is Christ, the holy child." So the bells for Christmas ring, So the little children sing. Lydia Avery Coonley Ward. _A Visit from St. Nicholas_ 'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there. The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads; And mamma in her kerchief, and I in my cap, Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap-- When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash, Tore open the shutter, and threw up the sash. The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow Gave a lustre of midday to objects below; When what to my wondering eyes should appear But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer, With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick! More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled and shouted and called them by name. "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!-- To the top of the porch, to the top of the wall, Now, dash away, dash away, dash away all!" As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, When they meet with an obstacle mount to the sky, So, up to the housetop the coursers they flew, With a sleigh full of toys--and St. Nicholas, too. And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof The prancing and pawing of each little hoof. As I drew in my head, and was turning around, Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound: He was dressed all in fur from his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot: A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack. His eyes, how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry; His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow. The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath. He had a broad face and a little round belly That shook, when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly. He was chubby and plump--a right jolly old elf: And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself; A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head, Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread. He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, And filled all the stockings: then turned with a jerk, And laying his finger aside of his nose, And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose. He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, And away they all flew like the down of a thistle. But I heard him exclaim, ere they drove out of sight, "Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!" Clement C. Moore. _The Christmas Trees_ There's a stir among the trees, There's a whisper in the breeze, Little ice-points clash and clink, Little needles nod and wink, Sturdy fir-trees sway and sigh-- "Here am I! Here am I!" "All the summer long I stood In the silence of the woods. Tall and tapering I grew; What might happen well I knew; For one day a little bird Sang, and in the song I heard Many things quite strange to me Of Christmas and the Christmas tree. "When the sun was hid from sight In the darkness of the night, When the wind with sudden fret Pulled at my green coronet, Staunch I stood, and hid my fears, Weeping silent fragrant tears, Praying still that I might be Fitted for a Christmas tree. "Now here we stand On every hand! In us a hoard of summer stored, Birds have flown over us, Blue sky has covered us, Soft winds have sung to us, Blossoms have flung to us Measureless sweetness, Now in completeness We wait." Mary F. Butts. _A Birthday Gift_ * * * * * What can I give him, Poor as I am? If I were a shepherd I would bring a lamb, If I were a wise man I would do my part,-- Yet what I can I give him, Give my heart. Christina Rossetti. _A Christmas Lullaby_ Sleep, baby, sleep! The Mother sings: Heaven's angels kneel and fold their wings. Sleep, baby, sleep! With swathes of scented hay Thy bed By Mary's hand at eve was spread. Sleep, baby, sleep! At midnight came the shepherds, they Whom seraphs wakened by the way. Sleep, baby, sleep! And three kings from the East afar, Ere dawn came, guided by the star. Sleep, baby, sleep! They brought Thee gifts of gold and gems, Pure orient pearls, rich diadems. Sleep, baby, sleep! But Thou who liest slumbering there, Art King of Kings, earth, ocean, air. Sleep, baby, sleep! Sleep, baby, sleep! The shepherds sing: Through heaven, through earth, hosannas ring. Sleep, baby, sleep! John Addington Symonds. _I Saw Three Ships_ I saw three ships come sailing in, On Christmas day, on Christmas day; I saw three ships come sailing in, On Christmas day in the morning. * * * * * Pray whither sailed those ships all three On Christmas day, on Christmas day? Pray whither sailed those ships all three On Christmas day in the morning? Oh, they sailed into Bethlehem On Christmas day, on Christmas day; Oh, they sailed into Bethlehem On Christmas day in the morning. And all the bells on earth shall ring On Christmas day, on Christmas day; And all the bells on earth shall ring On Christmas day in the morning. And all the angels in heaven shall sing On Christmas day, on Christmas day; And all the angels in heaven shall sing On Christmas day in the morning. And all the souls on earth shall sing On Christmas day, on Christmas day; And all the souls on earth shall sing On Christmas day in the morning. Old Carol. _Santa Claus_ He comes in the night! He comes in the night! He softly, silently comes; While the little brown heads on the pillows so white Are dreaming of bugles and drums. He cuts through the snow like a ship through the foam, While the white flakes around him whirl; Who tells him I know not, but he findeth the home Of each good little boy and girl. His sleigh it is long, and deep, and wide; It will carry a host of things, While dozens of drums hang over the side, With the sticks sticking under the strings. And yet not the sound of a drum is heard, Not a bugle blast is blown, As he mounts to the chimney-top like a bird, And drops to the hearth like a stone. The little red stockings he silently fills, Till the stockings will hold no more; The bright little sleds for the great snow hills Are quickly set down on the floor. Then Santa Claus mounts to the roof like a bird, And glides to his seat in the sleigh; Not the sound of a bugle or drum is heard As he noiselessly gallops away. He rides to the East, and he rides to the West, Of his goodies he touches not one; He eateth the crumbs of the Christmas feast When the dear little folks are done. Old Santa Claus doeth all that he can; This beautiful mission is his; Then, children, be good to the little old man, When you find who the little man is. Unknown. _Neighbors of the Christ Night_ Deep in the shelter of the cave, The ass with drooping head Stood weary in the shadow, where His master's hand had led. About the manger oxen lay, Bending a wide-eyed gaze Upon the little new-born Babe, Half worship, half amaze. High in the roof the doves were set, And cooed there, soft and mild, Yet not so sweet as, in the hay, The Mother to her Child. The gentle cows breathed fragrant breath To keep Babe Jesus warm, While loud and clear, o'er hill and dale, The cocks crowed, "Christ is born!" Out in the fields, beneath the stars, The young lambs sleeping lay, And dreamed that in the manger slept Another, white as they. * * * * * These were Thy neighbors, Christmas Child; To Thee their love was given, For in Thy baby face there shone The wonder-light of Heaven. Nora Archibald Smith. _Cradle Hymn_ Away in a manger, no crib for a bed, The little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head. The stars in the bright sky looked down where he lay-- The little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay. The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, But little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes. I love thee, Lord Jesus! look down from the sky, And stay by my cradle till morning is nigh. Martin Luther. _The Christmas Holly_ The holly! the holly! oh, twine it with bay-- Come give the holly a song; For it helps to drive stern winter away, With his garment so sombre and long; It peeps through the trees with its berries of red, And its leaves of burnished green, When the flowers and fruits have long been dead, And not even the daisy is seen. Then sing to the holly, the Christmas holly, That hangs over peasant and king; While we laugh and carouse 'neath its glittering boughs, To the Christmas holly we'll sing. * * * * * Eliza Cook. Said I to myself, here's a chance for me The Lilliput Laureate for to be! And these are the Specimens I sent in To Pinafore Palace. Shall I win? William Brighty Rands. INDEX Adoration of the Wise Men, The, 257 All Things Bright and Beautiful, 237 Angel's Whisper, The, 139 Answer to a Child's Question, 62 Ant and the Cricket, The, 78 April, In, 8 Auld Daddy Darkness, 221 Baby Corn, 93 Baby Seed Song, 88 Beau's Reply, 112 Bed-Time, 232 Bells of Christmas, 255 Birdies with Broken Wings, 133 Birds in Spring, The, 54 Birds in Summer, 65 Bird's Song in Spring, 102 Birthday Gift, A, 267 Blessing for the Blessed, A, 129 Blind Boy, The, 160 Bluebird, The, 68 Blue Jay, The, 74 Boy and the Sheep, The, 114 Boy, The, 128 Boy's Song, A, 165 Breeches, Going Into, 174 Bunch of Roses, A, 155 Butterflies, White, 78 By Cool Siloam's Shady Rill, 244 Camel's Nose, The, 240 Chanticleer, 72 Child, A Sleeping, 132 Child at Bethlehem, The, 155 Child's Fancy, A, 95 Child's Grace, A, 241 Child's Laughter, A, 145 Child's Prayer, A, 252 Child's Thought of God, A, 241 Children, Little, 137 Children, Other Little, 123 Chill, A, 144 Christmas Holly, The, 273 Christmas Lullaby, A, 267 Christmas Silence, The, 260 Christmas Song, 261 Christmas Trees, The, 265 City Child, The, 173 Cleanliness, 126 Clouds, 40 Corn-Fields, 248 Cottager to Her Infant, 230 Cow-Boy's Song, The, 217 Cradle Hymn (Watts), 258 Cradle Hymn (Luther), 272 Daffy-Down-Dilly, 91 Daisy's Song, The, 103 Dandelions, 98 Day, A, 28 Deaf and Dumb, 159 Dear Little Violets, 101 Discontent, 193 Doll, Dressing the, 167 Doll, The Lost, 166 Dolladine, 167 Elf and the Dormouse, The, 213 Elf, The Little, 188 Fable, 206 Fairies of the Caldon-Low, The, 209 Fairies' Shopping, The, 204 Fairies, The Child and the, 187 Fairies, The Last Voyage of The, 184 Fairy Folk, The, 181 Fairy in Armor, A, 183 February, In, 5 Fern, A New, 186 Fern Song, 90 Flax Flower, The, 99 Flower Folk, The, 81 Fountain, The, 34 Garaine, Little, 140 Garden, In a, 151 Good Luck, For, 105 Good-Morning, 29 Good-Night and Good-Morning, 136 Grass, The Voice of the, 36 Guessing Song, 45 Hie Away, 176 High and Low, 244 How the Leaves Came Down, 17 Hunting Song, 176 Infant Joy, 129 I Remember, I Remember, 135 I Saw Three Ships, 268 Jack Frost, 47 Kitten and Falling Leaves, The, 121 Lady Moon, 30 Lamb, The, 242 Lamb, The Pet, 116 Lambs in the Meadow, 115 Land of Story-Books, The, 172 Lark and the Rook, The, 56 Letter, A, to Lady Margaret Cavendish Holles-Harley, when a Child, 141 Little Christel, 250 Little Dandelion, 97 Little Gustava, 152 Little Land, The, 148 Little White Lily, 83 Lobster Quadrille, A, 202 Love and the Child, 142 Lucy Gray, 156 Lullaby of an Infant Chief, 226 Lullaby, Old Gaelic, 228 Magpie's Nest, The, 198 March, 6 Marjorie's Almanac, 3 May, 13 Meg Merrilies, 214 Midsummer Song, A, 207 Milking Time, 113 My Pony, 109 Nearly Ready, 7 Neighbors of the Christ Night, 271 Night, 232 Night and Day, 243 Nightfall in Dordrecht, 233 Nightingale and the Glowworm, The, 195 Now the Noisy Winds Are Still, 33 Offertory, An, 261 O Lady Moon, 31 Old Gaelic Lullaby, 228 "One, Two, Three," 188 Owl, The, 70 Owl and the Pussy-Cat, The, 201 Pedlar's Caravan, The, 170 Piping Down the Valleys Wild, 131 Play-Time, 163 Polly, 143 Rain, Signs of, 41 Rivulet, The, 46 Robert of Lincoln, 75 Robin Redbreast, 54 Robin Redbreast, An Epitaph on a, 67 Rockaby, Lullaby, 224 Romance, 215 St. Nicholas, A Visit from, 262 Sandman, The, 228 Santa Claus, 269 Sea-Song from the Shore, A, 171 Seal Lullaby, 113 September, 16 Seven Times One, 133 Sheep and Lambs, 245 Shower, A Sudden, 43 Singer, The, 73 Sleep, A Charm to Call, 231 Sleep, My Treasure, 225 Snowbird, The, 57 Snowdrops, 89 Snowflakes, 49 Song (Keats), 69 Song (Peacock), 104 Spaniel, On a, Called Beau, Killing a Young Bird, 111 Spring, 9 Spring and Summer, 14 Spring Song, 7 Spring, The Coming of, 11 Spring, The Voice of, 10 Storm, After the, 156 Strange Lands, 44 Summer Days, 15 Swallows, The, 53 Sweet and Low, 227 Thank You, Pretty Cow, 114 Thanksgiving Day, 196 Thanksgiving Fable, A, 197 The Water! the Water! 49 There's Nothing Like the Rose, 89 Thimble, What May Happen to a, 190 Titmouse, The, 64 To His Saviour, a Child; A Present by a Child, 246 Tree, The, 102 Violet Bank, A, 88 Violet, The, 90 Violets, 85 Voice, The Still Small, 238 Waterfall, The, 35 What Does Little Birdie Say? 69 What the Winds Bring, 29 What Would You See? 247 Where Go the Boats? 125 Who Stole the Bird's Nest? 59 Wild Geese, 71 Wild Winds, 32 Wind in a Frolic, The, 38 Wind, The, 33 Windy Nights, 31 Winter Night, 19 Wishing, 127 Wonderful World, The, 27 World's Music, The, 146 Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, 222 Year's Windfalls, A (Rossetti), 20 Young Dandelion, 86 * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Page xi, "v" changed to "ix" for actual location of poem entitled "Lilliput Notice." Page xiii, "Child's" changed to "Bird's" to conform to text (Bird's Song in Spring) Page xiv, "Bjoörnson" changed to "Björnson" (Björnstjerne Björnson) Page 151, a break was inserted between the lines: Fairer though they be than dreams of ours. Baby, hear the birds! 
2294	----	ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE, Editor CONTENTS HOME BOUND JOSEPH AUSLANDER AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL KATHERINE LEE BATES YELLOW CLOVER KATHERINE LEE BATES THE RETURNING SYLVESTER BAXTER TWO MOODS FROM THE HILL ERNEST BENSHIMOL A BANQUET ERNEST BENSHIMOL SONG GEORGE CABOT LODGE THE WORLDS MARTHA GILBERT DICKINSON BIANCHI THE RIOT GAMALIEL BRADFORD HUNGER GAMALIEL BRADFORD EXIT GOD GAMALIEL BRADFORD ROUSSEAU GAMALIEL BRADFORD JOHN MASEFIELD AMY BRIDGMAN 1620-1920 LE BARON RUSSEL BRIGGS THE CROSS-CURRENT ABBIE FARWELL BROWN CANDLEMAS ALICE BROWN SUNRISE ON MANSFIELD MOUNTAIN ALICE BROWN BURNT ARE THE PETALS OF LIFE ELSIE PUMPELLY CABOT FOUR FOUNTAINS. AFTER RESPIGHI JESSICA CARR IN THE TROLLEY CAR RUTH BALDWIN CHENERY IN IRISH RAIN MARTHA HASKELL CLARK CRETONNE TROPICS GRACE HAZARD CONKLING TO HILDA OF HER ROSES GRACE HAZARD CONKLING DANDELION HILDA CONKLING RED ROOSTER HILDA CONKLING VELVETS HILDA CONKLING THE MOODS FANNY STEARNS DAVIS HILL-FANTASY FANNY STEARNS DAVIS THE MIRAGE NATHAN HASKELL DOLE THE ROAD BEYOND THE TOWN MICHAEL EARLS, S.J. THE LILAC WALTER PRICHARD EATON GOD, THROUGH HIS OFFSPRING NATURE, GAVE ME LOVE CHARLES GIBSON TO MUSIC MAUDE GORDON-ROBY THE VOICE IN THE SONG MARY GERTRUDE HAMILTON HYMNS AND ANTHEMS SUNG AT WELLESLEY COLLEGE CAROLINE HAZARD REUBEN ROY HAROLD CRAWFORD STEARNS COUNTRY ROAD MARIE LOUISE HERSEY WREATHS CAROLYN HILLMAN MEMPHIS GORDON MALHERBE HILLMAN SAINT COLUMBKILLE E.J.V. HUIGINN MISS DOANE WINIFRED VIRGINIA JACKSON FALLEN FENCES WINIFRED VIRGINIA JACKSON CROSS-CURRENTS WINIFRED VIRGINIA JACKSON THE FAREWELL WINIFRED VIRGINIA JACKSON SONG OLIVER JENKINS LOVE AUTUMNAL OLIVER JENKINS ECHOES RUTH LAMBERT JONES WAR PICTURES RUTH LAMBERT JONES AN OLD SONG ARTHUR KETCHUM ROADSIDE REST ARTHUR KETCHUM OLD LIZETTE ON SLEEP AGNES LEE MOTHERHOOD AGNES LEE ESSEX GEORGE CABOT LODGE THE SONG OF THE WAVE GEORGE CABOT LODGE FRIMAIRE AMY LOWELL PATTERNS AMY LOWELL A BATHER AMY LOWELL LEPRECHAUNS AND CLURICAUNS DENNIS A. MCCARTHY L'ENVOI DOROTHEA LAWRENCE MANN TO IMAGINATION DOROTHEA LAWRENCE MANN DRAGON JEANETTE MARKS GREEN GOLDEN DOOR JEANETTE MARKS SLEEPY HOLLOW, CONCORD JOHN CLAIR MINOT THE SWORD OF ARTHUR JOHN CLAIR MINOT THE DIVINE FOREST CHARLES R. MURPHY MAGIC EDWARD J. O'BRIEN MICHAEL PAT EDWARD J. O'BRIAN SONG EDWARD J. O'BRIAN IN MEMORIAM: FRANCIS LEDWIDGE NORREYS JEPHSON O'CONNOR EVENSONG NORREYS JEPHSON O'CONNOR THE PROPHET JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY HARVEST-MOON: 1914 JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY HORSEMAN SPRINGING FROM THE DARK: A DREAM LILLA CABOT PERRY THREE QUATRAINS LILLA CABOT PERRY A VALENTINE UNSENT MARGARET PERRY SHIPBUILDERS ARTHUR STANWOOD PIER UNFADING PICTURES LOUELLA C. POOLE WITH WAVES AND WINGS CHARLOTTE PORTER BLUEBERRIES FRANK PRENTICE RAND NOCTURNE WILLIAM ROSCOIE THAYER ENVOI WILLIAM 'ROSCOE THAYER THERE WHERE THE SEA MARIE TUDOR MARRIAGE MARIE TUDOR PITY HAROLD VINAL A ROSE TO THE LIVING NIXON WATERMAN THE STORM G.O. WARREN WHERE THEY SLEEP G.O. WARREN BEAUTY G.O. WARREN COMRADES GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY THE FLIGHT GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY HOME-BOUND THE moon is a wavering rim where one fish slips, The water makes a quietness of sound; Night is an anchoring of many ships Home-bound. There are strange tunnelers in the dark, and whirs Of wings that die, and hairy spiders spin The silence into nets, and tenanters Move softly in. I step on shadows riding through the grass, And feel the night lean cool against my face; And challenged by the sentinel of space, I pass. JOSEPH AUSLANDE AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL O BEAUTIFUL for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed His grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea! O beautiful for pilgrim feet, Those stern, impassioned stress A thoroughfare for freedom beat Across the wilderness! America! America! God mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law! O beautiful for heroes proved In liberating strife Who more than self their country loved, And mercy more than life! America! America! May God thy gold refine, Till all success be nobleness, And every gain divine. O beautiful for patriot dream That sees beyond the years Thine alabaster cities gleam Undimmed by human tears! America! America! God shed His grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea! KATHERINE LEE BATES YELLOW CLOVER MUST I, who walk alone, come on it still, This Puck of plants The wise would do away with, The sunshine slants To play with, Our wee, gold-dusty flower, the yellow clover, Which once in Parting for a time That then seemed long, Ere time for you was over, We sealed our own? Do you remember yet, O Soul beyond the stars, Beyond the uttermost dim bars Of space, Dear Soul, who found earth sweet, Remember by love's grace, In dreamy hushes of the heavenly song, How suddenly we halted in our climb, Lingering, reluctant, up that farthest hill, Stooped for the blossoms closest to our feet, And gave them as a token Each to Each, In lieu of speech, In lieu of words too grievous to be spoken, Those little, gypsy, wondering blossoms wet With a strange dew of tears? So it began, This vagabond, unvalued yellow clover, To be our tenderest language. All the years It lent a new zest to the summer hours, As each of us went scheming to surprise The other with our homely, laureate flowers. Sonnets and odes Fringing our daily roads. Can amaranth and asphodel Bring merrier laughter to your eyes? Oh, if the Blest, in their serene abodes, Keep any wistful consciousness of earth, Not grandeurs, but the childish ways of love, Simplicities of mirth, Must follow them above With touches of vague homesickness that pass Like shadows of swift birds across the grass. Beneath some foreign arch of sky, How many a time the rover You or I, For life oft sundered look from look, And voice from voice, the transient dearth Schooling my soul to brook This distance that no messages may span, Would chance Upon our wilding by a lonely well, Or drowsy watermill, Or swaying to the chime of convent bell, Or where the nightingales of old romance With tragical contraltos fill Dim solitudes of infinite desire; And once I joyed to meet Our peasant gadabout A trespasser on trim, seigniorial seat, Twinkling a saucy eye As potentates paced by. Our golden cord! our soft, pursuing flame From friendship's altar fire! How proudly we would pluck and tame The dimpling clusters, mutinously gay! How swiftly they were sent Far, far away On journeys wide, By sea and continent, Green miles and blue leagues over, From each of us to each, That so our hearts might reach, And touch within the yellow clover, Love's letter to be glad about Like sunshine when it came! My sorrow asks no healing; it is love; Let love then make me brave To bear the keen hurts of This careless summertide, Ay, of our own poor flower, Changed with our fatal hour, For all its sunshine vanished when you died; Only white clover blossoms on your grave. KATHERINE LEE BATES THE RETURNING We long for her, we yearn for her-- Yes, ardently we yearn For her return. Recalling those beloved days (Days intimate with ways Of friends so near to us And life so dear to us), We yearn unspeakably for her return. And come she must... Yet while we trust We soon may see the passing of this agony Which makes intrusive years still seem A fearsome dream, We know that when she comes She really comes not back again. She'll come in other guise And under fairer skies-- And yet to bitter pain! That day she went away Our homes with laughing youth were filled. Where then was happiness Is now distress, The laughter stilled; For when she left Youth followed her-- We stay bereft. So all our golden joy For what she brings Must carry gray alloy: The sorrow that she can not lay, The mysery that she can not stay-- While all the gladsome songs she sings Must bear for undertones Old sighs and echoed moans. As they who go away In flush of youth May come quite worn and gray And bringing naught but ruth-- So, when the strife shall cease, And when she comes at last, When all the armies vast Shall at her feet Kneel down to greet Thrice welcome Peace, This world will be so changed (So many dear ones dead, So many friends estranged, So many blessings fled, So many wonted ways forever barred, So many coming days forever marred) That then She truly comes not back again-- She, the Peace we knew. Yet how we long for her! How ardently we yearn For her return! SYLVESTER BAXTER TWO MOODS FROM THE HILL I. YOUTH I LOVE to watch the world from here, for all The numberless living portraits that are drawn Upon the mind. Far over is the sea, Fronting the sand, a few great yellow dunes, A salt marsh stumbling after, rank and green, With brackish gullies wandering in between, All this from the hill. And more: a clump of dwarfed and twisted cedars, Sentinels over the marsh, and bright with the sun A field of daises wandering in the wind As though a hidden serpent glided through, A broken wall, a new-plowed field, and then The dusty road and the abodes of men Surrounding the hill. How small the enclosure is wherein there lives Each phase and passion of life, the distant sail Dips in the limpid bosom of the sea, From that far place to where in state the turf Raises a throne for me upon the hill, Each little love and lust of a living thing Can thus be compassed in a rainbow ring And seen from the hill. II. AGE Why did I build my cottage on a hill Facing the sea? Why did I plan each terraced lawn to slope Down to the deep blue billowy breast of hope, Surging and sweeping, laughing and leaping, Tumbling its garments of foam upon the shore, Rustling the sands that know my step no more, I should have found a valley, deep and still, To shelter me. There flows the river, and it seems asleep So far away, Yet I remember whip of wave and roar Of wind that rose and smote against the oar, Smote and retreated, Proud but defeated, While I rejoiced and rowed into the brine, Drawing on wet and heavy-straining line The great cod quivering from the deep As counterplay. What is the solace of these hills and vales That rise and fall? What is there glorious in the greenwood glen, Or twittering thrush or wing of darting wren? Give me the gusty, Raucous and rusty Call of the sea gull in the echoing sky, The wild shriek of the winds that cannot die, Give me the life that follows the bending sails, Or none at all! ERNEST BENSHIMOL A BANQUET ONE MEMORY FROM SOCRATES AFTER the song the love, and after the love the play, Flute girl and pretty boy blowing Bubbles of sparkling Wine into darkling Beards of a former austerity, stern even now, but Fast growing Foolish, with less of a stately Reserve that held them sedately. Oh Zeus, what a sight! With the wine dripping off it, The grin of an ass on a bald-pated prophet. After the feast the night, and after the night the day, Fool and philosopher stirring With the day dawning, Stretching and yawning, While in each wine-throbbing, desolated brain is the Wheeling and whirring Of thousands of bats, that the slaking Of throats will not hinder from aching, No wine for the brow that is beating to bursting, But water at morning is quench for the thirsting! ERNEST BENSHIMOL SONG OUT of one heart the birds and I together, Earth hushed in twilight, Low through the live-oaks hung heavy with silver, Gemmed with the sky-light, Under the great wet star Shaking with light, we jar Lute-voiced the silence with intervaled music. While under the margined world the slow sun lingers, Flaming earth's portal, Over the lilac dusk spreads his great fingers-- Earth is immortal! While the frail beauty dies. Dream in the dreamer's eyes, All the good gladness turns praise for the singers. Hark, 'tis the breath of life! Hush! and I need it; Northern, gigantic,-- Questing the silences, herding the sudden foam Down the Atlantic; Leaves from the autumn's store Shrill at my desert door, They and I out of one heart that is grieving. GEORGE CABOT LODGE THE WORLDS I SAW an idler on a summer day Piping with Iris by a dancing brook; And all his world was rife with Pleasures gay, And languid Follies smiled from every nook. I saw an artist in a world of dreams, His rainbow rising from his radiant task, To throw its magic prism beams O'er Fancy's changeful masque and counter-masque. I saw Toil--stooping underneath a world Whereon his foster-brothers lighter tread, His skyward pinions ever closer furled Before the grim necessity of bread! I saw a sinner working hard to be Worthy his death-wage from the mint of time; I saw a sailor, unto whom the sea Was hearth and hope and love and wedding-chime. I saw a mother living in her child-- I saw a saint among his fellow men-- Brave soldiery before my eyes defiled And solemn-hearted scholars--Sudden then I cried: "The stars are no less neighborly In their ethereal remoteness swung, Than these near human orbits wherein we Live out our lives and speak our chosen tongue! "Love seek through all--less there be one Least soul unlit within the night-- And over all, the selfsame sun Give each creation light!" MARTHA GILBERT DICKINSON BIANCHI THE RIOT YOU may think my life is quiet. I find it full of change, An ever-varied diet, As piquant as 'tis strange. Wild thoughts are always flying, Like sparks across my brain, Now flashing out, now dying, To kindle soon again. Fine fancies set me thrilling, And subtle monsters creep Before my sight unwilling: They even haunt my sleep. One broad, perpetual riot Enfolds me night and day. You think my life is quiet? You don't know what you say. GAMALIEL BRADFORD HUNGER I'VE been a hopeless sinner, but I understand a saint, Their bend of weary knees and their contortions long and faint, And the endless pricks of conscience, like a hundred thousand pins, A real perpetual penance for imaginary sins. I love to wander widely, but I understand a cell, Where you tell and tell your beads because you've nothing else to tell, Where the crimson joy of flesh, with all its wild fantastic tricks, Is forgotten in the blinding glory of the crucifix. I cannot speak for others, but my inmost soul is torn With a battle of desires making all my life forlorn. There are moments when I would untread the paths that I have trod. I'm a haunter of the devil, but I hunger after God. GAMALIEL BRADFORD EXIT GOD Of old our father's God was real, Something they almost saw, Which kept them to a stern ideal And scourged them into awe. They walked the narrow path of right Most vigilantly well, Because they feared eternal night And boiling depths of Hell. Now Hell has wholly boiled away And God become a shade. There is no place for him to stay In all the world He made. The followers of William James Still let the Lord exist, And call Him by imposing names, A venerable list. But nerve and muscle only count, Gray matter of the brain, And an astonishing amount Of inconvenient pain. I sometimes wish that God were back In this dark world and wide; For though sonic virtues He might lack, He had his pleasant side. GAMALIEL BRADFORD ROUSSEAU THAT odd, fantastic ass, Rousseau, Declared himself unique. How men persist in doing so, Puzzles me more than Greek. The sins that tarnish whore and thief Beset me every day. My most ethereal belief Inhabits common clay. GAMALIEL BRADFORD JOHN MASEFIELD I MASEFIELD (HIMSELF) GOD said, and frowned, as He looked on Shropshire clay: "Alone, 'twont do; composite, would I make This man-child rare; 'twere well, methinks, to take A handful from the Stratford tomb, and weigh A few of Shelley's ashes; Bunyan may Contribute, too, and, for my sweet Son's sake, I'll visit Avalon; then, let me slake The whole with Wyclif-water from the Bay. A sailor, he! Too godly, though, I fear; Offset it with tobacco! Next, I'll find Hedge-roses, star-dust, and a vagrant's mind; His mother's heart now let me breathe upon; When west winds blow, I'll whisper in her ear: "Apocalypse awaits him; call him John!" II HIS PORTRAIT A Man of Sorrows! with such haunted eyes, I trow, the Master looked across the lake,-- Looked from the Judas-heart, so soon to make Of Him the world's historic sacrifice; Moreover, as I gaze, do more arise; Great souls, great pallid ghosts of pain, who wake And wander yet; all, weary men who brake Their hearts; all hemlock-drunk, with growing wise: Hudson adrift; Defoe; the Wandering Jew; Tannhauser; Faust; Andrea; phantoms, all, In Masefield's eyes you lodge; and to the wall I turn you,--hand a-tremble,--lest you make Of mine own stricken eyes a mirror, too. Wherein the sad world's sadder for your sake. III HIS "DAUBER" O Masefield's "Dauber!" You, who being dead, Yet speak: heroic, dauntless, flaming soul, Too suddenly snuffed out! Here take fresh toll Of cognizance, and, in your ocean bed, Serenely rest, assured that who has read What you would fain have pictured of the Pole Would gladly match your part against the whole Of many a modern artist, Paris-bred. And more than this: if you, indeed, are his, Then, by a dual truth, he, too, is yours; For, marked and credited by what endures, Were it the only thing, which bears his name, (O deathless Soul, I speak you true in this!) "The Dauber" has brought Masefield to his fame. IV HIS "GALLIPOLI" "Small wonder," speaks my pensive self, "that he Whose passion 'tis to sing of men who fail,-- (Belabored, broken by The Unseen Flail) Small wonder that be makes Gallipoli His fervent text, for could there be A costlier failure in Earth's shuddering tale? Think of heroic Sulva's bloody swale; Of Anzac's tortured thirst and agony!" But as I read, protesting voices cry: "Not we, Not we, who fell among the daffodils, Who conquered Death among those blistered hills, And found our glory after mortal pain; Not we, who failed and lost Gallipoli; The sad, strange failure theirs who mourn in vain!" V HIS MEAD So, Masefield, have your royal words once more Called forth the praise of men, where praise is due; Your great elegiac, tragically true, Must leave all Britain prouder than before; And, in spite of all that breaking hearts deplore, And all that anguished consciences must rue, One arrowed gladness surely pierces through From London's centre to Canadian shore: When England, sobbing, mourns Gallipoli, When warm tears flow for Rupert Brooke And all the splendid Youth her error took As hostage from the fields of daffodils, Let this a present, living solace be: You are not sleeping in those cruel hills! AMY BRIDGEMAN 1620-1920 BEFORE him rolls the dark, relentless ocean; Behind him stretch the cold and barren sands; Wrapt in the mantle of his deep devotion The Pilgrim kneels, and clasps his lifted hands; "God of our fathers, who hast safely brought us Through seas and sorrows, famine, fire, and sword; Who, in Thy mercies manifold hast taught us To trust in Thee, our leader and our Lord; "God, who hast send Thy truth to shine before us, A fiery pillar, beaconing on the sea; God, who hast spread thy wings of mercy o'er us; God, who hast set our children's children free, "Freedom Thy new-born nation here shall cherish; Grant us Thy covenant, changing, sure: Earth shall decay; the firmament shall perish; Freedom and Truth, immortal shall endure." Face to the Indian arrows. Face to the Prussian guns, From then till now the Pilgrim's vow Has held the Pilgrim's sons. He braved the red man's ambush, He loosed the black man's chain; His spirit broke King George's yoke And the battleships of Spain. He crossed the seething ocean; He dared the death-strewn track; He charged in the hell of Saint Mihiel And hurled the tyrant back. For the voice of the lonely Pilgrim Who knelt upon the strand A people hears three hundred years In the conscience of the land. Daughter of Truth and mother of Courage, Conscience, all hail! Heart of New England, strength of the Pilgrims, Thou shalt prevail. Look how the empires rise and fall! Athens robed in her learning and beauty, Rome in her royal lust for power-- Each has flourished for her little hour, Risen and fallen and ceased to be. What of her by the Western Sea, Born and bred as the child of Duty, Sternest of them all? She it is and she alone Who built on faith as her corner stone; Of all the nations none but she Knew that the truth shall make us free. Daughter of Courage, mother of heros, Freedom divine. Light of New England, Star of the Pilgrim, Still shalt thou shine. Yet even as we in our pride rejoice, Hark to the prophet's warning voice: "The Pilgrim's thrift is vanished And the Pilgrim's faith is dead, And the Pilgrim's God is banished, And Mammon reigns in his stead; And work is damned as an evil, And men and women cry, In their restless haste, 'Let us spend and waste, And live; for to-morrow we die.' "And law is trampled under; And the nations stand aghast, As they hear the distant thunder Of the storm that marches fast; And we,--whose ocean borders Shut off the sound and the sight, We will wait for marching orders; The world has seen us fight; We have earned our days of revel; 'On with the dance'! we cry. It is pain to think; we will eat and drink! And live; for to-morrow we die." "We have laughed in the eyes of danger; We have given our bravest and best; We have succored the starving stranger; Others shall heed the rest.' And the revel never ceases; And the nations hold their breath; And our laughter peals, and the mad world reels, To a carnival of death. "Slaves of sloth and the senses, Clippers of Freedom's wings, Come back to the Pilgrim's Army And fight for the King of Kings; Come back to the Pilgrim's conscience; Be born in the nation's birth; And strive again as simple men For the freedom of the earth. Freedom a free-born nation still shall cherish, Be this our covenant, unchanging, sure: Earth shall decay; the firmament shall perish; Freedom and Truth immortal shall endure." Land of our fathers, when the tempest rages, When the wide earth is racked with war and crime, Founded forever on the Rock of Ages, Beaten in vain by surging seas of time, Even as the shallop on the breakers riding, Even as the Pilgrim kneeling on the shore, Firm in thy faith and fortitude abiding, Hold thou thy children free forever more. And when we sail as Pilgrims' sons and daughters The spirit's Mayflower into seas unknown, Driving across the waste of wintry waters The voyage every soul shall make alone, The Pilgrim's faith, the Pilgrim's courage grant us; Still shines the truth that for the Pilgrim shone. We are his seed; nor life nor death shall daunt us. The port is Freedom! Pilgrim heart, sail on! LE BARON RUSSELL BRIGGS THE CROSS-CURRENT THROUGH twelve stout generations New England blood I boast; The stubborn pastures bred them, The grim, uncordial coast, Sedate and proud old cities,-- Loved well enough by me, Then how should I be yearning To scour the earth and sea. Each of my Yankee forbears Wed a New England mate: They dwelt and did and died here, Nor glimpsed a rosier fate. My clan endured their kindred; But foreigners they loathed, And wandering folk, and minstrels, And gypsies motley-clothed. Then why do patches please me, Fantastic, wild array? Why have I vagrant fancies For lads from far away. My folk were godly Churchmen,-- Or paced in Elders' weeds; But all were grave and pious And hated heathen creeds. Then why are Thor and Wotan To dread forces still? Why does my heart go questing For Pan beyond the hill? My people clutched at freedom.-- Though others' wills they chained,-- But made the Law and kept it,-- And Beauty, they restrained. Then why am I a rebel To laws of rule and square? Why would I dream and dally, Or, reckless, do and dare? O righteous, solemn Grandsires, O dames, correct and mild, Who bred me of your virtues! Whence comes this changing child?-- The thirteenth generation,-- Unlucky number this!-- My grandma loved a Pirate, And all my faults are his! A gallant, ruffled rover, With beauty-loving eye, He swept Colonial waters Of coarser, bloodier fry. He waved his hat to danger, At Law he shook his fist. Ah, merrily he plundered, He sang and fought and kissed! Though none have found his treasure, And none his part would take,-- I bless that thirteenth lady Who chose him for my sake! ABBIE FARWELL BROWN CANDLEMAS O HEARKEN, all ye little weeds That lie beneath the snow, (So low, dear hearts, in poverty so low!) The sun hath risen for royal deeds, A valiant wind the vanguard leads; Now quicken ye, lest unborn seeds Before ye rise and blow. O furry living things, adream On winter's drowsy breast, (How rest ye there, how softly, safely rest!) Arise and follow where a gleam Of wizard gold unbinds the stream, And all the woodland windings seem With sweet expectance blest. My birds, come back! the hollow sky Is weary for your note. (Sweet-throat, come back! O liquid, mellow throat!) Ere May's soft minions hereward fly, Shame on ye, Laggards, to deny The brooding breast, the sun-bright eye, The tawny, shining coat! ALICE BROWN SUNRISE ON MANSFIELD MOUNTAIN O SWIFT forerunners, rosy with the race! Spirits of dawn, divinely manifest Behind your blushing banners in the sky, Daring invaders of Night's tenting-ground, How do ye strain on forward-bending foot, Each to be first in heralding of joy! With silence sandalled, so they weave their way, And so they stand, with silence panoplied, Chanting, through mystic symbollings of flame, Their solemn invocation to the light. O changeless guardians! O ye wizard first! What strenuous philter feeds your potency. That thus ye rest, in sweet wood-hardiness, Ready to learn of all and utter naught? What breath may move ye, or what breeze invite To odorous hot lendings of the heart? What wind-but all the winds are yet afar, And e'en the little tricksy zephyr sprites, That fleet before them, like their elfin locks, Have lagged in sleep, nor stir nor waken yet To pluck the robe of patient majesty. Too still for dreaming, too divine for sleep, So range the firs, the constant, fearless ones. Warders of mountain secrets, there they wait, Each with his cloak about him, breathless, calm. And yet expectant, as who knows the dawn, And all night thrills with memory and desire, Searching in what has been for what shall be: The marvel of the ne'er familiar day, Sacred investiture of life renewed, The chrism of dew, the coronal of flame. Low in the valley lies the conquered rout Of man's poor, trivial turmoil, lost and drowned Under the mist, in gleaming rivers rolled, Where oozy marsh contends with frothing main. And rounding all, springs one full, ambient arch, One great good limpid world--so still, so still! For no sound echoes from its crystal curve Save four clear notes, the song of that lone bird Who, brave but trembling, tries his morning hymn, And has no heart to finish, for the awe And wonder of this pearling globe of dawn. Light, light eternal! veiling-place of stars! Light, the revealer of dread beauty's face! Weaving whereof the hills are lambent clad! Mighty libation to the Unknown God! Cup whereat pine-trees slake their giant thirst And little leaves drink sweet delirium! Being and breath and potion! living soul And all-informing heart of all that lives! How can we magnify thine awful name Save by its chanting: Light! and Light! and Light! An exhalation from far sky retreats, It grows in silence, as 'twere self-create, Suffusing all the dusky web of night. But one lone corner it invades not yet, Where low above a black and rimy crag Hangs the old moon, thin as a battered shield, The holy, useless shield of long-past wars, Dinted and frosty, on the crystal dark. But lo! the east,--let none forget the east, Pathway ordained of old where He should tread. Through some sweet magic common in the skies, The rosy banners are with saffron tinct; The saffron grows to gold, the gold is fire, And led by silence more majestical Than clash of conquering arms, He comes! He comes! He holds His spear benignant, sceptrewise, And strikes out flame from the adoring hills. ALICE BROWN BURNT ARE THE PETALS OF LIFE BURNT are the petals of life as a rose fallen and crumbled to dust. Blackened the heart of the past is, ashes that must Forever be sifted, more precious than sunbeams that open the budding to-morrow. Once was a passion completed,-too perfect, the Gods have not broken to borrow-- Blackened the heart of the past is, ashes that must Forever be sifted. O, loving to-morrow The rose of the past is, Life-Eternity's dust. ELSIE PUMPELLY CABOT FOUR FOUNTAINS AFTER RESPIGHI FRESH mists of Roman dawn; For water search the cattle; Faintly on damp air sounds the shepherd's horn Above fountain Giulia's prattle. Triton, joyous and loud Of Naiads summons troops; A frenziedly leaping and mingling crowd, Dancing, pursuing groups. At high noon the trumpets peal, Neptune's chariot passes by; Trains of sirens, tritons, Trevi's jets heal Then trumpets' echoes sigh. Tolling bell and sunset, Twittering birds and calm; Medici's fountain, shimmering net, Into the night brings balm. JESSICA CARR IN THE TROLLEY CAR THE swart Italian in the trolley car, Hoarded his children in his arms and breast; The mother, all unheeding, sat afar, Her splendid eyes were vague, her lips compressed. One Raphael-boy slipped from his father's knee, Climbed to her side, and gently stroked her cheek, She turned away, and would not hear his plea, She turned away, and would not even speak. With trembling lips the child crept back again To the warm shelter of his father's breast; We looked indignant pity, for till then We thought that mother-love bore every test. We rose to go, the father-mother said, In deep, low tones, "Don't t'inka hard you bet The younges' was too-seeck, and he is dead, She will be alla right, when she forget." When she forgets! "Great-Heart," hold closer yet Thy precious brood and let it feel no lack! Until her soul shall wake, but not forget, When the warm tides of love come surging back. RUTH BALDWIN CHENERY IN IRISH RAIN THE great world stretched its arms to me and held me to its breast, They say I've song-birds in my throat, and give me of their best; But sure, not all their gold can buy, can take me back again To little Mag o' Monagan's a-singing in the rain. The silver-slanting Irish rain, all warm and sweet that fills The little brackened lowland pools, and drifts across the hills; That turns the hill-grass cool and wet to dusty childish feet, And hangs above the valley-roofs, filmed blue with burning peat. And oh the kindly neighbor-folk that called the young ones in, Down fragrant yellow-tapered paths that thread the prickly whin; The hot, sweet smell of oaten-cake, the kettle purring soft, The dear-remembered Irish speech--they call to me how oft! They mind me just a slip o' girl in tattered kirtle blue, But oh they loved me for myself, and not for what I do! And never one but had a joy to pass the time of day With little Mag o' Monagan's a-laughing down the way. There's fifty roofs to shelter me where one was set before, But make me free to that again--I'll not be wanting more, But sure I know not tears nor gold can turn the years again To little Mag o' Monagan's a-singing in the rain. MARTHA HASKELL CLARK CRETONNE TROPICS THE cretonne in your willow chair Shows through a zone of rosy air, A tree of parrots, agate-eyed, With blue-green crests and plumes of pride And beaks most formidably curved. I hear the river, silver-nerved, To their shrill protests make reply, And the palm forest stir and sigh. Curious, the spell that colors cast, Binding the fancy coweb-fast, And you would smile if you could know I like your cretonne parrots so! But I have seen them sail toward night Superbly homeward, the last light Lifting them like a purple sea Scorned and made use of arrogantly; And I have heard them cry aloud From out a tall palm's emerald cloud; And I brought home a brilliant feather, Lost like a flake of sunset weather. Here in the north the sea is white And mother-of-pearl in morning light, Quite lovely, but there is a glare That daunts me. Now the willow chair Suggests a more perplexing sea, Till my heart aches with memory And parrots dye the air around, And I forget the pallid Sound. GRACE HAZARD TO HILDA OF HER ROSES ENOUGH has been said about roses To fill thirty thick volumes; There are as many songs about roses As there are roses in the world That includes Mexico ... the Azores ... Oregon... It is a pity your roses Are too late for Omar... It is a pity Keats has gone... Yet there must be something left to say Of flowers like these! Adventurers, They pushed their way Through dewy tunnels of the June night Now they confer.... A little tremulous.... Dazzled by the yellow sea-beach of morning If Herrick would tiptoe back... If Blake were to look this way Ledwidge, even! GRACE HAZARD CONKLING DANDELION LITTLE soldier with the golden helmet, O What are you guarding on my lawn? You with your green gun And your yellow beard, Why do you stand so stiff? There is only the grass to fight! HILDA CONKLING RED ROOSTER RED ROOSTER in your gray coop, O stately creature with tail-feathers red and blue, Yellow and black, You have a comb gay as a parade On your head: You have pearl trinkets On your feet: The short feathers smooth along your back Are the dark color of wet rocks, Or the rippled green of ships When I look at their sides through water. I don't know how you happened to be made So proud, so foolish, Wearing your coat of many colors, Shouting all day long your crooked words, Loud... sharp... not beautiful! HILDA CONKLING VELVETS (BY A BED OF PANSIES) THIS pansy has a thinking face Like the yellow moon. This one has a face with white blots; I call him the clown. Here goes one down the grass With a pretty look of plumpness; She is a little girl going to school With her hands in the pockets of her pinafore. Her name is Sue. I like this one, in a bonnet, Waiting, Her eyes are so deep! But these on the other side, These that wear purple and blue, They are the Velvets, The king with his cloak, The queen with her gown, The prince with his feather. These are dark and quiet And stay alone. I know you, Velvets, Color of Dark, Like the pine-tree on the hill When stars shine! HILDA CONKLING THE MOODS THE Moods have laid their hands across my hair: The Moods have drawn their fingers through my heart; My hair shall never more lie smooth and bright, But stir like tide-worn sea-weed, and my heart Shall never more be glad of small sweet things,-- A wild rose, or a crescent moon,-a book Of little verses, or a dancing child. My heart turns crying from the rose and book, My heart turns crying from the thin bright moon, And weeps with useless sorrow for the child. The Moods have loosed a wind to vex my hair, And made my heart too wise, that was a child. Now I shall blow like smitten candle-flame: I shall desire all things that may not be: The years, the stars, the souls of ancient men, All tears that must, and smiles that may not be,-- Yes, glimmering lights across a windy ford, And vagrant voices on a darkened plain, And holy things, and outcast things, and things, Far too remote, frail-bodied to be plain. My pity and my joy are grown alike. I cannot sweep the strangeness from my heart. The Moods have laid swift hands across my hair: The Moods have drawn swift fingers through my heart. FANNIE STEARNS DAVIS HILL-FANTASY SITTETH by the red cairn a brown One, a hoofed One, High upon the mountain, where the grasses fail. Where the ash-trees flourish far their blazing bunches to the sun, A brown One, a hoofed One, pipes against the gale. Up scrambled I then, furry fingers helping me. I was on the mountain, wandering, wandering; No one but the pine trees and the white birch knew. Over rocks I scrambled, looked up and saw that Strange Thing, Peaked ears and sharp horns, pricked against the blue. Oh, and, how he piped there! piped upon the high reeds Till the blue air crackled like a frost-film on a pool! Oh, and how he spread himself, like a child whom no one heeds, Tumbled chuckling in the brook, all sleek and kind and cool! He had berries 'twixt his horns, crimson-red as cochineal., Bobbing, wagging wantonly they tickled him, and oh, How his deft lips puckered round the reed, seemed to chase and steal Sky-music, earth-music, tree-music low! I said "Good-day, Thou!" He said, "Good-day, Thou!" Wiped his reed against the spotted doe-skin on his back, He said, "Come up here, and I will teach thee piping now. While the earth is singing so, for tunes we shall not lack." Up scrambled I then, furry fingers helping me. Up scrambled I. So we sat beside the cairn. Broad into my face laughed that horned Thing so naughtily. Oh, it was a rascal of a woodland Satyr's bairn! 'So blow, and so, Thou! Move thy fingers faster, look! Move them like the little leaves and whirling midges. So! Soon `twill twist like tendrils and out-twinkle like the lost brook. Move thy fingers merrily, and blow! Blow! Blow!" Brown One! Hoofed One! Beat time to keep me straight. Kick it on the red stone, whistle in my ear. Brush thy crimson berries in my face, then hold thy breath, for--wait! Joy comes bubbling to me lips. I pipe, oh, hear! Blue sky, art glad of us? Green wood, art glad of us? Old hard-heart mountain, dost thou hear me, how I blow? Far away the sea-isles swim in sun-haze luminous. Each one has a color like the seven-splendor bow. Wind, wind, wind, dost thou mind me how I pipe, Now? Chipmunk chatt'ring in the beech, rabbit in the brake? Furry arm around my neck: "Oh, Thou art a brave one, Thou!" Satyr, little satyr-friend, my heart with joy doth ache! Sky-music, earth-music, tree-music tremulous, Water over steaming rocks, water in the shade, Storm-tune and sun-tune, how they flock up unto us, Sitting by the red cairn, gay and unafraid! Brown One, Hoofed One, give me nimble hoofs, Thou! Give me furry fingers and a secret furry tail! Pleasant are thy smooth horns: if their like were on my brow Might I not abide here, till the strong sun fail? Oh, the sorry brown eyes! Oh, the soft kind hand-touch, Sudden brush of velvet ears across my wind-cool cheek! "Play-mate, Pipe-mate, thou askest one good boon too much. I could never find thee horns, though day-long I seek. "Yet, keep the pipe, Thou: I will cut another one. Keep the pipe and play on it for all the world to hear. Ah, but it was good once to sit together in the sun! Though I have but half a soul, it finds thee very dear! "Wise Thing, Mortal Thing, yet my half-soul fears thee! Take the pipe and go thy ways,--quick now, for the sun Reels across the hot west and stumbles dazzled to the sea. Take the pipe, and oh-one kiss! then run, run, run! run!" Silence on the mountain. Lonely stands the high cairn, All the leaves a-shivering, all the stones dead-gray. O thou cold small pipe, which way is fled that Satyr's bairn? I am lost and all alone, and down drops the day. I was on the mountain, wandering, wandering There I got this Pipe o' dreams. Strange, when I blow, Something deep as human love starts a-crying, troubling. Is it only sky-music, earth-music low? FANNIE STEARNS DAVIS THE MIRAGE ACROSS the Bay are low-lying cliffs, Where stand fishermen's cottages: I can barely distinguish them with the naked eye. But to-day the cliffs are lifted, escarpt, Perpendicular, mysterious, inaccessible, And those sordid dwellings have become The magnificent fortified castles of Sea-kings. NATHAN HASKELL DOLE THE ROAD BEYOND THE TOWN A ROAD goes up a pleasant hill, And a little house looks down: Ah! but I see the roadway still And the day I left the town. The day I left my father's home, It's many a year ago, And a heart and hope were brave to roam the long, long road I know. The long, long road by hill and plain, It's tired the heart might be: But hope stayed bright in sun or rain, And a Voice that called to me. A Voice that called me over the hill And out of the little town: Ah! but I see the roadway still. And the good house looking down. The house that spake me never a No! As I started brave away, But said with a blessing, Go! And followed me every day. It followed me down the road of years, For a father's heart is true, And joy is sweet in a mother's tears For the deeds her child may do. The poor little deeds, all powerless For the Kingdom of God would be, Save in His mercy will He bless The road that goes with me: The road that left a pleasant hill, Where a little house looks down: Ah! but I bless the roadway still, And the land beyond the town. MICHAEL EARLS, S.J. THE LILAC THE scent of lilac in the air Hath made him drag his steps and pause Whence comes this scent within the Square, Where endless dusty traffic roars? A push-cart stands beside the curb, With fragrant blossoms laden high; Speak low, nor stare, lest we disturb His sudden reverie! He sees us not, nor heeds the din Of clanging car and scuffling throng; His eyes see fairer sights within, And memory hears the robin's song As once it trilled against the day, And shook his slumber in a room Where drifted with the breath of May The lilac's sweet perfume. The heart of boyhood in him stirs; The wonder of the morning skies, Of sunset gold behind the firs, Is kindled in his dreaming eyes: How far off is this sordid place, As turning from our sight away He crushes to his hungry face A purple lilac spray. WALTER PRICHARD EATON GOD, THROUGH HIS OFFSPRING NATURE, GAVE ME LOVE GOD, through his offspring Nature, gave me love, Though man in opposition saith me nay, And taketh from my heart its life to-day, As through the valley of the world I rove. Still unaccompanied, within the grove That doth enamored beings hold at play, My spirit must pursue its lonely way, And strive to pluck some flowers that bloom above. Oh, wherefore then doth Nature give desire To have that which mankind may not possess, And force him to endure on earth hell's fire, And live in one perpetual distress? Some evil power must such love inspire, And with it masquerade in Cupid's dress! CHARLES GIBSON TO MUSIC "Music, the language, the atmosphere of the Soul." FLY back where Melodies like lilies grow, My weary heart is bending low; Fly higher yet to joyful realms above, Where holy Angels dwell in love. Fly higher still and hear the Angel throng And bring to me their Glory-song: Ah Music, thou and I above the World May dwell where heaven with shining song is pearled! While Sun and Moon and all the planets roll I'll love thee, Music, language of my soul! Music-lark from on high, song that doth fly, Spark of the sky! MAUDE GORDON-ROBY THE VOICE IN THE SONG HIGH in the apple bough jauntily swinging, Hid by the branches in bridal array, Straight from his heart, all his life in his singing, Chants a wee bird, lures his mate with his lay. "Sweet, sweet, my sweet, Hear I entreat! Say, love, together, this bright sunny weather, Gold of the west we shall weave in a nest! Have no fear! Trust me, dear! Sunshine of May that will gild every day Pledge I to thee if thou'lt harken to me." Lo! in the light thro' the gay branches streaming, Quivering in answer to all the bird sings, Warm on a breath, leaps a soul with love gleaming, Speeds to its mate on its glittering wings. "Dear, on thy breast Earth yields its best! Loud in the singing I heard thy call ringing, Pleading and strong in the voice of the song, Whisper low,--Yes, just so!-- Softly revealing the depth of thy feeling, Words in whose fire glow thy love and desire." MARY GERTRUDE HAMILTON HYMNS AND ANTHEMS SUNG AT WELLESLEY COLLEGE I MOUNT CARMEL WHERE art Thou, O my Lord? Mount Carmel saw the throng Of priests and heard the song; To Baal was their call-- From morn till night did fall. Where art Thou, O my Lord? Again Mount Carmel heard Not in the spoken word, Not in the earthquake's shock, Not in the thunder roll, But in the inmost soul. II VESPER HYMN Send peaceful sleep, O Lord, this night, To keep us till the morning light; And let no vision of alarm Come near to do Thy children harm Within Thy circling arms we lie, O God, in Thine infinity; Our souls in quiet shall abide Beset with love on every side. III THIS IS THAT BREAD This is that Bread that came down from Heaven, he that eateth of this Bread shall live forever. Bread on which angels feed, Bread for the spirit's need By faith receiving, New life do Thou impart, New strength to every heart, Pure love of God Thou art To us believing. IV O SLOW OF HEART O slow of heart to believe! Ought Christ not to have suffered these things and to enter into His Glory? Quicken, Lord, my fainting heart, Touch my eyes that they may see, Let me know Thee as Thou art. Life and Immortality. V ALL HAIL TO THEE, CHILD JESUS All hail to Thee, child Jesus! As the brooding darkness flies At the swift approach of day, Sun of righteousness, arise, Chase the gloom of night away. Great Prince of Peace, come to thine own, And build in every heart Thy throne. Come to shed Thy healing balm On all nations of the earth, Child Jesus, come with holy calm, How we hail thy wondrous birth. Great Prince of Peace, come to Thine own, And build in every heart Thy throne. All hail to Thee, Child Jesus! VI THE WINE-PRESS Who is this that comes from Edom In such glorious array, With his festal garments gleaming, Travelling on his royal way With a face majestic, calm and grave? I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save. Why is thy apparel crimson, Why is all thy garments' pride Stained as in the time of vintage And with blood-red-color dyed? Because of helpers I had none-- I have trodden the wine-press alone. VII WAKEN, SHEPHERDS! (Angels) Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna! (Shepherds) Waken, Shepherds, waken; Whence this glowing light? Ere the dawn of morning, Solemn signs of warning Portent of affright! (Angels) Courage, Shepherds, courage! Banish your dismay, or ye all are saved. In the town of David Christ is born to-day. (Shepherds) Harken, Shepherds, harken, Hear the angels sing! Jehovah sends a token, He himself hath spoken To proclaim our King. (Angels) Hasten, Shepherds, hasten, This shall be your sign; Where the kine are stabled, In a manger cradled Lies the Child Divine. (Shepherds and Angels) Angels, Shepherds, People, Shout the glad refrain! Joy to every nation Bringing full salvation, Christ has come to reign. Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna! CAROLINE HAZARD REUBEN ROY LITTLE fellow, brown with wind-- I saw him in the street Peering at numbers on the posts, But most discreet: For when a woman came outdoors, Or slyly peeped instead, He turned away, took off his hat, And scratched his head. I watched him from my garden-wall Perhaps an hour or more, For something in his attitude, The clothes he wore, Awoke the dimmest memories Of when I was a boy And knew the story of a man Named Reuben Roy. It seems that Reuben went to sea The night his wife decried The fence he built before their house And up the side. He wanted it but she did not, Because it hid from view The spot in which her mignonette And tulips grew. Nobody saw his face again, But each year, unawares, He sent a sum for taxes due-- And fence repairs. My curiosity aroused, I sauntered forth to see Whether this individual Were really he. "Who are you looking for?" I asked His eyes, like two bright pence, Sparkled at mine; and then he said: "A fence." "Somebody burned it Hallowe'en, When people were in bed; Before the judge could prosecute, The culprit fled." Well, Reuben only touched his hat And mumbled, "Thank you, Sir," And asked me whereabouts to find A carpenter. HAROLD CRAWFORD STEARNS COUNTRY ROAD I CAN'T forget a gaunt grey barn Like a face without an eye That kept recurring by field and tarn Under a Cape Cod sky. I can't forget a woman's hand, Roughened and scarred by toil That beckoned clear-eyed children tanned By sun and wind and soil. Beauty and hardship, bent and bound Under the selfsame yoke: Babies with bare knees plump and round And stooping women folk. MARIE LOUISE HERSEY WREATHS RED wreaths Hang in my neighbor's window, Green wreaths in my own. On this day I lost my husband. On this day you lost your boy. On this day Christ was born. Red wreaths, Green wreaths Hang in Our Windows Red for a bleeding heart, Green for grave grass. Mary, mother of Jesus, Look down and comfort us. You too knew passion; You too knew pain. Comfort us, Who are not brides of God, Nor bore God. On Christmas day Hang wreaths, Red for new pain. Green for spent passion. CAROLYN HILLMAN MEMPHIS WHY should I sing of my present? It is nothing to me or you, Rather I'd dream of Dixie and tie ships on the old bayou! Rather I'd dream of my packets and the lazy river days, Rather I'd dream of my levee and the crimson sunset haze, Rather I'd dream of my triumphs, of the days that are long gone by, Rather I'd dream of flame-tipped stacks against a saffron sky, Of level lawns of topaz, of level fields of jade, Of the rambling pillared mansions that my fathers' fathers made! Why should I sing of my present? It is nothing to you or me, But the river road, the great road, the high road to the sea! Aye, that is worth the dreaming, aye, that was worth the pain. Send me back my river, and I shall wake again! GORDON MALHERBE HILLMAN SAINT COLUMBKILLE COLUMBKILLE! Saint Columbkille! You naughty man, Saint Columbkille! Why did you Finnian's Psalter take And secretly a copy make? You know 'twas such a naughty thing For one descended from a king To lock himself into a cell, 'Twas far from right,-you knew it well,-- And copy Finnian's Psalter through, Against his will as well you knew. And then to think a common bird Should feel such shame, that when he heard The breathing spy outside your door, And felt your sainthood was no more, Should through the crack attack the spy, And in a rage pluck out his eye, As if that saintly Irish crane Would hide from all your Saintship's stain. I grieve to think that you did add Sin unto sin; it is too bad. For Finnian could not you persuade To yield the copy that you made, Until the King in his behalf Ruled-"To each cow belongs her calf": And then you grew so mad you swore On Erin's face you'd look no more. And crossed the sea the Picts to save, Because you so did misbehave To dear Saint Finnian: faith, 'twas ill For you to act so, Columbkille! A saint you were no doubt, no doubt! What pity 'twas you were found out! We know an angel (snob or fool?) To Kiaran showed a common rule, An axe, an auger, and a saw, And told that saint it was the law Of Heaven that Columbkille should be Far, far above such saints as he; For Columbkille contemned a crown, While he these homely tools laid down, To serve the Lord, and that the Lord To each would give his due reward. I wonder if that angel knew That Christ these tools had laid down too. O Columbkille! O Columbkille! A saint like you must have his will, But for myself I'd rather be The common sinner that you see Than make a crane ashamed of me, And angels talk such idiocy. E. J. V. HUIGINN MISS DOANE MISS Doane was sixty, probably; She rented third floor room That opened on an airshaft full Of cooking smells and gloom. She worked in philanthropic man's Well-known department store; Cashiered in basement, hot and close, For forty years or more. Each night when she came home she'd stand A moment in the hall, Before she went into her room With low and tender call. And often I would hear her voice Repeat a childish prayer; Or read some old, old fairy tale Of Princess, grand and fair. One night I went to visit her And spied, in little chair A great wax doll, in dainty dress, And curls of flaxen hair. I praised the doll; its prettiness; Miss Doane said, "I'm alone. She comforts me. I wanted so A child to call my own." Each night I heard her softly sing A childish lullaby; But once, and just before she died, I heard her cry and cry! WINIFRED VIRGINIA JACKSON FALLEN FENCES THE woods grew dark; black shadows rocked And I could scarcely see My way along the old tote road, That long had seemed to me To wind on aimlessly; but now Came full to life; the rain Would soon strike down; ahead I saw A clearing, and a lane Between gray, fallen fences and Wide, grayer, grim stone walls; So grim and gray I shrank from thought Of weary, aching spalles. On stony knoll great aspens swayed And swung in browsing teeth Of wind; slim, silvered yearlings shook And shivered underneath. Beyond, some ancient oak trees bent And wrangled over roof Of weatherbeaten house, and barn Whose sag bespoke no hoof. And ivy crawled up either end Of house, to chimney, where It lashed in futile anger at The wind wolves of the air. I thought the house abandoned, and I ran to get inside, When suddenly the old front door was opened and flung wide And she stood there, with hand on knob, As I went swiftly in, Then closed the door most softly on The storm and shrieking din. A space I stood and looked at her, So young; 'twas passing strange That fifty years or more had gone And brought no new style's change. The sweetness, daintiness of her In starched and dotted gown Of creamy whiteness, over hoops, With ruffles winding down! We had not much to say, and yet Of words I felt no lack; Her smiles slipped into dimples, stopped A moment, then dropped back. I felt her pride of race; her taste In silken rug and chair, And quaintly fashioned furniture Of patterns old and rare. On window sill a rose bush stood; 'Twas bringing rose to bud; One full bloomed there but yesterday, Dropped petals, red as blood. Quite soon, she asked to be excused For just a moment, and Went out, returning with a tray In either slender hand. My glance could not but linger on Each thin and lovely cup; "This came, dear thing, from home!" she sighed The while she raised it up. And when the storm was done and I Arose, reluctantly To go, she too was loath to have Me go, it seemed to me. When I reached old Joe Webber's place, Upon the Corner Road, I went into the Upper Field Where Joe, round-shouldered, hoed Potatoes, culling them with hoe And practised, calloused hand, In rounded piles that brownly glowed Upon the fresh-turned land. "Say, Joe," I said, "who is that girl With beauty's smiling charm, That lives beyond that hemlock growth, On that old grown-up farm?" Joe listened, while I told him where I'd been that afternoon, Then straightened from his hoe, and hummed, Before he spoke, a tune "They cum ter thet old place ter live Some sixty years ago; Jest where they cum from, who they ware, Wy, no one got to know. "An' then, one day, he hired Hen's Red racker an' the gig; We never heard from him nor could We track the hoss or rig. "Hen waited 'bout a week, an' then He went ter see the Wife; He found her in thet settin' room: She'd taken of her life. "An' no one's lived in thet house sence; Some say 'tis haunted,-but I ain't no use fer foolishness, So all I say's tut! tut!" WINIFRED VIRGINIA JACKSON CROSS-CURRENTS THEY wrapped my soul in eiderdown; They placed me warm and snug In carved chair; set me with care Upon an old prayer rug. They cased my feet in golden shoes That hurt at toe and heel; My restless feet, with youth all fleet, Nor asked how they might feel. And now they wonder where I am, And search with shrill, cold cry; But I crouch low where tall reeds grow, And smile as they pass by! WINIFRED VIRGINIA JACKSON THE FAREWELL WHAT is more beautiful Than thought, soul-fed, That I may be the crimson of a rose When dead? My soul, so light a joy And grief will be, That it will gently press the brown earth down On me. WINIFRED VIRGINIA JACKSON SONG LET me be great, as stars are great, Singing of love, not of hate. Love for sweet and simple things, Like clouds and sea-shell whisperings, Cool autumn winds, pale dew-kissed flowers, Thin coils of smoke and granite towers, Snow-capped mountain peaks that flash High above a river's crash, Shrill songs of birds and children's laughter, Soft grey shadows trailing after Sunbeam sprites that seek the woods And lose themselves in solitudes. All these I'll love, never hate, And loving them, I will be great. OLIVER JENKINS LOVE AUTUMNAL MY love will come in autumn-time When leaves go spinning to the ground And wistful stars in heaven chime With the leaves' sound. Then, we shall walk through dusty lanes And pause beneath low-hanging boughs, And there, while soft-hued beauty reigns We'll make our vows. Let others seek in spring for sighs When love flames forth from every seed; But love that blooms when nature dies Is love indeed! OLIVER JENKINS ECHOS TRAVELING at dusk the noisy city street, I listened to the newsboys' strident cries Of "Extra," as with flying feet, They strove to gain this man or that-their prize. But one there was with neither shout nor stride, And, having bought from him, I stood nearby, Pondering the cruel crutches at his side, Blaming the crowd's neglect, and wondering why-- When suddenly I heard a gruff voice greet The cripple with "On time to-night?" Then, as he handed out the sheet, The Youngster's answer-"You're all right. My other reg'lars are a little late. They'll find I'm short one paper when they come; You see, a strange guy bought one in the wait, I tho't 'twould cheer him up-he looked so glum!" So, sheepishly I laughed, and went my way For I had found a city's heart that day. RUTH LAMBERT JONES WAR PICTURES "GERMAN Retreat From Arras" "Official Films"-they came After "Corinne and Her Minstrels" Had ministered to fame. After "Corinne and Her Minstrels" Had pigeon-toed away, We saw where bits of churches And bits of horses lay. We saw bleak desolation; We saw no unscathed tree. We shivered in our comfort And murmured: "Can it be!" But later, walking homeward, Repeating: "Is it true?" We brushed a khaki shoulder And asked no more. We knew! RUTH LAMBERT JONES AN OLD SONG WHEN I was but a young lad, And that is long ago, I thought that luck loved every man, And time his only foe, And love was like a hawthorn bush That blossomed every May, And had but to choose his flower, For that's the young lad's way. Oh, youth's a thriftless squanderer, It's easy come and spent, And heavy is the going now Where once the light foot went. The hawthorn bush puts on its white, The throstle whistles clear, But Spring comes once for every man Just once in all the year. ARTHUR KETCHUM ROADSIDE REST SUCH quiet sleep has come to them! The Springs and Autumns pass, Nor do they know if it be snow Or daisies in the grass. All day the birches bend to hear The river's undertone; Across the hush a fluting thrush Sings even-song alone. But down their dream there drifts no sound, The winds may sob and stir: On the still breast of Peace they rest And they are glad of her. They ask not any gift--they mind Nor any foot that fares, Unheededly life passes by-- Such quiet sleep is theirs. ARTHUR KETCHUM OLD LIZETTE ON SLEEP BED is the boon for me! It's well to bake and sweep, But hear the word of old Lizette: It's better than all to sleep. Summer and flowers are gay, And morning light and dew; But aged eyelids love the dark Where never a light peeps through. What!--open-eyed, my dears? Thinking your hearts will break. There's nothing, nothing, nothing, I say, That's worth the lying awake! I learned it in my youth-- Love I was dreaming of! I learned it from the needle-work That took the place of love. I learned it from the years And what they brought about; From song, and from the hills of joy Where sorrow sought me out. It's good to dream and turn, And turn and dream, or fall To comfort with my pack of bones, And know of nothing at all! Yes, never know at all! If prowlers mew or bark, Nor wonder if it's three o'clock Or four o'clock of the dark. When the longer shades have fallen And the last weariness Has brought the sweetest gift of life, The last forgetfulness. If a sound as of old leaves Stir the last bed I keep, Then say, my dears: "It's old Lizette-- She's turning in her sleep!" AGNES LEE MOTHERHOOD MARY, the Christ long slain, passed silently. Following the children joyously astir Under the cedrus and the olive tree, Pausing to let their laughter float to her. Each voice an echo of a voice more dear, She saw a little Christ in every face; When lo, another woman, gliding near, Yearned o'er the tender life that filled the place. And Mary sought the woman's hand, and spoke: "I know thee not, yet know thy memory tossed With all a thousand dreams their eyes evoke Who bring to thee a child beloved and lost. "I, too, have rocked my little one, O, He was fair! Yea, fairer than the fairest sun, And like its rays through amber spun His sun-bright hair. Still I can see it shine and shine." "Even so," the woman said, "was mine." "His ways were ever darling ways,"-- And Mary smiled,-- "So soft, so clinging! Glad relays Of love were all His precious days. My little child! My infinite star! My music fled!" "Even so was mine," the woman said. Then whispered Mary: "Tell me, thou, Of thine." And she: "O, mine was rosy as a boug Blooming with roses, sent, somehow, To bloom for me! His balmy fingers left a thrill Within my breast that warms me still." Then gazed she down some wilder, darker hour, And said, when Mary questioned, knowing not, "Who art thou, mother of so sweet a flower?" "I am the mother of Iscariot." AGNES LEE ESSEX I THY hills are kneeling in the tardy spring, And wait, in supplication's gentleness, The certain resurrection that shall bring A robe of verdure for their nakedness. Thy perfumed valleys where the twilights dwell, Thy fields within the sunlight's living coil Now promise, while the veins of nature swell, Eternal recompense to human toil. And when the sunset's final shades depart The aspiration to completed birth Is sweet and silent; as the soft tears start, We know how wanton and how little worth Are all the passions of our bleeding heart That vex the awful patience of the earth. II Thine are the large winds and the splendid sun Glutting the spread of heaven to the floor Of waters rhythmic from far shore to shore, And thine the stars, revealing one by one, Thine the grave, lucent night's oblivion, The tawny moon that waits below the skies,-- Strange as the dawn that smote their blistered eyes Who watched from Calvary when the Deed was done. And thine the good brown earth that bares its breast To thy benign October, thine the trees Lusty with fruitage in the late year's rest; And thine the men whos@ blood has glorified Thy name with Liberty Is divine decrees-- The men who loved thy soil and fought and died. III Toward thine Eastern window when the morn Steals through the silver mesh of silent stars, I come unlaurelled from the strenuous wars Where men have fought and wept and died Forlorn. But here, across the early fields of corn, The living silence dwelleth, and the gray Sweet earth-mist, while afar the lisp of spray Breathes from the ocean like a Triton's horn. Open thy lattice, for the gage is won For which this earth has journeyed though the dust Of shattered systems, cold about the sun; And proved by sin, by mighty lives impearled, A voice cries through the sunrise: "Time is Just!"-- And falls like dew God's pity on the world GEORGE CABOT LODGE THE SONG OF THE WAVE This is the song of the wave! The mighty one! Child of the soul of silence, beating the air to sound: White as a live terror, as a drawn sword, This is the wave. II This is the song of the wave, the white-maned steed of the Tempest Whose veins are swollen with life, In whose flanks abide the four winds. This is the wave. III This is the song of the wave! The dawn leaped out of the sea And the waters lay smooth as a silver shield, And the sun-rays smote on the waters like a golden sword. Then a wind blew out of the morning And the waters rustled And the wave was born! IV This is the song of the wave! The wind blew out of the noon And the white sea-birds like driven foam Winged in from the ocean that lay beyond the sky And the face of the waters was barred with white, For the wave had many brothers, And the wave was strong! V This is the song of the wave! The wind blew out of the sunset And the west was lurid as Hell. The black clouds closed like a tomb, for the sun was dead. Then the wind smote full as the breath of God, And the wave called to its brothers, "This is the crest of life!" VI This is the song of the wave, that rises to fall, Rises a sheer green wall like a barrier of glass That has caught the soul of the moonlight. Caught and prisoned the moon-beams; Its edge is frittered to foam. This is the wave! VII This is the song of the wave, of the wave that falls-- Wild as a burst of day-gold blown through the colours of morning It shivers to infinite atoms up the rumbling steep of sand. This is the wave. VIII This is the song of the wave that died in the fullness of life. The prodigal this, that lavished its largess of strength In the lust of attainment. Aiming at things for Heaven too high, Sure in the pride of life, in the richness of strength. So tried it the impossible height, till the end was found: Where ends the soul that yearns for the fillet of morning stars, The soul in the toils of the journeying worlds, Whose eye is filled with the Image of God, And the end is Death! GEORGE CABOT LODGE FRIMAIRE DEAREST, we are like two flowers Blooming in the garden, A purple aster flower and a red one Standing alone in a withered desolation. The garden plants are shattered and seeded, One brittle leaf scrapes against another, Fiddling echoes of a rush of petals. Now only you and I nodding together. Many were with us; they have all faded. Only we are purple and crimson, Only we in the dew-clear mornings, Smarten into color as the sun rises. When I scarcely see you in the flat moonlight, And later when my cold roots tighten, I am anxious for morning, I cannot rest in fear of what may happen. You or I-and I am a coward. Surely frost should take the crimson. Purple is a finer color, Very splendid in isolation. So we nod above the broken Stems of flowers almost rotted. Many mornings there cannot be now For us both. Ah, Dear, I love you! AMY LOWELL PATTERNS I WALK down the garden paths, And all the daffodils Are blowing, and the bright blue squills. I walk down the patterned garden paths In my stiff, brocaded gown. With my powdered hair and jewelled fan, I too am a rare Pattern. As I wander down The garden paths. My dress is richly figured, And the train Makes a pink and silver stain On the gravel, and the thrift Of the borders. Just a plate of current fashion, Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes. Not a softness anywhere about me, Only a whale-bone and brocade. And I sink on a seat in the shade Of a lime tree. For my passion Wars against the stiff brocade. The daffodils and squills Flutter in the breeze As they please. And I weep; For the lime tree is in blossom And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom. And the splashing of waterdrops In the marble fountain Comes down the garden paths. The dripping never stops. Underneath my stiffened gown Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin, A basin in the midst of hedges grown So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding, But she guesses he is near, And the sliding of the water Seems the stroking of a dear Hand upon her. What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown! I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground. All the pink and silver crumpled up upon the ground. I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths, And he would stumble after, Bewildered by my laughter. I should see the sun flashing from his sword hilt and the buckles on his shoes. I would choose To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths, A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover, Till he caught me in the shade, And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me, Aching, melting, unafraid. With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops, And the plopping of the waterdrops, All about us in the open afternoon-- I am very like to swoon With the weight of this brocade, For the sun sifts through the shade. Underneath the fallen blossom In my bosom, Is a letter I have hid. It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke. "Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell Died in action Thursday sen'night." As I read it in the white morning sunlight. The letters squirmed like snakes. "Any answer, Madam," said my footman. "No," I told him. "See that the messenger takes some refreshment. No, no answer." And I walked into the garden, Up and down the patterned paths, In my stiff, correct brocade. The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun, Each one. I stood upright too, Held rigid to the pattern By the stiffness of my gown. Up and down I walked, Up and down. In a month he would have been my husband, In a month, here, underneath this lime, We would have broke the pattern; He for me, and I for him, He as Colonel, I as lady, On this shady seat. He had a whim That sunlight carried blessing. And I answered, "It shall be as you have said." Now he is dead. In Summer and in Winter I shall walk Up and down The patterned garden paths In my stiff, brocaded gown. The squills and the daffodils Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow. I shall go Up and down, In my gown. Gorgeously arrayed, Boned and stayed. And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace By each button, hook and lace. For the man who should loose me is dead, Fighting with the Duke in Flanders, In a pattern called a war. Christ! What are patterns for? AMY LOWELL A BATHER THICK dappled by circles of sunshine and fluttering shade. Your bright, naked body advances, blown over by leaves, Half-quenched in their various green, just a point Of you showing, A knee or a thigh, sudden glimpsed, then at once Blotted into The filmy and flickering forest, to start out again Triumphant in smooth, supple roundness, edged Sharp as white ivory, Cool, perfect, with rose rarely tinting your lips and Your breasts, Swelling out from the green in the opulent curves Of ripe fruit, And hidden, like fruit, by the swift intermittence Of leaves. So, clinging to branches and moss, you advance on the ledges Of rock which hang over the stream, with the wood-smells about you, The pungence of strawberry plants and of gum-oozing spruces, While below runs the water impatient, impatient to take you, To splash you, to run down your sides, to sing you of deepness, Of pools brown and golden, with brown-and-gold flags on their borders, Of blue, lingering skies floating solemnly over your beauty, Of undulant waters a-sway in the effort to hold you To keep you submerged and quiescent while over you glories The summer. Oread, Dryad, or Naiad, or just Woman, clad only in youth and in gallant perfection, Standing up in a great burst of sunshine, you dazzle my eyes Like a snow-star, a moon, your effulgence burns up in a halo, For you are the chalice which holds all the races of men. You slip into the pool and the water folds over your shoulder, And over the tree-tops the clouds slowly follow your swimming, To behold the way they act. And the scent of the woods is sweet on this hot summer morning. AMY LOWELL LEPRECHAUNS AND CLURICAUNS OVER where the Irish hedges Are with blossoms white as snow, Over where the limestone ledges Through the soft green grasses show-- There the fairies may be seen In their jackets of red and green, Leprechauns and cluricauns, And the other ones, I ween. And, bedad, it is a wonder To behold the way they act. They're the lads that seldom blunder, Wise and wary, that's the fact. You may hold them with your eye; Look away and off they fly; Leprechauns and cluricauns, Bedad, but they are sly! They have heaps of golden treasure Hid away within the ground, Where they spend their days in leisure, And where fairy joys abound; But to mortals not a guinea Will they give-no, not a penny. Leprechauns and cluricauns, Their gold is seldom found. Maybe of a morning early As you pass a lonely rath, You may see a little curly-- Headed fairy in your path. He'll be working at a shoe, But he'll have his eye on you-- Leprechauns and cluricauns, They know just what to do. Visions of a life of riches Surely will before you flash; (You'll no longer dig the ditches, You'll be well supplied with cash.) And you'll seize the little man, And you'll hold him--if you can; Leprechauns and cluricauns, 'Tis they're the slipp'ry clan! DENIS A. MCCARTHY L'ENVOI WHEN the time for parting comes, and the day is on the wane, And the silent evening darkens over hill and over plain, And earth holds no more sorrow, no more grief, and no more pain, Shall we weary for the battle and the strife? When at last the trail is ending, and the stars are growing near, And we breathe the breath of conquest, and the voices that we hear Are the great companions' voices that have hallowed year on year, Shall we know an instant's grieving as we pass? Shall we pause a fleeting moment ere we grasp the eager hands, Take one last long look of wonder at the dimming of the lands, Love the earth one glowing moment ere we pass from its demands, Cull all beauty in its essence as we gaze? Or with not one backward longing shall we leap the last abyss, Scale the highest crags glad-hearted, fearful only lest the bliss Of an earth-remembering instant should delay the great sun's kiss-- Consuming us within the flame? DOROTHEA LAWRENCE MANN TO IMAGINATION SUGGESTED BY MAXFIELD PARRISH'S "AIR CASTLES" O BEAUTEOUS boy a-dream, what visions sought Of pictures magical thy eyes unfold, What triumphs of celestial wonders wrought, What marvels from a breath of beauty rolled! Skyward and seaward on the clouds are scrolled, A mystic imagery of castled thought, A thousand worlds to lose,--or win and mould-- A radiant iridescence swiftly caught Of ever-changing glory, fancy-fraught. Blue wonder of the sea and luminous sky, A thousand wonders in thy dreamlit face,-- Eyes that behold afar the turrets high Of Ilium, and the transient mortal grace Of Deirdre's sadness, all the conquering race Of Athens,--eyes that saw Eden's beauty lie In passionate adoration--visions trace Across the tender brooding of the sigh That wrecked a city and made chieftains die. Forward not backward turns the mystic shine Of those far-seeing orbs that track the gleam-- The fleecy marvel of the cloud is line On line the wizard tracery of a dream. O lad, who buildest not of things that seem, Beyond what bounds of visioning divine Came that far smile, from what long-strayed sun-beam Caught thou the radiance, from what fostering vine The power to build and mould the deep design? Knowest thou the secret that thy brush would tell, Is all the dream a bubbled splendor white, Beyond those castles cloud-bound, does there dwell The eternal silence of the dark--or light? Will thy hand hold the pen which shall indict The symboled mystery-write the final knell Of rainbow fancy-is the distant sight A nothingless encircled by a spell Of gleaming bubbles wrought of beauty's shell? In vain to question, where the mystery Of Youth's short golden dream is lord and king. The eyes that farthest gaze in ecstasy, Were never meant to paint the immortal thing They see, nor understand the joy they bring. The misty baubles of the sky and sea Sail on. Dream still, bright-visioned boy, and fling The glittering mantle of thy thoughts that flee, Weaving us evermore thy shining pageantry. DORTHEA LAWRENCE MANN DRAGON SOME saw a dragon eating up the light, Oho! Oho! Oho, ho, ho! Some heard a lost bird riding out the night, Oho! Oho! Oho, ho, ho! But I saw: A low dark hill with its twisted back Two wings of flame from the green cloud rack, A sprawling flank overlaid with leaf Glitter and gleam and shine like steel, Crackle and lash like a serpent's tail! And I heard: The wind draw out of the west and wail, Dance and stagger and jig and reel! With the long low sound of a life in grief! I saw a life in grief Oho! Oho! Oho, ho, ho Dance and stagger and jig and reel! Oho! Oho! Oho, ho, ho! JEANNETTE MARKS "THE BOOKMAN." GREEN GOLDEN DOOR GREEN golden door, swing in, swing in! Fanning the life a man must live, Echoes and airs and minstrelsies, Love and hope that he called his, Fear and hurt and a man's own sin Casting them forth and sucking them in, Green golden door, swing out, swing out! Green golden door, swing in, swing in! Show me the youth that will not die, Tell me the dream that has not waked, Seek me the heart that never ached, Green golden door, swing out, swing out! Green golden door, swing in, swing out! Long is the wailing of man's breath, Short is the wail of death. JEANNETTE MARKS SLEEPY HOLLOW, CONCORD FOUR graves there are upon the wooded crest, Each one a shrine to pilgrims ever dear. Uncovered, mute, are those who tarry here. Romance's dreaming master lies at rest Beneath the cedars. Near is one whose breast Held Mother Nature's lore. Beyond, the seer And sage. There, one who saw her duty clear, Her name by little men and women blessed. Four friends who walked in Concord's pleasant ways Long years ago. They dwelt and worked apart, But now the world has crowned them with its bays, And holds them close forever to its heart. O, sacred hill! There Genius, guarding stays, And from its slopes shall never Love depart! JOHN CLAIR MINOT THE SWORD OF ARTHUR A CASTLE stands in Yorkshire (Oh, the hill is fair and green!) And far beneath it lies a cave No living man has seen. It is the cave enchanted (Oh, seek it ere ye die!) And there King Arthur and his knights In dreamless slumber lie. One time a peasant found it (Oh, the years have hurried well!) It was the day of fate for him, And this is what befell: Upon a couch of crystal (Oh, heart be pure and strong!) He saw the King, and, close beside, The armored knights athrong. And all of them were sleeping (Praise God, who sendeth rest!) The sleep that comes when strife is done And ended every quest. Beside the good King Arthur (How high is your desire?) His sword within its scabbard lay, The sword with blade of fire. Now had the peasant known it (Oh, if we all could know!) He should have drawn that wondrous blade Before he turned to go. If but his hand had touched it (The sword still lieth there!) He would have felt in every vein A lofty purpose thrill. If but his hand had drawn it (The sword still lieth there!) A kingly way he would have walked, Wherever he might fare. But no; he fled affrighted (Oh, pitiful the cost!) And then he knew; but lo! the way Into the cave was lost. He searched forever after (All this was long ago!) But nevermore that crystal cave His eager eyes could know. Pray God ye have the vision (Oh, search in every land!) To seize the sword that Arthur bore When it lies at your hand. JOHN CLAIR MINOT THE DIVINE FOREST IF there be leaves on the forest floor, Dead leaves there are and nothing more, If trunks of trees seem sentinels, For what their vigil no man tells. And if you clasp these guardian trees Nothing there is to hurt or please; Only the dead roof of the forest drops Gently down and never stops And roofs you in and roofs you under, Mute and away from life's dim thunder; And if there come eternal spring It is but more disheartening, For Autumn takes the Spring and Summer-- Autumn that is the latest comer-- With the Springtime's misty wonder And the Summer's yield of gold, Weighs you down and weighs you under To where the blackened leaves are mold. . . The lone gift of the forest is ever new: Eternity where dwell not you. The forest, accepting, heeds you not; Accepting all-you are forgot. If there be leaves on the forest floor, Dead leaves there are and nothing more. Once the forest spoke but now is silent, Save in the skyward branches whence no sound Seems to touch ear of any man below-- Or else no longer the man knows how to hear. Such men build roofs to keep the forest out, Yet all their roofs are built of the forest's self; Only they make the dead tree a shield against the living. Such lapsing of the forest then they use And turn it into countless lowly dwellings; Sometimes they even cut the living down To leaven the dead roofs they would erect. Though some of these low roofs are lovely there Beneath the guardianship of forest trees, And some yearn upward as with thought of wings, Yet the eyes of the dwellers therein are dark To the upper forest and they Fearful of the windy freedom of its top. They have forgotten That the greatest roof is but a banner And that it was a tree that made a Cross. CHARLES R. MURPHY MAGIC TO W.S.B. I RAN into the sunset light As hard as I could run: The treetops bowed in sheer delight As if they loved the sun: And all the songs of little birds Who laughed and cried in silver words Were joined as they were one. And down the streaming golden sky A lark came circling with a cry Of wonder-weaving joy: And all the arch of heaven rang Where meadowlands of dreaming hang As when I was a boy. And through the ringing solitude In pulsing lovely amplitude A mist hung in a shroud, As though the light of loneliness Turned pure delight to holiness, And bathed it in a cloud. I stripped my laughing body bare And plunged into that holy air That washed me like a sea, And raced against its silver tide That stroked my eager glancing side And made my spirit free. Across the limits of the land The wind and I swept hand and hand Beyond the golden glow. We danced across the ocean plain Like thrushes singing in the rain A song of long ago. And on into the silver night We strove to win the race with light And bring the vision home, And bring the wonder home again Unto the sleeping eyes of men Across the singing foam. And down the river of the world Our glowing, limbs in glory swirled As spring within a flower, And stars in music of delight Streamed gayly down our shoulders white Like petals in a shower. And tears of awful wonder ran Adown my cheeks to hear the clan Of beauty chaunting white The prayer too deep for living word, Or sight of man or winging bird, Or music over forest heard At falling of the night. And dropping slowly as the dew On grasses that the winds renew In urge of flooding fire, And softly as the hushing boughs The gentle airs of dawn arouse To cradle morning's quire. The murmur of the singing leaves Around the secret Flame, Like mating swallows 'neath the eaves In rustling silence came, And flowing through the silent air Creation fluttered in a prayer Descending on a spiral stair, And calling me by name. It nestled in my dreaming eyes Like heaven in a lake, And softened hope into surprise For very beauty's sake, And silence blossomed into morn, Whose fragrant rosy-breasted dawn Could scarcely bear to break. I sang into the morning light As loud as I could sing, The treetops bowed in sheer delight Before the slanting wing. And all the songs of little birds Who laughed and cried in silver words Adored the Risen Spring. EDWARD J. O'BRIEN MICHAEL PAT TO ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH OLD Michael Pat he said to me He saw an angel in a tree. He knew I'd never, never doubt him, For what would heaven be without them. The angel laughed for very glee And sang out loud: "Heigh! come with me!" Old Michael felt a creeping kind Of wonder in his humble mind, And, hardly knowing what to say, Ran where the angel showed the way. The lambs were running on the hills, Glad laughter echoed from the rills, And many hidden little birds Talked pleasant things in singing words. He followed up a mountain then And saw a crowd of singing men Approaching to a Crown of Light Wherein they took a fresh delight. He danced and sang and whooped and crew To see the Lord of all he knew Surrounded by the living songs Of stars and men in countless throngs, And then he died to life again, And shovelled with the strength of ten. He taught me how to say my letters, And take my hat off to my betters, And when I asked for fairy stories, He told me of angelic glories. He was a lovely farmer, he Had seen an angel in a tree. EDWARD J. O'BRIEN SONG FROM "FLESH: A GEOGORIAN ODE" EBB on with me across the sunset tide And float beyond the waters of the world, The light of evening slipping from my side, Thy softened voice in waves of silence furled. Flow on into the flaming morning wine, Drowning the land in color. Then on high Rise in thy candid innocence and shine Like to a poplar straight against the sky. EDWARD J. O'BRIEN IN MEMORIAM: FRANCIS LEDWIDGE (Killed in action, July 31, 1917) SOLDIER and singer of Erin, What may I fashion for thee? What garland of words or of flowers? Singer of sunlight and showers, The wind on the lea; Of clouds, and the houses of Erin, Wee cabins, white on the plain, And bright with the colours of even, Beauty of earth and of heaven falls Outspread beyond Slane! night through let my mind be still, Slane, where the Easter of Patrick Flamed on the night of the Gael, Guard both the honor and story Of him who has died for the glory That crowns Innisfail. Soldier of right and of freedom, I offer thee song and hot tears. With Brian, and Red Hugh O'Donnell, The chiefs of Tyrone and Tryconnell, Live on through the years! NORREYS JEPHSON O'CONOR EVENSONG A SHEPHERD piping, herald of the Night Who comes with Silence up the coloured vale, Treading low gently, clad in greyish white, Poignantly piping, sound your reedy wail! For Day departed moves in funeral train Tended by Twilight and, in deepest rose, The splendid Sunset melts beneath the main While sweet the Sea-wind with cool softness blows. As when a mother gathers to her breast The child who frets for Dad's remembered smart, Now Light fades quickly in the ashen west, And Night-Peace falls across my troubled heart. Flutes, for the night through let my mind be still, And God keep safe with Him my stubborn will! NORREYS JEPHSON O'CONOR THE PROPHET ALL day long he kept the sheep:-- Far and early, from the crowd, On the hills from steep to steep, Where the silence cried aloud; And the shadow of the cloud Wrapt him in a noonday sleep. Where he dipped the water's cool, Filling boyish hands from thence, Something breathed across the pool Stir of sweet enlightenments; And he drank, with thirsty sense, Till his heart was brimmed and full. Still, the hovering Voice unshed, And the Vision unbeheld, And the mute sky overhead, And his longing, still withheld! --Even when the two tears welled, Salt, upon that lonely bread. Vaguely blessed in the leaves, Dim-companioned in the sun, Eager mornings, wistful eyes, Very hunger drew him on; And To-morrow ever shone With the glow the sunset weaves. Even so, to that young heart, Words and hands and Men were dear; And the stir of lane and mart After daylong vigil here. Sunset called, and he drew near, Still to find his path apart. When the Bell, with gentle tongue, Called the herd-bells home again, Through the purple shades he swung, Down the mountain, through the glen; Towards the sound of fellow-men,-- Even from the light that clung. Dimly too, as cloud on cloud, Came that silent flock of his: Thronging whiteness, in a crowd, After homing twos and threes; With the longing memories Of all white things dreamed and vowed. Through the fragrances, alone, By the sudden-silent brook, From the open world unknown, To the close of speech and book; There to find the foreign look In the faces of his own. Sharing was beyond his skill; Shyly yet, he made essay: Sought to dip, and share, and fill Heart's-desire, from day to day. But their eyes, some foreign way, Looked at him; and he was still. Last, he reached his arms to sleep, Where the Vision waited, dim, Still beyond some deep-on-deep. And the darkness folded him, Eager heart and weary limb.-- All day long, he kept the sheep. JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY HARVEST-MOON: 1914 OVER the twilight field, The overflowing field,-- Over the glimmering field, And bleeding furrows with their sodden yield Of sheaves that still did writhe, After the scythe; The teeming field and darkly overstrewn With all the garnered fulness of that noon-- Two looked upon each other. One was a Woman men called their mother; And one, the Harvest-Moon. And one, the Harvest-Moon, Who stood, who gazed On those unquiet gleanings where they bled; Till the lone Woman said: "But we were crazed... We should laugh now together, I and you, We two. You, for your dreaming it was worth A star's while to look on and light the Earth; And I, forever telling to my mind, Glory it was, and gladness, to give birth To humankind! Yes, I, that ever thought it not amiss To give the breath to men, For men to slay again: Lording it over anguish but to give My life that men might live For this. You will be laughing now, remembering I called you once Dead World, and barren thing, Yes, so we named you then, You, far more wise Than to give life to men." Over the field, that there Gave back the skies A shattered upward stare From blank white eyes,-- Striving awhile, through many a bleeding dune Of throbbing clay, but dumb and quiet soon, She looked; and went her way-- The Harvest-Moon. JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEAODY HORSEMAN SPRINGING FROM THE DARK: A DREAM "HORSEMAN, springing from the dark, Horseman, flying wild and free, Tell me what shall be thy road Whither speedest far from me?" "From the dark into the light, From the small unto the great, From the valleys dark I ride O'er the hills to conquer fate!" "Take me with thee, horseman mine! Let me madly rode with thee!" As he turned I met his eyes, My own soul looked back at me! LILLA CABOT PERRY THREE QUATRAINS THE CUP SHE said, "Lift high the cup!" Of her arm's weariness she gave no sign, But, smiling, raised it up That none might see or guess it held no wine. FORGIVE ME NOT! FORGIVE me not! Hate me and I shall know Some of Love's fire still burns within your breast! Forgiveness finds its home in hearts at rest, On dead volcanoes only lies the snow. THE ROSE ONE deep red rose I dropped into his grave, So small a thing to give so great a friend! Yet well he knew it was my heart I gave And must fare on without it to the end, LILLA CABOT PERRY A VALENTINE, UNSENT STAY, flaming rose, 'twould grieve her heart To see you fade away, Unloved, unwelcome and apart From every joy to-day. Once long ago your tale was new, Days distant yet so dear; Why say her lover still is true, When that is all her fear? Why thus recall another's pain, Her tender heart to fret? Best let her think he loves again, Who never can forget! MARGARET PERRY SHIPBUILDERS THE German people reared them An idol made of wood; And Hindenburg before them Lifelike and stupid stood. To clothe him all in iron And thus his soul express, With nails and spikes they covered His wooden nakedness. And when they, thus had clothed him All in a suit of mail, Still came they, wild-eyed, looking For space to drive a nail. Whenever Teuton airmen Slay boys and girls at play, Or U-boats, drowning babies, Create a holiday. Then, gathering round their statue, A happy German throng Drive nails into the idol To make him still more strong. Avenge the babes, shipbuilders, That on the seas have died; Avenge the little children Murdered for Wilhelm's pride. Come, gather at the shipyards, And let your hammers ring, For more than ships and cargoes Waits on your fashioning. Come, gather at the shipyards; With every bolt you drive Bethink you `tis the Kaiser Whose brutish head you rive. Come, gather at the shipyards, And swing with might and main; `Tis Tirpitz and the Crown Prince That you to-day have slain. Come, gather at the shipyards, And heat the metal hot, For it is Bethmann Hollweg You're boiling in the pot. Come, gather at the shipyards,-- And when the day is done, You've spent it in driving spikes, In Hindernburg the Hun. Come, gather at the shipyards, And toil with healthy hate, For only you can save the world, The Hun is at the gate. ARTHUR STANWOOD PIE UNFADING PICTURES ("The air from the sea came blowing in again, mixed with the perfume of the flowers.... The old-fashioned furniture brightly rubbed and polished, my aunt's inviolable chair and table by the round green fan in the bow-window, the drugget-covered carpet, the cat, the kettle-holder, the two canaries, the old china ... and, wonderfully out of keeping with the rest, my dusty self upon the sofa, taking note of everything." -"David Copperfield," Chapter XIII.) HOW many are the scenes he limned, With artist strokes, clear-cut and free-- Our Dickens; time shall not efface Their charm, and they will ever grace The halls of memory. Oft and again we turn to them, To contemplate in pleased review; And like some picture on the screen Comes now to mind a favorite scene His master-pencil drew:-- Upon a sofa, stretched in sleep, I see a small lad, spent and worn, And by the window, stern and grim, A silent figure watching him, So dusty, ragged, torn. Ah, now she rises from behind The round green fan beside her chair; "Poor fellow!" croons-and pity lends Her voice new softness-and she bends And brushes back his hair. Then in his sleep he softly stirs. Was that a dream, these murmured words? He wakes! There by the casement sat Miss Trotwood still; close by, her cat And her canary birds. The peaceful calm of that quaint room, Its marks of comfort everywhere-- Old china and mahogany And blowing in, fresh from the sea, The perfume-laden air. Poor little pilgrim so bereft, So weary at his journey's end! What joy must then have filled his soul To reach at last such happy goal-- To find--oh, such a friend!... And then night came, and from his bed He saw the sea, moonlit and bright, And dreamed there came, to bless her son, His mother, with her little one, Adown that path of light. Ah, greater blessing I'd not crave, When my life's pilgrimage is o'er, Than such repose, content, and love; Some shining path that leads above To dear ones gone before! LOUELLA C. POOLE WITH WAVES AND WINGS WAVES and Wings and Growing Things! As through the gladden sight ye flow And flit and glow, Ye win me so In soul to go, I too am waves, I too am wings, And kindred motion in me springs. With thee I pass, glad growing grass!-- I climb the air with lissome mien; Unsheathing keen The vivid sheen Of springing green, I thrill the crude, exalt the crass Fine-flex'd and fluent from Earth's mass. And impulse craves with thee, Sea Waves!-- To make all mutable the floor Of Earth's firm shore, With flashing pour Whose brimming o'er Impassion'd motion loves and laves And livens sombre slumbering caves. Then soaring where the wild birds fare, My song would sweep the windy lyre Of Heaven's choir, Pulsing desire For starry fire, Abashing chilling vagues of air With throbbing of warm breasts that dare! CHARLOTTE PORTER BLUEBERRIES UPON the hills of Garlingtown Beneath the summer sky, In many pleasant pastures On sunny slopes and high, Their skins abloom with dusty blue, Asleep, the berries lie. And all the lads of Garlingtown, And all the lasses too, Still climb the tranquil hillsides, A merry, barefoot crew; Still homeward plod with unfilled pails And mouths of berry blue. And all the birds of Garlingtown, When flocking back to nest, Remember well the patches Where berries are the best; They pick the ripest ones at dawn And leave the lads the rest. Upon the hills of Garlingtown When berry-time was o'er, I looked into the sunset, And saw an open door, And from the hills of Garlingtown I went, and came no more. FRANK PRENTICE RAND NOCTURNE NIGHT of infinite power and infinite silence and space, From you may mortals infer, if ever, the scope divine! The jealous sun conceals all but his arrogant face, You bid the Milky Way and a million suns to shine. Each star to numberless planets gives light and motion and heat, But you enmantle them all, the nearest and most remote; And the lustres of all the suns are but spangles under your feet,-- Mere bubbles and beads of noon, they circle and shine and float. WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER ENVOI I WALKED with poets in my youth, Because the world they drew Was beautiful and glorious Beyond the world I knew. The poets are my comrades still, But dearer than in youth, For now I know that they alone Picture the world of truth. WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER THERE WHERE THE SEA THERE where the sea enwrapt A strip of land and wind-swept dune, Where nature was quiescent in the glimmering Noonday sun of early June,-- The Placid sea lay shimmering In a mist of blue, From which the sky now drew Its wealth of hue and colour; One heard but the deep breathing of the ocean, As it breathed along the shore in even motion. Among the pines and listless of the scene, Atthis and Alcaeus lay, Within the heart of each a hunger For the unknown gift of life. Here from day to day They met and dreamed away The soft unfloding days of spring,-- Now turning to the summer. Aleaeus: I am faint with all the fire In my blood, And I would plunge into the quiet blue And lose all sense of time and you. Atthis: I, too, would plunge And swim with you! Doffing her robe, the maid stood in her beauty, Calm and sure and unafraid, The sinuous splendour of her limbs, A silent symphony of curving line, Which reached its final note In breast and rounded throat. He had not known that flesh could be so fair; Each movement which she made Wove o'er his sense a deeper spell, Her beauty swept him like a flame And caught him unaware. She looked into his eyes, then dropping hers Before that burning gaze, Softly turned and crept with sunlit shoulders Down among the boulders, To the sea. Secure within its covering depth She called to him to follow. She led him out along the tide, With swift unerring stroke, Nor paused till he was at her side. With conquering arm He seized her and from her brow Tossed back the dripping locks, and sought her lips-- Her eyes closed,-- As all her body yielded to his kiss. Then home he bore her to the shore, Within his heart a song of triumph; In hers, a new-born joy of womanhood. So spring for them passed on to summer. MARIE TUDOR MARRIAGE YOU, who have given me your name, And with your laws have made me wife, To share your failures and your fame, Whose word has made me yours for life. What proof have you that you hold me? That in reality I'm one With you, through all eternity? What proof when all is said and done? In spite of all the laws you've made, I'm free. I am no part of you. But wait-the last word is not said; You're mine, for I'm myself and you. All through my veins there flows your blood, In you there is no part of me. By virtue of my motherhood Through me you live eternally. MARIE TUDOR PITY Oh do not Pity me because I gave My heart when lovely April with a gust, Swept down the singing lanes with a cool wave; And do not pity me because I thrust Aside your love that once burned as a flame. I was as thirsty as a windy flower That bares its bosom to the summer shower And to the unremembered winds that came. Pity me most for moments yet to be, In the far years, when some day I shall turn Toward this strong path up to our little door And find it barred to all my ecstasy. No sound of your warm voice the winds have borne-- Only the crying sea upon the shore. HAROLD VINAL A ROSE TO THE LIVING A ROSE to the living is more Than sumptuous wreaths to the dead; In filling love's infinite store, A rose to the living is more, If graciously given before The hungering spirit is fled,-- A rose to the living is more Than sumptuous wreaths to the dead. NIXON WATERMAN THE STORM SHE reached for sunset fires, And lived with stars and the sea, The mountains for her temple, The storm for priest had she. Together a libation They poured to the God she knew, Such wine as ageless heavens And lonely wisdom brew. Now she has done with worship, For her all rites are the same; Yet the storm keeps green forever The moss upon her name. G. O. WARREN WHERE THEY SLEEP THE fog inrolling, dark and still Lies deep upon the crowded dead As flooding sea upon the sands, And quenches starlight overhead. Long have they slept. Their separate dust Has mingled with a nameless mould. Only the slower-crumbling stones Still tell so much as may be told. And now in shoreless fog adrift Like some lone mariner gliding by, I lean above the drowning graves And wonder when I too shall lie Where evermore the tides of night And earth will hide my lonely rest; And Time will bid my love forget To read the stone upon my breast. G. O. WARREN BEAUTY NOT flesh alone am I, when I can be So swiftly caught in Beauty's shimmering thread Whose slender fibres, woven, held by me, With their frail strength my following heart have led. Yea, not all mortal, not all death my mind, When, watching by lone twilight waters' brim I tremblingly decipher, as they wind, Her deathless hieroglyphs, though strange and dim. So for this faith, when Thou my dust shalt bring To dust, remember well, Great Alchemist, Yearly to change my wintry earth to spring, That I with Beauty still may keep my tryst. G. O. WARREN COMRADES WHERE are the friends that I knew in my Maying, In the days of my youth, in the first of my roaming? We were dear; we were leal; O, far we went straying; Now never a heart to my heart comes homing!-- Where is he now, the dark boy slender Who taught me bare-back, stirrup and reins? I love him; he loved me; my beautiful, tender Tamer of horses on grass-grown plains. Where is he now whose eyes swam brighter, Softer than love, in his turbulent charms; Who taught me to strike, and to fall, dear fighter, And gather me up in his boyhood arms; Taught me the rifle, and with me went riding, Suppled my limbs to the horseman's war; Where is he now, for whom my heart's biding, Biding, biding--but he rides far! O love that passes the love of woman! Who that hath felt it shall ever forget When the breath of life with a throb turns human, And a lad's heart is to a lad's heart set? Ever, forever, lover and rover-- They shall cling, nor each from other shall part Till the reign of the stars in the heavens be 'over, And life is dust in each faithful heart. They are dead, the American grasses under; There is no one now who presses my side; By the African chotts I am riding asunder, And with great joy ride I the last great ride. I am fey; I am fein of sudden dying; Thousands of miles there is no one near; And my heart--all the night it is crying, crying In the bosoms of dead lads darling-dear. Hearts of my music--them dark earth covers; Comrades to die, and to die for, were they; In the width of the world there were no such rovers-- Back to back, breast to breast, it was ours to stay; And the highest on earth was the vow that we cherished, To spur forth from the crowd and come back never more, And to ride in the track of great souls perished Till the nests of the lark shall roof us o'er. Yet lingers a horseman on Altai highlands, Who hath joy of me, riding the Tartar glissade, And one, far faring o'er orient islands Whose blood yet glints with my blade's accolade; North, west, east, I fling you my last hallooing, Last love to the breasts where my own has bled; Through the reach of the desert my soul leaps pursuing My star where it rises a Star of the Dead. GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY THE FLIGHT I O WILD HEART, track the land's perfume, Beach-roses and moor-heather! All fragrances of herb and bloom Fail, out at sea, together. O follow where aloft find room Lark-song and eagle-feather! All ecstasies of throat and plume Melt, high on yon blue weather. O leave on sky and ocean lost The flight creation dareth; Take wings of love, that mounts the most: Find fame, that furthest fareth! Thy flight, albeit amid her host Thee, too, night star-like beareth, Flying, thy breast on heaven's coast, The infinite outweareth. II "Dead o'er us roll celestial fires; Mute stand Earth's ancient beaches; Old thoughts, old instincts, old desires, The passing hour outreaches; The soul creative never tires-- Evokes, adores, beseeches; And that heart most the god inspires Whom most its wildness teaches. "For I will course through falling years And stars and cities burning; And I will march through dying cheers Past empires unreturning; Ever the world flame reappears Where mankind power is earning, The nations' hopes, the people's tears, One with the wild heart yearning. GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY 
23111	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 23111-h.htm or 23111-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/3/1/1/23111/23111-h/23111-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/3/1/1/23111/23111-h.zip) RILEY SONGS OF FRIENDSHIP by JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY With Pictures by Will Vawter [Frontispiece: "Sleep, for thy mother bends over thee yet!"] New York Grosset & Dunlap Publishers Copyright 1885, 1887, 1888, 1890, 1892, 1893, 1894, 1900, 1903, 1908, 1913, 1915 James Whitcomb Riley To Young E. Allison--Bookman The bookman he's a humming-bird-- His feasts are honey-fine,-- (With hi! hilloo! And clover-dew And roses lush and rare!) _His_ roses are the phrase and word Of olden tomes divine; (With hi! and ho! And pinks ablow And posies everywhere!) The Bookman he's a humming-bird,-- He steals from song to song-- He scents the ripest-blooming rhyme, And takes his heart along And sacks all sweets of bursting verse And ballads, throng on throng. (With ho! and hey! And brook and brae, And brinks of shade and shine!) A humming-bird the Bookman is-- Though cumbrous, gray and grim,-- (With hi! hilloo! And honey-dew And odors musty-rare!) He bends him o'er that page of his As o'er the rose's rim. (With hi! and ho! And pinks aglow And roses everywhere!) Ay, he's the featest humming-bird, On airiest of wings He poises pendent o'er the poem That blossoms as it sings-- God friend him as he dips his beak In such delicious things! (With ho! and hey! And world away And only dreams for him!) O friends of mine, whose kindly words come to me Voiced only in lost lisps of ink and pen, If I had power to tell the good you do me, And how the blood you warm goes laughing through me, My tongue would babble baby-talk again. And I would toddle round the world to meet you-- Fall at your feet, and clamber to your knees And with glad, happy hands would reach and greet you, And twine my arms about you, and entreat you For leave to weave a thousand rhymes like these-- A thousand rhymes enwrought of nought but presses Of cherry-lip and apple-cheek and chin, And pats of honeyed palms, and rare caresses, And all the sweets of which as Fancy guesses She folds away her wings and swoons therein. {xv} CONTENTS PAGE ABE MARTIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 AMERICA'S THANKSGIVING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 ANCIENT PRINTERMAN, THE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 ART AND POETRY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 BACK FROM TOWN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 BE OUR FORTUNES AS THEY MAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 BECAUSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 CHRISTMAS GREETING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 DAN O'SULLIVAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 DEAD JOKE AND THE FUNNY MAN, THE . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 DOWN TO THE CAPITAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 FRIEND OF A WAYWARD HOUR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 GOOD-BY ER HOWDY-DO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 HER VALENTINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 HERR WEISER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 HOBO VOLUNTARY, A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 I SMOKE MY PIPE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 IN THE AFTERNOON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 IN THE HEART OF JUNE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 JAMES B. MAYNARD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 LETTER TO A FRIEND, A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 "LITTLE MAN IN THE TINSHOP, THE" . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 LITTLE OLD POEM THAT NOBODY READS, THE . . . . . . . . . 146 MOTHER-SONG, A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 MY BACHELOR CHUM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 MY FRIEND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 MY HENRY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 {xvi} MY JOLLY FRIEND'S SECRET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 MY OLD FRIEND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 OLD BAND, THE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 OLD CHUMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 OLD-FASHIONED BIBLE, THE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 OLD JOHN HENRY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 OLD INDIANY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 OLD MAN, THE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 OLD MAN AND JIM, THE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 OLD SCHOOL-CHUM, THE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 OUR OLD FRIEND NEVERFAIL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 POET'S LOVE FOR THE CHILDREN, THE . . . . . . . . . . . 42 REACH YOUR HAND TO ME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 SCOTTY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 SONG BY UNCLE SIDNEY, A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 STEPMOTHER, THE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 THAT NIGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 TO ALMON KEEPER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 TO THE QUIET OBSERVER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 TOM VAN ARDEN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 TOMMY SMITH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 TRAVELING MAN, THE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 UNCLE SIDNEY TO MARCELLUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 WHAT "OLD SANTA" OVERHEARD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 WHEN OLD JACK DIED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 WHEN WE THREE MEET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 {xvii} ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE "SLEEP, FOR THY MOTHER BENDS OVER THEE YET!" . . Frontispiece BACK FROM TOWN--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 A HOBO VOLUNTARY--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 HE CAMPS NEAR TOWN, ON THE OLD CRICK-BANK . . . . . . . 27 AND SO LIKEWISE DOES THE FARMHANDS STARE . . . . . . . . 31 A HOBO VOLUNTARY--TAILPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 BE OUR FORTUNES AS THEY MAY--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . 34 BE OUR FORTUNES AS THEY MAY--TAILPIECE . . . . . . . . . 35 AND WRAPPED IN SHROUDS OF DRIFTING CLOUDS . . . . . . . 37 UNCLE SIDNEY TO MARCELLUS--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . 40 THE POET'S LOVE FOR THE CHILDREN--HEADPIECE . . . . . . 42 OF THE ORCHARD-LANDS OF CHILDHOOD . . . . . . . . . . . 43 FRIEND OF A WAYWARD HOUR--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . 46 FRIEND OF A WAYWARD HOUR--TAILPIECE . . . . . . . . . . 47 MY HENRY--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 NOTHIN' THAT BOY WOULDN'T RESK! . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 A LETTER TO A FRIEND--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 A LETTER TO A FRIEND--TAILPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 THE OLD-FASHIONED BIBLE--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . 54 THE BLESSED OLD VOLUME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 GOOD-BY ER HOWDY-DO--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 GOOD-BY ER HOWDY-DO--TAILPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 "THE LITTLE MAN IN THE TINSHOP"--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . 61 THE ORCHESTRA, WITH ITS MELODY . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 TOMMY SMITH--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 OUR OLD FRIEND NEVERFAIL--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . 72 HIS MOUTH IS A GRIN WITH THE CORNERS TUCKED IN . . . . . 75 ART AND POETRY--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 DOWN TO THE CAPITAL--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 TO OLD ONE-LEGGED CHAPS, LIKE ME . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 {xviii} "IT'S ALL JES' ARTIFICIAL, THIS-ERE HIGH-PRICED LIFE OF OURS" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 OLD CHUMS--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 SCOTTY--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 THE OLD MAN--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 IN YOUR REPOSEFUL GAZE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 THE OLD MAN--TAILPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 THE ANCIENT PRINTERMAN--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . 101 O PRINTERMAN OF SALLOW FACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 THE OLD MAN AND JIM--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 "WELL, GOOD-BY, JIM" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 THE OLD MAN AND JIM--TAILPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 THE OLD MAN AND JIM--TAILPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 THE OLD MAN AND JIM--TAILPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 THE OLD SCHOOL-CHUM--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 THE OLD SCHOOL-CHUM--TAILPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 MY JOLLY FRIEND'S SECRET--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . 114 AH, FRIEND OF MINE, HOW GOES IT . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 MY JOLLY FRIEND'S SECRET--TAILPIECE . . . . . . . . . . 119 THE OLD BAND--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 I WANT TO HEAR THE OLD BAND PLAY . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 THE OLD BAND--TAILPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 MY FRIEND--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 MY FRIEND--TAILPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 THE TRAVELING MAN--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 WHO HAVE MET HIM WITH SMILES AND WITH CHEER . . . . . . 129 DAN O'SULLIVAN--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 DAN O'SULLIVAN--TAILPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 MY OLD FRIEND--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 OLD JOHN HENRY--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 A SMILIN' FACE AND A HEARTY HAND . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 CHRISTMAS GREETING--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 ABE MARTIN--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 HIS MOUTH, LIKE HIS PIPE, 'S ALLUS GOIN' . . . . . . . . 143 THE LITTLE OLD POEM THAT NOBODY READS--HEADPIECE . . . . 146 THE LITTLE OLD POEM THAT NOBODY READS--TAILPIECE . . . . 147 IN THE AFTERNOON--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 YOU IN THE HAMMOCK; AND I, NEAR BY . . . . . . . . . . . 149 IN THE AFTERNOON--TAILPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 {xix} HERR WEISER--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 AND LILY AND ASTER AND COLUMBINE . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 HERR WEISER--TAILPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 A MOTHER-SONG--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 WHAT "OLD SANTA" OVERHEARD--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . 160 WHAT "OLD SANTA" OVERHEARD--TAILPIECE . . . . . . . . . 161 WHEN OLD JACK DIED--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 WE COULDN'T ONLY CRY WHEN OLD JACK DIED . . . . . . . . 165 WHEN OLD JACK DIED--TAILPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 THAT NIGHT--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 THAT NIGHT--TAILPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 TO ALMON KEEFER--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 UNDER "THE OLD SWEET APPLE TREE" . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 TO ALMON KEEFER--TAILPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 TO THE QUIET OBSERVER--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 TO THE QUIET OBSERVER--TAILPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 REACH YOUR HAND TO ME--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 REACH YOUR HAND TO ME, MY FRIEND . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 REACH YOUR HAND TO ME--TAILPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 THE DEAD JOKE AND THE FUNNY MAN--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . 180 THE DEAD JOKE AND THE FUNNY MAN--TAILPIECE . . . . . . . 181 AMERICA'S THANKSGIVING--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . 182 OLD INDIANY--HEADPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 BUT, FELLERS, SHE'S A LEAKY STATE! . . . . . . . . . . . 187 OLD INDIANY--TAILPIECE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190 {23} RILEY SONGS OF FRIENDSHIP [Illustration: Back from town--headpiece] BACK FROM TOWN Old friends allus is the best, Halest-like and heartiest: Knowed us first, and don't allow We're so blame much better now! They was standin' at the bars When we grabbed "the kivvered kyars" And lit out fer town, to make Money--and that old mistake! {24} We thought then the world we went Into beat "The Settlement," And the friends 'at we'd make there Would beat any anywhere!-- And they do--fer that's their biz: They beat all the friends they is-- 'Cept the raal old friends like you 'At staid at home, like I'd ort to! W'y, of all the good things yit I ain't shet of, is to quit Business, and git back to sheer These old comforts waitin' here-- These old friends; and these old hands 'At a feller understands; These old winter nights, and old Young-folks chased in out the cold! Sing "Hard Times'll come ag'in No More!" and neighbors all jine in! Here's a feller come from town Wants that-air old fiddle down From the chimbly!--Git the floor Cleared fer one cowtillion more!-- It's poke the kitchen fire, says he, And shake a friendly leg with me! {25} [Illustration: A hobo voluntary--headpiece] A HOBO VOLUNTARY Oh, the hobo's life is a roving life; It robs pretty maids of their heart's delight-- It causes them to weep and it causes them to mourn For the life of a hobo, never to return. The hobo's heart it is light and free, Though it's Sweethearts all, farewell, to thee!-- Farewell to thee, for it's far away The homeless hobo's footsteps stray. In the morning bright, or the dusk so dim, It's any path is the one for him! He'll take his chances, long or short, For to meet his fate with a valiant heart. {26} Oh, it's beauty mops out the sidetracked-car, And it's beauty-beaut' at the pigs-feet bar; But when his drinks and his eats is made Then the hobo shunts off down the grade. He camps near town, on the old crick-bank, And he cuts his name on the water-tank-- He cuts his name and the hobo sign,-- "Bound for the land of corn and wine!" (Oh, it's I like friends that he'ps me through, And the friends also that he'ps you, too,-- Oh, I like all friends, 'most every kind But I don't like friends that don't like mine.) There's friends of mine, when they gits the hunch, Comes a swarmin' in, the blasted bunch,-- "Clog-step Jonny" and "Flat-wheel Bill" And "Brockey Ike" from Circleville. With "Cooney Ward" and "Sikes the Kid" And old "Pop Lawson"--the best we had-- The rankest mug and the worst for lush And the dandiest of the whole blame push. {27} [Illustration: He camps near town on the old crick-bank] {29} Oh, them's the times I remembers best When I took my chance with all the rest, And hogged fried chicken and roastin' ears, too, And sucked cheroots when the feed was through. Oh, the hobo's way is the railroad line, And it's little he cares for schedule time; Whatever town he's a-striken for Will wait for him till he gits there. And whatever burg that he lands in There's beauties there just thick for him-- There's beauty at "The Queen's Taste Lunch-stand," sure, Or "The Last Chance Boardin' House" back-door. He's lonesome-like, so he gits run in, To git the hang o' the world ag'in; But the laundry circles he moves in there Makes him sigh for the country air,-- {30} So it's Good-by gals! and he takes his chance And wads hisself through the workhouse-fence: He sheds the town and the railroad, too, And strikes mud roads for a change of view. The jay drives by on his way to town, And looks on the hobo in high scorn, And so likewise does the farmhands stare-- But what the haids does the hobo care! He hits the pike, in the summer's heat Or the winter's cold, with its snow and sleet-- With a boot on one foot, and one shoe-- Or he goes barefoot, if he chooses to. But he likes the best, when the days is warm, With his bum Prince-Albert on his arm-- He likes to size up a farmhouse where They haint no man nor bulldog there. Oh, he gits his meals wherever he can, So natchurly he's a handy man-- He's a handy man both day and night, And he's always blest with an appetite! {31} [Illustration: And so likewise do the farmhands stare] {33} A tin o' black coffee, and a rhuburb pie-- Be they old and cold as charity-- They're hot-stuff enough for the pore hobo, And it's "Thanks, kind lady, for to treat me so!" Then he fills his pipe with a stub cigar And swipes a coal from the kitchen fire, And the hired girl says, in a smilin' tone,-- "It's good-by, John, if you call that goin'!" Oh, the hobo's life is a roving life, It robs pretty maids of their heart's delight-- It causes them to weep and it causes them to mourn For the life of a hobo, never to return. [Illustration: A hobo voluntary--tailpiece] {34} [Illustration: Be our fortunes as they may--headpiece] BE OUR FORTUNES AS THEY MAY Be our fortunes as they may, Touched with loss or sorrow, Saddest eyes that weep to-day May be glad to-morrow. Yesterday the rain was here, And the winds were blowing-- Sky and earth and atmosphere Brimmed and overflowing. {35} But to-day the sun is out, And the drear November We were then so vexed about Now we scarce remember. Yesterday you lost a friend-- Bless your heart and love it!-- For you scarce could comprehend All the aching of it;-- But I sing to you and say: Let the lost friend sorrow-- Here's another come to-day, Others may to-morrow. [Illustration: Be our fortunes as they may--tailpiece] {36} I SMOKE MY PIPE I can't extend to every friend In need a helping hand-- No matter though I wish it so, 'Tis not as Fortune planned; But haply may I fancy they Are men of different stripe Than others think who hint and wink,-- And so--I smoke my pipe! A golden coal to crown the bowl-- My pipe and I alone,-- I sit and muse with idler views Perchance than I should own:-- It might be worse to own the purse Whose glutted bowels gripe In little qualms of stinted alms; And so I smoke my pipe. {37} [Illustration: And wrapped in shrouds of drifting clouds] {39} And if inclined to moor my mind And cast the anchor Hope, A puff of breath will put to death The morbid misanthrope That lurks inside--as errors hide In standing forms of type To mar at birth some line of worth; And so I smoke my pipe. The subtle stings misfortune flings Can give me little pain When my narcotic spell has wrought This quiet in my brain: When I can waste the past in taste So luscious and so ripe That like an elf I hug myself; And so I smoke my pipe. And wrapped in shrouds of drifting clouds I watch the phantom's flight, Till alien eyes from Paradise Smile on me as I write: And I forgive the wrongs that live, As lightly as I wipe Away the tear that rises here; And so I smoke my pipe. {40} [Illustration: Uncle Sidney to Marcellus--headpiece] UNCLE SIDNEY TO MARCELLUS Marcellus, won't you tell us-- Truly tell us, if you can,-- What will you be, Marcellus, When you get to be a man? You turn, with never answer But to the band that plays.-- O rapt and eerie dancer, What of your future days? Far in the years before us We dreamers see your fame, While song and praise in chorus Make music of your name. And though our dreams foretell us As only visions can, You must prove it, O Marcellus, When you get to be a man! {41} A SONG BY UNCLE SIDNEY O were I not a clod, intent On being just an earthly thing, I'd be that rare embodiment Of Heart and Spirit, Voice and Wing, With pure, ecstatic, rapture-sent, Divinely-tender twittering That Echo swoons to re-present,-- A bluebird in the Spring. {42} [Illustration: The poet's love for the children--headpiece] THE POET'S LOVE FOR THE CHILDREN Kindly and warm and tender, He nestled each childish palm So close in his own that his touch was a prayer And his speech a blessed psalm. He has turned from the marvelous pages Of many an alien tome-- Haply come down from Olivet, Or out from the gates of Rome-- {43} [Illustration: Of the orchard-lands of childhood] {45} Set sail o'er the seas between him And each little beckoning hand That fluttered about in the meadows And groves of his native land,-- Fluttered and flashed on his vision As, in the glimmering light Of the orchard-lands of childhood, The blossoms of pink and white. And there have been sobs in his bosom, As out on the shores he stept, And many a little welcomer Has wondered why he wept.-- That was because, O children, Ye might not always be The same that the Savior's arms were wound About, in Galilee. {46} [Illustration: Friend of a wayward hour--headpiece] FRIEND OF A WAYWARD HOUR Friend of a wayward hour, you came Like some good ghost, and went the same; And I within the haunted place Sit smiling on your vanished face, And talking with--your name. But thrice the pressure of your hand-- First hail--congratulations--and Your last "God bless you!" as the train That brought you snatched you back again Into the unknown land. {47} "God bless me?" Why, your very prayer Was answered ere you asked it there, I know--for when you came to lend Me your kind hand, and call me friend, God blessed me unaware. [Illustration: Friend of a wayward hour--tailpiece] {48} [Illustration: My Henry--headpiece] MY HENRY He's jes' a great, big, awk'ard, hulkin' Feller,--humped, and sort o' sulkin'-- Like, and ruther still-appearin'-- Kind-as-ef he wuzn't keerin' Whether school helt out er not-- That's my Henry, to a dot! Allus kind o' liked him--whether Childern, er growed-up together! Fifteen year' ago and better, 'Fore he ever knowed a letter, Run acrosst the little fool In my Primer-class at school. {49} [Illustration: Nothin' that boy wouldn't resk!] {51} When the Teacher wuzn't lookin', He'd be th'owin' wads; er crookin' Pins; er sprinklin' pepper, more'n Likely, on the stove; er borin' Gimlet-holes up thue his desk-- Nothin' _that_ boy wouldn't resk! But, somehow, as I was goin' On to say, he seemed so knowin', _Other_ ways, and cute and cunnin'-- Allus wuz a notion runnin' Thue my giddy, fool-head he Jes' had be'n cut out fer me! Don't go much on _prophesyin'_, But last night whilse I wuz fryin' Supper, with that man a-pitchin' Little Marthy round the kitchen, Think-says-I, "Them baby's eyes Is my Henry's, jes' p'cise!" {52} [Illustration: A letter to a friend--headpiece] A LETTER TO A FRIEND The past is like a story I have listened to in dreams That vanished in the glory Of the Morning's early gleams; And--at my shadow glancing-- I feel a loss of strength, As the Day of Life advancing Leaves it shorn of half its length. {53} But it's all in vain to worry At the rapid race of Time-- And he flies in such a flurry When I trip him with a rhyme, I'll bother him no longer Than to thank you for the thought That "my fame is growing stronger As you really think it ought." And though I fall below it, I might know as much of mirth To live and die a poet Of unacknowledged worth; For Fame is but a vagrant-- Though a loyal one and brave, And his laurels ne'er so fragrant As when scattered o'er the grave. [Illustration: A letter to a friend--tailpiece] {54} [Illustration: The old-fashioned Bible--headpiece] THE OLD-FASHIONED BIBLE How dear to my heart are the scenes of my childhood That now but in mem'ry I sadly review; The old meeting-house at the edge of the wildwood, The rail fence, and horses all tethered thereto; The low, sloping roof, and the bell in the steeple, The doves that came fluttering out overhead As it solemnly gathered the God-fearing people To hear the old Bible my grandfather read. The old-fashioned Bible-- The dust-covered Bible-- The leathern-bound Bible my grandfather read. {55} [Illustration: The blessed old volume] {57} The blessed old volume! The face bent above it-- As now I recall it--is gravely severe, Though the reverent eye that droops downward to love it Makes grander the text through the lens of a tear, And, as down his features it trickles and glistens, The cough of the deacon is stilled, and his head Like a haloed patriarch's leans as he listens To hear the old Bible my grandfather read. The old-fashioned Bible-- The dust-covered Bible-- The leathern-bound Bible my grandfather read. Ah! who shall look backward with scorn and derision And scoff the old book though it uselessly lies In the dust of the past, while this newer revision Lisps on of a hope and a home in the skies? Shall the voice of the Master be stifled and riven? Shall we hear but a tithe of the words He has said, When so long He has, listening, leaned out of Heaven To hear the old Bible my grandfather read? The old-fashioned Bible-- The dust-covered Bible-- The leathern-bound Bible my grandfather read. {58} [Illustration: Good-by er howdy-do--headpiece] GOOD-BY ER HOWDY-DO Say good-by er howdy-do-- What's the odds betwixt the two? Comin'--goin', ev'ry day-- Best friends first to go away-- Grasp of hands you'd ruther hold Than their weight in solid gold Slips their grip while greetin' you.-- Say good-by er howdy-do! {59} Howdy-do, and then, good-by-- Mixes jes' like laugh and cry; Deaths and births, and worst and best, Tangled their contrariest; Ev'ry jinglin' weddin'-bell Skeerin' up some funer'l knell.-- Here's my song, and there's your sigh.-- Howdy-do, and then, good-by! Say good-by er howdy-do-- Jes' the same to me and you; 'Taint worth while to make no fuss, 'Cause the job's put up on us! Some One's runnin' this concern That's got nothin' else to learn: Ef _He's_ willin', we'll pull through-- Say good-by er howdy-do! [Illustration: Good-by er howdy-do--tailpiece] {60} WHEN WE THREE MEET When we three meet? Ah! friend of mine Whose verses well and flow as wine,-- My thirsting fancy thou dost fill With draughts delicious, sweeter still Since tasted by those lips of thine. I pledge thee, through the chill sunshine Of autumn, with a warmth divine, Thrilled through as only I shall thrill When we three meet. I pledge thee, if we fast or dine, We yet shall loosen, line by line, Old ballads, and the blither trill Of our-time singers--for there will Be with us all the Muses nine When we three meet. {61} [Illustration: "The little man in the tinshop"--headpiece] "THE LITTLE MAN IN THE TINSHOP" When I was a little boy, long ago, And spoke of the theater as the "show," The first one that I went to see, Mother's brother it was took me-- (My uncle, of course, though he seemed to be Only a boy--I loved him so!) And ah, how pleasant he made it all! And the things he knew that _I_ should know!-- The stage, the "drop," and the frescoed wall; The sudden flash of the lights; and oh, The orchestra, with its melody, And the lilt and jingle and jubilee Of "The Little Man in the Tinshop"! {62} For Uncle showed me the "Leader" there, With his pale, bleak forehead and long, black hair; Showed me the "Second," and "'Cello," and "Bass," And the "B-Flat," pouting and puffing his face At the little end of the horn he blew Silvery bubbles of music through; And he coined me names of them, each in turn, Some comical name that I laughed to learn, Clean on down to the last and best,-- The lively little man, never at rest, Who hides away at the end of the string, And tinkers and plays on everything,-- That's "The Little Man in the Tinshop"! Raking a drum like a rattle of hail, Clinking a cymbal or castanet; Chirping a twitter or sending a wail Through a piccolo that thrills me yet; Reeling ripples of riotous bells, And tipsy tinkles of triangles-- Wrangled and tangled in skeins of sound Till it seemed that my very soul spun round, As I leaned, in a breathless joy, toward my Radiant uncle, who snapped his eye And said, with the courtliest wave of his hand, "Why, that little master of all the band Is 'The Little Man in the Tinshop'! {63} [Illustration: The orchestra, with its melody] {65} "And I've heard Verdi, the Wonderful, And Paganini, and Ole Bull, Mozart, Handel, and Mendelssohn, And fair Parepa, whose matchless tone Karl, her master, with magic bow, Blent with the angels', and held her so Tranced till the rapturous Infinite-- And I've heard arias, faint and low, From many an operatic light Glimmering on my swimming sight Dimmer and dimmer, until, at last, I still sit, holding my roses fast For 'The Little Man in the Tinshop.'" Oho! my Little Man, joy to you-- And _yours_--and _theirs_--your lifetime through! Though _I've_ heard melodies, boy and man, Since first "the show" of my life began, Never yet have I listened to Sadder, madder, or gladder glees Than your unharmonied harmonies; For yours is the music that appeals To all the fervor the boy's heart feels-- All his glories, his wildest cheers, His bravest hopes, and his brightest tears; And so, with his first bouquet, he kneels To "The Little Man in the Tinshop." {66} [Illustration: Tommy Smith--headpiece] TOMMY SMITH Dimple-cheeked and rosy-lipped, With his cap-rim backward tipped, Still in fancy I can see Little Tommy smile on me-- Little Tommy Smith. Little unsung Tommy Smith-- Scarce a name to rhyme it with; Yet most tenderly to me Something sings unceasingly-- Little Tommy Smith. {67} On the verge of some far land Still forever does he stand, With his cap-rim rakishly Tilted; so he smiles on me-- Little Tommy Smith. Elder-blooms contrast the grace Of the rover's radiant face-- Whistling back, in mimicry, "Old--Bob--White!" all liquidly-- Little Tommy Smith. O my jaunty statuette Of first love, I see you yet. Though you smile so mistily, It is but through tears I see, Little Tommy Smith. But, with crown tipped back behind, And the glad hand of the wind Smoothing back your hair, I see Heaven's best angel smile on me,-- Little Tommy Smith. {68} TOM VAN ARDEN Tom Van Arden, my old friend, Our warm fellowship is one Far too old to comprehend Where its bond was first begun: Mirage-like before my gaze Gleams a land of other days, Where two truant boys, astray, Dream their lazy lives away. There's a vision, in the guise Of Midsummer, where the Past Like a weary beggar lies In the shadow Time has cast; And as blends the bloom of trees With the drowsy hum of bees, Fragrant thoughts and murmurs blend, Tom Van Arden, my old friend. {69} Tom Van Arden, my old friend, All the pleasures we have known Thrill me now as I extend This old hand and grasp your own-- Feeling, in the rude caress, All affection's tenderness; Feeling, though the touch be rough, Our old souls are soft enough. So we'll make a mellow hour: Fill your pipe, and taste the wine-- Warp your face, if it be sour, I can spare a smile from mine; If it sharpen up your wit, Let me feel the edge of it-- I have eager ears to lend, Tom Van Arden, my old friend. Tom Van Arden, my old friend, Are we "lucky dogs," indeed? Are we all that we pretend In the jolly life we lead?-- Bachelors, we must confess, Boast of "single blessedness" To the world, but not alone-- Man's best sorrow is his own! {70} And the saddest truth is this,-- Life to us has never proved What we tasted in the kiss Of the women we have loved: Vainly we congratulate Our escape from such a fate As their lying lips could send, Tom Van Arden, my old friend! Tom Van Arden, my old friend, Hearts, like fruit upon the stem, Ripen sweetest, I contend, As the frost falls over them: Your regard for me to-day Makes November taste of May, And through every vein of rhyme Pours the blood of summer-time. When our souls are cramped with youth Happiness seems far away In the future, while, in truth, We look back on it to-day Through our tears, nor dare to boast,-- "Better to have loved and lost!" Broken hearts are hard to mend, Tom Van Arden, my old friend. {71} Tom Van Arden, my old friend, I grow prosy, and you tire; Fill the glasses while I bend To prod up the failing fire. . . . You are restless:--I presume There's a dampness in the room.-- Much of warmth our nature begs, With rheumatics in our legs! . . . Humph! the legs we used to fling Limber-jointed in the dance, When we heard the fiddle ring Up the curtain of Romance, And in crowded public halls Played with hearts like jugglers' balls.-- _Feats of mountebanks, depend!_-- Tom Van Arden, my old friend. Tom Van Arden, my old friend, Pardon, then, this theme of mine: While the firelight leaps to lend Higher color to the wine,-- I propose a health to those Who have _homes_, and home's repose, Wife- and child-love without end! . . . Tom Van Arden, my old friend. {72} [Illustration: Our old friend Neverfail--headpiece] OUR OLD FRIEND NEVERFAIL O it's good to ketch a relative 'at's richer and don't run When you holler out to hold up, and'll joke and have his fun; It's good to hear a man called bad and then find out he's not, Er strike some chap they call lukewarm 'at's really red-hot; {73} It's good to know the Devil's painted jes' a leetle black, And it's good to have most anybody pat you on the back;-- But jes' the best thing in the world's our old friend Neverfail, When he wags yer hand as honest as an old dog wags his tail! I like to strike the man I owe the same time I can pay, And take back things I've borried, and su'prise folks thataway; I like to find out that the man I voted fer last fall, That didn't git elected, was a scoundrel after all; I like the man that likes the pore and he'ps 'em when he can; I like to meet a ragged tramp 'at's still a gentleman; But most I like--with you, my boy--our old friend Neverfail, When he wags yer hand as honest as an old dog wags his tail! {74} MY BACHELOR CHUM A corpulent man is my bachelor chum, With a neck apoplectic and thick-- An abdomen on him as big as a drum, And a fist big enough for the stick; With a walk that for grace is clear out of the case, And a wobble uncertain--as though His little bow-legs had forgotten the pace That in youth used to favor him so. He is forty, at least; and the top of his head Is a bald and a glittering thing; And his nose and his two chubby cheeks are as red As three rival roses in spring; {75} [Illustration: His mouth is a grin with the corners tucked in] {77} His mouth is a grin with the corners tucked in, And his laugh is so breezy and bright That it ripples his features and dimples his chin With a billowy look of delight. He is fond of declaring he "don't care a straw"-- That "the ills of a bachelor's life Are blisses, compared with a mother-in-law And a boarding-school miss for a wife!" So he smokes and he drinks, and he jokes and he winks, And he dines and he wines, all alone, With a thumb ever ready to snap as he thinks Of the comforts he never has known. But up in his den--(Ah, my bachelor chum!)-- I have sat with him there in the gloom, When the laugh of his lips died away to become But a phantom of mirth in the room. And to look on him there you would love him, for all His ridiculous ways, and be dumb As the little girl-face that smiles down from the wall On the tears of my bachelor chum. {78} [Illustration: Art and poetry--headpiece] ART AND POETRY TO HOMER DAVENPORT Wess he says, and sort o' grins, "Art and Poetry is twins! "Yit, if I'd my pick, I'd shake Poetry, and no mistake! "Pictures, allus, 'peared to _me_, Clean laid over Poetry! {79} "Let me _draw_, and then, i jings, I'll not keer a straw who sings. "'F I could draw as you have drew, Like to jes' swop pens with you! "Picture-drawin' 's my pet vision Of Life-work in Lands Elysian. "Pictures is first language we Find hacked out in History. "Most delight we ever took Was in our first Picture-book. "'Thout the funny picture-makers, They'd be lots more undertakers! "Still, as I say, Rhymes and Art 'Smighty hard to tell apart. "Songs and pictures go together Same as birds and summer weather." So Wess says, and sort o' grins, "Art and Poetry is twins." {80} [Illustration: Down to the Capital--headpiece] DOWN TO THE CAPITAL I' be'n down to the Capital at Washington, D. C., Where Congerss meets and passes on the pensions ort to be Allowed to old one-legged chaps, like me, 'at sence the war Don't wear their pants in pairs at all--and yit how proud we are! {81} Old Flukens, from our deestrick, jes' turned in and tuck and made Me stay with him whilse I was there; and longer 'at I stayed The more I kep' a-wantin' jes' to kind o' git away, And yit a-feelin' sociabler with Flukens ever' day. You see I'd got the idy--and I guess most folks agrees-- 'At men as rich as him, you know, kin do jes' what they please; A man worth stacks o' money, and a Congerssman and all, And livin' in a buildin' bigger'n Masonic Hall! Now mind, I'm not a-faultin' Fluke--he made his money square: We both was Forty-niners, and both bu'sted gittin' there; I weakened and onwindlassed, and he stuck and stayed and made His millions; don't know what _I'm_ worth untel my pension's paid. But I was goin' to tell you--er a-ruther goin' to try To tell you how he's livin' now: gas burnin' mighty nigh In ever' room about the house; and ever' night, about, Some blame reception goin' on, and money goin' out. {82} They's people there from all the world--jes' ever' kind 'at lives, Injuns and all! and Senators, and Ripresentatives; And girls, you know, jes' dressed in gauze and roses, I declare, And even old men shamblin' round a-waltzin' with 'em there! And bands a-tootin' circus-tunes, 'way in some other room Jes' chokin' full o' hothouse plants and pinies and perfume; And fountains, squirtin' stiddy all the time; and statutes, made Out o' puore marble, 'peared-like, sneakin' round there in the shade. And Fluke he coaxed and begged and pled with me to take a hand And sashay in amongst 'em--crutch and all, you understand; But when I said how tired I was, and made fer open air, He follered, and tel five o'clock we set a-talkin' there. {83} [Illustration: To old one-legged chaps, like me] {85} "My God!" says he--Fluke says to me, "I'm tireder'n you! Don't putt up yer tobacker tel you give a man a chew. Set back a leetle furder in the shadder--that'll do; I'm tireder'n you, old man; I'm tireder'n you. "You see that-air old dome," says he, "humped up ag'inst the sky? It's grand, first time you see it; but it changes, by and by, And then it stays jes' thataway--jes' anchored high and dry Betwixt the sky up yender and the achin' of yer eye. "Night's purty; not so purty, though, as what it ust to be When my first wife was livin'. You remember her?" says he. I nodded-like, and Fluke went on, "I wonder now ef she Knows where I am--and what I am--and what I ust to be? "That band in there!--I ust to think 'at music couldn't wear A feller out the way it does; but that ain't music there-- That's jes' a' _imitation_, and like ever'thing, I swear, I hear, er see, er tetch, er taste, er tackle anywhere! {86} "It's all jes' _artificial_, this-'ere high-priced life of ours; The theory, it's sweet enough, tel it saps down and sours. They's no _home_ left, ner _ties_ o' home about it. By the powers, The whole thing's artificialer'n artificial flowers! "And all I want, and could lay down and sob fer, is to know The homely things of homely life; fer instance, jes' to go And set down by the kitchen stove--Lord! that 'u'd rest me so,-- Jes' set there, like I ust to do, and laugh and joke, you know. "Jes' set there, like I ust to do," says Fluke, a-startin' in, 'Peared-like, to say the whole thing over to hisse'f ag'in; Then stopped and turned, and kind o' coughed, and stooped and fumbled fer Somepin' o' 'nuther in the grass--I guess his handkercher. Well, sence I'm back from Washington, where I left Fluke a-still A-leggin' fer me, heart and soul, on that-air pension bill, I've half-way struck the notion, when I think o' wealth and sich, They's nothin' much patheticker'n jes' a-bein' rich! {87} [Illustration: "It's all jes' artificial, this-'ere high-priced life of ours"] {89} [Illustration: Old chums--headpiece] OLD CHUMS "If I die first," my old chum paused to say, "Mind! not a whimper of regret:--instead, Laugh and be glad, as I shall.--Being dead, I shall not lodge so very far away But that our mirth shall mingle.--So, the day The word comes, joy with me." "I'll try," I said, Though, even speaking, sighed and shook my head And turned, with misted eyes. His roundelay Rang gaily on the stair; and then the door Opened and--closed. . . . Yet something of the clear, Hale hope, and force of wholesome faith he had Abided with me--strengthened more and more.-- Then--then they brought his broken body here: And I laughed--whisperingly--and we were glad. {90} [Illustration: Scotty--headpiece] SCOTTY Scotty's dead--Of course he is! Jes' that same old luck of his!-- Ever sence we went cahoots He's be'n first, you bet yer boots! When our schoolin' first begun, Got two whippin's to my one: Stold and smoked the first cigar: Stood up first before the bar, Takin' whisky-straight--and me Wastin' time on "blackberry"! {91} Beat me in the Army, too, And clean on the whole way through! In more scrapes around the camp, And more troubles, on the tramp: Fought and fell there by my side With more bullets in his hide, And more glory in the cause,-- That's the kind o' man _he_ was! Luck liked Scotty more'n me.-- _I_ got married: Scotty, he Never even would _apply_ Fer the pension-money I Had to beg of "Uncle Sam"-- That's the kind o' cuss _I_ am!-- Scotty allus first and best-- Me the last and ornriest! Yit fer all that's said and done-- All the battles fought and won-- We hain't prospered, him ner me-- Both as pore as pore could be,-- Though we've allus, up tel now, Stuck together anyhow-- Scotty allus, as I've said, Luckiest--And now he's _dead_! {92} [Illustration: The old man--headpiece] THE OLD MAN Lo! steadfast and serene, In patient pause between The seen and the unseen, What gentle zephyrs fan Your silken silver hair,-- And what diviner air Breathes round you like a prayer, Old Man? {93} Can you, in nearer view Of Glory, pierce the blue Of happy Heaven through; And, listening mutely, can Your senses, dull to us, Hear Angel-voices thus, In chorus glorious-- Old Man? In your reposeful gaze The dusk of Autumn days Is blent with April haze, As when of old began The bursting of the bud Of rosy babyhood-- When all the world was good, Old Man. And yet I find a sly Little twinkle in your eye; And your whisperingly shy Little laugh is simply an Internal shout of glee That betrays the fallacy You'd perpetrate on me, Old Man. {94} So just put up the frown That your brows are pulling down! Why, the fleetest boy in town, As he bared his feet and ran, Could read with half a glance-- And of keen rebuke, perchance-- Your secret countenance, Old Man. Now, honestly, confess: Is an old man any less Than the little child we bless And caress when we can? Isn't age but just a place Where you mask the childish face To preserve its inner grace, Old Man? Hasn't age a truant day, Just as that you went astray In the wayward, restless way, When, brown with dust and tan, Your roguish face essayed, In solemn masquerade, To hide the smile it made, Old Man? {95} [Illustration: In your reposeful gaze] {97} Now, fair, and square, and true, Don't your old soul tremble through, As in youth it used to do When it brimmed and overran With the strange, enchanted sights, And the splendors and delights Of the old "Arabian Nights," Old Man? When, haply, you have fared Where glad Aladdin shared His lamp with you, and dared The Afrite and his clan; And, with him, clambered through The trees where jewels grew-- And filled your pockets, too, Old Man? Or, with Sinbad, at sea-- And in veracity Who has sinned as bad as he, Or would, or will, or can?-- Have you listened to his lies, With open mouth and eyes, And learned his art likewise, Old Man? {98} And you need not deny That your eyes were wet as dry, Reading novels on the sly! And review them, if you can And the same warm tears will fall-- Only faster, that is all-- Over Little Nell and Paul, Old Man! Oh, you were a lucky lad-- Just as good as you were bad! And the host of friends you had-- Charley, Tom, and Dick, and Dan; And the old School-Teacher, too, Though he often censured you; And the girls in pink and blue, Old Man. And--as often you have leant, In boyish sentiment, To kiss the letter sent By Nelly, Belle, or Nan-- Wherein the rose's hue Was red, the violet blue-- And sugar sweet--and you, Old Man,-- {99} So, to-day, as lives the bloom, And the sweetness, and perfume Of the blossoms, I assume, On the same mysterious plan The Master's love assures, That the selfsame boy endures In that hale old heart of yours, Old Man. [Illustration: The old man--tailpiece] {100} JAMES B. MAYNARD His daily, nightly task is o'er-- He leans above his desk no more. His pencil and his pen say not One further word of gracious thought. All silent is his _voice_, yet clear For all a grateful world to hear; He poured abroad his human love In opulence unmeasured of-- While, in return, his meek demand,-- The warm clasp of a neighbor-hand In recognition of the true World's duty that he lived to do. So was he kin of yours and mine-- So, even by the hallowed sign Of silence which he listens to, He hears our tears as falls the dew. {101} [Illustration: The ancient printerman--headpiece] THE ANCIENT PRINTERMAN O Printerman of sallow face, And look of absent guile, Is it the 'copy' on your 'case' That causes you to smile? Or is it some old treasure scrap You call from Memory's file? "I fain would guess its mystery-- For often I can trace A fellow dreamer's history Whene'er it haunts the face; Your fancy's running riot In a retrospective race! {102} "Ah, Printerman, you're straying Afar from 'stick' and type-- Your heart has 'gone a-maying,' And you taste old kisses, ripe Again on lips that pucker At your old asthmatic pipe! "You are dreaming of old pleasures That have faded from your view; And the music-burdened measures Of the laughs you listen to Are now but angel-echoes-- O, have I spoken true?" The ancient Printer hinted With a motion full of grace To where the words were printed On a card above his "case,"-- "'I am deaf and dumb!" I left him With a smile upon his face. {103} [Illustration: O Printerman of sallow face] {105} [Illustration: The old man and Jim--headpiece] THE OLD MAN AND JIM Old man never had much to say-- 'Ceptin' to Jim,-- And Jim was the wildest boy he had-- And the old man jes' wrapped up in him! Never heerd him speak but once Er twice in my life,--and first time was When the army broke out, and Jim he went, The old man backin' him, fer three months; And all 'at I heerd the old man say Was, jes' as we turned to start away,-- "Well, good-by, Jim: Take keer o' yourse'f!" {106} 'Peared-like, he was more satisfied Jes' _lookin'_ at Jim And likin' him all to hisse'f-like, see?-- 'Cause he was jes' wrapped up in him! And over and over I mind the day The old man come and stood round in the way While we was drillin', a-watchin' Jim-- And down at the deepo a-heerin' him say, "Well, good-by, Jim: Take keer of yourse'f!" Never was nothin' about the _farm_ Disting'ished Jim; Neighbors all ust to wonder why The old man 'peared wrapped up in him; But when Cap. Biggler he writ back 'At Jim was the bravest boy we had In the whole dern rigiment, white er black, And his fightin' good as his farmin' bad-- 'At he had led, with a bullet clean Bored through his thigh, and carried the flag Through the bloodiest battle you ever seen,-- The old man wound up a letter to him 'At Cap. read to us, 'at said: "Tell Jim Good-by, And take keer of hisse'f." {107} [Illustration: "Well, good-by, Jim"] {109} Jim come home jes' long enough To take the whim 'At he'd like to go back in the calvery-- And the old man jes' wrapped up in him! Jim 'lowed 'at he'd had sich luck afore, Guessed he'd tackle her three years more. And the old man give him a colt he'd raised, And follered him over to Camp Ben Wade, And laid around fer a week er so, Watchin' Jim on dress-parade-- Tel finally he rid away, And last he heerd was the old man say,-- "Well, good-by, Jim: Take keer of yourse'f!" [Illustration: The old man and Jim--tailpiece] {110} Tuk the papers, the old man did, A-watchin' fer Jim-- Fully believin' he'd make his mark _Some_ way--jes' wrapped up in him!-- And many a time the word 'u'd come 'At stirred him up like the tap of a drum-- At Petersburg, fer instunce, where Jim rid right into their cannons there, And tuk 'em, and p'inted 'em t'other way, And socked it home to the boys in gray As they scooted fer timber, and on and on-- Jim a lieutenant, and one arm gone, And the old man's words in his mind all day,-- "Well, good-by, Jim: Take keer of yourse'f!" [Illustration: The old man and Jim--tailpiece] {111} Think of a private, now, perhaps, We'll say like Jim, 'At's dumb clean up to the shoulder-straps-- And the old man jes' wrapped up in him! Think of him--with the war plum' through, And the glorious old Red-White-and-Blue A-laughin' the news down over Jim, And the old man, bendin' over him-- The surgeon turnin' away with tears 'At hadn't leaked fer years and years, As the hand of the dyin' boy clung to His father's, the old voice in his ears,-- "Well, good-by, Jim: Take keer of yourse'f!" [Illustration: The old man and Jim--tailpiece] {112} [Illustration: The old school-chum--headpiece] THE OLD SCHOOL-CHUM He puts the poem by, to say His eyes are not themselves to-day! A sudden glamour o'er his sight-- A something vague, indefinite-- An oft-recurring blur that blinds The printed meaning of the lines, And leaves the mind all dusk and dim In swimming darkness--strange to him! {113} It is not childishness, I guess,-- Yet something of the tenderness That used to wet his lashes when A boy seems troubling him again;-- The old emotion, sweet and wild, That drove him truant when a child, That he might hide the tears that fell Above the lesson--"Little Nell." And so it is he puts aside The poem he has vainly tried To follow; and, as one who sighs In failure, through a poor disguise Of smiles, he dries his tears, to say His eyes are not themselves to-day. [Illustration: The old school-chum--tailpiece] {114} [Illustration: My jolly friend's secret--headpiece] MY JOLLY FRIEND'S SECRET Ah, friend of mine, how goes it Since you've taken you a mate?-- Your smile, though, plainly shows it Is a very happy state! Dan Cupid's necromancy! You must sit you down and dine, And lubricate your fancy With a glass or two of wine. {115} [Illustration: Ah, friend of mine, how goes it] {117} And as you have "deserted," As my other chums have done, While I laugh alone diverted, As you drop off one by one--- And I've remained unwedded, Till--you see--look here--that I'm, In a manner, "snatched bald-headed" By the sportive hand of Time! I'm an "old 'un!" yes, but wrinkles Are not so plenty, quite, As to cover up the twinkles Of the _boy_--ain't I right? Yet there are ghosts of kisses Under this mustache of mine My mem'ry only misses When I drown 'em out with wine. From acknowledgment so ample, You would hardly take me for What I am--a perfect sample Of a "jolly bachelor"; Not a bachelor has being When he laughs at married life But his heart and soul's agreeing That he ought to have a wife! {118} Ah, ha! old chum, this claret, Like Fatima, holds the key Of the old Blue-Beardish garret Of my hidden mystery! Did you say you'd like to listen? Ah, my boy! the "_Sad No More!_" And the tear-drops that will glisten-- _Turn the catch upon the door,_ And sit you down beside me And put yourself at ease-- I'll trouble you to slide me That wine decanter, please; The path is kind o' mazy Where my fancies have to go, And my heart gets sort o' lazy On the journey--don't you know? Let me see--when I was twenty-- It's a lordly age, my boy, When a fellow's money's plenty, And the leisure to enjoy-- {119} And a girl--with hair as golden As--_that_; and lips--well--quite As red as _this_ I'm holdin' Between you and the light? And eyes and a complexion-- Ah, heavens!--le'-me-see-- Well,--just in this connection,-- _Did you lock that door for me?_ Did I start in recitation My past life to recall? Well, _that's_ an indication I am purty tight--that's all! [Illustration: My jolly friend's secret--tailpiece] {120} IN THE HEART OF JUNE In the heart of June, love, You and I together, On from dawn till noon, love, Laughing with the weather; Blending both our souls, love, In the selfsame tune, Drinking all life holds, love, In the heart of June. In the heart of June, love, With its golden weather, Underneath the moon, love, You and I together. Ah! how sweet to seem, love, Drugged and half aswoon With this luscious dream, love, In the heart of June. {121} [Illustration: The old band--headpiece] THE OLD BAND It's mighty good to git back to the old town, shore, Considerin' I've be'n away twenty year and more. Sence I moved then to Kansas, of course I see a change, A-comin' back, and notice things that's new to me and strange; Especially at evening when yer new band-fellers meet, In fancy uniforms and all, and play out on the street-- . . . What's come of old Bill Lindsey and the Saxhorn fellers--say? I want to hear the _old_ band play. {122} What's come of Eastman, and Nat Snow? And where's War Barnett at? And Nate and Bony Meek; Bill Hart; Tom Richa'son and that- Air brother of him played the drum as twic't as big as Jim; And old Hi Kerns, the carpenter--say, what's become o' him? I make no doubt yer _new band_ now's a _competenter_ band, And plays their music more by note than what they play by hand, And stylisher and grander tunes; but somehow--anyway, I want to hear the _old_ band play. Sich tunes as "John Brown's Body" and "Sweet Alice," don't you know; And "The Camels is A-comin'," and "John Anderson, my Jo"; And a dozent others of 'em--"Number Nine" and "Number 'Leven" Was favo-_rites_ that fairly made a feller dream o' Heaven. And when the boys 'u'd saranade, I've laid so still in bed I've even heerd the locus'-blossoms droppin' on the shed When "Lilly Dale," er "Hazel Dell," had sobbed and died away-- . . . I want to hear the _old_ band play. {123} [Illustration: I want to hear the old band play] {125} Yer _new_ band ma'by beats it, but the _old band's_ what I said-- It allus 'peared to kind o' chord with somepin' in my head; And, whilse I'm no musicianer, when my blame' eyes is jes' Nigh drownded out, and Mem'ry squares her jaws and sort o' says She _won't_ ner _never_ will fergit, I want to jes' turn in And take and light right out o' here and git back West ag'in And _stay_ there, when I git there, where I never haf to say I want to hear the _old_ band play. [Illustration: The old band--tailpiece] {126} [Illustration: My friend--headpiece] MY FRIEND "He is my friend," I said,-- "Be patient!" Overhead The skies were drear and dim; And lo! the thought of him Smiled on my heart--and then The sun shone out again! "He is my friend!" The words Brought summer and the birds; And all my winter-time Thawed into running rhyme And rippled into song, Warm, tender, brave, and strong. {127} And so it sings to-day.-- So may it sing alway! Though waving grasses grow Between, and lilies blow Their trills of perfume clear As laughter to the ear, Let each mute measure end With "Still he is thy friend." [Illustration: My friend--tailpiece] {128} [Illustration: The traveling man--headpiece] THE TRAVELING MAN I Could I pour out the nectar the gods only can, I would fill up my glass to the brim And drink the success of the Traveling Man, And the house represented by him; And could I but tincture the glorious draught With his smiles, as I drank to him then, And the jokes he has told and the laughs he has laughed, I would fill up the goblet again-- And drink to the sweetheart who gave him good-by With a tenderness thrilling him this Very hour, as he thinks of the tear in her eye That salted the sweet of her kiss; To her truest of hearts and her fairest of hands I would drink, with all serious prayers, Since the heart she must trust is a Traveling Man's, And as warm as the ulster he wears. {129} [Illustration: Who have met him with smiles and with cheer] {131} II I would drink to the wife, with the babe on her knee, Who awaits his returning in vain-- Who breaks his brave letters so tremulously And reads them again and again! And I'd drink to the feeble old mother who sits At the warm fireside of her son And murmurs and weeps o'er the stocking she knits, As she thinks of the wandering one. I would drink a long life and a health to the friends Who have met him with smiles and with cheer-- To the generous hand that the landlord extends To the wayfarer journeying here: And I pledge, when he turns from this earthly abode And pays the last fare that he can, Mine Host of the Inn at the End of the Road Will welcome the Traveling Man! {132} [Illustration: Dan O'Sullivan--headpiece] DAN O'SULLIVAN Dan O'Sullivan: It's your Lips have kissed "The Blarney," sure!-- To be trillin' praise av me, Dhrippin' swhate wid poethry!-- Not that I'd not have ye sing-- Don't lave off for anything-- Jusht be aisy whilst the fit Av me head shwells up to it! Dade and thrue, I'm not the man, Whilst yer singin', loike ye can, To cry shtop because ye've blesht My songs more than all the resht:-- I'll not be the b'y to ax Any shtar to wane or wax, Or ax any clock that's woun' To run up inshtid av down! {133} Whist yez! Dan O'Sullivan!-- Him that made the Irishman Mixt the birds in wid the dough, And the dew and mistletoe Wid the whusky in the quare Muggs av us--and here we air, Three parts right, and three parts wrong, Shpiked with beauty, wit and song! [Illustration: Dan O'Sullivan--tailpiece] {134} [Illustration: My old friend--headpiece] MY OLD FRIEND You've a manner all so mellow, My old friend, That it cheers and warms a fellow, My old friend, Just to meet and greet you, and Feel the pressure of a hand That one may understand, My old friend. {135} Though dimmed in youthful splendor, My old friend, Your smiles are still as tender, My old friend, And your eyes as true a blue As your childhood ever knew, And your laugh as merry, too, My old friend. For though your hair is faded, My old friend, And your step a trifle jaded, My old friend, Old Time, with all his lures In the trophies he secures, Leaves young that heart of yours, My old friend. And so it is you cheer me, My old friend, For to know you still are near me, My old friend, Makes my hopes of clearer light, And my faith of surer sight, And my soul a purer white, My old friend. {136} [Illustration: Old John Henry--headpiece] OLD JOHN HENRY Old John's jes' made o' the commonest stuff-- Old John Henry-- He's tough, I reckon,--but none too tough-- Too tough though's better than not enough! Says old John Henry. He does his best, and when his best's bad, He don't fret none, ner he don't git sad-- He simply 'lows it's the best he had: Old John Henry! {137} [Illustration: A smilin' face and hearty hand] {139} His doctern's jes' o' the plainest brand-- Old John Henry-- A smilin' face and a hearty hand 'S religen 'at all folks understand, Says old John Henry. He's stove up some with the rhumatiz, And they hain't no shine on them shoes o' his, And his hair hain't cut--but his eye-teeth is: Old John Henry! He feeds hisse'f when the stock's all fed-- Old John Henry-- And sleeps like a babe when he goes to bed-- And dreams o' Heaven and home-made bread, Says old John Henry. He hain't refined as he'd ort to be To fit the statutes o' poetry, Ner his clothes don't fit him--but _he_ fits _me_: Old John Henry! {140} HER VALENTINE Somebody's sent a funny little valentine to me. It's a bunch of baby-roses in a vase of filigree, And hovering above them--just as cute as he can be-- Is a fairy Cupid tangled in a scarf of poetry. And the prankish little fellow looks so knowing in his glee, With his golden bow and arrow, aiming most unerringly At a pair of hearts so labeled that I may read and see That one is meant for "One Who Loves," and one is meant for me. But I know the lad who sent it! It's as plain as A-B-C!-- For the roses they are _blushing_, and the vase stands _awkwardly_, And the little god above it--though as cute as he can be-- Can not breathe the lightest whisper of his burning love for me. {141} [Illustration: Christmas greeting--headpiece] CHRISTMAS GREETING A word of Godspeed and good cheer To all on earth, or far or near, Or friend or foe, or thine or mine-- In echo of the voice divine, Heard when the star bloomed forth and lit The world's face, with God's smile on it. {142} [Illustration: Abe Martin--headpiece] ABE MARTIN Abe Martin!--dad-burn his old picture! P'tends he's a Brown County fixture-- A kind of a comical mixture Of hoss-sense and no sense at all! His mouth, like his pipe, 's allus goin', And his thoughts, like his whiskers, is flowin', And what he don't know ain't wuth knowin'-- From Genesis clean to baseball! {143} [Illustration: His mouth, like his pipe, 's allus goin'] {145} The artist, Kin Hubbard, 's so keerless He draws Abe 'most eyeless and earless, But he's never yet pictured him cheerless Er with fun 'at he tries to conceal,-- Whuther on to the fence er clean over A-rootin' up ragweed er clover, Skeert stiff at some "Rambler" er "Rover" Er newfangled automo_beel_! It's a purty steep climate old Brown's in; And the rains there his ducks nearly drowns in The old man hisse'f wades his rounds in As ca'm and serene, mighty nigh As the old handsaw-hawg, er the mottled Milch cow, er the old rooster wattled Like the mumps had him 'most so well throttled That it was a pleasure to die. But best of 'em all's the fool-breaks 'at Abe don't see at all, and yit makes 'at Both me and you lays back and shakes at His comic, miraculous cracks Which makes him--clean back of the power Of genius itse'f in its flower-- This Notable Man of the Hour, Abe Martin, The Joker on Facts. {146} [Illustration: The little old poem that nobody reads--headpiece] THE LITTLE OLD POEM THAT NOBODY READS The little old poem that nobody reads Blooms in a crowded space, Like a ground-vine blossom, so low in the weeds That nobody sees its face-- Unless, perchance, the reader's eye Stares through a yawn, and hurries by, For no one wants, or loves, or heeds, The little old poem that nobody reads. {147} The little old poem that nobody reads Was written--where?--and when? Maybe a hand of goodly deeds Thrilled as it held the pen: Maybe the fountain whence it came Was a heart brimmed o'er with tears of shame, And maybe its creed is the worst of creeds-- The little old poem that nobody reads. But, little old poem that nobody reads, Holding you here above The wound of a heart that warmly bleeds For all that knows not love, I well believe if the old World knew As dear a friend as I find in you, That friend would tell it that all it needs Is the little old poem that nobody reads. [Illustration: The little old poem that nobody reads--tailpiece] {148} [Illustration: In the afternoon--headpiece] IN THE AFTERNOON You in the hammock; and I, near by, Was trying to read, and to swing you, too; And the green of the sward was so kind to the eye, And the shade of the maples so cool and blue, That often I looked from the book to you To say as much, with a sigh. You in the hammock. The book we'd brought From the parlor--to read in the open air,-- Something of love and of Launcelot And Guinevere, I believe, was there-- But the afternoon, it was far more fair Than the poem was, I thought. {149} [Illustration: You in the hammock; and I, near by] {151} You in the hammock; and on and on. I droned and droned through the rhythmic stuff-- But, with always a half of my vision gone Over the top of the page--enough To caressingly gaze at you, swathed in the fluff Of your hair and your odorous "lawn." You in the hammock--and that was a year-- Fully a year ago, I guess-- And what do we care for their Guinevere And her Launcelot and their lordliness!-- You in the hammock still, and--Yes-- Kiss me again, my dear! [Illustration: In the afternoon--tailpiece] {152} BECAUSE Why did we meet long years of yore? And why did we strike hands and say "We will be friends and nothing more"; Why are we musing thus to-day? Because because was just because, And no one knew just why it was. Why did I say good-by to you? Why did I sail across the main? Why did I love not heaven's own blue Until I touched these shores again? Because because was just because, And you nor I knew why it was. Why are my arms about you now, And happy tears upon your cheek? And why my kisses on your brow? Look up in thankfulness and speak! Because because was just because, And only God knew why it was. {153} [Illustration: Herr Weiser--headpiece] HERR WEISER Herr Weiser!--Threescore years and ten,-- A hale white rose of his countrymen, Transplanted here in the Hoosier loam, And blossomy as his German home-- As blossomy and as pure and sweet As the cool green glen of his calm retreat, Far withdrawn from the noisy town Where trade goes clamoring up and down, Whose fret and fever, and stress and strife, May not trouble his tranquil life! {154} Breath of rest, what a balmy gust!-- Quit of the city's heat and dust, Jostling down by the winding road Through the orchard ways of his quaint abode.-- Tether the horse, as we onward fare Under the pear trees trailing there, And thumping the wooden bridge at night With lumps of ripeness and lush delight, Till the stream, as it maunders on till dawn, Is powdered and pelted and smiled upon. Herr Weiser, with his wholesome face, And the gentle blue of his eyes, and grace Of unassuming honesty, Be there to welcome you and me! And what though the toil of the farm be stopped And the tireless plans of the place be dropped, While the prayerful master's knees are set In beds of pansy and mignonette And lily and aster and columbine, Offered in love, as yours and mine?-- {155} [Illustration: And lily and aster and columbine] {157} What, but a blessing of kindly thought, Sweet as the breath of forget-me-not!-- What, but a spirit of lustrous love White as the aster he bends above!-- What, but an odorous memory Of the dear old man, made known to me In days demanding a help like his,-- As sweet as the life of the lily is-- As sweet as the soul of a babe, bloom-wise Born of a lily in Paradise. [Illustration: Herr Weiser--tailpiece] {158} [Illustration: A mother-song--headpiece] A MOTHER-SONG Mother, O mother! forever I cry for you, Sing the old song I may never forget; Even in slumber I murmur and sigh for you.-- Mother, O mother, Sing low, "Little brother, Sleep, for thy mother bends over thee yet!" {159} Mother, O mother! the years are so lonely, Filled but with weariness, doubt and regret! Can't you come back to me--for to-night only, Mother, my mother, And sing, "Little brother, Sleep, for thy mother bends over thee yet!" Mother, O mother! of old I had never One wish denied me, nor trouble to fret; Now--must I cry out all vainly forever,-- Mother, sweet mother, O sing, "Little brother, Sleep, for thy mother bends over thee yet!" Mother, O mother! must longing and sorrow Leave me in darkness, with eyes ever wet, And never the hope of a meeting to-morrow? Answer me, mother, And sing, "Little brother, Sleep, for thy mother bends over thee yet!" {160} [Illustration: What "Old Santa" overheard--headpiece] WHAT "OLD SANTA" OVERHEARD _'Tis said old Santa Claus one time_ _Told this joke on himself in rhyme:_ One Christmas, in the early din That ever leads the morning in, I heard the happy children shout In rapture at the toys turned out Of bulging little socks and shoes-- A joy at which I could but choose To listen enviously, because I'm always just "Old Santa Claus,"-- But ere my rising sigh had got To its first quaver at the thought, It broke in laughter, as I heard A little voice chirp like a bird,-- {161} "Old Santa's mighty good, I know. And awful rich--and he can go Down ever' chimbly anywhere In all the world!--But I don't care, _I_ wouldn't trade with _him_, and be Old Santa Clause, and him be me, Fer all his toys and things!--and _I_ Know why, and bet you _he_ knows why!-- They _wuz_ no Santa Clause when _he_ Wuz ist a little boy like me!" [Illustration: What "Old Santa" overheard--tailpiece] {162} THE STEPMOTHER First she come to our house, Tommy run and hid; And Emily and Bob and me We cried jus' like we did When Mother died,--and we all said 'At we all wisht 'at we was dead! And Nurse she couldn't stop us; And Pa he tried and tried,-- We sobbed and shook and wouldn't look, But only cried and cried; And nen some one--we couldn't jus' Tell who--was cryin' same as us! Our Stepmother! Yes, it was her, Her arms around us all-- 'Cause Tom slid down the banister And peeked in from the hall.-- And we all love her, too, because She's purt' nigh good as Mother was! {163} [Illustration: When old Jack died--headpiece] WHEN OLD JACK DIED When Old Jack died, we stayed from school (they said, At home, we needn't go that day), and none Of us ate any breakfast--only one, And that was Papa--and his eyes were red When he came round where we were, by the shed Where Jack was lying, half-way in the sun And half-way in the shade. When we begun To cry out loud, Pa turned and dropped his head And went away; and Mamma, she went back Into the kitchen. Then, for a long while, All to ourselves, like, we stood there and cried. We thought so many good things of Old Jack, And funny things--although we didn't smile-- We couldn't only cry when Old Jack died. {164} When Old Jack died, it seemed a human friend Had suddenly gone from us; that some face That we had loved to fondle and embrace From babyhood, no more would condescend To smile on us forever. We might bend With tearful eyes above him, interlace Our chubby fingers o'er him, romp and race, Plead with him, call and coax--aye, we might send The old halloo up for him, whistle, hist, (If sobs had let us) or, as wildly vain, Snapped thumbs, called "Speak," and he had not replied; We might have gone down on our knees and kissed The tousled ears, and yet they must remain Deaf, motionless, we knew--when Old Jack died. {165} [Illustration: We couldn't only cry when old Jack died] {167} When Old Jack died, it seemed to us, some way, That all the other dogs in town were pained With our bereavement, and some that were chained, Even, unslipped their collars on that day To visit Jack in state, as though to pay A last, sad tribute there, while neighbors craned Their heads above the high board fence, and deigned To sigh "Poor Dog!" remembering how they Had cuffed him, when alive, perchance, because, For love of them he leaped to lick their hands-- Now, that he could not, were they satisfied? We children thought that, as we crossed his paws, And o'er his grave, 'way down the bottom-lands, Wrote "Our First Love Lies Here," when Old Jack died. [Illustration: When old Jack died--tailpiece] {168} [Illustration: That night--headpiece] THAT NIGHT You and I, and that night, with its perfume and glory!-- The scent of the locusts--the light of the moon; And the violin weaving the waltzers a story, Enmeshing their feet in the weft of the tune, Till their shadows uncertain Reeled round on the curtain, While under the trellis we drank in the June. {169} Soaked through with the midnight the cedars were sleeping, Their shadowy tresses outlined in the bright Crystal, moon-smitten mists, where the fountain's heart, leaping Forever, forever burst, full with delight; And its lisp on my spirit Fell faint as that near it Whose love like a lily bloomed out in the night. O your glove was an odorous sachet of blisses! The breath of your fan was a breeze from Cathay! And the rose at your throat was a nest of spilled kisses!-- And the music!--in fancy I hear it to-day, As I sit here, confessing Our secret, and blessing My rival who found us, and waltzed you away. [Illustration: That night--tailpiece] {170} [Illustration: To Almon Keefer--headpiece] TO ALMON KEEFER INSCRIBED IN "TALES OF THE OCEAN" This first book that I ever knew Was read aloud to me by you-- Friend of my boyhood, therefore take It back from me, for old times' sake-- The selfsame "Tales" first read to me, Under "the old sweet apple tree," Ere I myself could read such great Big words,--but listening all elate, At your interpreting, until Brain, heart and soul were all athrill With wonder, awe, and sheer excess Of wildest childish happiness. {171} [Illustration: Under "the old sweet apple tree"] {173} So take the book again--forget All else,--long years, lost hopes, regret; Sighs for the joys we ne'er attain, Prayers we have lifted all in vain; Tears for the faces seen no more, Once as the roses at the door! Take the enchanted book--And lo, On grassy swards of long ago, Sprawl out again, beneath the shade The breezy old-home orchard made, The veriest barefoot boy indeed-- And I will listen as you read. [Illustration: To Almon Keefer--tailpiece] {174} [Illustration: To the quiet observer--headpiece] TO THE QUIET OBSERVER AFTER HIS LONG SILENCE Dear old friend of us all in need Who know the worth of a friend indeed, How rejoiced are we all to learn Of your glad return. {175} We who have missed your voice so long-- Even as March might miss the song Of the sugar-bird in the maples when They're tapped again. Even as the memory of these _Blended_ sweets,--the sap of the trees And the song of the birds, and the old camp too, We think of you. Hail to you, then, with welcomes deep As grateful hearts may laugh or weep!-- You give us not only the bird that sings, But all good things. [Illustration: To the quiet observer--tailpiece] {176} [Illustration: Reach your hand to me--headpiece] REACH YOUR HAND TO ME Reach your hand to me, my friend, With its heartiest caress-- Sometime there will come an end To its present faithfulness-- Sometime I may ask in vain For the touch of it again, When between us land or sea Holds it ever back from me. {177} [Illustration: Reach your hand to me, my friend] {179} Sometime I may need it so, Groping somewhere in the night, It will seem to me as though Just a touch, however light, Would make all the darkness day, And along some sunny way Lead me through an April-shower Of my tears to this fair hour. O the present is too sweet To go on forever thus! Round the corner of the street Who can say what waits for us?-- Meeting--greeting, night and day, Faring each the selfsame way-- Still somewhere the path must end-- Reach your hand to me, my friend! [Illustration: Reach your hand to me--tailpiece] {180} [Illustration: The dead joke and the funny man--headpiece] THE DEAD JOKE AND THE FUNNY MAN Long years ago, a funny man, Flushed with a strange delight, Sat down and wrote a funny thing All in the solemn night; And as he wrote he clapped his hands And laughed with all his might. For it was such a funny thing, O, such a very funny thing, This wonderfully funny thing, He Laughed Outright. {181} And so it was this funny man Printed this funny thing-- Forgot it, too, nor ever thought It worth remembering, Till but a day or two ago. (Ah! what may changes bring!) He found this selfsame funny thing In an exchange--"O, funny thing!" He cried, "You dear old funny thing!" And Sobbed Outright. [Illustration: The dead joke and the funny man--tailpiece] {182} [Illustration: America's Thanksgiving--headpiece] AMERICA'S THANKSGIVING 1900 Father all bountiful, in mercy bear With this our universal voice of prayer-- The voice that needs must be Upraised in thanks to Thee, O Father, from Thy children everywhere. A multitudinous voice, wherein we fain Wouldst have Thee hear no lightest sob of pain-- No murmur of distress, Nor moan of loneliness, Nor drip of tears, though soft as summer rain. {183} And, Father, give us first to comprehend, No ill can come from Thee; lean Thou and lend Us clearer sight to see Our boundless debt to Thee, Since all Thy deeds are blessings, in the end. And let us feel and know that, being Thine, We are inheritors of hearts divine, And hands endowed with skill, And strength to work Thy will, And fashion to fulfilment Thy design. So, let us thank Thee, with all self aside, Nor any lingering taint of mortal pride; As here to Thee we dare Uplift our faltering prayer, Lend it some fervor of the glorified. We thank Thee that our land is loved of Thee The blessed home of thrift and industry, With ever-open door Of welcome to the poor-- Thy shielding hand o'er all abidingly. {184} E'en thus we thank Thee for the wrong that grew Into a right that heroes battled to, With brothers long estranged, Once more as brothers ranged Beneath the red and white and starry blue. Ay, thanks--though tremulous the thanks expressed-- Thanks for the battle at its worst, and best-- For all the clanging fray Whose discord dies away Into a pastoral-song of peace and rest. {185} [Illustration: Old Indiany--headpiece] OLD INDIANY INTENDED FOR A DINNER OF THE INDIANA SOCIETY OF CHICAGO Old Indiany, 'course we know Is first, and best, and _most_, also, Of _all_ the States' whole forty-four:-- She's first in ever'thing, that's shore!-- And _best_ in ever'way as yet Made known to man; and you kin bet She's _most_, because she won't confess She ever was, or will be, _less_! And yet, fer all her proud array Of sons, how many gits away!-- {186} No doubt about her bein' _great_, But, fellers, she's a leaky State! And them that boasts the most about Her, them's the ones that's dribbled out. Law! jes' to think of all you boys 'Way over here in Illinoise A-celebratin', like ye air, Old Indiany, 'way back there In the dark ages, so to speak, A-prayin' for ye once a week And wonderin' what's a-keepin' you From comin', like you ort to do. You're all a-lookin' well, and like You wasn't "sidin' up the pike," As the tramp-shoemaker said When "he sacked the boss and shed The blame town, to hunt fer one Where they didn't work fer fun!" Lookin' _extry_ well, I'd say, Your old home so fur away.-- {187} [Illustration: But, fellers, she's a leaky State!] {189} Maybe, though, like the old jour., Fun hain't all yer workin' fer. So you've found a job that pays Better than in them old days You was on The Weekly Press, Heppin' run things, more er less; Er a-learnin' telegraph- Operatin', with a half- Notion of the tinner's trade, Er the dusty man's that laid Out designs on marble and Hacked out little lambs by hand, And chewed finecut as he wrought, "Shapin' from his bitter thought" Some squshed mutterings to say,-- "Yes, hard work, and porer pay!" Er you'd kind o' thought the far- Gazin' kuss that owned a car And took pictures in it, had Jes' the snap you wanted--bad! And you even wondered why He kep' foolin' with his sky- Light the same on shiny days As when rainin'. ('T leaked always.) {190} Wondered what strange things was hid In there when he shet the door And smelt like a burnt drug store Next some orchard-trees, i swan! With whole roasted apples on! That's why Ade is, here of late, Buyin' in the dear old state,-- So's to cut it up in plots Of both town and country lots. [Illustration: Old Indiany--tailpiece] 
23332	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original lovely illustrations. See 23332-h.htm or 23332-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/3/3/3/23332/23332-h/23332-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/3/3/3/23332/23332-h.zip) GREETINGS FROM LONGFELLOW [Illustration] Copyright 1907 Cupples & Leon Co. New York * * * * * Sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate! We know what Master laid thy keel, What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, What anvils rang, what hammers beat, In what a forge and what a heat Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 'T is of the wave and not the rock; 'T is but the flapping of the sail, And not a rent made by the gale! In spite of rock and tempest's roar, In spite of false lights on the shore, Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee--are all with thee! [Illustration] SOMETHING LEFT UNDONE. Labor with what zeal we will, Something still remains undone, Something uncompleted still Waits the rising of the sun. By the bedside, on the stair, At the threshold, near the gates, With its menace or its prayer, Like a mendicant it waits; Waits, and will not go away; Waits, and will not be gainsaid; By the cares of yesterday Each to-day is heavier made; Till at length the burden seems Greater than our strength can bear, Heavy as the weight of dreams, Pressing on us everywhere. And we stand from day to day, Like the dwarfs of times gone by, Who, as Northern legends say, On their shoulders held the sky. [Illustration] THE LADDER OF ST. AUGUSTINE. Saint Augustine! well hast thou said, That of our vices we can frame A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath our feet each deed of shame! All common things, each day's events, That with the hour begin and end, Our pleasures and our discontents, Are rounds by which we may ascend. We have not wings, we cannot soar; But we have feet to scale and climb By slow degrees, by more and more, The cloudy summits of our time. The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upwards in the night. Nor deem the irrevocable Past, As wholly wasted, wholly vain, If, rising on its wrecks, at last To something nobler we attain. [Illustration] EVANGELINE. "Gabriel! O my beloved!" Then he beheld, in a dream, once more the home of his childhood; Green Acadian meadows, with sylvan rivers among them, Village, and mountain, and woodlands; and, walking under their shadow, As in the days of her youth, Evangeline rose in his vision. Tears came into his eyes; and as slowly he lifted his eyelids, Vanished the vision away, but Evangeline knelt by his bedside. Vainly he strove to whisper her name, for the accents unuttered Died on his lips, and their motion revealed what his tongue would have spoken. Vainly he strove to rise; and Evangeline, kneeling beside him, Kissed his dying lips, and laid his head on her bosom. Sweet was the light of his eyes; but it suddenly sank into darkness, As when a lamp is blown out by a gust of wind at a casement. All was ended now, the hope, and the fear, and the sorrow, All the aching of heart, the restless, unsatisfied longing. All the dull, deep pain, and constant anguish of patience! And, as she pressed once more the lifeless head to her bosom, Meekly she bowed her own, and murmured, "Father, I thank thee!" [Illustration] O little feet! that such long years Must wander on through hopes and fears, Must ache and bleed beneath your load; I, nearer to the wayside inn Where toil shall cease and rest begin, Am weary, thinking of your road! O little hands! that, weak or strong, Have still to serve or rule so long, Have still so long to give or ask; I, who so much with book and pen Have toiled among my fellow-men, Am weary, thinking of your task. O little hearts! that throb and beat With such impatient, feverish heat, Such limitless and strong desires; Mine that so long has glowed and burned, With passions into ashes turned Now covers and conceals its fires. O little souls! as pure and white And crystalline as rays of light Direct from heaven, their source divine; Refracted through the mist of years, How red my setting sun appears, How lurid looks this soul of mine! [Illustration] THE SINGERS. God sent his Singers upon earth With songs of sadness and of mirth, That they might touch the hearts of men, And bring them back to heaven again. The first, a youth with soul of fire, Held in his hand a golden lyre; Through groves he wandered, and by streams, Playing the music of our dreams. The second, with a bearded face, Stood singing in the market-place, And stirred with accents deep and loud The hearts of all the listening crowd. A gray old man, the third and last, Sang in cathedrals dim and vast, While the majestic organ rolled Contrition from its mouths of gold. [Illustration] And those who heard the Singers three Disputed which the best might be; For still their music seemed to start Discordant echoes in each heart. But the great Master said, "I see No best in kind, but in degree; I gave a various gift to each, To charm, to strengthen and to teach. "These are the three great chords of might, And he whose ear is tuned aright Will hear no discord in the three, But the most perfect harmony." [Illustration] 
1365	----	THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (From the PUBLISHER'S NOTE: "The present Household Edition of Mr. Longfellow's Poetical Writings . . . contains all his original verse that he wished to preserve, and all his translations except the Divina Commedia. The poems are printed as nearly as possible in chronological order . . . Boston, Autumn, 1902." Houghton Mifflin Company.) CONTENTS. VOICES OF THE NIGHT. Prelude Hymn to the Night A Psalm of Life The Reaper and the Flowers The Light of Stars Footsteps of Angels Flowers The Beleaguered City Midnight Mass for the Dying Year EARLIER POEMS. An April Day Autumn Woods in Winter Hymn of the Moravian Nuns of Bethlehem Sunrise on the Hills The Spirit of Poetry Burial of the Minnisink L'Envoi BALLADS AND OTHER POEMS. The Skeleton in Armor The Wreck of the Hesperus The Village Blacksmith Endymion It is not Always May The Rainy Day God's-Acre To the River Charles Blind Bartimeus The Goblet of Life Maidenhood Excelsior POEMS ON SLAVERY. To William E. Channing The Slave's Dream The Good Part, that shall not be taken away The Slave in the Dismal Swamp The Slave singing at Midnight The Witnesses The Quadroon Girl The Warning THE SPANISH STUDENT. THE BELFRY OF BRUGES AND OTHER POEMS. Carillon The Belfry of Bruges A Gleam of Sunshine The Arsenal at Springfield Nuremberg The Norman Baron Rain In Summer To a Child The Occultation of Orion The Bridge To the Driving Cloud SONGS The Day Is done Afternoon in February To an Old Danish Song-Book Walter von der Vogelweid Drinking Song The Old Clock on the Stairs The Arrow and the Song SONNETS Mezzo Cammin The Evening Star Autumn Dante Curfew EVANGELINE: A TALE OF ACADIE. THE SEASIDE AND THE FIRESIDE. Dedication BY THE SEASIDE. The Building of the Ship Seaweed Chrysaor The Secret of the Sea Twilight Sir Humphrey Gilbert The Lighthouse The Fire of Drift-Wood BY THE FIRESIDE. Resignation The Builders Sand of the Desert In an Hour-Glass The Open Window King Witlaf's Drinking-Horn Gaspar Becerra Pegasus in Pound Tegner's Drapa Sonnet on Mrs. Kemble's Reading from Shakespeare The Singers Suspiria Hymn for my Brother's Ordination THE SONG OF HIAWATHA. Introduction I. The Peace-Pipe II. The Four Winds III. Hiawatha's Childhood IV. Hiawatha and Madjekeewis V. Hiawatha's Fasting VI. Hiawatha's Friends VII. Hiawatha's Sailing VIII. Hiawatha's Fishing IX. Hiawatha and the Pearl-Feather X. Hiawatha's Wooing XI. Hiawatha's Wedding-Feast XII. The Son of the Evening Star XIII. Blessing the Cornfields XIV. Picture-Writing XV. Hiawatha's Lamentation XVI. Pau-Puk-Keewis XVII. The Hunting of Pau-Puk-Keewis XVIII. The Death of Kwasind XIX. The Ghosts XX. The Famine XXI. The White Man's Foot XXII. Hiawatha's Departure <NOTES> THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH. I. Miles Standish II. Love and Friendship III. The Lover's Errand IV. John Alden V. The Sailing of the May flower VI. Priscilla VII. The March of Miles Standish VIII. The Spinning-Wheel IX. The Wedding-Day BIRDS OF PASSAGE. FLIGHT THE FIRST. Birds of Passage Prometheus, or the Poet's Forethought Epimetheus, or the Poet's Afterthought The Ladder of St. Augustine The Phantom Ship The Warden of the Cinque Ports Haunted Houses In the Churchyard at Cambridge The Emperor's Bird's-Nest The Two Angels Daylight and Moonlight The Jewish Cemetery at Newport Oliver Basselin Victor Galbraith My Lost Youth The Ropewalk The Golden Mile-Stone Catawba Wine Santa Filomena The Discoverer of the North Cape Daybreak The Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz Children Sandalphon FLIGHT THE SECOND. The Children's Hour Enceladus The Cumberland Snow-Flakes A Day of Sunshine Something left Undone Weariness TALES OF A WAYSIDE INN. Part First Prelude The Wayside Inn The Landlord's Tale Paul Revere's Ride Interlude The Student's Tale The Falcon of Ser Federigo Interlude The Spanish Jew's Tale The Legend of Rabbi Ben Levi Interlude The Sicilian's Tale King Robert of Sicily Interlude The Musician's Tale The Saga of King Olaf I. The Challenge of Thor II. King Olaf's Return III. Thora of Rimol IV. Queen Sigrid the Haughty V. The Skerry of Shrieks VI. The Wraith of Odin VII. Iron-Beard VIII. Gudrun IX. Thangbrand the Priest X. Raud the Strong XI. Bishop Sigurd at Salten Fiord XII. King Olaf's Christmas XIII. The Building of the Long Serpent XIV. The Crew of the Long Serpent XV. A Little Bird in the Air XVI. Queen Thyri and the Angelica Stalks XVII. King Svend of the Forked Beard XVIII. King Olaf and Earl Sigvald XIX. King Olaf's War-Horns XX. Einar Tamberskelver XXI. King Olaf's Death-drink XXII. The Nun of Nidaros Interlude The Theologian's Tale. Torquemada Interlude The Poet's Tale The Birds of Killingworth Finale PART SECOND. Prelude The Sicilian's Tale The Bell of Atri Interlude The Spanish Jew's Tale Kambalu Interlude The Student's Tale The Cobbler of Hagenau Interlude The Musician's Tale The Ballad of Carmilhan Interlude The Poet's Tale Lady Wentworth Interlude The Theologian's Tale The Legend Beautiful Interlude The Student's Second Tale The Baron of St. Castine Finale PART THIRD. Prelude The Spanish Jew's Tale Azrael Interlude The Poet's Tale Charlemagne Interlude The Student's Tale Emma and Eginhard Interlude The Theologian's Tale Elizabeth Interlude The Sicilian's Tale The Monk of Casa-Maggiore Interlude The Spanish Jew's Second Tale Scanderbeg Interlude The Musician's Tale The Mother's Ghost Interlude The Landlord's Tale The Rhyme of Sir Christopher Finale FLOWER-DE-LUCE. Flower-de-Luce Palingenesis The Bridge of Cloud Hawthorne Christmas Bells The Wind over the Chimney The Bells of Lynn Killed at the Ford Giotto's Tower To-morrow Divina Commedia Noel BIRDS OF PASSAGE FLIGHT THE THIRD. Fata Morgana The Haunted Chamber The Meeting Vox Populi The Castle-Builder Changed The Challenge The Brook and the Wave Aftermath THE MASQUE OF PANDORA. I. The Workshop of Hephaestus II. Olympus III. Tower of Prometheus on Mount Caucasus IV. The Air V. The House of Epimetheus VI. In the Garden VII. The House of Epimetheus VIII. In the Garden THE HANGING OF THE CRANE MORITURI SALUTAMUS A BOOK OF SONNETS. Three Friends of Mine Chaucer Shakespeare Milton Keats The Galaxy The Sound of the Sea A Summer Day by the Sea The Tides A Shadow A Nameless Grave Sleep The Old Bridge at Florence Il Ponte Vecchio di Firenze Nature In the Churchyard at Tarrytown Eliot's Oak The Descent of the Muses Venice The Poets Parker Cleaveland The Harvest Moon To the River Rhone The Three Silences of Molinos The Two Rivers Boston St. John's, Cambridge Moods Woodstock Park The Four Princesses at Wilna Holidays Wapentake The Broken Oar The Cross of Snow BIRDS OF PASSAGE FLIGHT THE FOURTH. Charles Sumner Travels by the Fireside Cadenabbia Monte Cassino Amalfi The Sermon of St. Francis Belisarius Songo River KERAMOS BIRDS OF PASSAGE. FLIGHT THE FIFTH. The Herons of Elmwood A Dutch Picture Castles in Spain Vittoria Colonna The Revenge of Rain-in-the-Face To the River Yvette The Emperor's Glove A Ballad or the French Fleet The Leap of Roushan Beg Haroun Al Raschid. King Trisanku A Wraith in the Mist The Three Kings Song: "Stay, Stay at Home, my Heart, and Rest." The White Czar Delia ULTIMA THULE. Dedication Poems Bayard Taylor The Chamber over the Gate From my Arm-Chair Jugurtha The Iron Pen Robert Burns Helen of Tyre Elegiac Old St. David's at Radnor FOLK-SONGS. The Sifting of Peter Maiden and Weathercock The Windmill The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls SONNETS My Cathedral The Burial of the Poet Night L'ENVOI. The Poet and his Songs IN THE HARBOR. Becalmed The Poet's Calendar Autumn Within The Four Lakes of Madison Victor and Vanquished Moonlight The Children's Crusade Sundown Chimes Four by the Clock Auf Wiedersehen Elegiac Verse The City and the Sea Memories Hermes Trismegistus To the Avon President Garfield My Books Mad River Possibilities Decoration Day A Fragment Loss and Gain Inscription on the Shanklin Fountain The Bells of San Blas FRAGMENTS. "Neglected record of a mind neglected" "O Faithful, indefatigable tides" "Soft through the silent air" "So from the bosom of darkness" CHRISTUS: A MYSTERY. Introitus PART I. THE DIVINE TRAGEDY. The First Passover I. Vox Clamantis II. Mount Quarantania III. The Marriage in Cana IV. In the Cornfields V. Nazareth VI. The Sea of Galilee VII. The Demoniac of Gadara IX. The Tower of Magdala X. The House of Simon the Pharisee The Second Passover I. Before the Gates of Machaerus II. Herod's Banquet-Hall III. Under the Wall of Machaerus IV. Nicodemus at Night V. Blind Bartimeus VI. Jacob's Well VII. The Coasts of Caesarea Philippi VIII. The Young Ruler IX. At Bethany X. Born Blind XI. Simon Magus and Helen of Tyre The Third Passover I. The Entry into Jerusalem II. Solomon's Porch III. Lord, is it I? IV. The Garden of Gethsemane V. The Palace of Caiaphas VI. Pontius Pilate VII. Barabbas in Prison VIII. Ecce Homo IX. Aceldama X. The Three Crosses XI. The Two Maries XII. The Sea of Galilee Epilogue. Symbolum Apostolorum First Interlude. The Abbot Joachim PART II. THE GOLDEN LEGEND. Prologue: The Spire of Strasburg Cathedral I. The Castle of Vautsberg on the Rhine Courtyard of the Castle II. A Farm in the Odenwald A Room in the Farmhouse Elsie's Chamber The Chamber of Gottlieb and Ursula A Village Church A Room in the Farmhouse In the Garden III. A Street in Strasburg Square in Front of the Cathedral In the Cathedral The Nativity: A Miracle-Play Introitus I. Heaven II. Mary at the Well III. The Angels of the Seven Planets IV. The Wise Men of the East V. The Flight into Egypt VI. The Slaughter of the Innocents VII. Jesus at Play with his Schoolmates VIII. The Village School IX. Crowned with Flowers Epilogue IV. The Road to Hirschau The Convent of Hirschau in the Black Forest The Scriptorium The Cloisters The Chapel The Refectory The Neighboring Nunnery V. A Covered Bridge at Lucerne The Devil's Bridge The St. Gothard Pass At the Foot of the Alps The Inn at Genoa At Sea VI. The School of Salerno The Farm-house in the Odenwald The Castle of Vautsberg on the Rhine Epilogue. The Two Recording Angels Ascending Second Interlude. Martin Luther PART III. THE NEW ENGLAND TRAGEDIES. John Endicott Giles Corey of the Salem Farms Finale. St. John JUDAS MACCABAEUS Act I. The Citadel of Antiochus at Jerusalem Act II. The Dungeons in the Citadel Act III. The Battle-field of Beth-Horon Act IV. The Outer Courts of the Temple at Jerusalem Act V. The Mountains of Ecbatana MICHAEL ANGELO Dedication PART FIRST I. Prologue at Ischia Monologue : The Last Judgment II. San Silvestro III. Cardinal Ippolito IV. Borgo delle Vergine at Naples V. Vittoria Colonna PART SECOND. I. Monologue II. Viterbo III. Michael Angelo and Benvenuto Cellini IV. Fra Sebastiano del Piombo V. Palazzo Belvedere VI. Palazzo Cesarini PART THIRD. I. Monologue II. Vigna di Papa Giulio III. Bindo Altoviti IV. In the Coliseum V. Macello de' Corvi VI. Michael Angelo's Studio VII. The Oaks of Monte Luca VIII. The Dead Christ TRANSLATIONS. Prelude From the Spanish Coplas de Manrique Sonnets. I. The Good Shepherd II. To-morrow III. The Native Land IV. The Image of God V. The Brook Ancient Spanish Ballads. I. Rio Verde, Rio Verde II. Don Nuno, Count of Lara III. The peasant leaves his plough afield Vida de San Millan San Miguel, the Convent Song: "She is a maid of artless grace" Santa Teresa's Book-Mark From the Cancioneros I. Eyes so tristful, eyes so tristful II. Some day, some day III. Come, O death, so silent flying IV. Glove of black in white hand bare From the Swedish and Danish. Passages from Frithiof's Saga I. Frithiof's Homestead II. A Sledge-Ride on the Ice III. Frithiof's Temptation IV. Frithiof's Farewell The Children of the Lord's Supper King Christian The Elected Knight Childhood From the German. The Happiest Land The Wave The Dead The Bird and the Ship Whither? Beware! Song of the Bell The Castle by the Sea The Black Knight Song of the Silent Land The Luck of Edenhall The Two Locks of Hair The Hemlock Tree Annie of Tharaw The Statue over the Cathedral Door The Legend of the Crossbill The Sea hath its Pearls Poetic Aphorisms Silent Love Blessed are the Dead Wanderer's Night-Songs Remorse Forsaken Allah From the Anglo-Saxon. The Grave Beowulf's Expedition to Heort The Soul's Complaint against the Body From the French Song: Hark! Hark! Song: "And whither goest thou, gentle sigh" The Return of Spring Spring The Child Asleep Death of Archbishop Turpin The Blind Girl of Castel-Cuille A Christmas Carol Consolation To Cardinal Richelieu The Angel and the Child On the Terrace of the Aigalades To my Brooklet Barreges Will ever the dear days come back again? At La Chaudeau A Quiet Life The Wine of Jurancon Friar Lubin Rondel My Secret From the Italian. The Celestial Pilot The Terrestrial Paradise Beatrice To Italy Seven Sonnets and a Canzone I. The Artist II. Fire. III. Youth and Age IV. Old Age V. To Vittoria Colonna VI. To Vittoria Colonna VII. Dante VIII. Canzone The Nature of Love From the Portuguese. Song: If thou art sleeping, maiden From Eastern sources. The Fugitive The Siege of Kazan The Boy and the Brook To the Stork From the Latin. Virgils First Eclogue Ovid in Exile VOICES OF THE NIGHT <Greek poem here--Euripides.> PRELUDE. Pleasant it was, when woods were green, And winds were soft and low, To lie amid some sylvan scene. Where, the long drooping boughs between, Shadows dark and sunlight sheen Alternate come and go; Or where the denser grove receives No sunlight from above, But the dark foliage interweaves In one unbroken roof of leaves, Underneath whose sloping eaves The shadows hardly move. Beneath some patriarchal tree I lay upon the ground; His hoary arms uplifted he, And all the broad leaves over me Clapped their little hands in glee, With one continuous sound;-- A slumberous sound, a sound that brings The feelings of a dream, As of innumerable wings, As, when a bell no longer swings, Faint the hollow murmur rings O'er meadow, lake, and stream. And dreams of that which cannot die, Bright visions, came to me, As lapped in thought I used to lie, And gaze into the summer sky, Where the sailing clouds went by, Like ships upon the sea; Dreams that the soul of youth engage Ere Fancy has been quelled; Old legends of the monkish page, Traditions of the saint and sage, Tales that have the rime of age, And chronicles of Eld. And, loving still these quaint old themes, Even in the city's throng I feel the freshness of the streams, That, crossed by shades and sunny gleams, Water the green land of dreams, The holy land of song. Therefore, at Pentecost, which brings The Spring, clothed like a bride, When nestling buds unfold their wings, And bishop's-caps have golden rings, Musing upon many things, I sought the woodlands wide. The green trees whispered low and mild; It was a sound of joy! They were my playmates when a child, And rocked me in their arms so wild! Still they looked at me and smiled, As if I were a boy; And ever whispered, mild and low, "Come, be a child once more!" And waved their long arms to and fro, And beckoned solemnly and slow; O, I could not choose but go Into the woodlands hoar,-- Into the blithe and breathing air, Into the solemn wood, Solemn and silent everywhere Nature with folded hands seemed there Kneeling at her evening prayer! Like one in prayer I stood. Before me rose an avenue Of tall and sombrous pines; Abroad their fan-like branches grew, And, where the sunshine darted through, Spread a vapor soft and blue, In long and sloping lines. And, falling on my weary brain, Like a fast-falling shower, The dreams of youth came back again, Low lispings of the summer rain, Dropping on the ripened grain, As once upon the flower. Visions of childhood! Stay, O stay! Ye were so sweet and wild! And distant voices seemed to say, "It cannot be! They pass away! Other themes demand thy lay; Thou art no more a child! "The land of Song within thee lies, Watered by living springs; The lids of Fancy's sleepless eyes Are gates unto that Paradise, Holy thoughts, like stars, arise, Its clouds are angels' wings. "Learn, that henceforth thy song shall be, Not mountains capped with snow, Nor forests sounding like the sea, Nor rivers flowing ceaselessly, Where the woodlands bend to see The bending heavens below. "There is a forest where the din Of iron branches sounds! A mighty river roars between, And whosoever looks therein Sees the heavens all black with sin, Sees not its depths, nor bounds. "Athwart the swinging branches cast, Soft rays of sunshine pour; Then comes the fearful wintry blast Our hopes, like withered leaves, fail fast; Pallid lips say, 'It is past! We can return no more!, "Look, then, into thine heart, and write! Yes, into Life's deep stream! All forms of sorrow and delight, All solemn Voices of the Night, That can soothe thee, or affright,-- Be these henceforth thy theme." HYMN TO THE NIGHT. [Greek quotation] I heard the trailing garments of the Night Sweep through her marble halls! I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light From the celestial walls! I felt her presence, by its spell of might, Stoop o'er me from above; The calm, majestic presence of the Night, As of the one I love. I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight, The manifold, soft chimes, That fill the haunted chambers of the Night Like some old poet's rhymes. From the cool cisterns of the midnight air My spirit drank repose; The fountain of perpetual peace flows there,-- From those deep cisterns flows. O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear What man has borne before! Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care, And they complain no more. Peace! Peace! Orestes-like I breathe this prayer! Descend with broad-winged flight, The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair, The best-beloved Night! A PSALM OF LIFE. WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST. Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream! For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul. Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way; But to act, that each to-morrow Find us farther than to-day. Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave. In the world's broad field of battle, In the bivouac of Life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle! Be a hero in the strife! Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act,--act in the living Present! Heart within, and God o'erhead! Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time;-- Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again. Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait. THE REAPER AND THE FLOWERS. There is a Reaper, whose name is Death, And, with his sickle keen, He reaps the bearded grain at a breath, And the flowers that grow between. "Shall I have naught that is fair?" saith he; "Have naught but the bearded grain? Though the breath of these flowers is sweet to me, I will give them all back again." He gazed at the flowers with tearful eyes, He kissed their drooping leaves; It was for the Lord of Paradise He bound them in his sheaves. "My Lord has need of these flowerets gay," The Reaper said, and smiled; "Dear tokens of the earth are they, Where he was once a child. "They shall all bloom in fields of light, Transplanted by my care, And saints, upon their garments white, These sacred blossoms wear." And the mother gave, in tears and pain, The flowers she most did love; She knew she should find them all again In the fields of light above. O, not in cruelty, not in wrath, The Reaper came that day; 'T was an angel visited the green earth, And took the flowers away. THE LIGHT OF STARS. The night is come, but not too soon; And sinking silently, All silently, the little moon Drops down behind the sky. There is no light in earth or heaven But the cold light of stars; And the first watch of night is given To the red planet Mars. Is it the tender star of love? The star of love and dreams? O no! from that blue tent above, A hero's armor gleams. And earnest thoughts within me rise, When I behold afar, Suspended in the evening skies, The shield of that red star. O star of strength! I see thee stand And smile upon my pain; Thou beckonest with thy mailed hand, And I am strong again. Within my breast there is no light But the cold light of stars; I give the first watch of the night To the red planet Mars. The star of the unconquered will, He rises in my breast, Serene, and resolute, and still, And calm, and self-possessed. And thou, too, whosoe'er thou art, That readest this brief psalm, As one by one thy hopes depart, Be resolute and calm. O fear not in a world like this, And thou shalt know erelong, Know how sublime a thing it is To suffer and be strong. FOOTSTEPS OF ANGELS. When the hours of Day are numbered, And the voices of the Night Wake the better soul, that slumbered, To a holy, calm delight; Ere the evening lamps are lighted, And, like phantoms grim and tall, Shadows from the fitful firelight Dance upon the parlor wall; Then the forms of the departed Enter at the open door; The beloved, the true-hearted, Come to visit me once more; He, the young and strong, who cherished Noble longings for the strife, By the roadside fell and perished, Weary with the march of life! They, the holy ones and weakly, Who the cross of suffering bore, Folded their pale hands so meekly, Spake with us on earth no more! And with them the Being Beauteous, Who unto my youth was given, More than all things else to love me, And is now a saint in heaven. With a slow and noiseless footstep Comes that messenger divine, Takes the vacant chair beside me, Lays her gentle hand in mine. And she sits and gazes at me With those deep and tender eyes, Like the stars, so still and saint-like, Looking downward from the skies. Uttered not, yet comprehended, Is the spirit's voiceless prayer, Soft rebukes, in blessings ended, Breathing from her lips of air. Oh, though oft depressed and lonely, All my fears are laid aside, If I but remember only Such as these have lived and died! FLOWERS. Spake full well, in language quaint and olden, One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine, When he called the flowers, so blue and golden, Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine. Stars they are, wherein we read our history, As astrologers and seers of eld; Yet not wrapped about with awful mystery, Like the burning stars, which they beheld. Wondrous truths, and manifold as wondrous, God hath written in those stars above; But not less in the bright flowerets under us Stands the revelation of his love. Bright and glorious is that revelation, Written all over this great world of ours; Making evident our own creation, In these stars of earth, these golden flowers. And the Poet, faithful and far-seeing, Sees, alike in stars and flowers, a part Of the self-same, universal being, Which is throbbing in his brain and heart. Gorgeous flowerets in the sunlight shining, Blossoms flaunting in the eye of day, Tremulous leaves, with soft and silver lining, Buds that open only to decay; Brilliant hopes, all woven in gorgeous tissues, Flaunting gayly in the golden light; Large desires, with most uncertain issues, Tender wishes, blossoming at night! These in flowers and men are more than seeming; Workings are they of the self-same powers, Which the Poet, in no idle dreaming, Seeth in himself and in the flowers. Everywhere about us are they glowing, Some like stars, to tell us Spring is born; Others, their blue eyes with tears o'er-flowing, Stand like Ruth amid the golden corn; Not alone in Spring's armorial bearing, And in Summer's green-emblazoned field, But in arms of brave old Autumn's wearing, In the centre of his brazen shield; Not alone in meadows and green alleys, On the mountain-top, and by the brink Of sequestered pools in woodland valleys, Where the slaves of nature stoop to drink; Not alone in her vast dome of glory, Not on graves of bird and beast alone, But in old cathedrals, high and hoary, On the tombs of heroes, carved in stone; In the cottage of the rudest peasant, In ancestral homes, whose crumbling towers, Speaking of the Past unto the Present, Tell us of the ancient Games of Flowers; In all places, then, and in all seasons, Flowers expand their light and soul-like wings, Teaching us, by most persuasive reasons, How akin they are to human things. And with childlike, credulous affection We behold their tender buds expand; Emblems of our own great resurrection, Emblems of the bright and better land. THE BELEAGUERED CITY. I have read, in some old, marvellous tale, Some legend strange and vague, That a midnight host of spectres pale Beleaguered the walls of Prague. Beside the Moldau's rushing stream, With the wan moon overhead, There stood, as in an awful dream, The army of the dead. White as a sea-fog, landward bound, The spectral camp was seen, And, with a sorrowful, deep sound, The river flowed between. No other voice nor sound was there, No drum, nor sentry's pace; The mist-like banners clasped the air, As clouds with clouds embrace. But when the old cathedral bell Proclaimed the morning prayer, The white pavilions rose and fell On the alarmed air. Down the broad valley fast and far The troubled army fled; Up rose the glorious morning star, The ghastly host was dead. I have read, in the marvellous heart of man, That strange and mystic scroll, That an army of phantoms vast and wan Beleaguer the human soul. Encamped beside Life's rushing stream, In Fancy's misty light, Gigantic shapes and shadows gleam Portentous through the night. Upon its midnight battle-ground The spectral camp is seen, And, with a sorrowful, deep sound, Flows the River of Life between. No other voice nor sound is there, In the army of the grave; No other challenge breaks the air, But the rushing of Life's wave. And when the solemn and deep churchbell Entreats the soul to pray, The midnight phantoms feel the spell, The shadows sweep away. Down the broad Vale of Tears afar The spectral camp is fled; Faith shineth as a morning star, Our ghastly fears are dead. MIDNIGHT MASS FOR THE DYING YEAR Yes, the Year is growing old, And his eye is pale and bleared! Death, with frosty hand and cold, Plucks the old man by the beard, Sorely, sorely! The leaves are falling, falling, Solemnly and slow; Caw! caw! the rooks are calling, It is a sound of woe, A sound of woe! Through woods and mountain passes The winds, like anthems, roll; They are chanting solemn masses, Singing, "Pray for this poor soul, Pray, pray!" And the hooded clouds, like friars, Tell their beads in drops of rain, And patter their doleful prayers; But their prayers are all in vain, All in vain! There he stands in the foul weather, The foolish, fond Old Year, Crowned with wild flowers and with heather, Like weak, despised Lear, A king, a king! Then comes the summer-like day, Bids the old man rejoice! His joy! his last! O, the man gray Loveth that ever-soft voice, Gentle and low. To the crimson woods he saith, To the voice gentle and low Of the soft air, like a daughter's breath, "Pray do not mock me so! Do not laugh at me!" And now the sweet day is dead; Cold in his arms it lies; No stain from its breath is spread Over the glassy skies, No mist or stain! Then, too, the Old Year dieth, And the forests utter a moan, Like the voice of one who crieth In the wilderness alone, "Vex not his ghost!" Then comes, with an awful roar, Gathering and sounding on, The storm-wind from Labrador, The wind Euroclydon, The storm-wind! Howl! howl! and from the forest Sweep the red leaves away! Would, the sins that thou abhorrest, O Soul! could thus decay, And be swept away! For there shall come a mightier blast, There shall be a darker day; And the stars, from heaven down-cast Like red leaves be swept away! Kyrie, eleyson! Christe, eleyson! ********** EARLIER POEMS AN APRIL DAY When the warm sun, that brings Seed-time and harvest, has returned again, 'T is sweet to visit the still wood, where springs The first flower of the plain. I love the season well, When forest glades are teeming with bright forms, Nor dark and many-folded clouds foretell The coming-on of storms. From the earth's loosened mould The sapling draws its sustenance, and thrives; Though stricken to the heart with winter's cold, The drooping tree revives. The softly-warbled song Comes from the pleasant woods, and colored wings Glance quick in the bright sun, that moves along The forest openings. When the bright sunset fills The silver woods with light, the green slope throws Its shadows in the hollows of the hills, And wide the upland glows. And when the eve is born, In the blue lake the sky, o'er-reaching far, Is hollowed out and the moon dips her horn, And twinkles many a star. Inverted in the tide Stand the gray rocks, and trembling shadows throw, And the fair trees look over, side by side, And see themselves below. Sweet April! many a thought Is wedded unto thee, as hearts are wed; Nor shall they fail, till, to its autumn brought, Life's golden fruit is shed. AUTUMN With what a glory comes and goes the year! The buds of spring, those beautiful harbingers Of sunny skies and cloudless times, enjoy Life's newness, and earth's garniture spread out; And when the silver habit of the clouds Comes down upon the autumn sun, and with A sober gladness the old year takes up His bright inheritance of golden fruits, A pomp and pageant fill the splendid scene. There is a beautiful spirit breathing now Its mellow richness on the clustered trees, And, from a beaker full of richest dyes, Pouring new glory on the autumn woods, And dipping in warm light the pillared clouds. Morn on the mountain, like a summer bird, Lifts up her purple wing, and in the vales The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer, Kisses the blushing leaf, and stirs up life Within the solemn woods of ash deep-crimsoned, And silver beech, and maple yellow-leaved, Where Autumn, like a faint old man, sits down By the wayside a-weary. Through the trees The golden robin moves. The purple finch, That on wild cherry and red cedar feeds, A winter bird, comes with its plaintive whistle, And pecks by the witch-hazel, whilst aloud From cottage roofs the warbling blue-bird sings, And merrily, with oft-repeated stroke, Sounds from the threshing-floor the busy flail. O what a glory doth this world put on For him who, with a fervent heart, goes forth Under the bright and glorious sky, and looks On duties well performed, and days well spent! For him the wind, ay, and the yellow leaves, Shall have a voice, and give him eloquent teachings. He shall so hear the solemn hymn that Death Has lifted up for all, that he shall go To his long resting-place without a tear. WOODS IN WINTER. When winter winds are piercing chill, And through the hawthorn blows the gale, With solemn feet I tread the hill, That overbrows the lonely vale. O'er the bare upland, and away Through the long reach of desert woods, The embracing sunbeams chastely play, And gladden these deep solitudes. Where, twisted round the barren oak, The summer vine in beauty clung, And summer winds the stillness broke, The crystal icicle is hung. Where, from their frozen urns, mute springs Pour out the river's gradual tide, Shrilly the skater's iron rings, And voices fill the woodland side. Alas! how changed from the fair scene, When birds sang out their mellow lay, And winds were soft, and woods were green, And the song ceased not with the day! But still wild music is abroad, Pale, desert woods! within your crowd; And gathering winds, in hoarse accord, Amid the vocal reeds pipe loud. Chill airs and wintry winds! my ear Has grown familiar with your song; I hear it in the opening year, I listen, and it cheers me long. HYMN OF THE MORAVIAN NUNS OF BETHLEHEM AT THE CONSECRATION OF PULASKI'S BANNER. When the dying flame of day Through the chancel shot its ray, Far the glimmering tapers shed Faint light on the cowled head; And the censer burning swung, Where, before the altar, hung The crimson banner, that with prayer Had been consecrated there. And the nuns' sweet hymn was heard the while, Sung low, in the dim, mysterious aisle. "Take thy banner! May it wave Proudly o'er the good and brave; When the battle's distant wail Breaks the sabbath of our vale. When the clarion's music thrills To the hearts of these lone hills, When the spear in conflict shakes, And the strong lance shivering breaks. "Take thy banner! and, beneath The battle-cloud's encircling wreath, Guard it, till our homes are free! Guard it! God will prosper thee! In the dark and trying hour, In the breaking forth of power, In the rush of steeds and men, His right hand will shield thee then. "Take thy banner! But when night Closes round the ghastly fight, If the vanquished warrior bow, Spare him! By our holy vow, By our prayers and many tears, By the mercy that endears, Spare him! he our love hath shared! Spare him! as thou wouldst be spared! "Take thy banner! and if e'er Thou shouldst press the soldier's bier, And the muffled drum should beat To the tread of mournful feet, Then this crimson flag shall be Martial cloak and shroud for thee." The warrior took that banner proud, And it was his martial cloak and shroud! SUNRISE ON THE HILLS I stood upon the hills, when heaven's wide arch Was glorious with the sun's returning march, And woods were brightened, and soft gales Went forth to kiss the sun-clad vales. The clouds were far beneath me; bathed in light, They gathered mid-way round the wooded height, And, in their fading glory, shone Like hosts in battle overthrown. As many a pinnacle, with shifting glance. Through the gray mist thrust up its shattered lance, And rocking on the cliff was left The dark pine blasted, bare, and cleft. The veil of cloud was lifted, and below Glowed the rich valley, and the river's flow Was darkened by the forest's shade, Or glistened in the white cascade; Where upward, in the mellow blush of day, The noisy bittern wheeled his spiral way. I heard the distant waters dash, I saw the current whirl and flash, And richly, by the blue lake's silver beach, The woods were bending with a silent reach. Then o'er the vale, with gentle swell, The music of the village bell Came sweetly to the echo-giving hills; And the wild horn, whose voice the woodland fills, Was ringing to the merry shout, That faint and far the glen sent out, Where, answering to the sudden shot, thin smoke, Through thick-leaved branches, from the dingle broke. If thou art worn and hard beset With sorrows, that thou wouldst forget, If thou wouldst read a lesson, that will keep Thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep, Go to the woods and hills! No tears Dim the sweet look that Nature wears. THE SPIRIT OF POETRY There is a quiet spirit in these woods, That dwells where'er the gentle south-wind blows; Where, underneath the white-thorn, in the glade, The wild flowers bloom, or, kissing the soft air, The leaves above their sunny palms outspread. With what a tender and impassioned voice It fills the nice and delicate ear of thought, When the fast ushering star of morning comes O'er-riding the gray hills with golden scarf; Or when the cowled and dusky-sandaled Eve, In mourning weeds, from out the western gate, Departs with silent pace! That spirit moves In the green valley, where the silver brook, From its full laver, pours the white cascade; And, babbling low amid the tangled woods, Slips down through moss-grown stones with endless laughter. And frequent, on the everlasting hills, Its feet go forth, when it doth wrap itself In all the dark embroidery of the storm, And shouts the stern, strong wind. And here, amid The silent majesty of these deep woods, Its presence shall uplift thy thoughts from earth, As to the sunshine and the pure, bright air Their tops the green trees lift. Hence gifted bards Have ever loved the calm and quiet shades. For them there was an eloquent voice in all The sylvan pomp of woods, the golden sun, The flowers, the leaves, the river on its way, Blue skies, and silver clouds, and gentle winds, The swelling upland, where the sidelong sun Aslant the wooded slope, at evening, goes, Groves, through whose broken roof the sky looks in, Mountain, and shattered cliff, and sunny vale, The distant lake, fountains, and mighty trees, In many a lazy syllable, repeating Their old poetic legends to the wind. And this is the sweet spirit, that doth fill The world; and, in these wayward days of youth, My busy fancy oft embodies it, As a bright image of the light and beauty That dwell in nature; of the heavenly forms We worship in our dreams, and the soft hues That stain the wild bird's wing, and flush the clouds When the sun sets. Within her tender eye The heaven of April, with its changing light, And when it wears the blue of May, is hung, And on her lip the rich, red rose. Her hair Is like the summer tresses of the trees, When twilight makes them brown, and on her cheek Blushes the richness of an autumn sky, With ever-shifting beauty. Then her breath, It is so like the gentle air of Spring, As, front the morning's dewy flowers, it comes Full of their fragrance, that it is a joy To have it round us, and her silver voice Is the rich music of a summer bird, Heard in the still night, with its passionate cadence. BURIAL OF THE MINNISINK On sunny slope and beechen swell, The shadowed light of evening fell; And, where the maple's leaf was brown, With soft and silent lapse came down, The glory, that the wood receives, At sunset, in its golden leaves. Far upward in the mellow light Rose the blue hills. One cloud of white, Around a far uplifted cone, In the warm blush of evening shone; An image of the silver lakes, By which the Indian's soul awakes. But soon a funeral hymn was heard Where the soft breath of evening stirred The tall, gray forest; and a band Of stern in heart, and strong in hand, Came winding down beside the wave, To lay the red chief in his grave. They sang, that by his native bowers He stood, in the last moon of flowers, And thirty snows had not yet shed Their glory on the warrior's head; But, as the summer fruit decays, So died he in those naked days. A dark cloak of the roebuck's skin Covered the warrior, and within Its heavy folds the weapons, made For the hard toils of war, were laid; The cuirass, woven of plaited reeds, And the broad belt of shells and beads. Before, a dark-haired virgin train Chanted the death dirge of the slain; Behind, the long procession came Of hoary men and chiefs of fame, With heavy hearts, and eyes of grief, Leading the war-horse of their chief. Stripped of his proud and martial dress, Uncurbed, unreined, and riderless, With darting eye, and nostril spread, And heavy and impatient tread, He came; and oft that eye so proud Asked for his rider in the crowd. They buried the dark chief; they freed Beside the grave his battle steed; And swift an arrow cleaved its way To his stern heart! One piercing neigh Arose, and, on the dead man's plain, The rider grasps his steed again. L' ENVOI Ye voices, that arose After the Evening's close, And whispered to my restless heart repose! Go, breathe it in the ear Of all who doubt and fear, And say to them, "Be of good cheer!" Ye sounds, so low and calm, That in the groves of balm Seemed to me like an angel's psalm! Go, mingle yet once more With the perpetual roar Of the pine forest dark and hoar! Tongues of the dead, not lost But speaking from deaths frost, Like fiery tongues at Pentecost! Glimmer, as funeral lamps, Amid the chills and damps Of the vast plain where Death encamps! **************** BALLADS AND OTHER POEMS THE SKELETON IN ARMOR "Speak! speak I thou fearful guest Who, with thy hollow breast Still in rude armor drest, Comest to daunt me! Wrapt not in Eastern balms, Bat with thy fleshless palms Stretched, as if asking alms, Why dost thou haunt me?" Then, from those cavernous eyes Pale flashes seemed to rise, As when the Northern skies Gleam in December; And, like the water's flow Under December's snow, Came a dull voice of woe From the heart's chamber. "I was a Viking old! My deeds, though manifold, No Skald in song has told, No Saga taught thee! Take heed, that in thy verse Thou dost the tale rehearse, Else dread a dead man's curse; For this I sought thee. "Far in the Northern Land, By the wild Baltic's strand, I, with my childish hand, Tamed the gerfalcon; And, with my skates fast-bound, Skimmed the half-frozen Sound, That the poor whimpering hound Trembled to walk on. "Oft to his frozen lair Tracked I the grisly bear, While from my path the hare Fled like a shadow; Oft through the forest dark Followed the were-wolf's bark, Until the soaring lark Sang from the meadow. "But when I older grew, Joining a corsair's crew, O'er the dark sea I flew With the marauders. Wild was the life we led; Many the souls that sped, Many the hearts that bled, By our stern orders. "Many a wassail-bout Wore the long Winter out; Often our midnight shout Set the cocks crowing, As we the Berserk's tale Measured in cups of ale, Draining the oaken pail, Filled to o'erflowing. "Once as I told in glee Tales of the stormy sea, Soft eyes did gaze on me, Burning yet tender; And as the white stars shine On the dark Norway pine, On that dark heart of mine Fell their soft splendor. "I wooed the blue-eyed maid, Yielding, yet half afraid, And in the forest's shade Our vows were plighted. Under its loosened vest Fluttered her little breast Like birds within their nest By the hawk frighted. "Bright in her father's hall Shields gleamed upon the wall, Loud sang the minstrels all, Chanting his glory; When of old Hildebrand I asked his daughter's hand, Mute did the minstrels stand To hear my story. "While the brown ale he quaffed, Loud then the champion laughed, And as the wind-gusts waft The sea-foam brightly, So the loud laugh of scorn, Out of those lips unshorn, From the deep drinking-horn Blew the foam lightly. "She was a Prince's child, I but a Viking wild, And though she blushed and smiled, I was discarded! Should not the dove so white Follow the sea-mew's flight, Why did they leave that night Her nest unguarded? "Scarce had I put to sea, Bearing the maid with me, Fairest of all was she Among the Norsemen! When on the white sea-strand, Waving his armed hand, Saw we old Hildebrand, With twenty horsemen. "Then launched they to the blast, Bent like a reed each mast, Yet we were gaining fast, When the wind failed us; And with a sudden flaw Came round the gusty Skaw, So that our foe we saw Laugh as he hailed us. "And as to catch the gale Round veered the flapping sail, Death I was the helmsman's hail, Death without quarter! Mid-ships with iron keel Struck we her ribs of steel Down her black hulk did reel Through the black water! "As with his wings aslant, Sails the fierce cormorant, Seeking some rocky haunt With his prey laden, So toward the open main, Beating to sea again, Through the wild hurricane, Bore I the maiden. "Three weeks we westward bore, And when the storm was o'er, Cloud-like we saw the shore Stretching to leeward; There for my lady's bower Built I the lofty tower, Which, to this very hour, Stands looking seaward. "There lived we many years; Time dried the maiden's tears She had forgot her fears, She was a mother. Death closed her mild blue eyes, Under that tower she lies; Ne'er shall the sun arise On such another! "Still grew my bosom then. Still as a stagnant fen! Hateful to me were men, The sunlight hateful! In the vast forest here, Clad in my warlike gear, Fell I upon my spear, O, death was grateful! "Thus, seamed with many scars, Bursting these prison bars, Up to its native stars My soul ascended! There from the flowing bowl Deep drinks the warrior's soul, Skoal! to the Northland! skoal!" Thus the tale ended. THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS It was the schooner Hesperus, That sailed the wintry sea; And the skipper had taken his little daughter, To bear him company. Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax, Her cheeks like the dawn of day, And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds, That ope in the month of May. The skipper he stood beside the helm, His pipe was in his month, And he watched how the veering flaw did blow The smoke now West, now South. Then up and spake an old Sailor, Had sailed to the Spanish Main, "I pray thee, put into yonder port, For I fear a hurricane. "Last night, the moon had a golden ring, And to-night no moon we see!" The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe, And a scornful laugh laughed he. Colder and louder blew the wind, A gale from the Northeast. The snow fell hissing in the brine, And the billows frothed like yeast. Down came the storm, and smote amain The vessel in its strength; She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed, Then leaped her cable's length. "Come hither! come hither! my little daughter, And do not tremble so; For I can weather the roughest gale That ever wind did blow." He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound her to the mast. "O father! I hear the church-bells ring, O say, what may it be?" "'Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!"-- And he steered for the open sea. "O father! I hear the sound of guns, O say, what may it be?" "Some ship in distress, that cannot live In such an angry sea!" "O father! I see a gleaming light O say, what may it be?" But the father answered never a word, A frozen corpse was he. Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark, With his face turned to the skies, The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow On his fixed and glassy eyes. Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed That saved she might be; And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave, On the Lake of Galilee. And fast through the midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Tow'rds the reef of Norman's Woe. And ever the fitful gusts between A sound came from the land; It was the sound of the trampling surf On the rocks and the hard sea-sand. The breakers were right beneath her bows, She drifted a dreary wreck, And a whooping billow swept the crew Like icicles from her deck. She struck where the white and fleecy waves Looked soft as carded wool, But the cruel rocks, they gored her side Like the horns of an angry bull. Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice, With the masts went by the board; Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank, Ho! ho! the breakers roared! At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach, A fisherman stood aghast, To see the form of a maiden fair, Lashed close to a drifting mast. The salt sea was frozen on her breast, The salt tears in her eyes; And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed, On the billows fall and rise. Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, In the midnight and the snow! Christ save us all from a death like this, On the reef of Norman's Woe! THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH Under a spreading chestnut-tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands. His hair is crisp, and black, and long, His face is like the tan; His brow is wet with honest sweat, He earns whate'er he can, And looks the whole world in the face, For he owes not any man. Week in, week out, from morn till night, You can hear his bellows blow; You can hear him swing his heavy sledge, With measured beat and slow, Like a sexton ringing the village bell, When the evening sun is low. And children coming home from school Look in at the open door; They love to see the flaming forge, And bear the bellows roar, And catch the burning sparks that fly Like chaff from a threshing-floor. He goes on Sunday to the church, And sits among his boys; He hears the parson pray and preach, He hears his daughter's voice, Singing in the village choir, And it makes his heart rejoice. It sounds to him like her mother's voice, Singing in Paradise! He needs must think of her once more, How in the grave she lies; And with his hard, rough hand he wipes A tear out of his eyes. Toiling,--rejoicing,--sorrowing, Onward through life he goes; Each morning sees some task begin, Each evening sees it close Something attempted, something done, Has earned a night's repose. Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, For the lesson thou hast taught! Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each burning deed and thought. ENDYMION The rising moon has hid the stars; Her level rays, like golden bars, Lie on the landscape green, With shadows brown between. And silver white the river gleams, As if Diana, in her dreams, Had dropt her silver bow Upon the meadows low. On such a tranquil night as this, She woke Endymion with a kiss, When, sleeping in the grove, He dreamed not of her love. Like Dian's kiss, unasked, unsought, Love gives itself, but is not bought; Nor voice, nor sound betrays Its deep, impassioned gaze. It comes,--the beautiful, the free, The crown of all humanity,-- In silence and alone To seek the elected one. It lifts the boughs, whose shadows deep Are Life's oblivion, the soul's sleep, And kisses the closed eyes Of him, who slumbering lies. O weary hearts! O slumbering eyes! O drooping souls, whose destinies Are fraught with fear and pain, Ye shall be loved again! No one is so accursed by fate, No one so utterly desolate, But some heart, though unknown, Responds unto his own. Responds,--as if with unseen wings, An angel touched its quivering strings; And whispers, in its song, "'Where hast thou stayed so long?" IT IS NOT ALWAYS MAY No hay pajaros en los nidos de antano. Spanish Proverb The sun is bright,--the air is clear, The darting swallows soar and sing. And from the stately elms I hear The bluebird prophesying Spring. So blue you winding river flows, It seems an outlet from the sky, Where waiting till the west-wind blows, The freighted clouds at anchor lie. All things are new;--the buds, the leaves, That gild the elm-tree's nodding crest, And even the nest beneath the eaves;-- There are no birds in last year's nest! All things rejoice in youth and love, The fulness of their first delight! And learn from the soft heavens above The melting tenderness of night. Maiden, that read'st this simple rhyme, Enjoy thy youth, it will not stay; Enjoy the fragrance of thy prime, For oh, it is not always May! Enjoy the Spring of Love and Youth, To some good angel leave the rest; For Time will teach thee soon the truth, There are no birds in last year's nest! THE RAINY DAY The day is cold, and dark, and dreary It rains, and the wind is never weary; The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, But at every gust the dead leaves fall, And the day is dark and dreary. My life is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains, and the wind is never weary; My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past, But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast, And the days are dark and dreary. Be still, sad heart! and cease repining; Behind the clouds is the sun still shining; Thy fate is the common fate of all, Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary. GOD'S-ACRE. I like that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls The burial-ground God's-Acre! It is just; It consecrates each grave within its walls, And breathes a benison o'er the sleeping dust. God's-Acre! Yes, that blessed name imparts Comfort to those, who in the grave have sown The seed that they had garnered in their hearts, Their bread of life, alas! no more their own. Into its furrows shall we all be cast, In the sure faith, that we shall rise again At the great harvest, when the archangel's blast Shall winnow, like a fan, the chaff and grain. Then shall the good stand in immortal bloom, In the fair gardens of that second birth; And each bright blossom mingle its perfume With that of flowers, which never bloomed on earth. With thy rude ploughshare, Death, turn up the sod, And spread the furrow for the seed we sow; This is the field and Acre of our God, This is the place where human harvests grow! TO THE RIVER CHARLES. River! that in silence windest Through the meadows, bright and free, Till at length thy rest thou findest In the bosom of the sea! Four long years of mingled feeling, Half in rest, and half in strife, I have seen thy waters stealing Onward, like the stream of life. Thou hast taught me, Silent River! Many a lesson, deep and long; Thou hast been a generous giver; I can give thee but a song. Oft in sadness and in illness, I have watched thy current glide, Till the beauty of its stillness Overflowed me, like a tide. And in better hours and brighter, When I saw thy waters gleam, I have felt my heart beat lighter, And leap onward with thy stream. Not for this alone I love thee, Nor because thy waves of blue From celestial seas above thee Take their own celestial hue. Where yon shadowy woodlands hide thee, And thy waters disappear, Friends I love have dwelt beside thee, And have made thy margin dear. More than this;--thy name reminds me Of three friends, all true and tried; And that name, like magic, binds me Closer, closer to thy side. Friends my soul with joy remembers! How like quivering flames they start, When I fan the living embers On the hearth-stone of my heart! 'T is for this, thou Silent River! That my spirit leans to thee; Thou hast been a generous giver, Take this idle song from me. BLIND BARTIMEUS Blind Bartimeus at the gates Of Jericho in darkness waits; He hears the crowd;--he hears a breath Say, "It is Christ of Nazareth!" And calls, in tones of agony, <Greek here> The thronging multitudes increase; Blind Bartimeus, hold thy peace! But still, above the noisy crowd, The beggar's cry is shrill and loud; Until they say, "He calleth thee!" <Greek here> Then saith the Christ, as silent stands The crowd, "What wilt thou at my hands?" And he replies, "O give me light! Rabbi, restore the blind man's sight. And Jesus answers, '<Greek here>' <Greek here>! Ye that have eyes, yet cannot see, In darkness and in misery, Recall those mighty Voices Three, <Greek here>! <Greek here>! <Greek here>! THE GOBLET OF LIFE Filled is Life's goblet to the brim; And though my eyes with tears are dim, I see its sparkling bubbles swim, And chant a melancholy hymn With solemn voice and slow. No purple flowers,--no garlands green, Conceal the goblet's shade or sheen, Nor maddening draughts of Hippocrene, Like gleams of sunshine, flash between Thick leaves of mistletoe. This goblet, wrought with curious art, Is filled with waters, that upstart, When the deep fountains of the heart, By strong convulsions rent apart, Are running all to waste. And as it mantling passes round, With fennel is it wreathed and crowned, Whose seed and foliage sun-imbrowned Are in its waters steeped and drowned, And give a bitter taste. Above the lowly plants it towers, The fennel, with its yellow flowers, And in an earlier age than ours Was gifted with the wondrous powers, Lost vision to restore. It gave new strength, and fearless mood; And gladiators, fierce and rude, Mingled it in their daily food; And he who battled and subdued, A wreath of fennel wore. Then in Life's goblet freely press, The leaves that give it bitterness, Nor prize the colored waters less, For in thy darkness and distress New light and strength they give! And he who has not learned to know How false its sparkling bubbles show, How bitter are the drops of woe, With which its brim may overflow, He has not learned to live. The prayer of Ajax was for light; Through all that dark and desperate fight The blackness of that noonday night He asked but the return of sight, To see his foeman's face. Let our unceasing, earnest prayer Be, too, for light,--for strength to bear Our portion of the weight of care, That crushes into dumb despair One half the human race. O suffering, sad humanity! O ye afflicted one; who lie Steeped to the lips in misery, Longing, and yet afraid to die, Patient, though sorely tried! I pledge you in this cup of grief, Where floats the fennel's bitter leaf! The Battle of our Life is brief The alarm,--the struggle,--the relief, Then sleep we side by side. MAIDENHOOD Maiden! with the meek, brown eyes, In whose orbs a shadow lies Like the dusk in evening skies! Thou whose locks outshine the sun, Golden tresses, wreathed in one, As the braided streamlets run! Standing, with reluctant feet, Where the brook and river meet, Womanhood and childhood fleet! Gazing, with a timid glance, On the brooklet's swift advance, On the river's broad expanse! Deep and still, that gliding stream Beautiful to thee must seem, As the river of a dream. Then why pause with indecision, When bright angels in thy vision Beckon thee to fields Elysian? Seest thou shadows sailing by, As the dove, with startled eye, Sees the falcon's shadow fly? Hearest thou voices on the shore, That our ears perceive no more, Deafened by the cataract's roar? O, thou child of many prayers! Life hath quicksands,--Life hath snares Care and age come unawares! Like the swell of some sweet tune, Morning rises into noon, May glides onward into June. Childhood is the bough, where slumbered Birds and blossoms many-numbered;-- Age, that bough with snows encumbered. Gather, then, each flower that grows, When the young heart overflows, To embalm that tent of snows. Bear a lily in thy hand; Gates of brass cannot withstand One touch of that magic wand. Bear through sorrow, wrong, and ruth, In thy heart the dew of youth, On thy lips the smile of truth! O, that dew, like balm, shall steal Into wounds that cannot heal, Even as sleep our eyes doth seal; And that smile, like sunshine, dart Into many a sunless heart, For a smile of God thou art. EXCELSIOR The shades of night were falling fast, As through an Alpine village passed A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice, A banner with the strange device, Excelsior! His brow was sad; his eye beneath, Flashed like a falchion from its sheath, And like a silver clarion rung The accents of that unknown tongue, Excelsior! In happy homes he saw the light Of household fires gleam warm and bright; Above, the spectral glaciers shone, And from his lips escaped a groan, Excelsior! "Try not the Pass!" the old man said: "Dark lowers the tempest overhead, The roaring torrent is deep and wide! And loud that clarion voice replied, Excelsior! "Oh stay," the maiden said, "and rest Thy weary head upon this breast!" A tear stood in his bright blue eye, But still he answered, with a sigh, Excelsior! "Beware the pine-tree's withered branch! Beware the awful avalanche!" This was the peasant's last Good-night, A voice replied, far up the height, Excelsior! At break of day, as heavenward The pious monks of Saint Bernard Uttered the oft-repeated prayer, A voice cried through the startled air, Excelsior! A traveller, by the faithful hound, Half-buried in the snow was found, Still grasping in his hand of ice That banner with the strange device, Excelsior! There in the twilight cold and gray, Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay, And from the sky, serene and far, A voice fell, like a falling star, Excelsior! ************** POEMS ON SLAVERY. [The following poems, with one exception, were written at sea, in the latter part of October, 1842. I had not then heard of Dr. Channing's death. Since that event, the poem addressed to him is no longer appropriate. I have decided, however, to let it remain as it was written, in testimony of my admiration for a great and good man.] TO WILLIAM E. CHANNING The pages of thy book I read, And as I closed each one, My heart, responding, ever said, "Servant of God! well done!" Well done! Thy words are great and bold; At times they seem to me, Like Luther's, in the days of old, Half-battles for the free. Go on, until this land revokes The old and chartered Lie, The feudal curse, whose whips and yokes Insult humanity. A voice is ever at thy side Speaking in tones of might, Like the prophetic voice, that cried To John in Patmos, "Write!" Write! and tell out this bloody tale; Record this dire eclipse, This Day of Wrath, this Endless Wail, This dread Apocalypse! THE SLAVE'S DREAM Beside the ungathered rice he lay, His sickle in his hand; His breast was bare, his matted hair Was buried in the sand. Again, in the mist and shadow of sleep, He saw his Native Land. Wide through the landscape of his dreams The lordly Niger flowed; Beneath the palm-trees on the plain Once more a king he strode; And heard the tinkling caravans Descend the mountain-road. He saw once more his dark-eyed queen Among her children stand; They clasped his neck, they kissed his cheeks, They held him by the hand!-- A tear burst from the sleeper's lids And fell into the sand. And then at furious speed he rode Along the Niger's bank; His bridle-reins were golden chains, And, with a martial clank, At each leap he could feel his scabbard of steel Smiting his stallion's flank. Before him, like a blood-red flag, The bright flamingoes flew; From morn till night he followed their flight, O'er plains where the tamarind grew, Till he saw the roofs of Caffre huts, And the ocean rose to view. At night he heard the lion roar, And the hyena scream, And the river-horse, as he crushed the reeds Beside some hidden stream; And it passed, like a glorious roll of drums, Through the triumph of his dream. The forests, with their myriad tongues, Shouted of liberty; And the Blast of the Desert cried aloud, With a voice so wild and free, That he started in his sleep and smiled At their tempestuous glee. He did not feel the driver's whip, Nor the burning heat of day; For Death had illumined the Land of Sleep, And his lifeless body lay A worn-out fetter, that the soul Had broken and thrown away! THE GOOD PART THAT SHALL NOT BE TAKEN AWAY She dwells by Great Kenhawa's side, In valleys green and cool; And all her hope and all her pride Are in the village school. Her soul, like the transparent air That robes the hills above, Though not of earth, encircles there All things with arms of love. And thus she walks among her girls With praise and mild rebukes; Subduing e'en rude village churls By her angelic looks. She reads to them at eventide Of One who came to save; To cast the captive's chains aside And liberate the slave. And oft the blessed time foretells When all men shall be free; And musical, as silver bells, Their falling chains shall be. And following her beloved Lord, In decent poverty, She makes her life one sweet record And deed of charity. For she was rich, and gave up all To break the iron bands Of those who waited in her hall, And labored in her lands. Long since beyond the Southern Sea Their outbound sails have sped, While she, in meek humility, Now earns her daily bread. It is their prayers, which never cease, That clothe her with such grace; Their blessing is the light of peace That shines upon her face. THE SLAVE IN THE DISMAL SWAMP In dark fens of the Dismal Swamp The hunted Negro lay; He saw the fire of the midnight camp, And heard at times a horse's tramp And a bloodhound's distant bay. Where will-o'-the-wisps and glow-worms shine, In bulrush and in brake; Where waving mosses shroud the pine, And the cedar grows, and the poisonous vine Is spotted like the snake; Where hardly a human foot could pass, Or a human heart would dare, On the quaking turf of the green morass He crouched in the rank and tangled grass, Like a wild beast in his lair. A poor old slave, infirm and lame; Great scars deformed his face; On his forehead he bore the brand of shame, And the rags, that hid his mangled frame, Were the livery of disgrace. All things above were bright and fair, All things were glad and free; Lithe squirrels darted here and there, And wild birds filled the echoing air With songs of Liberty! On him alone was the doom of pain, From the morning of his birth; On him alone the curse of Cain Fell, like a flail on the garnered grain, And struck him to the earth! THE SLAVE SINGING AT MIDNIGHT Loud he sang the psalm of David! He, a Negro and enslaved, Sang of Israel's victory, Sang of Zion, bright and free. In that hour, when night is calmest, Sang he from the Hebrew Psalmist, In a voice so sweet and clear That I could not choose but hear, Songs of triumph, and ascriptions, Such as reached the swart Egyptians, When upon the Red Sea coast Perished Pharaoh and his host. And the voice of his devotion Filled my soul with strange emotion; For its tones by turns were glad, Sweetly solemn, wildly sad. Paul and Silas, in their prison, Sang of Christ, the Lord arisen, And an earthquake's arm of might Broke their dungeon-gates at night. But, alas! what holy angel Brings the Slave this glad evangel? And what earthquake's arm of might Breaks his dungeon-gates at night? THE WITNESSES In Ocean's wide domains, Half buried in the sands, Lie skeletons in chains, With shackled feet and hands. Beyond the fall of dews, Deeper than plummet lies, Float ships, with all their crews, No more to sink nor rise. There the black Slave-ship swims, Freighted with human forms, Whose fettered, fleshless limbs Are not the sport of storms. These are the bones of Slaves; They gleam from the abyss; They cry, from yawning waves, "We are the Witnesses!" Within Earth's wide domains Are markets for men's lives; Their necks are galled with chains, Their wrists are cramped with gyves. Dead bodies, that the kite In deserts makes its prey; Murders, that with affright Scare school-boys from their play! All evil thoughts and deeds; Anger, and lust, and pride; The foulest, rankest weeds, That choke Life's groaning tide! These are the woes of Slaves; They glare from the abyss; They cry, from unknown graves, "We are the Witnesses! THE QUADROON GIRL The Slaver in the broad lagoon Lay moored with idle sail; He waited for the rising moon, And for the evening gale. Under the shore his boat was tied, And all her listless crew Watched the gray alligator slide Into the still bayou. Odors of orange-flowers, and spice, Reached them from time to time, Like airs that breathe from Paradise Upon a world of crime. The Planter, under his roof of thatch, Smoked thoughtfully and slow; The Slaver's thumb was on the latch, He seemed in haste to go. He said, "My ship at anchor rides In yonder broad lagoon; I only wait the evening tides, And the rising of the moon. Before them, with her face upraised, In timid attitude, Like one half curious, half amazed, A Quadroon maiden stood. Her eyes were large, and full of light, Her arms and neck were bare; No garment she wore save a kirtle bright, And her own long, raven hair. And on her lips there played a smile As holy, meek, and faint, As lights in some cathedral aisle The features of a saint. "The soil is barren,--the farm is old"; The thoughtful planter said; Then looked upon the Slaver's gold, And then upon the maid. His heart within him was at strife With such accursed gains: For he knew whose passions gave her life, Whose blood ran in her veins. But the voice of nature was too weak; He took the glittering gold! Then pale as death grew the maiden's cheek, Her hands as icy cold. The Slaver led her from the door, He led her by the hand, To be his slave and paramour In a strange and distant land! THE WARNING Beware! The Israelite of old, who tore The lion in his path,--when, poor and blind, He saw the blessed light of heaven no more, Shorn of his noble strength and forced to grind In prison, and at last led forth to be A pander to Philistine revelry,-- Upon the pillars of the temple laid His desperate hands, and in its overthrow Destroyed himself, and with him those who made A cruel mockery of his sightless woe; The poor, blind Slave, the scoff and jest of all, Expired, and thousands perished in the fall! There is a poor, blind Samson in this land, Shorn of his strength and bound in bonds of steel, Who may, in some grim revel, raise his hand, And shake the pillars of this Commonweal, Till the vast Temple of our liberties. A shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies. ******************* THE SPANISH STUDENT DRAMATIS PERSONAE VICTORIAN HYPOLITO Students of Alcala. THE COUNT OF LARA DON CARLOS Gentlemen of Madrid. THE ARCHBISHOP OF TOLEDO. A CARDINAL. BELTRAN CRUZADO Count of the Gypsies. BARTOLOME ROMAN A young Gypsy. THE PADRE CURA OF GUADARRAMA. PEDRO CRESPO Alcalde. PANCHO Alguacil. FRANCISCO Lara's Servant. CHISPA Victorian's Servant. BALTASAR Innkeeper. PRECIOSA A Gypsy Girl. ANGELICA A poor Girl. MARTINA The Padre Cura's Niece. DOLORES Preciosa's Maid. Gypsies, Musicians, etc. ACT I. SCENE I.--The COUNT OF LARA'S chambers. Night. The COUNT in his dressing-gown, smoking and conversing with DON CARLOS. Lara. You were not at the play tonight, Don Carlos; How happened it? Don C. I had engagements elsewhere. Pray who was there? Lara. Why all the town and court. The house was crowded; and the busy fans Among the gayly dressed and perfumed ladies Fluttered like butterflies among the flowers. There was the Countess of Medina Celi; The Goblin Lady with her Phantom Lover, Her Lindo Don Diego; Dona Sol, And Dona Serafina, and her cousins. Don C. What was the play? Lara. It was a dull affair; One of those comedies in which you see, As Lope says, the history of the world Brought down from Genesis to the Day of Judgment. There were three duels fought in the first act, Three gentlemen receiving deadly wounds, Laying their hands upon their hearts, and saying, "O, I am dead!" a lover in a closet, An old hidalgo, and a gay Don Juan, A Dona Inez with a black mantilla, Followed at twilight by an unknown lover, Who looks intently where he knows she is not! Don C. Of course, the Preciosa danced to-night? Lara. And never better. Every footstep fell As lightly as a sunbeam on the water. I think the girl extremely beautiful. Don C. Almost beyond the privilege of woman! I saw her in the Prado yesterday. Her step was royal,--queen-like,--and her face As beautiful as a saint's in Paradise. Lara. May not a saint fall from her Paradise, And be no more a saint? Don C. Why do you ask? Lara. Because I have heard it said this angel fell, And though she is a virgin outwardly, Within she is a sinner; like those panels Of doors and altar-pieces the old monks Painted in convents, with the Virgin Mary On the outside, and on the inside Venus! Don C. You do her wrong; indeed, you do her wrong! She is as virtuous as she is fair. Lara. How credulous you are! Why look you, friend, There's not a virtuous woman in Madrid, In this whole city! And would you persuade me That a mere dancing-girl, who shows herself, Nightly, half naked, on the stage, for money, And with voluptuous motions fires the blood Of inconsiderate youth, is to be held A model for her virtue? Don C. You forget She is a Gypsy girl. Lara. And therefore won The easier. Don C. Nay, not to be won at all! The only virtue that a Gypsy prizes Is chastity. That is her only virtue. Dearer than life she holds it. I remember A Gypsy woman, a vile, shameless bawd, Whose craft was to betray the young and fair; And yet this woman was above all bribes. And when a noble lord, touched by her beauty, The wild and wizard beauty of her race, Offered her gold to be what she made others, She turned upon him, with a look of scorn, And smote him in the face! Lara. And does that prove That Preciosa is above suspicion? Don C. It proves a nobleman may be repulsed When he thinks conquest easy. I believe That woman, in her deepest degradation, Holds something sacred, something undefiled, Some pledge and keepsake of her higher nature, And, like the diamond in the dark, retains Some quenchless gleam of the celestial light! Lara. Yet Preciosa would have taken the gold. Don C. (rising). I do not think so. Lara. I am sure of it. But why this haste? Stay yet a little longer, And fight the battles of your Dulcinea. Don C. 'T is late. I must begone, for if I stay You will not be persuaded. Lara. Yes; persuade me. Don C. No one so deaf as he who will not hear! Lara. No one so blind as he who will not see! Don C. And so good night. I wish you pleasant dreams, And greater faith in woman. [Exit. Lara. Greater faith! I have the greatest faith; for I believe Victorian is her lover. I believe That I shall be to-morrow; and thereafter Another, and another, and another, Chasing each other through her zodiac, As Taurus chases Aries. (Enter FRANCISCO with a casket.) Well, Francisco, What speed with Preciosa? Fran. None, my lord. She sends your jewels back, and bids me tell you She is not to be purchased by your gold. Lara. Then I will try some other way to win her. Pray, dost thou know Victorian? Fran. Yes, my lord; I saw him at the jeweller's to-day. Lara. What was he doing there? Fran. I saw him buy A golden ring, that had a ruby in it. Lara. Was there another like it? Fran. One so like it I could not choose between them. Lara. It is well. To-morrow morning bring that ring to me. Do not forget. Now light me to my bed. [Exeunt. SCENE II. -- A street in Madrid. Enter CHISPA, followed by musicians, with a bagpipe, guitars, and other instruments. Chispa. Abernuncio Satanas! and a plague on all lovers who ramble about at night, drinking the elements, instead of sleeping quietly in their beds. Every dead man to his cemetery, say I; and every friar to his monastery. Now, here's my master, Victorian, yesterday a cow-keeper, and to-day a gentleman; yesterday a student, and to-day a lover; and I must be up later than the nightingale, for as the abbot sings so must the sacristan respond. God grant he may soon be married, for then shall all this serenading cease. Ay, marry! marry! marry! Mother, what does marry mean? It means to spin, to bear children, and to weep, my daughter! And, of a truth, there is something more in matrimony than the wedding-ring. (To the musicians.) And now, gentlemen, Pax vobiscum! as the ass said to the cabbages. Pray, walk this way; and don't hang down your heads. It is no disgrace to have an old father and a ragged shirt. Now, look you, you are gentlemen who lead the life of crickets; you enjoy hunger by day and noise by night. Yet, I beseech you, for this once be not loud, but pathetic; for it is a serenade to a damsel in bed, and not to the Man in the Moon. Your object is not to arouse and terrify, but to soothe and bring lulling dreams. Therefore, each shall not play upon his instrument as if it were the only one in the universe, but gently, and with a certain modesty, according with the others. Pray, how may I call thy name, friend? First Mus. Geronimo Gil, at your service. Chispa. Every tub smells of the wine that is in it. Pray, Geronimo, is not Saturday an unpleasant day with thee? First Mus. Why so? Chispa. Because I have heard it said that Saturday is an unpleasant day with those who have but one shirt. Moreover, I have seen thee at the tavern, and if thou canst run as fast as thou canst drink, I should like to hunt hares with thee. What instrument is that? First Mus. An Aragonese bagpipe. Chispa. Pray, art thou related to the bagpiper of Bujalance, who asked a maravedi for playing, and ten for leaving off? First Mus. No, your honor. Chispa. I am glad of it. What other instruments have we? Second and Third Musicians. We play the bandurria. Chispa. A pleasing instrument. And thou? Fourth Mus. The fife. Chispa. I like it; it has a cheerful, soul-stirring sound, that soars up to my lady's window like the song of a swallow. And you others? Other Mus. We are the singers, please your honor. Chispa. You are too many. Do you think we are going to sing mass in the cathedral of Cordova? Four men can make but little use of one shoe, and I see not how you can all sing in one song. But follow me along the garden wall. That is the way my master climbs to the lady's window, it is by the Vicar's skirts that the Devil climbs into the belfry. Come, follow me, and make no noise. [Exeunt. SCENE III. -- PRECIOSA'S chamber. She stands at the open window. Prec. How slowly through the lilac-scented air Descends the tranquil moon! Like thistle-down The vapory clouds float in the peaceful sky; And sweetly from yon hollow vaults of shade The nightingales breathe out their souls in song. And hark! what songs of love, what soul-like sounds, Answer them from below! SERENADE. Stars of the summer night! Far in yon azure deeps, Hide, hide your golden light! She sleeps! My lady sleeps! Sleeps! Moon of the summer night! Far down yon western steeps, Sink, sink in silver light! She sleeps! My lady sleeps! Sleeps! Wind of the summer night! Where yonder woodbine creeps, Fold, fold thy pinions light! She sleeps! My lady sleeps! Sleeps! Dreams of the summer night! Tell her, her lover keeps Watch! while in slumbers light She sleeps My lady sleeps Sleeps! (Enter VICTORIAN by the balcony.) Vict. Poor little dove! Thou tremblest like a leaf! Prec. I am so frightened! 'T is for thee I tremble! I hate to have thee climb that wall by night! Did no one see thee? Vict. None, my love, but thou. Prec. 'T is very dangerous; and when thou art gone I chide myself for letting thee come here Thus stealthily by night. Where hast thou been? Since yesterday I have no news from thee. Vict. Since yesterday I have been in Alcala. Erelong the time will come, sweet Preciosa, When that dull distance shall no more divide us; And I no more shall scale thy wall by night To steal a kiss from thee, as I do now. Prec. An honest thief, to steal but what thou givest. Vict. And we shall sit together unmolested, And words of true love pass from tongue to tongue, As singing birds from one bough to another. Prec. That were a life to make time envious! I knew that thou wouldst come to me to-night. I saw thee at the play. Vict. Sweet child of air! Never did I behold thee so attired And garmented in beauty as to-night! What hast thou done to make thee look so fair? Prec. Am I not always fair? Vict. Ay, and so fair That I am jealous of all eyes that see thee, And wish that they were blind. Prec. I heed them not; When thou art present, I see none but thee! Vict. There's nothing fair nor beautiful, but takes Something from thee, that makes it beautiful. Prec. And yet thou leavest me for those dusty books. Vict. Thou comest between me and those books too often! I see thy face in everything I see! The paintings in the chapel wear thy looks, The canticles are changed to sarabands, And with the leaned doctors of the schools I see thee dance cachuchas. Prec. In good sooth, I dance with learned doctors of the schools To-morrow morning. Vict. And with whom, I pray? Prec. A grave and reverend Cardinal, and his Grace The Archbishop of Toledo. Vict. What mad jest Is this? Prec. It is no jest; indeed it is not. Vict. Prithee, explain thyself. Prec. Why, simply thus. Thou knowest the Pope has sent here into Spain To put a stop to dances on the stage. Vict. I have heard it whispered. Prec. Now the Cardinal, Who for this purpose comes, would fain behold With his own eyes these dances; and the Archbishop Has sent for me-- Vict. That thou mayst dance before them! Now viva la cachucha! It will breathe The fire of youth into these gray old men! 'T will be thy proudest conquest! Prec. Saving one. And yet I fear these dances will be stopped, And Preciosa be once more a beggar. Vict. The sweetest beggar that e'er asked for alms; With such beseeching eyes, that when I saw thee I gave my heart away! Prec. Dost thou remember When first we met? Vict. It was at Cordova, In the cathedral garden. Thou wast sitting Under the orange-trees, beside a fountain. Prec. 'T was Easter-Sunday. The full-blossomed trees Filled all the air with fragrance and with joy. The priests were singing, and the organ sounded, And then anon the great cathedral bell. It was the elevation of the Host. We both of us fell down upon our knees, Under the orange boughs, and prayed together. I never had been happy till that moment. Vict. Thou blessed angel! Prec. And when thou wast gone I felt an acting here. I did not speak To any one that day. But from that day Bartolome grew hateful unto me. Vict. Remember him no more. Let not his shadow Come between thee and me. Sweet Preciosa! I loved thee even then, though I was silent! Prec. I thought I ne'er should see thy face again. Thy farewell had a sound of sorrow in it. Vict. That was the first sound in the song of love! Scarce more than silence is, and yet a sound. Hands of invisible spirits touch the strings Of that mysterious instrument, the soul, And play the prelude of our fate. We hear The voice prophetic, and are not alone. Prec. That is my faith. Dust thou believe these warnings? Vict. So far as this. Our feelings and our thoughts Tend ever on, and rest not in the Present. As drops of rain fall into some dark well, And from below comes a scarce audible sound, So fall our thoughts into the dark Hereafter, And their mysterious echo reaches us. Prec. I have felt it so, but found no words to say it! I cannot reason; I can only feel! But thou hast language for all thoughts and feelings. Thou art a scholar; and sometimes I think We cannot walk together in this world! The distance that divides us is too great! Henceforth thy pathway lies among the stars; I must not hold thee back. Vict. Thou little sceptic! Dost thou still doubt? What I most prize in woman Is her affections, not her intellect! The intellect is finite; but the affections Are infinite, and cannot be exhausted. Compare me with the great men of the earth; What am I? Why, a pygmy among giants! But if thou lovest,--mark me! I say lovest, The greatest of thy sex excels thee not! The world of the affections is thy world, Not that of man's ambition. In that stillness Which most becomes a woman, calm and holy, Thou sittest by the fireside of the heart, Feeding its flame. The element of fire Is pure. It cannot change nor hide its nature, But burns as brightly in a Gypsy camp As in a palace hall. Art thou convinced? Prec. Yes, that I love thee, as the good love heaven; But not that I am worthy of that heaven. How shall I more deserve it? Vict. Loving more. Prec. I cannot love thee more; my heart is full. Vict. Then let it overflow, and I will drink it, As in the summer-time the thirsty sands Drink the swift waters of the Manzanares, And still do thirst for more. A Watchman (in the street). Ave Maria Purissima! 'T is midnight and serene! Vict. Hear'st thou that cry? Prec. It is a hateful sound, To scare thee from me! Vict. As the hunter's horn Doth scare the timid stag, or bark of hounds The moor-fowl from his mate. Prec. Pray, do not go! Vict. I must away to Alcala to-night. Think of me when I am away. Prec. Fear not! I have no thoughts that do not think of thee. Vict. (giving her a ring). And to remind thee of my love, take this; A serpent, emblem of Eternity; A ruby,--say, a drop of my heart's blood. Prec. It is an ancient saying, that the ruby Brings gladness to the wearer, and preserves The heart pure, and, if laid beneath the pillow, Drives away evil dreams. But then, alas! It was a serpent tempted Eve to sin. Vict. What convent of barefooted Carmelites Taught thee so much theology? Prec. (laying her hand upon his mouth). Hush! hush! Good night! and may all holy angels guard thee! Vict. Good night! good night! Thou art my guardian angel! I have no other saint than thou to pray to! (He descends by the balcony.) Prec. Take care, and do not hurt thee. Art thou safe? Vict. (from the garden). Safe as my love for thee! But art thou safe? Others can climb a balcony by moonlight As well as I. Pray shut thy window close; I am jealous of the perfumed air of night That from this garden climbs to kiss thy lips. Prec. (throwing down her handkerchief). Thou silly child! Take this to blind thine eyes. It is my benison! Vict. And brings to me Sweet fragrance from thy lips, as the soft wind Wafts to the out-bound mariner the breath Of the beloved land he leaves behind. Prec. Make not thy voyage long. Vict. To-morrow night Shall see me safe returned. Thou art the star To guide me to an anchorage. Good night! My beauteous star! My star of love, good night! Prec. Good night! Watchman (at a distance). Ave Maria Purissima! Scene IV. -- An inn on the road to Alcala. BALTASAR asleep on a bench. Enter CHISPA. Chispa. And here we are, halfway to Alcala, between cocks and midnight. Body o' me! what an inn this is! The lights out, and the landlord asleep. Hola! ancient Baltasar! Bal. (waking). Here I am. Chispa. Yes, there you are, like a one-eyed Alcalde in a town without inhabitants. Bring a light, and let me have supper. Bal. Where is your master? Chispo. Do not trouble yourself about him. We have stopped a moment to breathe our horses; and, if he chooses to walk up and down in the open air, looking into the sky as one who hears it rain, that does not satisfy my hunger, you know. But be quick, for I am in a hurry, and every man stretches his legs according to the length of his coverlet. What have we here? Bal. (setting a light on the table). Stewed rabbit. Chispa (eating). Conscience of Portalegre! Stewed kitten, you mean! Bal. And a pitcher of Pedro Ximenes, with a roasted pear in it. Chispa (drinking). Ancient Baltasar, amigo! You know how to cry wine and sell vinegar. I tell you this is nothing but Vino Tinto of La Mancha, with a tang of the swine-skin. Bal. I swear to you by Saint Simon and Judas, it is all as I say. Chispa. And I swear to you by Saint Peter and Saint Paul, that it is no such thing. Moreover, your supper is like the hidalgo's dinner, very little meat and a great deal of tablecloth. Bal. Ha! ha! ha! Chispa. And more noise than nuts. Bal. Ha! ha! ha! You must have your joke, Master Chispa. But shall I not ask Don Victorian in, to take a draught of the Pedro Ximenes? Chispa. No; you might as well say, "Don't-you-want-some?" to a dead man. Bal. Why does he go so often to Madrid? Chispa. For the same reason that he eats no supper. He is in love. Were you ever in love, Baltasar? Bal. I was never out of it, good Chispa. It has been the torment of my life. Chispa. What! are you on fire, too, old hay-stack? Why, we shall never be able to put you out. Vict. (without). Chispa! Chispa. Go to bed, Pero Grullo, for the cocks are crowing. Vict. Ea! Chispa! Chispa! Chispa. Ea! Senor. Come with me, ancient Baltasar, and bring water for the horses. I will pay for the supper tomorrow. [Exeunt. SCENE V. -- VICTORIAN'S chambers at Alcala. HYPOLITO asleep in an arm-chair. He awakes slowly. Hyp. I must have been asleep! ay, sound asleep! And it was all a dream. O sleep, sweet sleep Whatever form thou takest, thou art fair, Holding unto our lips thy goblet filled Out of Oblivion's well, a healing draught! The candles have burned low; it must be late. Where can Victorian be? Like Fray Carrillo, The only place in which one cannot find him Is his own cell. Here's his guitar, that seldom Feels the caresses of its master's hand. Open thy silent lips, sweet instrument! And make dull midnight merry with a song. (He plays and sings.) Padre Francisco! Padre Francisco! What do you want of Padre Francisco? Here is a pretty young maiden Who wants to confess her sins! Open the door and let her come in, I will shrive her from every sin. (Enter VICTORIAN.) Vict. Padre Hypolito! Padre Hypolito! Hyp. What do you want of Padre Hypolito? Vict. Come, shrive me straight; for, if love be a sin, I am the greatest sinner that doth live. I will confess the sweetest of all crimes, A maiden wooed and won. Hyp. The same old tale Of the old woman in the chimney-corner, Who, while the pot boils, says, "Come here, my child; I'll tell thee a story of my wedding-day." Vict. Nay, listen, for my heart is full; so full That I must speak. Hyp. Alas! that heart of thine Is like a scene in the old play; the curtain Rises to solemn music, and lo! enter The eleven thousand virgins of Cologne! Vict. Nay, like the Sibyl's volumes, thou shouldst say; Those that remained, after the six were burned, Being held more precious than the nine together. But listen to my tale. Dost thou remember The Gypsy girl we saw at Cordova Dance the Romalis in the market-place? Hyp. Thou meanest Preciosa. Vict. Ay, the same. Thou knowest how her image haunted me Long after we returned to Alcala. She's in Madrid. Hyp. I know it. Vict. And I'm in love. Hyp. And therefore in Madrid when thou shouldst be In Alcala. Vict. O pardon me, my friend, If I so long have kept this secret from thee; But silence is the charm that guards such treasures, And, if a word be spoken ere the time, They sink again, they were not meant for us. Hyp. Alas! alas! I see thou art in love. Love keeps the cold out better than a cloak. It serves for food and raiment. Give a Spaniard His mass, his olla, and his Dona Luisa-- Thou knowest the proverb. But pray tell me, lover, How speeds thy wooing? Is the maiden coy? Write her a song, beginning with an Ave; Sing as the monk sang to the Virgin Mary, Ave! cujus calcem clare Nec centenni commendare Sciret Seraph studio! Vict. Pray, do not jest! This is no time for it! I am in earnest! Hyp. Seriously enamored? What, ho! The Primus of great Alcala Enamored of a Gypsy? Tell me frankly, How meanest thou? Vict. I mean it honestly. Hyp. Surely thou wilt not marry her! Vict. Why not? Hyp. She was betrothed to one Bartolome, If I remember rightly, a young Gypsy Who danced with her at Cordova. Vict. They quarrelled, And so the matter ended. Hyp. But in truth Thou wilt not marry her. Vict. In truth I will. The angels sang in heaven when she was born! She is a precious jewel I have found Among the filth and rubbish of the world. I'll stoop for it; but when I wear it here, Set on my forehead like the morning star, The world may wonder, but it will not laugh. Hyp. If thou wear'st nothing else upon thy forehead, 'T will be indeed a wonder. Vict. Out upon thee With thy unseasonable jests! Pray tell me, Is there no virtue in the world? Hyp. Not much. What, think'st thou, is she doing at this moment; Now, while we speak of her? Vict. She lies asleep, And from her parted lips her gentle breath Comes like the fragrance from the lips of flowers. Her tender limbs are still, and on her breast The cross she prayed to, ere she fell asleep, Rises and falls with the soft tide of dreams, Like a light barge safe moored. Hyp. Which means, in prose, She's sleeping with her mouth a little open! Vict. O, would I had the old magician's glass To see her as she lies in childlike sleep! Hyp. And wouldst thou venture? Vict. Ay, indeed I would! Hyp. Thou art courageous. Hast thou e'er reflected How much lies hidden in that one word, NOW? Vict. Yes; all the awful mystery of Life! I oft have thought, my dear Hypolito, That could we, by some spell of magic, change The world and its inhabitants to stone, In the same attitudes they now are in, What fearful glances downward might we cast Into the hollow chasms of human life! What groups should we behold about the death-bed, Putting to shame the group of Niobe! What joyful welcomes, and what sad farewells! What stony tears in those congealed eyes! What visible joy or anguish in those cheeks! What bridal pomps, and what funereal shows! What foes, like gladiators, fierce and struggling! What lovers with their marble lips together! Hyp. Ay, there it is! and, if I were in love, That is the very point I most should dread. This magic glass, these magic spells of thine, Might tell a tale were better left untold. For instance, they might show us thy fair cousin, The Lady Violante, bathed in tears Of love and anger, like the maid of Colchis, Whom thou, another faithless Argonaut, Having won that golden fleece, a woman's love, Desertest for this Glauce. Vict. Hold thy peace! She cares not for me. She may wed another, Or go into a convent, and, thus dying, Marry Achilles in the Elysian Fields. Hyp. (rising). And so, good night! Good morning, I should say. (Clock strikes three.) Hark! how the loud and ponderous mace of Time Knocks at the golden portals of the day! And so, once more, good night! We'll speak more largely Of Preciosa when we meet again. Get thee to bed, and the magician, Sleep, Shall show her to thee, in his magic glass, In all her loveliness. Good night! [Exit. Vict. Good night! But not to bed; for I must read awhile. (Throws himself into the arm-chair which HYPOLITO has left, and lays a large book open upon his knees.) Must read, or sit in revery and watch The changing color of the waves that break Upon the idle sea-shore of the mind! Visions of Fame! that once did visit me, Making night glorious with your smile, where are ye? O, who shall give me, now that ye are gone, Juices of those immortal plants that bloom Upon Olympus, making us immortal? Or teach me where that wondrous mandrake grows Whose magic root, torn from the earth with groans, At midnight hour, can scare the fiends away, And make the mind prolific in its fancies! I have the wish, but want the will, to act! Souls of great men departed! Ye whose words Have come to light from the swift river of Time, Like Roman swords found in the Tagus' bed, Where is the strength to wield the arms ye bore? From the barred visor of Antiquity Reflected shines the eternal light of Truth, As from a mirror! All the means of action-- The shapeless masses, the materials-- Lie everywhere about us. What we need Is the celestial fire to change the flint Into transparent crystal, bright and clear. That fire is genius! The rude peasant sits At evening in his smoky cot, and draws With charcoal uncouth figures on the wall. The son of genius comes, foot-sore with travel, And begs a shelter from the inclement night. He takes the charcoal from the peasant's hand, And, by the magic of his touch at once Transfigured, all its hidden virtues shine, And, in the eyes of the astonished clown, It gleams a diamond! Even thus transformed, Rude popular traditions and old tales Shine as immortal poems, at the touch Of some poor, houseless, homeless, wandering bard, Who had but a night's lodging for his pains. But there are brighter dreams than those of Fame, Which are the dreams of Love! Out of the heart Rises the bright ideal of these dreams, As from some woodland fount a spirit rises And sinks again into its silent deeps, Ere the enamored knight can touch her robe! 'T is this ideal that the soul of man, Like the enamored knight beside the fountain, Waits for upon the margin of Life's stream; Waits to behold her rise from the dark waters, Clad in a mortal shape! Alas! how many Must wait in vain! The stream flows evermore, But from its silent deeps no spirit rises! Yet I, born under a propitious star, Have found the bright ideal of my dreams. Yes! she is ever with me. I can feel, Here, as I sit at midnight and alone, Her gentle breathing! on my breast can feel The pressure of her head! God's benison Rest ever on it! Close those beauteous eyes, Sweet Sleep! and all the flowers that bloom at night With balmy lips breathe in her ears my name! (Gradually sinks asleep.) ACT II. SCENE I. -- PRECIOSA'S chamber. Morning. PRECIOSA and ANGELICA. Prec. Why will you go so soon? Stay yet awhile. The poor too often turn away unheard From hearts that shut against them with a sound That will be heard in heaven. Pray, tell me more Of your adversities. Keep nothing from me. What is your landlord's name? Ang. The Count of Lara. Prec. The Count of Lara? O, beware that man! Mistrust his pity,--hold no parley with him! And rather die an outcast in the streets Than touch his gold. Ang. You know him, then! Prec. As much As any woman may, and yet be pure. As you would keep your name without a blemish, Beware of him! Ang. Alas! what can I do? I cannot choose my friends. Each word of kindness, Come whence it may, is welcome to the poor. Prec. Make me your friend. A girl so young and fair Should have no friends but those of her own sex. What is your name? Ang. Angelica. Prec. That name Was given you, that you might be an angel To her who bore you! When your infant smile Made her home Paradise, you were her angel. O, be an angel still! She needs that smile. So long as you are innocent, fear nothing. No one can harm you! I am a poor girl, Whom chance has taken from the public streets. I have no other shield than mine own virtue. That is the charm which has protected me! Amid a thousand perils, I have worn it Here on my heart! It is my guardian angel. Ang. (rising). I thank you for this counsel, dearest lady. Prec. Thank me by following it. Ang. Indeed I will. Prec. Pray, do not go. I have much more to say. Ang. My mother is alone. I dare not leave her. Prec. Some other time, then, when we meet again. You must not go away with words alone. (Gives her a purse.) Take this. Would it were more. Ang. I thank you, lady. Prec. No thanks. To-morrow come to me again. I dance to-night,--perhaps for the last time. But what I gain, I promise shall be yours, If that can save you from the Count of Lara. Ang. O, my dear lady! how shall I be grateful For so much kindness? Prec. I deserve no thanks, Thank Heaven, not me. Ang. Both Heaven and you. Prec. Farewell. Remember that you come again tomorrow. Ang. I will. And may the Blessed Virgin guard you, And all good angels. [Exit. Prec. May they guard thee too, And all the poor; for they have need of angels. Now bring me, dear Dolores, my basquina, My richest maja dress,--my dancing dress, And my most precious jewels! Make me look Fairer than night e'er saw me! I've a prize To win this day, worthy of Preciosa! (Enter BELTRAN CRUZADO.) Cruz. Ave Maria! Prec. O God! my evil genius! What seekest thou here to-day? Cruz. Thyself,--my child. Prec. What is thy will with me? Cruz. Gold! gold! Prec. I gave thee yesterday; I have no more. Cruz. The gold of the Busne,--give me his gold! Prec. I gave the last in charity to-day. Cruz. That is a foolish lie. Prec. It is the truth. Cruz. Curses upon thee! Thou art not my child! Hast thou given gold away, and not to me? Not to thy father? To whom, then? Prec. To one Who needs it more. Cruz. No one can need it more. Prec. Thou art not poor. Cruz. What, I, who lurk about In dismal suburbs and unwholesome lanes I, who am housed worse than the galley slave; I, who am fed worse than the kennelled hound; I, who am clothed in rags,--Beltran Cruzado,-- Not poor! Prec. Thou hast a stout heart and strong hands. Thou canst supply thy wants; what wouldst thou more? Cruz. The gold of the Busne! give me his gold! Prec. Beltran Cruzado! hear me once for all. I speak the truth. So long as I had gold, I gave it to thee freely, at all times, Never denied thee; never had a wish But to fulfil thine own. Now go in peace! Be merciful, be patient, and ere long Thou shalt have more. Cruz. And if I have it not, Thou shalt no longer dwell here in rich chambers, Wear silken dresses, feed on dainty food, And live in idleness; but go with me, Dance the Romalis in the public streets, And wander wild again o'er field and fell; For here we stay not long. Prec. What! march again? Cruz. Ay, with all speed. I hate the crowded town! I cannot breathe shut up within its gates Air,--I want air, and sunshine, and blue sky, The feeling of the breeze upon my face, The feeling of the turf beneath my feet, And no walls but the far-off mountain-tops. Then I am free and strong,--once more myself, Beltran Cruzado, Count of the Cales! Prec. God speed thee on thy march!--I cannot go. Cruz. Remember who I am, and who thou art Be silent and obey! Yet one thing more. Bartolome Roman-- Prec. (with emotion). O, I beseech thee If my obedience and blameless life, If my humility and meek submission In all things hitherto, can move in thee One feeling of compassion; if thou art Indeed my father, and canst trace in me One look of her who bore me, or one tone That doth remind thee of her, let it plead In my behalf, who am a feeble girl, Too feeble to resist, and do not force me To wed that man! I am afraid of him! I do not love him! On my knees I beg thee To use no violence, nor do in haste What cannot be undone! Cruz. O child, child, child! Thou hast betrayed thy secret, as a bird Betrays her nest, by striving to conceal it. I will not leave thee here in the great city To be a grandee's mistress. Make thee ready To go with us; and until then remember A watchful eye is on thee. [Exit. Prec. Woe is me! I have a strange misgiving in my heart! But that one deed of charity I'll do, Befall what may; they cannot take that from me. SCENE II -- A room in the ARCHBISHOP'S Palace. The ARCHBISHOP and a CARDINAL seated. Arch. Knowing how near it touched the public morals, And that our age is grown corrupt and rotten By such excesses, we have sent to Rome, Beseeching that his Holiness would aid In curing the gross surfeit of the time, By seasonable stop put here in Spain To bull-fights and lewd dances on the stage. All this you know. Card. Know and approve. Arch. And further, That, by a mandate from his Holiness, The first have been suppressed. Card. I trust forever. It was a cruel sport. Arch. A barbarous pastime, Disgraceful to the land that calls itself Most Catholic and Christian. Card. Yet the people Murmur at this; and, if the public dances Should be condemned upon too slight occasion, Worse ills might follow than the ills we cure. As Panem et Circenses was the cry Among the Roman populace of old, So Pan y Toros is the cry in Spain. Hence I would act advisedly herein; And therefore have induced your Grace to see These national dances, ere we interdict them. (Enter a Servant) Serv. The dancing-girl, and with her the musicians Your Grace was pleased to order, wait without. Arch. Bid them come in. Now shall your eyes behold In what angelic, yet voluptuous shape The Devil came to tempt Saint Anthony. (Enter PRECIOSA, with a mantle thrown over her head. She advances slowly, in modest, half-timid attitude.) Card. (aside). O, what a fair and ministering angel Was lost to heaven when this sweet woman fell! Prec. (kneeling before the ARCHBISHOP). I have obeyed the order of your Grace. If I intrude upon your better hours, I proffer this excuse, and here beseech Your holy benediction. Arch. May God bless thee, And lead thee to a better life. Arise. Card. (aside). Her acts are modest, and her words discreet! I did not look for this! Come hither, child. Is thy name Preciosa? Prec. Thus I am called. Card. That is a Gypsy name. Who is thy father? Prec. Beltran Cruzado, Count of the Cales. Arch. I have a dim remembrance of that man: He was a bold and reckless character, A sun-burnt Ishmael! Card. Dost thou remember Thy earlier days? Prec. Yes; by the Darro's side My childhood passed. I can remember still The river, and the mountains capped with snow The village, where, yet a little child, I told the traveller's fortune in the street; The smuggler's horse, the brigand and the shepherd; The march across the moor; the halt at noon; The red fire of the evening camp, that lighted The forest where we slept; and, further back, As in a dream or in some former life, Gardens and palace walls. Arch. 'T is the Alhambra, Under whose towers the Gypsy camp was pitched. But the time wears; and we would see thee dance. Prec. Your Grace shall be obeyed. (She lays aside her mantilla. The music of the cachucha is played, and the dance begins. The ARCHBISHOP and the CARDINAL look on with gravity and an occasional frown; then make signs to each other; and, as the dance continues, become more and more pleased and excited; and at length rise from their seats, throw their caps in the air, and applaud vehemently as the scene closes.) SCENE III. -- The Prado. A long avenue of trees leading to the gate of Atocha. On the right the dome and spires of a convent. A fountain. Evening, DON CARLOS and HYPOLITO meeting. Don C. Hola! good evening, Don Hypolito. Hyp. And a good evening to my friend, Don Carlos. Some lucky star has led my steps this way. I was in search of you. Don. C. Command me always. Hyp. Do you remember, in Quevedo's Dreams, The miser, who, upon the Day of Judgment, Asks if his money-bags would rise? Don C. I do; But what of that? Hyp. I am that wretched man. Don C. You mean to tell me yours have risen empty? Hyp. And amen! said my Cid the Campeador. Don C. Pray, how much need you? Hyp. Some half-dozen ounces, Which, with due interest-- Don C. (giving his purse). What, am I a Jew To put my moneys out at usury? Here is my purse. Hyp. Thank you. A pretty purse. Made by the hand of some fair Madrilena; Perhaps a keepsake. Don C. No, 't is at your service. Hyp. Thank you again. Lie there, good Chrysostom, And with thy golden mouth remind me often, I am the debtor of my friend. Don C. But tell me, Come you to-day from Alcala? Hyp. This moment. Don C. And pray, how fares the brave Victorian? Hyp. Indifferent well; that is to say, not well. A damsel has ensnared him with the glances Of her dark, roving eyes, as herdsmen catch A steer of Andalusia with a lazo. He is in love. Don C. And is it faring ill To be in love? Hyp. In his case very ill. Don C. Why so? Hyp. For many reasons. First and foremost, Because he is in love with an ideal; A creature of his own imagination; A child of air; an echo of his heart; And, like a lily on a river floating, She floats upon the river of his thoughts! Don C. A common thing with poets. But who is This floating lily? For, in fine, some woman, Some living woman,--not a mere ideal,-- Must wear the outward semblance of his thought. Who is it? Tell me. Hyp. Well, it is a woman! But, look you, from the coffer of his heart He brings forth precious jewels to adorn her, As pious priests adorn some favorite saint With gems and gold, until at length she gleams One blaze of glory. Without these, you know, And the priest's benediction, 't is a doll. Don C. Well, well! who is this doll? Hyp. Why, who do you think? Don C. His cousin Violante. Hyp. Guess again. To ease his laboring heart, in the last storm He threw her overboard, with all her ingots. Don C. I cannot guess; so tell me who it is. Hyp. Not I. Don. C. Why not? Hyp. (mysteriously). Why? Because Mari Franca Was married four leagues out of Salamanca! Don C. Jesting aside, who is it? Hyp. Preciosa. Don C. Impossible! The Count of Lara tells me She is not virtuous. Hyp. Did I say she was? The Roman Emperor Claudius had a wife Whose name was Messalina, as I think; Valeria Messalina was her name. But hist! I see him yonder through the trees, Walking as in a dream. Don C. He comes this way. Hyp. It has been truly said by some wise man, That money, grief, and love cannot be hidden. (Enter VICTORIAN in front.) Vict. Where'er thy step has passed is holy ground! These groves are sacred! I behold thee walking Under these shadowy trees, where we have walked At evening, and I feel thy presence now; Feel that the place has taken a charm from thee, And is forever hallowed. Hyp. Mark him well! See how he strides away with lordly air, Like that odd guest of stone, that grim Commander Who comes to sup with Juan in the play. Don C. What ho! Victorian! Hyp. Wilt thou sup with us? Vict. Hola! amigos! Faith, I did not see you. How fares Don Carlos? Don C. At your service ever. Vict. How is that young and green-eyed Gaditana That you both wot of? Don C. Ay, soft, emerald eyes! She has gone back to Cadiz. Hyp. Ay de mi! Vict. You are much to blame for letting her go back. A pretty girl; and in her tender eyes Just that soft shade of green we sometimes see In evening skies. Hyp. But, speaking of green eyes, Are thine green? Vict. Not a whit. Why so? Hyp. I think The slightest shade of green would be becoming, For thou art jealous. Vid. No, I am not jealous. Hyp. Thou shouldst be. Vict. Why? Hyp. Because thou art in love. And they who are in love are always jealous. Therefore thou shouldst be. Vict. Marry, is that all? Farewell; I am in haste. Farewell, Don Carlos. Thou sayest I should be jealous? Hyp. Ay, in truth I fear there is reason. Be upon thy guard. I hear it whispered that the Count of Lara Lays siege to the same citadel. Vict. Indeed! Then he will have his labor for his pains. Hyp. He does not think so, and Don Carlos tells me He boasts of his success. Vict. How's this, Don Carlos? Don. C. Some hints of it I heard from his own lips. He spoke but lightly of the lady's virtue, As a gay man might speak. Vict. Death and damnation! I'll cut his lying tongue out of his mouth, And throw it to my dog! But no, no, no! This cannot be. You jest, indeed you jest. Trifle with me no more. For otherwise We are no longer friends. And so, fare well! [Exit. Hyp. Now what a coil is here! The Avenging Child Hunting the traitor Quadros to his death, And the Moor Calaynos, when he rode To Paris for the ears of Oliver, Were nothing to him! O hot-headed youth! But come; we will not follow. Let us join The crowd that pours into the Prado. There We shall find merrier company; I see The Marialonzos and the Almavivas, And fifty fans, that beckon me already. [Exeunt. SCENE IV. -- PRECIOSA'S chamber. She is sitting, with a book in her hand, near a table, on which are flowers. A bird singing in its cage. The COUNT OF LARA enters behind unperceived. Prec. (reads). All are sleeping, weary heart! Thou, thou only sleepless art! Heigho! I wish Victorian were here. I know not what it is makes me so restless! (The bird sings.) Thou little prisoner with thy motley coat, That from thy vaulted, wiry dungeon singest, Like thee I am a captive, and, like thee, I have a gentle jailer. Lack-a-day! All are sleeping, weary heart! Thou, thou only sleepless art! All this throbbing, all this aching, Evermore shall keep thee waking, For a heart in sorrow breaking Thinketh ever of its smart! Thou speakest truly, poet! and methinks More hearts are breaking in this world of ours Than one would say. In distant villages And solitudes remote, where winds have wafted The barbed seeds of love, or birds of passage Scattered them in their flight, do they take root, And grow in silence, and in silence perish. Who hears the falling of the forest leaf? Or who takes note of every flower that dies? Heigho! I wish Victorian would come. Dolores! (Turns to lay down her boot and perceives the COUNT.) Ha! Lara. Senora, pardon me. Prec. How's this? Dolores! Lara. Pardon me-- Prec. Dolores! Lara. Be not alarmed; I found no one in waiting. If I have been too bold-- Prec. (turning her back upon him). You are too bold! Retire! retire, and leave me! Lara. My dear lady, First hear me! I beseech you, let me speak! 'T is for your good I come. Prec. (turning toward him with indignation). Begone! begone! You are the Count of Lara, but your deeds Would make the statues of your ancestors Blush on their tombs! Is it Castilian honor, Is it Castilian pride, to steal in here Upon a friendless girl, to do her wrong? O shame! shame! shame! that you, a nobleman, Should be so little noble in your thoughts As to send jewels here to win my love, And think to buy my honor with your gold! I have no words to tell you how I scorn you! Begone! The sight of you is hateful to me! Begone, I say! Lara. Be calm; I will not harm you. Prec. Because you dare not. Lara. I dare anything! Therefore beware! You are deceived in me. In this false world, we do not always know Who are our friends and who our enemies. We all have enemies, and all need friends. Even you, fair Preciosa, here at court Have foes, who seek to wrong you. Prec. If to this I owe the honor of the present visit, You might have spared the coming. Raving spoken, Once more I beg you, leave me to myself. Lara. I thought it but a friendly part to tell you What strange reports are current here in town. For my own self, I do not credit them; But there are many who, not knowing you, Will lend a readier ear. Prec. There was no need That you should take upon yourself the duty Of telling me these tales. Lara. Malicious tongues Are ever busy with your name. Prec. Alas! I've no protectors. I am a poor girl, Exposed to insults and unfeeling jests. They wound me, yet I cannot shield myself. I give no cause for these reports. I live Retired; am visited by none. Lara. By none? O, then, indeed, you are much wronged! Prec. How mean you? Lara. Nay, nay; I will not wound your gentle soul By the report of idle tales. Prec. Speak out! What are these idle tales? You need not spare me. Lara. I will deal frankly with you. Pardon me This window, as I think, looks toward the street, And this into the Prado, does it not? In yon high house, beyond the garden wall,-- You see the roof there just above the trees,-- There lives a friend, who told me yesterday, That on a certain night,--be not offended If I too plainly speak,--he saw a man Climb to your chamber window. You are silent! I would not blame you, being young and fair-- (He tries to embrace her. She starts back, and draws a dagger from her bosom.) Prec. Beware! beware! I am a Gypsy girl! Lay not your hand upon me. One step nearer And I will strike! Lara. Pray you, put up that dagger. Fear not. Prec. I do not fear. I have a heart In whose strength I can trust. Lara. Listen to me I come here as your friend,--I am your friend,-- And by a single word can put a stop To all those idle tales, and make your name Spotless as lilies are. Here on my knees, Fair Preciosa! on my knees I swear, I love you even to madness, and that love Has driven me to break the rules of custom, And force myself unasked into your presence. (VICTORIAN enters behind.) Prec. Rise, Count of Lara! That is not the place For such as you are. It becomes you not To kneel before me. I am strangely moved To see one of your rank thus low and humbled; For your sake I will put aside all anger, All unkind feeling, all dislike, and speak In gentleness, as most becomes a woman, And as my heart now prompts me. I no more Will hate you, for all hate is painful to me. But if, without offending modesty And that reserve which is a woman's glory, I may speak freely, I will teach my heart To love you. Lara. O sweet angel! Prec. Ay, in truth, Far better than you love yourself or me. Lara. Give me some sign of this,--the slightest token. Let me but kiss your hand! Prec. Nay, come no nearer. The words I utter are its sign and token. Misunderstand me not! Be not deceived! The love wherewith I love you is not such As you would offer me. For you come here To take from me the only thing I have, My honor. You are wealthy, you have friends And kindred, and a thousand pleasant hopes That fill your heart with happiness; but I Am poor, and friendless, having but one treasure, And you would take that from me, and for what? To flatter your own vanity, and make me What you would most despise. O sir, such love, That seeks to harm me, cannot be true love. Indeed it cannot. But my love for you Is of a different kind. It seeks your good. It is a holier feeling. It rebukes Your earthly passion, your unchaste desires, And bids you look into your heart, and see How you do wrong that better nature in you, And grieve your soul with sin. Lara. I swear to you, I would not harm you; I would only love you. I would not take your honor, but restore it, And in return I ask but some slight mark Of your affection. If indeed you love me, As you confess you do, O let me thus With this embrace-- Vict. (rushing forward). Hold! hold! This is too much. What means this outrage? Lara. First, what right have you To question thus a nobleman of Spain? Vict. I too am noble, and you are no more! Out of my sight! Lara. Are you the master here? Vict. Ay, here and elsewhere, when the wrong of others Gives me the right! Prec. (to LARA). Go! I beseech you, go! Vict. I shall have business with you, Count, anon! Lara. You cannot come too soon! [Exit. Prec. Victorian! O, we have been betrayed! Vict. Ha! ha! betrayed! 'T is I have been betrayed, not we!--not we! Prec. Dost thou imagine-- Vict. I imagine nothing; I see how 't is thou whilest the time away When I am gone! Prec. O speak not in that tone! It wounds me deeply. Vict. 'T was not meant to flatter. Prec. Too well thou knowest the presence of that man Is hateful to me! Vict. Yet I saw thee stand And listen to him, when he told his love. Prec. I did not heed his words. Vict. Indeed thou didst, And answeredst them with love. Prec. Hadst thou heard all-- Vict. I heard enough. Prec. Be not so angry with me. Vict. I am not angry; I am very calm. Prec. If thou wilt let me speak-- Vict. Nay, say no more. I know too much already. Thou art false! I do not like these Gypsy marriages! Where is the ring I gave thee? Prec. In my casket. Vict. There let it rest! I would not have thee wear it: I thought thee spotless, and thou art polluted! Prec. I call the Heavens to witness-- Vict. Nay, nay, nay! Take not the name of Heaven upon thy lips! They are forsworn! Prec. Victorian! dear Victorian! Vict. I gave up all for thee; myself, my fame, My hopes of fortune, ay, my very soul! And thou hast been my ruin! Now, go on! Laugh at my folly with thy paramour, And, sitting on the Count of Lara's knee, Say what a poor, fond fool Victorian was! (He casts her from him and rushes out.) Prec. And this from thee! (Scene closes.) SCENE V. -- The COUNT OF LARA'S rooms. Enter the COUNT. Lara. There's nothing in this world so sweet as love, And next to love the sweetest thing is hate! I've learned to hate, and therefore am revenged. A silly girl to play the prude with me! The fire that I have kindled-- (Enter FRANCISCO.) Well, Francisco, What tidings from Don Juan? Fran. Good, my lord; He will be present. Lara. And the Duke of Lermos? Fran. Was not at home. Lara. How with the rest? Fran. I've found The men you wanted. They will all be there, And at the given signal raise a whirlwind Of such discordant noises, that the dance Must cease for lack of music. Lara. Bravely done. Ah! little dost thou dream, sweet Preciosa, What lies in wait for thee. Sleep shall not close Thine eyes this night! Give me my cloak and sword. [Exeunt. SCENE VI. -- A retired spot beyond the city gates. Enter VICTORIAN and HYPOLITO. Vict. O shame! O shame! Why do I walk abroad By daylight, when the very sunshine mocks me, And voices, and familiar sights and sounds Cry, "Hide thyself!" O what a thin partition Doth shut out from the curious world the knowledge Of evil deeds that have been done in darkness! Disgrace has many tongues. My fears are windows, Through which all eyes seem gazing. Every face Expresses some suspicion of my shame, And in derision seems to smile at me! Hyp. Did I not caution thee? Did I not tell thee I was but half persuaded of her virtue? Vict. And yet, Hypolito, we may be wrong, We may be over-hasty in condemning! The Count of Lara is a cursed villain. Hyp. And therefore is she cursed, loving him. Vid. She does not love him! 'T is for gold! for gold! Hyp. Ay, but remember, in the public streets He shows a golden ring the Gypsy gave him, A serpent with a ruby in its mouth. Vict. She had that ring from me! God! she is false! But I will be revenged! The hour is passed. Where stays the coward? Hyp. Nay, he is no coward; A villain, if thou wilt, but not a coward. I've seen him play with swords; it is his pastime. And therefore be not over-confident, He'll task thy skill anon. Look, here he comes. (Enter LARA followed by FRNANCISCO) Lara. Good evening, gentlemen. Hyp. Good evening, Count. Lara. I trust I have not kept you long in waiting. Vict. Not long, and yet too long. Are you prepared? Lara. I am. Hyp. It grieves me much to see this quarrel Between you, gentlemen. Is there no way Left open to accord this difference, But you must make one with your swords? Vict. No! none! I do entreat thee, dear Hypolito, Stand not between me an my foe. Too long Our tongues have spoken. Let these tongues of steel End our debate. Upon your guard, Sir Count. (They fight. VICTORIAN disarms the COUNT.) Your life is mine; and what shall now withhold me From sending your vile soul to its account? Lara. Strike! strike! Vict. You are disarmed. I will not kill you. I will not murder you. Take up your sword. (FRANCISCO hands the COUNT his sword, and HYPOLITO interposes.) Hyp. Enough! Let it end here! The Count of Lara Has shown himself a brave man, and Victorian A generous one, as ever. Now be friends. Put up your swords; for, to speak frankly to you, Your cause of quarrel is too slight a thing To move you to extremes. Lara. I am content, I sought no quarrel. A few hasty words, Spoken in the heat of blood, have led to this. Vict. Nay, something more than that. Lara. I understand you. Therein I did not mean to cross your path. To me the door stood open, as to others. But, had I known the girl belonged to you, Never would I have sought to win her from you. The truth stands now revealed; she has been false To both of us. Vict. Ay, false as hell itself! Lara. In truth, I did not seek her; she sought me; And told me how to win her, telling me The hours when she was oftenest left alone. Vict. Say, can you prove this to me? O, pluck out These awful doubts, that goad me into madness! Let me know all! all! all! Lara. You shall know all. Here is my page, who was the messenger Between us. Question him. Was it not so, Francisco? Fran. Ay, my lord. Lara. If further proof Is needful, I have here a ring she gave me. Vict. Pray let me see that ring! It is the same! (Throws it upon the ground, and tramples upon it.) Thus may she perish who once wore that ring! Thus do I spurn her from me; do thus trample Her memory in the dust! O Count of Lara, We both have been abused, been much abused! I thank you for your courtesy and frankness. Though, like the surgeon's hand, yours gave me pain, Yet it has cured my blindness, and I thank you. I now can see the folly I have done, Though 't is, alas! too late. So fare you well! To-night I leave this hateful town forever. Regard me as your friend. Once more farewell! Hyp. Farewell, Sir Count. [Exeunt VICTORIAN and HYPOLITO. Lara. Farewell! farewell! farewell! Thus have I cleared the field of my worst foe! I have none else to fear; the fight is done, The citadel is stormed, the victory won! [Exit with FRANCISCO. SCENE VII. -- A lane in the suburbs. Night. Enter CRUZADO and BARTOLOME. Cruz. And so, Bartolome, the expedition failed. But where wast thou for the most part? Bart. In the Guadarrama mountains, near San Ildefonso. Cruz. And thou bringest nothing back with thee? Didst thou rob no one? Bart. There was no one to rob, save a party of students from Segovia, who looked as if they would rob us; and a jolly little friar, who had nothing in his pockets but a missal and a loaf of bread. Cruz. Pray, then, what brings thee back to Madrid? Bart. First tell me what keeps thee here? Cruz. Preciosa. Bart. And she brings me back. Hast thou forgotten thy promise? Cruz. The two years are not passed yet. Wait patiently. The girl shall be thine. Bart. I hear she has a Busne lover. Cruz. That is nothing. Bart. I do not like it. I hate him,--the son of a Busne harlot. He goes in and out, and speaks with her alone, and I must stand aside, and wait his pleasure. Cruz. Be patient, I say. Thou shalt have thy revenge. When the time comes, thou shalt waylay him. Bart. Meanwhile, show me her house. Cruz. Come this way. But thou wilt not find her. She dances at the play to-night. Bart. No matter. Show me the house. [Exeunt. SCENE VIII. -- The Theatre. The orchestra plays the cachucha. Sound of castanets behind the scenes. The curtain rises, and discovers PRECIOSA in the attitude of commencing the dance. The cachucha. Tumult; hisses; cries of "Brava!" and "Afuera!" She falters and pauses. The music stops. General confusion. PRECIOSA faints. SCENE IX. -- The COUNT OF LARA'S chambers. LARA and his friends at supper. Lara. So, Caballeros, once more many thanks! You have stood by me bravely in this matter. Pray fill your glasses. Don J. Did you mark, Don Luis, How pale she looked, when first the noise began, And then stood still, with her large eyes dilated! Her nostrils spread! her lips apart! Her bosom Tumultuous as the sea! Don L. I pitied her. Lara. Her pride is humbled; and this very night I mean to visit her. Don J. Will you serenade her? Lara. No music! no more music! Don L. Why not music? It softens many hearts. Lara. Not in the humor She now is in. Music would madden her. Don J. Try golden cymbals. Don L. Yes, try Don Dinero; A mighty wooer is your Don Dinero. Lara. To tell the truth, then, I have bribed her maid. But, Caballeros, you dislike this wine. A bumper and away; for the night wears. A health to Preciosa. (They rise and drink.) All. Preciosa. Lara. (holding up his glass). Thou bright and flaming minister of Love! Thou wonderful magician! who hast stolen My secret from me, and mid sighs of passion Caught from my lips, with red and fiery tongue, Her precious name! O nevermore henceforth Shall mortal lips press thine; and nevermore A mortal name be whispered in thine ear. Go! keep my secret! (Drinks and dashes the goblet down.) Don J. Ite! missa est! (Scene closes.) SCENE X. -- Street and garden wall. Night. Enter CRUZADO and BARTOLOME. Cruz. This is the garden wall, and above it, yonder, is her house. The window in which thou seest the light is her window. But we will not go in now. Bart. Why not? Cruz. Because she is not at home. Bart. No matter; we can wait. But how is this? The gate is bolted. (Sound of guitars and voices in a neighboring street.) Hark! There comes her lover with his infernal serenade! Hark! SONG. Good night! Good night, beloved! I come to watch o'er thee! To be near thee,--to be near thee, Alone is peace for me. Thine eyes are stars of morning, Thy lips are crimson flowers! Good night! Good night beloved, While I count the weary hours. Cruz. They are not coming this way. Bart. Wait, they begin again. SONG (coming nearer). Ah! thou moon that shinest Argent-clear above! All night long enlighten My sweet lady-love! Moon that shinest, All night long enlighten! Bart. Woe be to him, if he comes this way! Cruz. Be quiet, they are passing down the street. SONG (dying away). The nuns in the cloister Sang to each other; For so many sisters Is there not one brother! Ay, for the partridge, mother! The cat has run away with the partridge! Puss! puss! puss! Bart. Follow that! follow that! Come with me. Puss! puss! (Exeunt. On the opposite side enter the COUNT OF LARA and gentlemen, with FRANCISCO.) Lara. The gate is fast. Over the wall, Francisco, And draw the bolt. There, so, and so, and over. Now, gentlemen, come in, and help me scale Yon balcony. How now? Her light still burns. Move warily. Make fast the gate, Francisco. (Exeunt. Re-enter CRUZADO and BARTOLOME.) Bart. They went in at the gate. Hark! I hear them in the garden. (Tries the gate.) Bolted again! Vive Cristo! Follow me over the wall. (They climb the wall.) SCENE XI. -- PRECIOSA'S bedchamber. Midnight. She is sleeping in an armchair, in an undress. DOLORES watching her. Dol. She sleeps at last! (Opens the window, and listens.) All silent in the street, And in the garden. Hark! Prec. (in her sleep). I must go hence! Give me my cloak! Dol. He comes! I hear his footsteps. Prec. Go tell them that I cannot dance to-night; I am too ill! Look at me! See the fever That burns upon my cheek! I must go hence. I am too weak to dance. (Signal from the garden.) Dol. (from the window). Who's there? Voice (from below). A friend. Dol. I will undo the door. Wait till I come. Prec. I must go hence. I pray you do not harm me! Shame! shame! to treat a feeble woman thus! Be you but kind, I will do all things for you. I'm ready now,--give me my castanets. Where is Victorian? Oh, those hateful lamps! They glare upon me like an evil eye. I cannot stay. Hark! how they mock at me! They hiss at me like serpents! Save me! save me! (She wakes.) How late is it, Dolores? Dol. It is midnight. Prec. We must be patient. Smooth this pillow for me. (She sleeps again. Noise from the garden, and voices.) Voice. Muera! Another Voice. O villains! villains! Lara. So! have at you! Voice. Take that! Lara. O, I am wounded! Dol. (shutting the window). Jesu Maria! ACT III. SCENE I. -- A cross-road through a wood. In the background a distant village spire. VICTORIAN and HYPOLITO, as travelling students, with guitars, sitting under the trees. HYPOLITO plays and sings. SONG. Ah, Love! Perjured, false, treacherous Love! Enemy Of all that mankind may not rue! Most untrue To him who keeps most faith with thee. Woe is me! The falcon has the eyes of the dove. Ah, Love! Perjured, false, treacherous Love! Vict. Yes, Love is ever busy with his shuttle, Is ever weaving into life's dull warp Bright, gorgeous flowers and scenes Arcadian; Hanging our gloomy prison-house about With tapestries, that make its walls dilate In never-ending vistas of delight. Hyp. Thinking to walk in those Arcadian pastures, Thou hast run thy noble head against the wall. SONG (continued). Thy deceits Give us clearly to comprehend, Whither tend All thy pleasures, all thy sweets! They are cheats, Thorns below and flowers above. Ah, Love! Perjured, false, treacherous Love! Vict. A very pretty song. I thank thee for it. Hyp. It suits thy case. Vict. Indeed, I think it does. What wise man wrote it? Hyp. Lopez Maldonado. Vict. In truth, a pretty song. Hyp. With much truth in it. I hope thou wilt profit by it; and in earnest Try to forget this lady of thy love. Vict. I will forget her! All dear recollections Pressed in my heart, like flowers within a book, Shall be torn out, and scattered to the winds! I will forget her! But perhaps hereafter, When she shall learn how heartless is the world, A voice within her will repeat my name, And she will say, "He was indeed my friend!" O, would I were a soldier, not a scholar, That the loud march, the deafening beat of drums, The shattering blast of the brass-throated trumpet, The din of arms, the onslaught and the storm, And a swift death, might make me deaf forever To the upbraidings of this foolish heart! Hyp. Then let that foolish heart upbraid no more! To conquer love, one need but will to conquer. Vict. Yet, good Hypolito, it is in vain I throw into Oblivion's sea the sword That pierces me; for, like Excalibar, With gemmed and flashing hilt, it will not sink. There rises from below a hand that grasp it, And waves it in the air; and wailing voices Are heard along the shore. Hyp. And yet at last Down sank Excalibar to rise no more. This is not well. In truth, it vexes me. Instead of whistling to the steeds of Time, To make them jog on merrily with life's burden, Like a dead weight thou hangest on the wheels. Thou art too young, too full of lusty health To talk of dying. Vict. Yet I fain would die! To go through life, unloving and unloved; To feel that thirst and hunger of the soul We cannot still; that longing, that wild impulse, And struggle after something we have not And cannot have; the effort to be strong And, like the Spartan boy, to smile, and smile, While secret wounds do bleed beneath our cloaks All this the dead feel not,--the dead alone! Would I were with them! Hyp. We shall all be soon. Vict. It cannot be too soon; for I am weary Of the bewildering masquerade of Life, Where strangers walk as friends, and friends as strangers; Where whispers overheard betray false hearts; And through the mazes of the crowd we chase Some form of loveliness, that smiles, and beckons, And cheats us with fair words, only to leave us A mockery and a jest; maddened,--confused,-- Not knowing friend from foe. Hyp. Why seek to know? Enjoy the merry shrove-tide of thy youth! Take each fair mask for what it gives itself, Nor strive to look beneath it. Vict. I confess, That were the wiser part. But Hope no longer Comforts my soul. I am a wretched man, Much like a poor and shipwrecked mariner, Who, struggling to climb up into the boat, Has both his bruised and bleeding hands cut off, And sinks again into the weltering sea, Helpless and hopeless! Hyp. Yet thou shalt not perish. The strength of thine own arm is thy salvation. Above thy head, through rifted clouds, there shines A glorious star. Be patient. Trust thy star! (Sound of a village belt in the distance.) Vict. Ave Maria! I hear the sacristan Ringing the chimes from yonder village belfry! A solemn sound, that echoes far and wide Over the red roofs of the cottages, And bids the laboring hind a-field, the shepherd, Guarding his flock, the lonely muleteer, And all the crowd in village streets, stand still, And breathe a prayer unto the blessed Virgin! Hyp. Amen! amen! Not half a league from hence The village lies. Vict. This path will lead us to it, Over the wheat-fields, where the shadows sail Across the running sea, now green, now blue, And, like an idle mariner on the main, Whistles the quail. Come, let us hasten on. [Exeunt. SCENE II. -- Public square in the village of Guadarrama. The Ave Maria still tolling. A crowd of villagers, with their hats in their hands, as if in prayer. In front, a group of Gypsies. The bell rings a merrier peal. A Gypsy dance. Enter PANCHO, followed by PEDRO CRESPO. Pancho. Make room, ye vagabonds and Gypsy thieves! Make room for the Alcalde and for me! Pedro C. Keep silence all! I have an edict here From our most gracious lord, the King of Spain, Jerusalem, and the Canary Islands, Which I shall publish in the market-place. Open your ears and listen! (Enter the PADRE CURA at the door of his cottage.) Padre Cura, Good day! and, pray you, hear this edict read. Padre C. Good day, and God be with you! Pray, what is it? Pedro C. An act of banishment against the Gypsies! (Agitation and murmurs in the crowd.) Pancho. Silence! Pedro C. (reads). "I hereby order and command, That the Egyptian an Chaldean strangers, Known by the name of Gypsies, shall henceforth Be banished from the realm, as vagabonds And beggars; and if, after seventy days, Any be found within our kingdom's bounds, They shall receive a hundred lashes each; The second time, shall have their ears cut off; The third, be slaves for life to him who takes them, Or burnt as heretics. Signed, I, the King." Vile miscreants and creatures unbaptized! You hear the law! Obey and disappear! Pancho. And if in seventy days you are not gone, Dead or alive I make you all my slaves. (The Gypsies go out in confusion, showing signs of fear and discontent. PANCHO follows.) Padre C. A righteous law! A very righteous law! Pray you, sit down. Pedro C. I thank you heartily. (They seat themselves on a bench at the PADRE CURAS door. Sound of guitars heard at a distance, approaching during the dialogue which follows.) A very righteous judgment, as you say. Now tell me, Padre Cura,--you know all things, How came these Gypsies into Spain? Padre C. Why, look you; They came with Hercules from Palestine, And hence are thieves and vagrants, Sir Alcalde, As the Simoniacs from Simon Magus, And, look you, as Fray Jayme Bleda says, There are a hundred marks to prove a Moor Is not a Christian, so 't is with the Gypsies. They never marry, never go to mass, Never baptize their children, nor keep Lent, Nor see the inside of a church,--nor--nor-- Pedro C. Good reasons, good, substantial reasons all! No matter for the other ninety-five. They should be burnt, I see it plain enough, They should be bunt. (Enter VICTORIAN and HYPOLITO playing.) Padre C. And pray, whom have we here? Pedro C. More vagrants! By Saint Lazarus, more vagrants! Hyp. Good evening, gentlemen! Is this Guadarrama? Padre C. Yes, Guadarrama, and good evening to you. Hyp. We seek the Padre Cura of the village; And, judging from your dress and reverend mien, You must be he. Padre C. I am. Pray, what's your pleasure? Hyp. We are poor students, traveling in vacation. You know this mark? (Touching the wooden spoon in his hat-band. Padre C. (joyfully). Ay, know it, and have worn it. Pedro C. (aside). Soup-eaters! by the mass! The worst of vagrants! And there's no law against them. Sir, your servant. [Exit. Padre C. Your servant, Pedro Crespo. Hyp. Padre Cura, Front the first moment I beheld your face, I said within myself, "This is the man!" There is a certain something in your looks, A certain scholar-like and studious something,-- You understand,--which cannot be mistaken; Which marks you as a very learned man, In fine, as one of us. Vict. (aside). What impudence! Hyp. As we approached, I said to my companion, "That is the Padre Cura; mark my words!" Meaning your Grace. "The other man," said I, Who sits so awkwardly upon the bench, Must be the sacristan." Padre C. Ah! said you so? Why, that was Pedro Crespo, the alcalde! Hyp. Indeed! you much astonish me! His air Was not so full of dignity and grace As an alcalde's should be. Padre C. That is true. He's out of humor with some vagrant Gypsies, Who have their camp here in the neighborhood. There's nothing so undignified as anger. Hyp. The Padre Cura will excuse our boldness, If, from his well-known hospitality, We crave a lodging for the night. Padre C. I pray you! You do me honor! I am but too happy To have such guests beneath my humble roof. It is not often that I have occasion To speak with scholars; and Emollit mores, Nec sinit esse feros, Cicero says. Hyp. 'T is Ovid, is it not? Padre C. No, Cicero. Hyp. Your Grace is right. You are the better scholar. Now what a dunce was I to think it Ovid! But hang me if it is not! (Aside.) Padre C. Pass this way. He was a very great man, was Cicero! Pray you, go in, go in! no ceremony. [Exeunt. SCENE III. -- A room in the PADRE CURA'S house. Enter the PADRE and HYPOLITO. Padre C. So then, Senor, you come from Alcala. I am glad to hear it. It was there I studied. Hyp. And left behind an honored name, no doubt. How may I call your Grace? Padre C. Geronimo De Santillana, at your Honor's service. Hyp. Descended from the Marquis Santillana? From the distinguished poet? Padre C. From the Marquis, Not from the poet. Hyp. Why, they were the same. Let me embrace you! O some lucky star Has brought me hither! Yet once more!--once more! Your name is ever green in Alcala, And our professor, when we are unruly, Will shake his hoary head, and say, "Alas! It was not so in Santillana's time!" Padre C. I did not think my name remembered there. Hyp. More than remembered; it is idolized. Padre C. Of what professor speak you? Hyp. Timoneda. Padre C. I don't remember any Timoneda. Hyp. A grave and sombre man, whose beetling brow O'erhangs the rushing current of his speech As rocks o'er rivers hang. Have you forgotten? Padre C. Indeed, I have. O, those were pleasant days, Those college days! I ne'er shall see the like! I had not buried then so many hopes! I had not buried then so many friends! I've turned my back on what was then before me; And the bright faces of my young companions Are wrinkled like my own, or are no more. Do you remember Cueva? Hyp. Cueva? Cueva? Padre C. Fool that I am! He was before your time. You're a mere boy, and I am an old man. Hyp. I should not like to try my strength with you. Padre C. Well, well. But I forget; you must be hungry. Martina! ho! Martina! 'T is my niece. (Enter MARTINA.) Hyp. You may be proud of such a niece as that. I wish I had a niece. Emollit mores. (Aside.) He was a very great man, was Cicero! Your servant, fair Martina. Mart. Servant, sir. Padre C. This gentleman is hungry. See thou to it. Let us have supper. Mart. 'T will be ready soon. Padre C. And bring a bottle of my Val-de-Penas Out of the cellar. Stay; I'll go myself. Pray you. Senor, excuse me. [Exit. Hyp. Hist! Martina! One word with you. Bless me I what handsome eyes! To-day there have been Gypsies in the village. Is it not so? Mart. There have been Gypsies here. Hyp. Yes, and have told your fortune. Mart. (embarrassed). Told my fortune? Hyp. Yes, yes; I know they did. Give me your hand. I'll tell you what they said. They said,--they said, The shepherd boy that loved you was a clown, And him you should not marry. Was it not? Mart. (surprised). How know you that? Hyp. O, I know more than that, What a soft, little hand! And then they said, A cavalier from court, handsome, and tall And rich, should come one day to marry you, And you should be a lady. Was it not! He has arrived, the handsome cavalier. (Tries to kiss her. She runs off. Enter VICTORIAN, with a letter.) Vict. The muleteer has come. Hyp. So soon? Vict. I found him Sitting at supper by the tavern door, And, from a pitcher that he held aloft His whole arm's length, drinking the blood-red wine. Hyp. What news from Court? Vict. He brought this letter only. (Reads.) O cursed perfidy! Why did I let That lying tongue deceive me! Preciosa, Sweet Preciosa! how art thou avenged! Hyp. What news is this, that makes thy cheek turn pale, And thy hand tremble? Vict. O, most infamous! The Count of Lara is a worthless villain! Hyp. That is no news, forsooth. Vict. He strove in vain To steal from me the jewel of my soul, The love of Preciosa. Not succeeding, He swore to be revenged; and set on foot A plot to ruin her, which has succeeded. She has been hissed and hooted from the stage, Her reputation stained by slanderous lies Too foul to speak of; and, once more a beggar, She roams a wanderer over God's green earth Housing with Gypsies! Hyp. To renew again The Age of Gold, and make the shepherd swains Desperate with love, like Gasper Gil's Diana. Redit et Virgo! Vict. Dear Hypolito, How have I wronged that meek, confiding heart! I will go seek for her; and with my tears Wash out the wrong I've done her! Hyp. O beware! Act not that folly o'er again. Vict. Ay, folly, Delusion, madness, call it what thou wilt, I will confess my weakness,--I still love her! Still fondly love her! (Enter the PADRE CURA.) Hyp. Tell us, Padre Cura, Who are these Gypsies in the neighborhood? Padre C. Beltran Cruzado and his crew. Vict. Kind Heaven, I thank thee! She is found! is found again! Hyp. And have they with them a pale, beautiful girl, Called Preciosa? Padre C. Ay, a pretty girl. The gentleman seems moved. Hyp. Yes, moved with hunger, He is half famished with this long day's journey. Padre C. Then, pray you, come this way. The supper waits. [Exeunt. SCENE IV. -- A post-house on the road to Segovia, not far from the village of Guadarrama. Enter CHISPA, cracking a whip, and singing the cachucha. Chispa. Halloo! Don Fulano! Let us have horses, and quickly. Alas, poor Chispa! what a dog's life dost thou lead! I thought, when I left my old master Victorian, the student, to serve my new master Don Carlos, the gentleman, that I, too, should lead the life of a gentleman; should go to bed early, and get up late. For when the abbot plays cards, what can you expect of the friars? But, in running away from the thunder, I have run into the lightning. Here I am in hot chase after my master and his Gypsy girl. And a good beginning of the week it is, as he said who was hanged on Monday morning. (Enter DON CARLOS) Don C. Are not the horses ready yet? Chispa. I should think not, for the hostler seems to be asleep. Ho! within there! Horses! horses! horses! (He knocks at the gate with his whip, and enter MOSQUITO, putting on his jacket.) Mosq. Pray, have a little patience. I'm not a musket. Chispa. Health and pistareens! I'm glad to see you come on dancing, padre! Pray, what's the news? Mosq. You cannot have fresh horses; because there are none. Chispa. Cachiporra! Throw that bone to another dog. Do I look like your aunt? Mosq. No; she has a beard. Chispa. Go to! go to! Mosq. Are you from Madrid? Chispa. Yes; and going to Estramadura. Get us horses. Mosq. What's the news at Court? Chispa. Why, the latest news is, that I am going to set up a coach, and I have already bought the whip. (Strikes him round the legs.) Mosq. Oh! oh! You hurt me! Don C. Enough of this folly. Let us have horses. (Gives money to MOSQUITO.) It is almost dark; and we are in haste. But tell me, has a band of Gypsies passed this way of late? Mosq. Yes; and they are still in the neighborhood. Don C. And where? Mosq. Across the fields yonder, in the woods near Guadarrama. [Exit. Don C. Now this is lucky. We will visit the Gypsy camp. Chispa. Are you not afraid of the evil eye? Have you a stag's horn with you? Don C. Fear not. We will pass the night at the village. Chispa. And sleep like the Squires of Hernan Daza, nine under one blanket. Don C. I hope we may find the Preciosa among them. Chispa. Among the Squires? Don C. No; among the Gypsies, blockhead! Chispa. I hope we may; for we are giving ourselves trouble enough on her account. Don't you think so? However, there is no catching trout without wetting one's trousers. Yonder come the horses. [Exeunt. SCENE V. -- The Gypsy camp in the forest. Night. Gypsies working at a forge. Others playing cards by the firelight. Gypsies (at the forge sing). On the top of a mountain I stand, With a crown of red gold in my hand, Wild Moors come trooping over the lea O how from their fury shall I flee, flee, flee? O how from their fury shall I flee? First Gypsy (playing). Down with your John-Dorados, my pigeon. Down with your John-Dorados, and let us make an end. Gypsies (at the forge sing). Loud sang the Spanish cavalier, And thus his ditty ran; God send the Gypsy lassie here, And not the Gypsy man. First Gypsy (playing). There you are in your morocco! Second Gypsy. One more game. The Alcalde's doves against the Padre Cura's new moon. First Gypsy. Have at you, Chirelin. Gypsies (at the forge sing). At midnight, when the moon began To show her silver flame, There came to him no Gypsy man, The Gypsy lassie came. (Enter BELTRAN CRUZADO.) Cruz. Come hither, Murcigalleros and Rastilleros; leave work, leave play; listen to your orders for the night. (Speaking to the right.) You will get you to the village, mark you, by the stone cross. Gypsies. Ay! Cruz. (to the left). And you, by the pole with the hermit's head upon it. Gypsies. Ay! Cruz. As soon as you see the planets are out, in with you, and be busy with the ten commandments, under the sly, and Saint Martin asleep. D'ye hear? Gypsies. Ay! Cruz. Keep your lanterns open, and, if you see a goblin or a papagayo, take to your trampers. Vineyards and Dancing John is the word. Am I comprehended? Gypsies. Ay! ay! Cruz. Away, then! (Exeunt severally. CRUZADO walks up the stage, and disappears among the trees. Enter PRECIOSA.) Prec. How strangely gleams through the gigantic trees The red light of the forge! Wild, beckoning shadows Stalk through the forest, ever and anon Rising and bending with the flickering flame, Then flitting into darkness! So within me Strange hopes and fears do beckon to each other, My brightest hopes giving dark fears a being As the light does the shadow. Woe is me How still it is about me, and how lonely! (BARTOLOME rushes in.) Bart. Ho! Preciosa! Prec. O Bartolome! Thou here? Bart. Lo! I am here. Prec. Whence comest thou? Bart. From the rough ridges of the wild Sierra, From caverns in the rocks, from hunger, thirst, And fever! Like a wild wolf to the sheepfold. Come I for thee, my lamb. Prec. O touch me not! The Count of Lara's blood is on thy hands! The Count of Lara's curse is on thy soul! Do not come near me! Pray, begone from here Thou art in danger! They have set a price Upon thy head! Bart. Ay, and I've wandered long Among the mountains; and for many days Have seen no human face, save the rough swineherd's. The wind and rain have been my sole companions. I shouted to them from the rocks thy name, And the loud echo sent it back to me, Till I grew mad. I could not stay from thee, And I am here! Betray me, if thou wilt. Prec. Betray thee? I betray thee? Bart. Preciosa! I come for thee! for thee I thus brave death! Fly with me o'er the borders of this realm! Fly with me! Prec. Speak of that no more. I cannot. I'm thine no longer. Bart. O, recall the time When we were children! how we played together, How we grew up together; how we plighted Our hearts unto each other, even in childhood! Fulfil thy promise, for the hour has come. I'm hunted from the kingdom, like a wolf! Fulfil thy promise. Prec. 'T was my father's promise. Not mine. I never gave my heart to thee, Nor promised thee my hand! Bart. False tongue of woman! And heart more false! Prec. Nay, listen unto me. I will speak frankly. I have never loved thee; I cannot love thee. This is not my fault, It is my destiny. Thou art a man Restless and violent. What wouldst thou with me, A feeble girl, who have not long to live, Whose heart is broken? Seek another wife, Better than I, and fairer; and let not Thy rash and headlong moods estrange her from thee. Thou art unhappy in this hopeless passion, I never sought thy love; never did aught To make thee love me. Yet I pity thee, And most of all I pity thy wild heart, That hurries thee to crimes and deeds of blood, Beware, beware of that. Bart. For thy dear sake I will be gentle. Thou shalt teach me patience. Prec. Then take this farewell, and depart in peace. Thou must not linger here. Bart. Come, come with me. Prec. Hark! I hear footsteps. Bart. I entreat thee, come! Prec. Away! It is in vain. Bart. Wilt thou not come? Prec. Never! Bart. Then woe, eternal woe, upon thee! Thou shalt not be another's. Thou shalt die. [Exit. Prec. All holy angels keep me in this hour! Spirit of her who bore me, look upon me! Mother of God, the glorified, protect me! Christ and the saints, be merciful unto me! Yet why should I fear death? What is it to die? To leave all disappointment, care, and sorrow, To leave all falsehood, treachery, and unkindness, All ignominy, suffering, and despair, And be at rest forever! O dull heart, Be of good cheer! When thou shalt cease to beat, Then shalt thou cease to suffer and complain! (Enter VICTORIAN and HYPOLITO behind.) Vict. 'T is she! Behold, how beautiful she stands Under the tent-like trees! Hyp. A woodland nymph! Vict. I pray thee, stand aside. Leave me. Hyp. Be wary. Do not betray thyself too soon. Vict. (disguising his voice). Hist! Gypsy! Prec. (aside, with emotion). That voice! that voice from heaven! O speak again! Who is it calls? Vict. A friend. Prec. (aside). 'T is he! 'T is he! I thank thee, Heaven, that thou hast heard my prayer, And sent me this protector! Now be strong, Be strong, my heart! I must dissemble here. False friend or true? Vict. A true friend to the true; Fear not; come hither. So; can you tell fortunes? Prec. Not in the dark. Come nearer to the fire. Give me your hand. It is not crossed, I see. Vict. (putting a piece of gold into her hand). There is the cross. Prec. Is 't silver? Vict. No, 't is gold. Prec. There's a fair lady at the Court, who loves you, And for yourself alone. Vict. Fie! the old story! Tell me a better fortune for my money; Not this old woman's tale! Prec. You are passionate; And this same passionate humor in your blood Has marred your fortune. Yes; I see it now; The line of life is crossed by many marks. Shame! shame! O you have wronged the maid who loved you! How could you do it? Vict. I never loved a maid; For she I loved was then a maid no more. Prec. How know you that? Vict. A little bird in the air Whispered the secret. Prec. There, take back your gold! Your hand is cold, like a deceiver's hand! There is no blessing in its charity! Make her your wife, for you have been abused; And you shall mend your fortunes, mending hers. Vict. (aside). How like an angel's speaks the tongue of woman, When pleading in another's cause her own! That is a pretty ring upon your finger. Pray give it me. (Tries to take the ring.) Prec. No; never from my hand Shall that be taken! Vict. Why, 't is but a ring. I'll give it back to you; or, if I keep it, Will give you gold to buy you twenty such. Prec. Why would you have this ring? Vict. A traveller's fancy, A whim, and nothing more. I would fain keep it As a memento of the Gypsy camp In Guadarrama, and the fortune-teller Who sent me back to wed a widowed maid. Pray, let me have the ring. Prec. No, never! never! I will not part with it, even when I die; But bid my nurse fold my pale fingers thus, That it may not fall from them. 'T is a token Of a beloved friend, who is no more. Vict. How? dead? Prec. Yes; dead to me; and worse than dead. He is estranged! And yet I keep this ring. I will rise with it from my grave hereafter, To prove to him that I was never false. Vict. (aside). Be still, my swelling heart! one moment, still! Why, 't is the folly of a love-sick girl. Come, give it me, or I will say 't is mine, And that you stole it. Prec. O, you will not dare To utter such a falsehood! Vict. I not dare? Look in my face, and say if there is aught I have not dared, I would not dare for thee! (She rushes into his arms.) Prec. 'T is thou! 't is thou! Yes; yes; my heart's elected! My dearest-dear Victorian! my soul's heaven! Where hast thou been so long? Why didst thou leave me? Vict. Ask me not now, my dearest Preciosa. Let me forget we ever have been parted! Prec. Hadst thou not come-- Vict. I pray thee, do not chide me! Prec. I should have perished here among these Gypsies. Vict. Forgive me, sweet! for what I made thee suffer. Think'st thou this heart could feel a moment's joy, Thou being absent? O, believe it not! Indeed, since that sad hour I have not slept, For thinking of the wrong I did to thee Dost thou forgive me? Say, wilt thou forgive me? Prec. I have forgiven thee. Ere those words of anger Were in the book of Heaven writ down against thee, I had forgiven thee. Vict. I'm the veriest fool That walks the earth, to have believed thee false. It was the Count of Lara-- Prec. That bad man Has worked me harm enough. Hast thou not heard-- Vict. I have heard all. And yet speak on, speak on! Let me but hear thy voice, and I am happy; For every tone, like some sweet incantation, Calls up the buried past to plead for me. Speak, my beloved, speak into my heart, Whatever fills and agitates thine own. (They walk aside.) Hyp. All gentle quarrels in the pastoral poets, All passionate love scenes in the best romances, All chaste embraces on the public stage, All soft adventures, which the liberal stars Have winked at, as the natural course of things, Have been surpassed here by my friend, the student, And this sweet Gypsy lass, fair Preciosa! Prec. Senor Hypolito! I kiss your hand. Pray, shall I tell your fortune? Hyp. Not to-night; For, should you treat me as you did Victorian, And send me back to marry maids forlorn, My wedding day would last from now till Christmas. Chispa (within). What ho! the Gypsies, ho! Beltran Cruzado! Halloo! halloo! halloo! halloo! (Enters booted, with a whip and lantern. Vict. What now Why such a fearful din? Hast thou been robbed? Chispa. Ay, robbed and murdered; and good evening to you, My worthy masters. Vict. Speak; what brings thee here? CHISPA (to PRECIOSA). Good news from Court; good news! Beltran Cruzado, The Count of the Cales, is not your father, But your true father has returned to Spain Laden with wealth. You are no more a Gypsy. Vict. Strange as a Moorish tale! Chispa. And we have all Been drinking at the tavern to your health, As wells drink in November, when it rains. Vict. Where is the gentlemen? Chispa. As the old song says, His body is in Segovia, His soul is in Madrid, Prec. Is this a dream? O, if it be a dream, Let me sleep on, and do not wake me yet! Repeat thy story! Say I'm not deceived! Say that I do not dream! I am awake; This is the Gypsy camp; this is Victorian, And this his friend, Hypolito! Speak! speak! Let me not wake and find it all a dream! Vict. It is a dream, sweet child! a waking dream, A blissful certainty, a vision bright Of that rare happiness, which even on earth Heaven gives to those it loves. Now art thou rich, As thou wast ever beautiful and good; And I am now the beggar. Prec. (giving him her hand). I have still A hand to give. Chispa (aside). And I have two to take. I've heard my grandmother say, that Heaven gives almonds To those who have no teeth. That's nuts to crack, I've teeth to spare, but where shall I find almonds? Vict. What more of this strange story? Chispa. Nothing more. Your friend, Don Carlos, is now at the village Showing to Pedro Crespo, the Alcalde, The proofs of what I tell you. The old hag, Who stole you in your childhood, has confessed; And probably they'll hang her for the crime, To make the celebration more complete. Vict. No; let it be a day of general joy; Fortune comes well to all, that comes not late. Now let us join Don Carlos. Hyp. So farewell, The student's wandering life! Sweet serenades, Sung under ladies' windows in the night, And all that makes vacation beautiful! To you, ye cloistered shades of Alcala, To you, ye radiant visions of romance, Written in books, but here surpassed by truth, The Bachelor Hypolito returns, And leaves the Gypsy with the Spanish Student. SCENE VI. -- A pass in the Guadarrama mountains. Early morning. A muleteer crosses the stage, sitting sideways on his mule and lighting a paper cigar with flint and steel. SONG. If thou art sleeping, maiden, Awake and open thy door, 'T is the break of day, and we must away, O'er meadow, and mount, and moor. Wait not to find thy slippers, But come with thy naked feet; We shall have to pass through the dewy grass, And waters wide and fleet. (Disappears down the pass. Enter a Monk. A shepherd appears on the rocks above.) Monk. Ave Maria, gratia plena. Ola! good man! Shep. Ola! Monk. Is this the road to Segovia? Shep. It is, your reverence. Monk. How far is it? Shep. I do not know. Monk. What is that yonder in the valley? Shep. San Ildefonso. Monk. A long way to breakfast. Shep. Ay, marry. Monk. Are there robbers in these mountains? Shep. Yes, and worse than that. Monk. What? Shep. Wolves. Monk. Santa Maria! Come with me to San Ildefonso, and thou shalt be well rewarded. Shep. What wilt thou give me? Monk. An Agnus Dei and my benediction. (They disappear. A mounted Contrabandista passes, wrapped in his cloak, and a gun at his saddle-bow. He goes down the pass singing.) SONG. Worn with speed is my good steed, And I march me hurried, worried; Onward, caballito mio, With the white star in thy forehead! Onward, for here comes the Ronda, And I hear their rifles crack! Ay, jaleo! Ay, ay, jaleo! Ay, jaleo! They cross our track. (Song dies away. Enter PRECIOSA, on horseback, attended by VICTORIAN, HYPOLITO, DON CARLOS, and CHISPA, on foot, and armed.) Vict. This is the highest point. Here let us rest. See, Preciosa, see how all about us Kneeling, like hooded friars, the misty mountains Receive the benediction of the sun! O glorious sight! Prec. Most beautiful indeed! Hyp. Most wonderful! Vict. And in the vale below, Where yonder steeples flash like lifted halberds, San Ildefonso, from its noisy belfries, Sends up a salutation to the morn, As if an army smote their brazen shields, And shouted victory! Prec. And which way lies Segovia? Vict. At a great distance yonder. Dost thou not see it? Prec. No. I do not see it. Vict. The merest flaw that dents the horizon's edge. There, yonder! Hyp. 'T is a notable old town, Boasting an ancient Roman aqueduct, And an Alcazar, builded by the Moors, Wherein, you may remember, poor Gil Blas Was fed on Pan del Rey. O, many a time Out of its grated windows have I looked Hundreds of feet plumb down to the Eresma, That, like a serpent through the valley creeping, Glides at its foot. Prec. O yes! I see it now, Yet rather with my heart than with mine eyes, So faint it is. And all my thoughts sail thither, Freighted with prayers and hopes, and forward urged Against all stress of accident, as in The Eastern Tale, against the wind and tide Great ships were drawn to the Magnetic Mountains, And there were wrecked, and perished in the sea! (She weeps.) Vict. O gentle spirit! Thou didst bear unmoved Blasts of adversity and frosts of fate! But the first ray of sunshine that falls on thee Melts thee to tears! O, let thy weary heart Lean upon mine! and it shall faint no more, Nor thirst, nor hunger; but be comforted And filled with my affection. Prec. Stay no longer! My father waits. Methinks I see him there, Now looking from the window, and now watching Each sound of wheels or footfall in the street, And saying, "Hark! she comes!" O father! father! (They descend the pass. CHISPA remains behind.) Chispa. I have a father, too, but he is a dead one. Alas and alack-a-day. Poor was I born, and poor do I remain. I neither win nor lose. Thus I was, through the world, half the time on foot, and the other half walking; and always as merry as a thunder-storm in the night. And so we plough along, as the fly said to the ox. Who knows what may happen? Patience, and shuffle the cards! I am not yet so bald that you can see my brains; and perhaps, after all, I shall some day go to Rome, and come back Saint Peter. Benedicite! [Exit. (A pause. Then enter BARTOLOME wildly, as if in pursuit, with a carbine in his hand.) Bart. They passed this way! I hear their horses' hoofs! Yonder I see them! Come, sweet caramillo, This serenade shall be the Gypsy's last! (Fires down the pass.) Ha! ha! Well whistled, my sweet caramillo! Well whistled!--I have missed her!--O my God! (The shot is returned. BARTOLOME falls). **************** THE BELFRY OF BRUGES AND OTHER POEMS THE BELFRY OF BRUGES CARILLON In the ancient town of Bruges, In the quaint old Flemish city, As the evening shades descended, Low and loud and sweetly blended, Low at times and loud at times, And changing like a poet's rhymes, Rang the beautiful wild chimes From the Belfry in the market Of the ancient town of Bruges. Then, with deep sonorous clangor Calmly answering their sweet anger, When the wrangling bells had ended, Slowly struck the clock eleven, And, from out the silent heaven, Silence on the town descended. Silence, silence everywhere, On the earth and in the air, Save that footsteps here and there Of some burgher home returning, By the street lamps faintly burning, For a moment woke the echoes Of the ancient town of Bruges. But amid my broken slumbers Still I heard those magic numbers, As they loud proclaimed the flight And stolen marches of the night; Till their chimes in sweet collision Mingled with each wandering vision, Mingled with the fortune-telling Gypsy-bands of dreams and fancies, Which amid the waste expanses Of the silent land of trances Have their solitary dwelling; All else seemed asleep in Bruges, In the quaint old Flemish city. And I thought how like these chimes Are the poet's airy rhymes, All his rhymes and roundelays, His conceits, and songs, and ditties, From the belfry of his brain, Scattered downward, though in vain, On the roofs and stones of cities! For by night the drowsy ear Under its curtains cannot hear, And by day men go their ways, Hearing the music as they pass, But deeming it no more, alas! Than the hollow sound of brass. Yet perchance a sleepless wight, Lodging at some humble inn In the narrow lanes of life, When the dusk and hush of night Shut out the incessant din Of daylight and its toil and strife, May listen with a calm delight To the poet's melodies, Till he hears, or dreams he hears, Intermingled with the song, Thoughts that he has cherished long; Hears amid the chime and singing The bells of his own village ringing, And wakes, and finds his slumberous eyes Wet with most delicious tears. Thus dreamed I, as by night I lay In Bruges, at the Fleur-de-Ble, Listening with a wild delight To the chimes that, through the night Bang their changes from the Belfry Of that quaint old Flemish city. THE BELFRY OF BRUGES In the market-place of Bruges stands the belfry old and brown; Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o'er the town. As the summer morn was breaking, on that lofty tower I stood, And the world threw off the darkness, like the weeds of widowhood. Thick with towns and hamlets studded, and with streams and vapors gray, Like a shield embossed with silver, round and vast the landscape lay. At my feet the city slumbered. From its chimneys, here and there, Wreaths of snow-white smoke, ascending, vanished, ghost-like, into air. Not a sound rose from the city at that early morning hour, But I heard a heart of iron beating in the ancient tower. From their nests beneath the rafters sang the swallows wild and high; And the world, beneath me sleeping, seemed more distant than the sky. Then most musical and solemn, bringing back the olden times, With their strange, unearthly changes rang the melancholy chimes, Like the psalms from some old cloister, when the nuns sing in the choir; And the great bell tolled among them, like the chanting of a friar. Visions of the days departed, shadowy phantoms filled my brain; They who live in history only seemed to walk the earth again; All the Foresters of Flanders,--mighty Baldwin Bras de Fer, Lyderick du Bucq and Cressy Philip, Guy de Dampierre. I beheld the pageants splendid that adorned those days of old; Stately dames, like queens attended, knights who bore the Fleece of Gold Lombard and Venetian merchants with deep-laden argosies; Ministers from twenty nations; more than royal pomp and ease. I beheld proud Maximilian, kneeling humbly on the ground; I beheld the gentle Mary, hunting with her hawk and hound; And her lighted bridal-chamber, where a duke slept with the queen, And the armed guard around them, and the sword unsheathed between. I beheld the Flemish weavers, with Namur and Juliers bold, Marching homeward from the bloody battle of the Spurs of Gold; Saw the light at Minnewater, saw the White Hoods moving west, Saw great Artevelde victorious scale the Golden Dragon's nest. And again the whiskered Spaniard all the land with terror smote; And again the wild alarum sounded from the tocsin's throat; Till the bell of Ghent responded o'er lagoon and dike of sand, "I am Roland! I am Roland! there is victory in the land!" Then the sound of drums aroused me. The awakened city's roar Chased the phantoms I had summoned back into their graves once more. Hours had passed away like minutes; and, before I was aware, Lo! the shadow of the belfry crossed the sun-illumined square. A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE This is the place. Stand still, my steed, Let me review the scene, And summon from the shadowy Past The forms that once have been. The Past and Present here unite Beneath Time's flowing tide, Like footprints hidden by a brook, But seen on either side. Here runs the highway to the town; There the green lane descends, Through which I walked to church with thee, O gentlest of my friends! The shadow of the linden-trees Lay moving on the grass; Between them and the moving boughs, A shadow, thou didst pass. Thy dress was like the lilies, And thy heart as pure as they: One of God's holy messengers Did walk with me that day. I saw the branches of the trees Bend down thy touch to meet, The clover-blossoms in the grass Rise up to kiss thy feet, "Sleep, sleep to-day, tormenting cares, Of earth and folly born!" Solemnly sang the village choir On that sweet Sabbath morn. Through the closed blinds the golden sun Poured in a dusty beam, Like the celestial ladder seen By Jacob in his dream. And ever and anon, the wind, Sweet-scented with the hay, Turned o'er the hymn-book's fluttering leaves That on the window lay. Long was the good man's sermon, Yet it seemed not so to me; For he spake of Ruth the beautiful, And still I thought of thee. Long was the prayer he uttered, Yet it seemed not so to me; For in my heart I prayed with him, And still I thought of thee. But now, alas! the place seems changed; Thou art no longer here: Part of the sunshine of the scene With thee did disappear. Though thoughts, deep-rooted in my heart, Like pine-trees dark and high, Subdue the light of noon, and breathe A low and ceaseless sigh; This memory brightens o'er the past, As when the sun, concealed Behind some cloud that near us hangs Shines on a distant field. THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling, Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms; But front their silent pipes no anthem pealing Startles the villages with strange alarms. Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary, When the death-angel touches those swift keys What loud lament and dismal Miserere Will mingle with their awful symphonies I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus, The cries of agony, the endless groan, Which, through the ages that have gone before us, In long reverberations reach our own. On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer, Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman's song, And loud, amid the universal clamor, O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong. I hear the Florentine, who from his palace Wheels out his battle-bell with dreadful din, And Aztec priests upon their teocallis Beat the wild war-drums made of serpent's skin; The tumult of each sacked and burning village; The shout that every prayer for mercy drowns; The soldiers' revels in the midst of pillage; The wail of famine in beleaguered towns; The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder, The rattling musketry, the clashing blade; And ever and anon, in tones of thunder, The diapason of the cannonade. Is it, O man, with such discordant noises, With such accursed instruments as these, Thou drownest Nature's sweet and kindly voices, And jarrest the celestial harmonies? Were half the power, that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth, bestowed on camps and courts, Given to redeem the human mind from error, There were no need of arsenals or forts: The warrior's name would be a name abhorred! And every nation, that should lift again Its hand against a brother, on its forehead Would wear forevermore the curse of Cain! Down the dark future, through long generations, The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease; And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations, I hear once more the voice of Christ say, "Peace!" Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies! But beautiful as songs of the immortals, The holy melodies of love arise. NUREMBERG In the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadow-lands Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, stands. Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song, Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round them throng: Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors, rough and bold, Had their dwelling in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old; And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted, in their uncouth rhyme, That their great imperial city stretched its hand through every clime. In the court-yard of the castle, bound with many an iron hand, Stands the mighty linden planted by Queen Cunigunde's hand; On the square the oriel window, where in old heroic days Sat the poet Melchior singing Kaiser Maximilian's praise. Everywhere I see around me rise the wondrous world of Art: Fountains wrought with richest sculpture standing in the common mart; And above cathedral doorways saints and bishops carved in stone, By a former age commissioned as apostles to our own. In the church of sainted Sebald sleeps enshrined his holy dust, And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard from age to age their trust; In the church of sainted Lawrence stands a pix of sculpture rare, Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through the painted air. Here, when Art was still religion, with a simple, reverent heart, Lived and labored Albrecht Durer, the Evangelist of Art; Hence in silence and in sorrow, toiling still with busy hand, Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the Better Land. Emigravit is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies; Dead he is not, but departed,--for the artist never dies. Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair, That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed its air! Through these streets so broad and stately, these obscure and dismal lanes, Walked of yore the Mastersingers, chanting rude poetic strains. From remote and sunless suburbs came they to the friendly guild, Building nests in Fame's great temple, as in spouts the swallows build. As the weaver plied the shuttle, wove he too the mystic rhyme, And the smith his iron measures hammered to the anvil's chime; Thanking God, whose boundless wisdom makes the flowers of poesy bloom In the forge's dust and cinders, in the tissues of the loom. Here Hans Sachs, the cobbler-poet, laureate of the gentle craft, Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters, in huge folios sang and laughed. But his house is now an ale-house, with a nicely sanded floor, And a garland in the window, and his face above the door; Painted by some humble artist, as in Adam Puschman's song, As the old man gray and dove-like, with his great beard white and long. And at night the swart mechanic comes to drown his cark and care, Quaffing ale from pewter tankard; in the master's antique chair. Vanished is the ancient splendor, and before my dreamy eye Wave these mingled shapes and figures, like a faded tapestry. Not thy Councils, not thy Kaisers, win for thee the world's regard; But thy painter, Albrecht Durer, and Hans Sachs thy cobbler-bard. Thus, O Nuremberg, a wanderer from a region far away, As he paced thy streets and court-yards, sang in thought his careless lay: Gathering from the pavement's crevice, as a floweret of the soil, The nobility of labor,--the long pedigree of toil. THE NORMAN BARON Dans les moments de la vie ou la reflexion devient plus calme et plus profonde, ou l'interet et l'avarice parlent moins haut que la raison, dans les instants de chagrin domestique, de maladie, et de peril de mort, les nobles se repentirent de posseder des serfs, comme d'une chose peu agreable a Dieu, qui avait cree tous les hommes a son image.--THIERRY, Conquete de l'Angleterre. In his chamber, weak and dying, Was the Norman baron lying; Loud, without, the tempest thundered And the castle-turret shook, In this fight was Death the gainer, Spite of vassal and retainer, And the lands his sires had plundered, Written in the Doomsday Book. By his bed a monk was seated, Who in humble voice repeated Many a prayer and pater-noster, From the missal on his knee; And, amid the tempest pealing, Sounds of bells came faintly stealing, Bells, that from the neighboring kloster Rang for the Nativity. In the hall, the serf and vassal Held, that night their Christmas wassail; Many a carol, old and saintly, Sang the minstrels and the waits; And so loud these Saxon gleemen Sang to slaves the songs of freemen, That the storm was heard but faintly, Knocking at the castle-gates. Till at length the lays they chanted Reached the chamber terror-haunted, Where the monk, with accents holy, Whispered at the baron's ear. Tears upon his eyelids glistened, As he paused awhile and listened, And the dying baron slowly Turned his weary head to hear. "Wassail for the kingly stranger Born and cradled in a manger! King, like David, priest, like Aaron, Christ is born to set us free!" And the lightning showed the sainted Figures on the casement painted, And exclaimed the shuddering baron, "Miserere, Domine!" In that hour of deep contrition He beheld, with clearer vision, Through all outward show and fashion, Justice, the Avenger, rise. All the pomp of earth had vanished, Falsehood and deceit were banished, Reason spake more loud than passion, And the truth wore no disguise. Every vassal of his banner, Every serf born to his manor, All those wronged and wretched creatures, By his hand were freed again. And, as on the sacred missal He recorded their dismissal, Death relaxed his iron features, And the monk replied, "Amen!" Many centuries have been numbered Since in death the baron slumbered By the convent's sculptured portal, Mingling with the common dust: But the good deed, through the ages Living in historic pages, Brighter grows and gleams immortal, Unconsumed by moth or rust RAIN IN SUMMER How beautiful is the rain! After the dust and heat, In the broad and fiery street, In the narrow lane, How beautiful is the rain! How it clatters along the roofs, Like the tramp of hoofs How it gushes and struggles out From the throat of the overflowing spout! Across the window-pane It pours and pours; And swift and wide, With a muddy tide, Like a river down the gutter roars The rain, the welcome rain! The sick man from his chamber looks At the twisted brooks; He can feel the cool Breath of each little pool; His fevered brain Grows calm again, And he breathes a blessing on the rain. From the neighboring school Come the boys, With more than their wonted noise And commotion; And down the wet streets Sail their mimic fleets, Till the treacherous pool Ingulfs them in its whirling And turbulent ocean. In the country, on every side, Where far and wide, Like a leopard's tawny and spotted hide, Stretches the plain, To the dry grass and the drier grain How welcome is the rain! In the furrowed land The toilsome and patient oxen stand; Lifting the yoke encumbered head, With their dilated nostrils spread, They silently inhale The clover-scented gale, And the vapors that arise From the well-watered and smoking soil. For this rest in the furrow after toil Their large and lustrous eyes Seem to thank the Lord, More than man's spoken word. Near at hand, From under the sheltering trees, The farmer sees His pastures, and his fields of grain, As they bend their tops To the numberless beating drops Of the incessant rain. He counts it as no sin That he sees therein Only his own thrift and gain. These, and far more than these, The Poet sees! He can behold Aquarius old Walking the fenceless fields of air; And from each ample fold Of the clouds about him rolled Scattering everywhere The showery rain, As the farmer scatters his grain. He can behold Things manifold That have not yet been wholly told,-- Have not been wholly sung nor said. For his thought, that never stops, Follows the water-drops Down to the graves of the dead, Down through chasms and gulfs profound, To the dreary fountain-head Of lakes and rivers under ground; And sees them, when the rain is done, On the bridge of colors seven Climbing up once more to heaven, Opposite the setting sun. Thus the Seer, With vision clear, Sees forms appear and disappear, In the perpetual round of strange, Mysterious change From birth to death, from death to birth, From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth; Till glimpses more sublime Of things, unseen before, Unto his wondering eyes reveal The Universe, as an immeasurable wheel Turning forevermore In the rapid and rushing river of Time. TO A CHILD Dear child! how radiant on thy mother's knee, With merry-making eyes and jocund smiles, Thou gazest at the painted tiles, Whose figures grace, With many a grotesque form and face. The ancient chimney of thy nursery! The lady with the gay macaw, The dancing girl, the grave bashaw With bearded lip and chin; And, leaning idly o'er his gate, Beneath the imperial fan of state, The Chinese mandarin. With what a look of proud command Thou shakest in thy little hand The coral rattle with its silver bells, Making a merry tune! Thousands of years in Indian seas That coral grew, by slow degrees, Until some deadly and wild monsoon Dashed it on Coromandel's sand! Those silver bells Reposed of yore, As shapeless ore, Far down in the deep-sunken wells Of darksome mines, In some obscure and sunless place, Beneath huge Chimborazo's base, Or Potosi's o'erhanging pines And thus for thee, O little child, Through many a danger and escape, The tall ships passed the stormy cape; For thee in foreign lands remote, Beneath a burning, tropic clime, The Indian peasant, chasing the wild goat, Himself as swift and wild, In falling, clutched the frail arbute, The fibres of whose shallow root, Uplifted from the soil, betrayed The silver veins beneath it laid, The buried treasures of the miser, Time. But, lo! thy door is left ajar! Thou hearest footsteps from afar! And, at the sound, Thou turnest round With quick and questioning eyes, Like one, who, in a foreign land, Beholds on every hand Some source of wonder and surprise! And, restlessly, impatiently, Thou strivest, strugglest, to be free, The four walls of thy nursery Are now like prison walls to thee. No more thy mother's smiles, No more the painted tiles, Delight thee, nor the playthings on the floor, That won thy little, beating heart before; Thou strugglest for the open door. Through these once solitary halls Thy pattering footstep falls. The sound of thy merry voice Makes the old walls Jubilant, and they rejoice With the joy of thy young heart, O'er the light of whose gladness No shadows of sadness From the sombre background of memory start. Once, ah, once, within these walls, One whom memory oft recalls, The Father of his Country, dwelt. And yonder meadows broad and damp The fires of the besieging camp Encircled with a burning belt. Up and down these echoing stairs, Heavy with the weight of cares, Sounded his majestic tread; Yes, within this very room Sat he in those hours of gloom, Weary both in heart and head. But what are these grave thoughts to thee? Out, out! into the open air! Thy only dream is liberty, Thou carest little how or where. I see thee eager at thy play, Now shouting to the apples on the tree, With cheeks as round and red as they; And now among the yellow stalks, Among the flowering shrubs and plants, As restless as the bee. Along the garden walks, The tracks of thy small carriage-wheels I trace; And see at every turn how they efface Whole villages of sand-roofed tents, That rise like golden domes Above the cavernous and secret homes Of wandering and nomadic tribes of ants. Ah, cruel little Tamerlane, Who, with thy dreadful reign, Dost persecute and overwhelm These hapless Troglodytes of thy realm! What! tired already! with those suppliant looks, And voice more beautiful than a poet's books, Or murmuring sound of water as it flows. Thou comest back to parley with repose; This rustic seat in the old apple-tree, With its o'erhanging golden canopy Of leaves illuminate with autumnal hues, And shining with the argent light of dews, Shall for a season be our place of rest. Beneath us, like an oriole's pendent nest, From which the laughing birds have taken wing, By thee abandoned, hangs thy vacant swing. Dream-like the waters of the river gleam; A sailless vessel drops adown the stream, And like it, to a sea as wide and deep, Thou driftest gently down the tides of sleep. O child! O new-born denizen Of life's great city! on thy head The glory of the morn is shed, Like a celestial benison! Here at the portal thou dost stand, And with thy little hand Thou openest the mysterious gate Into the future's undiscovered land. I see its valves expand, As at the touch of Fate! Into those realms of love and hate, Into that darkness blank and drear, By some prophetic feeling taught, I launch the bold, adventurous thought, Freighted with hope and fear; As upon subterranean streams, In caverns unexplored and dark, Men sometimes launch a fragile bark, Laden with flickering fire, And watch its swift-receding beams, Until at length they disappear, And in the distant dark expire. By what astrology of fear or hope Dare I to cast thy horoscope! Like the new moon thy life appears; A little strip of silver light, And widening outward into night The shadowy disk of future years; And yet upon its outer rim, A luminous circle, faint and dim, And scarcely visible to us here, Rounds and completes the perfect sphere; A prophecy and intimation, A pale and feeble adumbration, Of the great world of light, that lies Behind all human destinies. Ah! if thy fate, with anguish fraught, Should be to wet the dusty soil With the hot tears and sweat of toil,-- To struggle with imperious thought, Until the overburdened brain, Weary with labor, faint with pain, Like a jarred pendulum, retain Only its motion, not its power,-- Remember, in that perilous hour, When most afflicted and oppressed, From labor there shall come forth rest. And if a more auspicious fate On thy advancing steps await Still let it ever be thy pride To linger by the laborer's side; With words of sympathy or song To cheer the dreary march along Of the great army of the poor, O'er desert sand, o'er dangerous moor. Nor to thyself the task shall be Without reward; for thou shalt learn The wisdom early to discern True beauty in utility; As great Pythagoras of yore, Standing beside the blacksmith's door, And hearing the hammers, as they smote The anvils with a different note, Stole from the varying tones, that hung Vibrant on every iron tongue, The secret of the sounding wire. And formed the seven-chorded lyre. Enough! I will not play the Seer; I will no longer strive to ope The mystic volume, where appear The herald Hope, forerunning Fear, And Fear, the pursuivant of Hope. Thy destiny remains untold; For, like Acestes' shaft of old, The swift thought kindles as it flies, And burns to ashes in the skies. THE OCCULTATION OF ORION I saw, as in a dream sublime, The balance in the hand of Time. O'er East and West its beam impended; And day, with all its hours of light, Was slowly sinking out of sight, While, opposite, the scale of night Silently with the stars ascended. Like the astrologers of eld, In that bright vision I beheld Greater and deeper mysteries. I saw, with its celestial keys, Its chords of air, its frets of fire, The Samian's great Aeolian lyre, Rising through all its sevenfold bars, From earth unto the fixed stars. And through the dewy atmosphere, Not only could I see, but hear, Its wondrous and harmonious strings, In sweet vibration, sphere by sphere, From Dian's circle light and near, Onward to vaster and wider rings. Where, chanting through his beard of snows, Majestic, mournful, Saturn goes, And down the sunless realms of space Reverberates the thunder of his bass. Beneath the sky's triumphal arch This music sounded like a march, And with its chorus seemed to be Preluding some great tragedy. Sirius was rising in the east; And, slow ascending one by one, The kindling constellations shone. Begirt with many a blazing star, Stood the great giant Algebar, Orion, hunter of the beast! His sword hung gleaming by his side, And, on his arm, the lion's hide Scattered across the midnight air The golden radiance of its hair. The moon was pallid, but not faint; And beautiful as some fair saint, Serenely moving on her way In hours of trial and dismay. As if she heard the voice of God, Unharmed with naked feet she trod Upon the hot and burning stars, As on the glowing coals and bars, That were to prove her strength, and try Her holiness and her purity. Thus moving on, with silent pace, And triumph in her sweet, pale face, She reached the station of Orion. Aghast he stood in strange alarm! And suddenly from his outstretched arm Down fell the red skin of the lion Into the river at his feet. His mighty club no longer beat The forehead of the bull; but he Reeled as of yore beside the sea, When, blinded by Oenopion, He sought the blacksmith at his forge, And, climbing up the mountain gorge, Fixed his blank eyes upon the sun. Then, through the silence overhead, An angel with a trumpet said, "Forevermore, forevermore, The reign of violence is o'er!" And, like an instrument that flings Its music on another's strings, The trumpet of the angel cast Upon the heavenly lyre its blast, And on from sphere to sphere the words Re-echoed down the burning chords,-- "Forevermore, forevermore, The reign of violence is o'er!" THE BRIDGE I stood on the bridge at midnight, As the clocks were striking the hour, And the moon rose o'er the city, Behind the dark church-tower. I saw her bright reflection In the waters under me, Like a golden goblet falling And sinking into the sea. And far in the hazy distance Of that lovely night in June, The blaze of the flaming furnace Gleamed redder than the moon. Among the long, black rafters The wavering shadows lay, And the current that came from the ocean Seemed to lift and bear them away; As, sweeping and eddying through them, Rose the belated tide, And, streaming into the moonlight, The seaweed floated wide. And like those waters rushing Among the wooden piers, A flood of thoughts came o'er me That filled my eyes with tears. How often, oh, how often, In the days that had gone by, I had stood on that bridge at midnight And gazed on that wave and sky! How often, oh, how often, I had wished that the ebbing tide Would bear me away on its bosom O'er the ocean wild and wide! For my heart was hot and restless, And my life was full of care, And the burden laid upon me Seemed greater than I could bear. But now it has fallen from me, It is buried in the sea; And only the sorrow of others Throws its shadow over me. Yet whenever I cross the river On its bridge with wooden piers, Like the odor of brine from the ocean Comes the thought of other years. And I think how many thousands Of care-encumbered men, Each bearing his burden of sorrow, Have crossed the bridge since then. I see the long procession Still passing to and fro, The young heart hot and restless, And the old subdued and slow! And forever and forever, As long as the river flows, As long as the heart has passions, As long as life has woes; The moon and its broken reflection And its shadows shall appear, As the symbol of love in heaven, And its wavering image here. TO THE DRIVING CLOUD Gloomy and dark art thou, O chief of the mighty Omahas; Gloomy and dark as the driving cloud, whose name thou hast taken! Wrapt in thy scarlet blanket, I see thee stalk through the city's Narrow and populous streets, as once by the margin of rivers Stalked those birds unknown, that have left us only their footprints. What, in a few short years, will remain of thy race but the footprints? How canst thou walk these streets, who hast trod the green turf of the prairies! How canst thou breathe this air, who hast breathed the sweet air of the mountains! Ah! 't is in vain that with lordly looks of disdain thou dost challenge Looks of disdain in return, and question these walls and these pavements, Claiming the soil for thy hunting-grounds, while down-trodden millions Starve in the garrets of Europe, and cry from its caverns that they, too, Have been created heirs of the earth, and claim its division! Back, then, back to thy woods in the regions west of the Wabash! There as a monarch thou reignest. In autumn the leaves of the maple Pave the floors of thy palace-halls with gold, and in summer Pine-trees waft through its chambers the odorous breath of their branches. There thou art strong and great, a hero, a tamer of horses! There thou chasest the stately stag on the banks of the Elkhorn, Or by the roar of the Running-Water, or where the Omaha Calls thee, and leaps through the wild ravine like a brave of the Blackfeet! Hark! what murmurs arise from the heart of those mountainous deserts? Is it the cry of the Foxes and Crows, or the mighty Behemoth, Who, unharmed, on his tusks once caught the bolts of the thunder, And now lurks in his lair to destroy the race of the red man? Far more fatal to thee and thy race than the Crows and the Foxes, Far more fatal to thee and thy race than the tread of Behemoth, Lo! the big thunder-canoe, that steadily breasts the Missouri's Merciless current! and yonder, afar on the prairies, the camp-fires Gleam through the night; and the cloud of dust in the gray of the daybreak Marks not the buffalo's track, nor the Mandan's dexterous horse-race; It is a caravan, whitening the desert where dwell the Camanches! Ha! how the breath of these Saxons and Celts, like the blast of the east-wind, Drifts evermore to the west the scanty smokes of thy wigwams! SONGS THE DAY IS DONE The day is done, and the darkness Falls from the wings of Night, As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle in his flight. I see the lights of the village Gleam through the rain and the mist, And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me That my soul cannot resist: A feeling of sadness and longing, That is not akin to pain, And resembles sorrow only As the mist resembles the rain. Come, read to me some poem, Some simple and heartfelt lay, That shall soothe this restless feeling, And banish the thoughts of day. Not from the grand old masters, Not from the bards sublime, Whose distant footsteps echo Through the corridors of Time. For, like strains of martial music, Their mighty thoughts suggest Life's endless toil and endeavor; And to-night I long for rest. Read from some humbler poet, Whose songs gushed from his heart, As showers from the clouds of summer, Or tears from the eyelids start; Who, through long days of labor, And nights devoid of ease, Still heard in his soul the music Of wonderful melodies. Such songs have power to quiet The restless pulse of care, And come like the benediction That follows after prayer. Then read from the treasured volume The poem of thy choice, And lend to the rhyme of the poet The beauty of thy voice. And the night shall be filled with music And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, And as silently steal away. AFTERNOON IN FEBRUARY The day is ending, The night is descending; The marsh is frozen, The river dead. Through clouds like ashes The red sun flashes On village windows That glimmer red. The snow recommences; The buried fences Mark no longer The road o'er the plain; While through the meadows, Like fearful shadows, Slowly passes A funeral train. The bell is pealing, And every feeling Within me responds To the dismal knell; Shadows are trailing, My heart is bewailing And tolling within Like a funeral bell. TO AN OLD DANISH SONG-BOOK Welcome, my old friend, Welcome to a foreign fireside, While the sullen gales of autumn Shake the windows. The ungrateful world Has, it seems, dealt harshly with thee, Since, beneath the skies of Denmark, First I met thee. There are marks of age, There are thumb-marks on thy margin, Made by hands that clasped thee rudely, At the alehouse. Soiled and dull thou art; Yellow are thy time-worn pages, As the russet, rain-molested Leaves of autumn. Thou art stained with wine Scattered from hilarious goblets, As the leaves with the libations Of Olympus. Yet dost thou recall Days departed, half-forgotten, When in dreamy youth I wandered By the Baltic,-- When I paused to hear The old ballad of King Christian Shouted from suburban taverns In the twilight. Thou recallest bards, Who in solitary chambers, And with hearts by passion wasted, Wrote thy pages. Thou recallest homes Where thy songs of love and friendship Made the gloomy Northern winter Bright as summer. Once some ancient Scald, In his bleak, ancestral Iceland, Chanted staves of these old ballads To the Vikings. Once in Elsinore, At the court of old King Hamlet Yorick and his boon companions Sang these ditties. Once Prince Frederick's Guard Sang them in their smoky barracks;-- Suddenly the English cannon Joined the chorus! Peasants in the field, Sailors on the roaring ocean, Students, tradesmen, pale mechanics, All have sung them. Thou hast been their friend; They, alas! have left thee friendless! Yet at least by one warm fireside Art thou welcome. And, as swallows build In these wide, old-fashioned chimneys, So thy twittering songs shall nestle In my bosom,-- Quiet, close, and warm, Sheltered from all molestation, And recalling by their voices Youth and travel. WALTER VON DER VOGELWEID Vogelweid the Minnesinger, When he left this world of ours, Laid his body in the cloister, Under Wurtzburg's minster towers. And he gave the monks his treasures, Gave them all with this behest: They should feed the birds at noontide Daily on his place of rest; Saying, "From these wandering minstrels I have learned the art of song; Let me now repay the lessons They have taught so well and long." Thus the bard of love departed; And, fulfilling his desire, On his tomb the birds were feasted By the children of the choir. Day by day, o'er tower and turret, In foul weather and in fair, Day by day, in vaster numbers, Flocked the poets of the air. On the tree whose heavy branches Overshadowed all the place, On the pavement, on the tombstone, On the poet's sculptured face, On the cross-bars of each window, On the lintel of each door, They renewed the War of Wartburg, Which the bard had fought before. There they sang their merry carols, Sang their lauds on every side; And the name their voices uttered Was the name of Vogelweid. Till at length the portly abbot Murmured, "Why this waste of food? Be it changed to loaves henceforward For our tasting brotherhood." Then in vain o'er tower and turret, From the walls and woodland nests, When the minster bells rang noontide, Gathered the unwelcome guests. Then in vain, with cries discordant, Clamorous round the Gothic spire, Screamed the feathered Minnesingers For the children of the choir. Time has long effaced the inscriptions On the cloister's funeral stones, And tradition only tells us Where repose the poet's bones. But around the vast cathedral, By sweet echoes multiplied, Still the birds repeat the legend, And the name of Vogelweid. DRINKING SONG INSCRIPTION FOR AN ANTIQUE PITCHER Come, old friend! sit down and listen! From the pitcher, placed between us, How the waters laugh and glisten In the head of old Silenus! Old Silenus, bloated, drunken, Led by his inebriate Satyrs; On his breast his head is sunken, Vacantly he leers and chatters. Fauns with youthful Bacchus follow; Ivy crowns that brow supernal As the forehead of Apollo, And possessing youth eternal. Round about him, fair Bacchantes, Bearing cymbals, flutes, and thyrses, Wild from Naxian groves, or Zante's Vineyards, sing delirious verses. Thus he won, through all the nations, Bloodless victories, and the farmer Bore, as trophies and oblations, Vines for banners, ploughs for armor. Judged by no o'erzealous rigor, Much this mystic throng expresses: Bacchus was the type of vigor, And Silenus of excesses. These are ancient ethnic revels, Of a faith long since forsaken; Now the Satyrs, changed to devils, Frighten mortals wine-o'ertaken. Now to rivulets from the mountains Point the rods of fortune-tellers; Youth perpetual dwells in fountains,-- Not in flasks, and casks, and cellars. Claudius, though he sang of flagons And huge tankards filled with Rhenish, From that fiery blood of dragons Never would his own replenish. Even Redi, though he chaunted Bacchus in the Tuscan valleys, Never drank the wine he vaunted In his dithyrambic sallies. Then with water fill the pitcher Wreathed about with classic fables; Ne'er Falernian threw a richer Light upon Lucullus' tables. Come, old friend, sit down and listen As it passes thus between us, How its wavelets laugh and glisten In the head of old Silenus! THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS L'eternite est une pendule, dont le balancier dit et redit sans cesse ces deux mots seulement dans le silence des tombeaux: "Toujours! jamais! Jamais! toujours!"--JACQUES BRIDAINE. Somewhat back from the village street Stands the old-fashioned country-seat. Across its antique portico Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw; And from its station in the hall An ancient timepiece says to all,-- "Forever--never! Never--forever!" Half-way up the stairs it stands, And points and beckons with its hands From its case of massive oak, Like a monk, who, under his cloak, Crosses himself, and sighs, alas! With sorrowful voice to all who pass,-- "Forever--never! Never--forever!" By day its voice is low and light; But in the silent dead of night, Distinct as a passing footstep's fall, It echoes along the vacant hall, Along the ceiling, along the floor, And seems to say, at each chamber-door,-- "Forever--never! Never--forever!" Through days of sorrow and of mirth, Through days of death and days of birth, Through every swift vicissitude Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood, And as if, like God, it all things saw, It calmly repeats those words of awe,-- "Forever--never! Never--forever!" In that mansion used to be Free-hearted Hospitality; His great fires up the chimney roared; The stranger feasted at his board; But, like the skeleton at the feast, That warning timepiece never ceased,-- "Forever--never! Never--forever!" There groups of merry children played, There youths and maidens dreaming strayed; O precious hours! O golden prime, And affluence of love and time! Even as a Miser counts his gold, Those hours the ancient timepiece told,-- "Forever--never! Never--forever!" From that chamber, clothed in white, The bride came forth on her wedding night; There, in that silent room below, The dead lay in his shroud of snow; And in the hush that followed the prayer, Was heard the old clock on the stair,-- "Forever--never! Never--forever!" All are scattered now and fled, Some are married, some are dead; And when I ask, with throbs of pain. "Ah! when shall they all meet again?" As in the days long since gone by, The ancient timepiece makes reply,-- "Forever--never! Never--forever!" Never here, forever there, Where all parting, pain, and care, And death, and time shall disappear,-- Forever there, but never here! The horologe of Eternity Sayeth this incessantly,-- "Forever--never! Never--forever!" THE ARROW AND THE SONG I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For, so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight. I breathed a song into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For who has sight so keen and strong, That it can follow the flight of song? Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroke; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend. SONNETS MEZZO CAMMIN Half of my life is gone, and I have let The years slip from me and have not fulfilled The aspiration of my youth, to build Some tower of song with lofty parapet. Not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret Of restless passions chat would not be stilled, But sorrow, and a care that almost killed, Kept me from what I may accomplish yet; Though, half way up the hill, I see the Past Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,-- A city in the twilight dim and vast, With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights.-- And hear above me on the autumnal blast The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights. THE EVENING STAR Lo! in the painted oriel of the West, Whose panes the sunken sun incarnadines, Like a fair lady at her casement, shines The evening star, the star of love and rest! And then anon she doth herself divest Of all her radiant garments, and reclines Behind the sombre screen of yonder pines, With slumber and soft dreams of love oppressed. O my beloved, my sweet Hesperus! My morning and my evening star of love! My best and gentlest lady! even thus, As that fair planet in the sky above, Dost thou retire unto thy rest at night, And from thy darkened window fades the light. AUTUMN Thou comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain, With banners, by great gales incessant fanned, Brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand, And stately oxen harnessed to thy wain! Thou standest, like imperial Charlemagne, Upon thy bridge of gold; thy royal hand Outstretched with benedictions o'er the land, Blessing the farms through all thy vast domain! Thy shield is the red harvest moon, suspended So long beneath the heaven's o'er-hanging eaves; Thy steps are by the farmer's prayers attended; Like flames upon an altar shine the sheaves; And, following thee, in thy ovation splendid, Thine almoner, the wind, scatters the golden leaves! DANTE Tuscan, that wanderest through the realms of gloom, With thoughtful pace, and sad, majestic eyes, Stern thoughts and awful from thy soul arise, Like Farinata from his fiery tomb. Thy sacred song is like the trump of doom; Yet in thy heart what human sympathies, What soft compassion glows, as in the skies The tender stars their clouded lamps relume! Methinks I see thee stand, with pallid cheeks, By Fra Hilario in his diocese, As up the convent-walls, in golden streaks, The ascending sunbeams mark the day's decrease; And, as he asks what there the stranger seeks, Thy voice along the cloister whispers, "Peace!" CURFEW I. Solemnly, mournfully, Dealing its dole, The Curfew Bell Is beginning to toll. Cover the embers, And put out the light; Toil comes with the morning, And rest with the night. Dark grow the windows, And quenched is the fire; Sound fades into silence,-- All footsteps retire. No voice in the chambers, No sound in the hall! Sleep and oblivion Reign over all! II. The book is completed, And closed, like the day; And the hand that has written it Lays it away. Dim grow its fancies; Forgotten they lie; Like coals in the ashes, They darken and die. Song sinks into silence, The story is told, The windows are darkened, The hearth-stone is cold. Darker and darker The black shadows fall; Sleep and oblivion Reign over all. ************ EVANGELINE A TALE OF ACADIE This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic, Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest. This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers,-- Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands, Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven? Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed! Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of October Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o'er the ocean Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of Grand-Pre. Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient, Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman's devotion, List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest; List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy. PART THE FIRST I In the Acadian land, on the shores of the Basin of Minas, Distant, secluded, still, the little village of Grand-Pre Lay in the fruitful valley. Vast meadows stretched to the eastward, Giving the village its name, and pasture to flocks without number. Dikes, that the hands of the farmers had raised with labor incessant, Shut out the turbulent tides; but at stated seasons the flood-gates Opened, and welcomed the sea to wander at will o'er the meadows. West and south there were fields of flax, and orchards and cornfields Spreading afar and unfenced o'er the plain; and away to the northward Blomidon rose, and the forests old, and aloft on the mountains Sea-fogs pitched their tents, and mists from the mighty Atlantic Looked on the happy valley, but ne'er from their station descended There, in the midst of its farms, reposed the Acadian village. Strongly built were the houses, with frames of oak and of hemlock, Such as the peasants of Normandy built in the reign of the Henries. Thatched were the roofs, with dormer-windows; and gables projecting Over the basement below protected and shaded the doorway. There in the tranquil evenings of summer, when brightly the sunset Lighted the village street and gilded the vanes on the chimneys, Matrons and maidens sat in snow-white caps and in kirtles Scarlet and blue and green, with distaffs spinning the golden Flax for the gossiping looms, whose noisy shuttles within doors Mingled their sound with the whir of the wheels and the songs of the maidens, Solemnly down the street came the parish priest, and the children Paused in their play to kiss the hand he extended to bless them. Reverend walked he among them; and up rose matrons and maidens, Hailing his slow approach with words of affectionate welcome. Then came the laborers home from the field, and serenely the sun sank Down to his rest, and twilight prevailed. Anon from the belfry Softly the Angelus sounded, and over the roofs of the village Columns of pale blue smoke, like clouds of incense ascending, Rose from a hundred hearths, the homes of peace and contentment. Thus dwelt together in love these simple Acadian farmers,-- Dwelt in the love of God and of man. Alike were they free from Fear, that reigns with the tyrant, and envy, the vice of republics. Neither locks had they to their doors, nor bars to their windows; But their dwellings were open as day and the hearts of their owners; There the richest was poor, and the poorest lived in abundance. Somewhat apart from the village, and nearer the Basin of Minas, Benedict Bellefontaine, the wealthiest farmer of Grand-Pre, Dwelt on his goodly acres: and with him, directing his household, Gentle Evangeline lived, his child, and the pride of the village. Stalworth and stately in form was the man of seventy winters; Hearty and hale was he, an oak that is covered with snow-flakes; White as the snow were his locks, and his cheeks as brown as the oak-leaves. Fair was she to behold, that maiden of seventeen summers. Black were her eyes as the berry that grows on the thorn by the wayside, Black, yet how softly they gleamed beneath the brown shade of her tresses! Sweet was her breath as the breath of kine that feed in the meadows. When in the harvest heat she bore to the reapers at noontide Flagons of home-brewed ale, ah! fair in sooth was the maiden, Fairer was she when, on Sunday morn, while the bell from its turret Sprinkled with holy sounds the air, as the priest with his hyssop Sprinkles the congregation, and scatters blessings upon them, Down the long street she passed, with her chaplet of beads and her missal, Wearing her Norman cap and her kirtle of blue, and the ear-rings, Brought in the olden time from France, and since, as an heirloom, Handed down from mother to child, through long generations. But a celestial brightness--a more ethereal beauty-- Shone on her face and encircled her form, when, after confession, Homeward serenely she walked with God's benediction upon her. When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music. Firmly builded with rafters of oak, the house of the farmer Stood on the side of a hill commanding the sea; and a shady Sycamore grew by the door, with a woodbine wreathing around it. Rudely carved was the porch, with seats beneath; and a footpath Led through an orchard wide, and disappeared in the meadow. Under the sycamore-tree were hives overhung by a penthouse, Such as the traveller sees in regions remote by the roadside, Built o'er a box for the poor, or the blessed image of Mary. Farther down, on the slope of the hill, was the well with its moss-grown Bucket, fastened with iron, and near it a trough for the horses. Shielding the house from storms, on the north, were the barns and the farm-yard, There stood the broad-wheeled wains and the antique ploughs and the harrows; There were the folds for the sheep; and there, in his feathered seraglio, Strutted the lordly turkey, and crowed the cock, with the selfsame Voice that in ages of old had startled the penitent Peter. Bursting with hay were the barns, themselves a village. In each one Far o'er the gable projected a roof of thatch; and a staircase, Under the sheltering eaves, led up to the odorous corn-loft. There too the dove-cot stood, with its meek and innocent inmates Murmuring ever of love; while above in the variant breezes Numberless noisy weathercocks rattled and sang of mutation. Thus, at peace with God and the world, the farmer of Grand-Pre Lived on his sunny farm, and Evangeline governed his household. Many a youth, as he knelt in the church and opened his missal, Fixed his eyes upon her as the saint of his deepest devotion; Happy was he who might touch her hand or the hem of her garment! Many a suitor came to her door, by the darkness befriended, And, as he knocked and waited to hear the sound of her footsteps, Knew not which beat the louder, his heart or the knocker of iron; Or at the joyous feast of the Patron Saint of the village, Bolder grew, and pressed her hand in the dance as he whispered Hurried words of love, that seemed a part of the music. But, among all who came, young Gabriel only was welcome; Gabriel Lajeunesse, the son of Basil the blacksmith, Who was a mighty man in the village, and honored of all men; For, since the birth of time, throughout all ages and nations, Has the craft of the smith been held in repute by the people. Basil was Benedict's friend. Their children from earliest childhood Grew up together as brother and sister; and Father Felician, Priest and pedagogue both in the village, had taught them their letters Out of the selfsame book, with the hymns of the church and the plain-song. But when the hymn was sung, and the daily lesson completed, Swiftly they hurried away to the forge of Basil the blacksmith. There at the door they stood, with wondering eyes to behold him Take in his leathern lap the hoof of the horse as a plaything, Nailing the shoe in its place; while near him the tire of the cart-wheel Lay like a fiery snake, coiled round in a circle of cinders. Oft on autumnal eves, when without in the gathering darkness Bursting with light seemed the smithy, through every cranny and crevice, Warm by the forge within they watched the laboring bellows, And as its panting ceased, and the sparks expired in the ashes, Merrily laughed, and said they were nuns going into the chapel. Oft on sledges in winter, as swift as the swoop of the eagle, Down the hillside hounding, they glided away o'er the meadow. Oft in the barns they climbed to the populous nests on the rafters, Seeking with eager eyes that wondrous stone, which the swallow Brings from the shore of the sea to restore the sight of its fledglings; Lucky was he who found that stone in the nest of the swallow! Thus passed a few swift years, and they no longer were children. He was a valiant youth, and his face, like the face of the morning, Gladdened the earth with its light, and ripened thought into action. She was a woman now, with the heart and hopes of a woman. "Sunshine of Saint Eulalie" was she called; for that was the sunshine Which, as the farmers believed, would load their orchards with apples She, too, would bring to her husband's house delight and abundance, Filling it full of love and the ruddy faces of children. II Now had the season returned, when the nights grow colder and longer, And the retreating sun the sign of the Scorpion enters. Birds of passage sailed through the leaden air, from the ice-bound, Desolate northern bays to the shores of tropical islands, Harvests were gathered in; and wild with the winds of September Wrestled the trees of the forest, as Jacob of old with the angel. All the signs foretold a winter long and inclement. Bees, with prophetic instinct of want, had hoarded their honey Till the hives overflowed; and the Indian bunters asserted Cold would the winter be, for thick was the fur of the foxes. Such was the advent of autumn. Then followed that beautiful season, Called by the pious Acadian peasants the Summer of All-Saints! Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscape Lay as if new-created in all the freshness of childhood. Peace seemed to reign upon earth, and the restless heart of the ocean Was for a moment consoled. All sounds were in harmony blended. Voices of children at play, the crowing of cocks in the farm-yards, Whir of wings in the drowsy air, and the cooing of pigeons, All were subdued and low as the murmurs of love, and the great sun Looked with the eye of love through the golden vapors around him; While arrayed in its robes of russet and scarlet and yellow, Bright with the sheen of the dew, each glittering tree of the forest Flashed like the plane-tree the Persian adorned with mantles and jewels. Now recommenced the reign of rest and affection and stillness. Day with its burden and heat had departed, and twilight descending Brought back the evening star to the sky, and the herds to the homestead. Pawing the ground they came, and resting their necks on each other, And with their nostrils distended inhaling the freshness of evening. Foremost, bearing the bell, Evangeline's beautiful heifer, Proud of her snow-white hide, and the ribbon that waved from her collar, Quietly paced and slow, as if conscious of human affection. Then came the shepherd back with his bleating flocks from the seaside, Where was their favorite pasture. Behind them followed the watch-dog, Patient, full of importance, and grand in the pride of his instinct, Walking from side to side with a lordly air, and superbly Waving his bushy tail, and urging forward the stragglers; Regent of flocks was he when the shepherd slept; their protector, When from the forest at night, through the starry silence, the wolves howled. Late, with the rising moon, returned the wains from the marshes, Laden with briny hay, that filled the air with its odor. Cheerily neighed the steeds, with dew on their manes and their fetlocks, While aloft on their shoulders the wooden and ponderous saddles, Painted with brilliant dyes, and adorned with tassels of crimson, Nodded in bright array, like hollyhocks heavy with blossoms. Patiently stood the cows meanwhile, and yielded their udders Unto the milkmaid's hand; whilst loud and in regular cadence Into the sounding pails the foaming streamlets descended. Lowing of cattle and peals of laughter were heard in the farm-yard, Echoed back by the barns. Anon they sank into stillness; Heavily closed, with a jarring sound, the valves of the barn-doors, Rattled the wooden bars, and all for a season was silent. In-doors, warm by the wide-mouthed fireplace, idly the farmer Sat in his elbow-chair, and watched how the flames and the smoke-wreaths Struggled together like foes in a burning city. Behind him, Nodding and mocking along the wall, with gestures fantastic, Darted his own huge shadow, and vanished away into darkness. Faces, clumsily carved in oak, on the back of his arm-chair Laughed in the flickering light, and the pewter plates on the dresser Caught and reflected the flame, as shields of armies the sunshine. Fragments of song the old man sang, and carols of Christmas, Such as at home, in the olden time, his fathers before him Sang in their Norman orchards and bright Burgundian vineyards. Close at her father's side was the gentle Evangeline seated, Spinning flax for the loom, that stood in the corner behind her. Silent awhile were its treadles, at rest was its diligent shuttle, While the monotonous drone of the wheel, like the drone of a bagpipe, Followed the old man's songs and united the fragments together. As in a church, when the chant of the choir at intervals ceases, Footfalls are heard in the aisles, or words of the priest at the altar, So, in each pause of the song, with measured motion the clock clicked. Thus as they sat, there were footsteps heard, and, suddenly lifted, Sounded the wooden latch, and the door swung back on its hinges. Benedict knew by the hob-nailed shoes it was Basil the blacksmith, And by her beating heart Evangeline knew who was with him. "Welcome!" the farmer exclaimed, as their footsteps paused on the threshold. "Welcome, Basil, my friend! Come, take thy place on the settle Close by the chimney-side, which is always empty without thee; Take from the shelf overhead thy pipe and the box of tobacco; Never so much thyself art thou as when through the curling Smoke of the pipe or the forge thy friendly and jovial face gleams Round and red as the harvest moon through the mist of the marshes." Then, with a smile of content, thus answered Basil the blacksmith, Taking with easy air the accustomed seat by the fireside:-- "Benedict Bellefontaine, thou hast ever thy jest and thy ballad! Ever in cheerfullest mood art thou, when others are filled with Gloomy forebodings of ill, and see only ruin before them. Happy art thou, as if every day thou hadst picked up a horseshoe." Pausing a moment, to take the pipe that Evangeline brought him, And with a coal from the embers had lighted, he slowly continued:-- "Four days now are passed since the English ships at their anchors Ride in the Gaspereau's mouth, with their cannon pointed against us. What their design may be is unknown; but all are commanded On the morrow to meet in the church, where his Majesty's mandate Will be proclaimed as law in the land. Alas! in the mean time Many surmises of evil alarm the hearts of the people." Then made answer the farmer:--"Perhaps some friendlier purpose Brings these ships to our shores. Perhaps the harvests in England By untimely rains or untimelier heat have been blighted, And from our bursting barns they would feed their cattle and children." "Not so thinketh the folk in the village," said, warmly, the blacksmith, Shaking his head, as in doubt; then, heaving a sigh, he continued:-- "Louisburg is not forgotten, nor Beau Sejour, nor Port Royal. Many already have fled to the forest, and lurk on its outskirts, Waiting with anxious hearts the dubious fate of to-morrow. Arms have been taken from us, and warlike weapons of all kinds; Nothing is left but the blacksmith's sledge and the scythe of the mower." Then with a pleasant smile made answer the jovial farmer:-- "Safer are we unarmed, in the midst of our flocks and our cornfields, Safer within these peaceful dikes, besieged by the ocean, Than our fathers in forts, besieged by the enemy's cannon. Fear no evil, my friend, and to-night may no shadow of sorrow Fall on this house and hearth; for this is the night of the contract. Built are the house and the barn. The merry lads of the village Strongly have built them and well; and, breaking the glebe round about them, Filled the barn with hay, and the house with food for a twelvemonth. Rene Leblanc will be here anon, with his papers and inkhorn. Shall we not then be glad, and rejoice in the joy of our children?" As apart by the window she stood, with her hand in her lover's, Blushing Evangeline heard the words that her father had spoken, And, as they died on his lips, the worthy notary entered. III Bent like a laboring oar, that toils in the surf of the ocean, Bent, but not broken, by age was the form of the notary public; Shocks of yellow hair, like the silken floss of the maize, hung Over his shoulders; his forehead was high; and glasses with horn bows Sat astride on his nose, with a look of wisdom supernal. Father of twenty children was he, and more than a hundred Children's children rode on his knee, and heard his great watch tick. Four long years in the times of the war had he languished a captive, Suffering much in an old French fort as the friend of the English. Now, though warier grown, without all guile or suspicion, Ripe in wisdom was he, but patient, and simple, and childlike. He was beloved by all, and most of all by the children; For he told them tales of the Loup-garou in the forest, And of the goblin that came in the night to water the horses, And of the white Letiche, the ghost of a child who unchristened Died, and was doomed to haunt unseen the chambers of children; And how on Christmas eve the oxen talked in the stable, And how the fever was cured by a spider shut up in a nutshell, And of the marvellous powers of four-leaved clover and horseshoes, With whatsoever else was writ in the lore of the village. Then up rose from his seat by the fireside Basil the blacksmith, Knocked from his pipe the ashes, and slowly extending his right hand, "Father Leblanc," he exclaimed, "thou hast heard the talk in the village, And, perchance, canst tell us some news of these ships and their errand." Then with modest demeanor made answer the notary public,-- "Gossip enough have I heard, in sooth, yet am never the wiser; And what their errand may be I know not better than others. Yet am I not of those who imagine some evil intention Brings them here, for we are at peace; and why then molest us?" "God's name!" shouted the hasty and somewhat irascible blacksmith; "Must we in all things look for the how, and the why, and the wherefore? Daily injustice is done, and might is the right of the strongest!" But, without heeding his warmth, continued the notary public,-- "Man is unjust, but God is just; and finally justice Triumphs; and well I remember a story, that often consoled me, When as a captive I lay in the old French fort at Port Royal." This was the old man's favorite tale, and he loved to repeat it When his neighbors complained that any injustice was done them. "Once in an ancient city, whose name I no longer remember, Raised aloft on a column, a brazen statue of Justice Stood in the public square, upholding the scales in its left hand, And in its right a sword, as an emblem that justice presided Over the laws of the land, and the hearts and homes of the people. Even the birds had built their nests in the scales of the balance, Having no fear of the sword that flashed in the sunshine above them. But in the course of time the laws of the land were corrupted; Might took the place of right, and the weak were oppressed, and the mighty Ruled with an iron rod. Then it chanced in a nobleman's palace That a necklace of pearls was lost, and erelong a suspicion Fell on an orphan girl who lived as maid in the household. She, after form of trial condemned to die on the scaffold, Patiently met her doom at the foot of the statue of Justice. As to her Father in heaven her innocent spirit ascended, Lo! o'er the city a tempest rose; and the bolts of the thunder Smote the statue of bronze, and hurled in wrath from its left hand Down on the pavement below the clattering scales of the balance, And in the hollow thereof was found the nest of a magpie, Into whose clay-built walls the necklace of pearls was inwoven." Silenced, but not convinced, when the story was ended, the blacksmith Stood like a man who fain would speak, but findeth no language; All his thoughts were congealed into lines on his face, as the vapors Freeze in fantastic shapes on the window-panes in the winter. Then Evangeline lighted the brazen lamp on the table, Filled, till it overflowed, the pewter tankard with home-brewed Nut-brown ale, that was famed for its strength in the village of Grand-Pre; While from his pocket the notary drew his papers and inkhorn, Wrote with a steady hand the date and the age of the parties, Naming the dower of the bride in flocks of sheep and in cattle. Orderly all things proceeded, and duly and well were completed, And the great seal of the law was set like a sun on the margin. Then from his leathern pouch the farmer threw on the table Three times the old man's fee in solid pieces of silver; And the notary rising, and blessing the bride and the bridegroom, Lifted aloft the tankard of ale and drank to their welfare. Wiping the foam from his lip, he solemnly bowed and departed, While in silence the others sat and mused by the fireside, Till Evangeline brought the draught-board out of its corner. Soon was the game begun. In friendly contention the old men Laughed at each lucky hit, or unsuccessful manoeuver, Laughed when a man was crowned, or a breach was made in the king-row Meanwhile apart, in the twilight gloom of a window's embrasure, Sat the lovers, and whispered together, beholding the moon rise Over the pallid sea and the silvery mist of the meadows. Silently one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels. Thus was the evening passed. Anon the bell from the belfry Rang out the hour of nine, the village curfew, and straightway Rose the guests and departed; and silence reigned in the household. Many a farewell word and sweet good-night on the door-step Lingered long in Evangeline's heart, and filled it with gladness. Carefully then were covered the embers that glowed on the hearth-stone, And on the oaken stairs resounded the tread of the farmer. Soon with a soundless step the foot of Evangeline followed. Up the staircase moved a luminous space in the darkness, Lighted less by the lamp than the shining face of the maiden. Silent she passed the hall, and entered the door of her chamber. Simple that chamber was, with its curtains of white, and its clothes-press Ample and high, on whose spacious shelves were carefully folded Linen and woollen stuffs, by the hand of Evangeline woven. This was the precious dower she would bring to her husband in marriage, Better than flocks and herds, being proofs of her skill as a housewife. Soon she extinguished her lamp, for the mellow and radiant moonlight Streamed through the windows, and lighted the room, till the heart of the maiden Swelled and obeyed its power, like the tremulous tides of the ocean. Ah! she was fair, exceeding fair to behold, as she stood with Naked snow-white feet on the gleaming floor of her chamber! Little she dreamed that below, among the trees of the orchard, Waited her lover and watched for the gleam of her lamp and her shadow. Yet were her thoughts of him, and at times a feeling of sadness Passed o'er her soul, as the sailing shade of clouds in the moonlight Flitted across the floor and darkened the room for a moment. And, as she gazed from the window, she saw serenely the moon pass Forth from the folds of a cloud, and one star follow her footsteps, As out of Abraham's tent young Ishmael wandered with Hagar! IV Pleasantly rose next morn the sun on the village of Grand-Pre. Pleasantly gleamed in the soft, sweet air the Basin of Minas, Where the ships, with their wavering shadows, were riding at anchor. Life had long been astir in the village, and clamorous labor Knocked with its hundred hands at the golden gates of the morning. Now from the country around, from the farms and neighboring hamlets, Came in their holiday dresses the blithe Acadian peasants. Many a glad good-morrow and jocund laugh from the young folk Made the bright air brighter, as up from the numerous meadows, Where no path could be seen but the track of wheels in the greensward, Group after group appeared, and joined, or passed on the highway. Long ere noon, in the village all sounds of labor were silenced. Thronged were the streets with people; and noisy groups at the house-doors Sat in the cheerful sun, and rejoiced and gossiped together. Every house was an inn, where all were welcomed and feasted; For with this simple people, who lived like brothers together, All things were held in common, and what one had was another's. Yet under Benedict's roof hospitality seemed more abundant: For Evangeline stood among the guests of her father; Bright was her face with smiles, and words of welcome and gladness Fell from her beautiful lips, and blessed the cup as she gave it. Under the open sky, in the odorous air of the orchard, Stript of its golden fruit, was spread the feast of betrothal. There in the shade of the porch were the priest and the notary seated; There good Benedict sat, and sturdy Basil the blacksmith. Not far withdrawn from these, by the cider-press and the beehives, Michael the fiddler was placed, with the gayest of hearts and of waistcoats. Shadow and light from the leaves alternately played on his snow-white Hair, as it waved in the wind; and the jolly face of the fiddler Glowed like a living coal when the ashes are blown from the embers. Gayly the old man sang to the vibrant sound of his fiddle, Tous les Bourgeois de Chartres, and Le Carillon de Dunkerque, And anon with his wooden shoes beat time to the music. Merrily, merrily whirled the wheels of the dizzying dances Under the orchard-trees and down the path to the meadows; Old folk and young together, and children mingled among them. Fairest of all the maids was Evangeline, Benedict's daughter! Noblest of all the youths was Gabriel, son of the blacksmith! So passed the morning away. And lo! with a summons sonorous Sounded the bell from its tower, and over the meadows a drum beat. Thronged erelong was the church with men. Without, in the churchyard, Waited the women. They stood by the graves, and hung on the headstones Garlands of autumn-leaves and evergreens fresh from the forest. Then came the guard from the ships, and marching proudly among them Entered the sacred portal. With loud and dissonant clangor Echoed the sound of their brazen drums from ceiling and casement,-- Echoed a moment only, and slowly the ponderous portal Closed, and in silence the crowd awaited the will of the soldiers. Then uprose their commander, and spoke from the steps of the altar, Holding aloft in his hands, with its seals, the royal commission. "You are convened this day," he said, "by his Majesty's orders. Clement and kind has he been; but how you have answered his kindness, Let your own hearts reply! To my natural make and my temper Painful the task is I do, which to you I know must be grievous. Yet must I bow and obey, and deliver the will of our monarch; Namely, that all your lands, and dwellings, and cattle of all kinds Forfeited be to the crown; and that you yourselves from this province Be transported to other lands. God grant you may dwell there Ever as faithful subjects, a happy and peaceable people! Prisoners now I declare you; for such is his Majesty's pleasure!" As, when the air is serene in the sultry solstice of summer, Suddenly gathers a storm, and the deadly sling of the hailstones Beats down the farmer's corn in the field and shatters his windows, Hiding the sun, and strewing the ground with thatch from the house-roofs, Bellowing fly the herds, and seek to break their enclosures; So on the hearts of the people descended the words of the speaker. Silent a moment they stood in speechless wonder, and then rose Louder and ever louder a wail of sorrow and anger, And, by one impulse moved, they madly rushed to the door-way. Vain was the hope of escape; and cries and fierce imprecations Rang through the house of prayer; and high o'er the heads of the others Rose, with his arms uplifted, the figure of Basil the blacksmith, As, on a stormy sea, a spar is tossed by the billows. Flushed was his face and distorted with passion; and wildly he shouted,-- "Down with the tyrants of England! we never have sworn them allegiance! Death to these foreign soldiers, who seize on our homes and our harvests!" More he fain would have said, but the merciless hand of a soldier Smote him upon the mouth, and dragged him down to the pavement. In the midst of the strife and tumult of angry contention, Lo! the door of the chancel opened, and Father Felician Entered, with serious mien, and ascended the steps of the altar. Raising his reverend hand, with a gesture he awed into silence All that clamorous throng; and thus he spake to his people; Deep were his tones and solemn; in accents measured and mournful Spake he, as, after the tocsin's alarum, distinctly the clock strikes. "What is this that ye do, my children? what madness has seized you? Forty years of my life have I labored among you, and taught you, Not in word alone, but in deed, to love one another! Is this the fruit of my toils, of my vigils and prayers and privations? Have you so soon forgotten all lessons of love and forgiveness? This is the house of the Prince of Peace, and would you profane it Thus with violent deeds and hearts overflowing with hatred? Lo! where the crucified Christ from his cross is gazing upon you! See! in those sorrowful eyes what meekness and holy compassion! Hark! how those lips still repeat the prayer, 'O Father, forgive them!' Let us repeat that prayer in the hour when the wicked assail us, Let us repeat it now, and say, 'O Father, forgive them!'" Few were his words of rebuke, but deep in the hearts of his people Sank they, and sobs of contrition succeeded the passionate outbreak, While they repeated his prayer, and said, "O Father, forgive them!" Then came the evening service. The tapers gleamed from the altar. Fervent and deep was the voice of the priest and the people responded, Not with their lips alone, but their hearts; and the Ave Maria Sang they, and fell on their knees, and their souls, with devotion translated, Rose on the ardor of prayer, like Elijah ascending to heaven. Meanwhile had spread in the village the tidings of ill, and on all sides Wandered, wailing, from house to house the women and children. Long at her father's door Evangeline stood, with her right hand Shielding her eyes from the level rays of the sun, that, descending, Lighted the village street with mysterious splendor, and roofed each Peasant's cottage with golden thatch, and emblazoned its windows. Long within had been spread the snow-white cloth on the table; There stood the wheaten loaf, and the honey fragrant with wild-flowers; There stood the tankard of ale, and the cheese fresh brought from the dairy; And, at the head of the board, the great arm-chair of the farmer. Thus did Evangeline wait at her father's door, as the sunset Threw the long shadows of trees o'er the broad ambrosial meadows. Ah! on her spirit within a deeper shadow had fallen, And from the fields of her soul a fragrance celestial ascended,-- Charity, meekness, love, and hope, and forgiveness, and patience! Then, all-forgetful of self, she wandered into the village, Cheering with looks and words the mournful hearts of the women, As o'er the darkening fields with lingering steps they departed, Urged by their household cares, and the weary feet of their children. Down sank the great red sun, and in golden, glimmering vapors Veiled the light of his face, like the Prophet descending from Sinai. Sweetly over the village the bell of the Angelus sounded. Meanwhile, amid the gloom, by the church Evangeline lingered. All was silent within; and in vain at the door and the windows Stood she, and listened and looked, till, overcome by emotion, "Gabriel!" cried she aloud with tremulous voice; but no answer Came from the graves of the dead, nor the gloomier grave of the living. Slowly at length she returned to the tenantless house of her father. Smouldered the fire on the hearth, on the board was the supper untasted, Empty and drear was each room, and haunted with phantoms of terror. Sadly echoed her step on the stair and the floor of her chamber. In the dead of the night she heard the disconsolate rain fall Loud on the withered leaves of the sycamore-tree by the window. Keenly the lightning flashed; and the voice of the echoing thunder Told her that God was in heaven, and governed the world he created! Then she remembered the tale she had heard of the justice of Heaven; Soothed was her troubled soul, and she peacefully slumbered till morning. V Four times the sun had risen and set; and now on the fifth day Cheerily called the cock to the sleeping maids of the farm-house. Soon o'er the yellow fields, in silent and mournful procession, Came from the neighboring hamlets and farms the Acadian women, Driving in ponderous wains their household goods to the sea-shore, Pausing and looking back to gaze once more on their dwellings, Ere they were shut from sight by the winding road and the woodland. Close at their sides their children ran, and urged on the oxen, While in their little hands they clasped some fragments of playthings. Thus to the Gaspereau's mouth they hurried; and there on the sea-beach Piled in confusion lay the household goods of the peasants. All day long between the shore and the ships did the boats ply; All day long the wains came laboring down from the village. Late in the afternoon, when the sun was near to his setting, Echoed far o'er the fields came the roll of drums from the churchyard. Thither the women and children thronged. On a sudden the church-doors Opened, and forth came the guard, and marching in gloomy procession Followed the long-imprisoned, but patient, Acadian farmers. Even as pilgrims, who journey afar from their homes and their country, Sing as they go, and in singing forget they are weary and wayworn, So with songs on their lips the Acadian peasants descended Down from the church to the shore, amid their wives and their daughters. Foremost the young men came; and, raising together their voices, Sang with tremulous lips a chant of the Catholic Missions:-- "Sacred heart of the Saviour! O inexhaustible fountain! Fill our hearts this day with strength and submission and patience!" Then the old men, as they marched, and the women that stood by the wayside Joined in the sacred psalm, and the birds in the sunshine above them Mingled their notes therewith, like voices of spirits departed. Half-way down to the shore Evangeline waited in silence, Not overcome with grief, but strong in the hour of affliction,-- Calmly and sadly she waited, until the procession approached her, And she beheld the face of Gabriel pale with emotion. Team then filled her eyes, and, eagerly running to meet him, Clasped she his hands, and laid her head on his shoulder, and whispered,-- "Gabriel! be of good cheer! for if we love one another Nothing, in truth, can harm us, whatever mischances may happen!" Smiling she spake these words; then suddenly paused, for her father Saw she slowly advancing. Alas! how changed was his aspect! Gone was the glow from his cheek, and the fire from his eye, and his footstep Heavier seemed with the weight of the heavy heart in his bosom. But with a smile and a sigh, she clasped his neck and embraced him, Speaking words of endearment where words of comfort availed not. Thus to the Gaspereau's mouth moved on that mournful procession. There disorder prevailed, and the tumult and stir of embarking. Busily plied the freighted boats; and in the confusion Wives were torn from their husbands, and mothers, too late, saw their children Left on the land, extending their arms, with wildest entreaties. So unto separate ships were Basil and Gabriel carried, While in despair on the shore Evangeline stood with her father. Half the task was not done when the sun went down, and the twilight Deepened and darkened around; and in haste the refluent ocean Fled away from the shore, and left the line of the sand-beach Covered with waifs of the tide, with kelp and the slippery sea-weed. Farther back in the midst of the household goods and the wagons, Like to a gypsy camp, or a leaguer after a battle, All escape cut off by the sea, and the sentinels near them, Lay encamped for the night the houseless Acadian farmers. Back to its nethermost caves retreated the bellowing ocean, Dragging adown the beach the rattling pebbles, and leaving Inland and far up the shore the stranded boats of the sailors. Then, as the night descended, the herds returned from their pastures; Sweet was the moist still air with the odor of milk from their udders; Lowing they waited, and long, at the well-known bars of the farm-yard,-- Waited and looked in vain for the voice and the hand of the milkmaid. Silence reigned in the streets; from the church no Angelus sounded, Rose no smoke from the roofs, and gleamed no lights from the windows. But on the shores meanwhile the evening fires had been kindled, Built of the drift-wood thrown on the sands from wrecks in the tempest. Round them shapes of gloom and sorrowful faces were gathered, Voices of women were heard, and of men, and the crying of children. Onward from fire to fire, as from hearth to hearth in his parish, Wandered the faithful priest, consoling and blessing and cheering, Like unto shipwrecked Paul on Melita's desolate sea-shore. Thus he approached the place where Evangeline sat with her father, And in the flickering light beheld the face of the old man, Haggard and hollow and wan, and without either thought or emotion, E'en as the face of a clock from which the hands have been taken. Vainly Evangeline strove with words and caresses to cheer him, Vainly offered him food; yet he moved not, he looked not, he spake not But, with a vacant stare, ever gazed at the flickering fire-light. "Benedicite!" murmured the priest, in tones of compassion. More he fain would have said, but his heart was full, and his accents Faltered and paused on his lips, as the feet of a child on a threshold, Hushed by the scene he beholds, and the awful presence of sorrow. Silently, therefore, he laid his hand on the head of the maiden, Raising his tearful eyes to the silent stars that above them Moved on their way, unperturbed by the wrongs and sorrows of mortals. Then sat he down at her side, and they wept together in silence. Suddenly rose from the south a light, as in autumn the blood-red Moon climbs the crystal walls of heaven, and o'er the horizon Titan-like stretches its hundred hands upon mountain and meadow, Seizing the rocks and the rivers, and piling huge shadows together. Broader and ever broader it gleamed on the roofs of the village, Gleamed on the sky and the sea, and the ships that lay in the roadstead. Columns of shining smoke uprose, and flashes of flame were Thrust through their folds and withdrawn, like the quivering hands of a martyr. Then as the wind seized the gleeds and the burning thatch, and, uplifting, Whirled them aloft through the air, at once from a hundred house-tops Started the sheeted smoke with flashes of flame intermingled. These things beheld in dismay the crowd on the shore and on shipboard. Speechless at first they stood, then cried aloud in their anguish, "We shall behold no more our homes in the village of Grand-Pre!" Loud on a sudden the cocks began to crow in the farm-yards, Thinking the day had dawned; and anon the lowing of cattle Came on the evening breeze, by the barking of dogs interrupted. Then rose a sound of dread, such as startles the sleeping encampments Far in the western prairies or forests that skirt the Nebraska, When the wild horses affrighted sweep by with the speed of the whirlwind, Or the loud bellowing herds of buffaloes rush to the river. Such was the sound that arose on the night, as the herds and the horses Broke through their folds and fences, and madly rushed o'er the meadows. Overwhelmed with the sight, yet speechless, the priest and the maiden Gazed on the scene of terror that reddened and widened before them; And as they turned at length to speak to their silent companion, Lo! from his seat he had fallen, and stretched abroad on the sea-shore Motionless lay his form, from which the soul had departed. Slowly the priest uplifted the lifeless head, and the maiden Knelt at her father's side, and wailed aloud in her terror. Then in a swoon she sank, and lay with her head on his bosom. Through the long night she lay in deep, oblivious slumber; And when she woke from the trance, she beheld a multitude near her. Faces of friends she beheld, that were mournfully gazing upon her, Pallid, with tearful eyes, and looks of saddest compassion. Still the blaze of the burning village illumined the landscape, Reddened the sky overhead, and gleamed on the faces around her, And like the day of doom it seemed to her wavering senses. Then a familiar voice she heard, as it said to the people,-- "Let us bury him here by the sea. When a happier season Brings us again to our homes from the unknown land of our exile, Then shall his sacred dust be piously laid in the churchyard." Such were the words of the priest. And there in haste by the sea-side, Having the glare of the burning village for funeral torches, But without bell or book, they buried the farmer of Grand-Pre. And as the voice of the priest repeated the service of sorrow, Lo! with a mournful sound, like the voice of a vast congregation, Solemnly answered the sea, and mingled its roar with the dirges. 'T was the returning tide, that afar from the waste of the ocean, With the first dawn of the day, came heaving and hurrying landward. Then recommenced once more the stir and noise of embarking; And with the ebb of the tide the ships sailed out of the harbor, Leaving behind them the dead on the shore, and the village in ruins. PART THE SECOND I Many a weary year had passed since the burning of Grand-Pre, When on the falling tide the freighted vessels departed, Bearing a nation, with all its household gods, into exile. Exile without an end, and without an example in story. Far asunder, on separate coasts, the Acadians landed; Scattered were they, like flakes of snow, when the wind from the northeast Strikes aslant through the fogs that darken the Banks of Newfoundland. Friendless, homeless, hopeless, they wandered from city to city, From the cold lakes of the North to sultry Southern savannas,-- From the bleak shores of the sea to the lands where the Father of Waters Seizes the hills in his hands, and drags them down to the ocean, Deep in their sands to bury the scattered bones of the mammoth. Friends they sought and homes; and many, despairing, heart-broken, Asked of the earth but a grave, and no longer a friend nor a fireside. Written their history stands on tablets of stone in the churchyards. Long among them was seen a maiden who waited and wandered, Lowly and meek in spirit, and patiently suffering all things. Fair was she and young; but, alas! before her extended, Dreary and vast and silent, the desert of life, with its pathway Marked by the graves of those who had sorrowed and suffered before her, Passions long extinguished, and hopes long dead and abandoned, As the emigrant's way o'er the Western desert is marked by Camp-fires long consumed, and bones that bleach in the sunshine. Something there was in her life incomplete, imperfect, unfinished; As if a morning of June, with all its music and sunshine, Suddenly paused in the sky, and, fading, slowly descended Into the east again, from whence it late had arisen. Sometimes she lingered in towns, till, urged by the fever within her, Urged by a restless longing, the hunger and thirst of the spirit, She would commence again her endless search and endeavor; Sometimes in churchyards strayed, and gazed on the crosses and tombstones, Sat by some nameless grave, and thought that perhaps in its bosom He was already at rest, and she longed to slumber beside him. Sometimes a rumor, a hearsay, an inarticulate whisper, Came with its airy hand to point and beckon her forward. Sometimes she spake with those who had seen her beloved and known him, But it was long ago, in some far-off place or forgotten. "Gabriel Lajeunesse!" they said; "yes! we have seen him. He was with Basil the blacksmith, and both have gone to the prairies; Coureurs-des-Bois are they, and famous hunters and trappers." "Gabriel Lajeunesse!" said others; "O yes! we have seen him. He is a Voyageur in the lowlands of Louisiana." Then would they say, "Dear child! why dream and wait for him longer? Are there not other youths as fair as Gabriel? others Who have hearts as tender and true, and spirits as loyal? Here is Baptiste Leblanc, the notary's son, who has loved thee Many a tedious year; come, give him thy hand and be happy! Thou art too fair to be left to braid St. Catherine's tresses." Then would Evangeline answer, serenely but sadly, "I cannot! Whither my heart has gone, there follows my hand, and not elsewhere. For when the heart goes before, like a lamp, and illumines the pathway, Many things are made clear, that else lie hidden in darkness." Thereupon the priest, her friend and father-confessor, Said, with a smile, "O daughter! thy God thus speaketh within thee! Talk not of wasted affection, affection never was wasted; If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters, returning Back to their springs, like the rain, shall fill them full of refreshment; That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain. Patience; accomplish thy labor; accomplish thy work of affection! Sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is godlike. Therefore accomplish thy labor of love, till the heart is made godlike, Purified, strengthened, perfected, and rendered more worthy of heaven!" Cheered by the good man's words, Evangeline labored and waited. Still in her heart she heard the funeral dirge of the ocean, But with its sound there was mingled a voice that whispered, "Despair not?" Thus did that poor soul wander in want and cheerless discomfort Bleeding, barefooted, over the shards and thorns of existence. Let me essay, O Muse! to follow the wanderer's footsteps;-- Not through each devious path, each changeful year of existence; But as a traveller follows a streamlet's course through the valley: Far from its margin at times, and seeing the gleam of its water Here and there, in some open space, and at intervals only; Then drawing nearer its banks, through sylvan glooms that conceal it, Though he behold it not, he can hear its continuous murmur; Happy, at length, if he find the spot where it reaches an outlet. II It was the month of May. Far down the Beautiful River, Past the Ohio shore and past the mouth of the Wabash, Into the golden stream of the broad and swift Mississippi, Floated a cumbrous boat, that was rowed by Acadian boatmen. It was a band of exiles: a raft, as it were, from the shipwrecked Nation, scattered along the coast, now floating together, Bound by the bonds of a common belief and a common misfortune; Men and women and children, who, guided by hope or by hearsay, Sought for their kith and their kin among the few-acred farmers On the Acadian coast, and the prairies of fair Opelousas. With them Evangeline went, and her guide, the Father Felician. Onward o'er sunken sands, through a wilderness sombre with forests, Day after day they glided adown the turbulent river; Night after night, by their blazing fires, encamped on its borders. Now through rushing chutes, among green islands, where plumelike Cotton-trees nodded their shadowy crests, they swept with the current, Then emerged into broad lagoons, where silvery sand-bars Lay in the stream, and along the wimpling waves of their margin, Shining with snow-white plumes, large flocks of pelicans waded. Level the landscape grew, and along the shores of the river, Shaded by china-trees, in the midst of luxuriant gardens, Stood the houses of planters, with negro-cabins and dove-cots. They were approaching the region where reigns perpetual summer, Where through the Golden Coast, and groves of orange and citron, Sweeps with majestic curve the river away to the eastward. They, too, swerved from their course; and, entering the Bayou of Plaquemine, Soon were lost in a maze of sluggish and devious waters, Which, like a network of steel, extended in every direction. Over their heads the towering and tenebrous boughs of the cypress Met in a dusky arch, and trailing mosses in mid-air Waved like banners that hang on the walls of ancient cathedrals. Deathlike the silence seemed, and unbroken, save by the herons Home to their roasts in the cedar-trees returning at sunset, Or by the owl, as he greeted the moon with demoniac laughter. Lovely the moonlight was as it glanced and gleamed on the water, Gleamed on the columns of cypress and cedar sustaining the arches, Down through whose broken vaults it fell as through chinks in a ruin. Dreamlike, and indistinct, and strange were all things around them; And o'er their spirits there came a feeling of wonder and sadness,-- Strange forebodings of ill, unseen and that cannot be compassed. As, at the tramp of a horse's hoof on the turf of the prairies, Far in advance are closed the leaves of the shrinking mimosa, So, at the hoof-beats of fate, with sad forebodings of evil, Shrinks and closes the heart, ere the stroke of doom has attained it. But Evangeline's heart was sustained by a vision, that faintly Floated before her eyes, and beckoned her on through the moonlight. It was the thought of her brain that assumed the shape of a phantom. Through those shadowy aisles had Gabriel wandered before her, And every stroke of the oar now brought him nearer and nearer. Then in his place, at the prow of the boat, rose one of the oarsmen, And, as a signal sound, if others like them peradventure Sailed on those gloomy and midnight streams, blew a blast on his bugle. Wild through the dark colonnades and corridors leafy the blast rang, Breaking the seal of silence, and giving tongues to the forest. Soundless above them the banners of moss just stirred to the music. Multitudinous echoes awoke and died in the distance, Over the watery floor, and beneath the reverberant branches; But not a voice replied; no answer came from the darkness; And, when the echoes had ceased, like a sense of pain was the silence. Then Evangeline slept; but the boatmen rowed through the midnight, Silent at times, then singing familiar Canadian boat-songs, Such as they sang of old on their own Acadian rivers, While through the night were heard the mysterious sounds of the desert, Far off,--indistinct,--as of wave or wind in the forest, Mixed with the whoop of the crane and the roar of the grim alligator. Thus ere another noon they emerged from the shades; and before them Lay, in the golden sun, the lakes of the Atchafalaya. Water-lilies in myriads rocked on the slight undulations Made by the passing oars, and, resplendent in beauty, the lotus Lifted her golden crown above the heads of the boatmen. Faint was the air with the odorous breath of magnolia blossoms, And with the heat of noon; and numberless sylvan islands, Fragrant and thickly embowered with blossoming hedges of roses, Near to whose shores they glided along, invited to slumber. Soon by the fairest of these their weary oars were suspended. Under the boughs of Wachita willows, that grew by the margin, Safely their boat was moored; and scattered about on the greensward, Tired with their midnight toil, the weary travellers slumbered. Over them vast and high extended the cope of a cedar. Swinging from its great arms, the trumpet-flower and the grapevine Hung their ladder of ropes aloft like the ladder of Jacob, On whose pendulous stairs the angels ascending, descending, Were the swift humming-birds, that flitted from blossom to blossom. Such was the vision Evangeline saw as she slumbered beneath it. Filled was her heart with love, and the dawn of an opening heaven Lighted her soul in sleep with the glory of regions celestial. Nearer, ever nearer, among the numberless islands, Darted a light, swift boat, that sped away o'er the water, Urged on its course by the sinewy arms of hunters and trappers. Northward its prow was turned, to the land of the bison and beaver. At the helm sat a youth, with countenance thoughtful and careworn. Dark and neglected locks overshadowed his brow, and a sadness Somewhat beyond his years on his face was legibly written. Gabriel was it, who, weary with waiting, unhappy and restless, Sought in the Western wilds oblivion of self and of sorrow. Swiftly they glided along, close under the lee of the island, But by the opposite bank, and behind a screen of palmettos, So that they saw not the boat, where it lay concealed in the willows, All undisturbed by the dash of their oars, and unseen, were the sleepers, Angel of God was there none to awaken the slumbering maiden. Swiftly they glided away, like the shade of a cloud on the prairie. After the sound of their oars on the tholes had died in the distance, As from a magic trance the sleepers awoke, and the maiden Said with a sigh to the friendly priest, "O Father Felician! Something says in my heart that near me Gabriel wanders. Is it a foolish dream, an idle and vague superstition? Or has an angel passed, and revealed the truth to my spirit?" Then, with a blush, she added, "Alas for my credulous fancy! Unto ears like thine such words as these have no meaning." But made answer the reverend man, and he smiled as he answered,-- "Daughter, thy words are not idle; nor are they to me without meaning. Feeling is deep and still; and the word that floats on the surface Is as the tossing buoy, that betrays where the anchor is hidden. Therefore trust to thy heart, and to what the world calls illusions. Gabriel truly is near thee; for not far away to the southward, On the banks of the Teche, are the towns of St. Maur and St. Martin. There the long-wandering bride shall be given again to her bridegroom, There the long-absent pastor regain his flock and his sheepfold. Beautiful is the land, with its prairies and forests of fruit-trees; Under the feet a garden of flowers, and the bluest of heavens Bending above, and resting its dome on the walls of the forest. They who dwell there have named it the Eden of Louisiana." With these words of cheer they arose and continued their journey. Softly the evening came. The sun from the western horizon Like a magician extended his golden wand o'er the landscape; Twinkling vapors arose; and sky and water and forest Seemed all on fire at the touch, and melted and mingled together. Hanging between two skies, a cloud with edges of silver, Floated the boat, with its dripping oars, on the motionless water. Filled was Evangeline's heart with inexpressible sweetness. Touched by the magic spell, the sacred fountains of feeling Glowed with the light of love, as the skies and waters around her. Then from a neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of singers, Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the water, Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music, That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent to listen. Plaintive at first were the tones and sad; then soaring to madness Seemed they to follow or guide the revel of frenzied Bacchantes. Single notes were then heard, in sorrowful, low lamentation; Till, having gathered them all, he flung them abroad in derision, As when, after a storm, a gust of wind through the tree-tops Shakes down the rattling rain in a crystal shower on the branches. With such a prelude as this, and hearts that throbbed with emotion, Slowly they entered the Teche, where it flows through the green Opelousas, And, through the amber air, above the crest of the woodland, Saw the column of smoke that arose from a neighboring dwelling;-- Sounds of a horn they heard, and the distant lowing of cattle. III Near to the bank of the river, o'ershadowed by oaks, from whose branches Garlands of Spanish moss and of mystic mistletoe flaunted, Such as the Druids cut down with golden hatchets at Yule-tide, Stood, secluded and still, the house of the herdsman. A garden Girded it round about with a belt of luxuriant blossoms, Filling the air with fragrance. The house itself was of timbers Hewn from the cypress-tree, and carefully fitted together. Large and low was the roof; and on slender columns supported, Rose-wreathed, vine-encircled, a broad and spacious veranda, Haunt of the humming-bird and the bee, extended around it. At each end of the house, amid the flowers of the garden, Stationed the dove-cots were, as love's perpetual symbol, Scenes of endless wooing, and endless contentions of rivals. Silence reigned o'er the place. The line of shadow and sunshine Ran near the tops of the trees; but the house itself was in shadow, And from its chimney-top, ascending and slowly expanding Into the evening air, a thin blue column of smoke rose. In the rear of the house, from the garden gate, ran a pathway Through the great groves of oak to the skirts of the limitless prairie, Into whose sea of flowers the sun was slowly descending. Full in his track of light, like ships with shadowy canvas Hanging loose from their spars in a motionless calm in the tropics, Stood a cluster of trees, with tangled cordage of grapevines. Just where the woodlands met the flowery surf of the prairie, Mounted upon his horse, with Spanish saddle and stirrups, Sat a herdsman, arrayed in gaiters and doublet of deerskin. Broad and brown was the face that from under the Spanish sombrero Gazed on the peaceful scene, with the lordly look of its master. Round about him were numberless herds of kine, that were grazing Quietly in the meadows, and breathing the vapory freshness That uprose from the river, and spread itself over the landscape. Slowly lifting the horn that hung at his side, and expanding Fully his broad, deep chest, he blew a blast, that resounded Wildly and sweet and far, through the still damp air of the evening. Suddenly out of the grass the long white horns of the cattle Rose like flakes of foam on the adverse currents of ocean. Silent a moment they gazed, then bellowing rushed o'er the prairie, And the whole mass became a cloud, a shade in the distance. Then, as the herdsman turned to the house, through the gate of the garden Saw he the forms of the priest and the maiden advancing to meet him. Suddenly down from his horse he sprang in amazement, and forward Rushed with extended arms and exclamations of wonder; When they beheld his face, they recognized Basil the blacksmith. Hearty his welcome was, as he led his guests to the garden. There in an arbor of roses with endless question and answer Gave they vent to their hearts, and renewed their friendly embraces, Laughing and weeping by turns, or sitting silent and thoughtful. Thoughtful, for Gabriel came not; and now dark doubts and misgivings Stole o'er the maiden's heart; and Basil, somewhat embarrassed, Broke the silence and said, "If you came by the Atchafalaya, How have you nowhere encountered my Gabriel's boat on the bayous?" Over Evangeline's face at the words of Basil a shade passed. Tears came into her eyes, and she said, with a tremulous accent, "Gone? is Gabriel gone?" and, concealing her face on his shoulder, All her o'erburdened heart gave way, and she wept and lamented. Then the good Basil said,--and his voice grew blithe as he said it,-- "Be of good cheer, my child; it is only to-day he departed. Foolish boy! he has left me alone with my herds and my horses. Moody and restless grown, and tried and troubled, his spirit Could no longer endure the calm of this quiet existence. Thinking ever of thee, uncertain and sorrowful ever, Ever silent, or speaking only of thee and his troubles, He at length had become so tedious to men and to maidens, Tedious even to me, that at length I bethought me, and sent him Unto the town of Adayes to trade for mules with the Spaniards. Thence he will follow the Indian trails to the Ozark Mountains, Hunting for furs in the forests, on rivers trapping the beaver. Therefore be of good cheer; we will follow the fugitive lover; He is not far on his way, and the Fates and the streams are against him. Up and away to-morrow, and through the red dew of the morning We will follow him fast, and bring him back to his prison." Then glad voices were heard, and up from the banks of the river, Borne aloft on his comrades' arms, came Michael the fiddler. Long under Basil's roof had he lived like a god on Olympus, Having no other care than dispensing music to mortals. Far renowned was he for his silver locks and his fiddle. "Long live Michael," they cried, "our brave Acadian minstrel!" As they bore him aloft in triumphal procession; and straightway Father Felician advanced with Evangeline, greeting the old man Kindly and oft, and recalling the past, while Basil, enraptured, Hailed with hilarious joy his old companions and gossips, Laughing loud and long, and embracing mothers and daughters. Much they marvelled to see the wealth of the cidevant blacksmith, All his domains and his herds, and his patriarchal demeanor; Much they marvelled to hear his tales of the soil and the climate, And of the prairie; whose numberless herds were his who would take them; Each one thought in his heart, that he, too, would go and do likewise. Thus they ascended the steps, and, crossing the breezy veranda, Entered the hall of the house, where already the supper of Basil Waited his late return; and they rested and feasted together. Over the joyous feast the sudden darkness descended. All was silent without, and, illuming the landscape with silver, Fair rose the dewy moon and the myriad stars; but within doors, Brighter than these, shone the faces of friends in the glimmering lamplight. Then from his station aloft, at the head of the table, the herdsman Poured forth his heart and his wine together in endless profusion. Lighting his pipe, that was filled with sweet Natchitoches tobacco, Thus he spake to his guests, who listened, and smiled as they listened:-- "Welcome once more, my friends, who long have been friendless and homeless, Welcome once more to a home, that is better perchance than the old one! Here no hungry winter congeals our blood like the rivers; Here no stony ground provokes the wrath of the farmer. Smoothly the ploughshare runs through the soil, as a keel through the water. All the year round the orange-groves are in blossom; and grass grows More in a single night than a whole Canadian summer. Here, too, numberless herds run wild and unclaimed in the prairies; Here, too, lands may be had for the asking, and forests of timber With a few blows of the axe are hewn and framed into houses. After your houses are built, and your fields are yellow with harvests, No King George of England shall drive you away from your homesteads, Burning your dwellings and barns, and stealing your farms and your cattle." Speaking these words, he blew a wrathful cloud from his nostrils, While his huge, brown hand came thundering down on the table, So that the guests all started; and Father Felician, astounded, Suddenly paused, with a pinch of snuff half-way to his nostrils. But the brave Basil resumed, and his words were milder and gayer:-- "Only beware of the fever, my friends, beware of the fever! For it is not like that of our cold Acadian climate, Cured by wearing a spider hung round one's neck in a nutshell!" Then there were voices heard at the door, and footsteps approaching Sounded upon the stairs and the floor of the breezy veranda. It was the neighboring Creoles and small Acadian planters, Who had been summoned all to the house of Basil the Herdsman. Merry the meeting was of ancient comrades and neighbors: Friend clasped friend in his arms; and they who before were as strangers, Meeting in exile, became straightway as friends to each other, Drawn by the gentle bond of a common country together. But in the neighboring hall a strain of music, proceeding From the accordant strings of Michael's melodious fiddle, Broke up all further speech. Away, like children delighted, All things forgotten beside, they gave themselves to the maddening Whirl of the dizzy dance, as it swept and swayed to the music, Dreamlike, with beaming eyes and the rush of fluttering garments. Meanwhile, apart, at the head of the hall, the priest and the herdsman Sat, conversing together of past and present and future; While Evangeline stood like one entranced, for within her Olden memories rose, and loud in the midst of the music Heard she the sound of the sea, and an irrepressible sadness Came o'er her heart, and unseen she stole forth into the garden. Beautiful was the night. Behind the black wall of the forest, Tipping its summit with silver, arose the moon. On the river Fell here and there through the branches a tremulous gleam of the moonlight, Like the sweet thoughts of love on a darkened and devious spirit. Nearer and round about her, the manifold flowers of the garden Poured out their souls in odors, that were their prayers and confessions Unto the night, as it went its way, like a silent Carthusian. Fuller of fragrance than they, and as heavy with shadows and night-dews, Hung the heart of the maiden. The calm and the magical moonlight Seemed to inundate her soul with indefinable longing; As, through the garden gate, and beneath the shade of the oak-trees, Passed she along the path to the edge of the measureless prairie. Silent it lay, with a silvery haze upon it, and fire-flies Gleaming and floating away in mingled and infinite numbers. Over her head the stars, the thoughts of God in the heavens, Shone on the eyes of man who had ceased to marvel and worship, Save when a blazing comet was seen on the walls of that temple, As if a hand had appeared and written upon them, "Upharsin." And the soul of the maiden, between the stars and the fire-flies, Wandered alone, and she cried, "O Gabriel! O my beloved! Art thou so near unto me, and yet I cannot behold thee? Art thou so near unto me, and yet thy voice does not reach me? Ah! how often thy feet have trod this path to the prairie! Ah! how often thine eyes have looked on the woodlands around me! Ah! how often beneath this oak, returning from labor, Thou hast lain down to rest and to dream of me in thy slumbers! When shall these eyes behold, these arms be folded about thee?" Loud and sudden and near the note of a whippoorwill sounded Like a flute in the woods; and anon, through the neighboring thickets, Farther and farther away it floated and dropped into silence. "Patience!" whispered the oaks from oracular caverns of darkness: And, from the moonlit meadow, a sigh responded, "To-morrow!" Bright rose the sun next day; and all the flowers of the garden Bathed his shining feet with their tears, and anointed his tresses With the delicious balm that they bore in their vases of crystal. "Farewell!" said the priest, as he stood at the shadowy threshold; "See that you bring us the Prodigal Son from his fasting and famine, And, too, the Foolish Virgin, who slept when the bridegroom was coming." "Farewell!" answered the maiden, and, smiling, with Basil descended Down to the river's brink, where the boatmen already were waiting. Thus beginning their journey with morning, and sunshine, and gladness, Swiftly they followed the flight of him who was speeding before them, Blown by the blast of fate like a dead leaf over the desert. Not that day, nor the next, nor yet the day that succeeded, Found they trace of his course, in lake or forest or river, Nor, after many days, had they found him; but vague and uncertain Rumors alone were their guides through a wild and desolate Country; Till, at the little inn of the Spanish town of Adayes, Weary and worn, they alighted, and learned from the garrulous landlord, That on the day before, with horses and guides and companions, Gabriel left the village, and took the road of the prairies. IV Far in the West there lies a desert land, where the mountains Lift, through perpetual snows, their lofty and luminous summits. Down from their jagged, deep ravines, where the gorge, like a gateway, Opens a passage rude to the wheels of the emigrant's wagon, Westward the Oregon flows and the Walleway and Owyhee. Eastward, with devious course, among the Wind-river Mountains, Through the Sweet-water Valley precipitate leaps the Nebraska; And to the south, from Fontaine-qui-bout and the Spanish sierras, Fretted with sands and rocks, and swept by the wind of the desert, Numberless torrents, with ceaseless sound, descend to the ocean, Like the great chords of a harp, in loud and solemn vibrations. Spreading between these streams are the wondrous, beautiful prairies, Billowy bays of grass ever rolling in shadow and sunshine, Bright with luxuriant clusters of roses and purple amorphas. Over them wandered the buffalo herds, and the elk and the roebuck; Over them wandered the wolves, and herds of riderless horses; Fires that blast and blight, and winds that are weary with travel; Over them wander the scattered tribes of Ishmael's children, Staining the desert with blood; and above their terrible war-trails Circles and sails aloft, on pinions majestic, the vulture, Like the implacable soul of a chieftain slaughtered in battle, By invisible stairs ascending and scaling the heavens. Here and there rise smokes from the camps of these savage marauders; Here and there rise groves from the margins of swift-running rivers; And the grim, taciturn bear, the anchorite monk of the desert, Climbs down their dark ravines to dig for roots by the brook-side, And over all is the sky, the clear and crystalline heaven, Like the protecting hand of God inverted above them. Into this wonderful land, at the base of the Ozark Mountains, Gabriel far had entered, with hunters and trappers behind him. Day after day, with their Indian guides, the maiden and Basil Followed his flying steps, and thought each day to o'ertake him. Sometimes they saw, or thought they saw, the smoke of his camp-fire Rise in the morning air from the distant plain; but at nightfall, When they had reached the place, they found only embers and ashes. And, though their hearts were sad at times and their bodies were weary, Hope still guided them on, as the magic Fata Morgana Showed them her lakes of light, that retreated and vanished before them. Once, as they sat by their evening fire, there silently entered Into the little camp an Indian woman, whose features Wore deep traces of sorrow, and patience as great as her sorrow. She was a Shawnee woman returning home to her people, From the far-off hunting-grounds of the cruel Camanches, Where her Canadian husband, a Coureur-des-Bois, had been murdered. Touched were their hearts at her story, and warmest and friendliest welcome Gave they, with words of cheer, and she sat and feasted among them On the buffalo-meat and the venison cooked on the embers. But when their meal was done, and Basil and all his companions, Worn with the long day's march and the chase of the deer and the bison, Stretched themselves on the ground, and slept where the quivering fire-light Flashed on their swarthy cheeks, and their forms wrapped up in their blankets Then at the door of Evangeline's tent she sat and repeated Slowly, with soft, low voice, and the charm of her Indian accent, All the tale of her love, with its pleasures, and pains, and reverses. Much Evangeline wept at the tale, and to know that another Hapless heart like her own had loved and had been disappointed. Moved to the depths of her soul by pity and woman's compassion, Yet in her sorrow pleased that one who had suffered was near her, She in turn related her love and all its disasters. Mute with wonder the Shawnee sat, and when she had ended Still was mute; but at length, as if a mysterious horror Passed through her brain, she spake, and repeated the tale of the Mowis; Mowis, the bridegroom of snow, who won and wedded a maiden, But, when the morning came, arose and passed from the wigwam, Fading and melting away and dissolving into the sunshine, Till she beheld him no more, though she followed far into the forest. Then, in those sweet, low tones, that seemed like a weird incantation, Told she the tale of the fair Lilinau, who was wooed by a phantom, That, through the pines o'er her father's lodge, in the hush of the twilight, Breathed like the evening wind, and whispered love to the maiden, Till she followed his green and waving plume through the forest, And nevermore returned, nor was seen again by her people. Silent with wonder and strange surprise, Evangeline listened To the soft flow of her magical words, till the region around her Seemed like enchanted ground, and her swarthy guest the enchantress. Slowly over the tops of the Ozark Mountains the moon rose, Lighting the little tent, and with a mysterious splendor Touching the sombre leaves, and embracing and filling the woodland. With a delicious sound the brook rushed by, and the branches Swayed and sighed overhead in scarcely audible whispers. Filled with the thoughts of love was Evangeline's heart, but a secret, Subtile sense crept in of pain and indefinite terror, As the cold, poisonous snake creeps into the nest of the swallow. It was no earthly fear. A breath from the region of spirits Seemed to float in the air of night; and she felt for a moment That, like the Indian maid, she, too, was pursuing a phantom. With this thought she slept, and the fear and the phantom had vanished. Early upon the morrow the march was resumed; and the Shawnee Said, as they journeyed along, "On the western slope of these mountains Dwells in his little village the Black Robe chief of the Mission. Much he teaches the people, and tells them of Mary and Jesus; Loud laugh their hearts with joy, and weep with pain, as they hear him." Then, with a sudden and secret emotion, Evangeline answered, "Let us go to the Mission, for there good tidings await us!" Thither they turned their steeds; and behind a spur of the mountains, Just as the sun went down, they heard a murmur of voices, And in a meadow green and broad, by the bank of a river, Saw the tents of the Christians, the tents of the Jesuit Mission. Under a towering oak, that stood in the midst of the village, Knelt the Black Robe chief with his children. A crucifix fastened High on the trunk of the tree, and overshadowed by grapevines, Looked with its agonized face on the multitude kneeling beneath it. This was their rural chapel. Aloft, through the intricate arches Of its aerial roof, arose the chant of their vespers, Mingling its notes with the soft susurrus and sighs of the branches. Silent, with heads uncovered, the travellers, nearer approaching, Knelt on the swarded floor, and joined in the evening devotions. But when the service was done, and the benediction had fallen Forth from the hands of the priest, like seed from the hands of the sower, Slowly the reverend man advanced to the strangers, and bade them Welcome; and when they replied, he smiled with benignant expression, Hearing the homelike sounds of his mother-tongue in the forest, And, with words of kindness, conducted them into his wigwam. There upon mats and skins they reposed, and on cakes of the maize-ear Feasted, and slaked their thirst from the water-gourd of the teacher. Soon was their story told; and the priest with solemnity answered:-- "Not six suns have risen and set since Gabriel, seated On this mat by my side, where now the maiden reposes, Told me this same sad tale then arose and continued his journey!" Soft was the voice of the priest, and he spake with an accent of kindness; But on Evangeline's heart fell his words as in winter the snow-flakes Fall into some lone nest from which the birds have departed. "Far to the north he has gone," continued the priest; "but in autumn, When the chase is done, will return again to the Mission." Then Evangeline said, and her voice was meek and submissive, "Let me remain with thee, for my soul is sad and afflicted." So seemed it wise and well unto all; and betimes on the morrow, Mounting his Mexican steed, with his Indian guides and companions. Homeward Basil returned, and Evangeline stayed at the Mission. Slowly, slowly, slowly the days succeeded each other,-- Days and weeks and months; and the fields of maize that were springing Green from the ground when a stranger she came, now waving above her, Lifted their slender shafts, with leaves interlacing, and forming Cloisters for mendicant crows and granaries pillaged by squirrels. Then in the golden weather the maize was husked, and the maidens Blushed at each blood-red ear, for that betokened a lover, But at the crooked laughed, and called it a thief in the corn-field. Even the blood-red ear to Evangeline brought not her lover. "Patience!" the priest would say; "have faith, and thy prayer will be answered! Look at this vigorous plant that lifts its head from the meadow, See how its leaves are turned to the north, as true as the magnet; This is the compass-flower, that the finger of God has planted Here in the houseless wild, to direct the traveller's journey Over the sea-like, pathless, limitless waste of the desert. Such in the soul of man is faith. The blossoms of passion, Gay and luxuriant flowers, are brighter and fuller of fragrance, But they beguile us, and lead us astray, and their odor is deadly. Only this humble plant can guide us here, and hereafter Crown us with asphodel flowers, that are wet with the dews of nepenthe." So came the autumn, and passed, and the winter,--yet Gabriel came not; Blossomed the opening spring, and the notes of the robin and bluebird Sounded sweet upon wold and in wood, yet Gabriel came not. But on the breath of the summer winds a rumor was wafted Sweeter than song of bird, or hue or odor of blossom. Far to the north and east, it said, in the Michigan forests, Gabriel had his lodge by the banks of the Saginaw River, And, with returning guides, that sought the lakes of St. Lawrence, Saying a sad farewell, Evangeline went from the Mission. When over weary ways, by long and perilous marches, She had attained at length the depths of the Michigan forests, Found she the hunter's lodge deserted and fallen to ruin! Thus did the long sad years glide on, and in seasons and places Divers and distant far was seen the wandering maiden;-- Now in the Tents of Grace of the meek Moravian Missions, Now in the noisy camps and the battle-fields of the army, Now in secluded hamlets, in towns and populous cities. Like a phantom she came, and passed away unremembered. Fair was she and young, when in hope began the long journey; Faded was she and old, when in disappointment it ended. Each succeeding year stole something away from her beauty, Leaving behind it, broader and deeper, the gloom and the shadow. Then there appeared and spread faint streaks of gray o'er her forehead, Dawn of another life, that broke o'er her earthy horizon, As in the eastern sky the first faint streaks of the morning. V In that delightful land which is washed by the Delaware's waters, Guarding in sylvan shades the name of Penn the apostle, Stands on the banks of its beautiful stream the city he founded. There all the air is balm, and the peach is the emblem of beauty, And the streets still re-echo the names of the trees of the forest, As if they fain would appease the Dryads whose haunts they molested. There from the troubled sea had Evangeline landed, an exile, Finding among the children of Penn a home and a country. There old Rene Leblanc had died; and when he departed, Saw at his side only one of all his hundred descendants. Something at least there was in the friendly streets of the city, Something that spake to her heart, and made her no longer a stranger; And her ear was pleased with the Thee and Thou of the Quakers, For it recalled the past, the old Acadian country, Where all men were equal, and all were brothers and sisters. So, when the fruitless search, the disappointed endeavor, Ended, to recommence no more upon earth, uncomplaining, Thither, as leaves to the light, were turned her thoughts and her footsteps. As from a mountain's top the rainy mists of the morning Roll away, and afar we behold the landscape below us, Sun-illumined, with shining rivers and cities and hamlets, So fell the mists from her mind, and she saw the world far below her, Dark no longer, but all illumined with love; and the pathway Which she had climbed so far, lying smooth and fair in the distance. Gabriel was not forgotten. Within her heart was his image, Clothed in the beauty of love and youth, as last she beheld him, Only more beautiful made by his deathlike silence and absence. Into her thoughts of him time entered not, for it was not. Over him years had no power; he was not changed, but transfigured; He had become to her heart as one who is dead, and not absent; Patience and abnegation of self, and devotion to others, This was the lesson a life of trial and sorrow had taught her. So was her love diffused, but, like to some odorous spices, Suffered no waste nor loss, though filling the air with aroma. Other hope had she none, nor wish in life, but to follow Meekly, with reverent steps, the sacred feet of her Saviour. Thus many years she lived as a Sister of Mercy; frequenting Lonely and wretched roofs in the crowded lanes of the city, Where distress and want concealed themselves from the sunlight, Where disease and sorrow in garrets languished neglected. Night after night, when the world was asleep, as the watchman repeated Loud, through the gusty streets, that all was well in the city, High at some lonely window he saw the light of her taper. Day after day, in the gray of the dawn, as slow through the suburbs Plodded the German farmer, with flowers and fruits for the market, Met he that meek, pale face, returning home from its watchings. Then it came to pass that a pestilence fell on the city, Presaged by wondrous signs, and mostly by flocks of wild pigeons, Darkening the sun in their flight, with naught in their craws but an acorn. And, as the tides of the sea arise in the month of September, Flooding some silver stream, till it spreads to a lake in the meadow, So death flooded life, and, o'erflowing its natural margin, Spread to a brackish lake, the silver stream of existence. Wealth had no power to bribe, nor beauty to charm, the oppressor; But all perished alike beneath the scourge of his anger;-- Only, alas! the poor, who had neither friends nor attendants, Crept away to die in the almshouse, home of the homeless. Then in the suburbs it stood, in the midst of meadows and woodlands; Now the city surrounds it; but still, with its gateway and wicket Meek, in the midst of splendor, its humble walls seem to echo Softly the words of the Lord:--"The poor ye always have with you." Thither, by night and by day, came the Sister of Mercy. The dying Looked up into her face, and thought, indeed, to behold there Gleams of celestial light encircle her forehead with splendor, Such as the artist paints o'er the brows of saints and apostles, Or such as hangs by night o'er a city seen at a distance. Unto their eyes it seemed the lamps of the city celestial, Into whose shining gates erelong their spirits would enter. Thus, on a Sabbath morn, through the streets, deserted and silent, Wending her quiet way, she entered the door of the almshouse. Sweet on the summer air was the odor of flowers in the garden; And she paused on her way to gather the fairest among them, That the dying once more might rejoice in their fragrance and beauty. Then, as she mounted the stairs to the corridors, cooled by the east-wind, Distant and soft on her ear fell the chimes from the belfry of Christ Church, While, intermingled with these, across the meadows were wafted Sounds of psalms, that were sung by the Swedes in their church at Wicaco. Soft as descending wings fell the calm of the hour on her spirit; Something within her said, "At length thy trials are ended"; And, with light in her looks, she entered the chambers of sickness. Noiselessly moved about the assiduous, careful attendants, Moistening the feverish lip, and the aching brow, and in silence Closing the sightless eyes of the dead, and concealing their faces, Where on their pallets they lay, like drifts of snow by the roadside. Many a languid head, upraised as Evangeline entered, Turned on its pillow of pain to gaze while she passed, for her presence Fell on their hearts like a ray of the sun on the walls of a prison. And, as she looked around, she saw how Death, the consoler, Laying his hand upon many a heart, had healed it forever. Many familiar forms had disappeared in the night time; Vacant their places were, or filled already by strangers. Suddenly, as if arrested by fear or a feeling of wonder, Still she stood, with her colorless lips apart, while a shudder Ran through her frame, and, forgotten, the flowerets dropped from her fingers, And from her eyes and cheeks the light and bloom of the morning. Then there escaped from her lips a cry of such terrible anguish, That the dying heard it, and started up from their pillows. On the pallet before her was stretched the form of an old man. Long, and thin, and gray were the locks that shaded his temples; But, as he lay in the in morning light, his face for a moment Seemed to assume once more the forms of its earlier manhood; So are wont to be changed the faces of those who are dying. Hot and red on his lips still burned the flush of the fever, As if life, like the Hebrew, with blood had besprinkled its portals, That the Angel of Death might see the sign, and pass over. Motionless, senseless, dying, he lay, and his spirit exhausted Seemed to be sinking down through infinite depths in the darkness, Darkness of slumber and death, forever sinking and sinking. Then through those realms of shade, in multiplied reverberations, Heard he that cry of pain, and through the hush that succeeded Whispered a gentle voice, in accents tender and saint-like, "Gabriel! O my beloved!" and died away into silence. Then he beheld, in a dream, once more the home of his childhood; Green Acadian meadows, with sylvan rivers among them, Village, and mountain, and woodlands; and, walking under their shadow, As in the days of her youth, Evangeline rose in his vision. Tears came into his eyes; and as slowly he lifted his eyelids, Vanished the vision away, but Evangeline knelt by his bedside. Vainly he strove to whisper her name, for the accents unuttered Died on his lips, and their motion revealed what his tongue would have spoken. Vainly he strove to rise; and Evangeline, kneeling beside him, Kissed his dying lips, and laid his head on her bosom. Sweet was the light of his eyes; but it suddenly sank into darkness, As when a lamp is blown out by a gust of wind at a casement. All was ended now, the hope, and the fear, and the sorrow, All the aching of heart, the restless, unsatisfied longing, All the dull, deep pain, and constant anguish of patience! And, as she pressed once more the lifeless head to her bosom, Meekly she bowed her own, and murmured, "Father, I thank thee!" ------------- Still stands the forest primeval; but far away from its shadow, Side by side, in their nameless graves, the lovers are sleeping. Under the humble walls of the little Catholic churchyard, In the heart of the city, they lie, unknown and unnoticed. Daily the tides of life go ebbing and flowing beside them, Thousands of throbbing hearts, where theirs are at rest and forever, Thousands of aching brains, where theirs no longer are busy, Thousands of toiling hands, where theirs have ceased from their labors, Thousands of weary feet, where theirs have completed their journey! Still stands the forest primeval; but under the shade of its branches Dwells another race, with other customs and language. Only along the shore of the mournful and misty Atlantic Linger a few Acadian peasants, whose fathers from exile Wandered back to their native land to die in its bosom. In the fisherman's cot the wheel and the loom are still busy; Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun, And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline's story, While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced, neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest. ************** THE SEASIDE AND THE FIRESIDE DEDICATION As one who, walking in the twilight gloom, Hears round about him voices as it darkens, And seeing not the forms from which they come, Pauses from time to time, and turns and hearkens; So walking here in twilight, O my friends! I hear your voices, softened by the distance, And pause, and turn to listen, as each sends His words of friendship, comfort, and assistance. If any thought of mine, or sung or told, Has ever given delight or consolation, Ye have repaid me back a thousand-fold, By every friendly sign and salutation. Thanks for the sympathies that ye have shown! Thanks for each kindly word, each silent token, That teaches me, when seeming most alone, Friends are around us, though no word be spoken. Kind messages, that pass from land to land; Kind letters, that betray the heart's deep history, In which we feel the pressure of a hand,-- One touch of fire,--and all the rest is mystery! The pleasant books, that silently among Our household treasures take familiar places, And are to us as if a living tongue Spice from the printed leaves or pictured faces! Perhaps on earth I never shall behold, With eye of sense, your outward form and semblance; Therefore to me ye never will grow old, But live forever young in my remembrance. Never grow old, nor change, nor pass away! Your gentle voices will flow on forever, When life grows bare and tarnished with decay, As through a leafless landscape flows a river. Not chance of birth or place has made us friends, Being oftentimes of different tongues and nations, But the endeavor for the selfsame ends, With the same hopes, and fears, and aspirations. Therefore I hope to join your seaside walk, Saddened, and mostly silent, with emotion; Not interrupting with intrusive talk The grand, majestic symphonies of ocean. Therefore I hope, as no unwelcome guest, At your warm fireside, when the lamps are lighted, To have my place reserved among the rest, Nor stand as one unsought and uninvited! BY THE SEASIDE THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP "Build me straight, O worthy Master! Stanch and strong, a goodly vessel, That shall laugh at all disaster, And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!" The merchant's word Delighted the Master heard; For his heart was in his work, and the heart Giveth grace unto every Art. A quiet smile played round his lips, As the eddies and dimples of the tide Play round the bows of ships, That steadily at anchor ride. And with a voice that was full of glee, He answered, "Erelong we will launch A vessel as goodly, and strong, and stanch, As ever weathered a wintry sea!" And first with nicest skill and art, Perfect and finished in every part, A little model the Master wrought, Which should be to the larger plan What the child is to the man, Its counterpart in miniature; That with a hand more swift and sure The greater labor might be brought To answer to his inward thought. And as he labored, his mind ran o'er The various ships that were built of yore, And above them all, and strangest of all Towered the Great Harry, crank and tall, Whose picture was hanging on the wall, With bows and stern raised high in air, And balconies hanging here and there, And signal lanterns and flags afloat, And eight round towers, like those that frown From some old castle, looking down Upon the drawbridge and the moat. And he said with a smile, "Our ship, I wis, Shall be of another form than this!" It was of another form, indeed; Built for freight, and yet for speed, A beautiful and gallant craft; Broad in the beam, that the stress of the blast, Pressing down upon sail and mast, Might not the sharp bows overwhelm; Broad in the beam, but sloping aft With graceful curve and slow degrees, That she might be docile to the helm, And that the currents of parted seas, Closing behind, with mighty force, Might aid and not impede her course. In the ship-yard stood the Master, With the model of the vessel, That should laugh at all disaster, And with wave and whirlwind wrestle! Covering many a rood of ground, Lay the timber piled around; Timber of chestnut, and elm, and oak, And scattered here and there, with these, The knarred and crooked cedar knees; Brought from regions far away, From Pascagoula's sunny bay, And the banks of the roaring Roanoke! Ah! what a wondrous thing it is To note how many wheels of toil One thought, one word, can set in motion! There's not a ship that sails the ocean, But every climate, every soil, Must bring its tribute, great or small, And help to build the wooden wall! The sun was rising o'er the sea, And long the level shadows lay, As if they, too, the beams would be Of some great, airy argosy. Framed and launched in a single day. That silent architect, the sun, Had hewn and laid them every one, Ere the work of man was yet begun. Beside the Master, when he spoke, A youth, against an anchor leaning, Listened, to catch his slightest meaning. Only the long waves, as they broke In ripples on the pebbly beach, Interrupted the old man's speech. Beautiful they were, in sooth, The old man and the fiery youth! The old man, in whose busy brain Many a ship that sailed the main Was modelled o'er and o'er again;-- The fiery youth, who was to be the heir of his dexterity, The heir of his house, and his daughter's hand, When he had built and launched from land What the elder head had planned. "Thus," said he, "will we build this ship! Lay square the blocks upon the slip, And follow well this plan of mine. Choose the timbers with greatest care; Of all that is unsound beware; For only what is sound and strong to this vessel stall belong. Cedar of Maine and Georgia pine Here together shall combine. A goodly frame, and a goodly fame, And the UNION be her name! For the day that gives her to the sea Shall give my daughter unto thee!" The Master's word Enraptured the young man heard; And as he turned his face aside, With a look of joy and a thrill of pride, Standing before Her father's door, He saw the form of his promised bride. The sun shone on her golden hair, And her cheek was glowing fresh and fair, With the breath of morn and the soft sea air. Like a beauteous barge was she, Still at rest on the sandy beach, Just beyond the billow's reach; But he Was the restless, seething, stormy sea! Ah, how skilful grows the hand That obeyeth Love's command! It is the heart, and not the brain, That to the highest doth attain, And he who followeth Love's behest Far excelleth all the rest! Thus with the rising of the sun Was the noble task begun And soon throughout the ship-yard's bounds Were heard the intermingled sounds Of axes and of mallets, plied With vigorous arms on every side; Plied so deftly and so well, That, ere the shadows of evening fell, The keel of oak for a noble ship, Scarfed and bolted, straight and strong Was lying ready, and stretched along The blocks, well placed upon the slip. Happy, thrice happy, every one Who sees his labor well begun, And not perplexed and multiplied, By idly waiting for time and tide! And when the hot, long day was o'er, The young man at the Master's door Sat with the maiden calm and still. And within the porch, a little more Removed beyond the evening chill, The father sat, and told them tales Of wrecks in the great September gales, Of pirates coasting the Spanish Main, And ships that never came back again, The chance and change of a sailor's life, Want and plenty, rest and strife, His roving fancy, like the wind, That nothing can stay and nothing can bind, And the magic charm of foreign lands, With shadows of palms, and shining sands, Where the tumbling surf, O'er the coral reefs of Madagascar, Washes the feet of the swarthy Lascar, As he lies alone and asleep on the turf. And the trembling maiden held her breath At the tales of that awful, pitiless sea, With all its terror and mystery, The dim, dark sea, so like unto Death, That divides and yet unites mankind! And whenever the old man paused, a gleam From the bowl of his pipe would awhile illume The silent group in the twilight gloom, And thoughtful faces, as in a dream; And for a moment one might mark What had been hidden by the dark, That the head of the maiden lay at rest, Tenderly, on the young man's breast! Day by day the vessel grew, With timbers fashioned strong and true, Stemson and keelson and sternson-knee, Till, framed with perfect symmetry, A skeleton ship rose up to view! And around the bows and along the side The heavy hammers and mallets plied, Till after many a week, at length, Wonderful for form and strength, Sublime in its enormous bulk, Loomed aloft the shadowy hulk! And around it columns of smoke, up-wreathing. Rose from the boiling, bubbling, seething Caldron, that glowed, And overflowed With the black tar, heated for the sheathing. And amid the clamors Of clattering hammers, He who listened heard now and then The song of the Master and his men:-- "Build me straight, O worthy Master. Stanch and strong, a goodly vessel, That shall laugh at all disaster, And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!" With oaken brace and copper band, Lay the rudder on the sand, That, like a thought, should have control Over the movement of the whole; And near it the anchor, whose giant hand Would reach down and grapple with the land, And immovable and fast Hold the great ship against the bellowing blast! And at the bows an image stood, By a cunning artist carved in wood, With robes of white, that far behind Seemed to be fluttering in the wind. It was not shaped in a classic mould, Not like a Nymph or Goddess of old, Or Naiad rising from the water, But modelled from the Master's daughter! On many a dreary and misty night, 'T will be seen by the rays of the signal light, Speeding along through the rain and the dark, Like a ghost in its snow-white sark, The pilot of some phantom bark, Guiding the vessel, in its flight, By a path none other knows aright! Behold, at last, Each tall and tapering mast Is swung into its place; Shrouds and stays Holding it firm and fast! Long ago, In the deer-haunted forests of Maine, When upon mountain and plain Lay the snow, They fell,--those lordly pines! Those grand, majestic pines! 'Mid shouts and cheers The jaded steers, Panting beneath the goad, Dragged down the weary, winding road Those captive kings so straight and tall, To be shorn of their streaming hair, And, naked and bare, To feel the stress and the strain Of the wind and the reeling main, Whose roar Would remind them forevermore Of their native forests they should not see again. And everywhere The slender, graceful spars Poise aloft in the air, And at the mast-head, White, blue, and red, A flag unrolls the stripes and stars. Ah! when the wanderer, lonely, friendless, In foreign harbors shall behold That flag unrolled, 'T will be as a friendly hand Stretched out from his native land, Filling his heart with memories sweet and endless! All is finished! and at length Has come the bridal day Of beauty and of strength. To-day the vessel shall be launched! With fleecy clouds the sky is blanched, And o'er the bay, Slowly, in all his splendors dight, The great sun rises to behold the sight. The ocean old, Centuries old, Strong as youth, and as uncontrolled, Paces restless to and fro, Up and down the sands of gold. His beating heart is not at rest; And far and wide, With ceaseless flow, His beard of snow Heaves with the heaving of his breast. He waits impatient for his bride. There she stands, With her foot upon the sands, Decked with flags and streamers gay, In honor of her marriage day, Her snow-white signals fluttering, blending, Round her like a veil descending, Ready to be The bride of the gray old sea. On the deck another bride Is standing by her lover's side. Shadows from the flags and shrouds, Like the shadows cast by clouds, Broken by many a sunny fleck, Fall around them on the deck. The prayer is said, The service read, The joyous bridegroom bows his head; And in tear's the good old Master Shakes the brown hand of his son, Kisses his daughter's glowing cheek In silence, for he cannot speak, And ever faster Down his own the tears begin to run. The worthy pastor-- The shepherd of that wandering flock, That has the ocean for its wold, That has the vessel for its fold, Leaping ever from rock to rock-- Spake, with accents mild and clear, Words of warning, words of cheer, But tedious to the bridegroom's ear. He knew the chart Of the sailor's heart, All its pleasures and its griefs, All its shallows and rocky reefs, All those secret currents, that flow With such resistless undertow, And lift and drift, with terrible force, The will from its moorings and its course. Therefore he spake, and thus said he:-- "Like unto ships far off at sea, Outward or homeward bound, are we. Before, behind, and all around, Floats and swings the horizon's bound, Seems at its distant rim to rise And climb the crystal wall of the skies, And then again to turn and sink, As if we could slide from its outer brink. Ah! it is not the sea, It is not the sea that sinks and shelves, But ourselves That rock and rise With endless and uneasy motion, Now touching the very skies, Now sinking into the depths of ocean. Ah! if our souls but poise and swing Like the compass in its brazen ring, Ever level and ever true To the toil and the task we have to do, We shall sail securely, and safely reach The Fortunate Isles, on whose shining beach The sights we see, and the sounds we hear, Will be those of joy and not of fear!" Then the Master, With a gesture of command, Waved his hand; And at the word, Loud and sudden there was heard, All around them and below, The sound of hammers, blow on blow, Knocking away the shores and spurs. And see! she stirs! She starts,--she moves,--she seems to feel The thrill of life along her keel, And, spurning with her foot the ground, With one exulting, joyous bound, She leaps into the ocean's arms! And lo! from the assembled crowd There rose a shout, prolonged and loud, That to the ocean seemed to say, "Take her, O bridegroom, old and gray, Take her to thy protecting arms, With all her youth and all her charms!" How beautiful she is! How fair She lies within those arms, that press Her form with many a soft caress Of tenderness and watchful care! Sail forth into the sea, O ship! Through wind and wave, right onward steer! The moistened eye, the trembling lip, Are not the signs of doubt or fear. Sail forth into the sea of life, O gentle, loving, trusting wife, And safe from all adversity Upon the bosom of that sea Thy comings and thy goings be! For gentleness and love and trust Prevail o'er angry wave and gust; And in the wreck of noble lives Something immortal still survives! Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O UNION, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate! We know what Master laid thy keel, What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, What anvils rang, what hammers beat, In what a forge and what a heat Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 'T is of the wave and not the rock; 'T is but the flapping of the sail, And not a rent made by the gale! In spite of rock and tempest's roar, In spite of false lights on the shore, Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee,--are all with thee! SEAWEED When descends on the Atlantic The gigantic Storm-wind of the equinox, Landward in his wrath he scourges The toiling surges, Laden with seaweed from the rocks: From Bermuda's reefs; from edges Of sunken ledges, In some far-off, bright Azore; From Bahama, and the dashing, Silver-flashing Surges of San Salvador; From the tumbling surf, that buries The Orkneyan skerries, Answering the hoarse Hebrides; And from wrecks of ships, and drifting Spars, uplifting On the desolate, rainy seas;-- Ever drifting, drifting, drifting On the shifting Currents of the restless main; Till in sheltered coves, and reaches Of sandy beaches, All have found repose again. So when storms of wild emotion Strike the ocean Of the poet's soul, erelong From each cave and rocky fastness, In its vastness, Floats some fragment of a song: Front the far-off isles enchanted, Heaven has planted With the golden fruit of Truth; From the flashing surf, whose vision Gleams Elysian In the tropic clime of Youth; From the strong Will, and the Endeavor That forever Wrestle with the tides of Fate From the wreck of Hopes far-scattered, Tempest-shattered, Floating waste and desolate;-- Ever drifting, drifting, drifting On the shifting Currents of the restless heart; Till at length in books recorded, They, like hoarded Household words, no more depart. CHRYSAOR Just above yon sandy bar, As the day grows fainter and dimmer, Lonely and lovely, a single star Lights the air with a dusky glimmer Into the ocean faint and far Falls the trail of its golden splendor, And the gleam of that single star Is ever refulgent, soft, and tender. Chrysaor, rising out of the sea, Showed thus glorious and thus emulous, Leaving the arms of Callirrhoe, Forever tender, soft, and tremulous. Thus o'er the ocean faint and far Trailed the gleam of his falchion brightly; Is it a God, or is it a star That, entranced, I gaze on nightly! THE SECRET OF THE SEA Ah! what pleasant visions haunt me As I gaze upon the sea! All the old romantic legends, All my dreams, come back to me. Sails of silk and ropes of sandal, Such as gleam in ancient lore; And the singing of the sailors, And the answer from the shore! Most of all, the Spanish ballad Haunts me oft, and tarries long, Of the noble Count Arnaldos And the sailor's mystic song. Like the long waves on a sea-beach, Where the sand as silver shines, With a soft, monotonous cadence, Flow its unrhymed lyric lines:-- Telling how the Count Arnaldos, With his hawk upon his hand, Saw a fair and stately galley, Steering onward to the land;-- How he heard the ancient helmsman Chant a song so wild and clear, That the sailing sea-bird slowly Poised upon the mast to hear, Till his soul was full of longing, And he cried, with impulse strong,-- "Helmsman! for the love of heaven, Teach me, too, that wondrous song!" "Wouldst thou,"--so the helmsman answered, "Learn the secret of the sea? Only those who brave its dangers Comprehend its mystery!" In each sail that skims the horizon, In each landward-blowing breeze, I behold that stately galley, Hear those mournful melodies; Till my soul is full of longing For the secret of the sea, And the heart of the great ocean Sends a thrilling pulse through me. TWILIGHT The twilight is sad and cloudy, The wind blows wild and free, And like the wings of sea-birds Flash the white caps of the sea. But in the fisherman's cottage There shines a ruddier light, And a little face at the window Peers out into the night. Close, close it is pressed to the window, As if those childish eyes Were looking into the darkness, To see some form arise. And a woman's waving shadow Is passing to and fro, Now rising to the ceiling, Now bowing and bending low. What tale do the roaring ocean, And the night-wind, bleak and wild, As they beat at the crazy casement, Tell to that little child? And why do the roaring ocean, And the night-wind, wild and bleak, As they beat at the heart of the mother, Drive the color from her cheek? SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT Southward with fleet of ice Sailed the corsair Death; Wild and fast blew the blast, And the east-wind was his breath. His lordly ships of ice Glisten in the sun; On each side, like pennons wide, Flashing crystal streamlets run. His sails of white sea-mist Dripped with silver rain; But where he passed there were cast Leaden shadows o'er the main. Eastward from Campobello Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed; Three days or more seaward he bore, Then, alas! the land-wind failed. Alas! the land-wind failed, And ice-cold grew the night; And nevermore, on sea or shore, Should Sir Humphrey see the light. He sat upon the deck, The Book was in his hand "Do not fear! Heaven is as near," He said, "by water as by land!" In the first watch of the night, Without a signal's sound, Out of the sea, mysteriously, The fleet of Death rose all around. The moon and the evening star Were hanging in the shrouds; Every mast, as it passed, Seemed to rake the passing clouds. They grappled with their prize, At midnight black and cold! As of a rock was the shock; Heavily the ground-swell rolled. Southward through day and dark, They drift in close embrace, With mist and rain, o'er the open main; Yet there seems no change of place. Southward, forever southward, They drift through dark and day; And like a dream, in the Gulf-Stream Sinking, vanish all away. THE LIGHTHOUSE The rocky ledge runs far into the sea, And on its outer point, some miles away, The Lighthouse lifts its massive masonry, A pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day. Even at this distance I can see the tides, Upheaving, break unheard along its base, A speechless wrath, that rises and subsides In the white lip and tremor of the face. And as the evening darkens, lo! how bright, Through the deep purple of the twilight air, Beams forth the sudden radiance of its light With strange, unearthly splendor in the glare! Not one alone; from each projecting cape And perilous reef along the ocean's verge, Starts into life a dim, gigantic shape, Holding its lantern o'er the restless surge. Like the great giant Christopher it stands Upon the brink of the tempestuous wave, Wading far out among the rocks and sands, The night-o'ertaken mariner to save. And the great ships sail outward and return, Bending and bowing o'er the billowy swells, And ever joyful, as they see it burn, They wave their silent welcomes and farewells. They come forth from the darkness, and their sails Gleam for a moment only in the blaze, And eager faces, as the light unveils, Gaze at the tower, and vanish while they gaze. The mariner remembers when a child, On his first voyage, he saw it fade and sink; And when, returning from adventures wild, He saw it rise again o'er ocean's brink. Steadfast, serene, immovable, the same Year after year, through all the silent night Burns on forevermore that quenchless flame, Shines on that inextinguishable light! It sees the ocean to its bosom clasp The rocks and sea-sand with the kiss of peace; It sees the wild winds lift it in their grasp, And hold it up, and shake it like a fleece. The startled waves leap over it; the storm Smites it with all the scourges of the rain, And steadily against its solid form Press the great shoulders of the hurricane. The sea-bird wheeling round it, with the din Of wings and winds and solitary cries, Blinded and maddened by the light within, Dashes himself against the glare, and dies. A new Prometheus, chained upon the rock, Still grasping in his hand the fire of Jove, It does not hear the cry, nor heed the shock, But hails the mariner with words of love. "Sail on!" it says, "sail on, ye stately ships! And with your floating bridge the ocean span; Be mine to guard this light from all eclipse, Be yours to bring man nearer unto man!" THE FIRE OF DRIFT-WOOD DEVEREUX FARM, NEAR MARBLEHEAD We sat within the farm-house old, Whose windows, looking o'er the bay, Gave to the sea-breeze, damp and cold, An easy entrance, night and day. Not far away we saw the port, The strange, old-fashioned, silent town, The lighthouse, the dismantled fort, The wooden houses, quaint and brown. We sat and talked until the night, Descending, filled the little room; Our faces faded from the sight, Our voices only broke the gloom. We spake of many a vanished scene, Of what we once had thought and said, Of what had been, and might have been, And who was changed, and who was dead; And all that fills the hearts of friends, When first they feel, with secret pain, Their lives thenceforth have separate ends, And never can be one again; The first slight swerving of the heart, That words are powerless to express, And leave it still unsaid in part, Or say it in too great excess. The very tones in which we spake Had something strange, I could but mark; The leaves of memory seemed to make A mournful rustling in the dark. Oft died the words upon our lips, As suddenly, from out the fire Built of the wreck of stranded ships, The flames would leap and then expire. And, as their splendor flashed and failed, We thought of wrecks upon the main, Of ships dismasted, that were hailed And sent no answer back again. The windows, rattling in their frames, The ocean, roaring up the beach, The gusty blast, the bickering flames, All mingled vaguely in our speech. Until they made themselves a part Of fancies floating through the brain, The long-lost ventures of the heart, That send no answers back again. O flames that glowed! O hearts that yearned! They were indeed too much akin, The drift-wood fire without that burned, The thoughts that burned and glowed within. BY THE FIRESIDE RESIGNATION There is no flock, however watched and tended, But one dead lamb is there! There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, But has one vacant chair! The air is full of farewells to the dying, And mournings for the dead; The heart of Rachel, for her children crying, Will not be comforted! Let us be patient! These severe afflictions Not from the ground arise, But oftentimes celestial benedictions Assume this dark disguise. We see but dimly through the mists and vapors; Amid these earthly damps What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers May be heaven's distant lamps. There is no Death! What seems so is transition; This life of mortal breath Is but a suburb of the life elysian, Whose portal we call Death. She is not dead,--the child of our affection,-- But gone unto that school Where she no longer needs our poor protection, And Christ himself doth rule. In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion, By guardian angels led, Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, She lives, whom we call dead. Day after day we think what she is doing In those bright realms of air; Year after year, her tender steps pursuing, Behold her grown more fair. Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken The bond which nature gives, Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken, May reach her where she lives. Not as a child shall we again behold her; For when with raptures wild In our embraces we again enfold her, She will not be a child; But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion, Clothed with celestial grace; And beautiful with all the soul's expansion Shall we behold her face. And though at times impetuous with emotion And anguish long suppressed, The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean, That cannot be at rest,-- We will be patient, and assuage the feeling We may not wholly stay; By silence sanctifying, not concealing, The grief that must have way. THE BUILDERS All are architects of Fate, Working in these walls of Time; Some with massive deeds and great, Some with ornaments of rhyme. Nothing useless is, or low; Each thing in its place is best; And what seems but idle show Strengthens and supports the rest. For the structure that we raise, Time is with materials filled; Our to-days and yesterdays Are the blocks with which we build. Truly shape and fashion these; Leave no yawning gaps between; Think not, because no man sees, Such things will remain unseen. In the elder days of Art, Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part; For the Gods see everywhere. Let us do our work as well, Both the unseen and the seen; Make the house, where Gods may dwell, Beautiful, entire, and clean. Else our lives are incomplete, Standing in these walls of Time, Broken stairways, where the feet Stumble as they seek to climb. Build to-day, then, strong and sure, With a firm and ample base; And ascending and secure Shall to-morrow find its place. Thus alone can we attain To those turrets, where the eye Sees the world as one vast plain, And one boundless reach of sky. SAND OF THE DESERT IN AN HOUR-GLASS A handful of red sand, from the hot clime Of Arab deserts brought, Within this glass becomes the spy of Time, The minister of Thought. How many weary centuries has it been About those deserts blown! How many strange vicissitudes has seen, How many histories known! Perhaps the camels of the Ishmaelite Trampled and passed it o'er, When into Egypt from the patriarch's sight His favorite son they bore. Perhaps the feet of Moses, burnt and bare, Crushed it beneath their tread; Or Pharaoh's flashing wheels into the air Scattered it as they sped; Or Mary, with the Christ of Nazareth Held close in her caress, Whose pilgrimage of hope and love and faith Illumed the wilderness; Or anchorites beneath Engaddi's palms Pacing the Dead Sea beach, And singing slow their old Armenian psalms In half-articulate speech; Or caravans, that from Bassora's gate With westward steps depart; Or Mecca's pilgrims, confident of Fate, And resolute in heart! These have passed over it, or may have passed! Now in this crystal tower Imprisoned by some curious hand at last, It counts the passing hour, And as I gaze, these narrow walls expand; Before my dreamy eye Stretches the desert with its shifting sand, Its unimpeded sky. And borne aloft by the sustaining blast, This little golden thread Dilates into a column high and vast, A form of fear and dread. And onward, and across the setting sun, Across the boundless plain, The column and its broader shadow run, Till thought pursues in vain. The vision vanishes! These walls again Shut out the lurid sun, Shut out the hot, immeasurable plain; The half-hour's sand is run! THE OPEN WINDOW The old house by the lindens Stood silent in the shade, And on the gravelled pathway The light and shadow played. I saw the nursery windows Wide open to the air; But the faces of the children, They were no longer there. The large Newfoundland house-dog Was standing by the door; He looked for his little playmates, Who would return no more. They walked not under the lindens, They played not in the hall; But shadow, and silence, and sadness Were hanging over all. The birds sang in the branches, With sweet, familiar tone; But the voices of the children Will be heard in dreams alone! And the boy that walked beside me, He could not understand Why closer in mine, ah! closer, I pressed his warm, soft hand! KING WITLAF'S DRINKING-HORN Witlaf, a king of the Saxons, Ere yet his last he breathed, To the merry monks of Croyland His drinking-horn bequeathed,-- That, whenever they sat at their revels, And drank from the golden bowl, They might remember the donor, And breathe a prayer for his soul. So sat they once at Christmas, And bade the goblet pass; In their beards the red wine glistened Like dew-drops in the grass. They drank to the soul of Witlaf, They drank to Christ the Lord, And to each of the Twelve Apostles, Who had preached his holy word. They drank to the Saints and Martyrs Of the dismal days of yore, And as soon as the horn was empty They remembered one Saint more. And the reader droned from the pulpit Like the murmur of many bees, The legend of good Saint Guthlac, And Saint Basil's homilies; Till the great bells of the convent, From their prison in the tower, Guthlac and Bartholomaeus, Proclaimed the midnight hour. And the Yule-log cracked in the chimney, And the Abbot bowed his head, And the flamelets flapped and flickered, But the Abbot was stark and dead. Yet still in his pallid fingers He clutched the golden bowl, In which, like a pearl dissolving, Had sunk and dissolved his soul. But not for this their revels The jovial monks forbore, For they cried, "Fill high the goblet! We must drink to one Saint more!" GASPAR BECERRA By his evening fire the artist Pondered o'er his secret shame; Baffled, weary, and disheartened, Still he mused, and dreamed of fame. 'T was an image of the Virgin That had tasked his utmost skill; But, alas! his fair ideal Vanished and escaped him still. From a distant Eastern island Had the precious wood been brought Day and night the anxious master At his toil untiring wrought; Till, discouraged and desponding, Sat he now in shadows deep, And the day's humiliation Found oblivion in sleep. Then a voice cried, "Rise, O master! From the burning brand of oak Shape the thought that stirs within thee!" And the startled artist woke,-- Woke, and from the smoking embers Seized and quenched the glowing wood; And therefrom he carved an image, And he saw that it was good. O thou sculptor, painter, poet! Take this lesson to thy heart: That is best which lieth nearest; Shape from that thy work of art. PEGASUS IN POUND Once into a quiet village, Without haste and without heed, In the golden prime of morning, Strayed the poet's winged steed. It was Autumn, and incessant Piped the quails from shocks and sheaves, And, like living coals, the apples Burned among the withering leaves. Loud the clamorous bell was ringing From its belfry gaunt and grim; 'T was the daily call to labor, Not a triumph meant for him. Not the less he saw the landscape, In its gleaming vapor veiled; Not the less he breathed the odors That the dying leaves exhaled. Thus, upon the village common, By the school-boys he was found; And the wise men, in their wisdom, Put him straightway into pound. Then the sombre village crier, Ringing loud his brazen bell, Wandered down the street proclaiming There was an estray to sell. And the curious country people, Rich and poor, and young and old, Came in haste to see this wondrous Winged steed, with mane of gold. Thus the day passed, and the evening Fell, with vapors cold and dim; But it brought no food nor shelter, Brought no straw nor stall, for him. Patiently, and still expectant, Looked he through the wooden bars, Saw the moon rise o'er the landscape, Saw the tranquil, patient stars; Till at length the bell at midnight Sounded from its dark abode, And, from out a neighboring farm-yard Loud the cock Alectryon crowed. Then, with nostrils wide distended, Breaking from his iron chain, And unfolding far his pinions, To those stars he soared again. On the morrow, when the village Woke to all its toil and care, Lo! the strange steed had departed, And they knew not when nor where. But they found, upon the greensward Where his straggling hoofs had trod, Pure and bright, a fountain flowing From the hoof-marks in the sod. From that hour, the fount unfailing Gladdens the whole region round, Strengthening all who drink its waters, While it soothes them with its sound. TEGNER'S DRAPA I heard a voice, that cried, "Balder the Beautiful Is dead, is dead!" And through the misty air Passed like the mournful cry Of sunward sailing cranes. I saw the pallid corpse Of the dead sun Borne through the Northern sky. Blasts from Niffelheim Lifted the sheeted mists Around him as he passed. And the voice forever cried, "Balder the Beautiful Is dead, is dead!" And died away Through the dreary night, In accents of despair. Balder the Beautiful, God of the summer sun, Fairest of all the Gods! Light from his forehead beamed, Runes were upon his tongue, As on the warrior's sword. All things in earth and air Bound were by magic spell Never to do him harm; Even the plants and stones; All save the mistletoe, The sacred mistletoe! Hoeder, the blind old God, Whose feet are shod with silence, Pierced through that gentle breast With his sharp spear, by fraud Made of the mistletoe, The accursed mistletoe! They laid him in his ship, With horse and harness, As on a funeral pyre. Odin placed A ring upon his finger, And whispered in his ear. They launched the burning ship! It floated far away Over the misty sea, Till like the sun it seemed, Sinking beneath the waves. Balder returned no more! So perish the old Gods! But out of the sea of Time Rises a new land of song, Fairer than the old. Over its meadows green Walk the young bards and sing. Build it again, O ye bards, Fairer than before! Ye fathers of the new race, Feed upon morning dew, Sing the new Song of Love! The law of force is dead! The law of love prevails! Thor, the thunderer, Shall rule the earth no more, No more, with threats, Challenge the meek Christ. Sing no more, O ye bards of the North, Of Vikings and of Jarls! Of the days of Eld Preserve the freedom only, Not the deeds of blood! SONNET ON MRS. KEMBLE'S READINGS FROM SHAKESPEARE O precious evenings! all too swiftly sped! Leaving us heirs to amplest heritages Of all the best thoughts of the greatest sages, And giving tongues unto the silent dead! How our hearts glowed and trembled as she read, Interpreting by tones the wondrous pages Of the great poet who foreruns the ages, Anticipating all that shall be said! O happy Reader! having for thy text The magic book, whose Sibylline leaves have caught The rarest essence of all human thought! O happy Poet! by no critic vext! How must thy listening spirit now rejoice To be interpreted by such a voice! THE SINGERS God sent his Singers upon earth With songs of sadness and of mirth, That they might touch the hearts of men, And bring them back to heaven again. The first, a youth, with soul of fire, Held in his hand a golden lyre; Through groves he wandered, and by streams, Playing the music of our dreams. The second, with a bearded face, Stood singing in the market-place, And stirred with accents deep and loud The hearts of all the listening crowd. A gray old man, the third and last, Sang in cathedrals dim and vast, While the majestic organ rolled Contrition from its mouths of gold. And those who heard the Singers three Disputed which the best might be; For still their music seemed to start Discordant echoes in each heart, But the great Master said, "I see No best in kind, but in degree; I gave a various gift to each, To charm, to strengthen, and to teach. "These are the three great chords of might, And he whose ear is tuned aright Will hear no discord in the three, But the most perfect harmony." SUSPIRIA Take them, O Death! and bear away Whatever thou canst call thine own! Thine image, stamped upon this clay, Doth give thee that, but that alone! Take them, O Grave! and let them lie Folded upon thy narrow shelves, As garments by the soul laid by, And precious only to ourselves! Take them, O great Eternity! Our little life is but a gust That bends the branches of thy tree, And trails its blossoms in the dust! HYMN FOR MY BROTHER'S ORDINATION Christ to the young man said: "Yet one thing more; If thou wouldst perfect be, Sell all thou hast and give it to the poor, And come and follow me!" Within this temple Christ again, unseen, Those sacred words hath said, And his invisible hands to-day have been Laid on a young man's head. And evermore beside him on his way The unseen Christ shall move, That he may lean upon his arm and say, "Dost thou, dear Lord, approve?" Beside him at the marriage feast shall be, To make the scene more fair; Beside him in the dark Gethsemane Of pain and midnight prayer. O holy trust! O endless sense of rest! Like the beloved John To lay his head upon the Saviour's breast, And thus to journey on! *************** THE SONG OF HIAWATHA <Notes from HIAWATHA follow> INTRODUCTION Should you ask me, whence these stories? Whence these legends and traditions, With the odors of the forest With the dew and damp of meadows, With the curling smoke of wigwams, With the rushing of great rivers, With their frequent repetitions, And their wild reverberations As of thunder in the mountains? I should answer, I should tell you, "From the forests and the prairies, From the great lakes of the Northland, From the land of the Ojibways, From the land of the Dacotahs, From the mountains, moors, and fen-lands Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, Feeds among the reeds and rushes. I repeat them as I heard them From the lips of Nawadaha, The musician, the sweet singer." Should you ask where Nawadaha Found these songs so wild and wayward, Found these legends and traditions, I should answer, I should tell you, "In the bird's-nests of the forest, In the lodges of the beaver, In the hoof-prints of the bison, In the eyry of the eagle! "All the wild-fowl sang them to him, In the moorlands and the fen-lands, In the melancholy marshes; Chetowaik, the plover, sang them, Mahng, the loon, the wild-goose, Wawa, The blue heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, And the grouse, the Mushkodasa!" If still further you should ask me, Saying, "Who was Nawadaha? Tell us of this Nawadaha," I should answer your inquiries Straightway in such words as follow. "In the vale of Tawasentha, In the green and silent valley, By the pleasant water-courses, Dwelt the singer Nawadaha. Round about the Indian village Spread the meadows and the corn-fields, And beyond them stood the forest, Stood the groves of singing pine-trees, Green in Summer, white in Winter, Ever sighing, ever singing. "And the pleasant water-courses, You could trace them through the valley, By the rushing in the Spring-time, By the alders in the Summer, By the white fog in the Autumn, By the black line in the Winter; And beside them dwelt the singer, In the vale of Tawasentha, In the green and silent valley. "There he sang of Hiawatha, Sang the Song of Hiawatha, Sang his wondrous birth and being, How he prayed and how he fasted, How he lived, and toiled, and suffered, That the tribes of men might prosper, That he might advance his people!" Ye who love the haunts of Nature, Love the sunshine of the meadow, Love the shadow of the forest, Love the wind among the branches, And the rain-shower and the snow-storm, And the rushing of great rivers Through their palisades of pine-trees, And the thunder in the mountains, Whose innumerable echoes Flap like eagles in their eyries;-- Listen to these wild traditions, To this Song of Hiawatha! Ye who love a nation's legends, Love the ballads of a people, That like voices from afar off Call to us to pause and listen, Speak in tones so plain and childlike, Scarcely can the ear distinguish Whether they are sung or spoken;-- Listen to this Indian Legend, To this Song of Hiawatha! Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple, Who have faith in God and Nature, Who believe that in all ages Every human heart is human, That in even savage bosoms There are longings, yearnings, strivings For the good they comprehend not, That the feeble hands and helpless, Groping blindly in the darkness, Touch God's right hand in that darkness And are lifted up and strengthened;-- Listen to this simple story, To this Song of Hiawatha! Ye, who sometimes, in your rambles Through the green lanes of the country, Where the tangled barberry-bushes Hang their tufts of crimson berries Over stone walls gray with mosses, Pause by some neglected graveyard, For a while to muse, and ponder On a half-effaced inscription, Written with little skill of song-craft, Homely phrases, but each letter Full of hope and yet of heart-break, Full of all the tender pathos Of the Here and the Hereafter;-- Stay and read this rude inscription, Read this Song of Hiawatha! I THE PEACE-PIPE On the Mountains of the Prairie, On the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry, Gitche Manito, the mighty, He the Master of Life, descending, On the red crags of the quarry Stood erect, and called the nations, Called the tribes of men together. From his footprints flowed a river, Leaped into the light of morning, O'er the precipice plunging downward Gleamed like Ishkoodah, the comet. And the Spirit, stooping earthward, With his finger on the meadow Traced a winding pathway for it, Saying to it, "Run in this way!" From the red stone of the quarry With his hand he broke a fragment, Moulded it into a pipe-head, Shaped and fashioned it with figures; From the margin of the river Took a long reed for a pipe-stem, With its dark green leaves upon it; Filled the pipe with bark of willow, With the bark of the red willow; Breathed upon the neighboring forest, Made its great boughs chafe together, Till in flame they burst and kindled; And erect upon the mountains, Gitche Manito, the mighty, Smoked the calumet, the Peace-Pipe, As a signal to the nations. And the smoke rose slowly, slowly, Through the tranquil air of morning, First a single line of darkness, Then a denser, bluer vapor, Then a snow-white cloud unfolding, Like the tree-tops of the forest, Ever rising, rising, rising, Till it touched the top of heaven, Till it broke against the heaven, And rolled outward all around it. From the Vale of Tawasentha, From the Valley of Wyoming, From the groves of Tuscaloosa, From the far-off Rocky Mountains, From the Northern lakes and rivers All the tribes beheld the signal, Saw the distant smoke ascending, The Pukwana of the Peace-Pipe. And the Prophets of the nations Said: "Behold it, the Pukwana! By the signal of the Peace-Pipe, Bending like a wand of willow, Waving like a hand that beckons, Gitche Manito, the mighty, Calls the tribes of men together, Calls the warriors to his council!" Down the rivers, o'er the prairies, Came the warriors of the nations, Came the Delawares and Mohawks, Came the Choctaws and Camanches, Came the Shoshonies and Blackfeet, Came the Pawnees and Omahas, Came the Mandans and Dacotahs, Came the Hurons and Ojibways, All the warriors drawn together By the signal of the Peace-Pipe, To the Mountains of the Prairie, To the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry. And they stood there on the meadow, With their weapons and their war-gear, Painted like the leaves of Autumn, Painted like the sky of morning, Wildly glaring at each other; In their faces stern defiance, In their hearts the feuds of ages, The hereditary hatred, The ancestral thirst of vengeance. Gitche Manito, the mighty, The creator of the nations, Looked upon them with compassion, With paternal love and pity; Looked upon their wrath and wrangling But as quarrels among children, But as feuds and fights of children! Over them he stretched his right hand, To subdue their stubborn natures, To allay their thirst and fever, By the shadow of his right hand; Spake to them with voice majestic As the sound of far-off waters, Falling into deep abysses, Warning, chiding, spake in this wise:-- "O my children! my poor children! Listen to the words of wisdom, Listen to the words of warning, From the lips of the Great Spirit, From the Master of Life, who made you! "I have given you lands to hunt in, I have given you streams to fish in, I have given you bear and bison, I have given you roe and reindeer, I have given you brant and beaver, Filled the marshes full of wild-fowl, Filled the rivers full of fishes: Why then are you not contented? Why then will you hunt each other? "I am weary of your quarrels, Weary of your wars and bloodshed, Weary of your prayers for vengeance, Of your wranglings and dissensions; All your strength is in your union, All your danger is in discord; Therefore be at peace henceforward, And as brothers live together. "I will send a Prophet to you, A Deliverer of the nations, Who shall guide you and shall teach you, Who shall toil and suffer with you. If you listen to his counsels, You will multiply and prosper; If his warnings pass unheeded, You will fade away and perish! "Bathe now in the stream before you, Wash the war-paint from your faces, Wash the blood-stains from your fingers, Bury your war-clubs and your weapons, Break the red stone from this quarry, Mould and make it into Peace-Pipes, Take the reeds that grow beside you, Deck them with your brightest feathers, Smoke the calumet together, And as brothers live henceforward!" Then upon the ground the warriors Threw their cloaks and shirts of deer-skin, Threw their weapons and their war-gear, Leaped into the rushing river, Washed the war-paint from their faces. Clear above them flowed the water, Clear and limpid from the footprints Of the Master of Life descending; Dark below them flowed the water, Soiled and stained with streaks of crimson, As if blood were mingled with it! From the river came the warriors, Clean and washed from all their war-paint; On the banks their clubs they buried, Buried all their warlike weapons. Gitche Manito, the mighty, The Great Spirit, the creator, Smiled upon his helpless children! And in silence all the warriors Broke the red stone of the quarry, Smoothed and formed it into Peace-Pipes, Broke the long reeds by the river, Decked them with their brightest feathers, And departed each one homeward, While the Master of Life, ascending, Through the opening of cloud-curtains, Through the doorways of the heaven, Vanished from before their faces, In the smoke that rolled around him, The Pukwana of the Peace-Pipe! II The Four Winds "Honor be to Mudjekeewis!" Cried the warriors, cried the old men, When he came in triumph homeward With the sacred Belt of Wampum, From the regions of the North-Wind, From the kingdom of Wabasso, From the land of the White Rabbit. He had stolen the Belt of Wampum From the neck of Mishe-Mokwa, From the Great Bear of the mountains, From the terror of the nations, As he lay asleep and cumbrous On the summit of the mountains, Like a rock with mosses on it, Spotted brown and gray with mosses. Silently he stole upon him, Till the red nails of the monster Almost touched him, almost scared him, Till the hot breath of his nostrils Warmed the hands of Mudjekeewis, As he drew the Belt of Wampum Over the round ears, that heard not, Over the small eyes, that saw not, Over the long nose and nostrils, The black muffle of the nostrils, Out of which the heavy breathing Warmed the hands of Mudjekeewis. Then he swung aloft his war-club, Shouted loud and long his war-cry, Smote the mighty Mishe-Mokwa In the middle of the forehead, Right between the eyes he smote him. With the heavy blow bewildered, Rose the Great Bear of the mountains; But his knees beneath him trembled, And he whimpered like a woman, As he reeled and staggered forward, As he sat upon his haunches; And the mighty Mudjekeewis, Standing fearlessly before him, Taunted him in loud derision, Spake disdainfully in this wise:-- "Hark you, Bear! you are a coward; And no Brave, as you pretended; Else you would not cry and whimper Like a miserable woman! Bear! you know our tribes are hostile, Long have been at war together; Now you find that we are strongest, You go sneaking in the forest, You go hiding in the mountains! Had you conquered me in battle Not a groan would I have uttered; But you, Bear! sit here and whimper, And disgrace your tribe by crying, Like a wretched Shaugodaya, Like a cowardly old woman!" Then again he raised his war-club, Smote again the Mishe-Mokwa In the middle of his forehead, Broke his skull, as ice is broken When one goes to fish in Winter. Thus was slain the Mishe-Mokwa, He the Great Bear of the mountains, He the terror of the nations. "Honor be to Mudjekeewis!" With a shout exclaimed the people, "Honor be to Mudjekeewis! Henceforth he shall be the West-Wind, And hereafter and forever Shall he hold supreme dominion Over all the winds of heaven. Call him no more Mudjekeewis, Call him Kabeyun, the West-Wind!" Thus was Mudjekeewis chosen Father of the Winds of Heaven. For himself he kept the West-Wind, Gave the others to his children; Unto Wabun gave the East-Wind, Gave the South to Shawondasee, And the North-Wind, wild and cruel, To the fierce Kabibonokka. Young and beautiful was Wabun; He it was who brought the morning, He it was whose silver arrows Chased the dark o'er hill and valley; He it was whose cheeks were painted With the brightest streaks of crimson, And whose voice awoke the village, Called the deer, and called the hunter. Lonely in the sky was Wabun; Though the birds sang gayly to him, Though the wild-flowers of the meadow Filled the air with odors for him, Though the forests and the rivers Sang and shouted at his coming, Still his heart was sad within him, For he was alone in heaven. But one morning, gazing earthward, While the village still was sleeping, And the fog lay on the river, Like a ghost, that goes at sunrise, He beheld a maiden walking All alone upon a meadow, Gathering water-flags and rushes By a river in the meadow. Every morning, gazing earthward, Still the first thing he beheld there Was her blue eyes looking at him, Two blue lakes among the rushes. And he loved the lonely maiden, Who thus waited for his coming; For they both were solitary, She on earth and he in heaven. And he wooed her with caresses, Wooed her with his smile of sunshine, With his flattering words he wooed her, With his sighing and his singing, Gentlest whispers in the branches, Softest music, sweetest odors, Till he drew her to his bosom, Folded in his robes of crimson, Till into a star he changed her, Trembling still upon his bosom; And forever in the heavens They are seen together walking, Wabun and the Wabun-Annung, Wabun and the Star of Morning. But the fierce Kabibonokka Had his dwelling among icebergs, In the everlasting snow-drifts, In the kingdom of Wabasso, In the land of the White Rabbit. He it was whose hand in Autumn Painted all the trees with scarlet, Stained the leaves with red and yellow; He it was who sent the snow-flake, Sifting, hissing through the forest, Froze the ponds, the lakes, the rivers, Drove the loon and sea-gull southward, Drove the cormorant and curlew To their nests of sedge and sea-tang In the realms of Shawondasee. Once the fierce Kabibonokka Issued from his lodge of snow-drifts From his home among the icebergs, And his hair, with snow besprinkled, Streamed behind him like a river, Like a black and wintry river, As he howled and hurried southward, Over frozen lakes and moorlands. There among the reeds and rushes Found he Shingebis, the diver, Trailing strings of fish behind him, O'er the frozen fens and moorlands, Lingering still among the moorlands, Though his tribe had long departed To the land of Shawondasee. Cried the fierce Kabibonokka, "Who is this that dares to brave me? Dares to stay in my dominions, When the Wawa has departed, When the wild-goose has gone southward, And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, Long ago departed southward? I will go into his wigwam, I will put his smouldering fire out!" And at night Kabibonokka, To the lodge came wild and wailing, Heaped the snow in drifts about it, Shouted down into the smoke-flue, Shook the lodge-poles in his fury, Flapped the curtain of the door-way. Shingebis, the diver, feared not, Shingebis, the diver, cared not; Four great logs had he for firewood, One for each moon of the winter, And for food the fishes served him. By his blazing fire he sat there, Warm and merry, eating, laughing, Singing, "O Kabibonokka, You are but my fellow-mortal!" Then Kabibonokka entered, And though Shingebis, the diver, Felt his presence by the coldness, Felt his icy breath upon him, Still he did not cease his singing, Still he did not leave his laughing, Only turned the log a little, Only made the fire burn brighter, Made the sparks fly up the smoke-flue. From Kabibonokka's forehead, From his snow-besprinkled tresses, Drops of sweat fell fast and heavy, Making dints upon the ashes, As along the eaves of lodges, As from drooping boughs of hemlock, Drips the melting snow in spring-time, Making hollows in the snow-drifts. Till at last he rose defeated, Could not bear the heat and laughter, Could not bear the merry singing, But rushed headlong through the door-way, Stamped upon the crusted snow-drifts, Stamped upon the lakes and rivers, Made the snow upon them harder, Made the ice upon them thicker, Challenged Shingebis, the diver, To come forth and wrestle with him, To come forth and wrestle naked On the frozen fens and moorlands. Forth went Shingebis, the diver, Wrestled all night with the North-Wind, Wrestled naked on the moorlands With the fierce Kabibonokka, Till his panting breath grew fainter, Till his frozen grasp grew feebler, Till he reeled and staggered backward, And retreated, baffled, beaten, To the kingdom of Wabasso, To the land of the White Rabbit, Hearing still the gusty laughter, Hearing Shingebis, the diver, Singing, "O Kabibonokka, You are but my fellow-mortal!" Shawondasee, fat and lazy, Had his dwelling far to southward, In the drowsy, dreamy sunshine, In the never-ending Summer. He it was who sent the wood-birds, Sent the robin, the Opechee, Sent the bluebird, the Owaissa, Sent the Shawshaw, sent the swallow, Sent the wild-goose, Wawa, northward, Sent the melons and tobacco, And the grapes in purple clusters. From his pipe the smoke ascending Filled the sky with haze and vapor, Filled the air with dreamy softness, Gave a twinkle to the water, Touched the rugged hills with smoothness, Brought the tender Indian Summer To the melancholy north-land, In the dreary Moon of Snow-shoes. Listless, careless Shawondasee! In his life he had one shadow, In his heart one sorrow had he. Once, as he was gazing northward, Far away upon a prairie He beheld a maiden standing, Saw a tall and slender maiden All alone upon a prairie; Brightest green were all her garments, And her hair was like the sunshine. Day by day he gazed upon her, Day by day he sighed with passion, Day by day his heart within him Grew more hot with love and longing For the maid with yellow tresses. But he was too fat and lazy To bestir himself and woo her; Yes, too indolent and easy To pursue her and persuade her; So he only gazed upon her, Only sat and sighed with passion For the maiden of the prairie. Till one morning, looking northward, He beheld her yellow tresses Changed and covered o'er with whiteness, Covered as with whitest snow-flakes. "Ah! my brother from the North-land, From the kingdom of Wabasso, From the land of the White Rabbit! You have stolen the maiden from me, You have laid your hand upon her, You have wooed and won my maiden, With your stories of the North-land!" Thus the wretched Shawondasee Breathed into the air his sorrow; And the South-Wind o'er the prairie Wandered warm with sighs of passion, With the sighs of Shawondasee, Till the air seemed full of snow-flakes, Full of thistle-down the prairie, And the maid with hair like sunshine Vanished from his sight forever; Never more did Shawondasee See the maid with yellow tresses! Poor, deluded Shawondasee! 'T was no woman that you gazed at, 'T was no maiden that you sighed for, 'T was the prairie dandelion That through all the dreamy Summer You had gazed at with such longing, You had sighed for with such passion, And had puffed away forever, Blown into the air with sighing. Ah! deluded Shawondasee! Thus the Four Winds were divided; Thus the sons of Mudjekeewis Had their stations in the heavens, At the corners of the heavens; For himself the West-Wind only Kept the mighty Mudjekeewis. III HIAWATHA'S CHILDHOOD Downward through the evening twilight, In the days that are forgotten, In the unremembered ages, From the full moon fell Nokomis, Fell the beautiful Nokomis, She a wife, but not a mother. She was sporting with her women, Swinging in a swing of grape-vines, When her rival, the rejected, Full of jealousy and hatred, Cut the leafy swing asunder, Cut in twain the twisted grape-vines, And Nokomis fell affrighted Downward through the evening twilight, On the Muskoday, the meadow, On the prairie full of blossoms. "See! a star falls!" said the people; "From the sky a star is falling!" There among the ferns and mosses, There among the prairie lilies, On the Muskoday, the meadow, In the moonlight and the starlight, Fair Nokomis bore a daughter. And she called her name Wenonah, As the first-born of her daughters. And the daughter of Nokomis Grew up like the prairie lilies, Grew a tall and slender maiden, With the beauty of the moonlight, With the beauty of the starlight. And Nokomis warned her often, Saying oft, and oft repeating, "Oh, beware of Mudjekeewis, Of the West-Wind, Mudjekeewis; Listen not to what he tells you; Lie not down upon the meadow, Stoop not down among the lilies, Lest the West-Wind come and harm you!" But she heeded not the warning, Heeded not those words of wisdom, And the West-Wind came at evening, Walking lightly o'er the prairie, Whispering to the leaves and blossoms, Bending low the flowers and grasses, Found the beautiful Wenonah, Lying there among the lilies, Wooed her with his words of sweetness, Wooed her with his soft caresses, Till she bore a son in sorrow, Bore a son of love and sorrow. Thus was born my Hiawatha, Thus was born the child of wonder; But the daughter of Nokomis, Hiawatha's gentle mother, In her anguish died deserted By the West-Wind, false and faithless, By the heartless Mudjekeewis. For her daughter long and loudly Wailed and wept the sad Nokomis; "Oh that I were dead!" she murmured, "Oh that I were dead, as thou art! No more work, and no more weeping, Wahonowin! Wahonowin!" By the shores of Gitche Gumee, By the shining Big-Sea-Water, Stood the wigwam of Nokomis, Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis. Dark behind it rose the forest, Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees, Rose the firs with cones upon them; Bright before it beat the water, Beat the clear and sunny water, Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water. There the wrinkled old Nokomis Nursed the little Hiawatha, Rocked him in his linden cradle, Bedded soft in moss and rushes, Safely bound with reindeer sinews; Stilled his fretful wail by saying, "Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!" Lulled him into slumber, singing, "Ewa-yea! my little owlet! Who is this, that lights the wigwam? With his great eyes lights the wigwam? Ewa-yea! my little owlet!" Many things Nokomis taught him Of the stars that shine in heaven; Showed him Ishkoodah, the comet, Ishkoodah, with fiery tresses; Showed the Death-Dance of the spirits, Warriors with their plumes and war-clubs, Flaring far away to northward In the frosty nights of Winter; Showed the broad white road in heaven, Pathway of the ghosts, the shadows, Running straight across the heavens, Crowded with the ghosts, the shadows. At the door on summer evenings Sat the little Hiawatha; Heard the whispering of the pine-trees, Heard the lapping of the water, Sounds of music, words of wonder; 'Minne-wawa!" said the Pine-trees, Mudway-aushka!" said the water. Saw the fire-fly, Wah-wah-taysee, Flitting through the dusk of evening, With the twinkle of its candle Lighting up the brakes and bushes, And he sang the song of children, Sang the song Nokomis taught him: "Wah-wah-taysee, little fire-fly, Little, flitting, white-fire insect, Little, dancing, white-fire creature, Light me with your little candle, Ere upon my bed I lay me, Ere in sleep I close my eyelids!" Saw the moon rise from the water Rippling, rounding from the water, Saw the flecks and shadows on it, Whispered, "What is that, Nokomis?" And the good Nokomis answered: "Once a warrior, very angry, Seized his grandmother, and threw her Up into the sky at midnight; Right against the moon he threw her; 'T is her body that you see there." Saw the rainbow in the heaven, In the eastern sky, the rainbow, Whispered, "What is that, Nokomis?" And the good Nokomis answered: "'T is the heaven of flowers you see there; All the wild-flowers of the forest, All the lilies of the prairie, When on earth they fade and perish, Blossom in that heaven above us." When he heard the owls at midnight, Hooting, laughing in the forest, "What is that?" he cried in terror, "What is that," he said, "Nokomis?" And the good Nokomis answered: "That is but the owl and owlet, Talking in their native language, Talking, scolding at each other." Then the little Hiawatha Learned of every bird its language, Learned their names and all their secrets, How they built their nests in Summer, Where they hid themselves in Winter, Talked with them whene'er he met them, Called them "Hiawatha's Chickens." Of all beasts he learned the language, Learned their names and all their secrets, How the beavers built their lodges, Where the squirrels hid their acorns, How the reindeer ran so swiftly, Why the rabbit was so timid, Talked with them whene'er he met them, Called them "Hiawatha's Brothers." Then Iagoo, the great boaster, He the marvellous story-teller, He the traveller and the talker, He the friend of old Nokomis, Made a bow for Hiawatha; From a branch of ash he made it, From an oak-bough made the arrows, Tipped with flint, and winged with feathers, And the cord he made of deer-skin. Then he said to Hiawatha: "Go, my son, into the forest, Where the red deer herd together, Kill for us a famous roebuck, Kill for us a deer with antlers!" Forth into the forest straightway All alone walked Hiawatha Proudly, with his bow and arrows; And the birds sang round him, o'er him, "Do not shoot us, Hiawatha!" Sang the robin, the Opechee, Sang the bluebird, the Owaissa, "Do not shoot us, Hiawatha!" Up the oak-tree, close beside him, Sprang the squirrel, Adjidaumo, In and out among the branches, Coughed and chattered from the oak-tree, Laughed, and said between his laughing, "Do not shoot me, Hiawatha!" And the rabbit from his pathway Leaped aside, and at a distance Sat erect upon his haunches, Half in fear and half in frolic, Saying to the little hunter, "Do not shoot me, Hiawatha!" But he heeded not, nor heard them, For his thoughts were with the red deer; On their tracks his eyes were fastened, Leading downward to the river, To the ford across the river, And as one in slumber walked he. Hidden in the alder-bushes, There he waited till the deer came, Till he saw two antlers lifted, Saw two eyes look from the thicket, Saw two nostrils point to windward, And a deer came down the pathway, Flecked with leafy light and shadow. And his heart within him fluttered, Trembled like the leaves above him, Like the birch-leaf palpitated, As the deer came down the pathway. Then, upon one knee uprising, Hiawatha aimed an arrow; Scarce a twig moved with his motion, Scarce a leaf was stirred or rustled, But the wary roebuck started, Stamped with all his hoofs together, Listened with one foot uplifted, Leaped as if to meet the arrow; Ah! the singing, fatal arrow, Like a wasp it buzzed and stung him! Dead he lay there in the forest, By the ford across the river; Beat his timid heart no longer, But the heart of Hiawatha Throbbed and shouted and exulted, As he bore the red deer homeward, And Iagoo and Nokomis Hailed his coming with applauses. From the red deer's hide Nokomis Made a cloak for Hiawatha, From the red deer's flesh Nokomis Made a banquet to his honor. All the village came and feasted, All the guests praised Hiawatha, Called him Strong-Heart, Soan-ge-taha! Called him Loon-Heart, Mahn-go-taysee! IV HIAWATHA AND MUDJEKEEWIS Out of childhood into manhood Now had grown my Hiawatha, Skilled in all the craft of hunters, Learned in all the lore of old men, In all youthful sports and pastimes, In all manly arts and labors. Swift of foot was Hiawatha; He could shoot an arrow from him, And run forward with such fleetness, That the arrow fell behind him! Strong of arm was Hiawatha; He could shoot ten arrows upward, Shoot them with such strength and swiftness, That the tenth had left the bow-string Ere the first to earth had fallen! He had mittens, Minjekahwun, Magic mittens made of deer-skin; When upon his hands he wore them, He could smite the rocks asunder, He could grind them into powder. He had moccasins enchanted, Magic moccasins of deer-skin; When he bound them round his ankles, When upon his feet he tied them, At each stride a mile he measured! Much he questioned old Nokomis Of his father Mudjekeewis; Learned from her the fatal secret Of the beauty of his mother, Of the falsehood of his father; And his heart was hot within him, Like a living coal his heart was. Then he said to old Nokomis, "I will go to Mudjekeewis, See how fares it with my father, At the doorways of the West-Wind, At the portals of the Sunset!" From his lodge went Hiawatha, Dressed for travel, armed for hunting; Dressed in deer-skin shirt and leggings, Richly wrought with quills and wampum; On his head his eagle-feathers, Round his waist his belt of wampum, In his hand his bow of ash-wood, Strung with sinews of the reindeer; In his quiver oaken arrows, Tipped with jasper, winged with feathers; With his mittens, Minjekahwun, With his moccasins enchanted. Warning said the old Nokomis, "Go not forth, O Hiawatha! To the kingdom of the West-Wind, To the realms of Mudjekeewis, Lest he harm you with his magic, Lest he kill you with his cunning!" But the fearless Hiawatha Heeded not her woman's warning; Forth he strode into the forest, At each stride a mile he measured; Lurid seemed the sky above him, Lurid seemed the earth beneath him, Hot and close the air around him, Filled with smoke and fiery vapors, As of burning woods and prairies, For his heart was hot within him, Like a living coal his heart was. So he journeyed westward, westward, Left the fleetest deer behind him, Left the antelope and bison; Crossed the rushing Esconaba, Crossed the mighty Mississippi, Passed the Mountains of the Prairie, Passed the land of Crows and Foxes, Passed the dwellings of the Blackfeet, Came unto the Rocky Mountains, To the kingdom of the West-Wind, Where upon the gusty summits Sat the ancient Mudjekeewis, Ruler of the winds of heaven. Filled with awe was Hiawatha At the aspect of his father. On the air about him wildly Tossed and streamed his cloudy tresses, Gleamed like drifting snow his tresses, Glared like Ishkoodah, the comet, Like the star with fiery tresses. Filled with joy was Mudjekeewis When he looked on Hiawatha, Saw his youth rise up before him In the face of Hiawatha, Saw the beauty of Wenonah From the grave rise up before him. "Welcome!" said he, "Hiawatha, To the kingdom of the West-Wind! Long have I been waiting for you! Youth is lovely, age is lonely, Youth is fiery, age is frosty; You bring back the days departed, You bring back my youth of passion, And the beautiful Wenonah!" Many days they talked together, Questioned, listened, waited, answered; Much the mighty Mudjekeewis Boasted of his ancient prowess, Of his perilous adventures, His indomitable courage, His invulnerable body. Patiently sat Hiawatha, Listening to his father's boasting; With a smile he sat and listened, Uttered neither threat nor menace, Neither word nor look betrayed him, But his heart was hot within him, Like a living coal his heart was. Then he said, "O Mudjekeewis, Is there nothing that can harm you? Nothing that you are afraid of?" And the mighty Mudjekeewis, Grand and gracious in his boasting, Answered, saying, "There is nothing, Nothing but the black rock yonder, Nothing but the fatal Wawbeek!" And he looked at Hiawatha With a wise look and benignant, With a countenance paternal, Looked with pride upon the beauty Of his tall and graceful figure, Saying, "O my Hiawatha! Is there anything can harm you? Anything you are afraid of?" But the wary Hiawatha Paused awhile, as if uncertain, Held his peace, as if resolving, And then answered, "There is nothing, Nothing but the bulrush yonder, Nothing but the great Apukwa!" And as Mudjekeewis, rising, Stretched his hand to pluck the bulrush, Hiawatha cried in terror, Cried in well-dissembled terror, "Kago! kago! do not touch it!" "Ah, kaween!" said Mudjekeewis, "No indeed, I will not touch it!" Then they talked of other matters; First of Hiawatha's brothers, First of Wabun, of the East-Wind, Of the South-Wind, Shawondasee, Of the North, Kabibonokka; Then of Hiawatha's mother, Of the beautiful Wenonah, Of her birth upon the meadow, Of her death, as old Nokomis Had remembered and related. And he cried, "O Mudjekeewis, It was you who killed Wenonah, Took her young life and her beauty, Broke the Lily of the Prairie, Trampled it beneath your footsteps; You confess it! you confess it!" And the mighty Mudjekeewis Tossed upon the wind his tresses, Bowed his hoary head in anguish, With a silent nod assented. Then up started Hiawatha, And with threatening look and gesture Laid his hand upon the black rock, On the fatal Wawbeek laid it, With his mittens, Minjekahwun, Rent the jutting crag asunder, Smote and crushed it into fragments, Hurled them madly at his father, The remorseful Mudjekeewis, For his heart was hot within him, Like a living coal his heart was. But the ruler of the West-Wind Blew the fragments backward from him, With the breathing of his nostrils, With the tempest of his anger, Blew them back at his assailant; Seized the bulrush, the Apukwa, Dragged it with its roots and fibres From the margin of the meadow, From its ooze the giant bulrush; Long and loud laughed Hiawatha! Then began the deadly conflict, Hand to hand among the mountains; From his eyry screamed the eagle, The Keneu, the great war-eagle, Sat upon the crags around them, Wheeling flapped his wings above them. Like a tall tree in the tempest Bent and lashed the giant bulrush; And in masses huge and heavy Crashing fell the fatal Wawbeek; Till the earth shook with the tumult And confusion of the battle, And the air was full of shoutings, And the thunder of the mountains, Starting, answered, "Baim-wawa!" Back retreated Mudjekeewis, Rushing westward o'er the mountains, Stumbling westward down the mountains, Three whole days retreated fighting, Still pursued by Hiawatha To the doorways of the West-Wind, To the portals of the Sunset, To the earth's remotest border, Where into the empty spaces Sinks the sun, as a flamingo Drops into her nest at nightfall, In the melancholy marshes. "Hold!" at length cried Mudjekeewis, "Hold, my son, my Hiawatha! 'T is impossible to kill me, For you cannot kill the immortal. I have put you to this trial, But to know and prove your courage; Now receive the prize of valor! "Go back to your home and people, Live among them, toil among them, Cleanse the earth from all that harms it, Clear the fishing-grounds and rivers, Slay all monsters and magicians, All the Wendigoes, the giants, All the serpents, the Kenabeeks, As I slew the Mishe-Mokwa, Slew the Great Bear of the mountains. "And at last when Death draws near you, When the awful eyes of Pauguk Glare upon you in the darkness, I will share my kingdom with you, Ruler shall you be thenceforward Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin, Of the home-wind, the Keewaydin." Thus was fought that famous battle In the dreadful days of Shah-shah, In the days long since departed, In the kingdom of the West-Wind. Still the hunter sees its traces Scattered far o'er hill and valley; Sees the giant bulrush growing By the ponds and water-courses, Sees the masses of the Wawbeek Lying still in every valley. Homeward now went Hiawatha; Pleasant was the landscape round him, Pleasant was the air above him, For the bitterness of anger Had departed wholly from him, From his brain the thought of vengeance, From his heart the burning fever. Only once his pace he slackened, Only once he paused or halted, Paused to purchase heads of arrows Of the ancient Arrow-maker, In the land of the Dacotahs, Where the Falls of Minnehaha Flash and gleam among the oak-trees, Laugh and leap into the valley. There the ancient Arrow-maker Made his arrow-heads of sandstone, Arrow-heads of chalcedony, Arrow-heads of flint and jasper, Smoothed and sharpened at the edges, Hard and polished, keen and costly. With him dwelt his dark-eyed daughter, Wayward as the Minnehaha, With her moods of shade and sunshine, Eyes that smiled and frowned alternate, Feet as rapid as the river, Tresses flowing like the water, And as musical a laughter; And he named her from the river, From the water-fall he named her, Minnehaha, Laughing Water. Was it then for heads of arrows, Arrow-heads of chalcedony, Arrow-heads of flint and jasper, That my Hiawatha halted In the land of the Dacotahs? Was it not to see the maiden, See the face of Laughing Water Peeping from behind the curtain, Hear the rustling of her garments From behind the waving curtain, As one sees the Minnehaha Gleaming, glancing through the branches, As one hears the Laughing Water From behind its screen of branches? Who shall say what thoughts and visions Fill the fiery brains of young men? Who shall say what dreams of beauty Filled the heart of Hiawatha? All he told to old Nokomis, When he reached the lodge at sunset, Was the meeting with his father, Was his fight with Mudjekeewis; Not a word he said of arrows, Not a word of Laughing Water. V HIAWATHA'S FASTING You shall hear how Hiawatha Prayed and fasted in the forest, Not for greater skill in hunting, Not for greater craft in fishing, Not for triumphs in the battle, And renown among the warriors, But for profit of the people, For advantage of the nations. First he built a lodge for fasting, Built a wigwam in the forest, By the shining Big-Sea-Water, In the blithe and pleasant Spring-time, In the Moon of Leaves he built it, And, with dreams and visions many, Seven whole days and nights he fasted. On the first day of his fasting Through the leafy woods he wandered; Saw the deer start from the thicket, Saw the rabbit in his burrow, Heard the pheasant, Bena, drumming, Heard the squirrel, Adjidaumo, Rattling in his hoard of acorns, Saw the pigeon, the Omeme, Building nests among the pine-trees, And in flocks the wild-goose, Wawa, Flying to the fen-lands northward, Whirring, wailing far above him. "Master of Life!" he cried, desponding, "Must our lives depend on these things?" On the next day of his fasting By the river's brink he wandered, Through the Muskoday, the meadow, Saw the wild rice, Mahnomonee, Saw the blueberry, Meenahga, And the strawberry, Odahmin, And the gooseberry, Shahbomin, And the grape-vine, the Bemahgut, Trailing o'er the alder-branches, Filling all the air with fragrance! "Master of Life!" he cried, desponding, "Must our lives depend on these things?" On the third day of his fasting By the lake he sat and pondered, By the still, transparent water; Saw the sturgeon, Nahma, leaping, Scattering drops like beads of wampum, Saw the yellow perch, the Sahwa, Like a sunbeam in the water, Saw the pike, the Maskenozha, And the herring, Okahahwis, And the Shawgashee, the crawfish! "Master of Life!" he cried, desponding, "Must our lives depend on these things?" On the fourth day of his fasting In his lodge he lay exhausted; From his couch of leaves and branches Gazing with half-open eyelids, Full of shadowy dreams and visions, On the dizzy, swimming landscape, On the gleaming of the water, On the splendor of the sunset. And he saw a youth approaching, Dressed in garments green and yellow, Coming through the purple twilight, Through the splendor of the sunset; Plumes of green bent o'er his forehead, And his hair was soft and golden. Standing at the open doorway, Long he looked at Hiawatha, Looked with pity and compassion On his wasted form and features, And, in accents like the sighing Of the South-Wind in the tree-tops, Said he, "O my Hiawatha! All your prayers are heard in heaven, For you pray not like the others; Not for greater skill in hunting, Not for greater craft in fishing, Not for triumph in the battle, Nor renown among the warriors, But for profit of the people, For advantage of the nations. "From the Master of Life descending, I, the friend of man, Mondamin, Come to warn you and instruct you, How by struggle and by labor You shall gain what you have prayed for. Rise up from your bed of branches, Rise, O youth, and wrestle with me!" Faint with famine, Hiawatha Started from his bed of branches, From the twilight of his wigwam Forth into the flush of sunset Came, and wrestled with Mondamin; At his touch he felt new courage Throbbing in his brain and bosom, Felt new life and hope and vigor Run through every nerve and fibre. So they wrestled there together In the glory of the sunset, And the more they strove and struggled, Stronger still grew Hiawatha; Till the darkness fell around them, And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, From her nest among the pine-trees, Gave a cry of lamentation, Gave a scream of pain and famine. "'T is enough!" then said Mondamin, Smiling upon Hiawatha, "But tomorrow, when the sun sets, I will come again to try you." And he vanished, and was seen not; Whether sinking as the rain sinks, Whether rising as the mists rise, Hiawatha saw not, knew not, Only saw that he had vanished, Leaving him alone and fainting, With the misty lake below him, And the reeling stars above him. On the morrow and the next day, When the sun through heaven descending, Like a red and burning cinder From the hearth of the Great Spirit, Fell into the western waters, Came Mondamin for the trial, For the strife with Hiawatha; Came as silent as the dew comes, From the empty air appearing, Into empty air returning, Taking shape when earth it touches, But invisible to all men In its coming and its going. Thrice they wrestled there together In the glory of the sunset, Till the darkness fell around them, Till the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, From her nest among the pine-trees, Uttered her loud cry of famine, And Mondamin paused to listen. Tall and beautiful he stood there, In his garments green and yellow; To and fro his plumes above him, Waved and nodded with his breathing, And the sweat of the encounter Stood like drops of dew upon him. And he cried, "O Hiawatha! Bravely have you wrestled with me, Thrice have wrestled stoutly with me, And the Master of Life, who sees us, He will give to you the triumph!" Then he smiled, and said: "To-morrow Is the last day of your conflict, Is the last day of your fasting. You will conquer and o'ercome me; Make a bed for me to lie in, Where the rain may fall upon me, Where the sun may come and warm me; Strip these garments, green and yellow, Strip this nodding plumage from me, Lay me in the earth, and make it Soft and loose and light above me. "Let no hand disturb my slumber, Let no weed nor worm molest me, Let not Kahgahgee, the raven, Come to haunt me and molest me, Only come yourself to watch me, Till I wake, and start, and quicken, Till I leap into the sunshine." And thus saying, he departed; Peacefully slept Hiawatha, But he heard the Wawonaissa, Heard the whippoorwill complaining, Perched upon his lonely wigwam; Heard the rushing Sebowisha, Heard the rivulet rippling near him, Talking to the darksome forest; Heard the sighing of the branches, As they lifted and subsided At the passing of the night-wind, Heard them, as one hears in slumber Far-off murmurs, dreamy whispers: Peacefully slept Hiawatha. On the morrow came Nokomis, On the seventh day of his fasting, Came with food for Hiawatha, Came imploring and bewailing, Lest his hunger should o'ercome him, Lest his fasting should be fatal. But he tasted not, and touched not, Only said to her, "Nokomis, Wait until the sun is setting, Till the darkness falls around us, Till the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, Crying from the desolate marshes, Tells us that the day is ended." Homeward weeping went Nokomis, Sorrowing for her Hiawatha, Fearing lest his strength should fail him, Lest his fasting should be fatal. He meanwhile sat weary waiting For the coming of Mondamin, Till the shadows, pointing eastward, Lengthened over field and forest, Till the sun dropped from the heaven, Floating on the waters westward, As a red leaf in the Autumn Falls and floats upon the water, Falls and sinks into its bosom. And behold! the young Mondamin, With his soft and shining tresses, With his garments green and yellow, With his long and glossy plumage, Stood and beckoned at the doorway. And as one in slumber walking, Pale and haggard, but undaunted, From the wigwam Hiawatha Came and wrestled with Mondamin. Round about him spun the landscape, Sky and forest reeled together, And his strong heart leaped within him, As the sturgeon leaps and struggles In a net to break its meshes. Like a ring of fire around him Blazed and flared the red horizon, And a hundred suns seemed looking At the combat of the wrestlers. Suddenly upon the greensward All alone stood Hiawatha, Panting with his wild exertion, Palpitating with the struggle; And before him breathless, lifeless, Lay the youth, with hair dishevelled, Plumage torn, and garments tattered, Dead he lay there in the sunset. And victorious Hiawatha Made the grave as he commanded, Stripped the garments from Mondamin, Stripped his tattered plumage from him, Laid him in the earth, and made it Soft and loose and light above him; And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, From the melancholy moorlands, Gave a cry of lamentation, Gave a cry of pain and anguish! Homeward then went Hiawatha To the lodge of old Nokomis, And the seven days of his fasting Were accomplished and completed. But the place was not forgotten Where he wrestled with Mondamin; Nor forgotten nor neglected Was the grave where lay Mondamin, Sleeping in the rain and sunshine, Where his scattered plumes and garments Faded in the rain and sunshine. Day by day did Hiawatha Go to wait and watch beside it; Kept the dark mould soft above it, Kept it clean from weeds and insects, Drove away, with scoffs and shoutings, Kahgahgee, the king of ravens. Till at length a small green feather From the earth shot slowly upward, Then another and another, And before the Summer ended Stood the maize in all its beauty, With its shining robes about it, And its long, soft, yellow tresses; And in rapture Hiawatha Cried aloud, "It is Mondamin! Yes, the friend of man, Mondamin!" Then he called to old Nokomis And Iagoo, the great boaster, Showed them where the maize was growing, Told them of his wondrous vision, Of his wrestling and his triumph, Of this new gift to the nations, Which should be their food forever. And still later, when the Autumn Changed the long, green leaves to yellow, And the soft and juicy kernels Grew like wampum hard and yellow, Then the ripened ears he gathered, Stripped the withered husks from off them, As he once had stripped the wrestler, Gave the first Feast of Mondamin, And made known unto the people This new gift of the Great Spirit. VI HIAWATHA'S FRIENDS Two good friends had Hiawatha, Singled out from all the others, Bound to him in closest union, And to whom he gave the right hand Of his heart, in joy and sorrow; Chibiabos, the musician, And the very strong man, Kwasind. Straight between them ran the pathway, Never grew the grass upon it; Singing birds, that utter falsehoods, Story-tellers, mischief-makers, Found no eager ear to listen, Could not breed ill-will between them, For they kept each other's counsel, Spake with naked hearts together, Pondering much and much contriving How the tribes of men might prosper. Most beloved by Hiawatha Was the gentle Chibiabos, He the best of all musicians, He the sweetest of all singers. Beautiful and childlike was he, Brave as man is, soft as woman, Pliant as a wand of willow, Stately as a deer with antlers. When he sang, the village listened; All the warriors gathered round him, All the women came to hear him; Now he stirred their souls to passion, Now he melted them to pity. From the hollow reeds he fashioned Flutes so musical and mellow, That the brook, the Sebowisha, Ceased to murmur in the woodland, That the wood-birds ceased from singing, And the squirrel, Adjidaumo, Ceased his chatter in the oak-tree, And the rabbit, the Wabasso, Sat upright to look and listen. Yes, the brook, the Sebowisha, Pausing, said, "O Chibiabos, Teach my waves to flow in music, Softly as your words in singing!" Yes, the bluebird, the Owaissa, Envious, said, "O Chibiabos, Teach me tones as wild and wayward, Teach me songs as full of frenzy!" Yes, the robin, the Opechee, Joyous, said, "O Chibiabos, Teach me tones as sweet and tender, Teach me songs as full of gladness!" And the whippoorwill, Wawonaissa, Sobbing, said, "O Chibiabos, Teach me tones as melancholy, Teach me songs as full of sadness!" All the many sounds of nature Borrowed sweetness from his singing; All the hearts of men were softened By the pathos of his music; For he sang of peace and freedom, Sang of beauty, love, and longing; Sang of death, and life undying In the Islands of the Blessed, In the kingdom of Ponemah, In the land of the Hereafter. Very dear to Hiawatha Was the gentle Chibiabos, He the best of all musicians, He the sweetest of all singers; For his gentleness he loved him, And the magic of his singing. Dear, too, unto Hiawatha Was the very strong man, Kwasind, He the strongest of all mortals, He the mightiest among many; For his very strength he loved him, For his strength allied to goodness. Idle in his youth was Kwasind, Very listless, dull, and dreamy, Never played with other children, Never fished and never hunted, Not like other children was he; But they saw that much he fasted, Much his Manito entreated, Much besought his Guardian Spirit. "Lazy Kwasind!" said his mother, "In my work you never help me! In the Summer you are roaming Idly in the fields and forests; In the Winter you are cowering O'er the firebrands in the wigwam! In the coldest days of Winter I must break the ice for fishing; With my nets you never help me! At the door my nets are hanging, Dripping, freezing with the water; Go and wring them, Yenadizze! Go and dry them in the sunshine!" Slowly, from the ashes, Kwasind Rose, but made no angry answer; From the lodge went forth in silence, Took the nets, that hung together, Dripping, freezing at the doorway; Like a wisp of straw he wrung them, Like a wisp of straw he broke them, Could not wring them without breaking, Such the strength was in his fingers. "Lazy Kwasind!" said his father, "In the hunt you never help me; Every bow you touch is broken, Snapped asunder every arrow; Yet come with me to the forest, You shall bring the hunting homeward." Down a narrow pass they wandered, Where a brooklet led them onward, Where the trail of deer and bison Marked the soft mud on the margin, Till they found all further passage Shut against them, barred securely By the trunks of trees uprooted, Lying lengthwise, lying crosswise, And forbidding further passage. "We must go back," said the old man, "O'er these logs we cannot clamber; Not a woodchuck could get through them, Not a squirrel clamber o'er them!" And straightway his pipe he lighted, And sat down to smoke and ponder. But before his pipe was finished, Lo! the path was cleared before him; All the trunks had Kwasind lifted, To the right hand, to the left hand, Shot the pine-trees swift as arrows, Hurled the cedars light as lances. "Lazy Kwasind!" said the young men, As they sported in the meadow: "Why stand idly looking at us, Leaning on the rock behind you? Come and wrestle with the others, Let us pitch the quoit together!" Lazy Kwasind made no answer, To their challenge made no answer, Only rose, and slowly turning, Seized the huge rock in his fingers, Tore it from its deep foundation, Poised it in the air a moment, Pitched it sheer into the river, Sheer into the swift Pauwating, Where it still is seen in Summer. Once as down that foaming river, Down the rapids of Pauwating, Kwasind sailed with his companions, In the stream he saw a beaver, Saw Ahmeek, the King of Beavers, Struggling with the rushing currents, Rising, sinking in the water. Without speaking, without pausing, Kwasind leaped into the river, Plunged beneath the bubbling surface, Through the whirlpools chased the beaver, Followed him among the islands, Stayed so long beneath the water, That his terrified companions Cried, "Alas! good-by to Kwasind! We shall never more see Kwasind!" But he reappeared triumphant, And upon his shining shoulders Brought the beaver, dead and dripping, Brought the King of all the Beavers. And these two, as I have told you, Were the friends of Hiawatha, Chibiabos, the musician, And the very strong man, Kwasind. Long they lived in peace together, Spake with naked hearts together, Pondering much and much contriving How the tribes of men might prosper. VII HIAWATHA'S SAILING "Give me of your bark, O Birch-tree! Of your yellow bark, O Birch-tree! Growing by the rushing river, Tall and stately in the valley! I a light canoe will build me, Build a swift Cheemaun for sailing, That shall float on the river, Like a yellow leaf in Autumn, Like a yellow water-lily! "Lay aside your cloak, O Birch-tree! Lay aside your white-skin wrapper, For the Summer-time is coming, And the sun is warm in heaven, And you need no white-skin wrapper!" Thus aloud cried Hiawatha In the solitary forest, By the rushing Taquamenaw, When the birds were singing gayly, In the Moon of Leaves were singing, And the sun, from sleep awaking, Started up and said, "Behold me! Gheezis, the great Sun, behold me!" And the tree with all its branches Rustled in the breeze of morning, Saying, with a sigh of patience, "Take my cloak, O Hiawatha!" With his knife the tree he girdled; Just beneath its lowest branches, Just above the roots, he cut it, Till the sap came oozing outward; Down the trunk, from top to bottom, Sheer he cleft the bark asunder, With a wooden wedge he raised it, Stripped it from the trunk unbroken. "Give me of your boughs, O Cedar! Of your strong and pliant branches, My canoe to make more steady, Make more strong and firm beneath me!" Through the summit of the Cedar Went a sound, a cry of horror, Went a murmur of resistance; But it whispered, bending downward, 'Take my boughs, O Hiawatha!" Down he hewed the boughs of cedar, Shaped them straightway to a framework, Like two bows he formed and shaped them, Like two bended bows together. "Give me of your roots, O Tamarack! Of your fibrous roots, O Larch-tree! My canoe to bind together, So to bind the ends together That the water may not enter, That the river may not wet me!" And the Larch, with all its fibres, Shivered in the air of morning, Touched his forehead with its tassels, Slid, with one long sigh of sorrow. "Take them all, O Hiawatha!" From the earth he tore the fibres, Tore the tough roots of the Larch-tree, Closely sewed the bark together, Bound it closely to the frame-work. "Give me of your balm, O Fir-tree! Of your balsam and your resin, So to close the seams together That the water may not enter, That the river may not wet me!" And the Fir-tree, tall and sombre, Sobbed through all its robes of darkness, Rattled like a shore with pebbles, Answered wailing, answered weeping, "Take my balm, O Hiawatha!" And he took the tears of balsam, Took the resin of the Fir-tree, Smeared therewith each seam and fissure, Made each crevice safe from water. "Give me of your quills, O Hedgehog! All your quills, O Kagh, the Hedgehog! I will make a necklace of them, Make a girdle for my beauty, And two stars to deck her bosom!" From a hollow tree the Hedgehog With his sleepy eyes looked at him, Shot his shining quills, like arrows, Saying with a drowsy murmur, Through the tangle of his whiskers, "Take my quills, O Hiawatha!" From the ground the quills he gathered, All the little shining arrows, Stained them red and blue and yellow, With the juice of roots and berries; Into his canoe he wrought them, Round its waist a shining girdle, Round its bows a gleaming necklace, On its breast two stars resplendent. Thus the Birch Canoe was builded In the valley, by the river, In the bosom of the forest; And the forest's life was in it, All its mystery and its magic, All the lightness of the birch-tree, All the toughness of the cedar, All the larch's supple sinews; And it floated on the river Like a yellow leaf in Autumn, Like a yellow water-lily. Paddles none had Hiawatha, Paddles none he had or needed, For his thoughts as paddles served him, And his wishes served to guide him; Swift or slow at will he glided, Veered to right or left at pleasure. Then he called aloud to Kwasind, To his friend, the strong man, Kwasind, Saying, "Help me clear this river Of its sunken logs and sand-bars." Straight into the river Kwasind Plunged as if he were an otter, Dived as if he were a beaver, Stood up to his waist in water, To his arm-pits in the river, Swam and scouted in the river, Tugged at sunken logs and branches, With his hands he scooped the sand-bars, With his feet the ooze and tangle. And thus sailed my Hiawatha Down the rushing Taquamenaw, Sailed through all its bends and windings, Sailed through all its deeps and shallows, While his friend, the strong man, Kwasind, Swam the deeps, the shallows waded. Up and down the river went they, In and out among its islands, Cleared its bed of root and sand-bar, Dragged the dead trees from its channel, Made its passage safe and certain, Made a pathway for the people, From its springs among the mountains, To the waters of Pauwating, To the bay of Taquamenaw. VIII HIAWATHA'S FISHING Forth upon the Gitche Gumee, On the shining Big-Sea-Water, With his fishing-line of cedar, Of the twisted bark of cedar, Forth to catch the sturgeon Nahma, Mishe-Nahma, King of Fishes, In his birch canoe exulting All alone went Hiawatha. Through the clear, transparent water He could see the fishes swimming Far down in the depths below him; See the yellow perch, the Sahwa, Like a sunbeam in the water, See the Shawgashee, the craw-fish, Like a spider on the bottom, On the white and sandy bottom. At the stern sat Hiawatha, With his fishing-line of cedar; In his plumes the breeze of morning Played as in the hemlock branches; On the bows, with tail erected, Sat the squirrel, Adjidaumo; In his fur the breeze of morning Played as in the prairie grasses. On the white sand of the bottom Lay the monster Mishe-Nahma, Lay the sturgeon, King of Fishes; Through his gills he breathed the water, With his fins he fanned and winnowed, With his tail he swept the sand-floor. There he lay in all his armor; On each side a shield to guard him, Plates of bone upon his forehead, Down his sides and back and shoulders Plates of bone with spines projecting Painted was he with his war-paints, Stripes of yellow, red, and azure, Spots of brown and spots of sable; And he lay there on the bottom, Fanning with his fins of purple, As above him Hiawatha In his birch canoe came sailing, With his fishing-line of cedar. "Take my bait," cried Hiawatha, Down into the depths beneath him, "Take my bait, O Sturgeon, Nahma! Come up from below the water, Let us see which is the stronger!" And he dropped his line of cedar Through the clear, transparent water, Waited vainly for an answer, Long sat waiting for an answer, And repeating loud and louder, "Take my bait, O King of Fishes!" Quiet lay the sturgeon, Nahma, Fanning slowly in the water, Looking up at Hiawatha, Listening to his call and clamor, His unnecessary tumult, Till he wearied of the shouting; And he said to the Kenozha, To the pike, the Maskenozha, "Take the bait of this rude fellow, Break the line of Hiawatha!" In his fingers Hiawatha Felt the loose line jerk and tighten; As he drew it in, it tugged so That the birch canoe stood endwise, Like a birch log in the water, With the squirrel, Adjidaumo, Perched and frisking on the summit. Full of scorn was Hiawatha When he saw the fish rise upward, Saw the pike, the Maskenozha, Coming nearer, nearer to him, And he shouted through the water, "Esa! esa! shame upon you! You are but the pike, Kenozha, You are not the fish I wanted, You are not the King of Fishes!" Reeling downward to the bottom Sank the pike in great confusion, And the mighty sturgeon, Nahma, Said to Ugudwash, the sun-fish, To the bream, with scales of crimson, "Take the bait of this great boaster, Break the line of Hiawatha!" Slowly upward, wavering, gleaming, Rose the Ugudwash, the sun-fish, Seized the line of Hiawatha, Swung with all his weight upon it, Made a whirlpool in the water, Whirled the birch canoe in circles, Round and round in gurgling eddies, Till the circles in the water Reached the far-off sandy beaches, Till the water-flags and rushes Nodded on the distant margins. But when Hiawatha saw him Slowly rising through the water, Lifting up his disk refulgent, Loud he shouted in derision, "Esa! esa! shame upon you! You are Ugudwash, the sun-fish, You are not the fish I wanted, You are not the King of Fishes!" Slowly downward, wavering, gleaming, Sank the Ugudwash, the sun-fish, And again the sturgeon, Nahma, Heard the shout of Hiawatha, Heard his challenge of defiance, The unnecessary tumult, Ringing far across the water. From the white sand of the bottom Up he rose with angry gesture, Quivering in each nerve and fibre, Clashing all his plates of armor, Gleaming bright with all his war-paint; In his wrath he darted upward, Flashing leaped into the sunshine, Opened his great jaws, and swallowed Both canoe and Hiawatha. Down into that darksome cavern Plunged the headlong Hiawatha, As a log on some black river Shoots and plunges down the rapids, Found himself in utter darkness, Groped about in helpless wonder, Till he felt a great heart beating, Throbbing in that utter darkness. And he smote it in his anger, With his fist, the heart of Nahma, Felt the mighty King of Fishes Shudder through each nerve and fibre, Heard the water gurgle round him As he leaped and staggered through it, Sick at heart, and faint and weary. Crosswise then did Hiawatha Drag his birch-canoe for safety, Lest from out the jaws of Nahma, In the turmoil and confusion, Forth he might be hurled and perish. And the squirrel, Adjidaumo, Frisked and chatted very gayly, Toiled and tugged with Hiawatha Till the labor was completed. Then said Hiawatha to him, "O my little friend, the squirrel, Bravely have you toiled to help me; Take the thanks of Hiawatha, And the name which now he gives you; For hereafter and forever Boys shall call you Adjidaumo, Tail-in-air the boys shall call you!" And again the sturgeon, Nahma, Gasped and quivered in the water, Then was still, and drifted landward Till he grated on the pebbles, Till the listening Hiawatha Heard him grate upon the margin, Felt him strand upon the pebbles, Knew that Nahma, King of Fishes, Lay there dead upon the margin. Then he heard a clang and flapping, As of many wings assembling, Heard a screaming and confusion, As of birds of prey contending, Saw a gleam of light above him, Shining through the ribs of Nahma, Saw the glittering eyes of sea-gulls, Of Kayoshk, the sea-gulls, peering, Gazing at him through the opening, Heard them saying to each other, "'T is our brother, Hiawatha!" And he shouted from below them, Cried exulting from the caverns: "O ye sea-gulls! O my brothers! I have slain the sturgeon, Nahma; Make the rifts a little larger, With your claws the openings widen, Set me free from this dark prison, And henceforward and forever Men shall speak of your achievements, Calling you Kayoshk, the sea-gulls, Yes, Kayoshk, the Noble Scratchers!" And the wild and clamorous sea-gulls Toiled with beak and claws together, Made the rifts and openings wider In the mighty ribs of Nahma, And from peril and from prison, From the body of the sturgeon, From the peril of the water, They released my Hiawatha. He was standing near his wigwam, On the margin of the water, And he called to old Nokomis, Called and beckoned to Nokomis, Pointed to the sturgeon, Nahma, Lying lifeless on the pebbles, With the sea-gulls feeding on him. "I have slain the Mishe-Nahma, Slain the King of Fishes!" said he; "Look! the sea-gulls feed upon him, Yes, my friends Kayoshk, the sea-gulls; Drive them not away, Nokomis, They have saved me from great peril In the body of the sturgeon, Wait until their meal is ended, Till their craws are full with feasting, Till they homeward fly, at sunset, To their nests among the marshes; Then bring all your pots and kettles, And make oil for us in Winter." And she waited till the sun set, Till the pallid moon, the Night-sun, Rose above the tranquil water, Till Kayoshk, the sated sea-gulls, From their banquet rose with clamor, And across the fiery sunset Winged their way to far-off islands, To their nests among the rushes. To his sleep went Hiawatha, And Nokomis to her labor, Toiling patient in the moonlight, Till the sun and moon changed places, Till the sky was red with sunrise, And Kayoshk, the hungry sea-gulls, Came back from the reedy islands, Clamorous for their morning banquet. Three whole days and nights alternate Old Nokomis and the sea-gulls Stripped the oily flesh of Nahma, Till the waves washed through the rib-bones, Till the sea-gulls came no longer, And upon the sands lay nothing But the skeleton of Nahma. IX HIAWATHA AND THE PEARL-FEATHER On the shores of Gitche Gumee, Of the shining Big-Sea-Water, Stood Nokomis, the old woman, Pointing with her finger westward, O'er the water pointing westward, To the purple clouds of sunset. Fiercely the red sun descending Burned his way along the heavens, Set the sky on fire behind him, As war-parties, when retreating, Burn the prairies on their war-trail; And the moon, the Night-sun, eastward, Suddenly starting from his ambush, Followed fast those bloody footprints, Followed in that fiery war-trail, With its glare upon his features. And Nokomis, the old woman, Pointing with her finger westward, Spake these words to Hiawatha: "Yonder dwells the great Pearl-Feather, Megissogwon, the Magician, Manito of Wealth and Wampum, Guarded by his fiery serpents, Guarded by the black pitch-water. You can see his fiery serpents, The Kenabeek, the great serpents, Coiling, playing in the water; You can see the black pitch-water Stretching far away beyond them, To the purple clouds of sunset! "He it was who slew my father, By his wicked wiles and cunning, When he from the moon descended, When he came on earth to seek me. He, the mightiest of Magicians, Sends the fever from the marshes, Sends the pestilential vapors, Sends the poisonous exhalations, Sends the white fog from the fen-lands, Sends disease and death among us! "Take your bow, O Hiawatha, Take your arrows, jasper-headed, Take your war-club, Puggawaugun, And your mittens, Minjekahwun, And your birch-canoe for sailing, And the oil of Mishe-Nahma, So to smear its sides, that swiftly You may pass the black pitch-water; Slay this merciless magician, Save the people from the fever That he breathes across the fen-lands, And avenge my father's murder!" Straightway then my Hiawatha Armed himself with all his war-gear, Launched his birch-canoe for sailing; With his palm its sides he patted, Said with glee, "Cheemaun, my darling, O my Birch-canoe! leap forward, Where you see the fiery serpents, Where you see the black pitch-water!" Forward leaped Cheemaun exulting, And the noble Hiawatha Sang his war-song wild and woful, And above him the war-eagle, The Keneu, the great war-eagle, Master of all fowls with feathers, Screamed and hurtled through the heavens. Soon he reached the fiery serpents, The Kenabeek, the great serpents, Lying huge upon the water, Sparkling, rippling in the water, Lying coiled across the passage, With their blazing crests uplifted, Breathing fiery fogs and vapors, So that none could pass beyond them. But the fearless Hiawatha Cried aloud, and spake in this wise: "Let me pass my way, Kenabeek, Let me go upon my journey!" And they answered, hissing fiercely, With their fiery breath made answer: "Back, go back! O Shaugodaya! Back to old Nokomis, Faint-heart!" Then the angry Hiawatha Raised his mighty bow of ash-tree, Seized his arrows, jasper-headed, Shot them fast among the serpents; Every twanging of the bow-string Was a war-cry and a death-cry, Every whizzing of an arrow Was a death-song of Kenabeek. Weltering in the bloody water, Dead lay all the fiery serpents, And among them Hiawatha Harmless sailed, and cried exulting: "Onward, O Cheemaun, my darling! Onward to the black pitch-water!" Then he took the oil of Nahma, And the bows and sides anointed, Smeared them well with oil, that swiftly He might pass the black pitch-water. All night long he sailed upon it, Sailed upon that sluggish water, Covered with its mould of ages, Black with rotting water-rushes, Rank with flags and leaves of lilies, Stagnant, lifeless, dreary, dismal, Lighted by the shimmering moonlight, And by will-o'-the-wisps illumined, Fires by ghosts of dead men kindled, In their weary night-encampments. All the air was white with moonlight, All the water black with shadow, And around him the Suggema, The mosquito, sang his war-song, And the fire-flies, Wah-wah-taysee, Waved their torches to mislead him; And the bull-frog, the Dahinda, Thrust his head into the moonlight, Fixed his yellow eyes upon him, Sobbed and sank beneath the surface; And anon a thousand whistles, Answered over all the fen-lands, And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, Far off on the reedy margin, Heralded the hero's coming. Westward thus fared Hiawatha, Toward the realm of Megissogwon, Toward the land of the Pearl-Feather, Till the level moon stared at him, In his face stared pale and haggard, Till the sun was hot behind him, Till it burned upon his shoulders, And before him on the upland He could see the Shining Wigwam Of the Manito of Wampum, Of the mightiest of Magicians. Then once more Cheemaun he patted, To his birch-canoe said, "Onward!" And it stirred in all its fibres, And with one great bound of triumph Leaped across the water-lilies, Leaped through tangled flags and rushes, And upon the beach beyond them Dry-shod landed Hiawatha. Straight he took his bow of ash-tree, On the sand one end he rested, With his knee he pressed the middle, Stretched the faithful bow-string tighter, Took an arrow, jasper-headed, Shot it at the Shining Wigwam, Sent it singing as a herald, As a bearer of his message, Of his challenge loud and lofty: "Come forth from your lodge, Pearl-Feather! Hiawatha waits your coming!" Straightway from the Shining Wigwam Came the mighty Megissogwon, Tall of stature, broad of shoulder, Dark and terrible in aspect, Clad from head to foot in wampum, Armed with all his warlike weapons, Painted like the sky of morning, Streaked with crimson, blue, and yellow, Crested with great eagle-feathers, Streaming upward, streaming outward. "Well I know you, Hiawatha!" Cried he in a voice of thunder, In a tone of loud derision. "Hasten back, O Shaugodaya! Hasten back among the women, Back to old Nokomis, Faint-heart! I will slay you as you stand there, As of old I slew her father!" But my Hiawatha answered, Nothing daunted, fearing nothing: "Big words do not smite like war-clubs, Boastful breath is not a bow-string, Taunts are not so sharp as arrows, Deeds are better things than words are, Actions mightier than boastings!" Then began the greatest battle That the sun had ever looked on, That the war-birds ever witnessed. All a Summer's day it lasted, From the sunrise to the sunset; For the shafts of Hiawatha Harmless hit the shirt of wampum, Harmless fell the blows he dealt it With his mittens, Minjekahwun, Harmless fell the heavy war-club; It could dash the rocks asunder, But it could not break the meshes Of that magic shirt of wampum. Till at sunset Hiawatha, Leaning on his bow of ash-tree, Wounded, weary, and desponding, With his mighty war-club broken, With his mittens torn and tattered, And three useless arrows only, Paused to rest beneath a pine-tree, From whose branches trailed the mosses, And whose trunk was coated over With the Dead-man's Moccasin-leather, With the fungus white and yellow. Suddenly from the boughs above him Sang the Mama, the woodpecker: "Aim your arrows, Hiawatha, At the head of Megissogwon, Strike the tuft of hair upon it, At their roots the long black tresses; There alone can he be wounded!" Winged with feathers, tipped with jasper, Swift flew Hiawatha's arrow, Just as Megissogwon, stooping, Raised a heavy stone to throw it. Full upon the crown it struck him, At the roots of his long tresses, And he reeled and staggered forward, Plunging like a wounded bison, Yes, like Pezhekee, the bison, When the snow is on the prairie. Swifter flew the second arrow, In the pathway of the other, Piercing deeper than the other, Wounding sorer than the other; And the knees of Megissogwon Shook like windy reeds beneath him, Bent and trembled like the rushes. But the third and latest arrow Swiftest flew, and wounded sorest, And the mighty Megissogwon Saw the fiery eyes of Pauguk, Saw the eyes of Death glare at him, Heard his voice call in the darkness; At the feet of Hiawatha Lifeless lay the great Pearl-Feather, Lay the mightiest of Magicians. Then the grateful Hiawatha Called the Mama, the woodpecker, From his perch among the branches Of the melancholy pine-tree, And, in honor of his service, Stained with blood the tuft of feathers On the little head of Mama; Even to this day he wears it, Wears the tuft of crimson feathers, As a symbol of his service. Then he stripped the shirt of wampum From the back of Megissogwon, As a trophy of the battle, As a signal of his conquest. On the shore he left the body, Half on land and half in water, In the sand his feet were buried, And his face was in the water. And above him, wheeled and clamored The Keneu, the great war-eagle, Sailing round in narrower circles, Hovering nearer, nearer, nearer. From the wigwam Hiawatha Bore the wealth of Megissogwon, All his wealth of skins and wampum, Furs of bison and of beaver, Furs of sable and of ermine, Wampum belts and strings and pouches, Quivers wrought with beads of wampum, Filled with arrows, silver-headed. Homeward then he sailed exulting, Homeward through the black pitch-water, Homeward through the weltering serpents, With the trophies of the battle, With a shout and song of triumph. On the shore stood old Nokomis, On the shore stood Chibiabos, And the very strong man, Kwasind, Waiting for the hero's coming, Listening to his songs of triumph. And the people of the village Welcomed him with songs and dances, Made a joyous feast, and shouted: "Honor be to Hiawatha! He has slain the great Pearl-Feather, Slain the mightiest of Magicians, Him, who sent the fiery fever, Sent the white fog from the fen-lands, Sent disease and death among us!" Ever dear to Hiawatha Was the memory of Mama! And in token of his friendship, As a mark of his remembrance, He adorned and decked his pipe-stem With the crimson tuft of feathers, With the blood-red crest of Mama. But the wealth of Megissogwon, All the trophies of the battle, He divided with his people, Shared it equally among them. X HIAWATHA'S WOOING "As unto the bow the cord is, So unto the man is woman; Though she bends him, she obeys him, Though she draws him, yet she follows, Useless each without the other!" Thus the youthful Hiawatha Said within himself and pondered, Much perplexed by various feelings, Listless, longing, hoping, fearing, Dreaming still of Minnehaha, Of the lovely Laughing Water, In the land of the Dacotahs. "Wed a maiden of your people," Warning said the old Nokomis; "Go not eastward, go not westward, For a stranger, whom we know not! Like a fire upon the hearth-stone Is a neighbor's homely daughter, Like the starlight or the moonlight Is the handsomest of strangers!" Thus dissuading spake Nokomis, And my Hiawatha answered Only this: "Dear old Nokomis, Very pleasant is the firelight, But I like the starlight better, Better do I like the moonlight!" Gravely then said old Nokomis: "Bring not here an idle maiden, Bring not here a useless woman, Hands unskilful, feet unwilling; Bring a wife with nimble fingers, Heart and hand that move together, Feet that run on willing errands!" Smiling answered Hiawatha: "In the land of the Dacotahs Lives the Arrow-maker's daughter, Minnehaha, Laughing Water, Handsomest of all the women. I will bring her to your wigwam, She shall run upon your errands, Be your starlight, moonlight, firelight, Be the sunlight of my people!" Still dissuading said Nokomis: "Bring not to my lodge a stranger From the land of the Dacotahs! Very fierce are the Dacotahs, Often is there war between us, There are feuds yet unforgotten, Wounds that ache and still may open!" Laughing answered Hiawatha: "For that reason, if no other, Would I wed the fair Dacotah, That our tribes might be united, That old feuds might be forgotten, And old wounds be healed forever!" Thus departed Hiawatha To the land of the Dacotahs, To the land of handsome women; Striding over moor and meadow, Through interminable forests, Through uninterrupted silence. With his moccasins of magic, At each stride a mile he measured; Yet the way seemed long before him, And his heart outran his footsteps; And he journeyed without resting, Till he heard the cataract's laughter, Heard the Falls of Minnehaha Calling to him through the silence. "Pleasant is the sound!" he murmured, "Pleasant is the voice that calls me!" On the outskirts of the forests, 'Twixt the shadow and the sunshine, Herds of fallow deer were feeding, But they saw not Hiawatha; To his bow he whispered, "Fail not!" To his arrow whispered, "Swerve not!" Sent it singing on its errand, To the red heart of the roebuck; Threw the deer across his shoulder, And sped forward without pausing. At the doorway of his wigwam Sat the ancient Arrow-maker, In the land of the Dacotahs, Making arrow-heads of jasper, Arrow-heads of chalcedony. At his side, in all her beauty, Sat the lovely Minnehaha, Sat his daughter, Laughing Water, Plaiting mats of flags and rushes Of the past the old man's thoughts were, And the maiden's of the future. He was thinking, as he sat there, Of the days when with such arrows He had struck the deer and bison, On the Muskoday, the meadow; Shot the wild goose, flying southward On the wing, the clamorous Wawa; Thinking of the great war-parties, How they came to buy his arrows, Could not fight without his arrows. Ah, no more such noble warriors Could be found on earth as they were! Now the men were all like women, Only used their tongues for weapons! She was thinking of a hunter, From another tribe and country, Young and tall and very handsome, Who one morning, in the Spring-time, Came to buy her father's arrows, Sat and rested in the wigwam, Lingered long about the doorway, Looking back as he departed. She had heard her father praise him, Praise his courage and his wisdom; Would he come again for arrows To the Falls of Minnehaha? On the mat her hands lay idle, And her eyes were very dreamy. Through their thoughts they heard a footstep, Heard a rustling in the branches, And with glowing cheek and forehead, With the deer upon his shoulders, Suddenly from out the woodlands Hiawatha stood before them. Straight the ancient Arrow-maker Looked up gravely from his labor, Laid aside the unfinished arrow, Bade him enter at the doorway, Saying, as he rose to meet him, 'Hiawatha, you are welcome!" At the feet of Laughing Water Hiawatha laid his burden, Threw the red deer from his shoulders; And the maiden looked up at him, Looked up from her mat of rushes, Said with gentle look and accent, "You are welcome, Hiawatha!" Very spacious was the wigwam, Made of deer-skins dressed and whitened, With the Gods of the Dacotahs Drawn and painted on its curtains, And so tall the doorway, hardly Hiawatha stooped to enter, Hardly touched his eagle-feathers As he entered at the doorway. Then uprose the Laughing Water, From the ground fair Minnehaha, Laid aside her mat unfinished, Brought forth food and set before them, Water brought them from the brooklet, Gave them food in earthen vessels, Gave them drink in bowls of bass-wood, Listened while the guest was speaking, Listened while her father answered, But not once her lips she opened, Not a single word she uttered. Yes, as in a dream she listened To the words of Hiawatha, As he talked of old Nokomis, Who had nursed him in his childhood, As he told of his companions, Chibiabos, the musician, And the very strong man, Kwasind, And of happiness and plenty In the land of the Ojibways, In the pleasant land and peaceful. "After many years of warfare, Many years of strife and bloodshed, There is peace between the Ojibways And the tribe of the Dacotahs." Thus continued Hiawatha, And then added, speaking slowly, "That this peace may last forever, And our hands be clasped more closely, And our hearts be more united, Give me as my wife this maiden, Minnehaha, Laughing Water, Loveliest of Dacotah women!" And the ancient Arrow-maker Paused a moment ere he answered, Smoked a little while in silence, Looked at Hiawatha proudly, Fondly looked at Laughing Water, And made answer very gravely: "Yes, if Minnehaha wishes; Let your heart speak, Minnehaha!" And the lovely Laughing Water Seemed more lovely as she stood there, Neither willing nor reluctant, As she went to Hiawatha, Softly took the seat beside him, While she said, and blushed to say it, "I will follow you, my husband!" This was Hiawatha's wooing! Thus it was he won the daughter Of the ancient Arrow-maker, In the land of the Dacotahs! From the wigwam he departed, Leading with him Laughing Water; Hand in hand they went together, Through the woodland and the meadow, Left the old man standing lonely At the doorway of his wigwam, Heard the Falls of Minnehaha Calling to them from the distance, Crying to them from afar off, "Fare thee well, O Minnehaha!" And the ancient Arrow-maker Turned again unto his labor, Sat down by his sunny doorway, Murmuring to himself, and saying: "Thus it is our daughters leave us, Those we love, and those who love us! Just when they have learned to help us, When we are old and lean upon them, Comes a youth with flaunting feathers, With his flute of reeds, a stranger Wanders piping through the village, Beckons to the fairest maiden, And she follows where he leads her, Leaving all things for the stranger!" Pleasant was the journey homeward, Through interminable forests, Over meadow, over mountain, Over river, hill, and hollow. Short it seemed to Hiawatha, Though they journeyed very slowly, Though his pace he checked and slackened To the steps of Laughing Water. Over wide and rushing rivers In his arms he bore the maiden; Light he thought her as a feather, As the plume upon his head-gear; Cleared the tangled pathway for her, Bent aside the swaying branches, Made at night a lodge of branches, And a bed with boughs of hemlock, And a fire before the doorway With the dry cones of the pine-tree. All the travelling winds went with them, O'er the meadows, through the forest; All the stars of night looked at them, Watched with sleepless eyes their slumber; From his ambush in the oak-tree Peeped the squirrel, Adjidaumo, Watched with eager eyes the lovers; And the rabbit, the Wabasso, Scampered from the path before them, Peering, peeping from his burrow, Sat erect upon his haunches, Watched with curious eyes the lovers. Pleasant was the journey homeward! All the birds sang loud and sweetly Songs of happiness and heart's-ease; Sang the bluebird, the Owaissa, "Happy are you, Hiawatha, Having such a wife to love you!" Sang the robin, the Opechee, "Happy are you, Laughing Water, Having such a noble husband!" From the sky the sun benignant Looked upon them through the branches, Saying to them, "O my children, Love is sunshine, hate is shadow, Life is checkered shade and sunshine, Rule by love, O Hiawatha!" From the sky the moon looked at them, Filled the lodge with mystic splendors, Whispered to them, "O my children, Day is restless, night is quiet, Man imperious, woman feeble; Half is mine, although I follow; Rule by patience, Laughing Water!" Thus it was they journeyed homeward; Thus it was that Hiawatha To the lodge of old Nokomis Brought the moonlight, starlight, firelight, Brought the sunshine of his people, Minnehaha, Laughing Water, Handsomest of all the women In the land of the Dacotahs, In the land of handsome women. XI HIAWATHA'S WEDDING-FEAST You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis, How the handsome Yenadizze Danced at Hiawatha's wedding; How the gentle Chibiabos, He the sweetest of musicians, Sang his songs of love and longing; How Iagoo, the great boaster, He the marvellous story-teller, Told his tales of strange adventure, That the feast might be more joyous, That the time might pass more gayly, And the guests be more contented. Sumptuous was the feast Nokomis Made at Hiawatha's wedding; All the bowls were made of bass-wood, White and polished very smoothly, All the spoons of horn of bison, Black and polished very smoothly. She had sent through all the village Messengers with wands of willow, As a sign of invitation, As a token of the feasting; And the wedding guests assembled, Clad in all their richest raiment, Robes of fur and belts of wampum, Splendid with their paint and plumage, Beautiful with beads and tassels. First they ate the sturgeon, Nahma, And the pike, the Maskenozha, Caught and cooked by old Nokomis; Then on pemican they feasted, Pemican and buffalo marrow, Haunch of deer and hump of bison, Yellow cakes of the Mondamin, And the wild rice of the river. But the gracious Hiawatha, And the lovely Laughing Water, And the careful old Nokomis, Tasted not the food before them, Only waited on the others Only served their guests in silence. And when all the guests had finished, Old Nokomis, brisk and busy, From an ample pouch of otter, Filled the red-stone pipes for smoking With tobacco from the South-land, Mixed with bark of the red willow, And with herbs and leaves of fragrance. Then she said, "O Pau-Puk-Keewis, Dance for us your merry dances, Dance the Beggar's Dance to please us, That the feast may be more joyous, That the time may pass more gayly, And our guests be more contented!" Then the handsome Pau-Puk-Keewis, He the idle Yenadizze, He the merry mischief-maker, Whom the people called the Storm-Fool, Rose among the guests assembled. Skilled was he in sports and pastimes, In the merry dance of snow-shoes, In the play of quoits and ball-play; Skilled was he in games of hazard, In all games of skill and hazard, Pugasaing, the Bowl and Counters, Kuntassoo, the Game of Plum-stones. Though the warriors called him Faint-Heart, Called him coward, Shaugodaya, Idler, gambler, Yenadizze, Little heeded he their jesting, Little cared he for their insults, For the women and the maidens Loved the handsome Pau-Puk-Keewis. He was dressed in shirt of doeskin, White and soft, and fringed with ermine, All inwrought with beads of wampum; He was dressed in deer-skin leggings, Fringed with hedgehog quills and ermine, And in moccasins of buck-skin, Thick with quills and beads embroidered. On his head were plumes of swan's down, On his heels were tails of foxes, In one hand a fan of feathers, And a pipe was in the other. Barred with streaks of red and yellow, Streaks of blue and bright vermilion, Shone the face of Pau-Puk-Keewis. From his forehead fell his tresses, Smooth, and parted like a woman's, Shining bright with oil, and plaited, Hung with braids of scented grasses, As among the guests assembled, To the sound of flutes and singing, To the sound of drums and voices, Rose the handsome Pau-Puk-Keewis, And began his mystic dances. First he danced a solemn measure, Very slow in step and gesture, In and out among the pine-trees, Through the shadows and the sunshine, Treading softly like a panther. Then more swiftly and still swifter, Whirling, spinning round in circles, Leaping o'er the guests assembled, Eddying round and round the wigwam, Till the leaves went whirling with him, Till the dust and wind together Swept in eddies round about him. Then along the sandy margin Of the lake, the Big-Sea-Water, On he sped with frenzied gestures, Stamped upon the sand, and tossed it Wildly in the air around him; Till the wind became a whirlwind, Till the sand was blown and sifted Like great snowdrifts o'er the landscape, Heaping all the shores with Sand Dunes, Sand Hills of the Nagow Wudjoo! Thus the merry Pau-Puk-Keewis Danced his Beggar's Dance to please them, And, returning, sat down laughing There among the guests assembled, Sat and fanned himself serenely With his fan of turkey-feathers. Then they said to Chibiabos, To the friend of Hiawatha, To the sweetest of all singers, To the best of all musicians, "Sing to us, O Chibiabos! Songs of love and songs of longing, That the feast may be more joyous, That the time may pass more gayly, And our guests be more contented!" And the gentle Chibiabos Sang in accents sweet and tender, Sang in tones of deep emotion, Songs of love and songs of longing; Looking still at Hiawatha, Looking at fair Laughing Water, Sang he softly, sang in this wise: "Onaway! Awake, beloved! Thou the wild-flower of the forest! Thou the wild-bird of the prairie! Thou with eyes so soft and fawn-like! "If thou only lookest at me, I am happy, I am happy, As the lilies of the prairie, When they feel the dew upon them! "Sweet thy breath is as the fragrance Of the wild-flowers in the morning, As their fragrance is at evening, In the Moon when leaves are falling. "Does not all the blood within me Leap to meet thee, leap to meet thee, As the springs to meet the sunshine, In the Moon when nights are brightest? "Onaway! my heart sings to thee, Sings with joy when thou art near me, As the sighing, singing branches In the pleasant Moon of Strawberries! "When thou art not pleased, beloved, Then my heart is sad and darkened, As the shining river darkens When the clouds drop shadows on it! "When thou smilest, my beloved, Then my troubled heart is brightened, As in sunshine gleam the ripples That the cold wind makes in rivers. "Smiles the earth, and smile the waters, Smile the cloudless skies above us, But I lose the way of smiling When thou art no longer near me! "I myself, myself! behold me! Blood of my beating heart, behold me! Oh awake, awake, beloved! Onaway! awake, beloved!" Thus the gentle Chibiabos Sang his song of love and longing; And Iagoo, the great boaster, He the marvellous story-teller, He the friend of old Nokomis, Jealous of the sweet musician, Jealous of the applause they gave him, Saw in all the eyes around him, Saw in all their looks and gestures, That the wedding guests assembled Longed to hear his pleasant stories, His immeasurable falsehoods. Very boastful was Iagoo; Never heard he an adventure But himself had met a greater; Never any deed of daring But himself had done a bolder; Never any marvellous story But himself could tell a stranger. Would you listen to his boasting, Would you only give him credence, No one ever shot an arrow Half so far and high as he had; Ever caught so many fishes, Ever killed so many reindeer, Ever trapped so many beaver! None could run so fast as he could, None could dive so deep as he could, None could swim so far as he could; None had made so many journeys, None had seen so many wonders, As this wonderful Iagoo, As this marvellous story-teller! Thus his name became a by-word And a jest among the people; And whene'er a boastful hunter Praised his own address too highly, Or a warrior, home returning, Talked too much of his achievements, All his hearers cried, "Iagoo! Here's Iagoo come among us!" He it was who carved the cradle Of the little Hiawatha, Carved its framework out of linden, Bound it strong with reindeer sinews; He it was who taught him later How to make his bows and arrows, How to make the bows of ash-tree, And the arrows of the oak-tree. So among the guests assembled At my Hiawatha's wedding Sat Iagoo, old and ugly, Sat the marvellous story-teller. And they said, "O good Iagoo, Tell us now a tale of wonder, Tell us of some strange adventure, That the feast may be more joyous, That the time may pass more gayly, And our guests be more contented!" And Iagoo answered straightway, "You shall hear a tale of wonder, You shall hear the strange adventures Of Osseo, the Magician, From the Evening Star descending." XII THE SON OF THE EVENING STAR Can it be the sun descending O'er the level plain of water? Or the Red Swan floating, flying, Wounded by the magic arrow, Staining all the waves with crimson, With the crimson of its life-blood, Filling all the air with splendor, With the splendor of its plumage? Yes; it is the sun descending, Sinking down into the water; All the sky is stained with purple, All the water flushed with crimson! No; it is the Red Swan floating, Diving down beneath the water; To the sky its wings are lifted, With its blood the waves are reddened! Over it the Star of Evening Melts and trembles through the purple, Hangs suspended in the twilight. No; it is a bead of wampum On the robes of the Great Spirit As he passes through the twilight, Walks in silence through the heavens. This with joy beheld Iagoo And he said in haste: "Behold it! See the sacred Star of Evening! You shall hear a tale of wonder, Hear the story of Osseo, Son of the Evening Star, Osseo! "Once, in days no more remembered, Ages nearer the beginning, When the heavens were closer to us, And the Gods were more familiar, In the North-land lived a hunter, With ten young and comely daughters, Tall and lithe as wands of willow; Only Oweenee, the youngest, She the wilful and the wayward, She the silent, dreamy maiden, Was the fairest of the sisters. "All these women married warriors, Married brave and haughty husbands; Only Oweenee, the youngest, Laughed and flouted all her lovers, All her young and handsome suitors, And then married old Osseo, Old Osseo, poor and ugly, Broken with age and weak with coughing, Always coughing like a squirrel. "Ah, but beautiful within him Was the spirit of Osseo, From the Evening Star descended, Star of Evening, Star of Woman, Star of tenderness and passion! All its fire was in his bosom, All its beauty in his spirit, All its mystery in his being, All its splendor in his language! "And her lovers, the rejected, Handsome men with belts of wampum, Handsome men with paint and feathers. Pointed at her in derision, Followed her with jest and laughter. But she said: 'I care not for you, Care not for your belts of wampum, Care not for your paint and feathers, Care not for your jests and laughter; I am happy with Osseo!' "Once to some great feast invited, Through the damp and dusk of evening, Walked together the ten sisters, Walked together with their husbands; Slowly followed old Osseo, With fair Oweenee beside him; All the others chatted gayly, These two only walked in silence. "At the western sky Osseo Gazed intent, as if imploring, Often stopped and gazed imploring At the trembling Star of Evening, At the tender Star of Woman; And they heard him murmur softly, 'Ah, showain nemeshin, Nosa! Pity, pity me, my father!' "'Listen!' said the eldest sister, 'He is praying to his father! What a pity that the old man Does not stumble in the pathway, Does not break his neck by falling!' And they laughed till all the forest Rang with their unseemly laughter. "On their pathway through the woodlands Lay an oak, by storms uprooted, Lay the great trunk of an oak-tree, Buried half in leaves and mosses, Mouldering, crumbling, huge and hollow. And Osseo, when he saw it, Gave a shout, a cry of anguish, Leaped into its yawning cavern, At one end went in an old man, Wasted, wrinkled, old, and ugly; From the other came a young man, Tall and straight and strong and handsome. "Thus Osseo was transfigured, Thus restored to youth and beauty; But, alas for good Osseo, And for Oweenee, the faithful! Strangely, too, was she transfigured. Changed into a weak old woman, With a staff she tottered onward, Wasted, wrinkled, old, and ugly! And the sisters and their husbands Laughed until the echoing forest Rang with their unseemly laughter. "But Osseo turned not from her, Walked with slower step beside her, Took her hand, as brown and withered As an oak-leaf is in Winter, Called her sweetheart, Nenemoosha, Soothed her with soft words of kindness, Till they reached the lodge of feasting, Till they sat down in the wigwam, Sacred to the Star of Evening, To the tender Star of Woman. "Wrapt in visions, lost in dreaming, At the banquet sat Osseo; All were merry, all were happy, All were joyous but Osseo. Neither food nor drink he tasted, Neither did he speak nor listen; But as one bewildered sat he, Looking dreamily and sadly, First at Oweenee, then upward At the gleaming sky above them. "Then a voice was heard, a whisper, Coming from the starry distance, Coming from the empty vastness, Low, and musical, and tender; And the voice said: 'O Osseo! O my son, my best beloved! Broken are the spells that bound you, All the charms of the magicians, All the magic powers of evil; Come to me; ascend, Osseo! "'Taste the food that stands before you: It is blessed and enchanted, It has magic virtues in it, It will change you to a spirit. All your bowls and all your kettles Shall be wood and clay no longer; But the bowls be changed to wampum, And the kettles shall be silver; They shall shine like shells of scarlet, Like the fire shall gleam and glimmer. "'And the women shall no longer Bear the dreary doom of labor, But be changed to birds, and glisten With the beauty of the starlight, Painted with the dusky splendors Of the skies and clouds of evening!' "What Osseo heard as whispers, What as words he comprehended, Was but music to the others, Music as of birds afar off, Of the whippoorwill afar off, Of the lonely Wawonaissa Singing in the darksome forest. "Then the lodge began to tremble, Straight began to shake and tremble, And they felt it rising, rising, Slowly through the air ascending, From the darkness of the tree-tops Forth into the dewy starlight, Till it passed the topmost branches; And behold! the wooden dishes All were changed to shells of scarlet! And behold! the earthen kettles All were changed to bowls of silver! And the roof-poles of the wigwam Were as glittering rods of silver, And the roof of bark upon them As the shining shards of beetles. "Then Osseo gazed around him, And he saw the nine fair sisters, All the sisters and their husbands, Changed to birds of various plumage. Some were jays and some were magpies, Others thrushes, others blackbirds; And they hopped, and sang, and twittered, Perked and fluttered all their feathers, Strutted in their shining plumage, And their tails like fans unfolded. "Only Oweenee, the youngest, Was not changed, but sat in silence, Wasted, wrinkled, old, and ugly, Looking sadly at the others; Till Osseo, gazing upward, Gave another cry of anguish, Such a cry as he had uttered By the oak-tree in the forest. "Then returned her youth and beauty, And her soiled and tattered garments Were transformed to robes of ermine, And her staff became a feather, Yes, a shining silver feather! "And again the wigwam trembled, Swayed and rushed through airy currents, Through transparent cloud and vapor, And amid celestial splendors On the Evening Star alighted, As a snow-flake falls on snow-flake, As a leaf drops on a river, As the thistledown on water. "Forth with cheerful words of welcome Came the father of Osseo, He with radiant locks of silver, He with eyes serene and tender. And he said: 'My son, Osseo, Hang the cage of birds you bring there, Hang the cage with rods of silver, And the birds with glistening feathers, At the doorway of my wigwam.' "At the door he hung the bird-cage, And they entered in and gladly Listened to Osseo's father, Ruler of the Star of Evening, As he said: 'O my Osseo! I have had compassion on you, Given you back your youth and beauty, Into birds of various plumage Changed your sisters and their husbands; Changed them thus because they mocked you In the figure of the old man, In that aspect sad and wrinkled, Could not see your heart of passion, Could not see your youth immortal; Only Oweenee, the faithful, Saw your naked heart and loved you. "'In the lodge that glimmers yonder, In the little star that twinkles Through the vapors, on the left hand, Lives the envious Evil Spirit, The Wabeno, the magician, Who transformed you to an old man. Take heed lest his beams fall on you, For the rays he darts around him Are the power of his enchantment, Are the arrows that he uses.' "Many years, in peace and quiet, On the peaceful Star of Evening Dwelt Osseo with his father; Many years, in song and flutter, At the doorway of the wigwam, Hung the cage with rods of silver, And fair Oweenee, the faithful, Bore a son unto Osseo, With the beauty of his mother, With the courage of his father. "And the boy grew up and prospered, And Osseo, to delight him, Made him little bows and arrows, Opened the great cage of silver, And let loose his aunts and uncles, All those birds with glossy feathers, For his little son to shoot at. "Round and round they wheeled and darted, Filled the Evening Star with music, With their songs of joy and freedom Filled the Evening Star with splendor, With the fluttering of their plumage; Till the boy, the little hunter, Bent his bow and shot an arrow, Shot a swift and fatal arrow, And a bird, with shining feathers, At his feet fell wounded sorely. "But, O wondrous transformation! 'T was no bird he saw before him, 'T was a beautiful young woman, With the arrow in her bosom! "When her blood fell on the planet, On the sacred Star of Evening, Broken was the spell of magic, Powerless was the strange enchantment, And the youth, the fearless bowman, Suddenly felt himself descending, Held by unseen hands, but sinking Downward through the empty spaces, Downward through the clouds and vapors, Till he rested on an island, On an island, green and grassy, Yonder in the Big-Sea-Water. "After him he saw descending All the birds with shining feathers, Fluttering, falling, wafted downward, Like the painted leaves of Autumn; And the lodge with poles of silver, With its roof like wings of beetles, Like the shining shards of beetles, By the winds of heaven uplifted, Slowly sank upon the island, Bringing back the good Osseo, Bringing Oweenee, the faithful. "Then the birds, again transfigured, Reassumed the shape of mortals, Took their shape, but not their stature; They remained as Little People, Like the pygmies, the Puk-Wudjies, And on pleasant nights of Summer, When the Evening Star was shining, Hand in hand they danced together On the island's craggy headlands, On the sand-beach low and level. "Still their glittering lodge is seen there, On the tranquil Summer evenings, And upon the shore the fisher Sometimes hears their happy voices, Sees them dancing in the starlight!" When the story was completed, When the wondrous tale was ended, Looking round upon his listeners, Solemnly Iagoo added: "There are great men, I have known such, Whom their people understand not, Whom they even make a jest of, Scoff and jeer at in derision. From the story of Osseo Let us learn the fate of jesters!" All the wedding guests delighted Listened to the marvellous story, Listened laughing and applauding, And they whispered to each other: "Does he mean himself, I wonder? And are we the aunts and uncles?" Then again sang Chibiabos, Sang a song of love and longing, In those accents sweet and tender, In those tones of pensive sadness, Sang a maiden's lamentation For her lover, her Algonquin. "When I think of my beloved, Ah me! think of my beloved, When my heart is thinking of him, O my sweetheart, my Algonquin! "Ah me! when I parted from him, Round my neck he hung the wampum, As a pledge, the snow-white wampum, O my sweetheart, my Algonquin! "I will go with you, he whispered, Ah me! to your native country; Let me go with you, he whispered, O my sweetheart, my Algonquin! "Far away, away, I answered, Very far away, I answered, Ah me! is my native country, O my sweetheart, my Algonquin! "When I looked back to behold him, Where we parted, to behold him, After me he still was gazing, O my sweetheart, my Algonquin! "By the tree he still was standing, By the fallen tree was standing, That had dropped into the water, O my sweetheart, my Algonquin! "When I think of my beloved, Ah me! think of my beloved, When my heart is thinking of him, O my sweetheart, my Algonquin!" Such was Hiawatha's Wedding, Such the dance of Pau-Puk-Keewis, Such the story of Iagoo, Such the songs of Chibiabos; Thus the wedding banquet ended, And the wedding guests departed, Leaving Hiawatha happy With the night and Minnehaha. XIII BLESSING THE CORNFIELDS Sing, O Song of Hiawatha, Of the happy days that followed, In the land of the Ojibways, In the pleasant land and peaceful! Sing the mysteries of Mondamin, Sing the Blessing of the Cornfields! Buried was the bloody hatchet, Buried was the dreadful war-club, Buried were all warlike weapons, And the war-cry was forgotten. There was peace among the nations; Unmolested roved the hunters, Built the birch canoe for sailing, Caught the fish in lake and river, Shot the deer and trapped the beaver; Unmolested worked the women, Made their sugar from the maple, Gathered wild rice in the meadows, Dressed the skins of deer and beaver. All around the happy village Stood the maize-fields, green and shining, Waved the green plumes of Mondamin, Waved his soft and sunny tresses, Filling all the land with plenty. 'T was the women who in Spring-time Planted the broad fields and fruitful, Buried in the earth Mondamin; 'T was the women who in Autumn Stripped the yellow husks of harvest, Stripped the garments from Mondamin, Even as Hiawatha taught them. Once, when all the maize was planted, Hiawatha, wise and thoughtful, Spake and said to Minnehaha, To his wife, the Laughing Water: "You shall bless to-night the cornfields, Draw a magic circle round them, To protect them from destruction, Blast of mildew, blight of insect, Wagemin, the thief of cornfields, Paimosaid, who steals the maize-ear! "In the night, when all is silence, In the night, when all is darkness, When the Spirit of Sleep, Nepahwin, Shuts the doors of all the wigwams, So that not an ear can hear you, So that not an eye can see you, Rise up from your bed in silence, Lay aside your garments wholly, Walk around the fields you planted, Round the borders of the cornfields, Covered by your tresses only, Robed with darkness as a garment. "Thus the fields shall be more fruitful, And the passing of your footsteps Draw a magic circle round them, So that neither blight nor mildew, Neither burrowing worm nor insect, Shall pass o'er the magic circle; Not the dragon-fly, Kwo-ne-she, Nor the spider, Subbekashe, Nor the grasshopper, Pah-puk-keena; Nor the mighty caterpillar, Way-muk-kwana, with the bear-skin, King of all the caterpillars!" On the tree-tops near the cornfields Sat the hungry crows and ravens, Kahgahgee, the King of Ravens, With his band of black marauders. And they laughed at Hiawatha, Till the tree-tops shook with laughter, With their melancholy laughter, At the words of Hiawatha. "Hear him!" said they; "hear the Wise Man, Hear the plots of Hiawatha!" When the noiseless night descended Broad and dark o'er field and forest, When the mournful Wawonaissa Sorrowing sang among the hemlocks, And the Spirit of Sleep, Nepahwin, Shut the doors of all the wigwams, From her bed rose Laughing Water, Laid aside her garments wholly, And with darkness clothed and guarded, Unashamed and unaffrighted, Walked securely round the cornfields, Drew the sacred, magic circle Of her footprints round the cornfields. No one but the Midnight only Saw her beauty in the darkness, No one but the Wawonaissa Heard the panting of her bosom; Guskewau, the darkness, wrapped her Closely in his sacred mantle, So that none might see her beauty, So that none might boast, "I saw her!" On the morrow, as the day dawned, Kahgahgee, the King of Ravens, Gathered all his black marauders, Crows and blackbirds, jays and ravens, Clamorous on the dusky tree-tops, And descended, fast and fearless, On the fields of Hiawatha, On the grave of the Mondamin. "We will drag Mondamin," said they, "From the grave where he is buried, Spite of all the magic circles Laughing Water draws around it, Spite of all the sacred footprints Minnehaha stamps upon it!" But the wary Hiawatha, Ever thoughtful, careful, watchful, Had o'erheard the scornful laughter When they mocked him from the tree-tops. "Kaw!" he said, "my friends the ravens! Kahgahgee, my King of Ravens! I will teach you all a lesson That shall not be soon forgotten!" He had risen before the daybreak, He had spread o'er all the cornfields Snares to catch the black marauders, And was lying now in ambush In the neighboring grove of pine-trees, Waiting for the crows and blackbirds, Waiting for the jays and ravens. Soon they came with caw and clamor, Rush of wings and cry of voices, To their work of devastation, Settling down upon the cornfields, Delving deep with beak and talon, For the body of Mondamin. And with all their craft and cunning, All their skill in wiles of warfare, They perceived no danger near them, Till their claws became entangled, Till they found themselves imprisoned In the snares of Hiawatha. From his place of ambush came he, Striding terrible among them, And so awful was his aspect That the bravest quailed with terror. Without mercy he destroyed them Right and left, by tens and twenties, And their wretched, lifeless bodies Hung aloft on poles for scarecrows Round the consecrated cornfields, As a signal of his vengeance, As a warning to marauders. Only Kahgahgee, the leader, Kahgahgee, the King of Ravens, He alone was spared among them As a hostage for his people. With his prisoner-string he bound him, Led him captive to his wigwam, Tied him fast with cords of elm-bark To the ridge-pole of his wigwam. "Kahgahgee, my raven!" said he, "You the leader of the robbers, You the plotter of this mischief, The contriver of this outrage, I will keep you, I will hold you, As a hostage for your people, As a pledge of good behavior!" And he left him, grim and sulky, Sitting in the morning sunshine On the summit of the wigwam, Croaking fiercely his displeasure, Flapping his great sable pinions, Vainly struggling for his freedom, Vainly calling on his people! Summer passed, and Shawondasee Breathed his sighs o'er all the landscape, From the South-land sent his ardor, Wafted kisses warm and tender; And the maize-field grew and ripened, Till it stood in all the splendor Of its garments green and yellow, Of its tassels and its plumage, And the maize-ears full and shining Gleamed from bursting sheaths of verdure. Then Nokomis, the old woman, Spake, and said to Minnehaha: "'T is the Moon when leaves are falling; All the wild-rice has been gathered, And the maize is ripe and ready; Let us gather in the harvest, Let us wrestle with Mondamin, Strip him of his plumes and tassels, Of his garments green and yellow!" And the merry Laughing Water Went rejoicing from the wigwam, With Nokomis, old and wrinkled, And they called the women round them, Called the young men and the maidens, To the harvest of the cornfields, To the husking of the maize-ear. On the border of the forest, Underneath the fragrant pine-trees, Sat the old men and the warriors Smoking in the pleasant shadow. In uninterrupted silence Looked they at the gamesome labor Of the young men and the women; Listened to their noisy talking, To their laughter and their singing, Heard them chattering like the magpies, Heard them laughing like the blue-jays, Heard them singing like the robins. And whene'er some lucky maiden Found a red ear in the husking, Found a maize-ear red as blood is, "Nushka!" cried they all together, "Nushka! you shall have a sweetheart, You shall have a handsome husband!" "Ugh!" the old men all responded From their seats beneath the pine-trees. And whene'er a youth or maiden Found a crooked ear in husking, Found a maize-ear in the husking Blighted, mildewed, or misshapen, Then they laughed and sang together, Crept and limped about the cornfields, Mimicked in their gait and gestures Some old man, bent almost double, Singing singly or together: "Wagemin, the thief of cornfields! Paimosaid, who steals the maize-ear!" Till the cornfields rang with laughter, Till from Hiawatha's wigwam Kahgahgee, the King of Ravens, Screamed and quivered in his anger, And from all the neighboring tree-tops Cawed and croaked the black marauders. "Ugh!" the old men all responded, From their seats beneath the pine-trees! XIV PICTURE-WRITING In those days said Hiawatha, "Lo! how all things fade and perish! From the memory of the old men Pass away the great traditions, The achievements of the warriors, The adventures of the hunters, All the wisdom of the Medas, All the craft of the Wabenos, All the marvellous dreams and visions Of the Jossakeeds, the Prophets! "Great men die and are forgotten, Wise men speak; their words of wisdom Perish in the ears that hear them, Do not reach the generations That, as yet unborn, are waiting In the great, mysterious darkness Of the speechless days that shall be! "On the grave-posts of our fathers Are no signs, no figures painted; Who are in those graves we know not, Only know they are our fathers. Of what kith they are and kindred, From what old, ancestral Totem, Be it Eagle, Bear, or Beaver, They descended, this we know not, Only know they are our fathers. "Face to face we speak together, But we cannot speak when absent, Cannot send our voices from us To the friends that dwell afar off; Cannot send a secret message, But the bearer learns our secret, May pervert it, may betray it, May reveal it unto others." Thus said Hiawatha, walking In the solitary forest, Pondering, musing in the forest, On the welfare of his people. From his pouch he took his colors, Took his paints of different colors, On the smooth bark of a birch-tree Painted many shapes and figures, Wonderful and mystic figures, And each figure had a meaning, Each some word or thought suggested. Gitche Manito the Mighty, He, the Master of Life, was painted As an egg, with points projecting To the four winds of the heavens. Everywhere is the Great Spirit, Was the meaning of this symbol. Mitche Manito the Mighty, He the dreadful Spirit of Evil, As a serpent was depicted, As Kenabeek, the great serpent. Very crafty, very cunning, Is the creeping Spirit of Evil, Was the meaning of this symbol. Life and Death he drew as circles, Life was white, but Death was darkened; Sun and moon and stars he painted, Man and beast, and fish and reptile, Forests, mountains, lakes, and rivers. For the earth he drew a straight line, For the sky a bow above it; White the space between for daytime, Filled with little stars for night-time; On the left a point for sunrise, On the right a point for sunset, On the top a point for noontide, And for rain and cloudy weather Waving lines descending from it. Footprints pointing towards a wigwam Were a sign of invitation, Were a sign of guests assembling; Bloody hands with palms uplifted Were a symbol of destruction, Were a hostile sign and symbol. All these things did Hiawatha Show unto his wondering people, And interpreted their meaning, And he said: "Behold, your grave-posts Have no mark, no sign, nor symbol, Go and paint them all with figures; Each one with its household symbol, With its own ancestral Totem; So that those who follow after May distinguish them and know them." And they painted on the grave-posts On the graves yet unforgotten, Each his own ancestral Totem, Each the symbol of his household; Figures of the Bear and Reindeer, Of the Turtle, Crane, and Beaver, Each inverted as a token That the owner was departed, That the chief who bore the symbol Lay beneath in dust and ashes. And the Jossakeeds, the Prophets, The Wabenos, the Magicians, And the Medicine-men, the Medas, Painted upon bark and deer-skin Figures for the songs they chanted, For each song a separate symbol, Figures mystical and awful, Figures strange and brightly colored; And each figure had its meaning, Each some magic song suggested. The Great Spirit, the Creator, Flashing light through all the heaven; The Great Serpent, the Kenabeek, With his bloody crest erected, Creeping, looking into heaven; In the sky the sun, that listens, And the moon eclipsed and dying; Owl and eagle, crane and hen-hawk, And the cormorant, bird of magic; Headless men, that walk the heavens, Bodies lying pierced with arrows, Bloody hands of death uplifted, Flags on graves, and great war-captains Grasping both the earth and heaven! Such as these the shapes they painted On the birch-bark and the deer-skin; Songs of war and songs of hunting, Songs of medicine and of magic, All were written in these figures, For each figure had its meaning, Each its separate song recorded. Nor forgotten was the Love-Song, The most subtle of all medicines, The most potent spell of magic, Dangerous more than war or hunting! Thus the Love-Song was recorded, Symbol and interpretation. First a human figure standing, Painted in the brightest scarlet; 'T is the lover, the musician, And the meaning is, "My painting Makes me powerful over others." Then the figure seated, singing, Playing on a drum of magic, And the interpretation, "Listen! 'T is my voice you hear, my singing!" Then the same red figure seated In the shelter of a wigwam, And the meaning of the symbol, "I will come and sit beside you In the mystery of my passion!" Then two figures, man and woman, Standing hand in hand together With their hands so clasped together That they seemed in one united, And the words thus represented Are, "I see your heart within you, And your cheeks are red with blushes!" Next the maiden on an island, In the centre of an island; And the song this shape suggested Was, "Though you were at a distance, Were upon some far-off island, Such the spell I cast upon you, Such the magic power of passion, I could straightway draw you to me!" Then the figure of the maiden Sleeping, and the lover near her, Whispering to her in her slumbers, Saying, "Though you were far from me In the land of Sleep and Silence, Still the voice of love would reach you!" And the last of all the figures Was a heart within a circle, Drawn within a magic circle; And the image had this meaning: "Naked lies your heart before me, To your naked heart I whisper!" Thus it was that Hiawatha, In his wisdom, taught the people All the mysteries of painting, All the art of Picture-Writing, On the smooth bark of the birch-tree, On the white skin of the reindeer, On the grave-posts of the village. XV HIAWATHA'S LAMENTATION In those days the Evil Spirits, All the Manitos of mischief, Fearing Hiawatha's wisdom, And his love for Chibiabos, Jealous of their faithful friendship, And their noble words and actions, Made at length a league against them, To molest them and destroy them. Hiawatha, wise and wary, Often said to Chibiabos, "O my brother! do not leave me, Lest the Evil Spirits harm you!" Chibiabos, young and heedless, Laughing shook his coal-black tresses, Answered ever sweet and childlike, "Do not fear for me, O brother! Harm and evil come not near me!" Once when Peboan, the Winter, Roofed with ice the Big-Sea-Water, When the snow-flakes, whirling downward, Hissed among the withered oak-leaves, Changed the pine-trees into wigwams, Covered all the earth with silence,-- Armed with arrows, shod with snow-shoes, Heeding not his brother's warning, Fearing not the Evil Spirits, Forth to hunt the deer with antlers All alone went Chibiabos. Right across the Big-Sea-Water Sprang with speed the deer before him. With the wind and snow he followed, O'er the treacherous ice he followed, Wild with all the fierce commotion And the rapture of the hunting. But beneath, the Evil Spirits Lay in ambush, waiting for him, Broke the treacherous ice beneath him, Dragged him downward to the bottom, Buried in the sand his body. Unktahee, the god of water, He the god of the Dacotahs, Drowned him in the deep abysses Of the lake of Gitche Gumee. From the headlands Hiawatha Sent forth such a wail of anguish, Such a fearful lamentation, That the bison paused to listen, And the wolves howled from the prairies, And the thunder in the distance Starting answered "Baim-wawa!" Then his face with black he painted, With his robe his head he covered, In his wigwam sat lamenting, Seven long weeks he sat lamenting, Uttering still this moan of sorrow:-- "He is dead, the sweet musician! He the sweetest of all singers! He has gone from us forever, He has moved a little nearer To the Master of all music, To the Master of all singing! O my brother, Chibiabos!" And the melancholy fir-trees Waved their dark green fans above him, Waved their purple cones above him, Sighing with him to console him, Mingling with his lamentation Their complaining, their lamenting. Came the Spring, and all the forest Looked in vain for Chibiabos; Sighed the rivulet, Sebowisha, Sighed the rushes in the meadow. From the tree-tops sang the bluebird, Sang the bluebird, the Owaissa, "Chibiabos! Chibiabos! He is dead, the sweet musician!" From the wigwam sang the robin, Sang the robin, the Opechee, "Chibiabos! Chibiabos! He is dead, the sweetest singer!" And at night through all the forest Went the whippoorwill complaining, Wailing went the Wawonaissa, "Chibiabos! Chibiabos! He is dead, the sweet musician! He the sweetest of all singers!" Then the Medicine-men, the Medas, The magicians, the Wabenos, And the Jossakeeds, the Prophets, Came to visit Hiawatha; Built a Sacred Lodge beside him, To appease him, to console him, Walked in silent, grave procession, Bearing each a pouch of healing, Skin of beaver, lynx, or otter, Filled with magic roots and simples, Filled with very potent medicines. When he heard their steps approaching, Hiawatha ceased lamenting, Called no more on Chibiabos; Naught he questioned, naught he answered, But his mournful head uncovered, From his face the mourning colors Washed he slowly and in silence, Slowly and in silence followed Onward to the Sacred Wigwam. There a magic drink they gave him, Made of Nahma-wusk, the spearmint, And Wabeno-wusk, the yarrow, Roots of power, and herbs of healing; Beat their drums, and shook their rattles; Chanted singly and in chorus, Mystic songs like these, they chanted. "I myself, myself! behold me! 'T is the great Gray Eagle talking; Come, ye white crows, come and hear him! The loud-speaking thunder helps me; All the unseen spirits help me; I can hear their voices calling, All around the sky I hear them! I can blow you strong, my brother, I can heal you, Hiawatha!" "Hi-au-ha!" replied the chorus, "Way-ha-way!" the mystic chorus. "Friends of mine are all the serpents! Hear me shake my skin of hen-hawk! Mahng, the white loon, I can kill him; I can shoot your heart and kill it! I can blow you strong, my brother, I can heal you, Hiawatha!" "Hi-au-ha!" replied the chorus, "Way-ha-way!" the mystic chorus. "I myself, myself! the prophet! When I speak the wigwam trembles, Shakes the Sacred Lodge with terror, Hands unseen begin to shake it! When I walk, the sky I tread on Bends and makes a noise beneath me! I can blow you strong, my brother! Rise and speak, O Hiawatha!" "Hi-au-ha!" replied the chorus, "Way-ha-way!" the mystic chorus. Then they shook their medicine-pouches O'er the head of Hiawatha, Danced their medicine-dance around him; And upstarting wild and haggard, Like a man from dreams awakened, He was healed of all his madness. As the clouds are swept from heaven, Straightway from his brain departed All his moody melancholy; As the ice is swept from rivers, Straightway from his heart departed All his sorrow and affliction. Then they summoned Chibiabos From his grave beneath the waters, From the sands of Gitche Gumee Summoned Hiawatha's brother. And so mighty was the magic Of that cry and invocation, That he heard it as he lay there Underneath the Big-Sea-Water; From the sand he rose and listened, Heard the music and the singing, Came, obedient to the summons, To the doorway of the wigwam, But to enter they forbade him. Through a chink a coal they gave him, Through the door a burning fire-brand; Ruler in the Land of Spirits, Ruler o'er the dead, they made him, Telling him a fire to kindle For all those that died thereafter, Camp-fires for their night encampments On their solitary journey To the kingdom of Ponemah, To the land of the Hereafter. From the village of his childhood, From the homes of those who knew him, Passing silent through the forest, Like a smoke-wreath wafted sideways, Slowly vanished Chibiabos! Where he passed, the branches moved not, Where he trod, the grasses bent not, And the fallen leaves of last year Made no sound beneath his footstep. Four whole days he journeyed onward Down the pathway of the dead men; On the dead-man's strawberry feasted, Crossed the melancholy river, On the swinging log he crossed it, Came unto the Lake of Silver, In the Stone Canoe was carried To the Islands of the Blessed, To the land of ghosts and shadows. On that journey, moving slowly, Many weary spirits saw he, Panting under heavy burdens, Laden with war-clubs, bows and arrows, Robes of fur, and pots and kettles, And with food that friends had given For that solitary journey. "Ay! why do the living," said they, "Lay such heavy burdens on us! Better were it to go naked, Better were it to go fasting, Than to bear such heavy burdens On our long and weary journey!" Forth then issued Hiawatha, Wandered eastward, wandered westward, Teaching men the use of simples And the antidotes for poisons, And the cure of all diseases. Thus was first made known to mortals All the mystery of Medamin, All the sacred art of healing. XVI PAU-PUK-KEEWIS You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis, He, the handsome Yenadizze, Whom the people called the Storm-Fool, Vexed the village with disturbance; You shall hear of all his mischief, And his flight from Hiawatha, And his wondrous transmigrations, And the end of his adventures. On the shores of Gitche Gumee, On the dunes of Nagow Wudjoo, By the shining Big-Sea-Water Stood the lodge of Pau-Puk-Keewis. It was he who in his frenzy Whirled these drifting sands together, On the dunes of Nagow Wudjoo, When, among the guests assembled, He so merrily and madly Danced at Hiawatha's wedding, Danced the Beggar's Dance to please them. Now, in search of new adventures, From his lodge went Pau-Puk-Keewis, Came with speed into the village, Found the young men all assembled In the lodge of old Iagoo, Listening to his monstrous stories, To his wonderful adventures. He was telling them the story Of Ojeeg, the Summer-Maker, How he made a hole in heaven, How he climbed up into heaven, And let out the summer-weather, The perpetual, pleasant Summer; How the Otter first essayed it; How the Beaver, Lynx, and Badger Tried in turn the great achievement, From the summit of the mountain Smote their fists against the heavens, Smote against the sky their foreheads, Cracked the sky, but could not break it; How the Wolverine, uprising, Made him ready for the encounter, Bent his knees down, like a squirrel, Drew his arms back, like a cricket. "Once he leaped," said old Iagoo, "Once he leaped, and lo! above him Bent the sky, as ice in rivers When the waters rise beneath it; Twice he leaped, and lo! above him Cracked the sky, as ice in rivers When the freshet is at highest! Thrice he leaped, and lo! above him Broke the shattered sky asunder, And he disappeared within it, And Ojeeg, the Fisher Weasel, With a bound went in behind him!" "Hark you!" shouted Pau-Puk-Keewis As he entered at the doorway; "I am tired of all this talking, Tired of old Iagoo's stories, Tired of Hiawatha's wisdom. Here is something to amuse you, Better than this endless talking." Then from out his pouch of wolf-skin Forth he drew, with solemn manner, All the game of Bowl and Counters, Pugasaing, with thirteen pieces. White on one side were they painted, And vermilion on the other; Two Kenabeeks or great serpents, Two Ininewug or wedge-men, One great war-club, Pugamaugun, And one slender fish, the Keego, Four round pieces, Ozawabeeks, And three Sheshebwug or ducklings. All were made of bone and painted, All except the Ozawabeeks; These were brass, on one side burnished, And were black upon the other. In a wooden bowl he placed them, Shook and jostled them together, Threw them on the ground before him, Thus exclaiming and explaining: "Red side up are all the pieces, And one great Kenabeek standing On the bright side of a brass piece, On a burnished Ozawabeek; Thirteen tens and eight are counted." Then again he shook the pieces, Shook and jostled them together, Threw them on the ground before him, Still exclaiming and explaining: "White are both the great Kenabeeks, White the Ininewug, the wedge-men, Red are all the other pieces; Five tens and an eight are counted." Thus he taught the game of hazard, Thus displayed it and explained it, Running through its various chances, Various changes, various meanings: Twenty curious eyes stared at him, Full of eagerness stared at him. "Many games," said old Iagoo, "Many games of skill and hazard Have I seen in different nations, Have I played in different countries. He who plays with old Iagoo Must have very nimble fingers; Though you think yourself so skilful, I can beat you, Pau-Puk-Keewis, I can even give you lessons In your game of Bowl and Counters!" So they sat and played together, All the old men and the young men, Played for dresses, weapons, wampum, Played till midnight, played till morning, Played until the Yenadizze, Till the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis, Of their treasures had despoiled them, Of the best of all their dresses, Shirts of deer-skin, robes of ermine, Belts of wampum, crests of feathers, Warlike weapons, pipes and pouches. Twenty eyes glared wildly at him, Like the eyes of wolves glared at him. Said the lucky Pau-Puk-Keewis: "In my wigwam I am lonely, In my wanderings and adventures I have need of a companion, Fain would have a Meshinauwa, An attendant and pipe-bearer. I will venture all these winnings, All these garments heaped about me, All this wampum, all these feathers, On a single throw will venture All against the young man yonder!" 'T was a youth of sixteen summers, 'T was a nephew of Iagoo; Face-in-a-Mist, the people called him. As the fire burns in a pipe-head Dusky red beneath the ashes, So beneath his shaggy eyebrows Glowed the eyes of old Iagoo. "Ugh!" he answered very fiercely; "Ugh!" they answered all and each one. Seized the wooden bowl the old man, Closely in his bony fingers Clutched the fatal bowl, Onagon, Shook it fiercely and with fury, Made the pieces ring together As he threw them down before him. Red were both the great Kenabeeks, Red the Ininewug, the wedge-men, Red the Sheshebwug, the ducklings, Black the four brass Ozawabeeks, White alone the fish, the Keego; Only five the pieces counted! Then the smiling Pau-Puk-Keewis Shook the bowl and threw the pieces; Lightly in the air he tossed them, And they fell about him scattered; Dark and bright the Ozawabeeks, Red and white the other pieces, And upright among the others One Ininewug was standing, Even as crafty Pau-Puk-Keewis Stood alone among the players, Saying, "Five tens! mine the game is!" Twenty eyes glared at him fiercely, Like the eyes of wolves glared at him, As he turned and left the wigwam, Followed by his Meshinauwa, By the nephew of Iagoo, By the tall and graceful stripling, Bearing in his arms the winnings, Shirts of deer-skin, robes of ermine, Belts of wampum, pipes and weapons. "Carry them," said Pau-Puk-Keewis, Pointing with his fan of feathers, "To my wigwam far to eastward, On the dunes of Nagow Wudjoo!" Hot and red with smoke and gambling Were the eyes of Pau-Puk-Keewis As he came forth to the freshness Of the pleasant Summer morning. All the birds were singing gayly, All the streamlets flowing swiftly, And the heart of Pau-Puk-Keewis Sang with pleasure as the birds sing, Beat with triumph like the streamlets, As he wandered through the village, In the early gray of morning, With his fan of turkey-feathers, With his plumes and tufts of swan's down, Till he reached the farthest wigwam, Reached the lodge of Hiawatha. Silent was it and deserted; No one met him at the doorway, No one came to bid him welcome; But the birds were singing round it, In and out and round the doorway, Hopping, singing, fluttering, feeding, And aloft upon the ridge-pole Kahgahgee, the King of Ravens, Sat with fiery eyes, and, screaming, Flapped his wings at Pau-Puk-Keewis. "All are gone! the lodge is empty!" Thus it was spake Pau-Puk-Keewis, In his heart resolving mischief;-- "Gone is wary Hiawatha, Gone the silly Laughing Water, Gone Nokomis, the old woman, And the lodge is left unguarded!" By the neck he seized the raven, Whirled it round him like a rattle, Like a medicine-pouch he shook it, Strangled Kahgahgee, the raven, From the ridge-pole of the wigwam Left its lifeless body hanging, As an insult to its master, As a taunt to Hiawatha. With a stealthy step he entered, Round the lodge in wild disorder Threw the household things about him, Piled together in confusion Bowls of wood and earthen kettles, Robes of buffalo and beaver, Skins of otter, lynx, and ermine, As an insult to Nokomis, As a taunt to Minnehaha. Then departed Pau-Puk-Keewis, Whistling, singing through the forest, Whistling gayly to the squirrels, Who from hollow boughs above him Dropped their acorn-shells upon him, Singing gayly to the wood birds, Who from out the leafy darkness Answered with a song as merry. Then he climbed the rocky headlands, Looking o'er the Gitche Gumee, Perched himself upon their summit, Waiting full of mirth and mischief The return of Hiawatha. Stretched upon his back he lay there; Far below him plashed the waters, Plashed and washed the dreamy waters; Far above him swam the heavens, Swam the dizzy, dreamy heavens; Round him hovered, fluttered, rustled Hiawatha's mountain chickens, Flock-wise swept and wheeled about him, Almost brushed him with their pinions. And he killed them as he lay there, Slaughtered them by tens and twenties, Threw their bodies down the headland, Threw them on the beach below him, Till at length Kayoshk, the sea-gull, Perched upon a crag above them, Shouted: "It is Pau-Puk-Keewis! He is slaying us by hundreds! Send a message to our brother, Tidings send to Hiawatha!" XVII THE HUNTING OF PAU-PUK-KEEWIS Full of wrath was Hiawatha When he came into the village, Found the people in confusion, Heard of all the misdemeanors, All the malice and the mischief, Of the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis. Hard his breath came through his nostrils, Through his teeth he buzzed and muttered Words of anger and resentment, Hot and humming, like a hornet. "I will slay this Pau-Puk-Keewis, Slay this mischief-maker!" said he. "Not so long and wide the world is, Not so rude and rough the way is, That my wrath shall not attain him, That my vengeance shall not reach him!" Then in swift pursuit departed Hiawatha and the hunters On the trail of Pau-Puk-Keewis, Through the forest, where he passed it, To the headlands where he rested; But they found not Pau-Puk-Keewis, Only in the trampled grasses, In the whortleberry-bushes, Found the couch where he had rested, Found the impress of his body. From the lowlands far beneath them, From the Muskoday, the meadow, Pau-Puk-Keewis, turning backward, Made a gesture of defiance, Made a gesture of derision; And aloud cried Hiawatha, From the summit of the mountains: "Not so long and wide the world is, Not so rude and rough the way is, But my wrath shall overtake you, And my vengeance shall attain you!" Over rock and over river, Through bush, and brake, and forest, Ran the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis; Like an antelope he bounded, Till he came unto a streamlet In the middle of the forest, To a streamlet still and tranquil, That had overflowed its margin, To a dam made by the beavers, To a pond of quiet water, Where knee-deep the trees were standing, Where the water lilies floated, Where the rushes waved and whispered. On the dam stood Pau-Puk-Keewis, On the dam of trunks and branches, Through whose chinks the water spouted, O'er whose summit flowed the streamlet. From the bottom rose the beaver, Looked with two great eyes of wonder, Eyes that seemed to ask a question, At the stranger, Pau-Puk-Keewis. On the dam stood Pau-Puk-Keewis, O'er his ankles flowed the streamlet, Flowed the bright and silvery water, And he spake unto the beaver, With a smile he spake in this wise: "O my friend Ahmeek, the beaver, Cool and pleasant is the water; Let me dive into the water, Let me rest there in your lodges; Change me, too, into a beaver!" Cautiously replied the beaver, With reserve he thus made answer: "Let me first consult the others, Let me ask the other beavers." Down he sank into the water, Heavily sank he, as a stone sinks, Down among the leaves and branches, Brown and matted at the bottom. On the dam stood Pau-Puk-Keewis, O'er his ankles flowed the streamlet, Spouted through the chinks below him, Dashed upon the stones beneath him, Spread serene and calm before him, And the sunshine and the shadows Fell in flecks and gleams upon him, Fell in little shining patches, Through the waving, rustling branches. From the bottom rose the beavers, Silently above the surface Rose one head and then another, Till the pond seemed full of beavers, Full of black and shining faces. To the beavers Pau-Puk-Keewis Spake entreating, said in this wise: "Very pleasant is your dwelling, O my friends! and safe from danger; Can you not, with all your cunning, All your wisdom and contrivance, Change me, too, into a beaver?" "Yes!" replied Ahmeek, the beaver, He the King of all the beavers, "Let yourself slide down among us, Down into the tranquil water." Down into the pond among them Silently sank Pau-Puk-Keewis; Black became his shirt of deer-skin, Black his moccasins and leggings, In a broad black tail behind him Spread his fox-tails and his fringes; He was changed into a beaver. "Make me large," said Pau-Puk-Keewis, "Make me large and make me larger, Larger than the other beavers." "Yes," the beaver chief responded, "When our lodge below you enter, In our wigwam we will make you Ten times larger than the others." Thus into the clear, brown water Silently sank Pau-Puk-Keewis: Found the bottom covered over With the trunks of trees and branches, Hoards of food against the winter, Piles and heaps against the famine; Found the lodge with arching doorway, Leading into spacious chambers. Here they made him large and larger, Made him largest of the beavers, Ten times larger than the others. "You shall be our ruler," said they; "Chief and King of all the beavers." But not long had Pau-Puk-Keewis Sat in state among the beavers, When there came a voice of warning From the watchman at his station In the water-flags and lilies, Saying, "Here Is Hiawatha! Hiawatha with his hunters!" Then they heard a cry above them, Heard a shouting and a tramping, Heard a crashing and a rushing, And the water round and o'er them Sank and sucked away in eddies, And they knew their dam was broken. On the lodge's roof the hunters Leaped, and broke it all asunder; Streamed the sunshine through the crevice, Sprang the beavers through the doorway, Hid themselves in deeper water, In the channel of the streamlet; But the mighty Pau-Puk-Keewis Could not pass beneath the doorway; He was puffed with pride and feeding, He was swollen like a bladder. Through the roof looked Hiawatha, Cried aloud, "O Pau-Puk-Keewis Vain are all your craft and cunning, Vain your manifold disguises! Well I know you, Pau-Puk-Keewis!" With their clubs they beat and bruised him, Beat to death poor Pau-Puk-Keewis, Pounded him as maize is pounded, Till his skull was crushed to pieces. Six tall hunters, lithe and limber, Bore him home on poles and branches, Bore the body of the beaver; But the ghost, the Jeebi in him, Thought and felt as Pau-Puk-Keewis, Still lived on as Pau-Puk-Keewis. And it fluttered, strove, and struggled, Waving hither, waving thither, As the curtains of a wigwam Struggle with their thongs of deer-skin, When the wintry wind is blowing; Till it drew itself together, Till it rose up from the body, Till it took the form and features Of the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis Vanishing into the forest. But the wary Hiawatha Saw the figure ere it vanished, Saw the form of Pau-Puk-Keewis Glide into the soft blue shadow Of the pine-trees of the forest; Toward the squares of white beyond it, Toward an opening in the forest. Like a wind it rushed and panted, Bending all the boughs before it, And behind it, as the rain comes, Came the steps of Hiawatha. To a lake with many islands Came the breathless Pau-Puk-Keewis, Where among the water-lilies Pishnekuh, the brant, were sailing; Through the tufts of rushes floating, Steering through the reedy islands. Now their broad black beaks they lifted, Now they plunged beneath the water, Now they darkened in the shadow, Now they brightened in the sunshine. "Pishnekuh!" cried Pau-Puk-Keewis, "Pishnekuh! my brothers!" said he, "Change me to a brant with plumage, With a shining neck and feathers, Make me large, and make me larger, Ten times larger than the others." Straightway to a brant they changed him, With two huge and dusky pinions, With a bosom smooth and rounded, With a bill like two great paddles, Made him larger than the others, Ten times larger than the largest, Just as, shouting from the forest, On the shore stood Hiawatha. Up they rose with cry and clamor, With a whir and beat of pinions, Rose up from the reedy Islands, From the water-flags and lilies. And they said to Pau-Puk-Keewis: "In your flying, look not downward, Take good heed and look not downward, Lest some strange mischance should happen, Lest some great mishap befall you!" Fast and far they fled to northward, Fast and far through mist and sunshine, Fed among the moors and fen-lands, Slept among the reeds and rushes. On the morrow as they journeyed, Buoyed and lifted by the South-wind, Wafted onward by the South-wind, Blowing fresh and strong behind them, Rose a sound of human voices, Rose a clamor from beneath them, From the lodges of a village, From the people miles beneath them. For the people of the village Saw the flock of brant with wonder, Saw the wings of Pau-Puk-Keewis Flapping far up in the ether, Broader than two doorway curtains. Pau-Puk-Keewis heard the shouting, Knew the voice of Hiawatha, Knew the outcry of Iagoo, And, forgetful of the warning, Drew his neck in, and looked downward, And the wind that blew behind him Caught his mighty fan of feathers, Sent him wheeling, whirling downward! All in vain did Pau-Puk-Keewis Struggle to regain his balance! Whirling round and round and downward, He beheld in turn the village And in turn the flock above him, Saw the village coming nearer, And the flock receding farther, Heard the voices growing louder, Heard the shouting and the laughter; Saw no more the flocks above him, Only saw the earth beneath him; Dead out of the empty heaven, Dead among the shouting people, With a heavy sound and sullen, Fell the brant with broken pinions. But his soul, his ghost, his shadow, Still survived as Pau-Puk-Keewis, Took again the form and features Of the handsome Yenadizze, And again went rushing onward, Followed fast by Hiawatha, Crying: "Not so wide the world is, Not so long and rough the way is, But my wrath shall overtake you, But my vengeance shall attain you!" And so near he came, so near him, That his hand was stretched to seize him, His right hand to seize and hold him, When the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis Whirled and spun about in circles, Fanned the air into a whirlwind, Danced the dust and leaves about him, And amid the whirling eddies Sprang into a hollow oak-tree, Changed himself into a serpent, Gliding out through root and rubbish. With his right hand Hiawatha Smote amain the hollow oak-tree, Rent it into shreds and splinters, Left it lying there in fragments. But in vain; for Pau-Puk-Keewis, Once again in human figure, Full in sight ran on before him, Sped away in gust and whirlwind, On the shores of Gitche Gumee, Westward by the Big-Sea-Water, Came unto the rocky headlands, To the Pictured Rocks of sandstone, Looking over lake and landscape. And the Old Man of the Mountain, He the Manito of Mountains, Opened wide his rocky doorways, Opened wide his deep abysses, Giving Pau-Puk-Keewis shelter In his caverns dark and dreary, Bidding Pau-Puk-Keewis welcome To his gloomy lodge of sandstone. There without stood Hiawatha, Found the doorways closed against him, With his mittens, Minjekahwun, Smote great caverns in the sandstone, Cried aloud in tones of thunder, "Open! I am Hiawatha!" But the Old Man of the Mountain Opened not, and made no answer From the silent crags of sandstone, From the gloomy rock abysses. Then he raised his hands to heaven, Called imploring on the tempest, Called Waywassimo, the lightning, And the thunder, Annemeekee; And they came with night and darkness, Sweeping down the Big-Sea-Water From the distant Thunder Mountains; And the trembling Pau-Puk-Keewis Heard the footsteps of the thunder, Saw the red eyes of the lightning, Was afraid, and crouched and trembled. Then Waywassimo, the lightning, Smote the doorways of the caverns, With his war-club smote the doorways, Smote the jutting crags of sandstone, And the thunder, Annemeekee, Shouted down into the caverns, Saying, "Where is Pau-Puk-Keewis!" And the crags fell, and beneath them Dead among the rocky ruins Lay the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis, Lay the handsome Yenadizze, Slain in his own human figure. Ended were his wild adventures, Ended were his tricks and gambols, Ended all his craft and cunning, Ended all his mischief-making, All his gambling and his dancing, All his wooing of the maidens. Then the noble Hiawatha Took his soul, his ghost, his shadow, Spake and said: "O Pau-Puk-Keewis, Never more in human figure Shall you search for new adventures; Never more with jest and laughter Dance the dust and leaves in whirlwinds; But above there in the heavens You shall soar and sail in circles; I will change you to an eagle, To Keneu, the great war-eagle, Chief of all the fowls with feathers, Chief of Hiawatha's chickens." And the name of Pau-Puk-Keewis Lingers still among the people, Lingers still among the singers, And among the story-tellers; And in Winter, when the snow-flakes Whirl in eddies round the lodges, When the wind in gusty tumult O'er the smoke-flue pipes and whistles, "There," they cry, "comes Pau-Puk-Keewis; He is dancing through the village, He is gathering in his harvest!" XVIII THE DEATH OF KWASIND Far and wide among the nations Spread the name and fame of Kwasind; No man dared to strive with Kwasind, No man could compete with Kwasind. But the mischievous Puk-Wudjies, They the envious Little People, They the fairies and the pygmies, Plotted and conspired against him. "If this hateful Kwasind," said they, "If this great, outrageous fellow Goes on thus a little longer, Tearing everything he touches, Rending everything to pieces, Filling all the world with wonder, What becomes of the Puk-Wudjies? Who will care for the Puk-Wudjies? He will tread us down like mushrooms, Drive us all into the water, Give our bodies to be eaten By the wicked Nee-ba-naw-baigs, By the Spirits of the water! So the angry Little People All conspired against the Strong Man, All conspired to murder Kwasind, Yes, to rid the world of Kwasind, The audacious, overbearing, Heartless, haughty, dangerous Kwasind! Now this wondrous strength of Kwasind In his crown alone was seated; In his crown too was his weakness; There alone could he be wounded, Nowhere else could weapon pierce him, Nowhere else could weapon harm him. Even there the only weapon That could wound him, that could slay him, Was the seed-cone of the pine-tree, Was the blue cone of the fir-tree. This was Kwasind's fatal secret, Known to no man among mortals; But the cunning Little People, The Puk-Wudjies, knew the secret, Knew the only way to kill him. So they gathered cones together, Gathered seed-cones of the pine-tree, Gathered blue cones of the fir-tree, In the woods by Taquamenaw, Brought them to the river's margin, Heaped them in great piles together, Where the red rocks from the margin Jutting overhang the river. There they lay in wait for Kwasind, The malicious Little People. 'T was an afternoon in Summer; Very hot and still the air was, Very smooth the gliding river, Motionless the sleeping shadows: Insects glistened in the sunshine, Insects skated on the water, Filled the drowsy air with buzzing, With a far resounding war-cry. Down the river came the Strong Man, In his birch canoe came Kwasind, Floating slowly down the current Of the sluggish Taquamenaw, Very languid with the weather, Very sleepy with the silence. From the overhanging branches, From the tassels of the birch-trees, Soft the Spirit of Sleep descended; By his airy hosts surrounded, His invisible attendants, Came the Spirit of Sleep, Nepahwin; Like a burnished Dush-kwo-ne-she, Like a dragon-fly, he hovered O'er the drowsy head of Kwasind. To his ear there came a murmur As of waves upon a sea-shore, As of far-off tumbling waters, As of winds among the pine-trees; And he felt upon his forehead Blows of little airy war-clubs, Wielded by the slumbrous legions Of the Spirit of Sleep, Nepahwin, As of some one breathing on him. At the first blow of their war-clubs, Fell a drowsiness on Kwasind; At the second blow they smote him, Motionless his paddle rested; At the third, before his vision Reeled the landscape into darkness, Very sound asleep was Kwasind. So he floated down the river, Like a blind man seated upright, Floated down the Taquamenaw, Underneath the trembling birch-trees, Underneath the wooded headlands, Underneath the war encampment Of the pygmies, the Puk-Wudjies. There they stood, all armed and waiting, Hurled the pine-cones down upon him, Struck him on his brawny shoulders, On his crown defenceless struck him. "Death to Kwasind!" was the sudden War-cry of the Little People. And he sideways swayed and tumbled, Sideways fell into the river, Plunged beneath the sluggish water Headlong, as an otter plunges; And the birch canoe, abandoned, Drifted empty down the river, Bottom upward swerved and drifted: Nothing more was seen of Kwasind. But the memory of the Strong Man Lingered long among the people, And whenever through the forest Raged and roared the wintry tempest, And the branches, tossed and troubled, Creaked and groaned and split asunder, "Kwasind!" cried they; "that is Kwasind! He is gathering in his fire-wood!" IX THE GHOSTS Never stoops the soaring vulture On his quarry in the desert, On the sick or wounded bison, But another vulture, watching From his high aerial look-out, Sees the downward plunge, and follows; And a third pursues the second, Coming from the invisible ether, First a speck, and then a vulture, Till the air is dark with pinions. So disasters come not singly; But as if they watched and waited, Scanning one another's motions, When the first descends, the others Follow, follow, gathering flock-wise Round their victim, sick and wounded, First a shadow, then a sorrow, Till the air is dark with anguish. Now, o'er all the dreary North-land, Mighty Peboan, the Winter, Breathing on the lakes and rivers, Into stone had changed their waters. From his hair he shook the snow-flakes, Till the plains were strewn with whiteness, One uninterrupted level, As if, stooping, the Creator With his hand had smoothed them over. Through the forest, wide and wailing, Roamed the hunter on his snow-shoes; In the village worked the women, Pounded maize, or dressed the deer-skin; And the young men played together On the ice the noisy ball-play, On the plain the dance of snow-shoes. One dark evening, after sundown, In her wigwam Laughing Water Sat with old Nokomis, waiting For the steps of Hiawatha Homeward from the hunt returning. On their faces gleamed the firelight, Painting them with streaks of crimson, In the eyes of old Nokomis Glimmered like the watery moonlight, In the eyes of Laughing Water Glistened like the sun in water; And behind them crouched their shadows In the corners of the wigwam, And the smoke in wreaths above them Climbed and crowded through the smoke-flue. Then the curtain of the doorway From without was slowly lifted; Brighter glowed the fire a moment, And a moment swerved the smoke-wreath, As two women entered softly, Passed the doorway uninvited, Without word of salutation, Without sign of recognition, Sat down in the farthest corner, Crouching low among the shadows. From their aspect and their garments, Strangers seemed they in the village; Very pale and haggard were they, As they sat there sad and silent, Trembling, cowering with the shadows. Was it the wind above the smoke-flue, Muttering down into the wigwam? Was it the owl, the Koko-koho, Hooting from the dismal forest? Sure a voice said in the silence: "These are corpses clad in garments, These are ghosts that come to haunt you, From the kingdom of Ponemah, From the land of the Hereafter!" Homeward now came Hiawatha From his hunting in the forest, With the snow upon his tresses, And the red deer on his shoulders. At the feet of Laughing Water Down he threw his lifeless burden; Nobler, handsomer she thought him, Than when first he came to woo her, First threw down the deer before her, As a token of his wishes, As a promise of the future. Then he turned and saw the strangers, Cowering, crouching with the shadows; Said within himself, "Who are they? What strange guests has Minnehaha?" But he questioned not the strangers, Only spake to bid them welcome To his lodge, his food, his fireside. When the evening meal was ready, And the deer had been divided, Both the pallid guests, the strangers, Springing from among the shadows, Seized upon the choicest portions, Seized the white fat of the roebuck, Set apart for Laughing Water, For the wife of Hiawatha; Without asking, without thanking, Eagerly devoured the morsels, Flitted back among the shadows In the corner of the wigwam. Not a word spake Hiawatha, Not a motion made Nokomis, Not a gesture Laughing Water; Not a change came o'er their features; Only Minnehaha softly Whispered, saying, "They are famished; Let them do what best delights them; Let them eat, for they are famished." Many a daylight dawned and darkened, Many a night shook off the daylight As the pine shakes off the snow-flakes From the midnight of its branches; Day by day the guests unmoving Sat there silent in the wigwam; But by night, in storm or starlight, Forth they went into the forest, Bringing fire-wood to the wigwam, Bringing pine-cones for the burning, Always sad and always silent. And whenever Hiawatha Came from fishing or from hunting, When the evening meal was ready, And the food had been divided, Gliding from their darksome corner, Came the pallid guests, the strangers, Seized upon the choicest portions Set aside for Laughing Water, And without rebuke or question Flitted back among the shadows. Never once had Hiawatha By a word or look reproved them; Never once had old Nokomis Made a gesture of impatience; Never once had Laughing Water Shown resentment at the outrage. All had they endured in silence, That the rights of guest and stranger, That the virtue of free-giving, By a look might not be lessened, By a word might not be broken. Once at midnight Hiawatha, Ever wakeful, ever watchful, In the wigwam, dimly lighted By the brands that still were burning, By the glimmering, flickering firelight Heard a sighing, oft repeated, Heard a sobbing, as of sorrow. From his couch rose Hiawatha, From his shaggy hides of bison, Pushed aside the deer-skin curtain, Saw the pallid guests, the shadows, Sitting upright on their couches, Weeping in the silent midnight. And he said: "O guests! why is it That your hearts are so afflicted, That you sob so in the midnight? Has perchance the old Nokomis, Has my wife, my Minnehaha, Wronged or grieved you by unkindness, Failed in hospitable duties?" Then the shadows ceased from weeping, Ceased from sobbing and lamenting, And they said, with gentle voices: "We are ghosts of the departed, Souls of those who once were with you. From the realms of Chibiabos Hither have we come to try you, Hither have we come to warn you. "Cries of grief and lamentation Reach us in the Blessed Islands; Cries of anguish from the living, Calling back their friends departed, Sadden us with useless sorrow. Therefore have we come to try you; No one knows us, no one heeds us. We are but a burden to you, And we see that the departed Have no place among the living. "Think of this, O Hiawatha! Speak of it to all the people, That henceforward and forever They no more with lamentations Sadden the souls of the departed In the Islands of the Blessed. "Do not lay such heavy burdens In the graves of those you bury, Not such weight of furs and wampum, Not such weight of pots and kettles, For the spirits faint beneath them. Only give them food to carry, Only give them fire to light them. "Four days is the spirit's journey To the land of ghosts and shadows, Four its lonely night encampments; Four times must their fires be lighted. Therefore, when the dead are buried, Let a fire, as night approaches, Four times on the grave be kindled, That the soul upon its journey May not lack the cheerful firelight, May not grope about in darkness. "Farewell, noble Hiawatha! We have put you to the trial, To the proof have put your patience, By the insult of our presence, By the outrage of our actions. We have found you great and noble. Fail not in the greater trial, Faint not in the harder struggle." When they ceased, a sudden darkness Fell and filled the silent wigwam. Hiawatha heard a rustle As of garments trailing by him, Heard the curtain of the doorway Lifted by a hand he saw not, Felt the cold breath of the night air, For a moment saw the starlight; But he saw the ghosts no longer, Saw no more the wandering spirits From the kingdom of Ponemah, From the land of the Hereafter. XX THE FAMINE Oh the long and dreary Winter! Oh the cold and cruel Winter! Ever thicker, thicker, thicker Froze the ice on lake and river, Ever deeper, deeper, deeper Fell the snow o'er all the landscape, Fell the covering snow, and drifted Through the forest, round the village. Hardly from his buried wigwam Could the hunter force a passage; With his mittens and his snow-shoes Vainly walked he through the forest, Sought for bird or beast and found none, Saw no track of deer or rabbit, In the snow beheld no footprints, In the ghastly, gleaming forest Fell, and could not rise from weakness, Perished there from cold and hunger. Oh the famine and the fever! Oh the wasting of the famine! Oh the blasting of the fever! Oh the wailing of the children! Oh the anguish of the women! All the earth was sick and famished; Hungry was the air around them, Hungry was the sky above them, And the hungry stars in heaven Like the eyes of wolves glared at them! Into Hiawatha's wigwam Came two other guests, as silent As the ghosts were, and as gloomy, Waited not to be invited Did not parley at the doorway Sat there without word of welcome In the seat of Laughing Water; Looked with haggard eyes and hollow At the face of Laughing Water. And the foremost said: "Behold me! I am Famine, Bukadawin!" And the other said: "Behold me! I am Fever, Ahkosewin!" And the lovely Minnehaha Shuddered as they looked upon her, Shuddered at the words they uttered, Lay down on her bed in silence, Hid her face, but made no answer; Lay there trembling, freezing, burning At the looks they cast upon her, At the fearful words they uttered. Forth into the empty forest Rushed the maddened Hiawatha; In his heart was deadly sorrow, In his face a stony firmness; On his brow the sweat of anguish Started, but it froze and fell not. Wrapped in furs and armed for hunting, With his mighty bow of ash-tree, With his quiver full of arrows, With his mittens, Minjekahwun, Into the vast and vacant forest On his snow-shoes strode he forward. "Gitche Manito, the Mighty!" Cried he with his face uplifted In that bitter hour of anguish, "Give your children food, O father! Give us food, or we must perish! Give me food for Minnehaha, For my dying Minnehaha!" Through the far-resounding forest, Through the forest vast and vacant Rang that cry of desolation, But there came no other answer Than the echo of his crying, Than the echo of the woodlands, "Minnehaha! Minnehaha!" All day long roved Hiawatha In that melancholy forest, Through the shadow of whose thickets, In the pleasant days of Summer, Of that ne'er forgotten Summer, He had brought his young wife homeward From the land of the Dacotahs; When the birds sang in the thickets, And the streamlets laughed and glistened, And the air was full of fragrance, And the lovely Laughing Water Said with voice that did not tremble, "I will follow you, my husband!" In the wigwam with Nokomis, With those gloomy guests that watched her, With the Famine and the Fever, She was lying, the Beloved, She, the dying Minnehaha. "Hark!" she said; "I hear a rushing, Hear a roaring and a rushing, Hear the Falls of Minnehaha Calling to me from a distance!" "No, my child!" said old Nokomis, "'T is the night-wind in the pine-trees!" "Look!" she said; "I see my father Standing lonely at his doorway, Beckoning to me from his wigwam In the land of the Dacotahs!" "No, my child!" said old Nokomis. "'T is the smoke, that waves and beckons!" "Ah!" said she, "the eyes of Pauguk Glare upon me in the darkness, I can feel his icy fingers Clasping mine amid the darkness! Hiawatha! Hiawatha!" And the desolate Hiawatha, Far away amid the forest, Miles away among the mountains, Heard that sudden cry of anguish, Heard the voice of Minnehaha Calling to him in the darkness, "Hiawatha! Hiawatha!" Over snow-fields waste and pathless, Under snow-encumbered branches, Homeward hurried Hiawatha, Empty-handed, heavy-hearted, Heard Nokomis moaning, wailing: "Wahonowin! Wahonowin! Would that I had perished for you, Would that I were dead as you are! Wahonowin! Wahonowin!" And he rushed into the wigwam, Saw the old Nokomis slowly Rocking to and fro and moaning, Saw his lovely Minnehaha Lying dead and cold before him, And his bursting heart within him Uttered such a cry of anguish, That the forest moaned and shuddered, That the very stars in heaven Shook and trembled with his anguish. Then he sat down, still and speechless, On the bed of Minnehaha, At the feet of Laughing Water, At those willing feet, that never More would lightly run to meet him, Never more would lightly follow. With both hands his face he covered, Seven long days and nights he sat there, As if in a swoon he sat there, Speechless, motionless, unconscious Of the daylight or the darkness. Then they buried Minnehaha; In the snow a grave they made her In the forest deep and darksome Underneath the moaning hemlocks; Clothed her in her richest garments Wrapped her in her robes of ermine, Covered her with snow, like ermine; Thus they buried Minnehaha. And at night a fire was lighted, On her grave four times was kindled, For her soul upon its journey To the Islands of the Blessed. From his doorway Hiawatha Saw it burning in the forest, Lighting up the gloomy hemlocks; From his sleepless bed uprising, From the bed of Minnehaha, Stood and watched it at the doorway, That it might not be extinguished, Might not leave her in the darkness. "Farewell!" said he, "Minnehaha! Farewell, O my Laughing Water! All my heart is buried with you, All my thoughts go onward with you! Come not back again to labor, Come not back again to suffer, Where the Famine and the Fever Wear the heart and waste the body. Soon my task will be completed, Soon your footsteps I shall follow To the Islands of the Blessed, To the Kingdom of Ponemah, To the Land of the Hereafter!" XXI THE WHITE MAN'S FOOT In his lodge beside a river, Close beside a frozen river, Sat an old man, sad and lonely. White his hair was as a snow-drift; Dull and low his fire was burning, And the old man shook and trembled, Folded in his Waubewyon, In his tattered white-skin-wrapper, Hearing nothing but the tempest As it roared along the forest, Seeing nothing but the snow-storm, As it whirled and hissed and drifted. All the coals were white with ashes, And the fire was slowly dying, As a young man, walking lightly, At the open doorway entered. Red with blood of youth his cheeks were, Soft his eyes, as stars in Spring-time, Bound his forehead was with grasses; Bound and plumed with scented grasses, On his lips a smile of beauty, Filling all the lodge with sunshine, In his hand a bunch of blossoms Filling all the lodge with sweetness. "Ah, my son!" exclaimed the old man, "Happy are my eyes to see you. Sit here on the mat beside me, Sit here by the dying embers, Let us pass the night together, Tell me of your strange adventures, Of the lands where you have travelled; I will tell you of my prowess, Of my many deeds of wonder." From his pouch he drew his peace-pipe, Very old and strangely fashioned; Made of red stone was the pipe-head, And the stem a reed with feathers; Filled the pipe with bark of willow, Placed a burning coal upon it, Gave it to his guest, the stranger, And began to speak in this wise: "When I blow my breath about me, When I breathe upon the landscape, Motionless are all the rivers, Hard as stone becomes the water!" And the young man answered, smiling: "When I blow my breath about me, When I breathe upon the landscape, Flowers spring up o'er all the meadows, Singing, onward rush the rivers!" "When I shake my hoary tresses," Said the old man darkly frowning, "All the land with snow is covered; All the leaves from all the branches Fall and fade and die and wither, For I breathe, and lo! they are not. From the waters and the marshes, Rise the wild goose and the heron, Fly away to distant regions, For I speak, and lo! they are not. And where'er my footsteps wander, All the wild beasts of the forest Hide themselves in holes and caverns, And the earth becomes as flintstone!" "When I shake my flowing ringlets," Said the young man, softly laughing, "Showers of rain fall warm and welcome, Plants lift up their heads rejoicing, Back into their lakes and marshes Come the wild goose and the heron, Homeward shoots the arrowy swallow, Sing the bluebird and the robin, And where'er my footsteps wander, All the meadows wave with blossoms, All the woodlands ring with music, All the trees are dark with foliage!" While they spake, the night departed: From the distant realms of Wabun, From his shining lodge of silver, Like a warrior robed and painted, Came the sun, and said, "Behold me Gheezis, the great sun, behold me!" Then the old man's tongue was speechless And the air grew warm and pleasant, And upon the wigwam sweetly Sang the bluebird and the robin, And the stream began to murmur, And a scent of growing grasses Through the lodge was gently wafted. And Segwun, the youthful stranger, More distinctly in the daylight Saw the icy face before him; It was Peboan, the Winter! From his eyes the tears were flowing, As from melting lakes the streamlets, And his body shrunk and dwindled As the shouting sun ascended, Till into the air it faded, Till into the ground it vanished, And the young man saw before him, On the hearth-stone of the wigwam, Where the fire had smoked and smouldered, Saw the earliest flower of Spring-time, Saw the Beauty of the Spring-time, Saw the Miskodeed in blossom. Thus it was that in the North-land After that unheard-of coldness, That intolerable Winter, Came the Spring with all its splendor, All its birds and all its blossoms, All its flowers and leaves and grasses. Sailing on the wind to northward, Flying in great flocks, like arrows, Like huge arrows shot through heaven, Passed the swan, the Mahnahbezee, Speaking almost as a man speaks; And in long lines waving, bending Like a bow-string snapped asunder, Came the white goose, Waw-be-wawa; And in pairs, or singly flying, Mahng the loon, with clangorous pinions, The blue heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, And the grouse, the Mushkodasa. In the thickets and the meadows Piped the bluebird, the Owaissa, On the summit of the lodges Sang the robin, the Opechee, In the covert of the pine-trees Cooed the pigeon, the Omemee; And the sorrowing Hiawatha, Speechless in his infinite sorrow, Heard their voices calling to him, Went forth from his gloomy doorway, Stood and gazed into the heaven, Gazed upon the earth and waters. From his wanderings far to eastward, From the regions of the morning, From the shining land of Wabun, Homeward now returned Iagoo, The great traveller, the great boaster, Full of new and strange adventures, Marvels many and many wonders. And the people of the village Listened to him as he told them Of his marvellous adventures, Laughing answered him in this wise: "Ugh! it is indeed Iagoo! No one else beholds such wonders!" He had seen, he said, a water Bigger than the Big-Sea-Water, Broader than the Gitche Gumee, Bitter so that none could drink it! At each other looked the warriors, Looked the women at each other, Smiled, and said, "It cannot be so!" Kaw!" they said, it cannot be so!" O'er it, said he, o'er this water Came a great canoe with pinions, A canoe with wings came flying, Bigger than a grove of pine-trees, Taller than the tallest tree-tops! And the old men and the women Looked and tittered at each other; "Kaw!" they said, "we don't believe it!" From its mouth, he said, to greet him, Came Waywassimo, the lightning, Came the thunder, Annemeekee! And the warriors and the women Laughed aloud at poor Iagoo; "Kaw!" they said, "what tales you tell us!" In it, said he, came a people, In the great canoe with pinions Came, he said, a hundred warriors; Painted white were all their faces And with hair their chins were covered! And the warriors and the women Laughed and shouted in derision, Like the ravens on the tree-tops, Like the crows upon the hemlocks. "Kaw!" they said, "what lies you tell us! Do not think that we believe them!" Only Hiawatha laughed not, But he gravely spake and answered To their jeering and their jesting: "True is all Iagoo tells us; I have seen it in a vision, Seen the great canoe with pinions, Seen the people with white faces, Seen the coming of this bearded People of the wooden vessel From the regions of the morning, From the shining land of Wabun. "Gitche Manito, the Mighty, The Great Spirit, the Creator, Sends them hither on his errand. Sends them to us with his message. Wheresoe'er they move, before them Swarms the stinging fly, the Ahmo, Swarms the bee, the honey-maker; Wheresoe'er they tread, beneath them Springs a flower unknown among us, Springs the White-man's Foot in blossom. "Let us welcome, then, the strangers, Hail them as our friends and brothers, And the heart's right hand of friendship Give them when they come to see us. Gitche Manito, the Mighty, Said this to me in my vision. "I beheld, too, in that vision All the secrets of the future, Of the distant days that shall be. I beheld the westward marches Of the unknown, crowded nations. All the land was full of people, Restless, struggling, toiling, striving, Speaking many tongues, yet feeling But one heart-beat in their bosoms. In the woodlands rang their axes, Smoked their towns in all the valleys, Over all the lakes and rivers Rushed their great canoes of thunder. "Then a darker, drearier vision Passed before me, vague and cloud-like; I beheld our nation scattered, All forgetful of my counsels, Weakened, warring with each other; Saw the remnants of our people Sweeping westward, wild and woful, Like the cloud-rack of a tempest, Like the withered leaves of Autumn!" XXII HIAWATHA'S DEPARTURE By the shore of Gitche Gumee, By the shining Big-Sea-Water, At the doorway of his wigwam, In the pleasant Summer morning, Hiawatha stood and waited. All the air was full of freshness, All the earth was bright and joyous, And before him, through the sunshine, Westward toward the neighboring forest Passed in golden swarms the Ahmo, Passed the bees, the honey-makers, Burning, singing in the sunshine. Bright above him shone the heavens, Level spread the lake before him; From its bosom leaped the sturgeon, Sparkling, flashing in the sunshine; On its margin the great forest Stood reflected in the water, Every tree-top had its shadow, Motionless beneath the water. From the brow of Hiawatha Gone was every trace of sorrow, As the fog from off the water, As the mist from off the meadow. With a smile of joy and triumph, With a look of exultation, As of one who in a vision Sees what is to be, but is not, Stood and waited Hiawatha. Toward the sun his hands were lifted, Both the palms spread out against it, And between the parted fingers Fell the sunshine on his features, Flecked with light his naked shoulders, As it falls and flecks an oak-tree Through the rifted leaves and branches. O'er the water floating, flying, Something in the hazy distance, Something in the mists of morning, Loomed and lifted from the water, Now seemed floating, now seemed flying, Coming nearer, nearer, nearer. Was it Shingebis the diver? Or the pelican, the Shada? Or the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah? Or the white goose, Waw-be-wawa, With the water dripping, flashing, From its glossy neck and feathers? It was neither goose nor diver, Neither pelican nor heron, O'er the water floating, flying, Through the shining mist of morning, But a birch canoe with paddles, Rising, sinking on the water, Dripping, flashing in the sunshine; And within it came a people From the distant land of Wabun, From the farthest realms of morning Came the Black-Robe chief, the Prophet, He the Priest of Prayer, the Pale-face, With his guides and his companions. And the noble Hiawatha, With his hands aloft extended, Held aloft in sign of welcome, Waited, full of exultation, Till the birch canoe with paddles Grated on the shining pebbles, Stranded on the sandy margin, Till the Black-Robe chief, the Pale-face, With the cross upon his bosom, Landed on the sandy margin. Then the joyous Hiawatha Cried aloud and spake in this wise: "Beautiful is the sun, O strangers, When you come so far to see us! All our town in peace awaits you, All our doors stand open for you; You shall enter all our wigwams, For the heart's right hand we give you. "Never bloomed the earth so gayly, Never shone the sun so brightly, As to-day they shine and blossom When you come so far to see us! Never was our lake so tranquil, Nor so free from rocks, and sand-bars; For your birch canoe in passing Has removed both rock and sand-bar. "Never before had our tobacco Such a sweet and pleasant flavor, Never the broad leaves of our cornfields Were so beautiful to look on, As they seem to us this morning, When you come so far to see us!' And the Black-Robe chief made answer, Stammered in his speech a little, Speaking words yet unfamiliar: "Peace be with you, Hiawatha, Peace be with you and your people, Peace of prayer, and peace of pardon, Peace of Christ, and joy of Mary!" Then the generous Hiawatha Led the strangers to his wigwam, Seated them on skins of bison, Seated them on skins of ermine, And the careful old Nokomis Brought them food in bowls of basswood, Water brought in birchen dippers, And the calumet, the peace-pipe, Filled and lighted for their smoking. All the old men of the village, All the warriors of the nation, All the Jossakeeds, the Prophets, The magicians, the Wabenos, And the Medicine-men, the Medas, Came to bid the strangers welcome; "It is well", they said, "O brothers, That you come so far to see us!" In a circle round the doorway, With their pipes they sat in silence, Waiting to behold the strangers, Waiting to receive their message; Till the Black-Robe chief, the Pale-face, From the wigwam came to greet them, Stammering in his speech a little, Speaking words yet unfamiliar; "It is well," they said, "O brother, That you come so far to see us!" Then the Black-Robe chief, the Prophet, Told his message to the people, Told the purport of his mission, Told them of the Virgin Mary, And her blessed Son, the Saviour, How in distant lands and ages He had lived on earth as we do; How he fasted, prayed, and labored; How the Jews, the tribe accursed, Mocked him, scourged him, crucified him; How he rose from where they laid him, Walked again with his disciples, And ascended into heaven. And the chiefs made answer, saying: "We have listened to your message, We have heard your words of wisdom, We will think on what you tell us. It is well for us, O brothers, That you come so far to see us!" Then they rose up and departed Each one homeward to his wigwam, To the young men and the women Told the story of the strangers Whom the Master of Life had sent them From the shining land of Wabun. Heavy with the heat and silence Grew the afternoon of Summer; With a drowsy sound the forest Whispered round the sultry wigwam, With a sound of sleep the water Rippled on the beach below it; From the cornfields shrill and ceaseless Sang the grasshopper, Pah-puk-keena; And the guests of Hiawatha, Weary with the heat of Summer, Slumbered in the sultry wigwam. Slowly o'er the simmering landscape Fell the evening's dusk and coolness, And the long and level sunbeams Shot their spears into the forest, Breaking through its shields of shadow, Rushed into each secret ambush, Searched each thicket, dingle, hollow; Still the guests of Hiawatha Slumbered in the silent wigwam. From his place rose Hiawatha, Bade farewell to old Nokomis, Spake in whispers, spake in this wise, Did not wake the guests, that slumbered. "I am going, O Nokomis, On a long and distant journey, To the portals of the Sunset. To the regions of the home-wind, Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin. But these guests I leave behind me, In your watch and ward I leave them; See that never harm comes near them, See that never fear molests them, Never danger nor suspicion, Never want of food or shelter, In the lodge of Hiawatha!" Forth into the village went he, Bade farewell to all the warriors, Bade farewell to all the young men, Spake persuading, spake in this wise: "I am going, O my people, On a long and distant journey; Many moons and many winters Will have come, and will have vanished, Ere I come again to see you. But my guests I leave behind me; Listen to their words of wisdom, Listen to the truth they tell you, For the Master of Life has sent them From the land of light and morning!" On the shore stood Hiawatha, Turned and waved his hand at parting; On the clear and luminous water Launched his birch canoe for sailing, From the pebbles of the margin Shoved it forth into the water; Whispered to it, "Westward! westward!" And with speed it darted forward. And the evening sun descending Set the clouds on fire with redness, Burned the broad sky, like a prairie, Left upon the level water One long track and trail of splendor, Down whose stream, as down a river, Westward, westward Hiawatha Sailed into the fiery sunset, Sailed into the purple vapors, Sailed into the dusk of evening: And the people from the margin Watched him floating, rising, sinking, Till the birch canoe seemed lifted High into that sea of splendor, Till it sank into the vapors Like the new moon slowly, slowly Sinking in the purple distance. And they said, "Farewell forever!" Said, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!" And the forests, dark and lonely, Moved through all their depths of darkness, Sighed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!" And the waves upon the margin Rising, rippling on the pebbles, Sobbed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!" And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, From her haunts among the fen-lands, Screamed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!" Thus departed Hiawatha, Hiawatha the Beloved, In the glory of the sunset,. In the purple mists of evening, To the regions of the home-wind, Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin, To the Islands of the Blessed, To the Kingdom of Ponemah, To the Land of the Hereafter! NOTES THE SONG OF HIAWATHA. This Indian Edda--if I may so call it--is founded on a tradition prevalent among the North American Indians, of a personage of miraculous birth, who was sent among them to clear their rivers, forests, and fishing-grounds, and to teach them the arts of peace. He was known among different tribes by the several names of Michabou, Chiabo, Manabozo, Tarenyawagon, and Hiawatha. Mr. Schoolcraft gives an account of him in his Algic Researches, Vol. I. p. 134; and in his History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, Part III. p. 314, may be found the Iroquois form of the tradition, derived from the verbal narrations of an Onondaga chief. Into this old tradition I have woven other curious Indian legends, drawn chiefly from the various and valuable writings of Mr. Schoolcraft, to whom the literary world is greatly indebted for his indefatigable zeal in rescuing from oblivion so much of the legendary lore of the Indians. The scene of the poem is among the Ojibways on the southern shore of Lake Superior, in the region between the Pictured Rocks and the Grand Sable. VOCABULARY Adjidau'mo, the red squirrel. Ahdeek', the reindeer. Ahkose'win, fever. Ahmeek', the beaver. Algon'quin, Ojibway. Annemee'kee, the thunder. Apuk'wa. a bulrush. Baim-wa'wa, the sound of the thunder. Bemah'gut, the grapevine. Be'na, the pheasant. Big-Sea-Water, Lake Superior. Bukada'win, famine. Chemaun', a birch canoe. Chetowaik', the plover. Chibia'bos, a musician; friend of Hiawatha; ruler in the Land of Spirits. Dahin'da, the bull frog. Dush-kwo-ne'she or Kwo-ne'she, the dragon fly. Esa, shame upon you. Ewa-yea', lullaby. Ghee'zis, the sun. Gitche Gu'mee, The Big-Sea-Water, Lake Superior. Gitche Man'ito, the Great Spirit, the Master of Life. Gushkewau', the darkness. Hiawa'tha, the Wise Man, the Teacher, son of Mudjekeewis, the WestWind and Wenonah, daughter of Nokomis. Ia'goo, a great boaster and story-teller. Inin'ewug, men, or pawns in the Game of the Bowl. Ishkoodah', fire, a comet. Jee'bi, a ghost, a spirit. Joss'akeed, a prophet. Kabibonok'ka, the North-Wind. Kagh, the hedge-hog. Ka'go, do not. Kahgahgee', the raven. Kaw, no. Kaween', no indeed. Kayoshk', the sea-gull. Kee'go, a fish. Keeway'din, the Northwest wind, the Home-wind. Kena'beek, a serpent. Keneu', the great war-eagle. Keno'zha, the pickerel. Ko'ko-ko'ho, the owl. Kuntasoo', the Game of Plum-stones. Kwa'sind, the Strong Man. Kwo-ne'she, or Dush-kwo-ne'she, the dragon-fly. Mahnahbe'zee, the swan. Mahng, the loon. Mahn-go-tay'see, loon-hearted, brave. Mahnomo'nee, wild rice. Ma'ma, the woodpecker. Maskeno'zha, the pike. Me'da, a medicine-man. Meenah'ga, the blueberry. Megissog'won, the great Pearl-Feather, a magician, and the Manito of Wealth. Meshinau'wa, a pipe-bearer. Minjekah'wun, Hiawatha's mittens. Minneha'ha, Laughing Water; wife of Hiawatha; a water-fall in a stream running into the Mississippi between Fort Snelling and the Falls of St. Anthony. Minne-wa'wa, a pleasant sound, as of the wind in the trees. Mishe-Mo'kwa, the Great Bear. Mishe-Nah'ma, the Great Sturgeon. Miskodeed', the Spring-Beauty, the Claytonia Virginica. Monda'min, Indian corn. Moon of Bright Nights, April. Moon of Leaves, May. Moon of Strawberries, June. Moon of the Falling Leaves, September. Moon of Snow-shoes, November. Mudjekee'wis, the West-Wind; father of Hiawatha. Mudway-aush'ka, sound of waves on a shore. Mushkoda'sa, the grouse. Nah'ma, the sturgeon. Nah'ma-wusk, spearmint. Na'gow Wudj'oo, the Sand Dunes of Lake Superior. Nee-ba-naw'-baigs, water-spirits. Nenemoo'sha, sweetheart. Nepah'win, sleep. Noko'mis, a grandmother, mother of Wenonah. No'sa, my father. Nush'ka, look! look! Odah'min, the strawberry. Okahah'wis, the fresh-water herring. Ome'me, the pigeon. Ona'gon, a bowl. Onaway', awake. Ope'chee, the robin. Osse'o, Son of the Evening Star. Owais'sa, the bluebird. Oweenee', wife of Osseo. Ozawa'beek, a round piece of brass or copper in the Game of the Bowl. Pah-puk-kee'na, the grasshopper. Pau'guk, death. Pau-Puk-Kee'wis, the handsome Yenadizze, the son of Storm Fool. Pauwa'ting, Saut Sainte Marie. Pe'boan, Winter. Pem'ican, meat of the deer or buffalo dried and pounded. Pezhekee', the bison. Pishnekuh', the brant. Pone'mah, hereafter. Pugasaing', Game of the Bowl. Puggawau'gun, a war-club. Puk-Wudj'ies, little wild men of the woods; pygmies. Sah-sah-je'wun, rapids. Sah'wa, the perch. Segwun', Spring. Sha'da, the pelican. Shahbo'min, the gooseberry. Shah-shah, long ago. Shaugoda'ya, a coward. Shawgashee', the craw-fish. Shawonda'see, the South-Wind. Shaw-shaw, the swallow. Shesh'ebwug, ducks; pieces in the Game of the Bowl. Shin'gebis, the diver, or grebe. Showain' neme'shin, pity me. Shuh-shuh'gah, the blue heron. Soan-ge-ta'ha, strong-hearted. Subbeka'she, the spider. Sugge'me, the mosquito. To'tem, family coat-of-arms. Ugh, yes. Ugudwash', the sun-fish. Unktahee', the God of Water. Wabas'so, the rabbit, the North. Wabe'no, a magician, a juggler. Wabe'no-wusk, yarrow. Wa'bun, the East-Wind. Wa'bun An'nung, the Star of the East, the Morning Star. Wahono'win, a cry of lamentation. Wah-wah-tay'see, the fire-fly. Wam'pum, beads of shell. Waubewy'on, a white skin wrapper. Wa'wa, the wild goose. Waw'beek, a rock. Waw-be-wa'wa, the white goose. Wawonais'sa, the whippoorwill. Way-muk-kwa'na, the caterpillar. Wen'digoes, giants. Weno'nah, Hiawatha's mother, daughter of Nokomis. Yenadiz'ze, an idler and gambler; an Indian dandy. In the Vale of Tawasentha. This valley, now called Norman's Kill; is in Albany County, New York. On the Mountains of the Prairie. Mr. Catlin, in his Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians, Vol. II p. 160, gives an interesting account of the Coteau des Prairies, and the Red Pipestone Quarry. He says:-- "Here (according to their traditions) happened the mysterious birth of the red pipe, which has blown its fumes of peace and war to the remotest corners of the continent; which has visited every warrior, and passed through its reddened stem the irrevocable oath of war and desolation. And here, also, the peace-breathing calumet was born, and fringed with the eagle's quills, which has shed its thrilling fumes over the land, and soothed the fury of the relentless savage. "The Great Spirit at an ancient period here called the Indian nations together, and, standing on the precipice of the red pipe- stone rock, broke from its wall a piece, and made a huge pipe by turning it in his hand, which he smoked over them, and to the North, the South, the East, and the West, and told them that this stone was red,--that it was their flesh,--that they must use it for their pipes of peace,--that it belonged to them all, and that the war-club and scalping-knife must not be raised on its ground. At the last whiff of his pipe his head went into a great cloud, and the whole surface of the rock for several miles was melted and glazed; two great ovens were opened beneath, and two women (guardian spirits of the place) entered them in a blaze of fire; and they are heard there yet (Tso-mec-cos-tee aud Tso-me-cos-te-won-dee), answering to the invocations of the high-priests or medicine-men, who consult them when they are visitors to this sacred place." Hark you, Bear! you are a coward. This anecdote is from Heckewelder. In his account of the Indian Nations, he describes an Indian hunter as addressing a bear in nearly these words. "I was present," he says, "at the delivery of this curious invective; when the hunter had despatched the bear, I asked him how he thought that poor animal could understand what he said to it. 'O,' said he in answer, 'the bear understood me very well; did you not observe how ashamed he looked while I was upbraiding him?"'--Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. I. p. 240. Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee! Heckewelder, in a letter published in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. IV. p. 260, speaks of this tradition as prevalent among the Mohicans and Delawares. "Their reports," he says, "run thus: that among all animals that had been formerly in this country, this was the most ferocious; that it was much larger than the largest of the common bears, and remarkably long-bodied; all over (except a spot of hair on its back of a white color) naked. . . . . "The history of this animal used to be a subject of conversation among the Indians, especially when in the woods a hunting. I have also heard them say to their children when crying: 'Hush! the naked bear will hear you, be upon you, and devour you,'" Where the Falls of Minnehaha, etc. "The scenery about Fort Snelling is rich in beauty. The Falls of St. Anthony are familiar to travellers, and to readers of Indian sketches. Between the fort and these falls are the 'Little Falls,' forty feet in height, on a stream that empties into the Mississippi. The Indians called them Mine-hah-hah, or 'laughing waters.'" -- MRS. EASTMAN'S Dacotah, or Legends of the Sioux, Introd., p. ii. Sand Hills of the Nagow Wudjoo. A description of the Grand Sable, or great sand-dunes of Lake Superior, is given in Foster and Whitney's Report on the Geology of the Lake Superior Land District, Part II. p. 131. "The Grand Sable possesses a scenic interest little inferior to that of the Pictured Rocks. The explorer passes abruptly from a coast of consolidated sand to one of loose materials; and although in the one case the cliffs are less precipitous, yet in the other they attain a higher altitude. He sees before him a long reach of coast, resembling a vast sand-bank, more than three hundred and fifty feet in height, without a trace of vegetation. Ascending to the top, rounded hillocks of blown sand are observed, with occasional clumps of trees standing out like oases in the desert." Onaway! Awake, beloved! The original of this song may be found in Littell's Living Age, Vol. XXV. p. 45. On the Red Swan floating, flying. The fanciful tradition of the Red Swan may be found in Schoolcraft's Algic Researches, Vol. II. p. 9. Three brothers were hunting on a wager to see who would bring home the first game. "They were to shoot no other animal," so the legend says, "but such as each was in the habit of killing. They set out different ways: Odjibwa, the youngest, had not gone far before he saw a bear, an animal he was not to kill, by the agreement. He followed him close, and drove an arrow through him, which brought him to the ground. Although contrary to the bet, he immediately commenced skinning him, when suddenly something red tinged all the air around him. He rubbed his eyes, thinking he was perhaps deceived; but without effect, for the red hue continued. At length he heard a strange noise at a distance. It first appeared like a human voice, but after following the sound for some distance, he reached the shores of a lake, and soon saw the object he was looking for. At a distance out in the lake sat a most beautiful Red Swan, whose plumage glittered in the sun, and who would now and then make the same noise he had heard. He was within long bow-shot, and, pulling the arrow from the bowstring up to his ear, took deliberate aim and shot. The arrow took no effect; and he shot and shot again till his quiver was empty. Still the swan remained, moving round and round, stretching its long neck and dipping its bill into the water, as if heedless of the arrows shot at it. Odjibwa ran home, and got all his own and his brother's arrows and shot them all away. He then stood and gazed at the beautiful bird. While standing, he remembered his brother's saying that in their deceased father's medicine-sack were three magic arrows. Off he started, his anxiety to kill the swan overcoming all scruples. At any other time, he would have deemed it sacrilege to open his father's medicine-sack; but now he hastily seized the three arrows and ran back, leaving the other contents of the sack scattered over the lodge. The swan was still there. He shot the first arrow with great precision, and came very near to it. The second came still closer; as he took the last arrow, he felt his arm firmer, and, drawing it up with vigor, saw it pass through the neck of the swan a little above the breast. Still it did not prevent the bird from flying off, which it did, however, at first slowly, flapping its wings and rising gradually into the airs and teen flying off toward the sinking of the sun." -- pp.10-12. When I think of my beloved. The original of this song may be found in Oneota, p. 15. Sing the mysteries of Mondamin. The Indians hold the maize, or Indian corn, in great veneration. "They esteem it so important and divine a grain," says Schoolcraft, "that their story-tellers invented various tales, in which this idea is symbolized under the form of a special gift from the Great Spirit. The Odjibwa-Algonquins, who call it Mon-da-min, that is, the Spirit's grain or berry, have a pretty story of this kind, in which the stalk in full tassel is represented as descending from the sky, under the guise of a handsome youth, in answer to the prayers of a young man at his fast of virility, or coming to manhood. "It is well known that corn-planting and corn-gathering, at least among all the still uncolonized tribes, are left entirely to the females and children, and a few superannuated old men. It is not generally known, perhaps, that this labor is not compulsory, and that it is assumed by the females as a just equivalent, in their view, for the onerous and continuous labor of the other sex, in providing meats, and skins for clothing, by the chase, and in defending their villages against their enemies, and keeping intruders off their territories. A good Indian housewife deems this a part of her prerogative, and prides herself to have a store of corn to exercise her hospitality, or duly honor her husband's hospitality, in the entertainment of the lodge guests." -- Oneota, p. 82. Thus the fields shall be more fruitful. "A singular proof of this belief, in both sexes, of the mysterious influence of the steps of a woman on the vegetable and in sect creation, is found in an ancient custom, which was related to me, respecting corn-planting. It was the practice of the hunter's wife, when the field of corn had been planted, to choose the first dark or overclouded evening to perform a secret circuit, sans habillement, around the field. For this purpose she slipped out of the lodge in the evening, unobserved, to some obscure nook, where she completely disrobed. Then, taking her matchecota, or principal garment, in one hand, she dragged it around the field. This was thought to insure a prolific crop, and to prevent the assaults of insects and worms upon the grain. It was supposed they could not creep over the charmed line." -- Oneota, p. 83. With his prisoner-string he bound him. "These cords," says Mr. Tanner "are made of the bark of the elm- tree, by boiling and then immersing it in cold water. . . . The leader of a war party commonly carries several fastened about his waist, and if, in the course of the fight, any one of his young men take a prisoner, it is his duty to bring him immediately to the chief, to be tied, and the latter is responsible for his safe keeping." -- Narrative of Captivity and Adventures, p. 412. Wagemin, the thief of cornfields, Paimosaid, who steals the maize-ear. "If one of the young female huskers finds a red ear of corn, it is typical of a brave admirer, and is regarded as a fitting present to some young warrior. But if the ear be crooked, and tapering to a point, no matter what color, the whole circle is set in a roar, and wa-ge-min is the word shouted aloud. It is the symbol of a thief in the cornfield. It is considered as the image of an old man stooping as he enters the lot. Had the chisel of Praxiteles been employed to produce this image, it could not more vividly bring to the minds of the merry group the idea of a pilferer of their favorite mondamin. . . . "The literal meaning of the term is, a mass, or crooked ear of grain; but the ear of corn so called is a conventional type of a little old man pilfering ears of corn in a cornfield. It is in this manner that a single word or term, in these curious languages, becomes the fruitful parent of many ideas. And we can thus perceive why it is that the word wagemin is alone competent to excite merriment in the husking circle. "This term is taken as the basis of the cereal chorus, or corn song, as sung by the Northern Algonquin tribes. It is coupled with the phrase Paimosaid,--a permutative form of the Indian substantive, made from the verb pim-o-sa, to walk. Its literal meaning is, he who walks, or the walker; but the ideas conveyed by it are, he who walks by night to pilfer corn. It offers, therefore, a kind of parallelism in expression to the preceding term." -- Oneota, p. 254. Pugasaing, with thirteen pieces. This Game of the Bowl is the principal game of hazard among the Northern tribes of Indians. Mr. Schoolcraft gives a particular account of it in Oneota, p. 85. "This game," he says, "is very fascinating to some portions of the Indians. They stake at it their ornaments, weapons, clothing, canoes, horses, everything in fact they possess; and have been known, it is said, to set up their wives and children and even to forfeit their own liberty. Of such desperate stakes I have seen no examples, nor do I think the game itself in common use. It is rather confined to certain persons, who hold the relative rank of gamblers in Indian society,--men who are not noted as hunters or warriors, or steady providers for their families. Among these are persons who bear the term of Iena-dizze- wug, that is, wanderers about the country, braggadocios, or fops. It can hardly be classed with the popular games of amusement, by which skill and dexterity are acquired. I have generally found the chiefs and graver men of the tribes, who encouraged the young men to play ball, and are sure to be present at the customary sports, to witness, and sanction, and applaud them, speak lightly and disparagingly of this game of hazard. Yet it cannot be denied that some of the chiefs, distinguished in war and the chase, at the West, can be referred to as lending their example to its fascinating power." See also his history, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes, Part II, p. 72. To the Pictured Rocks of sandstone. The reader will find a long description of the Pictured Rocks in Foster and Whitney's Report on the Geology of the Lake Superior Land District, Part II. p. 124. From this I make the following extract:-- "The Pictured Rocks may be described, in general terms, as a series of sandstone bluffs extending along the shore of Lake Superior for about five miles, and rising, in most places, vertically from the water, without any beach at the base, to a height varying from fifty to nearly two hundred feet. Were they simply a line of cliffs, they might not, so far as relates to height or extent, be worthy of a rank among great natural curiosities, although such an assemblage of rocky strata, washed by the waves of the great lake, would not, under any circumstances, be destitute of grandeur. To the voyager, coasting along their base in his frail canoe, they would, at all times, be an object of dread; the recoil of the surf, the rock-bound coast, affording, for miles, no place of refuge,--the lowering sky, the rising wind,--all these would excite his apprehension, and induce him to ply a vigorous oar until the dreaded wall was passed. But in the Pictured Rocks there are two features which communicate to the scenery a wonderful and almost unique character. These are, first, the curious manner in which the cliffs have been excavated and worn away by the action of the lake, which, for centuries, has dashed an ocean-like surf against their base; and, second, the equally curious manner in which large portions of the surface have been colored by bands of brilliant hues. "It is from the latter circumstance that the name, by which these cliffs are known to the American traveller, is derived; while that applied to them by the French voyageurs ('Les Portails') is derived from the former, and by far the most striking peculiarity. "The term Pictured Rocks has been in use for a great length of time; but when it was first applied, we have been unable to discover. It would seem that the first travellers were more impressed with the novel and striking distribution of colors on the surface than with the astonishing variety of form into which the cliffs themselves have been worn. . . . "Our voyageurs had many legends to relate of the pranks of the Menni-bojou in these caverns, and, in answer to our inquiries, seemed disposed to fabricate stories, without end, of the achievements of this Indian deity." Toward the Sun his hands were lifted. In this manner, and with such salutations, was Father Marquette received by the Illinois. See his Voyages et Decouvertes, Section V. <END HIAWATHA NOTES> ************* THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH I MILES STANDISH In the Old Colony days, in Plymouth the land of the Pilgrims, To and fro in a room of his simple and primitive dwelling, Clad in doublet and hose, and boots of Cordovan leather, Strode, with a martial air, Miles Standish the Puritan Captain. Buried in thought he seemed, with his hands behind him, and pausing Ever and anon to behold his glittering weapons of warfare, Hanging in shining array along the walls of the chamber,-- Cutlass and corselet of steel, and his trusty sword of Damascus, Curved at the point and inscribed with its mystical Arabic sentence, While underneath, in a corner, were fowling-piece, musket, and matchlock. Short of stature he was, but strongly built and athletic, Broad in the shoulders, deep-chested, with muscles and sinews of iron; Brown as a nut was his face, but his russet beard was already Flaked with patches of snow, as hedges sometimes in November. Near him was seated John Alden, his friend, and household companion, Writing with diligent speed at a table of pine by the window; Fair-haired, azure-eyed, with delicate Saxon complexion, Having the dew of his youth, and the beauty thereof, as the captives Whom Saint Gregory saw, and exclaimed, "Not Angles, but Angels." Youngest of all was he of the men who came in the Mayflower. Suddenly breaking the silence, the diligent scribe interrupting, Spake, in the pride of his heart, Miles Standish the Captain of Plymouth. "Look at these arms," he said, "the warlike weapons that hang here Burnished and bright and clean, as if for parade or inspection! This is the sword of Damascus I fought with in Flanders; this breastplate, Well I remember the day! once saved my life in a skirmish; Here in front you can see the very dint of the bullet Fired point-blank at my heart by a Spanish arcabucero. Had it not been of sheer steel, the forgotten bones of Miles Standish Would at this moment be mould, in their grave in the Flemish morasses." Thereupon answered John Alden, but looked not up from his writing: "Truly the breath of the Lord hath slackened the speed of the bullet; He in his mercy preserved you, to be our shield and our weapon!" Still the Captain continued, unheeding the words of the stripling: "See, how bright they are burnished, as if in an arsenal hanging; That is because I have done it myself, and not left it to others. Serve yourself, would you be well served, is an excellent adage; So I take care of my arms, as you of your pens and your inkhorn. Then, too, there are my soldiers, my great, invincible army, Twelve men, all equipped, having each his rest and his matchlock, Eighteen shillings a month, together with diet and pillage, And, like Caesar, I know the name of each of my soldiers!" This he said with a smile, that danced in his eyes, as the sunbeams Dance on the waves of the sea, and vanish again in a moment. Alden laughed as he wrote, and still the Captain continued: "Look! you can see from this window my brazen howitzer planted High on the roof of the church, a preacher who speaks to the purpose, Steady, straight-forward, and strong, with irresistible logic, Orthodox, flashing conviction right into the hearts of the heathen. Now we are ready, I think, for any assault of the Indians; Let them come, if they like, and the sooner they try it the better,-- Let them come if they like, be it sagamore, sachem, or pow-wow, Aspinet, Samoset, Corbitant, Squanto, or Tokamahamon!" Long at the window he stood, and wistfully gazed on the landscape, Washed with a cold gray mist, the vapory breath of the east-wind, Forest and meadow and hill, and the steel-blue rim of the ocean, Lying silent and sad, in the afternoon shadows and sunshine. Over his countenance flitted a shadow like those on the landscape, Gloom intermingled with light; and his voice was subdued with emotion, Tenderness, pity, regret, as after a pause he proceeded: "Yonder there, on the hill by the sea, lies buried Rose Standish; Beautiful rose of love, that bloomed for me by the wayside! She was the first to die of all who came in the Mayflower! Green above her is growing the field of wheat we have sown there, Better to hide from the Indian scouts the graves of our people, Lest they should count them and see how many already have perished!" Sadly his face he averted, and strode up and down, and was thoughtful. Fixed to the opposite wall was a shelf of books, and among them Prominent three, distinguished alike for bulk and for binding; Bariffe's Artillery Guide, and the Commentaries of Caesar, Out of the Latin translated by Arthur Goldinge of London, And, as if guarded by these, between them was standing the Bible. Musing a moment before them, Miles Standish paused, as if doubtful Which of the three he should choose for his consolation and comfort, Whether the wars of the Hebrews, the famous campaigns of the Romans, Or the Artillery practice, designed for belligerent Christians. Finally down from its shelf he dragged the ponderous Roman, Seated himself at the window, and opened the book, and in silence Turned o'er the well-worn leaves, where thumb-marks thick on the margin, Like the trample of feet, proclaimed the battle was hottest. Nothing was heard in the room but the hurrying pen of the stripling, Busily writing epistles important, to go by the Mayflower, Ready to sail on the morrow, or next day at latest, God willing! Homeward bound with the tidings of all that terrible winter, Letters written by Alden, and full of the name of Priscilla, Full of the name and the fame of the Puritan maiden Priscilla! II LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP Nothing was heard in the room but the hurrying pen of the stripling, Or an occasional sigh from the laboring heart of the Captain, Reading the marvellous words and achievements of Julius Caesar. After a while he exclaimed, as he smote with his hand, palm downwards, Heavily on the page: "A wonderful man was this Caesar! You are a writer, and I am a fighter, but here is a fellow Who could both write and fight, and in both was equally skilful!" Straightway answered and spake John Alden, the comely, the youthful: "Yes, he was equally skilled, as you say, with his pen and his weapons. Somewhere have I read, but where I forget, he could dictate Seven letters at once, at the same time writing his memoirs." "Truly," continued the Captain, not heeding or hearing the other, "Truly a wonderful man was Caius Julius Caesar! Better be first, he said, in a little Iberian village, Than be second in Rome, and I think he was right when he said it. Twice was he married before he was twenty, and many times after; Battles five hundred he fought, and a thousand cities he conquered; He, too, fought in Flanders, as he himself has recorded; Finally he was stabbed by his friend, the orator Brutus! Now, do you know what he did on a certain occasion in Flanders, When the rear-guard of his army retreated, the front giving way too, And the immortal Twelfth Legion was crowded so closely together There was no room for their swords? Why, he seized a shield from a soldier, Put himself straight at the head of his troops, and commanded the captains, Calling on each by his name, to order forward the ensigns; Then to widen the ranks, and give more room for their weapons; So he won the day, the battle of something-or-other. That's what I always say; if you wish a thing to be well done, You must do it yourself, you must not leave it to others!" All was silent again; the Captain continued his reading. Nothing was heard in the room but the hurrying pen of the stripling Writing epistles important to go next day by the Mayflower, Filled with the name and the fame of the Puritan maiden Priscilla; Every sentence began or closed with the name of Priscilla, Till the treacherous pen, to which he confided the secret, Strove to betray it by singing and shouting the name of Priscilla! Finally closing his book, with a bang of the ponderous cover, Sudden and loud as the sound of a soldier grounding his musket, Thus to the young man spake Miles Standish the Captain of Plymouth: "When you have finished your work, I have something important to tell you. Be not however in haste; I can wait; I shall not be impatient!" Straightway Alden replied, as he folded the last of his letters, Pushing his papers aside, and giving respectful attention: "Speak; for whenever you speak, I am always ready to listen, Always ready to hear whatever pertains to Miles Standish." Thereupon answered the Captain, embarrassed, and culling his phrases: "'T is not good for a man to be alone, say the Scriptures. This I have said before, and again and again I repeat it; Every hour in the day, I think it, and feel it, and say it. Since Rose Standish died, my life has been weary and dreary; Sick at heart have I been, beyond the healing of friendship. Oft in my lonely hours have I thought of the maiden Priscilla. She is alone in the world; her father and mother and brother Died in the winter together; I saw her going and coming, Now to the grave of the dead, and now to the bed of the dying, Patient, courageous, and strong, and said to myself, that if ever There were angels on earth, as there are angels in heaven, Two have I seen and known; and the angel whose name is Priscilla Holds in my desolate life the place which the other abandoned. Long have I cherished the thought, but never have dared to reveal it, Being a coward in this, though valiant enough for the most part. Go to the damsel Priscilla, the loveliest maiden of Plymouth, Say that a blunt old Captain, a man not of words but of actions, Offers his hand and his heart, the hand and heart of a soldier. Not in these words, you know, but this in short is my meaning; I am a maker of war, and not a maker of phrases. You, who are bred as a scholar, can say it in elegant language, Such as you read in your books of the pleadings and wooings of lovers, Such as you think best adapted to win the heart of a maiden." When he had spoken, John Alden, the fair-haired, taciturn stripling, All aghast at his words, surprised, embarrassed, bewildered, Trying to mask his dismay by treating the subject with lightness, Trying to smile, and yet feeling his heart stand still in his bosom, Just as a timepiece stops in a house that is stricken by lightning, Thus made answer and spake, or rather stammered than answered: "Such a message as that, I am sure I should mangle and mar it; If you would have it well done,--I am only repeating your maxim,-- You must do it yourself, you must not leave it to others!" But with the air of a man whom nothing can turn from his purpose, Gravely shaking his head, made answer the Captain of Plymouth: "Truly the maxim is good, and I do not mean to gainsay it; But we must use it discreetly, and not waste powder for nothing. Now, as I said before, I was never a maker of phrases. I can march up to a fortress and summon the place to surrender, But march up to a woman with such a proposal, I dare not. I'm not afraid of bullets, nor shot from the mouth of a cannon, But of a thundering "No!" point-blank from the mouth of a woman, That I confess I'm afraid of, nor am I ashamed to confess it! So you must grant my request, for you are an elegant scholar, Having the graces of speech, and skill in the turning of phrases." Taking the hand of his friend, who still was reluctant and doubtful, Holding it long in his own, and pressing it kindly, he added: "Though I have spoken thus lightly, yet deep is the feeling that prompts me; Surely you cannot refuse what I ask in the name of our friendship!" Then made answer John Alden: "The name of friendship is sacred; What you demand in that name, I have not the power to deny you!" So the strong will prevailed, subduing and moulding the gentler, Friendship prevailed over love, and Alden went on his errand. III THE LOVER'S ERRAND So the strong will prevailed, and Alden went on his errand, Out of the street of the village, and into the paths of the forest, Into the tranquil woods, where blue-birds and robins were building Towns in the populous trees, with hanging gardens of verdure, Peaceful, aerial cities of joy and affection and freedom. All around him was calm, but within him commotion and conflict, Love contending with friendship, and self with each generous impulse. To and fro in his breast his thoughts were heaving and dashing, As in a foundering ship, with every roll of the vessel, Washes the bitter sea, the merciless surge of the ocean! "Must I relinquish it all," he cried with a wild lamentation, "Must I relinquish it all, the joy, the hope, the illusion? Was it for this I have loved, and waited, and worshipped in silence? Was it for this I have followed the flying feet and the shadow Over the wintry sea, to the desolate shores of New England? Truly the heart is deceitful, and out of its depths of corruption Rise, like an exhalation, the misty phantoms of passion; Angels of light they seem, but are only delusions of Satan. All is clear to me now; I feel it, I see it distinctly! This is the hand of the Lord; it is laid upon me in anger, For I have followed too much the heart's desires and devices, Worshipping Astaroth blindly, and impious idols of Baal. This is the cross I must bear; the sin and the swift retribution." So through the Plymouth woods John Alden went on his errand; Crossing the brook at the ford, where it brawled over pebble and shallow, Gathering still, as he went, the May-flowers blooming around him, Fragrant, filling the air with a strange and wonderful sweetness, Children lost in the woods, and covered with leaves in their slumber. "Puritan flowers," he said, "and the type of Puritan maidens, Modest and simple and sweet, the very type of Priscilla! So I will take them to her; to Priscilla the May-flower of Plymouth, Modest and simple and sweet, as a parting gift will I take them; Breathing their silent farewells, as they fade and wither and perish, Soon to be thrown away as is the heart of the giver." So through the Plymouth woods John Alden went on his errand; Came to an open space, and saw the disk of the ocean, Sailless, sombre and cold with the comfortless breath of the east-wind; Saw the new-built house and people at work in a meadow; Heard, as he drew near the door, the musical voice of Priscilla Singing the hundredth Psalm, the grand old Puritan anthem, Music that Luther sang to the sacred words of the Psalmist, Full of the breath of the Lord, consoling and comforting many. Then, as he opened the door, he beheld the form of the maiden Seated beside her wheel, and the carded wool like a snow-drift Piled at her knee, her white hands feeding the ravenous spindle, While with her foot on the treadle she guided the wheel in its motion. Open wide on her lap lay the well-worn psalm-book of Ainsworth, Printed in Amsterdam, the words and the music together, Rough-hewn, angular notes, like stones in the wall of a churchyard, Darkened and overhung by the running vine of the verses. Such was the book from whose pages she sang the old Puritan anthem, She, the Puritan girl, in the solitude of the forest, Making the humble house and the modest apparel of home-spun Beautiful with her beauty, and rich with the wealth of her being! Over him rushed, like a wind that is keen and cold and relentless, Thoughts of what might have been, and the weight and woe of his errand; All the dreams that had faded, and all the hopes that had vanished, All his life henceforth a dreary and tenantless mansion, Haunted by vain regrets, and pallid, sorrowful faces. Still he said to himself, and almost fiercely he said it, "Let not him that putteth his hand to the plough look backwards; Though the ploughshare cut through the flowers of life to its fountains, Though it pass o'er the graves of the dead and the hearths of the living, It is the will of the Lord; and his mercy endureth for ever!" So he entered the house: and the hum of the wheel and the singing Suddenly ceased; for Priscilla, aroused by his step on the threshold, Rose as he entered, and gave him her hand, in signal of welcome, Saying, "I knew it was you, when I heard your step in the passage; For I was thinking of you, as I sat there singing and spinning." Awkward and dumb with delight, that a thought of him had been mingled Thus in the sacred psalm, that came from the heart of the maiden, Silent before her he stood, and gave her the flowers for an answer, Finding no words for his thought. He remembered that day in the winter, After the first great snow, when he broke a path from the village, Reeling and plunging along through the drifts that encumbered the doorway, Stamping the snow from his feet as he entered the house, and Priscilla Laughed at his snowy locks, and gave him a seat by the fireside, Grateful and pleased to know he had thought of her in the snow-storm. Had he but spoken then! perhaps not in vain had he spoken; Now it was all too late; the golden moment had vanished! So he stood there abashed, and gave her the flowers for an answer. Then they sat down and talked of the birds and the beautiful Spring-time, Talked of their friends at home, and the Mayflower that sailed on the morrow. "I have been thinking all day," said gently the Puritan maiden, "Dreaming all night, and thinking all day, of the hedge-rows of England,-- They are in blossom now, and the country is all like a garden; Thinking of lanes and fields, and the song of the lark and the linnet, Seeing the village street, and familiar faces of neighbors Going about as of old, and stopping to gossip together, And, at the end of the street, the village church, with the ivy Climbing the old gray tower, and the quiet graves in the churchyard. Kind are the people I live with, and dear to me my religion; Still my heart is so sad, that I wish myself back in Old England. You will say it is wrong, but I cannot help it: I almost Wish myself back in Old England, I feel so lonely and wretched." Thereupon answered the youth:--"Indeed I do not condemn you; Stouter hearts than a woman's have quailed in this terrible winter. Yours is tender and trusting, and needs a stronger to lean on; So I have come to you now, with an offer and proffer of marriage Made by a good man and true, Miles Standish the Captain of Plymouth!" Thus he delivered his message, the dexterous writer of letters,-- Did not embellish the theme, nor array it in beautiful phrases, But came straight to the point, and blurted it out like a schoolboy; Even the Captain himself could hardly have said it more bluntly. Mute with amazement and sorrow, Priscilla the Puritan maiden Looked into Alden's face, her eyes dilated with wonder, Feeling his words like a blow, that stunned her and rendered her speechless; Till at length she exclaimed, interrupting the ominous silence: "If the great Captain of Plymouth is so very eager to wed me, Why does he not come himself, and take the trouble to woo me? If I am not worth the wooing, I surely am not worth the winning!" Then John Alden began explaining and smoothing the matter, Making it worse as he went, by saying the Captain was busy,-- Had no time for such things;--such things! the words grating harshly Fell on the ear of Priscilla; and swift as a flash she made answer: "Has he no time for such things, as you call it, before he is married, Would he be likely to find it, or make it, after the wedding? That is the way with you men; you don't understand us, you cannot. When you have made up your minds, after thinking of this one and that one, Choosing, selecting, rejecting, comparing one with another, Then you make known your desire, with abrupt and sudden avowal, And are offended and hurt, and indignant perhaps, that a woman Does not respond at once to a love that she never suspected, Does not attain at a bound the height to which you have been climbing. This is not right nor just: for surely a woman's affection Is not a thing to be asked for, and had for only the asking. When one is truly in love, one not only says it, but shows it. Had he but waited awhile, had he only showed that he loved me, Even this Captain of yours--who knows?--at last might have won me, Old and rough as he is; but now it never can happen." Still John Alden went on, unheeding the words of Priscilla, Urging the suit of his friend, explaining, persuading, expanding; Spoke of his courage and skill, and of all his battles in Flanders, How with the people of God he had chosen to suffer affliction, How, in return for his zeal, they had made him Captain of Plymouth; He was a gentleman born, could trace his pedigree plainly Back to Hugh Standish of Duxbury Hall, in Lancashire, England, Who was the son of Ralph, and the grandson of Thurston de Standish; Heir unto vast estates, of which he was basely defrauded, Still bore the family arms, and had for his crest a cock argent Combed and wattled gules, and all the rest of the blazon. He was a man of honor, of noble and generous nature; Though he was rough, he was kindly; she knew how during the winter He had attended the sick, with a hand as gentle as woman's; Somewhat hasty and hot, he could not deny it, and headstrong, Stern as a soldier might be, but hearty, and placable always, Not to be laughed at and scorned, because he was little of stature; For he was great of heart, magnanimous, courtly, courageous; Any woman in Plymouth, nay, any woman in England, Might be happy and proud to be called the wife of Miles Standish! But as he warmed and glowed, in his simple and eloquent language, Quite forgetful of self, and full of the praise of his rival, Archly the maiden smiled, and, with eyes over-running with laughter, Said, in a tremulous voice, "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" IV JOHN ALDEN Into the open air John Alden, perplexed and bewildered, Rushed like a man insane, and wandered alone by the sea-side; Paced up and down the sands, and bared his head to the east-wind, Cooling his heated brow, and the fire and fever within him. Slowly as out of the heavens, with apocalyptical splendors, Sank the City of God, in the vision of John the Apostle, So, with its cloudy walls of chrysolite, jasper, and sapphire, Sank the broad red sun, and over its turrets uplifted Glimmered the golden reed of the angel who measured the city. "Welcome, O wind of the East!" he exclaimed in his wild exultation, "Welcome, O wind of the East, from the caves of the misty Atlantic! Blowing o'er fields of dulse, and measureless meadows of sea-grass, Blowing o'er rocky wastes, and the grottos and gardens of ocean! Lay thy cold, moist hand on my burning forehead, and wrap me Close in thy garments of mist, to allay the fever within me!" Like an awakened conscience, the sea was moaning and tossing, Beating remorseful and loud the mutable sands of the sea-shore. Fierce in his soul was the struggle and tumult of passions contending; Love triumphant and crowned, and friendship wounded and bleeding, Passionate cries of desire, and importunate pleadings of duty! "Is it my fault," he said, "that the maiden has chosen between us? Is it my fault that he failed,--my fault that I am the victor?" Then within him there thundered a voice, like the voice of the Prophet: "It hath displeased the Lord!"--and he thought of David's transgression, Bathsheba's beautiful face, and his friend in the front of the battle! Shame and confusion of guilt, and abasement and self-condemnation, Overwhelmed him at once; and he cried in the deepest contrition: "It hath displeased the Lord! It is the temptation of Satan!" Then, uplifting his head, he looked at the sea, and beheld there Dimly the shadowy form of the Mayflower riding at anchor, Rocked on the rising tide, and ready to sail on the morrow; Heard the voices of men through the mist, the rattle of cordage Thrown on the deck, the shouts of the mate, and the sailors' "Ay, ay, Sir!" Clear and distinct, but not loud, in the dripping air of the twilight. Still for a moment he stood, and listened, and stared at the vessel, Then went hurriedly on, as one who, seeing a phantom, Stops, then quickens his pace, and follows the beckoning shadow. "Yes, it is plain to me now," he murmured; "the hand of the Lord is Leading me out of the land of darkness, the bondage of error, Through the sea, that shall lift the walls of its waters around me, Hiding me, cutting me off, from the cruel thoughts that pursue me. Back will I go o'er the ocean, this dreary land will abandon, Her whom I may not love, and him whom my heart has offended. Better to be in my grave in the green old churchyard in England, Close by my mother's side, and among the dust of my kindred; Better be dead and forgotten, than living in shame and dishonor! Sacred and safe and unseen, in the dark of the narrow chamber With me my secret shall lie, like a buried jewel that glimmers Bright on the hand that is dust, in the chambers of silence and darkness,-- Yes, as the marriage ring of the great espousal hereafter!" Thus as he spake, he turned, in the strength of his strong resolution, Leaving behind him the shore, and hurried along in the twilight, Through the congenial gloom of the forest silent and sombre, Till he beheld the lights in the seven houses of Plymouth, Shining like seven stars in the dusk and mist of the evening. Soon he entered his door, and found the redoubtable Captain Sitting alone, and absorbed in the martial pages of Caesar, Fighting some great campaign in Hainault or Brabant or Flanders. "Long have you been on your errand," he said with a cheery demeanor, Even as one who is waiting an answer, and fears not the issue. "Not far off is the house, although the woods are between us; But you have lingered so long, that while you were going and coming I have fought ten battles and sacked and demolished a city. Come, sit down, and in order relate to me all that has happened." Then John Alden spake, and related the wondrous adventure, From beginning to end, minutely, just as it happened; How he had seen Priscilla, and how he had sped in his courtship, Only smoothing a little, and softening down her refusal. But when he came at length to the words Priscilla had spoken, Words so tender and cruel: "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" Up leaped the Captain of Plymouth, and stamped on the floor, till his armor Clanged on the wall, where it hung, with a sound of sinister omen. All his pent-up wrath burst forth in a sudden explosion, Even as a hand-grenade, that scatters destruction around it. Wildly he shouted, and loud: "John Alden! you have betrayed me! Me, Miles Standish, your friend! have supplanted, defrauded, betrayed me! One of my ancestors ran his sword through the heart of Wat Tyler; Who shall prevent me from running my own through the heart of a traitor? Yours is the greater treason, for yours is a treason to friendship! You, who lived under my roof, whom I cherished and loved as a brother; You, who have fed at my board, and drunk at my cup, to whose keeping I have intrusted my honor, my thoughts the most sacred and secret,-- You too, Brutus! ah woe to the name of friendship hereafter! Brutus was Caesar's friend, and you were mine, but henceforward Let there be nothing between us save war, and implacable hatred!" So spake the Captain of Plymouth, and strode about in the chamber, Chafing and choking with rage; like cords were the veins on his temples. But in the midst of his anger a man appeared at the doorway, Bringing in uttermost haste a message of urgent importance, Rumors of danger and war and hostile incursions of Indians! Straightway the Captain paused, and, without further question or parley, Took from the nail on the wall his sword with its scabbard of iron, Buckled the belt round his waist, and, frowning fiercely, departed. Alden was left alone. He heard the clank of the scabbard Growing fainter and fainter, and dying away in the distance. Then he arose from his seat, and looked forth into the darkness, Felt the cool air blow on his cheek, that was hot with the insult, Lifted his eyes to the heavens, and, folding his hands as in childhood, Prayed in the silence of night to the Father who seeth in secret. Meanwhile the choleric Captain strode wrathful away to the council, Found it already assembled, impatiently waiting his coming; Men in the middle of life, austere and grave in deportment, Only one of them old, the hill that was nearest to heaven, Covered with snow, but erect, the excellent Elder of Plymouth. God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this planting, Then had sifted the wheat, as the living seed of a nation; So say the chronicles old, and such is the faith of the people! Near them was standing an Indian, in attitude stern and defiant, Naked down to the waist, and grim and ferocious in aspect; While on the table before them was lying unopened a Bible, Ponderous, bound in leather, brass-studded, printed in Holland, And beside it outstretched the skin of a rattle-snake glittered, Filled, like a quiver, with arrows; a signal and challenge of warfare, Brought by the Indian, and speaking with arrowy tongues of defiance. This Miles Standish beheld, as he entered, and heard them debating What were an answer befitting the hostile message and menace, Talking of this and of that, contriving, suggesting, objecting; One voice only for peace, and that the voice of the Elder, Judging it wise and well that some at least were converted, Rather than any were slain, for this was but Christian behavior! Then out spake Miles Standish, the stalwart Captain of Plymouth, Muttering deep in his throat, for his voice was husky with anger, "What! do you mean to make war with milk and the water of roses? Is it to shoot red squirrels you have your howitzer planted There on the roof of the church, or is it to shoot red devils? Truly the only tongue that is understood by a savage Must be the tongue of fire that speaks from the mouth of the cannon!" Thereupon answered and said the excellent Elder of Plymouth, Somewhat amazed and alarmed at this irreverent language: "Not so thought Saint Paul, nor yet the other Apostles; Not from the cannon's mouth were the tongues of fire they spake with!" But unheeded fell this mild rebuke on the Captain, Who had advanced to the table, and thus continued discoursing: "Leave this matter to me, for to me by right it pertaineth. War is a terrible trade; but in the cause that is righteous, Sweet is the smell of powder; and thus I answer the challenge!" Then from the rattlesnake's skin, with a sudden, contemptuous gesture, Jerking the Indian arrows, he filled it with powder and bullets Full to the very jaws, and handed it back to the savage, Saying, in thundering tones: "Here, take it! this is your answer!" Silently out of the room then glided the glistening savage, Bearing the serpent's skin, and seeming himself like a serpent, Winding his sinuous way in the dark to the depths of the forest. V THE SAILING OF THE MAYFLOWER Just in the gray of the dawn, as the mists uprose from the meadows, There was a stir and a sound in the slumbering village of Plymouth; Clanging and clicking of arms, and the order imperative, "Forward!" Given in tone suppressed, a tramp of feet, and then silence. Figures ten, in the mist, marched slowly out of the village. Standish the stalwart it was, with eight of his valorous army, Led by their Indian guide, by Hobomok, friend of the white men, Northward marching to quell the sudden revolt of the savage. Giants they seemed in the mist, or the mighty men of King David; Giants in heart they were, who believed in God and the Bible,-- Ay, who believed in the smiting of Midianites and Philistines. Over them gleamed far off the crimson banners of morning; Under them loud on the sands, the serried billows, advancing, Fired along the line, and in regular order retreated. Many a mile had they marched, when at length the village of Plymouth Woke from its sleep, and arose, intent on its manifold labors. Sweet was the air and soft; and slowly the smoke from the chimneys Rose over roofs of thatch, and pointed steadily eastward; Men came forth from the doors, and paused and talked of the weather, Said that the wind had changed, and was blowing fair for the Mayflower; Talked of their Captain's departure, and all the dangers that menaced, He being gone, the town, and what should be done in his absence. Merrily sang the birds, and the tender voices of women Consecrated with hymns the common cares of the household. Out of the sea rose the sun, and the billows rejoiced at his coming; Beautiful were his feet on the purple tops of the mountains; Beautiful on the sails of the Mayflower riding at anchor, Battered and blackened and worn by all the storms of the winter. Loosely against her masts was hanging and flapping her canvas, Rent by so many gales, and patched by the hands of the sailors. Suddenly from her side, as the sun rose over the ocean, Darted a puff of smoke, and floated seaward; anon rang Loud over field and forest the cannon's roar, and the echoes Heard and repeated the sound, the signal-gun of departure! Ah! but with louder echoes replied the hearts of the people! Meekly, in voices subdued, the chapter was read from the Bible, Meekly the prayer was begun, but ended in fervent entreaty! Then from their houses in haste came forth the Pilgrims of Plymouth, Men and women and children, all hurrying down to the sea-shore, Eager, with tearful eyes, to say farewell to the Mayflower, Homeward bound o'er the sea, and leaving them here in the desert. Foremost among them was Alden. All night he had lain without slumber, Turning and tossing about in the heat and unrest of his fever. He had beheld Miles Standish, who came back late from the council, Stalking into the room, and heard him mutter and murmur, Sometimes it seemed a prayer, and sometimes it sounded like swearing. Once he had come to the bed, and stood there a moment in silence; Then he had turned away, and said: "I will not awake him; Let him sleep on, it is best; for what is the use of more talking!" Then he extinguished the light, and threw himself down on his pallet, Dressed as he was, and ready to start at the break of the morning,-- Covered himself with the cloak he had worn in his campaigns in Flanders,-- Slept as a soldier sleeps in his bivouac, ready for action. But with the dawn he arose; in the twilight Alden beheld him Put on his corselet of steel, and all the rest of his armor, Buckle about his waist his trusty blade of Damascus, Take from the corner his musket, and so stride out of the chamber. Often the heart of the youth had burned and yearned to embrace him, Often his lips had essayed to speak, imploring for pardon; All the old friendship came back, with its tender and grateful emotions; But his pride overmastered the nobler nature within him,-- Pride, and the sense of his wrong, and the burning fire of the insult. So he beheld his friend departing in anger, but spake not, Saw him go forth to danger, perhaps to death, and he spake not! Then he arose from his bed, and heard what the people were saying, Joined in the talk at the door, with Stephen and Richard and Gilbert, Joined in the morning prayer, and in the reading of Scripture, And, with the others, in haste went hurrying down to the sea-shore, Down to the Plymouth Rock, that had been to their feet as a door-step Into a world unknown,--the corner-stone of a nation! There with his boat was the Master, already a little impatient Lest he should lose the tide, or the wind might shift to the eastward, Square-built, hearty, and strong, with an odor of ocean about him, Speaking with this one and that, and cramming letters and parcels Into his pockets capacious, and messages mingled together Into his narrow brain, till at last he was wholly bewildered. Nearer the boat stood Alden, with one foot placed on the gunwale, One still firm on the rock, and talking at times with the sailors, Seated erect on the thwarts, all ready and eager for starting. He too was eager to go, and thus put an end to his anguish, Thinking to fly from despair, that swifter than keel is or canvas, Thinking to drown in the sea the ghost that would rise and pursue him. But as he gazed on the crowd, he beheld the form of Priscilla Standing dejected among them, unconscious of all that was passing. Fixed were her eyes upon his, as if she divined his intention, Fixed with a look so sad, so reproachful, imploring, and patient, That with a sudden revulsion his heart recoiled from its purpose, As from the verge of a crag, where one step more is destruction. Strange is the heart of man, with its quick, mysterious instincts! Strange is the life of man, and fatal or fated are moments, Whereupon turn, as on hinges, the gates of the wall adamantine! "Here I remain!" he exclaimed, as he looked at the heavens above him, Thanking the Lord whose breath had scattered the mist and the madness, Wherein, blind and lost, to death he was staggering headlong. "Yonder snow-white cloud, that floats in the ether above me, Seems like a hand that is pointing and beckoning over the ocean. There is another hand, that is not so spectral and ghost-like, Holding me, drawing me back, and clasping mine for protection. Float, O hand of cloud, and vanish away in the ether! Roll thyself up like a fist, to threaten and daunt me; I heed not Either your warning or menace, or any omen of evil! There is no land so sacred, no air so pure and so wholesome, As is the air she breathes, and the soil that is pressed by her footsteps. Here for her sake will I stay, and like an invisible presence Hover around her for ever, protecting, supporting her weakness; Yes! as my foot was the first that stepped on this rock at the landing, So, with the blessing of God, shall it be the last at the leaving!" Meanwhile the Master alert, but with dignified air and important, Scanning with watchful eye the tide and the wind and the weather, Walked about on the sands; and the people crowded around him Saying a few last words, and enforcing his careful remembrance. Then, taking each by the hand, as if he were grasping a tiller, Into the boat he sprang, and in haste shoved off to his vessel, Glad in his heart to get rid of all this worry and flurry, Glad to be gone from a land of sand and sickness and sorrow, Short allowance of victual, and plenty of nothing but Gospel! Lost in the sound of the oars was the last farewell of the Pilgrims. O strong hearts and true! not one went back in the Mayflower! No, not one looked back, who had set his hand to this ploughing! Soon were heard on board the shouts and songs of the sailors Heaving the windlass round, and hoisting the ponderous anchor. Then the yards were braced, and all sails set to the west-wind, Blowing steady and strong; and the Mayflower sailed from the harbor, Rounded the point of the Gurnet, and leaving far to the southward Island and cape of sand, and the Field of the First Encounter, Took the wind on her quarter, and stood for the open Atlantic, Borne on the send of the sea, and the swelling hearts of the Pilgrims. Long in silence they watched the receding sail of the vessel, Much endeared to them all, as something living and human; Then, as if filled with the spirit, and wrapt in a vision prophetic, Baring his hoary head, the excellent Elder of Plymouth Said, "Let us pray!" and they prayed, and thanked the Lord and took courage. Mournfully sobbed the waves at the base of the rock, and above them Bowed and whispered the wheat on the hill of death, and their kindred Seemed to awake in their graves, and to join in the prayer that they uttered. Sun-illumined and white, on the eastern verge of the ocean Gleamed the departing sail, like a marble slab in a graveyard; Buried beneath it lay for ever all hope of escaping. Lo! as they turned to depart, they saw the form of an Indian, Watching them from the hill; but while they spake with each other, Pointing with outstretched hands, and saying, "Look!" he had vanished. So they returned to their homes; but Alden lingered a little, Musing alone on the shore, and watching the wash of the billows Round the base of the rock, and the sparkle and flash of the sunshine, Like the spirit of God, moving visibly over the waters. VI PRISCILLA Thus for a while he stood, and mused by the shore of the ocean, Thinking of many things, and most of all of Priscilla; And as if thought had the power to draw to itself, like the loadstone, Whatsoever it touches, by subtile laws of its nature, Lo! as he turned to depart, Priscilla was standing beside him. "Are you so much offended, you will not speak to me?" said she. "Am I so much to blame, that yesterday, when you were pleading Warmly the cause of another, my heart, impulsive and wayward, Pleaded your own, and spake out, forgetful perhaps of decorum? Certainly you can forgive me for speaking so frankly, for saying What I ought not to have said, yet now I can never unsay it; For there are moments in life, when the heart is so full of emotion, That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret, Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together. Yesterday I was shocked, when I heard you speak of Miles Standish, Praising his virtues, transforming his very defects into virtues, Praising his courage and strength, and even his fighting in Flanders, As if by fighting alone you could win the heart of a woman, Quite overlooking yourself and the rest, in exalting your hero. Therefore I spake as I did, by an irresistible impulse. You will forgive me, I hope, for the sake of the friendship between us, Which is too true and too sacred to be so easily broken!" Thereupon answered John Alden, the scholar, the friend of Miles Standish: "I was not angry with you, with myself alone I was angry, Seeing how badly I managed the matter I had in my keeping." "No!" interrupted the maiden, with answer prompt and decisive; "No; you were angry with me, for speaking so frankly and freely. It was wrong, I acknowledge; for it is the fate of a woman Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is speechless, Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence. Hence is the inner life of so many suffering women Sunless and silent and deep, like subterranean rivers Running through caverns of darkness, unheard, unseen, and unfruitful, Chafing their channels of stone, with endless and profitless murmurs." Thereupon answered John Alden, the young man, the lover of women: "Heaven forbid it, Priscilla; and truly they seem to me always More like the beautiful rivers that watered the garden of Eden, More like the river Euphrates, through deserts of Havilah flowing, Filling the land with delight, and memories sweet of the garden!" "Ah, by these words, I can see," again interrupted the maiden, "How very little you prize me, or care for what I am saying. When from the depths of my heart, in pain and with secret misgiving, Frankly I speak to you, asking for sympathy only and kindness, Straightway you take up my words, that are plain and direct and in earnest, Turn them away from their meaning, and answer with flattering phrases. This is not right, is not just, is not true to the best that is in you; For I know and esteem you, and feel that your nature is noble, Lifting mine up to a higher, a more ethereal level. Therefore I value your friendship, and feel it perhaps the more keenly If you say aught that implies I am only as one among many, If you make use of those common and complimentary phrases Most men think so fine, in dealing and speaking with women, But which women reject as insipid, if not as insulting." Mute and amazed was Alden; and listened and looked at Priscilla, Thinking he never had seen her more fair, more divine in her beauty. He who but yesterday pleaded so glibly the cause of another, Stood there embarrassed and silent, and seeking in vain for an answer. So the maiden went on, and little divined or imagined What was at work in his heart, that made him so awkward and speechless. "Let us, then, be what we are, and speak what we think, and in all things Keep ourselves loyal to truth, and the sacred professions of friendship. It is no secret I tell you, nor am I ashamed to declare it: I have liked to be with you, to see you, to speak with you always. So I was hurt at your words, and a little affronted to hear you Urge me to marry your friend, though he were the Captain Miles Standish. For I must tell you the truth: much more to me is your friendship Than all the love he could give, were he twice the hero you think him." Then she extended her hand, and Alden, who eagerly grasped it, Felt all the wounds in his heart, that were aching and bleeding so sorely, Healed by the touch of that hand, and he said, with a voice full of feeling: "Yes, we must ever be friends; and of all who offer you friendship Let me be ever the first, the truest, the nearest and dearest!" Casting a farewell look at the glimmering sail of the Mayflower, Distant, but still in sight, and sinking below the horizon, Homeward together they walked, with a strange, indefinite feeling, That all the rest had departed and left them alone in the desert. But, as they went through the fields in the blessing and smile of the sunshine, Lighter grew their hearts, and Priscilla said very archly: "Now that our terrible Captain has gone in pursuit of the Indians, Where he is happier far than he would be commanding a household, You may speak boldly, and tell me of all that happened between you, When you returned last night, and said how ungrateful you found me." Thereupon answered John Alden, and told her the whole of the story,-- Told her his own despair, and the direful wrath of Miles Standish. Whereat the maiden smiled, and said between laughing and earnest, "He is a little chimney, and heated hot in a moment!" But as he gently rebuked her, and told her how much he had suffered,-- How he had even determined to sail that day in the Mayflower, And had remained for her sake, on hearing the dangers that threatened,-- All her manner was changed, and she said with a faltering accent, "Truly I thank you for this: how good you have been to me always!" Thus, as a pilgrim devout, who toward Jerusalem journeys, Taking three steps in advance, and one reluctantly backward, Urged by importunate zeal, and withheld by pangs of contrition; Slowly but steadily onward, receding yet ever advancing, Journeyed this Puritan youth to the Holy Land of his longings, Urged by the fervor of love, and withheld by remorseful misgivings. VII THE MARCH OF MILES STANDISH Meanwhile the stalwart Miles Standish was marching steadily northward, Winding through forest and swamp, and along the trend of the sea-shore, All day long, with hardly a halt, the fire of his anger Burning and crackling within, and the sulphurous odor of powder Seeming more sweet to his nostrils than all the scents of the forest. Silent and moody he went, and much he revolved his discomfort; He who was used to success, and to easy victories always, Thus to be flouted, rejected, and laughed to scorn by a maiden, Thus to be mocked and betrayed by the friend whom most he had trusted! Ah! 't was too much to be borne, and he fretted and chafed in his armor! "I alone am to blame," he muttered, "for mine was the folly. What has a rough old soldier, grown grim and gray in the harness, Used to the camp and its ways, to do with the wooing of maidens? 'T was but a dream,--let it pass,--let it vanish like so many others! What I thought was a flower, is only a weed, and is worthless; Out of my heart will I pluck it, and throw it away, and henceforward Be but a fighter of battles, a lover and wooer of dangers!" Thus he revolved in his mind his sorry defeat and discomfort, While he was marching by day or lying at night in the forest, Looking up at the trees, and the constellations beyond them. After a three days' march he came to an Indian encampment Pitched on the edge of a meadow, between the sea and the forest; Women at work by the tents, and the warriors, horrid with war-paint, Seated about a fire, and smoking and talking together; Who, when they saw from afar the sudden approach of the white men, Saw the flash of the sun on breastplate and sabre and musket, Straightway leaped to their feet, and two, from among them advancing, Came to parley with Standish, and offer him furs as a present; Friendship was in their looks, but in their hearts there was hatred. Braves of the tribe were these, and brothers gigantic in stature, Huge as Goliath of Gath, or the terrible Og, king of Bashan; One was Pecksuot named, and the other was called Wattawamat. Round their necks were suspended their knives in scabbards of wampum, Two-edged, trenchant knives, with points as sharp as a needle. Other arms had they none, for they were cunning and crafty. "Welcome, English!" they said,--these words they had learned from the traders Touching at times on the coast, to barter and chaffer for peltries. Then in their native tongue they began to parley with Standish, Through his guide and interpreter Hobomok, friend of the white man, Begging for blankets and knives, but mostly for muskets and powder, Kept by the white man, they said, concealed, with the plague, in his cellars, Ready to be let loose, and destroy his brother the red man! But when Standish refused, and said he would give them the Bible, Suddenly changing their tone, they began to boast and to bluster. Then Wattawamat advanced with a stride in front of the other, And, with a lofty demeanor, thus vauntingly spake to the Captain: "Now Wattawamat can see, by the fiery eyes of the Captain, Angry is he in his heart; but the heart of the brave Wattawamat Is not afraid at the sight. He was not born of a woman, But on a mountain, at night, from an oak-tree riven by lightning, Forth he sprang at a bound, with all his weapons about him, Shouting, 'Who is there here to fight with the brave Wattawamat?'" Then he unsheathed his knife, and, whetting the blade on his left hand, Held it aloft and displayed a woman's face on the handle, Saying, with bitter expression and look of sinister meaning: "I have another at home, with the face of a man on the handle; By and by they shall marry; and there will be plenty of children!" Then stood Pecksuot forth, self-vaunting, insulting Miles Standish: While with his fingers he petted the knife that hung at his bosom, Drawing it half from its sheath, and plunging it back, as he muttered, "By and by it shall see; it shall eat; ah, ha! but shall speak not! This is the mighty Captain the white men have sent to destroy us! He is a little man; let him go and work with the women!" Meanwhile Standish had noted the faces and figures of Indians Peeping and creeping about from bush to tree in the forest, Feigning to look for game, with arrows set on their bow-strings, Drawing about him still closer and closer the net of their ambush. But undaunted he stood, and dissembled and treated them smoothly; So the old chronicles say, that were writ in the days of the fathers. But when he heard their defiance, the boast, the taunt, and the insult, All the hot blood of his race, of Sir Hugh and of Thurston de Standish, Boiled and beat in his heart, and swelled in the veins of his temples. Headlong he leaped on the boaster, and, snatching his knife from its scabbard, Plunged it into his heart, and, reeling backward, the savage Fell with his face to the sky, and a fiendlike fierceness upon it. Straight there arose from the forest the awful sound of the war-whoop, And, like a flurry of snow on the whistling wind of December, Swift and sudden and keen came a flight of feathery arrows, Then came a cloud of smoke, and out of the cloud came the lightning, Out of the lightning thunder, and death unseen ran before it. Frightened the savages fled for shelter in swamp and in thicket, Hotly pursued and beset; but their sachem, the brave Wattawamat, Fled not; he was dead. Unswerving and swift had a bullet Passed through his brain, and he fell with both hands clutching the greensward, Seeming in death to hold back from his foe the land of his fathers. There on the flowers of the meadow the warriors lay, and above them, Silent, with folded arms, stood Hobomok, friend of the white man. Smiling at length he exclaimed to the stalwart Captain of Plymouth: "Pecksuot bragged very loud, of his courage, his strength, and his stature,-- Mocked the great Captain, and called him a little man; but I see now Big enough have you been to lay him speechless before you!" Thus the first battle was fought and won by the stalwart Miles Standish. When the tidings thereof were brought to the village of Plymouth, And as a trophy of war the head of the brave Wattawamat Scowled from the roof of the fort, which at once was a church and a fortress, All who beheld it rejoiced, and praised the Lord, and took courage. Only Priscilla averted her face from this spectre of terror, Thanking God in her heart that she had not married Miles Standish; Shrinking, fearing almost, lest, coming home from his battles, He should lay claim to her hand, as the prize and reward of his valor. VIII THE SPINNING-WHEEL Month after month passed away, and in Autumn the ships of the merchants Came with kindred and friends, with cattle and corn for the Pilgrims. All in the village was peace; the men were intent on their labors, Busy with hewing and building, with garden-plot and with merestead, Busy with breaking the glebe, and mowing the grass in the meadows, Searching the sea for its fish, and hunting the deer in the forest. All in the village was peace; but at times the rumor of warfare Filled the air with alarm, and the apprehension of danger. Bravely the stalwart Miles Standish was scouring the land with his forces, Waxing valiant in fight and defeating the alien armies, Till his name had become a sound of fear to the nations. Anger was still in his heart, but at times the remorse and contrition Which in all noble natures succeed the passionate outbreak, Came like a rising tide, that encounters the rush of a river, Staying its current awhile, but making it bitter and brackish. Meanwhile Alden at home had built him a new habitation, Solid, substantial, of timber rough-hewn from the firs of the forest. Wooden-barred was the door, and the roof was covered with rushes; Latticed the windows were, and the window-panes were of paper, Oiled to admit the light, while wind and rain were excluded. There too he dug a well, and around it planted an orchard: Still may be seen to this day some trace of the well and the orchard. Close to the house was the stall, where, safe and secure from annoyance, Raghorn, the snow-white steer, that had fallen to Alden's allotment In the division of cattle, might ruminate in the night-time Over the pastures he cropped, made fragrant by sweet pennyroyal. Oft when his labor was finished, with eager feet would the dreamer Follow the pathway that ran through the woods to the house of Priscilla, Led by illusions romantic and subtile deceptions of fancy, Pleasure disguised as duty, and love in the semblance of friendship. Ever of her he thought, when he fashioned the walls of his dwelling; Ever of her he thought, when he delved in the soil of his garden; Ever of her he thought, when he read in his Bible on Sunday Praise of the virtuous woman, as she is described in the Proverbs,-- How the heart of her husband doth safely trust in her always, How all the days of her life she will do him good, and not evil, How she seeketh the wool and the flax and worketh with gladness, How she layeth her hand to the spindle and holdeth the distaff, How she is not afraid of the snow for herself or her household, Knowing her household are clothed with the scarlet cloth of her weaving! So as she sat at her wheel one afternoon in the Autumn, Alden, who opposite sat, and was watching her dexterous fingers, As if the thread she was spinning were that of his life and his fortune, After a pause in their talk, thus spake to the sound of the spindle. "Truly, Priscilla," he said, "when I see you spinning and spinning, Never idle a moment, but thrifty and thoughtful of others, Suddenly you are transformed, are visibly changed in a moment; You are no longer Priscilla, but Bertha the Beautiful Spinner." Here the light foot on the treadle grew swifter and swifter; the spindle Uttered an angry snarl, and the thread snapped short in her fingers; While the impetuous speaker, not heeding the mischief, continued: "You are the beautiful Bertha, the spinner, the queen of Helvetia; She whose story I read at a stall in the streets of Southampton, Who, as she rode on her palfrey, o'er valley and meadow and mountain, Ever was spinning her thread from a distaff fixed to her saddle. She was so thrifty and good, that her name passed into a proverb. So shall it be with your own, when the spinning-wheel shall no longer Hum in the house of the farmer, and fill its chambers with music. Then shall the mothers, reproving, relate how it was in their childhood, Praising the good old times, and the days of Priscilla the spinner!" Straight uprose from her wheel the beautiful Puritan maiden, Pleased with the praise of her thrift from him whose praise was the sweetest, Drew from the reel on the table a snowy skein of her spinning, Thus making answer, meanwhile, to the flattering phrases of Alden: "Come, you must not be idle; if I am a pattern for housewives, Show yourself equally worthy of being the model of husbands. Hold this skein on your hands, while I wind it, ready for knitting; Then who knows but hereafter, when fashions have changed and the manners, Fathers may talk to their sons of the good old times of John Alden!" Thus, with a jest and a laugh, the skein on his hands she adjusted, He sitting awkwardly there, with his arms extended before him, She standing graceful, erect, and winding the thread from his fingers, Sometimes chiding a little his clumsy manner of holding, Sometimes touching his hands, as she disentangled expertly Twist or knot in the yarn, unawares--for how could she help it?-- Sending electrical thrills through every nerve in his body. Lo! in the midst of this scene, a breathless messenger entered, Bringing in hurry and heat the terrible news from the village. Yes; Miles Standish was dead!--an Indian had brought them the tidings,-- Slain by a poisoned arrow, shot down in the front of the battle, Into an ambush beguiled, cut off with the whole of his forces; All the town would be burned, and all the people be murdered! Such were the tidings of evil that burst on the hearts of the hearers. Silent and statue-like stood Priscilla, her face looking backward Still at the face of the speaker, her arms uplifted in horror; But John Alden, upstarting, as if the barb of the arrow Piercing the heart of his friend had struck his own, and had sundered Once and for ever the bonds that held him bound as a captive, Wild with excess of sensation, the awful delight of his freedom, Mingled with pain and regret, unconscious of what he was doing, Clasped, almost with a groan, the motionless form of Priscilla, Pressing her close to his heart, as for ever his own, and exclaiming: "Those whom the Lord hath united, let no man put them asunder!" Even as rivulets twain, from distant and separate sources, Seeing each other afar, as they leap from the rocks, and pursuing Each one its devious path, but drawing nearer and nearer, Rush together at last, at their trysting-place in the forest; So these lives that had run thus far in separate channels, Coming in sight of each other, then swerving and flowing asunder, Parted by barriers strong, but drawing nearer and nearer, Rushed together at last, and one was lost in the other. IX THE WEDDING-DAY Forth from the curtain of clouds, from the tent of purple and scarlet, Issued the sun, the great High-Priest, in his garments resplendent, Holiness unto the Lord, in letters of light, on his forehead, Round the hem of his robe the golden bells and pomegranates. Blessing the world he came, and the bars of vapor beneath him Gleamed like a grate of brass, and the sea at his feet was a laver! This was the wedding morn of Priscilla the Puritan maiden. Friends were assembled together; the Elder and Magistrate also Graced the scene with their presence, and stood like the Law and the Gospel, One with the sanction of earth and one with the blessing of heaven. Simple and brief was the wedding, as that of Ruth and of Boaz. Softly the youth and the maiden repeated the words of betrothal, Taking each other for husband and wife in the Magistrate's presence, After the Puritan way, and the laudable custom of Holland. Fervently then, and devoutly, the excellent Elder of Plymouth Prayed for the hearth and the home, that were founded that day in affection, Speaking of life and of death, and imploring divine benedictions. Lo! when the service was ended, a form appeared on the threshold, Clad in armor of steel, a sombre and sorrowful figure! Why does the bridegroom start and stare at the strange apparition? Why does the bride turn pale, and hide her face on his shoulder? Is it a phantom of air,--a bodiless, spectral illusion? Is it a ghost from the grave, that has come to forbid the betrothal? Long had it stood there unseen, a guest uninvited, unwelcomed; Over its clouded eyes there had passed at times an expression Softening the gloom and revealing the warm heart hidden beneath them, As when across the sky the driving rack of the rain-cloud Grows for a moment thin, and betrays the sun by its brightness. Once it had lifted its hand, and moved its lips, but was silent, As if an iron will had mastered the fleeting intention. But when were ended the troth and the prayer and the last benediction, Into the room it strode, and the people beheld with amazement Bodily there in his armor Miles Standish, the Captain of Plymouth! Grasping the bridegroom's hand, he said with emotion, "Forgive me! I have been angry and hurt,--too long have I cherished the feeling; I have been cruel and hard, but now, thank God! it is ended. Mine is the same hot blood that leaped in the veins of Hugh Standish, Sensitive, swift to resent, but as swift in atoning for error. Never so much as now was Miles Standish the friend of John Alden." Thereupon answered the bridegroom: "Let all be forgotten between us,-- All save the dear, old friendship, and that shall grow older and dearer!" Then the Captain advanced, and, bowing, saluted Priscilla, Gravely, and after the manner of old-fashioned gentry in England, Something of camp and of court, of town and of country, commingled, Wishing her joy of her wedding, and loudly lauding her husband. Then he said with a smile: "I should have remembered the adage,-- If you would be well served, you must serve yourself; and moreover, No man can gather cherries in Kent at the season of Christmas!" Great was the people's amazement, and greater yet their rejoicing, Thus to behold once more the sun-burnt face of their Captain, Whom they had mourned as dead; and they gathered and crowded about him, Eager to see him and hear him, forgetful of bride and of bridegroom, Questioning, answering, laughing, and each interrupting the other, Till the good Captain declared, being quite overpowered and bewildered, He had rather by far break into an Indian encampment, Than come again to a wedding to which he had not been invited. Meanwhile the bridegroom went forth and stood with the bride at the doorway, Breathing the perfumed air of that warm and beautiful morning. Touched with autumnal tints, but lonely and sad in the sunshine, Lay extended before them the land of toil and privation; There were the graves of the dead, and the barren waste of the sea-shore, There the familiar fields, the groves of pine, and the meadows; But to their eyes transfigured, it seemed as the Garden of Eden, Filled with the presence of God, whose voice was the sound of the ocean. Soon was their vision disturbed by the noise and stir of departure, Friends coming forth from the house, and impatient of longer delaying, Each with his plan for the day, and the work that was left uncompleted. Then from a stall near at hand, amid exclamations of wonder, Alden the thoughtful, the careful, so happy, so proud of Priscilla, Brought out his snow-white steer, obeying the hand of its master, Led by a cord that was tied to an iron ring in its nostrils, Covered with crimson cloth, and a cushion placed for a saddle. She should not walk, he said, through the dust and heat of the noonday; Nay, she should ride like a queen, not plod along like a peasant. Somewhat alarmed at first, but reassured by the others, Placing her hand on the cushion, her foot in the hand of her husband, Gayly, with joyous laugh, Priscilla mounted her palfrey. "Nothing is wanting now," he said with a smile, "but the distaff; Then you would be in truth my queen, my beautiful Bertha!" Onward the bridal procession now moved to their new habitation, Happy husband and wife, and friends conversing together. Pleasantly murmured the brook, as they crossed the ford in the forest, Pleased with the image that passed, like a dream of love through its bosom, Tremulous, floating in air, o'er the depths of the azure abysses. Down through the golden leaves the sun was pouring his splendors, Gleaming on purple grapes, that, from branches above them suspended, Mingled their odorous breath with the balm of the pine and the fir-tree, Wild and sweet as the clusters that grew in the valley of Eshcol. Like a picture it seemed of the primitive, pastoral ages, Fresh with the youth of the world, and recalling Rebecca and Isaac, Old and yet ever new, and simple and beautiful always, Love immortal and young in the endless succession of lovers, So through the Plymouth woods passed onward the bridal procession. ************** BIRDS OF PASSAGE. FLIGHT THE FIRST . . come i gru van cantando lor lai, Facendo in aer di se lunga riga. -- DANTE BIRDS OF PASSAGE Black shadows fall From the lindens tall, That lift aloft their massive wall Against the southern sky; And from the realms Of the shadowy elms A tide-like darkness overwhelms The fields that round us lie. But the night is fair, And everywhere A warm, soft vapor fills the air, And distant sounds seem near, And above, in the light Of the star-lit night, Swift birds of passage wing their flight Through the dewy atmosphere. I hear the beat Of their pinions fleet, As from the land of snow and sleet They seek a southern lea. I hear the cry Of their voices high Falling dreamily through the sky, But their forms I cannot see. O, say not so! Those sounds that flow In murmurs of delight and woe Come not from wings of birds. They are the throngs Of the poet's songs, Murmurs of pleasures, and pains, and wrongs, The sound of winged words. This is the cry Of souls, that high On toiling, beating pinions, fly, Seeking a warmer clime, From their distant flight Through realms of light It falls into our world of night, With the murmuring sound of rhyme. PROMETHEUS OR THE POET'S FORETHOUGHT Of Prometheus, how undaunted On Olympus' shining bastions His audacious foot he planted, Myths are told and songs are chanted, Full of promptings and suggestions. Beautiful is the tradition Of that flight through heavenly portals, The old classic superstition Of the theft and the transmission Of the fire of the Immortals! First the deed of noble daring, Born of heavenward aspiration, Then the fire with mortals sharing, Then the vulture,--the despairing Cry of pain on crags Caucasian. All is but a symbol painted Of the Poet, Prophet, Seer; Only those are crowned and sainted Who with grief have been acquainted, Making nations nobler, freer. In their feverish exultations, In their triumph and their yearning, In their passionate pulsations, In their words among the nations, The Promethean fire is burning. Shall it, then, be unavailing, All this toil for human culture? Through the cloud-rack, dark and trailing, Must they see above them sailing O'er life's barren crags the vulture? Such a fate as this was Dante's, By defeat and exile maddened; Thus were Milton and Cervantes, Nature's priests and Corybantes, By affliction touched and saddened. But the glories so transcendent That around their memories cluster, And, on all their steps attendant, Make their darkened lives resplendent With such gleams of inward lustre! All the melodies mysterious, Through the dreary darkness chanted; Thoughts in attitudes imperious, Voices soft, and deep, and serious, Words that whispered, songs that haunted! All the soul in rapt suspension, All the quivering, palpitating Chords of life in utmost tension, With the fervor of invention, With the rapture of creating! Ah, Prometheus! heaven-scaling! In such hours of exultation Even the faintest heart, unquailing, Might behold the vulture sailing Round the cloudy crags Caucasian! Though to all there is not given Strength for such sublime endeavor, Thus to scale the walls of heaven, And to leaven with fiery leaven All the hearts of men for ever; Yet all bards, whose hearts unblighted Honor and believe the presage, Hold aloft their torches lighted, Gleaming through the realms benighted, As they onward bear the message! EPIMETHEUS OR THE POET'S AFTERTHOUGHT Have I dreamed? or was it real, What I saw as in a vision, When to marches hymeneal In the land of the Ideal Moved my thought o'er Fields Elysian? What! are these the guests whose glances Seemed like sunshine gleaming round me? These the wild, bewildering fancies, That with dithyrambic dances As with magic circles bound me? Ah! how cold are their caresses! Pallid cheeks, and haggard bosoms! Spectral gleam their snow-white dresses, And from loose dishevelled tresses Fall the hyacinthine blossoms! O my songs! whose winsome measures Filled my heart with secret rapture! Children of my golden leisures! Must even your delights and pleasures Fade and perish with the capture? Fair they seemed, those songs sonorous, When they came to me unbidden; Voices single, and in chorus, Like the wild birds singing o'er us In the dark of branches hidden. Disenchantment! Disillusion! Must each noble aspiration Come at last to this conclusion, Jarring discord, wild confusion, Lassitude, renunciation? Not with steeper fall nor faster, From the sun's serene dominions, Not through brighter realms nor vaster, In swift ruin and disaster, Icarus fell with shattered pinions! Sweet Pandora! dear Pandora! Why did mighty Jove create thee Coy as Thetis, fair as Flora, Beautiful as young Aurora, If to win thee is to hate thee? No, not hate thee! for this feeling Of unrest and long resistance Is but passionate appealing, A prophetic whisper stealing O'er the chords of our existence. Him whom thou dost once enamour, Thou, beloved, never leavest; In life's discord, strife, and clamor, Still he feels thy spell of glamour; Him of Hope thou ne'er bereavest. Weary hearts by thee are lifted, Struggling souls by thee are strengthened, Clouds of fear asunder rifted, Truth from falsehood cleansed and sifted, Lives, like days in summer, lengthened! Therefore art thou ever clearer, O my Sibyl, my deceiver! For thou makest each mystery clearer, And the unattained seems nearer, When thou fillest my heart with fever! Muse of all the Gifts and Graces! Though the fields around us wither, There are ampler realms and spaces, Where no foot has left its traces: Let us turn and wander thither! THE LADDER OF ST. AUGUSTINE Saint Augustine! well hast thou said, That of our vices we can frame A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath our feet each deed of shame! All common things, each day's events, That with the hour begin and end, Our pleasures and our discontents, Are rounds by which we may ascend. The low desire, the base design, That makes another's virtues less; The revel of the ruddy wine, And all occasions of excess; The longing for ignoble things; The strife for triumph more than truth; The hardening of the heart, that brings Irreverence for the dreams of youth; All thoughts of ill; all evil deeds, That have their root in thoughts of ill; Whatever hinders or impedes The action of the nobler will;-- All these must first be trampled down Beneath our feet, if we would gain In the bright fields of fair renown The right of eminent domain. We have not wings, we cannot soar; But we have feet to scale and climb By slow degrees, by more and more, The cloudy summits of our time. The mighty pyramids of stone That wedge-like cleave the desert airs, When nearer seen, and better known, Are but gigantic flights of stairs. The distant mountains, that uprear Their solid bastions to the skies, Are crossed by pathways, that appear As we to higher levels rise. The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night. Standing on what too long we bore With shoulders bent and downcast eyes, We may discern--unseen before-- A path to higher destinies. Nor deem the irrevocable Past, As wholly wasted, wholly vain, If, rising on its wrecks, at last To something nobler we attain. THE PHANTOM SHIP In Mather's Magnalia Christi, Of the old colonial time, May be found in prose the legend That is here set down in rhyme. A ship sailed from New Haven, And the keen and frosty airs, That filled her sails at parting, Were heavy with good men's prayers. "O Lord! if it be thy pleasure"-- Thus prayed the old divine-- "To bury our friends in the ocean, Take them, for they are thine!" But Master Lamberton muttered, And under his breath said he, "This ship is so crank and walty I fear our grave she will be!" And the ships that came from England, When the winter months were gone, Brought no tidings of this vessel Nor of Master Lamberton. This put the people to praying That the Lord would let them hear What in his greater wisdom He had done with friends so dear. And at last their prayers were answered:-- It was in the month of June, An hour before the sunset Of a windy afternoon, When, steadily steering landward, A ship was seen below, And they knew it was Lamberton, Master, Who sailed so long ago. On she came, with a cloud of canvas, Right against the wind that blew, Until the eye could distinguish The faces of the crew. Then fell her straining topmasts, Hanging tangled in the shrouds, And her sails were loosened and lifted, And blown away like clouds. And the masts, with all their rigging, Fell slowly, one by one, And the hulk dilated and vanished, As a sea-mist in the sun! And the people who saw this marvel Each said unto his friend, That this was the mould of their vessel, And thus her tragic end. And the pastor of the village Gave thanks to God in prayer, That, to quiet their troubled spirits, He had sent this Ship of Air. THE WARDEN OF THE CINQUE PORTS A mist was driving down the British Channel, The day was just begun, And through the window-panes, on floor and panel, Streamed the red autumn sun. It glanced on flowing flag and rippling pennon, And the white sails of ships; And, from the frowning rampart, the black cannon Hailed it with feverish lips. Sandwich and Romney, Hastings, Hithe, and Dover Were all alert that day, To see the French war-steamers speeding over, When the fog cleared away. Sullen and silent, and like couchant lions, Their cannon, through the night, Holding their breath, had watched, in grim defiance, The sea-coast opposite. And now they roared at drum-beat from their stations On every citadel; Each answering each, with morning salutations, That all was well. And down the coast, all taking up the burden, Replied the distant forts, As if to summon from his sleep the Warden And Lord of the Cinque Ports. Him shall no sunshine from the fields of azure, No drum-beat from the wall, No morning gun from the black fort's embrasure, Awaken with its call! No more, surveying with an eye impartial The long line of the coast, Shall the gaunt figure of the old Field Marshal Be seen upon his post! For in the night, unseen, a single warrior, In sombre harness mailed, Dreaded of man, and surnamed the Destroyer, The rampart wall has scaled. He passed into the chamber of the sleeper, The dark and silent room, And as he entered, darker grew, and deeper, The silence and the gloom. He did not pause to parley or dissemble, But smote the Warden hoar; Ah! what a blow! that made all England tremble And groan from shore to shore. Meanwhile, without, the surly cannon waited, The sun rose bright o'erhead; Nothing in Nature's aspect intimated That a great man was dead. HAUNTED HOUSES All houses wherein men have lived and died Are haunted houses. Through the open doors The harmless phantoms on their errands glide, With feet that make no sound upon the floors. We meet them at the door-way, on the stair, Along the passages they come and go, Impalpable impressions on the air, A sense of something moving to and fro. There are more guests at table, than the hosts Invited; the illuminated hall Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts, As silent as the pictures on the wall. The stranger at my fireside cannot see The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear; He but perceives what is; while unto me All that has been is visible and clear. We have no title-deeds to house or lands; Owners and occupants of earlier dates From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands, And hold in mortmain still their old estates. The spirit-world around this world of sense Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere Wafts through these earthly mists and vapors dense A vital breath of more ethereal air. Our little lives are kept in equipoise By opposite attractions and desires; The struggle of the instinct that enjoys, And the more noble instinct that aspires. These perturbations, this perpetual jar Of earthly wants and aspirations high, Come from the influence of an unseen star, An undiscovered planet in our sky. And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud Throws o'er the sea a floating bridge of light, Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd Into the realm of mystery and night,-- So from the world of spirits there descends A bridge of light, connecting it with this, O'er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends, Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss. IN THE CHURCHYARD AT CAMBRIDGE In the village churchyard she lies, Dust is in her beautiful eyes, No more she breathes, nor feels, nor stirs; At her feet and at her head Lies a slave to attend the dead, But their dust is white as hers. Was she a lady of high degree, So much in love with the vanity And foolish pomp of this world of ours? Or was it Christian charity, And lowliness and humility, The richest and rarest of all dowers? Who shall tell us? No one speaks; No color shoots into those cheeks, Either of anger or of pride, At the rude question we have asked; Nor will the mystery be unmasked By those who are sleeping at her side. Hereafter?--And do you think to look On the terrible pages of that Book To find her failings, faults, and errors? Ah, you will then have other cares, In your own short-comings and despairs, In your own secret sins and terrors! THE EMPEROR'S BIRD'S-NEST Once the Emperor Charles of Spain, With his swarthy, grave commanders, I forget in what campaign, Long besieged, in mud and rain, Some old frontier town of Flanders. Up and down the dreary camp, In great boots of Spanish leather, Striding with a measured tramp, These Hidalgos, dull and damp, Cursed the Frenchmen, cursed the weather. Thus as to and fro they went, Over upland and through hollow, Giving their impatience vent, Perched upon the Emperor's tent, In her nest, they spied a swallow. Yes, it was a swallow's nest, Built of clay and hair of horses, Mane, or tail, or dragoon's crest, Found on hedge-rows east and west, After skirmish of the forces. Then an old Hidalgo said, As he twirled his gray mustachio, "Sure this swallow overhead Thinks the Emperor's tent a shed, And the Emperor but a Macho!" Hearing his imperial name Coupled with those words of malice, Half in anger, half in shame, Forth the great campaigner came Slowly from his canvas palace. "Let no hand the bird molest," Said he solemnly, "nor hurt her!" Adding then, by way of jest, "Golondrina is my guest, 'Tis the wife of some deserter!" Swift as bowstring speeds a shaft, Through the camp was spread the rumor, And the soldiers, as they quaffed Flemish beer at dinner, laughed At the Emperor's pleasant humor. So unharmed and unafraid Sat the swallow still and brooded, Till the constant cannonade Through the walls a breach had made, And the siege was thus concluded. Then the army, elsewhere bent, Struck its tents as if disbanding, Only not the Emperor's tent, For he ordered, ere he went, Very curtly, "Leave it standing!" So it stood there all alone, Loosely flapping, torn and tattered, Till the brood was fledged and flown, Singing o'er those walls of stone Which the cannon-shot had shattered. THE TWO ANGELS Two angels, one of Life and one of Death, Passed o'er our village as the morning broke; The dawn was on their faces, and beneath, The sombre houses hearsed with plumes of smoke. Their attitude and aspect were the same, Alike their features and their robes of white; But one was crowned with amaranth, as with flame, And one with asphodels, like flakes of light. I saw them pause on their celestial way; Then said I, with deep fear and doubt oppressed, "Beat not so loud, my heart, lest thou betray The place where thy beloved are at rest!" And he who wore the crown of asphodels, Descending, at my door began to knock, And my soul sank within me, as in wells The waters sink before an earthquake's shock. I recognized the nameless agony, The terror and the tremor and the pain, That oft before had filled or haunted me, And now returned with threefold strength again. The door I opened to my heavenly guest, And listened, for I thought I heard God's voice; And, knowing whatsoe'er he sent was best, Dared neither to lament nor to rejoice. Then with a smile, that filled the house with light, "My errand is not Death, but Life," he said; And ere I answered, passing out of sight, On his celestial embassy he sped. 'T was at thy door, O friend! and not at mine, The angel with the amaranthine wreath, Pausing, descended, and with voice divine, Whispered a word that had a sound like Death. Then fell upon the house a sudden gloom, A shadow on those features fair and thin; And softly, from that hushed and darkened room, Two angels issued, where but one went in. All is of God! If he but wave his hand, The mists collect, the rain falls thick and loud, Till, with a smile of light on sea and land, Lo! he looks back from the departing cloud. Angels of Life and Death alike are his; Without his leave they pass no threshold o'er; Who, then, would wish or dare, believing this, Against his messengers to shut the door? DAYLIGHT AND MOONLIGHT In broad daylight, and at noon, Yesterday I saw the moon Sailing high, but faint and white, As a school-boy's paper kite. In broad daylight, yesterday, I read a Poet's mystic lay; And it seemed to me at most As a phantom, or a ghost. But at length the feverish day Like a passion died away, And the night, serene and still, Fell on village, vale, and hill. Then the moon, in all her pride, Like a spirit glorified, Filled and overflowed the night With revelations of her light. And the Poet's song again Passed like music through my brain; Night interpreted to me All its grace and mystery. THE JEWISH CEMETERY AT NEWPORT How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves, Close by the street of this fair seaport town, Silent beside the never-silent waves, At rest in all this moving up and down! The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep Wave their broad curtains in the south-wind's breath, While underneath such leafy tents they keep The long, mysterious Exodus of Death. And these sepulchral stones, so old and brown, That pave with level flags their burial-place, Seem like the tablets of the Law, thrown down And broken by Moses at the mountain's base. The very names recorded here are strange, Of foreign accent, and of different climes; Alvares and Rivera interchange With Abraham and Jacob of old times. "Blessed be God! for he created Death!" The mourners said, "and Death is rest and peace"; Then added, in the certainty of faith, "And giveth Life that never more shall cease." Closed are the portals of their Synagogue, No Psalms of David now the silence break, No Rabbi reads the ancient Decalogue In the grand dialect the Prophets spake. Gone are the living, but the dead remain, And not neglected; for a hand unseen, Scattering its bounty, like a summer rain, Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green. How came they here? What burst of Christian hate, What persecution, merciless and blind, Drove o'er the sea--that desert desolate-- These Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind? They lived in narrow streets and lanes obscure, Ghetto and Judenstrass, in mirk and mire; Taught in the school of patience to endure The life of anguish and the death of fire. All their lives long, with the unleavened bread And bitter herbs of exile and its fears, The wasting famine of the heart they fed, And slaked its thirst with marah of their tears. Anathema maranatha! was the cry That rang from town to town, from street to street; At every gate the accursed Mordecai Was mocked and jeered, and spurned by Christian feet. Pride and humiliation hand in hand Walked with them through the world where'er they went; Trampled and beaten were they as the sand, And yet unshaken as the continent. For in the background figures vague and vast Of patriarchs and of prophets rose sublime, And all the great traditions of the Past They saw reflected in the coming time. And thus for ever with reverted look The mystic volume of the world they read, Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book, Till life became a Legend of the Dead. But ah! what once has been shall be no more! The groaning earth in travail and in pain Brings forth its races, but does not restore, And the dead nations never rise again. OLIVER BASSELIN In the Valley of the Vire Still is seen an ancient mill, With its gables quaint and queer, And beneath the window-sill, On the stone, These words alone: "Oliver Basselin lived here." Far above it, on the steep, Ruined stands the old Chateau; Nothing but the donjon-keep Left for shelter or for show. Its vacant eyes Stare at the skies, Stare at the valley green and deep. Once a convent, old and brown, Looked, but ah! it looks no more, From the neighboring hillside down On the rushing and the roar Of the stream Whose sunny gleam Cheers the little Norman town. In that darksome mill of stone, To the water's dash and din, Careless, humble, and unknown, Sang the poet Basselin Songs that fill That ancient mill With a splendor of its own. Never feeling of unrest Broke the pleasant dream he dreamed; Only made to be his nest, All the lovely valley seemed; No desire Of soaring higher Stirred or fluttered in his breast. True, his songs were not divine; Were not songs of that high art, Which, as winds do in the pine, Find an answer in each heart; But the mirth Of this green earth Laughed and revelled in his line. From the alehouse and the inn, Opening on the narrow street, Came the loud, convivial din, Singing and applause of feet, The laughing lays That in those days Sang the poet Basselin. In the castle, cased in steel, Knights, who fought at Agincourt, Watched and waited, spur on heel; But the poet sang for sport Songs that rang Another clang, Songs that lowlier hearts could feel. In the convent, clad in gray, Sat the monks in lonely cells, Paced the cloisters, knelt to pray, And the poet heard their bells; But his rhymes Found other chimes, Nearer to the earth than they. Gone are all the barons bold, Gone are all the knights and squires, Gone the abbot stern and cold, And the brotherhood of friars; Not a name Remains to fame, From those mouldering days of old! But the poet's memory here Of the landscape makes a part; Like the river, swift and clear, Flows his song through many a heart; Haunting still That ancient mill, In the Valley of the Vire. VICTOR GALBRAITH Under the walls of Monterey At daybreak the bugles began to play, Victor Galbraith! In the mist of the morning damp and gray, These were the words they seemed to say: "Come forth to thy death, Victor Galbraith!" Forth he came, with a martial tread; Firm was his step, erect his head; Victor Galbraith, He who so well the bugle played, Could not mistake the words it said: "Come forth to thy death, Victor Galbraith!" He looked at the earth, he looked at the sky, He looked at the files of musketry, Victor Galbraith! And he said, with a steady voice and eye, "Take good aim; I am ready to die!" Thus challenges death Victor Galbraith. Twelve fiery tongues flashed straight and red, Six leaden balls on their errand sped; Victor Galbraith Falls to the ground, but he is not dead; His name was not stamped on those balls of lead, And they only scath Victor Galbraith. Three balls are in his breast and brain, But he rises out of the dust again, Victor Galbraith! The water he drinks has a bloody stain; "O kill me, and put me out of my pain!" In his agony prayeth Victor Galbraith. Forth dart once more those tongues of flame, And the bugler has died a death of shame, Victor Galbraith! His soul has gone back to whence it came, And no one answers to the name, When the Sergeant saith, "Victor Galbraith!" Under the walls of Monterey By night a bugle is heard to play, Victor Galbraith! Through the mist of the valley damp and gray The sentinels hear the sound, and say, "That is the wraith Of Victor Galbraith!" MY LOST YOUTH Often I think of the beautiful town That is seated by the sea; Often in thought go up and down The pleasant streets of that dear old town, And my youth comes back to me. And a verse of a Lapland song Is haunting my memory still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." I can see the shadowy lines of its trees, And catch, in sudden gleams, The sheen of the far-surrounding seas, And islands that were the Hersperides Of all my boyish dreams. And the burden of that old song, It murmurs and whispers still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." I remember the black wharves and the slips, And the sea-tides tossing free; And Spanish sailors with bearded lips, And the beauty and mystery of the ships, And the magic of the sea. And the voice of that wayward song Is singing and saying still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." I remember the bulwarks by the shore, And the fort upon the hill; The sunrise gun, with its hollow roar, The drum-beat repeated o'er and o'er, And the bugle wild and shrill. And the music of that old song Throbs in my memory still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." I remember the sea-fight far away, How it thundered o'er the tide! And the dead captains, as they lay In their graves, o'erlooking the tranquil bay, Where they in battle died. And the sound of that mournful song Goes through me with a thrill: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." I can see the breezy dome of groves, The shadows of Deering's Woods; And the friendships old and the early loves Come back with a sabbath sound, as of doves In quiet neighborhoods. And the verse of that sweet old song, It flutters and murmurs still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." I remember the gleams and glooms that dart Across the schoolboy's brain; The song and the silence in the heart, That in part are prophecies, and in part Are longings wild and vain. And the voice of that fitful song Sings on, and is never still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." There are things of which I may not speak; There are dreams that cannot die; There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak, And bring a pallor into the cheek, And a mist before the eye. And the words of that fatal song Come over me like a chill: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." Strange to me now are the forms I meet When I visit the dear old town; But the native air is pure and sweet, And the trees that o'ershadow each well-known street, As they balance up and down, Are singing the beautiful song, Are sighing and whispering still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." And Deering's Woods are fresh and fair, And with joy that is almost pain My heart goes back to wander there, And among the dreams of the days that were, I find my lost youth again. And the strange and beautiful song, The groves are repeating it still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." THE ROPEWALK In that building, long and low, With its windows all a-row, Like the port-holes of a hulk, Human spiders spin and spin, Backward down their threads so thin Dropping, each a hempen bulk. At the end, an open door; Squares of sunshine on the floor Light the long and dusky lane; And the whirring of a wheel, Dull and drowsy, makes me feel All its spokes are in my brain. As the spinners to the end Downward go and reascend, Gleam the long threads in the sun; While within this brain of mine Cobwebs brighter and more fine By the busy wheel are spun. Two fair maidens in a swing, Like white doves upon the wing, First before my vision pass; Laughing, as their gentle hands Closely clasp the twisted strands, At their shadow on the grass. Then a booth of mountebanks, With its smell of tan and planks, And a girl poised high in air On a cord, in spangled dress, With a faded loveliness, And a weary look of care. Then a homestead among farms, And a woman with bare arms Drawing water from a well; As the bucket mounts apace, With it mounts her own fair face, As at some magician's spell. Then an old man in a tower, Ringing loud the noontide hour, While the rope coils round and round Like a serpent at his feet, And again, in swift retreat, Nearly lifts him from the ground. Then within a prison-yard, Faces fixed, and stern, and hard, Laughter and indecent mirth; Ah! it is the gallows-tree! Breath of Christian charity, Blow, and sweep it from the earth! Then a school-boy, with his kite Gleaming in a sky of light, And an eager, upward look; Steeds pursued through lane and field; Fowlers with their snares concealed; And an angler by a brook. Ships rejoicing in the breeze, Wrecks that float o'er unknown seas, Anchors dragged through faithless sand; Sea-fog drifting overhead, And, with lessening line and lead, Sailors feeling for the land. All these scenes do I behold, These, and many left untold, In that building long and low; While the wheel goes round and round, With a drowsy, dreamy sound, And the spinners backward go. THE GOLDEN MILE-STONE Leafless are the trees; their purple branches Spread themselves abroad, like reefs of coral, Rising silent In the Red Sea of the Winter sunset. From the hundred chimneys of the village, Like the Afreet in the Arabian story, Smoky columns Tower aloft into the air of amber. At the window winks the flickering fire-light; Here and there the lamps of evening glimmer, Social watch-fires Answering one another through the darkness. On the hearth the lighted logs are glowing, And like Ariel in the cloven pine-tree For its freedom Groans and sighs the air imprisoned in them. By the fireside there are old men seated, Seeing ruined cities in the ashes, Asking sadly Of the Past what it can ne'er restore them. By the fireside there are youthful dreamers, Building castles fair, with stately stairways, Asking blindly Of the Future what it cannot give them. By the fireside tragedies are acted In whose scenes appear two actors only, Wife and husband, And above them God the sole spectator. By the fireside there are peace and comfort, Wives and children, with fair, thoughtful faces, Waiting, watching For a well-known footstep in the passage. Each man's chimney is his Golden Mile-stone; Is the central point, from which he measures Every distance Through the gateways of the world around him. In his farthest wanderings still he sees it; Hears the talking flame, the answering night-wind, As he heard them When he sat with those who were, but are not. Happy he whom neither wealth nor fashion, Nor the march of the encroaching city, Drives an exile From the hearth of his ancestral homestead. We may build more splendid habitations, Fill our rooms with paintings and with sculptures, But we cannot Buy with gold the old associations! CATAWBA WINE This song of mine Is a Song of the Vine, To be sung by the glowing embers Of wayside inns, When the rain begins To darken the drear Novembers. It is not a song Of the Scuppernong, From warm Carolinian valleys, Nor the Isabel And the Muscadel That bask in our garden alleys. Nor the red Mustang, Whose clusters hang O'er the waves of the Colorado, And the fiery flood Of whose purple blood Has a dash of Spanish bravado. For richest and best Is the wine of the West, That grows by the Beautiful River; Whose sweet perfume Fills all the room With a benison on the giver. And as hollow trees Are the haunts of bees, For ever going and coming; So this crystal hive Is all alive With a swarming and buzzing and humming. Very good in its way Is the Verzenay, Or the Sillery soft and creamy; But Catawba wine Has a taste more divine, More dulcet, delicious, and dreamy. There grows no vine By the haunted Rhine, By Danube or Guadalquivir, Nor on island or cape, That bears such a grape As grows by the Beautiful River. Drugged is their juice For foreign use, When shipped o'er the reeling Atlantic, To rack our brains With the fever pains, That have driven the Old World frantic. To the sewers and sinks With all such drinks, And after them tumble the mixer; For a poison malign Is such Borgia wine, Or at best but a Devil's Elixir. While pure as a spring Is the wine I sing, And to praise it, one needs but name it; For Catawba wine Has need of no sign, No tavern-bush to proclaim it. And this Song of the Vine, This greeting of mine, The winds and the birds shall deliver To the Queen of the West, In her garlands dressed, On the banks of the Beautiful River. SANTA FILOMENA Whene'er a noble deed is wrought, Whene'er is spoken a noble thought, Our hearts, in glad surprise, To higher levels rise. The tidal wave of deeper souls Into our inmost being rolls, And lifts us unawares Out of all meaner cares. Honor to those whose words or deeds Thus help us in our daily needs, And by their overflow Raise us from what is low! Thus thought I, as by night I read Of the great army of the dead, The trenches cold and damp, The starved and frozen camp,-- The wounded from the battle-plain, In dreary hospitals of pain, The cheerless corridors, The cold and stony floors. Lo! in that house of misery A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom, And flit from room to room. And slow, as in a dream of bliss, The speechless sufferer turns to kiss Her shadow, as it falls Upon the darkening walls. As if a door in heaven should be Opened and then closed suddenly, The vision came and went, The light shone and was spent. On England's annals, through the long Hereafter of her speech and song, That light its rays shall cast From portals of the past. A Lady with a Lamp shall stand In the great history of the land, A noble type of good, Heroic womanhood. Nor even shall be wanting here The palm, the lily, and the spear, The symbols that of yore Saint Filomena bore. THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH CAPE A LEAF FROM KING ALFRED'S OROSIUS Othere, the old sea-captain, Who dwelt in Helgoland, To King Alfred, the Lover of Truth, Brought a snow-white walrus-tooth, Which he held in his brown right hand. His figure was tall and stately, Like a boy's his eye appeared; His hair was yellow as hay, But threads of a silvery gray Gleamed in his tawny beard. Hearty and hale was Othere, His cheek had the color of oak; With a kind of laugh in his speech, Like the sea-tide on a beach, As unto the King he spoke. And Alfred, King of the Saxons, Had a book upon his knees, And wrote down the wondrous tale Of him who was first to sail Into the Arctic seas. "So far I live to the northward, No man lives north of me; To the east are wild mountain-chains; And beyond them meres and plains; To the westward all is sea. "So far I live to the northward, From the harbor of Skeringes-hale, If you only sailed by day, With a fair wind all the way, More than a month would you sail. "I own six hundred reindeer, With sheep and swine beside; I have tribute from the Finns, Whalebone and reindeer-skins, And ropes of walrus-hide. "I ploughed the land with horses, But my heart was ill at ease, For the old seafaring men Came to me now and then, With their sagas of the seas;-- "Of Iceland and of Greenland, And the stormy Hebrides, And the undiscovered deep;-- I could not eat nor sleep For thinking of those seas. "To the northward stretched the desert, How far I fain would know; So at last I sallied forth, And three days sailed due north, As far as the whale-ships go. "To the west of me was the ocean, To the right the desolate shore, But I did not slacken sail For the walrus or the whale, Till after three days more. "The days grew longer and longer, Till they became as one, And southward through the haze I saw the sullen blaze Of the red midnight sun. "And then uprose before me, Upon the water's edge, The huge and haggard shape Of that unknown North Cape, Whose form is like a wedge. "The sea was rough and stormy, The tempest howled and wailed, And the sea-fog, like a ghost, Haunted that dreary coast, But onward still I sailed. "Four days I steered to eastward, Four days without a night: Round in a fiery ring Went the great sun, O King, With red and lurid light." Here Alfred, King of the Saxons, Ceased writing for a while; And raised his eyes from his book, With a strange and puzzled look, And an incredulous smile. But Othere, the old sea-captain, He neither paused nor stirred, Till the King listened, and then Once more took up his pen, And wrote down every word. "And now the land," said Othere, "Bent southward suddenly, And I followed the curving shore And ever southward bore Into a nameless sea. "And there we hunted the walrus, The narwhale, and the seal; Ha! 't was a noble game! And like the lightning's flame Flew our harpoons of steel. "There were six of us all together, Norsemen of Helgoland; In two days and no more We killed of them threescore, And dragged them to the strand!" Here Alfred the Truth-Teller Suddenly closed his book, And lifted his blue eyes, With doubt and strange surmise Depicted in their look. And Othere the old sea-captain Stared at him wild and weird, Then smiled, till his shining teeth Gleamed white from underneath His tawny, quivering beard. And to the King of the Saxons, In witness of the truth, Raising his noble head, He stretched his brown hand, and said, "Behold this walrus-tooth!" DAYBREAK A wind came up out of the sea, And said, "O mists, make room for me." It hailed the ships, and cried, "Sail on, Ye mariners, the night is gone." And hurried landward far away, Crying, "Awake! it is the day." It said unto the forest, "Shout! Hang all your leafy banners out!" It touched the wood-bird's folded wing, And said, "O bird, awake and sing." And o'er the farms, "O chanticleer, Your clarion blow; the day is near." It whispered to the fields of corn, "Bow down, and hail the coming morn." It shouted through the belfry-tower, "Awake, O bell! proclaim the hour." It crossed the churchyard with a sigh, And said, "Not yet! in quiet lie." THE FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY OF AGASSIZ MAY 28, 1857 It was fifty years ago In the pleasant month of May, In the beautiful Pays de Vaud, A child in its cradle lay. And Nature, the old nurse, took The child upon her knee, Saying: "Here is a story-book Thy Father has written for thee." "Come, wander with me," she said, "Into regions yet untrod; And read what is still unread In the manuscripts of God." And he wandered away and away With Nature, the dear old nurse, Who sang to him night and day The rhymes of the universe. And whenever the way seemed long, Or his heart began to fail, She would sing a more wonderful song, Or tell a more marvellous tale. So she keeps him still a child, And will not let him go, Though at times his heart beats wild For the beautiful Pays de Vaud; Though at times he hears in his dreams The Ranz des Vaches of old, And the rush of mountain streams From glaciers clear and cold; And the mother at home says, "Hark! For his voice I listen and yearn; It is growing late and dark, And my boy does not return!" CHILDREN Come to me, O ye children! For I hear you at your play, And the questions that perplexed me Have vanished quite away. Ye open the eastern windows, That look towards the sun, Where thoughts are singing swallows And the brooks of morning run. In your hearts are the birds and the sunshine, In your thoughts the brooklet's flow, But in mine is the wind of Autumn And the first fall of the snow. Ah! what would the world be to us If the children were no more? We should dread the desert behind us Worse than the dark before. What the leaves are to the forest, With light and air for food, Ere their sweet and tender juices Have been hardened into wood,-- That to the world are children; Through them it feels the glow Of a brighter and sunnier climate Than reaches the trunks below. Come to me, O ye children! And whisper in my ear What the birds and the winds are singing In your sunny atmosphere. For what are all our contrivings, And the wisdom of our books, When compared with your caresses, And the gladness of your looks? Ye are better than all the ballads That ever were sung or said; For ye are living poems, And all the rest are dead. SANDALPHON Have you read in the Talmud of old, In the Legends the Rabbins have told Of the limitless realms of the air,-- Have you read it,--the marvellous story Of Sandalphon, the Angel of Glory, Sandalphon, the Angel of Prayer? How, erect, at the outermost gates Of the City Celestial he waits, With his feet on the ladder of light, That, crowded with angels unnumbered, By Jacob was seen, as he slumbered Alone in the desert at night? The Angels of Wind and of Fire Chant only one hymn, and expire With the song's irresistible stress; Expire in their rapture and wonder, As harp-strings are broken asunder By music they throb to express. But serene in the rapturous throng, Unmoved by the rush of the song, With eyes unimpassioned and slow, Among the dead angels, the deathless Sandalphon stands listening breathless To sounds that ascend from below;-- From the spirits on earth that adore, From the souls that entreat and implore In the fervor and passion of prayer; From the hearts that are broken with losses, And weary with dragging the crosses Too heavy for mortals to bear. And he gathers the prayers as he stands, And they change into flowers in his hands, Into garlands of purple and red; And beneath the great arch of the portal, Through the streets of the City Immortal Is wafted the fragrance they shed. It is but a legend, I know,-- A fable, a phantom, a show, Of the ancient Rabbinical lore; Yet the old mediaeval tradition, The beautiful, strange superstition, But haunts me and holds me the more. When I look from my window at night, And the welkin above is all white, All throbbing and panting with stars, Among them majestic is standing Sandalphon the angel, expanding His pinions in nebulous bars. And the legend, I feel, is a part Of the hunger and thirst of the heart, The frenzy and fire of the brain, That grasps at the fruitage forbidden, The golden pomegranates of Eden, To quiet its fever and pain. FLIGHT THE SECOND THE CHILDREN'S HOUR Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupations, That is known as the Children's Hour. I hear in the chamber above me The patter of little feet, The sound of a door that is opened, And voices soft and sweet. From my study I see in the lamplight, Descending the broad hall stair, Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, And Edith with golden hair. A whisper, and then a silence: Yet I know by their merry eyes They are plotting and planning together To take me by surprise. A sudden rush from the stairway, A sudden raid from the hall! By three doors left unguarded They enter my castle wall! They climb up into my turret O'er the arms and back of my chair; If I try to escape, they surround me; They seem to be everywhere. They almost devour me with kisses, Their arms about me entwine, Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine! Do you think, o blue-eyed banditti, Because you have scaled the wall, Such an old mustache as I am Is not a match for you all! I have you fast in my fortress, And will not let you depart, But put you down into the dungeon In the round-tower of my heart. And there will I keep you forever, Yes, forever and a day, Till the walls shall crumble to ruin, And moulder in dust away! ENCELADUS Under Mount Etna he lies, It is slumber, it is not death; For he struggles at times to arise, And above him the lurid skies Are hot with his fiery breath. The crags are piled on his breast, The earth is heaped on his head; But the groans of his wild unrest, Though smothered and half suppressed, Are heard, and he is not dead. And the nations far away Are watching with eager eyes; They talk together and say, "To-morrow, perhaps to-day, Euceladus will arise!" And the old gods, the austere Oppressors in their strength, Stand aghast and white with fear At the ominous sounds they hear, And tremble, and mutter, "At length!" Ah me! for the land that is sown With the harvest of despair! Where the burning cinders, blown From the lips of the overthrown Enceladus, fill the air. Where ashes are heaped in drifts Over vineyard and field and town, Whenever he starts and lifts His head through the blackened rifts Of the crags that keep him down. See, see! the red light shines! 'T is the glare of his awful eyes! And the storm-wind shouts through the pines Of Alps and of Apennines, "Enceladus, arise!" THE CUMBERLAND At anchor in Hampton Roads we lay, On board of the cumberland, sloop-of-war; And at times from the fortress across the bay The alarum of drums swept past, Or a bugle blast From the camp on the shore. Then far away to the south uprose A little feather of snow-white smoke, And we knew that the iron ship of our foes Was steadily steering its course To try the force Of our ribs of oak. Down upon us heavily runs, Silent and sullen, the floating fort; Then comes a puff of smoke from her guns, And leaps the terrible death, With fiery breath, From each open port. We are not idle, but send her straight Defiance back in a full broadside! As hail rebounds from a roof of slate, Rebounds our heavier hail From each iron scale Of the monster's hide. "Strike your flag!" the rebel cries, In his arrogant old plantation strain. "Never!" our gallant Morris replies; "It is better to sink than to yield!" And the whole air pealed With the cheers of our men. Then, like a kraken huge and black, She crushed our ribs in her iron grasp! Down went the Cumberland all a wrack, With a sudden shudder of death, And the cannon's breath For her dying gasp. Next morn, as the sun rose over the bay, Still floated our flag at the mainmast head. Lord, how beautiful was Thy day! Every waft of the air Was a whisper of prayer, Or a dirge for the dead. Ho! brave hearts that went down in the seas Ye are at peace in the troubled stream; Ho! brave land! with hearts like these, Thy flag, that is rent in twain, Shall be one again, And without a seam! SNOW-FLAKES Out of the bosom of the Air, Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken, Over the woodlands brown and bare, Over the harvest-fields forsaken, Silent, and soft, and slow Descends the snow. Even as our cloudy fancies take Suddenly shape in some divine expression, Even as the troubled heart doth make In the white countenance confession, The troubled sky reveals The grief it feels. This is the poem of the air, Slowly in silent syllables recorded; This is the secret of despair, Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded, Now whispered and revealed To wood and field. A DAY OF SUNSHINE O gift of God! O perfect day: Whereon shall no man work, but play; Whereon it is enough for me, Not to be doing, but to be! Through every fibre of my brain, Through every nerve, through every vein, I feel the electric thrill, the touch Of life, that seems almost too much. I hear the wind among the trees Playing celestial symphonies; I see the branches downward bent, Like keys of some great instrument. And over me unrolls on high The splendid scenery of the sky, Where though a sapphire sea the sun Sails like a golden galleon, Towards yonder cloud-land in the West, Towards yonder Islands of the Blest, Whose steep sierra far uplifts Its craggy summits white with drifts. Blow, winds! and waft through all the rooms The snow-flakes of the cherry-blooms! Blow, winds! and bend within my reach The fiery blossoms of the peach! O Life and Love! O happy throng Of thoughts, whose only speech is song! O heart of man! canst thou not be Blithe as the air is, and as free? SOMETHING LEFT UNDONE Labor with what zeal we will, Something still remains undone, Something uncompleted still Waits the rising of the sun. By the bedside, on the stair, At the threshold, near the gates, With its menace or its prayer, Like a mendicant it waits; Waits, and will not go away; Waits, and will not be gainsaid; By the cares of yesterday Each to-day is heavier made; Till at length the burden seems Greater than our strength can bear, Heavy as the weight of dreams, Pressing on us everywhere. And we stand from day to day, Like the dwarfs of times gone by, Who, as Northern legends say, On their shoulders held the sky. WEARINESS O little feet! that such long years Must wander on through hopes and fears, Must ache and bleed beneath your load; I, nearer to the wayside inn Where toil shall cease and rest begin, Am weary, thinking of your road! O little hands! that, weak or strong, Have still to serve or rule so long, Have still so long to give or ask; I, who so much with book and pen Have toiled among my fellow-men, Am weary, thinking of your task. O little hearts! that throb and beat With such impatient, feverish heat, Such limitless and strong desires; Mine that so long has glowed and burned, With passions into ashes turned Now covers and conceals its fires. O little souls! as pure and white And crystalline as rays of light Direct from heaven, their source divine; Refracted through the mist of years, How red my setting sun appears, How lurid looks this soul of mine! **************** TALES OF A WAYSIDE INN PART FIRST PRELUDE THE WAYSIDE INN One Autumn night, in Sudbury town, Across the meadows bare and brown, The windows of the wayside inn Gleamed red with fire-light through the leaves Of woodbine, hanging from the eaves Their crimson curtains rent and thin. As ancient is this hostelry As any in the land may be, Built in the old Colonial day, When men lived in a grander way, With ampler hospitality; A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall, Now somewhat fallen to decay, With weather-stains upon the wall, And stairways worn, and crazy doors, And creaking and uneven floors, And chimneys huge, and tiled and tall. A region of repose it seems, A place of slumber and of dreams, Remote among the wooded hills! For there no noisy railway speeds, Its torch-race scattering smoke and gleeds; But noon and night, the panting teams Stop under the great oaks, that throw Tangles of light and shade below, On roofs and doors and window-sills. Across the road the barns display Their lines of stalls, their mows of hay, Through the wide doors the breezes blow, The wattled cocks strut to and fro, And, half effaced by rain and shine, The Red Horse prances on the sign. Round this old-fashioned, quaint abode Deep silence reigned, save when a gust Went rushing down the county road, And skeletons of leaves, and dust, A moment quickened by its breath, Shuddered and danced their dance of death, And through the ancient oaks o'erhead Mysterious voices moaned and fled. But from the parlor of the inn A pleasant murmur smote the ear, Like water rushing through a weir: Oft interrupted by the din Of laughter and of loud applause, And, in each intervening pause, The music of a violin. The fire-light, shedding over all The splendor of its ruddy glow, Filled the whole parlor large and low; It gleamed on wainscot and on wall, It touched with more than wonted grace Fair Princess Mary's pictured face; It bronzed the rafters overhead, On the old spinet's ivory keys It played inaudible melodies, It crowned the sombre clock with flame, The hands, the hours, the maker's name, And painted with a livelier red The Landlord's coat-of-arms again; And, flashing on the window-pane, Emblazoned with its light and shade The jovial rhymes, that still remain, Writ near a century ago, By the great Major Molineaux, Whom Hawthorne has immortal made. Before the blazing fire of wood Erect the rapt musician stood; And ever and anon he bent His head upon his instrument, And seemed to listen, till he caught Confessions of its secret thought,-- The joy, the triumph, the lament, The exultation and the pain; Then, by the magic of his art, He soothed the throbbings of its heart, And lulled it into peace again. Around the fireside at their ease There sat a group of friends, entranced With the delicious melodies Who from the far-off noisy town Had to the wayside inn come down, To rest beneath its old oak-trees. The fire-light on their faces glanced, Their shadows on the wainscot danced, And, though of different lands and speech, Each had his tale to tell, and each Was anxious to be pleased and please. And while the sweet musician plays, Let me in outline sketch them all, Perchance uncouthly as the blaze With its uncertain touch portrays Their shadowy semblance on the wall. But first the Landlord will I trace; Grave in his aspect and attire; A man of ancient pedigree, A Justice of the Peace was he, Known in all Sudbury as "The Squire." Proud was he of his name and race, Of old Sir William and Sir Hugh, And in the parlor, full in view, His coat-of-arms, well framed and glazed, Upon the wall in colors blazed; He beareth gules upon his shield, A chevron argent in the field, With three wolf's heads, and for the crest A Wyvern part-per-pale addressed Upon a helmet barred; below The scroll reads, "By the name of Howe." And over this, no longer bright, Though glimmering with a latent light, Was hung the sword his grandsire bore In the rebellious days of yore, Down there at Concord in the fight. A youth was there, of quiet ways, A Student of old books and days, To whom all tongues and lands were known And yet a lover of his own; With many a social virtue graced, And yet a friend of solitude; A man of such a genial mood The heart of all things he embraced, And yet of such fastidious taste, He never found the best too good. Books were his passion and delight, And in his upper room at home Stood many a rare and sumptuous tome, In vellum bound, with gold bedight, Great volumes garmented in white, Recalling Florence, Pisa, Rome. He loved the twilight that surrounds The border-land of old romance; Where glitter hauberk, helm, and lance, And banner waves, and trumpet sounds, And ladies ride with hawk on wrist, And mighty warriors sweep along, Magnified by the purple mist, The dusk of centuries and of song. The chronicles of Charlemagne, Of Merlin and the Mort d'Arthure, Mingled together in his brain With tales of Flores and Blanchefleur, Sir Ferumbras, Sir Eglamour, Sir Launcelot, Sir Morgadour, Sir Guy, Sir Bevis, Sir Gawain. A young Sicilian, too, was there; In sight of Etna born and bred, Some breath of its volcanic air Was glowing in his heart and brain, And, being rebellious to his liege, After Palermo's fatal siege, Across the western seas he fled, In good King Bomba's happy reign. His face was like a summer night, All flooded with a dusky light; His hands were small; his teeth shone white As sea-shells, when he smiled or spoke; His sinews supple and strong as oak; Clean shaven was he as a priest, Who at the mass on Sunday sings, Save that upon his upper lip His beard, a good palm's length least, Level and pointed at the tip, Shot sideways, like a swallow's wings. The poets read he o'er and o'er, And most of all the Immortal Four Of Italy; and next to those, The story-telling bard of prose, Who wrote the joyous Tuscan tales Of the Decameron, that make Fiesole's green hills and vales Remembered for Boccaccio's sake. Much too of music was his thought; The melodies and measures fraught With sunshine and the open air, Of vineyards and the singing sea Of his beloved Sicily; And much it pleased him to peruse The songs of the Sicilian muse,-- Bucolic songs by Meli sung In the familiar peasant tongue, That made men say, "Behold! once more The pitying gods to earth restore Theocritus of Syracuse!" A Spanish Jew from Alicant With aspect grand and grave was there; Vender of silks and fabrics rare, And attar of rose from the Levant. Like an old Patriarch he appeared, Abraham or Isaac, or at least Some later Prophet or High-Priest; With lustrous eyes, and olive skin, And, wildly tossed from cheeks and chin, The tumbling cataract of his beard. His garments breathed a spicy scent Of cinnamon and sandal blent, Like the soft aromatic gales That meet the mariner, who sails Through the Moluccas, and the seas That wash the shores of Celebes. All stories that recorded are By Pierre Alphonse he knew by heart, And it was rumored he could say The Parables of Sandabar, And all the Fables of Pilpay, Or if not all, the greater part! Well versed was he in Hebrew books, Talmud and Targum, and the lore Of Kabala; and evermore There was a mystery in his looks; His eyes seemed gazing far away, As if in vision or in trance He heard the solemn sackbut play, And saw the Jewish maidens dance. A Theologian, from the school Of Cambridge on the Charles, was there; Skilful alike with tongue and pen, He preached to all men everywhere The Gospel of the Golden Rule, The New Commandment given to men, Thinking the deed, and not the creed, Would help us in our utmost need. With reverent feet the earth he trod, Nor banished nature from his plan, But studied still with deep research To build the Universal Church, Lofty as in the love of God, And ample as the wants of man. A Poet, too, was there, whose verse Was tender, musical, and terse; The inspiration, the delight, The gleam, the glory, the swift flight, Of thoughts so sudden, that they seem The revelations of a dream, All these were his; but with them came No envy of another's fame; He did not find his sleep less sweet For music in some neighboring street, Nor rustling hear in every breeze The laurels of Miltiades. Honor and blessings on his head While living, good report when dead, Who, not too eager for renown, Accepts, but does not clutch, the crown! Last the Musician, as he stood Illumined by that fire of wood; Fair-haired, blue-eyed, his aspect blithe. His figure tall and straight and lithe, And every feature of his face Revealing his Norwegian race; A radiance, streaming from within, Around his eyes and forehead beamed, The Angel with the violin, Painted by Raphael, he seemed. He lived in that ideal world Whose language is not speech, but song; Around him evermore the throng Of elves and sprites their dances whirled; The Stromkarl sang, the cataract hurled Its headlong waters from the height; And mingled in the wild delight The scream of sea-birds in their flight, The rumor of the forest trees, The plunge of the implacable seas, The tumult of the wind at night, Voices of eld, like trumpets blowing, Old ballads, and wild melodies Through mist and darkness pouring forth, Like Elivagar's river flowing Out of the glaciers of the North. The instrument on which he played Was in Cremona's workshops made, By a great master of the past, Ere yet was lost the art divine; Fashioned of maple and of pine, That in Tyrolian forests vast Had rocked and wrestled with the blast; Exquisite was it in design, Perfect in each minutest part. A marvel of the lutist's art; And in its hollow chamber, thus, The maker from whose hands it came Had written his unrivalled name,-- "Antonius Stradivarius." And when he played, the atmosphere Was filled with magic, and the ear Caught echoes of that Harp of Gold, Whose music had so weird a sound, The hunted stag forgot to bound, The leaping rivulet backward rolled, The birds came down from bush and tree, The dead came from beneath the sea, The maiden to the harper's knee! The music ceased; the applause was loud, The pleased musician smiled and bowed; The wood-fire clapped its hands of flame, The shadows on the wainscot stirred, And from the harpsichord there came A ghostly murmur of acclaim, A sound like that sent down at night By birds of passage in their flight, From the remotest distance heard. Then silence followed; then began A clamor for the Landlord's tale,-- The story promised them of old, They said, but always left untold; And he, although a bashful man, And all his courage seemed to fail, Finding excuse of no avail, Yielded; and thus the story ran. THE LANDLORD'S TALE. PAUL REVERE'S RIDE. Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year. He said to his friend, "If the British march By land or sea from the town to-night, Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch Of the North Church tower as a signal light,-- One, if by land, and two, if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm For the country folk to be up and to arm," Then he said, "Good night!" and with muffled oar Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, Just as the moon rose over the bay, Where swinging wide at her moorings lay The Somerset, British man-of-war; A phantom ship, with each mast and spar Across the moon like a prison bar, And a huge black hulk, that was magnified By its own reflection in the tide. Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street, Wanders and watches with eager ears, Till in the silence around him he hears The muster of men at the barrack door, The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet, And the measured tread of the grenadiers, Marching down to their boats on the shore. Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church, By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread, To the belfry-chamber overhead, And startled the pigeons from their perch On the sombre rafters, that round him made Masses and moving shapes of shade,-- By the trembling ladder, steep and tall To the highest window in the wall, Where he paused to listen and look down A moment on the roofs of the town, And the moonlight flowing over all. Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead, In their night-encampment on the hill, Wrapped in silence so deep and still That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread, The watchful night-wind, as it went Creeping along from tent to tent And seeming to whisper, "All is well!" A moment only he feels the spell Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread Of the lonely belfry and the dead; For suddenly all his thoughts are bent On a shadowy something far away, Where the river widens to meet the bay,-- A line of black that bends and floats On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats. Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride, Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere. Now he patted his horse's side, Now gazed at the landscape far and near, Then, impetuous, stamped the earth, And turned and tightened his saddle-girth; But mostly he watched with eager search The belfry-tower of the Old North Church, As it rose above the graves on the hill, Lonely and spectral and sombre and still. And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height A glimmer, and then a gleam of light! He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns, But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight A second lamp in the belfry burns! A hurry of hoofs in a village street, A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark, And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet: That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light, The fate of a nation was riding that night; And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight, Kindled the land into flame with its heat. He has left the village and mounted the steep, And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep, Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides; And under the alders, that skirt its edge, Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge, Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides. It was twelve by the village clock When he crossed the bridge into Medford town. He heard the crowing of the cock, And the barking of the farmer's dog, And felt the damp of the river fog, That rises after the sun goes down. It was one by the village clock, When he galloped into Lexington. He saw the gilded weathercock Swim in the moonlight as he passed, And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare, Gaze at him with a spectral glare, As if they already stood aghast At the bloody work they would look upon. It was two by the village clock, When he came to the bridge in Concord town. He heard the bleating of the flock, And the twitter of birds among the trees, And felt the breath of the morning breeze Blowing over the meadows brown. And one was safe and asleep in his bed Who at the bridge would be first to fall, Who that day would be lying dead, Pierced by a British musket-ball. You know the rest. In the books you have read, How the British Regulars fired and fled,-- How the farmers gave them ball for ball, From behind each fence and farm-yard wall, Chasing the red-coats down the lane, Then crossing the fields to emerge again Under the trees at the turn of the road, And only pausing to fire and load. So through the night rode Paul Revere; And so through the night went his cry of alarm To every Middlesex village and farm,-- A cry of defiance and not of fear, A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, And a word that shall echo forevermore! For, borne on the night-wind of the Past, Through all our history, to the last, In the hour of darkness and peril and need, The people will waken and listen to hear The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed, And the midnight message of Paul Revere. INTERLUDE. The Landlord ended thus his tale, Then rising took down from its nail The sword that hung there, dim with dust And cleaving to its sheath with rust, And said, "This sword was in the fight." The Poet seized it, and exclaimed, "It is the sword of a good knight, Though homespun was his coat-of-mail; What matter if it be not named Joyeuse, Colada, Durindale, Excalibar, or Aroundight, Or other name the books record? Your ancestor, who bore this sword As Colonel of the Volunteers, Mounted upon his old gray mare, Seen here and there and everywhere, To me a grander shape appears Than old Sir William, or what not, Clinking about in foreign lands With iron gauntlets on his hands, And on his head an iron pot!" All laughed; the Landlord's face grew red As his escutcheon on the wall; He could not comprehend at all The drift of what the Poet said; For those who had been longest dead Were always greatest in his eyes; And be was speechless with surprise To see Sir William's plumed head Brought to a level with the rest, And made the subject of a jest. And this perceiving, to appease The Landlord's wrath, the others' fears, The Student said, with careless ease, "The ladies and the cavaliers, The arms, the loves, the courtesies, The deeds of high emprise, I sing! Thus Ariosto says, in words That have the stately stride and ring Of armed knights and clashing swords. Now listen to the tale I bring Listen! though not to me belong The flowing draperies of his song, The words that rouse, the voice that charms. The Landlord's tale was one of arms, Only a tale of love is mine, Blending the human and divine, A tale of the Decameron, told In Palmieri's garden old, By Fiametta, laurel-crowned, While her companions lay around, And heard the intermingled sound Of airs that on their errands sped, And wild birds gossiping overhead, And lisp of leaves, and fountain's fall, And her own voice more sweet than all, Telling the tale, which, wanting these, Perchance may lose its power to please." THE STUDENT'S TALE THE FALCON OF SER FEDERIGO One summer morning, when the sun was hot, Weary with labor in his garden-plot, On a rude bench beneath his cottage eaves, Ser Federigo sat among the leaves Of a huge vine, that, with its arms outspread, Hung its delicious clusters overhead. Below him, through the lovely valley flowed The river Arno, like a winding road, And from its banks were lifted high in air The spires and roofs of Florence called the Fair; To him a marble tomb, that rose above His wasted fortunes and his buried love. For there, in banquet and in tournament, His wealth had lavished been, his substance spent, To woo and lose, since ill his wooing sped, Monna Giovanna, who his rival wed, Yet ever in his fancy reigned supreme, The ideal woman of a young man's dream. Then he withdrew, in poverty and pain, To this small farm, the last of his domain, His only comfort and his only care To prune his vines, and plant the fig and pear; His only forester and only guest His falcon, faithful to him, when the rest, Whose willing hands had found so light of yore The brazen knocker of his palace door, Had now no strength to lift the wooden latch, That entrance gave beneath a roof of thatch. Companion of his solitary ways, Purveyor of his feasts on holidays, On him this melancholy man bestowed The love with which his nature overflowed. And so the empty-handed years went round, Vacant, though voiceful with prophetic sound, And so, that summer morn, he sat and mused With folded, patient hands, as he was used, And dreamily before his half-closed sight Floated the vision of his lost delight. Beside him, motionless, the drowsy bird Dreamed of the chase, and in his slumber heard The sudden, scythe-like sweep of wings, that dare The headlong plunge thro' eddying gulfs of air, Then, starting broad awake upon his perch, Tinkled his bells, like mass-bells in a church, And, looking at his master, seemed to say, "Ser Federigo, shall we hunt to-day?" Ser Federigo thought not of the chase; The tender vision of her lovely face, I will not say he seems to see, he sees In the leaf-shadows of the trellises, Herself, yet not herself; a lovely child With flowing tresses, and eyes wide and wild, Coming undaunted up the garden walk, And looking not at him, but at the hawk. "Beautiful falcon!" said he, "would that I Might hold thee on my wrist, or see thee fly!" The voice was hers, and made strange echoes start Through all the haunted chambers of his heart, As an aeolian harp through gusty doors Of some old ruin its wild music pours. "Who is thy mother, my fair boy?" he said, His hand laid softly on that shining head. "Monna Giovanna. Will you let me stay A little while, and with your falcon play? We live there, just beyond your garden wall, In the great house behind the poplars tall." So he spake on; and Federigo heard As from afar each softly uttered word, And drifted onward through the golden gleams And shadows of the misty sea of dreams, As mariners becalmed through vapors drift, And feel the sea beneath them sink and lift, And hear far off the mournful breakers roar, And voices calling faintly from the shore! Then, waking from his pleasant reveries He took the little boy upon his knees, And told him stories of his gallant bird, Till in their friendship he became a third. Monna Giovanna, widowed in her prime, Had come with friends to pass the summer time In her grand villa, half-way up the hill, O'erlooking Florence, but retired and still; With iron gates, that opened through long lines Of sacred ilex and centennial pines, And terraced gardens, and broad steps of stone, And sylvan deities, with moss o'ergrown, And fountains palpitating in the heat, And all Val d'Arno stretched beneath its feet. Here in seclusion, as a widow may, The lovely lady whiled the hours away, Pacing in sable robes the statued hall, Herself the stateliest statue among all, And seeing more and more, with secret joy, Her husband risen and living in her boy, Till the lost sense of life returned again, Not as delight, but as relief from pain. Meanwhile the boy, rejoicing in his strength, Stormed down the terraces from length to length; The screaming peacock chased in hot pursuit, And climbed the garden trellises for fruit. But his chief pastime was to watch the flight Of a gerfalcon, soaring into sight, Beyond the trees that fringed the garden wall, Then downward stooping at some distant call; And as he gazed full often wondered he Who might the master of the falcon be, Until that happy morning, when he found Master and falcon in the cottage ground. And now a shadow and a terror fell On the great house, as if a passing-bell Tolled from the tower, and filled each spacious room With secret awe, and preternatural gloom; The petted boy grew ill, and day by day Pined with mysterious malady away. The mother's heart would not be comforted; Her darling seemed to her already dead, And often, sitting by the sufferer's side, "What can I do to comfort thee?" she cried. At first the silent lips made no reply, But moved at length by her importunate cry, "Give me," he answered, with imploring tone, "Ser Federigo's falcon for my own!" No answer could the astonished mother make; How could she ask, e'en for her darling's sake, Such favor at a luckless lover's hand, Well knowing that to ask was to command? Well knowing, what all falconers confessed, In all the land that falcon was the best, The master's pride and passion and delight, And the sole pursuivant of this poor knight. But yet, for her child's sake, she could no less Than give assent to soothe his restlessness, So promised, and then promising to keep Her promise sacred, saw him fall asleep. The morrow was a bright September morn; The earth was beautiful as if new-born; There was that nameless splendor everywhere, That wild exhilaration in the air, Which makes the passers in the city street Congratulate each other as they meet. Two lovely ladies, clothed in cloak and hood, Passed through the garden gate into the wood, Under the lustrous leaves, and through the sheen Of dewy sunshine showering down between. The one, close-hooded, had the attractive grace Which sorrow sometimes lends a woman's face; Her dark eyes moistened with the mists that roll From the gulf-stream of passion in the soul; The other with her hood thrown back, her hair Making a golden glory in the air, Her cheeks suffused with an auroral blush, Her young heart singing louder than the thrush. So walked, that morn, through mingled light and shade, Each by the other's presence lovelier made, Monna Giovanna and her bosom friend, Intent upon their errand and its end. They found Ser Federigo at his toil, Like banished Adam, delving in the soil; And when he looked and these fair women spied, The garden suddenly was glorified; His long-lost Eden was restored again, And the strange river winding through the plain No longer was the Arno to his eyes, But the Euphrates watering Paradise! Monna Giovanna raised her stately head, And with fair words of salutation said: "Ser Federigo, we come here as friends, Hoping in this to make some poor amends For past unkindness. I who ne'er before Would even cross the threshold of your door, I who in happier days such pride maintained, Refused your banquets, and your gifts disdained, This morning come, a self-invited guest, To put your generous nature to the test, And breakfast with you under your own vine." To which he answered: "Poor desert of mine, Not your unkindness call it, for if aught Is good in me of feeling or of thought, From you it comes, and this last grace outweighs All sorrows, all regrets of other days." And after further compliment and talk, Among the asters in the garden walk He left his guests; and to his cottage turned, And as he entered for a moment yearned For the lost splendors of the days of old, The ruby glass, the silver and the gold, And felt how piercing is the sting of pride, By want embittered and intensified. He looked about him for some means or way To keep this unexpected holiday; Searched every cupboard, and then searched again, Summoned the maid, who came, but came in vain; "The Signor did not hunt to-day," she said, "There's nothing in the house but wine and bread." Then suddenly the drowsy falcon shook His little bells, with that sagacious look, Which said, as plain as language to the ear, "If anything is wanting, I am here!" Yes, everything is wanting, gallant bird! The master seized thee without further word. Like thine own lure, he whirled thee round; ah me! The pomp and flutter of brave falconry, The bells, the jesses, the bright scarlet hood, The flight and the pursuit o'er field and wood, All these forevermore are ended now; No longer victor, but the victim thou! Then on the board a snow-white cloth he spread, Laid on its wooden dish the loaf of bread, Brought purple grapes with autumn sunshine hot, The fragrant peach, the juicy bergamot; Then in the midst a flask of wine he placed, And with autumnal flowers the banquet graced. Ser Federigo, would not these suffice Without thy falcon stuffed with cloves and spice? When all was ready, and the courtly dame With her companion to the cottage came, Upon Ser Federigo's brain there fell The wild enchantment of a magic spell! The room they entered, mean and low and small, Was changed into a sumptuous banquet-hall, With fanfares by aerial trumpets blown; The rustic chair she sat on was a throne; He ate celestial food, and a divine Flavor was given to his country wine, And the poor falcon, fragrant with his spice, A peacock was, or bird of paradise! When the repast was ended, they arose And passed again into the garden-close. Then said the lady, "Far too well I know Remembering still the days of long ago, Though you betray it not with what surprise You see me here in this familiar wise. You have no children, and you cannot guess What anguish, what unspeakable distress A mother feels, whose child is lying ill, Nor how her heart anticipates his will. And yet for this, you see me lay aside All womanly reserve and check of pride, And ask the thing most precious in your sight, Your falcon, your sole comfort and delight, Which if you find it in your heart to give, My poor, unhappy boy perchance may live." Ser Federigo listens, and replies, With tears of love and pity in his eyes: "Alas, dear lady! there can be no task So sweet to me, as giving when you ask. One little hour ago, if I had known This wish of yours, it would have been my own. But thinking in what manner I could best Do honor to the presence of my guest, I deemed that nothing worthier could be Than what most dear and precious was to me, And so my gallant falcon breathed his last To furnish forth this morning our repast." In mute contrition, mingled with dismay, The gentle lady tuned her eyes away, Grieving that he such sacrifice should make, And kill his falcon for a woman's sake, Yet feeling in her heart a woman's pride, That nothing she could ask for was denied; Then took her leave, and passed out at the gate With footstep slow and soul disconsolate. Three days went by, and lo! a passing-bell Tolled from the little chapel in the dell; Ten strokes Ser Federigo heard, and said, Breathing a prayer, "Alas! her child is dead!" Three months went by; and lo! a merrier chime Rang from the chapel bells at Christmas time; The cottage was deserted, and no more Ser Federigo sat beside its door, But now, with servitors to do his will, In the grand villa, half-way up the hill, Sat at the Christmas feast, and at his side Monna Giovanna, his beloved bride, Never so beautiful, so kind, so fair, Enthroned once more in the old rustic chair, High-perched upon the back of which there stood The image of a falcon carved in wood, And underneath the inscription, with date, "All things come round to him who will but wait." INTERLUDE Soon as the story reached its end, One, over eager to commend, Crowned it with injudicious praise; And then the voice of blame found vent, And fanned the embers of dissent Into a somewhat lively blaze. The Theologian shook his head; "These old Italian tales," he said, "From the much-praised Decameron down Through all the rabble of the rest, Are either trifling, dull, or lewd; The gossip of a neighborhood In some remote provincial town, A scandalous chronicle at best! They seem to me a stagnant fen, Grown rank with rushes and with reeds, Where a white lily, now and then, Blooms in the midst of noxious weeds And deadly nightshade on its banks." To this the Student straight replied, "For the white lily, many thanks! One should not say, with too much pride, Fountain, I will not drink of thee! Nor were it grateful to forget, That from these reservoirs and tanks Even imperial Shakespeare drew His Moor of Venice, and the Jew, And Romeo and Juliet, And many a famous comedy." Then a long pause; till some one said, "An Angel is flying overhead!" At these words spake the Spanish Jew, And murmured with an inward breath: "God grant, if what you say be true, It may not be the Angel of Death!" And then another pause; and then, Stroking his beard, he said again: "This brings back to my memory A story in the Talmud told, That book of gems, that book of gold, Of wonders many and manifold, A tale that often comes to me, And fills my heart, and haunts my brain, And never wearies nor grows old." THE SPANISH JEW'S TALE THE LEGEND OF RABBI BEN LEVI Rabbi Ben Levi, on the Sabbath, read A volume of the Law, in which it said, "No man shall look upon my face and live." And as he read, he prayed that God would give His faithful servant grace with mortal eye To look upon His face and yet not die. Then fell a sudden shadow on the page, And, lifting up his eyes, grown dim with age He saw the Angel of Death before him stand, Holding a naked sword in his right hand. Rabbi Ben Levi was a righteous man, Yet through his veins a chill of terror ran. With trembling voice he said, "What wilt thou here?" The angel answered, "Lo! the time draws near When thou must die; yet first, by God's decree, Whate'er thou askest shall be granted thee." Replied the Rabbi, "Let these living eyes First look upon my place in Paradise." Then said the Angel, "Come with me and look." Rabbi Ben Levi closed the sacred book, And rising, and uplifting his gray head, "Give me thy sword," he to the Angel said, "Lest thou shouldst fall upon me by the way." The angel smiled and hastened to obey, Then led him forth to the Celestial Town, And set him on the wall, whence, gazing down, Rabbi Ben Levi, with his living eyes, Might look upon his place in Paradise. Then straight into the city of the Lord The Rabbi leaped with the Death-Angel's sword, And through the streets there swept a sudden breath Of something there unknown, which men call death. Meanwhile the Angel stayed without and cried, "Come back!" To which the Rabbi's voice replied, "No! in the name of God, whom I adore, I swear that hence I will depart no more!" Then all the Angels cried, "O Holy One, See what the son of Levi here hath done! The kingdom of Heaven he takes by violence, And in Thy name refuses to go hence!" The Lord replied, "My Angels, be not wroth; Did e'er the son of Levi break his oath? Let him remain; for he with mortal eye Shall look upon my face and yet not die." Beyond the outer wall the Angel of Death Heard the great voice, and said, with panting breath, "Give back the sword, and let me go my way." Whereat the Rabbi paused, and answered, "Nay! Anguish enough already hath it caused Among the sons of men." And while he paused He heard the awful mandate of the Lord Resounding through the air, "Give back the sword!" The Rabbi bowed his head in silent prayer; Then said he to the dreadful Angel, "Swear, No human eye shall look on it again; But when thou takest away the souls of men, Thyself unseen, and with an unseen sword, Thou wilt perform the bidding of the Lord." The Angel took the sword again, and swore, And walks on earth unseen forevermore. INTERLUDE He ended: and a kind of spell Upon the silent listeners fell. His solemn manner and his words Had touched the deep, mysterious chords, That vibrate in each human breast Alike, but not alike confessed. The spiritual world seemed near; And close above them, full of fear, Its awful adumbration passed, A luminous shadow, vague and vast. They almost feared to look, lest there, Embodied from the impalpable air, They might behold the Angel stand, Holding the sword in his right hand. At last, but in a voice subdued, Not to disturb their dreamy mood, Said the Sicilian: "While you spoke, Telling your legend marvellous, Suddenly in my memory woke The thought of one, now gone from us,-- An old Abate, meek and mild, My friend and teacher, when a child, Who sometimes in those days of old The legend of an Angel told, Which ran, as I remember, thus?' THE SICILIAN'S TALE KING ROBERT OF SICILY Robert of Sicily, brother of Pope Urbane And Valmond, Emperor of Allemaine, Apparelled in magnificent attire, With retinue of many a knight and squire, On St. John's eve, at vespers, proudly sat And heard the priests chant the Magnificat, And as he listened, o'er and o'er again Repeated, like a burden or refrain, He caught the words, "Deposuit potentes De sede, et exaltavit humiles"; And slowly lifting up his kingly head He to a learned clerk beside him said, "What mean these words?" The clerk made answer meet, "He has put down the mighty from their seat, And has exalted them of low degree." Thereat King Robert muttered scornfully, "'T is well that such seditious words are sung Only by priests and in the Latin tongue; For unto priests and people be it known, There is no power can push me from my throne!" And leaning back, he yawned and fell asleep, Lulled by the chant monotonous and deep. When he awoke, it was already night; The church was empty, and there was no light, Save where the lamps, that glimmered few and faint, Lighted a little space before some saint. He started from his seat and gazed around, But saw no living thing and heard no sound. He groped towards the door, but it was locked; He cried aloud, and listened, and then knocked, And uttered awful threatenings and complaints, And imprecations upon men and saints. The sounds re-echoed from the roof and walls As if dead priests were laughing in their stalls. At length the sexton, hearing from without The tumult of the knocking and the shout, And thinking thieves were in the house of prayer, Came with his lantern, asking, "Who is there?" Half choked with rage, King Robert fiercely said, "Open: 'tis I, the King! Art thou afraid?" The frightened sexton, muttering, with a curse, "This is some drunken vagabond, or worse!" Turned the great key and flung the portal wide; A man rushed by him at a single stride, Haggard, half naked, without hat or cloak, Who neither turned, nor looked at him, nor spoke, But leaped into the blackness of the night, And vanished like a spectre from his sight. Robert of Sicily, brother of Pope Urbane And Valmond, Emperor of Allemaine, Despoiled of his magnificent attire, Bareheaded, breathless, and besprent with mire, With sense of wrong and outrage desperate, Strode on and thundered at the palace gate; Rushed through the courtyard, thrusting in his rage To right and left each seneschal and page, And hurried up the broad and sounding stair, His white face ghastly in the torches' glare. From hall to hall he passed with breathless speed; Voices and cries he heard, but did not heed, Until at last he reached the banquet-room, Blazing with light and breathing with perfume. There on the dais sat another king, Wearing his robes, his crown, his signet-ring, King Robert's self in features, form, and height, But all transfigured with angelic light! It was an Angel; and his presence there With a divine effulgence filled the air, An exaltation, piercing the disguise, Though none the hidden Angel recognize. A moment speechless, motionless, amazed, The throneless monarch on the Angel gazed, Who met his look of anger and surprise With the divine compassion of his eyes; Then said, "Who art thou? and why com'st thou here?" To which King Robert answered, with a sneer, "I am the King, and come to claim my own From an impostor, who usurps my throne!" And suddenly, at these audacious words, Up sprang the angry guests, and drew their swords; The Angel answered, with unruffled brow, "Nay, not the King, but the King's Jester, thou Henceforth shall wear the bells and scalloped cape, And for thy counsellor shalt lead an ape; Thou shalt obey my servants when they call, And wait upon my henchmen in the hall!" Deaf to King Robert's threats and cries and prayers, They thrust him from the hall and down the stairs; A group of tittering pages ran before, And as they opened wide the folding door, His heart failed, for he heard, with strange alarms, The boisterous laughter of the men-at-arms, And all the vaulted chamber roar and ring With the mock plaudits of "Long live the King!" Next morning, waking with the day's first beam, He said within himself, "It was a dream!" But the straw rustled as he turned his head, There were the cap and bells beside his bed, Around him rose the bare, discolored walls, Close by, the steeds were champing in their stalls, And in the corner, a revolting shape, Shivering and chattering sat the wretched ape. It was no dream; the world he loved so much Had turned to dust and ashes at his touch! Days came and went; and now returned again To Sicily the old Saturnian reign; Under the Angel's governance benign The happy island danced with corn and wine, And deep within the mountain's burning breast Enceladus, the giant, was at rest. Meanwhile King Robert yielded to his fate, Sullen and silent and disconsolate. Dressed in the motley garb that Jesters wear, With look bewildered and a vacant stare, Close shaven above the ears, as monks are shorn, By courtiers mocked, by pages laughed to scorn, His only friend the ape, his only food What others left,--he still was unsubdued. And when the Angel met him on his way, And half in earnest, half in jest, would say Sternly, though tenderly, that he might feel The velvet scabbard held a sword of steel, "Art thou the King?" the passion of his woe Burst from him in resistless overflow, And, lifting high his forehead, he would fling The haughty answer back, "I am, I am the King!" Almost three years were ended; when there came Ambassadors of great repute and name From Valmond, Emperor of Allemaine, Unto King Robert, saying that Pope Urbane By letter summoned them forthwith to come On Holy Thursday to his city of Rome. The Angel with great joy received his guests, And gave them presents of embroidered vests, And velvet mantles with rich ermine lined, And rings and jewels of the rarest kind. Then he departed with them o'er the sea Into the lovely land of Italy, Whose loveliness was more resplendent made By the mere passing of that cavalcade, With plumes, and cloaks, and housings, and the stir Of jewelled bridle and of golden spur. And lo! among the menials, in mock state, Upon a piebald steed, with shambling gait, His cloak of fox-tails flapping in the wind, The solemn ape demurely perched behind, King Robert rode, making huge merriment In all the country towns through which they went. The Pope received them with great pomp and blare Of bannered trumpets, on Saint Peter's square, Giving his benediction and embrace, Fervent, and full of apostolic grace. While with congratulations and with prayers He entertained the Angel unawares, Robert, the Jester, bursting through the crowd, Into their presence rushed, and cried aloud, "I am the King! Look, and behold in me Robert, your brother, King of Sicily! This man, who wears my semblance to your eyes, Is an impostor in a king's disguise. Do you not know me? does no voice within Answer my cry, and say we are akin?" The Pope in silence, but with troubled mien, Gazed at the Angel's countenance serene; The Emperor, laughing, said, "It is strange sport To keep a mad man for thy Fool at court!" And the poor, baffled Jester in disgrace Was hustled back among the populace. In solemn state the Holy Week went by, And Easter Sunday gleamed upon the sky; The presence of the Angel, with its light, Before the sun rose, made the city bright, And with new fervor filled the hearts of men, Who felt that Christ indeed had risen again. Even the Jester, on his bed of straw, With haggard eyes the unwonted splendor saw, He felt within a power unfelt before, And, kneeling humbly on his chamber floor, He heard the rushing garments of the Lord Sweep through the silent air, ascending heavenward. And now the visit ending, and once more Valmond returning to the Danube's shore, Homeward the Angel journeyed, and again The land was made resplendent with his train, Flashing along the towns of Italy Unto Salerno, and from thence by sea. And when once more within Palermo's wall, And, seated on the throne in his great hall, He heard the Angelus from convent towers, As if the better world conversed with ours, He beckoned to King Robert to draw nigher, And with a gesture bade the rest retire; And when they were alone, the Angel said, "Art thou the King?" Then, bowing down his head, King Robert crossed both hands upon his breast, And meekly answered him: "Thou knowest best! My sins as scarlet are; let me go hence, And in some cloister's school of penitence, Across those stones, that pave the way to heaven, Walk barefoot, till my guilty soul be shriven!" The Angel smiled, and from his radiant face A holy light illumined all the place, And through the open window, loud and clear, They heard the monks chant in the chapel near, Above the stir and tumult of the street: "He has put down the mighty from their seat, And has exalted them of low degree!" And through the chant a second melody Rose like the throbbing of a single string: "I am an Angel, and thou art the King!" King Robert, who was standing near the throne, Lifted his eyes, and lo! he was alone! But all apparelled as in days of old, With ermined mantle and with cloth of gold; And when his courtiers came, they found him there Kneeling upon the floor, absorbed in, silent prayer. INTERLUDE And then the blue-eyed Norseman told A Saga of the days of old. "There is," said he, "a wondrous book Of Legends in the old Norse tongue, Of the dead kings of Norroway,-- Legends that once were told or sung In many a smoky fireside nook Of Iceland, in the ancient day, By wandering Saga-man or Scald; Heimskringla is the volume called; And he who looks may find therein The story that I now begin." And in each pause the story made Upon his violin he played, As an appropriate interlude, Fragments of old Norwegian tunes That bound in one the separate runes, And held the mind in perfect mood, Entwining and encircling all The strange and antiquated rhymes with melodies of olden times; As over some half-ruined wall, Disjointed and about to fall, Fresh woodbines climb and interlace, And keep the loosened stones in place. THE MUSICIAN'S TALE THE SAGA OF KING OLAF I THE CHALLENGE OF THOR I am the God Thor, I am the War God, I am the Thunderer! Here in my Northland, My fastness and fortress, Reign I forever! Here amid icebergs Rule I the nations; This is my hammer, Miolner the mighty; Giants and sorcerers Cannot withstand it! These are the gauntlets Wherewith I wield it, And hurl it afar off; This is my girdle; Whenever I brace it, Strength is redoubled! The light thou beholdest Stream through the heavens, In flashes of crimson, Is but my red beard Blown by the night-wind, Affrighting the nations! Jove is my brother; Mine eyes are the lightning; The wheels of my chariot Roll in the thunder, The blows of my hammer Ring in the earthquake! Force rules the world still, Has ruled it, shall rule it; Meekness is weakness, Strength is triumphant, Over the whole earth Still is it Thor's-Day! Thou art a God too, O Galilean! And thus single-handed Unto the combat, Gauntlet or Gospel, Here I defy thee! II KING OLAF'S RETURN And King Olaf heard the cry, Saw the red light in the sky, Laid his hand upon his sword, As he leaned upon the railing, And his ships went sailing, sailing Northward into Drontheim fiord. There he stood as one who dreamed; And the red light glanced and gleamed On the armor that he wore; And he shouted, as the rifled Streamers o'er him shook and shifted, "I accept thy challenge, Thor!" To avenge his father slain, And reconquer realm and reign, Came the youthful Olaf home, Through the midnight sailing, sailing, Listening to the wild wind's wailing, And the dashing of the foam. To his thoughts the sacred name Of his mother Astrid came, And the tale she oft had told Of her flight by secret passes Through the mountains and morasses, To the home of Hakon old. Then strange memories crowded back Of Queen Gunhild's wrath and wrack, And a hurried flight by sea; Of grim Vikings, and the rapture Of the sea-fight, and the capture, And the life of slavery. How a stranger watched his face In the Esthonian market-place, Scanned his features one by one, Saying, "We should know each other; I am Sigurd, Astrid's brother, Thou art Olaf, Astrid's son!" Then as Queen Allogia's page, Old in honors, young in age, Chief of all her men-at-arms; Till vague whispers, and mysterious, Reached King Valdemar, the imperious, Filling him with strange alarms. Then his cruisings o'er the seas, Westward to the Hebrides, And to Scilly's rocky shore; And the hermit's cavern dismal, Christ's great name and rites baptismal in the ocean's rush and roar. All these thoughts of love and strife Glimmered through his lurid life, As the stars' intenser light Through the red flames o'er him trailing, As his ships went sailing, sailing, Northward in the summer night. Trained for either camp or court, Skilful in each manly sport, Young and beautiful and tall; Art of warfare, craft of chases, Swimming, skating, snow-shoe races Excellent alike in all. When at sea, with all his rowers, He along the bending oars Outside of his ship could run. He the Smalsor Horn ascended, And his shining shield suspended, On its summit, like a sun. On the ship-rails he could stand, Wield his sword with either hand, And at once two javelins throw; At all feasts where ale was strongest Sat the merry monarch longest, First to come and last to go. Norway never yet had seen One so beautiful of mien, One so royal in attire, When in arms completely furnished, Harness gold-inlaid and burnished, Mantle like a flame of fire. Thus came Olaf to his own, When upon the night-wind blown Passed that cry along the shore; And he answered, while the rifted Streamers o'er him shook and shifted, "I accept thy challenge, Thor!" III THORA OF RIMOL "Thora of Rimol! hide me! hide me! Danger and shame and death betide me! For Olaf the King is hunting me down Through field and forest, through thorp and town!" Thus cried Jarl Hakon To Thora, the fairest of women. Hakon Jarl! for the love I bear thee Neither shall shame nor death come near thee! But the hiding-place wherein thou must lie Is the cave underneath the swine in the sty." Thus to Jarl Hakon Said Thora, the fairest of women. So Hakon Jarl and his base thrall Karker Crouched in the cave, than a dungeon darker, As Olaf came riding, with men in mail, Through the forest roads into Orkadale, Demanding Jarl Hakon Of Thora, the fairest of women. "Rich and honored shall be whoever The head of Hakon Jarl shall dissever!" Hakon heard him, and Karker the slave, Through the breathing-holes of the darksome cave. Alone in her chamber Wept Thora, the fairest of women. Said Karker, the crafty, "I will not slay thee! For all the king's gold I will never betray thee!" "Then why dost thou turn so pale, O churl, And then again black as the earth?" said the Earl. More pale and more faithful Was Thora, the fairest of women. From a dream in the night the thrall started, saying, "Round my neck a gold ring King Olaf was laying!" And Hakon answered, "Beware of the king! He will lay round thy neck a blood-red ring." At the ring on her finger Gazed Thora, the fairest of women. At daybreak slept Hakon, with sorrows encumbered, But screamed and drew up his feet as he slumbered; The thrall in the darkness plunged with his knife, And the Earl awakened no more in this life. But wakeful and weeping Sat Thora, the fairest of women. At Nidarholm the priests are all singing, Two ghastly heads on the gibbet are swinging; One is Jarl Hakon's and one is his thrall's, And the people are shouting from windows and walls; While alone in her chamber Swoons Thora, the fairest of women. IV QUEEN SIGRID THE HAUGHTY Queen Sigrid the Haughty sat proud and aloft In her chamber, that looked over meadow and croft. Heart's dearest, Why dost thou sorrow so? The floor with tassels of fir was besprent, Filling the room with their fragrant scent. She heard the birds sing, she saw the sun shine, The air of summer was sweeter than wine. Like a sword without scabbard the bright river lay Between her own kingdom and Norroway. But Olaf the King had sued for her hand, The sword would be sheathed, the river be spanned. Her maidens were seated around her knee, Working bright figures in tapestry. And one was singing the ancient rune Of Brynhilda's love and the wrath of Gudrun. And through it, and round it, and over it all Sounded incessant the waterfall. The Queen in her hand held a ring of gold, From the door of Lade's Temple old. King Olaf had sent her this wedding gift, But her thoughts as arrows were keen and swift. She had given the ring to her goldsmiths twain, Who smiled, as they handed it back again. And Sigrid the Queen, in her haughty way, Said, "Why do you smile, my goldsmiths, say?" And they answered: "O Queen! if the truth must be told, The ring is of copper, and not of gold!" The lightning flashed o'er her forehead and cheek, She only murmured, she did not speak: "If in his gifts he can faithless be, There will be no gold in his love to me." A footstep was heard on the outer stair, And in strode King Olaf with royal air. He kissed the Queen's hand, and he whispered of love, And swore to be true as the stars are above. But she smiled with contempt as she answered: "O King, Will you swear it, as Odin once swore, on the ring?" And the King: "O speak not of Odin to me, The wife of King Olaf a Christian must be." Looking straight at the King, with her level brows, She said, "I keep true to my faith and my vows." Then the face of King Olaf was darkened with gloom, He rose in his anger and strode through the room. "Why, then, should I care to have thee?" he said,-- "A faded old woman, a heathenish jade!" His zeal was stronger than fear or love, And he struck the Queen in the face with his glove. Then forth from the chamber in anger he fled, And the wooden stairway shook with his tread. Queen Sigrid the Haughty said under her breath, "This insult, King Olaf, shall be thy death!" Heart's dearest, Why dost thou sorrow so? V THE SKERRY OF SHRIEKS Now from all King Olaf's farms His men-at-arms Gathered on the Eve of Easter; To his house at Angvalds-ness Fast they press, Drinking with the royal feaster. Loudly through the wide-flung door Came the roar Of the sea upon the Skerry; And its thunder loud and near Reached the ear, Mingling with their voices merry. "Hark!" said Olaf to his Scald, Halfred the Bald, "Listen to that song, and learn it! Half my kingdom would I give, As I live, If by such songs you would earn it! "For of all the runes and rhymes Of all times, Best I like the ocean's dirges, When the old harper heaves and rocks, His hoary locks Flowing and flashing in the surges!" Halfred answered: "I am called The Unappalled! Nothing hinders me or daunts me. Hearken to me, then, O King, While I sing The great Ocean Song that haunts me." "I will hear your song sublime Some other time," Says the drowsy monarch, yawning, And retires; each laughing guest Applauds the jest; Then they sleep till day is dawning. Facing up and down the yard, King Olaf's guard Saw the sea-mist slowly creeping O'er the sands, and up the hill, Gathering still Round the house where they were sleeping. It was not the fog he saw, Nor misty flaw, That above the landscape brooded; It was Eyvind Kallda's crew Of warlocks blue With their caps of darkness hooded! Round and round the house they go, Weaving slow Magic circles to encumber And imprison in their ring Olaf the King, As he helpless lies in slumber. Then athwart the vapors dun The Easter sun Streamed with one broad track of splendor! in their real forms appeared The warlocks weird, Awful as the Witch of Endor. Blinded by the light that glared, They groped and stared Round about with steps unsteady; From his window Olaf gazed, And, amazed, "Who are these strange people?" said he. "Eyvind Kallda and his men!" Answered then From the yard a sturdy farmer; While the men-at-arms apace Filled the place, Busily buckling on their armor. From the gates they sallied forth, South and north, Scoured the island coast around them, Seizing all the warlock band, Foot and hand On the Skerry's rocks they bound them. And at eve the king again Called his train, And, with all the candles burning, Silent sat and heard once more The sullen roar Of the ocean tides returning. Shrieks and cries of wild despair Filled the air, Growing fainter as they listened; Then the bursting surge alone Sounded on;-- Thus the sorcerers were christened! "Sing, O Scald, your song sublime, Your ocean-rhyme," Cried King Olaf: "it will cheer me!" Said the Scald, with pallid cheeks, "The Skerry of Shrieks Sings too loud for you to hear me!" VI THE WRAITH OF ODIN The guests were loud, the ale was strong, King Olaf feasted late and long; The hoary Scalds together sang; O'erhead the smoky rafters rang. Dead rides Sir Morten of Fogelsang. The door swung wide, with creak and din; A blast of cold night-air came in, And on the threshold shivering stood A one-eyed guest, with cloak and hood. Dead rides Sir Morten of Fogelsang. The King exclaimed, "O graybeard pale! Come warm thee with this cup of ale." The foaming draught the old man quaffed, The noisy guests looked on and laughed. Dead rides Sir Morten of Fogelsang. Then spake the King: "Be not afraid; Sit here by me." The guest obeyed, And, seated at the table, told Tales of the sea, and Sagas old. Dead rides Sir Morten of Fogelsang. And ever, when the tale was o'er, The King demanded yet one more; Till Sigurd the Bishop smiling said, "'T is late, O King, and time for bed." Dead rides Sir Morten of Fogelsang. The King retired; the stranger guest Followed and entered with the rest; The lights were out, the pages gone, But still the garrulous guest spake on. Dead rides Sir Morten of Fogelsang. As one who from a volume reads, He spake of heroes and their deeds, Of lands and cities he had seen, And stormy gulfs that tossed between. Dead rides Sir Morten of Fogelsang. Then from his lips in music rolled The Havamal of Odin old, With sounds mysterious as the roar Of billows on a distant shore. Dead rides Sir Morten of Fogelsang. "Do we not learn from runes and rhymes Made by the gods in elder times, And do not still the great Scalds teach That silence better is than speech?" Dead rides Sir Morten of Fogelsang. Smiling at this, the King replied, "Thy lore is by thy tongue belied; For never was I so enthralled Either by Saga-man or Scald," Dead rides Sir Morten of Fogelsang. The Bishop said, "Late hours we keep! Night wanes, O King! 't is time for sleep!" Then slept the King, and when he woke The guest was gone, the morning broke. Dead rides Sir Morten of Fogelsang. They found the doors securely barred, They found the watch-dog in the yard, There was no footprint in the grass, And none had seen the stranger pass. Dead rides Sir Morten of Fogelsang. King Olaf crossed himself and said: "I know that Odin the Great is dead; Sure is the triumph of our Faith, The one-eyed stranger was his wraith." Dead rides Sir Morten of Fogelsang. VII IRON-BEARD Olaf the King, one summer morn, Blew a blast on his bugle-horn, Sending his signal through the land of Drontheim. And to the Hus-Ting held at Mere Gathered the farmers far and near, With their war weapons ready to confront him. Ploughing under the morning star, Old Iron-Beard in Yriar Heard the summons, chuckling with a low laugh. He wiped the sweat-drops from his brow, Unharnessed his horses from the plough, And clattering came on horseback to King Olaf. He was the churliest of the churls; Little he cared for king or earls; Bitter as home-brewed ale were his foaming passions. Hodden-gray was the garb he wore, And by the Hammer of Thor he swore; He hated the narrow town, and all its fashions. But he loved the freedom of his farm, His ale at night, by the fireside warm, Gudrun his daughter, with her flaxen tresses. He loved his horses and his herds, The smell of the earth, and the song of birds, His well-filled barns, his brook with its water-cresses. Huge and cumbersome was his frame; His beard, from which he took his name, Frosty and fierce, like that of Hymer the Giant. So at the Hus-Ting he appeared, The farmer of Yriar, Iron-Beard, On horseback, in an attitude defiant. And to King Olaf he cried aloud, Out of the middle of the crowd, That tossed about him like a stormy ocean: "Such sacrifices shalt thou bring; To Odin and to Thor, O King, As other kings have done in their devotion!" King Olaf answered: "I command This land to be a Christian land; Here is my Bishop who the folk baptizes! "But if you ask me to restore Your sacrifices, stained with gore, Then will I offer human sacrifices! "Not slaves and peasants shall they be, But men of note and high degree, Such men as Orm of Lyra and Kar of Gryting!" Then to their Temple strode he in, And loud behind him heard the din Of his men-at-arms and the peasants fiercely fighting. There in the Temple, carved in wood, The image of great Odin stood, And other gods, with Thor supreme among them. King Olaf smote them with the blade Of his huge war-axe, gold inlaid, And downward shattered to the pavement flung them. At the same moment rose without, From the contending crowd, a shout, A mingled sound of triumph and of wailing. And there upon the trampled plain The farmer iron-Beard lay slain, Midway between the assailed and the assailing. King Olaf from the doorway spoke. "Choose ye between two things, my folk, To be baptized or given up to slaughter!" And seeing their leader stark and dead, The people with a murmur said, "O King, baptize us with thy holy water"; So all the Drontheim land became A Christian land in name and fame, In the old gods no more believing and trusting. And as a blood-atonement, soon King Olaf wed the fair Gudrun; And thus in peace ended the Drontheim Hus-Ting! VIII GUDRUN On King Olaf's bridal night Shines the moon with tender light, And across the chamber streams Its tide of dreams. At the fatal midnight hour, When all evil things have power, In the glimmer of the moon Stands Gudrun. Close against her heaving breast Something in her hand is pressed Like an icicle, its sheen Is cold and keen. On the cairn are fixed her eyes Where her murdered father lies, And a voice remote and drear She seems to hear. What a bridal night is this! Cold will be the dagger's kiss; Laden with the chill of death Is its breath. Like the drifting snow she sweeps To the couch where Olaf sleeps; Suddenly he wakes and stirs, His eyes meet hers. "What is that," King Olaf said, "Gleams so bright above thy head? Wherefore standest thou so white In pale moonlight?" "'T is the bodkin that I wear When at night I bind my hair; It woke me falling on the floor; 'T is nothing more." "Forests have ears, and fields have eyes; Often treachery lurking lies Underneath the fairest hair! Gudrun beware!" Ere the earliest peep of morn Blew King Olaf's bugle-horn; And forever sundered ride Bridegroom and bride! IX THANGBRAND THE PRIEST Short of stature, large of limb, Burly face and russet beard, All the women stared at him, When in Iceland he appeared. "Look!" they said, With nodding head, "There goes Thangbrand, Olaf's Priest." All the prayers he knew by rote, He could preach like Chrysostome, From the Fathers he could quote, He had even been at Rome, A learned clerk, A man of mark, Was this Thangbrand, Olaf's Priest, He was quarrelsome and loud, And impatient of control, Boisterous in the market crowd, Boisterous at the wassail-bowl, Everywhere Would drink and swear, Swaggering Thangbrand, Olaf's Priest In his house this malcontent Could the King no longer bear, So to Iceland he was sent To convert the heathen there, And away One summer day Sailed this Thangbrand, Olaf's Priest. There in Iceland, o'er their books Pored the people day and night, But he did not like their looks, Nor the songs they used to write. "All this rhyme Is waste of time!" Grumbled Thangbrand, Olaf's Priest. To the alehouse, where he sat Came the Scalds and Saga-men; Is it to be wondered at, That they quarrelled now and then, When o'er his beer Began to leer Drunken Thangbrand, Olaf's Priest? All the folk in Altafiord Boasted of their island grand; Saying in a single word, "Iceland is the finest land That the sun Doth shine upon!" Loud laughed Thangbrand, Olaf's Priest. And he answered: "What's the use Of this bragging up and down, When three women and one goose Make a market in your town!" Every Scald Satires scrawled On poor Thangbrand, Olaf's Priest. Something worse they did than that; And what vexed him most of all Was a figure in shovel hat, Drawn in charcoal on the wall; With words that go Sprawling below, "This is Thangbrand, Olaf's Priest." Hardly knowing what he did, Then he smote them might and main, Thorvald Veile and Veterlid Lay there in the alehouse slain. "To-day we are gold, To-morrow mould!" Muttered Thangbrand, Olaf's Priest. Much in fear of axe and rope, Back to Norway sailed he then. "O, King Olaf! little hope Is there of these Iceland men!" Meekly said, With bending head, Pious Thangbrand, Olaf's Priest. X RAUD THE STRONG "All the old gods are dead, All the wild warlocks fled; But the White Christ lives and reigns, And throughout my wide domains His Gospel shall be spread!" On the Evangelists Thus swore King Olaf. But still in dreams of the night Beheld he the crimson light, And heard the voice that defied Him who was crucified, And challenged him to the fight. To Sigurd the Bishop King Olaf confessed it. And Sigurd the Bishop said, "The old gods are not dead, For the great Thor still reigns, And among the Jarls and Thanes The old witchcraft still is spread." Thus to King Olaf Said Sigurd the Bishop. "Far north in the Salten Fiord, By rapine, fire, and sword, Lives the Viking, Raud the Strong; All the Godoe Isles belong To him and his heathen horde." Thus went on speaking Sigurd the Bishop. "A warlock, a wizard is he, And lord of the wind and the sea; And whichever way he sails, He has ever favoring gales, By his craft in sorcery." Here the sign of the cross Made devoutly King Olaf. "With rites that we both abhor, He worships Odin and Thor; So it cannot yet be said, That all the old gods are dead, And the warlocks are no more," Flushing with anger Said Sigurd the Bishop. Then King Olaf cried aloud: "I will talk with this mighty Raud, And along the Salten Fiord Preach the Gospel with my sword, Or be brought back in my shroud!" So northward from Drontheim Sailed King Olaf! XI BISHOP SIGURD AT SALTEN FIORD Loud the angry wind was wailing As King Olaf's ships came sailing Northward out of Drontheim haven To the mouth of Salten Fiord. Though the flying sea-spray drenches Fore and aft the rowers' benches, Not a single heart is craven Of the champions there on board. All without the Fiord was quiet But within it storm and riot, Such as on his Viking cruises Raud the Strong was wont to ride. And the sea through all its tide-ways Swept the reeling vessels sideways, As the leaves are swept through sluices, When the flood-gates open wide. "'T is the warlock! 't is the demon Raud!" cried Sigurd to the seamen; "But the Lord is not affrighted By the witchcraft of his foes." To the ship's bow he ascended, By his choristers attended, Round him were the tapers lighted, And the sacred incense rose. On the bow stood Bishop Sigurd, In his robes, as one transfigured, And the Crucifix he planted High amid the rain and mist. Then with holy water sprinkled All the ship; the mass-bells tinkled; Loud the monks around him chanted, Loud he read the Evangelist. As into the Fiord they darted, On each side the water parted; Down a path like silver molten Steadily rowed King Olaf's ships; Steadily burned all night the tapers, And the White Christ through the vapors Gleamed across the Fiord of Salten, As through John's Apocalypse,-- Till at last they reached Raud's dwelling On the little isle of Gelling; Not a guard was at the doorway, Not a glimmer of light was seen. But at anchor, carved and gilded, Lay the dragon-ship he builded; 'T was the grandest ship in Norway, With its crest and scales of green. Up the stairway, softly creeping, To the loft where Raud was sleeping, With their fists they burst asunder Bolt and bar that held the door. Drunken with sleep and ale they found him, Dragged him from his bed and bound him, While he stared with stupid wonder, At the look and garb they wore. Then King Olaf said: "O Sea-King! Little time have we for speaking, Choose between the good and evil; Be baptized, or thou shalt die! But in scorn the heathen scoffer Answered: "I disdain thine offer; Neither fear I God nor Devil; Thee and thy Gospel I defy!" Then between his jaws distended, When his frantic struggles ended, Through King Olaf's horn an adder, Touched by fire, they forced to glide. Sharp his tooth was as an arrow, As he gnawed through bone and marrow; But without a groan or shudder, Raud the Strong blaspheming died. Then baptized they all that region, Swarthy Lap and fair Norwegian, Far as swims the salmon, leaping, Up the streams of Salten Fiord. In their temples Thor and Odin Lay in dust and ashes trodden, As King Olaf, onward sweeping, Preached the Gospel with his sword. Then he took the carved and gilded Dragon-ship that Raud had builded, And the tiller single-handed, Grasping, steered into the main. Southward sailed the sea-gulls o'er him, Southward sailed the ship that bore him, Till at Drontheim haven landed Olaf and his crew again. XII KING OLAF'S CHRISTMAS At Drontheim, Olaf the King Heard the bells of Yule-tide ring, As he sat in his banquet-hall, Drinking the nut-brown ale, With his bearded Berserks hale And tall. Three days his Yule-tide feasts He held with Bishops and Priests, And his horn filled up to the brim; But the ale was never too strong, Nor the Saga-man's tale too long, For him. O'er his drinking-horn, the sign He made of the cross divine, As he drank, and muttered his prayers; But the Berserks evermore Made the sign of the Hammer of Thor Over theirs. The gleams of the fire-light dance Upon helmet and hauberk and lance, And laugh in the eyes of the King; And he cries to Halfred the Scald, Gray-bearded, wrinkled, and bald, "Sing!" "Sing me a song divine, With a sword in every line, And this shall be thy reward." And he loosened the belt at his waist, And in front of the singer placed His sword. "Quern-biter of Hakon the Good, Wherewith at a stroke he hewed The millstone through and through, And Foot-breadth of Thoralf the Strong, Were neither so broad nor so long, Nor so true." Then the Scald took his harp and sang, And loud though the music rang The sound of that shining word; And the harp-strings a clangor made, As if they were struck with the blade Of a sword. And the Berserks round about Broke forth into a shout That made the rafters ring: They smote with their fists on the board, And shouted, "Long live the Sword, And the King!" But the King said, "O my son, I miss the bright word in one Of thy measures and thy rhymes." And Halfred the Scald replied, "In another 't was multiplied Three times." Then King Olaf raised the hilt Of iron, cross-shaped and gilt, And said, "Do not refuse; Count well the gain and the loss, Thor's hammer or Christ's cross: Choose!" And Halfred the Scald said, "This In the name of the Lord I kiss, Who on it was crucified!" And a shout went round the board, "In the name of Christ the Lord, Who died!" Then over the waste of snows The noonday sun uprose, Through the driving mists revealed, Like the lifting of the Host, By incense-clouds almost Concealed. On the shining wall a vast And shadowy cross was cast From the hilt of the lifted sword, And in foaming cups of ale The Berserks drank "Was-hael! To the Lord!" XIII THE BUILDING OF THE LONG SERPENT Thorberg Skafting, master-builder, In his ship-yard by the sea, Whistling, said, "It would bewilder Any man but Thorberg Skafting, Any man but me!" Near him lay the Dragon stranded, Built of old by Raud the Strong, And King Olaf had commanded He should build another Dragon, Twice as large and long. Therefore whistled Thorberg Skafting, As he sat with half-closed eyes, And his head turned sideways, drafting That new vessel for King Olaf Twice the Dragon's size. Round him busily hewed and hammered Mallet huge and heavy axe; Workmen laughed and sang and clamored; Whirred the wheels, that into rigging Spun the shining flax! All this tumult heard the master,-- It was music to his ear; Fancy whispered all the faster, "Men shall hear of Thorberg Skafting For a hundred year!" Workmen sweating at the forges Fashioned iron bolt and bar, Like a warlock's midnight orgies Smoked and bubbled the black caldron With the boiling tar. Did the warlocks mingle in it, Thorberg Skafting, any curse? Could you not be gone a minute But some mischief must be doing, Turning bad to worse? 'T was an ill wind that came wafting, From his homestead words of woe To his farm went Thorberg Skafting, Oft repeating to his workmen, Build ye thus and so. After long delays returning Came the master back by night To his ship-yard longing, yearning, Hurried he, and did not leave it Till the morning's light. "Come and see my ship, my darling" On the morrow said the King; "Finished now from keel to carling; Never yet was seen in Norway Such a wondrous thing!" In the ship-yard, idly talking, At the ship the workmen stared: Some one, all their labor balking, Down her sides had cut deep gashes, Not a plank was spared! "Death be to the evil-doer!" With an oath King Olaf spoke; "But rewards to his pursuer And with wrath his face grew redder Than his scarlet cloak. Straight the master-builder, smiling, Answered thus the angry King: "Cease blaspheming and reviling, Olaf, it was Thorberg Skafting Who has done this thing!" Then he chipped and smoothed the planking, Till the King, delighted, swore, With much lauding and much thanking, "Handsomer is now my Dragon Than she was before!" Seventy ells and four extended On the grass the vessel's keel; High above it, gilt and splendid, Rose the figure-head ferocious With its crest of steel. Then they launched her from the tressels, In the ship-yard by the sea; She was the grandest of all vessels, Never ship was built in Norway Half so fine as she! The Long Serpent was she christened, 'Mid the roar of cheer on cheer! They who to the Saga listened Heard the name of Thorberg Skafting For a hundred year! XIV THE CREW OF THE LONG SERPENT Safe at anchor in Drontheim bay King Olaf's fleet assembled lay, And, striped with white and blue, Downward fluttered sail and banner, As alights the screaming lanner; Lustily cheered, in their wild manner, The Long Serpent's crew Her forecastle man was Ulf the Red, Like a wolf's was his shaggy head, His teeth as large and white; His beard, of gray and russet blended, Round as a swallow's nest descended; As standard-bearer he defended Olaf's flag in the fight. Near him Kolbiorn had his place, Like the King in garb and face, So gallant and so hale; Every cabin-boy and varlet Wondered at his cloak of scarlet; Like a river, frozen and star-lit, Gleamed his coat of mail. By the bulkhead, tall and dark, Stood Thrand Rame of Thelemark, A figure gaunt and grand; On his hairy arm imprinted Was an anchor, azure-tinted; Like Thor's hammer, huge and dinted Was his brawny hand. Einar Tamberskelver, bare To the winds his golden hair, By the mainmast stood; Graceful was his form, and slender, And his eyes were deep and tender As a woman's, in the splendor Of her maidenhood. In the fore-hold Biorn and Bork Watched the sailors at their work: Heavens! how they swore! Thirty men they each commanded, Iron-sinewed, horny-handed, Shoulders broad, and chests expanded. Tugging at the oar. These, and many more like these, With King Olaf sailed the seas, Till the waters vast Filled them with a vague devotion, With the freedom and the motion, With the roll and roar of ocean And the sounding blast. When they landed from the fleet, How they roared through Drontheim's street, Boisterous as the gale! How they laughed and stamped and pounded, Till the tavern roof resounded, And the host looked on astounded As they drank the ale! Never saw the wild North Sea Such a gallant company Sail its billows blue! Never, while they cruised and quarrelled, Old King Gorm, or Blue-Tooth Harald, Owned a ship so well apparelled, Boasted such a crew! XV A LITTLE BIRD IN THE AIR A little bird in the air Is singing of Thyri the fair, The sister of Svend the Dane; And the song of the garrulous bird In the streets of the town is heard, And repeated again and again. Hoist up your sails of silk, And flee away from each other. To King Burislaf, it is said, Was the beautiful Thyri wed, And a sorrowful bride went she; And after a week and a day, She has fled away and away, From his town by the stormy sea. Hoist up your sails of silk, And flee away from each other. They say, that through heat and through cold, Through weald, they say, and through wold, By day and by night, they say, She has fled; and the gossips report She has come to King Olaf's court, And the town is all in dismay. Hoist up your sails of silk, And flee away from each other. It is whispered King Olaf has seen, Has talked with the beautiful Queen; And they wonder how it will end; For surely, if here she remain, It is war with King Svend the Dane, And King Burislaf the Vend! Hoist up your sails of silk, And flee away from each other. O, greatest wonder of all! It is published in hamlet and hall, It roars like a flame that is fanned! The King--yes, Olaf the King-- Has wedded her with his ring, And Thyri is Queen in the land! Hoist up your sails of silk, And flee away from each other. XVI QUEEN THYRI AND THE ANGELICA STALKS Northward over Drontheim, Flew the clamorous sea-gulls, Sang the lark and linnet From the meadows green; Weeping in her chamber, Lonely and unhappy, Sat the Drottning Thyri, Sat King Olaf's Queen. In at all the windows Streamed the pleasant sunshine, On the roof above her Softly cooed the dove; But the sound she heard not, Nor the sunshine heeded, For the thoughts of Thyri Were not thoughts of love, Then King Olaf entered, Beautiful as morning, Like the sun at Easter Shone his happy face; In his hand he carried Angelicas uprooted, With delicious fragrance Filling all the place. Like a rainy midnight Sat the Drottning Thyri, Even the smile of Olaf Could not cheer her gloom; Nor the stalks he gave her With a gracious gesture, And with words as pleasant As their own perfume. In her hands he placed them, And her jewelled fingers Through the green leaves glistened Like the dews of morn; But she cast them from her, Haughty and indignant, On the floor she threw them With a look of scorn. "Richer presents," said she, "Gave King Harald Gormson To the Queen, my mother, Than such worthless weeds; "When he ravaged Norway, Laying waste the kingdom, Seizing scatt and treasure For her royal needs. "But thou darest not venture Through the Sound to Vendland, My domains to rescue From King Burislaf; "Lest King Svend of Denmark, Forked Beard, my brother, Scatter all thy vessels As the wind the chaff." Then up sprang King Olaf, Like a reindeer bounding, With an oath he answered Thus the luckless Queen: "Never yet did Olaf Fear King Svend of Denmark; This right hand shall hale him By his forked chin!" Then he left the chamber, Thundering through the doorway, Loud his steps resounded Down the outer stair. Smarting with the insult, Through the streets of Drontheim Strode he red and wrathful, With his stately air. All his ships he gathered, Summoned all his forces, Making his war levy In the region round; Down the coast of Norway, Like a flock of sea-gulls, Sailed the fleet of Olaf Through the Danish Sound. With his own hand fearless, Steered he the Long Serpent, Strained the creaking cordage, Bent each boom and gaff; Till in Venland landing, The domains of Thyri He redeemed and rescued From King Burislaf. Then said Olaf, laughing, "Not ten yoke of oxen Have the power to draw us Like a woman's hair! "Now will I confess it, Better things are jewels Than angelica stalks are For a Queen to wear." XVII KING SVEND OF THE FORKED BEAR Loudly the sailors cheered Svend of the Forked Beard, As with his fleet he steered Southward to Vendland; Where with their courses hauled All were together called, Under the Isle of Svald Near to the mainland. After Queen Gunhild's death, So the old Saga saith, Plighted King Svend his faith To Sigrid the Haughty; And to avenge his bride, Soothing her wounded pride, Over the waters wide King Olaf sought he. Still on her scornful face, Blushing with deep disgrace, Bore she the crimson trace Of Olaf's gauntlet; Like a malignant star, Blazing in heaven afar, Red shone the angry scar Under her frontlet. Oft to King Svend she spake, "For thine own honor's sake Shalt thou swift vengeance take On the vile coward!" Until the King at last, Gusty and overcast, Like a tempestuous blast Threatened and lowered. Soon as the Spring appeared, Svend of the Forked Beard High his red standard reared, Eager for battle; While every warlike Dane, Seizing his arms again, Left all unsown the grain, Unhoused the cattle. Likewise the Swedish King Summoned in haste a Thing, Weapons and men to bring In aid of Denmark; Erie the Norseman, too, As the war-tidings flew, Sailed with a chosen crew From Lapland and Finmark. So upon Easter day Sailed the three kings away, Out of the sheltered bay, In the bright season; With them Earl Sigvald came, Eager for spoil and fame; Pity that such a name Stooped to such treason! Safe under Svald at last, Now were their anchors cast, Safe from the sea and blast, Plotted the three kings; While, with a base intent, Southward Earl Sigvald went, On a foul errand bent, Unto the Sea-kings. Thence to hold on his course, Unto King Olaf's force, Lying within the hoarse Mouths of Stet-haven; Him to ensnare and bring, Unto the Danish king, Who his dead corse would fling Forth to the raven! XVIII KING OLAF AND EARL SIGVALD On the gray sea-sands King Olaf stands, Northward and seaward He points with his hands. With eddy and whirl The sea-tides curl, Washing the sandals Of Sigvald the Earl. The mariners shout, The ships swing about, The yards are all hoisted, The sails flutter out. The war-horns are played, The anchors are weighed, Like moths in the distance The sails flit and fade. The sea is like lead The harbor lies dead, As a corse on the sea-shore, Whose spirit has fled! On that fatal day, The histories say, Seventy vessels Sailed out of the bay. But soon scattered wide O'er the billows they ride, While Sigvald and Olaf Sail side by side. Cried the Earl: "Follow me! I your pilot will be, For I know all the channels Where flows the deep sea!" So into the strait Where his foes lie in wait, Gallant King Olaf Sails to his fate! Then the sea-fog veils The ships and their sails; Queen Sigrid the Haughty, Thy vengeance prevails! XIX KING OLAF'S WAR-HORNS "Strike the sails!" King Olaf said; "Never shall men of mine take flight; Never away from battle I fled, Never away from my foes! Let God dispose Of my life in the fight!" "Sound the horns!" said Olaf the King; And suddenly through the drifting brume The blare of the horns began to ring, Like the terrible trumpet shock Of Regnarock, On the Day of Doom! Louder and louder the war-horns sang Over the level floor of the flood; All the sails came down with a clang, And there in the mist overhead The sun hung red As a drop of blood. Drifting down on the Danish fleet Three together the ships were lashed, So that neither should turn and retreat; In the midst, but in front of the rest The burnished crest Of the Serpent flashed. King Olaf stood on the quarter-deck, With bow of ash and arrows of oak, His gilded shield was without a fleck, His helmet inlaid with gold, And in many a fold Hung his crimson cloak. On the forecastle Ulf the Red Watched the lashing of the ships; "If the Serpent lie so far ahead, We shall have hard work of it here, Said he with a sneer On his bearded lips. King Olaf laid an arrow on string, "Have I a coward on board?" said he. "Shoot it another way, O King!" Sullenly answered Ulf, The old sea-wolf; "You have need of me!" In front came Svend, the King of the Danes, Sweeping down with his fifty rowers; To the right, the Swedish king with his thanes; And on board of the Iron Beard Earl Eric steered To the left with his oars. "These soft Danes and Swedes," said the King, "At home with their wives had better stay, Than come within reach of my Serpent's sting: But where Eric the Norseman leads Heroic deeds Will be done to-day!" Then as together the vessels crashed, Eric severed the cables of hide, With which King Olaf's ships were lashed, And left them to drive and drift With the currents swift Of the outward tide. Louder the war-horns growl and snarl, Sharper the dragons bite and sting! Eric the son of Hakon Jarl A death-drink salt as the sea Pledges to thee, Olaf the King! XX EINAR TAMBERSKELVER It was Einar Tamberskelver Stood beside the mast; From his yew-bow, tipped with silver, Flew the arrows fast; Aimed at Eric unavailing, As he sat concealed, Half behind the quarter-railing, Half behind his shield. First an arrow struck the tiller, Just above his head; "Sing, O Eyvind Skaldaspiller," Then Earl Eric said. "Sing the song of Hakon dying, Sing his funeral wail!" And another arrow flying Grazed his coat of mail. Turning to a Lapland yeoman, As the arrow passed, Said Earl Eric, "Shoot that bowman Standing by the mast." Sooner than the word was spoken Flew the yeoman's shaft; Einar's bow in twain was broken, Einar only laughed. "What was that?" said Olaf, standing On the quarter-deck. "Something heard I like the stranding Of a shattered wreck." Einar then, the arrow taking From the loosened string, Answered, "That was Norway breaking From thy hand, O King!" "Thou art but a poor diviner," Straightway Olaf said; "Take my bow, and swifter, Einar, Let thy shafts be sped." Of his bows the fairest choosing, Reached he from above; Einar saw the blood-drops oozing Through his iron glove. But the bow was thin and narrow; At the first assay, O'er its head he drew the arrow, Flung the bow away; Said, with hot and angry temper Flushing in his cheek, "Olaf! for so great a Kamper Are thy bows too weak!" Then, with smile of joy defiant On his beardless lip, Scaled he, light and self-reliant, Eric's dragon-ship. Loose his golden locks were flowing, Bright his armor gleamed; Like Saint Michael overthrowing Lucifer he seemed. XXI KING OLAF'S DEATH-DRINK All day has the battle raged, All day have the ships engaged, But not yet is assuaged The vengeance of Eric the Earl. The decks with blood are red, The arrows of death are sped, The ships are filled with the dead, And the spears the champions hurl. They drift as wrecks on the tide, The grappling-irons are plied, The boarders climb up the side, The shouts are feeble and few. Ah! never shall Norway again See her sailors come back o'er the main; They all lie wounded or slain, Or asleep in the billows blue! On the deck stands Olaf the King, Around him whistle and sing The spears that the foemen fling, And the stones they hurl with their hands. In the midst of the stones and the spears, Kolbiorn, the marshal, appears, His shield in the air he uprears, By the side of King Olaf he stands. Over the slippery wreck Of the Long Serpent's deck Sweeps Eric with hardly a check, His lips with anger are pale; He hews with his axe at the mast, Till it falls, with the sails overcast, Like a snow-covered pine in the vast Dim forests of Orkadale. Seeking King Olaf then, He rushes aft with his men, As a hunter into the den Of the bear, when he stands at bay. "Remember Jarl Hakon!" he cries; When lo! on his wondering eyes, Two kingly figures arise, Two Olaf's in warlike array! Then Kolbiorn speaks in the ear Of King Olaf a word of cheer, In a whisper that none may hear, With a smile on his tremulous lip; Two shields raised high in the air, Two flashes of golden hair, Two scarlet meteors' glare, And both have leaped from the ship. Earl Eric's men in the boats Seize Kolbiorn's shield as it floats, And cry, from their hairy throats, "See! it is Olaf the King!" While far on the opposite side Floats another shield on the tide, Like a jewel set in the wide Sea-current's eddying ring. There is told a wonderful tale, How the King stripped off his mail, Like leaves of the brown sea-kale, As he swam beneath the main; But the young grew old and gray, And never, by night or by day, In his kingdom of Norroway Was King Olaf seen again! XXII THE NUN OF NIDAROS In the convent of Drontheim, Alone in her chamber Knelt Astrid the Abbess, At midnight, adoring, Beseeching, entreating The Virgin and Mother. She heard in the silence The voice of one speaking, Without in the darkness, In gusts of the night-wind Now louder, now nearer, Now lost in the distance. The voice of a stranger It seemed as she listened, Of some one who answered, Beseeching, imploring, A cry from afar off She could not distinguish. The voice of Saint John, The beloved disciple, Who wandered and waited The Master's appearance. Alone in the darkness, Unsheltered and friendless. "It is accepted The angry defiance The challenge of battle! It is accepted, But not with the weapons Of war that thou wieldest! "Cross against corselet, Love against hatred, Peace-cry for war-cry! Patience is powerful; He that o'ercometh Hath power o'er the nations! "As torrents in summer, Half dried in their channels, Suddenly rise, though the Sky is still cloudless, For rain has been falling Far off at their fountains; So hearts that are fainting Grow full to o'erflowing, And they that behold it Marvel, and know not That God at their fountains Far off has been raining! "Stronger than steel Is the sword of the Spirit; Swifter than arrows The light of the truth is, Greater than anger Is love, and subdueth! "Thou art a phantom, A shape of the sea-mist, A shape of the brumal Rain, and the darkness Fearful and formless; Day dawns and thou art not! "The dawn is not distant, Nor is the night starless; Love is eternal! God is still God, and His faith shall not fail us Christ is eternal!" INTERLUDE A strain of music closed the tale, A low, monotonous, funeral wail, That with its cadence, wild and sweet, Made the long Saga more complete. "Thank God," the Theologian said, "The reign of violence is dead, Or dying surely from the world; While Love triumphant reigns instead, And in a brighter sky o'erhead His blessed banners are unfurled. And most of all thank God for this: The war and waste of clashing creeds Now end in words, and not in deeds, And no one suffers loss, or bleeds, For thoughts that men call heresies. "I stand without here in the porch, I hear the bell's melodious din, I hear the organ peal within, I hear the prayer, with words that scorch Like sparks from an inverted torch, I hear the sermon upon sin, With threatenings of the last account. And all, translated in the air, Reach me but as our dear Lord's Prayer, And as the Sermon on the Mount. "Must it be Calvin, and not Christ? Must it be Athanasian creeds, Or holy water, books, and beads? Must struggling souls remain content With councils and decrees of Trend? And can it be enough for these The Christian Church the year embalms With evergreens and boughs of palms, And fills the air with litanies? "I know that yonder Pharisee Thanks God that he is not like me; In my humiliation dressed, I only stand and beat my breast, And pray for human charity. "Not to one church alone, but seven, The voice prophetic spake from heaven; And unto each the promise came, Diversified, but still the same; For him that overcometh are The new name written on the stone, The raiment white, the crown, the throne, And I will give him the Morning Star! "Ah! to how many Faith has been No evidence of things unseen, But a dim shadow, that recasts The creed of the Phantasiasts, For whom no Man of Sorrows died, For whom the Tragedy Divine Was but a symbol and a sign, And Christ a phantom crucified! "For others a diviner creed Is living in the life they lead. The passing of their beautiful feet Blesses the pavement of the street And all their looks and words repeat Old Fuller's saying, wise and sweet, Not as a vulture, but a dove, The Holy Ghost came from above. "And this brings back to me a tale So sad the hearer well may quail, And question if such things can be; Yet in the chronicles of Spain Down the dark pages runs this stain, And naught can wash them white again, So fearful is the tragedy." THE THEOLOGIAN'S TALE TORQUEMADA In the heroic days when Ferdinand And Isabella ruled the Spanish land, And Torquemada, with his subtle brain, Ruled them, as Grand Inquisitor of Spain, In a great castle near Valladolid, Moated and high and by fair woodlands hid, There dwelt as from the chronicles we learn, An old Hidalgo proud and taciturn, Whose name has perished, with his towers of stone, And all his actions save this one alone; This one, so terrible, perhaps 't were best If it, too, were forgotten with the rest; Unless, perchance, our eyes can see therein The martyrdom triumphant o'er the sin; A double picture, with its gloom and glow, The splendor overhead, the death below. This sombre man counted each day as lost On which his feet no sacred threshold crossed; And when he chanced the passing Host to meet, He knelt and prayed devoutly in the street; Oft he confessed; and with each mutinous thought, As with wild beasts at Ephesus, he fought. In deep contrition scourged himself in Lent, Walked in processions, with his head down bent, At plays of Corpus Christi oft was seen, And on Palm Sunday bore his bough of green. His sole diversion was to hunt the boar Through tangled thickets of the forest hoar, Or with his jingling mules to hurry down To some grand bull-fight in the neighboring town, Or in the crowd with lighted taper stand, When Jews were burned, or banished from the land. Then stirred within him a tumultuous joy; The demon whose delight is to destroy Shook him, and shouted with a trumpet tone, Kill! kill! and let the Lord find out his own!" And now, in that old castle in the wood, His daughters, in the dawn of womanhood, Returning from their convent school, had made Resplendent with their bloom the forest shade, Reminding him of their dead mother's face, When first she came into that gloomy place,-- A memory in his heart as dim and sweet As moonlight in a solitary street, Where the same rays, that lift the sea, are thrown Lovely but powerless upon walls of stone. These two fair daughters of a mother dead Were all the dream had left him as it fled. A joy at first, and then a growing care, As if a voice within him cried, "Beware A vague presentiment of impending doom, Like ghostly footsteps in a vacant room, Haunted him day and night; a formless fear That death to some one of his house was near, With dark surmises of a hidden crime, Made life itself a death before its time. Jealous, suspicious, with no sense of shame, A spy upon his daughters he became; With velvet slippers, noiseless on the floors, He glided softly through half-open doors; Now in the room, and now upon the stair, He stood beside them ere they were aware; He listened in the passage when they talked, He watched them from the casement when they walked, He saw the gypsy haunt the river's side, He saw the monk among the cork-trees glide; And, tortured by the mystery and the doubt Of some dark secret, past his finding out, Baffled he paused; then reassured again Pursued the flying phantom of his brain. He watched them even when they knelt in church; And then, descending lower in his search, Questioned the servants, and with eager eyes Listened incredulous to their replies; The gypsy? none had seen her in the wood! The monk? a mendicant in search of food! At length the awful revelation came, Crushing at once his pride of birth and name; The hopes his yearning bosom forward cast, And the ancestral glories of the vast, All fell together, crumbling in disgrace, A turret rent from battlement to base. His daughters talking in the dead of night In their own chamber, and without a light, Listening, as he was wont, he overheard, And learned the dreadful secret, word by word; And hurrying from his castle, with a cry He raised his hands to the unpitying sky, Repeating one dread word, till bush and tree Caught it, and shuddering answered, "Heresy!" Wrapped in his cloak, his hat drawn o'er his face, Now hurrying forward, now with lingering pace, He walked all night the alleys of his park, With one unseen companion in the dark, The Demon who within him lay in wait, And by his presence turned his love to hate, Forever muttering in an undertone, "Kill! kill! and let the Lord find out his own!" Upon the morrow, after early Mass, While yet the dew was glistening on the grass, And all the woods were musical with birds, The old Hidalgo, uttering fearful words, Walked homeward with the Priest, and in his room Summoned his trembling daughters to their doom. When questioned, with brief answers they replied, Nor when accused evaded or denied; Expostulations, passionate appeals, All that the human heart most fears or feels, In vain the Priest with earnest voice essayed; In vain the father threatened, wept, and prayed; Until at last he said, with haughty mien, "The Holy Office, then, must intervene!" And now the Grand Inquisitor of Spain, With all the fifty horsemen of his train, His awful name resounding, like the blast Of funeral trumpets, as he onward passed, Came to Valladolid, and there began To harry the rich Jews with fire and ban. To him the Hidalgo went, and at the gate Demanded audience on affairs of state, And in a secret chamber stood before A venerable graybeard of fourscore, Dressed in the hood and habit of a friar; Out of his eyes flashed a consuming fire, And in his hand the mystic horn he held, Which poison and all noxious charms dispelled. He heard in silence the Hidalgo's tale, Then answered in a voice that made him quail: "Son of the Church! when Abraham of old To sacrifice his only son was told, He did not pause to parley nor protest But hastened to obey the Lord's behest. In him it was accounted righteousness; The Holy Church expects of thee no less!" A sacred frenzy seized the father's brain, And Mercy from that hour implored in vain. Ah! who will e'er believe the words I say? His daughters he accused, and the same day They both were cast into the dungeon's gloom, That dismal antechamber of the tomb, Arraigned, condemned, and sentenced to the flame, The secret torture and the public shame. Then to the Grand Inquisitor once more The Hidalgo went, more eager than before, And said: "When Abraham offered up his son, He clave the wood wherewith it might be done. By his example taught, let me too bring Wood from the forest for my offering!" And the deep voice, without a pause, replied: "Son of the Church! by faith now justified, Complete thy sacrifice, even as thou wilt; The Church absolves thy conscience from all guilt!" Then this most wretched father went his way Into the woods, that round his castle lay, Where once his daughters in their childhood played With their young mother in the sun and shade. Now all the leaves had fallen; the branches bare Made a perpetual moaning in the air, And screaming from their eyries overhead The ravens sailed athwart the sky of lead. With his own hands he lopped the boughs and bound Fagots, that crackled with foreboding sound, And on his mules, caparisoned and gay With bells and tassels, sent them on their way. Then with his mind on one dark purpose bent, Again to the Inquisitor he went, And said: "Behold, the fagots I have brought, And now, lest my atonement be as naught, Grant me one more request, one last desire,-- With my own hand to light the funeral fire!" And Torquemada answered from his seat, "Son of the Church! Thine offering is complete; Her servants through all ages shall not cease To magnify thy deed. Depart in peace!" Upon the market-place, builded of stone The scaffold rose, whereon Death claimed his own. At the four corners, in stern attitude, Four statues of the Hebrew Prophets stood, Gazing with calm indifference in their eyes Upon this place of human sacrifice, Round which was gathering fast the eager crowd, With clamor of voices dissonant and loud, And every roof and window was alive With restless gazers, swarming like a hive. The church-bells tolled, the chant of monks drew near, Loud trumpets stammered forth their notes of fear, A line of torches smoked along the street, There was a stir, a rush, a tramp of feet, And, with its banners floating in the air, Slowly the long procession crossed the square, And, to the statues of the Prophets bound, The victims stood, with fagots piled around. Then all the air a blast of trumpets shook, And louder sang the monks with bell and book, And the Hidalgo, lofty, stern, and proud, Lifted his torch, and, bursting through the crowd, Lighted in haste the fagots, and then fled, Lest those imploring eyes should strike him dead! O pitiless skies! why did your clouds retain For peasants' fields their floods of hoarded rain? O pitiless earth! why open no abyss To bury in its chasm a crime like this? That night a mingled column of fire and smoke Prom the dark thickets of the forest broke, And, glaring o'er the landscape leagues away, Made all the fields and hamlets bright as day. Wrapped in a sheet of flame the castle blazed, And as the villagers in terror gazed, They saw the figure of that cruel knight Lean from a window in the turret's height, His ghastly face illumined with the glare, His hands upraised above his head in prayer, Till the floor sank beneath him, and he fell Down the black hollow of that burning well. Three centuries and more above his bones Have piled the oblivious years like funeral stones; His name has perished with him, and no trace Remains on earth of his afflicted race; But Torquemada's name, with clouds o'ercast, Looms in the distant landscape of the Past, Like a burnt tower upon a blackened heath, Lit by the fires of burning woods beneath! INTERLUDE Thus closed the tale of guilt and gloom, That cast upon each listener's face Its shadow, and for some brief space Unbroken silence filled the room. The Jew was thoughtful and distressed; Upon his memory thronged and pressed The persecution of his race, Their wrongs and sufferings and disgrace; His head was sunk upon his breast, And from his eyes alternate came Flashes of wrath and tears of shame. The student first the silence broke, As one who long has lain in wait With purpose to retaliate, And thus he dealt the avenging stroke. "In such a company as this, A tale so tragic seems amiss, That by its terrible control O'ermasters and drags down the soul Into a fathomless abyss. The Italian Tales that you disdain, Some merry Night of Straparole, Or Machiavelli's Belphagor, Would cheer us and delight us more, Give greater pleasure and less pain Than your grim tragedies of Spain!" And here the Poet raised his hand, With such entreaty and command, It stopped discussion at its birth, And said: "The story I shall tell Has meaning in it, if not mirth; Listen, and hear what once befell The merry birds of Killingworth!" THE POET'S TALE THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH It was the season, when through all the land The merle and mavis build, and building sing Those lovely lyrics, written by His hand, Whom Saxon Caedmon calls the Blitheheart King; When on the boughs the purple buds expand, The banners of the vanguard of the Spring, And rivulets, rejoicing, rush and leap, And wave their fluttering signals from the steep. The robin and the bluebird, piping loud, Filled all the blossoming orchards with their glee; The sparrows chirped as if they still were proud Their race in Holy Writ should mentioned be; And hungry crows assembled in a crowd, Clamored their piteous prayer incessantly, Knowing who hears the ravens cry, and said: "Give us, O Lord, this day our daily bread!" Across the Sound the birds of passage sailed, Speaking some unknown language strange and sweet Of tropic isle remote, and passing hailed The village with the cheers of all their fleet; Or quarrelling together, laughed and railed Like foreign sailors, landed in the street Of seaport town, and with outlandish noise Of oaths and gibberish frightening girls and boys. Thus came the jocund Spring in Killingworth, In fabulous day; some hundred years ago; And thrifty farmers, as they tilled the earth, Heard with alarm the cawing of the crow, That mingled with the universal mirth, Cassandra-like, prognosticating woe; They shook their heads, and doomed with dreadful words To swift destruction the whole race of birds. And a town-meeting was convened straightway To set a price upon the guilty heads Of these marauders, who, in lieu of pay, Levied black-mail upon the garden beds And cornfields, and beheld without dismay The awful scarecrow, with his fluttering shreds; The skeleton that waited at their feast, Whereby their sinful pleasure was increased. Then from his house, a temple painted white, With fluted columns, and a roof of red, The Squire came forth, august and splendid sight! Slowly descending, with majestic tread, Three flights of steps, nor looking left nor right, Down the long street he walked, as one who said, "A town that boasts inhabitants like me Can have no lack of good society!" The Parson, too, appeared, a man austere, The instinct of whose nature was to kill; The wrath of God he preached from year to year, And read, with fervor, Edwards on the Will; His favorite pastime was to slay the deer In Summer on some Adirondac hill; E'en now, while walking down the rural lane, He lopped the wayside lilies with his cane. From the Academy, whose belfry crowned The hill of Science with its vane of brass, Came the Preceptor, gazing idly round, Now at the clouds, and now at the green grass, And all absorbed in reveries profound Of fair Almira in the upper class, Who was, as in a sonnet he had said, As pure as water, and as good as bread. And next the Deacon issued from his door, In his voluminous neck-cloth, white as snow; A suit of sable bombazine he wore; His form was ponderous, and his step was slow; There never was so wise a man before; He seemed the incarnate "Well, I told you so!" And to perpetuate his great renown There was a street named after him in town. These came together in the new town-hall, With sundry farmers from the region round. The Squirt presided, dignified and tall, His air impressive and his reasoning sound; Ill fared it with the birds, both great and small; Hardly a friend in all that crowd they found, But enemies enough, who every one Charged them with all the crimes beneath the sun. When they had ended, from his place apart, Rose the Preceptor, to redress the wrong, And, trembling like a steed before the start, Looked round bewildered on the expectant throng; Then thought of fair Almira, and took heart To speak out what was in him, clear and strong, Alike regardless of their smile or frown, And quite determined not to be laughed down. "Plato, anticipating the Reviewers, From his Republic banished without pity The Poets; in this little town of yours, You put to death, by means of a Committee, The ballad-singers and the Troubadours, The street-musicians of the heavenly city, The birds, who make sweet music for us all In our dark hours, as David did for Saul. "The thrush that carols at the dawn of day From the green steeples of the piny wood; The oriole in the elm; the noisy jay, Jargoning like a foreigner at his food; The bluebird balanced on some topmost spray, Flooding with melody the neighborhood; Linnet and meadow-lark, and all the throng That dwell in nests, and have the gift of song. "You slay them all! and wherefore! for the gain Of a scant handful more or less of wheat, Or rye, or barley, or some other grain, Scratched up at random by industrious feet, Searching for worm or weevil after rain! Or a few cherries, that are not so sweet As are the songs these uninvited guests, Sing at their feast with comfortable breasts. "Do you ne'er think what wondrous beings these? Do you ne'er think who made them and who taught The dialect they speak, where melodies Alone are the interpreters of thought? Whose household words are songs in many keys, Sweeter than instrument of man e'er caught! Whose habitations in the tree-tops even Are half-way houses on the road to heaven! "Think, every morning when the sun peeps through The dim, leaf-latticed windows of the grove, How jubilant the happy birds renew Their old, melodious madrigals of love! And when you think of this, remember too 'T is always morning somewhere, and above The awakening continent; from shore to shore, Somewhere the birds are singing evermore. "Think of your woods and orchards without birds! Of empty nests that cling to boughs and beams As in an idiot's brain remembered words Hang empty 'mid the cobwebs of his dreams! Will bleat of flocks or bellowing of herds Make up for the lost music, when your teams Drag home the stingy harvest, and no more The feathered gleaners follow to your door? "What! would you rather see the incessant stir Of insects in the windrows of the hay, And hear the locust and the grasshopper Their melancholy hurdy-gurdies play? Is this more pleasant to you than the whir Of meadow-lark, and her sweet roundelay, Or twitter of little field-fares, as you take Your nooning in the shade of bush and brake? "You call them thieves and pillagers; but know, They are the winged wardens of your farms, Who from the cornfields drive the insidious foe, And from your harvests keep a hundred harms; Even the blackest of them all, the crow, Renders good service as your man-at-arms, Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail, And crying havoc on the slug and snail. "How can I teach your children gentleness, And mercy to the weak, and reverence For Life, which, in its weakness or excess, Is still a gleam of God's omnipotence, Or Death, which, seeming darkness, is no less The selfsame light, although averted hence, When by your laws, your actions, and your speech, You contradict the very things I teach?" With this he closed; and through the audience went A murmur, like the rustle of dead leaves; The farmers laughed and nodded, and some bent Their yellow heads together like their sheaves; Men have no faith in fine-spun sentiment Who put their trust in bullocks and in beeves. The birds were doomed; and, as the record shows, A bounty offered for the heads of crows. There was another audience out of reach, Who had no voice nor vote in making laws, But in the papers read his little speech, And crowned his modest temples with applause; They made him conscious, each one more than each, He still was victor, vanquished in their cause. Sweetest of all the applause he won from thee, O fair Almira at the Academy! And so the dreadful massacre began; O'er fields and orchards, and o'er woodland crests, The ceaseless fusillade of terror ran. Dead fell the birds, with blood-stains on their breasts, Or wounded crept away from sight of man, While the young died of famine in their nests; A slaughter to be told in groans, not words, The very St. Bartholomew of Birds! The Summer came, and all the birds were dead; The days were like hot coals; the very ground Was burned to ashes; in the orchards fed Myriads of caterpillars, and around The cultivated fields and garden beds Hosts of devouring insects crawled, and found No foe to check their march, till they had made The land a desert without leaf or shade. Devoured by worms, like Herod, was the town, Because, like Herod, it had ruthlessly Slaughtered the Innocents. From the trees spun down The canker-worms upon the passers-by, Upon each woman's bonnet, shawl, and gown, Who shook them off with just a little cry They were the terror of each favorite walk, The endless theme of all the village talk. The farmers grew impatient but a few Confessed their error, and would not complain, For after all, the best thing one can do When it is raining, is to let it rain. Then they repealed the law, although they knew It would not call the dead to life again; As school-boys, finding their mistake too late, Draw a wet sponge across the accusing slate. That year in Killingworth the Autumn came Without the light of his majestic look, The wonder of the falling tongues of flame, The illumined pages of his Doom's-Day book. A few lost leaves blushed crimson with their shame, And drowned themselves despairing in the brook, While the wild wind went moaning everywhere, Lamenting the dead children of the air! But the next Spring a stranger sight was seen, A sight that never yet by bard was sung, As great a wonder as it would have been If some dumb animal had found a tongue! A wagon, overarched with evergreen, Upon whose boughs were wicker cages hung, All full of singing birds, came down the street, Filling the air with music wild and sweet. From all the country round these birds were brought, By order of the town, with anxious quest, And, loosened from their wicker prisons, sought In woods and fields the places they loved best, Singing loud canticles, which many thought Were satires to the authorities addressed, While others, listening in green lanes, averred Such lovely music never had been heard! But blither still and louder carolled they Upon the morrow, for they seemed to know It was the fair Almira's wedding-day, And everywhere, around, above, below, When the Preceptor bore his bride away, Their songs burst forth in joyous overflow, And a new heaven bent over a new earth Amid the sunny farms of Killingworth. FINALE The hour was late; the fire burned low, The Landlord's eyes were closed in sleep, And near the story's end a deep Sonorous sound at times was heard, As when the distant bagpipes blow. At this all laughed; the Landlord stirred, As one awaking from a swound, And, gazing anxiously around, Protested that he had not slept, But only shut his eyes, and kept His ears attentive to each word. Then all arose, and said "Good Night." Alone remained the drowsy Squire To rake the embers of the fire, And quench the waning parlor light. While from the windows, here and there, The scattered lamps a moment gleamed, And the illumined hostel seemed The constellation of the Bear, Downward, athwart the misty air, Sinking and setting toward the sun, Far off the village clock struck one. PART SECOND PRELUDE A cold, uninterrupted rain, That washed each southern window-pane, And made a river of the road; A sea of mist that overflowed The house, the barns, the gilded vane, And drowned the upland and the plain, Through which the oak-trees, broad and high, Like phantom ships went drifting by; And, hidden behind a watery screen, The sun unseen, or only seen As a faint pallor in the sky;-- Thus cold and colorless and gray, The morn of that autumnal day, As if reluctant to begin, Dawned on the silent Sudbury Inn, And all the guests that in it lay. Full late they slept. They did not hear The challenge of Sir Chanticleer, Who on the empty threshing-floor, Disdainful of the rain outside, Was strutting with a martial stride, As if upon his thigh he wore The famous broadsword of the Squire, And said, "Behold me, and admire!" Only the Poet seemed to hear, In drowse or dream, more near and near Across the border-land of sleep The blowing of a blithesome horn, That laughed the dismal day to scorn; A splash of hoofs and rush of wheels Through sand and mire like stranding keels, As from the road with sudden sweep The Mail drove up the little steep, And stopped beside the tavern door; A moment stopped, and then again With crack of whip and bark of dog Plunged forward through the sea of fog, And all was silent as before,-- All silent save the dripping rain. Then one by one the guests came down, And greeted with a smile the Squire, Who sat before the parlor fire, Reading the paper fresh from town. First the Sicilian, like a bird, Before his form appeared, was heard Whistling and singing down the stair; Then came the Student, with a look As placid as a meadow-brook; The Theologian, still perplexed With thoughts of this world and the next; The Poet then, as one who seems Walking in visions and in dreams; Then the Musician, like a fair Hyperion from whose golden hair The radiance of the morning streams; And last the aromatic Jew Of Alicant, who, as he threw The door wide open, on the air Breathed round about him a perfume Of damask roses in full bloom, Making a garden of the room. The breakfast ended, each pursued The promptings of his various mood; Beside the fire in silence smoked The taciturn, impassive Jew, Lost in a pleasant revery; While, by his gravity provoked, His portrait the Sicilian drew, And wrote beneath it "Edrehi, At the Red Horse in Sudbury." By far the busiest of them all, The Theologian in the hall Was feeding robins in a cage,-- Two corpulent and lazy birds, Vagrants and pilferers at best, If one might trust the hostler's words, Chief instrument of their arrest; Two poets of the Golden Age, Heirs of a boundless heritage Of fields and orchards, east and west, And sunshine of long summer days, Though outlawed now and dispossessed!-- Such was the Theologian's phrase. Meanwhile the Student held discourse With the Musician, on the source Of all the legendary lore Among the nations, scattered wide Like silt and seaweed by the force And fluctuation of the tide; The tale repeated o'er and o'er, With change of place and change of name, Disguised, transformed, and yet the same We've heard a hundred times before. The Poet at the window mused, And saw, as in a dream confused, The countenance of the Sun, discrowned, And haggard with a pale despair, And saw the cloud-rack trail and drift Before it, and the trees uplift Their leafless branches, and the air Filled with the arrows of the rain, And heard amid the mist below, Like voices of distress and pain, That haunt the thoughts of men insane, The fateful cawings of the crow. Then down the road, with mud besprent, And drenched with rain from head to hoof, The rain-drops dripping from his mane And tail as from a pent-house roof, A jaded horse, his head down bent, Passed slowly, limping as he went. The young Sicilian--who had grown Impatient longer to abide A prisoner, greatly mortified To see completely overthrown His plans for angling in the brook, And, leaning o'er the bridge of stone, To watch the speckled trout glide by, And float through the inverted sky, Still round and round the baited hook-- Now paced the room with rapid stride, And, pausing at the Poet's side, Looked forth, and saw the wretched steed, And said: "Alas for human greed, That with cold hand and stony eye Thus turns an old friend out to die, Or beg his food from gate to gate! This brings a tale into my mind, Which, if you are not disinclined To listen, I will now relate." All gave assent; all wished to hear, Not without many a jest and jeer, The story of a spavined steed; And even the Student with the rest Put in his pleasant little jest Out of Malherbe, that Pegasus Is but a horse that with all speed Bears poets to the hospital; While the Sicilian, self-possessed, After a moment's interval Began his simple story thus. THE SICILIAN'S TALE THE BELL OF ATRI At Atri in Abruzzo, a small town Of ancient Roman date, but scant renown, One of those little places that have run Half up the hill, beneath a blazing sun, And then sat down to rest, as if to say, "I climb no farther upward, come what may,"-- The Re Giovanni, now unknown to fame, So many monarchs since have borne the name, Had a great bell hung in the market-place Beneath a roof, projecting some small space, By way of shelter from the sun and rain. Then rode he through the streets with all his train, And, with the blast of trumpets loud and long, Made proclamation, that whenever wrong Was done to any man, he should but ring The great bell in the square, and he, the King, Would cause the Syndic to decide thereon. Such was the proclamation of King John. How swift the happy days in Atri sped, What wrongs were righted, need not here be said. Suffice it that, as all things must decay, The hempen rope at length was worn away, Unravelled at the end, and, strand by strand, Loosened and wasted in the ringer's hand, Till one, who noted this in passing by, Mended the rope with braids of briony, So that the leaves and tendrils of the vine Hung like a votive garland at a shrine. By chance it happened that in Atri dwelt A knight, with spur on heel and sword in belt, Who loved to hunt the wild-boar in the woods, Who loved his falcons with their crimson hoods, Who loved his hounds and horses, and all sports And prodigalities of camps and courts;-- Loved, or had loved them; for at last, grown old, His only passion was the love of gold. He sold his horses, sold his hawks and hounds, Rented his vineyards and his garden-grounds, Kept but one steed, his favorite steed of all, To starve and shiver in a naked stall, And day by day sat brooding in his chair, Devising plans how best to hoard and spare. At length he said: "What is the use or need To keep at my own cost this lazy steed, Eating his head off in my stables here, When rents are low and provender is dear? Let him go feed upon the public ways; I want him only for the holidays." So the old steed was turned into the heat Of the long, lonely, silent, shadeless street; And wandered in suburban lanes forlorn, Barked at by dogs, and torn by brier and thorn. One afternoon, as in that sultry clime It is the custom in the summer time, With bolted doors and window-shutters closed, The inhabitants of Atri slept or dozed; When suddenly upon their senses fell The loud alarum of the accusing bell! The Syndic started from his deep repose, Turned on his couch, and listened, and then rose And donned his robes, and with reluctant pace Went panting forth into the market-place, Where the great bell upon its cross-beam swung Reiterating with persistent tongue, In half-articulate jargon, the old song: "Some one hath done a wrong, hath done a wrong!" But ere he reached the belfry's light arcade He saw, or thought he saw, beneath its shade, No shape of human form of woman born, But a poor steed dejected and forlorn, Who with uplifted head and eager eye Was tugging at the vines of briony. "Domeneddio!" cried the Syndie straight, "This is the Knight of Atri's steed of state! He calls for justice, being sore distressed, And pleads his cause as loudly as the best." Meanwhile from street and lane a noisy crowd Had rolled together like a summer cloud, And told the story of the wretched beast In five-and-twenty different ways at least, With much gesticulation and appeal To heathen gods, in their excessive zeal. The Knight was called and questioned; in reply Did not confess the fact, did not deny; Treated the matter as a pleasant jest, And set at naught the Syndic and the rest, Maintaining, in an angry undertone, That he should do what pleased him with his own. And thereupon the Syndic gravely read The proclamation of the King; then said: "Pride goeth forth on horseback grand and gay, But cometh back on foot, and begs its way; Fame is the fragrance of heroic deeds, Of flowers of chivalry and not of weeds! These are familiar proverbs; but I fear They never yet have reached your knightly ear. What fair renown, what honor, what repute Can come to you from starving this poor brute? He who serves well and speaks not, merits more Than they who clamor loudest at the door. Therefore the law decrees that as this steed Served you in youth, henceforth you shall take heed To comfort his old age, and to provide Shelter in stall an food and field beside." The Knight withdrew abashed; the people all Led home the steed in triumph to his stall. The King heard and approved, and laughed in glee And cried aloud: "Right well it pleaseth me! Church-bells at best but ring us to the door; But go not in to mass; my bell doth more: It cometh into court and pleads the cause Of creatures dumb and unknown to the laws; And this shall make, in every Christian clime, The Bell of Atri famous for all time." INTERLUDE "Yes, well your story pleads the cause Of those dumb mouths that have no speech, Only a cry from each to each In its own kind, with its own laws; Something that is beyond the reach Of human power to learn or teach,-- An inarticulate moan of pain, Like the immeasurable main Breaking upon an unknown beach." Thus spake the Poet with a sigh; Then added, with impassioned cry, As one who feels the words he speaks, The color flushing in his cheeks, The fervor burning in his eye: "Among the noblest in the land, Though he may count himself the least, That man I honor and revere Who without favor, without fear, In the great city dares to stand The friend of every friendless beast, And tames with his unflinching hand The brutes that wear our form and face, The were-wolves of the human race!" Then paused, and waited with a frown, Like some old champion of romance, Who, having thrown his gauntlet down, Expectant leans upon his lance; But neither Knight nor Squire is found To raise the gauntlet from the ground, And try with him the battle's chance. "Wake from your dreams, O Edrehi! Or dreaming speak to us, and make A feint of being half awake, And tell us what your dreams may be. Out of the hazy atmosphere Of cloud-land deign to reappear Among us in this Wayside Inn; Tell us what visions and what scenes Illuminate the dark ravines In which you grope your way. Begin!" Thus the Sicilian spake. The Jew Made no reply, but only smiled, As men unto a wayward child, Not knowing what to answer, do. As from a cavern's mouth, o'ergrown With moss and intertangled vines, A streamlet leaps into the light And murmurs over root and stone In a melodious undertone; Or as amid the noonday night Of sombre and wind-haunted pines, There runs a sound as of the sea; So from his bearded lips there came A melody without a name, A song, a tale, a history, Or whatsoever it may be, Writ and recorded in these lines. THE SPANISH JEW'S TALE KAMBALU Into the city of Kambalu, By the road that leadeth to Ispahan, At the head of his dusty caravan, Laden with treasure from realms afar, Baldacca and Kelat and Kandahar, Rode the great captain Alau. The Khan from his palace-window gazed, And saw in the thronging street beneath, In the light of the setting sun, that blazed Through the clouds of dust by the caravan raised, The flash of harness and jewelled sheath, And the shining scymitars of the guard, And the weary camels that bared their teeth, As they passed and passed through the gates unbarred Into the shade of the palace-yard. Thus into the city of Kambalu Rode the great captain Alau; And he stood before the Khan, and said: "The enemies of my lord are dead; All the Kalifs of all the West Bow and obey thy least behest; The plains are dark with the mulberry-trees, The weavers are busy in Samarcand, The miners are sifting the golden sand, The divers plunging for pearls in the seas, And peace and plenty are in the land. "Baldacca's Kalif, and he alone, Rose in revolt against thy throne: His treasures are at thy palace-door, With the swords and the shawls and the jewels he wore; His body is dust o'er the desert blown. "A mile outside of Baldacca's gate I left my forces to lie in wait, Concealed by forests and hillocks of sand, And forward dashed with a handful of men, To lure the old tiger from his den Into the ambush I had planned. Ere we reached the town the alarm was spread, For we heard the sound of gongs from within; And with clash of cymbals and warlike din The gates swung wide; and we turned and fled; And the garrison sallied forth and pursued, With the gray old Kalif at their head, And above them the banner of Mohammed: So we snared them all, and the town was subdued. "As in at the gate we rode, behold, A tower that is called the Tower of Gold! For there the Kalif had hidden his wealth, Heaped and hoarded and piled on high, Like sacks of wheat in a granary; And thither the miser crept by stealth To feel of the gold that gave him health, And to gaze and gloat with his hungry eye On jewels that gleamed like a glow-worm's spark, Or the eyes of a panther in the dark. "I said to the Kalif: 'Thou art old, Thou hast no need of so much gold. Thou shouldst not have heaped and hidden it here, Till the breath of battle was hot and near, But have sown through the land these useless hoards To spring into shining blades of swords, And keep thine honor sweet and clear. These grains of gold are not grains of wheat; These bars of silver thou canst not eat; These jewels and pearls and precious stones Cannot cure the aches in thy bones, Nor keep the feet of Death one hour From climbing the stairways of thy tower!' "Then into his dungeon I locked the drone, And left him to feed there all alone In the honey-cells of his golden hive: Never a prayer, nor a cry, nor a groan Was heard from those massive walls of stone, Nor again was the Kalif seen alive! "When at last we unlocked the door, We found him dead upon the floor; The rings had dropped from his withered hands, His teeth were like bones in the desert sands: Still clutching his treasure he had died; And as he lay there, he appeared A statue of gold with a silver beard, His arms outstretched as if crucified." This is the story, strange and true, That the great captain Alau Told to his brother the Tartar Khan, When he rode that day into Kambalu By the road that leadeth to Ispahan. INTERLUDE "I thought before your tale began," The Student murmured, "we should have Some legend written by Judah Rav In his Gemara of Babylon; Or something from the Gulistan,-- The tale of the Cazy of Hamadan, Or of that King of Khorasan Who saw in dreams the eyes of one That had a hundred years been dead Still moving restless in his head, Undimmed, and gleaming with the lust Of power, though all the rest was dust. "But lo! your glittering caravan On the road that leadeth to Ispahan Hath led us farther to the East Into the regions of Cathay. Spite of your Kalif and his gold, Pleasant has been the tale you told, And full of color; that at least No one will question or gainsay. And yet on such a dismal day We need a merrier tale to clear The dark and heavy atmosphere. So listen, Lordlings, while I tell, Without a preface, what befell A simple cobbler, in the year -- No matter; it was long ago; And that is all we need to know." THE STUDENT'S TALE THE COBBLER OF HAGENAU I trust that somewhere and somehow You all have heard of Hagenau, A quiet, quaint, and ancient town Among the green Alsatian hills, A place of valleys, streams, and mills, Where Barbarossa's castle, brown With rust of centuries, still looks down On the broad, drowsy land below,-- On shadowy forests filled with game, And the blue river winding slow Through meadows, where the hedges grow That give this little town its name. It happened in the good old times, While yet the Master-singers filled The noisy workshop and the guild With various melodies and rhymes, That here in Hagenau there dwelt A cobbler,--one who loved debate, And, arguing from a postulate, Would say what others only felt; A man of forecast and of thrift, And of a shrewd and careful mind In this world's business, but inclined Somewhat to let the next world drift. Hans Sachs with vast delight he read, And Regenbogen's rhymes of love, For their poetic fame had spread Even to the town of Hagenau; And some Quick Melody of the Plough, Or Double Harmony of the Dove, Was always running in his head. He kept, moreover, at his side, Among his leathers and his tools, Reynard the Fox, the Ship of Fools, Or Eulenspiegel, open wide; With these he was much edified: He thought them wiser than the Schools. His good wife, full of godly fear, Liked not these worldly themes to hear; The Psalter was her book of songs; The only music to her ear Was that which to the Church belongs, When the loud choir on Sunday chanted, And the two angels carved in wood, That by the windy organ stood, Blew on their trumpets loud and clear, And all the echoes, far and near, Gibbered as if the church were haunted. Outside his door, one afternoon, This humble votary of the muse Sat in the narrow strip of shade By a projecting cornice made, Mending the Burgomaster's shoes, And singing a familiar tune:-- "Our ingress into the world Was naked and bare; Our progress through the world Is trouble and care; Our egress from the world Will be nobody knows where; But if we do well here We shall do well there; And I could tell you no more, Should I preach a whole year!" Thus sang the cobbler at his work; And with his gestures marked the time Closing together with a jerk Of his waxed thread the stitch and rhyme. Meanwhile his quiet little dame Was leaning o'er the window-sill, Eager, excited, but mouse-still, Gazing impatiently to see What the great throng of folk might be That onward in procession came, Along the unfrequented street, With horns that blew, and drums that beat, And banners flying, and the flame Of tapers, and, at times, the sweet Voices of nuns; and as they sang Suddenly all the church-bells rang. In a gay coach, above the crowd, There sat a monk in ample hood, Who with his right hand held aloft A red and ponderous cross of wood, To which at times he meekly bowed. In front three horsemen rode, and oft, With voice and air importunate, A boisterous herald cried aloud: "The grace of God is at your gate!" So onward to the church they passed. The cobbler slowly tuned his last, And, wagging his sagacious head, Unto his kneeling housewife said: "'Tis the monk Tetzel. I have heard The cawings of that reverend bird. Don't let him cheat you of your gold; Indulgence is not bought and sold." The church of Hagenau, that night, Was full of people, full of light; An odor of incense filled the air, The priest intoned, the organ groaned Its inarticulate despair; The candles on the altar blazed, And full in front of it upraised The red cross stood against the glare. Below, upon the altar-rail Indulgences were set to sale, Like ballads at a country fair. A heavy strong-box, iron-bound And carved with many a quaint device, Received, with a melodious sound, The coin that purchased Paradise. Then from the pulpit overhead, Tetzel the monk, with fiery glow, Thundered upon the crowd below. "Good people all, draw near!" he said; "Purchase these letters, signed and sealed, By which all sins, though unrevealed And unrepented, are forgiven! Count but the gain, count not the loss Your gold and silver are but dross, And yet they pave the way to heaven. I hear your mothers and your sires Cry from their purgatorial fires, And will ye not their ransom pay? O senseless people! when the gate Of heaven is open, will ye wait? Will ye not enter in to-day? To-morrow it will be too late; I shall be gone upon my way. Make haste! bring money while ye may!' The women shuddered, and turned pale; Allured by hope or driven by fear, With many a sob and many a tear, All crowded to the altar-rail. Pieces of silver and of gold Into the tinkling strong-box fell Like pebbles dropped into a well; And soon the ballads were all sold. The cobbler's wife among the rest Slipped into the capacious chest A golden florin; then withdrew, Hiding the paper in her breast; And homeward through the darkness went Comforted, quieted, content; She did not walk, she rather flew, A dove that settles to her nest, When some appalling bird of prey That scared her has been driven away. The days went by, the monk was gone, The summer passed, the winter came; Though seasons changed, yet still the same The daily round of life went on; The daily round of household care, The narrow life of toil and prayer. But in her heart the cobbler's dame Had now a treasure beyond price, A secret joy without a name, The certainty of Paradise. Alas, alas! Dust unto dust! Before the winter wore away, Her body in the churchyard lay, Her patient soul was with the Just! After her death, among the things That even the poor preserve with care,-- Some little trinkets and cheap rings, A locket with her mother's hair, Her wedding gown, the faded flowers She wore upon her wedding day,-- Among these memories of past hours, That so much of the heart reveal, Carefully kept and put away, The Letter of Indulgence lay Folded, with signature and seal. Meanwhile the Priest, aggrieved and pained, Waited and wondered that no word Of mass or requiem he heard, As by the Holy Church ordained; Then to the Magistrate complained, That as this woman had been dead A week or more, and no mass said, It was rank heresy, or at least Contempt of Church; thus said the Priest; And straight the cobbler was arraigned. He came, confiding in his cause, But rather doubtful of the laws. The Justice from his elbow-chair Gave him a look that seemed to say: "Thou standest before a Magistrate, Therefore do not prevaricate!" Then asked him in a business way, Kindly but cold: "Is thy wife dead?" The cobbler meekly bowed his head; "She is," came struggling from his throat Scarce audibly. The Justice wrote The words down in a book, and then Continued, as he raised his pen: "She is; and hath a mass been said For the salvation of her soul? Come, speak the truth! confess the whole!" The cobbler without pause replied: "Of mass or prayer there was no need; For at the moment when she died Her soul was with the glorified!" And from his pocket with all speed He drew the priestly title-deed, And prayed the Justice he would read. The Justice read, amused, amazed; And as he read his mirth increased; At times his shaggy brows he raised, Now wondering at the cobbler gazed, Now archly at the angry Priest. "From all excesses, sins, and crimes Thou hast committed in past times Thee I absolve! And furthermore, Purified from all earthly taints, To the communion of the Saints And to the sacraments restore! All stains of weakness, and all trace Of shame and censure I efface; Remit the pains thou shouldst endure, And make thee innocent and pure, So that in dying, unto thee The gates of heaven shall open be! Though long thou livest, yet this grace Until the moment of thy death Unchangeable continueth!" Then said he to the Priest: "I find This document is duly signed Brother John Tetzel, his own hand. At all tribunals in the land In evidence it may be used; Therefore acquitted is the accused." Then to the cobbler turned: "My friend, Pray tell me, didst thou ever read Reynard the Fox?"--"O yes, indeed!"-- "I thought so. Don't forget the end." INTERLUDE "What was the end? I am ashamed Not to remember Reynard's fate; I have not read the book of late; Was he not hanged?" the Poet said. The Student gravely shook his head, And answered: "You exaggerate. There was a tournament proclaimed, And Reynard fought with Isegrim The Wolf, and having vanquished him, Rose to high honor in the State, And Keeper of the Seals was named!" At this the gay Sicilian laughed: "Fight fire with fire, and craft with craft; Successful cunning seems to be The moral of your tale," said he. "Mine had a better, and the Jew's Had none at all, that I could see; His aim was only to amuse." Meanwhile from out its ebon case His violin the Minstrel drew, And having tuned its strings anew, Now held it close in his embrace, And poising in his outstretched hand The bow, like a magician's wand, He paused, and said, with beaming face: "Last night my story was too long; To-day I give you but a song, An old tradition of the North; But first, to put you in the mood, I will a little while prelude, And from this instrument draw forth Something by way of overture." He played; at first the tones were pure And tender as a summer night, The full moon climbing to her height, The sob and ripple of the seas, The flapping of an idle sail; And then by sudden and sharp degrees The multiplied, wild harmonies Freshened and burst into a gale; A tempest howling through the dark, A crash as of some shipwrecked bark. A loud and melancholy wail. Such was the prelude to the tale Told by the Minstrel; and at times He paused amid its varying rhymes, And at each pause again broke in The music of his violin, With tones of sweetness or of fear, Movements of trouble or of calm, Creating their own atmosphere; As sitting in a church we hear Between the verses of the psalm The organ playing soft and clear, Or thundering on the startled ear. THE MUSICIAN'S TALE THE BALLAD OF CARMILHAN I At Stralsund, by the Baltic Sea, Within the sandy bar, At sunset of a summer's day, Ready for sea, at anchor lay The good ship Valdemar. The sunbeams danced upon the waves, And played along her side; And through the cabin windows streamed In ripples of golden light, that seemed The ripple of the tide. There sat the captain with his friends, Old skippers brown and hale, Who smoked and grumbled o'er their grog, And talked of iceberg and of fog, Of calm and storm and gale. And one was spinning a sailor's yarn About Klaboterman, The Kobold of the sea; a spright Invisible to mortal sight, Who o'er the rigging ran. Sometimes he hammered in the hold, Sometimes upon the mast, Sometimes abeam, sometimes abaft, Or at the bows he sang and laughed, And made all tight and fast. He helped the sailors at their work, And toiled with jovial din; He helped them hoist and reef the sails, He helped them stow the casks and bales, And heave the anchor in. But woe unto the lazy louts, The idlers of the crew; Them to torment was his delight, And worry them by day and night, And pinch them black and blue. And woe to him whose mortal eyes Klaboterman behold. It is a certain sign of death!-- The cabin-boy here held his breath, He felt his blood run cold. II The jolly skipper paused awhile, And then again began; "There is a Spectre Ship," quoth he, "A ship of the Dead that sails the sea, And is called the Carmilhan. "A ghostly ship, with a ghostly crew, In tempests she appears; And before the gale, or against the gale, She sails without a rag of sail, Without a helmsman steers. "She haunts the Atlantic north and south, But mostly the mid-sea, Where three great rocks rise bleak and bare Like furnace-chimneys in the air, And are called the Chimneys Three. "And ill betide the luckless ship That meets the Carmilhan; Over her decks the seas will leap, She must go down into the deep, And perish mouse and man." The captain of the Valdemar Laughed loud with merry heart. "I should like to see this ship," said he; "I should like to find these Chimneys Three, That are marked down in the chart. "I have sailed right over the spot," he said "With a good stiff breeze behind, When the sea was blue, and the sky was clear,-- You can follow my course by these pinholes here,-- And never a rock could find." And then he swore a dreadful oath, He swore by the Kingdoms Three, That, should he meet the Carmilhan, He would run her down, although he ran Right into Eternity! All this, while passing to and fro, The cabin-boy had heard; He lingered at the door to hear, And drank in all with greedy ear, And pondered every word. He was a simple country lad, But of a roving mind. "O, it must be like heaven," thought he, "Those far-off foreign lands to see, And fortune seek and find!" But in the fo'castle, when he heard The mariners blaspheme, He thought of home, he thought of God, And his mother under the churchyard sod, And wished it were a dream. One friend on board that ship had he; 'T was the Klaboterman, Who saw the Bible in his chest, And made a sign upon his breast, All evil things to ban. III The cabin windows have grown blank As eyeballs of the dead; No more the glancing sunbeams burn On the gilt letters of the stern, But on the figure-head; On Valdemar Victorious, Who looketh with disdain To see his image in the tide Dismembered float from side to side, And reunite again. "It is the wind," those skippers said, "That swings the vessel so; It is the wind; it freshens fast, 'T is time to say farewell at last 'T is time for us to go." They shook the captain by the hand, "Goodluck! goodluck!" they cried; Each face was like the setting sun, As, broad and red, they one by one Went o'er the vessel's side. The sun went down, the full moon rose, Serene o'er field and flood; And all the winding creeks and bays And broad sea-meadows seemed ablaze, The sky was red as blood. The southwest wind blew fresh and fair, As fair as wind could be; Bound for Odessa, o'er the bar, With all sail set, the Valdemar Went proudly out to sea. The lovely moon climbs up the sky As one who walks in dreams; A tower of marble in her light, A wall of black, a wall of white, The stately vessel seems. Low down upon the sandy coast The lights begin to burn; And now, uplifted high in air, They kindle with a fiercer glare, And now drop far astern. The dawn appears, the land is gone, The sea is all around; Then on each hand low hills of sand Emerge and form another land; She steereth through the Sound. Through Kattegat and Skager-rack She flitteth like a ghost; By day and night, by night and day, She bounds, she flies upon her way Along the English coast. Cape Finisterre is drawing near, Cape Finisterre is past; Into the open ocean stream She floats, the vision of a dream Too beautiful to last. Suns rise and set, and rise, and yet There is no land in sight; The liquid planets overhead Burn brighter now the moon is dead, And longer stays the night. IV And now along the horizon's edge Mountains of cloud uprose, Black as with forests underneath, Above their sharp and jagged teeth Were white as drifted snows. Unseen behind them sank the sun, But flushed each snowy peak A little while with rosy light That faded slowly from the sight As blushes from the cheek. Black grew the sky,--all black, all black; The clouds were everywhere; There was a feeling of suspense In nature, a mysterious sense Of terror in the air. And all on board the Valdemar Was still as still could be; Save when the dismal ship-bell tolled, As ever and anon she rolled, And lurched into the sea. The captain up and down the deck Went striding to and fro; Now watched the compass at the wheel, Now lifted up his hand to feel Which way the wind might blow. And now he looked up at the sails, And now upon the deep; In every fibre of his frame He felt the storm before it came, He had no thought of sleep. Eight bells! and suddenly abaft, With a great rush of rain, Making the ocean white with spume, In darkness like the day of doom, On came the hurricane. The lightning flashed from cloud to cloud, And rent the sky in two; A jagged flame, a single jet Of white fire, like a bayonet That pierced the eyeballs through. Then all around was dark again, And blacker than before; But in that single flash of light He had beheld a fearful sight, And thought of the oath he swore. For right ahead lay the Ship of the Dead, The ghostly Carmilhan! Her masts were stripped, her yards were bare, And on her bowsprit, poised in air, Sat the Klaboterman. Her crew of ghosts was all on deck Or clambering up the shrouds; The boatswain's whistle, the captain's hail, Were like the piping of the gale, And thunder in the clouds. And close behind the Carmilhan There rose up from the sea, As from a foundered ship of stone, Three bare and splintered masts alone: They were the Chimneys Three. And onward dashed the Valdemar And leaped into the dark; A denser mist, a colder blast, A little shudder, and she had passed Right through the Phantom Bark. She cleft in twain the shadowy hulk, But cleft it unaware; As when, careering to her nest, The sea-gull severs with her breast The unresisting air. Again the lightning flashed; again They saw the Carmilhan, Whole as before in hull and spar; But now on board of the Valdemar Stood the Klaboterman. And they all knew their doom was sealed; They knew that death was near; Some prayed who never prayed before, And some they wept, and some they swore, And some were mute with fear. Then suddenly there came a shock, And louder than wind or sea A cry burst from the crew on deck, As she dashed and crashed, a hopeless wreck, Upon the Chimneys Three. The storm and night were passed, the light To streak the east began; The cabin-boy, picked up at sea, Survived the wreck, and only he, To tell of the Carmilhan. INTERLUDE When the long murmur of applause That greeted the Musician's lay Had slowly buzzed itself away, And the long talk of Spectre Ships That followed died upon their lips And came unto a natural pause, "These tales you tell are one and all Of the Old World," the Poet said, "Flowers gathered from a crumbling wall, Dead leaves that rustle as they fall; Let me present you in their stead Something of our New England earth, A tale which, though of no great worth, Has still this merit, that it yields A certain freshness of the fields, A sweetness as of home-made bread." The Student answered: "Be discreet; For if the flour be fresh and sound, And if the bread be light and sweet, Who careth in what mill 't was ground, Or of what oven felt the heat, Unless, as old Cervantes said, You are looking after better bread Than any that is made of wheat? You know that people nowadays To what is old give little praise; All must be new in prose and verse: They want hot bread, or something worse, Fresh every morning, and half baked; The wholesome bread of yesterday, Too stale for them, is thrown away, Nor is their thirst with water slaked. As oft we see the sky in May Threaten to rain, and yet not rain, The Poet's face, before so gay, Was clouded with a look of pain, But suddenly brightened up again; And without further let or stay He told his tale of yesterday. THE POET'S TALE LADY WENTWORTH. One hundred years ago, and something more, In Queen Street, Portsmouth, at her tavern door, Neat as a pin, and blooming as a rose, Stood Mistress Stavers in her furbelows, Just as her cuckoo-clock was striking nine. Above her head, resplendent on the sign, The portrait of the Earl of Halifax, In scarlet coat and periwig of flax, Surveyed at leisure all her varied charms, Her cap, her bodice, her white folded arms, And half resolved, though he was past his prime, And rather damaged by the lapse of time, To fall down at her feet and to declare The passion that had driven him to despair. For from his lofty station he had seen Stavers, her husband, dressed in bottle-green, Drive his new Flying Stage-coach, four in hand, Down the long lane, and out into the land, And knew that he was far upon the way To Ipswich and to Boston on the Bay! Just then the meditations of the Earl Were interrupted by a little girl, Barefooted, ragged, with neglected hair, Eyes full of laughter, neck and shoulders bare, A thin slip of a girl, like a new moon, Sure to be rounded into beauty soon, A creature men would worship and adore, Though now in mean habiliments she bore A pail of water, dripping, through the street And bathing, as she went her naked feet. It was a pretty picture, full of grace,-- The slender form, the delicate, thin face; The swaying motion, as she hurried by; The shining feet, the laughter in her eye, That o'er her face in ripples gleamed and glanced, As in her pail the shifting sunbeam danced: And with uncommon feelings of delight The Earl of Halifax beheld the sight. Not so Dame Stavers, for he heard her say These words, or thought he did, as plain as day: "O Martha Hilton! Fie! how dare you go About the town half dressed, and looking so!" At which the gypsy laughed, and straight replied: "No matter how I look; I yet shall ride In my own chariot, ma'am." And on the child The Earl of Halifax benignly smiled, As with her heavy burden she passed on, Looked back, then turned the corner, and was gone. What next, upon that memorable day, Arrested his attention was a gay And brilliant equipage, that flashed and spun, The silver harness glittering in the sun, Outriders with red jackets, lithe and lank, Pounding the saddles as they rose and sank, While all alone within the chariot sat A portly person with three-cornered hat, A crimson velvet coat, head high in air, Gold-headed cane, and nicely powdered hair, And diamond buckles sparkling at his knees, Dignified, stately, florid, much at ease. Onward the pageant swept, and as it passed, Fair Mistress Stavers courtesied low and fast; For this was Governor Wentworth, driving down To Little Harbor, just beyond the town, Where his Great House stood looking out to sea, A goodly place, where it was good to be. It was a pleasant mansion, an abode Near and yet hidden from the great high-road, Sequestered among trees, a noble pile, Baronial and colonial in its style; Gables and dormer-windows everywhere, And stacks of chimneys rising high in air,-- Pandaean pipes, on which all winds that blew Made mournful music the whole winter through. Within, unwonted splendors met the eye, Panels, and floors of oak, and tapestry; Carved chimney-pieces, where on brazen dogs Revelled and roared the Christmas fires of logs; Doors opening into darkness unawares, Mysterious passages, and flights of stairs; And on the walls, in heavy gilded frames, The ancestral Wentworths with Old-Scripture names. Such was the mansion where the great man dwelt. A widower and childless; and he felt The loneliness, the uncongenial gloom, That like a presence haunted ever room; For though not given to weakness, he could feel The pain of wounds, that ache because they heal. The years came and the years went,--seven in all, And passed in cloud and sunshine o'er the Hall; The dawns their splendor through its chambers shed, The sunsets flushed its western windows red; The snow was on its roofs, the wind, the rain; Its woodlands were in leaf and bare again; Moons waxed and waned, the lilacs bloomed and died, In the broad river ebbed and flowed the tide, Ships went to sea, and ships came home from sea, And the slow years sailed by and ceased to be. And all these years had Martha Hilton served In the Great House, not wholly unobserved: By day, by night, the silver crescent grew, Though hidden by clouds, her light still shining through; A maid of all work, whether coarse or fine, A servant who made service seem divine! Through her each room was fair to look upon; The mirrors glistened, and the brasses shone, The very knocker on the outer door, If she but passed, was brighter than before. And now the ceaseless turning of the mill Of Time, that never for an hour stands still, Ground out the Governor's sixtieth birthday, And powdered his brown hair with silver-gray. The robin, the forerunner of the spring, The bluebird with his jocund carolling, The restless swallows building in the eaves, The golden buttercups, the grass, the leaves, The lilacs tossing in the winds of May, All welcomed this majestic holiday! He gave a splendid banquet served on plate, Such as became the Governor of the State, Who represented England and the King, And was magnificent in everything. He had invited all his friends and peers,-- The Pepperels, the Langdons, and the Lears, The Sparhawks, the Penhallows, and the rest; For why repeat the name of every guest? But I must mention one, in bands and gown, The rector there, the Reverend Arthur Brown Of the Established Church; with smiling face He sat beside the Governor and said grace; And then the feast went on, as others do, But ended as none other I e'er knew. When they had drunk the King, with many a cheer, The Governor whispered in a servant's ear, Who disappeared and presently there stood Within the room, in perfect womanhood, A maiden, modest and yet self-possessed, Youthful and beautiful, and simply dressed. Can this be Martha Hilton? It must be! Yes, Martha Hilton, and no other she! Dowered with the beauty of her twenty years, How ladylike, how queenlike she appears; The pale, thin crescent of the days gone by Is Dian now in all her majesty! Yet scarce a guest perceived that she was there, Until the Governor, rising from his chair, Played slightly with his ruffles, then looked down, And said unto the Reverend Arthur Brown: "This is my birthday: it shall likewise be My wedding-day; and you shall marry me!" The listening guests were greatly mystified, None more so than the rector, who replied: "Marry you? Yes, that were a pleasant task, Your Excellency; but to whom? I ask." The Governor answered: "To this lady here" And beckoned Martha Hilton to draw near. She came and stood, all blushes, at his side. The rector paused. The impatient Governor cried: "This is the lady; do you hesitate? Then I command you as Chief Magistrate." The rector read the service loud and clear: "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here," And so on to the end. At his command On the fourth finger of her fair left hand The Governor placed the ring; and that was all: Martha was Lady Wentworth of the Hall! INTERLUDE. Well pleased the audience heard the tale. The Theologian said: "Indeed, To praise you there is little need; One almost hears the farmers flail Thresh out your wheat, nor does there fail A certain freshness, as you said, And sweetness as of home-made bread. But not less sweet and not less fresh Are many legends that I know, Writ by the monks of long-ago, Who loved to mortify the flesh, So that the soul might purer grow, And rise to a diviner state; And one of these--perhaps of all Most beautiful--I now recall, And with permission will narrate; Hoping thereby to make amends For that grim tragedy of mine, As strong and black as Spanish wine, I told last night, and wish almost It had remained untold, my friends; For Torquemada's awful ghost Came to me in the dreams I dreamed, And in the darkness glared and gleamed Like a great lighthouse on the coast." The Student laughing said: "Far more Like to some dismal fire of bale Flaring portentous on a hill; Or torches lighted on a shore By wreckers in a midnight gale. No matter; be it as you will, Only go forward with your tale." THE THEOLOGIAN'S TALE THE LEGEND BEAUTIFUL "Hads't thou stayed, I must have fled!" That is what the Vision said. In his chamber all alone, Kneeling on the floor of stone, Prayed the Monk in deep contrition For his sins of indecision, Prayed for greater self-denial In temptation and in trial; It was noonday by the dial, And the Monk was all alone. Suddenly, as if it lightened, An unwonted splendor brightened All within him and without him In that narrow cell of stone; And he saw the Blessed Vision Of our Lord, with light Elysian Like a vesture wrapped about him, Like a garment round him thrown. Not as crucified and slain, Not in agonies of pain, Not with bleeding hands and feet, Did the Monk his Master see; But as in the village street, In the house or harvest-field, Halt and lame and blind he healed, When he walked in Galilee. In an attitude imploring, Hands upon his bosom crossed, Wondering, worshipping, adoring, Knelt the Monk in rapture lost. Lord, he thought, in heaven that reignest, Who am I, that thus thou deignest To reveal thyself to me? Who am I, that from the centre Of thy glory thou shouldst enter This poor cell, my guest to be? Then amid his exaltation, Loud the convent bell appalling, From its belfry calling, calling, Rang through court and corridor With persistent iteration He had never heard before. It was now the appointed hour When alike in shine or shower, Winter's cold or summer's heat, To the convent portals came All the blind and halt and lame, All the beggars of the street, For their daily dole of food Dealt them by the brotherhood; And their almoner was he Who upon his bended knee, Rapt in silent ecstasy Of divinest self-surrender, Saw the Vision and the Splendor. Deep distress and hesitation Mingled with his adoration; Should he go, or should he stay? Should he leave the poor to wait Hungry at the convent gate, Till the Vision passed away? Should he slight his radiant guest, Slight this visitant celestial, For a crowd of ragged, bestial Beggars at the convent gate? Would the Vision there remain? Would the Vision come again? Then a voice within his breast Whispered, audible and clear As if to the outward ear: "Do thy duty; that is best; Leave unto thy Lord the rest!" Straightway to his feet he started, And with longing look intent On the Blessed Vision bent, Slowly from his cell departed, Slowly on his errand went. At the gate the poor were waiting, Looking through the iron grating, With that terror in the eye That is only seen in those Who amid their wants and woes Hear the sound of doors that close, And of feet that pass them by; Grown familiar with disfavor, Grown familiar with the savor Of the bread by which men die! But to-day, they knew not why, Like the gate of Paradise Seemed the convent sate to rise, Like a sacrament divine Seemed to them the bread and wine. In his heart the Monk was praying, Thinking of the homeless poor, What they suffer and endure; What we see not, what we see; And the inward voice was saying: "Whatsoever thing thou doest To the least of mine and lowest, That thou doest unto me!" Unto me! but had the Vision Come to him in beggar's clothing, Come a mendicant imploring, Would he then have knelt adoring, Or have listened with derision, And have turned away with loathing. Thus his conscience put the question, Full of troublesome suggestion, As at length, with hurried pace, Towards his cell he turned his face, And beheld the convent bright With a supernatural light, Like a luminous cloud expanding Over floor and wall and ceiling. But he paused with awe-struck feeling At the threshold of his door, For the Vision still was standing As he left it there before, When the convent bell appalling, From its belfry calling, calling, Summoned him to feed the poor. Through the long hour intervening It had waited his return, And he felt his bosom burn, Comprehending all the meaning, When the Blessed Vision said, "Hadst thou stayed, I must have fled!" INTERLUDE. All praised the Legend more or less; Some liked the moral, some the verse; Some thought it better, and some worse Than other legends of the past; Until, with ill-concealed distress At all their cavilling, at last The Theologian gravely said: "The Spanish proverb, then, is right; Consult your friends on what you do, And one will say that it is white, And others say that it is red." And "Amen!" quoth the Spanish Jew. "Six stories told! We must have seven, A cluster like the Pleiades, And lo! it happens, as with these, That one is missing from our heaven. Where is the Landlord? Bring him here; Let the Lost Pleiad reappear." Thus the Sicilian cried, and went Forthwith to seek his missing star, But did not find him in the bar, A place that landlords most frequent, Nor yet beside the kitchen fire, Nor up the stairs, nor in the hall; It was in vain to ask or call, There were no tidings of the Squire. So he came back with downcast head, Exclaiming: "Well, our bashful host Hath surely given up the ghost. Another proverb says the dead Can tell no tales; and that is true. It follows, then, that one of you Must tell a story in his stead. You must," he to the Student said, "Who know so many of the best, And tell them better than the rest." Straight by these flattering words beguiled, The Student, happy as a child When he is called a little man, Assumed the double task imposed, And without more ado unclosed His smiling lips, and thus began. THE STUDENT'S SECOND TALE THE BARON OF ST. CASTINE Baron Castine of St. Castine Has left his chateau in the Pyrenees, And sailed across the western seas. When he went away from his fair demesne The birds were building, the woods were green; And now the winds of winter blow Round the turrets of the old chateau, The birds are silent and unseen, The leaves lie dead in the ravine, And the Pyrenees are white with snow. His father, lonely, old, and gray, Sits by the fireside day by day, Thinking ever one thought of care; Through the southern windows, narrow and tall, The sun shines into the ancient hall, And makes a glory round his hair. The house-dog, stretched beneath his chair, Groans in his sleep as if in pain Then wakes, and yawns, and sleeps again, So silent is it everywhere,-- So silent you can hear the mouse Run and rummage along the beams Behind the wainscot of the wall; And the old man rouses from his dreams, And wanders restless through the house, As if he heard strange voices call. His footsteps echo along the floor Of a distant passage, and pause awhile; He is standing by an open door Looking long, with a sad, sweet smile, Into the room of his absent son. There is the bed on which he lay, There are the pictures bright and gay, Horses and hounds and sun-lit seas; There are his powder-flask and gun, And his hunting-knives in shape of a fan; The chair by the window where he sat, With the clouded tiger-skin for a mat, Looking out on the Pyrenees, Looking out on Mount Marbore And the Seven Valleys of Lavedan. Ah me! he turns away and sighs; There is a mist before his eyes. At night whatever the weather be, Wind or rain or starry heaven, Just as the clock is striking seven, Those who look from the windows see The village Curate, with lantern and maid, Come through the gateway from the park And cross the courtyard damp and dark,-- A ring of light in a ring of shade. And now at the old man's side he stands, His voice is cheery, his heart expands, He gossips pleasantly, by the blaze Of the fire of fagots, about old days, And Cardinal Mazarin and the Fronde, And the Cardinal's nieces fair and fond, And what they did, and what they said, When they heard his Eminence was dead. And after a pause the old man says, His mind still coming back again To the one sad thought that haunts his brain, "Are there any tidings from over sea? Ah, why has that wild boy gone from me?" And the Curate answers, looking down, Harmless and docile as a lamb, "Young blood! young blood! It must so be!" And draws from the pocket of his gown A handkerchief like an oriflamb, And wipes his spectacles, and they play Their little game of lansquenet In silence for an hour or so, Till the clock at nine strikes loud and clear From the village lying asleep below, And across the courtyard, into the dark Of the winding pathway in the park, Curate and lantern disappear, And darkness reigns in the old chateau. The ship has come back from over sea, She has been signalled from below, And into the harbor of Bordeaux She sails with her gallant company. But among them is nowhere seen The brave young Baron of St. Castine; He hath tarried behind, I ween, In the beautiful land of Acadie! And the father paces to and fro Through the chambers of the old chateau, Waiting, waiting to hear the hum Of wheels on the road that runs below, Of servants hurrying here and there, The voice in the courtyard, the step on the stair, Waiting for some one who doth not come! But letters there are, which the old man reads To the Curate, when he comes at night Word by word, as an acolyte Repeats his prayers and tells his beads; Letters full of the rolling sea, Full of a young man's joy to be Abroad in the world, alone and free; Full of adventures and wonderful scenes Of hunting the deer through forests vast In the royal grant of Pierre du Gast; Of nights in the tents of the Tarratines; Of Madocawando the Indian chief, And his daughters, glorious as queens, And beautiful beyond belief; And so soft the tones of their native tongue, The words are not spoken, they are sung! And the Curate listens, and smiling says: "Ah yes, dear friend! in our young days We should have liked to hunt the deer All day amid those forest scenes, And to sleep in the tents of the Tarratines; But now it is better sitting here Within four walls, and without the fear Of losing our hearts to Indian queens; For man is fire and woman is tow, And the Somebody comes and begins to blow." Then a gleam of distrust and vague surmise Shines in the father's gentle eyes, As fire-light on a window-pane Glimmers and vanishes again; But naught he answers; he only sighs, And for a moment bows his head; Then, as their custom is, they play Their little gain of lansquenet, And another day is with the dead. Another day, and many a day And many a week and month depart, When a fatal letter wings its way Across the sea, like a bird of prey, And strikes and tears the old man's heart. Lo! the young Baron of St. Castine, Swift as the wind is, and as wild, Has married a dusky Tarratine, Has married Madocawando's child! The letter drops from the father's hand; Though the sinews of his heart are wrung, He utters no cry, he breathes no prayer, No malediction falls from his tongue; But his stately figure, erect and grand, Bends and sinks like a column of sand In the whirlwind of his great despair. Dying, yes, dying! His latest breath Of parley at the door of death Is a blessing on his wayward son. Lower and lower on his breast Sinks his gray head; he is at rest; No longer he waits for any one; For many a year the old chateau Lies tenantless and desolate; Rank grasses in the courtyard grow, About its gables caws the crow; Only the porter at the gate Is left to guard it, and to wait The coming of the rightful heir; No other life or sound is there; No more the Curate comes at night, No more is seen the unsteady light, Threading the alleys of the park; The windows of the hall are dark, The chambers dreary, cold, and bare! At length, at last, when the winter is past, And birds are building, and woods are green, With flying skirts is the Curate seen Speeding along the woodland way, Humming gayly, "No day is so long But it comes at last to vesper-song." He stops at the porter's lodge to say That at last the Baron of St. Castine Is coming home with his Indian queen, Is coming without a week's delay; And all the house must be swept and clean, And all things set in good array! And the solemn porter shakes his head; And the answer he makes is: "Lackaday! We will see, as the blind man said!" Alert since first the day began, The cock upon the village church Looks northward from his airy perch, As if beyond the ken of man To see the ships come sailing on, And pass the isle of Oleron, And pass the Tower of Cordouan. In the church below is cold in clay The heart that would have leaped for joy-- O tender heart of truth and trust!-- To see the coming of that day; In the church below the lips are dust; Dust are the hands, and dust the feet, That would have been so swift to meet The coming of that wayward boy. At night the front of the old chateau Is a blaze of light above and below; There's a sound of wheels and hoofs in the street, A cracking of whips, and scamper of feet, Bells are ringing, and horns are blown, And the Baron hath come again to his own. The Curate is waiting in the hall, Most eager and alive of all To welcome the Baron and Baroness; But his mind is full of vague distress, For he hath read in Jesuit books Of those children of the wilderness, And now, good, simple man! he looks To see a painted savage stride Into the room, with shoulders bare, And eagle feathers in her hair, And around her a robe of panther's hide. Instead, he beholds with secret shame A form of beauty undefined, A loveliness with out a name, Not of degree, but more of kind; Nor bold nor shy, nor short nor tall, But a new mingling of them all. Yes, beautiful beyond belief, Transfigured and transfused, he sees The lady of the Pyrenees, The daughter of the Indian chief. Beneath the shadow of her hair The gold-bronze color of the skin Seems lighted by a fire within, As when a burst of sunlight shines Beneath a sombre grove of pines,-- A dusky splendor in the air. The two small hands, that now are pressed In his, seem made to be caressed, They lie so warm and soft and still, Like birds half hidden in a nest, Trustful, and innocent of ill. And ah! he cannot believe his ears When her melodious voice he hears Speaking his native Gascon tongue; The words she utters seem to be Part of some poem of Goudouli, They are not spoken, they are sung! And the Baron smiles, and says, "You see, I told you but the simple truth; Ah, you may trust the eyes of youth!" Down in the village day by day The people gossip in their way, And stare to see the Baroness pass On Sunday morning to early Mass; And when she kneeleth down to pray, They wonder, and whisper together, and say, "Surely this is no heathen lass!" And in course of time they learn to bless The Baron and the Baroness. And in course of time the Curate learns A secret so dreadful, that by turns He is ice and fire, he freezes and burns. The Baron at confession hath said, That though this woman be his wife, He bath wed her as the Indians wed, He hath bought her for a gun and a knife! And the Curate replies: "O profligate, O Prodigal Son! return once more To the open arms and the open door Of the Church, or ever it be too late. Thank God, thy father did not live To see what he could not forgive; On thee, so reckless and perverse, He left his blessing, not his curse. But the nearer the dawn the darker the night, And by going wrong all things come right; Things have been mended that were worse, And the worse, the nearer they are to mend. For the sake of the living and the dead, Thou shalt be wed as Christians wed, And all things come to a happy end." O sun, that followest the night, In yon blue sky, serene and pure, And pourest thine impartial light Alike on mountain and on moor, Pause for a moment in thy course, And bless the bridegroom and the bride! O Gave, that from thy hidden source In you mysterious mountain-side Pursuest thy wandering way alone, And leaping down its steps of stone, Along the meadow-lands demure Stealest away to the Adour, Pause for a moment in thy course To bless the bridegroom and the bride! The choir is singing the matin song, The doors of the church are opened wide, The people crowd, and press, and throng To see the bridegroom and the bride. They enter and pass along the nave; They stand upon the father's grave; The bells are ringing soft and slow; The living above and the dead below Give their blessing on one and twain; The warm wind blows from the hills of Spain, The birds are building, the leaves are green, And Baron Castine of St. Castine Hath come at last to his own again. FINALE "Nunc plaudite!" the Student cried, When he had finished; "now applaud, As Roman actors used to say At the conclusion of a play"; And rose, and spread his hands abroad, And smiling bowed from side to side, As one who bears the palm away. And generous was the applause and loud, But less for him than for the sun, That even as the tale was done Burst from its canopy of cloud, And lit the landscape with the blaze Of afternoon on autumn days, And filled the room with light, and made The fire of logs a painted shade. A sudden wind from out the west Blew all its trumpets loud and shrill; The windows rattled with the blast, The oak-trees shouted as it passed, And straight, as if by fear possessed, The cloud encampment on the hill Broke up, and fluttering flag and tent Vanished into the firmament, And down the valley fled amain The rear of the retreating rain. Only far up in the blue sky A mass of clouds, like drifted snow Suffused with a faint Alpine glow, Was heaped together, vast and high, On which a shattered rainbow hung, Not rising like the ruined arch Of some aerial aqueduct, But like a roseate garland plucked From an Olympian god, and flung Aside in his triumphal march. Like prisoners from their dungeon gloom, Like birds escaping from a snare, Like school-boys at the hour of play, All left at once the pent-up room, And rushed into the open air; And no more tales were told that day. PART THIRD PRELUDE The evening came; the golden vane A moment in the sunset glanced, Then darkened, and then gleamed again, As from the east the moon advanced And touched it with a softer light; While underneath, with flowing mane, Upon the sign the Red Horse pranced, And galloped forth into the night. But brighter than the afternoon That followed the dark day of rain, And brighter than the golden vane That glistened in the rising moon, Within the ruddy fire-light gleamed; And every separate window-pane, Backed by the outer darkness, showed A mirror, where the flamelets gleamed And flickered to and fro, and seemed A bonfire lighted in the road. Amid the hospitable glow, Like an old actor on the stage, With the uncertain voice of age, The singing chimney chanted low The homely songs of long ago. The voice that Ossian heard of yore, When midnight winds were in his hall; A ghostly and appealing call, A sound of days that are no more! And dark as Ossian sat the Jew, And listened to the sound, and knew The passing of the airy hosts, The gray and misty cloud of ghosts In their interminable flight; And listening muttered in his beard, With accent indistinct and weird, "Who are ye, children of the Night?" Beholding his mysterious face, "Tell me," the gay Sicilian said, "Why was it that in breaking bread At supper, you bent down your head And, musing, paused a little space, As one who says a silent grace?" The Jew replied, with solemn air, "I said the Manichaean's prayer. It was his faith,--perhaps is mine,-- That life in all its forms is one, And that its secret conduits run Unseen, but in unbroken line, From the great fountain-head divine Through man and beast, through grain and grass. Howe'er we struggle, strive, and cry, From death there can be no escape, And no escape from life, alas Because we cannot die, but pass From one into another shape: It is but into life we die. "Therefore the Manichaean said This simple prayer on breaking bread, Lest he with hasty hand or knife Might wound the incarcerated life, The soul in things that we call dead: 'I did not reap thee, did not bind thee, I did not thrash thee, did not grind thee, Nor did I in the oven bake thee! It was not I, it was another Did these things unto thee, O brother; I only have thee, hold thee, break thee!'" "That birds have souls I can concede," The poet cried, with glowing cheeks; "The flocks that from their beds of reed Uprising north or southward fly, And flying write upon the sky The biforked letter of the Greeks, As hath been said by Rucellai; All birds that sing or chirp or cry, Even those migratory bands, The minor poets of the air, The plover, peep, and sanderling, That hardly can be said to sing, But pipe along the barren sands,-- All these have souls akin to ours; So hath the lovely race of flowers: Thus much I grant, but nothing more. The rusty hinges of a door Are not alive because they creak; This chimney, with its dreary roar, These rattling windows, do not speak!" "To me they speak," the Jew replied; "And in the sounds that sink and soar, I hear the voices of a tide That breaks upon an unknown shore!" Here the Sicilian interfered: "That was your dream, then, as you dozed A moment since, with eyes half-closed, And murmured something in your beard." The Hebrew smiled, and answered, "Nay; Not that, but something very near; Like, and yet not the same, may seem The vision of my waking dream; Before it wholly dies away, Listen to me, and you shall hear." THE SPANISH JEW'S TALE AZRAEL King Solomon, before his palace gate At evening, on the pavement tessellate Was walking with a stranger from the East, Arrayed in rich attire as for a feast, The mighty Runjeet-Sing, a learned man, And Rajah of the realms of Hindostan. And as they walked the guest became aware Of a white figure in the twilight air, Gazing intent, as one who with surprise His form and features seemed to recognize; And in a whisper to the king he said: "What is yon shape, that, pallid as the dead, Is watching me, as if he sought to trace In the dim light the features of my face?" The king looked, and replied: "I know him well; It is the Angel men call Azrael, 'T is the Death Angel; what hast thou to fear?" And the guest answered: "Lest he should come near, And speak to me, and take away my breath! Save me from Azrael, save me from death! O king, that hast dominion o'er the wind, Bid it arise and bear me hence to Ind." The king gazed upward at the cloudless sky, Whispered a word, and raised his hand on high, And lo! the signet-ring of chrysoprase On his uplifted finger seemed to blaze With hidden fire, and rushing from the west There came a mighty wind, and seized the guest And lifted him from earth, and on they passed, His shining garments streaming in the blast, A silken banner o'er the walls upreared, A purple cloud, that gleamed and disappeared. Then said the Angel, smiling: "If this man Be Rajah Runjeet-Sing of Hindostan, Thou hast done well in listening to his prayer; I was upon my way to seek him there." INTERLUDE. "O Edrehi, forbear to-night Your ghostly legends of affright, And let the Talmud rest in peace; Spare us your dismal tales of death That almost take away one's breath; So doing, may your tribe increase." Thus the Sicilian said; then went And on the spinet's rattling keys Played Marianina, like a breeze From Naples and the Southern seas, That brings us the delicious scent Of citron and of orange trees, And memories of soft days of ease At Capri and Amalfi spent. "Not so," the eager Poet said; "At least, not so before I tell The story of my Azrael, An angel mortal as ourselves, Which in an ancient tome I found Upon a convent's dusty shelves, Chained with an iron chain, and bound In parchment, and with clasps of brass, Lest from its prison, some dark day, It might be stolen or steal away, While the good friars were singing mass. "It is a tale of Charlemagne, When like a thunder-cloud, that lowers And sweeps from mountain-crest to coast, With lightning flaming through its showers, He swept across the Lombard plain, Beleaguering with his warlike train Pavia, the country's pride and boast, The City of the Hundred Towers." Thus heralded the tale began, And thus in sober measure ran. THE POET'S TALE CHARLEMAGNE Olger the Dane and Desiderio, King of the Lombards, on a lofty tower Stood gazing northward o'er the rolling plains, League after league of harvests, to the foot Of the snow-crested Alps, and saw approach A mighty army, thronging all the roads That led into the city. And the King Said unto Olger, who had passed his youth As hostage at the court of France, and knew The Emperor's form and face "Is Charlemagne Among that host?" And Olger answered: "No." And still the innumerable multitude Flowed onward and increased, until the King Cried in amazement: "Surely Charlemagne Is coming in the midst of all these knights!" And Olger answered slowly: "No; not yet; He will not come so soon." Then much disturbed King Desiderio asked: "What shall we do, if he approach with a still greater army!" And Olger answered: "When he shall appear, You will behold what manner of man he is; But what will then befall us I know not." Then came the guard that never knew repose, The Paladins of France; and at the sight The Lombard King o'ercome with terror cried: "This must be Charlemagne!" and as before Did Olger answer: "No; not yet, not yet." And then appeared in panoply complete The Bishops and the Abbots and the Priests Of the imperial chapel, and the Counts And Desiderio could no more endure The light of day, nor yet encounter death, But sobbed aloud and said: "Let us go down And hide us in the bosom of the earth, Far from the sight and anger of a foe So terrible as this!" And Olger said: "When you behold the harvests in the fields Shaking with fear, the Po and the Ticino Lashing the city walls with iron waves, Then may you know that Charlemagne is come. And even as he spake, in the northwest, Lo! there uprose a black and threatening cloud, Out of whose bosom flashed the light of arms Upon the people pent up in the city; A light more terrible than any darkness; And Charlemagne appeared;--a Man of Iron! His helmet was of iron, and his gloves Of iron, and his breastplate and his greaves And tassets were of iron, and his shield. In his left hand he held an iron spear, In his right hand his sword invincible. The horse he rode on had the strength of iron, And color of iron. All who went before him Beside him and behind him, his whole host, Were armed with iron, and their hearts within them Were stronger than the armor that they wore. The fields and all the roads were filled with iron, And points of iron glistened in the sun And shed a terror through the city streets. This at a single glance Olger the Dane Saw from the tower, and turning to the King Exclaimed in haste: "Behold! this is the man You looked for with such eagerness!" and then Fell as one dead at Desiderio's feet. INTERLUDE Well pleased all listened to the tale, That drew, the Student said, its pith And marrow from the ancient myth Of some one with an iron flail; Or that portentous Man of Brass Hephaestus made in days of yore, Who stalked about the Cretan shore, And saw the ships appear and pass, And threw stones at the Argonauts, Being filled with indiscriminate ire That tangled and perplexed his thoughts; But, like a hospitable host, When strangers landed on the coast, Heated himself red-hot with fire, And hugged them in his arms, and pressed Their bodies to his burning breast. The Poet answered: "No, not thus The legend rose; it sprang at first Out of the hunger and the thirst In all men for the marvellous. And thus it filled and satisfied The imagination of mankind, And this ideal to the mind Was truer than historic fact. Fancy enlarged and multiplied The tenors of the awful name Of Charlemagne, till he became Armipotent in every act, And, clothed in mystery, appeared Not what men saw, but what they feared. Besides, unless my memory fail, Your some one with an iron flail Is not an ancient myth at all, But comes much later on the scene As Talus in the Faerie Queene, The iron groom of Artegall, Who threshed out falsehood and deceit, And truth upheld, and righted wrong, As was, as is the swallow, fleet, And as the lion is, was strong." The Theologian said: "Perchance Your chronicler in writing this Had in his mind the Anabasis, Where Xenophon describes the advance Of Artaxerxes to the fight; At first the low gray cloud of dust, And then a blackness o'er the fields As of a passing thunder-gust, Then flash of brazen armor bright, And ranks of men, and spears up-thrust, Bowmen and troops with wicker shields, And cavalry equipped in white, And chariots ranged in front of these With scythes upon their axle-trees." To this the Student answered: "Well, I also have a tale to tell Of Charlemagne; a tale that throws A softer light, more tinged with rose, Than your grim apparition cast Upon the darkness of the past. Listen, and hear in English rhyme What the good Monk of Lauresheim Gives as the gossip of his time, In mediaeval Latin prose." THE STUDENT'S TALE EMMA AND EGINHARD When Alcuin taught the sons of Charlemagne, In the free schools of Aix, how kings should reign, And with them taught the children of the poor How subjects should be patient and endure, He touched the lips of some, as best befit, With honey from the hives of Holy Writ; Others intoxicated with the wine Of ancient history, sweet but less divine; Some with the wholesome fruits of grammar fed; Others with mysteries of the stars o'er-head, That hang suspended in the vaulted sky Like lamps in some fair palace vast and high. In sooth, it was a pleasant sight to see That Saxon monk, with hood and rosary, With inkhorn at his belt, and pen and book, And mingled lore and reverence in his look, Or hear the cloister and the court repeat The measured footfalls of his sandaled feet, Or watch him with the pupils of his school, Gentle of speech, but absolute of rule. Among them, always earliest in his place. Was Eginhard, a youth of Frankish race, Whose face was bright with flashes that forerun The splendors of a yet unrisen sun. To him all things were possible, and seemed Not what he had accomplished, but had dreamed, And what were tasks to others were his play, The pastime of an idle holiday. Smaragdo, Abbot of St. Michael's, said, With many a shrug and shaking of the head, Surely some demon must possess the lad, Who showed more wit than ever schoolboy had, And learned his Trivium thus without the rod; But Alcuin said it was the grace of God. Thus he grew up, in Logic point-device, Perfect in Grammar, and in Rhetoric nice; Science of Numbers, Geometric art, And lore of Stars, and Music knew by heart; A Minnesinger, long before the times Of those who sang their love in Suabian rhymes. The Emperor, when he heard this good report Of Eginhard much buzzed about the court, Said to himself, "This stripling seems to be Purposely sent into the world for me; He shall become my scribe, and shall be schooled In all the arts whereby the world is ruled." Thus did the gentle Eginhard attain To honor in the court of Charlemagne; Became the sovereign's favorite, his right hand, So that his fame was great in all the land, And all men loved him for his modest grace And comeliness of figure and of face. An inmate of the palace, yet recluse, A man of books, yet sacred from abuse Among the armed knights with spur on heel, The tramp of horses and the clang of steel; And as the Emperor promised he was schooled In all the arts by which the world is ruled. But the one art supreme, whose law is fate, The Emperor never dreamed of till too late. Home from her convent to the palace came The lovely Princess Emma, whose sweet name, Whispered by seneschal or sung by bard, Had often touched the soul of Eginhard. He saw her from his window, as in state She came, by knights attended through the gate; He saw her at the banquet of that day, Fresh as the morn, and beautiful as May; He saw her in the garden, as she strayed Among the flowers of summer with her maid, And said to him, "O Eginhard, disclose The meaning and the mystery of the rose"; And trembling he made answer: "In good sooth, Its mystery is love, its meaning youth!" How can I tell the signals and the signs By which one heart another heart divines? How can I tell the many thousand ways By which it keeps the secret it betrays? O mystery of love! O strange romance! Among the Peers and Paladins of France, Shining in steel, and prancing on gay steeds, Noble by birth, yet nobler by great deeds, The Princess Emma had no words nor looks But for this clerk, this man of thought and books. The summer passed, the autumn came; the stalks Of lilies blackened in the garden walks; The leaves fell, russet-golden and blood-red, Love-letters thought the poet fancy-led, Or Jove descending in a shower of gold Into the lap of Danae of old; For poets cherish many a strange conceit, And love transmutes all nature by its heat. No more the garden lessons, nor the dark And hurried meetings in the twilight park; But now the studious lamp, and the delights Of firesides in the silent winter nights, And watching from his window hour by hour The light that burned in Princess Emma's tower. At length one night, while musing by the fire, O'ercome at last by his insane desire,-- For what will reckless love not do and dare?-- He crossed the court, and climbed the winding stair, With some feigned message in the Emperor's name; But when he to the lady's presence came He knelt down at her feet, until she laid Her hand upon him, like a naked blade, And whispered in his ear: "Arise, Sir Knight, To my heart's level, O my heart's delight." And there he lingered till the crowing cock, The Alectryon of the farmyard and the flock, Sang his aubade with lusty voice and clear, To tell the sleeping world that dawn was near. And then they parted; but at parting, lo! They saw the palace courtyard white with snow, And, placid as a nun, the moon on high Gazing from cloudy cloisters of the sky. "Alas!" he said, "how hide the fatal line Of footprints leading from thy door to mine, And none returning!" Ah, he little knew What woman's wit, when put to proof, can do! That night the Emperor, sleepless with the cares And troubles that attend on state affairs, Had risen before the dawn, and musing gazed Into the silent night, as one amazed To see the calm that reigned o'er all supreme, When his own reign was but a troubled dream. The moon lit up the gables capped with snow, And the white roofs, and half the court below, And he beheld a form, that seemed to cower Beneath a burden, come from Emma's tower,-- A woman, who upon her shoulders bore Clerk Eginhard to his own private door, And then returned in haste, but still essayed To tread the footprints she herself had made; And as she passed across the lighted space, The Emperor saw his daughter Emma's face! He started not; he did not speak or moan, But seemed as one who hath been turned to stone; And stood there like a statue, nor awoke Out of his trance of pain, till morning broke, Till the stars faded, and the moon went down, And o'er the towers and steeples of the town Came the gray daylight; then the sun, who took The empire of the world with sovereign look, Suffusing with a soft and golden glow All the dead landscape in its shroud of snow, Touching with flame the tapering chapel spires, Windows and roofs, and smoke of household fires, And kindling park and palace as he came; The stork's nest on the chimney seemed in flame. And thus he stood till Eginhard appeared, Demure and modest with his comely beard And flowing flaxen tresses, come to ask, As was his wont, the day's appointed task. The Emperor looked upon him with a smile, And gently said: "My son, wait yet awhile; This hour my council meets upon some great And very urgent business of the state. Come back within the hour. On thy return The work appointed for thee shalt thou learn. Having dismissed this gallant Troubadour, He summoned straight his council, and secure And steadfast in his purpose, from the throne All the adventure of the night made known; Then asked for sentence; and with eager breath Some answered banishment, and others death. Then spake the king: "Your sentence is not mine; Life is the gift of God, and is divine; Nor from these palace walls shall one depart Who carries such a secret in his heart; My better judgment points another way. Good Alcuin, I remember how one day When my Pepino asked you, 'What are men?' You wrote upon his tablets with your pen, 'Guests of the grave and travellers that pass!' This being true of all men, we, alas! Being all fashioned of the selfsame dust, Let us be merciful as well as just; This passing traveller, who hath stolen away The brightest jewel of my crown to-day, Shall of himself the precious gem restore; By giving it, I make it mine once more. Over those fatal footprints I will throw My ermine mantle like another snow." Then Eginhard was summoned to the hall, And entered, and in presence of them all, The Emperor said: "My son, for thou to me Hast been a son, and evermore shalt be, Long hast thou served thy sovereign, and thy zeal Pleads to me with importunate appeal, While I have been forgetful to requite Thy service and affection as was right. But now the hour is come, when I, thy Lord, Will crown thy love with such supreme reward, A gift so precious kings have striven in vain To win it from the hands of Charlemagne." Then sprang the portals of the chamber wide, And Princess Emma entered, in the pride Of birth and beauty, that in part o'er-came The conscious terror and the blush of shame. And the good Emperor rose up from his throne, And taking her white hand within his own Placed it in Eginhard's, and said: "My son This is the gift thy constant zeal hath won; Thus I repay the royal debt I owe, And cover up the footprints in the snow." INTERLUDE Thus ran the Student's pleasant rhyme Of Eginhard and love and youth; Some doubted its historic truth, But while they doubted, ne'ertheless Saw in it gleams of truthfulness, And thanked the Monk of Lauresheim. This they discussed in various mood; Then in the silence that ensued Was heard a sharp and sudden sound As of a bowstring snapped in air; And the Musician with a bound Sprang up in terror from his chair, And for a moment listening stood, Then strode across the room, and found His dear, his darling violin Still lying safe asleep within Its little cradle, like a child That gives a sudden cry of pain, And wakes to fall asleep again; And as he looked at it and smiled, By the uncertain light beguiled, Despair! two strings were broken in twain. While all lamented and made moan, With many a sympathetic word As if the loss had been their own, Deeming the tones they might have heard Sweeter than they had heard before, They saw the Landlord at the door, The missing man, the portly Squire! He had not entered, but he stood With both arms full of seasoned wood, To feed the much-devouring fire, That like a lion in a cage Lashed its long tail and roared with rage. The missing man! Ah, yes, they said, Missing, but whither had he fled? Where had he hidden himself away? No farther than the barn or shed; He had not hidden himself, nor fled; How should he pass the rainy day But in his barn with hens and hay, Or mending harness, cart, or sled? Now, having come, he needs must stay And tell his tale as well as they. The Landlord answered only: "These Are logs from the dead apple-trees Of the old orchard planted here By the first Howe of Sudbury. Nor oak nor maple has so clear A flame, or burns so quietly, Or leaves an ash so clean and white"; Thinking by this to put aside The impending tale that terrified; When suddenly, to his delight, The Theologian interposed, Saying that when the door was closed, And they had stopped that draft of cold, Unpleasant night air, he proposed To tell a tale world-wide apart From that the Student had just told; World-wide apart, and yet akin, As showing that the human heart Beats on forever as of old, As well beneath the snow-white fold Of Quaker kerchief, as within Sendal or silk or cloth of gold, And without preface would begin. And then the clamorous clock struck eight, Deliberate, with sonorous chime Slow measuring out the march of time, Like some grave Consul of old Rome In Jupiter's temple driving home The nails that marked the year and date. Thus interrupted in his rhyme, The Theologian needs must wait; But quoted Horace, where he sings The dire Necessity of things, That drives into the roofs sublime Of new-built houses of the great The adamantine nails of Fate. When ceased the little carillon To herald from its wooden tower The important transit of the hour, The Theologian hastened on, Content to be all owed at last To sing his Idyl of the Past. THE THEOLOGIAN'S TALE ELIZABETH I "Ah, how short are the days! How soon the night overtakes us! In the old country the twilight is longer; but here in the forest Suddenly comes the dark, with hardly a pause in its coming, Hardly a moment between the two lights, the day and the lamplight; Yet how grand is the winter! How spotless the snow is, and perfect!" Thus spake Elizabeth Haddon at nightfall to Hannah the housemaid, As in the farm-house kitchen, that served for kitchen and parlor, By the window she sat with her work, and looked on a landscape White as the great white sheet that Peter saw in his vision, By the four corners let down and descending out of the heavens. Covered with snow were the forests of pine, and the fields and the meadows. Nothing was dark but the sky, and the distant Delaware flowing Down from its native hills, a peaceful and bountiful river. Then with a smile on her lips made answer Hannah the housemaid: "Beautiful winter! yea, the winter is beautiful, surely, If one could only walk like a fly with one's feet on the ceiling. But the great Delaware River is not like the Thames, as we saw it Out of our upper windows in Rotherhithe Street in the Borough, Crowded with masts and sails of vessels coming and going; Here there is nothing but pines, with patches of snow on their branches. There is snow in the air, and see! it is falling already; All the roads will be blocked, and I pity Joseph to-morrow, Breaking his way through the drifts, with his sled and oxen; and then, too, How in all the world shall we get to Meeting on First-Day?" But Elizabeth checked her, and answered, mildly reproving: "Surely the Lord will provide; for unto the snow he sayeth, Be thou on the earth, the good Lord sayeth; he is it Giveth snow like wool, like ashes scatters the hoar-frost." So she folded her work and laid it away in her basket. Meanwhile Hannah the housemaid had closed and fastened the shutters, Spread the cloth, and lighted the lamp on the table, and placed there Plates and cups from the dresser, the brown rye loaf, and the butter Fresh from the dairy, and then, protecting her hand with a holder, Took from the crane in the chimney the steaming and simmering kettle, Poised it aloft in the air, and filled up the earthen teapot, Made in Delft, and adorned with quaint and wonderful figures. Then Elizabeth said, "Lo! Joseph is long on his errand. I have sent him away with a hamper of food and of clothing For the poor in the village. A good lad and cheerful is Joseph; In the right place is his heart, and his hand is ready and willing." Thus in praise of her servant she spake, and Hannah the housemaid Laughed with her eyes, as she listened, but governed her tongue, and was silent, While her mistress went on: "The house is far from the village; We should be lonely here, were it not for Friends that in passing Sometimes tarry o'ernight, and make us glad by their coming." Thereupon answered Hannah the housemaid, the thrifty, the frugal: "Yea, they come and they tarry, as if thy house were a tavern; Open to all are its doors, and they come and go like the pigeons In and out of the holes of the pigeon-house over the hayloft, Cooing and smoothing their feathers and basking themselves in the sunshine." But in meekness of spirit, and calmly, Elizabeth answered: "All I have is the Lord's, not mine to give or withhold it; I but distribute his gifts to the poor, and to those of his people Who in journeyings often surrender their lives to his service. His, not mine, are the gifts, and only so far can I make them Mine, as in giving I add my heart to whatever is given. Therefore my excellent father first built this house in the clearing; Though he came not himself, I came; for the Lord was my guidance, Leading me here for this service. We must not grudge, then, to others Ever the cup of cold water, or crumbs that fall from our table." Thus rebuked, for a season was silent the penitent housemaid; And Elizabeth said in tones even sweeter and softer: "Dost thou remember, Hannah, the great May-Meeting in London, When I was still a child, how we sat in the silent assembly, Waiting upon the Lord in patient and passive submission? No one spake, till at length a young man, a stranger, John Estaugh, Moved by the Spirit, rose, as if he were John the Apostle, Speaking such words of power that they bowed our hearts, as a strong wind Bends the grass of the fields, or grain that is ripe for the sickle. Thoughts of him to-day have been oft borne inward upon me, Wherefore I do not know; but strong is the feeling within me That once more I shall see a face I have never forgotten." II E'en as she spake they heard the musical jangle of sleigh-bells, First far off, with a dreamy sound and faint in the distance, Then growing nearer and louder, and turning into the farmyard, Till it stopped at the door, with sudden creaking of runners. Then there were voices heard as of two men talking together, And to herself, as she listened, upbraiding said Hannah the housemaid, "It is Joseph come back, and I wonder what stranger is with him?" Down from its nail she took and lighted the great tin lantern Pierced with holes, and round, and roofed like the top of a lighthouse, And went forth to receive the coming guest at the doorway, Casting into the dark a network of glimmer and shadow Over the falling snow, the yellow sleigh, and the horses, And the forms of men, snow-covered, looming gigantic. Then giving Joseph the lantern, she entered the house with the stranger. Youthful he was and tall, and his cheeks aglow with the night air; And as he entered, Elizabeth rose, and, going to meet him, As if an unseen power had announced and preceded his presence, And he had come as one whose coming had long been expected, Quietly gave him her hand, and said, "Thou art welcome, John Estaugh." And the stranger replied, with staid and quiet behavior, "Dost thou remember me still, Elizabeth? After so many Years have passed, it seemeth a wonderful thing that I find thee. Surely the hand of the Lord conducted me here to thy threshold. For as I journeyed along, and pondered alone and in silence On his ways, that are past finding out, I saw in the snow-mist, Seemingly weary with travel, a wayfarer, who by the wayside Paused and waited. Forthwith I remembered Queen Candace's eunuch, How on the way that goes down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, Reading Esaias the Prophet, he journeyed, and spake unto Philip, Praying him to come up and sit in his chariot with him. So I greeted the man, and he mounted the sledge beside me, And as we talked on the way he told me of thee and thy homestead, How, being led by the light of the Spirit, that never deceiveth, Full of zeal for the work of the Lord, thou hadst come to this country. And I remembered thy name, and thy father and mother in England, And on my journey have stopped to see thee, Elizabeth Haddon. Wishing to strengthen thy hand in the labors of love thou art doing." And Elizabeth answered with confident voice, and serenely Looking into his face with her innocent eyes as she answered, "Surely the hand of the Lord is in it; his Spirit hath led thee Out of the darkness and storm to the light and peace of my fireside." Then, with stamping of feet, the door was opened, and Joseph Entered, bearing the lantern, and, carefully blowing the light out, Rung it up on its nail, and all sat down to their supper; For underneath that roof was no distinction of persons, But one family only, one heart, one hearth and one household. When the supper was ended they drew their chairs to the fireplace, Spacious, open-hearted, profuse of flame and of firewood, Lord of forests unfelled, and not a gleaner of fagots, Spreading its arms to embrace with inexhaustible bounty All who fled from the cold, exultant, laughing at winter! Only Hannah the housemaid was busy in clearing the table, Coming and going, and hustling about in closet and chamber. Then Elizabeth told her story again to John Estaugh, Going far back to the past, to the early days of her childhood; How she had waited and watched, in all her doubts and besetments Comforted with the extendings and holy, sweet inflowings Of the spirit of love, till the voice imperative sounded, And she obeyed the voice, and cast in her lot with her people Here in the desert land, and God would provide for the issue. Meanwhile Joseph sat with folded hands, and demurely Listened, or seemed to listen, and in the silence that followed Nothing was heard for a while but the step of Hannah the housemaid Walking the floor overhead, and setting the chambers in order. And Elizabeth said, with a smile of compassion, "The maiden Hath a light heart in her breast, but her feet are heavy and awkward." Inwardly Joseph laughed, but governed his tongue, and was silent. Then came the hour of sleep, death's counterfeit, nightly rehearsal Of the great Silent Assembly, the Meeting of shadows, where no man Speaketh, but all are still, and the peace and rest are unbroken! Silently over that house the blessing of slumber descended. But when the morning dawned, and the sun uprose in his splendor, Breaking his way through clouds that encumbered his path in the heavens, Joseph was seen with his sled and oxen breaking a pathway Through the drifts of snow; the horses already were harnessed, And John Estaugh was standing and taking leave at the threshold, Saying that he should return at the Meeting in May; while above them Hannah the housemaid, the homely, was looking out of the attic, Laughing aloud at Joseph, then suddenly closing the casement, As the bird in a cuckoo-clock peeps out of its window, Then disappears again, and closes the shutter behind it. III Now was the winter gone, and the snow; and Robin the Redbreast, Boasted on bush and tree it was he, it was he and no other That had covered with leaves the Babes in the Wood, and blithely All the birds sang with him, and little cared for his boasting, Or for his Babes in the Wood, or the Cruel Uncle, and only Sang for the mates they had chosen, and cared for the nests they were building. With them, but more sedately and meekly, Elizabeth Haddon Sang in her inmost heart, but her lips were silent and songless. Thus came the lovely spring with a rush of blossoms and music, Flooding the earth with flowers, and the air with melodies vernal. Then it came to pass, one pleasant morning, that slowly Up the road there came a cavalcade, as of pilgrims Men and women, wending their way to the Quarterly Meeting In the neighboring town; and with them came riding John Estaugh. At Elizabeth's door they stopped to rest, and alighting Tasted the currant wine, and the bread of rye, and the honey Brought from the hives, that stood by the sunny wall of the garden; Then remounted their horses, refreshed, and continued their journey, And Elizabeth with them, and Joseph, and Hannah the housemaid. But, as they started, Elizabeth lingered a little, and leaning Over her horse's neck, in a whisper said to John Estaugh "Tarry awhile behind, for I have something to tell thee, Not to be spoken lightly, nor in the presence of others; Them it concerneth not, only thee and me it concerneth." And they rode slowly along through the woods, conversing together. It was a pleasure to breathe the fragrant air of the forest; It was a pleasure to live on that bright and happy May morning! Then Elizabeth said, though still with a certain reluctance, As if impelled to reveal a secret she fain would have guarded: "I will no longer conceal what is laid upon me to tell thee; I have received from the Lord a charge to love thee, John Estaugh." And John Estaugh made answer, surprised by the words she had spoken, "Pleasant to me are thy converse, thy ways, thy meekness of spirit; Pleasant thy frankness of speech, and thy soul's immaculate whiteness, Love without dissimulation, a holy and inward adorning. But I have yet no light to lead me, no voice to direct me. When the Lord's work is done, and the toil and the labor completed He hath appointed to me, I will gather into the stillness Of my own heart awhile, and listen and wait for his guidance." Then Elizabeth said, not troubled nor wounded in spirit, "So is it best, John Estaugh. We will not speak of it further. It hath been laid upon me to tell thee this, for to-morrow Thou art going away, across the sea, and I know not When I shall see thee more; but if the Lord hath decreed it, Thou wilt return again to seek me here and to find me." And they rode onward in silence, and entered the town with the others. IV Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another, Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence. Now went on as of old the quiet life of the homestead. Patient and unrepining Elizabeth labored, in all things Mindful not of herself, but bearing the burdens of others, Always thoughtful and kind and untroubled; and Hannah the housemaid Diligent early and late, and rosy with washing and scouring, Still as of old disparaged the eminent merits of Joseph, And was at times reproved for her light and frothy behavior, For her shy looks, and her careless words, and her evil surmisings, Being pressed down somewhat like a cart with sheaves overladen, As she would sometimes say to Joseph, quoting the Scriptures. Meanwhile John Estaugh departed across the sea, and departing Carried hid in his heart a secret sacred and precious, Filling its chambers with fragrance, and seeming to him in its sweetness Mary's ointment of spikenard, that filled all the house with its odor. O lost days of delight, that are wasted in doubting and waiting! O lost hours and days in which we might have been happy! But the light shone at last, and guided his wavering footsteps, And at last came the voice, imperative, questionless, certain. Then John Estaugh came back o'er the sea for the gift that was offered, Better than houses and lands, the gift of a woman's affection. And on the First-Day that followed, he rose in the Silent Assembly, Holding in his strong hand a hand that trembled a little, Promising to be kind and true and faithful in all things. Such were the marriage-rites of John and Elizabeth Estaugh. And not otherwise Joseph, the honest, the diligent servant, Sped in his bashful wooing with homely Hannah the housemaid; For when he asked her the question, she answered, "Nay"; and then added "But thee may make believe, and see what will come of it, Joseph." INTERLUDE "A pleasant and a winsome tale," The Student said, "though somewhat pale And quiet in its coloring, As if it caught its tone and air From the gray suits that Quakers wear; Yet worthy of some German bard, Hebel, or Voss, or Eberhard, Who love of humble themes to sing, In humble verse; but no more true Than was the tale I told to you." The Theologian made reply, And with some warmth, "That I deny; 'T is no invention of my own, But something well and widely known To readers of a riper age, Writ by the skilful hand that wrote The Indian tale of Hobomok, And Philothea's classic page. I found it like a waif afloat Or dulse uprooted from its rock, On the swift tides that ebb and flow In daily papers, and at flood Bear freighted vessels to and fro, But later, when the ebb is low, Leave a long waste of sand and mud." "It matters little," quoth the Jew; "The cloak of truth is lined with lies, Sayeth some proverb old and wise; And Love is master of all arts, And puts it into human hearts The strangest things to say and do." And here the controversy closed Abruptly, ere 't was well begun; For the Sicilian interposed With, "Lordlings, listen, every one That listen may, unto a tale That's merrier than the nightingale; A tale that cannot boast, forsooth, A single rag or shred of truth; That does not leave the mind in doubt As to the with it or without; A naked falsehood and absurd As mortal ever told or heard. Therefore I tell it; or, maybe, Simply because it pleases me." THE SICILIAN'S TALE THE MONK OF CASAL-MAGGIORE Once on a time, some centuries ago, In the hot sunshine two Franciscan friars Wended their weary way with footsteps slow Back to their convent, whose white walls and spires Gleamed on the hillside like a patch of snow; Covered with dust they were, and torn by briers, And bore like sumpter-mules upon their backs The badge of poverty, their beggar's sacks. The first was Brother Anthony, a spare And silent man, with pallid cheeks and thin, Much given to vigils, penance, fasting, prayer, Solemn and gray, and worn with discipline, As if his body but white ashes were, Heaped on the living coals that glowed within; A simple monk, like many of his day, Whose instinct was to listen and obey. A different man was Brother Timothy, Of larger mould and of a coarser paste; A rubicund and stalwart monk was he, Broad in the shoulders, broader in the waist, Who often filled the dull refectory With noise by which the convent was disgraced, But to the mass-book gave but little heed, By reason he had never learned to read. Now, as they passed the outskirts of a wood, They saw, with mingled pleasure and surprise, Fast tethered to a tree an ass, that stood Lazily winking his large, limpid eyes. The farmer Gilbert of that neighborhood His owner was, who, looking for supplies Of fagots, deeper in the wood had strayed, Leaving his beast to ponder in the shade. As soon as Brother Timothy espied The patient animal, he said: "Good-lack! Thus for our needs doth Providence provide; We'll lay our wallets on the creature's back." This being done, he leisurely untied From head and neck the halter of the jack, And put it round his own, and to the tree Stood tethered fast as if the ass were he. And, bursting forth into a merry laugh, He cried to Brother Anthony: "Away! And drive the ass before you with your staff; And when you reach the convent you may say You left me at a farm, half tired and half Ill with a fever, for a night and day, And that the farmer lent this ass to bear Our wallets, that are heavy with good fare." Now Brother Anthony, who knew the pranks Of Brother Timothy, would not persuade Or reason with him on his quirks and cranks, But, being obedient, silently obeyed; And, smiting with his staff the ass's flanks, Drove him before him over hill and glade, Safe with his provend to the convent gate, Leaving poor Brother Timothy to his fate. Then Gilbert, laden with fagots for his fire, Forth issued from the wood, and stood aghast To see the ponderous body of the friar Standing where he had left his donkey last. Trembling he stood, and dared not venture nigher, But stared, and gaped, and crossed himself full fast; For, being credulous and of little wit, He thought it was some demon from the pit. While speechless and bewildered thus he gazed, And dropped his load of fagots on the ground, Quoth Brother Timothy: "Be not amazed That where you left a donkey should be found A poor Franciscan friar, half-starved and crazed, Standing demure and with a halter bound; But set me free, and hear the piteous story Of Brother Timothy of Casal-Maggiore. "I am a sinful man, although you see I wear the consecrated cowl and cape; You never owned an ass, but you owned me, Changed and transformed from my own natural shape All for the deadly sin of gluttony, From which I could not otherwise escape, Than by this penance, dieting on grass, And being worked and beaten as an ass. "Think of the ignominy I endured; Think of the miserable life I led, The toil and blows to which I was inured, My wretched lodging in a windy shed, My scanty fare so grudgingly procured, The damp and musty straw that formed my bed! But, having done this penance for my sins, My life as man and monk again begins." The simple Gilbert, hearing words like these, Was conscience-stricken, and fell down apace Before the friar upon his bended knees, And with a suppliant voice implored his grace; And the good monk, now very much at ease, Granted him pardon with a smiling face, Nor could refuse to be that night his guest, It being late, and he in need of rest. Upon a hillside, where the olive thrives, With figures painted on its white-washed walls, The cottage stood; and near the humming hives Made murmurs as of far-off waterfalls; A place where those who love secluded lives Might live content, and, free from noise and brawls, Like Claudian's Old Man of Verona here Measure by fruits the slow-revolving year. And, coming to this cottage of content They found his children, and the buxom wench His wife, Dame Cicely, and his father, bent With years and labor, seated on a bench, Repeating over some obscure event In the old wars of Milanese and French; All welcomed the Franciscan, with a sense Of sacred awe and humble reverence. When Gilbert told them what had come to pass, How beyond question, cavil, or surmise, Good Brother Timothy had been their ass, You should have seen the wonder in their eyes; You should have heard them cry, "Alas! alas! Have heard their lamentations and their sighs! For all believed the story, and began To see a saint in this afflicted man. Forthwith there was prepared a grand repast, To satisfy the craving of the friar After so rigid and prolonged a fast; The bustling housewife stirred the kitchen fire; Then her two barnyard fowls, her best and last, Were put to death, at her express desire, And served up with a salad in a bowl, And flasks of country wine to crown the whole. It would not be believed should I repeat How hungry Brother Timothy appeared; It was a pleasure but to see him eat, His white teeth flashing through his russet beard, His face aglow and flushed with wine and meat, His roguish eyes that rolled and laughed and leered! Lord! how he drank the blood-red country wine As if the village vintage were divine! And all the while he talked without surcease, And told his merry tales with jovial glee That never flagged, but rather did increase, And laughed aloud as if insane were he, And wagged his red beard, matted like a fleece, And cast such glances at Dame Cicely That Gilbert now grew angry with his guest, And thus in words his rising wrath expressed. "Good father," said he, "easily we see How needful in some persons, and how right, Mortification of the flesh may be. The indulgence you have given it to-night, After long penance, clearly proves to me Your strength against temptation is but slight, And shows the dreadful peril you are in Of a relapse into your deadly sin. "To-morrow morning, with the rising sun, Go back unto your convent, nor refrain From fasting and from scourging, for you run Great danger to become an ass again, Since monkish flesh and asinine are one; Therefore be wise, nor longer here remain, Unless you wish the scourge should be applied By other hands, that will not spare your hide." When this the monk had heard, his color fled And then returned, like lightning in the air, Till he was all one blush from foot to head, And even the bald spot in his russet hair Turned from its usual pallor to bright red! The old man was asleep upon his chair. Then all retired, and sank into the deep And helpless imbecility of sleep. They slept until the dawn of day drew near, Till the cock should have crowed, but did not crow, For they had slain the shining chanticleer And eaten him for supper, as you know. The monk was up betimes and of good cheer, And, having breakfasted, made haste to go, As if he heard the distant matin bell, And had but little time to say farewell. Fresh was the morning as the breath of kine; Odors of herbs commingled with the sweet Balsamic exhalations of the pine; A haze was in the air presaging heat; Uprose the sun above the Apennine, And all the misty valleys at its feet Were full of the delirious song of birds, Voices of men, and bells, and low of herds. All this to Brother Timothy was naught; He did not care for scenery, nor here His busy fancy found the thing it sought; But when he saw the convent walls appear, And smoke from kitchen chimneys upward caught And whirled aloft into the atmosphere, He quickened his slow footsteps, like a beast That scents the stable a league off at least. And as he entered though the convent gate He saw there in the court the ass, who stood Twirling his ears about, and seemed to wait, Just as he found him waiting in the wood; And told the Prior that, to alleviate The daily labors of the brotherhood, The owner, being a man of means and thrift, Bestowed him on the convent as a gift. And thereupon the Prior for many days Revolved this serious matter in his mind, And turned it over many different ways, Hoping that some safe issue he might find; But stood in fear of what the world would say, If he accepted presents of this kind, Employing beasts of burden for the packs, That lazy monks should carry on their backs. Then, to avoid all scandal of the sort, And stop the mouth of cavil, he decreed That he would cut the tedious matter short, And sell the ass with all convenient speed, Thus saving the expense of his support, And hoarding something for a time of need. So he despatched him to the neighboring Fair, And freed himself from cumber and from care. It happened now by chance, as some might say, Others perhaps would call it destiny, Gilbert was at the Fair; and heard a bray, And nearer came, and saw that it was he, And whispered in his ear, "Ah, lackaday! Good father, the rebellious flesh, I see, Has changed you back into an ass again, And all my admonitions were in vain." The ass, who felt this breathing in his ear, Did not turn round to look, but shook his head, As if he were not pleased these words to hear, And contradicted all that had been said. And this made Gilbert cry in voice more clear, "I know you well; your hair is russet-red; Do not deny it; for you are the same Franciscan friar, and Timothy by name." The ass, though now the secret had come out, Was obstinate, and shook his head again; Until a crowd was gathered round about To hear this dialogue between the twain; And raised their voices in a noisy shout When Gilbert tried to make the matter plain, And flouted him and mocked him all day long With laughter and with jibes and scraps of song. "If this be Brother Timothy," they cried, "Buy him, and feed him on the tenderest grass; Thou canst not do too much for one so tried As to be twice transformed into an ass." So simple Gilbert bought him, and untied His halter, and o'er mountain and morass He led him homeward, talking as he went Of good behavior and a mind content. The children saw them coming, and advanced, Shouting with joy, and hung about his neck,-- Not Gilbert's, but the ass's,--round him danced, And wove green garlands where-withal to deck His sacred person; for again it chanced Their childish feelings, without rein or check, Could not discriminate in any way A donkey from a friar of Orders Gray. "O Brother Timothy," the children said, "You have come back to us just as before; We were afraid, and thought that you were dead, And we should never see you any more." And then they kissed the white star on his head, That like a birth-mark or a badge he wore, And patted him upon the neck and face, And said a thousand things with childish grace. Thenceforward and forever he was known As Brother Timothy, and led alway A life of luxury, till he had grown Ungrateful being stuffed with corn and hay, And very vicious. Then in angry tone, Rousing himself, poor Gilbert said one day "When simple kindness is misunderstood A little flagellation may do good." His many vices need not here be told; Among them was a habit that he had Of flinging up his heels at young and old, Breaking his halter, running off like mad O'er pasture-lands and meadow, wood and wold, And other misdemeanors quite as bad; But worst of all was breaking from his shed At night, and ravaging the cabbage-bed. So Brother Timothy went back once more To his old life of labor and distress; Was beaten worse than he had been before. And now, instead of comfort and caress, Came labors manifold and trials sore; And as his toils increased his food grew less, Until at last the great consoler, Death, Ended his many sufferings with his breath. Great was the lamentation when he died; And mainly that he died impenitent; Dame Cicely bewailed, the children cried, The old man still remembered the event In the French war, and Gilbert magnified His many virtues, as he came and went, And said: "Heaven pardon Brother Timothy, And keep us from the sin of gluttony." INTERLUDE "Signor Luigi," said the Jew, When the Sicilian's tale was told, "The were-wolf is a legend old, But the were-ass is something new, And yet for one I think it true. The days of wonder have not ceased If there are beasts in forms of men, As sure it happens now and then, Why may not man become a beast, In way of punishment at least? "But this I will not now discuss, I leave the theme, that we may thus Remain within the realm of song. The story that I told before, Though not acceptable to all, At least you did not find too long. I beg you, let me try again, With something in a different vein, Before you bid the curtain fall. Meanwhile keep watch upon the door, Nor let the Landlord leave his chair, Lest he should vanish into air, And thus elude our search once more." Thus saying, from his lips he blew A little cloud of perfumed breath, And then, as if it were a clew To lead his footsteps safely through, Began his tale as followeth. THE SPANISH JEW'S SECOND TALE SCANDERBEG The battle is fought and won By King Ladislaus the Hun, In fire of hell and death's frost, On the day of Pentecost. And in rout before his path From the field of battle red Flee all that are not dead Of the army of Amurath. In the darkness of the night Iskander, the pride and boast Of that mighty Othman host, With his routed Turks, takes flight From the battle fought and lost On the day of Pentecost; Leaving behind him dead The army of Amurath, The vanguard as it led, The rearguard as it fled, Mown down in the bloody swath Of the battle's aftermath. But he cared not for Hospodars, Nor for Baron or Voivode, As on through the night he rode And gazed at the fateful stars, That were shining overhead But smote his steed with his staff, And smiled to himself, and said; "This is the time to laugh." In the middle of the night, In a halt of the hurrying flight, There came a Scribe of the King Wearing his signet ring, And said in a voice severe: "This is the first dark blot On thy name, George Castriot! Alas why art thou here, And the army of Amurath slain, And left on the battle plain?" And Iskander answered and said: "They lie on the bloody sod By the hoofs of horses trod; But this was the decree Of the watchers overhead; For the war belongeth to God, And in battle who are we, Who are we, that shall withstand The wind of his lifted hand?" Then he bade them bind with chains This man of books and brains; And the Scribe said: "What misdeed Have I done, that, without need, Thou doest to me this thing?" And Iskander answering Said unto him: "Not one Misdeed to me hast thou done; But for fear that thou shouldst run And hide thyself from me, Have I done this unto thee. "Now write me a writing, O Scribe, And a blessing be on thy tribe! A writing sealed with thy ring, To King Amurath's Pasha In the city of Croia, The city moated and walled, That he surrender the same In the name of my master, the King; For what is writ in his name Can never be recalled." And the Scribe bowed low in dread, And unto Iskander said: "Allah is great and just, But we are as ashes and dust; How shall I do this thing, When I know that my guilty head Will be forfeit to the King?" Then swift as a shooting star The curved and shining blade Of Iskander's scimetar From its sheath, with jewels bright, Shot, as he thundered: "Write!" And the trembling Scribe obeyed, And wrote in the fitful glare Of the bivouac fire apart, With the chill of the midnight air On his forehead white and bare, And the chill of death in his heart. Then again Iskander cried: "Now follow whither I ride, For here thou must not stay. Thou shalt be as my dearest friend, And honors without end Shall surround thee on every side, And attend thee night and day." But the sullen Scribe replied "Our pathways here divide; Mine leadeth not thy way." And even as he spoke Fell a sudden scimetar-stroke, When no one else was near; And the Scribe sank to the ground, As a stone, pushed from the brink Of a black pool, might sink With a sob and disappear; And no one saw the deed; And in the stillness around No sound was heard but the sound Of the hoofs of Iskander's steed, As forward he sprang with a bound. Then onward he rode and afar, With scarce three hundred men, Through river and forest and fen, O'er the mountains of Argentar; And his heart was merry within, When he crossed the river Drin, And saw in the gleam of the morn The White Castle Ak-Hissar, The city Croia called, The city moated and walled, The city where he was born,-- And above it the morning star. Then his trumpeters in the van On their silver bugles blew, And in crowds about him ran Albanian and Turkoman, That the sound together drew. And he feasted with his friends, And when they were warm with wine, He said: "O friends of mine, Behold what fortune sends, And what the fates design! King Amurath commands That my father's wide domain, This city and all its lands, Shall be given to me again." Then to the Castle White He rode in regal state, And entered in at the gate In all his arms bedight, And gave to the Pasha Who ruled in Croia The writing of the King, Sealed with his signet ring. And the Pasha bowed his head, And after a silence said: "Allah is just and great! I yield to the will divine, The city and lands are thine; Who shall contend with fate?" Anon from the castle walls The crescent banner falls, And the crowd beholds instead, Like a portent in the sky, Iskander's banner fly, The Black Eagle with double head; And a shout ascends on high, For men's souls are tired of the Turks, And their wicked ways and works, That have made of Ak-Hissar A city of the plague; And the loud, exultant cry That echoes wide and far Is: "Long live Scanderbeg!" It was thus Iskander came Once more unto his own; And the tidings, like the flame Of a conflagration blown By the winds of summer, ran, Till the land was in a blaze, And the cities far and near, Sayeth Ben Joshua Ben Meir, In his Book of the Words of the Days, "Were taken as a man Would take the tip of his ear." INTERLUDE "Now that is after my own heart," The Poet cried; "one understands Your swarthy hero Scanderbeg, Gauntlet on hand and boot on leg, And skilled in every warlike art, Riding through his Albanian lands, And following the auspicious star That shone for him o'er Ak-Hissar." The Theologian added here His word of praise not less sincere, Although he ended with a jibe; "The hero of romance and song Was born," he said, "to right the wrong; And I approve; but all the same That bit of treason with the Scribe Adds nothing to your hero's fame." The Student praised the good old times And liked the canter of the rhymes, That had a hoofbeat in their sound; But longed some further word to hear Of the old chronicler Ben Meir, And where his volume might he found. The tall Musician walked the room With folded arms and gleaming eyes, As if he saw the Vikings rise, Gigantic shadows in the gloom; And much he talked of their emprise, And meteors seen in Northern skies, And Heimdal's horn, and day of doom But the Sicilian laughed again; "This is the time to laugh," he said, For the whole story he well knew Was an invention of the Jew, Spun from the cobwebs in his brain, And of the same bright scarlet thread As was the Tale of Kambalu. Only the Landlord spake no word; 'T was doubtful whether he had heard The tale at all, so full of care Was he of his impending fate, That, like the sword of Damocles, Above his head hung blank and bare, Suspended by a single hair, So that he could not sit at ease, But sighed and looked disconsolate, And shifted restless in his chair, Revolving how he might evade The blow of the descending blade. The Student came to his relief By saying in his easy way To the Musician: "Calm your grief, My fair Apollo of the North, Balder the Beautiful and so forth; Although your magic lyre or lute With broken strings is lying mute, Still you can tell some doleful tale Of shipwreck in a midnight gale, Or something of the kind to suit The mood that we are in to-night For what is marvellous and strange; So give your nimble fancy range, And we will follow in its flight." But the Musician shook his head; "No tale I tell to-night," he said, "While my poor instrument lies there, Even as a child with vacant stare Lies in its little coffin dead." Yet, being urged, he said at last: "There comes to me out of the Past A voice, whose tones are sweet and wild, Singing a song almost divine, And with a tear in every line; An ancient ballad, that my nurse Sang to me when I was a child, In accents tender as the verse; And sometimes wept, and sometimes smiled While singing it, to see arise The look of wonder in my eyes, And feel my heart with tenor beat. This simple ballad I retain Clearly imprinted on my brain, And as a tale will now repeat" THE MUSICIAN'S TALE THE MOTHER'S GHOST Svend Dyring he rideth adown the glade; I myself was young! There he hath wooed him so winsome a maid; Fair words gladden so many a heart. Together were they for seven years, And together children six were theirs. Then came Death abroad through the land, And blighted the beautiful lily-wand. Svend Dyring he rideth adown the glade, And again hath he wooed him another maid, He hath wooed him a maid and brought home a bride, But she was bitter and full of pride. When she came driving into the yard, There stood the six children weeping so hard. There stood the small children with sorrowful heart; From before her feet she thrust them apart. She gave to them neither ale nor bread; "Ye shall suffer hunger and hate," she said. She took from them their quilts of blue, And said: "Ye shall lie on the straw we strew." She took from them the great waxlight; "Now ye shall lie in the dark at night." In the evening late they cried with cold; The mother heard it under the mould. The woman heard it the earth below: "To my little children I must go." She standeth before the Lord of all: "And may I go to my children small?" She prayed him so long, and would not cease, Until he bade her depart in peace. "At cock-crow thou shalt return again; Longer thou shalt not there remain!" She girded up her sorrowful bones, And rifted the walls and the marble stones. As through the village she flitted by, The watch-dogs howled aloud to the sky. When she came to the castle gate, There stood her eldest daughter in wait. "Why standest thou here, dear daughter mine? How fares it with brothers and sisters thine?" "Never art thou mother of mine, For my mother was both fair and fine. "My mother was white, with cheeks of red, But thou art pale, and like to the dead." "How should I be fair and fine? I have been dead; pale cheeks are mine. "How should I be white and red, So long, so long have I been dead?" When she came in at the chamber door, There stood the small children weeping sore. One she braided, another she brushed, The third she lifted, the fourth she hushed. The fifth she took on her lap and pressed, As if she would suckle it at her breast. Then to her eldest daughter said she, "Do thou bid Svend Dyring come hither to me." Into the chamber when he came She spake to him in anger and shame. "I left behind me both ale and bread; My children hunger and are not fed. "I left behind me quilts of blue; My children lie on the straw ye strew. "I left behind me the great waxlight; My children lie in the dark at night. "If I come again unto your hall, As cruel a fate shall you befall! "Now crows the cock with feathers red; Back to the earth must all the dead. "Now crows the cock with feathers swart; The gates of heaven fly wide apart. "Now crows the cock with feathers white; I can abide no longer to-night." Whenever they heard the watch-dogs wail, They gave the children bread and ale. Whenever they heard the watch-dogs bay, They feared lest the dead were on their way. Whenever they heard the watch-dogs bark; I myself was young! They feared the dead out there in the dark. Fair words gladden so many a heart. INTERLUDE Touched by the pathos of these rhymes, The Theologian said: "All praise Be to the ballads of old times And to the bards of simple ways, Who walked with Nature hand in hand, Whose country was their Holy Land, Whose singing robes were homespun brown From looms of their own native town, Which they were not ashamed to wear, And not of silk or sendal gay, Nor decked with fanciful array Of cockle-shells from Outre-Mer." To whom the Student answered: "Yes; All praise and honor! I confess That bread and ale, home-baked, home-brewed, Are wholesome and nutritious food, But not enough for all our needs; Poets--the best of them--are birds Of passage; where their instinct leads They range abroad for thoughts and words, And from all climes bring home the seeds That germinate in flowers or weeds. They are not fowls in barnyards born To cackle o'er a grain of corn; And, if you shut the horizon down To the small limits of their town, What do you but degrade your bard Till he at last becomes as one Who thinks the all-encircling sun Rises and sets in his back yard?" The Theologian said again: "It may be so; yet I maintain That what is native still is best, And little care I for the rest. 'T is a long story; time would fail To tell it, and the hour is late; We will not waste it in debate, But listen to our Landlord's tale." And thus the sword of Damocles Descending not by slow degrees, But suddenly, on the Landlord fell, Who blushing, and with much demur And many vain apologies, Plucking up heart, began to tell The Rhyme of one Sir Christopher. THE LANDLORD'S TALE THE RHYME OF SIR CHRISTOPHER It was Sir Christopher Gardiner, Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, From Merry England over the sea, Who stepped upon this continent As if his august presence lent A glory to the colony. You should have seen him in the street Of the little Boston of Winthrop's time, His rapier dangling at his feet Doublet and hose and boots complete, Prince Rupert hat with ostrich plume, Gloves that exhaled a faint perfume, Luxuriant curls and air sublime, And superior manners now obsolete! He had a way of saying things That made one think of courts and kings, And lords and ladies of high degree; So that not having been at court Seemed something very little short Of treason or lese-majesty, Such an accomplished knight was he. His dwelling was just beyond the town, At what he called his country-seat; For, careless of Fortune's smile or frown, And weary grown of the world and its ways, He wished to pass the rest of his days In a private life and a calm retreat. But a double life was the life he led, And, while professing to be in search Of a godly course, and willing, he said, Nay, anxious to join the Puritan church, He made of all this but small account, And passed his idle hours instead With roystering Morton of Merry Mount, That pettifogger from Furnival's Inn, Lord of misrule and riot and sin, Who looked on the wine when it was red. This country-seat was little more Than a cabin of log's; but in front of the door A modest flower-bed thickly sown With sweet alyssum and columbine Made those who saw it at once divine The touch of some other hand than his own. And first it was whispered, and then it was known, That he in secret was harboring there A little lady with golden hair, Whom he called his cousin, but whom he had wed In the Italian manner, as men said, And great was the scandal everywhere. But worse than this was the vague surmise, Though none could vouch for it or aver, That the Knight of the Holy Sepulchre Was only a Papist in disguise; And the more to imbitter their bitter lives, And the more to trouble the public mind, Came letters from England, from two other wives, Whom he had carelessly left behind; Both of them letters of such a kind As made the governor hold his breath; The one imploring him straight to send The husband home, that he might amend; The other asking his instant death, As the only way to make an end. The wary governor deemed it right, When all this wickedness was revealed, To send his warrant signed and sealed, And take the body of the knight. Armed with this mighty instrument, The marshal, mounting his gallant steed, Rode forth from town at the top of his speed, And followed by all his bailiffs bold, As if on high achievement bent, To storm some castle or stronghold, Challenge the warders on the wall, And seize in his ancestral hall A robber-baron grim and old. But when though all the dust and heat He came to Sir Christopher's country-seat, No knight he found, nor warder there, But the little lady with golden hair, Who was gathering in the bright sunshine The sweet alyssum and columbine; While gallant Sir Christopher, all so gay, Being forewarned, through the postern gate Of his castle wall had tripped away, And was keeping a little holiday In the forests, that bounded his estate. Then as a trusty squire and true The marshal searched the castle through, Not crediting what the lady said; Searched from cellar to garret in vain, And, finding no knight, came out again And arrested the golden damsel instead, And bore her in triumph into the town, While from her eyes the tears rolled down On the sweet alyssum and columbine, That she held in her fingers white and fine. The governor's heart was moved to see So fair a creature caught within The snares of Satan and of sin, And he read her a little homily On the folly and wickedness of the lives Of women, half cousins and half wives; But, seeing that naught his words availed, He sent her away in a ship that sailed For Merry England over the sea, To the other two wives in the old countree, To search her further, since he had failed To come at the heart of the mystery. Meanwhile Sir Christopher wandered away Through pathless woods for a month and a day, Shooting pigeons, and sleeping at night With the noble savage, who took delight In his feathered hat and his velvet vest, His gun and his rapier and the rest. But as soon as the noble savage heard That a bounty was offered for this gay bird, He wanted to slay him out of hand, And bring in his beautiful scalp for a show, Like the glossy head of a kite or crow, Until he was made to understand They wanted the bird alive, not dead; Then he followed him whithersoever he fled, Through forest and field, and hunted him down, And brought him prisoner into the town. Alas! it was a rueful sight, To see this melancholy knight In such a dismal and hapless case; His hat deformed by stain and dent, His plumage broken, his doublet rent, His beard and flowing locks forlorn, Matted, dishevelled, and unshorn, His boots with dust and mire besprent; But dignified in his disgrace, And wearing an unblushing face. And thus before the magistrate He stood to hear the doom of fate. In vain he strove with wonted ease To modify and extenuate His evil deeds in church and state, For gone was now his power to please; And his pompous words had no more weight Than feathers flying in the breeze. With suavity equal to his own The governor lent a patient ear To the speech evasive and highflown, In which he endeavored to make clear That colonial laws were too severe When applied to a gallant cavalier, A gentleman born, and so well known, And accustomed to move in a higher sphere. All this the Puritan governor heard, And deigned in answer never a word; But in summary manner shipped away, In a vessel that sailed from Salem bay, This splendid and famous cavalier, With his Rupert hat and his popery, To Merry England over the sea, As being unmeet to inhabit here. Thus endeth the Rhyme of Sir Christopher, Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, The first who furnished this barren land With apples of Sodom and ropes of sand. FINALE These are the tales those merry guests Told to each other, well or ill; Like summer birds that lift their crests Above the borders of their nests And twitter, and again are still. These are the tales, or new or old, In idle moments idly told; Flowers of the field with petals thin, Lilies that neither toil nor spin, And tufts of wayside weeds and gorse Hung in the parlor of the inn Beneath the sign of the Red Horse. And still, reluctant to retire, The friends sat talking by the fire And watched the smouldering embers burn To ashes, and flash up again Into a momentary glow, Lingering like them when forced to go, And going when they would remain; For on the morrow they must turn Their faces homeward, and the pain Of parting touched with its unrest A tender nerve in every breast. But sleep at last the victory won; They must be stirring with the sun, And drowsily good night they said, And went still gossiping to bed, And left the parlor wrapped in gloom. The only live thing in the room Was the old clock, that in its pace Kept time with the revolving spheres And constellations in their flight, And struck with its uplifted mace The dark, unconscious hours of night, To senseless and unlistening ears. Uprose the sun; and every guest, Uprisen, was soon equipped and dressed For journeying home and city-ward; The old stage-coach was at the door, With horses harnessed, long before The sunshine reached the withered sward Beneath the oaks, whose branches hoar Murmured: "Farewell forevermore." "Farewell!" the portly Landlord cried; "Farewell!" the parting guests replied, But little thought that nevermore Their feet would pass that threshold o'er; That nevermore together there Would they assemble, free from care, To hear the oaks' mysterious roar, And breathe the wholesome country air. Where are they now? What lands and skies Paint pictures in their friendly eyes? What hope deludes, what promise cheers, What pleasant voices fill their ears? Two are beyond the salt sea waves, And three already in their graves. Perchance the living still may look Into the pages of this book, And see the days of long ago Floating and fleeting to and fro, As in the well-remembered brook They saw the inverted landscape gleam, And their own faces like a dream Look up upon them from below. FLOWER-DE-LUCE FLOWER-DE-LUCE Beautiful lily, dwelling by still rivers, Or solitary mere, Or where the sluggish meadow-brook delivers Its waters to the weir! Thou laughest at the mill, the whir and worry Of spindle and of loom, And the great wheel that toils amid the hurry And rushing of the flame. Born in the purple, born to joy and pleasance, Thou dost not toil nor spin, But makest glad and radiant with thy presence The meadow and the lin. The wind blows, and uplifts thy drooping banner, And round thee throng and run The rushes, the green yeomen of thy manor, The outlaws of the sun. The burnished dragon-fly is thine attendant, And tilts against the field, And down the listed sunbeam rides resplendent With steel-blue mail and shield. Thou art the Iris, fair among the fairest, Who, armed with golden rod And winged with the celestial azure, bearest The message of some God. Thou art the Muse, who far from crowded cities Hauntest the sylvan streams, Playing on pipes of reed the artless ditties That come to us as dreams. O flower-de-luce, bloom on, and let the river Linger to kiss thy feet! O flower of song, bloom on, and make forever The world more fair and sweet. PALINGENESIS I lay upon the headland-height, and listened To the incessant sobbing of the sea In caverns under me, And watched the waves, that tossed and fled and glistened, Until the rolling meadows of amethyst Melted away in mist. Then suddenly, as one from sleep, I started; For round about me all the sunny capes Seemed peopled with the shapes Of those whom I had known in days departed, Apparelled in the loveliness which gleams On faces seen in dreams. A moment only, and the light and glory Faded away, and the disconsolate shore Stood lonely as before; And the wild-roses of the promontory Around me shuddered in the wind, and shed Their petals of pale red. There was an old belief that in the embers Of all things their primordial form exists, And cunning alchemists Could re-create the rose with all its members From its own ashes, but without the bloom, Without the lost perfume. Ah me! what wonder-working, occult science Can from the ashes in our hearts once more The rose of youth restore? What craft of alchemy can bid defiance To time and change, and for a single hour Renew this phantom-flower? "O, give me back," I cried, "the vanished splendors, The breath of morn, and the exultant strife, When the swift stream of life Bounds o'er its rocky channel, and surrenders The pond, with all its lilies, for the leap Into the unknown deep!" And the sea answered, with a lamentation, Like some old prophet wailing, and it said, "Alas! thy youth is dead! It breathes no more, its heart has no pulsation; In the dark places with the dead of old It lies forever cold!" Then said I, "From its consecrated cerements I will not drag this sacred dust again, Only to give me pain; But, still remembering all the lost endearments, Go on my way, like one who looks before, And turns to weep no more." Into what land of harvests, what plantations Bright with autumnal foliage and the glow Of sunsets burning low; Beneath what midnight skies, whose constellations Light up the spacious avenues between This world and the unseen! Amid what friendly greetings and caresses, What households, though not alien, yet not mine, What bowers of rest divine; To what temptations in lone wildernesses, What famine of the heart, what pain and loss, The bearing of what cross! I do not know; nor will I vainly question Those pages of the mystic book which hold The story still untold, But without rash conjecture or suggestion Turn its last leaves in reverence and good heed, Until "The End" I read. THE BRIDGE OF CLOUD Burn, O evening hearth, and waken Pleasant visions, as of old! Though the house by winds be shaken, Safe I keep this room of gold! Ah, no longer wizard Fancy Builds her castles in the air, Luring me by necromancy Up the never-ending stair! But, instead, she builds me bridges Over many a dark ravine, Where beneath the gusty ridges Cataracts dash and roar unseen. And I cross them, little heeding Blast of wind or torrent's roar, As I follow the receding Footsteps that have gone before. Naught avails the imploring gesture, Naught avails the cry of pain! When I touch the flying vesture, 'T is the gray robe of the rain. Baffled I return, and, leaning O'er the parapets of cloud, Watch the mist that intervening Wraps the valley in its shroud. And the sounds of life ascending Faintly, vaguely, meet the ear, Murmur of bells and voices blending With the rush of waters near. Well I know what there lies hidden, Every tower and town and farm, And again the land forbidden Reassumes its vanished charm. Well I know the secret places, And the nests in hedge and tree; At what doors are friendly faces, In what hearts are thoughts of me. Through the mist and darkness sinking, Blown by wind and beaten by shower, Down I fling the thought I'm thinking, Down I toss this Alpine flower. HAWTHORNE MAY 23, 1864 How beautiful it was, that one bright day In the long week of rain! Though all its splendor could not chase away The omnipresent pain. The lovely town was white with apple-blooms, And the great elms o'erhead Dark shadows wove on their aerial looms Shot through with golden thread. Across the meadows, by the gray old manse, The historic river flowed: I was as one who wanders in a trance, Unconscious of his road. The faces of familiar friends seemed strange; Their voices I could hear, And yet the words they uttered seemed to change Their meaning to my ear. For the one face I looked for was not there, The one low voice was mute; Only an unseen presence filled the air, And baffled my pursuit. Now I look back, and meadow, manse, and stream Dimly my thought defines; I only see--a dream within a dream-- The hill-top hearsed with pines. I only hear above his place of rest Their tender undertone, The infinite longings of a troubled breast, The voice so like his own. There in seclusion and remote from men The wizard hand lies cold, Which at its topmost speed let fall the pen, And left the tale half told. Ah! who shall lift that wand of magic power, And the lost clew regain? The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower Unfinished must remain! CHRISTMAS BELLS I heard the bells on Christmas Day Their old, familiar carols play, And wild and sweet The words repeat Of peace on earth, good-will to men! And thought how, as the day had come, The belfries of all Christendom Had rolled along The unbroken song Of peace on earth, good-will to men! Till, ringing, singing on its way, The world revolved from night to day, A voice, a chime, A chant sublime Of peace on earth, good-will to men! Then from each black, accursed mouth The cannon thundered in the South, And with the sound The carols drowned Of peace on earth, good-will to men! It was as if an earthquake rent The hearth-stones of a continent, And made forlorn The households born Of peace on earth, good-will to men! And in despair I bowed my head; "There is no peace on earth," I said: "For hate is strong, And mocks the song Of peace on earth, good-will to men!" Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: "God is not dead; nor doth he sleep! The Wrong shall fail, The Right prevail, With peace on earth, good-will to men!" THE WIND OVER THE CHIMNEY See, the fire is sinking low, Dusky red the embers glow, While above them still I cower, While a moment more I linger, Though the clock, with lifted finger, Points beyond the midnight hour. Sings the blackened log a tune Learned in some forgotten June From a school-boy at his play, When they both were young together, Heart of youth and summer weather Making all their holiday. And the night-wind rising, hark! How above there in the dark, In the midnight and the snow, Ever wilder, fiercer, grander, Like the trumpets of Iskander, All the noisy chimneys blow! Every quivering tongue of flame Seems to murmur some great name, Seems to say to me, "Aspire!" But the night-wind answers, "Hollow Are the visions that you follow, Into darkness sinks your fire!" Then the flicker of the blaze Gleams on volumes of old days, Written by masters of the art, Loud through whose majestic pages Rolls the melody of ages, Throb the harp-strings of the heart. And again the tongues of flame Start exulting and exclaim: "These are prophets, bards, and seers; In the horoscope of nations, Like ascendant constellations, They control the coming years." But the night-wind cries: "Despair! Those who walk with feet of air Leave no long-enduring marks; At God's forges incandescent Mighty hammers beat incessant, These are but the flying sparks. "Dust are all the hands that wrought; Books are sepulchres of thought; The dead laurels of the dead Rustle for a moment only, Like the withered leaves in lonely Churchyards at some passing tread." Suddenly the flame sinks down; Sink the rumors of renown; And alone the night-wind drear Clamors louder, wilder, vaguer,-- "'T is the brand of Meleager Dying on the hearth-stone here!" And I answer,--"Though it be, Why should that discomfort me? No endeavor is in vain; Its reward is in the doing, And the rapture of pursuing Is the prize the vanquished gain." THE BELLS OF LYNN HEARD AT NAHANT O curfew of the setting sun! O Bells of Lynn! O requiem of the dying day! O Bells of Lynn! From the dark belfries of yon cloud-cathedral wafted, Your sounds aerial seem to float, O Bells of Lynn! Borne on the evening wind across the crimson twilight, O'er land and sea they rise and fall, O Bells of Lynn! The fisherman in his boat, far out beyond the headland, Listens, and leisurely rows ashore, O Bells of Lynn! Over the shining sands the wandering cattle homeward Follow each other at your call, O Bells of Lynn! The distant lighthouse hears, and with his flaming signal Answers you, passing the watchword on, O Bells of Lynn! And down the darkening coast run the tumultuous surges, And clap their hands, and shout to you, O Bells of Lynn! Till from the shuddering sea, with your wild incantations, Ye summon up the spectral moon, O Bells of Lynn! And startled at the sight like the weird woman of Endor, Ye cry aloud, and then are still, O Bells of Lynn! KILLED AT THE FORD. He is dead, the beautiful youth, The heart of honor, the tongue of truth, He, the life and light of us all, Whose voice was blithe as a bugle-call, Whom all eyes followed with one consent, The cheer of whose laugh, and whose pleasant word, Hushed all murmurs of discontent. Only last night, as we rode along, Down the dark of the mountain gap, To visit the picket-guard at the ford, Little dreaming of any mishap, He was humming the words of some old song: "Two red roses he had on his cap, And another he bore at the point of his sword." Sudden and swift a whistling ball Came out of a wood, and the voice was still; Something I heard in the darkness fall, And for a moment my blood grew chill; I spake in a whisper, as he who speaks In a room where some one is lying dead; But he made no answer to what I said. We lifted him up to his saddle again, And through the mire and the mist and the rain Carried him back to the silent camp, And laid him as if asleep on his bed; And I saw by the light of the surgeon's lamp Two white roses upon his cheeks, And one, just over his heart, blood-red! And I saw in a vision how far and fleet That fatal bullet went speeding forth, Till it reached a town in the distant North, Till it reached a house in a sunny street, Till it reached a heart that ceased to beat Without a murmur, without a cry; And a bell was tolled, in that far-off town, For one who had passed from cross to crown, And the neighbors wondered that she should die. GIOTTO'S TOWER How many lives, made beautiful and sweet By self-devotion and by self-restraint, Whose pleasure is to run without complaint On unknown errands of the Paraclete, Wanting the reverence of unshodden feet, Fail of the nimbus which the artists paint Around the shining forehead of the saint, And are in their completeness incomplete! In the old Tuscan town stands Giotto's tower, The lily of Florence blossoming in stone,-- A vision, a delight, and a desire,-- The builder's perfect and centennial flower, That in the night of ages bloomed alone, But wanting still the glory of the spire. TO-MORROW 'T is late at night, and in the realm of sleep My little lambs are folded like the flocks; From room to room I hear the wakeful clocks Challenge the passing hour, like guards that keep Their solitary watch on tower and steep; Far off I hear the crowing of the cocks, And through the opening door that time unlocks Feel the fresh breathing of To-morrow creep. To-morrow! the mysterious, unknown guest, Who cries to me: "Remember Barmecide, And tremble to be happy with the rest." And I make answer: "I am satisfied; I dare not ask; I know not what is best; God hath already said what shall betide." DIVINA COMMEDIA I Oft have I seen at some cathedral door A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat, Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er; Far off the noises of the world retreat; The loud vociferations of the street Become an undistinguishable roar. So, as I enter here from day to day, And leave my burden at this minster gate, Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray, The tumult of the time disconsolate To inarticulate murmurs dies away, While the eternal ages watch and wait. II How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers! This crowd of statues, in whose folded sleeves Birds build their nests; while canopied with leaves Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bowers, And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers! But fiends and dragons on the gargoyled eaves Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves, And, underneath, the traitor Judas lowers! Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain, What exultations trampling on despair, What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong, What passionate outcry of a soul in pain, Uprose this poem of the earth and air, This medieval miracle of song! III I enter, and I see thee in the gloom Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine! And strive to make my steps keep pace with thine. The air is filled with some unknown perfume; The congregation of the dead make room For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine; Like rooks that haunt Ravenna's groves of pine The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb. From the confessionals I hear arise Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies, And lamentations from the crypts below; And then a voice celestial, that begins With the pathetic words, "Although your sins As scarlet be," and ends with "as the snow." IV With snow-white veil and garments as of flame, She stands before thee, who so long ago Filled thy young heart with passion and the woe From which thy song and all its splendors came; And while with stern rebuke she speaks thy name, The ice about thy heart melts as the snow On mountain height; and in swift overflow Comes gushing from thy lips in sobs of shame. Thou makest full confession; and a gleam, As of the dawn on some dark forest cast, Seems on thy lifted forehead to increase; Lethe and Eunoe--the remembered dream And the forgotten sorrow--bring at last That perfect pardon which is perfect peace. V I lift mine eyes, and all the windows blaze With forms of saints and holy men who died, Here martyred and hereafter glorified; And the great Rose upon its leaves displays Christ's Triumph, and the angelic roundelays, With splendor upon splendor multiplied; And Beatrice again at Dante's side No more rebukes, but smiles her words of praise. And then the organ sounds, and unseen choirs Sing the old Latin hymns of peace and love, And benedictions of the Holy Ghost; And the melodious bells among the spires O'er all the house-tops and through heaven above Proclaim the elevation of the Host! VI O star of morning and of liberty! O bringer of the light, whose splendor shines Above the darkness of the Apennines, Forerunner of the day that is to be! The voices of the city and the sea, The voices of the mountains and the pines, Repeat thy song, till the familiar lines Are footpaths for the thought of Italy! Thy fame is blown abroad from all the heights, Through all the nations, and a sound is heard, As of a mighty wind, and men devout, Strangers of Rome, and the new proselytes, In their own language hear thy wondrous word, And many are amazed and many doubt. NOEL. ENVOYE A M. AGASSIZ, LA VEILLE DE NOEL 1864, AVEC UN PANIER DE VINS DIVERS L'Academie en respect, Nonobstant l'incorrection A la faveur du sujet, Ture-lure, N'y fera point de rature; Noel! ture-lure-lure. -- Gui Barozai Quand les astres de Noel Brillaient, palpitaient au ciel, Six gaillards, et chacun ivre, Chantaient gaiment dans le givre, "Bons amis, Allons donc chez Agassiz!" Ces illustres Pelerins D'Outre-Mer adroits et fins, Se donnant des airs de pretre, A l'envi se vantaient d'etre "Bons amis, De Jean Rudolphe Agassiz!" Oeil-de-Perdrix, grand farceur, Sans reproche et sans pudeur, Dans son patois de Bourgogne, Bredouillait comme un ivrogne, "Bons amis, J'ai danse chez Agassiz!" Verzenay le Champenois, Bon Francais, point New-Yorquois, Mais des environs d'Avize, Fredonne a mainte reprise, "Bons amis, J'ai chante chez Agassiz!" A cote marchait un vieux Hidalgo, mais non mousseux; Dans le temps de Charlemagne Fut son pere Grand d'Espagne! "Bons amis, J'ai dine chez Agassiz!" Derriere eux un Bordelais, Gascon, s'il en fut jamais, Parfume de poesie Riait, chantait, plein de vie, "Bons amis, J'ai soupe chez Agassiz!" Avec ce beau cadet roux, Bras dessus et bras dessous, Mine altiere et couleur terne, Vint le Sire de Sauterne; "Bons amis, J'ai couche chez Agassiz!" Mais le dernier de ces preux, Etait un pauvre Chartreux, Qui disait, d'un ton robuste, "Benedictions sur le Juste! Bons amis, Benissons Pere Agassiz!" Ils arrivent trois a trois, Montent l'escalier de bois Clopin-clopant! quel gendarme Peut permettre ce vacarme, Bons amis, A la porte d'Agassiz! "Ouvrer donc, mon bon Seigneur, Ouvrez vite et n'ayez peur; Ouvrez, ouvrez, car nous sommes Gens de bien et gentilshommes, Bons amis De la famille Agassiz!" Chut, ganaches! taisez-vous! C'en est trop de vos glouglous; Epargnez aux Philosophes Vos abominables strophes! Bons amis, Respectez mon Agassiz! ************** BIRDS OF PASSAGE FLIGHT THE THIRD FATA MORGANA O sweet illusions of Song, That tempt me everywhere, In the lonely fields, and the throng Of the crowded thoroughfare! I approach, and ye vanish away, I grasp you, and ye are gone; But ever by nigh an day, The melody soundeth on. As the weary traveller sees In desert or prairie vast, Blue lakes, overhung with trees, That a pleasant shadow cast; Fair towns with turrets high, And shining roofs of gold, That vanish as he draws nigh, Like mists together rolled,-- So I wander and wander along, And forever before me gleams The shining city of song, In the beautiful land of dreams. But when I would enter the gate Of that golden atmosphere, It is gone, and I wander and wait For the vision to reappear. THE HAUNTED CHAMBER Each heart has its haunted chamber, Where the silent moonlight falls! On the floor are mysterious footsteps, There are whispers along the walls! And mine at times is haunted By phantoms of the Past As motionless as shadows By the silent moonlight cast. A form sits by the window, That is not seen by day, For as soon as the dawn approaches It vanishes away. It sits there in the moonlight Itself as pale and still, And points with its airy finger Across the window-sill. Without before the window, There stands a gloomy pine, Whose boughs wave upward and downward As wave these thoughts of mine. And underneath its branches Is the grave of a little child, Who died upon life's threshold, And never wept nor smiled. What are ye, O pallid phantoms! That haunt my troubled brain? That vanish when day approaches, And at night return again? What are ye, O pallid phantoms! But the statues without breath, That stand on the bridge overarching The silent river of death? THE MEETING After so long an absence At last we meet again: Does the meeting give us pleasure, Or does it give us pain? The tree of life has been shaken, And but few of us linger now, Like the Prophet's two or three berries In the top of the uppermost bough. We cordially greet each other In the old, familiar tone; And we think, though we do not say it, How old and gray he is grown! We speak of a Merry Christmas And many a Happy New Year But each in his heart is thinking Of those that are not here. We speak of friends and their fortunes, And of what they did and said, Till the dead alone seem living, And the living alone seem dead. And at last we hardly distinguish Between the ghosts and the guests; And a mist and shadow of sadness Steals over our merriest jests. VOX POPULI When Mazarvan the Magician, Journeyed westward through Cathay, Nothing heard he but the praises Of Badoura on his way. But the lessening rumor ended When he came to Khaledan, There the folk were talking only Of Prince Camaralzaman, So it happens with the poets: Every province hath its own; Camaralzaman is famous Where Badoura is unknown. THE CASTLE-BUILDER A gentle boy, with soft and silken locks A dreamy boy, with brown and tender eyes, A castle-builder, with his wooden blocks, And towers that touch imaginary skies. A fearless rider on his father's knee, An eager listener unto stories told At the Round Table of the nursery, Of heroes and adventures manifold. There will be other towers for thee to build; There will be other steeds for thee to ride; There will be other legends, and all filled With greater marvels and more glorified. Build on, and make thy castles high and fair, Rising and reaching upward to the skies; Listen to voices in the upper air, Nor lose thy simple faith in mysteries. CHANGED From the outskirts of the town Where of old the mile-stone stood. Now a stranger, looking down I behold the shadowy crown Of the dark and haunted wood. Is it changed, or am I changed? Ah! the oaks are fresh and green, But the friends with whom I ranged Through their thickets are estranged By the years that intervene. Bright as ever flows the sea, Bright as ever shines the sun, But alas! they seem to me Not the sun that used to be, Not the tides that used to run. THE CHALLENGE I have a vague remembrance Of a story, that is told In some ancient Spanish legend Or chronicle of old. It was when brave King Sanchez Was before Zamora slain, And his great besieging army Lay encamped upon the plain. Don Diego de Ordonez Sallied forth in front of all, And shouted loud his challenge To the warders on the wall. All the people of Zamora, Both the born and the unborn, As traitors did he challenge With taunting words of scorn. The living, in their houses, And in their graves, the dead! And the waters of their rivers, And their wine, and oil, and bread! There is a greater army, That besets us round with strife, A starving, numberless army, At all the gates of life. The poverty-stricken millions Who challenge our wine and bread, And impeach us all as traitors, Both the living and the dead. And whenever I sit at the banquet, Where the feast and song are high, Amid the mirth and the music I can hear that fearful cry. And hollow and haggard faces Look into the lighted hall, And wasted hands are extended To catch the crumbs that fall. For within there is light and plenty, And odors fill the air; But without there is cold and darkness, And hunger and despair. And there in the camp of famine, In wind and cold and rain, Christ, the great Lord of the army, Lies dead upon the plain! THE BROOK AND THE WAVE The brooklet came from the mountain, As sang the bard of old, Running with feet of silver Over the sands of gold! Far away in the briny ocean There rolled a turbulent wave, Now singing along the sea-beach, Now howling along the cave. And the brooklet has found the billow Though they flowed so far apart, And has filled with its freshness and sweetness That turbulent bitter heart! AFTERMATH When the summer fields are mown, When the birds are fledged and flown, And the dry leaves strew the path; With the falling of the snow, With the cawing of the crow, Once again the fields we mow And gather in the aftermath. Not the sweet, new grass with flowers Is this harvesting of ours; Not the upland clover bloom; But the rowen mired with weeds, Tangled tufts from marsh and meads, Where the poppy drops its seeds In the silence and the gloom. THE MASQUE OF PANDORA I THE WORKSHOP OF HEPHAESTUS HEPHAESTUS (standing before the statue of Pandora.) Not fashioned out of gold, like Hera's throne, Nor forged of iron like the thunderbolts Of Zeus omnipotent, or other works Wrought by my hands at Lemnos or Olympus, But moulded in soft clay, that unresisting Yields itself to the touch, this lovely form Before me stands, perfect in every part. Not Aphrodite's self appeared more fair, When first upwafted by caressing winds She came to high Olympus, and the gods Paid homage to her beauty. Thus her hair Was cinctured; thus her floating drapery Was like a cloud about her, and her face Was radiant with the sunshine and the sea. THE VOICE OF ZEUS. Is thy work done, Hephaestus? HEPHAESTUS. It is finished! THE VOICE. Not finished till I breathe the breath of life Into her nostrils, and she moves and speaks. HEPHAESTUS. Will she become immortal like ourselves? THE VOICE. The form that thou hast fashioned out of clay Is of the earth and mortal; but the spirit, The life, the exhalation of my breath, Is of diviner essence and immortal. The gods shall shower on her their benefactions, She shall possess all gifts: the gift of song, The gift of eloquence, the gift of beauty, The fascination and the nameless charm That shall lead all men captive. HEPHAESTUS. Wherefore? wherefore? (A wind shakes the house.) I hear the rushing of a mighty wind Through all the halls and chambers of my house! Her parted lips inhale it, and her bosom Heaves with the inspiration. As a reed Beside a river in the rippling current Bends to and fro, she bows or lifts her head. She gazes round about as if amazed; She is alive; she breathes, but yet she speaks not! (PANDORA descends from the pedestal.) CHORUS OF THE GRACES AGLAIA. In the workshop of Hephaestus What is this I see? Have the Gods to four increased us Who were only three? Beautiful in form and feature, Lovely as the day, Can there be so fair a creature Formed of common clay? THALIA. O sweet, pale face! O lovely eyes of azure, Clear as the waters of a brook that run Limpid and laughing in the summer sun! O golden hair that like a miser's treasure In its abundance overflows the measure! O graceful form, that cloudlike floatest on With the soft, undulating gait of one Who moveth as if motion were a pleasure! By what name shall I call thee? Nymph or Muse, Callirrhoe or Urania? Some sweet name Whose every syllable is a caress Would best befit thee; but I cannot choose, Nor do I care to choose; for still the same, Nameless or named, will be thy loveliness. EUPHROSYNE. Dowered with all celestial gifts, Skilled in every art That ennobles and uplifts And delights the heart, Fair on earth shall be thy fame As thy face is fair, And Pandora be the name Thou henceforth shalt bear. II OLYMPUS. HERMES (putting on his sandals.) Much must he toil who serves the Immortal Gods, And I, who am their herald, most of all. No rest have I, nor respite. I no sooner Unclasp the winged sandals from my feet, Than I again must clasp them, and depart Upon some foolish errand. But to-day The errand is not foolish. Never yet With greater joy did I obey the summons That sends me earthward. I will fly so swiftly That my caduceus in the whistling air Shall make a sound like the Pandaean pipes, Cheating the shepherds; for to-day I go, Commissioned by high-thundering Zeus, to lead A maiden to Prometheus, in his tower, And by my cunning arguments persuade him To marry her. What mischief lies concealed In this design I know not; but I know Who thinks of marrying hath already taken One step upon the road to penitence. Such embassies delight me. Forth I launch On the sustaining air, nor fear to fall Like Icarus, nor swerve aside like him Who drove amiss Hyperion's fiery steeds. I sink, I fly! The yielding element Folds itself round about me like an arm, And holds me as a mother holds her child. III TOWER OF PROMETHEUS ON MOUNT CAUCASUS PROMETHEUS. I hear the trumpet of Alectryon Proclaim the dawn. The stars begin to fade, And all the heavens are full of prophecies And evil auguries. Blood-red last night I saw great Kronos rise; the crescent moon Sank through the mist, as if it were the scythe His parricidal hand had flung far down The western steeps. O ye Immortal Gods, What evil are ye plotting and contriving? (HERMES and PANDORA at the threshold.) PANDORA. I cannot cross the threshold. An unseen And icy hand repels me. These blank walls Oppress me with their weight! PROMETHEUS. Powerful ye are, But not omnipotent. Ye cannot fight Against Necessity. The Fates control you, As they do us, and so far we are equals! PANDORA. Motionless, passionless, companionless, He sits there muttering in his beard. His voice Is like a river flowing underground! HERMES. Prometheus, hail! PROMETHEUS. Who calls me? HERMES. It is I. Dost thou not know me? PROMETHEUS. By thy winged cap And winged heels I know thee. Thou art Hermes, Captain of thieves! Hast thou again been stealing The heifers of Admetus in the sweet Meadows of asphodel? or Hera's girdle? Or the earth-shaking trident of Poseidon? HERMES. And thou, Prometheus; say, hast thou again Been stealing fire from Helios' chariot-wheels To light thy furnaces? PROMETHEUS. Why comest thou hither So early in the dawn? HERMES. The Immortal Gods Know naught of late or early. Zeus himself The omnipotent hath sent me. PROMETHEUS. For what purpose? HERMES. To bring this maiden to thee. PROMETHEUS. I mistrust The Gods and all their gifts. If they have sent her It is for no good purpose. HERMES. What disaster Could she bring on thy house, who is a woman? PROMETHEUS. The Gods are not my friends, nor am I theirs. Whatever comes from them, though in a shape As beautiful as this, is evil only. Who art thou? PANDORA. One who, though to thee unknown, Yet knoweth thee. PROMETHEUS. How shouldst thou know me, woman? PANDORA. Who knoweth not Prometheus the humane? PROMETHEUS. Prometheus the unfortunate; to whom Both Gods and men have shown themselves ungrateful. When every spark was quenched on every hearth Throughout the earth, I brought to man the fire And all its ministrations. My reward Hath been the rock and vulture. HERMES. But the Gods At last relent and pardon. PROMETHEUS. They relent not; They pardon not; they are implacable, Revengeful, unforgiving! HERMES. As a pledge Of reconciliation they have sent to thee This divine being, to be thy companion, And bring into thy melancholy house The sunshine and the fragrance of her youth. PROMETHEUS. I need them not. I have within myself All that my heart desires; the ideal beauty Which the creative faculty of mind Fashions and follows in a thousand shapes More lovely than the real. My own thoughts Are my companions; my designs and labors And aspirations are my only friends. HERMES. Decide not rashly. The decision made Can never be recalled. The Gods implore not, Plead not, solicit not; they only offer Choice and occasion, which once being passed Return no more. Dost thou accept the gift? PROMETHEUS. No gift of theirs, in whatsoever shape It comes to me, with whatsoever charm To fascinate my sense, will I receive. Leave me. PANDORA. Let us go hence. I will not stay. HERMES. We leave thee to thy vacant dreams, and all The silence and the solitude of thought, The endless bitterness of unbelief, The loneliness of existence without love. CHORUS OF THE FATES CLOTHO. How the Titan, the defiant, The self-centred, self-reliant, Wrapped in visions and illusions, Robs himself of life's best gifts! Till by all the storm-winds shaken, By the blast of fate o'ertaken, Hopeless, helpless, and forsaken, In the mists of his confusions To the reefs of doom he drifts! LACHESIS. Sorely tried and sorely tempted, From no agonies exempted, In the penance of his trial, And the discipline of pain; Often by illusions cheated, Often baffled and defeated In the tasks to be completed, He, by toil and self-denial, To the highest shall attain. ATROPOS. Tempt no more the noble schemer; Bear unto some idle dreamer This new toy and fascination, This new dalliance and delight! To the garden where reposes Epimetheus crowned with roses, To the door that never closes Upon pleasure and temptation, Bring this vision of the night! IV THE AIR HERMES (returning to Olympus.) As lonely as the tower that he inhabits, As firm and cold as are the crags about him, Prometheus stands. The thunderbolts of Zeus Alone can move him; but the tender heart Of Epimetheus, burning at white heat, Hammers and flames like all his brother's forges! Now as an arrow from Hyperion's bow, My errand done, I fly, I float, I soar Into the air, returning to Olympus. O joy of motion! O delight to cleave The infinite realms of space, the liquid ether, Through the warm sunshine and the cooling cloud, Myself as light as sunbeam or as cloud! With one touch of my swift and winged feet, I spurn the solid earth, and leave it rocking As rocks the bough from which a bird takes wing. V THE HOUSE OF EPIMETHEUS EPIMETHEUS. Beautiful apparition! go not hence! Surely thou art a Goddess, for thy voice Is a celestial melody, and thy form Self-poised as if it floated on the air! PANDORA. No Goddess am I, nor of heavenly birth, But a mere woman fashioned out of clay And mortal as the rest. EPIMETHEUS. Thy face is fair; There is a wonder in thine azure eyes That fascinates me. Thy whole presence seems A soft desire, a breathing thought of love. Say, would thy star like Merope's grow dim If thou shouldst wed beneath thee? PANDORA. Ask me not; I cannot answer thee. I only know The Gods have sent me hither. EPIMETHEUS. I believe, And thus believing am most fortunate. It was not Hermes led thee here, but Eros, And swifter than his arrows were thine eyes In wounding me. There was no moment's space Between my seeing thee and loving thee. O, what a telltale face thou hast! Again I see the wonder in thy tender eyes. PANDORA. They do but answer to the love in thine, Yet secretly I wonder thou shouldst love me. Thou knowest me not. EPIMETHEUS. Perhaps I know thee better Than had I known thee longer. Yet it seems That I have always known thee, and but now Have found thee. Ah, I have been waiting long. PANDORA. How beautiful is this house! The atmosphere Breathes rest and comfort, and the many chambers Seem full of welcomes. EPIMETHEUS. They not only seem, But truly are. This dwelling and its master Belong to thee. PANDORA. Here let me stay forever! There is a spell upon me. EPIMETHEUS. Thou thyself Art the enchantress, and I feel thy power Envelop me, and wrap my soul and sense In an Elysian dream. PANDORA, O, let me stay. How beautiful are all things round about me, Multiplied by the mirrors on the walls! What treasures hast thou here! Yon oaken chest, Carven with figures and embossed with gold, Is wonderful to look upon! What choice And precious things dost thou keep hidden in it? EPIMETHEUS. I know not. 'T is a mystery. PANDORA. Hast thou never Lifted the lid? EPIMETHEUS. The oracle forbids. Safely concealed there from all mortal eyes Forever sleeps the secret of the Gods. Seek not to know what they have hidden from thee, Till they themselves reveal it. PANDORA. As thou wilt. EPIMETHEUS. Let us go forth from this mysterious place. The garden walks are pleasant at this hour; The nightingales among the sheltering boughs Of populous and many-nested trees Shall teach me how to woo thee, and shall tell me By what resistless charms or incantations They won their mates. PANDORA. Thou dost not need a teacher. (They go out.) CHORUS OF THE EUMENIDES. What the Immortals Confide to thy keeping, Tell unto no man; Waking or sleeping, Closed be thy portals To friend as to foeman. Silence conceals it; The word that is spoken Betrays and reveals it; By breath or by token The charm may be broken. With shafts of their splendors The Gods unforgiving Pursue the offenders, The dead and the living! Fortune forsakes them, Nor earth shall abide them, Nor Tartarus hide them; Swift wrath overtakes them! With useless endeavor, Forever, forever, Is Sisyphus rolling His stone up the mountain! Immersed in the fountain, Tantalus tastes not The water that wastes not! Through ages increasing The pangs that afflict him, With motion unceasing The wheel of Ixion Shall torture its victim! VI IN THE GARDEN EPIMETHEUS. Yon snow-white cloud that sails sublime in ether Is but the sovereign Zeus, who like a swan Flies to fair-ankled Leda! PANDORA. Or perchance Ixion's cloud, the shadowy shape of Hera, That bore the Centaurs. EPIMETHEUS. The divine and human. CHORUS OF BIRDS. Gently swaying to and fro, Rocked by all the winds that blow, Bright with sunshine from above Dark with shadow from below, Beak to beak and breast to breast In the cradle of their nest, Lie the fledglings of our love. ECHO. Love! love! EPIMETHEUS. Hark! listen! Hear how sweetly overhead The feathered flute-players pipe their songs of love, And echo answers, love and only love. CHORUS OF BIRDS. Every flutter of the wing, Every note of song we sing, Every murmur, every tone, Is of love and love alone. ECHO. Love alone! EPIMETHEUS. Who would not love, if loving she might be Changed like Callisto to a star in heaven? PANDORA. Ah, who would love, if loving she might be Like Semele consumed and burnt to ashes? EPIMETHEUS. Whence knowest thou these stories? PANDORA. Hermes taught me; He told me all the history of the Gods. CHORUS OF REEDS. Evermore a sound shall be In the reeds of Arcady, Evermore a low lament Of unrest and discontent, As the story is retold Of the nymph so coy and cold, Who with frightened feet outran The pursuing steps of Pan. EPIMETHEUS. The pipe of Pan out of these reeds is made, And when he plays upon it to the shepherds They pity him, so mournful is the sound. Be thou not coy and cold as Syrinx was. PANDORA. Nor thou as Pan be rude and mannerless. PROMETHEUS (without). Ho! Epimetheus! EPIMETHEUS. 'T is my brother's voice; A sound unwelcome and inopportune As was the braying of Silenus' ass, Once heard in Cybele's garden. PANDORA. Let me go. I would not be found here. I would not see him. (She escapes among the trees.) CHORUS OF DRYADES. Haste and hide thee, Ere too late, In these thickets intricate; Lest Prometheus See and chide thee, Lest some hurt Or harm betide thee, Haste and hide thee! PROMETHEUS (entering.) Who was it fled from here? I saw a shape Flitting among the trees. EPIMETHEUS. It was Pandora. PROMETHEUS. O Epimetheus! Is it then in vain That I have warned thee? Let me now implore. Thou harborest in thy house a dangerous guest. EPIMETHEUS. Whom the Gods love they honor with such guests. PROMETHEUS. Whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad. EPIMETHEUS. Shall I refuse the gifts they send to me? PROMETHEUS. Reject all gifts that come from higher powers. EPIMETHEUS. Such gifts as this are not to be rejected. PROMETHEUS. Make not thyself the slave of any woman. EPIMETHEUS. Make not thyself the judge of any man. PROMETHEUS. I judge thee not; for thou art more than man; Thou art descended from Titanic race, And hast a Titan's strength, and faculties That make thee godlike; and thou sittest here Like Heracles spinning Omphale's flax, And beaten with her sandals. EPIMETHEUS. O my brother! Thou drivest me to madness with thy taunts. PROMETHEUS. And me thou drivest to madness with thy follies. Come with me to my tower on Caucasus: See there my forges in the roaring caverns, Beneficent to man, and taste the joy That springs from labor. Read with me the stars, And learn the virtues that lie hidden in plants, And all things that are useful. EPIMETHEU5. O my brother! I am not as thou art. Thou dost inherit Our father's strength, and I our mother's weakness: The softness of the Oceanides, The yielding nature that cannot resist. PROMETHEUS. Because thou wilt not. EPIMETHEUS. Nay; because I cannot. PROMETHEUS. Assert thyself; rise up to thy full height; Shake from thy soul these dreams effeminate, These passions born of indolence and ease. Resolve, and thou art free. But breathe the air Of mountains, and their unapproachable summits Will lift thee to the level of themselves. EPIMETHEUS. The roar of forests and of waterfalls, The rushing of a mighty wind, with loud And undistinguishable voices calling, Are in my ear! PROMETHEUS. O, listen and obey. EPIMETHEUS. Thou leadest me as a child, I follow thee. (They go out.) CHORUS OF OREADES. Centuries old are the mountains; Their foreheads wrinkled and rifted Helios crowns by day, Pallid Selene by night; From their bosoms uptossed The snows are driven and drifted, Like Tithonus' beard Streaming dishevelled and white. Thunder and tempest of wind Their trumpets blow in the vastness; Phantoms of mist and rain, Cloud and the shadow of cloud, Pass and repass by the gates Of their inaccessible fastness; Ever unmoved they stand, Solemn, eternal, and proud, VOICES OF THE WATERS. Flooded by rain and snow In their inexhaustible sources, Swollen by affluent streams Hurrying onward and hurled Headlong over the crags, The impetuous water-courses, Rush and roar and plunge Down to the nethermost world. Say, have the solid rocks Into streams of silver been melted, Flowing over the plains, Spreading to lakes in the fields? Or have the mountains, the giants, The ice-helmed, the forest-belted, Scattered their arms abroad; Flung in the meadows their shields? VOICES OF THE WINDS. High on their turreted cliffs That bolts of thunder have shattered, Storm-winds muster and blow Trumpets of terrible breath; Then from the gateways rush, And before them routed and scattered Sullen the cloud-rack flies, Pale with the pallor of death. Onward the hurricane rides, And flee for shelter the shepherds; White are the frightened leaves, Harvests with terror are white; Panic seizes the herds, And even the lions and leopards, Prowling no longer for prey, Crouch in their caverns with fright. VOICES OF THE FOREST. Guarding the mountains around Majestic the forests are standing, Bright are their crested helms, Dark is their armor of leaves; Filled with the breath of freedom Each bosom subsiding, expanding, Now like the ocean sinks, Now like the ocean upheaves. Planted firm on the rock, With foreheads stern and defiant, Loud they shout to the winds, Loud to the tempest they call; Naught but Olympian thunders, That blasted Titan and Giant, Them can uproot and o'erthrow, Shaking the earth with their fall. CHORUS OF OREADES. These are the Voices Three Of winds and forests and fountains, Voices of earth and of air, Murmur and rushing of streams, Making together one sound, The mysterious voice of the mountains, Waking the sluggard that sleeps, Waking the dreamer of dreams. These are the Voices Three, That speak of endless endeavor, Speak of endurance and strength, Triumph and fulness of fame, Sounding about the world, An inspiration forever, Stirring the hearts of men, Shaping their end and their aim. VII THE HOUSE OF EPIMETHEUS PANDORA. Left to myself I wander as I will, And as my fancy leads me, through this house, Nor could I ask a dwelling more complete Were I indeed the Goddess that he deems me. No mansion of Olympus, framed to be The habitation of the Immortal Gods, Can be more beautiful. And this is mine And more than this, the love wherewith he crowns me. As if impelled by powers invisible And irresistible, my steps return Unto this spacious hall. All corridors And passages lead hither, and all doors But open into it. Yon mysterious chest Attracts and fascinates me. Would I knew What there lies hidden! But the oracle Forbids. Ah me! The secret then is safe. So would it be if it were in my keeping. A crowd of shadowy faces from the mirrors That line these walls are watching me. I dare not Lift up the lid. A hundred times the act Would be repeated, and the secret seen By twice a hundred incorporeal eyes. (She walks to the other side of the hall.) My feet are weary, wandering to and fro, My eyes with seeing and my heart with waiting. I will lie here and rest till he returns, Who is my dawn, my day, my Helios. (Throws herself upon a couch, and falls asleep.) ZEPHYRUS. Come from thy caverns dark and deep. O son of Erebus and Night; All sense of hearing and of sight Enfold in the serene delight And quietude of sleep! Set all the silent sentinels To bar and guard the Ivory Gate, And keep the evil dreams of fate And falsehood and infernal hate Imprisoned in their cells. But open wide the Gate of Horn, Whence, beautiful as planets, rise The dreams of truth, with starry eyes, And all the wondrous prophecies And visions of the morn. CHORUS OF DREAMS FROM THE IVORY GATE. Ye sentinels of sleep, It is in vain ye keep Your drowsy watch before the Ivory Gate; Though closed the portal seems, The airy feet of dreams Ye cannot thus in walls incarcerate. We phantoms are and dreams Born by Tartarean streams, As ministers of the infernal powers; O son of Erebus And Night, behold! we thus Elude your watchful warders on the towers! From gloomy Tartarus The Fates have summoned us To whisper in her ear, who lies asleep, A tale to fan the fire Of her insane desire To know a secret that the Gods would keep. This passion, in their ire, The Gods themselves inspire, To vex mankind with evils manifold, So that disease and pain O'er the whole earth may reign, And nevermore return the Age of Gold. PANDORA (waking). A voice said in my sleep: "Do not delay: Do not delay; the golden moments fly! The oracle hath forbidden; yet not thee Doth it forbid, but Epimetheus only!" I am alone. These faces in the mirrors Are but the shadows and phantoms of myself; They cannot help nor hinder. No one sees me, Save the all-seeing Gods, who, knowing good And knowing evil, have created me Such as I am, and filled me with desire Of knowing good and evil like themselves. (She approaches the chest.) I hesitate no longer. Weal or woe, Or life or death, the moment shall decide. (She lifts the lid. A dense mist rises from the chest, and fills the room. PANDORA falls senseless on the floor. Storm without.) CHORUS OF DREAMS FROM THE GATE OF HORN. Yes, the moment shall decide! It already hath decided; And the secret once confided To the keeping of the Titan Now is flying far and wide, Whispered, told on every side, To disquiet and to frighten. Fever of the heart and brain, Sorrow, pestilence, and pain, Moans of anguish, maniac laughter, All the evils that hereafter Shall afflict and vex mankind, All into the air have risen From the chambers of their prison; Only Hope remains behind. VIII IN THE GARDEN EPIMETHEUS. The storm is past, but it hath left behind it Ruin and desolation. All the walks Are strewn with shattered boughs; the birds are silent; The flowers, downtrodden by the wind, lie dead; The swollen rivulet sobs with secret pain, The melancholy reeds whisper together As if some dreadful deed had been committed They dare not name, and all the air is heavy With an unspoken sorrow! Premonitions, Foreshadowings of some terrible disaster Oppress my heart. Ye Gods, avert the omen! PANDORA (coming from the house). O Epimetheus, I no longer dare To lift mine eyes to thine, nor hear thy voice, Being no longer worthy of thy love. EPIMETHEUS. What hast thou done? PANDORA. Forgive me not, but kill me. EPIMETHEUS. What hast thou done? PANDORA. I pray for death, not pardon. EPIMETHEUS. What hast thou done? PANDORA. I dare not speak of it. EPIMETHEUS. Thy pallor and thy silence terrify me! PANDORA. I have brought wrath and ruin on thy house! My heart hath braved the oracle that guarded The fatal secret from us, and my hand Lifted the lid of the mysterious chest! EPIMETHEUS. Then all is lost! I am indeed undone. PANDORA. I pray for punishment, and not for pardon. EPIMETHEUS. Mine is the fault not thine. On me shall fall The vengeance of the Gods, for I betrayed Their secret when, in evil hour, I said It was a secret; when, in evil hour, I left thee here alone to this temptation. Why did I leave thee? PANDORA. Why didst thou return? Eternal absence would have been to me The greatest punishment. To be left alone And face to face with my own crime, had been Just retribution. Upon me, ye Gods, Let all your vengeance fall! EPIMETHEUS. On thee and me. I do not love thee less for what is done, And cannot be undone. Thy very weakness Hath brought thee nearer to me, and henceforth My love will have a sense of pity in it, Making it less a worship than before. PANDORA. Pity me not; pity is degradation. Love me and kill me. EPIMETHEUS. Beautiful Pandora! Thou art a Goddess still! PANDORA. I am a woman; And the insurgent demon in my nature, That made me brave the oracle, revolts At pity and compassion. Let me die; What else remains for me? EPIMETHEUS. Youth, hope, and love: To build a new life on a ruined life, To make the future fairer than the past, And make the past appear a troubled dream. Even now in passing through the garden walks Upon the ground I saw a fallen nest Ruined and full of rain; and over me Beheld the uncomplaining birds already Busy in building a new habitation. PANDORA. Auspicious omen! EPIMETHEUS. May the Eumenides Put out their torches and behold us not, And fling away their whips of scorpions And touch us not. PANDORA. Me let them punish. Only through punishment of our evil deeds, Only through suffering, are we reconciled To the immortal Gods and to ourselves. CHORUS OF THE EUMENIDES. Never shall souls like these Escape the Eumenides, The daughters dark of Acheron and Night! Unquenched our torches glare, Our scourges in the air Send forth prophetic sounds before they smite. Never by lapse of time The soul defaced by crime Into its former self returns again; For every guilty deed Holds in itself the seed Of retribution and undying pain. Never shall be the loss Restored, till Helios Hath purified them with his heavenly fires; Then what was lost is won, And the new life begun, Kindled with nobler passions and desires. THE HANGING OF THE CRANE I The lights are out, and gone are all the guests That thronging came with merriment and jests To celebrate the Hanging of the Crane In the new house,--into the night are gone; But still the fire upon the hearth burns on, And I alone remain. O fortunate, O happy day, When a new household finds its place Among the myriad homes of earth, Like a new star just sprung to birth, And rolled on its harmonious way Into the boundless realms of space! So said the guests in speech and song, As in the chimney, burning bright, We hung the iron crane to-night, And merry was the feast and long. II And now I sit and muse on what may be, And in my vision see, or seem to see, Through floating vapors interfused with light, Shapes indeterminate, that gleam and fade, As shadows passing into deeper shade Sink and elude the sight. For two alone, there in the hall, As spread the table round and small; Upon the polished silver shine The evening lamps, but, more divine, The light of love shines over all; Of love, that says not mine and thine, But ours, for ours is thine and mine. They want no guests, to come between Their tender glances like a screen, And tell them tales of land and sea, And whatsoever may betide The great, forgotten world outside; They want no guests; they needs must be Each other's own best company. III The picture fades; as at a village fair A showman's views, dissolving into air, Again appear transfigured on the screen, So in my fancy this; and now once more, In part transfigured, through the open door Appears the selfsame scene. Seated, I see the two again, But not alone; they entertain A little angel unaware, With face as round as is the moon; A royal guest with flaxen hair, Who, throned upon his lofty chair, Drums on the table with his spoon, Then drops it careless on the floor, To grasp at things unseen before. Are these celestial manners? these The ways that win, the arts that please? Ah yes; consider well the guest, And whatsoe'er he does seems best; He ruleth by the right divine Of helplessness, so lately born In purple chambers of the morn, As sovereign over thee and thine. He speaketh not; and yet there lies A conversation in his eyes; The golden silence of the Greek, The gravest wisdom of the wise, Not spoken in language, but in looks More legible than printed books, As if he could but would not speak. And now, O monarch absolute, Thy power is put to proof; for, lo! Resistless, fathomless, and slow, The nurse comes rustling like the sea, And pushes back thy chair and thee, And so good night to King Canute. IV As one who walking in a forest sees A lovely landscape through the parted frees, Then sees it not, for boughs that intervene Or as we see the moon sometimes revealed Through drifting clouds, and then again concealed, So I behold the scene. There are two guests at table now; The king, deposed and older grown, No longer occupies the throne,-- The crown is on his sister's brow; A Princess from the Fairy Isles, The very pattern girl of girls. All covered and embowered in curls, Rose-tinted from the Isle of Flowers, And sailing with soft, silken sails From far-off Dreamland into ours. Above their bowls with rims of blue Four azure eyes of deeper hue Are looking, dreamy with delight; Limpid as planets that emerge Above the ocean's rounded verge, Soft-shining through the summer night. Steadfast they gaze, yet nothing see Beyond the horizon of their bowls; Nor care they for the world that rolls With all its freight of troubled souls Into the days that are to be. V Again the tossing boughs shut out the scene, Again the drifting vapors intervene, And the moon's pallid disk is hidden quite; And now I see the table wider grown, As round a pebble into water thrown Dilates a ring of light. I see the table wider grown, I see it garlanded with guests, As if fair Ariadne's Crown Out of the sky had fallen down; Maidens within whose tender breasts A thousand restless hopes and fears, Forth reaching to the coming years, Flutter awhile, then quiet lie Like timid birds that fain would fly, But do not dare to leave their nests;-- And youths, who in their strength elate Challenge the van and front of fate, Eager as champions to be In the divine knight-errantry Of youth, that travels sea and land Seeking adventures, or pursues, Through cities, and through solitudes Frequented by the lyric Muse, The phantom with the beckoning hand, That still allures and still eludes. O sweet illusions of the brain! O sudden thrills of fire and frost! The world is bright while ye remain, And dark and dead when ye are lost! VI The meadow-brook, that seemeth to stand still, Quickens its current as it nears the mill; And so the stream of Time that lingereth In level places, and so dull appears, Runs with a swifter current as it nears The gloomy mills of Death. And now, like the magician's scroll, That in the owner's keeping shrinks With every wish he speaks or thinks, Till the last wish consumes the whole, The table dwindles, and again I see the two alone remain. The crown of stars is broken in parts; Its jewels, brighter than the day, Have one by one been stolen away To shine in other homes and hearts. One is a wanderer now afar In Ceylon or in Zanzibar, Or sunny regions of Cathay; And one is in the boisterous camp Mid clink of arms and horses' tramp, And battle's terrible array. I see the patient mother read, With aching heart, of wrecks that float Disabled on those seas remote, Or of some great heroic deed On battle-fields where thousands bleed To lift one hero into fame. Anxious she bends her graceful head Above these chronicles of pain, And trembles with a secret dread Lest there among the drowned or slain She find the one beloved name. VII After a day of cloud and wind and rain Sometimes the setting sun breaks out again, And touching all the darksome woods with light, Smiles on the fields, until they laugh and sing, Then like a ruby from the horizon's ring Drops down into the night. What see I now? The night is fair, The storm of grief, the clouds of care, The wind, the rain, have passed away; The lamps are lit, the fires burn bright, The house is full of life and light: It is the Golden Wedding day. The guests come thronging in once more, Quick footsteps sound along the floor, The trooping children crowd the stair, And in and out and everywhere Flashes along the corridor The sunshine of their golden hair. On the round table in the hall Another Ariadne's Crown Out of the sky hath fallen down; More than one Monarch of the Moon Is drumming with his silver spoon; The light of love shines over all. O fortunate, O happy day! The people sing, the people say. The ancient bridegroom and the bride, Smiling contented and serene Upon the blithe, bewildering scene, Behold, well pleased, on every side Their forms and features multiplied, As the reflection of a light Between two burnished mirrors gleams, Or lamps upon a bridge at night Stretch on and on before the sight, Till the long vista endless seems. MORITURI SALUTAMUS POEM FOR THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE CLASS OF 1825 IN BOWDOIN COLLEGE Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis, Et fugiunt freno non remorante dies.--OVID, Fastorum, Lib. vi. "O Caesar, we who are about to die Salute you!" was the gladiators' cry In the arena, standing face to face With death and with the Roman populace. O ye familiar scenes,--ye groves of pine, That once were mine and are no longer mine,-- Thou river, widening through the meadows green To the vast sea, so near and yet unseen,-- Ye halls, in whose seclusion and repose Phantoms of fame, like exhalations, rose And vanished,--we who are about to die Salute you; earth and air and sea and sky, And the Imperial Sun that scatters down His sovereign splendors upon grove and town. Ye do not answer us! ye do not hear! We are forgotten; and in your austere And calm indifference, ye little care Whether we come or go, or whence or where. What passing generations fill these halls, What passing voices echo front these walls, Ye heed not; we are only as the blast, A moment heard, and then forever past. Not so the teachers who in earlier days Led our bewildered feet through learning's maze; They answer us--alas! what have I said? What greetings come there from the voiceless dead? What salutation, welcome, or reply? What pressure from the hands that lifeless lie? They are no longer here; they all are gone Into the land of shadows,--all save one. Honor and reverence, and the good repute That follows faithful service as its fruit, Be unto him, whom living we salute. The great Italian poet, when he made His dreadful journey to the realms of shade, Met there the old instructor of his youth, And cried in tones of pity and of ruth: "O, never from the memory of my heart Your dear, paternal image shall depart, Who while on earth, ere yet by death surprised, Taught me how mortals are immortalized; How grateful am I for that patient care All my life long my language shall declare." To-day we make the poet's words our own And utter them in plaintive undertone; Nor to the living only be they said, But to the other living called the dead, Whose dear, paternal images appear Not wrapped in gloom, but robed in sunshine here; Whose simple lives, complete and without flaw, Were part and parcel of great Nature's law; Who said not to their Lord, as if afraid "Here is thy talent in a napkin laid," But labored in their sphere, as men who live In the delight that work alone can give. Peace be to them; eternal peace and rest, And the fulfilment of the great behest: "Ye have been faithful over a few things, Over ten cities shall ye reign as kings." And ye who fill the places we once filled, And follow in the furrows that we tilled, Young men, whose generous hearts are beating high, We who are old, and are about to die, Salute you; hail you; take your hands in ours, And crown you with our welcome as with flowers! How beautiful is youth! how bright it gleams With its illusions, aspirations, dreams! Book of Beginnings, Story without End, Each maid a heroine, and each man a friend! Aladdin's Lamp, and Fortunatus' Purse, That holds the treasures of the universe! All possibilities are in its hands, No danger daunts it, and no foe withstands; In its sublime audacity of faith, "Be thou removed!" it to the mountain saith, And with ambitious feet, secure and proud, Ascends the ladder leaning on the cloud! As ancient Priam at the Scaean gate Sat on the walls of Troy in regal state With the old men, too old and weak to fight, Chirping like grasshoppers in their delight To see the embattled hosts, with spear and shield, Of Trojans and Achaians in the field; So from the snowy summits of our years We see you in the plain, as each appears, And question of you; asking, "Who is he That towers above the others? Which may be Atreides, Menelaus, Odysseus, Ajax the great, or bold Idomeneus?" Let him not boast who puts his armor on As he who puts it off, the battle done. Study yourselves; and most of all note well Wherein kind Nature meant you to excel. Not every blossom ripens into fruit; Minerva, the inventress of the flute, Flung it aside, when she her face surveyed Distorted in a fountain as she played; The unlucky Marsyas found it, and his fate Was one to make the bravest hesitate. Write on your doors the saying wise and old, "Be bold! be bold!" and everywhere--"Be bold; Be not too bold!" Yet better the excess Than the defect; better the more than less; Better like Hector in the field to die, Than like a perfumed Paris turn and fly, And now, my classmates; ye remaining few That number not the half of those we knew, Ye, against whose familiar names not yet The fatal asterisk of death is set, Ye I salute! The horologe of Time Strikes the half-century with a solemn chime, And summons us together once again, The joy of meeting not unmixed with pain. Where are the others? Voices from the deep Caverns of darkness answer me: "They sleep!" I name no names; instinctively I feel Each at some well-remembered grave will kneel, And from the inscription wipe the weeds and moss, For every heart best knoweth its own loss. I see their scattered gravestones gleaming white Through the pale dusk of the impending night; O'er all alike the impartial sunset throws Its golden lilies mingled with the rose; We give to each a tender thought, and pass Out of the graveyards with their tangled grass, Unto these scenes frequented by our feet When we were young, and life was fresh and sweet. What shall I say to you? What can I say Better than silence is? When I survey This throng of faces turned to meet my own, Friendly and fair, and yet to me unknown, Transformed the very landscape seems to be; It is the same, yet not the same to me. So many memories crowd upon my brain, So many ghosts are in the wooded plain, I fain would steal away, with noiseless tread, As from a house where some one lieth dead. I cannot go;--I pause;--I hesitate; My feet reluctant linger at the gate; As one who struggles in a troubled dream To speak and cannot, to myself I seem. Vanish the dream! Vanish the idle fears! Vanish the rolling mists of fifty years! Whatever time or space may intervene, I will not be a stranger in this scene. Here every doubt, all indecision, ends; Hail, my companions, comrades, classmates, friends! Ah me! the fifty years since last we met Seem to me fifty folios bound and set By Time, the great transcriber, on his shelves, Wherein are written the histories of ourselves. What tragedies, what comedies, are there; What joy and grief, what rapture and despair! What chronicles of triumph and defeat, Of struggle, and temptation, and retreat! What records of regrets, and doubts, and fears What pages blotted, blistered by our tears! What lovely landscapes on the margin shine, What sweet, angelic faces, what divine And holy images of love and trust, Undimmed by age, unsoiled by damp or dust! Whose hand shall dare to open and explore These volumes, closed and clasped forevermore? Not mine. With reverential feet I pass; I hear a voice that cries, "Alas! alas! Whatever hath been written shall remain, Nor be erased nor written o'er again; The unwritten only still belongs to thee: Take heed, and ponder well what that shall be." As children frightened by a thundercloud Are reassured if some one reads aloud A tale of wonder, with enchantment fraught, Or wild adventure, that diverts their thought, Let me endeavor with a tale to chase The gathering shadows of the time and place, And banish what we all too deeply feel Wholly to say, or wholly to conceal. In mediaeval Rome, I know not where, There stood an image with its arm in air, And on its lifted finger, shining clear, A golden ring with the device, "Strike here!" Greatly the people wondered, though none guessed The meaning that these words but half expressed, Until a learned clerk, who at noonday With downcast eyes was passing on his way, Paused, and observed the spot, and marked it well, Whereon the shadow of the finger fell; And, coming back at midnight, delved, and found A secret stairway leading under ground. Down this he passed into a spacious hall, Lit by a flaming jewel on the wall; And opposite in threatening attitude With bow and shaft a brazen statue stood. Upon its forehead, like a coronet, Were these mysterious words of menace set: "That which I am, I am; my fatal aim None can escape, not even yon luminous flame!" Midway the hall was a fair table placed, With cloth of gold, and golden cups enchased With rubies, and the plates and knives were gold, And gold the bread and viands manifold. Around it, silent, motionless, and sad, Were seated gallant knights in armor clad, And ladies beautiful with plume and zone, But they were stone, their hearts within were stone; And the vast hall was filled in every part With silent crowds, stony in face and heart. Long at the scene, bewildered and amazed The trembling clerk in speechless wonder gazed; Then from the table, by his greed made bold, He seized a goblet and a knife of gold, And suddenly from their seats the guests upsprang, The vaulted ceiling with loud clamors rang, The archer sped his arrow, at their call, Shattering the lambent jewel on the wall, And all was dark around and overhead;-- Stark on the door the luckless clerk lay dead! The writer of this legend then records Its ghostly application in these words: The image is the Adversary old, Whose beckoning finger points to realms of gold; Our lusts and passions are the downward stair That leads the soul from a diviner air; The archer, Death; the flaming jewel, Life; Terrestrial goods, the goblet and the knife; The knights and ladies, all whose flesh and bone By avarice have been hardened into stone; The clerk, the scholar whom the love of pelf Tempts from his books and from his nobler self. The scholar and the world! The endless strife, The discord in the harmonies of life! The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books; The market-place, the eager love of gain, Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain! But why, you ask me, should this tale be told To men grown old, or who are growing old? It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate. Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles Wrote his grand Oedipus, and Simonides Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers, When each had numbered more than fourscore years, And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten, Had but begun his Characters of Men. Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales, At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales; Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last, Completed Faust when eighty years were past. These are indeed exceptions; but they show How far the gulf-stream of our youth may flow Into the arctic regions of our lives. Where little else than life itself survives. As the barometer foretells the storm While still the skies are clear, the weather warm, So something in us, as old age draws near, Betrays the pressure of the atmosphere. The nimble mercury, ere we are aware, Descends the elastic ladder of the air; The telltale blood in artery and vein Sinks from its higher levels in the brain; Whatever poet, orator, or sage May say of it, old age is still old age. It is the waning, not the crescent moon; The dusk of evening, not the blaze of noon: It is not strength, but weakness; not desire, But its surcease; not the fierce heat of fire, The burning and consuming element, But that of ashes and of embers spent, In which some living sparks we still discern, Enough to warm, but not enough to burn. What then? Shall we sit idly down and say The night hath come; it is no longer day? The night hath not yet come; we are not quite Cut off from labor by the failing light; Something remains for us to do or dare; Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear; Not Oedipus Coloneus, or Greek Ode, Or tales of pilgrims that one morning rode Out of the gateway of the Tabard inn, But other something, would we but begin; For age is opportunity no less Than youth itself, though in another dress, And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day. A BOOK OF SONNETS THREE FRIENDS OF MINE I When I remember them, those friends of mine, Who are no longer here, the noble three, Who half my life were more than friends to me, And whose discourse was like a generous wine, I most of all remember the divine Something, that shone in them, and made us see The archetypal man, and what might be The amplitude of Nature's first design. In vain I stretch my hands to clasp their hands; I cannot find them. Nothing now is left But a majestic memory. They meanwhile Wander together in Elysian lands, Perchance remembering me, who am bereft Of their dear presence, and, remembering, smile. II In Attica thy birthplace should have been, Or the Ionian Isles, or where the seas Encircle in their arms the Cyclades, So wholly Greek wast thou in thy serene And childlike joy of life, O Philhellene! Around thee would have swarmed the Attic bees; Homer had been thy friend, or Socrates, And Plato welcomed thee to his demesne. For thee old legends breathed historic breath; Thou sawest Poseidon in the purple sea, And in the sunset Jason's fleece of gold! O, what hadst thou to do with cruel Death, Who wast so full of life, or Death with thee, That thou shouldst die before thou hadst grown old! III I stand again on the familiar shore, And hear the waves of the distracted sea Piteously calling and lamenting thee, And waiting restless at thy cottage door. The rocks, the sea-weed on the ocean floor, The willows in the meadow, and the free Wild winds of the Atlantic welcome me; Then why shouldst thou be dead, and come no more? Ah, why shouldst thou be dead, when common men Are busy with their trivial affairs, Having and holding? Why, when thou hadst read Nature's mysterious manuscript, and then Wast ready to reveal the truth it bears, Why art thou silent! Why shouldst thou be dead? IV River, that stealest with such silent pace Around the City of the Dead, where lies A friend who bore thy name, and whom these eyes Shall see no more in his accustomed place, Linger and fold him in thy soft embrace And say good night, for now the western skies Are red with sunset, and gray mists arise Like damps that gather on a dead man's face. Good night! good night! as we so oft have said Beneath this roof at midnight in the days That are no more, and shall no more return. Thou hast but taken thy lamp and gone to bed; I stay a little longer, as one stays To cover up the embers that still burn. V The doors are all wide open; at the gate The blossomed lilacs counterfeit a blaze, And seem to warm the air; a dreamy haze Hangs o'er the Brighton meadows like a fate, And on their margin, with sea-tides elate, The flooded Charles, as in the happier days, Writes the last letter of his name, and stays His restless steps, as if compelled to wait. I also wait; but they will come no more, Those friends of mine, whose presence satisfied The thirst and hunger of my heart. Ah me! They have forgotten the pathway to my door! Something is gone from nature since they died, And summer is not summer, nor can be. CHAUCER An old man in a lodge within a park; The chamber walls depicted all around With portraitures of huntsman, hawk, and hound. And the hurt deer. He listeneth to the lark, Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound; He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound, Then writeth in a book like any clerk. He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote The Canterbury Tales, and his old age Made beautiful with song; and as I read I hear the crowing cock, I hear the note Of lark and linnet, and from every page Rise odors of ploughed field or flowery mead. SHAKESPEARE A vision as of crowded city streets, With human life in endless overflow; Thunder of thoroughfares; trumpets that blow To battle; clamor, in obscure retreats, Of sailors landed from their anchored fleets; Tolling of bells in turrets, and below Voices of children, and bright flowers that throw O'er garden-walls their intermingled sweets! This vision comes to me when I unfold The volume of the Poet paramount, Whom all the Muses loved, not one alone;-- Into his hands they put the lyre of gold, And, crowned with sacred laurel at their fount, Placed him as Musagetes on their throne. MILTON I pace the sounding sea-beach and behold How the voluminous billows roll and run, Upheaving and subsiding, while the sun Shines through their sheeted emerald far unrolled, And the ninth wave, slow gathering fold by fold All its loose-flowing garments into one, Plunges upon the shore, and floods the dun Pale reach of sands, and changes them to gold. So in majestic cadence rise and fall The mighty undulations of thy song, O sightless bard, England's Maeonides! And ever and anon, high over all Uplifted, a ninth wave superb and strong, Floods all the soul with its melodious seas. KEATS The young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep; The shepherd-boy whose tale was left half told! The solemn grove uplifts its shield of gold To the red rising moon, and loud and deep The nightingale is singing from the steep; It is midsummer, but the air is cold; Can it be death? Alas, beside the fold A shepherd's pipe lies shattered near his sheep. Lo! in the moonlight gleams a marble white, On which I read: "Here lieth one whose name Was writ in water." And was this the meed Of his sweet singing? Rather let me write: "The smoking flax before it burst to flame Was quenched by death, and broken the bruised reed." THE GALAXY Torrent of light and river of the air, Along whose bed the glimmering stars are seen Like gold and silver sands in some ravine Where mountain streams have left their channels bare! The Spaniard sees in thee the pathway, where His patron saint descended in the sheen Of his celestial armor, on serene And quiet nights, when all the heavens were fair. Not this I see, nor yet the ancient fable Of Phaeton's wild course, that scorched the skies Where'er the hoofs of his hot coursers trod; But the white drift of worlds o'er chasms of sable, The star-dust that is whirled aloft and flies From the invisible chariot-wheels of God. THE SOUND OF THE SEA The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep, And round the pebbly beaches far and wide I heard the first wave of the rising tide Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep; A voice out of the silence of the deep, A sound mysteriously multiplied As of a cataract from the mountain's side, Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep. So comes to us at times, from the unknown And inaccessible solitudes of being, The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul; And inspirations, that we deem our own, Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing Of things beyond our reason or control. A SUMMER DAY BY THE SEA The sun is set; and in his latest beams Yon little cloud of ashen gray and gold, Slowly upon the amber air unrolled, The falling mantle of the Prophet seems. From the dim headlands many a lighthouse gleams, The street-lamps of the ocean; and behold, O'erhead the banners of the night unfold; The day hath passed into the land of dreams. O summer day beside the joyous sea! O summer day so wonderful and white, So full of gladness and so full of pain! Forever and forever shalt thou be To some the gravestone of a dead delight, To some the landmark of a new domain. THE TIDES I saw the long line of the vacant shore, The sea-weed and the shells upon the sand, And the brown rocks left bare on every hand, As if the ebbing tide would flow no more. Then heard I, more distinctly than before, The ocean breathe and its great breast expand, And hurrying came on the defenceless land The insurgent waters with tumultuous roar. All thought and feeling and desire, I said, Love, laughter, and the exultant joy of song Have ebbed from me forever! Suddenly o'er me They swept again from their deep ocean bed, And in a tumult of delight, and strong As youth, and beautiful as youth, upbore me. A SHADOW I said unto myself, if I were dead, What would befall these children? What would be Their fate, who now are looking up to me For help and furtherance? Their lives, I said, Would be a volume wherein I have read But the first chapters, and no longer see To read the rest of their dear history, So full of beauty and so full of dread. Be comforted; the world is very old, And generations pass, as they have passed, A troop of shadows moving with the sun; Thousands of times has the old tale been told; The world belongs to those who come the last, They will find hope and strength as we have done. A NAMELESS GRAVE "A soldier of the Union mustered out," Is the inscription on an unknown grave At Newport News, beside the salt-sea wave, Nameless and dateless; sentinel or scout Shot down in skirmish, or disastrous rout Of battle, when the loud artillery drave Its iron wedges through the ranks of brave And doomed battalions, storming the redoubt. Thou unknown hero sleeping by the sea In thy forgotten grave! with secret shame I feel my pulses beat, my forehead burn, When I remember thou hast given for me All that thou hadst, thy life, thy very name, And I can give thee nothing in return. SLEEP Lull me to sleep, ye winds, whose fitful sound Seems from some faint Aeolian harp-string caught; Seal up the hundred wakeful eyes of thought As Hermes with his lyre in sleep profound The hundred wakeful eyes of Argus bound; For I am weary, and am overwrought With too much toil, with too much care distraught, And with the iron crown of anguish crowned. Lay thy soft hand upon my brow and cheek, O peaceful Sleep! until from pain released I breathe again uninterrupted breath! Ah, with what subtile meaning did the Greek Call thee the lesser mystery at the feast Whereof the greater mystery is death! THE OLD BRIDGE AT FLORENCE Taddeo Gaddi built me. I am old, Five centuries old. I plant my foot of stone Upon the Arno, as St. Michael's own Was planted on the dragon. Fold by fold Beneath me as it struggles. I behold Its glistening scales. Twice hath it overthrown My kindred and companions. Me alone It moveth not, but is by me controlled, I can remember when the Medici Were driven from Florence; longer still ago The final wars of Ghibelline and Guelf. Florence adorns me with her jewelry; And when I think that Michael Angelo Hath leaned on me, I glory in myself. IL PONTE VECCHIO DI FIRENZE Gaddi mi fece; il Ponte Vecchio sono; Cinquecent' anni gia sull' Arno pianto Il piede, come il suo Michele Santo Pianto sul draco. Mentre ch' io ragiono Lo vedo torcere con flebil suono Le rilucenti scaglie. Ha questi affranto Due volte i miei maggior. Me solo intanto Neppure muove, ed io non l' abbandono. Io mi rammento quando fur cacciati I Medici; pur quando Ghibellino E Guelfo fecer pace mi rammento. Fiorenza i suoi giojelli m' ha prestati; E quando penso ch' Agnolo il divino Su me posava, insuperbir mi sento. NATURE As a fond mother, when the day is o'er, Leads by the hand her little child to bed, Half willing, half reluctant to be led, And leave his broken playthings on the floor, Still gazing at them through the open door, Nor wholly reassured and comforted By promises of others in their stead, Which, though more splendid, may not please him more; So Nature deals with us, and takes away Our playthings one by one, and by the hand Leads us to rest so gently, that we go Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay, Being too full of sleep to understand How far the unknown transcends the what we know. IN THE CHURCHYARD AT TARRYTOWN Here lies the gentle humorist, who died In the bright Indian Summer of his fame! A simple stone, with but a date and name, Marks his secluded resting-place beside The river that he loved and glorified. Here in the autumn of his days he came, But the dry leaves of life were all aflame With tints that brightened and were multiplied. How sweet a life was his; how sweet a death! Living, to wing with mirth the weary hours, Or with romantic tales the heart to cheer; Dying, to leave a memory like the breath Of summers full of sunshine and of showers, A grief and gladness in the atmosphere. ELIOT'S OAK Thou ancient oak! whose myriad leaves are loud With sounds of unintelligible speech, Sounds as of surges on a shingly beach, Or multitudinous murmurs of a crowd; With some mysterious gift of tongues endowed, Thou speakest a different dialect to each; To me a language that no man can teach, Of a lost race, long vanished like a cloud. For underneath thy shade, in days remote, Seated like Abraham at eventide Beneath the oaks of Mamre, the unknown Apostle of the Indians, Eliot, wrote His Bible in a language that hath died And is forgotten, save by thee alone. THE DESCENT OF THE MUSES Nine sisters, beautiful in form and face, Came from their convent on the shining heights Of Pierus, the mountain of delights, To dwell among the people at its base. Then seemed the world to change. All time and space, Splendor of cloudless days and starry nights, And men and manners, and all sounds and sights, Had a new meaning, a diviner grace. Proud were these sisters, but were not too proud To teach in schools of little country towns Science and song, and all the arts that please; So that while housewives span, and farmers ploughed, Their comely daughters, clad in homespun gowns, Learned the sweet songs of the Pierides. VENICE White swan of cities, slumbering in thy nest So wonderfully built among the reeds Of the lagoon, that fences thee and feeds, As sayeth thy old historian and thy guest! White water-lily, cradled and caressed By ocean streams, and from the silt and weeds Lifting thy golden filaments and seeds, Thy sun-illumined spires, thy crown and crest! White phantom city, whose untrodden streets Are rivers, and whose pavements are the shifting Shadows of palaces and strips of sky; I wait to see thee vanish like the fleets Seen in mirage, or towers of cloud uplifting In air their unsubstantial masonry. THE POETS O ye dead Poets, who are living still Immortal in your verse, though life be fled, And ye, O living Poets, who are dead Though ye are living, if neglect can kill, Tell me if in the darkest hours of ill, With drops of anguish falling fast and red From the sharp crown of thorns upon your head, Ye were not glad your errand to fulfil? Yes; for the gift and ministry of Song Have something in them so divinely sweet, It can assuage the bitterness of wrong; Not in the clamor of the crowded street, Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat. PARKER CLEAVELAND WRITTEN ON REVISITING BRUNSWICK IN THE SUMMER OF 1875 Among the many lives that I have known, None I remember more serene and sweet, More rounded in itself and more complete, Than his, who lies beneath this funeral stone. These pines, that murmur in low monotone, These walks frequented by scholastic feet, Were all his world; but in this calm retreat For him the Teacher's chair became a throne. With fond affection memory loves to dwell On the old days, when his example made A pastime of the toil of tongue and pen; And now, amid the groves he loved so well That naught could lure him from their grateful shade, He sleeps, but wakes elsewhere, for God hath said, Amen! THE HARVEST MOON It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes And roofs of villages, on woodland crests And their aerial neighborhoods of nests Deserted, on the curtained window-panes Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests! Gone are the birds that were our summer guests, With the last sheaves return the laboring wains! All things are symbols: the external shows Of Nature have their image in the mind, As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves; The song-birds leave us at the summer's close, Only the empty nests are left behind, And pipings of the quail among the sheaves. TO THE RIVER RHONE Thou Royal River, born of sun and shower In chambers purple with the Alpine glow, Wrapped in the spotless ermine of the snow And rocked by tempests!--at the appointed hour Forth, like a steel-clad horseman from a tower, With clang and clink of harness dost thou go To meet thy vassal torrents, that below Rush to receive thee and obey thy power. And now thou movest in triumphal march, A king among the rivers! On thy way A hundred towns await and welcome thee; Bridges uplift for thee the stately arch, Vineyards encircle thee with garlands gay, And fleets attend thy progress to the sea! THE THREE SILENCES OF MOLINOS TO JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER Three Silences there are: the first of speech, The second of desire, the third of thought; This is the lore a Spanish monk, distraught With dreams and visions, was the first to teach. These Silences, commingling each with each, Made up the perfect Silence, that he sought And prayed for, and wherein at times he caught Mysterious sounds from realms beyond our reach. O thou, whose daily life anticipates The life to come, and in whose thought and word The spiritual world preponderates. Hermit of Amesbury! thou too hast heard Voices and melodies from beyond the gates, And speakest only when thy soul is stirred! THE TWO RIVERS I Slowly the hour-hand of the clock moves round; So slowly that no human eye hath power To see it move! Slowly in shine or shower The painted ship above it, homeward bound, Sails, but seems motionless, as if aground; Yet both arrive at last; and in his tower The slumberous watchman wakes and strikes the hour, A mellow, measured, melancholy sound. Midnight! the outpost of advancing day! The frontier town and citadel of night! The watershed of Time, from which the streams Of Yesterday and To-morrow take their way, One to the land of promise and of light, One to the land of darkness and of dreams! II O River of Yesterday, with current swift Through chasms descending, and soon lost to sight, I do not care to follow in their flight The faded leaves, that on thy bosom drift! O River of To-morrow, I uplift Mine eyes, and thee I follow, as the night Wanes into morning, and the dawning light Broadens, and all the shadows fade and shift! I follow, follow, where thy waters run Through unfrequented, unfamiliar fields, Fragrant with flowers and musical with song; Still follow, follow; sure to meet the sun, And confident, that what the future yields Will be the right, unless myself be wrong. III Yet not in vain, O River of Yesterday, Through chasms of darkness to the deep descending, I heard thee sobbing in the rain, and blending Thy voice with other voices far away. I called to thee, and yet thou wouldst not stay, But turbulent, and with thyself contending, And torrent-like thy force on pebbles spending, Thou wouldst not listen to a poet's lay. Thoughts, like a loud and sudden rush of wings, Regrets and recollections of things past, With hints and prophecies of things to be, And inspirations, which, could they be things, And stay with us, and we could hold them fast, Were our good angels,--these I owe to thee. IV And thou, O River of To-morrow, flowing Between thy narrow adamantine walls, But beautiful, and white with waterfalls, And wreaths of mist, like hands the pathway showing; I hear the trumpets of the morning blowing, I hear thy mighty voice, that calls and calls, And see, as Ossian saw in Morven's halls, Mysterious phantoms, coming, beckoning, going! It is the mystery of the unknown That fascinates us; we are children still, Wayward and wistful; with one hand we cling To the familiar things we call our own, And with the other, resolute of will, Grope in the dark for what the day will bring. BOSTON St. Bototlph's Town! Hither across the plains And fens of Lincolnshire, in garb austere, There came a Saxon monk, and founded here A Priory, pillaged by marauding Danes, So that thereof no vestige now remains; Only a name, that, spoken loud and clear, And echoed in another hemisphere, Survives the sculptured walls and painted panes. St. Botolph's Town! Far over leagues of land And leagues of sea looks forth its noble tower, And far around the chiming bells are heard; So may that sacred name forever stand A landmark, and a symbol of the power, That lies concentred in a single word. ST. JOHN'S, CAMBRIDGE I stand beneath the tree, whose branches shade Thy western window, Chapel of St. John! And hear its leaves repeat their benison On him, whose hand if thy stones memorial laid; Then I remember one of whom was said In the world's darkest hour, "Behold thy son!" And see him living still, and wandering on And waiting for the advent long delayed. Not only tongues of the apostles teach Lessons of love and light, but these expanding And sheltering boughs with all their leaves implore, And say in language clear as human speech, "The peace of God, that passeth understanding, Be and abide with you forevermore!" MOODS Oh that a Song would sing itself to me Out of the heart of Nature, or the heart Of man, the child of Nature, not of Art, Fresh as the morning, salt as the salt sea, With just enough of bitterness to be A medicine to this sluggish mood, and start The life-blood in my veins, and so impart Healing and help in this dull lethargy! Alas! not always doth the breath of song Breathe on us. It is like the wind that bloweth At its own will, not ours, nor tarries long; We hear the sound thereof, but no man knoweth From whence it comes, so sudden and swift and strong, Nor whither in its wayward course it goeth. WOODSTOCK PARK Here in a little rustic hermitage Alfred the Saxon King, Alfred the Great, Postponed the cares of king-craft to translate The Consolations of the Roman sage. Here Geoffrey Chaucer in his ripe old age Wrote the unrivalled Tales, which soon or late The venturous hand that strives to imitate Vanquished must fall on the unfinished page. Two kings were they, who ruled by right divine, And both supreme; one in the realm of Truth, One in the realm of Fiction and of Song. What prince hereditary of their line, Uprising in the strength and flush of youth, Their glory shall inherit and prolong? THE FOUR PRINCESSES AT WILNA A PHOTOGRAPH Sweet faces, that from pictured casements lean As from a castle window, looking down On some gay pageant passing through a town, Yourselves the fairest figures in the scene; With what a gentle grace, with what serene Unconsciousness ye wear the triple crown Of youth and beauty and the fair renown Of a great name, that ne'er hath tarnished been! From your soft eyes, so innocent and sweet, Four spirits, sweet and innocent as they, Gaze on the world below, the sky above; Hark! there is some one singing in the street; "Faith, Hope, and Love! these three," he seems to say; "These three; and greatest of the three is Love." HOLIDAYS The holiest of all holidays are those Kept by ourselves in silence and apart; The secret anniversaries of the heart, When the full river of feeling overflows;-- The happy days unclouded to their close; The sudden joys that out of darkness start As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart Like swallows singing down each wind that blows! White as the gleam of a receding sail, White as a cloud that floats and fades in air, White as the whitest lily on a stream, These tender memories are;--a Fairy Tale Of some enchanted land we know not where, But lovely as a landscape in a dream. WAPENTAKE TO ALFRED TENNYSON Poet! I come to touch thy lance with mine; Not as a knight, who on the listed field Of tourney touched his adversary's shield In token of defiance, but in sign Of homage to the mastery, which is thine, In English song; nor will I keep concealed, And voiceless as a rivulet frost-congealed, My admiration for thy verse divine. Not of the howling dervishes of song, Who craze the brain with their delirious dance, Art thou, O sweet historian of the heart! Therefore to thee the laurel-leaves belong, To thee our love and our allegiance, For thy allegiance to the poet's art. THE BROKEN OAR Once upon Iceland's solitary strand A poet wandered with his book and pen, Seeking some final word, some sweet Amen, Wherewith to close the volume in his hand. The billows rolled and plunged upon the sand, The circling sea-gulls swept beyond his ken, And from the parting cloud-rack now and then Flashed the red sunset over sea and land. Then by the billows at his feet was tossed A broken oar; and carved thereon he read, "Oft was I weary, when I toiled at thee"; And like a man, who findeth what was lost, He wrote the words, then lifted up his head, And flung his useless pen into the sea. THE CROSS OF SNOW In the long, sleepless watches of the night, A gentle face--the face of one long dead-- Looks at me from the wall, where round its head The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light. Here in this room she died; and soul more white Never through martyrdom of fire was led To its repose; nor can in books be read The legend of a life more benedight. There is a mountain in the distant West That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines Displays a cross of snow upon its side. Such is the cross I wear upon my breast These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes And seasons, changeless since the day she died. ************** BIRDS OF PASSAGE FLIGHT THE FOURTH CHARLES SUMNER Garlands upon his grave, And flowers upon his hearse, And to the tender heart and brave The tribute of this verse. His was the troubled life, The conflict and the pain, The grief, the bitterness of strife, The honor without stain. Like Winkelried, he took Into his manly breast The sheaf of hostile spears, and broke A path for the oppressed. Then from the fatal field Upon a nation's heart Borne like a warrior on his shield!-- So should the brave depart. Death takes us by surprise, And stays our hurrying feet; The great design unfinished lies, Our lives are incomplete. But in the dark unknown Perfect their circles seem, Even as a bridge's arch of stone Is rounded in the stream. Alike are life and death, When life in death survives, And the uninterrupted breath Inspires a thousand lives. Were a star quenched on high, For ages would its light, Still travelling downward from the sky, Shine on our mortal sight. So when a great man dies, For years beyond our ken, The light he leaves behind him lies Upon the paths of men. TRAVELS BY THE FIRESIDE The ceaseless rain is falling fast, And yonder gilded vane, Immovable for three days past, Points to the misty main, It drives me in upon myself And to the fireside gleams, To pleasant books that crowd my shelf, And still more pleasant dreams, I read whatever bards have sung Of lands beyond the sea, And the bright days when I was young Come thronging back to me. In fancy I can hear again The Alpine torrent's roar, The mule-bells on the hills of Spain, The sea at Elsinore. I see the convent's gleaming wall Rise from its groves of pine, And towers of old cathedrals tall, And castles by the Rhine. I journey on by park and spire, Beneath centennial trees, Through fields with poppies all on fire, And gleams of distant seas. I fear no more the dust and heat, No more I feel fatigue, While journeying with another's feet O'er many a lengthening league. Let others traverse sea and land, And toil through various climes, I turn the world round with my hand Reading these poets' rhymes. From them I learn whatever lies Beneath each changing zone, And see, when looking with their eyes, Better than with mine own. CADENABBIA LAKE OF COMO No sound of wheels or hoof-beat breaks The silence of the summer day, As by the loveliest of all lakes I while the idle hours away. I pace the leafy colonnade Where level branches of the plane Above me weave a roof of shade Impervious to the sun and rain. At times a sudden rush of air Flutters the lazy leaves o'erhead, And gleams of sunshine toss and flare Like torches down the path I tread. By Somariva's garden gate I make the marble stairs my seat, And hear the water, as I wait, Lapping the steps beneath my feet. The undulation sinks and swells Along the stony parapets, And far away the floating bells Tinkle upon the fisher's nets. Silent and slow, by tower and town The freighted barges come and go, Their pendent shadows gliding down By town and tower submerged below. The hills sweep upward from the shore, With villas scattered one by one Upon their wooded spurs, and lower Bellaggio blazing in the sun. And dimly seen, a tangled mass Of walls and woods, of light and shade, Stands beckoning up the Stelvio Pass Varenna with its white cascade. I ask myself, Is this a dream? Will it all vanish into air? Is there a land of such supreme And perfect beauty anywhere? Sweet vision! Do not fade away; Linger until my heart shall take Into itself the summer day, And all the beauty of the lake. Linger until upon my brain Is stamped an image of the scene, Then fade into the air again, And be as if thou hadst not been. MONTE CASSINO TERRA DI LAVORO Beautiful valley! through whose verdant meads Unheard the Garigliano glides along;-- The Liris, nurse of rushes and of reeds, The river taciturn of classic song. The Land of Labor and the Land of Rest, Where mediaeval towns are white on all The hillsides, and where every mountain's crest Is an Etrurian or a Roman wall. There is Alagna, where Pope Boniface Was dragged with contumely from his throne; Sciarra Colonna, was that day's disgrace The Pontiff's only, or in part thine own? There is Ceprano, where a renegade Was each Apulian, as great Dante saith, When Manfred by his men-at-arms betrayed Spurred on to Benevento and to death. There is Aquinum, the old Volscian town, Where Juvenal was born, whose lurid light Still hovers o'er his birthplace like the crown Of splendor seen o'er cities in the night. Doubled the splendor is, that in its streets The Angelic Doctor as a school-boy played, And dreamed perhaps the dreams, that he repeats In ponderous folios for scholastics made. And there, uplifted, like a passing cloud That pauses on a mountain summit high, Monte Cassino's convent rears its proud And venerable walls against the sky. Well I remember how on foot I climbed The stony pathway leading to its gate; Above, the convent bells for vespers chimed, Below, the darkening town grew desolate. Well I remember the low arch and dark, The court-yard with its well, the terrace wide, From which, far down, the valley like a park Veiled in the evening mists, was dim descried. The day was dying, and with feeble hands Caressed the mountain-tops; the vales between Darkened; the river in the meadowlands Sheathed itself as a sword, and was not seen. The silence of the place was like a sleep, So full of rest it seemed; each passing tread Was a reverberation from the deep Recesses of the ages that are dead. For, more than thirteen centuries ago, Benedict fleeing from the gates of Rome, A youth disgusted with its vice and woe, Sought in these mountain solitudes a home. He founded here his Convent and his Rule Of prayer and work, and counted work as prayer; The pen became a clarion, and his school Flamed like a beacon in the midnight air. What though Boccaccio, in his reckless way, Mocking the lazy brotherhood, deplores The illuminated manuscripts, that lay Torn and neglected on the dusty floors? Boccaccio was a novelist, a child Of fancy and of fiction at the best! This the urbane librarian said, and smiled Incredulous, as at some idle jest. Upon such themes as these, with one young friar I sat conversing late into the night, Till in its cavernous chimney the woodfire Had burnt its heart out like an anchorite. And then translated, in my convent cell, Myself yet not myself, in dreams I lay, And, as a monk who hears the matin bell, Started from sleep; already it was day. From the high window I beheld the scene On which Saint Benedict so oft had gazed,-- The mountains and the valley in the sheen Of the bright sun,--and stood as one amazed. Gray mists were rolling, rising, vanishing; The woodlands glistened with their jewelled crowns; Far off the mellow bells began to ring For matins in the half-awakened towns. The conflict of the Present and the Past, The ideal and the actual in our life, As on a field of battle held me fast, Where this world and the next world were at strife. For, as the valley from its sleep awoke, I saw the iron horses of the steam Toss to the morning air their plumes of smoke, And woke, as one awaketh from a dream. AMALFI Sweet the memory is to me Of a land beyond the sea, Where the waves and mountains meet, Where, amid her mulberry-trees Sits Amalfi in the heat, Bathing ever her white feet In the tideless summer seas. In the middle of the town, From its fountains in the hills, Tumbling through the narrow gorge, The Canneto rushes down, Turns the great wheels of the mills, Lifts the hammers of the forge. 'T is a stairway, not a street, That ascends the deep ravine, Where the torrent leaps between Rocky walls that almost meet. Toiling up from stair to stair Peasant girls their burdens bear; Sunburnt daughters of the soil, Stately figures tall and straight, What inexorable fate Dooms them to this life of toil? Lord of vineyards and of lands, Far above the convent stands. On its terraced walk aloof Leans a monk with folded hands, Placid, satisfied, serene, Looking down upon the scene Over wall and red-tiled roof; Wondering unto what good end All this toil and traffic tend, And why all men cannot be Free from care and free from pain, And the sordid love of gain, And as indolent as he. Where are now the freighted barks From the marts of east and west? Where the knights in iron sarks Journeying to the Holy Land, Glove of steel upon the hand, Cross of crimson on the breast? Where the pomp of camp and court? Where the pilgrims with their prayers? Where the merchants with their wares, And their gallant brigantines Sailing safely into port Chased by corsair Algerines? Vanished like a fleet of cloud, Like a passing trumpet-blast, Are those splendors of the past, And the commerce and the crowd! Fathoms deep beneath the seas Lie the ancient wharves and quays, Swallowed by the engulfing waves; Silent streets and vacant halls, Ruined roofs and towers and walls; Hidden from all mortal eyes Deep the sunken city lies: Even cities have their graves! This is an enchanted land! Round the headlands far away Sweeps the blue Salernian bay With its sickle of white sand: Further still and furthermost On the dim discovered coast Paestum with its ruins lies, And its roses all in bloom Seem to tinge the fatal skies Of that lonely land of doom. On his terrace, high in air, Nothing doth the good monk care For such worldly themes as these, From the garden just below Little puffs of perfume blow, And a sound is in his ears Of the murmur of the bees In the shining chestnut-trees; Nothing else he heeds or hears. All the landscape seems to swoon In the happy afternoon; Slowly o'er his senses creep The encroaching waves of sleep, And he sinks as sank the town, Unresisting, fathoms down, Into caverns cool and deep! Walled about with drifts of snow, Hearing the fierce north-wind blow, Seeing all the landscape white, And the river cased in ice, Comes this memory of delight, Comes this vision unto me Of a long-lost Paradise In the land beyond the sea. THE SERMON OF ST. FRANCIS Up soared the lark into the air, A shaft of song, a winged prayer, As if a soul, released from pain, Were flying back to heaven again. St. Francis heard; it was to him An emblem of the Seraphim; The upward motion of the fire, The light, the heat, the heart's desire. Around Assisi's convent gate The birds, God's poor who cannot wait, From moor and mere and darksome wood Came flocking for their dole of food. "O brother birds," St. Francis said, "Ye come to me and ask for bread, But not with bread alone to-day Shall ye be fed and sent away. "Ye shall be fed, ye happy birds, With manna of celestial words; Not mine, though mine they seem to be, Not mine, though they be spoken through me. "O, doubly are ye bound to praise The great Creator in your lays; He giveth you your plumes of down, Your crimson hoods, your cloaks of brown. "He giveth you your wings to fly And breathe a purer air on high, And careth for you everywhere, Who for yourselves so little care!" With flutter of swift wings and songs Together rose the feathered throngs, And singing scattered far apart; Deep peace was in St. Francis' heart. He knew not if the brotherhood His homily had understood; He only knew that to one ear The meaning of his words was clear. BELISARIUS I am poor and old and blind; The sun burns me, and the wind Blows through the city gate And covers me with dust From the wheels of the august Justinian the Great. It was for him I chased The Persians o'er wild and waste, As General of the East; Night after night I lay In their camps of yesterday; Their forage was my feast. For him, with sails of red, And torches at mast-head, Piloting the great fleet, I swept the Afric coasts And scattered the Vandal hosts, Like dust in a windy street. For him I won again The Ausonian realm and reign, Rome and Parthenope; And all the land was mine From the summits of Apennine To the shores of either sea. For him, in my feeble age, I dared the battle's rage, To save Byzantium's state, When the tents of Zabergan, Like snow-drifts overran The road to the Golden Gate. And for this, for this, behold! Infirm and blind and old, With gray, uncovered head, Beneath the very arch Of my triumphal march, I stand and beg my bread! Methinks I still can hear, Sounding distinct and near, The Vandal monarch's cry, As, captive and disgraced, With majestic step he paced,-- "All, all is Vanity!" Ah! vainest of all things Is the gratitude of kings; The plaudits of the crowd Are but the clatter of feet At midnight in the street, Hollow and restless and loud. But the bitterest disgrace Is to see forever the face Of the Monk of Ephesus! The unconquerable will This, too, can bear;--I still Am Belisarius! SONGO RIVER Nowhere such a devious stream, Save in fancy or in dream, Winding slow through bush and brake Links together lake and lake. Walled with woods or sandy shelf, Ever doubling on itself Flows the stream, so still and slow That it hardly seems to flow. Never errant knight of old, Lost in woodland or on wold, Such a winding path pursued Through the sylvan solitude. Never school-boy in his quest After hazel-nut or nest, Through the forest in and out Wandered loitering thus about. In the mirror of its tide Tangled thickets on each side Hang inverted, and between Floating cloud or sky serene. Swift or swallow on the wing Seems the only living thing, Or the loon, that laughs and flies Down to those reflected skies. Silent stream! thy Indian name Unfamiliar is to fame; For thou hidest here alone, Well content to be unknown. But thy tranquil waters teach Wisdom deep as human speech, Moving without haste or noise In unbroken equipoise. Though thou turnest no busy mill, And art ever calm and still, Even thy silence seems to say To the traveller on his way:-- "Traveller, hurrying from the heat Of the city, stay thy feet! Rest awhile, nor longer waste Life with inconsiderate haste! "Be not like a stream that brawls Loud with shallow waterfalls, But in quiet self-control Link together soul and soul" ************ KERAMOS Turn, turn, my wheel? Turn round and round Without a pause, without a sound: So spins the flying world away! This clay, well mixed with marl and sand, Follows the motion of my hand; Far some must follow, and some command, Though all are made of clay! Thus sang the Potter at his task Beneath the blossoming hawthorn-tree, While o'er his features, like a mask, The quilted sunshine and leaf-shade Moved, as the boughs above him swayed, And clothed him, till he seemed to be A figure woven in tapestry, So sumptuously was he arrayed In that magnificent attire Of sable tissue flaked with fire. Like a magician he appeared, A conjurer without book or beard; And while he plied his magic art-- For it was magical to me-- I stood in silence and apart, And wondered more and more to see That shapeless, lifeless mass of clay Rise up to meet the master's hand, And now contract and now expand, And even his slightest touch obey; While ever in a thoughtful mood He sang his ditty, and at times Whistled a tune between the rhymes, As a melodious interlude. Turn, turn, my wheel! All things must change To something new, to something strange; Nothing that is can pause or stay; The moon will wax, the moon will wane, The mist and cloud will turn to rain, The rain to mist and cloud again, To-morrow be to-day. Thus still the Potter sang, and still, By some unconscious act of will, The melody and even the words Were intermingled with my thought As bits of colored thread are caught And woven into nests of birds. And thus to regions far remote, Beyond the ocean's vast expanse, This wizard in the motley coat Transported me on wings of song, And by the northern shores of France Bore me with restless speed along. What land is this that seems to be A mingling of the land and sea? This land of sluices, dikes, and dunes? This water-net, that tessellates The landscape? this unending maze Of gardens, through whose latticed gates The imprisoned pinks and tulips gaze; Where in long summer afternoons The sunshine, softened by the haze, Comes streaming down as through a screen; Where over fields and pastures green The painted ships float high in air, And over all and everywhere The sails of windmills sink and soar Like wings of sea-gulls on the shore? What land is this? Yon pretty town Is Delft, with all its wares displayed; The pride, the market-place, the crown And centre of the Potter's trade. See! every house and room is bright With glimmers of reflected light From plates that on the dresser shine; Flagons to foam with Flemish beer, Or sparkle with the Rhenish wine, And pilgrim flasks with fleurs-de-lis, And ships upon a rolling sea, And tankards pewter topped, and queer With comic mask and musketeer! Each hospitable chimney smiles A welcome from its painted tiles; The parlor walls, the chamber floors, The stairways and the corridors, The borders of the garden walks, Are beautiful with fadeless flowers, That never droop in winds or showers, And never wither on their stalks. Turn, turn, my wheel! All life is brief; What now is bud wilt soon be leaf, What now is leaf will soon decay; The wind blows east, the wind blows west; The blue eyes in the robin's nest Will soon have wings and beak and breast, And flutter and fly away. Now southward through the air I glide, The song my only pursuivant, And see across the landscape wide The blue Charente, upon whose tide The belfries and the spires of Saintes Ripple and rock from side to side, As, when an earthquake rends its walls, A crumbling city reels and falls. Who is it in the suburbs here, This Potter, working with such cheer, In this mean house, this mean attire, His manly features bronzed with fire, Whose figulines and rustic wares Scarce find him bread from day to day? This madman, as the people say, Who breaks his tables and his chairs To feed his furnace fires, nor cares Who goes unfed if they are fed, Nor who may live if they are dead? This alchemist with hollow cheeks And sunken, searching eyes, who seeks, By mingled earths and ores combined With potency of fire, to find Some new enamel, hard and bright, His dream, his passion, his delight? O Palissy! within thy breast Burned the hot fever of unrest; Thine was the prophets vision, thine The exultation, the divine Insanity of noble minds, That never falters nor abates, But labors and endures and waits, Till all that it foresees it finds, Or what it cannot find creates! Turn, turn, my wheel! This earthen jar A touch can make, a touch can mar; And shall it to the Potter say, What makest thou. Thou hast no hand? As men who think to understand A world by their Creator planned, Who wiser is than they. Still guided by the dreamy song, As in a trance I float along Above the Pyrenean chain, Above the fields and farms of Spain, Above the bright Majorcan isle, That lends its softened name to art,-- A spot, a dot upon the chart, Whose little towns, red-roofed with tile, Are ruby-lustred with the light Of blazing furnaces by night, And crowned by day with wreaths of smoke. Then eastward, wafted in my flight On my enchanter's magic cloak, I sail across the Tyrrhene Sea Into the land of Italy, And o'er the windy Apennines, Mantled and musical with pines. The palaces, the princely halls, The doors of houses and the walls Of churches and of belfry towers, Cloister and castle, street and mart, Are garlanded and gay with flowers That blossom in the fields of art. Here Gubbio's workshops gleam and glow With brilliant, iridescent dyes, The dazzling whiteness of the snow, The cobalt blue of summer skies; And vase and scutcheon, cup and plate, In perfect finish emulate Faenza, Florence, Pesaro. Forth from Urbino's gate there came A youth with the angelic name Of Raphael, in form and face Himself angelic, and divine In arts of color and design. From him Francesco Xanto caught Something of his transcendent grace, And into fictile fabrics wrought Suggestions of the master's thought. Nor less Maestro Giorgio shines With madre-perl and golden lines Of arabesques, and interweaves His birds and fruits and flowers and leaves About some landscape, shaded brown, With olive tints on rock and town. Behold this cup within whose bowl, Upon a ground of deepest blue With yellow-lustred stars o'erlaid, Colors of every tint and hue Mingle in one harmonious whole! With large blue eyes and steadfast gaze, Her yellow hair in net and braid, Necklace and ear-rings all ablaze With golden lustre o'er the glaze, A woman's portrait; on the scroll, Cana, the Beautiful! A name Forgotten save for such brief fame As this memorial can bestow,-- A gift some lover long ago Gave with his heart to this fair dame. A nobler title to renown Is thine, O pleasant Tuscan town, Seated beside the Arno's stream; For Lucca della Robbia there Created forms so wondrous fair, They made thy sovereignty supreme. These choristers with lips of stone, Whose music is not heard, but seen, Still chant, as from their organ-screen, Their Maker's praise; nor these alone, But the more fragile forms of clay, Hardly less beautiful than they, These saints and angels that adorn The walls of hospitals, and tell The story of good deeds so well That poverty seems less forlorn, And life more like a holiday. Here in this old neglected church, That long eludes the traveller's search, Lies the dead bishop on his tomb; Earth upon earth he slumbering lies, Life-like and death-like in the gloom; Garlands of fruit and flowers in bloom And foliage deck his resting place; A shadow in the sightless eyes, A pallor on the patient face, Made perfect by the furnace heat; All earthly passions and desires Burnt out by purgatorial fires; Seeming to say, "Our years are fleet, And to the weary death is sweet." But the most wonderful of all The ornaments on tomb or wall That grace the fair Ausonian shores Are those the faithful earth restores, Near some Apulian town concealed, In vineyard or in harvest field,-- Vases and urns and bas-reliefs, Memorials of forgotten griefs, Or records of heroic deeds Of demigods and mighty chiefs: Figures that almost move and speak, And, buried amid mould and weeds, Still in their attitudes attest The presence of the graceful Greek,-- Achilles in his armor dressed, Alcides with the Cretan bull, And Aphrodite with her boy, Or lovely Helena of Troy, Still living and still beautiful. Turn, turn, my wheel! 'T is nature's plan The child should grow into the man, The man grow wrinkled, old, and gray; In youth the heart exults and sings, The pulses leap, the feet have wings; In age the cricket chirps, and brings The harvest home of day. And now the winds that southward blow, And cool the hot Sicilian isle, Bear me away. I see below The long line of the Libyan Nile, Flooding and feeding the parched land With annual ebb and overflow, A fallen palm whose branches lie Beneath the Abyssinian sky, Whose roots are in Egyptian sands, On either bank huge water-wheels, Belted with jars and dripping weeds, Send forth their melancholy moans, As if, in their gray mantles hid, Dead anchorites of the Thebaid Knelt on the shore and told their beads, Beating their breasts with loud appeals And penitential tears and groans. This city, walled and thickly set With glittering mosque and minaret, Is Cairo, in whose gay bazaars The dreaming traveller first inhales The perfume of Arabian gales, And sees the fabulous earthen jars, Huge as were those wherein the maid Morgiana found the Forty Thieves Concealed in midnight ambuscade; And seeing, more than half believes The fascinating tales that run Through all the Thousand Nights and One, Told by the fair Scheherezade. More strange and wonderful than these Are the Egyptian deities, Ammonn, and Emeth, and the grand Osiris, holding in his hand The lotus; Isis, crowned and veiled; The sacred Ibis, and the Sphinx; Bracelets with blue enamelled links; The Scarabee in emerald mailed, Or spreading wide his funeral wings; Lamps that perchance their night-watch kept O'er Cleopatra while she slept,-- All plundered from the tombs of kings. Turn, turn, my wheel! The human race, Of every tongue, of every place, Caucasian, Coptic, or Malay, All that inhabit this great earth, Whatever be their rank or worth, Are kindred and allied by birth, And made of the same clay. O'er desert sands, o'er gulf and bay, O'er Ganges and o'er Himalay, Bird-like I fly, and flying sing, To flowery kingdoms of Cathay, And bird-like poise on balanced wing Above the town of King-te-tching, A burning town, or seeming so,-- Three thousand furnaces that glow Incessantly, and fill the air With smoke uprising, gyre on gyre And painted by the lurid glare, Of jets and flashes of red fire. As leaves that in the autumn fall, Spotted and veined with various hues, Are swept along the avenues, And lie in heaps by hedge and wall, So from this grove of chimneys whirled To all the markets of the world, These porcelain leaves are wafted on,-- Light yellow leaves with spots and stains Of violet and of crimson dye, Or tender azure of a sky Just washed by gentle April rains, And beautiful with celadon. Nor less the coarser household wares,-- The willow pattern, that we knew In childhood, with its bridge of blue Leading to unknown thoroughfares; The solitary man who stares At the white river flowing through Its arches, the fantastic trees And wild perspective of the view; And intermingled among these The tiles that in our nurseries Filled us with wonder and delight, Or haunted us in dreams at night. And yonder by Nankin, behold! The Tower of Porcelain, strange and old, Uplifting to the astonished skies Its ninefold painted balconies, With balustrades of twining leaves, And roofs of tile, beneath whose eaves Hang porcelain bells that all the time Ring with a soft, melodious chime; While the whole fabric is ablaze With varied tints, all fused in one Great mass of color, like a maze Of flowers illumined by the sun. Turn, turn, my wheel! What is begun At daybreak must at dark be done, To-morrow will be another day; To-morrow the hot furnace flame Will search the heart and try the frame, And stamp with honor or with shame These vessels made of clay. Cradled and rocked in Eastern seas, The islands of the Japanese Beneath me lie; o'er lake and plain The stork, the heron, and the crane Through the clear realms of azure drift, And on the hillside I can see The villages of Imari, Whose thronged and flaming workshops lift Their twisted columns of smoke on high, Cloud cloisters that in ruins lie, With sunshine streaming through each rift, And broken arches of blue sky. All the bright flowers that fill the land, Ripple of waves on rock or sand, The snow on Fusiyama's cone, The midnight heaven so thickly sown With constellations of bright stars, The leaves that rustle, the reeds that make A whisper by each stream and lake, The saffron dawn, the sunset red, Are painted on these lovely jars; Again the skylark sings, again The stork, the heron, and the crane Float through the azure overhead, The counterfeit and counterpart Of Nature reproduced in Art. Art is the child of Nature; yes, Her darling child, in whom we trace The features of the mother's face, Her aspect and her attitude, All her majestic loveliness Chastened and softened and subdued Into a more attractive grace, And with a human sense imbued. He is the greatest artist, then, Whether of pencil or of pen, Who follows Nature. Never man, As artist or as artisan, Pursuing his own fantasies, Can touch the human heart, or please, Or satisfy our nobler needs, As he who sets his willing feet In Nature's footprints, light and fleet, And follows fearless where she leads. Thus mused I on that morn in May, Wrapped in my visions like the Seer, Whose eyes behold not what is near, But only what is far away, When, suddenly sounding peal on peal, The church-bell from the neighboring town Proclaimed the welcome hour of noon. The Potter heard, and stopped his wheel, His apron on the grass threw down, Whistled his quiet little tune, Not overloud nor overlong, And ended thus his simple song: Stop, stop, my wheel! Too soon, too soon The noon will be the afternoon, Too soon to-day be yesterday; Behind us in our path we cast The broken potsherds of the past, And all are ground to dust a last, And trodden into clay! ************* BIRDS OF PASSAGE FLIGHT THE FIFTH THE HERONS OF ELMWOOD Warm and still is the summer night, As here by the river's brink I wander; White overhead are the stars, and white The glimmering lamps on the hillside yonder. Silent are all the sounds of day; Nothing I hear but the chirp of crickets, And the cry of the herons winging their way O'er the poet's house in the Elmwood thickets. Call to him, herons, as slowly you pass To your roosts in the haunts of the exiled thrushes, Sing him the song of the green morass; And the tides that water the reeds and rushes. Sing him the mystical Song of the Hern, And the secret that baffles our utmost seeking; For only a sound of lament we discern, And cannot interpret the words you are speaking. Sing of the air, and the wild delight Of wings that uplift and winds that uphold you, The joy of freedom, the rapture of flight Through the drift of the floating mists that infold you. Of the landscape lying so far below, With its towns and rivers and desert places; And the splendor of light above, and the glow Of the limitless, blue, ethereal spaces. Ask him if songs of the Troubadours, Or of Minnesingers in old black-letter, Sound in his ears more sweet than yours, And if yours are not sweeter and wilder and better. Sing to him, say to him, here at his gate, Where the boughs of the stately elms are meeting, Some one hath lingered to meditate, And send him unseen this friendly greeting; That many another hath done the same, Though not by a sound was the silence broken; The surest pledge of a deathless name Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken. A DUTCH PICTURE Simon Danz has come home again, From cruising about with his buccaneers; He has singed the beard of the King of Spain, And carried away the Dean of Jaen And sold him in Algiers. In his house by the Maese, with its roof of tiles, And weathercocks flying aloft in air, There are silver tankards of antique styles, Plunder of convent and castle, and piles Of carpets rich and rare. In his tulip-garden there by the town, Overlooking the sluggish stream, With his Moorish cap and dressing-gown, The old sea-captain, hale and brown, Walks in a waking dream. A smile in his gray mustachio lurks Whenever he thinks of the King of Spain, And the listed tulips look like Turks, And the silent gardener as he works Is changed to the Dean of Jaen. The windmills on the outermost Verge of the landscape in the haze, To him are towers on the Spanish coast, With whiskered sentinels at their post, Though this is the river Maese. But when the winter rains begin, He sits and smokes by the blazing brands, And old seafaring men come in, Goat-bearded, gray, and with double chin, And rings upon their hands. They sit there in the shadow and shine Of the flickering fire of the winter night; Figures in color and design Like those by Rembrandt of the Rhine, Half darkness and half light. And they talk of ventures lost or won, And their talk is ever and ever the same, While they drink the red wine of Tarragon, From the cellars of some Spanish Don, Or convent set on flame. Restless at times with heavy strides He paces his parlor to and fro; He is like a ship that at anchor rides, And swings with the rising and falling tides, And tugs at her anchor-tow. Voices mysterious far and near, Sound of the wind and sound of the sea, Are calling and whispering in his ear, "Simon Danz! Why stayest thou here? Come forth and follow me!" So he thinks he shall take to the sea again For one more cruise with his buccaneers, To singe the beard of the King of Spain, And capture another Dean of Jaen And sell him in Algiers. CASTLES IN SPAIN How much of my young heart, O Spain, Went out to thee in days of yore! What dreams romantic filled my brain, And summoned back to life again The Paladins of Charlemagne The Cid Campeador! And shapes more shadowy than these, In the dim twilight half revealed; Phoenician galleys on the seas, The Roman camps like hives of bees, The Goth uplifting from his knees Pelayo on his shield. It was these memories perchance, From annals of remotest eld, That lent the colors of romance To every trivial circumstance, And changed the form and countenance Of all that I beheld. Old towns, whose history lies hid In monkish chronicle or rhyme, Burgos, the birthplace of the Cid, Zamora and Valladolid, Toledo, built and walled amid The wars of Wamba's time; The long, straight line of the high-way, The distant town that seems so near, The peasants in the fields, that stay Their toil to cross themselves and pray, When from the belfry at midday The Angelus they hear; White crosses in the mountain pass, Mules gay with tassels, the loud din Of muleteers, the tethered ass That crops the dusty wayside grass, And cavaliers with spurs of brass Alighting at the inn; White hamlets hidden in fields of wheat, White cities slumbering by the sea, White sunshine flooding square and street, Dark mountain-ranges, at whose feet The river-beds are dry with heat,-- All was a dream to me. Yet something sombre and severe O'er the enchanted landscape reigned; A terror in the atmosphere As if King Philip listened near, Or Torquemada, the austere, His ghostly sway maintained. The softer Andalusian skies Dispelled the sadness and the gloom; There Cadiz by the seaside lies, And Seville's orange-orchards rise, Making the land a paradise Of beauty and of bloom. There Cordova is hidden among The palm, the olive, and the vine; Gem of the South, by poets sung, And in whose Mosque Ahmanzor hung As lamps the bells that once had rung At Compostella's shrine. But over all the rest supreme, The star of stars, the cynosure, The artist's and the poet's theme, The young man's vision, the old man's dream,-- Granada by its winding stream, The city of the Moor! And there the Alhambra still recalls Aladdin's palace of delight; Allah il Allah! through its halls Whispers the fountain as it falls, The Darro darts beneath its walls, The hills with snow are white. Ah yes, the hills are white with snow, And cold with blasts that bite and freeze; But in the happy vale below The orange and pomegranate grow, And wafts of air toss to and fro The blossoming almond-trees. The Vega cleft by the Xenil, The fascination and allure Of the sweet landscape chains the will; The traveller lingers on the hill, His parted lips are breathing still The last sigh of the Moor. How like a ruin overgrown With flower's that hide the rents of time, Stands now the Past that I have known, Castles in Spain, not built of stone But of white summer clouds, and blown Into this little mist of rhyme! VITTORIA COLONNA. VITTORIA COLONNA, on the death of her hushand, the Marchese di Pescara, retired to her castle at Ischia (Inarime), and there wrote the Ode upon his death, which gained her the title of Divine. Once more, once more, Inarime, I see thy purple hills!--once more I hear the billows of the bay Wash the white pebbles on thy shore. High o'er the sea-surge and the sands, Like a great galleon wrecked and cast Ashore by storms, thy castle stands, A mouldering landmark of the Past. Upon its terrace-walk I see A phantom gliding to and fro; It is Colonna,--it is she Who lived and loved so long ago. Pescara's beautiful young wife, The type of perfect womanhood, Whose life was love, the life of life, That time and change and death withstood. For death, that breaks the marriage band In others, only closer pressed The wedding-ring upon her hand And closer locked and barred her breast. She knew the life-long martyrdom, The weariness, the endless pain Of waiting for some one to come Who nevermore would come again. The shadows of the chestnut-trees, The odor of the orange blooms, The song of birds, and, more than these, The silence of deserted rooms; The respiration of the sea, The soft caresses of the air, All things in nature seemed to be But ministers of her despair; Till the o'erburdened heart, so long Imprisoned in itself, found vent And voice in one impassioned song Of inconsolable lament. Then as the sun, though hidden from sight, Transmutes to gold the leaden mist, Her life was interfused with light, From realms that, though unseen, exist, Inarime! Inarime! Thy castle on the crags above In dust shall crumble and decay, But not the memory of her love. THE REVENGE OF RAIN-IN-THE-FACE In that desolate land and lone, Where the Big Horn and Yellowstone Roar down their mountain path, By their fires the Sioux Chiefs Muttered their woes and griefs And the menace of their wrath. "Revenge!" cried Rain-in-the-Face, "Revenue upon all the race Of the White Chief with yellow hair!" And the mountains dark and high From their crags re-echoed the cry Of his anger and despair. In the meadow, spreading wide By woodland and riverside The Indian village stood; All was silent as a dream, Save the rushing a of the stream And the blue-jay in the wood. In his war paint and his beads, Like a bison among the reeds, In ambush the Sitting Bull Lay with three thousand braves Crouched in the clefts and caves, Savage, unmerciful! Into the fatal snare The White Chief with yellow hair And his three hundred men Dashed headlong, sword in hand; But of that gallant band Not one returned again. The sudden darkness of death Overwhelmed them like the breath And smoke of a furnace fire: By the river's bank, and between The rocks of the ravine, They lay in their bloody attire. But the foemen fled in the night, And Rain-in-the-Face, in his flight Uplifted high in air As a ghastly trophy, bore The brave heart, that beat no more, Of the White Chief with yellow hair. Whose was the right and the wrong? Sing it, O funeral song, With a voice that is full of tears, And say that our broken faith Wrought all this ruin and scathe, In the Year of a Hundred Years. TO THE RIVER YVETTE O lovely river of Yvette! O darling river! like a bride, Some dimpled, bashful, fair Lisette, Thou goest to wed the Orge's tide. Maincourt, and lordly Dampierre, See and salute thee on thy way, And, with a blessing and a prayer, Ring the sweet bells of St. Forget. The valley of Chevreuse in vain Would hold thee in its fond embrace; Thou glidest from its arms again And hurriest on with swifter pace. Thou wilt not stay; with restless feet Pursuing still thine onward flight, Thou goest as one in haste to meet Her sole desire, her head's delight. O lovely river of Yvette! O darling stream! on balanced wings The wood-birds sang the chansonnette That here a wandering poet sings. THE EMPEROR'S GLOVE "Combien faudrait-il de peaux d'Espagne pour faire un gant de cette grandeur?" A play upon the words gant, a glove, and Gand, the French for Ghent. On St. Baron's tower, commanding Half of Flanders, his domain, Charles the Emperor once was standing, While beneath him on the landing Stood Duke Alva and his train. Like a print in books of fables, Or a model made for show, With its pointed roofs and gables, Dormer windows, scrolls and labels, Lay the city far below. Through its squares and streets and alleys Poured the populace of Ghent; As a routed army rallies, Or as rivers run through valleys, Hurrying to their homes they went "Nest of Lutheran misbelievers!" Cried Duke Alva as he gazed; "Haunt of traitors and deceivers, Stronghold of insurgent weavers, Let it to the ground be razed!" On the Emperor's cap the feather Nods, as laughing he replies: "How many skins of Spanish leather, Think you, would, if stitched together Make a glove of such a size?" A BALLAD OF THE FRENCH FLEET OCTOBER, 1746 MR. THOMAS PRINCE loquitur. A fleet with flags arrayed Sailed from the port of Brest, And the Admiral's ship displayed The signal: "Steer southwest." For this Admiral D'Anville Had sworn by cross and crown To ravage with fire and steel Our helpless Boston Town. There were rumors in the street, In the houses there was fear Of the coming of the fleet, And the danger hovering near. And while from mouth to mouth Spread the tidings of dismay, I stood in the Old South, Saying humbly: "Let us pray! "O Lord! we would not advise; But if in thy Providence A tempest should arise To drive the French fleet hence, And scatter it far and wide, Or sink it in the sea, We should be satisfied, And thine the glory be." This was the prayer I made, For my soul was all on flame, And even as I prayed The answering tempest came; It came with a mighty power, Shaking the windows and walls, And tolling the bell in the tower, As it tolls at funerals. The lightning suddenly Unsheathed its flaming sword, And I cried: "Stand still, and see The salvation of the Lord!" The heavens were black with cloud, The sea was white with hail, And ever more fierce and loud Blew the October gale. The fleet it overtook, And the broad sails in the van Like the tents of Cushan shook, Or the curtains of Midian. Down on the reeling decks Crashed the o'erwhelming seas; Ah, never were there wrecks So pitiful as these! Like a potter's vessel broke The great ships of the line; They were carried away as a smoke, Or sank like lead in the brine. O Lord! before thy path They vanished and ceased to be, When thou didst walk in wrath With thine horses through the sea! THE LEAP OF ROUSHAN BEG Mounted on Kyrat strong and fleet, His chestnut steed with four white feet, Roushan Beg, called Kurroglou, Son of the road and bandit chief, Seeking refuge and relief, Up the mountain pathway flew. Such was Kyrat's wondrous speed, Never yet could any steed Reach the dust-cloud in his course. More than maiden, more than wife, More than gold and next to life Roushan the Robber loved his horse. In the land that lies beyond Erzeroum and Trebizond, Garden-girt his fortress stood; Plundered khan, or caravan Journeying north from Koordistan, Gave him wealth and wine and food. Seven hundred and fourscore Men at arms his livery wore, Did his bidding night and day. Now, through regions all unknown, He was wandering, lost, alone, Seeking without guide his way. Suddenly the pathway ends, Sheer the precipice descends, Loud the torrent roars unseen; Thirty feet from side to side Yawns the chasm; on air must ride He who crosses this ravine. Following close in his pursuit, At the precipice's foot, Reyhan the Arab of Orfah Halted with his hundred men, Shouting upward from the glen, "La Illah illa Allah!" Gently Roushan Beg caressed Kyrat's forehead, neck, and breast; Kissed him upon both his eyes; Sang to him in his wild way, As upon the topmost spray Sings a bird before it flies. "O my Kyrat, O my steed, Round and slender as a reed, Carry me this peril through! Satin housings shall be thine, Shoes of gold, O Kyrat mine, O thou soul of Kurroglou! "Soft thy skin as silken skein, Soft as woman's hair thy mane, Tender are thine eyes and true; All thy hoofs like ivory shine, Polished bright; O, life of mine, Leap, and rescue Kurroglou!" Kyrat, then, the strong and fleet, Drew together his four white feet, Paused a moment on the verge, Measured with his eye the space, And into the air's embrace Leaped as leaps the ocean surge. As the ocean surge o'er sand Bears a swimmer safe to land, Kyrat safe his rider bore; Rattling down the deep abyss Fragments of the precipice Rolled like pebbles on a shore. Roushan's tasselled cap of red Trembled not upon his head, Careless sat he and upright; Neither hand nor bridle shook, Nor his head he turned to look, As he galloped out of sight. Flash of harness in the air, Seen a moment like the glare Of a sword drawn from its sheath; Thus the phantom horseman passed, And the shadow that he cast Leaped the cataract underneath. Reyhan the Arab held his breath While this vision of life and death Passed above him. "Allahu!" Cried he. "In all Koordistan Lives there not so brave a man As this Robber Kurroglou!" HAROUN AL RASCHID One day, Haroun Al Raschid read A book wherein the poet said:-- "Where are the kings, and where the rest Of those who once the world possessed? "They're gone with all their pomp and show, They're gone the way that thou shalt go. "O thou who choosest for thy share The world, and what the world calls fair, "Take all that it can give or lend, But know that death is at the end!" Haroun Al Raschid bowed his head: Tears fell upon the page he read. KING TRISANKU Viswamitra the Magician, By his spells and incantations, Up to Indra's realms elysian Raised Trisanku, king of nations. Indra and the gods offended Hurled him downward, and descending In the air he hung suspended, With these equal powers contending. Thus by aspirations lifted, By misgivings downward driven, Human hearts are tossed and drifted Midway between earth and heaven. A WRAITH IN THE MIST "Sir, I should build me a fortification, if I came to live here." --BOSWELL'S Johnson. On the green little isle of Inchkenneth, Who is it that walks by the shore, So gay with his Highland blue bonnet, So brave with his targe and claymore? His form is the form of a giant, But his face wears an aspect of pain; Can this be the Laird of Inchkenneth? Can this be Sir Allan McLean? Ah, no! It is only the Rambler, The Idler, who lives in Bolt Court, And who says, were he Laird of Inchkenneth, He would wall himself round with a fort. THE THREE KINGS Three Kings came riding from far away, Melchior and Gaspar and Baltasar; Three Wise Men out of the East were they, And they travelled by night and they slept by day, For their guide was a beautiful, wonderful star. The star was so beautiful, large, and clear, That all the other stars of the sky Became a white mist in the atmosphere, And by this they knew that the coming was near Of the Prince foretold in the prophecy. Three caskets they bore on their saddle-bows, Three caskets of gold with golden keys; Their robes were of crimson silk with rows Of bells and pomegranates and furbelows, Their turbans like blossoming almond-trees. And so the Three Kings rode into the West, Through the dusk of night, over hill and dell, And sometimes they nodded with beard on breast And sometimes talked, as they paused to rest, With the people they met at some wayside well. "Of the child that is born," said Baltasar, "Good people, I pray you, tell us the news; For we in the East have seen his star, And have ridden fast, and have ridden far, To find and worship the King of the Jews." And the people answered, "You ask in vain; We know of no king but Herod the Great!" They thought the Wise Men were men insane, As they spurred their horses across the plain, Like riders in haste, and who cannot wait. And when they came to Jerusalem, Herod the Great, who had heard this thing, Sent for the Wise Men and questioned them; And said, "Go down unto Bethlehem, And bring me tidings of this new king." So they rode away; and the star stood still, The only one in the gray of morn Yes, it stopped, it stood still of its own free will, Right over Bethlehem on the hill, The city of David where Christ was born. And the Three Kings rode through the gate and the guard, Through the silent street, till their horses turned And neighed as they entered the great inn-yard; But the windows were closed, and the doors were barred, And only a light in the stable burned. And cradled there in the scented hay, In the air made sweet by the breath of kine, The little child in the manger lay, The child, that would be king one day Of a kingdom not human but divine. His mother Mary of Nazareth Sat watching beside his place of rest, Watching the even flow of his breath, For the joy of life and the terror of death Were mingled together in her breast. They laid their offerings at his feet: The gold was their tribute to a King, The frankincense, with its odor sweet, Was for the Priest, the Paraclete, The myrrh for the body's burying. And the mother wondered and bowed her head, And sat as still as a statue of stone; Her heart was troubled yet comforted, Remembering what the Angel had said Of an endless reign and of David's throne. Then the Kings rode out of the city gate, With a clatter of hoofs in proud array; But they went not back to Herod the Great, For they knew his malice and feared his hate, And returned to their homes by another way. SONG Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest; Home-keeping hearts are happiest, For those that wander they know not where Are full of trouble and full of care; To stay at home is best. Weary and homesick and distressed, They wander east, they wander west, And are baffled and beaten and blown about By the winds of the wilderness of doubt; To stay at home is best. Then stay at home, my heart, and rest; The bird is safest in its nest; O'er all that flutter their wings and fly A hawk is hovering in the sky; To stay at home is best. THE WHITE CZAR The White Czar is Peter the Great. Batyushka, Father dear, and Gosudar, Sovereign, are titles the Russian people are fond of giving to the Czar in their popular songs. Dost thou see on the rampart's height That wreath of mist, in the light Of the midnight moon? O, hist! It is not a wreath of mist; It is the Czar, the White Czar, Batyushka! Gosudar! He has heard, among the dead, The artillery roll o'erhead; The drums and the tramp of feet Of his soldiery in the street; He is awake! the White Czar, Batyushka! Gosudar! He has heard in the grave the cries Of his people: "Awake! arise!" He has rent the gold brocade Whereof his shroud was made; He is risen! the White Czar, Batyushka! Gosudar! From the Volga and the Don He has led his armies on, Over river and morass, Over desert and mountain pass; The Czar, the Orthodox Czar, Batyushka! Gosudar! He looks from the mountain-chain Toward the seas, that cleave in twain The continents; his hand Points southward o'er the land Of Roumili! O Czar, Batyushka! Gosudar! And the words break from his lips: "I am the builder of ships, And my ships shall sail these seas To the Pillars of Hercules! I say it; the White Czar, Batyushka! Gosudar! "The Bosphorus shall be free; It shall make room for me; And the gates of its water-streets Be unbarred before my fleets. I say it; the White Czar, Batyushka! Gosudar! "And the Christian shall no more Be crushed, as heretofore, Beneath thine iron rule, O Sultan of Istamboul! I swear it; I the Czar, Batyushka! Gosudar!" DELIA Sweet as the tender fragrance that survives, When martyred flowers breathe out their little lives, Sweet as a song that once consoled our pain, But never will be sung to us again, Is thy remembrance. Now the hour of rest Hath come to thee. Sleep, darling; it is best. ULTIMA THULE DEDICATION TO G.W.G. With favoring winds, o'er sunlit seas, We sailed for the Hesperides, The land where golden apples grow; But that, ah! that was long ago. How far, since then, the ocean streams Have swept us from that land of dreams, That land of fiction and of truth, The lost Atlantis of our youth! Whither, oh, whither? Are not these The tempest-haunted Hebrides, Where sea gulls scream, and breakers roar, And wreck and sea-weed line the shore? Ultima Thule! Utmost Isle! Here in thy harbors for a while We lower our sails; a while we rest From the unending, endless quest. POEMS BAYARD TAYLOR Dead he lay among his books! The peace of God was in his looks. As the statues in the gloom Watch o'er Maximilian's tomb, So those volumes from their shelves Watched him, silent as themselves. Ah! his hand will nevermore Turn their storied pages o'er; Nevermore his lips repeat Songs of theirs, however sweet. Let the lifeless body rest! He is gone, who was its guest; Gone, as travellers haste to leave An inn, nor tarry until eve. Traveller! in what realms afar, In what planet, in what star, In what vast, aerial space, Shines the light upon thy face? In what gardens of delight Rest thy weary feet to-night? Poet! thou, whose latest verse Was a garland on thy hearse; Thou hast sung, with organ tone, In Deukalion's life, thine own; On the ruins of the Past Blooms the perfect flower at last. Friend! but yesterday the bells Rang for thee their loud farewells; And to-day they toll for thee, Lying dead beyond the sea; Lying dead among thy books, The peace of God in all thy looks! THE CHAMBER OVER THE GATE Is it so far from thee Thou canst no longer see, In the Chamber over the Gate, That old man desolate, Weeping and wailing sore For his son, who is no more? O Absalom, my son! Is it so long ago That cry of human woe From the walled city came, Calling on his dear name, That it has died away In the distance of to-day? O Absalom, my son! There is no far or near, There is neither there nor here, There is neither soon nor late, In that Chamber over the Gate, Nor any long ago To that cry of human woe, O Absalom, my son! From the ages that are past The voice sounds like a blast, Over seas that wreck and drown, Over tumult of traffic and town; And from ages yet to be Come the echoes back to me, O Absalom, my son! Somewhere at every hour The watchman on the tower Looks forth, and sees the fleet Approach of the hurrying feet Of messengers, that bear The tidings of despair. O Absalom, my son! He goes forth from the door Who shall return no more. With him our joy departs; The light goes out in our hearts; In the Chamber over the Gate We sit disconsolate. O Absalom, my son! That 't is a common grief Bringeth but slight relief; Ours is the bitterest loss, Ours is the heaviest cross; And forever the cry will be "Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son!" FROM MY ARM-CHAIR TO THE CHILDREN OF CAMBRIDGE Who presented to me on my Seventy-second Birth-day, February 27, 1879, this Chair, made from the Wood of the Village Blacksmith's Chestnut Tree. Am I a king, that I should call my own This splendid ebon throne? Or by what reason, or what right divine, Can I proclaim it mine? Only, perhaps, by right divine of song It may to me belong; Only because the spreading chestnut tree Of old was sung by me. Well I remember it in all its prime, When in the summer-time The affluent foliage of its branches made A cavern of cool shade. There, by the blacksmith's forge, beside the street, Its blossoms white and sweet Enticed the bees, until it seemed alive, And murmured like a hive. And when the winds of autumn, with a shout, Tossed its great arms about, The shining chestnuts, bursting from the sheath, Dropped to the ground beneath. And now some fragments of its branches bare, Shaped as a stately chair, Have by my hearthstone found a home at last, And whisper of the past. The Danish king could not in all his pride Repel the ocean tide, But, seated in this chair, I can in rhyme Roll back the tide of Time. I see again, as one in vision sees, The blossoms and the bees, And hear the children's voices shout and call, And the brown chestnuts fall. I see the smithy with its fires aglow, I hear the bellows blow, And the shrill hammers on the anvil beat The iron white with heat! And thus, dear children, have ye made for me This day a jubilee, And to my more than three-score years and ten Brought back my youth again. The heart hath its own memory, like the mind, And in it are enshrined The precious keepsakes, into which is wrought The giver's loving thought. Only your love and your remembrance could Give life to this dead wood, And make these branches, leafless now so long, Blossom again in song. JUGURTHA How cold are thy baths, Apollo! Cried the African monarch, the splendid, As down to his death in the hollow Dark dungeons of Rome he descended, Uncrowned, unthroned, unattended; How cold are thy baths, Apollo! How cold are thy baths, Apollo! Cried the Poet, unknown, unbefriended, As the vision, that lured him to follow, With the mist and the darkness blended, And the dream of his life was ended; How cold are thy baths, Apollo! THE IRON PEN Made from a fetter of Bonnivard, the Prisoner of Chillon; the handle of wood from the Frigate Constitution, and bound with a circlet of gold, inset with three precious stones from Siberia, Ceylon, and Maine. I thought this Pen would arise From the casket where it lies-- Of itself would arise and write My thanks and my surprise. When you gave it me under the pines, I dreamed these gems from the mines Of Siberia, Ceylon, and Maine Would glimmer as thoughts in the lines; That this iron link from the chain Of Bonnivard might retain Some verse of the Poet who sang Of the prisoner and his pain; That this wood from the frigate's mast Might write me a rhyme at last, As it used to write on the sky The song of the sea and the blast. But motionless as I wait, Like a Bishop lying in state Lies the Pen, with its mitre of gold, And its jewels inviolate. Then must I speak, and say That the light of that summer day In the garden under the pines Shall not fade and pass away. I shall see you standing there, Caressed by the fragrant air, With the shadow on your face, And the sunshine on your hair. I shall hear the sweet low tone Of a voice before unknown, Saying, "This is from me to you-- From me, and to you alone." And in words not idle and vain I shall answer and thank you again For the gift, and the grace of the gift, O beautiful Helen of Maine! And forever this gift will be As a blessing from you to me, As a drop of the dew of your youth On the leaves of an aged tree. ROBERT BURNS I see amid the fields of Ayr A ploughman, who, in foul and fair, Sings at his task So clear, we know not if it is The laverock's song we hear, or his, Nor care to ask. For him the ploughing of those fields A more ethereal harvest yields Than sheaves of grain; Songs flush with Purple bloom the rye, The plover's call, the curlew's cry, Sing in his brain. Touched by his hand, the wayside weed Becomes a flower; the lowliest reed Beside the stream Is clothed with beauty; gorse and grass And heather, where his footsteps pass, The brighter seem. He sings of love, whose flame illumes The darkness of lone cottage rooms; He feels the force, The treacherous undertow and stress Of wayward passions, and no less The keen remorse. At moments, wrestling with his fate, His voice is harsh, but not with hate; The brushwood, hung Above the tavern door, lets fall Its bitter leaf, its drop of gall Upon his tongue. But still the music of his song Rises o'er all elate and strong; Its master-chords Are Manhood, Freedom, Brotherhood, Its discords but an interlude Between the words. And then to die so young and leave Unfinished what he might achieve! Yet better sure Is this, than wandering up and down An old man in a country town, Infirm and poor. For now he haunts his native land As an immortal youth; his hand Guides every plough; He sits beside each ingle-nook, His voice is in each rushing brook, Each rustling bough. His presence haunts this room to-night, A form of mingled mist and light From that far coast. Welcome beneath this roof of mine! Welcome! this vacant chair is thine, Dear guest and ghost! HELEN OF TYRE What phantom is this that appears Through the purple mist of the years, Itself but a mist like these? A woman of cloud and of fire; It is she; it is Helen of Tyre, The town in the midst of the seas. O Tyre! in thy crowded streets The phantom appears and retreats, And the Israelites that sell Thy lilies and lions of brass, Look up as they see her pass, And murmur "Jezebel!" Then another phantom is seen At her side, in a gray gabardine, With beard that floats to his waist; It is Simon Magus, the Seer; He speaks, and she pauses to hear The words he utters in haste. He says: "From this evil fame, From this life of sorrow and shame, I will lift thee and make thee mine; Thou hast been Queen Candace, And Helen of Troy, and shalt be The Intelligence Divine!" Oh, sweet as the breath of morn, To the fallen and forlorn Are whispered words of praise; For the famished heart believes The falsehood that tempts and deceives, And the promise that betrays. So she follows from land to land The wizard's beckoning hand, As a leaf is blown by the gust, Till she vanishes into night. O reader, stoop down and write With thy finger in the dust. O town in the midst of the seas, With thy rafts of cedar trees, Thy merchandise and thy ships, Thou, too, art become as naught, A phantom, a shadow, a thought, A name upon men's lips. ELEGIAC Dark is the morning with mist; in the narrow mouth of the harbor Motionless lies the sea, under its curtain of cloud; Dreamily glimmer the sails of ships on the distant horizon, Like to the towers of a town, built on the verge of the sea. Slowly and stately and still, they sail forth into the ocean; With them sail my thoughts over the limitless deep, Farther and farther away, borne on by unsatisfied longings, Unto Hesperian isles, unto Ausonian shores. Now they have vanished away, have disappeared in the ocean; Sunk are the towers of the town into the depths of the sea! AU have vanished but those that, moored in the neighboring roadstead, Sailless at anchor ride, looming so large in the mist. Vanished, too, are the thoughts, the dim, unsatisfied longings; Sunk are the turrets of cloud into the ocean of dreams; While in a haven of rest my heart is riding at anchor, Held by the chains of love, held by the anchors of trust! OLD ST. DAVID'S AT RADNOR What an image of peace and rest Is this little church among its graves! All is so quiet; the troubled breast, The wounded spirit, the heart oppressed, Here may find the repose it craves. See, how the ivy climbs and expands Over this humble hermitage, And seems to caress with its little hands The rough, gray stones, as a child that stands Caressing the wrinkled cheeks of age! You cross the threshold; and dim and small Is the space that serves for the Shepherd's Fold; The narrow aisle, the bare, white wall, The pews, and the pulpit quaint and tall, Whisper and say: "Alas! we are old." Herbert's chapel at Bemerton Hardly more spacious is than this; But Poet and Pastor, blent in one, Clothed with a splendor, as of the sun, That lowly and holy edifice. It is not the wall of stone without That makes the building small or great But the soul's light shining round about, And the faith that overcometh doubt, And the love that stronger is than hate. Were I a pilgrim in search of peace, Were I a pastor of Holy Church, More than a Bishop's diocese Should I prize this place of rest, and release From farther longing and farther search. Here would I stay, and let the world With its distant thunder roar and roll; Storms do not rend the sail that is furled; Nor like a dead leaf, tossed and whirled In an eddy of wind, is the anchored soul. FOLK SONGS THE SIFTING OF PETER In St. Luke's Gospel we are told How Peter in the days of old Was sifted; And now, though ages intervene, Sin is the same, while time and scene Are shifted. Satan desires us, great and small, As wheat to sift us, and we all Are tempted; Not one, however rich or great, Is by his station or estate Exempted. No house so safely guarded is But he, by some device of his, Can enter; No heart hath armor so complete But he can pierce with arrows fleet Its centre. For all at last the cock will crow, Who hear the warning voice, but go Unheeding, Till thrice and more they have denied The Man of Sorrows, crucified And bleeding. One look of that pale suffering face Will make us feel the deep disgrace Of weakness; We shall be sifted till the strength Of self-conceit be changed at length To meekness. Wounds of the soul, though healed will ache; The reddening scars remain, and make Confession; Lost innocence returns no more; We are not what we were before Transgression. But noble souls, through dust and heat, Rise from disaster and defeat The stronger, And conscious still of the divine Within them, lie on earth supine No longer. MAIDEN AND WEATHERCOCK MAIDEN O weathercock on the village spire, With your golden feathers all on fire, Tell me, what can you see from your perch Above there over the tower of the church? WEATHERCOCK. I can see the roofs and the streets below, And the people moving to and fro, And beyond, without either roof or street, The great salt sea, and the fisherman's fleet. I can see a ship come sailing in Beyond the headlands and harbor of Lynn, And a young man standing on the deck, With a silken kerchief round his neck. Now he is pressing it to his lips, And now he is kissing his finger-tips, And now he is lifting and waving his hand And blowing the kisses toward the land. MAIDEN. Ah, that is the ship from over the sea, That is bringing my lover back to me, Bringing my lover so fond and true, Who does not change with the wind like you. WEATHERCOCK. If I change with all the winds that blow, It is only because they made me so, And people would think it wondrous strange, If I, a Weathercock, should not change. O pretty Maiden, so fine and fair, With your dreamy eyes and your golden hair, When you and your lover meet to-day You will thank me for looking some other way. THE WINDMILL Behold! a giant am I! Aloft here in my tower, With my granite jaws I devour The maize, and the wheat, and the rye, And grind them into flour. I look down over the farms; In the fields of grain I see The harvest that is to be, And I fling to the air my arms, For I know it is all for me. I hear the sound of flails Far off, from the threshing-floors In barns, with their open doors, And the wind, the wind in my sails, Louder and louder roars. I stand here in my place, With my foot on the rock below, And whichever way it may blow I meet it face to face, As a brave man meets his foe. And while we wrestle and strive My master, the miller, stands And feeds me with his hands; For he knows who makes him thrive, Who makes him lord of lands. On Sundays I take my rest; Church-going bells begin Their low, melodious din; I cross my arms on my breast, And all is peace within. THE TIDE RISES, THE TIDE FALLS The tide rises, the tide falls, The twilight darkens, the curlew calls; Along the sea-sands damp and brown The traveller hastens toward the town, And the tide rises, the tide falls. Darkness settles on roofs and walls, But the sea in the darkness calls and calls; The little waves, with their soft, white hands, Efface the footprints in the sands, And the tide rises, the tide falls. The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls; The day returns, but nevermore Returns the traveller to the shore, And the tide rises, the tide falls. SONNETS MY CATHEDRAL Like two cathedral towers these stately pines Uplift their fretted summits tipped with cones; The arch beneath them is not built with stones, Not Art but Nature traced these lovely lines, And carved this graceful arabesque of vines; No organ but the wind here sighs and moans, No sepulchre conceals a martyr's bones. No marble bishop on his tomb reclines. Enter! the pavement, carpeted with leaves, Gives back a softened echo to thy tread! Listen! the choir is singing; all the birds, In leafy galleries beneath the eaves, Are singing! listen, ere the sound be fled, And learn there may be worship with out words. THE BURIAL OF THE POET RICHARD HENRY DANA In the old churchyard of his native town, And in the ancestral tomb beside the wall, We laid him in the sleep that comes to all, And left him to his rest and his renown. The snow was falling, as if Heaven dropped down White flowers of Paradise to strew his pall;-- The dead around him seemed to wake, and call His name, as worthy of so white a crown. And now the moon is shining on the scene, And the broad sheet of snow is written o'er With shadows cruciform of leafless trees, As once the winding-sheet of Saladin With chapters of the Koran; but, ah! more Mysterious and triumphant signs are these. NIGHT Into the darkness and the hush of night Slowly the landscape sinks, and fades away, And with it fade the phantoms of the day, The ghosts of men and things, that haunt the light, The crowd, the clamor, the pursuit, the flight, The unprofitable splendor and display, The agitations, and the cares that prey Upon our hearts, all vanish out of sight. The better life begins; the world no more Molests us; all its records we erase From the dull common-place book of our lives, That like a palimpsest is written o'er With trivial incidents of time and place, And lo! the ideal, hidden beneath, revives. L'ENVOI THE POET AND HIS SONGS As the birds come in the Spring, We know not from where; As the stars come at evening From depths of the air; As the rain comes from the cloud, And the brook from the ground; As suddenly, low or loud, Out of silence a sound; As the grape comes to the vine, The fruit to the tree; As the wind comes to the pine, And the tide to the sea; As come the white sails of ships O'er the ocean's verge; As comes the smile to the lips, The foam to the surge; So come to the Poet his songs, All hitherward blown From the misty realm, that belongs To the vast unknown. His, and not his, are the lays He sings; and their fame Is his, and not his; and the praise And the pride of a name. For voices pursue him by day, And haunt him by night, And he listens, and needs must obey, When the Angel says: "Write!" *********** IN THE HARBOR BECALMED Becalmed upon the sea of Thought, Still unattained the land it sought, My mind, with loosely-hanging sails, Lies waiting the auspicious gales. On either side, behind, before, The ocean stretches like a floor,-- A level floor of amethyst, Crowned by a golden dome of mist. Blow, breath of inspiration, blow! Shake and uplift this golden glow! And fill the canvas of the mind With wafts of thy celestial wind. Blow, breath of song! until I feel The straining sail, the lifting keel, The life of the awakening sea, Its motion and its mystery! THE POET'S CALENDAR JANUARY Janus am I; oldest of potentates; Forward I look, and backward, and below I count, as god of avenues and gates, The years that through my portals come and go. I block the roads, and drift the fields with snow; I chase the wild-fowl from the frozen fen; My frosts congeal the rivers in their flow, My fires light up the hearths and hearts of men. FEBRUARY I am lustration, and the sea is mine. I wash the sands and headlands with my tide; My brow is crowned with branches of the pine; Before my chariot-wheels the fishes glide. By me all things unclean are purified, By me the souls of men washed white again; E'en the unlovely tombs of those who died Without a dirge, I cleanse from every stain. MARCH I Martius am! Once first, and now the third! To lead the Year was my appointed place; A mortal dispossessed me by a word, And set there Janus with the double face. Hence I make war on all the human race; I shake the cities with my hurricanes; I flood the rivers and their banks efface, And drown the farms and hamlets with my rains. APRIL I open wide the portals of the Spring To welcome the procession of the flowers, With their gay banners, and the birds that sing Their song of songs from their aerial towers. I soften with my sunshine and my showers The heart of earth; with thoughts of love I glide Into the hearts of men; and with the Hours Upon the Bull with wreathed horns I ride. MAY Hark! The sea-faring wild-fowl loud proclaim My coming, and the swarming of the bees. These are my heralds, and behold! my name Is written in blossoms on the hawthorn-trees. I tell the mariner when to sail the seas; I waft o'er all the land from far away The breath and bloom of the Hesperides, My birthplace. I am Maia. I am May. JUNE Mine is the Month of Roses; yes, and mine The Month of Marriages! All pleasant sights And scents, the fragrance of the blossoming vine, The foliage of the valleys and the heights. Mine are the longest days, the loveliest nights; The mower's scythe makes music to my ear; I am the mother of all dear delights; I am the fairest daughter of the year. JULY My emblem is the Lion, and I breathe The breath of Libyan deserts o'er the land; My sickle as a sabre I unsheathe, And bent before me the pale harvests stand. The lakes and rivers shrink at my command, And there is thirst and fever in the air; The sky is changed to brass, the earth to sand; I am the Emperor whose name I bear. AUGUST The Emperor Octavian, called the August, I being his favorite, bestowed his name Upon me, and I hold it still in trust, In memory of him and of his fame. I am the Virgin, and my vestal flame Burns less intensely than the Lion's rage; Sheaves are my only garlands, and I claim The golden Harvests as my heritage. SEPTEMBER I bear the Scales, where hang in equipoise The night and day; and when unto my lips I put my trumpet, with its stress and noise Fly the white clouds like tattered sails of ships; The tree-tops lash the air with sounding whips; Southward the clamorous sea-fowl wing their flight; The hedges are all red with haws and hips, The Hunter's Moon reigns empress of the night. OCTOBER My ornaments are fruits; my garments leaves, Woven like cloth of gold, and crimson dyed; I do not boast the harvesting of sheaves, O'er orchards and o'er vineyards I preside. Though on the frigid Scorpion I ride, The dreamy air is full, and overflows With tender memories of the summer-tide, And mingled voices of the doves and crows. NOVEMBER The Centaur, Sagittarius, am I, Born of Ixion's and the cloud's embrace; With sounding hoofs across the earth I fly, A steed Thessalian with a human face. Sharp winds the arrows are with which I chase The leaves, half dead already with affright; I shroud myself in gloom; and to the race Of mortals bring nor comfort nor delight. DECEMBER Riding upon the Goat, with snow-white hair, I come, the last of all. This crown of mine Is of the holly; in my hand I bear The thyrsus, tipped with fragrant cones of pine. I celebrate the birth of the Divine, And the return of the Saturnian reign;-- My songs are carols sung at every shrine, Proclaiming "Peace on earth, good will to men." AUTUMN WITHIN It is autumn; not without, But within me is the cold. Youth and spring are all about; It is I that have grown old. Birds are darting through the air, Singing, building without rest; Life is stirring everywhere, Save within my lonely breast. There is silence: the dead leaves Fall and rustle and are still; Beats no flail upon the sheaves Comes no murmur from the mill. THE FOUR LAKES OF MADISON Four limpid lakes,--four Naiades Or sylvan deities are these, In flowing robes of azure dressed; Four lovely handmaids, that uphold Their shining mirrors, rimmed with gold, To the fair city in the West. By day the coursers of the sun Drink of these waters as they run Their swift diurnal round on high; By night the constellations glow Far down the hollow deeps below, And glimmer in another sky. Fair lakes, serene and full of light, Fair town, arrayed in robes of white, How visionary ye appear! All like a floating landscape seems In cloud-land or the land of dreams, Bathed in a golden atmosphere! VICTOR AND VANQUISHED As one who long hath fled with panting breath Before his foe, bleeding and near to fall, I turn and set my back against the wall, And look thee in the face, triumphant Death, I call for aid, and no one answereth; I am alone with thee, who conquerest all; Yet me thy threatening form doth not appall, For thou art but a phantom and a wraith. Wounded and weak, sword broken at the hilt, With armor shattered, and without a shield, I stand unmoved; do with me what thou wilt; I can resist no more, but will not yield. This is no tournament where cowards tilt; The vanquished here is victor of the field. MOONLIGHT As a pale phantom with a lamp Ascends some ruin's haunted stair, So glides the moon along the damp Mysterious chambers of the air. Now hidden in cloud, and now revealed, As if this phantom, full of pain, Were by the crumbling walls concealed, And at the windows seen again. Until at last, serene and proud In all the splendor of her light, She walks the terraces of cloud, Supreme as Empress of the Night. I look, but recognize no more Objects familiar to my view; The very pathway to my door Is an enchanted avenue. All things are changed. One mass of shade, The elm-trees drop their curtains down; By palace, park, and colonnade I walk as in a foreign town. The very ground beneath my feet Is clothed with a diviner air; White marble paves the silent street And glimmers in the empty square. Illusion! Underneath there lies The common life of every day; Only the spirit glorifies With its own tints the sober gray. In vain we look, in vain uplift Our eyes to heaven, if we are blind, We see but what we have the gift Of seeing; what we bring we find. THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE [A FRAGMENT.] I What is this I read in history, Full of marvel, full of mystery, Difficult to understand? Is it fiction, is it truth? Children in the flower of youth, Heart in heart, and hand in hand, Ignorant of what helps or harms, Without armor, without arms, Journeying to the Holy Land! Who shall answer or divine? Never since the world was made Such a wonderful crusade Started forth for Palestine. Never while the world shall last Will it reproduce the past; Never will it see again Such an army, such a band, Over mountain, over main, Journeying to the Holy Land. Like a shower of blossoms blown From the parent trees were they; Like a flock of birds that fly Through the unfrequented sky, Holding nothing as their own, Passed they into lands unknown, Passed to suffer and to die. O the simple, child-like trust! O the faith that could believe What the harnessed, iron-mailed Knights of Christendom had failed, By their prowess, to achieve, They the children, could and must? Little thought the Hermit, preaching Holy Wars to knight and baron, That the words dropped in his teaching, His entreaty, his beseeching, Would by children's hands be gleaned, And the staff on which he leaned Blossom like the rod of Aaron. As a summer wind upheaves The innumerable leaves In the bosom of a wood,-- Not as separate leaves, but massed All together by the blast,-- So for evil or for good His resistless breath upheaved All at once the many-leaved, Many-thoughted multitude. In the tumult of the air Rock the boughs with all the nests Cradled on their tossing crests; By the fervor of his prayer Troubled hearts were everywhere Rocked and tossed in human breasts. For a century, at least, His prophetic voice had ceased; But the air was heated still By his lurid words and will, As from fires in far-off woods, In the autumn of the year, An unwonted fever broods In the sultry atmosphere. II In Cologne the bells were ringing, In Cologne the nuns were singing Hymns and canticles divine; Loud the monks sang in their stalls, And the thronging streets were loud With the voices of the crowd;-- Underneath the city walls Silent flowed the river Rhine. From the gates, that summer day, Clad in robes of hodden gray, With the red cross on the breast, Azure-eyed and golden-haired, Forth the young crusaders fared; While above the band devoted Consecrated banners floated, Fluttered many a flag and streamer, And the cross o'er all the rest! Singing lowly, meekly, slowly, "Give us, give us back the holy Sepulchre of the Redeemer!" On the vast procession pressed, Youths and maidens. . . . III Ah! what master hand shall paint How they journeyed on their way, How the days grew long and dreary, How their little feet grew weary, How their little hearts grew faint! Ever swifter day by day Flowed the homeward river; ever More and more its whitening current Broke and scattered into spray, Till the calmly-flowing river Changed into a mountain torrent, Rushing from its glacier green Down through chasm and black ravine. Like a phoenix in its nest, Burned the red sun in the West, Sinking in an ashen cloud; In the East, above the crest Of the sea-like mountain chain, Like a phoenix from its shroud, Came the red sun back again. Now around them, white with snow, Closed the mountain peaks. Below, Headlong from the precipice Down into the dark abyss, Plunged the cataract, white with foam; And it said, or seemed to say: "Oh return, while yet you may, Foolish children, to your home, There the Holy City is!" But the dauntless leader said: "Faint not, though your bleeding feet O'er these slippery paths of sleet Move but painfully and slowly; Other feet than yours have bled; Other tears than yours been shed Courage! lose not heart or hope; On the mountains' southern slope Lies Jerusalem the Holy!" As a white rose in its pride, By the wind in summer-tide Tossed and loosened from the branch, Showers its petals o'er the ground, From the distant mountain's side, Scattering all its snows around, With mysterious, muffled sound, Loosened, fell the avalanche. Voices, echoes far and near, Roar of winds and waters blending, Mists uprising, clouds impending, Filled them with a sense of fear, Formless, nameless, never ending. . . . . . . . . . . SUNDOWN The summer sun is sinking low; Only the tree-tops redden and glow: Only the weathercock on the spire Of the neighboring church is a flame of fire; All is in shadow below. O beautiful, awful summer day, What hast thou given, what taken away? Life and death, and love and hate, Homes made happy or desolate, Hearts made sad or gay! On the road of life one mile-stone more! In the book of life one leaf turned o'er! Like a red seal is the setting sun On the good and the evil men have done,-- Naught can to-day restore! CHIMES Sweet chimes! that in the loneliness of night Salute the passing hour, and in the dark And silent chambers of the household mark The movements of the myriad orbs of light! Through my closed eyelids, by the inner sight, I see the constellations in the arc Of their great circles moving on, and hark! I almost hear them singing in their flight. Better than sleep it is to lie awake O'er-canopied by the vast starry dome Of the immeasurable sky; to feel The slumbering world sink under us, and make Hardly an eddy,--a mere rush of foam On the great sea beneath a sinking keel. FOUR BY THE CLOCK. "NAHANT, September 8, 1880, Four o'clock in the morning." Four by the clock! and yet not day; But the great world rolls and wheels away, With its cities on land, and its ships at sea, Into the dawn that is to be! Only the lamp in the anchored bark Sends its glimmer across the dark, And the heavy breathing of the sea Is the only sound that comes to me. AUF WIEDERSEHEN. IN MEMORY OF J.T.F. Until we meet again! That is the meaning Of the familiar words, that men repeat At parting in the street. Ah yes, till then! but when death intervening Rends us asunder, with what ceaseless pain We wait for the Again! The friends who leave us do not feel the sorrow Of parting, as we feel it, who must stay Lamenting day by day, And knowing, when we wake upon the morrow, We shall not find in its accustomed place The one beloved face. It were a double grief, if the departed, Being released from earth, should still retain A sense of earthly pain; It were a double grief, if the true-hearted, Who loved us here, should on the farther shore Remember us no more. Believing, in the midst of our afflictions, That death is a beginning, not an end, We cry to them, and send Farewells, that better might be called predictions, Being fore-shadowings of the future, thrown Into the vast Unknown. Faith overleaps the confines of our reason, And if by faith, as in old times was said, Women received their dead Raised up to life, then only for a season Our partings are, nor shall we wait in vain Until we meet again! ELEGIAC VERSE I Peradventure of old, some bard in Ionian Islands, Walking alone by the sea, hearing the wash of the waves, Learned the secret from them of the beautiful verse elegiac, Breathing into his song motion and sound of the sea. For as the wave of the sea, upheaving in long undulations, Plunges loud on the sands, pauses, and turns, and retreats, So the Hexameter, rising and singing, with cadence sonorous, Falls; and in refluent rhythm back the Pentameter flows? II Not in his youth alone, but in age, may the heart of the poet Bloom into song, as the gorse blossoms in autumn and spring. III Not in tenderness wanting, yet rough are the rhymes of our poet; Though it be Jacob's voice, Esau's, alas! are the hands. IV Let us be grateful to writers for what is left in the inkstand; When to leave off is an art only attained by the few. V How can the Three be One? you ask me; I answer by asking, Hail and snow and rain, are they not three, and yet one? VI By the mirage uplifted the land floats vague in the ether, Ships and the shadows of ships hang in the motionless air; So by the art of the poet our common life is uplifted, So, transfigured, the world floats in a luminous haze. VII Like a French poem is Life; being only perfect in structure When with the masculine rhymes mingled the feminine are. VIII Down from the mountain descends the brooklet, rejoicing in freedom; Little it dreams of the mill hid in the valley below; Glad with the joy of existence, the child goes singing and laughing, Little dreaming what toils lie in the future concealed. IX As the ink from our pen, so flow our thoughts and our feelings When we begin to write, however sluggish before. X Like the Kingdom of Heaven, the Fountain of Youth is within us; If we seek it elsewhere, old shall we grow in the search. XI If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it; Every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth. XII Wisely the Hebrews admit no Present tense in their language; While we are speaking the word, it is is already the Past. XIII In the twilight of age all things seem strange and phantasmal, As between daylight and dark ghost-like the landscape appears. XIV Great is the art of beginning, but greater the art is of ending; Many a poem is marred by a superfluous verse. THE CITY AND THE SEA The panting City cried to the Sea, "I am faint with heat,--O breathe on me!" And the Sea said, "Lo, I breathe! but my breath To some will be life, to others death!" As to Prometheus, bringing ease In pain, come the Oceanides, So to the City, hot with the flame Of the pitiless sun, the east wind came. It came from the heaving breast of the deep, Silent as dreams are, and sudden as sleep. Life-giving, death-giving, which will it be; O breath of the merciful, merciless Sea? MEMORIES Oft I remember those whom I have known In other days, to whom my heart was led As by a magnet, and who are not dead, But absent, and their memories overgrown With other thoughts and troubles of my own, As graves with grasses are, and at their head The stone with moss and lichens so o'erspread, Nothing is legible but the name alone. And is it so with them? After long years, Do they remember me in the same way, And is the memory pleasant as to me? I fear to ask; yet wherefore are my fears? Pleasures, like flowers, may wither and decay, And yet the root perennial may be. HERMES TRISMEGISTUS As Seleucus narrates, Hermes describes the principles that rank as wholes in two myriads of books; or, as we are informed by Manetho, he perfectly unfolded these principles in three myriads six thousand five hundred and twenty-five volumes. . . . . . . Our ancestors dedicated the inventions of their wisdom to this deity, inscribing all their own writings with the name of Hermes.--IAMBLICUS. Still through Egypt's desert places Flows the lordly Nile, From its banks the great stone faces Gaze with patient smile. Still the pyramids imperious Pierce the cloudless skies, And the Sphinx stares with mysterious, Solemn, stony eyes. But where are the old Egyptian Demi-gods and kings? Nothing left but an inscription Graven on stones and rings. Where are Helios and Hephaestus, Gods of eldest eld? Where is Hermes Trismegistus, Who their secrets held? Where are now the many hundred Thousand books he wrote? By the Thaumaturgists plundered, Lost in lands remote; In oblivion sunk forever, As when o'er the land Blows a storm-wind, in the river Sinks the scattered sand. Something unsubstantial, ghostly, Seems this Theurgist, In deep meditation mostly Wrapped, as in a mist. Vague, phantasmal, and unreal To our thought he seems, Walking in a world ideal, In a land of dreams. Was he one, or many, merging Name and fame in one, Like a stream, to which, converging Many streamlets run? Till, with gathered power proceeding, Ampler sweep it takes, Downward the sweet waters leading From unnumbered lakes. By the Nile I see him wandering, Pausing now and then, On the mystic union pondering Between gods and men; Half believing, wholly feeling, With supreme delight, How the gods, themselves concealing, Lift men to their height. Or in Thebes, the hundred-gated, In the thoroughfare Breathing, as if consecrated, A diviner air; And amid discordant noises, In the jostling throng, Hearing far, celestial voices Of Olympian song. Who shall call his dreams fallacious? Who has searched or sought All the unexplored and spacious Universe of thought? Who, in his own skill confiding, Shall with rule and line Mark the border-land dividing Human and divine? Trismegistus! three times greatest! How thy name sublime Has descended to this latest Progeny of time! Happy they whose written pages Perish with their lives, If amid the crumbling ages Still their name survives! Thine, O priest of Egypt, lately Found I in the vast, Weed-encumbered sombre, stately, Grave-yard of the Past; And a presence moved before me On that gloomy shore, As a waft of wind, that o'er me Breathed, and was no more. TO THE AVON Flow on, sweet river! like his verse Who lies beneath this sculptured hearse Nor wait beside the churchyard wall For him who cannot hear thy call. Thy playmate once; I see him now A boy with sunshine on his brow, And hear in Stratford's quiet street The patter of his little feet. I see him by thy shallow edge Wading knee-deep amid the sedge; And lost in thought, as if thy stream Were the swift river of a dream. He wonders whitherward it flows; And fain would follow where it goes, To the wide world, that shall erelong Be filled with his melodious song. Flow on, fair stream! That dream is o'er; He stands upon another shore; A vaster river near him flows, And still he follows where it goes. PRESIDENT GARFIELD "E venni dal martirio a questa pace." These words the poet heard in Paradise, Uttered by one who, bravely dying here, In the true faith was living in that sphere Where the celestial cross of sacrifice Spread its protecting arms athwart the skies; And set thereon, like jewels crystal clear, The souls magnanimous, that knew not fear, Flashed their effulgence on his dazzled eyes. Ah me! how dark the discipline of pain, Were not the suffering followed by the sense Of infinite rest and infinite release! This is our consolation; and again A great soul cries to us in our suspense, "I came from martyrdom unto this peace!" MY BOOKS Sadly as some old mediaeval knight Gazed at the arms he could no longer wield, The sword two-handed and the shining shield Suspended in the hall, and full in sight, While secret longings for the lost delight Of tourney or adventure in the field Came over him, and tears but half concealed Trembled and fell upon his beard of white, So I behold these books upon their shelf, My ornaments and arms of other days; Not wholly useless, though no longer used, For they remind me of my other self, Younger and stronger, and the pleasant ways In which I walked, now clouded and confused. MAD RIVER IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS TRAVELLER Why dost thou wildly rush and roar, Mad River, O Mad River? Wilt thou not pause and cease to pour Thy hurrying, headlong waters o'er This rocky shelf forever? What secret trouble stirs thy breast? Why all this fret and flurry? Dost thou not know that what is best In this too restless world is rest From over-work and worry? THE RIVER What wouldst thou in these mountains seek, O stranger from the city? Is it perhaps some foolish freak Of thine, to put the words I speak Into a plaintive ditty? TRAVELLER Yes; I would learn of thee thy song, With all its flowing number; And in a voice as fresh and strong As thine is, sing it all day long, And hear it in my slumbers. THE RIVER A brooklet nameless and unknown Was I at first, resembling A little child, that all alone Comes venturing down the stairs of stone, Irresolute and trembling. Later, by wayward fancies led, For the wide world I panted; Out of the forest dark and dread Across the open fields I fled, Like one pursued and haunted. I tossed my arms, I sang aloud, My voice exultant blending With thunder from the passing cloud, The wind, the forest bent and bowed, The rush of rain descending. I heard the distant ocean call, Imploring and entreating; Drawn onward, o'er this rocky wall I plunged, and the loud waterfall Made answer to the greeting. And now, beset with many ills, A toilsome life I follow; Compelled to carry from the hills These logs to the impatient mills Below there in the hollow. Yet something ever cheers and charms The rudeness of my labors; Daily I water with these arms The cattle of a hundred farms, And have the birds for neighbors. Men call me Mad, and well they may, When, full of rage and trouble, I burst my banks of sand and clay, And sweep their wooden bridge away, Like withered reeds or stubble. Now go and write thy little rhyme, As of thine own creating. Thou seest the day is past its prime; I can no longer waste my time; The mills are tired of waiting. POSSIBILITIES Where are the Poets, unto whom belong The Olympian heights; whose singing shafts were sent Straight to the mark, and not from bows half bent, But with the utmost tension of the thong? Where are the stately argosies of song, Whose rushing keels made music as they went Sailing in search of some new continent, With all sail set, and steady winds and strong? Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught In schools, some graduate of the field or street, Who shall become a master of the art, An admiral sailing the high seas of thought, Fearless and first and steering with his fleet For lands not yet laid down in any chart. DECORATION DAY Sleep, comrades, sleep and rest On this Field of the Grounded Arms, Where foes no more molest, Nor sentry's shot alarms! Ye have slept on the ground before, And started to your feet At the cannon's sudden roar, Or the drum's redoubling beat. But in this camp of Death No sound your slumber breaks; Here is no fevered breath, No wound that bleeds and aches. All is repose and peace, Untrampled lies the sod; The shouts of battle cease, It is the Truce of God! Rest, comrades, rest and sleep! The thoughts of men shall be As sentinels to keep Your rest from danger free. Your silent tents of green We deck with fragrant flowers; Yours has the suffering been, The memory shall be ours. A FRAGMENT Awake! arise! the hour is late! Angels are knocking at thy door! They are in haste and cannot wait, And once departed come no more. Awake! arise! the athlete's arm Loses its strength by too much rest; The fallow land, the untilled farm Produces only weeds at best. LOSS AND GAIN When I compare What I have lost with what I have gained, What I have missed with what attained, Little room do I find for pride. I am aware How many days have been idly spent; How like an arrow the good intent Has fallen short or been turned aside. But who shall dare To measure loss and gain in this wise? Defeat may be victory in disguise; The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide. INSCRIPTION ON THE SHANKLIN FOUNTAIN O traveller, stay thy weary feet; Drink of this fountain, pure and sweet; It flows for rich and poor the same. Then go thy way, remembering still The wayside well beneath the hill, The cup of water in His name. THE BELLS OF SAN BLAS What say the Bells of San Blas To the ships that southward pass From the harbor of Mazatlan? To them it is nothing more Than the sound of surf on the shore,-- Nothing more to master or man. But to me, a dreamer of dreams, To whom what is and what seems Are often one and the same,-- The Bells of San Blas to me Have a strange, wild melody, And are something more than a name. For bells are the voice of the church; They have tones that touch and search The hearts of young and old; One sound to all, yet each Lends a meaning to their speech, And the meaning is manifold. They are a voice of the Past, Of an age that is fading fast, Of a power austere and grand, When the flag of Spain unfurled Its folds o'er this western world, And the Priest was lord of the land. The chapel that once looked down On the little seaport town Has crumbled into the dust; And on oaken beams below The bells swing to and fro, And are green with mould and rust. "Is, then, the old faith dead," They say, "and in its stead Is some new faith proclaimed, That we are forced to remain Naked to sun and rain, Unsheltered and ashamed? "Once, in our tower aloof, We rang over wall and roof Our warnings and our complaints; And round about us there The white doves filled the air, Like the white souls of the saints. "The saints! Ah, have they grown Forgetful of their own? Are they asleep, or dead, That open to the sky Their ruined Missions lie, No longer tenanted? "Oh, bring us back once more The vanished days of yore, When the world with faith was filled; Bring back the fervid zeal, The hearts of fire and steel, The hands that believe and build. "Then from our tower again We will send over land and main Our voices of command, Like exiled kings who return To their thrones, and the people learn That the Priest is lord of the land!" O Bells of San Blas in vain Ye call back the Past again; The Past is deaf to your prayer! Out of the shadows of night The world rolls into light; It is daybreak everywhere. ************* FRAGMENTS October 22, 1838. Neglected record of a mind neglected, Unto what "lets and stops" art thou subjected! The day with all its toils and occupations, The night with its reflections and sensations, The future, and the present, and the past,-- All I remember, feel, and hope at last, All shapes of joy and sorrow, as they pass,-- Find but a dusty image in this glass. August 18, 1847. O faithful, indefatigable tides, That evermore upon God's errands go,-- Now seaward bearing tidings of the land,-- Now landward bearing tidings of the sea,-- And filling every frith and estuary, Each arm of the great sea, each little creek, Each thread and filament of water-courses, Full with your ministration of delight! Under the rafters of this wooden bridge I see you come and go; sometimes in haste To reach your journey's end, which being done With feet unrested ye return again And recommence the never-ending task; Patient, whatever burdens ye may bear, And fretted only by the impeding rocks. December 18, 1847. Soft through the silent air descend the feathery snow-flakes; White are the distant hills, white are the neighboring fields; Only the marshes are brown, and the river rolling among them Weareth the leaden hue seen in the eyes of the blind. August 4, 1856. A lovely morning, without the glare of the sun, the sea in great commotion, chafing and foaming. So from the bosom of darkness our days come roaring and gleaming, Chafe and break into foam, sink into darkness again. But on the shores of Time each leaves some trace of its passage, Though the succeeding wave washes it out from the sand. ******** CHRISTUS: A MYSTERY INTROITUS The ANGEL bearing the PROPHET HABAKKUK through the air. PROPHET. Why dost thou bear me aloft, O Angel of God, on thy pinions O'er realms and dominions? Softly I float as a cloud In air, for thy right hand upholds me, Thy garment enfolds me! ANGEL. Lo! as I passed on my way In the harvest-field I beheld thee, When no man compelled thee, Bearing with thine own hands This food to the famishing reapers, A flock without keepers! The fragrant sheaves of the wheat Made the air above them sweet; Sweeter and more divine Was the scent of the scattered grain, That the reaper's hand let fall To be gathered again By the hand of the gleaner! Sweetest, divinest of all, Was the humble deed of thine, And the meekness of thy demeanor! PROPHET. Angel of Light, I cannot gainsay thee, I can but obey thee! ANGEL. Beautiful was it in the lord's sight, To behold his Prophet Feeding those that toil, The tillers of the soil. But why should the reapers eat of it And not the Prophet of Zion In the den of the lion? The Prophet should feed the Prophet! Therefore I thee have uplifted, And bear thee aloft by the hair Of thy head, like a cloud that is drifted Through the vast unknown of the air! Five days hath the Prophet been lying In Babylon, in the den Of the lions, death-defying, Defying hunger and thirst; But the worst Is the mockery of men! Alas! how full of fear Is the fate of Prophet and Seer! Forevermore, forevermore, It shall be as it hath been heretofore; The age in which they live Will not forgive The splendor of the everlasting light, That makes their foreheads bright, Nor the sublime Fore-running of their time! PROPHET. Oh tell me, for thou knowest, Wherefore and by what grace, Have I, who am least and lowest, Been chosen to this place, To this exalted part? ANGEL. Because thou art The Struggler; and from thy youth Thy humble and patient life Hath been a strife And battle for the Truth; Nor hast thou paused nor halted, Nor ever in thy pride Turned from the poor aside, But with deed and word and pen Hast served thy fellow-men; Therefore art thou exalted! PROPHET. By thine arrow's light Thou goest onward through the night, And by the clear Sheen of thy glittering spear! When will our journey end? ANGEL. Lo, it is ended! Yon silver gleam Is the Euphrates' stream. Let us descend Into the city splendid, Into the City of Gold! PROPHET. Behold! As if the stars had fallen from their places Into the firmament below, The streets, the gardens, and the vacant spaces With light are all aglow; And hark! As we draw near, What sound is it I hear Ascending through the dark? ANGEL. The tumultuous noise of the nations, Their rejoicings and lamentations, The pleadings of their prayer, The groans of their despair, The cry of their imprecations, Their wrath, their love, their hate! PROPHET. Surely the world doth wait The coming of its Redeemer! ANGEL. Awake from thy sleep, O dreamer? The hour is near, though late; Awake! write the vision sublime, The vision, that is for a time, Though it tarry, wait; it is nigh; In the end it will speak and not lie. PART ONE THE DIVINE TRAGEDY THE FIRST PASSOVER I VOX CLAMANTIS JOHN THE BAPTIST. Repent! repent! repent! For the kingdom of God is at hand, And all the land Full of the knowledge of the Lord shall be As the waters cover the sea, And encircle the continent! Repent! repent! repent! For lo, the hour appointed, The hour so long foretold By the Prophets of old, Of the coming of the Anointed, The Messiah, the Paraclete, The Desire of the Nations, is nigh! He shall not strive nor cry, Nor his voice be heard in the street; Nor the bruised reed shall He break, Nor quench the smoking flax; And many of them that sleep In the dust of earth shall awake, On that great and terrible day, And the wicked shall wail and weep, And be blown like a smoke away, And be melted away like wax. Repent! repent! repent! O Priest, and Pharisee, Who hath warned you to flee From the wrath that is to be? From the coming anguish and ire? The axe is laid at the root Of the trees, and every tree That bringeth not forth good fruit Is hewn down and cast into the fire! Ye Scribes, why come ye hither? In the hour that is uncertain, In the day of anguish and trouble, He that stretcheth the heavens as a curtain And spreadeth them out as a tent, Shall blow upon you, and ye shall wither, And the whirlwind shall take you away as stubble! Repent! repent! repent! PRIEST. Who art thou, O man of prayer! In raiment of camel's hair, Begirt with leathern thong, That here in the wilderness, With a cry as of one in distress, Preachest unto this throng? Art thou the Christ? JOHN. Priest of Jerusalem, In meekness and humbleness, I deny not, I confess I am not the Christ! PRIEST. What shall we say unto them That sent us here? Reveal Thy name, and naught conceal! Art thou Elias? JOHN. No! PRIEST. Art thou that Prophet, then, Of lamentation and woe, Who, as a symbol and sign Of impending wrath divine Upon unbelieving men, Shattered the vessel of clay In the Valley of Slaughter? JOHN. Nay. I am not he thou namest! PRIEST. Who art thou, and what is the word That here thou proclaimest? JOHN. I am the voice of one Crying in the wilderness alone: Prepare ye the way of the Lord; Make his paths straight In the land that is desolate! PRIEST. If thou be not the Christ, Nor yet Elias, nor he That, in sign of the things to be, Shattered the vessel of clay In the Valley of Slaughter, Then declare unto us, and say By what authority now Baptizest thou? JOHN. I indeed baptize you with water Unto repentance; but He, That cometh after me, Is mightier than I and higher; The latchet of whose shoes I an not worthy to unloose; He shall baptize you with fire, And with the Holy Ghost! Whose fan is in his hand; He will purge to the uttermost His floor, and garner his wheat, But will burn the chaff in the brand And fire of unquenchable heat! Repent! repent! repent! II MOUNT QUARANTANIA I LUCIFER. Not in the lightning's flash, nor in the thunder, Not in the tempest, nor the cloudy storm, Will I array my form; But part invisible these boughs asunder, And move and murmur as the wind upheaves And whispers in the leaves. Not as a terror and a desolation, Not in my natural shape, inspiring fear And dread, will I appear; But in soft tones of sweetness and persuasion, A sound as of the fall of mountain streams, Or voices heard in dreams. He sitteth there in silence, worn and wasted With famine, and uplifts his hollow eyes To the unpitying skies; For forty days and nights he hath not tasted Of food or drink, his parted lips are pale, Surely his strength must fail. Wherefore dost thou in penitential fasting Waste and consume the beauty of thy youth. Ah, if thou be in truth The Son of the Unnamed, the Everlasting, Command these stones beneath thy feet to be Changed into bread for thee! CHRISTUS. 'T is written! Man shall not live by bread alone, But by each word that from God's mouth proceedeth! II LUCIFER. Too weak, alas! too weak is the temptation For one whose soul to nobler things aspires Than sensual desires! Ah, could I, by some sudden aberration, Lend and delude to suicidal death This Christ of Nazareth! Unto the holy Temple on Moriah, With its resplendent domes, and manifold Bright pinnacles of gold, Where they await thy coming, O Messiah! Lo, I have brought thee! Let thy glory here Be manifest and clear. Reveal thyself by royal act and gesture Descending with the bright triumphant host Of all the hithermost Archangels, and about thee as a vesture The shining clouds, and all thy splendors show Unto the world below! Cast thyself down, it is the hour appointed; And God hath given his angels charge and care To keep thee and upbear Upon their hands his only Son, the Anointed, Lest he should dash his foot against a stone And die, and be unknown. CHRISTUS. 'T is written: Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God! III LUCIFER. I cannot thus delude him to perdition! But one temptation still remains untried, The trial of his pride, The thirst of power, the fever of ambition! Surely by these a humble peasant's son At last may be undone! Above the yawning chasms and deep abysses, Across the headlong torrents, I have brought Thy footsteps, swift as thought; And from the highest of these precipices, The Kingdoms of the world thine eyes behold. Like a great map unrolled. From far-off Lebanon, with cedars crested, To where the waters of the Asphalt Lake On its white pebbles break, And the vast desert, silent, sand-invested, These kingdoms all are mine, and thine shall be, If thou wilt worship me! CHRISTUS. Get thee behind me, Satan! thou shalt worship The Lord thy God; Him only shalt thou serve! ANGELS MINISTRANT. The sun goes down; the evening shadows lengthen, The fever and the struggle of the day Abate and pass away; Thine Angels Miniatrant, we come to strengthen And comfort thee, and crown thee with the palm, The silence and the calm. III THE MARRIAGE IN CANA THE MUSICIANS. Rise up, my love, my fair one, Rise up, and come away, For lo! the winter is past, The rain is over and gone, The flowers appear on the earth, The time of the singing of birds is come, And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. THE BRIDEGROOM. Sweetly the minstrels sing the Song of Songs! My heart runs forward with it, and I say: Oh set me as a seal upon thine heart, And set me as a seal upon thine arm; For love is strong as life, and strong as death, And cruel as the grave is jealousy! THE MUSICIANS. I sleep, but my heart awaketh; 'T is the voice of my beloved Who knocketh, saying: Open to me, My sister, my love, my dove, For my head is filled with dew, My locks with the drops of the night! THE BRIDE. Ah yes, I sleep, and yet my heart awaketh. It is the voice of my beloved who knocks. THE BRIDEGROOM. O beautiful as Rebecca at the fountain, O beautiful as Ruth among the sheaves! O fairest among women! O undefiled! Thou art all fair, my love, there's no spot in thee! THE MUSICIANS. My beloved is white and ruddy, The chiefest among ten thousand His locks are black as a raven, His eyes are the eyes of doves, Of doves by the rivers of water, His lips are like unto lilies, Dropping sweet-smelling myrrh. ARCHITRICLINUS. Who is that youth with the dark azure eyes, And hair, in color like unto the wine, Parted upon his forehead, and behind Falling in flowing locks? PARANYMPHUS. The Nazarene Who preacheth to the poor in field and village The coming of God's Kingdom. ARCHITRICLINUS. How serene His aspect is! manly yet womanly. PARANYMPHUS. Most beautiful among the sons of men! Oft known to weep, but never known to laugh. ARCHITRICLINUS. And tell me, she with eyes of olive tint, And skin as fair as wheat, and pale brown hair, The woman at his side? PARANYMPHUS. His mother, Mary. ARCHITRICLINUS. And the tall figure standing close behind them, Clad all in white, with lace and beard like ashes, As if he were Elias, the White Witness, Come from his cave on Carmel to foretell The end of all things? PARANYMPHUS. That is Manahem The Essenian, he who dwells among the palms Near the Dead Sea. ARCHITRICLINUS. He who foretold to Herod He should one day be King? PARANYMPHUS. The same. ARCHITRICLINUS. Then why Doth he come here to sadden with his presence Our marriage feast, belonging to a sect Haters of women, and that taste not wine? THE MUSICIANS. My undefiled is but one, The only one of her mother, The choice of her that bare her; The daughters saw her and blessed her; The queens and the concubines praised her; Saying, Lo! who is this That looketh forth as the morning? MANAHEM aside. The Ruler of the Feast is gazing at me, As if he asked, why is that old man here Among the revellers? And thou, the Anointed! Why art thou here? I see as in a vision A figure clothed in purple, crowned with thorns; I see a cross uplifted in the darkness, And hear a cry of agony, that shall echo Forever and forever through the world! ARCHITRICLINUS. Give us more wine. These goblets are all empty. MARY to CHRISTUS. They have no wine! CHRISTUS. O woman, what have I To do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come. MARY to the servants. Whatever he shall say to you, that do. CHRISTUS. Fill up these pots with water. THE MUSICIANS. Come, my beloved, Let us go forth into the field, Let us lodge in the villages; Let us get up early to the vineyards, Let us see if the vine flourish, Whether the tender grape appear, And the pomegranates bud forth. CHRISTUS. Draw out now And bear unto the Ruler of the Feast. MANAHEM aside. O thou, brought up among the Essenians, Nurtured in abstinence, taste not the wine! It is the poison of dragons from the vineyards Of Sodom, and the taste of death is in it! ARCHITRICLINUS to the BRIDEGROOM. All men set forth good wine at the beginning, And when men have well drunk, that which is worse; But thou hast kept the good wine until now. MANAHEM aside. The things that have been and shall be no more, The things that are, and that hereafter shall he, The things that might have been, and yet were not, The fading twilight of great joys departed, The daybreak of great truths as yet unrisen, The intuition and the expectation Of something, which, when come, is not the same, But only like its forecast in men's dreams, The longing, the delay, and the delight, Sweeter for the delay; youth, hope, love, death, And disappointment which is also death, All these make up the sum of human life; A dream within a dream, a wind at night Howling across the desert in despair, Seeking for something lost it cannot find. Fate or foreseeing, or whatever name Men call it, matters not; what is to be Hath been fore-written in the thought divine From the beginning. None can hide from it, But it will find him out; nor run from it, But it o'ertaketh him! The Lord hath said it. THE BRIDEGROOM to the BRIDE, on the balcony. When Abraham went with Sarah into Egypt, The land was all illumined with her beauty; But thou dost make the very night itself Brighter than day! Behold, in glad procession, Crowding the threshold of the sky above us, The stars come forth to meet thee with their lamps; And the soft winds, the ambassadors of flowers, From neighboring gardens and from fields unseen, Come laden with odors unto thee, my Queen! THE MUSICIANS. Awake, O north-wind, And come, thou wind of the South. Blow, blow upon my garden, That the spices thereof may flow out. IV IN THE CORNFIELDS PHILIP. Onward through leagues of sun-illumined corn, As if through parted seas, the pathway runs, And crowned with sunshine as the Prince of Peace Walks the beloved Master, leading us, As Moses led our fathers in old times Out of the land of bondage! We have found Him of whom Moses and the Prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Joseph. NATHANAEL. Can any good come out of Nazareth? Can this be the Messiah? PHILIP. Come and see. NATHANAEL. The summer sun grows hot: I am anhungered. How cheerily the Sabbath-breaking quail Pipes in the corn, and bids us to his Feast Of Wheat Sheaves! How the bearded, ripening ears Toss in the roofless temple of the air; As if the unseen hand of some High-Priest Waved them before Mount Tabor as an altar! It were no harm, if we should pluck and eat. PHILIP. How wonderful it is to walk abroad With the Good Master! Since the miracle He wrought at Cana, at the marriage feast, His fame hath gone abroad through all the land, And when we come to Nazareth, thou shalt see How his own people will receive their Prophet, And hail him as Messiah! See, he turns And looks at thee. CHRISTUS. Behold an Israelite In whom there is no guile. NATHANAEL. Whence knowest thou me? CHRISTUS. Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast Under the fig-tree, I beheld thee. NATHANAEL. Rabbi! Thou art the Son of God, thou art the King Of Israel! CHRISTUS. Because I said I saw thee Under the fig-tree, before Philip called thee, Believest thou? Thou shalt see greater things. Hereafter thou shalt see the heavens unclosed, The angels of God ascending and descending Upon the Son of Man! PHAIRISEES, passing. Hail, Rabbi! CHRISTUS. Hail! PHARISEES. Behold how thy disciples do a thing Which is not lawful on the Sabbath-day, And thou forbiddest them not! CHRISTUS. Have ye not read What David did when he anhungered was, And all they that were with him? How he entered Into the house of God, and ate the shew-bread, Which was not lawful, saving for the priests? Have ye not read, how on the Sabbath-days The priests profane the Sabbath in the Temple, And yet are blameless? But I say to you, One in this place is greater than the Temple! And had ye known the meaning of the words, I will have mercy and not sacrifice, The guiltless ye would not condemn. The Sabbath Was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Passes on with the disciples. PHARISEES. This is, alas! some poor demoniac Wandering about the fields, and uttering His unintelligible blasphemies Among the common people, who receive As prophecies the words they comprehend not! Deluded folk! The incomprehensible Alone excites their wonder. There is none So visionary, or so void of sense, But he will find a crowd to follow him! V NAZARETH CHRISTUS, reading in the Synagogue. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me. He hath anointed me to preach good tidings Unto the poor; to heal the broken-hearted; To comfort those that mourn, and to throw open The prison doors of captives, and proclaim The Year Acceptable of the Lord, our God! He closes the book and sits down. A PHARISEE. Who is this youth? He hath taken the Teacher's seat! Will he instruct the Elders? A PRIEST. Fifty years Have I been Priest here in the Synagogue, And never have I seen so young a man Sit in the Teacher's seat! CHRISTUS. Behold, to-day This scripture is fulfilled. One is appointed And hath been sent to them that mourn in Zion, To give them beauty for ashes, and the oil Of joy for mourning! They shall build again The old waste-places; and again raise up The former desolations, and repair The cities that are wasted! As a bridegroom Decketh himself with ornaments; as a bride Adorneth herself with jewels, so the Lord Hath clothed me with the robe of righteousness! A PRIEST. He speaks the Prophet's words; but with an air As if himself had been foreshadowed in them! CHRISTUS. For Zion's sake I will not hold my peace, And for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest Until its righteousness be as a brightness, And its salvation as a lamp that burneth! Thou shalt be called no longer the Forsaken, Nor any more thy land the Desolate. The Lord hath sworn, by his right hand hath sworn, And by his arm of strength: I will no more Give to thine enemies thy corn as meat; The sons of strangers shall not drink thy wine. Go through, go through the gates! Prepare a way Unto the people! Gather out the stones! Lift up a standard for the people! A PRIEST. Ah! These are seditious words! CHRISTUS. And they shall call them The holy people; the redeemed of God! And thou, Jerusalem, shalt be called Sought out, A city not forsaken! A PHARISEE. Is not this The carpenter Joseph's son? Is not his mother Called Mary? and his brethren and his sisters Are they not with us? Doth he make himself To be a Prophet? CHRISTUS. No man is a Prophet In his own country, and among his kin. In his own house no Prophet is accepted. I say to you, in the land of Israel Were many widows in Elijah's day, When for three years and more the heavens were shut, And a great famine was throughout the land; But unto no one was Elijah sent Save to Sarepta, to a city of Sidon, And to a woman there that was a widow. And many lepers were then in the land Of Israel, in the time of Eliseus The Prophet, and yet none of them was cleansed, Save Naaman the Syrian! A PRIEST. Say no more! Thou comest here into our Synagogue And speakest to the Elders and the Priests, As if the very mantle of Elijah Had fallen upon thee! Are thou not ashamed? A PHARISEE. We want no Prophets here! Let him be driven From Synagogue and city! Let him go And prophesy to the Samaritans! AN ELDER. The world is changed. We Elders are as nothing! We are but yesterdays, that have no part Or portion in to-day! Dry leaves that rustle, That make a little sound, and then are dust! A PHARISEE. A carpenter's apprentice! a mechanic, Whom we have seen at work here in the town Day after day; a stripling without learning, Shall he pretend to unfold the Word of God To men grown old in study of the Law? CHRISTUS is thrust out. VI THE SEA OF GALILEE. PETER and ANDREW mending their nets. PETER. Never was such a marvellous draught of fishes Heard of in Galilee! The market-places Both of Bethsaida and Capernaum Are full of them! Yet we had toiled all night And taken nothing, when the Master said: Launch out into the deep, and cast your nets; And doing this, we caught such multitudes, Our nets like spiders' webs were snapped asunder, And with the draught we filled two ships so full That they began to sink. Then I knelt down Amazed, and said: O Lord, depart from me, I am a sinful man. And he made answer: Simon, fear not; henceforth thou shalt catch men! What was the meaning of those words? ANDREW. I know not. But here is Philip, come from Nazareth. He hath been with the Master. Tell us, Philip, What tidings dost thou bring? PHILIP. Most wonderful! As we drew near to Nain, out of the gate Upon a bier was carried the dead body Of a young man, his mother's only son, And she a widow, who with lamentation Bewailed her loss, and the much people with her; And when the Master saw her he was filled With pity; and he said to her: Weep not And came and touched the bier, and they that bare it Stood still; and then he said: Young man, arise! And he that had been dead sat up, and soon Began to speak; and he delivered him Unto his mother. And there came a fear On all the people, and they glorified The Lord, and said, rejoicing: A great Prophet Is risen up among us! and the Lord Hath visited his people! PETER. A great Prophet? Ay, greater than a Prophet: greater even Than John the Baptist! PHILIP. Yet the Nazarenes Rejected him. PETER. The Nazarenes are dogs! As natural brute beasts, they growl at things They do not understand; and they shall perish, Utterly perish in their own corruption. The Nazarenes are dogs! PHILIP. They drave him forth Out of their Synagogue, out of their city, And would have cast him down a precipice, But, passing through the midst of them, he vanished Out of their hands. PETER. Wells are they without water, Clouds carried with a tempest, unto whom The mist of darkness is reserved forever. PHILIP. Behold, he cometh. There is one man with him I am amazed to see! ANDREW. What man is that? PHILIP. Judas Iscariot; he that cometh last, Girt with a leathern apron. No one knoweth His history; but the rumor of him is He had an unclean spirit in his youth. It hath not left him yet. CHRISTUS, passing. Come unto me, All ye that labor and are heavy laden, And I will give you rest! Come unto me, And take my yoke upon you and learn of me, For I am meek, and I am lowly in heart, And ye shall all find rest unto your souls! PHILIP. Oh, there is something in that voice that reaches The innermost recesses of my spirit! I feel that it might say unto the blind: Receive your sight! and straightway they would see! I feel that it might say unto the dead, Arise! and they would hear it and obey! Behold, he beckons to us! CHRISTUS to PETER and ANDREW. Follow me! PETER. Master, I will leave all and follow thee. VII THE DEMONIAC OF GADARA A GADARENE. He hath escaped, hath plucked his chains asunder, And broken his fetters; always night and day Is in the mountains here, and in the tombs, Crying aloud, and cutting himself with stones, Exceeding fierce, so that no man can tame him! THE DEMONIAC from above, unseen. O Aschmedai! O Aschmedai, have pity! A GADARENE. Listen! It is his voice! Go warn the people Just landing from the lake! THE DEMONIAC. O Aschmedai! Thou angel of the bottomless pit, have pity! It was enough to hurl King Solomon, On whom be peace! two hundred leagues away Into the country, and to make him scullion In the kitchen of the King of Maschkemen! Why dost thou hurl me here among these rocks, And cut me with these stones? A GADARENE. He raves and mutters He knows not what. THE DEMONIAC, appearing from a tomb among the rocks. The wild cock Tarnegal Singeth to me, and bids me to the banquet, Where all the Jews shall come; for they have slain Behemoth the great ox, who daily cropped A thousand hills for food, and at a draught Drank up the river Jordan, and have slain The huge Leviathan, and stretched his skin Upon the high walls of Jerusalem, And made them shine from one end of the world Unto the other; and the fowl Barjuchne, Whose outspread wings eclipse the sun, and make Midnight at noon o'er all the continents! And we shall drink the wine of Paradise From Adam's cellars. A GADARENE. O thou unclean spirit! THE DEMONIAC, hurling down a stone. This is the wonderful Barjuchne's egg, That fell out of her nest, and broke to pieces And swept away three hundred cedar-trees, And threescore villages!--Rabbi Eliezer, How thou didst sin there in that seaport town When thou hadst carried safe thy chest of silver Over the seven rivers for her sake! I too have sinned beyond the reach of pardon. Ye hills and mountains, pray for mercy on me! Ye stars and planets, pray for mercy on me! Ye sun and moon, oh pray for mercy on me! CHRISTUS and his disciples pass. A GADARENE. There is a man here of Decapolis, Who hath an unclean spirit; so that none Can pass this way. He lives among the tombs Up there upon the cliffs, and hurls down stones On those who pass beneath. CHRISTUS. Come out of him, Thou unclean spirit! THE DEMONIAC. What have I to do With thee, thou Son of God? Do not torment us. CHRISTUS. What is thy name? THE DEMONIAC. Legion; for we are many. Cain, the first murderer; and the King Belshazzar, And Evil Merodach of Babylon, And Admatha, the death-cloud, prince of Persia And Aschmedai the angel of the pit, And many other devils. We are Legion. Send us not forth beyond Decapolis; Command us not to go into the deep! There is a herd of swine here in the pastures, Let us go into them. CHRISTUS. Come out of him, Thou unclean spirit! A GADARENE. See how stupefied, How motionless he stands! He cries no more; He seems bewildered and in silence stares As one who, walking in his sleep, awakes And knows not where he is, and looks about him, And at his nakedness, and is ashamed. THE DEMONIAC. Why am I here alone among the tombs? What have they done to me, that I am naked? Ah, woe is me! CHRISTUS. Go home unto thy friends And tell them how great things the Lord hath done For thee, and how He had compassion on thee! A SWINEHERD, running. The herds! the herd! O most unlucky day! They were all feeding quiet in the sun, When suddenly they started, and grew savage As the wild boars of Tabor, and together Rushed down a precipice into the sea! They are all drowned! PETER. Thus righteously are punished The apostate Jews, that eat the flesh of swine, And broth of such abominable things! GREEKS OF GADARA. We sacrifice a sow unto Demeter At the beginning of harvest and another To Dionysus at the vintage-time. Therefore we prize our herds of swine, and count them Not as unclean, but as things consecrate To the immortal gods. O great magician, Depart out of our coasts; let us alone, We are afraid of thee. PETER. Let us depart; For they that sanctify and purify Themselves in gardens, eating flesh of swine. And the abomination, and the mouse, Shall be consumed together, saith the Lord! VIII TALITHA CUMI JAIRUS at the feet of CHRISTUS. O Master! I entreat thee! I implore thee! My daughter lieth at the point of death; I pray thee come and lay thy hands upon her, And she shall live! CHRISTUS. Who was it touched my garments? SIMON PETER. Thou seest the multitude that throng and press thee, And sayest thou: Who touched me? 'T was not I. CHRISTUS. Some one hath touched my garments; I perceive That virtue is gone out of me. A WOMAN. O Master! Forgive me! For I said within myself, If I so much as touch his garment's hem, I shall be whole. CHRISTUS. Be of good comfort, daughter! Thy faith hath made thee whole. Depart in peace. A MESSENGER from the house. Why troublest thou the Master? Hearest thou not The flute players, and the voices of the women Singing their lamentation? She is dead! THE MINSTRELS AND MOURNERS. We have girded ourselves with sackcloth! We have covered our heads with ashes! For our young men die, and our maidens Swoon in the streets of the city; And into their mother's bosom They pour out their souls like water! CHRISTUS, going in. Give place. Why make ye this ado, and weep? She is not dead, but sleepeth. THE MOTHER, from within. Cruel Death! To take away front me this tender blossom! To take away my dove, my lamb, my darling! THE MINSTRELS AND MOURNERS. He hath led me and brought into darkness, Like the dead of old in dark places! He hath bent his bow, and hath set me Apart as a mark for his arrow! He hath covered himself with a cloud, That our prayer should not pass through and reach him! THE CROWD. He stands beside her bed! He takes her hand! Listen, he speaks to her! CHRISTUS, within. Maiden, arise! THE CROWD. See, she obeys his voice! She stirs! She lives! Her mother holds her folded in her arms! O miracle of miracles! O marvel! IX THE TOWER OF MAGDALA MARY MAGDALENE. Companionless, unsatisfied, forlorn, I sit here in this lonely tower, and look Upon the lake below me, and the hills That swoon with heat, and see as in a vision All my past life unroll itself before me. The princes and the merchants come to me, Merchants of Tyre and Princes of Damascus. And pass, and disappear, and are no more; But leave behind their merchandise and jewels, Their perfumes, and their gold, and their disgust. I loathe them, and the very memory of them Is unto me as thought of food to one Cloyed with the luscious figs of Dalmanutha! What if hereafter, in the long hereafter Of endless joy or pain, or joy in pain, It were my punishment to be with them Grown hideous and decrepit in their sins, And hear them say: Thou that hast brought us here, Be unto us as thou hast been of old! I look upon this raiment that I wear, These silks, and these embroideries, and they seem Only as cerements wrapped about my limbs! I look upon these rings thick set with pearls, And emerald and amethyst and jasper, And they are burning coals upon my flesh! This serpent on my wrist becomes alive! Away, thou viper! and away, ye garlands, Whose odors bring the swift remembrance back Of the unhallowed revels in these chambers! But yesterday,--and yet it seems to me Something remote, like a pathetic song Sung long ago by minstrels in the street,-- But yesterday, as from this tower I gazed, Over the olive and the walnut trees Upon the lake and the white ships, and wondered Whither and whence they steered, and who was in them, A fisher's boat drew near the landing-place Under the oleanders, and the people Came up from it, and passed beneath the tower, Close under me. In front of them, as leader, Walked one of royal aspect, clothed in white, Who lifted up his eyes, and looked at me, And all at once the air seemed filled and living With a mysterious power, that streamed from him, And overflowed me with an atmosphere Of light and love. As one entranced I stood, And when I woke again, lo! he was gone; So that I said: Perhaps it is a dream. But from that very hour the seven demons That had their habitation in this body Which men call beautiful, departed from me! This morning, when the first gleam of the dawn Made Lebanon a glory in the air, And all below was darkness, I beheld An angel, or a spirit glorified, With wind-tossed garments walking on the lake. The face I could not see, but I distinguished The attitude and gesture, and I knew 'T was he that healed me. And the gusty wind Brought to mine ears a voice, which seemed to say: Be of good cheer! 'T is I! Be not afraid! And from the darkness, scarcely heard, the answer: If it be thou, bid me come unto thee Upon the water! And the voice said: Come! And then I heard a cry of fear: Lord, save me! As of a drowning man. And then the voice: Why didst thou doubt, O thou of little faith! At this all vanished, and the wind was hushed, And the great sun came up above the hills, And the swift-flying vapors hid themselves In caverns among the rocks! Oh, I must find him And follow him, and be with him forever! Thou box of alabaster, in whose walls The souls of flowers lie pent, the precious balm And spikenard of Arabian farms, the spirits Of aromatic herbs, ethereal natures Nursed by the sun and dew, not all unworthy To bathe his consecrated feet, whose step Makes every threshold holy that he crosses; Let us go forth upon our pilgrimage, Thou and I only! Let us search for him Until we find him, and pour out our souls Before his feet, till all that's left of us Shall be the broken caskets that once held us! X THE HOUSE OF SIMON THE PHARISEE A GUEST at table. Are ye deceived? Have any of the Rulers Believed on him? or do they know indeed This man to be the very Christ? Howbeit We know whence this man is, but when the Christ Shall come, none knoweth whence he is. CHRISTUS. Whereunto shall I liken, then, the men Of this generation? and what are they like? They are like children sitting in the markets, And calling unto one another, saying: We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced We have mourned unto you, and ye have not wept! This say I unto you, for John the Baptist Came neither eating bread nor drinking wine Ye say he hath a devil. The Son of Man Eating and drinking cometh, and ye say: Behold a gluttonous man, and a wine-bibber; Behold a friend of publicans and sinners! A GUEST aside to SIMON. Who is that woman yonder, gliding in So silently behind him? SIMON. It is Mary, Who dwelleth in the Tower of Magdala. THE GUEST. See, how she kneels there weeping, and her tears Fall on his feet; and her long, golden hair Waves to and fro and wipes them dry again. And now she kisses them, and from a box Of alabaster is anointing them With precious ointment, filling all the house With its sweet odor! SIMON, aside, Oh, this man, forsooth, Were he indeed a Prophet, would have known Who and what manner of woman this may be That toucheth him! would know she is a sinner! CHRISTUS. Simon, somewhat have I to say to thee. SIMON. Master, say on. CHRISTUS. A certain creditor Had once two debtors; and the one of them Owed him five hundred pence; the other, fifty. They having naught to pay withal, he frankly Forgave them both. Now tell me which of them Will love him most? SIMON. He, I suppose to whom He most forgave. CHRISTUS. Yea, thou hast rightly judged. Seest thou this woman? When thine house I entered, Thou gavest me no water for my feet, But she hath washed them with her tears, and wiped them With her own hair. Thou gavest me no kiss; This woman hath not ceased, since I came in, To kiss my feet. My head with oil didst thou Anoint not; but this woman hath anointed My feet with ointment. Hence I say to thee, Her sins, which have been many, are forgiven, For she loved much. THE GUESTS. Oh, who, then, is this man That pardoneth also sins without atonement? CHRISTUS. Woman, thy faith hath saved thee! Go in peace! THE SECOND PASSOVER. I BEFORE THE GATES OF MACHAERUS MANAHEM. Welcome, O wilderness, and welcome, night And solitude, and ye swift-flying stars That drift with golden sands the barren heavens, Welcome once more! The Angels of the Wind Hasten across the desert to receive me; And sweeter than men's voices are to me The voices of these solitudes; the sound Of unseen rivulets, and the far-off cry Of bitterns in the reeds of water-pools. And lo! above me, like the Prophet's arrow Shot from the eastern window, high in air The clamorous cranes go singing through the night. O ye mysterious pilgrims of the air, Would I had wings that I might follow you! I look forth from these mountains, and behold The omnipotent and omnipresent night, Mysterious as the future and the fate That hangs o'er all men's lives! I see beneath me The desert stretching to the Dead Sea shore, And westward, faint and far away, the glimmer Of torches on Mount Olivet, announcing The rising of the Moon of Passover. Like a great cross it seems, on which suspended, With head bowed down in agony, I see A human figure! Hide, O merciful heaven, The awful apparition from my sight! And thou, Machaerus, lifting high and black Thy dreadful walls against the rising moon, Haunted by demons and by apparitions, Lilith, and Jezerhara, and Bedargon, How grim thou showest in the uncertain light, A palace and a prison, where King Herod Feasts with Herodias, while the Baptist John Fasts, and consumes his unavailing life! And in thy court-yard grows the untithed rue, Huge as the olives of Gethsemane, And ancient as the terebinth of Hebron, Coeval with the world. Would that its leaves Medicinal could purge thee of the demons That now possess thee, and the cunning fox That burrows in thy walls, contriving mischief! Music is heard from within. Angels of God! Sandalphon, thou that weavest The prayers of men into immortal garlands, And thou, Metatron, who dost gather up Their songs, and bear them to the gates of heaven, Now gather up together in your hands The prayers that fill this prison, and the songs That echo from the ceiling of this palace, And lay them side by side before God's feet! He enters the castle. II HEROD'S BANQUET-HALL MANAHEM. Thou hast sent for me, O King, and I am here. HEROD. Who art thou? MANAHEM. Manahem, the Essenian. HEROD. I recognize thy features, but what mean These torn and faded garments? On thy road Have demons crowded thee, and rubbed against thee, And given thee weary knees? A cup of wine! MANAHEM. The Essenians drink no wine. HEROD. What wilt thou, then? MANAHEM. Nothing. HEROD. Not even a cup of water? MANAHEM. Nothing. Why hast thou sent for me? HEROD. Dost thou remember One day when I, a schoolboy in the streets Of the great city, met thee on my way To school, and thou didst say to me: Hereafter Thou shalt be king? MANAHEM. Yea, I remember it. HEROD. Thinking thou didst not know me, I replied: I am of humble birth; whereat thou, smiling, Didst smite me with thy hand, and saidst again: Thou shalt be king; and let the friendly blows That Manahem hath given thee on this day Remind thee of the fickleness of fortune. MANAHEM. What more? HEROD. No more. MANAHEM. Yea, for I said to thee: It shall be well with thee if thou love justice And clemency towards thy fellow-men. Hast thou done this, O King? HEROD. Go, ask my people. MANAHEM. And then, foreseeing all thy life, I added: But these thou wilt forget; and at the end Of life the Lord will punish thee. HEROD. The end! When will that come? For this I sent to thee. How long shall I still reign? Thou dost not answer! Speak! shall I reign ten years? MANAHEM. Thou shalt reign twenty, Nay, thirty years. I cannot name the end. HEROD. Thirty? I thank thee, good Essenian! This is my birthday, and a happier one Was never mine. We hold a banquet here. See, yonder are Herodias and her daughter. MANAHEM, aside. 'T is said that devils sometimes take the shape Of ministering angels, clothed with air. That they may be inhabitants of earth, And lead man to destruction. Such are these. HEROD. Knowest thou John the Baptist? MANAHEM. Yea, I know him; Who knows him not? HEROD. Know, then, this John the Baptist Said that it was not lawful I should marry My brother Philip's wife, and John the Baptist Is here in prison. In my father's time Matthias Margaloth was put to death For tearing the golden eagle from its station Above the Temple Gate,--a slighter crime Than John is guilty of. These things are warnings To intermeddlers not to play with eagles, Living or dead. I think the Essenians Are wiser, or more wary, are they not? MANAHEM. The Essenians do not marry. HEROD. Thou hast given My words a meaning foreign to my thought. MANAHEM. Let me go hence, O King! HEROD. Stay yet awhile, And see the daughter of Herodias dance. Cleopatra of Jerusalem, my mother, In her best days, was not more beautiful. Music. THE DAUGHTER OP HERODIAS dances. HEROD. Oh, what was Miriam dancing with her timbrel, Compared to this one? MANAHEM, aside. O thou Angel of Death, Dancing at funerals among the women, When men bear out the dead! The air is hot And stifles me! Oh for a breath of air! Bid me depart, O King! HEROD. Not yet. Come hither, Salome, thou enchantress! Ask of me Whate'er thou wilt; and even unto the half Of all my kingdom, I will give it thee, As the Lord liveth! DAUGHTER OF HERODIAS, kneeling. Give me here the head Of John the Baptist on this silver charger! HEROD. Not that, dear child! I dare not; for the people Regard John as a prophet. DAUGHTER OF HERODIAS. Thou hast sworn it. HEROD. For mine oath's sake, then. Send unto the prison; Let him die quickly. Oh, accursed oath! MANAHEM. Bid me depart, O King! HEROD. Good Manahem, Give me thy hand. I love the Essenians. He's gone and hears me not! The guests are dumb, Awaiting the pale face, the silent witness. The lamps flare; and the curtains of the doorways Wave to and fro as if a ghost were passing! Strengthen my heart, red wine of Ascalon! III UNDER THE WALLS OF MACHAERUS MANAHEM, rushing out. Away from this Palace of sin! The demons, the terrible powers Of the air, that haunt its towers And hide in its water-spouts, Deafen me with the din Of their laughter and their shouts For the crimes that are done within! Sink back into the earth, Or vanish into the air, Thou castle of despair! Let it all be but a dream Of the things of monstrous birth, Of the things that only seem! White Angel of the Moon, Onafiel! be my guide Out of this hateful place Of sin and death, nor hide In you black cloud too soon Thy pale and tranquil face! A trumpet is blown from the walls. Hark! hark! It is the breath Of the trump of doom and death, From the battlements overhead Like a burden of sorrow cast On the midnight and the blast, A wailing for the dead, That the gusts drop and uplift! O Herod, thy vengeance is swift! O Herodias, thou hast been The demon, the evil thing, That in place of Esther the Queen, In place of the lawful bride, Hast lain at night by the side Of Ahasuerus the king! The trumpet again. The Prophet of God is dead! At a drunken monarch's call, At a dancing-woman's beck, They have severed that stubborn neck And into the banquet-hall Are bearing the ghastly head! A body is thrown from the tower. A torch of red Lights the window with its glow; And a white mass as of snow Is hurled into the abyss Of the black precipice, That yawns for it below! O hand of the Most High, O hand of Adonai! Bury it, hide it away From the birds and beasts of prey, And the eyes of the homicide, More pitiless than they, As thou didst bury of yore The body of him that died On the mountain of Peor! Even now I behold a sign, A threatening of wrath divine, A watery, wandering star, Through whose streaming hair, and the white Unfolding garments of light, That trail behind it afar, The constellations shine! And the whiteness and brightness appear Like the Angel bearing the Seer By the hair of his head, in the might And rush of his vehement flight. And I listen until I hear From fathomless depths of the sky The voice of his prophecy Sounding louder and more near! Malediction! malediction! May the lightnings of heaven fall On palace and prison wall, And their desolation be As the day of fear and affliction, As the day of anguish and ire, With the burning and fuel of fire, In the Valley of the Sea! IV NICODEMUS AT NIGHT NICODEMUS. The streets are silent. The dark houses seem Like sepulchres, in which the sleepers lie Wrapped in their shrouds, and for the moment dead. The lamps are all extinguished; only one Burns steadily, and from the door its light Lies like a shining gate across the street. He waits for me. Ah, should this be at last The long-expected Christ! I see him there Sitting alone, deep-buried in his thought, As if the weight of all the world were resting Upon him, and thus bowed him down. O Rabbi, We know thou art a Teacher come from God, For no man can perform the miracles Thou dost perform, except the Lord be with him. Thou art a Prophet, sent here to proclaim The Kingdom of the Lord. Behold in me A Ruler of the Jews, who long have waited The coming of that kingdom. Tell me of it. CHRISTUS. Verily, verily I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot Behold the Kingdom of God! NICODEMUS. Be born again? How can a man be born when he is old? Say, can he enter for a second time Into his mother's womb, and so be born? CHRISTUS. Verily I say unto thee, except A man be born of water and the spirit, He cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. For that which of the flesh is born, is flesh; And that which of the spirit is born, is spirit. NICODEMUS. We Israelites from the Primeval Man Adam Ahelion derive our bodies; Our souls are breathings of the Holy Ghost. No more than this we know, or need to know. CHRISTUS. Then marvel not, that I said unto thee Ye must be born again. NICODEMUS. The mystery Of birth and death we cannot comprehend. CHRISTUS. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and we hear The sound thereof, but know not whence it cometh, Nor whither it goeth. So is every one Born of the spirit! NICODEMUS, aside. How can these things be? He seems to speak of some vague realm of shadows, Some unsubstantial kingdom of the air! It is not this the Jews are waiting for, Nor can this be the Christ, the Son of David, Who shall deliver us! CHRISTUS. Art thou a master Of Israel, and knowest not these things? We speak that we do know, and testify That we have seen, and ye will not receive Our witness. If I tell you earthly things, And ye believe not, how shall ye believe, If I should tell you of things heavenly? And no man hath ascended up to heaven, But he alone that first came down from heaven, Even the Son of Man which is in heaven! NICODEMUS, aside. This is a dreamer of dreams; a visionary, Whose brain is overtasked, until he deems The unseen world to be a thing substantial, And this we live in, an unreal vision! And yet his presence fascinates and fills me With wonder, and I feel myself exalted Into a higher region, and become Myself in part a dreamer of his dreams, A seer of his visions! CHRISTUS. And as Moses Uplifted the serpent in the wilderness, So must the Son of Man be lifted up; That whosoever shall believe in Him Shall perish not, but have eternal life. He that believes in Him is not condemned; He that believes not, is condemned already. NICODEMUS, aside. He speaketh like a Prophet of the Lord! CHRISTUS. This is the condemnation; that the light Is come into the world, and men loved darkness Rather than light, because their deeds are evil! NICODEMUS, aside. Of me he speaketh! He reproveth me, Because I come by night to question him! CHRISTUS. For every one that doeth evil deeds Hateth the light, nor cometh to the light Lest he should be reproved. NICODEMUS, aside. Alas, how truly He readeth what is passing in my heart! CHRISTUS. But he that doeth truth comes to the light, So that his deeds may be made manifest, That they are wrought in God. NICODEMUS. Alas! alas! V BLIND BARTIMEUS BARTIMEUS. Be not impatient, Chilion; it is pleasant To sit here in the shadow of the walls Under the palms, and hear the hum of bees, And rumor of voices passing to and fro, And drowsy bells of caravans on their way To Sidon or Damascus. This is still The City of Palms, and yet the walls thou seest Are not the old walls, not the walls where Rahab Hid the two spies, and let them down by cords Out of the window, when the gates were shut, And it was dark. Those walls were overthrown When Joshua's army shouted, and the priests Blew with their seven trumpets. CHILION. When was that? BARTIMEUS. O my sweet rose of Jericho, I know not Hundreds of years ago. And over there Beyond the river, the great prophet Elijah Was taken by a whirlwind up to heaven In chariot of fire, with fiery horses. That is the plain of Moab; and beyond it Rise the blue summits of Mount Abarim, Nebo and Pisgah and Peor, where Moses Died, whom the Lord knew face to face? and whom He buried in a valley, and no man Knows of his sepulchre unto this day. CHILION. Would thou couldst see these places, as I see them. BARTIMEUS. I have not seen a glimmer of the light Since thou wast born. I never saw thy face, And yet I seem to see it; and one day Perhaps shall see it; for there is a Prophet In Galilee, the Messiah, the Son of David, Who heals the blind, if I could only find him. I hear the sound of many feet approaching, And voices, like the murmur of a crowd! What seest thou? CHILION. A young man clad in white Is coming through the gateway, and a crowd Of people follow. BARTIMEUS. Can it be the Prophet! O neighbors, tell me who it is that passes? ONE OF THE CROWD. Jesus of Nazareth. BARTIMEUS, crying. O Son of David! Have mercy on me! MANY OP THE CROWD. Peace. Blind Bartimeus! Do not disturb the Master. BARTIMEUS, crying more vehemently. Son of David, Have mercy on me! ONE OF THE CROWD. See, the Master stops. Be of good comfort; rise, He calleth thee! BARTIMEUS, casting away his cloak. Chilion! good neighbors! lead me on. CHRISTUS. What wilt thou That I should do to thee? BARTIMEUS. Good Lord! my sight-- That I receive my sight! CHRISTUS. Receive thy sight! Thy faith hath made thee whole! THE CROWD. He sees again! CHRISTUS passes on, The crowd gathers round BARTIMEUS. BARTIMEUS. I see again; but sight bewilders me! Like a remembered dream, familiar things Come back to me. I see the tender sky Above me, see the trees, the city walls, And the old gateway, through whose echoing arch I groped so many years; and you, my neighbors; But know you by your friendly voices only. How beautiful the world is! and how wide! Oh, I am miles away, if I but look! Where art thou, Chilion? CHILION. Father, I am here. BARTIMEUS. Oh let me gaze upon thy face, dear child! For I have only seen thee with my hands! How beautiful thou art! I should have known thee; Thou hast her eyes whom we shall see hereafter! O God of Abraham! Elion! Adonai! Who art thyself a Father, pardon me If for a moment I have thee postponed To the affections and the thoughts of earth, Thee, and the adoration that I owe thee, When by thy power alone these darkened eyes Have been unsealed again to see thy light! VI JACOB'S WELL A SAMARITAN WOMAN. The sun is hot; and the dry east-wind blowing Fills all the air with dust. The birds are silent; Even the little fieldfares in the corn No longer twitter; only the grasshoppers Sing their incessant song of sun and summer. I wonder who those strangers were I met Going into the city? Galileans They seemed to me in speaking, when they asked The short way to the market-place. Perhaps They are fishermen from the lake; or travellers, Looking to find the inn. And here is some one Sitting beside the well; another stranger; A Galilean also by his looks. What can so many Jews be doing here Together in Samaria? Are they going Up to Jerusalem to the Passover? Our Passover is better here at Sychem, For here is Ebal; here is Gerizim, The mountain where our father Abraham Went up to offer Isaac; here the tomb Of Joseph,--for they brought his bones Egypt And buried them in this land, and it is holy. CHRISTUS. Give me to drink. SAMARITAN WOMAN. How can it be that thou, Being a Jew, askest to drink of me Which am a woman of Samaria? You Jews despise us; have no dealings with us; Make us a byword; call us in derision The silly folk of Sychar. Sir, how is it Thou askest drink of me? CHRISTUS. If thou hadst known The gift of God, and who it is that sayeth Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of Him; He would have given thee the living water. SAMARITAN WOMAN. Sir, thou hast naught to draw with, and the well Is deep! Whence hast thou living water? Say, art thou greater than our father Jacob, Which gave this well to us, and drank thereof Himself, and all his children and his cattle? CHRISTUS. Ah, whosoever drinketh of this water Shall thirst again; but whosoever drinketh The water I shall give him shall not thirst Forevermore, for it shall be within him A well of living water, springing up Into life everlasting. SAMARITAN WOMAN. Every day I must go to and fro, in heat and cold, And I am weary. Give me of this water, That I may thirst not, nor come here to draw. CHRISTUS. Go call thy husband, woman, and come hither. SAMARITAN WOMAN. I have no husband, Sir. CHRISTUS. Thou hast well said I have no husband. Thou hast had five husbands; And he whom now thou hast is not thy husband. SAMARITAN WOMAN. Surely thou art a Prophet, for thou readest The hidden things of life! Our fathers worshipped Upon this mountain Gerizim; and ye say The only place in which men ought to worship Is at Jerusalem. CHRISTUS. Believe me, woman, The hour is coming, when ye neither shall Upon this mount, nor at Jerusalem, Worship the Father; for the hour is coming, And is now come, when the true worshippers Shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth! The Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a spirit; and they that worship Him Must worship Him in spirit and in truth. SAMARITAN WOMAN. Master, I know that the Messiah cometh, Which is called Christ; and he will tell us all things. CHRISTUS. I that speak unto thee am He! THE DISCIPLES, returning. Behold, The Master sitting by the well, and talking With a Samaritan woman! With a woman Of Sychar, the silly people, always boasting Of their Mount Ebal, and Mount Gerizim, Their Everlasting Mountain, which they think Higher and holier than our Mount Moriah! Why, once upon the Feast of the New Moon, When our great Sanhedrim of Jerusalem Had all its watch-fires kindled on the hills To warn the distant villages, these people Lighted up others to mislead the Jews, And make a mockery of their festival! See, she has left the Master; and is running Back to the city! SAMARITAN WOMAN. Oh, come see a man Who hath told me all things that I ever did! Say, is not this the Christ? THE DISCIPLES. Lo, Master, here Is food, that we have brought thee from the city. We pray thee eat it. CHRISTUS. I have food to eat Ye know not of. THE DISCIPLES, to each other. Hath any man been here, And brought Him aught to eat, while we were gone? CHRISTUS. The food I speak of is to do the will Of Him that sent me, and to finish his work. Do ye not say, Lo! there are yet four months And cometh, harvest? I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look upon the fields, For they are white already unto harvest! VII THE COASTS OF CAESAREA PHILIPPI CHRISTUS, going up the mountain. Who do the people say I am? JOHN. Some say That thou art John the Baptist; some, Elias; And others Jeremiah. JAMES. Or that one Of the old Prophets is risen again. CHRISTUS. But who say ye I am? PETER. Thou art the Christ? Thou art the Son of God! CHRISTUS. Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona! Flesh and blood hath not Revealed it unto thee, but even my Father, Which is in Heaven. And I say unto thee That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I build my Church, and all the gates of Hell Shall not prevail against it. But take heed Ye tell no man that I am the Christ. For I must go up to Jerusalem, And suffer many things, and be rejected Of the Chief Priests, and of the Scribes and Elders, And must be crucified, and the third day Shall rise again! PETER. Be it far from thee, Lord! This shall not be! CHRISTUS. Get thee behind me, Satan! Thou savorest not the things that be of God, But those that be of men! If any will Come after me, let him deny himself, And daily take his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, And whosoever will lose his life shall find it. For wherein shall a man be profited If he shall gain the whole world, and shall lose Himself or be a castaway? JAMES, after a long pause. Why doth The Master lead us up into this mountain? PETER. He goeth up to pray. JOHN. See where He standeth Above us on the summit of the hill! His face shines as the sun! and all his raiment Exceeding white as snow, so as no fuller On earth can white them! He is not alone; There are two with him there; two men of eld, Their white beards blowing on the mountain air, Are talking with him. JAMES. I am sore afraid! PETER. Who and whence are they? JOHN. Moses and Elias! PETER. O Master! it is good for us to be here! If thou wilt, let us make three tabernacles; For thee one, and for Moses and Elias! JOHN. Behold a bright cloud sailing in the sun! It overshadows us. A golden mist Now hides them from us, and envelops us And all the mountains in a luminous shadow! I see no more. The nearest rocks are hidden. VOICE from the cloud. Lo! this is my beloved Son! Hear Him! PETER. It is the voice of God. He speaketh to us, As from the burning bush He spake to Moses! JOHN. The cloud-wreaths roll away. The veil is lifted; We see again. Behold! He is alone. It was a vision that our eyes beheld, And it hath vanished into the unseen. CHRISTUS, coming down from the mountain. I charge ye, tell the vision unto no one, Till the Son of Man is risen from the dead! PETER, aside. Again He speaks of it! What can it mean, This rising from the dead? JAMES. Why say the Scribe! Elias must first come? CHRISTUS. He cometh first, Restoring all things. But I say to you, That this Elias is already come. They knew him not, but have done unto him Whate'er they listed, as is written of him. PETER, aside. It is of John the Baptist He is speaking. JAMES. As we descend, see, at the mountain's foot, A crowd of people; coming, going, thronging Round the disciples, that we left behind us, Seeming impatient, that we stay so long. PETER. It is some blind man, or some paralytic That waits the Master's coming to be healed. JAMES. I see a boy, who struggles and demeans him As if an unclean spirit tormented him! A CERTAIN MAN, running forward. Lord! I beseech thee, look upon my son. He is mine only child; a lunatic, And sorely vexed; for oftentimes he falleth Into the fire and oft into the water. Wherever the dumb spirit taketh him He teareth him. He gnasheth with his teeth, And pines away. I spake to thy disciples That they should cast him out, and they could not. CHRISTUS. O faithless generation and perverse! How long shall I be with you, and suffer you? Bring thy son hither. BYSTANDERS. How the unclean spirit Seizes the boy, and tortures him with pain! He falleth to the ground and wallows, foaming! He cannot live. CHRISTUS. How long is it ago Since this came unto him? THE FATHER. Even of a child. Oh, have compassion on us, Lord, and help us, If thou canst help us. CHRISTUS. If thou canst believe. For unto him that verily believeth, All things are possible. THE FATHER. Lord, I believe! Help thou mine unbelief! CHRISTUS. Dumb and deaf spirit, Come out of him, I charge thee, and no more Enter thou into him! The boy utters a loud cry of pain, and then lies still. BYSTANDERS. How motionless He lieth there. No life is left in him. His eyes are like a blind man's, that see not. The boy is dead! OTHERS. Behold! the Master stoops, And takes him by the hand, and lifts him up. He is not dead. DISCIPLES. But one word from those lips, But one touch of that hand, and he is healed! Ah, why could we not do it? THE FATHER. My poor child! Now thou art mine again. The unclean spirit Shall never more torment thee! Look at me! Speak unto me! Say that thou knowest me! DISCIPLES to CHRISTUS departing. Good Master, tell us, for what reason was it We could not cast him out? CHRISTUS. Because of your unbelief! VIII THE YOUNG RULER CHRISTUS. Two men went up into the temple to pray. The one was a self-righteous Pharisee, The other a Publican. And the Pharisee Stood and prayed thus within himself: O God, I thank thee I am not as other men, Extortioners, unjust, adulterers, Or even as this Publican. I fast Twice in the week, and also I give tithes Of all that I possess! The Publican, Standing afar off, would not lift so much Even as his eyes to heaven, but smote his breast, Saying: God be merciful to me a sinner! I tell you that this man went to his house More justified than the other. Every one That doth exalt himself shall be abased, And he that humbleth himself shall be exalted! CHILDREN, among themselves. Let us go nearer! He is telling stories! Let us go listen to them. AN OLD JEW. Children, children! What are ye doing here? Why do ye crowd us? It was such little vagabonds as you That followed Elisha, mucking him and crying: Go up, thou bald-head! But the bears--the bears Came out of the wood, and tare them! A MOTHER. Speak not thus! We brought them here, that He might lay his hands On them, and bless them. CHRISTUS. Suffer little children To come unto me, and forbid them not; Of such is the kingdom of heaven; and their angels Look always on my Father's face. Takes them in his arms and blesses them. A YOUNG RULER, running. Good Master! What good thing shall I do, that I may have Eternal life? CHRISTUS. Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, and that is God. If thou wilt enter into life eternal, Keep the commandments. YOUNG RULER. Which of them? CHRISTUS. Thou shalt not Commit adultery; thou shalt not kill; Thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear false witness; Honor thy father and thy mother; and love Thy neighbor as thyself. YOUNG RULER. From my youth up All these things have I kept. What lack I yet? JOHN. With what divine compassion in his eyes The Master looks upon this eager youth, As if he loved him! CHRISTUS. Wouldst thou perfect be, Sell all thou hast, and give it to the poor, And come, take up thy cross, and follow me, And thou shalt have thy treasure in the heavens. JOHN. Behold, how sorrowful he turns away! CHRISTUS. Children! how hard it is for them that trust In riches to enter into the kingdom of God! 'T is easier for a camel to go through A needle's eye, than for the rich to enter The kingdom of God! JOHN. Ah, who then can be saved? CHRISTUS. With men this is indeed impossible, But unto God all things are possible! PETER. Behold, we have left all, and followed thee. What shall we have therefor? CHRISTUS. Eternal life. IX AT BETHANY MARTHA busy about household affairs. MARY sitting at the feet of CHRISTUS. MARTHA. She sitteth idly at the Master's feet. And troubles not herself with household cares. 'T is the old story. When a guest arrives She gives up all to be with him; while I Must be the drudge, make ready the guest-chamber, Prepare the food, set everything in order, And see that naught is wanting in the house. She shows her love by words, and I by works. MARY. O Master! when thou comest, it is always A Sabbath in the house. I cannot work; I must sit at thy feet; must see thee, hear thee! I have a feeble, wayward, doubting heart, Incapable of endurance or great thoughts, Striving for something that it cannot reach, Baffled and disappointed, wounded, hungry; And only when I hear thee am I happy, And only when I see thee am at peace! Stronger than I, and wiser, and far better In every manner, is my sister Martha. Thou seest how well she orders everything To make thee welcome; how she comes and goes, Careful and cumbered ever with much serving, While I but welcome thee with foolish words! Whene'er thou speakest to me, I am happy; When thou art silent, I am satisfied. Thy presence is enough. I ask no more. Only to be with thee, only to see thee, Sufficeth me. My heart is then at rest. I wonder I am worthy of so much. MARTHA. Lord, dost thou care not that my sister Mary Hath left me thus to wait on thee alone? I pray thee, bid her help me. CHRISTUS. Martha, Martha, Careful and troubled about many things Art thou, and yet one thing alone is needful! Thy sister Mary hath chosen that good part, Which never shall be taken away from her! X BORN BLIND A JEW. Who is this beggar blinking in the sun? Is it not he who used to sit and beg By the Gate Beautiful? ANOTHER. It is the same. A THIRD. It is not he, but like him, for that beggar Was blind from birth. It cannot be the same. THE BEGGAR. Yea, I am he. A JEW. How have thine eyes been opened? THE BEGGAR. A man that is called Jesus made a clay And put it on mine eyes, and said to me: Go to Siloam's Pool and wash thyself. I went and washed, and I received my sight. A JEW. Where is he? THE BEGGAR. I know not. PHARISEES. What is this crowd Gathered about a beggar? What has happened? A JEW. Here is a man who hath been blind from birth, And now he sees. He says a man called Jesus Hath healed him. PHARISEES. As God liveth, the Nazarene! How was this done? THE BEGGAR. Rabboni, he put clay Upon mine eyes; I washed, and now I see. PHARISEES. When did he this? THE BEGGAR. Rabboni, yesterday. PHARISEES. The Sabbath day. This man is not of God, Because he keepeth not the Sabbath day! A JEW. How can a man that is a sinner do Such miracles? PHARISEES. What dost thou say of him That hath restored thy sight? THE BEGGAR. He is a Prophet. A JEW. This is a wonderful story, but not true, A beggar's fiction. He was not born blind, And never has been blind! OTHERS. Here are his parents. Ask them. PHARISEES. Is this your son? THE PARENTS. Rabboni, yea; We know this is our son. PHARISEES. Was he born blind? THE PARENTS. He was born blind. PHARISEES. Then how doth he now see? THE PARENTS, aside. What answer shall we make? If we confess It was the Christ, we shall be driven forth Out of the Synagogue! We know, Rabboni, This is our son, and that he was born blind; But by what means he seeth, we know not, Or who his eyes hath opened, we know not. He is of age; ask him; we cannot say; He shall speak for himself. PHARISEES. Give God the praise! We know the man that healed thee is a sinner! THE BEGGAR. Whether He be a sinner, I know not; One thing I know; that whereas I was blind, I now do see. PHARISEES. How opened he thine eyes? What did he do? THE BEGGAR. I have already told you. Ye did not hear: why would ye hear again? Will ye be his disciples? PHARISEES. God of Moses! Are we demoniacs, are we halt or blind, Or palsy-stricken, or lepers, or the like, That we should join the Synagogue of Satan, And follow jugglers? Thou art his disciple, But we are disciples of Moses; and we know That God spake unto Moses; but this fellow, We know not whence he is! THE BEGGAR. Why, herein is A marvellous thing! Ye know not whence he is, Yet he hath opened mine eyes! We know that God Heareth not sinners; but if any man Doeth God's will, and is his worshipper, Him doth he hear. Oh, since the world began It was not heard that any man hath opened The eyes of one that was born blind. If He Were not of God, surely he could do nothing! PHARISEES. Thou, who wast altogether born in sins And in iniquities, dost thou teach us? Away with thee out of the holy places, Thou reprobate, thou beggar, thou blasphemer! THE BEGGAR is cast out. XI SIMON MAGUS AND HELEN OF TYRE On the house-top at Endor. Night. A lighted lantern on a table. SIMON. Swift are the blessed Immortals to the mortal That perseveres! So doth it stand recorded In the divine Chaldaean Oracles Of Zoroaster, once Ezekiel's slave, Who in his native East betook himself To lonely meditation, and the writing On the dried skins of oxen the Twelve Books Of the Avesta and the Oracles! Therefore I persevere; and I have brought thee From the great city of Tyre, where men deride The things they comprehend not, to this plain Of Esdraelon, in the Hebrew tongue Called Armageddon, and this town of Endor, Where men believe; where all the air is full Of marvellous traditions, and the Enchantress That summoned up the ghost of Samuel Is still remembered. Thou hast seen the land; Is it not fair to look on? HELEN. It is fair, Yet not so fair as Tyre. SIMON. Is not Mount Tabor As beautiful as Carmel by the Sea? HELEN. It is too silent and too solitary; I miss the tumult of the street; the sounds Of traffic, and the going to and fro Of people in gay attire, with cloaks of purple, And gold and silver jewelry! SIMON. Inventions Of Abriman, the spirit of the dark, The Evil Spirit! HELEN. I regret the gossip Of friends and neighbors at the open door On summer nights. SIMON. An idle waste of time. HELEN. The singing and the dancing, the delight Of music and of motion. Woe is me, To give up all these pleasures, and to lead The life we lead! SIMON. Thou canst not raise thyself Up to the level of my higher thought, And though possessing thee, I still remain Apart from thee, and with thee, am alone In my high dreams. HELEN. Happier was I in Tyre. Oh, I remember how the gallant ships Came sailing in, with ivory, gold, and silver, And apes and peacocks; and the singing sailors, And the gay captains with their silken dresses, Smelling of aloes, myrrh, and cinnamon! SIMON. But the dishonor, Helen! Let the ships Of Tarshish howl for that! HELEN. And what dishonor? Remember Rahab, and how she became The ancestress of the great Psalmist David; And wherefore should not I, Helen of Tyre, Attain like honor? SIMON. Thou art Helen of Tyre, And hast been Helen of Troy, and hast been Rahab, The Queen of Sheha, and Semiramis, And Sara of seven husbands, and Jezebel, And other women of the like allurements; And now thou art Minerva, the first Aeon, The Mother of Angels! HELEN. And the concubine Of Simon the Magician! Is it honor For one who has been all these noble dames, To tramp about the dirty villages And cities of Samaria with a juggler? A charmer of serpents? SIMON. He who knows himself Knows all things in himself. I have charmed thee, Thou beautiful asp: yet am I no magician, I am the Power of God, and the Beauty of God! I am the Paraclete, the Comforter! HELEN. Illusions! Thou deceiver, self-deceived! Thou dost usurp the titles of another; Thou art not what thou sayest. SIMON. Am I not? Then feel my power. HELEN. Would I had ne'er left Tyre! He looks at her, and she sinks into a deep sleep. SIMON. Go, see it in thy dreams, fair unbeliever! And leave me unto mine, if they be dreams, That take such shapes before me, that I see them; These effable and ineffable impressions Of the mysterious world, that come to me From the elements of Fire and Earth and Water, And the all-nourishing Ether! It is written, Look not on Nature, for her name is fatal! Yet there are Principles, that make apparent The images of unapparent things, And the impression of vague characters And visions most divine appear in ether. So speak the Oracles; then wherefore fatal? I take this orange-bough, with its five leaves, Each equidistant on the upright stem; And I project them on a plane below, In the circumference of a circle drawn About a centre where the stem is planted, And each still equidistant from the other, As if a thread of gossamer were drawn Down from each leaf, and fastened with a pin. Now if from these five points a line be traced To each alternate point, we shall obtain The Pentagram, or Solomon's Pentangle, A charm against all witchcraft, and a sign, Which on the banner of Antiochus Drove back the fierce barbarians of the North, Demons esteemed, and gave the Syrian King The sacred name of Soter, or of Savior. Thus Nature works mysteriously with man; And from the Eternal One, as from a centre, All things proceed, in fire, air, earth, and water, And all are subject to one law, which, broken Even in a single point, is broken in all; Demons rush in, and chaos comes again. By this will I compel the stubborn spirits, That guard the treasures, hid in caverns deep On Gerizim, by Uzzi the High-Priest, The ark and holy vessels, to reveal Their secret unto me, and to restore These precious things to the Samaritans. A mist is rising from the plain below me, And as I look, the vapors shape themselves Into strange figures, as if unawares My lips had breathed the Tetragrammaton, And from their graves, o'er all the battlefields Of Armageddon, the long-buried captains Had started, with their thousands, and ten thousands, And rushed together to renew their wars, Powerless, and weaponless, and without a sound! Wake, Helen, from thy sleep! The air grows cold; Let us go down. HELEN, awaking. Oh, would I were at home! SIMON. Thou sayest that I usurp another's titles. In youth I saw the Wise Men of the East, Magalath and Pangalath and Saracen, Who followed the bright star, but home returned For fear of Herod by another way. O shining worlds above me! in what deep Recesses of your realms of mystery Lies hidden now that star? and where are they That brought the gifts of frankincense and myrrh? HELEN. The Nazarene still liveth. SIMON. We have heard His name in many towns, but have not seen Him. He flits before us; tarries not; is gone When we approach, like something unsubstantial, Made of the air, and fading into air. He is at Nazareth, He is at Nain, Or at the Lovely Village on the Lake, Or sailing on its waters. HELEN. So say those Who do not wish to find Him. SIMON. Can this be The King of Israel, whom the Wise Men worshipped? Or does He fear to meet me? It would seem so. We should soon learn which of us twain usurps The titles of the other, as thou sayest. They go down. THE THIRD PASSOVER I THE ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM THE SYRO-PHOENICIAN WOMAN and her DAUGHTER on the house-top at Jerusalem. THE DAUGHTER, singing. Blind Bartimeus at the gates Of Jericho in darkness waits; He hears the crowd;--he hears a breath Say, It is Christ of Nazareth! And calls, in tones of agony, [Greek text]! The thronging multitudes increase: Blind Bartimeus, hold thy peace! But still, above the noisy crowd, The beggar's cry is shrill and loud; Until they say, he calleth thee! [Greek text]! Then saith the Christ, as silent stands The crowd, What wilt thou at my hands? And he replies, Oh, give me light! Rabbi, restore the blind man's sight! And Jesus answers, [Greek text]! Ye that have eyes, yet cannot see, In darkness and in misery, Recall those mighty voices three, [Greek text]! [Greek text]! [Greek text]! THE MOTHER. Thy faith hath saved thee! Ah, how true that is! For I had faith; and when the Master came Into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, fleeing From those who sought to slay him, I went forth And cried unto Him, saying: Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David! for my daughter Is grievously tormented with a devil. But he passed on, and answered not a word. And his disciples said, beseeching Him: Send her away! She crieth after us! And then the Master answered them and said: I am not sent but unto the lost sheep Of the House of Israel! Then I worshipped Him, Saying: Lord help me! And He answered me, It is not meet to take the children's bread And cast it unto dogs! Truth, Lord, I said; And yet the dogs may eat the crumbs which fall From off their master's table; and he turned, And answered me; and said to me: O woman, Great is thy faith; then be it unto thee Even as thou wilt. And from that very hour Thou wast made whole, my darling! my delight! THE DAUGHTER. There came upon my dark and troubled mind A calm, as when the tumult of the City Suddenly ceases, and I lie and hear The silver trumpets of the Temple blowing Their welcome to the Sabbath. Still I wonder, That one who was so far away from me And could not see me, by his thought alone Had power to heal me. Oh that I could see Him! THE MOTHER. Perhaps thou wilt; for I have brought thee here To keep the holy Passover, and lay Thine offering of thanksgiving on the altar. Thou mayst both see and hear Him. Hark! VOICES afar off. Hosanna! THE DAUGHTER. A crowd comes pouring through the city gate! O mother, look! VOICES in the street. Hosanna to the Son Of David! THE DAUGHTER. A great multitude of people Fills all the street; and riding on an ass Comes one of noble aspect, like a king! The people spread their garments in the way, And scatter branches of the palm-trees! VOICES. Blessed Is he that cometh in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest! OTHER VOICES. Who is this? VOICES. Jesus of Nazareth! THE DAUGHTER. Mother, it is he! VOICES. He hath called Lazarus of Bethany Out of his grave, and raised him from the dead! Hosanna in the highest! PHARISEES. Ye perceive That nothing we prevail. Behold, the world Is all gone after him! THE DAUGHTER. What majesty, What power is in that care-worn countenance! What sweetness, what compassion! I no longer Wonder that he hath healed me! VOICES. Peace in heaven, And glory in the highest! PHARISEES. Rabbi! Rabbi! Rebuke thy followers! CHRISTUS. Should they hold their peace The very stones beneath us would cry out! THE DAUGHTER. All hath passed by me like a dream of wonder! But I have seen Him, and have heard his voice, And I am satisfied! I ask no more! II SOLOMON'S PORCH GAMALIEL THE SCRIBE. When Rabban Simeon--upon whom be peace!-- Taught in these Schools, he boasted that his pen Had written no word that he could call his own, But wholly and always had been consecrated To the transcribing of the Law and Prophets. He used to say, and never tired of saying, The world itself was built upon the Law. And ancient Hillel said, that whosoever Gains a good name gains something for himself, But he who gains a knowledge of the Law Gains everlasting life. And they spake truly. Great is the Written Law; but greater still The Unwritten, the Traditions of the Elders, The lovely words of Levites, spoken first To Moses on the Mount, and handed down From mouth to mouth, in one unbroken sound And sequence of divine authority, The voice of God resounding through the ages. The Written Law is water; the Unwritten Is precious wine; the Written Law is salt, The Unwritten costly spice; the Written Law Is but the body; the Unwritten, the soul That quickens it and makes it breathe and live. I can remember, many years ago, A little bright-eyed school-boy, a mere stripling, Son of a Galilean carpenter, From Nazareth, I think, who came one day And sat here in the Temple with the Scribes, Hearing us speak, and asking many questions, And we were all astonished at his quickness. And when his mother came, and said: Behold Thy father and I have sought thee, sorrowing; He looked as one astonished, and made answer, How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not That I must be about my Father's business? Often since then I see him here among us, Or dream I see him, with his upraised face Intent and eager, and I often wonder Unto what manner of manhood he hath grown! Perhaps a poor mechanic like his father, Lost in his little Galilean village And toiling at his craft, to die unknown And he no more remembered among men. CHRISTUS, in the outer court. The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat; All, therefore, whatsoever they command you, Observe and do; but follow not their works They say and do not. They bind heavy burdens And very grievous to be borne, and lay them Upon men's shoulders, but they move them not With so much as a finger! GAMALIEL, looking forth. Who is this Exhorting in the outer courts so loudly? CHRISTUS. Their works they do for to be seen of men. They make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge The borders of their garments, and they love The uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats In Synagogues, and greetings in the markets, And to be called of all men Rabbi, Rabbi! GAMALIEL. It is that loud and turbulent Galilean, That came here at the Feast of Dedication, And stirred the people up to break the Law! CHRISTUS. Woe unto you, ye Scribes and Pharisees, Ye hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom Of heaven, and neither go ye in yourselves Nor suffer them that are entering to go in! GAMALIEL. How eagerly the people throng and listen, As if his ribald words were words of wisdom! CHRISTUS. Woe unto you, ye Scribes and Pharisees, Ye hypocrites! for ye devour the houses Of widows, and for pretence ye make long prayers; Therefore shall ye receive the more damnation. GAMALIEL. This brawler is no Jew,--he is a vile Samaritan, and hath an unclean spirit! CHRISTUS. Woe unto you, ye Scribes and Pharisees, Ye hypocrites! ye compass sea and land To make one proselyte, and when he is made Ye make him twofold more the child of hell Than you yourselves are! GAMALIEL. O my father's father! Hillel of blessed memory, hear and judge! CHRISTUS. Woe unto you, ye Scribes and Pharisees, Ye hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint, Of anise, and of cumin, and omit The weightier matters of the law of God, Judgment and faith and mercy; and all these Ye ought to have done, nor leave undone the others! GAMALIEL. O Rabban Simeon! how must thy bones Stir in their grave to hear such blasphemies! CHRISTUS. Woe unto you, ye Scribes, and Pharisees, Ye hypocrites! for ye make clean and sweet The outside of the cup and of the platter, But they within are full of all excess! GAMALIEL. Patience of God! canst thou endure so long? Or art thou deaf, or gone upon a journey? CHRISTUS. Woe unto you, ye Scribes and Pharisees, Ye hypocrites! for ye are very like To whited sepulchres, which indeed appear Beautiful outwardly, but are within Filled full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness! GAMALIEL. Am I awake? Is this Jerusalem? And are these Jews that throng and stare and listen? CHRISTUS. Woe unto you, ye Scribes and Pharisees, Ye hypocrites! because ye build the tombs Of prophets, and adorn the sepulchres Of righteous men, and say: if we had lived When lived our fathers, we would not have been Partakers with them in the blood of Prophets. So ye be witnesses unto yourselves, That ye are children of them that killed the Prophets! Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. I send unto you Prophets and Wise Men, And Scribes, and some ye crucify, and some Scourge in your Synagogues, and persecute From city to city; that on you may come The righteous blood that hath been shed on earth, From the blood of righteous Abel to the blood Of Zacharias, son of Barachias, Ye slew between the Temple and the altar! GAMALIEL. Oh, had I here my subtle dialectician, My little Saul of Tarsus, the tent-maker, Whose wit is sharper than his needle's point, He would delight to foil this noisy wrangler! CHRISTUS. Jerusalem! Jerusalem! O thou That killest the Prophets, and that stonest them Which are sent unto thee, how often would I Have gathered together thy children, as a hen Gathereth her chickens underneath her wing, And ye would not! Behold, your house is left Unto you desolate! THE PEOPLE. This is a Prophet! This is the Christ that was to come! GAMALIEL. Ye fools! Think ye, shall Christ come out of Galilee? III LORD, IS IT I? CHRISTUS. One of you shall betray me. THE DISCIPLES. Is it I? Lord, is it I? CHRISTUS. One of the Twelve it is That dippeth with me in this dish his hand; He shall betray me. Lo, the Son of Man Goeth indeed as it is written of Him; But woe shall be unto that man by whom He is betrayed! Good were it for that man If he had ne'er been born! JUDAS ISCARIOT. Lord, is it I? CHRISTUS. Ay, thou hast said. And that thou doest, do quickly. JUDAS ISCARIOT, going out. Ah, woe is me! CHRISTUS. All ye shall be offended Because of me this night; for it is written: Awake, O sword, against my shepherd! Smite The shepherd, saith the Lord of hosts, and scattered Shall be the sheep!--But after I am risen I go before you into Galilee. PETER. O Master! though all men shall be offended Because of thee, yet will not I be! CHRISTUS. Simon, Behold how Satan hath desired to have you, That he may sift you as one sifteth wheat! Whither I go thou canst not follow me-- Not now; but thou shalt follow me hereafter. PETER. Wherefore can I not follow thee? I am ready To go with thee to prison and to death. CHRISTUS. Verily I say unto thee, this night, Ere the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice! PETER. Though I should die, yet will I not deny thee. CHRISTUS. When first I sent you forth without a purse, Or scrip, or shoes, did ye lack anything? THE DISCIPLES. Not anything. CHRISTUS. But he that hath a purse, Now let him take it, and likewise his scrip; And he that hath no sword, let him go sell His clothes and buy one. That which hath been written Must be accomplished now: He hath poured out His soul even unto death; he hath been numbered With the transgressors, and himself hath borne The sin of many, and made intercession For the transgressors. And here have an end The things concerning me. PETER. Behold, O Lord, Behold here are two swords! CHRISTUS. It is enough. IV THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE CHRISTUS. My spirit is exceeding sorrowful Even unto death! Tarry ye here and watch. He goes apart. PETER. Under this ancient olive-tree, that spreads Its broad centennial branches like a tent, Let us lie down and rest. JOHN. What are those torches, That glimmer on Brook Kedron there below us? JAMES. It is some marriage feast; the joyful maidens Go out to meet the bridegroom. PETER. I am weary. The struggles of this day have overcome me. They sleep. CHRISTUS, falling on his face. Father! all things are possible to thee,-- Oh let this cup pass from me! Nevertheless Not as I will, but as thou wilt, be done! Returning to the Disciples. What! could ye not watch with me for one hour? Oh watch and pray, that ye may enter not Into temptation. For the spirit indeed Is willing, but the flesh is weak! JOHN. Alas! It is for sorrow that our eyes are heavy.-- I see again the glimmer of those torches Among the olives; they are coming hither. JAMES. Outside the garden wall the path divides; Surely they come not hither. They sleep again. CHRISTUS, as before. O my Father! If this cup may not pass away from me, Except I drink of it, thy will be done. Returning to the Disciples. Sleep on; and take your rest! JOHN. Beloved Master, Alas! we know not what to answer thee! It is for sorrow that our eves are heavy.-- Behold, the torches now encompass us. JAMES. They do but go about the garden wall, Seeking for some one, or for something lost. They sleep again. CHRISTUS, as before. If this cup may not pass away from me, Except I drink of it, thy will be done. Returning to the Disciples. It is enough! Behold, the Son of Man Hath been betrayed into the hands of sinners! The hour is come. Rise up, let us be going; For he that shall betray me is at hand. JOHN. Ah me! See, from his forehead, in the torchlight, Great drops of blood are falling to the ground! PETER. What lights are these? What torches glare and glisten Upon the swords and armor of these men? And there among them Judas Iscariot! He smites the servant of the High-Priest with his sword. CHRISTUS. Put up thy sword into its sheath; for they That take the sword shall perish with the sword. The cup my Father hath given me to drink, Shall I not drink it? Think'st thou that I cannot Pray to my Father, and that he shall give me More than twelve legions of angels presently! JUDAS to CHRISTUS, kissing him. Hail, Master! hail! CHRISTUS. Friend, wherefore art thou come? Whom seek ye? CAPTAIN OF THE TEMPLE. Jesus of Nazareth. CHRISTUS. I am he. Are ye come hither as against a thief, With swords and staves to take me? When I daily Was with you in the Temple, ye stretched forth No hands to take me! But this is your hour, And this the power of darkness. If ye seek Me only, let these others go their way. The Disciples depart. CHRISTUS is bound and led away. A certain young man follows him, having a linen cloth cast about his body. They lay hold of him, and the young man flees from them naked. V THE PALACE OF CAIAPHAS PHARISEES. What do we? Clearly something must we do, For this man worketh many miracles. CAIAPHAS. I am informed that he is a mechanic; A carpenter's son; a Galilean peasant, Keeping disreputable company. PHARISEES. The people say that here in Bethany He hath raised up a certain Lazarus, Who had been dead three days. CAIAPHAS. Impossible! There is no resurrection of the dead; This Lazarus should be taken, and put to death As an impostor. If this Galilean Would be content to stay in Galilee, And preach in country towns, I should not heed him. But when he comes up to Jerusalem Riding in triumph, as I am informed, And drives the money-changers from the Temple, That is another matter. PHARISEES. If we thus Let him alone, all will believe on him, And then the Romans come and take away Our place and nation. CAIAPHAS. Ye know nothing at all. Simon Ben Camith, my great predecessor, On whom be peace! would have dealt presently With such a demagogue. I shall no less. The man must die. Do ye consider not It is expedient that one man should die, Not the whole nation perish? What is death? It differeth from sleep but in duration. We sleep and wake again; an hour or two Later or earlier, and it matters not, And if we never wake it matters not; When we are in our graves we are at peace, Nothing can wake us or disturb us more. There is no resurrection. PHARISEES, aside. O most faithful Disciple of Hircanus Maccabaeus, Will nothing but complete annihilation Comfort and satisfy thee? CAIAPHAS. While ye are talking And plotting, and contriving how to take him, Fearing the people, and so doing naught, I, who fear not the people, have been acting; Have taken this Prophet, this young Nazarene, Who by Beelzebub the Prince of devils Casteth out devils, and doth raise the dead, That might as well be dead, and left in peace. Annas my father-in-law hath sent him hither. I hear the guard. Behold your Galilean! CHRISTUS is brought in bound. SERVANT, in the vestibule. Why art thou up so late, my pretty damsel? DAMSEL. Why art thou up so early, pretty man? It is not cock-crow yet, and art thou stirring? SERVANT. What brings thee here? DAMSEL. What brings the rest of you? SERVANT. Come here and warm thy hands. DAMSEL to PETER. Art thou not One of this man's also disciples? PETER. I am not. DAMSEL. Now surely thou art also one of them; Thou art a Galilean, and thy speech Betrayeth thee. PETER. Woman, I know him not! CAIAPHAS to CHRISTUS, in the Hall. Who art thou? Tell us plainly of thyself And of thy doctrines, and of thy disciples. CHRISTUS. Lo, I have spoken openly to the world, I have taught ever in the Synagogue, And in the Temple, where the Jews resort In secret have said nothing. Wherefore then Askest thou me of this? Ask them that heard me What I have said to them. Behold, they know What I have said! OFFICER, striking him, What, fellow! answerest thou The High-Priest so? CHRISTUS. If I have spoken evil, Bear witness of the evil; but if well, Why smitest thou me? CAIAPHAS. Where are the witnesses? Let them say what they know. THE TWO FALSE WITNESSES. We heard him say: I will destroy this Temple made with hands, And will within three days build up another Made without hands. SCRIBES and PHARISEES. He is o'erwhelmed with shame And cannot answer! CAIAPHAS. Dost thou answer nothing? What is this thing they witness here against thee? SCRIBES and PHARISEES. He holds his peace. CAIAPHAS. Tell us, art thou the Christ? I do adjure thee by the living God, Tell us, art thou indeed the Christ? CHRISTUS. I am. Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man Sit on the right hand of the power of God, And come in clouds of heaven! CAIAPHAS, rending his clothes. It is enough. He hath spoken blasphemy! What further need Have we of witnesses? Now ye have heard His blasphemy. What think ye? Is he guilty? SCRIBES and PHARISEES. Guilty of death! KINSMAN OF MALCHUS to PETER in the vestibule. Surely I know thy face, Did I not see thee in the garden with him? PETER. How couldst thou see me? I swear unto thee I do not know this man of whom ye speak! The cock crows. Hark! the cock crows! That sorrowful, pale face Seeks for me in the crowd, and looks at me, As if He would remind me of those words: Ere the cock crow thou shalt deny me thrice! Goes out weeping. CHRISTUS is blindfolded and buffeted. AN OFFICER, striking him with his palm. Prophesy unto us, thou Christ, thou Prophet! Who is it smote thee? CAIAPHAS. Lead him unto Pilate! VI PONTIUS PILATE PILATE. Wholly incomprehensible to me, Vainglorious, obstinate, and given up To unintelligible old traditions, And proud, and self-conceited are these Jews! Not long ago, I marched the legions Down from Caesarea to their winter-quarters Here in Jerusalem, with the effigies Of Caesar on their ensigns, and a tumult Arose among these Jews, because their Law Forbids the making of all images! They threw themselves upon the ground with wild Expostulations, bared their necks, and cried That they would sooner die than have their Law Infringed in any manner; as if Numa Were not as great as Moses, and the Laws Of the Twelve Tables as their Pentateuch! And then, again, when I desired to span Their valley with an aqueduct, and bring A rushing river in to wash the city And its inhabitants,--they all rebelled As if they had been herds of unwashed swine! Thousands and thousands of them got together And raised so great a clamor round my doors, That, fearing violent outbreak, I desisted, And left them to their wallowing in the mire. And now here comes the reverend Sanhedrim Of lawyers, priests, and Scribes and Pharisees, Like old and toothless mastiffs, that can bark But cannot bite, howling their accusations Against a mild enthusiast, who hath preached I know not what new doctrine, being King Of some vague kingdom in the other world, That hath no more to do with Rome and Caesar Than I have with the patriarch Abraham! Finding this man to be a Galilean I sent him straight to Herod, and I hope That is the last of it; but if it be not, I still have power to pardon and release him, As is the custom at the Passover, And so accommodate the matter smoothly, Seeming to yield to them, yet saving him, A prudent and sagacious policy For Roman Governors in the Provinces. Incomprehensible, fanatic people! Ye have a God, who seemeth like yourselves Incomprehensible, dwelling apart, Majestic, cloud-encompassed, clothed in darkness! One whom ye fear, but love not; yet ye have No Goddesses to soften your stern lives, And make you tender unto human weakness, While we of Rome have everywhere around us Our amiable divinities, that haunt The woodlands, and the waters, and frequent Our households, with their sweet and gracious presence! I will go in, and, while these Jews are wrangling, Read my Ovidius on the Art of Love. VII BARABBAS IN PRISON BARABBAS, to his fellow-prisoners Barabbas is my name, Barabbas, the Son of Shame, Is the meaning, I suppose; I'm no better than the best, And whether worse than the rest Of my fellow-men, who knows? I was once, to say it in brief, A highwayman, a robber-chief, In the open light of day. So much I am free to confess; But all men, more or less, Are robbers in their way. From my cavern in the crags, From my lair of leaves and flags, I could see, like ants, below, The camels with their load Of merchandise, on the road That leadeth to Jericho. And I struck them unaware, As an eagle from the air Drops down upon bird or beast; And I had my heart's desire Of the merchants of Sidon and Tyre, And Damascus and the East. But it is not for that I fear; It is not for that I am here In these iron fetters bound; Sedition! that is the word That Pontius Pilate heard, And he liketh not the sound. What think ye, would he care For a Jew slain here or there, Or a plundered caravan? But Caesar!--ah, that is a crime, To the uttermost end of time Shall not be forgiven to man. Therefore was Herod wroth With Matthias Margaloth, And burned him for a show! Therefore his wrath did smite Judas the Gaulonite, And his followers, as ye know. For that cause and no more, Am I here, as I said before; For one unlucky night, Jucundus, the captain of horse, Was upon us with all his force, And I was caught in the flight, I might have fled with the rest, But my dagger was in the breast Of a Roman equerry, As we rolled there in the street, They bound me, hands and feet And this is the end of me. Who cares for death? Not I! A thousand times I would die, Rather than suffer wrong! Already those women of mine Are mixing the myrrh and the wine; I shall not be with you long. VIII ECCE HOMO PILATE, on the tessellated pavement in front of his palace. Ye have brought unto me this man, as one Who doth pervert the people; and behold! I have examined him, and found no fault Touching the things whereof ye do accuse him. No, nor yet Herod; for I sent you to him, And nothing worthy of death he findeth in him. Ye have a custom at the Passover; That one condemned to death shall be released. Whom will ye, then, that I release to you? Jesus Barabbas, called the Son of Shame, Or Jesus, Son of Joseph, called the Christ? THE PEOPLE, shouting. Not this man, but Barabbas! PILATE. What then will ye That I should do with him that is called Christ? THE PEOPLE. Crucify him! PILATE. Why, what evil hath he done? Lo, I have found no cause of death in him; I will chastise him, and then let him go. THE PEOPLE, more vehemently. Crucify him! crucify him! A MESSENGER, to PILATE. Thy wife sends This message to thee,--Have thou naught to do With that just man; for I this day in dreams Have suffered many things because of him. PILATE, aside. The Gods speak to us in our dreams! I tremble At what I have to do! O Claudia, How shall I save him? Yet one effort more, Or he must perish! Washes his hands before them. I am innocent Of the blood of this just person; see ye to it! THE PEOPLE. Let his blood be on us and on our children! VOICES, within the palace. Put on thy royal robes; put on thy crown, And take thy sceptre! Hail, thou King of the Jews! PILATE. I bring him forth to you, that ye may know I find no fault in him. Behold the man! CHRISTUS is led in with the purple robe and crown of thorns. CHIEF PRIESTS and OFFICERS. Crucify him! crucify him! PILATE. Take ye him; I find no fault in him. CHIEF PRIESTS. We have a Law, And by our Law he ought to die; because He made himself to be the Son of God. PILATE, aside. Ah! there are Sons of God, and demigods More than ye know, ye ignorant High-Priests! To CHRISTUS. Whence art thou? CHIEF PRIESTS. Crucify him! crucify him! PILATE, to CHRISTUS. Dost thou not answer me? Dost thou not know That I have power enough to crucify thee? That I have also power to set thee free? CHRISTUS. Thou couldst have no power at all against me Except that it were given thee from above; Therefore hath he that sent me unto thee The greater sin. CHIEF PRIESTS. If thou let this man go, Thou art not Caesar's friend. For whosoever Maketh himself a King, speaks against Caesar. PILATE. Ye Jews, behold your King! CHIEF PRIESTS. Away with him! Crucify him! PILATE. Shall I crucify your King? CHIEF PRIESTS. We have no King but Caesar! PILATE. Take him, then, Take him, ye cruel and bloodthirsty priests, More merciless than the plebeian mob, Who pity and spare the fainting gladiator Blood-stained in Roman amphitheatres,-- Take him, and crucify him if ye will; But if the immortal Gods do ever mingle With the affairs of mortals, which I doubt not, And hold the attribute of justice dear, They will commission the Eumenides To scatter you to the four winds of heaven, Exacting tear for tear, and blood for blood. Here, take ye this inscription, Priests, and nail it Upon the cross, above your victim's head: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. CHIEF PRIESTS. Nay, we entreat! write not, the King of the Jews! But that he said: I am the King of the Jews! PILATE. Enough. What I have written, I have written. IX ACELDAMA JUDAS ISCARIOT. Lost! Lost! Forever lost! I have betrayed The innocent blood! O God! if thou art love, Why didst thou leave me naked to the tempter? Why didst thou not commission thy swift lightning To strike me dead? or why did I not perish With those by Herod slain, the innocent children, Who went with playthings in their little hands Into the darkness of the other world, As if to bed? Or wherefore was I born, If thou in thy foreknowledge didst perceive All that I am, and all that I must be? I know I am not generous, am not gentle, Like other men; but I have tried to be, And I have failed. I thought by following him I should grow like him; but the unclean spirit That from my childhood up hath tortured me Hath been too cunning and too strong for me, Am I to blame for this? Am I to blame Because I cannot love, and ne'er have known The love of woman or the love of children? It is a curse and a fatality, A mark that hath been set upon my forehead, That none shall slay me, for it were a mercy That I were dead, or never had been born. Too late! too late! I shall not see Him more Among the living. That sweet, patient face Will never more rebuke me, nor those lips Repeat the words: One of you shall betray me! It stung me into madness. How I loved, Yet hated Him: But in the other world! I will be there before Him, and will wait Until he comes, and fall down on my knees And kiss his feet, imploring pardon, pardon! I heard Him say: All sins shall be forgiven, Except the sin against the Holy Ghost. That shall not be forgiven in this world, Nor in the world to come. Is that my sin? Have I offended so there is no hope Here nor hereafter? That I soon shall know. O God, have mercy! Christ have mercy on me! Throws himself headlong from the cliff. X THE THREE CROSSES MANAHEM, THE ESSENIAN. Three crosses in this noonday night uplifted, Three human figures that in mortal pain Gleam white against the supernatural darkness; Two thieves, that writhe in torture, and between them The Suffering Messiah, the Son of Joseph, Ay, the Messiah Triumphant, Son of David! A crown of thorns on that dishonored head! Those hands that healed the sick now pierced with nails, Those feet that wandered homeless through the world Now crossed and bleeding, and at rest forever! And the three faithful Maries, overwhelmed By this great sorrow, kneeling, praying weeping! O Joseph Caiaphas, thou great High-Priest How wilt thou answer for this deed of blood? SCRIBES and ELDERS. Thou that destroyest the Temple, and dost build it In three days, save thyself; and if thou be The Son of God, come down now from the cross. CHIEF PRIESTS. Others he saved, himself he cannot save! Let Christ the King of Israel descend That we may see and believe! SCRIBES and ELDERS. In God he trusted; Let Him deliver him, if He will have him, And we will then believe. CHRISTUS. Father! forgive them; They know not what they do. THE IMPENITENT THIEF. If thou be Christ, Oh save thyself and us! THE PENITENT THIEF. Remember me, Lord, when thou comest into thine own kingdom. CHRISTUS. This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise. MANAHEN. Golgotha! Golgotha! Oh the pain and darkness! Oh the uplifted cross, that shall forever Shine through the darkness, and shall conquer pain By the triumphant memory of this hour! SIMON MAGUS. O Nazarene! I find thee here at last! Thou art no more a phantom unto me! This is the end of one who called himself The Son of God! Such is the fate of those Who preach new doctrines. 'T is not what he did, But what he said, hath brought him unto this. I will speak evil of no dignitaries. This is my hour of triumph, Nazarene! THE YOUNG RULER. This is the end of him who said to me: Sell that thou hast, and give unto the poor! This is the treasure in heaven he promised me! CHRISTUS. Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani! A SOLDIER, preparing the hyssop. He calleth for Elias! ANOTHER. Nay, let be! See if Elias will now come to save him! CHRISTUS. I thirst. A SOLDIER. Give him the wormwood! CHRISTUS, with a loud cry, bowing his head. It is finished! XI THE TWO MARIES MARY MAGDALENE. We have risen early, yet the sun O'ertakes us ere we reach the sepulchre, To wrap the body of our blessed Lord With our sweet spices. MARY, MOTHER OF JAMES. Lo, this is the garden, And yonder is the sepulchre. But who Shall roll away the stone for us to enter? MARY MAGDALENE. It hath been rolled away! The sepulchre Is open! Ah, who hath been here before us, When we rose early, wishing to be first? MARY, MOTHER OF JAMES. I am affrighted! MARY MAGDALENE. Hush! I will stoop down And look within. There is a young man sitting On the right side, clothed in a long white garment! It is an angel! THE ANGEL. Fear not; ye are seeking Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified. Why do ye seek the living among the dead? He is no longer here; He is arisen! Come see the place where the Lord lay! Remember How He spake unto you in Galilee, Saying: The Son of Man must be delivered Into the hands of sinful men; by them Be crucified, and the third day rise again! But go your way, and say to his disciples, He goeth before you into Galilee; There shall ye see Him as He said to you. MARY, MOTHER OF JAMES. I will go swiftly for them. MARY MAGDALENE, alone, weeping. They have taken My Lord away from me, and now I know not Where they have laid Him! Who is there to tell me? This is the gardener. Surely he must know. CHRISTUS. Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou? MARY MAGDALENE. They have taken my Lord away; I cannot find Him. O sir, if thou have borne Him hence, I pray thee Tell me where thou hast laid Him. CHRISTUS. Mary! MARY MAGDALENE. Rabboni! XII THE SEA OF GALILEE NATHANIEL, in the ship. All is now ended. JOHN. Nay, He is arisen, I ran unto the tomb, and stooping down Looked in, and saw the linen grave-clothes lying, Yet dared not enter. PETER. I went in, and saw The napkin that had been about his head, Not lying with the other linen clothes, But wrapped together in a separate place. THOMAS. And I have seen Him. I have seen the print Of nails upon his hands, and thrust my hands Into his side. I know He is arisen; But where are now the kingdom and the glory He promised unto us? We have all dreamed That we were princes, and we wake to find We are but fishermen. PETER. Who should have been Fishers of men! JOHN. We have come back again To the old life, the peaceful life, among The white towns of the Galilean lake. PETER. They seem to me like silent sepulchres In the gray light of morning! The old life, Yea, the old life! for we have toiled all night And have caught nothing. JOHN. Do ye see a man Standing upon the beach and beckoning? 'T is like an apparition. He hath kindled A fire of coals, and seems to wait for us. He calleth. CHRISTUS, from the shore. Children, have ye any meat? PETER. Alas! We have caught nothing. CHRISTUS. Cast the net On the right side of the ship, and ye shall find. PETER. How that reminds me of the days gone by, And one who said: Launch out into the deep, And cast your nets! NATHANAEL. We have but let them down And they are filled, so that we cannot draw them! JOHN. It is the Lord! PETER, girding his fisher's coat about him. He said: When I am risen I will go before you into Galilee! He casts himself into the lake. JOHN. There is no fear in love; for perfect love Casteth out fear. Now then, if ye are men, Put forth your strength; we are not far from shore; The net is heavy, but breaks not. All is safe. PETER, on the shore. Dear Lord! I heard thy voice and could not wait. Let me behold thy face, and kiss thy feet! Thou art not dead, thou livest! Again I see thee. Pardon, dear Lord! I am a sinful man; I have denied thee thrice. Have mercy on me! THE OTHERS, coming to land. Dear Lord! stay with us! cheer us! comfort us! Lo! we again have found thee! Leave us not! CHRISTUS. Bring hither of the fish that ye have caught, And come and eat! JOHN. Behold! He breaketh bread As He was wont. From his own blessed hands Again we take it. CHRISTUS. Simon, son of Jonas, Lovest thou me, more than these others? PETER. Yea, More, Lord, than all men, even more than these. Thou knowest that I love thee. CHRISTUS. Feed my lambs. THOMAS, aside. How more than we do? He remaineth ever Self-confident and boastful as before. Nothing will cure him. CHRISTUS. Simon, son of Jonas, Lovest thou me? PETER. Yea, dearest Lord, I love thee. Thou knowest that I love thee. CHRISTUS. Feed my sheep. THOMAS, aside. Again, the selfsame question, and the answer Repeated with more vehemence. Can the Master Doubt if we love Him? CHRISTUS. Simon, son of Jonas, Lovest thou me? PETER, grieved. Dear Lord, thou knowest all things. Thou knowest that I love thee. CHRISTUS. Feed my sheep. When thou wast young thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst Whither thou wouldst; but when thou shalt be old, Thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and other men Shall gird and carry thee whither thou wouldst not. Follow thou me! JOHN, aside. It is a prophecy Of what death he shall die. PETER, pointing to JOHN. Tell me, O Lord, And what shall this man do? CHRISTUS. And if I will He tarry till I come, what is it to thee? Follow thou me! PETER. Yea, I will follow thee, dear Lord and Master! Will follow thee through fasting and temptation, Through all thine agony and bloody sweat, Thy cross and passion, even unto death! EPILOGUE SYMBOLUM APOSTOLORUM PETER. I believe in God the Father Almighty; JOHN. Maker of heaven and Earth; JAMES. And in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord; ANDREW. Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary; PHILIP. Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; THOMAS. And the third day He rose again from the dead; BARTHOLOMEW. He ascended into Heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God, the Father Almighty; MATTHEW. From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. JAMES, THE SON OF ALFHEUS. I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy Catholic Church; SIMON ZELOTES. The communion of Saints; the forgiveness of sins; JUDE. The resurrection of the body; MATTHIAS. And the Life Everlasting. FIRST INTERLUDE THE ABBOT JOACHIM A ROOM IN THE CONVENT OF FLORA IN CALABRIA. NIGHT. JOACHIM. The wind is rising; it seizes and shakes The doors and window-blinds and makes Mysterious moanings in the halls; The convent-chimneys seem almost The trumpets of some heavenly host, Setting its watch upon our walls! Where it listeth, there it bloweth; We hear the sound, but no man knoweth Whence it cometh or whither it goeth, And thus it is with the Holy Ghost. O breath of God! O my delight In many a vigil of the night, Like the great voice in Patmos heard By John, the Evangelist of the Word, I hear thee behind me saying: Write In a book the things that thou hast seen, The things that are, and that have been, And the things that shall hereafter be! This convent, on the rocky crest Of the Calabrian hills, to me A Patmos is wherein I rest; While round about me like a sea The white mists roll, and overflow The world that lies unseen below In darkness and in mystery. Here in the Spirit, in the vast Embrace of God's encircling arm, Am I uplifted from all harm The world seems something far away, Something belonging to the Past, A hostelry, a peasant's farm, That lodged me for a night or day, In which I care not to remain, Nor, having left, to see again. Thus, in the hollow of Gods hand I dwelt on sacred Tabor's height, When as a simple acolyte I journeyed to the Holy Land, A pilgrim for my master's sake, And saw the Galilean Lake, And walked through many a village street That once had echoed to his feet. There first I heard the great command, The voice behind me saying: Write! And suddenly my soul became Illumined by a flash of flame, That left imprinted on my thought The image I in vain had sought, And which forever shall remain; As sometimes from these windows high, Gazing at midnight on the sky Black with a storm of wind and rain, I have beheld a sudden glare Of lightning lay the landscape bare, With tower and town and hill and plain Distinct and burnt into my brain, Never to be effaced again! And I have written. These volumes three, The Apocalypse, the Harmony Of the Sacred Scriptures, new and old, And the Psalter with Ten Strings, enfold Within their pages, all and each, The Eternal Gospel that I teach. Well I remember the Kingdom of Heaven Hath been likened to a little leaven Hidden in two measures of meal, Until it leavened the whole mass; So likewise will it come to pass With the doctrines that I here conceal. Open and manifest to me The truth appears, and must be told; All sacred mysteries are threefold; Three Persons in the Trinity, Three ages of Humanity, And holy Scriptures likewise three, Of Fear, of Wisdom, and of Love; For Wisdom that begins in Fear Endeth in Love; the atmosphere In which the soul delights to be And finds that perfect liberty Which cometh only from above. In the first Age, the early prime And dawn of all historic time, The Father reigned; and face to face He spake with the primeval race. Bright Angels, on his errands sent, Sat with the patriarch in his tent; His prophets thundered in the street; His lightnings flashed, his hailstorms beat; In earthquake and in flood and flame, In tempest and in cloud He came! The fear of God is in his Book; The pages of the Pentateuch Are full of the terror of his name. Then reigned the Son; his Covenant Was peace on earth, good-will to man; With Him the reign of Law began. He was the Wisdom and the Word, And sent his Angels Ministrant, Unterrified and undeterred, To rescue souls forlorn and lost, The troubled, tempted, tempest-tost To heal, to comfort, and to teach. The fiery tongues of Pentecost His symbols were, that they should preach In every form of human speech From continent to continent. He is the Light Divine, whose rays Across the thousand years unspent Shine through the darkness of our days, And touch with their celestial fires Our churches and our convent spires. His Book is the New Testament. These Ages now are of the Past; And the Third Age begins at last. The coming of the Holy Ghost, The reign of Grace, the reign of Love Brightens the mountain-tops above, And the dark outline of the coast. Already the whole land is white With Convent walls, as if by night A snow had fallen on hill and height! Already from the streets and marts Of town and traffic, and low cares, Men climb the consecrated stairs With weary feet, and bleeding hearts; And leave the world and its delights, Its passions, struggles, and despairs, For contemplation and for prayers In cloister-cells of coenobites. Eternal benedictions rest Upon thy name, Saint Benedict! Founder of convents in the West, Who built on Mount Cassino's crest In the Land of Labor, thine eagle's nest! May I be found not derelict In aught of faith or godly fear, If I have written, in many a page, The Gospel of the coming age, The Eternal Gospel men shall hear. Oh may I live resembling thee, And die at last as thou hast died; So that hereafter men may see, Within the choir, a form of air, Standing with arms outstretched in prayer, As one that hath been crucified! My work is finished; I am strong In faith and hope and charity; For I have written the things I see, The things that have been and shall be, Conscious of right, nor fearing wrong; Because I am in love with Love, And the sole thing I hate is Hate; For Hate is death; and Love is life, A peace, a splendor from above; And Hate, a never-ending strife, A smoke, a blackness from the abyss Where unclean serpents coil and hiss! Love is the Holy Ghost within Hate the unpardonable sin! Who preaches otherwise than this Betrays his Master with a kiss! PART TWO THE GOLDEN LEGEND PROLOGUE THE SPIRE OF STRASBURG CATHEDRAL Night and storm. LUCIFER, with the Powers of the Air, trying to tear down the Cross. LUCIFER. Hasten! hasten! O ye spirits! From its station drag the ponderous Cross of iron, that to mock us Is uplifted high in air! VOICES. Oh, we cannot! For around it All the Saints and Guardian Angels Throng in legions to protect it; They defeat us everywhere! THE BELLS. Laudo Deum verum! Plebem voco! Congrego clerum! LUCIFER. Lower! lower! Hover downward! Seize the loud, vociferous bells, and Clashing, clanging to the pavement, Hurl them from their windy tower. VOICES. All thy thunders Here are harmless! For these bells have been anointed, And baptized with holy water! They defy our utmost power. THE BELLS. Defunctos ploro! Pestem fugo! Festa decoro! LUCIFER. Shake the casements! Break the painted Panes, that flame with gold and crimson; Scatter them like leaves of Autumn, Swept away before the blast! VOICES. Oh, we cannot! The Archangel Michael flames from every window, With the sword of fire that drove us Headlong, out of heaven, aghast! THE BELLS. Funera plango! Fulgura frango! Sabbata pango! LUCIFER. Aim your lightnings At the oaken, Massive, iron-studded portals! Sack the house of God, and scatter Wide the ashes of the dead! VOICES. Oh, we cannot! The Apostles And the Martyrs, wrapped in mantles, Stand as warders at the entrance, Stand as sentinels o'erhead! THE BELLS. Excito lentos! Dissipo ventos! Paco cruentos! LUCIFER. Baffled! baffled! Inefficient, Craven spirits! leave this labor Unto time, the great Destroyer! Come away, ere night is gone! VOICES. Onward! onward! With the night-wind, Over field and farm and forest, Lonely homestead, darksome hamlet, Blighting all we breathe upon! They sweep away. Organ and Gregorian Chant. CHOIR. Nocte surgentes Vigilemus omnes! I THE CASTLE OF VAUTSBERG ON THE RHINE A chamber in a tower. PRINCE HENRY sitting alone, ill and restless. Midnight. PRINCE HENRY. I cannot sleep! my fervid brain Calls up the vanished Past again, And throws its misty splendors deep Into the pallid realms of sleep! A breath from that far-distant shore Comes freshening ever more and more, And wafts o'er intervening seas Sweet odors from the Hesperides! A wind, that through the corridor Just stirs the curtain, and no more, And, touching the aolian strings, Faints with the burden that it brings! Come back! ye friendships long departed! That like o'erflowing streamlets started, And now are dwindled, one by one, To stony channels in the sun! Come back! ye friends, whose lives are ended, Come back, with all that light attended, Which seemed to darken and decay When ye arose and went away! They come, the shapes of joy and woe, The airy crowds of long ago, The dreams and fancies known of yore, That have been, and shall be no more. They change the cloisters of the night Into a garden of delight; They make the dark and dreary hours Open and blossom into flowers! I would not sleep! I love to be Again in their fair company; But ere my lips can bid them stay, They pass and vanish quite away! Alas! our memories may retrace Each circumstance of time and place, Season and scene come back again, And outward things unchanged remain; The rest we cannot reinstate; Ourselves we can not re-create; Nor set our souls to the same key Of the remembered harmony! Rest! rest! Oh, give me rest and peace! The thought of life that ne'er shall cease Has something in it like despair, A weight I am too weak to bear! Sweeter to this afflicted breast The thought of never-ending rest! Sweeter the undisturbed and deep Tranquillity of endless sleep! A flash of lightning, out of which LUCIFER appears, in the garb of a travelling Physician. LUCIFER. All hail, Prince Henry! PRINCE HENRY, starting. Who is it speaks? Who and what are you? LUCIFER. One who seeks A moment's audience with the Prince. PRINCE HENRY. When came you in? LUCIFER. A moment since. I found your study door unlocked, And thought you answered when I knocked. PRINCE HENRY. I did not hear you. LUCIFER. You heard the thunder; It was loud enough to waken the dead. And it is not a matter of special wonder That, when God is walking overhead, You should not hear my feeble tread. PRINCE HENRY. What may your wish or purpose be? LUCIFER. Nothing or everything, as it pleases Your Highness. You behold in me Only a travelling Physician; One of the few who have a mission To cure incurable diseases, Or those that are called so. PRINCE HENRY. Can you bring The dead to life? LUCIFER. Yes; very nearly. And, what is a wiser and better thing, Can keep the living from ever needing Such an unnatural, strange proceeding, By showing conclusively and clearly That death is a stupid blunder merely, And not a necessity of our lives. My being here is accidental; The storm, that against your casement drives, In the little village below waylaid me. And there I heard, with a secret delight, Of your maladies physical and mental, Which neither astonished nor dismayed me. And I hastened hither, though late in the night, To proffer my aid! PRINCE HENRY, ironically. For this you came! Ah, how can I ever hope to requite This honor from one so erudite? LUCIFER. The honor is mine, or will be when I have cured your disease. PRINCE HENRY. But not till then. LUCIFER. What is your illness? PRINCE HENRY. It has no name. A smouldering, dull, perpetual flame, As in a kiln, burns in my veins, Sending up vapors to the head; My heart has become a dull lagoon, Which a kind of leprosy drinks and drains; I am accounted as one who is dead, And, indeed, I think that I shall be soon. LUCIFER. And has Gordonius the Divine, In his famous Lily of Medicine,-- I see the book lies open before you,-- No remedy potent enough to restore you? PRINCE HENRY. None whatever! LUCIFER. The dead are dead, And their oracles dumb, when questioned Of the new diseases that human life Evolves in its progress, rank and rife. Consult the dead upon things that were, But the living only on things that are. Have you done this, by the appliance And aid of doctors? PRINCE HENRY. Ay, whole schools Of doctors, with their learned rules; But the case is quite beyond their science. Even the doctors of Salern Send me back word they can discern No cure for a malady like this, Save one which in its nature is Impossible and cannot be! LUCIFER. That sounds oracular! PRINCE HENRY. Unendurable! LUCIFER. What is their remedy? PRINCE HENRY. You shall see; Writ in this scroll is the mystery. LUCIFER, reading. "Not to be cured, yet not incurable! The only remedy that remains Is the blood that flows from a maiden's veins, Who of her own free will shall die, And give her life as the price of yours!" That is the strangest of all cures, And one, I think, you will never try; The prescription you may well put by, As something impossible to find Before the world itself shall end! And yet who knows? One cannot say That into some maiden's brain that kind Of madness will not find its way. Meanwhile permit me to recommend, As the matter admits of no delay, My wonderful Catholicon, Of very subtile and magical powers! PRINCE HENRY. Purge with your nostrums and drugs infernal The spouts and gargoyles of these towers, Not me! My faith is utterly gone In every power but the Power Supernal! Pray tell ne, of what school are you? LUCIFER. Both of the Old and of the New! The school of Hermes Trismegistus, Who uttered his oracles sublime Before the Olympiads, in the dew Of the early dusk and dawn of time, The reign of dateless old Hephaestus! As northward, from its Nubian springs, The Nile, forever new and old, Among the living and the dead, Its mighty mystic stream has rolled; So, starting from its fountain-head Under the lotus-leaves of Isis, From the dead demigods of eld, Through long unbroken lines of kings Its course the sacred art has held, Unchecked, unchanged by man's devices. This art the Arabian Geber taught, And in alembics, finely wrought, Distilling herbs and flowers, discovered The secret that so long had hovered Upon the misty verge of Truth, The Elixir of Perpetual Youth, Called Alcohol, in the Arab speech! Like him, this wondrous lore I teach! PRINCE HENRY. What! an adept? LUCIFFR. Nor less, nor more! PRINCE HENRY. I am a reader of your books, A lover of that mystic lore! With such a piercing glance it looks Into great Nature's open eye, And sees within it trembling lie The portrait of the Deity! And yet, alas! with all my pains, The secret and the mystery Have baffled and eluded me, Unseen the grand result remains! LUCIFER, showing a flask. Behold it here! this little flask Contains the wonderful quintessence, The perfect flower and efflorescence, Of all the knowledge man can ask! Hold it up thus against the light! PRINCE HENRY. How limpid, pure, and crystalline, How quick, and tremulous, and bright The little wavelets dance and shine, As were it the Water of Life in sooth! LUCIFER. It is! It assuages every pain, Cures all disease, and gives again To age the swift delights of youth. Inhale its fragrance. PRINCE HENRY. It is sweet. A thousand different odors meet And mingle in its rare perfume, Such as the winds of summer waft At open windows through a room! LUCIFER. Will you not taste it? PRINCE HENRY. Will one draught Suffice? LUCIFER. If not, you can drink more. PRINCE HENRY. Into this crystal goblet pour So much as safely I may drink, LUCIFER, pouring. Let not the quantity alarm you; You may drink all; it will not harm you. PRINCE HENRY. I am as one who on the brink Of a dark river stands and sees The waters flow, the landscape dim Around him waver, wheel, and swim, And, ere he plunges, stops to think Into what whirlpools he may sink; One moment pauses, and no more, Then madly plunges from the shore! Headlong into the mysteries Of life and death I boldly leap, Nor fear the fateful current's sweep, Nor what in ambush lurks below! For death is better than disease! An ANGEL with an aeolian harp hovers in the air. ANGEL. Woe! woe! eternal woe! Not only the whispered prayer Of love, But the imprecations of hate, Reverberate For ever and ever through the air Above! This fearful curse Shakes the great universe! LUCIFER, disappearing. Drink! drink! And thy soul shall sink Down into the dark abyss, Into the infinite abyss, From which no plummet nor rope Ever drew up the silver sand of hope! PRINCE HENRY, drinking. It is like a draught of fire! Through every vein I feel again The fever of youth, the soft desire; A rapture that is almost pain Throbs in my heart and fills my brain O joy! O joy! I feel The band of steel That so long and heavily has pressed Upon my breast Uplifted, and the malediction Of my affliction Is taken from me, and my weary breast At length finds rest. THE ANGEL. It is but the rest of the fire, from which the air has been taken! It is but the rest of the sand, when the hour-glass is not shaken! It is but the rest of the tide between the ebb and the flow! It is but the rest of the wind between the flaws that blow! With fiendish laughter, Hereafter, This false physician Will mock thee in thy perdition. PRINCE HENRY. Speak! speak! Who says that I am ill? I am not ill! I am not weak! The trance, the swoon, the dream, is o'er! I feel the chill of death no more! At length, I stand renewed in all my strength Beneath me I can feel The great earth stagger and reel, As if the feet of a descending God Upon its surface trod, And like a pebble it rolled beneath his heel! This, O brave physician! this Is thy great Palingenesis! Drinks again. THE ANGEL. Touch the goblet no more! It will make thy heart sore To its very core! Its perfume is the breath Of the Angel of Death, And the light that within it lies Is the flash of his evil eyes. Beware! Oh, beware! For sickness, sorrow, and care All are there! PRINCE HENRY, sinking back. O thou voice within my breast! Why entreat me, why upbraid me, When the steadfast tongues of truth And the flattering hopes of youth Have all deceived me and betrayed me? Give me, give me rest, oh rest! Golden visions wave and hover, Golden vapors, waters streaming, Landscapes moving, changing, gleaming! I am like a happy lover, Who illumines life with dreaming! Brave physician! Rare physician! Well hast thou fulfilled thy mission! His head falls on his book. THE ANGEL, receding. Alas! alas! Like a vapor the golden vision Shall fade and pass, And thou wilt find in thy heart again Only the blight of pain, And bitter, bitter, bitter contrition! COURT-YARD OF THE CASTLE HUBERT standing by the gateway. HUBERT. How sad the grand old castle looks! O'erhead, the unmolested rooks Upon the turret's windy top Sit, talking of the farmer's crop Here in the court-yard springs the grass, So few are now the feet that pass; The stately peacocks, bolder grown, Come hopping down the steps of stone, As if the castle were their own; And I, the poor old seneschal, Haunt, like a ghost, the banquet-hall. Alas! the merry guests no more Crowd through the hospitable door; No eyes with youth and passion shine, No cheeks glow redder than the wine; No song, no laugh, no jovial din Of drinking wassail to the pin; But all is silent, sad, and drear, And now the only sounds I hear Are the hoarse rooks upon the walls, And horses stamping in their stalls! A horn sounds. What ho! that merry, sudden blast Reminds me of the days long past! And, as of old resounding, grate The heavy hinges of the gate, And, clattering loud, with iron clank, Down goes the sounding bridge of plank, As if it were in haste to greet The pressure of a traveller's feet! Enter WALTER the Minnesinger. WALTER. How now, my friend! This looks quite lonely! No banner flying from the walls, No pages and no seneschals, No warders, and one porter only! Is it you, Hubert? HUBERT. Ah! Master Walter! WALTER. Alas! how forms and faces alter! I did not know you. You look older! Your hair has grown much grayer and thinner, And you stoop a little in the shoulder! HUBERT. Alack! I am a poor old sinner, And, like these towers, begin to moulder; And you have been absent many a year! WALTER. How is the Prince? HUBERT. He is not here; He has been ill: and now has fled. WALTER. Speak it out frankly: say he's dead! Is it not so? HUBERT. No; if you please, A strange, mysterious disease Fell on him with a sudden blight. Whole hours together he would stand Upon the terrace in a dream, Resting his head upon his hand, Best pleased when he was most alone, Like Saint John Nepomuck in stone, Looking down into a stream. In the Round Tower, night after night, He sat and bleared his eyes with books; Until one morning we found him there Stretched on the floor, as if in a swoon He had fallen from his chair. We hardly recognized his sweet looks! WALTER. Poor Prince! HUBERT. I think he might have mended; And he did mend; but very soon The priests came flocking in, like rooks, With all their crosiers and their crooks, And so at last the matter ended. WALTER. How did it end? HUBERT. Why, in Saint Rochus They made him stand and wait his doom; And, as if he were condemned to the tomb, Began to mutter their hocus-pocus. First, the Mass for the Dead they chanted, Then three times laid upon his head A shovelful of churchyard clay, Saying to him, as he stood undaunted, "This is a sign that thou art dead, So in thy heart be penitent!" And forth from the chapel door he went Into disgrace and banishment, Clothed in a cloak of hodden gray, And hearing a wallet, and a bell, Whose sound should be a perpetual knell To keep all travellers away. WALTER. Oh, horrible fate! Outcast, rejected, As one with pestilence infected! HUBERT. Then was the family tomb unsealed, And broken helmet, sword, and shield Buried together, in common wreck, As is the custom when the last Of any princely house has passed, And thrice, as with a trumpet-blast, A herald shouted down the stair The words of warning and despair,-- "O Hoheneck! O Hoheneck!" WALTER. Still in my soul that cry goes on,-- Forever gone! forever gone! Ah, what a cruel sense of loss, Like a black shadow, would fall across The hearts of all, if he should die! His gracious presence upon earth Was as a fire upon a hearth; As pleasant songs, at morning sung, The words that dropped from his sweet tongue Strengthened our hearts; or heard at night Made all our slumbers soft and light. Where is he? HUBERT. In the Odenwald. Some of his tenants, unappalled By fear of death, or priestly word,-- A holy family, that make Each meal a Supper of the Lord,-- Have him beneath their watch and ward, For love of him, and Jesus' sake! Pray you come in. For why should I With out-door hospitality My prince's friend thus entertain? WALTER. I would a moment here remain. But you, good Hubert, go before, Fill me a goblet of May-drink, As aromatic as the May From which it steals the breath away, And which he loved so well of yore; It is of him that I would think. You shall attend me, when I call, In the ancestral banquet-hall. Unseen companions, guests of air, You cannot wait on, will be there; They taste not food, they drink not wine, But their soft eyes look into mine, And their lips speak to me, and all The vast and shadowy banquet-hall Is full of looks and words divine! Leaning over the parapet. The day is done; and slowly from the scene The stooping sun up-gathers his spent shafts, And puts them back into his golden quiver! Below me in the valley, deep and green As goblets are, from which in thirsty draughts We drink its wine, the swift and mantling river Flows on triumphant through these lovely regions, Etched with the shadows of its sombre margent, And soft, reflected clouds of gold and argent! Yes, there it flows, forever, broad and still As when the vanguard of the Roman legions First saw it from the top of yonder hill! How beautiful it is! Fresh fields of wheat, Vineyard and town, and tower with fluttering flag, The consecrated chapel on the crag, And the white hamlet gathered round its base, Like Mary sitting at her Saviour's feet, And looking up at his beloved face! O friend! O best of friends! Thy absence more Than the impending night darkens the landscape o'er! II A FARM IN THE ODENWALD A garden; morning; PRINCE HENRY seated, with a book. ELSIE at a distance gathering flowers. PRINCE HENRY, reading. One morning, all alone, Out of his convent of gray stone, Into the forest older, darker, grayer, His lips moving, as if in prayer, His head sunken upon his breast As in a dream of rest, Walked the Monk Felix. All about The broad, sweet sunshine lay without, Filling the summer air; And within the woodlands as he trod, The dusk was like the truce of God With worldly woe and care; Under him lay the golden moss; And above him the boughs of hoary trees Waved, and made the sign of the cross, And whispered their Benedicites; And from the ground Rose an odor sweet and fragrant Of the wild-flowers and the vagrant Vines that wandered, Seeking the sunshine, round and round. These he heeded not, but pondered On the volume in his hand, Wherein amazed he read: "A thousand years in thy sight Are but as yesterday when it is past, And as a watch in the night!" And with his eyes downcast In humility he said: "I believe, O Lord, What is written in thy Word, But alas! I do not understand!" And lo! he heard The sudden singing of a bird, A snow-white bird, that from a cloud Dropped down, And among the branches brown Sat singing, So sweet, and clear, and loud, It seemed a thousand harp-strings ringing. And the Monk Felix closed his book, And long, long, With rapturous look, He listened to the song, And hardly breathed or stirred, Until he saw, as in a vision, The land Elysian, And in the heavenly city heard Angelic feet Fall on the golden flagging of the street And he would fain Have caught the wondrous bird, But strove in vain; For it flew away, away, Far over hill and dell, And instead of its sweet singing He heard the convent bell Suddenly in the silence ringing For the service of noonday. And he retraced His pathway sadly and in haste. In the convent there was a change! He looked for each well-known face, But the faces were new and strange; New figures sat in the oaken stalls, New voices chanted in the choir; Yet the place was the same place, The same dusky walls Of cold, gray stone, The same cloisters and belfry and spire. A stranger and alone Among that brotherhood The Monk Felix stood. "Forty years," said a Friar, "Have I been Prior Of this convent in the wood, But for that space Never have I beheld thy face!" The heart of the Monk Felix fell And he answered, with submissive tone, This morning after the hour of Prime, I left my cell, And wandered forth alone, Listening all the time To the melodious singing Of a beautiful white bird, Until I heard The bells of the convent ringing Noon from their noisy towers. It was as if I dreamed; For what to me had seemed Moments only, had been hours!" "Years!" said a voice close by. It was an aged monk who spoke, From a bench of oak Fastened against the wall;-- He was the oldest monk of all. For a whole century Had he been there, Serving God in prayer, The meekest and humblest of his creatures. He remembered well the features Of Felix, and he said, Speaking distinct and slow: "One hundred years ago, When I was a novice in this place, There was here a monk, full of God's grace, Who bore the name Of Felix, and this man must be the same." And straightway They brought forth to the light of day A volume old and brown, A huge tome, bound In brass and wild-boar's hide, Wherein were written down The names of all who had died In the convent, since it was edified. And there they found, Just as the old monk said, That on a certain day and date, One hundred years before, Had gone forth from the convent gate The Monk Felix, and never more Had entered that sacred door. He had been counted among the dead! And they knew, at last, That, such had been the power Of that celestial and immortal song, A hundred years had passed, And had not seemed so long As a single hour! ELSIE comes in with flowers. ELSIE. Here are flowers for you, But they are not all for you. Some of them are for the Virgin And for Saint Cecilia. PRINCE HENRY. As thou standest there, Thou seemest to me like the angel That brought the immortal roses To Saint Cecilia's bridal chamber. ELSIE. But these will fade. PRINCE HENRY. Themselves will fade, But not their memory, And memory has the power To re-create them from the dust. They remind me, too, Of martyred Dorothea, Who from Celestial gardens sent Flowers as her witnesses To him who scoffed and doubted. ELSIE. Do you know the story Of Christ and the Sultan's daughter! That is the prettiest legend of them all. PRINCE HENRY. Then tell it to me. But first come hither. Lay the flowers down beside me, And put both thy hands in mine. Now tell me the story. ELSIE. Early in the morning The Sultan's daughter Walked in her father's garden, Gathering the bright flowers, All full of dew. PRINCE HENRY. Just as thou hast been doing This morning, dearest Elsie. ELSIE. And as she gathered them She wondered more and more Who was the Master of the Flowers, And made them grow Out of the cold, dark earth. "In my heart," she said, "I love him; and for him Would leave my father's palace, To labor in his garden." PRINCE HENRY. Dear, innocent child! How sweetly thou recallest The long-forgotten legend. That in my early childhood My mother told me! Upon my brain It reappears once more, As a birth-mark on the forehead When a hand suddenly Is raised upon it, and removed! ELSIE. And at midnight, As she lay upon her bed, She heard a voice Call to her from the garden, And, looking forth from her window, She saw a beautiful youth Standing among the flowers. It was the Lord Jesus; And she went down to Him, And opened the door for Him; And He said to her, "O maiden! Thou hast thought of me with love, And for thy sake Out of my Father's kingdom Have I come hither: I am the Master of the Flowers. My garden is in Paradise, And if thou wilt go with me, Thy bridal garland Shall be of bright red flowers." And then He took from his finger A golden ring, And asked the Sultan's daughter If she would be his bride. And when she answered Him with love, His wounds began to bleed, And she said to Him, "O Love! how red thy heart is, And thy hands are full of roses." "For thy sake," answered He, "For thy sake is my heart so red, For thee I bring these roses; I gathered them at the cross Whereon I died for thee! I Come, for my Father calls. Thou art my elected bride!" And the Sultan's daughter Followed Him to his Father's garden. PRINCE HENRY. Wouldst thou have done so, Elsie? ELSIE. Yes, very gladly. PRINCE HENRY. Then the Celestial Bridegroom Will come for thee also. Upon thy forehead He will place, Not his crown of thorns, But a crown of roses. In thy bridal chamber, Like Saint Cecilia, Thou shalt hear sweet music, And breathe the fragrance Of flowers immortal! Go now and place these flowers Before her picture. A ROOM IN THE FARM-HOUSE Twilight. URSULA Spinning. GOTTLIEB asleep in his chair. URSULA. Darker and darker! Hardly a glimmer Of light comes in at the window-pane; Or is it my eyes are growing dimmer? I cannot disentangle this skein, Nor wind it rightly upon the reel. Elsie! GOTTLIER, starting. The stopping of thy wheel Has awakened me out of a pleasant dream. I thought I was sitting beside a stream, And heard the grinding of a mill, When suddenly the wheels stood still, And a voice cried "Elsie," in my ear! It startled me, it seemed so near. URSULA. I was calling her: I want a light. I cannot see to spin my flax. Bring the lamp, Elsie. Dost thou hear? ELSIE, within. In a moment! GOTTLIEB. Where are Bertha and Max? URSULA. They are sitting with Elsie at the door. She is telling them stories of the wood, And the Wolf, and little Red Ridinghood. GOTTLIEB. And where is the Prince? URSULA. In his room overhead; I heard him walking across the floor, As he always does, with a heavy tread. ELSIE comes in with a lamp. MAX and BERTHA follow her; and they all sing the Evening Song on the lighting of the lamps. EVENING SONG O gladsome light Of the Father Immortal, And of the celestial Sacred and blessed Jesus, our Saviour! Now to the sunset Again hast thou brought us; And seeing the evening Twilight, we bless thee! Praise thee, adore thee! Father omnipotent! Son, the Life-giver! Spirit, the Comforter! Worthy at all times Of worship and wonder! PRINCE HENRY, at the door, Amen! URSULA. Who was it said Amen? ELSIE. It was the Prince: he stood at the door, And listened a moment, as we chanted The evening song. He is gone again. I have often seen him there before. URSULA. Poor Prince! GOTTLIEB. I thought the house was haunted! Poor Prince, alas! and yet as mild And patient as the gentlest child! MAX. I love him because he is so good, And makes me such fine bows and arrows, To shoot at the robins and the sparrows, And the red squirrels in the wood! BERTHA. I love him, too! GOTTLIEB. Ah, yes! we all Love him from the bottom of our hearts; He gave us the farm, the house, and the grange, He gave us the horses and the carts, And the great oxen in the stall, The vineyard, and the forest range! We have nothing to give him but our love! BERTHA. Did he give us the beautiful stork above On the chimney-top, with its large, round nest? GOTTLIEB. No, not the stork; by God in heaven, As a blessing, the dear white stork was given, But the Prince has given us all the rest. God bless him, and make him well again. ELSIE. Would I could do something for his sake, Something to cure his sorrow and pain! GOTTLIEB. That no one can; neither thou nor I, Nor any one else. ELSIE. And must he die? URSULA. Yes; if the dear God does not take Pity upon him in his distress, And work a miracle! GOTTLIEB. Or unless Some maiden, of her own accord, Offers her life for that of her lord, And is willing to die in his stead. ELSIE. I will! URSULA. Prithee, thou foolish child, be still! Thou shouldst not say what thou dost not mean! ELSIE. I mean it truly! MAX. O father! this morning, Down by the mill, in the ravine, Hans killed a wolf, the very same That in the night to the sheepfold came, And ate up my lamb, that was left outside. GOTTLIEB. I am glad he is dead. It will be a warning To the wolves in the forest, far and wide. MAX. And I am going to have his hide! BERTHA. I wonder if this is the wolf that ate Little Red Ridinghood! URSULA. Oh, no! That wolf was killed a long while ago. Come, children, it is growing late. MAX. Ah, how I wish I were a man, As stout as Hans is, and as strong! I would do nothing else, the whole day long, But just kill wolves. GOTTLIEB. Then go to bed, And grow as fast as a little boy can. Bertha is half asleep already. See how she nods her heavy head, And her sleepy feet are so unsteady She will hardly be able to creep upstairs. URSULA. Goodnight, my children. Here's the light. And do not forget to say your prayers Before you sleep. GOTTLIEB. Good night! MAX and BERTHA. Good night! They go out with ELSIE. URSULA, spinning. She is a strange and wayward child, That Elsie of ours. She looks so old, And thoughts and fancies weird and wild Seem of late to have taken hold Of her heart, that was once so docile and mild! GOTTLIEB. She is like all girls. URSULA. Ah no, forsooth! Unlike all I have ever seen. For she has visions and strange dreams, And in all her words and ways, she seems Much older than she is in truth. Who would think her but fifteen? And there has been of late such a change! My heart is heavy with fear and doubt That she may not live till the year is out. She is so strange,--so strange,--so strange! GOTTLIEB. I am not troubled with any such fear; She will live and thrive for many a year. ELSIE'S CHAMBER Night. ELSIE praying. ELSIE. My Redeemer and my Lord, I beseech thee, I entreat thee, Guide me in each act and word, That hereafter I may meet thee, Watching, waiting, hoping, yearning, With my lamp well trimmed and burning! Interceding With these bleeding Wounds upon thy hands and side, For all who have lived and erred Thou hast suffered, thou hast died, Scourged, and mocked, and crucified, And in the grave hast thou been buried! If my feeble prayer can reach thee, O my Saviour, I beseech thee, Even as thou hast died for me, More sincerely Let me follow where thou leadest, Let me, bleeding as thou bleedest, Die, if dying I may give Life to one who asks to live, And more nearly, Dying thus, resemble thee! THE CHAMBER OF GOTTLIEB AND URSULA Midnight. ELSIE standing by their bedside, weeping. GOTTLIEB. The wind is roaring; the rushing rain Is loud upon roof and window-pane, As if the Wild Huntsman of Rodenstein, Boding evil to me and mine, Were abroad to-night with his ghostly train! In the brief lulls of the tempest wild, The dogs howl in the yard; and hark! Some one is sobbing in the dark, Here in the chamber! ELSIE. It is I. URSULA. Elsie! what ails thee, my poor child? ELSIE. I am disturbed and much distressed, In thinking our dear Prince must die; I cannot close mine eyes, nor rest, GOTTLIEB. What wouldst thou? In the Power Divine His healing lies, not in our own; It is in the hand of God alone, ELSIE. Nay, He has put it into mine, And into my heart! GOTTLIEB. Thy words are wild! URSULA. What dost thou mean? my child! My child! ELSIE. That for our dear Prince Henry's sake I will myself the offering make, And give my life to purchase his. URSULA. Am I still dreaming, or awake? Thou speakest carelessly of death, And yet thou knowest not what it is. ELSIE. 'T is the cessation of our breath. Silent and motionless we lie; And no one knoweth more than this. I saw our little Gertrude die; She left off breathing, and no more I smoothed the pillow beneath her head. She was more beautiful than before. Like violets faded were her eyes; By this we knew that she was dead. Through the open window looked the skies Into the chamber where she lay, And the wind was like the sound of wings, As if angels came to bear her away. Ah! when I saw and felt these things, I found it difficult to stay; I longed to die, as she had died, And go forth with her, side by side. The Saints are dead, the Martyrs dead And Mary, and our Lord; and I Would follow in humility The way by them illumined! URSULA. My child! my child! thou must not die! ELSIE. Why should I live? Do I not know The life of woman is full of woe? Toiling on and on and on, With breaking heart, and tearful eyes, And silent lips, and in the soul The secret longings that arise, Which this world never satisfies! Some more, some less, but of the whole Not one quite happy, no, not one! URSULA. It is the malediction of Eve! ELSIE. In place of it, let me receive The benediction of Mary, then. GOTTLIEB. Ah, woe is me! Ah, woe is me! Most wretched am I among men! URSULA. Alas! that I should live to see Thy death, beloved, and to stand Above thy grave! Ah, woe the day! ELSIE. Thou wilt not see it. I shall lie Beneath the flowers of another land, For at Salerno, far away Over the mountains, over the sea, It is appointed me to die! And it will seem no more to thee Than if at the village on market-day I should a little longer stay Than I am wont. URSULA. Even as thou sayest! And how my heart beats, when thou stayest! I cannot rest until my sight Is satisfied with seeing thee, What, then, if thou wert dead? GOTTLIEB. Ah me! Of our old eyes thou art the light! The joy of our old hearts art thou! And wilt thou die? URSULA. Not now! not now! ELSIE. Christ died for me, and shall not! Be willing for my Prince to die? You both are silent; you cannot speak This said I at our Saviour's feast After confession, to the priest, And even he made no reply. Does he not warn us all to seek The happier, better land on high, Where flowers immortal never wither; And could he forbid me to go thither? GOTTLIEB. In God's own time, my heart's delight! When He shall call thee, not before! ELSIE. I heard Him call. When Christ ascended Triumphantly, from star to star, He left the gates of heaven ajar. I had a vision in the night, And saw Him standing at the door Of his Father's mansion, vast and splendid, And beckoning to me from afar. I cannot stay! GOTTLIEB. She speaks almost As if it were the Holy Ghost Spake through her lips, and in her stead: What if this were of God? URSULA. Ah, then Gainsay it dare we not. GOTTLIEB. Amen! Elsie! the words that thou hast said Are strange and new for us to hear, And fill our hears with doubt and fear. Whether it be a dark temptation Of the Evil One, or God's inspiration, We in our blindness cannot say. We must think upon it, and pray; For evil and good it both resembles. If it be of God, his will be done! May He guard us from the Evil One! How hot thy hand is! how it trembles! Go to thy bed, and try to sleep. URSULA. Kiss me. Good night; and do not weep! ELSIE goes out. Ah, what an awful thing is this! I almost shuddered at her kiss, As if a ghost had touched my cheek, I am so childish and so weak! As soon as I see the earliest gray Of morning glimmer in the east, I will go over to the priest, And hear what the good man has to say. A VILLAGE CHURCH A woman kneeling at the confessional. THE PARISH PRIEST, from within. Go, sin no more! Thy penance o'er, A new and better life begin! God maketh thee forever free From the dominion of thy sin! Go, sin no more! He will restore The peace that filled thy heart before, And pardon thine iniquity! The woman goes out. The Priest comes forth, and walks slowly up and down the church. O blessed Lord! how much I need Thy light to guide me on my way! So many hands, that, without heed, Still touch thy wounds and make them bleed! So many feet, that, day by day, Still wander from thy fold astray! Unless thou fill me with thy light, I cannot lead thy flock aright; Nor without thy support can bear The burden of so great a care, But am myself a castaway! A pause. The day is drawing to its close; And what good deeds, since first it rose, Have I presented, Lord, to thee, As offsprings of my ministry? What wrong repressed, what right maintained, What struggle passed, what victory gained, What good attempted and attained? Feeble, at best, is my endeavor! I see, but cannot reach, the height That lies forever in the light; And yet forever and forever, When seeming just within my grasp, I feel my feeble hands unclasp, And sink discouraged into night! For thine own purpose, thou hast sent The strife and the discouragement! A pause. Why stayest thou, Prince of Hoheneck? Why keep me pacing to and fro Amid these aisles of sacred gloom, Counting my footsteps as I go, And marking with each step a tomb? Why should the world for thee make room, And wait thy leisure and thy beck? Thou comest in the hope to hear Some word of comfort and of cheer. What can I say? I cannot give The counsel to do this and live; But rather, firmly to deny The tempter, though his power be strong, And, inaccessible to wrong, Still like a martyr live and die! A pause. The evening air grows dusk and brown; I must go forth into the town, To visit beds of pain and death, Of restless limbs, and quivering breath, And sorrowing hearts, and patient eyes That see, through tears, the sun go down, But never more shall see it rise. The poor in body and estate, The sick and the disconsolate, Must not on man's convenience wait. Goes out. Enter LUCIFER, as a Priest. LUCIFER, with a genuflexion, mocking. This is the Black Pater-noster. God was my foster, He fostered me Under the book of the Palm-tree! St. Michael was my dame. He was born at Bethlehem, He was made of flesh and blood. God send me my right food, My right food, and shelter too, That I may to yon kirk go, To read upon yon sweet book Which the mighty God of heaven shook Open, open, hell's gates! Shut, shut, heaven's gates! All the devils in the air The stronger be, that hear the Black Prayer! Looking round the church. What a darksome and dismal place! I wonder that any man has the face To call such a hole the House of the Lord, And the gate of Heaven,--yet such is the word. Ceiling, and walls, and windows old, Covered with cobwebs, blackened with mould; Dust on the pulpit, dust on the stairs, Dust on the benches, and stalls, and chairs! The pulpit, from which such ponderous sermons Have fallen down on the brains of the Germans, With about as much real edification As if a great Bible, bound in lead, Had fallen, and struck them on the head; And I ought to remember that sensation! Here stands the holy-water stoup! Holy-water it may be to many, But to me, the veriest Liquor Gehennae! It smells like a filthy fast-day soup! Near it stands the box for the poor, With its iron padlock, safe and sure. I and the priest of the parish know Whither all these charities go; Therefore, to keep up the institution, I will add my little contribution! He puts in money. Underneath this mouldering tomb, With statue of stone, and scutcheon of brass, Slumbers a great lord of the village. All his life was riot and pillage, But at length, to escape the threatened doom Of the everlasting penal fire, He died in the dress of a mendicant friar, And bartered his wealth for a daily mass. But all that afterwards came to pass, And whether he finds it dull or pleasant, Is kept a secret for the present, At his own particular desire. And here, in a corner of the wall, Shadowy, silent, apart from all, With its awful portal open wide, And its latticed windows on either side, And its step well worn by the beaded knees Of one or two pious centuries, Stands the village confessional! Within it, as an honored guest, I will sit down awhile and rest! Seats himself in the confessional. Here sits the priest; and faint and low, Like the sighing of an evening breeze, Comes through these painted lattices The ceaseless sound of human woe; Here, while her bosom aches and throbs With deep and agonizing sobs, That half are passion, half contrition, The luckless daughter of perdition Slowly confesses her secret shame! The time, the place, the lover's name! Here the grim murderer, with a groan, From his bruised conscience rolls the stone, Thinking that thus he can atone For ravages of sword and flame! Indeed, I marvel, and marvel greatly, How a priest can sit here so sedately, Reading, the whole year out and in, Naught but the catalogue of sin, And still keep any faith whatever In human virtue! Never! never! I cannot repeat a thousandth part Of the horrors and crimes and sins and woes That arise, when with palpitating throes The graveyard in the human heart Gives up its dead, at the voice of the priest, As if he were an archangel, at least. It makes a peculiar atmosphere, This odor of earthly passions and crimes, Such as I like to breathe, at times, And such as often brings me here In the hottest and most pestilential season. To-day, I come for another reason; To foster and ripen an evil thought In a heart that is almost to madness wrought, And to make a murderer out of a prince, A sleight of hand I learned long since! He comes. In the twilight he will not see The difference between his priest and me! In the same net was the mother caught! PRINCE HENRY, entering and kneeling at the confessional. Remorseful, penitent, and lowly, I come to crave, O Father holy, Thy benediction on my head. LUCIFER. The benediction shall be said After confession, not before! 'T is a God-speed to the parting guest, Who stands already at the door, Sandalled with holiness, and dressed In garments pure from earthly stain. Meanwhile, hast thou searched well thy breast? Does the same madness fill thy brain? Or have thy passion and unrest Vanished forever from thy mind? PRINCE HENRY. By the same madness still made blind, By the same passion still possessed, I come again to the house of prayer, A man afflicted and distressed! As in a cloudy atmosphere, Through unseen sluices of the air, A sudden and impetuous wind Strikes the great forest white with fear, And every branch, and bough, and spray, Points all its quivering leaves one way, And meadows of grass, and fields of rain, And the clouds above, and the slanting rain, And smoke from chimneys of the town, Yield themselves to it, and bow down, So does this dreadful purpose press Onward, with irresistible stress, And all my thoughts and faculties, Struck level by the strength of this, From their true inclination turn And all stream forward to Salem! LUCIFER. Alas! we are but eddies of dust, Uplifted by the blast, and whirled Along the highway of the world A moment only, then to fall Back to a common level all, At the subsiding of the gust! PRINCE HENRY. O holy Father! pardon in me The oscillation of a mind Unsteadfast, and that cannot find Its centre of rest and harmony! For evermore before mine eyes This ghastly phantom flits and flies, And as a madman through a crowd, With frantic gestures and wild cries, It hurries onward, and aloud Repeats its awful prophecies! Weakness is wretchedness! To be strong Is to be happy! I am weak, And cannot find the good I seek, Because I feel and fear the wrong! LUCIFER. Be not alarmed! The church is kind, And in her mercy and her meekness She meets half-way her children's weakness, Writes their transgressions in the dust! Though in the Decalogue we find The mandate written, "Thou shalt not kill!" Yet there are cases when we must. In war, for instance, or from scathe To guard and keep the one true faith We must look at the Decalogue in the light Of an ancient statute, that was meant For a mild and general application, To be understood with the reservation That in certain instances the Right Must yield to the Expedient! Thou art a Prince. If thou shouldst die What hearts and hopes would prostrate lie! What noble deeds, what fair renown, Into the grave with thee go down! What acts of valor and courtesy Remain undone, and die with thee! Thou art the last of all thy race! With thee a noble name expires, And vanishes from the earth's face The glorious memory of thy sires! She is a peasant. In her veins Flows common and plebeian blood; It is such as daily and hourly stains The dust and the turf of battle plains, By vassals shed, in a crimson flood, Without reserve and without reward, At the slightest summons of their lord! But thine is precious; the fore-appointed Blood of kings, of God's anointed! Moreover, what has the world in store For one like her, but tears and toil? Daughter of sorrow, serf of the soil, A peasant's child and a peasant's wife, And her soul within her sick and sore With the roughness and barrenness of life! I marvel not at the heart's recoil From a fate like this, in one so tender, Nor at its eagerness to surrender All the wretchedness, want, and woe That await it in this world below, For the unutterable splendor Of the world of rest beyond the skies. So the Church sanctions the sacrifice: Therefore inhale this healing balm, And breathe this fresh life into thine; Accept the comfort and the calm She offers, as a gift divine; Let her fall down and anoint thy feet With the ointment costly and most sweet Of her young blood, and thou shalt live. PRINCE HENRY. And will the righteous Heaven forgive? No action, whether foal or fair, Is ever done, but it leaves somewhere A record, written by fingers ghostly, As a blessing or a curse, and mostly In the greater weakness or greater strength Of the acts which follow it, till at length The wrongs of ages are redressed, And the justice of God made manifest! LUCIFER. In ancient records it is stated That, whenever an evil deed is done, Another devil is created To scourge and torment the offending one! But evil is only good perverted, And Lucifer, the bearer of Light, But an angel fallen and deserted, Thrust from his Father's house with a curse Into the black and endless night. PRINCE HENRY. If justice rules the universe, From the good actions of good men Angels of light should be begotten. And thus the balance restored again. LUCIFER. Yes; if the world were not so rotten, And so given over to the Devil! PRINCE HENRY. But this deed, is it good or evil? Have I thine absolution free To do it, and without restriction? LUCIFER. Ay; and from whatsoever sin Lieth around it and within, From all crimes in which it may involve thee, I now release thee and absolve thee! PRINCE HENRY. Give me thy holy benediction. LUCIFER, stretching forth his hand and muttering. Maledictione perpetua Maledicat vos Pater eternus! THE ANGEL, with the aeolian harp. Take heed! take heed! Noble art thou in thy birth, By the good and the great of earth Hast thou been taught! Be noble in every thought And in every deed! Let not the illusion of thy senses Betray thee to deadly offences, Be strong! be good! be pure! The right only shall endure, All things else are but false pretences. I entreat thee, I implore, Listen no more To the suggestions of an evil spirit, That even now is there, Making the foul seem fair, And selfishness itself a virtue and a merit! A ROOM IN THE FARM-HOUSE GOTTLIEB. It is decided! For many days, And nights as many, we have had A nameless terror in our breast, Making us timid, and afraid Of God, and his mysterious ways! We have been sorrowful and sad; Much have we suffered, much have prayed That He would lead us as is best, And show us what his will required. It is decided; and we give Our child, O Prince, that you may live! URSULA. It is of God. He has inspired This purpose in her: and through pain, Out of a world of sin and woe, He takes her to Himself again. The mother's heart resists no longer; With the Angel of the Lord in vain It wrestled, for he was the stronger. GOTTLIEB. As Abraham offered long ago His son unto the Lord, and even The Everlasting Father in heaven Gave his, as a lamb unto the slaughter, So do I offer up my daughter! URSULA hides her face. ELSIE. My life is little, Only a cup of water, But pure and limpid. Take it, O my Prince! Let it refresh you, Let it restore you. It is given willingly, It is given freely; May God bless the gift! PRINCE HENRY, And the giver! GOTTLIEB. Amen! PRINCE HENRY. I accept it! GOTTLIEB. Where are the children? URSULA. They are already asleep. GOTTLIEB. What if they were dead? IN THE GARDEN ELSIE. I have one thing to ask of you. PRINCE HENRY. What is it? It is already granted. ELSIE. Promise me, When we are gone from here, and on our way Are journeying to Salerno, you will not, By word or deed, endeavor to dissuade me And turn me from my purpose; but remember That as a pilgrim to the Holy City Walks unmolested, and with thoughts of pardon Occupied wholly, so would I approach The gates of Heaven, in this great jubilee, With my petition, putting off from me All thoughts of earth, as shoes from off my feet. Promise me this. PRINCE HENRY. Thy words fall from thy lips Like roses from the lips of Angelo: and angels Might stoop to pick them up! ELSIE. Will you not promise? PRINCE HENRY. If ever we depart upon this journey, So long to one or both of us, I promise. ELSIE. Shall we not go, then? Have you lifted me Into the air, only to hurl me back Wounded upon the ground? and offered me The waters of eternal life, to bid me Drink the polluted puddles of the world? PRINCE HENRY. O Elsie! what a lesson thou dost teach me! The life which is, and that which is to come, Suspended hang in such nice equipoise A breath disturbs the balance; and that scale In which we throw our hearts preponderates, And the other, like an empty one, flies up, And is accounted vanity and air! To me the thought of death is terrible, Having such hold on life. To thee it is not So much even as the lifting of a latch; Only a step into the open air Out of a tent already luminous With light that shines through its transparent walls! O pure in heart! from thy sweet dust shall grow Lilies, upon whose petals will be written "Ave Maria" in characters of gold! III A STREET IN STRASBURG Night. PRINCE HENRY wandering alone, wrapped in a cloak. PRINCE HENRY. Still is the night. The sound of feet Has died away from the empty street, And like an artisan, bending down His head on his anvil, the dark town Sleeps, with a slumber deep and sweet. Sleepless and restless, I alone, In the dusk and damp of these walls of stone, Wander and weep in my remorse! CRIER OF THE DEAD, ringing a bell. Wake! wake! All ye that sleep! Pray for the Dead! Pray for the Dead! PRINCE HENRY. Hark! with what accents loud and hoarse This warder on the walls of death Sends forth the challenge of his breath! I see the dead that sleep in the grave! They rise up and their garments wave, Dimly and spectral, as they rise, With the light of another world in their eyes! CRIER OF THE DEAD. Wake! wake! All ye that sleep! Pray for the Dead! Pray for the Dead! PRINCE HENRY, Why for the dead, who are at rest? Pray for the living, in whose breast The struggle between right and wrong Is raging terrible and strong, As when good angels war with devils! This is the Master of the Revels, Who, at Life's flowing feast, proposes The health of absent friends, and pledges, Not in bright goblets crowned with roses, And tinkling as we touch their edges, But with his dismal, tinkling bell. That mocks and mimics their funeral knell. CRIER OP THE DEAD. Wake! wake! All ye that sleep! Pray for the Dead! Pray for the Dead! PRINCE HENRY. Wake not, beloved! be thy sleep Silent as night is, and as deep! There walks a sentinel at thy gate Whose heart is heavy and desolate, And the heavings of whose bosom number The respirations of thy slumber, As if some strange, mysterious fate Had linked two hearts in one, and mine Went madly wheeling about thine, Only with wider and wilder sweep! CRIER OP THE DEAD, at a distance. Wake! wake! All ye that sleep! Pray for the Dead! Pray for the Dead! PRINCE HENRY. Lo! with what depth of blackness thrown Against the clouds, far up the skies The walls of the cathedral rise, Like a mysterious grove of stone, With fitful lights and shadows blending, As from behind, the moon ascending, Lights its dim aisles and paths unknown! The wind is rising; but the boughs Rise not and fall not with the wind, That through their foliage sobs and soughs; Only the cloudy rack behind, Drifting onward, wild and ragged, Gives to each spire and buttress jagged A seeming motion undefined. Below on the square, an armed knight, Still as a statue and as white, Sits on his steed, and the moonbeams quiver Upon the points of his armor bright As on the ripples of a river. He lifts the visor from his cheek, And beckons, and makes as he would speak. WALTER the Minnesinger. Friend! can you tell me where alight Thuringia's horsemen for the night? For I have lingered in the rear, And wander vainly up and down. PRINCE HENRY. I am a stranger in the town. As thou art; but the voice I hear Is not a stranger to mine ear. Thou art Walter of the Vogelweid! WALTER. Thou hast guessed rightly; and thy name Is Henry of Hoheneck! PRINCE HENRY. Ay, the same. WALTER, embracing him. Come closer, closer to my side! What brings thee hither? What potent charm Has drawn thee from thy German farm Into the old Alsatian city? PRINCE HENRY. A tale of wonder and of pity! A wretched man, almost by stealth Dragging my body to Salem, In the vain hope and search for health, And destined never to return. Already thou hast heard the rest. But what brings thee, thus armed and dight In the equipments of a knight? WALTER. Dost thou not see upon my breast The cross of the Crusaders shine? My pathway leads to Palestine. PRINCE HENRY. Ah, would that way were also mine! O noble poet! thou whose heart Is like a nest of singing-birds Rocked on the topmost bough of life, Wilt thou, too, from our sky depart, And in the clangor of the strife Mingle the music of thy words? WALTER. My hopes are high, my heart is proud, And like a trumpet long and loud, Thither my thoughts all clang and ring! My life is in my hand, and lo! I grasp and bend it as a bow, And shoot forth from its trembling string An arrow, that shall be, perchance, Like the arrow of the Israelite king Shot from the window towards the east. That of the Lord's deliverance! PRINCE HENRY. My life, alas! is what thou seest! O enviable fate! to be Strong, beautiful, and armed like thee With lyre and sword, with song and steel; A hand to smite, a heart to feel! Thy heart, thy hand, thy lyre, thy sword, Thou givest all unto thy Lord; While I, so mean and abject grown, Am thinking of myself alone, WALTER. Be patient; Time will reinstate Thy health and fortunes. PRINCE HENRY. 'T is too late! I cannot strive against my fate! WALTER. Come with me; for my steed is weary; Our journey has been long and dreary, And, dreaming of his stall, he dints With his impatient hoofs the flints. PRINCE HENRY, aside. I am ashamed, in my disgrace, To look into that noble face! To-morrow, Walter, let it be. WALTER. To-morrow, at the dawn of day, I shall again be on my way. Come with me to the hostelry, For I have many things to say. Our journey into Italy Perchance together we may make; Wilt thou not do it for my sake? PRINCE HENRY. A sick man's pace would but impede Thine eager and impatient speed. Besides, my pathway leads me round To Hirsehau, in the forest's bound, Where I assemble man and steed, And all things for my journey's need. They go out. LUCIFER, flying over the city. Sleep, sleep, O city! till the light Wake you to sin and crime again, Whilst on your dreams, like dismal rain, I scatter downward through the night My maledictions dark and deep. I have more martyrs in your walls Than God has; and they cannot sleep; They are my bondsmen and my thralls; Their wretched lives are full of pain, Wild agonies of nerve and brain; And every heart-beat, every breath, Is a convulsion worse than death! Sleep, sleep, O city! though within The circuit of your walls there be No habitation free from sin, And all its nameless misery; The aching heart, the aching head, Grief for the living and the dead, And foul corruption of the time, Disease, distress, and want, and woe, And crimes, and passions that may grow Until they ripen into crime! SQUARE IN FRONT OF THE CATHEDRAL Easter Sunday. FRIAR CUTHBERT preaching to the crowd from a pulpit in the open air. PRINCE HENRY and Elsie crossing the square. PRINCE HENRY. This is the day, when from the dead Our Lord arose; and everywhere, Out of their darkness and despair, Triumphant over fears and foes, The hearts of his disciples rose, When to the women, standing near, The Angel in shining vesture said, "The Lord is risen; he is not here!" And, mindful that the day is come, On all the hearths in Christendom The fires are quenched, to be again Rekindled from the sun, that high Is dancing in the cloudless sky. The churches are all decked with flowers, The salutations among men Are but the Angel's words divine, "Christ is arisen!" and the bells Catch the glad murmur, as it swells, And chant together in their towers. All hearts are glad; and free from care The faces of the people shine. See what a crowd is in the square, Gayly and gallantly arrayed! ELSIE. Let us go back; I am afraid! PRINCE HENRY. Nay, let us mount the church-steps here, Under the doorway's sacred shadow; We can see all things, and be freer From the crowd that madly heaves and presses! ELSIE. What a gay pageant! what bright dresses! It looks like a flower-besprinkled meadow. What is that yonder on the square? PRINCE HENRY. A pulpit in the open air, And a Friar, who is preaching to the crowd In a voice so deep and clear and loud, That, if we listen, and give heed, His lowest words will reach the ear. FRIAR CUTHBERT, gesticulating and cracking a postilion's whip. What ho! good people! do you not hear? Dashing along at the top of his speed, Booted and spurred, on his jaded steed, A courier comes with words of cheer. Courier! what is the news, I pray? "Christ is arisen!" Whence come you? "From court." Then I do not believe it; you say it in sport. Cracks his whip again. Ah, here comes another, riding this way; We soon shall know what he has to say. Courier! what are the tidings to-day? "Christ is arisen!" Whence come you? "From town." Then I do not believe it; away with you, clown. Cracks his whip more violently. And here comes a third, who is spurring amain; What news do you bring, with your loose-hanging rein, Your spurs wet with blood, and your bridle with foam? "Christ is arisen!" Whence come you? "From Rome." Ah, now I believe. He is risen, indeed. Ride on with the news, at the top of your speed! Great applause among the crowd. To come back to my text! When the news was first spread That Christ was arisen indeed from the dead, Very great was the joy of the angels in heaven; And as great the dispute as to who should carry The tidings thereof to the Virgin Mary, Pierced to the heart with sorrows seven. Old Father Adam was first to propose, As being the author of all our woes; But he was refused, for fear, said they, He would stop to eat apples on the way! Abel came next, but petitioned in vain, Because he might meet with his brother Cain! Noah, too, was refused, lest his weakness for wine Should delay him at every tavern-sign; And John the Baptist could not get a vote, On account of his old-fashioned camel's-hair coat; And the Penitent Thief, who died on the cross, Was reminded that all his bones were broken! Till at last, when each in turn had spoken, The company being still at loss, The Angel, who rolled away the stone, Was sent to the sepulchre, all alone. And filled with glory that gloomy prison, And said to the Virgin, "The Lord is arisen!" The Cathedral bells ring. But hark! the bells are beginning to chime; And I feel that I am growing hoarse. I will put an end to my discourse, And leave the rest for some other time. For the bells themselves are the best of preachers; Their brazen lips are learned teachers, From their pulpits of stone, in the upper air, Sounding aloft, without crack or flaw, Shriller than trumpets under the Law, Now a sermon, and now a prayer. The clangorous hammer is the tongue, This way, that way, beaten and swung, That from mouth of brass, as from Month of Gold, May be taught the Testaments, New and Old, And above it the great cross-beam of wood Representeth the Holy Rood, Upon which, like the bell, our hopes are hung. And the wheel wherewith it is swayed and rung Is the mind of man, that round and round Sways, and maketh the tongue to sound! And the rope, with its twisted cordage three, Denoteth the Scriptural Trinity Of Morals, and Symbols, and History; And the upward and downward motion show That we touch upon matters high and low; And the constant change and transmutation Of action and of contemplation, Downward, the Scripture brought from on high, Upward, exalted again to the sky; Downward, the literal interpretation, Upward, the Vision and Mystery! And now, my hearers, to make an end, I have only one word more to say; In the church, in honor of Easter day Will be presented a Miracle Play; And I hope you will have the grace to attend. Christ bring us at last to his felicity! Pax vobiscum! et Benedicite! IN THE CATHEDRAL CHANT. Kyrie Eleison Christe Eleison! ELSIE. I am at home here in my Father's house! These paintings of the Saints upon the walls Have all familiar and benignant faces. PRINCE HENRY. The portraits of the family of God! Thine own hereafter shall be placed among them. ELSIE. How very grand it is and wonderful! Never have I beheld a church so splendid! Such columns, and such arches, and such windows, So many tombs and statues in the chapels, And under them so many confessionals. They must be for the rich. I should not like To tell my sins in such a church as this. Who built it? PRINCE HENRY. A great master of his craft, Erwin von Steinbach; but not he alone, For many generations labored with him. Children that came to see these Saints in stone, As day by day out of the blocks they rose, Grew old and died, and still the work went on, And on, and on, and is not yet completed. The generation that succeeds our own Perhaps may finish it. The architect Built his great heart into these sculptured stones, And with him toiled his children, and their lives Were builded, with his own, into the walls, As offerings unto God. You see that statue Fixing its joyous, but deep-wrinkled eyes Upon the Pillars of the Angels yonder. That is the image of the master, carved By the fair hand of his own child, Sabina. ELSIE. How beautiful is the column that he looks at! PRINCE HENRY. That, too, she sculptured. At the base of it Stand the Evangelists; above their heads Four Angels blowing upon marble trumpets, And over them the blessed Christ, surrounded By his attendant ministers, upholding The instruments of his passion. ELSIE. O my Lord! Would I could leave behind me upon earth Some monument to thy glory, such as this! PRINCE HENRY. A greater monument than this thou leavest In thine own life, all purity and love! See, too, the Rose, above the western portal Resplendent with a thousand gorgeous colors, The perfect flower of Gothic loveliness! ELSIE. And, in the gallery, the long line of statues, Christ with his twelve Apostles watching us! A Bishop in armor, booted and spurred, passes with his train. PRINCE HENRY. But come away; we have not time to look, The crowd already fills the church, and yonder Upon a stage, a herald with a trumpet, Clad like the Angel Gabriel, proclaims The Mystery that will now be represented. THE NATIVITY A MIRACLE-PLAY INTROITUS PRAECO. Come, good people, all and each, Come and listen to our speech! In your presence here I stand, With a trumpet in my hand, To announce the Easter Play, Which we represent to-day! First of all we shall rehearse, In our action and our verse, The Nativity of our Lord, As written in the old record Of the Protevangelion, So that he who reads may run! Blows his trumpet. I. HEAVEN. MERCY, at the feet of God. Have pity, Lord! be not afraid To save mankind, whom thou hast made, Nor let the souls that were betrayed Perish eternally! JUSTICE. It cannot be, it must not be! When in the garden placed by thee, The fruit of the forbidden tree He ate, and he must die! MERCY. Have pity, Lord! let penitence Atone for disobedience, Nor let the fruit of man's offence Be endless misery! JUSTICE. What penitence proportionate Can e'er be felt for sin so great? Of the forbidden fruit he ate, And damned must he be! GOD. He shall be saved, if that within The bounds of earth one free from sin Be found, who for his kith and kin Will suffer martyrdom. THE FOUR VIRTUES. Lord! we have searched the world around, From centre to the utmost bound, But no such mortal can be found; Despairing, back we come. WISDOM. No mortal, but a God-made man, Can ever carry out this plan, Achieving what none other can, Salvation unto all! GOD. Go, then, O my beloved Son! It can by thee alone be done; By thee the victory shall be won O'er Satan and the Fall! Here the ANGEL GABRIEL shall leave Paradise and fly towards the earth; the jaws of hell open below, and the Devils walk about, making a great noise. II. MARY AT THE WELL MARY. Along the garden walk, and thence Through the wicket in the garden fence I steal with quiet pace, My pitcher at the well to fill, That lies so deep and cool and still In this sequestered place. These sycamores keep guard around; I see no face, I hear no sound, Save bubblings of the spring, And my companions, who, within, The threads of gold and scarlet spin, And at their labor sing. THE ANGEL GABRIEL. Hail, Virgin Mary, full of grace! Here MARY looketh around her, trembling, and then saith: MARY. Who is it speaketh in this place, With such a gentle voice? GABRIEL. The Lord of heaven is with thee now! Blessed among all women thou, Who art his holy choice! MARY, setting down the pitcher. What can this mean? No one is near, And yet, such sacred words I hear, I almost fear to stay. Here the ANGEL, appearing to her, shall say: GABRIEL. Fear not, O Mary! but believe! For thou, a Virgin, shalt conceive A child this very day. Fear not, O Mary! from the sky The Majesty of the Most High Shall overshadow thee! MARY. Behold the handmaid of the Lord! According to thy holy word, So be it unto me! Here the Devils shall again make a great noise, under the stage. III. THE ANGELS OF THE SEVEN PLANETS, BEARING THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM THE ANGELS. The Angels of the Planets Seven, Across the shining fields of heaven The natal star we bring! Dropping our sevenfold virtues down As priceless jewels in the crown Of Christ, our new-born King. RAPHAEL. I am the Angel of the Sun, Whose flaming wheels began to run When God Almighty's breath Said to the darkness and the Night, Let there he light! and there was light! I bring the gift of Faith. ONAFIEL. I am the Angel of the Moon, Darkened to be rekindled soon Beneath the azure cope! Nearest to earth, it is my ray That best illumes the midnight way; I bring the gift of Hope! ANAEL. The Angel of the Star of Love, The Evening Star, that shines above The place where lovers be, Above all happy hearths and homes, On roofs of thatch, or golden domes, I give him Charity! ZOBIACHEL. The Planet Jupiter is mine! The mightiest star of all that shine, Except the sun alone! He is the High Priest of the Dove, And sends, from his great throne above, Justice, that shall atone! MICHAEL. The Planet Mercury, whose place Is nearest to the sun in space, Is my allotted sphere! And with celestial ardor swift I hear upon my hands the gift Of heavenly Prudence here! URIEL. I am the Minister of Mars, The strongest star among the stars! My songs of power prelude The march and battle of man's life, And for the suffering and the strife, I give him Fortitude! ORIFEL. The Angel of the uttermost Of all the shining, heavenly host, From the far-off expanse Of the Saturnian, endless space I bring the last, the crowning grace, The gift of Temperance! A sudden light shines from the windows of the stable in the village below. IV. THE WISE MEN OF THE EAST The stable of the Inn. The VIRGIN and CHILD. Three Gypsy Kings, GASPAR, MELCHIOR, and BELSHAZZAR, shall come in. GASPAR. Hail to thee, Jesus of Nazareth! Though in a manger thou draw breath, Thou art greater than Life and Death, Greater than Joy or Woe! This cross upon the line of life Portendeth struggle, toil, and strife, And through a region with peril rife In darkness shalt thou go! MELCHIOR. Hail to thee, King of Jerusalem! Though humbly born in Bethlehem, A sceptre and a diadem Await thy brow and hand! The sceptre is a simple reed, The crown will make thy temples bleed, And in thine hour of greatest need, Abashed thy subjects stand! BELSHAZZAR. Hail to thee, Christ of Christendom! O'er all the earth thy kingdom come! From distant Trebizond to Rome Thy name shall men adore! Peace and good-will among all men, The Virgin has returned again, Returned the old Saturnian reign And Golden Age once more. THE CHILD CHRIST. Jesus, the Son of God, am I, Born here to suffer and to die According to the prophecy, That other men may live! THE VIRGIN. And now these clothes, that wrapped Him, take And keep them precious, for his sake; Our benediction thus we make, Naught else have we to give. She gives them swaddling-clothes and they depart. V. THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT Here JOSEPH shall come in, leading an ass, on which are seated MARY and the CHILD. MARY. Here will we rest us, under these O'erhanging branches of the trees, Where robins chant their Litanies And canticles of joy. JOSEPH. My saddle-girths have given way With trudging through the heat to-day; To you I think it is but play To ride and hold the boy. MARY. Hark! how the robins shout and sing, As if to hail their infant King! I will alight at yonder spring To wash his little coat. JOSEPH. And I will hobble well the ass, Lest, being loose upon the grass, He should escape; for, by the mass, He's nimble as a goat. Here MARY shall alight and go to the spring. MARY. O Joseph! I am much afraid, For men are sleeping in the shade; I fear that we shall be waylaid, And robbed and beaten sore! Here a band of robbers shall be seen sleeping, two of whom shall rise and come forward. DUMACHUS. Cock's soul! deliver up your gold! JOSEPH. I pray you, sirs, let go your hold! You see that I am weak and old, Of wealth I have no store. DUMACHUS. Give up your money! TITUS. Prithee cease. Let these people go in peace. DUMACHUS. First let them pay for their release, And then go on their way. TITUS. These forty groats I give in fee, If thou wilt only silent be. MARY. May God be merciful to thee Upon the Judgment Day! JESUS. When thirty years shall have gone by, I at Jerusalem shall die, By Jewish hands exalted high On the accursed tree, Then on my right and my left side, These thieves shall both be crucified, And Titus thenceforth shall abide In paradise with me. Here a great rumor of trumpets and horses, like the noise of a king with his army, and the robbers shall take flight. VI. THE SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS KING HEROD. Potz-tausend! Himmel-sacrament! Filled am I with great wonderment At this unwelcome news! Am I not Herod? Who shall dare My crown to take, my sceptre bear, As king among the Jews? Here he shall stride up and down and flourish his sword. What ho! I fain would drink a can Of the strong wine of Canaan! The wine of Helbon bring I purchased at the Fair of Tyre, As red as blood, as hot as fire, And fit for any king! He quaffs great goblets of wine. Now at the window will I stand, While in the street the armed band The little children slay; The babe just born in Bethlehem Will surely slaughtered be with them, Nor live another day! Here a voice of lamentation shall be heard in the street. RACHEL. O wicked king! O cruel speed! To do this most unrighteous deed! My children all are slain! HEROD. Ho, seneschal! another cup! With wine of Sorek fill it up! I would a bumper drain! RAHAB. May maledictions fall and blast Thyself and lineage to the last Of all thy kith and kin! HEROD. Another goblet! quick! and stir Pomegranate juice and drops of myrrh And calamus therein! SOLDIERS, in the street. Give up thy child into our hands! It is King Herod who commands That he should thus be slain! THE NURSE MEDUSA. O monstrous men! What have ye done! It is King Herod's only son That ye have cleft in twain! HEROD. Ah, luckless day! What words of fear Are these that smite upon my ear With such a doleful sound! What torments rack my heart and head! Would I were dead! would I were dead, And buried in the ground! He falls down and writhes as though eaten by worms. Hell opens, and SATAN and ASTAROTH come forth and drag him down. VII. JESUS AT PLAY WITH HIS SCHOOLMATES JESUS. The shower is over. Let us play, And make some sparrows out of clay, Down by the river's side. JUDAS. See, how the stream has overflowed Its banks, and o'er the meadow road Is spreading far and wide! They draw water out of the river by channels and form little pools. JESUS makes twelve sparrows of clay, and the other boys do the same. JESUS. Look! look how prettily I make These little sparrows by the lake Bend down their necks and drink! Now will I make them sing and soar So far, they shall return no more Unto this river's brink. JUDAS. That canst thou not! They are but clay, They cannot sing, nor fly away Above the meadow lands! JESUS. Fly, fly! ye sparrows! you are free! And while you live, remember me, Who made you with my hands. Here JESUS shall clap his hands, and the sparrows shall fly away, chirruping. JUDAS. Thou art a sorcerer, I know; Oft has my mother told me so, I will not play with thee! He strikes JESUS in the right side. JESUS. Ah, Judas! thou hast smote my side, And when I shall be crucified, There shall I pierced be! Here JOSEPH shall come in and say: JOSEPH. Ye wicked boys! why do ye play, And break the holy Sabbath day? What, think ye, will your mothers say To see you in such plight! In such a sweat and such a heat, With all that mud upon your feet! There's not a beggar in the street Makes such a sorry sight! VIII. THE VILLAGE SCHOOL The RABBI BEN ISRAEL, sitting on a high stool, with a long beard, and a rod in his hand. RABBI. I am the Rabbi Ben Israel, Throughout this village known full well, And, as my scholars all will tell, Learned in things divine; The Cabala and Talmud hoar Than all the prophets prize I more, For water is all Bible lore, But Mishna is strong wine. My fame extends from West to East, And always, at the Purim feast, I am as drunk as any beast That wallows in his sty; The wine it so elateth me, That I no difference can see Between "Accursed Haman be!" And "Blessed be Mordecai!" Come hither, Judas Iscariot; Say, if thy lesson thou hast got From the Rabbinical Book or not. Why howl the dogs at night? JUDAS. In the Rabbinical Book, it saith The dogs howl, when with icy breath Great Sammael, the Angel of Death, Takes through the town his flight! RABBI. Well, boy! now say, if thou art wise, When the Angel of Death, who is full of eyes, Comes where a sick man dying lies, What doth he to the wight? JUDAS. He stands beside him, dark and tall, Holding a sword, from which doth fall Into his mouth a drop of gall, And so he turneth white. RABBI. And now, my Judas, say to me What the great Voices Four may be, That quite across the world do flee, And are not heard by men? JUDAS. The Voice of the Sun in heaven's dome, The Voice of the Murmuring of Rome, The Voice of a Soul that goeth home, And the Angel of the Rain! RABBI. Right are thine answers every one! Now, little Jesus, the carpenter's son, Let us see how thy task is done; Canst thou thy letters say? JESUS. Aleph. RABBI. What next? Do not stop yet! Go on with all the alphabet. Come, Aleph, Beth; dost thou forget? Cock's soul! thou'dst rather play! JESUS. What Aleph means I fain would know Before I any farther go! RABBI. Oh, by Saint Peter! wouldst thou so? Come hither, boy, to me. As surely as the letter Jod Once cried aloud, and spake to God, So surely shalt thou feel this rod, And punished shalt thou be! Here RABBI BEN ISRAEL shall lift up his rod to strike Jesus, and his right arm shall be paralyzed. IX. CROWNED WITH FLOWERS JESUS sitting among his playmates, crowned with flowers as their King. BOYS. We spread our garments on the ground! With fragrant flowers thy head is crowned While like a guard we stand around, And hail thee as our King! Thou art the new King of the Jews! Nor let the passers-by refuse To bring that homage which men use To majesty to bring. Here a traveller shall go by, and the boys shall lay hold of his garments and say: BOYS. Come hither I and all reverence pay Unto our monarch, crowned to-day! Then go rejoicing on your way, In all prosperity! TRAVELLER. Hail to the King of Bethlehem, Who weareth in his diadem The yellow crocus for the gem Of his authority! He passes by; and others come in, bearing on a litter a sick child. BOYS. Set down the litter and draw near! The King of Bethlehem is here! What ails the child, who seems to fear That we shall do him harm? THE BEARERS. He climbed up to the robin's nest, And out there darted, from his rest, A serpent with a crimson crest, And stung him in the arm. JESUS. Bring him to me, and let me feel The wounded place; my touch can heal The sting of serpents, and can steal The poison from the bite! He touches the wound, and the boy begins to cry. Cease to lament! I can foresee That thou hereafter known shalt be, Among the men who follow me, As Simon the Canaanite! EPILOGUE In the after part of the day Will be represented another play, Of the Passion of our Blessed Lord, Beginning directly after Nones! At the close of which we shall accord, By way of benison and reward, The sight of a holy Martyr's bones! IV THE ROAD TO HIRSCHAU PRINCE HENRY and ELSIE, with their attendants on horseback. ELSIE. Onward and onward the highway runs to the distant city, impatiently bearing Tidings of human joy and disaster, of love and of hate, of doing and daring! PRINCE HENRY. This life of ours is a wild aeolian harp of many a joyous strain, But under them all there runs a loud perpetual wail, as of souls in pain. ELSIE. Faith alone can interpret life, and the heart that aches and bleeds with the stigma Of pain, alone bears the likeness of Christ, and can comprehend its dark enigma. PRINCE HENRY. Man is selfish, and seeketh pleasure with little care of what may betide, Else why am I travelling here beside thee, a demon that rides by an angel's side? ELSIE. All the hedges are white with dust, and the great dog under the creaking wain Hangs his head in the lazy heat, while onward the horses toil and strain. PRINCE HENRY. Now they stop at the wayside inn, and the wagoner laughs with the landlord's daughter, While out of the dripping trough the horses distend their leathern sides with water. ELSIE. All through life there are wayside inns, where man may refresh his soul with love; Even the lowest may quench his thirst at rivulets fed by springs from above. PRINCE HENRY. Yonder, where rises the cross of stone, our journey along the highway ends, And over the fields, by a bridle path, down into the broad green valley descends. ELSIE. I am not sorry to leave behind the beaten road with its dust and heat The air will be sweeter far, and the turf will be softer under our horses' feet. They turn down a green lane. ELSIE. Sweet is the air with the budding haws, and the valley stretching for miles below Is white with blossoming cherry-trees, as if just covered with lightest snow. PRINCE HENRY. Over our heads a white cascade is gleaming against the distant hill; We cannot hear it, nor see it move, but it hangs like a banner when winds are still. ELSIE. Damp and cool is this deep ravine, and cool the sound of the brook by our side! What is this castle that rises above us, and lords it over a land so wide? PRINCE HENRY. It is the home of the Counts of Calva; well have I known these scenes of old, Well I remember each tower and turret, remember the brooklet, the wood, and the wold. ELSIE. Hark! from the little village below us the bells of the church are ringing for rain! Priests and peasants in long procession come forth and kneel on the arid plain. PRINCE HENRY. They have not long to wait, for I see in the south uprising a little cloud, That before the sun shall be set will cover the sky above us as with a shroud. They pass on. THE CONVENT OF HIRSCHAU IN THE BLACK FOREST. The Convent cellar. FRIAR CLAUS comes in with a light and a basket of empty flagons. FRIAR CLAUS. I always enter this sacred place With a thoughtful, solemn, and reverent pace, Pausing long enough on each stair To breathe an ejaculatory prayer, And a benediction on the vines That produce these various sorts of wines! For my part, I am well content That we have got through with the tedious Lent! Fasting is all very well for those Who have to contend with invisible foes; But I am quite sure it does not agree With a quiet, peaceable man like me, Who am not of that nervous and meagre kind, That are always distressed in body and mind! And at times it really does me good To come down among this brotherhood, Dwelling forever underground, Silent, contemplative, round and sound; Each one old, and brown with mould, But filled to the lips with the ardor of youth, With the latent power and love of truth, And with virtues fervent and manifold. I have heard it said, that at Easter-tide, When buds are swelling on every side, And the sap begins to move in the vine, Then in all cellars, far and wide, The oldest as well as the newest wine Begins to stir itself, and ferment, With a kind of revolt and discontent At being so long in darkness pent, And fain would burst from its sombre tun To bask on the hillside in the sun; As in the bosom of us poor friars, The tumult of half-subdued desires For the world that we have left behind Disturbs at times all peace of mind! And now that we have lived through Lent, My duty it is, as often before, To open awhile the prison-door, And give these restless spirits vent. Now here is a cask that stands alone, And has stood a hundred years or more, Its beard of cobwebs, long and hoar, Trailing and sweeping along the floor, Like Barbarossa, who sits in his cave, Taciturn, sombre, sedate, and grave, Till his beard has grown through the table of stone! It is of the quick and not of the dead! In its veins the blood is hot and red, And a heart still beats in those ribs of oak That time may have tamed, but has not broke! It comes from Bacharach on the Rhine, Is one of the three best kinds of wine, And costs some hundred florins the ohm; But that I do not consider dear, When I remember that every year Four butts are sent to the Pope of Rome. And whenever a goblet thereof I drain, The old rhyme keeps running in my brain; At Bacharach on the Rhine, At Hochheim on the Main, And at Wurzburg on the Stein, Grow the three best kinds of wine! They are all good wines, and better far Than those of the Neckar, or those of the Ahr. In particular, Wurzburg well may boast Of its blessed wine of the Holy Ghost, Which of all wines I like the most. This I shall draw for the Abbot's drinking, Who seems to be much of my way of thinking. Fills a flagon. Ah! how the streamlet laughs and sings! What a delicious fragrance springs From the deep flagon, while it fills, As of hyacinths and daffodils! Between this cask and the Abbot's lips Many have been the sips and slips; Many have been the draughts of wine, On their way to his, that have stopped at mine; And many a time my soul has hankered For a deep draught out of his silver tankard, When it should have been busy with other affairs, Less with its longings and more with its prayers. But now there is no such awkward condition, No danger of death and eternal perdition; So here's to the Abbot and Brothers all, Who dwell in this convent of Peter and Paul! He drinks. O cordial delicious! O soother of pain! It flashes like sunshine into my brain! A benison rest on the Bishop who sends Such a fudder of wine as this to his friends! And now a flagon for such as may ask A draught from the noble Bacharach cask, And I will be gone, though I know full well The cellar's a cheerfuller place than the cell. Behold where he stands, all sound and good, Brown and old in his oaken hood; Silent he seems externally As any Carthusian monk may be; But within, what a spirit of deep unrest! What a seething and simmering in his breast! As if the heaving of his great heart Would burst his belt of oak apart! Let me unloose this button of wood, And quiet a little his turbulent mood. Sets it running. See! how its currents gleam and shine, As if they had caught the purple hues Of autumn sunsets on the Rhine, Descending and mingling with the dews; Or as if the grapes were stained with the blood Of the innocent boy, who, some years back, Was taken and crucified by the Jews, In that ancient town of Bacharach! Perdition upon those infidel Jews, In that ancient town of Bacharach! The beautiful town, that gives us wine With the fragrant odor of Muscadine! I should deem it wrong to let this pass Without first touching my lips to the glass, For here in the midst of the current I stand Like the stone Pfalz in the midst of the river, Taking toll upon either hand, And much more grateful to the giver. He drinks. Here, now, is a very inferior kind, Such as in any town you may find, Such as one might imagine would suit The rascal who drank wine out of a boot. And, after all, it was not a crime, For he won thereby Dorf Huffelsheim. A jolly old toper! who at a pull Could drink a postilion's jack-boot full, And ask with a laugh, when that was done, If the fellow had left the other one! This wine is as good as we can afford To the friars who sit at the lower board, And cannot distinguish bad from good, And are far better off than if they could, Being rather the rude disciples of beer, Than of anything more refined and dear! Fills the flagon and departs. THE SCRIPTORIUM FRIAR PACIFICUS transcribing and illuminating. FRIAR PACIFICUS. It is growing dark! Yet one line more, And then my work for to-day is o'er. I come again to the name of the Lord! Ere I that awful name record, That is spoken so lightly among men, Let me pause awhile and wash my pen; Pure from blemish and blot must it be When it writes that word of mystery! Thus have I labored on and on, Nearly through the Gospel of John. Can it be that from the lips Of this same gentle Evangelist, That Christ himself perhaps has kissed, Came the dread Apocalypse! It has a very awful look, As it stands there at the end of the book, Like the sun in an eclipse. Ah me! when I think of that vision divine, Think of writing it, line by line, I stand in awe of the terrible curse, Like the trump of doom, in the closing verse! God forgive me! if ever I Take aught from the book of that Prophecy, Lest my part too should be taken away From the Book of Life on the Judgment Day. This is well written, though I say it! I should not be afraid to display it In open day, on the selfsame shelf With the writings of St. Thecla herself, Or of Theodosius, who of old Wrote the Gospels in letters of gold! That goodly folio standing yonder, Without a single blot or blunder, Would not bear away the palm from mine, If we should compare them line for line. There, now, is an initial letter! Saint Ulric himself never made a better! Finished down to the leaf and the snail, Down to the eyes on the peacock's tail! And now, as I turn the volume over, And see what lies between cover and cover, What treasures of art these pages hold, All ablaze with crimson and gold, God forgive me! I seem to feel A certain satisfaction steal Into my heart, and into my brain, As if my talent had not lain Wrapped in a napkin, and all in vain. Yes, I might almost say to the Lord, Here is a copy of thy Word, Written out with much toil and pain; Take it, O Lord, and let it be As something I have done for thee! He looks from the window. How sweet the air is! how fair the scene! I wish I had as lovely a green To paint my landscapes and my leaves! How the swallows twitter under the eaves! There, now, there is one in her nest; I can just catch a glimpse of her head and breast, And will sketch her thus, in her quiet nook For the margin of my Gospel book. He makes a sketch. I can see no more. Through the valley yonder A shower is passing; I hear the thunder Mutter its curses in the air, The devil's own and only prayer! The dusty road is brown with rain, And, speeding on with might and main, Hitherward rides a gallant train. They do not parley, they cannot wait, But hurry in at the convent gate. What a fair lady! and beside her What a handsome, graceful, noble rider! Now she gives him her hand to alight; They will beg a shelter for the night. I will go down to the corridor, And try to see that face once more; It will do for the face of some beautiful Saint, Or for one of the Maries I shall paint. Goes out. THE CLOISTERS The ABBOT ERNESTUS pacing to and fro. ABBOT. Slowly, slowly up the wall Steals the sunshine, steals the shade; Evening damps begin to fall, Evening shadows are displayed. Round me, o'er me, everywhere, All the sky is grand with clouds, And athwart the evening air Wheel the swallows home in crowds. Shafts of sunshine from the west Paint the dusky windows red; Darker shadows, deeper rest, Underneath and overhead. Darker, darker, and more wan, In my breast the shadows fall; Upward steals the life of man, As the sunshine from the wall. From the wall into the sky, From the roof along the spire; Ah, the souls of those that die Are but sunbeams lifted higher. Enter PRINCE HENRY. PRINCE HENRY. Christ is arisen! ABBOT. Amen! He is arisen! His peace be with you! PRINCE HENRY. Here it reigns forever! The peace of God, that passeth understanding, Reigns in these cloisters and these corridors. Are you Ernestus, Abbot of the convent? ABBOT. I am. PRINCE HENRY. And I Prince Henry of Hoheneck, Who crave your hospitality to-night. ABBOT. You are thrice welcome to our humble walls. You do us honor; and we shall requite it, I fear, but poorly, entertaining you With Paschal eggs, and our poor convent wine, The remnants of our Easter holidays. PRINCE HENRY. How fares it with the holy monks of Hirschau? Are all things well with them? ABBOT. All things are well. PRINCE HENRY. A noble convent! I have known it long By the report of travellers. I now see Their commendations lag behind the truth. You lie here in the valley of the Nagold As in a nest: and the still river, gliding Along its bed, is like an admonition How all things pass. Your lands are rich and ample, And your revenues large. God's benediction Rests on your convent. ABBOT. By our charities We strive to merit it. Our Lord and Master, When He departed, left us in his will, As our best legacy on earth, the poor! These we have always with us; had we not, Our hearts would grow as hard as are these stones. PRINCE HENRY. If I remember right, the Counts of Calva Founded your convent. ABBOT. Even as you say. PRINCE HENRY. And, if I err not, it is very old. ABBOT. Within these cloisters lie already buried Twelve holy Abbots. Underneath the flags On which we stand, the Abbot William lies, Of blessed memory. PRINCE HENRY. And whose tomb is that, Which bears the brass escutcheon? ABBOT. A benefactor's. Conrad, a Count of Calva, he who stood Godfather to our bells. PRINCE HENRY. Your monks are learned And holy men, I trust. ABBOT. There are among them Learned and holy men. Yet in this age We need another Hildebrand, to shake And purify us like a mighty wind. The world is wicked, and sometimes I wonder God does not lose his patience with it wholly, And shatter it like glass! Even here, at times, Within these walls, where all should be at peace, I have my trials. Time has laid his hand Upon my heart, gently, not smiting it, But as a harper lays his open palm Upon his harp to deaden its vibrations, Ashes are on my head, and on my lips Sackcloth, and in my breast a heaviness And weariness of life, that makes me ready To say to the dead Abbots under us, "Make room for me!" Ony I see the dusk Of evening twilight coming, and have not Completed half my task; and so at times The thought of my shortcomings in this life Falls like a shadow on the life to come. PRINCE HENRY. We must all die, and not the old alone; The young have no exemption from that doom. ABBOT. Ah, yes! the young may die, but the old must! That is the difference. PRINCE HENRY. I have heard much laud Of your transcribers, Your Scriptorium Is famous among all; your manuscripts Praised for their beauty and their excellence. ABBOT. That is indeed our boast. If you desire it You shall behold these treasures. And meanwhile Shall the Refectorarius bestow Your horses and attendants for the night. They go in. The Vesper-bell rings. THE CHAPEL Vespers: after which the monks retire, a chorister leading an old monk who is blind. PRINCE HENRY. They are all gone, save one who lingers, Absorbed in deep and silent prayer. As if his heart could find no rest, At times he beats his heaving breast With clenched and convulsive fingers, Then lifts them trembling in the air. A chorister, with golden hair, Guides hitherward his heavy pace. Can it be so? Or does my sight Deceive me in the uncertain light? Ah no! I recognize that face Though Time has touched it in his flight, And changed the auburn hair to white. It is Count Hugo of the Rhine, The deadliest foe of all our race, And hateful unto me and mine! THE BLIND MONK. Who is it that doth stand so near His whispered words I almost hear? PRINCE HENRY. I am Prince Henry of Hoheneck, And you, Count Hugo of the Rhine! I know you, and I see the scar, The brand upon your forehead, shine And redden like a baleful star! THE BLIND MONK. Count Hugo once, but now the wreck Of what I was. O Hoheneck! The passionate will, the pride, the wrath That bore me headlong on my path, Stumbled and staggered into fear, And failed me in my mad career, As a tired steed some evil-doer, Alone upon a desolate moor, Bewildered, lost, deserted, blind, And hearing loud and close behind The o'ertaking steps of his pursuer. Then suddenly from the dark there came A voice that called me by my name, And said to me, "Kneel down and pray!" And so my terror passed away, Passed utterly away forever. Contrition, penitence, remorse, Came on me, with o'erwhelming force; A hope, a longing, an endeavor, By days of penance and nights of prayer, To frustrate and defeat despair! Calm, deep, and still is now my heart, With tranquil waters overflowed; A lake whose unseen fountains start, Where once the hot volcano glowed. And you, O Prince of Hoheneck! Have known me in that earlier time, A man of violence and crime, Whose passions brooked no curb nor check. Behold me now, in gentler mood, One of this holy brotherhood. Give me your hand; here let me kneel; Make your reproaches sharp as steel; Spurn me, and smite me on each cheek; No violence can harm the meek, There is no wound Christ cannot heal! Yes; lift your princely hand, and take Revenge, if 't is revenge you seek; Then pardon me, for Jesus' sake! PRINCE HENRY. Arise, Count Hugo! let there be No further strife nor enmity Between us twain; we both have erred Too rash in act, too wroth in word, From the beginning have we stood In fierce, defiant attitude, Each thoughtless of the other's right, And each reliant on his might. But now our souls are more subdued; The hand of God, and not in vain, Has touched us with the fire of pain. Let us kneel down and side by side Pray till our souls are purified, And pardon will not be denied! They kneel. THE REFECTORY Gaudiolum of Monks at midnight. LUCIFER disguised as a Friar. FRIAR PAUL sings. Ave! color vini clari, Dulcis potus, non amari, Tua nos inebriari Digneris potentia! FRIAR CUTHBERT. Not so much noise, my worthy freres, You'll disturb the Abbot at his prayers. FRIAR PAUL sings. O! quam placens in colore! O! quam fragrans in odore! O! quam sapidum in ore! Dulce linguae vinculum! FRIAR CUTHBERT. I should think your tongue had broken its chain! FRIAR PAUL sings. Felix venter quem intrabis! Felix guttur quod rigabis! Felix os quod tu lavabis! Et beata labia! FRIAR CUTHBERT. Peace! I say, peace! Will you never cease! You will rouse up the Abbot, I tell you again! FRIAR JOHN. No danger! to-night he will let us alone, As I happen to know he has guests of his own. FRIAR CUTHBERT. Who are they? FRIAR JOHN. A German Prince and his train, Who arrived here just before the rain. There is with him a damsel fair to see, As slender and graceful as a reed! When she alighted from her steed, It seemed like a blossom blown from a tree. FRIAR CUTHBERT. None of your pale-faced girls for me! None of your damsels of high degree! FRIAR JOHN. Come, old fellow, drink down to your peg! But do not drink any further, I beg! FRIAR PAUL sings. In the days of gold, The days of old, Crosier of wood And bishop of gold! FRIAR CUTHBERT. What an infernal racket and riot! Can you not drink your wine in quiet? Why fill the convent with such scandals, As if we were so many drunken Vandals? FRIAR PAUL continues. Now we have changed That law so good To crosier of gold And bishop of wood! FRIAR CUTHBERT. Well, then, since you are in the mood To give your noisy humors vent, Sing and howl to your heart's content! CHORUS OF MONKS. Funde vinum, funde! Tanquam sint fluminis undae, Nec quaeras unde, Sed fundas semper abunde! FRIAR JOHN. What is the name of yonder friar, With an eye that glows like a coal of fire, And such a black mass of tangled hair? FRIAR PAUL. He who is sitting there, With a rollicking, Devil may care, Free and easy look and air, As if he were used to such feasting and frolicking? FRIAR JOHN. The same. FRIAR PAUL. He's a stranger. You had better ask his name, And where he is going and whence he came. FRIAR JOHN. Hallo! Sir Friar! FRIAR PAUL. You must raise your voice a little higher, He does not seem to hear what you say. Now, try again! He is looking this way. FRIAR JOHN. Hallo! Sir Friar, We wish to inquire Whence you came, and where you are going, And anything else that is worth the knowing. So be so good as to open your head. LUCIFER. I am a Frenchman born and bred, Going on a pilgrimage to Rome. My home Is the convent of St. Gildas de Rhuys, Of which, very like, you never have heard. MONKS. Never a word. LUCIFER. You must know, then, it is in the diocese Called the Diocese of Vannes, In the province of Brittany. From the gray rocks of Morbihan It overlooks the angry sea; The very sea-shore where, In his great despair, Abbot Abelard walked to and fro, Filling the night with woe, And wailing aloud to the merciless seas The name of his sweet Heloise, Whilst overhead The convent windows gleamed as red As the fiery eyes of the monks within, Who with jovial din Gave themselves up to all kinds of sin! Ha! that is a convent! that is an abbey! Over the doors, None of your death-heads carved in wood, None of your Saints looking pious and good, None of your Patriarchs old and shabby! But the heads and tusks of boars, And the cells Hung all round with the fells Of the fallow-deer. And then what cheer! What jolly, fat friars, Sitting round the great, roaring fires, Roaring louder than they, With their strong wines, And their concubines, And never a bell, With its swagger and swell, Calling you up with a start of affright In the dead of night, To send you grumbling down dark stairs, To mumble your prayers; But the cheery crow Of cocks in the yard below, After daybreak, an hour or so, And the barking of deep-mouthed hounds, These are the sounds That, instead of bells, salute the ear. And then all day Up and away Through the forest, hunting the deer! Ah, my friends, I'm afraid that here You are a little too pious, a little too tame, And the more is the shame. 'T is the greatest folly Not to be jolly; That's what I think! Come, drink, drink, Drink, and die game! MONKS. And your Abbot What's-his-name? LUCIFER. Abelard! MONKS. Did he drink hard? LUCIFER. Oh, no! Not he! He was a dry old fellow, Without juice enough to get thoroughly mellow. There he stood, Lowering at us in sullen mood, As if he had come into Brittany Just to reform our brotherhood! A roar of laughter. But you see It never would do! For some of us knew a thing or two, In the Abbey of St. Gildas de Rhuys! For instance, the great ado With old Fulbert's niece, The young and lovely Heloise. FRIAR JOHN. Stop there, if you please, Till we drink so the fair Heloise. ALL, drinking and shouting. Heloise! Heloise! The Chapel-bell tolls. LUCIFER, starting. What is that bell for! Are you such asses As to keep up the fashion of midnight masses? FRIAR CUTHBERT. It is only a poor unfortunate brother, Who is gifted with most miraculous powers Of getting up at all sorts of hours, And, by way of penance and Christian meekness, Of creeping silently out of his cell To take a pull at that hideous bell; So that all monks who are lying awake May murmur some kind of prayer for his sake, And adapted to his peculiar weakness! FRIAR JOHN. From frailty and fall-- ALL. Good Lord, deliver us all! FRIAR CUTHBERT. And before the bell for matins sounds, He takes his lantern, and goes the rounds, Flashing it into our sleepy eyes, Merely to say it is time to arise. But enough of that. Go on, if you please, With your story about St. Gildas de Rhuys. LUCIFER. Well, it finally came to pass That, half in fun and half in malice, One Sunday at Mass We put some poison into the chalice. But, either by accident or design, Peter Abelard kept away From the chapel that day, And a poor young friar, who in his stead Drank the sacramental wine, Fell on the steps of the altar, dead! But look! do you see at the window there That face, with a look of grief and despair, That ghastly face, as of one in pain? MONKS. Who? where? LUCIFER. As I spoke, it vanished away again. FRIAR CUTHBERT. It is that nefarious Siebald the Refectorarius, That fellow is always playing the scout, Creeping and peeping and prowling about; And then he regales The Abbot with scandalous tales. LUCIFER. A spy in the convent? One of the brothers Telling scandalous tales of the others? Out upon him, the lazy loon! I would put a stop to that pretty soon, In a way he should rue it. MONKS. How shall we do it! LUCIFER. Do you, brother Paul, Creep under the window, close to the wall, And open it suddenly when I call. Then seize the villain by the hair, And hold him there, And punish him soundly, once for all. FRIAR CUTHBERT. As Saint Dunstan of old, We are told, Once caught the Devil by the nose! LUCIFER. Ha! ha! that story is very clever, But has no foundation whatsoever. Quick! for I see his face again Glaring in at the window-pane; Now! now! and do not spare your blows. FRIAR PAUL opens the window suddenly, and seizes SIEBALD. They beat him. FRIAR SIEBALD. Help! help! are you going to slay me? FRIAR PAUL. That will teach you again to betray me! FRIAR SIEBALD. Mercy! mercy! FRIAR PAUL, shouting and beating. Rumpas bellorum lorum Vim confer amorum Morum verorum rorum Tu plena polorum! LUCIFER. Who stands in the doorway yonder, Stretching out his trembling hand, Just as Abelard used to stand, The flash of his keen, black eyes Forerunning the thunder? THE MONKS, in confusion. The Abbot! the Abbot! FRIAR CUTHBERT. And what is the wonder! He seems to have taken you by surprise. FRIAR FRANCIS. Hide the great flagon From the eyes of the dragon! FRIAR CUTHBERT. Pull the brown hood over your face! This will bring us into disgrace! ABBOT. What means this revel and carouse? Is this a tavern and drinking-house? Are you Christian monks, or heathen devils, To pollute this convent with your revels? Were Peter Damian still upon earth, To be shocked by such ungodly mirth, He would write your names, with pen of gall, In his Book of Gomorrah, one and all! Away, you drunkards! to your cells, And pray till you hear the matin-bells; You, Brother Francis, and you, Brother Paul! And as a penance mark each prayer With the scourge upon your shoulders bare; Nothing atones for such a sin But the blood that follows the discipline. And you, Brother Cuthbert, come with me Alone into the sacristy; You, who should be a guide to your brothers, And are ten times worse than all the others, For you I've a draught that has long been brewing, You shall do a penance worth the doing! Away to your prayers, then, one and all! I wonder the very convent wall Does not crumble and crush you in its fall! THE NEIGHBORING NUNNERY The ABBESS IRMINGARD Sitting with ELSIE in the moonlight. IRMINGARD. The night is silent, the wind is still, The moon is looking from yonder hill Down upon convent, and grove, and garden; The clouds have passed away from her face, Leaving behind them no sorrowful trace, Only the tender and quiet grace Of one whose heart has been healed with pardon! And such am I. My soul within Was dark with passion and soiled with sin. But now its wounds are healed again; Gone are the anguish, the terror, and pain; For across that desolate land of woe, O'er whose burning sands I was forced to go, A wind from heaven began to blow; And all my being trembled and shook, As the leaves of the tree, or the grass of the field, And I was healed, as the sick are healed, When fanned by the leaves of the Holy Book! As thou sittest in the moonlight there, Its glory flooding thy golden hair, And the only darkness that which lies In the haunted chambers of thine eyes, I feel my soul drawn unto thee, Strangely, and strongly, and more and more, As to one I have known and loved before; For every soul is akin to me That dwells in the land of mystery! I am the Lady Irmingard, Born of a noble race and name! Many a wandering Suabian bard, Whose life was dreary, and bleak, and hard, Has found through me the way to fame. Brief and bright were those days, and the night Which followed was full of a lurid light. Love, that of every woman's heart Will have the whole, and not a part, That is to her, in Nature's plan, More than ambition is to man, Her light, her life, her very breath, With no alternative but death, Found me a maiden soft and young, Just from the convent's cloistered school, And seated on my lowly stool, Attentive while the minstrels sung. Gallant, graceful, gentle, tall, Fairest, noblest, best of all, Was Walter of the Vogelweid; And, whatsoever may betide, Still I think of him with pride! His song was of the summer-time, The very birds sang in his rhyme; The sunshine, the delicious air, The fragrance of the flowers, were there; And I grew restless as I heard, Restless and buoyant as a bird, Down soft, aerial currents sailing, O'er blossomed orchards and fields in bloom, And through the momentary gloom, Of shadows o'er the landscape trailing, Yielding and borne I knew not where, But feeling resistance unavailing. And thus, unnoticed and apart, And more by accident than choice, I listened to that single voice Until the chambers of my heart Were filled with it by night and day. One night,--it was a night in May,-- Within the garden, unawares, Under the blossoms in the gloom, I heard it utter my own name With protestations and wild prayers; And it rang through me, and became Like the archangel's trump of doom, Which the soul hears, and must obey; And mine arose as from a tomb. My former life now seemed to me Such as hereafter death may be, When in the great Eternity We shall awake and find it day. It was a dream, and would not stay; A dream, that in a single night Faded and vanished out of sight. My father's anger followed fast This passion, as a freshening blast Seeks out and fans the fire, whose rage It may increase, but not assuage. And he exclaimed: "No wandering bard Shall win thy hand, O Irmingard! For which Prince Henry of Hoheneck By messenger and letter sues." Gently, but firmly, I replied: "Henry of Hoheneck I discard! Never the hand of Irmingard Shall lie in his as the hand of a bride! This said I, Walter, for thy sake This said I, for I could not choose. After a pause, my father spake In that cold and deliberate tone Which turns the hearer into stone, And seems itself the act to be That follows with such dread certainty "This or the cloister and the veil!" No other words than these he said, But they were like a funeral wail; My life was ended, my heart was dead. That night from the castle-gate went down With silent, slow, and stealthy pace, Two shadows, mounted on shadowy steeds, Taking the narrow path that leads Into the forest dense and brown. In the leafy darkness of the place, One could not distinguish form nor face, Only a bulk without a shape, A darker shadow in the shade; One scarce could say it moved or stayed. Thus it was we made our escape! A foaming brook, with many a bound, Followed us like a playful hound; Then leaped before us, and in the hollow Paused, and waited for us to follow, And seemed impatient, and afraid That our tardy flight should be betrayed By the sound our horses' hoof-beats made. And when we reached the plain below, We paused a moment and drew rein To look back at the castle again; And we saw the windows all aglow With lights, that were passing to and fro; Our hearts with terror ceased to beat; The brook crept silent to our feet; We knew what most we feared to know. Then suddenly horns began to blow; And we heard a shout, and a heavy tramp, And our horses snorted in the damp Night-air of the meadows green and wide, And in a moment, side by side, So close, they must have seemed but one, The shadows across the moonlight run, And another came, and swept behind, Like the shadow of clouds before the wind! How I remember that breathless flight Across the moors, in the summer night! How under our feet the long, white road Backward like a river flowed, Sweeping with it fences and hedges, Whilst farther away and overhead, Paler than I, with fear and dread, The moon fled with us as we fled Along the forest's jagged edges! All this I can remember well; But of what afterwards befell I nothing further can recall Than a blind, desperate, headlong fall; The rest is a blank and darkness all. When I awoke out of this swoon, The sun was shining, not the moon, Making a cross upon the wall With the bars of my windows narrow and tall; And I prayed to it, as I had been wont to pray From early childhood, day by day, Each morning, as in bed I lay! I was lying again in my own room! And I thanked God, in my fever and pain, That those shadows on the midnight plain Were gone, and could not come again! I struggled no longer with my doom! This happened many years ago. I left my father's home to come Like Catherine to her martyrdom, For blindly I esteemed it so. And when I heard the convent door Behind me close, to ope no more, I felt it smite me like a blow. Through all my limbs a shudder ran, And on my bruised spirit fell The dampness of my narrow cell As night-air on a wounded man, Giving intolerable pain. But now a better life began. I felt the agony decrease By slow degrees, then wholly cease, Ending in perfect rest and peace! It was not apathy, nor dulness, That weighed and pressed upon my brain, But the same passion I had given To earth before, now turned to heaven With all its overflowing fulness. Alas! the world is full of peril! The path that runs through the fairest meads, On the sunniest side of the valley, leads Into a region bleak and sterile! Alike in the high-born and the lowly, The will is feeble, and passion strong. We cannot sever right from wrong; Some falsehood mingles with all truth; Nor is it strange the heart of youth Should waver and comprehend but slowly The things that are holy and unholy! But in this sacred, calm retreat, We are all well and safely shielded From winds that blow, and waves that beat, From the cold, and rain, and blighting heat, To which the strongest hearts have yielded. Here we stand as the Virgins Seven, For our celestial bridegroom yearning; Our hearts are lamps forever burning, With a steady and unwavering flame, Pointing upward, forever the same, Steadily upward toward the heaven! The moon is hidden behind a cloud; A sudden darkness fills the room, And thy deep eyes, amid the gloom, Shine like jewels in a shroud. On the leaves is a sound of falling rain; A bird, awakened in its nest, Gives a faint twitter of unrest, Then smooths its plumes and sleeps again. No other sounds than these I hear; The hour of midnight must be near. Thou art o'erspent with the day's fatigue Of riding many a dusty league; Sink, then, gently to thy slumber; Me so many cares encumber, So many ghosts, and forms of fright, Have started from their graves to-night, They have driven sleep from mine eyes away: I will go down to the chapel and pray. V. A COVERED BRIDGE AT LUCERNE PRINCE HENRY. God's blessing on the architects who build The bridges o'er swift rivers and abysses Before impassable to human feet, No less than on the builders of cathedrals, Whose massive walls are bridges thrown across The dark and terrible abyss of Death. Well has the name of Pontifex been given Unto the Church's head, as the chief builder And architect of the invisible bridge That leads from earth to heaven. ELSIE. How dark it grows! What are these paintings on the walls around us? PRINCE HENRY. The Dance Macaber! ELSIE. What? PRINCE HENRY. The Dance of Death! All that go to and fro must look upon it, Mindful of what they shall be, while beneath, Among the wooden piles, the turbulent river Rushes, impetuous as the river of life, With dimpling eddies, ever green and bright, Save where the shadow of this bridge falls on it. ELSIE. Oh yes! I see it now! PRINCE HENRY. The grim musician Leads all men through the mazes of that dance, To different sounds in different measures moving; Sometimes he plays a lute, sometimes a drum, To tempt or terrify. ELSIE. What is this picture? PRINCE HENRY. It is a young man singing to a nun, Who kneels at her devotions, but in kneeling Turns round to look at him; and Death, meanwhile, Is putting out the candles on the altar! ELSIE. Ah, what a pity 't is that she should listen Unto such songs, when in her orisons She might have heard in heaven the angels singing! PRINCE HENRY. Here he has stolen a jester's cap and bells And dances with the Queen. ELSIE. A foolish jest! PRINCE HENRY. And here the heart of the new-wedded wife, Coming from church with her beloved lord, He startles with the rattle of his drum. ELSIE. Ah, that is sad! And yet perhaps 't is best That she should die, with all the sunshine on her, And all the benedictions of the morning, Before this affluence of golden light Shall fade into a cold and clouded gray, Then into darkness! PRINCE HENRY. Under it is written, "Nothing but death shall separate thee and me!" ELSIE. And what is this, that follows close upon it? PRINCE HENRY. Death playing on a dulcimer. Behind him, A poor old woman, with a rosary, Follows the sound, and seems to wish her feet Were swifter to o'ertake him. Underneath, The inscription reads, "Better is Death than Life." ELSIE. Better is Death than Life! Ah yes! to thousands Death plays upon a dulcimer, and sings That song of consolation, till the air Rings with it, and they cannot choose but follow Whither he leads. And not the old alone, But the young also hear it, and are still. PRINCE HENRY. Yes, in their sadder moments. 'T is the sound Of their own hearts they hear, half full of tears, Which are like crystal cups, half filled with water, Responding to the pressure of a finger With music sweet and low and melancholy. Let us go forward, and no longer stay In this great picture-gallery of Death! I hate it! ay, the very thought of it! ELSIE. Why is it hateful to you? PRINCE HENRY. For the reason That life, and all that speaks of life, is lovely, And death, and all that speaks of death, is hateful. ELSIE. The grave itself is but a covered bridge, Leading from light to light, through a brief darkness! PRINCE HENRY, emerging from the bridge. I breathe again more freely! Ah, how pleasant To come once more into the light of day, Out of that shadow of death! To hear again The hoof-beats of our horses on firm ground, And not upon those hollow planks, resounding With a sepulchral echo, like the clods On coffins in a churchyard! Yonder lies The Lake of the Four Forest-Towns, apparelled In light, and lingering, like a village maiden, Hid in the bosom of her native mountains Then pouring all her life into another's, Changing her name and being! Overhead, Shaking his cloudy tresses loose in air, Rises Pilatus, with his windy pines. They pass on. THE DEVIL'S BRIDGE PRINCE HENRY and ELSIE crossing with attendants. GUIDE. This bridge is called the Devil's Bridge. With a single arch, from ridge to ridge, It leaps across the terrible chasm Yawning beneath us, black and deep, As if, in some convulsive spasm, The summits of the hills had cracked, And made a road for the cataract That raves and rages down the steep! LUCIFER, under the bridge. Ha! ha! GUIDE. Never any bridge but this Could stand across the wild abyss; All the rest, of wood or stone, By the Devil's hand were overthrown. He toppled crags from the precipice, And whatsoe'er was built by day In the night was swept away; None could stand but this alone. LUCIFER, under the bridge. Ha! ha! GUIDE. I showed you in the valley a bowlder Marked with the imprint of his shoulder; As he was bearing it up this way, A peasant, passing, cried, "Herr Je! And the Devil dropped it in his fright, And vanished suddenly out of sight! LUCIFER, under the bridge. Ha! ha! GUIDE. Abbot Giraldus of Einsiedel, For pilgrims on their way to Rome, Built this at last, with a single arch, Under which, on its endless march, Runs the river, white with foam, Like a thread through the eye of a needle. And the Devil promised to let it stand, Under compact and condition That the first living thing which crossed Should be surrendered into his hand, And be beyond redemption lost. LUCIFER, under the bridge. Ha! ha! perdition! GUIDE. At length, the bridge being all completed, The Abbot, standing at its head, Threw across it a loaf of bread, Which a hungry dog sprang after; And the rocks re-echoed with the peals of laughter, To see the Devil thus defeated! They pass on. LUCIFER, under the bridge. Ha! ha! defeated! For journeys and for crimes like this I let the bridge stand o'er the abyss! THE ST. GOTHARD PASS PRINCE HENRY. This is the highest point. Two ways the rivers Leap down to different seas, and as they roll Grow deep and still, and their majestic presence Becomes a benefaction to the towns They visit, wandering silently among them, Like patriarchs old among their shining tents. ELSIE. How bleak and bare it is! Nothing but mosses Grow on these rocks. PRINCE HENRY. Yet are they not forgotten; Beneficent Nature sends the mists to feed them. ELSIE. See yonder little cloud, that, borne aloft So tenderly by the wind, floats fast away Over the snowy peaks! It seems to me The body of St. Catherine, borne by angels! PRINCE HENRY. Thou art St. Catherine, and invisible angels Bear thee across these chasms and precipices, Lest thou shouldst dash thy feet against a stone! ELSIE. Would I were borne unto my grave, as she was, Upon angelic shoulders! Even now I seem uplifted by them, light as air! What sound is that? PRINCE HENRY. The tumbling avalanches! ELSIE. How awful, yet how beautiful! PRINCE HENRY. These are The voices of the mountains! Thus they ope Their snowy lips, and speak unto each other, In the primeval language, lost to man. ELSIE. What land is this that spreads itself beneath us? PRINCE HENRY. Italy! Italy! ELSIE. Land of the Madonna! How beautiful it is! It seems a garden Of Paradise! PRINCE HENRY. Nay, of Gethsemane To thee and me, of passion and of prayer! Yet once of Paradise. Long years ago I wandered as a youth among its bowers, And never from my heart has faded quite Its memory, that, like a summer sunset, Encircles with a ring of purple light All the horizon of my youth. GUIDE. O friends! The days are short, the way before us long: We must not linger, if we think to reach The inn at Belinzona before vespers! They pass on. AT THE FOOT OF THE ALPS A halt under the trees at noon. PRINCE HENRY. Here let us pause a moment in the trembling Shadow and sunshine of the roadside trees, And, our tired horses in a group assembling, Inhale long draughts of this delicious breeze. Our fleeter steeds have distanced our attendants; They lag behind us with a slower pace; We will await them under the green pendants Of the great willows in this shady place. Ho, Barbarossa! how thy mottled haunches Sweat with this canter over hill and glade! Stand still, and let these overhanging branches Fan thy hot sides and comfort thee with shade! ELSIE. What a delightful landscape spreads before us, Marked with a whitewashed cottage here and there! And, in luxuriant garlands drooping o'er us, Blossoms of grape-vines scent the sunny air. PRINCE HENRY. Hark! what sweet sounds are those, whose accents holy Fill the warm noon with music sad and sweet! ELSIE. It is a band of pilgrims, moving slowly On their long journey, with uncovered feet. PILGRIMS, chanting the Hymn of St. Hildebert. Me receptet Sion illa, Sion David, urbs tranquilla, Cujus faber auctor lucis, Cujus portae lignum crucis, Cujus claves lingua Petri, Cujus cives semper laeti, Cujus muri lapis vivus, Cujus custos rex festivus! LUCIFER, as a Friar in the procession. Here am I, too, in the pious band, In the garb of a barefooted Carmelite dressed! The soles of my feet are as hard and tanned As the conscience of old Pope Hildebrand, The Holy Satan, who made the wives Of the bishops lead such shameful lives, All day long I beat my breast, And chant with a most particular zest The Latin hymns, which I understand Quite as well, I think, as the rest. And at night such lodging in barns and sheds, Such a hurly-burly in country inns, Such a clatter of tongues in empty heads, Such a helter-skelter of prayers and sins! Of all the contrivances of the time For sowing broadcast the seeds of crime, There is none so pleasing to me and mine As a pilgrimage to some far-off shrine! PRINCE HENRY. If from the outward man we judge the inner, And cleanliness is godliness, I fear A hopeless reprobate, a hardened Sinner, Must be that Carmelite now passing near. LUCIFER. There is my German Prince again, Thus far on his journey to Salern, And the lovesick girl, whose heated brain Is sowing the cloud to reap the rain; But it's a long road that has no turn! Let them quietly hold their way, I have also a part in the play. But first I must act to my heart's content This mummery and this merriment, And drive this motley flock of sheep Into the fold, where drink and sleep The jolly old friars of Benevent. Of a truth, it often provokes me to laugh To see these beggars hobble along, Lamed and maimed, and fed upon chaff, Chanting their wonderful puff and paff, And, to make up for not understanding the song, Singing it fiercely, and wild, and strong! Were it not for my magic garters and staff, And the goblets of goodly wine I quaff, And the mischief I make in the idle throng, I should not continue the business long. PILGRIMS, chanting. In hac urbe, lux solennis, Ver aeternum, pax perennis; In hac odor implens caelos, In hac semper festum melos! PRINCE HENRY. Do you observe that monk among the train, Who pours from his great throat the roaring bass, As a cathedral spout pours out the rain, And this way turns his rubicund, round face? ELSIE. It is the same who, on the Strasburg square, Preached to the people in the open air. PRINCE HENRY. And he has crossed o'er mountain, field, and fell, On that good steed, that seems to bear him well, The hackney of the Friars of Orders Gray, His own stout legs! He, too, was in the play, Both as King Herod and Ben Israel. Good morrow, Friar! FRIAR CUTHBERT. Good morrow, noble Sir! PRINCE HENRY. I speak in German, for, unless I err, You are a German. FRIAR CUTHBERT. I cannot gainsay you. But by what instinct, or what secret sign, Meeting me here, do you straightway divine That northward of the Alps my country lies? PRINCE HENRY. Your accent, like St. Peter's, would betray you, Did not your yellow beard and your blue eyes. Moreover, we have seen your face before, And heard you preach at the Cathedral door On Easter Sunday, in the Strasburg square. We were among the crowd that gathered there, And saw you play the Rabbi with great skill, As if, by leaning o'er so many years To walk with little children, your own will Had caught a childish attitude from theirs, A kind of stooping in its form and gait, And could no longer stand erect and straight. Whence come you now? FRIAR CUTHBERT. From the old monastery Of Hirschau, in the forest; being sent Upon a pilgrimage to Benevent, To see the image of the Virgin Mary, That moves its holy eyes, and sometimes speaks, And lets the piteous tears run down its cheeks, To touch the hearts of the impenitent. PRINCE HENRY. Oh, had I faith, as in the days gone by, That knew no doubt, and feared no mystery! LUCIFER, at a distance. Ho, Cuthbert! Friar Cuthbert! FRIAR CUTHBERT. Fare well, Prince; I cannot stay to argue and convince. PRINCE HENRY. This is indeed the blessed Mary's land, Virgin and mother of our dear redeemer! All hearts are touched and softened at her name, Alike the bandit, with the bloody hand, The priest, the prince, the scholar, and the peasant, The man of deeds, the visionary dreamer, Pay homage to her as one ever present! And even as children, who have much offended A too indulgent father, in great shame, Penitent, and yet not daring unattended To go into his presence, at the gate Speak with their sister, and confiding wait Till she goes in before and intercedes; So men, repenting of their evil deeds, And yet not venturing rashly to draw near With their requests an angry father's ear, Offer to her their prayers and their confession, And she for them in heaven makes intercession. And if our faith had given us nothing more Than this example of all womanhood, So mild, so merciful, so strong, so good, So patient, peaceful, loyal, loving, pure, This were enough to prove it higher and truer Than all the creeds the world had known before. PILGRIMS, chanting afar off. Urbs coelestis, urbs beata, Supra petram collocata, Urbs in portu satis tuto De longinquo te saluto, Te saluto, te suspiro, Te affecto, te requiro! THE INN AT GENOA A terrace overlooking the sea. Night. PRINCE HENRY. It is the sea, it is the sea, In all its vague immensity, Fading and darkening in the distance! Silent, majestical, and slow, The white ships haunt it to and fro, With all their ghostly sails unfurled, As phantoms from another world Haunt the dim confines of existence! But ah! how few can comprehend Their signals, or to what good end From land to land they come and go! Upon a sea more vast and dark The spirits of the dead embark, All voyaging to unknown coasts. We wave our farewells from the shore, And they depart, and come no more, Or come as phantoms and as ghosts. Above the darksome sea of death Looms the great life that is to be, A land of cloud and mystery, A dim mirage, with shapes of men Long dead and passed beyond our ken, Awe-struck we gaze, and hold our breath Till the fair pageant vanisheth, Leaving us in perplexity, And doubtful whether it has been A vision of the world unseen, Or a bright image of our own Against the sky in vapors thrown. LUCIFER, singing from the sea. Thou didst not make it, thou canst not mend it, But thou hast the power to end it! The sea is silent, the sea is discreet, Deep it lies at thy very feet; There is no confessor like unto Death! Thou canst not see him, but he is near; Thou needst not whisper above thy breath, And he will hear; He will answer the questions, The vague surmises and suggestions, That fill thy soul with doubt and fear! PRINCE HENRY. The fisherman, who lies afloat, With shadowy sail, in yonder boat, Is singing softly to the Night! But do I comprehend aright The meaning of the words he sung So sweetly in his native tongue? Ah yes! the sea is still and deep. All things within its bosom sleep! A single step, and all is o'er; A plunge, a bubble an no more; And thou, dear Elsie, wilt be free From martyrdom and agony. ELSIE, coming from her chamber upon the terrace. The night is calm and cloudless, And still as still can be, And the stars come forth to listen To the music of the sea. They gather, and gather, and gather, Until they crowd the sky, And listen, in breathless silence, To the solemn litany. It begins in rocky caverns, As a voice that chants alone To the pedals of the organ In monotonous undertone; And anon from shelving beaches, And shallow sands beyond, In snow-white robes uprising The ghostly choirs respond. And sadly and unceasing The mournful voice sings on, And the snow-white choirs still answer Christe eleison! PRINCE HENRY. Angel of God! thy finer sense perceives Celestial and perpetual harmonies! Thy purer soul, that trembles and believes, Hears the archangel's trumpet in the breeze, And where the forest rolls, or ocean heaves, Cecilia's organ sounding in the seas, And tongues of prophets speaking in the leaves. But I hear discord only and despair, And whispers as of demons in the air! AT SEA IL PADRONE. The wind upon our quarter lies, And on before the freshening gale, That fills the snow-white lateen sail, Swiftly our light felucca flies, Around the billows burst and foam; They lift her o'er the sunken rock, They beat her sides with many a shock, And then upon their flowing dome They poise her, like a weathercock! Between us and the western skies The hills of Corsica arise; Eastward in yonder long blue line, The summits of the Apennine, And southward, and still far away, Salerno, on its sunny bay. You cannot see it, where it lies. PRINCE HENRY. Ah, would that never more mine eyes Might see its towers by night or day! ELSIE. Behind us, dark and awfully, There comes a cloud out of the sea, That bears the form of a hunted deer, With hide of brown, and hoofs of black And antlers laid upon its back, And fleeing fast and wild with fear, As if the hounds were on its track! PRINCE HENRY. Lo! while we gaze, it breaks and falls In shapeless masses, like the walls Of a burnt city. Broad and red The flies of the descending sun Glare through the windows, and o'erhead, Athwart the vapors, dense and dun, Long shafts of silvery light arise, Like rafters that support the skies! ELSIE. See! from its summit the lurid levin Flashes downward without warning, As Lucifer, son of the morning, Fell from the battlements of heaven! IL PADRONE. I must entreat you, friends, below! The angry storm begins to blow, For the weather changes with the moon. All this morning, until noon, We had baffling winds, and sudden flaws Struck the sea with their cat's-paws. Only a little hour ago I was whistling to Saint Antonio For a capful of wind to fill our sail, And instead of a breeze he has sent a gale. Last night I saw St. Elmo's stars, With their glimmering lanterns, all at play On the tops of the masts and the tips of the spars, And I knew we should have foul weather to-day. Cheerily, my hearties! yo heave ho! Brail up the mainsail, and let her go As the winds will and Saint Antonio! Do you see that Livornese felucca, That vessel to the windward yonder, Running with her gunwale under? I was looking when the wind o'ertook her, She had all sail set, and the only wonder Is that at once the strength of the blast Did not carry away her mast. She is a galley of the Gran Duca, That, through the fear of the Algerines, Convoys those lazy brigantines, Laden with wine and oil from Lucca. Now all is ready, high and low; Blow, blow, good Saint Antonio! Ha! that is the first dash of the rain, With a sprinkle of spray above the rails, Just enough to moisten our sails, And make them ready for the strain. See how she leaps, as the blasts o'ertake her, And speeds away with a bone in her mouth! Now keep her head toward the south, And there is no danger of bank or breaker. With the breeze behind us, on we go; Not too much, good Saint Antonio! VI THE SCHOOL OF SALERNO A travelling Scholastic affixing his Theses to the gate of the College. SCHOLASTIC. There, that is my gauntlet, my banner, my shield, Hung up as a challenge to all the field! One hundred and twenty-five propositions, Which I will maintain with the sword of the tongue Against all disputants, old and young. Let us see if doctors or dialecticians Will dare to dispute my definitions, Or attack any one of my learned theses. Here stand I; the end shall be as God pleases. I think I have proved, by profound researches, The error of all those doctrines so vicious Of the old Areopagite Dionysius, That are making such terrible work in the churches, By Michael the Stammerer sent from the East, And done into Latin by that Scottish beast, Johannes Duns Scotus, who dares to maintain, In the face of the truth, the error infernal, That the universe is and must be eternal; At first laying down, as a fact fundamental, That nothing with God can be accidental; Then asserting that God before the creation Could not have existed, because it is plain That, had He existed, He would have created; Which is begging the question that should be debated, And moveth me less to anger than laughter. All nature, he holds, is a respiration Of the Spirit of God, who, in breathing, hereafter Will inhale it into his bosom again, So that nothing but God alone will remain. And therein he contradicteth himself; For he opens the whole discussion by stating, That God can only exist in creating. That question I think I have laid on the shelf! He goes out. Two Doctors come in disputing, and followed by pupils. DOCTOR SERAFINO. I, with the Doctor Seraphic, maintain, That a word which is only conceived in the brain Is a type of eternal Generation; The spoken word is the Incarnation. DOCTOR CHERUBINO. What do I care for the Doctor Seraphic, With all his wordy chaffer and traffic? DOCTOR SERAFINO. You make but a paltry show of resistance; Universals have no real existence! DOCTOR CHERUBINO. Your words are but idle and empty chatter; Ideas are eternally joined to matter! DOCTOR SERAFINO. May the Lord have mercy on your position, You wretched, wrangling culler of herbs! DOCTOR CHERUBINO. May he send your soul to eternal perdition, For your Treatise on the Irregular verbs! They rush out fighting. Two Scholars come in. FIRST SCHOLAR. Monte Cassino, then, is your College. What think you of ours here at Salern? SECOND SCHOLAR. To tell the truth, I arrived so lately, I hardly yet have had time to discern. So much, at least, I am bound to acknowledge: The air seems healthy, the buildings stately, And on the whole I like it greatly. FIRST SCHOLAR. Yes, the air is sweet; the Calabrian hills Send us down puffs of mountain air; And in summer-time the sea-breeze fills With its coolness cloister, and court, and square. Then at every season of the year There are crowds of guests and travellers here; Pilgrims, and mendicant friars, and traders From the Levant, with figs and wine, And bands of wounded and sick Crusaders, Coming back from Palestine. SECOND SCHOLAR. And what are the studies you pursue? What is the course you here go through? FIRST SCHOLAR. The first three years of the college course Are given to Logic alone, as the source Of all that is noble, and wise, and true. SECOND SCHOLAR. That seems rather strange, I must confess, In a Medical School; yet, nevertheless, You doubtless have reasons for that. FIRST SCHOLAR. Oh yes For none but a clever dialectician Can hope to become a great physician; That has been settled long ago. Logic makes an important part Of the mystery of the healing art; For without it how could you hope to show That nobody knows so much as you know? After this there are five years more Devoted wholly to medicine, With lectures on chirurgical lore, And dissections of the bodies of swine, As likest the human form divine. SECOND SCHOLAR. What are the books now most in vogue? FIRST SCHOLAR. Quite an extensive catalogue; Mostly, however, books of our own; As Gariopontus' Passionarius, And the writings of Matthew Platearius; And a volume universally known As the Regimen of the School of Salern, For Robert of Normandy written in terse And very elegant Latin verse. Each of these writings has its turn. And when at length we have finished these Then comes the struggle for degrees, Will all the oldest and ablest critics; The public thesis and disputation, Question, and answer, and explanation Of a passage out of Hippocrates, Or Aristotle's Analytics. There the triumphant Magister stands! A book is solemnly placed in his hands, On which he swears to follow the rule And ancient forms of the good old School; To report if any confectionarius Mingles his drugs with matters various, And to visit his patients twice a day, And once in the night, if they live in town, And if they are poor, to take no pay. Having faithfully promised these, His head is crowned with a laurel crown; A kiss on his cheek, a ring on his hand, The Magister Artium et Physices Goes forth from the school like a lord of the land. And now, as we have the whole morning before us, Let us go in, if you make no objection, And listen awhile to a learned prelection On Marcus Aurelius Cassioderus. They go in. Enter Lucifer as a Doctor. LUCIFER. This is the great School of Salern! A land of wrangling and of quarrels, Of brains that seethe, and hearts that burn, Where every emulous scholar hears, In every breath that comes to his ears, The rustling of another's laurels! The air of the place is called salubrious; The neighborhood of Vesuvius lends it Au odor volcanic, that rather mends it, And the building's have an aspect lugubrious, That inspires a feeling of awe and terror Into the heart of the beholder. And befits such an ancient homestead of error, Where the old falsehoods moulder and smoulder, And yearly by many hundred hands Are carried away in the zeal of youth, And sown like tares in the field of truth, To blossom and ripen in other lands. What have we here, affixed to the gate? The challenge of some scholastic wight, Who wishes to hold a public debate On sundry questions wrong or right! Ah, now this is my great delight! For I have often observed of late That such discussions end in a fight. Let us see what the learned wag maintains With such a prodigal waste of brains. Reads. "Whether angels in moving from place to place Pass through the intermediate space. Whether God himself is the author of evil, Or whether that is the work of the Devil. When, where, and wherefore Lucifer fell, And whether he now is chained in hell." I think I can answer that question well! So long as the boastful human mind Consents in such mills as this to grind, I sit very firmly upon my throne! Of a truth it almost makes me laugh, To see men leaving the golden grain To gather in piles the pitiful chaff That old Peter Lombard thrashed with his brain, To have it caught up and tossed again On the horns of the Dumb Ox of Cologne! But my guests approach! there is in the air A fragrance, like that of the Beautiful Garden Of Paradise, in the days that were! An odor of innocence and of prayer, And of love, and faith that never fails, Such as the fresh young heart exhales Before it begins to wither and harden! I cannot breathe such an atmosphere! My soul is filled with a nameless fear, That after all my trouble and pain, After all my restless endeavor, The youngest, fairest soul of the twain, The most ethereal, most divine, Will escape from my hands for ever and ever. But the other is already mine! Let him live to corrupt his race, Breathing among them, with every breath, Weakness, selfishness, and the base And pusillanimous fear of death. I know his nature, and I know That of all who in my ministry Wander the great earth to and fro, And on my errands come and go, The safest and subtlest are such as he. Enter PRINCE HENRY and ELSIE, with attendants. PRINCE HENRY. Can you direct us to Friar Angelo? LUCIFER. He stands before you. PRINCE HENRY. Then you know our purpose. I am Prince Henry of Hoheneck, and this The maiden that I spake of in my letters. LUCIFER. It is a very grave and solemn business! We must nor be precipitate. Does she Without compulsion, of her own free will, Consent to this? PRINCE HENRY. Against all opposition, Against all prayers, entreaties, protestations, She will not be persuaded. LUCIFER. That is strange! Have you thought well of it? ELSIE. I come not here To argue, but to die. Your business is not To question, but to kill me. I am ready, I am impatient to be gone from here Ere any thoughts of earth disturb again The spirit of tranquillity within me. PRINCE HENRY. Would I had not come here! Would I were dead, And thou wert in thy cottage in the forest, And hadst not known me! Why have I done this? Let me go back and die. ELSIE. It cannot be; Not if these cold, flat stones on which we tread Were coulters heated white, and yonder gateway Flamed like a furnace with a sevenfold heat. I must fulfil my purpose. PRINCE HENRY. I forbid it! Not one step further. For I only meant To put thus far thy courage to the proof. It is enough. I, too, have strength to die, For thou hast taught me! ELSIE. O my Prince! remember Your promises. Let me fulfil my errand. You do not look on life and death as I do. There are two angels, that attend unseen Each one of us, and in great books record Our good and evil deeds. He who writes down The good ones, after every action closes His volume, and ascends with it to God. The other keeps his dreadful day-book open Till sunset, that we may repent; which doing, The record of the action fades away, And leaves a line of white across the page. Now if my act be good, as I believe, It cannot be recalled. It is already Sealed up in heaven, as a good deed accomplished. The rest is yours. Why wait you? I am ready. To her attendants. Weep not, my friends! rather rejoice with me. I shall not feel the pain, but shall be gone, And you will have another friend in heaven. Then start not at the creaking of the door Through which I pass. I see what lies beyond it. To PRINCE HENRY. And you, O Prince! bear back my benison Unto my father's house, and all within it. This morning in the church I prayed for them, After confession, after absolution, When my whole soul was white, I prayed for them. God will take care of them, they need me not. And in your life let my remembrance linger, As something not to trouble and disturb it, But to complete it, adding life to life. And if at times beside the evening fire, You see my face among the other faces, Let it not be regarded as a ghost That haunts your house, but as a guest that loves you. Nay, even as one of your own family, Without whose presence there were something wanting. I have no more to say. Let us go in. PRINCE HENRY. Friar Angelo! I charge you on your life, Believe not what she says, for she is mad, And comes here not to die, but to be healed. ELSIE. Alas! Prince Henry! LUCIFER. Come with me; this way. ELSIE goes in with LUCIFER, who thrusts PRINCE HENRY back and closes the door. PRINCE HENRY. Gone! and the light of all my life gone with her! A sudden darkness falls upon the world! Oh, what a vile and abject thing am I That purchase length of days at such a cost! Not by her death alone, but by the death Of all that's good and true and noble in me All manhood, excellence, and self-respect, All love, and faith, and hope, and heart are dead! All my divine nobility of nature By this one act is forfeited forever. I am a Prince in nothing but in name! To the attendants. Why did you let this horrible deed be done? Why did you not lay hold on her, and keep her From self destruction? Angelo! murderer! Struggles at the door, but cannot open it. ELSIE, within. Farewell, dear Prince! farewell! PRINCE HENRY. Unbar the door! LUCIFER. It is too late! PRINCE HENRY. It shall not be too late. They burst the door open and rush in. THE FARM-HOUSE IN THE ODENWALD URSULA spinning. A summer afternoon. A table spread. URSULA. I have marked it well,--it must be true,-- Death never takes one alone, but two! Whenever he enters in at a door, Under roof of gold or roof of thatch, He always leaves it upon the latch, And comes again ere the year is o'er. Never one of a household only! Perhaps it is a mercy of God, Lest the dead there under the sod, In the land of strangers, should be lonely! Ah me! I think I am lonelier here! It is hard to go,--but harder to stay! Were it not for the children, I should pray That Death would take me within the year! And Gottlieb!--he is at work all day, In the sunny field, or the forest murk, But I know that his thoughts are far away, I know that his heart is not in his work! And when he comes home to me at night He is not cheery, but sits and sighs, And I see the great tears in his eyes, And try to be cheerful for his sake. Only the children's hearts are light. Mine is weary, and ready to break. God help us! I hope we have done right; We thought we were acting for the best! Looking through the open door. Who is it coming under the trees? A man, in the Prince's livery dressed! He looks about him with doubtful face, As if uncertain of the place. He stops at the beehives;--now he sees The garden gate;--he is going past! Can he be afraid of the bees? No; he is coming in at last! He fills my heart with strange alarm! Enter a Forester. FORESTER. Is this the tenant Gottlieb's farm? URSULA. This is his farm, and I his wife. Pray sit. What may your business be? FORESTER. News from the Prince! URSULA. Of death or life? FORESTER. You put your questions eagerly! URSULA. Answer me, then! How is the Prince? FORESTER. I left him only two hours since Homeward returning down the river, As strong and well as if God, the Giver, Had given him back his youth again. URSULA, despairing. Then Elsie, my poor child, is dead! FORESTER. That, my good woman, I have not said. Don't cross the bridge till you come to it, Is a proverb old, and of excellent wit. URSULA. Keep me no longer in this pain! FORESTER. It is true your daughter is no more;-- That is, the peasant she was before. URSULA. Alas! I am simple and lowly bred, I am poor, distracted, and forlorn. And it is not well that you of the court Should mock me thus, and make a sport Of a joyless mother whose child is dead, For you, too, were of mother born! FORESTER. Your daughter lives, and the Prince is well! You will learn erelong how it all befell. Her heart for a moment never failed; But when they reached Salerno's gate, The Prince's nobler self prevailed, And saved her for a noble fate. And he was healed, in his despair, By the touch of St. Matthew's sacred bones; Though I think the long ride in the open air, That pilgrimage over stocks and stones, In the miracle must come in for a share. URSULA. Virgin! who lovest the poor and lowly, If the loud cry of a mother's heart Can ever ascend to where thou art, Into thy blessed hands and holy Receive my prayer of praise and thanksgiving! Let the hands that bore our Saviour bear it Into the awful presence of God; For thy feet with holiness are shod, And if thou hearest it He will hear it. Our child who was dead again is living! FORESTER. I did not tell you she was dead; If you thought so 't was no fault of mine; At this very moment while I speak, They are sailing homeward down the Rhine, In a splendid barge, with golden prow, And decked with banners white and red As the colors on your daughter's cheek. They call her the Lady Alicia now; For the Prince in Salerno made a vow That Elsie only would he wed. URSULA. Jesu Maria! what a change! All seems to me so weird and strange! FORESTER. I saw her standing on the deck, Beneath an awning cool and shady; Her cap of velvet could not hold The tresses of her hair of gold, That flowed and floated like the stream, And fell in masses down her neck. As fair and lovely did she seem As in a story or a dream Some beautiful and foreign lady. And the Prince looked so grand and proud, And waved his hand thus to the crowd That gazed and shouted from the shore, All down the river, long and loud. URSULA. We shall behold our child once more; She is not dead! She is not dead! God, listening, must have overheard The prayers, that, without sound or word, Our hearts in secrecy have said! Oh, bring me to her; for mine eyes Are hungry to behold her face; My very soul within me cries; My very hands seem to caress her, To see her, gaze at her, and bless her; Dear Elsie, child of God and grace! Goes out toward the garden. FORESTER. There goes the good woman out of her head; And Gottlieb's supper is waiting here; A very capacious flagon of beer, And a very portentous loaf of bread. One would say his grief did not much oppress him. Here's to the health of the Prince, God bless him! He drinks. Ha! it buzzes and stings like a hornet! And what a scene there, through the door! The forest behind and the garden before, And midway an old man of threescore, With a wife and children that caress him. Let me try still further to cheer and adorn it With a merry, echoing blast of my cornet! Goes out blowing his horn. THE CASTLE OF VAUTSBERG ON THE RHINE PRINCE HENRY and ELSIE standing on the terrace at evening. The sound of tells heard from a distance. PRINCE HENRY. We are alone. The wedding guests Ride down the hill, with plumes and cloaks, And the descending dark invests The Niederwald, and all the nests Among its hoar and haunted oaks. ELSIE. What bells are those, that ring so slow, So mellow, musical, and low? PRINCE HENRY. They are the bells of Geisenheim, That with their melancholy chime Ring out the curfew of the sun. ELSIE. Listen, beloved. PRINCE HENRY. They are done! Dear Elsie! many years ago Those same soft bells at eventide Rang in the ears of Charlemagne, As, seated by Fastrada's side At Ingelheim, in all his pride He heard their sound with secret pain. ELSIE. Their voices only speak to me Of peace and deep tranquillity, And endless confidence in thee! PRINCE HENRY. Thou knowest the story of her ring, How, when the court went back to Aix, Fastrada died; and how the king Sat watching by her night and day, Till into one of the blue lakes, Which water that delicious land, They cast the ring, drawn from her hand: And the great monarch sat serene And sad beside the fated shore, Nor left the land forevermore. ELSIE. That was true love. PRINCE HENRY. For him the queen Ne'er did what thou hast done for me. ELSIE. Wilt thou as fond and faithful be? Wilt thou so love me after death? PRINCE HENRY. In life's delight, in death's dismay, In storm and sunshine, night and day, In health, in sickness, in decay, Here and hereafter, I am thine! Thou hast Fastrada's ring. Beneath the calm, blue waters of thine eyes, Deep in thy steadfast soul it lies, And, undisturbed by this world's breath, With magic light its jewels shine! This golden ring, which thou hast worn Upon thy finger since the morn, Is but a symbol and a semblance, An outward fashion, a remembrance, Of what thou wearest within unseen, O my Fastrada, O my queen! Behold! the hill-trips all aglow With purple and with amethyst; While the whole valley deep below Is filled, and seems to overflow, With a fast-rising tide of mist. The evening air grows damp and chill; Let us go in. ELSIE. Ah, not so soon. See yonder fire! It is the moon Slow rising o'er the eastern hill. It glimmers on the forest tips And through the dewy foliage drips In little rivulets of light, And makes the heart in love with night. PRINCE HENRY. Oft on this terrace, when the day Was closing, have I stood and gazed, And seen the landscape fade away, And the white vapors rise and drown Hamlet and vineyard, tower and town, While far above the hill-tops blazed. But then another hand than thine Was gently held and clasped in mine; Another head upon my breast Was laid, as thine is now, at rest. Why dost thou lift those tender eyes With so much sorrow and surprise? A minstrel's, not a maiden's hand, Was that which in my own was pressed, A manly form usurped thy place, A beautiful, but bearded face, That now is in the Holy Land, Yet in my memory from afar Is shining on us like a star. But linger not. For while I speak, A sheeted spectre white and tall, The cold mist climbs the castle wall, And lays his hand upon thy cheek! They go in. EPILOGUE THE TWO RECORDING ANGELS ASCENDING THE ANGEL OF GOOD DEEDS, with closed book. God sent his messenger the rain, And said unto the mountain brook, "Rise up, and from thy caverns look And leap, with naked, snow-white feet, From the cool hills into the heat Of the broad, arid plain. God sent his messenger of faith, And whispered in the maiden's heart, "Rise up and look from where thou art, And scatter with unselfish hands Thy freshness on the barren sands And solitudes of Death." O beauty of holiness, Of self-forgetfulness, of lowliness! O power of meekness, Whose very gentleness and weakness Are like the yielding, but irresistible air! Upon the pages Of the sealed volume that I bear, The deed divine Is written in characters of gold, That never shall grow old, But through all ages Burn and shine, With soft effulgence! O God! it is thy indulgence That fills the world with the bliss Of a good deed like this! THE ANGEL OF EVIL DEEDS, with open book. Not yet, not yet Is the red sun wholly set, But evermore recedes, While open still I bear The Book of Evil Deeds, To let the breathings of the upper air Visit its pages and erase The records from its face! Fainter and fainter as I gaze In the broad blaze The glimmering landscape shines, And below me the black river Is hidden by wreaths of vapor! Fainter and fainter the black lines Begin to quiver Along the whitening surface of the paper; Shade after shade The terrible words grow faint and fade, And in their place Runs a white space! Down goes the sun! But the soul of one, Who by repentance hath escaped the dreadful sentence, Shines bright below me as I look. It is the end! With closed Book To God do I ascend. Lo! over the mountain steeps A dark, gigantic shadow sweeps Beneath my feet; A blackness inwardly brightening With sullen heat, As a storm-cloud lurid with lightning. And a cry of lamentation, Repeated and again repeated, Deep and loud As the reverberation Of cloud answering unto cloud, Swells and rolls away in the distance, As if the sheeted Lightning retreated. Baffled and thwarted by the wind's resistance. It is Lucifer, The son of mystery; And since God suffers him to be, He, too, is God's minister. And labors for some good By us not understood! SECOND INTERLUDE MARTIN LUTHER A CHAMBER IN THE WARTBURG. MORNING. MARTIN LUTHER WRITING. MARTIN LUTHER. Our God, a Tower of Strength is He, A goodly wall and weapon; From all our need He helps us free, That now to us doth happen. The old evil foe Doth in earnest grow, In grim armor dight, Much guile and great might; On earth there is none like him. Oh yes; a tower of strength indeed, A present help in all our need, A sword and buckler is our God. Innocent men have walked unshod O'er burning ploughshares, and have trod Unharmed on serpents in their path, And laughed to scorn the Devil's wrath! Safe in this Wartburg tower I stand Where God hath led me by the hand, And look down, with a heart at ease, Over the pleasant neighborhoods, Over the vast Thuringian Woods, With flash of river, and gloom of trees, With castles crowning the dizzy heights, And farms and pastoral delights, And the morning pouring everywhere Its golden glory on the air. Safe, yes, safe am I here at last, Safe from the overwhelming blast Of the mouths of Hell, that followed me fast, And the howling demons of despair That hunted me like a beast to his lair. Of our own might we nothing can; We soon are unprotected: There fighteth for us the right Man, Whom God himself elected. Who is He; ye exclaim? Christus is his name, Lord of Sabaoth, Very God in troth; The field He holds forever. Nothing can vex the Devil more Than the name of him whom we adore. Therefore doth it delight me best To stand in the choir among the rest, With the great organ trumpeting Through its metallic tubes, and sing: Et verbum caro factum est! These words the devil cannot endure, For he knoweth their meaning well! Him they trouble and repel, Us they comfort and allure, And happy it were, if our delight Were as great as his affright! Yea, music is the Prophet's art; Among the gifts that God hath sent, One of the most magnificent! It calms the agitated heart; Temptations, evil thoughts, and all The passions that disturb the soul, Are quelled by its divine control, As the evil spirit fled from Saul, And his distemper was allayed, When David took his harp and played. This world may full of Devils be, All ready to devour us; Yet not so sore afraid are we, They shall not overpower us. This World's Prince, howe'er Fierce he may appear, He can harm us not, He is doomed, God wot! One little word can slay him! Incredible it seems to some And to myself a mystery, That such weak flesh and blood as we, Armed with no other shield or sword, Or other weapon than the Word, Should combat and should overcome A spirit powerful as he! He summons forth the Pope of Rome With all his diabolic crew, His shorn and shaven retinue Of priests and children of the dark; Kill! kill! they cry, the Heresiarch, Who rouseth up all Christendom Against us; and at one fell blow Seeks the whole Church to overthrow! Not yet; my hour is not yet come. Yesterday in an idle mood, Hunting with others in the wood, I did not pass the hours in vain, For in the very heart of all The joyous tumult raised around, Shouting of men, and baying of hound, And the bugle's blithe and cheery call, And echoes answering back again, From crags of the distant mountain chain,-- In the very heart of this, I found A mystery of grief and pain. It was an image of the power Of Satan, hunting the world about, With his nets and traps and well-trained dogs, His bishops and priests and theologues, And all the rest of the rabble rout, Seeking whom he may devour! Enough I have had of hunting hares, Enough of these hours of idle mirth, Enough of nets and traps and gins! The only hunting of any worth Is where I can pierce with javelins The cunning foxes and wolves and bears, The whole iniquitous troop of beasts, The Roman Pope and the Roman priests That sorely infest and afflict the earth! Ye nuns, ye singing birds of the air! The fowler hath caught you in his snare, And keeps you safe in his gilded cage, Singing the song that never tires, To lure down others from their nests; How ye flutter and heat your breasts, Warm and soft with young desires, Against the cruel, pitiless wires, Reclaiming your lost heritage! Behold! a hand unbars the door, Ye shall be captives held no more. The Word they shall perforce let stand, And little thanks they merit! For He is with us in the land, With gifts of his own Spirit! Though they take our life, Goods, honors, child and wife, Lot these pass away, Little gain have they; The Kingdom still remaineth! Yea, it remaineth forevermore, However Satan may rage and roar, Though often be whispers in my ears: What if thy doctrines false should be? And wrings from me a bitter sweat. Then I put him to flight with jeers, Saying: Saint Satan! pray for me; If thou thinkest I am not saved yet! And my mortal foes that lie in wait In every avenue and gate! As to that odious monk John Tetzel, Hawking about his hollow wares Like a huckster at village fairs, And those mischievous fellows, Wetzel, Campanus, Carlstadt, Martin Cellarius, And all the busy, multifarious Heretics, and disciples of Arius, Half-learned, dunce-bold, dry and hard, They are not worthy of my regard, Poor and humble as I am. But ah! Erasmus of Rotterdam, He is the vilest miscreant That ever walked this world below A Momus, making his mock and mow, At Papist and at Protestant, Sneering at St. John and St. Paul, At God and Man, at one and all; And yet as hollow and false and drear, As a cracked pitcher to the ear, And ever growing worse and worse! Whenever I pray, I pray for a curse On Erasmus, the Insincere! Philip Melanethon! thou alone Faithful among the faithless known, Thee I hail, and only thee! Behold the record of us three! Res et verba Philippus, Res sine verbis Lutherus; Erasmus verba sine re! My Philip, prayest thou for me? Lifted above all earthly care, From these high regions of the air, Among the birds that day and night Upon the branches of tall trees Sing their lauds and litanies, Praising God with all their might, My Philip, unto thee I write, My Philip! thou who knowest best All that is passing in this breast; The spiritual agonies, The inward deaths, the inward hell, And the divine new births as well, That surely follow after these, As after winter follows spring; My Philip, in the night-time sing This song of the Lord I send to thee; And I will sing it for thy sake, Until our answering voices make A glorious antiphony, And choral chant of victory! PART THREE THE NEW ENGLAND TRAGEDIES JOHN ENDICOTT DRAMATIS PERSONAE. JOHN ENDICOTT Governor. JOHN ENDICOTT His son. RICHARD BELLINGHAM Deputy Governor. JOHN NORTON Minister of the Gospel. EDWARD BUTTER Treasurer. WALTER MERRY Tithing-man. NICHOLAS UPSALL An old citizen. SAMUEL COLE Landlord of the Three Mariners. SIMON KEMPTHORN RALPH GOLDSMITH Sea-Captains. WENLOCK CHRISTISON EDITH, his daughter EDWARD WHARTON Quakers Assistants, Halberdiers, Marshal, etc. The Scene is in Boston in the year 1665. PROLOGUE. To-night we strive to read, as we may best, This city, like an ancient palimpsest; And bring to light, upon the blotted page, The mournful record of an earlier age, That, pale and half effaced, lies hidden away Beneath the fresher writing of to-day. Rise, then, O buried city that hast been; Rise up, rebuilded in the painted scene, And let our curious eyes behold once more The pointed gable and the pent-house door, The Meeting-house with leaden-latticed panes, The narrow thoroughfares, the crooked lanes! Rise, too, ye shapes and shadows of the Past, Rise from your long-forgotten graves at last; Let us behold your faces, let us hear The words ye uttered in those days of fear Revisit your familiar haunts again,-- The scenes of triumph, and the scenes of pain And leave the footprints of your bleeding feet Once more upon the pavement of the street! Nor let the Historian blame the Poet here, If he perchance misdate the day or year, And group events together, by his art, That in the Chronicles lie far apart; For as the double stars, though sundered far, Seem to the naked eye a single star, So facts of history, at a distance seen, Into one common point of light convene. "Why touch upon such themes?" perhaps some friend May ask, incredulous; "and to what good end? Why drag again into the light of day The errors of an age long passed away?" I answer: "For the lessons that they teach: The tolerance of opinion and of speech. Hope, Faith, and Charity remain,--these three; And greatest of them all is Charity." Let us remember, if these words be true, That unto all men Charity is due; Give what we ask; and pity, while we blame, Lest we become copartners in the shame, Lest we condemn, and yet ourselves partake, And persecute the dead for conscience' sake. Therefore it is the author seeks and strives To represent the dead as in their lives, And lets at times his characters unfold Their thoughts in their own language, strong and bold; He only asks of you to do the like; To hear hint first, and, if you will, then strike. ACT I. SCENE I. -- Sunday afternoon. The interior of the Meeting-house. On the pulpit, an hour-glass; below, a box for contributions. JOHN NORTON in the pulpit. GOVERNOR ENDICOTT in a canopied seat, attended by four halberdiers. The congregation singing. The Lord descended from above, And bowed the heavens high; And underneath his feet He cast The darkness of the sky. On Cherubim and Seraphim Right royally He rode, And on the wings of mighty winds Came flying all abroad. NORTON (rising and turning the hourglass on the pulpit). I heard a great voice from the temple saying Unto the Seven Angels, Go your ways; Pour out the vials of the wrath of God Upon the earth. And the First Angel went And poured his vial on the earth; and straight There fell a noisome and a grievous sore On them which had the birth-mark of the Beast, And them which worshipped and adored his image. On us hath fallen this grievous pestilence. There is a sense of terror in the air; And apparitions of things horrible Are seen by many; from the sky above us The stars fall; and beneath us the earth quakes! The sound of drums at midnight from afar, The sound of horsemen riding to and fro, As if the gates of the invisible world Were opened, and the dead came forth to warn us,-- All these are omens of some dire disaster Impending over us, and soon to fall, Moreover, in the language of the Prophet, Death is again come up into our windows, To cut off little children from without, And young men from the streets. And in the midst Of all these supernatural threats and warnings Doth Heresy uplift its horrid head; A vision of Sin more awful and appalling Than any phantasm, ghost, or apparition, As arguing and portending some enlargement Of the mysterious Power of Darkness! EDITH, barefooted, and clad in sackcloth, with her hair hanging loose upon her shoulders, walks slowly up the aisle, followed by WHARTON and other Quakers. The congregation starts up in confusion. EDITH (to NORTON, raising her hand). Peace! NORTON. Anathema maranatha! The Lord cometh! EDITH. Yea, verily He cometh, and shall judge The shepherds of Israel who do feed themselves, And leave their flocks to eat what they have trodden Beneath their feet. NORTON. Be silent, babbling woman! St. Paul commands all women to keep silence Within the churches. EDITH. Yet the women prayed And prophesied at Corinth in his day; And, among those on whom the fiery tongues Of Pentecost descended, some were women! NORTON. The Elders of the Churches, by our law, Alone have power to open the doors of speech And silence in the Assembly. I command you! EDITH. The law of God is greater than your laws! Ye build your church with blood, your town with crime; The heads thereof give judgment for reward; The priests thereof teach only for their hire; Your laws condemn the innocent to death; And against this I bear my testimony! NORTON. What testimony? EDITH. That of the Holy Spirit, Which, as your Calvin says, surpasseth reason. NORTON. The laborer is worthy of his hire. EDITH. Yet our great Master did not teach for hire, And the Apostles without purse or scrip Went forth to do his work. Behold this box Beneath thy pulpit. Is it for the poor? Thou canst not answer. It is for the Priest And against this I bear my testimony. NORTON. Away with all these Heretics and Quakers! Quakers, forsooth! Because a quaking fell On Daniel, at beholding of the Vision, Must ye needs shake and quake? Because Isaiah Went stripped and barefoot, must ye wail and howl? Must ye go stripped and naked? must ye make A wailing like the dragons, and a mourning As of the owls? Ye verify the adage That Satan is God's ape! Away with them! Tumult. The Quakers are driven out with violence, EDITH following slowly. The congregation retires in confusion. Thus freely do the Reprobates commit Such measure of iniquity as fits them For the intended measure of God's wrath And even in violating God's commands Are they fulfilling the divine decree! The will of man is but an instrument Disposed and predetermined to its action According unto the decree of God, Being as much subordinate thereto As is the axe unto the hewer's hand! He descends from the pulpit, and joins GOVERNOR ENDICOTT, who comes forward to meet him. The omens and the wonders of the time, Famine, and fire, and shipwreck, and disease, The blast of corn, the death of our young men, Our sufferings in all precious, pleasant things, Are manifestations of the wrath divine, Signs of God's controversy with New England. These emissaries of the Evil One, These servants and ambassadors of Satan, Are but commissioned executioners Of God's vindictive and deserved displeasure. We must receive them as the Roman Bishop Once received Attila, saying, I rejoice You have come safe, whom I esteem to be The scourge of God, sent to chastise his people. This very heresy, perchance, may serve The purposes of God to some good end. With you I leave it; but do not neglect The holy tactics of the civil sword. ENDICOTT. And what more can be done? NORTON. The hand that cut The Red Cross from the colors of the king Can cut the red heart from this heresy. Fear not. All blasphemies immediate And heresies turbulent must be suppressed By civil power. ENDICOTT. But in what way suppressed? NORTON. The Book of Deuteronomy declares That if thy son, thy daughter, or thy wife, Ay, or the friend which is as thine own soul, Entice thee secretly, and say to thee, Let us serve other gods, then shalt thine eye Not pity him, but thou shalt surely kill him, And thine own hand shall be the first upon him To slay him. ENDICOTT. Four already have been slain; And others banished upon pain of death. But they come back again to meet their doom, Bringing the linen for their winding-sheets. We must not go too far. In truth, I shrink From shedding of more blood. The people murmur At our severity. NORTON. Then let them murmur! Truth is relentless; justice never wavers; The greatest firmness is the greatest mercy; The noble order of the Magistracy Cometh immediately from God, and yet This noble order of the Magistracy Is by these Heretics despised and outraged. ENDICOTT. To-night they sleep in prison. If they die, They cannot say that we have caused their death. We do but guard the passage, with the sword Pointed towards them; if they dash upon it, Their blood will be on their own heads, not ours. NORTON. Enough. I ask no more. My predecessor Coped only with the milder heresies Of Antinomians and of Anabaptists. He was not born to wrestle with these fiends. Chrysostom in his pulpit; Augustine In disputation; Timothy in his house! The lantern of St. Botolph's ceased to burn When from the portals of that church he came To be a burning and a shining light Here in the wilderness. And, as he lay On his death-bed, he saw me in a vision Ride on a snow-white horse into this town. His vision was prophetic; thus I came, A terror to the impenitent, and Death On the pale horse of the Apocalypse To all the accursed race of Heretics! [Exeunt. SCENE II. -- A street. On one side, NICHOLAS UPSALL's house; on the other, WALTER MERRY's, with a flock of pigeons on the roof. UPSALL seated in the porch of his house. UPSALL. O day of rest! How beautiful, how fair, How welcome to the weary and the old! Day of the Lord! and truce to earthly cares! Day of the Lord, as all our days should be! Ah, why will man by his austerities Shut out the blessed sunshine and the light, And make of thee a dungeon of despair! WALTER MERRY (entering and looking round him). All silent as a graveyard! No one stirring; No footfall in the street, no sound of voices! By righteous punishment and perseverance, And perseverance in that punishment, At last I have brought this contumacious town To strict observance of the Sabbath day. Those wanton gospellers, the pigeons yonder, Are now the only Sabbath-breakers left. I cannot put them down. As if to taunt me, They gather every Sabbath afternoon In noisy congregation on my roof, Billing and cooing. Whir! take that, ye Quakers. Throws a stone at the pigeons. Sees UPSALL. Ah! Master Nicholas! UPSALL. Good afternoon, Dear neighbor Walter. MERRY. Master Nicholas, You have to-day withdrawn yourself from meeting. UPSALL. Yea, I have chosen rather to worship God Sitting in silence here at my own door. MERRY. Worship the Devil! You this day have broken Three of our strictest laws. First, by abstaining From public worship. Secondly, by walking Profanely on the Sabbath. UPSALL. Not one step. I have been sitting still here, seeing the pigeons Feed in the street and fly about the roofs. MERRY. You have been in the street with other intent Than going to and from the Meeting-house. And, thirdly, you are harboring Quakers here. I am amazed! UPSALL. Men sometimes, it is said, Entertain angels unawares. MERRY. Nice angels! Angels in broad-brimmed hats and russet cloaks, The color of the Devil's nutting-bag. They came Into the Meeting-house this afternoon More in the shape of devils than of angels. The women screamed and fainted; and the boys Made such an uproar in the gallery I could not keep them quiet. UPSALL. Neighbor Walter, Your persecution is of no avail. MERRY. 'T is prosecution, as the Governor says, Not persecution. UPSALL. Well, your prosecution; Your hangings do no good. MERRY. The reason is, We do not hang enough. But, mark my words, We'll scour them; yea, I warrant ye, we'll scour them! And now go in and entertain your angels, And don't be seen here in the street again Till after sundown! There they are again! Exit UPSALL. MERRY throws another stone at the pigeons, and then goes into his house. SCENE III. -- A room in UPSALL'S house. Night. EDITH, WHARTON, and other Quakers seated at a table. UPSALL seated near them, Several books on the table. WHARTON. William and Marmaduke, our martyred brothers, Sleep in untimely graves, if aught untimely Can find place in the providence of God, Where nothing comes too early or too late. I saw their noble death. They to the scaffold Walked hand in hand. Two hundred armed men And many horsemen guarded them, for fear Of rescue by the crowd, whose hearts were stirred. EDITH. O holy martyrs! WHARTON. When they tried to speak, Their voices by the roll of drums were drowned. When they were dead they still looked fresh and fair, The terror of death was not upon their faces. Our sister Mary, likewise, the meek woman, Has passed through martyrdom to her reward; Exclaiming, as they led her to her death, "These many days I've been in Paradise." And, when she died, Priest Wilson threw the hangman His handkerchief, to cover the pale face He dared not look upon. EDITH. As persecuted, Yet not forsaken; as unknown, yet known; As dying, and behold we are alive; As sorrowful, and yet rejoicing always; As having nothing, yet possessing all! WHARTON. And Leddra, too, is dead. But from his prison, The day before his death, he sent these words Unto the little flock of Christ: "What ever May come upon the followers of the Light,-- Distress, affliction, famine, nakedness, Or perils in the city or the sea, Or persecution, or even death itself,-- I am persuaded that God's armor of Light, As it is loved and lived in, will preserve you. Yea, death itself; through which you will find entrance Into the pleasant pastures of the fold, Where you shall feed forever as the herds That roam at large in the low valleys of Achor. And as the flowing of the ocean fills Each creek and branch thereof, and then retires, Leaving behind a sweet and wholesome savor; So doth the virtue and the life of God Flow evermore into the hearts of those Whom He hath made partakers of His nature; And, when it but withdraws itself a little, Leaves a sweet savor after it, that many Can say they are made clean by every word That He hath spoken to them in their silence." EDITH (rising and breaking into a kind of chant). Truly we do but grope here in the dark, Near the partition-wall of Life and Death, At every moment dreading or desiring To lay our hands upon the unseen door! Let us, then, labor for an inward stillness,-- An inward stillness and an inward healing; That perfect silence where the lips and heart Are still, and we no longer entertain Our own imperfect thoughts and vain opinions, But God alone speaks in us, and we wait In singleness of heart, that we may know His will, and in the silence of our spirits, That we may do His will, and do that only! A long pause, interrupted by the sound of a drum approaching; then shouts in the street, and a loud knocking at the door. MARSHAL. Within there! Open the door! MERRY. Will no one answer? MARSHAL. In the King's name! Within there! MERRY. Open the door! UPSALL (from the window). It is not barred. Come in. Nothing prevents you. The poor man's door is ever on the latch. He needs no bolt nor bar to shut out thieves; He fears no enemies, and has no friends Importunate enough to need a key. Enter JOHN ENDICOTT, the MARSHAL, MERRY, and a crowd. Seeing the Quakers silent and unmoved, they pause, awe-struck. ENDICOTT opposite EDITH. MARSHAL. In the King's name do I arrest you all! Away with them to prison. Master Upsall, You are again discovered harboring here These ranters and disturbers of the peace. You know the law. UPSALL. I know it, and am ready To suffer yet again its penalties. EDITH (to ENDICOTT). Why dost thou persecute me, Saul of Tarsus? ACT II. SCENE I. -- JOHN ENDICOTT's room. Early morning. JOHN ENDICOTT. "Why dost thou persecute me, Saul of Tarsus?" All night these words were ringing in mine ears! A sorrowful sweet face; a look that pierced me With meek reproach; a voice of resignation That had a life of suffering in its tone; And that was all! And yet I could not sleep, Or, when I slept, I dreamed that awful dream! I stood beneath the elm-tree on the Common, On which the Quakers have been hanged, and heard A voice, not hers, that cried amid the darkness, "This is Aceldama, the field of blood! I will have mercy, and not sacrifice!" Opens the window and looks out. The sun is up already; and my heart Sickens and sinks within me when I think How many tragedies will be enacted Before his setting. As the earth rolls round, It seems to me a huge Ixion's wheel, Upon whose whirling spokes we are bound fast, And must go with it! Ah, how bright the sun Strikes on the sea and on the masts of vessels, That are uplifted, in the morning air, Like crosses of some peaceable crusade! It makes me long to sail for lands unknown, No matter whither! Under me, in shadow, Gloomy and narrow, lies the little town, Still sleeping, but to wake and toil awhile, Then sleep again. How dismal looks the prison, How grim and sombre in the sunless street,-- The prison where she sleeps, or wakes and waits For what I dare not think of,--death, perhaps! A word that has been said may be unsaid: It is but air. But when a deed is done It cannot be undone, nor can our thoughts Reach out to all the mischiefs that may follow. 'T is time for morning prayers. I will go down. My father, though severe, is kind and just; And when his heart is tender with devotion,-- When from his lips have fallen the words, "Forgive us As we forgive,"--then will I intercede For these poor people, and perhaps may save them. [Exit. SCENE II. -- Dock Square. On one side, the tavern of the Three Mariners. In the background, a quaint building with gables; and, beyond it, wharves and shipping. CAPTAIN KEMPTHORN and others seated at a table before the door. SAMUEL COLE standing near them. KEMPTHORN. Come, drink about! Remember Parson Melham, And bless the man who first invented flip! They drink. COLE. Pray, Master Kempthorn, where were you last night? KEMPTHORN. On board the Swallow, Simon Kempthorn, master, Up for Barbadoes, and the Windward Islands. COLE. The town was in a tumult. KEMPTHORN. And for what? COLE. Your Quakers were arrested. KEMPTHORN. How my Quakers? COLE. These you brought in your vessel from Barbadoes. They made an uproar in the Meeting-house Yesterday, and they're now in prison for it. I owe you little thanks for bringing them To the Three Mariners. KEMPTHORN. They have not harmed you. I tell you, Goodman Cole, that Quaker girl Is precious as a sea-bream's eye. I tell you It was a lucky day when first she set Her little foot upon the Swallow's deck, Bringing good luck, fair winds, and pleasant weather. COLE. I am a law-abiding citizen; I have a seat in the new Meeting-house, A cow-right on the Common; and, besides, Am corporal in the Great Artillery. I rid me of the vagabonds at once. KEMPTHORN. Why should you not have Quakers at your tavern If you have fiddlers? COLE. Never! never! never! If you want fiddling you must go elsewhere, To the Green Dragon and the Admiral Vernon, And other such disreputable places. But the Three Mariners is an orderly house, Most orderly, quiet, and respectable. Lord Leigh said he could be as quiet here As at the Governor's. And have I not King Charles's Twelve Good Rules, all framed and glazed, Hanging in my best parlor? KEMPTHORN. Here's a health To good King Charles. Will you not drink the King? Then drink confusion to old Parson Palmer. COLE. And who is Parson Palmer? I don't know him. KEMPTHORN. He had his cellar underneath his pulpit, And so preached o'er his liquor, just as you do. A drum within. COLE. Here comes the Marshal. MERRY (within). Make room for the Marshal. KEMPTHORN. How pompous and imposing he appears! His great buff doublet bellying like a mainsail, And all his streamers fluttering in the wind. What holds he in his hand? COLE. A proclamation. Enter the MARSHAL, with a proclamation; and MERRY, with a halberd. They are preceded by a drummer, and followed by the hangman, with an armful of books, and a crowd of people, among whom are UPSALL and JOHN ENDICOTT. A pile is made of the books. MERRY. Silence, the drum! Good citizens, attend To the new laws enacted by the Court. MARSHAL (reads). "Whereas a cursed sect of Heretics Has lately risen, commonly called Quakers, Who take upon themselves to be commissioned Immediately of God, and furthermore Infallibly assisted by the Spirit To write and utter blasphemous opinions, Despising Government and the order of God In Church and Commonwealth, and speaking evil Of Dignities, reproaching and reviling The Magistrates and Ministers, and seeking To turn the people from their faith, and thus Gain proselytes to their pernicious ways;-- This Court, considering the premises, And to prevent like mischief as is wrought By their means in our land, doth hereby order, That whatsoever master or commander Of any ship, bark, pink, or catch shall bring To any roadstead, harbor, creek, or cove Within this Jurisdiction any Quakers, Or other blasphemous Heretics, shall pay Unto the Treasurer of the Commonwealth One hundred pounds, and for default thereof Be put in prison, and continue there Till the said sum be satisfied and paid." COLE. Now, Simon Kempthorn, what say you to that? KEMPTHORN. I pray you, Cole, lend me a hundred pounds! MARSHAL (reads). "If any one within this Jurisdiction Shall henceforth entertain, or shall conceal Quakers or other blasphemous Heretics, Knowing them so to be, every such person Shall forfeit to the country forty shillings For each hour's entertainment or concealment, And shall be sent to prison, as aforesaid, Until the forfeiture be wholly paid!" Murmurs in the crowd. KEMPTHORN. Now, Goodman Cole, I think your turn has come! COLE. Knowing them so to be! KEMPTHORN. At forty shillings The hour, your fine will be some forty pounds! COLE. Knowing them so to be! That is the law. MARSHAL (reads). "And it is further ordered and enacted, If any Quaker or Quakers shall presume To come henceforth into this Jurisdiction, Every male Quaker for the first offence Shall have one ear cut off; and shall be kept At labor in the Workhouse, till such time As he be sent away at his own charge. And for the repetition of the offence Shall have his other ear cut off, and then Be branded in the palm of his right hand. And every woman Quaker shall be whipt Severely in three towns; and every Quaker, Or he or she, that shall for a third time Herein again offend, shall have their tongues Bored through with a hot iron, and shall be Sentenced to Banishment on pain of Death." Loud murmurs. The voice of CHRISTISON in the crowd. O patience of the Lord! How long, how long, Ere thou avenge the blood of Thine Elect? MERRY. Silence, there, silence! Do not break the peace! MARSHAL (reads). "Every inhabitant of this Jurisdiction Who shall defend the horrible opinions Of Quakers, by denying due respect To equals and superiors, and withdrawing From Church Assemblies, and thereby approving The abusive and destructive practices Of this accursed sect, in opposition To all the orthodox received opinions Of godly men shall be forthwith commit ted Unto close prison for one month; and then Refusing to retract and to reform The opinions as aforesaid, he shall be Sentenced to Banishment on pain of Death. By the Court. Edward Rawson, Secretary." Now, hangman, do your duty. Burn those books. Loud murmurs in the crowd. The pile of books is lighted. UPSALL. I testify against these cruel laws! Forerunners are they of some judgment on us; And, in the love and tenderness I bear Unto this town and people, I beseech you, O Magistrates, take heed, lest ye be found As fighters against God! JOHN ENDICOTT (taking UPSALL'S hand). Upsall, I thank you For speaking words such as some younger man, I, or another, should have said before you. Such laws as these are cruel and oppressive; A blot on this fair town, and a disgrace To any Christian people. MERRY (aside, listening behind them). Here's sedition! I never thought that any good would come Of this young popinjay, with his long hair And his great boots, fit only for the Russians Or barbarous Indians, as his father says! THE VOICE. Woe to the bloody town! And rightfully Men call it the Lost Town! The blood of Abel Cries from the ground, and at the final judgment The Lord will say, "Cain, Cain! Where is thy brother?" MERRY. Silence there in the crowd! UPSALL (aside). 'T is Christison! THE VOICE. O foolish people, ye that think to burn And to consume the truth of God, I tell you That every flame is a loud tongue of fire To publish it abroad to all the world Louder than tongues of men! KEMPTHORN (springing to his feet). Well said, my hearty! There's a brave fellow! There's a man of pluck! A man who's not afraid to say his say, Though a whole town's against him. Rain, rain, rain, Bones of St. Botolph, and put out this fire! The drum beats. Exeunt all but MERRY, KEMPTHORN, and COLE. MERRY. And now that matter's ended, Goodman Cole, Fetch me a mug of ale, your strongest ale. KEMPTHORN (sitting down). And me another mug of flip; and put Two gills of brandy in it. [Exit COLE. MERRY. No; no more. Not a drop more, I say. You've had enough. KEMPTHORN. And who are you, sir? MERRY. I'm a Tithing-man, And Merry is my name. KEMPTHORN. A merry name! I like it; and I'll drink your merry health Till all is blue. MERRY. And then you will be clapped Into the stocks, with the red letter D Hung round about your neck for drunkenness. You're a free-drinker,--yes, and a free-thinker! KEMPTHORN. And you are Andrew Merry, or Merry Andrew. MERRY. My name is Walter Merry, and not Andrew. KEMPTHORN. Andrew or Walter, you're a merry fellow; I'll swear to that. MERRY. No swearing, let me tell you. The other day one Shorthose had his tongue Put into a cleft stick for profane swearing. COLE brings the ale. KEMPTHORN. Well, where's my flip? As sure as my name's Kempthorn-- MERRY. Is your name Kempthorn? KEMPTHORN. That's the name I go by. MERRY. What, Captain Simon Kempthorn of the Swallow? KEMPTHORN. No other. MERRY (touching him on the shoulder). Then you're wanted. I arrest you In the King's name. KEMPTHORN. And where's your warrant? MERRY (unfolding a paper, and reading). Here. Listen to me. "Hereby you are required, In the King's name, to apprehend the body Of Simon Kempthorn, mariner, and him Safely to bring before me, there to answer All such objections as are laid to him, Touching the Quakers." Signed, John Endicott. KEMPTHORN. Has it the Governor's seal? MERRY. Ay, here it is. KEMPTHORN. Death's head and cross-bones. That's a pirate's flag! MERRY. Beware how you revile the Magistrates; You may be whipped for that. KEMPTHORN. Then mum's the word. Exeunt MERRY and KEMPTHORN. COLE. There's mischief brewing! Sure, there's mischief brewing. I feel like Master Josselyn when he found The hornet's nest, and thought it some strange fruit, Until the seeds came out, and then he dropped it. [Exit. Scene III. -- A room in the Governor's house, Enter GOVERNOR ENDICOTT and MERRY. ENDICOTT. My son, you say? MERRY. Your Worship's eldest son. ENDICOTT. Speaking against the laws? MERRY. Ay, worshipful sir. ENDICOTT. And in the public market-place? MERRY. I saw him With my own eyes, heard him with my own ears. ENDICOTT. Impossible! MERRY. He stood there in the crowd With Nicholas Upsall, when the laws were read To-day against the Quakers, and I heard him Denounce and vilipend them as unjust, And cruel, wicked, and abominable. ENDICOTT. Ungrateful son! O God! thou layest upon me A burden heavier than I can bear! Surely the power of Satan must be great Upon the earth, if even the elect Are thus deceived and fall away from grace! MERRY. Worshipful sir! I meant no harm-- ENDICOTT. 'T is well. You've done your duty, though you've done it roughly, And every word you've uttered since you came Has stabbed me to the heart! MERRY. I do beseech Your Worship's pardon! ENDICOTT. He whom I have nurtured And brought up in the reverence of the Lord! The child of all my hopes and my affections! He upon whom I leaned as a sure staff For my old age! It is God's chastisement For leaning upon any arm but His! MERRY. Your Worship!-- ENDICOTT. And this comes from holding parley With the delusions and deceits of Satan. At once, forever, must they be crushed out, Or all the land will reek with heresy! Pray, have you any children? MERRY. No, not any. ENDICOTT. Thank God for that. He has delivered you From a great care. Enough; my private griefs Too long have kept me from the public service. Exit MERRY, ENDICOTT seats himself at the table and arranges his papers. The hour has come; and I am eager now To sit in judgment on these Heretics. A knock. Come in. Who is it? (Not looking up). JOHN ENDICOTT. It is I. ENDICOTT (restraining himself). Sit down! JOHN ENDICOTT (sitting down). I come to intercede for these poor people Who are in prison, and await their trial. ENDICOTT. It is of them I wished to speak with you. I have been angry with you, but 't is passed. For when I hear your footsteps come or go, See in your features your dead mother's face, And in your voice detect some tone of hers, All anger vanishes, and I remember The days that are no more, and come no more, When as a child you sat upon my knee, And prattled of your playthings, and the games You played among the pear trees in the orchard! JOHN ENDICOTT. Oh, let the memory of my noble mother Plead with you to be mild and merciful! For mercy more becomes a Magistrate Than the vindictive wrath which men call justice! ENDICOTT. The sin of heresy is a deadly sin. 'T is like the falling of the snow, whose crystals The traveller plays with, thoughtless of his danger, Until he sees the air so full of light That it is dark; and blindly staggering onward, Lost and bewildered, he sits down to rest; There falls a pleasant drowsiness upon him, And what he thinks is sleep, alas! is death. JOHN ENDICOTT. And yet who is there that has never doubted? And doubting and believing, has not said, "Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief"? ENDICOTT. In the same way we trifle with our doubts, Whose shining shapes are like the stars descending; Until at last, bewildered and dismayed, Blinded by that which seemed to give us light, We sink to sleep, and find that it is death, Rising. Death to the soul through all eternity! Alas that I should see you growing up To man's estate, and in the admonition And nurture of the law, to find you now Pleading for Heretics! JOHN ENDICOTT (rising). In the sight of God, Perhaps all men are Heretics. Who dares To say that he alone has found the truth? We cannot always feel and think and act As those who go before us. Had you done so, You would not now be here. ENDICOTT. Have you forgotten The doom of Heretics, and the fate of those Who aid and comfort them? Have you forgotten That in the market-place this very day You trampled on the laws? What right have you, An inexperienced and untravelled youth, To sit in judgment here upon the acts Of older men and wiser than yourself, Thus stirring up sedition in the streets, And making me a byword and a jest? JOHN ENDICOTT. Words of an inexperienced youth like me Were powerless if the acts of older men Were not before them. 'T is these laws themselves Stir up sedition, not my judgment of them. ENDICOTT. Take heed, lest I be called, as Brutus was, To be the judge of my own son. Begone! When you are tired of feeding upon husks, Return again to duty and submission, But not till then. JOHN ENDICOTT. I hear and I obey! [Exit. ENDICOTT. Oh happy, happy they who have no children! He's gone! I hear the hall door shut behind him. It sends a dismal echo through my heart, As if forever it had closed between us, And I should look upon his face no more! Oh, this will drag me down into my grave,-- To that eternal resting-place wherein Man lieth down, and riseth not again! Till the heavens be no more, he shall not wake, Nor be roused from his sleep; for Thou dost change His countenance and sendest him away! [Exit. ACT III. SCENE I. -- The Court of Assistants, ENDICOTT, BELLINGHAM, ATHERTON, and other magistrates. KEMPTHORN, MERRY, and constables. Afterwards WHARTON, EDITH, and CHRISTISON. ENDICOTT. Call Captain Simon Kempthorn. MERRY. Simon Kempthorn, Come to the bar! KEMPTHORN comes forward. ENDICOTT. You are accused of bringing Into this Jurisdiction, from Barbadoes, Some persons of that sort and sect of people Known by the name of Quakers, and maintaining Most dangerous and heretical opinions, Purposely coming here to propagate Their heresies and errors; bringing with them And spreading sundry books here, which contain Their doctrines most corrupt and blasphemous, And contrary to the truth professed among us. What say you to this charge? KEMPTHORN. I do acknowledge, Among the passengers on board the Swallow Were certain persons saying Thee and Thou. They seemed a harmless people, mostways silent, Particularly when they said their prayers. ENDICOTT. Harmless and silent as the pestilence! You'd better have brought the fever or the plague Among us in your ship! Therefore, this Court, For preservation of the Peace and Truth, Hereby commands you speedily to transport, Or cause to be transported speedily, The aforesaid persons hence unto Barbadoes, From whence they came; you paying all the charges Of their imprisonment. KEMPTHORN. Worshipful sir, No ship e'er prospered that has carried Quakers Against their will! I knew a vessel once-- ENDICOTT. And for the more effectual performance Hereof you are to give security In bonds amounting to one hundred pounds. On your refusal, you will be committed To prison till you do it. KEMPTHORN. But you see I cannot do it. The law, sir, of Barbadoes Forbids the landing Quakers on the island. ENDICOTT. Then you will be committed. Who comes next? MERRY. There is another charge against the Captain. ENDICOTT. What is it? MERRY. Profane swearing, please your Worship. He cursed and swore from Dock Square to the Court-house, ENDICOTT. Then let him stand in the pillory for one hour. [Exit KEMPTHORN with constable. Who's next? MERRY. The Quakers. ENDICOTT. Call them. MERRY. Edward Wharton, Come to the bar! WHARTON. Yea, even to the bench. ENDICOTT. Take off your hat. WHARTON. My hat offendeth not. If it offendeth any, let him take it; For I shall not resist. ENDICOTT. Take off his hat. Let him be fined ten shillings for contempt. MERRY takes off WHARTON'S hat. WHARTON. What evil have I done? ENDICOTT. Your hair's too long; And in not putting off your hat to us You've disobeyed and broken that commandment Which sayeth "Honor thy father and thy mother." WHARTON. John Endicott, thou art become too proud; And loved him who putteth off the hat, And honoreth thee by bowing of the body, And sayeth "Worshipful sir!" 'T is time for thee To give such follies over, for thou mayest Be drawing very near unto thy grave. ENDICOTT. Now, sirrah, leave your canting. Take the oath. WHARTON. Nay, sirrah me no sirrahs! ENDICOTT. Will you swear? WHARTON. Nay, I will not. ENDICOTT. You made a great disturbance And uproar yesterday in the Meeting-house, Having your hat on. WHARTON. I made no disturbance; For peacefully I stood, like other people. I spake no words; moved against none my hand; But by the hair they haled me out, and dashed Their hooks into my face. ENDICOTT. You, Edward Wharton, On pain of death, depart this Jurisdiction Within ten days. Such is your sentence. Go. WHARTON. John Endicott, it had been well for thee If this day's doings thou hadst left undone But, banish me as far as thou hast power, Beyond the guard and presence of my God Thou canst not banish me. ENDICOTT. Depart the Court; We have no time to listen to your babble. Who's next? [Exit WHARTON. MERRY. This woman, for the same offence. EDITH comes forward. ENDICOTT. What is your name? EDITH. 'T is to the world unknown, But written in the Book of Life. ENDICOTT. Take heed It be not written in the Book of Death! What is it? EDITH. Edith Christison. ENDICOTT (with eagerness). The daughter Of Wenlock Christison? EDITH. I am his daughter. ENDICOTT. Your father hath given us trouble many times. A bold man and a violent, who sets At naught the authority of our Church and State, And is in banishment on pain of death. Where are you living? EDITH. In the Lord. ENDICOTT. Make answer Without evasion. Where? EDITH. My outward being Is in Barbadoes. ENDICOTT. Then why come you here? EDITH. I come upon an errand of the Lord. ENDICOTT. 'Tis not the business of the Lord you're doing; It is the Devil's. Will you take the oath? Give her the Book. MERRY offers the Book. EDITH. You offer me this Book To swear on; and it saith, "Swear not at all, Neither by heaven, because it is God's Throne, Nor by the earth, because it is his footstool!" I dare not swear. ENDICOTT. You dare not? Yet you Quakers Deny this book of Holy Writ, the Bible, To be the Word of God. EDITH (reverentially). Christ is the Word, The everlasting oath of God. I dare not. ENDICOTT. You own yourself a Quaker,--do you not? EDITH. I own that in derision and reproach I am so called. ENDICOTT. Then you deny the Scripture To be the rule of life. EDITH. Yea, I believe The Inner Light, and not the Written Word, To be the rule of life. ENDICOTT. And you deny That the Lord's Day is holy. EDITH. Every day Is the Lords Day. It runs through all our lives, As through the pages of the Holy Bible, "Thus saith the Lord." ENDICOTT. You are accused of making An horrible disturbance, and affrighting The people in the Meeting-house on Sunday. What answer make you? EDITH. I do not deny That I was present in your Steeple-house On the First Day; but I made no disturbance. ENDICOTT. Why came you there? EDITH. Because the Lord commanded. His word was in my heart, a burning fire Shut up within me and consuming me, And I was very weary with forbearing; I could not stay. ENDICOTT. 'T was not the Lord that sent you; As an incarnate devil did you come! EDITH. On the First Day, when, seated in my chamber, I heard the bells toll, calling you together, The sound struck at my life, as once at his, The holy man, our Founder, when he heard The far-off bells toll in the Vale of Beavor. It sounded like a market bell to call The folk together, that the Priest might set His wares to sale. And the Lord said within me, "Thou must go cry aloud against that Idol, And all the worshippers thereof." I went Barefooted, clad in sackcloth, and I stood And listened at the threshold; and I heard The praying and the singing and the preaching, Which were but outward forms, and without power. Then rose a cry within me, and my heart Was filled with admonitions and reproofs. Remembering how the Prophets and Apostles Denounced the covetous hirelings and diviners, I entered in, and spake the words the Lord Commanded me to speak. I could no less. ENDICOTT. Are you a Prophetess? EDITH. Is it not written, "Upon my handmaidens will I pour out My spirit, and they shall prophesy"? ENDICOTT. Enough; For out of your own mouth are you condemned! Need we hear further? THE JUDGES. We are satisfied. ENDICOTT. It is sufficient. Edith Christison, The sentence of the Court is, that you be Scourged in three towns, with forty stripes save one, Then banished upon pain of death! EDITH. Your sentence Is truly no more terrible to me Than had you blown a feather into the the air, And, as it fell upon me, you had said, Take heed it hurt thee not! God's will he done! WENLOCK CHRISTISON (unseen in the crowd). Woe to the city of blood! The stone shall cry Out of the wall; the beam from out the timber Shall answer it! Woe unto him that buildeth A town with blood, and stablisheth a city By his iniquity! ENDICOTT. Who is it makes Such outcry here? CHRISTISON (coming forward). I, Wenlock Christison! ENDICOTT. Banished on pain of death, why come you here? CHRISTISON. I come to warn you that you shed no more The blood of innocent men! It cries aloud For vengeance to the Lord! ENDICOTT. Your life is forfeit Unto the law; and you shall surely die, And shall not live. CHRISTISON. Like unto Eleazer, Maintaining the excellence of ancient years And the honor of his gray head, I stand before you; Like him disdaining all hypocrisy, Lest, through desire to live a little longer, I get a stain to my old age and name! ENDICOTT. Being in banishment, on pain of death, You come now in among us in rebellion. CHRISTISON. I come not in among you in rebellion, But in obedience to the Lord of heaven. Not in contempt to any Magistrate, But only in the love I bear your souls, As ye shall know hereafter, when all men Give an account of deeds done in the body! God's righteous judgments ye cannot escape. ONE OF THE JUDGES. Those who have gone before you said the same, And yet no judgment of the Lord hath fallen Upon us. CHRISTISON. He but waiteth till the measure Of your iniquities shall be filled up, And ye have run your race. Then will his wrath Descend upon you to the uttermost! For thy part, Humphrey Atherton, it hangs Over thy head already. It shall come Suddenly, as a thief doth in the night, And in the hour when least thou thinkest of it! ENDICOTT. We have a law, and by that law you die. CHRISTISON. I, a free man of England and freeborn, Appeal unto the laws of mine own nation! ENDICOTT. There's no appeal to England from this Court! What! do you think our statutes are but paper? Are but dead leaves that rustle in the wind? Or litter to be trampled under foot? What say ye, Judges of the Court,--what say ye? Shall this man suffer death? Speak your opinions. ONE OF THE JUDGES. I am a mortal man, and die I must, And that erelong; and I must then appear Before the awful judgment-seat of Christ, To give account of deeds done in the body. My greatest glory on that day will be, That I have given my vote against this man. CHRISTISON. If, Thomas Danforth, thou hast nothing more To glory in upon that dreadful day Than blood of innocent people, then thy glory Will be turned into shame! The Lord hath said it! ANOTHER JUDGE. I cannot give consent, while other men Who have been banished upon pain of death Are now in their own houses here among us. ENDICOTT. Ye that will not consent, make record of it. I thank my God that I am not afraid To give my judgment. Wenlock Christison, You must be taken back from hence to prison, Thence to the place of public execution, There to be hanged till you be dead--dead,--dead. CHRISTISON. If ye have power to take my life from me,-- Which I do question,--God hath power to raise The principle of life in other men, And send them here among you. There shall be No peace unto the wicked, saith my God. Listen, ye Magistrates, for the Lord hath said it! The day ye put his servitors to death, That day the Day of your own Visitation, The Day of Wrath shall pass above your heads, And ye shall be accursed forevermore! To EDITH, embracing her. Cheer up, dear heart! they have not power to harm us. [Exeunt CHRISTISON and EDITH guarded. The Scene closes. SCENE II. -- A street. Enter JOHN ENDICOTT and UPSALL. JOHN ENDICOTT. Scourged in three towns! and yet the busy people Go up and down the streets on their affairs Of business or of pleasure, as if nothing Had happened to disturb them or their thoughts! When bloody tragedies like this are acted, The pulses of a nation should stand still The town should be in mourning, and the people Speak only in low whispers to each other. UPSALL. I know this people; and that underneath A cold outside there burns a secret fire That will find vent and will not be put out, Till every remnant of these barbarous laws Shall be to ashes burned, and blown away. JOHN ENDICOTT. Scourged in three towns! It is incredible Such things can be! I feel the blood within me Fast mounting in rebellion, since in vain Have I implored compassion of my father! UPSALL. You know your father only as a father; I know him better as a Magistrate. He is a man both loving and severe; A tender heart; a will inflexible. None ever loved him more than I have loved him. He is an upright man and a just man In all things save the treatment of the Quakers. JOHN ENDICOTT. Yet I have found him cruel and unjust Even as a father. He has driven me forth Into the street; has shut his door upon me, With words of bitterness. I am as homeless As these poor Quakers are. UPSALL. Then come with me. You shall be welcome for your father's sake, And the old friendship that has been between us. He will relent erelong. A father's anger Is like a sword without a handle, piercing Both ways alike, and wounding him that wields it No less than him that it is pointed at. [Exeunt. SCENE III. -- The prison. Night. EDITH reading the Bible by a lamp. EDITH. "Blessed are ye when men shall persecute you, And shall revile you, and shall say against you All manner of evil falsely for my sake! Rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for great Is your reward in heaven. For so the prophets, Which were before you, have been persecuted." Enter JOHN ENDICOTT. JOHN ENDICOTT. Edith! EDITH. Who is it that speaketh? JOHN ENDICOTT. Saul of Tarsus: As thou didst call me once. EDITH (coming forward). Yea, I remember. Thou art the Governor's son. JOHN ENDICOTT. I am ashamed Thou shouldst remember me. EDITH. Why comest thou Into this dark guest-chamber in the night? What seekest thou? JOHN ENDICOTT. Forgiveness! EDITH. I forgive All who have injured me. What hast thou done? JOHN ENDICOTT. I have betrayed thee, thinking that in this I did God service. Now, in deep contrition, I come to rescue thee. EDITH. From what? JOHN ENDICOTT. From prison. EDITH. I am safe here within these gloomy walls. JOHN ENDICOTT. From scourging in the streets, and in three towns! EDITH. Remembering who was scourged for me, I shrink not Nor shudder at the forty stripes save one. JOHN ENDICOTT. Perhaps from death itself! EDITH. I fear not death, Knowing who died for me. JOHN ENDICOTT (aside). Surely some divine Ambassador is speaking through those lips And looking through those eyes! I cannot answer! EDITH. If all these prison doors stood opened wide I would not cross the threshold,--not one step. There are invisible bars I cannot break; There are invisible doors that shut me in, And keep me ever steadfast to my purpose. JOHN ENDICOTT. Thou hast the patience and the faith of Saints! EDITH. Thy Priest hath been with me this day to save me, Not only from the death that comes to all, But from the second death! JOHN ENDICOTT. The Pharisee! My heart revolts against him and his creed! Alas! the coat that was without a seam Is rent asunder by contending sects; Each bears away a portion of the garment, Blindly believing that he has the whole! EDITH. When Death, the Healer, shall have touched our eyes With moist clay of the grave, then shall we see The truth as we have never yet beheld it. But he that overcometh shall not be Hurt of the second death. Has he forgotten The many mansions in our father's house? JOHN ENDICOTT. There is no pity in his iron heart! The hands that now bear stamped upon their palms The burning sign of Heresy, hereafter Shall be uplifted against such accusers, And then the imprinted letter and its meaning Will not be Heresy, but Holiness! EDITH. Remember, thou condemnest thine own father! JOHN ENDICOTT. I have no father! He has cast me off. I am as homeless as the wind that moans And wanders through the streets. Oh, come with me! Do not delay. Thy God shall be my God, And where thou goest I will go. EDITH. I cannot. Yet will I not deny it, nor conceal it; From the first moment I beheld thy face I felt a tenderness in my soul towards thee. My mind has since been inward to the Lord, Waiting his word. It has not yet been spoken. JOHN ENDICOTT. I cannot wait. Trust me. Oh, come with me! EDITH. In the next room, my father, an old man, Sitteth imprisoned and condemned to death, Willing to prove his faith by martyrdom; And thinkest thou his daughter would do less? JOHN ENDICOTT. Oh, life is sweet, and death is terrible! EDITH. I have too long walked hand in hand with death To shudder at that pale familiar face. But leave me now. I wish to be alone. JOHN ENDICOTT. Not yet. Oh, let me stay. EDITH. Urge me no more. JOHN ENDICOTT. Alas! good-night. I will not say good-by! EDITH. Put this temptation underneath thy feet. To him that overcometh shall be given The white stone with the new name written on it, That no man knows save him that doth receive it, And I will give thee a new name, and call thee Paul of Damascus, and not Saul of Tarsus. [Exit ENDICOTT. EDITH sits down again to read the Bible. ACT IV. SCENE I. -- King Street, in front of the town-house. KEMPTHORN in the pillory. MERRY and a crowd of lookers-on. KEMPTHORN (sings). The world is full of care, Much like unto a bubble; Women and care, and care and women, And women and care and trouble. Good Master Merry, may I say confound? MERRY. Ay, that you may. KEMPTHORN. Well, then, with your permission, Confound the Pillory! MERRY. That's the very thing The joiner said who made the Shrewsbury stocks. He said, Confound the stocks, because they put him Into his own. He was the first man in them. KEMPTHORN. For swearing, was it? MERRY. No, it was for charging; He charged the town too much; and so the town, To make things square, set him in his own stocks, And fined him five pounds sterling,--just enough To settle his own bill. KEMPTHORN. And served him right; But, Master Merry, is it not eight bells? MERRY. Not quite. KEMPTHORN. For, do you see? I'm getting tired Of being perched aloft here in this cro' nest Like the first mate of a whaler, or a Middy Mast-headed, looking out for land! Sail ho! Here comes a heavy-laden merchant-man With the lee clews eased off and running free Before the wind. A solid man of Boston. A comfortable man, with dividends, And the first salmon, and the first green peas. A gentleman passes. He does not even turn his head to look. He's gone without a word. Here comes another, A different kind of craft on a taut bow-line,-- Deacon Giles Firmin the apothecary, A pious and a ponderous citizen, Looking as rubicund and round and splendid As the great bottle in his own shop window! DEACON FIRMIN passes. And here's my host of the Three Mariners, My creditor and trusty taverner, My corporal in the Great Artillery! He's not a man to pass me without speaking. COLE looks away and passes. Don't yaw so; keep your luff, old hypocrite! Respectable, ah yes, respectable, You, with your seat in the new Meeting-house, Your cow-right on the Common! But who's this? I did not know the Mary Ann was in! And yet this is my old friend, Captain Goldsmith, As sure as I stand in the bilboes here. Why, Ralph, my boy! Enter RALPH GOLDSMITH. GOLDSMITH. Why, Simon, is it you? Set in the bilboes? KEMPTHORN. Chock-a-block, you see, And without chafing-gear. GOLDSMITH. And what's it for? KEMPTHORN. Ask that starbowline with the boat-hook there, That handsome man. MERRY (bowing). For swearing. KEMPTHORN. In this town They put sea-captains in the stocks for swearing, And Quakers for not swearing. So look out. GOLDSMITH. I pray you set him free; he meant no harm; 'T is an old habit he picked up afloat. MERRY. Well, as your time is out, you may come down, The law allows you now to go at large Like Elder Oliver's horse upon the Common. KEMPTHORN. Now, hearties, bear a hand! Let go and haul. KEMPTHORN is set free, and comes forward, shaking GOLDSMITH'S hand. KEMPTHORN. Give me your hand, Ralph. Ah, how good it feels! The hand of an old friend. GOLDSMITH. God bless you, Simon! KEMPTHORN. Now let us make a straight wake for the tavern Of the Three Mariners, Samuel Cole commander; Where we can take our ease, and see the shipping, And talk about old times. GOLDSMITH. First I must pay My duty to the Governor, and take him His letters and despatches. Come with me. KEMPTHORN. I'd rather not. I saw him yesterday. GOLDSMITH. Then wait for me at the Three Nuns and Comb. KEMPTHORN. I thank you. That's too near to the town pump. I will go with you to the Governor's, And wait outside there, sailing off and on; If I am wanted, you can hoist a signal. MERRY. Shall I go with you and point out the way? GOLDSMITH. Oh no, I thank you. I am not a stranger Here in your crooked little town. MERRY. How now, sir? Do you abuse our town? [Exit. GOLDSMITH. Oh, no offence. KEMPTHORN. Ralph, I am under bonds for a hundred pound. GOLDSMITH. Hard lines. What for? KEMPTHORN. To take some Quakers back I brought here from Barbadoes in the Swallow. And how to do it I don't clearly see, For one of them is banished, and another Is sentenced to be hanged! What shall I do? GOLDSMITH. Just slip your hawser on some cloudy night; Sheer off, and pay it with the topsail, Simon! [Exeunt. SCENE II. -- Street in front of the prison. In the background a gateway and several flights of steps leading up terraces to the Governor's house. A pump on one side of the street. JOHN ENDICOTT, MERRY, UPSALL, and others. A drum beats. JOHN ENDICOTT. Oh shame, shame, shame! MERRY. Yes, it would be a shame But for the damnable sin of Heresy! JOHN ENDICOTT. A woman scourged and dragged about our streets! MERRY. Well, Roxbury and Dorchester must take Their share of shame. She will be whipped in each! Three towns, and Forty Stripes save one; that makes Thirteen in each. JOHN ENDICOTT. And are we Jews or Christians? See where she comes, amid a gaping crowd! And she a child. Oh, pitiful! pitiful! There's blood upon her clothes, her hands, her feet! Enter MARSHAL and a drummer. EDITH, stripped to the waist, followed by the hangman with a scourge, and a noisy crowd. EDITH. Here let me rest one moment. I am tired. Will some one give me water? MERRY. At his peril. UPSALL. Alas! that I should live to see this day! A WOMAN. Did I forsake my father and my mother And come here to New England to see this? EDITH. I am athirst. Will no one give me water? JOHN ENDICOTT (making his way through the crowd with water). In the Lord's name! EDITH (drinking. In his name I receive it! Sweet as the water of Samaria's well This water tastes. I thank thee. Is it thou? I was afraid thou hadst deserted me. JOHN ENDICOTT. Never will I desert thee, nor deny thee. Be comforted. MERRY. O Master Endicott, Be careful what you say. JOHN ENDICOTT. Peace, idle babbler! MERRY. You'll rue these words! JOHN ENDICOTT. Art thou not better now? EDITH. They've struck me as with roses. JOHN ENDICOTT. Ah, these wounds! These bloody garments! EDITH. It is granted me To seal my testimony with my blood. JOHN ENDICOTT. O blood-red seal of man's vindictive wrath! O roses in the garden of the Lord! I, of the household of Iscariot, I have betrayed in thee my Lord and Master. WENLOCK CHRISTISON appears above, at the window of the prison, stretching out his hands through the bars. CHRISTISON. Be of good courage, O my child! my child! Blessed art thou when men shall persecute thee! Fear not their faces, saith the Lord, fear not, For I am with thee to deliver thee. A CITIZEN. Who is it crying from the prison yonder. MERRY. It is old Wenlock Christison. CHRISTISON. Remember Him who was scourged, and mocked, and crucified! I see his messengers attending thee. Be steadfast, oh, be steadfast to the end! EDITH (with exultation). I cannot reach thee with these arms, O father! But closely in my soul do I embrace thee And hold thee. In thy dungeon and thy death I will be with thee, and will comfort thee. MARSHAL. Come, put an end to this. Let the drum beat. The drum beats. Exeunt all but JOHN ENDICOTT, UPSALL, and MERRY. CHRISTISON. Dear child, farewell! Never shall I behold Thy face again with these bleared eyes of flesh; And never wast thou fairer, lovelier, dearer Than now, when scourged and bleeding, and insulted For the truth's sake. O pitiless, pitiless town! The wrath of God hangs over thee; and the day Is near at hand when thou shalt be abandoned To desolation and the breeding of nettles. The bittern and the cormorant shall lodge Upon thine upper lintels, and their voice Sing in thy windows. Yea, thus saith the Lord! JOHN ENDICOTT. Awake! awake! ye sleepers, ere too late, And wipe these bloody statutes from your books! [Exit. MERRY. Take heed; the walls have ears! UPSALL. At last, the heart Of every honest man must speak or break! Enter GOVERNOR ENDICOTT with his halberdiers. ENDICOTT. What is this stir and tumult in the street? MERRY. Worshipful sir, the whipping of a girl, And her old father howling from the prison. ENDICOTT (to his halberdiers). Go on. CHRISTISON. Antiochus! Antiochus! O thou that slayest the Maccabees! The Lord Shall smite thee with incurable disease, And no man shall endure to carry thee! MERRY. Peace, old blasphemer! CHRISTISON. I both feel and see The presence and the waft of death go forth Against thee, and already thou dost look Like one that's dead! MERRY (pointing). And there is your own son, Worshipful sir, abetting the sedition. ENDICOTT. Arrest him. Do not spare him. MERRY (aside). His own child! There is some special providence takes care That none shall be too happy in this world! His own first-born. ENDICOTT. O Absalom, my son! [Exeunt; the Governor with his halberdiers ascending the steps of his house. SCENE III. -- The Governor's private room. Papers upon the table. ENDICOTT and BELLINGHAM ENDICOTT. There is a ship from England has come in, Bringing despatches and much news from home, His majesty was at the Abbey crowned; And when the coronation was complete There passed a mighty tempest o'er the city, Portentous with great thunderings and lightnings. BELLINGHAM. After his father's, if I well remember, There was an earthquake, that foreboded evil. ENDICOTT. Ten of the Regicides have been put to death! The bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw Have been dragged from their graves, and publicly Hanged in their shrouds at Tyburn. BELLINGHAM. Horrible! ENDICOTT. Thus the old tyranny revives again. Its arm is long enough to reach us here, As you will see. For, more insulting still Than flaunting in our faces dead men's shrouds, Here is the King's Mandamus, taking from us, From this day forth, all power to punish Quakers. BELLINGHAM. That takes from us all power; we are but puppets, And can no longer execute our laws. ENDICOTT. His Majesty begins with pleasant words, "Trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well;" Then with a ruthless hand he strips from me All that which makes me what I am; as if From some old general in the field, grown gray In service, scarred with many wounds, Just at the hour of victory, he should strip His badge of office and his well-gained honors, And thrust him back into the ranks again. Opens the Mandamus and hands it to BELLINGHAM; and, while he is reading, ENDICOTT walks up and down the room. Here, read it for yourself; you see his words Are pleasant words--considerate--not reproachful-- Nothing could be more gentle--or more royal; But then the meaning underneath the words, Mark that. He says all people known as Quakers Among us, now condemned to suffer death Or any corporal punishment whatever, Who are imprisoned, or may be obnoxious To the like condemnation, shall be sent Forthwith to England, to be dealt with there In such wise as shall be agreeable Unto the English law and their demerits. Is it not so? BELLINGHAM (returning the paper). Ay, so the paper says. ENDICOTT. It means we shall no longer rule the Province; It means farewell to law and liberty, Authority, respect for Magistrates, The peace and welfare of the Commonwealth. If all the knaves upon this continent Can make appeal to England, and so thwart The ends of truth and justice by delay, Our power is gone forever. We are nothing But ciphers, valueless save when we follow Some unit; and our unit is the King! 'T is he that gives us value. BELLINGHAM. I confess Such seems to be the meaning of this paper, But being the King's Mandamus, signed and sealed, We must obey, or we are in rebellion. ENDICOTT. I tell you, Richard Bellingham,--I tell you, That this is the beginning of a struggle Of which no mortal can foresee the end. I shall not live to fight the battle for you, I am a man disgraced in every way; This order takes from me my self-respect And the respect of others. 'T is my doom, Yes, my death-warrant, but must be obeyed! Take it, and see that it is executed So far as this, that all be set at large; But see that none of them be sent to England To bear false witness, and to spread reports That might be prejudicial to ourselves. [Exit BELLINGHAM. There's a dull pain keeps knocking at my heart, Dolefully saying, "Set thy house in order, For thou shalt surely die, and shalt not live! For me the shadow on the dial-plate Goeth not back, but on into the dark! [Exit. SCENE IV. -- The street. A crowd, reading a placard on the door of the Meeting-house. NICHOLAS UPSALL among them. Enter John Norton. NORTON. What is this gathering here? UPSALL. One William Brand, An old man like ourselves, and weak in body, Has been so cruelly tortured in his prison, The people are excited, and they threaten To tear the prison down. NORTON. What has been done? UPSALL. He has been put in irons, with his neck And heels tied close together, and so left From five in the morning until nine at night. NORTON. What more was done? UPSALL. He has been kept five days In prison without food, and cruelly beaten, So that his limbs were cold, his senses stopped. NORTON. What more? UPSALL. And is this not enough? NORTON. Now hear me. This William Brand of yours has tried to beat Our Gospel Ordinances black and blue; And, if he has been beaten in like manner, It is but justice, and I will appear In his behalf that did so. I suppose That he refused to work. UPSALL. He was too weak. How could an old man work, when he was starving? NORTON. And what is this placard? UPSALL. The Magistrates, To appease the people and prevent a tumult, Have put up these placards throughout the town, Declaring that the jailer shall be dealt with Impartially and sternly by the Court. NORTON (tearing down the placard). Down with this weak and cowardly concession, This flag of truce with Satan and with Sin! I fling it in his face! I trample it Under my feet! It is his cunning craft, The masterpiece of his diplomacy, To cry and plead for boundless toleration. But toleration is the first-born child Of all abominations and deceits. There is no room in Christ's triumphant army For tolerationists. And if an Angel Preach any other gospel unto you Than that ye have received, God's malediction Descend upon him! Let him be accursed! [Exit. UPSALL. Now, go thy ways, John Norton, go thy ways, Thou Orthodox Evangelist, as men call thee! But even now there cometh out of England, Like an o'ertaking and accusing conscience, An outraged man, to call thee to account For the unrighteous murder of his son! [Exit. SCENE V. -- The Wilderness. Enter EDITH. EDITH. How beautiful are these autumnal woods! The wilderness doth blossom like the rose, And change into a garden of the Lord! How silent everywhere! Alone and lost Here in the forest, there comes over me An inward awfulness. I recall the words Of the Apostle Paul: "In journeyings often, Often in perils in the wilderness, In weariness, in painfulness, in watchings, In hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness;" And I forget my weariness and pain, My watchings, and my hunger and my thirst. The Lord hath said that He will seek his flock In cloudy and dark days, and they shall dwell Securely in the wilderness, and sleep Safe in the woods! Whichever way I turn, I come back with my face towards the town. Dimly I see it, and the sea beyond it. O cruel town! I know what waits me there, And yet I must go back; for ever louder I hear the inward calling of the Spirit, And must obey the voice. O woods that wear Your golden crown of martyrdom, blood-stained, From you I learn a lesson of submission, And am obedient even unto death, If God so wills it. [Exit. JOHN ENDICOTT (within). Edith! Edith! Edith! He enters. It is in vain! I call, she answers not; I follow, but I find no trace of her! Blood! blood! The leaves above me and around me Are red with blood! The pathways of the forest, The clouds that canopy the setting sun And even the little river in the meadows Are stained with it! Where'er I look, I see it! Away, thou horrible vision! Leave me! leave me! Alas! you winding stream, that gropes its way Through mist and shadow, doubling on itself, At length will find, by the unerring law Of nature, what it seeks. O soul of man, Groping through mist and shadow, and recoiling Back on thyself, are, too, thy devious ways Subject to law? and when thou seemest to wander The farthest from thy goal, art thou still drawing Nearer and nearer to it, till at length Thou findest, like the river, what thou seekest? [Exit. ACT V. SCENE I. -- Daybreak. Street in front of UPSALL's house. A light in the window. Enter JOHN ENDICOTT. JOHN ENDICOTT. O silent, sombre, and deserted streets, To me ye 're peopled with a sad procession, And echo only to the voice of sorrow! O houses full of peacefulness and sleep, Far better were it to awake no more Than wake to look upon such scenes again! There is a light in Master Upsall's window. The good man is already risen, for sleep Deserts the couches of the old. Knocks at UPSALL's door. UPSALL (at the window). Who's there? JOHN ENDICOTT. Am I so changed you do not know my voice? UPSALL. I know you. Have you heard what things have happened? JOHN ENDICOTT. I have heard nothing. UPSALL. Stay; I will come down. JOHN ENDICOTT. I am afraid some dreadful news awaits me! I do not dare to ask, yet am impatient To know the worst. Oh, I am very weary With waiting and with watching and pursuing! Enter UPSALL. UPSALL. Thank God, you have come back! I've much to tell you. Where have you been? JOHN ENDICOTT. You know that I was seized, Fined, and released again. You know that Edith, After her scourging in three towns, was banished Into the wilderness, into the land That is not sown; and there I followed her, But found her not. Where is she? UPSALL. She is here. JOHN ENDICOTT. Oh, do not speak that word, for it means death! UPSALL. No, it means life. She sleeps in yonder chamber. Listen to me. When news of Leddra's death Reached England, Edward Burroughs, having boldly Got access to the presence of the King, Told him there was a vein of innocent blood Opened in his dominions here, which threatened To overrun them all. The King replied. "But I will stop that vein!" and he forthwith Sent his Mandamus to our Magistrates, That they proceed no further in this business. So all are pardoned, and all set at large. JOHN ENDICOTT. Thank God! This is a victory for truth! Our thoughts are free. They cannot be shut up In prison wall, nor put to death on scaffolds! UPSALL. Come in; the morning air blows sharp and cold Through the damp streets. JOHN ENDICOTT. It is the dawn of day That chases the old darkness from our sky, And tills the land with liberty and light. [Exeunt. SCENE II. -- The parlor of the Three Mariners. Enter KEMPTHORN. KEMPTHORN. A dull life this,--a dull life anyway! Ready for sea; the cargo all aboard, Cleared for Barbadoes, and a fair wind blowing From nor'-nor'-west; and I, an idle lubber, Laid neck and heels by that confounded bond! I said to Ralph, says I, "What's to be done?" Says he: "Just slip your hawser in the night; Sheer off, and pay it with the topsail, Simon." But that won't do; because, you see, the owners Somehow or other are mixed up with it. Here are King Charles's Twelve Good Rules, that Cole Thinks as important as the Rule of Three. Reads. "Make no comparisons; make no long meals." Those are good rules and golden for a landlord To hang in his best parlor, framed and glazed! "Maintain no ill opinions; urge no healths." I drink to the King's, whatever he may say And, as to ill opinions, that depends. Now of Ralph Goldsmith I've a good opinion, And of the bilboes I've an ill opinion; And both of these opinions I'll maintain As long as there's a shot left in the locker. Enter EDWARD BUTTER, with an ear-trumpet. BUTTER. Good morning, Captain Kempthorn. KEMPTHORN. Sir, to you. You've the advantage of me. I don't know you. What may I call your name? BUTTER. That's not your name? KEMPTHORN. Yes, that's my name. What's yours? BUTTER. My name is Butter. I am the treasurer of the Commonwealth. KEMPTHORN. Will you be seated? BUTTER. What say? Who's conceited? KEMPTHORN. Will you sit down? BUTTER. Oh, thank you. KEMPTHORN. Spread yourself Upon this chair, sweet Butter. BUTTER (sitting down). A fine morning. KEMPTHORN. Nothing's the matter with it that I know of. I have seen better, and I have seen worse. The wind's nor'west. That's fair for them that sail. BUTTER. You need not speak so loud; I understand you. You sail to-day. KEMPTHORN. No, I don't sail to-day. So, be it fair or foul, it matters not. Say, will you smoke? There's choice tobacco here. BUTTER. No, thank you. It's against the law to smoke. KEMPTHORN. Then, will you drink? There's good ale at this inn. BUTTER. No, thank you. It's against the law to drink. KEMPTHORN. Well, almost everything's against the law In this good town. Give a wide berth to one thing, You're sure to fetch up soon on something else. BUTTER. And so you sail to-day for dear Old England. I am not one of those who think a sup Of this New England air is better worth Than a whole draught of our Old England's ale. KEMPTHORN. Nor I. Give me the ale and keep the air. But, as I said, I do not sail to-day. BUTTER. Ah yes; you sail today. KEMPTHORN. I'm under bonds To take some Quakers back to the Barbadoes; And one of them is banished, and another Is sentenced to be hanged. BUTTER. No, all are pardoned, All are set free by order of the Court; But some of them would fain return to England. You must not take them. Upon that condition Your bond is cancelled. KEMPTHORN. Ah, the wind has shifted! I pray you, do you speak officially? BUTTER. I always speak officially. To prove it, Here is the bond. Rising and giving a paper. KEMPTHORN. And here's my hand upon it, And look you, when I say I'll do a thing The thing is done. Am I now free to go? BUTTER. What say? KEMPTHORN. I say, confound the tedious man With his strange speaking-trumpet! Can I go? BUTTER. You're free to go, by order of the Court. Your servant, sir. [Exit. KEMPTHORN (shouting from the window). Swallow, ahoy! Hallo! If ever a man was happy to leave Boston, That man is Simon Kempthorn of the Swallow! Re-enter BUTTER. BUTTER. Pray, did you call? KEMPTHORN. Call! Yes, I hailed the Swallow. BUTTER. That's not my name. My name is Edward Butter. You need not speak so loud. KEMPTHORN (shaking hands). Good-by! Good-by! BUTTER. Your servant, sir. KEMPTHORN. And yours a thousand times! [Exeunt. SCENE III. -- GOVERNOR ENDICOTT'S private room. An open window. ENDICOTT seated in an arm-chair. BELLINGHAM standing near. ENDICOTT. O lost, O loved! wilt thou return no more? O loved and lost, and loved the more when lost! How many men are dragged into their graves By their rebellious children! I now feel The agony of a father's breaking heart In David's cry, "O Absalom, my son!" BELLINGHAM. Can you not turn your thoughts a little while To public matters? There are papers here That need attention. ENDICOTT. Trouble me no more! My business now is with another world, Ah, Richard Bellingham! I greatly fear That in my righteous zeal I have been led To doing many things which, left undone, My mind would now be easier. Did I dream it, Or has some person told me, that John Norton Is dead? BELLINGHAM. You have not dreamed it. He is dead, And gone to his reward. It was no dream. ENDICOTT. Then it was very sudden; for I saw him Standing where you now stand, not long ago. BELLINGHAM. By his own fireside, in the afternoon, A faintness and a giddiness came o'er him; And, leaning on the chimney-piece, he cried, "The hand of God is on me!" and fell dead. ENDICOTT. And did not some one say, or have I dreamed it, That Humphrey Atherton is dead? BELLINGHAM. Alas! He too is gone, and by a death as sudden. Returning home one evening, at the place Where usually the Quakers have been scourged, His horse took fright, and threw him to the ground, So that his brains were dashed about the street. ENDICOTT. I am not superstitions, Bellingham, And yet I tremble lest it may have been A judgment on him. BELLINGHAM. So the people think. They say his horse saw standing in the way The ghost of William Leddra, and was frightened. And furthermore, brave Richard Davenport, The captain of the Castle, in the storm Has been struck dead by lightning. ENDICOTT. Speak no more. For as I listen to your voice it seems As if the Seven Thunders uttered their voices, And the dead bodies lay about the streets Of the disconsolate city! Bellingham, I did not put those wretched men to death. I did but guard the passage with the sword Pointed towards them, and they rushed upon it! Yet now I would that I had taken no part In all that bloody work. BELLINGHAM. The guilt of it Be on their heads, not ours. ENDICOTT. Are all set free? BELLINGHAM. All are at large. ENDICOTT. And none have been sent back To England to malign us with the King? BELLINGHAM. The ship that brought them sails this very hour, But carries no one back. A distant cannon. ENDICOTT. What is that gun? BELLINGHAM. Her parting signal. Through the window there, Look, you can see her sails, above the roofs, Dropping below the Castle, outward bound. ENDICOTT. O white, white, white! Would that my soul had wings As spotless as those shining sails to fly with! Now lay this cushion straight. I thank you. Hark! I thought I heard the hall door open and shut! I thought I beard the footsteps of my boy! BELLINGHAM. It was the wind. There's no one in the passage. ENDICOTT. O Absalom, my son! I feel the world Sinking beneath me, sinking, sinking, sinking! Death knocks! I go to meet him! Welcome, Death! Rises, and sinks back dead; his head failing aside upon his shoulder. BELLINGHAM. O ghastly sight! Like one who has been hanged! Endicott! Endicott! He makes no answer! Raises Endicott's head. He breathes no more! How bright this signet-ring Glitters upon his hand, where he has worn it Through such long years of trouble, as if Death Had given him this memento of affection, And whispered in his ear, "Remember me!" How placid and how quiet is his face, Now that the struggle and the strife are ended Only the acrid spirit of the times Corroded this true steel. Oh, rest in peace, Courageous heart! Forever rest in peace! GILES COREY OF THE SALEM FARMS DRAMATIS PERSONAE. GILES COREY Farmer. JOHN HATHORNE Magistrate. COTTON MATHER Minister of the Gospel. JONATHAN WALCOT A youth. RICHARD GARDNER Sea-Captain. JOHN GLOYD Corey's hired man. MARTHA Wife of Giles Corey. TITUBA An Indian woman. MARY WALCOT One of the Afflicted. The Scene is in Salem in the year 1692. PROLOGUE. Delusions of the days that once have been, Witchcraft and wonders of the world unseen, Phantoms of air, and necromantic arts That crushed the weak and awed the stoutest hearts,-- These are our theme to-night; and vaguely here, Through the dim mists that crowd the atmosphere, We draw the outlines of weird figures cast In shadow on the background of the Past, Who would believe that in the quiet town Of Salem, and, amid the woods that crown The neighboring hillsides, and the sunny farms That fold it safe in their paternal arms,-- Who would believe that in those peaceful streets, Where the great elms shut out the summer heats, Where quiet reigns, and breathes through brain and breast The benediction of unbroken rest,-- Who would believe such deeds could find a place As these whose tragic history we retrace? 'T was but a village then; the goodman ploughed His ample acres under sun or cloud; The goodwife at her doorstep sat and spun, And gossiped with her neighbors in the sun; The only men of dignity and state Were then the Minister and the Magistrate, Who ruled their little realm with iron rod, Less in the love than in the fear of God; And who believed devoutly in the Powers Of Darkness, working in this world of ours, In spells of Witchcraft, incantations dread, And shrouded apparitions of the dead. Upon this simple folk "with fire and flame," Saith the old chronicle, "the Devil came; Scattering his firebrands and his poisonous darts, To set on fire of Hell all tongues and hearts! And 't is no wonder; for, with all his host, There most he rages where he hateth most, And is most hated; so on us he brings All these stupendous and portentous things!" Something of this our scene to-night will show; And ye who listen to the Tale of Woe, Be not too swift in casting the first stone, Nor think New England bears the guilt alone, This sudden burst of wickedness and crime Was but the common madness of the time, When in all lands, that lie within the sound Of Sabbath bells, a Witch was burned or drowned. ACT I. SCENE I. -- The woods near Salem Village. Enter TITUBA, with a basket of herbs. TITUBA. Here's monk's-hood, that breeds fever in the blood; And deadly nightshade, that makes men see ghosts; And henbane, that will shake them with convulsions; And meadow-saffron and black hellebore, That rack the nerves, and puff the skin with dropsy; And bitter-sweet, and briony, and eye-bright, That cause eruptions, nosebleed, rheumatisms; I know them, and the places where they hide In field and meadow; and I know their secrets, And gather them because they give me power Over all men and women. Armed with these, I, Tituba, an Indian and a slave, Am stronger than the captain with his sword, Am richer than the merchant with his money, Am wiser than the scholar with his books, Mightier than Ministers and Magistrates, With all the fear and reverence that attend them! For I can fill their bones with aches and pains, Can make them cough with asthma, shake with palsy, Can make their daughters see and talk with ghosts, Or fall into delirium and convulsions; I have the Evil Eye, the Evil Hand; A touch from me and they are weak with pain, A look from me, and they consume and die. The death of cattle and the blight of corn, The shipwreck, the tornado, and the fire,-- These are my doings, and they know it not. Thus I work vengeance on mine enemies Who, while they call me slave, are slaves to me! Exit TITUBA. Enter MATHER, booted and spurred, with a riding-whip in his hand. MATHER. Methinks that I have come by paths unknown Into the land and atmosphere of Witches; For, meditating as I journeyed on, Lo! I have lost my way! If I remember Rightly, it is Scribonius the learned That tells the story of a man who, praying For one that was possessed by Evil Spirits, Was struck by Evil Spirits in the face; I, journeying to circumvent the Witches, Surely by Witches have been led astray. I am persuaded there are few affairs In which the Devil doth not interfere. We cannot undertake a journey even, But Satan will be there to meddle with it By hindering or by furthering. He hath led me Into this thicket, struck me in the face With branches of the trees, and so entangled The fetlocks of my horse with vines and brambles, That I must needs dismount, and search on foot For the lost pathway leading to the village. Re-enter TITUBA. What shape is this? What monstrous apparition, Exceeding fierce, that none may pass that way? Tell me, good woman, if you are a woman-- TITUBA. I am a woman, but I am not good, I am a Witch! MATHER. Then tell me, Witch and woman, For you must know the pathways through this wood, Where lieth Salem Village? TITUBA. Reverend sir, The village is near by. I'm going there With these few herbs. I'll lead you. Follow me. MATHER. First say, who are you? I am loath to follow A stranger in this wilderness, for fear Of being misled, and left in some morass. Who are you? TITUBA. I am Tituba the Witch, Wife of John Indian. MATHER. You are Tituba? I know you then. You have renounced the Devil, And have become a penitent confessor, The Lord be praised! Go on, I'll follow you. Wait only till I fetch my horse, that stands Tethered among the trees, not far from here. TITUBA. Let me get up behind you, reverend sir. MATHER. The Lord forbid! What would the people think, If they should see the Reverend Cotton Mather Ride into Salem with a Witch behind him? The Lord forbid! TITUBA. I do not need a horse! I can ride through the air upon a stick, Above the tree-tops and above the houses, And no one see me, no one overtake me. [Exeunt. SCENE II. -- A room at JUSTICE HATHORNE'S. A clock in the corner. Enter HATHORNE and MATHER. HATHORNE. You are welcome, reverend sir, thrice welcome here Beneath my humble roof. MATHER. I thank your Worship. HATHORNE. Pray you be seated. You must be fatigued With your long ride through unfrequented woods. They sit down. MATHER. You know the purport of my visit here,-- To be advised by you, and counsel with you, And with the Reverend Clergy of the village, Touching these witchcrafts that so much afflict you; And see with mine own eyes the wonders told Of spectres and the shadows of the dead, That come back from their graves to speak with men. HATHORNE. Some men there are, I have known such, who think That the two worlds--the seen and the unseen, The world of matter and the world of spirit-- Are like the hemispheres upon our maps, And touch each other only at a point. But these two worlds are not divided thus, Save for the purposes of common speech, They form one globe, in which the parted seas All flow together and are intermingled, While the great continents remain distinct. MATHER. I doubt it not. The spiritual world Lies all about us, and its avenues Are open to the unseen feet of phantoms That come and go, and we perceive them not, Save by their influence, or when at times A most mysterious Providence permits them To manifest themselves to mortal eyes. HATHORNE. You, who are always welcome here among us, Are doubly welcome now. We need your wisdom, Your learning in these things to be our guide. The Devil hath come down in wrath upon us, And ravages the land with all his hosts. MATHER. The Unclean Spirit said, "My name is Legion!" Multitudes in the Valley of Destruction! But when our fervent, well-directed prayers, Which are the great artillery of Heaven, Are brought into the field, I see them scattered And driven like autumn leaves before the wind. HATHORNE. You as a Minister of God, can meet them With spiritual weapons: but, alas! I, as a Magistrate, must combat them With weapons from the armory of the flesh. MATHER. These wonders of the world invisible,-- These spectral shapes that haunt our habitations,-- The multiplied and manifold afflictions With which the aged and the dying saints Have their death prefaced and their age imbittered,-- Are but prophetic trumpets that proclaim The Second Coming of our Lord on earth. The evening wolves will be much more abroad, When we are near the evening of the world. HATHORNE. When you shall see, as I have hourly seen, The sorceries and the witchcrafts that torment us, See children tortured by invisible spirits, And wasted and consumed by powers unseen, You will confess the half has not been told you. MATHER. It must be so. The death-pangs of the Devil Will make him more a Devil than before; And Nebuchadnezzar's furnace will be heated Seven times more hot before its putting out. HATHORNE. Advise me, reverend sir. I look to you For counsel and for guidance in this matter. What further shall we do? MATHER. Remember this, That as a sparrow falls not to the ground Without the will of God, so not a Devil Can come down from the air without his leave. We must inquire. HATHORNE. Dear sir, we have inquired; Sifted the matter thoroughly through and through, And then resifted it. MATHER. If God permits These Evil Spirits from the unseen regions To visit us with surprising informations, We must inquire what cause there is for this, But not receive the testimony borne By spectres as conclusive proof of guilt In the accused. HATHORNE. Upon such evidence We do not rest our case. The ways are many In which the guilty do betray themselves. MATHER. Be careful. Carry the knife with such exactness, That on one side no innocent blood be shed By too excessive zeal, and on the other No shelter given to any work of darkness. HATHORNE. For one, I do not fear excess of zeal. What do we gain by parleying with the Devil? You reason, but you hesitate to act! Ah, reverend sir! believe me, in such cases The only safety is in acting promptly. 'T is not the part of wisdom to delay In things where not to do is still to do A deed more fatal than the deed we shrink from. You are a man of books and meditation, But I am one who acts. MATHER. God give us wisdom In the directing of this thorny business, And guide us, lest New England should become Of an unsavory and sulphurous odor In the opinion of the world abroad! The clock strikes. I never hear the striking of a clock Without a warning and an admonition That time is on the wing, and we must quicken Our tardy pace in journeying Heavenward, As Israel did in journeying Canaan-ward! They rise. HATHORNE. Then let us make all haste; and I will show you In what disguises and what fearful shapes The Unclean Spirits haunt this neighborhood, And you will pardon my excess of zeal. MATHER. Ah, poor New England! He who hurricanoed The house of Job is making now on thee One last assault, more deadly and more snarled With unintelligible circumstances Than any thou hast hitherto encountered! [Exeunt. SCENE III. -- A room in WALCOT'S House. MARY WALCOT seated in an arm-chair. TITUBA with a mirror. MARY. Tell me another story, Tituba. A drowsiness is stealing over me Which is not sleep; for, though I close mine eyes, I am awake, and in another world. Dim faces of the dead and of the absent Come floating up before me,--floating, fading, And disappearing. TITUBA. Look into this glass. What see you? MARY. Nothing but a golden vapor. Yes, something more. An island, with the sea Breaking all round it, like a blooming hedge. What land is this? TITUBA. It is San Salvador, Where Tituba was born. What see you now? MARY. A man all black and fierce. TITUBA. That is my father. He was an Obi man, and taught me magic,-- Taught me the use of herbs and images. What is he doing? MARY. Holding in his hand A waxen figure. He is melting it Slowly before a fire. TITUBA. And now what see you? MARY. A woman lying on a bed of leaves, Wasted and worn away. Ah, she is dying! TITUBA. That is the way the Obi men destroy The people they dislike! That is the way Some one is wasting and consuming you. MARY. You terrify me, Tituba! Oh, save me From those who make me pine and waste away! Who are they? Tell me. TITUBA. That I do not know, But you will see them. They will come to you. MARY. No, do not let them come! I cannot bear it! I am too weak to bear it! I am dying. Fails into a trance. TITUBA. Hark! there is some one coming! Enter HATHORNE, MATHER, and WALCOT. WALCOT. There she lies, Wasted and worn by devilish incantations! O my poor sister! MATHER. Is she always thus? WALCOT. Nay, she is sometimes tortured by convulsions. MATHER. Poor child! How thin she is! How wan and wasted! HATHORNE. Observe her. She is troubled in her sleep. MATHER. Some fearful vision haunts her. HATHORNE. You now see With your own eyes, and touch with your own hands, The mysteries of this Witchcraft. MATHER. One would need The hands of Briareus and the eyes of Argus To see and touch them all. HATHORNE. You now have entered The realm of ghosts and phantoms,--the vast realm Of the unknown and the invisible, Through whose wide-open gates there blows a wind From the dark valley of the shadow of Death, That freezes us with horror. MARY (starting). Take her hence! Take her away from me. I see her there! She's coming to torment me! WALCOT (taking her hand. O my sister! What frightens you? She neither hears nor sees me. She's in a trance. MARY. Do you not see her there? TITUBA. My child, who is it? MARY. Ah, I do not know, I cannot see her face. TITUBA. How is she clad? MARY. She wears a crimson bodice. In her hand She holds an image, and is pinching it Between her fingers. Ah, she tortures me! I see her face now. It is Goodwife Bishop! Why does she torture me? I never harmed her! And now she strikes me with an iron rod! Oh, I am beaten! MATHER. This is wonderful!. I can see nothing! Is this apparition Visibly there, and yet we cannot see it? HATHORNE. It is. The spectre is invisible Unto our grosser senses, but she sees it. MARY. Look! look! there is another clad in gray! She holds a spindle in her hand, and threatens To stab me with it! It is Goodwife Corey! Keep her away! Now she is coming at me! Oh, mercy! mercy! WALCOT (thrusting with his sword. There is nothing there! MATHER to HATHORNE. Do you see anything? HATHORNE. The laws that govern The spiritual world prevent our seeing Things palpable and visible to her. These spectres are to us as if they were not. Mark her; she wakes. TITUBA touches her, and she awakes. MARY. Who are these gentlemen? WALCOT. They are our friends. Dear Mary, are you better? MARY. Weak, very weak. Taking a spindle from her lap, and holding it up. How came this spindle here? TITUBA. You wrenched it from the hand of Goodwife Corey When she rushed at you. HATHORNE. Mark that, reverend sir! MATHER. It is most marvellous, most inexplicable! TITUBA. (picking up a bit of gray cloth from the floor). And here, too, is a bit of her gray dress, That the sword cut away. MATHER. Beholding this, It were indeed by far more credulous To be incredulous than to believe. None but a Sadducee, who doubts of all Pertaining to the spiritual world, Could doubt such manifest and damning proofs! HATHORNE. Are you convinced? MATHER to MARY. Dear child, be comforted! Only by prayer and fasting can you drive These Unclean Spirits from you. An old man Gives you his blessing. God be with you, Mary! ACT II SCENE I. -- GILES COREY's farm. Morning. Enter COREY, with a horseshoe and a hammer. COREY. The Lord hath prospered me. The rising sun Shines on my Hundred Acres and my woods As if he loved them. On a morn like this I can forgive mine enemies, and thank God For all his goodness unto me and mine. My orchard groans with russets and pearmains; My ripening corn shines golden in the sun; My barns are crammed with hay, my cattle thrive The birds sing blithely on the trees around me! And blither than the birds my heart within me. But Satan still goes up and down the earth; And to protect this house from his assaults, And keep the powers of darkness from my door, This horseshoe will I nail upon the threshold. Nails down the horseshoe. There, ye night-hags and witches that torment The neighborhood, ye shall not enter here!-- What is the matter in the field?--John Gloyd! The cattle are all running to the woods!-- John Gloyd! Where is the man? Enter JOHN GLOYD. Look there! What ails the cattle? Are they all bewitched? They run like mad. GLOYD. They have been overlooked. COREY. The Evil Eye is on them sure enough. Call all the men. Be quick. Go after them! Exit GLOYD and enter MARTHA. MARTHA. What is amiss? COREY. The cattle are bewitched. They are broken loose and making for the woods. MARTHA. Why will you harbor such delusions, Giles? Bewitched? Well, then it was John Gloyd bewitched them; I saw him even now take down the bars And turn them loose! They're only frolicsome. COREY. The rascal! MARTHA. I was standing in the road, Talking with Goodwife Proctor, and I saw him. COREY. With Proctor's wife? And what says Goodwife Proctor? MARTHA. Sad things indeed; the saddest you can hear Of Bridget Bishop. She's cried out upon! COREY. Poor soul! I've known her forty year or more. She was the widow Wasselby, and then She married Oliver, and Bishop next. She's had three husbands. I remember well My games of shovel-board at Bishop's tavern In the old merry days, and she so gay With her red paragon bodice and her ribbons! Ah, Bridget Bishop always was a Witch! MARTHA. They'll little help her now,--her caps and ribbons, And her red paragon bodice and her plumes, With which she flaunted in the Meeting-house! When next she goes there, it will be for trial. COREY. When will that be? MARTHA. This very day at ten. COREY. Then get you ready. We'll go and see it. Come; you shall ride behind me on the pillion. MARTHA. Not I. You know I do not like such things. I wonder you should. I do not believe In Witches nor in Witchcraft. COREY. Well, I do. There's a strange fascination in it all. That draws me on and on. I know not why. MARTHA. What do we know of spirits good or ill, Or of their power to help us or to harm us? COREY. Surely what's in the Bible must be true. Did not an Evil Spirit come on Saul? Did not the Witch of Endor bring the ghost Of Samuel from his grave? The Bible says so. MARTHA. That happened very long ago. COREY. With God There is no long ago. MARTHA. There is with us. COREY. And Mary Magdalene had seven devils, And he who dwelt among the tombs a legion! MARTHA. God's power is infinite. I do not doubt it. If in His providence He once permitted Such things to be among the Israelites, It does not follow He permits them now, And among us who are not Israelites. But we will not dispute about it, Giles. Go to the village if you think it best, And leave me here; I'll go about my work. [Exit into the house. COREY. And I will go and saddle the gray mare. The last word always. That is woman's nature. If an old man will marry a young wife, He must make up his mind to many things. It's putting new cloth into an old garment, When the strain comes, it is the old gives way. Goes to the door. Oh, Martha! I forgot to tell you something. I've had a letter from a friend of mine, A certain Richard Gardner of Nantucket, Master and owner of a whaling-vessel; He writes that he is coming down to see us. I hope you'll like him. MARTHA. I will do my best. COREY. That's a good woman. Now I will be gone. I've not seen Gardner for this twenty year; But there is something of the sea about him,-- Something so open, generous, large; and strong, It makes me love him better than a brother. [Exit. MARTHA comes to the door. MARTHA. Oh these old friends and cronies of my husband, These captains from Nantucket and the Cape, That come and turn my house into a tavern With their carousing! Still, there's something frank In these seafaring men that makes me like them. Why, here's a horseshoe nailed upon the doorstep! Giles has done this to keep away the Witches. I hope this Richard Gardner will bring him A gale of good sound common-sense to blow The fog of these delusions from his brain! COREY (within). Ho! Martha! Martha! Enter COREY. Have you seen my saddle? MARTHA. I saw it yesterday. COREY. Where did you see it? MARTHA. On a gray mare, that somebody was riding Along the village road. COREY. Who was it? Tell me. MARTHA. Some one who should have stayed at home. COREY (restraining himself). I see! Don't vex me, Martha. Tell me where it is. MARTHA. I've hidden it away. COREY. Go fetch it me. MARTHA. Go find it. COREY. No. I'll ride down to the village Bareback; and when the people stare and say, "Giles Corey, where's your saddle?" I will answer, "A Witch has stolen it." How shall you like that! MARTHA. I shall not like it. COREY. Then go fetch the saddle. [Exit MARTHA. If an old man will marry a young wife, Why then--why then--why then--he must spell Baker! Enter MARTHA with the saddle, which she throws down. MARTHA. There! There's the saddle. COREY. Take it up. MARTHA. I won't! COREY. Then let it lie there. I'll ride to the village, And say you are a Witch. MARTHA. No, not that, Giles. She takes up the saddle. COREY. Now come with me, and saddle the gray mare With your own hands; and you shall see me ride Along the village road as is becoming Giles Corey of the Salem Farms, your husband! [Exeunt. SCENE II. -- The Green in front of the Meeting-house in Salem village. People coming and going. Enter GILES COREY. COREY. A melancholy end! Who would have thought That Bridget Bishop e'er would come to this? Accused, convicted, and condemned to death For Witchcraft! And so good a woman too! A FARMER. Good morrow, neighbor Corey. COREY (not hearing him). Who is safe? How do I know but under my own roof I too may harbor Witches, and some Devil Be plotting and contriving against me? FARMER. He does not hear. Good morrow, neighbor Corey! COREY Good morrow. FARMER. Have you seen John Proctor lately? COREY. No, I have not. FARMER. Then do not see him, Corey. COREY. Why should I not? FARMER. Because he's angry with you. So keep out of his way. Avoid a quarrel. COREY. Why does he seek to fix a quarrel on me? FARMER. He says you burned his house. COREY. I burn his house? If he says that, John Proctor is a liar! The night his house was burned I was in bed, And I can prove it! Why, we are old friends! He could not say that of me. FARMER. He did say it. I heard him say it. COREY. Then he shall unsay it. FARMER. He said you did it out of spite to him For taking part against you in the quarrel You had with your John Gloyd about his wages. He says you murdered Goodell; that you trampled Upon his body till he breathed no more. And so beware of him; that's my advice! [Exit. COREY. By heaven! this is too much! I'll seek him out, And make him eat his words, or strangle him. I'll not be slandered at a time like this, When every word is made an accusation, When every whisper kills, and every man Walks with a halter round his neck! Enter GLOYD in haste. What now? GLOYD. I came to look for you. The cattle-- COREY. Well, What of them? Have you found them? GLOYD. They are dead. I followed them through the woods, across the meadows; Then they all leaped into the Ipswich River, And swam across, but could not climb the bank, And so were drowned. COREY. You are to blame for this; For you took down the bars, and let them loose. GLOYD. That I deny. They broke the fences down. You know they were bewitched. COREY. Ah, my poor cattle! The Evil Eye was on them; that is true. Day of disaster! Most unlucky day! Why did I leave my ploughing and my reaping To plough and reap this Sodom and Gomorrah? Oh, I could drown myself for sheer vexation! [Exit. GLOYD. He's going for his cattle. He won't find them. By this time they have drifted out to sea. They will not break his fences any more, Though they may break his heart. And what care I? [Exit. SCENE III. -- COREY's kitchen. A table with supper. MARTHA knitting. MARTHA. He's come at last. I hear him in the passage. Something has gone amiss with him today; I know it by his step, and by the sound The door made as he shut it. He is angry. Enter COREY with his riding-whip. As he speaks he takes off his hat and gloves and throws them down violently. COREY. I say if Satan ever entered man He's in John Proctor! MARTHA. Giles, what is the matter? You frighten me. COREY. I say if any man Can have a Devil in him, then that man Is Proctor,--is John Proctor, and no other! MARTHA. Why, what has he been doing? COREY. Everything! What do you think I heard there in the village? MARTHA. I'm sure I cannot guess. What did you hear? COREY. He says I burned his house! MARTHA. Does he say that? COREY. He says I burned his house. I was in bed And fast asleep that night; and I can prove it. MARTHA. If he says that, I think the Father of Lies Is surely in the man. COREY. He does say that And that I did it to wreak vengeance on him For taking sides against me in the quarrel I had with that John Gloyd about his wages. And God knows that I never bore him malice For that, as I have told him twenty times MARTHA. It is John Gloyd has stirred him up to this. I do not like that Gloyd. I think him crafty, Not to be trusted, sullen and untruthful. Come, have your supper. You are tired and hungry. COREY. I'm angry, and not hungry. MARTHA. Do eat something. You'll be the better for it. COREY (sitting down). I'm not hungry. MARTHA. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath. COREY. It has gone down upon it, and will rise To-morrow, and go down again upon it. They have trumped up against me the old story Of causing Goodell's death by trampling on him. MARTHA. Oh, that is false. I know it to be false. COREY. He has been dead these fourteen years or more. Why can't they let him rest? Why must they drag him Out of his grave to give me a bad name? I did not kill him. In his bed he died, As most men die, because his hour had come. I have wronged no man. Why should Proctor say Such things bout me? I will not forgive him Till he confesses he has slandered me. Then, I've more trouble. All my cattle gone. MARTHA. They will come back again. COREY. Not in this world. Did I not tell you they were overlooked? They ran down through the woods, into the meadows, And tried to swim the river, and were drowned. It is a heavy loss. MARTHA. I'm sorry for it. COREY. All my dear oxen dead. I loved them, Martha, Next to yourself. I liked to look at them, And watch the breath come out of their wide nostrils, And see their patient eyes. Somehow I thought It gave me strength only to look at them. And how they strained their necks against the yoke If I but spoke, or touched them with the goad! They were my friends; and when Gloyd came and told me They were all drowned, I could have drowned myself From sheer vexation; and I said as much To Gloyd and others. MARTHA. Do not trust John Gloyd With anything you would not have repeated. COREY. As I came through the woods this afternoon, Impatient at my loss, and much perplexed With all that I had heard there in the village, The yellow leaves lit up the trees about me Like an enchanted palace, and I wished I knew enough of magic or of Witchcraft To change them into gold. Then suddenly A tree shook down some crimson leaves upon me, Like drops of blood, and in the path before me Stood Tituba the Indian, the old crone. MARTHA. Were you not frightened? COREY. No, I do not think I know the meaning of that word. Why frightened? I am not one of those who think the Lord Is waiting till He catches them some day In the back yard alone! What should I fear? She started from the bushes by the path, And had a basket full of herbs and roots For some witch-broth or other,--the old hag. MARTHA. She has been here to-day. COREY. With hand outstretched She said: "Giles Corey, will you sign the Book?" "Avaunt!" I cried: "Get thee behind me, Satan!" At which she laughed and left me. But a voice Was whispering in my ear continually: "Self-murder is no crime. The life of man Is his, to keep it or to throw away!" MARTHA. 'T was a temptation of the Evil One! Giles, Giles! why will you harbor these dark thoughts? COREY (rising). I am too tired to talk. I'll go to bed. MARTHA. First tell me something about Bridget Bishop. How did she look? You saw her? You were there? COREY. I'll tell you that to-morrow, not to-night. I'll go to bed. MARTHA. First let us pray together. COREY. I cannot pray to-night. MARTHA. Say the Lord's Prayer, And that will comfort you. COREY. I cannot say, "As we forgive those that have sinned against us," When I do not forgive them. MARTHA (kneeling on the hearth). God forgive you! COREY. I will not make believe! I say to-night There's something thwarts me when I wish to pray, And thrusts into my mind, instead of prayers, Hate and revenge, and things that are not prayers. Something of my old self,--my old, bad life,-- And the old Adam in me rises up, And will not let me pray. I am afraid The Devil hinders me. You know I say Just what I think, and nothing more nor less, And, when I pray, my heart is in my prayer. I cannot say one thing and mean another. If I can't pray, I will not make believe! [Exit COREY. MARTHA continues kneeling. ACT III. SCENE I. -- GILES COREY'S kitchen. Morning. COREY and MARTHA sitting at the breakfast-table. COREY (rising). Well, now I've told you all I saw and heard Of Bridget Bishop; and I must be gone. MARTHA. Don't go into the village, Giles, to-day. Last night you came back tired and out of humor. COREY. Say, angry; say, right angry. I was never In a more devilish temper in my life. All things went wrong with me. MARTHA. You were much vexed; So don't go to the village. COREY (going). No, I won't. I won't go near it. We are going to mow The Ipswich meadows for the aftermath, The crop of sedge and rowens. MARTHA. Stay a moment, I want to tell you what I dreamed last night. Do you believe in dreams? COREY. Why, yes and no. When they come true, then I believe in them When they come false, I don't believe in them. But let me hear. What did you dream about? MARTHA. I dreamed that you and I were both in prison; That we had fetters on our hands and feet; That we were taken before the Magistrates, And tried for Witchcraft, and condemned to death! I wished to pray; they would not let me pray; You tried to comfort me, and they forbade it. But the most dreadful thing in all my dream Was that they made you testify against me! And then there came a kind of mist between us; I could not see you; and I woke in terror. I never was more thankful in my life Than when I found you sleeping at my side! COREY (with tenderness). It was our talk last night that made you dream. I'm sorry for it. I'll control myself Another time, and keep my temper down! I do not like such dreams.--Remember, Martha, I'm going to mow the Ipswich River meadows; If Gardner comes, you'll tell him where to find me. [Exit. MARTHA. So this delusion grows from bad to worse First, a forsaken and forlorn old woman, Ragged and wretched, and without a friend; Then something higher. Now it's Bridget Bishop; God only knows whose turn it will be next! The Magistrates are blind, the people mad! If they would only seize the Afflicted Children, And put them in the Workhouse, where they should be, There'd be an end of all this wickedness. [Exit. SCENE II. -- A street in Salem Village. Enter MATHER and HATHORNE. MATHER. Yet one thing troubles me. HATHORNE. And what is that? MATHER. May not the Devil take the outward shape Of innocent persons? Are we not in danger, Perhaps, of punishing some who are not guilty? HATHORNE. As I have said, we do not trust alone To spectral evidence. MATHER. And then again, If any shall be put to death for Witchcraft, We do but kill the body, not the soul. The Unclean Spirits that possessed them once Live still, to enter into other bodies. What have we gained? Surely, there's nothing gained. HATHORNE. Doth not the Scripture say, "Thou shalt not suffer A Witch to live"? MATHER. The Scripture sayeth it, But speaketh to the Jews; and we are Christians. What say the laws of England? HATHORNE. They make Witchcraft Felony without the benefit of Clergy. Witches are burned in England. You have read-- For you read all things, not a book escapes you-- The famous Demonology of King James? MATHER. A curious volume. I remember also The plot of the Two Hundred, with one Fian, The Registrar of the Devil, at their head, To drown his Majesty on his return From Denmark; how they sailed in sieves or riddles Unto North Berwick Kirk in Lothian, And, landing there, danced hand in hand, and sang, "Goodwife, go ye before! good wife, go ye! If ye'll not go before, goodwife, let me!" While Geilis Duncan played the Witches' Reel Upon a jews-harp. HATHORNE. Then you know full well The English law, and that in England Witches, When lawfully convicted and attainted, Are put to death. MATHER. When lawfully convicted; That is the point. HATHORNE. You heard the evidence Produced before us yesterday at the trial Of Bridget Bishop. MATHER. One of the Afflicted, I know, bore witness to the apparition Of ghosts unto the spectre of this Bishop, Saying, "You murdered us!" of the truth whereof There was in matter of fact too much Suspicion. HATHORNE. And when she cast her eyes on the Afflicted, They were struck down; and this in such a manner There could be no collusion in the business. And when the accused but laid her hand upon them, As they lay in their swoons, they straight revived, Although they stirred not when the others touched them. MATHER. What most convinced me of the woman's guilt Was finding hidden in her cellar wall Those poppets made of rags, with headless pins Stuck into them point outwards, and whereof She could not give a reasonable account. HATHORNE. When you shall read the testimony given Before the Court in all the other cases, I am persuaded you will find the proof No less conclusive than it was in this. Come, then, with me, and I will tax your patience With reading of the documents so far As may convince you that these sorcerers Are lawfully convicted and attainted. Like doubting Thomas, you shall lay your hand Upon these wounds, and you will doubt no more. {Exeunt. SCENE III. -- A room in COREY's house. MARTHA and two Deacons of the church. MARTHA. Be seated. I am glad to see you here. I know what you are come for. You are come To question me, and learn from my own lips If I have any dealings with the Devil; In short, if I'm a Witch. DEACON (sitting down). Such is our purpose. How could you know beforehand why we came? MARTHA. 'T was only a surmise. DEACON. We came to ask you, You being with us in church covenant, What part you have, if any, in these matters. MARTHA. And I make answer, No part whatsoever. I am a farmer's wife, a working woman; You see my spinning-wheel, you see my loom, You know the duties of a farmer's wife, And are not ignorant that my life among you Has been without reproach until this day. Is it not true? DEACON. So much we're bound to own, And say it frankly, and without reserve. MARTHA. I've heard the idle tales that are abroad; I've heard it whispered that I am a Witch; I cannot help it. I do not believe In any Witchcraft. It is a delusion. DEACON. How can you say that it is a delusion, When all our learned and good men believe it,-- Our Ministers and worshipful Magistrates? MARTHA. Their eyes are blinded and see not the truth. Perhaps one day they will be open to it. DEACON. You answer boldly. The Afflicted Children Say you appeared to them. MARTHA. And did they say What clothes I came in? DEACON. No, they could not tell. They said that you foresaw our visit here, And blinded them, so that they could not see The clothes you wore. MARTHA. The cunning, crafty girls! I say to you, in all sincerity, I never have appeared to anyone In my own person. If the Devil takes My shape to hurt these children, or afflict them, I am not guilty of it. And I say It's all a mere delusion of the senses. DEACON. I greatly fear that you will find too late It is not so. MARTHA (rising). They do accuse me falsely. It is delusion, or it is deceit. There is a story in the ancient Scriptures Which I much wonder comes not to your minds. Let me repeat it to you. DEACON. We will hear it. MARTHA. It came to pass that Naboth had a vineyard Hard by the palace of the King called Ahab. And Ahab, King of Israel, spake to Naboth, And said to him, Give unto me thy vineyard, That I may have it for a garden of herbs, And I will give a better vineyard for it, Or, if it seemeth good to thee, its worth In money. And then Naboth said to Ahab, The Lord forbid it me that I should give The inheritance of my fathers unto thee. And Ahab came into his house displeased And heavy at the words which Naboth spake, And laid him down upon his bed, and turned His face away; and he would eat no bread. And Jezebel, the wife of Ahab, came And said to him, Why is thy spirit sad? And he said unto her, Because I spake To Naboth, to the Jezreelite, and said, Give me thy vineyard; and he answered, saying, I will not give my vineyard unto thee. And Jezebel, the wife of Ahab, said, Dost thou not rule the realm of Israel? Arise, eat bread, and let thy heart be merry; I will give Naboth's vineyard unto thee. So she wrote letters in King Ahab's name, And sealed them with his seal, and sent the letters Unto the elders that were in his city Dwelling with Naboth, and unto the nobles; And in the letters wrote, Proclaim a fast; And set this Naboth high among the people, And set two men, the sons of Belial, Before him, to bear witness and to say, Thou didst blaspheme against God and the King; And carry him out and stone him, that he die! And the elders and the nobles in the city Did even as Jezebel, the wife of Ahab, Had sent to them and written in the letters. And then it came to pass, when Ahab heard Naboth was dead, that Ahab rose to go Down unto Naboth's vineyard, and to take Possession of it. And the word of God Came to Elijah, saying to him, Arise, Go down to meet the King of Israel In Naboth's vineyard, whither he hath gone To take possession. Thou shalt speak to him, Saying, Thus saith the Lord! What! hast thou killed And also taken possession? In the place Wherein the dogs have licked the blood of Naboth Shall the dogs lick thy blood,--ay, even thine! Both of the Deacons start from their seats. And Ahab then, the King of Israel, Said, Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? Elijah the Prophet answered, I have found thee! So will it be with those who have stirred up The Sons of Belial here to bear false witness And swear away the lives of innocent people; Their enemy will find them out at last, The Prophet's voice will thunder, I have found thee! [Exeunt. SCENE IV. -- Meadows on Ipswich River, COREY and his men mowing; COREY in advance. COREY. Well done, my men. You see, I lead the field! I'm an old man, but I can swing a scythe Better than most of you, though you be younger. Hangs his scythe upon a tree. GLOYD (aside to the others). How strong he is! It's supernatural. No man so old as he is has such strength. The Devil helps him! COREY (wiping his forehead). Now we'll rest awhile, And take our nooning. What's the matter with you? You are not angry with me,--are you, Gloyd? Come, come, we will not quarrel. Let's be friends. It's an old story, that the Raven said, "Read the Third of Colossians and fifteenth." GLOYD. You're handier at the scythe, but I can beat you At wrestling. COREY. Well, perhaps so. I don't know. I never wrestled with you. Why, you're vexed! Come, come, don't bear a grudge. GLOYD. You are afraid. COREY. What should I be afraid of? All bear witness The challenge comes from him. Now, then, my man. They wrestle, and GLOYD is thrown. ONE OF THE MEN. That's a fair fall. ANOTHER. 'T was nothing but a foil! OTHERS. You've hurt him! COREY (helping GLOYD rise). No; this meadow-land is soft. You're not hurt,--are you, Gloyd? GLOYD (rising). No, not much hurt. COREY. Well, then, shake hands; and there's an end of it. How do you like that Cornish hug, my lad? And now we'll see what's in our basket here. GLOYD (aside). The Devil and all his imps are in that man! The clutch of his ten fingers burns like fire! COREY (reverentially taking off his hat). God bless the food He hath provided for us, And make us thankful for it, for Christ's sake! He lifts up a keg of cider, and drinks from it. GLOYD. Do you see that? Don't tell me it's not Witchcraft Two of us could not lift that cask as he does! COREY puts down the keg, and opens a basket. A voice is heard calling. VOICE. Ho! Corey, Corey! COREY. What is that? I surely Heard some one calling me by name! VOICE. Giles Corey! Enter a boy, running, and out of breath. BOY. Is Master Corey here? COREY. Yes, here I am. BOY. O Master Corey! COREY. Well? BOY. Your wife--your wife-- COREY. What's happened to my wife? BOY. She's sent to prison! COREY. The dream! the dream! O God, be merciful! BOY. She sent me here to tell you. COREY (putting on his jacket). Where's my horse? Don't stand there staring, fellows. Where's my horse? [Exit COREY. GLOYD. Under the trees there. Run, old man, run, run! You've got some one to wrestle with you now Who'll trip your heels up, with your Cornish hug. If there's a Devil, he has got you now. Ah, there he goes! His horse is snorting fire! ONE OF THE MEN. John Gloyd, don't talk so! It's a shame to talk so! He's a good master, though you quarrel with him. GLOYD. If hard work and low wages make good masters, Then he is one. But I think otherwise. Come, let us have our dinner and be merry, And talk about the old man and the Witches. I know some stories that will make you laugh. They sit down on the grass, and eat. Now there are Goody Cloyse and Goody Good, Who have not got a decent tooth between them, And yet these children--the Afflicted Children-- Say that they bite them, and show marks of teeth Upon their arms! ONE OF THE MEN. That makes the wonder greater. That's Witchcraft. Why, if they had teeth like yours, 'T would be no wonder if the girls were bitten! GLOYD. And then those ghosts that come out of their graves And cry, "You murdered us! you murdered us!" ONE OF THE MEN. And all those Apparitions that stick pins Into the flesh of the Afflicted Children! GLOYD. Oh those Afflicted Children! They know well Where the pins come from. I can tell you that. And there's old Corey, he has got a horseshoe Nailed on his doorstep to keep off the Witches, And all the same his wife has gone to prison. ONE OF THE MEN. Oh, she's no Witch. I'll swear that Goodwife Corey Never did harm to any living creature. She's a good woman, if there ever was one. GLOYD. Well, we shall see. As for that Bridget Bishop, She has been tried before; some years ago A negro testified he saw her shape Sitting upon the rafters in a barn, And holding in its hand an egg; and while He went to fetch his pitchfork, she had vanished. And now be quiet, will you? I am tired, And want to sleep here on the grass a little. They stretch themselves on the grass. ONE OF THE MEN. There may be Witches riding through the air Over our heads on broomsticks at this moment, Bound for some Satan's Sabbath in the woods To be baptized. GLOYD. I wish they'd take you with them, And hold you under water, head and ears, Till you were drowned; and that would stop your talking, If nothing else will. Let me sleep, I say. ACT IV SCENE I. -- The Green in front of the village Meeting-house. An excited crowd gathering. Enter JOHN GLOYD. A FARMER. Who will be tried to-day? A SECOND. I do not know. Here is John Gloyd. Ask him; he knows. FARMER. John Gloyd, Whose turn is it to-day? GLOYD. It's Goodwife Corey's. FARMER. Giles Corey's wife? GLOYD. The same. She is not mine. It will go hard with her with all her praying. The hypocrite! She's always on her knees; But she prays to the Devil when she prays. Let us go in. A trumpet blows. FARMER. Here come the Magistrates. SECOND FARMER. Who's the tall man in front? GLOYD. Oh, that is Hathorne, A Justice of the Court, and a Quarter-master In the Three County Troop. He'll sift the matter. That's Corwin with him; and the man in black Is Cotton Mather, Minister of Boston. Enter HATHORNE and other Magistrates on horseback, followed by the Sheriff, constables, and attendants on foot. The Magistrates dismount, and enter the Meeting-house, with the rest. FARMER. The Meeting-house is full. I never saw So great a crowd before. GLOYD. No matter. Come. We shall find room enough by elbowing Our way among them. Put your shoulder to it. FARMER. There were not half so many at the trial Of Goodwife Bishop. GLOYD. Keep close after me. I'll find a place for you. They'll want me there. I am a friend of Corey's, as you know, And he can't do without me just at present. [Exeunt. SCENE II. -- Interior of the Meeting-house. MATHER and the Magistrates seated in front of the pulpit. Before them a raised platform. MARTHA in chains. COREY near her. MARY WALCOT in a chair. A crowd of spectators, among them GLOYD. Confusion and murmurs during the scene. HATHORNE. Call Martha Corey. MARTHA. I am here. HATHORNE. Come forward. She ascends the platform. The Jurors of our Sovereign Lord and Lady The King and Queen, here present, do accuse you Of having on the tenth of June last past, And divers other times before and after, Wickedly used and practised certain arts Called Witchcrafts, Sorceries, and Incantations, Against one Mary Walcot, single woman, Of Salem Village; by which wicked arts The aforesaid Mary Walcot was tormented, Tortured, afflicted, pined, consumed, and wasted, Against the peace of our Sovereign Lord and Lady The King and Queen, as well as of the Statute Made and provided in that case. What say you? MARTHA. Before I answer, give me leave to pray. HATHORNE. We have not sent for you, nor are we here, To hear you pray, but to examine you In whatsoever is alleged against you. Why do you hurt this person? MARTHA. I do not. I am not guilty of the charge against me. MARY. Avoid, she-devil! You may torment me now! Avoid, avoid, Witch! MARTHA. I am innocent. I never had to do with any Witchcraft Since I was born. I am a gospel woman. MARY. You are a gospel Witch! MARTHA (clasping her hands). Ah me! ah me! Oh, give me leave to pray! MARY (stretching out her hands). She hurts me now. See, she has pinched my hands! HATHORNE. Who made these marks Upon her hands? MARTHA. I do not know. I stand Apart from her. I did not touch her hands. HATHORNE. Who hurt her then? MARTHA. I know not. HATHORNE. Do you think She is bewitched? MARTHA. Indeed I do not think so. I am no Witch, and have no faith in Witches. HATHORNE. Then answer me: When certain persons came To see you yesterday, how did you know Beforehand why they came? MARTHA. I had had speech; The children said I hurt them, and I thought These people came to question me about it. HATHORNE. How did you know the children had been told To note the clothes you wore? MARTHA. My husband told me What others said about it. HATHORNE. Goodman Corey, Say, did you tell her? COREY. I must speak the truth; I did not tell her. It was some one else. HATHORNE. Did you not say your husband told you so? How dare you tell a lie in this assembly? Who told you of the clothes? Confess the truth. MARTHA bites her lips, and is silent. You bite your lips, but do not answer me! MARY. Ah, she is biting me! Avoid, avoid! HATHORNE. You said your husband told you. MARTHA. Yes, he told me The children said I troubled them. HATHORNE. Then tell me, Why do you trouble them? MARTHA. I have denied it. MARY. She threatened me; stabbed at me with her spindle; And, when my brother thrust her with his sword, He tore her gown, and cut a piece away. Here are they both, the spindle and the cloth. Shows them. HATHORNE. And there are persons here who know the truth Of what has now been said. What answer make you? MARTHA. I make no answer. Give me leave to pray. HATHORNE. Whom would you pray to? MARTHA. To my God and Father. HATHORNE. Who is your God and Father? MARTHA. The Almighty! HATHORNE. Doth he you pray to say that he is God? It is the Prince of Darkness, and not God. MARY. There is a dark shape whispering in her ear. HATHORNE. What does it say to you? MARTHA. I see no shape. HATHORNE. Did you not hear it whisper? MARTHA. I heard nothing. MARY. What torture! Ah, what agony I suffer! Falls into a swoon. HATHORNE. You see this woman cannot stand before you. If you would look for mercy, you must look In God's way, by confession of your guilt. Why does your spectre haunt and hurt this person? MARTHA. I do not know. He who appeared of old In Samuel's shape, a saint and glorified, May come in whatsoever shape he chooses. I cannot help it. I am sick at heart! COREY. O Martha, Martha! let me hold your hand. HATHORNE. No; stand aside, old man. MARY (starting up). Look there! Look there! I see a little bird, a yellow bird Perched on her finger; and it pecks at me. Ah, it will tear mine eyes out! MARTHA. I see nothing. HATHORNE. 'T is the Familiar Spirit that attends her. MARY. Now it has flown away. It sits up there Upon the rafters. It is gone; is vanished. MARTHA. Giles, wipe these tears of anger from mine eyes. Wipe the sweat from my forehead. I am faint. She leans against the railing. MARY. Oh, she is crushing me with all her weight! HATHORNE. Did you not carry once the Devil's Book To this young woman? MARTHA. Never. HATHORNE. Have you signed it, Or touched it? MARTHA. No; I never saw it. HATHORNE. Did you not scourge her with an iron rod? MARTHA. No, I did not. If any Evil Spirit Has taken my shape to do these evil deeds, I cannot help it. I am innocent. HATHORNE. Did you not say the Magistrates were blind? That you would open their eyes? MARTHA (with a scornful laugh). Yes, I said that; If you call me a sorceress, you are blind! If you accuse the innocent, you are blind! Can the innocent be guilty? HATHORNE. Did you not On one occasion hide your husband's saddle To hinder him from coming to the sessions? MARTHA. I thought it was a folly in a farmer To waste his time pursuing such illusions. HATHORNE. What was the bird that this young woman saw Just now upon your hand? MARTHA. I know no bird. HATHORNE. Have you not dealt with a Familiar Spirit? MARTHA. No, never, never! HATHORNE. What then was the Book You showed to this young woman, and besought her To write in it? MARTHA. Where should I have a book? I showed her none, nor have none. MARY. The next Sabbath Is the Communion Day, but Martha Corey Will not be there! MARTHA. Ah, you are all against me. What can I do or say? HATHORNE. You can confess. MARTHA. No, I cannot, for I am innocent. HATHORNE. We have the proof of many witnesses That you are guilty. MARTHA. Give me leave to speak. Will you condemn me on such evidence,-- You who have known me for so many years? Will you condemn me in this house of God, Where I so long have worshipped with you all? Where I have eaten the bread and drunk the wine So many times at our Lord's Table with you? Bear witness, you that hear me; you all know That I have led a blameless life among you, That never any whisper of suspicion Was breathed against me till this accusation. And shall this count for nothing? Will you take My life away from me, because this girl, Who is distraught, and not in her right mind, Accuses me of things I blush to name? HATHORNE. What! is it not enough? Would you hear more? Giles Corey! COREY. I am here. HATHORNE. Come forward, then. COREY ascends the platform. Is it not true, that on a certain night You were impeded strangely in your prayers? That something hindered you? and that you left This woman here, your wife, kneeling alone Upon the hearth? COREY. Yes; I cannot deny it. HATHORNE. Did you not say the Devil hindered you? COREY. I think I said some words to that effect. HATHORNE. Is it not true, that fourteen head of cattle, To you belonging, broke from their enclosure And leaped into the river, and were drowned? COREY. It is most true. HATHORNE. And did you not then say That they were overlooked? COREY. So much I said. I see; they're drawing round me closer, closer, A net I cannot break, cannot escape from! (Aside). HATHORNE. Who did these things? COREY. I do not know who did them. HATHORNE. Then I will tell you. It is some one near you; You see her now; this woman, your own wife. COREY. I call the heavens to witness, it is false! She never harmed me, never hindered me In anything but what I should not do. And I bear witness in the sight of heaven, And in God's house here, that I never knew her As otherwise than patient, brave, and true, Faithful, forgiving, full of charity, A virtuous and industrious and good wife! HATHORNE. Tut, tut, man; do not rant so in your speech; You are a witness, not an advocate! Here, Sheriff, take this woman back to prison. MARTHA. O Giles, this day you've sworn away my life! MARY. Go, go and join the Witches at the door. Do you not hear the drum? Do you not see them? Go quick. They're waiting for you. You are late. [Exit MARTHA; COREY following. COREY. The dream! the dream! the dream! HATHORNE. What does he say? Giles Corey, go not hence. You are yourself Accused of Witchcraft and of Sorcery By many witnesses. Say, are you guilty? COREY. I know my death is foreordained by you, Mine and my wife's. Therefore I will not answer. During the rest of the scene he remains silent. HATHORNE. Do you refuse to plead?--'T were better for you To make confession, or to plead Not Guilty.-- Do you not hear me?--Answer, are you guilty? Do you not know a heavier doom awaits you, If you refuse to plead, than if found guilty? Where is John Gloyd? GLOYD (coming forward). Here am I. HATHORNE. Tell the Court Have you not seen the supernatural power Of this old man? Have you not seen him do Strange feats of strength? GLOYD. I've seen him lead the field, On a hot day, in mowing, and against Us younger men; and I have wrestled with him. He threw me like a feather. I have seen him Lift up a barrel with his single hands, Which two strong men could hardly lift together, And, holding it above his head, drink from it. HATHORNE. That is enough; we need not question further. What answer do you make to this, Giles Corey? MARY. See there! See there! HATHORNE. What is it? I see nothing. MARY. Look! Look! It is the ghost of Robert Goodell, Whom fifteen years ago this man did murder By stamping on his body! In his shroud He comes here to bear witness to the crime! The crowd shrinks back from COREY in horror. HATHORNE. Ghosts of the dead and voices of the living Bear witness to your guilt, and you must die! It might have been an easier death. Your doom Will be on your own head, and not on ours. Twice more will you be questioned of these things; Twice more have room to plead or to confess. If you are contumacious to the Court, And if, when questioned, you refuse to answer, Then by the Statute you will be condemned To the peine forte et dure! To have your body Pressed by great weights until you shall be dead! And may the Lord have mercy on your soul! ACT V. SCENE I. -- COREy's farm as in Act II., Scene I. Enter RICHARD GARDNER, looking round him. GARDNER. Here stands the house as I remember it. The four tall poplar-trees before the door; The house, the barn, the orchard, and the well, With its moss-covered bucket and its trough; The garden, with its hedge of currant-bushes; The woods, the harvest-fields; and, far beyond, The pleasant landscape stretching to the sea. But everything is silent and deserted! No bleat of flocks, no bellowing of herds, No sound of flails, that should be beating now; Nor man nor beast astir. What can this mean? Knocks at the door. What ho! Giles Corey! Hillo-ho! Giles Corey!-- No answer but the echo from the barn, And the ill-omened cawing of the crow, That yonder wings his flight across the fields, As if he scented carrion in the air. Enter TITUBA with a basket. What woman's this, that, like an apparition, Haunts this deserted homestead in broad day? Woman, who are you? TITUBA. I'm Tituba. I am John Indian's wife. I am a Witch. GARDNER. What are you doing here? TITUBA. I am gathering herbs,-- Cinquefoil, and saxifrage, and pennyroyal. GARDNER (looking at the herbs). This is not cinquefoil, it is deadly nightshade! This is not saxifrage, but hellebore! This is not pennyroyal, it is henbane! Do you come here to poison these good people? TITUBA. I get these for the Doctor in the Village. Beware of Tituba. I pinch the children; Make little poppets and stick pins in them, And then the children cry out they are pricked. The Black Dog came to me and said, "Serve me!" I was afraid. He made me hurt the children. GARDNER. Poor soul! She's crazed, with all these Devil's doings. TITUBA. Will you, sir, sign the book? GARDNER. No, I'll not sign it. Where is Giles Corey? Do you know Giles Corey! TITUBA. He's safe enough. He's down there in the prison. GARDNER. Corey in prison? What is he accused of? TITURA. Giles Corey and Martha Corey are in prison Down there in Salem Village. Both are witches. She came to me and whispered, "Kill the children!" Both signed the Book! GARDNER. Begone, you imp of darkness! You Devil's dam! TITUBA. Beware of Tituba! [Exit. GARDNER. How often out at sea on stormy nights, When the waves thundered round me, and the wind Bellowed, and beat the canvas, and my ship Clove through the solid darkness, like a wedge, I've thought of him upon his pleasant farm, Living in quiet with his thrifty housewife, And envied him, and wished his fate were mine! And now I find him shipwrecked utterly, Drifting upon this sea of sorceries, And lost, perhaps, beyond all aid of man! [Exit. SCENE II.. -- The prison. GILES COREY at a table on which are some papers. COREY. Now I have done with earth and all its cares; I give my worldly goods to my dear children; My body I bequeath to my tormentors, And my immortal soul to Him who made it. O God! who in thy wisdom dost afflict me With an affliction greater than most men Have ever yet endured or shall endure, Suffer me not in this last bitter hour For any pains of death to fall from Thee! MARTHA is heard singing. Arise, O righteous Lord! And disappoint my foes; They are but thine avenging sword, Whose wounds are swift to close. COREY. Hark, hark! it is her voice! She is not dead! She lives! I am not utterly forsaken! MARTHA, singing. By thine abounding grace, And mercies multiplied, I shall awake, and see thy face; I shall be satisfied. COREY hides his face in his hands. Enter the JAILER, followed by RICHARD GARDNER. JAILER. Here's a seafaring man, one Richard Gardner, A friend of yours, who asks to speak with you. COREY rises. They embrace. COREY. I'm glad to see you, ay, right glad to see you. GARDNER. And I am most sorely grieved to see you thus. COREY. Of all the friends I had in happier days, You are the first, ay, and the only one, That comes to seek me out in my disgrace! And you but come in time to say farewell, They've dug my grave already in the field. I thank you. There is something in your presence, I know not what it is, that gives me strength. Perhaps it is the bearing of a man Familiar with all dangers of the deep, Familiar with the cries of drowning men, With fire, and wreck, and foundering ships at sea! GARDNER. Ah, I have never known a wreck like yours! Would I could save you! COREY. Do not speak of that. It is too late. I am resolved to die. GARDNER. Why would you die who have so much to live for?-- Your daughters, and-- COREY. You cannot say the word. My daughters have gone from me. They are married; They have their homes, their thoughts, apart from me; I will not say their hearts,--that were too cruel. What would you have me do? GARDNER. Confess and live. COREY. That's what they said who came here yesterday To lay a heavy weight upon my conscience By telling me that I was driven forth As an unworthy member of their church. GARDNER. It is an awful death. COREY. 'T is but to drown, And have the weight of all the seas upon you. GARDNER. Say something; say enough to fend off death Till this tornado of fanaticism Blows itself out. Let me come in between you And your severer self, with my plain sense; Do not be obstinate. COREY. I will not plead. If I deny, I am condemned already, In courts where ghosts appear as witnesses, And swear men's lives away. If I confess, Then I confess a lie, to buy a life Which is not life, but only death in life. I will not bear false witness against any, Not even against myself, whom I count least. GARDNER (aside). Ah, what a noble character is this! COREY. I pray you, do not urge me to do that You would not do yourself. I have already The bitter taste of death upon my lips; I feel the pressure of the heavy weight That will crush out my life within this hour; But if a word could save me, and that word Were not the Truth; nay, if it did but swerve A hair's-breadth from the Truth, I would not say it! GARDNER (aside). How mean I seem beside a man like this! COREY. As for my wife, my Martha and my Martyr,-- Whose virtues, like the stars, unseen by day, Though numberless, do but await the dark To manifest themselves unto all eyes,-- She who first won me from my evil ways, And taught me how to live by her example, By her example teaches me to die, And leads me onward to the better life! SHERIFF (without). Giles Corey! Come! The hour has struck! COREY. I come! Here is my body; ye may torture it, But the immortal soul ye cannot crush! [Exeunt. SCENE III-- A street in the Village. Enter GLOYD and others. GLOYD. Quick, or we shall be late! A MAN. That's not the way. Come here; come up this lane. GLOYD. I wonder now If the old man will die, and will not speak? He's obstinate enough and tough enough For anything on earth. A bell tolls. Hark! What is that? A MAN. The passing bell. He's dead! GLOYD. We are too late. [Exeunt in haste. SCENE IV. -- A field near the graveyard, GILES COREY lying dead, with a great stone on his breast. The Sheriff at his head, RICHARD GARDNER at his feet. A crowd behind. The bell tolling. Enter HATHORNE and MATHER. HATHORNE. This is the Potter's Field. Behold the fate Of those who deal in Witchcrafts, and, when questioned, Refuse to plead their guilt or innocence, And stubbornly drag death upon themselves. MATHER. O sight most horrible! In a land like this, Spangled with Churches Evangelical, Inwrapped in our salvations, must we seek In mouldering statute-books of English Courts Some old forgotten Law, to do such deeds? Those who lie buried in the Potter's Field Will rise again, as surely as ourselves That sleep in honored graves with epitaphs; And this poor man, whom we have made a victim, Hereafter will be counted as a martyr! FINALE SAINT JOHN SAINT JOHN wandering over the face of the Earth. SAINT JOHN. The Ages come and go, The Centuries pass as Years; My hair is white as the snow, My feet are weary and slow, The earth is wet with my tears The kingdoms crumble, and fall Apart, like a ruined wall, Or a bank that is undermined By a river's ceaseless flow, And leave no trace behind! The world itself is old; The portals of Time unfold On hinges of iron, that grate And groan with the rust and the weight, Like the hinges of a gate That hath fallen to decay; But the evil doth not cease; There is war instead of peace, Instead of Love there is hate; And still I must wander and wait, Still I must watch and pray, Not forgetting in whose sight, A thousand years in their flight Are as a single day. The life of man is a gleam Of light, that comes and goes Like the course of the Holy Stream. The cityless river, that flows From fountains no one knows, Through the Lake of Galilee, Through forests and level lands, Over rocks, and shallows, and sands Of a wilderness wild and vast, Till it findeth its rest at last In the desolate Dead Sea! But alas! alas for me Not yet this rest shall be! What, then! doth Charity fail? Is Faith of no avail? Is Hope blown out like a light By a gust of wind in the night? The clashing of creeds, and the strife Of the many beliefs, that in vain Perplex man's heart and brain, Are naught but the rustle of leaves, When the breath of God upheaves The boughs of the Tree of Life, And they subside again! And I remember still The words, and from whom they came, Not he that repeateth the name, But he that doeth the will! And Him evermore I behold Walking in Galilee, Through the cornfield's waving gold, In hamlet, in wood, and in wold, By the shores of the Beautiful Sea. He toucheth the sightless eyes; Before Him the demons flee; To the dead He sayeth: Arise! To the living: Follow me! And that voice still soundeth on From the centuries that are gone, To the centuries that shall be! From all vain pomps and shows, From the pride that overflows, And the false conceits of men; From all the narrow rules And subtleties of Schools, And the craft of tongue and pen; Bewildered in its search, Bewildered with the cry, Lo, here! lo, there, the Church! Poor, sad Humanity Through all the dust and heat Turns back with bleeding feet, By the weary road it came, Unto the simple thought By the great Master taught, And that remaineth still: Not he that repeateth the name, But he that doeth the will! ******** JUDAS MACCABAEUS. ACT I. The Citadel of Antiochus at Jerusalem. SCENE I. -- ANTIOCHUS; JASON. ANTIOCHUS. O Antioch, my Antioch, my city! Queen of the East! my solace, my delight! The dowry of my sister Cleopatra When she was wed to Ptolemy, and now Won back and made more wonderful by me! I love thee, and I long to be once more Among the players and the dancing women Within thy gates, and bathe in the Orontes, Thy river and mine. O Jason, my High-Priest, For I have made thee so, and thou art mine, Hast thou seen Antioch the Beautiful? JASON. Never, my Lord. ANTIOCHUS. Then hast thou never seen The wonder of the world. This city of David Compared with Antioch is but a village, And its inhabitants compared with Greeks Are mannerless boors. JASON. They are barbarians, And mannerless. ANTIOCHUS. They must be civilized. They must be made to have more gods than one; And goddesses besides. JASON. They shall have more. ANTIOCHUS. They must have hippodromes, and games, and baths, Stage-plays and festivals, and most of all The Dionysia. JASON. They shall have them all. ANTIOCHUS. By Heracles! but I should like to see These Hebrews crowned with ivy, and arrayed In skins of fawns, with drums and flutes and thyrsi, Revel and riot through the solemn streets Of their old town. Ha, ha! It makes me merry Only to think of it!--Thou dost not laugh. JASON. Yea, I laugh inwardly. ANTIOCHUS. The new Greek leaven Works slowly in this Israelitish dough! Have I not sacked the Temple, and on the altar Set up the statue of Olympian Zeus To Hellenize it? JASON. Thou hast done all this. ANTIOCHUS. As thou wast Joshua once and now art Jason, And from a Hebrew hast become a Greek, So shall this Hebrew nation be translated, Their very natures and their names be changed, And all be Hellenized. JASON. It shall be done. ANTIOCHUS. Their manners and their laws and way of living Shall all be Greek. They shall unlearn their language, And learn the lovely speech of Antioch. Where hast thou been to-day? Thou comest late. JASON. Playing at discus with the other priests In the Gymnasium. ANTIOCHUS. Thou hast done well. There's nothing better for you lazy priests Than discus-playing with the common people. Now tell me, Jason, what these Hebrews call me When they converse together at their games. JASON. Antiochus Epiphanes, my Lord; Antiochus the Illustrious. ANTIOCHUS. O, not that; That is the public cry; I mean the name They give me when they talk among themselves, And think that no one listens; what is that? JASON. Antiochus Epimanes, my Lord! ANTIOCHUS. Antiochus the Mad! Ay, that is it. And who hath said it? Who hath set in motion That sorry jest? JASON. The Seven Sons insane Of a weird woman, like themselves insane. ANTIOCHUS. I like their courage, but it shall not save them. They shall be made to eat the flesh of swine, Or they shall die. Where are they? JASON. In the dungeons Beneath this tower. ANTIOCHUS. There let them stay and starve, Till I am ready to make Greeks of them, After my fashion. JASON. They shall stay and starve.-- My Lord, the Ambassadors of Samaria Await thy pleasure. ANTIOCHUS. Why not my displeasure? Ambassadors are tedious. They are men Who work for their own ends, and not for mine There is no furtherance in them. Let them go To Apollonius, my governor There in Samaria, and not trouble me. What do they want? JASON. Only the royal sanction To give a name unto a nameless temple Upon Mount Gerizim. ANTIOCHUS. Then bid them enter. This pleases me, and furthers my designs. The occasion is auspicious. Bid them enter. SCENE II. -- ANTIOCHUS; JASON; THE SAMARITAN AMBASSADORS. ANTIOCHUS. Approach. Come forward; stand not at the door Wagging your long beards, but demean yourselves As doth become Ambassadors. What seek ye? AN AMBASSADOR. An audience from the King. ANTIOCHUS. Speak, and be brief. Waste not the time in useless rhetoric. Words are not things. AMBASSADOR (reading). "To King Antiochus, The God, Epiphanes; a Memorial From the Sidonians, who live at Sichem." ANTIOCHUS. Sidonians? AMBASSADOR. Ay, my Lord. ANTIOCHUS. Go on, go on! And do not tire thyself and me with bowing! AMBASSADOR (reading). "We are a colony of Medes and Persians." ANTIOCHUS. No, ye are Jews from one of the Ten Tribes; Whether Sidonians or Samaritans Or Jews of Jewry, matters not to me; Ye are all Israelites, ye are all Jews. When the Jews prosper, ye claim kindred with them; When the Jews suffer, ye are Medes and Persians: I know that in the days of Alexander Ye claimed exemption from the annual tribute In the Sabbatic Year, because, ye said, Your fields had not been planted in that year. AMBASSADOR (reading). "Our fathers, upon certain frequent plagues, And following an ancient superstition, Were long accustomed to observe that day Which by the Israelites is called the Sabbath, And in a temple on Mount Gerizim Without a name, they offered sacrifice. Now we, who are Sidonians, beseech thee, Who art our benefactor and our savior, Not to confound us with these wicked Jews, But to give royal order and injunction To Apollonius in Samaria. Thy governor, and likewise to Nicanor, Thy procurator, no more to molest us; And let our nameless temple now be named The Temple of Jupiter Hellenius." ANTIOCHUS. This shall be done. Full well it pleaseth me Ye are not Jews, or are no longer Jews, But Greeks; if not by birth, yet Greeks by custom. Your nameless temple shall receive the name Of Jupiter Hellenius. Ye may go! SCENE III. -- ANTIOCHUS; JASON. ANTIOCHUS. My task is easier than I dreamed. These people Meet me half-way. Jason, didst thou take note How these Samaritans of Sichem said They were not Jews? that they were Medes and Persians, They were Sidonians, anything but Jews? 'T is of good augury. The rest will follow Till the whole land is Hellenized. JASON. My Lord, These are Samaritans. The tribe of Judah Is of a different temper, and the task Will be more difficult. ANTIOCHUS. Dost thou gainsay me? JASON. I know the stubborn nature of the Jew. Yesterday, Eleazer, an old man, Being fourscore years and ten, chose rather death By torture than to eat the flesh of swine. ANTIOCHUS. The life is in the blood, and the whole nation Shall bleed to death, or it shall change its faith! JASON. Hundreds have fled already to the mountains Of Ephraim, where Judas Maccabaeus Hath raised the standard of revolt against thee. ANTIOCHUS. I will burn down their city, and will make it Waste as a wilderness. Its thoroughfares Shall be but furrows in a field of ashes. It shall be sown with salt as Sodom is! This hundred and fifty-third Olympiad Shall have a broad and blood-red sea upon it, Stamped with the awful letters of my name, Antiochus the God, Epiphanes!-- Where are those Seven Sons? JASON. My Lord, they wait Thy royal pleasure. ANTIOCHUS. They shall wait no longer! ACT II. The Dungeons in the Citadel. SCENE I. -- THE MOTHER of the SEVEN SONS alone, listening. THE MOTHER. Be strong, my heart! Break not till they are dead, All, all my Seven Sons; then burst asunder, And let this tortured and tormented soul Leap and rush out like water through the shards Of earthen vessels broken at a well. O my dear children, mine in life and death, I know not how ye came into my womb; I neither gave you breath, nor gave you life, And neither was it I that formed the members Of every one of you. But the Creator, Who made the world, and made the heavens above us, Who formed the generation of mankind, And found out the beginning of all things, He gave you breath and life, and will again Of his own mercy, as ye now regard Not your own selves, but his eternal law. I do not murmur, nay, I thank thee, God, That I and mine have not been deemed unworthy To suffer for thy sake, and for thy law, And for the many sins of Israel. Hark! I can hear within the sound of scourges! I feel them more than ye do, O my sons! But cannot come to you. I, who was wont To wake at night at the least cry ye made, To whom ye ran at every slightest hurt, I cannot take you now into my lap And soothe your pain, but God will take you all Into his pitying arms, and comfort you, And give you rest. A VOICE (within). What wouldst thou ask of us? Ready are we to die, but we will never Transgress the law and customs of our fathers. THE MOTHER. It is the Voice of my first-born! O brave And noble boy! Thou hast the privilege Of dying first, as thou wast born the first. THE SAME VOICE (within). God looketh on us, and hath comfort in us; As Moses in his song of old declared, He in his servants shall be comforted. THE MOTHER. I knew thou wouldst not fail!--He speaks no more, He is beyond all pain! ANTIOCHUS. (within). If thou eat not Thou shalt be tortured throughout all the members Of thy whole body. Wilt thou eat then? SECOND VOICE. (within). No. THE MOTHER. It is Adaiah's voice. I tremble for him. I know his nature, devious as the wind, And swift to change, gentle and yielding always. Be steadfast, O my son! THE SAME VOICE (within). Thou, like a fury, Takest us from this present life, but God, Who rules the world, shall raise us up again Into life everlasting. THE MOTHER. God, I thank thee That thou hast breathed into that timid heart Courage to die for thee. O my Adaiah, Witness of God! if thou for whom I feared Canst thus encounter death, I need not fear; The others will not shrink. THIRD VOICE (within). Behold these hands Held out to thee, O King Antiochus, Not to implore thy mercy, but to show That I despise them. He who gave them to me Will give them back again. THE MOTHER. O Avilan, It is thy voice. For the last time I hear it; For the last time on earth, but not the last. To death it bids defiance and to torture. It sounds to me as from another world, And makes the petty miseries of this Seem unto me as naught, and less than naught. Farewell, my Avilan; nay, I should say Welcome, my Avilan; for I am dead Before thee. I am waiting for the others. Why do they linger? FOURTH VOICE (within). It is good, O King, Being put to death by men, to look for hope From God, to be raised up again by him. But thou--no resurrection shalt thou have To life hereafter. THE MOTHER. Four! already four! Three are still living; nay, they all are living, Half here, half there. Make haste, Antiochus, To reunite us; for the sword that cleaves These miserable bodies makes a door Through which our souls, impatient of release, Rush to each other's arms. FIFTH VOICE (within). Thou hast the power; Thou doest what thou wilt. Abide awhile, And thou shalt see the power of God, and how He will torment thee and thy seed. THE MOTHER. O hasten; Why dost thou pause? Thou who hast slain already So many Hebrew women, and hast hung Their murdered infants round their necks, slay me, For I too am a woman, and these boys Are mine. Make haste to slay us all, And hang my lifeless babes about my neck. SIXTH VOICE (within). Think not, Antiochus, that takest in hand To strive against the God of Israel, Thou shalt escape unpunished, for his wrath Shall overtake thee and thy bloody house. THE MOTHER. One more, my Sirion, and then all is ended. Having put all to bed, then in my turn I will lie down and sleep as sound as they. My Sirion, my youngest, best beloved! And those bright golden locks, that I so oft Have curled about these fingers, even now Are foul with blood and dust, like a lamb's fleece, Slain in the shambles.--Not a sound I hear. This silence is more terrible to me Than any sound, than any cry of pain, That might escape the lips of one who dies. Doth his heart fail him? Doth he fall away In the last hour from God? O Sirion, Sirion, Art thou afraid? I do not hear thy voice. Die as thy brothers died. Thou must not live! SCENE II. -- THE MOTHER; ANTIOCHUS; SIRION, THE MOTHER. Are they all dead? ANTIOCHUS. Of all thy Seven Sons One only lives. Behold them where they lie How dost thou like this picture? THE MOTHER. God in heaven! Can a man do such deeds, and yet not die By the recoil of his own wickedness? Ye murdered, bleeding, mutilated bodies That were my children once, and still are mine, I cannot watch o'er you as Rispah watched In sackcloth o'er the seven sons of Saul, Till water drop upon you out of heaven And wash this blood away! I cannot mourn As she, the daughter of Aiah, mourned the dead, From the beginning of the barley-harvest Until the autumn rains, and suffered not The birds of air to rest on them by day, Nor the wild beasts by night. For ye have died A better death, a death so full of life That I ought rather to rejoice than mourn.-- Wherefore art thou not dead, O Sirion? Wherefore art thou the only living thing Among thy brothers dead? Art thou afraid? ANTIOCHUS. O woman, I have spared him for thy sake, For he is fair to look upon and comely; And I have sworn to him by all the gods That I would crown his life with joy and honor, Heap treasures on him, luxuries, delights, Make him my friend and keeper of my secrets, If he would turn from your Mosaic Law And be as we are; but he will not listen. THE MOTHER. My noble Sirion! ANTIOCHUS. Therefore I beseech thee, Who art his mother, thou wouldst speak with him, And wouldst persuade him. I am sick of blood. THE MOTHER. Yea, I will speak with him and will persuade him. O Sirion, my son! have pity on me, On me that bare thee, and that gave thee suck, And fed and nourished thee, and brought thee up With the dear trouble of a mother's care Unto this age. Look on the heavens above thee, And on the earth and all that is therein; Consider that God made them out of things That were not; and that likewise in this manner Mankind was made. Then fear not this tormentor But, being worthy of thy brethren, take Thy death as they did, that I may receive thee Again in mercy with them. ANTIOCHUS. I am mocked, Yea, I am laughed to scorn. SIRION. Whom wait ye for? Never will I obey the King's commandment, But the commandment of the ancient Law, That was by Moses given unto our fathers. And thou, O godless man, that of all others Art the most wicked, be not lifted up, Nor puffed up with uncertain hopes, uplifting Thy hand against the servants of the Lord, For thou hast not escaped the righteous judgment Of the Almighty God, who seeth all things! ANTIOCHUS. He is no God of mine; I fear him not. SIRION. My brothers, who have suffered a brief pain, Are dead; but thou, Antiochus, shalt suffer The punishment of pride. I offer up My body and my life, beseeching God That he would speedily be merciful Unto our nation, and that thou by plagues Mysterious and by torments mayest confess That he alone is God. ANTIOCHUS. Ye both shall perish By torments worse than any that your God, Here or hereafter, hath in store for me. THE MOTHER. My Sirion, I am proud of thee! ANTIOCHUS. Be silent! Go to thy bed of torture in yon chamber, Where lie so many sleepers, heartless mother! Thy footsteps will not wake them, nor thy voice, Nor wilt thou hear, amid thy troubled dreams, Thy children crying for thee in the night! THE MOTHER. O Death, that stretchest thy white hands to me, I fear them not, but press them to my lips, That are as white as thine; for I am Death, Nay, am the Mother of Death, seeing these sons All lying lifeless.--Kiss me, Sirion. ACT III. The Battle-field of Beth-horon. SCENE I. -- JUDAS MACCABAEUS in armor before his tent. JUDAS. The trumpets sound; the echoes of the mountains Answer them, as the Sabbath morning breaks Over Beth-horon and its battle-field, Where the great captain of the hosts of God, A slave brought up in the brick-fields of Egypt, O'ercame the Amorites. There was no day Like that, before or after it, nor shall be. The sun stood still; the hammers of the hail Beat on their harness; and the captains set Their weary feet upon the necks of kings, As I will upon thine, Antiochus, Thou man of blood!--Behold the rising sun Strikes on the golden letters of my banner, Be Elohim Yehovah! Who is like To thee, O Lord, among the gods!--Alas! I am not Joshua, I cannot say, "Sun, stand thou still on Gibeon, and thou Moon, In Ajalon!" Nor am I one who wastes The fateful time in useless lamentation; But one who bears his life upon his hand To lose it or to save it, as may best Serve the designs of Him who giveth life. SCENE II -- JUDAS MACCABAEUS; JEWISH FUGITIVES. JUDAS. Who and what are ye, that with furtive steps Steal in among our tents? FUGITIVES. O Maccabaeus, Outcasts are we, and fugitives as thou art, Jews of Jerusalem, that have escaped From the polluted city, and from death. JUDAS. None can escape from death. Say that ye come To die for Israel, and ye are welcome. What tidings bring ye? FUGITIVES. Tidings of despair. The Temple is laid waste; the precious vessels, Censers of gold, vials and veils and crowns, And golden ornaments, and hidden treasures, Have all been taken from it, and the Gentiles With revelling and with riot fill its courts, And dally with harlots in the holy places. JUDAS. All this I knew before. FUGITIVES. Upon the altar Are things profane, things by the law forbidden; Nor can we keep our Sabbaths or our Feasts, But on the festivals of Dionysus Must walk in their processions, bearing ivy To crown a drunken god. JUDAS. This too I know. But tell me of the Jews. How fare the Jews? FUGITIVES. The coming of this mischief hath been sore And grievous to the people. All the land Is full of lamentation and of mourning. The Princes and the Elders weep and wail; The young men and the maidens are made feeble; The beauty of the women hath been changed. JUDAS. And are there none to die for Israel? 'T is not enough to mourn. Breastplate and harness Are better things than sackcloth. Let the women Lament for Israel; the men should die. FUGITIVES. Both men and women die; old men and young: Old Eleazer died: and Mahala With all her Seven Sons. JUDAS. Antiochus, At every step thou takest there is left A bloody footprint in the street, by which The avenging wrath of God will track thee out! It is enough. Go to the sutler's tents; Those of you who are men, put on such armor As ye may find; those of you who are women, Buckle that armor on; and for a watchword Whisper, or cry aloud, "The Help of God." SCENE III. -- JUDAS MACCABAEUS; NICANOR. NICANOR. Hail, Judas Maccabaeus! JUDAS. Hail!--Who art thou That comest here in this mysterious guise Into our camp unheralded? NICANOR. A herald Sent from Nicanor. JUDAS. Heralds come not thus. Armed with thy shirt of mail from head to heel, Thou glidest like a serpent silently Into my presence. Wherefore dost thou turn Thy face from me? A herald speaks his errand With forehead unabashed. Thou art a spy sent by Nicanor. NICANOR. No disguise avails! Behold my face; I am Nicanor's self. JUDAS. Thou art indeed Nicanor. I salute thee. What brings thee hither to this hostile camp Thus unattended? NICANOR. Confidence in thee. Thou hast the nobler virtues of thy race, Without the failings that attend those virtues. Thou canst be strong, and yet not tyrannous, Canst righteous be and not intolerant. Let there be peace between us. JUDAS. What is peace? Is it to bow in silence to our victors? Is it to see our cities sacked and pillaged, Our people slain, or sold as slaves, or fleeing At night-time by the blaze of burning towns; Jerusalem laid waste; the Holy Temple Polluted with strange gods? Are these things peace? NICANOR. These are the dire necessities that wait On war, whose loud and bloody enginery I seek to stay. Let there be peace between Antiochus and thee. JUDAS. Antiochus? What is Antiochus, that he should prate Of peace to me, who am a fugitive? To-day he shall be lifted up; to-morrow Shall not be found, because he is returned Unto his dust; his thought has come to nothing. There is no peace between us, nor can be, Until this banner floats upon the walls Of our Jerusalem. NICANOR. Between that city And thee there lies a waving wall of tents, Held by a host of forty thousand foot, And horsemen seven thousand. What hast thou To bring against all these? JUDAS. The power of God, Whose breath shall scatter your white tents abroad, As flakes of snow. NICANOR. Your Mighty One in heaven Will not do battle on the Seventh Day; It is his day of rest. JUDAS. Silence, blasphemer. Go to thy tents. NICANOR. Shall it be war or peace? JUDAS. War, war, and only war. Go to thy tents That shall be scattered, as by you were scattered The torn and trampled pages of the Law, Blown through the windy streets. NICANOR. Farewell, brave foe! JUDAS. Ho, there, my captains! Have safe-conduct given Unto Nicanor's herald through the camp, And come yourselves to me.--Farewell, Nicanor! SCENE IV. -- JUDAS MACCABAEUS; CAPTAINS AND SOLDIERS. JUDAS. The hour is come. Gather the host together For battle. Lo, with trumpets and with songs The army of Nicanor comes against us. Go forth to meet them, praying in your hearts, And fighting with your hands. CAPTAINS. Look forth and see! The morning sun is shining on their shields Of gold and brass; the mountains glisten with them, And shine like lamps. And we who are so few And poorly armed, and ready to faint with fasting, How shall we fight against this multitude? JUDAS. The victory of a battle standeth not In multitudes, but in the strength that cometh From heaven above. The Lord forbid that I Should do this thing, and flee away from them. Nay, if our hour be come, then let us die; Let us not stain our honor. CAPTAINS. 'T is the Sabbath. Wilt thou fight on the Sabbath, Maccabaeus? JUDAS. Ay; when I fight the battles of the Lord, I fight them on his day, as on all others. Have ye forgotten certain fugitives That fled once to these hills, and hid themselves In caves? How their pursuers camped against them Upon the Seventh Day, and challenged them? And how they answered not, nor cast a stone, Nor stopped the places where they lay concealed, But meekly perished with their wives and children, Even to the number of a thousand souls? We who are fighting for our laws and lives Will not so perish. CAPTAINS. Lead us to the battle! JUDAS. And let our watchword be, "The Help of God!" Last night I dreamed a dream; and in my vision Beheld Onias, our High-Priest of old, Who holding up his hands prayed for the Jews. This done, in the like manner there appeared An old man, and exceeding glorious, With hoary hair, and of a wonderful And excellent majesty. And Onias said: "This is a lover of the Jews, who prayeth Much for the people and the Holy City,-- God's prophet Jeremias." And the prophet Held forth his right hand and gave unto me A sword of gold; and giving it he said: "Take thou this holy sword, a gift from God, And with it thou shalt wound thine adversaries." CAPTAINS. The Lord is with us! JUDAS. Hark! I hear the trumpets Sound from Beth-horon; from the battle-field Of Joshua, where he smote the Amorites, Smote the Five Kings of Eglon and of Jarmuth, Of Hebron, Lachish, and Jerusalem, As we to-day will smite Nicanor's hosts And leave a memory of great deeds behind us. CAPTAINS and SOLDIERS. The Help of God! JUDAS. Be Elohim Yehovah! Lord, thou didst send thine Angel in the time Of Esekias, King of Israel, And in the armies of Sennacherib Didst slay a hundred fourscore and five thousand. Wherefore, O Lord of heaven, now also send Before us a good angel for a fear, And through the might of thy right arm let those Be stricken with terror that have come this day Against thy holy people to blaspheme! ACT IV. The outer Courts of the Temple at Jerusalem. SCENE I. -- JUDAS MACCABAEUS; CAPTAINS; JEWS. JUDAS. Behold, our enemies are discomfited. Jerusalem is fallen; and our banners Float from her battlements, and o'er her gates Nicanor's severed head, a sign of terror, Blackens in wind and sun. CAPTAINS. O Maccabaeus, The citadel of Antiochus, wherein The Mother with her Seven Sons was murdered, Is still defiant. JUDAS. Wait. CAPTAINS. Its hateful aspect Insults us with the bitter memories Of other days. JUDAS. Wait; it shall disappear And vanish as a cloud. First let us cleanse The Sanctuary. See, it is become Waste like a wilderness. Its golden gates Wrenched from their hinges and consumed by fire; Shrubs growing in its courts as in a forest; Upon its altars hideous and strange idols; And strewn about its pavement at my feet Its Sacred Books, half burned and painted o'er With images of heathen gods. JEWS. Woe! woe! Our beauty and our glory are laid waste! The Gentiles have profaned our holy places! (Lamentation and alarm of trumpets.) JUDAS. This sound of trumpets, and this lamentation, The heart-cry of a people toward the heavens, Stir me to wrath and vengeance. Go, my captains; I hold you back no longer. Batter down The citadel of Antiochus, while here We sweep away his altars and his gods. SCENE II. -- JUDAS MACCABAEUS; JASON; JEWS, JEWS. Lurking among the ruins of the Temple, Deep in its inner courts, we found this man, Clad as High-Priest. JUDAS. I ask not who thou art. I know thy face, writ over with deceit As are these tattered volumes of the Law With heathen images. A priest of God Wast thou in other days, but thou art now A priest of Satan. Traitor, thou art Jason. JASON. I am thy prisoner, Judas Maccabaeus, And it would ill become me to conceal My name or office. JUDAS. Over yonder gate There hangs the head of one who was a Greek. What should prevent me now, thou man of sin, From hanging at its side the head of one Who born a Jew hath made himself a Greek? JASON. Justice prevents thee. JUDAS. Justice? Thou art stained With every crime against which the Decalogue Thunders with all its thunder. JASON. If not Justice, Then Mercy, her handmaiden. JUDAS. When hast thou At any time, to any man or woman, Or even to any little child, shown mercy? JASON. I have but done what King Antiochus Commanded me. JUDAS. True, thou hast been the weapon With which he struck; but hast been such a weapon, So flexible, so fitted to his hand, It tempted him to strike. So thou hast urged him To double wickedness, thine own and his. Where is this King? Is he in Antioch Among his women still, and from his windows Throwing down gold by handfuls, for the rabble To scramble for? JASON. Nay, he is gone from there, Gone with an army into the far East. JUDAS. And wherefore gone? JASON. I know not. For the space Of forty days almost were horsemen seen Running in air, in cloth of gold, and armed With lances, like a band of soldiery; It was a sign of triumph. JUDAS. Or of death. Wherefore art thou not with him? JASON. I was left For service in the Temple. JUDAS. To pollute it, And to corrupt the Jews; for there are men Whose presence is corruption; to be with them Degrades us and deforms the things we do. JASON. I never made a boast, as some men do, Of my superior virtue, nor denied The weakness of my nature, that hath made me Subservient to the will of other men. JUDAS. Upon this day, the five and twentieth day Of the month Caslan, was the Temple here Profaned by strangers,--by Antiochus And thee, his instrument. Upon this day Shall it be cleansed. Thou, who didst lend thyself Unto this profanation, canst not be A witness of these solemn services. There can be nothing clean where thou art present. The people put to death Callisthenes, Who burned the Temple gates; and if they find thee Will surely slay thee. I will spare thy life To punish thee the longer. Thou shalt wander Among strange nations. Thou, that hast cast out So many from their native land, shalt perish In a strange land. Thou, that hast left so many Unburied, shalt have none to mourn for thee, Nor any solemn funerals at all, Nor sepulchre with thy fathers.--Get thee hence! (Music. Procession of Priests and people, with citherns, harps, and cymbals. JUDAS MACCABAEUS puts himself at their head, and they go into the inner courts.) SCENE III. -- JASON, alone. JASON. Through the Gate Beautiful I see them come With branches and green boughs and leaves of palm, And pass into the inner courts. Alas! I should be with them, should be one of them, But in an evil hour, an hour of weakness, That cometh unto all, I fell away From the old faith, and did not clutch the new, Only an outward semblance of belief; For the new faith I cannot make mine own, Not being born to it. It hath no root Within me. I am neither Jew nor Greek, But stand between them both, a renegade To each in turn; having no longer faith In gods or men. Then what mysterious charm, What fascination is it chains my feet, And keeps me gazing like a curious child Into the holy places, where the priests Have raised their altar?--Striking stones together, They take fire out of them, and light the lamps In the great candlestick. They spread the veils, And set the loaves of showbread on the table. The incense burns; the well-remembered odor Comes wafted unto me, and takes me back To other days. I see myself among them As I was then; and the old superstition Creeps over me again!--A childish fancy!-- And hark! they sing with citherns and with cymbals, And all the people fall upon their faces, Praying and worshipping!--I will away Into the East, to meet Antiochus Upon his homeward journey, crowned with triumph. Alas! to-day I would give everything To see a friend's face, or to hear a voice That had the slightest tone of comfort in it! ACT V. The Mountains of Ecbatana. SCENE I. -- ANTIOCHUS; PHILIP; ATTENDANTS. ANTIOCHUS. Here let us rest awhile. Where are we, Philip? What place is this? PHILIP. Ecbatana, my Lord; And yonder mountain range is the Orontes. ANTIOCHUS. The Orontes is my river at Antioch. Why did I leave it? Why have I been tempted By coverings of gold and shields and breastplates To plunder Elymais, and be driven From out its gates, as by a fiery blast Out of a furnace? PHILIP. These are fortune's changes. ANTIOCHUS. What a defeat it was! The Persian horsemen Came like a mighty wind, the wind Khamaseen, And melted us away, and scattered us As if we were dead leaves, or desert sand. PHILIP. Be comforted, my Lord; for thou hast lost But what thou hadst not. ANTIOCHUS. I, who made the Jews Skip like the grasshoppers, am made myself To skip among these stones. PHILIP. Be not discouraged. Thy realm of Syria remains to thee; That is not lost nor marred. ANTIOCHUS. O, where are now The splendors of my court, my baths and banquets? Where are my players and my dancing women? Where are my sweet musicians with their pipes, That made me merry in the olden time? I am a laughing-stock to man and brute. The very camels, with their ugly faces, Mock me and laugh at me. PHILIP. Alas! my Lord, It is not so. If thou wouldst sleep awhile, All would be well. ANTIOCHUS. Sleep from mine eyes is gone, And my heart faileth me for very care. Dost thou remember, Philip, the old fable Told us when we were boys, in which the bear Going for honey overturns the hive, And is stung blind by bees? I am that beast, Stung by the Persian swarms of Elymais. PHILIP. When thou art come again to Antioch These thoughts will be as covered and forgotten As are the tracks of Pharaoh's chariot-wheels In the Egyptian sands. ANTIOCHUS. Ah! when I come Again to Antioch! When will that be? Alas! alas! SCENE II -- ANTIOCHUS; PHILIP; A MESSENGER MESSENGER. May the King live forever! ANTIOCHUS. Who art thou, and whence comest thou? MESSENGER. My Lord, I am a messenger from Antioch, Sent here by Lysias. ANTIOCHUS. A strange foreboding Of something evil overshadows me. I am no reader of the Jewish Scriptures; I know not Hebrew; but my High-Priest Jason, As I remember, told me of a Prophet Who saw a little cloud rise from the sea Like a man's hand and soon the heaven was black With clouds and rain. Here, Philip, read; I cannot; I see that cloud. It makes the letters dim Before mine eyes. PHILIP (reading). "To King Antiochus, The God, Epiphanes." ANTIOCHUS. O mockery! Even Lysias laughs at me!--Go on, go on. PHILIP (reading). "We pray thee hasten thy return. The realm Is falling from thee. Since thou hast gone from us The victories of Judas Maccabaeus Form all our annals. First he overthrew Thy forces at Beth-horon, and passed on, And took Jerusalem, the Holy City. And then Emmaus fell; and then Bethsura; Ephron and all the towns of Galaad, And Maccabaeus marched to Carnion." ANTIOCHUS. Enough, enough! Go call my chariot-men; We will drive forward, forward, without ceasing, Until we come to Antioch. My captains, My Lysias, Gorgias, Seron, and Nicanor, Are babes in battle, and this dreadful Jew Will rob me of my kingdom and my crown. My elephants shall trample him to dust; I will wipe out his nation, and will make Jerusalem a common burying-place, And every home within its walls a tomb! (Throws up his hands, and sinks into the arms of attendants, who lay him upon a bank.) PHILIP. Antiochus! Antiochus! Alas, The King is ill! What is it, O my Lord? ANTIOCHUS. Nothing. A sudden and sharp spasm of pain, As if the lightning struck me, or the knife Of an assassin smote me to the heart. 'T is passed, even as it came. Let us set forward. PHILIP. See that the chariots be in readiness We will depart forthwith. ANTIOCHUS. A moment more. I cannot stand. I am become at once Weak as an infant. Ye will have to lead me. Jove, or Jehovah, or whatever name Thou wouldst be named,--it is alike to me,-- If I knew how to pray, I would entreat To live a little longer. PHILIP. O my Lord, Thou shalt not die; we will not let thee die! ANTIOCHUS. How canst thou help it, Philip? O the pain! Stab after stab. Thou hast no shield against This unseen weapon. God of Israel, Since all the other gods abandon me, Help me. I will release the Holy City. Garnish with goodly gifts the Holy Temple. Thy people, whom I judged to be unworthy To be so much as buried, shall be equal Unto the citizens of Antioch. I will become a Jew, and will declare Through all the world that is inhabited The power of God! PHILIP. He faints. It is like death. Bring here the royal litter. We will bear him In to the camp, while yet he lives. ANTIOCHUS. O Philip, Into what tribulation am I come! Alas! I now remember all the evil That I have done the Jews; and for this cause These troubles are upon me, and behold I perish through great grief in a strange land. PHILIP. Antiochus! my King! ANTIOCHUS. Nay, King no longer. Take thou my royal robes, my signet-ring, My crown and sceptre, and deliver them Unto my son, Antiochus Eupator; And unto the good Jews, my citizens, In all my towns, say that their dying monarch Wisheth them joy, prosperity, and health. I who, puffed up with pride and arrogance, Thought all the kingdoms of the earth mine own, If I would but outstretch my hand and take them, Meet face to face a greater potentate, King Death--Epiphanes--the Illustrious! [Dies. ***** MICHAEL ANGELO Michel, piu che mortal, Angel divino. -- ARIOSTO. Similamente operando all' artista ch' a l'abito dell' arte e man che trema. -- DANTE, Par. xiii., st. 77. DEDICATION. Nothing that is shall perish utterly, But perish only to revive again In other forms, as clouds restore in rain The exhalations of the land and sea. Men build their houses from the masonry Of ruined tombs; the passion and the pain Of hearts, that long have ceased to beat, remain To throb in hearts that are, or are to be. So from old chronicles, where sleep in dust Names that once filled the world with trumpet tones, I build this verse; and flowers of song have thrust Their roots among the loose disjointed stones, Which to this end I fashion as I must. Quickened are they that touch the Prophet's bones. PART FIRST. I. PROLOGUE AT ISCHIA The Castle Terrace. VITTORIA COLONNA, and JULIA GONZAGA. VITTORIA. Will you then leave me, Julia, and so soon, To pace alone this terrace like a ghost? JULIA. To-morrow, dearest. VITTORIA. Do not say to-morrow. A whole month of to-morrows were too soon. You must not go. You are a part of me. JULIA. I must return to Fondi. VITTORIA. The old castle Needs not your presence. No one waits for you. Stay one day longer with me. They who go Feel not the pain of parting; it is they Who stay behind that suffer. I was thinking But yesterday how like and how unlike Have been, and are, our destinies. Your husband, The good Vespasian, an old man, who seemed A father to you rather than a husband, Died in your arms; but mine, in all the flower And promise of his youth, was taken from me As by a rushing wind. The breath of battle Breathed on him, and I saw his face no more, Save as in dreams it haunts me. As our love Was for these men, so is our sorrow for them. Yours a child's sorrow, smiling through its tears; But mine the grief of an impassioned woman, Who drank her life up in one draught of love. JULIA. Behold this locket. This is the white hair Of my Vespasian. This is the flower-of-love, This amaranth, and beneath it the device Non moritura. Thus my heart remains True to his memory; and the ancient castle, Where we have lived together, where he died, Is dear to me as Ischia is to you. VITTORIA. I did not mean to chide you. JULIA. Let your heart Find, if it can, some poor apology For one who is too young, and feels too keenly The joy of life, to give up all her days To sorrow for the dead. While I am true To the remembrance of the man I loved And mourn for still, I do not make a show Of all the grief I feel, nor live secluded And, like Veronica da Gambara, Drape my whole house in mourning, and drive forth In coach of sable drawn by sable horses, As if I were a corpse. Ah, one to-day Is worth for me a thousand yesterdays. VITTORIA. Dear Julia! Friendship has its jealousies As well as love. Who waits for you at Fondi? JULIA. A friend of mine and yours; a friend and friar. You have at Naples your Fra Bernadino; And I at Fondi have my Fra Bastiano, The famous artist, who has come from Rome To paint my portrait. That is not a sin. VITTORIA. Only a vanity. JULIA. He painted yours. VITTORIA. Do not call up to me those days departed When I was young, and all was bright about me, And the vicissitudes of life were things But to be read of in old histories, Though as pertaining unto me or mine Impossible. Ah, then I dreamed your dreams, And now, grown older, I look back and see They were illusions. JULIA. Yet without illusions What would our lives become, what we ourselves? Dreams or illusions, call them what you will, They lift us from the commonplace of life To better things. VITTORIA. Are there no brighter dreams, No higher aspirations, than the wish To please and to be pleased? JULIA. For you there are; I am no saint; I feel the world we live in Comes before that which is to be here after, And must be dealt with first. VITTORIA. But in what way? JULIA. Let the soft wind that wafts to us the odor Of orange blossoms, let the laughing sea And the bright sunshine bathing all the world, Answer the question. VITTORIA. And for whom is meant This portrait that you speak of? JULIA. For my friend The Cardinal Ippolito. VITTORIA. For him? JULIA Yes, for Ippolito the Magnificent. 'T is always flattering to a woman's pride To be admired by one whom all admire. VITTORIA. Ah, Julia, she that makes herself a dove Is eaten by the hawk. Be on your guard, He is a Cardinal; and his adoration Should be elsewhere directed. JULIA. You forget The horror of that night, when Barbarossa, The Moorish corsair, landed on our coast To seize me for the Sultan Soliman; How in the dead of night, when all were sleeping, He scaled the castle wall; how I escaped, And in my night-dress, mounting a swift steed, Fled to the mountains, and took refuge there Among the brigands. Then of all my friends The Cardinal Ippolito was first To come with his retainers to my rescue. Could I refuse the only boon he asked At such a time, my portrait? VITTORIA. I have heard Strange stories of the splendors of his palace, And how, apparelled like a Spanish Prince, He rides through Rome with a long retinue Of Ethiopians and Numidians And Turks and Tartars, in fantastic dresses, Making a gallant show. Is this the way A Cardinal should live? JULIA. He is so young; Hardly of age, or little more than that; Beautiful, generous, fond of arts and letters, A poet, a musician, and a scholar; Master of many languages, and a player On many instruments. In Rome, his palace Is the asylum of all men distinguished In art or science, and all Florentines Escaping from the tyranny of his cousin, Duke Alessandro. VITTORIA. I have seen his portrait, Painted by Titian. You have painted it In brighter colors. JULIA. And my Cardinal, At Itri, in the courtyard of his palace, Keeps a tame lion! VITTORIA. And so counterfeits St. Mark, the Evangelist! JULIA. Ah, your tame lion Is Michael Angelo. VITTORIA. You speak a name That always thrills me with a noble sound, As of a trumpet! Michael Angelo! A lion all men fear and none can tame; A man that all men honor, and the model That all should follow; one who works and prays, For work is prayer, and consecrates his life To the sublime ideal of his art, Till art and life are one; a man who holds Such place in all men's thoughts, that when they speak Of great things done, or to be done, his name Is ever on their lips. JULIA. You too can paint The portrait of your hero, and in colors Brighter than Titian's; I might warn you also Against the dangers that beset your path; But I forbear. VITTORIA. If I were made of marble, Of Fior di Persico or Pavonazzo, He might admire me: being but flesh and blood, I am no more to him than other women; That is, am nothing. JULIA. Does he ride through Rome Upon his little mule, as he was wont, With his slouched hat, and boots of Cordovan, As when I saw him last? VITTORIA. Pray do not jest. I cannot couple with his noble name A trivial word! Look, how the setting sun Lights up Castel-a-mare and Sorrento, And changes Capri to a purple cloud! And there Vesuvius with its plume of smoke, And the great city stretched upon the shore As in a dream! JULIA. Parthenope the Siren! VITTORIA. And yon long line of lights, those sunlit windows Blaze like the torches carried in procession To do her honor! It is beautiful! JULIA. I have no heart to feel the beauty of it! My feet are weary, pacing up and down These level flags, and wearier still my thoughts Treading the broken pavement of the Past, It is too sad. I will go in and rest, And make me ready for to-morrow's journey. VITTORIA. I will go with you; for I would not lose One hour of your dear presence. 'T is enough Only to be in the same room with you. I need not speak to you, nor hear you speak; If I but see you, I am satisfied. [They go in. MONOLOGUE: THE LAST JUDGMENT MICHAEL ANGELO's Studio. He is at work on the cartoon of the Last Judgment. MICHAEL ANGELO. Why did the Pope and his ten Cardinals Come here to lay this heavy task upon me? Were not the paintings on the Sistine ceiling Enough for them? They saw the Hebrew leader Waiting, and clutching his tempestuous beard, But heeded not. The bones of Julius Shook in their sepulchre. I heard the sound; They only heard the sound of their own voices. Are there no other artists here in Rome To do this work, that they must needs seek me? Fra Bastian, my Era Bastian, might have done it; But he is lost to art. The Papal Seals, Like leaden weights upon a dead man's eyes, Press down his lids; and so the burden falls On Michael Angelo, Chief Architect And Painter of the Apostolic Palace. That is the title they cajole me with, To make me do their work and leave my own; But having once begun, I turn not back. Blow, ye bright angels, on your golden trumpets To the four corners of the earth, and wake The dead to judgment! Ye recording angels, Open your books and read? Ye dead awake! Rise from your graves, drowsy and drugged with death, As men who suddenly aroused from sleep Look round amazed, and know not where they are! In happy hours, when the imagination Wakes like a wind at midnight, and the soul Trembles in all its leaves, it is a joy To be uplifted on its wings, and listen To the prophetic voices in the air That call us onward. Then the work we do Is a delight, and the obedient hand Never grows weary. But how different is it En the disconsolate, discouraged hours, When all the wisdom of the world appears As trivial as the gossip of a nurse In a sick-room, and all our work seems useless, What is it guides my hand, what thoughts possess me, That I have drawn her face among the angels, Where she will be hereafter? O sweet dreams, That through the vacant chambers of my heart Walk in the silence, as familiar phantoms Frequent an ancient house, what will ye with me? 'T is said that Emperors write their names in green When under age, but when of age in purple. So Love, the greatest Emperor of them all, Writes his in green at first, but afterwards In the imperial purple of our blood. First love or last love,--which of these two passions Is more omnipotent? Which is more fair, The star of morning or the evening star? The sunrise or the sunset of the heart? The hour when we look forth to the unknown, And the advancing day consumes the shadows, Or that when all the landscape of our lives Lies stretched behind us, and familiar places Gleam in the distance, and sweet memories Rise like a tender haze, and magnify The objects we behold, that soon must vanish? What matters it to me, whose countenance Is like the Laocoon's, full of pain; whose forehead Is a ploughed harvest-field, where three-score years Have sown in sorrow and have reaped in anguish; To me, the artisan, to whom all women Have been as if they were not, or at most A sudden rush of pigeons in the air, A flutter of wings, a sound, and then a silence? I am too old for love; I am too old To flatter and delude myself with visions Of never-ending friendship with fair women, Imaginations, fantasies, illusions, In which the things that cannot be take shape, And seem to be, and for the moment are. [Convent bells ring. Distant and near and low and loud the bells, Dominican, Benedictine, and Franciscan, Jangle and wrangle in their airy towers, Discordant as the brotherhoods themselves In their dim cloisters. The descending sun Seems to caress the city that he loves, And crowns it with the aureole of a saint. I will go forth and breathe the air a while. II. SAN SILVESTRO A Chapel in the Church of San Silvestra on Monte Cavallo. VITTORIA COLONNA, CLAUDIO TOLOMMEI, and others. VITTORIA. Here let us rest a while, until the crowd Has left the church. I have already sent For Michael Angelo to join us here. MESSER CLAUDIO. After Fra Bernardino's wise discourse On the Pauline Epistles, certainly Some words of Michael Angelo on Art Were not amiss, to bring us back to earth. MICHAEL ANGELO, at the door. How like a Saint or Goddess she appears; Diana or Madonna, which I know not! In attitude and aspect formed to be At once the artist's worship and despair! VITTORIA. Welcome, Maestro. We were waiting for you. MICHAEL ANGELO. I met your messenger upon the way, And hastened hither. VITTORIA. It is kind of you To come to us, who linger here like gossips Wasting the afternoon in idle talk. These are all friends of mine and friends of yours. MICHAEL ANGELO. If friends of yours, then are they friends of mine. Pardon me, gentlemen. But when I entered I saw but the Marchesa. VITTORIA. Take this seat Between me and Ser Claudio Tolommei, Who still maintains that our Italian tongue Should be called Tuscan. But for that offence We will not quarrel with him. MICHAEL ANGELO. Eccellenza-- VITTORIA. Ser Claudio has banished Eccellenza And all such titles from the Tuscan tongue. MESSER CLAUDIO. 'T is the abuse of them and not the use I deprecate. MICHAEL ANGELO. The use or the abuse It matters not. Let them all go together, As empty phrases and frivolities, And common as gold-lace upon the collar Of an obsequious lackey. VITTORIA. That may be, But something of politeness would go with them; We should lose something of the stately manners Of the old school. MESSER CLAUDIO. Undoubtedly. VITTORlA. But that Is not what occupies my thoughts at present, Nor why I sent for you, Messer Michele. It was to counsel me. His Holiness Has granted me permission, long desired, To build a convent in this neighborhood, Where the old tower is standing, from whose top Nero looked down upon the burning city. MICHAEL ANGELO. It is an inspiration! VITTORIA. I am doubtful How I shall build; how large to make the convent, And which way fronting. MICHAEL ANGELO. Ah, to build, to build! That is the noblest art of all the arts. Painting and sculpture are but images, Are merely shadows cast by outward things On stone or canvas, having in themselves No separate existence. Architecture, Existing in itself, and not in seeming A something it is not, surpasses them As substance shadow. Long, long years ago, Standing one morning near the Baths of Titus, I saw the statue of Laocoon Rise from its grave of centuries, like a ghost Writhing in pain; and as it tore away The knotted serpents from its limbs, I heard, Or seemed to hear, the cry of agony From its white, parted lips. And still I marvel At the three Rhodian artists, by whose hands This miracle was wrought. Yet he beholds Far nobler works who looks upon the ruins Of temples in the Forum here in Rome. If God should give me power in my old age To build for Him a temple half as grand As those were in their glory, I should count My age more excellent than youth itself, And all that I have hitherto accomplished As only vanity. VITTORIA. I understand you. Art is the gift of God, and must be used Unto His glory. That in art is highest Which aims at this. When St. Hilarion blessed The horses of Italicus, they won The race at Gaza, for his benediction O'erpowered all magic; and the people shouted That Christ had conquered Marnas. So that art Which bears the consecration and the seal Of holiness upon it will prevail Over all others. Those few words of yours Inspire me with new confidence to build. What think you? The old walls might serve, perhaps, Some purpose still. The tower can hold the bells. MICHAEL ANGELO. If strong enough. VITTORIA. If not, it can be strengthened. MICHAEL ANGELO. I see no bar nor drawback to this building, And on our homeward way, if it shall please you, We may together view the site. VITTORIA. I thank you. I did not venture to request so much. MICHAEL ANGELO. Let us now go to the old walls you spake of, Vossignoria-- VITTORIA. What, again, Maestro? MICHAEL ANGELO. Pardon me, Messer Claudio, if once more I use the ancient courtesies of speech. I am too old to change. III. CARDINAL IPPOLITO. A richly furnished apartment in the Palace of CARDINAL IPPOLITO. Night. JACOPO NARDI, an old man, alone. NARDI. I am bewildered. These Numidian slaves, In strange attire; these endless ante-chambers; This lighted hall, with all its golden splendors, Pictures, and statues! Can this be the dwelling Of a disciple of that lowly Man Who had not where to lay his head? These statues Are not of Saints; nor is this a Madonna, This lovely face, that with such tender eyes Looks down upon me from the painted canvas. My heart begins to fail me. What can he Who lives in boundless luxury at Rome Care for the imperilled liberties of Florence, Her people, her Republic? Ah, the rich Feel not the pangs of banishment. All doors Are open to them, and all hands extended, The poor alone are outcasts; they who risked All they possessed for liberty, and lost; And wander through the world without a friend, Sick, comfortless, distressed, unknown, uncared for. Enter CARDINAL HIPPOLITO, in Spanish cloak and slouched hat. IPPOLITO. I pray you pardon me that I have kept you Waiting so long alone. NARDI. I wait to see The Cardinal. IPPOLITO. I am the Cardinal. And you? NARDI. Jacopo Nardi. IPPOLITO. You are welcome I was expecting you. Philippo Strozzi Had told me of your coming. NARDI. 'T was his son That brought me to your door. IPPOLITO. Pray you, be seated. You seem astonished at the garb I wear, But at my time of life, and with my habits, The petticoats of a Cardinal would be-- Troublesome; I could neither ride nor walk, Nor do a thousand things, if I were dressed Like an old dowager. It were putting wine Young as the young Astyanax into goblets As old as Priam. NARDI. Oh, your Eminence Knows best what you should wear. IPPOLITO. Dear Messer Nardi, You are no stranger to me. I have read Your excellent translation of the books Of Titus Livius, the historian Of Rome, and model of all historians That shall come after him. It does you honor; But greater honor still the love you bear To Florence, our dear country, and whose annals I hope your hand will write, in happier days Than we now see. NARDI. Your Eminence will pardon The lateness of the hour. IPPOLITO. The hours I count not As a sun-dial; but am like a clock, That tells the time as well by night as day. So no excuse. I know what brings you here. You come to speak of Florence. NARDI. And her woes. IPPOLITO. The Duke, my cousin, the black Alessandro, Whose mother was a Moorish slave, that fed The sheep upon Lorenzo's farm, still lives And reigns. NARDI. Alas, that such a scourge Should fall on such a city! IPPOLITO. When he dies, The Wild Boar in the gardens of Lorenzo, The beast obscene, should be the monument Of this bad man. NARDI. He walks the streets at night With revellers, insulting honest men. No house is sacred from his lusts. The convents Are turned by him to brothels, and the honor Of women and all ancient pious customs Are quite forgotten now. The offices Of the Priori and Gonfalonieri Have been abolished. All the magistrates Are now his creatures. Liberty is dead. The very memory of all honest living Is wiped away, and even our Tuscan tongue Corrupted to a Lombard dialect. IPPOLITO. And worst of all his impious hand has broken The Martinella,--our great battle bell, That, sounding through three centuries, has led The Florentines to victory,--lest its voice Should waken in their souls some memory Of far-off times of glory. NARDI. What a change Ten little years have made! We all remember Those better days, when Niccola Capponi, The Gonfaloniere, from the windows Of the Old Palace, with the blast of trumpets, Proclaimed to the inhabitants that Christ Was chosen King of Florence; and already Christ is dethroned, and slain, and in his stead Reigns Lucifer! Alas, alas, for Florence! IPPOLITO. Lilies with lilies, said Savonarola; Florence and France! But I say Florence only, Or only with the Emperor's hand to help us In sweeping out the rubbish. NARDI. Little hope Of help is there from him. He has betrothed His daughter Margaret to this shameless Duke. What hope have we from such an Emperor? IPPOLITO. Baccio Valori and Philippo Strozzi, Once the Duke's friends and intimates are with us, And Cardinals Salvati and Ridolfi. We shall soon see, then, as Valori says, Whether the Duke can best spare honest men, Or honest men the Duke. NARDI. We have determined To send ambassadors to Spain, and lay Our griefs before the Emperor, though I fear More than I hope. IPPOLITO. The Emperor is busy With this new war against the Algerines, And has no time to listen to complaints From our ambassadors; nor will I trust them, But go myself. All is in readiness For my departure, and to-morrow morning I shall go down to Itri, where I meet Dante da Castiglione and some others, Republicans and fugitives from Florence, And then take ship at Gaeta, and go To join the Emperor in his new crusade Against the Turk. I shall have time enough And opportunity to plead our cause. NARDI, rising. It is an inspiration, and I hail it As of good omen. May the power that sends it Bless our beloved country, and restore Its banished citizens. The soul of Florence Is now outside its gates. What lies within Is but a corpse, corrupted and corrupting. Heaven help us all, I will not tarry longer, For you have need of rest. Good-night. IPPOLITO. Good-night. Enter FRA SEBASTIANO; Turkish attendants. IPPOLITO. Fra Bastiano, how your portly presence Contrasts with that of the spare Florentine Who has just left me! FRA SEBASTIANO. As we passed each other, I saw that he was weeping. IPPOLITO. Poor old man! FRA SEBASTIANO. Who is he? IPPOLITO. Jacopo Nardi. A brave soul; One of the Fuoruseiti, and the best And noblest of them all; but he has made me Sad with his sadness. As I look on you My heart grows lighter. I behold a man Who lives in an ideal world, apart From all the rude collisions of our life, In a calm atmosphere. FRA SEBASTIANO. Your Eminence Is surely jesting. If you knew the life Of artists as I know it, you might think Far otherwise. IPPOLITO. But wherefore should I jest? The world of art is an ideal world,-- The world I love, and that I fain would live in; So speak to me of artists and of art, Of all the painters, sculptors, and musicians That now illustrate Rome. FRA SEBASTIANO. Of the musicians, I know but Goudimel, the brave maestro And chapel-master of his Holiness, Who trains the Papal choir. IPPOLITO. In church this morning, I listened to a mass of Goudimel, Divinely chanted. In the Incarnatus, In lieu of Latin words, the tenor sang With infinite tenderness, in plain Italian, A Neapolitan love-song. FRA SEBASTIANO. You amaze me. Was it a wanton song? IPPOLITO. Not a divine one. I am not over-scrupulous, as you know, In word or deed, yet such a song as that. Sung by the tenor of the Papal choir, And in a Papal mass, seemed out of place; There's something wrong in it. FRA SEBASTIANO. There's something wrong In everything. We cannot make the world Go right. 'T is not my business to reform The Papal choir. IPPOLITO. Nor mine, thank Heaven. Then tell me of the artists. FRA SEBASTIANO. Naming one I name them all; for there is only one. His name is Messer Michael Angelo. All art and artists of the present day Centre in him. IPPOLITO. You count yourself as nothing! FRA SEBASTIANO. Or less than nothing, since I am at best Only a portrait-painter; one who draws With greater or less skill, as best he may, The features of a face. IPPOLITO. And you have had The honor, nay, the glory, of portraying Julia Gonzaga! Do you count as nothing A privilege like that? See there the portrait Rebuking you with its divine expression. Are you not penitent? He whose skilful hand Painted that lovely picture has not right To vilipend the art of portrait-painting. But what of Michael Angelo? FRA SEBASTIANO. But lately Strolling together down the crowded Corso, We stopped, well pleased, to see your Eminence Pass on an Arab steed, a noble creature, Which Michael Angelo, who is a lover Of all things beautiful, especially When they are Arab horses, much admired, And could not praise enough. IPPOLITO, to an attendant. Hassan, to-morrow, When I am gone, but not till I am gone,-- Be careful about that,--take Barbarossa To Messer Michael Angelo, the sculptor, Who lives there at Macello dei Corvi, Near to the Capitol; and take besides Some ten mule-loads of provender, and say Your master sends them to him as a present. FRA SEBASTIANO. A princely gift. Though Michael Angelo Refuses presents from his Holiness, Yours he will not refuse. IPPOLITO. You think him like Thymoetes, who received the wooden horse Into the walls of Troy. That book of Virgil Have I translated in Italian verse, And shall, some day, when we have leisure for it, Be pleased to read you. When I speak of Troy I am reminded of another town And of a lovelier Helen, our dear Countess Julia Gonzaga. You remember, surely, The adventure with the corsair Barbarossa, And all that followed? FRA SEBASTIANO. A most strange adventure; A tale as marvellous and full of wonder As any in Boccaccio or Sacchetti; Almost incredible! IPPOLITO. Were I a painter I should not want a better theme than that: The lovely lady fleeing through the night In wild disorder; and the brigands' camp With the red fire-light on their swarthy faces. Could you not paint it for me? FRA SEBASTIANO. No, not I. It is not in my line. IPPOLITO. Then you shall paint The portrait of the corsair, when we bring him A prisoner chained to Naples: for I feel Something like admiration for a man Who dared this strange adventure. FRA SEBASTIANO. I will do it. But catch the corsair first. IPPOLITO. You may begin To-morrow with the sword. Hassan, come hither; Bring me the Turkish scimitar that hangs Beneath the picture yonder. Now unsheathe it. 'T is a Damascus blade; you see the inscription In Arabic: La Allah illa Allah,-- There is no God but God. FRA SEBASTIANO. How beautiful In fashion and in finish! It is perfect. The Arsenal of Venice can not boast A finer sword. IPPOLITO. You like it? It is yours. FRA SEBASTIANO. You do not mean it. IPPOLITO. I am not a Spaniard, To say that it is yours and not to mean it. I have at Itri a whole armory Full of such weapons. When you paint the portrait Of Barbarossa, it will be of use. You have not been rewarded as you should be For painting the Gonzaga. Throw this bauble Into the scale, and make the balance equal. Till then suspend it in your studio; You artists like such trifles. FRA SEBASTIANO. I will keep it In memory of the donor. Many thanks. IPPOLITO. Fra Bastian, I am growing tired of Rome, The old dead city, with the old dead people; Priests everywhere, like shadows on a wall, And morning, noon, and night the ceaseless sound Of convent bells. I must be gone from here; Though Ovid somewhere says that Rome is worthy To be the dwelling-place of all the Gods, I must be gone from here. To-morrow morning I start for Itri, and go thence by sea To join the Emperor, who is making war Upon the Algerines; perhaps to sink Some Turkish galleys, and bring back in chains The famous corsair. Thus would I avenge The beautiful Gonzaga. FRA SEBASTIANO. An achievement Worthy of Charlemagne, or of Orlando. Berni and Ariosto both shall add A canto to their poems, and describe you As Furioso and Innamorato. Now I must say good-night. IPPOLITO. You must not go; First you shall sup with me. My seneschal Giovan Andrea dal Borgo a San Sepolcro,-- I like to give the whole sonorous name, It sounds so like a verse of the Aeneid,-- Has brought me eels fresh from the Lake of Fondi, And Lucrine oysters cradled in their shells: These, with red Fondi wine, the Caecu ban That Horace speaks of, under a hundred keys Kept safe, until the heir of Posthumus Shall stain the pavement with it, make a feast Fit for Lucullus, or Fra Bastian even; So we will go to supper, and be merry. FRA SEBASTIANO. Beware! I Remember that Bolsena's eels And Vernage wine once killed a Pope of Rome! IPPOLITO. 'T was a French Pope; and then so long ago; Who knows?--perhaps the story is not true. IV. BORGO DELLE VERGINE AT NAPLES Room in the Palace of JULIA GONZAGA. Night. JULIA GONZAGA, GIOVANNI VALDESSO. JULIA. Do not go yet. VALDESSO. The night is far advanced; I fear to stay too late, and weary you With these discussions. JULIA. I have much to say. I speak to you, Valdesso, with that frankness Which is the greatest privilege of friendship.-- Speak as I hardly would to my confessor, Such is my confidence in you. VALDESSO. Dear Countess If loyalty to friendship be a claim Upon your confidence, then I may claim it. JULIA. Then sit again, and listen unto things That nearer are to me than life itself. VALDESSO. In all things I am happy to obey you, And happiest then when you command me most. JULIA. Laying aside all useless rhetoric, That is superfluous between us two, I come at once unto the point and say, You know my outward life, my rank and fortune; Countess of Fondi, Duchess of Trajetto, A widow rich and flattered, for whose hand In marriage princes ask, and ask it only To be rejected. All the world can offer Lies at my feet. If I remind you of it, It is not in the way of idle boasting, But only to the better understanding Of what comes after. VALDESSO. God hath given you also Beauty and intellect; and the signal grace To lead a spotless life amid temptations, That others yield to. JULIA. But the inward life,-- That you know not; 't is known but to myself, And is to me a mystery and a pain. A soul disquieted, and ill at ease, A mind perplexed with doubts and apprehensions, A heart dissatisfied with all around me, And with myself, so that sometimes I weep, Discouraged and disgusted with the world. VALDESSO. Whene'er we cross a river at a ford, If we would pass in safety, we must keep Our eyes fixed steadfast on the shore beyond, For if we cast them on the flowing stream, The head swims with it; so if we would cross The running flood of things here in the world, Our souls must not look down, but fix their sight On the firm land beyond. JULIA. I comprehend you. You think I am too worldly; that my head Swims with the giddying whirl of life about me. Is that your meaning? VALDESSO. Yes; your meditations Are more of this world and its vanities Than of the world to come. JULIA. Between the two I am confused. VALDESSO. Yet have I seen you listen Enraptured when Fra Bernardino preached Of faith and hope and charity. JULIA. I listen, But only as to music without meaning. It moves me for the moment, and I think How beautiful it is to be a saint, As dear Vittoria is; but I am weak And wayward, and I soon fall back again To my old ways, so very easily. There are too many week-days for one Sunday. VALDESSO. Then take the Sunday with you through the week, And sweeten with it all the other days. JULIA. In part I do so; for to put a stop To idle tongues, what men might say of me If I lived all alone here in my palace, And not from a vocation that I feel For the monastic life, I now am living With Sister Caterina at the convent Of Santa Chiara, and I come here only On certain days, for my affairs, or visits Of ceremony, or to be with friends. For I confess, to live among my friends Is Paradise to me; my Purgatory Is living among people I dislike. And so I pass my life in these two worlds, This palace and the convent. VALDESSO. It was then The fear of man, and not the love of God, That led you to this step. Why will you not Give all your heart to God? JULIA. If God commands it, Wherefore hath He not made me capable Of doing for Him what I wish to do As easily as I could offer Him This jewel from my hand, this gown I wear, Or aught else that is mine? VALDESSO. The hindrance lies In that original sin, by which all fell. JULIA. Ah me, I cannot bring my troubled mind To wish well to that Adam, our first parent, Who by his sin lost Paradise for us, And brought such ills upon us. VALDESSO. We ourselves, When we commit a sin, lose Paradise, As much as he did. Let us think of this, And how we may regain it. JULIA. Teach me, then, To harmonize the discord of my life, And stop the painful jangle of these wires. VALDESSO. That is a task impossible, until You tune your heart-strings to a higher key Than earthly melodies. JULIA. How shall I do it? Point out to me the way of this perfection, And I will follow you; for you have made My soul enamored with it, and I cannot Rest satisfied until I find it out. But lead me privately, so that the world Hear not my steps; I would not give occasion For talk among the people. VALDESSO. Now at last I understand you fully. Then, what need Is there for us to beat about the bush? I know what you desire of me. JULIA. What rudeness! If you already know it, why not tell me? VALDESSO. Because I rather wait for you to ask it With your own lips. JULIA. Do me the kindness, then, To speak without reserve; and with all frankness, If you divine the truth, will I confess it. VALDESSO. I am content. JULIA. Then speak. VALDESSO. You would be free From the vexatious thoughts that come and go Through your imagination, and would have me Point out some royal road and lady-like Which you may walk in, and not wound your feet; You would attain to the divine perfection, And yet not turn your back upon the world; You would possess humility within, But not reveal it in your outward actions; You would have patience, but without the rude Occasions that require its exercise; You would despise the world, but in such fashion The world should not despise you in return; Would clothe the soul with all the Christian graces, Yet not despoil the body of its gauds; Would feed the soul with spiritual food, Yet not deprive the body of its feasts; Would seem angelic in the sight of God, Yet not too saint-like in the eyes of men; In short, would lead a holy Christian life In such a way that even your nearest friend Would not detect therein one circumstance To show a change from what it was before. Have I divined your secret? JULIA. You have drawn The portrait of my inner self as truly As the most skilful painter ever painted A human face. VALDESSO. This warrants me in saying You think you can win heaven by compromise, And not by verdict. JULIA You have often told me That a bad compromise was better even Than a good verdict. VALDESSO. Yes, in suits at law; Not in religion. With the human soul There is no compromise. By faith alone Can man be justified. JULIA. Hush, dear Valdesso; That is a heresy. Do not, I pray you, Proclaim it from the house-top, but preserve it As something precious, hidden in your heart, As I, who half believe and tremble at it. VALDESSO. I must proclaim the truth. JULIA. Enthusiast! Why must you? You imperil both yourself And friends by your imprudence. Pray, be patient. You have occasion now to show that virtue Which you lay stress upon. Let us return To our lost pathway. Show me by what steps I shall walk in it. [Convent bells are heard. VALDESSO. Hark! the convent bells Are ringing; it is midnight; I must leave you. And yet I linger. Pardon me, dear Countess, Since you to-night have made me your confessor, If I so far may venture, I will warn you Upon one point. JULIA. What is it? Speak, I pray you, For I have no concealments in my conduct; All is as open as the light of day. What is it you would warn me of? VALDESSO. Your friendship With Cardinal Ippolito. JULIA. What is there To cause suspicion or alarm in that, More than in friendships that I entertain With you and others? I ne'er sat with him Alone at night, as I am sitting now With you, Valdesso. VALDESSO. Pardon me; the portrait That Fra Bastiano painted was for him. Is that quite prudent? JULIA. That is the same question Vittoria put to me, when I last saw her. I make you the same answer. That was not A pledge of love, but of pure gratitude. Recall the adventure of that dreadful night When Barbarossa with two thousand Moors Landed upon the coast, and in the darkness Attacked my castle. Then, without delay, The Cardinal came hurrying down from Rome To rescue and protect me. Was it wrong That in an hour like that I did not weigh Too nicely this or that, but granted him A boon that pleased him, and that flattered me? VALDESSO. Only beware lest, in disguise of friendship Another corsair, worse than Barbarossa, Steal in and seize the castle, not by storm But strategy. And now I take my leave. JULIA. Farewell; but ere you go look forth and see How night hath hushed the clamor and the stir Of the tumultuous streets. The cloudless moon Roofs the whole city as with tiles of silver; The dim, mysterious sea in silence sleeps; And straight into the air Vesuvius lifts His plume of smoke. How beautiful it is! [Voices in the street. GIOVAN ANDREA. Poisoned at Itri. ANOTHER VOICE. Poisoned? Who is poisoned? GIOVAN ANDREA. The Cardinal Ippolito, my master. Call it malaria. It was sudden. [Julia swoons. V. VITTORIA COLONNA A room in the Torre Argentina. VITTORIA COLONNA and JULIA GONZAGA. VITTORIA. Come to my arms and to my heart once more; My soul goes out to meet you and embrace you, For we are of the sisterhood of sorrow. I know what you have suffered. JULIA. Name it not. Let me forget it. VITTORIA. I will say no more. Let me look at you. What a joy it is To see your face, to hear your voice again! You bring with you a breath as of the morn, A memory of the far-off happy days When we were young. When did you come from Fondi? JULIA. I have not been at Fondi since-- VITTORIA. Ah me! You need not speak the word; I understand you. JULIA. I came from Naples by the lovely valley The Terra di Lavoro. VITTORIA. And you find me But just returned from a long journey northward. I have been staying with that noble woman Renee of France, the Duchess of Ferrara. JULIA. Oh, tell me of the Duchess. I have heard Flaminio speak her praises with such warmth That I am eager to hear more of her And of her brilliant court. VITTORIA. You shall hear all But first sit down and listen patiently While I confess myself. JULIA. What deadly sin Have you committed? VITTORIA. Not a sin; a folly I chid you once at Ischia, when you told me That brave Fra Bastian was to paint your portrait. JULIA Well I remember it. VITTORIA. Then chide me now, For I confess to something still more strange. Old as I am, I have at last consented To the entreaties and the supplications Of Michael Angelo-- JULIA To marry him? VITTORIA. I pray you, do not jest with me! You now, Or you should know, that never such a thought Entered my breast. I am already married. The Marquis of Pescara is my husband, And death has not divorced us. JULIA. Pardon me. Have I offended you? VITTORIA. No, but have hurt me. Unto my buried lord I give myself, Unto my friend the shadow of myself, My portrait. It is not from vanity, But for the love I bear him. JULIA. I rejoice To hear these words. Oh, this will be a portrait Worthy of both of you! [A knock. VITTORIA. Hark! He is coming. JULIA. And shall I go or stay? VITTORIA. By all means, stay. The drawing will be better for your presence; You will enliven me. JULIA. I shall not speak; The presence of great men doth take from me All power of speech. I only gaze at them In silent wonder, as if they were gods, Or the inhabitants of some other planet. Enter MICHAEL ANGELO. VITTORIA. Come in. MICHAEL ANGELO. I fear my visit is ill-timed; I interrupt you. VITTORIA. No; this is a friend Of yours as well as mine,--the Lady Julia, The Duchess of Trajetto. MICHAEL ANGELO to JULIA. I salute you. 'T is long since I have seen your face, my lady; Pardon me if I say that having seen it, One never can forget it. JULIA. You are kind To keep me in your memory. MICHAEL ANGELO. It is The privilege of age to speak with frankness. You will not be offended when I say That never was your beauty more divine. JULIA. When Michael Angelo condescends to flatter Or praise me, I am proud, and not offended. VITTORIA. Now this is gallantry enough for one; Show me a little. MICHAEL ANGELO. Ah, my gracious lady, You know I have not words to speak your praise. I think of you in silence. You conceal Your manifold perfections from all eyes, And make yourself more saint-like day by day. And day by day men worship you the wore. But now your hour of martyrdom has come. You know why I am here. VITTORIA. Ah yes, I know it, And meet my fate with fortitude. You find me Surrounded by the labors of your hands: The Woman of Samaria at the Well, The Mater Dolorosa, and the Christ Upon the Cross, beneath which you have written Those memorable words of Alighieri, "Men have forgotten how much blood it costs." MICHAEL ANGELO. And now I come to add one labor more, If you will call that labor which is pleasure, And only pleasure. VITTORIA. How shall I be seated? MICHAEL ANGELO, opening his portfolio. Just as you are. The light falls well upon you. VITTORIA. I am ashamed to steal the time from you That should be given to the Sistine Chapel. How does that work go on? MICHAEL ANGELO, drawing. But tardily. Old men work slowly. Brain and hand alike Are dull and torpid. To die young is best, And not to be remembered as old men Tottering about in their decrepitude. VITTORIA. My dear Maestro! have you, then, forgotten The story of Sophocles in his old age? MICHAEL ANGELO. What story is it? VITTORIA. When his sons accused him, Before the Areopagus, of dotage, For all defence, he read there to his Judges The Tragedy of Oedipus Coloneus,-- The work of his old age. MICHAEL ANGELO. 'T is an illusion A fabulous story, that will lead old men Into a thousand follies and conceits. VITTORIA. So you may show to cavilers your painting Of the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. MICHAEL ANGELO. Now you and Lady Julia shall resume The conversation that I interrupted. VITTORIA. It was of no great import; nothing more Nor less than my late visit to Ferrara, And what I saw there in the ducal palace. Will it not interrupt you? MICHAEL ANGELO. Not the least. VITTORIA. Well, first, then, of Duke Ercole: a man Cold in his manners, and reserved and silent, And yet magnificent in all his ways; Not hospitable unto new ideas, But from state policy, and certain reasons Concerning the investiture of the duchy, A partisan of Rome, and consequently Intolerant of all the new opinions. JULIA. I should not like the Duke. These silent men, Who only look and listen, are like wells That have no water in them, deep and empty. How could the daughter of a king of France Wed such a duke? MICHAEL ANGELO. The men that women marry And why they marry them, will always be A marvel and a mystery to the world. VITTORIA. And then the Duchess,--how shall I describe her, Or tell the merits of that happy nature, Which pleases most when least it thinks of pleasing? Not beautiful, perhaps, in form and feature, Yet with an inward beauty, that shines through Each look and attitude and word and gesture; A kindly grace of manner and behavior, A something in her presence and her ways That makes her beautiful beyond the reach Of mere external beauty; and in heart So noble and devoted to the truth, And so in sympathy with all who strive After the higher life. JULIA. She draws me to her As much as her Duke Ercole repels me. VITTORIA. Then the devout and honorable women That grace her court, and make it good to be there; Francesca Bucyronia, the true-hearted, Lavinia della Rovere and the Orsini, The Magdalena and the Cherubina, And Anne de Parthenai, who sings so sweetly; All lovely women, full of noble thoughts And aspirations after noble things. JULIA. Boccaccio would have envied you such dames. VITTORIA. No; his Fiammettas and his Philomenas Are fitter company for Ser Giovanni; I fear he hardly would have comprehended The women that I speak of. MICHAEL ANGELO. Yet he wrote The story of Griselda. That is something To set down in his favor. VITTORIA. With these ladies Was a young girl, Olympia Morate, Daughter of Fulvio, the learned scholar, Famous in all the universities. A marvellous child, who at the spinning wheel, And in the daily round of household cares, Hath learned both Greek and Latin; and is now A favorite of the Duchess and companion Of Princess Anne. This beautiful young Sappho Sometimes recited to us Grecian odes That she had written, with a voice whose sadness Thrilled and o'ermastered me, and made me look Into the future time, and ask myself What destiny will be hers. JULIA. A sad one, surely. Frost kills the flowers that blossom out of season; And these precocious intellects portend A life of sorrow or an early death. VITTORIA. About the court were many learned men; Chilian Sinapius from beyond the Alps, And Celio Curione, and Manzolli, The Duke's physician; and a pale young man, Charles d'Espeville of Geneva, whom the Duchess Doth much delight to talk with and to read, For he hath written a book of Institutes The Duchess greatly praises, though some call it The Koran of the heretics. JULIA. And what poets Were there to sing you madrigals, and praise Olympia's eyes and Cherubina's tresses? VITTORIA. No; for great Ariosto is no more. The voice that filled those halls with melody Has long been hushed in death. JULIA. You should have made A pilgrimage unto the poet's tomb, And laid a wreath upon it, for the words He spake of you. VITTORIA. And of yourself no less, And of our master, Michael Angelo. MICHAEL ANGELO. Of me? VITTORIA. Have you forgotten that he calls you Michael, less man than angel, and divine? You are ungrateful. MICHAEL ANGELO. A mere play on words. That adjective he wanted for a rhyme, To match with Gian Bellino and Urbino. VITTORIA. Bernardo Tasso is no longer there, Nor the gay troubadour of Gascony, Clement Marot, surnamed by flatterers The Prince of Poets and the Poet of Princes, Who, being looked upon with much disfavor By the Duke Ercole, has fled to Venice. MICHAEL ANGELO. There let him stay with Pietro Aretino, The Scourge of Princes, also called Divine. The title is so common in our mouths, That even the Pifferari of Abruzzi, Who play their bag-pipes in the streets of Rome At the Epiphany, will bear it soon, And will deserve it better than some poets. VITTORIA. What bee hath stung you? MICHAEL ANGELO. One that makes no honey; One that comes buzzing in through every window, And stabs men with his sting. A bitter thought Passed through my mind, but it is gone again; I spake too hastily. JULIA. I pray you, show me What you have done. MICHAEL ANGELO. Not yet; it is not finished. PART SECOND I MONOLOGUE A room in MICHAEL ANGELO'S house. MICHAEL ANGELO. Fled to Viterbo, the old Papal city Where once an Emperor, humbled in his pride, Held the Pope's stirrup, as his Holiness Alighted from his mule! A fugitive From Cardinal Caraffa's hate, who hurls His thunders at the house of the Colonna, With endless bitterness!--Among the nuns In Santa Catarina's convent hidden, Herself in soul a nun! And now she chides me For my too frequent letters, that disturb Her meditations, and that hinder me And keep me from my work; now graciously She thanks me for the crucifix I sent her, And says that she will keep it: with one hand Inflicts a wound, and with the other heals it. [Reading. "Profoundly I believed that God would grant you A supernatural faith to paint this Christ; I wished for that which I now see fulfilled So marvellously, exceeding all my wishes. Nor more could be desired, or even so much. And greatly I rejoice that you have made The angel on the right so beautiful; For the Archangel Michael will place you, You, Michael Angelo, on that new day Upon the Lord's right hand! And waiting that, How can I better serve you than to pray To this sweet Christ for you, and to beseech you To hold me altogether yours in all things." Well, I will write less often, or no more, But wait her coming. No one born in Rome Can live elsewhere; but he must pine for Rome, And must return to it. I, who am born And bred a Tuscan and a Florentine, Feel the attraction, and I linger here As if I were a pebble in the pavement Trodden by priestly feet. This I endure, Because I breathe in Rome an atmosphere Heavy with odors of the laurel leaves That crowned great heroes of the sword and pen, In ages past. I feel myself exalted To walk the streets in which a Virgil walked, Or Trajan rode in triumph; but far more, And most of all, because the great Colonna Breathes the same air I breathe, and is to me An inspiration. Now that she is gone, Rome is no longer Rome till she return. This feeling overmasters me. I know not If it be love, this strong desire to be Forever in her presence; but I know That I, who was the friend of solitude, And ever was best pleased when most alone, Now weary grow of my own company. For the first time old age seems lonely to me. [Opening the Divina Commedia. I turn for consolation to the leaves Of the great master of our Tuscan tongue, Whose words, like colored garnet-shirls in lava, Betray the heat in which they were engendered. A mendicant, he ate the bitter bread Of others, but repaid their meagre gifts With immortality. In courts of princes He was a by-word, and in streets of towns Was mocked by children, like the Hebrew prophet, Himself a prophet. I too know the cry, Go up, thou bald head! from a generation That, wanting reverence, wanteth the best food The soul can feed on. There's not room enough For age and youth upon this little planet. Age must give way. There was not room enough Even for this great poet. In his song I hear reverberate the gates of Florence, Closing upon him, never more to open; But mingled with the sound are melodies Celestial from the gates of paradise. He came, and he is gone. The people knew not What manner of man was passing by their doors, Until he passed no more; but in his vision He saw the torments and beatitudes Of souls condemned or pardoned, and hath left Behind him this sublime Apocalypse. I strive in vain to draw here on the margin The face of Beatrice. It is not hers, But the Colonna's. Each hath his ideal, The image of some woman excellent, That is his guide. No Grecian art, nor Roman, Hath yet revealed such loveliness as hers. II VITERBO VITTORIA COLONNA at the convent window. VITTORIA. Parting with friends is temporary death, As all death is. We see no more their faces, Nor hear their voices, save in memory; But messages of love give us assurance That we are not forgotten. Who shall say That from the world of spirits comes no greeting, No message of remembrance? It may be The thoughts that visit us, we know not whence, Sudden as inspiration, are the whispers Of disembodied spirits, speaking to us As friends, who wait outside a prison wall, Through the barred windows speak to those within. [A pause. As quiet as the lake that lies beneath me, As quiet as the tranquil sky above me, As quiet as a heart that beats no more, This convent seems. Above, below, all peace! Silence and solitude, the soul's best friends, Are with me here, and the tumultuous world Makes no more noise than the remotest planet. O gentle spirit, unto the third circle Of heaven among the blessed souls ascended, Who, living in the faith and dying for it, Have gone to their reward, I do not sigh For thee as being dead, but for myself That I am still alive. Turn those dear eyes, Once so benignant to me, upon mine, That open to their tears such uncontrolled And such continual issue. Still awhile Have patience; I will come to thee at last. A few more goings in and out these doors, A few more chimings of these convent bells, A few more prayers, a few more sighs and tears, And the long agony of this life will end, And I shall be with thee. If I am wanting To thy well-being, as thou art to mine, Have patience; I will come to thee at last. Ye minds that loiter in these cloister gardens, Or wander far above the city walls, Bear unto him this message, that I ever Or speak or think of him, or weep for him. By unseen hands uplifted in the light Of sunset, yonder solitary cloud Floats, with its white apparel blown abroad, And wafted up to heaven. It fades away, And melts into the air. Ah, would that I Could thus be wafted unto thee, Francesco, A cloud of white, an incorporeal spirit! III MICHAEL ANGELO AND BENVENUTO CELLINI MICHAEL ANGELO, BENVENUTO CELLINI in gay attire. BENVENUTO. A good day and good year to the divine Maestro Michael Angelo, the sculptor! MICHAEL ANGELO. Welcome, my Benvenuto. BENVENUTO. That is what My father said, the first time he beheld This handsome face. But say farewell, not welcome. I come to take my leave. I start for Florence As fast as horse can carry me. I long To set once more upon its level flags These feet, made sore by your vile Roman pavements. Come with me; you are wanted there in Florence. The Sacristy is not finished. MICHAEL ANGELO. Speak not of it! How damp and cold it was! How my bones ached And my head reeled, when I was working there! I am too old. I will stay here in Rome, Where all is old and crumbling, like myself, To hopeless ruin. All roads lead to Rome. BENVENUTO. And all lead out of it. MICHAEL ANGELO. There is a charm, A certain something in the atmosphere, That all men feel, and no man can describe. BENVENUTO. Malaria? MICHAEL ANGELO. Yes, malaria of the mind, Out of this tomb of the majestic Past! The fever to accomplish some great work That will not let us sleep. I must go on Until I die. BENVENUTO. Do you ne'er think of Florence? MICHAEL ANGELO. Yes; whenever I think of anything beside my work, I think of Florence. I remember, too, The bitter days I passed among the quarries Of Seravezza and Pietrasanta; Road-building in the marshes; stupid people, And cold and rain incessant, and mad gusts Of mountain wind, like howling dervishes, That spun and whirled the eddying snow about them As if it were a garment; aye, vexations And troubles of all kinds, that ended only In loss of time and money. BENVENUTO. True; Maestro, But that was not in Florence. You should leave Such work to others. Sweeter memories Cluster about you, in the pleasant city Upon the Arno. MICHAEL ANGELO. In my waking dreams I see the marvellous dome of Brunelleschi, Ghiberti's gates of bronze, and Giotto's tower; And Ghirlandajo's lovely Benci glides With folded hands amid my troubled thoughts, A splendid vision! Time rides with the old At a great pace. As travellers on swift steeds See the near landscape fly and flow behind them, While the remoter fields and dim horizons Go with them, and seem wheeling round to meet them, So in old age things near us slip away, And distant things go with as. Pleasantly Come back to me the days when, as a youth, I walked with Ghirlandajo in the gardens Of Medici, and saw the antique statues, The forms august of gods and godlike men, And the great world of art revealed itself To my young eyes. Then all that man hath done Seemed possible to me. Alas! how little Of all I dreamed of has my hand achieved! BENVENUTO. Nay, let the Night and Morning, let Lorenzo And Julian in the Sacristy at Florence, Prophets and Sibyls in the Sistine Chapel, And the Last Judgment answer. Is it finished? MICHAEL ANGELO. The work is nearly done. But this Last Judgment Has been the cause of more vexation to me Than it will be of honor. Ser Biagio, Master of ceremonies at the Papal court, A man punctilious and over nice, Calls it improper; says that those nude forms, Showing their nakedness in such shameless fashion, Are better suited to a common bagnio, Or wayside wine-shop, than a Papal Chapel. To punish him I painted him as Minos And leave him there as master of ceremonies In the Infernal Regions. What would you Have done to such a man? BENVENUTO. I would have killed him. When any one insults me, if I can I kill him, kill him. MICHAEL ANGELO. Oh, you gentlemen, Who dress in silks and velvets, and wear swords, Are ready with your weapon; and have all A taste for homicide. BENVENUTO. I learned that lesson Under Pope Clement at the siege of Rome, Some twenty years ago. As I was standing Upon the ramparts of the Campo Santo With Alessandro Bene, I beheld A sea of fog, that covered all the plain, And hid from us the foe; when suddenly, A misty figure, like an apparition, Rose up above the fog, as if on horseback. At this I aimed my arquebus, and fired. The figure vanished; and there rose a cry Out of the darkness, long and fierce and loud, With imprecations in all languages. It was the Constable of France, the Bourbon, That I had slain. MICHAEL ANGELO. Rome should be grateful to you. BENVENUTO. But has not been; you shall hear presently. During the siege I served as bombardier, There in St. Angelo. His Holiness, One day, was walking with his Cardinals On the round bastion, while I stood above Among my falconets. All thought and feeling, All skill in art and all desire of fame, Were swallowed up in the delightful music Of that artillery. I saw far off, Within the enemy's trenches on the Prati, A Spanish cavalier in scarlet cloak; And firing at him with due aim and range, I cut the gay Hidalgo in two pieces. The eyes are dry that wept for him in Spain. His Holiness, delighted beyond measure With such display of gunnery, and amazed To see the man in scarlet cut in two, Gave me his benediction, and absolved me From all the homicides I had committed In service of the Apostolic Church, Or should commit thereafter. From that day I have not held in very high esteem The life of man. MICHAEL ANGELO. And who absolved Pope Clement? Now let us speak of Art. BENVENUTO. Of what you will. MICHAEL ANGELO. Say, have you seen our friend Fra Bastian lately, Since by a turn of fortune he became Friar of the Signet? BENVENUTO. Faith, a pretty artist To pass his days in stamping leaden seals On Papal bulls! MICHAEL ANGELO. He has grown fat and lazy, As if the lead clung to him like a sinker. He paints no more, since he was sent to Fondi By Cardinal Ippolito to paint The fair Gonzaga. Ah, you should have seen him As I did, riding through the city gate, In his brown hood, attended by four horsemen, Completely armed, to frighten the banditti. I think he would have frightened them alone, For he was rounder than the O of Giotto. BENVENUTO. He must have looked more like a sack of meal Than a great painter. MICHAEL ANGELO. Well, he is not great But still I like him greatly. Benvenuto Have faith in nothing but in industry. Be at it late and early; persevere, And work right on through censure and applause, Or else abandon Art. BENVENUTO. No man works harder Then I do. I am not a moment idle. MICHAEL ANGELO. And what have you to show me? BENVENUTO. This gold ring, Made for his Holiness,--my latest work, And I am proud of it. A single diamond Presented by the Emperor to the Pope. Targhetta of Venice set and tinted it; I have reset it, and retinted it Divinely, as you see. The jewellers Say I've surpassed Targhetta. MICHAEL ANGELO. Let me see it. A pretty jewel. BENVENUTO. That is not the expression. Pretty is not a very pretty word To be applied to such a precious stone, Given by an Emperor to a Pope, and set By Benvenuto! MICHAEL ANGELO. Messer Benvenuto, I lose all patience with you; for the gifts That God hath given you are of such a kind, They should be put to far more noble uses Than setting diamonds for the Pope of Rome. You can do greater things. BENVENUTO. The God who made me Knows why he made me what I am,--a goldsmith, A mere artificer. MICHAEL ANGELO. Oh no; an artist Richly endowed by nature, but who wraps His talent in a napkin, and consumes His life in vanities. BENVENUTO. Michael Angelo May say what Benvenuto would not bear From any other man. He speaks the truth. I know my life is wasted and consumed In vanities; but I have better hours And higher aspirations than you think. Once, when a prisoner at St. Angelo, Fasting and praying in the midnight darkness, In a celestial vision I beheld A crucifix in the sun, of the same substance As is the sun itself. And since that hour There is a splendor round about my head, That may be seen at sunrise and at sunset Above my shadow on the grass. And now I know that I am in the grace of God, And none henceforth can harm me. MICHAEL ANGELO. None but one,-- None but yourself, who are your greatest foe. He that respects himself is safe from others; He wears a coat of mail that none can pierce. BENVENUTO. I always wear one. MICHAEL ANGELO. O incorrigible! At least, forget not the celestial vision. Man must have something higher than himself To think of. BENVENUTO. That I know full well. Now listen. I have been sent for into France, where grow The Lilies that illumine heaven and earth, And carry in mine equipage the model Of a most marvellous golden salt-cellar For the king's table; and here in my brain A statue of Mars Armipotent for the fountain Of Fontainebleau, colossal, wonderful. I go a goldsmith, to return a sculptor. And so farewell, great Master. Think of me As one who, in the midst of all his follies, Had also his ambition, and aspired To better things. MICHAEL ANGELO. Do not forget the vision. [Sitting down again to the Divina Commedia. Now in what circle of his poem sacred Would the great Florentine have placed this man? Whether in Phlegethon, the river of blood, Or in the fiery belt of Purgatory, I know not, but most surely not with those Who walk in leaden cloaks. Though he is one Whose passions, like a potent alkahest, Dissolve his better nature, he is not That despicable thing, a hypocrite; He doth not cloak his vices, nor deny them. Come back, my thoughts, from him to Paradise. IV. FRA SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO MICHAEL ANGELO; FRA SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO. MICHAEL ANGELO, not turning round. Who is it? FRA SEBASTIANO. Wait, for I am out of breath In climbing your steep stairs. MICHAEL ANGELO. Ah, my Bastiano, If you went up and down as many stairs As I do still, and climbed as many ladders, It would be better for you. Pray sit down. Your idle and luxurious way of living Will one day take your breath away entirely. And you will never find it. FRA SEBASTIANO. Well, what then? That would be better, in my apprehension, Than falling from a scaffold. MICHAEL ANGELO. That was nothing It did not kill me; only lamed me slightly; I am quite well again. FRA SEBASTIANO. But why, dear Master, Why do you live so high up in your house, When you could live below and have a garden, As I do? MICHAEL ANGELO. From this window I can look On many gardens; o'er the city roofs See the Campagna and the Alban hills; And all are mine. FRA SEBASTIANO. Can you sit down in them, On summer afternoons, and play the lute Or sing, or sleep the time away? MICHAEL ANGELO. I never Sleep in the day-time; scarcely sleep at night. I have not time. Did you meet Benvenuto As you came up the stair? FRA SEBASTIANO. He ran against me On the first landing, going at full speed; Dressed like the Spanish captain in a play, With his long rapier and his short red cloak. Why hurry through the world at such a pace? Life will not be too long. MICHAEL ANGELO. It is his nature,-- A restless spirit, that consumes itself With useless agitations. He o'erleaps The goal he aims at. Patience is a plant That grows not in all gardens. You are made Of quite another clay. FRA SEBASTIANO. And thank God for it. And now, being somewhat rested, I will tell you Why I have climbed these formidable stairs. I have a friend, Francesco Berni, here, A very charming poet and companion, Who greatly honors you and all your doings, And you must sup with us. MICHAEL ANGELO. Not I, indeed. I know too well what artists' suppers are. You must excuse me. FRA SEBASTIANO. I will not excuse you. You need repose from your incessant work; Some recreation, some bright hours of pleasure. MICHAEL ANGELO. To me, what you and other men call pleasure Is only pain. Work is my recreation, The play of faculty; a delight like that Which a bird feels in flying, or a fish In darting through the water,--nothing more. I cannot go. The Sibylline leaves of life Grow precious now, when only few remain. I cannot go. FRA SEBASTIANO. Berni, perhaps, will read A canto of the Orlando Inamorato. MICHAEL ANGELO. That is another reason for not going. If aught is tedious and intolerable, It is a poet reading his own verses, FRA SEBASTIANO. Berni thinks somewhat better of your verses Than you of his. He says that you speak things, And other poets words. So, pray you, come. MICHAEL ANGELO. If it were now the Improvisatore, Luigia Pulci, whom I used to hear With Benvenuto, in the streets of Florence, I might be tempted. I was younger then And singing in the open air was pleasant. FRA SEBASTIANO. There is a Frenchman here, named Rabelais, Once a Franciscan friar, and now a doctor, And secretary to the embassy: A learned man, who speaks all languages, And wittiest of men; who wrote a book Of the Adventures of Gargantua, So full of strange conceits one roars with laughter At every page; a jovial boon-companion And lover of much wine. He too is coming. MICHAEL ANGELO. Then you will not want me, who am not witty, And have no sense of mirth, and love not wine. I should be like a dead man at your banquet. Why should I seek this Frenchman, Rabelais? And wherefore go to hear Francesco Berni, When I have Dante Alighieri here. The greatest of all poets? FRA SEBASTIANO. And the dullest; And only to be read in episodes. His day is past. Petrarca is our poet. MICHAEL ANGELO. Petrarca is for women and for lovers And for those soft Abati, who delight To wander down long garden walks in summer, Tinkling their little sonnets all day long, As lap dogs do their bells. FRA SEBASTIANO. I love Petrarca. How sweetly of his absent love he sings When journeying in the forest of Ardennes! "I seem to hear her, hearing the boughs and breezes And leaves and birds lamenting, and the waters Murmuring flee along the verdant herbage." MICHAEL ANGELO. Enough. It is all seeming, and no being. If you would know how a man speaks in earnest, Read here this passage, where St. Peter thunders In Paradise against degenerate Popes And the corruptions of the church, till all The heaven about him blushes like a sunset. I beg you to take note of what he says About the Papal seals, for that concerns Your office and yourself. FRA SEBASTIANO, reading. Is this the passage? "Nor I be made the figure of a seal To privileges venal and mendacious, Whereat I often redden and flash with fire!"-- That is not poetry. MICHAEL ANGELO. What is it, then? FRA SEBASTIANO. Vituperation; gall that might have spirited From Aretino's pen. MICHAEL ANGELO. Name not that man! A profligate, whom your Francesco Berni Describes as having one foot in the brothel And the other in the hospital; who lives By flattering or maligning, as best serves His purpose at the time. He writes to me With easy arrogance of my Last Judgment, In such familiar tone that one would say The great event already had occurred, And he was present, and from observation Informed me how the picture should be painted. FRA SEBASTIANO. What unassuming, unobtrusive men These critics are! Now, to have Aretino Aiming his shafts at you brings back to mind The Gascon archers in the square of Milan, Shooting their arrows at Duke Sforza's statue, By Leonardo, and the foolish rabble Of envious Florentines, that at your David Threw stones at night. But Aretino praised you. MICHAEL ANGELO. His praises were ironical. He knows How to use words as weapons, and to wound While seeming to defend. But look, Bastiano, See how the setting sun lights up that picture! FRA SEBASTIANO. My portrait of Vittoria Colonna. MICHAEL ANGELO. It makes her look as she will look hereafter, When she becomes a saint! FRA SEBASTIANO. A noble woman! MICHAEL ANGELO. Ah, these old hands can fashion fairer shapes In marble, and can paint diviner pictures, Since I have known her. FRA SEBASTIANO. And you like this picture. And yet it is in oil; which you detest. MICHAEL ANGELO. When that barbarian Jan Van Eyck discovered The use of oil in painting, he degraded His art into a handicraft, and made it Sign-painting, merely, for a country inn Or wayside wine-shop. 'T is an art for women, Or for such leisurely and idle people As you, Fra Bastiano. Nature paints not In oils, but frescoes the great dome of heaven With sunset; and the lovely forms of clouds And flying vapors. FRA SEBASTIANO. And how soon they fade! Behold yon line of roofs and belfries painted Upon the golden background of the sky, Like a Byzantine picture, or a portrait Of Cimabue. See how hard the outline, Sharp-cut and clear, not rounded into shadow. Yet that is nature. MICHAEL ANGELO. She is always right. The picture that approaches sculpture nearest Is the best picture. FRA SEBASTIANO. Leonardo thinks The open air too bright. We ought to paint As if the sun were shining through a mist. 'T is easier done in oil than in distemper. MICHAEL ANGELO. Do not revive again the old dispute; I have an excellent memory for forgetting, But I still feel the hurt. Wounds are not healed By the unbending of the bow that made them. FRA SEBASTIANO. So say Petrarca and the ancient proverb. MICHAEL ANGELO. But that is past. Now I am angry with you, Not that you paint in oils, but that grown fat And indolent, you do not paint at all. FRA SEBASTIANO. Why should I paint? Why should I toil and sweat, Who now am rich enough to live at ease, And take my pleasure? MICHAEL ANGELO. When Pope Leo died, He who had been so lavish of the wealth His predecessors left him, who received A basket of gold-pieces every morning, Which every night was empty, left behind Hardly enough to pay his funeral. FRA SEBASTIANO. I care for banquets, not for funerals, As did his Holiness. I have forbidden All tapers at my burial, and procession Of priests and friars and monks; and have provided The cost thereof be given to the poor! MICHAEL ANGELO. You have done wisely, but of that I speak not. Ghiberti left behind him wealth and children; But who to-day would know that he had lived, If he had never made those gates of bronze In the old Baptistery,--those gates of bronze, Worthy to be the gates of Paradise. His wealth is scattered to the winds; his children Are long since dead; but those celestial gates Survive, and keep his name and memory green. FRA SEBASTIANO. But why should I fatigue myself? I think That all things it is possible to paint Have been already painted; and if not, Why, there are painters in the world at present Who can accomplish more in two short months Than I could in two years; so it is well That some one is contented to do nothing, And leave the field to others. MICHAEL ANGELO. O blasphemer! Not without reason do the people call you Sebastian del Piombo, for the lead Of all the Papal bulls is heavy upon you, And wraps you like a shroud. FRA SEBASTIANO. Misericordia! Sharp is the vinegar of sweet wine, and sharp The words you speak, because the heart within you Is sweet unto the core. MICHAEL ANGELO. How changed you are From the Sebastiano I once knew, When poor, laborious, emulous to excel, You strove in rivalry with Badassare And Raphael Sanzio. FRA SEBASTIANO. Raphael is dead; He is but dust and ashes in his grave, While I am living and enjoying life, And so am victor. One live Pope is worth A dozen dead ones. MICHAEL ANGELO. Raphael is not dead; He doth but sleep; for how can he be dead Who lives immortal in the hearts of men? He only drank the precious wine of youth, The outbreak of the grapes, before the vintage Was trodden to bitterness by the feet of men. The gods have given him sleep. We never were Nor could be foes, although our followers, Who are distorted shadows of ourselves, Have striven to make us so; but each one worked Unconsciously upon the other's thought; Both giving and receiving. He perchance Caught strength from me, and I some greater sweetness And tenderness from his more gentle nature. I have but words of praise and admiration For his great genius; and the world is fairer That he lived in it. FRA SEBASTIANO. We at least are friends; So come with me. MICHAEL ANGELO. No, no; I am best pleased When I'm not asked to banquets. I have reached A time of life when daily walks are shortened, And even the houses of our dearest friends, That used to be so near, seem far away. FRA SEBASTIANO. Then we must sup without you. We shall laugh At those who toil for fame, and make their lives A tedious martyrdom, that they may live A little longer in the mouths of men! And so, good-night. MICHAEL ANGELO. Good-night, my Fra Bastiano. [Returning to his work. How will men speak of me when I am gone, When all this colorless, sad life is ended, And I am dust? They will remember only The wrinkled forehead, the marred countenance, The rudeness of my speech, and my rough manners, And never dream that underneath them all There was a woman's heart of tenderness. They will not know the secret of my life, Locked up in silence, or but vaguely hinted In uncouth rhymes, that may perchance survive Some little space in memories of men! Each one performs his life-work, and then leaves it; Those that come after him will estimate His influence on the age in which he lived. V PALAZZO BELVEDERE TITIAN'S studio. A painting of Danae with a curtain before it. TITIAN, MICHAEL ANGELO, and GIORGIO VASARI. MICHAEL ANGELO. So you have left at last your still lagoons, Your City of Silence floating in the sea, And come to us in Rome. TITIAN. I come to learn, But I have come too late. I should have seen Rome in my youth, when all my mind was open To new impressions. Our Vasari here Leads me about, a blind man, groping darkly Among the marvels of the past. I touch them, But do not see them. MICHAEL ANGELO. There are things in Rome That one might walk bare-footed here from Venice But to see once, and then to die content. TITIAN. I must confess that these majestic ruins Oppress me with their gloom. I feel as one Who in the twilight stumbles among tombs, And cannot read the inscriptions carved upon them. MICHAEL ANGELO. I felt so once; but I have grown familiar With desolation, and it has become No more a pain to me, but a delight. TITIAN. I could not live here. I must have the sea, And the sea-mist, with sunshine interwoven Like cloth of gold; must have beneath my windows The laughter of the waves, and at my door Their pattering footsteps, or I am not happy. MICHAEL ANGELO. Then tell me of your city in the sea, Paved with red basalt of the Paduan hills. Tell me of art in Venice. Three great names, Giorgione, Titian, and the Tintoretto, Illustrate your Venetian school, and send A challenge to the world. The first is dead, But Tintoretto lives. TITIAN. And paints with fires Sudden and splendid, as the lightning paints The cloudy vault of heaven. GIORGIO. Does he still keep Above his door the arrogant inscription That once was painted there,--"The color of Titian, With the design of Michael Angelo"? TITIAN. Indeed, I know not. 'T was a foolish boast, And does no harm to any but himself. Perhaps he has grown wiser. MICHAEL ANGELO. When you two Are gone, who is there that remains behind To seize the pencil falling from your fingers? GIORGIO. Oh there are many hands upraised already To clutch at such a prize, which hardly wait For death to loose your grasp,--a hundred of them; Schiavone, Bonifazio, Campagnola, Moretto, and Moroni; who can count them, Or measure their ambition? TITIAN. When we are gone The generation that comes after us Will have far other thoughts than ours. Our ruins Will serve to build their palaces or tombs. They will possess the world that we think ours, And fashion it far otherwise. MICHAEL ANGELO. I hear Your son Orazio and your nephew Marco Mentioned with honor. TITIAN. Ay, brave lads, brave lads. But time will show. There is a youth in Venice, One Paul Cagliari, called the Veronese, Still a mere stripling, but of such rare promise That we must guard our laurels, or may lose them. MICHAEL ANGELO. These are good tidings; for I sometimes fear That, when we die, with us all art will die. 'T is but a fancy. Nature will provide Others to take our places. I rejoice To see the young spring forward in the race, Eager as we were, and as full of hope And the sublime audacity of youth. TITIAN. Men die and are forgotten. The great world Goes on the same. Among the myriads Of men that live, or have lived, or shall live What is a single life, or thine or mime, That we should think all nature would stand still If we were gone? We must make room for others. MICHAEL ANGELO. And now, Maestro, pray unveil your picture Of Danae, of which I hear such praise. TITIAN, drawing hack the curtain. What think you? MICHAEL ANGELO. That Acrisius did well To lock such beauty in a brazen tower And hide it from all eyes. TITIAN. The model truly Was beautiful. MICHAEL ANGELO. And more, that you were present, And saw the showery Jove from high Olympus Descend in all his splendor. TITIAN. From your lips Such words are full of sweetness. MICHAEL ANGELO. You have caught These golden hues from your Venetian sunsets. TITIAN. Possibly. MICHAEL ANGELO. Or from sunshine through a shower On the lagoons, or the broad Adriatic. Nature reveals herself in all our arts. The pavements and the palaces of cities Hint at the nature of the neighboring hills. Red lavas from the Euganean quarries Of Padua pave your streets; your palaces Are the white stones of Istria, and gleam Reflected in your waters and your pictures. And thus the works of every artist show Something of his surroundings and his habits. The uttermost that can be reached by color Is here accomplished. Warmth and light and softness Mingle together. Never yet was flesh Painted by hand of artist, dead or living, With such divine perfection. TITIAN. I am grateful For so much praise from you, who are a master; While mostly those who praise and those who blame Know nothing of the matter, so that mainly Their censure sounds like praise, their praise like censure. MICHAEL ANGELO. Wonderful! wonderful! The charm of color Fascinates me the more that in myself The gift is wanting. I am not a painter. GIORGIO. Messer Michele, all the arts are yours, Not one alone; and therefore I may venture To put a question to you. MICHAEL ANGELO. Well, speak on. GIORGIO. Two nephews of the Cardinal Farnese Have made me umpire in dispute between them Which is the greater of the sister arts, Painting or sculpture. Solve for me the doubt. MICHAEL ANGELO. Sculpture and painting have a common goal, And whosoever would attain to it, Whichever path he take, will find that goal Equally hard to reach. GIORGIO. No doubt, no doubt; But you evade the question. MICHAEL ANGELO. When I stand In presence of this picture, I concede That painting has attained its uttermost; But in the presence of my sculptured figures I feel that my conception soars beyond All limit I have reached. GIORGIO. You still evade me. MICHAEL ANGELO. Giorgio Vasari, I have often said That I account that painting as the best Which most resembles sculpture. Here before us We have the proof. Behold those rounded limbs! How from the canvas they detach themselves, Till they deceive the eye, and one would say, It is a statue with a screen behind it! TITIAN. Signori, pardon me; but all such questions Seem to me idle. MICHAEL ANGELO. Idle as the wind. And now, Maestro, I will say once more How admirable I esteem your work, And leave you, without further interruption. TITIAN. Your friendly visit hath much honored me. GIOROIO. Farewell. MICHAEL ANGELO to GIORGIO, going out. If the Venetian painters knew But half as much of drawing as of color, They would indeed work miracles in art, And the world see what it hath never seen. VI PALAZZO CESARINI VITTORIA COLONNA, seated in an armchair; JULIA GONZAGA, standing near her. JULIA. It grieves me that I find you still so weak And suffering. VITTORIA. No, not suffering; only dying. Death is the chillness that precedes the dawn; We shudder for a moment, then awake In the broad sunshine of the other life. I am a shadow, merely, and these hands, These cheeks, these eyes, these tresses that my husband Once thought so beautiful, and I was proud of Because he thought them so, are faded quite,-- All beauty gone from them. JULIA. Ah, no, not that. Paler you are, but not less beautiful. VITTORIA. Hand me the mirror. I would fain behold What change comes o'er our features when we die. Thank you. And now sit down beside me here How glad I am that you have come to-day, Above all other days, and at the hour When most I need you! JULIA. Do you ever need me? VICTORIA. Always, and most of all to-day and now. Do you remember, Julia, when we walked, One afternoon, upon the castle terrace At Ischia, on the day before you left me? JULIA. Well I remember; but it seems to me Something unreal, that has never been,-- Something that I have read of in a book, Or heard of some one else. VITTORIA. Ten years and more Have passed since then; and many things have happened In those ten years, and many friends have died: Marco Flaminio, whom we all admired And loved as our Catullus; dear Valldesso, The noble champion of free thought and speech; And Cardinal Ippolito, your friend. JULIA. Oh, do not speak of him! His sudden death O'ercomes me now, as it o'ercame me then. Let me forget it; for my memory Serves me too often as an unkind friend, And I remember things I would forget, While I forget the things I would remember. VITTORIA. Forgive me; I will speak of him no more, The good Fra Bernardino has departed, Has fled from Italy, and crossed the Alps, Fearing Caraffa's wrath, because he taught That He who made us all without our help Could also save us without aid of ours. Renee of France, the Duchess of Ferrara, That Lily of the Loire, is bowed by winds That blow from Rome; Olympia Morata Banished from court because of this new doctrine. Therefore be cautious. Keep your secret thought Locked in your breast. JULIA. I will be very prudent But speak no more, I pray; it wearies you. VITTORIA. Yes, I am very weary. Read to me. JULIA. Most willingly. What shall I read? VITTORIA. Petrarca's Triumph of Death. The book lies on the table; Beside the casket there. Read where you find The leaf turned down. 'T was there I left off reading. JULIA, reads. "Not as a flame that by some force is spent, But one that of itself consumeth quite, Departed hence in peace the soul content, In fashion of a soft and lucent light Whose nutriment by slow gradation goes, Keeping until the end its lustre bright. Not pale, but whiter than the sheet of snows That without wind on some fair hill-top lies, Her weary body seemed to find repose. Like a sweet slumber in her lovely eyes, When now the spirit was no longer there, Was what is dying called by the unwise. E'en Death itself in her fair face seemed fair"-- Is it of Laura that he here is speaking?-- She doth not answer, yet is not asleep; Her eyes are full of light and fixed on something Above her in the air. I can see naught Except the painted angels on the ceiling. Vittoria! speak! What is it? Answer me!-- She only smiles, and stretches out her hands. [The mirror falls and breaks. VITTORIA. Not disobedient to the heavenly vision! Pescara! my Pescara! [Dies. JULIA. Holy Virgin! Her body sinks together,--she is dead! [Kneels and hides her face in Vittoria's lap. Enter MICHAEL ANGELO. JULIA. Hush! make no noise. MICHAEL ANGELO. How is she? JULIA. Never better. MICHAEL ANGELO. Then she is dead! JULIA. Alas! yes, she is dead! Even death itself in her fair face seems fair. How wonderful! The light upon her face Shines from the windows of another world. Saint only have such faces. Holy Angels! Bear her like sainted Catherine to her rest! [Kisses Vittoria's hand. PART THIRD I MONOLOGUE Macello de' Corvi. A room in MICHAEL ANGELO'S house. MICHAEL ANGELO, standing before a model of St. Peter's. MICHAEL ANGELO. Better than thou I cannot, Brunelleschi, And less than thou I will not! If the thought Could, like a windlass, lift the ponderous stones And swing them to their places; if a breath Could blow this rounded dome into the air, As if it were a bubble, and these statues Spring at a signal to their sacred stations, As sentinels mount guard upon a wall. Then were my task completed. Now, alas! Naught am I but a Saint Sebaldus, holding Upon his hand the model of a church, As German artists paint him; and what years, What weary years, must drag themselves along, Ere this be turned to stone! What hindrances Must block the way; what idle interferences Of Cardinals and Canons of St. Peter's, Who nothing know of art beyond the color Of cloaks and stockings, nor of any building Save that of their own fortunes! And what then? I must then the short-coming of my means Piece out by stepping forward, as the Spartan Was told to add a step to his short sword. [A pause. And is Fra Bastian dead? Is all that light Gone out, that sunshine darkened; all that music And merriment, that used to make our lives Less melancholy, swallowed up in silence Like madrigals sung in the street at night By passing revellers? It is strange indeed That he should die before me. 'T is against The laws of nature that the young should die, And the old live; unless it be that some Have long been dead who think themselves alive, Because not buried. Well, what matters it, Since now that greater light, that was my sun, Is set, and all is darkness, all is darkness! Death's lightnings strike to right and left of me, And, like a ruined wall, the world around me Crumbles away, and I am left alone. I have no friends, and want none. My own thoughts Are now my sole companions,--thoughts of her, That like a benediction from the skies Come to me in my solitude and soothe me. When men are old, the incessant thought of Death Follows them like their shadow; sits with them At every meal; sleeps with them when they sleep; And when they wake already is awake, And standing by their bedside. Then, what folly It is in us to make an enemy Of this importunate follower, not a friend! To me a friend, and not an enemy, Has he become since all my friends are dead. II VIGNA DI PAPA GIULIO POPE JULIUS III. seated by the Fountain of Acqua Vergine, surrounded by Cardinals. JULIUS. Tell me, why is it ye are discontent, You, Cardinals Salviati and Marcello, With Michael Angelo? What has he done, Or left undone, that ye are set against him? When one Pope dies, another is soon made; And I can make a dozen Cardinals, But cannot make one Michael Angelo. CARDINAL SALVIATI. Your Holiness, we are not set against him; We but deplore his incapacity. He is too old. JULIUS. You, Cardinal Salviati, Are an old man. Are you incapable? 'T is the old ox that draws the straightest furrow. CARDINAL MARCELLO. Your Holiness remembers he was charged With the repairs upon St. Mary's bridge; Made cofferdams, and heaped up load on load Of timber and travertine; and yet for years The bridge remained unfinished, till we gave it To Baccio Bigio. JULIUS. Always Baccio Bigio! Is there no other architect on earth? Was it not he that sometime had in charge The harbor of Ancona. CARDINAL MARCELLO. Ay, the same. JULIUS. Then let me tell you that your Baccio Bigio Did greater damage in a single day To that fair harbor than the sea had done Or would do in ten years. And him you think To put in place of Michael Angelo, In building the Basilica of St. Peter! The ass that thinks himself a stag discovers His error when he comes to leap the ditch. CARDINAL MARCELLO. He does not build; he but demolishes The labors of Bramante and San Gallo. JULIUS. Only to build more grandly. CARDINAL MARCELLO. But time passes: Year after year goes by, and yet the work Is not completed. Michael Angelo Is a great sculptor, but no architect. His plans are faulty. JULIUS. I have seen his model, And have approved it. But here comes the artist. Beware of him. He may make Persians of you, To carry burdens on your backs forever. SCENE II. The same: MICHAEL ANGELO. JULIUS. Come forward, dear Maestro! In these gardens All ceremonies of our court are banished. Sit down beside me here. MICHAEL ANGELO, sitting down. How graciously Your Holiness commiserates old age And its infirmities! JULIUS. Say its privileges. Art I respect. The building of this palace And laying out these pleasant garden walks Are my delight, and if I have not asked Your aid in this, it is that I forbear To lay new burdens on you at an age When you need rest. Here I escape from Rome To be at peace. The tumult of the city Scarce reaches here. MICHAEL ANGELO. How beautiful it is, And quiet almost as a hermitage! JULIUS. We live as hermits here; and from these heights O'erlook all Rome and see the yellow Tiber Cleaving in twain the city, like a sword, As far below there as St. Mary's bridge. What think you of that bridge? MICHAEL ANGELO. I would advise Your Holiness not to cross it, or not often It is not safe. JULIUS. It was repaired of late. MICHAEL ANGELO. Some morning you will look for it in vain; It will be gone. The current of the river Is undermining it. JULIUS. But you repaired it. MICHAEL ANGELO. I strengthened all its piers, and paved its road With travertine. He who came after me Removed the stone, and sold it, and filled in The space with gravel. JULIUS. Cardinal Salviati And Cardinal Marcello, do you listen? This is your famous Nanni Baccio Bigio. MICHAEL ANGELO, aside. There is some mystery here. These Cardinals Stand lowering at me with unfriendly eyes. JULIUS. Now let us come to what concerns us more Than bridge or gardens. Some complaints are made Concerning the Three Chapels in St. Peter's; Certain supposed defects or imperfections, You doubtless can explain. MICHAEL ANGELO. This is no longer The golden age of art. Men have become Iconoclasts and critics. They delight not In what an artist does, but set themselves To censure what they do not comprehend. You will not see them bearing a Madonna Of Cimabue to the church in triumph, But tearing down the statue of a Pope To cast it into cannon. Who are they That bring complaints against me? JULIUS. Deputies Of the commissioners; and they complain Of insufficient light in the Three Chapels. MICHAEL ANGELO. Your Holiness, the insufficient light Is somewhere else, and not in the Three Chapels. Who are the deputies that make complaint? JULIUS. The Cardinals Salviati and Marcello, Here present. MICHAEL ANGELO, rising. With permission, Monsignori, What is it ye complain of? CARDINAL MARCELLO, We regret You have departed from Bramante's plan, And from San Gallo's. MICHAEL ANGELO. Since the ancient time No greater architect has lived on earth Than Lazzari Bramante. His design, Without confusion, simple, clear, well-lighted. Merits all praise, and to depart from it Would be departing from the truth. San Gallo, Building about with columns, took all light Out of this plan; left in the choir dark corners For infinite ribaldries, and lurking places For rogues and robbers; so that when the church Was shut at night, not five and twenty men Could find them out. It was San Gallo, then, That left the church in darkness, and not I. CARDINAL MARCELLO. Excuse me; but in each of the Three Chapels Is but a single window. MICHAEL ANGELO. Monsignore, Perhaps you do not know that in the vaulting Above there are to go three other windows. CARDINAL SALVIATI. How should we know? You never told us of it. MICHAEL ANGELO. I neither am obliged, nor will I be, To tell your Eminence or any other What I intend or ought to do. Your office Is to provide the means, and see that thieves Do not lay hands upon them. The designs Must all be left to me. CARDINAL MARCELLO. Sir architect, You do forget yourself, to speak thus rudely In presence of his Holiness, and to us Who are his cardinals. MICHAEL ANGELO, putting on his hat. I do not forget I am descended from the Counts Canossa, Linked with the Imperial line, and with Matilda, Who gave the Church Saint Peter's Patrimony. I, too, am proud to give unto the Church The labor of these hands, and what of life Remains to me. My father Buonarotti Was Podesta of Chiusi and Caprese. I am not used to have men speak to me As if I were a mason, hired to build A garden wall, and paid on Saturdays So much an hour. CARDINAL SALVIATI, aside. No wonder that Pope Clement Never sat down in presence of this man, Lest he should do the same; and always bade him Put on his hat, lest he unasked should do it! MICHAEL ANGELO. If any one could die of grief and shame, I should. This labor was imposed upon me; I did not seek it; and if I assumed it, 'T was not for love of fame or love of gain, But for the love of God. Perhaps old age Deceived me, or self-interest, or ambition; I may be doing harm instead of good. Therefore, I pray your Holiness, release me; Take off from me the burden of this work; Let me go back to Florence. JULIUS. Never, never, While I am living. MICHAEL ANGELO. Doth your Holiness Remember what the Holy Scriptures say Of the inevitable time, when those Who look out of the windows shall be darkened, And the almond-tree shall flourish? JULIUS. That is in Ecclesiastes. MICHAEL ANGELO. And the grasshopper Shall be a burden, and desire shall fail, Because man goeth unto his long home. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher; all Is vanity. JULIUS. Ah, were to do a thing As easy as to dream of doing it, We should not want for artists. But the men Who carry out in act their great designs Are few in number; ay, they may be counted Upon the fingers of this hand. Your place Is at St. Peter's. MICHAEL ANGELO. I have had my dream, And cannot carry out my great conception, And put it into act. JULIUS. Then who can do it? You would but leave it to some Baccio Bigio To mangle and deface. MICHAEL ANGELO. Rather than that I will still bear the burden on my shoulders A little longer. If your Holiness Will keep the world in order, and will leave The building of the church to me, the work Will go on better for it. Holy Father, If all the labors that I have endured, And shall endure, advantage not my soul, I am but losing time. JULIUS, laying his hands on MICHAEL ANGELO'S shoulders. You will be gainer Both for your soul and body. MICHAEL ANGELO. Not events Exasperate me, but the funest conclusions I draw from these events; the sure decline Of art, and all the meaning of that word: All that embellishes and sweetens life, And lifts it from the level of low cares Into the purer atmosphere of beauty; The faith in the Ideal; the inspiration That made the canons of the church of Seville Say, "Let us build, so that all men hereafter Will say that we were madmen." Holy Father, I beg permission to retire from here. JULIUS. Go; and my benediction be upon you. [Michael Angelo goes out. My Cardinals, this Michael Angelo Must not be dealt with as a common mason. He comes of noble blood, and for his crest Bear two bull's horns; and he has given us proof That he can toss with them. From this day forth Unto the end of time, let no man utter The name of Baccio Bigio in my presence. All great achievements are the natural fruits Of a great character. As trees bear not Their fruits of the same size and quality, But each one in its kind with equal ease, So are great deeds as natural to great men As mean things are to small ones. By his work We know the master. Let us not perplex him. III BINDO ALTOVITI A street in Rome. BINDO ALTOVITI, standing at the door of his house. MICHAEL ANGELO, passing. BINDO. Good-morning, Messer Michael Angelo! MICHAEL ANGELO. Good-morning, Messer Bindo Altoviti! BINDO. What brings you forth so early? MICHAEL ANGELO. The same reason That keeps you standing sentinel at your door,-- The air of this delicious summer morning. What news have you from Florence? BINDO. Nothing new; The same old tale of violence and wrong. Since the disastrous day at Monte Murlo, When in procession, through San Gallo's gate, Bareheaded, clothed in rags, on sorry steeds, Philippo Strozzi and the good Valori Were led as prisoners down the streets of Florence, Amid the shouts of an ungrateful people, Hope is no more, and liberty no more. Duke Cosimo, the tyrant, reigns supreme. MICHAEL ANGELO. Florence is dead: her houses are but tombs; Silence and solitude are in her streets. BINDO. Ah yes; and often I repeat the words You wrote upon your statue of the Night, There in the Sacristy of San Lorenzo: "Grateful to me is sleep; to be of stone More grateful, while the wrong and shame endure; To see not, feel not, is a benediction; Therefore awake me not; oh, speak in whispers." MICHAEL ANGELO. Ah, Messer Bindo, the calamities, The fallen fortunes, and the desolation Of Florence are to me a tragedy Deeper than words, and darker than despair. I, who have worshipped freedom from my cradle, Have loved her with the passion of a lover, And clothed her with all lovely attributes That the imagination can conceive, Or the heart conjure up, now see her dead, And trodden in the dust beneath the feet Of an adventurer! It is a grief Too great for me to bear in my old age. BINDO. I say no news from Florence: I am wrong, For Benvenuto writes that he is coming To be my guest in Rome. MICHAEL ANGELO. Those are good tidings. He hath been many years away from us. BINDO. Pray you, come in. MICHAEL ANGELO. I have not time to stay, And yet I will. I see from here your house Is filled with works of art. That bust in bronze Is of yourself. Tell me, who is the master That works in such an admirable way, And with such power and feeling? BINDO. Benvenuto. MICHAEL ANGELO. Ah? Benvenuto? 'T is a masterpiece! It pleases me as much, and even more, Than the antiques about it; and yet they Are of the best one sees. But you have placed it By far too high. The light comes from below, And injures the expression. Were these windows Above and not beneath it, then indeed It would maintain its own among these works Of the old masters, noble as they are. I will go in and study it more closely. I always prophesied that Benvenuto, With all his follies and fantastic ways, Would show his genius in some work of art That would amaze the world, and be a challenge Unto all other artists of his time. [They go in. IV IN THE COLISEUM MICHAEL ANGELO and TOMASO DE CAVALIERI CAVALIERI. What have you here alone, Messer Michele? MICHAEL ANGELO. I come to learn. CAVALIERI. You are already master, And teach all other men. MICHAEL ANGELO. Nay, I know nothing; Not even my own ignorance, as some Philosopher hath said. I am a schoolboy Who hath not learned his lesson, and who stands Ashamed and silent in the awful presence Of the great master of antiquity Who built these walls cyclopean. CAVALIERI. Gaudentius His name was, I remember. His reward Was to be thrown alive to the wild beasts Here where we now are standing. MICHAEL ANGELO. Idle tales. CAVALIERI. But you are greater than Gaudentius was, And your work nobler. MICHAEL ANGELO. Silence, I beseech you. CAVALIERI. Tradition says that fifteen thousand men Were toiling for ten years incessantly Upon this amphitheatre. MICHAEL ANGELO. Behold How wonderful it is! The queen of flowers, The marble rose of Rome! Its petals torn By wind and rain of thrice five hundred years; Its mossy sheath half rent away, and sold To ornament our palaces and churches, Or to be trodden under feet of man Upon the Tiber's bank; yet what remains Still opening its fair bosom to the sun, And to the constellations that at night Hang poised above it like a swarm of bees. CAVALIERI. The rose of Rome, but not of Paradise; Not the white rose our Tuscan poet saw, With saints for petals. When this rose was perfect Its hundred thousand petals were not Saints, But senators in their Thessalian caps, And all the roaring populace of Rome; And even an Empress and the Vestal Virgins, Who came to see the gladiators die, Could not give sweetness to a rose like this. MICHAEL ANGELO. I spake not of its uses, but its beauty. CAVALIERI. The sand beneath our feet is saturate With blood of martyrs; and these rifted stones Are awful witnesses against a people Whose pleasure was the pain of dying men. MICHAEL ANGELO. Tomaso Cavalieri, on my word, You should have been a preacher, not a painter! Think you that I approve such cruelties, Because I marvel at the architects Who built these walls, and curved these noble arches? Oh, I am put to shame, when I consider How mean our work is, when compared with theirs! Look at these walls about us and above us! They have been shaken by earthquake; have been made A fortress, and been battered by long sieges; The iron clamps, that held the stones together, Have been wrenched from them; but they stand erect And firm, as if they had been hewn and hollowed Out of the solid rock, and were a part Of the foundations of the world itself. CAVALIERI. Your work, I say again, is nobler work, In so far as its end and aim are nobler; And this is but a ruin, like the rest. Its vaulted passages are made the caverns Of robbers, and are haunted by the ghosts Of murdered men. MICHAEL ANGELO. A thousand wild flowers bloom From every chink, and the birds build their nests Among the ruined arches, and suggest New thoughts of beauty to the architect, Now let us climb the broken stairs that lead Into the corridors above, and study The marvel and the mystery of that art In which I am a pupil, not a master. All things must have an end; the world itself Must have an end, as in a dream I saw it. There came a great hand out of heaven, and touched The earth, and stopped it in its course. The seas Leaped, a vast cataract, into the abyss; The forests and the fields slid off, and floated Like wooded islands in the air. The dead Were hurled forth from their sepulchres; the living Were mingled with them, and themselves were dead,-- All being dead; and the fair, shining cities Dropped out like jewels from a broken crown. Naught but the core of the great globe remained, A skeleton of stone. And over it The wrack of matter drifted like a cloud, And then recoiled upon itself, and fell Back on the empty world, that with the weight Reeled, staggered, righted, and then headlong plunged Into the darkness, as a ship, when struck By a great sea, throws off the waves at first On either side, then settles and goes down Into the dark abyss, with her dead crew. CAVALIERI. But the earth does not move. MICHAEL ANGELO. Who knows? who knowst? There are great truths that pitch their shining tents Outside our walls, and though but dimly seen In the gray dawn, they will be manifest When the light widens into perfect day. A certain man, Copernicus by name, Sometime professor here in Rome, has whispered It is the earth, and not the sun, that moves. What I beheld was only in a dream, Yet dreams sometimes anticipate events, Being unsubstantial images of things As yet unseen. V MACELLO DE' CORVI MICHAEL ANGELO, BENVENUTO CELLINI. MICHAEL ANGELO. So, Benvenuto, you return once more To the Eternal City. 'T is the centre To which all gravitates. One finds no rest Elsewhere than here. There may be other cities That please us for a while, but Rome alone Completely satisfies. It becomes to all A second native land by predilection, And not by accident of birth alone. BENVENUTO. I am but just arrived, and am now lodging With Bindo Altoviti. I have been To kiss the feet of our most Holy Father, And now am come in haste to kiss the hands Of my miraculous Master. MICHAEL ANGELO. And to find him Grown very old. BENVENUTO. You know that precious stones Never grow old. MICHAEL ANGELO. Half sunk beneath the horizon, And yet not gone. Twelve years are a long while. Tell me of France. BENVENUTO. It were too long a tale To tell you all. Suffice in brief to say The King received me well, and loved me well; Gave me the annual pension that before me Our Leonardo had, nor more nor less, And for my residence the Tour de Nesle, Upon the river-side. MICHAEL ANGELO. A princely lodging. BENVENUTO. What in return I did now matters not, For there are other things, of greater moment, I wish to speak of. First of all, the letter You wrote me, not long since, about my bust Of Bindo Altoviti, here in Rome. You said, "My Benvenuto, I for many years Have known you as the greatest of all goldsmiths, And now I know you as no less a sculptor." Ah, generous Master! How shall I e'er thank you For such kind language? MICHAEL ANGELO. By believing it. I saw the bust at Messer Bindo's house, And thought it worthy of the ancient masters, And said so. That is all. BENVENUTO. It is too much; And I should stand abashed here in your presence, Had I done nothing worthier of your praise Than Bindo's bust. MICHAEL ANGELO. What have you done that's better? BENVENUTO. When I left Rome for Paris, you remember I promised you that if I went a goldsmith I would return a sculptor. I have kept The promise I then made. MICHAEL ANGELO. Dear Benvenuto, I recognized the latent genius in you, But feared your vices. BENVENUTO. I have turned them all To virtues. My impatient, wayward nature, That made me quick in quarrel, now has served me Where meekness could not, and where patience could not, As you shall hear now. I have cast in bronze A statue of Perseus, holding thus aloft In his left hand the head of the Medusa, And in his right the sword that severed it; His right foot planted on the lifeless corse; His face superb and pitiful, with eyes Down-looking on the victim of his vengeance. MICHAEL ANGELO. I see it as it should be. BENVENUTO. As it will be When it is placed upon the Ducal Square, Half-way between your David and the Judith Of Donatello. MICHAEL ANGELO. Rival of them both! BENVENUTO. But ah, what infinite trouble have I had With Bandinello, and that stupid beast, The major-domo of Duke Cosimo, Francesco Ricci, and their wretched agent Gorini, who came crawling round about me Like a black spider, with his whining voice That sounded like the buzz of a mosquito! Oh, I have wept in utter desperation, And wished a thousand times I had not left My Tour do Nesle, nor e'er returned to Florence, Or thought of Perseus. What malignant falsehoods They told the Grand Duke, to impede my work, And make me desperate! MICHAEL ANGELO. The nimble lie Is like the second-hand upon a clock; We see it fly; while the hour-hand of truth Seems to stand still, and yet it moves unseen, And wins at last, for the clock will not strike Till it has reached the goal. BENVENUTO. My obstinacy Stood me in stead, and helped me to o'ercome The hindrances that envy and ill-will Put in my way. MICHAEL ANGELO. When anything is done People see not the patient doing of it, Nor think how great would be the loss to man If it had not been done. As in a building Stone rests on stone, and wanting the foundation All would be wanting, so in human life Each action rests on the foregone event, That made it possible, but is forgotten And buried in the earth. BENVENUTO. Even Bandinello, Who never yet spake well of anything, Speaks well of this; and yet he told the Duke That, though I cast small figures well enough, I never could cast this. MICHAEL ANGELO. But you have done it, And proved Ser Bandinello a false prophet. That is the wisest way. BENVENUTO. And ah, that casting What a wild scene it was, as late at night, A night of wind and rain, we heaped the furnace With pine of Serristori, till the flames Caught in the rafters over us, and threatened To send the burning roof upon our heads; And from the garden side the wind and rain Poured in upon us, and half quenched our fires. I was beside myself with desperation. A shudder came upon me, then a fever; I thought that I was dying, and was forced To leave the work-shop, and to throw myself Upon my bed, as one who has no hope. And as I lay there, a deformed old man Appeared before me, and with dismal voice, Like one who doth exhort a criminal Led forth to death, exclaimed, "Poor Benvenuto, Thy work is spoiled! There is no remedy!" Then, with a cry so loud it might have reached The heaven of fire, I bounded to my feet, And rushed back to my workmen. They all stood Bewildered and desponding; and I looked Into the furnace, and beheld the mass Half molten only, and in my despair I fed the fire with oak, whose terrible heat Soon made the sluggish metal shine and sparkle. Then followed a bright flash, and an explosion, As if a thunderbolt had fallen among us. The covering of the furnace had been rent Asunder, and the bronze was flowing over; So that I straightway opened all the sluices To fill the mould. The metal ran like lava, Sluggish and heavy; and I sent my workmen To ransack the whole house, and bring together My pewter plates and pans, two hundred of them, And cast them one by one into the furnace To liquefy the mass, and in a moment The mould was filled! I fell upon my knees And thanked the Lord; and then we ate and drank And went to bed, all hearty and contented. It was two hours before the break of day. My fever was quite gone. MICHAEL ANGELO. A strange adventure, That could have happened to no man alive But you, my Benvenuto. BENVENUTO. As my workmen said To major-domo Ricci afterward, When he inquired of them: "'T was not a man, But an express great devil." MICHAEL ANGELO. And the statue? BENVENUTO. Perfect in every part, save the right foot Of Perseus, as I had foretold the Duke. There was just bronze enough to fill the mould; Not a drop over, not a drop too little. I looked upon it as a miracle Wrought by the hand of God. MICHAEL ANGELO. And now I see How you have turned your vices into virtues. BENVENUTO. But wherefore do I prate of this? I came To speak of other things. Duke Cosimo Through me invites you to return to Florence, And offers you great honors, even to make you One of the Forty-Eight, his Senators. MICHAEL ANGELO. His Senators! That is enough. Since Florence Was changed by Clement Seventh from a Republic Into a Dukedom, I no longer wish To be a Florentine. That dream is ended. The Grand Duke Cosimo now reigns supreme; All liberty is dead. Ah, woe is me! I hoped to see my country rise to heights Of happiness and freedom yet unreached By other nations, but the climbing wave Pauses, lets go its hold, and slides again Back to the common level, with a hoarse Death rattle in its throat. I am too old To hope for better days. I will stay here And die in Rome. The very weeds, that grow Among the broken fragments of her ruins, Are sweeter to me than the garden flowers Of other cities; and the desolate ring Of the Campagna round about her walls Fairer than all the villas that encircle The towns of Tuscany. BENVENUTO. But your old friends! MICHAEL ANGELO. All dead by violence. Baccio Valori Has been beheaded; Guicciardini poisoned; Philippo Strozzi strangled in his prison. Is Florence then a place for honest men To flourish in? What is there to prevent My sharing the same fate? BENVENUTO. Why this: if all Your friends are dead, so are your enemies. MICHAEL ANGELO. Is Aretino dead? BENVENUTO. He lives in Venice, And not in Florence. MICHAEL ANGELO. 'T is the same to me This wretched mountebank, whom flatterers Call the Divine, as if to make the word Unpleasant in the mouths of those who speak it And in the ears of those who hear it, sends me A letter written for the public eye, And with such subtle and infernal malice, I wonder at his wickedness. 'T is he Is the express great devil, and not you. Some years ago he told me how to paint The scenes of the Last Judgment. BENVENUTO. I remember. MICHAEL ANGELO. Well, now he writes to me that, as a Christian, He is ashamed of the unbounded freedom With which I represent it. BENVENUTO. Hypocrite! MICHAEL ANGELO. He says I show mankind that I am wanting In piety and religion, in proportion As I profess perfection in my art. Profess perfection? Why, 't is only men Like Bugiardini who are satisfied With what they do. I never am content, But always see the labors of my hand Fall short of my conception. BENVENUTO. I perceive The malice of this creature. He would taint you With heresy, and in a time like this! 'T is infamous! MICHAEL ANGELO. I represent the angels Without their heavenly glory, and the saints Without a trace of earthly modesty. BENVENUTO. Incredible audacity! MICHAEL ANGELO. The heathen Veiled their Diana with some drapery, And when they represented Venus naked They made her by her modest attitude, Appear half clothed. But I, who am a Christian, Do so subordinate belief to art That I have made the very violation Of modesty in martyrs and in virgins A spectacle at which all men would gaze With half-averted eyes even in a brothel. BENVENUTO. He is at home there, and he ought to know What men avert their eyes from in such places; From the Last Judgment chiefly, I imagine. MICHAEL ANGELO. But divine Providence will never leave The boldness of my marvellous work unpunished; And the more marvellous it is, the more 'T is sure to prove the ruin of my fame! And finally, if in this composition I had pursued the instructions that he gave me Concerning heaven and hell and paradise, In that same letter, known to all the world, Nature would not be forced, as she is now, To feel ashamed that she invested me With such great talent; that I stand myself A very idol in the world of art. He taunts me also with the Mausoleum Of Julius, still unfinished, for the reason That men persuaded the inane old man It was of evil augury to build His tomb while he was living; and he speaks Of heaps of gold this Pope bequeathed to me, And calls it robbery;--that is what he says. What prompted such a letter? BENVENUTO. Vanity. He is a clever writer, and he likes To draw his pen, and flourish it in the face Of every honest man, as swordsmen do Their rapiers on occasion, but to show How skilfully they do it. Had you followed The advice he gave, or even thanked him for it, You would have seen another style of fence. 'T is but his wounded vanity, and the wish To see his name in print. So give it not A moment's thought; it soon will be forgotten. MICHAEL ANGELO. I will not think of it, but let it pass For a rude speech thrown at me in the street, As boys threw stones at Dante. BENVENUTO. And what answer Shall I take back to Grand Duke Cosimo? He does not ask your labor or your service; Only your presence in the city of Florence, With such advice upon his work in hand As he may ask, and you may choose to give. MICHAEL ANGELO. You have my answer. Nothing he can offer Shall tempt me to leave Rome. My work is here, And only here, the building of St. Peter's. What other things I hitherto have done Have fallen from me, are no longer mine; I have passed on beyond them, and have left them As milestones on the way. What lies before me, That is still mine, and while it is unfinished No one shall draw me from it, or persuade me, By promises of ease, or wealth, or honor, Till I behold the finished dome uprise Complete, as now I see it in my thought. BENVENUTO. And will you paint no more? MICHAEL ANGELO. No more. BENVENUTO. 'T is well. Sculpture is more divine, and more like Nature, That fashions all her works in high relief, And that is sculpture. This vast ball, the Earth, Was moulded out of clay, and baked in fire; Men, women, and all animals that breathe Are statues, and not paintings. Even the plants, The flowers, the fruits, the grasses, were first sculptured, And colored later. Painting is a lie, A shadow merely. MICHAEL ANGELO. Truly, as you say, Sculpture is more than painting. It is greater To raise the dead to life than to create Phantoms that seem to live. The most majestic Of the three sister arts is that which builds; The eldest of them all, to whom the others Are but the hand-maids and the servitors, Being but imitation, not creation. Henceforth I dedicate myself to her. BENVENUTO. And no more from the marble hew those forms That fill us all with wonder? MICHAEL ANGELO. Many statues Will there be room for in my work. Their station Already is assigned them in my mind. But things move slowly. There are hindrances, Want of material, want of means, delays And interruptions, endless interference Of Cardinal Commissioners, and disputes And jealousies of artists, that annoy me. But twill persevere until the work Is wholly finished, or till I sink down Surprised by death, that unexpected guest, Who waits for no man's leisure, but steps in, Unasked and unannounced, to put a stop To all our occupations and designs. And then perhaps I may go back to Florence; This is my answer to Duke Cosimo. VI MICHAEL ANGELO'S STUDIO MICHAEL ANGELO and URBINO. MICHAEL ANGELO, pausing in his work. Urbino, thou and I are both old men. My strength begins to fail me. URBINO. Eccellenza. That is impossible. Do I not see you Attack the marble blocks with the same fury As twenty years ago? MICHAEL ANGELO. 'T is an old habit. I must have learned it early from my nurse At Setignano, the stone-mason's wife; For the first sounds I heard were of the chisel chipping away the stone. URBINO. At every stroke You strike fire with your chisel. MICHAEL ANGELO. Ay, because The marble is too hard. URBINO. It is a block That Topolino sent you from Carrara. He is a judge of marble. MICHAEL ANGELO. I remember. With it he sent me something of his making,-- A Mercury, with long body and short legs, As if by any possibility A messenger of the gods could have short legs. It was no more like Mercury than you are, But rather like those little plaster figures That peddlers hawk about the villages As images of saints. But luckily For Topolino, there are many people Who see no difference between what is best And what is only good, or not even good; So that poor artists stand in their esteem On the same level with the best, or higher. URBINO. How Eccellenza laughed! MICHAEL ANGELO. Poor Topolino! All men are not born artists, nor will labor E'er make them artists. URBINO. No, no more Than Emperors, or Popes, or Cardinals. One must be chosen for it. I have been Your color-grinder six and twenty years, And am not yet an artist. MICHAEL ANGELO. Some have eyes That see not; but in every block of marble I see a statue,--see it as distinctly As if it stood before me shaped and perfect In attitude and action. I have only To hew away the stone walls that imprison The lovely apparition, and reveal it To other eyes as mine already see it. But I grow old and weak. What wilt thou do When I am dead, Urbino? URBINO. Eccellenza, I must then serve another master. MICHAEL ANGELO. Never! Bitter is servitude at best. Already So many years hast thou been serving me; But rather as a friend than as a servant. We have grown old together. Dost thou think So meanly of this Michael Angelo As to imagine he would let thee serve, When he is free from service? Take this purse, Two thousand crowns in gold. URBINO. Two thousand crowns! MICHAEL ANGELO. Ay, it will make thee rich. Thou shalt not die A beggar in a hospital. URBINO. Oh, Master! MICHAEL ANGELO. I cannot have them with me on the journey That I am undertaking. The last garment That men will make for me will have no pockets. URBINO, kissing the hand of MICHAEL ANGELO. My generous master! MICHAEL ANGELO. Hush! URBINO. My Providence! MICHAEL ANGELO. Not a word more. Go now to bed, old man. Thou hast served Michael Angelo. Remember, Henceforward thou shalt serve no other master. VII THE OAKS OF MONTE LUCA MICHAEL ANGELO, alone in the woods. MICHAEL ANGELO. How still it is among these ancient oaks! Surges and undulations of the air Uplift the leafy boughs, and let them fall With scarce a sound. Such sylvan quietudes Become old age. These huge centennial oaks, That may have heard in infancy the trumpets Of Barbarossa's cavalry, deride Man's brief existence, that with all his strength He cannot stretch beyond the hundredth year. This little acorn, turbaned like the Turk, Which with my foot I spurn, may be an oak Hereafter, feeding with its bitter mast The fierce wild boar, and tossing in its arms The cradled nests of birds, when all the men That now inhabit this vast universe, They and their children, and their children's children, Shall be but dust and mould, and nothing more. Through openings in the trees I see below me The valley of Clitumnus, with its farms And snow-white oxen grazing in the shade Of the tall poplars on the river's brink. O Nature, gentle mother, tender nurse! I who have never loved thee as I ought, But wasted all my years immured in cities, And breathed the stifling atmosphere of streets, Now come to thee for refuge. Here is peace. Yonder I see the little hermitages Dotting the mountain side with points of light, And here St. Julian's convent, like a nest Of curlews, clinging to some windy cliff. Beyond the broad, illimitable plain Down sinks the sun, red as Apollo's quoit, That, by the envious Zephyr blown aside, Struck Hyacinthus dead, and stained the earth With his young blood, that blossomed into flowers. And now, instead of these fair deities Dread demons haunt the earth; hermits inhabit The leafy homes of sylvan Hamadryads; And jovial friars, rotund and rubicund, Replace the old Silenus with his ass. Here underneath these venerable oaks, Wrinkled and brown and gnarled like them with age, A brother of the monastery sits, Lost in his meditations. What may be The questions that perplex, the hopes that cheer him? Good-evening, holy father. MONK. God be with you. MICHAEL ANGELO. Pardon a stranger if he interrupt Your meditations. MONK. It was but a dream,-- The old, old dream, that never will come true; The dream that all my life I have been dreaming, And yet is still a dream. MICHAEL ANGELO. All men have dreams: I have had mine; but none of them came true; They were but vanity. Sometimes I think The happiness of man lies in pursuing, Not in possessing; for the things possessed Lose half their value. Tell me of your dream. MONK. The yearning of my heart, my sole desire, That like the sheaf of Joseph stands up right, While all the others bend and bow to it; The passion that torments me, and that breathes New meaning into the dead forms of prayer, Is that with mortal eyes I may behold The Eternal City. MICHAEL ANGELO. Rome? MONK. There is but one; The rest are merely names. I think of it As the Celestial City, paved with gold, And sentinelled with angels. MICHAEL ANGELO. Would it were. I have just fled from it. It is beleaguered By Spanish troops, led by the Duke of Alva. MONK. But still for me 't is the Celestial City, And I would see it once before I die. MICHAEL ANGELO. Each one must bear his cross. MONK. Were it a cross That had been laid upon me, I could bear it, Or fall with it. It is a crucifix; I am nailed hand and foot, and I am dying! MICHAEL ANGELO. What would you see in Rome? MONK. His Holiness. MICHAEL ANGELO. Him that was once the Cardinal Caraffa? You would but see a man of fourscore years, With sunken eyes, burning like carbuncles, Who sits at table with his friends for hours, Cursing the Spaniards as a race of Jews And miscreant Moors. And with what soldiery Think you he now defends the Eternal City? MONK. With legions of bright angels. MICHAEL ANGELO. So he calls them; And yet in fact these bright angelic legions Are only German Lutherans. MONK, crossing himself. Heaven protect us? MICHAEL ANGELO. What further would you see? MONK. The Cardinals, Going in their gilt coaches to High Mass. MICHAEL ANGELO. Men do not go to Paradise in coaches. MONK. The catacombs, the convents, and the churches; The ceremonies of the Holy Week In all their pomp, or, at the Epiphany, The Feast of the Santissima Bambino At Ara Coeli. But I shall not see them. MICHAEL ANGELO. These pompous ceremonies of the Church Are but an empty show to him who knows The actors in them. Stay here in your convent, For he who goes to Rome may see too much. What would you further? MONK. I would see the painting of the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. MICHAEL ANGELO. The smoke of incense and of altar candles Has blackened it already. MONK. Woe is me! Then I would hear Allegri's Miserere, Sung by the Papal choir. MICHAEL ANGELO. A dismal dirge! I am an old, old man, and I have lived In Rome for thirty years and more, and know The jarring of the wheels of that great world, Its jealousies, its discords, and its strife. Therefore I say to you, remain content Here in your convent, here among your woods, Where only there is peace. Go not to Rome. There was of old a monk of Wittenberg Who went to Rome; you may have heard of him; His name was Luther; and you know what followed. [The convent bell rings. MONK, rising. It is the convent bell; it rings for vespers. Let us go in; we both will pray for peace. VIII THE DEAD CHRIST. MICHAEL ANGELO'S studio. MICHAEL ANGELO, with a light, working upon the Dead Christ. Midnight. MICHAEL ANGELO. O Death, why is it I cannot portray Thy form and features? Do I stand too near thee? Or dost thou hold my hand, and draw me back, As being thy disciple, not thy master? Let him who knows not what old age is like Have patience till it comes, and he will know. I once had skill to fashion Life and Death And Sleep, which is the counterfeit of Death; And I remember what Giovanni Strozzi Wrote underneath my statue of the Night In San Lorenzo, ah, so long ago! Grateful to me is sleep! More grateful now Than it was then; for all my friends are dead; And she is dead, the noblest of them all. I saw her face, when the great sculptor Death, Whom men should call Divine, had at a blow Stricken her into marble; and I kissed Her cold white hand. What was it held me back From kissing her fair forehead, and those lips, Those dead, dumb lips? Grateful to me is sleep! Enter GIORGIO VASARI. GIORGIO. Good-evening, or good-morning, for I know not Which of the two it is. MICHAEL ANGELO. How came you in? GIORGIO. Why, by the door, as all men do. MICHAEL ANGELO. Ascanio Must have forgotten to bolt it. GIORGIO. Probably. Am I a spirit, or so like a spirit, That I could slip through bolted door or window? As I was passing down the street, I saw A glimmer of light, and heard the well-known chink Of chisel upon marble. So I entered, To see what keeps you from your bed so late. MICHAEL ANGELO, coming forward with the lamp. You have been revelling with your boon companions, Giorgio Vasari, and you come to me At an untimely hour. GIORGIO. The Pope hath sent me. His Holiness desires to see again The drawing you once showed him of the dome Of the Basilica. MICHAEL ANGELO. We will look for it. GIORGIO. What is the marble group that glimmers there Behind you? MICHAEL ANGELO. Nothing, and yet everything,-- As one may take it. It is my own tomb, That I am building. GIORGIO. Do not hide it from me. By our long friendship and the love I bear you, Refuse me not! MICHAEL ANGELO, letting fall the lamp. Life hath become to me An empty theatre,--its lights extinguished, The music silent, and the actors gone; And I alone sit musing on the scenes That once have been. I am so old that Death Oft plucks me by the cloak, to come with him And some day, like this lamp, shall I fall down, And my last spark of life will be extinguished. Ah me! ah me! what darkness of despair! So near to death, and yet so far from God! ***** TRANSLATIONS PRELUDE As treasures that men seek, Deep-buried in sea-sands, Vanish if they but speak, And elude their eager hands, So ye escape and slip, O songs, and fade away, When the word is on my lip To interpret what ye say. Were it not better, then, To let the treasures rest Hid from the eyes of men, Locked in their iron chest? I have but marked the place, But half the secret told, That, following this slight trace, Others may find the gold. FROM THE SPANISH COPLAS DE MANRIQUE. O let the soul her slumbers break, Let thought be quickened, and awake; Awake to see How soon this life is past and gone, And death comes softly stealing on, How silently! Swiftly our pleasures glide away, Our hearts recall the distant day With many sighs; The moments that are speeding fast We heed not, but the past,--the past, More highly prize. Onward its course the present keeps, Onward the constant current sweeps, Till life is done; And, did we judge of time aright, The past and future in their flight Would be as one. Let no one fondly dream again, That Hope and all her shadowy train Will not decay; Fleeting as were the dreams of old, Remembered like a tale that's told, They pass away. Our lives are rivers, gliding free To that unfathomed, boundless sea, The silent grave! Thither all earthly pomp and boast Roll, to be swallowed up and lost In one dark wave. Thither the mighty torrents stray, Thither the brook pursues its way, And tinkling rill, There all are equal; side by side The poor man and the son of pride Lie calm and still. I will not here invoke the throng Of orators and sons of song, The deathless few; Fiction entices and deceives, And, sprinkled o'er her fragrant leaves, Lies poisonous dew. To One alone my thoughts arise, The Eternal Truth, the Good and Wise, To Him I cry, Who shared on earth our common lot, But the world comprehended not His deity. This world is but the rugged road Which leads us to the bright abode Of peace above; So let us choose that narrow way, Which leads no traveller's foot astray From realms of love, Our cradle is the starting-place, Life is the running of the race, We reach the goal When, in the mansions of the blest, Death leaves to its eternal rest The weary soul. Did we but use it as we ought, This world would school each wandering thought To its high state. Faith wings the soul beyond the sky, Up to that better world on high, For which we wait. Yes, the glad messenger of love, To guide us to our home above, The Saviour came; Born amid mortal cares and fears. He suffered in this vale of tears A death of shame. Behold of what delusive worth The bubbles we pursue on earth, The shapes we chase, Amid a world of treachery! They vanish ere death shuts the eye, And leave no trace. Time steals them from us, chances strange, Disastrous accident, and change, That come to all; Even in the most exalted state, Relentless sweeps the stroke of fate; The strongest fall. Tell me, the charms that lovers seek In the clear eye and blushing cheek, The hues that play O'er rosy lip and brow of snow, When hoary age approaches slow, Ah; where are they? The cunning skill, the curious arts, The glorious strength that youth imparts In life's first stage; These shall become a heavy weight, When Time swings wide his outward gate To weary age. The noble blood of Gothic name, Heroes emblazoned high to fame, In long array; How, in the onward course of time, The landmarks of that race sublime Were swept away! Some, the degraded slaves of lust, Prostrate and trampled in the dust, Shall rise no more; Others, by guilt and crime, maintain The scutcheon, that without a stain, Their fathers bore. Wealth and the high estate of pride, With what untimely speed they glide, How soon depart! Bid not the shadowy phantoms stay, The vassals of a mistress they, Of fickle heart. These gifts in Fortune's hands are found; Her swift revolving wheel turns round, And they are gone! No rest the inconstant goddess knows, But changing, and without repose, Still hurries on. Even could the hand of avarice save Its gilded baubles till the grave Reclaimed its prey, Let none on such poor hopes rely; Life, like an empty dream, flits by, And where are they? Earthly desires and sensual lust Are passions springing from the dust, They fade and die; But in the life beyond the tomb, They seal the immortal spirits doom Eternally! The pleasures and delights, which mask In treacherous smiles life's serious task, What are they, all, But the fleet coursers of the chase, And death an ambush in the race, Wherein we fall? No foe, no dangerous pass, we heed, Brook no delay, but onward speed With loosened rein; And, when the fatal snare is near, We strive to check our mad career, But strive in vain. Could we new charms to age impart, And fashion with a cunning art The human face, As we can clothe the soul with light, And make the glorious spirit bright With heavenly grace, How busily each passing hour Should we exert that magic power, What ardor show, To deck the sensual slave of sin, Yet leave the freeborn soul within, In weeds of woe! Monarchs, the powerful and the strong, Famous in history and in song Of olden time, Saw, by the stern decrees of fate, Their kingdoms lost, and desolate Their race sublime. Who is the champion? who the strong? Pontiff and priest, and sceptred throng? On these shall fall As heavily the hand of Death, As when it stays the shepherd's breath Beside his stall. I speak not of the Trojan name, Neither its glory nor its shame Has met our eyes; Nor of Rome's great and glorious dead, Though we have heard so oft, and read, Their histories. Little avails it now to know Of ages passed so long ago, Nor how they rolled; Our theme shall be of yesterday, Which to oblivion sweeps away, Like day's of old. Where is the King, Don Juan? Where Each royal prince and noble heir Of Aragon? Where are the courtly gallantries? The deeds of love and high emprise, In battle done? Tourney and joust, that charmed the eye, And scarf, and gorgeous panoply, And nodding plume, What were they but a pageant scene? What but the garlands, gay and green, That deck the tomb? Where are the high-born dames, and where Their gay attire, and jewelled hair, And odors sweet? Where are the gentle knights, that came To kneel, and breathe love's ardent flame, Low at their feet? Where is the song of Troubadour? Where are the lute and gay tambour They loved of yore? Where is the mazy dance of old, The flowing robes, inwrought with gold, The dancers wore? And he who next the sceptre swayed, Henry, whose royal court displayed Such power and pride; O, in what winning smiles arrayed, The world its various pleasures laid His throne beside! But O how false and full of guile That world, which wore so soft a smile But to betray! She, that had been his friend before, Now from the fated monarch tore Her charms away. The countless gifts, the stately walls, The loyal palaces, and halls All filled with gold; Plate with armorial bearings wrought, Chambers with ample treasures fraught Of wealth untold; The noble steeds, and harness bright, And gallant lord, and stalwart knight, In rich array, Where shall we seek them now? Alas! Like the bright dewdrops on the grass, They passed away. His brother, too, whose factious zeal Usurped the sceptre of Castile, Unskilled to reign; What a gay, brilliant court had he, When all the flower of chivalry Was in his train! But he was mortal; and the breath, That flamed from the hot forge of Death, Blasted his years; Judgment of God! that flame by thee, When raging fierce and fearfully, Was quenched in tears! Spain's haughty Constable, the true And gallant Master, whom we knew Most loved of all; Breathe not a whisper of his pride, He on the gloomy scaffold died, Ignoble fall! The countless treasures of his care, His villages and villas fair, His mighty power, What were they all but grief and shame, Tears and a broken heart, when came The parting hour? His other brothers, proud and high, Masters, who, in prosperity, Might rival kings; Who made the bravest and the best The bondsmen of their high behest, Their underlings; What was their prosperous estate, When high exalted and elate With power and pride? What, but a transient gleam of light, A flame, which, glaring at its height, Grew dim and died? So many a duke of royal name, Marquis and count of spotless fame, And baron brave, That might the sword of empire wield, All these, O Death, hast thou concealed In the dark grave! Their deeds of mercy and of arms, In peaceful days, or war's alarms, When thou dost show. O Death, thy stern and angry face, One stroke of thy all-powerful mace Can overthrow. Unnumbered hosts, that threaten nigh, Pennon and standard flaunting high, And flag displayed; High battlements intrenched around, Bastion, and moated wall, and mound, And palisade, And covered trench, secure and deep, All these cannot one victim keep, O Death, from thee, When thou dost battle in thy wrath, And thy strong shafts pursue their path Unerringly. O World! so few the years we live, Would that the life which thou dost give Were life indeed! Alas! thy sorrows fall so fast, Our happiest hour is when at last The soul is freed. Our days are covered o'er with grief, And sorrows neither few nor brief Veil all in gloom; Left desolate of real good, Within this cheerless solitude No pleasures bloom. Thy pilgrimage begins in tears, And ends in bitter doubts and fears, Or dark despair; Midway so many toils appear, That he who lingers longest here Knows most of care. Thy goods are bought with many a groan, By the hot sweat of toil alone, And weary hearts; Fleet-footed is the approach of woe, But with a lingering step and slow Its form departs. And he, the good man's shield and shade, To whom all hearts their homage paid, As Virtue's son, Roderic Manrique, he whose name Is written on the scroll of Fame, Spain's champion; His signal deeds and prowess high Demand no pompous eulogy. Ye saw his deeds! Why should their praise in verse be sung? The name, that dwells on every tongue, No minstrel needs. To friends a friend; how kind to all The vassals of this ancient hall And feudal fief! To foes how stern a foe was he! And to the valiant and the free How brave a chief! What prudence with the old and wise: What grace in youthful gayeties; In all how sage! Benignant to the serf and slave, He showed the base and falsely brave A lion's rage. His was Octavian's prosperous star, The rush of Caesar's conquering car At battle's call; His, Scipio's virtue; his, the skill And the indomitable will Of Hannibal. His was a Trajan's goodness, his A Titus' noble charities And righteous laws; The arm of Hector, and the might Of Tully, to maintain the right In truth's just cause; The clemency of Antonine, Aurelius' countenance divine, Firm, gentle, still; The eloquence of Adrian, And Theodosius' love to man, And generous will; In tented field and bloody fray, An Alexander's vigorous sway And stern command; The faith of Constantine; ay, more, The fervent love Camillus bore His native land. He left no well-filled treasury, He heaped no pile of riches high, Nor massive plate; He fought the Moors, and, in their fall, City and tower and castled wall Were his estate. Upon the hard-fought battle-ground, Brave steeds and gallant riders found A common grave; And there the warrior's hand did gain The rents, and the long vassal train, That conquest gave. And if, of old, his halls displayed The honored and exalted grade His worth had gained, So, in the dark, disastrous hour, Brothers and bondsmen of his power His hand sustained. After high deeds, not left untold, In the stern warfare, which of old 'T was his to share, Such noble leagues he made, that more And fairer regions, than before, His guerdon were. These are the records, half effaced, Which, with the hand of youth, he traced On history's page; But with fresh victories he drew Each fading character anew In his old age. By his unrivalled skill, by great And veteran service to the state, By worth adored, He stood, in his high dignity, The proudest knight of chivalry, Knight of the Sword. He found his cities and domains Beneath a tyrant's galling chains And cruel power; But by fierce battle and blockade, Soon his own banner was displayed From every tower. By the tried valor of his hand, His monarch and his native land Were nobly served; Let Portugal repeat the story, And proud Castile, who shared the glory His arms deserved. And when so oft, for weal or woe, His life upon the fatal throw Had been cast down; When he had served, with patriot zeal, Beneath the banner of Castile, His sovereign's crown; And done such deeds of valor strong, That neither history nor song Can count them all; Then, on Ocana's castled rock, Death at his portal came to knock, With sudden call, Saying, "Good Cavalier, prepare To leave this world of toil and care With joyful mien; Let thy strong heart of steel this day Put on its armor for the fray, The closing scene. "Since thou hast been, in battle-strife, So prodigal of health and life, For earthly fame, Let virtue nerve thy heart again; Loud on the last stern battle-plain They call thy name. "Think not the struggle that draws near Too terrible for man, nor fear To meet the foe; Nor let thy noble spirit grieve, Its life of glorious fame to leave On earth below. "A life of honor and of worth Has no eternity on earth, 'T is but a name; And yet its glory far exceeds That base and sensual life, which leads To want and shame. "The eternal life, beyond the sky, Wealth cannot purchase, nor the high And proud estate; The soul in dalliance laid, the spirit Corrupt with sin, shall not inherit A joy so great. "But the good monk, in cloistered cell, Shall gain it by his book and bell, His prayers and tears; And the brave knight, whose arm endures Fierce battle, and against the Moors His standard rears. "And thou, brave knight, whose hand has poured The life-blood of the Pagan horde O'er all the land, In heaven shalt thou receive, at length, The guerdon of thine earthly strength And dauntless hand. "Cheered onward by this promise sure, Strong in the faith entire and pure Thou dost profess, Depart, thy hope is certainty, The third, the better life on high Shalt thou possess." "O Death, no more, no more delay; My spirit longs to flee away, And be at rest; The will of Heaven my will shall be, I bow to the divine decree, To God's behest. "My soul is ready to depart, No thought rebels, the obedient heart Breathes forth no sigh; The wish on earth to linger still Were vain, when 't is God's sovereign will That we shall die. "O thou, that for our sins didst take A human form, and humbly make Thy home on earth; Thou, that to thy divinity A human nature didst ally By mortal birth, "And in that form didst suffer here Torment, and agony, and fear, So patiently; By thy redeeming grace alone, And not for merits of my own, O, pardon me!" As thus the dying warrior prayed, Without one gathering mist or shade Upon his mind; Encircled by his family, Watched by affection's gentle eye So soft and kind; His soul to Him, who gave it, rose; God lead it to its long repose, Its glorious rest! And, though the warrior's sun has set, Its light shall linger round us yet, Bright, radiant, blest. SONNETS I THE GOOD SHEPHERD (EL BUEN PASTOR) BY LOPE DE VEGA Shepherd! who with thine amorous, sylvan song Hast broken the slumber that encompassed me, Who mad'st thy crook from the accursed tree, On which thy powerful arms were stretched so long! Lead me to mercy's ever-flowing fountains; For thou my shepherd, guard, and guide shalt be; I will obey thy voice, and wait to see Thy feet all beautiful upon the mountains. Hear, Shepherd! thou who for thy flock art dying, O, wash away these scarlet sins, for thou Rejoicest at the contrite sinner's vow. O, wait! to thee my weary soul is crying, Wait for me! Yet why ask it, when I see, With feet nailed to the cross, thou 'rt waiting still for me! II TO-MORROW (MANANA) BY LOPE DE VEGA Lord, what am I, that with unceasing care, Thou didst seek after me, that thou didst wait Wet with unhealthy dews, before my gate, And pass the gloomy nights of winter there? O strange delusion! that I did not greet Thy blest approach, and O, to Heaven how lost, If my ingratitude's unkindly frost Has chilled the bleeding wounds upon thy feet. How oft my guardian angel gently cried, "Soul, from thy casement look, and thou shalt see How he persists to knock and wait for thee!" And, O! how often to that voice of sorrow, "To-morrow we will open," I replied, And when the morrow came I answered still "To-morrow." III THE NATIVE LAND (EL PATRIO CIELO) BY FRANCISCO DE ALDANA Clear fount of light! my native land on high, Bright with a glory that shall never fade! Mansion of truth! without a veil or shade, Thy holy quiet meets the spirit's eye. There dwells the soul in its ethereal essence, Gasping no longer for life's feeble breath; But, sentinelled in heaven, its glorious presence With pitying eye beholds, yet fears not, death. Beloved country! banished from thy shore, A stranger in this prison-house of clay, The exiled spirit weeps and sighs for thee! Heavenward the bright perfections I adore Direct, and the sure promise cheers the way, That, whither love aspires, there shall my dwelling be. IV THE IMAGE OF GOD (LA IMAGEN DE DIOS) BY FRANCISCO DE ALDANA O Lord! who seest, from yon starry height, Centred in one the future and the past, Fashioned in thine own image, see how fast The world obscures in me what once was bright! Eternal Sun! the warmth which thou hast given, To cheer life's flowery April, fast decays; Yet in the hoary winter of my days, Forever green shall be my trust in Heaven. Celestial King! O let thy presence pass Before my spirit, and an image fair Shall meet that look of mercy from on high, As the reflected image in a glass Doth meet the look of him who seeks it there, And owes its being to the gazer's eye. V THE BROOK (A UN ARROYUELO) ANONYMOUS Laugh of the mountain!--lyre of bird and tree! Pomp of the meadow! mirror of the morn! The soul of April, unto whom are born The rose and jessamine, leaps wild in thee! Although, where'er thy devious current strays, The lap of earth with gold and silver teems, To me thy clear proceeding brighter seems Than golden sands, that charm each shepherd's gaze. How without guile thy bosom, all transparent As the pure crystal, lets the curious eye Thy secrets scan, thy smooth, round pebbles count! How, without malice murmuring, glides thy current! O sweet simplicity of days gone by! Thou shun'st the haunts of man, to dwell in limpid fount! ANCIENT SPANISH BALLADS. In the chapter with this title in Outre-Mer, besides Illustrations from Byron and Lockhart are the three following examples, contributed by Mr. Longfellow. I Rio Verde, Rio Verde! Many a corpse is bathed in thee, Both of Moors and eke of Christians, Slain with swords most cruelly. And thy pure and crystal waters Dappled are with crimson gore; For between the Moors and Christians Long has been the fight and sore. Dukes and Counts fell bleeding near thee, Lords of high renown were slain, Perished many a brave hidalgo Of the noblemen of Spain. II "King Alfonso the Eighth, having exhausted his treasury in war, wishes to lay a tax of five farthings upon each of the Castillan hidalgos, in order to defray the expenses of a journey from Burgos to Cuenca. This proposition of the king was met with disdain by the noblemen who had been assembled on the occasion." Don Nuno, Count of Lara, In anger and in pride, Forgot all reverence for the king, And thus in wrath replied: "Our noble ancestors," quoth he, "Ne'er such a tribute paid; Nor shall the king receive of us What they have once gainsaid. "The base-born soul who deems it just May here with thee remain; But follow me, ye cavaliers, Ye noblemen of Spain." Forth followed they the noble Count, They marched to Glera's plain; Out of three thousand gallant knights Did only three remain. They tied the tribute to their spears, They raised it in the air, And they sent to tell their lord the king That his tax was ready there. "He may send and take by force," said they, "This paltry sum of gold; But the goodly gift of liberty Cannot be bought and sold." III "One of the finest of the historic ballads is that which describes Bernardo's march to Roncesvalles. He sallies forth 'with three thousand Leonese and more,' to protect the glory and freedom of his native land. From all sides, the peasantry of the land flock to the hero's standard." The peasant leaves his plough afield, The reaper leaves his hook, And from his hand the shepherd-boy. Lets fall the pastoral crook. The young set up a shout of joy, The old forget their years, The feeble man grows stout of heart. No more the craven fears. All rush to Bernard's standard, And on liberty they call; They cannot brook to wear the yoke, When threatened by the Gaul. "Free were we born," 't is thus they cry "And willingly pay we The duty that we owe our king By the divine decree. "But God forbid that we obey The laws of foreign knaves, Tarnish the glory of our sires, And make our children slaves. "Our hearts have not so craven grown, So bloodless all our veins, So vigorless our brawny arms, As to submit to chains. "Has the audacious Frank, forsooth, Subdued these seas and lands? Shall he a bloodless victory have? No, not while we have hands. "He shall learn that the gallant Leonese Can bravely fight and fall, But that they know not how to yield; They are Castilians all. "Was it for this the Roman power Of old was made to yield Unto Numantia's valiant hosts On many a bloody field? "Shall the bold lions that have bathed Their paws in Libyan gore, Crouch basely to a feebler foe, And dare the strife no more? "Let the false king sell town and tower, But not his vassals free; For to subdue the free-born soul No royal power hath he!" VIDA DE SAN MILLAN BY GONZALO DE BERCEO And when the kings were in the field,--their squadrons in array,-- With lance in rest they onward pressed to mingle in the fray; But soon upon the Christians fell a terror of their foes,-- These were a numerous army,--a little handful those. And while the Christian people stood in this uncertainty, Upward to heaven they turned their eyes, and fixed their thoughts on high; And there two figures they beheld, all beautiful and bright, Even than the pure new-fallen snow their garments were more white. They rode upon two horses more white than crystal sheen, And arms they bore such as before no mortal man had seen; The one, he held a crosier,--a pontiff's mitre wore; The other held a crucifix,--such man ne'er saw before. Their faces were angelical, celestial forms had they,-- And downward through the fields of air they urged their rapid way; They looked upon the Moorish host with fierce and angry look, And in their hands, with dire portent, their naked sabres shook. The Christian host, beholding this, straightway take heart again; They fall upon their bended knees, all resting on the plain, And each one with his clenched fist to smite his breast begins, And promises to God on high he will forsake his sins. And when the heavenly knights drew near unto the battle-ground, They dashed among the Moors and dealt unerring blows around; Such deadly havoc there they made the foremost ranks along, A panic terror spread unto the hindmost of the throng. Together with these two good knights, the champions of the sky, The Christians rallied and began to smite full sore and high; The Moors raised up their voices and by the Koran swore That in their lives such deadly fray they ne'er had seen before. Down went the misbelievers,--fast sped the bloody fight,-- Some ghastly and dismembered lay, and some half dead with fright: Full sorely they repented that to the field they came, For they saw that from the battle they should retreat with shame. Another thing befell them,--they dreamed not of such woes,-- The very arrows that the Moors shot front their twanging bows Turned back against them in their flight and wounded them full sore, And every blow they dealt the foe was paid in drops of gore. . . . . . . . . . Now he that bore the crosier, and the papal crown had on, Was the glorified Apostle, the brother of Saint John; And he that held the crucifix, and wore the monkish hood, Was the holy San Millan of Cogolla's neighborhood. SAN MIGUEL, THE CONVENT (SAN MIGUEL DE LA TUMBA) BY GONZALO DE BERCEO San Miguel de la Tumba is a convent vast and wide; The sea encircles it around, and groans on every side: It is a wild and dangerous place, and many woes betide The monks who in that burial-place in penitence abide. Within those dark monastic walls, amid the ocean flood, Of pious, fasting monks there dwelt a holy brotherhood; To the Madonna's glory there an altar high was placed, And a rich and costly image the sacred altar graced. Exalted high upon a throne, the Virgin Mother smiled, And, as the custom is, she held within her arms the Child; The kings and wise men of the East were kneeling by her side; Attended was she like a queen whom God had sanctified. . . . . . . . . . Descending low before her face a screen of feathers hung,-- A moscader, or fan for flies, 'tis called in vulgar tongue; From the feathers of the peacock's wing 't was fashioned bright and fair, And glistened like the heaven above when all its stars are there. It chanced that, for the people's sins, fell the lightning's blasting stroke: Forth from all four the sacred walls the flames consuming broke; The sacred robes were all consumed, missal and holy book; And hardly with their lives the monks their crumbling walls forsook. . . . . . . . . . But though the desolating flame raged fearfully and wild, It did not reach the Virgin Queen, it did not reach the Child; It did not reach the feathery screen before her face that shone, Nor injure in a farthing's worth the image or the throne. The image it did not consume, it did not burn the screen; Even in the value of a hair they were not hurt, I ween; Not even the smoke did reach them, nor injure more the shrine Than the bishop hight Don Tello has been hurt by hand of mine. . . . . . . . . . SONG She is a maid of artless grace, Gentle in form, and fair of face, Tell me, thou ancient mariner, That sailest on the sea, If ship, or sail or evening star Be half so fair as she! Tell me, thou gallant cavalier, Whose shining arms I see, If steel, or sword, or battle-field Be half so fair as she! Tell me, thou swain, that guard'st thy flock Beneath the shadowy tree, If flock, or vale, or mountain-ridge Be half so fair as she! SANTA TERESA'S BOOK-MARK (LETRILLA QUE LLEVABA POR REGISTRO EN SU BREVIARIO) BY SANTA TERESA DE AVILA Let nothing disturb thee, Nothing affright thee; All things are passing; God never changeth; Patient endurance Attaineth to all things; Who God possesseth In nothing is wanting; Alone God sufficeth. FROM THE CANCIONEROS I EYES SO TRISTFUL, EYES SO TRISTFUL (OJOS TRISTES, OJOS TRISTES) BY DIEGO DE SALDANA Eyes so tristful, eyes so tristful, Heart so full of care and cumber, I was lapped in rest and slumber, Ye have made me wakeful, wistful! In this life of labor endless Who shall comfort my distresses? Querulous my soul and friendless In its sorrow shuns caresses. Ye have made me, ye have made me Querulous of you, that care not, Eyes so tristful, yet I dare not Say to what ye have betrayed me. II SOME DAY, SOME DAY (ALGUNA VEZ) BY CRISTOBAL DE GASTILLOJO Some day, some day O troubled breast, Shalt thou find rest. If Love in thee To grief give birth, Six feet of earth Can more than he; There calm and free And unoppressed Shalt thou find rest. The unattained In life at last, When life is passed, Shall all be gained; And no more pained, No more distressed, Shalt thou find rest. III COME, O DEATH, SO SILENT FLYING (VEN, MUERTE TAN ESCONDIDA) BY EL COMMENDADOR ESCRIVA Come, O Death, so silent flying That unheard thy coming be, Lest the sweet delight of dying Bring life back again to me. For thy sure approach perceiving, In my constancy and pain I new life should win again, Thinking that I am not living. So to me, unconscious lying, All unknown thy coming be, Lest the sweet delight of dying Bring life back again to me. Unto him who finds thee hateful, Death, thou art inhuman pain; But to me, who dying gain, Life is but a task ungrateful. Come, then, with my wish complying, All unheard thy coming be, Lest the sweet delight of dying Bring life back again to me. IV GLOVE OF BLACK IN WHITE HAND BARE Glove of black in white hand bare, And about her forehead pale Wound a thin, transparent veil, That doth not conceal her hair; Sovereign attitude and air, Cheek and neck alike displayed With coquettish charms arrayed, Laughing eyes and fugitive;-- This is killing men that live, 'T is not mourning for the dead. FROM THE SWEDISH AND DANISH PASSAGES FROM FRITHIOF'S SAGA BY ESAIAS TEGNER I FRITHIOF'S HOMESTEAD Three miles extended around the fields of the homestead, on three sides Valleys and mountains and hills, but on the fourth side was the ocean. Birch woods crowned the summits, but down the slope of the hillsides Flourished the golden corn, and man-high was waving the rye-field. Lakes, full many in number, their mirror held up for the mountains, Held for the forests up, in whose depths the high-horned reindeers Had their kingly walk, and drank of a hundred brooklets. But in the valleys widely around, there fed on the greensward Herds with shining hides and udders that longed for the milk-pail. 'Mid these scattered, now here and now there, were numberless flocks of Sheep with fleeces white, as thou seest the white-looking stray clouds, Flock-wise spread o'er the heavenly vault when it bloweth in springtime. Coursers two times twelve, all mettlesome, fast fettered storm-winds, Stamping stood in the line of stalls, and tugged at their fodder. Knotted with red were their manes, and their hoofs all white with steel shoes. Th' banquet-hall, a house by itself, was timbered of hard fir. Not five hundred men (at ten times twelve to the hundred) Filled up the roomy hall, when assembled for drinking, at Yule-tide. Through the hall, as long as it was, went a table of holm-oak, Polished and white, as of steel; the columns twain of the High-seat Stood at the end thereof, two gods carved out of an elm-tree: Odin with lordly look, and Frey with the sun on his frontlet. Lately between the two, on a bear-skin (the skin it was coal-black, Scarlet-red was the throat, but the paws were shodden with silver), Thorsten sat with his friends, Hospitality sitting with Gladness. Oft, when the moon through the cloudrack flew, related the old man Wonders from distant lands he had seen, and cruises of Vikings Far away on the Baltic, and Sea of the West and the White Sea. Hushed sat the listening bench, and their glances hung on the graybeard's Lips, as a bee on the rose; but the Scald was thinking of Brage, Where, with his silver beard, and runes on his tongue, he is seated Under the leafy beech, and tells a tradition by Mimer's Ever-murmuring wave, himself a living tradition. Midway the floor (with thatch was it strewn) burned ever the fire-flame Glad on its stone-built hearth; and thorough the wide-mouthed smoke-flue Looked the stars, those heavenly friends, down into the great hall. Round the walls, upon nails of steel, were hanging in order Breastplate and helmet together, and here and there among them Downward lightened a sword, as in winter evening a star shoots. More than helmets and swords the shields in the hall were resplendent, White as the orb of the sun, or white as the moon's disk of silver. Ever and anon went a maid round the hoard, and filled up the drink-horns, Ever she cast down her eyes and blushed; in the shield her reflection Blushed, too, even as she; this gladdened the drinking champions. II A SLEDGE-RIDE ON THE ICE King Ring with his queen to the banquet did fare, On the lake stood the ice so mirror-clear, "Fare not o'er the ice," the stranger cries; "It will burst, and full deep the cold bath lies." "The king drowns not easily," Ring outspake; "He who's afraid may go round the lake." Threatening and dark looked the stranger round, His steel shoes with haste on his feet he bound, The sledge-horse starts forth strong and free; He snorteth flames, so glad is he. "Strike out," screamed the king, "my trotter good, Let us see if thou art of Sleipner's blood." They go as a storm goes over the lake. No heed to his queen doth the old man take. But the steel-shod champion standeth not still, He passeth them by as swift as he will. He carves many runes in the frozen tide, Fair Ingeborg o'er her own name doth glide. III FRITHIOF'S TEMPTATION Spring is coming, birds are twittering, forests leaf, and smiles the sun, And the loosened torrents downward, singing, to the ocean run; Glowing like the cheek of Freya, peeping rosebuds 'gin to ope, And in human hearts awaken love of life, and joy, and hope. Now will hunt the ancient monarch, and the queen shall join the sport: Swarming in its gorgeous splendor, is assembled all the Court; Bows ring loud, and quivers rattle, stallions paw the ground alway, And, with hoods upon their eyelids, scream the falcons for their prey. See, the Queen of the Chase advances! Frithiof, gaze not at the sight! Like a star upon a spring-cloud sits she on her palfrey white. Half of Freya, half of Rota, yet more beauteous than these two, And from her light hat of purple wave aloft the feathers blue. Gaze not at her eyes' blue heaven, gaze not at her golden hair! Oh beware! her waist is slender, full her bosom is, beware! Look not at the rose and lily on her cheek that shifting play, List not to the voice beloved, whispering like the wind of May. Now the huntsman's band is ready. Hurrah! over hill and dale! Horns ring, and the hawks right upward to the hall of Odin sail. All the dwellers in the forest seek in fear their cavern homes, But, with spear outstretched before her, after them the Valkyr comes. . . . . . . . . . . Then threw Frithiof down his mantle, and upon the greensward spread, And the ancient king so trustful laid on Frithiof's knee his head, Slept as calmly as the hero sleepeth, after war's alarm, On his shield, or as an infant sleeps upon its mother's arm. As he slumbers, hark! there sings a coal-black bird upon the bough; "Hasten, Frithiof, slay the old man, end your quarrel at a blow: Take his queen, for she is thine, and once the bridal kiss she gave, Now no human eye beholds thee, deep and silent is the grave," Frithiof listens; hark! there sings a snow-white bird upon the bough: "Though no human eye beholds thee, Odin's eye beholds thee now. Coward! wilt thou murder sleep, and a defenceless old man slay! Whatsoe'er thou winn'st, thou canst not win a hero's fame this way." Thus the two wood-birds did warble: Frithiof took his war-sword good, With a shudder hurled it from him, far into the gloomy wood. Coal-black bird flies down to Nastrand, but on light, unfolded wings, Like the tone of harps, the other, sounding towards the sun, upsprings. Straight the ancient king awakens. "Sweet has been my sleep," he said; "Pleasantly sleeps one in the shadow, guarded by a brave man's blade. But where is thy sword, O stranger? Lightning's brother, where is he? Who thus parts you, who should never from each other parted be?" "It avails not," Frithiof answered; "in the North are other swords: Sharp, O monarch! is the sword's tongue, and it speaks not peaceful words; Murky spirits dwell in steel blades, spirits from the Niffelhem; Slumber is not safe before them, silver locks but anger them." IV FRITHIOF'S FAREWELL No more shall I see In its upward motion The smoke of the Northland. Man is a slave: The fates decree. On the waste of the ocean There is my fatherland, there is my grave. Go not to the strand, Ring, with thy bride, After the stars spread their light through the sky. Perhaps in the sand, Washed up by the tide, The bones of the outlawed Viking may lie. Then, quoth the king, "'T is mournful to hear A man like a whimpering maiden cry. The death-song they sing Even now in mine ear, What avails it? He who is born must die." ***** THE CHILDREN OF THE LORD'S SUPPER BY ESAIAS TEGNER Pentecost, day of rejoicing, had come. The church of the village Gleaming stood in the morning's sheen. On the spire of the bell Decked with a brazen cock, the friendly flames of the Spring-sun Glanced like the tongues of fire, beheld by Apostles aforetime. Clear was the heaven and blue, and May, with her cap crowned with roses, Stood in her holiday dress in the fields, and the wind and the brooklet Murmured gladness and peace, God's-peace! with lips rosy-tinted Whispered the race of the flowers, and merry on balancing branches Birds were singing their carol, a jubilant hymn to the Highest. Swept and clean was the churchyard. Adorned like a leaf-woven arbor Stood its old-fashioned gate; and within upon each cross of iron Hung was a fragrant garland, new twined by the hands of affection. Even the dial, that stood on a mound among the departed, (There full a hundred years had it stood,) was embellished with blossoms Like to the patriarch hoary, the sage of his kith and the hamlet, Who on his birthday is crowned by children and children's children, So stood the ancient prophet, and mute with his pencil of iron Marked on the tablet of stone, and measured the time and its changes, While all around at his feet, an eternity slumbered in quiet. Also the church within was adorned, for this was the season When the young, their parents' hope, and the loved-ones of heaven, Should at the foot of the altar renew the vows of their baptism. Therefore each nook and corner was swept and cleaned, and the dust was Blown from the walls and ceiling, and from the oil-painted benches. There stood the church like a garden; the Feast of the Leafy Pavilions Saw we in living presentment. From noble arms on the church wall Grew forth a cluster of leaves, and the preacher's pulpit of oak-wood Budded once more anew, as aforetime the rod before Aaron. Wreathed thereon was the Bible with leaves, and the dove, washed with silver Under its canopy fastened, had on it a necklace of wind-flowers. But in front of the choir, round the altar-piece painted by Horberg, Crept a garland gigantic; and bright-curling tresses of angels Peeped, like the sun from a cloud, from out of the shadowy leaf-work. Likewise the lustre of brass, new-polished, blinked from the ceiling, And for lights there were lilies of Pentecost set in the sockets. Loud rang the bells already; the thronging crowd was assembled Far from valleys and hills, to list to the holy preaching. Hark! then roll forth at once the mighty tones of the organ, Hover like voices from God, aloft like invisible spirits. Like as Elias in heaven, when he cast from off him his mantle, So cast off the soul its garments of earth; and with one voice Chimed in the congregation, and sang an anthem immortal Of the sublime Wallin, of David's harp in the North-land Tuned to the choral of Luther; the song on its mighty pinions Took every living soul, and lifted it gently to heaven, And each face did shine like the Holy One's face upon Tabor. Lo! there entered then into the church the Reverend Teacher. Father he hight and he was in the parish; a Christianly plainness Clothed from his head to his feet the old man of seventy winters. Friendly was he to behold, and glad as the heralding angel Walked he among the crowds, but still a contemplative grandeur Lay on his forehead as clear as on moss-covered gravestone a sunbeam. As in his inspiration (an evening twilight that faintly Gleams in the human soul, even now, from the day of creation) Th' Artist, the friend of heaven, imagines Saint John when in Patmos, Gray, with his eyes uplifted to heaven, so seemed then the old man: Such was the glance of his eye, and such were his tresses of silver. All the congregation arose in the pews that were numbered. But with a cordial look, to the right and the left hand, the old man Nodding all hail and peace, disappeared in the innermost chancel. Simply and solemnly now proceeded the Christian service, Singing and prayer, and at last an ardent discourse from the old man. Many a moving word and warning, that out of the heart came, Fell like the dew of the morning, like manna on those in the desert. Then, when all was finished, the Teacher re-entered the chancel Followed therein by the young. The boys on the right had their places, Delicate figures, with close-curling hair and cheeks rosy-blooming. But on the left of these there stood the tremulous lilies, Tinged with the blushing light of the dawn, the diffident maidens,-- Folding their hands in prayer, and their eyes cast down on the pavement Now came, with question and answer, the catechism. In the beginning Answered the children with troubled and faltering voice, but the old man's Glances of kindness encouraged them soon, and the doctrines eternal Flowed, like the waters of fountains, so clear from lips unpolluted. Each time the answer was closed, and as oft as they named the Redeemer, Lowly louted the boys, and lowly the maidens all courtesied. Friendly the Teacher stood, like an angel of light there among them. And to the children explained the holy, the highest, in few words, Thorough, yet simple and clear, for sublimity always is simple, Both in sermon and song, a child can seize on its meaning. E'en as the green-growing bud unfolds when Springtide approaches. Leaf by leaf puts forth, and warmed, by the radiant sunshine, Blushes with purple and gold, till at last the perfected blossom Opens its odorous chalice, and rocks with its crown in the breezes, So was unfolded here the Christian lore of salvation, Line by line from the soul of childhood. The fathers and mothers Stood behind them in tears, and were glad at the well-worded answer. Now went the old man up to the altar;--and straightway transfigured (So did it seem unto me) was then the affectionate Teacher. Like the Lord's Prophet sublime, and awful as Death and as Judgment Stood he, the God-commissioned, the soul-searcher, earthward descending Glances, sharp as a sword, into hearts that to him were transparent Shot he; his voice was deep, was low like the thunder afar off. So on a sudden transfigured he stood there, lie spake and he questioned. "This is the faith of the Fathers, the faith the Apostles delivered, This is moreover the faith whereunto I baptized you, while still ye Lay on your mothers' breasts, and nearer the portals of heaven, Slumbering received you then the Holy Church in its bosom; Wakened from sleep are ye now, and the light in its radiant splendor Downward rains from the heaven;--to-day on the threshold of childhood Kindly she frees you again, to examine and make your election, For she knows naught of compulsion, and only conviction desireth. This is the hour of your trial, the turning-point of existence, Seed for the coming days; without revocation departeth Now from your lips the confession; Bethink ye, before ye make answer! Think not, O think not with guile to deceive the questioning Teacher. Sharp is his eye to-day, and a curse ever rests upon falsehood. Enter not with a lie on Life's journey; the multitude hears you, Brothers and sisters and parents, what dear upon earth is and holy Standeth before your sight as a witness; the Judge everlasting Looks from the sun down upon you, and angels in waiting beside him Grave your confession in letters of fire upon tablets eternal. Thus, then,--believe ye in God, in the Father who this world created? Him who redeemed it, the Son, and the Spirit where both are united? Will ye promise me here, (a holy promise!) to cherish God more than all things earthly, and every man as a brother? Will ye promise me here, to confirm your faith by your living, Th' heavenly faith of affection! to hope, to forgive, and to suffer, Be what it may your condition, and walk before God in uprightness? Will ye promise me this before God and man?"--With a clear voice Answered the young men Yes! and Yes! with lips softly-breathing Answered the maidens eke. Then dissolved from the brow of the Teacher Clouds with the lightnings therein, and lie spake in accents more gentle, Soft as the evening's breath, as harps by Babylon's rivers. "Hail, then, hail to you all! To the heirdom of heaven be ye welcome! Children no more from this day, but by covenant brothers and sisters! Yet,--for what reason not children? Of such is the kingdom of heaven. Here upon earth an assemblage of children, in heaven one Father, Ruling them all as his household,--forgiving in turn and chastising, That is of human life a picture, as Scripture has taught us. Blest are the pure before God! Upon purity and upon virtue Resteth the Christian Faith: she herself from on high is descended. Strong as a man and pure as a child, is the sum of the doctrine, Which the Divine One taught, and suffered and died on the cross for Oh, as ye wander this day from childhood's sacred asylum Downward and ever downward, and deeper in Age's chill valley, Oh, how soon will ye come,--too soon!--and long to turn backward Up to its hill-tops again, to the sun-illumined, where Judgment Stood like a father before you, and Pardon, clad like a mother, Gave you her hand to kiss, and the loving heart was for given Life was a play and your hands grasped after the roses of heaven! Seventy years have I lived already; the Father eternal Gave rue gladness and care; but the loveliest hours of existence, When I have steadfastly gazed in their eyes, I have instantly known them, Known them all again;--the were my childhood's acquaintance. Therefore take from henceforth, as guides in the paths of existence, Prayer, with her eyes raised to heaven, and Innocence, bride of man's childhood Innocence, child beloved, is a guest from the world of the blessed, Beautiful, and in her hand a lily; on life's roaring billows Swings she in safety, she heedeth them not in the ship she is sleeping. Calmly she gazes around in the turmoil of men; in the desert Angels descend and minister unto her; she herself knoweth Naught of her glorious attendance; but follows faithful and humble, Follows so long as she may her friend; oh do not reject her, For she cometh from God and she holdeth the keys of the heavens. Prayer is Innocence' friend; and willingly flieth incessant 'Twixt the earth and the sky, the carrier-pigeon of heaven, Son of Eternity, fettered in Time, and an exile, the Spirit Tugs at his chains evermore, and struggles like flame ever upward. Still he recalls with emotion his Father's manifold mansions, Thinks of the land of his fathers, where blossomed more freshly the flowerets, Shone a more beautiful sun, and he played with the winged angels. Then grows the earth too narrow, too close; and homesick for heaven Longs the wanderer again; and the Spirit's longings are worship; Worship is called his most beautiful hour, and its tongue is entreaty. Aid when the infinite burden of life descendeth upon us, Crushes to earth our hope, and, under the earth, in the graveyard, Then it is good to pray unto God; for his sorrowiug children Turns he ne'er from his door, but he heals and helps and consoles them, Yet is it better to pray when all things are prosperous with us, Pray in fortunate days, for life's most beautiful Fortune Kneels before the Eternal's throne; and with hands interfolded, Praises thankful and moved the only giver of blessings. Or do ye know, ye children, one blessing that comes not from Heaven? What has mankind forsooth, the poor! that it has not received? Therefore, fall in the dust and pray! The seraphs adoring Cover with pinions six their face in the glory of him who Hung his masonry pendent on naught, when the world be created. Earth declareth his might, and the firmament utters his glory. Races blossom and die, and stars fall downward from heaven, Downward like withered leaves; at the last stroke of midnight, millenniums Lay themselves down at his feet, and he sees them, but counts them as nothing Who shall stand in his presence? The wrath of the judge is terrific, Casting the insolent down at a glance. When he speaks in his anger Hillocks skip like the kid, and mountains leap like the roebuck. Yet,--why are ye afraid, ye children? This awful avenger, Ah! is a merciful God! God's voice was not in the earthquake, Not in the fire, nor the storm, but it was in the whispering breezes. Love is the root of creation; God's essence; worlds without number Lie in his bosom like children; he made them for this purpose only. Only to love and to be loved again, he breathed forth his spirit Into the slumbering dust, and upright standing, it laid its Hand on its heart, and felt it was warm with a flame out of heaven. Quench, oh quench not that flame! It is the breath of your being. Love is life, but hatred is death. Not father, nor mother Loved you, as God has loved you; for 't was that you may be happy Gave he his only Son. When he bowed down his head in the death-hour Solemnized Love its triumph; the sacrifice then was completed. Lo! then was rent on a sudden the veil of the temple, dividing Earth and heaven apart, and the dead from their sepulchres rising Whispered with pallid lips and low in the ears of each other Th' answer, but dreamed of before, to creation's enigma,--Atonement! Depths of Love are Atonement's depths, for Love is Atonement. Therefore, child of mortality, love thou the merciful Father; Wish what the Holy One wishes, and not from fear, but affection Fear is the virtue of slaves; but the heart that loveth is willing Perfect was before God, and perfect is Love, and Love only. Lovest thou God as thou oughtest, then lovest thou likewise thy brethren: One is the sun in heaven, and one, only one, is Love also. Bears not each human figure the godlike stamp on his forehead Readest thou not in his face thou origin? Is he not sailing Lost like thyself on an ocean unknown, and is he not guided By the same stars that guide thee? Why shouldst thou hate then thy brother? Hateth he thee, forgive! For 't is sweet to stammer one letter Of the Eternal's language;--on earth it is called Forgiveness! Knowest thou Him, who forgave, with the crown of thorns on his temples? Earnestly prayed for his foes, for his murderers? Say, dost thou know him? Ah! thou confessest his name, so follow likewise his example, Think of thy brother no ill, but throw a veil over his failings, Guide the erring aright; for the good, the heavenly shepherd Took the lost lamb in his arms, and bore it back to its mother. This is the fruit of Love, and it is by its fruits that we know it. Love is the creature's welfare, with God; but Love among mortals Is but an endless sigh! He longs, and endures, and stands waiting, Suffers and yet rejoices, and smiles with tears on his eyelids. Hope,--so is called upon earth, his recompense, Hope, the befriending, Does what she can, for she points evermore up to heaven, and faithful Plunges her anchor's peak in the depths of the grave, and beneath it Paints a more beautiful world, a dim, but a sweet play of shadows! Races, better than we, have leaned on her wavering promise, Having naught else but Hope. Then praise we our Father in heaven, Him, who has given us more; for to us has Hope been transfigured, Groping no longer in night; she is Faith, she is living assurance. Faith is enlightened Hope; she is light, is the eye of affection, Dreams of the longing interprets, and carves their visions in marble. Faith is the sun of life; and her countenance shines like the Hebrew's, For she has looked upon God; the heaven on its stable foundation Draws she with chains down to earth, and the New Jerusalem sinketh Splendid with portals twelve in golden vapors descending. There enraptured she wanders. and looks at the figures majestic, Fears not the winged crowd, in the midst of them all is her homestead. Therefore love and believe; for works will follow spontaneous Even as day does the sun; the Right from the Good is an offspring, Love in a bodily shape; and Christian works are no more than Animate Love and faith, as flowers are the animate Springtide. Works do follow us all unto God; there stand and bear witness Not what they seemed,--but what they were only. Blessed is he who Hears their confession secure; they are mute upon earth until death's hand Opens the mouth of the silent. Ye children, does Death e'er alarm you? Death is the brother of Love, twin-brother is he, and is only More austere to behold. With a kiss upon lips that are fading Takes he the soul and departs, and, rocked in the arms of affection, Places the ransomed child, new born, 'fore the face of its father. Sounds of his coming already I hear,--see dimly his pinions, Swart as the night, but with stars strewn upon them! I fear not before him. Death is only release, and in mercy is mute. On his bosom Freer breathes, in its coolness, my breast; and face to face standing Look I on God as he is, a sun unpolluted by vapors; Look on the light of the ages I loved, the spirits majestic, Nobler, better than I; they stand by the throne all transfigured, Vested in white, and with harps of gold, and are singing an anthem, Writ in the climate of heaven, in the language spoken by angels. You, in like manner, ye children beloved, he one day shall gather, Never forgets he the weary;--then welcome, ye loved ones, hereafter! Meanwhile forget not the keeping of vows, forget not the promise, Wander from holiness onward to holiness; earth shall ye heed not Earth is but dust and heaven is light; I have pledged you to heaven. God of the universe, hear me! thou fountain of Love everlasting, Hark to the voice of thy servant! I send up my prayer to thy heaven! Let me hereafter not miss at thy throne one spirit of all these, Whom thou hast given me here! I have loved them all like a father. May they bear witness for me, that I taught them the way of salvation, Faithful, so far as I knew, of thy word; again may they know me, Fall on their Teacher's breast, and before thy face may I place them, Pure as they now are, but only more tried, and exclaiming with gladness, Father, lo! I am here, and the children, whom thou hast given me!" Weeping he spake in these words; and now at the beck of the old man Knee against knee they knitted a wreath round the altar's enclosure. Kneeling he read then the prayers of the consecration, and softly With him the children read; at the close, with tremulous accents, Asked he the peace of Heaven, a benediction upon them. Now should have ended his task for the day; the following Sunday Was for the young appointed to eat of the Lord's holy Supper. Sudden, as struck from the clouds, stood the Teacher silent and laid his Hand on his forehead, and cast his looks upward; while thoughts high and holy, Flew through the midst of his soul, and his eyes glanced with wonderful brightness. "On the next Sunday, who knows! perhaps I shall rest in the graveyard! Some one perhaps of yourselves, a lily broken untimely, Bow down his head to the earth; why delay I? the hour is accomplished, Warm is the heart;--I will! for to-day grows the harvest of heaven. What I began accomplish I now; what failing therein is I, the old man, will answer to God and the reverend father. Say to me only, ye children, ye denizens new-come in heaven, Are ye ready this day to eat of the bread of Atonement? What it denoteth, that know ye full well, I have told it you often. Of the new covenant symbol it is, of Atonement a token, Stablished between earth and heaven. Man by his sins and transgressions Far has wandered from God, from his essence. 'T was in the beginning Fast by the Tree of Knowledge he fell, and it hangs its crown o'er the Fall to this day; in the Thought is the Fall; in the Heart the Atonement. Infinite is the fall,--the Atonement infinite likewise. See! behind me, as far as the old man remembers, and forward, Far as Hope in her flight can reach with her wearied pinions, Sin and Atonement incessant go through the lifetime of mortals. Sin is brought forth full-grown; but Atonement sleeps in our bosoms Still as the cradled babe; and dreams of heaven and of angels, Cannot awake to sensation; is like the tones in the harp's strings, Spirits imprisoned, that wait evermore the deliverer's finger. Therefore, ye children beloved, descended the Prince of Atonement, Woke the slumberer from sleep, and she stands now with eyes all resplendent. Bright as the vault of the sky, and battles with Sin and o'ercomes her. Downward to earth he came and, transfigured, thence reascended, Not from the heart in like wise, for there he still lives in the Spirit, Loves and atones evermore. So long as Time is, is Atonement. Therefore with reverence take this day her visible token. Tokens are dead if the things live not. The light everlasting Unto the blind is not, but is born of the eye that has vision. Neither in bread nor in wine, but in the heart that is hallowed Lieth forgiveness enshrined; the intention alone of amendment Fruits of the earth ennobles to heavenly things, and removes all Sin and the guerdon of sin. Only Love with his arms wide extended, Penitence wee ping and praying; the Will that is tried, and whose gold flows Purified forth from the flames; in a word, mankind by Atonement Breaketh Atonement's bread, and drinketh Atonement's wine-cup. But he who cometh up hither, unworthy, with hate in his bosom, Scoffing at men and at God, is guilty of Christ's blessed body, And the Redeemer's blood! To himself he eateth and drinketh Death and doom! And from this, preserve us, thou heavenly Father! Are ye ready, ye children, to eat of the bread of Atonement?" Thus with emotion he asked, and together answered the children, "Yes!" with deep sobs interrupted. Then read he the due supplications, Read the Form of Communion, and in chimed the organ and anthem: "O Holy Lamb of God, who takest away our transgressions, Hear us! give us thy peace! have mercy, have mercy upon us!" Th' old man, with trembling hand, and heavenly pearls on his eyelids, Filled now the chalice and paten, and dealt round the mystical symbols. Oh, then seemed it to me as if God, with the broad eye of midday, Clearer looked in at the windows, and all the trees in the church yard Bowed down their summits of green, and the grass on the graves 'gan to shiver But in the children (I noted it well; I knew it) there ran a Tremor of holy rapture along through their ice-cold members. Decked like an altar before them, there stood the green earth, and above it Heaven opened itself, as of old before Stephen; they saw there Radiant in glory the Father, and on his right hand the Redeemer. Under them hear they the clang of harpstrings, and angels from gold clouds Beckon to them like brothers, and fan with their pinions of purple. Closed was the Teacher's task, and with heaven in their hearts and their faces, Up rose the children all, and each bowed him, weeping full sorely, Downward to kiss that reverend hand, but all of them pressed he Moved to his bosom, and laid, with a prayer, his hands full of blessings, Now on the holy breast, and now on the innocent tresses. ******* KING CHRISTIAN A NATIONAL SONG OF DENMARK King Christian stood by the lofty mast In mist and smoke; His sword was hammering so fast, Through Gothic helm and brain it passed; Then sank each hostile hulk and mast, In mist and smoke. "Fly!" shouted they, "fly, he who can! Who braves of Denmark's Christian The stroke?" Nils Juel gave heed to the tempest's roar, Now is the hour! He hoisted his blood-red flag once more, And smote upon the foe full sore, And shouted Loud, through the tempest's roar, "Now is the hour!" "Fly!" shouted they, "for shelter fly! Of Denmark's Juel who can defy The power?" North Sea! a glimpse of Wessel rent Thy murky sky! Then champions to thine arms were sent; Terror and Death glared where he went; From the waves was heard a wail, that rent Thy murky sky! From Denmark, thunders Tordenskiol', Let each to Heaven commend his soul, And fly! Path of the Dane to fame and might! Dark-rolling wave! Receive thy friend, who, scorning flight Goes to meet danger with despite, Proudly as thou the tempest's might Dark-rolling wave! And amid pleasures and alarm; And war and victory, be thine arms My grave! THE ELECTED KNIGHT Sir Oluf he rideth over the plain, Full seven miles broad and seven miles wide, But never, ah never can meet with the man A tilt with him dare ride. He saw under the hillside A Knight full well equipped; His steed was black, his helm was barred; He was riding at full speed. He wore upon his spurs Twelve little golden birds; Anon he spurred his steed with a clang, And there sat all the birds and sang. He wore upon his mail Twelve little golden wheels; Anon in eddies the wild wind blew, And round and round the wheels they flew. He wore before his breast A lance that was poised in rest; And it was sharper than diamond-stone, It made Sir Oluf's heart to groan. He wore upon his helm A wreath of ruddy gold; And that gave him the Maidens Three, The youngest was fair to behold. Sir Oluf questioned the Knight eftsoon If he were come from heaven down; "Art thou Christ of Heaven," quoth he, "So will I yield me unto thee." "I am not Christ the Great, Thou shalt not yield thee yet; I am an Unknown Knight, Three modest Maidens have me bedight." "Art thou a Knight elected, And have three Maidens thee bedight So shalt thou ride a tilt this day, For all the Maidens' honor!" The first tilt they together rode They put their steeds to the test, The second tilt they together rode, They proved their manhood best. The third tilt they together rode, Neither of them would yield; The fourth tilt they together rode, They both fell on the field. Now lie the lords upon the plain, And their blood runs unto death; Now sit the Maidens in the high tower, The youngest sorrows till death. CHILDHOOD BY JENS IMMANUEL BAGGESEN There was a time when I was very small, When my whole frame was but an ell in height; Sweetly, as I recall it, tears do fall, And therefore I recall it with delight. I sported in my tender mother's arms, And rode a-horseback on best father's knee; Alike were sorrows, passions and alarms, And gold, and Greek, and love, unknown to me, Then seemed to me this world far less in size, Likewise it seemed to me less wicked far; Like points in heaven, I saw the stars arise, And longed for wings that I might catch a star. I saw the moon behind the island fade, And thought, "Oh, were I on that island there, I could find out of what the moon is made, Find out how large it is, how round, how fair!" Wondering, I saw God's sun, through western skies, Sink in the ocean's golden lap at night, And yet upon the morrow early rise, And paint the eastern heaven with crimson light; And thought of God, the gracious Heavenly Father, Who made me, and that lovely sun on high, And all those pearls of heaven thick-strung together, Dropped, clustering, from his hand o'er all the sky. With childish reverence, my young lips did say The prayer my pious mother taught to me: "O gentle God! oh, let me strive alway Still to be wise, and good, and follow Thee!" So prayed I for my father and my mother, And for my sister, and for all the town; The king I knew not, and the beggar-brother, Who, bent with age, went, sighing, up and down. They perished, the blithe days of boyhood perished, And all the gladness, all the peace I knew! Now have I but their memory, fondly cherished;-- God! may I never lose that too! FROM THE GERMAN THE HAPPIEST LAND There sat one day in quiet, By an alehouse on the Rhine, Four hale and hearty fellows, And drank the precious wine. The landlord's daughter filled their cups, Around the rustic board Then sat they all so calm and still, And spake not one rude word. But, when the maid departed, A Swabian raised his hand, And cried, all hot and flushed with wine, "Long live the Swabian land! "The greatest kingdom upon earth Cannot with that compare With all the stout and hardy men And the nut-brown maidens there. "Ha!" cried a Saxon, laughing, And dashed his heard with wine; "I had rather live in Laplaud, Than that Swabian land of thine! "The goodliest land on all this earth, It is the Saxon land There have I as many maidens As fingers on this hand!" "Hold your tongues! both Swabian and Saxon!" A bold Bohemian cries; "If there's a heaven upon this earth, In Bohemia it lies. "There the tailor blows the flute, And the cobbler blows the horn, And the miner blows the bugle, Over mountain gorge and bourn." . . . . . . . . . . . . . . And then the landlord's daughter Up to heaven raised her hand, And said, "Ye may no more contend,-- There lies the happiest land!" THE WAVE BY CHRISTOPH AUGUST TIEDGE "Whither, thou turbid wave? Whither, with so much haste, As if a thief wert thou?" "I am the Wave of Life, Stained with my margin's dust; From the struggle and the strife Of the narrow stream I fly To the Sea's immensity, To wash from me the slime Of the muddy banks of Time." THE DEAD BY ERNST STOCKMANN How they so softly rest, All they the holy ones, Unto whose dwelling-place Now doth my soul draw near! How they so softly rest, All in their silent graves, Deep to corruption Slowly don-sinking! And they no longer weep, Here, where complaint is still! And they no longer feel, Here, where all gladness flies! And, by the cypresses Softly o'ershadowed Until the Angel Calls them, they slumber! THE BIRD AND THE SHIP BY WILHELM MULLER "The rivers rush into the sea, By castle and town they go; The winds behind them merrily Their noisy trumpets blow. "The clouds are passing far and high, We little birds in them play; And everything, that can sing and fly, Goes with us, and far away. "I greet thee, bonny boat! Whither, or whence, With thy fluttering golden band?"-- "I greet thee, little bird! To the wide sea I haste from the narrow land. "Full and swollen is every sail; I see no longer a hill, I have trusted all to the sounding gale, And it will not let me stand still. "And wilt thou, little bird, go with us? Thou mayest stand on the mainmast tall, For full to sinking is my house With merry companions all."-- "I need not and seek not company, Bonny boat, I can sing all alone; For the mainmast tall too heavy am I, Bonny boat, I have wings of my own. "High over the sails, high over the mast, Who shall gainsay these joys? When thy merry companions are still, at last, Thou shalt hear the sound of my voice. "Who neither may rest, nor listen may, God bless them every one! I dart away, in the bright blue day, And the golden fields of the sun. "Thus do I sing my merry song, Wherever the four winds blow; And this same song, my whole life long, Neither Poet nor Printer may know.' WHITHER? BY WILHELM MULLER I heard a brooklet gushing From its rocky fountain near, Down into the valley rushing, So fresh and wondrous clear. I know not what came o'er me, Nor who the counsel gave; But I must hasten downward, All with my pilgrim-stave; Downward, and ever farther, And ever the brook beside; And ever fresher murmured, And ever clearer, the tide. Is this the way I was going? Whither, O brooklet, say I Thou hast, with thy soft murmur, Murmured my senses away. What do I say of a murmur? That can no murmur be; 'T is the water-nymphs, that are singing Their roundelays under me. Let them sing, my friend, let them murmur, And wander merrily near; The wheels of a mill are going In every brooklet clear. BEWARE! (HUT DU DICH!) I know a maiden fair to see, Take care! She can both false and friendly be, Beware! Beware! Trust her not, She is fooling thee! She has two eyes, so soft and brown, Take care! She gives a side-glance and looks down, Beware! Beware! Trust her not, She is fooling thee! And she has hair of a golden hue, Take care! And what she says, it is not true, Beware! Beware! Trust her not, She is fooling thee! She has a bosom as white as snow, Take care! She knows how much it is best to show, Beware! Beware! Trust her not, She is fooling thee! She gives thee a garland woven fair, Take care! It is a fool's-cap for thee to wear, Beware! Beware! Trust her not, She is fooling thee! SONG OF THE BELL Bell! thou soundest merrily, When the bridal party To the church doth hie! Bell! thou soundest solemnly. When, on Sabbath morning, Fields deserted lie! Bell! thou soundest merrily; Tellest thou at evening, Bed-time draweth nigh! Bell! thou soundest mournfully. Tellest thou the bitter Parting hath gone by! Say! how canst thou mourn? How canst thou rejoice? Thou art but metal dull! And yet all our sorrowings, And all our rejoicings, Thou dost feel them all! God hath wonders many, Which we cannot fathom, Placed within thy form! When the heart is sinking, Thou alone canst raise it, Trembling in the storm! THE CASTLE BY THE SEA BY JOHANN LUDWIG UHLAND "Hast thou seen that lordly castle, That Castle by the Sea? Golden and red above it The clouds float gorgeously. "And fain it would stoop downward To the mirrored wave below; And fain it would soar upward In the evening's crimson glow." "Well have I seen that castle, That Castle by the Sea, And the moon above it standing, And the mist rise solemnly." "The winds and the waves of ocean, Had they a merry chime? Didst thou hear, from those lofty chambers, The harp and the minstrel's rhyme?" "The winds and the waves of ocean, They rested quietly, But I heard on the gale a sound of wail, And tears came to mine eye." "And sawest thou on the turrets The King and his royal bride? And the wave of their crimson mantles? And the golden crown of pride? "Led they not forth, in rapture, A beauteous maiden there? Resplendent as the morning sun, Beaming with golden hair?" "Well saw I the ancient parents, Without the crown of pride; They were moving slow, in weeds of woe, No maiden was by their side!" THE BLACK KNIGHT BY JOHANN LUDWIG UHLAND 'T was Pentecost, the Feast of Gladness, When woods and fields put off all sadness. Thus began the King and spake: "So from the halls Of ancient hofburg's walls, A luxuriant Spring shall break." Drums and trumpets echo loudly, Wave the crimson banners proudly, From balcony the King looked on; In the play of spears, Fell all the cavaliers, Before the monarch's stalwart son. To the barrier of the fight Rode at last a sable Knight. "Sir Knight! your name and scutcheon, say!" "Should I speak it here, Ye would stand aghast with fear; I am a Prince of mighty sway!" When he rode into the lists, The arch of heaven grew black with mists, And the castle 'gan to rock; At the first blow, Fell the youth from saddle-bow, Hardly rises from the shock. Pipe and viol call the dances, Torch-light through the high halls glances; Waves a mighty shadow in; With manner bland Doth ask the maiden's hand, Doth with her the dance begin. Danced in sable iron sark, Danced a measure weird and dark, Coldly clasped her limbs around; From breast and hair Down fall from her the fair Flowerets, faded, to the ground. To the sumptuous banquet came Every Knight and every Dame, 'Twixt son and daughter all distraught, With mournful mind The ancient King reclined, Gazed at them in silent thought. Pale the children both did look, But the guest a beaker took: "Golden wine will make you whole!" The children drank, Gave many a courteous thank: "O, that draught was very cool!" Each the father's breast embraces, Son and daughter; and their faces Colorless grow utterly; Whichever way Looks the fear-struck father gray, He beholds his children die. "Woe! the blessed children both Takest thou in the joy of youth; Take me, too, the joyless father!" Spake the grim Guest, From his hollow, cavernous breast; "Roses in the spring I gather!" SONG OF THE SILENT LAND BY JOHAN GAUDENZ VON SALISSEEWIS Into the Silent Land! Ah! who shall lead us thither? Clouds in the evening sky more darkly gather, And shattered wrecks lie thicker on the strand. Who leads us with a gentle hand Thither, O thither, Into the Silent Land? Into the Silent Land! To you, ye boundless regions Of all perfection! Tender morning-visions Of beauteous souls! The Future's pledge and band! Who in Life's battle firm doth stand, Shall bear Hope's tender blossoms Into the Silent Land! O Land! O Land! For all the broken-hearted The mildest herald by our fate allotted, Beckons, and with inverted torch doth stand To lead us with a gentle hand To the land of the great Departed, Into the Silent Land! THE LUCK OF EDENHALL BY JOHAN LUDWIG UHLAND OF Edenhall, the youthful Lord Bids sound the festal trumpet's call; He rises at the banquet board, And cries, 'mid the drunken revellers all, "Now bring me the Luck of Edenhall!" The butler hears the words with pain, The house's oldest seneschal, Takes slow from its silken cloth again The drinking-glass of crystal tall; They call it The Luck of Edenhall. Then said the Lord: "This glass to praise, Fill with red wine from Portugal!" The graybeard with trembling hand obeys; A purple light shines over all, It beams from the Luck of Edenhall. Then speaks the Lord, and waves it light: "This glass of flashing crystal tall Gave to my sires the Fountain-Sprite; She wrote in it, If this glass doth fall, Farewell then, O Luck of Edenhall! "'T was right a goblet the Fate should be Of the joyous race of Edenhall! Deep draughts drink we right willingly: And willingly ring, with merry call, Kling! klang! to the Luck of Edenhall!" First rings it deep, and full, and mild, Like to the song of a nightingale Then like the roar of a torrent wild; Then mutters at last like the thunder's fall, The glorious Luck of Edenhall. "For its keeper takes a race of might, The fragile goblet of crystal tall; It has lasted longer than is right; King! klang!--with a harder blow than all Will I try the Luck of Edenhall!" As the goblet ringing flies apart, Suddenly cracks the vaulted hall; And through the rift, the wild flames start; The guests in dust are scattered all, With the breaking Luck of Edenhall! In storms the foe, with fire and sword; He in the night had scaled the wall, Slain by the sword lies the youthful Lord, But holds in his hand the crystal tall, The shattered Luck of Edenhall. On the morrow the butler gropes alone, The graybeard in the desert hall, He seeks his Lord's burnt skeleton, He seeks in the dismal ruin's fall The shards of the Luck of Edenhall. "The stone wall," saith he, "doth fall aside, Down must the stately columns fall; Glass is this earth's Luck and Pride; In atoms shall fall this earthly ball One day like the Luck of Edenhall!" THE TWO LOCKS OF HAIR BY GUSTAV PFIZER A youth, light-hearted and content, I wander through the world Here, Arab-like, is pitched my tent And straight again is furled. Yet oft I dream, that once a wife Close in my heart was locked, And in the sweet repose of life A blessed child I rocked. I wake! Away that dream,--away! Too long did it remain! So long, that both by night and day It ever comes again. The end lies ever in my thought; To a grave so cold and deep The mother beautiful was brought; Then dropt the child asleep. But now the dream is wholly o'er, I bathe mine eyes and see; And wander through the world once more, A youth so light and free. Two locks--and they are wondrous fair-- Left me that vision mild; The brown is from the mother's hair, The blond is from the child. And when I see that lock of gold, Pale grows the evening-red; And when the dark lock I behold, I wish that I were dead. THE HEMLOCK TREE. O hemlock tree! O hemlock tree! how faithful are thy branches! Green not alone in summer time, But in the winter's frost and rime! O hemlock tree! O hemlock tree! how faithful are thy branches! O maiden fair! O maiden fair! how faithless is thy bosom! To love me in prosperity, And leave me in adversity! O maiden fair! O maiden fair! how faithless is thy bosom! The nightingale, the nightingale, thou tak'st for thine example! So long as summer laughs she sings, But in the autumn spreads her wings. The nightingale, the nightingale, thou tak'st for thine example! The meadow brook, the meadow brook, is mirror of thy falsehood! It flows so long as falls the rain, In drought its springs soon dry again. The meadow brook, the meadow brook, is mirror of thy falsehood! ANNIE OF THARAW BY SIMON DACH Annie of Tharaw, my true love of old, She is my life, and my goods, and my gold. Annie of Tharaw, her heart once again To me has surrendered in joy and in pain. Annie of Tharaw, my riches, my good, Thou, O my soul, my flesh, and my blood! Then come the wild weather, come sleet or come snow, We will stand by each other, however it blow. Oppression, and sickness, and sorrow, and pain Shall be to our true love as links to the chain. As the palm-tree standeth so straight and so tall, The more the hail beats, and the more the rains fall,-- So love in our hearts shall grow mighty and strong, Through crosses, through sorrows, through manifold wrong. Shouldst thou be torn from me to wander alone In a desolate land where the sun is scarce known,-- Through forests I'll follow, and where the sea flows, Through ice, and through iron, through armies of foes, Annie of Tharaw, my light and my sun, The threads of our two lives are woven in one. Whate'er I have bidden thee thou hast obeyed, Whatever forbidden thou hast not gainsaid. How in the turmoil of life can love stand, Where there is not one heart, and one mouth, and one hand? Some seek for dissension, and trouble, and strife; Like a dog and a cat live such man and wife. Annie of Tharaw, such is not our love; Thou art my lambkin, my chick, and my dove. Whate'er my desire is, in thine may be seen; I am king of the household, and thou art its queen. It is this, O my Annie, my heart's sweetest rest, That makes of us twain but one soul in one breast. This turns to a heaven the hut where we dwell; While wrangling soon changes a home to a hell. THE STATUE OVER THE CATHEDRAL DOOR BY JULIUS MOSEN Forms of saints and kings are standing The cathedral door above; Yet I saw but one among them Who hath soothed my soul with love. In his mantle,--wound about him, As their robes the sowers wind,-- Bore he swallows and their fledglings, Flowers and weeds of every kind. And so stands he calm and childlike, High in wind and tempest wild; O, were I like him exalted, I would be like him, a child! And my songs,--green leaves and blossoms,-- To the doors of heaven would hear, Calling even in storm and tempest, Round me still these birds of air. THE LEGEND OF THE CROSSBILL BY JULIUS MOSEN On the cross the dying Saviour Heavenward lifts his eyelids calm, Feels, but scarcely feels, a trembling In his pierced and bleeding palm. And by all the world forsaken, Sees he how with zealous care At the ruthless nail of iron A little bird is striving there. Stained with blood and never tiring, With its beak it doth not cease, From the cross 't would free the Saviour, Its Creator's Son release. And the Saviour speaks in mildness: "Blest be thou of all the good! Bear, as token of this moment, Marks of blood and holy rood!" And that bird is called the crossbill; Covered all with blood so clear, In the groves of pine it singeth Songs, like legends, strange to hear. THE SEA HATH ITS PEARLS BY HEINRICH HEINE The sea hath its pearls, The heaven hath its stars; But my heart, my heart, My heart hath its love. Great are the sea and the heaven; Yet greater is my heart, And fairer than pearls and stars Flashes and beams my love. Thou little, youthful maiden, Come unto my great heart; My heart, and the sea, and the heaven Are melting away with love! POETIC APHORISMS FROM THE SINNGEDICHTE OF FRIEDRICH VON LOGAU MONEY Whereunto is money good? Who has it not wants hardihood, Who has it has much trouble and care, Who once has had it has despair. THE BEST MEDICINES Joy and Temperance and Repose Slam the door on the doctor's nose. SIN Man-like is it to fall into sin, Fiend-like is it to dwell therein, Christ-like is it for sin to grieve, God-like is it all sin to leave. POVERTY AND BLINDNESS A blind man is a poor man, and blind a poor man is; For the former seeth no man, and the latter no man sees. LAW OF LIFE Live I, so live I, To my Lord heartily, To my Prince faithfully, To my Neighbor honestly. Die I, so die I. CREEDS Lutheran, Popish, Calvinistic, all these creeds and doctrines three Extant are; but still the doubt is, where Christianity may be. THE RESTLESS HEART A millstone and the human heart are driven ever round; If they have nothing else to grind, they must themselves be ground. CHRISTIAN LOVE Whilom Love was like a tire, and warmth and comfort it bespoke; But, alas! it now is quenched, and only bites us, like the smoke. ART AND TACT Intelligence and courtesy not always are combined; Often in a wooden house a golden room we find. RETRIBUTION Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience he stands waiting, with exactness grinds he all. TRUTH When by night the frogs are croaking, kindle but a torch's fire, Ha! how soon they all are silent! Thus Truth silences the liar. RHYMES If perhaps these rhymes of mine should sound not well in strangers' ears, They have only to bethink them that it happens so with theirs; For so long as words, like mortals, call a fatherland their own, They will be most highly valued where they are best and longest known. SILENT LOVE Who love would seek, Let him love evermore And seldom speak; For in love's domain Silence must reign; Or it brings the heart Smart And pain. BLESSED ARE THE DEAD BY SIMON DACH Oh, how blest are ye whose toils are ended! Who, through death, have unto God ascended! Ye have arisen From the cares which keep us still in prison. We are still as in a dungeon living, Still oppressed with sorrow and misgiving; Our undertakings Are but toils, and troubles, and heart-breakings. Ye meanwhile, are in your chambers sleeping, Quiet, and set free from all our weeping; No cross nor trial Hinders your enjoyments with denial. Christ has wiped away your tears for ever; Ye have that for which we still endeavor. To you are chanted Songs which yet no mortal ear have haunted. Ah! who would not, then, depart with gladness, To inherit heaven for earthly sadness? Who here would languish Longer in bewailing and in anguish? Come, O Christ, and loose the chains that bind us! Lead us forth, and cast this world behind us! With Thee, the Anointed, Finds the soul its joy and rest appointed. WANDERER'S NIGHT-SONGS BY JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE I Thou that from the heavens art, Every pain and sorrow stillest, And the doubly wretched heart Doubly with refreshment fillest, I am weary with contending! Why this rapture and unrest? Peace descending Come, ah, come into my breast! II O'er all the hill-tops Is quiet now, In all the tree-tops Hearest thou Hardly a breath; The birds are asleep in the trees: Wait; soon like these Thou too shalt rest. REMORSE BY AUGUST VON PLATEN How I started up in the night, in the night, Drawn on without rest or reprieval! The streets, with their watchmen, were lost to my sight, As I wandered so light In the night, in the night, Through the gate with the arch mediaeval. The mill-brook rushed from the rocky height, I leaned o'er the bridge in my yearning; Deep under me watched I the waves in their flight, As they glided so light In the night, in the night, Yet backward not one was returning. O'erhead were revolving, so countless and bright, The stars in melodious existence; And with them the moon, more serenely bedight;-- They sparkled so light In the night, in the night, Through the magical, measureless distance. And upward I gazed in the night, in the night, And again on the waves in their fleeting; Ah woe! thou hast wasted thy days in delight, Now silence thou light, In the night, in the night, The remorse in thy heart that is beating. FORSAKEN. Something the heart must have to cherish, Must love and joy and sorrow learn, Something with passion clasp or perish, And in itself to ashes burn. So to this child my heart is clinging, And its frank eyes, with look intense, Me from a world of sin are bringing Back to a world of innocence. Disdain must thou endure forever; Strong may thy heart in danger be! Thou shalt not fail! but ah, be never False as thy father was to me. Never will I forsake thee, faithless, And thou thy mother ne'er forsake, Until her lips are white and breathless, Until in death her eyes shall break. ALLAH BY SIEGFRIED AUGUST MAHLMANN Allah gives light in darkness, Allah gives rest in pain, Cheeks that are white with weeping Allah paints red again. The flowers and the blossoms wither, Years vanish with flying fleet; But my heart will live on forever, That here in sadness beat. Gladly to Allah's dwelling Yonder would I take flight; There will the darkness vanish, There will my eyes have sight. ********** FROM THE ANGLO-SAXON THE GRAVE For thee was a house built Ere thou wast born, For thee was a mould meant Ere thou of mother camest. But it is not made ready, Nor its depth measured, Nor is it seen How long it shall be. Now I bring thee Where thou shalt be; Now I shall measure thee, And the mould afterwards. Thy house is not Highly timbered, It is unhigh and low; When thou art therein, The heel-ways are low, The side-ways unhigh. The roof is built Thy breast full nigh, So thou shalt in mould Dwell full cold, Dimly and dark. Doorless is that house, And dark it is within; There thou art fast detained And Death hath the key. Loathsome is that earth-house, And grim within to dwell. There thou shalt dwell, And worms shall divide thee. Thus thou art laid, And leavest thy friends Thou hast no friend, Who will come to thee, Who will ever see How that house pleaseth thee; Who will ever open The door for thee, And descend after thee; For soon thou art loathsome And hateful to see. BEOWULF'S EXPEDITION TO HEORT. Thus then, much care-worn, The son of Healfden Sorrowed evermore, Nor might the prudent hero His woes avert. The war was too hard, Too loath and longsome, That on the people came, Dire wrath and grim, Of night-woes the worst. This from home heard Higelac's Thane, Good among the Goths, Grendel's deeds. He was of mankind In might the strongest, At that day Of this life, Noble and stalwart. He bade him a sea-ship, A goodly one, prepare. Quoth he, the war-king, Over the swan's road, Seek he would The mighty monarch, Since he wanted men. For him that journey His prudent fellows Straight made ready, Those that loved him. They excited their souls, The omen they beheld. Had the good-man Of the Gothic people Champions chosen, Of those that keenest He might find, Some fifteen men. The sea-wood sought he. The warrior showed, Sea-crafty man! The land-marks, And first went forth. The ship was on the waves, Boat under the cliffs. The barons ready To the prow mounted. The streams they whirled The sea against the sands. The chieftains bore On the naked breast Bright ornaments, War-gear, Goth-like. The men shoved off, Men on their willing way, The bounden wood. Then went over the sea-waves, Hurried by the wind, The ship with foamy neck, Most like a sea-fowl, Till about one hour Of the second day The curved prow Had passed onward So that the sailors The land saw, The shore-cliffs shining, Mountains steep, And broad sea-noses. Then was the sea-sailing Of the Earl at an end. Then up speedily The Weather people On the land went, The sea-bark moored, Their mail-sarks shook, Their war-weeds. God thanked they, That to them the sea-journey Easy had been. Then from the wall beheld The warden of the Scyldings, He who the sea-cliffs Had in his keeping, Bear o'er the balks The bright shields, The war-weapons speedily. Him the doubt disturbed In his mind's thought, What these men might be. Went then to the shore, On his steed riding, The Thane of Hrothgar. Before the host he shook His warden's-staff in hand, In measured words demanded: "What men are ye War-gear wearing, Host in harness, Who thus the brown keel Over the water-street Leading come Hither over the sea? I these boundaries As shore-warden hold, That in the Land of the Danes Nothing loathsome With a ship-crew Scathe us might. . . . Ne'er saw I mightier Earl upon earth Than is your own, Hero in harness. Not seldom this warrior Is in weapons distinguished; Never his beauty belies him, His peerless countenance! Now would I fain Your origin know, Ere ye forth As false spies Into the Land of the Danes Farther fare. Now, ye dwellers afar-off! Ye sailors of the sea! Listen to my One-fold thought. Quickest is best To make known Whence your coming may be." THE SOUL'S COMPLAINT AGAINST THE BODY FROM THE ANGLO-SAXON Much it behoveth Each one of mortals, That he his soul's journey In himself ponder, How deep it may be. When Death cometh, The bonds he breaketh By which were united The soul and the body. Long it is thenceforth Ere the soul taketh From God himself Its woe or its weal; As in the world erst, Even in its earth-vessel, It wrought before. The soul shall come Wailing with loud voice, After a sennight, The soul, to find The body That it erst dwelt in;-- Three hundred winters, Unless ere that worketh The Eternal Lord, The Almighty God, The end of the world. Crieth then, so care-worn, With cold utterance, And speaketh grimly, The ghost to the dust: "Dry dust! thou dreary one! How little didst thou labor for me! In the foulness of earth Thou all wearest away Like to the loam! Little didst thou think How thy soul's journey Would be thereafter, When from the body It should be led forth." FROM THE FRENCH SONG FROM THE PARADISE OF LOVE Hark! hark! Pretty lark! Little heedest thou my pain! But if to these longing arms Pitying Love would yield the charms Of the fair With smiling air, Blithe would beat my heart again. Hark! hark! Pretty lark! Little heedest thou my pain! Love may force me still to bear, While he lists, consuming care; But in anguish Though I languish, Faithful shall my heart remain. Hark! hark! Pretty lark! Little heedest thou my pain! Then cease, Love, to torment me so; But rather than all thoughts forego Of the fair With flaxen hair, Give me back her frowns again. Hark! hark! Pretty lark! Little heedest thou my pain! SONG And whither goest thou, gentle sigh, Breathed so softly in my ear? Say, dost thou bear his fate severe To Love's poor martyr doomed to die? Come, tell me quickly,--do not lie; What secret message bring'st thou here? And whither goest thou, gentle sigh, Breathed so softly in my ear? May heaven conduct thee to thy will And safely speed thee on thy way; This only I would humbly pray,-- Pierce deep,--but oh! forbear to kill. And whither goest thou, gentle sigh, Breathed so softly in my ear? THE RETURN OF SPRING BY CHARLES D'ORLEANS Now Time throws off his cloak again Of ermined frost, and wind, and rain, And clothes him in the embroidery Of glittering sun and clear blue sky. With beast and bird the forest rings, Each in his jargon cries or sings; And Time throws off his cloak again. Of ermined frost, and wind, and rain. River, and fount, and tinkling brook Wear in their dainty livery Drops of silver jewelry; In new-made suit they merry look; And Time throws off his cloak again Of ermined frost, and wind, and rain. SPRING BY CHARLES D'ORLEANS Gentle Spring! in sunshine clad, Well dost thou thy power display! For Winter maketh the light heart sad, And thou, thou makest the sad heart gay. He sees thee, and calls to his gloomy train, The sleet, and the snow, and the wind, and the rain; And they shrink away, and they flee in fear, When thy merry step draws near. Winter giveth the fields and the trees, so old, Their beards of icicles and snow; And the rain, it raineth so fast and cold, We must cower over the embers low; And, snugly housed from the wind and weather, Mope like birds that are changing feather. But the storm retires, and the sky grows clear, When thy merry step draws near. Winter maketh the sun in the gloomy sky Wrap him round with a mantle of cloud; But, Heaven be praised, thy step is nigh; Thou tearest away the mournful shroud, And the earth looks bright, and Winter surly, Who has toiled for naught both late and early, Is banished afar by the new-born year, When thy merry step draws near. THE CHILD ASLEEP BY CLOTILDE DE SURVILLE Sweet babe! true portrait of thy father's face, Sleep on the bosom that thy lips have pressed! Sleep, little one; and closely, gently place Thy drowsy eyelid on thy mother's breast. Upon that tender eye, my little friend, Soft sleep shall come, that cometh not to me! I watch to see thee, nourish thee, defend; 'T is sweet to watch for thee, alone for thee! His arms fall down; sleep sits upon his brow; His eye is closed; he sleeps, nor dreams of harm. Wore not his cheek the apple's ruddy glow, Would you not say he slept on Death's cold arm? Awake, my boy! I tremble with affright! Awake, and chase this fatal thought! Unclose Thine eye but for one moment on the light! Even at the price of thine, give me repose! Sweet error! he but slept, I breathe again; Come, gentle dreams, the hour of sleep beguile! O, when shall he, for whom I sigh in vain, Beside me watch to see thy waking smile? DEATH OF ARCHBISHOP TURPIN FROM THE CHANSON DE ROLAND The Archbishop, whom God loved in high degree, Beheld his wounds all bleeding fresh and free; And then his cheek more ghastly grew and wan, And a faint shudder through his members ran. Upon the battle-field his knee was bent; Brave Roland saw, and to his succor went, Straightway his helmet from his brow unlaced, And tore the shining hauberk from his breast. Then raising in his arms the man of God, Gently he laid him on the verdant sod. "Rest, Sire," he cried,--"for rest thy suffering needs." The priest replied, "Think but of warlike deeds! The field is ours; well may we boast this strife! But death steals on,--there is no hope of life; In paradise, where Almoners live again, There are our couches spread, there shall we rest from pain." Sore Roland grieved; nor marvel I, alas! That thrice he swooned upon the thick green grass. When he revived, with a loud voice cried he, "O Heavenly Father! Holy Saint Marie! Why lingers death to lay me in my grave! Beloved France! how have the good and brave Been torn from thee, and left thee weak and poor!" Then thoughts of Aude, his lady-love, came o'er His spirit, and he whispered soft and slow, "My gentle friend!--what parting full of woe! Never so true a liegeman shalt thou see;-- Whate'er my fate, Christ's benison on thee! Christ, who did save from realms of woe beneath, The Hebrew Prophets from the second death." Then to the Paladins, whom well he knew, He went, and one by one unaided drew To Turpin's side, well skilled in ghostly lore;-- No heart had he to smile, but, weeping sore, He blessed them in God's name, with faith that He Would soon vouchsafe to them a glad eternity. The Archbishop, then, on whom God's benison rest, Exhausted, bowed his head upon his breast;-- His mouth was full of dust and clotted gore, And many a wound his swollen visage bore. Slow beats his heart, his panting bosom heaves, Death comes apace,--no hope of cure relieves. Towards heaven he raised his dying hands and prayed That God, who for our sins was mortal made, Born of the Virgin, scorned and crucified, In paradise would place him by His side. Then Turpin died in service of Charlon, In battle great and eke great orison;-- 'Gainst Pagan host alway strong champion; God grant to him His holy benison. THE BLIND GIRL OF CASTEL CUILLE BY JACQUES JASMIN Only the Lowland tongue of Scotland might Rehearse this little tragedy aright; Let me attempt it with an English quill; And take, O Reader, for the deed the will. I At the foot of the mountain height Where is perched Castel Cuille, When the apple, the plum, and the almond tree In the plain below were growing white, This is the song one might perceive On a Wednesday morn of Saint Joseph's Eve: "The roads should blossom, the roads should bloom, So fair a bride shall leave her home! Should blossom and bloom with garlands gay, So fair a bride shall pass to-day!" This old Te Deum, rustic rites attending, Seemed from the clouds descending; When lo! a merry company Of rosy village girls, clean as the eye, Each one with her attendant swain, Came to the cliff, all singing the same strain; Resembling there, so near unto the sky, Rejoicing angels, that kind Heaven has sent For their delight and our encouragement. Together blending, And soon descending The narrow sweep Of the hillside steep, They wind aslant Towards Saint Amant, Through leafy alleys Of verdurous valleys With merry sallies Singing their chant: "The roads should blossom, the roads should bloom, So fair a bride shall leave her home! Should blossom and bloom with garlands gay, So fair a bride shall pass to-day! It is Baptiste, and his affianced maiden, With garlands for the bridal laden! The sky was blue; without one cloud of gloom, The sun of March was shining brightly, And to the air the freshening wind gave lightly Its breathings of perfume. When one beholds the dusky hedges blossom, A rustic bridal, oh! how sweet it is! To sounds of joyous melodies, That touch with tenderness the trembling bosom, A band of maidens Gayly frolicking, A band of youngsters Wildly rollicking! Kissing, Caressing, With fingers pressing, Till in the veriest Madness of mirth, as they dance, They retreat and advance, Trying whose laugh shall be loudest and merriest; While the bride, with roguish eyes, Sporting with them, now escapes and cries: "Those who catch me Married verily This year shall be!" And all pursue with eager haste, And all attain what they pursue, And touch her pretty apron fresh and new, And the linen kirtle round her waist. Meanwhile, whence comes it that among These youthful maidens fresh and fair, So joyous, with such laughing air, Baptiste stands sighing, with silent tongue? And yet the bride is fair and young! Is it Saint Joseph would say to us all, That love, o'er-hasty, precedeth a fall? O no! for a maiden frail, I trow, Never bore so lofty a brow! What lovers! they give not a single caress! To see them so careless and cold to-day, These are grand people, one would say. What ails Baptiste? what grief doth him oppress? It is, that half-way up the hill, In yon cottage, by whose walls Stand the cart-house and the stalls, Dwelleth the blind orphan still, Daughter of a veteran old; And you must know, one year ago, That Margaret, the young and tender, Was the village pride and splendor, And Baptiste her lover bold. Love, the deceiver, them ensnared; For them the altar was prepared; But alas! the summer's blight, The dread disease that none can stay, The pestilence that walks by night, Took the young bride's sight away. All at the father's stern command was changed; Their peace was gone, but not their love estranged. Wearied at home, erelong the lover fled; Returned but three short days ago, The golden chain they round him throw, He is enticed, and onward led To marry Angela, and yet Is thinking ever of Margaret. Then suddenly a maiden cried, "Anna, Theresa, Mary, Kate! Here comes the cripple Jane!" And by a fountain's side A woman, bent and gray with years, Under the mulberry-trees appears, And all towards her run, as fleet As had they wings upon their feet. It is that Jane, the cripple Jane, Is a soothsayer, wary and kind. She telleth fortunes, and none complain. She promises one a village swain, Another a happy wedding-day, And the bride a lovely boy straightway. All comes to pass as she avers; She never deceives, she never errs. But for this once the village seer Wears a countenance severe, And from beneath her eyebrows thin and white Her two eyes flash like cannons bright Aimed at the bridegroom in waistcoat blue, Who, like a statue, stands in view; Changing color as well he might, When the beldame wrinkled and gray Takes the young bride by the hand, And, with the tip of her reedy wand Making the sign of the cross, doth say:-- "Thoughtless Angela, beware! Lest, when thou weddest this false bridegroom, Thou diggest for thyself a tomb!" And she was silent; and the maidens fair Saw from each eye escape a swollen tear; But on a little streamlet silver-clear, What are two drops of turbid rain? Saddened a moment, the bridal train Resumed the dance and song again; The bridegroom only was pale with fear;-- And down green alleys Of verdurous valleys, With merry sallies, They sang the refrain:-- "The roads should blossom, the roads should bloom, So fair a bride shall leave her home! Should blossom and bloom with garlands gay, So fair a bride shall pass to-day!" II And by suffering worn and weary, But beautiful as some fair angel yet, Thus lamented Margaret, In her cottage lone and dreary;-- "He has arrived! arrived at last! Yet Jane has named him not these three days past; Arrived! yet keeps aloof so far! And knows that of my night he is the star! Knows that long months I wait alone, benighted, And count the moments since he went away! Come! keep the promise of that happier day, That I may keep the faith to thee I plighted! What joy have I without thee? what delight? Grief wastes my life, and makes it misery; Day for the others ever, but for me Forever night! forever night! When he is gone 't is dark! my soul is sad! I suffer! O my God! come, make me glad. When he is near, no thoughts of day intrude; Day has blue heavens, but Baptiste has blue eyes! Within them shines for me a heaven of love, A heaven all happiness, like that above, No more of grief! no more of lassitude! Earth I forget,--and heaven, and all distresses, When seated by my side my hand he presses; But when alone, remember all! Where is Baptiste? he hears not when I call! A branch of ivy, dying on the ground, I need some bough to twine around! In pity come! be to my suffering kind! True love, they say, in grief doth more abound! What then--when one is blind? "Who knows? perhaps I am forsaken! Ah! woe is me! then bear me to my grave! O God! what thoughts within me waken! Away! he will return! I do but rave! He will return! I need not fear! He swore it by our Saviour dear; He could not come at his own will; Is weary, or perhaps is ill! Perhaps his heart, in this disguise, Prepares for me some sweet surprise! But some one comes! Though blind, my heart can see! And that deceives me not! 't is he! 't is he!" And the door ajar is set, And poor, confiding Margaret Rises, with outstretched arms, but sightless eyes; 'T is only Paul, her brother, who thus cries:-- "Angela the bride has passed! I saw the wedding guests go by; Tell me, my sister, why were we not asked? For all are there but you and I!" "Angela married! and not send To tell her secret unto me! O, speak! who may the bridegroom be?" "My sister, 't is Baptiste, thy friend!" A cry the blind girl gave, but nothing said; A milky whiteness spreads upon her cheeks; An icy hand, as heavy as lead, Descending, as her brother speaks, Upon her heart, that has ceased to beat, Suspends awhile its life and heat. She stands beside the boy, now sore distressed, A wax Madonna as a peasant dressed. At length, the bridal song again Brings her back to her sorrow and pain. "Hark! the joyous airs are ringing! Sister, dost thou hear them singing? How merrily they laugh and jest! Would we were bidden with the rest! I would don my hose of homespun gray, And my doublet of linen striped and gay; Perhaps they will come; for they do not wed Till to-morrow at seven o'clock, it is said!" "I know it!" answered Margaret; Whom the vision, with aspect black as jet, Mastered again; and its hand of ice Held her heart crushed, as in a vice! "Paul, be not sad! 'T is a holiday; To-morrow put on thy doublet gay! But leave me now for a while alone." Away, with a hop and a jump, went Paul, And, as he whistled along the hall, Entered Jane, the crippled crone. "Holy Virgin! what dreadful heat! I am faint, and weary, and out of breath! But thou art cold,--art chill as death; My little friend! what ails thee, sweet?" "Nothing! I heard them singing home the bride; And, as I listened to the song, I thought my turn would come erelong, Thou knowest it is at Whitsuntide. Thy cards forsooth can never lie, To me such joy they prophesy, Thy skill shall be vaunted far and wide When they behold him at my side. And poor Baptiste, what sayest thou? It must seem long to him;--methinks I see him now!" Jane, shuddering, her hand doth press: "Thy love I cannot all approve; We must not trust too much to happiness;-- Go, pray to God, that thou mayst love him less!" "The more I pray, the more I love! It is no sin, for God is on my side!" It was enough; and Jane no more replied. Now to all hope her heart is barred and cold; But to deceive the beldame old She takes a sweet, contented air; Speak of foul weather or of fair, At every word the maiden smiles! Thus the beguiler she beguiles; So that, departing at the evening's close, She says, "She may be saved! she nothing knows!" Poor Jane, the cunning sorceress! Now that thou wouldst, thou art no prophetess! This morning, in the fulness of thy heart, Thou wast so, far beyond thine art! III Now rings the bell, nine times reverberating, And the white daybreak, stealing up the sky, Sees in two cottages two maidens waiting, How differently! Queen of a day, by flatterers caressed, The one puts on her cross and crown, Decks with a huge bouquet her breast, And flaunting, fluttering up and down, Looks at herself, and cannot rest, The other, blind, within her little room, Has neither crown nor flower's perfume; But in their stead for something gropes apart, That in a drawer's recess doth lie, And, 'neath her bodice of bright scarlet dye, Convulsive clasps it to her heart. The one, fantastic, light as air, 'Mid kisses ringing, And joyous singing, Forgets to say her morning prayer! The other, with cold drops upon her brow, Joins her two hands, and kneels upon the floor, And whispers, as her brother opes the door, "O God! forgive me now!" And then the orphan, young and blind, Conducted by her brother's hand, Towards the church, through paths unscanned, With tranquil air, her way doth wind. Odors of laurel, making her faint and pale, Round her at times exhale, And in the sky as yet no sunny ray, But brumal vapors gray. Near that castle, fair to see, Crowded with sculptures old, in every part, Marvels of nature and of art, And proud of its name of high degree, A little chapel, almost bare At the base of the rock, is builded there; All glorious that it lifts aloof, Above each jealous cottage roof, Its sacred summit, swept by autumn gales, And its blackened steeple high in air, Round which the osprey screams and sails. "Paul, lay thy noisy rattle by!" Thus Margaret said. "Where are we? we ascend!" "Yes; seest thou not our journey's end? Hearest not the osprey from the belfry cry? The hideous bird, that brings ill luck, we know! Dost thou remember when our father said, The night we watched beside his bed, 'O daughter, I am weak and low; Take care of Paul; I feel that I am dying!' And thou, and he, and I, all fell to crying? Then on the roof the osprey screamed aloud; And here they brought our father in his shroud. There is his grave; there stands the cross we set; Why dost thou clasp me so, dear Margaret? Come in! The bride will be here soon: Thou tremblest! O my God! thou art going to swoon!" She could no more,--the blind girl, weak and weary! A voice seemed crying from that grave so dreary, "What wouldst thou do, my daughter?"--and she started, And quick recoiled, aghast, faint-hearted; But Paul, impatient, urges evermore Her steps towards the open door; And when, beneath her feet, the unhappy maid Crushes the laurel near the house immortal, And with her head, as Paul talks on again, Touches the crown of filigrane Suspended from the low-arched portal, No more restrained, no more afraid, She walks, as for a feast arrayed, And in the ancient chapel's sombre night They both are lost to sight. At length the bell, With booming sound, Sends forth, resounding round. Its hymeneal peal o'er rock and down the dell. It is broad day, with sunshine and with rain; And yet the guests delay not long, For soon arrives the bridal train, And with it brings the village throng. In sooth, deceit maketh no mortal gay, For lo! Baptiste on this triumphant day, Mute as an idiot, sad as yester-morning, Thinks only of the beldame's words of warning. And Angela thinks of her cross, I wis; To be a bride is all! The pretty lisper Feels her heart swell to hear all round her whisper, "How beautiful! how beautiful she is!". But she must calm that giddy head, For already the Mass is said; At the holy table stands the priest; The wedding ring is blessed; Baptiste receives it; Ere on the finger of the bride he leaves it, He must pronounce one word at least! 'T is spoken; and sudden at the grooms-man's side "'T is he!" a well-known voice has cried. And while the wedding guests all hold their breath, Opes the confessional, and the blind girl, see! "Baptiste," she said, "since thou hast wished my death, As holy water be my blood for thee!" And calmly in the air a knife suspended! Doubtless her guardian angel near attended, For anguish did its work so well, That, ere the fatal stroke descended, Lifeless she fell! At eve instead of bridal verse, The De Profundis filled the air; Decked with flowers a simple hearse To the churchyard forth they bear; Village girls in robes of snow Follow, weeping as they go; Nowhere was a smile that day, No, ah no! for each one seemed to say:-- "The road should mourn and be veiled in gloom, So fair a corpse shall leave its home! Should mourn and should weep, ah, well-away! So fair a corpse shall pass to-day!" A CHRISTMAS CAROL FROM THE NOEI BOURGUIGNON DE GUI BAROZAI I hear along our street Pass the minstrel throngs; Hark! they play so sweet, On their hautboys, Christmas songs! Let us by the fire Ever higher Sing them till the night expire! In December ring Every day the chimes; Loud the gleemen sing In the streets their merry rhymes. Let us by the fire Ever higher Sing them till the night expire. Shepherds at the grange, Where the Babe was born, Sang, with many a change, Christmas carols until morn. Let us by the fire Ever higher Sing them till the night expire! These good people sang Songs devout and sweet; While the rafters rang, There they stood with freezing feet. Let us by the fire Ever higher Sing them till the night expire. Nuns in frigid veils At this holy tide, For want of something else, Christmas songs at times have tried. Let us by the fire Ever higher Sing them fill the night expire! Washerwomen old, To the sound they beat, Sing by rivers cold, With uncovered heads and feet. Let us by the fire Ever higher Sing them till the night expire. Who by the fireside stands Stamps his feet and sings; But he who blows his hands Not so gay a carol brings. Let us by the fire Ever higher Sing them till the night expire! CONSOLATION To M. Duperrier, Gentleman of Aix in Provence, on the Death of his Daughter. BY FRANCOISE MALHERBE Will then, Duperrier, thy sorrow be eternal? And shall the sad discourse Whispered within thy heart, by tenderness paternal, Only augment its force? Thy daughter's mournful fate, into the tomb descending By death's frequented ways, Has it become to thee a labyrinth never ending, Where thy lost reason strays? I know the charms that made her youth a benediction: Nor should I be content, As a censorious friend, to solace thine affliction By her disparagement. But she was of the world, which fairest things exposes To fates the most forlorn; A rose, she too hath lived as long as live the roses, The space of one brief morn. * * * * * Death has his rigorous laws, unparalleled, unfeeling; All prayers to him are vain; Cruel, he stops his ears, and, deaf to our appealing, He leaves us to complain. The poor man in his hut, with only thatch for cover, Unto these laws must bend; The sentinel that guards the barriers of the Louvre Cannot our kings defend. To murmur against death, in petulant defiance, Is never for the best; To will what God doth will, that is the only science That gives us any rest. TO CARDINAL RICHELIEU BY FRANCOIS DE MALHERBE Thou mighty Prince of Church and State, Richelieu! until the hour of death, Whatever road man chooses, Fate Still holds him subject to her breath. Spun of all silks, our days and nights Have sorrows woven with delights; And of this intermingled shade Our various destiny appears, Even as one sees the course of years Of summers and of winters made. Sometimes the soft, deceitful hours Let us enjoy the halcyon wave; Sometimes impending peril lowers Beyond the seaman's skill to save, The Wisdom, infinitely wise, That gives to human destinies Their foreordained necessity, Has made no law more fixed below, Than the alternate ebb and flow Of Fortune and Adversity. THE ANGEL AND THE CHILD BY JEAN REBOUL, THE BAKER OF NISMES An angel with a radiant face, Above a cradle bent to look, Seemed his own image there to trace, As in the waters of a brook. "Dear child! who me resemblest so," It whispered, "come, O come with me! Happy together let us go, The earth unworthy is of thee! "Here none to perfect bliss attain; The soul in pleasure suffering lies; Joy hath an undertone of pain, And even the happiest hours their sighs. "Fear doth at every portal knock; Never a day serene and pure From the o'ershadowing tempest's shock Hath made the morrow's dawn secure. "What then, shall sorrows and shall fears Come to disturb so pure a brow? And with the bitterness of tears These eyes of azure troubled grow? "Ah no! into the fields of space, Away shalt thou escape with me; And Providence will grant thee grace Of all the days that were to be. "Let no one in thy dwelling cower, In sombre vestments draped and veiled; But let them welcome thy last hour, As thy first moments once they hailed. "Without a cloud be there each brow; There let the grave no shadow cast; When one is pure as thou art now, The fairest day is still the last." And waving wide his wings of white, The angel, at these words, had sped Towards the eternal realms of light!-- Poor mother! see, thy son is dead! ON THE TERRACE OF THE AIGALADES BY JOSEPH MERY From this high portal, where upsprings The rose to touch our hands in play, We at a glance behold three things-- The Sea, the Town, and the Highway. And the Sea says: My shipwrecks fear; I drown my best friends in the deep; And those who braved icy tempests, here Among my sea-weeds lie asleep! The Town says: I am filled and fraught With tumult and with smoke and care; My days with toil are overwrought, And in my nights I gasp for air. The Highway says: My wheel-tracks guide To the pale climates of the North; Where my last milestone stands abide The people to their death gone forth. Here, in the shade, this life of ours, Full of delicious air, glides by Amid a multitude of flowers As countless as the stars on high; These red-tiled roofs, this fruitful soil, Bathed with an azure all divine, Where springs the tree that gives us oil, The grape that giveth us the wine; Beneath these mountains stripped of trees, Whose tops with flowers are covered o'er, Where springtime of the Hesperides Begins, but endeth nevermore; Under these leafy vaults and walls, That unto gentle sleep persuade; This rainbow of the waterfalls, Of mingled mist and sunshine made; Upon these shores, where all invites, We live our languid life apart; This air is that of life's delights, The festival of sense and heart; This limpid space of time prolong, Forget to-morrow in to-day, And leave unto the passing throng The Sea, the Town, and the Highway. TO MY BROOKLET BY JEAN FRANCOIS DUCIS Thou brooklet, all unknown to song, Hid in the covert of the wood! Ah, yes, like thee I fear the throng, Like thee I love the solitude. O brooklet, let my sorrows past Lie all forgotten in their graves, Till in my thoughts remain at last Only thy peace, thy flowers, thy waves. The lily by thy margin waits;-- The nightingale, the marguerite; In shadow here he meditates His nest, his love, his music sweet. Near thee the self-collected soul Knows naught of error or of crime; Thy waters, murmuring as they roll, Transform his musings into rhyme. Ah, when, on bright autumnal eves, Pursuing still thy course, shall I Lisp the soft shudder of the leaves, And hear the lapwing's plaintive cry? BARREGES BY LEFRANC DE POMPIGNAN I leave you, ye cold mountain chains, Dwelling of warriors stark and frore! You, may these eyes behold no more, Rave on the horizon of our plains. Vanish, ye frightful, gloomy views! Ye rocks that mount up to the clouds! Of skies, enwrapped in misty shrouds, Impracticable avenues! Ye torrents, that with might and main Break pathways through the rocky walls, With your terrific waterfalls Fatigue no more my weary brain! Arise, ye landscapes full of charms, Arise, ye pictures of delight! Ye brooks, that water in your flight The flowers and harvests of our farms! You I perceive, ye meadows green, Where the Garonne the lowland fills, Not far from that long chain of hills, With intermingled vales between. You wreath of smoke, that mounts so high, Methinks from my own hearth must come; With speed, to that beloved home, Fly, ye too lazy coursers, fly! And bear me thither, where the soul In quiet may itself possess, Where all things soothe the mind's distress, Where all things teach me and console. WILL EVER THE DEAR DAYS COME BACK AGAIN? Will ever the dear days come back again, Those days of June, when lilacs were in bloom, And bluebirds sang their sonnets in the gloom Of leaves that roofed them in from sun or rain? I know not; but a presence will remain Forever and forever in this room, Formless, diffused in air, like a perfume,-- A phantom of the heart, and not the brain. Delicious days! when every spoken word Was like a foot-fall nearer and more near, And a mysterious knocking at the gate Of the heart's secret places, and we heard In the sweet tumult of delight and fear A voice that whispered, "Open, I cannot wait!" AT LA CHAUDEAU BY XAVIER MARMIER At La Chaudeau,--'t is long since then: I was young,--my years twice ten; All things smiled on the happy boy, Dreams of love and songs of joy, Azure of heaven and wave below, At La Chaudeau. At La Chaudeau I come back old: My head is gray, my blood is cold; Seeking along the meadow ooze, Seeking beside the river Seymouse, The days of my spring-time of long ago At La Chaudeau. At La Chaudeau nor heart nor brain Ever grows old with grief and pain; A sweet remembrance keeps off age; A tender friendship doth still assuage The burden of sorrow that one may know At La Chaudeau. At La Chaudeau, had fate decreed To limit the wandering life I lead, Peradventure I still, forsooth, Should have preserved my fresh green youth, Under the shadows the hill-tops throw At La Chaudeau. At La Chaudeau, live on, my friends, Happy to be where God intends; And sometimes, by the evening fire, Think of him whose sole desire Is again to sit in the old chateau At La Chaudeau. A QUIET LIFE. Let him who will, by force or fraud innate, Of courtly grandeurs gain the slippery height; I, leaving not the home of my delight, Far from the world and noise will meditate. Then, without pomps or perils of the great, I shall behold the day succeed the night; Behold the alternate seasons take their flight, And in serene repose old age await. And so, whenever Death shall come to close The happy moments that my days compose, I, full of years, shall die, obscure, alone! How wretched is the man, with honors crowned, Who, having not the one thing needful found, Dies, known to all, but to himself unknown. THE WINE OF JURANCON BY CHARLES CORAN Little sweet wine of Jurancon, You are dear to my memory still! With mine host and his merry song, Under the rose-tree I drank my fill. Twenty years after, passing that way, Under the trellis I found again Mine host, still sitting there au frais, And singing still the same refrain. The Jurancon, so fresh and bold, Treats me as one it used to know; Souvenirs of the days of old Already from the bottle flow, With glass in hand our glances met; We pledge, we drink. How sour it is Never Argenteuil piquette Was to my palate sour as this! And yet the vintage was good, in sooth; The self-same juice, the self-same cask! It was you, O gayety of my youth, That failed in the autumnal flask! FRIAR LUBIN BY CLEMENT MAROT To gallop off to town post-haste, So oft, the times I cannot tell; To do vile deed, nor feel disgraced,-- Friar Lubin will do it well. But a sober life to lead, To honor virtue, and pursue it, That's a pious, Christian deed,-- Friar Lubin can not do it. To mingle, with a knowing smile, The goods of others with his own, And leave you without cross or pile, Friar Lubin stands alone. To say 't is yours is all in vain, If once he lays his finger to it; For as to giving back again, Friar Lubin cannot do it. With flattering words and gentle tone, To woo and win some guileless maid, Cunning pander need you none,-- Friar Lubin knows the trade. Loud preacheth he sobriety, But as for water, doth eschew it; Your dog may drink it,--but not he; Friar Lubin cannot do it. ENVOY When an evil deed 's to do Friar Lubin is stout and true; Glimmers a ray of goodness through it, Friar Lubin cannot do it. RONDEL BY JEAN FROISSART Love, love, what wilt thou with this heart of mine? Naught see I fixed or sure in thee! I do not know thee,--nor what deeds are thine: Love, love, what wilt thou with this heart of mine? Naught see I fixed or sure in thee! Shall I be mute, or vows with prayers combine? Ye who are blessed in loving, tell it me: Love, love, what wilt thou with this heart of mine? Naught see I permanent or sure in thee! MY SECRET BY FELIX ARVERS My soul its secret has, my life too has its mystery, A love eternal in a moment's space conceived; Hopeless the evil is, I have not told its history, And she who was the cause nor knew it nor believed. Alas! I shall have passed close by her unperceived, Forever at her side, and yet forever lonely, I shall unto the end have made life's journey, only Daring to ask for naught, and having naught received. For her, though God has made her gentle and endearing, She will go on her way distraught and without hearing These murmurings of love that round her steps ascend, Piously faithful still unto her austere duty, Will say, when she shall read these lines full of her beauty, "Who can this woman be?" and will not comprehend. FROM THE ITALIAN THE CELESTIAL PILOT PURGATORIO II. 13-51. And now, behold! as at the approach of morning, Through the gross vapors, Mars grows fiery red Down in the west upon the ocean floor Appeared to me,--may I again behold it! A light along the sea, so swiftly coming, Its motion by no flight of wing is equalled. And when therefrom I had withdrawn a little Mine eyes, that I might question my conductor, Again I saw it brighter grown and larger. Thereafter, on all sides of it, appeared I knew not what of white, and underneath, Little by little, there came forth another. My master yet had uttered not a word, While the first whiteness into wings unfolded; But, when he clearly recognized the pilot, He cried aloud: "Quick, quick, and bow the knee! Behold the Angel of God! fold up thy hands! Henceforward shalt thou see such officers! See, how he scorns all human arguments, So that no oar he wants, nor other sail Than his own wings, between so distant shores! See, how he holds them, pointed straight to heaven, Fanning the air with the eternal pinions, That do not moult themselves like mortal hair!" And then, as nearer and more near us came The Bird of Heaven, more glorious he appeared, So that the eye could not sustain his presence, But down I cast it; and he came to shore With a small vessel, gliding swift and light, So that the water swallowed naught thereof. Upon the stern stood the Celestial Pilot! Beatitude seemed written in his face! And more than a hundred spirits sat within. "In exitu Israel de Aegypto!" Thus sang they all together in one voice, With whatso in that Psalm is after written. Then made he sign of holy rood upon them, Whereat all cast themselves upon the shore, And he departed swiftly as he came. THE TERRESTRIAL PARADISE PURGATORIO XXVIII. 1-33. Longing already to search in and round The heavenly forest, dense and living-green, Which tempered to the eyes the newborn day, Withouten more delay I left the bank, Crossing the level country slowly, slowly, Over the soil, that everywhere breathed fragrance. A gently-breathing air, that no mutation Had in itself, smote me upon the forehead, No heavier blow, than of a pleasant breeze, Whereat the tremulous branches readily Did all of them bow downward towards that side Where its first shadow casts the Holy Mountain; Yet not from their upright direction bent So that the little birds upon their tops Should cease the practice of their tuneful art; But with full-throated joy, the hours of prime Singing received they in the midst of foliage That made monotonous burden to their rhymes, Even as from branch to branch it gathering swells, Through the pine forests on the shore of Chiassi, When Aeolus unlooses the Sirocco. Already my slow steps had led me on Into the ancient wood so far, that I Could see no more the place where I had entered. And lo! my further course cut off a river, Which, tow'rds the left hand, with its little waves, Bent down the grass, that on its margin sprang. All waters that on earth most limpid are, Would seem to have within themselves some mixture, Compared with that, which nothing doth conceal, Although it moves on with a brown, brown current, Under the shade perpetual, that never Ray of the sun lets in, nor of the moon. BEATRICE. PURGATORIO XXX. 13-33, 85-99, XXXI. 13-21. Even as the Blessed, at the final summons, Shall rise up quickened, each one from his grave, Wearing again the garments of the flesh, So, upon that celestial chariot, A hundred rose ad vocem tanti senis, Ministers and messengers of life eternal. They all were saying, "Benedictus qui venis," And scattering flowers above and round about, "Manibus o date lilia plenis." Oft have I seen, at the approach of day, The orient sky all stained with roseate hues, And the other heaven with light serene adorned, And the sun's face uprising, overshadowed, So that, by temperate influence of vapors, The eye sustained his aspect for long while; Thus in the bosom of a cloud of flowers, Which from those hands angelic were thrown up, And down descended inside and without, With crown of olive o'er a snow-white veil, Appeared a lady, under a green mantle, Vested in colors of the living flame. . . . . . . Even as the snow, among the living rafters Upon the back of Italy, congeals, Blown on and beaten by Sclavonian winds, And then, dissolving, filters through itself, Whene'er the land, that loses shadow, breathes, Like as a taper melts before a fire, Even such I was, without a sigh or tear, Before the song of those who chime forever After the chiming of the eternal spheres; But, when I heard in those sweet melodies Compassion for me, more than had they said, "O wherefore, lady, dost thou thus consume him?" The ice, that was about my heart congealed, To air and water changed, and, in my anguish, Through lips and eyes came gushing from my breast. . . . . . . Confusion and dismay, together mingled, Forced such a feeble "Yes!" out of my mouth, To understand it one had need of sight. Even as a cross-bow breaks, when 't is discharged, Too tensely drawn the bow-string and the bow, And with less force the arrow hits the mark; So I gave way beneath this heavy burden, Gushing forth into bitter tears and sighs, And the voice, fainting, flagged upon its passage. TO ITALY BY VINCENZO DA FILICAJA Italy! Italy! thou who'rt doomed to wear The fatal gift of beauty, and possess The dower funest of infinite wretchedness Written upon thy forehead by despair; Ah! would that thou wert stronger, or less fair. That they might fear thee more, or love thee less, Who in the splendor of thy loveliness Seem wasting, yet to mortal combat dare! Then from the Alps I should not see descending Such torrents of armed men, nor Gallic horde Drinking the wave of Po, distained with gore, Nor should I see thee girded with a sword Not thine, and with the stranger's arm contending, Victor or vanquished, slave forever more. SEVEN SONNETS AND A CANZONE [The following translations are from the poems of Michael Angelo as revised by his nephew Michael Angelo the Younger, and were made before the publication of the original text by Guasti.] I THE ARTIST Nothing the greatest artist can conceive That every marble block doth not confine Within itself; and only its design The hand that follows intellect can achieve. The ill I flee, the good that I believe, In thee, fair lady, lofty and divine, Thus hidden lie; and so that death be mine Art, of desired success, doth me bereave. Love is not guilty, then, nor thy fair face, Nor fortune, cruelty, nor great disdain, Of my disgrace, nor chance, nor destiny, If in thy heart both death and love find place At the same time, and if my humble brain, Burning, can nothing draw but death from thee. II FIRE Not without fire can any workman mould The iron to his preconceived design, Nor can the artist without fire refine And purify from all its dross the gold; Nor can revive the phoenix, we are told, Except by fire. Hence if such death be mine I hope to rise again with the divine, Whom death augments, and time cannot make old. O sweet, sweet death! O fortunate fire that burns Within me still to renovate my days, Though I am almost numbered with the dead! If by its nature unto heaven returns This element, me, kindled in its blaze, Will it bear upward when my life is fled. III YOUTH AND AGE Oh give me back the days when loose and free To my blind passion were the curb and rein, Oh give me back the angelic face again, With which all virtue buried seems to be! Oh give my panting footsteps back to me, That are in age so slow and fraught with pain, And fire and moisture in the heart and brain, If thou wouldst have me burn and weep for thee! If it be true thou livest alone, Amor, On the sweet-bitter tears of human hearts, In an old man thou canst not wake desire; Souls that have almost reached the other shore Of a diviner love should feel the darts, And be as tinder to a holier fire. IV OLD AGE The course of my long life hath reached at last, In fragile bark o'er a tempestuous sea, The common harbor, where must rendered be Account of all the actions of the past. The impassioned phantasy, that, vague and vast, Made art an idol and a king to me, Was an illusion, and but vanity Were the desires that lured me and harassed. The dreams of love, that were so sweet of yore, What are they now, when two deaths may be mine,-- One sure, and one forecasting its alarms? Painting and sculpture satisfy no more The soul now turning to the Love Divine, That oped, to embrace us, on the cross its arms. V TO VITTORIA COLONNA Lady, how can it chance--yet this we see In long experience--that will longer last A living image carved from quarries vast Than its own maker, who dies presently? Cause yieldeth to effect if this so be, And even Nature is by Art at surpassed; This know I, who to Art have given the past, But see that Time is breaking faith with me. Perhaps on both of us long life can I Either in color or in stone bestow, By now portraying each in look and mien; So that a thousand years after we die, How fair thou wast, and I how full of woe, And wherefore I so loved thee, may be seen. VI TO VITTORIA COLONNA When the prime mover of my many sighs Heaven took through death from out her earthly place, Nature, that never made so fair a face, Remained ashamed, and tears were in all eyes. O fate, unheeding my impassioned cries! O hopes fallacious! O thou spirit of grace, Where art thou now? Earth holds in its embrace Thy lovely limbs, thy holy thoughts the skies. Vainly did cruel death attempt to stay The rumor of thy virtuous renown, That Lethe's waters could not wash away! A thousand leaves, since he hath stricken thee down, Speak of thee, nor to thee could Heaven convey, Except through death, a refuge and a crown. VII DANTE What should be said of him cannot be said; By too great splendor is his name attended; To blame is easier those who him offended, Than reach the faintest glory round him shed. This man descended to the doomed and dead For our instruction; then to God ascended; Heaven opened wide to him its portals splendid, Who from his country's, closed against him, fled. Ungrateful land! To its own prejudice Nurse of his fortunes; and this showeth well, That the most perfect most of grief shall see. Among a thousand proofs let one suffice, That as his exile hath no parallel, Ne'er walked the earth a greater man than he. VIII CANZONE Ah me! ah me! when thinking of the years, The vanished years, alas, I do not find Among them all one day that was my own! Fallacious hope; desires of the unknown, Lamenting, loving, burning, and in tears (For human passions all have stirred my mind), Have held me, now I feel and know, confined Both from the true and good still far away. I perish day by day; The sunshine fails, the shadows grow more dreary, And I am near to fail, infirm and weary. THE NATURE OF LOVE BY GUIDO GUINIZELLI To noble heart Love doth for shelter fly, As seeks the bird the forest's leafy shade; Love was not felt till noble heart beat high, Nor before love the noble heart was made. Soon as the sun's broad flame Was formed, so soon the clear light filled the air; Yet was not till he came: So love springs up in noble breasts, and there Has its appointed space, As heat in the bright flames finds its allotted place. Kindles in noble heart the fire of love, As hidden virtue in the precious stone: This virtue comes not from the stars above, Till round it the ennobling sun has shone; But when his powerful blaze Has drawn forth what was vile, the stars impart Strange virtue in their rays; And thus when Nature doth create the heart Noble and pure and high, Like virtue from the star, love comes from woman's eye. FROM THE PORTUGUESE SONG BY GIL VICENTE If thou art sleeping, maiden, Awake and open thy door, 'T is the break of day, and we must away, O'er meadow, and mount, and moor. Wait not to find thy slippers, But come with thy naked feet; We shall have to pass through the dewy grass, And waters wide and fleet. FROM EASTERN SOURCES THE FUGITIVE A TARTAR SONG I "He is gone to the desert land I can see the shining mane Of his horse on the distant plain, As he rides with his Kossak band! "Come back, rebellious one! Let thy proud heart relent; Come back to my tall, white tent, Come back, my only son! "Thy hand in freedom shall Cast thy hawks, when morning breaks, On the swans of the Seven Lakes, On the lakes of Karajal. "I will give thee leave to stray And pasture thy hunting steeds In the long grass and the reeds Of the meadows of Karaday. "I will give thee my coat of mail, Of softest leather made, With choicest steel inlaid; Will not all this prevail?" II "This hand no longer shall Cast my hawks, when morning breaks, On the swans of the Seven Lakes, On the lakes of Karajal. "I will no longer stray And pasture my hunting steeds In the long grass and the reeds Of the meadows of Karaday. "Though thou give me thy coat of mall, Of softest leather made, With choicest steel inlaid, All this cannot prevail. "What right hast thou, O Khan, To me, who am mine own, Who am slave to God alone, And not to any man? "God will appoint the day When I again shall be By the blue, shallow sea, Where the steel-bright sturgeons play. "God, who doth care for me, In the barren wilderness, On unknown hills, no less Will my companion be. "When I wander lonely and lost In the wind; when I watch at night Like a hungry wolf, and am white And covered with hoar-frost; "Yea, wheresoever I be, In the yellow desert sands, In mountains or unknown lands, Allah will care for me!" III Then Sobra, the old, old man,-- Three hundred and sixty years Had he lived in this land of tears, Bowed down and said, "O Khan! "If you bid me, I will speak. There's no sap in dry grass, No marrow in dry bones! Alas, The mind of old men is weak! "I am old, I am very old: I have seen the primeval man, I have seen the great Gengis Khan, Arrayed in his robes of gold. "What I say to you is the truth; And I say to you, O Khan, Pursue not the star-white man, Pursue not the beautiful youth. "Him the Almighty made, And brought him forth of the light, At the verge and end of the night, When men on the mountain prayed. "He was born at the break of day, When abroad the angels walk; He hath listened to their talk, And he knoweth what they say. "Gifted with Allah's grace, Like the moon of Ramazan When it shines in the skies, O Khan, Is the light of his beautiful face. "When first on earth he trod, The first words that he said Were these, as he stood and prayed, There is no God but God! "And he shall be king of men, For Allah hath heard his prayer, And the Archangel in the air, Gabriel, hath said, Amen!" THE SIEGE OF KAZAN Black are the moors before Kazan, And their stagnant waters smell of blood: I said in my heart, with horse and man, I will swim across this shallow flood. Under the feet of Argamack, Like new moons were the shoes he bare, Silken trappings hung on his back, In a talisman on his neck, a prayer. My warriors, thought I, are following me; But when I looked behind, alas! Not one of all the band could I see, All had sunk in the black morass! Where are our shallow fords? and where The power of Kazan with its fourfold gates? From the prison windows our maidens fair Talk of us still through the iron grates. We cannot hear them; for horse and man Lie buried deep in the dark abyss! Ah! the black day hath come down on Kazan! Ah! was ever a grief like this? THE BOY AND THE BROOK Down from yon distant mountain height The brooklet flows through the village street; A boy comes forth to wash his hands, Washing, yes washing, there he stands, In the water cool and sweet. Brook, from what mountain dost thou come, O my brooklet cool and sweet! I come from yon mountain high and cold, Where lieth the new snow on the old, And melts in the summer heat. Brook, to what river dost thou go? O my brooklet cool and sweet! I go to the river there below Where in bunches the violets grow, And sun and shadow meet. Brook, to what garden dost thou go? O my brooklet cool and sweet! I go to the garden in the vale Where all night long the nightingale Her love-song doth repeat. Brook, to what fountain dost thou go? O my brooklet cool and sweet! I go to the fountain at whose brink The maid that loves thee comes to drink, And whenever she looks therein, I rise to meet her, and kiss her chin, And my joy is then complete. TO THE STORK Welcome, O Stork! that dost wing Thy flight from the far-away! Thou hast brought us the signs of Spring, Thou hast made our sad hearts gay. Descend, O Stork! descend Upon our roof to rest; In our ash-tree, O my friend, My darling, make thy nest. To thee, O Stork, I complain, O Stork, to thee I impart The thousand sorrows, the pain And aching of my heart. When thou away didst go, Away from this tree of ours, The withering winds did blow, And dried up all the flowers. Dark grew the brilliant sky, Cloudy and dark and drear; They were breaking the snow on high, And winter was drawing near. From Varaca's rocky wall, From the rock of Varaca unrolled, the snow came and covered all, And the green meadow was cold. O Stork, our garden with snow Was hidden away and lost, Mid the rose-trees that in it grow Were withered by snow and frost. FROM THE LATIN VIRGIL'S FIRST ECLOGUE MELIBOEUS. Tityrus, thou in the shade of a spreading beech-tree reclining, Meditatest, with slender pipe, the Muse of the woodlands. We our country's bounds and pleasant pastures relinquish, We our country fly; thou, Tityrus, stretched in the shadow, Teachest the woods to resound with the name of the fair Amaryllis. TITYRUS. O Meliboeus, a god for us this leisure created, For he will be unto me a god forever; his altar Oftentimes shall imbue a tender lamb from our sheepfolds. He, my heifers to wander at large, and myself, as thou seest, On my rustic reed to play what I will, hath permitted. MELIBOEUS. Truly I envy not, I marvel rather; on all sides In all the fields is such trouble. Behold, my goats I am driving, Heartsick, further away; this one scarce, Tityrus, lead I; For having here yeaned twins just now among the dense hazels, Hope of the flock, ah me! on the naked flint she hath left them. Often this evil to me, if my mind had not been insensate, Oak-trees stricken by heaven predicted, as now I remember; Often the sinister crow from the hollow ilex predicted, Nevertheless, who this god may be, O Tityrus, tell me. TITYRUS. O Meliboeus, the city that they call Rome, I imagined, Foolish I! to be like this of ours, where often we shepherds Wonted are to drive down of our ewes the delicate offspring. Thus whelps like unto dogs had I known, and kids to their mothers, Thus to compare great things with small had I been accustomed. But this among other cities its head as far hath exalted As the cypresses do among the lissome viburnums. MELIBOEUS. And what so great occasion of seeing Rome hath possessed thee? TITYRUS. Liberty, which, though late, looked upon me in my inertness, After the time when my beard fell whiter front me in shaving,-- Yet she looked upon me, and came to me after a long while, Since Amaryllis possesses and Galatea hath left me. For I will even confess that while Galatea possessed me Neither care of my flock nor hope of liberty was there. Though from my wattled folds there went forth many a victim, And the unctuous cheese was pressed for the city ungrateful, Never did my right hand return home heavy with money. MELIBOEUS. I have wondered why sad thou invokedst the gods, Amaryllis, And for whom thou didst suffer the apples to hang on the branches! Tityrus hence was absent! Thee, Tityrus, even the pine-trees, Thee, the very fountains, the very copses were calling. TITYRUS. What could I do? No power had I to escape from my bondage, Nor had I power elsewhere to recognize gods so propitious. Here I beheld that youth, to whom each year, Meliboeus, During twice six days ascends the smoke of our altars. Here first gave he response to me soliciting favor: "Feed as before your heifers, ye boys, and yoke up your bullocks." MELIBOEUS. Fortunate old man! So then thy fields will be left thee, And large enough for thee, though naked stone and the marish All thy pasture-lands with the dreggy rush may encompass. No unaccustomed food thy gravid ewes shall endanger, Nor of the neighboring flock the dire contagion inject them. Fortunate old man! Here among familiar rivers, And these sacred founts, shalt thou take the shadowy coolness. On this side, a hedge along the neighboring cross-road, Where Hyblaean bees ever feed on the flower of the willow, Often with gentle susurrus to fall asleep shall persuade thee. Yonder, beneath the high rock, the pruner shall sing to the breezes, Nor meanwhile shalt thy heart's delight, the hoarse wood-pigeons, Nor the turtle-dove cease to mourn from aerial elm-trees. TITYRUS. Therefore the agile stags shall sooner feed in the ether, And the billows leave the fishes bare on the sea-shore. Sooner, the border-lands of both overpassed, shall the exiled Parthian drink of the Soane, or the German drink of the Tigris, Than the face of him shall glide away from my bosom! MELIBOEUS. But we hence shall go, a part to the thirsty Afries, Part to Scythia come, and the rapid Cretan Oaxes, And to the Britons from all the universe utterly sundered. Ah, shall I ever, a long time hence, the bounds of my country And the roof of my lowly cottage covered with greensward Seeing, with wonder behold,--my kingdoms, a handful of wheat-ears! Shall an impious soldier possess these lands newly cultured, And these fields of corn a barbarian? Lo, whither discord Us wretched people hath brought! for whom our fields we have planted! Graft, Meliboeus, thy pear-trees now, put in order thy vine-yards. Go, my goats, go hence, my flocks so happy aforetime. Never again henceforth outstretched in my verdurous cavern Shall I behold you afar from the bushy precipice hanging. Songs no more shall I sing; not with me, ye goats, as your shepherd, Shall ye browse on the bitter willow or blooming laburnum. TITYRUS. Nevertheless, this night together with me canst thou rest thee Here on the verdant leaves; for us there are mellowing apples, Chestnuts soft to the touch, and clouted cream in abundance; And the high roofs now of the villages smoke in the distance, And from the lofty mountains are falling larger the shadows. OVID IN EXILE AT TOMIS, IN BESSARABIA, NEAR THE MOUTHS OF THE DANUBE. TRISTIA, Book III., Elegy X. Should any one there in Rome remember Ovid the exile, And, without me, my name still in the city survive; Tell him that under stars which never set in the ocean I am existing still, here in a barbarous land. Fierce Sarmatians encompass me round, and the Bessi and Getae; Names how unworthy to be sung by a genius like mine! Yet when the air is warm, intervening Ister defends us: He, as he flows, repels inroads of war with his waves. But when the dismal winter reveals its hideous aspect, When all the earth becomes white with a marble-like frost; And when Boreas is loosed, and the snow hurled under Arcturus, Then these nations, in sooth, shudder and shiver with cold. Deep lies the snow, and neither the sun nor the rain can dissolve it; Boreas hardens it still, makes it forever remain. Hence, ere the first ha-s melted away, another succeeds it, And two years it is wont, in many places, to lie. And so great is the power of the Northwind awakened, it levels Lofty towers with the ground, roofs uplifted bears off. Wrapped in skins, and with trousers sewed, they contend with the weather, And their faces alone of the whole body are seen. Often their tresses, when shaken, with pendent icicles tinkle, And their whitened beards shine with the gathering frost. Wines consolidate stand, preserving the form of the vessels; No more draughts of wine,--pieces presented they drink. Why should I tell you how all the rivers are frozen and solid, And from out of the lake frangible water is dug? Ister,--no narrower stream than the river that bears the papyrus,-- Which through its many mouths mingles its waves with the deep; Ister, with hardening winds, congeals its cerulean waters, Under a roof of ice, winding its way to the sea. There where ships have sailed, men go on foot; and the billows, Solid made by the frost, hoof-beats of horses indent. Over unwonted bridges, with water gliding beneath them, The Sarmatian steers drag their barbarian carts. Scarcely shall I be believed; yet when naught is gained by a falsehood, Absolute credence then should to a witness be given. I have beheld the vast Black Sea of ice all compacted, And a slippery crust pressing its motionless tides. 'T is not enough to have seen, I have trodden this indurate ocean; Dry shod passed my foot over its uppermost wave. If thou hadst had of old such a sea as this is, Leander! Then thy death had not been charged as a crime to the Strait. Nor can the curved dolphins uplift themselves from the water; All their struggles to rise merciless winter prevents; And though Boreas sound with roar of wings in commotion, In the blockaded gulf never a wave will there be; And the ships will stand hemmed in by the frost, as in marble, Nor will the oar have power through the stiff waters to cleave. Fast-bound in the ice have I seen the fishes adhering, Yet notwithstanding this some of them still were alive. Hence, if the savage strength of omnipotent Boreas freezes Whether the salt-sea wave, whether the refluent stream,-- Straightway,--the Ister made level by arid blasts of the North-wind,-- Comes the barbaric foe borne on his swift-footed steed; Foe, that powerful made by his steed and his far-flying arrows, All the neighboring land void of inhabitants makes. Some take flight, and none being left to defend their possessions, Unprotected, their goods pillage and plunder become; Cattle and creaking carts, the little wealth of the country, And what riches beside indigent peasants possess. Some as captives are driven along, their hands bound behind them, Looking backward in vain toward their Lares and lands. Others, transfixed with barbed arrows, in agony perish, For the swift arrow-heads all have in poison been dipped. What they cannot carry or lead away they demolish, And the hostile flames burn up the innocent cots. Even when there is peace, the fear of war is impending; None, with the ploughshare pressed, furrows the soil any more. Either this region sees, or fears a foe that it sees not, And the sluggish land slumbers in utter neglect. No sweet grape lies hidden here in the shade of its vine-leaves, No fermenting must fills and o'erflows the deep vats. Apples the region denies; nor would Acontius have found here Aught upon which to write words for his mistress to read. Naked and barren plains without leaves or trees we behold here,-- Places, alas! unto which no happy man would repair. Since then this mighty orb lies open so wide upon all sides, Has this region been found only my prison to be? TRISTIA, Book III., Elegy XII. Now the zephyrs diminish the cold, and the year being ended, Winter Maeotian seems longer than ever before; And the Ram that bore unsafely the burden of Helle, Now makes the hours of the day equal with those of the night. Now the boys and the laughing girls the violet gather, Which the fields bring forth, nobody sowing the seed. Now the meadows are blooming with flowers of various colors, And with untaught throats carol the garrulous birds. Now the swallow, to shun the crime of her merciless mother, Under the rafters builds cradles and dear little homes; And the blade that lay hid, covered up in the furrows of Ceres, Now from the tepid ground raises its delicate head. Where there is ever a vine, the bud shoots forth from the tendrils, But from the Getic shore distant afar is the vine! Where there is ever a tree, on the tree the branches are swelling, But from the Getic land distant afar is the tree! Now it is holiday there in Rome, and to games in due order Give place the windy wars of the vociferous bar. Now they are riding the horses; with light arms now they are playing, Now with the ball, and now round rolls the swift-flying hoop: Now, when the young athlete with flowing oil is anointed, He in the Virgin's Fount bathes, over-wearied, his limbs. Thrives the stage; and applause, with voices at variance, thunders, And the Theatres three for the three Forums resound. Four times happy is he, and times without number is happy, Who the city of Rome, uninterdicted, enjoys. But all I see is the snow in the vernal sunshine dissolving, And the waters no more delved from the indurate lake. Nor is the sea now frozen, nor as before o'er the Ister Comes the Sarmatian boor driving his stridulous cart. Hitherward, nevertheless, some keels already are steering, And on this Pontic shore alien vessels will be. Eagerly shall I run to the sailor, and, having saluted, Who he may be, I shall ask; wherefore and whence he hath come. Strange indeed will it be, if he come not from regions adjacent, And incautious unless ploughing the neighboring sea. Rarely a mariner over the deep from Italy passes, Rarely he comes to these shores, wholly of harbors devoid. Whether he knoweth Greek, or whether in Latin he speaketh, Surely on this account he the more welcome will be. Also perchance from the mouth of the Strait and the waters Propontic, Unto the steady South-wind, some one is spreading his sails. Whosoever he is, the news he can faithfully tell me, Which may become a part and an approach to the truth. He, I pray, may be able to tell me the triumphs of Caesar, Which he has heard of, and vows paid to the Latian Jove; And that thy sorrowful head, Germania, thou, the rebellious, Under the feet, at last, of the Great Captain hast laid. Whoso shall tell me these things, that not to have seen will afflict me, Forthwith unto my house welcomed as guest shall he be. Woe is me! Is the house of Ovid in Scythian lands now? And doth punishment now give me its place for a home? Grant, ye gods, that Caesar make this not my house and my homestead, But decree it to be only the inn of my pain. 
2487	----	CROSS ROADS By Margaret E. Sangster To My Father NOTE Some of the verses in this book have been printed by The Christian Herald, Good Housekeeping, Pictorial Review, New Fiction Publishing Company and the _C. H. Young Publishing Company_. I wish to acknowledge, with thanks, permission to reprint them. CONTENTS PREFACE WOOD MAGIC WATERIN' THE HORSES AT DAWN THE HAUNTED HOUSE TO A PAIR OF GLOVES PEAKS LI'L FELLER TO AN OLD SCHOOLHOUSE THE OLD SAILOR THE RIVER AND THE TREE AUTUMN SONG SCARLET FLOWERS ON FIFTH AVENUE FROM A CITY WINDOW THE LADY ACROSS THE COURT TO A PORCELAIN PUPPY DOG COLORS POSSESSION (A TENEMENT MOTHER SPEAKS) LIGHTS OF THE CITY STEEL MUSIC OF THE SLUMS "BE OF GOOD CHEER!" FROM MY ROOM THE BALCONY SCENE A BOWERY PAWN-SHOP SPRING IN THE CITY LI'L EMPTY CLOSET TWO LULLABYS I DREAMED YOUR FACE ANSWER A BABY'S HANDS ALL ALONG THE BROAD HIGHWAY MY MOTHER HEREDITY APRIL THE DESERT PATH (SEVEN SONNETS) SUMMER SONG COMPREHENSION (A MOTHER'S SONG) SINGING ON THE MARCH EASTER RESURRECTION THE QUEEN FRAGMENTS IT'S LOTS OF FUN VALENTINE THE SACRIFICE TO A CERTAIN ROOM OTHER DAYS AT TWILIGHT THERE ARE SUCH WEARY LITTLE LINES THREE SONGS OF AWAKENING IN A CANOE CAPTIVE-HEART EVENING SONG AFTER A DAY OF WAITING INTANGIBLE AT FIRST SIGHT FIVE SONNETS FORGIVEN THE WRITING AT PARTING WHEN I AM OLD THE REFUGE TO DREAM ALONE NOW I MAY SING OF SADNESS WHEN WAR CAME WHEN YOU WENT BY IN MEMORIAM A PEASANT GIRL SINGS TOGETHER JIM-DOG SIX SONNETS AFTER PEACE FROM THE DECK OF A TRANSPORT TIM--MY BUNKIE A PRAYER FOR OUR BOYS RETURNING PARIS SONG FROM FRANCE FROM PARIS TO CHATEAU-THIERRY A RUINED CHURCH CHILD FACES AFTER HEARING MUSIC COMING FROM A DEVASTATED FARMHOUSE RETURN THE PHOENIX A PRAYER ON EASTER FOR OUR BOYS KILLED IN ACTION INDEPENDENCE DAY, 1919 SHADOWS L'ENVOI PREFACE The candlelight sweeps softly through the room, Filling dim surfaces with golden laughter, Touching with mystery each high hung rafter, Cutting a path of promise through the gloom. Slim little elves dance gently on each taper, Wistful, small ghosts steal out of shrouded corners-- And, like a line of vague enchanted mourners, Great shadows sway like wind-blown sheets of paper. Gently as fingers drawn across your hair, I see the yellow flicker of it creep-- And in a silence that is kin to sleep, I feel a world away from pain and care. Roads stretch like arms across the world outside, Roads reach to strife, to happiness, to fame-- Here, in the candlelight, I speak your name, Here we are at life's cross way, side by side! OH, THERE ARE BROOKS THERE, AND FIELDS THERE AND NOOKS THERE-- NOOKS WHERE A SEEKER MAY FIND FOREST FLOWERS; BLUE IS THE SKY THERE, AND SOFT WINDS CREEP BY THERE, SINGING A SONG THROUGH THE LONG SUMMER HOURS. WOOD MAGIC The woods lay dreaming in a topaz dream, And we, who silently roamed hand in hand, Were pilgrims in a strange, enchanted land, Where life was love, and love was all a-gleam. And old remembered songs came back to greet Our ears, from other worlds of long ago, The worlds that we of earth may seldom know-- And to those songs we timed our vagrant feet. We did not speak, we did not need to say The thought that lay so buried in our hearts-- The thoughts as sweet as springtime rain, that starts The buds to blossoming in wistful May. We did not need to speak, we could not speak, The wonder words that we in silence knew-- We walked, as very little children do, Who feel, but cannot tell, the thing they seek. Beyond a screen of bushes, bending low, We knew that fair Titania lay at rest, Her pillowed head upon her lover's breast, Her kisses swift as birds that come and go! And underneath a wall of mottled stone, We knew the sleeping beauty lay in state, Entangled in a mist of tears, to wait The prince whose kiss would raise her to a throne. Perhaps a witch with single flaming eye, Was watching from beneath the hemlock tree; And fairies that our gaze might never see, Laughed at us as we, hand in hand, crept by. Laughed at us? No, I somehow think they knew That you and I were kin to them that day! I think they knew that we were years away From everything but make-believe, come true. I think they knew that, singing through the air, There thrilled a vague, insistent, harp-like call-- And that, where woodbine blazed against the wall, You held me close and kissed my wind-tossed hair! WATERIN' TH' HORSES I took th' horses to th' brook--to water 'em you know, Th' air was cold with just a touch o' frost; And as we went a-joggin' down I couldn't help but think, O' city folk an' all the things they lost. O' cause they have their lighted streets--their Great White Way an' such, O' course they have their buildings large an' tall; But, my! they never know th' joy o' ridin' ter th' brook, An' somehow I don't envy 'em at all! Perhaps I'd like it--for awhile--to hear th' songs an' laughter, But somehow, I don't know exactly why; I'd feel th' country callin' me; I'd long again fer silence, An' fer God's mountains, blue against the sky. I took th' horses to th' brook--to water 'em you know, Th' day was pretty as a day can be; An' as we went a-joggin' down I couldn't help but think, O' city folk an' all they never see! AT DAWN I. THE CAVEMAN I live! And the scarlet sunrise is climbing the mountain steep, I live... And below, in the caverns, the rest of my clansmen sleep; But I--I am here, and chanting, I could slay a beast with my hand, And I thrill as the mist of the morning creeps up from the rock-strewn land! I live, I have strength for fighting--and courage to rend and slay, I live! And my eyes are lifting to gaze at the new- born day; And I pause, on the way to my hewn-out cave, though I know that she waits me there, My mate, with her eyes on the scarlet dawn, and the wind in her flame-like hair. I live--and the joy of living leaps up in my searching eyes, I live, and my soul starts forward, to challenge the waking skies! Far down are the torrents roaring, far up are the clouds, unfurled; And I stand on the cliff, exultant, akin to the waking world. The mists are gone, and an eagle sweeps down from the mountain high, And I wish that my arms were feathered and strong, that I, too, might fly; I live! I am one with the morning! Ah, I am a MAN, and free! And I shout aloud, and the scarlet dawn shouts back, on the gale, to me! II. THE PIONEER I creep along, but silently, For, oh, the dawn is coming; I creep along, for I have heard A flint-tipped arrow, humming; And I have heard a snapping twig, Above the wind's low laughter; And I have known--and thrilled to know, That swift THEY followed after! The forest turns from black to grey, The leaves are silver-shining; But I have heard a far-off call-- The war-whoop's sullen whining. And I have been a naked form, Among the tree trunks prowling; And I have glimpsed a savage face, That faded from me, scowling. A rosy color sweeps the sky, A vagrant lark is singing, But, as I steal along the trail, I know that day is bringing A host of red-skins in its train, Their tommy-hawks are gleaming-- I SEE THEM NOW; or can it be The first pale sunlight beaming? I creep along, but stealthily, For, oh, the dawn is coming! I creep along--but I have heard A flint-tipped arrow, humming.... And yet, my heart is light, inside, My soul, itself, is flying To greet the dawn! I AM ALIVE-- AND WHAT IS DEATH--BUT DYING? III. THE FARMER The dawn is here! I climb the hill; The earth is young and strangely still; A tender green is showing where But yesterday my fields were bare.... I climb and, as I climb, I sing; The dawn is here, and with it--spring! My oxen stamp the ground, and they Seem glad, with me, that soon the day Will bring new work for us to do! The light above is clear and blue; And one great cloud that swirls on high, Seems sent from earth to kiss the sky. The birds are coming back again, They know that soon the golden grain Will wave above this fragrant loam; The birds, with singing, hasten home; And I, who watch them, feel their song Deep in my soul, and nothing wrong, Or mean or small, can touch my heart.... Down in the vale the smoke-wreaths start, To softly curl above the trees; The fingers of a vagrant breeze Steal tenderly across my hair, And toil is fled, and want, and care! The dawn is here! I climb the hill; My very oxen seem to thrill-- To feel the mystery of day. The sun creeps out, and far away From man-made law I worship God, Who made the light, the cloud, the sod; I worship smilingly, and sing! * * * The dawn is here, and with it--spring! THE HAUNTED HOUSE It stands neglected, silent, far from the ways of men, A lonely little cottage beside a lonely glen; And, dreaming there, I saw it when sunset's golden rays Had touched it with the glory of other, sweeter days. They say the house is haunted, and--well, it is, I guess, For every empty window just aches with loneliness; With loneliness that tortures and memory that flays; Ah, yes, the house is haunted with ghosts of other days. The ghost of childish laughter rings on the narrow stair, And, from a silent corner, the murmur of a prayer Steals out, and then a love song, and then a bugle call, And steps that do not falter along the quiet hall. The story of the old house that stands beside the glen? That story is forgotten by every one; but when The house is touched and softened by sunset's golden rays, I know that ghosts must haunt it, the ghosts of sweeter days. TO A PAIR OF GLOVES Jus' a little pair o' gloves, Sorter thin an' worn; With th' fingers neatly darned, Like they had been torn. Jus' a little pair o' gloves, Not s' much ter see.... Not a soul on earth can guess What they mean ter me! Jus' a little pair o' gloves, Sorter tossed aside; Limp an' quiet, folded up, Like their soul had died. Every finger seems ter look Lonely, an' my hand Trembles as it touches them-- Who can understand? Jus' a little pair o' gloves, Ah, she tossed 'em there.... Singin'-like, she turned ter go, Didn't have a care! Kissin' them? A prayer, a tear? God, my head WILL bow-- Jus' a little pair o' gloves, .... Empty, now! PEAKS A storm may rage in the world below, It may tear great trees apart; But here on the mountain top, I know That it cannot touch my heart. I have struggled up through the lightning's glare, I have walked where the cliffs fell sheer To a gorge below, but I breathed a prayer, And my soul passed doubt and fear! Here on the mountain top the air Is clear as a silver song; And the sun is warm on my unbound hair; AND WHAT THOUGH THE WAY WAS LONG? What though the way was steep and bleak, And what though the road was hard? I stand at last on the mountain peak, With my eyes upraised to God! A storm may sweep through the world below, It may rend great rocks apart; But here on the crest of the world I know That it cannot touch my heart. LIL' FELLER When th.' sunshine's golden-yeller Like th' curls upon his head, Then he wakes--th' lil' feller-- An' he jumps up, outen bed; An' he scrambles fer his knickers Flung, perhaps, upon th' floor, An' he takes his hat (my old 'un), An' he races through th' door-- An' I hear his voice, a-singin', In his odd, ole-fashioned way, 'Cause he's glad--th' lil' feller-- In th' mornin' o' the day. Kinder makes me feel, well, lazy, So I hurry up, outside, Where th' mountains smile down, friendly-- And th' earth looks sorter wide; An' I hear his voice a-callin', Sayin', "Daddy, come an' see!" An' I find him makin' gardens Where a rock pile uster be-- An' I shout, "How goes it, sonny?" An' my heart feels light an' gay, Fer he's singin'--lil' feller-- In th' mornin' o' th' day. Lil' feller, an' his gardens! It don't matter much ter him, If th' hoein's hard an' tedgious, An' th' crop he grows is slim; Fer he loves ter be a-workin', An' he loves ter see things start Outer nothin'.... There's a garden In th' rock-bed o' my heart That he's planted, just by singin' In his odd, ole-fashioned way-- 'Cause he's glad, MY LIL' FELLER, In th' mornin' o' th' day! TO AN OLD SCHOOLHOUSE Down by the end of the lane it stands, Where the sumac grows in a crimson thatch, Down where the sweet wild berry patch, Holds out a lure for eager hands. Down at the end of the lane, who knows The ghosts that sit at the well-scarred seats, When the moon is dark, and the gray sky meets With the dawn time light, and a chill wind blows? Ghosts--well not ghosts, perhaps, but dreams-- Rather like wistful shades, that stand Waiting a look or an outstretched hand, To call them back where the morning gleams-- Dreams of the hopes we had, that died, Dreams of the vivid youth we sold; Dreams of a pot of rainbow gold-- Gold that we sought for, eager-eyed! Dreams of the plans we made, that sleep With the lesson books on the dusty rack, Of the joyous years that will not come back-- That are drowned in the tears we have learned to weep. Ghosts did I call them! Sweet they are As a plant that grows in a desert place, Sweet as a dear remembered face-- Sweet as a pale, courageous star. Where the sumac grows in a flaming wall, It stands, at the end of a little lane, And there do the children come again, Answering, still, the bell's shrill call, Just as we came, with their songs unsung, And their hopes all new, and their dreams dew kissed, Brave as the sun in a land of mist-- JUST AS WE CAME WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG! THE OLD SAILOR I've crossed the bar at last, mates, My longest voyage is done; And I can sit here, peaceful, And watch th' setting sun A-smilin' kind of glad like Upon the waves so free. My longest voyage is done, mates, But oh, the heart of me, Is out where sea meets skyline! My longest voyage is done.... But--can I sit, in peace, mates, And watch the settin' sun? For what's a peaceful life, mates, When every breeze so free, When every gale a-blowin', Brings messages to me? And is the sky so shinin', For all it's golden sun, To one who loves the sea, mates, And knows his voyage is done? And, can a year on land, mates, Match with one day--at sea? Ah, every wind a-singin' Brings memory to me! I've crossed the bar at last, mates, My longest voyage is past, And I must watch the sunset, Must see it fade, at last. My steps are not so light, mates, As they were, years ago; And sometimes, when I'm tired, My head droops kind of low-- Yet, though I'm old and--weary, The waves that dance so free, Keep callin' to my soul, mates, And thrill the heart of me! THE RIVER AND THE TREE "You are white and tall and swaying," sang the river to the tree, "And your leaves are touched with silver--but you never smile on me; For your branches murmur love songs to the sun- kissed turquoise sky, And you seem so far above me that I always hurry by!" "You are laughing in your shallows, you are somber in your deeps, And below your shining surface there's a heart that never sleeps; But all day you pass me, dancing, and at evening time you dream, And I didn't think you liked me," sang the birch- tree to the stream. So they got a bit acquainted on a glowing summer day, And they found they liked each other (which is often times the way); And the river got so friendly, and it ran so very slow, That the birch-tree shone reflected in the water down below! AUTUMN SONG Let's go down the road together, you and I, Let's go down the road together, Through the vivid autumn weather; Let's go down the road together when the red leaves fly. Let's go searching, searching after Joy and mirth and love and laughter-- Let's go down the road together, you and I. Let's go hunting for adventure, you and I, For the romance we are knowing Waits for us, alive and glowing, For the romance that has always passed us by. Let's have done with tears and sighing, What if summer-time IS dying? Let's go hunting for adventure, you and I. Let's go down the road together, you and I-- And if you are frightened lest you Weary grow, my arms will rest you, As we take the road together when the red leaves fly. Springtime is the time for mating? Ah, a deeper love is waiting Down the autumn road that calls us, you and I! THE CITY-- TOWERS AND CANYONS, AND SLUMS, MAN BUILT.... AND SOULS, GOD BUILT! SCARLET FLOWERS The window box across the street Is filled with scarlet flowers; They glow, like bits of sunset cloud, Across the dragging hours. What though the mist be like a shroud What though the day be dreary? The window box across the street Is warm, and gay, and cheery! The window box across the street Is filled with scarlet flowers; I almost catch their perfume sweet.... Above the sound of tramping feet, They sing of country bowers. Against the house that looms so gray, They smile in--well, a friendly way. A tired shop girl hurries by; Their color seems to catch her eye; She pauses, starts, and wistfully She gazes up. It seems to me That I can hear her longing sigh.... A little shop girl hurries by. A newsboy stops to sell his wares; The crowds brush by him; no one cares To buy his papers. But above The scarlet flowers bravely grow In token of the Father's love.... The crowds brush coldly by below. A blind man stumbles, groping past; He cannot see their scarlet shine; And yet some memory seems to twine About his soul. For, oh, he turns As trusting as a child who yearns For some vague dream, and smilingly He lifts the eyes that cannot see.... A blind man stumbles, groping past. The window box across the street Is filled with scarlet flowers; They tell a secret, tender, sweet, Through all the dreary hours. And folk who hurry on their way Dream of some other brighter day.... The window box across the street Is filled with scarlet flowers. ON FIFTH AVENUE I walked down Fifth Avenue the other day (In the languid summertime everybody strolls down Fifth Avenue); And I passed women, dainty in their filmy frocks, And much bespatted men with canes. And great green busses lumbered past me, And impressive limousines, and brisk little 'lectrics. I walked down Fifth Avenue the other day, And the sunshine smiled at me, And something, deep in my heart, burst into song. And then, all at once, I saw her-- A woman with painted lips and rouge-touched cheeks-- Standing in front of a jeweler's window. She was looking at diamonds-- A tray of great blue-white diamonds-- And I saw a flame leap out of her eyes to meet them (Greedy eyes they were, and cold, like too-perfect jewels); And I realized, for the first time, That diamonds weren't always pretty. And then I SAW THE OTHER ONE: A thin little girl looking into a florist's shop At a fragrant mass of violets, dew-purple and fresh. She carried a huge box on her arm, And a man, passing, said loudly, "I guess somebody's hat'll be late today!" And the thin little girl flushed and hurried on, But not before I had seen the tenderness in her eyes-- The tenderness that real women show When they look at vast rolling hills, or flowers, or very small pink babies. I walked down Fifth Avenue the other day. (All the world walks, leisurely, down Fifth Avenue in the summertime.) FROM A CITY WINDOW The dust is thick on the city street, The smoke on the city sky Hangs dense and gray at the close of day-- And the city crowds surge by With heavy feet through the summer heat Like a sluggish sullen tide;... But hand in hand through a magic land We are wandering side by side. For somewhere, dear, there's a magic land On the shores of a silver sea; And there is a boat with turquoise sails-- With sails that are wide and free; A boat that is whirling through the spray, That is coming for you and me! Somewhere, dear, there's a singing breeze That creeps through the laughing air To the wide-flung boughs of a blue-black tree-- It touches your joyous hair; And the touch of it is as soft and light As a baby's lisping prayer. Somewhere, dear, there's a bit of beach Where the sand is warm and white; Where the sky seems close and the drifting clouds Are tenderly, warmly bright. And there is a ship with turquoise sails, With sails like a living light! Ah, the ship is bringing us dreams come true, And hopes that are all dew-kissed; It is bringing us days that are all aglow With scarlet and amethyst;... Bringing us faith to find our way Through a world that is wrapped in mist. Our window looks on the city street, We can glimpse the city sky; But our hearts are gay at the close of day, Though the tired crowds pass by With heavy feet through the blinding heat, Like a sullen, sluggish tide.... For hand in hand through a magic land. We are wandering side by side. THE LADY ACROSS THE COURT She only comes when night is near, And stands a moment quietly Beside her window, in the dusk-- She lives across the court from me-- And though I cannot see her eyes Because she is too far away, I somehow feel that they are kind, And very soft, and widely gray! Her hands are only dim white blurs, That rest against the window pane; And yet I know that they are firm, And cool and sweet as April rain. And, oh, I cannot help but wish As, through the dark, I go to bed, That they might rest a moment like A little prayer upon my head! She only comes when night is near, I do not know who she can be; I never see her anywhere But just across the court from me.... I am so small the curtains hide The wistful smiles that I have smiled, And yet I, somehow, think she feels The love of me--a lonely child. TO A PORCELAIN PUPPY DOG Oh, pudgy porcelain puppy dog from far-away Japan, I saw you in a shop to-day where lonesomely you sat Upon a velvet cushion that was colored gold and purple, Between a bowl of goldfish, and a sleeping wooden cat. I wonder what you thought about as stolidly you sat there, A grin of faint derision on your pudgy porcelain face; I wonder if you dreamed about some cherry blossom tea house, And if the goldfish bored you in their painted Chinese case? I wonder if you dreamed about the laughter of the geishas As languidly they danced across the shining lacquered floor, I wonder if your thoughts were with a purple clump of iris That bloomed, all through the summer, by the little tea house door? I wonder if you hated us who passed, you by unheeding, You who had known the temples of another, older land? And, oh, I wonder if you knew when I had paused beside you To pat you, porcelain puppy dog, that I could understand? COLORS I love color. I love flaming reds, And vivid greens, And royal flaunting purples. I love the startled rose of the sun at dawning, And the blazing orange of it at twilight. I love color. I love the drowsy blue of the fringed gentian, And the yellow of the goldenrod, And the rich russet of the leaves That turn at autumn-time.... I love rainbows, And prisms, And the tinsel glitter Of every shop-window. I love color. And yet today, I saw a brown little bird Perched on the dull-gray fence Of a weed-filled city yard. And as I watched him The little bird Threw back his head Defiantly, almost, And sang a song That was full of gay ripples, And poignant sweetness, And half-hidden melody. 1 love color.... I love crimson, and azure, And the glowing purity of white. And yet today, I saw a living bit of brown, A vague oasis on a streak of gray, That brought heaven Very near to me. POSSESSION (A TENEMENT MOTHER SPEAKS) Y' ain't as pretty as some babies are-- But, oh, yer mine! Yer lil' fingers sorter seem t' twine Aroun' my soul. Yer eyes are bright, t' me, as any star, Yer hair's like gol'. Some people say yer hair is sandy-red, An' that yer eyes is sorter wan an' pale, An' that yer lil' body looks, well, frail.... Y' ain't been fed Like rich folks children are.... It takes fresh air Ter keep a baby fat an' strong an' pink! It takes more care, 'N I have time ter give.... An' yet, if God'll only let yer live-- When yer first came, An' when I seen yer face, deep down inside My heart I felt--well, sorter broke an' tore, 'Cause when yer came ter me I like ter died, An' I had lost my job, there at th' store. I looked at you, an' oh, it wasn't pride I felt, but bitterness an' shame! An' then yer gropin' fingers touched my hand, As helpless as a snow-flake in the air, Yer didn't know, yer couldn't understand, ('Cause yer was new t' this cold-hearted land), That life ain't fair! Yer didn't know if I was good, 'r bad, 'R much ter see-- Y' only knew that I belonged, an' oh, Yer trusted me! Somehow, right there, I didn't stop ter think That yer was white an' thin--instead o' pink, An' that yer lips, an' not yer eyes, was blue... I got t' thinkin' how, when work was through I'd sing t' yer, an' rock yer off t' rest. I got t' thinkin' that I had been blessed, More than th' richest girl I'd ever knew! An' oh, I held yer tight against my breast, An', lookin' far ahead, I dreamed an' planned That I would work th' fingers off my hand Fer you! An' mother-love swept on me like a tide, An', oh, I cried! Some people say yer hair is sandy-red, But they don't know; They say yer eyes is sorter pale an' weak, But it ain't so! It's jus' because yer never been well fed, An' never had a lil' cribby bed; It's jus' because yer never had a peek At th' blue sky-- That's why! Yer ain't so pretty as some babies are, But, oh, t' me yer like a silver star That, through th' darkest night can smile an' shine.... Yer ain't as pretty as some babies are, But, God, yer mine! LIGHTS OF THE CITY He was young, And his mind Was filled with the science of economics That he had studied in college. And as we talked about the food riots, And high prices, And jobless men, He said: "It's all stupid and wrong, "This newspaper talk! "Folk have no business to starve. "The price of labor always advances, "Proportionally, "With the price of food!" "Any man," he said, A moment later, "Can earn at least two dollars a day "By working on a railroad, "Or in the street cleaning department! "What if potatoes DO cost "Eight cents a pound? "Wages are high, too.... "People have no reason to starve." I listened to him prayerfully (More or less), For I had never been to college, And I didn't know much about economics. But-- As I walked to the window, And looked out over the veiled, mysterious lights Of the city, I couldn't help thinking Of a little baby That I had seen a few days ago; A baby of the slums--thin, and joyless, And old of face, But with eyes Like the eyes of the Christ Child.. .. A baby--crying for bread-- And.... I wondered.... STEEL They think that we're just animals, almost, We men who work with steel. A lady visitor was here th' other day, She looked at me, an' I could hear her say, "My, what a life! I s'pose his only boast "Is muscles!" She's wrong. We feel A certain pride, a certain sort o' joy, When some great blazin' mass is tamed an' turned Into an engine wheel. Our hands get burned, An' sometimes half our hair is scorched away-- But, well, it's fun! Perhaps you've seen a boy, Who did hard work he loved, an' called it play? Know what I mean? Well, that's the way we feel, We men who work with steel. A lady visitor was here th' other day; She held her skirts right dainty in her hand, An' as she passed me by, I heard her say, "I wonder what he THINKS--or if his head "Is just a piece o' metal, too!" She said It laughin'-like. She didn't understand, She couldn't know that we have dreams as grand, As any SHE could have. We wonder where Th' rivets that we make are goin' to, An' if th' engine wheels we turn, will go Through tropic heat, or if they'll plow through snow; An' as we watch, we sorter grow to care About th' steel. Why it's as shiny blue As j'ew'ls! An' every bit is, well, a part Of life to us. Sometimes my very heart Thanks God that I've a man-sized job to do! MUSIC OF THE SLUMS I. THE VIOLIN-MAKER Over a slum his sign swings out, Over a street where the city's shout Is deadened into a sob of pain-- Where even joy has a minor strain. "Violins made," read the sign. It swings Over a street where sorrow sings; Over a street where people give Their right to laugh for a chance to live. He works alone with his head bent low And all the sorrow and all the woe, And all the pride of a banished race, Stare from the eyes that light his face. But he never sighs and his slender hand, Fastens the cat-gut, strand by strand-- Fastens it tight, but tenderly As if he dreams of some melody. Some melody of his yesterday.... Will it, I wonder, find its way Out to the world, when fingers creep Over the strings that lie asleep? Or will the city's misery Mould the song in a tragic key-- Making its sweetest, faintest breath Thrill with sorrow, and throb with death? Maker of music--who can know Where the work of his hand shall go? Maybe its slightest phrase will bring, Comfort to ease the suffering-- Maybe his dreams will have their part Buried deep in the music's heart.... Out of a chain of dreary days, Joy may come as some master plays! Over a slum his sign hangs out, Over a street where dread meets doubt-- "Violins made," reads the sign. It swings Over a street where sorrow sings. II. THE PARK BAND (Side by side and silent--eagerly they stand-- Souls look out of tired eyes, hands are clasped together, Through the thrilling softness of the late spring weather, All a city slum is out to listen to the band.) Young love and Maytime, hear the joyous strain, Listen to a serenade written long ago! You will recognize the song--you who care must know Fear that blends with happiness, joy that touches pain. Rabbi with the grizzled beard hear adventure's story! Hear the tale the music tells, thrilling with ro- mance, Hear the clatter of a sword, hear a broken lance Falling from some hero's hand, red with blood- stained glory. (Tenements on either side, light-flecked in the gloam- ing, Tenements on either side, stark and tall and gray-- Ah, the folk who line your halls wander far away, All a crowded city slum is a-gypsie roaming!) Woman with the brooding gaze, hear the lilting laughter Of the children that you loved, feel their soft- lipped kisses; Think of all the little joys that a hard world misses- What though bitter loneliness always follows after? Gangster with the shifty eyes, listen to the sighing Of the hymn tune that you heard at your mother's knee; Listen to the restless ghost of the used-to-be, Listen to a wistful ghost's empty-hearted crying. (Tenements on either side--menacing they stand-- Light-flecked in the softness of the late spring weather.... But young love and broken life are standing close together, And all a city slum is out to listen to the band.) III. THE ORGAN MAN He's very old, his music box is old and rusty, too, And half the notes of it are harsh, and half of them are slow; One wonders if the coat he wears could ever have been new-- And if the tune he plays was quite forgotten long ago. He finds a sunny place to stand, and lifts his bleary eyes, And smiles a bit--a toothless smile half touched, perhaps, with fear; And though he cannot see them he is looking at the skies, As if he prays, but silently, for hope and faith and cheer. The foreign women pass him by, their tarnished coins held tight, They toss their heads and will not hear his music's wistful hum-- But through each alley way and street, like moths that seek the light, With eager eyes and laughing lips the little chil- dren come. He plays his ancient, shaky song, his mouth moves to its sway, He does not know the tune of it is old and out of key; For, through his eyes, a soul stares out that wanders far away, In some fair land of youth and love--some land that used to be. The little children cluster close, bareheaded, bare of limb-- They hold their ragged frocks and dance, they do not care--or know, That they are like a garden place, a fragrant dream to him, Or that the tune he plays was quite forgotten long ago. "BE OF GOOD CHEER!" Temptation came to me today, And oh, I felt that I must stray Down primrose paths, forgetting all.... The city's fevered, siren call Spoke to my soul, its whispered cry Said, "Live, for Youth, too soon, will die!" So all alone, when work was done, I sought the park. The setting sun Had left a bit of warmth for me-- I found a bench beneath a tree, And sat and thought. My life is hard, Sometimes my heart seems battle-scarred, With longings keen, and bitter fears, And want, and suffering, and tears. Temptation spoke, and Youth spoke back; The night seemed cold and grimly black, And every light was like a star That cleft the sky--they were so far, So very far away! And I Was lonely, there, beneath the sky.... There used to be a little farm A tiny place, remote from harm; There used to be a mother frail And sweet, with hair as silver-pale As the faint moon. She heard me say The words when first I learned to pray.... Above me in the silent trees, I heard the rustles of the breeze, It sounded like her step, as light As dreams across an endless night. My mother-- Ah, the name so sweet, Brought memories on noiseless feet, And softly in the darkness, there, I breathed my little childhood prayer.... Do prayers have answers? As I prayed A Presence came, and gently laid A Hand upon my arm. I knew That Someone kind, and good, and true Was very near. Upon my soul A peace swept down, and left it whole. I felt a calm steal over me, The same that stilled the troubled sea Where Jesus walked. My fears were laid, Temptation left me unafraid. And as I smiled, there in the park, A voice spoke through the fragrant dark. "Be of good cheer!" the words rang out Like music through the city's shout. And all the lights that I could see Were stars of home, agleam for me! FROM MY ROOM I love you, dear.... Here, alone in my room tonight, it is all that matters, Out through my window, vaguely hushed, the city clatters, Telling ever its tale of woe and mirth, Sighing ever its song of death and birth, Singing ever its potent, mad refrain, Swept with tears and the bitter weight of pain. Here in my room I kneel, alone, to pray, But there seems very little, dear, to say Even to God. So, kneeling by my bed, I think dim thoughts, and dream long dreams instead. Wide-eyed I kneel and watch the candle flame, Making swift shadows on the wall; your name Throbs in my heart, and makes my pulse to thrill-- Wide-eyed I kneel, with soul a-light, until Somewhere a clock starts chiming.... It is late.... Out through the dark wan tenderness and hate Press pale kisses upon the city's lips-- Dawn comes creeping, the weary nighttime slips Furtively by, like some hurt thief with plunder.... Dear, I cross to my window, and I wonder Whether you are asleep, or if you lie, Sleepless beneath the smoke-hung purple sky.... Down in the streets the tired city vaguely clatters, Here alone in my room I stand, and nothing matters, Only.... I love you! THE BALCONY SCENES The stage is set, like a garden, And the lights are flickering and low; And a Romeo with fat legs, Is telling a Juliet with dyed hair and tired, disillusioned eyes, That love--real love--is the only thing in the world. And up in the balcony of the theatre Where the seats cost twenty-five cents, A slim little girl in a shiny serge frock, And a boy with a wistful mouth Are holding hands. And as they listen, breathlessly, to the studied voice of the actor, Their fingers are all a-thrill, With the music of the ages. A BOWERY PAWN-SHOP A dusty, musty little shop set in a dingy street, A doorsill old and scarred and worn by many tired feet, A row of cases, vaguely glassed, a safe against the wall, And, oh, the ache of many hearts--the fabric of it all! A violin with broken strings that fingers have caressed, A diamond-set betrothal ring that lover's lips have pressed, A high shell comb, a spangled fan, a filmy bit of lace, A heart-shaped locket, ribbon-tied, that frames a laughing face. A pair of blankets folded up, an overcoat, a shawl, A tall old clock that might have chimed in some wainscoted hall, And in the farthest corner, where the purple shadows lie, The echo of a woman's sob, the phantom of a sigh. Ah, wedding-rings--a score of them--not many of them new, A grim revolver laid beside a baby's tiny shoe, A satin coat, a ragged gown, a gold-clasped book of verse, A necklace of bedraggled pearls, an empty silver purse. A dreary weary little shop set in a sunless place. A little shop where love has met with sorrow and disgrace.... A row of cases, double-locked, a safe against the wall; And, oh, the ache of countless hearts that lies behind it all! SPRING IN THE CITY I saw a crocus blooming in the park, I felt a hint of magic in the air, I heard faint music sighing everywhere, And so, as all the world, grew softly dark-- I found again the hope that never dies, And hungrily, with out-flung arms, I came Once more to you. And when you spoke my name I read springtime eternal in your eyes! ROSE PETALS IN THE EARLY RAIN, FORGOTTEN DREAMS, AND A TORN SKETCH BOOK! LI'L EMPTY CLOSET There's a li'l empty closet in a li'l empty room, Where th' shadows lie like dust upon th' floor; It uster be HIS closet not s' very long ago-- That's why I don't go near it any more. Every li'l hook is empty, 'ceptin' one, an' from it hangs (Th' whitest li'l ghost that ever grew In a heart that's near ter breakin' with it's agony o' grief! ) An empty flannel nightie piped with blue. Jus' a li'l flannel nightie that was shrunken in th' wash, In spots th' blue has ran inter th' white; But I've seen him in it, sleepy, when I tucked th' covers in, An' kissed him, soft, an took away th' light. Jus' a li'l flannel nightie, hangin' empty on a hook, As if it was ashamed--or in disgrace-- Jus' a li'l flannel nightie an' it ain't no use no more, But I couldn't bear t' take it from its place! Jus' a li'l empty closet in a li'l empty room, Where th' shadows lie like dust upon th' floor-- It uster be his closet, where I'd put his clothes away, That's why I hate ter go there any more. But I've left his li'l nightie hangin' on a single hook, I sorter had ter leave it there, I guess; Ah, that li'l empty closet in that li'l empty room Is crowded--crowded ful o' loneliness! TWO LULLABYS I. To A DREAM BABY Oh, little child whose face I cannot see, I feel your presence very near tonight, I feel the warmth of you creep close to me... The grey moths drift across the candlelight, And tiny shadows sway across the floor, Like wistful elves who do a fairy dance; The wind is tapping softly at the door, And rain is beating, like a silver lance, Against the tightly curtained window pane. Oh, little child whose face I cannot see, The loneliness, the twilight, and the rain, Have brought your dearness very close to me. And though I rock with empty arms, I sing A lullaby that I have made to croon Into your drowsy shadow ear--a song About the star sheep and the shepherd moon! II. POPPY LAND Sleep, little tired eyes, close to the heart of me, Sleep while the sun trembles low in the west; You who are dream of my dreams, and a part of me-- Sleep with your head lying warm on my breast. Dear, there's a land that is filled with red flowers, Poppies, they call them, that sway in the breeze; Sometimes their petals, in soft scarlet showers, Fall in warm drifts that are high as your knees.... Dear, in your dreams you will laugh as you roll through them, Waving your arms in an effort to creep; Gently they nod as the wind sings its soul through them, Sleep, little tired eyes, sleep.... Dear, in this land there's a sky like a feather, Blue in some places, or white as a star; And there's a fragrance--a plant that's called heather Grows in the spot where the butterflies are. Dear, there are pastures as gay as glad laughter, Dotted with hundreds of woolly white sheep, Dear, you can pat them, for they'll follow after You, as you sleep.... Dream, little tired eyes, close to the breast of me, Wander in fields where red flowers are gloaming; All of my heart wanders with you, the rest of me Watches your dreaming.... I DREAMED YOUR FACE I dreamed your face, one night, when Heaven seemed resting, Against the troubled fever of the earth; I dreamed that vivid throated birds were nesting, In trees that shook with elfin-hearted mirth. I dreamed that star-like purple flowers were springing A-throb with perfume all about the place, And that there was a far-off sound of singing-- And then--I dreamed your face! I dreamed your face, and then I waked from dreaming, (The creeping dawn seemed very cold and bare!) The rising sun seemed pallid in its beaming, Because its coming did not find you there! And I--I rose despondent in the morning, As one whose burning thirst has not been slaked; I dreamed your face, a wonder world adorning, And then--I waked. And so I went upon a quest to find you, A quest that led through many bitter years; I journeyed far with strands of love to bind you, And found, not you, but bitterness and tears-- So I returned, discouraged, through the gloaming, My shoulders bowed with weariness unguessed; I came back, unsuccessful, from my roaming-- My sorry quest! I had a bit of garden that I tended, It helped me dream, again, my dream of you-- It was a joyous place of colors blended-- A place where pansies and Sweet William grew. And one bright day I hummed as I was planting A border row of flowers slim and fair, And raised my eyes to see pale sunlight slanting Across your hair! ANSWER I am myself--you cannot take my dreams And pull the filmy stuff of them apart! I am myself--and life IS what it seems. I am myself, and love is in my heart! You cannot make me think by fast set rule, You cannot laugh beliefs like mine away, Experience MAY be a bitter school, And yet.... The golden sun shines every day, And stars at night lend magic to the sky, And all the world is vividly a-glow, You cannot make me pause to question why For we who dare to dream have learned to know! THE WORLD IS RIGHT! There is a friendly One Who smiles when we have tried to do our part-- I will not flinch, my journey's just begun.... I AM MYSELF--YOU CANNOT BREAK MY HEART! A BABY'S HANDS God made the rivers, the hills, and the seas, God made the flowers, the grass, and the trees; God made the clouds, and the waves, silver-crested, Then God made the hands of a baby--and rested! How did He make them? Well, nobody knows-- Some say He dreamed of the bud of a rose, And that He woke as the dawn swept away Night in the dancing pink promise of day. Maybe He thought of the light of a star, (That's why He made them as soft as they are!) Maybe He watched while a new butterfly, Light as a sunbeam, went fluttering by. Maybe He walked in a garden, dew-kissed, That's why He made them as frail as the mist-- Then as He leaned from His heaven above, God made them strong as His greatest gift--LOVE! God made the mountains--we wonder at these-- God made the splendor of sunsets and trees; God made vast mines where a world's wealth is piled, Then God made the hands of a baby--and smiled! ALL ALONG THE BROAD HIGHWAY All along the broad highway the little dreams were growing, White as hope, and red as life, and bluer than the sea-- All along the broad highway I felt their petals blowing, Like a storm of fragrant snow across the lips of me! So I danced with joyous heart, and bent above them singing. So I skipped along the road and smiled into the skies; ALL ALONG THE BROAD HIGHWAY THE LITTLE DREAMS WERE SPRINGING, FRAGRANT AS THE DEW OF STARS AND GLAD AS BUTTERFLIES! All along the broad highway I danced and sang unheeding, Till One came with haughty step and traveled by my side; Traveled first beside my path then, suddenly, was leading-- One who drew me after him and murmured, "I AM PRIDE!" All along the broad highway I hurried, ever faster, Faster through the purple dust that blinded like a mist, Blinded me until I felt that only Pride was master, (And I saw the little dreams through clouds of amethyst!) All along the broad highway I toiled, no longer glancing Anywhere but straight ahead... I had no heart to sing-- All along the broad highway, my feet no longer dancing; Followed I the steps of Pride, and felt the thick dust sting In the tired eyes of me... the eyes too sad for weeping! Still I struggled--struggled on until quite suddenly-- All the strength that kept me up seemed drowsy, almost sleeping-- And I paused with drooping head and lo, Pride went from me! All along the broad highway the silent dusk was stealing, Quite alone I stood and stared about me in the gloom; And the voice of me was still, and my heart was kneeling Like a weary pilgrim soul in an attic room. And I stretched my empty hands to where the ghostly lighting, Showed a crumpled mist of blue, a heap of white and red-- There along the broad highway like armies after fighting, All the gallant little dreams were lying gaunt and dead! MY MOTHER My mother's kinder chubby--she's fat, th' fellers say-- My mother's kinder chubby, but I like her that a-way! 'Cause she's awful sorter jolly, an' she makes th' bestest pies, An' she laughs when I'm a-jokin' 'till th' tears are in her eyes. An' she pats me on th' shoulder when I'm feelin' sad an' blue, An' whispers, "Little feller, yer mother's proud o' you!" She don't wear silks 'at rustle, like Tommie's mother does, But I like her gingham better 'cause it's--well, just 'cause it's hers! An' she don't look young an' girl-like, an' her hands are sorter red, But, my, they're awful gentle when she tucks you inter bed.... She hasn't got a di'mond like th' lady crost th' street, But she's got two great big dimples, an' her smile is mighty sweet! My mother's sorter chubby--but say, her step is light-- She's never cross 'r tired--not even when it's night! An' her shoulders JUST as comfy when yer heart is feelin' sore, When you wish you was a baby--an' not a boy no more-- Oh, her arms are cushion tender at th' twilight time o' day, Yes--my mother's sorter chubby--But I like her that a-way! HEREDITY You told me, last night, In a strange and sudden burst of confidence; That a New England ancestor of yours, Had burned witches-- And at last I knew.... Why your eyes are always so grim, And why your mouth is cut, In a straight line, And why you can never see beauty and mirth In the sweep of wind over a wheat field, Or in the sunlight on a baby's hair. At last I knew Why you can never see romance In the long gypsie trail, Or magic, In the still purple woods. I knew why life, To you, Was something to be struggled with, Not a glorious adventure; And why death was the end of things, And not the beginning. And I knew at last, Why you could never understand, That tears may cover laughter, And that laughter may be a veil For tears. You told me, last night, That an ancestor of yours, Had burned witches, And, oh, as I sat in the candlelight, Watching you, I couldn't help wishing, That somewhere behind you, in the shadows, There was another ancestor-- A gay cavalier ancestor-- Who rode hard, And fought with his sword, And wore his hat, rakishly, On the back of his head, And knew--love. APRIL I had not meant to love again--all that was lost to me, For I had felt love's fear and pain, as well as ecstasy; I closed my heart, and locked the door, and tossed away the key. All through the winter-time I sat before my flaming fire, And listened to the sleigh-bells chime, and watched the flames leap higher, To grasp at shadows, sombre-hued, with fiendish, red desire. And then mad April came again--I felt the breezes blowing, And I forgot the fear, the pain.... I only knew that, glowing, In shady nook and garden spot, pale hyacinths were growing. And when across the perfumed lea (for nothing could defeat him! ) My vagrant love crept back to me... I did not mean to greet him; But April opened up my heart, and, oh, I ran to meet him! THE DESERT PATH--SEVEN SONNETS I. The camel tracks led whitely across the desert sand, And one came riding after with furtive mystery; Ah, one came swiftly riding, a dagger in his hand, And he was bent on plunder--a nomad thief was he! He did not heed the starshine that glimmered from on high, For laden beasts had traveled along the lonely way. He did not see the glory that swept the Eastern sky, For he had far to journey before the dawn of day. He followed through the desert, and then at last he saw An inn upon the outskirts of some small village place; And there were camels resting before the stable door-- He left his horse, crept nearer, with greed upon his face; And peering o'er the threshold, he saw that gold was piled, With precious stones and incense, before a little Child. II. A thief he was by calling, who to the stable came, A thief whose youthful fingers had learned to steal their fill; A thief he was who valued his heritage of shame, YET STANDING BY THAT DOORWAY, HE DID NOT WANT TO KILL! A thief he was, but--watching,--he saw a Baby face, And, bending near, a Mother, whose joy was undefiled; And for one breathless moment across the stable space, The Baby's eyes gazed at him--AND THEN THE BABY SMILED! A thief he was by calling, but there beside the door He saw a Holy Vision--he knelt and tried to pray-- And something, thrilling, whispered of love forever- more-- And then he rose, half weeping--and it was Christmas Day! A thief he was by calling, who felt the Father's plan, But back across the desert there silent rode a man! III. The years are met as milestones upon a winding road, And some slip by like shadows, and some are fair with flowers; And some seem dreary, hopeless--a leaden chain of hours-- And some are like a heart-throb, and some a heavy load, The thief, a thief no longer, a lonely figure strode Heart-weary down life's pathway, through tempest and through showers, But always prayed that somewhere among sweet- scented bowers, A Baby's smile might show him where happiness abode. For he was often hungry--a thief, reformed, must eat-- And there were folk who shunned him, and turned his plea away; And there were those who scourged him from out the market place-- (They were the ones who told him to earn his bread and meat!) Yet ever he walked onward, and dreamed of some fair day When he would find the Christ-Child with love upon His face! IV. Where work lay for the asking it seemed that men MIGHT work, But prejudice was rampant in every shop and field; And, "What if you ARE trying, MY scythe you may not wield!" Men told the thief, who answered--"Indeed, I will not shirk!" And carpenters and builders turned from him with a smirk, And farmers hurried by him to house the harvest's yield. And so he took his dagger, all rusted, and his shield, And sought again the highway where thieves and jackals lurk. And yet the spark of manhood still flamed within his heart, And still he saw the Baby, beyond the stable door; And oftentimes at even, as crimson daytime died, He knelt, a sorry figure, from all of life apart. And, "Oh, if I could see Him--and feel His love once more, "If I could see Him smiling, I would not steal!" he cried. V. It was a glowing ruby that caused the thief to fall, But--he was very hungry, and lonely, too, and cold; And youth lay all behind him, a tattered funeral pall, For he was very tired, and he was growing old. It was a glowing ruby that lay upon the breast Of one who had not earned it, who wore it with a sneer; The thief was very weary, he only longed for rest; He was too wan for caring, he was too numb for fear! It was a glowing ruby--he held it in his hand-- His hand was thin and withered, it shook beneath the gem; He took the vivid ruby, the ransom of a land, And tied it firmly, tightly, within his garment's hem; And then he shuffled forward, but like a thorn within His soul he bore the torment of bitterness and sin! VI. They caught him when the morning had tinged the Eastern skies; The gem was found upon him, as red as guilty blood; He stood, his head sunk forward, with listless, shal- low eyes, And hopelessness submerged him like some unholy flood; A Thief he was by calling. The law? The law was great; What chance had he for pity? His fate was sealed and done; He was unclean, an outcast, a menace to the state; A thing to be avoided, a stain against the sun! They led him to his hearing, the hall was still and light; A judge was seated higher, who passed him with a glance; And suddenly, forgetting his weariness and fright, The thief cried, leaping forward, "I did not have a chance!" The judgment hall was spacious, and coldly white and wide-- And coldly came the sentence--"He shall be crucified!" VII. They nailed him, God's creation, upon a cross of shame; They nailed him up with laughter, they heeded not his tears; And people looking at him were moved to soulless jeers, And agony was on him--a searing, breathless flame! And then, as he hung sobbing, a sudden feeling came Of peace that, reaching toward him across the sound of sneers, Was like a burst of music that one more feels than hears-- For, from somewhere beside him, a Voice had breathed his name. Ah, he was weak with anguish, and yet he turned his head, And saw a cross beside him, and on the cross a Form; And he forgot the tumult, the horror and the storm-- And someone, down below him, said, "Look, the thief is dead!" But, safe from fear and torture beyond their scornful cries, The thief had gazed at Heaven in Christ's triumphant eyes! SUMMER SONG If I might go with my True Love, To some far, dream-swept land, I'd be content to sit all day Upon the silver sand, And watch the sea come creeping in, The sighing, singing sea-- If I might go to some far land, And take True Love with me! If I could go with my True Love, To some far, lonely place; The world might well be lost, and I Could look upon Love's face. And wealth would seem a little thing, While happiness might be-- If I could go to some far land, And take True Love with me. Ah, Love would smile, and ruffle up, The hair above my brow; And we would laugh at all that seems So very sober, now. And monkey-folk, and scarlet birds, Would peer from every tree, And try to understand the words My True Love said to me! If I might go with my True Love, To some far, dream-swept land; I would not miss the world, for I Could always touch Love's hand, And feel the magic of his lips-- Oh, by the singing sea, And Eden-place would bloom a-new For my True Love and me! COMPREHENSION--A MOTHER'S SONG I KNOW HOW MARY FELT, THERE IN THE HAY, MY LITTLE SON WAS BORN ON CHRISTMAS DAY! I know, as she bent tenderly above Him, She did not think of majesty or power, For he was hers--and she was there to love Him! His hands, as pinkly tinted as a flower, Seemed all too small to carve His deathless story-- What though a star gleamed glorious to guide Him? She snatched Him to her breast as if to hide Him From harm, and fear, and even--yes, from glory. And when the wise men came to give their treasure, She smiled at them as proud as any queen; She scarcely saw the jewels in countless measure, The gold that gleamed; her gaze was far, serene, Upon the hills where shepherds watched, alone. She did not think of crosses or of dying, For He was just a drowsy baby, lying Wrapped in her love--A baby--all her own! I KNOW HOW MARY FELT, THERE IN THE HAY, MY LITTLE SON WAS BORN ON CHRISTMAS DAY! SINGING ON THE MARCH God put a song into my heart one day, A little song as light as ocean form, A little song of love and hope and home, A little song to cheer me on my way. And though I bowed beneath the load I bore, I found that, when I sang, the way was bright, And that my footsteps swifter grew, and light; And all my life seemed fairer than before. God has a song that fits in every heart, And though that song may seem a tiny thing, It is your task--so forge ahead, and SING-- And you will find that you have done your part! EASTER He came to call last night-- And we began to talk, as young folk will, Half carelessly, and half in awe, of God. It was the springtime, and the night was still And fragrant, all about us. And the sod Was fresh with tender grass, And overhead a crescent moon shone bright. And, "God," he said, "Has built the world on laws, "Like some great watch, and every breathing space "Is measured; and the system has no flaws, "And nothing moves from its appointed place. "God is the Master Scientist," he said, His voice was bold and had a ring of truth-- But God seemed ponderous, and far away.... And then a gentle breeze danced overhead, And caused the timid, new-born leaves to sway, And we began to talk of love, and youth. And then, I sent him home, and went upstairs, To my still room, and flung the windows wide; And as I knelt to say my evening prayers I saw the stars, far smiling, in the sky. And, all at once, I knew the reason why I worshipped God... knew why He had sent His son to save the world from sin and shame; And, suddenly, like some sweet, healing tide, The meaning of my life swept over me; And, through the dark, my groping soul could see The Christ Who loved us, and was crucified. And, as I knelt and watched the star's faint shine, I felt God's hand, a moment, touching mine! RESURRECTION You took the lilt from my heart of hearts, And the breath of song from my soul; And the mind of me that had once been free And buoyantly young, and whole; Grew calm and still as a barren sea, Where never a star beam shone, A sea where never a ripple danced-- That reflected your face along. I walked in a daze down well-worn paths-- Paths that your feet had trod; I thought your thoughts and I spoke your tongue, I knelt to your hostile God. And the dreams that had been a part of me, I tossed with a sigh away, And left to rust in the misty dust Of the land called Yesterday. My hands lay folded in slim repose, Quite as you bade them rest; Folded, meek, o'er the leaden heart That tortured my gypsie breast. And I smiled with my lips--my eyes were numb-- I smiled for I never knew, That the mind of me was a lifeless sea, Reflecting the face of you! You took the lilt from my carefree life, And the song from my singing heart; But there came a day when the world grew gray, When I knew that we must part.... So I tore you out of your soul-bound shrine-- And, oh, though it caused me pain, I raised my face to the sky and knew That my song would come again! THE QUEEN "Barefooted came the beggar maid," So ran the minstrel's lay-- "Barefooted came the beggar maid "Before the King Corpethua." But, oh, her face was like a light, Her hair was black as middle night, And whispers ran from left to right-- "She is more beautiful than day!" "In robe and crown the king stepped down," So ran the minstrel's lay-- "In robe and crown the king stepped down, "To meet and greet her by the way." And so the beggar maid became, A Queen, but just a queen in name, For, with her gypsie eyes aflame, Her mirror heard her say-- I was a beggar maid, I used to lie Silent and unafraid, beneath the sky, And watch the stars--my little sisters, they, I used to wake at dawning time of day To plunge my body in some mountain stream-- I was a beggar maid! Is this a dream, This golden crown I wear upon my head? This robe of royal purple and of red, This rope of pearls, this ring, these silken shoon? Not long ago the silver crescent moon Was like a hand that beckoned me to stray, And cities seemed vast centuries away; And as my feet--swift feet, they were, and light-- Carried me through the wonder of the night, I never thought of kings, or kingly power-- My life was all one splendid, singing hour! I love my king--He raised me from the dust, And looked at me with wonder, and with trust; My hair hung, tangled, to the waist of me, He brushed it from my eyes, that he might see Deep into them! He set me on his steed, He never knew my name, or asked my creed, He just believed in me--and told me so. I love my king, I love him well, but, oh-- Once I wore poppies, red upon my brow, (A crown seems very heavy to me, now,) And once I wore, for all the world to see A gown of rags. (Now, velvets stifle me!) And once my hands (how soft they are!) were strong To toil for me. The days seem very long While I must sit in state above the land-- I love my king... But does he understand? I was a beggar maid, I used to lie Silent and unafraid beneath the sky-- And, now that I am queen, my being longs To hear, once more, the little slumber songs Of night birds nesting in some forest tree-- I want to be myself, again, and free! I want to climb the crest of some great hill, And watch the sunset clouds, again, and thrill Before the color of them! I would stand Alone, once more, and see the wistful land Take on the tint of twilight. I would pray My gypsie prayer, again, at close of day! I love my king--for he has given me Rare pearls, the treasure of a sighing sea, And rubies, red as sunset clouds a-glow And opals like the wistful winds that blow At twilight-time. But I would wear, instead, Wild forest flowers, twined about my head-- And I would dance, barefooted, on the sod, An innovation to my pagan God! Am I a queen? What is this crown I wear? I tear it from my smoothly plaited hair-- I lay my ring, my rope of pearls, aside; Am I a queen--am I a monarch's bride? The soul of me is still a gypsie thing-- I pull them off, the glowing gems, the ring.... I love my king, I love him well--but, oh, GIVE ME MY RAGS, AGAIN, AND LET ME GO! FRAGMENTS A WITHERED ROSE A book of verse, And one withered rose Between two pages.... My love is as faded as the petals, But still faintly fragrant With sweet memories. ASHES OF LOVE Dust on the letters you sent me And I did not know that they had been forgotten. Does it mean that I love again? IT'S LOTS OF FUN-- It's lots of fun to play around, To dance and sing; And not be tied to anyone, Or anything! It's lots of fun to live my life, Beneath the sky; To have no one who owns the right To question "Why"? It's lots of fun to come and go, Through storm and strife, With no one by my side who hopes To mould my life. (But sometimes at the twilight time, When night birds cry; I dream, perhaps, that something fair Has passed me by!) And yet--it's good to play around, To laugh and sing; And not be tied to anyone, Or anything! VALENTINE I wonder if you know, up there in heaven, That I have kept your roses, crumpled now. I wonder if you guess that still I treasure A faded ribbon that once touched your brow. I wonder if you dream, as dusk is falling, Of how I read that note you sent to me. I wonder if you think, up there in heaven, Of all the golden days that used to be. I wonder if you smile up there in heaven, And pass by, lightly, in your robes of white; Or if you sometimes think of me a little. You seem so near, so very near tonight. I wonder if that last shy kiss I gave you Can make you lonely, just a bit, for me. I wonder if you long, up there in heaven, For all the golden plans that used to be. Do they have valentines up there in heaven? A love like mine is surely strong to go The little way from earth to where you wait me, Although it be beyond the stars' faint glow. I want you dear; my tired heart is calling; My eyes are searching, though they may not see; I wonder if you're lonely, there in heaven, For all the golden dreams that used to be. THE SACRIFICE I started out in a cloak of pride, With talent, too, that I did not hide; I started out on Life's stony road, Ambition's weight was my only load, And the way seemed fair in the dawn's first glow, And I hurried--ran--FOR I DID NOT KNOW! Love smiled from a garden by the way, And called to me, but I would not stray From the road that stretched like a ribbon white, Up endless hills to an endless night. Love smiled at me, but I pushed ahead, And love fell back in the garden--dead-- But I did not care as I hastened by, And I did not pause for regret or sigh.... The road before was a path of hope, And every hill with its gentle slope Led up to heights I had dreamed and prayed To reach some day-- Ah! I might have stayed With Love and Youth in the garden gay, That smiled at me from beside the way. I plodded up, and the gentle hills Grew hard to climb, and the laughing rills Were torrents peopled with sodden forms; The sky grew black with the threat of storms, And rocks leaped out and they bruised my feet, And faint I grew in the fever heat. (But ever on led the path that lay As grey as dust in the waning day.) My back was bent, and my heart was sore, And the cloak of pride that I grandly wore Was rent and patched and not fair to see-- Ambition, talent, seemed naught to me.... But I struggled on 'till I reached the top, FOR ONLY THEN DID I DARE TO STOP! I stood on the summit gazing down, And the earth looked sordid and dull and brown, And neutral-tinted and neutral-souled; And all of life seemed a story told, And the only spot that was bright to see Was a patch of green that had bloomed for me Where a garden lived in a spring long fled, When Love stood smiling-- BUT LOVE WAS DEAD! TO A CERTAIN ROOM Your room is still the dainty little place, That used to seem so much a part of you-- The draperies of faded rose and blue Still hold a shadow of their former grace. The windows still are hung with frosty lace, And sometimes, when the moonlight glimmers through, I watch your mirror, half expecting to See once again, reflected there, your face! And yet, the little room seems much too neat, It seems quite colorless, and very bare, Because the filmy things you used to wear Are laid away. Because the perfume sweet That clung about you has been swept aside.... Your room is there--but, oh, its soul has died! OTHER DAYS I wonder if you ever dream of other days, Because, sometimes, at twilight when the sunset plays Half wistfully across the polished oaken floor, I see you smiling--standing in your place once more. (Do you remember little things we used to say? They wouldn't mean so very much to us to-day.... Do you remember how I wore a gown of blue, Because it brought the haze of autumn clouds to you? Do you remember how I said you didn't care-- And how you laughed at me and rumpled up my hair? Do you remember how the tears stood in my eyes At your good-by when darkness overhung the skies?) I wonder if you ever dream of other days? Because, sometimes at twilight when the sunset plays Half wistfully across your empty cozy-chair, I turn and half expect to see you smiling there! THIS IS TO YOU, DEAR, TO YOU, UNKNOWING; JUST AS THE SOUTH WIND WISTFULLY BLOWING TOUCHES SOME FLOWER-- SO IS MY SONG, DEAR, THROUGH EVERY HOUR, ALL THE DAY LONG, DEAR, TO YOU, UNKNOWING! AT TWILIGHT You came to me through the candlelight, When the world, outside, was grey.... You came to me through the candlelight When the day was done, and the misty night Crept through the land. And your eyes were bright, And they seemed to laugh and pray. You came to me through the candlelight, And you took my hands, and you held them tight, And you didn't speak, but, dear, I KNEW-- And my heart and my soul were part of you. You came to me through the candlelight, When the world, outside, was grey; And I looked in your eyes and, glowing there, I saw a hope and I read a prayer; And I knew, at last, that I didn't care, If life were a troubled, weary way, As long as I walked with you. You came to me, at the close of day, Through the candlelight--when the world was grey-- And dreams of Heaven seemed strangely new.... And I told you, dear, to stay! THERE ARE SUCH WEARY LITTLE LINES There are such weary little lines about the mouth of you, Such tragic little mirthless lines--they mock at dreams come true, And twist your lips when you would smile, until all joy is dead, And I, who want to laugh with you, am fain to weep instead! There are such dreary little lines about the mouth of you, They make me want to whisper that summer sky is blue, And that the rain is like a lance of silver through the air, And that the flowers in the lane are growing tall and fair! There are such tired little lines about the mouth of you-- As if you thought that life was cold and loving friends were few.... They are such lonely little lines I think that I, some day, Will creep close to you in the dusk, and kiss them quite away! THREE SONGS OF AWAKENING 1. The flowers spring from the broken heart, Of the frozen winter sod-- Rending their prison bars apart, They smile in the face of God! The birds sweep up to the wind-blown plain, E'er ever the land knows spring; To sway on a budding branch again, To challenge the world, and sing! And I with my tired eyes a-dance, And my weary heart a-flame; Have felt the call of the old romance, And thrilled to a whispered name! 2. I saw a sky as blue as eyes I know, I felt a breeze, as soft as kisses, blow; And, dear, I saw one golden sunbeam creep From Heaven, lighting all the world below, Like love that wakens, dewy-eyed, from sleep! 3. We who have wondered know the answer, now; For Spring stands, joyous, on the purple brow Of the far hill; and doubt is swept away, And all the mirth-mad world makes holiday! We who have wandered long, and half afraid, Find answer in each dreaming woodland glade; HEARTS THAT HAVE BROKEN MAY BE BOUND TOGETHER, WHEN SPRING HAS TRIUMPHED OVER WINTER WEATHER! IN A CANOE Starlight, and the silver lake Clasp the skies-- And two nearer, dearer stars, Your eyes! Elfin voices seem to call Through the night, But your arms are warm, and they Hold me tight. Pallidly the moon slides down, Hour by hour slips; Ah, the deathless magic of Your lips! Dark the shadows as we creep Past the shore-- Dear, that we might drift like this Evermore! CAPTIVE-HEART Now that the day is done I am ready to greet you, Smiling, the way that I know you would have me smile; I will open the door, and will run down the walk to meet you, As if I had missed you, dear, for a weary while! I will listen, breathless, the while you tell of your toiling, All day long in the dust and the city's heat; And, dear, you will never know that my blood is boiling-- Back of the smile that is calm and tenderly sweet. You will never know that the soul of me, dear, is flying, Out where the seagull dips in the ocean's foam; You will never know that something of me is dying, Every night as I smile and welcome you home. You will never know that my heart is soaring above you-- You will be content with my mask of a smile-- KNOWING I LOVE YOU! EVENING SONG I do not want to be worshipped, From a distance; Like some idol carved in wood, Or stone. I want to be loved As every real woman Wants to be loved! And so.... Lay aside the book that you are reading from-- What if Leander did swim the Hellespont? And what if burning Sappho Did sing? What do I care for Launcelot and Elaine, Or Tristram and Isolt, Or Aucassin and Nicholette? Lay aside the book that you are reading from, And cross the room quickly, And take my cold hands between your two Warmer ones.... And here, in the vivid dusk, We will make our own love songs! AFTER A DAY OF WAITING All day long I waited--waited with soul aflame-- And then through the still of evening, humming a tune, you came; Came with a jest on your smiling lips, and eyes that were all too gay; And the light died out of my waiting heart with the words that I could not say. We laughed through the star-flecked twilight--what though my laugh was strained? You, who were there beside me, laughed with a mirth unfeigned! And at last when I bade you leave me you went, and you never knew That with soul aflame I had waited, all through the day, for you. INTANGIBLE Dear, you are like the summer dusk to me, The summer dusk when all the world seems still; When purple shadows creep along the hill, And birds are softly crooning in each tree. You are the gentle-cool-eyed mystery Of twilight hours. Sometime I think you will Melt from me out into the dark, until You turn to star-shine, silvering the sea. Dear, even when your head is on my breast, You seem no nearer than a moonbeam thrown Across my heart. Your fingers have caressed My hair so lightly that I scarce have known Their pressure. You are like that time when rest Steals up so softly that one feels alone! AT FIRST SIGHT Seeing you once, how can I forget That our eyes have smiled and our hands have met? That our souls have known and our hearts have cried, Though our lips were dumb. Ah, the world is wide, And love there is for us both to know-- But my eyes were dim as I watched you go! You may wander far, you may come no more, But you hold the key to the inmost door Of my heart of hearts! For our hands have met, And our eyes have smiled, and I CAN'T FORGET! FIVE SONNETS I. THE COMING I know that Love will come to me, some day, Though I have never loved, or looked on Love; I know that Love will wait beside the way And smile at me. The tender skies above Will be alight with all the joy of spring, And flowers will life their heads above the earth, And some far bird will stay its flight and sing, And fill the land with silver throated mirth. I know that Love, at last, with smiling eyes, Will pause beside my half-swung cottage door, And I will lift my gaze, without surprise, To see his shadow dance across the floor. I know that Love will come to me, some day, When springtime blossoms, shyly, into May! II. REALIZATION I know that you are not the one that I Should fall in love with, for your eyes are blind To all the things that make my world the kind I want to live in. Often, when I cry At some vague beauty that has caught my eye, You laugh! You cannot dream the dreams I find, In forest places where dim pathways wind Up to the Heaven-land so far and high. I know that I should never learn to care, And yet, sometimes the blueness of your eyes Can make me half forget the smiling skies.... And, when I see the sunlight on your hair, I do not stop to reason, dear, for oh-- My heart throbs faster, and I know--I know! III. THE RAIN OUTSIDE You close beside me, and outside, the rain, Which, stealing through the darkness of the night, Seems tapping out with fingers softly light, A world-old song upon my window pane-- A song of happiness with a refrain That throbs in suffering. You hold me tight, Your eyes, that search my own, are warmly bright, Your lips touch mine again, and yet again! Ah, what though years must pass, though you and I May live our lives, quite silently, apart? Whenever rain comes, when the day is through, And, tapping on my casement, seems to sigh, A dream will blossom, fragrant, in my heart, A dream of youth eternal, and of--you. IV. I USED TO WRITE I used to write so many songs of love-- I wrote them carefully, I did not know That love was more than moonlight from above, And pretty words set in an even row, I held my pencil calmly in my hand, And sang of arms and lips and tender eyes; I wrote of love--who did not understand-- And hoped that folk would think me very wise! I used to write so many songs... To-day My hands are folded, and I cannot sing, I sit, instead, and watch the sunlight stray Across my desk. And I am wondering If God, who lights a million stars each night, Laughed at the groping words I tried to write! V. MOON-GLOW I wonder if, dim centuries ago, We watched the moon together, on some night When stars hung very near, and softly bright? I wonder if my tired head drooped low Against your breast? And if you seemed to know (As you know now) the dreams that, like a light, Shone in my soul? For, dear, it seems so right-- So very right that you should hold me so! Here, in the moonlight, there is nothing new, The very arms that crush me to your heart, Seem almost like a memory, a part Of some vague yesterday that has come true-- I feel tonight as if I, dear, might start A journey back, across the years, with you! FORGIVEN You left me when the weary weight of sorrow Lay, like a stone, upon my bursting heart; It seemed as if no shimmering tomorrow Could dry the tears that you had caused to start. You left me, never telling why you wandered-- Without a word, without a last caress; Left me with but the love that I had squandered, The husks of love and a vast loneliness. And yet if you came back with arms stretched toward me, Came back to-night, with carefree, smiling eyes, And said: "My journeying has somehow bored me, And love, though broken, never, never dies!" I would forget the wounded heart you gave me, I would forget the bruises on my soul. My old-time gods would rise again to save me, My dreams would grow supremely new and whole. What though youth lay, a tattered garment, o'er you? Warm words would leap upon my lips, long dumb; If you came back, with arms stretched out before you, AND TOLD ME, DEAR, THAT YOU WERE GLAD TO COME! THE WRITING Sometimes a mist of sunlight across a stranger's hair, Sometimes the vague expression upon a stranger's face, Can make me feel your presence--can fill a lonely place With dreams of life half realized. Faint music through the air Can make me hear your foot-fall, again, upon the stair-- Sometimes a dancer moving with quite unconscious grace, Can make my pulse beat faster; and for a breathless space Can make me turn, expecting to find you standing there! You have not gone! The passing of every empty day Has only brought you nearer. Those things that were a part Of all we planned together are bits of you that stay, To bruise my soul as sharply as any flame-tipped dart. Ah, time may hold its healing--but years that pass away Cannot erase the writing you traced upon my heart! AT PARTING Love of my life, the time has come for parting-- For, dearest, I must leave you while we care! Leave you while tears of vain regret are starting, While I can look at you and find you fair. Could we endure a morn of bitter waking, Could we accept a love that would seem less? Dear, I must go the while my heart is breaking-- Go while my world is filled with happiness. Love of my soul, our dream has been so flaming, That, if we waited, it might smoulder down-- Leaving dead ashes only, ashes shaming All that was vivid--ashes dimly brown. We will have memories as sweet as flowers, We who have left, untouched, Fate's cup of woe; Kiss me once more to bridge life's aching hours-- Love of my heart--the time has come to go! WHEN I AM OLD-- When I am old and drenched in worlds of sadness, And wear a lacy cap upon my head; When, looking past the future's singing gladness, I linger, wistful, in the years long dead. When I am old, and young folk all about me, Speak softly of religion, WHEN THEY SPEAK, When parties are a grand success without me; And when my laugh is fluttering and weak-- Will I then be content to raise my glances, Serenely to the cloud-entangled sky? And will I be content to watch at dances, Without a heartbreak, as the hours pass by? Or when I see young lovers' fingers twine, WILL I REMEMBER, DEAR, YOUR LIPS ON MINE? THE REFUGE We hurried, once, down the purple road, When a storm hung low in the sky; And we gained the door of Love's abode As the silver rain flashed by. Our steps rang out as we crossed the sill, And the place was dimly bright, And even our hearts seemed strangely still, While our searching hands clasped tight. We waited there while the wind moaned past And the thunder crashed in the air; And the door of Love's abode blew fast, But we didn't know--or care! For we heard a song in the driving rain, And the sky seemed warmly gray; And the tempest rang with a mad refrain, And the world seemed years away. . . . . . . . . . We have wandered far from the road of dreams, We have crept from the house of love; And the scorching sun of the noonday gleams From the pitiless sky above. But once, ah, once--in that dusky place, When the lightning flashed through the air, I saw its flame on your upturned face, And its glow on your vivid hair. We have strayed away--we have strayed away-- For the world is all too wide.... But once I came through the stormy day, And you walked, proud, at my side. AND, OH, FOR THE FEEL OF THE RAIN AGAIN, AND, OH, FOR THE PURPLE ROAD, AND, OH, FOR THE JOY AND THE PAIN AGAIN, THAT WE KNEW IN LOVE'S ABODE! TO DREAM ALONE.... How long the days may seem, how long each night, (And yet, how short the evenings used to be!) How strange it is that I can never see, Warm pictures in the hearth that glows so bright. We used to watch the laughing firelight, And build dream castles in it--Ah, but we Built castles everywhere! And now the sea Is swept between us. You have gone to fight. And I--I wait and try to dream alone, And try to smile, to dance and laugh and sing; And, somehow, cannot think of anything, But just the thrilling roughness of your tone, The light that lights your eyes, your lips that cling, And love--the flame of love that we have known! NOW I MAY SING OF SADNESS.... Knowing, dear, that my whole heart lies at rest Deep in the heart of you, I may sing a song Telling the tale of bitterness and wrong.... Knowing, dear, that my head lay on your breast Only last night, I may sing of dreams that died, And hopes that never were born, and faith betrayed, Of weary feet that have left the road and strayed Out of the narrow way, to pastures wide. Dear, when my songs were gay, I did not know Whether you cared. And so I had to sing Gladly, to mask grim fear--I had to bring Sunlight to point the path that I must go! Now that the clouds are silver sweet above, I may sing songs of sadness. I am blessed Knowing, dear, that my whole heart lies at rest, Knowing, dear, that I have your love--your love! KNOWING THAT YOU HAVE WALKED HER MUDDY ROADS WEARILY, AFTER BITTER TIMES OF FIGHTING; KNOWING THAT YOU HAVE CARRIED HEAVY LOADS OVER HER HILLS--WHILE I, AT HOME, WAS LIGHTING DIM YELLOW CANDLES ON THE MANTEL SHELF.... KNOWING YOU SUFFERED AGONY AND LOSS, UNDER THE VERY SHADOW OF A CROSS-- FRANCE HOLDS A BIT OF YOU--AND OF MYSELF! WHEN WAR CAME War came, one day, and drew us close together, Although it swept us many miles apart; The love that lay as lightly as a feather, Now rests, a precious weight, upon my heart. And all the dreams I dreamed for just the dreaming, Have taken on a meaning that is new; And somehow all the lonely world is seeming, To cry aloud my aching need of you! Because you were so much a part of living, Like sunshine and the freshness of the air, The priceless gift of faith that you were giving Seemed small to me. Scarce knowing you were there I took your heart-strings in my careless fingers, And played a song as light as summer dew, And yet, today, its wistful echo lingers And fills an empty world with thoughts of you. I did not think that I would ever miss you, I did not dream the time would come to be When I would long to touch your hand, to kiss you-- To hear your voice say tender words to me. I did not know that I would wonder whether My head would rest, once more, against your heart.... War came, my dear, and drew us close together, Although it swept us many miles apart! WHEN YOU WENT BY I stood in the rain and watched you pass, I stood in the blinding rain.... And I thought of a fragrant summer night, When the room was glowing with candlelight, And a shower beat on the window glass With a wonderful, low refrain. I thought of your arms that held me tight, And your eyes that were near and warmly bright; I thought of--all, as I watched you pass, And my soul was wrung with pain. "Tramp, tramp, tramp!" rang your column's tread. "Tramp, tramp, tramp!" through the street. (Ah, dear, it was summer once, and there Were flower scents on the misty air-- Honeysuckle and mignonette, poignantly, sadly sweet!) "Tramp, tramp, tramp!" rang your column's tread, And my eyes were dim as I bowed my head; And my heart seemed broken and old and dead, Under your marching feet. I stood in the rain and watched you pass-- There in the autumn rain.... And I thought, my dear, of the night when you Had kissed me first. (Ah, your eyes were blue, And very tender, and Heaven-true, There in the candlelight!) I thought of a misty summer night, When a shower fell on the vivid grass (There, through the rain, I watched you pass!) I thought of a mystic summer night That never may come again. "TRAMP, TRAMP, TRAMP!" RANG YOUR COLUMN'S TREAD, "TRAMP, TRAMP, TRAMP!" IN THE STREET; AND I TRIED TO SMILE--WITH A LIFTED HEAD-- BUT MY HEART LAY, CRUSHED, AT YOUR FEET! IN MEMORIAM To an American Aviator He went to battle in the mist-hung sky, Like some gold-hearted bird with pinions strong; He went with courage, with a snatch of song, In all his splendid youth! And God on high Looked down with love to watch him dip and fly, Then lifted him to where the brave belong. He went to right a bleeding nation's wrong, And proved that he was not afraid to die! So we, who stare across the lonely hours, Must only think of that great gift he gave; Must think of other lives that his will save; And know that, when the tender, healing showers Have fallen in a stranger-land, the flowers Will bloom, like prayers, upon a hero's grave! A PEASANT GIRL SINGS Somewhere, Out There, he is--just a boy, that's all-- (Laughter sparkled in his eyes--he was always singing!) Just a boy who answered when he heard his country's call; (Somewhere, Out There, he is--how my thoughts go winging--) Ready to do or dare, (Like sunlight was his hair,) Just a boy, a laughing boy, Somewhere, Out There. Idle my wheel, to-day, hushed is it's spinning-- (Ah, but his eyes were blue--blue as the sea--) Somewhere, Out There, he is... Losing--or winning! (Boy with the carefree heart, come back to me!) Blood red the cannon's flare, (God, can you hear my prayer?) Keep him, my boy, from harm-- Somewhere, Out There. TOGETHER THEY LAY TOGETHER IN THE SUN AND WAITED FOR THE END; SIDE BY SIDE, TOGETHER, BEARDED FOE AND FRIEND; JEAN FROM THE PLEASANT FIELDS OF SINGING, SOUTHERN FRANCE, JEAN FROM THE POPPY FIELDS SIGHING WITH ROMANCE; FRITZ FROM A FATHERLAND HE BLINDLY LOVED AND SERVED, FRITZ WHOSE SOFT-NOSED BULLETS HAD NEVER FLINCHED NOR SWERVED; AND PETER, WHOSE TIRED EYES WERE WIDE AND DEEP AND BROWN, PETER FROM DELANCEY STREET, IN NEW YORK TOWN. They didn't speak, these three, They didn't know each other's tongue; And, then, When men Whose songs are nearly sung Are lying side by side, Their breathing not so... free, The gulf is rather wide. In the sun they lay there; And Fritz's hair Was very bright. He was a foe To kill on sight-- And yet the light Upon his hair was so, So very fair.... Jean found himself remembering HER hair; Of palest gold it was, a magic snare To net men's soul in! She had bade him go, Sobbing, "Je t'aime"--which means, "I love you so!" Her hair--her hands--her lips, Red as a sunset cloud when daytime slips Into the night. No, redder! Like a flower That blooms upon the earth for just an hour; A poppy flower, fragile, soft.... HER LIPS Red as the heart-blood of a man, that drips Into eternity.... Jean sighed, And died. PERHAPS HER LIPS WERE VERY NEAR--WHO KNOWS? WHEN EYES MUST CLOSE AGAINST THE SUN, AND LIFE, WHO CARES? ONE ONLY DARES TO WONDER! Fritz lay still. He felt the strength, the faith, the stubborn will, Drop from him like worn garments, till he lay Half-frightened in the burning light of day. He had killed many, yes.... From under His tunic, gropingly, he drew a cross; He wondered would it make, for her, the loss A little less? Ah, to press His bearded lips once more upon her cheek, To hear her speak.... Yes, he had killed, and killed-- And he had thrilled To do it.... But just to sit Beside her, in the shade, THAT had been paradise! Her soft arms laid About his throat.... THEY STRANGLED HIM-- His eyes grew dim.... He choked--once... twice.... Peter from Delancey Street, laughed with white- lipped pluck. "Dyin' side o' HIM!" he coughed. "Ain't it rotten luck! "Poor guy, they got him, though--got him same as me...." Peter, from Delancey Street, stopped talking suddenly. He saw-- A candy store, On the busy, smelly corner of a crowded city slum; He heard the hum Of traffic in the street, The sound of feet Upon the pavement; and he saw, Behind the counter there, THE GIRL. She wore Her hair Plastered tight to her little shell-like ears. He felt her tears Upon his face The night he told her that he'd left his place, His steady paying job, to go and fight. "Good night!" He'd said to her. "Somebody's gotta go! Yerself, you know, We gotta STIR T'lick them fellers Over There!" Her slicked-back hair Had roughened up against his khaki sleeve, And she had cried: "Dear, MUST you leave?" And he had dried Her eyes, and smudged the powder on her nose.... "Here goes!" Said Peter of Delancey Street. He saw A candy store-- A city slum, a girl with plastered hair, Who waited there.... THEY LAY TOGETHER IN THE SUN--BRAVELY TO THE END, SIDE BY SIDE, TOGETHER, BEARDED FOE AND FRIEND. JEAN FROM THE POPPY FIELDS, SIGHING WITH ROMANCE, JEAN FROM THE LAUGHTER-LILTING FIELDS OF SOUTHERN FRANCE; FRITZ FROM A FATHERLAND HE BLINDLY LOVED AND SERVED, FRITZ, WHOSE FAITH, ALTHOUGH BETRAYED, HAD NEVER FLINCHED OR SWERVED; AND PETER, WHOSE TIRED EYES WERE QUESTIONING AND BROWN, PETER, FROM DELANCEY STREET, IN NEW YORK TOWN. JIM-DOG He wasn't, well, a fancy kind o' dog-- Not Jim! But, oh, I sorter couldn't seem ter help A-lovin' him. He always seemed ter understand. He'd rub his nose against my hand If I was feelin' blue or sad. Or if my thoughts was pretty bad; An' how he'd bark an' frisk an' play When I was gay! A soldier's dog don't have much time ter whine Like little pets a-howlin' at th' moon. A soldier's dog is bound ter learn, right soon, That war is war, an' what a steady line Of men in khaki means. (What, dogs don't know? You bet they do! Jim-dog, he had ter go Along th' trenches oftentimes at night; He seemed ter sense it when there was a fight A-brewin'. Oh, I guess he knew, all right!) I was a soldier, an' Jim-dog was MINE. Ah, what's the use? There never was another dog like him. Why, on th' march I'd pause an' call--"Hey, Jim!" An' he'd be there, his head tipped on one side, A-lookin' up at me with love an' pride, His tail a-waggin', an' his ears raised high.... I wonder why my Jim-dog had ter die? He was a friend ter folks; he didn't bite; He never snapped at no one in th' night; He didn't hate a soul; an' he was GAME! An' yet... a spark o' light, a dartin' flame Across th' dark, a sneaky bit o' lead, An' he was... dead! They say there ain't no heaven-land for him, 'Cause dogs is dogs, an' haven't any right; But let me tell yer this; without my Jim Th' very shinin' streets would seem less bright! An' somehow I'm a-thinkin' that if he Could come at that last stirrin' bugle call Up to th' gates o' gold aside of me, Where God stands smilin' welcome to us all, An' I said, "Father, here's my dog... here's Jim," They'd find some corner, touched with love, fer him! SIX SONNETS I. SOMEHOW Somehow I never thought that you would go, Not even when red war swept through the land-- I somehow thought, because I loved you so, That you would stay. I did not understand That something stronger than my love could come, To draw you, half-reluctant, from my heart; I never thought the call of fife and drum Would rend our cloak of happiness apart! And yet, you went... And I--I did not weep-- I smiled, instead, and brushed the tears aside. And yet, when night-time comes, I cannot sleep But silent lie, while longing fights with pride-- YOU ARE MY MAN, THE FOE YOU FIGHT MY FOE, AND YET--I NEVER THOUGHT THAT YOU WOULD GO! II. I WONDER I wonder if you dream, across the night, When watchfires cut the vivid dark in twain, Of long dim rooms, and yellow candlelight, And gardens drenched in vaguely perfumed rain? I wonder if you think, when shot and shell And molten fire are singing songs of hate, Of that last throbbing moment of farewell When, in your arms, I promised you to wait! I wonder, should grim death reach out his hand, And speak, above the strife, of peace and rest; If you, alone in that dark stranger land, Would feel again my head upon your breast? And if, as light and love and living slips, Your prayer would be my kiss upon your lips.... III. SOME DAY Some day when on exultant feet you come Back through the streets that echo at your tread-- My soul will thrill to hear the throbbing drum, And yet, perhaps, I'll sit with drooping head, Not caring, quite, to meet your steady gaze, Not daring, quite, to look into your eyes; Afraid because a weary stretch of days, Each one a million years, between us lies. My heart--my heart is ever yours to hold, And yet, while I have waited here for you, You have seen faith betrayed, and brave youth sold, You have seen meadows drenched in bloody dew-- It may have changed you, and your eyes may be A little harder when they look at me! IV. DREAM Sometimes I dream that you are back with me, And that with hands together clasped we go Like little children, young and glad and free, A-down a magic road we used to know. Sometimes I dream your eyes upon my face, And feel your fingers softly touch my hair.... And when I wake from dreaming all the place, Seems lonelier because you are not there. What is a dream? Not very much, they say, An idle vision made in castled Spain-- Well, maybe they are right.... And yet, today, When all the warring world was swept with pain, The suffering and sorrow ceased to be, Because I dreamed that you were back with me! V. UNDERSTANDING Now, when I stand in some great crowded place, I see the souls of other women stare Out of their eyes--And I can glimpse the care And worry that has banished light and grace From every life. Upon each woman-face I see the mark of tears, the hint of prayer That, one short year ago, had not been there-- I see what time will never quite erase! Before you left, I did not notice eyes-- Because I knew that I might touch your hand, I did not dream the dread that swept our land... Ah, dear, the months have made me very wise! Now, one with everything, I understand, And heart meets heart and I can sympathize. VI. THE WAKING Now war is over and a world set free, And youth returns, triumphant, to our land-- And dear-heart, you'll be coming back to me, With eager lips, and tender outstretched hand! You will be coming as you came of old, At evening time, with laughter lilting gay; Glad of the little things that life may hold-- And I will meet you in the self same way.... Yes, in the shadows by my oaken door, I will be waiting as I used to wait-- And I will feel that you are come, before I hear the clicking of the garden gate. And, in the darkness there, my pulse will leap, Reviving dreams that long have lain asleep! AFTER PEACE "I wonder what they're doin' home tonight?" Jim said-- We sat there, in the yellow firelight, There, in a house in France-- Some of us, maybe thinkin' of romance-- Some of us missin' buddies who was dead-- And some just dreamin' Sorter hardly seemin' Ter make th' dream come clear. An' then--Jim spoke-- "I wonder what they're doin' home ternight?" Says Jim-- An' some of us felt, well--as if we'd like Ter smother him! An' some of us tried hard-like not ter choke, Th' smoke Was pretty thick an' black! A-thinkin' back, Across th' ocean I could sort of see A little house that means just all ter me And, though nobody said a word I knew Their thoughts was goin' on th' self-same track-- Thoughts do Out here, in France. Home--HOME--No wonder that we all was still-- For one of us was thinkin' of a hill, With pine trees on it black against th' moon-- And one of us was dreaming of a town, All drab an' brown-- An' one of us was lookin'--far an' high Ter some one who had gone back home too soon To that real home that is beyond the sky. Nobody of us spoke fer quite a while-- We didn't smile-- We just sat still an' wondered when there'd be An order for ter send us home-- Back 'crost the sea. Th' war was won-- An' we was DONE! We wanted faces that we loved an' knew, An' voices too-- We sat an' watched th' dancin' fire fling Its shadders on th' floor-- Bright shapes, an' dim. An' then Jim coughed as if his throat was sore, An'--"Say--let's sing!" Says Jim. FROM THE DECK OF A TRANSPORT (A Returning Soldier Speaks) I am coming back with a singing soul through the surge of the splendid sea, Coming back to the land called home, and the love that used to be-- I am coming back through a flash of spray, through a conquered tempest's hum, I am coming back, I am coming back.... But, God, do I want to come? I have heard the shriek of the great shells speak to the dawn of a flaming day; And a growling gun when the fight was won, and the twilight flickered gray, I have seen men die with their chins raised high, and a curse that was half a prayer-- I have fought alone when a comrade's groan was tense on the blinding air. I have tramped a road when a burning load was strapped to my aching back, Through miles of mud that was streaked with blood, when my closing eyes turned back-- I have cried aloud to a heedless crowd of a God that they could not know, And have knelt at night when the way was bright with a rocket's sullen glow. I am going home through the whirling foam--home to her arms stretched wide-- I am going back to the beaten track and the sheltered fireside, With gasping breath I have sneered at death, and have mocked at a shell's swift shirr, And safe again, through the years of pain, I am going back--to HER! I am coming back with a singing soul through the surge of the splendid sea, Coming back--BUT MY SINGING SOUL WILL NEVER BE QUITE FREE-- For I have killed, and my heart has thrilled to the call of the battle hum.... I am coming back to the used-to-be--But, God, do I want to come? TIM--MY BUNKIE I met Tim th' other day On Broadway; Hadn't seem him since he fell, Covered like with streaks of blood, In th' Argonne's battle hell. Tim an' me was bunkies; we Marched together Through th' water an' th' slime-- SUNNY FRANCE, HEY? We seen weather That we hadn't dreamed COULD be Anywhere or any time. We had fought--well, hand to hand, Over miles o' broken land, Through th' Vesle, an' by th' Aisne, When th' shrapnel fell like rain-- Tim an' me was bunkies--see? Smilin' sort o' cuss was Tim; Never seen th' beat o' him! He could whistle when a pack Was like lead upon his back; He could smile with blistered feet; Never swore at monkey meat, Or at cooties, or th' drill; Always laughin'--never still-- That was Tim! Say, th' fellers loved that boy! Chaplain said that he "was joy All incarnate--" Sounds all right, But th' men said he was WHITE, That meant most to us, I'd say! Why, we never seen th' day When he wouldn't help a guy. If he had a franc he'd buy Chocolate or chow for us, Gen'rus little smilin' cuss-- That was Tim! When THEY got him, I can see Even now, th' way he slipped To th' ground beside o' me. Red blood dripped From his tunic an' his chin, But he choked out, "Fellers, win! "Me, I don't much matter, GRIN!" Sure we had ter leave him lay; War is always that-a-way; An' we thought o'course he'd die. Maybe that's the reason why We could fight th' way we did; Why we found th' guns THEY hid; Why we broke their line in two, Whistlin' a tune HE knew All th' time we pushed 'em back, Crowdin' on 'em whack fer whack! I seen Tim th' other day On Broadway; He had lef' one arm in France, But his eyes was all a-dance When he seen me face t' face. "Say," he shouts, "ain't this SOME place? Ain't it great th' war is through? Glad I seen it, though; ain't you?" Smilin' sort o' little cuss, Meetin' me without a fuss-- Tim, my bunkie, livin'!... Tim! That's him! A PRAYER FOR OUR BOYS RETURNING God, bring them back just as they went away; A little wiser, maybe, but unchanged In all the vital things--let them today Take up the lives that war has disarranged. Let them renew the youth they laid aside To fight their battles in the world of men, God, bring to life their little dreams that died, And build their altars new again, and then-- Give them the vivid youth that they have sought for Through bloody mists on bloody fields of strife; Show them the gallant truth that they have fought for; Show them, anew, the better things of life. God of the hosts, blot out the months of pain-- And let them have their boyhood back again. AMEN. PARIS I. AFTER PEACE The city thrills once more to joyous singing; Glad laughter sounds again upon the street, And music throbs again, until young feet Trip merrily upon their way; the ringing Of hour chimes are gallant voices, flinging Their challenges through each crowded space, to greet Old friends who linger where they used to meet With other friends long gone.... The summer, bringing The light of peace, has seemed to fill the city, With happiness that echoes far and wide In sounds of joy; there seems no room for sorrow-- Yet, like a minor chord submersed in pity, There steals above the music of tomorrow, The weary footsteps of the ones who died. II. THE RUE DE LA PAIX--(A STREET OF JEWELS) The windows glow with many jewels, with rubies fire-entangled, And glowing bits of emerald, and diamonds like the dew-- But, Paris, can you quite forget the bodies lying mangled Beneath the snow on Flanders fields--your lost who call to you?). The windows of each little shop are gay with gem- like laughter, With rings to fit milady's hand, and drops to deck her ear; (But, Paris, can you quite forget Verdun, and Ypres, and--after? And, far beneath the sounds of mirth, one wonders what you hear.) The windows glow with countless jewels, the shop- girls stop to wonder, The little shopgirls who are still, so many, dressed in black-- (But, oh, the saddened hearts of them no doubt are lying under Some sandy stretch along the Marne, where grim defeat turned back!) The windows gleam enticingly, and eyes light up to see them, For Paris thrills to loveliness, as Paris always thrilled-- (Oh, God of beauty, touch the lives that war has crushed, and free them From broken dreams, an empty faith, and hopes forever stilled!) III. THE FLOWER WAGONS Violets and mignonette, crowded close together, Crowded close together on the corner of each street, Through the chilling dampness of the misty weather, Violets and mignonette--ah, so close together-- Making all the Paris day colorful and sweet! Roses faintly touched with pink; see, a soldier lingers Close beside the flower-stand, dreaming of the day When she broke a single bud with her slender fingers, Pressed it to her wistful mouth--see, a soldier lingers Dreaming of a summertime very far away. Lilacs white and pure and new, fragrant as the morning-- One pale widow, passing by, pauses for a space, Thinking of the lilac tree that once grew, adorning All a little cottage home, in life's fragrant morning; Of a lilac tree that grew in a garden place. Pansies for a thought of love, lilies for love's sorrow, Bay leaves green as hopes that live, berries red and brown; Flowers vivid for a day, gone upon the morrow, Flowers that are sweet as faith, that are sad as sorrow-- Flowers for the weary souls of a weary town. Violets and mignonette, crowded close together, Crowded close together on the corner of each street; Singing of the summertime, through the misty weather, Violets and mignonette--ah, so close together-- Making all the Paris day colorful and sweet! IV. ACROSS THE YEARS (Marie Antoinette walked down the steps of a certain Chapel on her way to the guillotine.) They say a queen once walked along the marble steps with grace, To meet grim death by guillotine--a smile was on her face, A smile of scorn that lifted her above the howling crowd, A smile that mocked at pallid fear--a smile serene and proud. Yes, it was Marie Antoinette--she walked with steady tread, She sauntered down the marble steps with proudly lifted head; And there were those among the crowd who watched with indrawn breath, To see a queen walk out with smiles to keep a tryst with death! I stood beside those marble steps just yesterday, and saw, A bride upon a soldier's arm--a poilu brave who wore A Croix de Guerre upon his breast--and oh, they smiled above The busy throng that hurried by, unconscious of their love. And though, across the mist of years, I glimpsed a fair queen's face, A face that smiled, but scornfully, above her land's disgrace-- I will remember, on those steps, the little new-made wife, Who came, her eyes all filled with trust, to keep her tryst with life. V. SUNLIGHT The sun shines over Paris fitfully, As if it really were afraid to shine; And clouds of gray mist curl and twist and twine Across the sky. As far as one can see The streets are wet with rain, and suddenly New rain falls in a straight, relentless line-- And silver drops, like needles, slim and fine, Drip from the branches of each gaunt-limbed tree. Ah, Paris, can the very wistful sky Look down into the center of your heart, That has been bruised by war, and torn apart-- The once glad heart that has been taught to sigh? The sun is like your smile that flutters by Like some lost dream, before the tear-drops start. VI. THE LATIN QUARTER--AFTER They were the brave ones, the gallant ones, the laughing ones, Who were the very first to go--to heed their coun- try's call; They were the joyous ones, the carefree ones, the chaffing ones, Who were the first to meet the foe, who were the first to fall. Artists and poets, they; the talented and youthful ones-- All the world before their feet, their feet that loved to stray; We have heard about their lives; stories crude, and truthful ones Of the carefree lives they lived, in the yesterday. Ah, the Latin Quarter now; boarded up, the most of it, Studios are bare, this year, and little models sigh, For the ones who died for France, died and are the boast of it, Died as they had always lived, with their heads held high! But a spark of it remains, in forgotten places, For I saw a blinded boy strumming a guitar, Playing with his face a-smile, with the arts and graces Of a troubadour of old. He had wandered far. Through the flaming hell of war--wandered far and home again, To the corner that he loved when his eyes could see; And he played a jolly tune, he who may not roam again, Played it on an old guitar--played it smilingly. And I saw another sit at a tiny table, In a dingy eating house; he had laughed and drawn Sketches on the ragged cloth, boasting he was able Still to draw as well as most--with two fingers gone.... VII. NOTRE DAME Through colored glass, on burnished walls, Soft as a psalm, the sunlight falls; And, in the corners, cool and dim, Its glow is like a vesper hymn. And, arch by arch, the ceilings high Rise like a hand stretched toward the sky To touch God's hand. On every side Is misty silence; and the wide Untroubled spaces seem to tell That Peace is come--and all is well! A slender woman kneels in prayer; The sunlight slants across her hair; A pallid child in rusty black Stands in the doorway, looking back.... A poilu gropes (his eyes are wide) Along the altar rail. The tide Of war has cast him brokenly Upon the shore of life. I see A girl in costly furs, who cries Against her muff; I see her rise And hurry out. Two tourists pause Beside the grated chancel doors, To wonder and to speculate; To stoop and read a carven date. In uniform the nations come; Their voices are a steady hum Until they feel some subtle thrill That makes them falter, holds them still-- Bronzed boys, who shrugged and laughed at death, They stand today with indrawn breath, Half mystified. The colors steal Into my heart, and I can feel The rapture that the artists knew Who, centuries before me, drew Their very souls into the glass Of every window..... Hours pass Like beads of amber that are strung Upon a rainbow, frail and young. Through mellow glass, on hallowed walls, The twilight, like faint music, falls; And in each corner, cool and dim, The music is a splendid hymn. And, arch on arch, the ceilings high Seem like a hand stretched toward the sky To touch a Hand that clasped a Cross-- FOR FRANCE, NEW-RISEN FROM THE LOSS, AND PAIN AND FEAR OF BATTLE-HELL, KNOWS PEACE, AT LEAST, AND ALL IS WELL! VIII. SUNDAY MORNING The streets are silent, and the church bells ring Across the city like the silver chime Of some forgotten memory. They bring The phantom of another, sweeter time, When war was all undreamed. They seem to say, "Come back, come back, across the years of strife "To One who reaches out a Hand today, "A Hand that brings your dead again to life!" A little white-haired woman hurries past, A tiny prayer-book in one wrinkled hand; Her eyes are calm, as one who knows at last What only age may really understand; That, as a rainbow creeps across the rain, The God of Paris smiles above its pain! SONGS FROM FRANCE SCARS Summer sweeps, like sad laughter, over France, Touching the fields with flower-tinted mirth; Bringing its wistful gladness to an earth That has been stabbed with sorrow's bitter lance; Bringing again the hint of old romance, Bringing again the magic of re-birth; Paying again the price that youth was worth-- OVER DIM WAYSIDE MOUNDS THE GRASSES DANCE! Where there were shell holes summer sends, un- heeding, Blossoms to deck the broken country side; Where, in another season, heroes, bleeding, Fell for the cause of righteousness, and died, Green creeper twines its vivid arms, half-pleading, But there are scars that summer cannot hide! FROM PARIS TO CHATEAU THIERRY The road winds out its weary way, Where fields are torn with sorrow; It is a road of yesterday, That dreams no fair tomorrow. It is silent, saddened road, A lonely road to follow; For in its dust red rivers flowed, And now, from every hollow, The crows rise up in sullen flight The crows that, blackly flying Against the skyline, speak of night, And bitterness, and dying. It is a road that creeps around Farmhouses that lie broken; That pauses at each shallow mound, At every blood-stained token. A helmet by the way one sees; A pistol, bent and rusty; And hung between two shattered trees, A coat mildewed and musty. It is a sad, forgotten road, But oh, it tells the story Of youth that bore another's load Without a thought of glory! For every tattered homestead cries Of vengeance that descended; And memory that never dies, From hearts that stay unmended! The road winds out its weary way, A lonely way to follow; And crows rise black against the day From every tree and hollow. A RUINED CHURCH They could not take the living God away, Although they left His altar blank and bare; Their ruthless hands could never rend and tear More than the walls, they could not hope to sway The utter faith that is the nation's heart; They could not bring a real destruction where Hymn music had been softly wont to play! They smothered beauty, and tore hope apart; But in the house of One who is supreme, The marks they left will now be sanctified; The broken walls, when war is but a dream, Will be a monument to those who died; And every shell-torn scar will stand for One Whose hands were scarred, the Christ men crucified! I think, perhaps, the very morning sun, Will slant more gently through the broken tower-- And, in good season, that some tender flower Will bloom beside the ruined threshold, where Folk paused before they entered in to prayer.... CHILD FACES Child faces saddened, older than they should be, And wiser than a lived-out span of years; One wonders what those self same faces would be, If they had never looked on pain--if tears Had never been their portion; if the morrow, Had never held the pallid ghost of care-- Child faces, graven deep with worlds of sorrow, Until the light of childhood is not there! Child faces, once agleam with carefree laughter, Wide eyes, where smiles like baby rainbows grew; They are the heritage of ever after, They are the dreams that never will come true. They are the words of fate that have been spoken, And when the tumult of the war is gone, They will remind a world that hearts were broken, For, in their souls, France goes to meet her dawn! AFTER HEARING MUSIC COMING FROM A DEVASTATED FARMHOUSE Just a little wisp of song played softly in the twilight, Such a happy little song--and oh, the dusk is gray! Such a joyous little song, and oh, the night is coming-- Coming with the bitter chill that marks the death of day. Almost like a dance it is, it holds no hint of sorrow, Almost like a waltz it is, to set the pulse a-thrill; Not a hint of tears in it--and oh, the night is coming-- Coming like a purple shroud across the purple hill! Sad the little farmhouse is, the doors swing on their hinges, All the windows look like wounds, pitiful and bare, And a shell has torn a gash in the broken roof of it, But the music lilts along like a happy prayer. Do pale ghostly fingers play on a ghostly violin? (War has swept the countryside of the songs it knew!) Merry is the little tune--not a wistful questioning-- Merry with a rosy thrill of a dream come true. Just a little wisp of song played softly in the twilight, Such a happy little song--and oh, the dusk is gray! Such a joyous little song, and oh, the night is coming-- Coming with the bitter chill that marks the death of day! RETURN Now that the tumult of the war is over, The fairy folk are coming back to France; They push their way through tangled grass and clover, To find the ring where once they used to dance. They come half-wistfully, the little people, Through broken town, and battered market place, They come past shell-torn church with shattered steeple, They come as smiles come to a tear-stained face. They come with packs of dreams, with love and laughter, They come with songs rolled snugly up in sacks; They come with promises for ever after, Tied neatly into bundles on their backs! They bring the seeds of magic so that flowers, The flowers of new happiness and mirth, May bloom, once more, in sweet enchanted bowers, Above the heart-ache of a tortured earth. Now that the angry powder smoke has vanished, The fairy folk are coming as of yore, The fairy folk that hate and war had banished... They pause beside a loosely swinging door, To set it right on hinges that were breaking, They lift an old rag doll with tender care, And hurry on--because their hearts are aching, For one-time childish faces that were there. They cross forgotten meadows in the gloaming, Through forest aisles at even-time they creep; Where trenches were, their little feet are roaming, And where the heroes of the conflict sleep, They stop, a moment, wistful--and their singing Dies down into the semblance of a prayer; And tiny bells in far-off elf land ringing, Sound, like a silver promise, on the air. NOW THAT THE TUMULT OF THE WAR IS OVER, ONCE MORE THE COUNTRY WAKENS TO ROMANCE; FOR, THROUGH THE TANGLE OF THE GRASS AND CLOVER, THE FAIRY FOLK ARE COMING BACK TO FRANCE. THE PHOENIX The ruined wheat fields lying in the sun Will smile again, e'er many seasons pass; The crooning breeze will sway the golden grass, The way it did before a blazing gun, Mowed down the meadow poppies in red heaps; And battered villages will rise anew, And homes will stand where one-time gardens grew, And, in dim forests where an army sleeps, The little birds will sing their evening songs, The way they did before a blasting rain, Of shrapnel cut their tiny nests in twain; For France will rise, triumphant, from her wrongs-- Yes, France will rise once more in faith, and pave Her roads anew with shattered stones of life, Her songs will rise, once more, above the strife-- But what about the hearts that gave--and gave! A PRAYER ON EASTER FOR OUR BOYS KILLED IN ACTION Dear God, they will not come again, those lads of ours, Who went to fight with honor's foe across the sea-- Who died with eyes set straight ahead, amid the showers Of shrapnel, as they cleared a path to victory, They will not come again... And it is Easter weather, And all the world is waking to the call of life, But they lie sleeping, Over There, our lads, together, Who died before their hearts could know the end of strife. Dear God, they will not come again, those lads of ours, Who left this land so gallantly to do their best-- And so I ask that You will send gay springtime flowers, To deck each shell-torn meadow where their bodies rest. I ask that You will let them hear the joyous singing, Of some deep-throated bird whose heart tones throb and swell; God, let them feel the thrill that Easter time is bringing, That death is only life asleep--and all is well! AMEN. INDEPENDENCE DAY--1919 Over the mists of a century they come, and their tramping feet Are light as the dust on the broad highway, or the wind that sways in the wheat; Out of the haze of the years between their shadowy hands stretch wide To welcome the heroes home again who have fought for their cause and died. They went to battle at Concord Bridge, and they fell on Bunker Hill; The odds were great, but they struggled on with a stubborn Yankee will; They lay in the fields at Lexington when the sun in the west was red, And the next year's violets grew on the spot where their valiant blood was shed. But they won in the end--with their broken guns and without much food to spare, Won at the end of a bitter war, by means that they knew were fair; And some of them wandered back to their plows, and some lay wrapped in the loam, And slept the sleep of the fearless heart that has fought at home--for home! Fought for their homes, at home, they did--but these other boys today Fought for the homes of stranger folk three thousand miles away; FOUGHT FOR THE HONOR OF THE WORLD, and were not afraid to die In a muddy trench, in a foreign land, and under a foreign sky! They fought on the Marne, at Belleau Wood; they swept through the mad Argonne; Chateau-Thierry was theirs to take; they took it and then surged on; And now that the fight they fought is won, though they lie in a far-off grave, Their souls come back to the land they loved--the land that they LEFT to save. And so, through the damp of the sorry sea, through the wreck of the shell-torn plain, They are coming back to homes they loved--they are coming back again! And light as the wind that sways in the wheat, or the dust on the broad highway, They march to their rendezvous with the ones who died in the yesterday. SHADOWS You come to me at twilight, when the others, Are laughing in the fullness of their joy; When glad-eyed women folk, when wives and mothers, Are welcoming some other bronze-cheeked boy. You come to me, all silent, in the gloaming, A shadow form, with curly shadow hair-- And, dear, I somehow feel that you are roaming Between two shadow worlds--the Here and There. They ask me, do those others, why I wander Down dewy lanes, alone, at eventide-- They do not know my heart's a shadow--yonder... They do not know that part of me has died. They do not know that your dear presence stands Just out of reach with misty, wide-flung hands! L'ENVOI Only we two, dear... and the candlelight, Seems to be softer than it was before, Country and city, vivid dream lands, war-- Dear, they are very far from us to-night! Woven of promise from life's golden loom, Pale threads of light have bound us heart to heart; Laughter and sorrow--they are things apart-- ALL OF OUR WORLD IS IN THIS LITTLE ROOM. Outside the branches sway, and winter weather Sweeps, with a cry of triumph, through the land Dear, it is springtime, when you touch my hand-- Only we two, and magic, here together! 
2491	----	None 
2507	----	COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS By Bret Harte "Argonaut Edition" Of The Works Of Bret Harte, Vol. 8 P. F. Collier & Son New York Copyright 1882, 1896, And 1902 By Houghton, Mifflin & Company BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Although Bret Harte's name is identified with Californian life, it was not till he was fifteen that the author of "Plain Language from Truthful James" saw the country of his adoption. Francis Bret Harte, to give the full name which he carried till he became famous, was born at Albany, New York, August 25, 1839. He went with his widowed mother to California in 1854, and was thrown as a young man into the hurly-burly which he more than any other writer has made real to distant and later people. He was by turns a miner, school-teacher, express messenger, printer, and journalist. The types which live again in his pages are thus not only what he observed, but what he himself impersonated in his own experience. He began trying his pen in The Golden Era of San Francisco, where he was working as a compositor; and when The Californian, edited by Charles Henry Webb, was started in 1864 as a literary newspaper, he was one of a group of brilliant young fellows--Mark Twain, Charles Warren Stoddard, Webb himself, and Prentice Mulford--who gave at once a new interest in California beside what mining and agriculture caused. Here in an early number appeared "The Ballad of the Emeu," and he contributed many poems, grave and gay, as well as prose in a great variety of form. At the same time he was appointed Secretary of the United States Branch Mint at San Francisco, holding the office till 1870. But Bret Harte's great opportunity came when The Overland Monthly was established in 1868 by Anton Roman. This magazine was the outgrowth of the racy, exuberant literary spirit which had already found free expression in the journals named. An eager ambition to lift all the new life of the Pacific into a recognized place in the world of letters made the young men we have named put their wits together in a monthly magazine which should rival the Atlantic in Boston and Blackwood in Edinburgh. The name was easily had, and for a sign manual on the cover some one drew a grizzly bear, that formidable exemplar of Californian wildness. But the design did not quite satisfy, until Bret Harte, with a felicitous stroke, drew two parallel lines just before the feet of the halting brute. Now it was the grizzly of the wilderness drawing back before the railway of civilization, and the picture was complete as an emblem. Bret Harte became, by the common urgency of his companions, the first editor of the Overland, and at once his own tales and poems began, and in the second number appeared "The Luck of Roaring Camp," which instantly brought him wide fame. In a few months he found himself besought for poems and articles, sketches and stories, in influential magazines, and in 1871 he turned away from the Pacific coast, and took up his residence, first in New York, afterward in Boston. "No one," says his old friend, Mr. Stoddard, "who knows Mr. Harte, and knew the California of his day, wonders that he left it as he did. Eastern editors were crying for his work. Cities vied with one another in the offer of tempting bait. When he turned his back on San Francisco, and started for Boston, he began a tour that the greatest author of any age might have been proud of. It was a veritable ovation that swelled from sea to sea: the classic sheep was sacrificed all along the route. I have often thought that if Bret Harte had met with a fatal accident during that transcontinental journey, the world would have declared with one voice that the greatest genius of his time was lost to it." In Boston he entered into an arrangement with the predecessors of the publishers of this volume, and his contributions appeared in their periodicals and were gathered into volumes. The arrangement in one form or another continued to the time of his death, and has for witness a stately array of comely volumes; but the prose has far outstripped the poetry. There are few writers of Mr. Harte's prodigality of nature who have used with so much fine reserve their faculty for melodious verse, and the present volume contains the entire body of his poetical work, growing by minute accretions during thirty odd years. In 1878 he was appointed United States Consul at Crefeld, Germany, and after that date he resided, with little interruption, on the Continent or in England. He was transferred to Glasgow in March, 1880, and remained there until July, 1885. During the rest of his life he made his home in London. His foreign residence is disclosed in a number of prose sketches and tales and in one or two poems; but life abroad never dimmed the vividness of the impressions made on him by the experience of his early manhood when he partook of the elixir vitae of California, and the stories which from year to year flowed from an apparently inexhaustible fountain glittered with the gold washed down from the mountain slopes of that country which through his imagination he had made so peculiarly his own. Mr. Harte died suddenly at Camberley, England, May 6, 1902. CONTENTS I. NATIONAL. JOHN BURNS OF GETTYSBURG "HOW ARE YOU, SANITARY?" BATTLE BUNNY THE REVEILLE OUR PRIVILEGE RELIEVING GUARD THE GODDESS ON A PEN OF THOMAS STARR KING A SECOND REVIEW OF THE GRAND ARMY THE COPPERHEAD A SANITARY MESSAGE THE OLD MAJOR EXPLAINS CALIFORNIA'S GREETING TO SEWARD THE AGED STRANGER THE IDYL OP BATTLE HOLLOW CALDWELL OF SPRINGFIELD POEM, DELIVERED ON THE FOURTEENTH ANNIVERSARY OF CALIFORNIA'S ADMISSION INTO THE UNION MISS BLANCHE SAYS AN ARCTIC VISION ST. THOMAS OFF SCARBOROUGH CADET GREY II. SPANISH IDYLS AND LEGENDS. THE MIRACLE OF PADRE JUNIPERO THE WONDERFUL SPRING OF SAN JOAQUIN THE ANGELUS CONCEPCION DE ARGUELLO "FOR THE KING" RAMON DON DIEGO OF THE SOUTH AT THE HACIENDA FRIAR PEDRO'S RIDE IN THE MISSION GARDEN THE LOST GALLEON III. IN DIALECT. "JIM" CHIQUITA DOW'S FLAT IN THE TUNNEL "CICELY" PENELOPE PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES THE SOCIETY UPON THE STANISLAUS LUKE "THE BABES IN THE WOODS" THE LATEST CHINESE OUTRAGE TRUTHFUL JAMES TO THE EDITOR AN IDYL OF THE ROAD THOMPSON OF ANGELS THE HAWK'S NEST HER LETTER HIS ANSWER TO "HER LETTER" "THE RETURN OF BELISARIUS" FURTHER LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES AFTER THE ACCIDENT THE GHOST THAT JIM SAW "SEVENTY-NINE" THE STAGE-DRIVER'S STORY A QUESTION OF PRIVILEGE THE THOUGHT-READER OF ANGELS THE SPELLING BEE AT ANGELS ARTEMIS IN SIERRA JACK OF THE TULES IV. MISCELLANEOUS. A GREYPORT LEGEND A NEWPORT ROMANCE SAN FRANCISCO THE MOUNTAIN HEART'S-EASE GRIZZLY MADRONO COYOTE TO A SEA-BIRD WHAT THE CHIMNEY SANG DICKENS IN CAMP TWENTY YEARS FATE GRANDMOTHER TENTERDEN GUILD'S SIGNAL ASPIRING MISS DELAINE A LEGEND OF COLOGNE THE TALE OF A PONY ON A CONE OF THE BIG TREES LONE MOUNTAIN ALNASCHAR THE TWO SHIPS ADDRESS (OPENING OF THE CALIFORNIA THEATRE, SAN FRANCISCO, JANUARY 19, 1870) DOLLY VARDEN TELEMACHUS VERSUS MENTOR WHAT THE WOLF REALLY SAID TO LITTLE RED RIDING-HOOD HALF AN HOUR BEFORE SUPPER WHAT THE BULLET SANG THE OLD CAMP-FIRE THE STATION-MASTER OF LONE PRAIRIE THE MISSION BELLS OF MONTEREY "CROTALUS" ON WILLIAM FRANCIS BARTLETT THE BIRDS OF CIRENCESTER LINES TO A PORTRAIT, BY A SUPERIOR PERSON HER LAST LETTER: BEING A REPLY TO "HIS ANSWER" V. PARODIES. BEFORE THE CURTAIN TO THE PLIOCENE SKULL THE BALLAD OF MR. COOKE THE BALLAD OF THE EMEU MRS. JUDGE JENKINS A GEOLOGICAL MADRIGAL AVITOR THE WILLOWS NORTH BEACH THE LOST TAILS OF MILETUS THE RITUALIST A MORAL VINDICATOR CALIFORNIA MADRIGAL WHAT THE ENGINES SAID THE LEGENDS OF THE RHINE SONGS WITHOUT SENSE VI. LITTLE POSTERITY. MASTER JOHNNY'S NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR MISS EDITH'S MODEST REQUEST MISS EDITH MAKES IT PLEASANT FOR BROTHER JACK MISS EDITH MAKES ANOTHER FRIEND WHAT MISS EDITH SAW FROM HER WINDOW ON THE LANDING NOTES POEMS I. NATIONAL JOHN BURNS OF GETTYSBURG Have you heard the story that gossips tell Of Burns of Gettysburg?--No? Ah, well: Brief is the glory that hero earns, Briefer the story of poor John Burns. He was the fellow who won renown,-- The only man who didn't back down When the rebels rode through his native town; But held his own in the fight next day, When all his townsfolk ran away. That was in July sixty-three, The very day that General Lee, Flower of Southern chivalry, Baffled and beaten, backward reeled From a stubborn Meade and a barren field. I might tell how but the day before John Burns stood at his cottage door, Looking down the village street, Where, in the shade of his peaceful vine, He heard the low of his gathered kine, And felt their breath with incense sweet; Or I might say, when the sunset burned The old farm gable, he thought it turned The milk that fell like a babbling flood Into the milk-pail red as blood! Or how he fancied the hum of bees Were bullets buzzing among the trees. But all such fanciful thoughts as these Were strange to a practical man like Burns, Who minded only his own concerns, Troubled no more by fancies fine Than one of his calm-eyed, long-tailed kine,-- Quite old-fashioned and matter-of-fact, Slow to argue, but quick to act. That was the reason, as some folk say, He fought so well on that terrible day. And it was terrible. On the right Raged for hours the heady fight, Thundered the battery's double bass,-- Difficult music for men to face While on the left--where now the graves Undulate like the living waves That all that day unceasing swept Up to the pits the rebels kept-- Round shot ploughed the upland glades, Sown with bullets, reaped with blades; Shattered fences here and there Tossed their splinters in the air; The very trees were stripped and bare; The barns that once held yellow grain Were heaped with harvests of the slain; The cattle bellowed on the plain, The turkeys screamed with might and main, And brooding barn-fowl left their rest With strange shells bursting in each nest. Just where the tide of battle turns, Erect and lonely stood old John Burns. How do you think the man was dressed? He wore an ancient long buff vest, Yellow as saffron,--but his best; And buttoned over his manly breast Was a bright blue coat, with a rolling collar, And large gilt buttons,--size of a dollar,-- With tails that the country-folk called "swaller." He wore a broad-brimmed, bell-crowned hat, White as the locks on which it sat. Never had such a sight been seen For forty years on the village green, Since old John Burns was a country beau, And went to the "quiltings" long ago. Close at his elbows all that day, Veterans of the Peninsula, Sunburnt and bearded, charged away; And striplings, downy of lip and chin,-- Clerks that the Home Guard mustered in,-- Glanced, as they passed, at the hat he wore, Then at the rifle his right hand bore, And hailed him, from out their youthful lore, With scraps of a slangy repertoire: "How are you, White Hat?" "Put her through!" "Your head's level!" and "Bully for you!" Called him "Daddy,"--begged he'd disclose The name of the tailor who made his clothes, And what was the value he set on those; While Burns, unmindful of jeer and scoff, Stood there picking the rebels off,-- With his long brown rifle and bell-crown hat, And the swallow-tails they were laughing at. 'Twas but a moment, for that respect Which clothes all courage their voices checked; And something the wildest could understand Spake in the old man's strong right hand, And his corded throat, and the lurking frown Of his eyebrows under his old bell-crown; Until, as they gazed, there crept an awe Through the ranks in whispers, and some men saw, In the antique vestments and long white hair, The Past of the Nation in battle there; And some of the soldiers since declare That the gleam of his old white hat afar, Like the crested plume of the brave Navarre, That day was their oriflamme of war. So raged the battle. You know the rest: How the rebels, beaten and backward pressed, Broke at the final charge and ran. At which John Burns--a practical man-- Shouldered his rifle, unbent his brows, And then went back to his bees and cows. That is the story of old John Burns; This is the moral the reader learns: In fighting the battle, the question's whether You'll show a hat that's white, or a feather! "HOW ARE YOU, SANITARY?" Down the picket-guarded lane Rolled the comfort-laden wain, Cheered by shouts that shook the plain, Soldier-like and merry: Phrases such as camps may teach, Sabre-cuts of Saxon speech, Such as "Bully!" "Them's the peach!" "Wade in, Sanitary!" Right and left the caissons drew As the car went lumbering through, Quick succeeding in review Squadrons military; Sunburnt men with beards like frieze, Smooth-faced boys, and cries like these,-- "U. S. San. Com." "That's the cheese!" "Pass in, Sanitary!" In such cheer it struggled on Till the battle front was won: Then the car, its journey done, Lo! was stationary; And where bullets whistling fly Came the sadder, fainter cry, "Help us, brothers, ere we die,-- Save us, Sanitary!" Such the work. The phantom flies, Wrapped in battle clouds that rise: But the brave--whose dying eyes, Veiled and visionary, See the jasper gates swung wide, See the parted throng outside-- Hears the voice to those who ride: "Pass in, Sanitary!" BATTLE BUNNY (MALVERN HILL, 1864) "After the men were ordered to lie down, a white rabbit, which had been hopping hither and thither over the field swept by grape and musketry, took refuge among the skirmishers, in the breast of a corporal."--Report of the Battle of Malvern Hill. Bunny, lying in the grass, Saw the shining column pass; Saw the starry banner fly, Saw the chargers fret and fume, Saw the flapping hat and plume,-- Saw them with his moist and shy Most unspeculative eye, Thinking only, in the dew, That it was a fine review. Till a flash, not all of steel, Where the rolling caissons wheel, Brought a rumble and a roar Rolling down that velvet floor, And like blows of autumn flail Sharply threshed the iron hail. Bunny, thrilled by unknown fears, Raised his soft and pointed ears, Mumbled his prehensile lip, Quivered his pulsating hip, As the sharp vindictive yell Rose above the screaming shell; Thought the world and all its men,-- All the charging squadrons meant,-- All were rabbit-hunters then, All to capture him intent. Bunny was not much to blame: Wiser folk have thought the same,-- Wiser folk who think they spy Every ill begins with "I." Wildly panting here and there, Bunny sought the freer air, Till he hopped below the hill, And saw, lying close and still, Men with muskets in their hands. (Never Bunny understands That hypocrisy of sleep, In the vigils grim they keep, As recumbent on that spot They elude the level shot.) One--a grave and quiet man, Thinking of his wife and child Far beyond the Rapidan, Where the Androscoggin smiled-- Felt the little rabbit creep, Nestling by his arm and side, Wakened from strategic sleep, To that soft appeal replied, Drew him to his blackened breast, And-- But you have guessed the rest. Softly o'er that chosen pair Omnipresent Love and Care Drew a mightier Hand and Arm, Shielding them from every harm; Right and left the bullets waved, Saved the saviour for the saved. ------ Who believes that equal grace God extends in every place, Little difference he scans Twixt a rabbit's God and man's. THE REVEILLE Hark! I hear the tramp of thousands, And of armed men the hum; Lo! a nation's hosts have gathered Round the quick alarming drum,-- Saying, "Come, Freemen, come! Ere your heritage be wasted," said the quick alarming drum. "Let me of my heart take counsel: War is not of life the sum; Who shall stay and reap the harvest When the autumn days shall come?" But the drum Echoed, "Come! Death shall reap the braver harvest," said the solemn-sounding drum. "But when won the coming battle, What of profit springs therefrom? What if conquest, subjugation, Even greater ills become?" But the drum Answered, "Come! You must do the sum to prove it," said the Yankee answering drum. "What if, 'mid the cannons' thunder, Whistling shot and bursting bomb, When my brothers fall around me, Should my heart grow cold and numb?" But the drum Answered, "Come! Better there in death united, than in life a recreant.--Come!" Thus they answered,--hoping, fearing, Some in faith, and doubting some, Till a trumpet-voice proclaiming, Said, "My chosen people, come!" Then the drum, Lo! was dumb, For the great heart of the nation, throbbing, answered, "Lord, we come!" OUR PRIVILEGE Not ours, where battle smoke upcurls, And battle dews lie wet, To meet the charge that treason hurls By sword and bayonet. Not ours to guide the fatal scythe The fleshless Reaper wields; The harvest moon looks calmly down Upon our peaceful fields. The long grass dimples on the hill, The pines sing by the sea, And Plenty, from her golden horn, Is pouring far and free. O brothers by the farther sea! Think still our faith is warm; The same bright flag above us waves That swathed our baby form. The same red blood that dyes your fields Here throbs in patriot pride,-- The blood that flowed when Lander fell, And Baker's crimson tide. And thus apart our hearts keep time With every pulse ye feel, And Mercy's ringing gold shall chime With Valor's clashing steel. RELIEVING GUARD THOMAS STARR KING. OBIIT MARCH 4, 1864 Came the relief. "What, sentry, ho! How passed the night through thy long waking?" "Cold, cheerless, dark,--as may befit The hour before the dawn is breaking." "No sight? no sound?" "No; nothing save The plover from the marshes calling, And in yon western sky, about An hour ago, a star was falling." "A star? There's nothing strange in that." "No, nothing; but, above the thicket, Somehow it seemed to me that God Somewhere had just relieved a picket." THE GODDESS CONTRIBUTED TO THE FAIR FOR THE LADIES' PATRIOTIC FUND OF THE PACIFIC "Who comes?" The sentry's warning cry Rings sharply on the evening air: Who comes? The challenge: no reply, Yet something motions there. A woman, by those graceful folds; A soldier, by that martial tread: "Advance three paces. Halt! until Thy name and rank be said." "My name? Her name, in ancient song, Who fearless from Olympus came: Look on me! Mortals know me best In battle and in flame." "Enough! I know that clarion voice; I know that gleaming eye and helm, Those crimson lips,--and in their dew The best blood of the realm. "The young, the brave, the good and wise, Have fallen in thy curst embrace: The juices of the grapes of wrath Still stain thy guilty face. "My brother lies in yonder field, Face downward to the quiet grass: Go back! he cannot see thee now; But here thou shalt not pass." A crack upon the evening air, A wakened echo from the hill: The watchdog on the distant shore Gives mouth, and all is still. The sentry with his brother lies Face downward on the quiet grass; And by him, in the pale moonshine, A shadow seems to pass. No lance or warlike shield it bears: A helmet in its pitying hands Brings water from the nearest brook, To meet his last demands. Can this be she of haughty mien, The goddess of the sword and shield? Ah, yes! The Grecian poet's myth Sways still each battlefield. For not alone that rugged War Some grace or charm from Beauty gains; But, when the goddess' work is done, The woman's still remains. ON A PEN OF THOMAS STARR KING This is the reed the dead musician dropped, With tuneful magic in its sheath still hidden; The prompt allegro of its music stopped, Its melodies unbidden. But who shall finish the unfinished strain, Or wake the instrument to awe and wonder, And bid the slender barrel breathe again, An organ-pipe of thunder! His pen! what humbler memories cling about Its golden curves! what shapes and laughing graces Slipped from its point, when his full heart went out In smiles and courtly phrases? The truth, half jesting, half in earnest flung; The word of cheer, with recognition in it; The note of alms, whose golden speech outrung The golden gift within it. But all in vain the enchanter's wand we wave: No stroke of ours recalls his magic vision: The incantation that its power gave Sleeps with the dead magician. A SECOND REVIEW OF THE GRAND ARMY I read last night of the grand review In Washington's chiefest avenue,-- Two hundred thousand men in blue, I think they said was the number,-- Till I seemed to hear their trampling feet, The bugle blast and the drum's quick beat, The clatter of hoofs in the stony street, The cheers of people who came to greet, And the thousand details that to repeat Would only my verse encumber,-- Till I fell in a reverie, sad and sweet, And then to a fitful slumber. When, lo! in a vision I seemed to stand In the lonely Capitol. On each hand Far stretched the portico, dim and grand Its columns ranged like a martial band Of sheeted spectres, whom some command Had called to a last reviewing. And the streets of the city were white and bare, No footfall echoed across the square; But out of the misty midnight air I heard in the distance a trumpet blare, And the wandering night-winds seemed to bear The sound of a far tattooing. Then I held my breath with fear and dread For into the square, with a brazen tread, There rode a figure whose stately head O'erlooked the review that morning, That never bowed from its firm-set seat When the living column passed its feet, Yet now rode steadily up the street To the phantom bugle's warning: Till it reached the Capitol square, and wheeled, And there in the moonlight stood revealed A well-known form that in State and field Had led our patriot sires: Whose face was turned to the sleeping camp, Afar through the river's fog and damp, That showed no flicker, nor waning lamp, Nor wasted bivouac fires. And I saw a phantom army come, With never a sound of fife or drum, But keeping time to a throbbing hum Of wailing and lamentation: The martyred heroes of Malvern Hill, Of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville, The men whose wasted figures fill The patriot graves of the nation. And there came the nameless dead,--the men Who perished in fever swamp and fen, The slowly-starved of the prison pen; And, marching beside the others, Came the dusky martyrs of Pillow's fight, With limbs enfranchised and bearing bright; I thought--perhaps 'twas the pale moonlight-- They looked as white as their brothers! And so all night marched the nation's dead, With never a banner above them spread, Nor a badge, nor a motto brandished; No mark--save the bare uncovered head Of the silent bronze Reviewer; With never an arch save the vaulted sky; With never a flower save those that lie On the distant graves--for love could buy No gift that was purer or truer. So all night long swept the strange array, So all night long till the morning gray I watched for one who had passed away; With a reverent awe and wonder,-- Till a blue cap waved in the length'ning line, And I knew that one who was kin of mine Had come; and I spake--and lo! that sign Awakened me from my slumber. THE COPPERHEAD (1864) There is peace in the swamp where the Copperhead sleeps, Where the waters are stagnant, the white vapor creeps, Where the musk of Magnolia hangs thick in the air, And the lilies' phylacteries broaden in prayer. There is peace in the swamp, though the quiet is death, Though the mist is miasma, the upas-tree's breath, Though no echo awakes to the cooing of doves,-- There is peace: yes, the peace that the Copperhead loves. Go seek him: he coils in the ooze and the drip, Like a thong idly flung from the slave-driver's whip; But beware the false footstep,--the stumble that brings A deadlier lash than the overseer swings. Never arrow so true, never bullet so dread, As the straight steady stroke of that hammer-shaped head; Whether slave or proud planter, who braves that dull crest, Woe to him who shall trouble the Copperhead's rest! Then why waste your labors, brave hearts and strong men, In tracking a trail to the Copperhead's den? Lay your axe to the cypress, hew open the shade To the free sky and sunshine Jehovah has made; Let the breeze of the North sweep the vapors away, Till the stagnant lake ripples, the freed waters play; And then to your heel can you righteously doom The Copperhead born of its shadow and gloom! A SANITARY MESSAGE Last night, above the whistling wind, I heard the welcome rain,-- A fusillade upon the roof, A tattoo on the pane: The keyhole piped; the chimney-top A warlike trumpet blew; Yet, mingling with these sounds of strife, A softer voice stole through. "Give thanks, O brothers!" said the voice, "That He who sent the rains Hath spared your fields the scarlet dew That drips from patriot veins: I've seen the grass on Eastern graves In brighter verdure rise; But, oh! the rain that gave it life Sprang first from human eyes. "I come to wash away no stain Upon your wasted lea; I raise no banners, save the ones The forest waves to me: Upon the mountain side, where Spring Her farthest picket sets, My reveille awakes a host Of grassy bayonets. "I visit every humble roof; I mingle with the low: Only upon the highest peaks My blessings fall in snow; Until, in tricklings of the stream And drainings of the lea, My unspent bounty comes at last To mingle with the sea." And thus all night, above the wind, I heard the welcome rain,-- A fusillade upon the roof, A tattoo on the pane: The keyhole piped; the chimney-top A warlike trumpet blew; But, mingling with these sounds of strife, This hymn of peace stole through. THE OLD MAJOR EXPLAINS (RE-UNION, ARMY OF THE POTOMAC, 12TH MAY, 1871) Well, you see, the fact is, Colonel, I don't know as I can come: For the farm is not half planted, and there's work to do at home; And my leg is getting troublesome,--it laid me up last fall,-- And the doctors, they have cut and hacked, and never found the ball. And then, for an old man like me, it's not exactly right, This kind o' playing soldier with no enemy in sight. "The Union,"--that was well enough way up to '66; But this "Re-Union," maybe now it's mixed with politics? No? Well, you understand it best; but then, you see, my lad, I'm deacon now, and some might think that the example's bad. And week from next is Conference.... You said the twelfth of May? Why, that's the day we broke their line at Spottsylvan-i-a! Hot work; eh, Colonel, wasn't it? Ye mind that narrow front: They called it the "Death-Angle"! Well, well, my lad, we won't Fight that old battle over now: I only meant to say I really can't engage to come upon the twelfth of May. How's Thompson? What! will he be there? Well, now I want to know! The first man in the rebel works! they called him "Swearing Joe." A wild young fellow, sir, I fear the rascal was; but then-- Well, short of heaven, there wa'n't a place he dursn't lead his men. And Dick, you say, is coming too. And Billy? ah! it's true We buried him at Gettysburg: I mind the spot; do you? A little field below the hill,--it must be green this May; Perhaps that's why the fields about bring him to me to-day. Well, well, excuse me, Colonel! but there are some things that drop The tail-board out one's feelings; and the only way's to stop. So they want to see the old man; ah, the rascals! do they, eh? Well, I've business down in Boston about the twelfth of May. CALIFORNIA'S GREETING TO SEWARD (1869) We know him well: no need of praise Or bonfire from the windy hill To light to softer paths and ways The world-worn man we honor still. No need to quote the truths he spoke That burned through years of war and shame, While History carves with surer stroke Across our map his noonday fame. No need to bid him show the scars Of blows dealt by the Scaean gate, Who lived to pass its shattered bars, And see the foe capitulate: Who lived to turn his slower feet Toward the western setting sun, To see his harvest all complete, His dream fulfilled, his duty done, The one flag streaming from the pole, The one faith borne from sea to sea: For such a triumph, and such goal, Poor must our human greeting be. Ah! rather that the conscious land In simpler ways salute the Man,-- The tall pines bowing where they stand, The bared head of El Capitan! The tumult of the waterfalls, Pohono's kerchief in the breeze, The waving from the rocky walls, The stir and rustle of the trees; Till, lapped in sunset skies of hope, In sunset lands by sunset seas, The Young World's Premier treads the slope Of sunset years in calm and peace. THE AGED STRANGER AN INCIDENT OF THE WAR "I was with Grant"--the stranger said; Said the farmer, "Say no more, But rest thee here at my cottage porch, For thy feet are weary and sore." "I was with Grant"--the stranger said; Said the farmer, "Nay, no more,-- I prithee sit at my frugal board, And eat of my humble store. "How fares my boy,--my soldier boy, Of the old Ninth Army Corps? I warrant he bore him gallantly In the smoke and the battle's roar!" "I know him not," said the aged man, "And, as I remarked before, I was with Grant"-- "Nay, nay, I know," Said the farmer, "say no more: "He fell in battle,--I see, alas! Thou'dst smooth these tidings o'er,-- Nay, speak the truth, whatever it be, Though it rend my bosom's core. "How fell he? With his face to the foe, Upholding the flag he bore? Oh, say not that my boy disgraced The uniform that he wore!" "I cannot tell," said the aged man, "And should have remarked before. That I was with Grant,--in Illinois,-- Some three years before the war." Then the farmer spake him never a word, But beat with his fist full sore That aged man who had worked for Grant Some three years before the war. THE IDYL OF BATTLE HOLLOW (WAR OF THE REBELLION, 1884) No, I won't,--thar, now, so! And it ain't nothin',--no! And thar's nary to tell that you folks yer don't know; And it's "Belle, tell us, do!" and it's "Belle, is it true?" And "Wot's this yer yarn of the Major and you?" Till I'm sick of it all,--so I am, but I s'pose Thet is nothin' to you.... Well, then, listen! yer goes! It was after the fight, and around us all night Thar was poppin' and shootin' a powerful sight; And the niggers had fled, and Aunt Chlo was abed, And Pinky and Milly were hid in the shed: And I ran out at daybreak, and nothin' was nigh But the growlin' of cannon low down in the sky. And I saw not a thing, as I ran to the spring, But a splintered fence rail and a broken-down swing, And a bird said "Kerchee!" as it sat on a tree, As if it was lonesome, and glad to see me; And I filled up my pail and was risin' to go, When up comes the Major a-canterin' slow. When he saw me he drew in his reins, and then threw On the gate-post his bridle, and--what does he do But come down where I sat; and he lifted his hat, And he says--well, thar ain't any need to tell THAT; 'Twas some foolishness, sure, but it 'mounted to this, Thet he asked for a drink, and he wanted--a kiss. Then I said (I was mad), "For the water, my lad, You're too big and must stoop; for a kiss, it's as bad,-- You ain't near big enough." And I turned in a huff, When that Major he laid his white hand on my cuff, And he says, "You're a trump! Take my pistol, don't fear! But shoot the next man that insults you, my dear." Then he stooped to the pool, very quiet and cool, Leavin' me with that pistol stuck there like a fool, When thar flashed on my sight a quick glimmer of light From the top of the little stone fence on the right, And I knew 'twas a rifle, and back of it all Rose the face of that bushwhacker, Cherokee Hall! Then I felt in my dread that the moment the head Of the Major was lifted, the Major was dead; And I stood still and white, but Lord! gals, in spite Of my care, that derned pistol went off in my fright! Went off--true as gospil!--and, strangest of all, It actooally injured that Cherokee Hall! Thet's all--now, go 'long! Yes, some folks thinks it's wrong, And thar's some wants to know to what side I belong; But I says, "Served him right!" and I go, all my might, In love or in war, for a fair stand-up fight; And as for the Major--sho! gals, don't you know Thet--Lord! thar's his step in the garden below. CALDWELL OF SPRINGFIELD (NEW JERSEY, 1780) Here's the spot. Look around you. Above on the height Lay the Hessians encamped. By that church on the right Stood the gaunt Jersey farmers. And here ran a wall,-- You may dig anywhere and you'll turn up a ball. Nothing more. Grasses spring, waters run, flowers blow, Pretty much as they did ninety-three years ago. Nothing more, did I say? Stay one moment: you've heard Of Caldwell, the parson, who once preached the word Down at Springfield? What, no? Come--that's bad; why, he had All the Jerseys aflame! And they gave him the name Of the "rebel high priest." He stuck in their gorge, For he loved the Lord God--and he hated King George! He had cause, you might say! When the Hessians that day Marched up with Knyphausen, they stopped on their way At the "farms," where his wife, with a child in her arms, Sat alone in the house. How it happened none knew But God--and that one of the hireling crew Who fired the shot! Enough!--there she lay, And Caldwell, the chaplain, her husband, away! Did he preach--did he pray? Think of him as you stand By the old church to-day,--think of him and his band Of militant ploughboys! See the smoke and the heat Of that reckless advance, of that straggling retreat! Keep the ghost of that wife, foully slain, in your view-- And what could you, what should you, what would YOU do? Why, just what HE did! They were left in the lurch For the want of more wadding. He ran to the church, Broke the door, stripped the pews, and dashed out in the road With his arms full of hymn-books, and threw down his load At their feet! Then above all the shouting and shots Rang his voice: "Put Watts into 'em! Boys, give 'em Watts!" And they did. That is all. Grasses spring, flowers blow, Pretty much as they did ninety-three years ago. You may dig anywhere and you'll turn up a ball-- But not always a hero like this--and that's all. POEM DELIVERED ON THE FOURTEENTH ANNIVERSARY OF CALIFORNIA'S ADMISSION INTO THE UNION, SEPTEMBER 9, 1864 We meet in peace, though from our native East The sun that sparkles on our birthday feast Glanced as he rose on fields whose dews were red With darker tints than those Aurora spread. Though shorn his rays, his welcome disk concealed In the dim smoke that veiled each battlefield, Still striving upward, in meridian pride, He climbed the walls that East and West divide,-- Saw his bright face flashed back from golden sand, And sapphire seas that lave the Western land. Strange was the contrast that such scenes disclose From his high vantage o'er eternal snows; There War's alarm the brazen trumpet rings-- Here his love-song the mailed cicala sings; There bayonets glitter through the forest glades-- Here yellow cornfields stack their peaceful blades; There the deep trench where Valor finds a grave-- Here the long ditch that curbs the peaceful wave; There the bold sapper with his lighted train-- Here the dark tunnel and its stores of gain; Here the full harvest and the wain's advance-- There the Grim Reaper and the ambulance. With scenes so adverse, what mysterious bond Links our fair fortunes to the shores beyond? Why come we here--last of a scattered fold-- To pour new metal in the broken mould? To yield our tribute, stamped with Caesar's face, To Caesar, stricken in the market-place? Ah! love of country is the secret tie That joins these contrasts 'neath one arching sky; Though brighter paths our peaceful steps explore, We meet together at the Nation's door. War winds her horn, and giant cliffs go down Like the high walls that girt the sacred town, And bares the pathway to her throbbing heart, From clustered village and from crowded mart. Part of God's providence it was to found A Nation's bulwark on this chosen ground; Not Jesuit's zeal nor pioneer's unrest Planted these pickets in the distant West, But He who first the Nation's fate forecast Placed here His fountains sealed for ages past, Rock-ribbed and guarded till the coming time Should fit the people for their work sublime; When a new Moses with his rod of steel Smote the tall cliffs with one wide-ringing peal, And the old miracle in record told To the new Nation was revealed in gold. Judge not too idly that our toils are mean, Though no new levies marshal on our green; Nor deem too rashly that our gains are small, Weighed with the prizes for which heroes fall. See, where thick vapor wreathes the battle-line; There Mercy follows with her oil and wine; Or where brown Labor with its peaceful charm Stiffens the sinews of the Nation's arm. What nerves its hands to strike a deadlier blow And hurl its legions on the rebel foe? Lo! for each town new rising o'er our State See the foe's hamlet waste and desolate, While each new factory lifts its chimney tall, Like a fresh mortar trained on Richmond's wall. For this, O brothers, swings the fruitful vine, Spread our broad pastures with their countless kine: For this o'erhead the arching vault springs clear, Sunlit and cloudless for one half the year; For this no snowflake, e'er so lightly pressed, Chills the warm impulse of our mother's breast. Quick to reply, from meadows brown and sere, She thrills responsive to Spring's earliest tear; Breaks into blossom, flings her loveliest rose Ere the white crocus mounts Atlantic snows; And the example of her liberal creed Teaches the lesson that to-day we heed. Thus ours the lot with peaceful, generous hand To spread our bounty o'er the suffering land; As the deep cleft in Mariposa's wall Hurls a vast river splintering in its fall,-- Though the rapt soul who stands in awe below Sees but the arching of the promised bow, Lo! the far streamlet drinks its dews unseen, And the whole valley wakes a brighter green. MISS BLANCHE SAYS And you are the poet, and so you want Something--what is it?--a theme, a fancy? Something or other the Muse won't grant To your old poetical necromancy; Why, one half you poets--you can't deny-- Don't know the Muse when you chance to meet her, But sit in your attics and mope and sigh For a faineant goddess to drop from the sky, When flesh and blood may be standing by Quite at your service, should you but greet her. What if I told you my own romance? Women are poets, if you so take them, One third poet,--the rest what chance Of man and marriage may choose to make them. Give me ten minutes before you go,-- Here at the window we'll sit together, Watching the currents that ebb and flow; Watching the world as it drifts below Up the hot Avenue's dusty glow: Isn't it pleasant, this bright June weather? Well, it was after the war broke out, And I was a schoolgirl fresh from Paris; Papa had contracts, and roamed about, And I--did nothing--for I was an heiress. Picked some lint, now I think; perhaps Knitted some stockings--a dozen nearly: Havelocks made for the soldiers' caps; Stood at fair-tables and peddled traps Quite at a profit. The "shoulder-straps" Thought I was pretty. Ah, thank you! really? Still it was stupid. Rata-tat-tat! Those were the sounds of that battle summer, Till the earth seemed a parchment round and flat, And every footfall the tap of a drummer; And day by day down the Avenue went Cavalry, infantry, all together, Till my pitying angel one day sent My fate in the shape of a regiment, That halted, just as the day was spent, Here at our door in the bright June weather. None of your dandy warriors they,-- Men from the West, but where I know not; Haggard and travel-stained, worn and gray, With never a ribbon or lace or bow-knot: And I opened the window, and, leaning there, I felt in their presence the free winds blowing. My neck and shoulders and arms were bare,-- I did not dream they might think me fair, But I had some flowers that night in my hair, And here, on my bosom, a red rose glowing. And I looked from the window along the line, Dusty and dirty and grim and solemn, Till an eye like a bayonet flash met mine, And a dark face shone from the darkening column, And a quick flame leaped to my eyes and hair, Till cheeks and shoulders burned all together, And the next I found myself standing there With my eyelids wet and my cheeks less fair, And the rose from my bosom tossed high in air, Like a blood-drop falling on plume and feather. Then I drew back quickly: there came a cheer, A rush of figures, a noise and tussle, And then it was over, and high and clear My red rose bloomed on his gun's black muzzle. Then far in the darkness a sharp voice cried, And slowly and steadily, all together, Shoulder to shoulder and side to side, Rising and falling and swaying wide, But bearing above them the rose, my pride, They marched away in the twilight weather. And I leaned from my window and watched my rose Tossed on the waves of the surging column, Warmed from above in the sunset glows, Borne from below by an impulse solemn. Then I shut the window. I heard no more Of my soldier friend, nor my flower neither, But lived my life as I did before. I did not go as a nurse to the war,-- Sick folks to me are a dreadful bore,-- So I didn't go to the hospital either. You smile, O poet, and what do you? You lean from your window, and watch life's column Trampling and struggling through dust and dew, Filled with its purposes grave and solemn; And an act, a gesture, a face--who knows?-- Touches your fancy to thrill and haunt you, And you pluck from your bosom the verse that grows And down it flies like my red, red rose, And you sit and dream as away it goes, And think that your duty is done,--now don't you? I know your answer. I'm not yet through. Look at this photograph,--"In the Trenches"! That dead man in the coat of blue Holds a withered rose in his hand. That clenches Nothing!--except that the sun paints true, And a woman is sometimes prophetic-minded. And that's my romance. And, poet, you Take it and mould it to suit your view; And who knows but you may find it too Come to your heart once more, as mine did. AN ARCTIC VISION Where the short-legged Esquimaux Waddle in the ice and snow, And the playful Polar bear Nips the hunter unaware; Where by day they track the ermine, And by night another vermin,-- Segment of the frigid zone, Where the temperature alone Warms on St. Elias' cone; Polar dock, where Nature slips From the ways her icy ships; Land of fox and deer and sable, Shore end of our western cable,-- Let the news that flying goes Thrill through all your Arctic floes, And reverberate the boast From the cliffs off Beechey's coast, Till the tidings, circling round Every bay of Norton Sound, Throw the vocal tide-wave back To the isles of Kodiac. Let the stately Polar bears Waltz around the pole in pairs, And the walrus, in his glee, Bare his tusk of ivory; While the bold sea-unicorn Calmly takes an extra horn; All ye Polar skies, reveal your Very rarest of parhelia; Trip it, all ye merry dancers, In the airiest of "Lancers;" Slide, ye solemn glaciers, slide, One inch farther to the tide, Nor in rash precipitation Upset Tyndall's calculation. Know you not what fate awaits you, Or to whom the future mates you? All ye icebergs, make salaam,-- You belong to Uncle Sam! On the spot where Eugene Sue Led his wretched Wandering Jew, Stands a form whose features strike Russ and Esquimaux alike. He it is whom Skalds of old In their Runic rhymes foretold; Lean of flank and lank of jaw, See the real Northern Thor! See the awful Yankee leering Just across the Straits of Behring; On the drifted snow, too plain, Sinks his fresh tobacco stain, Just beside the deep inden- Tation of his Number 10. Leaning on his icy hammer Stands the hero of this drama, And above the wild-duck's clamor, In his own peculiar grammar, With its linguistic disguises, La! the Arctic prologue rises: "Wall, I reckon 'tain't so bad, Seein' ez 'twas all they had. True, the Springs are rather late, And early Falls predominate; But the ice-crop's pretty sure, And the air is kind o' pure; 'Tain't so very mean a trade, When the land is all surveyed. There's a right smart chance for fur-chase All along this recent purchase, And, unless the stories fail, Every fish from cod to whale; Rocks, too; mebbe quartz; let's see,-- 'Twould be strange if there should be,-- Seems I've heerd such stories told; Eh!--why, bless us,--yes, it's gold!" While the blows are falling thick From his California pick, You may recognize the Thor Of the vision that I saw,-- Freed from legendary glamour, See the real magician's hammer. ST. THOMAS (A GEOGRAPHICAL SURVEY, 1868) Very fair and full of promise Lay the island of St. Thomas: Ocean o'er its reefs and bars Hid its elemental scars; Groves of cocoanut and guava Grew above its fields of lava. So the gem of the Antilles-- "Isles of Eden," where no ill is-- Like a great green turtle slumbered On the sea that it encumbered. Then said William Henry Seward, As he cast his eye to leeward, "Quite important to our commerce Is this island of St. Thomas." Said the Mountain ranges, "Thank'ee, But we cannot stand the Yankee O'er our scars and fissures poring, In our very vitals boring, In our sacred caverns prying, All our secret problems trying,-- Digging, blasting, with dynamit Mocking all our thunders! Damn it! Other lands may be more civil; Bust our lava crust if we will!" Said the Sea, its white teeth gnashing Through its coral-reef lips flashing, "Shall I let this scheming mortal Shut with stone my shining portal, Curb my tide and check my play, Fence with wharves my shining bay? Rather let me be drawn out In one awful waterspout!" Said the black-browed Hurricane, Brooding down the Spanish Main, "Shall I see my forces, zounds! Measured by square inch and pounds, With detectives at my back When I double on my track, And my secret paths made clear, Published o'er the hemisphere To each gaping, prying crew? Shall I? Blow me if I do!" So the Mountains shook and thundered, And the Hurricane came sweeping, And the people stared and wondered As the Sea came on them leaping: Each, according to his promise, Made things lively at St. Thomas. Till one morn, when Mr. Seward Cast his weather eye to leeward, There was not an inch of dry land Left to mark his recent island. Not a flagstaff or a sentry, Not a wharf or port of entry,-- Only--to cut matters shorter-- Just a patch of muddy water In the open ocean lying, And a gull above it flying. OFF SCARBOROUGH (SEPTEMBER, 1779) I "Have a care!" the bailiffs cried From their cockleshell that lay Off the frigate's yellow side, Tossing on Scarborough Bay, While the forty sail it convoyed on a bowline stretched away. "Take your chicks beneath your wings, And your claws and feathers spread, Ere the hawk upon them springs,-- Ere around Flamborough Head Swoops Paul Jones, the Yankee falcon, with his beak and talons red." II How we laughed!--my mate and I,-- On the "Bon Homme Richard's" deck, As we saw that convoy fly Like a snow-squall, till each fleck Melted in the twilight shadows of the coast-line, speck by speck; And scuffling back to shore The Scarborough bailiffs sped, As the "Richard" with a roar Of her cannon round the Head, Crossed her royal yards and signaled to her consort: "Chase ahead" III But the devil seize Landais In that consort ship of France! For the shabby, lubber way That he worked the "Alliance" In the offing,--nor a broadside fired save to our mischance!-- When tumbling to the van, With his battle-lanterns set, Rose the burly Englishman 'Gainst our hull as black as jet,-- Rode the yellow-sided "Serapis," and all alone we met! IV All alone, though far at sea Hung his consort, rounding to; All alone, though on our lee Fought our "Pallas," stanch and true! For the first broadside around us both a smoky circle drew: And, like champions in a ring, There was cleared a little space-- Scarce a cable's length to swing-- Ere we grappled in embrace, All the world shut out around us, and we only face to face! V Then awoke all hell below From that broadside, doubly curst, For our long eighteens in row Leaped the first discharge and burst! And on deck our men came pouring, fearing their own guns the worst. And as dumb we lay, till, through Smoke and flame and bitter cry, Hailed the "Serapis:" "Have you Struck your colors?" Our reply, "We have not yet begun to fight!" went shouting to the sky! VI Roux of Brest, old fisher, lay Like a herring gasping here; Bunker of Nantucket Bay, Blown from out the port, dropped sheer Half a cable's length to leeward; yet we faintly raised a cheer As with his own right hand Our Commodore made fast The foeman's head-gear and The "Richard's" mizzen-mast, And in that death-lock clinging held us there from first to last! VII Yet the foeman, gun on gun, Through the "Richard" tore a road, With his gunners' rammers run Through our ports at every load, Till clear the blue beyond us through our yawning timbers showed. Yet with entrails torn we clung Like the Spartan to our fox, And on deck no coward tongue Wailed the enemy's hard knocks, Nor that all below us trembled like a wreck upon the rocks. VIII Then a thought rose in my brain, As through Channel mists the sun. From our tops a fire like rain Drove below decks every one Of the enemy's ship's company to hide or work a gun: And that thought took shape as I On the "Richard's" yard lay out, That a man might do and die, If the doing brought about Freedom for his home and country, and his messmates' cheering shout! IX Then I crept out in the dark Till I hung above the hatch Of the "Serapis,"--a mark For her marksmen!--with a match And a hand-grenade, but lingered just a moment more to snatch One last look at sea and sky! At the lighthouse on the hill! At the harvest-moon on high! And our pine flag fluttering still! Then turned and down her yawning throat I launched that devil's pill! X Then a blank was all between As the flames around me spun! Had I fired the magazine? Was the victory lost or won? Nor knew I till the fight was o'er but half my work was done: For I lay among the dead In the cockpit of our foe, With a roar above my head,-- Till a trampling to and fro, And a lantern showed my mate's face, and I knew what now you know! CADET GREY CANTO I I Act first, scene first. A study. Of a kind Half cell, half salon, opulent yet grave; Rare books, low-shelved, yet far above the mind Of common man to compass or to crave; Some slight relief of pamphlets that inclined The soul at first to trifling, till, dismayed By text and title, it drew back resigned, Nor cared with levity to vex a shade That to itself such perfect concord made. II Some thoughts like these perplexed the patriot brain Of Jones, Lawgiver to the Commonwealth, As on the threshold of this chaste domain He paused expectant, and looked up in stealth To darkened canvases that frowned amain, With stern-eyed Puritans, who first began To spread their roots in Georgius Primus' reign, Nor dropped till now, obedient to some plan, Their century fruit,--the perfect Boston man. III Somewhere within that Russia-scented gloom A voice catarrhal thrilled the Member's ear: "Brief is our business, Jones. Look round this room! Regard yon portraits! Read their meaning clear! These much proclaim MY station. I presume YOU are our Congressman, before whose wit And sober judgment shall the youth appear Who for West Point is deemed most just and fit To serve his country and to honor it." IV "Such is my son! Elsewhere perhaps 'twere wise Trial competitive should guide your choice. There are some people I can well surmise Themselves must show their merits. History's voice Spares me that trouble: all desert that lies In yonder ancestor of Queen Anne's day, Or yon grave Governor, is all my boy's,-- Reverts to him; entailed, as one might say; In brief, result in Winthrop Adams Grey!" V He turned and laid his well-bred hand, and smiled, On the cropped head of one who stood beside. Ah me! in sooth it was no ruddy child Nor brawny youth that thrilled the father's pride; 'Twas but a Mind that somehow had beguiled From soulless Matter processes that served For speech and motion and digestion mild, Content if all one moral purpose nerved, Nor recked thereby its spine were somewhat curved. VI He was scarce eighteen. Yet ere he was eight He had despoiled the classics; much he knew Of Sanskrit; not that he placed undue weight On this, but that it helped him with Hebrew, His favorite tongue. He learned, alas! too late, One can't begin too early,--would regret That boyish whim to ascertain the state Of Venus' atmosphere made him forget That philologic goal on which his soul was set. VII He too had traveled; at the age of ten Found Paris empty, dull except for art And accent. "Mabille" with its glories then Less than Egyptian "Almees" touched a heart Nothing if not pure classic. If some men Thought him a prig, it vexed not his conceit, But moved his pity, and ofttimes his pen, The better to instruct them, through some sheet Published in Boston, and signed "Beacon Street." VIII From premises so plain the blind could see But one deduction, and it came next day. "In times like these, the very name of G. Speaks volumes," wrote the Honorable J. "Inclosed please find appointment." Presently Came a reception to which Harvard lent Fourteen professors, and, to give esprit, The Liberal Club some eighteen ladies sent, Five that spoke Greek, and thirteen sentiment. IX Four poets came who loved each other's song, And two philosophers, who thought that they Were in most things impractical and wrong; And two reformers, each in his own way Peculiar,--one who had waxed strong On herbs and water, and such simple fare; Two foreign lions, "Ram See" and "Chy Long," And several artists claimed attention there, Based on the fact they had been snubbed elsewhere. X With this indorsement nothing now remained But counsel, Godspeed, and some calm adieux; No foolish tear the father's eyelash stained, And Winthrop's cheek as guiltless shone of dew. A slight publicity, such as obtained In classic Rome, these few last hours attended. The day arrived, the train and depot gained, The mayor's own presence this last act commended The train moved off and here the first act ended. CANTO II I Where West Point crouches, and with lifted shield Turns the whole river eastward through the pass; Whose jutting crags, half silver, stand revealed Like bossy bucklers of Leonidas; Where buttressed low against the storms that wield Their summer lightnings where her eaglets swarm, By Freedom's cradle Nature's self has steeled Her heart, like Winkelried, and to that storm Of leveled lances bares her bosom warm. II But not to-night. The air and woods are still, The faintest rustle in the trees below, The lowest tremor from the mountain rill, Come to the ear as but the trailing flow Of spirit robes that walk unseen the hill; The moon low sailing o'er the upland farm, The moon low sailing where the waters fill The lozenge lake, beside the banks of balm, Gleams like a chevron on the river's arm. III All space breathes languor: from the hilltop high, Where Putnam's bastion crumbles in the past, To swooning depths where drowsy cannon lie And wide-mouthed mortars gape in slumbers vast; Stroke upon stroke, the far oars glance and die On the hushed bosom of the sleeping stream; Bright for one moment drifts a white sail by, Bright for one moment shows a bayonet gleam Far on the level plain, then passes as a dream. IV Soft down the line of darkened battlements, Bright on each lattice of the barrack walls, Where the low arching sallyport indents, Seen through its gloom beyond, the moonbeam falls. All is repose save where the camping tents Mock the white gravestones farther on, where sound No morning guns for reveille, nor whence No drum-beat calls retreat, but still is ever found Waiting and present on each sentry's round. V Within the camp they lie, the young, the brave, Half knight, half schoolboy, acolytes of fame, Pledged to one altar, and perchance one grave; Bred to fear nothing but reproach and blame, Ascetic dandies o'er whom vestals rave, Clean-limbed young Spartans, disciplined young elves, Taught to destroy, that they may live to save, Students embattled, soldiers at their shelves, Heroes whose conquests are at first themselves. VI Within the camp they lie, in dreams are freed From the grim discipline they learn to love; In dreams no more the sentry's challenge heed, In dreams afar beyond their pickets rove; One treads once more the piny paths that lead To his green mountain home, and pausing hears The cattle call; one treads the tangled weed Of slippery rocks beside Atlantic piers; One smiles in sleep, one wakens wet with tears. VII One scents the breath of jasmine flowers that twine The pillared porches of his Southern home; One hears the coo of pigeons in the pine Of Western woods where he was wont to roam; One sees the sunset fire the distant line Where the long prairie sweeps its levels down; One treads the snow-peaks; one by lamps that shine Down the broad highways of the sea-girt town; And two are missing,--Cadets Grey and Brown! VIII Much as I grieve to chronicle the fact, That selfsame truant known as "Cadet Grey" Was the young hero of our moral tract, Shorn of his twofold names on entrance-day. "Winthrop" and "Adams" dropped in that one act Of martial curtness, and the roll-call thinned Of his ancestors, he with youthful tact Indulgence claimed, since Winthrop no more sinned, Nor sainted Adams winced when he, plain Grey, was "skinned." IX He had known trials since we saw him last, By sheer good luck had just escaped rejection, Not for his learning, but that it was cast In a spare frame scarce fit for drill inspection; But when he ope'd his lips a stream so vast Of information flooded each professor, They quite forgot his eyeglass,--something past All precedent,--accepting the transgressor, Weak eyes and all of which he was possessor. X E'en the first day he touched a blackboard's space-- So the tradition of his glory lingers-- Two wise professors fainted, each with face White as the chalk within his rapid fingers: All day he ciphered, at such frantic pace, His form was hid in chalk precipitation Of every problem, till they said his case Could meet from them no fair examination Till Congress made a new appropriation. XI Famous in molecules, he demonstrated From the mess hash to many a listening classful; Great as a botanist, he separated Three kinds of "Mentha" in one julep's glassful; High in astronomy, it has been stated He was the first at West Point to discover Mars' missing satellites, and calculated Their true positions, not the heavens over, But 'neath the window of Miss Kitty Rover. XII Indeed, I fear this novelty celestial That very night was visible and clear; At least two youths of aspect most terrestrial, And clad in uniform, were loitering near A villa's casement, where a gentle vestal Took their impatience somewhat patiently, Knowing the youths were somewhat green and "bestial"-- (A certain slang of the Academy, I beg the reader won't refer to me). XIII For when they ceased their ardent strain, Miss Kitty Glowed not with anger nor a kindred flame, But rather flushed with an odd sort of pity, Half matron's kindness, and half coquette's shame; Proud yet quite blameful, when she heard their ditty She gave her soul poetical expression, And being clever too, as she was pretty, From her high casement warbled this confession,-- Half provocation and one half repression:-- NOT YET Not yet, O friend, not yet! the patient stars Lean from their lattices, content to wait. All is illusion till the morning bars Slip from the levels of the Eastern gate. Night is too young, O friend! day is too near; Wait for the day that maketh all things clear. Not yet, O friend, not yet! Not yet, O love, not yet! all is not true, All is not ever as it seemeth now. Soon shall the river take another blue, Soon dies yon light upon the mountain brow. What lieth dark, O love, bright day will fill; Wait for thy morning, be it good or ill. Not yet, O love, not yet! XIV The strain was finished; softly as the night Her voice died from the window, yet e'en then Fluttered and fell likewise a kerchief white; But that no doubt was accident, for when She sought her couch she deemed her conduct quite Beyond the reach of scandalous commenter,-- Washing her hands of either gallant wight, Knowing the moralist might compliment her,-- Thus voicing Siren with the words of Mentor. XV She little knew the youths below, who straight Dived for her kerchief, and quite overlooked The pregnant moral she would inculcate; Nor dreamed the less how little Winthrop brooked Her right to doubt his soul's maturer state. Brown--who was Western, amiable, and new-- Might take the moral and accept his fate; The which he did, but, being stronger too, Took the white kerchief, also, as his due. XVI They did not quarrel, which no doubt seemed queer To those who knew not how their friendship blended; Each was opposed, and each the other's peer, Yet each the other in some things transcended. Where Brown lacked culture, brains,--and oft, I fear, Cash in his pocket,--Grey of course supplied him; Where Grey lacked frankness, force, and faith sincere, Brown of his manhood suffered none to chide him, But in his faults stood manfully beside him. XVII In academic walks and studies grave, In the camp drill and martial occupation, They helped each other: but just here I crave Space for the reader's full imagination,-- The fact is patent, Grey became a slave! A tool, a fag, a "pleb"! To state it plainer, All that blue blood and ancestry e'er gave Cleaned guns, brought water!--was, in fact, retainer To Jones, whose uncle was a paper-stainer! XVIII How they bore this at home I cannot say: I only know so runs the gossip's tale. It chanced one day that the paternal Grey Came to West Point that he himself might hail The future hero in some proper way Consistent with his lineage. With him came A judge, a poet, and a brave array Of aunts and uncles, bearing each a name, Eyeglass and respirator with the same. XIX "Observe!" quoth Grey the elder to his friends, "Not in these giddy youths at baseball playing You'll notice Winthrop Adams! Greater ends Than these absorb HIS leisure. No doubt straying With Caesar's Commentaries, he attends Some Roman council. Let us ask, however, Yon grimy urchin, who my soul offends By wheeling offal, if he will endeavor To find-- What! heaven! Winthrop! Oh! no! never!" XX Alas! too true! The last of all the Greys Was "doing police detail,"--it had come To this; in vain the rare historic bays That crowned the pictured Puritans at home! And yet 'twas certain that in grosser ways Of health and physique he was quite improving. Straighter he stood, and had achieved some praise In other exercise, much more behooving A soldier's taste than merely dirt removing. XXI But to resume: we left the youthful pair, Some stanzas back, before a lady's bower; 'Tis to be hoped they were no longer there, For stars were pointing to the morning hour. Their escapade discovered, ill 'twould fare With our two heroes, derelict of orders; But, like the ghost, they "scent the morning air," And back again they steal across the borders, Unseen, unheeded, by their martial warders. XXII They got to bed with speed: young Grey to dream Of some vague future with a general's star, And Mistress Kitty basking in its gleam; While Brown, content to worship her afar, Dreamed himself dying by some lonely stream, Having snatched Kitty from eighteen Nez Perces, Till a far bugle, with the morning beam, In his dull ear its fateful song rehearses, Which Winthrop Adams after put to verses. XXIII So passed three years of their novitiate, The first real boyhood Grey had ever known. His youth ran clear,--not choked like his Cochituate, In civic pipes, but free and pure alone; Yet knew repression, could himself habituate To having mind and body well rubbed down, Could read himself in others, and could situate Themselves in him,--except, I grieve to own, He couldn't see what Kitty saw in Brown! XXIV At last came graduation; Brown received In the One Hundredth Cavalry commission; Then frolic, flirting, parting,--when none grieved Save Brown, who loved our young Academician. And Grey, who felt his friend was still deceived By Mistress Kitty, who with other beauties Graced the occasion, and it was believed Had promised Brown that when he could recruit his Promised command, she'd share with him those duties. XXV Howe'er this was I know not; all I know, The night was June's, the moon rode high and clear; "'Twas such a night as this," three years ago, Miss Kitty sang the song that two might hear. There is a walk where trees o'erarching grow, Too wide for one, not wide enough for three (A fact precluding any plural beau), Which quite explained Miss Kitty's company, But not why Grey that favored one should be. XXVI There is a spring, whose limpid waters hide Somewhere within the shadows of that path Called Kosciusko's. There two figures bide,-- Grey and Miss Kitty. Surely Nature hath No fairer mirror for a might-be bride Than this same pool that caught our gentle belle To its dark heart one moment. At her side Grey bent. A something trembled o'er the well, Bright, spherical--a tear? Ah no! a button fell! XXVII "Material minds might think that gravitation," Quoth Grey, "drew yon metallic spheroid down. The soul poetic views the situation Fraught with more meaning. When thy girlish crown Was mirrored there, there was disintegration Of me, and all my spirit moved to you, Taking the form of slow precipitation!" But here came "Taps," a start, a smile, adieu! A blush, a sigh, and end of Canto II. BUGLE SONG Fades the light, And afar Goeth day, cometh night; And a star Leadeth all, Speedeth all To their rest! Love, good-night! Must thou go When the day And the light Need thee so,-- Needeth all, Heedeth all, That is best? CANTO III I Where the sun sinks through leagues of arid sky, Where the sun dies o'er leagues of arid plain, Where the dead bones of wasted rivers lie, Trailed from their channels in yon mountain chain; Where day by day naught takes the wearied eye But the low-rimming mountains, sharply based On the dead levels, moving far or nigh, As the sick vision wanders o'er the waste, But ever day by day against the sunset traced: II There moving through a poisonous cloud that stings With dust of alkali the trampling band Of Indian ponies, ride on dusky wings The red marauders of the Western land; Heavy with spoil, they seek the trail that brings Their flaunting lances to that sheltered bank Where lie their lodges; and the river sings Forgetful of the plain beyond, that drank Its life blood, where the wasted caravan sank. III They brought with them the thief's ignoble spoil, The beggar's dole, the greed of chiffonnier, The scum of camps, the implements of toil Snatched from dead hands, to rust as useless here; All they could rake or glean from hut or soil Piled their lean ponies, with the jackdaw's greed For vacant glitter. It were scarce a foil To all this tinsel that one feathered reed Bore on its barb two scalps that freshly bleed! IV They brought with them, alas! a wounded foe, Bound hand and foot, yet nursed with cruel care, Lest that in death he might escape one throe They had decreed his living flesh should bear: A youthful officer, by one foul blow Of treachery surprised, yet fighting still Amid his ambushed train, calm as the snow Above him; hopeless, yet content to spill His blood with theirs, and fighting but to kill. V He had fought nobly, and in that brief spell Had won the awe of those rude border men Who gathered round him, and beside him fell In loyal faith and silence, save that when By smoke embarrassed, and near sight as well, He paused to wipe his eyeglass, and decide Its nearer focus, there arose a yell Of approbation, and Bob Barker cried, "Wade in, Dundreary!" tossed his cap and--died. VI Their sole survivor now! his captors bear Him all unconscious, and beside the stream Leave him to rest; meantime the squaws prepare The stake for sacrifice: nor wakes a gleam Of pity in those Furies' eyes that glare Expectant of the torture; yet alway His steadfast spirit shines and mocks them there With peace they know not, till at close of day On his dull ear there thrills a whispered "Grey!" VII He starts! Was it a trick? Had angels kind Touched with compassion some weak woman's breast? Such things he'd read of! Faintly to his mind Came Pocahontas pleading for her guest. But then, this voice, though soft, was still inclined To baritone! A squaw in ragged gown Stood near him, frowning hatred. Was he blind? Whose eye was this beneath that beetling frown? The frown was painted, but that wink meant--Brown! VIII "Hush! for your life and mine! the thongs are cut," He whispers; "in yon thicket stands my horse. One dash!--I follow close, as if to glut My own revenge, yet bar the others' course. Now!" And 'tis done. Grey speeds, Brown follows; but Ere yet they reach the shade, Grey, fainting, reels, Yet not before Brown's circling arms close shut His in, uplifting him! Anon he feels A horse beneath him bound, and hears the rattling heels. IX Then rose a yell of baffled hate, and sprang Headlong the savages in swift pursuit; Though speed the fugitives, they hope to hang Hot on their heels, like wolves, with tireless foot. Long is the chase; Brown hears with inward pang The short, hard panting of his gallant steed Beneath its double burden; vainly rang Both voice and spur. The heaving flanks may bleed, Yet comes the sequel that they still must heed! X Brown saw it--reined his steed; dismounting, stood Calm and inflexible. "Old chap! you see There is but ONE escape. You know it? Good! There is ONE man to take it. You are he. The horse won't carry double. If he could, 'Twould but protract this bother. I shall stay: I've business with these devils, they with me; I will occupy them till you get away. Hush! quick time, forward. There! God bless you, Grey!" XI But as he finished, Grey slipped to his feet, Calm as his ancestors in voice and eye: "You do forget yourself when you compete With him whose RIGHT it is to stay and die: That's not YOUR duty. Please regain your seat; And take my ORDERS--since I rank you here!-- Mount and rejoin your men, and my defeat Report at quarters. Take this letter; ne'er Give it to aught but HER, nor let aught interfere." XII And, shamed and blushing, Brown the letter took Obediently and placed it in his pocket; Then, drawing forth another, said, "I look For death as you do, wherefore take this locket And letter." Here his comrade's hand he shook In silence. "Should we both together fall, Some other man"--but here all speech forsook His lips, as ringing cheerily o'er all He heard afar his own dear bugle-call! XIII 'Twas his command and succor, but e'en then Grey fainted, with poor Brown, who had forgot He likewise had been wounded, and both men Were picked up quite unconscious of their lot. Long lay they in extremity, and when They both grew stronger, and once more exchanged Old vows and memories, one common "den" In hospital was theirs, and free they ranged, Awaiting orders, but no more estranged. XIV And yet 'twas strange--nor can I end my tale Without this moral, to be fair and just: They never sought to know why each did fail The prompt fulfillment of the other's trust. It was suggested they could not avail Themselves of either letter, since they were Duly dispatched to their address by mail By Captain X., who knew Miss Rover fair Now meant stout Mistress Bloggs of Blank Blank Square. II. SPANISH IDYLS AND LEGENDS THE MIRACLE OF PADRE JUNIPERO This is the tale that the Chronicle Tells of the wonderful miracle Wrought by the pious Padre Serro, The very reverend Junipero. The heathen stood on his ancient mound, Looking over the desert bound Into the distant, hazy South, Over the dusty and broad champaign, Where, with many a gaping mouth And fissure, cracked by the fervid drouth, For seven months had the wasted plain Known no moisture of dew or rain. The wells were empty and choked with sand; The rivers had perished from the land; Only the sea-fogs to and fro Slipped like ghosts of the streams below. Deep in its bed lay the river's bones, Bleaching in pebbles and milk-white stones, And tracked o'er the desert faint and far, Its ribs shone bright on each sandy bar. Thus they stood as the sun went down Over the foot-hills bare and brown; Thus they looked to the South, wherefrom The pale-face medicine-man should come, Not in anger or in strife, But to bring--so ran the tale-- The welcome springs of eternal life, The living waters that should not fail. Said one, "He will come like Manitou, Unseen, unheard, in the falling dew." Said another, "He will come full soon Out of the round-faced watery moon." And another said, "He is here!" and lo, Faltering, staggering, feeble and slow, Out from the desert's blinding heat The Padre dropped at the heathen's feet. They stood and gazed for a little space Down on his pallid and careworn face, And a smile of scorn went round the band As they touched alternate with foot and hand This mortal waif, that the outer space Of dim mysterious sky and sand Flung with so little of Christian grace Down on their barren, sterile strand. Said one to him: "It seems thy God Is a very pitiful kind of God: He could not shield thine aching eyes From the blowing desert sands that rise, Nor turn aside from thy old gray head The glittering blade that is brandished By the sun He set in the heavens high; He could not moisten thy lips when dry; The desert fire is in thy brain; Thy limbs are racked with the fever-pain. If this be the grace He showeth thee Who art His servant, what may we, Strange to His ways and His commands, Seek at His unforgiving hands?" "Drink but this cup," said the Padre, straight, "And thou shalt know whose mercy bore These aching limbs to your heathen door, And purged my soul of its gross estate. Drink in His name, and thou shalt see The hidden depths of this mystery. Drink!" and he held the cup. One blow From the heathen dashed to the ground below The sacred cup that the Padre bore, And the thirsty soil drank the precious store Of sacramental and holy wine, That emblem and consecrated sign And blessed symbol of blood divine. Then, says the legend (and they who doubt The same as heretics be accurst), From the dry and feverish soil leaped out A living fountain; a well-spring burst Over the dusty and broad champaign, Over the sandy and sterile plain, Till the granite ribs and the milk-white stones That lay in the valley--the scattered bones-- Moved in the river and lived again! Such was the wonderful miracle Wrought by the cup of wine that fell From the hands of the pious Padre Serro, The very reverend Junipero. THE WONDERFUL SPRING OF SAN JOAQUIN Of all the fountains that poets sing,-- Crystal, thermal, or mineral spring, Ponce de Leon's Fount of Youth, Wells with bottoms of doubtful truth,-- In short, of all the springs of Time That ever were flowing in fact or rhyme, That ever were tasted, felt, or seen, There were none like the Spring of San Joaquin. Anno Domini eighteen-seven, Father Dominguez (now in heaven,-- Obiit eighteen twenty-seven) Found the spring, and found it, too, By his mule's miraculous cast of a shoe; For his beast--a descendant of Balaam's ass-- Stopped on the instant, and would not pass. The Padre thought the omen good, And bent his lips to the trickling flood; Then--as the Chronicles declare, On the honest faith of a true believer-- His cheeks, though wasted, lank, and bare, Filled like a withered russet pear In the vacuum of a glass receiver, And the snows that seventy winters bring Melted away in that magic spring. Such, at least, was the wondrous news The Padre brought into Santa Cruz. The Church, of course, had its own views Of who were worthiest to use The magic spring; but the prior claim Fell to the aged, sick, and lame. Far and wide the people came: Some from the healthful Aptos Creek Hastened to bring their helpless sick; Even the fishers of rude Soquel Suddenly found they were far from well; The brawny dwellers of San Lorenzo Said, in fact, they had never been so; And all were ailing,--strange to say,-- From Pescadero to Monterey. Over the mountain they poured in, With leathern bottles and bags of skin; Through the canyons a motley throng Trotted, hobbled, and limped along. The Fathers gazed at the moving scene With pious joy and with souls serene; And then--a result perhaps foreseen-- They laid out the Mission of San Joaquin. Not in the eyes of faith alone The good effects of the water shone; But skins grew rosy, eyes waxed clear, Of rough vaquero and muleteer; Angular forms were rounded out, Limbs grew supple and waists grew stout; And as for the girls,--for miles about They had no equal! To this day, From Pescadero to Monterey, You'll still find eyes in which are seen The liquid graces of San Joaquin. There is a limit to human bliss, And the Mission of San Joaquin had this; None went abroad to roam or stay But they fell sick in the queerest way,-- A singular maladie du pays, With gastric symptoms: so they spent Their days in a sensuous content, Caring little for things unseen Beyond their bowers of living green, Beyond the mountains that lay between The world and the Mission of San Joaquin. Winter passed, and the summer came The trunks of madrono, all aflame, Here and there through the underwood Like pillars of fire starkly stood. All of the breezy solitude Was filled with the spicing of pine and bay And resinous odors mixed and blended; And dim and ghostlike, far away, The smoke of the burning woods ascended. Then of a sudden the mountains swam, The rivers piled their floods in a dam, The ridge above Los Gatos Creek Arched its spine in a feline fashion; The forests waltzed till they grew sick, And Nature shook in a speechless passion; And, swallowed up in the earthquake's spleen, The wonderful Spring of San Joaquin Vanished, and never more was seen! Two days passed: the Mission folk Out of their rosy dream awoke; Some of them looked a trifle white, But that, no doubt, was from earthquake fright. Three days: there was sore distress, Headache, nausea, giddiness. Four days: faintings, tenderness Of the mouth and fauces; and in less Than one week--here the story closes; We won't continue the prognosis-- Enough that now no trace is seen Of Spring or Mission of San Joaquin. MORAL You see the point? Don't be too quick To break bad habits: better stick, Like the Mission folk, to your ARSENIC. THE ANGELUS (HEARD AT THE MISSION DOLORES, 1868) Bells of the Past, whose long-forgotten music Still fills the wide expanse, Tingeing the sober twilight of the Present With color of romance! I hear your call, and see the sun descending On rock and wave and sand, As down the coast the Mission voices, blending, Girdle the heathen land. Within the circle of your incantation No blight nor mildew falls; Nor fierce unrest, nor lust, nor low ambition Passes those airy walls. Borne on the swell of your long waves receding, I touch the farther Past; I see the dying glow of Spanish glory, The sunset dream and last! Before me rise the dome-shaped Mission towers, The white Presidio; The swart commander in his leathern jerkin, The priest in stole of snow. Once more I see Portala's cross uplifting Above the setting sun; And past the headland, northward, slowly drifting, The freighted galleon. O solemn bells! whose consecrated masses Recall the faith of old; O tinkling bells! that lulled with twilight music The spiritual fold! Your voices break and falter in the darkness,-- Break, falter, and are still; And veiled and mystic, like the Host descending, The sun sinks from the hill! CONCEPCION DE ARGUELLO (PRESIDIO DE SAN FRANCISCO, 1800) I Looking seaward, o'er the sand-hills stands the fortress, old and quaint, By the San Francisco friars lifted to their patron saint,-- Sponsor to that wondrous city, now apostate to the creed, On whose youthful walls the Padre saw the angel's golden reed; All its trophies long since scattered, all its blazon brushed away; And the flag that flies above it but a triumph of to-day. Never scar of siege or battle challenges the wandering eye, Never breach of warlike onset holds the curious passer-by; Only one sweet human fancy interweaves its threads of gold With the plain and homespun present, and a love that ne'er grows old; Only one thing holds its crumbling walls above the meaner dust,-- Listen to the simple story of a woman's love and trust. II Count von Resanoff, the Russian, envoy of the mighty Czar, Stood beside the deep embrasures, where the brazen cannon are. He with grave provincial magnates long had held serene debate On the Treaty of Alliance and the high affairs of state; He from grave provincial magnates oft had turned to talk apart With the Commandante's daughter on the questions of the heart, Until points of gravest import yielded slowly one by one, And by Love was consummated what Diplomacy begun; Till beside the deep embrasures, where the brazen cannon are, He received the twofold contract for approval of the Czar; Till beside the brazen cannon the betrothed bade adieu, And from sallyport and gateway north the Russian eagles flew. III Long beside the deep embrasures, where the brazen cannon are, Did they wait the promised bridegroom and the answer of the Czar; Day by day on wall and bastion beat the hollow, empty breeze,-- Day by day the sunlight glittered on the vacant, smiling seas: Week by week the near hills whitened in their dusty leather cloaks,-- Week by week the far hills darkened from the fringing plain of oaks; Till the rains came, and far breaking, on the fierce southwester tost, Dashed the whole long coast with color, and then vanished and were lost. So each year the seasons shifted,--wet and warm and drear and dry Half a year of clouds and flowers, half a year of dust and sky. Still it brought no ship nor message,--brought no tidings, ill or meet, For the statesmanlike Commander, for the daughter fair and sweet. Yet she heard the varying message, voiceless to all ears beside: "He will come," the flowers whispered; "Come no more," the dry hills sighed. Still she found him with the waters lifted by the morning breeze,-- Still she lost him with the folding of the great white-tented seas; Until hollows chased the dimples from her cheeks of olive brown, And at times a swift, shy moisture dragged the long sweet lashes down; Or the small mouth curved and quivered as for some denied caress, And the fair young brow was knitted in an infantine distress. Then the grim Commander, pacing where the brazen cannon are, Comforted the maid with proverbs, wisdom gathered from afar; Bits of ancient observation by his fathers garnered, each As a pebble worn and polished in the current of his speech: "'Those who wait the coming rider travel twice as far as he;' 'Tired wench and coming butter never did in time agree;' "'He that getteth himself honey, though a clown, he shall have flies;' 'In the end God grinds the miller;' 'In the dark the mole has eyes;' "'He whose father is Alcalde of his trial hath no fear,'-- And be sure the Count has reasons that will make his conduct clear." Then the voice sententious faltered, and the wisdom it would teach Lost itself in fondest trifles of his soft Castilian speech; And on "Concha" "Conchitita," and "Conchita" he would dwell With the fond reiteration which the Spaniard knows so well. So with proverbs and caresses, half in faith and half in doubt, Every day some hope was kindled, flickered, faded, and went out. IV Yearly, down the hillside sweeping, came the stately cavalcade, Bringing revel to vaquero, joy and comfort to each maid; Bringing days of formal visit, social feast and rustic sport, Of bull-baiting on the plaza, of love-making in the court. Vainly then at Concha's lattice, vainly as the idle wind, Rose the thin high Spanish tenor that bespoke the youth too kind; Vainly, leaning from their saddles, caballeros, bold and fleet, Plucked for her the buried chicken from beneath their mustang's feet; So in vain the barren hillsides with their gay serapes blazed,-- Blazed and vanished in the dust-cloud that their flying hoofs had raised. Then the drum called from the rampart, and once more, with patient mien, The Commander and his daughter each took up the dull routine,-- Each took up the petty duties of a life apart and lone, Till the slow years wrought a music in its dreary monotone. V Forty years on wall and bastion swept the hollow idle breeze, Since the Russian eagle fluttered from the California seas; Forty years on wall and bastion wrought its slow but sure decay, And St. George's cross was lifted in the port of Monterey; And the citadel was lighted, and the hall was gayly drest, All to honor Sir George Simpson, famous traveler and guest. Far and near the people gathered to the costly banquet set, And exchanged congratulations with the English baronet; Till, the formal speeches ended, and amidst the laugh and wine, Some one spoke of Concha's lover,--heedless of the warning sign. Quickly then cried Sir George Simpson: "Speak no ill of him, I pray! He is dead. He died, poor fellow, forty years ago this day,-- "Died while speeding home to Russia, falling from a fractious horse. Left a sweetheart, too, they tell me. Married, I suppose, of course! "Lives she yet?" A deathlike silence fell on banquet, guests, and hall, And a trembling figure rising fixed the awestruck gaze of all. Two black eyes in darkened orbits gleamed beneath the nun's white hood; Black serge hid the wasted figure, bowed and stricken where it stood. "Lives she yet?" Sir George repeated. All were hushed as Concha drew Closer yet her nun's attire. "Senor, pardon, she died, too!" "FOR THE KING" (NORTHERN MEXICO, 1640) As you look from the plaza at Leon west You can see her house, but the view is best From the porch of the church where she lies at rest; Where much of her past still lives, I think, In the scowling brows and sidelong blink Of the worshiping throng that rise or sink To the waxen saints that, yellow and lank, Lean out from their niches, rank on rank, With a bloodless Saviour on either flank; In the gouty pillars, whose cracks begin To show the adobe core within,-- A soul of earth in a whitewashed skin. And I think that the moral of all, you'll say, Is the sculptured legend that moulds away On a tomb in the choir: "Por el Rey." "Por el Rey!" Well, the king is gone Ages ago, and the Hapsburg one Shot--but the Rock of the Church lives on. "Por el Rey!" What matters, indeed, If king or president succeed To a country haggard with sloth and greed, As long as one granary is fat, And yonder priest, in a shovel hat, Peeps out from the bin like a sleek brown rat? What matters? Naught, if it serves to bring The legend nearer,--no other thing,-- We'll spare the moral, "Live the king!" Two hundred years ago, they say, The Viceroy, Marquis of Monte-Rey, Rode with his retinue that way: Grave, as befitted Spain's grandee; Grave, as the substitute should be Of His Most Catholic Majesty; Yet, from his black plume's curving grace To his slim black gauntlet's smaller space, Exquisite as a piece of lace! Two hundred years ago--e'en so-- The Marquis stopped where the lime-trees blow, While Leon's seneschal bent him low, And begged that the Marquis would that night take His humble roof for the royal sake, And then, as the custom demanded, spake The usual wish, that his guest would hold The house, and all that it might enfold, As his--with the bride scarce three days old. Be sure that the Marquis, in his place, Replied to all with the measured grace Of chosen speech and unmoved face; Nor raised his head till his black plume swept The hem of the lady's robe, who kept Her place, as her husband backward stept. And then (I know not how nor why) A subtle flame in the lady's eye-- Unseen by the courtiers standing by-- Burned through his lace and titled wreath, Burned through his body's jeweled sheath, Till it touched the steel of the man beneath! (And yet, mayhap, no more was meant Than to point a well-worn compliment, And the lady's beauty, her worst intent.) Howbeit, the Marquis bowed again: "Who rules with awe well serveth Spain, But best whose law is love made plain." Be sure that night no pillow prest The seneschal, but with the rest Watched, as was due a royal guest,-- Watched from the wall till he saw the square Fill with the moonlight, white and bare,-- Watched till he saw two shadows fare Out from his garden, where the shade That the old church tower and belfry made Like a benedictory hand was laid. Few words spoke the seneschal as he turned To his nearest sentry: "These monks have learned That stolen fruit is sweetly earned. "Myself shall punish yon acolyte Who gathers my garden grapes by night; Meanwhile, wait thou till the morning light." Yet not till the sun was riding high Did the sentry meet his commander's eye, Nor then till the Viceroy stood by. To the lovers of grave formalities No greeting was ever so fine, I wis, As this host's and guest's high courtesies! The seneschal feared, as the wind was west, A blast from Morena had chilled his rest; The Viceroy languidly confest That cares of state, and--he dared to say-- Some fears that the King could not repay The thoughtful zeal of his host, some way Had marred his rest. Yet he trusted much None shared his wakefulness; though such Indeed might be! If he dared to touch A theme so fine--the bride, perchance, Still slept! At least, they missed her glance To give this greeting countenance. Be sure that the seneschal, in turn, Was deeply bowed with the grave concern Of the painful news his guest should learn: "Last night, to her father's dying bed By a priest was the lady summoned; Nor know we yet how well she sped, "But hope for the best." The grave Viceroy (Though grieved his visit had such alloy) Must still wish the seneschal great joy Of a bride so true to her filial trust! Yet now, as the day waxed on, they must To horse, if they'd 'scape the noonday dust. "Nay," said the seneschal, "at least, To mend the news of this funeral priest, Myself shall ride as your escort east." The Viceroy bowed. Then turned aside To his nearest follower: "With me ride-- You and Felipe--on either side. "And list! Should anything me befall, Mischance of ambush or musket-ball, Cleave to his saddle yon seneschal! "No more." Then gravely in accents clear Took formal leave of his late good cheer; Whiles the seneschal whispered a musketeer, Carelessly stroking his pommel top: "If from the saddle ye see me drop, Riddle me quickly yon solemn fop!" So these, with many a compliment, Each on his own dark thought intent, With grave politeness onward went, Riding high, and in sight of all, Viceroy, escort, and seneschal, Under the shade of the Almandral; Holding their secret hard and fast, Silent and grave they ride at last Into the dusty traveled Past. Even like this they passed away Two hundred years ago to-day. What of the lady? Who shall say? Do the souls of the dying ever yearn To some favored spot for the dust's return, For the homely peace of the family urn? I know not. Yet did the seneschal, Chancing in after-years to fall Pierced by a Flemish musket-ball, Call to his side a trusty friar, And bid him swear, as his last desire, To bear his corse to San Pedro's choir At Leon, where 'neath a shield azure Should his mortal frame find sepulture: This much, for the pains Christ did endure. Be sure that the friar loyally Fulfilled his trust by land and sea, Till the spires of Leon silently Rose through the green of the Almandral, As if to beckon the seneschal To his kindred dust 'neath the choir wall. I wot that the saints on either side Leaned from their niches open-eyed To see the doors of the church swing wide; That the wounds of the Saviour on either flank Bled fresh, as the mourners, rank by rank, Went by with the coffin, clank on clank. For why? When they raised the marble door Of the tomb, untouched for years before, The friar swooned on the choir floor; For there, in her laces and festal dress, Lay the dead man's wife, her loveliness Scarcely changed by her long duress,-- As on the night she had passed away; Only that near her a dagger lay, With the written legend, "Por el Rey." What was their greeting, the groom and bride, They whom that steel and the years divide? I know not. Here they lie side by side. Side by side! Though the king has his way, Even the dead at last have their day. Make you the moral. "Por el Rey!" RAMON (REFUGIO MINE, NORTHERN MEXICO) Drunk and senseless in his place, Prone and sprawling on his face, More like brute than any man Alive or dead, By his great pump out of gear, Lay the peon engineer, Waking only just to hear, Overhead, Angry tones that called his name, Oaths and cries of bitter blame,-- Woke to hear all this, and, waking, turned and fled! "To the man who'll bring to me," Cried Intendant Harry Lee,-- Harry Lee, the English foreman of the mine,-- "Bring the sot alive or dead, I will give to him," he said, "Fifteen hundred pesos down, Just to set the rascal's crown Underneath this heel of mine: Since but death Deserves the man whose deed, Be it vice or want of heed, Stops the pumps that give us breath,-- Stops the pumps that suck the death From the poisoned lower levels of the mine!" No one answered; for a cry From the shaft rose up on high, And shuffling, scrambling, tumbling from below, Came the miners each, the bolder Mounting on the weaker's shoulder, Grappling, clinging to their hold or Letting go, As the weaker gasped and fell From the ladder to the well,-- To the poisoned pit of hell Down below! "To the man who sets them free," Cried the foreman, Harry Lee,-- Harry Lee, the English foreman of the mine,-- "Brings them out and sets them free, I will give that man," said he, "Twice that sum, who with a rope Face to face with Death shall cope. Let him come who dares to hope!" "Hold your peace!" some one replied, Standing by the foreman's side; "There has one already gone, whoe'er he be!" Then they held their breath with awe, Pulling on the rope, and saw Fainting figures reappear, On the black rope swinging clear, Fastened by some skillful hand from below; Till a score the level gained, And but one alone remained,-- He the hero and the last, He whose skillful hand made fast The long line that brought them back to hope and cheer! Haggard, gasping, down dropped he At the feet of Harry Lee,-- Harry Lee, the English foreman of the mine. "I have come," he gasped, "to claim Both rewards. Senor, my name Is Ramon! I'm the drunken engineer, I'm the coward, Senor"-- Here He fell over, by that sign, Dead as stone! DON DIEGO OF THE SOUTH (REFECTORY, MISSION SAN GABRIEL, 1869) Good!--said the Padre,--believe me still, "Don Giovanni," or what you will, The type's eternal! We knew him here As Don Diego del Sud. I fear The story's no new one! Will you hear? One of those spirits you can't tell why God has permitted. Therein I Have the advantage, for I hold That wolves are sent to the purest fold, And we'd save the wolf if we'd get the lamb. You're no believer? Good! I am. Well, for some purpose, I grant you dim, The Don loved women, and they loved him. Each thought herself his LAST love! Worst, Many believed that they were his FIRST! And, such are these creatures since the Fall, The very doubt had a charm for all! You laugh! You are young, but I--indeed I have no patience... To proceed:-- You saw, as you passed through the upper town, The Eucinal where the road goes down To San Felipe! There one morn They found Diego,--his mantle torn, And as many holes through his doublet's band As there were wronged husbands--you understand! "Dying," so said the gossips. "Dead" Was what the friars who found him said. May be. Quien sabe? Who else should know? It was a hundred years ago. There was a funeral. Small indeed-- Private. What would you? To proceed:-- Scarcely the year had flown. One night The Commandante awoke in fright, Hearing below his casement's bar The well-known twang of the Don's guitar; And rushed to the window, just to see His wife a-swoon on the balcony. One week later, Don Juan Ramirez Found his own daughter, the Dona Inez, Pale as a ghost, leaning out to hear The song of that phantom cavalier. Even Alcalde Pedro Blas Saw, it was said, through his niece's glass, The shade of Diego twice repass. What these gentlemen each confessed Heaven and the Church only knows. At best The case was a bad one. How to deal With Sin as a Ghost, they couldn't but feel Was an awful thing. Till a certain Fray Humbly offered to show the way. And the way was this. Did I say before That the Fray was a stranger? No, Senor? Strange! very strange! I should have said That the very week that the Don lay dead He came among us. Bread he broke Silent, nor ever to one he spoke. So he had vowed it! Below his brows His face was hidden. There are such vows! Strange! are they not? You do not use Snuff? A bad habit! Well, the views Of the Fray were these: that the penance done By the caballeros was right; but one Was due from the CAUSE, and that, in brief, Was Dona Dolores Gomez, chief, And Inez, Sanchicha, Concepcion, And Carmen,--well, half the girls in town On his tablets the Friar had written down. These were to come on a certain day And ask at the hands of the pious Fray For absolution. That done, small fear But the shade of Diego would disappear. They came; each knelt in her turn and place To the pious Fray with his hidden face And voiceless lips, and each again Took back her soul freed from spot or stain, Till the Dona Inez, with eyes downcast And a tear on their fringes, knelt her last. And then--perhaps that her voice was low From fear or from shame--the monks said so-- But the Fray leaned forward, when, presto! all Were thrilled by a scream, and saw her fall Fainting beside the confessional. And so was the ghost of Diego laid As the Fray had said. Never more his shade Was seen at San Gabriel's Mission. Eh! The girl interests you? I dare say! "Nothing," said she, when they brought her to-- "Only a faintness!" They spoke more true Who said 'twas a stubborn soul. But then-- Women are women, and men are men! So, to return. As I said before, Having got the wolf, by the same high law We saved the lamb in the wolf's own jaw, And that's my moral. The tale, I fear, But poorly told. Yet it strikes me here Is stuff for a moral. What's your view? You smile, Don Pancho. Ah! that's like you! AT THE HACIENDA Know I not whom thou mayst be Carved upon this olive-tree,-- "Manuela of La Torre,"-- For around on broken walls Summer sun and spring rain falls, And in vain the low wind calls "Manuela of La Torre." Of that song no words remain But the musical refrain,-- "Manuela of La Torre." Yet at night, when winds are still, Tinkles on the distant hill A guitar, and words that thrill Tell to me the old, old story,-- Old when first thy charms were sung, Old when these old walls were young, "Manuela of La Torre." FRIAR PEDRO'S RIDE It was the morning season of the year; It was the morning era of the land; The watercourses rang full loud and clear; Portala's cross stood where Portala's hand Had planted it when Faith was taught by Fear, When monks and missions held the sole command Of all that shore beside the peaceful sea, Where spring-tides beat their long-drawn reveille. Out of the mission of San Luis Rey, All in that brisk, tumultuous spring weather, Rode Friar Pedro, in a pious way, With six dragoons in cuirasses of leather, Each armed alike for either prayer or fray; Handcuffs and missals they had slung together, And as an aid the gospel truth to scatter Each swung a lasso--alias a "riata." In sooth, that year the harvest had been slack, The crop of converts scarce worth computation; Some souls were lost, whose owners had turned back To save their bodies frequent flagellation; And some preferred the songs of birds, alack! To Latin matins and their souls' salvation, And thought their own wild whoopings were less dreary Than Father Pedro's droning miserere. To bring them back to matins and to prime, To pious works and secular submission, To prove to them that liberty was crime,-- This was, in fact, the Padre's present mission; To get new souls perchance at the same time, And bring them to a "sense of their condition,"-- That easy phrase, which, in the past and present, Means making that condition most unpleasant. He saw the glebe land guiltless of a furrow; He saw the wild oats wrestle on the hill; He saw the gopher working in his burrow; He saw the squirrel scampering at his will:-- He saw all this, and felt no doubt a thorough And deep conviction of God's goodness; still He failed to see that in His glory He Yet left the humblest of His creatures free. He saw the flapping crow, whose frequent note Voiced the monotony of land and sky, Mocking with graceless wing and rusty coat His priestly presence as he trotted by. He would have cursed the bird by bell and rote, But other game just then was in his eye,-- A savage camp, whose occupants preferred Their heathen darkness to the living Word. He rang his bell, and at the martial sound Twelve silver spurs their jingling rowels clashed; Six horses sprang across the level ground As six dragoons in open order dashed; Above their heads the lassos circled round, In every eye a pious fervor flashed; They charged the camp, and in one moment more They lassoed six and reconverted four. The Friar saw the conflict from a knoll, And sang Laus Deo and cheered on his men: "Well thrown, Bautista,--that's another soul; After him, Gomez,--try it once again; This way, Felipe,--there the heathen stole; Bones of St. Francis!--surely that makes TEN; Te Deum laudamus--but they're very wild; Non nobis Domine--all right, my child!" When at that moment--as the story goes-- A certain squaw, who had her foes eluded, Ran past the Friar, just before his nose. He stared a moment, and in silence brooded; Then in his breast a pious frenzy rose And every other prudent thought excluded; He caught a lasso, and dashed in a canter After that Occidental Atalanta. High o'er his head he swirled the dreadful noose; But, as the practice was quite unfamiliar, His first cast tore Felipe's captive loose, And almost choked Tiburcio Camilla, And might have interfered with that brave youth's Ability to gorge the tough tortilla; But all things come by practice, and at last His flying slip-knot caught the maiden fast. Then rose above the plain a mingled yell Of rage and triumph,--a demoniac whoop: The Padre heard it like a passing knell, And would have loosened his unchristian loop; But the tough raw-hide held the captive well, And held, alas! too well the captor-dupe; For with one bound the savage fled amain, Dragging horse, Friar, down the lonely plain. Down the arroyo, out across the mead, By heath and hollow, sped the flying maid, Dragging behind her still the panting steed And helpless Friar, who in vain essayed To cut the lasso or to check his speed. He felt himself beyond all human aid, And trusted to the saints,--and, for that matter, To some weak spot in Felipe's riata. Alas! the lasso had been duly blessed, And, like baptism, held the flying wretch,-- A doctrine that the priest had oft expressed, Which, like the lasso, might be made to stretch, But would not break; so neither could divest Themselves of it, but, like some awful fetch, The holy Friar had to recognize The image of his fate in heathen guise. He saw the glebe land guiltless of a furrow; He saw the wild oats wrestle on the hill; He saw the gopher standing in his burrow; He saw the squirrel scampering at his will:-- He saw all this, and felt no doubt how thorough The contrast was to his condition; still The squaw kept onward to the sea, till night And the cold sea-fog hid them both from sight. The morning came above the serried coast, Lighting the snow-peaks with its beacon-fires, Driving before it all the fleet-winged host Of chattering birds above the Mission spires, Filling the land with light and joy, but most The savage woods with all their leafy lyres; In pearly tints and opal flame and fire The morning came, but not the holy Friar. Weeks passed away. In vain the Fathers sought Some trace or token that might tell his story; Some thought him dead, or, like Elijah, caught Up to the heavens in a blaze of glory. In this surmise some miracles were wrought On his account, and souls in purgatory Were thought to profit from his intercession; In brief, his absence made a "deep impression." A twelvemonth passed; the welcome Spring once more Made green the hills beside the white-faced Mission, Spread her bright dais by the western shore, And sat enthroned, a most resplendent vision. The heathen converts thronged the chapel door At morning mass, when, says the old tradition, A frightful whoop throughout the church resounded, And to their feet the congregation bounded. A tramp of hoofs upon the beaten course, Then came a sight that made the bravest quail: A phantom Friar on a spectre horse, Dragged by a creature decked with horns and tail. By the lone Mission, with the whirlwind's force, They madly swept, and left a sulphurous trail: And that was all,--enough to tell the story, And leave unblessed those souls in purgatory. And ever after, on that fatal day That Friar Pedro rode abroad lassoing, A ghostly couple came and went away With savage whoop and heathenish hallooing, Which brought discredit on San Luis Rey, And proved the Mission's ruin and undoing; For ere ten years had passed, the squaw and Friar Performed to empty walls and fallen spire. The Mission is no more; upon its wall. The golden lizards slip, or breathless pause, Still as the sunshine brokenly that falls Through crannied roof and spider-webs of gauze; No more the bell its solemn warning calls,-- A holier silence thrills and overawes; And the sharp lights and shadows of to-day Outline the Mission of San Luis Rey. IN THE MISSION GARDEN (1865) FATHER FELIPE I speak not the English well, but Pachita, She speak for me; is it not so, my Pancha? Eh, little rogue? Come, salute me the stranger Americano. Sir, in my country we say, "Where the heart is, There live the speech." Ah! you not understand? So! Pardon an old man,--what you call "old fogy,"-- Padre Felipe! Old, Senor, old! just so old as the Mission. You see that pear-tree? How old you think, Senor? Fifteen year? Twenty? Ah, Senor, just fifty Gone since I plant him! You like the wine? It is some at the Mission, Made from the grape of the year eighteen hundred; All the same time when the earthquake he come to San Juan Bautista. But Pancha is twelve, and she is the rose-tree; And I am the olive, and this is the garden: And "Pancha" we say, but her name is "Francisca," Same like her mother. Eh, you knew HER? No? Ah! it is a story; But I speak not, like Pachita, the English: So! if I try, you will sit here beside me, And shall not laugh, eh? When the American come to the Mission, Many arrive at the house of Francisca: One,--he was fine man,--he buy the cattle Of Jose Castro. So! he came much, and Francisca, she saw him: And it was love,--and a very dry season; And the pears bake on the tree,--and the rain come, But not Francisca. Not for one year; and one night I have walk much Under the olive-tree, when comes Francisca,-- Comes to me here, with her child, this Francisca,-- Under the olive-tree. Sir, it was sad;... but I speak not the English; So!... she stay here, and she wait for her husband: He come no more, and she sleep on the hillside; There stands Pachita. Ah! there's the Angelus. Will you not enter? Or shall you walk in the garden with Pancha? Go, little rogue--st! attend to the stranger! Adios, Senor. PACHITA (briskly). So, he's been telling that yarn about mother! Bless you! he tells it to every stranger: Folks about yer say the old man's my father; What's your opinion? THE LOST GALLEON* In sixteen hundred and forty-one, The regular yearly galleon, Laden with odorous gums and spice, India cottons and India rice, And the richest silks of far Cathay, Was due at Acapulco Bay. Due she was, and overdue,-- Galleon, merchandise and crew, Creeping along through rain and shine, Through the tropics, under the line. The trains were waiting outside the walls, The wives of sailors thronged the town, The traders sat by their empty stalls, And the Viceroy himself came down; The bells in the tower were all a-trip, Te Deums were on each Father's lip, The limes were ripening in the sun For the sick of the coming galleon. All in vain. Weeks passed away, And yet no galleon saw the bay. India goods advanced in price; The Governor missed his favorite spice; The Senoritas mourned for sandal And the famous cottons of Coromandel; And some for an absent lover lost, And one for a husband,--Dona Julia, Wife of the captain tempest-tossed, In circumstances so peculiar; Even the Fathers, unawares, Grumbled a little at their prayers; And all along the coast that year Votive candles wore scarce and dear. Never a tear bedims the eye That time and patience will not dry; Never a lip is curved with pain That can't be kissed into smiles again; And these same truths, as far as I know, Obtained on the coast of Mexico More than two hundred years ago, In sixteen hundred and fifty-one,-- Ten years after the deed was done,-- And folks had forgotten the galleon: The divers plunged in the gulf for pearls, White as the teeth of the Indian girls; The traders sat by their full bazaars; The mules with many a weary load, And oxen dragging their creaking cars, Came and went on the mountain road. Where was the galleon all this while? Wrecked on some lonely coral isle, Burnt by the roving sea-marauders, Or sailing north under secret orders? Had she found the Anian passage famed, By lying Maldonado claimed, And sailed through the sixty-fifth degree Direct to the North Atlantic Sea? Or had she found the "River of Kings," Of which De Fonte told such strange things, In sixteen forty? Never a sign, East or west or under the line, They saw of the missing galleon; Never a sail or plank or chip They found of the long-lost treasure-ship, Or enough to build a tale upon. But when she was lost, and where and how, Are the facts we're coming to just now. Take, if you please, the chart of that day, Published at Madrid,--por el Rey; Look for a spot in the old South Sea, The hundred and eightieth degree Longitude west of Madrid: there, Under the equatorial glare, Just where the east and west are one, You'll find the missing galleon,-- You'll find the San Gregorio, yet Riding the seas, with sails all set, Fresh as upon the very day She sailed from Acapulco Bay. How did she get there? What strange spell Kept her two hundred years so well, Free from decay and mortal taint? What but the prayers of a patron saint! A hundred leagues from Manilla town, The San Gregorio's helm came down; Round she went on her heel, and not A cable's length from a galliot That rocked on the waters just abreast Of the galleon's course, which was west-sou'-west. Then said the galleon's commandante, General Pedro Sobriente (That was his rank on land and main, A regular custom of Old Spain), "My pilot is dead of scurvy: may I ask the longitude, time, and day?" The first two given and compared; The third--the commandante stared! "The FIRST of June? I make it second." Said the stranger, "Then you've wrongly reckoned; I make it FIRST: as you came this way, You should have lost, d'ye see, a day; Lost a day, as plainly see, On the hundred and eightieth degree." "Lost a day?" "Yes; if not rude, When did you make east longitude?" "On the ninth of May,--our patron's day." "On the ninth?--YOU HAD NO NINTH OF MAY! Eighth and tenth was there; but stay"-- Too late; for the galleon bore away. Lost was the day they should have kept, Lost unheeded and lost unwept; Lost in a way that made search vain, Lost in a trackless and boundless main; Lost like the day of Job's awful curse, In his third chapter, third and fourth verse; Wrecked was their patron's only day,-- What would the holy Fathers say? Said the Fray Antonio Estavan, The galleon's chaplain,--a learned man,-- "Nothing is lost that you can regain; And the way to look for a thing is plain, To go where you lost it, back again. Back with your galleon till you see The hundred and eightieth degree. Wait till the rolling year goes round, And there will the missing day be found; For you'll find, if computation's true, That sailing EAST will give to you Not only one ninth of May, but two,-- One for the good saint's present cheer, And one for the day we lost last year." Back to the spot sailed the galleon; Where, for a twelvemonth, off and on The hundred and eightieth degree She rose and fell on a tropic sea. But lo! when it came to the ninth of May, All of a sudden becalmed she lay One degree from that fatal spot, Without the power to move a knot; And of course the moment she lost her way, Gone was her chance to save that day. To cut a lengthening story short, She never saved it. Made the sport Of evil spirits and baffling wind, She was always before or just behind, One day too soon or one day too late, And the sun, meanwhile, would never wait. She had two Eighths, as she idly lay, Two Tenths, but never a NINTH of May; And there she rides through two hundred years Of dreary penance and anxious fears; Yet, through the grace of the saint she served, Captain and crew are still preserved. By a computation that still holds good, Made by the Holy Brotherhood, The San Gregorio will cross that line In nineteen hundred and thirty-nine: Just three hundred years to a day From the time she lost the ninth of May. And the folk in Acapulco town, Over the waters looking down, Will see in the glow of the setting sun The sails of the missing galleon, And the royal standard of Philip Rey, The gleaming mast and glistening spar, As she nears the surf of the outer bar. A Te Deum sung on her crowded deck, An odor of spice along the shore, A crash, a cry from a shattered wreck,-- And the yearly galleon sails no more In or out of the olden bay; For the blessed patron has found his day. ------- Such is the legend. Hear this truth: Over the trackless past, somewhere, Lie the lost days of our tropic youth, Only regained by faith and prayer, Only recalled by prayer and plaint: Each lost day has its patron saint! * See notes at end. III. IN DIALECT "JIM" Say there! P'r'aps Some on you chaps Might know Jim Wild? Well,--no offense: Thar ain't no sense In gittin' riled! Jim was my chum Up on the Bar: That's why I come Down from up yar, Lookin' for Jim. Thank ye, sir! YOU Ain't of that crew,-- Blest if you are! Money? Not much: That ain't my kind; I ain't no such. Rum? I don't mind, Seein' it's you. Well, this yer Jim,-- Did you know him? Jes' 'bout your size; Same kind of eyes;-- Well, that is strange: Why, it's two year Since he came here, Sick, for a change. Well, here's to us: Eh? The h--- you say! Dead? That little cuss? What makes you star', You over thar? Can't a man drop 's glass in yer shop But you must r'ar? It wouldn't take D----d much to break You and your bar. Dead! Poor--little--Jim! Why, thar was me, Jones, and Bob Lee, Harry and Ben,-- No-account men: Then to take HIM! Well, thar-- Good-by-- No more, sir--I-- Eh? What's that you say? Why, dern it!--sho!-- No? Yes! By Joe! Sold! Sold! Why, you limb, You ornery, Derned old Long-legged Jim. CHIQUITA Beautiful! Sir, you may say so. Thar isn't her match in the county; Is thar, old gal,--Chiquita, my darling, my beauty? Feel of that neck, sir,--thar's velvet! Whoa! steady,--ah, will you, you vixen! Whoa! I say. Jack, trot her out; let the gentleman look at her paces. Morgan!--she ain't nothing else, and I've got the papers to prove it. Sired by Chippewa Chief, and twelve hundred dollars won't buy her. Briggs of Tuolumne owned her. Did you know Briggs of Tuolumne? Busted hisself in White Pine, and blew out his brains down in 'Frisco? Hedn't no savey, hed Briggs. Thar, Jack! that'll do,--quit that foolin'! Nothin' to what she kin do, when she's got her work cut out before her. Hosses is hosses, you know, and likewise, too, jockeys is jockeys: And 'tain't ev'ry man as can ride as knows what a hoss has got in him. Know the old ford on the Fork, that nearly got Flanigan's leaders? Nasty in daylight, you bet, and a mighty rough ford in low water! Well, it ain't six weeks ago that me and the Jedge and his nevey Struck for that ford in the night, in the rain, and the water all round us; Up to our flanks in the gulch, and Rattlesnake Creek just a-bilin', Not a plank left in the dam, and nary a bridge on the river. I had the gray, and the Jedge had his roan, and his nevey, Chiquita; And after us trundled the rocks jest loosed from the top of the canyon. Lickity, lickity, switch, we came to the ford, and Chiquita Buckled right down to her work, and, a fore I could yell to her rider, Took water jest at the ford, and there was the Jedge and me standing, And twelve hundred dollars of hoss-flesh afloat, and a-driftin' to thunder! Would ye b'lieve it? That night, that hoss, that 'ar filly, Chiquita, Walked herself into her stall, and stood there, all quiet and dripping: Clean as a beaver or rat, with nary a buckle of harness, Just as she swam the Fork,--that hoss, that 'ar filly, Chiquita. That's what I call a hoss! and-- What did you say?-- Oh, the nevey? Drownded, I reckon,--leastways, he never kem beck to deny it. Ye see the derned fool had no seat, ye couldn't have made him a rider; And then, ye know, boys will be boys, and hosses--well, hosses is hosses! DOW'S FLAT (1856) Dow's Flat. That's its name; And I reckon that you Are a stranger? The same? Well, I thought it was true,-- For thar isn't a man on the river as can't spot the place at first view. It was called after Dow,-- Which the same was an ass,-- And as to the how Thet the thing kem to pass,-- Jest tie up your hoss to that buckeye, and sit ye down here in the grass. You see this 'yer Dow Hed the worst kind of luck; He slipped up somehow On each thing thet he struck. Why, ef he'd a straddled thet fence-rail, the derned thing'd get up and buck. He mined on the bar Till he couldn't pay rates; He was smashed by a car When he tunneled with Bates; And right on the top of his trouble kem his wife and five kids from the States. It was rough,--mighty rough; But the boys they stood by, And they brought him the stuff For a house, on the sly; And the old woman,--well, she did washing, and took on when no one was nigh. But this 'yer luck of Dow's Was so powerful mean That the spring near his house Dried right up on the green; And he sunk forty feet down for water, but nary a drop to be seen. Then the bar petered out, And the boys wouldn't stay; And the chills got about, And his wife fell away; But Dow in his well kept a peggin' in his usual ridikilous way. One day,--it was June, And a year ago, jest-- This Dow kem at noon To his work like the rest, With a shovel and pick on his shoulder, and derringer hid in his breast. He goes to the well, And he stands on the brink, And stops for a spell Jest to listen and think: For the sun in his eyes (jest like this, sir!), you see, kinder made the cuss blink. His two ragged gals In the gulch were at play, And a gownd that was Sal's Kinder flapped on a bay: Not much for a man to be leavin', but his all,--as I've heer'd the folks say. And--That's a peart hoss Thet you've got,--ain't it now? What might be her cost? Eh? Oh!--Well, then, Dow-- Let's see,--well, that forty-foot grave wasn't his, sir, that day, anyhow. For a blow of his pick Sorter caved in the side, And he looked and turned sick, Then he trembled and cried. For you see the dern cuss had struck--"Water?"--Beg your parding, young man,--there you lied! It was GOLD,--in the quartz, And it ran all alike; And I reckon five oughts Was the worth of that strike; And that house with the coopilow's his'n,--which the same isn't bad for a Pike. Thet's why it's Dow's Flat; And the thing of it is That he kinder got that Through sheer contrairiness: For 'twas WATER the derned cuss was seekin', and his luck made him certain to miss. Thet's so! Thar's your way, To the left of yon tree; But--a--look h'yur, say? Won't you come up to tea? No? Well, then the next time you're passin'; and ask after Dow,-- and thet's ME. IN THE TUNNEL Didn't know Flynn,-- Flynn of Virginia,-- Long as he's been 'yar? Look 'ee here, stranger, Whar HEV you been? Here in this tunnel He was my pardner, That same Tom Flynn,-- Working together, In wind and weather, Day out and in. Didn't know Flynn! Well, that IS queer; Why, it's a sin To think of Tom Flynn,-- Tom with his cheer, Tom without fear,-- Stranger, look 'yar! Thar in the drift, Back to the wall, He held the timbers Ready to fall; Then in the darkness I heard him call: "Run for your life, Jake! Run for your wife's sake! Don't wait for me." And that was all Heard in the din, Heard of Tom Flynn,-- Flynn of Virginia. That's all about Flynn of Virginia. That lets me out. Here in the damp,-- Out of the sun,-- That 'ar derned lamp Makes my eyes run. Well, there,--I'm done! But, sir, when you'll Hear the next fool Asking of Flynn,-- Flynn of Virginia,-- Just you chip in, Say you knew Flynn; Say that you've been 'yar. "CICELY" (ALKALI STATION) Cicely says you're a poet; maybe,--I ain't much on rhyme: I reckon you'd give me a hundred, and beat me every time. Poetry!--that's the way some chaps puts up an idee, But I takes mine "straight without sugar," and that's what's the matter with me. Poetry!--just look round you,--alkali, rock, and sage; Sage-brush, rock, and alkali; ain't it a pretty page! Sun in the east at mornin', sun in the west at night, And the shadow of this 'yer station the on'y thing moves in sight. Poetry!--Well now--Polly! Polly, run to your mam; Run right away, my pooty! By-by! Ain't she a lamb? Poetry!--that reminds me o' suthin' right in that suit: Jest shet that door thar, will yer?--for Cicely's ears is cute. Ye noticed Polly,--the baby? A month afore she was born, Cicely--my old woman--was moody-like and forlorn; Out of her head and crazy, and talked of flowers and trees; Family man yourself, sir? Well, you know what a woman be's. Narvous she was, and restless,--said that she "couldn't stay." Stay!--and the nearest woman seventeen miles away. But I fixed it up with the doctor, and he said he would be on hand, And I kinder stuck by the shanty, and fenced in that bit o' land. One night,--the tenth of October,--I woke with a chill and a fright, For the door it was standing open, and Cicely warn't in sight, But a note was pinned on the blanket, which it said that she "couldn't stay," But had gone to visit her neighbor,--seventeen miles away! When and how she stampeded, I didn't wait for to see, For out in the road, next minit, I started as wild as she; Running first this way and that way, like a hound that is off the scent, For there warn't no track in the darkness to tell me the way she went. I've had some mighty mean moments afore I kem to this spot,-- Lost on the Plains in '50, drownded almost and shot; But out on this alkali desert, a-hunting a crazy wife, Was ra'ly as on-satis-factory as anything in my life. "Cicely! Cicely! Cicely!" I called, and I held my breath, And "Cicely!" came from the canyon,--and all was as still as death. And "Cicely! Cicely! Cicely!" came from the rocks below, And jest but a whisper of "Cicely!" down from them peaks of snow. I ain't what you call religious,--but I jest looked up to the sky, And--this 'yer's to what I'm coming, and maybe ye think I lie: But up away to the east'ard, yaller and big and far, I saw of a suddent rising the singlerist kind of star. Big and yaller and dancing, it seemed to beckon to me: Yaller and big and dancing, such as you never see: Big and yaller and dancing,--I never saw such a star, And I thought of them sharps in the Bible, and I went for it then and thar. Over the brush and bowlders I stumbled and pushed ahead, Keeping the star afore me, I went wherever it led. It might hev been for an hour, when suddent and peart and nigh, Out of the yearth afore me thar riz up a baby's cry. Listen! thar's the same music; but her lungs they are stronger now Than the day I packed her and her mother,--I'm derned if I jest know how. But the doctor kem the next minit, and the joke o' the whole thing is That Cis never knew what happened from that very night to this! But Cicely says you're a poet, and maybe you might, some day, Jest sling her a rhyme 'bout a baby that was born in a curious way, And see what she says; and, old fellow, when you speak of the star, don't tell As how 'twas the doctor's lantern,--for maybe 'twon't sound so well. PENELOPE (SIMPSON'S BAR, 1858) So you've kem 'yer agen, And one answer won't do? Well, of all the derned men That I've struck, it is you. O Sal! 'yer's that derned fool from Simpson's, cavortin' round 'yer in the dew. Kem in, ef you WILL. Thar,--quit! Take a cheer. Not that; you can't fill Them theer cushings this year,-- For that cheer was my old man's, Joe Simpson, and they don't make such men about 'yer. He was tall, was my Jack, And as strong as a tree. Thar's his gun on the rack,-- Jest you heft it, and see. And YOU come a courtin' his widder! Lord! where can that critter, Sal, be! You'd fill my Jack's place? And a man of your size,-- With no baird to his face, Nor a snap to his eyes, And nary--Sho! thar! I was foolin',--I was, Joe, for sartain,--don't rise. Sit down. Law! why, sho! I'm as weak as a gal. Sal! Don't you go, Joe, Or I'll faint,--sure, I shall. Sit down,--ANYWHEER, where you like, Joe,--in that cheer, if you choose,--Lord! where's Sal? PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES (TABLE MOUNTAIN, 1870) Which I wish to remark, And my language is plain, That for ways that are dark And for tricks that are vain, The heathen Chinee is peculiar, Which the same I would rise to explain. Ah Sin was his name; And I shall not deny, In regard to the same, What that name might imply; But his smile it was pensive and childlike, As I frequent remarked to Bill Nye. It was August the third, And quite soft was the skies; Which it might be inferred That Ah Sin was likewise; Yet he played it that day upon William And me in a way I despise. Which we had a small game, And Ah Sin took a hand: It was Euchre. The same He did not understand; But he smiled as he sat by the table, With the smile that was childlike and bland. Yet the cards they were stocked In a way that I grieve, And my feelings were shocked At the state of Nye's sleeve, Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers, And the same with intent to deceive. But the hands that were played By that heathen Chinee, And the points that he made, Were quite frightful to see,-- Till at last he put down a right bower, Which the same Nye had dealt unto me. Then I looked up at Nye, And he gazed upon me; And he rose with a sigh, And said, "Can this be? We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor,"-- And he went for that heathen Chinee. In the scene that ensued I did not take a hand, But the floor it was strewed Like the leaves on the strand With the cards that Ah Sin had been hiding, In the game "he did not understand." In his sleeves, which were long, He had twenty-four packs,-- Which was coming it strong, Yet I state but the facts; And we found on his nails, which were taper, What is frequent in tapers,--that's wax. Which is why I remark, And my language is plain, That for ways that are dark And for tricks that are vain, The heathen Chinee is peculiar,-- Which the same I am free to maintain. THE SOCIETY UPON THE STANISLAUS I reside at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James; I am not up to small deceit or any sinful games; And I'll tell in simple language what I know about the row That broke up our Society upon the Stanislow. But first I would remark, that it is not a proper plan For any scientific gent to whale his fellow-man, And, if a member don't agree with his peculiar whim, To lay for that same member for to "put a head" on him. Now nothing could be finer or more beautiful to see Than the first six months' proceedings of that same Society, Till Brown of Calaveras brought a lot of fossil bones That he found within a tunnel near the tenement of Jones. Then Brown he read a paper, and he reconstructed there, From those same bones, an animal that was extremely rare; And Jones then asked the Chair for a suspension of the rules, Till he could prove that those same bones was one of his lost mules. Then Brown he smiled a bitter smile, and said he was at fault, It seemed he had been trespassing on Jones's family vault; He was a most sarcastic man, this quiet Mr. Brown, And on several occasions he had cleaned out the town. Now I hold it is not decent for a scientific gent To say another is an ass,--at least, to all intent; Nor should the individual who happens to be meant Reply by heaving rocks at him, to any great extent. Then Abner Dean of Angel's raised a point of order, when A chunk of old red sandstone took him in the abdomen, And he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up on the floor, And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more. For, in less time than I write it, every member did engage In a warfare with the remnants of a palaeozoic age; And the way they heaved those fossils in their anger was a sin, Till the skull of an old mammoth caved the head of Thompson in. And this is all I have to say of these improper games, For I live at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James; And I've told in simple language what I know about the row That broke up our Society upon the Stanislow. LUKE (IN THE COLORADO PARK, 1873) Wot's that you're readin'?--a novel? A novel!--well, darn my skin! You a man grown and bearded and histin' such stuff ez that in-- Stuff about gals and their sweethearts! No wonder you're thin ez a knife. Look at me--clar two hundred--and never read one in my life! That's my opinion o' novels. And ez to their lyin' round here, They belong to the Jedge's daughter--the Jedge who came up last year On account of his lungs and the mountains and the balsam o' pine and fir; And his daughter--well, she read novels, and that's what's the matter with her. Yet she was sweet on the Jedge, and stuck by him day and night, Alone in the cabin up 'yer--till she grew like a ghost, all white. She wus only a slip of a thing, ez light and ez up and away Ez rifle smoke blown through the woods, but she wasn't my kind--no way! Speakin' o' gals, d'ye mind that house ez you rise the hill, A mile and a half from White's, and jist above Mattingly's mill? You do? Well now THAR's a gal! What! you saw her? Oh, come now, thar! quit! She was only bedevlin' you boys, for to me she don't cotton one bit. Now she's what I call a gal--ez pretty and plump ez a quail; Teeth ez white ez a hound's, and they'd go through a ten-penny nail; Eyes that kin snap like a cap. So she asked to know "whar I was hid?" She did! Oh, it's jist like her sass, for she's peart ez a Katydid. But what was I talking of?--Oh! the Jedge and his daughter--she read Novels the whole day long, and I reckon she read them abed; And sometimes she read them out loud to the Jedge on the porch where he sat, And 'twas how "Lord Augustus" said this, and how "Lady Blanche" she said that. But the sickest of all that I heerd was a yarn thet they read 'bout a chap, "Leather-stocking" by name, and a hunter chock full o' the greenest o' sap; And they asked me to hear, but I says, "Miss Mabel, not any for me; When I likes I kin sling my own lies, and thet chap and I shouldn't agree." Yet somehow or other that gal allus said that I brought her to mind Of folks about whom she had read, or suthin belike of thet kind, And thar warn't no end o' the names that she give me thet summer up here-- "Robin Hood," "Leather-stocking" "Rob Roy,"--Oh, I tell you, the critter was queer! And yet, ef she hadn't been spiled, she was harmless enough in her way; She could jabber in French to her dad, and they said that she knew how to play; And she worked me that shot-pouch up thar, which the man doesn't live ez kin use; And slippers--you see 'em down 'yer--ez would cradle an Injin's papoose. Yet along o' them novels, you see, she was wastin' and mopin' away, And then she got shy with her tongue, and at last she had nothin' to say; And whenever I happened around, her face it was hid by a book, And it warn't till the day she left that she give me ez much ez a look. And this was the way it was. It was night when I kem up here To say to 'em all "good-by," for I reckoned to go for deer At "sun up" the day they left. So I shook 'em all round by the hand, 'Cept Mabel, and she was sick, ez they give me to understand. But jist ez I passed the house next morning at dawn, some one, Like a little waver o' mist got up on the hill with the sun; Miss Mabel it was, alone--all wrapped in a mantle o' lace-- And she stood there straight in the road, with a touch o' the sun in her face. And she looked me right in the eye--I'd seen suthin' like it before When I hunted a wounded doe to the edge o' the Clear Lake Shore, And I had my knee on its neck, and I jist was raisin' my knife, When it give me a look like that, and--well, it got off with its life. "We are going to-day," she said, "and I thought I would say good-by To you in your own house, Luke--these woods and the bright blue sky! You've always been kind to us, Luke, and papa has found you still As good as the air he breathes, and wholesome as Laurel Tree Hill. "And we'll always think of you, Luke, as the thing we could not take away,-- The balsam that dwells in the woods, the rainbow that lives in the spray. And you'll sometimes think of ME, Luke, as you know you once used to say, A rifle smoke blown through the woods, a moment, but never to stay." And then we shook hands. She turned, but a-suddent she tottered and fell, And I caught her sharp by the waist, and held her a minit. Well, It was only a minit, you know, thet ez cold and ez white she lay Ez a snowflake here on my breast, and then--well, she melted away-- And was gone.... And thar are her books; but I says not any for me; Good enough may be for some, but them and I mightn't agree. They spiled a decent gal ez might hev made some chap a wife, And look at me!--clar two hundred--and never read one in my life! "THE BABES IN THE WOODS" (BIG PINE FLAT, 1871) "Something characteristic," eh? Humph! I reckon you mean by that Something that happened in our way, Here at the crossin' of Big Pine Flat. Times aren't now as they used to be, When gold was flush and the boys were frisky, And a man would pull out his battery For anything--maybe the price of whiskey. Nothing of that sort, eh? That's strange! Why, I thought you might be diverted Hearing how Jones of Red Rock Range Drawed his "hint to the unconverted," And saying, "Whar will you have it?" shot Cherokee Bob at the last debating! What was the question I forgot, But Jones didn't like Bob's way of stating. Nothing of that kind, eh? You mean Something milder? Let's see!--O Joe! Tell to the stranger that little scene Out of the "Babes in the Woods." You know, "Babes" was the name that we gave 'em, sir, Two lean lads in their teens, and greener Than even the belt of spruce and fir Where they built their nest, and each day grew leaner. No one knew where they came from. None Cared to ask if they had a mother. Runaway schoolboys, maybe. One Tall and dark as a spruce; the other Blue and gold in the eyes and hair, Soft and low in his speech, but rarely Talking with us; and we didn't care To get at their secret at all unfairly. For they were so quiet, so sad and shy, Content to trust each other solely, That somehow we'd always shut one eye, And never seem to observe them wholly As they passed to their work. 'Twas a worn-out claim, And it paid them grub. They could live without it, For the boys had a way of leaving game In their tent, and forgetting all about it. Yet no one asked for their secret. Dumb It lay in their big eyes' heavy hollows. It was understood that no one should come To their tent unawares, save the bees and swallows. So they lived alone. Until one warm night I was sitting here at the tent-door,--so, sir! When out of the sunset's rosy light Up rose the Sheriff of Mariposa. I knew at once there was something wrong, For his hand and his voice shook just a little, And there isn't much you can fetch along To make the sinews of Jack Hill brittle. "Go warn the Babes!" he whispered, hoarse; "Tell them I'm coming--to get and scurry; For I've got a story that's bad,--and worse, I've got a warrant: G-d d--n it, hurry!" Too late! they had seen him cross the hill; I ran to their tent and found them lying Dead in each other's arms, and still Clasping the drug they had taken flying. And there lay their secret cold and bare, Their life, their trial--the old, old story! For the sweet blue eyes and the golden hair Was a WOMAN'S shame and a WOMAN'S glory. "Who were they?" Ask no more, or ask The sun that visits their grave so lightly; Ask of the whispering reeds, or task The mourning crickets that chirrup nightly. All of their life but its love forgot, Everything tender and soft and mystic, These are our Babes in the Woods,--you've got, Well--human nature--that's characteristic. THE LATEST CHINESE OUTRAGE It was noon by the sun; we had finished our game, And was passin' remarks goin' back to our claim; Jones was countin' his chips, Smith relievin' his mind Of ideas that a "straight" should beat "three of a kind," When Johnson of Elko came gallopin' down, With a look on his face 'twixt a grin and a frown, And he calls, "Drop your shovels and face right about, For them Chinees from Murphy's are cleanin' us out-- With their ching-a-ring-chow And their chic-colorow They're bent upon making No slouch of a row." Then Jones--my own pardner--looks up with a sigh; "It's your wash-bill," sez he, and I answers, "You lie!" But afore he could draw or the others could arm, Up tumbles the Bates boys, who heard the alarm. And a yell from the hill-top and roar of a gong, Mixed up with remarks like "Hi! yi! Chang-a-wong," And bombs, shells, and crackers, that crashed through the trees, Revealed in their war-togs four hundred Chinees! Four hundred Chinee; We are eight, don't ye see! That made a square fifty To just one o' we. They were dressed in their best, but I grieve that that same Was largely made up of our own, to their shame; And my pardner's best shirt and his trousers were hung On a spear, and above him were tauntingly swung; While that beggar, Chey Lee, like a conjurer sat Pullin' out eggs and chickens from Johnson's best hat; And Bates's game rooster was part of their "loot," And all of Smith's pigs were skyugled to boot; But the climax was reached and I like to have died When my demijohn, empty, came down the hillside,-- Down the hillside-- What once held the pride Of Robertson County Pitched down the hillside! Then we axed for a parley. When out of the din To the front comes a-rockin' that heathen, Ah Sin! "You owe flowty dollee--me washee you camp, You catchee my washee--me catchee no stamp; One dollar hap dozen, me no catchee yet, Now that flowty dollee--no hab?--how can get? Me catchee you piggee--me sellee for cash, It catchee me licee--you catchee no 'hash;' Me belly good Sheliff--me lebbee when can, Me allee same halp pin as Melican man! But Melican man He washee him pan On BOTTOM side hillee And catchee--how can?" "Are we men?" says Joe Johnson, "and list to this jaw, Without process of warrant or color of law? Are we men or--a-chew!"--here be gasped in his speech, For a stink-pot had fallen just out of his reach. "Shall we stand here as idle, and let Asia pour Her barbaric hordes on this civilized shore? Has the White Man no country? Are we left in the lurch? And likewise what's gone of the Established Church? One man to four hundred is great odds, I own, But this 'yer's a White Man--I plays it alone!" And he sprang up the hillside--to stop him none dare-- Till a yell from the top told a "White Man was there!" A White Man was there! We prayed he might spare Those misguided heathens The few clothes they wear. They fled, and he followed, but no matter where; They fled to escape him,--the "White Man was there,"-- Till we missed first his voice on the pine-wooded slope, And we knew for the heathen henceforth was no hope; And the yells they grew fainter, when Petersen said, "It simply was human to bury his dead." And then, with slow tread, We crept up, in dread, But found nary mortal there, Living or dead. But there was his trail, and the way that they came, And yonder, no doubt, he was bagging his game. When Jones drops his pickaxe, and Thompson says "Shoo!" And both of 'em points to a cage of bamboo Hanging down from a tree, with a label that swung Conspicuous, with letters in some foreign tongue, Which, when freely translated, the same did appear Was the Chinese for saying, "A White Man is here!" And as we drew near, In anger and fear, Bound hand and foot, Johnson Looked down with a leer! In his mouth was an opium pipe--which was why He leered at us so with a drunken-like eye! They had shaved off his eyebrows, and tacked on a cue, They had painted his face of a coppery hue, And rigged him all up in a heathenish suit, Then softly departed, each man with his "loot." Yes, every galoot, And Ah Sin, to boot, Had left him there hanging Like ripening fruit. At a mass meeting held up at Murphy's next day There were seventeen speakers and each had his say; There were twelve resolutions that instantly passed, And each resolution was worse than the last; There were fourteen petitions, which, granting the same, Will determine what Governor Murphy's shall name; And the man from our district that goes up next year Goes up on one issue--that's patent and clear: "Can the work of a mean, Degraded, unclean Believer in Buddha Be held as a lien?" TRUTHFUL JAMES TO THE EDITOR (YREKA, 1873) Which it is not my style To produce needless pain By statements that rile Or that go 'gin the grain, But here's Captain Jack still a-livin', and Nye has no skelp on his brain! On that Caucasian head There is no crown of hair; It has gone, it has fled! And Echo sez "Where?" And I asks, "Is this Nation a White Man's, and is generally things on the square?" She was known in the camp As "Nye's other squaw," And folks of that stamp Hez no rights in the law, But is treacherous, sinful, and slimy, as Nye might hev well known before. But she said that she knew Where the Injins was hid, And the statement was true, For it seemed that she did, Since she led William where he was covered by seventeen Modocs, and-- slid! Then they reached for his hair; But Nye sez, "By the law Of nations, forbear! I surrenders--no more: And I looks to be treated,--you hear me?--as a pris'ner, a pris'ner of war!" But Captain Jack rose And he sez, "It's too thin! Such statements as those It's too late to begin. There's a MODOC INDICTMENT agin you, O Paleface, and you're goin' in! "You stole Schonchin's squaw In the year sixty-two; It was in sixty-four That Long Jack you went through, And you burned Nasty Jim's rancheria, and his wives and his papooses too. "This gun in my hand Was sold me by you 'Gainst the law of the land, And I grieves it is true!" And he buried his face in his blanket and wept as he hid it from view. "But you're tried and condemned, And skelping's your doom," And he paused and he hemmed-- But why this resume? He was skelped 'gainst the custom of nations, and cut off like a rose in its bloom. So I asks without guile, And I trusts not in vain, If this is the style That is going to obtain-- If here's Captain Jack still a-livin', and Nye with no skelp on his brain? AN IDYL OF THE ROAD (SIERRAS, 1876) DRAMATIS PERSONAE First Tourist Second Tourist Yuba Bill, Driver A Stranger FIRST TOURIST Look how the upland plunges into cover, Green where the pines fade sullenly away. Wonderful those olive depths! and wonderful, moreover-- SECOND TOURIST The red dust that rises in a suffocating way. FIRST TOURIST Small is the soul that cannot soar above it, Cannot but cling to its ever-kindred clay: Better be yon bird, that seems to breathe and love it-- SECOND TOURIST Doubtless a hawk or some other bird of prey. Were we, like him, as sure of a dinner That on our stomachs would comfortably stay; Or were the fried ham a shade or two just thinner, That must confront us at closing of the day: Then might you sing like Theocritus or Virgil, Then might we each make a metrical essay; But verse just now--I must protest and urge--ill Fits a digestion by travel led astray. CHORUS OF PASSENGERS Speed, Yuba Bill! oh, speed us to our dinner! Speed to the sunset that beckons far away. SECOND TOURIST William of Yuba, O Son of Nimshi, hearken! Check thy profanity, but not thy chariot's play. Tell us, O William, before the shadows darken, Where, and, oh! how we shall dine? O William, say! YUBA BILL It ain't my fault, nor the Kumpeney's, I reckon, Ye can't get ez square meal ez any on the Bay, Up at you place, whar the senset 'pears to beckon-- Ez thet sharp allows in his airy sort o' way. Thar woz a place wor yer hash ye might hev wrestled, Kept by a woman ez chipper ez a jay-- Warm in her breast all the morning sunshine nestled; Red on her cheeks all the evening's sunshine lay. SECOND TOURIST Praise is but breath, O chariot compeller! Yet of that hash we would bid you farther say. YUBA BILL Thar woz a snipe--like you, a fancy tourist-- Kem to that ranch ez if to make a stay, Ran off the gal, and ruined jist the purist Critter that lived-- STRANGER (quietly) You're a liar, driver! YUBA BILL (reaching for his revolver). Eh! Here take my lines, somebody-- CHORUS OF PASSENGERS Hush, boys! listen! Inside there's a lady! Remember! No affray! YUBA BILL Ef that man lives, the fault ain't mine or his'n. STRANGER Wait for the sunset that beckons far away, Then--as you will! But, meantime, friends, believe me, Nowhere on earth lives a purer woman; nay, If my perceptions do surely not deceive me, She is the lady we have inside to-day. As for the man--you see that blackened pine tree, Up which the green vine creeps heavenward away! He was that scarred trunk, and she the vine that sweetly Clothed him with life again, and lifted-- SECOND TOURIST Yes; but pray How know you this? STRANGER She's my wife. YUBA BILL The h-ll you say! THOMPSON OF ANGELS It is the story of Thompson--of Thompson, the hero of Angels. Frequently drunk was Thompson, but always polite to the stranger; Light and free was the touch of Thompson upon his revolver; Great the mortality incident on that lightness and freedom. Yet not happy or gay was Thompson, the hero of Angels; Often spoke to himself in accents of anguish and sorrow, "Why do I make the graves of the frivolous youth who in folly Thoughtlessly pass my revolver, forgetting its lightness and freedom? "Why in my daily walks does the surgeon drop his left eyelid, The undertaker smile, and the sculptor of gravestone marbles Lean on his chisel and gaze? I care not o'er much for attention; Simple am I in my ways, save but for this lightness and freedom." So spake that pensive man--this Thompson, the hero of Angels, Bitterly smiled to himself, as he strode through the chapparal musing. "Why, oh, why?" echoed the pines in the dark olive depth far resounding. "Why, indeed?" whispered the sage brush that bent 'neath his feet non-elastic. Pleasant indeed was that morn that dawned o'er the barroom at Angels, Where in their manhood's prime was gathered the pride of the hamlet. Six "took sugar in theirs," and nine to the barkeeper lightly Smiled as they said, "Well, Jim, you can give us our regular fusil." Suddenly as the gray hawk swoops down on the barnyard, alighting Where, pensively picking their corn, the favorite pullets are gathered, So in that festive bar-room dropped Thompson, the hero of Angels, Grasping his weapon dread with his pristine lightness and freedom. Never a word he spoke; divesting himself of his garments, Danced the war-dance of the playful yet truculent Modoc, Uttered a single whoop, and then, in the accents of challenge, Spake: "Oh, behold in me a Crested Jay Hawk of the mountain." Then rose a pallid man--a man sick with fever and ague; Small was he, and his step was tremulous, weak, and uncertain; Slowly a Derringer drew, and covered the person of Thompson; Said in his feeblest pipe, "I'm a Bald-headed Snipe of the Valley." As on its native plains the kangaroo, startled by hunters, Leaps with successive bounds, and hurries away to the thickets, So leaped the Crested Hawk, and quietly hopping behind him Ran, and occasionally shot, that Bald-headed Snipe of the Valley. Vain at the festive bar still lingered the people of Angels, Hearing afar in the woods the petulant pop of the pistol; Never again returned the Crested Jay Hawk of the mountains, Never again was seen the Bald-headed Snipe of the Valley. Yet in the hamlet of Angels, when truculent speeches are uttered, When bloodshed and life alone will atone for some trifling misstatement, Maidens and men in their prime recall the last hero of Angels, Think of and vainly regret the Bald-headed Snipe of the Valley! THE HAWK'S NEST (SIERRAS) We checked our pace, the red road sharply rounding; We heard the troubled flow Of the dark olive depths of pines resounding A thousand feet below. Above the tumult of the canyon lifted, The gray hawk breathless hung, Or on the hill a winged shadow drifted Where furze and thorn-bush clung; Or where half-way the mountain side was furrowed With many a seam and scar; Or some abandoned tunnel dimly burrowed,-- A mole-hill seen so far. We looked in silence down across the distant Unfathomable reach: A silence broken by the guide's consistent And realistic speech. "Walker of Murphy's blew a hole through Peters For telling him he lied; Then up and dusted out of South Hornitos Across the Long Divide. "We ran him out of Strong's, and up through Eden, And 'cross the ford below, And up this canyon (Peters' brother leadin'), And me and Clark and Joe. "He fou't us game: somehow I disremember Jest how the thing kem round; Some say 'twas wadding, some a scattered ember From fires on the ground. "But in one minute all the hill below him Was just one sheet of flame; Guardin' the crest, Sam Clark and I called to him, And,--well, the dog was game! "He made no sign: the fires of hell were round him, The pit of hell below. We sat and waited, but we never found him; And then we turned to go. "And then--you see that rock that's grown so bristly With chapparal and tan-- Suthin crep' out: it might hev been a grizzly It might hev been a man; "Suthin that howled, and gnashed its teeth, and shouted In smoke and dust and flame; Suthin that sprang into the depths about it, Grizzly or man,--but game! "That's all! Well, yes, it does look rather risky, And kinder makes one queer And dizzy looking down. A drop of whiskey Ain't a bad thing right here!" HER LETTER I'm sitting alone by the fire, Dressed just as I came from the dance, In a robe even YOU would admire,-- It cost a cool thousand in France; I'm be-diamonded out of all reason, My hair is done up in a cue: In short, sir, "the belle of the season" Is wasting an hour upon you. A dozen engagements I've broken; I left in the midst of a set; Likewise a proposal, half spoken, That waits--on the stairs--for me yet. They say he'll be rich,--when he grows up,-- And then he adores me indeed; And you, sir, are turning your nose up, Three thousand miles off as you read. "And how do I like my position?" "And what do I think of New York?" "And now, in my higher ambition, With whom do I waltz, flirt, or talk?" "And isn't it nice to have riches, And diamonds and silks, and all that?" "And aren't they a change to the ditches And tunnels of Poverty Flat?" Well, yes,--if you saw us out driving Each day in the Park, four-in-hand, If you saw poor dear mamma contriving To look supernaturally grand,-- If you saw papa's picture, as taken By Brady, and tinted at that, You'd never suspect he sold bacon And flour at Poverty Flat. And yet, just this moment, when sitting In the glare of the grand chandelier,-- In the bustle and glitter befitting The "finest soiree of the year,"-- In the mists of a gaze de Chambery, And the hum of the smallest of talk,-- Somehow, Joe, I thought of the "Ferry," And the dance that we had on "The Fork;" Of Harrison's barn, with its muster Of flags festooned over the wall; Of the candles that shed their soft lustre And tallow on head-dress and shawl; Of the steps that we took to one fiddle, Of the dress of my queer vis-a-vis; And how I once went down the middle With the man that shot Sandy McGee; Of the moon that was quietly sleeping On the hill, when the time came to go; Of the few baby peaks that were peeping From under their bedclothes of snow; Of that ride--that to me was the rarest; Of--the something you said at the gate. Ah! Joe, then I wasn't an heiress To "the best-paying lead in the State." Well, well, it's all past; yet it's funny To think, as I stood in the glare Of fashion and beauty and money, That I should be thinking, right there, Of some one who breasted high water, And swam the North Fork, and all that, Just to dance with old Folinsbee's daughter, The Lily of Poverty Flat. But goodness! what nonsense I'm writing! (Mamma says my taste still is low), Instead of my triumphs reciting, I'm spooning on Joseph,--heigh-ho! And I'm to be "finished" by travel,-- Whatever's the meaning of that. Oh, why did papa strike pay gravel In drifting on Poverty Flat? Good-night!--here's the end of my paper; Good-night!--if the longitude please,-- For maybe, while wasting my taper, YOUR sun's climbing over the trees. But know, if you haven't got riches, And are poor, dearest Joe, and all that, That my heart's somewhere there in the ditches, And you've struck it,--on Poverty Flat. HIS ANSWER TO "HER LETTER" (REPORTED BY TRUTHFUL JAMES) Being asked by an intimate party,-- Which the same I would term as a friend,-- Though his health it were vain to call hearty, Since the mind to deceit it might lend; For his arm it was broken quite recent, And there's something gone wrong with his lung,-- Which is why it is proper and decent I should write what he runs off his tongue. First, he says, Miss, he's read through your letter To the end,--and "the end came too soon;" That a "slight illness kept him your debtor," (Which for weeks he was wild as a loon); That "his spirits are buoyant as yours is;" That with you, Miss, he "challenges Fate," (Which the language that invalid uses At times it were vain to relate). And he says "that the mountains are fairer For once being held in your thought;" That each rock "holds a wealth that is rarer Than ever by gold-seeker sought." (Which are words he would put in these pages, By a party not given to guile; Though the claim not, at date, paying wages, Might produce in the sinful a smile.) He remembers the ball at the Ferry, And the ride, and the gate, and the vow, And the rose that you gave him,--that very Same rose he is "treasuring now." (Which his blanket he's kicked on his trunk, Miss, And insists on his legs being free And his language to me from his bunk, Miss, Is frequent and painful and free.) He hopes you are wearing no willows, But are happy and gay all the while; That he knows--(which this dodging of pillows Imparts but small ease to the style, And the same you will pardon)--he knows, Miss, That, though parted by many a mile, Yet, were HE lying under the snows, Miss, They'd melt into tears at your smile. And "you'll still think of him in your pleasures, In your brief twilight dreams of the past; In this green laurel spray that he treasures,-- It was plucked where your parting was last; In this specimen,--but a small trifle,-- It will do for a pin for your shawl." (Which, the truth not to wickedly stifle, Was his last week's "clean up,"--and HIS ALL.) He's asleep, which the same might seem strange, Miss, Were it not that I scorn to deny That I raised his last dose, for a change, Miss, In view that his fever was high; But he lies there quite peaceful and pensive. And now, my respects, Miss, to you; Which my language, although comprehensive, Might seem to be freedom, is true. For I have a small favor to ask you, As concerns a bull-pup, and the same,-- If the duty would not overtask you,-- You would please to procure for me, GAME; And send per express to the Flat, Miss,-- For they say York is famed for the breed, Which, though words of deceit may be that, Miss, I'll trust to your taste, Miss, indeed. P.S.--Which this same interfering Into other folks' way I despise; Yet if it so be I was hearing That it's just empty pockets as lies Betwixt you and Joseph, it follers That, having no family claims, Here's my pile, which it's six hundred dollars, As is YOURS, with respects, TRUTHFUL JAMES. "THE RETURN OF BELISARIUS" (MUD FLAT, 1860) So you're back from your travels, old fellow, And you left but a twelvemonth ago; You've hobnobbed with Louis Napoleon, Eugenie, and kissed the Pope's toe. By Jove, it is perfectly stunning, Astounding,--and all that, you know; Yes, things are about as you left them In Mud Flat a twelvemonth ago. The boys!--they're all right,--Oh! Dick Ashley, He's buried somewhere in the snow; He was lost on the Summit last winter, And Bob has a hard row to hoe. You know that he's got the consumption? You didn't! Well, come, that's a go; I certainly wrote you at Baden,-- Dear me! that was six months ago. I got all your outlandish letters, All stamped by some foreign P. O. I handed myself to Miss Mary That sketch of a famous chateau. Tom Saunders is living at 'Frisco,-- They say that he cuts quite a show. You didn't meet Euchre-deck Billy Anywhere on your road to Cairo? So you thought of the rusty old cabin, The pines, and the valley below, And heard the North Fork of the Yuba As you stood on the banks of the Po? 'Twas just like your romance, old fellow; But now there is standing a row Of stores on the site of the cabin That you lived in a twelvemonth ago. But it's jolly to see you, old fellow,-- To think it's a twelvemonth ago! And you have seen Louis Napoleon, And look like a Johnny Crapaud. Come in. You will surely see Mary,-- You know we are married. What, no? Oh, ay! I forgot there was something Between you a twelvemonth ago. FURTHER LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES (NYE'S FORD, STANISLAUS, 1870) Do I sleep? do I dream? Do I wonder and doubt? Are things what they seem? Or is visions about? Is our civilization a failure? Or is the Caucasian played out? Which expressions are strong; Yet would feebly imply Some account of a wrong-- Not to call it a lie-- As was worked off on William, my pardner, And the same being W. Nye. He came down to the Ford On the very same day Of that lottery drawed By those sharps at the Bay; And he says to me, "Truthful, how goes it?" I replied, "It is far, far from gay; "For the camp has gone wild On this lottery game, And has even beguiled 'Injin Dick' by the same." Then said Nye to me, "Injins is pizen: But what is his number, eh, James?" I replied, "7, 2, 9, 8, 4, is his hand;" When he started, and drew Out a list, which he scanned; Then he softly went for his revolver With language I cannot command. Then I said, "William Nye!" But he turned upon me, And the look in his eye Was quite painful to see; And he says, "You mistake; this poor Injin I protects from such sharps as YOU be!" I was shocked and withdrew; But I grieve to relate, When he next met my view Injin Dick was his mate; And the two around town was a-lying In a frightfully dissolute state. Which the war dance they had Round a tree at the Bend Was a sight that was sad; And it seemed that the end Would not justify the proceedings, As I quiet remarked to a friend. For that Injin he fled The next day to his band; And we found William spread Very loose on the strand, With a peaceful-like smile on his features, And a dollar greenback in his hand; Which the same, when rolled out, We observed, with surprise, Was what he, no doubt, Thought the number and prize-- Them figures in red in the corner, Which the number of notes specifies. Was it guile, or a dream? Is it Nye that I doubt? Are things what they seem? Or is visions about? Is our civilization a failure? Or is the Caucasian played out? AFTER THE ACCIDENT (MOUTH OF THE SHAFT) What I want is my husband, sir,-- And if you're a man, sir, You'll give me an answer,-- Where is my Joe? Penrhyn, sir, Joe,-- Caernarvonshire. Six months ago Since we came here-- Eh?--Ah, you know! Well, I am quiet And still, But I must stand here, And will! Please, I'll be strong, If you'll just let me wait Inside o' that gate Till the news comes along. "Negligence!"-- That was the cause!-- Butchery! Are there no laws,-- Laws to protect such as we? Well, then! I won't raise my voice. There, men! I won't make no noise, Only you just let me be. Four, only four--did he say-- Saved! and the other ones?--Eh? Why do they call? Why are they all Looking and coming this way? What's that?--a message? I'll take it. I know his wife, sir, I'll break it. "Foreman!" Ay, ay! "Out by and by,-- Just saved his life. Say to his wife Soon he'll be free." Will I?--God bless you! It's me! THE GHOST THAT JIM SAW Why, as to that, said the engineer, Ghosts ain't things we are apt to fear; Spirits don't fool with levers much, And throttle-valves don't take to such; And as for Jim, What happened to him Was one half fact, and t'other half whim! Running one night on the line, he saw A house--as plain as the moral law-- Just by the moonlit bank, and thence Came a drunken man with no more sense Than to drop on the rail Flat as a flail, As Jim drove by with the midnight mail. Down went the patents--steam reversed. Too late! for there came a "thud." Jim cursed As the fireman, there in the cab with him, Kinder stared in the face of Jim, And says, "What now?" Says Jim, "What now! I've just run over a man,--that's how!" The fireman stared at Jim. They ran Back, but they never found house nor man,-- Nary a shadow within a mile. Jim turned pale, but he tried to smile, Then on he tore Ten mile or more, In quicker time than he'd made afore. Would you believe it! the very next night Up rose that house in the moonlight white, Out comes the chap and drops as before, Down goes the brake and the rest encore; And so, in fact, Each night that act Occurred, till folks swore Jim was cracked. Humph! let me see; it's a year now, 'most, That I met Jim, East, and says, "How's your ghost?" "Gone," says Jim; "and more, it's plain That ghost don't trouble me again. I thought I shook That ghost when I took A place on an Eastern line,--but look! "What should I meet, the first trip out, But the very house we talked about, And the selfsame man! 'Well,' says I, 'I guess It's time to stop this 'yer foolishness.' So I crammed on steam, When there came a scream From my fireman, that jest broke my dream: "'You've killed somebody!' Says I, 'Not much! I've been thar often, and thar ain't no such, And now I'll prove it!' Back we ran, And--darn my skin!--but thar WAS a man On the rail, dead, Smashed in the head!-- Now I call that meanness!" That's all Jim said. "SEVENTY-NINE" (MR. INTERVIEWER INTERVIEWED) Know me next time when you see me, won't you, old smarty? Oh, I mean YOU, old figger-head,--just the same party! Take out your pensivil, d--n you; sharpen it, do! Any complaints to make? Lots of 'em--one of 'em's YOU. You! who are YOU, anyhow, goin' round in that sneakin' way? Never in jail before, was you, old blatherskite, say? Look at it; don't it look pooty? Oh, grin, and be d--d to you, do! But if I had you this side o' that gratin,' I'd just make it lively for you. How did I get in here? Well what 'ud you give to know? 'Twasn't by sneakin' round where I hadn't no call to go; 'Twasn't by hangin' round a-spyin' unfortnet men. Grin! but I'll stop your jaw if ever you do that agen. Why don't you say suthin, blast you? Speak your mind if you dare. Ain't I a bad lot, sonny? Say it, and call it square. Hain't got no tongue, hey, hev ye? Oh, guard! here's a little swell A cussin' and swearin' and yellin', and bribin' me not to tell. There! I thought that 'ud fetch ye! And you want to know my name? "Seventy-nine" they call me, but that is their little game; For I'm werry highly connected, as a gent, sir, can understand, And my family hold their heads up with the very furst in the land. For 'twas all, sir, a put-up job on a pore young man like me; And the jury was bribed a puppos, and at furst they couldn't agree; And I sed to the judge, sez I,--Oh, grin! it's all right, my son! But you're a werry lively young pup, and you ain't to be played upon! Wot's that you got?--tobacco? I'm cussed but I thought 'twas a tract. Thank ye! A chap t'other day--now, lookee, this is a fact-- Slings me a tract on the evils o' keepin' bad company, As if all the saints was howlin' to stay here along o' we. No, I hain't no complaints. Stop, yes; do you see that chap,-- Him standin' over there, a-hidin' his eyes in his cap? Well, that man's stumick is weak, and he can't stand the pris'n fare; For the coffee is just half beans, and the sugar it ain't nowhere. Perhaps it's his bringin' up; but he's sickenin' day by day, And he doesn't take no food, and I'm seein' him waste away. And it isn't the thing to see; for, whatever he's been and done, Starvation isn't the plan as he's to be saved upon. For he cannot rough it like me; and he hasn't the stamps, I guess, To buy him his extry grub outside o' the pris'n mess. And perhaps if a gent like you, with whom I've been sorter free, Would--thank you! But, say! look here! Oh, blast it! don't give it to ME! Don't you give it to me; now, don't ye, don't ye, DON'T! You think it's a put-up job; so I'll thank ye, sir, if you won't. But hand him the stamps yourself: why, he isn't even my pal; And, if it's a comfort to you, why, I don't intend that he shall. THE STAGE-DRIVER'S STORY It was the stage-driver's story, as he stood with his back to the wheelers, Quietly flecking his whip, and turning his quid of tobacco; While on the dusty road, and blent with the rays of the moonlight, We saw the long curl of his lash and the juice of tobacco descending. "Danger! Sir, I believe you,--indeed, I may say, on that subject, You your existence might put to the hazard and turn of a wager. I have seen danger? Oh, no! not me, sir, indeed, I assure you: 'Twas only the man with the dog that is sitting alone in yon wagon. "It was the Geiger Grade, a mile and a half from the summit: Black as your hat was the night, and never a star in the heavens. Thundering down the grade, the gravel and stones we sent flying Over the precipice side,--a thousand feet plumb to the bottom. "Half-way down the grade I felt, sir, a thrilling and creaking, Then a lurch to one side, as we hung on the bank of the canyon; Then, looking up the road, I saw, in the distance behind me, The off hind wheel of the coach, just loosed from its axle, and following. "One glance alone I gave, then gathered together my ribbons, Shouted, and flung them, outspread, on the straining necks of my cattle; Screamed at the top of my voice, and lashed the air in my frenzy, While down the Geiger Grade, on THREE wheels, the vehicle thundered. "Speed was our only chance, when again came the ominous rattle: Crack, and another wheel slipped away, and was lost in the darkness. TWO only now were left; yet such was our fearful momentum, Upright, erect, and sustained on TWO wheels, the vehicle thundered. "As some huge boulder, unloosed from its rocky shelf on the mountain, Drives before it the hare and the timorous squirrel, far leaping, So down the Geiger Grade rushed the Pioneer coach, and before it Leaped the wild horses, and shrieked in advance of the danger impending. "But to be brief in my tale. Again, ere we came to the level, Slipped from its axle a wheel; so that, to be plain in my statement, A matter of twelve hundred yards or more, as the distance may be, We traveled upon ONE wheel, until we drove up to the station. "Then, sir, we sank in a heap; but, picking myself from the ruins, I heard a noise up the grade; and looking, I saw in the distance The three wheels following still, like moons on the horizon whirling, Till, circling, they gracefully sank on the road at the side of the station. "This is my story, sir; a trifle, indeed, I assure you. Much more, perchance, might be said--but I hold him of all men most lightly Who swerves from the truth in his tale. No, thank you-- Well, since you ARE pressing, Perhaps I don't care if I do: you may give me the same, Jim,--no sugar." A QUESTION OF PRIVILEGE REPORTED BY TRUTHFUL JAMES It was Andrew Jackson Sutter who, despising Mr. Cutter for remarks he heard him utter in debate upon the floor, Swung him up into the skylight, in the peaceful, pensive twilight, and then keerlessly proceeded, makin' no account what WE did-- To wipe up with his person casual dust upon the floor. Now a square fight never frets me, nor unpleasantness upsets me, but the simple thing that gets me--now the job is done and gone, And we've come home free and merry from the peaceful cemetery, leavin' Cutter there with Sutter--that mebbee just a stutter On the part of Mr. Cutter caused the loss we deeply mourn. Some bashful hesitation, just like spellin' punctooation--might have worked an aggravation on to Sutter's mournful mind, For the witnesses all vary ez to wot was said and nary a galoot will toot his horn except the way he is inclined. But they all allow that Sutter had begun a kind of mutter, when uprose Mr. Cutter with a sickening kind of ease, And proceeded then to wade in to the subject then prevadin': "Is Profanity degradin'?" in words like unto these: "Onlike the previous speaker, Mr. Sutter of Yreka, he was but a humble seeker--and not like him--a cuss"-- It was here that Mr. Sutter softly reached for Mr. Cutter, when the latter with a stutter said: "ac-customed to discuss." Then Sutter he rose grimly, and sorter smilin' dimly bowed onto the Chairman primly--(just like Cutter ez could be!) Drawled "he guessed he must fall--back--as--Mr. Cutter owned the pack--as--he just had played the--Jack--as--" (here Cutter's gun went crack! as Mr. Sutter gasped and ended) "every man can see!" But William Henry Pryor--just in range of Sutter's fire--here evinced a wild desire to do somebody harm, And in the general scrimmage no one thought if Sutter's "image" was a misplaced punctooation--like the hole in Pryor's arm. For we all waltzed in together, never carin' to ask whether it was Sutter or was Cutter we woz tryin' to abate. But we couldn't help perceivin', when we took to inkstand heavin', that the process was relievin' to the sharpness of debate, So we've come home free and merry from the peaceful cemetery, and I make no commentary on these simple childish games; Things is various and human--and the man ain't born of woman who is free to intermeddle with his pal's intents and aims. THE THOUGHT-READER OF ANGELS REPORTED BY TRUTHFUL JAMES We hev tumbled ez dust Or ez worms of the yearth; Wot we looked for hez bust! We are objects of mirth! They have played us--old Pards of the river!--they hev played us for all we was worth! Was it euchre or draw Cut us off in our bloom? Was it faro, whose law Is uncertain ez doom? Or an innocent "Jack pot" that--opened--was to us ez the jaws of the tomb? It was nary! It kem With some sharps from the States. Ez folks sez, "All things kem To the fellers ez waits;" And we'd waited six months for that suthin'--had me and Bill Nye--in such straits! And it kem. It was small; It was dream-like and weak; It wore store clothes--that's all That we knew, so to speak; But it called itself "Billson, Thought-Reader"--which ain't half a name for its cheek! He could read wot you thought, And he knew wot you did; He could find things untaught, No matter whar hid; And he went to it, blindfold and smiling, being led by the hand like a kid! Then I glanced at Bill Nye, And I sez, without pride, "You'll excuse US. We've nigh On to nothin' to hide; But if some gent will lend us a twenty, we'll hide it whar folks shall decide." It was Billson's own self Who forked over the gold, With a smile. "Thar's the pelf," He remarked. "I make bold To advance it, and go twenty better that I'll find it without being told." Then I passed it to Nye, Who repassed it to me. And we bandaged each eye Of that Billson--ez we Softly dropped that coin in his coat pocket, ez the hull crowd around us could see. That was all. He'd one hand Locked in mine. Then he groped. We could not understand Why that minit Nye sloped, For we knew we'd the dead thing on Billson--even more than we dreamed of or hoped. For he stood thar in doubt With his hand to his head; Then he turned, and lit out Through the door where Nye fled, Draggin' me and the rest of us arter, while we larfed till we thought we was dead, Till he overtook Nye And went through him. Words fail For what follers! Kin I Paint our agonized wail Ez he drew from Nye's pocket that twenty wot we sworn was in his own coat-tail! And it WAS! But, when found, It proved bogus and brass! And the question goes round How the thing kem to pass? Or, if PASSED, woz it passed thar by William; and I listens, and echoes "Alas! "For the days when the skill Of the keerds was no blind, When no effort of will Could beat four of a kind, When the thing wot you held in your hand, Pard, was worth more than the thing in your mind." THE SPELLING BEE AT ANGELS (REPORTED BY TRUTHFUL JAMES) Waltz in, waltz in, ye little kids, and gather round my knee, And drop them books and first pot-hooks, and hear a yarn from me. I kin not sling a fairy tale of Jinnys* fierce and wild, For I hold it is unchristian to deceive a simple child; But as from school yer driftin' by, I thowt ye'd like to hear Of a "Spelling Bee" at Angels that we organized last year. It warn't made up of gentle kids, of pretty kids, like you, But gents ez hed their reg'lar growth, and some enough for two. There woz Lanky Jim of Sutter's Fork and Bilson of Lagrange, And "Pistol Bob," who wore that day a knife by way of change. You start, you little kids, you think these are not pretty names, But each had a man behind it, and--my name is Truthful James. There was Poker Dick from Whisky Flat, and Smith of Shooter's Bend, And Brown of Calaveras--which I want no better friend; Three-fingered Jack--yes, pretty dears, three fingers--YOU have five. Clapp cut off two--it's sing'lar, too, that Clapp ain't now alive. 'Twas very wrong indeed, my dears, and Clapp was much to blame; Likewise was Jack, in after-years, for shootin' of that same. The nights was kinder lengthenin' out, the rains had jest begun, When all the camp came up to Pete's to have their usual fun; But we all sot kinder sad-like around the bar-room stove Till Smith got up, permiskiss-like, and this remark he hove: "Thar's a new game down in Frisco, that ez far ez I can see Beats euchre, poker, and van-toon, they calls the 'Spellin' Bee.'" Then Brown of Calaveras simply hitched his chair and spake, "Poker is good enough for me," and Lanky Jim sez, "Shake!" And Bob allowed he warn't proud, but he "must say right thar That the man who tackled euchre hed his education squar." This brought up Lenny Fairchild, the schoolmaster, who said He knew the game, and he would give instructions on that head. "For instance, take some simple word," sez he, "like 'separate:' Now who can spell it?" Dog my skin, ef thar was one in eight. This set the boys all wild at once. The chairs was put in row, And at the head was Lanky Jim, and at the foot was Joe, And high upon the bar itself the schoolmaster was raised, And the bar-keep put his glasses down, and sat and silent gazed. The first word out was "parallel," and seven let it be, Till Joe waltzed in his "double l" betwixt the "a" and "e;" For since he drilled them Mexicans in San Jacinto's fight Thar warn't no prouder man got up than Pistol Joe that night-- Till "rhythm" came! He tried to smile, then said "they had him there," And Lanky Jim, with one long stride, got up and took his chair. O little kids, my pretty kids, 'twas touchin' to survey These bearded men, with weppings on, like schoolboys at their play. They'd laugh with glee, and shout to see each other lead the van, And Bob sat up as monitor with a cue for a rattan, Till the Chair gave out "incinerate," and Brown said he'd be durned If any such blamed word as that in school was ever learned. When "phthisis" came they all sprang up, and vowed the man who rung Another blamed Greek word on them be taken out and hung. As they sat down again I saw in Bilson's eye a flash, And Brown of Calaveras was a-twistin' his mustache, And when at last Brown slipped on "gneiss," and Bilson took his chair, He dropped some casual words about some folks who dyed their hair. And then the Chair grew very white, and the Chair said he'd adjourn, But Poker Dick remarked that HE would wait and get his turn; Then with a tremblin' voice and hand, and with a wanderin' eye, The Chair next offered "eider-duck," and Dick began with "I", And Bilson smiled--then Bilson shrieked! Just how the fight begun I never knowed, for Bilson dropped, and Dick, he moved up one. Then certain gents arose and said "they'd business down in camp," And "ez the road was rather dark, and ez the night was damp, They'd"--here got up Three-fingered Jack and locked the door and yelled: "No, not one mother's son goes out till that thar word is spelled!" But while the words were on his lips, he groaned and sank in pain, And sank with Webster on his chest and Worcester on his brain. Below the bar dodged Poker Dick, and tried to look ez he Was huntin' up authorities thet no one else could see; And Brown got down behind the stove, allowin' he "was cold," Till it upsot and down his legs the cinders freely rolled, And several gents called "Order!" till in his simple way Poor Smith began with "O-r"--"Or"--and he was dragged away. O little kids, my pretty kids, down on your knees and pray! You've got your eddication in a peaceful sort of way; And bear in mind thar may be sharps ez slings their spellin' square, But likewise slings their bowie-knives without a thought or care. You wants to know the rest, my dears? Thet's all! In me you see The only gent that lived to tell about the Spellin' Bee! ------ He ceased and passed, that truthful man; the children went their way With downcast heads and downcast hearts--but not to sport or play. For when at eve the lamps were lit, and supperless to bed Each child was sent, with tasks undone and lessons all unsaid, No man might know the awful woe that thrilled their youthful frames, As they dreamed of Angels Spelling Bee and thought of Truthful James. * Qy. Genii. ARTEMIS IN SIERRA DRAMATIS PERSONAE Poet. Philosopher. Jones of Mariposa. POET Halt! Here we are. Now wheel your mare a trifle Just where you stand; then doff your hat and swear Never yet was scene you might cover with your rifle Half as complete or as marvelously fair. PHILOSOPHER Dropped from Olympus or lifted out of Tempe, Swung like a censer betwixt the earth and sky! He who in Greece sang of flocks and flax and hemp,--he Here might recall them--six thousand feet on high! POET Well you may say so. The clamor of the river, Hum of base toil, and man's ignoble strife, Halt far below, where the stifling sunbeams quiver, But never climb to this purer, higher life! Not to this glade, where Jones of Mariposa, Simple and meek as his flocks we're looking at, Tends his soft charge; nor where his daughter Rosa-- (A shot.) Hallo! What's that? PHILOSOPHER A--something thro' my hat-- Bullet, I think. You were speaking of his daughter? POET Yes; but--your hat you were moving through the leaves; Likely he thought it some eagle bent on slaughter. Lightly he shoots-- (A second shot.) PHILOSOPHER As one readily perceives. Still, he improves! This time YOUR hat has got it, Quite near the band! Eh? Oh, just as you please-- Stop, or go on. POET Perhaps we'd better trot it Down through the hollow, and up among the trees. BOTH Trot, trot, trot, where the bullets cannot follow; Trot down and up again among the laurel trees. PHILOSOPHER Thanks, that is better; now of this shot-dispensing Jones and his girl--you were saying-- POET Well, you see-- I--hang it all!--Oh! what's the use of fencing! Sir, I confess it!--these shots were meant for ME. PHILOSOPHER Are you mad! POET God knows, I shouldn't wonder! I love this coy nymph, who, coldly--as yon peak Shines on the river it feeds, yet keeps asunder-- Long have I worshiped, but never dared to speak. Till she, no doubt, her love no longer hiding, Waked by some chance word her father's jealousy; Slips her disdain--as an avalanche down gliding Sweeps flocks and kin away--to clear a path for ME. Hence his attack. PHILOSOPHER I see. What I admire Chiefly, I think, in your idyl, so to speak, Is the cool modesty that checks your youthful fire,-- Absence of self-love and abstinence of cheek! Still, I might mention, I've met the gentle Rosa,-- Danced with her thrice, to her father's jealous dread; And, it is possible, she's happened to disclose a-- Ahem! You can fancy why he shoots at ME instead. POET YOU? PHILOSOPHER Me. But kindly take your hand from your revolver, I am not choleric--but accidents may chance. And here's the father, who alone can be the solver Of this twin riddle of the hat and the romance. Enter JONES OF MARIPOSA. POET Speak, shepherd--mine! PHILOSOPHER Hail! Time-and-cartridge waster, Aimless exploder of theories and skill! Whom do you shoot? JONES OF MARIPOSA Well, shootin' ain't my taste, or EF I shoot anything--I only shoot to kill. That ain't what's up. I only kem to tell ye-- Sportin' or courtin'--trot homeward for your life! Gals will be gals, and p'r'aps it's just ez well ye Larned there was one had no wish to be--a wife. POET What? PHILOSOPHER Is this true? JONES OF MARIPOSA I reckon it looks like it. She saw ye comin'. My gun was standin' by; She made a grab, and 'fore I up could strike it, Blazed at ye both! The critter is SO shy! POET Who? JONES OF MARIPOSA My darter! PHILOSOPHER Rosa? JONES OF MARIPOSA Same! Good-by! JACK OF THE TULES (SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA) Shrewdly you question, Senor, and I fancy You are no novice. Confess that to little Of my poor gossip of Mission and Pueblo You are a stranger! Am I not right? Ah! believe me, that ever Since we joined company at the posada I've watched you closely, and--pardon an old priest-- I've caught you smiling! Smiling to hear an old fellow like me talk Gossip of pillage and robbers, and even Air his opinion of law and alcaldes Like any other! Now!--by that twist of the wrist on the bridle, By that straight line from the heel to the shoulder, By that curt speech,--nay! nay! no offense, son,-- You are a soldier? No? Then a man of affairs? San Sebastian! 'Twould serve me right if I prattled thus wildly To--say a sheriff? No?--just caballero? Well, more's the pity. Ah! what we want here's a man of your presence; Sano, Secreto,--yes, all the four S's, Joined with a boldness and dash, when the time comes, And--may I say it?-- One not TOO hard on the poor country people, Peons and silly vaqueros, who, dazzled By reckless skill, and, perchance, reckless largesse, Wink at some queer things. No? You would crush THEM as well as the robbers,-- Root them out, scatter them? Ah you are bitter-- And yet--quien sabe, perhaps that's the one way To catch their leader. As to myself, now, I'd share your displeasure; For I admit in this Jack of the Tules Certain good points. He still comes to confession-- You'd "like to catch him"? Ah, if you did at such times, you might lead him Home by a thread. Good! Again you are smiling: You have no faith in such shrift, and but little In priest or penitent. Bueno! We take no offense, sir; whatever It please you to say, it becomes us, for Church sake, To bear in peace. Yet, if you were kinder-- And less suspicious-- I might still prove to you, Jack of the Tules Shames not our teaching; nay, even might show you, Hard by this spot, his old comrade, who, wounded, Lives on his bounty. If--ah, you listen!--I see I can trust you; Then, on your word as a gentleman--follow. Under that sycamore stands the old cabin; There sits his comrade. Eh!--are you mad? You would try to ARREST him? You, with a warrant? Oh, well, take the rest of them: Pedro, Bill, Murray, Pat Doolan. Hey!--all of you, Tumble out, d--n it! There!--that'll do, boys! Stand back! Ease his elbows; Take the gag from his mouth. Good! Now scatter like devils After his posse--four straggling, four drunken-- At the posada. You--help me off with these togs, and then vamos! Now, ole Jeff Dobbs!--Sheriff, Scout, and Detective! You're so derned 'cute! Kinder sick, ain't ye, bluffing Jack of the Tules! IV. MISCELLANEOUS A GREYPORT LEGEND (1797) They ran through the streets of the seaport town, They peered from the decks of the ships that lay; The cold sea-fog that came whitening down Was never as cold or white as they. "Ho, Starbuck and Pinckney and Tenterden! Run for your shallops, gather your men, Scatter your boats on the lower bay." Good cause for fear! In the thick mid-day The hulk that lay by the rotting pier, Filled with the children in happy play, Parted its moorings and drifted clear, Drifted clear beyond reach or call,-- Thirteen children they were in all,-- All adrift in the lower bay! Said a hard-faced skipper, "God help us all! She will not float till the turning tide!" Said his wife, "My darling will hear MY call, Whether in sea or heaven she bide;" And she lifted a quavering voice and high, Wild and strange as a sea-bird's cry, Till they shuddered and wondered at her side. The fog drove down on each laboring crew, Veiled each from each and the sky and shore: There was not a sound but the breath they drew, And the lap of water and creak of oar; And they felt the breath of the downs, fresh blown O'er leagues of clover and cold gray stone, But not from the lips that had gone before. They came no more. But they tell the tale That, when fogs are thick on the harbor reef, The mackerel fishers shorten sail-- For the signal they know will bring relief; For the voices of children, still at play In a phantom hulk that drifts alway Through channels whose waters never fail. It is but a foolish shipman's tale, A theme for a poet's idle page; But still, when the mists of Doubt prevail, And we lie becalmed by the shores of Age, We hear from the misty troubled shore The voice of the children gone before, Drawing the soul to its anchorage. A NEWPORT ROMANCE They say that she died of a broken heart (I tell the tale as 'twas told to me); But her spirit lives, and her soul is part Of this sad old house by the sea. Her lover was fickle and fine and French: It was nearly a hundred years ago When he sailed away from her arms--poor wench!-- With the Admiral Rochambeau. I marvel much what periwigged phrase Won the heart of this sentimental Quaker, At what gold-laced speech of those modish days She listened--the mischief take her! But she kept the posies of mignonette That he gave; and ever as their bloom failed And faded (though with her tears still wet) Her youth with their own exhaled. Till one night, when the sea-fog wrapped a shroud Round spar and spire and tarn and tree, Her soul went up on that lifted cloud From this sad old house by the sea. And ever since then, when the clock strikes two, She walks unbidden from room to room, And the air is filled that she passes through With a subtle, sad perfume. The delicate odor of mignonette, The ghost of a dead-and-gone bouquet, Is all that tells of her story; yet Could she think of a sweeter way? I sit in the sad old house to-night,-- Myself a ghost from a farther sea; And I trust that this Quaker woman might, In courtesy, visit me. For the laugh is fled from porch and lawn, And the bugle died from the fort on the hill, And the twitter of girls on the stairs is gone, And the grand piano is still. Somewhere in the darkness a clock strikes two: And there is no sound in the sad old house, But the long veranda dripping with dew, And in the wainscot a mouse. The light of my study-lamp streams out From the library door, but has gone astray In the depths of the darkened hall. Small doubt But the Quakeress knows the way. Was it the trick of a sense o'erwrought With outward watching and inward fret? But I swear that the air just now was fraught With the odor of mignonette! I open the window, and seem almost-- So still lies the ocean--to hear the beat Of its Great Gulf artery off the coast, And to bask in its tropic heat. In my neighbor's windows the gas-lights flare, As the dancers swing in a waltz of Strauss; And I wonder now could I fit that air To the song of this sad old house. And no odor of mignonette there is, But the breath of morn on the dewy lawn; And mayhap from causes as slight as this The quaint old legend is born. But the soul of that subtle, sad perfume, As the spiced embalmings, they say, outlast The mummy laid in his rocky tomb, Awakens my buried past. And I think of the passion that shook my youth, Of its aimless loves and its idle pains, And am thankful now for the certain truth That only the sweet remains. And I hear no rustle of stiff brocade, And I see no face at my library door; For now that the ghosts of my heart are laid, She is viewless for evermore. But whether she came as a faint perfume, Or whether a spirit in stole of white, I feel, as I pass from the darkened room, She has been with my soul to-night! SAN FRANCISCO (FROM THE SEA) Serene, indifferent of Fate, Thou sittest at the Western Gate; Upon thy height, so lately won, Still slant the banners of the sun; Thou seest the white seas strike their tents, O Warder of two continents! And, scornful of the peace that flies Thy angry winds and sullen skies, Thou drawest all things, small, or great, To thee, beside the Western Gate. O lion's whelp, that hidest fast In jungle growth of spire and mast! I know thy cunning and thy greed, Thy hard high lust and willful deed, And all thy glory loves to tell Of specious gifts material. Drop down, O Fleecy Fog, and hide Her skeptic sneer and all her pride! Wrap her, O Fog, in gown and hood Of her Franciscan Brotherhood. Hide me her faults, her sin and blame; With thy gray mantle cloak her shame! So shall she, cowled, sit and pray Till morning bears her sins away. Then rise, O Fleecy Fog, and raise The glory of her coming days; Be as the cloud that flecks the seas Above her smoky argosies; When forms familiar shall give place To stranger speech and newer face; When all her throes and anxious fears Lie hushed in the repose of years; When Art shall raise and Culture lift The sensual joys and meaner thrift, And all fulfilled the vision we Who watch and wait shall never see; Who, in the morning of her race, Toiled fair or meanly in our place, But, yielding to the common lot, Lie unrecorded and forgot. THE MOUNTAIN HEART'S-EASE By scattered rocks and turbid waters shifting, By furrowed glade and dell, To feverish men thy calm, sweet face uplifting, Thou stayest them to tell The delicate thought that cannot find expression, For ruder speech too fair, That, like thy petals, trembles in possession, And scatters on the air. The miner pauses in his rugged labor, And, leaning on his spade, Laughingly calls unto his comrade-neighbor To see thy charms displayed. But in his eyes a mist unwonted rises, And for a moment clear Some sweet home face his foolish thought surprises, And passes in a tear,-- Some boyish vision of his Eastern village, Of uneventful toil, Where golden harvests followed quiet tillage Above a peaceful soil. One moment only; for the pick, uplifting, Through root and fibre cleaves, And on the muddy current slowly drifting Are swept by bruised leaves. And yet, O poet, in thy homely fashion, Thy work thou dost fulfill, For on the turbid current of his passion Thy face is shining still! GRIZZLY. Coward,--of heroic size, In whose lazy muscles lies Strength we fear and yet despise; Savage,--whose relentless tusks Are content with acorn husks; Robber,--whose exploits ne'er soared O'er the bee's or squirrel's hoard; Whiskered chin and feeble nose, Claws of steel on baby toes,-- Here, in solitude and shade, Shambling, shuffling plantigrade, Be thy courses undismayed! Here, where Nature makes thy bed, Let thy rude, half-human tread Point to hidden Indian springs, Lost in ferns and fragrant grasses, Hovered o'er by timid wings, Where the wood-duck lightly passes, Where the wild bee holds her sweets,-- Epicurean retreats, Fit for thee, and better than Fearful spoils of dangerous man. In thy fat-jowled deviltry Friar Tuck shall live in thee; Thou mayst levy tithe and dole; Thou shalt spread the woodland cheer, From the pilgrim taking toll; Match thy cunning with his fear; Eat, and drink, and have thy fill; Yet remain an outlaw still! MADRONO Captain of the Western wood, Thou that apest Robin Hood! Green above thy scarlet hose, How thy velvet mantle shows! Never tree like thee arrayed, O thou gallant of the glade! When the fervid August sun Scorches all it looks upon, And the balsam of the pine Drips from stem to needle fine, Round thy compact shade arranged, Not a leaf of thee is changed! When the yellow autumn sun Saddens all it looks upon, Spreads its sackcloth on the hills, Strews its ashes in the rills, Thou thy scarlet hose dost doff, And in limbs of purest buff Challengest the sombre glade For a sylvan masquerade. Where, oh, where, shall he begin Who would paint thee, Harlequin? With thy waxen burnished leaf, With thy branches' red relief, With thy polytinted fruit,-- In thy spring or autumn suit,-- Where begin, and oh, where end, Thou whose charms all art transcend? COYOTE Blown out of the prairie in twilight and dew, Half bold and half timid, yet lazy all through; Loath ever to leave, and yet fearful to stay, He limps in the clearing, an outcast in gray. A shade on the stubble, a ghost by the wall, Now leaping, now limping, now risking a fall, Lop-eared and large-jointed, but ever alway A thoroughly vagabond outcast in gray. Here, Carlo, old fellow,--he's one of your kind,-- Go, seek him, and bring him in out of the wind. What! snarling, my Carlo! So even dogs may Deny their own kin in the outcast in gray. Well, take what you will,--though it be on the sly, Marauding or begging,--I shall not ask why, But will call it a dole, just to help on his way A four-footed friar in orders of gray! TO A SEA-BIRD (SANTA CRUZ, 1869) Sauntering hither on listless wings, Careless vagabond of the sea, Little thou heedest the surf that sings, The bar that thunders, the shale that rings,-- Give me to keep thy company. Little thou hast, old friend, that's new; Storms and wrecks are old things to thee; Sick am I of these changes, too; Little to care for, little to rue,-- I on the shore, and thou on the sea. All of thy wanderings, far and near, Bring thee at last to shore and me; All of my journeyings end them here: This our tether must be our cheer,-- I on the shore, and thou on the sea. Lazily rocking on ocean's breast, Something in common, old friend, have we: Thou on the shingle seek'st thy nest, I to the waters look for rest,-- I on the shore, and thou on the sea. WHAT THE CHIMNEY SANG Over the chimney the night-wind sang And chanted a melody no one knew; And the Woman stopped, as her babe she tossed, And thought of the one she had long since lost, And said, as her teardrops back she forced, "I hate the wind in the chimney." Over the chimney the night-wind sang And chanted a melody no one knew; And the Children said, as they closer drew, "'Tis some witch that is cleaving the black night through, 'Tis a fairy trumpet that just then blew, And we fear the wind in the chimney." Over the chimney the night-wind sang And chanted a melody no one knew; And the Man, as he sat on his hearth below, Said to himself, "It will surely snow, And fuel is dear and wages low, And I'll stop the leak in the chimney." Over the chimney the night-wind sang And chanted a melody no one knew; But the Poet listened and smiled, for he Was Man and Woman and Child, all three, And said, "It is God's own harmony, This wind we hear in the chimney." DICKENS IN CAMP Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting, The river sang below; The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting Their minarets of snow. The roaring camp-fire, with rude humor, painted The ruddy tints of health On haggard face and form that drooped and fainted In the fierce race for wealth; Till one arose, and from his pack's scant treasure A hoarded volume drew, And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure To hear the tale anew. And then, while round them shadows gathered faster, And as the firelight fell, He read aloud the book wherein the Master Had writ of "Little Nell." Perhaps 'twas boyish fancy,--for the reader Was youngest of them all,-- But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar A silence seemed to fall; The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows, Listened in every spray, While the whole camp with "Nell" on English meadows Wandered and lost their way. And so in mountain solitudes--o'ertaken As by some spell divine-- Their cares dropped from them like the needles shaken From out the gusty pine. Lost is that camp and wasted all its fire; And he who wrought that spell? Ah! towering pine and stately Kentish spire, Ye have one tale to tell! Lost is that camp, but let its fragrant story Blend with the breath that thrills With hop-vine's incense all the pensive glory That fills the Kentish hills. And on that grave where English oak and holly And laurel wreaths entwine, Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly, This spray of Western pine! July, 1870. "TWENTY YEARS" Beg your pardon, old fellow! I think I was dreaming just now when you spoke. The fact is, the musical clink Of the ice on your wine-goblet's brink A chord of my memory woke. And I stood in the pasture-field where Twenty summers ago I had stood; And I heard in that sound, I declare, The clinking of bells in the air, Of the cows coming home from the wood. Then the apple-bloom shook on the hill; And the mullein-stalks tilted each lance; And the sun behind Rapalye's mill Was my uttermost West, and could thrill Like some fanciful land of romance. Then my friend was a hero, and then My girl was an angel. In fine, I drank buttermilk; for at ten Faith asks less to aid her than when At thirty we doubt over wine. Ah, well, it DOES seem that I must Have been dreaming just now when you spoke, Or lost, very like, in the dust Of the years that slow fashioned the crust On that bottle whose seal you last broke. Twenty years was its age, did you say? Twenty years? Ah, my friend, it is true! All the dreams that have flown since that day, All the hopes in that time passed away, Old friend, I've been drinking with you! FATE "The sky is clouded, the rocks are bare, The spray of the tempest is white in air; The winds are out with the waves at play, And I shall not tempt the sea to-day. "The trail is narrow, the wood is dim, The panther clings to the arching limb; And the lion's whelps are abroad at play, And I shall not join in the chase to-day." But the ship sailed safely over the sea, And the hunters came from the chase in glee; And the town that was builded upon a rock Was swallowed up in the earthquake shock. GRANDMOTHER TENTERDEN (MASSACHUSETTS SHORE, 1800) I mind it was but yesterday: The sun was dim, the air was chill; Below the town, below the hill, The sails of my son's ship did fill,-- My Jacob, who was cast away. He said, "God keep you, mother dear," But did not turn to kiss his wife; They had some foolish, idle strife; Her tongue was like a two-edged knife, And he was proud as any peer. Howbeit that night I took no note Of sea nor sky, for all was drear; I marked not that the hills looked near, Nor that the moon, though curved and clear, Through curd-like scud did drive and float. For with my darling went the joy Of autumn woods and meadows brown; I came to hate the little town; It seemed as if the sun went down With him, my only darling boy. It was the middle of the night: The wind, it shifted west-by-south,-- It piled high up the harbor mouth; The marshes, black with summer drouth, Were all abroad with sea-foam white. It was the middle of the night: The sea upon the garden leapt, And my son's wife in quiet slept, And I, his mother, waked and wept, When lo! there came a sudden light. And there he stood! His seaman's dress All wet and dripping seemed to be; The pale blue fires of the sea Dripped from his garments constantly,-- I could not speak through cowardness. "I come through night and storm," he said. "Through storm and night and death," said he, "To kiss my wife, if it so be That strife still holds 'twixt her and me, For all beyond is peace," he said. "The sea is His, and He who sent The wind and wave can soothe their strife And brief and foolish is our life." He stooped and kissed his sleeping wife, Then sighed, and like a dream he went. Now, when my darling kissed not me, But her--his wife--who did not wake, My heart within me seemed to break; I swore a vow, nor thenceforth spake Of what my clearer eyes did see. And when the slow weeks brought him not, Somehow we spake of aught beside: For she--her hope upheld her pride; And I--in me all hope had died, And my son passed as if forgot. It was about the next springtide: She pined and faded where she stood, Yet spake no word of ill or good; She had the hard, cold Edwards' blood In all her veins--and so she died. One time I thought, before she passed, To give her peace; but ere I spake Methought, "HE will be first to break The news in heaven," and for his sake I held mine back until the last. And here I sit, nor care to roam; I only wait to hear his call. I doubt not that this day next fall Shall see me safe in port, where all And every ship at last comes home. And you have sailed the Spanish Main, And knew my Jacob?... Eh! Mercy! Ah! God of wisdom! hath the sea Yielded its dead to humble me? My boy!... My Jacob!... Turn again! GUILD'S SIGNAL [William Guild was engineer of the train which on the 19th of April, 1813, plunged into Meadow Brook, on the line of the Stonington and Providence Railroad. It was his custom, as often as he passed his home, to whistle an "All's well" to his wife. He was found, after the disaster, dead, with his hand on the throttle-valve of his engine.] Two low whistles, quaint and clear: That was the signal the engineer-- That was the signal that Guild, 'tis said-- Gave to his wife at Providence, As through the sleeping town, and thence, Out in the night, On to the light, Down past the farms, lying white, he sped! As a husband's greeting, scant, no doubt, Yet to the woman looking out, Watching and waiting, no serenade, Love-song, or midnight roundelay Said what that whistle seemed to say: "To my trust true, So, love, to you! Working or waiting, good-night!" it said. Brisk young bagmen, tourists fine, Old commuters along the line, Brakemen and porters glanced ahead, Smiled as the signal, sharp, intense, Pierced through the shadows of Providence: "Nothing amiss-- Nothing!--it is Only Guild calling his wife," they said. Summer and winter the old refrain Rang o'er the billows of ripening grain, Pierced through the budding boughs o'erhead, Flew down the track when the red leaves burned Like living coals from the engine spurned; Sang as it flew, "To our trust true, First of all, duty. Good-night!" it said. And then, one night, it was heard no more From Stonington over Rhode Island shore, And the folk in Providence smiled and said As they turned in their beds, "The engineer Has once forgotten his midnight cheer." ONE only knew, To his trust true, Guild lay under his engine, dead. ASPIRING MISS DE LAINE (A CHEMICAL NARRATIVE) Certain facts which serve to explain The physical charms of Miss Addie De Laine, Who, as the common reports obtain, Surpassed in complexion the lily and rose; With a very sweet mouth and a retrousse nose; A figure like Hebe's, or that which revolves In a milliner's window, and partially solves That question which mentor and moralist pains, If grace may exist minus feeling or brains. Of course the young lady had beaux by the score, All that she wanted,--what girl could ask more? Lovers that sighed and lovers that swore, Lovers that danced and lovers that played, Men of profession, of leisure, and trade; But one, who was destined to take the high part Of holding that mythical treasure, her heart,-- This lover, the wonder and envy of town, Was a practicing chemist, a fellow called Brown. I might here remark that 'twas doubted by many, In regard to the heart, if Miss Addie had any; But no one could look in that eloquent face, With its exquisite outline and features of grace, And mark, through the transparent skin, how the tide Ebbed and flowed at the impulse of passion or pride,-- None could look, who believed in the blood's circulation As argued by Harvey, but saw confirmation That here, at least, Nature had triumphed o'er art, And as far as complexion went she had a heart. But this par parenthesis. Brown was the man Preferred of all others to carry her fan, Hook her glove, drape her shawl, and do all that a belle May demand of the lover she wants to treat well. Folks wondered and stared that a fellow called Brown-- Abstracted and solemn, in manner a clown, Ill dressed, with a lingering smell of the shop-- Should appear as her escort at party or hop. Some swore he had cooked up some villainous charm, Or love philter, not in the regular Pharm- Acopoeia, and thus, from pure malice prepense, Had bewitched and bamboozled the young lady's sense; Others thought, with more reason, the secret to lie In a magical wash or indelible dye; While Society, with its censorious eye And judgment impartial, stood ready to damn What wasn't improper as being a sham. For a fortnight the townfolk had all been agog With a party, the finest the season had seen, To be given in honor of Miss Pollywog, Who was just coming out as a belle of sixteen. The guests were invited; but one night before A carriage drew up at the modest back door Of Brown's lab'ratory, and, full in the glare Of a big purple bottle, some closely veiled fair Alighted and entered: to make matters plain, Spite of veils and disguises, 'twas Addie De Laine. As a bower for true love, 'twas hardly the one That a lady would choose to be wooed in or won: No odor of rose or sweet jessamine's sigh Breathed a fragrance to hallow their pledge of troth by, Nor the balm that exhales from the odorous thyme; But the gaseous effusions of chloride of lime, And salts, which your chemist delights to explain As the base of the smell of the rose and the drain. Think of this, O ye lovers of sweetness! and know What you smell when you snuff up Lubin or Pinaud. I pass by the greetings, the transports and bliss, Which of course duly followed a meeting like this, And come down to business,--for such the intent Of the lady who now o'er the crucible leant, In the glow of a furnace of carbon and lime, Like a fairy called up in the new pantomime,-- And give but her words, as she coyly looked down In reply to the questioning glances of Brown: "I am taking the drops, and am using the paste, And the little white powders that had a sweet taste, Which you told me would brighten the glance of my eye, And the depilatory, and also the dye, And I'm charmed with the trial; and now, my dear Brown, I have one other favor,--now, ducky, don't frown,-- Only one, for a chemist and genius like you But a trifle, and one you can easily do. Now listen: to-morrow, you know, is the night Of the birthday soiree of that Pollywog fright; And I'm to be there, and the dress I shall wear Is TOO lovely; but"-- "But what then, ma chere?" Said Brown, as the lady came to a full stop, And glanced round the shelves of the little back shop. "Well, I want--I want something to fill out the skirt To the proper dimensions, without being girt In a stiff crinoline, or caged in a hoop That shows through one's skirt like the bars of a coop; Something light, that a lady may waltz in, or polk, With a freedom that none but you masculine folk Ever know. For, however poor woman aspires, She's always bound down to the earth by these wires. Are you listening? Nonsense! don't stare like a spoon, Idiotic; some light thing, and spacious, and soon-- Something like--well, in fact--something like a balloon!" Here she paused; and here Brown, overcome by surprise, Gave a doubting assent with still wondering eyes, And the lady departed. But just at the door Something happened,--'tis true, it had happened before In this sanctum of science,--a sibilant sound, Like some element just from its trammels unbound, Or two substances that their affinities found. The night of the anxiously looked for soiree Had come, with its fair ones in gorgeous array; With the rattle of wheels and the tinkle of bells, And the "How do ye do's" and the "Hope you are well's;" And the crush in the passage, and last lingering look You give as you hang your best hat on the hook; The rush of hot air as the door opens wide; And your entry,--that blending of self-possessed pride And humility shown in your perfect-bred stare At the folk, as if wondering how they got there; With other tricks worthy of Vanity Fair. Meanwhile, the safe topic, the beat of the room, Already was losing its freshness and bloom; Young people were yawning, and wondering when The dance would come off; and why didn't it then: When a vague expectation was thrilling the crowd, Lo! the door swung its hinges with utterance proud! And Pompey announced, with a trumpet-like strain, The entrance of Brown and Miss Addie De Laine. She entered; but oh! how imperfect the verb To express to the senses her movement superb! To say that she "sailed in" more clearly might tell Her grace in its buoyant and billowy swell. Her robe was a vague circumambient space, With shadowy boundaries made of point-lace; The rest was but guesswork, and well might defy The power of critical feminine eye To define or describe: 'twere as futile to try The gossamer web of the cirrus to trace, Floating far in the blue of a warm summer sky. 'Midst the humming of praises and glances of beaux That greet our fair maiden wherever she goes, Brown slipped like a shadow, grim, silent, and black, With a look of anxiety, close in her track. Once he whispered aside in her delicate ear A sentence of warning,--it might be of fear: "Don't stand in a draught, if you value your life." (Nothing more,--such advice might be given your wife Or your sweetheart, in times of bronchitis and cough, Without mystery, romance, or frivolous scoff.) But hark to the music; the dance has begun. The closely draped windows wide open are flung; The notes of the piccolo, joyous and light, Like bubbles burst forth on the warm summer night. Round about go the dancers; in circles they fly; Trip, trip, go their feet as their skirts eddy by; And swifter and lighter, but somewhat too plain, Whisks the fair circumvolving Miss Addie De Laine. Taglioni and Cerito well might have pined For the vigor and ease that her movements combined; E'en Rigelboche never flung higher her robe In the naughtiest city that's known on the globe. 'Twas amazing, 'twas scandalous; lost in surprise, Some opened their mouths, and a few shut their eyes. But hark! At the moment Miss Addie De Laine, Circling round at the outer edge of an ellipse Which brought her fair form to the window again, From the arms of her partner incautiously slips! And a shriek fills the air, and the music is still, And the crowd gather round where her partner forlorn Still frenziedly points from the wide window-sill Into space and the night; for Miss Addie was gone! Gone like the bubble that bursts in the sun; Gone like the grain when the reaper is done; Gone like the dew on the fresh morning grass; Gone without parting farewell; and alas! Gone with a flavor of hydrogen gas! When the weather is pleasant, you frequently meet A white-headed man slowly pacing the street; His trembling hand shading his lack-lustre eye, Half blind with continually scanning the sky. Rumor points him as some astronomical sage, Re-perusing by day the celestial page; But the reader, sagacious, will recognize Brown, Trying vainly to conjure his lost sweetheart down, And learn the stern moral this story must teach, That Genius may lift its love out of its reach. A LEGEND OF COLOGNE Above the bones St. Ursula owns, And those of the virgins she chaperons; Above the boats, And the bridge that floats, And the Rhine and the steamers' smoky throats; Above the chimneys and quaint-tiled roofs, Above the clatter of wheels and hoofs; Above Newmarket's open space, Above that consecrated place Where the genuine bones of the Magi seen are, And the dozen shops of the real Farina; Higher than even old Hohestrasse, Whose houses threaten the timid passer,-- Above them all, Through scaffolds tall, And spires like delicate limbs in splinters, The great Cologne's Cathedral stones Climb through the storms of eight hundred winters. Unfinished there, In high mid-air The towers halt like a broken prayer; Through years belated, Unconsummated, The hope of its architect quite frustrated. Its very youth They say, forsooth, With a quite improper purpose mated; And every stone With a curse of its own Instead of that sermon Shakespeare stated, Since the day its choir, Which all admire, By Cologne's Archbishop was consecrated. Ah! THAT was a day, One well might say, To be marked with the largest, whitest stone To be found in the towers of all Cologne! Along the Rhine, From old Rheinstein, The people flowed like their own good wine. From Rudesheim, And Geisenheim, And every spot that is known to rhyme; From the famed Cat's Castle of St. Goarshausen, To the pictured roofs of Assmannshausen, And down the track, From quaint Schwalbach To the clustering tiles of Bacharach; From Bingen, hence To old Coblentz: From every castellated crag, Where the robber chieftains kept their "swag," The folk flowed in, and Ober-Cassel Shone with the pomp of knight and vassal; And pouring in from near and far, As the Rhine to its bosom draws the Ahr, Or takes the arm of the sober Mosel, So in Cologne, knight, squire, and losel, Choked up the city's gates with men From old St. Stephen to Zint Marjen. What had they come to see? Ah me! I fear no glitter of pageantry, Nor sacred zeal For Church's weal, Nor faith in the virgins' bones to heal; Nor childlike trust in frank confession Drew these, who, dyed in deep transgression, Still in each nest On every crest Kept stolen goods in their possession; But only their gout For something new, More rare than the "roast" of a wandering Jew; Or--to be exact-- To see--in fact-- A Christian soul, in the very act Of being damned, secundum artem, By the devil, before a soul could part 'em. For a rumor had flown Throughout Cologne That the church, in fact, was the devil's own; That its architect (Being long "suspect") Had confessed to the Bishop that he had wrecked Not only his OWN soul, but had lost The VERY FIRST CHRISTIAN SOUL that crossed The sacred threshold: and all, in fine, For that very beautiful design Of the wonderful choir They were pleased to admire. And really, he must be allowed to say-- To speak in a purely business way-- That, taking the ruling market prices Of souls and churches, in such a crisis It would be shown-- And his Grace must own-- It was really a BARGAIN for Cologne! Such was the tale That turned cheeks pale With the thought that the enemy might prevail, And the church doors snap With a thunderclap On a Christian soul in that devil's trap. But a wiser few, Who thought that they knew Cologne's Archbishop, replied, "Pooh, pooh! Just watch him and wait, And as sure as fate, You'll find that the Bishop will give checkmate." One here might note How the popular vote, As shown in all legends and anecdote, Declares that a breach Of trust to o'erreach The devil is something quite proper for each. And, really, if you Give the devil his due In spite of the proverb--it's something you'll rue. But to lie and deceive him, To use and to leave him, From Job up to Faust is the way to receive him, Though no one has heard It ever averred That the "Father of Lies" ever yet broke HIS word, But has left this position, In every tradition, To be taken alone by the "truth-loving" Christian! Bom! from the tower! It is the hour! The host pours in, in its pomp and power Of banners and pyx, And high crucifix, And crosiers and other processional sticks, And no end of Marys In quaint reliquaries, To gladden the souls of all true antiquaries; And an Osculum Pacis (A myth to the masses Who trusted their bones more to mail and cuirasses)-- All borne by the throng Who are marching along To the square of the Dom with processional song, With the flaring of dips, And bending of hips, And the chanting of hundred perfunctory lips; And some good little boys Who had come up from Neuss And the Quirinuskirche to show off their voice: All march to the square Of the great Dom, and there File right and left, leaving alone and quite bare A covered sedan, Containing--so ran The rumor--the victim to take off the ban. They have left it alone, They have sprinkled each stone Of the porch with a sanctified Eau de Cologne, Guaranteed in this case To disguise every trace Of a sulphurous presence in that sacred place. Two Carmelites stand On the right and left hand Of the covered sedan chair, to wait the command Of the prelate to throw Up the cover and show The form of the victim in terror below. There's a pause and a prayer, Then the signal, and there-- Is a WOMAN!--by all that is good and is fair! A woman! and known To them all--one must own TOO WELL KNOWN to the many, to-day to be shown As a martyr, or e'en As a Christian! A queen Of pleasance and revel, of glitter and sheen; So bad that the worst Of Cologne spake up first, And declared 'twas an outrage to suffer one curst, And already a fief Of the Satanic chief, To martyr herself for the Church's relief. But in vain fell their sneer On the mob, who I fear On the whole felt a strong disposition to cheer. A woman! and there She stands in the glare Of the pitiless sun and their pitying stare,-- A woman still young, With garments that clung To a figure, though wasted with passion and wrung With remorse and despair, Yet still passing fair, With jewels and gold in her dark shining hair, And cheeks that are faint 'Neath her dyes and her paint. A woman most surely--but hardly a saint! She moves. She has gone From their pity and scorn; She has mounted alone The first step of stone, And the high swinging doors she wide open has thrown, Then pauses and turns, As the altar blaze burns On her cheeks, and with one sudden gesture she spurns Archbishop and Prior, Knight, ladye, and friar, And her voice rings out high from the vault of the choir. "O men of Cologne! What I WAS ye have known; What I AM, as I stand here, One knoweth alone. If it be but His will I shall pass from Him still, Lost, curst, and degraded, I reckon no ill; If still by that sign Of His anger divine One soul shall be saved, He hath blessed more than mine. O men of Cologne! Stand forth, if ye own A faith like to this, or more fit to atone, And take ye my place, And God give you grace To stand and confront Him, like me, face to face!" She paused. Yet aloof They all stand. No reproof Breaks the silence that fills the celestial roof. One instant--no more-- She halts at the door, Then enters!... A flood from the roof to the floor Fills the church rosy red. She is gone! But instead, Who is this leaning forward with glorified head And hands stretched to save? Sure this is no slave Of the Powers of Darkness, with aspect so brave! They press to the door, But too late! All is o'er. Naught remains but a woman's form prone on the floor; But they still see a trace Of that glow in her face That they saw in the light of the altar's high blaze On the image that stands With the babe in its hands Enshrined in the churches of all Christian lands. A Te Deum sung, A censer high swung, With praise, benediction, and incense wide-flung, Proclaim that the CURSE IS REMOVED--and no worse Is the Dom for the trial--in fact, the REVERSE; For instead of their losing A soul in abusing The Evil One's faith, they gained one of his choosing. Thus the legend is told: You will find in the old Vaulted aisles of the Dom, stiff in marble or cold In iron and brass, In gown and cuirass, The knights, priests, and bishops who came to that Mass; And high o'er the rest, With her babe at her breast, The image of Mary Madonna the blest. But you look round in vain, On each high pictured pane, For the woman most worthy to walk in her train. Yet, standing to-day O'er the dust and the clay, 'Midst the ghosts of a life that has long passed away, With the slow-sinking sun Looking softly upon That stained-glass procession, I scarce miss the one That it does not reveal, For I know and I feel That these are but shadows--the woman was real! THE TALE OF A PONY Name of my heroine, simply "Rose;" Surname, tolerable only in prose; Habitat, Paris,--that is where She resided for change of air; Aetat twenty; complexion fair; Rich, good looking, and debonnaire; Smarter than Jersey lightning. There! That's her photograph, done with care. In Paris, whatever they do besides, EVERY LADY IN FULL DRESS RIDES! Moire antiques you never meet Sweeping the filth of a dirty street But every woman's claim to ton Depends upon The team she drives, whether phaeton, Landau, or britzka. Hence it's plain That Rose, who was of her toilet vain, Should have a team that ought to be Equal to any in all Paris! "Bring forth the horse!" The commissaire Bowed, and brought Miss Rose a pair Leading an equipage rich and rare. Why doth that lovely lady stare? Why? The tail of the off gray mare Is bobbed, by all that's good and fair! Like the shaving-brushes that soldiers wear, Scarcely showing as much back hair As Tam O'Shanter's "Meg,"--and there, Lord knows, she'd little enough to spare. That stare and frown the Frenchman knew, But did as well-bred Frenchmen do: Raised his shoulders above his crown, Joined his thumbs with the fingers down, And said, "Ah, Heaven!"--then, "Mademoiselle, Delay one minute, and all is well!" He went--returned; by what good chance These things are managed so well in France I cannot say, but he made the sale, And the bob-tailed mare had a flowing tail. All that is false in this world below Betrays itself in a love of show; Indignant Nature hides her lash In the purple-black of a dyed mustache; The shallowest fop will trip in French, The would-be critic will misquote Trench; In short, you're always sure to detect A sham in the things folks most affect; Bean-pods are noisiest when dry, And you always wink with your weakest eye: And that's the reason the old gray mare Forever had her tail in the air, With flourishes beyond compare, Though every whisk Incurred the risk Of leaving that sensitive region bare. She did some things that you couldn't but feel She wouldn't have done had her tail been real. Champs Elysees: time, past five. There go the carriages,--look alive! Everything that man can drive, Or his inventive skill contrive,-- Yankee buggy or English "chay," Dog-cart, droschky, and smart coupe, A desobligeante quite bulky (French idea of a Yankee sulky); Band in the distance playing a march, Footman standing stiff as starch; Savans, lorettes, deputies, Arch- Bishops, and there together range Sous-lieutenants and cent-gardes (strange Way these soldier-chaps make change), Mixed with black-eyed Polish dames, With unpronounceable awful names; Laces tremble and ribbons flout, Coachmen wrangle and gendarmes shout-- Bless us! what is the row about? Ah! here comes Rosy's new turnout! Smart! You bet your life 'twas that! Nifty! (short for magnificat). Mulberry panels,--heraldic spread,-- Ebony wheels picked out with red, And two gray mares that were thoroughbred: No wonder that every dandy's head Was turned by the turnout,--and 'twas said That Caskowhisky (friend of the Czar), A very good whip (as Russians are), Was tied to Rosy's triumphal car, Entranced, the reader will understand, By "ribbons" that graced her head and hand. Alas! the hour you think would crown Your highest wishes should let you down! Or Fate should turn, by your own mischance, Your victor's car to an ambulance, From cloudless heavens her lightnings glance! (And these things happen, even in France.) And so Miss Rose, as she trotted by, The cynosure of every eye, Saw to her horror the off mare shy, Flourish her tail so exceedingly high That, disregarding the closest tie, And without giving a reason why, She flung that tail so free and frisky Off in the face of Caskowhisky. Excuses, blushes, smiles: in fine, End of the pony's tail, and mine! ON A CONE OF THE BIG TREES (SEQUOIA GIGANTEA) Brown foundling of the Western wood, Babe of primeval wildernesses! Long on my table thou hast stood Encounters strange and rude caresses; Perchance contented with thy lot, Surroundings new, and curious faces, As though ten centuries were not Imprisoned in thy shining cases. Thou bring'st me back the halcyon days Of grateful rest, the week of leisure, The journey lapped in autumn haze, The sweet fatigue that seemed a pleasure, The morning ride, the noonday halt, The blazing slopes, the red dust rising, And then the dim, brown, columned vault, With its cool, damp, sepulchral spicing. Once more I see the rocking masts That scrape the sky, their only tenant The jay-bird, that in frolic casts From some high yard his broad blue pennant. I see the Indian files that keep Their places in the dusty heather, Their red trunks standing ankle-deep In moccasins of rusty leather. I see all this, and marvel much That thou, sweet woodland waif, art able To keep the company of such As throng thy friend's--the poet's--table: The latest spawn the press hath cast,-- The "modern popes," "the later Byrons,"-- Why, e'en the best may not outlast Thy poor relation--Sempervirens. Thy sire saw the light that shone On Mohammed's uplifted crescent, On many a royal gilded throne And deed forgotten in the present; He saw the age of sacred trees And Druid groves and mystic larches; And saw from forest domes like these The builder bring his Gothic arches. And must thou, foundling, still forego Thy heritage and high ambition, To lie full lowly and full low, Adjusted to thy new condition? Not hidden in the drifted snows, But under ink-drops idly spattered, And leaves ephemeral as those That on thy woodland tomb were scattered? Yet lie thou there, O friend! and speak The moral of thy simple story: Though life is all that thou dost seek, And age alone thy crown of glory, Not thine the only germs that fail The purpose of their high creation, If their poor tenements avail For worldly show and ostentation. LONE MOUNTAIN (CEMETERY, SAN FRANCISCO) This is that hill of awe That Persian Sindbad saw,-- The mount magnetic; And on its seaward face, Scattered along its base, The wrecks prophetic. Here come the argosies Blown by each idle breeze, To and fro shifting; Yet to the hill of Fate All drawing, soon or late,-- Day by day drifting; Drifting forever here Barks that for many a year Braved wind and weather; Shallops but yesterday Launched on yon shining bay,-- Drawn all together. This is the end of all: Sun thyself by the wall, O poorer Hindbad! Envy not Sindbad's fame: Here come alike the same Hindbad and Sindbad. ALNASCHAR Here's yer toy balloons! All sizes! Twenty cents for that. It rises Jest as quick as that 'ere, Miss, Twice as big. Ye see it is Some more fancy. Make it square Fifty for 'em both. That's fair. That's the sixth I've sold since noon. Trade's reviving. Just as soon As this lot's worked off, I'll take Wholesale figgers. Make or break,-- That's my motto! Then I'll buy In some first-class lottery One half ticket, numbered right-- As I dreamed about last night. That'll fetch it. Don't tell me! When a man's in luck, you see, All things help him. Every chance Hits him like an avalanche. Here's your toy balloons, Miss. Eh? You won't turn your face this way? Mebbe you'll be glad some day. With that clear ten thousand prize This 'yer trade I'll drop, and rise Into wholesale. No! I'll take Stocks in Wall Street. Make or break,-- That's my motto! With my luck, Where's the chance of being stuck? Call it sixty thousand, clear, Made in Wall Street in one year. Sixty thousand! Umph! Let's see! Bond and mortgage'll do for me. Good! That gal that passed me by Scornful like--why, mebbe I Some day'll hold in pawn--why not?-- All her father's prop. She'll spot What's my little game, and see What I'm after's HER. He! he! He! he! When she comes to sue-- Let's see! What's the thing to do? Kick her? No! There's the perliss! Sorter throw her off like this. Hello! Stop! Help! Murder! Hey! There's my whole stock got away, Kiting on the house-tops! Lost! All a poor man's fortin! Cost? Twenty dollars! Eh! What's this? Fifty cents! God bless ye, Miss! THE TWO SHIPS As I stand by the cross on the lone mountain's crest, Looking over the ultimate sea, In the gloom of the mountain a ship lies at rest, And one sails away from the lea: One spreads its white wings on a far-reaching track, With pennant and sheet flowing free; One hides in the shadow with sails laid aback,-- The ship that is waiting for me! But lo! in the distance the clouds break away, The Gate's glowing portals I see; And I hear from the outgoing ship in the bay The song of the sailors in glee. So I think of the luminous footprints that bore The comfort o'er dark Galilee, And wait for the signal to go to the shore, To the ship that is waiting for me. ADDRESS (OPENING OF THE CALIFORNIA THEATRE, SAN FRANCISCO, JANUARY 19, 1870) Brief words, when actions wait, are well: The prompter's hand is on his bell; The coming heroes, lovers, kings, Are idly lounging at the wings; Behind the curtain's mystic fold The glowing future lies unrolled; And yet, one moment for the Past, One retrospect,--the first and last. "The world's a stage," the Master said. To-night a mightier truth is read: Not in the shifting canvas screen, The flash of gas or tinsel sheen; Not in the skill whose signal calls From empty boards baronial halls; But, fronting sea and curving bay, Behold the players and the play. Ah, friends! beneath your real skies The actor's short-lived triumph dies: On that broad stage of empire won, Whose footlights were the setting sun, Whose flats a distant background rose In trackless peaks of endless snows; Here genius bows, and talent waits To copy that but One creates. Your shifting scenes: the league of sand, An avenue by ocean spanned; The narrow beach of straggling tents, A mile of stately monuments; Your standard, lo! a flag unfurled, Whose clinging folds clasp half the world,-- This is your drama, built on facts, With "twenty years between the acts." One moment more: if here we raise The oft-sung hymn of local praise, Before the curtain facts must sway; HERE waits the moral of your play. Glassed in the poet's thought, you view What money can, yet cannot do; The faith that soars, the deeds that shine, Above the gold that builds the shrine. And oh! when others take our place, And Earth's green curtain hides our face, Ere on the stage, so silent now, The last new hero makes his bow: So may our deeds, recalled once more In Memory's sweet but brief encore, Down all the circling ages run, With the world's plaudit of "Well done!" DOLLY VARDEN Dear Dolly! who does not recall The thrilling page that pictured all Those charms that held our sense in thrall Just as the artist caught her,-- As down that English lane she tripped, In bowered chintz, hat sideways tipped, Trim-bodiced, bright-eyed, roguish-lipped,-- The locksmith's pretty daughter? Sweet fragment of the Master's art! O simple faith! O rustic heart! O maid that hath no counterpart In life's dry, dog-eared pages! Where shall we find thy like? Ah, stay! Methinks I saw her yesterday In chintz that flowered, as one might say, Perennial for ages. Her father's modest cot was stone, Five stories high; in style and tone Composite, and, I frankly own, Within its walls revealing Some certain novel, strange ideas: A Gothic door with Roman piers, And floors removed some thousand years, From their Pompeian ceiling. The small salon where she received Was Louis Quatorze, and relieved By Chinese cabinets, conceived Grotesquely by the heathen; The sofas were a classic sight,-- The Roman bench (sedilia hight); The chairs were French in gold and white, And one Elizabethan. And she, the goddess of that shrine, Two ringed fingers placed in mine,-- The stones were many carats fine, And of the purest water,-- Then dropped a curtsy, far enough To fairly fill her cretonne puff And show the petticoat's rich stuff That her fond parent bought her. Her speech was simple as her dress,-- Not French the more, but English less, She loved; yet sometimes, I confess, I scarce could comprehend her. Her manners were quite far from shy. There was a quiet in her eye Appalling to the Hugh who'd try With rudeness to offend her. "But whence," I cried, "this masquerade? Some figure for to-night's charade, A Watteau shepherdess or maid?" She smiled and begged my pardon: "Why, surely you must know the name,-- That woman who was Shakespeare's flame Or Byron's,--well, it's all the same: Why, Lord! I'm Dolly Varden!" TELEMACHUS VERSUS MENTOR Don't mind me, I beg you, old fellow,--I'll do very well here alone; You must not be kept from your "German" because I've dropped in like a stone. Leave all ceremony behind you, leave all thought of aught but yourself; And leave, if you like, the Madeira, and a dozen cigars on the shelf. As for me, you will say to your hostess--well, I scarcely need give you a cue. Chant my praise! All will list to Apollo, though Mercury pipe to a few. Say just what you please, my dear boy; there's more eloquence lies in youth's rash Outspoken heart-impulse than ever growled under this grizzling mustache. Go, don the dress coat of our tyrant,--youth's panoplied armor for fight,-- And tie the white neckcloth that rumples, like pleasure, and lasts but a night; And pray the Nine Gods to avert you what time the Three Sisters shall frown, And you'll lose your high-comedy figure, and sit more at ease in your gown. He's off! There's his foot on the staircase. By Jove, what a bound! Really now Did I ever leap like this springald, with Love's chaplet green on my brow? Was I such an ass? No, I fancy. Indeed, I remember quite plain A gravity mixed with my transports, a cheerfulness softened my pain. He's gone! There's the slam of his cab door, there's the clatter of hoofs and the wheels; And while he the light toe is tripping, in this armchair I'll tilt up my heels. He's gone, and for what? For a tremor from a waist like a teetotum spun; For a rosebud that's crumpled by many before it is gathered by one. Is there naught in the halo of youth but the glow of a passionate race--'Midst the cheers and applause of a crowd--to the goal of a beautiful face? A race that is not to the swift, a prize that no merits enforce, But is won by some faineant youth, who shall simply walk over the course? Poor boy! shall I shock his conceit? When he talks of her cheek's loveliness, Shall I say 'twas the air of the room, and was due to carbonic excess? That when waltzing she drooped on his breast, and the veins of her eyelids grew dim, 'Twas oxygen's absence she felt, but never the presence of him? Shall I tell him first love is a fraud, a weakling that's strangled in birth, Recalled with perfunctory tears, but lost in unsanctified mirth? Or shall I go bid him believe in all womankind's charm, and forget In the light ringing laugh of the world the rattlesnake's gay castanet? Shall I tear out a leaf from my heart, from that book that forever is shut On the past? Shall I speak of my first love--Augusta--my Lalage? But I forget. Was it really Augusta? No. 'Twas Lucy! No. Mary! No. Di! Never mind! they were all first and faithless, and yet--I've forgotten just why. No, no! Let him dream on and ever. Alas! he will waken too soon; And it doesn't look well for October to always be preaching at June. Poor boy! All his fond foolish trophies pinned yonder--a bow from HER hair, A few billets-doux, invitations, and--what's this? My name, I declare! Humph! "You'll come, for I've got you a prize, with beauty and money no end: You know her, I think; 'twas on dit she once was engaged to your friend; But she says that's all over." Ah, is it? Sweet Ethel! incomparable maid! Or--what if the thing were a trick?--this letter so freely displayed!-- My opportune presence! No! nonsense! Will nobody answer the bell? Call a cab! Half past ten. Not too late yet. Oh, Ethel! Why don't you go? Well? "Master said you would wait"-- Hang your master! "Have I ever a message to send?" Yes, tell him I've gone to the German to dance with the friend of his friend. WHAT THE WOLF REALLY SAID TO LITTLE RED RIDING-HOOD Wondering maiden, so puzzled and fair, Why dost thou murmur and ponder and stare? "Why are my eyelids so open and wild?" Only the better to see with, my child! Only the better and clearer to view Cheeks that are rosy and eyes that are blue. Dost thou still wonder, and ask why these arms Fill thy soft bosom with tender alarms, Swaying so wickedly? Are they misplaced Clasping or shielding some delicate waist? Hands whose coarse sinews may fill you with fear Only the better protect you, my dear! Little Red Riding-Hood, when in the street, Why do I press your small hand when we meet? Why, when you timidly offered your cheek, Why did I sigh, and why didn't I speak? Why, well: you see--if the truth must appear-- I'm not your grandmother, Riding-Hood, dear! HALF AN HOUR BEFORE SUPPER "So she's here, your unknown Dulcinea, the lady you met on the train, And you really believe she would know you if you were to meet her again?" "Of course," he replied, "she would know me; there never was womankind yet Forgot the effect she inspired. She excuses, but does not forget." "Then you told her your love?" asked the elder. The younger looked up with a smile: "I sat by her side half an hour--what else was I doing the while? "What, sit by the side of a woman as fair as the sun in the sky, And look somewhere else lest the dazzle flash back from your own to her eye? "No, I hold that the speech of the tongue be as frank and as bold as the look, And I held up herself to herself,--that was more than she got from her book." "Young blood!" laughed the elder; "no doubt you are voicing the mode of To-Day: But then we old fogies at least gave the lady some chance for delay. "There's my wife (you must know),--we first met on the journey from Florence to Rome: It took me three weeks to discover who was she and where was her home; "Three more to be duly presented; three more ere I saw her again; And a year ere my romance BEGAN where yours ended that day on the train." "Oh, that was the style of the stage-coach; we travel to-day by express; Forty miles to the hour," he answered, "won't admit of a passion that's less." "But what if you make a mistake?" quoth the elder. The younger half sighed. "What happens when signals are wrong or switches misplaced?" he replied. "Very well, I must bow to your wisdom," the elder returned, "but submit Your chances of winning this woman your boldness has bettered no whit. "Why, you do not at best know her name. And what if I try your ideal With something, if not quite so fair, at least more en regle and real? "Let me find you a partner. Nay, come, I insist--you shall follow-- this way. My dear, will you not add your grace to entreat Mr. Rapid to stay? "My wife, Mr. Rapid-- Eh, what! Why, he's gone--yet he said he would come. How rude! I don't wonder, my dear, you are properly crimson and dumb!" WHAT THE BULLET SANG O joy of creation To be! O rapture to fly And be free! Be the battle lost or won, Though its smoke shall hide the sun, I shall find my love,--the one Born for me! I shall know him where he stands, All alone, With the power in his hands Not o'erthrown; I shall know him by his face, By his godlike front and grace; I shall hold him for a space, All my own! It is he--O my love! So bold! It is I--all thy love Foretold! It is I. O love! what bliss! Dost thou answer to my kiss? O sweetheart! what is this Lieth there so cold? THE OLD CAMP-FIRE Now shift the blanket pad before your saddle back you fling, And draw your cinch up tighter till the sweat drops from the ring: We've a dozen miles to cover ere we reach the next divide. Our limbs are stiffer now than when we first set out to ride, And worse, the horses know it, and feel the leg-grip tire, Since in the days when, long ago, we sought the old camp-fire. Yes, twenty years! Lord! how we'd scent its incense down the trail, Through balm of bay and spice of spruce, when eye and ear would fail, And worn and faint from useless quest we crept, like this, to rest, Or, flushed with luck and youthful hope, we rode, like this, abreast. Ay! straighten up, old friend, and let the mustang think he's nigher, Through looser rein and stirrup strain, the welcome old camp-fire. You know the shout that would ring out before us down the glade, And start the blue jays like a flight of arrows through the shade, And sift the thin pine needles down like slanting, shining rain, And send the squirrels scampering back to their holes again, Until we saw, blue-veiled and dim, or leaping like desire, That flame of twenty years ago, which lit the old camp-fire. And then that rest on Nature's breast, when talk had dropped, and slow The night wind went from tree to tree with challenge soft and low! We lay on lazy elbows propped, or stood to stir the flame, Till up the soaring redwood's shaft our shadows danced and came, As if to draw us with the sparks, high o'er its unseen spire, To the five stars that kept their ward above the old camp-fire,-- Those picket stars whose tranquil watch half soothed, half shamed our sleep. What recked we then what beasts or men around might lurk or creep? We lay and heard with listless ears the far-off panther's cry, The near coyote's snarling snap, the grizzly's deep-drawn sigh, The brown bear's blundering human tread, the gray wolves' yelping choir Beyond the magic circle drawn around the old camp-fire. And then that morn! Was ever morn so filled with all things new? The light that fell through long brown aisles from out the kindling blue, The creak and yawn of stretching boughs, the jay-bird's early call, The rat-tat-tat of woodpecker that waked the woodland hall, The fainter stir of lower life in fern and brake and brier, Till flashing leaped the torch of Day from last night's old camp-fire! Well, well! we'll see it once again; we should be near it now; It's scarce a mile to where the trail strikes off to skirt the slough, And then the dip to Indian Spring, the wooded rise, and--strange! Yet here should stand the blasted pine that marked our farther range; And here--what's this? A ragged swab of ruts and stumps and mire! Sure this is not the sacred grove that hid the old camp-fire! Yet here's the "blaze" I cut myself, and there's the stumbling ledge, With quartz "outcrop" that lay atop, now leveled to its edge, And mounds of moss-grown stumps beside the woodman's rotting chips, And gashes in the hillside, that gape with dumb red lips. And yet above the shattered wreck and ruin, curling higher-- Ah yes!--still lifts the smoke that marked the welcome old camp-fire! Perhaps some friend of twenty years still lingers there to raise To weary hearts and tired eyes that beacon of old days. Perhaps but stay; 'tis gone! and yet once more it lifts as though To meet our tardy blundering steps, and seems to MOVE, and lo! Whirls by us in a rush of sound,--the vanished funeral pyre Of hopes and fears that twenty years burned in the old camp-fire! For see, beyond the prospect spreads, with chimney, spire, and roof,-- Two iron bands across the trail clank to our mustang's hoof; Above them leap two blackened threads from limb-lopped tree to tree, To where the whitewashed station speeds its message to the sea. Rein in! Rein in! The quest is o'er. The goal of our desire Is but the train whose track has lain across the old camp-fire! THE STATION-MASTER OF LONE PRAIRIE An empty bench, a sky of grayest etching, A bare, bleak shed in blackest silhouette, Twelve years of platform, and before them stretching Twelve miles of prairie glimmering through the wet. North, south, east, west,--the same dull gray persistence, The tattered vapors of a vanished train, The narrowing rails that meet to pierce the distance, Or break the columns of the far-off rain. Naught but myself; nor form nor figure breaking The long hushed level and stark shining waste; Nothing that moves to fill the vision aching, When the last shadow fled in sullen haste. Nothing beyond. Ah yes! From out the station A stiff, gaunt figure thrown against the sky, Beckoning me with some wooden salutation Caught from his signals as the train flashed by; Yielding me place beside him with dumb gesture Born of that reticence of sky and air. We sit apart, yet wrapped in that one vesture Of silence, sadness, and unspoken care: Each following his own thought,--around us darkening The rain-washed boundaries and stretching track,-- Each following those dim parallels and hearkening For long-lost voices that will not come back. Until, unasked,--I knew not why or wherefore,-- He yielded, bit by bit, his dreary past, Like gathered clouds that seemed to thicken there for Some dull down-dropping of their care at last. Long had he lived there. As a boy had started From the stacked corn the Indian's painted face; Heard the wolves' howl the wearying waste that parted His father's hut from the last camping-place. Nature had mocked him: thrice had claimed the reaping, With scythe of fire, of lands she once had sown; Sent the tornado, round his hearthstone heaping Rafters, dead faces that were like his own. Then came the War Time. When its shadow beckoned He had walked dumbly where the flag had led Through swamp and fen,--unknown, unpraised, unreckoned,-- To famine, fever, and a prison bed. Till the storm passed, and the slow tide returning Cast him, a wreck, beneath his native sky; Here, at his watch, gave him the chance of earning Scant means to live--who won the right to die. All this I heard--or seemed to hear--half blending With the low murmur of the coming breeze, The call of some lost bird, and the unending And tireless sobbing of those grassy seas. Until at last the spell of desolation Broke with a trembling star and far-off cry. The coming train! I glanced around the station, All was as empty as the upper sky! Naught but myself; nor form nor figure waking The long hushed level and stark shining waste; Naught but myself, that cry, and the dull shaking Of wheel and axle, stopped in breathless haste! "Now, then--look sharp! Eh, what? The Station-Master? THAR'S NONE! We stopped here of our own accord. The man got killed in that down-train disaster This time last evening. Right there! All aboard!" THE MISSION BELLS OF MONTEREY O bells that rang, O bells that sang Above the martyrs' wilderness, Till from that reddened coast-line sprang The Gospel seed to cheer and bless, What are your garnered sheaves to-day? O Mission bells! Eleison bells! O Mission bells of Monterey! O bells that crash, O bells that clash Above the chimney-crowded plain, On wall and tower your voices dash, But never with the old refrain; In mart and temple gone astray! Ye dangle bells! Ye jangle bells! Ye wrangle bells of Monterey! O bells that die, so far, so nigh, Come back once more across the sea; Not with the zealot's furious cry, Not with the creed's austerity; Come with His love alone to stay, O Mission bells! Eleison bells! O Mission bells of Monterey! * This poem was set to music by Monsieur Charles Gounod. "CROTALUS" (RATTLESNAKE BAR, SIERRAS) No life in earth, or air, or sky; The sunbeams, broken silently, On the bared rocks around me lie,-- Cold rocks with half-warmed lichens scarred, And scales of moss; and scarce a yard Away, one long strip, yellow-barred. Lost in a cleft! 'Tis but a stride To reach it, thrust its roots aside, And lift it on thy stick astride! Yet stay! That moment is thy grace! For round thee, thrilling air and space, A chattering terror fills the place! A sound as of dry bones that stir In the dead Valley! By yon fir The locust stops its noonday whir! The wild bird hears; smote with the sound, As if by bullet brought to ground, On broken wing, dips, wheeling round! The hare, transfixed, with trembling lip, Halts, breathless, on pulsating hip, And palsied tread, and heels that slip. Enough, old friend!--'tis thou. Forget My heedless foot, nor longer fret The peace with thy grim castanet! I know thee! Yes! Thou mayst forego That lifted crest; the measured blow Beyond which thy pride scorns to go, Or yet retract! For me no spell Lights those slit orbs, where, some think, dwell Machicolated fires of hell! I only know thee humble, bold, Haughty, with miseries untold, And the old Curse that left thee cold, And drove thee ever to the sun, On blistering rocks; nor made thee shun Our cabin's hearth, when day was done, And the spent ashes warmed thee best; We knew thee,--silent, joyless guest Of our rude ingle. E'en thy quest Of the rare milk-bowl seemed to be Naught but a brother's poverty, And Spartan taste that kept thee free From lust and rapine. Thou! whose fame Searchest the grass with tongue of flame, Making all creatures seem thy game; When the whole woods before thee run, Asked but--when all was said and done-- To lie, untrodden, in the sun! ON WILLIAM FRANCIS BARTLETT DEAD AT PITTSFIELD, MASS., 1876 O poor Romancer--thou whose printed page, Filled with rude speech and ruder forms of strife, Was given to heroes in whose vulgar rage No trace appears of gentler ways and life!-- Thou who wast wont of commoner clay to build Some rough Achilles or some Ajax tall; Thou whose free brush too oft was wont to gild Some single virtue till it dazzled all;-- What right hast thou beside this laureled bier Whereon all manhood lies--whereon the wreath Of Harvard rests, the civic crown, and here The starry flag, and sword and jeweled sheath? Seest thou these hatchments? Knowest thou this blood Nourished the heroes of Colonial days-- Sent to the dim and savage-haunted wood Those sad-eyed Puritans with hymns of praise? Look round thee! Everywhere is classic ground. There Greylock rears. Beside yon silver "Bowl" Great Hawthorne dwelt, and in its mirror found Those quaint, strange shapes that filled his poet's soul. Still silent, Stranger? Thou who now and then Touched the too credulous ear with pathos, canst not speak? Hast lost thy ready skill of tongue and pen? What, Jester! Tears upon that painted cheek? Pardon, good friends! I am not here to mar His laureled wreaths with this poor tinseled crown-- This man who taught me how 'twas better far To be the poem than to write it down. I bring no lesson. Well have others preached This sword that dealt full many a gallant blow; I come once more to touch the hand that reached Its knightly gauntlet to the vanquished foe. O pale Aristocrat, that liest there, So cold, so silent! Couldst thou not in grace Have borne with us still longer, and so spare The scorn we see in that proud, placid face? "Hail and farewell!" So the proud Roman cried O'er his dead hero. "Hail," but not "farewell." With each high thought thou walkest side by side; We feel thee, touch thee, know who wrought the spell! THE BIRDS OF CIRENCESTER Did I ever tell you, my dears, the way That the birds of Cisseter--"Cisseter!" eh? Well "Ciren-cester"--one OUGHT to say, From "Castra," or "Caster," As your Latin master Will further explain to you some day; Though even the wisest err, And Shakespeare writes "Ci-cester," While every visitor Who doesn't say "Cissiter" Is in "Ciren-cester" considered astray. A hundred miles from London town-- Where the river goes curving and broadening down From tree-top to spire, and spire to mast, Till it tumbles outright in the Channel at last-- A hundred miles from that flat foreshore That the Danes and the Northmen haunt no more-- There's a little cup in the Cotswold hills Which a spring in a meadow bubbles and fills, Spanned by a heron's wing--crossed by a stride-- Calm and untroubled by dreams of pride, Guiltless of Fame or ambition's aims, That is the source of the lordly Thames! Remark here again that custom contemns Both "Tames" and Thames--you must SAY "Tems!" But WHY? no matter!--from them you can see Cirencester's tall spires loom up o'er the lea. A. D. Five Hundred and Fifty-two, The Saxon invaders--a terrible crew-- Had forced the lines of the Britons through; And Cirencester, half mud and thatch, Dry and crisp as a tinder match, Was fiercely beleaguered by foes, who'd catch At any device that could harry and rout The folk that so boldly were holding out. For the streets of the town--as you'll see to-day-- Were twisted and curved in a curious way That kept the invaders still at bay; And the longest bolt that a Saxon drew Was stopped ere a dozen of yards it flew, By a turn in the street, and a law so true That even these robbers--of all laws scorners!-- Knew you couldn't shoot arrows AROUND street corners. So they sat them down on a little knoll, And each man scratched his Saxon poll, And stared at the sky, where, clear and high, The birds of that summer went singing by, As if, in his glee, each motley jester Were mocking the foes of Cirencester, Till the jeering crow and the saucy linnet Seemed all to be saying: "Ah! you're not in it!" High o'er their heads the mavis flew, And the "ouzel-cock so black of hue;" And the "throstle," with his "note so true" (You remember what Shakespeare says--HE knew); And the soaring lark, that kept dropping through Like a bucket spilling in wells of blue; And the merlin--seen on heraldic panes-- With legs as vague as the Queen of Spain's; And the dashing swift that would ricochet From the tufts of grasses before them, yet-- Like bold Antaeus--would each time bring New life from the earth, barely touched by his wing; And the swallow and martlet that always knew The straightest way home. Here a Saxon churl drew His breath--tapped his forehead--an idea had got through! So they brought them some nets, which straightway they filled With the swallows and martlets--the sweet birds who build In the houses of man--all that innocent guild Who sing at their labor on eaves and in thatch-- And they stuck on their feathers a rude lighted match Made of resin and tow. Then they let them all go To be free! As a child-like diversion? Ah, no! To work Cirencester's red ruin and woe. For straight to each nest they flew, in wild quest Of their homes and their fledgelings--that they loved the best; And straighter than arrow of Saxon e'er sped They shot o'er the curving streets, high overhead, Bringing fire and terror to roof tree and bed, Till the town broke in flame, wherever they came, To the Briton's red ruin--the Saxon's red shame! Yet they're all gone together! To-day you'll dig up From "mound" or from "barrow" some arrow or cup. Their fame is forgotten--their story is ended-- 'Neath the feet of the race they have mixed with and blended. But the birds are unchanged--the ouzel-cock sings, Still gold on his crest and still black on his wings; And the lark chants on high, as he mounts to the sky, Still brown in his coat and still dim in his eye; While the swallow or martlet is still a free nester In the eaves and the roofs of thrice-built Cirencester. LINES TO A PORTRAIT, BY A SUPERIOR PERSON When I bought you for a song, Years ago--Lord knows how long!-- I was struck--I may be wrong-- By your features, And--a something in your air That I couldn't quite compare To my other plain or fair Fellow creatures. In your simple, oval frame You were not well known to fame, But to me--'twas all the same-- Whoe'er drew you; For your face I can't forget, Though I oftentimes regret That, somehow, I never yet Saw quite through you. Yet each morning, when I rise, I go first to greet your eyes; And, in turn, YOU scrutinize My presentment. And when shades of evening fall, As you hang upon my wall, You're the last thing I recall With contentment. It is weakness, yet I know That I never turned to go Anywhere, for weal or woe, But I lingered For one parting, thrilling flash From your eyes, to give that dash To the curl of my mustache, That I fingered. If to some you may seem plain, And when people glance again Where you hang, their lips refrain. From confession; Yet they turn in stealth aside, And I note, they try to hide How much they are satisfied In expression. Other faces I have seen; Other forms have come between; Other things I have, I ween, Done and dared for! But OUR ties they cannot sever, And, though I should say it never, You're the only one I ever Really cared for! And you'll still be hanging there When we're both the worse for wear, And the silver's on my hair And off your backing; Yet my faith shall never pass In my dear old shaving-glass, Till my face and yours, alas! Both are lacking! HER LAST LETTER BEING A REPLY TO "HIS ANSWER" June 4th! Do you know what that date means? June 4th! By this air and these pines! Well,--only you know how I hate scenes,-- These might be my very last lines! For perhaps, sir, you'll kindly remember-- If some OTHER things you've forgot-- That you last wrote the 4th of DECEMBER,-- Just six months ago I--from this spot; From this spot, that you said was "the fairest For once being held in my thought." Now, really I call that the barest Of--well, I won't say what I ought! For here I am back from my "riches," My "triumphs," my "tours," and all that; And YOU'RE not to be found in the ditches Or temples of Poverty Flat! From Paris we went for the season To London, when pa wired, "Stop." Mama says "his HEALTH" was the reason. (I've heard that some things took a "drop.") But she said if my patience I'd summon I could go back with him to the Flat-- Perhaps I was thinking of some one Who of me--well--was not thinking THAT! Of course you will SAY that I "never Replied to the letter you wrote." That is just like a man! But, however, I read it--or how could I quote? And as to the stories you've heard (No, Don't tell me you haven't--I know!), You'll not believe one blessed word, Joe; But just whence they came, let them go! And they came from Sade Lotski of Yolo, Whose father sold clothes on the Bar-- You called him Job-lotski, you know, Joe, And the boys said HER value was par. Well, we met her in Paris--just flaring With diamonds, and lost in a hat And she asked me "how Joseph was faring In his love-suit on Poverty Flat!" She thought it would shame me! I met her With a look, Joe, that made her eyes drop; And I said that your "love-suit fared better Than any suit out of THEIR shop!" And I didn't blush THEN--as I'm doing To find myself here, all alone, And left, Joe, to do all the "sueing" To a lover that's certainly flown. In this brand-new hotel, called "The Lily" (I wonder who gave it that name?) I really am feeling quite silly, To think I was once called the same; And I stare from its windows, and fancy I'm labeled to each passer-by. Ah! gone is the old necromancy, For nothing seems right to my eye. On that hill there are stores that I knew not; There's a street--where I once lost my way; And the copse where you once tied my shoe-knot Is shamelessly open as day! And that bank by the spring--I once drank there, And you called the place Eden, you know; Now I'm banished like Eve--though the bank there Is belonging to "Adams and Co." There's the rustle of silk on the sidewalk; Just now there passed by a tall hat; But there's gloom in this "boom" and this wild talk Of the "future" of Poverty Flat. There's a decorous chill in the air, Joe, Where once we were simple and free; And I hear they've been making a mayor, Joe, Of the man who shot Sandy McGee. But there's still the "lap, lap" of the river; There's the song of the pines, deep and low. (How my longing for them made me quiver In the park that they call Fontainebleau!) There's the snow-peak that looked on our dances, And blushed when the morning said, "Go!" There's a lot that remains which one fancies-- But somehow there's never a Joe! Perhaps, on the whole, it is better, For you might have been changed like the rest; Though it's strange that I'm trusting this letter To papa, just to have it addressed. He thinks he may find you, and really Seems kinder now I'm all alone. You might have been here, Joe, if merely To LOOK what I'm willing to OWN. Well, well! that's all past; so good-night, Joe; Good-night to the river and Flat; Good-night to what's wrong and what's right, Joe; Good-night to the past, and all that-- To Harrison's barn, and its dancers; To the moon, and the white peak of snow; And good-night to the canyon that answers My "Joe!" with its echo of "No!" P. S. I've just got your note. You deceiver! How dared you--how COULD you? Oh, Joe! To think I've been kept a believer In things that were six months ago! And it's YOU'VE built this house, and the bank, too, And the mills, and the stores, and all that! And for everything changed I must thank YOU, Who have "struck it" on Poverty Flat! How dared you get rich--you great stupid!-- Like papa, and some men that I know, Instead of just trusting to Cupid And to me for your money? Ah, Joe! Just to think you sent never a word, dear, Till you wrote to papa for consent! Now I know why they had me transferred here, And "the health of papa"--what THAT meant! Now I know why they call this "The Lily;" Why the man who shot Sandy McGee You made mayor! 'Twas because--oh, you silly!-- He once "went down the middle" with me! I've been fooled to the top of my bent here, So come, and ask pardon--you know That you've still got to get MY consent, dear! And just think what that echo said--Joe! V. PARODIES BEFORE THE CURTAIN Behind the footlights hangs the rusty baize, A trifle shabby in the upturned blaze Of flaring gas and curious eyes that gaze. The stage, methinks, perhaps is none too wide, And hardly fit for royal Richard's stride, Or Falstaff's bulk, or Denmark's youthful pride. Ah, well! no passion walks its humble boards; O'er it no king nor valiant Hector lords: The simplest skill is all its space affords. The song and jest, the dance and trifling play, The local hit at follies of the day, The trick to pass an idle hour away,-- For these no trumpets that announce the Moor, No blast that makes the hero's welcome sure,-- A single fiddle in the overture! TO THE PLIOCENE SKULL* (A GEOLOGICAL ADDRESS) "Speak, O man, less recent! Fragmentary fossil! Primal pioneer of pliocene formation, Hid in lowest drifts below the earliest stratum Of volcanic tufa! "Older than the beasts, the oldest Palaeotherium; Older than the trees, the oldest Cryptogami; Older than the hills, those infantile eruptions Of earth's epidermis! "Eo--Mio--Plio--whatsoe'er the 'cene' was That those vacant sockets filled with awe and wonder,-- Whether shores Devonian or Silurian beaches,-- Tell us thy strange story! "Or has the professor slightly antedated By some thousand years thy advent on this planet, Giving thee an air that's somewhat better fitted For cold-blooded creatures? "Wert thou true spectator of that mighty forest When above thy head the stately Sigillaria Reared its columned trunks in that remote and distant Carboniferous epoch? "Tell us of that scene,--the dim and watery woodland, Songless, silent, hushed, with never bird or insect, Veiled with spreading fronds and screened with tall club mosses, Lycopodiacea,-- "When beside thee walked the solemn Plesiosaurus, And around thee crept the festive Ichthyosaurus, While from time to time above thee flew and circled Cheerful Pterodactyls. "Tell us of thy food,--those half-marine refections, Crinoids on the shell and Brachipods au naturel,-- Cuttlefish to which the pieuvre of Victor Hugo Seems a periwinkle. "Speak, thou awful vestige of the earth's creation, Solitary fragment of remains organic! Tell the wondrous secret of thy past existence,-- Speak! thou oldest primate!" Even as I gazed, a thrill of the maxilla, And a lateral movement of the condyloid process, With post-pliocene sounds of healthy mastication, Ground the teeth together. And from that imperfect dental exhibition, Stained with express juices of the weed nicotian, Came these hollow accents, blent with softer murmurs Of expectoration: "Which my name is Bowers, and my crust was busted Falling down a shaft in Calaveras County; But I'd take it kindly if you'd send the pieces Home to old Missouri!" * See notes at end. THE BALLAD OF MR. COOKE (LEGEND OF THE CLIFF HOUSE, SAN FRANCISCO) Where the sturdy ocean breeze Drives the spray of roaring seas, That the Cliff House balconies Overlook: There, in spite of rain that balked, With his sandals duly chalked, Once upon a tight-rope walked Mr. Cooke. But the jester's lightsome mien, And his spangles and his sheen, All had vanished when the scene He forsook. Yet in some delusive hope, In some vague desire to cope, ONE still came to view the rope Walked by Cooke. Amid Beauty's bright array, On that strange eventful day, Partly hidden from the spray, In a nook, Stood Florinda Vere de Vere; Who, with wind-disheveled hair, And a rapt, distracted air, Gazed on Cooke. Then she turned, and quickly cried To her lover at her side, While her form with love and pride Wildly shook: "Clifford Snook! oh, hear me now! Here I break each plighted vow; There's but one to whom I bow, And that's Cooke!" Haughtily that young man spoke: "I descend from noble folk; 'Seven Oaks,' and then 'Se'nnoak,' Lastly 'Snook,' Is the way my name I trace. Shall a youth of noble race In affairs of love give place To a Cooke?" "Clifford Snook, I know thy claim To that lineage and name, And I think I've read the same In Horne Tooke; But I swear, by all divine, Never, never, to be thine, Till thou canst upon yon line Walk like Cooke." Though to that gymnastic feat He no closer might compete Than to strike a BALANCE-sheet In a book; Yet thenceforward from that day He his figure would display In some wild athletic way, After Cooke. On some household eminence, On a clothes-line or a fence, Over ditches, drains, and thence O'er a brook, He, by high ambition led, Ever walked and balanced, Till the people, wondering, said, "How like Cooke!" Step by step did he proceed, Nerved by valor, not by greed, And at last the crowning deed Undertook. Misty was the midnight air, And the cliff was bleak and bare, When he came to do and dare, Just like Cooke. Through the darkness, o'er the flow, Stretched the line where he should go, Straight across as flies the crow Or the rook. One wild glance around he cast; Then he faced the ocean blast, And he strode the cable last Touched by Cooke. Vainly roared the angry seas, Vainly blew the ocean breeze; But, alas! the walker's knees Had a crook; And before he reached the rock Did they both together knock, And he stumbled with a shock-- Unlike Cooke! Downward dropping in the dark, Like an arrow to its mark, Or a fish-pole when a shark Bites the hook, Dropped the pole he could not save, Dropped the walker, and the wave Swift engulfed the rival brave Of J. Cooke! Came a roar across the sea Of sea-lions in their glee, In a tongue remarkably Like Chinook; And the maddened sea-gull seemed Still to utter, as he screamed, "Perish thus the wretch who deemed Himself Cooke!" But on misty moonlit nights Comes a skeleton in tights, Walks once more the giddy heights He mistook; And unseen to mortal eyes, Purged of grosser earthly ties, Now at last in spirit guise Outdoes Cooke. Still the sturdy ocean breeze Sweeps the spray of roaring seas, Where the Cliff House balconies Overlook; And the maidens in their prime, Reading of this mournful rhyme, Weep where, in the olden time, Walked J. Cooke. THE BALLAD OF THE EMEU Oh, say, have you seen at the Willows so green-- So charming and rurally true-- A singular bird, with a manner absurd, Which they call the Australian Emeu? Have you Ever seen this Australian Emeu? It trots all around with its head on the ground, Or erects it quite out of your view; And the ladies all cry, when its figure they spy, "Oh! what a sweet pretty Emeu! Oh! do Just look at that lovely Emeu!" One day to this spot, when the weather was hot, Came Matilda Hortense Fortescue; And beside her there came a youth of high name,-- Augustus Florell Montague: The two Both loved that wild, foreign Emeu. With two loaves of bread then they fed it, instead Of the flesh of the white Cockatoo, Which once was its food in that wild neighborhood Where ranges the sweet Kangaroo, That too Is game for the famous Emeu! Old saws and gimlets but its appetite whets, Like the world-famous bark of Peru; There's nothing so hard that the bird will discard, And nothing its taste will eschew That you Can give that long-legged Emeu! The time slipped away in this innocent play, When up jumped the bold Montague: "Where's that specimen pin that I gayly did win In raffle, and gave unto you, Fortescue?" No word spoke the guilty Emeu! "Quick! tell me his name whom thou gavest that same, Ere these hands in thy blood I imbrue!" "Nay, dearest," she cried, as she clung to his side, "I'm innocent as that Emeu!" "Adieu!" He replied, "Miss M. H. Fortescue!" Down she dropped at his feet, all as white as a sheet, As wildly he fled from her view; He thought 'twas her sin,--for he knew not the pin Had been gobbled up by the Emeu; All through The voracity of that Emeu! MRS. JUDGE JENKINS (BEING THE ONLY GENUINE SEQUEL TO "MAUD MULLER") Maud Muller all that summer day Raked the meadow sweet with hay; Yet, looking down the distant lane, She hoped the Judge would come again. But when he came, with smile and bow, Maud only blushed, and stammered, "Ha-ow?" And spoke of her "pa," and wondered whether He'd give consent they should wed together. Old Muller burst in tears, and then Begged that the Judge would lend him "ten;" For trade was dull, and wages low, And the "craps," this year, were somewhat slow. And ere the languid summer died, Sweet Maud became the Judge's bride. But on the day that they were mated, Maud's brother Bob was intoxicated; And Maud's relations, twelve in all, Were very drunk at the Judge's hall. And when the summer came again, The young bride bore him babies twain; And the Judge was blest, but thought it strange That bearing children made such a change; For Maud grew broad and red and stout, And the waist that his arm once clasped about Was more than he now could span; and he Sighed as he pondered, ruefully, How that which in Maud was native grace In Mrs. Jenkins was out of place; And thought of the twins, and wished that they Looked less like the men who raked the hay On Muller's farm, and dreamed with pain Of the day he wandered down the lane. And looking down that dreary track, He half regretted that he came back; For, had he waited, he might have wed Some maiden fair and thoroughbred; For there be women fair as she, Whose verbs and nouns do more agree. Alas for maiden! alas for judge! And the sentimental,--that's one-half "fudge;" For Maud soon thought the Judge a bore, With all his learning and all his lore; And the Judge would have bartered Maud's fair face For more refinement and social grace. If, of all words of tongue and pen, The saddest are, "It might have been," More sad are these we daily see: "It is, but hadn't ought to be." A GEOLOGICAL MADRIGAL I have found out a gift for my fair; I know where the fossils abound, Where the footprints of Aves declare The birds that once walked on the ground. Oh, come, and--in technical speech-- We'll walk this Devonian shore, Or on some Silurian beach We'll wander, my love, evermore. I will show thee the sinuous track By the slow-moving Annelid made, Or the Trilobite that, farther back, In the old Potsdam sandstone was laid; Thou shalt see, in his Jurassic tomb, The Plesiosaurus embalmed; In his Oolitic prime and his bloom, Iguanodon safe and unharmed. You wished--I remember it well, And I loved you the more for that wish-- For a perfect cystedian shell And a WHOLE holocephalic fish. And oh, if Earth's strata contains In its lowest Silurian drift, Or palaeozoic remains The same, 'tis your lover's free gift! Then come, love, and never say nay, But calm all your maidenly fears; We'll note, love, in one summer's day The record of millions of years; And though the Darwinian plan Your sensitive feelings may shock, We'll find the beginning of man, Our fossil ancestors, in rock! AVITOR (AN AERIAL RETROSPECT) What was it filled my youthful dreams, In place of Greek or Latin themes, Or beauty's wild, bewildering beams? Avitor! What visions and celestial scenes I filled with aerial machines, Montgolfier's and Mr. Green's! Avitor! What fairy tales seemed things of course! The roc that brought Sindbad across, The Calendar's own winged horse! Avitor! How many things I took for facts,-- Icarus and his conduct lax, And how he sealed his fate with wax! Avitor! The first balloons I sought to sail, Soap-bubbles fair, but all too frail, Or kites,--but thereby hangs a tail. Avitor! What made me launch from attic tall A kitten and a parasol, And watch their bitter, frightful fall? Avitor! What youthful dreams of high renown Bade me inflate the parson's gown, That went not up, nor yet came down? Avitor! My first ascent I may not tell; Enough to know that in that well My first high aspirations fell. Avitor! My other failures let me pass: The dire explosions, and, alas! The friends I choked with noxious gas. Avitor! For lo! I see perfected rise The vision of my boyish eyes, The messenger of upper skies. Avitor! THE WILLOWS (AFTER EDGAR ALLAN POE) The skies they were ashen and sober, The streets they were dirty and drear; It was night in the month of October, Of my most immemorial year. Like the skies, I was perfectly sober, As I stopped at the mansion of Shear,-- At the Nightingale,--perfectly sober, And the willowy woodland down here. Here, once in an alley Titanic Of Ten-pins, I roamed with my soul,-- Of Ten-pins, with Mary, my soul; They were days when my heart was volcanic, And impelled me to frequently roll, And made me resistlessly roll, Till my ten-strikes created a panic In the realms of the Boreal pole,-- Till my ten-strikes created a panic With the monkey atop of his pole. I repeat, I was perfectly sober, But my thoughts they were palsied and sear,-- My thoughts were decidedly queer; For I knew not the month was October, And I marked not the night of the year; I forgot that sweet morceau of Auber That the band oft performed down here, And I mixed the sweet music of Auber With the Nightingale's music by Shear. And now as the night was senescent, And star-dials pointed to morn, And car-drivers hinted of morn, At the end of the path a liquescent And bibulous lustre was born; 'Twas made by the bar-keeper present, Who mixed a duplicate horn,-- His two hands describing a crescent Distinct with a duplicate horn. And I said: "This looks perfectly regal, For it's warm, and I know I feel dry,-- I am confident that I feel dry. We have come past the emeu and eagle, And watched the gay monkey on high; Let us drink to the emeu and eagle, To the swan and the monkey on high,-- To the eagle and monkey on high; For this bar-keeper will not inveigle, Bully boy with the vitreous eye,-- He surely would never inveigle, Sweet youth with the crystalline eye." But Mary, uplifting her finger, Said: "Sadly this bar I mistrust,-- I fear that this bar does not trust. Oh, hasten! oh, let us not linger! Oh, fly,--let us fly,--are we must!" In terror she cried, letting sink her Parasol till it trailed in the dust; In agony sobbed, letting sink her Parasol till it trailed in the dust,-- Till it sorrowfully trailed in the dust. Then I pacified Mary and kissed her, And tempted her into the room, And conquered her scruples and gloom; And we passed to the end of the vista, But were stopped by the warning of doom,-- By some words that were warning of doom. And I said, "What is written, sweet sister, At the opposite end of the room?" She sobbed, as she answered, "All liquors Must be paid for ere leaving the room." Then my heart it grew ashen and sober, As the streets were deserted and drear, For my pockets were empty and drear; And I cried: "It was surely October, On this very night of last year, That I journeyed, I journeyed down here,-- That I brought a fair maiden down here, On this night of all nights in the year! Ah! to me that inscription is clear; Well I know now, I'm perfectly sober, Why no longer they credit me here,-- Well I know now that music of Auber, And this Nightingale, kept by one Shear." NORTH BEACH (AFTER SPENSER) Lo! where the castle of bold Pfeiffer throws Its sullen shadow on the rolling tide,-- No more the home where joy and wealth repose, But now where wassailers in cells abide; See yon long quay that stretches far and wide, Well known to citizens as wharf of Meiggs: There each sweet Sabbath walks in maiden pride The pensive Margaret, and brave Pat, whose legs Encased in broadcloth oft keep time with Peg's. Here cometh oft the tender nursery-maid, While in her ear her love his tale doth pour; Meantime her infant doth her charge evade, And rambleth sagely on the sandy shore, Till the sly sea-crab, low in ambush laid, Seizeth his leg and biteth him full sore. Ah me! what sounds the shuddering echoes bore When his small treble mixed with Ocean's roar! Hard by there stands an ancient hostelrie, And at its side a garden, where the bear, The stealthy catamount, and coon agree To work deceit on all who gather there; And when Augusta--that unconscious fair-- With nuts and apples plieth Bruin free, Lo! the green parrot claweth her back hair, And the gray monkey grabbeth fruits that she On her gay bonnet wears, and laugheth loud in glee! THE LOST TAILS OF MILETUS High on the Thracian hills, half hid in the billows of clover, Thyme, and the asphodel blooms, and lulled by Pactolian streamlet, She of Miletus lay, and beside her an aged satyr Scratched his ear with his hoof, and playfully mumbled his chestnuts. Vainly the Maenid and the Bassarid gamboled about her, The free-eyed Bacchante sang, and Pan--the renowned, the accomplished--Executed his difficult solo. In vain were their gambols and dances; High o'er the Thracian hills rose the voice of the shepherdess, wailing: "Ai! for the fleecy flocks, the meek-nosed, the passionless faces; Ai! for the tallow-scented, the straight-tailed, the high-stepping; Ai! for the timid glance, which is that which the rustic, sagacious, Applies to him who loves but may not declare his passion!" Her then Zeus answered slow: "O daughter of song and sorrow, Hapless tender of sheep, arise from thy long lamentation! Since thou canst not trust fate, nor behave as becomes a Greek maiden, Look and behold thy sheep." And lo! they returned to her tailless! THE RITUALIST (BY A COMMUNICANT OF "ST. JAMES'S") He wore, I think, a chasuble, the day when first we met; A stole and snowy alb likewise,--I recollect it yet. He called me "daughter," as he raised his jeweled hand to bless; And then, in thrilling undertones, he asked, "Would I confess?" O mother dear! blame not your child, if then on bended knees I dropped, and thought of Abelard, and also Eloise; Or when, beside the altar high, he bowed before the pyx, I envied that seraphic kiss he gave the crucifix. The cruel world may think it wrong, perhaps may deem me weak, And, speaking of that sainted man, may call his conduct "cheek;" And, like that wicked barrister whom Cousin Harry quotes, May term his mixed chalice "grog," his vestments "petticoats;" But, whatsoe'er they do or say, I'll build a Christian's hope On incense and on altar-lights, on chasuble and cope. Let others prove, by precedent, the faith that they profess: "His can't be wrong" that's symbolized by such becoming dress. A MORAL VINDICATOR If Mr. Jones, Lycurgus B., Had one peculiar quality, 'Twas his severe advocacy Of conjugal fidelity. His views of heaven were very free; His views of life were painfully Ridiculous; but fervently He dwelt on marriage sanctity. He frequently went on a spree; But in his wildest revelry, On this especial subject he Betrayed no ambiguity. And though at times Lycurgus B. Did lay his hands not lovingly Upon his wife, the sanctity Of wedlock was his guaranty. But Mrs. Jones declined to see Affairs in the same light as he, And quietly got a decree Divorcing her from that L. B. And what did Jones, Lycurgus B., With his known idiosyncrasy? He smiled,--a bitter smile to see,-- And drew the weapon of Bowie. He did what Sickles did to Key,-- What Cole on Hiscock wrought, did he; In fact, on persons twenty-three He proved the marriage sanctity. The counselor who took the fee, The witnesses and referee, The judge who granted the decree, Died in that wholesale butchery. And then when Jones, Lycurgus B., Had wiped the weapon of Bowie, Twelve jurymen did instantly Acquit and set Lycurgus free. CALIFORNIA MADRIGAL (ON THE APPROACH OF SPRING) Oh, come, my beloved, from thy winter abode, From thy home on the Yuba, thy ranch overflowed; For the waters have fallen, the winter has fled, And the river once more has returned to its bed. Oh, mark how the spring in its beauty is near! How the fences and tules once more reappear! How soft lies the mud on the banks of yon slough By the hole in the levee the waters broke through! All nature, dear Chloris, is blooming to greet The glance of your eye and the tread of your feet; For the trails are all open, the roads are all free, And the highwayman's whistle is heard on the lea. Again swings the lash on the high mountain trail, And the pipe of the packer is scenting the gale; The oath and the jest ringing high o'er the plain, Where the smut is not always confined to the grain. Once more glares the sunlight on awning and roof, Once more the red clay's pulverized by the hoof, Once more the dust powders the "outsides" with red, Once more at the station the whiskey is spread. Then fly with me, love, ere the summer's begun, And the mercury mounts to one hundred and one; Ere the grass now so green shall be withered and sear, In the spring that obtains but one month in the year. WHAT THE ENGINES SAID (OPENING OF THE PACIFIC RAILROAD) What was it the Engines said, Pilots touching,--head to head Facing on the single track, Half a world behind each back? This is what the Engines said, Unreported and unread. With a prefatory screech, In a florid Western speech, Said the Engine from the WEST: "I am from Sierra's crest; And if altitude's a test, Why, I reckon, it's confessed That I've done my level best." Said the Engine from the EAST: "They who work best talk the least. S'pose you whistle down your brakes; What you've done is no great shakes, Pretty fair,--but let our meeting Be a different kind of greeting. Let these folks with champagne stuffing, Not their Engines, do the PUFFING. "Listen! Where Atlantic beats Shores of snow and summer heats; Where the Indian autumn skies Paint the woods with wampum dyes,-- I have chased the flying sun, Seeing all he looked upon, Blessing all that he has blessed, Nursing in my iron breast All his vivifying heat, All his clouds about my crest; And before my flying feet Every shadow must retreat." Said the Western Engine, "Phew!" And a long, low whistle blew. "Come, now, really that's the oddest Talk for one so very modest. You brag of your East! YOU do? Why, I bring the East to YOU! All the Orient, all Cathay, Find through me the shortest way; And the sun you follow here Rises in my hemisphere. Really,--if one must be rude,-- Length, my friend, ain't longitude." Said the Union: "Don't reflect, or I'll run over some Director." Said the Central: "I'm Pacific; But, when riled, I'm quite terrific. Yet to-day we shall not quarrel, Just to show these folks this moral, How two Engines--in their vision-- Once have met without collision." That is what the Engines said, Unreported and unread; Spoken slightly through the nose, With a whistle at the close. THE LEGENDS OF THE RHINE Beetling walls with ivy grown, Frowning heights of mossy stone; Turret, with its flaunting flag Flung from battlemented crag; Dungeon-keep and fortalice Looking down a precipice O'er the darkly glancing wave By the Lurline-haunted cave; Robber haunt and maiden bower, Home of Love and Crime and Power,-- That's the scenery, in fine, Of the Legends of the Rhine. One bold baron, double-dyed Bigamist and parricide, And, as most the stories run, Partner of the Evil One; Injured innocence in white, Fair but idiotic quite, Wringing of her lily hands; Valor fresh from Paynim lands, Abbot ruddy, hermit pale, Minstrel fraught with many a tale,-- Are the actors that combine In the Legends of the Rhine. Bell-mouthed flagons round a board; Suits of armor, shield, and sword; Kerchief with its bloody stain; Ghosts of the untimely slain; Thunder-clap and clanking chain; Headsman's block and shining axe; Thumb-screw, crucifixes, racks; Midnight-tolling chapel bell, Heard across the gloomy fell,-- These and other pleasant facts Are the properties that shine In the Legends of the Rhine. Maledictions, whispered vows Underneath the linden boughs; Murder, bigamy, and theft; Travelers of goods bereft; Rapine, pillage, arson, spoil,-- Everything but honest toil, Are the deeds that best define Every Legend of the Rhine. That Virtue always meets reward, But quicker when it wears a sword; That Providence has special care Of gallant knight and lady fair; That villains, as a thing of course, Are always haunted by remorse,-- Is the moral, I opine, Of the Legends of the Rhine. SONGS WITHOUT SENSE FOR THE PARLOR AND PIANO I. THE PERSONIFIED SENTIMENTAL Affection's charm no longer gilds The idol of the shrine; But cold Oblivion seeks to fill Regret's ambrosial wine. Though Friendship's offering buried lies 'Neath cold Aversion's snow, Regard and Faith will ever bloom Perpetually below. I see thee whirl in marble halls, In Pleasure's giddy train; Remorse is never on that brow, Nor Sorrow's mark of pain. Deceit has marked thee for her own; Inconstancy the same; And Ruin wildly sheds its gleam Athwart thy path of shame. II. THE HOMELY PATHETIC The dews are heavy on my brow; My breath comes hard and low; Yet, mother dear, grant one request, Before your boy must go. Oh! lift me ere my spirit sinks, And ere my senses fail, Place me once more, O mother dear, Astride the old fence-rail. The old fence-rail, the old fence-rail! How oft these youthful legs, With Alice' and Ben Bolt's, were hung Across those wooden pegs! 'Twas there the nauseating smoke Of my first pipe arose: O mother dear, these agonies Are far less keen than those. I know where lies the hazel dell, Where simple Nellie sleeps; I know the cot of Nettie Moore, And where the willow weeps. I know the brookside and the mill, But all their pathos fails Beside the days when once I sat Astride the old fence-rails. III. SWISS AIR I'm a gay tra, la, la, With my fal, lal, la, la, And my bright-- And my light-- Tra, la, le. [Repeat.] Then laugh, ha, ha, ha, And ring, ting, ling, ling, And sing fal, la, la, La, la, le. [Repeat.] VI. LITTLE POSTERITY MASTER JOHNNY'S NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR It was spring the first time that I saw her, for her papa and mamma moved in Next door, just as skating was over, and marbles about to begin; For the fence in our back yard was broken, and I saw, as I peeped through the slat, There were "Johnny-jump-ups" all around her, and I knew it was spring just by that. I never knew whether she saw me, for she didn't say nothing to me, But "Ma! here's a slat in the fence broke, and the boy that is next door can see." But the next day I climbed on our wood-shed, as you know Mamma says I've a right, And she calls out, "Well, peekin' is manners!" and I answered her, "Sass is perlite!" But I wasn't a bit mad, no, Papa, and to prove it, the very next day, When she ran past our fence in the morning I happened to get in her way,-- For you know I am "chunked" and clumsy, as she says are all boys of my size,-- And she nearly upset me, she did, Pa, and laughed till tears came in her eyes. And then we were friends from that moment, for I knew that she told Kitty Sage,-- And she wasn't a girl that would flatter--"that she thought I was tall for my age." And I gave her four apples that evening, and took her to ride on my sled, And-- "What am I telling you this for?" Why, Papa, my neighbor is DEAD! You don't hear one half I am saying,--I really do think it's too bad! Why, you might have seen crape on her door-knob, and noticed to-day I've been sad. And they've got her a coffin of rosewood, and they say they have dressed her in white, And I've never once looked through the fence, Pa, since she died--at eleven last night. And Ma says it's decent and proper, as I was her neighbor and friend, That I should go there to the funeral, and she thinks that YOU ought to attend; But I am so clumsy and awkward, I know I shall be in the way, And suppose they should speak to me, Papa, I wouldn't know just what to say. So I think I will get up quite early,--I know I sleep late, but I know I'll be sure to wake up if our Bridget pulls the string that I'll tie to my toe; And I'll crawl through the fence, and I'll gather the "Johnny-jump-ups" as they grew Round her feet the first day that I saw her, and, Papa, I'll give them to you. For you're a big man, and, you know, Pa, can come and go just where you choose, And you'll take the flowers in to her, and surely they'll never refuse; But, Papa, don't SAY they're from Johnny; THEY won't understand, don't you see? But just lay them down on her bosom, and, Papa, SHE'LL know they're from Me. MISS EDITH'S MODEST REQUEST My Papa knows you, and he says you're a man who makes reading for books; But I never read nothing you wrote, nor did Papa,--I know by his looks. So I guess you're like me when I talk, and I talk, and I talk all the day, And they only say, "Do stop that child!" or, "Nurse, take Miss Edith away." But Papa said if I was good I could ask you--alone by myself-- If you wouldn't write me a book like that little one up on the shelf. I don't mean the pictures, of course, for to make THEM you've got to be smart But the reading that runs all around them, you know,--just the easiest part. You needn't mind what it's about, for no one will see it but me, And Jane,--that's my nurse,--and John,--he's the coachman,--just only us three. You're to write of a bad little girl, that was wicked and bold and all that; And then you're to write, if you please, something good--very good-- of a cat! This cat, she was virtuous and meek, and kind to her parents, and mild, And careful and neat in her ways, though her mistress was such a bad child; And hours she would sit and would gaze when her mistress--that's me-- was so bad, And blink, just as if she would say, "Oh, Edith! you make my heart sad." And yet, you would scarcely believe it, that beautiful, angelic cat Was blamed by the servants for stealing whatever, they said, she'd get at. And when John drank my milk,--don't you tell me! I know just the way it was done,-- They said 'twas the cat,--and she sitting and washing her face in the sun! And then there was Dick, my canary. When I left its cage open one day, They all made believe that she ate it, though I know that the bird flew away. And why? Just because she was playing with a feather she found on the floor. As if cats couldn't play with a feather without people thinking 'twas more! Why, once we were romping together, when I knocked down a vase from the shelf, That cat was as grieved and distressed as if she had done it herself; And she walked away sadly and hid herself, and never came out until tea,-- So they say, for they sent ME to bed, and she never came even to me. No matter whatever happened, it was laid at the door of that cat. Why, once when I tore my apron,--she was wrapped in it, and I called "Rat!"-- Why, they blamed that on HER. I shall never--no, not to my dying day-- Forget the pained look that she gave me when they slapped ME and took me away. Of course, you know just what comes next, when a child is as lovely as that: She wasted quite slowly away; it was goodness was killing that cat. I know it was nothing she ate, for her taste was exceedingly nice; But they said she stole Bobby's ice cream, and caught a bad cold from the ice. And you'll promise to make me a book like that little one up on the shelf, And you'll call her "Naomi," because it's a name that she just gave herself; For she'd scratch at my door in the morning, and whenever I'd call out, "Who's there?" She would answer, "Naomi! Naomi!" like a Christian, I vow and declare. And you'll put me and her in a book. And mind, you're to say I was bad; And I might have been badder than that but for the example I had. And you'll say that she was a Maltese, and--what's that you asked? "Is she dead?" Why, please, sir, THERE AIN'T ANY CAT! You're to make one up out of your head! MISS EDITH MAKES IT PLEASANT FOR BROTHER JACK "Crying!" Of course I am crying, and I guess you would be crying, too, If people were telling such stories as they tell about me, about YOU. Oh yes, you can laugh if you want to, and smoke as you didn't care how, And get your brains softened like uncle's. Dr. Jones says you're gettin' it now. Why don't you say "Stop!" to Miss Ilsey? She cries twice as much as I do, And she's older and cries just from meanness,--for a ribbon or anything new. Ma says it's her "sensitive nature." Oh my! No, I sha'n't stop my talk! And I don't want no apples nor candy, and I don't want to go take a walk! I know why you're mad! Yes, I do, now! You think that Miss Ilsey likes YOU, And I've heard her REPEATEDLY call you the bold-facest boy that she knew; And she'd "like to know where you learnt manners." Oh yes! Kick the table,--that's right! Spill the ink on my dress, and go then round telling Ma that I look like a fright! What stories? Pretend you don't know that they're saying I broke off the match Twixt old Money-grubber and Mary, by saying she called him "Crosspatch," When the only allusion I made him about sister Mary was, she Cared more for his cash than his temper, and you know, Jack, you said that to me. And it's true! But it's ME, and I'm scolded, and Pa says if I keep on I might By and by get my name in the papers! Who cares? Why, 'twas only last night I was reading how Pa and the sheriff were selling some lots, and it's plain If it's awful to be in the papers, why, Papa would go and complain. You think it ain't true about Ilsey? Well, I guess I know girls, and I say There's nothing I see about Ilsey to show she likes you, anyway! I know what it means when a girl who has called her cat after one boy Goes and changes its name to another's. And she's done it--and I wish you joy! MISS EDITH MAKES ANOTHER FRIEND Oh, you're the girl lives on the corner? Come in--if you want to-- come quick! There's no one but me in the house, and the cook--but she's only a stick. Don't try the front way, but come over the fence--through the window--that's how. Don't mind the big dog--he won't bite you--just see him obey me! there, now! What's your name? Mary Ellen? How funny! Mine's Edith--it's nicer, you see; But yours does for you, for you're plainer, though maybe you're gooder than me; For Jack says I'm sometimes a devil, but Jack, of all folks, needn't talk, For I don't call the seamstress an angel till Ma says the poor thing must "walk." Come in! It's quite dark in the parlor, for sister will keep the blinds down, For you know her complexion is sallow like yours, but she isn't as brown; Though Jack says that isn't the reason she likes to sit here with Jim Moore. Do you think that he meant that she kissed him? Would you--if your lips wasn't sore? If you like, you can try our piano. 'Tain't ours. A man left it here To rent by the month, although Ma says he hasn't been paid for a year. Sister plays--oh, such fine variations!--why, I once heard a gentleman say That she didn't mind THAT for the music--in fact, it was just in her way! Ain't I funny? And yet it's the queerest of all that, whatever I say, One half of the folks die a-laughing, and the rest, they all look t'other way. And some say, "That child!" Do they ever say that to such people as you? Though maybe you're naturally silly, and that makes your eyes so askew. Now stop--don't you dare to be crying! Just as sure as you live, if you do, I'll call in my big dog to bite you, and I'll make my Papa kill you, too! And then where'll you be? So play pretty. There's my doll, and a nice piece of cake. You don't want it--you think it is poison! Then I'LL eat it, dear, just for your sake! WHAT MISS EDITH SAW FROM HER WINDOW Our window's not much, though it fronts on the street; There's a fly in the pane that gets nothin' to eat; But it's curious how people think it's a treat For ME to look out of the window! Why, when company comes, and they're all speaking low, With their chairs drawn together, then some one says, "Oh! Edith dear!--that's a good child--now run, love, and go And amuse yourself there at the window!" Or Bob--that's my brother--comes in with his chum, And they whisper and chuckle, the same words will come. And it's "Edith, look here! Oh, I say! what a rum Lot of things you can see from that window!" And yet, as I told you, there's only that fly Buzzing round in the pane, and a bit of blue sky, And the girl in the opposite window, that I Look at when SHE looks from HER window. And yet, I've been thinking I'd so like to see If what goes on behind HER, goes on behind ME! And then, goodness gracious! what fun it would be For us BOTH as we sit by our window! How we'd know when the parcels were hid in a drawer, Or things taken out that one never sees more; What people come in and go out of the door, That we never see from the window! And that night when the stranger came home with our Jane I might SEE what I HEARD then, that sounded so plain-- Like when my wet fingers I rub on the pane (Which they won't let ME do on my window). And I'd know why papa shut the door with a slam, And said something funny that sounded like "jam," And then "Edith--where are you?" I said, "Here I am." "Ah, that's right, dear, look out of the window!" They say when I'm grown up these things will appear More plain than they do when I look at them here, But I think I see some things uncommonly clear, As I sit and look down from the window. What things? Oh, the things that I make up, you know, Out of stories I've read--and they all pass below. Ali Baba, the Forty Thieves, all in a row, Go by, as I look from my window. That's only at church time; other days there's no crowd. Don't laugh! See that big man who looked up and bowed? That's our butcher--I call him the Sultan Mahoud When he nods to me here at the window! And THAT man--he's our neighbor--just gone for a ride Has three wives in the churchyard that lie side by side. So I call him "Bluebeard" in search of his bride, While I'm Sister Anne at the window. And what do I call you? Well, here's what I DO: When my sister expects you, she puts me here, too; But I wait till you enter, to see if it's you, And then--I just OPEN the window! "Dear child!" Yes, that's me! "Oh, you ask what that's for? Well, Papa says you're 'Poverty's self,' and what's more, I open the window, when YOU'RE at the door, To see Love fly out of the window!" ON THE LANDING (AN IDYL OF THE BALUSTERS) BOBBY, aetat. 3 1/2. JOHNNY, aetat. 4 1/2. BOBBY Do you know why they've put us in that back room, Up in the attic, close against the sky, And made believe our nursery's a cloak-room? Do you know why? JOHNNY No more I don't, nor why that Sammy's mother, What Ma thinks horrid, 'cause he bunged my eye, Eats an ice cream, down there, like any other! No more don't I! BOBBY Do you know why Nurse says it isn't manners For you and me to ask folks twice for pie, And no one hits that man with two bananas? Do you know why? JOHNNY No more I don't, nor why that girl, whose dress is Off of her shoulders, don't catch cold and die, When you and me gets croup when WE undresses! No more don't I! BOBBY Perhaps she ain't as good as you and I is, And God don't want her up there in the sky, And lets her live--to come in just when pie is-- Perhaps that's why! JOHNNY Do you know why that man that's got a cropped head Rubbed it just now as if he felt a fly? Could it be, Bobby, something that I dropped? And is that why? BOBBY Good boys behaves, and so they don't get scolded, Nor drop hot milk on folks as they pass by. JOHNNY (piously) Marbles would bounce on Mr. Jones' bald head-- But I sha'n't try! BOBBY Do you know why Aunt Jane is always snarling At you and me because we tells a lie, And she don't slap that man that called her darling? Do you know why? JOHNNY No more I don't, nor why that man with Mamma Just kissed her hand. BOBBY She hurt it--and that's why; He made it well, the very way that Mamma Does do to I. JOHNNY I feel so sleepy.... Was that Papa kissed us? What made him sigh, and look up to the sky? BOBBY We weren't downstairs, and he and God had missed us, And that was why! NOTES THE LOST GALLEON. As the custom on which the central incident of this legend is based may not be familiar to all readers, I will repeat here that it is the habit of navigators to drop a day from their calendar in crossing westerly the 180th degree of longitude of Greenwich, adding a day in coming east; and that the idea of the lost galleon had an origin as prosaic as the log of the first China Mail Steamer from San Francisco. The explanation of the custom and its astronomical relations belongs rather to the usual text-books than to poetical narration. If any reader thinks I have overdrawn the credulous superstitions of the ancient navigators, I refer him to the veracious statements of Maldonado, De Fonte, the later voyages of La Perouse and Anson, and the charts of 1640. In the charts of that day Spanish navigators reckoned longitude E. 360 degrees from the meridian of the Isle of Ferro. For the sake of perspicuity before a modern audience, the more recent meridian of Madrid was substituted. The custom of dropping a day at some arbitrary point in crossing the Pacific westerly, I need not say, remains unaffected by any change of meridian. I know not if any galleon was ever really missing. For two hundred and fifty years an annual trip was made between Acapulco and Manila. It may be some satisfaction to the more severely practical of my readers to know that, according to the best statistics of insurance, the loss during that period would be exactly three vessels and six hundredths of a vessel, which would certainly justify me in this summary disposition of ONE. THE PLIOCENE SKULL. This extraordinary fossil is in the possession of Prof. Josiah D. Whitney, of the State Geological Survey of California. The poem was based on the following paragraph from the daily press of 1868: "A human skull has been found in California, in the pliocene formation. This skull is the remnant not only of the earliest pioneer of this State, but the oldest known human being.... The skull was found in a shaft 150 feet deep, two miles from Angels in Calaveras County, by a miner named James Watson, who gave it to Mr. Scribner, a merchant, who gave it to Dr. Jones, who sent it to the State Geological Survey.... The published volume of the State Survey of the Geology of California states that man existed here contemporaneously with the mastodon, but this fossil proves that he was here before the mastodon was known to exist." 
25153	----	None 
2558	----	None 
25599	----	None 
25880	----	images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) Transcriber's Notes Some text styles have been preserved in this text by enclosing between special characters. Italics uses _underlines_ and small caps uses ~tildes~. Font sizes are not preserved. AMERICAN POETRY 1922 A MISCELLANY [Illustration] NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY RAHWAY, N. J. A FOREWORD When the first Miscellany of American Poetry appeared in 1920, innumerable were the questions asked by both readers and reviewers of publishers and contributors alike. The modest note on the jacket appeared to satisfy no one. The volume purported to have no editor, yet a collection without an editor was pronounced preposterous. It was obviously not the organ of a school, yet it did not seem to have been compiled to exploit any particular phase of American life; neither Nature, Love, Patriotism, Propaganda, nor Philosophy could be acclaimed as its reason for being, and it was certainly not intended, as has been so frequent of late, to bring a cheerful absence of mind to the world-weary during an unoccupied ten minutes. Again, it was exclusive not inclusive, since its object was, evidently, not the meritorious if impossible one of attempting to be a compendium of present-day American verse. But the publisher's note had stated one thing quite clearly, that the Miscellany was to be a biennial. Two years have passed, and with the second volume it has seemed best to state at once the reasons which actuated its contributors to join in such a venture. In the first place, the plan of the _Miscellany_ is frankly imitative. For some years now there has been published in England an anthology entitled Georgian Poetry. The Miscellany is intended to be an American companion to that publication. The dissimilarities of temperament, range and choice of subjects are manifest, but the outstanding difference is this: _Georgian Poetry_ has an editor, and the poems it contains may be taken as that editor's reaction to the poetry of the day. The _Miscellany_, on the other hand, has no editor; it is no one person's choice which forms it; it is not an attempt to throw into relief any particular group or stress any particular tendency. It does disclose the most recent work of certain representative figures in contemporary American literature. The poets who appear here have come together by mutual accord and, although they may invite others to join them in subsequent volumes as circumstance dictates, each one stands (as all newcomers also must stand) as the exponent of fresh and strikingly diverse qualities in our native poetry. It is as if a dozen unacademic painters, separated by temperament and distance, were to arrange to have an exhibition every two years of their latest work. They would not pretend that they were the only painters worthy of a public showing; they would maintain that their work was, generally speaking, most interesting to one another. Their gallery would necessarily be limited; but it would be flexible enough to admit, with every fresh exhibit, three or four new members who had achieved an importance and an idiom of their own. This is just what the original contributors to the _Miscellany_ have done. The newcomers--H. D., Alfred Kreymborg, and Edna St. Vincent Millay--have taken their places with the same absence of judge or jury that marks any "society of independents." There is no hanging committee; no organizer of "position." Two years ago the alphabet determined the arrangement; this time seniority has been the sole arbiter of precedence. Furthermore--and this can not be too often repeated--there has been no editor. To be painstakingly precise, each contributor has been his own editor. As such, he has chosen his own selections and determined the order in which they are to be printed, but he has had no authority over either the choice or grouping of his fellow exhibitors' contributions. To one of the members has been delegated the merely mechanical labors of assembling, proof-reading, and seeing the volume through the press. The absence of E. A. Robinson from this year's _Miscellany_ is a source of regret not only to all the contributors but to the poet himself. Mr. Robinson has written nothing since his Collected Poems with the exception of a long poem--a volume in itself--but he hopes to appear in any subsequent collection. It should be added that this is not a haphazard anthology of picked-over poetry. The poems that follow are new. They are new not only in the sense that (with two exceptions) they cannot be found in book form, but most of them have never previously been published. Certain of the selections have appeared in recent magazines and these are reprinted by permission of _The Century_, _The Yale Review_, _Poetry: A Magazine of Verse_, _The New Republic_, _Harper's_, _Scribner's_, _The Bookman_, _The Freeman_, _Broom_, _The Dial_, _The Atlantic Monthly_, _Farm and Fireside_, _The Measure_, and _The Literary Review_. Vachel Lindsay's "I Know All This When Gipsy Fiddles Cry" is a revised version of the poem of that name which was printed in _The Enchanted Years_. CONTENTS _A Foreword_ _III_ AMY LOWELL Lilacs _3_ Twenty-four Hokku on a Modern Theme _8_ The Swans _13_ Prime _16_ Vespers _17_ In Excelsis _18_ La Ronde du Diable _20_ ROBERT FROST Fire and Ice _25_ The Grindstone _26_ The Witch of Coös _29_ A Brook in the City _37_ Design _38_ CARL SANDBURG And So To-day _41_ California City Landscape _49_ Upstream _51_ Windflower Leaf _52_ VACHEL LINDSAY In Praise of Johnny Appleseed _55_ I Know All This When Gipsy Fiddles Cry _66_ JAMES OPPENHEIM Hebrews _75_ ALFRED KREYMBORG Adagio: A Duet _79_ Die Küche _80_ Rain _81_ Peasant _83_ Bubbles _85_ Dirge _87_ Colophon _88_ SARA TEASDALE Wisdom _91_ Places _92_ _Twilight_ (Tucson) _Full Moon_ (Santa Barbara) _Winter Sun_ (Lenox) _Evening_ (Nahant) Words for an Old Air _97_ Those Who Love _98_ Two Songs for Solitude _99_ _The Crystal Gazer_ _The Solitary_ LOUIS UNTERMEYER Monolog from a Mattress _103_ Waters of Babylon _110_ The Flaming Circle _112_ Portrait of a Machine _114_ Roast Leviathan _115_ JOHN GOULD FLETCHER A Rebel _127_ The Rock _128_ Blue Water _129_ Prayers for Wind _130_ Impromptu _131_ Chinese Poet Among Barbarians _132_ Snowy Mountains _133_ The Future _134_ Upon the Hill _136_ The Enduring _137_ JEAN STARR UNTERMEYER Old Man _141_ Tone Picture _142_ They Say-- _143_ Rescue _144_ Mater in Extremis _146_ Self-Rejected _147_ H. D. Holy Satyr _151_ Lais _153_ Heliodora _156_ Toward the Piræus _161_ _Slay with your eyes, Greek_ _You would have broken my wings_ _I loved you_ _What had you done_ _If I had been a boy_ _It was not chastity that made me cold_ CONRAD AIKEN Seven Twilights _171_ _The ragged pilgrim on the road to nowhere_ _Now by the wall of the ancient town_ _When the tree bares, the music of it changes_ _"This is the hour," she says, "of transmutation"_ _Now the great wheel of darkness and low clouds_ _Heaven, you say, will be a field in April_ _In the long silence of the sea_ Tetélestai _184_ EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY Eight Sonnets _193_ _When you, that at this moment are to me_ _What's this of death, from you who never will die_ _I know I am but summer to your heart_ _Here is a wound that never will heal, I know_ _What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why_ _Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare_ _Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!_ _Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find_ BIBLIOGRAPHY _201_ AMY LOWELL LILACS Lilacs, False blue, White, Purple, Color of lilac, Your great puffs of flowers Are everywhere in this my New England. Among your heart-shaped leaves Orange orioles hop like music-box birds and sing Their little weak soft songs; In the crooks of your branches The bright eyes of song sparrows sitting on spotted eggs Peer restlessly through the light and shadow Of all Springs. Lilacs in dooryards Holding quiet conversations with an early moon; Lilacs watching a deserted house Settling sideways into the grass of an old road; Lilacs, wind-beaten, staggering under a lopsided shock of bloom Above a cellar dug into a hill. You are everywhere. You were everywhere. You tapped the window when the preacher preached his sermon, And ran along the road beside the boy going to school. You stood by pasture-bars to give the cows good milking, You persuaded the housewife that her dish-pan was of silver And her husband an image of pure gold. You flaunted the fragrance of your blossoms Through the wide doors of Custom Houses-- You, and sandal-wood, and tea, Charging the noses of quill-driving clerks When a ship was in from China. You called to them: "Goose-quill men, goose-quill men, May is a month for flitting," Until they writhed on their high stools And wrote poetry on their letter-sheets behind the propped-up ledgers. Paradoxical New England clerks, Writing inventories in ledgers, reading the "Song of Solomon" at night, So many verses before bedtime, Because it was the Bible. The dead fed you Amid the slant stones of graveyards. Pale ghosts who planted you Came in the night time And let their thin hair blow through your clustered stems. You are of the green sea, And of the stone hills which reach a long distance. You are of elm-shaded streets with little shops where they sell kites and marbles, You are of great parks where every one walks and nobody is at home. You cover the blind sides of greenhouses And lean over the top to say a hurry-word through the glass To your friends, the grapes, inside. Lilacs, False blue, White, Purple, Color of lilac, You have forgotten your Eastern origin, The veiled women with eyes like panthers, The swollen, aggressive turbans of jeweled Pashas. Now you are a very decent flower, A reticent flower, A curiously clear-cut, candid flower, Standing beside clean doorways, Friendly to a house-cat and a pair of spectacles, Making poetry out of a bit of moonlight And a hundred or two sharp blossoms. Maine knows you, Has for years and years; New Hampshire knows you, And Massachusetts And Vermont. Cape Cod starts you along the beaches to Rhode Island; Connecticut takes you from a river to the sea. You are brighter than apples, Sweeter than tulips, You are the great flood of our souls Bursting above the leaf-shapes of our hearts, You are the smell of all Summers, The love of wives and children, The recollection of the gardens of little children, You are State Houses and Charters And the familiar treading of the foot to and fro on a road it knows. May is lilac here in New England, May is a thrush singing "Sun up!" on a tip-top ash-tree, May is white clouds behind pine-trees Puffed out and marching upon a blue sky. May is a green as no other, May is much sun through small leaves, May is soft earth, And apple-blossoms, And windows open to a South wind. May is a full light wind of lilac From Canada to Narragansett Bay. Lilacs, False blue, White, Purple, Color of lilac, Heart-leaves of lilac all over New England, Roots of lilac under all the soil of New England, Lilac in me because I am New England, Because my roots are in it, Because my leaves are of it, Because my flowers are for it, Because it is my country And I speak to it of itself And sing of it with my own voice Since certainly it is mine. TWENTY-FOUR HOKKU ON A MODERN THEME I Again the larkspur, Heavenly blue in my garden. They, at least, unchanged. II How have I hurt you? You look at me with pale eyes, But these are my tears. III Morning and evening-- Yet for us once long ago Was no division. IV I hear many words. Set an hour when I may come Or remain silent. V In the ghostly dawn I write new words for your ears-- Even now you sleep. VI This then is morning. Have you no comfort for me Cold-colored flowers? VII My eyes are weary Following you everywhere. Short, oh short, the days! VIII When the flower falls The leaf is no more cherished. Every day I fear. IX Even when you smile Sorrow is behind your eyes. Pity me, therefore. X Laugh--it is nothing. To others you may seem gay, I watch with grieved eyes. XI Take it, this white rose. Stems of roses do not bleed; Your fingers are safe. XII As a river-wind Hurling clouds at a bright moon, So am I to you. XIII Watching the iris, The faint and fragile petals-- How am I worthy? XIV Down a red river I drift in a broken skiff. Are you then so brave? XV Night lies beside me Chaste and cold as a sharp sword. It and I alone. XVI Last night it rained. Now, in the desolate dawn, Crying of blue jays. XVII Foolish so to grieve, Autumn has its colored leaves-- But before they turn? XVIII Afterwards I think: Poppies bloom when it thunders. Is this not enough? XIX Love is a game--yes? I think it is a drowning: Black willows and stars. XX When the aster fades The creeper flaunts in crimson. Always another! XXI Turning from the page, Blind with a night of labor, I hear morning crows. XXII A cloud of lilies, Or else you walk before me. Who could see clearly? XXIII Sweet smell of wet flowers Over an evening garden. Your portrait, perhaps? XXIV Staying in my room, I thought of the new Spring leaves. That day was happy. THE SWANS The swans float and float Along the moat Around the Bishop's garden, And the white clouds push Across a blue sky With edges that seem to draw in and harden. Two slim men of white bronze Beat each with a hammer on the end of a rod The hours of God. Striking a bell, They do it well. And the echoes jump, and tinkle, and swell In the Cathedral's carved stone polygons. The swans float About the moat, And another swan sits still in the air Above the old inn. He gazes into the street And swims the cold and the heat, He has always been there, At least so say the cobbles in the square. They listen to the beat Of the hammered bell, And think of the feet Which beat upon their tops; But what they think they do not tell. And the swans who float Up and down the moat Gobble the bread the Bishop feeds them. The slim bronze men beat the hour again, But only the gargoyles up in the hard blue air heed them. When the Bishop says a prayer, And the choir sing "Amen," The hammers break in on them there: Clang! Clang! Beware! Beware! The carved swan looks down at the passing men, And the cobbles wink: "An hour has gone again." But the people kneeling before the Bishop's chair Forget the passing over the cobbles in the square. An hour of day and an hour of night, And the clouds float away in a red-splashed light. The sun, quotha? or white, white Smoke with fire all alight. An old roof crashing on a Bishop's tomb, Swarms of men with a thirst for room, And the footsteps blur to a shower, shower, shower, Of men passing--passing--every hour, With arms of power, and legs of power, And power in their strong, hard minds. No need then For the slim bronze men Who beat God's hours: Prime, Tierce, None. Who wants to hear? No one. We will melt them, and mold them, And make them a stem For a banner gorged with blood, For a blue-mouthed torch. So the men rush like clouds, They strike their iron edges on the Bishop's chair And fling down the lanterns by the tower stair. They rip the Bishop out of his tomb And break the mitre off of his head. "See," say they, "the man is dead; He cannot shiver or sing. We'll toss for his ring." The cobbles see this all along the street Coming--coming--on countless feet. And the clockmen mark the hours as they go. But slow--slow-- The swans float In the Bishop's moat. And the inn swan Sits on and on, Staring before him with cold glass eyes. Only the Bishop walks serene, Pleased with his church, pleased with his house, Pleased with the sound of the hammered bell, Beating his doom. Saying "Boom! Boom! Room! Room!" He is old, and kind, and deaf, and blind, And very, very pleased with his charming moat And the swans which float. PRIME Your voice is like bells over roofs at dawn When a bird flies And the sky changes to a fresher color. Speak, speak, Beloved. Say little things For my ears to catch And run with them to my heart. VESPERS Last night, at sunset, The foxgloves were like tall altar candles. Could I have lifted you to the roof of the greenhouse, my Dear, I should have understood their burning. IN EXCELSIS You--you-- Your shadow is sunlight on a plate of silver; Your footsteps, the seeding-place of lilies; Your hands moving, a chime of bells across a windless air. The movement of your hands is the long, golden running of light from a rising sun; It is the hopping of birds upon a garden-path. As the perfume of jonquils, you come forth in the morning. Young horses are not more sudden than your thoughts, Your words are bees about a pear-tree, Your fancies are the gold-and-black striped wasps buzzing among red apples. I drink your lips, I eat the whiteness of your hands and feet. My mouth is open, As a new jar I am empty and open. Like white water are you who fill the cup of my mouth, Like a brook of water thronged with lilies. You are frozen as the clouds, You are far and sweet as the high clouds. I dare reach to you, I dare touch the rim of your brightness. I leap beyond the winds, I cry and shout, For my throat is keen as a sword Sharpened on a hone of ivory. My throat sings the joy of my eyes, The rushing gladness of my love. How has the rainbow fallen upon my heart? How have I snared the seas to lie in my fingers And caught the sky to be a cover for my head? How have you come to dwell with me, Compassing me with the four circles of your mystic lightness, So that I say "Glory! Glory!" and bow before you As to a shrine? Do I tease myself that morning is morning and a day after? Do I think the air a condescension, The earth a politeness, Heaven a boon deserving thanks? So you--air--earth--heaven-- I do not thank you, I take you, I live. And those things which I say in consequence Are rubies mortised in a gate of stone. LA RONDE DU DIABLE "Here we go round the ivy-bush," And that's a tune we all dance to. Little poet people snatching ivy, Trying to prevent one another from snatching ivy. If you get a leaf, there's another for me; Look at the bush. But I want your leaf, Brother, and you mine, Therefore, of course, we push. "Here we go round the laurel-tree." Do we want laurels for ourselves most, Or most that no one else shall have any? We cannot stop to discuss the question. We cannot stop to plait them into crowns Or notice whether they become us. We scarcely see the laurel-tree, The crowd about us is all we see, And there's no room in it for you and me. Therefore, Sisters, it's my belief We've none of us very much chance at a leaf. "Here we go round the barberry-bush." It's a bitter, blood-red fruit at best, Which puckers the mouth and burns the heart. To tell the truth, only one or two Want the berries enough to strive For more than he has, more than she. An acid berry for you and me. Abundance of berries for all who will eat, But an aching meat. That's poetry. And who wants to swallow a mouthful of sorrow? The world is old and our century Must be well along, and we've no time to waste. Make haste, Brothers and Sisters, push With might and main round the ivy-bush, Struggle and pull at the laurel-tree, And leave the barberries be For poor lost lunatics like me, Who set them so high They overtop the sun in the sky. Does it matter at all that we don't know why? ROBERT FROST FIRE AND ICE Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To know that for destruction ice Is also great, And would suffice. THE GRINDSTONE Having a wheel and four legs of its own Has never availed the cumbersome grindstone To get it anywhere that I can see. These hands have helped it go and even race; Not all the motion, though, they ever lent, Not all the miles it may have thought it went, Have got it one step from the starting place. It stands beside the same old apple tree. The shadow of the apple tree is thin Upon it now; its feet are fast in snow. All other farm machinery's gone in, And some of it on no more legs and wheel Than the grindstone can boast to stand or go. (I'm thinking chiefly of the wheelbarrow.) For months it hasn't known the taste of steel, Washed down with rusty water in a tin. But standing outdoors, hungry, in the cold, Except in towns, at night, is not a sin. And, anyway, its standing in the yard Under a ruinous live apple tree Has nothing any more to do with me, Except that I remember how of old, One summer day, all day I drove it hard, And some one mounted on it rode it hard, And he and I between us ground a blade. I gave it the preliminary spin, And poured on water (tears it might have been); And when it almost gayly jumped and flowed, A Father-Time-like man got on and rode, Armed with a scythe and spectacles that glowed. He turned on will-power to increase the load And slow me down--and I abruptly slowed, Like coming to a sudden railroad station. I changed from hand to hand in desperation. I wondered what machine of ages gone This represented an improvement on. For all I knew it may have sharpened spears And arrowheads itself. Much use for years Had gradually worn it an oblate Spheroid that kicked and struggled in its gait, Appearing to return me hate for hate. (But I forgive it now as easily As any other boyhood enemy Whose pride has failed to get him anywhere.) I wondered who it was the man thought ground-- The one who held the wheel back or the one Who gave his life to keep it going round? I wondered if he really thought it fair For him to have the say when we were done. Such were the bitter thoughts to which I turned. Not for myself was I so much concerned. Oh, no!--although, of course, I could have found A better way to pass the afternoon Than grinding discord out of a grindstone, And beating insects at their gritty tune. Nor was I for the man so much concerned. Once when the grindstone almost jumped its bearing It looked as if he might be badly thrown And wounded on his blade. So far from caring, I laughed inside, and only cranked the faster, (It ran as if it wasn't greased but glued); I welcomed any moderate disaster That might be calculated to postpone What evidently nothing could conclude. The thing that made me more and more afraid Was that we'd ground it sharp and hadn't known, And now were only wasting precious blade. And when he raised it dripping once and tried The creepy edge of it with wary touch, And viewed it over his glasses funny-eyed, Only disinterestedly to decide It needed a turn more, I could have cried Wasn't there danger of a turn too much? Mightn't we make it worse instead of better? I was for leaving something to the whetter. What if it wasn't all it should be? I'd Be satisfied if he'd be satisfied. THE WITCH OF COÖS _Circa 1922_ I staid the night for shelter at a farm Behind the mountain, with a mother and son, Two old-believers. They did all the talking. _The Mother_ Folks think a witch who has familiar spirits She _could_ call up to pass a winter evening, But _won't_, should be burned at the stake or something. Summoning spirits isn't "Button, button, Who's got the button?" I'd have you understand. _The Son_ Mother can make a common table rear And kick with two legs like an army mule. _The Mother_ And when I've done it, what good have I done? Rather than tip a table for you, let me Tell you what Ralle the Sioux Control once told me. He said the dead had souls, but when I asked him How that could be--I thought the dead were souls, He broke my trance. Don't that make you suspicious That there's something the dead are keeping back? Yes, there's something the dead are keeping back. _The Son_ You wouldn't want to tell him what we have Up attic, mother? _The Mother_ Bones--a skeleton. _The Son_ But the headboard of mother's bed is pushed Against the attic door: the door is nailed. It's harmless. Mother hears it in the night Halting perplexed behind the barrier Of door and headboard. Where it wants to get Is back into the cellar where it came from. _The Mother_ We'll never let them, will we, son? We'll never! _The Son_ It left the cellar forty years ago And carried itself like a pile of dishes Up one flight from the cellar to the kitchen, Another from the kitchen to the bedroom, Another from the bedroom to the attic, Right past both father and mother, and neither stopped it. Father had gone upstairs; mother was downstairs. I was a baby: I don't know where I was. _The Mother_ The only fault my husband found with me-- I went to sleep before I went to bed, Especially in winter when the bed Might just as well be ice and the clothes snow. The night the bones came up the cellar-stairs Toffile had gone to bed alone and left me, But left an open door to cool the room off So as to sort of turn me out of it. I was just coming to myself enough To wonder where the cold was coming from, When I heard Toffile upstairs in the bedroom And thought I heard him downstairs in the cellar. The board we had laid down to walk dry-shod on When there was water in the cellar in spring Struck the hard cellar bottom. And then some one Began the stairs, two footsteps for each step, The way a man with one leg and a crutch, Or little child, comes up. It wasn't Toffile: It wasn't any one who could be there. The bulkhead double-doors were double-locked And swollen tight and buried under snow. The cellar windows were banked up with sawdust And swollen tight and buried under snow. It was the bones. I knew them--and good reason. My first impulse was to get to the knob And hold the door. But the bones didn't try The door; they halted helpless on the landing, Waiting for things to happen in their favor. The faintest restless rustling ran all through them. I never could have done the thing I did If the wish hadn't been too strong in me To see how they were mounted for this walk. I had a vision of them put together Not like a man, but like a chandelier. So suddenly I flung the door wide on him. A moment he stood balancing with emotion, And all but lost himself. (A tongue of fire Flashed out and licked along his upper teeth. Smoke rolled inside the sockets of his eyes.) Then he came at me with one hand outstretched, The way he did in life once; but this time I struck the hand off brittle on the floor, And fell back from him on the floor myself. The finger-pieces slid in all directions. (Where did I see one of those pieces lately? Hand me my button-box--it must be there.) I sat up on the floor and shouted, "Toffile, It's coming up to you." It had its choice Of the door to the cellar or the hall. It took the hall door for the novelty, And set off briskly for so slow a thing, Still going every which way in the joints, though, So that it looked like lightning or a scribble, From the slap I had just now given its hand. I listened till it almost climbed the stairs From the hall to the only finished bedroom, Before I got up to do anything; Then ran and shouted, "Shut the bedroom door, Toffile, for my sake!" "Company," he said, "Don't make me get up; I'm too warm in bed." So lying forward weakly on the handrail I pushed myself upstairs, and in the light (The kitchen had been dark) I had to own I could see nothing. "Toffile, I don't see it. It's with us in the room, though. It's the bones." "What bones?" "The cellar bones--out of the grave." * * * * * That made him throw his bare legs out of bed And sit up by me and take hold of me. I wanted to put out the light and see If I could see it, or else mow the room, With our arms at the level of our knees, And bring the chalk-pile down. "I'll tell you what-- It's looking for another door to try. The uncommonly deep snow has made him think Of his old song, _The Wild Colonial Boy_, He always used to sing along the tote-road. He's after an open door to get out-doors. Let's trap him with an open door up attic." Toffile agreed to that, and sure enough, Almost the moment he was given an opening, The steps began to climb the attic stairs. I heard them. Toffile didn't seem to hear them. "Quick!" I slammed to the door and held the knob. "Toffile, get nails." I made him nail the door shut, And push the headboard of the bed against it. Then we asked was there anything Up attic that we'd ever want again. The attic was less to us than the cellar. If the bones liked the attic, let them like it, Let them _stay_ in the attic. When they sometimes Come down the stairs at night and stand perplexed Behind the door and headboard of the bed, Brushing their chalky skull with chalky fingers, With sounds like the dry rattling of a shutter, That's what I sit up in the dark to say-- To no one any more since Toffile died. Let them stay in the attic since they went there. I promised Toffile to be cruel to them For helping them be cruel once to him. _The Son_ We think they had a grave down in the cellar. _The Mother_ We know they had a grave down in the cellar. _The Son_ We never could find out whose bones they were. _The Mother_ Yes, we could too, son. Tell the truth for once. They were a man's his father killed for me. I mean a man he killed instead of me. The least I could do was to help dig their grave. We were about it one night in the cellar. Son knows the story: but 'twas not for him To tell the truth, suppose the time had come. Son looks surprised to see me end a lie We'd kept up all these years between ourselves So as to have it ready for outsiders. But to-night I don't care enough to lie-- I don't remember why I ever cared. Toffile, if he were here, I don't believe Could tell you why he ever cared himself.... She hadn't found the finger-bone she wanted Among the buttons poured out in her lap. I verified the name next morning: Toffile; The rural letter-box said Toffile Lajway. A BROOK IN THE CITY The farm house lingers, though averse to square With the new city street it has to wear A number in. But what about the brook That held the house as in an elbow-crook? I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength And impulse, having dipped a finger-length And made it leap my knuckle, having tossed A flower to try its currents where they crossed. The meadow grass could be cemented down From growing under pavements of a town; The apple trees be sent to hearth-stone flame. Is water wood to serve a brook the same? How else dispose of an immortal force No longer needed? Staunch it at its source With cinder loads dumped down? The brook was thrown Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone In fetid darkness still to live and run-- And all for nothing it had ever done Except forget to go in fear perhaps. No one would know except for ancient maps That such a brook ran water. But I wonder If, from its being kept forever under, These thoughts may not have risen that so keep This new-built city from both work and sleep. DESIGN I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth-- Assorted characters of death and blight Mixed ready to begin the morning right, Like the ingredients of a witches' broth-- A snow-drop spider, a flower like froth, And dead wings carried like a paper kite. What had that flower to do with being white, The wayside blue and innocent heal-all? What brought the kindred spider to that height, Then steered the white moth thither in the night? What but design of darkness to appal?-- If design govern in a thing so small. CARL SANDBURG AND SO TO-DAY And so to-day--they lay him away-- the boy nobody knows the name of-- the buck private--the unknown soldier-- the doughboy who dug under and died when they told him to--that's him. Down Pennsylvania Avenue to-day the riders go, men and boys riding horses, roses in their teeth, stems of roses, rose leaf stalks, rose dark leaves-- the line of the green ends in a red rose flash. Skeleton men and boys riding skeleton horses, the rib bones shine, the rib bones curve, shine with savage, elegant curves-- a jawbone runs with a long white slant, a skull dome runs with a long white arch, bone triangles click and rattle, elbows, ankles, white line slants-- shining in the sun, past the White House, past the Treasury Building, Army and Navy Buildings, on to the mystic white Capitol Dome-- so they go down Pennsylvania Avenue to-day, skeleton men and boys riding skeleton horses, stems of roses in their teeth, rose dark leaves at their white jaw slants-- and a horse laugh question nickers and whinnies, moans with a whistle out of horse head teeth: why? who? where? ("The big fish--eat the little fish-- the little fish--eat the shrimps-- and the shrimps--eat mud,"-- said a cadaverous man--with a black umbrella-- spotted with white polka dots--with a missing ear--with a missing foot and arms-- with a missing sheath of muscles singing to the silver sashes of the sun.) And so to-day--they lay him away-- the boy nobody knows the name of-- the buck private--the unknown soldier-- the doughboy who dug under and died when they told him to--that's him. If he picked himself and said, "I am ready to die," if he gave his name and said, "My country, take me," then the baskets of roses to-day are for the Boy, the flowers, the songs, the steamboat whistles, the proclamations of the honorable orators, they are all for the Boy--that's him. If the government of the Republic picked him saying, "You are wanted, your country takes you"-- if the Republic put a stethoscope to his heart and looked at his teeth and tested his eyes and said, "You are a citizen of the Republic and a sound animal in all parts and functions--the Republic takes you"-- then to-day the baskets of flowers are all for the Republic, the roses, the songs, the steamboat whistles, the proclamations of the honorable orators-- they are all for the Republic. And so to-day--they lay him away-- and an understanding goes--his long sleep shall be under arms and arches near the Capitol Dome-- there is an authorization--he shall have tomb companions-- the martyred presidents of the Republic-- the buck private--the unknown soldier--that's him. The man who was war commander of the armies of the Republic rides down Pennsylvania Avenue-- The man who is peace commander of the armies of the Republic rides down Pennsylvania Avenue-- for the sake of the Boy, for the sake of the Republic. (And the hoofs of the skeleton horses all drum soft on the asphalt footing-- so soft is the drumming, so soft the roll call of the grinning sergeants calling the roll call-- so soft is it all--a camera man murmurs, "Moonshine.") Look--who salutes the coffin-- lays a wreath of remembrance on the box where a buck private sleeps a clean dry sleep at last-- look--it is the highest ranking general of the officers of the armies of the Republic. (Among pigeon corners of the Congressional Library--they file documents quietly, casually, all in a day's work-- this human document, the buck private nobody knows the name of--they file away in granite and steel--with music and roses, salutes, proclamations of the honorable orators.) Across the country, between two ocean shore lines, where cities cling to rail and water routes, there people and horses stop in their foot tracks, cars and wagons stop in their wheel tracks-- faces at street crossings shine with a silence of eggs laid in a row on a pantry shelf-- among the ways and paths of the flow of the Republic faces come to a standstill, sixty clockticks count-- in the name of the Boy, in the name of the Republic. (A million faces a thousand miles from Pennsylvania Avenue stay frozen with a look, a clocktick, a moment-- skeleton riders on skeleton horses--the nickering high horse laugh, the whinny and the howl up Pennsylvania Avenue: who? why? where?) (So people far from the asphalt footing of Pennsylvania Avenue look, wonder, mumble--the riding white-jaw phantoms ride hi-eeee, hi-eeee, hi-yi, hi-yi, hi-eeee-- the proclamations of the honorable orators mix with the top-sergeants whistling the roll call.) If when the clockticks counted sixty, when the heartbeats of the Republic came to a stop for a minute, if the Boy had happened to sit up, happening to sit up as Lazarus sat up, in the story, then the first shivering language to drip off his mouth might have come as, "Thank God," or "Am I dreaming?" or "What the hell" or "When do we eat?" or "Kill 'em, kill 'em, the...." or "Was that ... a rat ... ran over my face?" or "For Christ's sake, gimme water, gimme water," or "Blub blub, bloo bloo...." or any bubbles of shell shock gibberish from the gashes of No Man's Land. Maybe some buddy knows, some sister, mother, sweetheart, maybe some girl who sat with him once when a two-horn silver moon slid on the peak of a house-roof gable, and promises lived in the air of the night, when the air was filled with promises, when any little slip-shoe lovey could pick a promise out of the air. "Feed it to 'em, they lap it up, bull ... bull ... bull," Said a movie news reel camera man, Said a Washington newspaper correspondent, Said a baggage handler lugging a trunk, Said a two-a-day vaudeville juggler, Said a hanky-pank selling jumping-jacks. "Hokum--they lap it up," said the bunch. And a tall scar-face ball player, Played out as a ball player, Made a speech of his own for the hero boy, Sent an earful of his own to the dead buck private: "It's all safe now, buddy, Safe when you say yes, Safe for the yes-men." He was a tall scar-face battler With his face in a newspaper Reading want ads, reading jokes, Reading love, murder, politics, Jumping from jokes back to the want ads, Reading the want ads first and last, The letters of the word JOB, "J-O-B," Burnt like a shot of bootleg booze In the bones of his head-- In the wish of his scar-face eyes. The honorable orators, Always the honorable orators, Buttoning the buttons on their prinz alberts, Pronouncing the syllables "sac-ri-fice," Juggling those bitter salt-soaked syllables-- Do they ever gag with hot ashes in their mouths? Do their tongues ever shrivel with a pain of fire Across those simple syllables "sac-ri-fice"? (There was one orator people far off saw. He had on a gunnysack shirt over his bones, And he lifted an elbow socket over his head, And he lifted a skinny signal finger. And he had nothing to say, nothing easy-- He mentioned ten million men, mentioned them as having gone west, mentioned them as shoving up the daisies. We could write it all on a postage stamp, what he said. He said it and quit and faded away, A gunnysack shirt on his bones.) Stars of the night sky, did you see that phantom fadeout, did you see those phantom riders, skeleton riders on skeleton horses, stems of roses in their teeth, rose leaves red on white-jaw slants, grinning along on Pennsylvania Avenue, the top-sergeants calling roll calls-- did their horses nicker a horse laugh? did the ghosts of the boney battalions move out and on, up the Potomac, over on the Ohio and out to the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Red River, and down to the Rio Grande, and on to the Yazoo, over to the Chattahoochee and up to the Rappahannock? did you see 'em, stars of the night sky? And so to-day--they lay him away-- the boy nobody knows the name of-- they lay him away in granite and steel-- with music and roses--under a flag-- under a sky of promises. CALIFORNIA CITY LANDSCAPE On a mountain-side the real estate agents Put up signs marking the city lots to be sold there. A man whose father and mother were Irish Ran a goat farm half-way down the mountain; He drove a covered wagon years ago, Understood how to handle a rifle, Shot grouse, buffalo, Indians, in a single year, And now was raising goats around a shanty. Down at the foot of the mountain Two Japanese families had flower farms. A man and woman were in rows of sweet peas Picking the pink and white flowers To put in baskets and take to the Los Angeles market. They were clean as what they handled There in the morning sun, the big people and the baby-faces. Across the road, high on another mountain, Stood a house saying, "I am it," a commanding house. There was the home of a motion picture director Famous for lavish whore-house interiors, Clothes ransacked from the latest designs for women In the combats of "male against female." The mountain, the scenery, the layout of the landscape, And the peace of the morning sun as it happened, The miles of houses pocketed in the valley beyond-- It was all worth looking at, worth wondering about, How long it might last, how young it might be. UPSTREAM The strong men keep coming on. They go down shot, hanged, sick, broken. They live on, fighting, singing, lucky as plungers. The strong men ... they keep coming on. The strong mothers pulling them from a dark sea, a great prairie, a long mountain. Call hallelujah, call amen, call deep thanks. The strong men keep coming on. WINDFLOWER LEAF This flower is repeated out of old winds, out of old times. The wind repeats these, it must have these, over and over again. Oh, windflowers so fresh, Oh, beautiful leaves, here now again. The domes over fall to pieces. The stones under fall to pieces. Rain and ice wreck the works. The wind keeps, the windflowers keep, the leaves last, The wind young and strong lets these last longer than stones. VACHEL LINDSAY IN PRAISE OF JOHNNY APPLESEED[1] (_Born 1775. Died 1847_) [Footnote 1: The best account of John Chapman's career, under the name "Johnny Appleseed," is to be found in _Harper's Monthly Magazine_, November, 1871.] I. ~Over the Appalachian Barricade~ [Sidenote: _To be read like old leaves on the elm tree of Time. Sifting soft winds with sentence and rhyme_.] In the days of President Washington, The glory of the nations, Dust and ashes, Snow and sleet, And hay and oats and wheat, Blew west, Crossed the Appalachians, Found the glades of rotting leaves, the soft deer-pastures, The farms of the far-off future In the forest. Colts jumped the fence, Snorting, ramping, snapping, sniffing, With gastronomic calculations, Crossed the Appalachians, The east walls of our citadel, And turned to gold-horned unicorns, Feasting in the dim, volunteer farms of the forest. Stripedest, kickingest kittens escaped, Caterwauling "Yankee Doodle Dandy," Renounced their poor relations, Crossed the Appalachians, And turned to tiny tigers In the humorous forest. Chickens escaped From farmyard congregations, Crossed the Appalachians, And turned to amber trumpets On the ramparts of our Hoosiers' nest and citadel, Millennial heralds Of the foggy mazy forest. Pigs broke loose, scrambled west, Scorned their loathsome stations, Crossed the Appalachians, Turned to roaming, foaming wild boars Of the forest. The smallest, blindest puppies toddled west While their eyes were coming open, And, with misty observations, Crossed the Appalachians, Barked, barked, barked At the glow-worms and the marsh lights and the lightning-bugs, And turned to ravening wolves Of the forest. Crazy parrots and canaries flew west, Drunk on May-time revelations, Crossed the Appalachians, And turned to delirious, flower-dressed fairies Of the lazy forest. Haughtiest swans and peacocks swept west, And, despite soft derivations, Crossed the Appalachians, And turned to blazing warrior souls Of the forest, Singing the ways Of the Ancient of Days. And the "Old Continentals In their ragged regimentals," With bard's imaginations, Crossed the Appalachians. And A boy Blew west And with prayers and incantations, And with "Yankee Doodle Dandy," Crossed the Appalachians, And was "young John Chapman," Then "Johnny Appleseed, Johnny Appleseed," Chief of the fastnesses, dappled and vast, In a pack on his back, In a deer-hide sack, The beautiful orchards of the past, The ghosts of all the forests and the groves-- In that pack on his back, In that talisman sack, To-morrow's peaches, pears and cherries, To-morrow's grapes and red raspberries, Seeds and tree souls, precious things, Feathered with microscopic wings, All the outdoors the child heart knows, And the apple, green, red, and white, Sun of his day and his night-- The apple allied to the thorn, Child of the rose. Porches untrod of forest houses All before him, all day long, "Yankee Doodle" his marching song; And the evening breeze Joined his psalms of praise As he sang the ways Of the Ancient of Days. Leaving behind august Virginia, Proud Massachusetts, and proud Maine, Planting the trees that would march and train On, in his name to the great Pacific, Like Birnam wood to Dunsinane, Johnny Appleseed swept on, Every shackle gone, Loving every sloshy brake, Loving every skunk and snake, Loving every leathery weed, Johnny Appleseed, Johnny Appleseed, Master and ruler of the unicorn-ramping forest, The tiger-mewing forest, The rooster-trumpeting, boar-foaming, wolf-ravening forest, The spirit-haunted, fairy-enchanted forest, Stupendous and endless, Searching its perilous ways In the name of the Ancient of Days. III. ~The Indians Worship Him, but He hurries on~ Painted kings in the midst of the clearing Heard him asking his friends the eagles To guard each planted seed and seedling. Then he was a god, to the red man's dreaming; Then the chiefs brought treasures grotesque and fair,-- Magical trinkets and pipes and guns, Beads and furs from their medicine-lair,-- Stuck holy feathers in his hair, Hailed him with austere delight. The orchard god was their guest through the night. While the late snow blew from bleak Lake Erie, Scourging rock and river and reed, All night long they made great medicine For Jonathan Chapman, Johnny Appleseed, Johnny Appleseed; And as though his heart were a wind-blown wheat-sheaf, As though his heart were a new-built nest, As though their heaven house were his breast, In swept the snow-birds singing glory. And I hear his bird heart beat its story, Hear yet how the ghost of the forest shivers, Hear yet the cry of the gray, old orchards, Dim and decaying by the rivers, And the timid wings of the bird-ghosts beating, And the ghosts of the tom-toms beating, beating. [Sidenote: _While you read, hear the hoof-beats of deer in the snow. And see, by their track, bleeding footprints we know._] But he left their wigwams and their love. By the hour of dawn he was proud and stark, Kissed the Indian babes with a sigh, Went forth to live on roots and bark, Sleep in the trees, while the years howled by-- Calling the catamounts by name, And buffalo bulls no hand could tame, Slaying never a living creature, Joining the birds in every game, With the gorgeous turkey gobblers mocking, With the lean-necked eagles boxing and shouting; Sticking their feathers in his hair,-- Turkey feathers, Eagle feathers,-- Trading hearts with all beasts and weathers He swept on, winged and wonder-crested, Bare-armed, barefooted, and bare-breasted. [Sidenote: _While you read, see conventions of deer go by. The bucks toss their horns, the fuzzy fawns fly._] The maples, shedding their spinning seeds, Called to his appleseeds in the ground, Vast chestnut-trees, with their butterfly nations, Called to his seeds without a sound. And the chipmunk turned a "summer-set," And the foxes danced the Virginia reel; Hawthorne and crab-thorn bent, rain-wet, And dropped their flowers in his night-black hair; And the soft fawns stopped for his perorations; And his black eyes shone through the forest-gleam, And he plunged young hands into new-turned earth, And prayed dear orchard boughs into birth; And he ran with the rabbit and slept with the stream. And he ran with the rabbit and slept with the stream. And so for us he made great medicine, And so for us he made great medicine, In the days of President Washington. III. ~Johnny Appleseed's Old Age~ [Sidenote: _To be read like faint hoof-beats of fawns long gone From respectable pasture, and park and lawn, And heartbeats of fawns that are coming again When the forest, once more, is the master of men._] Long, long after, When settlers put up beam and rafter, They asked of the birds: "Who gave this fruit? Who watched this fence till the seeds took root? Who gave these boughs?" They asked the sky, And there was no reply. But the robin might have said, "To the farthest West he has followed the sun, His life and his empire just begun." Self-scourged, like a monk, with a throne for wages, Stripped like the iron-souled Hindu sages, Draped like a statue, in strings like a scarecrow, His helmet-hat an old tin pan, But worn in the love of the heart of man, More sane than the helm of Tamerlane, Hairy Ainu, wild man of Borneo, Robinson Crusoe--Johnny Appleseed; And the robin might have said, "Sowing, he goes to the far, new West, With the apple, the sun of his burning breast-- The apple allied to the thorn, Child of the rose." Washington buried in Virginia, Jackson buried in Tennessee, Young Lincoln, brooding in Illinois, And Johnny Appleseed, priestly and free, Knotted and gnarled, past seventy years, Still planted on in the woods alone. Ohio and young Indiana-- These were his wide altar-stone, Where still he burnt out flesh and bone. Twenty days ahead of the Indian, twenty years ahead of the white man, At last the Indian overtook him, at last the Indian hurried past him; At last the white man overtook him, at last the white man hurried past him; At last his own trees overtook him, at last his own trees hurried past him. Many cats were tame again, Many ponies tame again, Many pigs were tame again, Many canaries tame again; And the real frontier was his sun-burnt breast. From the fiery core of that apple, the earth, Sprang apple-amaranths divine. Love's orchards climbed to the heavens of the West, And snowed the earthly sod with flowers. Farm hands from the terraces of the blest Danced on the mists with their ladies fine; And Johnny Appleseed laughed with his dreams, And swam once more the ice-cold streams. And the doves of the spirit swept through the hours, With doom-calls, love-calls, death-calls, dream-calls; And Johnny Appleseed, all that year, Lifted his hands to the farm-filled sky, To the apple-harvesters busy on high; And so once more his youth began, And so for us he made great medicine-- Johnny Appleseed, medicine-man. Then The sun was his turned-up broken barrel, Out of which his juicy apples rolled, Down the repeated terraces, Thumping across the gold, An angel in each apple that touched the forest mold, A ballot-box in each apple, A state capital in each apple, Great high schools, great colleges, All America in each apple, Each red, rich, round, and bouncing moon That touched the forest mold. Like scrolls and rolled-up flags of silk, He saw the fruits unfold, And all our expectations in one wild-flower-written dream, Confusion and death sweetness, and a thicket of crab-thorns, Heart of a hundred midnights, heart of the merciful morns. Heaven's boughs bent down with their alchemy, Perfumed airs, and thoughts of wonder. And the dew on the grass and his own cold tears Were one in brooding mystery, Though death's loud thunder came upon him, Though death's loud thunder struck him down-- The boughs and the proud thoughts swept through the thunder, Till he saw our wide nation, each State a flower, Each petal a park for holy feet, With wild fawns merry on every street, With wild fawns merry on every street, The vista of ten thousand years, flower-lighted and complete. Hear the lazy weeds murmuring, bays and rivers whispering, From Michigan to Texas, California to Maine; Listen to the eagles, screaming, calling, "Johnny Appleseed, Johnny Appleseed," There by the doors of old Fort Wayne. In the four-poster bed Johnny Appleseed built, Autumn rains were the curtains, autumn leaves were the quilt. He laid him down sweetly, and slept through the night, Like a bump on a log, like a stone washed white, There by the doors of old Fort Wayne. I KNOW ALL THIS WHEN GIPSY FIDDLES CRY Oh, gipsies, proud and stiff-necked and perverse, Saying: "We tell the fortunes of the nations, And revel in the deep palm of the world. The head-line is the road we choose for trade. The love-line is the lane wherein we camp. The life-line is the road we wander on. Mount Venus, Jupiter, and all the rest Are finger-tips of ranges clasping round And holding up the Romany's wide sky." Oh, gipsies, proud and stiff-necked and perverse, Saying: "We will swap horses till the doom, And mend the pots and kettles of mankind, And lend our sons to big-time vaudeville, Or to the race-track, or the learned world. But India's Brahma waits within their breasts. They will return to us with gipsy grins, And chatter Romany, and shake their curls And hug the dirtiest babies in the camp. They will return to the moving pillar of smoke, The whitest toothed, the merriest laughers known, The blackest haired of all the tribes of men. What trap can hold such cats? The Romany Has crossed such delicate palms with lead or gold, Wheedling in sun and rain, through perilous years, All coins now look alike. The palm is all. Our greasy pack of cards is still the book Most read of men. The heart's librarians, We tell all lovers what they want to know. So, out of the famed Chicago Library, Out of the great Chicago orchestras, Out of the skyscraper, the Fine Arts Building, Our sons will come with fiddles and with loot, Dressed, as of old, like turkey-cocks and zebras, Like tiger-lilies and chameleons, Go west with us to California, Telling the fortunes of the bleeding world, And kiss the sunset, ere their day is done." Oh, gipsies, proud and stiff-necked and perverse, Picking the brains and pockets of mankind, You will go westward for one-half hour yet. You will turn eastward in a little while. You will go back, as men turn to Kentucky, Land of their fathers, dark and bloody ground. When all the Jews go home to Syria, When Chinese cooks go back to Canton, China, When Japanese photographers return With their black cameras to Tokio, And Irish patriots to Donegal, And Scotch accountants back to Edinburgh, You will go back to India, whence you came. When you have reached the borders of your quest, Homesick at last, by many a devious way, Winding the wonderlands circuitous, By foot and horse will trace the long way back! Fiddling for ocean liners, while the dance Sweeps through the decks, your brown tribes all will go! Those east-bound ships will hear your long farewell On fiddle, piccolo, and flute and timbrel. I know all this, when gipsy fiddles cry. That hour of their homesickness, I myself Will turn, will say farewell to Illinois, To old Kentucky and Virginia, And go with them to India, whence they came. For they have heard a singing from the Ganges, And cries of orioles,--from the temple caves,-- And Bengal's oldest, humblest villages. They smell the supper smokes of Amritsar. Green monkeys cry in Sanskrit to their souls From lofty bamboo trees of hot Madras. They think of towns to ease their feverish eyes, And make them stand and meditate forever, Domes of astonishment, to heal the mind. I know all this, when gipsy fiddles cry. What music will be blended with the wind When gipsy fiddlers, nearing that old land, Bring tunes from all the world to Brahma's house? Passing the Indus, winding poisonous forests, Blowing soft flutes at scandalous temple girls, Filling the highways with their magpie loot, What brass from my Chicago will they heap, What gems from Walla Walla, Omaha, Will they pile near the Bodhi Tree, and laugh? They will dance near such temples as best suit them, Though they will not quite enter, or adore, Looking on roofs, as poets look on lilies, Looking at towers, as boys at forest vines, That leap to tree-tops through the dizzy air. I know all this, when gipsy fiddles cry. And with the gipsies there will be a king And a thousand desperadoes just his style, With all their rags dyed in the blood of roses, Splashed with the blood of angels, and of demons. And he will boss them with an awful voice. And with a red whip he will beat his wife. He will be wicked on that sacred shore, And rattle cruel spurs against the rocks, And shake Calcutta's walls with circus bugles. He will kill Brahmins there, in Kali's name, And please the thugs, and blood-drunk of the earth. I know all this, when gipsy fiddles cry. Oh, sweating thieves, and hard-boiled scalawags, That still will boast your pride until the doom, Smashing every caste rule of the world, Reaching at last your Hindu goal to smash The caste rules of old India, and shout: "Down with the Brahmins, let the Romany reign." When gipsy girls look deep within my hand They always speak so tenderly and say That I am one of those star-crossed to wed A princess in a forest fairy-tale. So there will be a tender gipsy princess, My Juliet, shining through this clan. And I would sing you of her beauty now. And I will fight with knives the gipsy man Who tries to steal her wild young heart away. And I will kiss her in the waterfalls, And at the rainbow's end, and in the incense That curls about the feet of sleeping gods, And sing with her in canebrakes and in rice fields, In Romany, eternal Romany. We will sow secret herbs, and plant old roses, And fumble through dark, snaky palaces, Stable our ponies in the Taj Mahal, And sleep out-doors ourselves. In her strange fairy mill-wheel eyes will wait All windings and unwindings of the highways, From India, across America,-- All windings and unwindings of my fancy, All windings and unwindings of all souls, All windings and unwindings of the heavens. I know all this, when gipsy fiddles cry. We gipsies, proud and stiff-necked and perverse, Standing upon the white Himalayas, Will think of far divine Yosemite. We will heal Hindu hermits there with oil Brought from California's tall sequoias. And we will be like gods that heap the thunders, And start young redwood trees on Time's own mountains. We will swap horses with the rising moon, And mend that funny skillet called Orion, Color the stars like San Francisco's street-lights, And paint our sign and signature on high In planets like a bed of crimson pansies; While a million fiddles shake all listening hearts, Crying good fortune to the Universe, Whispering adventure to the Ganges waves, And to the spirits, and all winds and gods. Till mighty Brahma puts his golden palm Within the gipsy king's great striped tent, And asks his fortune told by that great love-line That winds across his palm in splendid flame. Only the hearthstone of old India Will end the endless march of gipsy feet. I will go back to India with them When they go back to India whence they came. I know all this, when gipsy fiddles cry. JAMES OPPENHEIM HEBREWS I come of a mighty race.... I come of a very mighty race.... Adam was a mighty man, and Noah a captain of the moving waters, Moses was a stern and splendid king, yea, so was Moses.... Give me more songs like David's to shake my throat to the pit of the belly, And let me roll in the Isaiah thunder.... Ho! the mightiest of our young men was born under a star in the midwinter.... His name is written on the sun and it is frosted on the moon.... Earth breathes him like an eternal spring: he is a second sky over the Earth. Mighty race! mighty race!--my flesh, my flesh Is a cup of song, Is a well in Asia.... I go about with a dark heart where the Ages sit in a divine thunder.... My blood is cymbal-clashed and the anklets of the dancers tinkle there.... Harp and psaltery, harp and psaltery make drunk my spirit.... I am of the terrible people, I am of the strange Hebrews.... Amongst the swarms fixed like the rooted stars, my folk is a streaming Comet, Comet of the Asian tiger-darkness, The Wanderer of Eternity, the eternal Wandering Jew.... Ho! we have turned against the mightiest of our young men And in that denial we have taken on the Christ, And the two thieves beside the Christ, And the Magdalen at the feet of the Christ, And the Judas with thirty silver pieces selling the Christ,-- And our twenty centuries in Europe have the shape of a Cross On which we have hung in disaster and glory.... Mighty race! mighty race!--my flesh, my flesh Is a cup of song, Is a well in Asia. ALFRED KREYMBORG ADAGIO: A DUET (_For J. S. and L. U._) Should you lay ear to these lines-- you will not catch a distant drum of hoofs, cavalcade of Arabians, passionate horde bearing down, destroying your citadel-- but maybe you'll hear-- should you just listen at the right place, hold it tenaciously, give your full blood to the effort-- maybe you'll note the start of a single step, always persistently faint, wavering in its movement between coming and going, never quite arriving, never quite passing-- and tell me which it is, you or I that you greet, searching a mutual being-- and whether two aren't closer for the labor of an ear? DIE KÜCHE She lets the hydrant water run: He fancies lonely, banal, bald-headed mountains, affected by the daily caress of the tropical sun, weeping tears the length of brooks down their faces and flanks. She lets the hydrant water run: He hearkens Father Sebastian cooking and spreading homely themes over an inept-looking clavier confounding the wits of his children and all men's children down to the last generation. He marvels at the paradox, drums his head with the tattoo: how can a thing as small as he shape and maintain an art out of himself universal enough to carry her daily vigil to crystalled immortality? She lets the hydrant water run. RAIN It's all very well for you suddenly to withdraw and say, I'll come again, but what of the bruises you've left, what of the green and the blue, the yellow, purple and violet?-- don't you be telling us, I'm innocent of these, irresponsible of happenings-- didn't we see you steal next to her, tenderly, with your silver mist about you to hide your blandishment?-- now, what of what followed, eh?-- we saw you hover close, caress her, open her pore-cups, make a cross of her, quickly penetrate her-- she opening to you, engulfing you, every limb of her, bud of her, pore of her?-- don't call these things, kisses-- mouth-kisses, hand-kisses, elbow, knee and toe, and let it go at that-- disappear and promise what you'll never perform: we've known you to slink away until drought-time, drooping-time, withering-time: we've caught you crawling off into winter-time, try to cover what you've done with a long white scarf-- your own frozen tears (likely phrase!) and lilt your, I'll be back in spring! Next spring, and you know it, she won't be the same, though she may look the same to you from where you are, and invite you down again! PEASANT It's the mixture of peasantry makes him so slow. He waggles his head before he speaks, like a cow before she crops. He bends to the habit of dragging his feet up under him, like a measuring-worm: some of his forefathers, stooped over books, ruled short straight lines under two rows of figures to keep their thin savings from sifting to the floor. Should you strike him with a question, he will blink twice or thrice and roll his head about, like an owl in the pin-pricks of a dawn he cannot see. There is mighty little flesh about his bones, there is no gusto in his stride: he seems to wait for the blow on the buttocks that will drive him another step forward-- step forward to what? There is no land, no house, no barn, he has ever owned; he sits uncomfortable on chairs you might invite him to: if you did, he'd keep his hat in hand against the moment when some silent pause for which he hearkens with his ear to one side bids him move on-- move on where? It doesn't matter. He has learned to shrug his shoulders, so he'll shrug his shoulders now: caterpillars do it when they're halted by a stick. Is there a sky overhead?-- a hope worth flying to?-- birds may know about it, but it's birds that birds descend from. BUBBLES You had best be very cautious how you say, I love you. If you accent the I, she has an opening for, who are you to strut on ahead and hint there aren't others, aren't, weren't and won't be? Blurt out the love, she has suspicion for, so?-- why not hitherto?-- what brings you bragging now?-- and what'll it be hereafter? Defer to the you, she has certitude for, me? thanks, lad!-- but why argue about it?-- or fancy I'm lonesome?-- do I look as though you had to? And having determined how you'll say it, you had next best ascertain whom it is that you say it to. That you're sure she's the one, that there'll never be another, never was one before. And having determined whom and having learned how, when you bring these together, inform the far of the intimate-- like a bubble on a pond, emerging from below, round wonderment completed by the first sight of the sky-- what good will it do, if she shouldn't, I love you?-- a bubble's but a bubble once, a bubble grows to die. DIRGE Death alone has sympathy for weariness: understanding of the ways of mathematics: of the struggle against giving up what was given: the plus one minus one of nitrogen for oxygen: and the unequal odds, you a cell against the universe, a breath or two against all time: Death alone takes what is left without protest, criticism or a demand for more than one can give who can give no more than was given: doesn't even ask, but accepts it as it is, without examination, valuation, or comparison. COLOPHON (_For W. W._) The Occident and the Orient, posterior and posterior, sitting tight, holding fast the culture dumped by them on to primitive America, Atlantic to Pacific, were monumental colophons a disorderly country fellow, vulgar Long Islander. not overfond of the stench choking native respiration, poked down off the shelf with the aid of some mere blades of grass; and deliberately climbing up, brazenly usurping one end of the new America, now waves his spears aloft and shouts down valleys, across plains, over mountains, into heights: Come, what man of you dares climb the other? SARA TEASDALE WISDOM It was a night of early spring, The winter-sleep was scarcely broken; Around us shadows and the wind Listened for what was never spoken. Though half a score of years are gone, Spring comes as sharply now as then-- But if we had it all to do It would be done the same again. It was a spring that never came; But we have lived enough to know That what we never have, remains; It is the things we have that go. PLACES I ~Twilight~ (_Tucson_) Aloof as aged kings, Wearing like them the purple, The mountains ring the mesa Crowned with a dusky light; Many a time I watched That coming-on of darkness Till stars burned through the heavens Intolerably bright. It was not long I lived there, But I became a woman Under those vehement stars, For it was there I heard For the first time my spirit Forging an iron rule for me, As though with slow cold hammers Beating out word by word: "Take love when love is given, But never think to find it A sure escape from sorrow Or a complete repose; Only yourself can heal you, Only yourself can lead you Up the hard road to heaven That ends where no one knows." II Full Moon (_Santa Barbara_) I listened, there was not a sound to hear In the great rain of moonlight pouring down, The eucalyptus trees were carved in silver, And a light mist of silver lulled the town. I saw far off the gray Pacific bearing A broad white disk of flame, And on the garden-walk a snail beside me Tracing in crystal the slow way he came. III Winter Sun (_Lenox_) There was a bush with scarlet berries, And there were hemlocks heaped with snow, With a sound like surf on long sea-beaches They took the wind and let it go. The hills were shining in their samite, Fold after fold they flowed away; "Let come what may," your eyes were saying, "At least we two have had to-day." IV Evening (_Nahant_) There was an evening when the sky was clear, Ineffably translucent in its blue; The tide was falling, and the sea withdrew In hushed and happy music from the sheer Shadowy granite of the cliffs; and fear Of what life may be, and what death can do, Fell from us like steel armor, and we knew The beauty of the Law that holds us here. It was as though we saw the Secret Will, It was as though we floated and were free; In the south-west a planet shone serenely, And the high moon, most reticent and queenly, Seeing the earth had darkened and grown still, Misted with light the meadows of the sea. WORDS FOR AN OLD AIR Your heart is bound tightly, let Beauty beware; It is not hers to set Free from the snare. Tell her a bleeding hand Bound it and tied it; Tell her the knot will stand Though she deride it. One who withheld so long All that you yearned to take, Has made a snare too strong For Beauty's self to break. THOSE WHO LOVE Those who love the most Do not talk of their love; Francesca, Guenevere, Dierdre, Iseult, Heloise In the fragrant gardens of heaven Are silent, or speak, if at all, Of fragile, inconsequent things. And a woman I used to know Who loved one man from her youth, Against the strength of the fates Fighting in lonely pride, Never spoke of this thing, But hearing his name by chance, A light would pass over her face. TWO SONGS FOR SOLITUDE I ~The Crystal Gazer~ I shall gather myself into myself again, I shall take my scattered selves and make them one, I shall fuse them into a polished crystal ball Where I can see the moon and the flashing sun. I shall sit like a sibyl, hour after hour intent, Watching the future come and the present go-- And the little shifting pictures of people rushing In tiny self-importance to and fro. II ~The Solitary~ My heart has grown rich with the passing of years, I have less need now than when I was young To share myself with every comer, Or shape my thoughts into words with my tongue. It is one to me that they come or go If I have myself and the drive of my will, And strength to climb on a summer night And watch the stars swarm over the hill. Let them think I love them more than I do, Let them think I care, though I go alone, If it lifts their pride, what is it to me Who am self-complete as a flower or a stone? LOUIS UNTERMEYER MONOLOG FROM A MATTRESS _Heinrich Heine ætat 56, loquitur:_ Can that be you, _la mouche?_ Wait till I lift This palsied eye-lid and make sure.... Ah, true. Come in, dear fly, and pardon my delay In thus existing; I can promise you Next time you come you'll find no dying poet-- Without sufficient spleen to see me through, The joke becomes too tedious a jest. I am afraid my mind is dull to-day; I have that--something--heavier on my chest And then, you see, I've been exchanging thoughts With Doctor Franz. He talked of Kant and Hegel As though he'd nursed them both through whooping cough And, as he left, he let his finger shake Too playfully, as though to say, "Now off With that long face--you've years and years to live." I think he thinks so. But, for Heaven's sake, Don't credit it--and never tell Mathilde. Poor dear, she has enough to bear already.... This _was_ a month! During my lonely weeks One person actually climbed the stairs To seek a cripple. It was Berlioz-- But Berlioz always was original. Meissner was also here; he caught me unawares, Scribbling to my old mother. "What!" he cried, "Is the old lady of the _Dammthor_ still alive? And do you write her still?" "Each month or so." "And is she not unhappy then, to find How wretched you must be?" "How can she know? You see," I laughed, "she thinks I am as well As when she saw me last. She is too blind To read the papers--some one else must tell What's in my letters, merely signed by me. Thus she is happy. For the rest-- That any son should be as sick as I, No mother could believe." _Ja_, so it goes. Come here, my lotus-flower. It is best I drop the mask to-day; the half-cracked shield Of mockery calls for younger hands to wield. Laugh--or I'll hug it closer to my breast. So ... I can be as mawkish as I choose And give my thoughts an airing, let them loose For one last rambling stroll before--Now look! Why tears? You never heard me say "the end." Before ... before I clap them in a book And so get rid of them once and for all. This is their holiday--we'll let them run-- Some have escaped already. There goes one ... What, I have often mused, did Goethe mean? So many years ago at Weimar, Goethe said "Heine has all the poet's gifts but love." Good God! But that is all I ever had. More than enough! So much of love to give That no one gave me any in return. And so I flashed and snapped in my own fires Until I stood, with nothing left to burn, A twisted trunk, in chilly isolation. _Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam_--you recall? I was that Northern tree and, in the South, Amalia.... So I turned to scornful cries, Hot iron songs to save the rest of me; Plunging the brand in my own misery. Crouching behind my pointed wall of words, Ramparts I built of moons and loreleys, Enchanted roses, sphinxes, love-sick birds, Giants, dead lads who left their graves to dance, Fairies and phoenixes and friendly gods-- A curious frieze, half Renaissance, half Greek, Behind which, in revulsion of romance, I lay and laughed--and wept--till I was weak. Words were my shelter, words my one escape, Words were my weapons against everything. Was I not once the son of Revolution? Give me the lyre, I said, and let me sing My song of battle: Words like flaming stars Shot down with power to burn the palaces; Words like bright javelins to fly with fierce Hate of the oily Philistines and glide Through all the seven heavens till they pierce The pious hypocrites who dare to creep Into the Holy Places. "Then," I cried, "I am a fire to rend and roar and leap; I am all joy and song, all sword and flame!" Ha--you observe me passionate. I aim To curb these wild emotions lest they soar Or drive against my will. (So I have said These many years--and still they are not tame.) Scraps of a song keep rumbling in my head ... Listen--you never heard me sing before. When a false world betrays your trust And stamps upon your fire, When what seemed blood is only rust, Take up the lyre! How quickly the heroic mood Responds to its own ringing; The scornful heart, the angry blood Leap upward, singing! Ah, that was how it used to be. But now, _Du schöner Todesengel_, it is odd How more than calm I am. Franz said it shows Power of religion, and it does, perhaps-- Religion or morphine or poultices--God knows. I sometimes have a sentimental lapse And long for saviours and a physical God. When health is all used up, when money goes, When courage cracks and leaves a shattered will, Then Christianity begins. For a sick Jew, It is a very good religion ... Still, I fear that I will die as I have lived, A long-nosed heathen playing with his scars, A pagan killed by weltschmerz ... I remember, Once when I stood with Hegel at a window, I, being full of bubbling youth and coffee, Spoke in symbolic tropes about the stars. Something I said about "those high Abodes of all the blest" provoked his temper. "Abodes? The stars?" He froze me with a sneer, "A light eruption on the firmament." "But," cried romantic I, "is there no sphere Where virtue is rewarded when we die?" And Hegel mocked, "A very pleasant whim. So you demand a bonus since you spent One lifetime and refrained from poisoning Your testy grandmother!" ... How much of him Remains in me--even when I am caught In dreams of death and immortality. To be eternal--what a brilliant thought! It must have been conceived and coddled first By some old shopkeeper in Nuremberg, His slippers warm, his children amply nursed, Who, with his lighted meerschaum in his hand, His nightcap on his head, one summer night Sat drowsing at his door. And mused, how grand If all of this could last beyond a doubt-- This placid moon, this plump _gemüthlichkeit_; Pipe, breath and summer never going out-- To vegetate through all eternity ... But no such everlastingness for me! God, if he can, keep me from such a blight. _Death, it is but the long, cool night, And Life's a dull and sultry day. It darkens; I grow sleepy; I am weary of the light._ _Over my bed a strange tree gleams And there a nightingale is loud. She sings of love, love only ... I hear it, even in dreams._ My Mouche, the other day as I lay here, Slightly propped up upon this mattress-grave In which I've been interred these few eight years, I saw a dog, a little pampered slave, Running about and barking. I would have given Heaven could I have been that dog; to thrive Like him, so senseless--and so much alive! And once I called myself a blithe Hellene, Who am too much in love with life to live. (The shrug is pure Hebraic) ... For what I've been, A lenient Lord will tax me--and forgive. _Dieu me pardonnera--c'est son metier._ But this is jesting. There are other scandals You haven't heard ... Can it be dusk so soon? Or is this deeper darkness ...? Is that you, Mother? How did you come? Where are the candles?... _Over my bed a strange tree gleams_--half filled With stars and birds whose white notes glimmer through Its seven branches now that all is stilled. What? Friday night again and all my songs Forgotten? Wait ... I still can sing-- _Sh'ma Yisroel Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Echod ..._ Mouche--Mathilde!... WATERS OF BABYLON What presses about us here in the evening As you open a window and stare at a stone-gray sky, And the streets give back the jangle of meaningless movement That is tired of life and almost too tired to die. Night comes on, and even the night is wounded; There, on its breast, it carries a curved, white scar. What will you find out there that is not torn and anguished? Can God be less distressed than the least of His creatures are? Below are the blatant lights in a huddled squalor; Above are futile fires in freezing space. What can they give that you should look to them for compassion Though you bare your heart and lift an imploring face? They have seen, by countless waters and windows, The women of your race facing a stony sky; They have heard, for thousands of years, the voices of women Asking them: "Why ...?" Let the night be; it has neither knowledge nor pity. One thing alone can hope to answer your fear; It is that which struggles and blinds us and burns between us.... Let the night be. Close the window, belovèd.... Come here. THE FLAMING CIRCLE Though for fifteen years you have chaffed me across the table, Slept in my arms and fingered my plunging heart, I scarcely know you; we have not known each other. For all the fierce and casual contacts, something keeps us apart. Are you struggling, perhaps, in a world that I see only dimly, Except as it sweeps toward the star on which I stand alone? Are we swung like two planets, compelled in our separate orbits, Yet held in a flaming circle far greater than our own? Last night we were single, a radiant core of completion, Surrounded by flames that embraced us but left no burns, To-day we are only ourselves; we have plans and pretensions; We move in dividing streets with our small and different concerns. Merging and rending, we wait for the miracle. Meanwhile The fire runs deeper, consuming these selves in its growth. Can this be the mystical marriage--this clash and communion; This pain of possession that frees and encircles us both? PORTRAIT OF A MACHINE What nudity is beautiful as this Obedient monster purring at its toil; These naked iron muscles dripping oil And the sure-fingered rods that never miss. This long and shining flank of metal is Magic that greasy labor cannot spoil; While this vast engine that could rend the soil Conceals its fury with a gentle hiss. It does not vent its loathing, does not turn Upon its makers with destroying hate. It bears a deeper malice; lives to earn Its master's bread and laughs to see this great Lord of the earth, who rules but cannot learn, Become the slave of what his slaves create. ROAST LEVIATHAN "_Old Jews!_" Well, David, aren't we? What news is that to make you see so red, To swear and almost tear your beard in half? Jeered at? Well, let them laugh. You can laugh longer when you're dead. What? Are you still too blind to see? Have you forgot your Midrash!... They were right, The little _goyim_, with their angry stones. You should be buried in the desert out of sight And not a dog should howl miscarried moans Over your foul bones.... Have you forgotten what is promised us, Because of stinking days and rotting nights? Eternal feasting, drinking, blazing lights With endless leisure, periods of play! Supernal pleasures, myriads of gay Discussions, great debates with prophet-kings! And rings of riddling scholars all surrounding God who sits in the very middle, expounding The Torah.... _Now_ your dull eyes glisten! Listen: It is the final Day. A blast of Gabriel's horn has torn away The last haze from our eyes, and we can see Past the three hundred skies and gaze upon The Ineffable Name engraved deep in the sun. Now one by one, the pious and the just Are seated by us, radiantly risen From their dull prison in the dust. And then the festival begins! A sudden music spins great webs of sound Spanning the ground, the stars and their companions; While from the cliffs and cañons of blue air, Prayers of all colors, cries of exultation Rise into choruses of singing gold. And at the height of this bright consecration, The whole Creation's rolled before us. The seven burning heavens unfold.... We see the first (the only one we know) Dispersed and, shining through, The other six declining: Those that hold The stars and moons, together with all those Containing rain and fire and sullen weather; Cellars of dew-fall higher than the brim; Huge arsenals with centuries of snows; Infinite rows of storms and swarms of seraphim.... * * * * * Divided now are winds and waters. Sea and land, Tohu and Bohu, light and darkness, stand Upright on either hand. And down this terrible aisle, While heaven's ranges roar aghast, Pours a vast file of strange and hidden things: Forbidden monsters, crocodiles with wings And perfumed flesh that sings and glows With more fresh colors than the rainbow knows.... The _reëm_, those great beasts with eighteen horns, Who mate but once in seventy years and die In their own tears which flow ten stadia high. The _shamir_, made by God on the sixth morn, No longer than a grain of barley corn But stronger than the bull of Bashan and so hard It cuts through diamonds. Meshed and starred With precious stones, there struts the shattering _ziz_ Whose groans are wrinkled thunder.... For thrice three hundred years the full parade Files past, a cavalcade of fear and wonder. And then the vast aisle clears. Now comes our constantly increased reward. The Lord commands that monstrous beast, Leviathan, to be our feast. What cheers ascend from horde on ravenous horde! One hears the towering creature rend the seas, Frustrated, cowering, and his pleas ignored. In vain his great, belated tears are poured-- For this he was created, kept and nursed. Cries burst from all the millions that attend: _"Ascend, Leviathan, it is the end! We hunger and we thirst! Ascend!" ..._ Observe him first, my friend. _God's deathless plaything rolls an eye Five hundred thousand cubits high. The smallest scale upon his tail Could hide six dolphins and a whale. His nostrils breathe--and on the spot The churning waves turn seething hot. If he be hungry, one huge fin Drives seven thousand fishes in; And when he drinks what he may need, The rivers of the earth recede. Yet he is more than huge and strong-- Twelve brilliant colors play along His sides until, compared to him, The naked, burning sun seems dim. New scintillating rays extend Through endless singing space and rise Into an ecstasy that cries: "Ascend, Leviathan, ascend!"_ God now commands the multi-colored bands Of angels to intrude and slay the beast That His good sons may have a feast of food. But as they come, Leviathan sneezes twice ... And, numb with sudden pangs, each arm hangs slack. Black terror seizes them; blood freezes into ice And every angel flees from the attack! God, with a look that spells eternal law, Compels them back. But, though they fight and smite him tail and jaw, Nothing avails; upon his scales their swords Break like frayed cords or, like a blade of straw, Bend towards the hilt and wilt like faded grass. Defeat and fresh retreat.... But once again God's murmurs pass among them and they mass With firmer steps upon the crowded plain. Vast clouds of spears and stones rise from the ground; But every dart flies past and rocks rebound To the disheartened angels falling around. A pause. The angel host withdraws With empty boasts throughout its sullen files. Suddenly God smiles.... On the walls of heaven a tumble of light is caught. Low thunder rumbles like an afterthought; And God's slow laughter calls: "Behemot!" _Behemot, sweating blood, Uses for his daily food All the fodder, flesh and juice That twelve tall mountains can produce._ _Jordan, flooded to the brim, Is a single gulp to him; Two great streams from Paradise Cool his lips and scarce suffice._ _When he shifts from side to side Earthquakes gape and open wide;_ _When a nightmare makes him snore, All the dead volcanoes roar._ _In the space between each toe, Kingdoms rise and saviours go; Epochs fall and causes die In the lifting of his eye._ _Wars and justice, love and death, These are but his wasted breath; Chews a planet for his cud-- Behemot sweating blood._ Roused from his unconcern, Behemot burns with anger. Dripping sleep and languor from his heavy haunches, He turns from deep disdain and launches Himself upon the thickening air, And, with weird cries of sickening despair, Flies at Leviathan. None can surmise the struggle that ensues-- The eyes lose sight of it and words refuse To tell the story in its gory might. Night passes after night, And still the fight continues, still the sparks Fly from the iron sinews, ... till the marks Of fire and belching thunder fill the dark And, almost torn asunder, one falls stark, Hammering upon the other!... What clamor now is born, what crashings rise! Hot lightnings lash the skies and frightening cries Clash with the hymns of saints and seraphim. The bloody limbs thrash through a ruddy dusk, Till one great tusk of Behemot has gored Leviathan, restored to his full strength, Who, dealing fiercer blows in those last throes, Closes on reeling Behemot at length-- Piercing him with steel-pointed claws, Straight through the jaws to his disjointed head. And both lie dead. _Then_ come the angels! With hoists and levers, joists and poles, With knives and cleavers, ropes and saws, Down the long slopes to the gaping maws, The angels hasten; hacking and carving, So nought will be lacking for the starving Chosen of God, who in frozen wonderment Realize now what the terrible thunder meant. How their mouths water while they are looking At miles of slaughter and sniffing the cooking! Whiffs of delectable fragrance swim by; Spice-laden vagrants that float and entice, Tickling the throat and brimming the eye. Ah! what rejoicing and crackling and roasting! Ah! How the boys sing as, cackling and boasting, The angels' old wives and their nervous assistants Run in to serve us.... And while we are toasting The Fairest of All, they call from the distance The rare ones of Time, they share our enjoyment; Their only employment to bear jars of wine And shine like the stars in a circle of glory. Here sways Rebekah accompanied by Zilpah; Miriam plays to the singing of Bilhah; Hagar has tales for us, Judith her story; Esther exhales bright romances and musk. There, in the dusky light, Salome dances. Sara and Rachel and Leah and Ruth, Fairer than ever and all in their youth, Come at our call and go by our leave. And, from her bower of beauty, walks Eve While, with the voice of a flower, she sings Of Eden, young earth and the birth of all things.... Peace without end. Peace will descend on us, discord will cease; And we, now so wretched, will lie stretched out Free of old doubt, on our cushions of ease. And, like a gold canopy over our bed, The skin of Leviathan, tail-tip to head, Soon will be spread till it covers the skies. Light will still rise from it; millions of bright Facets of brilliance, shaming the white Glass of the moon, inflaming the night. So Time shall pass and rest and pass again, Burn with an endless zest and then return, Walk at our side and tide us to new joys; God's voice to guide us, beauty as our staff. Thus shall Life be when Death has disappeared.... _Jeered at? Well, let them laugh._ JOHN GOULD FLETCHER A REBEL Tie a bandage over his eyes, And at his feet Let rifles drearily patter Their death-prayers of defeat. Throw a blanket over his body, It need no longer stir; Truth will but stand the stronger For all who died for her. Now he has broken through To his own secret place; Which, if we dared to do, We would have no more power left to look on that dead face. THE ROCK This rock, too, was a word; A word of flame and force when that which hurled The stars into their places in the night First stirred. And, in the summer's heat, Lay not your hand on it, for while the iron hours beat Gray anvils in the sky, it glows again With unfulfilled desire. Touch it not; let it stand Ragged, forlorn, still looking at the land; The dry blue chaos of mountains in the distance, The slender blades of grass it shelters are Its own dark thoughts of what is near and far. Your thoughts are yours, too; naked let them stand. BLUE WATER Sea-violins are playing on the sands; Curved bows of blue and white are flying over the pebbles, See them attack the chords--dark basses, glinting trebles. Dimly and faint they croon, blue violins. "Suffer without regret," they seem to cry, "Though dark your suffering is, it may be music, Waves of blue heat that wash midsummer sky; Sea-violins that play along the sands." PRAYERS FOR WIND Let the winds come, And bury our feet in the sands of seven deserts; Let strong breezes rise, Washing our ears with the far-off sounds of the foam. Let there be between our faces Green turf and a branch or two of back-tossed trees; Set firmly over questioning hearts The deep unquenchable answer of the wind. IMPROMPTU My mind is a puddle in the street reflecting green Sirius; In thick dark groves trees huddle lifting their branches like beckoning hands. We eat the grain, the grain is death, all goes back to the earth's dark mass, All but a song which moves across the plain like the wind's deep-muttering breath. Bowed down upon the earth, man sets his plants and watches for the seed, Though he be part of the tragic pageant of the sky, no heaven will aid his mortal need. I find flame in the dust, a word once uttered that will stir again, And a wine-cup reflecting Sirius in the water held in my hands. CHINESE POET AMONG BARBARIANS The rain drives, drives endlessly, Heavy threads of rain; The wind beats at the shutters, The surf drums on the shore; Drunken telegraph poles lean sideways; Dank summer cottages gloom hopelessly; Bleak factory-chimneys are etched on the filmy distance, Tepid with rain. It seems I have lived for a hundred years Among these things; And it is useless for me now to make complaint against them. For I know I shall never escape from this dull barbarian country, Where there is none now left to lift a cool jade winecup, Or share with me a single human thought. SNOWY MOUNTAINS Higher and still more high, Palaces made for cloud, Above the dingy city-roofs Blue-white like angels with broad wings, Pillars of the sky at rest The mountains from the great plateau Uprise. But the world heeds them not; They have been here now for too long a time. The world makes war on them, Tunnels their granite cliffs, Splits down their shining sides, Plasters their cliffs with soap-advertisements, Destroys the lonely fragments of their peace. Vaster and still more vast, Peak after peak, pile after pile, Wilderness still untamed, To which the future is as was the past, Barrier spread by Gods, Sunning their shining foreheads, Barrier broken down by those who do not need The joy of time-resisting storm-worn stone, The mountains swing along The south horizon of the sky; Welcoming with wide floors of blue-green ice The mists that dance and drive before the sun. THE FUTURE After ten thousand centuries have gone, Man will ascend the last long pass to know That all the summits which he saw at dawn Are buried deep in everlasting snow. Below him endless gloomy valleys, chill, Will wreathe and whirl with fighting cloud, driven by the wind's fierce breath; But on the summit, wind and cloud are still:-- Only the sunlight, and death. And staggering up to the brink of the gulf man will look down And painfully strive with weak sight to explore The silent gulfs below which the long shadows drown; Through every one of these he passed before. Then since he has no further heights to climb, And naught to witness he has come this endless way, On the wind-bitten ice cap he will wait for the last of time, And watch the crimson sunrays fading of the world's latest day: And blazing stars will burst upon him there, Dumb in the midnight of his hope and pain, Speeding no answer back to his last prayer, And, if akin to him, akin in vain. UPON THE HILL A hundred miles of landscape spread before me like a fan; Hills behind naked hills, bronze light of evening on them shed; How many thousand ages have these summits spied on man? How many thousand times shall I look on them ere this fire in me is dead? THE ENDURING If the autumn ended Ere the birds flew southward, If in the cold with weary throats They vainly strove to sing, Winter would be eternal; Leaf and bush and blossom Would never once more riot In the spring. If remembrance ended When life and love are gathered, If the world were not living Long after one is gone, Song would not ring, nor sorrow Stand at the door in evening; Life would vanish and slacken, Men would be changed to stone. But there will be autumn's bounty Dropping upon our weariness, There will be hopes unspoken And joys to haunt us still; There will be dawn and sunset Though we have cast the world away, And the leaves dancing Over the hill. JEAN STARR UNTERMEYER OLD MAN When an old man walks with lowered head And eyes that do not seem to see, I wonder does he ponder on The worm he was or is to be. Or has he turned his gaze within, Lost to his own vicinity; Erecting in a doubtful dream Frail bridges to Infinity. TONE PICTURE (Malipiero: _Impressioni Dal Vero_) Across the hot square, where the barbaric sun Pours coarse laughter on the crowds, Trumpets throw their loud nooses From corner to corner. Elephants, whose indifferent backs Heave with red lambrequins, Tigers with golden muzzles, Negresses, greased and turbaned in green and yellow, Weave and interweave in the merciless glare of noon. The sun flicks here and there like a throned tyrant, Snapping his whip. From amber platters, the smells ascend Of overripe peaches mingled with dust and heated oils. Pages in purple run madly about, Rolling their eyes and grinning with huge, frightened mouths. And from a high window--a square of black velvet-- A haughty figure stands back in the shadow, Aloof and silent. THEY SAY-- They say I have a constant heart, who know Not anything of how it turns and yields First here, first there; nor how in separate fields It runs to reap and then remains to sow; How, with quick worship, it will bend and glow Before a line of song, an antique vase, Evening at sea; or in a well-loved face Seek and find all that Beauty can bestow. Yet they do well who name it with a name, For all its rash surrenders call it true. Though many lamps be lit, yet flame is flame; The sun can show the way, a candle too. The tribute to each fragment is the same Service to all of Beauty--and her due. RESCUE Wind and wave and the swinging rope Were calling me last night; None to save and little hope, No inner light. Each snarling lash of the stormy sea Curled like a hungry tongue. One desperate splash--and no use to me The noose that swung! Death reached out three crooked claws To still my clamoring pain. I wheeled about, and Life's gray jaws Grinned once again. To sea I gazed, and then I turned Stricken toward the shore, Praying half-crazed to a moon that burned Above your door. And at your door, you discovered me; And at your heart, I sobbed ... And if there be more of eternity Let me be robbed. Let me be clipped of that heritage And burned for ages through; Freed and stripped of my fear and rage-- But not of you. MATER IN EXTREMIS I stand between them and the outer winds, But I am a crumbling wall. They told me they could bear the blast alone, They told me: that was all. But I must wedge myself between Them and the first snowfall. Riddled am I by onslaughts and attacks I thought I could forestall; I reared and braced myself to shelter them Before I heard them call. I cry them, God, a better shield! I am about to fall. SELF-REJECTED Plow not nor plant this arid mound. Here is no sap for seed, No ferment for your need-- Ungrateful ground! No sun can warm this spot God has forgot; No rain can penetrate Its barren slate. Demonic winds blow last year's stubble From its hard slope. Go, leave the hopeless without hope; Spare your trouble. H. D. HOLY SATYR Most holy Satyr, like a goat, with horns and hooves to match thy coat of russet brown, I make leaf-circlets and a crown of honey-flowers for thy throat; where the amber petals drip to ivory, I cut and slip each stiffened petal in the rift of carven petal: honey horn has wed the bright virgin petal of the white flower cluster: lip to lip let them whisper, let them lilt, quivering: Most holy Satyr, like a goat, hear this our song, accept our leaves, love-offering, return our hymn; like echo fling a sweet song, answering note for note. LAIS Let her who walks in Paphos take the glass, let Paphos take the mirror and the work of frosted fruit, gold apples set with silver apple-leaf, white leaf of silver wrought with vein of gilt. Let Paphos lift the mirror; let her look into the polished center of the disk. Let Paphos take the mirror: did she press flowerlet of flame-flower to the lustrous white of the white forehead? did the dark veins beat a deeper purple than the wine-deep tint of the dark flower? Did she deck black hair, one evening, with the winter-white flower of the winter-berry? Did she look (reft of her lover) at a face gone white under the chaplet of white virgin-breath? Lais, exultant, tyrannizing Greece, Lais who kept her lovers in the porch, lover on lover waiting (but to creep where the robe brushed the threshold where still sleeps Lais), so she creeps, Lais, to lay her mirror at the feet of her who reigns in Paphos. Lais has left her mirror, for she sees no longer in its depth the Lais' self that laughed exultant, tyrannizing Greece. Lais has left her mirror, for she weeps no longer, finding in its depth a face, but other than dark flame and white feature of perfect marble. _Lais has left her mirror_ (so one wrote) _to her who reigns in Paphos; Lais who laughed a tyrant over Greece, Lais who turned the lovers from the porch, that swarm for whom now Lais has no use; Lais is now no lover of the glass, seeing no more the face as once it was, wishing to see that face and finding this._ HELIODORA He and I sought together, over the spattered table, rhymes and flowers, gifts for a name. He said, among others, I will bring (and the phrase was just and good, but not as good as mine) "the narcissus that loves the rain." We strove for a name, while the light of the lamps burnt thin and the outer dawn came in, a ghost, the last at the feast or the first, to sit within with the two that remained to quibble in flowers and verse over a girl's name. He said, "the rain loving," I said, "the narcissus, drunk, drunk with the rain." Yet I had lost for he said, "the rose, the lover's gift, is loved of love," he said it, "loved of love;" I waited, even as he spoke, to see the room filled with a light, as when in winter the embers catch in a wind when a room is dank: so it would be filled, I thought, our room with a light when he said (and he said it first) "the rose, the lover's delight, is loved of love," but the light was the same. Then he caught, seeing the fire in my eyes, my fire, my fever, perhaps, for he leaned with the purple wine stained in his sleeve, and said this: "Did you ever think a girl's mouth caught in a kiss is a lily that laughs?" I had not. I saw it now as men must see it forever afterwards; no poet could write again, "the red-lily, a girl's laugh caught in a kiss;" it was his to pour in the vat from which all poets dip and quaff, for poets are brothers in this. So I saw the fire in his eyes, it was almost my fire (he was younger) I saw the face so white; my heart beat, it was almost my phrase, I said, "surprise the muses, take them by surprise; it is late, rather it is dawn-rise, those ladies sleep, the nine, our own king's mistresses." A name to rhyme, flowers to bring to a name, what was one girl faint and shy, with eyes like the myrtle (I said: "her underlids are rather like myrtle"), to vie with the nine? Let him take the name, he had the rhymes, "the rose, loved of love," "the lily, a mouth that laughs," he had the gift, "the scented crocus, the purple hyacinth," what was one girl to the nine? He said: "I will make her a wreath;" he said: "I will write it thus: _'I will bring you the lily that laughs, I will twine with soft narcissus, the myrtle, sweet crocus, white violet, the purple hyacinth and, last, the rose, loved of love, that these may drip on your hair the less soft flowers, may mingle sweet with the sweet of Heliodora's locks, myrrh-curled.'_" (He wrote myrrh-curled, I think, the first.) I said: "they sleep, the nine," when he shouted swift and passionate: "_that_ for the nine! Above the mountains the sun is about to wake, _and to-day white violets shine beside white lilies adrift on the mountain side; to-day the narcissus opens that loves the rain_." I watched him to the door, catching his robe as the wine-bowl crashed to the floor, spilling a few wet lees (ah, his purple hyacinth!); I saw him out of the door, I thought: there will never be a poet, in all the centuries after this, who will dare write, after my friend's verse, "a girl's mouth is a lily kissed." TOWARD THE PIRÆUS _Slay with your eyes, Greek, men over the face of the earth, slay with your eyes, the host, puny, passionless, weak._ _Break, as the ranks of steel broke of the Persian host: craven, we hated them then: now we would count them Gods beside these, spawn of the earth._ _Grant us your mantle, Greek; grant us but one to fright (as your eyes) with a sword, men, craven and weak, grant us but one to strike one blow for you, passionate Greek._ I You would have broken my wings, but the very fact that you knew I had wings, set some seal on my bitter heart, my heart broke and fluttered and sang. You would have snared me, and scattered the strands of my nest; but the very fact that you saw, sheltered me, claimed me, set me apart from the rest. Of men--of _men_ made you a god, and me, claimed me, set me apart and the song in my breast, yours, yours forever-- if I escape your evil heart. II I loved you: men have writ and women have said they loved, but as the Pythoness stands by the altar, intense and may not move; till the fumes pass over; and may not falter nor break, till the priest has caught the words that mar or make a deme or a ravaged town; so I, though my knees tremble, my heart break, must note the rumbling, heed only the shuddering down in the fissure beneath the rock of the temple floor; must wait and watch and may not turn nor move, nor break from my trance to speak so slight, so sweet, so simple a word as love. III What had you done had you been true, I can not think, I may not know. What could we do were I not wise, what play invent, what joy devise? What could we do if you were great? (Yet were you lost, who were there, then, to circumvent the tricks of men?) What can we do, for curious lies have filled your heart, and in my eyes sorrow has writ that I am wise. IV If I had been a boy, I would have worshiped your grace, I would have flung my worship before your feet, I would have followed apart, glad, rent with an ecstasy to watch you turn your great head, set on the throat, thick, dark with its sinews, burned and wrought like the olive stalk, and the noble chin and the throat. I would have stood, and watched and watched and burned, and when in the night, from the many hosts, your slaves, and warriors and serving men you had turned to the purple couch and the flame of the woman, tall like cypress tree that flames sudden and swift and free as with crackle of golden resin and cones and the locks flung free like the cypress limbs, bound, caught and shaken and loosed, bound, caught and riven and bound and loosened again, as in rain of a kingly storm or wind full from a desert plain. So, when you had risen from all the lethargy of love and its heat, you would have summoned me, me alone, and found my hands, beyond all the hands in the world, cold, cold, cold, intolerably cold and sweet. V It was not chastity that made me cold nor fear, only I knew that you, like myself, were sick of the puny race that crawls and quibbles and lisps of love and love and lovers and love's deceit. It was not chastity that made me wild but fear that my weapon, tempered in different heat, was over-matched by yours, and your hand skilled to yield death-blows, might break. With the slightest turn--no ill-will meant-- my own lesser, yet still somewhat fine-wrought fiery-tempered, delicate, over-passionate steel. CONRAD AIKEN SEVEN TWILIGHTS I The ragged pilgrim, on the road to nowhere, Waits at the granite milestone. It grows dark. Willows lean by the water. Pleas of water Cry through the trees. And on the boles and boughs Green water-lights make rings, already paling. Leaves speak everywhere. The willow leaves Silverly stir on the breath of moving water, Birch-leaves, beyond them, twinkle, and there on the hill, And the hills beyond again, and the highest hill, Serrated pines, in the dusk, grow almost black. By the eighth milestone on the road to nowhere He drops his sack, and lights once more the pipe There often lighted. In the dusk-sharpened sky A pair of night-hawks windily sweep, or fall, Booming, toward the trees. Thus had it been Last year, and the year before, and many years: Ever the same. "Thus turns the human track Backward upon itself, I stand once more By this small stream..." Now the rich sound of leaves, Turning in air to sway their heavy boughs, Burns in his heart, sings in his veins, as spring Flowers in veins of trees; bringing such peace As comes to seamen when they dream of seas. "O trees! exquisite dancers in gray twilight! Witches! fairies! elves! who wait for the moon To thrust her golden horn, like a golden snail, Above that mountain--arch your green benediction Once more over my heart. Muffle the sound of bells, Mournfully human, that cries from the darkening valley; Close, with your leaves, about the sound of water: Take me among your hearts as you take the mist Among your boughs!" ... Now by the granite milestone, On the ancient human road that winds to nowhere, The pilgrim listens, as the night air brings The murmured echo, perpetual, from the gorge Of barren rock far down the valley. Now, Though twilight here, it may be starlight there; Mist makes elfin lakes in the hollow fields; The dark wood stands in the mist like a somber island With one red star above it.... "This I should see, Should I go on, follow the falling road,-- This I have often seen.... But I shall stay Here, where the ancient milestone, like a watchman, Lifts up its figure eight, its one gray knowledge, Into the twilight; as a watchman lifts A lantern, which he does not know is out." II Now by the wall of the ancient town I lean Myself, like ancient wall and dust and sky, And the purple dusk, grown old, grown old in heart. Shadows of clouds flow inward from the sea. The mottled fields grow dark. The golden wall Grows gray again, turns stone again, the tower, No longer kindled, darkens against a cloud. Old is the world, old as the world am I; The cries of sheep rise upward from the fields, Forlorn and strange; and wake an ancient echo In fields my heart has known, but has not seen. "These fields"--an unknown voice beyond the wall Murmurs--"were once the province of the sea. Where now the sheep graze, mermaids were at play, Sea-horses galloped, and the great jeweled tortoise Walked slowly, looking upward at the waves, Bearing upon his back a thousand barnacles, A white acropolis ..." The ancient tower Sends out, above the houses and the trees, And the wide fields below the ancient walls, A measured phrase of bells. And in the silence I hear a woman's voice make answer then: "Well, they are green, although no ship can sail them.... Sky-larks rest in the grass, and start up singing Before the girl who stoops to pick sea-poppies. Spiny, the poppies are, and oh how yellow! And the brown clay is runneled by the rain...." A moment since, the sheep that crop the grass Had long blue shadows, and the grass-tips sparkled: Now all grows old.... O voices strangely speaking, Voices of man and woman, voices of bells, Diversely making comment on our time Which flows and bears us with it into dusk, Repeat the things you say! Repeat them slowly Upon this air, make them an incantation For ancient tower, old wall, the purple twilight, This dust, and me. But all I hear is silence, And something that may be leaves or may be sea. III When the tree bares, the music of it changes: Hard and keen is the sound, long and mournful; Pale are the poplar boughs in the evening light Above my house, against a slate-cold cloud. When the house ages and the tenants leave it, Cricket sings in the tall grass by the threshold; Spider, by the cold mantel, hangs his web. Here, in a hundred years from that clear season When first I came here, bearing lights and music, To this old ghostly house my ghost will come,-- Pause in the half-light, turn by the poplar, glide Above tall grasses through the broken door. Who will say that he saw--or the dusk deceived him-- A mist with hands of mist blow down from the tree And open the door and enter and close it after? Who will say that he saw, as midnight struck Its tremulous golden twelve, a light in the window, And first heard music, as of an old piano, Music remote, as if it came from the earth, Far down; and then, in the quiet, eager voices? "... Houses grow old and die, houses have ghosts-- Once in a hundred years we return, old house, And live once more." ... And then the ancient answer, In a voice not human, but more like creak of boards Or rattle of panes in the wind--"Not as the owner, But as a guest you come, to fires not lit By hands of yours.... Through these long-silent chambers Move slowly, turn, return, and bring once more Your lights and music. It will be good to talk." IV "This is the hour," she said, "of transmutation: It is the eucharist of the evening, changing All things to beauty. Now the ancient river, That all day under the arch was polished jade, Becomes the ghost of a river, thinly gleaming Under a silver cloud.... It is not water: It is that azure stream in which the stars Bathe at the daybreak, and become immortal...." "And the moon," said I--not thus to be outdone-- "What of the moon? Over the dusty plane-trees Which crouch in the dusk above their feeble lanterns, Each coldly lighted by his tiny faith; The moon, the waxen moon, now almost full, Creeps whitely up.... Westward the waves of cloud, Vermilion, crimson, violet, stream on the air, Shatter to golden flakes in the icy green Translucency of twilight.... And the moon Drinks up their light, and as they fade or darken, Brightens.... O monstrous miracle of the twilight, That one should live because the others die!" "Strange too," she answered, "that upon this azure Pale-gleaming ghostly stream, impalpable-- So faint, so fine that scarcely it bears up The petals that the lantern strews upon it,-- These great black barges float like apparitions, Loom in the silver of it, beat upon it, Moving upon it as dragons move on air." "Thus always," then I answered,--looking never Toward her face, so beautiful and strange It grew, with feeding on the evening light,-- "The gross is given, by inscrutable God, Power to beat wide wings upon the subtle. Thus we ourselves, so fleshly, fallible, mortal, Stand here, for all our foolishness, transfigured: Hung over nothing in an arch of light While one more evening like a wave of silence Gathers the stars together and goes out." V Now the great wheel of darkness and low clouds Whirs and whirls in the heavens with dipping rim; Against the ice-white wall of light in the west Skeleton trees bow down in a stream of air. Leaves, black leaves and smoke, are blown on the wind; Mount upward past my window; swoop again; In a sharp silence, loudly, loudly falls The first cold drop, striking a shriveled leaf.... Doom and dusk for the earth! Upward I reach To draw chill curtains and shut out the dark, Pausing an instant, with uplifted hand, To watch, between black ruined portals of cloud, One star,--the tottering portals fall and crush it. Here are a thousand books! here is the wisdom Alembicked out of dust, or out of nothing; Choose now the weightiest word, most golden page, Most somberly musicked line; hold up these lanterns,-- These paltry lanterns, wisdoms, philosophies,-- Above your eyes, against this wall of darkness; And you'll see--what? One hanging strand of cobweb, A window-sill a half-inch deep in dust ... Speak out, old wise-men! Now, if ever, we need you. Cry loudly, lift shrill voices like magicians Against this baleful dusk, this wail of rain.... But you are nothing! Your pages turn to water Under my fingers: cold, cold and gleaming, Arrowy in the darkness, rippling, dripping-- All things are rain.... Myself, this lighted room, What are we but a murmurous pool of rain?... The slow arpeggios of it, liquid, sibilant, Thrill and thrill in the dark. World-deep I lie Under a sky of rain. Thus lies the sea-shell Under the rustling twilight of the sea; No gods remember it, no understanding Cleaves the long darkness with a sword of light. VI Heaven, you say, will be a field in April, A friendly field, a long green wave of earth, With one domed cloud above it. There you'll lie In noon's delight, with bees to flash above you, Drown amid buttercups that blaze in the wind, Forgetting all save beauty. There you'll see With sun-filled eyes your one great dome of cloud Adding fantastic towers and spires of light, Ascending, like a ghost, to melt in the blue. Heaven enough, in truth, if you were there! Could I be with you I would choose your noon, Drown amid buttercups, laugh with the intimate grass, Dream there forever.... But, being older, sadder, Having not you, nor aught save thought of you, It is not spring I'll choose, but fading summer; Not noon I'll choose, but the charmed hour of dusk. Poppies? A few! And a moon almost as red.... But most I'll choose that subtler dusk that comes Into the mind--into the heart, you say-- When, as we look bewildered at lovely things, Striving to give their loveliness a name, They are forgotten; and other things, remembered, Flower in the heart with the fragrance we call grief. VII In the long silence of the sea, the seaman Strikes twice his bell of bronze. The short note wavers And loses itself in the blue realm of water. One sea-gull, paired with a shadow, wheels, wheels; Circles the lonely ship by wave and trough; Lets down his feet, strikes at the breaking water, Draws up his golden feet, beats wings, and rises Over the mast.... Light from a crimson cloud Crimsons the sluggishly creeping foams of waves; The seaman, poised in the bow, rises and falls As the deep forefoot finds a way through waves; And there below him, steadily gazing westward, Facing the wind, the sunset, the long cloud, The goddess of the ship, proud figurehead, Smiles inscrutably, plunges to crying waters, Emerges streaming, gleaming, with jewels falling Fierily from carved wings and golden breasts; Steadily glides a moment, then swoops again. Carved by the hand of man, grieved by the wind; Worn by the tumult of all the tragic seas, Yet smiling still, unchanging, smiling still Inscrutably, with calm eyes and golden brow-- What is it that she sees and follows always, Beyond the molten and ruined west, beyond The light-rimmed sea, the sky itself? What secret Gives wisdom to her purpose? Now the cloud In final conflagration pales and crumbles Into the darkening waters. Now the stars Burn softly through the dusk. The seaman strikes His small lost bell again, watching the west As she below him watches.... O pale goddess Whom not the darkness, even, or rain or storm, Changes; whose great wings are bright with foam, Whose breasts are cold as the sea, whose eyes forever Inscrutably take that light whereon they look-- Speak to us! Make us certain, as you are, That somewhere, beyond wave and wave and wave, That dreamed-of harbor lies which we would find. TETÉLESTAI I How shall we praise the magnificence of the dead, The great man humbled, the haughty brought to dust? Is there a horn we should not blow as proudly For the meanest of us all, who creeps his days, Guarding his heart from blows, to die obscurely? I am no king, have laid no kingdoms waste, Taken no princes captive, led no triumphs Of weeping women through long walls of trumpets; Say rather I am no one, or an atom; Say rather, two great gods in a vault of starlight Play ponderingly at chess; and at the game's end One of the pieces, shaken, falls to the floor And runs to the darkest corner; and that piece Forgotten there, left motionless, is I.... Say that I have no name, no gifts, no power, Am only one of millions, mostly silent; One who came with lips and hands and a heart, Looked on beauty, and loved it, and then left it. Say that the fates of time and space obscured me, Led me a thousand ways to pain, bemused me, Wrapped me in ugliness; and like great spiders Dispatched me at their leisure.... Well, what then? Should I not hear, as I lie down in dust, The horns of glory blowing above my burial? II Morning and evening opened and closed above me: Houses were built above me; trees let fall Yellowing leaves upon me, hands of ghosts, Rain has showered its arrows of silver upon me Seeking my heart; winds have roared and tossed me; Music in long blue waves of sound has borne me A helpless weed to shores of unthought silence; Time, above me, within me, crashed its gongs Of terrible warning, sifting the dust of death; And here I lie. Blow now your horns of glory Harshly over my flesh, you trees, you waters! You stars and suns, Canopus, Deneb, Rigel, Let me, as I lie down, here in this dust, Hear, far off, your whispered salutation! Roar now above my decaying flesh, you winds, Whirl out your earth-scents over this body, tell me Of ferns and stagnant pools, wild roses, hillsides! Anoint me, rain, let crash your silver arrows On this hard flesh! I am the one who named you, I lived in you, and now I die in you. I, your son, your daughter, treader of music, Lie broken, conquered.... Let me not fall in silence. III I, the restless one; the circler of circles; Herdsman and roper of stars, who could not capture The secret of self; I who was tyrant to weaklings, Striker of children; destroyer of women; corrupter Of innocent dreamers, and laugher at beauty; I, Too easily brought to tears and weakness by music, Baffled and broken by love, the helpless beholder Of the war in my heart of desire with desire, the struggle Of hatred with love, terror with hunger; I Who laughed without knowing the cause of my laughter, who grew Without wishing to grow, a servant to my own body; Loved without reason the laughter and flesh of a woman, Enduring such torments to find her! I who at last Grow weaker, struggle more feebly, relent in my purpose, Choose for my triumph an easier end, look backward At earlier conquests; or, caught in the web, cry out In a sudden and empty despair, "Tetélestai!" Pity me, now! I, who was arrogant, beg you! Tell me, as I lie down, that I was courageous. Blow horns of victory now, as I reel and am vanquished. Shatter the sky with trumpets above my grave. IV ... Look! this flesh how it crumbles to dust and is blown! These bones, how they grind in the granite of frost and are nothing! This skull, how it yawns for a flicker of time in the darkness Yet laughs not and sees not! It is crushed by a hammer of sunlight, And the hands are destroyed.... Press down through the leaves of the jasmine, Dig through the interlaced roots--nevermore will you find me; I was no better than dust, yet you cannot replace me.... Take the soft dust in your hand--does it stir: does it sing? Has it lips and a heart? Does it open its eyes to the sun? Does it run, does it dream, does it burn with a secret, or tremble In terror of death? Or ache with tremendous decisions?... Listen!... It says: "I lean by the river. The willows Are yellowed with bud. White clouds roar up from the south And darken the ripples; but they cannot darken my heart, Nor the face like a star in my heart!... Rain falls on the water And pelts it, and rings it with silver. The willow trees glisten, The sparrows chirp under the eaves; but the face in my heart Is a secret of music.... I wait in the rain and am silent." Listen again!... It says: "I have worked, I am tired, The pencil dulls in my hand: I see through the window Walls upon walls of windows with faces behind them, Smoke floating up to the sky, an ascension of seagulls. I am tired. I have struggled in vain, my decision was fruitless, Why then do I wait? with darkness, so easy, at hand!... But to-morrow, perhaps.... I will wait and endure till to-morrow!..." Or again: "It is dark. The decision is made. I am vanquished By terror of life. The walls mount slowly about me In coldness. I had not the courage. I was forsaken. I cried out, was answered by silence.... Tetélestai!..." V Hear how it babbles!--Blow the dust out of your hand, With its voices and visions, tread on it, forget it, turn homeward With dreams in your brain.... This, then, is the humble, the nameless,-- The lover, the husband and father, the struggler with shadows, The one who went down under shoutings of chaos! The weakling Who cried his "forsaken!" like Christ on the darkening hilltop!... This, then, is the one who implores, as he dwindles to silence, A fanfare of glory.... And which of us dares to deny him! EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY EIGHT SONNETS I When you, that at this moment are to me Dearer than words on paper, shall depart, And be no more the warder of my heart, Whereof again myself shall hold the key; And be no more, what now you seem to be, The sun, from which all excellencies start In a round nimbus, nor a broken dart Of moonlight, even, splintered on the sea; I shall remember only of this hour-- And weep somewhat, as now you see me weep-- The pathos of your love, that, like a flower, Fearful of death yet amorous of sleep, Droops for a moment and beholds, dismayed, The wind whereon its petals shall be laid. II What's this of death, from you who never will die? Think you the wrist that fashioned you in clay, The thumb that set the hollow just that way In your full throat and lidded the long eye So roundly from the forehead, will let lie Broken, forgotten, under foot some day Your unimpeachable body, and so slay The work he most had been remembered by? I tell you this: whatever of dust to dust Goes down, whatever of ashes may return To its essential self in its own season, Loveliness such as yours will not be lost, But, cast in bronze upon his very urn, Make known him Master, and for what good reason. III I know I am but summer to your heart, And not the full four seasons of the year; And you must welcome from another part Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear. No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing; And I have loved you all too long and well To carry still the high sweet breast of spring. Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes, I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums, That you may hail anew the bird and rose When I come back to you, as summer comes. Else will you seek, at some not distant time, Even your summer in another clime. IV Here is a wound that never will heal, I know, Being wrought not of a dearness and a death But of a love turned ashes and the breath Gone out of beauty; never again will grow The grass on that scarred acre, though I sow Young seed there yearly and the sky bequeath Its friendly weathers down, far underneath Shall be such bitterness of an old woe. That April should be shattered by a gust, That August should be leveled by a rain, I can endure, and that the lifted dust Of man should settle to the earth again; But that a dream can die, will be a thrust Between my ribs forever of hot pain. V What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning; but the rain Is full of ghosts to-night, that tap and sigh Upon the glass and listen for reply; And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain, For unremembered lads that not again Will turn to me at midnight with a cry. Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree, Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, Yet knows its boughs more silent than before: I cannot say what loves have come and gone; I only know that summer sang in me A little while, that in me sings no more. VI Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare. Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace, And lay them prone upon the earth and cease To ponder on themselves, the while they stare At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release From dusty bondage into luminous air. O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day, When first the shaft into his vision shone Of light anatomized! Euclid alone Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they Who, though once only and then but far away, Have heard her massive sandal set on stone. VII Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word! Give back my book and take my kiss instead. Was it my enemy or my friend I heard?-- "What a big book for such a little head!" Come, I will show you now my newest hat, And you may watch me purse my mouth and prink. Oh, I shall love you still and all of that. I never again shall tell you what I think. I shall be sweet and crafty, soft and sly; You will not catch me reading any more; I shall be called a wife to pattern by; And some day when you knock and push the door, Some sane day, not too bright and not too stormy, I shall be gone, and you may whistle for me. VIII Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find The roots of last year's roses in my breast; I am as surely riper in my mind As if the fruit stood in the stalls confessed. Laugh at the unshed leaf, say what you will, Call me in all things what I was before, A flutterer in the wind, a woman still; I tell you I am what I was and more. My branches weigh me down, frost cleans the air, My sky is black with small birds bearing south; Say what you will, confuse me with fine care, Put by my word as but an April truth,-- Autumn is no less on me that a rose Hugs the brown bough and sighs before it goes. BIBLIOGRAPHY BIBLIOGRAPHY (The following lists include poetical works only) AMY LOWELL A Dome of Many-Colored Glass Houghton Mifflin Co. 1912 Sword Blades and Poppy Seed The Macmillan Company 1914 Men, Women and Ghosts The Macmillan Company 1916 Can Grande's Castle The Macmillan Company 1918 Pictures of the Floating World The Macmillan Company 1919 Legends Houghton Mifflin Co. 1921 Fir-Flower Tablets Houghton Mifflin Co. 1921 ROBERT FROST A Boy's Will Henry Holt and Company 1914 North of Boston Henry Holt and Company 1915 Mountain Interval Henry Holt and Company 1916 CARL SANDBURG Chicago Poems Henry Holt and Company 1916 Cornhuskers Henry Holt and Company 1918 Smoke and Steel Harcourt, Brace and Co. 1930 Slabs of the Sunburnt West Harcourt, Brace and Co. 1922 VACHEL LINDSAY Rhymes to be Traded for Bread Privately Printed; 1912 Springfield, Ill. General William Booth Enters Into Mitchell Kennerley 1913 Heaven The Congo and Other Poems The Macmillan Company 1915 The Chinese Nightingale The Macmillan Company 1917 The Golden Whales of California The Macmillan Company 1920 JAMES OPPENHEIM Monday Morning and Other Poems Sturgis & Walton Co. 1909 Songs for the New Age The Century Company 1914 War and Laughter The Century Company 1915 The Book of Self Alfred A. Knopf 1917 The Solitary B. W. Huebsch 1919 The Mystic Warrior Alfred A. Knopf 1921 ALFRED KREYMBORG Mushrooms Alfred A. Knopf 1916 Plays for Poem-Mimes The Others Press 1918 Plays for Merry Andrews The Sunwise Turn 1920 Blood of Things Nicholas L. Brown 1921 SARA TEASDALE Sonnets to Duse The Poet Lore Co. 1907 Helen of Troy G. P. Putnam's Sons 1911 Rivers to the Sea The Macmillan Company 1915 Love Songs The Macmillan Company 1917 Flame and Shadow The Macmillan Company 1920 LOUIS UNTERMEYER The Younger Quire Moods Publishing Co. 1911 First Love Sherman French & Co. 1911 Challenge The Century Company 1914 "--and Other Poets" Henry Holt and Company 1916 The Poems of Heinrich Heine Henry Holt and Company 1917 These Times Henry Holt and Company 1917 Including Horace Harcourt, Brace and Co. 1919 The New Adam Harcourt, Brace and Co. 1920 Heavens Harcourt, Brace and Co. 1922 JOHN GOULD FLETCHER Fire and Wine Grant Richards (London) 1913 The Dominant City Max Goschen (London) 1913 Fool's Gold Max Goschen (London) 1913 The Book of Nature Constable & Co. (London) 1913 Visions of the Evening Erskine Macdonald (London) 1913 Irradiations Houghton Mifflin Co. 1915 Goblins and Pagodas Houghton Mifflin Co. 1916 Japanese Prints The Four Seas Company 1918 The Tree of Life The Macmillan Company 1919 Breakers and Granite The Macmillan Company 1921 JEAN STARR UNTERMEYER Growing Pains B. W. Huebsch 1918 Dreams Out of Darkness B. W. Huebsch 1921 H. D. Sea Garden Houghton Mifflin Co. 1916 Hymen Henry Holt and Co. 1921 CONRAD AIKEN Earth Triumphant The Macmillan Company 1914 Turns and Movies Houghton Mifflin Co. 1916 The Jig of Forslin The Four Seas Company 1916 Nocturne of Remembered Spring The Four Seas Company 1917 The Charnel Rose The Four Seas Company 1918 The House of Dust The Four Seas Company 1920 Punch: the Immortal Liar Alfred A. Knopf 1921 EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY Renascence Mitchell Kennerley 1917 A Few Figs from Thistles Frank Shay 1920 The Lamp and the Bell Frank Shay 1921 Aria Da Capo Mitchell Kennerley 1921 Second April Mitchell Kennerley 1921 
25961	----	generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) BIB BALLADS [Illustration] Copyright 1915 P. F. Volland & Co. Chicago, U. S. A. (All Rights Reserved) BIB BALLADS BY RING W. LARDNER ILLUSTRATED BY FONTAINE FOX [Illustration] Published by P. F. VOLLAND & CO. NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO FOREWORD Dear Parents:--Don't imagine, please, It's in a boastful spirit I fashion verses such as these; That's not the truth or near it. A hundred or a thousand, yes, A million kids there may be Who aren't one iota less Attractive than this baby. I'll venture that your household has As valuable a treasure As mine, but mine I know, and as For yours, I've not that pleasure. And that is why my book's about Just one, O Dads and Mothers; But babes are babes, and mine, no doubt, Is very much like others. THE AUTHOR [Illustration] BIB BALLADS [Illustration] GOOD-BY BILL Dollar Bill, that I've held so tight Ever since payday, a week ago, Shall I purchase with you tonight A pair of seats at the vaudeville show? (Hark! A voice from the easy chair: "Look at his shoes! We must buy a pair.") Dollar Bill, from the wreckage saved, Tell me, how shall I squander you? Shall I be shined, shampooed and shaved, Singed and trimmed 'round the edges, too? (Hark! A voice from the easy chair: "He hasn't a romper that's fit to wear.") Dollar Bill, that I cherished so, Think of the cigarettes you'd buy, Turkish ones, with a kick, you know; Makin's eventually tire a guy. (Hark! A voice from the easy chair: "Look at those stockings! Just one big tear!") Dollar Bill, it is time to part. What do I care for a vaudeville show? I'll shave myself and look just as smart. Makin's aren't so bad, you know. Dollar Bill, we must say good-by; There on the floor is the Reason Why. [Illustration] [Illustration] A VISIT FROM YOUNG GLOOM There's been a young stranger at our house, A baby whom nobody knew; Who hated his brother, his father, his mother, And made them aware of it, too. He stayed with us nearly a fortnight And carried a grouch all the while, Nor promise nor present could make him look pleasant; He hadn't the power to smile. He cried when he couldn't have something; He cried just as hard when he could; Kind words by the earful but made him more tearful, And scoldings did just as much good. He stormed when his meals weren't ready, And when they _were_ ready, he screamed. He went to bed growling, got up again howling And quarreled and snarled as he dreamed. He's gone, and the child we are fond of Is back, just as nice as of old. But I hope to be in some port European The next time he has a bad cold. [Illustration] [Illustration] AN APPRECIATIVE AUDIENCE My son, I wish that it were half As easy to extract a laugh From grown-ups as from thee. Then I'd go on the stage, my boy, While Richard Carle and Eddie Foy Burned up with jealousy. I wouldn't have to rack my brain Or lie awake all night in vain Pursuit of brand new jokes; Nor fear my lines were heard with groans Of pain and sympathetic moans From sympathetic folks. I'd merely have to make a face, Just twist a feature out of place, And be the soul of wit; Or bark, and then pretend to bite, And, from the screams of wild delight, Be sure I'd made a hit. [Illustration] [Illustration] DISCIPLINE He couldn't have a doughnut, and it made him very mad; He undertook to get revenge by screaming at his dad. "Cut out that noise!" I ordered, and he gave another roar, And so I put him in "the room" and shut and locked the door. I left him in his prison cell two minutes, just about, And, penitent, he smiled at me when I did let him out. But when he got another look at the forbidden fruit He gave a yell that they could hear in Jacksonville or Butte. "Cut out that noise!" I barked again. "Cut out that foghorn stuff! Perhaps I didn't leave you in your prison long enough. "You want your dad to keep you jailed all afternoon, I guess." He smiled at me and answered his equivalent for "yes." [Illustration] [Illustration] INEXPENSIVE GUESTS I wonder how 'twould make you feel, My fellow food providers, To have as guests at ev'ry meal Three--count 'em, three--outsiders. Well, that's the case with me, but still I don't complain or holler, For, strange to say, the groc'ry bill Has not gone up a dollar. These guests of ours, to make it brief, Can't really chew or swallow; They're merely dolls, called Indian Chief, And Funny Man, and Rollo. [Illustration] [Illustration] HIS SENSE OF HUMOR Perhaps in some respects it's true That you resemble dad; To be informed I look like you Would never make me mad. But one thing I am sure of, son, You have a different line Of humor, your idea of fun Is not a bit like mine. You drop my slippers in the sink And leave them there to soak. That's very laughable, you think But I can't see the joke You take my hat outdoors with you And fill it full of earth; You seem to think that's witty, too, But I'm not moved to mirth. You open up the chicken-yard; Its inmates run a mile; You giggle, but I find it hard To force one-half a smile. No, kid, I fear your funny stuff, Though funny it may be, Is not quite delicate enough To make a hit with me. [Illustration] [Illustration] SPEECH ECONOMY Since he began to talk and sing, I've learned one interesting thing-- The value of a verb is small; In fact, it has no worth at all. Why waste the breath required to say, "While toddling through the park today, I saw a bird up in a tree," When "Twee, pahk, birt," does splendidly? Why should one say, "Please pass the bread," When "Ba-ba me" is easier said? And why "I'm starved. Have supper quick," When "LUNCH!" yelled loudly, does the trick? Why "I've been riding on a train," When "By-by, Choo-choo" makes it plain? "Let words be few," the poet saith, So leave out words and save your breath. [Illustration] [Illustration] WELCOME TO SPRING Spring, you are welcome, for you are the friend of Fathers of all little girlies and chaps. Spring, you are welcome, for you mean the end of Bundling them up in their cold-weather wraps. Breathes there a parent of masculine gender, One whose young hopeful is seven or less, Who never has cursed the designer and vender Of juvenile-out-of-doors-winter-time dress? Leggings and overcoat, rubbers that squeeze on, Mittens and sweater a trifle too small; Not in the lot is one thing you can ease on, One that's affixed with no trouble at all. Spring, you are welcome, thrice welcome to father; Not for your flowers and birds, I'm afraid, As much as your promised relief from the bother Of bundling the kid for the daily parade. [Illustration] [Illustration] TASTE I can't understand why you pass up the toys That Santa considered just right for small boys; I can't understand why you turn up your nose At dogs, hobby-horses, and treasures like those, And play a whole hour, sometimes longer than that, With a thing as prosaic as daddy's old hat. The tables and shelves have been loaded for you With volumes of pictures--they're pretty ones, too-- Of birds, beasts, and fishes, and old Mother Goose Repines in a corner and feels like the deuce, While you, on the floor, quite contentedly look At page after page of the telephone book. [Illustration] [Illustration] RIDDLES If it's fun to take books from the bookcase, If you really believe it's worth while To carry them out to the kitchen And build them all up in a pile, Why isn't it just as agreeable then To carry them back to the bookcase again? If it's fun to make marks with a pencil In books that one cares for a heap; To tear out the pages from volumes One likes and is anxious to keep, Why isn't it pleasure to put on the hummer A magazine read and discarded last summer? [Illustration] [Illustration] HESITATION I've orders to waken you from your nap, And orders are orders, my little chap. But I hate to do it, because it seems A shame to break in on your blissful dreams. I've sat and watched you a long, long while, And not since I came have you ceased to smile. So it strikes me as wrong to arouse you, boy, From sleep that's so plainly a sleep of joy. 'Twill make a big diff'rence tonight, of course, But p'rhaps you are riding a real live horse; In dreams, it's a pleasant and harmless sport, So why should I cruelly cut it short? Maybe you have for your very own A piece of pie or an ice cream cone; If that's your amusement, why end it quick? Dream-food can't possibly make you sick. Orders are orders and I'm afraid It's trouble for me if they're disobeyed. But I'll bet if the boss could see you, son, She'd put off the duty, as I have done. [Illustration] [Illustration] HIS WONDERFUL CHOO-CHOOS When I see his wonderful choo-choo trains, Which he daily builds with infinite pains, Whose cars are a crazy and curious lot-- A doll, a picture, a pepper pot, A hat, a pillow, a horse, a book, A pote, a mintie, a button hook, A bag of tobacco, a piece of string, A pair of wubbas, a bodkin ring, A deck of twos and a paper box, A brush, a comb and a lot of blocks-- When I first gaze on his wonderful trains, Which he daily builds with infinite pains, I laugh, and I think to myself, "O gee! Was ever a child as cute as he?" But when he's gone to his cozy nest, From the toil of his strenuous day to rest, And when I gaze on his trains once more, Where they lie, abandoned, across the floor, And when the terrible task I face Of putting each "Pullman" back in its place, I groan a little, and think, "O gee! Was ever a child as mean as he?" GLOSSARY Bodkin--A napkin Mintie--A mitten. Pote--A pencil. Twos--Cards. [Illustration] [Illustration] COUSINLY AFFECTION Why do you love your Cousin Paull? For his sweet face, his smile, and all The little tricks that charm us so? You're not quite old enough to know How cute he is; to realize How clever for a child his size. I'm sure you can't appreciate The things that make us think him great. And yet you love your Cousin Paull. Is it because he's twice as small As you, just right for you to maul? Because he won't fight back, or bawl? Because when he is pushed he'll fall? And, where most kids would howl and squall, He takes it, nor puts in a call For mother? Am I warm at all? Is this why you love Cousin Paull? [Illustration] [Illustration] MY BABY'S GARDEN My baby has a garden, "Planted" four days ago, And nearly half his waking hours He spends among his precious flowers With sprinkling can and hoe. My baby has a garden, And Oh, how proud he is When, yielding to his pleading, we Lay work aside and go to see This masterpiece of his! Behold my baby's garden, Close by a rubbish pile! Look at the sprinkling can and hoe And flowers; then tell me if you know Whether to sigh or smile. The flowers in baby's garden, Flat on the ground they lie, Two hyacinths, a withered pair, Plucked from the pile of rubbish, where They had been left to die. The flowers in baby's garden, "Planted" four days ago, Grow every hour a sadder sight, Weaker and sicklier, in spite Of sprinkling can and hoe. [Illustration] [Illustration] DECISION REVERSED When I mixed with the shoppers and fought in vain To get what I sought, in the Christmas rush; When they stood on my toes in the crowded train, Or dented my ribs in the sidewalk crush, I dropped my manners and snarled and swore, And thought: "It's a bothersome, beastly bore!" But when, at the Christmas dawn, they brought My kid to the room where his things were piled, And when, from my vantage point, I caught The look on his face, I murmured: "Child, Your dad was a fool when he snarled and swore, And called it a bothersome, beastly bore." [Illustration] [Illustration] THE GROCERY MAN AND THE BEAR He was weary of all of his usual joys; His books and his blocks made him tired, And so did his games and mechanical toys, And the songs he had always admired; So I told him a story, a story so new It had never been heard anywhere; A tale disconnected, unlikely, untrue, Called The Grocery Man and the Bear. I didn't think much of the story despite The fact 'twas a child of my brain. And I never dreamt, when I told it that night, That I'd have to tell it again; I never imagined 'twould make such a hit With the audience of one that was there That for hours at a time he would quietly sit Through The Grocery Man and the Bear. To all other stories, this one is preferred; It's the season's best seller by far, And out at our house it's as frequently heard As cuss-words in Mexico are. When choo-choos and horses and picture books fail, He'll remain, quite content, in his chair, While I tell o'er and o'er the incredible tale Of The Grocery Man and the Bear. [Illustration] [Illustration] COMING HOME Prepare for noise, you quiet walls! You floors, get set for heavy falls! Frail dishes, hide away! Get ready for some scratches, stairs! Clean table linen, say your prayers! The kid comes home today! For three long weeks you've been, O House, As noiseless as the well-known mouse, As silent as the tomb. And you've stayed neat, with none on hand To track your floors with mud and sand, To muss your ev'ry room. The ideal place for work you've been, But soon a Bedlam once again, A mess, a wreck. But say, I wonder will it make us mad. No, House, I'll bet we both are glad The kid comes home today. [Illustration] [Illustration] HIS IMAGINATION One thing that's yours, my little child Your poor old dad is simply wild To own. It's not a book or toy; It's your imagination, boy. If I possessed it, what a time I'd have, nor need to spend a dime! I wish that I could get astride A broom, and have a horse to ride; Or climb into the swing, and be A sailor on the deep blue sea, Or b'lieve a chair a choo-choo train, Bound anywhere and back again. If I could ride as fast and far On ship or horse, in train or car, As you, at small expense or none, If I could have one-half your fun And do the things that you do, free, I'd give them back my salary. [Illustration] [Illustration] HIS MEMORY Besides my little son's imagination, Another thing he has appeals to me And agitates my envious admiration-- It's his accommodating memory. An instant after some unlucky stumble Has floored him and induced a howl of pain, He's clean forgotten all about his tumble And violently sets out to romp again. But if, when I leave home, I say that maybe I'll get him something nice while I'm away, It's very safe to bet that Mr. Baby Will not forget, though I be gone all day. Ah, would I might lose sight of things unpleasant: The bills I owe; the work I haven't done. And only think of future joys and present, Like the approaching payday, and my son. [Illustration] [Illustration] CONFESSION A sleuth like Pinkerton or Burns Is told that there has been a crime. He runs down clues and leads, and learns Who did the deed, in course of time. It's just the other way with me: The first thing I am sure of is The criminal's identity, And then I learn what crime was his. When Son comes up with hanging head And smiles a certain kind of smile, When he's affectionate instead Of playful; when he stalls awhile And starts to speak and stops again, Or, squirming like a mouse that's caught, Asserts, "I am a GOOD boy," then I look to see what harm's been wrought. [Illustration] [Illustration] HIS LADY FRIEND Who is Sylvia? What is she That early every morning You desert your family And rush to see her, scorning Your once cherished ma and me? Are her playthings such a treat? I will steal 'em from her; Better that than not to meet My son and heir all summer, Save when he comes home to eat. Or is she herself the one And only real attraction? Has your little heart begun To get that sort of action? Better wait a few years, son. [Illustration] [Illustration] DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE "MYSELF!" It means that you don't care To have me lift you in your chair; That if I do, you'll rage and tear. "MYSELF!" It means you don't require Assistance from your willing sire In eating; 'twill but rouse your ire. "MYSELF!" It means when you are through That you don't want your daddy to Unseat you, as he used to do. Time was, and not so long ago, When you were carried to and fro And waited on, but now? No! No! You'd rather fall and break your head, Or fill your lap with cream and bread Than be helped up or down, or fed. Well, kid, I hope you'll stay that way And that there'll never come a day When you're without the strength to say, "MYSELF!" [Illustration] [Illustration] THE ETERNAL GREETING What is the welcoming word I hear When I reach home at the close of day? "Glad you are with us, daddy, dear?" Something I'd like to hear you say? No, it is this, invariably: "Daddy, what have you got for me?" "Deep affection," I might reply; What would it profit if I did? I might answer: "The price to buy Clothes and edibles for you, kid." You would repeat, insistently: "Daddy, what have you got for me?" Isn't my Self enough for you? Doesn't my Presence satisfy? No, that spelling would never do; You want Presents, a new supply, When you inquire so eagerly: "Daddy, what have you got for me?" 'Twould be much nicer and cheaper, son, If I were welcome without a toy, But as I'm not, I must purchase one And take my reward from your look of joy When you open the bundle and cry: "O, see! See what daddy has got for me!" [Illustration] [Illustration] GUESS AGAIN "I guess I'll help you, daddy." And daddy can't say "No;" For if he did, 'twould wound you, kid, And cause the tears to flow. "I guess I'll help you, daddy." And daddy says: "All right," And tries to do, ignoring you, Whatever work's in sight. But what's the use of trying? As well be reconciled To quit and play the game that may Be pleasing to you, child. To quit and play, or roughhouse, Or read, as you elect; For I'm afraid the guess you made Was wholly incorrect. [Illustration] [Illustration] NEARLY A SINECURE "I'm going to the office." So says my youngster, and Gets on the train to take him there (The train's the sofa or a chair, Whichever's near at hand.) "Now I am to the office. I'm working now," says he, And just continues standing there On that same lounge or that same chair, As idle as can be. Perhaps four seconds after He first got on his train, I see him getting off once more. He steps or falls onto the floor And says, "I'm home again." I don't know what they pay him, Nor where the office is. The nature of the boy's posish I've never learned--but how I wish I had that job of his! [Illustration] [Illustration] THE HECKUSES That may not be the proper way To spell their name; I cannot say. I've never seen 'em written out: I've only heard 'em talked about. They're coming here tonight to dine, So says that little son of mine. But all last week, 'twas just the same; They were to come, and never came. And I'm just skeptical enough To think they're all a myth, a bluff; Mere creatures of my youngster's brain, Whose coming he'll await in vain. And yet to him they're very real. They own a big black auto'bile. They work downtown, and they'll arrive Out here at one-two-three-four-five. The Heckuses are four all told. There's Mrs. H. who's very old, And Baby Heckus, and a lad Named Tom, and Bill, the Heckus dad. Beyond this point I can't describe The fascinating Heckus tribe. I can but wonder how he came To think of such a lovely name. [Illustration] [Illustration] HIS FAVORITE ROLE You could be president as well as not, Since all you'd have to do is think you were, With that imagination that you've got; Or multimillionaire if you prefer, Or you could be some famous football star, Or Tyrus Cobb, admired by ev'ry fan; Instead of that, you tell me that you are The Garbage Man. Why pick him out, when you can take your choice? Is his so charming, nice, and sweet a role That acting it should make you to rejoice And be a source of comfort to your soul? Is there some hidden happiness that he Uncovers in his march from can to can That you above all else should want to be The Garbage Man? [Illustration] [Illustration] THE PATHS OF RASHNESS Up to the sky the birdman flew And looped some loops that were bold and new. The people marvelled at nerve so great And gasped or cheered as he tempted fate, More daring each day than the day before, Till the birdman fell and arose no more. The bandit bragged of his daylight crimes And said: "I'm the wonder of modern times." Bolder and bolder his thefts became, And the people shook when they heard his name. He boasted: "I'm one that they'll never get." But he jollied himself into Joliet. Well, son, I suppose you would be admired For the valorous habit that you've acquired Of rushing at each little girl you meet And hugging her tight in the public street. But the day will come, I have not a doubt, When you'll stagger home with an eye scratched out. [Illustration] [Illustration] THE NEW PLAYTHING I wonder what your thought will be And what you'll say and do, sir, When you come home again and see What Daddy's got for you, sir. I wonder if you'll like it, boy, Or turn away disgusted (You've often scorned a nice, new toy For one that's old and busted.) I wonder if you'll laugh, or cry And run in fright to mother, Or just act bored to death, when I Show you your brand new brother. [Illustration] 
261	----	A DOME OF MANY-COLOURED GLASS by Amy Lowell [American (Massachusetts) poet and critic -- 1874-1925.] [This etext has been transcribed from the 3rd printing (1916), of the 1912 (original) edition.] "Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity." Shelley, "Adonais". "Le silence est si grand que mon coeur en frissonne, Seul, le bruit de mes pas sur le pave resonne." Albert Samain. Contents Lyrical Poems Before the Altar Suggested by the Cover of a Volume of Keats's Poems Apples of Hesperides Azure and Gold Petals Venetian Glass Fatigue A Japanese Wood-Carving A Little Song Behind a Wall A Winter Ride A Coloured Print by Shokei Song The Fool Errant The Green Bowl Hora Stellatrix Fragment Loon Point Summer "To-morrow to Fresh Woods and Pastures New" The Way Diya {original title is Greek, Delta-iota-psi-alpha} Roads Teatro Bambino. Dublin, N. H. The Road to Avignon New York at Night A Fairy Tale Crowned To Elizabeth Ward Perkins The Promise of the Morning Star J--K. Huysmans March Evening Sonnets Leisure On Carpaccio's Picture: The Dream of St. Ursula The Matrix Monadnock in Early Spring The Little Garden To an Early Daffodil Listening The Lamp of Life Hero-Worship In Darkness Before Dawn The Poet At Night The Fruit Garden Path Mirage To a Friend A Fixed Idea Dreams Frankincense and Myrrh From One Who Stays Crepuscule du Matin Aftermath The End The Starling Market Day Epitaph in a Church-Yard in Charleston, South Carolina Francis II, King of Naples To John Keats The Boston Athenaeum Verses for Children Sea Shell Fringed Gentians The Painted Ceiling The Crescent Moon Climbing The Trout Wind The Pleiades Thanks are due to the editor of the 'Atlantic Monthly', and to Messrs. G. Schirmer, Inc., for their courteous permission to reprint certain of these poems which have been copyrighted by them. [All these copyrights are now expired.] LYRICAL POEMS Before the Altar Before the Altar, bowed, he stands With empty hands; Upon it perfumed offerings burn Wreathing with smoke the sacrificial urn. Not one of all these has he given, No flame of his has leapt to Heaven Firesouled, vermilion-hearted, Forked, and darted, Consuming what a few spare pence Have cheaply bought, to fling from hence In idly-asked petition. His sole condition Love and poverty. And while the moon Swings slow across the sky, Athwart a waving pine tree, And soon Tips all the needles there With silver sparkles, bitterly He gazes, while his soul Grows hard with thinking of the poorness of his dole. "Shining and distant Goddess, hear my prayer Where you swim in the high air! With charity look down on me, Under this tree, Tending the gifts I have not brought, The rare and goodly things I have not sought. Instead, take from me all my life! "Upon the wings Of shimmering moonbeams I pack my poet's dreams For you. My wearying strife, My courage, my loss, Into the night I toss For you. Golden Divinity, Deign to look down on me Who so unworthily Offers to you: All life has known, Seeds withered unsown, Hopes turning quick to fears, Laughter which dies in tears. The shredded remnant of a man Is all the span And compass of my offering to you. "Empty and silent, I Kneel before your pure, calm majesty. On this stone, in this urn I pour my heart and watch it burn, Myself the sacrifice; but be Still unmoved: Divinity." From the altar, bathed in moonlight, The smoke rose straight in the quiet night. Suggested by the Cover of a Volume of Keats's Poems Wild little bird, who chose thee for a sign To put upon the cover of this book? Who heard thee singing in the distance dim, The vague, far greenness of the enshrouding wood, When the damp freshness of the morning earth Was full of pungent sweetness and thy song? Who followed over moss and twisted roots, And pushed through the wet leaves of trailing vines Where slanting sunbeams gleamed uncertainly, While ever clearer came the dropping notes, Until, at last, two widening trunks disclosed Thee singing on a spray of branching beech, Hidden, then seen; and always that same song Of joyful sweetness, rapture incarnate, Filled the hushed, rustling stillness of the wood? We do not know what bird thou art. Perhaps That fairy bird, fabled in island tale, Who never sings but once, and then his song Is of such fearful beauty that he dies From sheer exuberance of melody. For this they took thee, little bird, for this They captured thee, tilting among the leaves, And stamped thee for a symbol on this book. For it contains a song surpassing thine, Richer, more sweet, more poignant. And the poet Who felt this burning beauty, and whose heart Was full of loveliest things, sang all he knew A little while, and then he died; too frail To bear this untamed, passionate burst of song. Apples of Hesperides Glinting golden through the trees, Apples of Hesperides! Through the moon-pierced warp of night Shoot pale shafts of yellow light, Swaying to the kissing breeze Swings the treasure, golden-gleaming, Apples of Hesperides! Far and lofty yet they glimmer, Apples of Hesperides! Blinded by their radiant shimmer, Pushing forward just for these; Dew-besprinkled, bramble-marred, Poor duped mortal, travel-scarred, Always thinking soon to seize And possess the golden-glistening Apples of Hesperides! Orbed, and glittering, and pendent, Apples of Hesperides! Not one missing, still transcendent, Clustering like a swarm of bees. Yielding to no man's desire, Glowing with a saffron fire, Splendid, unassailed, the golden Apples of Hesperides! Azure and Gold April had covered the hills With flickering yellows and reds, The sparkle and coolness of snow Was blown from the mountain beds. Across a deep-sunken stream The pink of blossoming trees, And from windless appleblooms The humming of many bees. The air was of rose and gold Arabesqued with the song of birds Who, swinging unseen under leaves, Made music more eager than words. Of a sudden, aslant the road, A brightness to dazzle and stun, A glint of the bluest blue, A flash from a sapphire sun. Blue-birds so blue, 't was a dream, An impossible, unconceived hue, The high sky of summer dropped down Some rapturous ocean to woo. Such a colour, such infinite light! The heart of a fabulous gem, Many-faceted, brilliant and rare. Centre Stone of the earth's diadem! . . . . . Centre Stone of the Crown of the World, "Sincerity" graved on your youth! And your eyes hold the blue-bird flash, The sapphire shaft, which is truth. Petals Life is a stream On which we strew Petal by petal the flower of our heart; The end lost in dream, They float past our view, We only watch their glad, early start. Freighted with hope, Crimsoned with joy, We scatter the leaves of our opening rose; Their widening scope, Their distant employ, We never shall know. And the stream as it flows Sweeps them away, Each one is gone Ever beyond into infinite ways. We alone stay While years hurry on, The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays. Venetian Glass As one who sails upon a wide, blue sea Far out of sight of land, his mind intent Upon the sailing of his little boat, On tightening ropes and shaping fair his course, Hears suddenly, across the restless sea, The rhythmic striking of some towered clock, And wakes from thoughtless idleness to time: Time, the slow pulse which beats eternity! So through the vacancy of busy life At intervals you cross my path and bring The deep solemnity of passing years. For you I have shed bitter tears, for you I have relinquished that for which my heart Cried out in selfish longing. And to-night Having just left you, I can say: "'T is well. Thank God that I have known a soul so true, So nobly just, so worthy to be loved!" Fatigue Stupefy my heart to every day's monotony, Seal up my eyes, I would not look so far, Chasten my steps to peaceful regularity, Bow down my head lest I behold a star. Fill my days with work, a thousand calm necessities Leaving no moment to consecrate to hope, Girdle my thoughts within the dull circumferences Of facts which form the actual in one short hour's scope. Give me dreamless sleep, and loose night's power over me, Shut my ears to sounds only tumultuous then, Bid Fancy slumber, and steal away its potency, Or Nature wakes and strives to live again. Let each day pass, well ordered in its usefulness, Unlit by sunshine, unscarred by storm; Dower me with strength and curb all foolish eagerness -- The law exacts obedience. Instruct, I will conform. A Japanese Wood-Carving High up above the open, welcoming door It hangs, a piece of wood with colours dim. Once, long ago, it was a waving tree And knew the sun and shadow through the leaves Of forest trees, in a thick eastern wood. The winter snows had bent its branches down, The spring had swelled its buds with coming flowers, Summer had run like fire through its veins, While autumn pelted it with chestnut burrs, And strewed the leafy ground with acorn cups. Dark midnight storms had roared and crashed among Its branches, breaking here and there a limb; But every now and then broad sunlit days Lovingly lingered, caught among the leaves. Yes, it had known all this, and yet to us It does not speak of mossy forest ways, Of whispering pine trees or the shimmering birch; But of quick winds, and the salt, stinging sea! An artist once, with patient, careful knife, Had fashioned it like to the untamed sea. Here waves uprear themselves, their tops blown back By the gay, sunny wind, which whips the blue And breaks it into gleams and sparks of light. Among the flashing waves are two white birds Which swoop, and soar, and scream for very joy At the wild sport. Now diving quickly in, Questing some glistening fish. Now flying up, Their dripping feathers shining in the sun, While the wet drops like little glints of light, Fall pattering backward to the parent sea. Gliding along the green and foam-flecked hollows, Or skimming some white crest about to break, The spirits of the sky deigning to stoop And play with ocean in a summer mood. Hanging above the high, wide open door, It brings to us in quiet, firelit room, The freedom of the earth's vast solitudes, Where heaping, sunny waves tumble and roll, And seabirds scream in wanton happiness. A Little Song When you, my Dear, are away, away, How wearily goes the creeping day. A year drags after morning, and night Starts another year of candle light. O Pausing Sun and Lingering Moon! Grant me, I beg of you, this boon. Whirl round the earth as never sun Has his diurnal journey run. And, Moon, slip past the ladders of air In a single flash, while your streaming hair Catches the stars and pulls them down To shine on some slumbering Chinese town. O Kindly Sun! Understanding Moon! Bring evening to crowd the footsteps of noon. But when that long awaited day Hangs ripe in the heavens, your voyaging stay. Be morning, O Sun! with the lark in song, Be afternoon for ages long. And, Moon, let you and your lesser lights Watch over a century of nights. Behind a Wall I own a solace shut within my heart, A garden full of many a quaint delight And warm with drowsy, poppied sunshine; bright, Flaming with lilies out of whose cups dart Shining things With powdered wings. Here terrace sinks to terrace, arbors close The ends of dreaming paths; a wanton wind Jostles the half-ripe pears, and then, unkind, Tumbles a-slumber in a pillar rose, With content Grown indolent. By night my garden is o'erhung with gems Fixed in an onyx setting. Fireflies Flicker their lanterns in my dazzled eyes. In serried rows I guess the straight, stiff stems Of hollyhocks Against the rocks. So far and still it is that, listening, I hear the flowers talking in the dawn; And where a sunken basin cuts the lawn, Cinctured with iris, pale and glistening, The sudden swish Of a waking fish. A Winter Ride Who shall declare the joy of the running! Who shall tell of the pleasures of flight! Springing and spurning the tufts of wild heather, Sweeping, wide-winged, through the blue dome of light. Everything mortal has moments immortal, Swift and God-gifted, immeasurably bright. So with the stretch of the white road before me, Shining snowcrystals rainbowed by the sun, Fields that are white, stained with long, cool, blue shadows, Strong with the strength of my horse as we run. Joy in the touch of the wind and the sunlight! Joy! With the vigorous earth I am one. A Coloured Print by Shokei It winds along the face of a cliff This path which I long to explore, And over it dashes a waterfall, And the air is full of the roar And the thunderous voice of waters which sweep In a silver torrent over some steep. It clears the path with a mighty bound And tumbles below and away, And the trees and the bushes which grow in the rocks Are wet with its jewelled spray; The air is misty and heavy with sound, And small, wet wildflowers star the ground. Oh! The dampness is very good to smell, And the path is soft to tread, And beyond the fall it winds up and on, While little streamlets thread Their own meandering way down the hill Each singing its own little song, until I forget that 't is only a pictured path, And I hear the water and wind, And look through the mist, and strain my eyes To see what there is behind; For it must lead to a happy land, This little path by a waterfall spanned. Song Oh! To be a flower Nodding in the sun, Bending, then upspringing As the breezes run; Holding up A scent-brimmed cup, Full of summer's fragrance to the summer sun. Oh! To be a butterfly Still, upon a flower, Winking with its painted wings, Happy in the hour. Blossoms hold Mines of gold Deep within the farthest heart of each chaliced flower. Oh! To be a cloud Blowing through the blue, Shadowing the mountains, Rushing loudly through Valleys deep Where torrents keep Always their plunging thunder and their misty arch of blue. Oh! To be a wave Splintering on the sand, Drawing back, but leaving Lingeringly the land. Rainbow light Flashes bright Telling tales of coral caves half hid in yellow sand. Soon they die, the flowers; Insects live a day; Clouds dissolve in showers; Only waves at play Last forever. Shall endeavor Make a sea of purpose mightier than we dream to-day? The Fool Errant The Fool Errant sat by the highway of life And his gaze wandered up and his gaze wandered down, A vigorous youth, but with no wish to walk, Yet his longing was great for the distant town. He whistled a little frivolous tune Which he felt to be pulsing with ecstasy, For he thought that success always followed desire, Such a very superlative fool was he. A maiden came by on an ambling mule, Her gown was rose-red and her kerchief blue, On her lap she carried a basket of eggs. Thought the fool, "There is certainly room for two." So he jauntily swaggered towards the maid And put out his hand to the bridle-rein. "My pretty girl," quoth the fool, "take me up, For to ride with you to the town I am fain." But the maiden struck at his upraised arm And pelted him hotly with eggs, a score. The mule, lashed into a fury, ran; The fool went back to his stone and swore. Then out of the cloud of settling dust The burly form of an abbot appeared, Reading his office he rode to the town. And the fool got up, for his heart was cheered. He stood in the midst of the long, white road And swept off his cap till it touched the ground. "Ah, Reverent Sir, well met," said the fool, "A worthier transport never was found. "I pray you allow me to mount with you, Your palfrey seems both sturdy and young." The abbot looked up from the holy book And cried out in anger, "Hold your tongue! "How dare you obstruct the King's highroad, You saucy varlet, get out of my way." Then he gave the fool a cut with his whip And leaving him smarting, he rode away. The fool was angry, the fool was sore, And he cursed the folly of monks and maids. "If I could but meet with a man," sighed the fool, "For a woman fears, and a friar upbraids." Then he saw a flashing of distant steel And the clanking of harness greeted his ears, And up the road journeyed knights-at-arms, With waving plumes and glittering spears. The fool took notice and slowly arose, Not quite so sure was his foolish heart. If priests and women would none of him Was it likely a knight would take his part? They sang as they rode, these lusty boys, When one chanced to turn toward the highway's side, "There's a sorry figure of fun," jested he, "Well, Sirrah! move back, there is scarce room to ride." "Good Sirs, Kind Sirs," begged the crestfallen fool, "I pray of your courtesy speech with you, I'm for yonder town, and have no horse to ride, Have you never a charger will carry two?" Then the company halted and laughed out loud. "Was such a request ever made to a knight?" "And where are your legs," asked one, "if you start, You may be inside the town gates to-night." "'T is a lazy fellow, let him alone, They've no room in the town for such idlers as he." But one bent from his saddle and said, "My man, Art thou not ashamed to beg charity! "Thou art well set up, and thy legs are strong, But it much misgives me lest thou'rt a fool; For beggars get only a beggar's crust, Wise men are reared in a different school." Then they clattered away in the dust and the wind, And the fool slunk back to his lonely stone; He began to see that the man who asks Must likewise give and not ask alone. Purple tree-shadows crept over the road, The level sun flung an orange light, And the fool laid his head on the hard, gray stone And wept as he realized advancing night. A great, round moon rose over a hill And the steady wind blew yet more cool; And crouched on a stone a wayfarer sobbed, For at last he knew he was only a fool. The Green Bowl This little bowl is like a mossy pool In a Spring wood, where dogtooth violets grow Nodding in chequered sunshine of the trees; A quiet place, still, with the sound of birds, Where, though unseen, is heard the endless song And murmur of the never resting sea. 'T was winter, Roger, when you made this cup, But coming Spring guided your eager hand And round the edge you fashioned young green leaves, A proper chalice made to hold the shy And little flowers of the woods. And here They will forget their sad uprooting, lost In pleasure that this circle of bright leaves Should be their setting; once more they will dream They hear winds wandering through lofty trees And see the sun smiling between the leaves. Hora Stellatrix The stars hang thick in the apple tree, The south wind smells of the pungent sea, Gold tulip cups are heavy with dew. The night's for you, Sweetheart, for you! Starfire rains from the vaulted blue. Listen! The dancing of unseen leaves. A drowsy swallow stirs in the eaves. Only a maiden is sorrowing. 'T is night and spring, Sweetheart, and spring! Starfire lights your heart's blossoming. In the intimate dark there's never an ear, Though the tulips stand on tiptoe to hear, So give; ripe fruit must shrivel or fall. As you are mine, Sweetheart, give all! Starfire sparkles, your coronal. Fragment What is poetry? Is it a mosaic Of coloured stones which curiously are wrought Into a pattern? Rather glass that's taught By patient labor any hue to take And glowing with a sumptuous splendor, make Beauty a thing of awe; where sunbeams caught, Transmuted fall in sheafs of rainbows fraught With storied meaning for religion's sake. Loon Point Softly the water ripples Against the canoe's curving side, Softly the birch trees rustle Flinging over us branches wide. Softly the moon glints and glistens As the water takes and leaves, Like golden ears of corn Which fall from loose-bound sheaves, Or like the snow-white petals Which drop from an overblown rose, When Summer ripens to Autumn And the freighted year must close. From the shore come the scents of a garden, And between a gap in the trees A proud white statue glimmers In cold, disdainful ease. The child of a southern people, The thought of an alien race, What does she in this pale, northern garden, How reconcile it with her grace? But the moon in her wayward beauty Is ever and always the same, As lovely as when upon Latmos She watched till Endymion came. Through the water the moon writes her legends In light, on the smooth, wet sand; They endure for a moment, and vanish, And no one may understand. All round us the secret of Nature Is telling itself to our sight, We may guess at her meaning but never Can know the full mystery of night. But her power of enchantment is on us, We bow to the spell which she weaves, Made up of the murmur of waves And the manifold whisper of leaves. Summer Some men there are who find in nature all Their inspiration, hers the sympathy Which spurs them on to any great endeavor, To them the fields and woods are closest friends, And they hold dear communion with the hills; The voice of waters soothes them with its fall, And the great winds bring healing in their sound. To them a city is a prison house Where pent up human forces labour and strive, Where beauty dwells not, driven forth by man; But where in winter they must live until Summer gives back the spaces of the hills. To me it is not so. I love the earth And all the gifts of her so lavish hand: Sunshine and flowers, rivers and rushing winds, Thick branches swaying in a winter storm, And moonlight playing in a boat's wide wake; But more than these, and much, ah, how much more, I love the very human heart of man. Above me spreads the hot, blue mid-day sky, Far down the hillside lies the sleeping lake Lazily reflecting back the sun, And scarcely ruffled by the little breeze Which wanders idly through the nodding ferns. The blue crest of the distant mountain, tops The green crest of the hill on which I sit; And it is summer, glorious, deep-toned summer, The very crown of nature's changing year When all her surging life is at its full. To me alone it is a time of pause, A void and silent space between two worlds, When inspiration lags, and feeling sleeps, Gathering strength for efforts yet to come. For life alone is creator of life, And closest contact with the human world Is like a lantern shining in the night To light me to a knowledge of myself. I love the vivid life of winter months In constant intercourse with human minds, When every new experience is gain And on all sides we feel the great world's heart; The pulse and throb of life which makes us men! "To-morrow to Fresh Woods and Pastures New" As for a moment he stands, in hardy masculine beauty, Poised on the fircrested rock, over the pool which below him Gleams in the wavering sunlight, waiting the shock of his plunging. So for a moment I stand, my feet planted firm in the present, Eagerly scanning the future which is so soon to possess me. The Way At first a mere thread of a footpath half blotted out by the grasses Sweeping triumphant across it, it wound between hedges of roses Whose blossoms were poised above leaves as pond lilies float on the water, While hidden by bloom in a hawthorn a bird filled the morning with singing. It widened a highway, majestic, stretching ever to distant horizons, Where shadows of tree-branches wavered, vague outlines invaded by sunshine; No sound but the wind as it whispered the secrets of earth to the flowers, And the hum of the yellow bees, honey-laden and dusty with pollen. And Summer said, "Come, follow onward, with no thought save the longing to wander, The wind, and the bees, and the flowers, all singing the great song of Nature, Are minstrels of change and of promise, they herald the joy of the Future." Later the solitude vanished, confused and distracted the road Where many were seeking and jostling. Left behind were the trees and the flowers, The half-realized beauty of quiet, the sacred unconscious communing. And now he is come to a river, a line of gray, sullen water, Not blue and splashing, but dark, rolling somberly on to the ocean. But on the far side is a city whose windows flame gold in the sunset. It lies fair and shining before him, a gem set betwixt sky and water, And spanning the river a bridge, frail promise to longing desire, Flung by man in his infinite courage, across the stern force of the water; And he looks at the river and fears, the bridge is so slight, yet he ventures His life to its fragile keeping, if it fails the waves will engulf him. O Arches! be strong to uphold him, and bear him across to the city, The beautiful city whose spires still glow with the fires of sunset! Diya {original title is Greek, Delta-iota-psi-alpha} Look, Dear, how bright the moonlight is to-night! See where it casts the shadow of that tree Far out upon the grass. And every gust Of light night wind comes laden with the scent Of opening flowers which never bloom by day: Night-scented stocks, and four-o'clocks, and that Pale yellow disk, upreared on its tall stalk, The evening primrose, comrade of the stars. It seems as though the garden which you love Were like a swinging censer, its incense Floating before us as a reverent act To sanctify and bless our night of love. Tell me once more you love me, that 't is you Yes, really you, I touch, so, with my hand; And tell me it is by your own free will That you are here, and that you like to be Just here, with me, under this sailing pine. I need to hear it often for my heart Doubts naturally, and finds it hard to trust. Ah, Dearest, you are good to love me so, And yet I would not have it goodness, rather Excess of selfishness in you to need Me through and through, as flowers need the sun. I wonder can it really be that you And I are here alone, and that the night Is full of hours, and all the world asleep, And none can call to you to come away; For you have given all yourself to me Making me gentle by your willingness. Has your life too been waiting for this time, Not only mine the sharpness of this joy? Dear Heart, I love you, worship you as though I were a priest before a holy shrine. I'm glad that you are beautiful, although Were you not lovely still I needs must love; But you are all things, it must have been so For otherwise it were not you. Come, close; When you are in the circle of my arm Faith grows a mountain and I take my stand Upon its utmost top. Yes, yes, once more Kiss me, and let me feel you very near Wanting me wholly, even as I want you. Have years behind been dark? Will those to come Bring unguessed sorrows into our two lives? What does it matter, we have had to-night! To-night will make us strong, for we believe Each in the other, this is a sacrament. Beloved, is it true? Roads I know a country laced with roads, They join the hills and they span the brooks, They weave like a shuttle between broad fields, And slide discreetly through hidden nooks. They are canopied like a Persian dome And carpeted with orient dyes. They are myriad-voiced, and musical, And scented with happiest memories. O Winding roads that I know so well, Every twist and turn, every hollow and hill! They are set in my heart to a pulsing tune Gay as a honey-bee humming in June. 'T is the rhythmic beat of a horse's feet And the pattering paws of a sheep-dog bitch; 'T is the creaking trees, and the singing breeze, And the rustle of leaves in the road-side ditch. A cow in a meadow shakes her bell And the notes cut sharp through the autumn air, Each chattering brook bears a fleet of leaves Their cargo the rainbow, and just now where The sun splashed bright on the road ahead A startled rabbit quivered and fled. O Uphill roads and roads that dip down! You curl your sun-spattered length along, And your march is beaten into a song By the softly ringing hoofs of a horse And the panting breath of the dogs I love. The pageant of Autumn follows its course And the blue sky of Autumn laughs above. And the song and the country become as one, I see it as music, I hear it as light; Prismatic and shimmering, trembling to tone, The land of desire, my soul's delight. And always it beats in my listening ears With the gentle thud of a horse's stride, With the swift-falling steps of many dogs, Following, following at my side. O Roads that journey to fairyland! Radiant highways whose vistas gleam, Leading me on, under crimson leaves, To the opaline gates of the Castles of Dream. Teatro Bambino. Dublin, N. H. How still it is! Sunshine itself here falls In quiet shafts of light through the high trees Which, arching, make a roof above the walls Changing from sun to shadow as each breeze Lingers a moment, charmed by the strange sight Of an Italian theatre, storied, seer Of vague romance, and time's long history; Where tiers of grass-grown seats sprinkled with white, Sweet-scented clover, form a broken sphere Grouped round the stage in hushed expectancy. What sound is that which echoes through the wood? Is it the reedy note of an oaten pipe? Perchance a minute more will see the brood Of the shaggy forest god, and on his lip Will rest the rushes he is wont to play. His train in woven baskets bear ripe fruit And weave a dance with ropes of gray acorns, So light their touch the grasses scarcely sway As they the measure tread to the lilting flute. Alas! 't is only Fancy thus adorns. A cloud drifts idly over the shining sun. How damp it seems, how silent, still, and strange! Surely 't was here some tragedy was done, And here the chorus sang each coming change? Sure this is deep in some sweet, southern wood, These are not pines, but cypress tall and dark; That is no thrush which sings so rapturously, But the nightingale in his most passionate mood Bursting his little heart with anguish. Hark! The tread of sandalled feet comes noiselessly. The silence almost is a sound, and dreams Take on the semblances of finite things; So potent is the spell that what but seems Elsewhere, is lifted here on Fancy's wings. The little woodland theatre seems to wait, All tremulous with hope and wistful joy, For something that is sure to come at last, Some deep emotion, satisfying, great. It grows a living presence, bold and shy, Cradling the future in a glorious past. The Road to Avignon A Minstrel stands on a marble stair, Blown by the bright wind, debonair; Below lies the sea, a sapphire floor, Above on the terrace a turret door Frames a lady, listless and wan, But fair for the eye to rest upon. The minstrel plucks at his silver strings, And looking up to the lady, sings: -- Down the road to Avignon, The long, long road to Avignon, Across the bridge to Avignon, One morning in the spring. The octagon tower casts a shade Cool and gray like a cutlass blade; In sun-baked vines the cicalas spin, The little green lizards run out and in. A sail dips over the ocean's rim, And bubbles rise to the fountain's brim. The minstrel touches his silver strings, And gazing up to the lady, sings: -- Down the road to Avignon, The long, long road to Avignon, Across the bridge to Avignon, One morning in the spring. Slowly she walks to the balustrade, Idly notes how the blossoms fade In the sun's caress; then crosses where The shadow shelters a carven chair. Within its curve, supine she lies, And wearily closes her tired eyes. The minstrel beseeches his silver strings, And holding the lady spellbound, sings: -- Down the road to Avignon, The long, long road to Avignon, Across the bridge to Avignon, One morning in the spring. Clouds sail over the distant trees, Petals are shaken down by the breeze, They fall on the terrace tiles like snow; The sighing of waves sounds, far below. A humming-bird kisses the lips of a rose Then laden with honey and love he goes. The minstrel woos with his silver strings, And climbing up to the lady, sings: -- Down the road to Avignon, The long, long road to Avignon, Across the bridge to Avignon, One morning in the spring. Step by step, and he comes to her, Fearful lest she suddenly stir. Sunshine and silence, and each to each, The lute and his singing their only speech; He leans above her, her eyes unclose, The humming-bird enters another rose. The minstrel hushes his silver strings. Hark! The beating of humming-birds' wings! Down the road to Avignon, The long, long road to Avignon, Across the bridge to Avignon, One morning in the spring. New York at Night A near horizon whose sharp jags Cut brutally into a sky Of leaden heaviness, and crags Of houses lift their masonry Ugly and foul, and chimneys lie And snort, outlined against the gray Of lowhung cloud. I hear the sigh The goaded city gives, not day Nor night can ease her heart, her anguished labours stay. Below, straight streets, monotonous, From north and south, from east and west, Stretch glittering; and luminous Above, one tower tops the rest And holds aloft man's constant quest: Time! Joyless emblem of the greed Of millions, robber of the best Which earth can give, the vulgar creed Has seared upon the night its flaming ruthless screed. O Night! Whose soothing presence brings The quiet shining of the stars. O Night! Whose cloak of darkness clings So intimately close that scars Are hid from our own eyes. Beggars By day, our wealth is having night To burn our souls before altars Dim and tree-shadowed, where the light Is shed from a young moon, mysteriously bright. Where art thou hiding, where thy peace? This is the hour, but thou art not. Will waking tumult never cease? Hast thou thy votary forgot? Nature forsakes this man-begot And festering wilderness, and now The long still hours are here, no jot Of dear communing do I know; Instead the glaring, man-filled city groans below! A Fairy Tale On winter nights beside the nursery fire We read the fairy tale, while glowing coals Builded its pictures. There before our eyes We saw the vaulted hall of traceried stone Uprear itself, the distant ceiling hung With pendent stalactites like frozen vines; And all along the walls at intervals, Curled upwards into pillars, roses climbed, And ramped and were confined, and clustered leaves Divided where there peered a laughing face. The foliage seemed to rustle in the wind, A silent murmur, carved in still, gray stone. High pointed windows pierced the southern wall Whence proud escutcheons flung prismatic fires To stain the tessellated marble floor With pools of red, and quivering green, and blue; And in the shade beyond the further door, Its sober squares of black and white were hid Beneath a restless, shuffling, wide-eyed mob Of lackeys and retainers come to view The Christening. A sudden blare of trumpets, and the throng About the entrance parted as the guests Filed singly in with rare and precious gifts. Our eager fancies noted all they brought, The glorious, unattainable delights! But always there was one unbidden guest Who cursed the child and left it bitterness. The fire falls asunder, all is changed, I am no more a child, and what I see Is not a fairy tale, but life, my life. The gifts are there, the many pleasant things: Health, wealth, long-settled friendships, with a name Which honors all who bear it, and the power Of making words obedient. This is much; But overshadowing all is still the curse, That never shall I be fulfilled by love! Along the parching highroad of the world No other soul shall bear mine company. Always shall I be teased with semblances, With cruel impostures, which I trust awhile Then dash to pieces, as a careless boy Flings a kaleidoscope, which shattering Strews all the ground about with coloured sherds. So I behold my visions on the ground No longer radiant, an ignoble heap Of broken, dusty glass. And so, unlit, Even by hope or faith, my dragging steps Force me forever through the passing days. Crowned You came to me bearing bright roses, Red like the wine of your heart; You twisted them into a garland To set me aside from the mart. Red roses to crown me your lover, And I walked aureoled and apart. Enslaved and encircled, I bore it, Proud token of my gift to you. The petals waned paler, and shriveled, And dropped; and the thorns started through. Bitter thorns to proclaim me your lover, A diadem woven with rue. To Elizabeth Ward Perkins Dear Bessie, would my tired rhyme Had force to rise from apathy, And shaking off its lethargy Ring word-tones like a Christmas chime. But in my soul's high belfry, chill The bitter wind of doubt has blown, The summer swallows all have flown, The bells are frost-bound, mute and still. Upon the crumbling boards the snow Has drifted deep, the clappers hang Prismed with icicles, their clang Unheard since ages long ago. The rope I pull is stiff and cold, My straining ears detect no sound Except a sigh, as round and round The wind rocks through the timbers old. Below, I know the church is bright With haloed tapers, warm with prayer; But here I only feel the air Of icy centuries of night. Beneath my feet the snow is lit And gemmed with colours, red, and blue, Topaz, and green, where light falls through The saints that in the windows sit. Here darkness seems a spectred thing, Voiceless and haunting, while the stars Mock with a light of long dead years The ache of present suffering. Silent and winter-killed I stand, No carol hymns my debt to you; But take this frozen thought in lieu, And thaw its music in your hand. The Promise of the Morning Star Thou father of the children of my brain By thee engendered in my willing heart, How can I thank thee for this gift of art Poured out so lavishly, and not in vain. What thou created never more can die, Thy fructifying power lives in me And I conceive, knowing it is by thee, Dear other parent of my poetry! For I was but a shadow with a name, Perhaps by now the very name's forgot; So strange is Fate that it has been my lot To learn through thee the presence of that aim Which evermore must guide me. All unknown, By me unguessed, by thee not even dreamed, A tree has blossomed in a night that seemed Of stubborn, barren wood. For thou hast sown This seed of beauty in a ground of truth. Humbly I dedicate myself, and yet I tremble with a sudden fear to set New music ringing through my fading youth. J--K. Huysmans A flickering glimmer through a window-pane, A dim red glare through mud bespattered glass, Cleaving a path between blown walls of sleet Across uneven pavements sunk in slime To scatter and then quench itself in mist. And struggling, slipping, often rudely hurled Against the jutting angle of a wall, And cursed, and reeled against, and flung aside By drunken brawlers as they shuffled past, A man was groping to what seemed a light. His eyelids burnt and quivered with the strain Of looking, and against his temples beat The all enshrouding, suffocating dark. He stumbled, lurched, and struck against a door That opened, and a howl of obscene mirth Grated his senses, wallowing on the floor Lay men, and dogs and women in the dirt. He sickened, loathing it, and as he gazed The candle guttered, flared, and then went out. Through travail of ignoble midnight streets He came at last to shelter in a porch Where gothic saints and warriors made a shield To cover him, and tortured gargoyles spat One long continuous stream of silver rain That clattered down from myriad roofs and spires Into a darkness, loud with rushing sound Of water falling, gurgling as it fell, But always thickly dark. Then as he leaned Unconscious where, the great oak door blew back And cast him, bruised and dripping, in the church. His eyes from long sojourning in the night Were blinded now as by some glorious sun; He slowly crawled toward the altar steps. He could not think, for heavy in his ears An organ boomed majestic harmonies; He only knew that what he saw was light! He bowed himself before a cross of flame And shut his eyes in fear lest it should fade. March Evening Blue through the window burns the twilight; Heavy, through trees, blows the warm south wind. Glistening, against the chill, gray sky light, Wet, black branches are barred and entwined. Sodden and spongy, the scarce-green grass plot Dents into pools where a foot has been. Puddles lie spilt in the road a mass, not Of water, but steel, with its cold, hard sheen. Faint fades the fire on the hearth, its embers Scattering wide at a stronger gust. Above, the old weathercock groans, but remembers Creaking, to turn, in its centuried rust. Dying, forlorn, in dreary sorrow, Wrapping the mists round her withering form, Day sinks down; and in darkness to-morrow Travails to birth in the womb of the storm. SONNETS Leisure Leisure, thou goddess of a bygone age, When hours were long and days sufficed to hold Wide-eyed delights and pleasures uncontrolled By shortening moments, when no gaunt presage Of undone duties, modern heritage, Haunted our happy minds; must thou withhold Thy presence from this over-busy world, And bearing silence with thee disengage Our twined fortunes? Deeps of unhewn woods Alone can cherish thee, alone possess Thy quiet, teeming vigor. This our crime: Not to have worshipped, marred by alien moods That sole condition of all loveliness, The dreaming lapse of slow, unmeasured time. On Carpaccio's Picture: The Dream of St. Ursula Swept, clean, and still, across the polished floor From some unshuttered casement, hid from sight, The level sunshine slants, its greater light Quenching the little lamp which pallid, poor, Flickering, unreplenished, at the door Has striven against darkness the long night. Dawn fills the room, and penetrating, bright, The silent sunbeams through the window pour. And she lies sleeping, ignorant of Fate, Enmeshed in listless dreams, her soul not yet Ripened to bear the purport of this day. The morning breeze scarce stirs the coverlet, A shadow falls across the sunlight; wait! A lark is singing as he flies away. The Matrix Goaded and harassed in the factory That tears our life up into bits of days Ticked off upon a clock which never stays, Shredding our portion of Eternity, We break away at last, and steal the key Which hides a world empty of hours; ways Of space unroll, and Heaven overlays The leafy, sun-lit earth of Fantasy. Beyond the ilex shadow glares the sun, Scorching against the blue flame of the sky. Brown lily-pads lie heavy and supine Within a granite basin, under one The bronze-gold glimmer of a carp; and I Reach out my hand and pluck a nectarine. Monadnock in Early Spring Cloud-topped and splendid, dominating all The little lesser hills which compass thee, Thou standest, bright with April's buoyancy, Yet holding Winter in some shaded wall Of stern, steep rock; and startled by the call Of Spring, thy trees flush with expectancy And cast a cloud of crimson, silently, Above thy snowy crevices where fall Pale shrivelled oak leaves, while the snow beneath Melts at their phantom touch. Another year Is quick with import. Such each year has been. Unmoved thou watchest all, and all bequeath Some jewel to thy diadem of power, Thou pledge of greater majesty unseen. The Little Garden A little garden on a bleak hillside Where deep the heavy, dazzling mountain snow Lies far into the spring. The sun's pale glow Is scarcely able to melt patches wide About the single rose bush. All denied Of nature's tender ministries. But no, -- For wonder-working faith has made it blow With flowers many hued and starry-eyed. Here sleeps the sun long, idle summer hours; Here butterflies and bees fare far to rove Amid the crumpled leaves of poppy flowers; Here four o'clocks, to the passionate night above Fling whiffs of perfume, like pale incense showers. A little garden, loved with a great love! To an Early Daffodil Thou yellow trumpeter of laggard Spring! Thou herald of rich Summer's myriad flowers! The climbing sun with new recovered powers Does warm thee into being, through the ring Of rich, brown earth he woos thee, makes thee fling Thy green shoots up, inheriting the dowers Of bending sky and sudden, sweeping showers, Till ripe and blossoming thou art a thing To make all nature glad, thou art so gay; To fill the lonely with a joy untold; Nodding at every gust of wind to-day, To-morrow jewelled with raindrops. Always bold To stand erect, full in the dazzling play Of April's sun, for thou hast caught his gold. Listening 'T is you that are the music, not your song. The song is but a door which, opening wide, Lets forth the pent-up melody inside, Your spirit's harmony, which clear and strong Sings but of you. Throughout your whole life long Your songs, your thoughts, your doings, each divide This perfect beauty; waves within a tide, Or single notes amid a glorious throng. The song of earth has many different chords; Ocean has many moods and many tones Yet always ocean. In the damp Spring woods The painted trillium smiles, while crisp pine cones Autumn alone can ripen. So is this One music with a thousand cadences. The Lamp of Life Always we are following a light, Always the light recedes; with groping hands We stretch toward this glory, while the lands We journey through are hidden from our sight Dim and mysterious, folded deep in night, We care not, all our utmost need demands Is but the light, the light! So still it stands Surely our own if we exert our might. Fool! Never can'st thou grasp this fleeting gleam, Its glowing flame would die if it were caught, Its value is that it doth always seem But just a little farther on. Distraught, But lighted ever onward, we are brought Upon our way unknowing, in a dream. Hero-Worship A face seen passing in a crowded street, A voice heard singing music, large and free; And from that moment life is changed, and we Become of more heroic temper, meet To freely ask and give, a man complete Radiant because of faith, we dare to be What Nature meant us. Brave idolatry Which can conceive a hero! No deceit, No knowledge taught by unrelenting years, Can quench this fierce, untamable desire. We know that what we long for once achieved Will cease to satisfy. Be still our fears; If what we worship fail us, still the fire Burns on, and it is much to have believed. In Darkness Must all of worth be travailled for, and those Life's brightest stars rise from a troubled sea? Must years go by in sad uncertainty Leaving us doubting whose the conquering blows, Are we or Fate the victors? Time which shows All inner meanings will reveal, but we Shall never know the upshot. Ours to be Wasted with longing, shattered in the throes, The agonies of splendid dreams, which day Dims from our vision, but each night brings back; We strive to hold their grandeur, and essay To be the thing we dream. Sudden we lack The flash of insight, life grows drear and gray, And hour follows hour, nerveless, slack. Before Dawn Life! Austere arbiter of each man's fate, By whom he learns that Nature's steadfast laws Are as decrees immutable; O pause Your even forward march! Not yet too late Teach me the needed lesson, when to wait Inactive as a ship when no wind draws To stretch the loosened cordage. One implores Thy clemency, whose wilfulness innate Has gone uncurbed and roughshod while the years Have lengthened into decades; now distressed He knows no rule by which to move or stay, And teased with restlessness and desperate fears He dares not watch in silence thy wise way Bringing about results none could have guessed. The Poet What instinct forces man to journey on, Urged by a longing blind but dominant! Nothing he sees can hold him, nothing daunt His never failing eagerness. The sun Setting in splendour every night has won His vassalage; those towers flamboyant Of airy cloudland palaces now haunt His daylight wanderings. Forever done With simple joys and quiet happiness He guards the vision of the sunset sky; Though faint with weariness he must possess Some fragment of the sunset's majesty; He spurns life's human friendships to profess Life's loneliness of dreaming ecstasy. At Night The wind is singing through the trees to-night, A deep-voiced song of rushing cadences And crashing intervals. No summer breeze Is this, though hot July is at its height, Gone is her gentler music; with delight She listens to this booming like the seas, These elemental, loud necessities Which call to her to answer their swift might. Above the tossing trees shines down a star, Quietly bright; this wild, tumultuous joy Quickens nor dims its splendour. And my mind, O Star! is filled with your white light, from far, So suffer me this one night to enjoy The freedom of the onward sweeping wind. The Fruit Garden Path The path runs straight between the flowering rows, A moonlit path, hemmed in by beds of bloom, Where phlox and marigolds dispute for room With tall, red dahlias and the briar rose. 'T is reckless prodigality which throws Into the night these wafts of rich perfume Which sweep across the garden like a plume. Over the trees a single bright star glows. Dear garden of my childhood, here my years Have run away like little grains of sand; The moments of my life, its hopes and fears Have all found utterance here, where now I stand; My eyes ache with the weight of unshed tears, You are my home, do you not understand? Mirage How is it that, being gone, you fill my days, And all the long nights are made glad by thee? No loneliness is this, nor misery, But great content that these should be the ways Whereby the Fancy, dreaming as she strays, Makes bright and present what she would would be. And who shall say if the reality Is not with dreams so pregnant. For delays And hindrances may bar the wished-for end; A thousand misconceptions may prevent Our souls from coming near enough to blend; Let me but think we have the same intent, That each one needs to call the other, "friend!" It may be vain illusion. I'm content. To a Friend I ask but one thing of you, only one, That always you will be my dream of you; That never shall I wake to find untrue All this I have believed and rested on, Forever vanished, like a vision gone Out into the night. Alas, how few There are who strike in us a chord we knew Existed, but so seldom heard its tone We tremble at the half-forgotten sound. The world is full of rude awakenings And heaven-born castles shattered to the ground, Yet still our human longing vainly clings To a belief in beauty through all wrongs. O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs! A Fixed Idea What torture lurks within a single thought When grown too constant, and however kind, However welcome still, the weary mind Aches with its presence. Dull remembrance taught Remembers on unceasingly; unsought The old delight is with us but to find That all recurring joy is pain refined, Become a habit, and we struggle, caught. You lie upon my heart as on a nest, Folded in peace, for you can never know How crushed I am with having you at rest Heavy upon my life. I love you so You bind my freedom from its rightful quest. In mercy lift your drooping wings and go. Dreams I do not care to talk to you although Your speech evokes a thousand sympathies, And all my being's silent harmonies Wake trembling into music. When you go It is as if some sudden, dreadful blow Had severed all the strings with savage ease. No, do not talk; but let us rather seize This intimate gift of silence which we know. Others may guess your thoughts from what you say, As storms are guessed from clouds where darkness broods. To me the very essence of the day Reveals its inner purpose and its moods; As poplars feel the rain and then straightway Reverse their leaves and shimmer through the woods. Frankincense and Myrrh My heart is tuned to sorrow, and the strings Vibrate most readily to minor chords, Searching and sad; my mind is stuffed with words Which voice the passion and the ache of things: Illusions beating with their baffled wings Against the walls of circumstance, and hoards Of torn desires, broken joys; records Of all a bruised life's maimed imaginings. Now you are come! You tremble like a star Poised where, behind earth's rim, the sun has set. Your voice has sung across my heart, but numb And mute, I have no tones to answer. Far Within I kneel before you, speechless yet, And life ablaze with beauty, I am dumb. From One Who Stays How empty seems the town now you are gone! A wilderness of sad streets, where gaunt walls Hide nothing to desire; sunshine falls Eery, distorted, as it long had shone On white, dead faces tombed in halls of stone. The whir of motors, stricken through with calls Of playing boys, floats up at intervals; But all these noises blur to one long moan. What quest is worth pursuing? And how strange That other men still go accustomed ways! I hate their interest in the things they do. A spectre-horde repeating without change An old routine. Alone I know the days Are still-born, and the world stopped, lacking you. Crepuscule du Matin All night I wrestled with a memory Which knocked insurgent at the gates of thought. The crumbled wreck of years behind has wrought Its disillusion; now I only cry For peace, for power to forget the lie Which hope too long has whispered. So I sought The sleep which would not come, and night was fraught With old emotions weeping silently. I heard your voice again, and knew the things Which you had promised proved an empty vaunt. I felt your clinging hands while night's broad wings Cherished our love in darkness. From the lawn A sudden, quivering birdnote, like a taunt. My arms held nothing but the empty dawn. Aftermath I learnt to write to you in happier days, And every letter was a piece I chipped From off my heart, a fragment newly clipped From the mosaic of life; its blues and grays, Its throbbing reds, I gave to earn your praise. To make a pavement for your feet I stripped My soul for you to walk upon, and slipped Beneath your steps to soften all your ways. But now my letters are like blossoms pale We strew upon a grave with hopeless tears. I ask no recompense, I shall not fail Although you do not heed; the long, sad years Still pass, and still I scatter flowers frail, And whisper words of love which no one hears. The End Throughout the echoing chambers of my brain I hear your words in mournful cadence toll Like some slow passing-bell which warns the soul Of sundering darkness. Unrelenting, fain To batter down resistance, fall again Stroke after stroke, insistent diastole, The bitter blows of truth, until the whole Is hammered into fact made strangely plain. Where shall I look for comfort? Not to you. Our worlds are drawn apart, our spirit's suns Divided, and the light of mine burnt dim. Now in the haunted twilight I must do Your will. I grasp the cup which over-runs, And with my trembling lips I touch the rim. The Starling "'I can't get out', said the starling." Sterne's 'Sentimental Journey'. Forever the impenetrable wall Of self confines my poor rebellious soul, I never see the towering white clouds roll Before a sturdy wind, save through the small Barred window of my jail. I live a thrall With all my outer life a clipped, square hole, Rectangular; a fraction of a scroll Unwound and winding like a worsted ball. My thoughts are grown uneager and depressed Through being always mine, my fancy's wings Are moulted and the feathers blown away. I weary for desires never guessed, For alien passions, strange imaginings, To be some other person for a day. Market Day White, glittering sunlight fills the market square, Spotted and sprigged with shadows. Double rows Of bartering booths spread out their tempting shows Of globed and golden fruit, the morning air Smells sweet with ripeness, on the pavement there A wicker basket gapes and overflows Spilling out cool, blue plums. The market glows, And flaunts, and clatters in its busy care. A stately minster at the northern side Lifts its twin spires to the distant sky, Pinnacled, carved and buttressed; through the wide Arched doorway peals an organ, suddenly -- Crashing, triumphant in its pregnant tide, Quenching the square in vibrant harmony. Epitaph in a Church-Yard in Charleston, South Carolina GEORGE AUGUSTUS CLOUGH A NATIVE OF LIVERPOOL, DIED SUDDENLY OF "STRANGER'S FEVER" NOV'R 5th 1843 AGED 22 He died of "Stranger's Fever" when his youth Had scarcely melted into manhood, so The chiselled legend runs; a brother's woe Laid bare for epitaph. The savage ruth Of a sunny, bright, but alien land, uncouth With cruel caressing dealt a mortal blow, And by this summer sea where flowers grow In tropic splendor, witness to the truth Of ineradicable race he lies. The law of duty urged that he should roam, Should sail from fog and chilly airs to skies Clear with deceitful welcome. He had come With proud resolve, but still his lonely eyes Ached with fatigue at never seeing home. Francis II, King of Naples Written after reading Trevelyan's "Garibaldi and the making of Italy" Poor foolish monarch, vacillating, vain, Decaying victim of a race of kings, Swift Destiny shook out her purple wings And caught him in their shadow; not again Could furtive plotting smear another stain Across his tarnished honour. Smoulderings Of sacrificial fires burst their rings And blotted out in smoke his lost domain. Bereft of courtiers, only with his queen, From empty palace down to empty quay. No challenge screamed from hostile carabine. A single vessel waited, shadowy; All night she ploughed her solitary way Beneath the stars, and through a tranquil sea. To John Keats Great master! Boyish, sympathetic man! Whose orbed and ripened genius lightly hung From life's slim, twisted tendril and there swung In crimson-sphered completeness; guardian Of crystal portals through whose openings fan The spiced winds which blew when earth was young, Scattering wreaths of stars, as Jove once flung A golden shower from heights cerulean. Crumbled before thy majesty we bow. Forget thy empurpled state, thy panoply Of greatness, and be merciful and near; A youth who trudged the highroad we tread now Singing the miles behind him; so may we Faint throbbings of thy music overhear. THE BOSTON ATHENAEUM The Boston Athenaeum Thou dear and well-loved haunt of happy hours, How often in some distant gallery, Gained by a little painful spiral stair, Far from the halls and corridors where throng The crowd of casual readers, have I passed Long, peaceful hours seated on the floor Of some retired nook, all lined with books, Where reverie and quiet reign supreme! Above, below, on every side, high shelved From careless grasp of transient interest, Stand books we can but dimly see, their charm Much greater that their titles are unread; While on a level with the dusty floor Others are ranged in orderly confusion, And we must stoop in painful posture while We read their names and learn their histories. The little gallery winds round about The middle of a most secluded room, Midway between the ceiling and the floor. A type of those high thoughts, which while we read Hover between the earth and furthest heaven As fancy wills, leaving the printed page; For books but give the theme, our hearts the rest, Enriching simple words with unguessed harmony And overtones of thought we only know. And as we sit long hours quietly, Reading at times, and at times simply dreaming, The very room itself becomes a friend, The confidant of intimate hopes and fears; A place where are engendered pleasant thoughts, And possibilities before unguessed Come to fruition born of sympathy. And as in some gay garden stretched upon A genial southern slope, warmed by the sun, The flowers give their fragrance joyously To the caressing touch of the hot noon; So books give up the all of what they mean Only in a congenial atmosphere, Only when touched by reverent hands, and read By those who love and feel as well as think. For books are more than books, they are the life, The very heart and core of ages past, The reason why men lived, and worked, and died, The essence and quintessence of their lives. And we may know them better, and divine The inner motives whence their actions sprang, Far better than the men who only knew Their bodily presence, the soul forever hid From those with no ability to see. They wait here quietly for us to come And find them out, and know them for our friends; These men who toiled and wrote only for this, To leave behind such modicum of truth As each perceived and each alone could tell. Silently waiting that from time to time It may be given them to illuminate Dull daily facts with pristine radiance For some long-waited-for affinity Who lingers yet in the deep womb of time. The shifting sun pierces the young green leaves Of elm trees, newly coming into bud, And splashes on the floor and on the books Through old, high, rounded windows, dim with age. The noisy city-sounds of modern life Float softened to us across the old graveyard. The room is filled with a warm, mellow light, No garish colours jar on our content, The books upon the shelves are old and worn. 'T was no belated effort nor attempt To keep abreast with old as well as new That placed them here, tricked in a modern guise, Easily got, and held in light esteem. Our fathers' fathers, slowly and carefully Gathered them, one by one, when they were new And a delighted world received their thoughts Hungrily; while we but love the more, Because they are so old and grown so dear! The backs of tarnished gold, the faded boards, The slightly yellowing page, the strange old type, All speak the fashion of another age; The thoughts peculiar to the man who wrote Arrayed in garb peculiar to the time; As though the idiom of a man were caught Imprisoned in the idiom of a race. A nothing truly, yet a link that binds All ages to their own inheritance, And stretching backward, dim and dimmer still, Is lost in a remote antiquity. Grapes do not come of thorns nor figs of thistles, And even a great poet's divinest thought Is coloured by the world he knows and sees. The little intimate things of every day, The trivial nothings that we think not of, These go to make a part of each man's life; As much a part as do the larger thoughts He takes account of. Nay, the little things Of daily life it is which mold, and shape, And make him apt for noble deeds and true. And as we read some much-loved masterpiece, Read it as long ago the author read, With eyes that brimmed with tears as he saw The message he believed in stamped in type Inviolable for the slow-coming years; We know a certain subtle sympathy, We seem to clasp his hand across the past, His words become related to the time, He is at one with his own glorious creed And all that in his world was dared and done. The long, still, fruitful hours slip away Shedding their influences as they pass; We know ourselves the richer to have sat Upon this dusty floor and dreamed our dreams. No other place to us were quite the same, No other dreams so potent in their charm, For this is ours! Every twist and turn Of every narrow stair is known and loved; Each nook and cranny is our very own; The dear, old, sleepy place is full of spells For us, by right of long inheritance. The building simply bodies forth a thought Peculiarly inherent to the race. And we, descendants of that elder time, Have learnt to love the very form in which The thought has been embodied to our years. And here we feel that we are not alone, We too are one with our own richest past; And here that veiled, but ever smouldering fire Of race, which rarely seen yet never dies, Springs up afresh and warms us with its heat. And must they take away this treasure house, To us so full of thoughts and memories; To all the world beside a dismal place Lacking in all this modern age requires To tempt along the unfamiliar paths And leafy lanes of old time literatures? It takes some time for moss and vines to grow And warmly cover gaunt and chill stone walls Of stately buildings from the cold North Wind. The lichen of affection takes as long, Or longer, ere it lovingly enfolds A place which since without it were bereft, All stript and bare, shorn of its chiefest grace. For what to us were halls and corridors However large and fitting, if we part With this which is our birthright; if we lose A sentiment profound, unsoundable, Which Time's slow ripening alone can make, And man's blind foolishness so quickly mar. VERSES FOR CHILDREN Sea Shell Sea Shell, Sea Shell, Sing me a song, O Please! A song of ships, and sailor men, And parrots, and tropical trees, Of islands lost in the Spanish Main Which no man ever may find again, Of fishes and corals under the waves, And seahorses stabled in great green caves. Sea Shell, Sea Shell, Sing of the things you know so well. Fringed Gentians Near where I live there is a lake As blue as blue can be, winds make It dance as they go blowing by. I think it curtseys to the sky. It's just a lake of lovely flowers And my Mamma says they are ours; But they are not like those we grow To be our very own, you know. We have a splendid garden, there Are lots of flowers everywhere; Roses, and pinks, and four o'clocks And hollyhocks, and evening stocks. Mamma lets us pick them, but never Must we pick any gentians -- ever! For if we carried them away They'd die of homesickness that day. The Painted Ceiling My Grandpapa lives in a wonderful house With a great many windows and doors, There are stairs that go up, and stairs that go down, And such beautiful, slippery floors. But of all of the rooms, even mother's and mine, And the bookroom, and parlour and all, I like the green dining-room so much the best Because of its ceiling and wall. Right over your head is a funny round hole With apples and pears falling through; There's a big bunch of grapes all purply and sweet, And melons and pineapples too. They tumble and tumble, but never come down Though I've stood underneath a long while With my mouth open wide, for I always have hoped Just a cherry would drop from the pile. No matter how early I run there to look It has always begun to fall through; And one night when at bedtime I crept in to see, It was falling by candle-light too. I am sure they are magical fruits, and each one Makes you hear things, or see things, or go Forever invisible; but it's no use, And of course I shall just never know. For the ladder's too heavy to lift, and the chairs Are not nearly so tall as I need. I've given up hope, and I feel I shall die Without having accomplished the deed. It's a little bit sad, when you seem very near To adventures and things of that sort, Which nearly begin, and then don't; and you know It is only because you are short. The Crescent Moon Slipping softly through the sky Little horned, happy moon, Can you hear me up so high? Will you come down soon? On my nursery window-sill Will you stay your steady flight? And then float away with me Through the summer night? Brushing over tops of trees, Playing hide and seek with stars, Peeping up through shiny clouds At Jupiter or Mars. I shall fill my lap with roses Gathered in the milky way, All to carry home to mother. Oh! what will she say! Little rocking, sailing moon, Do you hear me shout -- Ahoy! Just a little nearer, moon, To please a little boy. Climbing High up in the apple tree climbing I go, With the sky above me, the earth below. Each branch is the step of a wonderful stair Which leads to the town I see shining up there. Climbing, climbing, higher and higher, The branches blow and I see a spire, The gleam of a turret, the glint of a dome, All sparkling and bright, like white sea foam. On and on, from bough to bough, The leaves are thick, but I push my way through; Before, I have always had to stop, But to-day I am sure I shall reach the top. Today to the end of the marvelous stair, Where those glittering pinacles flash in the air! Climbing, climbing, higher I go, With the sky close above me, the earth far below. The Trout Naughty little speckled trout, Can't I coax you to come out? Is it such great fun to play In the water every day? Do you pull the Naiads' hair Hiding in the lilies there? Do you hunt for fishes' eggs, Or watch tadpoles grow their legs? Do the little trouts have school In some deep sun-glinted pool, And in recess play at tag Round that bed of purple flag? I have tried so hard to catch you, Hours and hours I've sat to watch you; But you never will come out, Naughty little speckled trout! Wind He shouts in the sails of the ships at sea, He steals the down from the honeybee, He makes the forest trees rustle and sing, He twirls my kite till it breaks its string. Laughing, dancing, sunny wind, Whistling, howling, rainy wind, North, South, East and West, Each is the wind I like the best. He calls up the fog and hides the hills, He whirls the wings of the great windmills, The weathercocks love him and turn to discover His whereabouts -- but he's gone, the rover! Laughing, dancing, sunny wind, Whistling, howling, rainy wind, North, South, East and West, Each is the wind I like the best. The pine trees toss him their cones with glee, The flowers bend low in courtesy, Each wave flings up a shower of pearls, The flag in front of the school unfurls. Laughing, dancing, sunny wind, Whistling, howling, rainy wind, North, South, East and West, Each is the wind I like the best. The Pleiades By day you cannot see the sky For it is up so very high. You look and look, but it's so blue That you can never see right through. But when night comes it is quite plain, And all the stars are there again. They seem just like old friends to me, I've known them all my life you see. There is the dipper first, and there Is Cassiopeia in her chair, Orion's belt, the Milky Way, And lots I know but cannot say. One group looks like a swarm of bees, Papa says they're the Pleiades; But I think they must be the toy Of some nice little angel boy. Perhaps his jackstones which to-day He has forgot to put away, And left them lying on the sky Where he will find them bye and bye. I wish he'd come and play with me. We'd have such fun, for it would be A most unusual thing for boys To feel that they had stars for toys! THE END ---------------------------------------------- | Advertisements of books by the same author | ---------------------------------------------- (These are taken from the back of the 1916 printing.) A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass By AMY LOWELL New edition, cloth, $1.25 PRESS NOTICES "These poems arouse interest, and justify it by the result. Miss Lowell is the sister of President Lowell of Harvard. Her art, however, needs no reflection from such distinguished influence to make apparent its distinction. Such verse as this is delightful, has a sort of personal flavour, a loyalty to the fundamentals of life and nationality. . . . The child poems are particularly graceful." -- 'Boston Evening Transcript', Boston, Mass. "Miss Lowell has given expression in exquisite form to many beautiful thoughts, inspired by a variety of subjects and based on some of the loftiest ideals. . . . "The verses are grouped under the captions 'Lyrical Poems', 'Sonnets', and 'Verses for Children'. . . . "It is difficult to say which of these are the most successful. Indeed, all reveal Miss Lowell's powers of observation from the view-point of a lover of nature. Moreover, Miss Lowell writes with a gentle philosophy and a deep knowledge of humanity. . . . "The sonnets are especially appealing and touch the heart strings so tenderly that there comes immediate response in the same spirit. . . . "That she knows the workings of the juvenile mind is plainly indicated by her verses written for their reading." -- 'Boston Sunday Globe', Boston, Mass. "A quite delightful little collection of verses." -- 'Toronto Globe', Toronto, Canada. "The Lyrics are true to the old definition; they would sing well to the accompaniment of the strings. We should like to hear "Hora Stellatrix" rendered by an artist." -- 'Hartford Courant', Hartford, Conn. "Verses that show delicate appreciation of the beautiful, and imaginative quality. A sonnet entitled 'Dreams' is peculiarly full of sympathy and feeling." -- 'The Sun', Baltimore, Md. ---------- By the same author Sword Blades and Poppy Seed Price, $1.25 Opinions of Leading Reviewers "Against the multitudinous array of daily verse our times produce this volume utters itself with a range and brilliancy wholly remarkable. I cannot see that Miss Lowell's use of unrhymed 'vers libre' has been surpassed in English. Read 'The Captured Goddess', 'Music', and 'The Precinct. Rochester', a piece of mastercraft in this kind. A wealth of subtleties and sympathies, gorgeously wrought, full of macabre effects (as many of the poems are) and brilliantly worked out. The things of splendor she has made she will hardly outdo in their kind." -- Josephine Preston Peabody, 'The Boston Herald'. "For quaint pictorial exactitude and bizarrerie of color these poems remind one of Flemish masters and Dutch tulip gardens; again, they are fine and fantastic, like Venetian glass; and they are all curiously flooded with the moonlight of dreams. . . . Miss Lowell has a remarkable gift of what one might call the dramatic-decorative. Her decorative imagery is intensely dramatic, and her dramatic pictures are in themselves vivid and fantastic decorations." -- Richard Le Gallienne, 'New York Times Book Review'. "The book as a whole is notable for the organic relation it bears to life and to art. Miss Lowell can find authentic inspiration equally in the lapidarian stanzas of Henri de Regnier and in the color effects produced by the flicking of the tail of the great northern pike. Her work is always vivid, sincere, poetically energetic. Throughout it run, in the quaint phrase of an old poet, 'bright shoots of everlastingnesse'." -- Ferris Greenslet, in the 'New Republic'. "Such poems as 'A Lady', 'Music', 'White and Green', are well-nigh flawless in their beauty -- perfect 'images'." -- Harriet Monroe, 'Poetry'. 
2620	----	None 
26333	----	MAURINE AND OTHER POEMS by ELLA WHEELER WILCOX W. B. Conkey Company Chicago Copyright, 1888 by Ella Wheeler Wilcox _I step across the mystic border-land,_ _And look upon the wonder-world of Art._ _How beautiful, how beautiful its hills!_ _And all its valleys, how surpassing fair!_ _The winding paths that lead up to the heights_ _Are polished by the footsteps of the great._ _The mountain-peaks stand very near to God:_ _The chosen few whose feet have trod thereon_ _Have talked with Him, and with the angels walked._ _Here are no sounds of discord--no profane_ _Or senseless gossip of unworthy things--_ _Only the songs of chisels and of pens._ _Of busy brushes, and ecstatic strains_ _Of souls surcharged with music most divine._ _Here is no idle sorrow, no poor grief_ _For any day or object left behind--_ _For time is counted precious, and herein_ _Is such complete abandonment of Self_ _That tears turn into rainbows, and enhance_ _The beauty of the land where all is fair._ _Awed and afraid, I cross the border-land._ _Oh, who am I, that I dare enter here_ _Where the great artists of the world have trod--_ _The genius-crowned aristocrats of Earth?_ _Only the singer of a little song;_ _Yet loving Art with such a mighty love_ _I hold it greater to have won a place_ _Just on the fair land's edge, to make my grave,_ _Than in the outer world of greed and gain_ _To sit upon a royal throne and reign._ CONTENTS Maurine 9 Two Sunsets 122 Unrest 124 "Artist's Life" 125 Nothing but Stones 126 The Coquette 128 Inevitable 129 The Ocean of Song 130 "It Might Have Been" 132 If 132 Gethsemane 134 Dust-Sealed 135 "Advice" 136 Over the Banisters 137 Momus, God of Laughter 138 I Dream 140 The Past 141 The Sonnet 142 Secrets 142 A Dream 143 Uselessness 143 Will 144 Winter Rain 145 Applause 145 Life 146 Burdened 146 The Story 147 Let Them Go 148 The Engine 149 Nothing New 151 Dreams 152 Helena 153 Nothing Remains 155 Lean Down 156 Comrades 157 What Gain? 158 Life 159 To the West 160 The Land of Content 161 A Song of Life 163 Warning 164 The Christian's New Year Prayer 164 In the Night 166 God's Measure 167 A March Snow 167 After the Battles are Over 168 Noblesse Oblige 174 And They Are Dumb 175 Night 177 All for Me 178 Philosophy 179 "Carlos" 180 The Two Glasses 182 Through Tears 184 Into Space 185 Through Dim Eyes 187 La Mort d'Amour 188 The Punished 189 Half Fledged 190 Love's Sleep 191 True Culture 192 The Voluptuary 193 The Year 194 The Unattained 195 In the Crowd 196 Life and I 198 Guerdon 199 Snowed Under 200 Platonic 201 What We Need 203 "Leudemann's-on-the-River" 204 In the Long Run 206 Plea to Science 207 Love's Burial 208 Little Blue Hood 209 No Spring 211 Lippo 212 Midsummer 213 A Reminiscence 214 Respite 216 A Girl's Faith 217 Two 218 Slipping Away 219 Is it Done? 220 A Leaf 221 Æsthetic 222 Poems of the Week 224 Ghosts 226 Fleeing Away 227 All Mad 228 Hidden Gems 229 By-and-By 230 Over the May Hill 231 A Song 232 Foes 234 Friendship 235 MAURINE _PART I._ I sat and sewed, and sang some tender tune, Oh, beauteous was that morn in early June! Mellow with sunlight, and with blossoms fair: The climbing rose-tree grew about me there, And checked with shade the sunny portico Where, morns like this, I came to read, or sew. I heard the gate click, and a firm quick tread Upon the walk. No need to turn my head; I would mistake, and doubt my own voice sounding, Before his step upon the gravel bounding. In an unstudied attitude of grace, He stretched his comely form; and from his face He tossed the dark, damp curls; and at my knees, With his broad hat he fanned the lazy breeze, And turned his head, and lifted his large eyes, Of that strange hue we see in ocean dyes, And call it blue sometimes, and sometimes green And save in poet eyes, not elsewhere seen. "Lest I should meet with my fair lady's scorning, For calling quite so early in the morning, I've brought a passport that can never fail," He said, and, laughing, laid the morning mail Upon my lap. "I'm welcome? so I thought! I'll figure by the letters that I brought How glad you are to see me. Only one? And that one from a lady? I'm undone! That, lightly skimmed, you'll think me _such_ a bore, And wonder why I did not bring you four. It's ever thus: a woman cannot get So many letters that she will not fret O'er one that did not come." "I'll prove you wrong," I answered gayly, "here upon the spot! This little letter, precious if not long, Is just the one, of all you might have brought, To please me. You have heard me speak, I'm sure, Of Helen Trevor: she writes here to say She's coming out to see me; and will stay Till Autumn, maybe. She is, like her note, Petite and dainty, tender, loving, pure. You'd know her by a letter that she wrote, For a sweet tinted thing. 'Tis always so:-- Letters all blots, though finely written, show A slovenly person. Letters stiff and white Bespeak a nature honest, plain, upright. And tissuey, tinted, perfumed notes, like this, Tell of a creature formed to pet and kiss." My listener heard me with a slow, odd smile; Stretched in abandon at my feet, the while, He fanned me idly with his broad-brimmed hat. "Then all young ladies must be formed for that!" He laughed, and said. "Their letters read, and look, As like as twenty copies of one book. They're written in a dainty, spider scrawl, To 'darling, precious Kate,' or 'Fan,' or 'Moll.' The 'dearest, sweetest' friend they ever had. They say they 'want to see you, oh, so bad!' Vow they'll 'forget you, never, _never_, oh!' And then they tell about a splendid beau-- A lovely hat--a charming dress, and send A little scrap of this to every friend. And then to close, for lack of something better, They beg you'll 'read and burn this horrid letter.'" He watched me, smiling. He was prone to vex And hector me with flings upon my sex. He liked, he said, to have me flash and frown, So he could tease me, and then laugh me down. My storms of wrath amused him very much: He liked to see me go off at a touch; Anger became me--made my color rise, And gave an added luster to my eyes. So he would talk--and so he watched me now, To see the hot flush mantle cheek and brow. Instead, I answered coolly, with a smile, Felling a seam with utmost care, meanwhile. "The caustic tongue of Vivian Dangerfield Is barbed as ever, for my sex, this morn. Still unconvinced, no smallest point I yield. Woman I love, and trust, despite your scorn. There is some truth in what you say? Well, yes! Your statements usually hold more or less. Some women write weak letters--(some men do;) Some make professions, knowing them untrue. And woman's friendship, in the time of need, I own, too often proves a broken reed. But I believe, and ever will contend, Woman can be a sister woman's friend, Giving from out her large heart's bounteous store A living love--claiming to do no more Than, through and by that love, she knows she can; And living by her professions, _like a man_. And such a tie, true friendship's silken tether, Binds Helen Trevor's heart and mine together. I love her for her beauty, meekness, grace; For her white lily soul and angel face. She loves me, for my greater strength, may be; Loves--and would give her heart's best blood for me And I, to save her from a pain, or cross, Would suffer any sacrifice or loss. Such can be woman's friendship for another. Could man give more, or ask more from a brother?" I paused: and Vivian leaned his massive head Against the pillar of the portico, Smiled his slow, skeptic smile, then laughed, and said: "Nay, surely not--if what you say be so. You've made a statement, but no proof's at hand. Wait--do not flash your eyes so! Understand I think you quite sincere in what you say: You love your friend, and she loves you, to-day; But friendship is not friendship at the best Till circumstances put it to the test. Man's, less demonstrative, stands strain and tear, While woman's, half profession, fails to wear. Two women love each other passing well-- Say Helen Trevor and Maurine La Pelle, Just for example. Let them daily meet At ball and concert, in the church and street, They kiss and coo, they visit, chat, caress; Their love increases, rather than grows less; And all goes well, till 'Helen dear' discovers That 'Maurine darling' wins too many lovers. And then her 'precious friend,' her 'pet,' her 'sweet,' Becomes a 'minx,' a 'creature all deceit.' Let Helen smile too oft on Maurine's beaux, Or wear more stylish or becoming clothes, Or sport a hat that has a longer feather-- And lo! the strain has broken 'friendship's tether.' Maurine's sweet smile becomes a frown or pout; 'She's just begun to find that Helen out' The breach grows wider--anger fills each heart; They drift asunder, whom 'but death could part.' You shake your head? Oh, well, we'll never know! It is not likely Fate will test you so. You'll live, and love; and, meeting twice a year, While life shall last, you'll hold each other dear. I pray it may be so; it were not best To shake your faith in woman by the test. Keep your belief, and nurse it while you can. I've faith in woman's friendship too--for man! They're true as steel, as mothers, friends, and wives: And that's enough to bless us all our lives. That man's a selfish fellow, and a bore, Who is unsatisfied, and asks for more." "But there is need of more!" I here broke in. "I hold that woman guilty of a sin, Who would not cling to, and defend another, As nobly as she would stand by a brother. Who would not suffer for a sister's sake, And, were there need to prove her friendship, make 'Most any sacrifice, nor count the cost. Who would not do this for a friend is lost To every nobler principle." "Shame, shame!" Cried Vivian, laughing, "for you now defame The whole sweet sex; since there's not one would do The thing you name, nor would I want her to. I love the sex. My mother was a woman-- I hope my wife will be, and wholly human. And if she wants to make some sacrifice, I'll think her far more sensible and wise To let her husband reap the benefit, Instead of some old maid or senseless chit. Selfish? Of course! I hold all love is so: And I shall love my wife right well, I know. Now there's a point regarding selfish love, You thirst to argue with me, and disprove. But since these cosy hours will soon be gone And all our meetings broken in upon, No more of these rare moments must be spent In vain discussions, or in argument. I wish Miss Trevor was in--Jericho! (You see the selfishness begins to show.) She wants to see you?--So do I: but she Will gain her wish, by taking you from me. 'Come all the same?' that means I'll be allowed To realize that 'three can make a crowd.' I do not like to feel myself _de trop_. With two girl cronies would I not be so? My ring would interrupt some private chat. You'd ask me in and take my cane and hat, And speak about the lovely summer day, And think--'The lout! I wish he'd kept away.' Miss Trevor'd smile, but just to hide a pout And count the moments till I was shown out. And, while I twirled my thumbs, I would sit wishing That I had gone off hunting birds, or fishing. No, thanks, Maurine! The iron hand of Fate, (Or otherwise Miss Trevor's dainty fingers,) Will bar my entrance into Eden's gate; And I shall be like some poor soul that lingers At heaven's portal, paying the price of sin, Yet hoping to be pardoned and let in." He looked so melancholy sitting there, I laughed outright. "How well you act a part; You look the very picture of despair! You've missed your calling, sir! suppose you start Upon a starring tour, and carve your name With Booth's and Barrett's on the heights of Fame. But now, tabooing nonsense, I shall send For you to help me entertain my friend, Unless you come without it. 'Cronies?' True, Wanting our 'private chats' as cronies do And we'll take those, while you are reading Greek, Or writing 'Lines to Dora's brow' or 'cheek.' But when you have an hour or two of leisure, Call as you now do, and afford like pleasure. For never yet did heaven's sun shine on, Or stars discover, that phenomenon, In any country, or in any clime: Two maids so bound, by ties of mind and heart. They did not feel the heavy weight of time In weeks of scenes wherein no man took part. God made the sexes to associate: Nor law of man, nor stern decree of Fate, Can ever undo what His hand has done, And, quite alone, make happy either one. My Helen is an only child:--a pet Of loving parents: and she never yet Has been denied one boon for which she pleaded. A fragile thing, her lightest wish was heeded. Would she pluck roses? they must first be shorn, By careful hands, of every hateful thorn. And loving eyes must scan the pathway where Her feet may tread, to see no stones are there. She'll grow dull here, in this secluded nook, Unless you aid me in the pleasant task Of entertaining. Drop in with your book-- Read, talk, sing for her sometimes. What I ask, Do once, to please me: then there'll be no need For me to state the case again, or plead. There's nothing like a woman's grace and beauty To waken mankind to a sense of duty." "I bow before the mandate of my queen: Your slightest wish is law, Ma Belle Maurine," He answered smiling, "I'm at your command; Point but one lily finger, or your wand, And you will find a willing slave obeying. There goes my dinner bell! I hear it saying I've spent two hours here, lying at your feet, Not profitable, maybe--surely sweet. All time is money; now were I to measure The time I spend here by its solid pleasure, And that were coined in dollars, then I've laid Each day a fortune at your feet, fair maid. There goes that bell again! I'll say good-bye, Or clouds will shadow my domestic sky. I'll come again, as you would have me do, And see your friend, while she is seeing you. That's like by proxy being at a feast; Unsatisfactory, to say the least." He drew his fine shape up, and trod the land With kingly grace. Passing the gate, his hand He lightly placed the garden wall upon, Leaped over like a leopard, and was gone. And, going, took the brightness from the place, Yet left the June day with a sweeter grace, And my young soul so steeped in happy dreams, Heaven itself seemed shown to me in gleams. There is a time with lovers, when the heart First slowly rouses from its dreamless sleep, To all the tumult of a passion life, Ere yet have wakened jealousy and strife. Just as a young, untutored child will start Out of a long hour's slumber, sound and deep, And lie and smile with rosy lips, and cheeks, In a sweet, restful trance, before it speaks. A time when yet no word the spell has broken, Save what the heart unto the soul has spoken, In quickened throbs, and sighs but half suppressed. A time when that sweet truth, all unconfessed, Gives added fragrance to the summer flowers, A golden glory to the passing hours, A hopeful beauty to the plainest face, And lends to life a new and tender grace. When the full heart has climbed the heights of bliss, And, smiling, looks back o'er the golden past, I think it finds no sweeter hour than this In all love-life. For, later, when the last Translucent drop o'erflows the cup of joy, And love, more mighty than the heart's control, Surges in words of passion from the soul, And vows are asked and given, shadows rise Like mists before the sun in noonday skies, Vague fears, that prove the brimming cup's alloy; A dread of change--the crowning moment's curse, Since what is perfect, change but renders worse: A vain desire to cripple Time, who goes Bearing our joys away, and bringing woes. And later, doubts and jealousies awaken. And plighted hearts are tempest-tossed, and shaken. Doubt sends a test, that goes a step too far, A wound is made, that, healing, leaves a scar, Or one heart, full with love's sweet satisfaction, Thinks truth once spoken always understood, While one is pining for the tender action And whispered word by which, of old, 'twas wooed. But this blest hour, in love's glad, golden day, Is like the dawning, ere the radiant ray Of glowing Sol has burst upon the eye, But yet is heralded in earth and sky, Warm with its fervor, mellow with its light, While Care still slumbers in the arms of night. But Hope, awake, hears happy birdlings sing, And thinks of all a summer day may bring. In this sweet calm, my young heart lay at rest, Filled with a blissful sense of peace; nor guessed That sullen clouds were gathering in the skies To hide the glorious sun, ere it should rise. _PART II._ To little birds that never tire of humming About the garden, in the summer weather, Aunt Ruth compared us, after Helen's coming, As we two roamed, or sat and talked together. Twelve months apart, we had so much to say Of school days gone--and time since passed away; Of that old friend, and this; of what we'd done; Of how our separate paths in life had run; Of what we would do, in the coming years; Of plans and castles, hopes and dreams and fears. All these, and more, as soon as we found speech, We touched upon, and skimmed from this to that But at the first, each only gazed on each, And, dumb with joy, that did not need a voice Like lesser joys, to say, "Lo! I rejoice," With smiling eyes and clasping hands we sat Wrapped in that peace, felt but with those dear, Contented just to know each other near. But when this silent eloquence gave place To words, 'twas like the rising of a flood Above a dam. We sat there, face to face, And let our talk glide on where'er it would, Speech never halting in its speed or zest, Save when our rippling laughter let it rest; Just as a stream will sometimes pause and play About a bubbling spring, then dash away. No wonder, then, the third day's sun was nigh Up to the zenith when my friend and I Opened our eyes from slumber long and deep: Nature demanding recompense for hours Spent in the portico, among the flowers, Halves of two nights we should have spent in sleep. So this third day, we breakfasted at one: Then walked about the garden in the sun, Hearing the thrushes and the robins sing, And looking to see what buds were opening. The clock chimed three, and we yet strayed at will About the yard in morning dishabille, When Aunt Ruth came, with apron o'er her head, Holding a letter in her hand, and said, "Here is a note, from Vivian I opine; At least his servant brought it. And now, girls, You may think this is no concern of mine, But in my day young ladies did not go, Till almost bed-time roaming to and fro In morning wrappers, and with tangled curls, The very pictures of forlorn distress. 'Tis three o'clock, and time for you to dress. Come! read your note and hurry in, Maurine, And make yourself fit object to be seen." Helen was bending o'er an almond bush, And ere she looked up I had read the note, And calmed my heart, that, bounding, sent a flush To brow and cheek, at sight of aught _he_ wrote. "Ma Belle Maurine:" (so Vivian's billet ran,) "Is it not time I saw your cherished guest? 'Pity the sorrows of a poor young man,' Banished from all that makes existence blest. I'm dying to see--your friend; and I will come And pay respects, hoping you'll be at home To-night at eight. Expectantly, V. D." Inside my belt I slipped the billet, saying, "Helen, go make yourself most fair to see: Quick! hurry now! no time for more delaying! In just five hours a caller will be here, And you must look your prettiest, my dear! Begin your toilet right away. I know How long it takes you to arrange each bow-- To twist each curl, and loop your skirts aright. And you must prove you are _au fait_ to-night, And make a perfect toilet: for our caller Is man, and critic, poet, artist, scholar, And views with eyes of all." "Oh, oh! Maurine," Cried Helen with a well-feigned look of fear, "You've frightened me so I shall not appear: I'll hide away, refusing to be seen By such an ogre. Woe is me! bereft Of all my friends, my peaceful home I've left, And strayed away into the dreadful wood To meet the fate of poor Red Riding Hood. No, Maurine, no! you've given me such a fright, I'll not go near your ugly wolf to-night." Meantime we'd left the garden; and I stood In Helen's room, where she had thrown herself Upon a couch, and lay, a winsome elf, Pouting and smiling, cheek upon her arm, Not in the least a portrait of alarm. "Now sweet!" I coaxed, and knelt by her, "be good! Go curl your hair; and please your own Maurine, By putting on that lovely grenadine. Not wolf, nor ogre, neither Caliban, Nor Mephistopheles, you'll meet to-night, But what the ladies call 'a nice young man'! Yet one worth knowing--strong with health and might Of perfect manhood; gifted, noble, wise; Moving among his kind with loving eyes, And helpful hand; progressive, brave, refined, After the image of his Maker's mind." "Now, now, Maurine!" cried Helen, "I believe It is your lover coming here this eve. Why have you never written of him, pray? Is the day set?--and when? Say, Maurine, say!" Had I betrayed by some too fervent word The secret love that all my being stirred? My lover? Ay! My heart proclaimed him so; But first _his_ lips must win the sweet confession, Ere even Helen be allowed to know. I must straightway erase the slight impression Made by the words just uttered. "Foolish child!" I gayly cried, "your fancy's straying wild. Just let a girl of eighteen hear the name Of maid and youth uttered about one time, And off her fancy goes, at break-neck pace, Defying circumstances, reason, space-- And straightway builds romances so sublime They put all Shakespeare's dramas to the shame. This Vivian Dangerfield is neighbor, friend And kind companion; bringing books and flowers. And, by his thoughtful actions without end, Helping me pass some otherwise long hours; But he has never breathed a word of love. If you still doubt me, listen while I prove My statement by the letter that he wrote. 'Dying to meet--my friend!' (she could not see The dash between that meant so much to me.) 'Will come this eve, at eight, and hopes we may Be in to greet him.' Now I think you'll say 'Tis not much like a lover's tender note." We laugh, we jest, not meaning what we say; We hide our thoughts, by light words lightly spoken, And pass on heedless, till we find one day They've bruised our hearts, or left some other broken. I sought my room, and trilling some blithe air, Opened my wardrobe, wondering what to wear. Momentous question! femininely human! More than all others, vexing mind of woman, Since that sad day, when in her discontent, To search for leaves, our fair first mother went. All undecided what I should put on, At length I made selection of a lawn-- White, with a tiny pink vine overrun:-- My simplest robe, but Vivian's favorite one. And placing a single flowret in my hair, I crossed the hall to Helen's chamber, where I found her with her fair locks all let down, Brushing the kinks out, with a pretty frown. 'T was like a picture, or a pleasing play, To watch her make her toilet. She would stand, And turn her head first this and then that way, Trying effect of ribbon, bow or band. Then she would pick up something else, and curve Her lovely neck, with cunning, bird-like grace, And watch the mirror while she put it on, With such a sweetly grave and thoughtful face; And then to view it all would sway, and swerve Her lithe young body, like a graceful swan. Helen was over medium height, and slender Even to frailty. Her great, wistful eyes Were like the deep blue of autumnal skies; And through them looked her soul, large, loving, tender. Her long, light hair was lusterless, except Upon the ends, where burnished sunbeams slept, And on the earlocks; and she looped the curls Back with a shell comb, studded thick with pearls, Costly yet simple. Her pale loveliness, That night, was heightened by her rich, black dress, That trailed behind her, leaving half in sight Her taper arms, and shoulders marble white. I was not tall as Helen, and my face Was shaped and colored like my grandsire's race; For through his veins my own received the warm, Red blood of southern France, which curved my form, And glowed upon my cheek in crimson dyes, And bronzed my hair, and darkled in my eyes. And as the morning trails the skirts of night, And dusky night puts on the garb of morn, And walk together when the day is born, So we two glided down the hall and stair, Arm clasping arm, into the parlor, where Sat Vivian, bathed in sunset's gorgeous light. He rose to greet us. Oh! his form was grand; And he possessed that power, strange, occult, Called magnetism, lacking better word, Which moves the world, achieving great result Where genius fails completely. Touch his hand, It thrilled through all your being--meet his eye, And you were moved, yet knew not how, or why. Let him but rise, you felt the air was stirred By an electric current. This strange force Is mightier than genius. Rightly used, It leads to grand achievements; all things yield Before its mystic presence, and its field Is broad as earth and heaven. But abused, It sweeps like a poison simoon on its course Bearing miasma in its scorching breath, And leaving all it touches struck with death. Far-reaching science shall yet tear away The mystic garb that hides it from the day, And drag it forth and bind it with its laws, And make it serve the purposes of men, Guided by common sense and reason. Then We'll hear no more of seance, table-rapping, And all that trash, o'er which the world is gaping, Lost in effect, while science seeks the cause. Vivian was not conscious of his power: Or, if he was, knew not its full extent. He knew his glance would make a wild beast cower, And yet he knew not that his large eyes sent Into the heart of woman the same thrill That made the lion servant of his will. And even strong men felt it. He arose, Reached forth his hand, and in it clasped my own, While I held Helen's; and he spoke some word Of pleasant greeting in his low, round tone, Unlike all other voices I have heard. Just as the white cloud, at the sunrise, glows With roseate colors, so the pallid hue Of Helen's cheek, like tinted sea-shells grew. Through mine, his hand caused hers to tremble; such Was the all-mast'ring magic of his touch. Then we sat down, and talked about the weather, The neighborhood--some author's last new book. But, when I could, I left the two together To make acquaintance, saying I must look After the chickens--my especial care; And ran away, and left them, laughing, there. Knee-deep, through clover, to the poplar grove, I waded, where my pets were wont to rove: And there I found the foolish mother hen Brooding her chickens underneath a tree, An easy prey for foxes. "Chick-a-dee," Quoth I, while reaching for the downy things That, chirping, peeped from out the mother-wings, "How very human is your folly! When There waits a haven, pleasant, bright, and warm, And one to lead you thither from the storm And lurking dangers, yet you turn away. And, thinking to be your own protector, stray Into the open jaws of death: for, see! An owl is sitting in this very tree You thought safe shelter. Go now to your pen." And, followed by the clucking, clamorous hen, So like the human mother here again, Moaning because a strong, protecting arm Would shield her little ones from cold and harm, I carried back my garden hat brimful Of chirping chickens, like white balls of wool, And snugly housed them. And just then I heard A sound like gentle winds among the trees, Or pleasant waters in the Summer, stirred And set in motion by a passing breeze. 'T was Helen singing: and, as I drew near, Another voice, a tenor full and clear, Mingled with hers, as murmuring streams unite, And flow on stronger in their wedded might. It was a way of Helen's, not to sing The songs that other people sang. She took Sometimes an extract from an ancient book; Again some floating, fragmentary thing And such she fitted to old melodies, Or else composed the music. One of these She sang that night; and Vivian caught the strain, And joined her in the chorus, or refrain, SONG. O thou, mine other, stronger part! Whom yet I cannot hear, or see, Come thou, and take this loving heart, That longs to yield its all to thee, I call mine own--Oh, come to me! Love, answer back, I come to thee, I come to thee. This hungry heart, so warm, so large, Is far too great a care for me. I have grown weary of the charge I keep so sacredly for thee. Come thou, and take my heart from me. Love, answer back, I come to thee, I come to thee. I am aweary, waiting here For one who tarries long from me. O! art thou far, or art thou near? And must I still be sad for thee? Or wilt thou straightway come to me? Love, answer, I am near to thee, I come to thee. The melody, so full of plaintive chords, Sobbed into silence--echoing down the strings Like voice of one who walks from us, and sings. Vivian had leaned upon the instrument The while they sang. But, as he spoke those words, "Love, I am near to thee, I come to thee," He turned his grand head slowly round, and bent His lustrous, soulful, speaking gaze on me. And my young heart, eager to own its king, Sent to my eyes a great, glad, trustful light Of love and faith, and hung upon my cheek Hope's rose-hued flag. There was no need to speak. I crossed the room, and knelt by Helen. "Sing That song you sang a fragment of one night, Out on the porch, beginning, 'Praise me not,'" I whispered: and her sweet and plaintive tone Rose, low and tender, as if she had caught From some sad passing breeze, and made her own, The echo of the wind-harp's sighing strain, Or the soft music of the falling rain. SONG. O praise me not with your lips, dear one! Though your tender words I prize. But dearer by far is the soulful gaze Of your eyes, your beautiful eyes, Your tender, loving eyes. O chide me not with your lips, dear one! Though I cause your bosom sighs. You can make repentance deeper far By your sad, reproving eyes, Your sorrowful, troubled eyes. Words, at the best, are but hollow sounds; Above, in the beaming skies, The constant stars say never a word, But only smile with their eyes-- Smile on with their lustrous eyes. Then breathe no vow with your lips, dear one; On the wingèd wind speech flies. But I read the truth of your noble heart In your soulful, speaking eyes-- In your deep and beautiful eyes. The twilight darkened 'round us, in the room, While Helen sang; and, in the gathering gloom, Vivian reached out, and took my hand in his, And held it so; while Helen made the air Languid with music. Then a step drew near, And voice of Aunt Ruth broke the spell: "Dear! dear! Why Maurie, Helen, children! how is this? I hear you, but you have no light in there. Your room is dark as Egypt. What a way For folks to visit!--Maurie, go, I pray, And order lamps." And so there came a light, And all the sweet dreams hovering around The twilight shadows flitted in affright: And e'en the music had a harsher sound. In pleasant converse passed an hour away: And Vivian planned a picnic for next day-- A drive the next, and rambles without end, That he might help me entertain my friend. And then he rose, bowed low, and passed from sight, Like some great star that drops out from the night; And Helen watched him through the shadows go, And turned and said, her voice subdued and low, "How tall he is! in all my life, Maurine, A grander man I never yet have seen." _PART III._ One golden twelfth-part of a checkered year; One summer month, of sunlight, moonlight, mirth With not a hint of shadows lurking near, Or storm-clouds brewing. 'T was a royal day: Voluptuous July held her lover, Earth, With her warm arms, upon her glowing breast, And twined herself about him, as he lay Smiling and panting in his dream-stirred rest. She bound him with her limbs of perfect grace, And hid him with her trailing robe of green, And wound him in her long hair's shimmering sheen, And rained her ardent kisses on his face. Through the glad glory of the summer land Helen and I went wandering, hand in hand. In winding paths, hard by the ripe wheat-field, White with the promise of a bounteous yield, Across the late shorn meadow--down the hill, Red with the tiger-lily blossoms, till We stood upon the borders of the lake, That like a pretty, placid infant, slept Low at its base: and little ripples crept Along its surface, just as dimples chase Each other o'er an infant's sleeping face Helen in idle hours had learned to make A thousand pretty, feminine knick-knacks: For brackets, ottomans, and toilet stands-- Labor just suited to her dainty hands. That morning she had been at work in wax, Molding a wreath of flowers for my room,-- Taking her patterns from the living blows, In all their dewy beauty and sweet bloom, Fresh from my garden. Fuchsia, tulip, rose, And trailing ivy, grew beneath her touch, Resembling the living plants as much As life is copied in the form of death: These lacking but the perfume, and that, breath. And now the wreath was all completed, save The mermaid blossom of all flowerdom, A water-lily, dripping from the wave. And 'twas in search of it that we had come Down to the lake, and wandered on the beach, To see if any lilies grew in reach. Some broken stalks, where flowers late had been; Some buds, with all their beauties folded in, We found, but not the treasure that we sought And then we turned our footsteps to the spot Where, all impatient of its chain, my boat, "The Swan," rocked, asking to be set afloat It was a dainty row-boat--strong, yet light; Each side a swan was painted snowy white: A present from my uncle, just before He sailed, with Death, to that mysterious strand, Where freighted ships go sailing evermore, But none return to tell us of the land. I freed the "Swan," and slowly rowed about, Wherever sea-weeds, grass, or green leaves lifted Their tips above the water. So we drifted, While Helen, opposite, leaned idly out And watched for lilies in the waves below, And softly crooned some sweet and dreamy air, That soothed me like a mother's lullabies. I dropped the oars, and closed my sun-kissed eyes, And let the boat go drifting here and there. Oh, happy day! the last of that brief time Of thoughtless youth, when all the world seems bright, Ere that disguisèd angel men call Woe Leads the sad heart through valleys dark as night, Up to the heights exalted and sublime. On each blest, happy moment, I am fain To linger long, ere I pass on to pain And sorrow that succeeded. From day-dreams, As golden as the summer noontide's beams, I was awakened by a voice that cried: "Strange ship, ahoy! Fair frigate, whither bound?" And, starting up, I cast my gaze around, And saw a sail-boat o'er the water glide Close to the "Swan," like some live thing of grace; And from it looked the glowing, handsome face Of Vivian. "Beauteous sirens of the sea, Come sail across the raging main with me!" He laughed; and leaning, drew our drifting boat Beside his own. "There, now! step in!" he said, "I'll land you anywhere you want to go-- My boat is safer far than yours, I know: And much more pleasant with its sails all spread. The Swan? We'll take the oars, and let it float Ashore at leisure. You, Maurine, sit there-- Miss Helen here. Ye gods and little fishes! I've reached the height of pleasure, and my wishes. Adieu despondency! farewell to care!" 'T was done so quickly: that was Vivian's way. He did not wait for either yea or nay. He gave commands, and left you with no choice But just to do the bidding of his voice. His rare, kind smile, low tones, and manly face Lent to his quick imperiousness a grace And winning charm, completely stripping it Of what might otherwise have seemed unfit. Leaving no trace of tyranny, but just That nameless force that seemed to say, "You must." Suiting its pretty title of "The Dawn," (So named, he said, that it might rhyme with "Swan,") Vivian's sail-boat, was carpeted with blue, While all its sails were of a pale rose hue. The daintiest craft that flirted with the breeze; A poet's fancy in an hour of ease. Whatever Vivian had was of the best. His room was like some Sultan's in the East. His board was always spread as for a feast. Whereat, each meal, he was both host and guest. He would go hungry sooner than he'd dine At his own table if 'twere illy set. He so loved things artistic in design-- Order and beauty, all about him. Yet So kind he was, if it befell his lot To dine within the humble peasant's cot, He made it seem his native soil to be, And thus displayed the true gentility. Under the rosy banners of the "Dawn," Around the lake we drifted on, and on. It was a time for dreams, and not for speech. And so we floated on in silence, each Weaving the fancies suiting such a day. Helen leaned idly o'er the sail-boat's side, And dipped her rosy fingers in the tide; And I among the cushions half reclined, Half sat, and watched the fleecy clouds at play While Vivian with his blank-book, opposite, In which he seemed to either sketch or write Was lost in inspiration of some kind. No time, no change, no scene, can e'er efface My mind's impression of that hour and place; It stands out like a picture. O'er the years, Black with their robes of sorrow--veiled with tears, Lying with all their lengthened shapes between, Untouched, undimmed, I still behold that scene. Just as the last of Indian-summer days, Replete with sunlight, crowned with amber haze, Followed by dark and desolate December, Through all the months of winter we remember. The sun slipped westward. That peculiar change Which creeps into the air, and speaks of night While yet the day is full of golden light, We felt steal o'er us. Vivian broke the spell Of dream-fraught silence, throwing down his book: "Young ladies, please allow me to arrange These wraps about your shoulders. I know well The fickle nature of our atmosphere,-- Her smile swift followed by a frown or tear,-- And go prepared for changes. Now you look, Like--like--oh, where's a pretty simile? Had you a pocket mirror here you'd see How well my native talent is displayed In shawling you. Red on the brunette maid; Blue on the blonde--and quite without design (Oh, where _is_ that comparison of mine?) Well--like a June rose and a violet blue In one bouquet! I fancy that will do. And now I crave your patience and a boon, Which is to listen, while I read my rhyme, A floating fancy of the summer time. 'Tis neither witty, wonderful, nor wise, So listen kindly--but don't criticise My maiden effort of the afternoon: "If all the ships I have at sea Should come a-sailing home to me, Ah, well! the harbor could not hold So many sails as there would be If all my ships came in from sea. "If half my ships came home from sea, And brought their precious freight to me, Ah, well! I should have wealth as great As any king who sits in state-- So rich the treasures that would be In half my ships now out at sea. "If just one ship I have at sea Should come a-sailing home to me, Ah, well! the storm-clouds then might frown: For if the others all went down Still rich and proud and glad I'd be, If that one ship came back to me. "If that one ship went down at sea, And all the others came to me, Weighed down with gems and wealth untold, With glory, honor, riches, gold, The poorest soul on earth I'd be If that one ship came not to me. "O skies be calm? O winds blow free-- Blow all my ships safe home to me. But if thou sendest some a-wrack To never more come sailing back, Send any--all, that skim the sea, But bring my love-ship home to me." Helen was leaning by me, and her head Rested against my shoulder: as he read, I stroked her hair, and watched the fleecy skies, And when he finished, did not turn my eyes. I felt too happy and too shy to meet His gaze just then. I said, "'Tis very sweet, And suits the day; does it not, Helen, dear?" But Helen, voiceless, did not seem to hear. "'Tis strange," I added, "how you poets sing So feelingly about the very thing You care not for! and dress up an ideal So well, it looks a living, breathing real! Now, to a listener, your love song seemed A heart's out-pouring; yet I've heard you say Almost the opposite; or that you deemed Position, honor, glory, power, fame, Gained without loss of conscience or good name, The things to live for." "Have you? Well you may," Laughed Vivian, "but 'twas years--or months ago! And Solomon says wise men change, you know! I now speak truth! if she I hold most dear Slipped from my life, and no least hope were left, My heart would find the years more lonely here. Than if I were of wealth, fame, friends, bereft, And sent an exile to a foreign land." His voice was low, and measured: as he spoke, New, unknown chords of melody awoke Within my soul. I felt my heart expand With that sweet fullness born of love. I turned To hide the blushes on my cheek that burned, And leaning over Helen, breathed her name. She lay so motionless I thought she slept: But, as I spoke, I saw her eyes unclose, And o'er her face a sudden glory swept, And a slight tremor thrilled all through her frame. "Sweet friend," I said, "your face is full of light: What were the dreams that made your eyes so bright?" She only smiled for answer, and arose From her reclining posture at my side, Threw back the clust'ring ringlets from her face With a quick gesture, full of easy grace, And, turning, spoke to Vivian. "Will you guide The boat up near that little clump of green Off to the right? There's where the lilies grow. We quite forgot our errand here, Maurine, And our few moments have grown into hours. What will Aunt Ruth think of our ling'ring so? There--that will do--now I can reach the flowers." "Hark! just hear that!" and Vivian broke forth singing, "Row, brothers, row." "The six o'clock bell's ringing! Who ever knew three hours to go so fast In all the annals of the world, before? I could have sworn not over one had passed. Young ladies, I am forced to go ashore! I thank you for the pleasure you have given; This afternoon has been a glimpse of heaven. Good night--sweet dreams! and by your gracious leave, I'll pay my compliments to-morrow eve." A smile, a bow, and he had gone his way: And, in the waning glory of the day, Down cool, green lanes, and through the length'ning shadows, Silent, we wandered back across the meadows. The wreath was finished, and adorned my room; Long afterward, the lilies' copied bloom Was like a horrid specter in my sight, Staring upon me morning, noon, and night. The sun went down. The sad new moon rose up, And passed before me, like an empty cup, The Great Unseen brims full of pain or bliss, And gives His children, saying, "Drink of this." A light wind, from the open casement, fanned My brow and Helen's, as we, hand in hand, Sat looking out upon the twilight scene, In dreamy silence. Helen's dark blue eyes, Like two lost stars that wandered from the skies Some night adown the meteor's shining track, And always had been grieving to go back, Now gazed up, wistfully, at heaven's dome, And seemed to recognize and long for home. Her sweet voice broke the silence: "Wish, Maurine, Before you speak! you know the moon is new, And anything you wish for will come true Before it wanes. I do believe the sign! Now tell me your wish, and I'll tell you mine." I turned and looked up at the slim young moon; And, with an almost superstitious heart, I sighed, "Oh, new moon! help me, by thine art, To grow all grace and goodness, and to be Worthy the love a true heart proffers me." Then smiling down, I said, "Dear one! my boon, I fear, is quite too silly or too sweet For my repeating: so we'll let it stay Between the moon and me. But if I may I'll listen now to your wish. Tell me, please!" All suddenly she nestled at my feet, And hid her blushing face upon my knees. Then drew my hand against her glowing cheek, And, leaning on my breast, began to speak, Half sighing out the words my tortured ear Reached down to catch, while striving not to hear. "Can you not guess who 'twas about, Maurine? Oh, my sweet friend! you must ere this have seen The love I tried to cover from all eyes And from myself. Ah, foolish little heart! As well it might go seeking for some art Whereby to hide the sun in noonday skies. When first the strange sound of his voice I heard, Looked on his noble face, and touched his hand, My slumb'ring heart thrilled through and through, and stirred As if to say, 'I hear, and understand.' And day by day mine eyes were blest beholding The inner beauty of his life, unfolding In countless words and actions, that portrayed The noble stuff of which his soul was made. And more and more I felt my heart upreaching Toward the truth, drawn gently by his teaching, As flowers are drawn by sunlight. And there grew A strange, shy something in its depths, I knew At length was love, because it was so sad, And yet so sweet, and made my heart so glad, Yet seemed to pain me. Then, for very shame, Lest all should read my secret and its name. I strove to hide it in my breast away, Where God could see it only. But each day It seemed to grow within me, and would rise, Like my own soul, and look forth from my eyes, Defying bonds of silence; and would speak, In its red-lettered language, on my cheek, If but his name was uttered. You were kind, My own Maurine! as you alone could be, So long the sharer of my heart and mind, While yet you saw, in seeming not to see. In all the years we have been friends, my own. And loved as women very rarely do, My heart no sorrow and no joy has known It has not shared at once, in full, with you And I so longed to speak to you of this, When first I felt its mingled pain and bliss; Yet dared not, lest you, knowing him, should say, In pity for my folly--'Lack-a-day! You are undone: because no mortal art Can win the love of such a lofty heart.' And so I waited, silent and in pain, Till I could know I did not love in vain. And now I know, beyond a doubt or fear. Did he not say, 'If she I hold most dear Slipped from my life, and no least hope were left, My heart would find the years more lonely here Than if I were of wealth, fame, friends, bereft, And sent, an exile, to a foreign land'? Oh, darling, you must _love_, to understand The joy that thrilled all through me at those words. It was as if a thousand singing birds Within my heart broke forth in notes of praise. I did not look up, but I knew his gaze Was on my face, and that his eyes must see The joy I felt almost transfigured me. He loves me--loves me! so the birds kept singing, And all my soul with that sweet strain is ringing. If there were added but one drop of bliss, No more my cup would hold: and so, this eve, I made a wish that I might feel his kiss Upon my lips, ere yon pale moon should leave The stars all lonely, having waned away, Too old and weak and bowed with care to stay." Her voice sighed into silence. While she spoke My heart writhed in me, praying she would cease-- Each word she uttered falling like a stroke On my bare soul. And now a hush like death, Save that 'twas broken by a quick-drawn breath, Fell 'round me, but brought not the hoped-for peace. For when the lash no longer leaves its blows, The flesh still quivers, and the blood still flows. She nestled on my bosom like a child. And 'neath her head my tortured heart throbbed wild With pain and pity. She had told her tale-- Her self-deceiving story to the end. How could I look down on her as she lay So fair, and sweet, and lily-like, and frail-- A tender blossom on my breast, and say, "Nay, you are wrong--you do mistake, dear friend! 'Tis I am loved, not you"? Yet that were truth, And she must know it later. Should I speak, And spread a ghastly pallor o'er the cheek Flushed now with joy?--And while I, doubting, pondered, She spoke again. "Maurine! I oft have wondered Why you and Vivian were not lovers. He Is all a heart could ask its king to be; And you have beauty, intellect and youth. I think it strange you have not loved each other-- Strange how he could pass by you for another Not half so fair or worthy. Yet I know A loving Father pre-arranged it so. I think my heart has known him all these years, And waited for him. And if when he came It had been as a lover of my friend, I should have recognized him, all the same, As my soul-mate, and loved him to the end, Hiding my grief, and forcing back my tears Till on my heart, slow dropping, day by day, Unseen they fell, and wore it all away. And so a tender Father kept him free, With all the largeness of his love, for me-- For me, unworthy such a precious gift! Yet I will bend each effort of my life To grow in grace and goodness, and to lift My soul and spirit to his lofty height, So to deserve that holy name, his wife. Sweet friend, it fills my whole heart with delight To breathe its long hid secret in your ear. Speak, my Maurine, and say you love to hear!" The while she spoke, my active brain gave rise To one great thought of mighty sacrifice And self-denial. Oh! it blanched my cheek, And wrung my soul; and from my heart it drove All life and feeling. Coward-like, I strove To send it from me; but I felt it cling And hold fast on my mind like some live thing; And all the Self within me felt its touch And cried, "No, no! I cannot do so much-- I am not strong enough--there is no call." And then the voice of Helen bade me speak, And with a calmness born of nerve, I said, Scarce knowing what I uttered, "Sweetheart, all Your joys and sorrows are with mine own wed. I thank you for your confidence, and pray I may deserve it always. But, dear one, Something--perhaps our boat-ride in the sun, Has set my head to aching. I must go To bed directly; and you will, I know, Grant me your pardon, and another day We'll talk of this together. Now good night And angels guard you with their wings of light." I kissed her lips, and held her on my heart, And viewed her as I ne'er had done before. I gazed upon her features o'er and o'er; Marked her white, tender face--her fragile form, Like some frail plant that withers in the storm; Saw she was fairer in her new-found joy Than e'er before; and thought, "Can I destroy God's handiwork, or leave it at the best A broken harp, while I close clasp my bliss?" I bent my head and gave her one last kiss, And sought my room, and found there such relief As sad hearts feel when first alone with grief. The moon went down, slow sailing from my sight, And left the stars to watch away the night. O stars, sweet stars, so changeless and serene! What depths of woe your pitying eyes have seen! The proud sun sets, and leaves us with our sorrow, To grope alone in darkness till the morrow. The languid moon, e'en if she deigns to rise, Soon seeks her couch, grown weary of our sighs; But from the early gloaming till the day Sends golden-liveried heralds forth to say He comes in might; the patient stars shine on, Steadfast and faithful, from twilight to dawn. And, as they shone upon Gethsemane, And watched the struggle of a God-like soul, Now from the same far height they shone on me, And saw the waves of anguish o'er me roll. The storm had come upon me all unseen: No sound of thunder fell upon my ear; No cloud arose to tell me it was near; But under skies all sunlit, and serene, I floated with the current of the stream, And thought life all one golden-haloed dream. When lo! a hurricane, with awful force, Swept swift upon its devastating course, Wrecked my frail bark, and cast me on the wave Where all my hopes had found a sudden grave. Love makes us blind and selfish: otherwise I had seen Helen's secret in her eyes; So used I was to reading every look In her sweet face, as I would read a book. But now, made sightless by love's blinding rays, I had gone on unseeing, to the end Where Pain dispelled the mist of golden haze That walled me in, and lo! I found my friend Who journeyed with me--at my very side, Had been sore wounded to the heart, while I Both deaf and blind, saw not, nor heard her cry. And then I sobbed, "O God! I would have died To save her this." And as I cried in pain, There leaped forth from the still, white realm of Thought Where Conscience dwells, that unimpassioned spot As widely different from the heart's domain As north from south--the impulse felt before, And put away; but now it rose once more, In greater strength, and said, "Heart, would'st thou prove What lips have uttered? Then go lay thy love On Friendship's altar, as thy offering." "Nay!" cried my heart, "ask any other thing-- Ask life itself--'twere easier sacrifice. But ask not love, for that I cannot give." "But," spoke the voice, "the meanest insect dies, And is no hero! heroes dare to live When all that makes life sweet is snatched away." So with my heart, in converse, till the day In gold and crimson billows, rose and broke, The voice of Conscience, all unwearied, spoke. Love warred with Friendship: heart with Conscience fought, Hours rolled away, and yet the end was not. And wily Self, tricked out like tenderness, Sighed, "Think how one, whose life thou wert to bless, Will be cast down, and grope in doubt and fear! Wouldst thou wound him, to give thy friend relief? Can wrong make right?" "Nay!" Conscience said, "but Pride And Time can heal the saddest hurts of Love. While Friendship's wounds gape wide and yet more wide, And bitter fountains of the spirit prove." At length, exhausted with the wearing strife, I cast the new-found burden of my life On God's broad breast, and sought that deep repose That only he who watched with sorrow knows. _PART IV._ "Maurine, Maurine! 'tis ten o'clock! arise, My pretty sluggard! open those dark eyes, And see where yonder sun is! Do you know I made my toilet just four hours ago?" 'T was Helen's voice: and Helen's gentle kiss Fell on my cheek. As from a deep abyss, I drew my weary self from that strange sleep That rests not, nor refreshes. Scarce awake Or conscious, yet there seemed a heavy weight Bound on my breast, as by a cruel Fate. I knew not why, and yet I longed to weep. Some dark cloud seemed to hang upon the day; And, for a moment, in that trance I lay, When suddenly the truth did o'er me break, Like some great wave upon a helpless child. The dull pain in my breast grew like a knife-- The heavy throbbing of my heart grew wild, And God gave back the burden of the life He kept what time I slumbered. "You are ill," Cried Helen, "with that blinding headache still! You look so pale and weary. Now let me Play nurse, Maurine, and care for you to-day! And first I'll suit some dainty to your taste, And bring it to you, with a cup of tea." And off she ran, not waiting my reply. But, wanting most the sunshine and the light, I left my couch, and clothed myself in haste, And, kneeling, sent to God an earnest cry For help and guidance. "Show Thou me the way, Where duty leads; for I am blind! my sight Obscured by self. Oh, lead my steps aright! Help me see the path: and if it may, Let this cup pass:--and yet Thou heavenly One Thy will in all things, not mine own, be done." Rising, I went upon my way, receiving The strength prayer gives alway to hearts believing. I felt that unseen hands were leading me, And knew the end was peace. "What! are you up?" Cried Helen, coming with a tray, and cup, Of tender toast, and fragrant smoking tea. "You naughty girl! you should have stayed in bed Until you ate your breakfast, and were better I've something hidden for you here--a letter. But drink your tea before you read it, dear! 'Tis from some distant cousin, Auntie said, And so you need not hurry. Now be good, And mind your Helen." So, in passive mood, I laid the still unopened letter near, And loitered at my breakfast more to please My nurse, than any hunger to appease. Then listlessly I broke the seal and read The few lines written in a bold free hand: "New London, Canada. Dear Coz. Maurine! (In spite of generations stretched between Our natural right to that most handy claim Of cousinship, we'll use it all the same) I'm coming to see you! honestly, in truth! I've threatened often--now I mean to act. You'll find my coming is a stubborn fact. Keep quiet though, and do not tell Aunt Ruth I wonder if she'll know her petted boy In spite of changes. Look for me until You see me coming. As of old I'm still Your faithful friend, and loving cousin, Roy." So Roy was coming! He and I had played As boy and girl, and later, youth and maid, Full half our lives together. He had been, Like me, an orphan; and the roof of kin Gave both kind shelter. Swift years sped away Ere change was felt: and then one summer day A long lost uncle sailed from India's shore-- Made Roy his heir, and he was ours no more. "He'd write us daily, and we'd see his face Once every year." Such was his promise given The morn he left. But now the years were seven Since last he looked upon the olden place. He'd been through college, traveled in all lands, Sailed over seas, and trod the desert sands. Would write and plan a visit, then, ere long, Would write again from Egypt or Hong Kong-- Some fancy called him thither unforeseen. So years had passed, till seven lay between His going and the coming of this note, Which I hid in my bosom, and replied To Aunt Ruth's queries, "What the truant wrote?" By saying he was still upon the wing, And merely dropped a line, while journeying, To say he lived: and she was satisfied. Sometimes it happens, in this world so strange, A human heart will pass through mortal strife, And writhe in torture: while the old sweet life So full of hope, and beauty, bloom and grace, Is slowly strangled by remorseless Pain: And one stern, cold, relentless, takes its place-- A ghastly, pallid specter of the slain. Yet those in daily converse see no change Nor dream the heart has suffered. So that day I passed along toward the troubled way Stern duty pointed, and no mortal guessed A mighty conflict had disturbed my breast. I had resolved to yield up to my friend The man I loved. Since she, too, loved him so I saw no other way in honor left. She was so weak and fragile, once bereft Of this great hope, that held her with such power She would wilt down, like some frost-bitten flower And swift untimely death would be the end. But I was strong: and hardy plants, which grow In out-door soil, can bear bleak winds that blow From Arctic lands, whereof a single breath Would lay the hot-house blossom low in death. The hours went by, too slow, and yet too fast. All day I argued with my foolish heart That bade me play the shrinking coward's part And hide from pain. And when the day had past And time for Vivian's call drew near and nearer, It pleaded. "Wait, until the way seems clearer: Say you are ill--or busy: keep away Until you gather strength enough to play The part you have resolved on." "Nay, not so," Made answer clear-eyed Reason, "Do you go And put your resolution to the test. Resolve, however nobly formed, at best Is but a still born babe of Thought, until It proves existence of its life and will By sound or action." So when Helen came And knelt by me, her fair face all aflame With sudden blushes, whispering, "My sweet! My heart can hear the music of his feet-- Go down with me to meet him," I arose, And went with her all calmly, as one goes To look upon the dear face of the dead. That eve, I know not what I did or said. I was not cold--my manner was not strange: Perchance I talked more freely than my wont, But in my speech was naught could give affront; Yet I conveyed, as only woman can, That nameless _something_, which bespeaks a change. 'Tis in the power of woman, if she be Whole-souled and noble, free from coquetry-- Her motives all unselfish, worthy, good, To make herself and feelings understood By nameless acts--thus sparing what to man, However gently answered, causes pain, The offering of his hand and heart in vain. She can be friendly, unrestrained, and kind, Assume no airs of pride or arrogance; But in her voice, her manner, and her glance, Convey that mystic something, undefined, Which men fail not to understand and read, And, when not blind with egoism, heed. My task was harder. 'T was the slow undoing Of long sweet months of unimpeded wooing. It was to hide and cover and conceal The truth--assuming, what I did not feel. It was to dam love's happy singing tide That blessed me with its hopeful, tuneful tone, By feigned indiff'rence, till it turned aside, And changed its channel, leaving me alone To walk parched plains, and thirst for that sweet draught My lips had tasted, but another quaffed. It could be done. For no words yet were spoken-- None to recall--no pledges to be broken. "He will be grieved, then angry, cold, then cross," I reasoned, thinking what would be his part In this strange drama. "Then, because his he Feels something lacking, to make good his loss, He'll turn to Helen: and her gentle grace And loving acts will win her soon the place I hold to-day: and like a troubled dream At length, our past, when he looks back, will seem." That evening passed with music, chat and song: But hours that once had flown on airy wings Now limped on weary, aching limbs along, Each moment like some dreaded step that brings A twinge of pain. As Vivian rose to go, Slow bending to me, from his greater height, He took my hand, and, looking in my eyes, With tender questioning and pained surprise, Said, "Maurine, you are not yourself to-night! What is it? Are you ailing?" "Ailing? no," I answered, laughing lightly, "I am not: Just see my cheek, sir! is it thin, or pale? Now tell me, am I looking very frail?" "Nay, nay!" he answered, "it can not be _seen_, The change I speak of--'twas more in your mien: Preoccupation, or--I know not what! Miss Helen, am I wrong, or does Maurine Seem to have something on her mind this eve?" "She does!" laughed Helen, "and I do believe I know what 'tis! A letter came to-day Which she read slyly, and then hid away Close to her heart, not knowing I was near: And since she's been as you have seen her here. See how she blushes! so my random shot We must believe has struck a tender spot." Her rippling laughter floated through the room, And redder yet I felt the hot blood rise, Then surge away to leave me pale as death, Under the dark and swiftly gathering gloom Of Vivian's questioning, accusing eyes, That searched my soul. I almost shrieked beneath That stern, fixed gaze; and stood spellbound until He turned with sudden movement, gave his hand To each in turn, and said, "You must not stand Longer, young ladies, in this open door. The air is heavy with a cold damp chill. We shall have rain to-morrow, or before. Good night." He vanished in the darkling shade; And so the dreaded evening found an end, That saw me grasp the conscience-whetted blade, And strike a blow for honor and for friend. "How swiftly passed the evening!" Helen sighed. "How long the hours!" my tortured heart replied. Joy, like a child, with lightsome steps doth glide By Father Time, and, looking in his face, Cries, snatching blossoms from the fair road-side, "I could pluck more, but for thy hurried pace." The while her elder brother Pain, man grown, Whose feet are hurt by many a thorn and stone, Looks to some distant hill-top, high and calm, Where he shall find not only rest, but balm For all his wounds, and cries in tones of woe, "O Father Time! why is thy pace so slow?" Two days, all sad with lonely wind and rain, Went sobbing by, repeating o'er and o'er The miserere, desolate and drear, Which every human heart must sometime hear. Pain is but little varied. Its refrain, Whate'er the words are, is for aye the same. The third day brought a change: for with it came Not only sunny smiles to Nature's face, But Roy, our Roy came back to us. Once more We looked into his laughing, handsome eyes, Which, while they gave Aunt Ruth a glad surprise In no way puzzled her: for one glance told What each succeeding one confirmed, that he Who bent above her with the lissome grace Of his fine form, though grown so tall, could be No other than the Roy Montaine of old. It was a sweet reunion: and he brought So much of sunshine with him, that I caught, Just from his smile alone, enough of gladness To make my heart forget a time its sadness. We talked together of the dear old days: Leaving the present, with its depths and heights Of life's maturer sorrows and delights, I turned back to my childhood's level land, And Roy and I, dear playmates, hand in hand, Wandered in mem'ry, through the olden ways. It was the second evening of his coming. Helen was playing dreamily, and humming Some wordless melody of white-souled thought, While Roy and I sat by the open door, Re-living childish incidents of yore. My eyes were glowing, and my cheeks were hot With warm young blood; excitement, joy, or pain Alike would send swift coursing through each vein. Roy, always eloquent, was waxing fine, And bringing vividly before my gaze Some old adventure of those halcyon days, When suddenly in pauses of the talk, I heard a well-known step upon the walk, And looked up quickly to meet full in mine The eyes of Vivian Dangerfield. A flash Shot from their depths:--a sudden blaze of light Like that swift followed by the thunder's crash, Which said, "Suspicion is confirmed by sight," As they fell on the pleasant door-way scene. Then o'er his clear-cut face, a cold white look Crept, like the pallid moonlight o'er a brook, And, with a slight, proud bending of the head, He stepped toward us haughtily and said, "Please pardon my intrusion, Miss Maurine: I called to ask Miss Trevor for a book She spoke of lending me: nay, sit you still! And I, by grant of your permission, will Pass by to where I hear her playing." "Stay!" I said, "one moment, Vivian, if you please;" And suddenly bereft of all my ease, And scarcely knowing what to do, or say, Confused as any school-girl, I arose, And some way made each to the other known They bowed, shook hands: then Vivian turned away And sought out Helen, leaving us alone. "One of Miss Trevor's, or of Maurine's beaux? Which may he be, who cometh like a prince With haughty bearing, and an eagle eye?" Roy queried, laughing: and I answered, "Since You saw him pass me for Miss Trevor's side, I leave your own good judgment to reply." And straightway caused the tide of talk to glide In other channels, striving to dispel The sudden gloom that o'er my spirit fell. We mortals are such hypocrites at best! When Conscience tries our courage with a test, And points to some steep pathway, we set out Boldly, denying any fear or doubt; But pause before the first rock in the way, And, looking back, with tears, at Conscience, say "We are so sad, dear Conscience! for we would Most gladly do what to thee seemeth good; But lo! this rock! we cannot climb it, so Thou must point out some other way to go." Yet secretly we are rejoicing: and, When right before our faces, as we stand In seeming grief, the rock is cleft in twain, Leaving the pathway clear, we shrink in pain! And loth to go, by every act reveal What we so tried from Conscience to conceal. I saw that hour, the way made plain, to do With scarce an effort, what had seemed a strife That would require the strength of my whole life. Women have quick perceptions: and I knew That Vivian's heart was full of jealous pain, Suspecting--nay _believing_ Roy Montaine To be my lover.--First my altered mien-- And next the letter--then the door-way scene-- My flushed face gazing in the one above That bent so near me, and my strange confusion When Vivian came, all led to one conclusion: That I had but been playing with his love, As women sometimes cruelly do play With hearts when their true lovers are away. There could be nothing easier, than just To let him linger on in this belief Till hourly-fed Suspicion and Distrust Should turn to scorn and anger all his grief. Compared with me, so doubly sweet and pure Would Helen seem, my purpose would be sure, And certain of completion in the end. But now, the way was made so straight and clear, My coward heart shrank back in guilty fear, Till Conscience whispered with her "still small voice," "The precious time is passing--make thy choice-- Resign thy love, or slay thy trusting friend." The growing moon, watched by the myriad eyes Of countless stars, went sailing through the skies, Like some young prince, rising to rule a nation, To whom all eyes are turned in expectation. A woman who possesses tact and art And strength of will can take the hand of doom, And walk on, smiling sweetly as she goes, With rosy lips, and rounded cheeks of bloom, Cheating a loud-tongued world that never knows The pain and sorrow of her hidden heart. And so I joined in Roy's bright changing chat; Answered his sallies--talked of this and that, My brow unruffled as the calm still wave That tells not of the wrecked ship, and the grave Beneath its surface. Then we heard, ere long, The sound of Helen's gentle voice in song, And, rising, entered where the subtle power Of Vivian's eyes, forgiving while accusing, Finding me weak, had won me, in that hour; But Roy, alway polite and debonair Where ladies were, now hung about my chair With nameless delicate attentions, using That air devotional, and those small arts Acquaintance with society imparts To men gallant by nature. 'T was my sex And not myself he bowed to. Had my place Been filled that evening by a dowager, Twice his own age, he would have given her The same attentions. But they served to vex Whatever hope in Vivian's heart remained. The cold, white look crept back upon his face, Which told how deeply he was hurt and pained. Little by little all things had conspired, To bring events I dreaded, yet desired. We were in constant intercourse: walks, rides, Picnics and sails, filled weeks of golden weather, And almost hourly we were thrown together. No words were spoken of rebuke or scorn: Good friends we seemed. But as a gulf divides This land and that, though lying side by side, So rolled a gulf between us--deep and wide-- The gulf of doubt, which widened slowly morn And noon and night. Free and informal were These picnics and excursions. Yet, although Helen and I would sometimes choose to go Without our escorts, leaving them quite free. It happened alway Roy would seek out me Ere passed the day, while Vivian walked with her. I had no thought of flirting. Roy was just Like some dear brother, and I quite forgot The kinship was so distant it was not Safe to rely upon in perfect trust, Without reserve or caution. Many a time When there was some steep mountain side to climb, And I grew weary, he would say, "Maurine, Come rest you here." And I would go and lean My head upon his shoulder, or would stand And let him hold in his my willing hand. The while he stroked it gently with his own. Or I would let him clasp me with his arm, Nor entertained a thought of any harm, Nor once supposed but Vivian was alone In his suspicions. But ere long the truth I learned in consternation! both Aunt Ruth And Helen, honestly, in faith believed That Roy and I were lovers. Undeceived, Some careless words might open Vivian's eyes And spoil my plans. So reasoning in this wise, To all their sallies I in jest replied, To naught assented, and yet naught denied, With Roy unchanged remaining, confident Each understood just what the other meant. If I grew weary of this double part, And self-imposed deception caused my heart Sometimes to shrink, I needed but to gaze On Helen's face: that wore a look ethereal, As if she dwelt above the things material And held communion with the angels. So I fed my strength and courage through the days. What time the harvest moon rose full and clear And cast its ling'ring radiance on the earth, We made a feast; and called from far and near, Our friends, who came to share the scene of mirth. Fair forms and faces flitted to and fro; But none more sweet than Helen's. Robed in white, She floated like a vision through the dance. So frailly fragile and so phantom fair, She seemed like some stray spirit of the air, And was pursued by many an anxious glance That looked to see her fading from the sight Like figures that a dreamer sees at night. And noble men and gallants graced the scene: Yet none more noble or more grand of mien Than Vivian--broad of chest and shoulder, tall And finely formed, as any Grecian god Whose high-arched foot on Mount Olympus trod. His clear-cut face was beardless; and, like those Same Grecian statues, when in calm repose, Was it in hue and feature. Framed in hair Dark and abundant; lighted by large eyes That could be cold as steel in winter air, Or warm and sunny as Italian skies. Weary of mirth and music, and the sound Of tripping feet, I sought a moment's rest Within the lib'ry, where a group I found Of guests, discussing with apparent zest Some theme of interest--Vivian, near the while, Leaning and listening with his slow odd smile. "Now Miss La Pelle, we will appeal to you," Cried young Guy Semple, as I entered. "We Have been discussing right before his face, All unrebuked by him, as you may see, A poem lately published by our friend: And we are quite divided. I contend The poem is a libel and untrue I hold the fickle women are but few, Compared with those who are like yon fair moon That, ever faithful, rises in her place Whether she's greeted by the flowers of June, Or cold and dreary stretches of white space." "Oh!" cried another, "Mr. Dangerfield, Look to your laurels! or you needs must yield The crown to Semple, who, 'tis very plain, Has mounted Pegasus and grasped his mane." All laughed: and then, as Guy appealed to me I answered lightly, "My young friend, I fear You chose a most unlucky simile To prove the truth of woman. To her place The moon does rise--but with a different face Each time she comes. But now I needs must hear The poem read, before I can consent To pass my judgment on the sentiment." All clamored that the author was the man To read the poem: and, with tones that said More than the cutting, scornful words he read, Taking the book Guy gave him, he began: HER LOVE. The sands upon the ocean side That change about with every tide, And never true to one abide, A woman's love I liken to. The summer zephyrs, light and vain, That sing the same alluring strain To every grass blade on the plain-- A woman's love is nothing more. The sunshine of an April day That comes to warm you with its ray, But while you smile has flown away-- A woman's love is like to this. God made poor woman with no heart, But gave her skill, and tact, and art, And so she lives, and plays her part. We must not blame, but pity her. She leans to man--but just to hear The praise he whispers in her ear, Herself, not him, she holdeth dear-- O fool! to be deceived by her. To sate her selfish thirst she quaffs The love of strong hearts in sweet draughts Then throws them lightly by and laughs, Too weak to understand their pain. As changeful as the winds that blow From every region, to and fro, Devoid of heart, she cannot know The suffering of a human heart. I knew the cold, fixed gaze of Vivian's eyes Saw the slow color to my forehead rise; But lightly answered, toying with my fan, "That sentiment is very like a man! Men call us fickle, but they do us wrong; We're only frail and helpless, men are strong; And when love dies, they take the poor dead thing And make a shroud out of their suffering, And drag the corpse about with them for years. But we?--we mourn it for a day with tears! And then we robe it for its last long rest, And being women, feeble things at best, We cannot dig the grave ourselves. And so We call strong-limbed New Love to lay it low: Immortal sexton he! whom Venus sends To do this service for her earthly friends, The trusty fellow digs the grave so deep Nothing disturbs the dead laid there to sleep." The laugh that followed had not died away Ere Roy Montaine came seeking me, to say The band was tuning for our waltz, and so Back to the ball-room bore me. In the glow And heat and whirl, my strength ere long was spent, And I grew faint and dizzy, and we went Out on the cool moonlighted portico, And, sitting there, Roy drew my languid head Upon the shelter of his breast, and bent His smiling eyes upon me, as he said, "I'll try the mesmerism of my touch To work a cure: be very quiet now, And let me make some passes o'er your brow. Why, how it throbs! you've exercised too much! I shall not let you dance again to-night." Just then before us, in the broad moonlight, Two forms were mirrored: and I turned my face To catch the teasing and mischievous glance Of Helen's eyes, as, heated by the dance, Leaning on Vivian's arm, she sought this place. "I beg your pardon," came in that round tone Of his low voice. "I think we do intrude." Bowing, they turned, and left us quite alone Ere I could speak, or change my attitude. _PART V._ A visit to a cave some miles away Was next in order. So, one sunny day, Four prancing steeds conveyed a laughing load Of merry pleasure-seekers o'er the road. A basket picnic, music and croquet Were in the programme. Skies were blue and clear, And cool winds whispered of the Autumn near. The merry-makers filled the time with pleasure: Some floated to the music's rhythmic measure, Some played, some promenaded on the green. Ticked off by happy hearts, the moments passed. The afternoon, all glow and glimmer, came. Helen and Roy were leaders of some game, And Vivian was not visible. "Maurine, I challenge you to climb yon cliff with me! And who shall tire, or reach the summit last Must pay a forfeit," cried a romping maid. "Come! start at once, or own you are afraid." So challenged I made ready for the race, Deciding first the forfeit was to be A handsome pair of bootees to replace The victor's loss who made the rough ascent. The cliff was steep and stony. On we went As eagerly as if the path was Fame, And what we climbed for, glory and a name. My hands were bruised; my garments sadly rent, But on I clambered. Soon I heard a cry, "Maurine! Maurine! my strength is wholly spent! You've won the boots! I'm going back--good bye!" And back she turned, in spite of laugh and jeer. I reached the summit: and its solitude, Wherein no living creature did intrude, Save some sad birds that wheeled and circled near, I found far sweeter than the scene below. Alone with One who knew my hidden woe, I did not feel so much alone as when I mixed with th' unthinking throngs of men. Some flowers that decked the barren, sterile place I plucked, and read the lesson they conveyed, That in our lives, albeit dark with shade And rough and hard with labor, yet may grow The flowers of Patience, Sympathy, and Grace. As I walked on in meditative thought, A serpent writhed across my pathway; not A large or deadly serpent; yet the sight Filled me with ghastly terror and affright. I shrieked aloud: a darkness veiled my eyes-- And I fell fainting 'neath the watchful skies. I was no coward. Country-bred and born, I had no feeling but the keenest scorn For those fine lady "ah's" and "oh's" of fear So much assumed (when any man is near). But God implanted in each human heart A natural horror, and a sickly dread Of that accursèd, slimy, creeping thing That squirms a limbless carcass o'er the ground. And where that inborn loathing is not found You'll find the serpent qualities instead. Who fears it not, himself is next of kin, And in his bosom holds some treacherous art Whereby to counteract its venomed sting. And all are sired by Satan--Chief of Sin. Who loathes not that foul creature of the dust, However fair in seeming, I distrust. I woke from my unconsciousness, to know I leaned upon a broad and manly breast, And Vivian's voice was speaking, soft and low, Sweet whispered words of passion, o'er and o'er. I dared not breathe. Had I found Eden's shore? Was this a foretaste of eternal bliss? "My love," he sighed, his voice like winds that moan Before a rain in Summer time, "My own, For one sweet stolen moment, lie and rest Upon this heart that loves and hates you both! O fair false face! Why were you made so fair! O mouth of Southern sweetness! that ripe kiss That hangs upon you, I do take an oath _His_ lips shall never gather. There!--and there! I steal it from him. Are you his--all his? Nay you are mine, this moment, as I dreamed-- Blind fool--believing you were what you seemed-- You would be mine in all the years to come. Fair fiend! I love and hate you in a breath. O God! if this white pallor were but _death_, And I were stretched beside you, cold and dumb, My arms about you, so--in fond embrace! My lips pressed, so--upon your dying face!" "Woman, how dare you bring me to such shame! How dare you drive me to an act like this, To steal from your unconscious lips the kiss You lured me on to think my rightful claim! O frail and puny woman! could you know The devil that you waken in the hearts You snare and bind in your enticing arts, The thin, pale stuff that in your veins doth flow Would freeze in terror. Strange you have such power To please, or pain us, poor, weak, soulless things-- Devoid of passion as a senseless flower! Like butterflies, your only boast, your wings. There, now, I scorn you--scorn you from this hour, And hate myself for having talked of love!" He pushed me from him. And I felt as those Doomed angels must, when pearly gates above Are closed against them. With a feigned surprise I started up and opened wide my eyes, And looked about. Then in confusion rose And stood before him. "Pardon me, I pray!" He said quite coldly. "Half an hour ago I left you with the company below, And sought this cliff. A moment since you cried, It seemed, in sudden terror and alarm. I came in time to see you swoon away. You'll need assistance down the rugged side Of this steep cliff. I pray you take my arm." So, formal and constrained, we passed along, Rejoined our friends, and mingled with the throng To have no further speech again that day. Next morn there came a bulky document, The legal firm of Blank & Blank had sent, Containing news unlooked for. An estate Which proved a cosy fortune--no-wise great Or princely--had in France been left to me, My grandsire's last descendant. And it brought A sense of joy and freedom in the thought Of foreign travel, which I hoped would be A panacea for my troubled mind, That longed to leave the olden scenes behind With all their recollections, and to flee To some strange country. I was in such haste To put between me and my native land The briny ocean's desolating waste, I gave Aunt Ruth no peace, until she planned To sail that week, two months: though she was fain To wait until the Springtime. Roy Montaine Would be our guide and escort. No one dreamed The cause of my strange hurry, but all seemed To think good fortune had quite turned my brain. One bright October morning, when the woods Had donned their purple mantles and red hoods In honor of the Frost King, Vivian came, Bringing some green leaves, tipped with crimson flame,-- First trophies of the Autumn time. And Roy Made a proposal that we all should go And ramble in the forest for a while. But Helen said she was not well--and so Must stay at home. Then Vivian, with a smile, Responded, "I will stay and talk to you, And they may go;" at which her two cheeks grew Like twin blush roses;--dyed with love's red wave, Her fair face shone transfigured with great joy. And Vivian saw--and suddenly was grave. Roy took my arm in that protecting way Peculiar to some men, which seems to say, "I shield my own," a manner pleasing, e'en When we are conscious that it does not mean More than a simple courtesy. A woman Whose heart is wholly feminine and human, And not unsexed by hobbies, likes to be The object of that tender chivalry, That guardianship which man bestows on her, Yet mixed with deference; as if she were Half child, half angel. Though she may be strong, Noble and self-reliant, not afraid To raise her hand and voice against all wrong And all oppression, yet if she be made, With all the independence of her thought, A woman womanly, as God designed, Albeit she may have as great a mind As man, her brother, yet his strength of arm His muscle and his boldness she has not, And cannot have without she loses what Is far more precious, modesty and grace. So, walking on in her appointed place, She does not strive to ape him, nor pretend But that she needs him for a guide and friend, To shield her with his greater strength from harm. We reached the forest; wandered to and fro Through many a winding path and dim retreat. Till I grew weary: when I chose a seat Upon an oak tree, which had been laid low By some wind storm, or by some lightning stroke. And Roy stood just below me, where the ledge On which I sat sloped steeply to the edge Of sunny meadows lying at my feet. One hand held mine; the other grasped a limb That cast its checkered shadows over him; And, with his head thrown back, his dark eyes raised And fixed upon me, silently he gazed Until I, smiling, turned to him and spoke: "Give words, my cousin, to those thoughts that rise, And, like dumb spirits, look forth from your eyes." The smooth and even darkness of his cheek Was stained one moment by a flush of red. He swayed his lithe form nearer as he stood Still clinging to the branch above his head. His brilliant eyes grew darker; and he said, With sudden passion, "Do you bid me speak? I can not, then, keep silence if I would. That hateful fortune, coming as it did, Forbade my speaking sooner; for I knew A harsh tongued world would quickly misconstrue My motive for a meaner one. But, sweet, So big my heart has grown with love for you I can not shelter it, or keep it hid. And so I cast it throbbing at your feet, For you to guard and cherish, or to break. Maurine, I love you better than my life. My friend--my cousin--be still more, my wife! Maurine, Maurine, what answer do you make?" I scarce could breathe for wonderment; and numb With truth that fell too suddenly, sat dumb With sheer amaze, and stared at Roy with eyes That looked no feeling but complete surprise. He swayed so near his breath was on my cheek. "Maurine, Maurine," he whispered, "will you speak?" Then suddenly, as o'er some magic glass One picture in a score of shapes will pass, I seemed to see Roy glide before my gaze. First, as the playmate of my earlier days-- Next, as my kin--and then my valued friend, And last, my lover. As when colors blend In some unlooked-for group before our eyes, We hold the glass, and look them o'er and o'er So now I gazed on Roy in his new guise, In which he ne'er appeared to me before. His form was like a panther's in its grace, So lithe and supple, and of medium height, And garbed in all the elegance of fashion. His large black eyes were full of fire and passion, And in expression fearless, firm, and bright. His hair was like the very deeps of night, And hung in raven clusters 'round a face Of dark and flashing beauty. He was more Like some romantic maiden's grand ideal Than like a common being. As I gazed Upon the handsome face to mine upraised, I saw before me, living, breathing, real, The hero of my early day-dreams: though So full my heart was with that clear-cut face, Which, all unlike, yet claimed the hero's place, I had not recognized him so before, Or thought of him, save as a valued friend. So now I called him, adding, "Foolish boy! Each word of love you utter aims a blow At that sweet trust I had reposed in you. I was so certain I had found a true, Steadfast man friend, on whom I could depend, And go on wholly trusting, to the end. Why did you shatter my delusion, Roy, By turning to a lover?" "Why, indeed! Because I loved you more than any brother, Or any friend could love." Then he began To argue like a lawyer, and to plead With all his eloquence. And, listening, I strove to think it was a goodly thing To be so fondly loved by such a man, And it were best to give his wooing heed, And not deny him. Then before my eyes In all its clear-cut majesty, that other Haughty and poet-handsome face would rise And rob my purpose of all life and strength. Roy urged and argued, as Roy only could, With that impetuous, boyish eloquence. He held my hands, and vowed I must, and should Give some least hope; till, in my own defense, I turned upon him, and replied at length: "I thank you for the noble heart you offer: But it deserves a true one in exchange. I could love you if I loved not another Who keeps my heart; so I have none to proffer." Then, seeing how his dark eyes flashed, I said, "Dear Roy! I know my words seem very strange; But I love one I cannot hope to wed. A river rolls between us, dark and deep. To cross it--were to stain with blood my hand. You force my speech on what I fain would keep In my own bosom, but you understand? My heart is given to love that's sanctified, And now can feel no other. Be you kind Dear Roy, my brother! speak of this no more, Lest pleading and denying should divide The hearts so long united. Let me find In you my cousin and my friend of yore And now come home. The morning, all too soon And unperceived, has melted into noon. Helen will miss us, and we must return." He took my hand, and helped me to arise, Smiling upon me with his sad dark eyes. Where passion's fires had, sudden, ceased to burn. "And so," he said, "too soon and unforeseen My friendship melted into love, Maurine. But, sweet! I am not wholly in the blame, For what you term my folly. You forgot, So long we'd known each other, I had not In truth a brother's or a cousin's claim. But I remembered, when through every nerve Your lightest touch went thrilling; and began To love you with that human love of man For comely woman. By your coaxing arts, You won your way into my heart of hearts, And all Platonic feelings put to rout. A maid should never lay aside reserve With one who's not her kinsman, out and out. But as we now, with measured steps, retrace The path we came, e'en so my heart I'll send, At your command, back to the olden place, And strive to love you only as a friend." I felt the justice of his mild reproof, But answered laughing, "'Tis the same old cry: 'The woman tempted me, and I did eat.' Since Adam's time we've heard it. But I'll try And be more prudent, sir, and hold aloof The fruit I never once had thought so sweet 'Twould tempt you any. Now go dress for dinner, Thou sinned against! as also will the sinner. And guard each act, that no least look betray What's passed between us." Then I turned away And sought my room, low humming some old air That ceased upon the threshold; for mine eyes Fell on a face so glorified and fair All other senses, merged in that of sight, Were lost in contemplation of the bright And wond'rous picture, which had otherwise Made dim my vision. Waiting in my room, Her whole face lit as by an inward flame That shed its halo 'round her, Helen stood; Her fair hands folded like a lily's leaves Weighed down by happy dews of summer eves. Upon her cheek the color went and came As sunlight flickers o'er a bed of bloom; And, like some slim young sapling of the wood, Her slender form leaned slightly; and her hair Fell 'round her loosely, in long curling strands All unconfined, and as by loving hands Tossed into bright confusion. Standing there, Her starry eyes uplifted, she did seem Like some unearthly creature of a dream; Until she started forward, gliding slowly, And broke the breathless silence, speaking lowly, As one grown meek, and humble in an hour, Bowing before some new and mighty power. "Maurine, Maurine!" she murmured, and again, "Maurine, my own sweet friend, Maurine!" And then, Laying her love light hands upon my head, She leaned, and looked into my eyes, and said With voice that bore her joy in ev'ry tone, As winds that blow across a garden bed Are weighed with fragrance, "He is mine alone, And I am his--all his--his very own. So pledged this hour, by that most sacred tie Save one beneath God's over-arching sky. I could not wait to tell you of my bliss: I want your blessing, sweetheart! and your kiss." So hiding my heart's trouble with a smile, I leaned and kissed her dainty mouth; the while I felt a guilt-joy, as of some sweet sin, When my lips fell where his so late had been. And all day long I bore about with me A sense of shame--yet mixed with satisfaction, As some starved child might steal a loaf, and be Sad with the guilt resulting from her action, While yet the morsel in her mouth was sweet. That ev'ning when the house had settled down To sleep and quiet, to my room there crept A lithe young form, robed in a long white gown: With steps like fall of thistle-down she came, Her mouth smile-wreathed; and, breathing low my name, Nestled in graceful beauty at my feet. "Sweetheart," she murmured softly, "ere I sleep, I needs must tell you all my tale of joy. Beginning where you left us--you and Roy. You saw the color flame upon my cheek When Vivian spoke of staying. So did he;-- And, when we were alone, he gazed at me With such a strange look in his wond'rous eyes. The silence deepened; and I tried to speak Upon some common topic, but could not, My heart was in such tumult. In this wise Five happy moments glided by us, fraught With hours of feeling. Vivian rose up then, And came and stood by me, and stroked my hair. And, in his low voice, o'er and o'er again, Said, 'Helen, little Helen, frail and fair.' Then took my face, and turned it to the light, And looking in my eyes, and seeing what Was shining from them, murmured, sweet and low, 'Dear eyes, you cannot veil the truth from sight. You love me, Helen! answer, is it so?' And I made answer straightway, 'With my life And soul and strength I love you, O my love!' He leaned and took me gently to his breast, And said, 'Here then this dainty head shall rest Henceforth forever: O my little dove! My lily-bud--my fragile blossom-wife!' "And then I told him all my thoughts; and he Listened, with kisses for his comments, till My tale was finished. Then he said, 'I will Be frank with you, my darling, from the start, And hide no secret from you in my heart. I love you, Helen, but you are not first To rouse that love to being. Ere we met I loved a woman madly--never dreaming She was not all in truth she was in seeming. Enough! she proved to be that thing accursed Of God and man--a wily vain coquette. I hate myself for having loved her. Yet So much my heart spent on her, it must give A love less ardent, and less prodigal, Albeit just as tender and as true-- A milder, yet a faithful love to you. Just as some evil fortune might befall A man's great riches, causing him to live In some low cot, all unpretending, still As much his home--as much his loved retreat, As was the princely palace on the hill, E'en so I give you all that's left, my sweet! Of my heart-fortune.' 'That were more to me,' I made swift smiling answer, 'than to be The worshiped consort of a king.' And so Our faith was pledged. But Vivian would not go Until I vowed to wed him New Year day. And I am sad because you go away Before that time. I shall not feel half wed Without you here. Postpone your trip and stay, And be my bridesmaid." "Nay, I cannot, dear! 'Twould disarrange our plans for half a year. I'll be in Europe New Year day," I said, "And send congratulations by the cable." And from my soul thanked Providence for sparing The pain, to me, of sharing in, and wearing The festal garments of a wedding scene, While all my heart was hung with sorrow's sable. Forgetting for a season, that between The cup and lip lies many a chance of loss, I lived in my near future, confident All would be as I planned it; and, across The briny waste of waters, I should find Some balm and comfort for my troubled mind. The sad Fall days, like maidens auburn-tressed And amber-eyed, in purple garments dressed, Passed by, and dropped their tears upon the tomb Of fair Queen Summer, buried in her bloom. Roy left us for a time, and Helen went To make the nuptial preparations. Then, Aunt Ruth complained one day of feeling ill: Her veins ran red with fever; and the skill Of two physicians could not stem the tide. The house, that rang so late with laugh and jest, Grew ghostly with low whispered sounds; and when The Autumn day, that I had thought to be Bounding upon the billows of the sea, Came sobbing in, it found me pale and worn, Striving to keep away that unloved guest Who comes unbidden, making hearts to mourn. Through all the anxious weeks I watched beside The suff'rer's couch, Roy was my help and stay; Others were kind, but he alone each day Brought strength and comfort, by his cheerful face, And hopeful words, that fell in that sad place Like rays of light upon a darkened way. November passed; and Winter, crisp and chill, In robes of ermine walked on plain and hill. Returning light and life dispelled the gloom That cheated Death had brought us from the tomb. Aunt Ruth was saved, and slowly getting better-- Was dressed each day, and walked about the room. Then came one morning in the Eastern mail, A little white-winged birdling of a letter. I broke the seal and read, "Maurine, my own! I hear Aunt Ruth is better, and am glad. I felt so sorry for you; and so sad To think I left you when I did--alone To bear your pain and worry, and those nights Of weary, anxious watching. Vivian writes Your plans are changed now, and you will not sail Before the Springtime. So you'll come and be My bridesmaid, darling! Do not say me nay. But three weeks more of girlhood left to me. Come, if you can, just two weeks from to-day, And make your preparations here. My sweet! Indeed I am not glad Aunt Ruth was ill-- I'm sorry she has suffered so; and still I'm thankful something happened, so you stayed. I'm sure my wedding would be incomplete Without your presence. Selfish, I'm afraid You'll think your Helen. But I love you so, How can I be quite willing you should go? Come Christmas Eve, or earlier. Let me know And I will meet you, dearie! at the train. Your happy, loving Helen." Then the pain That, hidden under later pain and care, Had made no moan, but silent, seemed to sleep, Woke from its trance-like lethargy, to steep My tortured heart in anguish and despair. I had relied too fully on my skill In bending circumstances to my will: And now I was rebuked and made to see That God alone knoweth what is to be. Then came a messenger from Vivian, who Came not himself, as he was wont to do, But sent his servant each new day to bring A kindly message, or an offering Of juicy fruits to cool the lips of fever, Or dainty hot-house blossoms, with their bloom To brighten up the convalescent's room. But now the servant only brought a line From Vivian Dangerfield to Roy Montaine, "Dear Sir, and Friend"--in letters bold and plain, Written on cream-white paper, so it ran: "It is the will and pleasure of Miss Trevor, And therefore doubly so a wish of mine, That you shall honor me next New Year Eve, My wedding hour, by standing as best man. Miss Trevor has six bridesmaids I believe. Being myself a novice in the art-- If I should fail in acting well my part, I'll need protection 'gainst the regiment Of outraged ladies. So, I pray, consent To stand by me in time of need, and shield Your friend sincerely, Vivian Dangerfield." The last least hope had vanished; I must drain, E'en to the dregs, this bitter cup of pain. _PART VI._ There was a week of bustle and of hurry; A stately home echoed to voices sweet, Calling, replying; and to tripping feet Of busy bridesmaids, running to and fro, With all that girlish fluttering and flurry Preceding such occasions. Helen's room Was like a lily-garden, all in bloom, Decked with the dainty robes of her trousseau. My robe was fashioned by swift, skillful hands-- A thing of beauty, elegant and rich, A mystery of loopings, puffs and bands; And as I watched it growing, stitch by stitch, I felt as one might feel who should behold With vision trance-like, where his body lay In deathly slumber, simulating clay, His grave-cloth sewed together, fold on fold. I lived with ev'ry nerve upon the strain, As men go into battle; and the pain, That, more and more, to my sad heart revealed, Grew ghastly with its horrors, was concealed From mortal eyes by superhuman power, That God bestowed upon me, hour by hour. What night the Old Year gave unto the New The key of human happiness and woe, The pointed stars, upon their field of blue, Shone, white and perfect, o'er a world below, Of snow-clad beauty; all the trees were dressed In gleaming garments, decked with diadems, Each seeming like a bridal-bidden guest, Coming o'er-laden with a gift of gems. The bustle of the dressing room; the sound Of eager voices in discourse; the clang Of "sweet bells jangled"; thud of steel-clad feet That beat swift music on the frozen ground-- All blent together in my brain, and rang A medley of strange noises, incomplete, And full of discords. Then out on the night Streamed from this open vestibule, a light That lit the velvet blossoms which we trod, With all the hues of those that deck the sod. The grand cathedral windows were ablaze With gorgeous colors; through a sea of bloom, Up the long aisle, to join the waiting groom, The bridal cortege passed. As some lost soul Might surge on with the curious crowd, to gaze Upon its coffined body, so I went With that glad festal throng. The organ sent Great waves of melody along the air, That broke and fell, in liquid drops, like spray, On happy hearts that listened. But to me It sounded faintly, as if miles away, A troubled spirit, sitting in despair Beside the sad and ever-moaning sea, Gave utterance to sighing sounds of dole. We paused before the altar. Framed in flowers, The white-robed man of God stood forth. I heard The solemn service open; through long hours I seemed to stand and listen, while each word Fell on my ear as falls the sound of clay Upon the coffin of the worshiped dead. The stately father gave the bride away: The bridegroom circled with a golden band The taper finger of her dainty hand. The last imposing, binding words were said-- "What God has joined let no man put asunder"-- And all my strife with self was at an end; My lover was the husband of my friend. How strangely, in some awful hour of pain, External trifles with our sorrows blend! I never hear the mighty organ's thunder, I never catch the scent of heliotrope, Nor see stained windows all ablaze with light, Without that dizzy whirling of the brain, And all the ghastly feeling of that night, When my sick heart relinquished love and hope. The pain we feel so keenly may depart, And e'en its memory cease to haunt the heart; But some slight thing, a perfume, or a sound Will probe the closed recesses of the wound, And for a moment bring the old-time smart. Congratulations, kisses, tears and smiles, Good-byes and farewells given; then across The snowy waste of weary wintry miles, Back to my girlhood's home, where, through each room, For evermore pale phantoms of delight Should aimless wander, always in my sight, Pointing, with ghostly fingers, to the tomb Wet with the tears of living pain and loss. The sleepless nights of watching and of care, Followed by that one week of keenest pain, Taxing my weakened system, and my brain, Brought on a ling'ring illness. Day by day, In that strange, apathetic state I lay, Of mental and of physical despair. I had no pain, no fever, and no chill, But lay without ambition, strength, or will, Knowing no wish for anything but rest, Which seemed, of all God's store of gifts, the best. Physicians came and shook their heads and sighed; And to their score of questions I replied, With but one languid answer, o'er and o'er. "I am so weary--weary--nothing more." I slept, and dreamed I was some feathered thing, Flying through space with ever-aching wing, Seeking a ship called Rest all snowy white, That sailed and sailed before me, just in sight, But always one unchanging distance kept, And woke more weary than before I slept. I slept, and dreamed I ran to win a prize. A hand from heaven held down before my eyes. All eagerness I sought it--it was gone, But shone in all its beauty farther on. I ran, and ran, and ran, in eager quest Of that great prize, whereon was written "rest," Which ever just beyond my reach did gleam, And wakened doubly weary with my dream. I dreamed I was a crystal drop of rain, That saw a snow-white lily on the plain, And left the cloud to nestle in her breast. I fell and fell, but nevermore found rest-- I fell and fell, but found no stopping place, Through leagues and leagues of never-ending space, While space illimitable stretched before. And all these dreams but wearied me the more. Familiar voices sounded in my room-- Aunt Ruth's and Roy's, and Helen's: but they seemed A part of some strange fancy I had dreamed, And now remembered dimly. Wrapped in gloom, My mind, o'er taxed, lost hold of time at last, Ignored its future, and forgot its past, And groped along the present, as a light, Carried, uncovered, through the fogs of night, Will flicker faintly. But I felt, at length, When March winds brought vague rumors of the spring, A certain sense of "restlessness with rest." My aching frame was weary of repose, And wanted action. Then slow-creeping strength Came back with Mem'ry, hand in hand, to bring And lay upon my sore and bleeding breast, Grim-visaged Recollection's thorny rose. I gained, and failed. One day could ride and walk, The next would find me prostrate: while a flock Of ghostly thoughts, like phantom birds, would flit About the chambers of my heart, or sit, Pale spectres of the past, with folded wings, Perched, silently, upon the voiceless strings, That once resounded to Hope's happy lays. So passed the ever-changing April days. When May came, lightsome footed, o'er the lea, Accompanied by kind Aunt Ruth and Roy, I bade farewell to home with secret joy, And turned my wan face eastward to the sea. Roy planned our route of travel: for all lands Were one to him. Or Egypt's burning sands, Or Alps of Switzerland, or stately Rome, All were familiar as the fields of home. There was a year of wand'ring to and fro, Like restless spirits; scaling mountain heights; Dwelling among the countless, rare delights Of lands historic; turning dusty pages, Stamped with the tragedies of mighty ages; Gazing upon the scenes of bloody acts, Of kings long buried--bare, unvarnished facts, Surpassing wildest fictions of the brain; Rubbing against all people, high and low, And by this contact feeling Self to grow Smaller and less important, and the vein Of human kindness deeper, seeing God, Unto the humble delver of the sod, And to the ruling monarch on the throne, Has given hope, ambition, joy, and pain, And that all hearts have feelings like our own. There is no school that disciplines the mind, And broadens thought, like contact with mankind. The college-prisoned greybeard, who has burned The midnight lamp, and book-bound knowledge learned, Till sciences or classics hold no lore He has not conned and studied, o'er and o'er, Is but a babe in wisdom, when compared With some unlettered wand'rer, who has shared The hospitalities of every land; Felt touch of brother in each proffered hand; Made man his study, and the world his college, And gained this grand epitome of knowledge: Each human being has a heart and soul, And self is but an atom of the whole. I hold he is best learnèd and most wise, Who best and most can love and sympathize. Book-wisdom makes us vain and self-contained; Our banded minds go round in little grooves; But constant friction with the world removes These iron foes to freedom, and we rise To grander heights, and, all untrammeled, find A better atmosphere and clearer skies; And through its broadened realm, no longer chained, Thought travels freely, leaving Self behind. Where'er we chanced to wander or to roam, Glad letters came from Helen; happy things, Like little birds that followed on swift wings, Bringing their tender messages from home. Her days were poems, beautiful, complete. The rhythm perfect, and the burden sweet. She was so happy--happy, and so blest. My heart had found contentment in that year. With health restored, my life seemed full of cheer The heart of youth turns ever to the light; Sorrow and gloom may curtain it like night, But, in its very anguish and unrest, It beats and tears the pall-like folds away, And finds again the sunlight of the day. And yet, despite the changes without measure, Despite sight-seeing, round on round of pleasure; Despite new friends, new suitors, still my heart Was conscious of a something lacking, where Love once had dwelt, and afterward despair. Now love was buried; and despair had flown Before the healthful zephyrs that had blown From heights serene and lofty; and the place Where both had dwelt, was empty, voiceless space And so I took my long-loved study, art, The dreary vacuum in my life to fill, And worked, and labored, with a right good will. Aunt Ruth and I took rooms in Rome; while Roy Lingered in Scotland, with his new-found joy. A dainty little lassie, Grace Kildare, Had snared him in her flossy, flaxen hair, And made him captive. We were thrown, by chance, In contact with her people while in France The previous season: she was wholly sweet And fair and gentle; so näive, and yet So womanly, she was at once the pet Of all our party; and, ere many days, Won by her fresh face, and her artless ways, Roy fell a helpless captive at her feet. Her home was in the Highlands; and she came Of good old stock, of fair untarnished fame. Through all these months Roy had been true as steel; And by his every action made me feel He was my friend and brother, and no more. The same big-souled and trusty friend of yore. Yet, in my secret heart, I wished I knew Whether the love he felt one time was dead, Or only hidden, for my sake, from view. So when he came to me one day, and said, The velvet blackness of his eyes ashine With light of love and triumph: "Cousin, mine, Congratulate me! She whom I adore Has pledged to me the promise of her hand; Her heart I have already," I was glad With double gladness, for it freed my mind Of fear that he, in secret, might be sad. From March till June had left her moons behind, And merged her rose-red beauty in July, There was no message from my native land. Then came a few brief lines, by Vivian penned: Death had been near to Helen, but passed by; The danger was now over. God was kind; The mother and the child were both alive; No other child was ever known to thrive As throve this one, nurse had been heard to say. The infant was a wonder, every way. And, at command of Helen he would send A lock of baby's golden hair to me. And did I, on my honor, ever see Such hair before? Helen would write, ere long: She gained quite slowly, but would soon be strong-- Stronger than ever, so the doctors said. I took the tiny ringlet, golden--fair, Mayhap his hand had severed from the head Of his own child, and pressed it to my cheek And to my lips, and kissed it o'er and o'er. All my maternal instincts seemed to rise, And clamor for their rights, while my wet eyes, Rained tears upon the silken tress of hair. The woman struggled with her heart before! It was the mother in me now did speak, Moaning, like Rachel, that her babes were not, And crying out against her barren lot. Once I bemoaned the long and lonely years That stretched before me, dark with love's eclipse; And thought how my unmated heart would miss The shelter of a broad and manly breast-- The strong, bold arm--the tender clinging kiss-- And all pure love's possessions, manifold; But now I wept a flood of bitter tears, Thinking of little heads of shining gold, That would not on my bosom sink to rest; Of little hands that would not touch my cheek; Of little lisping voices, and sweet lips, That never in my list'ning ear would speak The blessed name of mother. Oh, in woman How mighty is the love of offspring! Ere Unto her wond'ring, untaught mind unfolds The myst'ry that is half divine, half human, Of life and birth, the love of unborn souls Within her, and the mother-yearning creeps Through her warm heart, and stirs its hidden deeps, And grows and strengthens with each riper year. As storms may gather in a placid sky, And spend their fury, and then pass away, Leaving again the blue of cloudless day, E'en so the tempest of my grief passed by. 'T was weak to mourn for what I had resigned, With the deliberate purpose of my mind, To my sweet friend. Relinquishing my love, I gave my dearest hope of joy to her. If God, from out his boundless store above, Had chosen added blessings to confer, I would rejoice, for her sake--not repine That th' immortal treasures were not mine. Better my lonely sorrow, than to know My selfish joy had been another's woe; Better my grief and my strength to control, Than the despair of her frail-bodied soul; Better to go on, loveless, to the end, Than wear love's rose, whose thorn had slain my friend. Work is the salve that heals the wounded heart. With will most resolute I set my aim To enter on the weary race for Fame, And if I failed to climb the dizzy height, To reach some point of excellence in art. E'en as the Maker held earth incomplete, Till man was formed, and placed upon the sod, The perfect, living image of his God, All landscape scenes were lacking in my sight, Wherein the human figure had no part. In that, all lines of symmetry did meet-- All hues of beauty mingle. So I brought Enthusiasm in abundance, thought, Much study, and some talent, day by day, To help me in my efforts to portray The wond'rous power, majesty and grace Stamped on some form, or looking from some face. This was to be my specialty: To take Human emotion for my theme, and make The unassisted form divine express Anger or Sorrow, Pleasure, Pain, Distress; And thus to build Fame's monument above The grave of my departed hope and love. This is not Genius. Genius spreads its wings And soars beyond itself, or selfish things. Talent has need of stepping-stones: some cross, Some cheated purpose, some great pain or loss, Must lay the groundwork, and arouse ambition, Before it labors onward to fruition. But, as the lark from beds of bloom will rise And sail and sing among the very skies, Still mounting near and nearer to the light, Impelled alone by love of upward flight, So Genius soars--it does not need to climb-- Upon God-given wings, to heights sublime. Some sportman's shot, grazing the singer's throat, Some venomous assault of birds of prey, May speed its flight toward the realm of day, And tinge with triumph every liquid note. So deathless Genius mounts but higher yet, When Strife and Envy think to slay or fret. There is no balking Genius. Only death Can silence it, or hinder. While there's breath Or sense of feeling, it will spurn the sod, And lift itself to glory, and to God. The acorn sprouted--weeds nor flowers can choke The certain growth of th' upreaching oak. Talent was mine, not Genius; and my mind Seemed bound by chains, and would not leave behind Its selfish love and sorrow. Did I strive To picture some emotion, lo! _his_ eyes, Of emerald beauty, dark as ocean dyes, Looked from the canvas: and my buried pain Rose from its grave, and stood by me alive. Whate'er my subject, in some hue or line, The glorious beauty of his face would shine. So for a time my labor seemed in vain, Since it but freshened, and made keener yet, The grief my heart was striving to forget. While in his form all strength and magnitude With grace and supple sinews were entwined, While in his face all beauties were combined Of perfect features, intellect and truth, With all that fine rich coloring of youth, How could my brush portray aught good or fair Wherein no fatal likeness should intrude Of him my soul had worshiped? But, at last, Setting a watch upon my unwise heart That thus would mix its sorrow with my art, I resolutely shut away the past, And made the toilsome present passing bright With dreams of what was hidden from my sight In the far distant future, when the soil Should yield me golden fruit for all my toil. _PART VII._ With much hard labor and some pleasure fraught, The months rolled by me noiselessly, that taught My hand to grow more skillful in its art, Strengthened my daring dream of fame, and brought Sweet hope and resignation to my heart. Brief letters came from Helen, now and then: She was quite well--oh, yes! quite well, indeed! But still so weak and nervous. By and by, When baby, being older, should not need Such constant care, she would grow strong again. She was as happy as a soul could be; No least cloud hovered in her azure sky; She had not thought life held such depths of bliss. Dear baby sent Maurine a loving kiss, And said she was a naughty, naughty girl, Not to come home and see ma's little pearl. No gift of costly jewels, or of gold, Had been so precious or so dear to me, As each brief line wherein her joy was told. It lightened toil, and took the edge from pain, Knowing my sacrifice was not in vain. Roy purchased fine estates in Scotland, where He built a pretty villa-like retreat. And when the Roman Summer's languid heat Made work a punishment, I turned my face Toward the Highlands, and with Roy and Grace Found rest and freedom from all thought and care. I was a willing worker. Not an hour Passed idly by me: each, I would employ To some good purpose, ere it glided on To swell the tide of hours forever gone. My first completed picture, known as "Joy," Won pleasant words of praise. "Possesses power," "Displays much talent," "Very fairly done." So fell the comments on my grateful ear. Swift in the wake of Joy, and always near, Walks her sad sister Sorrow. So my brush Began depicting sorrow, heavy-eyed, With pallid visage, ere the rosy flush Upon the beaming face of Joy had dried. The careful study of long months, it won Golden opinions; even bringing forth That certain sign of merit--a critique Which set both pieces down as daubs, and weak As empty heads that sang their praises--so Proving conclusively the pictures' worth. These critics and reviewers do not use Their precious ammunition to abuse A worthless work. That, left alone, they know Will find its proper level; and they aim Their batteries at rising works which claim Too much of public notice. But this shot Resulted only in some noise, which brought A dozen people, where one came before To view my pictures; and I had my hour Of holding those frail baubles, Fame and Pow'r. An English Baron who had lived two score Of his allotted three score years and ten, Bought both the pieces. He was very kind, And so attentive, I, not being blind, Must understand his meaning. Therefore, when He said, "Sweet friend, whom I would make my wife, The 'Joy' and 'Sorrow' this dear hand portrayed I have in my possession: now resign Into my careful keeping, and make mine, The joy and sorrow of your future life,"-- I was prepared to answer, but delayed, Grown undecided suddenly. My mind Argued the matter coolly pro and con, And made resolve to speed his wooing on And grant him favor. He was good and kind; Not young, no doubt he would be quite content With my respect, nor miss an ardent love; Could give me ties of family and home; And then, perhaps, my mind was not above Setting some value on a titled name-- Ambitious woman's weakness! Then my art Would be encouraged and pursued the same, And I could spend my winters all in Rome. Love never more could touch my wasteful heart That all its wealth upon one object spent. Existence would be very bleak and cold, After long years, when I was gray and old, With neither home nor children. Once a wife, I would forget the sorrow of my life, And pile new sods upon the grave of pain. My mind so argued; and my sad heart heard, But made no comment. Then the Baron spoke, And waited for my answer. All in vain I strove for strength to utter that one word My mind dictated. Moments rolled away-- Until at last my torpid heart awoke, And forced my trembling lips to say him nay. And then my eyes with sudden tears o'erran, In pity for myself and for this man Who stood before me, lost in pained surprise. "Dear friend," I cried, "Dear generous friend forgive A troubled woman's weakness! As I live, In truth I meant to answer otherwise. From out its store, my heart can give you naught But honor and respect; and yet methought I would give willing answer, did you sue. But now I know 'twere cruel wrong I planned; Taking a heart that beat with love most true, And giving in exchange an empty hand. Who weds for love alone, may not be wise: Who weds without it, angels must despise. Love and respect together must combine To render marriage holy and divine; And lack of either, sure as Fate, destroys Continuation of the nuptial joys, And brings regret, and gloomy discontent, To put to rout each tender sentiment. Nay, nay! I will not burden all your life By that possession--an unloving wife; Nor will I take the sin upon my soul Of wedding where my heart goes not in whole. However bleak may be my single lot, I will not stain my life with such a blot. Dear friend, farewell! the earth is very wide; It holds some fairer woman for your bride; I would I had a heart to give to you, But, lacking it, can only say--adieu!" He whom temptation never has assailed, Knows not that subtle sense of moral strength; When sorely tried, we waver, but at length, Rise up and turn away, not having failed. * * * * * The Autumn of the third year came and went; The mild Italian winter was half spent, When this brief message came across the sea: "My darling! I am dying. Come to me. Love, which so long the growing truth concealed, Stands pale within its shadow. O, my sweet! This heart of mine grows fainter with each beat-- Dying with very weight of bliss. O, come! And take the legacy I leave to you, Before these lips forevermore are dumb. In life or death, Yours, Helen Dangerfield." This plaintive letter bore a month old date; And, wild with fears lest I had come too late, I bade the old world and new friends adieu. And with Aunt Ruth, who long had sighed for home, I turned my back on glory, art, and Rome. All selfish thoughts were merged in one wild fear That she for whose dear sake my heart had bled, Rather than her sweet eyes should know one tear, Was passing from me; that she might be dead; And, dying, had been sorely grieved with me, Because I made no answer to her plea. "O, ship, that sailest slowly, slowly on, Make haste before a wasting life is gone! Make haste that I may catch a fleeting breath! And true in life, be true e'en unto death. "O, ship, sail on! and bear me o'er the tide To her for whom my woman's heart once died. Sail, sail, O, ship! for she hath need of me, And I would know what her last wish may be! I have been true, so true, through all the past, Sail, sail, O, ship! I would not fail at last." So prayed my heart still o'er, and ever o'er, Until the weary lagging ship reached shore. All sad with fears that I had come too late, By that strange source whence men communicate, Though miles on miles of space between them lie, I spoke with Vivian: "Does she live? Reply." The answer came. "She lives, but hasten, friend! Her journey draweth swiftly to its end." Ah me! ah me! when each remembered spot, My own dear home, the lane that led to his-- The fields, the woods, the lake, burst on my sight, Oh! then, Self rose up in asserting might; Oh, then, my bursting heart all else forgot, But those sweet early years of lost delight, Of hope, defeat, of anguish and of bliss. I have a theory, vague, undefined, That each emotion of the human mind, Love, pain or passion, sorrow or despair, Is a live spirit, dwelling in the air, Until it takes possession of some breast; And, when at length, grown weary of unrest, We rise up strong and cast it from the heart, And bid it leave us wholly, and depart, It does not die, it cannot die; but goes And mingles with some restless wind that blows About the region where it had its birth. And though we wander over all the earth, That spirit waits, and lingers, year by year, Invisible, and clothèd like the air, Hoping that we may yet again draw near, And it may haply take us unaware, And once more find safe shelter in the breast It stirred of old with pleasure or unrest. Told by my heart, and wholly positive, Some old emotion long had ceased to live; That, were it called, it could not hear or come, Because it was so voiceless and so dumb, Yet, passing where it first sprang into life, My very soul has suddenly been rife With all the old intensity of feeling. It seemed a living spirit, which came stealing Into my heart from that departed day; Exiled emotion, which I fancied clay. So now into my troubled heart, above The present's pain and sorrow, crept the love And strife and passion of a by-gone hour, Possessed of all their olden might and power. 'T was but a moment, and the spell was broken By pleasant words of greeting, gently spoken, And Vivian stood before us. But I saw In him the husband of my friend alone. The old emotions might at times return, And smold'ring fires leap up an hour and burn; But never yet had I transgressed God's law, By looking on the man I had resigned, With any hidden feeling in my mind, Which she, his wife, my friend, might not have known. He was but little altered. From his face The nonchalant and almost haughty grace, The lurking laughter waiting in his eyes, The years had stolen, leaving in their place A settled sadness, which was not despair, Nor was it gloom, nor weariness, nor care, But something like the vapor o'er the skies Of Indian summer, beautiful to see, But spoke of frosts, which had been and would be. There was that in his face which cometh not, Save when the soul has many a battle fought, And conquered self by constant sacrifice. There are two sculptors, who, with chisels fine, Render the plainest features half divine. All other artists strive and strive in vain, To picture beauty perfect and complete. Their statues only crumble at their feet, Without the master touch of Faith and Pain. And now his face, that perfect seemed before, Chiseled by these two careful artists, wore A look exalted, which the spirit gives When soul has conquered, and the body lives Subservient to its bidding. In a room Which curtained out the February gloom, And, redolent with perfume, bright with flowers, Rested the eye like one of Summer's bowers, I found my Helen, who was less mine now Than Death's; for on the marble of her brow, His seal was stamped indelibly. Her form Was like the slendor willow, when some storm Has stripped it bare of foliage. Her face, Pale always, now was ghastly in its hue: And, like two lamps, in some dark, hollow place, Burned her large eyes, grown more intensely blue. Her fragile hands displayed each cord and vein, And on her mouth was that drawn look, of pain Which is not uttered. Yet an inward light Shone through and made her wasted features bright With an unearthly beauty; and an awe Crept o'er me, gazing on her, for I saw She was so near to Heaven that I seemed To look upon the face of one redeemed. She turned the brilliant luster of her eyes Upon me. She had passed beyond surprise, Or any strong emotion linked with clay. But as I glided to her where she lay, A smile, celestial in its sweetness, wreathed Her pallid features. "Welcome home!" she breathed, "Dear hands! dear lips! I touch you and rejoice." And like the dying echo of a voice Were her faint tones that thrilled upon my ear. I fell upon my knees beside her bed; All agonies within my heart were wed, While to the aching numbness of my grief, Mine eyes refused the solace of a tear,-- The tortured soul's most merciful relief. Her wasted hand caressed my bended head For one sad, sacred moment. Then she said, In that low tone so like the wind's refrain, "Maurine, my own! give not away to pain; The time is precious. Ere another dawn My soul may hear the summons and pass on. Arise, sweet sister! rest a little while, And when refreshed, come hither. I grow weak With every hour that passes. I must speak And make my dying wishes known to-night. Go now." And in the halo of her smile, Which seemed to fill the room with golden light, I turned and left her. Later in the gloom, Of coming night, I entered that dim room, And sat down by her. Vivian held her hand: And on the pillow at her side, there smiled The beauteous count'nance of a sleeping child. "Maurine," spoke Helen, "for three blissful years, My heart has dwelt in an enchanted land; And I have drank the sweetened cup of joy, Without one drop of anguish or alloy. And so, ere Pain embitters it with gall, Or sad-eyed Sorrow fills it full of tears, And bids me quaff, which is the Fate of all Who linger long upon this troubled way, God takes me to the realm of Endless Day, To mingle with his angels, who alone Can understand such bliss as I have known. I do not murmur. God has heaped my measure, In three short years, full to the brim with pleasure; And, from the fullness of an earthly love, I pass to th' Immortal arms above, Before I even brush the skirts of Woe. "I leave my aged parents here below, With none to comfort them. Maurine, sweet friend! Be kind to them, and love them to the end, Which may not be far distant. And I leave A soul immortal in your charge, Maurine. From this most holy, sad and sacred eve, Till God shall claim her, she is yours to keep, To love and shelter, to protect and guide." She touched the slumb'ring cherub at her side, And Vivian gently bore her, still asleep, And laid the precious burden on my breast. A solemn silence fell upon the scene. And when the sleeping infant smiled, and pressed My yielding bosom with her waxen cheek, I felt it would be sacrilege to speak, Such wordless joy possessed me. Oh! at last This infant, who, in that tear-blotted past, Had caused my soul such travail, was my own: Through all the lonely coming years to be Mine own to cherish--wholly mine alone. And what I mourned, so hopelessly as lost Was now restored, and given back to me. The dying voice continued: "In this child You yet have me, whose mortal life she cost. But all that was most pure and undefiled, And good within me, lives in her again. Maurine, my husband loves me; yet I know, Moving about the wide world, to and fro, And through, and in the busy haunts of men, Not always will his heart be dumb with woe, But sometime waken to a later love. Nay, Vivian, hush! my soul has passed above All selfish feelings! I would have it so. While I am with the angels, blest and glad, I would not have you sorrowing and sad, In loneliness go mourning to the end. But, love! I could not trust to any other The sacred office of a foster-mother To this sweet cherub, save my own heart-friend. "Teach her to love her father's name, Maurine, Where'er he wanders. Keep my memory green In her young heart, and lead her in her youth, To drink from th' eternal fount of Truth; Vex her not with sectarian discourse, Nor strive to teach her piety by force; Ply not her mind with harsh and narrow creeds, Nor frighten her with an avenging God, Who rules his subjects with a burning rod; But teach her that each mortal simply needs To grow in hate of hate and love of love, To gain a kingdom in the courts above. "Let her be free and natural as the flowers, That smile and nod throughout the summer hours. Let her rejoice in all the joys of youth, But first impress upon her mind this truth: No lasting happiness is e'er attained Save when the heart some _other_ seeks to please. The cup of selfish pleasures soon is drained, And full of gall and bitterness the lees. Next to her God, teach her to love her land; In her young bosom light the patriot's flame Until the heart within her shall expand With love and fervor at her country's name. "No coward-mother bears a valiant son. And this, my last wish, is an earnest one. "Maurine, my o'er-taxed strength is waning; you Have heard my wishes, and you will be true In death as you have been in life, my own! Now leave me for a little while alone With him--my husband. Dear love! I shall rest So sweetly with no care upon my breast. Good night, Maurine, come to me in the morning." But lo! the bridegroom with no further warning Came for her at the dawning of the day. She heard his voice, and smiled, and passed away Without a struggle. Leaning o'er her bed To give her greeting, I found but her clay, And Vivian bowed beside it. And I said, "Dear friend! my soul shall treasure thy request, And when the night of fever and unrest Melts in the morning of Eternity, Like a freed bird, then I will come to thee. "I will come to thee in the morning, sweet! I have been true; and soul with soul shall meet Before God's throne, and shall not be afraid. Thou gav'st me trust, and it was not betrayed. "I will come to thee in the morning, dear! The night is dark. I do not know how near The morn may be of that Eternal Day; I can but keep my faithful watch and pray. "I will come to thee in the morning, love! Wait for me on the Eternal Heights above. The way is troubled where my feet must climb, Ere I shall tread the mountain-top sublime. "I will come in the morning, O, mine own! But for a time must grope my way alone, Through tears and sorrow, till the Day shall dawn, And I shall hear the summons, and pass on. "I will come in the morning. Rest secure! My hope is certain and my faith is sure. After the gloom and darkness of the night I will come to thee with the morning light." * * * * * Three peaceful years slipped silently away. We dwelt together in my childhood's home, Aunt Ruth and I, and sunny-hearted May. She was a fair and most exquisite child; Her pensive face was delicate and mild Like her dead mother's; but through her dear eyes Her father smiled upon me, day by day. Afar in foreign countries did he roam, Now resting under Italy's blue skies, And now with Roy in Scotland. And he sent Brief, friendly letters, telling where he went And what he saw, addressed to May or me. And I would write and tell him how she grew-- And how she talked about him o'er the sea In her sweet baby fashion; how she knew His picture in the album; how each day She knelt and prayed the blessed Lord would bring Her own papa back to his little May. It was a warm bright morning in the Spring. I sat in that same sunny portico, Where I was sitting seven years ago When Vivian came. My eyes were full of tears, As I looked back across the checkered years. How many were the changes they had brought! Pain, death, and sorrow! but the lesson taught To my young heart had been of untold worth. I had learned how to "suffer and grow strong"-- That knowledge which best serves us here on earth, And brings reward in Heaven. Oh! how long The years had been since that June morning when I heard his step upon the walk, and yet I seemed to hear its echo still. Just then Down that same path I turned my eyes, tear-wet, And lo! the wanderer from a foreign land Stood there before me!--holding out his hand And smiling with those wond'rous eyes of old. To hide my tears, I ran and brought his child; But she was shy, and clung to me, when told This was papa, for whom her prayers were said. She dropped her eyes and shook her little head, And would not by his coaxing be beguiled, Or go to him. Aunt Ruth was not at home, And we two sat and talked, as strangers might, Of distant countries which we both had seen. But once I thought I saw his large eyes light With sudden passion, when there came a pause In our chit-chat, and then he spoke: "Maurine, I saw a number of your friends in Rome. We talked of you. They seemed surprised, because You were not 'mong the seekers for a name. They thought your whole ambition was for fame." "It might have been," I answered, "when my heart Had nothing else to fill it. Now my art Is but a recreation. I have _this_ To love and live for, which I had not then." And, leaning down, I pressed a tender kiss Upon my child's fair brow. "And yet," he said, The old light leaping to his eyes again, "And yet, Maurine, they say you might have wed A noble Baron! one of many men Who laid their hearts and fortunes at your feet. Why won the bravest of them no return?" I bowed my head, nor dared his gaze to meet. On cheek and brow I felt the red blood burn, And strong emotion strangled speech. He rose And came and knelt beside me. "Sweet, my sweet!" He murmured softly, "God in Heaven knows How well I loved you seven years ago. He only knows my anguish, and my grief, When your own acts forced on me the belief That I had been your plaything and your toy. Yet from his lips I since have learned that Roy Held no place nearer than a friend and brother. And then a faint suspicion, undefined, Of what had been--was--might be, stirred my mind, And that great love, I thought died at a blow, Rose up within me, strong with hope and life. "Before all heaven and the angel mother Of this sweet child that slumbers on your heart, Maurine, Maurine, I claim you for my wife-- Mine own, forever, until death shall part!" Through happy mists of upward welling tears, I leaned, and looked into his beauteous eyes. "Dear heart," I said, "if she who dwells above Looks down upon us, from yon azure skies, She can but bless us, knowing all these years My soul had yearned in silence for the love That crowned her life, and left mine own so bleak. I turned you from me for her fair, frail sake. For her sweet child's, and for my own, I take You back to be all mine, for evermore." Just then the child upon my breast awoke From her light sleep, and laid her downy cheek Against her father as he knelt by me. And this unconscious action seemed to be A silent blessing, which the mother spoke Gazing upon us from the mystic shore. TWO SUNSETS. In the fair morning of his life, When his pure heart lay in his breast, Panting, with all that wild unrest To plunge into the great world's strife That fills young hearts with mad desire, He saw a sunset. Red and gold The burning billows surged and rolled, And upward tossed their caps of fire. He looked. And as he looked, the sight Sent from his soul through breast and brain Such intense joy, it hurt like pain. His heart seemed bursting with delight. So near the Unknown seemed, so close He might have grasped it with his hand. He felt his inmost soul expand, As sunlight will expand a rose. One day he heard a singing strain-- A human voice, in bird-like trills. He paused, and little rapture-rills Went trickling downward through each vein. And in his heart the whole day long, As in a temple veiled and dim, He kept and bore about with him The beauty of that singer's song. And then? But why relate what then? His smouldering heart flamed into fire-- He had his one supreme desire. And plunged into the world of men. For years queen Folly held her sway. With pleasures of the grosser kind She fed his flesh and drugged his mind, Till, shamed, he sated turned away. He sought his boyhood's home. That hour Triumphant should have been, in sooth, Since he went forth an unknown youth, And came back crowned with wealth and power. The clouds made day a gorgeous bed; He saw the splendor of the sky With unmoved heart and stolid eye; He only knew the West was red. Then suddenly a fresh young voice Rose, bird-like, from some hidden place, He did not even turn his face; It struck him simply as a noise. He trod the old paths up and down. Their rich-hued leaves by Fall winds whirled-- How dull they were--how dull the world-- Dull even in the pulsing town. O! worst of punishments, that brings A blunting of all finer sense, A loss of feelings keen, intense, And dulls us to the higher things. O! penalty most dire, most sure, Swift following after gross delights, That we no more see beauteous sights, Or hear as hear the good and pure. O! shape more hideous and more dread Than Vengeance takes in creed-taught minds, This certain doom that blunts and blinds, And strikes the holiest feelings dead. UNREST. In the youth of the year, when the birds were building, When the green was showing on tree and hedge, And the tenderest light of all lights was gilding The world from zenith to outermost edge, My soul grew sad and longingly lonely! I sighed for the season of sun and rose, And I said, "In the Summer and that time only Lies sweet contentment and blest repose." With bee and bird for her maids of honor Came Princess Summer in robes of green. And the King of day smiled down upon her And wooed her, and won her, and made her queen. Fruit of their union and true love's pledges, Beautiful roses bloomed day by day, And rambled in gardens and hid in hedges Like royal children in sportive play. My restless soul for a little season Reveled in rapture of glow and bloom, And then, like a subject who harbors treason, Grew full of rebellion and gray with gloom. And I said, "I am sick of the Summer's blisses, Of warmth and beauty, and nothing more. The full fruition my sad soul misses That beauteous Fall time holds in store!" But now when the colors are almost blinding, Burning and blending on bush and tree, And the rarest fruits are mine for the finding, And the year is ripe as a year can be, My soul complains in the same old fashion; Crying aloud in my troubled breast Is the same old longing, the same old passion. O where is the treasure which men call rest? "ARTIST'S LIFE." Of all the waltzes the great Strauss wrote, Mad with melody, rhythm--rife From the very first to the final note, Give me his "Artist's Life!" It stirs my blood to my finger ends, Thrills me and fills me with vague unrest, And all that is sweetest and saddest blends Together within my breast. It brings back that night in the dim arcade, In love's sweet morning and life's best prime. When the great brass orchestra played and played. And set our thoughts to rhyme. It brings back that Winter of mad delights, Of leaping pulses and tripping feet, And those languid moon-washed Summer nights When we heard the band in the street. It brings back rapture and glee and glow, It brings back passion and pain and strife, And so of all the waltzes I know, Give me the "Artist's Life." For it is so full of the dear old time-- So full of the dear old friends I knew. And under its rhythm, and lilt, and rhyme, I am always finding--_you_. NOTHING BUT STONES. I think I never passed so sad an hour, Dear friend, as that one at the church to-night. The edifice from basement to the tower Was one resplendent blaze of colored light. Up through broad aisles the stylish crowd was thronging, Each richly robed like some king's bidden guest. "Here will I bring my sorrow and my longing," I said, "and here find rest." I heard the heavenly organ's voice of thunder, It seemed to give me infinite relief. I wept. Strange eyes looked on in well-bred wonder. I dried my tears: their gaze profaned my grief. Wrapt in the costly furs, and silks and laces Beat alien hearts, that had no part with me. I could not read, in all those proud cold faces, One thought of sympathy. I watched them bowing and devoutly kneeling, Heard their responses like sweet waters roll. But only the glorious organ's sacred pealing Seemed gushing from a full and fervent soul. I listened to the man of holy calling, He spoke of creeds, and hailed his own as best; Of man's corruption and of Adam's falling, But naught that gave me rest. Nothing that helped me bear the daily grinding Of soul with body, heart with heated brain. Nothing to show the purpose of this blinding And sometimes overwhelming sense of pain. And then, dear friend, I thought of thee, so lowly, So unassuming, and so gently kind, And lo! a peace, a calm serene and holy, Settled upon my mind. Ah, friend, my friend! one true heart, fond and tender, That understands our troubles and our needs, Brings us more near to God than all the splendor And pomp of seeming worship and vain creeds. One glance of thy dear eyes so full of feeling, Doth bring me closer to the Infinite, Than all that throng of worldly people kneeling In blaze of gorgeous light. THE COQUETTE. Alone she sat with her accusing heart, That, like a restless comrade frightened sleep, And every thought that found her, left a dart That hurt her so, she could not even weep. Her heart that once had been a cup well filled With love's red wine, save for some drops of gall She knew was empty; though it had not spilled Its sweets for one, but wasted them on all. She stood upon the grave of her dead truth, And saw her soul's bright armor red with rust, And knew that all the riches of her youth Were Dead Sea apples, crumbling into dust. Love that had turned to bitter, biting scorn, Hearthstones despoiled, and homes made desolate, Made her cry out that she was ever born, To loathe her beauty and to curse her fate. INEVITABLE. To-day I was so weary and I lay In that delicious state of semi-waking, When baby, sitting with his nurse at play, Cried loud for "mamma," all his toys forsaking. I was so weary and I needed rest, And signed to nurse to bear him from the room. Then, sudden, rose and caught him to my breast, And kissed the grieving mouth and cheeks of bloom. For swift as lightning came the thought to me, With pulsing heart-throes and a mist of tears, Of days inevitable, that are to be, If my fair darling grows to manhood's years; Days when he will not call for "mamma," when The world with many a pleasure and bright joy, Shall tempt him forth into the haunts of men And I shall lose the first place with my boy; When other homes and loves shall give delight, When younger smiles and voices will seem best. And so I held him to my heart to-night, Forgetting all my need of peace and rest. THE OCEAN OF SONG In a land beyond sight or conceiving, In a land where no blight is, no wrong, No darkness, no graves, and no grieving, There lies the great ocean of song. And its waves, oh, its waves unbeholden By any save gods, and their kind, Are not blue, are not green, but are golden, Like moonlight and sunlight combined. It was whispered to me that their waters Were made from the gathered-up tears, That were wept by the sons and the daughters Of long-vanished eras and spheres. Like white sands of heaven the spray is That falls all the happy day long, And whoever it touches straightway is Made glad with the spirit of song. Up, up to the clouds where their hoary Crowned heads melt away in the skies, The beautiful mountains of glory Each side of the song ocean rise. Here day is one splendor of sky light Of God's light with beauty replete. Here night is not night, but is twilight, Pervading, enfolding and sweet. Bright birds from all climes and all regions That sing the whole glad summer long, Are dumb, till they flock here in legions And lave in the ocean of song. It is here that the four winds of heaven, The winds that do sing and rejoice, It is here they first came and were given The secret of sound and a voice. Far down along beautiful beeches, By night and by glorious day, The throng of the gifted ones reaches, Their foreheads made white with the spray. And a few of the sons and the daughters Of this kingdom, cloud-hidden from sight, Go down in the wonderful waters, And bathe in those billows of light And their souls ever more are like fountains, And liquid and lucent and strong, High over the tops of the mountains Gush up the sweet billows of song. No drouth-time of waters can dry them. Whoever has bathed in that sea, All dangers, all deaths, they defy them, And are gladder than gods are, with glee. "IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN." We will be what we could be. Do not say, "It might have been, had not or that, or this." No fate can keep us from the chosen way; He only might, who _is_. We will do what we could do. Do not dream Chance leaves a hero, all uncrowned to grieve. I hold, all men are greatly what they seem; He does, who could achieve. We will climb where we could climb. Tell me not Of adverse storms that kept thee from the height. What eagle ever missed the peak he sought? He always climbs who might. I do not like the phrase, "It might have been!" It lacks all force, and life's best truths perverts: For I believe we have, and reach, and win, Whatever our deserts. IF. Dear love, if you and I could sail away, With snowy pennons to the winds unfurled, Across the waters of some unknown bay, And find some island far from all the world; If we could dwell there, ever more alone, While unrecorded years slip by apace, Forgetting and forgotten and unknown By aught save native song-birds of the place; If Winter never visited that land, And Summer's lap spilled o'er with fruits and flowers, And tropic trees cast shade on every hand, And twinèd boughs formed sleep-inviting bowers; If from the fashions of the world set free, And hid away from all its jealous strife, I lived alone for you, and you for me-- Ah! then, dear love, how sweet were wedded life. But since we dwell here in the crowded way, Where hurrying throngs rush by to seek for gold, And all is common-place and work-a-day, As soon as love's young honeymoon grows old; Since fashion rules and nature yields to art, And life is hurt by daily jar and fret, 'Tis best to shut such dreams down in the heart And go our ways alone, love, and forget. GETHSEMANE. In golden youth when seems the earth A Summer-land of singing mirth, When souls are glad and hearts are light, And not a shadow lurks in sight, We do not know it, but there lies Somewhere veiled under evening skies A garden which we all must see-- The garden of Gethsemane. With joyous steps we go our ways, Love lends a halo to our days; Light sorrows sail like clouds afar, We laugh, and say how strong we are. We hurry on; and hurrying, go Close to the border-land of woe, That waits for you, and waits for me-- Forever waits Gethsemane. Down shadowy lanes, across strange streams Bridged over by our broken dreams; Behind the misty caps of years, Beyond the great salt fount of tears, The garden lies. Strive as you may, You cannot miss it in your way. All paths that have been, or shall be, Pass somewhere through Gethsemane. All those who journey, soon or late, Must pass within the garden's gate; Must kneel alone in darkness there, And battle with some fierce despair. God pity those who can not say, "Not mine but thine," who only pray, "Let this cup pass," and cannot see The _purpose_ in Gethsemane. DUST-SEALED. I know not wherefore, but mine eyes See bloom, where other eyes see blight. They find a rainbow, a sunrise, Where others but discern deep night. Men call me an enthusiast, And say I look through gilded haze: Because where'er my gaze is cast, I see some thing that calls for praise. I say, "Behold those lovely eyes-- That tinted cheek of flower-like grace." They answer in amused surprise: "We thought it such a common face." I say, "Was ever scene more fair? I seem to walk in Eden's bowers." They answer with a pitying air, "The weeds are choking out the flowers." I know not wherefore, but God lent A deeper vision to my sight. On whatsoe'er my gaze is bent I catch the beauty Infinite; That underlying, hidden half That all things hold of Deity. So let the dull crowd sneer and laugh-- Their eyes are blind, they cannot see. "ADVICE." I must do as you do? Your way I own Is a very good way. And still, There are sometimes two straight roads to a town, One over, one under the hill. You are treading the safe and the well-worn way, That the prudent choose each time; And you think me reckless and rash to-day, Because I prefer to climb. Your path is the right one, and so is mine. We are not like peas in a pod, Compelled to lie in a certain line, Or else be scattered abroad. 'Twere a dull old world, methinks, my friend, If we all went just one way; Yet our paths will meet no doubt at the end, Though they lead apart to-day. You like the shade, and I like the sun; You like an even pace, I like to mix with the crowd and run, And then rest after the race. I like danger, and storm and strife, You like a peaceful time; I like the passion and surge of life, You like its gentle rhyme. You like buttercups, dewy sweet, And crocuses, framed in snow; I like roses, born of the heat, And the red carnation's glow. I must live my life, not yours, my friend, For so it was written down; We must follow our given paths to the end, But I trust we shall meet--in town. OVER THE BANISTERS. Over the banisters bends a face, Daringly sweet and beguiling. Somebody stands in careless grace, And watches the picture, smiling. The light burns dim in the hall below, Nobody sees her standing, Saying good-night again, soft and slow, Half way up to the landing. Nobody only the eyes of brown, Tender and full of meaning, That smile on the fairest face in town, Over the banisters leaning. Tired and sleepy, with drooping head, I wonder why she lingers; Now, when the good-nights all are said, Why somebody holds her fingers. He holds her fingers and draws her down, Suddenly growing bolder, Till the loose hair drops its masses brown Like a mantle over his shoulder. Over the banisters soft hands, fair, Brush his cheeks like a feather, And bright brown tresses and dusky hair, Meet and mingle together. There's a question asked, there's a swift caress, She has flown like a bird from the hallway, But over the banisters drops a "yes," That shall brighten the world for him alway. MOMUS, GOD OF LAUGHTER. Though with gods the world is cumbered, Gods unnamed, and gods unnumbered, Never god was known to be Who had not his devotee. So I dedicate to mine, Here in verse, my temple-shrine. 'Tis not Ares,--mighty Mars, Who can give success in wars. 'Tis not Morpheus, who doth keep Guard above us while we sleep, 'Tis not Venus, she whose duty 'Tis to give us love and beauty; Hail to these, and others, after Momus, gleesome god of laughter. Quirinus would guard my health! Plutus would insure me wealth Mercury looks after trade, Hera smiles on youth and maid. All are kind, I own their worth, After Momus, god of mirth. Though Apollo, out of spite, Hides away his face of light. Though Minerva looks askance, Deigning me no smiling glance, Kings and queens may envy me While I claim the god of glee. Wisdom wearies, Love has wings-- Wealth makes burdens, Pleasure stings, Glory proves a thorny crown-- So all gifts the gods throw down Bring their pains and troubles after; All save Momus, god of laughter. He alone gives constant joy, Hail to Momus, happy boy. I DREAM. Oh, I have dreams. I sometimes dream of Life In the full meaning of that splendid word. Its subtle music which few men have heard, Though all may hear it, sounding through earth's strife. Its mountain heights by mystic breezes kissed, Lifting their lovely peaks above the dust; Its treasures which no touch of time can rust, Its emerald seas, its dawns of amethyst, Its certain purpose, its serene repose, Its usefulness, that finds no hour for woes, This is my dream of Life. Yes, I have dreams. I ofttimes dream of Love As radiant and brilliant as a star. As changeless, too, as that fixed light afar Which glorifies vast worlds of space above. Strong as the tempest when it holds its breath, Before it bursts in fury; and as deep As the unfathomed seas, where lost worlds sleep And sad as birth, and beautiful as death. As fervent as the fondest soul could crave, Yet holy as the moonlight on a grave. This is my dream of Love. Yes, yes, I dream. One oft-recurring dream, Is beautiful and comforting and blest. Complete with certain promises of rest. Divine content, and ecstasy supreme. When that strange essence, author of all faith, That subtle something, which cries for the light, Like a lost child who wanders in the night, Shall solve the mighty mystery of Death, Shall find eternal progress, or sublime And satisfying slumber for all time. This is my dream of Death. THE PAST. I fling my past behind me, like a robe Worn threadbare in the seams, and out of date. I have outgrown it. Wherefore should I weep And dwell upon its beauty, and its dyes Of Oriental splendor, or complain That I must needs discard it? I can weave Upon the shuttles of the future years A fabric far more durable. Subdued, It may be, in the blending of its hues, Where somber shades commingle, yet the gleam Of golden warp shall shoot it through and through, While over all a fadeless luster lies, And starred with gems made out of crystalled tears, My new robe shall be richer than the old. THE SONNET. Alone it stands in Poesy's fair land, A temple by the muses set apart; A perfect structure of consummate art, By artists builded and by genius planned. Beyond the reach of the apprentice hand, Beyond the ken of the untutored heart, Like a fine carving in a common mart, Only the favored few will understand. A _chef-d'oeuvre_ toiled over with great care, Yet which the unseeing careless crowd goes by, A plainly set, but well-cut solitaire, An ancient bit of pottery, too rare To please or hold aught save the special eye, These only with the sonnet can compare. SECRETS. Think not some knowledge rests with thee alone; Why, even God's stupendous secret, Death, We one by one, with our expiring breath, Do pale with wonder seize and make our own; The bosomed treasures of the earth are shown, Despite her careful hiding; and the air Yields its mysterious marvels in despair To swell the mighty store-house of things known. In vain the sea expostulates and raves; It cannot cover from the keen world's sight The curious wonders of its coral caves. And so, despite thy caution or thy tears, The prying fingers of detective years Shall drag _thy_ secret out into the light. A DREAM. That was a curious dream; I thought the three Great planets that are drawing near the sun With such unerring certainty, begun To talk together in a mighty glee. They spoke of vast convulsions which would be Throughout the solar system--the rare fun Of watching haughty stars drop, one by one, And vanish in a seething vapor sea. I thought I heard them comment on the earth-- That small dark object--doomed beyond a doubt. They wondered if live creatures moved about Its tiny surface, deeming it of worth. And then they laughed--'twas such a ringing shout That I awoke and joined too in their mirth. USELESSNESS. Let mine not be that saddest fate of all To live beyond my greater self; to see My faculties decaying, as the tree Stands stark and helpless while its green leaves fall. Let me hear rather the imperious call, Which all men dread, in my glad morning time, And follow death ere I have reached my prime, Or drunk the strengthening cordial of life's gall. The lightning's stroke or the fierce tempest blast Which fells the green tree to the earth to-day Is kinder than the calm that lets it last, Unhappy witness of its own decay. May no man ever look on me and say, "She lives, but all her usefulness is past." WILL. There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, Can circumvent or hinder or control The firm resolve of a determined soul. Gifts count for nothing; will alone is great; All things give way before it, soon or late. What obstacle can stay the mighty force Of the sea-seeking river in its course, Or cause the ascending orb of day to wait? Each well-born soul must win what it deserves. Let the fool prate of luck. The fortunate Is he whose earnest purpose never swerves, Whose slightest action or inaction serves The one great aim. Why, even Death stands still, And waits an hour sometimes for such a will. WINTER RAIN. Falling upon the frozen world last night, I heard the slow beat of the Winter rain-- Poor foolish drops, down-dripping all in vain; The ice-bound Earth but mocked their puny might, Far better had the fixedness of white And uncomplaining snows--which make no sign, But coldly smile, when pitying moonbeams shine-- Concealed its sorrow from all human sight. Long, long ago, in blurred and burdened years, I learned the uselessness of uttered woe. Though sinewy Fate deals her most skillful blow, I do not waste the gall now of my tears, But feed my pride upon its bitter, while I look straight in the world's bold eyes, and smile. APPLAUSE. I hold it one of the sad certain laws Which makes our failures sometimes seem more kind Than that success which brings sure loss behind-- True greatness dies, when sounds the world's applause Fame blights the object it would bless, because Weighed down with men's expectancy, the mind Can no more soar to those far heights, and find That freedom which its inspiration was. When once we listen to its noisy cheers Or hear the populace' approval, then We catch no more the music of the spheres, Or walk with gods, and angels, but with men. Till, impotent from our self-conscious fears, The plaudits of the world turn into sneers. LIFE. Life, like a romping schoolboy, full of glee, Doth bear us on his shoulders for a time. There is no path too steep for him to climb, With strong, lithe limbs, as agile and as free, As some young roe, he speeds by vale and sea, By flowery mead, by mountain peak sublime, And all the world seems motion set to rhyme, Till, tired out, he cries, "Now carry me!" In vain we murmur, "Come," Life says, "fair play!" And seizes on us. God! he goads us so! He does not let us sit down all the day. At each new step we feel the burden grow, Till our bent backs seem breaking as we go, Watching for Death to meet us on the way. BURDENED. "Genius, a man's weapon, a woman's burden."--_Lamartine._ Dear God! there is no sadder fate in life, Than to be burdened so that you can not Sit down contented with the common lot Of happy mother and devoted wife. To feel your brain wild and your bosom rife With all the sea's commotion; to be fraught With fires and frenzies which you have not sought, And weighed down with the wide world's weary strife. To feel a fever alway in your breast, To lean and hear half in affright, half shame. A loud-voiced public boldly mouth your name, To reap your hard-sown harvest in unrest, And know, however great your meed of fame, You are but a weak woman at the best. THE STORY. They met each other in the glade-- She lifted up her eyes; Alack the day! Alack the maid! She blushed in swift surprise. Alas! alas! the woe that comes from lifting up the eyes. The pail was full, the path was steep-- He reached to her his hand; She felt her warm young pulses leap, But did not understand. Alas! alas! the woe that comes from clasping hand with hand. She sat beside him in the wood-- He wooed with words and sighs; Ah! love in spring seems sweet and good, And maidens are not wise. Alas! alas! the woe that comes from listing lovers' sighs. The summer sun shone fairly down, The wind blew from the south; As blue eyes gazed in eyes of brown, His kiss fell on her mouth. Alas! alas! the woe that comes from kisses on the mouth. And now the autumn time is near, The lover roves away, With breaking heart and falling tear, She sits the livelong day. Alas! alas! for breaking hearts when lovers rove away. LET THEM GO. Let the dream go. Are there not other dreams In vastness of clouds hid from thy sight That yet shall gild with beautiful gold gleams, And shoot the shadows through and through with light? What matters one lost vision of the night? Let the dream go! Let the hope set. Are there not other hopes That yet shall rise like new stars in thy sky? Not long a soul in sullen darkness gropes Before some light is lent it from on high; What folly to think happiness gone by! Let the hope set! Let the joy fade. Are there not other joys, Like frost-bound bulbs, that yet shall start and bloom? Severe must be the winter that destroys The hardy roots locked in their silent tomb. What cares the earth for her brief time of gloom? Let the joy fade! Let the love die. Are there not other loves As beautiful and full of sweet unrest, Flying through space like snowy-pinioned doves? They yet shall come and nestle in thy breast, And thou shalt say of each, "Lo, this is best!" Let the love die! THE ENGINE. Into the gloom of the deep, dark night, With panting breath and a startled scream; Swift as a bird in sudden flight Darts this creature of steel and steam. Awful dangers are lurking nigh, Rocks and chasms are near the track, But straight by the light of its great white eye It speeds through the shadows, dense and black. Terrible thoughts and fierce desires Trouble its mad heart many an hour, Where burn and smoulder the hidden fires, Coupled ever with might and power. It hates, as a wild horse hates the rein, The narrow track by vale and hill; And shrieks with a cry of startled pain, And longs to follow its own wild will. Oh, what am I but an engine, shod With muscle and flesh, by the hand of God, Speeding on through the dense, dark night, Guided alone by the soul's white light. Often and often my mad heart tires, And hates its way with a bitter hate, And longs to follow its own desires, And leave the end in the hand of fate. O mighty engine of steel and steam; O human engine of blood and bone, Follow the white light's certain beam-- There lies safety and there alone. The narrow track of fearless truth, Lit by the soul's great eye of light, O passionate heart of restless youth, Alone will carry you through the night. NOTHING NEW. From the dawn of spring till the year grows hoary, Nothing is new that is done or said, The leaves are telling the same old story-- "Budding, bursting, dying, dead." And ever and always the wild bird's chorus Is "coming, building, flying, fled." Never the round earth roams or ranges Out of her circuit, so old, so old, And the smile o' the sun knows but these changes-- Beaming, burning, tender, cold, As Spring time softens or Winter estranges The mighty heart of this orb of gold. From our great sire's birth to the last morn's breaking There were tempest, sunshine, fruit and frost, And the sea was calm or the sea was shaking His mighty main like a lion crossed, And ever this cry the heart was making-- Longing, loving, losing, lost. Forever the wild wind wanders, crying, Southerly, easterly, north and west, And one worn song the fields are sighing, "Sowing, growing, harvest, rest," And the tired thought of the world, replying Like an echo to what is last and best, Murmurs--"Rest." DREAMS. Thank God for dreams! I, desolate and lone, In the dark curtained night, did seem to be The centre where all golden sun-rays shone, And, sitting there, held converse sweet with thee. No shadow lurked between us; all was bright And beautiful as in the hours gone by, I smiled, and was rewarded by the light Of olden days soft beaming from thine eye. Thank God, thank God for dreams! I thought the birds all listened; for thy voice Pulsed through the air, like beat of silver wings. It made each chamber of my soul rejoice And thrilled along my heart's tear-rusted strings. As some devout and ever-prayerful nun Tells her bright beads, and counts them o'er and o'er, Thy golden words I gathered, one by one, And slipped them into memory's precious store. Thank God, thank God for dreams! My lips met thine in one ecstatic kiss. Hand pressed in hand, and heart to heart we sat. Why even now I am surcharged with bliss-- With joy supreme, if I but think of that. No fear of separation or of change Crept in to mar our sweet serene content. In that blest vision, nothing could estrange Our wedded souls, in perfect union blent. Thank God, thank God for dreams! Thank God for dreams! when nothing else is left. When the sick soul, all tortured with its pain, Knowing itself forever more bereft, Finds waiting hopeless and all watching vain, When empty arms grow rigid with their ache, When eyes are blinded with sad tides of tears, When stricken hearts do suffer, yet not break, For loss of those who come not with the years-- Thank God, thank God for dreams! HELENA. Last night I saw Helena. She whose praise Of late all men have sounded. She for whom Young Angus rashly sought a silent tomb Rather than live without her all his days. Wise men go mad who look upon her long, She is so ripe with dangers. Yet meanwhile I find no fascination in her smile, Although I make her theme of this poor song. "Her golden tresses?" yes, they may be fair, And yet to me each shining silken tress Seems robbed of beauty and all lusterless-- Too many hands have stroked Helena's hair. (I know a little maiden so demure She will not let her one true lover's hands In playful fondness touch her soft brown bands, So dainty-minded is she, and so pure.) "Her great dark eyes that flash like gems at night? Large, long-lashed eyes and lustrous?" that may be, And yet they are not beautiful to me. Too many hearts have sunned in their delight. (I mind me of two tender blue eyes, hid So underneath white curtains, and so veiled That I have sometimes plead for hours, and failed To see more than the shyly lifted lid.) "Her perfect mouth so like a carvèd kiss?" "Her honeyed mouth, where hearts do, fly-like, drown?" I would not taste its sweetness for a crown; Too many lips have drank its nectared bliss. (I know a mouth whose virgin dew, undried, Lies like a young grape's bloom, untouched and sweet, And though I plead in passion at her feet, She would not let me brush it if I died.) In vain, Helena! though wise men may vie For thy rare smile or die from loss of it, Armored by my sweet lady's trust, I sit, And know thou art not worth her faintest sigh. NOTHING REMAINS. Nothing remains of unrecorded ages That lie in the silent cemetery of time; Their wisdom may have shamed our wisest sages, Their glory may have been indeed sublime. How weak do seem our strivings after power, How poor the grandest efforts of our brains, If out of all we are, in one short hour Nothing remains. Nothing remains but the Eternal Spaces, Time and decay uproot the forest trees. Even the mighty mountains leave their places, And sink their haughty heads beneath strange seas; The great earth writhes in some convulsive spasm And turns the proudest cities into plains. The level sea becomes a yawning chasm-- Nothing remains. Nothing remains but the Eternal Forces, The sad seas cease complaining and grow dry; Rivers are drained and altered in their courses, Great stars pass out and vanish from the sky. Ideas die and old religions perish, Our rarest pleasures and our keenest pains Are swept away with all we hate or cherish-- Nothing remains. Nothing remains but the Eternal Nameless And all-creative spirit of the Law, Uncomprehended, comprehensive, blameless, Invincible, resistless, with no flaw; So full of love it must create forever, Destroying that it may create again Persistent and perfecting in endeavor, It yet must bring forth angels, after men-- This, this remains. LEAN DOWN. Lean down and lift me higher, Josephine! From the Eternal Hills hast thou not seen How I do strive for heights? but lacking wings, I cannot grasp at once those better things To which I in my inmost soul aspire. Lean down and lift me higher. I grope along--not desolate or sad, For youth and hope and health all keep me glad; But too bright sunlight, sometimes, makes us blind, And I do grope for heights I cannot find. Oh, thou must know my one supreme desire-- Lean down and lift me higher. Not long ago we trod the self-same way. Thou knowest how, from day to fleeting day Our souls were vexed with trifles, and our feet, Were lured aside to by-paths which seemed sweet, But only served to hinder and to tire; Lean down and lift me higher. Thou hast gone onward to the heights serene, And left me here, my loved one, Josephine; I am content to stay until the end, For life is full of promise; but, my friend, Canst thou not help me in my best desire And lean, and lift me higher? Frail as thou wert, thou hast grown strong and wise, And quick to understand and sympathize With all a full soul's needs. It must be so, Thy year with God hath made thee great I know. Thou must see how I struggle and aspire-- Oh, warm me with a breath of heavenly fire, And lean, and lift me higher. COMRADES. I and my Soul are alone to-day, All in the shining weather; We were sick of the world, and we put it away, So we could rejoice together. Our host, the Sun, in the blue, blue sky Is mixing a rare, sweet wine, In the burnished gold of his cup on high, For me, and this Soul of mine. We find it a safe and royal drink, And a cure for every pain; It helps us to love, and helps us to think, And strengthens body and brain. And sitting here, with my Soul alone, Where the yellow sun-rays fall, Of all the friends I have ever known I find it the _best_ of all. We rarely meet when the World is near, For the World hath a pleasing art And brings me so much that is bright and dear That my Soul it keepeth apart. But when I grow weary of mirth and glee, Of glitter, and glow, and splendor, Like a tried old friend it comes to me, With a smile that is sad and tender. And we walk together as two friends may, And laugh, and drink God's wine. Oh, a royal comrade any day I find this Soul of mine. WHAT GAIN? Now, while thy rounded cheek is fresh and fair, While beauty lingers, laughing, in thine eyes, Ere thy young heart shall meet the stranger, "Care," Or thy blithe soul become the home of sighs, Were it not kindness should I give thee rest By plunging this sharp dagger in thy breast? Dying so young, with all thy wealth of youth, What part of life wouldst thou not claim, in sooth? Only the woe, Sweetheart, that sad souls know. Now, in this sacred hour of supreme trust, Of pure delight and palpitating joy, Ere change can come, as come it surely must, With jarring doubts and discords, to destroy Our far too perfect peace, I pray thee, Sweet, Were it not best for both of us, and meet, If I should bring swift death to seal our bliss? Dying so full of joy, what could we miss? Nothing but tears, Sweetheart, and weary years. How slight the action! Just one well-aimed blow Here where I feel thy warm heart's pulsing beat, And then another through my own, and so Our perfect union would be made complete: So past all parting, I should claim thee mine. Dead with our youth, and faith, and love divine, Should we not keep the best of life that way? What shall we gain by living day on day? What shall we gain, Sweetheart, but bitter pain? LIFE. I feel the great immensity of life. All little aims slip from me, and I reach My yearning soul toward the Infinite. As when a mighty forest, whose green leaves Have shut it in, and made it seem a bower For lovers' secrets, or for children's sports, Casts all its clustering foliage to the winds, And lets the eye behold it, limitless, And full of winding mysteries of ways: So now with life that reaches out before, And borders on the unexplained Beyond. I see the stars above me, world on world: I hear the awful language of all Space; I feel the distant surging of great seas, That hide the secrets of the Universe In their eternal bosoms; and I know That I am but an atom of the Whole. TO THE WEST. [In an interview with Lawrence Barrett, he said: "The literature of the New World must look to the West for its poetry."] Not to the crowded East, Where, in a well-worn groove, Like the harnessed wheel of a great machine, The trammeled mind must move-- Where Thought must follow the fashion of Thought, Or be counted vulgar and set at naught. Not to the languid South, Where the mariners of the brain Are lured by the Sirens of the Sense, And wrecked upon its main-- Where Thought is rocked, on the sweet wind's breath, To a torpid sleep that ends in death. But to the mighty West, That chosen realm of God, Where Nature reaches her hands to men, And Freedom walks abroad-- Where mind is King, and fashion is naught: There shall the New World look for thought. To the West, the beautiful West, She shall look, and not in vain-- For out of its broad and boundless store Come muscle, and nerve, and brain. Let the bards of the East and the South be dumb-- For out of the West shall the Poets come. They shall come with souls as great As the cradle where they were rocked; They shall come with brows that are touched with fire, Like the Gods with whom they have walked; They shall come from the West in royal state, The Singers and Thinkers for whom we wait. THE LAND OF CONTENT. I set out for the Land of Content, By the gay crowded pleasure-highway, With laughter, and jesting, I went With the mirth-loving throng for a day; Then I knew I had wandered astray, For I met returned pilgrims, belated, Who said, "We are weary and sated, But we found not the Land of Content." I turned to the steep path of fame, I said, "It is over yon height-- This land with the beautiful name-- Ambition will lend me its light." But I paused in my journey ere night, For the way grew so lonely and troubled; I said--my anxiety doubled-- "This is not the road to Content." Then I joined the great rabble and throng That frequents the moneyed world's mart; But the greed, and the grasping and wrong, Left me only one wish--to depart. And sickened, and saddened at heart, I hurried away from the gateway, For my soul and my spirit said straightway, "This is not the road to Content." Then weary in body and brain, An overgrown path I detected, And I said "I will hide with my pain In this by-way, unused and neglected." Lo! it led to the realm God selected To crown with his best gifts of beauty, And through the dark pathway of duty I came to the land of Content. A SONG OF LIFE. In the rapture of life and of living, I lift up my heart and rejoice, And I thank the great Giver for giving The soul of my gladness a voice. In the glow of the glorious weather, In the sweet-scented sensuous air, My burdens seem light as a feather-- They are nothing to bear. In the strength and the glory of power, In the pride and the pleasure of wealth, (For who dares dispute me my dower Of talents and youth-time and health?) I can laugh at the world and its sages-- I am greater than seers who are sad, For he is most wise in all ages Who knows how to be glad. I lift up my eyes to Apollo, The god of the beautiful days, And my spirit soars off like a swallow And is lost in the light of its rays. Are you troubled and sad? I beseech you Come out of the shadows of strife-- Come out in the sun while I teach you The secret of life. Come out of the world--come above it-- Up over its crosses and graves, Though the green earth is fair and I love it, We must love it as masters, not slaves. Come up where the dust never rises-- But only the perfume of flowers-- And your life shall be glad with surprises Of beautiful hours. Come up where the rare golden wine is Apollo distills in my sight, And your life shall be happy as mine is, And as full of delight. WARNING. High in the heavens I saw the moon this morning, Albeit the sun shone bright; Unto my soul it spoke, in voice of warning, "Remember Night!" THE CHRISTIAN'S NEW YEAR PRAYER. Thou Christ of mine, thy gracious ear low bending Through these glad New Year days, To catch the countless prayers to Heaven ascending-- For e'en hard hearts do raise Some secret wish for fame, or gold, or power, Or freedom from all care-- Dear, patient Christ, who listeneth hour on hour, Hear now a Christian's prayer. Let this young year that, silent, walks beside me, Be as a means of grace To lead me up, no matter what betide me, Nearer the Master's face. If it need be that ere I reach the fountain Where Living waters play, My feet should bleed from sharp stones on the mountain, Then cast them in my way. If my vain soul needs blows and bitter losses To shape it for thy crown, Then bruise it, burn it, burden it with crosses, With sorrows bear it down. Do what thou wilt to mold me to thy pleasure, And if I should complain, Heap full of anguish yet another measure Until I smile at pain. Send dangers--deaths! but tell me how to dare them; Enfold me in thy care. Send trials, tears! but give me strength to bear them-- This is a Christian's prayer. IN THE NIGHT. Sometimes at night, when I sit and write, I hear the strangest things,-- As my brain grows hot with burning thought, That struggles for form and wings, I can hear the beat of my swift blood's feet, As it speeds with a rush and a whir From heart to brain and back again, Like a race-horse under the spur. With my soul's fine ear I listen and hear The tender Silence speak, As it leans on the breast of Night to rest, And presses his dusky cheek. And the darkness turns in its sleep, and yearns For something that is kin; And I hear the hiss of a scorching kiss, As it folds and fondles Sin. In its hurrying race through leagues of space, I can hear the Earth catch breath, As it heaves and moans, and shudders and groans, And longs for the rest of Death. And high and far, from a distant star, Whose name is unknown to me, I hear a voice that says, "Rejoice, For I keep ward o'er thee!" Oh, sweet and strange are the sounds that range Through the chambers of the night; And the watcher who waits by the dim, dark gates, May hear, if he lists aright. GOD'S MEASURE. God measures souls by their capacity For entertaining his best Angel, Love. Who loveth most is nearest kin to God, Who is all Love, or Nothing. He who sits And looks out on the palpitating world, And feels his heart swell in him large enough To hold all men within it, he is near His great Creator's standard, though he dwells Outside the pale of churches, and knows not A feast-day from a fast-day, or a line Of Scripture even. What God wants of us Is that outreaching bigness that ignores All littleness of aims, or loves, or creeds, And clasps all Earth and Heaven in its embrace. A MARCH SNOW. Let the old snow be covered with the new: The trampled snow, so soiled, and stained, and sodden. Let it be hidden wholly from our view By pure white flakes, all trackless and untrodden. When Winter dies, low at the sweet Spring's feet, Let him be mantled in a clean, white sheet. Let the old life be covered by the new: The old past life so full of sad mistakes, Let it be wholly hidden from the view By deeds as white and silent as snow-flakes. Ere this earth life melts in the eternal Spring Let the white mantle of repentance, fling Soft drapery about it, fold on fold, Even as the new snow covers up the old. AFTER THE BATTLES ARE OVER. [Read at Re-union of the G. A. T., Madison, Wis., July 4, 1872.] After the battles are over, And the war drums cease to beat, And no more is heard on the hillside The sound of hurrying feet, Full many a noble action, That was done in the days of strife, By the soldier is half forgotten, In the peaceful walks of life. Just as the tangled grasses, In Summer's warmth and light, Grow over the graves of the fallen And hide them away from sight, So many an act of valor, And many a deed sublime, Fade from the mind of the soldier, O'ergrown by the grass of time. Not so should they be rewarded, Those noble deeds of old; They should live forever and ever, When the heroes' hearts are cold. Then rally, ye brave old comrades, Old veterans, re-unite! Uproot Time's tangled grasses-- Live over the march, and the fight. Let Grant come up from the White House, And clasp each brother's hand, First chieftain of the army, Last chieftain of the land. Let him rest from a nation's burdens, And go, in thought, with his men, Through the fire and smoke of Shiloh, And save the day again. This silent hero of battles Knew no such word as defeat. It was left for the rebels' learning, Along with the word--retreat. He was not given to talking, But he found that guns would preach In a way that was more convincing Than fine and flowery speech. Three cheers for the grave commander Of the grand old Tennessee! Who won the first great battle-- Gained the first great victory. His motto was always "Conquer," "Success" was his countersign, And "though it took all Summer," He kept fighting upon "that line." Let Sherman, the stern old General, Come rallying with his men; Let them march once more through Georgia And down to the sea again. Oh! that grand old tramp to Savannah, Three hundred miles to the coast, It will live in the heart of the nation, Forever its pride and boast. As Sheridan went to the battle, When a score of miles away, He has come to the feast and banquet, By the iron horse, to-day. Its pace is not much swifter Than the pace of that famous steed Which bore him down to the contest And saved the day by his speed. Then go over the ground to-day, boys, Tread each remembered spot. It will be a gleesome journey, On the swift-shod feet of thought; You can fight a bloodless battle, You can skirmish along the route, But it's not worth while to forage, There are rations enough without. Don't start if you hear the cannon, It is not the sound of doom, It does not call to the contest-- To the battle's smoke and gloom. "Let us have peace," was spoken, And lo! peace ruled again; And now the nation is shouting, Through the cannon's voice, "Amen." O boys who besieged old Vicksburg, Can time e'er wash away The triumph of her surrender, Nine years ago to-day? Can you ever forget the moment, When you saw the flag of white, That told how the grim old city Had fallen in her might? Ah, 'twas a bold brave army, When the boys, with a right good will, Went gayly marching and singing To the fight at Champion Hill. They met with a warm reception, But the soul of "Old John Brown" Was abroad on that field of battle, And our flag did NOT go down. Come, heroes of Look Out Mountain, Of Corinth and Donelson, Of Kenesaw and Atlanta, And tell how the day was won! Hush! bow the head for a moment-- There are those who cannot come. No bugle-call can arouse them-- No sound of fife or drum. Oh, boys who died for the country, Oh, dear and sainted dead! What can we say about you That has not once been said? Whether you fell in the contest, Struck down by shot and shell, Or pined 'neath the hand of sickness Or starved in the prison cell, We know that you died for Freedom, To save our land from shame, To rescue a periled Nation, And we give you deathless fame. 'T was the cause of Truth and Justice That you fought and perished for, And we say it, oh, so gently, "Our boys who died in the war." Saviors of our Republic, Heroes who wore the blue, We owe the peace that surrounds us-- And our Nation's strength to you. We owe it to you that our banner, The fairest flag in the world, Is to-day unstained, unsullied, On the Summer air unfurled. We look on its stripes and spangles, And our hearts are filled the while With love for the brave commanders, And the boys of the rank and file. The grandest deeds of valor Were never written out, The noblest acts of virtue The world knows nothing about. And many a private soldier, Who walks his humble way, With no sounding name or title, Unknown to the world to-day, In the eyes of God is a hero As worthy of the bays, As any mighty General To whom the world gives praise. Brave men of a mighty army, We extend you friendship's hand! I speak for the "Loyal Women," Those pillars of our land. We wish you a hearty welcome, We are proud that you gather here To talk of old times together On this brightest day in the year. And if Peace, whose snow-white pinions, Brood over our land to-day, Should ever again go from us, (God grant she may ever stay!) Should our Nation call in her peril For "Six hundred thousand more," The loyal women would hear her, And send you out as before. We would bring out the treasured knapsack, We would take the sword from the wall, And hushing our own hearts' pleadings, Hear only the country's call. For next to our God, is our Nation; And we cherish the honored name, Of the bravest of all brave armies Who fought for that Nation's fame. NOBLESSE OBLIGE. I hold it the duty of one who is gifted, And specially dowered in all men's sight, To know no rest till his life is lifted Fully up to his great gifts' height. He must mold the man into rare completeness, For gems are set only in gold refined. He must fashion his thoughts into perfect sweetness, And cast out folly and pride from his mind. For he who drinks from a god's gold fountain Of art or music or rhythmic song Must sift from his soul the chaff of malice, And weed from his heart the roots of wrong. Great gifts should be worn, like a crown befitting! And not like gems in a beggar's hands. And the toil must be constant and unremitting Which lifts up the king to the crown's demands. AND THEY ARE DUMB. I have been across the bridges of the years. Wet with tears Were the ties on which I trod, going back Down the track To the valley where I left, 'neath skies of Truth, My lost youth. As I went, I dropped my burdens, one and all-- Let them fall; All my sorrows, all my wrinkles, all my care, My white hair, I laid down, like some lone pilgrim's heavy pack, By the track. As I neared the happy valley with light feet, My heart beat To the rhythm of a song I used to know Long ago, And my spirits gushed and bubbled like a fountain Down a mountain. On the border of that valley I found you, Tried and true; And we wandered through the golden Summer-Land Hand in hand. And my pulses beat with rapture in the blisses Of your kisses. And we met there, in those green and verdant places, Smiling faces, And sweet laughter echoed upward from the dells Like gold bells. And the world was spilling over with the glory Of Youth's story. It was but a dreamer's journey of the brain; And again I have left the happy valley far behind; And I find Time stands waiting with his burdens in a pack For my back. As he speeds me, like a rough, well-meaning friend, To the end, Will I find again the lost ones loved so well? Who can tell! But the dead know what the life will be to come-- And they are dumb! NIGHT. As some dusk mother shields from all alarms The tired child she gathers to her breast, The brunette Night doth fold me in her arms, And hushes me to perfect peace and rest. Her eyes of stars shine on me, and I hear Her voice of winds low crooning on my ear. O Night, O Night, how beautiful thou art! Come, fold me closer to thy pulsing heart. The day is full of gladness, and the light So beautifies the common outer things, I only see with my external sight, And only hear the great world's voice which rings But silently from daylight and from din The sweet Night draws me--whispers, "Look within!" And looking, as one wakened from a dream, I see what _is_--no longer what doth seem. The Night says, "Listen!" and upon my ear Revealed, as are the visions to my sight, The voices known as "Beautiful" come near And whisper of the vastly Infinite. Great, blue-eyed Truth, her sister Purity, Their brother Honor, all converse with me, And kiss my brow, and say, "Be brave of heart!" O holy three! how beautiful thou art! The Night says, "Child, sleep that thou may'st arise Strong for to-morrow's struggle." And I feel Her shadowy fingers pressing on my eyes: Like thistledown I float to the Ideal-- The Slumberland, made beautiful and bright As death, by dreams of loved ones gone from sight, O food for soul's, sweet dreams of pure delight, How beautiful the holy hours of Night! ALL FOR ME. The world grows green on a thousand hills-- By a thousand willows the bees are humming, And a million birds by a million rills, Sing of the golden season coming. But, gazing out on the sun-kist lea, And hearing a thrush and a blue-bird singing, I feel that the Summer is all for me, And all for me are the joys it is bringing. All for me the bumble-bee Drones his song in the perfect weather; And, just on purpose to sing to me, Thrush and blue-bird came North together. Just for me, in red and white, Bloom and blossom the fields of clover; And all for me and my delight The wild Wind follows and plays the lover. The mighty sun, with a scorching kiss (I have read, and heard, and do not doubt it) Has burned up a thousand worlds like this, And never stopped to think about it. And yet I believe he hurries up Just on purpose to kiss my flowers-- To drink the dew from the lily-cup, And help it to grow through golden hours. I know I am only a speck of dust, An individual mite of masses, Clinging upon the outer crust Of a little ball of cooling gases. And yet, and yet, say what you will, And laugh, if you please, at my lack of reason, For me wholly, and for me still, Blooms and blossoms the Summer season. Nobody else has ever heard The story the Wind to me discloses; And none but I and the humming-bird Can read the hearts of the crimson roses. Ah, my Summer--my love--my own! The world grows glad in your smiling weather; Yet all for me, and me alone, You and your Court came north together. PHILOSOPHY. At morn the wise man walked abroad, Proud with the learning of great fools. He laughed and said, "There is no God-- 'Tis force creates, 'tis reason rules." Meek with the wisdom of great faith, At night he knelt while angels smiled, And wept and cried with anguished breath, "Jehovah, _God_, save thou my child." "CARLOS." Last night I knelt low at my lady's feet. One soft, caressing hand played with my hair, And one I kissed and fondled. Kneeling there, I deemed my meed of happiness complete. She was so fair, so full of witching wiles-- Of fascinating tricks of mouth and eye; So womanly withal, but not too shy-- And all my heaven was compassed by her smiles. Her soft touch on my cheek and forehead sent, Like little arrows, thrills of tenderness Through all my frame. I trembled with excess Of love, and sighed the sigh of great content. When any mortal dares to so rejoice, I think a jealous Heaven, bending low, Reaches a stern hand forth and deals a blow. Sweet through the dusk I heard my lady's voice. "My love!" she sighed, "My Carlos!" even now I feel the perfumed zephyr of her breath Bearing to me those words of living death, And starting out the cold drops on my brow. For I am _Paul_--not Carlos! Who is he That, in the supreme hour of love's delight, Veiled by the shadows of the falling night, She should breathe low his name, forgetting me? I will not ask her! 'twere a fruitless task, For, woman-like, she would make me believe Some well-told tale; and sigh, and seem to grieve, And call me cruel. Nay, I will not ask. But this man Carlos, whosoe'er he be, Has turned my cup of nectar into gall, Since I know he has claimed some one or all Of these delights my lady grants to me. He must have knelt and kissed her, in some sad And tender twilight, when the day grew dim. How else could I remind her so of him? Why, reveries like these have made men mad! He must have felt her soft hand on his brow. If Heaven was shocked at such presumptuous wrongs, And plunged him in the grave, where he belongs, _Still she remembers_, though she loves me now. And if he lives, and meets me to his cost, Why, what avails it? I must hear and see That curst name "Carlos" always haunting me-- So has another Paradise been lost. THE TWO GLASSES. There sat two glasses filled to the brim, On a rich man's table, rim to rim. One was ruddy and red as blood, And one was clear as the crystal flood. Said the glass of wine to his paler brother, "Let us tell tales of the past to each other; I can tell of a banquet, and revel, and mirth, Where I was king, for I ruled in might; For the proudest and grandest souls on earth Fell under my touch, as though struck with blight. From the heads of kings I have torn the crown; From the heights of fame I have hurled men down. I have blasted many an honored name; I have taken virtue and given shame; I have tempted the youth with a sip, a taste, That has made his future a barren waste. Far greater than any king am I, Or than any army beneath the sky. I have made the arm of the driver fail, And sent the train from the iron rail. I have made good ships go down at sea, And the shrieks of the lost were sweet to me. Fame, strength, wealth, genius before me fall; And my might and power are over all! Ho, ho! pale brother," said the wine, "Can you boast of deeds as great as mine?" Said the water-glass: "I cannot boast Of a king dethroned, or a murdered host, But I can tell of hearts that were sad By my crystal drops made bright and glad; Of thirsts I have quenched, and brows I have laved; Of hands I have cooled, and souls I have saved. I have leaped through the valley, dashed down the mountain, Slept in the sunshine, and dripped from the fountain. I have burst my cloud-fetters, and dropped from the sky. And everywhere gladdened the prospect and eye; I have eased the hot forehead of fever and pain; I have made the parched meadows grow fertile with grain. I can tell of the powerful wheel of the mill, That ground out the flour, and turned at my will. I can tell of manhood debased by you, That I have uplifted and crowned anew I cheer, I help, I strengthen and aid; I gladden the heart of man and maid; I set the wine-chained captive free, And all are better for knowing me." These are the tales they told each other, The glass of wine and its paler brother, As they sat together, filled to the brim, On a rich man's table, rim to rim. THROUGH TEARS. An artist toiled over his pictures; He labored by night and by day. He struggled for glory and honor, But the world, it had nothing to say. His walls were ablaze with the splendors We see in the beautiful skies; But the world beheld only the colors That were made out of chemical dyes. Time sped. And he lived, loved, and suffered; He passed through the valley of grief. Again he toiled over his canvas, Since in labor alone was relief. It showed not the splendor of colors Of those of his earlier years, But the world? the world bowed down before it, Because it was painted with tears. A poet was gifted with genius, And he sang, and he sang all the days. He wrote for the praise of the people, But the people accorded no praise. Oh, his songs were as blithe as the morning, As sweet as the music of birds; But the world had no homage to offer, Because they were nothing but words. Time sped. And the poet through sorrow Became like his suffering kind. Again he toiled over his poems To lighten the grief of his mind. They were not so flowing and rhythmic As those of his earlier years, But the world? lo! it offered its homage Because they were written in tears. So ever the price must be given By those seeking glory in art; So ever the world is repaying The grief-stricken, suffering heart. The happy must ever be humble; Ambition must wait for the years, Ere hoping to win the approval Of a world that looks on through its tears. INTO SPACE. If the sad old world should jump a cog Sometime, in its dizzy spinning, And go off the track with a sudden jog, What an end would come to the sinning. What a rest from strife and the burdens of life For the millions of people in it, What a way out of care, and worry and wear, All in a beautiful minute. As 'round the sun with a curving sweep It hurries and runs and races, Should it lose its balance, and go with a leap Into the vast sea-spaces, What a blest relief it would bring to the grief, And the trouble and toil about us, To be suddenly hurled from the solar world And let it go on without us. With not a sigh or a sad good-by For loved ones left behind us, We would go with a lunge and a mighty plunge Where never a grave should find us. What a wild mad thrill our veins would fill As the great earth, life a feather, Should float through the air to God knows where, And carry us all together. No dark, damp tomb and no mourner's gloom, No tolling bell in the steeple, But in one swift breath a painless death For a million billion people. What greater bliss could we ask than this, To sweep with a bird's free motion Through leagues of space to a resting place, In a vast and vapory ocean-- To pass away from this life for aye With never a dear tie sundered, And a world on fire for a funeral pyre, While the stars looked on and wondered? THROUGH DIM EYES. Is it the world, or my eyes, that are sadder? I see not the grace that I used to see In the meadow-brook whose song was so glad, or In the boughs of the willow tree. The brook runs slower--its song seems lower, And not the song that it sang of old; And the tree I admired looks weary and tired Of the changeless story of heat and cold. When the sun goes up, and the stars go under, In that supreme hour of the breaking day, Is it my eyes, or the dawn I wonder, That finds less of the gold, and more of the gray? I see not the splendor, the tints so tender, The rose-hued glory I used to see; And I often borrow a vague half-sorrow That another morning has dawned for me. When the royal smile of that welcome comer Beams on the meadow and burns in the sky, Is it my eyes, or does the Summer Bring less of bloom than in days gone by? The beauty that thrilled me, the rapture that filled me, To an overflowing of happy tears, I pass unseeing, my sad eyes being Dimmed by the shadow of vanished years. When the heart grows weary, all things seem dreary; When the burden grows heavy, the way seems long. Thank God for sending kind death as an ending, Like a grand Amen to a minor song. LA MORT D'AMOUR. When was it that love died? We were so fond, So very fond, a little while ago. With leaping pulses, and blood all aglow, We dreamed about a sweeter life beyond, When we should dwell together as one heart, And scarce could wait that happy time to come. Now side by side we sit with lips quite dumb, And feel ourselves a thousand miles apart. How was it that love died! I do not know. I only know that all its grace untold Has faded into gray! I miss the gold From our dull skies; but did not see it go. Why should love die? We prized it, I am sure; We thought of nothing else when it was ours; We cherished it in smiling, sunlit bowers; It was our all; why could it not endure? Alas, we know not how, or when or why This dear thing died. We only know it went, And left us dull, cold, and indifferent; We who found heaven once in each other's sigh. How pitiful it is, and yet how true That half the lovers in the world, one day, Look questioning in each other's eyes this way And know love's gone forever, as we do. Sometimes I cannot help but think, dear heart, As I look out o'er all the wide, sad earth And see love's flame gone out on many a hearth, That those who would keep love must dwell apart. THE PUNISHED. Not they who know the awful gibbet's anguish, Not they who, while sad years go by them, in The sunless cells of lonely prisons languish, Do suffer fullest penalty for sin. 'Tis they who walk the highways unsuspected Yet with grim fear forever at their side, Who hug the corpse of some sin undetected, A corpse no grave or coffin-lid can hide-- 'Tis they who are in their own chambers haunted By thoughts that like unbidden guests intrude, And sit down, uninvited and unwanted, And make a nightmare of the solitude. HALF FLEDGED. I feel the stirrings in me of great things. New half-fledged thoughts rise up and beat their wings, And tremble on the margin of their nest, Then flutter back, and hide within my breast. Beholding space, they doubt their untried strength. Beholding men, they fear them. But at length Grown all too great and active for the heart That broods them with such tender mother art, Forgetting fear, and men, and all, that hour, Save the impelling consciousness of power That stirs within them--they shall soar away Up to the very portals of the Day. Oh, what exultant rapture thrills me through When I contemplate all those thoughts may do; Like snow-white eagles penetrating space, They may explore full many an unknown place, And build their nests on mountain heights unseen, Whereon doth lie that dreamed-of rest serene. Stay thou a little longer in my breast, Till my fond heart shall push thee from the nest, Anxious to see thee soar to heights divine-- Oh, beautiful but half-fledged thoughts of mine. LOVE'S SLEEP. (Vers de Société.) We'll cover Love with roses, And sweet sleep he shall take. None but a fool supposes Love always keeps awake. I've known loves without number. True loves were they, and tried; And just for want of slumber They pined away and died. Our love was bright and cheerful A little while agone; Now he is pale and tearful, And--yes, I've seen him yawn. So tired is he of kisses That he can only weep; The one dear thing he misses And longs for now is sleep. We could not let him leave us One time, he was so dear, But now it would not grieve us If he slept half a year. For he has had his season, Like the lily and the rose, And it but stands to reason That he should want repose. We prized the smiling Cupid Who made our days so bright; But he has grown so stupid We gladly say good-night. And if he wakens tender And fond, and fair as when He filled our lives with splendor, We'll take him back again. And should he never waken, As that perchance may be, We will not weep forsaken, But sing, "Love, tra-la-lee!" TRUE CULTURE. The highest culture is to speak no ill; The best reformer is the man whose eyes Are quick to see all beauty and all worth; And by his own discreet, well-ordered life, Alone reproves the erring. When they gaze Turns it on thine own soul, be most severe. But when it falls upon a fellow-man Let kindliness control it; and refrain From that belittling censure that springs forth From common lips like weeds from marshy soil. THE VOLUPTUARY. Oh, I am sick of love reciprocated, Of hopes fulfilled, ambitions gratified. Life holds no thing to be anticipated, And I am sad from being satisfied. The eager joy felt climbing up the mountain Has left me now the highest point is gained. The crystal spray that fell from Fame's fair fountain Was sweeter than the waters were when drained. The gilded apple which the world calls pleasure, And which I purchased with my youth and strength, Pleased me a moment. But the empty treasure Lost all its lustre, and grew dim at length. And love, all glowing with a golden glory, Delighted me a season with its tale. It pleased the longest, but at last the story So oft repeated, to my heart grew stale. I lived for self, and all I asked was given, I have had all, and now am sick of bliss, No other punishment designed by Heaven Could strike me half so forcibly as this. I feel no sense of aught but enervation In all the joys my selfish aims have brought, And know no wish but for annihilation, Since that would give me freedom from the thought. Oh, blest is he who has some aim defeated; Some mighty loss to balance all his gain. For him there is a hope not yet completed; For him hath life yet draughts of joy and pain. But cursed is he who has no balked ambition, No hopeless hope, no loss beyond repair, But sick and sated with complete fruition, Keeps not the pleasure even of despair. THE YEAR. What can be said in New Year rhymes, That's not been said a thousand times? The new years come, the old years go, We know we dream, we dream we know. We rise up laughing with the light, We lie down weeping with the night. We hug the world until it stings, We curse it then and sigh for wings. We live, we love, we woo, we wed, We wreathe our brides, we sheet our dead. We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear, And that's the burden of the year. THE UNATTAINED. A vision beauteous as the morn, With heavenly eyes and tresses streaming, Slow glided o'er a field late shorn Where walked a poet idly dreaming. He saw her, and joy lit his face, "Oh, vanish not at human speaking," He cried, "thou form of magic grace, Thou art the poem I am seeking. "I've sought thee long! I claim thee now-- My thought embodied, living, real." She shook the tresses from her brow. "Nay, nay!" she said, "I am ideal. I am the phantom of desire-- The spirit of all great endeavor, I am the voice that says, 'Come higher,' That calls men up and up forever. "'Tis not alone thy thought supreme That here upon thy path has risen; I am the artist's highest dream, The ray of light he cannot prison. I am the sweet ecstatic note Than all glad music gladder, clearer, That trembles in the singer's throat, And dies without a human hearer. "I am the greater, better yield, That leads and cheers thy farmer neighbor, For me he bravely tills the field And whistles gayly at his labor. Not thou alone, O poet soul, Dost seek me through an endless morrow, But to the toiling, hoping whole I am at once the hope and sorrow. The spirit of the unattained, I am to those who seek to name me, A good desired but never gained. All shall pursue, but none shall claim me." IN THE CROWD. How happy they are, in all seeming, How gay, or how smilingly proud, How brightly their faces are beaming, These people who make up the crowd. How they bow, how they bend, how they flutter, How they look at each other and smile, How they glow, and what _bon mots_ they utter! But a strange thought has found me the while! It is odd, but I stand here and fancy These people who now play a part, All forced by some strange necromancy To speak, and to act, from the heart. What a hush would come over the laughter! What a silence would fall on the mirth! And then what a wail would sweep after, As the night-wind sweeps over the earth. If the secrets held under and hidden In the intricate hearts of the crowd, Were suddenly called to, and bidden To rise up and cry out aloud, How strange one would look to another! Old friends of long standing and years-- Own brothers would not know each other, Robed new in their sorrows and fears. From broadcloth, and velvet, and laces, Would echo the groans of despair, And there would be blanching of faces And wringing of hands and of hair. That man with his record of honor, That lady down there with the rose, That girl with Spring's freshness upon her, Who knoweth the secrets of those? Smile on, O ye maskers, smile sweetly! Step lightly, bow low and laugh loud! Though the world is deceived and completely, I know ye, O sad-hearted crowd! I watch you with infinite pity: But play on, play ever your part, Be gleeful, be joyful, be witty! 'Tis better than showing the heart. LIFE AND I. Life and I are lovers, straying Arm in arm along: Often like two children Maying, Full of mirth and song. Life plucks all the blooming hours Growing by the way; Binds them on my brow like flowers; Calls me Queen of May. Then again, in rainy weather, We sit vis-a-vis, Planning work we'll do together In the years to be. Sometimes Life denies me blisses, And I frown or pout; But we make it up with kisses Ere the day is out. Woman-like, I sometimes grieve him, Try his trust and faith, Saying I shall one day leave him For his rival Death. Then he always grows more zealous, Tender, and more true; Loves the more for being jealous, As all lovers do. Though I swear by stars above him, And by worlds beyond, That I love him--love him--love him; Though my heart is fond; Though he gives me, doth my lover, Kisses with each breath-- I shall one day throw him over, And plight troth with Death. GUERDON. Upon the white cheek of the Cherub Year I saw a tear. Alas! I murmured, that the Year should borrow So soon a sorrow. Just then the sunlight fell with sudden flame: The tear became A wond'rous diamond sparkling in the light-- A beauteous sight. Upon my soul there fell such woeful loss, I said, "The Cross Is grievous for a life as young as mine." Just then, like wine, God's sunlight shone from His high Heavens down; And lo! a crown Gleamed in the place of what I thought a burden-- My sorrow's guerdon. SNOWED UNDER. Of a thousand things that the Year snowed under-- The busy Old Year who has gone away-- How many will rise in the Spring, I wonder, Brought to life by the sun of May? Will the rose-tree branches, so wholly hidden That never a rose-tree seems to be, At the sweet Spring's call come forth unbidden, And bud in beauty, and bloom for me? Will the fair, green Earth, whose throbbing bosom Is hid like a maid's in her gown at night, Wake out of her sleep, and with blade and blossom Gem her garments to please my sight? Over the knoll in the valley yonder The loveliest buttercups bloomed and grew; When the snow has gone that drifted them under, Will they shoot up sunward, and bloom anew? When wild winds blew, and a sleet-storm pelted, I lost a jewel of priceless worth; If I walk that way when snows have melted, Will the gem gleam up from the bare, brown Earth? I laid a love that was dead or dying, For the year to bury and hide from sight; But out of a trance will it waken, crying, And push to my heart, like a leaf to the light? Under the snow lie things so cherished-- Hopes, ambitions, and dreams of men-- Faces that vanished, and trusts that perished, Never to sparkle and glow again. The Old Year greedily grasped his plunder, And covered it over and hurried away: Of the thousand things that he did, I wonder How many will rise at the call of May? O wise Young Year, with your hands held under Your mantle of ermine, tell me, pray! PLATONIC. I knew it the first of the Summer-- I knew it the same at the end-- That you and your love were plighted, But couldn't you be my friend? Couldn't we sit in the twilight, Couldn't we walk on the shore, With only a pleasant friendship To bind us, and nothing more? There was never a word of nonsense Spoken between us two, Though we lingered oft in the garden Till the roses were wet with dew. We touched on a thousand subjects-- The moon and the stars above; But our talk was tinctured with science, With never a hint of love. "A wholly platonic friendship," You said I had proved to you, "Could bind a man and a woman The whole long season through, With never a thought of folly, Though both are in their youth." What would you have said, my lady, If you had known the truth? Had I done what my mad heart prompted-- Gone down on my knees to you, And told you my passionate story There in the dusk and dew; My burning, burdensome story, Hidden and hushed so long, My story of hopeless loving-- Say, would you have thought it wrong? But I fought with my heart and conquered: I hid my wound from sight; You were going away in the morning And I said a calm good-night. But now, when I sit in the twilight Or when I walk by the sea, That friendship quite "platonic" Comes surging over me. And a passionate longing fills me For the roses, the dusk and the dew,-- For the beautiful Summer vanished-- For the moonlit talks--and you. WHAT WE NEEDED. What does our country need? Not armies standing With sabres gleaming ready for the fight. Not increased navies, skillful and commanding, To bound the waters with an iron might. Not haughty men with glutted purses trying To purchase souls, and keep the power of place. Not jeweled dolls with one another vieing For palms of beauty, elegance and grace. But we want women, strong of soul, yet lowly, With that rare meekness, born of gentleness, Women whose lives are pure and clean and holy, The women whom all little children bless. Brave, earnest women, helpful to each other, With finest scorn for all things low and mean. Women who hold the names of wife and mother, Far nobler than the title of a Queen. O these are they who mold the men of story, These mothers, ofttimes shorn of grace and youth, Who, worn and weary, ask no greater glory Than making some young soul the home of truth, Who sow in hearts all fallow for the sowing The seeds of virtue and of scorn for sin, And, patient, watch the beauteous harvest growing And weed out tares which crafty hands cast in. Women who do not hold the gift of beauty As some rare treasure to be bought and sold, But guard it as a precious aid to duty-- The outer framing of the inner gold; Women who, low above their cradles bending, Let flattery's voice go by, and give no heed, While their pure prayers like incense are ascending: _These_ are our country's pride, our country's need. "LEUDEMANN'S-ON-THE-RIVER." Toward even when the day leans down To kiss the upturned face of night, Out just beyond the loud-voiced town I know a spot of calm delight. Like crimson arrows from a quiver The red rays pierce the waters flowing While we go dreaming, singing, rowing To Leudemann's-on-the-River. The hills, like some glad mocking-bird, Send back our laughter and our singing, While faint--and yet more faint is heard The steeple bells all sweetly ringing. Some message did the winds deliver To each glad heart that August night, All heard, but all heard not aright; By Leudemann's-on-the-River. Night falls as in some foreign clime, Between the hills that slope and rise. So dusk the shades at landing time, We could not see each other's eyes. We only saw the moonbeams quiver Far down upon the stream! that night The new moon gave but little light By Leudemann's-on-the-River. How dusky were those paths that led Up from the river to the hall. The tall trees branching overhead Invite the early shades that fall. In all the glad blithe world, oh, never Were hearts more free from care than when We wandered through those walks, we ten, By Leudemann's-on-the-River. So soon, so soon, the changes came. This August day we two alone, On that same river, not the same, Dream of a night forever flown. Strange distances have come to sever The hearts that gayly beat in pleasure, Long miles we cannot cross or measure-- From Leudemann's-on-the-River. We'll pluck two leaves, dear friend, to-day. The green, the russet! seems it strange So soon, so soon, the leaves can change! Ah, me! so runs all life away. This night wind chills me, and I shiver; The Summer time is almost past. One more good-bye--perhaps the last To Leudemann's-on-the-River. IN THE LONG RUN. In the long run fame finds the deserving man. The lucky wight may prosper for a day, But in good time true merit leads the van, And vain pretense, unnoticed, goes its way. There is no Chance, no Destiny, no Fate, But Fortune smiles on those who work and wait, In the long run. In the long run all goodly sorrow pays, There is no better thing than righteous pain, The sleepless nights, the awful thorn-crowned days, Bring sure reward to tortured soul and brain. Unmeaning joys enervate in the end. But sorrow yields a glorious dividend In the long run. In the long run all hidden things are known, The eye of truth will penetrate the night, And good or ill, thy secret shall be known, However well 'tis guarded from the light. All the unspoken motives of the breast Are fathomed by the years and stand confest In the long run. In the long run all love is paid by love, Though undervalued by the hosts of earth; The great eternal Government above Keeps strict account and will redeem its worth. Give thy love freely; do not count the cost; So beautiful a thing was never lost In the long run. PLEA TO SCIENCE. O Science reaching backward through the distance, Most earnest child of God, Exposing all the secrets of existence, With thy divining rod, I bid thee speed up to the heights supernal, Clear thinker, ne'er sufficed; Go seek and bind the laws and truths eternal, But leave me Christ. Upon the vanity of pious sages Let in the light of day. Break down the superstitions of all ages-- Thrust bigotry away; Stride on, and bid all stubborn foes defiance Let Truth and Reason reign. But I beseech thee, O Immortal Science, Let Christ remain. What canst thou give to help me bear my crosses, In place of Him, my Lord? And what to recompense for all my losses, And bring me sweet reward? _Thou_ couldst not with thy clear, cold eyes of reason, Thou couldst not comfort me Like one who passed through that tear-blotted season, In sad Gethsemane! Through all the weary, wearing hour of sorrow, What word that thou hast said, Would make me strong to wait for some to-morrow When I should find my dead? When I am weak, and desolate, and lonely-- And prone to follow wrong? Not thou, O Science--Christ, my Savior, only Can make me strong. Thou are so cold, so lofty and so distant, Though great my need might be, No prayer, however constant and persistent, Could bring thee down to me. Christ stands so near, to help me through each hour, To guide me day by day. O Science, sweeping all before thy power Leave Christ, I pray! LOVE'S BURIAL. Let us clear a little space, And make Love a burial place. He is dead, dear, as you see, And he wearies you and me, Growing heavier, day by day, Let us bury him, I say. Wings of dead white butterflies, These shall shroud him, as he lies In his casket rich and rare, Made of finest maiden-hair. With the pollen of the rose Let us his white eye-lids close. Put the rose thorn in his hand, Shorn of leaves--you understand. Let some holy water fall On his dead face, tears of gall-- As we kneel by him and say, "Dreams to dreams," and turn away. Those grave diggers, Doubt, Distrust, They will lower him to the dust. Let us part here with a kiss, You go that way, I go this. Since we buried Love to-day We will walk a separate way. LITTLE BLUE HOOD. Every morning and every night There passes our window near the street, A little girl with an eye so bright, And a cheek so round and a lip so sweet; The daintiest, jauntiest little miss That ever any one longed to kiss. She is neat as wax, and fresh to view, And her look is wholesome and clean, and good. Whatever her gown, her hood is blue, And so we call her our "Little Blue Hood," For we know not the name of the dear little lass, But we call to each other to see her pass. "Little Blue Hood is coming now!" And we watch from the window while she goes by, She has such a bonny, smooth, white brow, And a fearless look in her long-lashed eye; And a certain dignity wedded to grace, Seems to envelop her form and face. Every morning, in sun or rain, She walks by the window with sweet, grave air, And never guesses behind the pane We two are watching and thinking her fair; Lovingly watching her down the street, Dear little Blue Hood, bright and sweet. Somebody ties that hood of blue Under the face so fair to see, Somebody loves her, beside we two, Somebody kisses her--why can't we? Dear Little Blue Hood fresh and fair, Are you glad we love you, or don't you care? NO SPRING. Up from the South come the birds that were banished, Frightened away by the presence of frost. Back to the vale comes the verdure that vanished, Back to the forest the leaves that were lost. Over the hillside the carpet of splendor, Folded through Winter, Spring spreads down again; Along the horizon, the tints that were tender, Lost hues of Summer time, burn bright as then. Only the mountains' high summits are hoary, To the ice-fettered river the sun gives a key. Once more the gleaming shore lists to the story Told by an amorous Summer-kissed sea. All things revive that in Winter time perished, The rose buds again in the light o' the sun, All that was beautiful, all that was cherished, Sweet things and dear things and all things--save one. Late, when the year and the roses were lying Low with the ruins of Summer and bloom, Down in the dust fell a love that was dying, And the snow piled above it, and made it a tomb. Lo! now! the roses are budded for blossom-- Lo! now! the Summer is risen again. Why dost thou bud not, O Love of my bosom? Why dost thou rise not, and thrill me as then? Life without love, is a year without Summer, Heart without love, is a wood without song. Rise then, revive then, thou indolent comer, Why dost thou lie in the dark earth so long? Rise! ah, thou canst not! the rose-tree that sheddest Its beautiful leaves, in the Spring time may bloom, But of cold things the coldest, of dead things the deadest, Love buried once, rises not from the tomb. Green things may grow on the hillside and heather, Birds seek the forest and build there and sing. All things revive in the beautiful weather, But unto a dead love there cometh no Spring. LIPPO. Now we must part, my Lippo. Even so, I grieve to see thy sudden pained surprise; Gaze not on me with such accusing eyes-- 'T was thine own hand which dealt dear Love's death-blow. I loved thee fondly yesterday. Till then Thy heart was like a covered golden cup Always above my eager lip held up. I fancied thou wert not as other men. I knew that heart was filled with Love's sweet wine, Pressed wholly for my drinking. And my lip Grew parched with thirsting for one nectared sip Of what, denied me, seemed a draught divine. Last evening, in the gloaming, that cup spilled Its precious contents. Even to the lees Were offered to me, saying, "Drink of these!" And when I saw it empty, Love was killed. No word was left unsaid, no act undone, To prove to me thou wert my abject slave. Ah, Love! hadst thou been wise enough to save One little drop of that sweet wine--but one-- I still had loved thee, longing for it then. But even the cup is mine. I look within, And find it holds not one last drop to win, And cast it down.--Thou art as other men. MIDSUMMER. After the May time, and after the June time Rare with blossoms and perfumes sweet, Cometh the round world's royal noon time, The red midsummer of blazing heat. When the sun, like an eye that never closes, Bends on the earth its fervid gaze, And the winds are still, and the crimson roses Droop and wither and die in its rays. Unto my heart has come that season, O my lady, my worshiped one, When over the stars of Pride and Reason Sails Love's cloudless, noonday sun. Like a great red ball in my bosom burning With fires that nothing can quench or tame. It glows till my heart itself seems turning Into a liquid lake of flame. The hopes half shy, and the sighs all tender, The dreams and fears of an earlier day, Under the noontide's royal splendor, Droop like roses and wither away. From the hills of doubt no winds are blowing, From the isle of pain no breeze is sent. Only the sun in a white heat glowing Over an ocean of great content. Sink, O my soul, in this golden glory, Die, O my heart, in thy rapture-swoon, For the Autumn must come with its mournful story, And Love's midsummer will fade too soon. A REMINISCENCE. I saw the wild honey-bee kissing a rose A wee one, that grows Down low on the bush, where her sisters above Cannot see all that's done As the moments roll on. Nor hear all the whispers and murmurs of love. They flaunt out their beautiful leaves in the sun, And they flirt, every one, With the wild bees who pass, and the gay butterflies. And that wee thing in pink-- Why, they never once think That she's won a lover right under their eyes. It reminded me, Kate, of a time--you know when! You were so petite then, Your dresses were short, and your feet were so small. Your sisters, Maud-Belle And Madeline--well, They _both_ set their caps for me, after that ball. How the blue eyes and black eyes smiled up in my face! 'T was a neck-and-neck race, Till that day when you opened the door in the hall, And looked up and looked down, With your sweet eyes of brown, And _you_ seemed so tiny, and _I_ felt so tall. Your sisters had sent you to keep me, my dear, Till they should appear. Then you were dismissed like a child in disgrace. How meekly you went! But your brown eyes, they sent A thrill to my heart, and a flush to my face. We always were meeting some way after that. You hung up my hat, And got it again, when I finished my call. Sixteen, and _so_ sweet! Oh, those cute little feet! Shall I ever forget how they tripped down the hall? Shall I ever forget the first kiss by the door, Or the vows murmured o'er, Or the rage and surprise of Maud-Belle? Well-a-day, How swiftly time flows, And who would suppose That a _bee_ could have carried me so far away. RESPITE. The mighty conflict, which we call existence, Doth wear upon the body and the soul. Our vital forces wasted in resistance, So much there is to conquer and control. The rock which meets the billows with defiance. Undaunted and unshaken day by day, In spite of its unyielding self-reliance, Is by the warfare surely worn away. And there are depths and heights of strong emotions That surge at times within the human breast, More fierce than all the tides of all the oceans Which sweep on ever in divine unrest. I sometimes think the rock worn with adventures, And sad with thoughts of conflicts yet to be, Must envy the frail reed which no one censures, When overcome 'tis swallowed by the sea. This life is all resistance and repression, Dear God, if in that other world unseen, Not rest, we find, but new life and progression, Grant us a respite in the grave between. A GIRL'S FAITH. Across the miles that stretch between, Through days of gloom or glad sunlight, There shines a face I have not seen Which yet doth make my world more bright. He may be near, he may be far, Or near or far I cannot see, But faithful as the morning star He yet shall rise and come to me. What though fate leads us separate ways, The world is round, and time is fleet. A journey of a few brief days, And face to face we two shall meet. Shall meet beneath God's arching skies, While suns shall blaze, or stars shall gleam, And looking in each other's eyes Shall hold the past but as a dream. But round and perfect and complete, Life like a star shall climb the height, As we two press with willing feet Together toward the Infinite. And still behind the space between, As back of dawns the sunbeams play, There shines the face I have not seen, Whose smile shall wake my world to Day. TWO. One leaned on velvet cushions like a queen-- To see him pass, the hero of an hour, Whom men called great. She bowed with languid mien, And smiled, and blushed, and knew her beauty's power. One trailed her tinseled garments through the street, And thrust aside the crowd, and found a place So near, the blooded courser's praning feet Cast sparks of fire upon her painted face. One took the hot-house blossoms from her breast, And tossed them down, as he went riding by. And blushed rose-red to see them fondly pressed To bearded lips, while eye spoke unto eye. One, bold and hardened with her sinful life, Yet shrank and shivered painfully, because His cruel glance cut keener than a knife, The glance of him who made her what she was. One was observed, and lifted up to fame, Because the hero smiled upon her! while One who was shunned and hated, found her shame In basking in the death-light of his smile. SLIPPING AWAY. Slipping away--slipping away! Out of our brief year slips the May; And Winter lingers, and Summer flies; And Sorrow abideth, and Pleasure dies; And the days are short, and the nights are long; And little is right, and much is wrong. Slipping away is the Summer time; It has lost its rhythm and lilting rhyme-- For the grace goes out of the day so soon, And the tired head aches in the glare of noon, And the way seems long to the hills that lie Under the calm of the western sky. Slipping away are the friends whose worth Lent a glow to the sad old earth: One by one they slip from our sight; One by one their graves gleam white; Or we count them lost by the crueler death Of a trust betrayed, or a murdered faith. Slipping away are the hopes that made Bliss out of sorrow, and sun out of shade. Slipping away is our hold on life. And out of the struggle and wearing strife, From joys that diminish, and woes that increase, We are slipping away to the shores of Peace. IS IT DONE? It is done! in the fire's fitful flashes, The last line has withered and curled. In a tiny white heap of dead ashes Lie buried the hopes of your world. There were mad foolish vows in each letter, It is well they have shriveled and burned, And the ring! oh, the ring was a fetter, It was better removed and returned. But ah, is it done? in the embers Where letters and tokens were cast, Have you burned up the heart that remembers, And treasures its beautiful past? Do you think in this swift reckless fashion To ruthlessly burn and destroy The months that were freighted with passion, The dreams that were drunken with joy? Can you burn up the rapture of kisses That flashed from the lips to the soul? Or the heart that grows sick for lost blisses In spite of its strength of control? Have you burned up the touch of warm fingers That thrilled through each pulse and each vein, Or the sound of a voice that still lingers And hurts with a haunting refrain? Is it done? is the life drama ended? You have put all the lights out, and yet, Though the curtain, rung down, has descended, Can the actors go home and forget? Ah, no! they will turn in their sleeping With a strange restless pain in their hearts, And in darkness, and anguish and weeping, Will dream they are playing their parts. A LEAF. Somebody said, in the crowd, last eve, That you were married, or soon to be. I have not thought of you, I believe, Since last we parted. Let me see: Five long Summers have passed since then-- Each has been pleasant in its own way-- And you are but one of a dozen men Who have played the suitor a Summer day. But, nevertheless, when I heard your name, Coupled with some one's, not my own, There burned in my bosom a sudden flame, That carried me back to the day that is flown. I was sitting again by the laughing brook, With you at my feet, and the sky above, And my heart was fluttering under your look-- The unmistakable look of Love. Again your breath, like a South wind, fanned My cheek, where the blushes came and went; And the tender clasp of your strong, warm hand Sudden thrills through my pulses sent. Again you were mine by Love's own right-- Mine forever by Love's decree: So for a moment it seemed last night, When somebody mentioned your name to me. Just for the moment I thought you mine-- Loving me, wooing me, as of old. The tale remembered seemed half divine-- Though I held it lightly enough when told. The past seemed fairer than when it was near, As "Blessings brighten when taking flight;" And just for the moment I held you dear-- When somebody mentioned your name last night. AESTHETIC. In a garb that was guiltless of colors She stood, with a dull, listless air-- A creature of dumps and of dolors, But most undeniably fair. The folds of her garment fell round her, Revealing the curve of each limb; Well proportioned and graceful I found her, Although quite alarmingly slim. From the hem of her robe peeped one sandal-- "High art" was she down to her feet; And though I could not understand all She said, I could see she was sweet. Impressed by her limpness and languor, I proffered a chair near at hand; She looked back a mild sort of anger-- Posed anew, and continued to stand. Some praises I next tried to mutter Of the fan that she held to her face; She said it was "utterly utter," And waved it with languishing grace. I then, in a strain quite poetic, Begged her gaze on the bow in the sky, She looked--said its curve was "æsthetic." But the "tone was too dreadfully high." Her lovely face, lit by the splendor That glorified landscape and sea, Woke thoughts that were daring and tender: Did _her_ thoughts, too, rest upon me? "Oh, tell me," I cried, growing bolder, "Have I in your musings a place?" "Well, yes," she said over her shoulder: "I was thinking of nothing in space." POEMS OF THE WEEK. SUNDAY. Lie still and rest, in that serene repose That on this holy morning comes to those Who have been burdened with the cares which make The sad heart weary and the tired head ache. Lie still and rest-- God's day of all is best. MONDAY. Awake! arise! Cast off thy drowsy dreams! Red in the East, behold the Morning gleams. "As Monday goes, so goes the week," dames say. Refreshed, renewed, use well the initial day. And see! thy neighbor Already seeks his labor. TUESDAY. Another morning's banners are unfurled-- Another day looks smiling on the world. It holds new laurels for thy soul to win: Mar not its grace by slothfulness or sin, Nor sad, away, Send it to yesterday. WEDNESDAY. Half-way unto the end--the week's high noon. The morning hours do speed away so soon! And, when the noon is reached, however bright, Instinctively we look toward the night. The glow is lost Once the meridian crost. THURSDAY. So well the week has sped, hast thou a friend Go spend an hour in converse. It will lend New beauty to thy labors and thy life To pause a little sometimes in the strife. Toil soon seems rude That has no interlude. FRIDAY. From feasts abstain; be temperate, and pray; Fast if thou wilt; and yet, throughout the day, Neglect no labor and no duty shirk: Not many hours are left thee for thy work-- And it were meet That all should be complete. SATURDAY. Now with the almost finished task make haste; So near the night thou hast no time to waste. Post up accounts, and let thy Soul's eyes look For flaws and errors in Life's ledger-book. When labors cease, How sweet the sense of peace! GHOSTS. There are ghosts in the room. As I sit here alone, from the dark corners there They come out of the gloom, And they stand at my side and they lean on my chair. There's the ghost of a Hope That lighted my days with a fanciful glow, In her hand is the rope That strangled her life out. Hope was slain long ago. But her ghost comes to-night, With its skeleton face and expressionless eyes, And it stands in the light, And mocks me, and jeers me with sobs and with sighs. There's the ghost of a Joy, A frail, fragile thing, and I prized it too much, And the hands that destroy Clasped it close, and it died at the withering touch. There's the ghost of a Love, Born with joy, reared with hope, died in pain and unrest, But he towers above All the others--this ghost: yet a ghost at the best. I am weary, and fain Would forget all these dead: but the gibbering host Make my struggle in vain, In each shadowy corner there lurketh a ghost. FLEEING AWAY. My thoughts soar not as they ought to soar, Higher and higher on soul-lent wings; But ever and often, and more and more They are dragged down earthward by little things, By little troubles and little needs, As a lark might be tangled among the weeds. My purpose is not what it ought to be, Steady and fixed, like a star on high, But more like a fisherman's light at sea; Hither and thither it seems to fly-- Sometimes feeble, and sometimes bright, Then suddenly lost in the gloom of night. My life is far from my dream of life-- Calmly contented, serenely glad; But, vexed and worried by daily strife, It is always troubled, and ofttimes sad-- And the heights I had thought I should reach one day Grow dimmer and dimmer, and farther away. My heart finds never the longed-for rest; Its worldly striving, its greed for gold, Chilled and frightened the calm-eyed guest, Who sometimes sought me in days of old; And ever fleeing away from me Is the higher self that I long to be. ALL MAD. "He is mad as a hare, poor fellow, And should be in chains," you say. I haven't a doubt of your statement, But who isn't mad, I pray? Why, the world is a great asylum, And people are all insane, Gone daft with pleasure or folly, Or crazed with passion and pain. The infant who shrieks at a shadow, The child with his Santa Claus faith, The woman who worships Dame Fashion, Each man with his notions of death, The miser who hoards up his earnings, The spendthrift who wastes them too soon, The scholar grown blind in his delving, The lover who stares at the moon. The poet who thinks life a pæan, The cynic who thinks it a fraud, The youth who goes seeking for pleasure, The preacher who dares talk of God, All priests with their creeds and their croaking, All doubters who dare to deny, The gay who find aught to wake laughter, The sad who find aught worth a sigh, Whoever is downcast or solemn, Whoever is gleeful and glad, Are only the dupes of delusions-- We are all of us--all of us mad. HIDDEN GEMS. We know not what lies in us, till we seek; Men dive for pearls--they are not found on shore, The hillsides most unpromising and bleak Do sometimes hide the ore. Go, dive in the vast ocean of thy mind, O man! far down below the noisy waves, Down in the depths and silence thou mayst find Rare pearls and coral caves. Sink thou a shaft into the mine of thought; Be patient, like the seekers after gold; Under the rocks and rubbish lieth what May bring thee wealth untold. Reflected from the vasty Infinite, However dulled by earth, each human mind Holds somewhere gems of beauty and of light Which, seeking, thou shalt find. BY-AND-BY. "By-and-by," the maiden sighed--"by-and-by He will claim me for his bride, Hope is strong and time is fleet; Youth is fair, and love is sweet, Clouds will pass that fleck my sky. He will come back by-and-by--by-and-by." "By-and-by," the soldier said--"by-and-by, After I have fought and bled, I shall go home from the wars, Crowned with glory, seamed with scars. Joy will flash from some one's eye When she greets me by-and-by--by-and-by." "By-and-by," the mother cried--"by-and-by, Strong and sturdy at my side, Like a staff supporting me, Will my bonnie baby be. Break my rest, then, wail and cry-- Thou'lt repay me by-and-by--by-and-by." Fleeting years of time have sped--hurried by-- Still the maiden is unwed; All unknown the soldier lies, Buried under alien skies; And the son, with blood-shot eye Saw his mother starve and die. God in Heaven! dost Thou on high, Keep the promised by-and-by--by-and-by? OVER THE MAY HILL. All through the night time, and all through the day time, Dreading the morning and dreading the night, Nearer and nearer we drift to the May time Season of beauty and season of blight, Leaves on the linden, and sun on the meadow, Green in the garden, and bloom everywhere, Gloom in my heart, and a terrible shadow, Walks by me, sits by me, stands by my chair. Oh, but the birds by the brooklet are cheery, Oh, but the woods show such delicate greens, Strange how you droop and how soon you are weary-- Too well I know what that weariness means. But how could I know in the crisp winter weather (Though sometimes I noticed a catch in your breath), Riding and singing and dancing together, How could I know you were racing with death? How could I know when we danced until morning, And you were the gayest of all the gay crowd-- With only that shortness of breath for a warning, How could I know that you danced for a shroud? Whirling and whirling through moonlight and starlight, Rocking as lightly as boats on the wave, Down in your eyes shone a deep light--a far light, How could I know 'twas the light to your grave? Day by day, day by day, nearing and nearing, Hid under greenness, and beauty and bloom, Cometh the shape and the shadow I'm fearing, "Over the May hill" is waiting your tomb. The season of mirth and of music is over-- I have danced my last dance, I have sung my last song, Under the violets, under the clover, My heart and my love will be lying ere long. A SONG. Is any one sad in the world, I wonder? Does any one weep on a day like this, With the sun above, and the green earth under? Why, what is life but a dream of bliss? With the sun, and the skies, and the birds above me, Birds that sing as they wheel and fly-- With the winds to follow and say they love me-- Who could be lonely? O ho, not I! Somebody said, in the street this morning, As I opened my window to let in the light, That the darkest day of the world was dawning; But I looked, and the East was a gorgeous sight. One who claims that he knows about it Tells me the Earth is a vale of sin; But I and the bees and the birds--we doubt it, And think it a world worth living in. Some one says that hearts are fickle, That love is sorrow, that life is care, And the reaper Death, with his shining sickle, Gathers whatever is bright and fair. I told the thrush, and we laughed together, Laughed till the woods were all a-ring: And he said to me, as he plumed each feather, "Well, people must croak, if they cannot sing." Up he flew, but his song, remaining, Rang like a bell in my heart all day, And silenced the voices of weak complaining, That pipe like insects along the way. O world of light, and O world of beauty! Where are there pleasures so sweet as thine? Yes, life is love, and love is duty; And what heart sorrows? O no, not mine! FOES. Thank Fate for foes! I hold mine dear As valued friends. He cannot know The zest of life who runneth here His earthly race without a foe. I saw a prize. "Run," cried my friend; "'Tis thine to claim without a doubt." But ere I half-way reached the end, I felt my strength was giving out. My foe looked on the while I ran; A scornful triumph lit his eyes. With that perverseness born in man, I nerved myself, and won the prize. All blinded by the crimson glow Of sin's disguise, I tempted Fate. "I knew thy weakness!" sneered my foe, I saved myself, and balked his hate. For half my blessings, half my gain, I needs must thank my trusty foe; Despite his envy and disdain, He serves me well where'er I go. So may I keep him to the end, Nor may his enmity abate: More faithful than the fondest friend, He guards me ever with his hate. FRIENDSHIP. Dear friend, I pray thee, if thou wouldst be proving Thy strong regard for me, Make me no vows. Lip-service is not loving; Let thy faith speak for thee. Swear not to me that nothing can divide us-- So little such oaths mean. But when distrust and envy creep beside us Let them not come between. Say not to me the depths of thy devotion Are deeper than the sea; But watch, lest doubt or some unkind emotion Embitter them for me. Vow not to love me ever and forever, Words are such idle things; But when we differ in opinions, never Hurt me by little stings. I'm sick of words: they are so lightly spoken, And spoken, are but air. I'd rather feel thy trust in me unbroken Than list thy words so fair. If all the little proofs of trust are heeded, If thou art always kind, No sacrifice, no promise will be needed To satisfy my mind. 
26445	----	file was produced from images generously made available by The Kentuckiana Digital Library) [Illustration: (signed) Very Truly Yours, Paul H. Hayne.] SONGS FROM THE SOUTHLAND SELECTED BY S. F. PRICE [Illustration] BOSTON D. LOTHROP COMPANY WASHINGTON STREET OPPOSITE BROMFIEL COPYRIGHT, 1890, BY D. LOTHROP COMPANY. SONGS FROM THE SOUTH-LAND. THE CLOSING YEAR. GEORGE D. PRENTICE. 'Tis midnight's holy hour, and silence now Is brooding, like a gentle spirit o'er The still and pulseless world. Hark! on the winds The bell's deep tones are swelling; 'tis the knell Of the departed year. No funeral train Is sweeping past; yet, on the stream and wood, With melancholy light, the moonbeams rest Like a pale, spotless shroud; the air is stirred, As by a mourner's sigh; and, on yon cloud, That floats so still and placidly through heaven, The spirits of the Seasons seem to stand. Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn's solemn form, And Winter with its aged locks--and breathe In mournful cadences, that come abroad, Like the far windharps wild, touching wail, A melancholy dirge o'er the dead year, Gone from the earth forever. 'Tis a time For memory and for tears. Within the deep, Still chambers of the heart, a spectre dim, Whose tones are like the wizard voice of time, Heard from the tomb of ages, points its cold And solemn finger to the beautiful And holy visions, that have passed away, And left no shadow of their loveliness On the dead waste of life. The spectre lifts The coffin-lid of Hope and Joy and Love, And bending mournfully above the pale, Sweet forms that slumber there, scatters dead flowers O'er what has passed to nothingness. The year Has gone, and with it many a glorious throng Of happy dreams. Its mark is on each brow, Its shadow in each heart. In its swift course, It waved its sceptre o'er the beautiful; And they are not. It laid its pallid hand Upon the strong man: and the haughty form Is fallen, and the flashing eye is dim. It trod the hall of revelry, where thronged The bright and joyous; and the tearful wail Of stricken ones is heard, where erst the song And reckless shout resounded. It passed o'er The battle plain, where sword, and spear and shield, Flashed in the light of midday; and the strength Of serried hosts is shivered, and the grass, Green from the soil of carnage, waves above The crushed and mouldering skeleton. It came, And faded like a wreath of mist at eve; Yet, ere it melted in the viewless air, It heralded its millions to their home, In the dim land of dreams. Remorseless time! Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe! What power Can stay him in his silent course, or melt His iron heart to pity! On, still on, He presses and forever. The proud bird, The Condor of the Andes, that can soar Through heaven's unfathomable depths, or brave The fury of the northing hurricane, And bath its plumage in the thunder's home Furls his broad wing at nightfall, and sinks down To rest upon his mountain crag; but Time Knows not the weight of sleep or weariness, And Night's deep darkness has no chain to bind His rushing pinion. Revolutions sweep O'er earth, like troubled visions o'er the breast Of dreaming sorrow; cities rise and sink Like bubbles on the water; fiery isles Spring blazing from the ocean, and go back To their mysterious caverns; mountains rear To heaven their bold and blackened cliffs, and bow Their tall heads to the plain; and empires rise, Gathering the strength of hoary centuries, And rush down, like the Alpine avalanche, Startling the nations; and the very stars, Yon bright and glorious blazonry of God, Glitter awhile in their eternal depths, And like the Pleiad, loveliest of their train, Shoot from their glorious spheres, and pass away To darkle in the trackless void; yet Time, Time, the tomb-builder, holds his fierce career, Dark, stern, all pitiless, and pauses not Amid the mighty wrecks that strew his path, To sit and muse, like other conquerors, Upon the fearful ruin he hath wrought. CHRISTMAS. [1864.] HENRY TIMROD. How grace this hallowed day? Shall happy bells, from yonder ancient spire, Send their glad greetings to each Christmas fire Round which the children play? .... How shall we grace the day? Ah! Let the thought that on this holy morn The Prince of Peace-the Prince of Peace was born, Employ us, while we pray! Pray for the peace which long Hath left this tortured land, and haply now Holds its white court on some far mountain's brow, There hardly safe from wrong! Let every sacred fane Call its sad votaries to the shrine of God, And, with the cloister and the tented sod, Join in one solemn strain! He, who, till time shall cease, Will watch that earth, where once, not all in vain, He died to give us peace, may not disdain A prayer whose theme is--peace. Perhaps ere yet the Spring Hath died into the Summer, over all The land, the Peace of His vast love shall fall, Like some protecting wing. Oh, ponder what it means! Oh, turn the rapturous thought in every way! Oh, give the vision and the fancy play, And shape the coming scenes! Peace in the quiet dales, Made rankly fertile by the blood of men, Peace in the woodland, and the lonely glen, Peace in the peopled vales! Peace in the crowded town, Peace in the thousand fields of waving grain, Peace in the highway and the flowery lane, Peace on the wind-swept down! Peace on the farthest seas, Peace in our sheltered bays and ample streams, Peace whereso'er our starry garland gleams; And peace in every breeze! Peace on the whirring marts, Peace where the scholar thinks--the hunter roams, Peace, God of Peace! Peace, peace, in all our homes, And peace in all our hearts! [Illustration: "Peace in the quiet dales Made rankly fertile by the blood of men."] LA BELLE JUIVE. HENRY TIMROD. Is it because your sable hair Is folded over brows that wear At times a too imperial air; Or is it that the thoughts which rise In those dark orbs do seek disguise Beneath the lids of Eastern eyes; That choose whatever pose or place May chance to please, in you I trace The noblest woman of your race? The crowd is sauntering at its ease, And humming like a hive of bees-- You take your seat and touch the keys: I do not hear the giddy throng; The sea avenges Israel's wrong, And on the mind floats Miriam's song! You join me with a stately grace; Music to Poesy gives place; Some grand emotion lights your face: At once I stand by Mizpeh's walls; With smiles the martyred daughter falls, And desolate are Mizpeh's halls! Intrusive babblers come between; With calm, pale brow and lofty mein, You thread the circle like a queen! Then sweeps the royal Esther by; The deep devotion in her eye, Is looking "If I die, I die!" You stroll the gardener's flowery walks; The plants to me are grainless stalks, And Ruth to old Naomi talks. Adopted child of Judah's creed, Like Judah's daughters, true at need, I see you mid the alien seed. I watch afar the gleaner sweet; I watch like Boaz in the wheat, And find you lying at my feet. My feet! Oh! if the spell that lures, My heart through all these dreams endures, How soon shall I be stretched at yours! TO HELEN. EDGAR ALLAN POE. Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome. Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand! The agate lamp within thy hand, Ah! Psyche, from the regions which Are Holy Land! A CHRISTMAS CHANT. FATHER RYAN. Four thousand years earth waited, Four thousand years men prayed, Four thousand years the nations sighed That their King so long delayed. The prophets told His coming, The saintly for Him sighed; And the star of the Babe of Bethlehem Shone o'er them when they died. Their faces toward the future, They longed to hail the light That in the after centuries Would rise on Christmas night. But still the Saviour tarried, Within His father's home; And the nations wept and wondered why The promise had not come. At last earth's hope was granted, And God was a child of earth; And a thousand angels chanted The lowly midnight birth. Ah! Bethlehem was grander That hour than paradise; And the light of earth that night eclipsed The splendour of the skies. Then let us sing the anthem, The angels once did sing; Until the music of love and praise O'er whole wide world will ring. Glory in excelsis! Sound the thrilling song; In excelsis Deo! Roll the hymn along. [Illustration: Then let us sing the anthem The angels once did sing.] Glory in excelsis! Let the heavens ring; In excelsis Deo! Welcome, new-born King. Gloria in excelsis! Over the sea and land, In excelsis Deo! Chant the anthem grand. Gloria in excelsis! Let us all rejoice! In excelsis Deo! Lift each heart and voice. Gloria in excelsis! Swell the hymn on high; In excelsis Deo! Sound it to the sky. Gloria in excelsis! Sing it sinful earth. In excelsis Deo! For the Saviour's birth. Thus joyful and victoriously, Glad and ever so gloriously, High as the heavens, wide as the earth, Swelleth the hymn of the Saviour's birth. THE VOICE IN THE PINES. PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE. The morn is softly beautiful and still, Its light, fair clouds in pencilled gold and gray Pause motionless above the pine-grown hill, Where the pines, tranced as by a wizard's will, Uprise as mute and motionless as they! Yea! mute and moveless; not one flickering spray Flashed into sunlight, nor a gaunt bough stirred; Yet, if wooed hence beneath those pines to stray, We catch a faint, thin murmur far away, A bodiless voice, by grosser ears unheard. What voice is this? What low and solemn tone, Which, though all wings of all the winds seemed furled, Nor even the zephyr's fairy flute is blown, Makes thus forever its mysterious moan From out the whispering pine-tops' shadowy world? Ah! can it be the antique tales are true? Doth some lone Dryad haunt the breezeless air, Fronting yon bright immitigable blue, And wildly breathing all her wild soul through That strange unearthly music of despair? Or can it be that ages since, storm-tossed, And driven far inland from the roaring lea, Some baffled ocean-spirit, worn and lost, Here, through dry summer's dearth and winter's frost, Yearns for the sharp, sweet kisses of the sea? Whate'er the spell, I harken and am dumb, Dream-touched, and musing in the tranquil morn; All woodland sounds--the pheasant's gusty drum, The mock-bird's fugue, the droning insect's hum-- Scarce heard for that strange, sorrowful voice forlorn! Beneath the drowsèd sense, from deep to deep Of spiritual life its mournful minor flows, Streamlike, with pensive tide, whose currents keep Low murmuring 'twixt the bounds of grief and sleep, Yet locked for aye for sleep's divine repose. ASPECTS OF THE PINES. PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE. Tall, sombre, grim, against the morning sky They rise, scarce touched by melancholy airs, Which stir the fadeless foliage dreamfully, As if from realms of mystical despairs. Tall, sombre, grim, they stand with dusky gleams Brightening to gold within the woodland's core, Beneath the gracious noontide's tranquil beams-- But the weird winds of morning sigh no more. A stillness, strange, divine, ineffable, Broods round and o'er them in the wind's surcease, And on each tinted copse and shimmering dell Rests the mute rapture of deep-hearted peace. Last, sunset comes--the solemn joy and might Borne from the West when cloudless day declines-- Low, flutelike breezes sweep the waves of light, And lifting dark green tresses of the pines, Till every lock is luminous--gently float, Fraught with hale odors up the heavens afar To faint when twilight on her virginal throat Wears for a gem the tremulous vesper star. [Illustration: "Tall, sombre, grim, they stand with dusky gleam Brightening to gold within the woodland's core."] IN HARBOR. PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE. I think it is over, over, I think it is over at last, Voices of foeman and lover, The sweet and the bitter have passed-- Life, like a tempest of ocean Hath outblown its ultimate blast. There's but a faint sobbing seaward While the calm of the tide deepens leeward, And behold! like the welcoming quiver Of heart-pulses throbbed thro' the river, Those lights in the harbor at last, The heavenly harbor at last! I feel it is over! over! For the winds and the waters surcease; Ah! few were the days of the rover That smiled in the beauty of peace! And distant and dim was the omen That hinted redress or release. From the ravage of life, and its riot What marvel I yearn for the quiet Which bides in the harbor at last? For the lights with their welcoming quiver That through the sanctified river Which girdles the harbor at last, This heavenly harbor at last? I _know_ it is over, over, I know it is over at last! Down sail! the sheathed anchor uncover, For the stress of the voyage has passed-- Life, like a tempest of ocean Hath outbreathed its ultimate blast. There's but a faint sobbing seaward, While the calm of the tide deepens leeward; And behold! like the welcoming quiver Of heart-pulses throbbed thro' the river, Those lights in the harbor at last, The heavenly harbor at last! * * * * * Transcriber's Notes Spelling, hyphenation, and punctuation inconsistencies have been retained from the original book. Page 10: This is a shortened version of Henry Timrod's poem, and the four dots represent lines missing from the full version. 
2622	----	THE HOME BOOK OF VERSE, Volume 4 By Burton Egbert Stevenson Contents of Volumes 1 through 4 of our Etext editions: PART I POEMS OF YOUTH AND AGE The Human Seasons John Keats THE BABY "Only a Baby Small" Matthias Barr Only Harriet Prescott Spofford Infant Joy William Blake Baby George Macdonald To a New-Born Baby Girl Grace Hazard Conkling To Little Renee William Aspenwall Bradley A Rhyme of One Frederick Locker-Lampson To a New-Born Child Cosmo Monkhouse Baby May William Cox Bennett Alice Herbert Bashford Songs for Fragoletta Richard Le Gallienne Choosing a Name Mary Lamb Weighing the Baby Ethel Lynn Beers Etude Realiste Algernon Charles Swinburne Little Feet Elizabeth Akers The Babie Jeremiah Eames Rankin Little Hands Laurence Binyon Bartholomew Norman Gale The Storm-Child May Byron "On Parent Knees" William Jones "Philip, My King" Dinah Maria Mulock Craik The King of the Cradle Joseph Ashby-Sterry The Firstborn John Arthur Goodchild No Baby in the House Clara Dolliver Our Wee White Rose Gerald Massey Into the World and Out Sarah M. P. Piatt "Baby Sleeps" Samuel Hinds Baby Bell Thomas Bailey Aldrich IN THE NURSERY Mother Goose's Melodies Unknown Jack and Jill Unknown The Queen of Hearts Unknown Little Bo-Peep Unknown Mary's Lamb Sarah Josepha Hale The Star Jane Taylor "Sing a Song of Sixpence" Unknown Simple Simon Unknown A Pleasant Ship Unknown "I Had a Little Husband" Unknown "When I Was a Bachelor" Unknown "Johnny Shall Have a New Bonnet" Unknown The City Mouse and the Garden Mouse Christina Rossetti Robin Redbreast Unknown Solomon Grundy Unknown "Merry Are the Bells" Unknown "When Good King Arthur Ruled This Land" Unknown The Bells of London Unknown "The Owl and the Eel and the Warming Pan" Laura E. Richards The Cow Ann Taylor The Lamb William Blake Little Raindrops Unknown "Moon, So Round and Yellow" Matthias Barr The House That Jack Built Unknown Old Mother Hubbard Unknown The Death and Burial of Cock Robin Unknown Baby-Land George Cooper The First Tooth William Brighty Rands Baby's Breakfast Emilie Poulsson The Moon Eliza Lee Follen Baby at Play Unknown The Difference Laura E. Richards Foot Soldiers John Banister Tabb Tom Thumb's Alphabet Unknown Grammar in Rhyme Unknown Days of the Month Unknown The Garden Year Sara Coleridge Riddles Unknown Proverbs Unknown Kind Hearts Unknown Weather Wisdom Unknown Old Superstitions Unknown THE ROAD TO SLUMBERLAND Wynken, Blynken, and Nod Eugene Field The Sugar-Plum Tree Eugene Field When the Sleepy Man Comes Charles G. D. Roberts Auld Daddy Darkness James Ferguson Willie Winkle William Miller The Sandman Margaret Thomson Janvier The Dustman Frederick Edward Weatherly Sephestia's Lullaby Robert Greene "Golden Slumbers Kiss Your Eyes" Thomas Dekker "Sleep, Baby, Sleep" George Wither Mother's Song Unknown A Lullaby Richard Rowlands A Cradle Hymn Isaac Watts Cradle Song William Blake Lullaby Carolina Nairne Lullaby of an Infant Chief Walter Scott Good-Night Jane Taylor "Lullaby, O Lullaby" William Cox Bennett Lullaby Alfred Tennyson The Cottager to Her Infant Dorothy Wordsworth Trot, Trot! Mary F. Butts Holy Innocents Christina Georgina Rossetti Lullaby Josiah Gilbert Holland Cradle Song Josiah Gilbert Holland An Irish Lullaby Alfred Perceval Graves Cradle Song Josephine Preston Peabody Mother-Song from "Prince Lucifer" Alfred Austin Kentucky Babe Richard Henry Buck Minnie and Winnie Alfred Tennyson Bed-Time Song Emilie Poulsson Tucking the Baby In Curtis May "Jenny Wi' the Airn Teeth" Alexander Anderson Cuddle Doon Alexander Anderson Bedtime Francis Robert St. Clair Erskine THE DUTY OF CHILDREN Happy Thought Robert Louis Stevenson Whole Duty of Children Robert Louis Stevenson Politeness Elizabeth Turner Rules of Behavior Unknown Little Fred Unknown The Lovable Child Emilie Poulsson Good and Bad Children Robert Louis Stevenson Rebecca's After-Thought Elizabeth Turner Kindness to Animals Unknown A Rule for Birds' Nesters Unknown "Sing on, Blithe Bird" William Motherwell "I Like Little Pussy" Jane Taylor Little Things Julia Fletcher Carney The Little Gentleman Unknown The Crust of Bread Unknown "How Doth the Little Busy Bee" Isaac Watts The Brown Thrush Lucy Larcom The Sluggard Isaac Watts The Violet Jane Taylor Dirty Jim Jane Taylor The Pin Ann Taylor Jane and Eliza Ann Taylor Meddlesome Matty Ann Taylor Contented John Jane Taylor Friends Abbie Farwell Brown Anger Charles and Mary Lamb "There Was a Little Girl" H. W. Longfellow The Reformation of Godfrey Gore William Brighty Rands The Best Firm Walter G. Doty A Little Page's Song William Alexander Percy How the Little Kite Learned to Fly Unknown The Butterfly and the Bee William Lisle Bowles The Butterfly Adelaide O'Keefe Morning Jane Taylor Buttercups and Daisies Mary Howitt The Ant and the Cricket Unknown After Wings Sarah M. B. Piatt Deeds of Kindness Epes Sargent The Lion and the Mouse Jeffreys Taylor The Boy and the Wolf John Hookham Frere The Story of Augustus, Who Would Not Have Any Soup Heinrich Hoffman The Story of Little Suck-A-Thumb Heinrich Hoffman Written in a Little Lady's Little Album Frederick William Faber My Lady Wind Unknown To a Child William Wordsworth A Farewell Charles Kingsley RHYMES OF CHILDHOOD Reeds of Innocence William Blake The Wonderful World William Brighty Rands The World's Music Gabriel Setoun A Boy's Song James Hogg Going Down Hill On a Bicycle Henry Charles Beeching Playgrounds Laurence Alma-Tadema "Who Has Seen the Wind?" Christina Georgina Rossetti The Wind's Song Gabriel Setoun The Piper on the Hill Dora Sigerson Shorter The Wind and the Moon George Macdonald Child's Song in Spring Edith Nesbit Baby Seed Song Edith Nesbit Little Dandelion Helen Barron Bostwick Little White Lily George Macdonald Wishing William Allingham In the Garden Ernest Crosby The Gladness of Nature William Cullen Bryant Glad Day W. Graham Robertson The Tiger William Blake Answer to a Child's Question Samuel Taylor Coleridge How the Leaves Came Down Susan Coolidge A Legend of the Northland Phoebe Cary The Cricket's Story Emma Huntington Nason The Singing-Lesson Jean Ingelow Chanticleer Katherine Tynan "What Does Little Birdie Say?" Alfred Tennyson Nurse's Song William Blake Jack Frost Gabriel Setoun October's Party George Cooper The Shepherd William Blake Nikolina Celia Thaxter Little Gustava Celia Thaxter Prince Tatters Laura E. Richards The Little Black Boy William Blake The Blind Boy Colley Cibber Bunches of Grapes Walter de la Mare My Shadow Robert Louis Stevenson The Land of Counterpane Robert Louis Stevenson The Land of Story-Books Robert Louis Stevenson The Gardener Robert Louis Stevenson Foreign Lands Robert Louis Stevenson My Bed is a Boat Robert Louis Stevenson The Peddler's Caravan William Brighty Rands Mr. Coggs Edward Verrall Lucas The Building of the Nest Margaret Sangster "There was a Jolly Miller" Isaac Bickerstaff One and One Mary Mapes Dodge A Nursery Song Laura E. Richards A Mortifying Mistake Anna Maria Pratt The Raggedy Man James Whitcomb Riley The Man in the Moon James Whitcomb Riley Little Orphant Annie James Whitcomb Riley Our Hired Girl James Whitcomb Riley See'n Things Eugene Field The Duel Eugene Field Holy Thursday William Blake A Story for a Child Bayard Taylor The Spider and the Fly Mary Howitt The Captain's Daughter James Thomas Fields The Nightingale and the Glow-Worm William Cowper Sir Lark and King Sun: A Parable George Macdonald The Courtship, Merry Marriage, and Picnic Dinner of Cock Robin and Jenny Wren Unknown The Babes in the Wood Unknown God's Judgment on a Wicked Bishop Robert Southey The Pied Piper of Hamelin Robert Browning THE GLAD EVANGEL A Carol Unknown "God Rest You Merry Gentlemen" Unknown 'O Little Town of Bethlehem" Phillips Brooks A Christmas Hymn Alfred Domett "While Shepherds Watched their Flocks by Night" Nahum Tate Christmas Carols Edmund Hamilton Sears The Angels William Drummond The Burning Babe Robert Southwell Tryste Noel Louise Imogen Guiney Christmas Carol Unknown "Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning" Reginald Heber Christmas Bells Henry Wadsworth Longfellow A Christmas Carol Gilbert Keith Chesterton The House of Christmas Gilbert Keith Chesterton The Feast of the Snow Gilbert Keith Chesterton Mary's Baby Shaemas OSheel Gates and Doors Joyce Kilmer The Three Kings Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Lullaby in Bethlehem Henry Howarth Bashford A Child's Song of Christmas Marjorie L. C. Pickthall Jest 'Fore Christmas Eugene Field A Visit from St. Nicholas Clement Clarke Moore Ceremonies for Christmas Robert Herrick On the Morning of Christ's Nativity John Milton FAIRYLAND The Fairy Book Norman Gale Fairy Songs William Shakespeare Queen Mab Ben Jonson The Elf and the Dormouse Oliver Herford "Oh! Where Do Fairies Hide Their Heads?" Thomas Haynes Bayly Fairy Song Leigh Hunt Dream Song Richard Middleton Fairy Song John Keats Queen Mab Thomas Hood The Fairies of the Caldon-Low Mary Howitt The Fairies William Allingham The Fairy Thrall Mary C. G. Byron Farewell to the Fairies Richard Corbet The Fairy Folk Robert Bird The Fairy Book Abbie Farwell Brown The Visitor Patrick R. Chalmers The Little Elf John Kendrick Bangs The Satyrs and the Moon Herbert S. Gorman THE CHILDREN The Children Charles Monroe Dickinson The Children's Hour Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Laus Infantium William Canton The Desire Katherine Tynan A Child's Laughter Algernon Charles Swinburne Seven Years Old Algernon Charles Swinburne Creep Afore Ye Gang James Ballantine Castles in the Air James Ballantine Under My Window Thomas Westwood Little Bell Thomas Westwood The Barefoot Boy John Greenleaf Whittier The Heritage James Russell Lowell Letty's Globe Charles Tennyson Turner Dove's Nest Joseph Russell Taylor The Oracle Arthur Davison Ficke To a Little Girl Helen Parry Eden To a Little Girl Gustav Kobbe A Parental Ode to My Son Thomas Hood A New Poet William Canton To Laura W-, Two Years Old Nathaniel Parker Willis To Rose Sara Teasdale To Charlotte Pulteney Ambrose Philips The Picture of Little T. C. in a Prospect of Flowers Andrew Marvell To Hartley Coleridge William Wordsworth To a Child of Quality Matthew Prior Ex Ore Infantium Francis Thompson Obituary Thomas William Parsons The Child's Heritage John G. Neihardt A Girl of Pompeii Edward Sandford Martin On the Picture of a "Child Tired of Play" Nathaniel Parker Willis The Reverie of Poor Susan William Wordsworth Children's Song Ford Madox Hueffer The Mitherless Bairn William Thom The Cry of the Children Elizabeth Barrett Browning The Shadow-Child Harriet Monroe Mother Wept Joseph Skipsey Duty Ralph Waldo Emerson Lucy Gray William Wordsworth In the Children's Hospital Alfred Tennyson "If I Were Dead" Coventry Patmore The Toys Coventry Patmore A Song of Twilight Unknown Little Boy Blue Eugene Field The Discoverer Edmund Clarence Stedman A Chrysalis Mary Emily Bradley Mater Dolorosa William Barnes The Little Ghost Katherine Tynan Motherhood Josephine Daskam Bacon The Mother's Prayer Dora Sigerson Shorter Da Leetla Boy Thomas Augustin Daly On the Moor Gale Young Rice Epitaph of Dionysia Unknown For Charlie's Sake John Williamson Palmer "Are the Children at Home?" Margaret Sangster The Morning-Glory Maria White Lowell She Came and Went James Russell Lowell The First Snow-fall James Russell Lowell "We Are Seven" William Wordsworth My Child John Pierpont The Child's Wish Granted George Parsons Lathrop Challenge Kenton Foster Murray Tired Mothers May Riley Smith My Daughter Louise Homer Greene "I Am Lonely" George Eliot Sonnets from "Mimma Bella" Eugene Lee-Hamilton Rose-Marie of the Angels Adelaide Crapsey MAIDENHOOD Maidenhood Henry Wadsworth Longfellow To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time Robert Herrick To Mistress Margaret Hussey John Skelton On Her Coming To London Edmund Waller "O, Saw Ye Bonny Lesley" Robert Burns To a Young Lady William Cowper Ruth Thomas Hood The Solitary Reaper William Wordsworth The Three Cottage Girls William Wordsworth Blackmwore Maidens William Barnes A Portrait Elizabeth Barrett Browning To a Child of Fancy Lewis Morris Daisy Francis Thompson To Petronilla, Who Has Put Up Her Hair Henry Howarth Bashford The Gipsy Girl Henry Alford Fanny Anne Reeve Aldrich Somebody's Child Louise Chandler Moulton Emilia Sarah N. Cleghorn To a Greek Girl Austin Dobson "Chamber Scene" Nathaniel Parker Willis "Ah, Be Not False" Richard Watson Gilder A Life-Lesson James Whitcomb Riley THE MAN The Breaking Margaret Steele Anderson The Flight of Youth Richard Henry Stoddard "Days of My Youth" St. George Tucker Ave Atque Vale Rosamund Marriott Watson To Youth Walter Savage Landor Stanzas Written on the Road Between Florence and Pisa George Gordon Byron Stanzas for Music George Gordon Byron "When As a Lad" Isabel Ecclestone Mackay "Around the Child" Walter Savage Landor Aladdin James Russell Lowell The Quest Ellen Mackey Hutchinson Cortissoz My Birth-Day Thomas Moore Sonnet on His having Arrived to the Age of Twenty-Three John Milton On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year George Gordon Byron Growing Gray Austin Dobson The One White Hair Walter Savage Landor Ballade of Middle Age Andrew Lang Middle Age Rudolph Chambers Lehmann To Critics Walter Learned The Rainbow William Wordsworth Leavetaking William Watson Equinoctial Adeline D. T. Whitney "Before the Beginning of Years" Algernon Charles Swinburne Man Henry Vaughan The Pulley George Herbert Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood William Wordsworth THE WOMAN Woman Eaton Stannard Barrett Woman From the Sanskrit of Calidasa Simplex Munditiis Ben Jonson Delight in Disorder Robert Herrick A Praise of His Lady John Heywood On a Certain Lady at Court Alexander Pope Perfect Woman William Wordsworth The Solitary-Hearted Hartley Coleridge Of Those Who Walk Alone Richard Burton "She Walks in Beauty" George Gordon Byron Preludes from "The Angel in The House" Coventry Patmore A Health Edward Coote Pinkney Our Sister Horatio Nelson Powers From Life Brian Hooker The Rose of the World William Butler Yeats Dawn of Womanhood Harold Monro The Shepherdess Alice Meynell A Portrait Brian Hooker The Wife Theodosia Garrison "Trusty, Dusky, Vivid, True" Robert Louis Stevenson The Shrine Digby Mackworth Dolben The Voice Norman Gale Mother Theresa Helburn Ad Matrem Julian Fane C.L.M John Masefield STEPPING WESTWARD Stepping Westward William Wordsworth A Farewell to Arms George Peele The World Francis Bacon "When That I Was and a Little Tiny Boy" William Shakespeare Of the Last Verses in the Book Edmund Waller A Lament Chidiock Tichborne To-morrow John Collins Late Wisdom George Crabbe Youth and Age Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Old Man's Comforts Robert Southey To Age Walter Savage Lander Late Leaves Walter Savage Lander Years Walter Savage Lander The River of Life Thomas Campbell "Long Time a Child" Hartley Coleridge The World I am Passing Through Lydia Maria Child Terminus Ralph Waldo Emerson Rabbi Ben Ezra Robert Browning Human Life Audrey Thomas de Vere Young and Old Charles Kingsley The Isle of the Long Ago Benjamin Franklin Taylor Growing Old Matthew Arnold Past John Galsworthy Twilight A. Mary F. Robinson Youth and Age George Arnold Forty Years On Edward Ernest Bowen Dregs Ernest Dowson The Paradox of Time Austin Dobson Age William Winter Omnia Sonmia Rosamund Marriott Watson The Year's End Timothy Cole An Old Man's Song Richard Le Gallienne Songs of Seven Jean Ingelow Auspex James Russell Lowell LOOKING BACKWARD The Retreat Henry Vaughan A Superscription Dante Gabriel Rossetti The Child in the Garden Henry Van Dyke Castles in the Air Thomas Love Peacock Sometimes Thomas S. Jones, Jr The Little Ghosts Thomas S. Jones, Jr My Other Me Grace Denio Litchfield A Shadow Boat Arlo Bates A Lad That is Gone Robert Louis Stevenson Carcassonne John R. Thompson Childhood John Banister Tabb The Wastrel Reginald Wright Kauffman Troia Fuit Reginald Wright Kauffman Temple Garlands A. Mary F. Robinson Time Long Past Percy Bysshe Shelley "I Remember, I Remember" Thomas Hood My Lost Youth Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "Voice of the Western Wind" Edmund Clarence Stedman "Langsyne, When Life Was Bonnie" Alexander Anderson The Shoogy-Shoo Winthrop Packard Babylon Viola Taylor The Road of Remembrance Lizette Woodworth Reese The Triumph of Forgotten Things Edith M. Thomas In the Twilight James Russell Lowell An Immorality Ezra Pound Three Seasons Christina Georgina Rossetti The Old Familiar Faces Charles Lamb The Light of Other Days Thomas Moore "Tears, Idle Tears" Alfred Tennyson The Pet Name Elizabeth Barrett Browning Threescore and Ten Richard Henry Stoddard Rain on the Roof Coates Kinney Alone by the Hearth George Arnold The Old Man Dreams Oliver Wendell Holmes The Garret William Makepeace Thackeray Auld Lang Syne Robert Burns Rock Me to Sleep Elizabeth Akers The Bucket Samuel Woodworth The Grape-Vine Swing William Gilmore Simms The Old Swimmin'-Hole James Whitcomb Riley Forty Years Ago Unknown Ben Bolt Thomas Dunn English "Break, Break, Break" Alfred Tennyson PART II POEMS OF LOVE Eros Ralph Waldo Emerson "NOW WHAT IS LOVE" "Now What is Love" Walter Raleigh Wooing Song, "Love is the Blossom where there blows" Giles Fletcher Rosalind's Madrigal, "Love in My bosom" Thomas Lodge Song, "Love is a sickness full of woes" Samuel Daniel Love's Perjuries William Shakespeare Venus' Runaway Ben Jonson What is Love John Fletcher Love's Emblems John Fletcher The Power of Love John Fletcher Advice to a Lover Unknown Love's Horoscope Richard Crashaw "Ah, how Sweet it is to Love" John Dryden Song, "Love still has something of the sea" Charles Sedley The Vine James Thomson Song, "Fain would I change that Note" Unknown Cupid Stung Thomas Moore Cupid Drowned Leigh Hunt Song, "Oh! say not woman's love is bought" Isaac Pocock "In the Days of Old" Thomas Love Peacock Song, "How delicious is the winning" Thomas Campbell Stanzas, "Could love for ever" George Gordon Byron "They Speak o' Wiles" William Thom "Love will Find Out the Way" Unknown A Woman's Shortcomings Elizabeth Barrett Browning "Love hath a Language" Helen Selina Sheridan Song, "O, let the solid ground" Alfred Tennyson Amaturus William Johnson-Cory The Surface and the Depths Lewis Morris A Ballad of Dreamland Algernon Charles Swinburne Endymion Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Fate Susan Marr Spalding "Give all to Love" Ralph Waldo Emerson "O, Love is not a Summer Mood" Richard Watson Gilder "When will Love Come" Pakenham Beatty "Awake, My Heart" Robert Bridges The Secret George Edward Woodberry The Rose of Stars George Edward Woodberry Song of Eros from "Agathon" George Edward Woodberry Love is Strong Richard Burton "Love once was like an April Dawn" Robert Underwood Johnson The Garden of Shadow Ernest Dowson The Call Reginald Wright Kauffman The Highway Louise Driscoll Song, "Take it, love" Richard Le Gallienne "Never Give all the Heart" William Butler Yeats Song, "I came to the door of the house of love" Alfred Noyes "Child, Child" Sara Teasdale Wisdom Ford Madox Hueffer Epilogue from "Emblems of Love" Lascelles Abercrombie On Hampstead Heath Wilfrid Wilson Gibson Once on a Time Kendall Banning IN PRAISE OF HER First Song from "Astrophel and Stella" Philip Sidney Silvia William Shakespeare Cupid and Campaspe John Lyly Apollo's Song from "Midas" John Lyly "Fair is my Love for April's in her Face" Robert Greene Samela Robert Greene Damelus' Song of His Diaphenia Henry Constable Madrigal, "My Love in her attire doth show her wit" Unknown On Chloris Walking in the Snow William Strode "There is a Lady Sweet and Kind" Unknown Cherry-Ripe Thomas Campion Amarillis Thomas Campion Elizabeth of Bohemia Henry Wotton Her Triumph Ben Jonson Of Phillis William Drummond A Welcome William Browne The Complete Lover William Browne Rubies and Pearls Robert Herrick Upon Julia's Clothes Robert Herrick To Cynthia on Concealment of her Beauty Francis Kynaston Song, "Ask me no more where Jove bestows" Thomas Carew A Devout Lover Thomas Randolph On a Girdle Edmund Waller Castara William Habington To Amarantha that She would Dishevel her Hair Richard Lovelace Chloe Divine Thomas D'Urfey My Peggy Allan Ramsay Song, "O ruddier than the cherry" John Gay "Tell me, my Heart, if this be Love" George Lyttleton The Fair Thief Charles Wyndham Amoret Mark Akenside Song, "The shape alone let others Prize" Mark Akenside Kate of Aberdeen John Cunningham Song, "Who has robbed the ocean cave" John Shaw Chloe Robert Burns "O Mally's Meek, Mally's Sweet" Robert Burns The Lover's Choice Thomas Bedingfield Rondeau Redouble John Payne "My Love She's but a Lassie yet" James Hogg Jessie, the Flower o' Dunblane Robert Tannahill Margaret and Dora Thomas Campbell Dagonet's Canzonet Ernest Rhys Stanzas for Music, "There be none of Beauty's daughters" George Gordon Byron "Flowers I would Bring" Aubrey Thomas de Vere "It is not Beauty I Demand" George Darley Song, "She is not fair to outward view" Hartley Coleridge Song, "A violet in her lovely hair" Charles Swain Eileen Aroon Gerald Griffin Annie Laurie Unknown To Helen Edgar Allan Poe "A Voice by the Cedar Tree" Alfred Tennyson Song, "Nay, but you, who do not love her" Robert Browning The Henchman John Green1eaf Whittier Lovely Mary Donnelly William Allingham Love in the Valley George Meredith Marian George Meredith Praise of My Lady William Morris Madonna Mia Algernon Charles Swinburne "Meet we no Angels, Pansie" Thomas Ashe To Daphne Walter Besant "Girl of the Red Mouth" Martin MacDermott The Daughter of Mendoza Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar "If She be made of White and Red" Herbert P. Horne The Lover's Song Edward Rowland Sill "When First I Saw Her" George Edward Woodberry My April Lady Henry Van Dyke The Milkmaid Austin Dobson Song, "This peach is pink with such a pink" Norman Gale In February Henry Simpson "Love, I Marvel What You Are" Trumbull Stickney Ballade of My Lady's Beauty Joyce Kilmer Ursula Robert Underwood Johnson Villanelle of His Lady's Treasures Ernest Dowson Song, "Love, by that loosened hair" Bliss Carman Song, "O, like a queen's her happy tread" William Watson Any Lover, Any Lass Richard Middleton Songs Ascending Witter Bynner Song, "'Oh! Love,' they said, 'is King of Kings'" Rupert Brooke Song, "How do I love you" Irene Rutherford McLeod To.... In Church Alan Seeger After Two Years Richard Aldington Praise Seumas O'Sullivan PLAINTS AND PROTESTATIONS "Forget not Yet" Thomas Wyatt Fawnia Robert Greene The Passionate Shepherd to His Love Christopher Marlowe The Nymph's Reply to the Passionate Shepherd Walter Raleigh "Wrong not, Sweet Empress of My Heart" Walter Raleigh To His Coy Love Michael Drayton Her Sacred Bower Thomas Campion To Lesbia Thomas Campion "Love me or Not" Thomas Campion "There is None, O None but You" Thomas Campion Of Corinna's Singing Thomas Campion "Were my Heart as some Men's are" Thomas Campion "Kind are her Answers" Thomas Campion To Celia Ben Jonson Song, "O, do not wanton with those eyes" Ben Jonson Song, "Go and catch a falling star" John Donne The Message John Donne Song, "Ladies, though to your conquering eyes" George Etherege To a Lady Asking Him how Long He would Love Her" George Etherege To Aenone Robert Herrick To Anthea, who may Command him Anything Robert Herrick The Bracelet: To Julia Robert Herrick To the Western Wind Robert Herrick To my Inconstant Mistress Thomas Carew Persuasions to Enjoy Thomas Carew Mediocrity in Love Rejected Thomas Carew The Message Thomas Heywood "How Can the Heart forget Her" Francis Davison To Roses in the Bosom of Castara William Habington To Flavia Edmund Waller "Love not Me for Comely Grace" Unknown "When, Dearest, I but Think of Thee" Suckling or Felltham A Doubt of Martyrdom John Suckling To Chloe William Cartwright I'll Never Love Thee More James Graham To Althea, from Prison Richard Lovelace Why I Love Her Alexander Brome To his Coy Mistress Andrew Marvell A Deposition from Beauty Thomas Stanley "Love in thy Youth, Fair Maid" Unknown To Celia Charles Cotton To Celia Charles Sedley A Song, "My dear mistress Has a Heart" John Wilmot Love and Life John Wilmot Constancy John Wilmot Song, "Too late, alas, I must Confess" John Wilmot Song, "Come, Celia, let's agree at last" John Sheffield The Enchantment Thomas Otway Song, "Only tell her that I love" John Cutts "False though She be" William Congreve To Silvia Anne Finch "Why, Lovely Charmer" Unknown Against Indifference Charles Webbe A Song to Amoret Henry Vaughan The Lass of Richmond Hill James Upton Song, "Let my voice ring out and over the earth" James Thomson Gifts James Thomson Amynta Gilbert Elliot "O Nancy! wilt Thou go with Me" Thomas Percy Cavalier's Song Robert Cunninghame-Graham "My Heart is a Lute" Anne Barnard Song, "Had I a heart for falsehood framed" Richard Brinsley Sheridan Meeting George Crabbe "O Were my Love you Lilac Fair" Robert Burns "Bonnie Wee Thing" Robert Burns Rose Aylmer Walter Savage Landor "Take back the Virgin Page" Thomas Moore "Believe me, if all Those Endearing Young Charms" Thomas Moore The Nun Leigh Hunt Only of Thee and Me Louis Untermeyer To-- Percy Bysshe Shelley From the Arabic Percy Bysshe Shelley The Wandering Knight's Song John Gibson Lockhart Song, "Love's on the highroad" Dana Burnett The Secret Love A. E. The Flower of Beauty George Darley My Share of the World Alice Furlong Song, "A lake and a fairy boat" Thomas Hood "Smile and Never Heed Me" Charles Swain Are They not all Ministering Spirits Robert Stephen Hawker Maiden Eyes Gerald Griffin Hallowed Places Alice Freeman Palmer The Lady's "Yes" Elizabeth Barrett Browning Song, "It is the miller's daughter" Alfred Tennyson Lilian Alfred Tennyson Bugle Song, from "The Princess" Alfred Tennyson Ronsard to His Mistress William Makepeace Thackeray "When You are Old" William Butler Yeats Song, "You'll love me yet, and I can tarry" Robert Browning Love in a Life Robert Browning Life in a Love Robert Browning The Welcome Thomas Osborne Davis Urania Matthew Arnold Three Shadows Dante Gabriel Rossetti Since we Parted Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton A Match Algernon Charles Swinburne A Ballad of Life Algernon Charles Swinburne A Leave-Taking Algernon Charles Swinburne A Lyric Algernon Charles Swinburne Maureen John Todhunter A Love Symphony Arthur O'Shaughnessy Love on the Mountain Thomas Boyd Kate Temple's Song Mortimer Collins My Queen Unknown "Darling, Tell me Yes" John Godfrey Saxe "Do I Love Thee" John Godfrey Saxe "O World, be Nobler" Laurence Binyon "In the Dark, in the Dew" Mary Newmarch Prescott Nanny Francis Davis A Trifle Henry Timrod Romance Robert Louis Stevenson "Or Ever the Knightly Years were Gone" William Ernest Henley Rus in Urbe Clement Scott My Road Oliver Opdyke A White Rose John Boyle O'Reilly "Some Day of Days" Nora Perry The Telephone Robert Frost Where Love is Amelia Josephine Burr That Day You Came Lizette Woodworth Reese Amantium Irae Ernest Dowson In a Rose Garden John Bennett "God Bless You, Dear, To-day" John Bennett To-day Benjamin R. C. Low To Arcady Charles Buxton Going Wild Wishes Ethel M. Hewitt "Because of You" Sophia Almon Hensley Then Rose Terry Cooke The Missive Edmund Gosse Plymouth Harbor Mrs. Ernest Radford The Serf's Secret William Vaughn Moody "O, Inexpressible as Sweet" George Edward Woodberry The Cyclamen Arlo Bates The West-Country Lover Alice Brown "Be Ye in Love with April-Tide" Clinton Scollard Unity Alfred Noyes The Queen William Winter A Lover's Envy Henry Van Dyke Star Song Robert Underwood Johnson "My Heart Shall be Thy Garden" Alice Meynell At Night Alice Meynell Song, "Song is so old" Hermann Hagedorn "All Last Night" Lascelles Abercrombie The Last Word Frederic Lawrence Knowles "Heart of my Heart" Unknown My Laddie Amelie Rives The Shaded Pool Norman Gale Good-Night S. Weir Mitchell The Mystic Witter Bynner "I Am the Wind" Zoe Akins "I Love my Life, But not Too Well" Harriet Monroe "This is my Love for You" Grace Fallow Norton MY LADY'S LIPS Lips and Eyes Thomas Middleton The Kiss Ben Jonson "Take, O Take Those Lips Away" John Fletcher A Stolen Kiss George Wither Song, "My Love bound me with a kiss" Unknown To Electra Robert Herrick "Come, Chloe, and Give Me Sweet Kisses" Charles Hanbury Williams A Riddle William Cowper To a Kiss John Wolcot Song, "Often I have heard it said" Walter Savage Landor The First Kiss of Love George Gordon Byron "Jenny Kissed Me" Leigh Hunt "I Fear Thy Kisses, Gentle Maiden" Percy Bysshe Shelley Love's Philosophy Percy Bysshe Shelley Song, "The moth's kiss, first" Robert Browning Summum Bonum Robert Browning The First Kiss Theodore Watts-Dunton To My Love John Godfrey Saxe To Lesbia John Godfrey Saxe Make Believe Alice Cary Kissing's No Sin Unknown To Anne William Maxwell Song, "There is many a love in the land, my love" Joaquin Miller Phyllis and Corydon Arthur Colton AT HER WINDOW "Hark, Hark, the Lark" William Shakespeare "Sleep, Angry Beauty" Thomas Campion Matin Song Nathaniel Field The Night-Piece: To Julia Robert Herrick Morning William D'Avenant Matin Song Thomas Heywood The Rose Richard Lovelace Song, "See, see, she wakes! Sabina wakes" William Congreve Mary Morison Robert Burns Wake, Lady Joanna Baillie The Sleeping Beauty Samuel Rogers "The Young May Moon" Thomas Moore "Row Gently Here" Thomas Moore Morning Serenade Madison Cawein Serenade Aubrey Thomas De Vere Lines to an Indian Air Percy Bysshe Shelley Good-Night Percy Bysshe Shelley Serenade George Darley Serenade Thomas Hood Serenade Edward Coote Pinkney Serenade Henry Timrod Serenade Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "Come into the Garden, Maud" Alfred Tennyson At Her Window Frederick Locker-Lampson Bedouin Song Bayard Taylor Night and Love Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton Nocturne Thomas Bailey Aldrich Palabras Carinosas Thomas Bailey Aldrich Serenade Oscar Wilde The Little Red Lark Alfred Perceval Graves Serenade Richard Middleton THE COMEDY OF LOVE A Lover's Lullaby George Gascoigne Phillida and Corydon Nicholas Breton "Crabbed Age and Youth" William Shakespeare "It Was a Lover and His Lass" William Shakespeare "I Loved a Lass" George Wither To Chloris Charles Sedley Song, "The merchant, to secure his Treasure" Matthew Prior Pious Selinda William Congreve Fair Hebe John West A Maiden's Ideal of a Husband Henry Carey "Phillada Flouts Me" Unknown "When Molly Smiles" Unknown Contentions Unknown "I Asked My Fair, One Happy Day" Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Exchange Samuel Taylor Coleridge "Comin' Through the Rye" Robert Burns "Green Grow the Rashes, O" Robert Burns Defiance Walter Savage Landor Of Clementina Walter Savage Landor "The Time I've Lost in Wooing" Thomas Moore Dear Fanny Thomas Moore A Certain Young Lady Washington Irving "Where Be You Going, You Devon Maid" John Keats Love in a Cottage Nathaniel Parker Willis Song of the Milkmaid from "Queen Mary" Alfred Tennyson "Wouldn't You Like to Know" John Godfrey Saxe "Sing Heigh-ho" Charles Kingsley The Golden Fish George Arnold The Courtin' James Russell Lowell L'Eau Dormante Thomas Bailey Aldrich A Primrose Dame Gleeson White If James Jeffrey Roche Don't James Jeffrey Roche An Irish Love-Song Robert Underwood Johnson Growing Old Walter Learned Time's Revenge Walter Learned In Explanation Walter Learned Omnia Vincit Alfred Cochrane A Pastoral Norman Gale A Rose Arlo Bates "Wooed and Married and A'" Alexander Ross "Owre the Moor Amang the Heather" Jean Glover Marriage and the Care O't Robert Lochore The Women Folk James Hogg "Love is Like a Dizziness" James Hogg "Behave Yoursel' before Folk" Alexander Rodger Rory O'More; or, Good Omens Samuel Lover Ask and Have Samuel Lover Kitty of Coleraine Charles Dawson Shanly The Plaidie Charles Sibley Kitty Neil John Francis Waller "The Dule's i' this Bonnet o' Mine" Edwin Waugh The Ould Plaid Shawl Francis A. Fahy Little Mary Cassidy Francis A. Fahy The Road Patrick R. Chalmers Twickenham Ferry Theophile Marzials THE HUMOR OF LOVE Song, "I prithee send me back my Heart" John Suckling A Ballad Upon a Wedding John Suckling To Chloe Jealous Matthew Prior Jack and Joan Thomas Campion Phillis and Corydon Richard Greene Sally in Our Alley Henry Carey The Country Wedding Unknown "O Merry may the Maid be" John Clerk The Lass o' Gowrie Carolina Nairne The Constant Swain and Virtuous Maid Unknown When the Kye Comes Hame James Hogg The Low-Backed Car Samuel Lover The Pretty Girl of Loch Dan Samuel Ferguson Muckle-Mouth Meg Robert Browning Muckle-Mou'd Meg James Ballantine Glenlogie Unknown Lochinvar Walter Scott Jock of Hazeldean Walter Scott Candor Henry Cuyler Bunner "Do you Remember" Thomas Haynes Bayly Because Edward Fitzgerald Love and Age Thomas Love Peacock To Helen Winthrop Mackworth Praed At the Church Gate William Makepeace Thackeray Mabel, in New Hampshire James Thomas Fields Toujours Amour Edmund Clarence Stedman The Doorstep Edmund Clarence Stedman The White Flag John Hay A Song of the Four Seasons Austin Dobson The Love-Knot Nora Perry Riding Down Nora Perry "Forgettin'" Moira O'Neill "Across the Fields to Anne" Richard Burton Pamela in Town Ellen Mackay Hutchinson Cortissoz Yes? Henry Cuyler Bunner The Prime of Life Walter Learned Thoughts on the Commandments George Augustus Baker THE IRONY OF LOVE "Sigh no More, Ladies" William Shakespeare A Renunciation Edward Vere A Song, "Ye happy swains, whose hearts are free" George Etherege To His Forsaken Mistress Robert Ayton To an Inconstant Robert Ayton Advice to a Girl Thomas Campion Song, "Follow a shadow, it still flies you" Ben Jonson True Beauty Francis Beaumont The Indifferent Francis Beaumont The Lover's Resolution George Wither His Further Resolution Unknown Song, "Shall I tell you whom I love" William Browne To Dianeme Robert Herrick Ingrateful Beauty Threatened Thomas Carew Disdain Returned Thomas Carew "Love Who Will, for I'll Love None" William Browne Valerius on Women Thomas Heywood Dispraise of Love, and Lovers' Follies Francis Davison The Constant Lover John Suckling Song, "Why so pale and wan, fond Lover" John Suckling Wishes to His Supposed Mistress Richard Crashaw Song, "Love in fantastic Triumph sate" Aphra Behn Les Amours Charles Cotton Rivals William Walsh I Lately Vowed, but 'Twas in Haste John Oldmixon The Touchstone Samuel Bishop Air, "I ne'er could any luster see" Richard Brinsley Sheridan "I Took a Hansom on Today" William Ernest Henley Da Capo Henry Cuyler Bunner Song Against Women Willard Huntington Wright Song of Thyrsis Philip Freneau The Test Walter Savage Landor "The Fault is not Mine" Walter Savage Landor The Snake Thomas Moore "When I Loved You" Thomas Moore A Temple to Friendship Thomas Moore The Glove and the Lions Leigh Hunt To Woman George Gordon Byron Love's Spite Aubrey Thomas de Vere Lady Clara Vere de Vere Alfred Tennyson Shadows Richard Monckton Milnes Sorrows of Werther William Makepeace Thackeray The Age of Wisdom William Makepeace Thackeray Andrea del Sarto Robert Browning My Last Duchess Robert Browning Adam, Lilith, and Eve Robert Browning The Lost Mistress Robert Browning Friend and Lover Mary Ainge de Vere Lost Love Andrew Lang Vobiscum est Iope Thomas Campion Four Winds Sara Teasdale To Marion Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Crowned Amy Lowell Hebe James Russell Lowell "Justine, You Love me Not" John Godfrey Saxe Snowdrop William Wetmore Story When the Sultan Goes to Ispahan Thomas Bailey Aldrich The Shadow Dance Louise Chandler Moulton "Along the Field as we Came by" Alfred Edward Housman "When I was One-and-Twenty" Alfred Edward Housman "Grieve Not, Ladies" Anna Hempstead Branch Suburb Harold Monro The Betrothed Rudyard Kipling LOVE'S SADNESS "The Night has a Thousand Eyes" Francis William Bourdillon "I Saw my Lady Weep" Unknown Love's Young Dream Thomas Moore "Not Ours the Vows" Bernard Barton The Grave of Love Thomas Love Peacock "We'll go no More a Roving" George Gordon Byron Song, "Sing the old song, amid the sounds dispersing" Aubrey Thomas de Vere The Question Percy Bysshe Shelley The Wanderer Austin Dobson Egyptian Serenade George William Curtis The Water Lady Thomas Hood "Tripping Down the Field-path" Charles Swain Love Not Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton "A Place in Thy Memory" Gerald Griffin Inclusions Elizabeth Barrett Browning Mariana Alfred Tennyson Ask Me no More Alfred Tennyson A Woman's Last Word Robert Browning The Last Ride Together Robert Browning Youth and Art Robert Browning Two in the Campagna Robert Browning One Way of Love Robert Browning "Never the Time and the Place" Robert Browning Song, "Oh! that we two were Maying" Charles Kingsley For He Had Great Possessions Richard Middleton Windle-straws Edward Dowden Jessie Thomas Edward Brown The Chess-board Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton Aux Italiens Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton Song, "I saw the day's white rapture" Charles Hanson Towne The Lonely Road Kenneth Rand Evensong Ridgely Torrence The Nymph's Song to Hylas William Morris No and Yes Thomas Ashe Love in Dreams John Addington Symonds "A Little While I fain would Linger Yet" Paul Hamilton Hayne Song, "I made another garden, yea" Arthur O'Shaughnessy Song, "Has summer come without the rose" Arthur O'Shaughnessy After Philip Bourke Marston After Summer Philip Bourke Marston Rococo Algernon Charles Swinburne Rondel Algernon Charles Swinburne The Oblation Algernon Charles Swinburne The Song of the Bower Dante Gabriel Rossetti Song, "We break the glass, whose sacred wine" Edward Coote Pinkney Maud Muller John Greenleaf Whittier La Grisette Oliver Wendell Holmes The Dark Man Nora Hopper Eurydice Francis William Bourdillon A Woman's Thought Richard Watson Gilder Laus Veneris Louise Chandler Moulton Adonais Will Wallace Harney Face to Face Frances Cochrane Ashore Laurence Hope Khristna and His Flute Laurence Hope Impenitentia Ultima Ernest Dowson Non Sum Quails Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae Ernest Dowson Quid non Speremus, Amantes? Ernest Dowson "So Sweet Love Seemed" Robert Bridges An Old Tune Andrew Lang Refuge William Winter Midsummer Ella Wheeler Wilcox Ashes of Roses Elaine Goodale Sympathy Althea Gyles The Look Sara Teasdale "When My Beloved Sleeping Lies" Irene Rutherford McLeod Love and Life Julie Mathilde Lippman Love's Prisoner Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer Rosies Agnes I. Hanrahan At the Comedy Arthur Stringer "Sometime It may Be" Arthur Colton "I heard a Soldier" Herbert Trench The Last Memory Arthur Symonds "Down by the Salley Gardens" William Butler Yates Ashes of Life Edna St. Vincent Millay A Farewell Alice Brown THE PARTED LOVERS Song, "O mistress mine, where are you roaming" William Shakespeare "Go, Lovely Rose" Edmund Waller To the Rose: A Song Robert Herrick Memory William Browne To Lucasta, Going to the Wars Richard Lovelace To Lucasta, Going beyond the Seas Richard Lovelace Song to a Fair Young Lady, Going out of the Town in the Spring John Dryden Song, "To all you ladies now at land" Charles Sackville Song, "In vain you tell your parting lover" Matthew Prior Black-Eyed Susan John Gay Irish Molly O Unknown Song, "At setting day and rising morn" Allan Ramsay Lochaber no More Allan Ramsey Willie and Helen Hew Ainslie Absence Richard Jago "My Mother Bids me Bind my Hair" Anne Hunter "Blow High! Blow Low" Charles Dibdin The Siller Croun Susanna Blamire "My Nannie's Awa" Robert Burns "Ae Fond Kiss" Robert Burns "The Day Returns" Robert Burns My Bonnie Mary Robert Burns A Red, Red Rose Robert Burns I Love My Jean Robert Burns and John Hamilton The Rover's Adieu, from "Rokeby" Walter Scott "Loudoun's Bonnie Woods and Braes" Robert Tannahill "Fare Thee Well" George Gordon Byron "Maid of Athens, Ere We Part" George Gordon Byron "When We Two Parted" George Gordon Byron "Go, Forget Me" Charles Wolfe Last Night George Darley Adieu Thomas Carlyle Jeanie Morrison William Motherwell The Sea-lands Orrick Johns Fair Ines Thomas Hood A Valediction Elizabeth Barrett Browning Farewell John Addington Symonds "I Do Not Love Thee" Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton The Palm-tree and the Pine Richard Monckton Milnes "O Swallow, Swallow Flying South" Alfred Tennyson The Flower's Name Robert Browning To Marguerite Matthew Arnold Separation Matthew Arnold Longing Matthew Arnold Divided Jean Ingelow My Playmate John Greenleaf Whittier A Farewell Coventry Patmore Departure Coventry Patmore A song of Parting H. C. Compton Mackenzie Song, "Fair is the night, and fair the day" William Morris At Parting Algernon Charles Swinburne "If She But Knew" Arthur O'Shaughnessy Kathleen Mavourneen Louisa Macartney Crawford Robin Adair Caroline Keppel "If You Were Here" Philip Bourke Marston "Come to Me, Dearest" Joseph Brenan Song, "'Tis said that absence Conquers love" Frederick William Thomas Parting Gerald Massey The Parting Hour Olive Custance A Song of Autumn Rennell Rodd The Girl I Left Behind Me Unknown "When We are Parted" Hamilton Aide Remember or Forget Hamilton Aide Nancy Dawson Herbert P. Horne My Little Love Charles B. Hawley For Ever William Caldwell Roscoe Auf Wiedersehen James Russell Lowell "Forever and a Day" Thomas Bailey Aldrich Old Gardens Arthur Upson Ferry Hinksey Laurence Binyon Wearyin' fer You Frank L. Stanton The Lovers of Marchaid Marjorie L. C. Pickthall Song, "She's somewhere in the sunlight strong" Richard Le Gallienne The Lover Thinks of His Lady in the North Shaemas O Sheel Chanson de Rosemonde Richard Hovey Ad Domnulam Suam Ernest Dawson Marian Drury Bliss Carman Love's Rosary Alfred Noyes When She Comes Home James Whitcomb Riley THE TRAGEDY OF LOVE Song, "My silks and fine array" William Blake The Flight of Love Percy Bysshe Shelley "Farewell! If ever Fondest Prayer" George Gordon Byron Porphyria's Lover Robert Browning Modern Beauty Arthur Symons La Belle Dame Sans Merci John Keats Tantalus--Texas Joaquin Miller Enchainment Arthur O'Shaughnessy Auld Robin Gray Anne Barnard Lost Light Elizabeth Akers A Sigh Harriet Prescott Spofford Hereafter Harriet Prescott Spofford Endymion Oscar Wilde "Love is a Terrible Thing" Grace Fallow Norton The Ballad of the Angel Theodosia Garrison "Love Came Back at Fall o' Dew" Lizette Woodworth Reese I Shall not Care Sara Teasdale Outgrown Julia C. R. Dorr A Tragedy Edith Nesbit Left Behind Elizabeth Akers The Forsaken Merman Matthew Arnold The Portrait Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton The Rose and Thorn Paul Hamilton Hayne To Her--Unspoken Amelia Josephine Burr A Light Woman Robert Browning From the Turkish George Gordon Byron A Summer Wooing Louise Chandler Moulton Butterflies John Davidson Unseen Spirits Nathaniel Parker Willis "Grandmither, Think Not I Forget" Willa Sibert Cather Little Wild Baby Margaret Thomson Janvier A Cradle Song Nicholas Breton Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament Unknown A Woman's Love John Hay A Tragedy Theophile Marzials "Mother, I Cannot Mind My Wheel" Walter Savage Landor Airly Beacon Charles Kingsley A Sea Child Bliss Carman From the Harbor Hill Gustav Kobbe Allan Water Matthew Gregory Lewis Forsaken Unknown Bonnie Doon Robert Burns The Two Lovers Richard Hovey The Vampire Rudyard Kipling Agatha Alfred Austin "A Rose Will Fade" Dora Sigerson Shorter Affaire d'Amour Margaret Deland A Casual Song Roden Noel The Way of It John Vance Cheney "When Lovely Woman Stoops to Folly" Oliver Goldsmith Folk-Song Louis Untermeyer A Very Old Song William Laird "She Was Young and Blithe and Fair" Harold Monro The Lass that Died of Love Richard Middleton The Passion-Flower Margaret Fuller Norah Zoe Akins Of Joan's Youth Louise Imogen Guiney There's Wisdom in Women Rupert Brooke Goethe and Frederika Henry Sidgwick The Song of the King's Minstrel Richard Middleton Annie Shore and Johnnie Doon Patrick Orr Emmy Arthur Symons The Ballad of Camden Town James Elroy Flecker LOVE AND DEATH Helen of Kirconnell Unknown Willy Drowned in Yarrow Unknown Annan Water Unknown The Lament of the Border Widow Unknown Aspatia's Song from "The Maid's Tragedy" John Fletcher A Ballad, "'Twas when the seas were roaring" John Gay The Braes of Yarrow John Logan The Churchyard on the Sands Lord de Tabley The Minstrel's Song from "Aella" Thomas Chatterton Highland Mary Robert Burns To Mary in Heaven Robert Burns Lucy William Wordsworth Proud Maisie Walter Scott Song, "Earl March looked on His dying child" Thomas Campbell The Maid's Lament Walter Savage Landor "She is Far from the Land" Thomas Moore "At the Mid Hour of Night" Thomas Moore On a Picture by Poussin John Addington Symonds Threnody Ruth Guthrie Harding Strong as Death Henry Cuyler Banner "I Shall not Cry Return" Ellen M. H. Gates "Oh! Snatched away in Beauty's Bloom" George Gordon Byron To Mary Charles Wolfe My Heart and I Elizabeth Barrett Browning Rosalind's Scroll Elizabeth Barrett Browning Lament of the Irish Emigrant Helen Selina Sheridan The King of Denmark's Ride Caroline E. S. Norton The Watcher James Stephens The Three Sisters Arthur Davison Ficke Ballad May Kendall "O that 'Twere Possible" Alfred Tennyson "Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead" Alfred Tennyson Evelyn Hope Robert Browning Remembrance Emily Bronte Song,"The linnet in the rocky dells" Emily Bronte Song of the Old Love Jean Ingelow Requiescat Matthew Arnold Too Late Dinah Maria Mulock Craik Four Years Dinah Maria Mulock Craik Barbara Alexander Smith Song, "When I am dead, my dearest" Christina Georgina Rossetti Sarrazine's Song to Her Dead Lover Arthur O'Shaughnessy Love and Death Rosa Mulholland To One in Paradise Edgar Allan Poe Annabel Lee Edgar Allan Poe For Annie Edgar Allan Poe Telling the Bees John Greenleaf Whittier A Tryst Louise Chandler Moulton Love's Resurrection Day Louise Chandler Moulton Heaven Martha Gilbert Dickinson Janette's Hair Charles Graham Halpine The Dying Lover Richard Henry Stoddard "When the Grass Shall Cover Me" Ina Coolbrith Give Love Today Ethel Talbot Until Death Elizabeth Akers Florence Vane Phillip Pendleton Cooke "If Spirits Walk" Sophie Jewett Requiescat Oscar Wilde Lyric, "You would have understood me, had you waited" Ernest Dowson Romance Andrew Lang Good-Night Hester A. Benedict Requiescat Rosamund Marriott Watson The Four Winds Charles Henry Luders The King's Ballad Joyce Kilmer Heliotrope Harry Thurston Peck "Lydia is Gone this Many a Year" Lizette Woodworth Reese After Lizette Woodworth Reese Memories Arthur Stringer To Diane Helen Hay Whitney "Music I Heard" Conrad Aiken Her Dwelling-place Ada Foster Murray The Wife from Fairyland Richard Le Gallienne In the Fall o' Year Thomas S. Jones, Jr The Invisible Bride Edwin Markham Rain on a Grave Thomas Hardy Patterns Amy Lowell Dust Rupert Brooke Ballad, "The roses in my garden" Maurice Baring "The Little Rose is Dust, My Dear" Grace Hazard Conkling Dirge Adelaide Crapsey The Little Red Ribbon James Whitcomb Riley The Rosary Robert Cameron Rogers LOVE'S FULFILLMENT "My True-love Hath My Heart" Philip Sidney Song, "O sweet delight" Thomas Campion The Good-Morrow John Donne "There's Gowd in the Breast" James Hogg The Beggar Maid Alfred Tennyson Refuge A.E. At Sunset Louis V. Ledoux "One Morning Oh! so Early" Jean Ingelow Across the Door Padraic Colum May Margaret Theophile Marzials Rondel, "Kissing her hair, I sat against her feet" Algernon Charles Swinburne A Spring Journey Alice Freeman Palmer The Brookside Richard Monckton Milnes Song, "For me the jasmine buds unfold" Florence Earle Coates What My Lover Said Homer Greene May-Music Rachel Annand Taylor Song, "Flame at the core of the World" Arthur Upson A Memory Frederic Lawrence Knowles Love Triumphant Frederic Lawrence Knowles Lines, "Love within the lover's breast" George Meredith Love among the Ruins Robert Browning Earl Mertoun's Song Robert Browning Meeting at Night Robert Browning Parting at Morning Robert Browning The Turn of the Road Alice Rollit Coe "My Delight and Thy Delight" Robert Bridges "O, Saw Ye the Lass" Richard Ryan Love at Sea Algernon Charles Swinburne Mary Beaton's Song Algernon Charles Swinburne Plighted Dinah Maria Mulock Craik A Woman's Question Adelaide Anne Procter "Dinna Ask Me" John Dunlop A Song, "Sing me a sweet, low song of night" Hildegarde Hawthorne The Reason James Oppenheim "My Own Cailin Donn" George Sigerson Nocturne Amelia Josephine Burr Surrender Amelia Josephine Burr "By Yon Burn Side" Robert Tannahill A Pastoral, "Flower of the medlar" Theophile Marzials "When Death to Either shall Come" Robert Bridges The Reconciliation Alfred Tennyson Song, "Wait but a little while" Norman Gale Content Norman Gale Che Sara Sara Victor Plarr "Bid Adieu to Girlish Days" James Joyce To F.C. Mortimer Collins Spring Passion Joel Elias Spingarn Advice to a Lover S. Charles Jellicoe "Yes" Richard Doddridge Blackmore Love Samuel Taylor Coleridge Nested Habberton Lulham The Letters Alfred Tennyson Prothalamion Edmund Spenser Epithalamion Edmund Spenser The Kiss Sara Teasdale Marriage Wilfrid Wilson Gibson The Newly-wedded Winthrop Mackworth Praed I Saw Two Clouds at Morning John Gardiner Calkins Brainard Holy Matrimony John Keble The Bride Laurence Hope A Marriage Charm Nora Hopper "Like a Laverock in the Lift" Jean Ingelow My Owen Ellen Mary Patrick Downing Doris: A Pastoral Arthur Joseph Munby "He'd Nothing but His Violin" Mary Kyle Dallas Love's Calendar William Bell Scott Home Dora Greenwell Two Lovers George Eliot The Land of Heart's Desire Emily Huntington Miller My Ain Wife Alexander Laing The Irish Wife Thomas D'Arcy McGee My Wife's a Winsome Wee Thing Robert Burns Lettice Dinah Maria Mulock Craik "If Thou Wert by My Side, My Love" Reginald Heber The Shepherd's Wife's Song Robert Greene "Truth doth Truth Deserve" Philip Sidney The Married Lover Coventry Patmore My Love James Russell Lowell Margaret to Dolcino Charles Kingsley Dolcino to Margaret Charles Kingsley At Last Richard Henry Stoddard The Wife to Her Husband Unknown A Wife's Song William Cox Bennett The Sailor's Wife William Julius Mickle Jerry an' Me Hiram Rich "Don't be Sorrowful, Darling" Rembrandt Peale Winifreda Unknown An Old Man's Idyl Richard Realf The Poet's Song to his Wife Bryan Waller Procter John Anderson Robert Burns To Mary Samuel Bishop The Golden Wedding David Gray Moggy and Me James Hogg "O, Lay Thy Hand in Mine, Dear" Gerald Massey The Exequy Henry King LOVE SONNETS Sonnets from "Amoretti" Edmund Spenser Sonnets from "Astrophel and Stella" Philip Sidney Sonnets from "To Delia" Samuel Daniel Sonnets from "Idea" Michael Drayton Sonnets from "Diana" Henry Constable Sonnets William Shakespeare "Alexis, Here She Stayed" William Drummond "Were I as Base as is the Lowly Plain" Joshua Sylvester A Sonnet of the Moon Charles Best To Mary Unwin William Cowper "Why art Thou Silent" William Wordsworth Sonnets from "The House of Life" Dante Gabriel Rossetti Sonnets Christina Georgina Rossetti How My Songs of Her Began Philip Bourke Marston At the Last Philip Bourke Marston To One who Would Make a Confession Wilfrid Scawen Blunt The Pleasures of Love Wilfrid Scawen Blunt "Were but my Spirit Loosed upon the Air" Louise Chandler Moulton Renouncement Alice Meynell "My Love for Thee" Richard Watson Gilder Sonnets after the Italian Richard Watson Gilder Stanzas from "Modern Love" George Meredith Love in the Winds Richard Hovey "Oh, Death Will Find Me" Rupert Brooke The Busy Heart Rupert Brooke The Hill Rupert Brooke Sonnets from "Sonnets to Miranda" William Watson Sonnets from "Thysia" Morton Luce Sonnets from "Sonnets from the Portuguese" Elizabeth Barrett Browning One Word More Robert Browning PART III POEMS OF NATURE "The World is too Much With Us" William Wordsworth MOTHER NATURE The Book of the World William Drummond Nature Jones Very Compensation Celia Thaxter The Last Hour Ethel Clifford Nature Henry David Thoreau Song of Nature Ralph Waldo Emerson "Great Nature is an Army Gay" Richard Watson Gilder To Mother Nature Frederic Lawrence Knowles Quiet Work Matthew Arnold Nature Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "As an Old Mercer" Mahlon Leonard Fisher Good Company Karle Wilson Baker "Here is the Place where Loveliness Keeps House" Madison Cawein God's World Edna St. Vincent Millay Wild Honey Maurice Thompson Patmos Edith M. Thomas DAWN AND DARK Song, "Phoebus, arise" William Drummond Hymn of Apollo Percy Bysshe Shelley Prelude to "The New Day" Richard Watson Gilder Dawn on the Headland William Watson The Miracle of the Dawn Madison Cawein Dawn-angels A. Mary F. Robinson Music of the Dawn Virginia Bioren Harrison Sunrise on Mansfield Mountain Alice Brown Ode to Evening William Collins "It is a Beauteous Evening Calm and Free" William Wordsworth Gloaming Robert Adger Bowen Evening Melody Aubrey de Vere In the Cool of the Evening Alfred Noyes Twilight Olive Custance Twilight at Sea Amelia C. Welby "This is My Hour" Zoe Akins Song to the Evening Star Thomas Campbell The Evening Cloud John Wilson Song: To Cynthia Ben Jonson My Star Robert Browning Night William Blake To Night Percy Bysshe Shelly To Night Joseph Blanco White Night John Addington Symonds Night James Montgomery He Made the Night Lloyd Mifflin Hymn to the Night Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Night's Mardi Gras Edward J. Wheeler Dawn and Dark Norman Gale Dawn George B. Logan, Jr A Wood Song Ralph Hodgson THE CHANGING YEAR A Song for the Seasons Bryan Waller Procter A Song of the Seasons Cosmo Monkhouse Turn o' the Year Katherine Tynan The Waking Year Emily Dickinson Song, "The year's at the spring" Robert Browning Early Spring Alfred Tennyson Lines Written in Early Spring William Wordsworth In Early Spring Alice Meynell Spring Thomas Nashe A Starling's Spring Rondel James Cousins "When Daffodils begin to Peer" William Shakespeare Spring, from "In Memoriam" Alfred Tennyson The Spring Returns Charles Leonard Moore "When the Hounds of Spring" Algernon Charles Swinburne Song, "Again rejoicing Nature sees" Robert Burns To Spring William Blake An Ode on the Spring Thomas Gray Spring Henry Timrod The Meadows in Spring Edward Fitzgerald The Spring William Barnes "When Spring Comes Back to England" Alfred Noyes New Life Amelia Josephine Burr "Over the Wintry Threshold" Bliss Carman March William Morris Song in March William Gilmore Simms March Nora Hopper Written in March William Wordsworth The Passing of March Robert Burns Wilson Home Thoughts, from Abroad Robert Browning Song, "April, April" William Watson An April Adoration Charles G. D. Roberts Sweet Wild April William Force Stead Spinning in April Josephine Preston Peabody Song: On May Morning John Milton A May Burden Francis Thompson Corinna's Going a-Maying Robert Herrick "Sister, Awake" Unknown May Edward Hovell-Thurlow May Henry Sylvester Cornwell A Spring Lilt Unknown Summer Longings Denis Florence MacCarthy Midsummer John Townsend Trowbridge A Midsummer Song Richard Watson Gilder June, from "The Vision of Sir Launfal" James Russell Lowell June Harrison Smith Morris Harvest Ellen Mackay Hutchinson Cortissoz Scythe Song Andrew Lang September George Arnold Indian Summer Emily Dickinson Prevision Ada Foster Murray A Song of Early Autumn Richard Watson Gilder To Autumn John Keats Ode to Autumn Thomas Hood Ode to the West Wind Percy Bysshe Shelley Autumn: a Dirge Percy Bysshe Shelley Autumn Emily Dickinson "When the Frost is on the Punkin" James Whitcomb Riley Kore Frederic Manning Old October Thomas Constable November C. L. Cleaveland November Mahlon Leonard Fisher Storm Fear Robert Frost Winter: a Dirge Robert Burns Old Winter Thomas Noel The Frost Hannah Flagg Gould The Frosted Pane Charles G. D. Roberts The Frost Spirit John Greenleaf Whittier Snow Elizabeth Akers To a Snowflake Francis Thompson The Snow-Shower William Cullen Bryant Midwinter John Townsend Trowbridge A Glee for Winter Alfred Domett The Death of the Old Year Alfred Tennyson Dirge for the Year Percy Bysshe Shelley WOOD AND FIELD AND RUNNING BROOK Waldeinsamkeit Ralph Waldo Emerson "When in the Woods I Wander All Alone" Edward Hovell-Thurlow Aspects of the Pines Paul Hamilton Hayne Out in the Fields Unknown Under the Leaves Albert Laighton "On Wenlock Edge" Alfred Edward Housman "What Do We Plant" Henry Abbey The Tree Jones Very The Brave Old Oak Henry Fothergill Chorley "The Girt Woak Tree that's in the Dell" William Barnes To the Willow-tree Robert Herrick Enchantment Madison Cawein Trees Joyce Kilmer The Holly-tree Robert Southey The Pine Augusta Webster "Woodman, Spare that Tree" George Pope Morris The Beech Tree's Petition Thomas Campbell The Poplar Field William Cowper The Planting of the Apple-Tree William Cullen Bryant Of an Orchard Katherine Tynan An Orchard at Avignon A. Mary F. Robinson The Tide River Charles Kingsley The Brook's Song Alfred Tennyson Arethusa Percy Bysshe Shelley The Cataract of Lodore Robert Southey Song of the Chattahoochee Sidney Lanier "Flow Gently, Sweet Afton" Robert Burns Canadian Boat-Song Thomas Moore The Marshes of Glynn Sidney Lanier The Trosachs William Wordsworth Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Peaks Stephen Crane Kinchinjunga Cale Young Rice The Hills Julian Grenfell Hemlock Mountain Sarah N. Cleghorn Sunrise on Rydal Water John Drinkwater The Deserted Pasture Bliss Carman To Meadows Robert Herrick The Cloud Percy Bysshe Shelley April Rain Robert Loveman Summer Invocation William Cox Bennett April Rain Mathilde Blind To the Rainbow Thomas Campbell GREEN THINGS GROWING My Garden Thomas Edward Brown The Garden Andrew Marvell A Garden Andrew Marvell A Garden Song Austin Dobson In Green Old Gardens Violet Fane A Benedictine Garden Alice Brown An Autumn Garden Bliss Carman Unguarded Ada Foster Murray The Deserted Garden Elizabeth Barrett Browning A Forsaken Garden Algernon Charles Swinburne Green Things Growing Dinah Maria Mulock Craik A Chanted Calendar Sydney Dobell Flowers Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Flowers Thomas Hood A Contemplation Upon Flowers Henry King Almond Blossom Edwin Arnold White Azaleas Harriet McEwen Kimball Buttercups Wilfrid Thorley The Broom Flower Mary Howitt The Small Celandine William Wordsworth To the Small Celandine William Wordsworth Four-leaf Clover Ella Higginson Sweet Clover Wallace Rice "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" William Wordsworth To Daffodils Robert Herrick To a Mountain Daisy Robert Burns A Field Flower James Montgomery To Daisies, Not to Shut so Soon Robert Herrick Daisies Bliss Carman To the Daisy William Wordsworth To Daisies Francis Thompson To the Dandelion James Russell Lowell Dandelion Annie Rankin Annan The Dandelions Helen Gray Cone To the Fringed Gentian William Cullen Bryant Goldenrod Elaine Goodale Eastman Lessons from the Gorse Elizabeth Barrett Browning The Voice of The Grass Sarah Roberts Boyle A Song the Grass Sings Charles G. Blanden The Wild Honeysuckle Philip Freneau The Ivy Green Charles Dickens Yellow Jessamine Constance Fenimore Woolson Knapweed Arthur Christopher Benson Moly Edith Matilda Thomas The Morning-Glory Florence Earle Coates The Mountain Heart's-Ease Bret Harte The Primrose Robert Herrick To Primroses filled with Morning Dew Robert Herrick To an Early Primrose Henry Kirke White The Rhodora Ralph Waldo Emerson The Rose William Browne Wild Roses Edgar Fawcett The Rose of May Mary Howitt A Rose Richard Fanshawe The Shamrock Maurice Francis Egan To Violets Robert Herrick The Violet William Wetmore Story To a Wood-Violet John Banister Tabb The Violet and the Rose Augusta Webster To a Wind-Flower Madison Cawein To Blossoms Robert Herrick "'Tis the Last Rose of Summer" Thomas Moore The Death of the Flowers William Cullen Bryant GOD'S CREATURES Once on a Time Margaret Benson To a Mouse Robert Burns The Grasshopper Abraham Cowley On the Grasshopper and Cricket John Keats To the Grasshopper and the Cricket Leigh Hunt The Cricket William Cowper To a Cricket William Cox Bennett To an Insect Oliver Wendell Holmes The Snail William Cowper The Housekeeper Charles Lamb The Humble-Bee Ralph Waldo Emerson To a Butterfly William Wordsworth Ode to a Butterfly Thomas Wentworth Higginson The Butterfly Alice Freeman Palmer Fireflies Edgar Fawcett The Blood Horse Bryan Waller Procter Birds Moira O'Neill Birds Richard Henry Stoddard Sea-Birds Elizabeth Akers The Little Beach Bird Richard Henry Dana The Blackbird Frederick Tennyson The Blackbird Alfred Edward Housman The Blackbird William Ernest Henley The Blackbird William Barnes Robert of Lincoln William Cullen Bryant The O'Lincon Family Wilson Flagg The Bobolink Thomas Hill My Catbird William Henry Venable The Herald Crane Hamlin Garland The Crow William Canton To the Cuckoo John Logan The Cuckoo Frederick Locker-Lampson To the Cuckoo William Wordsworth The Eagle Alfred Tennyson The Hawkbit Charles G. D. Roberts The Heron Edward Hovell-Thurlow The Jackdaw William Cowper The Green Linnet William Wordsworth To the Man-of-War-Bird Walt Whitman The Maryland Yellow-Throat Henry Van Dyke Lament of a Mocking-bird Frances Anne Kemble "O Nightingale! Thou Surely Art" William Wordsworth Philomel Richard Barnfield Philomela Matthew Arnold On a Nightingale in April William Sharp To the Nightingale William Drummond The Nightingale Mark Akenside To the Nightingale John Milton Philomela Philip Sidney Ode to a Nightingale John Keats Song, 'Tis sweet to hear the merry lark Hartley Coleridge Bird Song Laura E. Richards The Song the Oriole Sings William Dean Howells To an Oriole Edgar Fawcett Song: the Owl Alfred Tennyson "Sweet Suffolk Owl" Thomas Vautor The Pewee John Townsend Trowbridge Robin Redbreast George Washington Doane Robin Redbreast William Allingham The Sandpiper Celia Thaxter The Sea-Mew Elizabeth Barrett Browning To a Skylark William Wordsworth To a Skylark William Wordsworth The Skylark James Hogg The Skylark Frederick Tennyson To a Skylark Percy Bysshe Shelley The Stormy Petrel Bryan Waller Procter The First Swallow Charlotte Smith To a Swallow Building Under our Eaves Jane Welsh Carlyle Chimney Swallows Horatio Nelson Powers Itylus Algernon Charles Swinburne The Throstle Alfred Tennyson Overflow John Banister Tabb Joy-Month David Atwood Wasson My Thrush Mortimer Collins "Blow Softly, Thrush" Joseph Russell Taylor The Black Vulture George Sterling Wild Geese Frederick Peterson To a Waterfowl William Cullen Bryant The Wood-Dove's Note Emily Huntington Miller THE SEA Song for all Seas, all Ships Walt Whitman Stanzas from "The Triumph of Time" Algernon Charles Swinburne The Sea from "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" George Gordon Byron On the Sea John Keats "With Ships the Sea was Sprinkled" William Wordsworth A Song of Desire Frederic Lawrence Knowles The Pines and the Sea Christopher Pearse Cranch Sea Fever John Masefield Hastings Mill C. Fox Smith "A Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea" Allan Cunningham The Sea Bryan Waller Procter Sailor's Song from "Death's Jest Book" Thomas Lovell Beddoes "A Life on the Ocean Wave" Epes Sargent Tacking Ship off Shore Walter Mitchell In Our Boat Dinah Maria Mulock Craik Poor Jack Charles Dibdin "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep" Emma Hart Willard Outward John G. Neihardt A Passer-by Robert Bridges Off Riviere du Loup Duncan Campbell Scott Christmas at Sea Robert Louis Stevenson The Port o' Heart's Desire John S. McGroarty On the Quay John Joy Bell The Forging of the Anchor Samuel Ferguson Drifting Thomas Buchanan Read "How's My Boy" Sydney Dobell The Long White Seam Jean Ingelow Storm Song Bayard Taylor The Mariner's Dream William Dimond The Inchcape Rock Robert Southey The Sea Richard Henry Stoddard The Sands of Dee Charles Kingsley The Three Fishers Charles Kingsley Ballad Harriet Prescott Spofford The Northern Star Unknown The Fisher's Widow Arthur Symons Caller Herrin' Carolina Nairne Hannah Binding Shoes Lucy Larcom The Sailor William Allingham The Burial of the Dane Henry Howard Brownell Tom Bowling Charles Dibdin Messmates Henry Newbolt The Last Buccaneer Charles Kingsley The Last Buccaneer Thomas Babington Macaulay The Leadman's Song Charles Dibdin Homeward Bound William Allingham THE SIMPLE LIFE The Lake Isle of Innisfree William Butler Yeats A Wish Samuel Rogers Ode on Solitude Alexander Pope "Thrice Happy He" William Drummond "Under the Greenwood Tree" William Shakespeare Coridon's Song John Chalkhill The Old Squire Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Inscription in a Hermitage Thomas Warton The Retirement Charles Cotton The Country Faith Norman Gale Truly Great William H. Davies Early Morning at Bargis Hermann Hagedorn The Cup John Townsend Trowbridge A Strip of Blue Lucy Larcom An Ode to Master Anthony Stafford Thomas Randolph "The Midges Dance Aboon the Burn" Robert Tannahill The Plow Richard Hengist Horne The Useful Plow Unknown "To One Who has Been Long in City Pent" John Keats The Quiet Life William Byrd The Wish Abraham Cowley Expostulation and Reply William Wordsworth The Tables Turned William Wordsworth Simple Nature George John Romanes "I Fear no Power a Woman Wields" Ernest McGaffey A Runnable Stag John Davidson Hunting Song Richard Hovey "A-Hunting We Will Go" Henry Fielding The Angler's Invitation Thomas Tod Stoddart The Angler's Wish Izaak Walton The Angler John Chalkhill WANDERLUST To Jane: the Invitation Percy Bysshe Shelley "My Heart's in the Highlands" Robert Burns "Afar in the Desert" Thomas Pringle Spring Song in the City Robert Buchanan In City Streets Ada Smith The Vagabond Robert Louis Stevenson In the Highlands Robert Louis Stevenson The Song my Paddle Sings E. Pauline Johnson The Gipsy Trail Rudyard Kipling Wanderlust Gerald Gould The Footpath Way Katherine Tynan A Maine Trail Gertrude Huntington McGiffert Afoot Charles G. D. Roberts From Romany to Rome Wallace Irwin The Toil of the Trail Hamlin Garland "Do You Fear the Wind?" Hamlin Garland The King's Highway John S. McGroarty The Forbidden Lure Fannie Stearns Davis The Wander-Lovers Richard Hovey The Sea-Gipsy Richard Hovey A Vagabond Song Bliss Carman Spring Song Bliss Carman The Mendicants Bliss Carman The Joys of the Road Bliss Carman The Song of the Forest Ranger Herbert Bashford A Drover Padraic Colum Ballad of Low-lie-down Madison Cawein The Good Inn Herman Knickerbocker Viele Night for Adventures Victor Starbuck Song, "Something calls and whispers" Georgiana Goddard King The Voortrekker Rudyard Kipling The Long Trail Rudyard Kipling PART IV FAMILIAR VERSE, AND POEMS HUMOROUS AND SATIRIC Ballade of the Primitive Jest Andrew Lang THE KINDLY MUSE Time to be Wise Walter Savage Landor Under the Lindens Walter Savage Landor Advice Walter Savage Landor To Fanny Thomas Moore "I'd be a Butterfly" Thomas Haynes Bayly "I'm not a Single Man" Thomas Hood To ----- Winthrop Mackworth Praed The Vicar Winthrop Mackworth Praed The Belle of the Ball-room Winthrop Mackworth Praed The Fine Old English Gentleman Unknown A Ternerie of Littles, upon a Pipkin of Jelly Sent to a Lady Robert Herrick Chivalry at a Discount Edward Fitzgerald The Ballad of Bouillabaisse William Makepeace Thackeray To my Grandmother Frederick Locker-Lampson My Mistress's Boots Frederick Locker-Lampson A Garden Lyric Frederick Locker-Lampson Mrs. Smith Frederick Locker-Lampson The Skeleton in the Cupboard Frederick Locker-Lampson A Terrible Infant Frederick Locker-Lampson Companions Charles Stuart Calverley Dorothy Q Oliver Wendell Holmes My Aunt Oliver Wendell Holmes The Last Leaf Oliver Wendell Holmes Contentment Oliver Wendell Holmes The Boys Oliver Wendell Holmes The Jolly Old Pedagogue George Arnold On an Intaglio Head of Minerva Thomas Bailey Aldrich Thalia Thomas Bailey Aldrich Pan in Wall Street Edmund Clarence Stedman Upon Lesbia--Arguing Alfred Cochrane To Anthea, who May Command Him Anything Alfred Cochrane The Eight-Day Clock Alfred Cochrane A Portrait Joseph Ashby-Sterry "Old Books are Best" Beverly Chew Impression Edmund Gosse "With Strawberries" William Ernest Henley Ballade of Ladies' Names William Ernest Henley To a Pair of Egyptian Slippers Edwin Arnold Without and Within James Russell Lowell "She was a Beauty" Henry Cuyler Bunner Nell Gwynne's Looking-Glass Laman Blanchard Mimnermus in Church William Johnson-Cory Clay Edward Verrall Lucas Aucassin and Nicolete Francis William Bourdillon Aucassin and Nicolette Edmund Clarence Stedman On the Hurry of This Time Austin Dobson "Good-Night, Babette" Austin Dobson A Dialogue from Plato Austin Dobson The Ladies of St. James's Austin Dobson The Cure's Progress Austin Dobson A Gentleman of the Old School Austin Dobson On a Fan Austin Dobson "When I Saw You Last, Rose" Austin Dobson Urceus Exit Austin Dobson A Corsage Bouquet Charles Henry Luders Two Triolets Harrison Robertson The Ballad of Dead Ladies Dante Gabriel Rossetti Ballade of Dead Ladies Andrew Lang A Ballad of Dead Ladies Justin Huntly McCarthy If I Were King Justin Huntly McCarthy A Ballade of Suicide Gilbert Keith Chesterton Chiffons! William Samuel Johnson The Court Historian Walter Thornbury Miss Lou Walter de La Mare The Poet and the Wood-louse Helen Parry Eden Students Florence Wilkinson "One, Two, Three" Henry Cuyler Bunner The Chaperon Henry Cuyler Bunner "A Pitcher of Mignonette" Henry Cuyler Bunner Old King Cole Edwin Arlington Robinson The Master Mariner George Sterling A Rose to the Living Nixon Waterman A Kiss Austin Dobson Biftek aux Champignons Henry Augustin Beers Evolution Langdon Smith A Reasonable Affliction Matthew Prior A Moral in Sevres Mildred Howells On the Fly-leaf of a Book of Old Plays Walter Learned The Talented Man Winthrop Mackworth Praed A Letter of Advice Winthrop Mackworth Praed A Nice Correspondent Frederick Locker-Lampson Her Letter Bret Harte A Dead Letter Austin Dobson The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn Andrew Marvell On the Death of a Favorite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes Thomas Gray Verses on a Cat Charles Daubeny Epitaph on a Hare William Cowper On the Death of Mrs. Throckmorton's Bullfinch William Cowper An Elegy on a Lap-Dog John Gay My Last Terrier John Halsham Geist's Grave Matthew Arnold "Hold" Patrick R. Chalmers THE BARB OF SATIRE The Vicar of Bray Unknown The Lost Leader Robert Browning Ichabod John Greenleaf Whittier What Mr. Robinson Thinks James Russell Lowell The Debate in the Sennit James Russell Lowell The Marquis of Carabas Robert Brough A Modest Wit Selleck Osborn Jolly Jack William Makepeace Thackeray The King of Brentford William Makepeace Thackeray Kaiser & Co A. Macgregor Rose Nongtongpaw Charles Dibdin The Lion and the Cub John Gay The Hare with Many Friends John Gay The Sycophantic Fox and the Gullible Raven Guy Wetmore Carryl The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder George Canning Villon's Straight Tip to all Cross Coves William Ernest Henley Villon's Ballade Andrew Lang A Little Brother of the Rich Edward Sandford Martin The World's Way Thomas Bailey Aldrich For My Own Monument Matthew Prior The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church Robert Browning Up at a Villa--Down in the City Robert Browning All Saints' Edmund Yates An Address to the Unco Guid Robert Burns The Deacon's Masterpiece Oliver Wendell Holmes Ballade of a Friar Andrew Lang The Chameleon James Merrick The Blind Men and the Elephant John Godfrey Saxe The Philosopher's Scales Jane Taylor The Maiden and the Lily John Fraser The Owl-Critic James Thomas Fields The Ballad of Imitation Austin Dobson The Conundrum of the Workshops Rudyard Kipling The V-a-s-e James Jeffrey Roche Hem and Haw Bliss Carmen Miniver Cheevy Edwin Arlington Robinson Then Ag'in Sam Walter Foss A Conservative Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman Similar Cases Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman Man and the Ascidian Andrew Lang The Calf-Path Sam Walter Foss Wedded Bliss Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman Paradise: A Hindoo Legend George Birdseye Ad Chloen, M. A. Mortimer Collins "As Like the Woman as You Can" William Ernest Henley "No Fault in Women" Robert Herrick "Are Women Fair" Francis Davison (?) A Strong Hand Aaron Hill Women's Longing John Fletcher Triolet Robert Bridges The Fair Circassian Richard Garnett The Female Phaeton Matthew Prior The Lure John Boyle O'Reilly The Female of the Species Rudyard Kipling The Woman with the Serpent's Tongue William Watson Suppose Anne Reeve Aldrich Too Candid by Half John Godfrey Saxe Fable Ralph Waldo Emerson Woman's Will Unknown Woman's Will John Godfrey Saxe Plays Walter Savage Landor Remedy Worse than the Disease Matthew Prior The Net of Law James Jeffrey Roche Cologne Samuel Taylor Coleridge Epitaph on Charles II John Wilmot Certain Maxims of Hafiz Rudyard Kipling A Baker's Duzzen uv Wise Sawz Edward Rowland Sill Epigram Samuel Taylor Coleridge Epigram Unknown Epigram Richard Garnett Epigram Richard Garnett Epigram Walter Savage Landor Epigram William Erskine Epigram Richard Brinsley Sheridan Epigram Alexander Pope Epigram Samuel Johnson Epigram John Gay Epigram Alexander Pope Epigram Samuel Taylor Coleridge Epigram Unknown Epigram Samuel Taylor Coleridge Epigram Unknown Epigram Matthew Prior Epigram George Macdonald Epigram Jonathan Swift Epigram Byron's epitaph for Pitt Epigram David Garrick Epigram John Harington Epigram John Byrom Epigram Richard Garnett Epigram Thomas Moore Epigram Unknown Epigram Samuel Taylor Coleridge Epigram John Dryden Epigram Thomas Hood Written on a Looking-glass Unknown An Epitaph George John Cayley On the Aristocracy of Harvard John Collins Bossidy On the Democracy of Yale Frederick Scheetz Jones A General Summary Rudyard Kipling THE MIMICS An Omar for Ladies Josephine Daskam Bacon "When Lovely Woman" Phoebe Cary Fragment in Imitation of Wordsworth Catherine M. Fanshaw Only Seven Henry Sambrooke Leigh Lucy Lake Newton Mackintosh Jane Smith Rudyard Kipling Father William Lewis Carroll The New Arrival George Washington Cable Disaster Charles Stuart Calverley 'Twas Ever Thus Henry Sambrooke Leigh A Grievance James Kenneth Stephen "Not a Sou Had he Got" Richard Harris Barham The Whiting and the Snail Lewis Carroll The Recognition William Sawyer The Higher Pantheism in a Nutshell Algernon Charles Swinburne The Willow-tree William Makepeace Thackeray Poets and Linnets Tom Hood, the Younger The Jam-pot Rudyard Kipling Ballad Charles Stuart Calverley The Poster-girl Carolyn Wells After Dilletante Concetti Henry Duff Traill If Mortimer Collins Nephilidia Algernon Charles Swinburne Commonplaces Rudyard Kipling The Promissory Note Bayard Taylor Mrs. Judge Jenkins Bret Harte The Modern Hiawatha George A. Strong How Often Ben King "If I should Die To-night" Ben King Sincere Flattery James Kenneth Stephen Culture in the Slums William Ernest Henley The Poets at Tea Barry Pain Wordsworth James Kenneth Stephen PART IV FAMILIAR VERSE, AND POEMS HUMOROUS AND SATIRIC BALLADE OF THE PRIMITIVE JEST "What did the dark-haired Iberian laugh at before the tall blonde Aryan drove him into the corners of Europe?"--Brander Matthews I am an ancient Jest! Palaeolithic man In his arboreal nest The sparks of fun would fan; My outline did he plan, And laughed like one possessed, 'Twas thus my course began, I am a Merry Jest! I am an early Jest! Man delved, and built, and span; Then wandered South and West The peoples Aryan, I journeyed in their van; The Semites, too, confessed,-- From Beersheba to Dan,-- I am a Merry Jest! I am an ancient Jest! Through all the human clan, Red, black, white, free, oppressed, Hilarious I ran! I'm found in Lucian, In Poggio, and the rest, I'm dear to Moll and Nan! I am a Merry Jest! ENVOY Prince, you may storm and ban-- Joe Millers are a pest, Suppress me if you can! I am a Merry Jest! Andrew Lang [1844-1912] THE KINDLY MUSE TIME TO BE WISE Yes; I write verses now and then, But blunt and flaccid is my pen, No longer talked of by young men As rather clever: In the last quarter are my eyes, You see it by their form and size; Is it not time then to be wise? Or now or never. Fairest that ever sprang from Eve! While Time allows the short reprieve, Just look at me! would you believe 'Twas once a lover? I cannot clear the five-bar gate; But, trying first its timber's state, Climb stiffly up, take breath, and wait To trundle over. Through gallopade I cannot swing The entangling blooms of Beauty's spring: I cannot say the tender thing, Be't true or false, And am beginning to opine Those girls are only half-divine Whose waists yon wicked boys entwine In giddy waltz. I fear that arm above that shoulder; I wish them wiser, graver, older, Sedater, and no harm if colder, And panting less. Ah! people were not half so wild In former days, when, starchly mild, Upon her high-heeled Essex smiled The brave Queen Bess. Walter Savage Landor [1775-1864] UNDER THE LINDENS Under the lindens lately sat A couple, and no more, in chat; I wondered what they would be at Under the lindens. I saw four eyes and four lips meet, I heard the words, "How sweet! how sweet!" Had then the Fairies given a treat Under the lindens? I pondered long and could not tell What dainty pleased them both so well: Bees! bees! was it your hydromel Under the lindens? Walter Savage Landor [1775-1864] ADVICE To write as your sweet mother does Is all you wish to do. Play, sing, and smile for others, Rose! Let others write for you. Or mount again your Dartmoor gray, And I will walk beside, Until we reach that quiet bay Which only hears the tide. Then wave at me your pencil, then At distance bid me stand, Before the caverned cliff, again The creature of your hand. And bid me then go past the nook To sketch me less in size; There are but few content to look So little in your eyes. Delight us with the gifts you have, And wish for none beyond: To some be gay, to some be grave, To one (blest youth!) be fond. Pleasures there are how close to Pain And better unpossessed! Let poetry's too throbbing vein Lie quiet in your breast. Walter Savage Landor [1775-1864] TO FANNY Never mind how the pedagogue proses, You want not antiquity's stamp; The lip, that such fragrance discloses, Oh! never should smell of the lamp. Old Chloe, whose withering kisses Have long set the Loves at defiance, Now, done with the science of blisses, May fly to the blisses of science! Young Sappho, for want of employments, Alone o'er her Ovid may melt, Condemned but to read of enjoyments, Which wiser Corinna had felt. But for you to be buried in books-- Oh, Fanny! they're pitiful sages; Who could not in one of your looks Read more than in millions of pages! Astronomy finds in your eyes Better light than she studies above, And Music must borrow your sighs As the melody fittest for Love. In Ethics--'tis you that can check, In a minute, their doubts and their quarrels; Oh! show but that mole on your neck, And 'twill soon put an end to their morals. Your Arithmetic only can trip When to kiss and to count you endeavor; But eloquence glows on your lip When you swear that you'll love me for ever. Thus you see what a brilliant alliance Of arts is assembled in you,-- A course of more exquisite science Man never need wish to pursue. And, oh!--if a Fellow like me May confer a diploma of hearts, With my lip thus I seal your degree, My divine little Mistress of Arts! Thomas Moore [1779-1852] "I'D BE A BUTTERFLY" I'd be a Butterfly born in a bower, Where roses and lilies and violets meet; Roving for ever from flower to flower, And kissing all buds that are pretty and sweet! I'd never languish for wealth, or for power, I'd never sigh to see slaves at my feet: I'd be a Butterfly born in a bower, Kissing all buds that are pretty and sweet. O could I pilfer the wand of a fairy, I'd have a pair of those beautiful wings; Their summer days' ramble is sportive and airy, They sleep in a rose when the nightingale sings. Those who have wealth must be watchful and wary; Power, alas! naught but misery brings! I'd be a Butterfly, sportive and airy, Rocked in a rose when the nightingale sings! What, though you tell me each gay little rover Shrinks from the breath of the first autumn day: Surely 'tis better when summer is over To die when all fair things are fading away. Some in life's winter may toil to discover Means of procuring a weary delay-- I'd be a butterfly; living, a rover, Dying when fair things are fading away! Thomas Haynes Bayly [1797-1839] "I'M NOT A SINGLE MAN" Lines Written In A Young Lady's Album A pretty task, Miss S---, to ask A Benedictine pen, That cannot quite at freedom write Like those of other men. No lover's plaint my Muse must paint To fill this page's span, But be correct and recollect I'm not a single man. Pray only think, for pen and ink How hard to get along, That may not turn on words that burn, Or Love, the life of song! Nine Muses, if I chooses, I May woo all in a clan; But one Miss S--- I daren't address-- I'm not a single man. Scribblers unwed, with little head, May eke it out with heart And in their lays it often plays A rare first-fiddle part. They make a kiss to rhyme with bliss, But if I so began, I have my fears about my ears-- I'm not a single man. Upon your cheek I may not speak, Nor on your lip be warm, I must be wise about your eyes, And formal with your form; Of all that sort of thing, in short, On T. H. Bayly's plan, I must not twine a single line-- I'm not a single man. A watchman's part compels my heart To keep you off its beat, And I might dare as soon to swear At you, as at your feet. I can't expire in passion's fire As other poets can-- My life (she's by) won't let me die-- I'm not a single man. Shut out from love, denied a dove, Forbidden bow and dart; Without a groan to call my own, With neither hand nor heart; To Hymen vowed, and not allowed To flirt e'en with your fan, Here end, as just a friend, I must-- I'm not a single man. Thomas Hood [1799-1845] TO---- We met but in one giddy dance, Good-night joined hands with greeting; And twenty thousand things may chance Before our second meeting; For oh! I have been often told That all the world grows older, And hearts and hopes to-day so cold, To-morrow must be colder. If I have never touched the string Beneath your chamber, dear one, And never said one civil thing When you were by to hear one,-- If I have made no rhymes about Those looks which conquer Stoics, And heard those angel tones, without One fit of fair heroics,-- Yet do not, though the world's cold school Some bitter truths has taught me, Oh, do not deem me quite the fool Which wiser friends have thought me! There is one charm I still could feel, If no one laughed at feeling; One dream my lute could still reveal,-- If it were worth revealing. But Folly little cares what name Of friend or foe she handles, When merriment directs the game, And midnight dims the candles; I know that Folly's breath is weak And would not stir a feather; But yet I would not have her speak Your name and mine together. Oh no! this life is dark and bright, Half rapture and half sorrow; My heart is very full to-night, My cup shall be to-morrow! But they shall never know from me, On any one condition, Whose health made bright my Burgundy, Whose beauty was my vision! Winthrop Mackworth Praed [1802-1839] THE VICAR Some years ago, ere Time and Taste Had turned our parish topsy-turvy, When Darnel Park was Darnel Waste, And roads as little known as scurvy, The man who lost his way between St. Mary's Hill and Sandy Thicket, Was always shown across the Green, And guided to the Parson's wicket. Back flew the bolt of lissom lath; Fair Margaret, in her tidy kirtle, Led the lorn traveller up the path Through clean-clipt rows of box and myrtle; And Don and Sancho, Tramp and Tray, Upon the parlor steps collected, Wagged all their tails, and seemed to say, "Our master knows you; you're expected!" Up rose the Reverend Doctor Brown, Up rose the Doctor's "winsome marrow"; The lady laid her knitting down, Her husband clasped his ponderous Barrow; Whate'er the stranger's caste or creed, Pundit or papist, saint or sinner, He found a stable for his steed, And welcome for himself, and dinner. If, when he reached his journey's end, And warmed himself in court or college, He had not gained an honest friend, And twenty curious scraps of knowledge;-- If he departed as he came, With no new light on love or liquor,-- Good sooth, the traveller was to blame, And not the Vicarage, nor the Vicar. His talk was like a stream which runs With rapid change from rocks to roses; It slipped from politics to puns; It passed from Mahomet to Moses; Beginning with the laws which keep The planets in their radiant courses, And ending with some precept deep For dressing eels or shoeing horses. He was a shrewd and sound divine, Of loud Dissent the mortal terror; And when, by dint of page and line, He 'stablished Truth, or startled Error, The Baptist found him far too deep, The Deist sighed with saving sorrow, And the lean Levite went to sleep And dreamed of tasting pork to-morrow. His sermon never said or showed That Earth is foul, that Heaven is gracious, Without refreshment on the road From Jerome, or from Athanasius; And sure a righteous zeal inspired The hand and head that penned and planned them, For all who understood, admired, And some who did not understand them. He wrote, too, in a quiet way, Small treatises, and smaller verses, And sage remarks on chalk and clay, And hints to noble lords and nurses; True histories of last year's ghost; Lines to a ringlet or a turban; And trifles to the Morning Post, And nothings for Sylvanus Urban. He did not think all mischief fair, Although he had a knack of joking; He did not make himself a bear, Although he had a taste for smoking; And when religious sects ran mad, He held, in spite of all his learning, That if a man's belief is bad, It will not be improved by burning. And he was kind, and loved to sit In the low hut or garnished cottage, And praise the farmer's homely wit, And share the widow's homelier pottage. At his approach complaint grew mild, And when his hand unbarred the shutter, The clammy lips of Fever smiled The welcome which they could not utter. He always had a tale for me Of Julius Caesar or of Venus; From him I learned the rule of three, Cat's-cradle, leap-frog, and Quae genus. I used to singe his powdered wig, To steal the staff he put such trust in, And make the puppy dance a jig When he began to quote Augustine. Alack, the change! In vain I look For haunts in which my boyhood trifled; The level lawn, the trickling brook, The trees I climbed, the beds I rifled. The church is larger than before, You reach it by a carriage entry: It holds three hundred people more, And pews are fitted up for gentry. Sit in the Vicar's seat; you'll hear The doctrine of a gentle Johnian, Whose hand is white, whose voice is clear, Whose phrase is very Ciceronian. Where is the old man laid? Look down, And construe on the slab before you: "Hic jacet Gulielmus Brown, Vir nulla non donandus lauru." Winthrop Mackworth Praed [1802-1839] THE BELLE OF THE BALL-ROOM Years, years ago, ere yet my dreams Had been of being wise or witty; Ere I had done with writing themes, Or yawned o'er this infernal Chitty;-- Years, years ago, while all my joy Were in my fowling-piece and filly; In short, while I was yet a boy, I fell in love with Laura Lilly. I saw her at the County Ball; There, when the sounds of flute and fiddle Gave signal sweet in that old hall Of hands across and down the middle, Hers was the subtlest spell by far Of all that sets young hearts romancing: She was our queen, our rose, our star; And then she danced,--oh, heaven, her dancing! Dark was her hair, her hand was white; Her voice was exquisitely tender; Her eyes were full of liquid light; I never saw a waist so slender; Her every look, her every smile, Shot right and left a score of arrows; I thought 'twas Venus from her isle, And wondered where she'd left her sparrows. She talked of politics or prayers,-- Of Southey's prose, or Wordsworth's sonnets, Of danglers or of dancing bears, Of battles, or the last new bonnets; By candle-light, at twelve o'clock, To me it mattered not a tittle, If those bright lips had quoted Locke, I might have thought they murmured Little. Through sunny May, through sultry June, I loved her with a love eternal; I spoke her praises to the moon, I wrote them to the Sunday Journal. My mother laughed; I soon found out That ancient ladies have no feeling: My father frowned; but how should gout See any happiness in kneeling? She was the daughter of a dean, Rich, fat, and rather apoplectic; She had one brother just thirteen, Whose color was extremely hectic; Her grandmother, for many a year, Had fed the parish with her bounty; Her second cousin was a peer, And lord-lieutenant of the county. But titles and the three-per-cents, And mortgages, and great relations, And India bonds, and tithes and rents, Oh, what are they to love's sensations? Black eyes, fair forehead, clustering locks,-- Such wealth, such honors, Cupid chooses; He cares as little for the stocks, As Baron Rothschild for the Muses. She sketched; the vale, the wood, the beach, Grew lovelier from her pencil's shading; She botanized; I envied each Young blossom in her boudoir fading: She warbled Handel; it was grand,-- She made the Catilina jealous; She touched the organ; I could stand For hours and hours to blow the bellows. She kept an album, too, at home, Well filled with all an album's glories; Paintings of butterflies and Rome, Patterns for trimmings, Persian stories, Soft songs to Julia's cockatoo, Fierce odes to famine and to slaughter, And autographs of Prince Leboo, And recipes for elder-water. And she was flattered, worshipped, bored; Her steps were watched, her dress was noted; Her poodle-dog was quite adored; Her sayings were extremely quoted. She laughed, and every heart was glad, As if the taxes were abolished; She frowned, and every took was sad, As if the opera were demolished. She smiled on many just for fun,-- I knew that there was nothing in it; I was the first, the only one Her heart had thought of for a minute. I knew it, for she told me so, In phrase which was divinely moulded; She wrote a charming hand, and oh, How sweetly all her notes were folded! Our love was like most other loves,-- A little glow, a little shiver, A rosebud and a pair of gloves, And "Fly Not Yet," upon the river; Some jealousy of some one's heir, Some hopes of dying broken-hearted; A miniature, a lock of hair, The usual vows,--and then we parted. We parted: months and years rolled by; We met again four summers after. Our parting was all sob and sigh,-- Our meeting was all mirth and laughter; For, in my heart's most secret cell, There had been many other lodgers; And she was not the ball-room's belle, But only Mrs.--Something--Rogers. Winthrop Mackworth Praed [1802-1839] THE FINE OLD ENGLISH GENTLEMAN I'll sing you a good old song, Made by a good old pate, Of a fine old English gentleman Who had an old estate, And who kept up his old mansion At a bountiful old rate; With a good old porter to relieve The old poor at his gate, Like a fine old English gentleman All of the olden time. His hall so old was hung around With pikes and guns and bows, And swords, and good old bucklers, That had stood some tough old blows; 'Twas there "his worship" held his state In doublet and trunk hose, And quaffed his cup of good old sack, To warm his good old nose, Like a fine old English gentleman All of the olden time. When winter's cold brought frost and snow, He opened house to all; And though threescore and ten his years, He featly led the ball; Nor was the houseless wanderer E'er driven from his hall; For while he feasted all the great, He ne'er forgot the small; Like a fine old English gentleman All of the olden time. But time, though old, is strong in flight, And years rolled swiftly by; And Autumn's falling leaves proclaimed This good old man must die! He laid him down right tranquilly, Gave up life's latest sigh; And mournful stillness reigned around, And tears bedewed each eye, For this fine old English gentleman All of the olden time. Now surely this is better far Than all the new parade Of theaters and fancy balls, "At home" and masquerade: And much more economical, For all his bills were paid, Then leave your new vagaries quite, And take up the old trade Of a fine old English gentleman, All of the olden time. Unknown A TERNARIE OF LITTLES, UPON A PIPKIN OF JELLY SENT TO A LADY A Little Saint best fits a little Shrine, A little Prop best fits a little Vine, As my small Cruse best fits my little Wine. A little Seed best fits a little Soil, A little Trade best fits a little Toil, As my small Jar best fits my little Oil. A little Bin best fits a little Bread, A little Garland fits a little Head, As my small Stuff best fits my little Shed. A little Hearth best fits a little Fire, A little Chapel fits a little Quire, As my small Bell best fits my little Spire. A little Stream best fits a little Boat, A little Lead best fits a little Float, As my small Pipe best fits my little Note. A little Meat best fits a little Belly, As sweetly, lady, give me leave to tell ye, This little Pipkin fits this little Jelly. Robert Herrick [1591-1674] CHIVALRY AT A DISCOUNT Fair cousin mine! the golden days Of old romance are over; And minstrels now care naught for bays, Nor damsels for a lover; And hearts are cold, and lips are mute That kindled once with passion, And now we've neither lance nor lute, And tilting's out of fashion. Yet weeping Beauty mourns the time When Love found words in flowers; When softest test sighs were breathed in rhyme, And sweetest songs in bowers; Now wedlock is a sober thing-- No more of chains or forges!-- A plain young man--a plain gold ring-- The curate--and St. George's. Then every cross-bow had a string, And every heart a fetter; And making love was quite the thing, And making verses better; And maiden-aunts were never seen, And gallant beaux were plenty; And lasses married at sixteen, And died at one-and-twenty. Then hawking was a noble sport, And chess a pretty science; And huntsmen learned to blow a morte, And heralds a defiance; And knights and spearmen showed their might, And timid hinds took warning; And hypocras was warmed at night, And coursers in the morning. Then plumes and pennons were prepared, And patron-saints were lauded; And noble deeds were bravely dared, And noble dames applauded; And Beauty played the leech's part, And wounds were healed with syrup; And warriors sometimes lost a heart, But never lost a stirrup. Then there was no such thing as Fear, And no such word as Reason; And Faith was like a pointed spear, And Fickleness was treason; And hearts were soft, though blows were hard; But when the fight was over, A brimming goblet cheered the board, His Lady's smile the lover. Ay, those were golden days! The moon Had then her true adorers; And there were lyres and lutes in tune, And no such thing as snorers; And lovers swam, and held at naught Streams broader than the Mersey; And fifty thousand would have fought For a smile from Lady Jersey. Then people wore an iron vest, And bad no use for tailors; And the artizans who lived the best Were armorers and nailers; And steel was measured by the ell And trousers lined with leather; And jesters wore a cap and bell, And knights a cap and feather. Then single folks might live at ease, And married ones might sever; Uncommon doctors had their fees, But Doctor's Commons never; O! had we in those times been bred, Fair cousin, for thy glances, Instead of breaking Priscian's head, I had been breaking lances! Edward Fitzgerald [1809-1883] THE BALLAD OF BOUILLABAISSE A street there is in Paris famous, For which no rhyme our language yields, Rue Neuve des Petits Champs its name is-- The New Street of the Little Fields; And there's an inn, not rich and splendid, But still in comfortable case-- The which in youth I oft attended, To eat a bowl of Bouillabaisse. This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is-- A sort of soup, or broth, or brew, Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes, That Greenwich never could outdo; Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffern, Soles, onions, garlic, roach, and dace: All these you eat at Terre's tavern, In that one dish of Bouillabaisse. Indeed, a rich and savory stew 'tis; And true philosophers, methinks, Who love all sorts of natural beauties, Should love good victuals and good drinks. And Cordelier or Benedictine Might gladly, sure, his lot embrace, Nor find a fast-day too afflicting, Which served him up a Bouillabaisse. I wonder if the house still there is? Yes, here the lamp is as before; The smiling, red-cheeked ecaillere is Still opening oysters at the door. Is Terre still alive and able? I recollect his droll grimace; He'd come and smile before your table And hope you liked your Bouillabaisse. We enter; nothing's changed or older. "How's Monsieur Terre, waiter, pray?" The waiter stares and shrugs his shoulder;-- "Monsieur is dead this many a day." "It is the lot of saint and sinner. So honest Terre's run his race!" "What will Monsieur require for dinner?" "Say, do you still cook Bouillabaisse?" "Oh, oui, Monsieur," 's the waiter's answer; "Quel vin Monsieur desire-t-il?" "Tell me a good one." "That I can, Sir; The Chambertin with yellow seal." "So Terre's gone," I say, and sink in My old accustomed corner-place; "He's done with feasting and with drinking, With Burgundy and Bouillabaisse." My old accustomed corner here is,-- The table still is in the nook; Ah! vanished many a busy year is, This well-known chair since last I took, When first I saw ye, cari luoghi, I'd scarce a beard upon my face, And now a grizzled, grim old fogy, I sit and wait for Bouillabaisse. Where are you, old companions trusty Of early days here met to dine? Come, waiter! quick, a flagon crusty-- I'll pledge them in the good old wine. The kind old voices and old faces My memory can quick retrace; Around the board they take their places, And share the wine and Bouillabaisse. There's Jack has made a wondrous marriage; There's laughing Tom is laughing yet; There's brave Augustus drives his carriage; There's poor old Fred in the Gazette; On James's head the grass is growing: Good Lord! the world has wagged apace Since here we set the Claret flowing, And drank, and ate the Bouillabaisse. Ah me! how quick the days are flitting! I mind me of a time that's gone, When here I'd sit, as now I'm sitting, In this same place--but not alone. A fair young form was nestled near me, A dear, dear face looked fondly up, And sweetly spoke and smiled to cheer me. --There's no one now to share my cup.... I drink it as the Fates ordain it. Come, fill it, and have done with rhymes; Fill up the lonely glass, and drain it In memory of dear old times. Welcome the wine, whate'er the seal is; And sit you down and say your grace With thankful heart, whate'er the meal is. --Here comes the smoking Bouillabaisse! William Makepeace Thackeray [1811-1863] TO MY GRANDMOTHER Suggested By A Picture By Mr. Romney Under the elm a rustic seat Was merriest Susan's pet retreat To merry-make This Relative of mine Was she seventy-and-nine When she died? By the canvas may be seen How she looked at seventeen, As a Bride. Beneath a summer tree Her maiden reverie Has a charm; Her ringlets are in taste; What an arm! and what a waist For an arm! With her bridal-wreath, bouquet, Lace farthingale, and gay Falbala,-- If Romney's touch be true, What a lucky dog were you, Grandpapa! Her lips are sweet as love; They are parting! Do they move? Are they dumb? Her eyes are blue, and beam Beseechingly, and seem To say, "Come!" What funny fancy slips From atween these cherry lips? Whisper me, Fair Sorceress in paint, What canon says I mayn't Marry thee? That good-for-nothing Time Has a confidence sublime! When I first Saw this Lady, in my youth, Her winters had, forsooth, Done their worst. Her locks, as white as snow, Once shamed the swarthy crow; By-and-by That fowl's avenging sprite Set his cruel foot for spite Near her eye. Her rounded form was lean, And her silk was bombazine: Well I wot With her needles would she sit, And for hours would she knit.-- Would she not? Ah perishable clay! Her charms had dropped away One by one: But if she heaved a sigh With a burden, it was, "Thy Will be done." In travail, as in tears, With the fardel of her years Overpressed, In mercy she was borne Where the weary and the worn Are at rest. Oh, if you now are there, And sweet as once you were, Grandmamma, This nether world agrees You'll all the better please Grandpapa. Frederick Locker-Lampson [1821-1895] MY MISTRESS'S BOOTS She has dancing eyes and ruby lips, Delightful boots--and away she skips They nearly strike me dumb,-- I tremble when they come Pit-a-pat: This palpitation means These Boots are Geraldine's-- Think of that! O, where did hunter win So delicate a skin For her feet? You lucky little kid, You perished, so you did, For my Sweet. The fairy stitching gleams On the sides, and in the seams, And reveals That the Pixies were the wags Who tipped these funny tags, And these heels. What soles to charm an elf!-- Had Crusoe, sick of self, Chanced to view One printed near the tide, O, how hard he would have tried For the two! For Gerry's debonair, And innocent and fair As a rose; She's an Angel in a frock,-- She's an Angel with a clock To her hose! The simpletons who squeeze Their pretty toes to please Mandarins, Would positively flinch From venturing to pinch Geraldine's. Cinderella's lefts and rights To Geraldine's were frights: And I trow The Damsel, deftly shod, Has dutifully trod Until now. Come, Gerry, since it suits Such a pretty Puss (in Boots) These to don, Set your dainty hand awhile On my shoulder, Dear, and I'll Put them on. Frederick Locker-Lampson [1821-1895] A GARDEN LYRIC Geraldine And I Dite, Damasippe, deaeque Verum ob consilium donent tonsore. We have loitered and laughed in the flowery croft, We have met under wintry skies; Her voice is the dearest voice, and soft Is the light in her wistful eyes; It is bliss in the silent woods, among Gay crowds, or in any place, To mould her mind, to gaze in her young Confiding face. For ever may roses divinely blow, And wine-dark pansies charm By that prim box path where I felt the glow Of her dimpled, trusting arm, And the sweep of her silk as she turned and smiled A smile as pure as her pearls; The breeze was in love with the darling Child, And coaxed her curls. She showed me her ferns and woodbine sprays, Foxglove and jasmine stars, A mist of blue in the beds, a blaze Of red in the celadon jars: And velvety bees in convolvulus bells, And roses of bountiful Spring. But I said--"Though roses and bees have spells, They have thorn, and sting." She showed me ripe peaches behind a net As fine as her veil, and fat Goldfish a-gape, who lazily met For her crumbs--I grudged them that! A squirrel, some rabbits with long lop ears, And guinea-pigs, tortoise-shell--wee; And I told her that eloquent truth inheres In all we see. I lifted her doe by its lops, quoth I, "Even here deep meaning lies,-- Why have squirrels these ample tails, and why Have rabbits these prominent eyes?" She smiled and said, as she twirled her veil, "For some nice little cause, no doubt-- If you lift a guinea-pig up by the tail His eyes drop out!" Frederick Locker Lampson [1821-1895] MRS. SMITH Heigh-ho! they're wed. The cards are dealt, Our frolic games are o'er; I've laughed, and fooled, and loved. I've felt-- As I shall feel no more! Yon little thatch is where she lives, Yon spire is where she met me;-- I think that if she quite forgives, She cannot quite forget me. Last year I trod these fields with Di,-- Fields fresh with clover and with rye; They now seem arid: Then Di was fair and single; how Unfair it seems on me, for now Di's fair,--and married! A blissful swain,--I scorned the song Which tells us though young Love is strong, The Fates are stronger: Then breezes blew a boon to men, Then buttercups were bright, and then The grass was longer. That day I saw, and much esteemed, Di's ankles, that the clover seemed Inclined to smother: It twitched, and soon untied (for fun) The ribbons of her shoes, first one, And then the other. I'm told that virgins augur some Misfortune if their shoe-strings come To grief on Friday: And so did Di,--and then her pride Decreed that shoe-strings so untied, Are "so untidy!" Of course I knelt; with fingers deft I tied the right, and tied the left: Says Di, "This stubble Is very stupid!--as I live I'm quite ashamed!--I'm shocked to give You so much trouble!" For answer I was fain to sink To what we all would say and think Were Beauty present: "Don't mention such a simple act-- A trouble? not the least! In fact It's rather pleasant!" I trust that Love will never tease Poor little Di, or prove that he's A graceless rover. She's happy now as Mrs. Smith-- But less polite when walking with Her chosen lover! Heigh-ho! Although no moral clings To Di's blue eyes, and sandal strings, We had our quarrels. I think that Smith is thought an ass,-- I know that when they walk in grass She wears balmorals. Frederick Locker-Lampson [1821-1895] THE SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD The characters of great and small Come ready made, we can't bespeak one; Their sides are many, too, and all (Except ourselves) have got a weak one. Some sanguine people love for life, Some love their hobby till it flings them. How many love a pretty wife For love of the eclat she brings them!... A little to relieve my mind I've thrown off this disjointed chatter, But more because I'm disinclined To enter on a painful matter: Once I was bashful; I'll allow I've blushed for words untimely spoken; I still am rather shy, and now... And now the ice is fairly broken. We all have secrets: you have one Which may n't be quite your charming spouse's; We all lock up a Skeleton In some grim chamber of our houses; Familiars who exhaust their days And nights in probing where our smart is, And who, for all their spiteful ways, Are "silent, unassuming Parties." We hug this Phantom we detest, Rarely we let it cross our portals: It is a most exacting guest, And we are much afflicted mortals. Your neighbor Gay, that jovial wight, As Dives rich, and brave as Hector, Poor Gay steals twenty times a night, On shaking knees, to see his Specter. Old Dives fears a pauper fate, So hoarding is his ruling passion:-- Some gloomy souls anticipate A waistcoat, straiter than the fashion! She childless pines, that lonely wife, And secret tears are bitter shedding; Hector may tremble all his life, And die,--but not of that he's dreading.... Ah me, the World! How fast it spins! The beldams dance, the caldron bubbles; They shriek, they stir it for our sins, And we must drain it for our troubles. We toil, we groan; the cry for love Mounts up from this poor seething city, And yet I know we have above A Father, infinite in pity. When Beauty smiles, when Sorrow weeps, Where sunbeams play, where shadows darken, One inmate of our dwelling keeps Its ghastly carnival; but hearken! How dry the rattle of the bones! That sound was not to make you start meant: Stand by! Your humble servant owns The Tenant of this Dark Apartment. Frederick Locker-Lampson [1821-1895] A TERRIBLE INFANT I recollect a nurse called Ann, Who carried me about the grass, And one fine day a fine young man Came up, and kissed the pretty lass: She did not make the least objection! Thinks I, "Aha! When I can talk I'll tell Mamma" --And that's my earliest recollection. Frederick Locker-Lampson [1821-1895] COMPANIONS A Tale Of A Grandfather I know not of what we pondered Or made pretty pretence to talk, As, her hand within mine, we wandered. Toward the pool by the lime-tree walk, While the dew fell in showers from the passion flowers And the blush-rose bent on her stalk. I cannot recall her figure: Was it regal as Juno's own? Or only a trifle bigger Than the elves who surround the throne Of the Fairy Queen, and are seen, I ween, By mortals in dreams alone? What her eyes were like I know not: Perhaps they were blurred with tears; And perhaps in yon skies there glow not (On the contrary) clearer spheres. No! as to her eyes I am just as wise As you or the cat, my dears. Her teeth, I presume, were "pearly": But which was she, brunette or blonde? Her hair, was it quaintly curly, Or as straight as a beadle's wand? That I failed to remark: it was rather dark And shadowy round the pond. Then the hand that reposed so snugly In mine,--was it plump or spare? Was the countenance fair or ugly? Nay, children, you have me there! My eyes were p'haps blurred; and besides I'd heard That it's horribly rude to stare. And I,--was I brusque and surly? Or oppressively bland and fond? Was I partial to rising early? Or why did we twain abscond, When nobody knew, from the public view To prowl by a misty pond? What passed, what was felt or spoken,-- Whether anything passed at all,-- And whether the heart was broken That beat under that sheltering shawl,-- (If shawl she had on, which I doubt),--has gone, Yes, gone from me past recall. Was I haply the lady's suitor? Or her uncle? I can't make out; Ask your governess, dears, or tutor. For myself, I'm in hopeless doubt As to why we were there, who on earth we were, And what this is all about. Charles Stuart Calverley [1831-1884] DOROTHY Q A Family Portrait Grandmother's mother: her age, I guess, Thirteen summers, or something less: Girlish bust, but womanly air; Smooth, square forehead with uprolled hair; Lips that lover has never kissed; Taper fingers and slender wrist; Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade; So they painted the little maid. On her hand a parrot green Sits unmoving and broods serene. Hold up the canvas full in view,-- Look! there's a rent the light shines through, Dark with a century's fringe of dust,-- That was a Red-Coat's rapier-thrust! Such is the tale the lady old, Dorothy's daughter's daughter, told. Who the painter was none may tell,-- One whose best was not over well; Hard and dry, it must be confessed, Flat as a rose that has long been pressed; Yet in her cheek the hues are bright, Dainty colors of red and white, And in her slender shape are seen Hint and promise of stately mien. Look not on her with eyes of scorn,-- Dorothy Q. was a lady born! Ay! since the galloping Normans came, England's annals have known her name; And still to the three-hilled rebel town Dear is that ancient name's renown, For many a civic wreath they won, The youthful sire and the gray-haired son. O Damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.! Strange is the gift that I owe to you; Such a gift as never a king Save to daughter or son might bring,-- All my tenure of heart and hand, All my title to house and land; Mother and sister and child and wife And joy and sorrow and death and life! What if a hundred years ago Those close-shut lips had answered No, When forth the tremulous question came That cost the maiden her Norman name, And under the folds that look so still The bodice swelled with the bosom's thrill? Should I be I, or would it be One tenth another, to nine tenths me? Soft is the breath of a maiden's YES: Not the light gossamer stirs with less; But never a cable that holds so fast Through all the battles of wave and blast, And never an echo of speech or song That lives in the babbling air so long! There were tones in the voice that whispered then You may hear to-day in a hundred men. O lady and lover, how faint and far Your images hover,--and here we are Solid and stirring in flesh and bone,-- Edward's and Dorothy's--all their own,-- A goodly record for Time to show Of a syllable spoken so long ago!-- Shall I bless you, Dorothy, or forgive For the tender whisper that bade me live? It shall be a blessing, my little maid! I will heal the stab of the Red-Coat's blade, And freshen the gold of the tarnished frame, And gild with a rhyme your household name; So you shall smile on us brave and bright As first you greeted the morning's light, And live untroubled by woes and fears Through a second youth of a hundred years. Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-1894] MY AUNT My aunt! my dear unmarried aunt! Long years have o'er her flown; Yet still she strains the aching clasp That binds her virgin zone; I know it hurts her,--though she looks As cheerful as she can; Her waist is ampler than her life, For life is but a span. My aunt! my poor deluded aunt! Her hair is almost gray; Why will she train that winter curl In such a spring-like way? How can she lay her glasses down, And say she reads as well, When, through a double convex lens, She just makes out to spell? Her father,--grandpapa! forgive This erring lip its smiles,-- Vowed she should make the finest girl Within a hundred miles; He sent her to a stylish school; 'Twas in her thirteenth June; And with her, as the rules required, "Two towels and a spoon." They braced my aunt against a board, To make her straight and tall; They laced her up, they starved her down, To make her light and small; They pinched her feet, they singed her hair, They screwed it up with pins;-- Oh, never mortal suffered more In penance for her sins. So, when my precious aunt was done, My grandsire brought her back; (By daylight, lest some rabid youth Might follow on the track;) "Ah!" said my grandsire, as he shook Some powder in his pan, "What could this lovely creature do Against a desperate man!" Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche, Nor bandit cavalcade, Tore from the trembling father's arms His all-accomplished maid. For her how happy had it been! And Heaven had spared to me To see one sad, ungathered rose On my ancestral tree. Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-1894] THE LAST LEAF I saw him once before, As he passed by the door, And again The pavement stones resound, As he totters o'er the ground With his cane. They say that in his prime, Ere the pruning-knife of Time Cut him down, Not a better man was found By the Crier on his round Through the town. But now he walks the streets, And he looks at all he meets Sad and wan, And he shakes his feeble head, That it seems as if he said, "They are gone." The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has pressed In their bloom, And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On the tomb. My grandmamma has said,-- Poor old lady, she is dead Long ago,-- That he had a Roman nose, And his cheek was like a rose In the snow: But now his nose is thin, And it rests upon his chin Like a staff, And a crook is in his back, And a melancholy crack In his laugh. I know it is a sin For me to sit and grin At him here; But the old three-cornered hat, And the breeches, and all that, Are so queer! And if I should live to be The last leaf upon the tree In the spring, Let them smile, as I do now, At the old forsaken bough Where I cling. Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-1894] CONTENTMENT "Man wants but little here below" Little I ask; my wants are few; I only wish a hut of stone, (A very plain brown stone will do,) That I may call my own;-- And close at hand is such a one, In yonder street that fronts the sun. Plain food is quite enough for me; Three courses are as good as ten;-- If Nature can subsist on three, Thank Heaven for three. Amen! I always thought cold victual nice;-- My choice would be vanilla-ice. I care not much for gold or land;-- Give me a mortgage here and there,-- Some good bank-stock, some note of hand, Or trifling railroad share,-- I only ask that Fortune send A little more than I shall spend. Honors are silly toys, I know, And titles are but empty names; I would, perhaps, be Plenipo,-- But only near St. James; I'm very sure I should not care To fill our Gubernator's chair. Jewels are baubles; 'tis a sin To care for such unfruitful things;-- One good-sized diamond in a pin,-- Some, not so large, in rings,-- A ruby, and a pearl, or so, Will do for me;--I laugh at show. My dame should dress in cheap attire; (Good heavy silks are never dear;)-- I own perhaps I might desire Some shawls of true Cashmere,-- Some marrowy crapes of China silk, Like wrinkled skins on scalded milk. I would not have the horse I drive So fast that folks must stop and stare; An easy gait--two forty-five-- Suits me; I do not care;-- Perhaps, far just a single spurt, Some seconds less would do no hurt. Of pictures, I should like to own Titians and Raphaels three or four,-- I love so much their style and tone,-- One Turner, and no more, (A landscape,--foreground golden dirt,-- The sunshine painted with a squirt.) Of books but few,--some fifty score For daily use, and bound for wear; The rest upon an upper floor;-- Some little luxury there Of red morocco's gilded gleam, And vellum rich as country cream. Busts, cameos, gems,--such things as these, Which others often show for pride, I value for their power to please, And selfish churls deride;-- One Stradivarius, I confess, Two meerschaums, I would fain possess. Wealth's wasteful tricks I will not learn, Nor ape the glittering upstart fool;-- Shall not carved tables serve my turn, But all must be of buhl? Give grasping pomp its double share,-- I ask but one recumbent chair. Thus humble let me live and die, Nor long for Midas' golden touch; If Heaven more generous gifts deny, I shall not miss them much,-- Too grateful for the blessing lent Of simple tastes and mind content! Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-1894] THE BOYS Has there any old fellow got mixed with the boys? If there has, take him out, without making a noise. Hang the Almanac's cheat and the Catalogue's spite! Old Time is a liar! We're twenty to-night! We're twenty! We're twenty! Who, says we are more? He's tipsy,--young jackanapes!--show him the door! "Gray temples at twenty?"--Yes! white if we please! Where the snow-flakes fall thickest there's nothing can freeze! Was it snowing I spoke of? Excuse the mistake! Look close,--you will not see a sign of a flake! We want some new garlands for those we have shed,-- And these are white roses in place of the red. We've a trick, we young fellows, you may have been told, Of talking (in public) as if we were old:-- That boy we call "Doctor," and this we call "Judge;" It's a neat little fiction,--of course it's all fudge. That fellow's the "Speaker,"--the one on the right; "Mr. Mayor," my young one, how are you to-night? That's our "Member of Congress," we say when we chaff; There's the "Reverend" What's his name?--don't make me laugh. That boy with the grave mathematical look Made believe he had written a wonderful book, And the ROYAL SOCIETY thought it was true! So they chose him right in; a good joke it was, too! There's a boy, we pretend, with a three-decker brain, That could harness a team with a logical chain; When he spoke for our manhood in syllabled fire, We called him "The Justice," but now he's "The Squire." And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith,-- Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith; But he shouted a song for the brave and the free,-- Just read on his medal, "My country," "of thee!" You hear that boy laughing?--You think he's all fun; But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done; The children laugh loud as they troop to his call, And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all! Yes, we're boys,--always playing with tongue or with pen,-- And I sometimes have asked,--Shall we ever be men? Shall we always be youthful, and laughing, and gay, Till the last dear companion drops smiling away? Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its gray! The stars of its winter, the dews of its May! And when we have done with our life-lasting toys, Dear Father, take care of thy children, The Boys! Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-1894] THE JOLLY OLD PEDAGOGUE 'Twas a jolly old pedagogue, long ago, Tall and slender, and sallow and dry; His form was bent, and his gait was slow, His long, thin hair was as white as snow, But a wonderful twinkle shone in his eye; And he sang every night as he went to bed, "Let us be happy down here below: The living should live, though the dead be dead," Said the jolly old pedagogue, long ago. He taught his scholars the rule of three, Writing, and reading, and history, too; He took the little ones up on his knee, For a kind old heart in his breast had he, And the wants of the littlest child he knew: "Learn while you're young," he often said, "There is much to enjoy, down here below; Life for the living, and rest for the dead!" Said the jolly old pedagogue, long ago. With the stupidest boys he was kind and cool, Speaking only in gentlest tones; The rod was hardly known in his school... Whipping, to him, was a barbarous rule, And too hard work for his poor old bones; Besides, it was painful, he sometimes said: "We should make life pleasant, down here below, The living need charity more than the dead," Said the jolly old pedagogue, long ago. He lived in the house by the hawthorn lane, With roses and woodbine over the door; His rooms were quiet, and neat, and plain, But a spirit of comfort there held reign, And made him forget he was old and poor; "I need so little," he often said; "And my friends and relatives here below Won't litigate over me when I am dead," Said the jolly old pedagogue, long ago. But the pleasantest times that he had, of all, Were the sociable hours he used to pass, With his chair tipped back to a neighbor's wall, Making an unceremonious call, Over a pipe and a friendly glass: This was the finest picture, he said, Of the many he tasted, here below; "Who has no cronies, had better be dead!" Said the jolly old pedagogue, long ago. Then the jolly old pedagogue's wrinkled face Melted all over in sunshiny smiles; He stirred his glass with an old-school grace, Chuckled, and sipped, and prattled apace, Till the house grew merry, from cellar to tiles: "I'm a pretty old man," he gently said, "I've lingered a long while, here below; But my heart is fresh, if my youth is fled!" Said the jolly old pedagogue, long ago. He smoked his pipe in the balmy air, Every night when the sun went down, While the soft wind played in his silvery hair, Leaving its tenderest kisses there, On the jolly old pedagogue's jolly old crown: And, feeling the kisses, he smiled and said, 'Twas a glorious world, down here below; "Why wait for happiness till we are dead?" Said the jolly old pedagogue, long ago. He sat at his door, one midsummer night, After the sun had sunk in the west, And the lingering beams of golden light Made his kindly old face look warm and bright, While the odorous night-wind whispered "Rest!" Gently, gently, he bowed his head.... There were angels waiting for him, I know; He was sure of happiness, living or dead, This jolly old pedagogue, long ago! George Arnold [1834-1865] ON AN INTAGLIO HEAD OF MINERVA Beneath the warrior's helm, behold The flowing tresses of the woman! Minerva, Pallas, what you will-- A winsome creature, Greek or Roman. Minerva? No! 'tis some sly minx In cousin's helmet masquerading; If not--then Wisdom was a dame For sonnets and for serenading! I thought the goddess cold, austere, Not made for love's despairs and blisses: Did Pallas wear her hair like that? Was Wisdom's mouth so shaped for kisses? The Nightingale should be her bird, And not the Owl, big-eyed and solemn: How very fresh she looks, and yet She's older far than Trajan's Column! The magic hand that carved this face, And set this vine-work round it running, Perhaps ere mighty Phidias wrought, Had lost its subtle skill and cunning. Who was he? Was he glad or sad, Who knew to carve in such a fashion? Perchance he graved the dainty head For some brown girl that scorned his passion. Perchance, in some still garden-place, Where neither fount nor tree to-day is, He flung the jewel at the feet Of Phryne, or perhaps 'twas Lais. But he is dust; we may not know His happy or unhappy story: Nameless, and dead these centuries, His work outlives him,--there's his glory! Both man and jewel lay in earth Beneath a lava-buried city; The countless summers came and went, With neither haste, nor hate, nor pity. Years blotted out the man, but left The jewel fresh as any blossom, Till some Visconti dug it up,-- To rise and fall on Mabel's bosom! O nameless brother! see how Time Your gracious handiwork has guarded: See how your loving, patient art Has come, at last, to be rewarded. Who would not suffer slights of men, And pangs of hopeless passion also, To have his carven agate-stone On such a bosom rise and fall so! Thomas Bailey Aldrich [1837-1907] THALIA A Middle-aged Lyrical Poet Is supposed To Be Taking Final Leave Of The Muse Of Comedy. She Has Brought Him His Hat And Gloves, And Is Abstractedly Picking A Thread Of Gold Hair From His Coat Sleeve As He Begins To Speak: I say it under the rose-- oh, thanks!--yes, under the laurel, We part lovers, not foes; we are not going to quarrel. We have too long been friends on foot and in gilded coaches, Now that the whole thing ends, to spoil our kiss with reproaches. I leave you; my soul is wrung; I pause, look back from the portal-- Ah, I no more am young, and you, child, you are immortal! Mine is the glacier's way, yours is the blossom's weather-- When were December and May known to be happy together? Before my kisses grow tame, before my moodiness grieve you, While yet my heart is flame, and I all lover, I leave you. So, in the coming time, when you count the rich years over, Think of me in my prime, and not as a white-haired lover, Fretful, pierced with regret, the wraith of a dead Desire Thrumming a cracked spinet by a slowly dying fire. When, at last, I am cold-- years hence, if the gods so will it-- Say, "He was true as gold," and wear a rose in your fillet! Others, tender as I, will come and sue for caresses, Woo you, win you, and die-- mind you, a rose in your tresses! Some Melpomene woo, some hold Clio the nearest; You, sweet Comedy--you were ever sweetest and dearest! Nay, it is time to go. When writing your tragic sister Say to that child of woe how sorry I was I missed her. Really, I cannot stay, though "parting is such sweet sorrow"... Perhaps I will, on my way down-town, look in to-morrow! Thomas Bailey Aldrich [1837-1907] PAN IN WALL STREET A. D. 1867 Just where the Treasury's marble front Looks over Wall Street's mingled nations; Where Jews and Gentiles most are wont To throng for trade and last quotations; Where, hour by hour, the rates of gold Outrival, in the ears of people, The quarter-chimes, serenely tolled From Trinity's undaunted steeple,-- Even there I heard a strange, wild strain Sound high above the modern clamor, Above the cries of greed and gain, The curbstone war, the auction's hammer; And swift, on Music's misty ways, It led, from all this strife for millions, To ancient, sweet-to-nothing days Among the kirtle-robed Sicilians. And as it stilled the multitude, And yet more joyous rose, and shriller, I saw the minstrel, where he stood At ease against a Doric pillar: One hand a droning organ played, The other held a Pan's-pipe (fashioned Like those of old) to lips that made The reeds give out that strain impassioned. 'Twas Pan himself had wandered here A-strolling through this sordid city, And piping to the civic ear The prelude of some pastoral ditty! The demigod had crossed the seas,-- From haunts of shepherd, nymph, and satyr, And Syracusan times,--to these Far shores and twenty centuries later. A ragged cap was on his head; But--hidden thus--there was no doubting That, all with crispy locks o'erspread, His gnarled horns were somewhere sprouting; His club-feet, cased in rusty shoes, Were crossed, as on some frieze you see them, And trousers, patched of divers hues, Concealed his crooked shanks beneath them. He filled the quivering reeds with sound, And o'er his mouth their changes shifted, And with his goat's-eyes looked around Where'er the passing current drifted; And soon, as on Trinacrian hills The nymphs and herdsmen ran to hear him, Even now the tradesmen from their tills, With clerks and porters, crowded near him. The bulls and bears together drew From Jauncey Court and New Street Alley, As erst, if pastorals be true, Came beasts from every wooded valley; The random passers stayed to list,-- A boxer Aegon, rough and merry, A Broadway Daphnis, on his tryst With Nais at the Brooklyn Ferry. A one-eyed Cyclops halted long In tattered cloak of army pattern, And Galatea joined the throng,-- A blowsy, apple-vending slattern; While old Silenus staggered out From some new-fangled lunch-house handy, And bade the piper, with a shout, To strike up Yankee Doodle Dandy! A newsboy and a peanut-girl Like little Fauns began to caper: His hair was all in tangled curl, Her tawny legs were bare and taper; And still the gathering larger grew, And gave its pence and crowded nigher, While aye the shepherd-minstrel blew His pipe, and struck the gamut higher. O heart of Nature, beating still With throbs her vernal passion taught her,-- Even here, as on the vine-clad hill, Or by the Arethusan water! New forms may fold the speech, new lands Arise within these ocean-portals, But Music waves eternal wands,-- Enchantress of the souls of mortals! So thought I,--but among us trod A man in blue, with legal baton, And scoffed the vagrant demigod, And pushed him from the step I sat on. Doubting I mused upon the cry, "Great Pan is dead!"--and all the people Went on their ways:--and clear and high The quarter sounded from the steeple. Edmund Clarence Stedman [1833-1908] UPON LESBIA--ARGUING My Lesbia, I will not deny, Bewitches me completely; She has the usual beaming eye, And smiles upon me sweetly: But she has an unseemly way Of contradicting what I say. And, though I am her closest friend, And find her fascinating, I cannot cordially commend Her method of debating: Her logic, though she is divine, Is singularly feminine. Her reasoning is full of tricks, And butterfly suggestions, I know no point to which she sticks, She begs the simplest questions; And, when her premises are strong, She always draws her inference wrong. Broad, liberal views on men and things She will not hear a word of; To prove herself correct she brings Some instance she has heard of; The argument ad hominem Appears her favorite strategem. Old Socrates, with sage replies To questions put to suit him, Would not, I think, have looked so wise With Lesbia to confute him; He would more probably have bade Xantippe hasten to his aid. Ah! well, my fair philosopher, With clear brown eyes that glisten So sweetly, that I much prefer To look at them than listen, Preach me your sermon: have your way, The voice is yours, whate'er you say. Alfred Cochrane [1865- TO ANTHEA, WHO MAY COMMAND HIM ANYTHING (New Style) Am I sincere? I say I dote On everything that Browning wrote; I know some bits by heart to quote: But then She reads him. I say--and is it strictly true?-- How I admire her cockatoo; Well! in a way of course I do: But then She feeds him. And I become, at her command, The sternest Tory in the land; The Grand Old Man is far from grand; But then She states it. Nay! worse than that, I am so tame, I once admitted--to my shame-- That football was a brutal game: Because She hates it. My taste in Art she hailed with groans, And I, once charmed with bolder tones, Now love the yellows of Burne-Jones: But then She likes them. My tuneful soul no longer hoards Stray jewels from the Empire boards; I revel now in Dvorak's chords: But then She strikes them. Our age distinctly cramps a knight; Yet, though debarred from tilt and fight, I can admit that black is white, If She asserts it. Heroes of old were luckier men Than I--I venture now and then To hint--retracting meekly when She controverts it. Alfred Cochrane [1865- THE EIGHT-DAY CLOCK The days of Bute and Grafton's fame, Of Chatham's waning prime, First heard your sounding gong proclaim Its chronicle of Time; Old days when Dodd confessed his guilt, When Goldsmith drave his quill, And genial gossip Horace built His house on Strawberry Hill. Now with a grave unmeaning face You still repeat the tale, High-towering in your somber case, Designed by Chippendale; Without regret for what is gone, You bid old customs change, As year by year you travel on To scenes and voices strange. We might have mingled with the crowd Of courtiers in this hall, The fans that swayed, the wigs that bowed, But you have spoiled it all; We might have lingered in the train Of nymphs that Reynolds drew, Or stared spell-bound in Drury Lane At Garrick--but for you. We might in Leicester Fields have swelled The throng of beaux and cits, Or listened to the concourse held Among the Kitcat wits; Have strolled with Selwyn in Pall Mall, Arrayed in gorgeous silks, Or in Great George Street raised a yell For Liberty and Wilkes. This is the life which you have known, Which you have ticked away, In one unmoved unfaltering tone That ceased not day by day, While ever round your dial moved Your hands from span to span, Through drowsy hours and hours that proved Big with the fate of man. A steady tick for fatal creeds, For youth on folly bent, A steady tick for worthy deeds, And moments wisely spent; No warning note of emphasis, No whisper of advice, To ruined rake or flippant miss, For coquetry or dice. You might, I think, have hammered out With meaning doubly dear, The midnight of a Vauxhall rout In Evelina's ear; Or when the night was almost gone, You might, the deals between, Have startled those who looked upon The cloth when it was green. But no, in all the vanished years Down which your wheels have run, Your message borne to heedless ears Is one and only one-- No wit of men, no power of kings, Can stem the overthrow Wrought by this pendulum that swings Sedately to and fro. Alfred Cochrane [1865- A PORTRAIT In sunny girlhood's vernal life She caused no small sensation, But now the modest English wife To others leaves flirtation. She's young still, lovely, debonair, Although sometimes her features Are clouded by a thought of care For those two tiny creatures. Each tiny, toddling, mottled mite Asserts with voice emphatic, In lisping accents, "Mite is right," Their rule is autocratic: The song becomes, that charmed mankind, Their musical narcotic, And baby lips than Love, she'll find, Are even more despotic. Soft lullaby when singing there, And castles ever building, Their destiny she'll carve in air, Bright with maternal gilding: Young Guy, a clever advocate, So eloquent and able! A powdered wig upon his pate, A coronet for Mabel! Joseph Ashby-Sterry [1838-1917] "OLD BOOKS ARE BEST" Old Books are best! With what delight Does "Faithorne fecit" greet our sight On frontispiece or title-page Of that old time, when on the stage "Sweet Nell" set "Rowley's" heart alight! And you, O Friend, to whom I write, Must not deny, e'en though you might, Through fear of modern pirates' rage, Old Books are best. What though the print be not so bright, The paper dark, the binding slight? Our author, be he dull or sage, Returning from that distant age So lives again, we say of right: Old Books are best. Beverly Chew [1850-1924] IMPRESSION In these restrained and careful times Our knowledge petrifies our rhymes; Ah! for that reckless fire men had When it was witty to be mad; When wild conceits were piled in scores, And lit by flaming metaphors, When all was crazed and out of tune,-- Yet throbbed with music of the moon. If we could dare to write as ill As some whose voices haunt us still, Even we, perchance, might call our own Their deep enchanting undertone. We are too diffident and nice, Too learned and too over-wise, Too much afraid of faults to be The flutes of bold sincerity. For, as this sweet life passes by, We blink and nod with critic eye; We've no words rude enough to give Its charm so frank and fugitive. The green and scarlet of the Park, The undulating streets at dark, The brown smoke blown across the blue, This colored city we walk through;-- The pallid faces full of pain, The field-smell of the passing wain, The laughter, longing, perfume, strife, The daily spectacle of life;-- Ah! how shall this be given to rhyme, By rhymesters of a knowing time? Ah! for the age when verse was clad, Being godlike, to be bad and mad. Edmund Gosse [1849-1928] "WITH STRAWBERRIES" With strawberries we filled a tray, And then we drove away, away Along the links beside the sea, Where wave and wind were light and free, And August felt as fresh as May, And where the springy turf was gay With thyme and balm and many a spray Of wild roses, you tempted me With strawberries! A shadowy sail, silent and gray, Stole like a ghost across the bay; But none could hear me ask my fee, And none could know what came to be. Can sweethearts all their thirst allay With strawberries? William Ernest Henley [1849-1903] BALLADE OF LADIES' NAMES Brown's for Lalage, Jones for Lelia, Robinson's bosom for Beatrice glows, Smith is a Hamlet before Ophelia. The glamor stays if the reason goes! Every lover the years disclose Is of a beautiful name made free. One befriends, and all others are foes. Anna's the name of names for me. Sentiment hallows the vowels of Delia; Sweet simplicity breathes from Rose; Courtly memories glitter in Celia; Rosalind savors of quips and hose, Araminta of wits and beaux, Prue of puddings, and Coralie All of sawdust and spangled shows; Anna's the name of names for me. Fie upon Caroline, Madge, Amelia-- These I reckon the essence of prose!-- Cavalier Katherine, cold Cornelia, Portia's masterful Roman nose, Maud's magnificence, Totty's toes, Poll and Bet with their twang of the sea, Nell's impertinence, Pamela's woes! Anna's the name of names for me. ENVOY Ruth like a gillyflower smells and blows, Sylvia prattles of Arcadee, Sybil mystifies, Connie crows, Anna's the name of names for me! William Ernest Henley [1849-1903] TO A PAIR OF EGYPTIAN SLIPPERS Tiny slippers of gold and green, Tied with a mouldering golden cord! What pretty feet they must have been When Caesar Augustus was Egypt's lord! Somebody graceful and fair you were! Not many girls could dance in these! When did your shoemaker make you, dear, Such a nice pair of Egyptian "threes"? Where were you measured? In Sais, or On, Memphis, or Thebes, or Pelusium? Fitting them neatly your brown toes upon, Lacing them deftly with finger and thumb, I seem to see you!--so long ago, Twenty-one centuries, less or more! And here are your sandals: yet none of us know What name, or fortune, or face you bore. Your lips would have laughed, with a rosy scorn, If the merchant, or slave-girl, had mockingly said, "The feet will pass, but the shoes they have worn Two thousand years onward Time's road shall tread, And still be footgear as good as new!" To think that calf-skin, gilded and stitched, Should Rome and the Pharaohs outlive--and you Be gone, like a dream, from the world you bewitched! Not that we mourn you! 'Twere too absurd! You have been such a very long while away! Your dry spiced dust would not value one word Of the soft regrets that my verse could say. Sorrow and Pleasure, and Love and Hate, If you ever felt them, have vaporized hence To this odor--so subtle and delicate-- Of myrrh, and cassia, and frankincense. Of course they embalmed you! Yet not so sweet Were aloes and nard, as the youthful glow Which Amenti stole when the small dark feet Wearied of treading our world below. Look! it was flood-time in valley of Nile, Or a very wet day in the Delta, dear! When your slippers tripped lightly their latest mile-- The mud on the soles renders that fact clear. You knew Cleopatra, no doubt! You saw Antony's galleys from Actium come. But there! if questions could answers draw From lips so many a long age dumb, I would not tease you with history, Nor vex your heart for the men that were; The one point to learn that would fascinate me Is, where and what are you to-day, my dear! You died, believing in Horus and Pasht, Isis, Osiris, and priestly lore; And found, of course, such theories smashed By actual fact on the heavenly shore. What next did you do? Did you transmigrate? Have we seen you since, all modern and fresh? Your charming soul--so I calculate-- Mislaid its mummy, and sought new flesh. Were you she whom I met at dinner last week, With eyes and hair of the Ptolemy black, Who still of this find in Fayoum would speak, And to Pharaohs and scarabs still carry us back? A scent of lotus about her hung, And she had such a far-away wistful air As of somebody born when the Earth was young; And she wore of gilt slippers a lovely pair. Perchance you were married? These might have been Part of your trousseau--the wedding shoes; And you laid them aside with the garments green, And painted clay Gods which a bride would use; And, may be, to-day, by Nile's bright waters Damsels of Egypt in gowns of blue-- Great-great-great--very great--grand-daughters Owe their shapely insteps to you! But vainly I beat at the bars of the Past, Little green slippers with golden strings! For all you can tell is that leather will last When loves, and delightings, and beautiful things Have vanished; forgotten--No! not quite that! I catch some gleam of the grace you wore When you finished with Life's daily pit-a-pat, And left your shoes at Death's bedroom door. You were born in the Egypt which did not doubt; You were never sad with our new-fashioned sorrows: You were sure, when your play-days on Earth ran out, Of play-times to come, as we of our morrows! Oh, wise little Maid of the Delta! I lay Your shoes in your mummy-chest back again, And wish that one game we might merrily play At "Hunt the Slippers"--to see it all plain. Edwin Arnold [1832-1904] WITHOUT AND WITHIN My coachman, in the moonlight there, Looks through the side-light of the door; I hear him with his brethren swear, As I could do,--but only more. Flattening his nose against the pane, He envies me my brilliant lot, Breathes on his aching fists in vain, And dooms me to a place more hot. He sees me in to supper go, A silken wonder by my side, Bare arms, bare shoulders, and a row Of flounces, for the door too wide. He thinks how happy is my arm 'Neath its white-gloved and jewelled load; And wishes me some dreadful harm, Hearing the merry corks explode. Meanwhile I inly curse the bore Of hunting still the same old coon, And envy him, outside the door, In golden quiets of the moon. The winter wind is not so cold As the bright smile he sees me win Nor the host's oldest wine so old As our poor gabble sour and thin. I envy him the ungyved prance With which his freezing feet he warms, And drag my lady's-chains and dance The galley-slave of dreary forms. Oh, could, he have my share of din, And I his quiet!--past a doubt 'Twould still be one man bored within, And just another bored without. Nay, when, once paid my mortal fee, Some idler on my headstone grim Traces the moss-blurred name, will he Think me the happier, or I him? James Russell Lowell [1819-1891] "SHE WAS A BEAUTY" She was a beauty in the days When Madison was President, And quite coquettish in her ways,-- On conquests of the heart intent. Grandpapa, on his right knee bent, Wooed her in stiff, old-fashioned phrase,-- She was a beauty in the days When Madison was President. And when your roses where hers went Shall go, my Rose, who date from Hayes, I hope you'll wear her sweet content Of whom tradition lightly says: She was a beauty in the days When Madison was President. Henry Cuyler Bunner [1855-1896] NELL GWYNNE'S LOOKING-GLASS Glass antique, 'twixt thee and Nell Draw we here a parallel. She, like thee, was forced to bear All reflections, foul or fair. Thou art deep and bright within, Depths as bright belonged to Gwynne; Thou art very frail as well, Frail as flesh is,--so was Nell. Thou, her glass, art silver-lined, She too, had a silver mind: Thine is fresh till this far day, Hers till death ne'er wore away: Thou dost to thy surface win Wandering glances, so did Gwynne; Eyes on thee love long to dwell, So men's eyes would do on Nell. Life-like forms in thee are sought, Such the forms the actress wrought; Truth unfailing rests in you, Nell, whate'er she was, was true. Clear as virtue, dull as sin, Thou art oft, as oft was Gwynne; Breathe on thee, and drops will swell: Bright tears dimmed the eyes of Nell. Thine's a frame to charm the sight, Framed was she to give delight; Waxen forms here truly show Charles above and Nell below; But between them, chin with chin, Stuart stands as low as Gwynne,-- Paired, yet parted,--meant to tell Charles was opposite to Nell. Round the glass wherein her face Smiled so soft, her "arms" we trace; Thou, her mirror, hast the pair, Lion here, and leopard there. She had part in these,--akin To the lion-heart was Gwynne; And the leopard's beauty fell With its spots to bounding Nell. Oft inspected, ne'er seen through, Thou art firm, if brittle too; So her will, on good intent, Might be broken, never bent. What the glass was, when therein Beamed the face of glad Nell Gwynne, Was that face by beauty's spell To the honest soul of Nell. Laman Blanchard [1804-1845] MIMNERMUS IN CHURCH You promise heavens free from strife, Pure truth, and perfect change of will; But sweet, sweet is this human life, So sweet, I fain would breathe it still: Your chilly stars I can forego, This warm kind world is all I know. You say there is no substance here, One great reality above: Back from that void I shrink in fear, And child-like hide myself in love: Show me what angels feel. Till then I cling, a mere weak man, to men. You bid me lift my mean desires From faltering lips and fitful veins To sexless souls, ideal choirs, Unwearied voices, wordless strains: My mind with fonder welcome owns One dear dead friend's remembered tones. Forsooth the present we must give To that which cannot pass away; All beauteous things for which we live By laws of time and space decay. But oh, the very reason why I clasp them, is because they die. William Johnson-Cory [1823-1892] CLAY "We are but clay," the preacher saith; "The heart is clay, and clay the brain, And soon or late there cometh death To mingle us with earth again." Well, let the preacher have it so, And clay we are, and clay shall be;-- Why iterate?--for this I know, That clay does very well for me. When clay has such red mouths to kiss, Firm hands to grasp, it is enough: How can I take it aught amiss We are not made of rarer stuff? And if one tempt you to believe His choice would be immortal gold, Question him, Can you then conceive A warmer heart than clay can hold? Or richer joys than clay can feel? And when perforce he falters nay, Bid him renounce his wish and kneel In thanks for this same kindly clay. Edward Verrall Lucas [1868- AUCASSIN AND NICOLETE What magic halo rings thy head, Dream-maiden of a minstrel dead? What charm of faerie round thee hovers, That all who listen are thy lovers? What power yet makes our pulses thrill To see thee at thy window-sill, And by that dangerous cord down-sliding, And through the moonlit garden gliding? True maiden art thou in thy dread; True maiden in thy hardihead; True maiden when, thy fears half-over, Thou lingerest to try thy lover. And ah! what heart of stone or steel But doth some stir unwonted feel, When to the day new brightness bringing Thou standest at the stair-foot singing! Thy slender limbs in boyish dress, Thy tones half glee, half tenderness, Thou singest, 'neath the light tale's cover, Of thy true love to thy true lover. O happy lover, happy maid, Together in sweet story laid; Forgive the hand that here is baring Your old loves for new lovers' staring! Yet, Nicolete, why fear'st thou fame? No slander now can touch thy name, Nor Scandal's self a fault discovers, Though each new year thou hast new lovers. Nor, Aucassin, need'st thou to fear These lovers of too late a year, Nor dread one jealous pang's revival; No lover now can be thy rival. What flower considers if its blooms Light, haunts of men, or forest glooms? What care ye though the world discovers Your flowers of love, O flower of lovers! Francis William Bourdillon [1852-1921] PROVENCAL LOVERS Aucassin And Nicolette Within the garden of Beaucaire He met her by a secret stair,-- The night was centuries ago. Said Aucassin, "My love, my pet, These old confessors vex me so! They threaten all the pains of hell Unless I give you up, ma belle";-- Said Aucassin to Nicolette. "Now who should there in Heaven be To fill your place, ma tres-douce mie? To reach that spot I little care! There all the droning priests are met; All the old cripples, too, are there That unto shrines and altars cling To filch the Peter-pence we bring";-- Said Aucassin to Nicolette. "There are the barefoot monks and friars With gowns well tattered by the briars, The saints who lift their eyes and whine: I like them not--a starveling set! Who'd care with folk like these to dine? The other road 'twere just as well That you and I should take, ma belle!"-- Said Aucassin to Nicolette. "To purgatory I would go With pleasant comrades whom we know, Fair scholars, minstrels, lusty knights Whose deeds the land will not forget, The captains of a hundred fights, The men of valor and degree: We'll join that gallant company,"-- Said Aucassin to Nicolette. "There, too, are jousts and joyance rare, And beauteous ladies debonair, The pretty dames, the merry brides, Who with their wedded lords coquette And have a friend or two besides,-- And all in gold and trappings gay, With furs, and crests in vair and gray,"-- Said Aucassin to Nicolette. "Sweet players on the cithern strings, And they who roam the world like kings, Are gathered there, so blithe and free! Pardie! I'd join them now, my pet, If you went also, ma douce mie! The joys of Heaven I'd forego To have you with me there below,"-- Said Aucassin to Nicolette. Edmund Clarence Stedman [1833-1908] ON THE HURRY OF THIS TIME With slower pen men used to write, Of old, when "letters" were "polite"; In Anna's or in George's days, They could afford to turn a phrase, Or trim a struggling theme aright. They knew not steam; electric light Not yet had dazed their calmer sight;-- They meted out both blame and praise With slower pen. Too swiftly now the Hours take flight! What's read at morn is dead at night: Scant space have we for Art's delays, Whose breathless thought so briefly stays, We may not work--ah! would we might!-- With slower pen. Austin Dobson [1840-1921] "GOOD-NIGHT, BABETTE!" Si vieillesse pouvait!-- Scene.--A small neat Room. In a high Voltaire Chair sits a white-haired old Gentleman. Monsieur Vieuxbois Babette M. Vieuxbois (turning querulously) Day of my life! Where can she get! Babette! I say! Babette!--Babette! Babette (entering hurriedly) Coming, M'sieu'! If M'sieu' speaks So loud, he won't be well for weeks! M. Vieuxbois Where have you been? Babette Why M'sieu' knows:-- April!... Ville d'Avray!... Ma'am'selle Rose! M. Vieuxbois Ah! I am old,--and I forget. Was the place growing green, Babette? Babette But of a greenness!--yes, M'sieu'! And then the sky so blue!--so blue! And when I dropped my immortelle, How the birds sang! (Lifting her apron to her eyes) This poor Ma'am'selle! M. Vieuxbois You're a good girl, Babette, but she,-- She was an Angel, verily. Sometimes I think I see her yet Stand smiling by the cabinet; And once, I know, she peeped and laughed Betwixt the curtains... Where's the draught? (She gives him a cup) Now I shall sleep, I think, Babette;-- Sing me your Norman chansonnette. Babette (sings) "Once at the Angelus, (Ere I was dead), Angels all glorious Came to my bed; Angels in blue and white Crowned on the Head." M. Vieuxbois (drowsily) "She was an Angel"... "Once she laughed"... What, was I dreaming? Where's the draught? Babette (showing the empty cup) The draught, M'sieu'? M. Vieuxbois How I forget! I am so old! But sing, Babette! Babette (sings) "One was the Friend I left Stark in the Snow; One was the Wife that died Long,--long ago; One was the Love I lost... How could she know?" M. Vieuxbois (murmuring) Ah, Paul!... old Paul!... Eulalie too! And Rose... And O! "the sky so blue!" Babette (sings) "One had my Mother's eyes, Wistful and mild; One had my Father's face; One was a Child: All of them bent to me,-- Bent down and smiled!" (He is asleep!) M. Vieuxbois (almost inaudibly) "How I forget!" "I am so old!"... "Good-night, Babette!" Austin Dobson [1840-1921] A DIALOGUE FROM PLATO Le tempo le mieux employe est celui qu'on perd.--Claude Tillier I'd "read" three hours. Both notes and text Were fast a mist becoming; In bounced a vagrant bee, perplexed, And filled the room with humming, Then out. The casement's leafage sways, And, parted light, discloses Miss Di., with hat and book,--a maze Of muslin mixed with roses. "You're reading Greek?" "I am--and you?" "O, mine's a mere romancer!" "So Plato is." "Then read him--do; And I'll read mine for answer." I read: "My Plato (Plato, too-- That wisdom thus should harden!) Declares 'blue eyes look doubly blue Beneath a Dolly Varden.'" She smiled. "My book in turn avers (No author's name is stated) That sometimes those Philosophers Are sadly mistranslated." "But hear,--the next's in stronger style: The Cynic School asserted That two red lips which part and smile May not be controverted!" She smiled once more. "My book, I find, Observes some modern doctors Would make the Cynics out a kind Of album-verse concoctors." Then I: "Why not? 'Ephesian law, No less than time's tradition, Enjoined fair speech on all who saw Diana's apparition." She blushed,--this time. "If Plato's page No wiser precept teaches, Then I'd renounce that doubtful sage, And walk to Burnham Beeches." "Agreed," I said. "For Socrates (I find he too is talking) Thinks Learning can't remain at ease When Beauty goes a-walking." She read no more. I leapt the sill: The sequel's scarce essential-- Nay, more than this, I hold it still Profoundly confidential. Austin Dobson [1840-1921] THE LADIES OF ST. JAMES'S A Proper New Ballad Of The Country And The Town Phyllida amo ante alias.--Virgil The ladies of St. James's Go swinging to the play; Their footmen run before them, With a "Stand by! Clear the way!" But Phyllida, my Phyllida! She takes her buckled shoon, When we go out a-courting Beneath the harvest moon. The ladies of St. James's Wear satin on their backs; They sit all night at Ombre, With candles all of wax: But Phyllida, my Phyllida! She dons her russet gown, And runs to gather May dew Before the world is down. The ladies of St. James's! They are so fine and fair, You'd think a box of essences Was broken in the air: But Phyllida, my Phyllida! The breath of heath and furze When breezes blow at morning, Is not so fresh as hers. The ladies of St. James's! They're painted to the eyes; Their white it stays for ever, Their red it never dies: But Phyllida, my Phyllida! Her color comes and goes; It trembles to a lily,-- It wavers to a rose. The ladies of St. James's! You scarce can understand The half of all their speeches, Their phrases are so grand: But Phyllida, my Phyllida! Her shy and simple words Are clear as after rain-drops The music of the birds. The ladies of St. James's! They have their fits and freaks; They smile on you--for seconds, They frown on you--for weeks: But Phyllida, my Phyllida! Come either storm or shine, From Shrove-tide unto Shrove-tide, Is always true--and mine. My Phyllida! my Phyllida! I care not though they heap The hearts of all St. James's, And give me all to keep; I care not whose the beauties Of all the world may be, For Phyllida--for Phyllida Is all the world to me! Austin Dobson [1840-1921] THE CURE'S PROGRESS Monsieur the Cure down the street Comes with his kind old face,-- With his coat worn bare, and his straggling hair, And his green umbrella-case. You may see him pass by the little "Grande Place", And the tiny "Hotel-de-Ville"; He smiles, as he goes, to the fleuriste Rose, And the pompier Theophile. He turns, as a rule, through the "Marche" cool, Where the noisy fish-wives call; And his compliment pays to the "Belle Therese", As she knits in her dusky stall. There's a letter to drop at the locksmith's shop, And Toto, the locksmith's niece, Has jubilant hopes, for the Cure gropes In his tails for a pain d'epice. There's a little dispute with a merchant of fruit, Who is said to be heterodox, That will ended be with a "Ma foi, oui!" And a pinch from the Cure's box. There is also a word that no one heard To the furrier's daughter Lou.; And a pale cheek fed with a flickering red, And a "Ben Dieu garde M'sieu'!" But a grander way for the Sous-Prefet, And a bow for Ma'am'selle Anne; And a mock "off-hat" to the Notary's cat, And a nod to the Sacristan:-- For ever through life the Cure goes With a smile on his kind old face-- With his coat worn bare, and his straggling hair, And his green umbrella-case. Austin Dobson [1840-1921] A GENTLEMAN OF THE OLD SCHOOL He lived in that past Georgian day, When men were less inclined to say That "Time is Gold," and overlay With toil their pleasure; He held some land, and dwelt thereon,-- Where, I forget,--the house is gone; His Christian name, I think, was John,-- His surname, Leisure. Reynolds has painted him,--a face Filled with a fine, old-fashioned grace, Fresh-colored, frank, with ne'er a trace Of trouble shaded; The eyes are blue, the hair is dressed In plainest way,--one hand is pressed Deep in a flapped canary vest, With buds brocaded. He wears a brown old Brunswick coat, With silver buttons,--round his throat, A soft cravat;--in all you note An elder fashion,-- A strangeness, which, to us who shine In shapely hats,--whose coats combine All harmonies of hue and line, Inspires compassion. He lived so long ago, you see! Men were untravelled then, but we, Like Ariel, post o'er land and sea With careless parting; He found it quite enough for him To smoke his pipe in "garden trim," And watch, about the fish tank's brim, The swallows darting. He liked the well-wheel's creaking tongue,-- He liked the thrush that fed her young,-- He liked the drone of flies among His netted peaches; He liked to watch the sunlight fall Athwart his ivied orchard wall; Or pause to catch the cuckoo's call Beyond the beeches. His were the times of Paint and Patch, And yet no Ranelagh could match The sober doves that round his thatch Spread tails and sidled; He liked their ruffling, puffed content; For him their drowsy wheelings meant More than a Mall of Beaux that bent, Or Belles that bridled. Not that, in truth, when life began He shunned the flutter of the fan; He too had maybe "pinked his man" In Beauty's quarrel; But now his "fervent youth" had flown Where lost things go; and he was grown As staid and slow-paced as his own Old hunter, Sorrel. Yet still he loved the chase, and held That no composer's score excelled The merry horn, when Sweetlip swelled Its jovial riot; But most his measured words of praise Caressed the angler's easy ways,-- His idly meditative days,-- His rustic diet. Not that his "meditating" rose Beyond a sunny summer doze; He never troubled his repose With fruitless prying; But held, as law for high and low, What God withholds no man can know, And smiled away enquiry so, Without replying. We read--alas, how much we read!-- The jumbled strifes of creed and creed With endless controversies feed Our groaning tables; His books--and they sufficed him--were Cotton's Montaigne, The Grave of Blair, A "Walton"--much the worse for wear, And Aesop's Fables. One more--The Bible. Not that he Had searched its page as deep as we; No sophistries could make him see Its slender credit; It may be that he could not count The sires and sons to Jesse's fount,-- He liked the "Sermon on the Mount,"-- And more, he read it. Once he had loved, but failed to wed, A red-cheeked lass who long was dead; His ways were far too slow, he said, To quite forget her; And still when time had turned him gray, The earliest hawthorn buds in May Would find his lingering feet astray, Where first he met her. "In Coelo Quies" heads the stone On Leisure's grave,--now little known, A tangle of wild-rose has grown So thick across it; The "Benefactions" still declare He left the clerk an elbow-chair, And "12 Pence Yearly to Prepare A Christmas Posset." Lie softly, Leisure! Doubtless you, With too serene a conscience drew Your easy breath, and slumbered through The gravest issue; But we, to whom our age allows Scarce space to wipe our weary brows, Look down upon your narrow house, Old friend, and miss you! Austin Dobson [1840-1921] ON A FAN That Belonged To The Marquise De Pompadour Chicken-skin, delicate, white, Painted by Carlo Vanloo, Loves in a riot of light, Roses and vaporous blue; Hark to the dainty frou-frou! Picture above, if you can, Eyes that could melt as the dew,-- This was the Pompadour's fan! See how they rise at the sight, Thronging the Ceil de Boeuf through, Courtiers as butterflies bright, Beauties that Fragonard drew, Talon-rouge, falbala, queue, Cardinal, Duke,--to a man, Eager to sigh or to sue,-- This was the Pompadour's fan! Ah, but things more than polite Hung on this toy, voyez-vous! Matters of state and of might, Things that great ministers do; Things that, maybe, overthrew Those in whose brains they began; Here was the sign and the cue,-- This was the Pompadour's fan! ENVOY Where are the secrets it knew? Weavings of plot and of plan? --But where is the Pompadour, too? This was the Pompadour's Fan! Austin Dobson [1840-1921] "WHEN I SAW YOU LAST, ROSE" When I saw you last, Rose, You were only so high;-- How fast the time goes! Like a bud ere it blows, You just peeped at the sky, When I saw you last, Rose! Now your petals unclose, Now your May-time is nigh;-- How fast the time goes! And a life,--how it grows! You were scarcely so shy, When I saw you last, Rose! In your bosom it shows There's a guest on the sly; (How fast the time goes!) Is it Cupid? Who knows! Yet you used not to sigh, When I saw you last, Rose;-- How fast the time goes! Austin Dobson [1840-1921] URCEUS EXIT I intended an Ode, And it turned to a Sonnet. It began a la mode, I intended an Ode; But Rose crossed the road In her latest new bonnet; I intended an Ode; And it turned to a Sonnet. Austin Dobson [1840-1921] A CORSAGE BOUQUET Myrtilla, to-night, Wears Jacqueminot roses. She's the loveliest sight! Myrtilla to-night:-- Correspondingly light My pocket-book closes. Myrtilla, to-night Wears Jacqueminot roses. Charles Henry Luders [1858-1891] TWO TRIOLETS What he said:-- This kiss upon your fan I press-- Ah! Sainte Nitouche, you don't refuse it! And may it from its soft recess-- This kiss upon your fan I press-- Be blown to you, a shy caress, By this white down, whene'er you use it. This kiss upon your fan I press,-- Ah, Sainte Nitouche, you don't refuse it! What she thought:-- To kiss a fan! What a poky poet! The stupid man To kiss a fan When he knows--that--he--can-- Or ought to know it-- To kiss a fan! What a poky poet! Harrison Robertson [1856- THE BALLAD OF DEAD LADIES From The French Of Francois Villon 1450 Tell me now in what hidden way is Lady Flora the lovely Roman? Where's Hipparchia, and where is Thais, Neither of them the fairer woman? Where is Echo, beheld of no man, Only heard on river and mere,-- She whose beauty was more than human?... But where are the snows of yester-year? Where's Heloise, the learned nun, For whose sake Abeilard, I ween, Lost manhood and put priesthood on? (From Love he won such dule and teen!) And where, I pray you, is the Queen Who willed that Buridan should steer Sewed in a sack's mouth down the Seine?... But where are the snows of yester-year? White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies, With a voice like any mermaiden,-- Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice, And Ermengarde the lady of Maine,-- And that good Joan whom Englishmen At Rouen doomed and burned her there,-- Mother of God, where are they then?... But where are the snows of yester-year? Nay, never ask this week, fair lord, Where they are gone, nor yet this year, Except with this for an overword,-- But where are the snows of yester-year? Dante Gabriel Rossetti [1828-1882] BALLADE OF DEAD LADIES After Villon Nay, tell me now in what strange air The Roman Flora dwells to-day, Where Archippiada hides, and where Beautiful Thais has passed away? Whence answers Echo, afield, astray, By mere or stream,--around, below? Lovelier she than a woman of clay; Nay, but where is the last year's snow? Where is wise Heloise, that care Brought on Abeilard, and dismay? All for her love he found a snare, A maimed poor monk in orders gray; And where's the Queen who willed to slay Buridan, that in a sack must go Afloat down Seine,--a perilous way-- Nay, but where is the last year's snow? Where's that White Queen, a lily rare, With her sweet song, the Siren's lay? Where's Bertha Broad-foot, Beatrice fair? Alys and Ermengarde, where are they? Good Joan, whom English did betray In Rouen town, and burned her? No, Maiden and Queen, no man may say; Nay, but where is the last year's snow? ENVOY Prince, all this week thou needst not pray, Nor yet this year the thing to know. One burden answers, ever and aye, "Nay, but where is the last year's snow?" Andrew Lang [1844-1912] A BALLAD OF DEAD LADIES After Villon From "If I Were King" I wonder in what Isle of Bliss Apollo's music fills the air; In what green valley Artemis For young Endymion spreads the snare: Where Venus lingers debonair: The Wind has blown them all away-- And Pan lies piping in his lair-- Where are the Gods of Yesterday? Say where the great Semiramis Sleeps in a rose-red tomb; and where The precious dust of Caesar is, Or Cleopatra's yellow hair: Where Alexander Do-and-Dare; The Wind has blown them all away-- And Redbeard of the Iron Chair; Where are the Dreams of Yesterday? Where is the Queen of Herod's kiss, And Phryne in her beauty bare; By what strange sea does Tomyris With Dido and Cassandra share Divine Proserpina's despair; The Wind has blown them all away-- For what poor ghost does Helen care? Where are the Girls of Yesterday? ENVOY Alas for lovers! Pair by pair The Wind has blown them all away: The young and yare, the fond and fair: Where are the Snows of Yesterday? Justin Huntly McCarthy [1860-1936] IF I WERE KING After Villon From "If I Were King" All French folk, whereso'er ye be, Who love your country, sail and sand, From Paris to the Breton sea, And back again to Norman strand, Forsooth ye seem a silly band, Sheep without shepherd, left to chance-- Far otherwise our Fatherland, If Villon were the King of France! The figure on the throne you see Is nothing but a puppet, planned To wear the regal bravery Of silken coat and gilded wand. Not so we Frenchmen understand The Lord of lion's heart and glance, And such a one would take command If Villon were the King of France! His counsellors are rogues, Perdie! While men of honest mind are banned To creak upon the Gallows Tree, Or squeal in prisons over-manned We want a chief to bear the brand, And bid the damned Burgundians dance. God! Where the Oriflamme should stand If Villon were the King of France! ENVOY Louis the Little, play the grand; Buffet the foe with sword and lance; 'Tis what would happen, by this hand, If Villon were the King of France! Justin Huntly McCarthy [1860-1936] A BALLADE OF SUICIDE The gallows in my garden, people say, Is new and neat and adequately tall. I tie the noose on in a knowing way As one that knots his necktie for a ball; But just as all the neighbors--on the wall-- Are drawing a long breath to shout "Hurray!" The strangest whim has seized me... After all I think I will not hang myself to-day. To-morrow is the time I get my pay-- My uncle's sword is hanging in the hall-- I see a little cloud all pink and gray-- Perhaps the rector's mother will not call-- I fancy that I heard from Mr. Gall That mushrooms could be cooked another way-- I never read the works of Juvenal-- I think I will not hang myself to-day. The world will have another washing day; The decadents decay; the pedants pall; And H. G. Wells has found that children play, And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall; Rationalists are growing rational-- And through thick woods one finds a stream astray, So secret that the very sky seems small-- I think I will not hang myself to-day. ENVOI Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal, The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way; Even to-day your royal head may fall-- I think I will not hang myself to-day. Gilbert Keith Chesterton [1874-1936] CHIFFONS! Through this our city of delight, This Paris of our joy and play, This Paris perfumed, jeweled, bright, Rouged, powdered, amorous,--ennuye: Across our gilded Quartier, So fair to see, so frail au fond, Echoes--mon Dieu!--the Ragman's bray: "Mar--chand d'ha--bits! Chif--fons!" Foul, hunched, a plague to dainty sight, He limps infect by park and quai, Voicing (for those that hear aright) His hunger-world, the dark Marais. Sexton of all we waste and fray, He bags at last pour tout de bon Our trappings rare, our braveries gay, "Mar--chand d'ha--bits! Chif--fons!" Their lot is ours! A grislier wight, The Ragman Time, takes day by day Our beauty's bloom, our manly might, Our joie de vivre, our gods of clay; Till torn and worn and soiled and gray Hot life rejects us--nom de nom!-- Rags! and our only requiem lay, "Mar--chand d'ha--bits! Chif--fons!" ENVOY Princes take heed!--for where are they, Valois, Navarre and Orleans?... Death drones the answer, far away, "Mar--chand d'ha--bits! Chif--fons!" William Samuel Johnson [1859- THE COURT HISTORIAN Lower Empire. Circa A. D. 700 The Monk Arnulphus uncorked his ink That shone with a blood-red light Just now as the sun began to sink; His vellum was pumiced a silvery white; "The Basileus"--for so he began-- "Is a royal sagacious Mars of a man, Than the very lion bolder; He has married the stately widow of Thrace--" "Hush!" cried a voice at his shoulder. His palette gleamed with a burnished green, Bright as a dragon-fly's skin: His gold-leaf shone like the robe of a queen, His azure glowed as a cloud worn thin, Deep as the blue of the king-whale's lair: "The Porphyrogenita Zoe the fair Is about to wed with a Prince much older, Of an unpropitious mien and look--" "Hush!" cried a voice at his shoulder. The red flowers trellised the parchment page, The birds leaped up on the spray, The yellow fruit swayed and drooped and swung, It was Autumn mixed up with May. (O, but his cheek was shrivelled and shrunk!) "The child of the Basileus," wrote the Monk, "Is golden-haired--tender the Queen's arms fold her. Her step-mother Zoe doth love her so--" "Hush!" cried a voice at his shoulder. The Kings and Martyrs and Saints and Priests All gathered to guard the text: There was Daniel snug in the lions' den Singing no whit perplexed-- Brazen Samson with spear and helm-- "The Queen," wrote the Monk, "rules firm this realm, For the King gets older and older. The Norseman Thorkill is brave and fair--" "Hush!" cried a voice at his shoulder. Walter Thornbury [1828-1876] MISS LOU When thin-strewn memory I look through, I see most clearly poor Miss Loo, Her tabby cat, her cage of birds, Her nose, her hair--her muffled words, And how she would open her green eyes, As if in some immense surprise, Whenever as we sat at tea, She made some small remark to me. 'Tis always drowsy summer when From out the past she comes again; The westering sunshine in a pool Floats in her parlor still and cool; While the slim bird its lean wires shakes, As into piercing song it breaks; Till Peter's pale-green eyes ajar Dream, wake; wake, dream, in one brief bar; And I am sitting, dull and shy, And she with gaze of vacancy, And large hands folded on the tray, Musing the afternoon away; Her satin bosom heaving slow With sighs that softly ebb and flow, And her plain face in such dismay, It seems unkind to look her way; Until all cheerful back will come Her gentle gleaming spirit home: And one would think that poor Miss Loo Asked nothing else, if she had you. Walter De la Mare [1873- THE POET AND THE WOOD-LOUSE A portly Wood-louse, full of cares, Transacted eminent affairs Along a parapet where pears Unripened fell And vines embellished the sweet airs With muscatel. Day after day beheld him run His scales a-twinkle in the sun About his business never done; Night's slender span he Spent in the home his wealth had won-- A red-brick cranny. Thus, as his Sense of Right directed, He lived both honored and respected, Cherished his children and protected His duteous wife, And naught of diffidence deflected His useful life. One mid-day, hastening to his Club, He spied beside a water-tub The owner of each plant and shrub A humble Bard-- Who turned upon the conscious grub A mild regard. "Eh?" quoth the Wood-louse, "Can it be A Higher Power looks down to see My praiseworthy activity And notes me plying My Daily Task?--Nor strange, dear me, But gratifying!" To whom the Bard: I still divest My orchard of the Insect Pest, That you are such is manifest, Prepare to die.-- And yet, how sweetly does your crest Reflect the sky! "Go then forgiven, (for what ails Your naughty life this fact avails Tu pardon) mirror in your scales Celestial blue, Till the sun sets and the light fails The skies and you." ....... May all we proud and bustling parties Whose lot in forum, street and mart is Stand in conspectu Deitatis And save our face, Reflecting where our scaly heart is Some skyey grace. Helen Parry Eden [18 STUDENTS John Brown and Jeanne at Fontainebleau-- 'Twas Toussaint, just a year ago; Crimson and copper was the glow Of all the woods at Fontainebleau. They peered into that ancient well, And watched the slow torch as it fell. John gave the keeper two whole sous, And Jeanne that smile with which she woos John Brown to folly. So they lose The Paris train. But never mind!-- All-Saints are rustling in the wind, And there's an inn, a crackling fire-- It's deux-cinquante, but Jeanne's desire); There's dinner, candles, country wine, Jeanne's lips--philosophy divine! There was a bosquet at Saint Cloud Wherein John's picture of her grew To be a Salon masterpiece-- Till the rain fell that would not cease. Through one long alley how they raced!-- 'Twas gold and brown, and all a waste Of matted leaves, moss-interlaced. Shades of mad queens and hunter-kings And thorn-sharp feet of dryad-things Were company to their wanderings; Then rain and darkness on them drew. The rich folks' motors honked and flew. They hailed an old cab, heaven for two; The bright Champs-Elysees at last-- Though the cab crawled it sped too fast. Paris, upspringing white and gold: Flamboyant arch and high-enscrolled War-sculpture, big, Napoleonic-- Fierce chargers, angels histrionic; The royal sweep of gardened spaces, The pomp and whirl of columned Places; The Rive Gauche, age-old, gay and gray; The impasse and the loved cafe; The tempting tidy little shops; The convent walls, the glimpsed tree-tops; Book-stalls, old men like dwarfs in plays; Talk, work, and Latin Quarter ways. May--Robinson's, the chestnut trees-- Were ever crowds as gay as these? The quick pale waiters on a run, The round green tables, one by one, Hidden away in amorous bowers-- Lilac, laburnum's golden showers. Kiss, clink of glasses, laughter heard, And nightingales quite undeterred. And then that last extravagance-- O Jeanne, a single amber glance Will pay him!--"Let's play millionaire For just two hours--on princely fare, At some hotel where lovers dine A deux and pledge across the wine." They find a damask breakfast-room, Where stiff silk roses range their bloom. The garcon has a splendid way Of bearing in grand dejeuner. Then to be left alone, alone, High up above Rue Castiglione; Curtained away from all the rude Rumors, in silken solitude; And, John, her head upon your knees-- Time waits for moments such as these. Florence Wilkinson [18 "ONE, TWO, THREE!" It was an old, old, old, old lady, And a boy that was half-past three; And the way that they played together Was beautiful to see. She couldn't go running and jumping, And the boy, no more could he; For he was a thin little fellow, With a thin little twisted knee. They sat in the yellow sunlight, Out under the maple tree; And the game that they played I'll tell you, Just as it was told to me. It was Hide-and-Go-Seek they were playing, Though you'd never have known it to be-- With an old, old, old, old lady, And a boy with a twisted knee. The boy would bend his face down On his one little sound right knee, And he'd guess where she was hiding, In guesses One, Two, Three! "You are in the china-closet!" He would cry, and laugh with glee-- It wasn't the china closet, But he still had Two and Three. "You are up in papa's big bedroom, In the chest with the queer old key!" And she said: "You are warm and warmer; But you're not quite right," said she. "It can't be the little cupboard Where mamma's things used to be-- So it must be the clothes-press, Gran'ma!" And he found her with his Three. Then she covered her face with her fingers, That were wrinkled and white and wee, And she guessed where the boy was hiding, With a One and a Two and a Three. And they never had stirred from their places, Right under the maple tree-- This old, old, old, old lady And the boy with the lame little knee-- This dear, dear, dear old lady, And the boy who was half-past three. Henry Cuyler Bunner [1855-1896] THE CHAPERON I take my chaperon to the play-- She thinks she's taking me. And the gilded youth who owns the box, A proud young man is he; But how would his young heart be hurt If he could only know That not for his sweet sake I go Nor yet to see the trifling show; But to see my chaperon flirt. Her eyes beneath her snowy hair They sparkle young as mine; There's scarce a wrinkle in her hand So delicate and fine. And when my chaperon is seen, They come from everywhere-- The dear old boys with silvery hair, With old-time grace and old-time air, To greet their old-time queen. They bow as my young Midas here Will never learn to bow (The dancing-masters do not teach That gracious reverence now); With voices quavering just a bit, They play their old parts through, They talk of folk who used to woo, Of hearts that broke in 'fifty-two-- Now none the worse for it. And as those aged crickets chirp, I watch my chaperon's face, And see the dear old features take A new and tender grace; And in her happy eyes I see Her youth awakening bright, With all its hope, desire, delight-- Ah, me! I wish that I were quite As young--as young as she! Henry Cuyler Bunner [1855-1896] "A PITCHER OF MIGNONETTE" A pitcher of mignonette In a tenement's highest casement,-- Queer sort of flower-pot--yet That pitcher of mignonette Is a garden in heaven set, To the little sick child in the basement-- The pitcher of mignonette, In the tenement's highest casement. Henry Cuyler Bunner [1855-1896] OLD KING COLE In Tilbury Town did Old King Cole A wise old age anticipate, Desiring, with his pipe and bowl, No Khan's extravagant estate. No crown annoyed his honest head, No fiddlers three were called or needed; For two disastrous heirs instead Made music more that ever three did. Bereft of her with whom his life Was harmony without a flaw, He took no other for a wife, Nor sighed for any that he saw; And if he doubted his two sons, And heirs, Alexis and Evander, He might have been as doubtful once Of Robert Burns and Alexander. Alexis, in his early youth, Began to steal--from old and young. Likewise Evander, and the truth Was like a bad taste on his tongue. Born thieves and liars, their affair Seemed only to be tarred with evil-- The most insufferable pair Of scamps that ever cheered the devil. The world went on, their fame went on, And they went on--from bad to worse; Till, goaded hot with nothing done, And each accoutered with a curse, The friends of Old King Cole, by twos, And fours, and sevens, and elevens, Pronounced unalterable views Of doings that were not of Heaven's. And having learned again whereby Their baleful zeal had come about, King Cole met many a wrathful eye So kindly that its wrath went out-- Or partly out. Say what they would, He seemed the more to court their candor, But never told what kind of good Was in Alexis and Evander. And Old King Cole, with many a puff That haloed his urbanity, Would smoke till he had smoked enough, And listen most attentively. He beamed as with an inward light That had the Lord's assurance in it; And once a man was there all night, Expecting something every minute. But whether from too little thought, Or too much fealty to the bowl, A dim reward was all he got For sitting up with Old King Cole. "Though mine," the father mused aloud, "Are not the sons I would have chosen, Shall I, less evilly endowed, By their infirmity be frozen? "They'll have a bad end, I'll agree, But I was never born to groan; For I can see what I can see, And I'm accordingly alone. With open heart and open door, I love my friends, I like my neighbors; But if I try to tell you more, Your doubts will overmatch my labors. "This pipe would never make me calm, This bowl my grief would never drown. For grief like mine there is no balm In Gilead, or in Tilbury Town. And if I see what I can see, I know not any way to blind it; Nor more if any way may be For you to grope or fly to find it. "There may be room for ruin yet, And ashes for a wasted love; Or, like One whom you may forget, I may have meat you know not of. And if I'd rather live than weep Meanwhile, do you find that surprising? Why, bless my soul, the man's asleep! That's good. The sun will soon be rising." Edwin Arlington Robinson [1869-1935] THE MASTER MARINER My grandshire sailed three years from home, And slew unmoved the sounding whale: Here on the windless beach I roam And watch far out the hardy sail. The lions of the surf that cry Upon this lion-colored shore On reefs of midnight met his eye: He knew their fangs as I their roar. My grandsire sailed uncharted seas, And toll of all their leagues he took: I scan the shallow bays at ease, And tell their colors in a book. The anchor-chains his music made And wind in shrouds and running-gear: The thrush at dawn beguiles my glade, And once, 'tis said, I woke to hear. My grandsire in his ample fist The long harpoon upheld to men: Behold obedient to my wrist A gray gull's-feather for my pen! Upon my grandsire's leathern cheek Five zones their bitter bronze had set: Some day their hazards I will seek, I promise me at times. Not yet. I think my grandsire now would turn A mild but speculative eye On me, my pen and its concern, Then gaze again to sea--and sigh. George Sterling [1869-1926] A ROSE TO THE LIVING A rose to the living is more Than sumptuous wreaths to the dead: In filling love's infinite store, A rose to the living is more,-- If graciously given before The hungering spirit is fled,-- A rose to the living is more Than sumptuous wreaths to the dead. Nixon Waterman [1859- A KISS Rose kissed me to-day. Will she kiss me to-morrow? Let it be as it may, Rose kissed me to-day But the pleasure gives way To a savor of sorrow;-- Rose kissed me to-day,-- Will she kiss me to-morrow? Austin Dobson [1840-1921] BIFTEK AUX CHAMPIGNONS Mimi, do you remember-- Don't get behind your fan-- That morning in September On the cliffs of Grand Manan, Where to the shock of Fundy The topmost harebells sway (Campanula rotundi- folia: cf. Gray)? On the pastures high and level, That overlook the sea, Where I wondered what the devil Those little things could be That Mimi stooped to gather, As she strolled across the down, And held her dress skirt rather-- Oh, now, you need n't frown. For you know the dew was heavy, And your boots, I know, were thin; So a little extra brevi- ty in skirts was, sure, no sin. Besides, who minds a cousin? First, second, even third,-- I've kissed 'em by the dozen, And they never once demurred. "If one's allowed to ask it," Quoth I, " ma belle cousine, What have you in your basket?" (Those baskets white and green The brave Passamaquoddies Weave out of scented grass, And sell to tourist bodies Who through Mt. Desert pass.) You answered, slightly frowning, "Put down your stupid book-- That everlasting Browning!-- And come and help me look. Mushroom you spik him English, I call him champignon: I'll teach you to distinguish The right kind from the wrong." There was no fog on Fundy That blue September day; The west wind, for that one day, Had swept it all away. The lighthouse glasses twinkled, The white gulls screamed and flew, The merry sheep-bells tinkled, The merry breezes blew. The bayberry aromatic, The papery immortelle, (That give our grandma's attic That sentimental smell, Tied up in little brush-brooms) Were sweet as new-mown hay, While we went hunting mushrooms That blue September day. Henry Augustin Beers [1847-1926] EVOLUTION When you were a Tadpole and I was a Fish, In the Paleozoic time, And side by side on the ebbing tide, We sprawled through the ooze and slime, Or skittered with many a caudal flip Through the depths of the Cambrian fen-- My heart was rife with the joy of life, For I loved you even then. Mindless we lived, mindless we loved, And mindless at last we died; And deep in the rift of a Caradoc drift We slumbered side by side. The world turned on in the lathe of time, The hot sands heaved amain, Till we caught our breath from the womb of death, And crept into life again. We were Amphibians, scaled and tailed, And drab as a dead man's hand. We coiled at ease 'neath the dripping trees Or trailed through the mud and sand, Croaking and blind, with our three-clawed feet, Writing a language dumb, With never a spark in the empty dark To hint at a life to come. Yet happy we lived, and happy we loved, And happy we died once more. Our forms were rolled in the clinging mold Of a Neocomian shore. The aeons came and the aeons fled, And the sleep that wrapped us fast Was riven away in a newer day, And the night of death was past. Then light and swift through the jungle trees We swung in our airy flights, Or breathed the balms of the fronded palms In the hush of the moonless nights. And oh, what beautiful years were these When our hearts clung each to each; When life was filled and our senses thrilled In the first faint dawn of speech! Thus life by life, and love by love, We passed through the cycles strange, And breath by breath, and death by death, We followed the chain of change. Till there came a time in the law of life When over the nursing sod The shadows broke, and the soul awoke In a strange, dim dream of God. I was thewed like an Aurocks bull And tusked like the great Cave-Bear, And you, my sweet, from head to feet, Were gowned in your glorious hair. Deep in the gloom of a fireless cave, When the night fell o'er the plain, And the moon hung red o'er the river bed, We mumbled the bones of the slain. I flaked a flint to a cutting edge, And shaped it with brutish craft; I broke a shank from the woodland dank, And fitted it, head to haft. Then I hid me close in the reedy tarn, Where the Mammoth came to drink-- Through brawn and bone I drave the stone, And slew him upon the brink. Loud I howled through the moonlit wastes, Loud answered our kith and kin; From west and east to the crimson feast The clan came trooping in. O'er joint and gristle and padded hoof, We fought and clawed and tore, And cheek by jowl, with many a growl, We talked the marvel o'er. I carved that fight on a reindeer bone With rude and hairy hand; I pictured his fall on the cavern wall That men might understand. For we lived by blood and the right of might, Ere human laws were drawn, And the Age of Sin did not begin Till our brutal tusks were gone. And that was a million years ago, In a time that no man knows; Yet here to-night in the mellow light, We sit at Delmonico's. Your eyes are deep as the Devon springs, Your hair is as dark as jet, Your years are few, your life is new, Your soul untried, and yet-- Our trail is on the Kimmeridge clay, And the scarp of the Purbeck flags; We have left our bones in the Bagshot stones, And deep in the Coralline crags. Our love is old, and our lives are old, And death shall come amain. Should it come to-day, what man may say We shall not live again? God wrought our souls from the Tremadoc beds And furnished them wings to fly; He sowed our spawn in the world's dim dawn, And I know that it shall not die; Though cities have sprung above the graves Where the crook-boned men made war, And the ox-wain creaks o'er the buried caves Where the mummied mammoths are. Then, as we linger at luncheon here, O'er many a dainty dish, Let us drink anew to the time when you Were a Tadpole and I was a Fish. Langdon Smith [1858-1908] A REASONABLE AFFLICTION On his death-bed poor Lubin lies: His spouse is in despair; With frequent cries, and mutual sighs, They both express their care. "A different cause," says Parson Sly, "The same effect may give: Poor Lubin fears that he may die; His wife, that he may live." Matthew Prior [1664-1721] A MORAL IN SEVRES Upon my mantel-piece they stand, While all its length between them lies; He throws a kiss with graceful hand, She glances back with bashful eyes. The china Shepherdess is fair, The Shepherd's face denotes a heart Burning with ardor and despair. Alas, they stand so far apart! And yet, perhaps, if they were moved, And stood together day by day, Their love had not so constant proved, Nor would they still have smiled so gay. His hand the Shepherd might have kissed The match-box Angel's heart to win; The Shepherdess, his love have missed, And flirted with the Mandarin. But on my mantel-piece they stand, While all its length between them lies; He throws a kiss with graceful hand, She glances back with bashful eyes. Mildred Howells [1872- ON THE FLY-LEAF OF A BOOK OF OLD PLAYS At Cato's Head in Russell Street These leaves she sat a-stitching; I fancy she was trim and neat, Blue-eyed and quite bewitching. Before her on the street below, All powder, ruffs, and laces, There strutted idle London beaux To ogle pretty faces; While, filling many a Sedan chair With monstrous hoop and feather, In paint and powder London's fair Went trooping past together. Swift, Addison, and Pope, mayhap They sauntered slowly past her, Or printer's boy, with gown and cap, For Steele, went trotting faster. For beau nor wit had she a look; Nor lord nor lady minding, She bent her head above this book, Attentive to her binding. And one stray thread of golden hair, Caught on her nimble fingers, Was stitched within this volume, where Until to-day it lingers. Past and forgotten, beaux and fair, Wigs, powder, all outdated; A queer antique, the Sedan chair, Pope, stiff and antiquated. Yet as I turn these odd, old plays, This single stray lock finding, I'm back in those forgotten days, And watch her at her binding. Walter Learned [1847-1915] THE TALENTED MAN Letter From A Lady In London To A Lady At Lausanne Dear Alice! you'll laugh when you know it,-- Last week, at the Duchess's ball, I danced with the clever new poet,-- You've heard of him,--Tully St. Paul. Miss Jonquil was perfectly frantic; I wish you had seen Lady Anne! It really was very romantic, He is such a talented man! He came up from Brazen Nose College, Just caught, as they call it, this spring; And his head, love, is stuffed full of knowledge Of every conceivable thing. Of science and logic he chatters, As fine and as fast as he can; Though I am no judge of such matters, I'm sure he's a talented man. His stories and jests are delightful;-- Not stories or jests, dear, for you; The jests are exceedingly spiteful, The stories not always quite true. Perhaps to be kind and veracious May do pretty well at Lausanne; But it never would answer,--good gracious! Chez nous--in a talented man. He sneers,--how my Alice would scold him!-- At the bliss of a sigh or a tear; He laughed--only think!--when I told him How we cried o'er Trevelyan last year; I vow I was quite in a passion; I broke all the sticks of my fan; But sentiment's quite out of fashion, It seems, in a talented man. Lady Bab, who is terribly moral, Has told me that Tully is vain, And apt--which is silly--to quarrel, And fond--which is sad--of champagne. I listened, and doubted, dear Alice, For I saw, when my Lady began, It was only the Dowager's malice;-- She does hate a talented man! He's hideous, I own it. But fame, love, Is all that these eyes can adore; He's lame,--but Lord Byron was lame, love, And dumpy,--but so is Tom Moore. Then his voice,--such a voice! my sweet creature, It's like your Aunt Lucy's toucan: But oh! what's a tone or a feature, When once one's a talented man? My mother, you know, all the season, Has talked of Sir Geoffrey's estate; And truly, to do the fool reason, He has been less horrid of late. But to-day, when we drive in the carriage, I'll tell her to lay down her plan;-- If ever I venture on marriage, It must be a talented man! P.S.--I have found, on reflection, One fault in my friend,--entre nous; Without it, he'd just be perfection;-- Poor fellow, he has not a sou! And so, when he comes in September To shoot with my uncle, Sir Dan, I've promised mamma to remember He's only a talented man! Winthrop Mackworth Praed [1802-1839] A LETTER OF ADVICE From Miss Medora Trevilian, At Padua, To Miss Araminta Vavasour, In London "Enfin, Monsieur, homme aimable; Voila pourquoi je ne saurais l'aimer."--Scribe You tell me you're promised a lover, My own Araminta, next week; Why cannot my fancy discover The hue of his coat, and his cheek? Alas! if he look like another, A vicar, a banker, a beau, Be deaf to your father and mother, My own Araminta, say "No!" Miss Lane, at her Temple of Fashion, Taught us both how to sing and to speak, And we loved one another with passion, Before we had been there a week: You gave me a ring for a token; I wear it wherever I go; I gave you a chain,--it is broken? My own Araminta, say "No!" O think of our favorite cottage, And think of our dear Lalla Rookh! How we shared with the milkmaids their pottage, And drank of the stream from the brook; How fondly our loving lips faltered, "What further can grandeur bestow?" My heart is the same;--is yours altered? My own Araminta, say "No!" Remember the thrilling romances We read on the bank in the glen; Remember the suitors our fancies Would picture for both of us then; They wore the red cross on their shoulder, They had vanquished and pardoned their foe-- Sweet friend, are you wiser or colder? My own Araminta, say "No!" You know, when Lord Rigmarole's carriage, Drove off with your cousin Justine, You wept, dearest girl, at the marriage, And whispered "How base she has been!" You said you were sure it would kill you, If ever your husband looked so; And you will not apostatize,--will you? My own Araminta, say "No!" When I heard I was going abroad, love, I thought I was going to die; We walked arm in arm to the road, love, We looked arm in arm to the sky; And I said, "When a foreign postilion Has hurried me off to the Po, Forget not Medora Trevilian:-- My own Araminta, say "No!" We parted! but sympathy's fetters Reach far over valley and hill; I muse o'er your exquisite letters, And feel that your heart is mine still; And he who would share it with me, love,-- The richest of treasures below,-- If he's not what Orlando should be, love, My own Araminta, say "No!" If he wears a top-boot in his wooing, If he comes to you riding a cob, If he talks of his baking or brewing, If he puts up his feet on the hob, If he ever drinks port after dinner, If his brow or his breeding is low, If he calls himself "Thompson" or "Skinner," My own Araminta, say "No!" If he studies the news in the papers While you are preparing the tea, If he talks of the damps or the vapors While moonlight lies soft on the sea, If he's sleepy while you are capricious, If he has not a musical "Oh!" If he does not call Werther delicious,-- My own Araminta, say "No!" If he ever Sets foot in the city Among the stockbrokers and Jews, If he has not a heart full of pity, If he don't stand six feet in his shoes, If his lips are not redder than roses, If his hands are not whiter than snow, If he has not the model of noses,-- My own Araminta, say "No!" If he speaks of a tax or a duty, If he does not look grand on his knees, If he's blind to a landscape of beauty, Hills, valleys, rocks, waters, and trees, If he dotes not on desolate towers, If he likes not to hear the blast blow, If he knows not the language of flowers,-- My own Araminta, say "No!" He must walk like a god of old story Come down from the home of his rest; He must smile like the sun in his glory On the buds he loves ever the best; And oh! from its ivory portal Like music his soft speech must flow!-- If he speak, smile, or walk like a mortal, My own Araminta, say "No!" Don't listen to tales of his bounty, Don't hear what they say of his birth, Don't look at his seat in the county, Don't calculate what he is worth; But give him a theme to write verse on, And see if he turns out his toe;-- If he's only an excellent person, My own Araminta, say "No!" Winthrop Mackworth Praed [1802-1839] A NICE CORRESPONDENT "There are plenty of roses" (the patriarch speaks) "Alas not for me, on your lips and your cheeks; Fair maiden rose-laden enough and to spare, Spare, spare me that rose that you wear in your hair." The glow and the glory are plighted To darkness, for evening is come; The lamp in Glebe Cottage is lighted, The birds and the sheep-bells are dumb. I'm alone, for the others have flitted To dine with a neighbor at Kew: Alone, but I'm not to be pitied-- I'm thinking of you! I wish you were here! Were I duller Than dull, you'd be dearer than dear; I am dressed in your favorite color-- Dear Fred, how I wish you were here! I am wearing my lazuli necklace, The necklace you fastened askew! Was there ever so rude or so reckless A Darling as you? I want you to come and pass sentence On two or three books with a plot; Of course you know "Janet's Repentance"? I am reading Sir Waverley Scott. That story of Edgar and Lucy, How thrilling, romantic, and true! The Master (his bride was a goosey!) Reminds me of you. They tell me Cockaigne has been crowning A Poet whose garland endures;-- It was you that first told me of Browning,-- That stupid old Browning of yours! His vogue and his verve are alarming, I'm anxious to give him his due; But, Fred, he's not nearly so charming A Poet as you! I heard how you shot at The Beeches, I saw how you rode Chanticleer, I have read the report of your speeches, And echoed the echoing cheer. There's a whisper of hearts you are breaking, Dear Fred, I believe it, I do! Small marvel that Folly is making Her Idol of you! Alas for the World, and its dearly Bought triumph,--its fugitive bliss; Sometimes I half wish I were merely A plain or a penniless Miss; But, perhaps, one is blest with "a measure Of pelf," and I'm not sorry, too, That I'm pretty, because it's a pleasure, My Darling, to you! Your whim is for frolic and fashion, Your taste is for letters and art;-- This rhyme is the commonplace passion That glows in a fond woman's heart: Lay it by in some sacred deposit For relics--we all have a few! Love, some day they'll print it, because it Was written to You. Frederick Locker-Lampson [1821-1895] HER LETTER I'm sitting alone by the fire, Dressed just as I came from the dance, In a robe even you would admire,-- It cost a cool thousand in France; I'm be-diamonded out of all reason, My hair is done up in a cue: In short, sir, "the belle of the season" Is wasting an hour upon you. A dozen engagements I've broken; I left in the midst of a set; Likewise a proposal, half spoken, That waits--on the stairs--for me yet. They say he'll be rich,--when he grows up,-- And then he adores me indeed; And you, sir, are turning your nose up, Three thousand miles off, as you read. "And how do I like my position?" "And what do I think of New York?" "And now, in my higher ambition, With whom do I waltz, flirt, or talk?" "And isn't it nice to have riches, And diamonds and silks, and all that?" "And aren't they a change to the ditches And tunnels of Poverty Flat?" Well, yes,--if you saw us out driving Each day in the Park, four-in-hand, If you saw poor dear mamma contriving To look supernaturally grand,-- If you saw papa's picture, as taken By Brady, and tinted at that,-- You'd never suspect he sold bacon And flour at Poverty Flat. And yet, just this moment, when sitting In the glare of the grand chandelier,-- In the bustle and glitter befitting The "finest soiree of the year,"-- In the mists of a gaze de Chambery, And the hum of the smallest of talk,-- Somehow, Joe, I thought of the "Ferry," And the dance that we had on "The Fork;" Of Harrison's bar, with its muster Of flags festooned over the wall; Of the candles that shed their soft lustre And tallow on head-dress and shawl; Of the steps that we took to one fiddle, Of the dress of my queer vis-a-vis; And how I once went down the middle With the man that shot Sandy McGee. Of the moon that was quietly sleeping On the hill, when the time came to go; Of the few baby peaks that were peeping From under their bedclothes of snow; Of that ride,--that to me was the rarest, Of--the something you said at the gate. Ah! Joe, then I wasn't an heiress To "the best-paying lead in the State." Well, well, it's all past; yet it's funny To think, as I stood in the glare Of fashion and beauty and money, That I should be thinking, right there, Of some one who breasted high water, And swam the North Fork, and all that, Just to dance with old Folinsbee's daughter, The Lily of Poverty Flat. But goodness! what nonsense I'm writing! (Mamma says my taste still is low), Instead of my triumphs reciting,-- I'm spooning on Joseph,--heigh-ho! And I'm to be "finished" by travel,-- Whatever's the meaning of that. Oh, why did papa strike pay gravel In drifting on Poverty Flat? Good-night!--here's the end of my paper; Good-night!--if the longitude please,-- For maybe, while wasting my taper, Your sun's climbing over the trees. But know, if you haven't got riches, And are poor, dearest Joe, and all that, That my heart's somewhere there in the ditches, And you've struck it,--on Poverty Flat Bret Harte [1830-1902] A DEAD LETTER A coeur blesse--l'ombre et le silence.--Balzac I I drew it from its china tomb;-- It came out feebly scented With some thin ghost of past perfume That dust and days had lent it. An old, old letter,--folded still! To read with due composure, I sought the sun-lit window-sill, Above the gray enclosure, That, glimmering in the sultry haze, Faint-flowered, dimly shaded, Slumbered like Goldsmith's Madam Blaize, Bedizened and brocaded. A queer old place! You'd surely say Some tea-board garden-maker Had planned it in Dutch William's day To please some florist Quaker, So trim it was. The yew-trees still, With pious care perverted, Grew in the same grim shapes; and still The lipless dolphin spurted; Still in his wonted state abode The broken-nosed Apollo; And still the cypress-arbor showed The same umbrageous hollow. Only,--as fresh young Beauty gleams From coffee-colored laces, So peeped from its old-fashioned dreams The fresher modern traces; For idle mallet, hoop, and ball Upon the lawn were lying; A magazine, a tumbled shawl, Round which the swifts were flying; And, tossed beside the Guelder rose, A heap of rainbow knitting, Where, blinking in her pleased repose, A Persian cat was sitting. "A place to love in,--live,--for aye, If we too, like Tithonus, Could find some God to stretch the gray Scant life the Fates have thrown us; "But now by steam we run our race, With buttoned heart and pocket, Our Love's a gilded, surplus grace,-- Just like an empty locket! "'The time is out of joint.' Who will, May strive to make it better; For me, this warm old window-sill, And this old dusty letter." II "Dear John (the letter ran), it can't, can't be, For Father's gone to Chorley Fair with Sam, And Mother's storing Apples,--Prue and Me Up to our Elbows making Damson Jam: But we shall meet before a Week is gone,-- ''Tis a long Lane that has no Turning,' John! "Only till Sunday next, and then you'll wait Behind the White-Thorn, by the broken Stile-- We can go round and catch them at the Gate, All to Ourselves, for nearly one long Mile; Dear Prue won't look, and Father he'll go on, And Sam's two Eyes are all for Cissy, John! "John, she's so smart,--with every Ribbon new, Flame-colored Sack, and Crimson Padesoy: As proud as proud; and has the Vapors too, Just like My Lady;--calls poor Sam a Boy, And vows no Sweet-heart's worth the Thinking-on Till he's past Thirty... I know better, John! "My Dear, I don't think that I thought of much Before we knew each other, I and you; And now, why, John, your least, least Finger-touch, Gives me enough to think a Summer through. See, for I send you Something! There, 'tis gone! Look in this corner,--mind you find it, John! III This was the matter of the note,-- A long-forgot deposit, Dropped in an Indian dragon's throat Deep in a fragrant closet, Piled with a dapper Dresden world,-- Beaux, beauties, prayers, and poses,-- Bonzes with squat legs undercurled, And great jars filled with roses. Ah, heart that wrote! Ah, lips that kissed! You had no thought or presage Into what keeping you dismissed Your simple old-world message! A reverent one. Though we to-day Distrust beliefs and powers, The artless, ageless things you say Are fresh as May's own flowers.... I need not search too much to find Whose lot it was to send it, That feel upon me yet the kind, Soft hand of her who penned it; And see, through two-score years of smoke, In by-gone, quaint apparel, Shine from yon time-black Norway oak The face of Patience Caryl,-- The pale, smooth forehead, silver-tressed; The gray gown, primly flowered; The spotless, stately coif whose crest Like Hector's horse-plume towered; And still the sweet half-solemn look Where some past thought was clinging, As when one shuts a serious book To hear the thrushes singing. I kneel to you! Of those you were, Whose kind old hearts grow mellow,-- Whose fair old faces grow more fair, As Point and Flanders yellow; Whom some old store of garnered grief, Their placid temples shading, Crowns like a wreath of autumn leaf With tender tints of fading. Peace to your soul! You died unwed-- Despite this loving letter. And what of John? The less that's said Of John, I think, the better. Austin Dobson [1840-1921] THE NYMPH COMPLAINING FOR THE DEATH OF HER FAWN The wanton troopers riding by Have shot my fawn, and it will die. Ungentle men! They cannot thrive Who killed thee. Thou ne'er didst, alive, Them any harm; alas! nor could Thy death to them do any good. I'm sure I never wished them ill, Nor do I for all this; nor will: But, if my simple prayers may yet Prevail with Heaven to forget Thy murder, I will join my tears Rather than fail. But O my fears! It cannot die so. Heaven's King Keeps register of everything, And nothing may we use in vain; Even beasts must be with justice slain; Else men are made their deodands. Though they should wash their guilty hands In this warm life-blood, which doth part From thine, and wound me to the heart, Yet could they not be clean; their stain Is dyed in such a purple grain, There is not such another in The world to offer for their sin. Inconstant Sylvio, when yet I had not found him counterfeit, One morning, I remember well, Tied in this silver chain and bell, Gave it to me: nay, and I know What he said then--I'm sure I do. Said he, "Look how your huntsman here Hath taught a fawn to hunt his deer!" But Sylvio soon had me beguiled: This waxed tame, while he grew wild, And, quite regardless of my smart, Left me his fawn, but took his heart. Thenceforth I set myself to play My solitary time away With this; and very well content Could so mine idle life have spent; For it was full of sport, and light Of foot and heart, and did invite Me to its game: it seemed to bless Itself in me. How could I less Than love it? Oh, I cannot be Unkind to a beast that loveth me! Had it lived long, I do not know Whether it, too, might have done so As Sylvio did; his gifts might be Perhaps as false, or more, than he. But I am sure, for aught that I Could in so short a time espy, Thy love was far more better than The love of false and cruel man. With sweetest milk and sugar first I it at mine own fingers nursed; And as it grew, so every day, It waxed more white and sweet than they. It had so sweet a breath! and oft I blushed to see its foot more soft, And white, shall I say? than my hand-- Nay, any lady's of the land! It was a wondrous thing how fleet 'Twas on those little silver feet. With what a pretty skipping grace It oft would challenge me the race; And when't had left me far away, 'Twould stay, and run again, and stay; For it was nimbler much than hinds, And trod as if on the four winds. I have a garden of my own, But so with roses overgrown, And lilies, that you would it guess To be a little wilderness; And all the spring-time of the year It loved only to be there. Among the beds of lilies I Have sought it oft, where it should lie, Yet could not, till itself would rise, Find it, although before mine eyes; For in the flaxen lilies' shade, It like a bank of lilies laid. Upon the roses it would feed, Until its lips e'en seemed to bleed; And then to me 'twould boldly trip, And print those roses on my lip. But all its chief delight was still On roses thus itself to fill; And its pure virgin lips to fold In whitest sheets of lilies cold. Had it lived long, it would have been Lilies without, roses within. O help! O help! I see it faint And die as calmly as a saint! See how it weeps! the tears do come Sad, slowly, dropping like a gum. So weeps the wounded balsam; so The holy frankincense doth flow; The brotherless Heliades Melt in such amber tears as these. I in a golden vial will Keep these two crystal tears, and fill It, till it doth overflow, with mine, Then place it in Diana's shrine. Now my sweet fawn is vanished to Whither the swans and turtles go; In fair Elysium to endure With milk-white lambs and ermines pure. O, do not run too fast, for I Will but bespeak thy grave, and die. First my unhappy statue shall Be cut in marble; and withal Let it be weeping too; but there The engraver sure his art may spare; For I so truly thee bemoan That I shall weep though I be stone, Until my tears, still dropping, wear My breast, themselves engraving there; Then at my feet shalt thou be laid, Of purest alabaster made; For I would have thine image be White as I can, though not as thee. Andrew Marvell [1621-1678] ON THE DEATH OF A FAVORITE CAT, DROWNED IN A TUB OF GOLD FISHES 'Twas on a lofty vase's side, Where China's gayest art had dyed The azure flowers that blow; Demurest of the tabby kind, The pensive Selima, reclined, Gazed on the lake below. Her conscious tail her joy declared; The fair round face, the snowy beard, The velvet of her paws, Her coat, that with the tortoise vies, Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes, She saw; and purred applause. Still had she gazed, but 'midst the tide Two angel forms were seen to glide, The Genii of the stream: Their scaly armor's Tyrian hue Through richest purple to the view Betrayed a golden gleam. The hapless Nymph with wonder saw: A whisker first and then a claw, With many an ardent wish, She stretched, in vain, to reach the prize. What female heart can gold despise? What Cat's averse to fish? Presumptous Maid! with looks intent Again she stretched, again she bent, Nor knew the gulf between. (Malignant Fate sat by, and smiled.) The slippery verge her feet beguiled, She tumbled headlong in. Eight times emerging from the flood She mewed to every watery god, Some speedy aid to send. No Dolphin came, no Nereid stirred: Nor cruel Tom nor Susan heard,-- A Favorite has no friend! From hence, ye Beauties, undeceived, Know, one false step is ne'er retrieved, And be with caution bold. Not all that tempts your wandering eyes And heedless hearts, is lawful prize; Nor all that glisters, gold. Thomas Gray [1716-1771] VERSES ON A CAT Clubby! thou surely art, I ween, A Puss of most majestic mien, So stately all thy paces! With such a philosophic air Thou seek'st thy professorial chair, And so demure thy face is! And as thou sit'st, thine eye seems fraught With such intensity of thought That could we read it, knowledge Would seem to breathe in every mew, And learning yet undreamt by you Who dwell in Hall or College. Oh! when in solemn taciturnity Thy brain seems wandering through eternity, What happiness were mine Could I then catch the thoughts that flow, Thoughts such as ne'er were hatched below, But in a head like thine. Oh then, throughout the livelong day, With thee I'd sit and purr away In ecstasy sublime; And in thy face, as from a book, I'd drink in science at each look, Nor fear the lapse of time. Charles Daubeny [1745-1827] EPITAPH ON A HARE Here lies, whom hound did ne'er pursue, Nor swifter greyhound follow, Whose foot ne'er tainted morning dew, Nor ear heard huntsman's hallo; Old Tiney, surliest of his kind, Who, nursed with tender care, And to domestic bounds confined, Was still a wild Jack-hare. Though duly from my hand he took His pittance every night, He did it with a jealous look, And, when he could, would bite. His diet was of wheaten bread, And milk, and oats, and straw; Thistles, or lettuces instead, With sand to scour his maw. On twigs of hawthorn he regaled, On pippins' russet peel; And, when his juicy salads failed, Sliced carrot pleased him well. A Turkey carpet was his lawn, Whereon he loved to bound, To skip and gambol like a fawn, And swing his rump around. His frisking was at evening hours, For then he lost his fear; But most before approaching showers, Or when a storm drew near. Eight years and five round-rolling moons He thus saw steal away, Dozing out all his idle noons, And every night at play. I kept him for his humor's sake, For he would oft beguile My heart of thoughts that made it ache, And force me to a smile. But now, beneath this walnut-shade He finds his long, last home, And waits, in snug concealment laid, Till gentler Puss shall come. He, still more aged, feels the shocks From which no care can save, And, partner once of Tiney's box, Must soon partake his grave. William Cowper [1731-1800] ON THE DEATH OF MRS. THROCKMORTON'S BULLFINCH Ye Nymphs! if e'er your eyes were red With tears o'er hapless favorites shed, O share Maria's grief! Her favorite, even in his cage, (What will not hunger's cruel rage?) Assassined by a thief. Where Rhenus strays his vines among, The egg was laid from which he sprung, And though by nature mute, Or only with a whistle blessed, Well-taught, he all the sounds expressed Of flageolet or flute. The honors of his ebon poll Were brighter than the sleekest mole; His bosom of the hue With which Aurora decks the skies, When piping winds shall soon arise To sweep away the dew. Above, below, in all the house, Dire foe alike of bird and mouse, No cat had leave to dwell; And Bully's cage supported stood, On props of smoothest-shaven wood, Large-built and latticed well. Well-latticed,--but the grate, alas! Not rough with wire of steel or brass, For Bully's plumage sake, But smooth with wands from Ouse's side, With which, when neatly peeled and dried, The swains their baskets make. Night veiled the pole--all seemed secure-- When, led by instinct sharp and sure, Subsistence to provide, A beast forth sallied on the scout, Long-backed, long-tailed, with whiskered snout, And badger-colored hide. He, entering at the study-door, Its ample area 'gan explore; And something in the wind Conjectured, sniffing round and round, Better than all the books he found, Food, chiefly, for the mind. Just then, by adverse fate impressed A dream disturbed poor Bully's rest; In sleep he seemed to view A rat, fast-clinging to the cage, And, screaming at the sad presage, Awoke and found it true. For, aided both by ear and scent, Right to his mark the monster went-- Ah, Muse! forbear to speak Minute the horror that ensued; His teeth were strong, the cage was wood-- He left poor Bully's beak. O had he made that too his prey! That beak, whence issued many a lay Of such mellifluous tone, Might have repaid him well, I wote, For silencing so sweet a throat, Fast stuck within his own. Maria weeps,--the Muses mourn;-- So, when by Bacchanalians torn, On Thracian Hebrus' side The tree-enchanter Orpheus fell, His head alone remained to tell The cruel death he died. William Cowper [1731-1800] AN ELEGY ON A LAP-DOG Shock's fate I mourn; poor Shock is now no more: Ye Muses! mourn; ye Chambermaids! deplore. Unhappy Shock! Yet more unhappy fair, Doomed to survive thy joy and only care. Thy wretched fingers now no more shall deck, And tie the favorite ribbon round his neck; No more thy hand shall smooth his glossy hair, And comb the wavings of his pendent ear. Let cease thy flowing grief, forsaken maid! All mortal pleasures in a moment fade: Our surest hope is in an hour destroyed, And love, best gift of Heaven, not long enjoyed. Methinks I see her frantic with despair, Her streaming eyes, wrung hands, and flowing hair; Her Mechlin pinners, rent, the floor bestrow, And her torn fan gives real signs of woe. Hence, Superstition! that tormenting guest, That haunts with fancied fears the coward breast; No dread events upon this fate attend, Stream eyes no more, no more thy tresses rend. Though certain omens oft forewarn a state, And dying lions show the monarch's fate, Why should such fears bid Celia's sorrow rise? For, when a lap-dog falls, no lover dies. Cease, Celia, cease; restrain thy flowing tears. Some warmer passion will dispel thy cares. In man you'll find a more substantial bliss, More grateful toying and a sweeter kiss. He's dead. Oh! lay him gently in the ground! And may his tomb be by this verse renowned: Here Shock, the pride of all his kind, is laid, Who fawned like man, but ne'er like man betrayed. John Gay [1685-1732] MY LAST TERRIER I mourn "Patroclus," whilst I praise Young "Peter" sleek before the fire, A proper dog, whose decent ways Renew the virtues of his sire; "Patroclus" rests in grassy tomb, And "Peter" grows into his room. For though, when Time or Fates consign The terrier to his latest earth, Vowing no wastrel of the line Shall dim the memory of his worth, I meditate the silkier breeds, Yet still an Amurath succeeds: Succeeds to bind the heart again To watchful eye and strenuous paw, To tail that gratulates amain Or deprecates offended Law; To bind, and break, when failing eye And palsied paw must say good-bye. Ah, had the dog's appointed day But tallied with his master's span, Nor one swift decade turned to gray The busy muzzle's black and tan, To reprobate in idle men Their threescore empty years and ten! Sure, somewhere o'er the Stygian strait "Panurge" and "Bito," "Tramp" and "Mike," In couchant conclave watch the gate, Till comes the last successive tyke, Acknowledged with the countersign: "Your master was a friend of mine." In dreams I see them spring to greet, With rapture more than tail can tell, Their master of the silent feet Who whistles o'er the asphodel, And through the dim Elysian bounds Leads all his cry of little hounds. John Halsham [18-- GEIST'S GRAVE Four years!--and didst thou stay above The ground, which hides thee now, but four? And all that life, and all that love, Were crowded, Geist! into no more? Only four years those winning ways, Which make me for thy presence yearn, Called us to pet thee or to praise, Dear little friend! at every turn? That loving heart, that patient soul, Had they indeed no longer span, To run their course, and reach their goal And read their homily to man? That liquid, melancholy eye, From whose pathetic, soul-fed springs Seemed surging the Virgilian cry, The sense of tears in mortal things-- That steadfast, mournful strain, consoled By spirits gloriously gay, And temper of heroic mould-- What, was four years their whole short day? Yes, only four!--and not the course Of all the centuries yet to come, And not the infinite resource Of Nature, with her countless sum Of figures, with her fulness vast Of new creation evermore, Can ever quite repeat the past, Or just thy little self restore. Stern law of every mortal lot! Which man, proud man, finds hard to bear, And builds himself I know not what Of second life I know not where. But thou, when struck thine hour to go, On us, who stood despondent by, A meek last glance of love didst throw, And humbly lay thee down to die. Yet would we keep thee in our heart-- Would fix our favorite on the scene, Nor let thee utterly depart And be as if thou ne'er hadst been. And so there rise these lines of verse On lips that rarely form them now; While to each other we rehearse: Such ways, such arts, such looks hadst thou! We stroke thy broad brown paws again, We bid thee to thy vacant chair, We greet thee by the window-pane, We hear thy scuffle on the stair; We see the flaps of thy large ears Quick raised to ask which way we go; Crossing the frozen lake, appears Thy small black figure on the snow! Nor to us only art thou dear, Who mourn thee in thine English home; Thou hast thine absent master's tear, Dropped by the far Australian foam. Thy memory lasts both here and there, And thou shalt live as long as we. And after that--thou dost not care! In us was all the world to thee. Yet, fondly zealous for thy fame, Even to a date beyond our own, We strive to carry down thy name By mounded turf and graven stone. We lay thee, close within our reach, Here, where the grass is smooth and warm, Between the holly and the beech, Where oft we watched thy couchant form, Asleep, yet lending half an ear To travelers on the Portsmouth road;-- There choose we thee, O guardian dear, Marked with a stone, thy last abode! Then some, who through this garden pass, When we too, like thyself, are clay, Shall see thy grave upon the grass, And stop before the stone, and say: People who lived here long ago Did by this stone, it seems, intend To name for future times to know The dachs-hound, Geist, their little friend. Matthew Arnold [1822-1888] "HOLD" I know, where Hampshire fronts the Wight, A little church, where "after strife" Reposes Guy de Blanquely, Knight, By Alison his wife: I know their features' graven lines In time-stained marble monotone, While crouched before their feet reclines Their little dog of stone! I look where Blanquely Castle still Frowns o'er the oak wood's summer state, (The maker of a patent pill Has purchased it of late), And then through Fancy's open door I backward turn to days of old, And see Sir Guy--a bachelor Who owns a dog called "Hold"! I see him take the tourney's chance, And urge his coal-black charger on To an arbitrament by lance For lovely Alison; I mark the onset, see him hurl From broidered saddle to the dirt His rival, that ignoble Earl-- Black-hearted Massingbert! Then Alison, with down-dropped eyes, Where happy tears bedim the blue, Bestows a valuable prize And adds her hand thereto; My lord, his surcoat streaked with sand, Remounts, low muttering curses hot, And with a base-born, hireling band He plans a dastard plot! ....... 'Tis night--Sir Guy has sunk to sleep, The castle keep is hushed and still-- See, up the spiral stairway creep, To work his wicked will, Lord Massingbert of odious fame, Soft followed by his cut-throat staff; Ah, "Hold" has justified his name And pinned his lordship's calf! A growl, an oath, then torches flare; Out rings a sentry's startled shout; The guard are racing for the stair, Half-dressed, Sir Guy runs out; On high his glittering blade he waves, He gives foul Massingbert the point, He carves the hired assassin knaves Joint from plebeian joint! ....... The Knight is dead--his sword is rust, But in his day I'm certain "Hold" Wore, as his master's badge of trust, A collarette of gold: And still I like to fancy that, Somewhere beyond the Styx's bound, Sir Guy's tall phantom stoops to pat His little phantom hound! Patrick R. Chalmers [18- THE BARB OF SATIRE THE VICAR OF BRAY In good King Charles's golden days, When loyalty no harm meant, A zealous high-churchman was I, And so I got preferment. To teach my flock I never missed: Kings were by God appointed, And lost are those that dare resist Or touch the Lord's anointed. And this is law that I'll maintain Until my dying day, sir, That whatsoever king shall reign, Still I'll be the Vicar of Bray, sir. When royal James possessed the crown, And popery grew in fashion, The penal laws I hooted down, And read the Declaration; The Church of Rome I found would fit Full well my constitution; And I had been a Jesuit But for the Revolution. When William was our king declared, To ease the nation's grievance, With this new wind about I steered, And swore to him allegiance; Old principles I did revoke, Set conscience at a distance; Passive obedience was a joke, A jest was non-resistance. When royal Anne became our queen, The Church of England's glory, Another face of things was seen, And I became a Tory; Occasional conformists base, I blamed their moderation, And thought the Church in danger was, By such prevarication. When George in pudding-time came o'er, And moderate men looked big, sir, My principles I changed once more, And so became a Whig, sir; And thus preferment I procured From our new Faith's defender, And almost every day abjured The Pope and the Pretender. The illustrious house of Hanover, And Protestant succession, To these I do allegiance swear-- While they can keep possession: For in my faith and loyalty I nevermore will falter, And George my lawful king shall be-- Until the times do alter. And this is law that I'll maintain Until my dying day, sir, That whatsoever king shall reign, Still I'll be the Vicar of Bray, sir. Unknown THE LOST LEADER [William Wordsworth] Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a ribbon to stick in his coat-- Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us, Lost all the others she lets us devote; They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver, So much was theirs who so little allowed: How all our copper had gone for his service! Rags--were they purple, his heart had been proud-- We that had loved him so, followed him, honored him, Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, Learned his great language, caught his clear accents, Made him our pattern to live and to die! Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us, Burns, Shelley, were with us,--they watch from their graves! He alone breaks from the van and the freemen, --He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves! We shall march prospering,--not through his presence; Songs may inspirit us,--not from his lyre; Deeds will be done,--while he boasts his quiescence, Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire: Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more, One task more declined, one more footpath untrod, One more devil's-triumph and sorrow for angels, One wrong more to man, one more insult to God! Life's night begins: let him never come back to us! There would be doubt, hesitation and pain, Forced praise on our part--the glimmer of twilight, Never glad confident morning again! Best fight on well, for we taught him--strike gallantly, Menace our heart ere we master his own; Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us, Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne! Robert Browning [1812-1889] ICHABOD [Daniel Webster] So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn Which once he wore! The glory from his gray hairs gone Forevermore! Revile him not, the Tempter hath A snare for all; And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, Befit his fall! Oh, dumb be passion's stormy rage, When he who might Have lighted up and led his age, Falls back in night. Scorn! would the angels laugh, to mark A bright soul driven, Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark, From hope and heaven! Let not the land once proud of him Insult him now, Nor brand with deeper shame his dim, Dishonored brow. But let its humbled sons, instead, From sea to lake, A long lament, as for the dead, In sadness make. Of all we loved and honored, naught Save power remains; A fallen angel's pride of thought, Still strong in chains. All else is gone; from those great eyes The soul has fled: When faith is lost, when honor dies, The man is dead! Then, pay the reverence of old days To his dead fame; Walk backward, with averted gaze, And hide the shame! John Greenleaf Whittier [1807-1892] WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS Guvener B. is a sensible man; He stays to his home an' looks arter his folks; He draws his furrer ez straight ez he can, An' into nobody's tater-patch pokes; But John P. Robinson he Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B. My! aint it terrible? Wut shall we du? We can't never choose him o' course,--thet's flat; Guess we shall hev to come round, (don't you?) An' go in fer thunder an' guns, an' all that; Fer John P. Robinson he Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B. Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man: He's ben on all sides that give places or pelf; But consistency still wuz a part of his plan,-- He's ben true to one party,--an' thet is himself;-- So John P. Robinson he Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C. Gineral C. he goes in fer the war; He don't vally princerple more'n an old cud; Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer, But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an' blood? So John P. Robinson he Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C. We were gittin' on nicely up here to our village, With good old idees o' wut's right an' wut aint, We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage, An' thet eppyletts worn't the best mark of a saint; But John P. Robinson he Sez this kind o' thing's an exploded idee. The side of our country must ollers be took, An' Presidunt Polk, you know, he is our country, An' the angel thet writes all our sins in a book Puts the debit to him, an' to us the per contry; An' John P. Robinson he Sez this is his view o' the thing to a T. Parson Wilbur he calls all these argimunts lies; Sez they're nothin' on airth but jest fee, faw, fum; An' thet all this big talk of our destinies Is half on it ign'ance, an' t'other half rum; But John P. Robinson he Sez it aint no sech thing; an', of course, so must we. Parson Wilbur sez he never heerd in his life That th' Apostles rigged out in their swaller-tail coats, An' marched round in front of a drum an' a fife, To git some on 'em office, an' some on 'em votes; But John P. Robinson he Sez they didn't know everythin' down in Judee. Wal, it's a marcy we've gut folks to tell us The rights an' the wrongs o' these matters, I vow,-- God sends country lawyers, an' other wise fellers, To start the world's team wen it gits in a slough; Fer John P. Robinson he Sez the world'll go right, ef he hollers out Gee! James Russell Lowell [1819-1891] THE DEBATE IN THE SENNIT Sot To A Nursery Rhyme "Here we stan' on the Constitution, by thunder! It's a fact o' wich ther's bushils o' proofs; Fer how could we trample on 't so, I wonder, Ef't worn't thet it's ollers under our hoofs?" Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; "Human rights haint no more Right to come on this floor, No more'n the man in the moon," sez he. "The North haint no kind o' bisness with nothin', An' you've no idee how much bother it saves; We aint none riled by their frettin' an' frothin', We're used to layin' the string on our slaves," Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- Sez Mister Foote, "I should like to shoot The holl gang, by the gret horn spoon!" sez he. "Freedom's Keystone is Slavery, thet ther's no doubt on, It's sutthin' thet's--wha'd'ye call it?--divine,-- An' the slaves thet we ollers make the most out on Air them north o' Mason an' Dixon's line," Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- "Fer all thet," sez Mangum, "'T would be better to hang 'em An' so git red on 'em soon," sez he. "The mass ough' to labor an' we lay on soffies, Thet's the reason I want to spread Freedom's aree; It puts all the cunninest on us in office, An' reelises our Maker's orig'nal idee," Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- "Thet's ez plain," sez Cass, "Ez thet some one's an ass, It's ez clear ez the sun is at noon," sez he. "Now don't go to say I'm the friend of oppression, But keep all your spare breath fer coolin' your broth, Fer I ollers hev strove (at least thet's my impression) To make cussed free with the rights o' the North," Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- "Yes," sez Davis o' Miss., "The perfection o' bliss Is in skinnin' that same old coon," sez he. "Slavery's a thing thet depends on complexion, It's God's law thet fetters on black skins don't chafe; Ef brains wuz to settle it (horrid reflection!) Wich of our onnable body'd be safe?" Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- Sez Mister Hannegan, Afore he began agin, "Thet exception is quite oppertoon," sez he. "Gen'nle Cass, Sir, you needn't be twitchin' your collar, Your merit's quite clear by the dut on your knees; At the North we don't make no distinctions o' color: You can all take a lick at our shoes wen you please," Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- Sez Mister Jarnagin, "They wun't hev to larn agin, They all on 'em know the old toon," sez he. "The slavery question aint no ways bewilderin', North an' South hev one int'rest, it's plain to a glance, No'thern men, like us patriarchs, don't sell their childrin, But they du sell themselves, ef they git a good chance," Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- Sez Atherton here, "This is gittin' severe, I wish I could dive like a loon," sez he. "It'll break up the Union, this talk about freedom, An' your fact'ry gals (soon ex we split) 'll make head, An' gittin' some Miss chief or other to lead 'em, 'll go to work raisin' permiscoous Ned," Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- "Yes, the North," sez Colquitt, "Ef we Southeners all quit, Would go down like a busted balloon," sez he. "Jest look wut is doin', wut annyky's brewin' In the beautiful clime o' the olive an' vine, All the wise aristoxy's atumblin' to ruin, An' the sankylot's drorin' an' drinkin' their wine," Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- "Yes," sez Johnson, "in France They're beginnin' to dance Beelzebub's own rigadoon," sez he. "The South's safe enough, it don't feel a mite skeery, Our slaves in their darkness an' dut air tu blest Not to welcome with proud hallylugers the ery Wen our eagle kicks yourn from the naytional nest," Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- "Oh," sez Westcott o' Florida, "Wut treason is horrider Than our priv'leges tryin' to proon?" sez he. "It's 'coz they're so happy, thet, wen crazy sarpints Stick their nose in our bizness, we git so darned riled; We think it's our dooty to give pooty sharp hints, Thet the last crumb of Edin on airth sha'n't be spiled," Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- "Ah," sez Dixon H. Lewis, "It perfectly true is Thet slavery's airth's grettest boon," sez he. James Russell Lowell [1819-1891] THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS A Song With A Stolen Burden Off with your hat! along the street His Lordship's carriage rolls; Respect to greatness--when it shines To cheer our darkened souls. Get off the step, you ragged boys! Policeman, where's your staff? This is a sight to check with awe The most irreverent laugh. Chapeau bas! Chapeau bas! Gloire au Marquis de Carabas! Stand further back! we'll see him well; Wait till they lift him out: It takes some time; his Lordship's old, And suffers from the gout. Now look! he owns a castled park For every finger thin; He has more sterling pounds a day Than wrinkles in his skin. The founder of his race was son To a king's cousin, rich; (The mother was an oyster wench-- She perished in a ditch). His patriot worth embalmed has been In poets' loud applause: He made twelve thousand pounds a year By aiding France's cause. The second marquis, of the stole Was groom to the second James; He all but caught that recreant king When flying o'er the Thames. Devotion rare! by Orange Will With a Scotch county paid; He gained one more--in Ireland--when Charles Edward he betrayed. He lived to see his son grow up A general famed and bold, Who fought his country's fights--and one, For half a million, sold. His son (alas! the house's shame) Frittered the name away: Diced, wenched and drank--at last got shot, Through cheating in his play! Now, see, where, focused on one head, The race's glories shine: The head gets narrow at the top, But mark the jaw--how fine! Don't call it satyr-like; you'd wound Some scores, whose honest pates The self-same type present, upon The Carabas estates! Look at his skin--at four-score years How fresh it gleams and fair: He never tasted ill-dressed food, Or breathed in tainted air. The noble blood glows through his veins Still, with a healthful pink; His brow scarce wrinkled!--Brows keep so That have not got to think. His hand 's ungloved!--it shakes, 'tis true, But mark its tiny size, (High birth's true sign) and shape, as on The lackey's arm it lies. That hand ne'er penned a useful line, Ne'er worked a deed of fame, Save slaying one, whose sister he-- Its owner--brought to shame. They ye got him in--he's gone to vote Your rights and mine away; Perchance our lives, should men be scarce, To fight his cause for pay. We are his slaves! he owns our lands, Our woods, our seas, and skies; He'd have us shot like vicious dogs, Should we in murmuring rise! Chapeau bas! Chapeau bas! Gloire au Marquis de Carabas! Robert Brough [1828-1860] A MODEST WIT A supercilious nabob of the East-- Haughty, being great--purse-proud, being rich-- A governor, or general, at the least, I have forgotten which-- Had in his family a humble youth, Who went from England in his patron's suit, An unassuming boy, in truth A lad of decent parts, and good repute. This youth had sense and spirit; But yet with all his sense, Excessive diffidence Obscured his merit. One day, at table, flushed with pride and wine, His Honor, proudly free, severely merry, Conceived it would be vastly fine To crack a joke upon his secretary. "Young man," he said, "by what art, craft, or trade, Did your good father gain a livelihood?"-- "He was a saddler, sir," Modestus said, "And in his time was reckoned good." "A saddler, eh! and taught you Greek, Instead of teaching you to sew! Pray, why did not your father make A saddler, sir, of you?" Each parasite, then, as in duty bound, The joke applauded, and the laugh went round. At length Modestus, bowing low, Said (craving pardon, if too free he made), "Sir, by your leave, I fain would know Your father's trade!" "My father's trade! by heaven, that's too bad! My father's trade? Why, blockhead, are you mad? My father, sir, did never stoop so low-- He was a gentleman, I'd have you know." "Excuse the liberty I take," Modestus said, with archness on his brow, "Pray, why did not your father make A gentleman of you?" Selleck Osborn [1783-1826] JOLLY JACK When fierce political debate Throughout the isle was storming, And Rads attacked the throne and state, And Tories the reforming, To calm the furious rage of each, And right the land demented, Heaven sent us Jolly Jack, to teach The way to be contented. Jack's bed was straw, 'twas warm and soft, His chair, a three-legged stool; His broken jug was emptied oft, Yet, somehow, always full. His mistress' portrait decked the wall, His mirror had a crack, Yet, gay and glad, though this was all His wealth, lived Jolly Jack. To give advice to avarice, Teach pride its mean condition, And preach good sense to dull pretence, Was honest Jack's high mission. Our simple statesman found his rule Of moral in the flagon, And held his philosophic school Beneath the "George and Dragon" When village Solons cursed the Lords, And called the malt-tax sinful, Jack heeded not their angry words, But smiled and drank his skinful. And when men wasted health and life, In search of rank and riches, Jack marched aloof the paltry strife, And wore his threadbare breeches. "I enter not the Church," he said, "But I'll not seek to rob it;" So worthy Jack Joe Miller read, While others studied Cobbett. His talk it was of feast and fun; His guide the Almanack; From youth to age thus gaily run The life of Jolly Jack. And when Jack prayed, as oft he would, He humbly thanked his Maker; "I am," said he, "O Father good! Nor Catholic nor Quaker: Give each his creed, let each proclaim His catalogue of curses; I trust in Thee, and not in them, In Thee, and in Thy mercies! "Forgive me if, midst all Thy works, No hint I see of damning; And think there's faith among the Turks, And hope for e'en the Brahmin. Harmless my mind is, and my mirth, And kindly is my laughter; I cannot see the smiling earth, And think there's hell hereafter." Jack died; he left no legacy, Save that his story teaches:-- Content to peevish poverty; Humility to riches. Ye scornful great, ye envious small, Come fellow in his track; We all were happier, if we all Would copy Jolly Jack. William Makepeace Thackeray [1811-1863] THE KING OF BRENTFORD After Beranger There was a King in Brentford,--of whom no legends tell, But who, without his glory,--could eat and sleep right well. His Polly's cotton nightcap--it was his crown of state, He slept of evenings early,--and rose of mornings late. All in a fine mud palace,--each day he took four meals, And for a guard of honor,--a dog ran at his heels. Sometimes to view his kingdoms,--rode forth this monarch good, And then a prancing jackass--he royally bestrode. There were no costly habits--with which this King was cursed, Except (and where's the harm on't)--a somewhat lively thirst; But people must pay taxes,--and Kings must have their sport; So out of every gallon--His Grace he took a quart. He pleased the ladies round him,--with manners soft and bland; With reason good, they named him,--the father of his land. Each year his mighty armies--marched forth in gallant show; Their enemies were targets,--their bullets they were tow. He vexed no quiet neighbor,--no useless conquest made, But by the laws of pleasure,--his peaceful realm he swayed. And in the years he reigned,--through all this country wide, There was no cause for weeping,--save when the good man died. The faithful men of Brentford,--do still their King deplore, His portrait yet is swinging,--beside an alehouse door. And topers, tender-hearted,--regard his honest phiz, And envy times departed,--that knew a reign like his. William Makepeace Thackeray [1811-1863] KAISER & CO Der Kaiser auf der Vaterland Und Gott on high, all dings gommand; Ve two, ach don'd you understandt? Meinself--und Gott. He reigns in heafen, und always shall, Und mein own embire don'd vas shmall; Ein noble bair, I dink you call Meinself--und Gott. Vile some mens sing der power divine, Mein soldiers sing der "Wacht am Rhein," Und drink der healt in Rhenish wein Auf me--und Gott. Dere's France dot swaggers all aroundt, She's ausgespieldt--she's no aggoundt; To mooch ve dinks she don'd amoundt, Meinself--und Gott. She vill not dare to fight again, But if she shouldt, I'll show her blain Dot Elsass und (in French) Lorraine Are mein--und Gott's. Dere's grandma dinks she's nicht shmall beer, Mit Boers und dings she interfere; She'll learn none runs dis hemisphere But me--und Gott. She dinks, goot frau, some ships she's got, Und soldiers mit der sgarlet goat; Ach! ve could knock dem--pouf! like dot, Meinself--und Gott. In dimes auf peace, brebared for wars, I bear der helm und sbear auf Mars, Und care nicht for den dousant czars, Meinself--und Gott. In short, I humor efery whim, Mit aspect dark und visage grim, Gott pulls mit me und I mit Him-- Meinself--und Gott. Alexander Macgregor Rose [1846-1898] NONGTONGPAW John Bull for pastime took a prance, Some time ago, to peep at France; To talk of sciences and arts, And knowledge gained in foreign parts. Monsieur, obsequious, heard him speak, And answered John in heathen Greek; To all he asked, 'bout all he saw, 'Twas, "Monsieur, je vous n'entends pas." John, to the Palais-Royal come, Its splendor almost struck him dumb. "I say, whose house is that there here?" "House! Je vous n'entends pas, Monsieur." "What, Nongtongpaw again!" cries John; "This fellow is some mighty Don: No doubt he's plenty for the maw,-- I'll breakfast with this Nongtongpaw." John saw Versailles from Marli's height, And cried, astonished at the sight, "Whose fine estate is that there here?" "State! Je vous n'entends pas, Monsieur." "His? what, the land and houses too? The fellow's richer than a Jew: On everything he lays his claw! I should like to dine with Nongtongpaw." Next tripping came a courtly fair, John cried, enchanted with her air, "What lovely wench is that there here?" "Ventch! Je vous n'entends pas, Monsieur." "What, he again? Upon my life! A palace, lands, and then a wife Sir Joshua might delight to draw: I should like to sup with Nongtongpaw. "But hold! whose funeral's that?" cries John. "Je vous n'entends pas."--"What, is he gone? Wealth, fame, and beauty could not save Poor Nongtongpaw, then, from the grave! His race is run, his game is up,-- I'd with him breakfast, dine, and sup; But since he chooses to withdraw, Good night t' ye, Mounseer Nongtongpaw!" Charles Dibdin [1745-1814] THE LION AND THE CUB How fond are men of rule and place, Who court it from the mean and base! These cannot bear an equal nigh, But from superior merit fly. They love the cellar's vulgar joke, And lose their hours in ale and smoke. There o'er some petty club preside; So poor, so paltry, is their pride! Nay, even with fools whole nights will sit, In hopes to be supreme in wit. If these can read, to these I write, To set their worth in truest light. A Lion-cub of sordid mind, Avoided all the lion kind; Fond of applause, he sought the feasts Of vulgar and ignoble beasts; With asses all his time he spent, Their club's perpetual president. He caught their manners, looks, and airs; An ass in everything but ears! If e'er his Highness meant a joke, They grinned applause before he spoke; But at each word what shouts of praise! "Good gods! how natural he brays!" Elate with flattery and conceit, He seeks his royal sire's retreat; Forward, and fond to show his parts, His Highness brays; the Lion starts. "Puppy! that cursed vociferation Betrays thy life and conversation: Coxcombs, an ever-noisy race, Are trumpets of their own disgrace." "Why so severe?" the Cub replies; "Our senate always held me wise!" "How weak is pride," returns the sire: "All fools are vain when fools admire! But know, what stupid asses prize, Lions and noble beasts despise." John Gay [1685-1732] THE HARE WITH MANY FRIENDS Friendship, like love, is but a name, Unless to one you stint the flame. The child, whom many fathers share, Hath seldom known a father's care. 'Tis thus in friendship; who depend On many, rarely find a friend. A Hare, who, in a civil way, Complied with everything, like Gay, Was known by all the bestial train, Who haunt the wood, or graze the plain; Her care was never to offend, And every creature was her friend. As forth she went at early dawn, To taste the dew-besprinkled lawn, Behind she hears the hunter's cries, And from the deep-mouthed thunder flies: She starts, she stops, she pants for breath; She hears the near advance of death; She doubles, to mislead the hound, And measures back her mazy round: Till, fainting in the public way, Half dead with fear she gasping lay. What transport in her bosom grew, When first the Horse appeared in view! "Let me," says she, "your back ascend, And owe my safety to a friend. You know my feet betray my flight: To friendship every burden's light." The Horse replied: "Poor honest Puss, It grieves my heart to see thee thus; Be comforted; relief is near, For all your friends are in the rear." She next the stately Bull implored; And thus replied the mighty lord: "Since every beast alive can tell That I sincerely wish you well, I may, without offence, pretend, To take the freedom of a friend. Love calls me hence; a favorite cow Expects me near yon barley-mow; And when a lady's in the case, You know, all other things give place. To leave you thus might seem unkind; But see, the Goat is just behind." The Goat remarked her pulse was high, Her languid head, her heavy eye; "My back," says he, "may do you harm; The Sheep's at hand, and wool is warm." The Sheep was feeble, and complained His sides a load of wool sustained: Said he was slow, confessed his fears, For hounds eat sheep as well as Hares. She now the trotting Calf addressed, To save from death a friend distressed. "Shall I," says he, "of tender age, In this important care engage? Older and abler passed you by; How strong are those, how weak am I! Should I presume to bear you hence, Those friends of mine may take offence. Excuse me, then. You know my heart; But dearest friends, alas! must part. How shall we all lament! Adieu! For see, the hounds are just in view." John Gay [1685-1732] THE SYCOPHANTIC FOX AND THE GULLIBLE RAVEN A raven sat upon a tree, And not a word he spoke, for His beak contained a piece of Brie, Or, maybe, it was Roquefort? We'll make it any kind you please-- At all events, it was a cheese. Beneath the tree's umbrageous limb A hungry fox sat smiling; He saw the raven watching him, And spoke in words beguiling: "J'admire," said he, "ton beau plumage," (The which was simply persiflage). Two things there are, no doubt you know, To which a fox is used,-- A rooster that is bound to crow, A crow that's bound to roost, And whichsoever he espies He tells the most unblushing lies. "Sweet fowl," he said, "I understand You're more than merely natty: I hear you sing to beat the band And Adelina Patti. Pray render with your liquid tongue A bit from 'Gotterdammerung.'" This subtle speech was aimed to please The crow, and it succeeded: He thought no bird in all the trees Could sing as well as he did. In flattery completely doused, He gave the "Jewel Song" from "Faust." But gravitation's law, of course, As Isaac Newton showed it, Exerted on the cheese its force, And elsewhere soon bestowed it. In fact, there is no need to tell What happened when to earth it fell. I blush to add that when the bird Took in the situation, He said one brief, emphatic word, Unfit for publication. The fox was greatly startled, but He only sighed and answered "Tut!" The moral is: A fox is bound To be a shameless sinner. And also: When the cheese comes round You know it's after dinner. But (what is only known to few) The fox is after dinner, too. Guy Wetmore Carryl [1873-1904] THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY AND THE KNIFE-GRINDER Friend Of Humanity Needy knife-grinder! whither are you going? Rough is the road; your wheel is out of order.-- Bleak blows the blast;--your hat has got a hole in't. So have your breeches! Weary knife-grinder! little think the proud ones Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike- Road, what hard work 'tis crying all day, "Knives and Scissors to grind O!" Tell me, knife-grinder, how you came to grind knives? Did some rich man tyrannically use you? Was it the squire? or parson of the parish? Or the attorney? Was it the squire for killing of his game? or Covetous parson, for his tithes destraining? Or roguish lawyer made you lose your little All in a lawsuit? (Have you not read the Rights of Man, by Tom Paine?) Drops of compassion tremble on my eyelids, Ready to fall, as soon as you have told your Pitiful story. KNIFE-GRINDER Story? God bless you! I have none to tell, sir; Only, last night, a-drinking at the Chequers, This poor old hat and breeches, as you see, were Torn in a scuffle Constables came up for to take me into Custody; they took me before the justice; Justice Oldmixon put me in the parish Stocks for a vagrant. I should be glad to drink your honor's health in A pot of beer, if you will give me sixpence; But for my part, I never love to meddle With politics, sir. FRIEND OF HUMANITY I give thee sixpence! I will see thee damned first,-- Wretch! whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance!-- Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded, Spiritless outcast! (Kicks the Knife-grinder, overturns his wheel, and exit in a transport of republican enthusiasm and universal philanthropy.) George Canning [1770-1827] VILLON'S STRAIGHT TIP TO ALL CROSS COVES "Tout aux tavernes et aux fiells." Suppose you screeve? or go cheap-jack? Or fake the broads? or fig a nag? Or thimble-rig? or knap a yack? Or pitch a snide? or smash a rag? Suppose you duff? or nose and lag? Or get the straight, and land your pot? How do you melt the multy swag? Booze and the blowens cop the lot. Fiddle, or fence, or mace, or mack; Or moskeneer, or flash the drag; Dead-lurk a crib, or do a crack; Pad with a slang, or chuck a fag; Bonnet, or tout, or mump and gag; Rattle the tats, or mark the spot; You can not bag a single stag; Booze and the blowens cop the lot. Suppose you try a different tack, And on the square you flash your flag? At penny-a-lining make your whack, Or with the mummers mug and gag? For nix, for nix the dibbs you bag! At any graft, no matter what, Your merry goblins soon stravag: Booze and the blowens cop the lot. THE MORAL It's up the spout and Charley Wag With wipes and tickers and what not, Until the squeezer nips your scrag, Booze and the blowens cop the lot. William Ernest Henley [1849-1903] VILLON'S BALLADE Of Good Counsel, To His Friends Of Evil Life Nay, be you pardoner or cheat, Or cogger keen, or mumper shy, You'll burn your fingers at the feat, And howl like other folks that fry. All evil folks that love a lie! And where goes gain that greed amasses, By wile, and guile, and thievery? 'Tis all to taverns and to lasses! Rhyme, rail, dance, play the cymbals sweet, With game, and shame, and jollity, Go jigging through the field and street, With myst'ry and morality; Win gold at gleek,--and that will fly, Where all your gain at passage passes,-- And that's? You know as well as I, 'Tis all to taverns and to lasses! Nay, forth from all such filth retreat, Go delve and ditch, in wet or dry, Turn groom, give horse and mule their meat, If you've no clerkly skill to ply; You'll gain enough, with husbandry, But--sow hempseed and such wild grasses, And where goes all you take thereby?-- 'Tis all to taverns and to lasses! ENVOY Your clothes, your hose, your broidery, Your linen that the snow surpasses, Or ere they're worn, off, off they fly, 'Tis all to taverns and to lasses! Andrew Lang [1844-1912] A LITTLE BROTHER OF THE RICH To put new shingles on old roofs; To give old women wadded skirts; To treat premonitory coughs With seasonable flannel shirts; To soothe the stings of poverty And keep the jackal from the door,-- These are the works that occupy The Little Sister of the Poor. She carries, everywhere she goes, Kind words and chickens, jams and coals; Poultices for corporeal woes, And sympathy for downcast souls: Her currant jelly, her quinine, The lips of fever move to bless; She makes the humble sick-room shine With unaccustomed tidiness. A heart of hers the instant twin And vivid counterpart is mine; I also serve my fellow-men, Though in a somewhat different line. The Poor, and their concerns, she has Monopolized, because of which It falls to me to labor as A Little Brother of the Rich. For their sake at no sacrifice Does my devoted spirit quail; I give their horses exercise; As ballast on their yachts I sail. Upon their tallyhos I ride And brave the chances of a storm; I even use my own inside To keep their wines and victuals warm. Those whom we strive to benefit Dear to our hearts soon grow to be; I love my Rich, and I admit That they are very good to me. Succor the Poor, my sisters,--I, While heaven shall still vouchsafe me health, Will strive to share and mollify The trials of abounding wealth. Edward Sandford Martin [1856- THE WORLD'S WAY At Haroun's court it chanced, upon a time, An Arab poet made this pleasant rhyme: "The new moon is a horseshoe, wrought of God, Wherewith the Sultan's stallion shall be shod." On hearing this, the Sultan smiled, and gave The man a gold-piece. Sing again, O slave! Above his lute the happy singer bent, And turned another gracious compliment. And, as before, the smiling Sultan gave The man a sekkah. Sing again, O slave! Again the verse came, fluent as a rill That wanders, silver-footed, down a hill. The Sultan, listening, nodded as before, Still gave the gold, and still demanded more. The nimble fancy that had climbed so high Grew weary with its climbing by and by: Strange discords rose; the sense went quite amiss; The singer's rhymes refused to meet and kiss: Invention flagged, the lute had got unstrung, And twice he sang the song already sung. The Sultan, furious, called a mute, and said, O Musta, straightway whip me off his head! Poets! not in Arabia alone You get beheaded when your skill is gone. Thomas Bailey Aldrich [1837-1907] FOR MY OWN MONUMENT As doctors give physic by way of prevention, Mat, alive and in health, of his tombstone took care; For delays are unsafe, and his pious intention May haply be never fulfilled by his heir. Then take Mat's word for it, the sculptor is paid; That the figure is fine, pray believe your own eye; Yet credit but lightly what more may be said, For we flatter ourselves, and teach marble to lie. Yet counting as far as to fifty his years, His virtues and vices were as other men's are; High hopes he conceived, and he smothered great fears, In a life parti-colored, half pleasure, half care. Nor to business a drudge, nor to faction a slave, He strove to make interest and freedom agree; In public employments industrious and grave, And alone with his friends, lord! how merry was he! Now in equipage stately, now humbly on foot, Both fortunes be tried, but to neither would trust; And whirled in the round, as the wheel turned about, He found riches had wings, and knew man was but dust. This verse, little polished, though mighty sincere, Sets neither his titles nor merit to view; It says that his relics collected lie here, And no mortal yet knows too if this may be true. Fierce robbers there are that infest the highway, So Mat may be killed, and his bones never found; False witness at court, and fierce tempests at sea, So Mat may yet chance to be hanged or be drowned. If his bones lie in earth, roll in sea, fly in air, To Fate we must yield, and the thing is the same; And if passing thou giv'st him a smile or a tear, He cares not--yet, prithee, be kind to his fame. Matthew Prior [1664-1721] THE BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB AT SAINT PRAXED'S CHURCH Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity! Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back? Nephews--sons mine.. ah God, I know not! Well-- She, men would have to be your mother once, Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was! What's done is done, and she is dead beside, Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since, And as she died so must we die ourselves, And thence ye may perceive the world's a dream. Life, how and what is it? As here I lie In this state-chamber, dying by degrees, Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask "Do I live, am I dead?" Peace, peace seems all. Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace; And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know: --Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care; Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner South He graced his carrion with, God curse the same! Yet still my niche is not so cramped, but thence One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side, And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats, And up into the aery dome where live The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk: And I shall fill my slab of basalt there, And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest, With those nine columns round me, two and two, The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands: Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse. --Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone, Put me where I may look at him! True peach, Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize! Draw close: that conflagration of my church --What then? So much was saved if aught were missed! My sons, ye would not be my death? Go dig The white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood, Drop water gently till the surface sink, And if ye-find... Ah God, I know not, I!... Bedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft, And corded up in a tight olive-frail, Some lump, ah God, of lapis lazuli, Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape, Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast... Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all, That brave Frascati villa with its bath, So, let the blue lump poise between my knees, Like God the Father's globe on both his hands Ye worship in the Jesu Church so gay, For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst! Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years: Man goeth to the grave, and where is he? Did I say basalt for my slab, sons? Black-- 'T was ever antique-black I meant! How else Shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath?-- The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me, Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so, The Saviour at his sermon on the mount, Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off, And Moses with the tables... but I know Ye mark me not! What do they whisper thee, Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hope To revel down my villas while I gasp Bricked o'er with beggar's mouldy travertine Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at! Nay, boys, ye love me--all of jasper, then! 'T is jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve My bath must needs be left behind, alas! One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut, There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world-- And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts, And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs? --That's if ye carve my epitaph aright, Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word, No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line-- Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need! And then how I shall lie through centuries, And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, And see God made and eaten all day long, And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke! For as I lie here, hours of the dead night, Dying in state and by such slow degrees, I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook, And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point, And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, drop Into great laps and folds of sculptor's-work: And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts Grow, with a certain humming in my ears, About the life before I lived this life, And this life too, popes, cardinals and priests, Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount, Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes, And new-found agate urns as fresh as day, And marble's language, Latin pure, discreet, --Aha, ELUCESCEBAT quoth our friend?-- No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best! Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage. All lapis, all, sons! Else I give the Pope My villas! Will ye ever eat my heart? Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick, They glitter like your mother's for my soul, Or ye would heighten my impoverished frieze, Piece out its starved design, and fill my vase With grapes, and add a visor and a Term, And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down, To comfort me on my entablature Whereon I am to lie till I must ask "Do I live, am I dead?" There, leave me, there! For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude To death--ye wish it--God, ye wish it! Stone-- Gritstone, a-crumble! Clammy squares which sweat As if the corpse they keep were oozing through-- And no more lapis to delight the world! Well, go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there, But in a row: and, going, turn your backs --Ay, like departing altar-ministrants, And leave me in my church, the church for peace, That I may watch at leisure if he leers-- Old Gandolf--at me, from his onion-stone, As still he envied me, so fair she was! Robert Browning [1812-1889] UP AT A VILLA--DOWN IN THE CITY As Distinguished By An Italian Person Of Quality Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare, The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square. Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there! Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least! There, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect feast; While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a beast. Well now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull Just on a mountain-edge as bare as the creature's skull, Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull! --I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair's turned wool. But the city, oh the city--the square with the houses! Why? They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there's something to take the eye! Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry! You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by; Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets high; And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly. What of a villa? Though winter be over in March by rights, 'Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the heights: You've the brown ploughed land before, where the oxen steam and wheeze, And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint gray olive trees. Is it better in May, I ask you? You've summer all at once; In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suns. 'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well, The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell, Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick and sell. Is it ever hot in the square? There's a fountain to spout and splash! In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such foam-bows flash On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and paddle and pash Round the lady atop in the conch--fifty gazers do not abash, Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a sort of sash. All the year round at the villa, nothing's to see though you linger, Except yon cypress that points like Death's lean lifted fore finger. Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix in the corn and mingle, Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem a-tingle. Late August or early September, the stunning cicala is shrill And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the resinous firs on the hill. Enough of the seasons,--I spare you the months of the fever and chill. Ere you open your eyes in the city, the blessed church-bells begin: No sooner the bells leave off, than the diligence rattles in: You get the pick of the news, and it costs you never a pin. By and by there's the travelling doctor gives pills, lets blood, draws teeth; Or the Pulcinello-trumpet breaks up the market beneath. At the post-office such a scene-picture--the new play, piping hot! And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal thieves were shot. Above it, behold the Archbishop's most fatherly of rebukes, And beneath, with his crown and his lion, some little new law of the Duke's! Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Reverend Don So-and-so, Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, St. Jerome, and Cicero, "And moreover," (the sonnet goes rhyming), "the skirts of St. Paul has reached, Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more unctuous than ever he preached." Noon strikes,--here sweeps the procession! our Lady borne smiling and smart With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart! Bang-whang-whang, goes the drum, tootle-k-tootle the fife; No keeping one's haunches still: it's the greatest pleasure in life. But bless you, it's dear--it's dear! fowls, wine, at double the rate. They have clapped a new tax upon salt, and what oil pays passing the gate It's a horror to think of. And so, the villa for me, not the city! Beggars can scarcely be choosers: but still--ah, the pity, the pity! Look, two and two go the priests, then the monks with cowls and sandals, And the penitents dressed in white skirts, a-holding the yellow candles; One, he carries a flag up straight, and another a cross with handles, And the Duke's guard brings up the rear, for the better prevention of scandals. Bang-whang-whang, goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife. Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life! Robert Browning [1812-1889] ALL SAINTS' In a church which is furnished with mullion and gable, With altar and reredos, with gargoyle and groin, The penitents' dresses are sealskin and sable, The odor of sanctity's eau-de-cologne. But only could Lucifer, flying from Hades, Gaze down on this crowd with its paniers and paints, He would say, as he looked at the lords and the ladies, "Oh, where is All Sinners' if this is All Saints'?" Edmund Yates [1831-1894] AN ADDRESS TO THE UNCO GUID, OR THE RIGIDLY RIGHTEOUS My son, these maxims make a rule, And lump them aye thegither: The Rigid Righteous is a fool The Rigid Wise anither: The cleanest corn that e'er was dight May hae some pyles o' caff in; Sae ne'er a fellow-creature slight For random fits o' daffin. Solomon--Eccles. vii. 16. Oh ye wha are sae guid yoursel', Sae pious and sae holy, Ye've naught to do but mark and tell Your neebor's fauts and folly:-- Whase life is like a weel-gaun mill, Supplied wi' store o' water, The heaped happer's ebbing still, And still the clap plays clatter. Hear me, ye venerable core, As counsel for poor mortals That frequent pass douce Wisdom's door, For glaikit Folly's portals! I, for their thoughtless, careless sakes, Would here propone defences, Their donsie tricks, their black mistakes, Their failings and mischances. Ye see your state wi' theirs compared, And shudder at the niffer; But cast a moment's fair regard, What maks the mighty differ? Discount what scant occasion gave That purity ye pride in, And (what's aft mair than a' the lave) Your better art o' hidin'. Think, when your castigated pulse Gies now and then a wallop, What ragings must his veins convulse, That still eternal gallop: Wi' wind and tide fair i' your tail, Right on ye scud your sea-way;-- But in the teeth o' baith to sail, It makes an unco lee-way. See Social Life and Glee sit down, All joyous and unthinking, Till, quite transmugrified, they've grown Debauchery and Drinking: Oh, would they stay to calculate The eternal consequences; Or your more dreaded hell to state, Damnation of expenses! Ye high, exalted, virtuous dames, Tied up in godly laces, Before ye gie poor Frailty names, Suppose a change o' cases; A dear-loved lad, convenience snug, A treacherous inclination,-- But, let me whisper i' your lug, Ye're aiblins nae temptation. Then gently scan your brother man, Still gentler sister woman; Though they may gang a kennin' wrang, To step aside is human: One point must still be greatly dark, The moving why they do it; And just as lamely can ye mark How far perhaps they rue it. Who made the heart, 'tis He alone Decidedly can try us; He knows each chord,--its various tone, Each spring,--its various bias: Then at the balance let's be mute; We never can adjust it; What's done we partly may compute, But know not what's resisted. Robert Burns [1759-1796] THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE, OR THE WONDERFUL "ONE-HOSS SHAY" A Logical Story Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, That was built in such a logical way It ran a hundred years to a day, And then, of a sudden, it--ah, but stay, I'll tell you what happened without delay, Scaring the parson into fits, Frightening people out of their wits,-- Have you ever heard of that, I say? Seventeen hundred and fifty-five. Georgius Secundus was then alive,-- Snuffy old drone from the German hive. That was the year when Lisbon-town Saw the earth open and gulp her down, And Braddock's army was done so brown, Left without a scalp to its crown. It was on the terrible Earthquake-day That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay. Now in building of chaises, I tell you what, There is always somewhere a weakest spot,-- In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill, In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill, In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace,--lurking still, Find it somewhere you must and will,-- Above or below, or within or without,-- And that's the reason, beyond a doubt, That a chaise breaks down, but doesn't wear out. But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do, With an "I dew vum," or an "I tell yeou,") He would build one shay to beat the taown 'N' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun'; It should be so built that it couldn' break daown: "Fur," said the Deacon, "'t's mighty plain Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain; 'N' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain, Is only jest T' make that place uz strong uz the rest." So the Deacon inquired of the village folk Where he could find the strongest oak, That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke,-- That was for spokes and floor and sills; He sent for lancewood to make the thills; The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees, The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese, But lasts like iron for things like these; The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"-- Last of its timber,--they couldn't sell 'em, Never an axe had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died. That was the way he "put her through." There! said the Deacon, "naow she'll dew!" Do! I tell you, I rather guess She was a wonder, and nothing less! Colts grew horses, beards turned gray, Deacon and deaconess dropped away, Children and grandchildren--where were they? But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day! EIGHTEEN HUNDRED;--it came and found The Deacon's masterpiece strong and sound. Eighteen hundred increased by ten; "Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then. Eighteen hundred and twenty came;-- Running as usual; much the same. Thirty and Forty at last arrive, And then come Fifty, and Fifty-Five. Little of all we value here Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year Without both feeling and looking queer. In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth, So far as I know, but a tree and truth. (This is a moral that runs at large; Take it.--You're welcome.--No extra charge.) FIRST OF November,--the Earthquake-day,-- There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay. A general flavor of mild decay, But nothing local, as one may say. There couldn't be,--for the Deacon's art Had made it so like in every part That there wasn't a chance for one to start. For the wheels were just as strong as the thills, And the floor was just as strong as the sills, And the panels just as strong as the floor, And the whipple-tree neither less nor more, And the back-crossbar as strong as the fore, And spring and axle and hub encore. And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt In another hour it will be worn out! First of November, Fifty-five! This morning the parson takes a drive. Now, small boys, get out of the way! Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay, Drawn by a rat-railed, ewe-necked bay. "Huddup!" said the parson.--Off went they. The parson was working his Sunday's text,- Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed At what the--Moses--was coming next. All at once the horse stood still, Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill. First a shiver, and then a thrill, Then something decidedly like a spill,-- And the parson was sitting upon a rock, At half past nine by the meet'n'-house clock,-- Just the hour of the Earthquake shock! What do you think the parson found, When he got up and stared around? The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, As if it had been to the mill and ground! You see, of course, if you're not a dunce, How it went to pieces all at once,-- All at once, and nothing first,-- Just as bubbles do when they burst. End of the wonderful one-hoss shay. Logic is logic. That's all I say. Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-1894] BALLADE OF A FRIAR After Clement Marot Some ten or twenty times a day, To bustle to the town with speed, To dabble in what dirt he may,-- Le Frere Lubin's the man you need! But any sober life to lead Upon an exemplary plan, Requires a Christian indeed,-- Le Frere Lubin is not the man! Another's wealth on his to lay, With all the craft of guile and greed, To leave you bare of pence or pay,-- Le Frere Lubin's the man you need! But watch him with the closest heed, And dun him with what force you can,-- He'll not refund, howe'er you plead,-- Le Frere Lubin is not the man-- An honest girl to lead astray, With subtle saw and promised meed, Requires no cunning crone and gray,-- Le Frere Lubin's the man you need! He preaches an ascetic creed, But,--try him with the water can-- A dog will drink, whate'er his breed,-- Le Frere Lubin is not the man! ENVOY In good to fail, in ill succeed, Le Frere Lubin's the man you need! In honest works to lead the van, Le Frere Lubin is not the man! Andrew Lang [1844-1912] THE CHAMELEON Oft has it been my lot to mark A proud, conceited, talking spark, With eyes, that hardly served at most To guard their master 'gainst a post, Yet round the world the blade has been To see whatever could be seen, Returning from his finished tour, Grown ten times perter than before; Whatever word you chance to drop, The traveled fool your mouth will stop; "Sir, if my judgment you'll allow, I've seen--and sure I ought to know," So begs you'd pay a due submission, And acquiesce in his decision. Two travelers of such a cast, As o'er Arabia's wilds they passed, And on their way in friendly chat, Now talked of this, and then of that, Discoursed awhile, 'mongst other matter, Of the chameleon's form and nature. "A stranger animal," cries one, "Sure never lived beneath the sun. A lizard's body, lean and long, A fish's head, a serpent's tongue, Its foot with triple claw disjoined; And what a length of tail behind! How slow its pace; and then its hue-- Who ever saw so fine a blue?" "Hold, there," the other quick replies, "'Tis green,--I saw it with these eyes, As late with open mouth it lay, And warmed it in the sunny ray: Stretched at its ease, the beast I viewed And saw it eat the air for food." "I've seen it, sir, as well as you, And must again affirm it blue; At leisure I the beast surveyed, Extended in the cooling shade." "'Tis green, 'tis green, sir, I assure ye!" "Green!" cries the other in a fury-- "Why, sir!--d'ye think I've lost my eyes?" "'Twere no great loss," the friend replies, "For, if they always serve you thus, You'll find them of but little use." So high at last the contest rose, From words they almost came to blows: When luckily came by a third-- To him the question they referred, And begged he'd tell 'em, if he knew, Whether the thing was green or blue. "Sirs," cries the umpire, "cease your pother! The creature's neither one or t'other. I caught the animal last night, And viewed it o'er by candlelight: I marked it well--'t was black as jet-- You stare--but, sirs, I've got it yet, And can produce it." "Pray, sir, do; I'll lay my life the thing is blue." "And I'll be sworn, that when you've seen The reptile, you'll pronounce him green." "Well, then, at once to ease the doubt," Replies the man, "I'll turn him out: And when before your eyes I've set him, If you don't find him black, I'll eat him." He said: then full before their sight Produced the beast, and lo!--'twas white. Both stared, the man looked wondrous wise-- "My children," the chameleon cries, (Then first the creature found a tongue), "You all are right, and all are wrong: When next you talk of what you view, Think others see as well as you: Nor wonder, if you find that none Prefers your eyesight to his own." After De La Motte, by James Merrick [1720-1769] THE BLIND MEN AND THE ELEPHANT A Hindoo Fable It was six men of Indostan To learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind), That each by observation Might satisfy his mind. The First approached the Elephant, And happening to fall Against his broad and sturdy side, At once began to bawl: "God bless me! but the Elephant Is very like a wall!" The Second, feeling of the tusk, Cried, "Ho! what have we here So very round and smooth and sharp? To me 'tis mighty clear This wonder of an Elephant Is very like a spear!" The Third approached the animal, And happening to take The squirming trunk within his hands, Thus boldly up and spake: "I see," quoth he, "the Elephant Is very like a snake!" The Fourth reached out an eager hand, And felt about the knee. "What most this wondrous beast is like Is mighty plain," quoth he; "'Tis clear enough the Elephant Is very like a tree!" The Fifth who chanced to touch the ear, Said: "E'en the blindest man Can tell what this resembles most; Deny the fact who can, This marvel of an Elephant Is very like a fan!" The Sixth no sooner had begun About the beast to grope, Than, seizing on the swinging tail That fell within his scope, "I see," quoth he, "the Elephant Is very like a rope!" And so these men of Indostan Disputed loud and long, Each in his own opinion Exceeding stiff and strong, Though each was partly in the right, And all were in the wrong! MORAL So oft in theologic wars, The disputants, I ween, Rail on in utter ignorance Of what each other mean, And prate about an Elephant Not one of them has seen! John Godfrey Saxe [1816-1887] THE PHILOSOPHER'S SCALES A monk, when his rites sacerdotal were o'er, In the depths of his cell with its stone-covered floor, Resigning to thought his chimerical brain, Once formed the contrivance we now shall explain; But whether by magic's or alchemy's powers We know not; indeed, 'tis no business of ours. Perhaps it was only by patience and care, At last, that he brought his invention to bear. In youth 'twas projected, but years stole away, And ere 'twas complete he was wrinkled and gray; But success is secure, unless energy fails; And at length he produced the Philosopher's Scales. "What were they?" you ask. You shall presently see; These scales were not made to weigh sugar and tea. Oh no; for such properties wondrous had they, That qualities, feelings, and thoughts they could weigh, Together with articles small or immense, From mountains or planets to atoms of sense. Naught was there so bulky but there it would lay, And naught so ethereal but there it would stay, And naught so reluctant but in it must go: All which some examples more clearly will show. The first thing he weighed was the head of Voltaire, Which retained all the wit that had ever been there; As a weight, he threw in the torn scrap of a leaf Containing the prayer of the penitent thief; When the skull rose aloft with so sudden a spell That it bounced like a ball on the roof of the cell. One time he put in Alexander the Great, With the garment that Dorcas had made, for a weight; And though clad in armor from sandals to crown, The hero rose up and the garment went down. A long row of almshouses, amply endowed By a well-esteemed Pharisee, busy and proud, Next loaded one scale; while the other was pressed By those mites the poor widow dropped into the chest: Up flew the endowment, not weighing an ounce, And down, down the farthing-worth came with a bounce. By further experiments (no matter how) He found that ten chariots weighed less than one plough; A sword with gilt trappings rose up in the scale, Though balanced by only a ten-penny nail; A shield and a helmet, a buckler and spear, Weighed less than a widow's uncrystallized tear. A lord and a lady went up at full sail, When a bee chanced to light on the opposite scale; Ten doctors, ten lawyers, two courtiers, one earl, Ten counsellors' wigs, full of powder and curl, All heaped in one balance and swinging from thence, Weighed less than a few grains of candor and sense; A first-water diamond, with brilliants begirt, Than one good potato just washed from the dirt; Yet not mountains of silver and gold could suffice One pearl to outweigh,--'twas the Pearl of Great Price. Last of all, the whole world was bowled in at the grate, With the soul of a beggar to serve for a weight, When the former sprang up with so strong a rebuff That it made a vast rent and escaped at the roof! When balanced in air, it ascended on high, And sailed up aloft, a balloon in the sky; While the scale with the soul in't so mightily fell That it jerked the philosopher out of his cell. Jane Taylor [1783-1824] THE MAIDEN AND THE LILY A lily in my garden grew, Amid the thyme and clover; No fairer lily ever blew, Search all the wide world over. Its beauty passed into my heart: I know 'twas very silly, But I was then a foolish maid, And it--a perfect lily. One day a learned man came by, With years of knowledge laden, And him I questioned with a sigh, Like any foolish maiden:-- "Wise sir, please tell me wherein lies-- I know the question's silly-- The something that my art defies, And makes a perfect lily." He smiled, then bending plucked the flower, Then tore it, leaf and petal, And talked to me for full an hour, And thought the point to settle:-- "Therein it lies," at length he cries; And I--I know 'twas silly-- Could only weep and say, "But where-- O doctor, where's my lily?" John Fraser [1750-1811] THE OWL-CRITIC "Who stuffed that white owl? No one spoke in the shop: The barber was busy, and he couldn't stop; The customers, waiting their turns, were all reading The Daily, the Herald, the Post, little heeding The young man who blurted out such a blunt question; Not one raised a head, or even made a suggestion; And the barber kept on shaving. "Don't you see, Mister Brown," Cried the youth with a frown, "How wrong the whole thing is, How preposterous each wing is, How flattened the head is, how jammed down the neck is-- In short, the whole owl, what an ignorant wreck 'tis! I make no apology; I've learned owl-eology. I've passed days and nights in a hundred collections, And cannot be blinded to any deflections Arising from unskilful fingers that fail To stuff a bird right, from his beak to his tail. Mister Brown! Mister Brown! Do take that bird down, Or you'll soon be the laughing-stock all over town!" And the barber kept on shaving. "I've studied owls And other night fowls, And I tell you What I know to be true: An owl cannot roost With his limbs so unloosed; No owl in this world Ever had his claws curled, Ever had his legs slanted, Ever had his bill canted, Ever had his neck screwed Into that attitude. He can't do it, because 'Tis against all bird-laws. Anatomy teaches, Ornithology preaches An owl has a toe That can't turn out so! I've made the white owl my study for years, And to see such a job almost moves me to tears! Mister Brown, I'm amazed You should be so gone crazed As to put up a bird In that posture absurd! To look at that owl really brings on a dizziness; The man who stuffed him don't half know his business!" And the barber kept on shaving. "Examine those eyes. I'm filled with surprise Taxidermists should pass Off on you such poor glass; So unnatural they seem They'd make Audubon scream, And John Burroughs laugh To encounter such chaff. Do take that bird down; Have him stuffed again, Brown!" And the barber kept on shaving. "With some sawdust and bark I could stuff in the dark An owl better than that. I could make an old hat Look more like an owl Than that horrid fowl, Stuck up there so stiff like a side of coarse leather. In fact, about him there's not one natural feather." Just then, with a wink and a sly normal lurch, The owl, very gravely, got down from his perch, Walked round, and regarded his fault-finding critic (Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance analytic And then fairly hooted, as if he would say: "Your learning's at fault this time, any way; Don't waste it again on a live bird, I pray. I'm an owl; you're another. Sir Critic, good-day!" And the barber kept on shaving. James Thomas Fields [1816-1881] THE BALLAD OF IMITATION C'est imiter quelqu'un que de planter des choux.--Alfred De Musset If they hint, O Musician, the piece that you played Is naught but a copy of Chopin or Spohr; That the ballad you sing is but merely "conveyed" From the stock of the Ames and the Purcells of yore; That there's nothing, in short, in the words or the score, That is not as out-worn as the "Wandering Jew"; Make answer--Beethoven could scarcely do more-- That the man who plants cabbages imitates, too! If they tell you, Sir Artist, your light and your shade Are simply "adapted" from other men's lore; That--plainly to speak of a "spade" as a "spade"-- You've "stolen" your grouping from three or from four; That (however the writer the truth may deplore), 'Twas Gainsborough painted your "Little Boy Blue"; Smile only serenely--though cut to the core-- For the man who plants cabbages imitates, too! And you too, my Poet, be never dismayed If they whisper your Epic--"Sir Eperon d'Or"-- Is nothing but Tennyson thinly arrayed In a tissue that's taken from Morris's store; That no one, in fact, but a child could ignore That you "lift" or "accommodate" all that you do; Take heart--though your Pegasus' withers be sore-- For the man who plants cabbages imitates, too! POSTCRIPTUM.--And you, whom we all so adore, Dear Critics, whose verdicts are always so new!-- One word in your ear. There were Critics before.... And the man who plants cabbages imitates, too! Austin Dobson [1840-1921] THE CONUNDRUM OF THE WORKSHOPS When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden's green and gold, Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mould; And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart, Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves: "It's pretty, but is it Art?" Wherefore he called to his wife, and fled to fashion his work anew-- The first of his race who cared a fig for the first, most dread review; And he left his lore to the use of his sons--and that was a glorious gain When the Devil chuckled: "Is it Art?" in the ear of the branded Cain. They builded a tower to shiver the sky and wrench the stars apart, Till the Devil grunted behind the bricks: "It's striking, but is it Art?" The stone was dropped at the quarry-side and the idle derrick swung, While each man talked of the aims of Art, and each in an alien tongue. They fought and they talked in the North and the South, they talked and they fought in the West, Till the waters rose on the pitiful land, and the poor Red Clay had rest-- Had rest till that dank, blank-canvas dawn when the dove was preened to start, And the Devil bubbled below the keel: "It's human, but is it Art?" The tale is as old as the Eden Tree--and new as the new-cut tooth-- For each man knows ere his lip-thatch grows he is master of Art and Truth; And each man hears as the twilight nears, to the beat of his dying heart, The Devil drum on the darkened pane: "You did it, but was it Art?" We have learned to whittle the Eden Tree to the shape of a surplice-peg, We have learned to bottle our-parents twain in the yelk of an addled egg, We know that the tail must wag the dog, for the horse is drawn by the cart; But the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old: "It's clever, but is it Art?" When the flicker of London sun falls faint on the clubroom's green and gold, The sons of Adam sit them down and scratch with their pens in the mould-- They scratch with their pens in the mould of their graves, and the ink and the anguish start, For the Devil mutters behind the leaves: "It's pretty, but is it Art?" Now, if we could win to the Eden Tree where the Four Great Rivers flow, And the Wreath of Eve is red on the turf as she left it long ago, And if we could come when the sentry slept, and softly scurry through, By the favor of God we might know as much--as our father Adam knew. Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936] THE V-A-S-E From the madding crowd they stand apart, The maidens four and the Work of Art; And none might tell from sight alone In which had Culture ripest grown,-- The Gotham Million fair to see, The Philadelphia Pedigree, The Boston Mind of azure hue, Or the soulful Soul from Kalamazoo,-- For all loved Art in a seemly way, With an earnest soul and a capital A. ...... Long they worshipped; but no one broke The sacred stillness, until up spoke The Western one from the nameless place, Who blushing said: "What a lovely vace!" Over three faces a sad smile flew, And they edged away from Kalamazoo. But Gotham's haughty soul was stirred To crush the stranger with one small word. Deftly hiding reproof in praise, She cries: "'Tis, indeed, a lovely vaze!" But brief her unworthy triumph when The lofty one from the home of Penn, With the consciousness of two grandpapas, Exclaims: "It is quite a lovely vahs!" And glances round with an anxious thrill, Awaiting the word of Beacon Hill. But the Boston maid smiles courteouslee, And gently murmurs: "Oh pardon me! "I did not catch your remark, because I was so entranced with that charming vaws!" Dies erit praegelida Sinistra quum Bostonia. James Jeffrey Roche [1847-1908] HEM AND HAW Hem and Haw were the sons of sin, Created to shally and shirk; Hem lay 'round and Haw looked on While God did all the work. Hem was a fogy, and Haw was a prig, For both had the dull, dull mind; And whenever they found a thing to do, They yammered and went it blind. Hem was the father of bigots and bores; As the sands of the sea were they. And Haw was the father of all the tribe Who criticise to-day. But God was an artist from the first, And knew what he was about; While over his shoulder sneered these two, And advised him to rub it out. They prophesied ruin ere man was made: "Such folly must surely fail!" And when he was done, "Do you think, my Lord, He's better without a tail?" And still in the honest working world, With posture and hint and smirk, These sons of the devil are standing by While Man does all the work. They balk endeavor and baffle reform, In the sacred name of law; And over the quavering voice of Hem, Is the droning voice of Haw. Bliss Carman [1861-1929] MINIVER CHEEVY Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn, Grew lean while he assailed the seasons; He wept that he was ever born, And he had reasons. Miniver loved the days of old When swords were bright and steeds were prancing; The vision of a warrior bold Would set him dancing. Miniver sighed for what was not, And dreamed, and rested from his labors; He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot, And Priam's neighbors. Miniver mourned the ripe renown That made so many a name so fragrant; He mourned Romance, now on the town, And Art, a vagrant. Miniver loved the Medici, Albeit he had never seen one; He would have sinned incessantly Could he have been one. Miniver cursed the commonplace, And eyed a khaki suit with loathing; He missed the medieval grace Of iron clothing. Miniver scorned the gold he sought, But sore annoyed was he without it; Miniver thought, and thought, and thought, And thought about it. Miniver Cheevy, born too late, Scratched his head and kept on thinking; Miniver coughed, and called it fate, And kept on drinking. Edwin Arlington Robinson [1869-1935] THEN AG'IN Jim Bowker, he said, ef he'd had a fair show, And a big enough town for his talents to grow, And the least bit assistance in hoein' his row, Jim Bowker, he said, He'd filled the world full of the sound of his name, An' clumb the top round in the ladder of fame; It may have been so; I dunno; Jest so it might been, Then ag'in-- But he had tarnal luck--everythin' went ag'in him, The arrers er fortune they allus 'ud pin him; So he didn't get no chance to show off what was in him. Jim Bowker, he said, Ef he'd had a fair show, you couldn't tell where he'd come, An' the feats he'd a-done, an' the heights he'd a-clumb-- It may have been so; I dunno; Jest so it might been, Then ag'in-- But we're all like Jim Bowker, thinks I, more or less-- Charge fate for our bad luck, ourselves for success, An' give fortune the blame for all our distress, As Jim Bowker, he said. Ef it hadn' been for luck an' misfortune an' sich, We might a-been famous, an' might a-been rich. It might be jest so; I dunno; Jest so it might been, Then ag'in-- Sam Walter Foss [1858-1911] A CONSERVATIVE The garden beds I wandered by One bright and cheerful morn, When I found a new-fledged butterfly, A-sitting on a thorn, A black and crimson butterfly, All doleful and forlorn. I thought that life could have no sting To infant butterflies, So I gazed on this unhappy thing With wonder and surprise, While sadly with his waving wing He wiped his weeping eyes. Said I, "What can the matter be? Why weepest thou so sore? With garden fair and sunlight free And flowers in goodly store:"-- But he only turned away from me And burst into a roar. Cried he, "My legs are thin and few Where once I had a swarm! Soft fuzzy fur--a joy to view-- Once kept my body warm, Before these flapping wing-things grew, To hamper and deform!" At that outrageous bug I shot The fury of mine eye; Said I, in scorn all burning hot, In rage and anger high, "You ignominious idiot! Those wings are made to fly! 'I do not want to fly," said he, "I only want to squirm!" And he drooped his wings dejectedly, But still his voice was firm: "I do not want to be a fly! I want to be a worm!" O yesterday of unknown lack! To-day of unknown bliss! I left my fool in red and black, The last I saw was this,-- The creature madly climbing back Into his chrysalis. Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman [1860-1935] SIMILAR CASES There was once a little animal, No bigger than a fox, And on five toes he scampered Over Tertiary rocks. They called him Eohippus, And they called him very small, And they thought him of no value-- When they thought of him at all; For the lumpish old Dinoceras And Coryphodon so slow Were the heavy aristocracy In days of long ago. Said the little Eohippus, "I am going to be a horse! And on my middle finger-nails To run my earthly course! I'm going to have a flowing tail! I'm going to have a mane! I'm going to stand fourteen hands high On the psychozoic plain!" The Coryphodon was horrified, The Dinoceras was shocked; And they chased young Eohippus, But he skipped away and mocked. And they laughed enormous laughter, And they groaned enormous groans, And they bade young Eohippus Go view his father's bones. Said they, "You always were as small And mean as now we see, And that's conclusive evidence That you're always going to be. What! Be a great, tall, handsome beast, With hoofs to gallop on? Why! You'd have to change your nature!" Said the Loxolophodon. They considered him disposed of, And retired with gait serene; That was the way they argued In "the early Eocene." There was once an Anthropoidal Ape, Far smarter than the rest, And everything that they could do He always did the best; So they naturally disliked him, And they gave him shoulders cool, And when they had to mention him They said he was a fool. Cried this pretentious Ape one day, "I'm going to be a Man! And stand upright, and hunt, and fight, And conquer all I can! I'm going to cut down forest trees, To make my houses higher! I'm going to kill the Mastodon! I'm going to make a fire!" Loud screamed the Anthropoidal Apes With laughter wild and gay; They tried to catch that boastful one, But he always got away. So they yelled at him in chorus, Which he minded not a whit; And they pelted him with cocoanuts, Which didn't seem to hit. And then they gave him reasons Which they thought of much avail, To prove how his preposterous Attempt was sure to fail. Said the sages, "In the first place, The thing cannot be done! And, second, if it could be, It would not be any fun! And, third, and most conclusive, And admitting no reply, You would have to change your nature! We should like to see you try!" They chuckled then triumphantly, These lean and hairy shapes, For these things passed as arguments With the Anthropoidal Apes. There was once a Neolithic Man, An enterprising wight, Who made his chopping implements Unusually bright. Unusually clever he, Unusually brave, And he drew delightful Mammoths On the borders of his cave. To his Neolithic neighbors, Who were startled and surprised, Said he, "My friends, in course of time, We shall be civilized! We are going to live in cities! We are going to fight in wars! We are going to eat three times a day Without the natural cause! We are going to turn life upside down About a thing called gold! We are going to want the earth, and take As much as we can hold! We are going to wear great piles of stuff Outside our proper skins! We are going to have diseases! And Accomplishments!! And Sins!!!" Then they all rose up in fury Against their boastful friend, For prehistoric patience Cometh quickly to an end. Said one, "This is chimerical! Utopian! Absurd!" Said another, "What a stupid life! Too dull, upon my word!" Cried all, "Before such things can come, You idiotic child, You must alter Human Nature!" And they all sat back and smiled. Thought they, "An answer to that last It will be hard to find!" It was a clinching argument To the Neolithic Mind! Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman [1860-1935] MAN AND THE ASCIDIAN A Morality "The Ancestor remote of Man," Says Darwin, "is the Ascidian," A scanty sort of water-beast That, ninety million years at least Before Gorillas came to be, Went swimming up and down the sea. Their ancestors the pious praise, And like to imitate their ways; How, then, does our first parent live, What lesson has his life to give? The Ascidian tadpole, young and gay, Doth Life with one bright eye survey, His consciousness has easy play. He's sensitive to grief and pain, Has tail, a spine, and bears a brain, And everything that fits the state Of creatures we call vertebrate. But age comes on; with sudden shock He sticks his head against a rock! His tail drops off, his eye drops in, His brain's absorbed into his skin; He does not move, nor feel, nor know The tidal water's ebb and flow, But still abides, unstirred, alone, A sucker sticking to a stone. And we, his children, truly we In youth are, like the Tadpole, free. And where we would we blithely go, Have brains and hearts, and feel and know. Then Age comes on! To Habit we Affix ourselves and are not free; The Ascidian's rooted to a rock, And we are bond-slaves of the clock; Our rocks are Medicine--Letters--Law, From these our heads we cannot draw: Our loves drop off, our hearts drop in, And daily thicker grows our skin. Ah, scarce we live, we scarcely know The wide world's moving ebb and flow, The clanging currents ring and shock, But we are rooted to the rock. And thus at ending of his span, Blind, deaf, and indolent, does Man Revert to the Ascidian. Andrew Lang [1844-1912] THE CALF-PATH One day, through the primeval wood, A calf walked home, as good calves should; But made a trail all bent askew, A crooked trail as all calves do. Since then two hundred years have fled, And, I infer, the calf is dead. But still he left behind his trail, And thereby hangs my moral tale. The trail was taken up next day By a lone dog that passed that way; And then a wise bell-wether sheep Pursued the trail o'er vale and steep, And drew the flock behind him, too, As good bell-wethers always do. And from that day, o'er hill and glade, Through those old woods a path was made; And many men wound in and out, And dodged, and turned, and bent about And uttered words of righteous wrath Because 'twas such a crooked path. But still they followed--do not laugh-- The first migrations of that calf, And through this winding wood-way stalked, Because he wobbled when he walked. This forest path became a lane, That bent, and turned, and turned again; This crooked lane became a road, Where many a poor horse with his load Toiled on beneath the burning sun, And traveled some three miles in one. And thus a century and a half They trod the footsteps of that calf. The years passed on in swiftness fleet, The road became a village street; And this, before men were aware, A city's crowded thoroughfare; And soon the central street was this Of a renowned metropolis; And men two centuries and a half Trod in the footsteps of that calf. Each day a hundred thousand rout Followed the zigzag calf about; And o'er his crooked journey went The traffic of a continent. A hundred thousand men were led By one calf near three centuries dead. They followed still his crooked way, And lost one hundred years a day; For thus such reverence is lent To well-established precedent. A moral lesson this might teach, Were I ordained and called to preach; For men are prone to go it blind Along the calf-paths of the mind, And work away from sun to sun To do what other men have done. They follow in the beaten track, And out and in, and forth and back, And still their devious course pursue, To keep the path that others do. But how the wise old wood-gods laugh, Who saw the first primeval calf! Ah! many things this tale might teach,-- But I am not ordained to preach. Sam Walter Foss [1858-1911] WEDDED BLISS "O come and be my mate!" said the Eagle to the Hen; "I love to soar, but then I want my mate to rest Forever in the nest!" Said the Hen, I cannot fly, I have no wish to try, But I joy to see my mate careering through the sky!" They wed, and cried, "Ah, this is Love, my own!" And the Hen sat, and the Eagle soared, alone. "O come and be my mate!" said the Lion to the Sheep; "My love for you is deep! I slay,--a Lion should,-- But you are mild and good!" Said the Sheep, "I do no ill-- Could not, had I the will-- But I joy to see my mate pursue, devour and kill." They wed, and cried, "Ah, this is Love, my own!" And the Sheep browsed, the Lion prowled, alone. "O come and be my mate!" said the Salmon to the Clam; "You are not wise, but I am. I know the sea and stream as well; You know nothing but your shell." Said the Clam, "I'm slow of motion, But my love is all devotion, And I joy to have my mate traverse lake and stream and ocean!" They wed, and cried, "Ah, this is Love, my own!" And the Clam sucked, the Salmon swam, alone. Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman [1860-1935} PARADISE: A HINDOO LEGEND A Hindoo died; a happy thing to do, When fifty years united to a shrew. Released, he hopefully for entrance cries Before the gates of Brahma's paradise. "Hast been through purgatory?" Brahma said. "I have been married!" and he hung his head. "Come in! come in! and welcome, too, my son! Marriage and purgatory are as one." In bliss extreme he entered heaven's door, And knew the peace he ne'er had known before. He scarce had entered in the gardens fair, Another Hindoo asked admission there. The self-same question Brahma asked again: "Hast been through purgatory?" "No; what then?" "Thou canst not enter!" did the god reply. "He who went in was there no more than I." "All that is true, but he has married been, And so on earth has suffered for all his sin." "Married? Tis well, for I've been married twice." "Begone! We'll have no fools, in paradise!" George Birdseye [1844-1919] AD CHLOEN, M. A. (Fresh From Her Cambridge Examination) Lady, very fair are you, And your eyes are very blue, And your hose; And your brow is like the snow, And the various things you know Goodness knows. And the rose-flush on your cheek, And your algebra and Greek Perfect are; And that loving lustrous eye Recognizes in the sky Every star. You have pouting piquant lips, You can doubtless an eclipse Calculate; But for your cerulean hue, I had certainly from you Met my fate. If by an arrangement dual I were Adams mixed with Whewell, Then some day I, as wooer, perhaps might come To so sweet an Artium Magistra. Mortimer Collins [1827-1876] "AS LIKE THE WOMAN AS YOU CAN" "As like the Woman as you can"-- (Thus the New Adam was beguiled)-- "So shall you touch the Perfect Man"-- (God in the Garden heard and smiled). "Your father perished with his day: A clot of passions fierce and blind, He fought, he hacked, he crushed his way: Your muscles, Child, must be of mind. "The Brute that lurks and irks within, How, till you have him gagged and bound, Escape the foulest form of Sin?" (God in the Garden laughed and frowned). "So vile, so rank, the bestial mood In which the race is bid to be, It wrecks the Rarer Womanhood: Live, therefore, you, for Purity! "Take for your mate no gallant croup, No girl all grace and natural will: To work her mission were to stoop, Maybe to lapse, from Well to Ill. Choose one of whom your grosser make"-- (God in the Garden laughed outright)-- "The true refining touch may take, Till both attain to Life's last height. "There, equal, purged of soul and sense, Beneficent, high-thinking, just, Beyond the appeal of Violence, Incapable of common Lust, In mental Marriage still prevail"-- (God in the Garden hid His face)-- "Till you achieve that Female-Male In which shall culminate the race." William Ernest Henley [1849-1903] "NO FAULT IN WOMEN" No fault in women to refuse The offer which they most would choose: No fault in women to confess How tedious they are in their dress: No fault in women to lay on The tincture of vermilion, And there to give the cheek a dye Of white, where Nature doth deny: No fault in women to make show Of largeness, when they're nothing so; When, true it is, the outside swells With inward buckram, little else: No fault in women, though they be But seldom from suspicion free: No fault in womankind at all, If they but slip, and never fall. Robert Herrick [1591-1674] "ARE WOMEN FAIR?" "Are women fair?" Ay! wondrous fair to see too. "Are women sweet?" Yea, passing sweet they be too; Most fair and sweet to them that only love them; Chaste and discreet to all save those that prove them. "Are women wise?" Not wise, but they be witty. "Are women witty?" Yea, the more the pity; They are so witty, and in wit so wily, That be you ne'er so wise, they will beguile ye. "Are women fools?" Not fools, but fondlings many. "Can women found be faithful unto any?" When snow-white swans do turn to color sable, Then women fond will be both firm and stable. "Are women saints?" No saints, nor yet no devils. "Are women good?" Not good, but needful evils; So Angel-like, that devils I do not doubt them; So needful evils, that few can live without them. "Are women proud?" Ay! passing proud, and praise them. "Are women kind?" Ay! wondrous kind and please them, Or so imperious, no man can endure them, Or so kind-hearted, any may procure them. Francis Davison (?) [fl. 1602] A STRONG HAND Tender-handed stroke a nettle, And it stings you for your pains; Grasp it like a lad of mettle, And it soft as silk remains: So it is with these fair creatures, Use them kindly, they rebel; But be rough as nutmeg graters, And the rogues obey you well. Aaron Hill [1685-1750] WOMEN'S LONGING From "Women Pleased" Tell me what is that only thing For which all women long; Yet, having what they most desire, To have it does them wrong? 'Tis not to be chaste, nor fair, (Such gifts malice may impair), Richly trimmed, to walk or ride, Or to wanton unespied, To preserve an honest name And so to give it up to fame-- These are toys. In good or ill They desire to have their will: Yet, when they have it, they abuse it, For they know not how to use it. John Fletcher [1579-1625] TRIOLET All women born are so perverse No man need boast their love possessing. If naught seem better, nothing's worse: All women born are so perverse. From Adam's wife, that proved a curse, Though God had made her for a blessing, All women born are so perverse No man need boast their love possessing. Robert Bridges [1844-1930] THE FAIR CIRCASSIAN Forty Viziers saw I go Up to the Seraglio, Burning, each and every man, For the fair Circassian. Ere the morn had disappeared, Every Vizier wore a beard; Ere the afternoon was born, Every Vizier came back shorn. "Let the man that woos to win Woo with an unhairy chin;" Thus she said, and as she bid Each devoted Vizier did. From the beards a cord she made, Looped it to the balustrade, Glided down and went away To her own Circassia. When the Sultan heard, waxed he Somewhat wroth, and presently In the noose themselves did lend Every Vizier did suspend. Sages all, this rhyme who read, Guard your beards with prudent heed, And beware the wily plans Of the fair Circassians. Richard Garnett [1835-1906] THE FEMALE PHAETON Thus Kitty, beautiful and young, And wild as colt untamed, Bespoke the fair from whence she sprung, With little rage inflamed: Inflamed with rage at sad restraint, Which wise mamma ordained; And sorely vexed to play the saint, Whilst wit and beauty reigned: "Shall I thumb holy books, confined With Abigails, forsaken? Kitty's for other things designed, Or I am much mistaken. "Must Lady Jenny frisk about, And visit with her cousins? At balls must she make all the rout, And bring home hearts by dozens? "What has she better, pray, than I, What hidden charms to boast, That all mankind for her should die, Whilst I am scarce a toast? "Dearest mamma! for once let me, Unchained, my fortune try; I'll have my earl as well as she, Or know the reason why. "I'll soon with Jenny's pride quit score, Make all her lovers fall: They'll grieve I was not loosed before; She, I was loosed at all." Fondness prevailed, mamma gave way; Kitty, at heart's desire, Obtained the chariot for a day, And set the world on fire. Matthew Prior [1664-1721] THE LURE "What bait do you use," said a Saint to the Devil, "When you fish where the souls of men abound?" "Well, for special tastes," said the King of Evil, "Gold and Fame are the best I've found." "But for general use?" asked the Saint. "Ah, then," Said the Demon, "I angle for Man, not men, And a thing I hate Is to change my bait, So I fish with a woman the whole year round." John Boyle O'Reilly [1844-1890] THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride, He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside; But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail, For the female of the species is more deadly than the male. When Nag, the wayside cobra, hears the careless foot of man, He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can; But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail, For the female of the species is more deadly than the male. When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws, They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws. 'Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale, For the female of the species is more deadly than the male. Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say, For the Woman that God gave him isn't his to give away; But when hunter meets with husband, each confirms the other's tale-- The female of the species is more deadly than the male. Man, a bear in most relations--worm and savage otherwise,-- Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise. Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act. Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low, To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe. Mirth obscene diverts his anger--Doubt and Pity oft perplex Him in dealing with an issue--to the scandal of The Sex! But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same; And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail, The female of the species must be deadlier than the male. She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast May not deal in doubt or pity--must not swerve for fact or jest. These be purely male diversions--not in these her honor dwells. She, the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else. She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate; And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same. She is wedded to convictions--in default of grosser ties; Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!-- He will meet no cool discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild, Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child. Unprovoked and awful charges--even so the she-bear fights; Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons--even so the cobra bites; Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw And the victim writhes in anguish--like the Jesuit with the squaw! So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands To some God of Abstract Justice--which no woman understands. And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him Must command but may not govern--shall enthral but not enslave him. And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail, That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male. Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936] THE WOMAN WITH THE SERPENT'S TONGUE She is not old, she is not young, The woman with the Serpent's Tongue, The haggard cheek, the hungering eye, The poisoned words that wildly fly, The famished face, the fevered hand,-- Who slights the worthiest in the land, Sneers at the just, contemns the brave, And blackens goodness in its grave. In truthful numbers be she sung, The Woman with the Serpent's Tongue; Concerning whom, Fame hints at things Told but in shrugs and whisperings: Ambitious from her natal hour, And scheming all her life for power; With little left of seemly pride; With venomed fangs she cannot hide; Who half makes love to you to-day, To-morrow gives her guest away. Burnt up within by that strange soul She cannot slake, or yet control: Malignant-lipped, unkind, unsweet; Past all example indiscreet; Hectic, and always overstrung,-- The Woman with the Serpent's Tongue. To think that such as she can mar Names that among the noblest are! That hands like hers can touch the springs That move who knows what men and things? That on her will their fates have hung!-- The Woman with the Serpent's Tongue. William Watson [1858-1935] SUPPOSE How sad if, by some strange new law, All kisses scarred! For she who is most beautiful Would be most marred. And we might be surprised to see Some lovely wife Smooth-visaged, while a seeming prude Was marked for life. Anne Reeve Aldrich [1866-1892] TOO CANDID BY HALF As Tom and his wife were discoursing one day Of their several faults in a bantering way, Said she, "Though my wit you disparage, I'm sure, my dear husband, our friends will attest This much, at the least, that my judgment is best." Quoth Tom, "So they said at our marriage." John Godfrey Saxe [1816-1887] FABLE The mountain and the squirrel Had a quarrel, And the former called the latter "Little Prig;" Bun replied, "You are doubtless very big; But all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together, To make up a year And a sphere. And I think it no disgrace To occupy my place. If I'm not so large as you, You are not so small as I, And not half so spry. I'll not deny you make A very pretty squirrel track; Talents differ; all is well and wisely put; If I cannot carry forests on thy back, Neither can you crack a nut. Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-1882] WOMAN'S WILL That man's a fool who tries by art and skill To stem the torrent of a woman's will: For if she will, she will; you may depend on't-- And if she won't, she won't--and there's an end on't. Unknown WOMAN'S WILL Men, dying, make their wills, but wives Escape a task so sad; Why should they make what all their lives The gentle dames have had? John Godfrey Saxe [1816-1887] PLAYS Alas, how soon the hours are over Counted us out to play the lover! And how much narrower is the stage Allotted us to play the sage! But when we play the fool, how wide The theatre expands! beside, How long the audience sits before us! How many prompters! what a chorus! Walter Savage Landor [1775-1864] THE REMEDY WORSE THAN THE DISEASE I sent for Ratcliffe; was so ill, That other doctors gave me over: He felt my pulse, prescribed his pill, And I was likely to recover. But, when the wit began to wheeze, And wine had warmed the politician, Cured yesterday of my disease, I died last night of my physician. Matthew Prior [1664-1721] THE NET OF LAW The net of law is spread so wide, No sinner from its sweep may hide. Its meshes are so fine and strong, They take in every child of wrong. O wondrous web of mystery! Big fish alone escape from thee! James Jeffrey Roche [1847-1908] COLOGNE In Koln, a town of monks and bones, And pavements fanged with murderous stones, And rags, and hags, and hideous wenches; I counted two and seventy stenches, All well defined, and several stinks! Ye Nymphs that reign o'er sewers and sinks, The river Rhine, it is well known, Doth wash your city of Cologne; But tell me, Nymphs! what power divine Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine? Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1772-1834] EPITAPH ON CHARLES II Here lies our Sovereign Lord the King, Whose word no man relies on, Who never said a foolish thing, Nor ever did a wise one. John Wilmot [1647-1680] CERTAIN MAXIMS OF HAFIZ I If It be pleasant to look on, stalled in the packed serai, Does not the Young Man try Its temper and pace ere he buy? If She be pleasant to look on, what does the Young Man say? "Lo! She is pleasant to look on, give Her to me today!" II Yea, though a Kaffir die, to him is remitted Jehannum If he borrowed in life from a native at sixty per cent per annum. III Blister we not for bursati? So when the heart is vexed, The pain of one maiden's refusal is drowned in the pain of the next. IV The temper of chums, the love of your wife, and a new piano's tune-- Which of the three will you trust at the end of an Indian June? V Who are the rulers of Ind--to whom shall we bow the knee? Make your peace with the women, and men will make you L. G. VI Does the woodpecker flit round the young ferash? Does the grass clothe a new-built wall? Is she under thirty, the woman who holds a boy in her thrall? VI If She grow suddenly gracious--reflect. Is it all for thee? The black-buck is stalked through the bullock, and Man through jealousy. VIII Seek not for favor of women. So shall you find it indeed. Does not the boar break cover just when you're lighting a weed? IX If He play, being young and unskilful, for shekels of silver and gold, Take His money, my son, praising Allah. The kid was ordained to be sold. X With a "weed" among men or horses verily this is the best, That you work him in office or dog-cart lightly--but give him no rest. XI Pleasant the snaffle of Courtship, improving the manners and carriage; But the colt who is wise will abstain from the terrible thornbit of Marriage. XII As the thriftless gold of the babul, so is the gold that we spend On a Derby Sweep, or our neighbor's wife, or the horse that we buy from a friend. XIII The ways of a man with a maid be strange, yet simple and tame To the ways of a man with a horse, when selling or racing that same. XIV In public Her face turneth to thee, and pleasant Her smile when ye meet. It is ill. The cold rocks of El-Gidar smile thus on the waves at their feet. In public Her face is averted, with anger She nameth thy name. It is well. Was there ever a loser content with the loss of the game? XV If She have spoken a word, remember thy lips are sealed, And the Brand of the Dog is upon him by whom is the secret revealed. If She have written a letter, delay not an instant, but burn it. Tear it in pieces, O Fool, and the wind to her mate shall return it! If there be trouble to Herward, and a lie of the blackest can clear, Lie, while thy lips can move or a man is alive to hear. XVI My Son, if a maiden deny thee and scufflingly bid thee give o'er, Yet lip meets with lip at the lastward--get out! She has been there before. They are pecked on the ear and the chin and the nose who are lacking in lore. XVII If we fall in the race, though we win, the hoof-slide is scarred on the course. Though Allah and Earth pardon Sin, remaineth forever Remorse. XVIII "By all I am misunderstood!" if the Matron shall say, or the Maid:-- "Alas! I do not understand," my son, be thou nowise afraid. In vain in the sight of the Bird is the net of the Fowler displayed. XIX My Son, if I, Hafiz, thy father, take hold of thy knees in my pain, Demanding thy name on stamped paper, one day or one hour--refrain. Are the links of thy fetters so light that thou cravest another man's chain? Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936] A BAKER'S DUZZEN UV WIZE SAWZ Them ez wants, must choose. Them ez hez, must lose. Them ez knows, won't blab. Them ez guesses, will gab. Them ez borrows, sorrows. Them ez lends, spends. Them ez gives, lives. Them ez keeps dark, is deep. Them ez kin earn; kin keep. Them ez aims, hits. Them ez hez, gits. Them ez waits, win. Them ez will, kin. Edward Rowland Sill [1841-1887] EPIGRAMS What is an epigram? a dwarfish whole, Its body brevity, and wit its soul. Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1772-1834] --------------- As in smooth oil the razor best is whet, So wit is by politeness sharpest set; Their want of edge from their offence is seen, Both pain the heart when exquisitely keen. Unknown --------------- "I hardly ever ope my lips," one cries; "Simonides, what think you of my rule?" "If you're a fool, I think you're very wise; If you are wise, I think you are a fool." Richard Garnett [1835-1906] --------------- Philosopher, whom dost thou most affect, Stoics austere, or Epicurus' sect? Friend, 'tis my grave infrangible design With those to study, and with these to dine. Richard Garnett [1835-1906] --------------- Joy is the blossom, sorrow is the fruit, Of human life; and worms are at the root. Walter Savage Landor [1775-1864] --------------- No truer word, save God's, was ever spoken, Than that the largest heart is soonest broken. Walter Savage Landor [1775-1864] --------------- This house, where once a lawyer dwelt, Is now a smith's. Alas! How rapidly the iron age Succeeds the age of brass! William Erskine [1769-1822] --------------- "I would," says Fox, "a tax devise That shall not fall on me." "Then tax receipts," Lord North replies, "For those you never see." Richard Brinsley Sheridan [1751-1816] --------------- You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come. Knock as you please,--there's nobody at home. Alexander Pope [1688-1744] --------------- If a man who turnips cries Cry not when his father dies, 'Tis a proof that he would rather Have a turnip than a father. Samuel Johnson [1709-1784] --------------- Life is a jest, and all things show it; I said so once, and now I know it. John Gay [1685-1732] --------------- I am his Highness' dog at Kew. Pray, sir, tell me,--whose dog are you? Alexander Pope [1688-1744] --------------- Sir, I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool, But you yourself may serve to show it, That every fool is not a poet. Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1772-1834] --------------- Damis, an author cold and weak, Thinks as a critic he's divine; Likely enough; we often make Good vinegar of sorry wine. Unknown --------------- Swans sing before they die--'twere no bad thing Did certain persons die before they sing. Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1772-1834] --------------- He who in his pocket hath no money Should, in his mouth, be never without honey. Unknown --------------- Nobles and heralds, by your leave, Here lies what once was Matthew Prior, The son of Adam and of Eve; Can Bourbon or Nassau claim higher? Matthew Prior [1664-1721] --------------- Here lie I, Martin Elginbrodde; Hae mercy o' my soul, Lord God, As I wad do were I Lord God, And ye were Martin Elginbrodde. George Macdonald [1824-1905] --------------- Who killed Kildare? Who dared Kildare to kill? Death killed Kildare--who dare kill whom he will. Jonathan Swift [1667-1745] --------------- With death doomed to grapple, Beneath the cold slab he Who lied in the chapel Now lies in the abbey. Byron's epitaph for Pitt --------------- When doctrines meet with general approbation, It is not heresy, but reformation. David Garrick [1717-1779] --------------- Treason doth never prosper; what's the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason. John Harington [1561-1612] --------------- God bless the King--I mean the faith's defender! God bless (no harm in blessing!) the Pretender! But who pretender is, or who is King-- God bless us all!--that's quite another thing. John Byrom [1692-1763] --------------- 'Tis highly rational, we can't dispute, The Love, being naked, should promote a suit: But doth not oddity to him attach Whose fire's so oft extinguished by a match? Richard Garnett [1835-1906] --------------- "Come, come," said Tom's father, "at your time of life, There's no longer excuse for thus playing the rake.-- It is time you should think, boy, of taking a wife."-- Why, so it is, father,--whose wife shall I take?" Thomas Moore [1779-1852] --------------- When Eve upon the first of men The apple pressed with specious cant, O, what a thousand pities then That Adam was not Adam-ant! Thomas Moore [1779-1852] --------------- Whilst Adam slept, Eve from his side arose: Strange! his first sleep should be his last repose! Unknown --------------- "What? rise again with all one's bones," Quoth Giles, "I hope you fib: I trusted, when I went to Heaven, To go without my rib. Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1772-1834] --------------- Here lies my wife: here let her lie! Now she's at rest, and so am I. John Dryden [1631-1700] --------------- After such years of dissension and strife, Some wonder that Peter should weep for his wife; But his tears on her grave are nothing surprising,-- He's laying her dust, for fear of its rising. Thomas Hood [1799-1845] WRITTEN ON A LOOKING-GLASS I change, and so do women too; But I reflect, which women never do. Unknown AN EPITAPH A lovely young lady I mourn in my rhymes: She was pleasant, good-natured, and civil sometimes. Her figure was good: she had very fine eyes, And her talk was a mixture of foolish and wise. Her adorers were many, and one of them said, "She waltzed rather well! It's a pity she's dead!" George John Cayley [? ] ON THE ARISTOCRACY OF HARVARD And this is good old Boston, The home of the bean and the cod, Where the Lowells talk to the Cabots And the Cabots talk only to God. John Collins Bossidy [1860-1928] ON THE DEMOCRACY OF YALE Here's to the town of New Haven, The home of the Truth and the Light, Where God talks to Jones in the very same tones That He uses with Hadley and Dwight! Frederick Scheetz Jones [1862- A GENERAL SUMMARY We are very slightly changed From the semi-apes who ranged India's prehistoric clay; Whoso drew the longest bow, Ran his brother down, you know, As we run men down to-day. "Dowb," the first of all his race, Met the Mammoth face to face On the lake or in the cave, Stole the steadiest canoe, Ate the quarry others slew, Died--and took the finest grave. When they scratched the reindeer-bone, Someone made the sketch his own, Filched it from the artist--then, Even in those early days, Won a simple Viceroy's praise Through the toil of other men. Ere they hewed the Sphinx's visage, Favoritism governed kissage, Even as it does in this age. Who shall doubt "the secret hid Under Cheops' pyramid" Was that the contractor did Cheops out of several millions? Or that Joseph's sudden rise To Comptroller of Supplies Was a fraud of monstrous size On King Pharaoh's swart Civilians? Thus, the artless songs I sing Do not deal with anything New or never said before. As it was in the beginning, Is to-day official sinning, And shall be for evermore! Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936] THE MIMICS AN OMAR FOR LADIES I One for her Club and her own Latch-key fights, Another wastes in Study her good Nights. Ah, take the Clothes and let the Culture go, Nor heed the grumble of the Women's Rights! Look at the Shop-girl all about us--"Lo, The Wages of a month," she says, "I blow Into a Hat, and when my hair is waved, Doubtless my Friend will take me to the Show." And she who saved her coin for Flannels red, And she who caught Pneumonia instead, Will both be Underground in Fifty Years, And Prudence pays no Premium to the dead. Th' exclusive Style you set your heart upon Gets to the Bargain counters--and anon, Like monograms on a Saleslady's tie, Cheers but a moment--soon for you 'tis gone. Think, in the sad Four Hundred's gilded halls, Whose endless Leisure ev'n themselves appalls, How Ping-pong raged so high--then faded out To those far Suburbs that still chase its Balls. They say Sixth Avenue and the Bowery keep The dernier cri that once was far from cheap; Green veils, one season chic--Department stores Mark down in vain--no profit shall they reap. II I sometimes think that never lasts so long The Style as when it starts a bit too strong; That all the Pompadours the parterre boasts Some Chorus-girl began, with Dance and Song. And this Revival of the Chignon low That fills the most of us with helpless Woe, Ah, criticise it Softly! for who knows What long-necked Peeress had to wear it so! Ah, my beloved, try each Style you meet; To-day brooks no loose ends, you must be neat. Tomorrow! why tomorrow you may be Wearing it down your back like Marguerite! For some we once admired, the Very Best That ever a French hand-boned Corset prest, Wore what they used to call Prunella Boots, And put on Nightcaps ere they went to rest. And we that now make fun of Waterfalls They wore, and whom their Crinoline appalls, Ourselves shall from old dusty Fashion plates Assist our Children in their Costume balls. Ah, make the most of what we yet may wear, Before we grow so old that we don't care! Before we have our Hats made all alike, Sans Plumes, sans Wings, sans Chiffon, and--sans Hair! III Alike to her who Dines both Loud and Long, Or her who Banting shuns the Dinner-gong, Some Doctor from his Office chair will shout, "It makes no Difference--both of you are Wrong!" Why, all the Health-Reformers who discussed High Heels and Corsets learnedly are thrust Square-toed and Waistless forth; their Duds are scorned, And Venus might as well have been a Bust. Myself when slim did eagerly frequent Delsarte and Ling, and heard great Argument Of muscles trained to Hold me up, but still Spent on my Modiste what I'd always spent! With walking Clubs I did the best I could; With my own Feet I tramped my Ten Miles, good; And this was All that I got out of it-- I ate much more for Dinner than I should. ...... And fear not lest your Rheumatism seize The Joy of Life from other people's Sprees; The Art will not have Perished--au contraire, Posterity will practise it with Ease! When you and I have ceased Champagne to Sup, Be sure there will be More to Keep it Up; And while we pat Old Tabby by the fire, Full many a Girl will lead her Brindled Pup. Josephine Daskam Bacon [1876- "WHEN LOVELY WOMAN" After Goldsmith When lovely woman wants a favor, And finds, too late, that man won't bend, What earthly circumstance can save her From disappointment in the end? The only way to bring him over, The last experiment to try, Whether a husband or a lover, If he have feeling is--to cry. Phoebe Cary [1824-1871] FRAGMENT IN IMITATION OF WORDSWORTH There is a river clear and fair, 'Tis neither broad nor narrow; It winds a little here and there-- It winds about like any hare; And then it holds as straight a course As, on the turnpike road, a horse, Or, through the air, an arrow. The trees that grow upon the shore Have grown a hundred years or more; So long there is no knowing: Old Daniel Dobson does not know When first those trees began to grow; But still they grew, and grew, and grew, As if they'd nothing else to do, But ever must be growing. The impulses of air and sky Have reared their stately heads so high, And clothed their boughs with green; Their leaves the dews of evening quaff,-- And when the wind blows loud and keen, I've seen the jolly timbers laugh, And shake their sides with merry glee-- Wagging their heads in mockery. Fixed are their feet in solid earth Where winds can never blow; But visitings of deeper birth Have reached their roots below. For they have gained the river's brink And of the living waters drink. There's little Will, a five years' child-- He is my youngest boy; To look on eyes so fair and wild, It is a very joy. He hath conversed with sun and shower, And dwelt with every idle flower, As fresh and gay as them. He loiters with the briar-rose,-- The blue-bells are his playfellows, That dance upon their slender stem. And I have said, my little Will, Why should he not continue still A thing of Nature's rearing? A thing beyond the world's control-- A living vegetable soul,-- No human sorrow fearing. It were a blessed sight to see That child become a willow-tree, His brother trees among. He'd be four times as tall as me, And live three times as long. Catherine M. Fanshawe [1765-1834] ONLY SEVEN After Wordsworth I marvelled why a simple child, That lightly draws its breath, Should utter groans so very wild, And look as pale as death. Adopting a parental tone, I asked her why she cried; The damsel answered with a groan, "I've got a pain inside! "I thought it would have sent me mad Last night about eleven." Said I, "What is it makes you bad? How many apples have you had?" She answered, "Only seven!" "And are you sure you took no more, My little maid?" quoth I; "Oh, please, sir, mother gave me four, But they were in a pie!" "If that's the case," I stammered out, "Of course you've had eleven." The maiden answered with a pout, "I ain't had more nor seven!" I wondered hugely what she meant, And said, "I'm bad at riddles; But I know where little girls are sent For telling taradiddles. "Now, if you don't reform," said I, "You'll never go to heaven." But all in vain; each time I try, That little idiot makes reply, "I ain't had more nor seven!" POSTSCRIPT: To borrow Wordsworth's name was wrong, Or slightly misapplied; And so I'd better call my song "Lines after Ache-inside." Henry Sambrooke Leigh [1837-1883] LUCY LAKE After Wordsworth Poor Lucy Lake was overgrown, But somewhat underbrained. She did not know enough, I own, To go in when it rained. Yet Lucy was constrained to go; Green bedding,--you infer. Few people knew she died, but oh, The difference to her! Newton Mackintosh [1858- JANE SMITH After Wordsworth I journeyed, on a winter's day, Across the lonely wold; No bird did sing upon the spray, And it was very cold. I had a coach with horses four, Three white (though one was black), And on they went the common o'er, Nor swiftness did they lack. A little girl ran by my side, And she was pinched and thin. "Oh, please, sir, do give me a ride! I'm fetching mother's gin." "Enter my coach, sweet child," said I, "For you shall ride with me; And I will get you your supply Of mother's eau-de-vie." The publican was stern and cold, And said: "Her mother's score Is writ, as you shall soon behold, Behind the bar-room door!" I blotted out the score with tears, And paid the money down; And took the maid of thirteen years Back to her mother's town. And though the past with surges wild Fond memories may sever, The vision of that happy child Will leave my spirits never! Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936] FATHER WILLIAM From "Alice in Wonderland" After Southey "You are old, Father William," the young man said, "And your hair has become very white; And yet you incessantly stand on your head-- Do you think, at your age, it is right?" "In my youth," Father William replied to his son, "I feared it might injure the brain; But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none, Why, I do it again and again." "You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before, And have grown most uncommonly fat; Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door-- Pray, what is the reason of that?" "In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his gray locks, "I kept all my limbs very supple By the use of this ointment--one shilling the box-- Allow me to sell you a couple?" "You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak For anything tougher than suet; Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak-- Pray, how did you manage to do it?" "In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law, And argued each case with my wife; And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw, Has lasted the rest of my life." "You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose That your eye was as steady as ever; Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose-- What made you so awfully clever?" "I have answered three questions and that is enough," Said his father; "don't give yourself airs! Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff? Be off, or I'll kick you downstairs!" Lewis Carroll [1832-1898] THE NEW ARRIVAL After Campbell There came to port last Sunday night The queerest little craft, Without an inch of rigging on; I looked and looked--and laughed! It seemed so curious that she Should cross the Unknown water, And moor herself within my room-- My daughter! O, my daughter! Yet by these presents witness all She's welcome fifty times, And comes consigned in hope and love-- And common-metre rhymes. She has no manifest but this; No flag floats o'er the water; She's too new for the British Lloyds-- My daughter! O, my daughter! Ring out, wild bells--and tame ones too; Ring out the lover's moon. Ring in the little worsted socks, Ring in the bib and spoon. Ring out the muse, ring in the nurse, Ring in the milk and water. Away with paper, pen, and ink-- My daughter! O, my daughter! George Washington Cable [1844-1925] DISASTER After Moore 'Twas ever thus from childhood's hour My fondest hopes would not decay: I never loved a tree or flower Which was the first to fade away! The garden, where I used to delve Short-frocked, still yields me pinks in plenty; The pear-tree that I climbed at twelve, I see still blossoming, at twenty. I never nursed a dear gazelle. But I was given a paroquet-- How I did nurse him if unwell! He's imbecile, but lingers yet. He's green, with an enchanting tuft; He melts me with his small black eye: He'd look inimitable stuffed, And knows it--but he will not die! I had a kitten--I was rich In pets--but all too soon my kitten Became a full-sized cat, by which I've more than once been scratched and bitten; And when for sleep her limbs she curled One day beside her untouched plateful, And glided calmly from the world, I freely own that I was grateful. And then I bought a dog--a queen! Ah, Tiny, dear departing pug! She lives, but she is past sixteen, And scarce can crawl across the rug. I loved her beautiful and kind; Delighted in her pert Bow-wow: But now she snaps if you don't mind; 'Twere lunacy to love her now. I used to think, should e'er mishap Betide my crumple-visaged Ti, In shape of prowling thief, or trap, Or coarse bull-terrier--I should die. But ah! disasters have their use; And life might e'en be too sunshiny: Nor would I make myself a goose, If some big dog should swallow Tiny. Charles Stuart Calverley [1831-1884] 'TWAS EVER THUS After Moore I never reared a young gazelle, (Because, you see, I never tried); But had it known and loved me well, No doubt the creature would have died. My rich and aged Uncle John Has known me long and loves me well But still persists in living on-- I would he were a young gazelle. I never loved a tree or flower; But, if I had, I beg to say The blight, the wind, the sun, or shower Would soon have withered it away. I've dearly loved my Uncle John, From childhood to the present hour, And yet he will go living on-- I would he were a tree or flower! Henry Sambrooke Leigh [1837-1883] A GRIEVANCE After Byron Dear Mr. Editor: I wish to say-- If you will not be angry at my, writing it-- But I've been used, since childhood's happy day, When I have thought of something, to inditing it; I seldom think of things; and, by the way, Although this meter may not be exciting, it Enables one to be extremely terse, Which is not what one always is in verse. I used to know a man,--such things befall The observant wayfarer through Fate's domain-- He was a man, take him for all in all, We shall not look upon his like again; I know that statement's not original; What statement is, since Shakespeare? or, since Cain, What murder? I believe 'twas Shakespeare said it, or Perhaps it may have been your Fighting Editor. Though why an Editor should fight, or why A Fighter should abase himself to edit, Are problems far too difficult and high For me to solve with any sort of credit. Some greatly more accomplished man than I Must tackle them: let's say then Shakespeare said it; And, if he did not, Lewis Morris may (Or even if he did). Some other day, When I have nothing pressing to impart, I should not mind dilating on this matter. I feel its import both in head and heart, And always did,--especially the latter. I could discuss it in the busy mart Or on the lonely housetop; hold! this chatter Diverts me from my purpose. To the point: The time, as Hamlet said, is out of joint, And perhaps I was born to set it right,-- A fact I greet with perfect equanimity. I do not put it down to "cursed spite," I don't see any cause for cursing in it. I Have always taken very great delight In such pursuits since first I read divinity. Whoever will may write a nation's songs As long as I'm allowed to right its wrongs. What's Eton but a nursery of wrong-righters, A mighty mother of effective men; A training ground for amateur reciters, A sharpener of the sword as of the pen; A factory of orators and fighters, A forcing-house of genius? Now and then The world at large shrinks back, abashed and beaten, Unable to endure the glare of Eton. I think I said I knew a man: what then? I don't suppose such knowledge is forbid. We nearly all do, more or less, know men,-- Or think we do; nor will a man get rid Of that delusion while he wields a pen. But who this man was, what, if aught, he did, Nor why I mentioned him, I do not know, Nor what I "wished to say" a while ago. James Kenneth Stephen [1859-1892] "NOT A SOU HAD HE GOT" After Charles Wolfe Not a sou had he got--not a guinea or note-- And he looked confoundedly flurried, As he bolted away without paying his shot, And the landlady after him hurried. We saw him again at dead of night, When home from the club returning; We twigged the doctor beneath the light Of the gas-lamp brilliantly burning. All bare and exposed to the midnight dews, Reclined in a gutter we found him; And he looked like a gentleman taking a snooze With his Marshall cloak around him. "The doctor's as drunk as the devil," we said, And we managed a shutter to borrow; We raised him; and sighed at the thought that his head Would consumedly ache on the morrow. We bore him home, and we put him to bed, And we told his wife and his daughter To give him next morning a couple of red- Herrings, with soda-water. Loudly they talked of his money that's gone, And his lady began to upbraid him; But little he recked, so they let him snore on 'Neath the counterpane, just as we laid him. We tucked him in, and had hardly done, When, beneath the window calling, We heard the rough voice of a son of a gun Of a watchman "One o'clock!" bawling. Slowly and sadly we all walked down From his room on the uppermost story; A rushlight we placed on the cold hearth-stone, And we left him alone in his glory. Richard Harris Barham [1788-1845] THE WHITING AND THE SNAIL From "Alice in Wonderland" After Mary Howitt "Will you walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail, "There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail, See bow eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance! They are waiting on the shingle--will you come and join the dance? Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance? Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance? "You can really have no notion how delightful it will be When they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea!" But the snail replied, "Too far, too far!" and gave a look askance-- Said he thanked the whiting kindly, but he would not join the dance. Would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join the dance. Would not, could not, would not, could not, could not join the dance. "What matters it how far we go?" his scaly friend replied. "There is another shore, you know, upon the other side. The further off from England the nearer is to France-- Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance. Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance? Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?" Lewis Carroll [1832-1898] THE RECOGNITION After Tennyson Home they brought her sailor son, Grown a man across the sea, Tall and broad and black of beard, And hoarse of voice as man may be. Hand to shake and mouth to kiss, Both he offered ere he spoke; But she said, "What man is this Comes to play a sorry joke?" Then they praised him--called him "smart," "Tightest lad that ever stept;" But her son she did not know, And she neither smiled nor wept. Rose, a nurse of ninety years, Set a pigeon-pie in sight; She saw him eat:--"'Tis he! 'tis he!" She knew him--by his appetite! Frederick William Sawyer [1810-1875] THE HIGHER PANTHEISM IN A NUTSHELL After Tennyson One, who is not, we see: but one, whom we see not, is; Surely this is not that: but that is assuredly this. What, and wherefore, and whence? for under is over and under; If thunder could be without lightning, lightning could be without thunder. Doubt is faith in the main: but faith, on the whole, is doubt; We cannot believe by proof: but could we believe without? Why, and whither, and how? for barley and rye are not clover; Neither are straight lines curves: yet over is under and over. Two and two may be four: but four and four are not eight; Fate and God may be twain: but God is the same thing as fate. Ask a man what he thinks, and get from a man what he feels; God, once caught in the fact, shows you a fair pair of heels. Body and spirit are twins: God only knows which is which; The soul squats down in the flesh, like a tinker drunk in a ditch. One and two are not one: but one and nothing is two; Truth can hardly be false, if falsehood cannot be true. Once the mastodon was: pterodactyls were common as cocks; Then the mammoth was God; now is He a prize ox. Parallels all things are: yet many of these are askew. You are certainly I: but certainly I am not you. Springs the rock from the plain, shoots the stream from the rock; Cocks exist for the hen: but hens exist for the cock. God, whom we see not, is: and God, who is not, we see; Fiddle, we know, is diddle; and diddle, we take it, is dee. Algernon Charles Swinburne [1837-1909] THE WILLOW-TREE After Hood Long by the willow-trees Vainly they sought her, Wild rang the mother's screams O'er the gray water: "Where is my lovely one? Where is my daughter? "Rouse thee, Sir Constable-- Rouse thee and look; Fisherman, bring your net, Boatman, your hook. Beat in the lily-beds, Dive in the brook!" Vainly the constable Shouted and called her; Vainly the fisherman Beat the green alder; Vainly he flung the net, Never it hauled her! Mother beside the fire Sat, her nightcap in; Father, in easy chair, Gloomily napping, When at the window-sill Came a light tapping! And a pale countenance Looked through the casement. Loud beat the mother's heart, Sick with amazement, And at the vision which Came to surprise her, Shrieked in an agony-- "Lor'! it's Elizar!" Yes, 'twas Elizabeth-- Yes, 'twas their girl; Pale was her cheek, and her Hair out of curl. "Mother," the loving one, Blushing exclaimed, "Let not your innocent Lizzy be blamed. "Yesterday, going to Aunt Jones's to tea, Mother, dear mother, I Forgot the door-key! And as the night was cold And the way steep, Mrs. Jones kept me to Breakfast and sleep." Whether her Pa and Ma Fully believed her, That we shall never know, Stern they received her; And for the work of that Cruel, though short, night Sent her to bed without Tea for a fortnight. MORAL Hey diddle diddlety, Cat and the fiddlety, Maidens of England, take caution by she! Let love and suicide Never tempt you aside, And always remember to take the door-key. William Makepeace Thackeray [1811-1863] POETS AND LINNETS After Robert Browning Where'er there's a thistle to feed a linnet And linnets are plenty, thistles rife-- Or an acorn-cup to catch dew-drops in it There's ample promise of further life. Now, mark how we begin it. For linnets will follow, if linnets are minded, As blows the white-feather parachute; And ships will reel by the tempest blinded-- Aye, ships and shiploads of men to boot! How deep whole fleets you'll find hid. And we blow the thistle-down hither and thither Forgetful of linnets, and men, and God. The dew! for its want an oak will wither-- By the dull hoof into the dust is trod, And then who strikes the cither? But thistles were only for donkeys intended, And that donkeys are common enough is clear, And that drop! what a vessel it might have befriended, Does it add any flavor to Glugabib's beer? Well, there's my musing ended. Tom Hood [1835-1874] THE JAM-POT The Jam-pot--tender thought! I grabbed it--so did you. "What wonder while we fought Together that it flew In shivers?" you retort. You should have loosed your hold One moment--checked your fist. But, as it was, too bold You grappled and you missed. More plainly--you were sold. "Well, neither of us shared The dainty." That your plea? "Well, neither of us cared," I answer.... "Let me see. How have your trousers fared?" Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936] BALLAD After William Morris Part I The auld wife sat at her ivied door, (Butler and eggs and a pound of cheese) A thing she had frequently done before; And her spectacles lay on her aproned knees. The piper he piped on the hill-top high, (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) Till the cow said "I die," and the goose asked "Why?" And the dog said nothing, but searched for fleas. The farmer he strode through the square farmyard; (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) His last brew of ale was a trifle hard-- The connection of which with the plot one sees. The farmer's daughter hath frank blue eyes; (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) She hears the rooks caw in the windy skies, As she sits at her lattice and shells her peas. The farmer's daughter hath ripe red lips; (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) If you try to approach her, away she skips Over tables and chairs with apparent ease. The farmer's daughter hath soft brown hair; (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) And I met with a ballad, I can't say where, Which wholly consisted of lines like these. Part II She sat, with her hands 'neath her dimpled cheeks, (Butler and eggs and a pound of cheese) And spake not a word. While a lady speaks There is hope, but she didn't even sneeze. She sat, with her hands 'neath her crimson cheeks, (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) She gave up mending her father's breeks, And let the cat roll in her new chemise. She sat, with her hands 'neath her burning cheeks, (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) And gazed at the piper for thirteen weeks; Then she followed him out o'er the misty leas. Her sheep followed her, as their tails did them. (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) And this song is considered a perfect gem, And as to the meaning, it's what you please. Charles Stuart Calverley [1831-1884] THE POSTER-GIRL After Dante Gabriel Rossetti The blessed Poster-girl leaned out From a pinky-purple heaven; One eye was red and one was green; Her bang was cut uneven; She had three fingers on her hand, And the hairs on her head were seven. Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem, No sunflowers did adorn, But a heavy Turkish portiere Was very neatly worn; And the hat that lay along her back Was yellow like canned corn. It was a kind of wobbly wave That she was standing on, And high aloft she flung a scarf That must have weighed a ton; And she was rather tall--at least She reached up to the sun. She curved and writhed, and then she said, Less green of speech than blue: "Perhaps I am absurd--perhaps I don't appeal to you; But my artistic worth depends Upon the point of view." I saw her smile, although her eyes Were only smudgy smears; And then she swished her swirling arms, And wagged her gorgeous ears, She sobbed a blue-and-green-checked sob, And wept some purple tears. Carolyn Wells [186?-- AFTER DILETTANTE CONCETTI After Dante Gabriel Rossetti "Why do you wear your hair like a man, Sister Helen? This week is the third since you began." "I'm writing a ballad; be still if you can, Little brother. (O Mother Carey, mother! What chickens are these between sea and heaven?)" "But why does your figure appear so lean, Sister Helen? And why do you dress in sage, sage green?" "Children should never be heard, if seen, Little brother! (O Mother Carey, mother! What fowls are a-wing in the stormy heaven!)" "But why is your face so yellowy white, Sister Helen? And why are your skirts so funnily tight?" "Be quiet, you torment, or how can I write, Little brother? (O Mother Carey, mother! How gathers thy train to the sea from the heaven!)" "And who's Mother Carey, and what is her train, Sister Helen? And why do you call her again and again?" "You troublesome boy, why that's the refrain, Little brother. (O Mother Carey, mother! What work is toward in the startled heaven?)" "And what's a refrain? What a curious word, Sister Helen! Is the ballad you're writing about a sea-bird?" "Not at all; why should it be? Don't be absurd, Little brother. (O Mother Carey, mother! Thy brood flies lower as lowers the heaven.)" (A big brother speaketh:) "The refrain you've studied a meaning had, Sister Helen! It gave strange force to a weird ballad. But refrains have become a ridiculous 'fad', Little brother. And Mother Carey, mother, Has a bearing on nothing in earth or heaven. "But the finical fashion has had its day, Sister Helen. And let's try in the style of a different lay To bid it adieu in poetical way, Little brother. So, Mother Carey, mother! Collect your chickens and go to--heaven." (A pause. Then the big brother singeth, accompanying himself in a plaintive wise on the triangle:) "Look in my face. My name is Used-to-was, I am also called Played-out and Done-to-death, And It-will-wash-no-more. Awakeneth Slowly, but sure awakening it has, The common-sense of man; and I, alas! The ballad-burden trick, now known too well, Am turned to scorn, and grown contemptible-- A too transparent artifice to pass. "What a cheap dodge I am! The cats who dart Tin-kettled through the streets in wild surprise Assail judicious ears not otherwise; And yet no critics praise the urchin's 'art', Who to the wretched creature's caudal part Its foolish empty-jingling 'burden' ties." Henry Duff Traill [1842-1900] IF After Swinburne If life were never bitter, And love were always sweet, Then who would care to borrow A moral from to-morrow-- If Thames would always glitter, And joy would ne'er retreat, If life were never bitter, And love were always sweet! If care were not the waiter Behind a fellow's chair, When easy-going sinners Sit down to Richmond dinners, And life's swift stream flows straighter, By Jove, it would be rare, If care were not the waiter Behind a fellow's chair. If wit were always radiant, And wine were always iced, And bores were kicked out straightway Through a convenient gateway; Then down the year's long gradient 'Twere sad to be enticed, If wit were always radiant, And wine were always iced. Mortimer Collins [1827-1876] NEPHELIDIA After Swinburne From the depth of the dreamy decline of the dawn through a notable nimbus of nebulous noonshine, Pallid and pink as the palm of the flag-flower that flickers with fear of the flies as they float, Are the looks of our lovers that lustrously lean from a marvel of mystic, miraculous moonshine, These that we feel in the blood of our blushes that thicken and threaten with throbs through the throat? Thicken and thrill as a theatre thronged at appeal of an actor's appalled agitation, Fainter with fear of the fires of the future than pale with the promise of pride in the past; Flushed with the famishing fulness of fever that reddens with radiance of rathe recreation, Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam through the gloom of the gloaming when ghosts go aghast? Nay, for the nick of the tick of the time is a tremulous touch on the temples of terror, Strained as the sinews yet strenuous with strife of the dead who is dumb as the dust-heaps of death; Surely no soul is it, sweet as the spasm of erotic, emotional, exquisite error, Bathed in the balms of beatified bliss, beatific itself by beatitude's breath. Surely no spirit or sense of a soul that was soft to the spirit and soul of our senses Sweetens the stress of suspiring suspicion that sobs in the semblance and sound of a sigh; Only this oracle opens Olympian in mystical moods and triangular tenses,-- "Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day when we die." Mild is the mirk and monotonous music of memory, melodiously mute as it may be, While the hope in the heart of a hero is bruised by the breach of men's rapiers, resigned to the rod; Made meek as a mother whose bosom-beats bound with the bliss-bringing bulk of a balm-breathing baby, As they grope through the graveyard of creeds under skies growing green at a groan for the grimness of God. Blank is the book of his bounty beholden of old, and its binding is blacker than bluer: Out of blue into black is the scheme of the skies, and their dews are the wine of the blood-shed of things; Till the darkling desire of delight shall be free as a fawn that is freed from the fangs that pursue her, Till the heart-beats of hell shall be hushed by a hymn from the hunt that has harried the kennel of kings. Algernon Charles Swinburne [1837-1909] COMMONPLACES After Heine Rain on the face of the sea, Rain on the sodden land, And the window-pane is blurred with rain As I watch it, pen in hand. Mist on the face of the sea, Mist on the sodden land, Filling the vales as daylight fails, And blotting the desolate sand. Voices from out of the mist, Calling to one another: "Hath love an end, thou more than friend, Thou dearer than ever brother?" Voices from out of the mist, Calling and passing away; But I cannot speak, for my voice is weak, And.... this is the end of my lay. Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936] THE PROMISSORY NOTE After Poe In the lonesome latter years (Fatal years!) To the dropping of my tears Danced the mad and mystic spheres In a rounded, reeling rune, 'Neath the moon, To the dripping and the dropping of my tears. Ah, my soul is swathed in gloom, (Ulalume!) In a dim Titanic tomb, For my gaunt and gloomy soul Ponders o'er the penal scroll, O'er the parchment (not a rhyme), Out of place,--out of time,-- I am shredded, shorn, unshifty, (Oh, the fifty!) And the days have passed, the three, Over me! And the debit and the credit are as one to him and me! 'Twas the random runes I wrote At the bottom of the note, (Wrote and freely Gave to Greeley) In the middle of the night, In the mellow, moonless night, When the stars were out of sight, When my pulses, like a knell, (Israfel!) Danced with dim and dying fays, O'er the ruins of my days, O'er the dimeless, timeless days, When the fifty, drawn at thirty, Seeming thrifty, yet the dirty Lucre of the market, was the most that I could raise! Fiends controlled it, (Let him hold it!) Devils held me for the inkstand and the pen; Now the days of grace are o'er, (Ah, Lenore!) I am but as other men; What is time, time, time, To my rare and runic rhyme, To my random, reeling rhyme, By the sands along the shore, Where the tempest whispers, "Pay him!" and I answer, "Nevermore!" Bayard Taylor [1825-1878] MRS. JUDGE JENKINS Being The Only Genuine Sequel To "Maud Muller" After Whittier Maud Muller all that summer day Raked the meadow sweet with hay; Yet, looking down the distant lane, She hoped the Judge would come again. But when he came, with smile and bow, Maud only blushed, and stammered, "Ha-ow?" And spoke of her "pa," and wondered whether He'd give consent they should wed together. Old Muller burst in tears, and then Begged that the Judge would lend him "ten"; For trade was dull and wages low, And the "craps," this year, were somewhat slow. And ere the languid summer died, Sweet Maud became the Judge's bride. But on the day that they were mated, Maud's brother Bob was intoxicated; And Maud's relations, twelve in all, Were very drunk at the Judge's hall; And when the summer came again, The young bride bore him babies twain; And the Judge was blest, but thought it strange That bearing children made such a change. For Maud grew broad, and red, and stout, And the waist that his arm once clasped about Was more than he now could span; and he Sighed as he pondered, ruefully, How that which in Maud was native grace In Mrs. Jenkins was out of place; And thought of the twins, and wished that they Looked less like the men who raked the hay On Muller's farm, and dreamed with pain Of the day he wandered down the lane. And, looking down that dreary track, He half regretted that he came back. For, had he waited, he might have wed Some maiden fair and thoroughbred; For there be women as fair as she, Whose verbs and nouns do more agree. Alas for maiden! alas for judge! And the sentimental,--that's one-half "fudge"; For Maud soon thought the Judge a bore, With all his learning and all his lore; And the Judge would have bartered Maud's fair face For more refinement and social grace. If, of all words of tongue and pen, The saddest are, "It might have been," More sad are these we daily see: "It is, but hadn't ought to be." Bret Harte [1839-1902] THE MODERN HIAWATHA From "The Song of Milkanwatha" He killed the noble Mudjokivis, With the skin he made him mittens, Made them with the fur side inside, Made them with the skin side outside, He, to get the warm side inside, Put the inside skin side outside: He, to get the cold side outside, Put the warm side fur side inside: That's why he put the fur side inside, Why he put the skin side outside, Why he turned them inside outside. George A. Strong [1832-1912] HOW OFTEN After Longfellow They stood on the bridge at midnight, In a park not far from the town; They stood on the bridge at midnight, Because they didn't sit down. The moon rose o'er the city, Behind the dark church spire; The moon rose o'er the city, And kept on rising higher. How often, oh! how often They whispered words so soft; How often, oh! how often, How often, oh! how oft. Ben King [1857-1894] "IF I SHOULD DIE TO-NIGHT" After Arabella Eugenia Smith If I should die to-night And you should come to my cold corpse and say, Weeping and heartsick o'er my lifeless clay-- If I should die to-night, And you should come in deepest grief and woe-- And say: "Here's that ten dollars that I owe," I might arise in my large white cravat And say, "What's that?" If I should die to-night And you should come to my cold corpse and, kneel, Clasping my bier to show the grief you feel, I say, if I should die to-night And you should come to me, and there and then Just even hint at paying me that ten, I might arise the while, But I'd drop dead again. Ben King [1857-1894] SINCERE FLATTERY Of W. W. (Americanus) The clear cool note of the cuckoo which has ousted the legitimate nest-holder, The whistle of the railway guard dispatching the train to the inevitable collision, The maiden's monosyllabic reply to a polysyllabic proposal, The fundamental note of the last trump, which is presumably D natural; All of these are sounds to rejoice in, yea, to let your very ribs re-echo with: But better than all of them is the absolutely last chord of the apparently inexhaustible pianoforte player. James Kenneth Stephen [1859-1892] CULTURE IN THE SLUMS Inscribed To An Intense Poet I. RONDEAU "O crikey, Bill!" she ses to me, she ses. "Look sharp," ses she, "with them there sossiges. Yea! sharp with them there bags of mysteree! For lo!" she ses, "for lo! old pal," ses she, "I'm blooming peckish, neither more nor less." Was it not prime--I leave you all to guess How prime!--to have a Jude in love's distress Come spooning round, and murmuring balmilee, "O crikey, Bill!" For in such rorty wise doth Love express His blooming views, and asks for your address, And makes it right, and does the gay and free. I kissed her--I did so! And her and me Was pals. And if that ain't good business, "O crikey, Bill!" II. VILLANELLE Now ain't they utterly too-too (She ses, my Missus mine, ses she), Them flymy little bits of Blue. Joe, just you kool 'em--nice and skew Upon our old meogginee, Now ain't they utterly too-too? They're better than a pot'n' a screw, They're equal to a Sunday spree, Them flymy little bits of Blue! Suppose I put 'em up the flue, And booze the profits, Joe? Not me. Now ain't they utterly too-too? I do the 'Igh Art fake, I do. Joe, I'm consummate; and I see Them flymy little bits of Blue. Which, Joe, is why I ses ter you-- Aesthetic-like, and limp, and free-- Now ain't they utterly too-too, Them flymy little bits of Blue? William Ernest Henley [1849-1903] THE POETS AT TEA I.--(Macaulay) Pour, varlet, pour the water, The water steaming hot! A spoonful for each man of us, Another for the pot! We shall not drink from amber, No Capuan slave shall mix For us the snows of Athos With port at thirty-six; Whiter than snow the crystals Grown sweet 'neath tropic fires, More rich the herb of China's field, The pasture-lands more fragrance yield; Forever let Britannia wield The teapot of her sires! II.--(Tennyson) I think that I am drawing to an end: For on a sudden came a gasp for breath, And stretching of the hands, and blinded eyes, And a, great darkness falling on my soul. O Hallelujah!... Kindly pass the milk. III.--(Swinburne) As the sin that was sweet in the sinning Is foul in the ending thereof, As the heat of the summer's beginning Is past in the winter of love: O purity, painful and pleading! O coldness, ineffably gray! O hear us, our handmaid unheeding, And take it away! IV.--(Cowper) The cosy fire is bright and gay, The merry kettle boils away And hums a cheerful song. I sing the saucer and the cup; Pray, Mary, fill the teapot up, And do not make it strong. V.--(Browning) Tut! Bah! We take as another case-- Pass the pills on the window-sill; notice the capsule (A sick man's fancy, no doubt, but I place Reliance on trade-marks, Sir)--so perhaps you'll Excuse the digression--this cup which I hold Light-poised--Bah, it's spilt in the bed--well, let's on go-- Hold Bohea and sugar, Sir; if you were told The sugar was salt, would the Bohea be Congo? VI.--(Wordsworth) "Come, little cottage girl, you seem To want my cup of tea; And will you take a little cream? Now tell the truth to me." She had a rustic, woodland grin, Her cheek was soft as silk, And she replied, "Sir, please put in A little drop of milk." "Why, what put milk into your head? 'Tis cream my cows supply;" And five times to the child I said, "Why, pig-head, tell me, why?" "You call me pig-head," she replied; "My proper name is Ruth. I called that milk"--she blushed with pride-- "You bade me speak the truth." VII.--(Poe) Here's a mellow cup of tea--golden tea! What a world of rapturous thought its fragrance brings to me! Oh, from out the silver cells How it wells! How it smells! Keeping tune, tune, tune, To the tintinnabulation of the spoon. And the kettle on the fire Boils its spout off with desire, With a desperate desire And a crystalline endeavor Now, now to sit, or never, On the top of the pale-faced moon, But he always came home to tea, tea, tea, tea, tea, Tea to the n-th. VIII.--(Rossetti) The lilies lie in my lady's bower, (O weary mother, drive the cows to roost), They faintly droop for a little hour; My lady's head droops like a flower. She took the porcelain in her hand (O weary mother, drive the cows to roost); She poured; I drank at her command; Drank deep, and now--you understand! (O weary mother, drive the cows to roost). IX.--(Burns) Weel, gin ye speir, I'm no inclined, Whusky or tay--to state my mind Fore ane or ither; For, gin I tak the first, I'm fou, And gin the next, I'm dull as you: Mix a' thegither. X.--(Walt Whitman) One cup for my self-hood, Many for you. Allons, camerados, we will drink together, O hand-in-hand! That tea-spoon, please, when you've done with it. What butter-colored hair you've got. I don't want to be personal. All right, then, you needn't. You're a stale-cadaver. Eighteen-pence if the bottles are returned. Allons, from all bat-eyed formulas. Barry Pain [1864-1928] WORDSWORTH Two voices are there: one is of the deep; It learns the storm cloud's thunderous melody, Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea, Now birdlike pipes, now closes soft in sleep; And one is of an old half-witted sheep Which bleats articulate monotony, And indicates that two and one are three, That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep: And, Wordsworth, both are thine: at certain times, Forth from the heart of thy melodious rhymes The form and pressure of high thoughts will burst; At other times-good Lord! I'd rather be Quite unacquainted with the A, B, C, Than write such hopeless rubbish as thy worst. James Kenneth Stephen [1859-1892] 
2619	----	THE HOME BOOK OF VERSE, VOLUME 1 By Various Edited by Burton Egbert Stevenson THE HOME BOOK OF VERSE, VOLUME 1 By Various Edited by Burton Egbert Stevenson Contents of Volume I of the two volume set This includes contents of Volumes 1 through 4 of our Etext editions. PART I POEMS OF YOUTH AND AGE The Human Seasons John Keats THE BABY "Only a Baby Small" Matthias Barr Only Harriet Prescott Spofford Infant Joy William Blake Baby George Macdonald To a New-Born Baby Girl Grace Hazard Conkling To Little Renee William Aspenwall Bradley A Rhyme of One Frederick Locker-Lampson To a New-Born Child Cosmo Monkhouse Baby May William Cox Bennett Alice Herbert Bashford Songs for Fragoletta Richard Le Gallienne Choosing a Name Mary Lamb Weighing the Baby Ethel Lynn Beers Etude Realiste Algernon Charles Swinburne Little Feet Elizabeth Akers The Babie Jeremiah Eames Rankin Little Hands Laurence Binyon Bartholomew Norman Gale The Storm-Child May Byron "On Parent Knees" William Jones "Philip, My King" Dinah Maria Mulock Craik The King of the Cradle Joseph Ashby-Sterry The Firstborn John Arthur Goodchild No Baby in the House Clara Dolliver Our Wee White Rose Gerald Massey Into the World and Out Sarah M. P. Piatt "Baby Sleeps" Samuel Hinds Baby Bell Thomas Bailey Aldrich IN THE NURSERY Mother Goose's Melodies Unknown Jack and Jill Unknown The Queen of Hearts Unknown Little Bo-Peep Unknown Mary's Lamb Sarah Josepha Hale The Star Jane Taylor "Sing a Song of Sixpence" Unknown Simple Simon Unknown A Pleasant Ship Unknown "I Had a Little Husband" Unknown "When I Was a Bachelor" Unknown "Johnny Shall Have a New Bonnet" Unknown The City Mouse and the Garden Mouse Christina Rossetti Robin Redbreast Unknown Solomon Grundy Unknown "Merry Are the Bells" Unknown "When Good King Arthur Ruled This Land" Unknown The Bells of London Unknown "The Owl and the Eel and the Warming Pan" Laura E. Richards The Cow Ann Taylor The Lamb William Blake Little Raindrops Unknown "Moon, So Round and Yellow" Matthias Barr The House That Jack Built Unknown Old Mother Hubbard Unknown The Death and Burial of Cock Robin Unknown Baby-Land George Cooper The First Tooth William Brighty Rands Baby's Breakfast Emilie Poulsson The Moon Eliza Lee Follen Baby at Play Unknown The Difference Laura E. Richards Foot Soldiers John Banister Tabb Tom Thumb's Alphabet Unknown Grammar in Rhyme Unknown Days of the Month Unknown The Garden Year Sara Coleridge Riddles Unknown Proverbs Unknown Kind Hearts Unknown Weather Wisdom Unknown Old Superstitions Unknown THE ROAD TO SLUMBERLAND Wynken, Blynken, and Nod Eugene Field The Sugar-Plum Tree Eugene Field When the Sleepy Man Comes Charles G. D. Roberts Auld Daddy Darkness James Ferguson Willie Winkle William Miller The Sandman Margaret Thomson Janvier The Dustman Frederick Edward Weatherly Sephestia's Lullaby Robert Greene "Golden Slumbers Kiss Your Eyes" Thomas Dekker "Sleep, Baby, Sleep" George Wither Mother's Song Unknown A Lullaby Richard Rowlands A Cradle Hymn Isaac Watts Cradle Song William Blake Lullaby Carolina Nairne Lullaby of an Infant Chief Walter Scott Good-Night Jane Taylor "Lullaby, O Lullaby" William Cox Bennett Lullaby Alfred Tennyson The Cottager to Her Infant Dorothy Wordsworth Trot, Trot! Mary F. Butts Holy Innocents Christina Georgina Rossetti Lullaby Josiah Gilbert Holland Cradle Song Josiah Gilbert Holland An Irish Lullaby Alfred Perceval Graves Cradle Song Josephine Preston Peabody Mother-Song from "Prince Lucifer" Alfred Austin Kentucky Babe Richard Henry Buck Minnie and Winnie Alfred Tennyson Bed-Time Song Emilie Poulsson Tucking the Baby In Curtis May "Jenny Wi' the Airn Teeth" Alexander Anderson Cuddle Doon Alexander Anderson Bedtime Francis Robert St. Clair Erskine THE DUTY OF CHILDREN Happy Thought Robert Louis Stevenson Whole Duty of Children Robert Louis Stevenson Politeness Elizabeth Turner Rules of Behavior Unknown Little Fred Unknown The Lovable Child Emilie Poulsson Good and Bad Children Robert Louis Stevenson Rebecca's After-Thought Elizabeth Turner Kindness to Animals Unknown A Rule for Birds' Nesters Unknown "Sing on, Blithe Bird" William Motherwell "I Like Little Pussy" Jane Taylor Little Things Julia Fletcher Carney The Little Gentleman Unknown The Crust of Bread Unknown "How Doth the Little Busy Bee" Isaac Watts The Brown Thrush Lucy Larcom The Sluggard Isaac Watts The Violet Jane Taylor Dirty Jim Jane Taylor The Pin Ann Taylor Jane and Eliza Ann Taylor Meddlesome Matty Ann Taylor Contented John Jane Taylor Friends Abbie Farwell Brown Anger Charles and Mary Lamb "There Was a Little Girl" H. W. Longfellow The Reformation of Godfrey Gore William Brighty Rands The Best Firm Walter G. Doty A Little Page's Song William Alexander Percy How the Little Kite Learned to Fly Unknown The Butterfly and the Bee William Lisle Bowles The Butterfly Adelaide O'Keefe Morning Jane Taylor Buttercups and Daisies Mary Howitt The Ant and the Cricket Unknown After Wings Sarah M. B. Piatt Deeds of Kindness Epes Sargent The Lion and the Mouse Jeffreys Taylor The Boy and the Wolf John Hookham Frere The Story of Augustus, Who Would Not Have Any Soup Heinrich Hoffman The Story of Little Suck-A-Thumb Heinrich Hoffman Written in a Little Lady's Little Album Frederick William Faber My Lady Wind Unknown To a Child William Wordsworth A Farewell Charles Kingsley RHYMES OF CHILDHOOD Reeds of Innocence William Blake The Wonderful World William Brighty Rands The World's Music Gabriel Setoun A Boy's Song James Hogg Going Down Hill On a Bicycle Henry Charles Beeching Playgrounds Laurence Alma-Tadema "Who Has Seen the Wind?" Christina Georgina Rossetti The Wind's Song Gabriel Setoun The Piper on the Hill Dora Sigerson Shorter The Wind and the Moon George Macdonald Child's Song in Spring Edith Nesbit Baby Seed Song Edith Nesbit Little Dandelion Helen Barron Bostwick Little White Lily George Macdonald Wishing William Allingham In the Garden Ernest Crosby The Gladness of Nature William Cullen Bryant Glad Day W. Graham Robertson The Tiger William Blake Answer to a Child's Question Samuel Taylor Coleridge How the Leaves Came Down Susan Coolidge A Legend of the Northland Phoebe Cary The Cricket's Story Emma Huntington Nason The Singing-Lesson Jean Ingelow Chanticleer Katherine Tynan "What Does Little Birdie Say?" Alfred Tennyson Nurse's Song William Blake Jack Frost Gabriel Setoun October's Party George Cooper The Shepherd William Blake Nikolina Celia Thaxter Little Gustava Celia Thaxter Prince Tatters Laura E. Richards The Little Black Boy William Blake The Blind Boy Colley Cibber Bunches of Grapes Walter de la Mare My Shadow Robert Louis Stevenson The Land of Counterpane Robert Louis Stevenson The Land of Story-Books Robert Louis Stevenson The Gardener Robert Louis Stevenson Foreign Lands Robert Louis Stevenson My Bed is a Boat Robert Louis Stevenson The Peddler's Caravan William Brighty Rands Mr. Coggs Edward Verrall Lucas The Building of the Nest Margaret Sangster "There was a Jolly Miller" Isaac Bickerstaff One and One Mary Mapes Dodge A Nursery Song Laura E. Richards A Mortifying Mistake Anna Maria Pratt The Raggedy Man James Whitcomb Riley The Man in the Moon James Whitcomb Riley Little Orphant Annie James Whitcomb Riley Our Hired Girl James Whitcomb Riley See'n Things Eugene Field The Duel Eugene Field Holy Thursday William Blake A Story for a Child Bayard Taylor The Spider and the Fly Mary Howitt The Captain's Daughter James Thomas Fields The Nightingale and the Glow-Worm William Cowper Sir Lark and King Sun: A Parable George Macdonald The Courtship, Merry Marriage, and Picnic Dinner of Cock Robin and Jenny Wren Unknown The Babes in the Wood Unknown God's Judgment on a Wicked Bishop Robert Southey The Pied Piper of Hamelin Robert Browning THE GLAD EVANGEL A Carol Unknown "God Rest You Merry Gentlemen" Unknown 'O Little Town of Bethlehem" Phillips Brooks A Christmas Hymn Alfred Domett "While Shepherds Watched their Flocks by Night" Nahum Tate Christmas Carols Edmund Hamilton Sears The Angels William Drummond The Burning Babe Robert Southwell Tryste Noel Louise Imogen Guiney Christmas Carol Unknown "Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning" Reginald Heber Christmas Bells Henry Wadsworth Longfellow A Christmas Carol Gilbert Keith Chesterton The House of Christmas Gilbert Keith Chesterton The Feast of the Snow Gilbert Keith Chesterton Mary's Baby Shaemas OSheel Gates and Doors Joyce Kilmer The Three Kings Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Lullaby in Bethlehem Henry Howarth Bashford A Child's Song of Christmas Marjorie L. C. Pickthall Jest 'Fore Christmas Eugene Field A Visit from St. Nicholas Clement Clarke Moore Ceremonies for Christmas Robert Herrick On the Morning of Christ's Nativity John Milton FAIRYLAND The Fairy Book Norman Gale Fairy Songs William Shakespeare Queen Mab Ben Jonson The Elf and the Dormouse Oliver Herford "Oh! Where Do Fairies Hide Their Heads?" Thomas Haynes Bayly Fairy Song Leigh Hunt Dream Song Richard Middleton Fairy Song John Keats Queen Mab Thomas Hood The Fairies of the Caldon-Low Mary Howitt The Fairies William Allingham The Fairy Thrall Mary C. G. Byron Farewell to the Fairies Richard Corbet The Fairy Folk Robert Bird The Fairy Book Abbie Farwell Brown The Visitor Patrick R. Chalmers The Little Elf John Kendrick Bangs The Satyrs and the Moon Herbert S. Gorman THE CHILDREN The Children Charles Monroe Dickinson The Children's Hour Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Laus Infantium William Canton The Desire Katherine Tynan A Child's Laughter Algernon Charles Swinburne Seven Years Old Algernon Charles Swinburne Creep Afore Ye Gang James Ballantine Castles in the Air James Ballantine Under My Window Thomas Westwood Little Bell Thomas Westwood The Barefoot Boy John Greenleaf Whittier The Heritage James Russell Lowell Letty's Globe Charles Tennyson Turner Dove's Nest Joseph Russell Taylor The Oracle Arthur Davison Ficke To a Little Girl Helen Parry Eden To a Little Girl Gustav Kobbe A Parental Ode to My Son Thomas Hood A New Poet William Canton To Laura W-, Two Years Old Nathaniel Parker Willis To Rose Sara Teasdale To Charlotte Pulteney Ambrose Philips The Picture of Little T. C. in a Prospect of Flowers Andrew Marvell To Hartley Coleridge William Wordsworth To a Child of Quality Matthew Prior Ex Ore Infantium Francis Thompson Obituary Thomas William Parsons The Child's Heritage John G. Neihardt A Girl of Pompeii Edward Sandford Martin On the Picture of a "Child Tired of Play" Nathaniel Parker Willis The Reverie of Poor Susan William Wordsworth Children's Song Ford Madox Hueffer The Mitherless Bairn William Thom The Cry of the Children Elizabeth Barrett Browning The Shadow-Child Harriet Monroe Mother Wept Joseph Skipsey Duty Ralph Waldo Emerson Lucy Gray William Wordsworth In the Children's Hospital Alfred Tennyson "If I Were Dead" Coventry Patmore The Toys Coventry Patmore A Song of Twilight Unknown Little Boy Blue Eugene Field The Discoverer Edmund Clarence Stedman A Chrysalis Mary Emily Bradley Mater Dolorosa William Barnes The Little Ghost Katherine Tynan Motherhood Josephine Daskam Bacon The Mother's Prayer Dora Sigerson Shorter Da Leetla Boy Thomas Augustin Daly On the Moor Gale Young Rice Epitaph of Dionysia Unknown For Charlie's Sake John Williamson Palmer "Are the Children at Home?" Margaret Sangster The Morning-Glory Maria White Lowell She Came and Went James Russell Lowell The First Snow-fall James Russell Lowell "We Are Seven" William Wordsworth My Child John Pierpont The Child's Wish Granted George Parsons Lathrop Challenge Kenton Foster Murray Tired Mothers May Riley Smith My Daughter Louise Homer Greene "I Am Lonely" George Eliot Sonnets from "Mimma Bella" Eugene Lee-Hamilton Rose-Marie of the Angels Adelaide Crapsey MAIDENHOOD Maidenhood Henry Wadsworth Longfellow To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time Robert Herrick To Mistress Margaret Hussey John Skelton On Her Coming To London Edmund Waller "O, Saw Ye Bonny Lesley" Robert Burns To a Young Lady William Cowper Ruth Thomas Hood The Solitary Reaper William Wordsworth The Three Cottage Girls William Wordsworth Blackmwore Maidens William Barnes A Portrait Elizabeth Barrett Browning To a Child of Fancy Lewis Morris Daisy Francis Thompson To Petronilla, Who Has Put Up Her Hair Henry Howarth Bashford The Gipsy Girl Henry Alford Fanny Anne Reeve Aldrich Somebody's Child Louise Chandler Moulton Emilia Sarah N. Cleghorn To a Greek Girl Austin Dobson "Chamber Scene" Nathaniel Parker Willis "Ah, Be Not False" Richard Watson Gilder A Life-Lesson James Whitcomb Riley THE MAN The Breaking Margaret Steele Anderson The Flight of Youth Richard Henry Stoddard "Days of My Youth" St. George Tucker Ave Atque Vale Rosamund Marriott Watson To Youth Walter Savage Landor Stanzas Written on the Road Between Florence and Pisa George Gordon Byron Stanzas for Music George Gordon Byron "When As a Lad" Isabel Ecclestone Mackay "Around the Child" Walter Savage Landor Aladdin James Russell Lowell The Quest Ellen Mackey Hutchinson Cortissoz My Birth-Day Thomas Moore Sonnet on His having Arrived to the Age of Twenty-Three John Milton On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year George Gordon Byron Growing Gray Austin Dobson The One White Hair Walter Savage Landor Ballade of Middle Age Andrew Lang Middle Age Rudolph Chambers Lehmann To Critics Walter Learned The Rainbow William Wordsworth Leavetaking William Watson Equinoctial Adeline D. T. Whitney "Before the Beginning of Years" Algernon Charles Swinburne Man Henry Vaughan The Pulley George Herbert Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood William Wordsworth THE WOMAN Woman Eaton Stannard Barrett Woman From the Sanskrit of Calidasa Simplex Munditiis Ben Jonson Delight in Disorder Robert Herrick A Praise of His Lady John Heywood On a Certain Lady at Court Alexander Pope Perfect Woman William Wordsworth The Solitary-Hearted Hartley Coleridge Of Those Who Walk Alone Richard Burton "She Walks in Beauty" George Gordon Byron Preludes from "The Angel in The House" Coventry Patmore A Health Edward Coote Pinkney Our Sister Horatio Nelson Powers From Life Brian Hooker The Rose of the World William Butler Yeats Dawn of Womanhood Harold Monro The Shepherdess Alice Meynell A Portrait Brian Hooker The Wife Theodosia Garrison "Trusty, Dusky, Vivid, True" Robert Louis Stevenson The Shrine Digby Mackworth Dolben The Voice Norman Gale Mother Theresa Helburn Ad Matrem Julian Fane C.L.M John Masefield STEPPING WESTWARD Stepping Westward William Wordsworth A Farewell to Arms George Peele The World Francis Bacon "When That I Was and a Little Tiny Boy" William Shakespeare Of the Last Verses in the Book Edmund Waller A Lament Chidiock Tichborne To-morrow John Collins Late Wisdom George Crabbe Youth and Age Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Old Man's Comforts Robert Southey To Age Walter Savage Lander Late Leaves Walter Savage Lander Years Walter Savage Lander The River of Life Thomas Campbell "Long Time a Child" Hartley Coleridge The World I am Passing Through Lydia Maria Child Terminus Ralph Waldo Emerson Rabbi Ben Ezra Robert Browning Human Life Audrey Thomas de Vere Young and Old Charles Kingsley The Isle of the Long Ago Benjamin Franklin Taylor Growing Old Matthew Arnold Past John Galsworthy Twilight A. Mary F. Robinson Youth and Age George Arnold Forty Years On Edward Ernest Bowen Dregs Ernest Dowson The Paradox of Time Austin Dobson Age William Winter Omnia Sonmia Rosamund Marriott Watson The Year's End Timothy Cole An Old Man's Song Richard Le Gallienne Songs of Seven Jean Ingelow Auspex James Russell Lowell LOOKING BACKWARD The Retreat Henry Vaughan A Superscription Dante Gabriel Rossetti The Child in the Garden Henry Van Dyke Castles in the Air Thomas Love Peacock Sometimes Thomas S. Jones, Jr The Little Ghosts Thomas S. Jones, Jr My Other Me Grace Denio Litchfield A Shadow Boat Arlo Bates A Lad That is Gone Robert Louis Stevenson Carcassonne John R. Thompson Childhood John Banister Tabb The Wastrel Reginald Wright Kauffman Troia Fuit Reginald Wright Kauffman Temple Garlands A. Mary F. Robinson Time Long Past Percy Bysshe Shelley "I Remember, I Remember" Thomas Hood My Lost Youth Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "Voice of the Western Wind" Edmund Clarence Stedman "Langsyne, When Life Was Bonnie" Alexander Anderson The Shoogy-Shoo Winthrop Packard Babylon Viola Taylor The Road of Remembrance Lizette Woodworth Reese The Triumph of Forgotten Things Edith M. Thomas In the Twilight James Russell Lowell An Immorality Ezra Pound Three Seasons Christina Georgina Rossetti The Old Familiar Faces Charles Lamb The Light of Other Days Thomas Moore "Tears, Idle Tears" Alfred Tennyson The Pet Name Elizabeth Barrett Browning Threescore and Ten Richard Henry Stoddard Rain on the Roof Coates Kinney Alone by the Hearth George Arnold The Old Man Dreams Oliver Wendell Holmes The Garret William Makepeace Thackeray Auld Lang Syne Robert Burns Rock Me to Sleep Elizabeth Akers The Bucket Samuel Woodworth The Grape-Vine Swing William Gilmore Simms The Old Swimmin'-Hole James Whitcomb Riley Forty Years Ago Unknown Ben Bolt Thomas Dunn English "Break, Break, Break" Alfred Tennyson PART II POEMS OF LOVE Eros Ralph Waldo Emerson "NOW WHAT IS LOVE" "Now What is Love" Walter Raleigh Wooing Song, "Love is the Blossom where there blows" Giles Fletcher Rosalind's Madrigal, "Love in My bosom" Thomas Lodge Song, "Love is a sickness full of woes" Samuel Daniel Love's Perjuries William Shakespeare Venus' Runaway Ben Jonson What is Love John Fletcher Love's Emblems John Fletcher The Power of Love John Fletcher Advice to a Lover Unknown Love's Horoscope Richard Crashaw "Ah, how Sweet it is to Love" John Dryden Song, "Love still has something of the sea" Charles Sedley The Vine James Thomson Song, "Fain would I change that Note" Unknown Cupid Stung Thomas Moore Cupid Drowned Leigh Hunt Song, "Oh! say not woman's love is bought" Isaac Pocock "In the Days of Old" Thomas Love Peacock Song, "How delicious is the winning" Thomas Campbell Stanzas, "Could love for ever" George Gordon Byron "They Speak o' Wiles" William Thom "Love will Find Out the Way" Unknown A Woman's Shortcomings Elizabeth Barrett Browning "Love hath a Language" Helen Selina Sheridan Song, "O, let the solid ground" Alfred Tennyson Amaturus William Johnson-Cory The Surface and the Depths Lewis Morris A Ballad of Dreamland Algernon Charles Swinburne Endymion Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Fate Susan Marr Spalding "Give all to Love" Ralph Waldo Emerson "O, Love is not a Summer Mood" Richard Watson Gilder "When will Love Come" Pakenham Beatty "Awake, My Heart" Robert Bridges The Secret George Edward Woodberry The Rose of Stars George Edward Woodberry Song of Eros from "Agathon" George Edward Woodberry Love is Strong Richard Burton "Love once was like an April Dawn" Robert Underwood Johnson The Garden of Shadow Ernest Dowson The Call Reginald Wright Kauffman The Highway Louise Driscoll Song, "Take it, love" Richard Le Gallienne "Never Give all the Heart" William Butler Yeats Song, "I came to the door of the house of love" Alfred Noyes "Child, Child" Sara Teasdale Wisdom Ford Madox Hueffer Epilogue from "Emblems of Love" Lascelles Abercrombie On Hampstead Heath Wilfrid Wilson Gibson Once on a Time Kendall Banning IN PRAISE OF HER First Song from "Astrophel and Stella" Philip Sidney Silvia William Shakespeare Cupid and Campaspe John Lyly Apollo's Song from "Midas" John Lyly "Fair is my Love for April's in her Face" Robert Greene Samela Robert Greene Damelus' Song of His Diaphenia Henry Constable Madrigal, "My Love in her attire doth show her wit" Unknown On Chloris Walking in the Snow William Strode "There is a Lady Sweet and Kind" Unknown Cherry-Ripe Thomas Campion Amarillis Thomas Campion Elizabeth of Bohemia Henry Wotton Her Triumph Ben Jonson Of Phillis William Drummond A Welcome William Browne The Complete Lover William Browne Rubies and Pearls Robert Herrick Upon Julia's Clothes Robert Herrick To Cynthia on Concealment of her Beauty Francis Kynaston Song, "Ask me no more where Jove bestows" Thomas Carew A Devout Lover Thomas Randolph On a Girdle Edmund Waller Castara William Habington To Amarantha that She would Dishevel her Hair Richard Lovelace Chloe Divine Thomas D'Urfey My Peggy Allan Ramsay Song, "O ruddier than the cherry" John Gay "Tell me, my Heart, if this be Love" George Lyttleton The Fair Thief Charles Wyndham Amoret Mark Akenside Song, "The shape alone let others Prize" Mark Akenside Kate of Aberdeen John Cunningham Song, "Who has robbed the ocean cave" John Shaw Chloe Robert Burns "O Mally's Meek, Mally's Sweet" Robert Burns The Lover's Choice Thomas Bedingfield Rondeau Redouble John Payne "My Love She's but a Lassie yet" James Hogg Jessie, the Flower o' Dunblane Robert Tannahill Margaret and Dora Thomas Campbell Dagonet's Canzonet Ernest Rhys Stanzas for Music, "There be none of Beauty's daughters" George Gordon Byron "Flowers I would Bring" Aubrey Thomas de Vere "It is not Beauty I Demand" George Darley Song, "She is not fair to outward view" Hartley Coleridge Song, "A violet in her lovely hair" Charles Swain Eileen Aroon Gerald Griffin Annie Laurie Unknown To Helen Edgar Allan Poe "A Voice by the Cedar Tree" Alfred Tennyson Song, "Nay, but you, who do not love her" Robert Browning The Henchman John Green1eaf Whittier Lovely Mary Donnelly William Allingham Love in the Valley George Meredith Marian George Meredith Praise of My Lady William Morris Madonna Mia Algernon Charles Swinburne "Meet we no Angels, Pansie" Thomas Ashe To Daphne Walter Besant "Girl of the Red Mouth" Martin MacDermott The Daughter of Mendoza Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar "If She be made of White and Red" Herbert P. Horne The Lover's Song Edward Rowland Sill "When First I Saw Her" George Edward Woodberry My April Lady Henry Van Dyke The Milkmaid Austin Dobson Song, "This peach is pink with such a pink" Norman Gale In February Henry Simpson "Love, I Marvel What You Are" Trumbull Stickney Ballade of My Lady's Beauty Joyce Kilmer Ursula Robert Underwood Johnson Villanelle of His Lady's Treasures Ernest Dowson Song, "Love, by that loosened hair" Bliss Carman Song, "O, like a queen's her happy tread" William Watson Any Lover, Any Lass Richard Middleton Songs Ascending Witter Bynner Song, "'Oh! Love,' they said, 'is King of Kings'" Rupert Brooke Song, "How do I love you" Irene Rutherford McLeod To.... In Church Alan Seeger After Two Years Richard Aldington Praise Seumas O'Sullivan PLAINTS AND PROTESTATIONS "Forget not Yet" Thomas Wyatt Fawnia Robert Greene The Passionate Shepherd to His Love Christopher Marlowe The Nymph's Reply to the Passionate Shepherd Walter Raleigh "Wrong not, Sweet Empress of My Heart" Walter Raleigh To His Coy Love Michael Drayton Her Sacred Bower Thomas Campion To Lesbia Thomas Campion "Love me or Not" Thomas Campion "There is None, O None but You" Thomas Campion Of Corinna's Singing Thomas Campion "Were my Heart as some Men's are" Thomas Campion "Kind are her Answers" Thomas Campion To Celia Ben Jonson Song, "O, do not wanton with those eyes" Ben Jonson Song, "Go and catch a falling star" John Donne The Message John Donne Song, "Ladies, though to your conquering eyes" George Etherege To a Lady Asking Him how Long He would Love Her" George Etherege To Aenone Robert Herrick To Anthea, who may Command him Anything Robert Herrick The Bracelet: To Julia Robert Herrick To the Western Wind Robert Herrick To my Inconstant Mistress Thomas Carew Persuasions to Enjoy Thomas Carew Mediocrity in Love Rejected Thomas Carew The Message Thomas Heywood "How Can the Heart forget Her" Francis Davison To Roses in the Bosom of Castara William Habington To Flavia Edmund Waller "Love not Me for Comely Grace" Unknown "When, Dearest, I but Think of Thee" Suckling or Felltham A Doubt of Martyrdom John Suckling To Chloe William Cartwright I'll Never Love Thee More James Graham To Althea, from Prison Richard Lovelace Why I Love Her Alexander Brome To his Coy Mistress Andrew Marvell A Deposition from Beauty Thomas Stanley "Love in thy Youth, Fair Maid" Unknown To Celia Charles Cotton To Celia Charles Sedley A Song, "My dear mistress Has a Heart" John Wilmot Love and Life John Wilmot Constancy John Wilmot Song, "Too late, alas, I must Confess" John Wilmot Song, "Come, Celia, let's agree at last" John Sheffield The Enchantment Thomas Otway Song, "Only tell her that I love" John Cutts "False though She be" William Congreve To Silvia Anne Finch "Why, Lovely Charmer" Unknown Against Indifference Charles Webbe A Song to Amoret Henry Vaughan The Lass of Richmond Hill James Upton Song, "Let my voice ring out and over the earth" James Thomson Gifts James Thomson Amynta Gilbert Elliot "O Nancy! wilt Thou go with Me" Thomas Percy Cavalier's Song Robert Cunninghame-Graham "My Heart is a Lute" Anne Barnard Song, "Had I a heart for falsehood framed" Richard Brinsley Sheridan Meeting George Crabbe "O Were my Love you Lilac Fair" Robert Burns "Bonnie Wee Thing" Robert Burns Rose Aylmer Walter Savage Landor "Take back the Virgin Page" Thomas Moore "Believe me, if all Those Endearing Young Charms" Thomas Moore The Nun Leigh Hunt Only of Thee and Me Louis Untermeyer To-- Percy Bysshe Shelley From the Arabic Percy Bysshe Shelley The Wandering Knight's Song John Gibson Lockhart Song, "Love's on the highroad" Dana Burnett The Secret Love A. E. The Flower of Beauty George Darley My Share of the World Alice Furlong Song, "A lake and a fairy boat" Thomas Hood "Smile and Never Heed Me" Charles Swain Are They not all Ministering Spirits Robert Stephen Hawker Maiden Eyes Gerald Griffin Hallowed Places Alice Freeman Palmer The Lady's "Yes" Elizabeth Barrett Browning Song, "It is the miller's daughter" Alfred Tennyson Lilian Alfred Tennyson Bugle Song, from "The Princess" Alfred Tennyson Ronsard to His Mistress William Makepeace Thackeray "When You are Old" William Butler Yeats Song, "You'll love me yet, and I can tarry" Robert Browning Love in a Life Robert Browning Life in a Love Robert Browning The Welcome Thomas Osborne Davis Urania Matthew Arnold Three Shadows Dante Gabriel Rossetti Since we Parted Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton A Match Algernon Charles Swinburne A Ballad of Life Algernon Charles Swinburne A Leave-Taking Algernon Charles Swinburne A Lyric Algernon Charles Swinburne Maureen John Todhunter A Love Symphony Arthur O'Shaughnessy Love on the Mountain Thomas Boyd Kate Temple's Song Mortimer Collins My Queen Unknown "Darling, Tell me Yes" John Godfrey Saxe "Do I Love Thee" John Godfrey Saxe "O World, be Nobler" Laurence Binyon "In the Dark, in the Dew" Mary Newmarch Prescott Nanny Francis Davis A Trifle Henry Timrod Romance Robert Louis Stevenson "Or Ever the Knightly Years were Gone" William Ernest Henley Rus in Urbe Clement Scott My Road Oliver Opdyke A White Rose John Boyle O'Reilly "Some Day of Days" Nora Perry The Telephone Robert Frost Where Love is Amelia Josephine Burr That Day You Came Lizette Woodworth Reese Amantium Irae Ernest Dowson In a Rose Garden John Bennett "God Bless You, Dear, To-day" John Bennett To-day Benjamin R. C. Low To Arcady Charles Buxton Going Wild Wishes Ethel M. Hewitt "Because of You" Sophia Almon Hensley Then Rose Terry Cooke The Missive Edmund Gosse Plymouth Harbor Mrs. Ernest Radford The Serf's Secret William Vaughn Moody "O, Inexpressible as Sweet" George Edward Woodberry The Cyclamen Arlo Bates The West-Country Lover Alice Brown "Be Ye in Love with April-Tide" Clinton Scollard Unity Alfred Noyes The Queen William Winter A Lover's Envy Henry Van Dyke Star Song Robert Underwood Johnson "My Heart Shall be Thy Garden" Alice Meynell At Night Alice Meynell Song, "Song is so old" Hermann Hagedorn "All Last Night" Lascelles Abercrombie The Last Word Frederic Lawrence Knowles "Heart of my Heart" Unknown My Laddie Amelie Rives The Shaded Pool Norman Gale Good-Night S. Weir Mitchell The Mystic Witter Bynner "I Am the Wind" Zoe Akins "I Love my Life, But not Too Well" Harriet Monroe "This is my Love for You" Grace Fallow Norton MY LADY'S LIPS Lips and Eyes Thomas Middleton The Kiss Ben Jonson "Take, O Take Those Lips Away" John Fletcher A Stolen Kiss George Wither Song, "My Love bound me with a kiss" Unknown To Electra Robert Herrick "Come, Chloe, and Give Me Sweet Kisses" Charles Hanbury Williams A Riddle William Cowper To a Kiss John Wolcot Song, "Often I have heard it said" Walter Savage Landor The First Kiss of Love George Gordon Byron "Jenny Kissed Me" Leigh Hunt "I Fear Thy Kisses, Gentle Maiden" Percy Bysshe Shelley Love's Philosophy Percy Bysshe Shelley Song, "The moth's kiss, first" Robert Browning Summum Bonum Robert Browning The First Kiss Theodore Watts-Dunton To My Love John Godfrey Saxe To Lesbia John Godfrey Saxe Make Believe Alice Cary Kissing's No Sin Unknown To Anne William Maxwell Song, "There is many a love in the land, my love" Joaquin Miller Phyllis and Corydon Arthur Colton AT HER WINDOW "Hark, Hark, the Lark" William Shakespeare "Sleep, Angry Beauty" Thomas Campion Matin Song Nathaniel Field The Night-Piece: To Julia Robert Herrick Morning William D'Avenant Matin Song Thomas Heywood The Rose Richard Lovelace Song, "See, see, she wakes! Sabina wakes" William Congreve Mary Morison Robert Burns Wake, Lady Joanna Baillie The Sleeping Beauty Samuel Rogers "The Young May Moon" Thomas Moore "Row Gently Here" Thomas Moore Morning Serenade Madison Cawein Serenade Aubrey Thomas De Vere Lines to an Indian Air Percy Bysshe Shelley Good-Night Percy Bysshe Shelley Serenade George Darley Serenade Thomas Hood Serenade Edward Coote Pinkney Serenade Henry Timrod Serenade Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "Come into the Garden, Maud" Alfred Tennyson At Her Window Frederick Locker-Lampson Bedouin Song Bayard Taylor Night and Love Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton Nocturne Thomas Bailey Aldrich Palabras Carinosas Thomas Bailey Aldrich Serenade Oscar Wilde The Little Red Lark Alfred Perceval Graves Serenade Richard Middleton THE COMEDY OF LOVE A Lover's Lullaby George Gascoigne Phillida and Corydon Nicholas Breton "Crabbed Age and Youth" William Shakespeare "It Was a Lover and His Lass" William Shakespeare "I Loved a Lass" George Wither To Chloris Charles Sedley Song, "The merchant, to secure his Treasure" Matthew Prior Pious Selinda William Congreve Fair Hebe John West A Maiden's Ideal of a Husband Henry Carey "Phillada Flouts Me" Unknown "When Molly Smiles" Unknown Contentions Unknown "I Asked My Fair, One Happy Day" Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Exchange Samuel Taylor Coleridge "Comin' Through the Rye" Robert Burns "Green Grow the Rashes, O" Robert Burns Defiance Walter Savage Landor Of Clementina Walter Savage Landor "The Time I've Lost in Wooing" Thomas Moore Dear Fanny Thomas Moore A Certain Young Lady Washington Irving "Where Be You Going, You Devon Maid" John Keats Love in a Cottage Nathaniel Parker Willis Song of the Milkmaid from "Queen Mary" Alfred Tennyson "Wouldn't You Like to Know" John Godfrey Saxe "Sing Heigh-ho" Charles Kingsley The Golden Fish George Arnold The Courtin' James Russell Lowell L'Eau Dormante Thomas Bailey Aldrich A Primrose Dame Gleeson White If James Jeffrey Roche Don't James Jeffrey Roche An Irish Love-Song Robert Underwood Johnson Growing Old Walter Learned Time's Revenge Walter Learned In Explanation Walter Learned Omnia Vincit Alfred Cochrane A Pastoral Norman Gale A Rose Arlo Bates "Wooed and Married and A'" Alexander Ross "Owre the Moor Amang the Heather" Jean Glover Marriage and the Care O't Robert Lochore The Women Folk James Hogg "Love is Like a Dizziness" James Hogg "Behave Yoursel' before Folk" Alexander Rodger Rory O'More; or, Good Omens Samuel Lover Ask and Have Samuel Lover Kitty of Coleraine Charles Dawson Shanly The Plaidie Charles Sibley Kitty Neil John Francis Waller "The Dule's i' this Bonnet o' Mine" Edwin Waugh The Ould Plaid Shawl Francis A. Fahy Little Mary Cassidy Francis A. Fahy The Road Patrick R. Chalmers Twickenham Ferry Theophile Marzials THE HUMOR OF LOVE Song, "I prithee send me back my Heart" John Suckling A Ballad Upon a Wedding John Suckling To Chloe Jealous Matthew Prior Jack and Joan Thomas Campion Phillis and Corydon Richard Greene Sally in Our Alley Henry Carey The Country Wedding Unknown "O Merry may the Maid be" John Clerk The Lass o' Gowrie Carolina Nairne The Constant Swain and Virtuous Maid Unknown When the Kye Comes Hame James Hogg The Low-Backed Car Samuel Lover The Pretty Girl of Loch Dan Samuel Ferguson Muckle-Mouth Meg Robert Browning Muckle-Mou'd Meg James Ballantine Glenlogie Unknown Lochinvar Walter Scott Jock of Hazeldean Walter Scott Candor Henry Cuyler Bunner "Do you Remember" Thomas Haynes Bayly Because Edward Fitzgerald Love and Age Thomas Love Peacock To Helen Winthrop Mackworth Praed At the Church Gate William Makepeace Thackeray Mabel, in New Hampshire James Thomas Fields Toujours Amour Edmund Clarence Stedman The Doorstep Edmund Clarence Stedman The White Flag John Hay A Song of the Four Seasons Austin Dobson The Love-Knot Nora Perry Riding Down Nora Perry "Forgettin'" Moira O'Neill "Across the Fields to Anne" Richard Burton Pamela in Town Ellen Mackay Hutchinson Cortissoz Yes? Henry Cuyler Bunner The Prime of Life Walter Learned Thoughts on the Commandments George Augustus Baker THE IRONY OF LOVE "Sigh no More, Ladies" William Shakespeare A Renunciation Edward Vere A Song, "Ye happy swains, whose hearts are free" George Etherege To His Forsaken Mistress Robert Ayton To an Inconstant Robert Ayton Advice to a Girl Thomas Campion Song, "Follow a shadow, it still flies you" Ben Jonson True Beauty Francis Beaumont The Indifferent Francis Beaumont The Lover's Resolution George Wither His Further Resolution Unknown Song, "Shall I tell you whom I love" William Browne To Dianeme Robert Herrick Ingrateful Beauty Threatened Thomas Carew Disdain Returned Thomas Carew "Love Who Will, for I'll Love None" William Browne Valerius on Women Thomas Heywood Dispraise of Love, and Lovers' Follies Francis Davison The Constant Lover John Suckling Song, "Why so pale and wan, fond Lover" John Suckling Wishes to His Supposed Mistress Richard Crashaw Song, "Love in fantastic Triumph sate" Aphra Behn Les Amours Charles Cotton Rivals William Walsh I Lately Vowed, but 'Twas in Haste John Oldmixon The Touchstone Samuel Bishop Air, "I ne'er could any luster see" Richard Brinsley Sheridan "I Took a Hansom on Today" William Ernest Henley Da Capo Henry Cuyler Bunner Song Against Women Willard Huntington Wright Song of Thyrsis Philip Freneau The Test Walter Savage Landor "The Fault is not Mine" Walter Savage Landor The Snake Thomas Moore "When I Loved You" Thomas Moore A Temple to Friendship Thomas Moore The Glove and the Lions Leigh Hunt To Woman George Gordon Byron Love's Spite Aubrey Thomas de Vere Lady Clara Vere de Vere Alfred Tennyson Shadows Richard Monckton Milnes Sorrows of Werther William Makepeace Thackeray The Age of Wisdom William Makepeace Thackeray Andrea del Sarto Robert Browning My Last Duchess Robert Browning Adam, Lilith, and Eve Robert Browning The Lost Mistress Robert Browning Friend and Lover Mary Ainge de Vere Lost Love Andrew Lang Vobiscum est Iope Thomas Campion Four Winds Sara Teasdale To Marion Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Crowned Amy Lowell Hebe James Russell Lowell "Justine, You Love me Not" John Godfrey Saxe Snowdrop William Wetmore Story When the Sultan Goes to Ispahan Thomas Bailey Aldrich The Shadow Dance Louise Chandler Moulton "Along the Field as we Came by" Alfred Edward Housman "When I was One-and-Twenty" Alfred Edward Housman "Grieve Not, Ladies" Anna Hempstead Branch Suburb Harold Monro The Betrothed Rudyard Kipling LOVE'S SADNESS "The Night has a Thousand Eyes" Francis William Bourdillon "I Saw my Lady Weep" Unknown Love's Young Dream Thomas Moore "Not Ours the Vows" Bernard Barton The Grave of Love Thomas Love Peacock "We'll go no More a Roving" George Gordon Byron Song, "Sing the old song, amid the sounds dispersing" Aubrey Thomas de Vere The Question Percy Bysshe Shelley The Wanderer Austin Dobson Egyptian Serenade George William Curtis The Water Lady Thomas Hood "Tripping Down the Field-path" Charles Swain Love Not Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton "A Place in Thy Memory" Gerald Griffin Inclusions Elizabeth Barrett Browning Mariana Alfred Tennyson Ask Me no More Alfred Tennyson A Woman's Last Word Robert Browning The Last Ride Together Robert Browning Youth and Art Robert Browning Two in the Campagna Robert Browning One Way of Love Robert Browning "Never the Time and the Place" Robert Browning Song, "Oh! that we two were Maying" Charles Kingsley For He Had Great Possessions Richard Middleton Windle-straws Edward Dowden Jessie Thomas Edward Brown The Chess-board Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton Aux Italiens Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton Song, "I saw the day's white rapture" Charles Hanson Towne The Lonely Road Kenneth Rand Evensong Ridgely Torrence The Nymph's Song to Hylas William Morris No and Yes Thomas Ashe Love in Dreams John Addington Symonds "A Little While I fain would Linger Yet" Paul Hamilton Hayne Song, "I made another garden, yea" Arthur O'Shaughnessy Song, "Has summer come without the rose" Arthur O'Shaughnessy After Philip Bourke Marston After Summer Philip Bourke Marston Rococo Algernon Charles Swinburne Rondel Algernon Charles Swinburne The Oblation Algernon Charles Swinburne The Song of the Bower Dante Gabriel Rossetti Song, "We break the glass, whose sacred wine" Edward Coote Pinkney Maud Muller John Greenleaf Whittier La Grisette Oliver Wendell Holmes The Dark Man Nora Hopper Eurydice Francis William Bourdillon A Woman's Thought Richard Watson Gilder Laus Veneris Louise Chandler Moulton Adonais Will Wallace Harney Face to Face Frances Cochrane Ashore Laurence Hope Khristna and His Flute Laurence Hope Impenitentia Ultima Ernest Dowson Non Sum Quails Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae Ernest Dowson Quid non Speremus, Amantes? Ernest Dowson "So Sweet Love Seemed" Robert Bridges An Old Tune Andrew Lang Refuge William Winter Midsummer Ella Wheeler Wilcox Ashes of Roses Elaine Goodale Sympathy Althea Gyles The Look Sara Teasdale "When My Beloved Sleeping Lies" Irene Rutherford McLeod Love and Life Julie Mathilde Lippman Love's Prisoner Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer Rosies Agnes I. Hanrahan At the Comedy Arthur Stringer "Sometime It may Be" Arthur Colton "I heard a Soldier" Herbert Trench The Last Memory Arthur Symonds "Down by the Salley Gardens" William Butler Yates Ashes of Life Edna St. Vincent Millay A Farewell Alice Brown THE PARTED LOVERS Song, "O mistress mine, where are you roaming" William Shakespeare "Go, Lovely Rose" Edmund Waller To the Rose: A Song Robert Herrick Memory William Browne To Lucasta, Going to the Wars Richard Lovelace To Lucasta, Going beyond the Seas Richard Lovelace Song to a Fair Young Lady, Going out of the Town in the Spring John Dryden Song, "To all you ladies now at land" Charles Sackville Song, "In vain you tell your parting lover" Matthew Prior Black-Eyed Susan John Gay Irish Molly O Unknown Song, "At setting day and rising morn" Allan Ramsay Lochaber no More Allan Ramsey Willie and Helen Hew Ainslie Absence Richard Jago "My Mother Bids me Bind my Hair" Anne Hunter "Blow High! Blow Low" Charles Dibdin The Siller Croun Susanna Blamire "My Nannie's Awa" Robert Burns "Ae Fond Kiss" Robert Burns "The Day Returns" Robert Burns My Bonnie Mary Robert Burns A Red, Red Rose Robert Burns I Love My Jean Robert Burns and John Hamilton The Rover's Adieu, from "Rokeby" Walter Scott "Loudoun's Bonnie Woods and Braes" Robert Tannahill "Fare Thee Well" George Gordon Byron "Maid of Athens, Ere We Part" George Gordon Byron "When We Two Parted" George Gordon Byron "Go, Forget Me" Charles Wolfe Last Night George Darley Adieu Thomas Carlyle Jeanie Morrison William Motherwell The Sea-lands Orrick Johns Fair Ines Thomas Hood A Valediction Elizabeth Barrett Browning Farewell John Addington Symonds "I Do Not Love Thee" Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton The Palm-tree and the Pine Richard Monckton Milnes "O Swallow, Swallow Flying South" Alfred Tennyson The Flower's Name Robert Browning To Marguerite Matthew Arnold Separation Matthew Arnold Longing Matthew Arnold Divided Jean Ingelow My Playmate John Greenleaf Whittier A Farewell Coventry Patmore Departure Coventry Patmore A song of Parting H. C. Compton Mackenzie Song, "Fair is the night, and fair the day" William Morris At Parting Algernon Charles Swinburne "If She But Knew" Arthur O'Shaughnessy Kathleen Mavourneen Louisa Macartney Crawford Robin Adair Caroline Keppel "If You Were Here" Philip Bourke Marston "Come to Me, Dearest" Joseph Brenan Song, "'Tis said that absence Conquers love" Frederick William Thomas Parting Gerald Massey The Parting Hour Olive Custance A Song of Autumn Rennell Rodd The Girl I Left Behind Me Unknown "When We are Parted" Hamilton Aide Remember or Forget Hamilton Aide Nancy Dawson Herbert P. Horne My Little Love Charles B. Hawley For Ever William Caldwell Roscoe Auf Wiedersehen James Russell Lowell "Forever and a Day" Thomas Bailey Aldrich Old Gardens Arthur Upson Ferry Hinksey Laurence Binyon Wearyin' fer You Frank L. Stanton The Lovers of Marchaid Marjorie L. C. Pickthall Song, "She's somewhere in the sunlight strong" Richard Le Gallienne The Lover Thinks of His Lady in the North Shaemas O Sheel Chanson de Rosemonde Richard Hovey Ad Domnulam Suam Ernest Dawson Marian Drury Bliss Carman Love's Rosary Alfred Noyes When She Comes Home James Whitcomb Riley THE TRAGEDY OF LOVE Song, "My silks and fine array" William Blake The Flight of Love Percy Bysshe Shelley "Farewell! If ever Fondest Prayer" George Gordon Byron Porphyria's Lover Robert Browning Modern Beauty Arthur Symons La Belle Dame Sans Merci John Keats Tantalus--Texas Joaquin Miller Enchainment Arthur O'Shaughnessy Auld Robin Gray Anne Barnard Lost Light Elizabeth Akers A Sigh Harriet Prescott Spofford Hereafter Harriet Prescott Spofford Endymion Oscar Wilde "Love is a Terrible Thing" Grace Fallow Norton The Ballad of the Angel Theodosia Garrison "Love Came Back at Fall o' Dew" Lizette Woodworth Reese I Shall not Care Sara Teasdale Outgrown Julia C. R. Dorr A Tragedy Edith Nesbit Left Behind Elizabeth Akers The Forsaken Merman Matthew Arnold The Portrait Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton The Rose and Thorn Paul Hamilton Hayne To Her--Unspoken Amelia Josephine Burr A Light Woman Robert Browning From the Turkish George Gordon Byron A Summer Wooing Louise Chandler Moulton Butterflies John Davidson Unseen Spirits Nathaniel Parker Willis "Grandmither, Think Not I Forget" Willa Sibert Cather Little Wild Baby Margaret Thomson Janvier A Cradle Song Nicholas Breton Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament Unknown A Woman's Love John Hay A Tragedy Theophile Marzials "Mother, I Cannot Mind My Wheel" Walter Savage Landor Airly Beacon Charles Kingsley A Sea Child Bliss Carman From the Harbor Hill Gustav Kobbe Allan Water Matthew Gregory Lewis Forsaken Unknown Bonnie Doon Robert Burns The Two Lovers Richard Hovey The Vampire Rudyard Kipling Agatha Alfred Austin "A Rose Will Fade" Dora Sigerson Shorter Affaire d'Amour Margaret Deland A Casual Song Roden Noel The Way of It John Vance Cheney "When Lovely Woman Stoops to Folly" Oliver Goldsmith Folk-Song Louis Untermeyer A Very Old Song William Laird "She Was Young and Blithe and Fair" Harold Monro The Lass that Died of Love Richard Middleton The Passion-Flower Margaret Fuller Norah Zoe Akins Of Joan's Youth Louise Imogen Guiney There's Wisdom in Women Rupert Brooke Goethe and Frederika Henry Sidgwick The Song of the King's Minstrel Richard Middleton Annie Shore and Johnnie Doon Patrick Orr Emmy Arthur Symons The Ballad of Camden Town James Elroy Flecker LOVE AND DEATH Helen of Kirconnell Unknown Willy Drowned in Yarrow Unknown Annan Water Unknown The Lament of the Border Widow Unknown Aspatia's Song from "The Maid's Tragedy" John Fletcher A Ballad, "'Twas when the seas were roaring" John Gay The Braes of Yarrow John Logan The Churchyard on the Sands Lord de Tabley The Minstrel's Song from "Aella" Thomas Chatterton Highland Mary Robert Burns To Mary in Heaven Robert Burns Lucy William Wordsworth Proud Maisie Walter Scott Song, "Earl March looked on His dying child" Thomas Campbell The Maid's Lament Walter Savage Landor "She is Far from the Land" Thomas Moore "At the Mid Hour of Night" Thomas Moore On a Picture by Poussin John Addington Symonds Threnody Ruth Guthrie Harding Strong as Death Henry Cuyler Banner "I Shall not Cry Return" Ellen M. H. Gates "Oh! Snatched away in Beauty's Bloom" George Gordon Byron To Mary Charles Wolfe My Heart and I Elizabeth Barrett Browning Rosalind's Scroll Elizabeth Barrett Browning Lament of the Irish Emigrant Helen Selina Sheridan The King of Denmark's Ride Caroline E. S. Norton The Watcher James Stephens The Three Sisters Arthur Davison Ficke Ballad May Kendall "O that 'Twere Possible" Alfred Tennyson "Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead" Alfred Tennyson Evelyn Hope Robert Browning Remembrance Emily Bronte Song,"The linnet in the rocky dells" Emily Bronte Song of the Old Love Jean Ingelow Requiescat Matthew Arnold Too Late Dinah Maria Mulock Craik Four Years Dinah Maria Mulock Craik Barbara Alexander Smith Song, "When I am dead, my dearest" Christina Georgina Rossetti Sarrazine's Song to Her Dead Lover Arthur O'Shaughnessy Love and Death Rosa Mulholland To One in Paradise Edgar Allan Poe Annabel Lee Edgar Allan Poe For Annie Edgar Allan Poe Telling the Bees John Greenleaf Whittier A Tryst Louise Chandler Moulton Love's Resurrection Day Louise Chandler Moulton Heaven Martha Gilbert Dickinson Janette's Hair Charles Graham Halpine The Dying Lover Richard Henry Stoddard "When the Grass Shall Cover Me" Ina Coolbrith Give Love Today Ethel Talbot Until Death Elizabeth Akers Florence Vane Phillip Pendleton Cooke "If Spirits Walk" Sophie Jewett Requiescat Oscar Wilde Lyric, "You would have understood me, had you waited" Ernest Dowson Romance Andrew Lang Good-Night Hester A. Benedict Requiescat Rosamund Marriott Watson The Four Winds Charles Henry Luders The King's Ballad Joyce Kilmer Heliotrope Harry Thurston Peck "Lydia is Gone this Many a Year" Lizette Woodworth Reese After Lizette Woodworth Reese Memories Arthur Stringer To Diane Helen Hay Whitney "Music I Heard" Conrad Aiken Her Dwelling-place Ada Foster Murray The Wife from Fairyland Richard Le Gallienne In the Fall o' Year Thomas S. Jones, Jr The Invisible Bride Edwin Markham Rain on a Grave Thomas Hardy Patterns Amy Lowell Dust Rupert Brooke Ballad, "The roses in my garden" Maurice Baring "The Little Rose is Dust, My Dear" Grace Hazard Conkling Dirge Adelaide Crapsey The Little Red Ribbon James Whitcomb Riley The Rosary Robert Cameron Rogers LOVE'S FULFILLMENT "My True-love Hath My Heart" Philip Sidney Song, "O sweet delight" Thomas Campion The Good-Morrow John Donne "There's Gowd in the Breast" James Hogg The Beggar Maid Alfred Tennyson Refuge A.E. At Sunset Louis V. Ledoux "One Morning Oh! so Early" Jean Ingelow Across the Door Padraic Colum May Margaret Theophile Marzials Rondel, "Kissing her hair, I sat against her feet" Algernon Charles Swinburne A Spring Journey Alice Freeman Palmer The Brookside Richard Monckton Milnes Song, "For me the jasmine buds unfold" Florence Earle Coates What My Lover Said Homer Greene May-Music Rachel Annand Taylor Song, "Flame at the core of the World" Arthur Upson A Memory Frederic Lawrence Knowles Love Triumphant Frederic Lawrence Knowles Lines, "Love within the lover's breast" George Meredith Love among the Ruins Robert Browning Earl Mertoun's Song Robert Browning Meeting at Night Robert Browning Parting at Morning Robert Browning The Turn of the Road Alice Rollit Coe "My Delight and Thy Delight" Robert Bridges "O, Saw Ye the Lass" Richard Ryan Love at Sea Algernon Charles Swinburne Mary Beaton's Song Algernon Charles Swinburne Plighted Dinah Maria Mulock Craik A Woman's Question Adelaide Anne Procter "Dinna Ask Me" John Dunlop A Song, "Sing me a sweet, low song of night" Hildegarde Hawthorne The Reason James Oppenheim "My Own Cailin Donn" George Sigerson Nocturne Amelia Josephine Burr Surrender Amelia Josephine Burr "By Yon Burn Side" Robert Tannahill A Pastoral, "Flower of the medlar" Theophile Marzials "When Death to Either shall Come" Robert Bridges The Reconciliation Alfred Tennyson Song, "Wait but a little while" Norman Gale Content Norman Gale Che Sara Sara Victor Plarr "Bid Adieu to Girlish Days" James Joyce To F.C. Mortimer Collins Spring Passion Joel Elias Spingarn Advice to a Lover S. Charles Jellicoe "Yes" Richard Doddridge Blackmore Love Samuel Taylor Coleridge Nested Habberton Lulham The Letters Alfred Tennyson Prothalamion Edmund Spenser Epithalamion Edmund Spenser The Kiss Sara Teasdale Marriage Wilfrid Wilson Gibson The Newly-wedded Winthrop Mackworth Praed I Saw Two Clouds at Morning John Gardiner Calkins Brainard Holy Matrimony John Keble The Bride Laurence Hope A Marriage Charm Nora Hopper "Like a Laverock in the Lift" Jean Ingelow My Owen Ellen Mary Patrick Downing Doris: A Pastoral Arthur Joseph Munby "He'd Nothing but His Violin" Mary Kyle Dallas Love's Calendar William Bell Scott Home Dora Greenwell Two Lovers George Eliot The Land of Heart's Desire Emily Huntington Miller My Ain Wife Alexander Laing The Irish Wife Thomas D'Arcy McGee My Wife's a Winsome Wee Thing Robert Burns Lettice Dinah Maria Mulock Craik "If Thou Wert by My Side, My Love" Reginald Heber The Shepherd's Wife's Song Robert Greene "Truth doth Truth Deserve" Philip Sidney The Married Lover Coventry Patmore My Love James Russell Lowell Margaret to Dolcino Charles Kingsley Dolcino to Margaret Charles Kingsley At Last Richard Henry Stoddard The Wife to Her Husband Unknown A Wife's Song William Cox Bennett The Sailor's Wife William Julius Mickle Jerry an' Me Hiram Rich "Don't be Sorrowful, Darling" Rembrandt Peale Winifreda Unknown An Old Man's Idyl Richard Realf The Poet's Song to his Wife Bryan Waller Procter John Anderson Robert Burns To Mary Samuel Bishop The Golden Wedding David Gray Moggy and Me James Hogg "O, Lay Thy Hand in Mine, Dear" Gerald Massey The Exequy Henry King LOVE SONNETS Sonnets from "Amoretti" Edmund Spenser Sonnets from "Astrophel and Stella" Philip Sidney Sonnets from "To Delia" Samuel Daniel Sonnets from "Idea" Michael Drayton Sonnets from "Diana" Henry Constable Sonnets William Shakespeare "Alexis, Here She Stayed" William Drummond "Were I as Base as is the Lowly Plain" Joshua Sylvester A Sonnet of the Moon Charles Best To Mary Unwin William Cowper "Why art Thou Silent" William Wordsworth Sonnets from "The House of Life" Dante Gabriel Rossetti Sonnets Christina Georgina Rossetti How My Songs of Her Began Philip Bourke Marston At the Last Philip Bourke Marston To One who Would Make a Confession Wilfrid Scawen Blunt The Pleasures of Love Wilfrid Scawen Blunt "Were but my Spirit Loosed upon the Air" Louise Chandler Moulton Renouncement Alice Meynell "My Love for Thee" Richard Watson Gilder Sonnets after the Italian Richard Watson Gilder Stanzas from "Modern Love" George Meredith Love in the Winds Richard Hovey "Oh, Death Will Find Me" Rupert Brooke The Busy Heart Rupert Brooke The Hill Rupert Brooke Sonnets from "Sonnets to Miranda" William Watson Sonnets from "Thysia" Morton Luce Sonnets from "Sonnets from the Portuguese" Elizabeth Barrett Browning One Word More Robert Browning PART III POEMS OF NATURE "The World is too Much With Us" William Wordsworth MOTHER NATURE The Book of the World William Drummond Nature Jones Very Compensation Celia Thaxter The Last Hour Ethel Clifford Nature Henry David Thoreau Song of Nature Ralph Waldo Emerson "Great Nature is an Army Gay" Richard Watson Gilder To Mother Nature Frederic Lawrence Knowles Quiet Work Matthew Arnold Nature Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "As an Old Mercer" Mahlon Leonard Fisher Good Company Karle Wilson Baker "Here is the Place where Loveliness Keeps House" Madison Cawein God's World Edna St. Vincent Millay Wild Honey Maurice Thompson Patmos Edith M. Thomas DAWN AND DARK Song, "Phoebus, arise" William Drummond Hymn of Apollo Percy Bysshe Shelley Prelude to "The New Day" Richard Watson Gilder Dawn on the Headland William Watson The Miracle of the Dawn Madison Cawein Dawn-angels A. Mary F. Robinson Music of the Dawn Virginia Bioren Harrison Sunrise on Mansfield Mountain Alice Brown Ode to Evening William Collins "It is a Beauteous Evening Calm and Free" William Wordsworth Gloaming Robert Adger Bowen Evening Melody Aubrey de Vere In the Cool of the Evening Alfred Noyes Twilight Olive Custance Twilight at Sea Amelia C. Welby "This is My Hour" Zoe Akins Song to the Evening Star Thomas Campbell The Evening Cloud John Wilson Song: To Cynthia Ben Jonson My Star Robert Browning Night William Blake To Night Percy Bysshe Shelly To Night Joseph Blanco White Night John Addington Symonds Night James Montgomery He Made the Night Lloyd Mifflin Hymn to the Night Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Night's Mardi Gras Edward J. Wheeler Dawn and Dark Norman Gale Dawn George B. Logan, Jr A Wood Song Ralph Hodgson THE CHANGING YEAR A Song for the Seasons Bryan Waller Procter A Song of the Seasons Cosmo Monkhouse Turn o' the Year Katherine Tynan The Waking Year Emily Dickinson Song, "The year's at the spring" Robert Browning Early Spring Alfred Tennyson Lines Written in Early Spring William Wordsworth In Early Spring Alice Meynell Spring Thomas Nashe A Starling's Spring Rondel James Cousins "When Daffodils begin to Peer" William Shakespeare Spring, from "In Memoriam" Alfred Tennyson The Spring Returns Charles Leonard Moore "When the Hounds of Spring" Algernon Charles Swinburne Song, "Again rejoicing Nature sees" Robert Burns To Spring William Blake An Ode on the Spring Thomas Gray Spring Henry Timrod The Meadows in Spring Edward Fitzgerald The Spring William Barnes "When Spring Comes Back to England" Alfred Noyes New Life Amelia Josephine Burr "Over the Wintry Threshold" Bliss Carman March William Morris Song in March William Gilmore Simms March Nora Hopper Written in March William Wordsworth The Passing of March Robert Burns Wilson Home Thoughts, from Abroad Robert Browning Song, "April, April" William Watson An April Adoration Charles G. D. Roberts Sweet Wild April William Force Stead Spinning in April Josephine Preston Peabody Song: On May Morning John Milton A May Burden Francis Thompson Corinna's Going a-Maying Robert Herrick "Sister, Awake" Unknown May Edward Hovell-Thurlow May Henry Sylvester Cornwell A Spring Lilt Unknown Summer Longings Denis Florence MacCarthy Midsummer John Townsend Trowbridge A Midsummer Song Richard Watson Gilder June, from "The Vision of Sir Launfal" James Russell Lowell June Harrison Smith Morris Harvest Ellen Mackay Hutchinson Cortissoz Scythe Song Andrew Lang September George Arnold Indian Summer Emily Dickinson Prevision Ada Foster Murray A Song of Early Autumn Richard Watson Gilder To Autumn John Keats Ode to Autumn Thomas Hood Ode to the West Wind Percy Bysshe Shelley Autumn: a Dirge Percy Bysshe Shelley Autumn Emily Dickinson "When the Frost is on the Punkin" James Whitcomb Riley Kore Frederic Manning Old October Thomas Constable November C. L. Cleaveland November Mahlon Leonard Fisher Storm Fear Robert Frost Winter: a Dirge Robert Burns Old Winter Thomas Noel The Frost Hannah Flagg Gould The Frosted Pane Charles G. D. Roberts The Frost Spirit John Greenleaf Whittier Snow Elizabeth Akers To a Snowflake Francis Thompson The Snow-Shower William Cullen Bryant Midwinter John Townsend Trowbridge A Glee for Winter Alfred Domett The Death of the Old Year Alfred Tennyson Dirge for the Year Percy Bysshe Shelley WOOD AND FIELD AND RUNNTNG BROOK Waldeinsamkeit Ralph Waldo Emerson "When in the Woods I Wander All Alone" Edward Hovell-Thurlow Aspects of the Pines Paul Hamilton Hayne Out in the Fields Unknown Under the Leaves Albert Laighton "On Wenlock Edge" Alfred Edward Housman "What Do We Plant" Henry Abbey The Tree Jones Very The Brave Old Oak Henry Fothergill Chorley "The Girt Woak Tree that's in the Dell" William Barnes To the Willow-tree Robert Herrick Enchantment Madison Cawein Trees Joyce Kilmer The Holly-tree Robert Southey The Pine Augusta Webster "Woodman, Spare that Tree" George Pope Morris The Beech Tree's Petition Thomas Campbell The Poplar Field William Cowper The Planting of the Apple-Tree William Cullen Bryant Of an Orchard Katherine Tynan An Orchard at Avignon A. Mary F. Robinson The Tide River Charles Kingsley The Brook's Song Alfred Tennyson Arethusa Percy Bysshe Shelley The Cataract of Lodore Robert Southey Song of the Chattahoochee Sidney Lanier "Flow Gently, Sweet Afton" Robert Burns Canadian Boat-Song Thomas Moore The Marshes of Glynn Sidney Lanier The Trosachs William Wordsworth Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Peaks Stephen Crane Kinchinjunga Cale Young Rice The Hills Julian Grenfell Hemlock Mountain Sarah N. Cleghorn Sunrise on Rydal Water John Drinkwater The Deserted Pasture Bliss Carman To Meadows Robert Herrick The Cloud Percy Bysshe Shelley April Rain Robert Loveman Summer Invocation William Cox Bennett April Rain Mathilde Blind To the Rainbow Thomas Campbell GREEN THINGS GROWING My Garden Thomas Edward Brown The Garden Andrew Marvell A Garden Andrew Marvell A Garden Song Austin Dobson In Green Old Gardens Violet Fane A Benedictine Garden Alice Brown An Autumn Garden Bliss Carman Unguarded Ada Foster Murray The Deserted Garden Elizabeth Barrett Browning A Forsaken Garden Algernon Charles Swinburne Green Things Growing Dinah Maria Mulock Craik A Chanted Calendar Sydney Dobell Flowers Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Flowers Thomas Hood A Contemplation Upon Flowers Henry King Almond Blossom Edwin Arnold White Azaleas Harriet McEwen Kimball Buttercups Wilfrid Thorley The Broom Flower Mary Howitt The Small Celandine William Wordsworth To the Small Celandine William Wordsworth Four-leaf Clover Ella Higginson Sweet Clover Wallace Rice "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" William Wordsworth To Daffodils Robert Herrick To a Mountain Daisy Robert Burns A Field Flower James Montgomery To Daisies, Not to Shut so Soon Robert Herrick Daisies Bliss Carman To the Daisy William Wordsworth To Daisies Francis Thompson To the Dandelion James Russell Lowell Dandelion Annie Rankin Annan The Dandelions Helen Gray Cone To the Fringed Gentian William Cullen Bryant Goldenrod Elaine Goodale Eastman Lessons from the Gorse Elizabeth Barrett Browning The Voice of The Grass Sarah Roberts Boyle A Song the Grass Sings Charles G. Blanden The Wild Honeysuckle Philip Freneau The Ivy Green Charles Dickens Yellow Jessamine Constance Fenimore Woolson Knapweed Arthur Christopher Benson Moly Edith Matilda Thomas The Morning-Glory Florence Earle Coates The Mountain Heart's-Ease Bret Harte The Primrose Robert Herrick To Primroses filled with Morning Dew Robert Herrick To an Early Primrose Henry Kirke White The Rhodora Ralph Waldo Emerson The Rose William Browne Wild Roses Edgar Fawcett The Rose of May Mary Howitt A Rose Richard Fanshawe The Shamrock Maurice Francis Egan To Violets Robert Herrick The Violet William Wetmore Story To a Wood-Violet John Banister Tabb The Violet and the Rose Augusta Webster To a Wind-Flower Madison Cawein To Blossoms Robert Herrick "'Tis the Last Rose of Summer" Thomas Moore The Death of the Flowers William Cullen Bryant GOD'S CREATURES Once on a Time Margaret Benson To a Mouse Robert Burns The Grasshopper Abraham Cowley On the Grasshopper and Cricket John Keats To the Grasshopper and the Cricket Leigh Hunt The Cricket William Cowper To a Cricket William Cox Bennett To an Insect Oliver Wendell Holmes The Snail William Cowper The Housekeeper Charles Lamb The Humble-Bee Ralph Waldo Emerson To a Butterfly William Wordsworth Ode to a Butterfly Thomas Wentworth Higginson The Butterfly Alice Freeman Palmer Fireflies Edgar Fawcett The Blood Horse Bryan Waller Procter Birds Moira O'Neill Birds Richard Henry Stoddard Sea-Birds Elizabeth Akers The Little Beach Bird Richard Henry Dana The Blackbird Frederick Tennyson The Blackbird Alfred Edward Housman The Blackbird William Ernest Henley The Blackbird William Barnes Robert of Lincoln William Cullen Bryant The O'Lincon Family Wilson Flagg The Bobolink Thomas Hill My Catbird William Henry Venable The Herald Crane Hamlin Garland The Crow William Canton To the Cuckoo John Logan The Cuckoo Frederick Locker-Lampson To the Cuckoo William Wordsworth The Eagle Alfred Tennyson The Hawkbit Charles G. D. Roberts The Heron Edward Hovell-Thurlow The Jackdaw William Cowper The Green Linnet William Wordsworth To the Man-of-War-Bird Walt Whitman The Maryland Yellow-Throat Henry Van Dyke Lament of a Mocking-bird Frances Anne Kemble "O Nightingale! Thou Surely Art" William Wordsworth Philomel Richard Barnfield Philomela Matthew Arnold On a Nightingale in April William Sharp To the Nightingale William Drummond The Nightingale Mark Akenside To the Nightingale John Milton Philomela Philip Sidney Ode to a Nightingale John Keats Song, 'Tis sweet to hear the merry lark Hartley Coleridge Bird Song Laura E. Richards The Song the Oriole Sings William Dean Howells To an Oriole Edgar Fawcett Song: the Owl Alfred Tennyson "Sweet Suffolk Owl" Thomas Vautor The Pewee John Townsend Trowbridge Robin Redbreast George Washington Doane Robin Redbreast William Allingham The Sandpiper Celia Thaxter The Sea-Mew Elizabeth Barrett Browning To a Skylark William Wordsworth To a Skylark William Wordsworth The Skylark James Hogg The Skylark Frederick Tennyson To a Skylark Percy Bysshe Shelley The Stormy Petrel Bryan Waller Procter The First Swallow Charlotte Smith To a Swallow Building Under our Eaves Jane Welsh Carlyle Chimney Swallows Horatio Nelson Powers Itylus Algernon Charles Swinburne The Throstle Alfred Tennyson Overflow John Banister Tabb Joy-Month David Atwood Wasson My Thrush Mortimer Collins "Blow Softly, Thrush" Joseph Russell Taylor The Black Vulture George Sterling Wild Geese Frederick Peterson To a Waterfowl William Cullen Bryant The Wood-Dove's Note Emily Huntington Miller THE SEA Song for all Seas, all Ships Walt Whitman Stanzas from "The Triumph of Time" Algernon Charles Swinburne The Sea from "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" George Gordon Byron On the Sea John Keats "With Ships the Sea was Sprinkled" William Wordsworth A Song of Desire Frederic Lawrence Knowles The Pines and the Sea Christopher Pearse Cranch Sea Fever John Masefield Hastings Mill C. Fox Smith "A Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea" Allan Cunningham The Sea Bryan Waller Procter Sailor's Song from "Death's Jest Book" Thomas Lovell Beddoes "A Life on the Ocean Wave" Epes Sargent Tacking Ship off Shore Walter Mitchell In Our Boat Dinah Maria Mulock Craik Poor Jack Charles Dibdin "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep" Emma Hart Willard Outward John G. Neihardt A Passer-by Robert Bridges Off Riviere du Loup Duncan Campbell Scott Christmas at Sea Robert Louis Stevenson The Port o' Heart's Desire John S. McGroarty On the Quay John Joy Bell The Forging of the Anchor Samuel Ferguson Drifting Thomas Buchanan Read "How's My Boy" Sydney Dobell The Long White Seam Jean Ingelow Storm Song Bayard Taylor The Mariner's Dream William Dimond The Inchcape Rock Robert Southey The Sea Richard Henry Stoddard The Sands of Dee Charles Kingsley The Three Fishers Charles Kingsley Ballad Harriet Prescott Spofford The Northern Star Unknown The Fisher's Widow Arthur Symons Caller Herrin' Carolina Nairne Hannah Binding Shoes Lucy Larcom The Sailor William Allingham The Burial of the Dane Henry Howard Brownell Tom Bowling Charles Dibdin Messmates Henry Newbolt The Last Buccaneer Charles Kingsley The Last Buccaneer Thomas Babington Macaulay The Leadman's Song Charles Dibdin Homeward Bound William Allingham THE SIMPLE LIFE The Lake Isle of Innisfree William Butler Yeats A Wish Samuel Rogers Ode on Solitude Alexander Pope "Thrice Happy He" William Drummond "Under the Greenwood Tree" William Shakespeare Coridon's Song John Chalkhill The Old Squire Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Inscription in a Hermitage Thomas Warton The Retirement Charles Cotton The Country Faith Norman Gale Truly Great William H. Davies Early Morning at Bargis Hermann Hagedorn The Cup John Townsend Trowbridge A Strip of Blue Lucy Larcom An Ode to Master Anthony Stafford Thomas Randolph "The Midges Dance Aboon the Burn" Robert Tannahill The Plow Richard Hengist Horne The Useful Plow Unknown "To One Who has Been Long in City Pent" John Keats The Quiet Life William Byrd The Wish Abraham Cowley Expostulation and Reply William Wordsworth The Tables Turned William Wordsworth Simple Nature George John Romanes "I Fear no Power a Woman Wields" Ernest McGaffey A Runnable Stag John Davidson Hunting Song Richard Hovey "A-Hunting We Will Go" Henry Fielding The Angler's Invitation Thomas Tod Stoddart The Angler's Wish Izaak Walton The Angler John Chalkhill WANDERLUST To Jane: the Invitation Percy Bysshe Shelley "My Heart's in the Highlands" Robert Burns "Afar in the Desert" Thomas Pringle Spring Song in the City Robert Buchanan In City Streets Ada Smith The Vagabond Robert Louis Stevenson In the Highlands Robert Louis Stevenson The Song my Paddle Sings E. Pauline Johnson The Gipsy Trail Rudyard Kipling Wanderlust Gerald Gould The Footpath Way Katherine Tynan A Maine Trail Gertrude Huntington McGiffert Afoot Charles G. D. Roberts From Romany to Rome Wallace Irwin The Toil of the Trail Hamlin Garland "Do You Fear the Wind?" Hamlin Garland The King's Highway John S. McGroarty The Forbidden Lure Fannie Stearns Davis The Wander-Lovers Richard Hovey The Sea-Gipsy Richard Hovey A Vagabond Song Bliss Carman Spring Song Bliss Carman The Mendicants Bliss Carman The Joys of the Road Bliss Carman The Song of the Forest Ranger Herbert Bashford A Drover Padraic Colum Ballad of Low-lie-down Madison Cawein The Good Inn Herman Knickerbocker Viele Night for Adventures Victor Starbuck Song, "Something calls and whispers" Georgiana Goddard King The Voortrekker Rudyard Kipling The Long Trail Rudyard Kipling PART IV FAMILIAR VERSE, AND POEMS HUMOROUS AND SATIRIC Ballade of the Primitive Jest Andrew Lang THE KINDLY MUSE Time to be Wise Walter Savage Landor Under the Lindens Walter Savage Landor Advice Walter Savage Landor To Fanny Thomas Moore "I'd be a Butterfly" Thomas Haynes Bayly "I'm not a Single Man" Thomas Hood To ----- Winthrop Mackworth Praed The Vicar Winthrop Mackworth Praed The Belle of the Ball-room Winthrop Mackworth Praed The Fine Old English Gentleman Unknown A Ternerie of Littles, upon a Pipkin of Jelly Sent to a Lady Robert Herrick Chivalry at a Discount Edward Fitzgerald The Ballad of Bouillabaisse William Makepeace Thackeray To my Grandmother Frederick Locker-Lampson My Mistress's Boots Frederick Locker-Lampson A Garden Lyric Frederick Locker-Lampson Mrs. Smith Frederick Locker-Lampson The Skeleton in the Cupboard Frederick Locker-Lampson A Terrible Infant Frederick Locker-Lampson Companions Charles Stuart Calverley Dorothy Q Oliver Wendell Holmes My Aunt Oliver Wendell Holmes The Last Leaf Oliver Wendell Holmes Contentment Oliver Wendell Holmes The Boys Oliver Wendell Holmes The Jolly Old Pedagogue George Arnold On an Intaglio Head of Minerva Thomas Bailey Aldrich Thalia Thomas Bailey Aldrich Pan in Wall Street Edmund Clarence Stedman Upon Lesbia--Arguing Alfred Cochrane To Anthea, who May Command Him Anything Alfred Cochrane The Eight-Day Clock Alfred Cochrane A Portrait Joseph Ashby-Sterry "Old Books are Best" Beverly Chew Impression Edmund Gosse "With Strawberries" William Ernest Henley Ballade of Ladies' Names William Ernest Henley To a Pair of Egyptian Slippers Edwin Arnold Without and Within James Russell Lowell "She was a Beauty" Henry Cuyler Bunner Nell Gwynne's Looking-Glass Laman Blanchard Mimnermus in Church William Johnson-Cory Clay Edward Verrall Lucas Aucassin and Nicolete Francis William Bourdillon Aucassin and Nicolette Edmund Clarence Stedman On the Hurry of This Time Austin Dobson "Good-Night, Babette" Austin Dobson A Dialogue from Plato Austin Dobson The Ladies of St. James's Austin Dobson The Cure's Progress Austin Dobson A Gentleman of the Old School Austin Dobson On a Fan Austin Dobson "When I Saw You Last, Rose" Austin Dobson Urceus Exit Austin Dobson A Corsage Bouquet Charles Henry Luders Two Triolets Harrison Robertson The Ballad of Dead Ladies Dante Gabriel Rossetti Ballade of Dead Ladies Andrew Lang A Ballad of Dead Ladies Justin Huntly McCarthy If I Were King Justin Huntly McCarthy A Ballade of Suicide Gilbert Keith Chesterton Chiffons! William Samuel Johnson The Court Historian Walter Thornbury Miss Lou Walter de La Mare The Poet and the Wood-louse Helen Parry Eden Students Florence Wilkinson "One, Two, Three" Henry Cuyler Bunner The Chaperon Henry Cuyler Bunner "A Pitcher of Mignonette" Henry Cuyler Bunner Old King Cole Edwin Arlington Robinson The Master Mariner George Sterling A Rose to the Living Nixon Waterman A Kiss Austin Dobson Biftek aux Champignons Henry Augustin Beers Evolution Langdon Smith A Reasonable Affliction Matthew Prior A Moral in Sevres Mildred Howells On the Fly-leaf of a Book of Old Plays Walter Learned The Talented Man Winthrop Mackworth Praed A Letter of Advice Winthrop Mackworth Praed A Nice Correspondent Frederick Locker-Lampson Her Letter Bret Harte A Dead Letter Austin Dobson The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn Andrew Marvell On the Death of a Favorite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes Thomas Gray Verses on a Cat Charles Daubeny Epitaph on a Hare William Cowper On the Death of Mrs. Throckmorton's Bullfinch William Cowper An Elegy on a Lap-Dog John Gay My Last Terrier John Halsham Geist's Grave Matthew Arnold "Hold" Patrick R. Chalmers THE BARB OF SATIRE The Vicar of Bray Unknown The Lost Leader Robert Browning Ichabod John Greenleaf Whittier What Mr. Robinson Thinks James Russell Lowell The Debate in the Sennit James Russell Lowell The Marquis of Carabas Robert Brough A Modest Wit Selleck Osborn Jolly Jack William Makepeace Thackeray The King of Brentford William Makepeace Thackeray Kaiser & Co A. Macgregor Rose Nongtongpaw Charles Dibdin The Lion and the Cub John Gay The Hare with Many Friends John Gay The Sycophantic Fox and the Gullible Raven Guy Wetmore Carryl The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder George Canning Villon's Straight Tip to all Cross Coves William Ernest Henley Villon's Ballade Andrew Lang A Little Brother of the Rich Edward Sandford Martin The World's Way Thomas Bailey Aldrich For My Own Monument Matthew Prior The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church Robert Browning Up at a Villa--Down in the City Robert Browning All Saints' Edmund Yates An Address to the Unco Guid Robert Burns The Deacon's Masterpiece Oliver Wendell Holmes Ballade of a Friar Andrew Lang The Chameleon James Merrick The Blind Men and the Elephant John Godfrey Saxe The Philosopher's Scales Jane Taylor The Maiden and the Lily John Fraser The Owl-Critic James Thomas Fields The Ballad of Imitation Austin Dobson The Conundrum of the Workshops Rudyard Kipling The V-a-s-e James Jeffrey Roche Hem and Haw Bliss Carmen Miniver Cheevy Edwin Arlington Robinson Then Ag'in Sam Walter Foss A Conservative Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman Similar Cases Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman Man and the Ascidian Andrew Lang The Calf-Path Sam Walter Foss Wedded Bliss Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman Paradise: A Hindoo Legend George Birdseye Ad Chloen, M. A. Mortimer Collins "As Like the Woman as You Can" William Ernest Henley "No Fault in Women" Robert Herrick "Are Women Fair" Francis Davison (?) A Strong Hand Aaron Hill Women's Longing John Fletcher Triolet Robert Bridges The Fair Circassian Richard Garnett The Female Phaeton Matthew Prior The Lure John Boyle O'Reilly The Female of the Species Rudyard Kipling The Woman with the Serpent's Tongue William Watson Suppose Anne Reeve Aldrich Too Candid by Half John Godfrey Saxe Fable Ralph Waldo Emerson Woman's Will Unknown Woman's Will John Godfrey Saxe Plays Walter Savage Landor Remedy Worse than the Disease Matthew Prior The Net of Law James Jeffrey Roche Cologne Samuel Taylor Coleridge Epitaph on Charles II John Wilmot Certain Maxims of Hafiz Rudyard Kipling A Baker's Duzzen uv Wise Sawz Edward Rowland Sill Epigram Samuel Taylor Coleridge Epigram Unknown Epigram Richard Garnett Epigram Richard Garnett Epigram Walter Savage Landor Epigram William Erskine Epigram Richard Brinsley Sheridan Epigram Alexander Pope Epigram Samuel Johnson Epigram John Gay Epigram Alexander Pope Epigram Samuel Taylor Coleridge Epigram Unknown Epigram Samuel Taylor Coleridge Epigram Unknown Epigram Matthew Prior Epigram George Macdonald Epigram Jonathan Swift Epigram Byron's epitaph for Pitt Epigram David Garrick Epigram John Harington Epigram John Byrom Epigram Richard Garnett Epigram Thomas Moore Epigram Unknown Epigram Samuel Taylor Coleridge Epigram John Dryden Epigram Thomas Hood Written on a Looking-glass Unknown An Epitaph George John Cayley On the Aristocracy of Harvard John Collins Bossidy On the Democracy of Yale Frederick Scheetz Jones A General Summary Rudyard Kipling THE MIMICS An Omar for Ladies Josephine Daskam Bacon "When Lovely Woman" Phoebe Cary Fragment in Imitation of Wordsworth Catherine M. Fanshaw Only Seven Henry Sambrooke Leigh Lucy Lake Newton Mackintosh Jane Smith Rudyard Kipling Father William Lewis Carroll The New Arrival George Washington Cable Disaster Charles Stuart Calverley 'Twas Ever Thus Henry Sambrooke Leigh A Grievance James Kenneth Stephen "Not a Sou Had he Got" Richard Harris Barham The Whiting and the Snail Lewis Carroll The Recognition William Sawyer The Higher Pantheism in a Nutshell Algernon Charles Swinburne The Willow-tree William Makepeace Thackeray Poets and Linnets Tom Hood, the Younger The Jam-pot Rudyard Kipling Ballad Charles Stuart Calverley The Poster-girl Carolyn Wells After Dilletante Concetti Henry Duff Traill If Mortimer Collins Nephilidia Algernon Charles Swinburne Commonplaces Rudyard Kipling The Promissory Note Bayard Taylor Mrs. Judge Jenkins Bret Harte The Modern Hiawatha George A. Strong How Often Ben King "If I should Die To-night" Ben King Sincere Flattery James Kenneth Stephen Culture in the Slums William Ernest Henley The Poets at Tea Barry Pain Wordsworth James Kenneth Stephen PART I POEMS OF YOUTH AND AGE THE HUMAN SEASONS Four Seasons fill the measure of the year; There are four seasons in the mind of man: He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear Takes in all beauty with an easy span: He has his Summer, when luxuriously Spring's honeyed cud of youthful thought he loves To ruminate, and by such dreaming high Is nearest unto Heaven: quiet coves His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings He furleth close; contented so to look On mists in idleness--to let fair things Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook:-- He has his Winter too of pale misfeature, Or else he would forego his mortal nature. John Keats [1795-1821] THE BABY "ONLY A BABY SMALL" Only a baby small, Dropped from the skies, Only a laughing face, Two sunny eyes; Only two cherry lips, One chubby nose; Only two little hands, Ten little toes. Only a golden head, Curly and soft; Only a tongue that wags Loudly and oft; Only a little brain, Empty of thought; Only a little heart, Troubled with naught. Only a tender flower Sent us to rear; Only a life to love While we are here; Only a baby small, Never at rest; Small, but how dear to us, God knoweth best. Matthias Barr [1831-?] ONLY Something to live for came to the place, Something to die for maybe, Something to give even sorrow a grace, And yet it was only a baby! Cooing, and laughter, and gurgles, and cries, Dimples for tenderest kisses, Chaos of hopes, and of raptures, and sighs, Chaos of fears and of blisses. Last year, like all years, the rose and the thorn; This year a wilderness maybe; But heaven stooped under the roof on the morn That it brought them only a baby. Harriet Prescott Spofford [1835-1921] INFANT JOY "I have no name; I am but two days old." What shall I call thee? "I happy am, Joy is my name." Sweet joy befall thee! Pretty joy! Sweet joy, but two days old. Sweet joy I call thee; Thou dost smile, I sing the while; Sweet joy befall thee! William Blake [1757-1827] BABY From "At the Back of the North Wind" Where did you come from, baby dear? Out of the everywhere into the here. Where did you get those eyes so blue? Out of the sky as I came through. What makes the light in them sparkle and spin? Some of the starry spikes left in. Where did you get that little tear? I found it waiting when I got here. What makes your forehead so smooth and high? A soft hand stroked it as I went by. What makes your cheek like a warm white rose? I saw something better than any one knows. Whence that three-cornered smile of bliss? Three angels gave me at once a kiss. Where did you get this pearly ear? God spoke, and it came out to hear. Where did you get those arms and hands? Love made itself into bonds and bands. Feet, where did you come, you darling things? From the same box as the cherubs' wings. How did they all just come to be you? God thought about me, and so I grew. But how did you come to us, you dear? God thought about you, and so I am here. George Macdonald [1824-1905] TO A NEW-BORN BABY GIRL And did thy sapphire shallop slip Its moorings suddenly, to dip Adown the clear, ethereal sea From star to star, all silently? What tenderness of archangels In silver, thrilling syllables Pursued thee, or what dulcet hymn Low-chanted by the cherubim? And thou departing must have heard The holy Mary's farewell word, Who with deep eyes and wistful smile Remembered Earth a little while. Now from the coasts of morning pale Comes safe to port thy tiny sail. Now have we seen by early sun, Thy miracle of life begun. All breathing and aware thou art, With beauty templed in thy heart To let thee recognize the thrill Of wings along far azure hill, And hear within the hollow sky Thy friends the angels rushing by. These shall recall that thou hast known Their distant country as thine own, To spare thee word of vales and streams, And publish heaven through thy dreams. The human accents of the breeze Through swaying star-acquainted trees Shall seem a voice heard earlier, Her voice, the adoring sigh of her, When thou amid rosy cherub-play Didst hear her call thee, far away, And dream in very Paradise The worship of thy mother's eyes. Grace Hazard Conkling [1878- TO LITTLE RENEE ON FIRST SEEING HER LYING IN HER CRADLE Who is she here that now I see, This dainty new divinity, Love's sister, Venus' child? She shows Her hues, white lily and pink rose, And in her laughing eyes the snares That hearts entangle unawares. Ah, woe to men if Love should yield His arrows to this girl to wield Even in play, for she would give Sore wounds that none might take and live. Yet no such wanton strain is hers, Nor Leda's child and Jupiter's Is she, though swans no softer are Than whom she fairer is by far. For she was born beside the rill That gushes from Parnassus' hill, And by the bright Pierian spring She shall receive an offering From every youth who pipes a strain Beside his flocks upon the plain. But I, the first, this very day, Will tune for her my humble lay, Invoking this new Muse to render My oaten reed more sweet and tender, Within its vibrant hollows wake Such dulcet voices for her sake As, curved hand at straining ear, I long have stood and sought to hear Borne with the warm midsummer breeze With scent of hay and hum of bees Faintly from far-off Sicily.... Ah, well I know that not for us Are Virgil and Theocritus, And that the golden age is past Whereof they sang, and thou, the last, Sweet Spenser, of their god-like line, Soar far too swift for verse of mine One strain to compass of your song. Yet there are poets that prolong Of your rare voice the ravishment In silver cadences; content Were I if I could but rehearse One stave of Wither's starry verse, Weave such wrought richness as recalls Britannia's lovely Pastorals, Or in some garden-spot suspire One breath of Marvell's magic fire When in the green and leafy shade He sees dissolving all that's made. Ah, little Muse still far too high On weak, clipped wings my wishes fly. Transform them then and make them doves, Soft-moaning birds that Venus loves, That they may circle ever low Above the abode where you shall grow Into your gracious womanhood. And you shall feed the gentle brood From out your hand--content they'll be Only to coo their songs to thee. William Aspenwall Bradley [1878- RHYME OF ONE You sleep upon your mother's breast, Your race begun, A welcome, long a wished-for Guest, Whose age is One. A Baby-Boy, you wonder why You cannot run; You try to talk--how hard you try!-- You're only One. Ere long you won't be such a dunce: You'll eat your bun, And fly your kite, like folk who once Were only One. You'll rhyme and woo, and fight and joke, Perhaps you'll pun! Such feats are never done by folk Before they're One. Some day, too, you may have your joy, And envy none; Yes, you, yourself, may own a Boy, Who isn't One. He'll dance, and laugh, and crow; he'll do As you have done: (You crown a happy home, though you Are only One.) But when he's grown shall you be here To share his fun, And talk of times when he (the Dear!) Was hardly One? Dear Child, 'tis your poor lot to be My little Son; I'm glad, though I am old, you see,-- While you are One. Frederick Locker-Lampson [1821-1895] TO A NEW-BORN CHILD Small traveler from an unseen shore, By mortal eye ne'er seen before, To you, good-morrow. You are as fair a little dame As ever from a glad world came To one of sorrow. We smile above you, but you fret; We call you gentle names, and yet Your cries redouble. 'Tis hard for little babes to prize The tender love that underlies A life of trouble. And have you come from Heaven to earth? That were a road of little mirth, A doleful travel. "Why did I come?" you seem to cry, But that's a riddle you and I Can scarce unravel. Perhaps you really wished to come, But now you are so far from home Repent the trial. What! did you leave celestial bliss To bless us with a daughter's kiss? What self-denial! Have patience for a little space, You might have come to a worse place, Fair Angel-rover. No wonder now you would have stayed, But hush your cries, my little maid, The journey's over. For, utter stranger as you are, There yet are many hearts ajar For your arriving, And trusty friends and lovers true Are waiting, ready-made for you, Without your striving. The earth is full of lovely things, And if at first you miss your wings, You'll soon forget them; And others, of a rarer kind Will grow upon your tender mind-- If you will let them-- Until you find that your exchange Of Heaven for earth expands your range E'en as a flier, And that your mother, you and I, If we do what we should, may fly Than Angels higher. Cosmo Monkhouse [1840-1901] BABY MAY Cheeks as soft as July peaches, Lips whose dewy scarlet teaches Poppies paleness--round large eyes Ever great with new surprise, Minutes filled with shadeless gladness, Minutes just as brimmed with sadness, Happy smiles and wailing cries, Crows and laughs and tearful eyes, Lights and shadows swifter born Than on wind-swept Autumn corn, Ever some new tiny notion Making every limb all motion-- Catching up of legs and arms, Throwings back and small alarms, Clutching fingers--straightening jerks, Twining feet whose each toe works, Kickings up and straining risings, Mother's ever new surprisings, Hands all wants and looks all wonder At all things the heavens under, Tiny scorns of smiled reprovings That have more of love than lovings, Mischiefs done with such a winning Archness, that we prize such sinning, Breakings dire of plates and glasses, Graspings small at all that passes, Pullings off of all that's able To be caught from tray or table; Silences--small meditations, Deep as thoughts of cares for nations, Breaking into wisest speeches In a tongue that nothing teaches, All the thoughts of whose possessing Must be wooed to light by guessing; Slumbers--such sweet angel-seemings, That we'd ever have such dreamings, Till from sleep we see thee breaking, And we'd always have thee waking; Wealth for which we know no measure, Pleasure high above all pleasure, Gladness brimming over gladness, Joy in care--delight in sadness, Loveliness beyond completeness, Sweetness distancing all sweetness, Beauty all that beauty may be-- That's May Bennett, that's my baby. William Cox Bennett [1820-1895] ALICE Of deepest blue of summer skies Is wrought the heaven of her eyes. Of that fine gold the autumns wear Is wrought the glory of her hair. Of rose leaves fashioned in the south Is shaped the marvel of her mouth. And from the honeyed lips of bliss Is drawn the sweetness of her kiss, 'Mid twilight thrushes that rejoice Is found the cadence of her voice, Of winds that wave the western fir Is made the velvet touch of her. Of all earth's songs God took the half To make the ripple of her laugh. I hear you ask, "Pray who is she?"-- This maid that is so dear to me. "A reigning queen in Fashion's whirl?" Nay, nay! She is my baby girl. Herbert Bashford [1871-1928] SONGS FOR FRAGOLETTA I Fragoletta, blessed one! What think you of the light of the sun? Do you think the dark was best, Lying snug in mother's breast? Ah! I knew that sweetness, too, Fragoletta, before you! But, Fragoletta, now you're born, You must learn to love the morn, Love the lovely working light, Love the miracle of sight, Love the thousand things to do-- Little girl, I envy you!-- Love the thousand things to see, Love your mother, and--love me! And some night, Fragoletta, soon, I'll take you out to see the moon; And for the first time, child of ours, You shall--think of it!--look on flowers, And smell them, too, if you are good, And hear the green leaves in the wood Talking, talking, all together In the happy windy weather; And if the journey's not too far For little limbs so lately made, Limb upon limb like petals laid, We'll go and picnic in a star. II Blue eyes, looking up at me, I wonder what you really see, Lying in your cradle there, Fragrant as a branch of myrrh? Helpless little hands and feet, O so helpless! O so sweet! Tiny tongue that cannot talk, Tiny feet that cannot walk, Nothing of you that can do Aught, except those eyes of blue. How they open, how they close!-- Eyelids of the baby-rose. Open and shut--so blue, so wise, Baby-eyelids, baby-eyes. III That, Fragoletta, is the rain Beating upon the window-pane; But lo! The golden sun appears, To kiss away the window's tears. That, Fragoletta, is the wind, That rattles so the window-blind; And yonder shining thing's a star, Blue eyes--you seem ten times as far. That, Fragoletta, is a bird That speaks, yet never says a word; Upon a cherry tree it sings, Simple as all mysterious things; Its little life to peck and pipe, As long as cherries ripe and ripe, And minister unto the need Of baby-birds that feed and feed. This, Fragoletta, is a flower, Open and fragrant for an hour, A flower, a transitory thing, Each petal fleeting as a wing, All a May morning blows and blows, And then for everlasting goes. IV Blue eyes, against the whiteness pressed Of little mother's hallowed breast, The while your trembling lips are fed, Look up at mother's bended head, All benediction over you-- O blue eyes looking into blue! Fragoletta is so small, We wonder that she lives at all-- Tiny alabaster girl, Hardly bigger than a pearl; That is why we take such care, Lest some one run away with her. Richard Le Gallienne [1866- CHOOSING A NAME I have got a new-born sister: I was nigh the first that kissed her. When the nursing-woman brought her To papa, his infant daughter, How papa's dear eyes did glisten! She will shortly be to christen; And papa has made the offer, I shall have the naming of her. Now I wonder what would please her,-- Charlotte, Julia, or Louisa? Ann and Mary, they're too common; Joan's too formal for a woman; Jane's a prettier name beside; But we had a Jane that died. They would say, if 'twas Rebecca, That she was a little Quaker. Edith's pretty, but that looks Better in old English books; Ellen's left off long ago; Blanche is out of fashion now. None that I have named as yet Is so good as Margaret. Emily is neat and fine; What do you think of Caroline? How I'm puzzled and perplexed What to choose or think of next! I am in a little fever Lest the name that I should give her Should disgrace her or defame her;-- I will leave papa to name her. Mary Lamb [1764-1847] WEIGHING THE BABY "How many pounds does the baby weigh-- Baby who came but a month ago? How many pounds from the crowning curl To the rosy point of the restless toe?" Grandfather ties the 'kerchief knot, Tenderly guides the swinging weight, And carefully over his glasses peers To read the record, "only eight." Softly the echo goes around: The father laughs at the tiny girl; The fair young mother sings the words, While grandmother smooths the golden curl. And stooping above the precious thing, Nestles a kiss within a prayer, Murmuring softly "Little one, Grandfather did not weigh you fair." Nobody weighed the baby's smile, Or the love that came with the helpless one; Nobody weighed the threads of care, From which a woman's life is spun. No index tells the mighty worth Of a little baby's quiet breath-- A soft, unceasing metronome, Patient and faithful until death. Nobody weighed the baby's soul, For here on earth no weights there be That could avail; God only knows Its value in eternity. Only eight pounds to hold a soul That seeks no angel's silver wing, But shrines it in this human guise, Within so frail and small a thing! Oh, mother! laugh your merry note, Be gay and glad, but don't forget From baby's eyes looks out a soul That claims a home in Eden yet. Ethel Lynn Beers [1827-1879] ETUDE REALISTE I A baby's feet, like seashells pink, Might tempt, should heaven see meet, An angel's lips to kiss, we think, A baby's feet. Like rose-hued sea-flowers toward the heat They stretch and spread and wink Their ten soft buds that part and meet. No flower-bells that expand and shrink Gleam half so heavenly sweet, As shine on life's untrodden brink A baby's feet. II A baby's hands, like rosebuds furled, Where yet no leaf expands, Ope if you touch, though close upcurled,-- A baby's hands. Then, even as warriors grip their brands When battle's bolt is hurled, They close, clenched hard like tightening bands. No rosebuds yet by dawn impearled Match, even in loveliest lands, The sweetest flowers in all the world,-- A baby's hands. III A baby's eyes, ere speech begin, Ere lips learn words or sighs, Bless all things bright enough to win A baby's eyes. Love, while the sweet thing laughs and lies, And sleep flows out and in, Sees perfect in them Paradise! Their glance might cast out pain and sin, Their speech make dumb the wise, By mute glad godhead felt within A baby's eyes. Algernon Charles Swinburne [1837-1909] LITTLE FEET Two little feet, so small that both may nestle In one caressing hand,-- Two tender feet upon the untried border Of life's mysterious land. Dimpled, and soft, and pink as peach-tree blossoms, In April's fragrant days, How can they walk among the briery tangles, Edging the world's rough ways? These rose-white feet, along the doubtful future, Must bear a mother's load; Alas! since Woman has the heavier burden, And walks the harder road. Love, for a while, will make the path before them All dainty, smooth, and fair,-- Will cull away the brambles, letting only The roses blossom there. But when the mother's watchful eyes are shrouded Away from sight of men, And these dear feet are left without her guiding, Who shall direct them then? How will they be allured, betrayed, deluded, Poor little untaught feet! Into what dreary mazes will they wander, What dangers will they meet? Will they go stumbling blindly in the darkness Of Sorrow's tearful shades? Or find the upland slopes of Peace and Beauty, Whose sunlight never fades? Will they go toiling up Ambition's summit, The common world above? Or in some nameless vale, securely sheltered, Walk side by side with Love? Some feet there be which walk Life's track unwounded, Which find but pleasant ways: Some hearts there be to which this life is only A round of happy days. But these are few. Far more there are who wander Without a hope or friend,-- Who find their journey full of pains and losses, And long to reach the end. How shall it be with her, the tender stranger, Fair-faced and gentle-eyed, Before whose unstained feet the world's rude highway Stretches so fair and wide? Ah! who may read the future? For our darling We crave all blessings sweet, And pray that He who feeds the crying ravens Will guide the baby's feet. Elizabeth Akers [1832-1911] THE BABIE Nae shoon to hide her tiny taes, Nae stockin' on her feet; Her supple ankles white as snaw, Or early blossoms sweet. Her simple dress o' sprinkled pink, Her double, dimplit chin, Her puckered lips, an' baumy mou', With na ane tooth within. Her een sae like her mither's een, Twa gentle, liquid things; Her face is like an angel's face,-- We're glad she has nae wings. She is the buddin' of our luve, A giftie God gied us: We maun na luve the gift owre weel, 'Twad be nae blessin' thus. We still maun luve the Giver mair, An' see Him in the given; An' sae she'll lead us up to Him, Our babie straight frae Heaven. Jeremiah Eames Rankin [1828-1904] LITTLE HANDS Soft little hands that stray and clutch, Like fern fronds curl and uncurl bold, While baby faces lie in such Close sleep as flowers at night that fold, What is it you would, clasp and hold, Wandering outstretched with wilful touch? O fingers small of shell-tipped rose, How should you know you hold so much? Two full hearts beating you inclose, Hopes, fears, prayers, longings, joys and woes,-- All yours to hold, O little hands! More, more than wisdom understands And love, love only knows. Laurence Binyon [1869- BARTHOLOMEW Bartholomew is very sweet, From sandy hair to rosy feet. Bartholomew is six months old, And dearer far than pearls or gold. Bartholomew has deep blue eyes, Round pieces dropped from out the skies. Bartholomew is hugged and kissed: He loves a flower in either fist. Bartholomew's my saucy son: No mother has a sweeter one! Norman Gale [1862- THE STORM-CHILD My child came to me with the equinox, The wild wind blew him to my swinging door, With flakes of tawny foam from off the shore, And shivering spindrift whirled across the rocks. Flung down the sky, the wheeling swallow-flocks Cried him a greeting, and the lordly woods, Waving lean arms of welcome one by one, Cast down their russet cloaks and golden hoods, And bid their dancing leaflets trip and run Before the tender feet of this my son. Therefore the sea's swift fire is in his veins, And in his heart the glory of the sea; Therefore the storm-wind shall his comrade be, That strips the hills and sweeps the cowering plains. October, shot with flashing rays and rains, Inhabits all his pulses; he shall know The stress and splendor of the roaring gales, The creaking boughs shall croon him fairy tales, And the sea's kisses set his blood aglow, While in his ears the eternal bugles blow. May Byron [1861- "ON PARENT KNEES" On parent knees, a naked new-born child, Weeping thou sat'st while all around thee smiled: So live, that, sinking to thy life's last sleep, Calm thou may'st smile, while all around thee weep. William Jones [1746-1794] "PHILIP, MY KING" "Who bears upon his baby brow the round and top of sovereignty." Look at me with thy large brown eyes, Philip, my king! Round whom the enshadowing purple lies Of babyhood's royal dignities. Lay on my neck thy tiny hand With love's invisible scepter laden; I am thine Esther to command Till thou shalt find a queen-handmaiden, Philip, my king. O the day when thou goest a-wooing, Philip, my king! When those beautiful lips are suing, And some gentle heart's bars undoing, Thou dost enter, love-crowned, and there Sittest love-glorified. Rule kindly, Tenderly, over thy kingdom fair, For we that love, ah! we love so blindly, Philip, my king. Up from thy sweet mouth,--up to thy brow, Philip, my king! The spirit that there lies sleeping now May rise like a giant and make men bow As to one heaven-chosen among his peers. My Saul, than thy brethren taller and fairer, Let me behold thee in future years!-- Yet thy head needeth a circlet rarer, Philip, my king. --A wreath not of gold, but palm. One day, Philip, my king! Thou too must tread, as we trod, a way Thorny and cruel and cold and gray: Rebels within thee, and foes without, Will snatch at thy crown. But march on, glorious, Martyr, yet monarch! till angels shout, As thou sittest at the feet of God victorious, "Philip, the king!" Dinah Maria Mulock Craik [1826-1887] THE KING OF THE CRADLE Draw back the cradle curtains, Kate, While watch and ward you're keeping, Let's see the monarch in his state, And view him while he's sleeping. He smiles and clasps his tiny hand, With sunbeams o'er him gleaming,-- A world of baby fairyland He visits while he's dreaming. Monarch of pearly powder-puff, Asleep in nest so cosy, Shielded from breath of breezes rough By curtains warm and rosy: He slumbers soundly in his cell, As weak as one decrepid, Though King of Coral, Lord of Bell, And Knight of Bath that's tepid. Ah, lucky tyrant! Happy lot! Fair watchers without number, Who sweetly sing beside his cot, And hush him off to slumber; White hands in wait to smooth so neat His pillow when its rumpled-- A couch of rose leaves soft and sweet, Not one of which is crumpled! Will yonder dainty dimpled hand-- Size, nothing and a quarter-- E'er grasp a saber, lead a band To glory and to slaughter? Or, may I ask, will those blue eyes-- In baby patois, "peepers"-- E'er in the House of Commons rise, And try to catch the Speaker's? Will that smooth brow o'er Hansard frown, Confused by lore statistic? Or will those lips e'er stir the town From pulpit ritualistic? Will e'er that tiny Sybarite Become an author noted? That little brain the world's delight, Its works by all men quoted? Though rosy, dimpled, plump, and round Though fragile, soft, and tender, Sometimes, alas! it may be found The thread of life is slender! A little shoe, a little glove-- Affection never waning-- The shattered idol of our love Is all that is remaining! Then does one chance, in fancy, hear, Small feet in childish patter, Tread soft as they a grave draw near, And voices hush their chatter; 'Tis small and new; they pause in fear, Beneath the gray church tower, To consecrate it with a tear, And deck it with a flower. Who can predict the future, Kate-- Your fondest aspiration! Who knows the solemn laws of fate, That govern all creation? Who knows what lot awaits your boy-- Of happiness or sorrow? Sufficient for to-day is joy, Leave tears, Sweet, for to-morrow! Joseph Ashby-Sterry [1838-1917] THE FIRSTBORN So fair, so dear, so warm upon my bosom, And in my hands the little rosy feet. Sleep on, my little bird, my lamb, my blossom; Sleep on, sleep on, my sweet. What is it God hath given me to cherish, This living, moving wonder which is mine-- Mine only? Leave it with me or I perish, Dear Lord of love divine. Dear Lord, 'tis wonderful beyond all wonder, This tender miracle vouchsafed to me, One with myself, yet just so far asunder That I myself may see. Flesh of my flesh, and yet so subtly linking New selfs with old, all things that I have been With present joys beyond my former thinking And future things unseen. There life began, and here it links with heaven, The golden chain of years scarce dipped adown From birth, ere once again a hold is given And nearer to God's Throne. Seen, held in arms and clasped around so tightly,-- My love, my bird, I will not let thee go. Yet soon the little rosy feet must lightly Go pattering to and fro. Mine, Lord, all mine Thy gift and loving token. Mine--yes or no, unseen its soul divine? Mine by the chain of love with links unbroken, Dear Saviour, Thine and mine. John Arthur Goodchild [1851- NO BABY IN THE HOUSE No baby in the house, I know, 'Tis far too nice and clean. No toys, by careless fingers strewn, Upon the floors are seen. No finger-marks are on the panes, No scratches on the chairs; No wooden men setup in rows, Or marshaled off in pairs; No little stockings to be darned, All ragged at the toes; No pile of mending to be done, Made up of baby-clothes; No little troubles to be soothed; No little hands to fold; No grimy fingers to be washed; No stories to be told; No tender kisses to be given; No nicknames, "Dove" and "Mouse"; No merry frolics after tea,-- No baby in the house! Clara Dolliver [18-- OUR WEE WHITE ROSE From "The Mother's Idol Broken" All in our marriage garden Grew, smiling up to God, A bonnier flower than ever Sucked the green warmth of the sod; O, beautiful unfathomably Its little life unfurled; And crown of all things was our wee White Rose of all the world. From out a balmy bosom Our bud of beauty grew; It fed on smiles for sunshine, On tears for daintier dew: Aye nestling warm and tenderly, Our leaves of love were curled So close and close about our wee White Rose of all the world. With mystical faint fragrance Our house of life she filled; Revealed each hour some fairy tower Where winged hopes might build! We saw--though none like us might see-- Such precious promise pearled Upon the petals of our wee White Rose of all the world. But evermore the halo Of angel-light increased, Like the mystery of moonlight That folds some fairy feast. Snow-white, snow-soft, snow-silently Our darling bud uncurled, And dropped in the grave--God's lap--our wee White Rose of all the world. Our Rose was but in blossom, Our life was but in spring, When down the solemn midnight We heard the spirits sing, "Another bud of infancy With holy dews impearled!" And in their hands they bore our wee White Rose of all the world. You scarce could think so small a thing Could leave a loss so large; Her little light such shadow fling From dawn to sunset's marge. In other springs our life may be In bannered bloom unfurled, But never, never match our wee White Rose of all the world. Gerald Massey [1828-1907] INTO THE WORLD AND OUT Into the world he looked with sweet surprise; The children laughed so when they saw his eyes. Into the world a rosy hand in doubt He reached--a pale hand took one rosebud out. "And that was all--quite all!" No, surely! But The children cried so when his eyes were shut. Sarah M. B. Piatt [1836-1919] "BABY SLEEPS" She is not dead, but sleepeth.--Luke viii. 52. The baby wept; The mother took it from the nurse's arms, And hushed its fears, and soothed its vain alarms, And baby slept. Again it weeps, And God doth take it from the mother's arms, From present griefs, and future unknown harms, And baby sleeps. Samuel Hinds [1793-1872] BABY BELL I Have you not heard the poets tell How came the dainty Baby Bell Into this world of ours? The gates of heaven were left ajar: With folded hands and dreamy eyes, Wandering out of Paradise, She saw this planet, like a star, Hung in the glistening depths of even-- Its bridges, running to and fro, O'er which the white-winged Angels go, Bearing the holy Dead to heaven. She touched a bridge of flowers--those feet, So light they did not bend the bells Of the celestial asphodels, They fell like dew upon the flowers: Then all the air grew strangely sweet. And thus came dainty Baby Bell Into this world of ours. II She came and brought delicious May; The swallows built beneath the eaves; Like sunlight, in and out the leaves The robins went, the livelong day; The lily swung its noiseless bell; And on the porch the slender vine Held out its cups of fairy wine. How tenderly the twilights fell! Oh, earth was full of singing-birds And opening springtide flowers, When the dainty Baby Bell Came to this world of ours. III O Baby, dainty Baby Bell, How fair she grew from day to day! What woman-nature filled her eyes, What poetry within them lay-- Those deep and tender twilight eyes, So full of meaning, pure and bright As if she yet stood in the light Of those oped gates of Paradise. And so we loved her more and more: Ah, never in our hearts before Was love so lovely born: We felt we had a link between This real world and that unseen-- The land beyond the morn; And for the love of those dear eyes, For love of her whom God led forth, (The mother's being ceased on earth When Baby came from Paradise,)-- For love of Him who smote our lives, And woke the chords of joy and pain, We said, Dear Christ!--our hearts bowed down Like violets after rain. IV And now the orchards, which were white And pink with blossoms when she came, Were rich in autumn's mellow prime; The clustered apples burnt like flame, The folded chestnut burst its shell, The grapes hung purpling, range on range; And time wrought just as rich a change In little Baby Bell. Her lissome form more perfect grew, And in her features we could trace, In softened curves, her mother's face. Her angel-nature ripened too: We thought her lovely when she came, But she was holy, saintly now... Around her pale angelic brow We saw a slender ring of flame. V God's hand had taken away the seal That held the portals of her speech; And oft she said a few strange words Whose meaning lay beyond our reach. She never was a child to us, We never held her being's key; We could not teach her holy things Who was Christ's self in purity. VI It came upon us by degrees, We saw its shadow ere it fell-- The knowledge that our God had sent His messenger for Baby Bell. We shuddered with unlanguaged pain, And all our hopes were changed to fears, And all our thoughts ran into tears Like sunshine into rain. We cried aloud in our belief, "Oh, smite us gently, gently, God! Teach us to bend and kiss the rod, And perfect grow through grief." Ah! how we loved her, God can tell; Her heart was folded deep in ours. Our hearts are broken, Baby Bell! VII At last he came, the messenger, The messenger from unseen lands: And what did dainty Baby Bell? She only crossed her little hands, She only looked more meek and fair! We parted back her silken hair, We wove the roses round her brow-- White buds, the summer's drifted snow-- Wrapped her from head to foot in flowers... And thus went dainty Baby Bell Out of this world of ours. Thomas Bailey Aldrich [1837-1907] IN THE NURSERY MOTHER GOOSE'S MELODIES ----------- Mistress Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? With cockle-shells, and silver bells, And pretty maids all in a row. ----------- There was an old woman who lived in a shoe, She had so many children she didn't know what to do; She gave them some broth without any bread; Then whipped them all soundly and put them to bed. ----------- Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater, Had a wife and couldn't keep her; He put her in a pumpkin shell And there he kept her very well. ----------- Run-a-dub-dub, Three men in a tub, And who do you think they be? The butcher, the baker, The candlestick-maker; Turn 'em out, knaves all three! ----------- I'll tell you a story About Jack a Nory-- And now my story's begun; I'll tell you another About Johnny, his brother-- And now my story is done. ----------- Hickory, dickory, dock, The mouse ran up the clock; The clock struck one, The mouse ran down, Hickory, dickory, dock. ----------- A dillar, a dollar, A ten o'clock scholar, What makes you come so soon? You used to come at ten o'clock But now you come at noon. ----------- There was a little man, And he had a little gun, And his bullets were made of lead, lead, lead; He shot Johnny Sprig Through the middle of his wig, And knocked it right off his head, head, head. ----------- There was an old woman, and what do you think? She lived upon nothing but victuals and drink: Victuals and drink were the chief of her diet: Yet this little old woman could never be quiet. She went to a baker to buy her some bread, And when she came home, her husband was dead; She went to the clerk to toll the bell, And when she came back her husband was well. ----------- If I had as much money as I could spend, I never would cry old chairs to mend; Old chairs to mend, old chairs to mend; I never would cry old chairs to mend. If I had as much money as I could tell, I never would cry old clothes to sell; Old clothes to sell, old clothes to sell; I never would cry old clothes to sell. ----------- One misty, moisty morning, When cloudy was the weather, I met a little old man Clothed all in leather; He began to bow and scrape, And I began to grin,-- How do you do, and how do you do, And how do you do again? ----------- If all the world were apple-pie, And all the sea were ink, And all the trees were bread and cheese, What should we have to drink? ----------- Pease-pudding hot, Pease-pudding cold, Pease-pudding in the pot, Nine days old. Some like it hot, Some like it cold, Some like it in the pot, Nine days old. ----------- Hey, diddle, diddle, The cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon; The little dog laughed To see such sport, And the dish ran away with the spoon. ----------- Little Jack Horner sat in the corner Eating a Christmas pie; He put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum, And said, "What a good boy am I!" ----------- Little Miss Muffet, Sat on a tuffet, Eating of curds and whey; There came a great spider That sat down beside her, And frightened Miss Muffet away. ----------- There was a crooked man, and he went a crooked mile. He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile: He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse, And they all lived together in a little crooked house. ----------- Little Polly Flinders, Sat among the cinders, Warming her pretty little toes; Her mother came and caught her, And whipped her little daughter For spoiling her nice new clothes. ----------- Barber, barber, shave a pig, How many hairs will make a wig? "Four-and-twenty, that's enough." Give the barber a pinch of snuff. ----------- Little Boy Blue, come blow up your horn, The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn; But where is the boy that looks after the sheep? He's under a hay-cock, fast asleep. Will you awake him? No, not I; For if I do, he'll be sure to cry. ----------- There was a man of our town, And he was wondrous wise, He jumped into a bramble bush, And scratched out both his eyes: But when he saw his eyes were out, With all his might and main, He jumped into another bush, And scratched 'em in again. ----------- The north wind doth blow, And we shall have snow, And what will poor Robin do then, Poor thing? He'll sit in a barn, And to keep himself warm, Will hide his head under his wing, Poor thing! ----------- Higgleby, piggleby, my black hen, She lays eggs for gentlemen; Sometimes nine, and sometimes ten, Higgleby, piggleby, my black hen. ----------- Three wise men of Gotham Went to sea in a bowl; If the bowl had been stronger, My song had been longer. ----------- There was an old woman lived under a hill, And if she's not gone, she lives there still. ----------- Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, where have you been? I've been to London to look at the Queen. Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, what did you there? I frightened a little mouse under the chair. ----------- There were two blackbirds sitting on a hill, The one named Jack, the other named Jill; Fly away, Jack! Fly away, Jill! Come again, Jack! Come again, Jill! ----------- Goosey, goosey, gander, Whither shall I wander, Up stairs, down stairs, And in my lady's chamber. There I met an old man Who would not say his prayers; I took him by his left leg And threw him down the stairs. ----------- Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool? Yes, sir; yes, sir, three, bags full. One for my master, one for my dame, And one for the little boy that lives in the lane. ----------- Bye, baby bunting, Daddy's gone a-hunting To get a little rabbit-skin To wrap the baby bunting in. ----------- Old King Cole was a merry old soul, And a merry old soul was he; He called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl, And he called for his fiddlers three. Every fiddler, he had a fiddle, and a very fine fiddle had he; Twee tweedle dee, tweedle dee, went the fiddlers. Oh, there's none so rare, as can compare With King Cole and his fiddlers three! ----------- Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross, To see a fine lady ride on a white horse, Rings on her fingers, and bells on her toes, She shall have music wherever she goes. ----------- Hector Protector was dressed all in green; Hector Protector was sent to the Queen. The Queen did not like him, no more did the King; So Hector Protector was sent back again. ----------- Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers; A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked; If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked? ----------- Jack Sprat could eat no fat, His wife could eat no lean, And so, betwixt them both, you see, They licked the platter clean. ----------- The lion and the unicorn Were fighting for the crown; The lion beat the unicorn All round about the town. Some gave them white bread, And some gave them brown; Some gave them plum cake, And sent them out of town. ----------- As Tommy Snooks and Bessy Brooks Were walking out one Sunday, Says Tommy Snooks to Bessy Brooks, "To-morrow will be Monday." ----------- Curly locks! Curly locks! Wilt thou be mine? Thou shalt not wash dishes Nor yet feed the swine; But sit on a cushion And sew a fine seam, And feed upon strawberries, Sugar and cream. ----------- Blow, wind, blow! and go, mill, go! That the miller may grind his corn; That the baker may take it and into rolls make it, And send us some hot in the morn. ----------- Six little mice sat down to spin, Pussy passed by, and she peeped in. "What are you at, my little men?" "Making coats for gentlemen." "Shall I come in and bite off your threads?" "No, no, Miss Pussy, you'll snip off our heads." "Oh, no, I'll not, I'll help you to spin." "That may be so, but you don't come in!" ----------- Bobby Shaftoe's gone to sea, Silver buckles at his knee; When he comes back, he'll marry me, Bonny Bobby Shaftoe. Bobby Shaftoe's fat and fair, Combing down his yellow hair; He's my love for evermair, Bonny Bobby Shaftoe. ----------- Rock-a-bye, baby, thy cradle is green; Father's a nobleman, mother's a queen; And Betty's a lady, and wears a gold ring; And Johnny's a drummer, and drums for the King. Hush-a-bye, baby, on the tree-top, When the wind blows the cradle will rock; When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, Down will come baby, bough, cradle, and all. ----------- To market, to market, to buy a fat pig, Home again, home again, jiggety-jig; To market, to market, to buy a fat hog, Home again, home again, jiggety-jog; To market, to market, to buy a plum bun, Home again, home again, market is done. ----------- JACK AND JILL Jack and Jill went up the hill, To fetch a pail of water; Jack fell down and broke his crown And Jill came tumbling after. Up Jack got and home did trot As fast as he could caper, And went to bed to mend his head With vinegar and brown paper. THE QUEEN OF HEARTS The Queen of Hearts She made some tarts, All on a summer's day; The Knave of Hearts He stole those tarts, And with them ran away. The King of Hearts Called for the tarts, And beat the Knave full sore; The Knave of Hearts Brought back the tarts, And vowed he'd steal no more! LITTLE BO-PEEP Little Bo-peep has lost her sheep, And can't tell where to find them; Leave them alone, and they'll come home, And bring their tails behind them. Little Bo-peep fell fast asleep, And dreamed she heard them bleating; But when she awoke, she found it a joke, For they were still a-fleeting. Then up she took her little crook, Determined for to find them; She found them indeed, but it made her heart bleed, For they'd left their tails behind them! It happened one day, as Bo-peep did stray, Unto a meadow hard by, There she espied their tails side by side, All hung on a tree to dry. She heaved a sigh, and wiped her eye, And over the hillocks she raced; And tried what she could, as a shepherdess should, That each tail should be properly placed. MARY'S LAMB Mary had a little lamb, Its fleece was white as snow, And every where that Mary went The lamb was sure to go; He followed her to school one day-- That was against the rule, It made the children laugh and play, To see a lamb at school. And so the Teacher turned him out, But still he lingered near, And waited patiently about, Till Mary did appear; And then he ran to her, and laid His head upon her arm, As if he said--"I'm not afraid-- You'll keep me from all harm." "What makes the lamb love Mary so?" The eager children cry-- "O, Mary loves the lamb, you know," The Teacher did reply;-- "And you each gentle animal In confidence may bind, And make them follow at your call, If you are always kind." Sarah Josepha Hale [1788-1879] THE STAR Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are, Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky. When the blazing sun is set, And the grass with dew is wet, Then you show your little light, Twinkle, twinkle, all the night. Then the traveler in the dark Thanks you for your tiny spark, He could not see where to go If you did not twinkle so. In the dark blue sky you keep, And often through my curtains peep, For you never shut your eye Till the sun is in the sky. As your bright and tiny spark Lights the traveler in the dark, Though I know not what you are, Twinkle, twinkle, little star. Jane Taylor [1783-1824) "SING A SONG OF SIXPENCE" Sing a song of sixpence, A pocket full of rye; Four-and-twenty blackbirds Baked in a pie; When the pie was opened The birds began to sing; Wasn't that a dainty dish To set before the King? The King was in his counting-house, Counting out his money; The Queen was in the parlor, Eating bread and honey; The maid was in the garden Hanging out the clothes; When down came a blackbird, And nipped off her nose. SIMPLE SIMON Simple Simon met a pieman Going to the fair; Says Simple Simon to the pieman, "Let me taste your ware." Says the pieman to Simple Simon, "Show me first your penny"; Says Simple Simon to the pieman, "Indeed I have not any." Simple Simon went a-fishing For to catch a whale; All the water he had got Was in his mother's pail. Simple Simon went to look If plums grew on a thistle; He pricked his fingers very much, Which made poor Simon whistle. A PLEASANT SHIP I saw a ship a-sailing, A-sailing on the sea, And oh! it was all laden With pretty things for thee! There were comfits in the cabin, And apples in the hold; The sails were made of silk, And the masts were made of gold. The four-and-twenty sailors That stood between the decks Were four-and-twenty white mice, With chains about their necks. The captain was a duck, With a packet on his back, And when the ship began to move, The captain said "Quack! Quack!" "I HAD A LITTLE HUSBAND" I had a little husband No bigger than my thumb; I put him in a pint pot, And there I bade him drum. I bought a little horse, That galloped up and down; I bridled him and saddled him, And sent him out of town. I gave him some garters, To garter up his hose, And a little handkerchief, To wipe his pretty nose. "WHEN I WAS A BACHELOR" When I was a bachelor I lived by myself; And all the bread and cheese I got I put upon the shelf. The rats and the mice They made such a strife, I was forced to go to London To buy me a wife. The streets were so bad, And the lanes were so narrow, I was forced to bring my wife home In a wheelbarrow. The wheelbarrow broke, And my wife had a fall, Down came wheelbarrow, Little wife and all. "JOHNNY SHALL HAVE A NEW BONNET" Johnny shall have a new bonnet, And Johnny shall go to the fair, And Johnny shall have a blue ribbon To tie up his bonny brown hair. And why may not I love Johnny, And why may not Johnny love me? And why may not I love Johnny As well as another body? And here's a leg for a stocking, And here's a foot for a shoe; And he has a kiss for his daddy, And one for his mammy, too. And why may not I love Johnny, And why may not Johnny love me? And why may not I love Johnny, As well as another body? THE CITY MOUSE AND THE GARDEN MOUSE The city mouse lives in a house;-- The garden mouse lives in a bower, He's friendly with the frogs and toads, And sees the pretty plants in flower. The city mouse eats bread and cheese;-- The garden mouse eats what he can; We will not grudge him seeds and stocks, Poor little timid furry man. Christina Georgina Rossetti [1830-1894] ROBIN REDBREAST Little Robin Redbreast sat upon a tree, Up went pussy-cat, and down went he; Down came pussy-cat, and away Robin ran; Said little Robin Redbreast, "Catch me if you can." Little Robin Redbreast jumped upon a wall, Pussy-cat jumped after him, and almost got a fall; Little Robin chirped and sang, and what did pussy say? Pussy-cat said naught but "Mew," and Robin flew away. SOLOMON GRUNDY Solomon Grundy, Born on a Monday, Christened on Tuesday, Married on Wednesday, Took ill on Thursday, Worse on Friday, Died on Saturday, Buried on Sunday, This is the end of Solomon Grundy. "MERRY ARE THE BELLS" Merry are the bells, and merry would they ring, Merry was myself, and merry could I sing; With a merry ding-dong, happy, gay, and free, And a merry sing-song, happy let us be! Waddle goes your gait, and hollow are your hose: Noddle goes your pate, and purple is your nose: Merry is your sing-song, happy, gay, and free; With a merry ding-dong, happy let us be! Merry have we met, and merry have we been; Merry let us part, and merry meet again; With our merry sing-song, happy, gay, and free, With a merry ding-dong, happy let us be! "WHEN GOOD KING ARTHUR RULED THIS LAND" When good King Arthur ruled this land, He was a goodly king; He stole three pecks of barley meal, To make a bag-pudding. A bag-pudding the queen did make, And stuffed it well with plums: And in it put great lumps of fat, As big as my two thumbs. The king and queen did eat thereof, And noblemen beside; And what they could not eat that night, The queen next morning fried. THE BELLS OF LONDON Gay go up, and gay go down, To ring the bells of London town. Bull's eyes and targets, Say the bells of Saint Marg'ret's. Brickbats and tiles, Say the bells of Saint Giles'. Half-pence and farthings, Say the bells of Saint Martin's. Oranges and lemons, Say the bells of Saint Clement's. Pancakes and fritters, Say the bells of Saint Peter's. Two sticks and an apple, Say the bells of Whitechapel. Old Father Baldpate, Say the slow bells at Aldgate. Pokers and tongs, Say the bells of Saint John's. Kettles and pans, Say the bells of Saint Ann's. You owe me ten shillings, Say the bells of Saint Helen's. When will you pay me? Say the bells at Old Bailey. When I grow rich, Say the bells at Shoreditch. Pray, when will that be? Say the bells of Stepney. I am sure I don't know, Says the great bell at Bow. THE OWL, THE EEL AND THE WARMING-PAN The owl and the eel and the warming-pan, They went to call on the soap-fat man. The soap-fat man he was not within: He'd gone for a ride on his rolling-pin. So they all came back by the way of the town, And turned the meeting-house upside down. Laura E. Richards [1850- THE COW Thank you, pretty cow, that made Pleasant milk to soak my bread, Every day, and every night, Warm, and fresh, and sweet, and white. Do not chew the hemlock rank, Growing on the weedy bank; But the yellow cowslips eat, They will make it very sweet. Where the purple violet grows, Where the bubbling water flows, Where the grass is fresh and fine, Pretty cow, go there and dine. Ann Taylor [1782-1866] THE LAMB Little Lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee, Gave thee life, and bade thee feed By the stream and o'er the mead; Gave thee clothing of delight, Softest clothing, woolly, bright; Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the vales rejoice? Little Lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee? Little Lamb, I'll tell thee, Little Lamb, I'll tell thee; He is called by thy name, For He calls Himself a Lamb. He is meek, and He is mild; He became a little child. I a child, and thou a lamb, We are called by His name. Little Lamb, God bless thee! Little Lamb, God bless thee. William Blake [1757-1827] LITTLE RAINDROPS Oh, where do you come from, You little drops of rain, Pitter patter, pitter patter, Down the window-pane? They won't let me walk, And they won't let me play, And they won't let me go Out of doors at all to-day. They put away my playthings Because I broke them all, And then they locked up all my bricks, And took away my ball. Tell me, little raindrops, Is that the way you play, Pitter patter, pitter patter, All the rainy day? They say I'm very naughty, But I've nothing else to do But sit here at the window; I should like to play with you. The little raindrops cannot speak, But "pitter, patter pat" Means, "We can play on this side: Why can't you play on that?" "MOON, SO ROUND AND YELLOW" Moon, so round and yellow, Looking from on high, How I love to see you Shining in the sky. Oft and oft I wonder, When I see you there, How they get to light you, Hanging in the air: Where you go at morning, When the night is past, And the sun comes peeping O'er the hills at last. Sometime I will watch you Slyly overhead, When you think I'm sleeping Snugly in my bed. Matthias Barr [1831-?] THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT This is the house that Jack built. This is the malt That lay in the house that Jack built. This is the rat That ate the malt That lay in the house that Jack built. This is the cat That killed the rat That ate the malt That lay in the house that Jack built. This is the dog That worried the cat That killed the rat That ate the malt That lay in the house that Jack built. This is the cow with the crumpled horn That tossed the dog That worried the cat That killed the rat That ate the malt That lay in the house that Jack built. This is the maiden all forlorn That milked the cow with the crumpled horn That tossed the dog That worried the cat That killed the rat That ate the malt That lay in the house that Jack built. This is the man all tattered and torn That kissed the maiden That milked the cow with the crumpled horn That tossed the dog That worried the cat That killed the rat That ate the malt That lay in the house that Jack built. This is the priest all shaven and shorn That married the man all tattered and torn That kissed the maiden all forlorn That milked the cow with the crumpled horn That tossed the dog That worried the cat That killed the rat That ate the malt That lay in the house that Jack built. This is the cock that crowed in the morn That waked the priest all shaven and shorn That married the man all tattered and torn That kissed the maiden all forlorn That milked the cow with the crumpled horn That tossed the dog That worried the cat That killed the rat That ate the malt That lay in the house that Jack built. This is the farmer sowing his corn That kept the cock that crowed in the morn That waked the priest all shaven and shorn That married the man all tattered and torn That kissed the maiden all forlorn That milked the cow with the crumpled horn That tossed the dog That worried the cat That killed the rat That ate the malt That lay in the house that Jack built. OLD MOTHER HUBBARD Old Mother Hubbard Went to the cupboard, To get her poor dog a bone: But when she got there The cupboard was bare, And so the poor dog had none. She went to the baker's To buy him some bread, But when she came back The poor dog was dead. She went to the joiner's To buy him a coffin, But when she came back The poor dog was laughing. She took a clean dish To get him some tripe, But when she came back He was smoking a pipe. She went to the fishmonger's To buy him some fish, But when she came back He was licking the dish. She went to the tavern For white wine and red, But when she came back The dog stood on his head. She went to the hatter's To buy him a hat, But when she came back He was feeding the cat. She went to the barber's To buy him a wig, But when she came back He was dancing a jig. She went to the fruiterer's To buy him some fruit, But when she came back He was playing the flute. She went to the tailor's To buy him a coat, But when she came back He was riding a goat. She went to the cobbler's To buy him some shoes, But when she came back He was reading the news. She went to the seamstress To buy him some linen, But when she came back The dog was spinning. She went to the hosier's To buy him some hose, But when she came back He was dressed in his clothes. The dame made a curtesy, The dog made a bow, The dame said, "Your servant," The dog said, "Bow-wow." This wonderful dog Was Dame Hubbard's delight; He could sing, he could dance, He could read, he could write. She gave him rich dainties Whenever he fed, And built him a monument When he was dead. THE DEATH AND BURIAL OF COCK ROBIN Who killed Cock Robin? "I," said the Sparrow, "With my bow and arrow, I killed Cock Robin." Who saw him die? "I'" said the Fly, "With my little eye, I saw him die." Who caught his blood? "I," said the Fish, "With my little dish, I caught his blood." Who'll make his shroud? "I," said the Beetle, "With my thread and needle, I'll make his shroud." Who'll dig his grave? "I," said the Owl, "With my spade and trowel, I'll dig his grave." Who'll be the parson? "I," said the Rook, "With my little book. I'll be the parson." Who'll be the clerk? "I," said the Lark, "I'll say Amen in the dark; I'll be the clerk." Who'll be chief mourner? "I," said the Dove, "I mourn for my love; I'll be chief mourner." Who'll bear the torch? "I," said the Linnet, "I'll come in a minute, I'll bear the torch." Who'll sing his dirge? "I," said the thrush. "As I sing in the bush I'll sing his dirge." Who'll bear the pall? "We," said the Wren, Both the Cock and the Hen; "We'll bear the pall." Who'll carry his coffin? "I," said the Kite, "If it be in the night, I'll carry his coffin." Who'll toll the bell? "I," said the Bull, "Because I can pull, I'll toll the bell." All the birds of the air Fell to sighing and sobbing When they heard the bell toll For poor Cock Robin. BABY-LAND "Which is the way to Baby-land?" "Any one can tell; Up one flight, To your right; Please to ring the bell." "What can you see in Baby-land?" "Little folks in white-- Downy heads, Cradle-beds, Faces pure and bright!" "What do they do in Baby-land?" "Dream and wake and play, Laugh and crow, Shout and grow; Jolly times have they!" "What do they say in Baby-land?" "Why, the oddest things; Might as well Try to tell What a birdie sings!" "Who is the Queen of Baby-land?" "Mother, kind and sweet; And her love, Born above, Guides the little feet." George Cooper [1840-1927] THE FIRST TOOTH There once was a wood, and a very thick wood, So thick that to walk was as much as you could; But a sunbeam got in, and the trees understood. I went to this wood, at the end of the snows, And as I was walking I saw a primrose; Only one! Shall I show you the place where it grows? There once was a house, and a very dark house, As dark, I believe, as the hole of a mouse, Or a tree in my wood, at the thick of the boughs. I went to this house, and I searched it aright, I opened the chambers, and I found a light; Only one! Shall I show you this little lamp bright? There once was a cave, and this very dark cave One day took a gift from an incoming wave; And I made up my mind to know what the sea gave. I took a lit torch, I walked round the ness When the water was lowest; and in a recess In my cave was a jewel. Will nobody guess? O there was a baby, he sat on my knee, With a pearl in his mouth that was precious to me, His little dark mouth like my cave of the sea! I said to my heart, "And my jewel is bright! He blooms like a primrose! He shines like a light!" Put your hand in his mouth! Do you feel? He can bite! William Brighty Rands [1823-1882] BABY'S BREAKFAST Baby wants his breakfast, Oh! what shall I do? Said the cow, "I'll give him Nice fresh milk--moo-oo!" Said the hen, "Cut-dah cut! I have laid an egg For the Baby's breakfast-- Take it now, I beg!" And the buzzing bee said, "Here is honey sweet. Don't you think the Baby Would like that to eat?" Then the baker kindly Brought the Baby's bread. "Breakfast is all ready," Baby's mother said; "But before the Baby Eats his dainty food, Will he not say 'Thank you!' To his friends so good?" Then the bonny Baby Laughed and laughed away. That was all the "Thank you" He knew how to say. Emilie Poulsson [1853- THE MOON O, look at the moon! She is shining up there; O mother, she looks Like a lamp in the air. Last week she was smaller, And shaped like a bow; But now she's grown bigger, And round as an O. Pretty moon, pretty moon, How you shine on the door, And make it all bright On my nursery floor! You shine on my playthings, And show me their place, And I love to look up At your pretty bright face. And there is a star Close by you, and maybe That small twinkling star Is your little baby. Eliza Lee Fallen [1787-1859] BABY AT PLAY Brow bender, Eye peeper, Nose smeller, Mouth eater, Chin chopper, Knock at the door--peep in, Lift up the latch--walk in. Here sits the Lord Mayor, here sit his two men, Here sits the cock, and here sits the hen; Here sit the chickens, and here they go in, Chippety, chippety, chippety, chin. This little pig went to market; This little pig stayed at home; This little pig got roast beef; This little pig got none; This little pig cried wee, wee, all the way home. One, two, Buckle my shoe; Three, four, Shut the door; Five, six, Pick up sticks; Seven, eight, Lay them straight; Nine, ten, A good fat hen; Eleven, twelve, Who will delve? Thirteen, fourteen, Maids a-courting; Fifteen, sixteen, Maids a-kissing; Seventeen, eighteen, Maids a-waiting; Nineteen, twenty, My stomach's empty. THE DIFFERENCE Eight fingers, Ten toes, Two eyes, And one nose. Baby said When she smelt the rose, "Oh! what a pity I've only one nose!" Ten teeth In even rows, Three dimples, And one nose. Baby said When she smelt the snuff, "Deary me! One nose is enough." Laura E. Richards [1850- FOOT SOLDIERS 'Tis all the way to Toe-town, Beyond the Knee-high hill, That Baby has to travel down To see the soldiers drill. One, two, three, four, five, a-row-- A captain and his men-- And on the other side, you know, Are six, seven, eight, nine, ten. John Banister Tabb [1845-1909] TOM THUMB'S ALPHABET A was an Archer, who shot at a frog; B was a Butcher, who had a great dog; C was a Captain, all covered with lace; D was a Drunkard, and had a red face; E was an Esquire, with pride on his brow; F was a Farmer, and followed the plow; G was a Gamester, who had but ill luck; H was a Hunter, who hunted a buck; I was an Innkeeper, who loved to bouse; J was a Joiner, who built up a house; K was a King, so mighty and grand; L was a Lady, who had a white hand; M was a Miser, and hoarded his gold; N was a Nobleman, gallant and bold; O was an Oysterman, who went about town; P was a Parson, and wore a black gown; Q was a Quack, with a wonderful pill; R was a Robber, who wanted to kill; S was a Sailor, who spent all he got; T was a Tinker, and mended a pot; U was an Usurer, a miserable elf; V was a Vintner, who drank all himself; W was a Watchman, who guarded the door; X was Expensive, and so became poor; Y was a Youth, that did not love school; Z was a Zany, a poor harmless fool. GRAMMAR IN RHYME Three little words, you often see, Are articles A, An, and The. A Noun is the name of anything, As School, or Garden, Hoop, or Swing. Adjectives tell the kind of Noun, As Great, Small, Pretty, White, or Brown. Instead of Nouns the Pronouns stand, Her head, His face, Your arm, My hand. Verbs tell something being done-- To Read, Count, Laugh, Sing, Jump, or Run. How things are done the Adverbs tell, As Slowly, Quickly, Ill, or Well. Conjunctions join the words together-- As men And women, wind Or weather. The Preposition stands before A noun, as In or Through a door, The Interjection shows surprise, As Oh! how pretty! Ah! how wise! The Whole are called nine parts of speech, Which reading, writing, speaking teach. DAYS OF THE MONTH Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November; All the rest have thirty-one; February twenty-eight alone,-- Except in leap year, at which time February's days are twenty-nine. THE GARDEN YEAR January brings the snow, Makes our feet and fingers glow. February brings the rain, Thaws the frozen lake again. March brings breezes, loud and shrill, To stir the dancing daffodil. April brings the primrose sweet, Scatters daisies at our feet. May brings flocks of pretty lambs Skipping by their fleecy dams. June brings tulips, lilies, roses, Fills the children's hands with posies. Hot July brings cooling showers, Apricots, and gillyflowers. August brings the sheaves of corn, Then the harvest home is borne. Warm September brings the fruit; Sportsmen then begin to shoot. Fresh October brings the pheasant; Then to gather nuts is pleasant. Dull November brings the blast; Then the leaves are whirling fast. Chill December brings the sleet, Blazing fire, and Christmas treat. Sara Coleridge [1802-1852] RIDDLES There was a girl in our town, Silk an' satin was her gown, Silk an' satin, gold an' velvet, Guess her name, three times I've telled it. (Ann.) As soft as silk, as white as milk, As bitter as gall, a thick green wall, And a green coat covers me all. (A walnut.) Make three fourths of a cross, And a circle complete; And let two semicircles On a perpendicular meet; Next add a triangle That stands on two feet; Next two semicircles, And a circle complete. (TOBACCO.) Flour of England, fruit of Spain, Met together in a shower of rain; Put in a bag tied round with a string, If you'll tell me this riddle, I'll give you a ring. (A plum-pudding.) In marble walls as white as milk, Lined with a skin as soft as silk, Within a fountain crystal clear, A golden apple doth appear. No doors there are to this stronghold, Yet thieves break in and steal the gold. (An egg.) Little Nanny Etticoat, In a white petticoat, And a red nose; The longer she stands, The shorter she grows. (A candle.) Long legs, crooked thighs, Little head and no eyes. (A pair of tongs.) Thirty white horses upon a red hill, Now they tramp, now they champ, now they stand still. (The teeth.) Formed long ago, yet made to-day, Employed while others sleep; What few would like to give away, Nor any wish to keep. (A bed.) Lives in winter, Dies in summer, And grows with its root upwards. (An icicle.) Elizabeth, Lizzy, Betsy and Bess, All went together to seek a bird's nest; They found a nest with five eggs in it; They each took one and left four in it. Thomas a Tattamus took two T's, To tie two tups to two tall trees, To frighten the terrible Thomas a Tattamus! Tell me how many T's there are in all THAT! Old Mother Twitchett had but one eye, And a long tail which she let fly; And every time she went over a gap, She left a bit of her tail in a trap. (A needle and thread.) As I went through a garden gap, Who should I meet but Dick Red-Cap! A stick in his hand, a stone in his throat, If you'll tell me this riddle, I'll give you a groat. (A cherry.) Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall; All the king's horses and all the king's men Cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again. (An egg.) As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives, Every wife had seven sacks, Every sack had seven cats, Every cat had seven kits-- Kits, cats, sacks, and wives, How many were going to St. Ives? (One.) Two legs sat upon three legs, With one leg in his lap; In comes four legs And runs away with one leg; Up jumps two legs, Catches up three legs, Throws it after four legs, And makes him drop one leg. (A man, a stool, a leg of mutton, and a dog.) PROVERBS If wishes were horses, Beggars would ride; If turnips were watches, I'd wear one by my side. A man of words, and not of deeds, Is like a garden full of weeds; For when the weeds begin to grow, Then doth the garden overflow. He that would thrive Must rise at five; He that hath thriven May lie till seven; And he that by the plough would thrive, Himself must either hold or drive. A swarm of bees in May Is worth a load of hay; A swarm of bees in June Is worth a silver spoon; A swarm of bees in July Is not worth a fly. They that wash on Monday Have all the week to dry; They that wash on Tuesday Are not so much awry; They that wash on Wednesday Are not so much to blame; They that wash on Thursday, Wash for shame; They that wash on Friday, Wash in need; And they that wash on Saturday, Oh, they are slovens, indeed. Needles and pins, needles and pins, When a man marries, his trouble begins. For every evil under the sun, There is a remedy, or there is none. If there be one, try and find it; If there be none, never mind it. Tommy's tears, and Mary's fears, Will make them old before their years. If "ifs" and "ands" Were pots and pans, There would be no need for tinkers! For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; For want of the shoe, the horse was lost; For want of the horse, the rider was lost; For want of the rider, the battle was lost; For want of the battle, the kingdom was lost; And all from the want of a horseshoe nail. KIND HEARTS Kind hearts are the gardens, Kind thoughts are the roots, Kind words are the blossoms, Kind deeds are the fruits; Love is the sweet sunshine That warms into life, For only in darkness Grow hatred and strife. WEATHER WISDOM A sunshiny shower Won't last half an hour. Rain before seven, Fair by eleven. The South wind brings wet weather, The North wind wet and cold together; The West wind always brings us rain, The East wind blows it back again. March winds and April showers Bring forth May flowers. Evening red and morning gray Set the traveller on his way, But evening gray and morning red, Bring the rain upon his head. Rainbow at night Is the sailor's delight; Rainbow at morning, Sailors, take warning. OLD SUPERSTITIONS See a pin and pick it up, All the day you'll have good luck; See a pin and let it lay, Bad luck you will have all day. Cut your nails on Monday, cut them for news; Cut them on Tuesday, a pair of new shoes; Cut them on Wednesday, cut them for health; Cut them on Thursday, cut them for wealth; Cut them on Friday, cut them for woe; Cut them on Saturday, a journey you'll go; Cut them on Sunday, you'll cut them for evil, For all the next week you'll be ruled by the devil. Marry Monday, marry for wealth; Marry Tuesday, marry for health; Marry Wednesday, the best day of all; Marry Thursday, marry for crosses; Marry Friday, marry for losses; Marry Saturday, no luck at all. Sneeze on a Monday, you sneeze for danger; Sneeze on a Tuesday, you'll kiss a stranger; Sneeze on a Wednesday, you sneeze for a letter; Sneeze on a Thursday, for something better; Sneeze on a Friday, you sneeze for sorrow; Sneeze on a Saturday, your sweetheart to-morrow; Sneeze on a Sunday, your safety seek-- The devil will have you the whole of the week. Monday's child is fair of face, Tuesday's child is full of grace, Wednesday's child is full of woe, Thursday's child has far to go, Friday's child is loving and giving, Saturday's child works hard for its living, And a child that's born on the Sabbath day Is fair and wise and good and gay. THE ROAD TO SLUMBERLAND WYNKEN, BLYNKEN, AND NOD Dutch Lullaby Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night Sailed off in a wooden shoe,-- Sailed on a river of crystal light Into a sea of dew. "Where are you going, and what do you wish?" The old moon asked the three. "We have come to fish for the herring fish That live in this beautiful sea; Nets of silver and gold have we!" Said Wynken, Blynken, And Nod. The old moon laughed and sang a song, As they rocked in the wooden shoe; And the wind that sped them all night long Ruffled the waves of dew. The little stars were the herring fish That lived in that beautiful sea-- "Now cast your nets wherever you wish,-- Never afeard are we!" So cried the stars to the fishermen three, Wynken, Blynken, And Nod. All night long their nets they threw To the stars in the twinkling foam,-- Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe, Bringing the fishermen home: 'Twas all so pretty a sail, it seemed As if it could not be; And some folk thought 'twas a dream they'd dreamed Of sailing that beautiful sea; But I shall name you the fishermen three: Wynken, Blynken, And Nod. Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes, And Nod is a little head, And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies Is a wee one's trundle-bed; So shut your eyes while Mother sings Of wonderful sights that be, And you shall see the beautiful things As you rock in the misty sea Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three:-- Wynken, Blynken, And Nod. Eugene Field [1850-1895] THE SUGAR-PLUM TREE Have you ever heard of the Sugar-Plum Tree? 'Tis a marvel of great renown! It blooms on the shore of the Lollypop sea In the garden of Shut-Eye Town; The fruit that it bears is so wondrously sweet (As those who have tasted it say) That good little children have only to eat Of that fruit to be happy next day. When you've got to the tree, you would have a hard time To capture the fruit which I sing; The tree is so tall that no person could climb To the boughs where the sugar-plums swing! But up in that tree sits a chocolate cat, And a gingerbread dog prowls below-- And this is the way you contrive to get at Those sugar-plums tempting you so: You say but the word to that gingerbread dog And he barks with such terrible zest That the chocolate cat is at once all agog, As her swelling proportions attest. And the chocolate cat goes cavorting around From this leafy limb unto that, And the sugar-plums tumble, of course, to the ground-- Hurrah for that chocolate cat! There are marshmallows, gumdrops, and peppermint canes, With stripings of scarlet or gold, And you carry away of the treasure that rains, As much as your apron can hold! So come, little child, cuddle closer to me In your dainty white nightcap and gown, And I'll rock you away to that Sugar-Plum Tree In the garden of Shut-Eye Town. Eugene Field [1850-1895] WHEN THE SLEEPY MAN COMES When the Sleepy Man comes with the dust on his eyes, (Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!) He shuts up the earth, and he opens the skies. (So hush-a-by, weary my Dearie!) He smiles through his fingers, and shuts up the sun; (Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!) The stars that he loves he lets out one by one. (So hush-a-by, weary my Dearie!) He comes from the castles of Drowsy-boy Town; (Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!) At the touch of his hand the tired eyelids fall down. (So hush-a-by, weary my Dearie!) He comes with a murmur of dream in his wings; (Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!) And whispers of mermaids and wonderful things. (So hush-a-by, weary my Dearie!) Then the top is a burden, the bugle a bane; (Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!) When one would be faring down Dream-a-way Lane. (So hush-a-by, weary my Dearie!) When one would be wending in Lullaby Wherry, (Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!) To Sleepy Man's Castle, by Comforting Ferry. (So hush-a-by, weary my Dearie!) Charles G. D. Roberts [1860- AULD DADDY DARKNESS Auld Daddy Darkness creeps frae his hole, Black as a blackamoor, blin' as a mole: Stir the fire till it lowes, let the bairnie sit, Auld Daddy Darkness is no wantit yit. See him in the corners hidin' frae the licht, See him at the window gloomin' at the nicht; Turn up the gas licht, close the shutters a', An' Auld Daddy Darkness will flee far awa'. Awa' to hide the birdie within its cosy nest, Awa' to lap the wee flooers on their mither's breast, Awa' to loosen Gaffer Toil frae his daily ca', For Auld Daddy Darkness is kindly to a'. He comes when we're weary to wean's frae oor waes, He comes when the bairnies are getting aff their claes; To cover them sae cosy, an' bring bonnie dreams, So Auld Daddy Darkness is better than he seems. Steek yer een, my wee tot, ye'll see Daddy then; He's in below the bed claes, to cuddle ye he's fain; Noo nestle to his bosie, sleep and dream yer fill, Till Wee Davie Daylicht comes keekin' owre the hill. James Ferguson [18--?] WILLIE WINKIE Wee Willie Winkie rins through the town, Upstairs and doon stairs, in his nicht-gown, Tirlin' at the window, cryin' at the lock, "Are the weans in their bed?--for it's noo ten o'clock." Hey, Willie Winkie! are ye comin' ben? The cat's singin' gay thrums to the sleepin' hen, The doug's speldered on the floor, and disna gie a cheep; But here's a waukrife laddie, that winna fa' asleep. Onything but sleep, ye rogue!--glowrin' like the moon, Rattlin' in an airn jug wi' an airn spoon, Rumblin', tumblin' roun' about, crawin' like a cock, Skirlin' like a kenna-what--wauknin' sleepin' folk! Hey, Willie Winkie! the wean's in a creel! Waumblin' aff a bodie's knee like a vera eel, Ruggin' at the cat's lug, and ravellin' a' her thrums: Hey, Willie Winkie!--See, there he comes! William Miller [1810-1872] THE SANDMAN The rosy clouds float overhead, The sun is going down; And now the sandman's gentle tread Comes stealing through the town. "White sand, white sand," he softly cries, And as he shakes his hand, Straightway there lies on babies' eyes His gift of shining sand. Blue eyes, gray eyes, black eyes, and brown, As shuts the rose, they softly close, when he goes through the town. From sunny beaches far away-- Yes, in another land-- He gathers up at break of day His stone of shining sand. No tempests beat that shore remote, No ships may sail that way; His little boat alone may float Within that lovely bay. Blue eyes, gray eyes, black eyes, and brown, As shuts the rose, they softly close, when he goes through the town. He smiles to see the eyelids close Above the happy eyes; And every child right well he knows,-- Oh, he is very wise! But if, as he goes through the land, A naughty baby cries, His other hand takes dull gray sand To close the wakeful eyes. Blue eyes, gray eyes, black eyes, and brown, As shuts the rose, they softly close, when he goes through the town. So when you hear the sandman's song Sound through the twilight sweet, Be sure you do not keep him long A-waiting in the street. Lie softly down, dear little head, Rest quiet, busy hands, Till, by your bed his good-night said, He strews the shining sands. Blue eyes, gray eyes, black eyes, and brown, As shuts the rose, they softly close, when he goes through the town. Margaret Thomson Janvier [1845-1913] THE DUSTMAN When the toys are growing weary, And the twilight gathers in; When the nursery still echoes With the children's merry din; Then unseen, unheard, unnoticed Comes an old man up the stair, Lightly to the children passes, Lays his hand upon their hair. Softly smiles the good old Dustman; In their eyes the dust he throws, Till their little heads are falling, And their weary eyes must close. Then the Dustman very gently Takes each little dimpled hand Leads them through the sweet green shadows, Far away in slumberland. Frederic Edward Weatherly [1848-1929] SEPHESTIA'S LULLABY From "Menaphon" Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee; When thou art old there's grief enough for thee. Mother's wag, pretty boy, Father's sorrow, father's joy; When thy father first did see Such a boy by him and me, He was glad, I was woe; Fortune changed made him so, When he left his pretty boy, Last his sorrow, first his joy. Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee; When thou art old there's grief enough for thee. Streaming tears that never stint, Like pearl-drops from a flint, Fell by course from his eyes, That one another's place supplies; Thus he grieved in every part, Tears of blood fell from his heart, When he left his pretty boy, Father's sorrow, father's joy. Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee; When thou art old there's grief enough for thee. The wanton smiled, father wept, Mother cried, baby leapt; More he crowed, more we cried, Nature could not sorrow hide: He must go, he must kiss Child and mother, baby bliss, For he left his pretty boy, Father's sorrow, father's joy. Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee, When thou art old there's grief enough for thee. Robert Greene [1560?-1592] "GOLDEN SLUMBERS KISS YOUR EYES" From "Patient Grissel" Golden slumbers kiss your eyes, Smiles awake you when you rise. Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry, And I will sing a lullaby. Rock them, rock them, lullaby. Care is heavy, therefore sleep you, You are care, and care must keep you. Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry, And I will sing a lullaby. Rock them, rock them, lullaby. Thomas Dekker [1570?-1641?] "SLEEP, BABY, SLEEP" Sleep, baby, sleep! what ails my dear, What ails my darling thus to cry? Be still, my child, and lend thine ear, To hear me sing thy lullaby. My pretty lamb, forbear to weep; Be still, my dear; sweet baby, sleep. Thou blessed soul, what canst thou fear? What thing to thee can mischief do? Thy God is now thy father dear, His holy Spouse thy mother too. Sweet baby, then forbear to weep; Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep. Though thy conception was in sin, A sacred bathing thou hast had; And though thy birth unclean hath been, A blameless babe thou art now made. Sweet baby, then forbear to weep; Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep. While thus thy lullaby I sing, For thee great blessings ripening be; Thine Eldest Brother is a king, And hath a kingdom bought for thee. Sweet baby, then forbear to weep; Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep. Sweet baby, sleep, and nothing fear; For whosoever thee offends By thy protector threatened are, And God and angels are thy friends. Sweet baby, then forbear to weep; Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep. When God with us was dwelling here, In little babes He took delight; Such innocents as thou, my dear, Are ever precious in His sight. Sweet baby, then forbear to weep; Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep. A little infant once was He; And strength in weakness then was laid Upon His Virgin Mother's knee, That power to thee might be conveyed. Sweet baby, then forbear to weep; Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep. In this thy frailty and thy need He friends and helpers doth prepare, Which thee shall cherish, clothe, and feed, For of thy weal they tender are. Sweet baby, then forbear to weep; Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep. The King of Kings when He was born, Had not so much for outward ease; By Him such dressings were not worn, Nor such like swaddling-clothes as these. Sweet baby, then forbear to weep; Be still, my babe; sweet baby sleep. Within a manger lodged thy Lord, Where oxen lay and asses fed: Warm rooms we do to thee afford, An easy cradle for a bed. Sweet baby, then forbear to weep; Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep. The wants that He did then sustain Have purchased wealth, my babe, for thee, And by His torments and His pain Thy rest and ease secured be. My baby, then forbear to weep; Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep. Thou hast, yet more, to perfect this A promise and an earnest got Of gaining everlasting bliss, Though thou, my babe, perceiv'st it not. Sweet baby, then forbear to weep; Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep. George Wither [1588-1667] MOTHER'S SONG My heart is like a fountain true That flows and flows with love to you. As chirps the lark unto the tree So chirps my pretty babe to me. And it's O! sweet, sweet! and a lullaby. There's not a rose where'er I seek, As comely as my baby's cheek. There's not a comb of honey-bee, So full of sweets as babe to me. And it's O! sweet, sweet! and a lullaby. There's not a star that shines on high, Is brighter than my baby's eye. There's not a boat upon the sea, Can dance as baby does to me. And it's O! sweet, sweet! and a lullaby. No silk was ever spun so fine As is the hair of baby mine. My baby smells more sweet to me Than smells in spring the elder tree. And it's O! sweet, sweet! and a lullaby. A little fish swims in the well, So in my heart does baby dwell. A little flower blows on the tree, My baby is the flower to me. And it's O! sweet, sweet! and a lullaby. The Queen has sceptre, crown and ball, You are my sceptre, crown and all. For all her robes of royal silk, More fair your skin, as white as milk. And it's O! sweet, sweet! and a lullaby. Ten thousand parks where deer do run, Ten thousand roses in the sun, Ten thousand pearls beneath the sea, My babe more precious is to me. And it's O! sweet, sweet! and a lullaby. Unknown A LULLABY Upon my lap my sovereign sits And sucks upon my breast; Meanwhile his love sustains my life And gives my body rest. Sing lullaby, my little boy, Sing lullaby, mine only joy! When thou hast taken thy repast, Repose, my babe, on me; So may thy mother and thy nurse Thy cradle also be. Sing lullaby, my little boy, Sing lullaby, mine only joy! I grieve that duty doth not work All that my wishing would, Because I would not be to thee But in the best I should. Sing lullaby, my little boy, Sing lullaby, mine only joy! Yet as I am, and as I may, I must and will be thine, Though all too little for thy self Vouchsafing to be mine. Sing lullaby, my little boy, Sing lullaby, mine only joy! Richard Rowlands [fl. 1565-1620] A CRADLE HYMN Hush! my dear, lie still and slumber, Holy angels guard thy bed! Heavenly blessings without number Gently falling on thy head. Sleep, my babe; thy food and raiment, House and home, thy friends provide; All without thy care or payment: All thy wants are well supplied. How much better thou'rt attended Than the Son of God could be, When from heaven He descended And became a child like thee! Soft and easy is thy cradle: Coarse and hard thy Saviour lay, When His birthplace was a stable And His softest bed was hay. Blessed babe! what glorious features-- Spotless fair, divinely bright! Must He dwell with brutal creatures? How could angels bear the sight? Was there nothing but a manger Cursed sinners could afford To receive the heavenly stranger? Did they thus affront their Lord? Soft, my child: I did not chide thee, Though my song might sound too hard; 'Tis thy mother sits beside thee, And her arms shall be thy guard. Yet to read the shameful story How the Jews abused their King, How they served the Lord of Glory, Makes me angry while I sing. See the kinder shepherds round Him, Telling wonders from the sky! Where they sought Him, there they found Him, With His Virgin mother by. See the lovely babe a-dressing; Lovely infant, how He smiled! When He wept, the mother's blessing Soothed and hushed the holy child. Lo, He slumbers in His manger, Where the horned oxen fed; Peace, my darling; here's no danger, Here's no ox anear thy bed. 'Twas to save thee, child, from dying, Save my dear from burning flame, Bitter groans and endless crying, That thy blest Redeemer came. May'st thou live to know and fear Him, Trust and love Him all thy days; Then go dwell forever near Him, See His face, and sing His praise! Isaac Watts [1674-1748] CRADLE SONG Sleep, sleep, beauty bright, Dreaming in the joys of night; Sleep, sleep; in thy sleep Little sorrows sit and weep. Sweet babe, in thy face Soft desires I can trace, Secret joys and secret smiles, Little pretty infant wiles. As thy softest limbs I feel Smiles as of the morning steal O'er thy cheek, and o'er thy breast Where thy little heart doth rest. O the cunning wiles that creep In thy little heart asleep! When thy little heart doth wake, Then the dreadful night shall break. William Blake [1757-1827] LULLABY Baloo, loo, lammy, now baloo, my dear, Does wee lammy ken that its daddy's no here? Ye're rocking full sweetly on mammy's warm knee, But daddy's a-rocking upon the salt sea. Now hushaby, lammy, now hushaby, dear; Now hushaby, lammy, for mother is near. The wild wind is raving, and mammy's heart's sair; The wild wind is raving, and ye dinna care. Sing baloo, loo, lammy, sing baloo, my dear; Sing baloo, loo, lammy, for mother is here. My wee bairnie's dozing, it's dozing now fine, And O may its wakening be blither than mine! Carolina Nairne [1763-1845] LULLABY OF AN INFANT CHIEF O, hush thee, my babie, thy sire was a knight, Thy mother a lady, both lovely and bright; The woods and the glens, from the towers which we see, They are all belonging, dear babie, to thee. O ho ro, i ri ri, cadul gu lo. O, fear not the bugle, though loudly it blows, It calls but the warders that guard thy repose; Their bows would be bended, their blades would be red, Ere the step of a foeman draws near to thy bed. O ho ro, i ri ri, cadul gu lo. O, hush thee, my babie, the time soon will come, When thy sleep shall be broken by trumpet and drum; Then hush thee, my darling, take rest while you may, For strife comes with manhood, and waking with day. O ho ro, i ri ri, cadul gu lo. Walter Scott [1771-1832] GOOD-NIGHT Little baby, lay your head On your pretty cradle-bed; Shut your eye-peeps, now the day And the light are gone away; All the clothes are tucked in tight; Little baby dear, good-night. Yes, my darling, well I know How the bitter wind doth blow; And the winter's snow and rain Patter on the window-pane: But they cannot come in here, To my little baby dear; For the window shutteth fast, Till the stormy night is past; And the curtains warm are spread Round about her cradle bed: So till morning shineth bright, Little baby dear, good-night. Jane Taylor [1783-1824] "LULLABY, O LULLABY" Lullaby! O lullaby! Baby, hush that little cry! Light is dying, Bats are flying, Bees to-day with work have done; So, till comes the morrow's sun, Let sleep kiss those bright eyes dry! Lullaby! O lullaby. Lullaby! O lullaby! Hushed are all things far and nigh; Flowers are closing, Birds reposing, All sweet things with life are done. Sweet, till dawns the morning sun, Sleep, then kiss those blue eyes dry. Lullaby! O lullaby! William Cox Bennett [1820-1895] LULLABY From "The Princess" Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow, Wind of the western sea! Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon, and blow, Blow him again to me; While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps. Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, Father will come to thee soon; Rest, rest, on mother's breast, Father will come to thee soon; Father will come to his babe in the nest, Silver sails all out of the west Under the silver moon: Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep. Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892] THE COTTAGER TO HER INFANT The days are cold, the nights are long, The north-wind sings a doleful song; Then hush again upon my breast; All merry things are now at rest, Save thee, my pretty love! The kitten sleeps upon the hearth; The crickets long have ceased their mirth; There's nothing stirring in the house Save one wee, hungry, nibbling mouse; Then why so busy thou? Nay! start not at that sparkling light; 'Tis but the moon that shines so bright On the window-pane bedropped with rain: There, little darling! sleep again, And wake when it is day! Dorothy Wordsworth [1804-1847] TROT, TROT! Every evening Baby goes Trot, trot, to town, Across the river, through the fields, Up hill and down. Trot, trot, the Baby goes, Up hill and down, To buy a feather for her hat, To buy a woolen gown. Trot, trot, the Baby goes; The birds fly down, alack! "You cannot have our feathers, dear," They say, "so please trot back." Trot, trot, the Baby goes; The lambs come bleating near. "You cannot have our wool," they say, "But we are sorry, dear." Trot, trot, the Baby goes, Trot, trot, to town; She buys a red rose for her hat, She buys a cotton gown. Mary F. Butts [1836-1902] HOLY INNOCENTS Sleep, little Baby, sleep; The holy Angels love thee, And guard thy bed, and keep A blessed watch above thee. No spirit can come near Nor evil beast to harm thee: Sleep, Sweet, devoid of fear Where nothing need alarm thee. The Love which doth not sleep, The eternal Arms surround thee: The Shepherd of the sheep In perfect love hath found thee. Sleep through the holy night, Christ-kept from snare and sorrow, Until thou wake to light And love and warmth to-morrow. Christina Georgina Rossetti [1830-1894] LULLABY From "The Mistress of the Manse" Rockaby, lullaby, bees in the clover! Crooning so drowsily, crying so low, Rockaby, lullaby, dear little rover! Down into wonderland, Down to the under-land Go, oh go! Down into wonderland go! Rockaby, lullaby, rain on the clover! (Tears on the eyelids that waver and weep!) Rockaby, lullaby--bending it over! Down on the mother-world, Down on the other world, Sleep, oh sleep! Down on the mother-world sleep! Rockaby, lullaby, dew on the clover! Dew on the eyes that will sparkle at dawn! Rockaby, lullaby, dear little rover! Into the stilly world, Into the lily world, Gone! oh gone! Into the lily world gone! Josiah Gilbert Holland [1819-1881] CRADLE SONG From "Bitter-Sweet" What is the little one thinking about? Very wonderful things, no doubt! Unwritten history! Unfathomed mystery! Yet he laughs and cries, and eats and drinks, And chuckles and crows, and nods and winks, As if his head were as full of kinks And curious riddles as any sphinx! Warped by colic, and wet by tears, Punctured by pins, and tortured by fears, Our little nephew will lose two years; And he'll never know Where the summers go;-- He need not laugh, for he'll find it so! Who can tell what a baby thinks? Who can follow the gossamer links By which the mannikin feels his way Out from the shore of the great unknown, Blind, and wailing, and alone, Into the light of day?-- Out from the shore of the unknown sea, Tossing in pitiful agony;-- Of the unknown sea that reels and rolls, Specked with the barks of little souls,-- Barks that were launched on the other side, And slipped from Heaven on an ebbing tide! What does he think of his mother's eyes? What does he think of his mother's hair? What of the cradle-roof, that flies Forward and backward through the air? What does he think of his mother's breast, Bare and beautiful, smooth and white, Seeking it ever with fresh delight,-- Cup of his life, and couch of his rest? What does he think when her quick embrace Presses his hand and buries his face Deep where the heart-throbs sink and swell With a tenderness she can never tell, Though she murmur the words Of all the birds,-- Words she has learned to murmur well? Now he thinks he'll go to sleep! I can see the shadow creep Over his eyes, in soft eclipse, Over his brow, and over his lips, Out to his little finger-tips! Softly sinking, down he goes! Down he goes! down he goes! See! he is hushed in sweet repose! Josiah Gilbert Holland [1819-1881] AN IRISH LULLABY I've found my bonny babe a nest On Slumber Tree, I'll rock you there to rosy rest, Asthore Machree! Oh, lulla lo! sing all the leaves On Slumber Tree, Till everything that hurts or grieves Afar must flee. I've put my pretty child to float Away from me, Within the new moon's silver boat On Slumber Sea. And when your starry sail is o'er From Slumber Sea, My precious one, you'll step to shore On Mother's knee. Alfred Perceval Graves [1846-1931] CRADLE SONG I Lord Gabriel, wilt thou not rejoice When at last a little boy's Cheek lies heavy as a rose, And his eyelids close? Gabriel, when that hush may be, This sweet hand all heedfully I'll undo, for thee alone, From his mother's own. Then the far blue highways paven With the burning stars of heaven, He shall gladden with the sweet Hasting of his feet-- Feet so brightly bare and cool, Leaping, as from pool to pool; From a little laughing boy Splashing rainbow joy! Gabriel, wilt thou understand How to keep his hovering hand-- Never shut, as in a bond, From the bright beyond?-- Nay, but though it cling and close Tightly as a climbing rose, Clasp it only so--aright, Lest his heart take fright. (Dormi, dormi tu: The dusk is hung with blue.) II Lord Michael, wilt not thou rejoice When at last a little boy's Heart, a shut-in murmuring bee, Turns him unto thee? Wilt thou heed thine armor well-- To take his hand from Gabriel, So his radiant cup of dream May not spill a gleam? He will take thy heart in thrall, Telling o'er thy breastplate, all Colors, in his bubbling speech, With his hand to each. (Dormi, dormi tu. Sapphire is the blue: Pearl and beryl, they are called, Chrysoprase and emerald, Sard and amethyst. Numbered so, and kissed.) Ah, but find some angel word For thy sharp, subduing sword! Yea, Lord Michael, make no doubt He will find it out: (Dormi, dormi tu! His eyes will look at you.) III Last, a little morning space, Lead him to that leafy place Where Our Lady sits awake, For all mothers' sake. Bosomed with the Blessed One, He shall mind her of her Son, Once so folded from all harms, In her shrining arms. (In her veil of blue, Dormi, dormi tu.) So;--and fare thee well. Softly,--Gabriel... When the first faint red shall come, Bid the Day-star lead him home, For the bright world's sake-- To my heart, awake. Josephine Preston Peabody [1874-1922] MOTHER-SONG FROM "PRINCE LUCIFER" White little hands! Pink little feet! Dimpled all over, Sweet, sweet, sweet! What dost thou wail for? The unknown? the unseen? The ills that are coming, The joys that have been? Cling to me closer, Closer and closer, Till the pain that is purer Hath banished the grosser. Drain, drain at the stream, love, Thy hunger is freeing, That was born in a dream, love, Along with thy being! Little fingers that feel For their home on my breast, Little lips that appeal For their nurture, their rest! Why, why dost thou weep, dear? Nay, stifle thy cries, Till the dew of thy sleep, dear, Lies soft on thine eyes. Alfred Austin [1835-1913] KENTUCKY BABE 'Skeeters am a hummin' on de honeysuckle vine,-- Sleep, Kentucky Babe! Sandman am a comin' to dis little coon of mine,-- Sleep, Kentucky Babe! Silv'ry moon am shinin' in de heabens up above, Bobolink am pinin' fo' his little lady love: Yo' is mighty lucky, Babe of old Kentucky,-- Close yo' eyes in sleep. Fly away, Fly away, Kentucky Babe, fly away to rest, Fly away, Lay yo' kinky, woolly head on yo' mammy's breast,-- Um--Um--, Close yo' eyes in sleep. Daddy's in de cane-brake wid his little dog and gun,-- Sleep, Kentucky Babe! 'Possum fo' yo' breakfast when yo' sleepin' time is done,-- Sleep, Kentucky Babe! Bogie man'll catch yo' sure unless yo' close yo' eyes, Waitin' jes outside de doo' to take yo' by surprise: Bes' be keepin' shady, Little colored lady,-- Close yo' eyes in sleep. Richard Henry Buck [1869- MINNIE AND WINNIE Minnie and Winnie slept in a shell. Sleep, little ladies! And they slept well. Pink was the shell within, silver without; Sounds of the great sea wandered about. Sleep, little ladies! Wake not soon! Echo on echo dies to the moon. Two bright stars peeped into the shell. "What are they dreaming of? Who can tell?" Started a green linnet out of the croft; Wake, little ladies! The sun is aloft. Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892] BED-TIME SONG Sleep, my baby, while I sing Bed-time news of everything. Chickens run to mother hen; Piggy curls up in the pen. In the field, all tired with play, Quiet now the lambkins stay. Kittens cuddle in a heap-- Baby, too, must go to sleep! Sleep, my baby, while I sing Bed-time news of everything. Now the cows from pasture come; Bees fly home with drowsy hum. Little birds are in the nest, Under mother-bird's soft breast. Over all soft shadows creep-- Baby now must go to sleep. Sleep, my baby, while I sing Bed-time news of everything. Sleepy flowers seem to nod, Drooping toward the dewy sod; While the big sun's fading light Bids my baby dear good-night. Mother loving watch will keep; Baby now must go to sleep. Emilie Poulsson [1853- TUCKING THE BABY IN The dark-fringed eyelids slowly close On eyes serene and deep; Upon my breast my own sweet child Has gently dropped to sleep; I kiss his soft and dimpled cheek, I kiss his rounded chin, Then lay him on his little bed, And tuck my baby in. How fair and innocent he lies; Like some small angel strayed, His face still warmed by God's own smile, That slumbers unafraid; Or like some new embodied soul, Still pure from taint of sin-- My thoughts are reverent as I stoop To tuck my baby in. What toil must stain these tiny hands That now lie still and white? What shadows creep across the face That shines with morning light? These wee pink shoeless feet--how far Shall go their lengthening tread, When they no longer cuddled close May rest upon this bed? O what am I that I should train An angel for the skies; Or mix the potent draught that feeds The soul within these eyes? I reach him up to the sinless Hands Before his cares begin,-- Great Father, with Thy folds of love, O tuck my baby in. Curtis May [18 -- "JENNY WI' THE AIRN TEETH" What a plague is this o' mine, Winna steek an e'e; Though I hap him o'er the heid, As cosy as can be. Sleep an' let me to my wark-- A' thae claes to airn-- Jenny wi' the airn teeth, Come an' tak' the bairn! Tak' him to your ain den, Whaur the bogie bides, But first put baith your big teeth In his wee plump sides; Gie your auld gray pow a shake, Rive him frae my grup, Tak' him whaur nae kiss is gaun When he waukens up. Whatna noise is that I hear Coomin' doon the street? Weel I ken the dump, dump, O' her beetle feet; Mercy me! she's at the door! Hear her lift the sneck; Wheesht, an' cuddle mammy noo, Closer roun' the neck. Jenny wi' the airn teeth, The bairn has aff his claes; Sleepin' safe an' soun', I think-- Dinna touch his taes. Sleepin' bairns are no for you, Ye may turn aboot, An' tak' awa' wee Tam next door-- I hear him screichin' oot. Dump, dump, awa' she gangs Back the road she cam', I hear her at the ither door, Speirin' after Tam; He's a crabbit, greetin' thing-- The warst in a' the toon, Little like my ain wee wean-- Losh, he's sleepin' soun'! Mithers hae an awfu' wark Wi' their bairns at nicht, Chappin' on the chair wi' tangs, To gie the rogues a fricht; Aulder bairns are fleyed wi' less, Weel eneuch we ken, Bigger bogies, bigger Jennies, Frichten muckle men. Alexander Anderson [1845-1909] CUDDLE DOON The bairnies cuddle doon at nicht Wi' muckie faucht an' din, "O, try an' sleep, ye waukrife rogues, Your father's comin' in." They never heed a word I speak; I try to gie a froon, But aye I hap them up, an' cry, "O bairnies, cuddle doon." Wee Jamie wi' the curly heid-- He aye sleeps next the wa'-- Bangs up an' cries, "I want a piece;" The rascal starts them a'. I rin an' fetch them pieces, drinks, They stop awee the soun'; Then draw the blankets up an' cry, "Noo, weanies, cuddle doon." But ere five minutes gang, wee Rab Cries oot, frae 'neath the claes, "Mither, mak' Tam gie ower at once-- He's kittlin' wi' his taes." The mischief's in that Tam for tricks, He'd bother half the toon; But aye I hap them up an' cry, "O bairnies, cuddle doon." At length they hear their father's fit, An', as he steeks the door, They turn their faces to the wa', While Tam pretends to snore. "Hae a' the weans been gude?" he asks, As he pits aff his shoon; "The bairnies, John, are in their beds, An' lang since cuddled doon." An' just afore we bed oorsel's, We look at oor wee lambs; Tam has his airm roun' wee Rab's neck, An' Rab his airm roun' Tam's. I lift wee Jamie up the bed, An' as I straik each croon, I whisper, till my heart fills up, "O bairnies, cuddle doon." The bairnies cuddle doon at nicht Wi' mirth that's dear to me; But sune the big warl's cark an' care Will quaten doon their glee. Yet, come what will to ilka ane, May He who sits aboon Aye whisper, though their pows be bauld, "O bairnies, cuddle doon." Alexander Anderson [1845-1909] BEDTIME 'Tis bedtime; say your hymn, and bid "Good-night; God bless Mamma, Papa, and dear ones all." Your half-shut eyes beneath your eyelids fall, Another minute, you will shut them quite. Yes, I will carry you, put out the light, And tuck you up, although you are so tall! What will you give me, sleepy one, and call My wages, if I settle you all right? I laid her golden curls upon my arm, I drew her little feet within my hand, Her rosy palms were joined in trustful bliss, Her heart next mine beat gently, soft and warm She nestled to me, and, by Love's command, Paid me my precious wages--"Baby's Kiss." Francis Robert St. Clair Erskine [1833-1890] THE DUTY OF CHILDREN HAPPY THOUGHT The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings. Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-1894] WHOLE DUTY OF CHILDREN A child should always say what's true And speak when he is spoken to, And behave mannerly at table; At least as far as he is able. Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-1894] POLITENESS Good little boys should never say "I will," and "Give me these"; O, no! that never is the way, But "Mother, if you please." And "If you please," to Sister Ann Good boys to say are ready; And, "Yes, sir," to a Gentleman, And, "Yes, ma'am," to a Lady. Elizabeth Turner [?--1846] RULES OF BEHAVIOR Hearts, like doors, will ope with ease To very, very little keys, And don't forget that two of these Are "I thank you" and "If you please." Come when you're called, Do what you're bid, Close the door after you, Never be chid. Seldom "can't," Seldom "don't;" Never "shan't," Never "won't." LITTLE FRED When little Fred Was called to bed, He always acted right; He kissed Mama, And then Papa, And wished them all good-night. He made no noise, Like naughty boys, But gently up the stairs Directly went, When he was sent, And always said his prayers. THE LOVABLE CHILD Frisky as a lambkin, Busy as a bee-- That's the kind of little girl People like to see. Modest as a violet, As a rosebud sweet-- That's the kind of little girl People like to meet. Bright as is a diamond, Pure as any pearl-- Everyone rejoices in Such a little girl. Happy as a robin, Gentle as a dove-- That's the kind of little girl Everyone will love. Fly away and seek her, Little song of mine, For I choose that very girl As my Valentine. Emilie Poulsson [1853- GOOD AND BAD CHILDREN Children, you are very little, And your bones are very brittle; If you would grow great and stately, You must try to walk sedately. You must still be bright and quiet, And content with simple diet; And remain, through all bewild'ring, Innocent and honest children. Happy hearts and happy faces, Happy play in grassy places-- That was how, in ancient ages, Children grew to kings and sages. But the unkind and the unruly, And the sort who eat unduly, They must never hope for glory-- Theirs is quite a different story! Cruel children, crying babies, All grow up as geese and gabies, Hated, as their age increases, By their nephews and their nieces. Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-1894] REBECCA'S AFTER-THOUGHT Yesterday, Rebecca Mason, In the parlor by herself, Broke a handsome china basin, Placed upon the mantel-shelf. Quite alarmed, she thought of going Very quietly away, Not a single person knowing, Of her being there that day. But Rebecca recollected She was taught deceit to shun; And the moment she reflected, Told her mother what was done; Who commended her behavior, Loved her better, and forgave her. Elizabeth Turner [?--1846] KINDNESS TO ANIMALS Little children, never give Pain to things that feel and live; Let the gentle robin come For the crumbs you save at home,-- As his meat you throw along He'll repay you with a song; Never hurt the timid hare Peeping from her green grass lair, Let her come and sport and play On the lawn at close of day; The little lark goes soaring high To the bright windows of the sky, Singing as if 'twere always spring, And fluttering on an untired wing,-- Oh! let him sing his happy song, Nor do these gentle creatures wrong. A RULE FOR BIRDS' NESTERS The robin and the red-breast, The sparrow and the wren; If ye take out o' their nest, Ye'll never thrive again! The robin and the red-breast, The martin and the swallow; If ye touch one o' their eggs, Bad luck will surely follow! "SING ON, BLITHE BIRD" I've plucked the berry from the bush, the brown nut from the tree, But heart of happy little bird ne'er broken was by me. I saw them in their curious nests, close couching, slyly peer With their wild eyes, like glittering beads, to note if harm were near; I passed them by, and blessed them all; I felt that it was good To leave unmoved the creatures small whose home was in the wood. And here, even now, above my head, a lusty rogue doth sing; He pecks his swelling breast and neck, and trims his little wing. He will not fly; he knows full well, while chirping on that spray, I would not harm him for the world, or interrupt his lay. Sing on, sing on, blithe bird! and fill my heart with summer gladness; It has been aching many a day with measures full of sadness! William Motherwell [1797-1835] "I LIKE LITTLE PUSSY" I like little Pussy, her coat is so warm; And if I don't hurt her she'll do me no harm. So I'll not pull her tail, nor drive her away, But Pussy and I very gently will play. She shall sit by my side, and I'll give her some food; And she'll love me because I am gentle and good. I'll pat little Pussy and then she will purr, And thus show her thanks for my kindness to her. I'll not pinch her ears, nor tread on her paw, Lest I should provoke her to use her sharp claw; I never will vex her, nor make her displeased, For Pussy can't bear to be worried or teased. Jane Taylor [1783-1824] LITTLE THINGS Little drops of water, Little grains of sand, Make the mighty ocean And the pleasant land. So the little moments, Humble though they be, Make the mighty ages Of eternity. So our little errors Lead the soul away From the path of virtue, Far in sin to stray. Little deeds of kindness, Little words of love, Help to make earth happy Like the heaven above. Julia Fletcher Carney [1823-1908] THE LITTLE GENTLEMAN From "Little Derwent's Breakfast" Take your meals, my little man, Always like a gentleman; Wash your face and hands with care, Change your shoes, and brush your hair; Then so fresh, and clean, and neat, Come and take your proper seat: Do not loiter and be late, Making other people wait; Do not rudely point or touch: Do not eat and drink too much: Finish what you have, before You even ask, or send for more: Never crumble or destroy Food that others might enjoy; They who idly crumbs will waste Often want a loaf to taste! Never spill your milk or tea, Never rude or noisy be; Never choose the daintiest food, Be content with what is good: Seek in all things that you can To be a little gentleman. THE CRUST OF BREAD I must not throw upon the floor The crust I cannot eat; For many little hungry ones Would think it quite a treat. My parents labor very hard To get me wholesome food; Then I must never waste a bit That would do others good. For wilful waste makes woeful want, And I may live to say, Oh! how I wish I had the bread That once I threw away! "HOW DOTH THE LITTLE BUSY BEE" How doth the little busy bee Improve each shining hour, And gather honey all the day From every opening flower! How skilfully she builds her cell! How neat she spreads the wax! And labors hard to store it well With the sweet food she makes. In works of labor or of skill, I would be busy too; For Satan finds some mischief still For idle hands to do. In books, or work, or healthful play, Let my first years be passed, That I may give for every day Some good account at last. Isaac Watts [1674-1748] THE BROWN THRUSH There's a merry brown thrush sitting up in the tree. "He's singing to me! He's singing to me!" And what does he say, little girl, little boy? "Oh, the world's running over with joy! Don't you hear? Don't you see? Hush! Look! In my tree, I'm as happy as happy can be!" And the brown thrush keeps singing, "A nest do you see, And five eggs, hid by me in the juniper-tree? Don't meddle! Don't touch! little girl, little boy, Or the world will lose some of its joy! Now I'm glad! Now I'm free! And I always shall be, If you never bring sorrow to me." So the merry brown thrush sings away in the tree, To you and to me, to you and to me; And he sings all the day, little girl, little boy, "Oh, the world's running over with joy! But long it won't be, Don't you know? Don't you see? Unless we're as good as can be." Lucy Larcom [1824-1893] THE SLUGGARD 'Tis the voice of a sluggard; I heard him complain, "You have waked me too soon; I must slumber again"; As the door on its hinges, so he on his bed Turns his sides, and his shoulders, and his heavy head. "A little more sleep, and a little more slumber"; Thus he wastes half his days, and his hours without number; And when he gets up, he sits folding his hands Or walks about saunt'ring, or trifling he stands. I passed by his garden, and saw the wild brier The thorn and the thistle grow broader and higher; The clothes that hang on him are turning to rags; And his money still wastes till he starves or he begs. I made him a visit, still hoping to find That he took better care for improving his mind; He told me his dreams, talked of eating and drinking. But he scarce reads his Bible, and never loves thinking. Said I then to my heart, "Here's a lesson for me; That man's but a picture of what I might be; But thanks to my friends for their care in my breeding, Who taught me betimes to love working and reading." Isaac Watts [1674-1748] THE VIOLET Down in a green and shady bed A modest violet grew; Its stalk was bent, it hung its head, As if to hide from view. And yet it was a lovely flower, Its colors bright and fair; It might have graced a rosy bower, Instead of hiding there. Yet there it was content to bloom, In modest tints arrayed; And there diffused a sweet perfume, Within the silent shade. Then let me to the valley go, This pretty flower to see; That I may also learn to grow In sweet humility. Jane Taylor [1783-1824] DIRTY JIM There was one little Jim, 'Tis reported of him, And must be to his lasting disgrace, That he never was seen With hands at all clean, Nor yet ever clean was his face. His friends were much hurt To see so much dirt, And often they made him quite clean; But all was in vain, He got dirty again, And not at all fit to be seen. It gave him no pain To hear them complain, Nor his own dirty clothes to survey; His indolent mind No pleasure could find In tidy and wholesome array. The idle and bad, Like this little lad, May love dirty ways, to be sure; But good boys are seen, To be decent and clean, Although they are ever so poor. Jane Taylor [1783-1824] THE PIN "Dear me! what signifies a pin, Wedged in a rotten board? I'm certain that I won't begin, At ten years old, to hoard; I never will be called a miser, That I'm determined," said Eliza. So onward tripped the little maid, And left the pin behind, Which very snug and quiet lay, To its hard fate resigned; Nor did she think (a careless chit) 'Twas worth her while to stoop for it. Next day a party was to ride, To see an air balloon; And all the company beside Were dressed and ready soon; But she a woeful case was in, For want of just a single pin. In vain her eager eyes she brings, To every darksome crack; There was not one, and yet her things Were dropping off her back. She cut her pincushion in two, But no, not one had fallen through. At last, as hunting on the floor, Over a crack she lay, The carriage rattled to the door, Then rattled fast away; But poor Eliza was not in, For want of just--a single pin! There's hardly anything so small, So trifling or so mean, That we may never want at all, For service unforeseen; And wilful waste, depend upon't, Brings, almost always, woeful want! Ann Taylor [1782-1866] JANE AND ELIZA There were two little girls, neither handsome nor plain, One's name was Eliza, the other's was Jane; They were both of one height, as I've heard people say, And both of one age, I believe, to a day. 'Twas fancied by some, who but slightly had seen them, There was not a pin to be chosen between them; But no one for long in this notion persisted, So great a distinction there really existed. Eliza knew well that she could not be pleasing, While fretting and fuming, while sulking or teasing; And therefore in company artfully tried, Not to break her bad habits, but only to hide. So, when she was out, with much labor and pain, She contrived to look almost as pleasant as Jane; But then you might see that, in forcing a smile, Her mouth was uneasy, and ached all the while. And in spite of her care it would sometimes befall That some cross event happened to ruin it all; And because it might chance that her share was the worst, Her temper broke loose, and her dimples dispersed. But Jane, who had nothing she wanted to hide, And therefore these troublesome arts never tried, Had none of the care and fatigue of concealing, But her face always showed what her bosom was feeling. At home or abroad there was peace in her smile, A cheerful good nature that needed no guile. And Eliza worked hard, but could never obtain The affection that freely was given to Jane. Ann Taylor [1782-1866] MEDDLESOME MATTY One ugly trick has often spoiled The sweetest and the best; Matilda, though a pleasant child, One ugly trick possessed, Which, like a cloud before the skies, Hid all her better qualities. Sometimes she'd lift the tea-pot lid, To peep at what was in it; Or tilt the kettle, if you did But turn your back a minute. In vain you told her not to touch, Her trick of meddling grew so much. Her grandmamma went out one day, And by mistake she laid Her spectacles and snuff-box gay Too near the little maid; "Ah! well," thought she, "I'll try them on, As soon as grandmamma is gone." Forthwith she placed upon her nose The glasses large and wide; And looking round, as I suppose, The snuff-box too she spied: "Oh! what a pretty box is that; I'll open it," said little Matt. "I know that grandmamma would say, 'Don't meddle with it, dear'; But then, she's far enough away, And no one else is near: Besides, what can there be amiss In opening such a box as this?" So thumb and finger went to work To move the stubborn lid, And presently a mighty jerk The mighty mischief did; For all at once, ah! woeful case, The snuff came puffing in her face. Poor eyes, and nose, and mouth, beside, A dismal sight presented; In vain, as bitterly she cried, Her folly she repented. In vain she ran about for ease; She could do nothing now but sneeze. She dashed the spectacles away, To wipe her tingling eyes, And as in twenty bits they lay, Her grandmamma she spies. "Heydey! and what's the matter now?" Cried grandmamma, with lifted brow. Matilda, smarting with the pain, And tingling still, and sore, Made many a promise to refrain From meddling evermore. And 'tis a fact, as I have heard, She ever since has kept her word. Ann Taylor [1782-1866] CONTENTED JOHN One honest John Tomkins, a hedger and ditcher, Although he was poor, did not want to be richer; For all such vain wishes in him were prevented By a fortunate habit of being contented. Though cold were the weather, or dear were the food, John never was found in a murmuring mood; For this he was constantly heard to declare,-- What he could not prevent he would cheerfully bear. "For why should I grumble and murmur?" he said; "If I cannot get meat, I'll be thankful for bread; And, though fretting may make my calamities deeper, It can never cause bread and cheese to be cheaper." If John was afflicted with sickness or pain, He wished himself better, but did not complain, Nor lie down to fret in despondence and sorrow, But said that he hoped to be better to-morrow. If any one wronged him or treated him ill, Why, John was good-natured and sociable still; For he said that revenging the injury done Would be making two rogues when there need be but one. And thus honest John, though his station was humble, Passed through this sad world without even a grumble; And I wish that some folks, who are greater and richer, Would copy John Tomkins, the hedger and ditcher. Jane Taylor [1783-1824] FRIENDS How good to lie a little while And look up through the tree! The Sky is like a kind big smile Bent sweetly over me. The Sunshine flickers through the lace Of leaves above my head, And kisses me upon the face Like Mother, before bed. The Wind comes stealing o'er the grass To whisper pretty things; And though I cannot see him pass, I feel his careful wings. So many gentle Friends are near Whom one can scarcely see, A child should never feel a fear, Wherever he may be. Abbie Farwell Brown [1875-1927] ANGER Anger in its time and place May assume a kind of grace. It must have some reason in it, And not last beyond a minute. If to further lengths it go, It does into malice grow. 'Tis the difference that we see 'Twixt the serpent and the bee. If the latter you provoke, It inflicts a hasty stroke, Puts you to some little pain, But it never stings again. Close in tufted bush or brake Lurks the poison-swelled snake Nursing up his cherished wrath; In the purlieus of his path, In the cold, or in the warm, Mean him good, or mean him harm, Wheresoever fate may bring you, The vile snake will always sting you. Charles and Mary Lamb "THERE WAS A LITTLE GIRL" There was a little girl, who had a little curl Right in the middle of her forehead, And when she was good she was very, very good, But when she was bad she was horrid. She stood on her head, on her little trundle-bed, With nobody by for to hinder; She screamed and she squalled, she yelled and she bawled, And drummed her little heels against the winder. Her mother heard the noise, and thought it was the boys Playing in the empty attic, She rushed upstairs, and caught her unawares, And spanked her, most emphatic. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [1807-1882] THE REFORMATION OF GODFREY GORE Godfrey Gordon Gustavus Gore-- No doubt you have heard the name before-- Was a boy who never would shut a door! The wind might whistle, the wind might roar, And teeth be aching and throats be sore, But still he never would shut the door. His father would beg, his mother implore, "Godfrey Gordon Gustavus Gore, We really do wish you would shut the door!" Their hands they wrung, their hair they tore; But Godfrey Gordon Gustavus Gore Was deaf as the buoy out at the Nore. When he walked forth the folks would roar, "Godfrey Gordon Gustavus Gore, Why don't you think to shut the door?" They rigged out a Shutter with sail and oar, And threatened to pack off Gustavus Gore On a voyage of penance to Singapore. But he begged for mercy, and said, "No more! Pray do not send me to Singapore On a Shutter, and then I will shut the door!" "You will?" said his parents; "then keep on shore! But mind you do! For the plague is sore Of a fellow that never will shut the door, Godfrey Gordon Gustavus Gore!" William Brighty Rands [1823-1882] THE BEST FIRM A pretty good firm is "Watch & Waite," And another is "Attit, Early & Layte;" And still another is "Doo & Dairet;" But the best is probably "Grinn & Barrett." Walter G. Doty [1876- A LITTLE PAGE'S SONG (13th Century) God's lark at morning I would be! I'd set my heart within a tree Close to His bed and sing to Him Right merrily A sunrise hymn. At night I'd be God's troubadour! Beneath His starry walls I'd pour Across the moat such roundelays He'd love me sure-- And maybe praise! William Alexander Percy [1885- HOW THE LITTLE KITE LEARNED TO FLY "I never can do it," the little kite said, As he looked at the others high over his head; "I know I should fall if I tried to fly." "Try," said the big kite; "only try! Or I fear you never will learn at all." But the little kite said, "I'm afraid I'll fall." The big kite nodded: "Ah well, goodby; I'm off;" and he rose toward the tranquil sky. Then the little kite's paper stirred at the sight, And trembling he shook himself free for flight. First whirling and frightened, then braver grown, Up, up he rose through the air alone, Till the big kite looking down could see The little one rising steadily. Then how the little kite thrilled with pride, As he sailed with the big kite side by side! While far below he could see the ground, And the boys like small spots moving round. They rested high in the quiet air, And only the birds and the clouds were there. "Oh, how happy I am!" the little kite cried, "And all because I was brave, and tried." Unknown THE BUTTERFLY AND THE BEE Methought I heard a butterfly Say to a laboring bee; "Thou hast no colors of the sky On painted wings like me." "Poor child of vanity! those dyes, And colors bright and rare," With mild reproof, the bee replies, "Are all beneath my care." "Content I toil from morn till eve, And, scorning idleness, To tribes of gaudy sloth I leave The vanity of dress." William Lisle Bowles [1762-1850] THE BUTTERFLY The butterfly, an idle thing, Nor honey makes, nor yet can sing, As do the bee and bird; Nor does it, like the prudent ant, Lay up the grain for times of want, A wise and cautious hoard. My youth is but a summer's day: Then like the bee and ant I'll lay A store of learning by; And though from flower to flower I rove, My stock of wisdom I'll improve, Nor be a butterfly. Adelaide O'Keefe [1776-1855] MORNING The lark is up to meet the sun, The bee is on the wing, The ant her labor has begun, The woods with music ring. Shall birds and bees and ants be wise, While I my moments waste? Oh, let me with the morning rise, And to my duties haste. Why should I sleep till beams of morn Their light and glory shed? Immortal beings were not born To waste their time in bed. Jane Taylor [1783-1824] BUTTERCUPS AND DAISIES Buttercups and daisies, Oh, the pretty flowers; Coming ere the spring time, To tell of sunny hours, While the trees are leafless, While the fields are bare, Buttercups and daisies Spring up here and there. Ere the snow-drop peepeth, Ere the crocus bold, Ere the early primrose Opes its paly gold,-- Somewhere on the sunny bank Buttercups are bright; Somewhere midst the frozen grass Peeps the daisy white. Little hardy flowers, Like to children poor, Playing in their sturdy health By their mother's door. Purple with the north-wind, Yet alert and bold; Fearing not, and caring not, Though they be a-cold! What to them is winter! What are stormy showers! Buttercups and daisies Are these human flowers! He who gave them hardships And a life of care, Gave them likewise hardy strength And patient hearts to bear. Mary Howitt [1799-1888] THE ANT AND THE CRICKET A silly young cricket, accustomed to sing Through the warm, sunny months of gay summer and spring, Began to complain, when he found that at home His cupboard was empty and winter was come. Not a crumb to be found On the snow-covered ground; Not a flower could he see, Not a leaf on a tree: "Oh, what will become," says the cricket, "of me?" At last by starvation and famine made bold, All dripping with wet and all trembling with cold, Away he set off to a miserly ant, To see if, to keep him alive, he would grant Him shelter from rain: A mouthful of grain He wished only to borrow, He'd repay it to-morrow: If not, he must die of starvation and sorrow. Says the ant to the cricket, "I'm your servant and friend, But we ants never borrow, we ants never lend; But tell me, dear sir, did you lay nothing by When the weather was warm?" Said the cricket, "Not I. My heart was so light That I sang day and night, For all nature looked gay." "You sang, sir, you say? Go then," said the ant, "and dance winter away." Thus ending, he hastily lifted the wicket And out of the door turned the poor little cricket. Though this is a fable, the moral is good: If you live without work, you must live without food. Unknown AFTER WINGS This was your butterfly, you see,-- His fine wings made him vain: The caterpillars crawl, but he Passed them in rich disdain.-- My pretty boy says, "Let him be Only a worm again!" O child, when things have learned to wear Wings once, they must be fain To keep them always high and fair: Think of the creeping pain Which even a butterfly must bear To be a worm again! Sarah M. B. Piatt [1836-1919] DEEDS OF KINDNESS Suppose the little Cowslip Should hang its golden cup And say, "I'm such a little flower I'd better not grow up!" How many a weary traveller Would miss its fragrant smell, How many a little child would grieve To lose it from the dell! Suppose the glistening Dewdrop Upon the grass should say, "What can a little dewdrop do? I'd better roll away!" The blade on which it rested, Before the day was done, Without a drop to moisten it, Would wither in the sun. Suppose the little Breezes, Upon a summer's day, Should think themselves too small to cool The traveller on his way: Who would not miss the smallest And softest ones that blow, And think they made a great mistake If they were acting so? How many deed of kindness A little child can do, Although it has but little strength And little wisdom too! It wants a loving spirit Much more than strength, to prove How many things a child may do For others by its love. Epes Sargent [1813-1880] THE LION AND THE MOUSE A lion with the heat oppressed, One day composed himself to rest: But while he dozed as he intended, A mouse, his royal back ascended; Nor thought of harm, as Aesop tells, Mistaking him for someone else; And travelled over him, and round him, And might have left him as she found him Had she not--tremble when you hear-- Tried to explore the monarch's ear! Who straightway woke, with wrath immense, And shook his head to cast her thence. "You rascal, what are you about?" Said he, when he had turned her out, "I'll teach you soon," the lion said, "To make a mouse-hole in my head!" So saying, he prepared his foot To crush the trembling tiny brute; But she (the mouse) with tearful eye, Implored the lion's clemency, Who thought it best at last to give His little prisoner a reprieve. 'Twas nearly twelve months after this, The lion chanced his way to miss; When pressing forward, heedless yet, He got entangled in a net. With dreadful rage, he stamped and tore, And straight commenced a lordly roar; When the poor mouse, who heard the noise, Attended, for she knew his voice. Then what the lion's utmost strength Could not effect, she did at length; With patient labor she applied Her teeth, the network to divide; And so at last forth issued he, A lion, by a mouse set free. Few are so small or weak, I guess, But may assist us in distress, Nor shall we ever, if we're wise, The meanest, or the least despise. Jeffreys Taylor [1792-1853] THE BOY AND THE WOLF A little Boy was set to keep A little flock of goats or sheep; He thought the task too solitary, And took a strange perverse vagary: To call the people out of fun, To see them leave their work and run, He cried and screamed with all his might,-- "Wolf! wolf!" in a pretended fright. Some people, working at a distance, Came running in to his assistance. They searched the fields and bushes round, The Wolf was nowhere to be found. The Boy, delighted with his game, A few days after did the same, And once again the people came. The trick was many times repeated, At last they found that they were cheated. One day the Wolf appeared in sight, The Boy was in a real fright, He cried, "Wolf! wolf!"--the neighbors heard, But not a single creature stirred. "We need not go from our employ,-- 'Tis nothing but that idle boy." The little Boy cried out again, "Help, help! the Wolf!" he cried in vain. At last his master came to beat him. He came too late, the Wolf had eat him. This shows the bad effect of lying, And likewise of continual crying. If I had heard you scream and roar, For nothing, twenty times before, Although you might have broke your arm, Or met with any serious harm, Your cries could give me no alarm; They would not make me move the faster, Nor apprehend the least disaster; I should be sorry when I came, But you yourself would be to blame. John Hookham Frere [1769-1846] THE STORY OF AUGUSTUS, WHO WOULD NOT HAVE ANY SOUP Augustus was a chubby lad; Fat, ruddy cheeks Augustus had; And everybody saw with joy The plump and hearty, healthy boy. He ate and drank as he was told, And never let his soup get cold. But one day, one cold winter's day, He screamed out--"Take the soup away! O take the nasty soup away! I won't have any soup to-day." Next day begins his tale of woes; Quite lank and lean Augustus grows. Yet, though he feels so weak and ill, The naughty fellow cries out still-- "Not any soup for me, I say: O take the nasty soup away! I won't have any soup to-day." The third day comes; O what a sin! To make himself so pale and thin. Yet, when the soup is put on table, He screams, as loud as he is able,-- "Not any soup for me, I say: O take the nasty soup away! I won't have any soup to-day." Look at him, now the fourth day's come! He scarcely weighs a sugar-plum; He's like a little bit of thread, And on the fifth day, he was--dead! From the German of Heinrich Hoffman [1798-1874] THE STORY OF LITTLE SUCK-A-THUMB One day, mamma said: "Conrad dear, I must go out and leave you here. But mind now, Conrad, what I say, Don't suck your thumb while I'm away. The great tall tailor always comes To little boys that suck their thumbs; And ere they dream what he's about, He takes his great sharp scissors out And cuts their thumbs clean off,--and then, You know, they never grow again." Mamma had scarcely turned her back, The thumb was in, alack! alack! The door flew open, in he ran, The great, long, red-legged scissors-man. Oh, children, see! the tailor's come And caught our little Suck-a-Thumb. Snip! snap! snip! the scissors go; And Conrad cries out--"Oh! oh! oh!" Snip! snap! Snip! They go so fast, That both his thumbs are off at last. Mamma comes home; there Conrad stands, And looks quite sad, and shows his hands;-- "Ah!" said mamma, "I knew he'd come To naughty little Suck-a-Thumb." From the German of Heinrich Hoffman [1798-1874] WRITTEN IN A LITTLE LADY'S LITTLE ALBUM Hearts good and true Have wishes few In narrow circles bounded, And hope that lives On what God gives Is Christian hope well founded. Small things are best; Grief and unrest To rank and wealth are given; But little things On little wings Bear little souls to heaven. Frederick William Faber [1814-1863] MY LADY WIND My Lady Wind, my Lady Wind, Went round about the house to find A chink to set her foot in; She tried the keyhole in the door, She tried the crevice in the floor, And drove the chimney soot in. And then one night when it was dark She blew up such a tiny spark That all the town was bothered; From it she raised such flame and smoke That many in great terror woke, And many more were smothered. And thus when once, my little dears, A whisper reaches itching ears-- The same will come, you'll find: Take my advice, restrain the tongue, Remember what old nurse has sung Of busy Lady Wind. Unknown TO A CHILD Small service is true service while it lasts: Of humblest friends, bright creature! scorn not one: The daisy, by the shadow that it casts, Protects the lingering dewdrop from the sun. William Wordsworth [1770-1850] A FAREWELL My fairest child, I have no song to give you; No lark could pipe to skies so dull and gray: Yet, if you will, one quiet hint I'll leave you For every day. I'll tell you how to sing a clearer carol Than lark who hails the dawn on breezy down; To earn yourself a purer poet's laurel Than Shakespeare's crown. Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever; Do noble things, not dream them, all day long: And so make Life, and Death, and that For Ever One grand sweet song. Charles Kingsley [1819-1875] RHYMES OF CHILDHOOD REEDS OF INNOCENCE Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: "Pipe a song about a lamb!" So I piped with merry cheer. "Piper, pipe that song again;" So I piped: he wept to hear. "Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; Sing thy songs of happy cheer!" So I sang the same again, While he wept with joy to hear. "Piper, sit thee down and write In a book that all may read." So he vanished from my sight; And I plucked a hollow reed, And I made a rural pen, And I stained the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs Every child may joy to hear. William Blake [1757-1827] THE WONDERFUL WORLD Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful World, With the wonderful water round you curled, And the wonderful grass upon your breast, World, you are beautifully dressed. The wonderful air is over me, And the wonderful wind is shaking the tree-- It walks on the water, and whirls the mills, And talks to itself on the tops of the hills. You friendly Earth, how far do you go, With the wheat-fields that nod and the rivers that flow, With cities and gardens, and cliffs and isles, And people upon you for thousands of miles? Ah! you are so great, and I am so small, I tremble to think of you, World, at all; And yet, when I said my prayers to-day, A whisper inside me seemed to say, "You are more than the Earth, though you are such a dot: You can love and think, and the Earth cannot!" William Brighty Rands [1823-1882] THE WORLD'S MUSIC The world's a very happy place, Where every child should dance and sing, And always have a smiling face, And never sulk for anything. I waken when the morning's come, And feel the air and light alive With strange sweet music like the hum Of bees about their busy hive. The linnets play among the leaves At hide-and-seek, and chirp and sing; While, flashing to and from the eaves, The swallows twitter on the wing. The twigs that shake, and boughs that sway; And tall old trees you could not climb; And winds that come, but cannot stay, Are gaily singing all the time. From dawn to dark the old mill-wheel Makes music, going round and round; And dusty-white with flour and meal, The miller whistles to its sound. And if you listen to the rain When leaves and birds and bees are dumb, You hear it pattering on the pane Like Andrew beating on his drum. The coals beneath the kettle croon, And clap their hands and dance in glee; And even the kettle hums a tune To tell you when it's time for tea. The world is such a happy place, That children, whether big or small, Should always have a smiling face, And never, never sulk at all. Gabriel Setoun [1861- A BOY'S SONG Where the pools are bright and deep, Where the gray trout lies asleep, Up the river and over the lea, That's the way for Billy and me. Where the blackbird sings the latest, Where the hawthorn blooms the sweetest, Where the nestlings chirp and flee, That's the way for Billy and me. Where the mowers mow the cleanest, Where the hay lies thick and greenest, There to track the homeward bee, That's the way for Billy and me. Where the hazel bank is steepest, Where the shadow falls the deepest, Where the clustering nuts fall free, That's the way for Billy and me. Why the boys should drive away Little sweet maidens from the play, Or love to banter and fight so well, That's the thing I never could tell. But this I know, I love to play Through the meadow, among the hay; Up the water and over the lea, That's the way for Billy and me. James Hogg [1770-1835] GOING DOWN HILL ON A BICYCLE A Boy's Song With lifted feet, hands still, I am poised, and down the hill Dart, with heedful mind; The air goes by in a wind. Swifter and yet more swift, Till the heart with a mighty lift Makes the lungs laugh, the throat cry:-- "O bird, see; see, bird, I fly. "Is this, is this your joy? O bird, then I, though a boy, For a golden moment share Your feathery life in air!" Say, heart, is there aught like this In a world that is full of bliss? 'Tis more than skating, bound Steel-shod to the level ground. Speed slackens now, I float Awhile in my airy boat; Till, when the wheels scarce crawl, My feet to the treadles fall. Alas, that the longest hill Must end in a vale; but still, Who climbs with toil, wheresoe'er, Shall find wings waiting there. Henry Charles Beeching [1859-1919] PLAYGROUNDS In summer I am very glad We children are so small, For we can see a thousand things That men can't see at all. They don't know much about the moss And all the stones they pass: They never lie and play among The forests in the grass: They walk about a long way off; And, when we're at the sea, Let father stoop as best he can He can't find things like me. But, when the snow is on the ground And all the puddles freeze, I wish that I were very tall, High up above the trees. Laurence Alma-Tadema [18-- "WHO HAS SEEN THE WIND?" Who has seen the wind? Neither I nor you: But when the leaves hang trembling, The wind is passing through. Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I: But when the trees bow down their heads, The wind is passing by. Christina Georgina Rossetti [1830-1894] THE WIND'S SONG O winds that blow across the sea, What is the story that you bring? Leaves clap their hands on every tree And birds about their branches sing. You sing to flowers and trees and birds Your sea-songs over all the land. Could you not stay and whisper words A little child might understand? The roses nod to hear you sing; But though I listen all the day, You never tell me anything Of father's ship so far away. Its masts are taller than the trees; Its sails are silver in the sun; There's not a ship upon the seas So beautiful as father's one. With wings spread out it flies so fast It leaves the waves all white with foam. Just whisper to me, blowing past, If you have seen it sailing home. I feel your breath upon my cheek, And in my hair, and on my brow. Dear winds, if you could only speak, I know that you would tell me now. My father's coming home, you'd say, With precious presents, one, two, three; A shawl for mother, beads for May, And eggs and shells for Rob and me. The winds sing songs where'er they roam; The leaves all clap their little hands; For father's ship is coming home With wondrous things from foreign lands. Gabriel Setoun [1861- THE PIPER ON THE HILL A Child's Song There sits a piper on the hill Who pipes the livelong day, And when he pipes both loud and shrill, The frightened people say: "The wind, the wind is blowing up 'Tis rising to a gale." The women hurry to the shore To watch some distant sail. The wind, the wind, the wind, the wind, Is blowing to a gale. But when he pipes all sweet and low, The piper on the hill, I hear the merry women go With laughter, loud and shrill: "The wind, the wind is coming south 'Twill blow a gentle day." They gather on the meadow-land To toss the yellow hay. The wind, the wind, the wind, the wind, Is blowing south to-day. And in the morn, when winter comes, To keep the piper warm, The little Angels shake their wings To make a feather storm: "The snow, the snow has come at last!" The happy children call, And "ring around" they dance in glee, And watch the snowflakes fall. The wind, the wind, the wind, the wind, Has spread a snowy pall. But when at night the piper plays, I have not any fear, Because God's windows open wide The pretty tune to hear; And when each crowding spirit looks, From its star window-pane, A watching mother may behold Her little child again. The wind, the wind, the wind, the wind, May blow her home again. Dora Sigerson Shorter [1862-1918] THE WIND AND THE MOON Said the Wind to the Moon, "I will blow you out; You stare In the air Like a ghost in a chair, Always looking what I am about-- I hate to be watched; I'll blow you out." The Wind blew hard, and out went the Moon. So, deep On a heap Of clouds to sleep, Down lay the Wind, and slumbered soon, Muttering low, "I've done for that Moon." He turned in his bed; she was there again! On high In the sky, With her one ghost eye, The Moon shone white and alive and plain. Said the Wind, "I will blow you out again." The Wind blew hard, and the Moon grew dim. "With my sledge, And my wedge, I have knocked off her edge! If only I blow right fierce and grim, The creature will soon be dimmer than dim." He blew and he blew, and she thinned to a thread. "One puff More's enough To blow her to snuff! One good puff more where the last was bred, And glimmer, glimmer, glum will go the thread." He blew a great blast, and the thread was gone. In the air Nowhere Was a moonbeam bare; Far off and harmless the shy stars shone-- Sure and certain the Moon was gone! The Wind he took to his revels once more; On down, In town, Like a merry-mad clown, He leaped and halloed with whistle and roar-- "What's that?" The glimmering thread once more! He flew in a rage--he danced and blew; But in vain Was the pain Of his bursting brain; For still the broader the Moon-scrap grew, The broader he swelled his big cheeks and blew. Slowly she grew--till she filled the night, And shone On her throne In the sky alone, A matchless, wonderful silvery light, Radiant and lovely, the queen of the night. Said the Wind: "What a marvel of power am I! With my breath, Good faith! I blew her to death-- First blew her away right out of the sky-- Then blew her in; what strength have I! But the Moon she knew nothing about the affair; For high In the sky, With her one white eye, Motionless, miles above the air, She had never heard the great Wind blare. George Macdonald [1824-1905] CHILD'S SONG IN SPRING The silver birch is a dainty lady, She wears a satin gown; The elm tree makes the old churchyard shady, She will not live in town. The English oak is a sturdy fellow, He gets his green coat late; The willow is smart in a suit of yellow, While brown the beech trees wait. Such a gay green gown God gives the larches-- As green as He is good! The hazels hold up their arms for arches When Spring rides through the wood. The chestnut's proud, and the lilac's pretty, The poplar's gentle and tall, But the plane tree's kind to the poor dull city-- I love him best of all! Edith Nesbit [1858-1924] BABY SEED SONG Little brown brother, oh! little brown brother, Are you awake in the dark? Here we lie cosily, close to each other: Hark to the song of the lark-- "Waken!" the lark says, "waken and dress you; Put on your green coats and gay, Blue sky will shine on you, sunshine caress you-- Waken! 'tis morning--'tis May!" Little brown brother, oh! little brown brother, What kind of flower will you be? I'll be a poppy--all white, like my mother; Do be a poppy like me. What! you're a sun-flower? How I shall miss you When you're grown golden and high! But I shall send all the bees up to kiss you; Little brown brother, good-bye. Edith Nesbit [1858-1924] LITTLE DANDELION Gay little Dandelion Lights up the meads, Swings on her slender foot, Telleth her beads, Lists to the robin's note Poured from above; Wise little Dandelion Asks not for love. Cold lie the daisy banks Clothed but in green, Where, in the days agone, Bright hues were seen. Wild pinks are slumbering, Violets delay; True little Dandelion Greeteth the May. Brave little Dandelion! Fast falls the snow, Bending the daffodil's Haughty head low. Under that fleecy tent, Careless of cold, Blithe little Dandelion Counteth her gold. Meek little Dandelion Groweth more fair, Till dies the amber dew Out from her hair. High rides the thirsty sun, Fiercely and high; Faint little Dandelion Closeth her eye. Pale little Dandelion, In her white shroud, Heareth the angel-breeze Call from the cloud; Tiny plumes fluttering Make no delay; Little winged Dandelion Soareth away. Helen Barron Bostwick [1826-? ] LITTLE WHITE LILY From "Within and Without" Little White Lily sat by a stone, Drooping and waiting till the sun shone. Little White Lily sunshine has fed; Little White Lily is lifting her head. Little White Lily said: "It is good, Little White Lily's clothing and food." Little White Lily dressed like a bride! Shining with whiteness, and crowned beside! Little White Lily drooping with pain, Waiting and waiting for the wet rain, Little White Lily holdeth her cup; Rain is fast falling and filling it up. Little White Lily said: "Good again, When I am thirsty to have the nice rain. Now I am stronger, now I am cool; Heat cannot burn me, my veins are so full." Little White Lily smells very sweet; On her head sunshine, rain at her feet. Thanks to the sunshine, thanks to the rain, Little White Lily is happy again. George Macdonald [1824-1905] WISHING Ring-ting! I wish I were a Primrose, A bright yellow Primrose, blowing in the Spring! The stooping bough above me, The wandering bee to love me, The fern and moss to creep across, And the Elm-tree for our King! Nay,--stay! I wish I were an Elm-tree, A great lofty Elm-tree, with green leaves gay! The winds would set them dancing, The sun and moonshine glance in, The Birds would house among the boughs, And sweetly sing! O--no! I wish I were a Robin, A Robin or a little Wren, everywhere to go; Through forest, field, or garden, And ask no leave or pardon, Till Winter comes with icy thumbs To ruffle up our wing. Well--tell! Where should I fly to, Where go to sleep in the dark wood or dell? Before a day was over, Home comes the rover, For Mother's kiss,--sweeter this Than any other thing! William Allingham [1824-1889] IN THE GARDEN I spied beside the garden bed A tiny lass of ours, Who stopped and bent her sunny head Above the red June flowers. Pushing the leaves and thorns apart, She singled out a rose, And in its inmost crimson heart, Enraptured, plunged her nose. "O dear, dear rose, come, tell me true-- Come, tell me true," said she, "If I smell just as sweet to you As you smell sweet to me!" Ernest Crosby [1856-1907] THE GLADNESS OF NATURE Is this a time to be cloudy and sad, When our mother Nature laughs around; When even the deep blue heavens look glad, And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground? There are notes of joy from the hang-bird and wren, And the gossip of swallows through all the sky; The ground-squirrel gaily chirps by his den, And the wilding bee hums merrily by. The clouds are at play in the azure space And their shadows at play on the bright-green vale, And here they stretch to the frolic chase, And there they roll on the easy gale. There's a dance of leaves in that aspen bower, There's a titter of winds in that beechen tree, There's a smile on the fruit, and a smile on the flower, And a laugh from the brook that runs to the sea. And look at the broad-faced sun, how he smiles On the dewy earth that smiles in his ray, On the leaping waters and gay young isles; Ay, look, and he'll smile thy gloom away. William Cullen Bryant [1794-1878] GLAD DAY Here's another day, dear, Here's the sun again Peeping in his pleasant way Through the window pane. Rise and let him in, dear, Hail him "hip hurray!" Now the fun will all begin. Here's another day! Down the coppice path, dear, Through the dewy glade, (When the Morning took her bath What a splash she made!) Up the wet wood-way, dear, Under dripping green Run to meet another day, Brightest ever seen. Mushrooms in the field, dear, Show their silver gleam. What a dainty crop they yield Firm as clouted cream, Cool as balls of snow, dear, Sweet and fresh and round! Ere the early dew can go We must clear the ground. Such a lot to do, dear, Such a lot to see! How we ever can get through Fairly puzzles me. Hurry up and out, dear, Then--away! away! In and out and round about, Here's another day! W. Graham Robertson [1867- THE TIGER Tiger! Tiger! burning bright, In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, and what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand and what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp? When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did He smile His work to see? Did He who made the Lamb, make thee? Tiger! Tiger! burning bright, In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? William Blake [1757-1827] ANSWER TO A CHILD'S QUESTION Do you ask what the birds say? The Sparrow, the Dove, The Linnet and Thrush say, "I love and I love!" In the winter they're silent--the wind is so strong; What it says, I don't know, but it sings a loud song. But green leaves, and blossoms, and sunny warm weather, And singing, and loving--all come back together. But the Lark is so brimful of gladness and love, The green fields below him, the blue sky above, That he sings, and he sings, and for ever sings he-- "I love my Love, and my Love loves me!" Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1772-1834] HOW THE LEAVES CAME DOWN I'll tell you how the leaves came down. The great Tree to his children said: "You're getting sleepy, Yellow and Brown, Yes, very sleepy, little Red. It is quite time to go to bed." "Ah!" begged each silly, pouting leaf, "Let us a little longer stay; Dear Father Tree, behold our grief! 'Tis such a very pleasant day, We do not want to go away." So, just for one more merry day To the great Tree the leaflets clung, Frolicked and danced, and had their way, Upon the autumn breezes swung, Whispering all their sports among-- "Perhaps the great Tree will forget, And let us stay until the spring, If we all beg, and coax, and fret." But the great Tree did no such thing; He smiled to hear them whispering. "Come, children, all to bed," he cried; And ere the leaves could urge their prayer, He shook his head, and far and wide, Fluttering and rustling everywhere, Down sped the leaflets through the air. I saw them; on the ground they lay, Golden and red, a huddled swarm, Waiting till one from far away, White bedclothes heaped upon her arm, Should come to wrap them safe and warm. The great bare Tree looked down and smiled. "Goodnight dear little leaves," he said. And from below each sleepy child Replied, "Goodnight," and murmured, "It is so nice to go to bed!" Susan Coolidge [1835-1905] A LEGEND OF THE NORTHLAND Away, away in the Northland, Where the hours of the day are few, And the nights are so long in winter That they cannot sleep them through; Where they harness the swift reindeer To the sledges, when it snows; And the children look like bear's cubs In their funny, furry clothes: They tell them a curious story-- I don't believe 'tis true; And yet you may learn a lesson If I tell the tale to you. Once, when the good Saint Peter Lived in the world below, And walked about it, preaching, Just as he did, you know, He came to the door of a cottage, In traveling round the earth, Where a little woman was making cakes, And baking them on the hearth; And being faint with fasting, For the day was almost done, He asked her, from her store of cakes, To give him a single one. So she made a very little cake, But as it baking lay, She looked at it, and thought it seemed Too large to give away. Therefore she kneaded another, And still a smaller one; But it looked, when she turned it over, As large as the first had done. Then she took a tiny scrap of dough, And rolled and rolled it flat; And baked it thin as a wafer-- But she couldn't part with that. For she said, "My cakes that seem too small When I eat of them myself, Are yet too large to give away." So she put them on the shelf. Then good Saint Peter grew angry, For he was hungry and faint; And surely such a woman Was enough to provoke a saint. And he said, "You are far too selfish To dwell in a human form, To have both food and shelter, And fire to keep you warm. "Now, you shall build as the birds do, And shall get your scanty food By boring, and boring, and boring, All day in the hard, dry wood." Then up she went through the chimney, Never speaking a word, And out of the top flew a woodpecker, For she was changed to a bird. She had a scarlet cap on her head, And that was left the same, But all the rest of her clothes were burned Black as a coal in the flame. And every country school-boy Has seen her in the wood, Where she lives in the trees till this very day, Boring and boring for food. And this is the lesson she teaches: Live not for yourself alone, Lest the needs you will not pity Shall one day be your own. Give plenty of what is given to you, Listen to pity's call; Don't think the little you give is great, And the much you get is small. Now, my little boy, remember that, And try to be kind and good, When you see the woodpecker's sooty dress, And see her scarlet hood. You mayn't be changed to a bird though you live As selfishly as you can; But you will be changed to a smaller thing-- A mean and selfish man. Phoebe Cary [1824-1871] THE CRICKET'S STORY The high and mighty lord of Glendare, The owner of acres both broad and fair, Searched, once on a time, his vast domains, His deep, green forest, and yellow plains, For some rare singer, to make complete The studied charms of his country-seat; But found, for all his pains and labors, No sweeter songster than had his neighbors. Ah, what shall my lord of the manor do? He pondered the day and the whole night through. He called on the gentry of hill-top and dale; And at last on Madame the Nightingale,-- Inviting, in his majestical way, Her pupils to sing at his grand soiree, That perchance among them my lord might find Some singer to whom his heart inclined. What wonder, then, when the evening came, And the castle gardens were all aflame With the many curious lights that hung O'er the ivied porches, and flared among The grand old trees and the banners proud, That many a heart beat high and loud, While the famous choir of Glendare Bog, Established and led by the Brothers Frog, Sat thrumming as hoarsely as they were able, In front of the manager's mushroom table! The overture closed with a crash--then, hark! Across the stage comes the sweet-voiced Lark. She daintily sways, with an airy grace, And flutters a bit of gossamer lace, While the leafy alcove echoes and thrills With her liquid runs and lingering trills. Miss Goldfinch came next, in her satin gown, And shaking her feathery flounces down, With much expression and feeling sung Some "Oh's" and "Ah's" in a foreign tongue; While to give the affair a classic tone, Miss Katydid rendered a song of her own, In which each line closed as it had begun, With some wonderful deed which she had done. Then the Misses Sparrow, so prim and set, Twittered and chirped through a long duet; And poor little Wren, who tried with a will, But who couldn't tell "Heber" from "Ortonville," Unconscious of sarcasm, piped away And courtesied low o'er a huge bouquet Of crimson clover-heads, culled by the dozen, By some brown-coated, plebeian cousin. But you should have heard the red Robin sing His English ballad, "Come, beautiful Spring!" And Master Owlet's melodious tune, "O, meet me under the silvery moon!" Then, as flighty Miss Humming-bird didn't care To sing for the high and mighty Glendare, The close of the evening's performance fell To the fair young Nightingale, Mademoiselle. Ah! the wealth of each wonderful note That came from the depths of her tiny throat! She carolled, she trilled, and she held her breath, Till she seemed to hang at the point of death: She ran the chromatics through every key, And ended triumphant on upper C; Airing the graces her mother had taught her In a manner quite worthy of Madame's daughter. But his lordship glared down the leafy aisle With never so much as a nod or smile, Till, out in the shade of a blackberry thicket, He all of a sudden spied little Miss Cricket; And, roused from his gloom, like an angry bat, He sternly demanded, "Who is that?" "Miss Cricket, my lord, may it please you so, A charity scholar--ahem!--you know-- Quite worthy, of course, but we couldn't bring"-- Thundered His Mightiness, "Let her sing!" The Nightingale opened her little eyes Extremely wide in her blank surprise; But catching a glimpse of his lordship's rage, Led little Miss Cricket upon the stage, Where she modestly sang, in her simple measures, Of "Home, sweet Home," and its humble pleasures. And the lord of Glendare cried out in his glee, "This little Miss Cricket shall sing for me!" Of course, of comment there was no need; But the world said, "Really!" and "Ah, indeed!" Yet, notwithstanding, we find it true As his lordship does will the neighbors do; So this is the way, as the legends tell, In the very beginning it befell That the Crickets came, in the evening's gloom, To sing at our hearths of "Home, sweet Home." Emma Huntington Nason [1845-1921] THE SINGING-LESSON A nightingale made a mistake; She sang a few notes out of tune; Her heart was ready to break, And she hid away from the moon. She wrung her claws, poor thing! But was far too proud to weep; She tucked her head under her wing, And pretended to be asleep. A lark, arm in arm with a thrush, Came sauntering up to the place; The nightingale felt herself blush, Though feathers hid her face. She knew they had heard her song, She felt them snicker and sneer; She thought that life was too long, And wished she could skip a year. "Oh, Nightingale," cooed a dove-- "Oh, Nightingale, what's the use? You bird of beauty and love, Why behave like a goose? Don't skulk away from our sight, Like a common, contemptible fowl; You bird of joy and delight, Why behave like an owl? "Only think of all you have done, Only think of all you can do; A false note is really fun From such a bird as you! Lift up your proud little crest, Open your musical beak; Other birds have to do their best-- You need only to speak." The nightingale shyly took Her head from under her wing, And, giving the dove a look, Straightway began to sing. There was never a bird could pass; The night was divinely calm, And the people stood on the grass To hear that wonderful psalm. The nightingale did not care; She only sang to the skies; Her song ascended there, And there she fixed her eyes. The people that stood below She knew but little about; And this tale has a moral, I know, If you'll try to find it out. Jean Ingelow [1820-1897] CHANTICLEER Of all the birds from East to West That tuneful are and dear, I love that farmyard bird the best, They call him Chanticleer. Gold plume and copper plume, Comb of scarlet gay; 'Tis he that scatters night and gloom, And whistles back the day! He is the sun's brave herald That, ringing his blithe horn, Calls round a world dew-pearled The heavenly airs of morn. O clear gold, shrill and bold! He calls through creeping mist The mountains from the night and cold To rose and amethyst. He sets the birds to singing, And calls the flowers to rise; The morning cometh, bringing Sweet sleep to heavy eyes. Gold plume and silver plume, Comb of coral gay; 'Tis he packs off the night and gloom, And summons home the day! Black fear he sends it flying, Black care he drives afar; And creeping shadows sighing Before the morning star. The birds of all the forest Have dear and pleasant cheer, But yet I hold the rarest The farmyard Chanticleer. Red cock or black cock, Gold cock or white, The flower of all the feathered flock, He whistles back the light! Katherine Tynan Hinkson [1861-1931] "WHAT DOES LITTLE BIRDIE SAY?" From "Sea Dreams" What does little birdie say In her nest at peep of day? Let me fly, says little birdie, Mother, let me fly away. Birdie, rest a little longer, Till the little wings are stronger. So she rests a little longer, Then she flies away. What does little baby say, In her bed at peep of day? Baby says, like little birdie, Let me rise and fly away. Baby, sleep a little longer, Till the little limbs are stronger, If she sleeps a little longer, Baby too shall fly away. Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892] NURSE'S SONG When the voices of children are heard on the green And laughing is heard on the hill, My heart is at rest within my breast, And everything else is still. "Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down, And the dews of the night arise; Come, come, leave off play, and let us away Till the morning appears in the skies." "No, no, let us play, for it is yet day, And we cannot go to sleep; Besides in the sky the little birds fly, And the hills are all covered with sheep." "Well, well, go and play till the light fades away, And then go home to bed." The little ones leaped and shouted and laughed; And all the hills echoed. William Blake [1757-1827] JACK FROST The door was shut, as doors should be, Before you went to bed last night; Yet Jack Frost has got in, you see, And left your window silver white. He must have waited till you slept; And not a single word he spoke, But pencilled o'er the panes and crept Away again before you woke. And now you cannot see the hills Nor fields that stretch beyond the lane; But there are fairer things than these His fingers traced on every pane. Rocks and castles towering high; Hills and dales, and streams and fields; And knights in armor riding by, With nodding plumes and shining shields. And here are little boats, and there Big ships with sails spread to the breeze; And yonder, palm trees waving fair On islands set in silver seas. And butterflies with gauzy wings; And herds of cows and flocks of sheep; And fruit and flowers and all the things You see when you are sound asleep. For creeping softly underneath The door when all the lights are out, Jack Frost takes every breath you breathe, And knows the things you think about. He paints them on the window pane In fairy lines with frozen steam; And when you wake you see again The lovely things you saw in dream. Gabriel Setoun [1861- OCTOBER'S PARTY October gave a party; The leaves by hundreds came-- The Chestnuts, Oaks, and Maples, And leaves of every name. The Sunshine spread a carpet, And everything was grand, Miss Weather led the dancing, Professor Wind the band. The Chestnuts came in yellow, The Oaks in crimson dressed; The lovely Misses Maple In scarlet looked their best; All balanced to their partners, And gaily fluttered by; The sight was like a rainbow New fallen from the sky. Then, in the rustic hollow, At hide-and-seek they played, The party closed at sundown, And everybody stayed. Professor Wind played louder; They flew along the ground; And then the party ended In jolly "hands around." George Cooper [1840-1927] THE SHEPHERD How sweet is the Shepherd's sweet lot! From the morn to the evening he strays; He shall follow his sheep all the day, And his tongue shall be filled with praise. For he hears the lamb's innocent call, And he hears the ewe's tender reply; He is watchful, while they are in peace, For they know when their Shepherd is nigh. William Blake [1757-1827] NIKOLINA O tell me, little children, have you seen her-- The tiny maid from Norway, Nikolina? O, her eyes are blue as cornflowers, mid the corn, And her cheeks are rosy red as skies of morn! Nikolina! swift she turns if any call her, As she stands among the poppies, hardly taller, Breaking off their scarlet cups for you, With spikes of slender larkspur, burning blue. In her little garden many a flower is growing-- Red, gold, and purple in the soft wind blowing, But the child that stands amid the blossoms gay Is sweeter, quainter, brighter e'en than they. Celia Thaxter [1835-1894] LITTLE GUSTAVA Little Gustava sits in the sun, Safe in the porch, and the little drops run From the icicles under the eaves so fast, For the bright spring sun shines warm at last, And glad is little Gustava. She wears a quaint little scarlet cap, And a little green bowl she holds in her lap, Filled with bread and milk to the brim, And a wreath of marigolds round the rim: "Ha! ha!" laughs little Gustava. Up comes her little gray coaxing cat With her little pink nose, and she mews, "What's that?" Gustava feeds her,--she begs for more; And a little brown hen walks in at the door: "Good day!" cries little Gustava. She scatters crumbs for the little brown hen. There comes a rush and a flutter, and then Down fly her little white doves so sweet, With their snowy wings and crimson feet: "Welcome!" cries little Gustava. So dainty and eager they pick up the crumbs. But who is this through the doorway comes? Little Scotch terrier, little dog Rags, Looks in her face, and his funny tail wags: "Ha! ha!" laughs little Gustava. "You want some breakfast too?" and down She sets her bowl on the brick floor brown; And little dog Rags drinks up her milk, While she strokes his shaggy locks like silk: "Dear Rags!" says little Gustava. Waiting without stood sparrow and crow, Cooling their feet in the melting snow: "Won't you come in, good folk?" she cried. But they were too bashful, and stood outside Though "Pray come in!" cried Gustava. So the last she threw them, and knelt on the mat With doves and biddy and dog and cat. And her mother came to the open house-door: "Dear little daughter, I bring you some more. My merry little Gustava!" Kitty and terrier, biddy and doves, All things harmless Gustava loves. The shy, kind creatures 'tis joy to feed, And oh, her breakfast is sweet indeed To happy little Gustava! Celia Thaxter [1835-1894] PRINCE TATTERS Little Prince Tatters has lost his cap! Over the hedge he threw it; Into the river it fell "kerslap!" Stupid old thing to do it! Now Mother may sigh and Nurse may fume For the gay little cap with its eagle plume. "One cannot be thinking all day of such matters! Trifles are trifles!" says little Prince Tatters. Little Prince Tatters has lost his coat! Playing, he did not need it; "Left it right there, by the nanny-goat, And nobody never seed it!" Now Mother and Nurse may search till night For the little new coat with its buttons bright; But--"Coat-sleeves or shirt-sleeves, how little it matters! Trifles are trifles!" says little Prince Tatters. Little Prince Tatters has LOST HIS BALL! Rolled away down the street! Somebody'll have to find it, that's all, Before he can sleep or eat. Now raise the neighborhood, quickly, do! And send for the crier and constable too! "Trifles are trifles; but serious matters, They must be seen to," says little Prince Tatters. Laura E. Richards [1850- THE LITTLE BLACK BOY My mother bore me in the southern wild, And I am black, but oh, my soul is white! White as an angel is the English child, But I am black, as if bereaved of light. My mother taught me underneath a tree, And, sitting down before the heat of day, She took me on her lap and kissed me, And, pointing to the East, began to say: "Look on the rising sun,--there God does live, And gives His light, and gives His heat away; And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday. "And we are put on earth a little space, That we may learn to bear the beams of love; And these black bodies and this sunburnt face Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove. "For, when our souls have learned the heat to bear, The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice, Saying: 'Come out from the grove, My love and care, And round My golden tent like lambs rejoice.'" Thus did my mother say, and kissed me; And thus I say to little English boy. When I from black, and he from white cloud free, And round the tent of God like lambs we joy, I'll shade him from the heat, till he can bear To lean in joy upon our Father's knee; And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair, And be like him, and he will then love me. William Blake [1757-1827] THE BLIND BOY O say what is that thing called Light, Which I must ne'er enjoy; What are the blessings of the sight, O tell your poor blind boy! You talk of wondrous things you see, You say the sun shines bright; I feel him warm, but how can he, Or make it day or night? My day or night myself I make Whene'er I sleep or play; And could I ever keep awake With me 'twere always day. With heavy sighs I often hear You mourn my hapless woe; But sure with patience I can bear A loss I ne'er can know. Then let not what I cannot have My cheer of mind destroy: Whilst thus I sing, I am a king, Although a poor blind boy. Colley Cibber [1671-1757] BUNCHES OF GRAPES "Bunches of grapes," says Timothy, "Pomegranates pink," says Elaine; "A junket of cream and a cranberry tart For me," says Jane. "Love-in-a-mist," says Timothy, "Primroses pale," says Elaine; "A nosegay of pinks and mignonette For me," says Jane. "Chariots of gold," says Timothy, "Silvery wings," says Elaine; "A bumpety ride in a wagon of hay For me," says Jane. Walter de la Mare [1873- MY SHADOW I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see. He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head; And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed. The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow-- Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow; For he sometimes shoots up taller like an India-rubber ball, And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all. He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play, And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way. He stays so close beside me, he's a coward you can see; I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me! One morning, very early, before the sun was up, I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup; But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head, Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed. Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-1894] THE LAND OF COUNTERPANE When I was sick and lay a-bed, I had two pillows at my head, And all my toys beside me lay To keep me happy all the day. And sometimes for an hour or so I watched my leaden soldiers go, With different uniforms and drills, Among the bed-clothes, through the hills; And sometimes sent my ships in fleets All up and down among the sheets; Or brought my trees and houses out, And planted cities all about. I was the giant great and still That sits upon the pillow-hill, And sees before him, dale and plain, The pleasant land of counterpane. Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-1894] THE LAND OF STORY-BOOKS At evening when the lamp is lit, Around the fire my parents sit; They sit at home and talk and sing, And do not play at anything. Now, with my little gun, I crawl All in the dark along the wall, And follow round the forest track Away behind the sofa back. There, in the night, where none can spy, All in my hunter's camp I lie, And play at books that I have read Till it is time to go to bed. These are the hills, these are the woods, These are my starry solitudes; And there the river by whose brink The roaring lions come to drink. I see the others far away As if in firelit camp they lay, And I, like to an Indian scout, Around their party prowled about. So, when my nurse comes in for me, Home I return across the sea, And go to bed with backward looks At my dear land of Story-books. Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-1894] THE GARDENER The gardener does not love to talk, He makes me keep the gravel walk; And when he puts his tools away, He locks the door and takes the key. Away behind the currant row Where no one else but cook may go, Far in the plots, I see him dig, Old and serious, brown and big. He digs the flowers, green, red, and blue, Nor wishes to be spoken to. He digs the flowers and cuts the hay, And never seems to want to play. Silly gardener! summer goes, And winter comes with pinching toes, When in the garden bare and brown You must lay your barrow down. Well now, and while the summer stays, To profit by these garden days O how much wiser you would be To play at Indian wars with me! Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-1894] FOREIGN LANDS Up into the cherry tree Who should climb but little me? I held the trunk with both my hands And looked abroad on foreign lands. I saw the next door garden lie, Adorned with flowers, before my eye, And many pleasant places more That I had never seen before. I saw the dimpling river pass And be the sky's blue looking-glass; The dusty roads go up and down With people tramping in to town. If I could find a higher tree, Farther and farther I should see, To where the grown-up river slips Into the sea among the ships; To where the roads on either hand Lead onward into fairy land, Where all the children dine at five, And all the playthings come alive. Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-1894] MY BED IS A BOAT My bed is like a little boat; Nurse helps me in when I embark; She girds me in my sailor's coat And starts me in the dark. At night, I go on board and say Good night to all my friends on shore; I shut my eyes and sail away And see and hear no more. And sometimes things to bed I take, As prudent sailors have to do; Perhaps a slice of wedding-cake, Perhaps a toy or two. All night across the dark we steer; But when the day returns at last, Safe in my room, beside the pier, I find my vessel fast. Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-1894] THE PEDDLER'S CARAVAN I wish I lived in a caravan, With a horse to drive, like a peddler-man! Where he comes from nobody knows, Or where he goes to, but on he goes! His caravan has windows two, And a chimney of tin, that the smoke comes through; He has a wife, with a baby brown, And they go riding from town to town. Chairs to mend, and delf to sell! He clashes the basins like a bell; Tea-trays, baskets ranged in order, Plates, with alphabets round the border! The roads are brown, and the sea is green, But his house is like a bathing-machine; The world is round, and he can ride, Rumble and slash, to the other side! With the peddler-man I should like to roam, And write a book when I came home; All the people would read my book, Just like the Travels of Captain Cook! William Brighty Rands [1823-1882] MR. COGGS A watch will tell the time of day, Or tell it nearly, any way, Excepting when it's overwound, Or when you drop it on the ground. If any of our watches stop, We haste to Mr. Coggs's shop; For though to scold us he pretends, He's quite among our special friends. He fits a dice-box in his eye, And takes a long and thoughtful spy, And prods the wheels, and says, "Dear, dear! More carelessness, I greatly fear." And then he lays the dice-box down And frowns a most prodigious frown; But if we ask him what's the time, He'll make his gold repeater chime. Edward Verrall Lucas [1868- THE BUILDING OF THE NEST They'll come again to the apple tree-- Robin and all the rest-- When the orchard branches are fair to see, In the snow of the blossoms dressed; And the prettiest thing in the world will be The building of the nest. Weaving it well, so round and trim, Hollowing it with care,-- Nothing too far away for him, Nothing for her too fair,-- Hanging it safe on the topmost limb, Their castle in the air. Ah! mother bird, you'll have weary days When the eggs are under your breast, And shadow may darken the dancing rays When the wee ones leave the nest; But they'll find their wings in a glad amaze. And God will see to the rest. So come to the trees with all your train When the apple blossoms blow; Through the April shimmer of sun and rain, Go flying to and fro; And sing to our hearts as we watch again Your fairy building grow. Margaret Sangster [1838-1912] "THERE WAS A JOLLY MILLER" From "Love in a Village" There was a jolly miller once lived on the river Dee; He danced and sang from morn till night, no lark so blithe as he; And this the burden of his song forever used to be:-- "I care for nobody, no not I, if nobody cares for me. "I live by my mill, God bless her! she's kindred, child, and wife; I would not change my station for any other in life; No lawyer, surgeon, or doctor e'er had a groat from me; I care for nobody, no not I if nobody cares for me." When spring begins his merry career, oh, how his heart grows gay; No summer's drought alarms his fear, nor winter's cold decay; No foresight mars the miller's joy, who's wont to sing and say, "Let others toil from year to year, I live from day to day." Thus, like the miller, bold and free, let us rejoice and sing; The days of youth are made for glee, and time is on the wing; This song shall pass from me to thee, along the jovial ring; Let heart and voice and all agree to say, "Long live the king." Isaac Bickerstaff [?--1812?] ONE AND ONE Two little girls are better than one, Two little boys can double the fun, Two little birds can build a fine nest, Two little arms can love mother best. Two little ponies must go to a span; Two little pockets has my little man; Two little eyes to open and close, Two little ears and one little nose, Two little elbows, dimpled and sweet, Two little shoes on two little feet, Two little lips and one little chin, Two little cheeks with a rose shut in; Two little shoulders, chubby and strong, Two little legs running all day long. Two little prayers does my darling say, Twice does he kneel by my side each day, Two little folded hands, soft and brown, Two little eyelids cast meekly down, And two little angels guard him in bed, "One at the foot, and one at the head." Mary Mapes Dodge [1831-1905] A NURSERY SONG Oh, Peterkin Pout and Gregory Grout Are two little goblins black. Full oft from my house I've driven them out, But somehow they still come back. They clamber up to the baby's mouth, And pull the corners down; They perch aloft on the baby's brow, And twist it into a frown. Chorus: And one says "Must!" and t'other says "Can't!" And one says "Shall!" and t'other says "Shan't!" Oh, Peterkin Pout and Gregory Grout, I pray you now from my house keep out! But Samuel Smile and Lemuel Laugh Are two little fairies bright; They're always ready for fun and chaff, And sunshine is their delight. And when they creep into Baby's eyes, Why, there the sunbeams are; And when they peep through her rosy lips, Her laughter rings near and far. Chorus: And one says "Please!" and t'other says "Do!" And both together say "I love you!" So, Lemuel Laugh and Samuel Smile, Come in, my dears, and tarry awhile! Laura E. Richards [1850- A MORTIFYING MISTAKE I studied my tables over and over, and backward and forward, too; But I couldn't remember six times nine, and I didn't know what to do, Till sister told me to play with my doll, and not to bother my head. "If you call her 'Fifty-four' for a while, you'll learn it by heart," she said. So I took my favorite, Mary Ann (though I thought 'twas a dreadful shame To give such a perfectly lovely child such a perfectly horrid name), And I called her my dear little "Fifty-four" a hundred times, till I knew The answer of six times nine as well as the answer of two times two. Next day Elizabeth Wigglesworth, who always acts so proud, Said, "Six times nine is fifty-two," and I nearly laughed aloud! But I wished I hadn't when teacher said, "Now, Dorothy, tell if you can." For I thought of my doll and--sakes alive!--I answered, "Mary Ann!" Anna Maria Pratt [18--- THE RAGGEDY MAN O the Raggedy Man! He works fer Pa; An' he's the goodest man ever you saw! He comes to our house every day, An' waters the horses, an' feeds 'em hay; An' he opens the shed--an' we all ist laugh When he drives out our little old wobble-ly calf; An' nen--ef our hired girl says he can-- He milks the cow fer 'Lizabuth Ann.-- Ain't he a' awful good Raggedy Man? Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man! W'y, the Raggedy Man--he's ist so good He splits the kindlin' an' chops the wood; An' nen he spades in our garden, too, An' does most things 'at boys can't do.-- He clumbed clean up in our big tree An' shooked a' apple down fer me-- An' nother'n', too, fer 'Lizabuth Ann-- An' nother'n', too, fer the Raggedy Man.-- Ain't he a' awful kind Raggedy Man? Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man! An' the Raggedy Man, he knows most rhymes An' tells 'em, ef I be good, sometimes: Knows 'bout Giunts, an' Griffuns, an' Elves, An' the Squidgicum-Squees 'at swallers therselves! An', wite by the pump in our pasture-lot, He showed me the hole 'at the Wunks is got, 'At lives 'way deep in the ground, an' can Turn into me, er 'Lizabuth Ann! Er Ma, er Pa, er the Raggedy Man! Ain't he a funny old Raggedy Man? Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man! The Raggedy Man--one time when he Was makin' a little bow-n'-orry fer me, Says, "When you're big like your Pa is, Air you go' to keep a fine store like his-- An' be a rich merchunt--an' wear fine clothes?-- Er what air you go' to be, goodness knows?" An' nen he laughed at 'Lizabuth Ann, An' I says "'M go' to be a Raggedy Man!-- I'm ist go' to be a nice Raggedy Man!" Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man! James Whitcomb Riley [1849-1916] THE MAN IN THE MOON Said the Raggedy Man, on a hot afternoon, "My! Sakes! What a lot o' mistakes Some little folks makes on The Man in the Moon! But people that's b'en up to see him, like me, And calls on him frequent and intimately, Might drop a few facts that would interest you Clean! Through!-- If you wanted 'em to-- Some actual facts that might interest you! "O The Man in the Moon has a crick in his back; Whee! Whimm! Ain't you sorry for him? And a mole on his nose that is purple and black; And his eyes are so weak that they water and run If he dares to dream even he looks at the sun.-- So he jes' dreams of stars, as the doctors advise-- My! Eyes! But isn't he wise-- To jes' dream of stars, as the doctors advise? "And The Man in the Moon has a boil on his ear,-- Whee! Whing! What a singular thing! I know! but these facts are authentic, my dear,-- There's a boil on his ear; and a corn on his chin,-- He calls it a dimple--but dimples stick in-- Yet it might be a dimple turned over, you know! Whang! Ho! Why, certainly so!-- It might be a dimple turned over, you know! "And The Man in the Moon has a rheumatic knee,-- Gee! Whizz! What a pity that is! And his toes have worked round where his heels ought to be. So whenever he wants to go North he goes South, And comes back with porridge crumbs all round his mouth, And he brushes them off with a Japanese fan. Whing! Whann! What a marvelous man! What a very remarkably marvelous man! "And The Man in the Moon," sighed the Raggedy Man, "Gits! So! Sullonesome, you know,-- Up there by hisse'f sence creation began!-- That when I call on him and then come away, He grabs me and holds me and begs me to stay,-- Till--Well! if it wasn't fer Jimmy-cum-Jim, Dadd! Limb! I'd go pardners with him-- Jes' jump my job here and be pardners with him!" James Whitcomb Riley [1849-1916] LITTLE ORPHANT ANNIE Little Orphant Annie's come to our house to stay, An' wash the cups an' saucers up, an' brush the crumbs away, An' shoo the chickens off the porch, an' dust the hearth, an' sweep, An' make the fire, an' bake the bread, an' earn her board an'-keep; An' all us other children, when the supper things is done, We set around the kitchen fire an' has the mostest fun A-list'nin' to the witch-tales 'at Annie tells about, An' the Gobble-uns 'at gits you Ef you Don't Watch Out! Onc't they was a little boy wouldn't say his prayers-- An' when he went to bed at night, away up stairs, His Mammy heered him holler, an' his Daddy heered him bawl, An' when they turn't the kivvers down, he wasn't there at all! An' they seeked him in the rafter-room, an' cubby-hole, an' press, An' seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an' ever'wheres, I guess; But all they ever found was thist his pants an' roundabout: An' the Gobble-uns 'll git you Ef you Don't Watch Out! An' one time a little girl 'ud allus laugh an' grin, An' make fun of ever' one, an' all her blood-an'-kin; An' onc't when they was "company," an' ole folks was there, She mocked 'em an' shocked 'em, an' said she didn't care! An' thist as she kicked her heels, an' turn't to run an' hide, They was two great big Black Things a-standin' by her side, An' they snatched her through the ceilin' 'fore she knowed what she's about! An' the Gobble-uns 'll git you Ef you Don't Watch Out! An' little Orphant Annie says, when the blaze is blue, An' the lamp-wick sputters, an' the wind goes woo-oo! An' you hear the crickets quit, an' the moon is gray, An' the lightnin'-bugs in dew is all squenched away,-- You better mind yer parents, an' yer teachers fond and dear, An' churish them 'at loves you, an' dry the orphant's tear, An' he'p the pore an' needy ones 'at clusters all about, Er the Gobble-uns 'll git you Ef you Don't Watch Out! James Whitcomb Riley [1849-1916] OUR HIRED GIRL Our hired girl, she's 'Lizabuth Ann; An' she can cook best things to eat! She ist puts dough in our pie-pan, An' pours in somepin' 'at's good an' sweet; An' nen she salts it all on top With cinnamon; an' nen she'll stop An' stoop an' slide it, ist as slow, In th' old cook-stove, so's 'twon't slop An' git all spilled; nen bakes it, so It's custard-pie, first thing you know! An' nen she'll say, "Clear out o' my way! They's time fer work, an' time fer play! Take yer dough, an' run, child, run! Er I cain't git no cookin' done!" When our hired girl 'tends like she's mad, An' says folks got to walk the chalk When she's around, er wisht they had! I play out on our porch an' talk To Th' Raggedy Man 'at mows our lawn; An' he says, "Whew!" an' nen leans on His old crook-scythe, and blinks his eyes, An' sniffs all 'round an' says, "I swawn! Ef my old nose don't tell me lies, It 'pears like I smell custard-pies!" An' nen he'll say, "Clear out o' my way! They's time fer work, an' time for play! Take yer dough, an' run, child, run! Er she cain't git no cookin' done!" Wunst our hired girl, when she Got the supper, an' we all et, An' it wuz night, an' Ma an' me An' Pa went wher' the "Social" met,-- An' nen when we come home, an' see A light in the kitchen door, an' we Heerd a maccordeun, Pa says, "Lan'-- O'-Gracious, who can her beau be?" An' I marched in, an' 'Lizabuth Ann Wuz parchin' corn fer The Raggedy Man! Better say, "Clear out o' the way! They's time fer work, an' time fer play! Take the hint, an' run, child, run! Er we cain't git no courtin' done!" James Whitcomb Riley [1849-1916] SEEIN' THINGS I ain't afeard uv snakes, or toads, or bugs, or worms, or mice, An' things 'at girls are skeered uv I think are awful nice! I'm pretty brave, I guess; an' yet I hate to go to bed, For, when I'm tucked up warm an' snug an' when my prayers are said, Mother tells me "Happy Dreams!" an' takes away the light, An' leaves me lyin' all alone an' seein' things at night! Sometimes they're in the corner, sometimes they're by the door, Sometimes they're all a-standin' in the middle uv the floor; Sometimes they are a-sittin' down, sometimes they're walkin' round So softly and so creepylike they never make a sound! Sometimes they are as black as ink, an' other times they're white-- But the color ain't no difference when you see things at night! Once, when I licked a feller 'at had just moved on our street, An' father sent me up to bed without a bite to eat, I woke up in the dark an' saw things standin' in a row, A-lookin' at me cross-eyed an' p'intin' at me--so! Oh, my! I wuz so skeered that time I never slep' a mite-- It's almost alluz when I'm bad I see things at night! Lucky thing I ain't a girl, or I'd be skeered to death! Bein' I'm a boy, I duck my head an' hold my breath; An' I am, oh, so sorry I'm a naughty boy, an' then I promise to be better an' I say my prayers again! Gran'ma tells me that's the only way to make it right When a feller has been wicked an' sees things at night! An' so, when other naughty boys would coax me into sin, I try to skwush the Tempter's voice 'at urges me within; An' when they's pie for supper, or cakes 'at's big an' nice, I want to--but I do not pass my plate f'r them things twice! No, ruther let Starvation wipe me slowly out o' sight Than I should keep a-livin' on an' seein' things at night! Eugene Field [1850-1895] THE DUEL The gingham dog and the calico cat Side by side on the table sat; 'Twas half past twelve, and (what do you think!) Nor one nor t'other had slept a wink! The old Dutch clock and the Chinese plate Appeared to know as sure as fate There was going to be a terrible spat. (I wasn't there: I simply state What was told to me by the Chinese plate!) The gingham dog went, "Bow-wow-wow!" And the calico cat replied, "Mee-ow!" The air was littered, an hour or so, With bits of gingham and calico, While the old Dutch clock in the chimney-place Up with its hands before its face, For it always dreaded a family row! (Now mind; I'm only telling you What the old Dutch clock declares is true!) The Chinese plate looked very blue, And wailed, "Oh, dear! what shall we do!" But the gingham dog and the calico cat Wallowed this way and tumbled that, Employing every tooth and claw In the awfullest way you ever saw-- And, oh! how the gingham and calico flew! (Don't fancy I exaggerate-- I got my news from the Chinese plate!) Next morning, where the two had sat They found no trace of dog or cat: And some folks think unto this day That burglars stole that pair away! But the truth about the cat and pup Is this: they ate each other up! Now what do you really think of that! (The old Dutch clock it told me so, And that is how I came to know.) Eugene Field [1850-1895] HOLY THURSDAY 'Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean, Came children walking two and two, in red, and blue, and green; Gray-headed beadles walked before, with wands as white as snow, Till into the high dome of Paul's they like Thames waters flow. Oh what a multitude they seemed, these flowers of London town! Seated in companies they sit, with radiance all their own. The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs, Thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands. Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song, Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among: Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor. Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door. William Blake [1757-1827] A STORY FOR A CHILD Little one, come to my knee! Hark, how the rain is pouring Over the roof, in the pitch-black night, And the wind in the woods a-roaring! Hush, my darling, and listen, Then pay for the story with kisses; Father was lost in the pitch-black night, In just such a storm as this is! High up on the lonely mountains, Where the wild men watched and waited; Wolves in the forest, and bears in the bush, And I on my path belated. The rain and the night together Came down and the wind came after, Bending the props of the pine-tree roof, And snapping many a rafter. I crept along in the darkness, Stunned, and bruised, and blinded,-- Crept to a fir with thick-set boughs, And a sheltering rock behind it. There, from the blowing and raining, Crouching, I sought to hide me: Something rustled, two green eyes shone, And a wolf lay down beside me. Little one, be not frightened; I and the wolf together, Side by side, through the long, long night, Hid from the awful weather. His wet fur pressed against me; Each of us warmed the other; Each of us felt, in the stormy dark, That beast and man was brother. And when the falling forest No longer crashed in warning, Each of us went from our hiding-place Forth in the wild, wet morning. Darling, kiss me payment! Hark, how the wind is roaring; Father's house is a better place When the stormy rain is pouring! Bayard Taylor [1825-1878] THE SPIDER AND THE FLY "Will you walk into my parlor?" said the Spider to the Fly. "'Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy; The way into my parlor is up a winding stair, And I have many curious things to show when you are there." "Oh no, no," said the little Fly, "to ask me is in vain; For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again." "I'm sure you must be weary, dear, with soaring up so high; Will you rest upon my little bed?" said the Spider to the Fly. "There are pretty curtains drawn around, the sheets are fine and thin; And if you like to rest a while, I'll snugly tuck you in!" "Oh no, no," said the little Fly, "for I've often heard it said, They never, never wake again, who sleep upon your bed!" Said the cunning Spider to the Fly, "Dear friend, what can I do To prove the warm affection I've always felt for you? I have, within my pantry, good store of all that's nice; I'm sure you're very welcome--will you please to take a slice?" "Oh no, no," said the little Fly, "kind sir, that cannot be, I've heard what's in your pantry, and I do not wish to see!" "Sweet creature," said the Spider, "you're witty and you're wise; How handsome are your gauzy wings, how brilliant are your eyes! I have a little looking-glass upon my parlor shelf; If you'll step in one moment, dear, you shall behold yourself." "I thank you, gentle sir," she said, "for what you're pleased to say, And bidding you good morning now, I'll call another day." The Spider turned him round about, and went into his den, For well he knew the silly Fly would soon be back again; So he wove a subtle web in a little corner sly, And set his table ready to dine upon the Fly. Then he came out to his door again, and merrily did sing,-- "Come hither, hither, pretty Fly, with the pearl and silver wing; Your robes are green and purple, there's a crest upon your head; Your eyes are like the diamond bright, but mine are dull as lead." Alas, alas! how very soon this silly little Fly, Hearing his wily, flattering words, came slowly flitting by: With buzzing wings she hung aloft, then near and nearer drew,-- Thinking only of her brilliant eyes, and green and purple hue; Thinking only of her crested head--poor foolish thing! At last, Up jumped the cunning Spider, and fiercely held her fast. He dragged her up his winding stair, into his dismal den Within his little parlor--but she ne'er came out again! And now, dear little children, who may this story read, To idle, silly, flattering words, I pray you ne'er give heed; Unto an evil counsellor close heart, and ear, and eye, And take a lesson from this tale of the Spider and the Fly. Mary Howitt [1799-1888] THE CAPTAIN'S DAUGHTER We were crowded in the cabin, Not a soul would dare to sleep,-- It was midnight on the waters, And a storm was on the deep. 'Tis a fearful thing in winter To be shattered by the blast, And to hear the rattling trumpet Thunder, "Cut away the mast!" So we shuddered there in silence,-- For the stoutest held his breath, While the hungry sea was roaring And the breakers talked with death. As thus we sat in darkness, Each one busy with his prayers, "We are lost!" the captain shouted, As he staggered down the stairs. But his little daughter whispered, As she took his icy hand, "Isn't God upon the ocean, Just the same as on the land?" Then we kissed the little maiden, And we spake in better cheer, And we anchored safe in harbor When the morn was shining clear. James Thomas Fields [1816-1881] THE NIGHTINGALE AND GLOW-WORM A nightingale, that all day long Had cheered the village with his song, Nor yet at eve his note suspended, Nor yet when eventide was ended, Began to feel, as well he might, The keen demands of appetite; When, looking eagerly around, He spied far off, upon the ground, A something shining in the dark, And knew the glow-worm by his spark; So, stooping down from hawthorn top, He thought to put him in his crop. The worm, aware of his intent, Harangued him thus, right eloquent: "Did you admire my lamp," quoth he, "As much as I your minstrelsy, You would abhor to do me wrong, As much as I to spoil your song; For 'twas the self-same Power Divine Taught you to sing, and me to shine; That you with music, I with light, Might beautify and cheer the night." The songster heard his short oration, And warbling out his approbation, Released him, as my story tells, And found a supper somewhere else. Hence jarring sectaries may learn Their real interest to discern; That brother should not war with brother, And worry and devour each other; But sing and shine by sweet consent, Till life's poor transient night is spent, Respecting in each other's case The gifts of nature and of grace. Those Christians best deserve the name Who studiously make peace their aim; Peace both the duty and the prize Of him that creeps and him that flies. William Cowper [1731-1808] SIR LARK AND KING SUN: A PARABLE From "Adela Cathcart" "Good morrow, my lord!" in the sky alone, Sang the lark, as the sun ascended his throne. "Shine on me, my lord; I only am come, Of all your servants, to welcome you home. I have flown right up, a whole hour, I swear, To catch the first shine of your golden hair." "Must I thank you, then," said the king, "Sir Lark, For flying so high and hating the dark? You ask a full cup for half a thirst: Half was love of me, and half love to be first. There's many a bird makes no such haste, But waits till I come: that's as much to my taste." And King Sun hid his head in a turban of cloud, And Sir Lark stopped singing, quite vexed and cowed; But he flew up higher, and thought, "Anon The wrath of the king will be over and gone; And his crown, shining out of its cloudy fold, Will change my brown feathers to a glory of gold." So he flew--with the strength of a lark he flew; But, as he rose, the cloud rose too; And not one gleam of the golden hair Came through the depths of the misty air; Till, weary with flying, with sighing sore, The strong sun-seeker could do no more. His wings had had no chrism of gold: And his feathers felt withered and worn and old; He faltered, and sank, and dropped like a stone. And there on her nest, where he left her, alone Sat his little wife on her little eggs, Keeping them warm with wings and legs. Did I say alone? Ah, no such thing! Full in her face was shining the king. "Welcome, Sir Lark! You look tired," said he; "Up is not always the best way to me. While you have been singing so high and away, I've been shining to your little wife all day." He had set his crown all about the nest, And out of the midst shone her little brown breast; And so glorious was she in russet gold, That for wonder and awe Sir Lark grew cold. He popped his head under her wing, and lay As still as a stone, till King Sun was away. George Macdonald [1824-1905] THE COURTSHIP, MERRY MARRIAGE, AND PICNIC DINNER OF COCK ROBIN AND JENNY WREN It was a merry time When Jenny Wren was young, So neatly as she danced, And so sweetly as she sung, Robin Redbreast lost his heart: He was a gallant bird; He doffed his hat to Jenny, And thus to her he said:-- "My dearest Jenny Wren, If you will but be mine, You shall dine on cherry pie, And drink nice currant wine. I'll dress you like a Goldfinch, Or like a Peacock gay; So if you'll have me, Jenny, Let us appoint the day." Jenny blushed behind her fan, And thus declared her mind: "Then let it be to-morrow, Bob, I take your offer kind-- Cherry pie is very good! So is currant wine! But I will wear my brown gown, And never dress too fine." Robin rose up early At the break of day; He flew to Jenny Wren's house, To sing a roundelay. He met the Cock and Hen, And bid the Cock declare, This was his wedding-day With Jenny Wren, the fair. The Cock then blew his horn, To let the neighbors know, This was Robin's wedding-day, And they might see the show. And first came Parson Rook, With his spectacles and band, And one of Mother Hubbard's books He held within his hand. Then followed him the Lark, For he could sweetly sing, And he was to be clerk At Cock Robin's wedding. He sang of Robin's love For little Jenny Wren; And when he came unto the end, Then he began again. Then came the bride and bridegroom; Quite plainly was she dressed, And blushed so much, her cheeks were As red as Robin's breast. But Robin cheered her up; "My pretty Jen," said he, "We're going to be married And happy we shall be." The Goldfinch came on next, To give away the bride; The Linnet, being bride's maid, Walked by Jenny's side; And, as she was a-walking, She said, "Upon my word, I think that your Cock Robin Is a very pretty bird." The Bulfinch walked by Robin, And thus to him did say, "Pray, mark, friend Robin Redbreast, That Goldfinch, dressed so gay; What though her gay apparel Becomes her very well, Yet Jenny's modest dress and look Must bear away the bell." The Blackbird and the Thrush, And charming Nightingale, Whose sweet jug sweetly echoes Through every grove and dale; The Sparrow and Tom Tit, And many more, were there: All came to see the wedding Of Jenny Wren, the fair. "O then," says Parson Rook, "Who gives this maid away?" "I do," says the Goldfinch, "And her fortune I will pay: Here's a bag of grain of many sorts, And other things beside; Now happy be the bridegroom, And happy be the bride!" "And will you have her, Robin, To be your wedded wife?" "Yes, I will," says Robin, "And love her all my life." "And will you have him, Jenny, Your husband now to be?" "Yes, I will," says Jenny, "And love him heartily." Then on her finger fair Cock Robin put the ring; "You're married now," says Parson Rook, While the Lark aloud did sing: "Happy be the bridegroom, And happy be the bride! And may not man, nor bird, nor beast, This happy pair divide." The birds were asked to dine; Not Jenny's friends alone, But every pretty songster That had Cock Robin known. They had a cherry pie, Beside some currant wine, And every guest brought something, That sumptuous they might dine. Now they all sat or stood To eat and to drink; And every one said what He happened to think: They each took a bumper, And drank to the pair: Cock Robin, the bridegroom, And Jenny Wren, the fair. The dinner-things removed, They all began to sing; And soon they made the place Near a mile round to ring. The concert it was fine; And every bird tried Who best could sing for Robin And Jenny Wren, the bride. Then in came the Cuckoo and made a great rout; He caught hold of Jenny and pulled her about. Cock Robin was angry, and so was the Sparrow, Who fetched in a hurry his bow and his arrow. His aim then he took, but he took it not right; His skill was not good, or he shot in a fright; For the Cuckoo he missed, but Cock Robin killed!-- And all the birds mourned that his blood was so spilled. Unknown THE BABES IN THE WOOD Now ponder well, you parents dear, These words, which I shall write; A doleful story you shall hear, In time brought forth to light. A gentleman of good account In Norfolk dwelt of late, Who did in honor far surmount Most men of his estate. Sore sick was he, and like to die, No help his life could save; His wife by him as sick did lie, And both possessed one grave. No love between these two was lost, Each was to other kind; In love they lived, in loved they died, And left two babes behind: The one a fine and pretty boy, Not passing three years old; The other a girl more young than he, And framed in beauty's mold. The father left his little son, As plainly does appear, When he to perfect age should come, Three hundred pounds a year. And to his little daughter Jane Five hundred pounds in gold, To be paid down on marriage-day, Which might not be controlled: But if the children chance to die, Ere they to age should come, Their uncle should possess their wealth; For so the will did run. "Now, brother," said the dying man, "Look to my children dear; Be good unto my boy and girl, No friends else have they here: To God and you I recommend My children dear this day; But little while be sure we have Within this world to stay. "You must be father and mother both, And uncle all in one; God knows what will become of them, When I am dead and gone." With that bespake their mother dear, "O brother kind," quoth she, "You are the man must bring our babes To wealth or misery. "And if you keep them carefully Then God will you reward; But if you otherwise should deal, God will your deeds regard." With lips as cold as any stone, They kissed their children small: "God bless you both, my children dear;" With that the tears did fall. These speeches then their brother spake To this sick couple there, "The keeping of your little ones, Sweet sister, do not fear; God never prosper me nor mine, Nor aught else that I have, If I do wrong your children dear, When you are laid in grave." The parents being dead and gone, The children home he takes, And brings them straight into his house, Where much of them he makes. He had not kept these pretty babes A twelvemonth and a day, But, for their wealth, he did devise To make them both away. He bargained with two ruffians strong, Which were of furious mood, That they should take these children young, And slay them in a wood. He told his wife an artful tale, He would the children send To be brought up in fair London, With one that was his friend. Away then went these pretty babes, Rejoicing at that tide, Rejoicing with a merry mind, They should on cock-horse ride. They prate and prattle pleasantly, As they rode on the way, To those that should their butchers be, And work their lives' decay: So that the pretty speech they had, Made Murder's heart relent; And they that undertook the deed, Full sore did now repent. Yet one of them more hard of heart, Did vow to do his charge, Because the wretch that hired him, Had paid him very large. The other won't agree thereto, So here they fall to strife; With one another they did fight, About the children's life: And he that was of mildest mood, Did slay the other there, Within an unfrequented wood; The babes did quake for fear! He took the children by the hand, Tears standing in their eye, And bade them straightway follow him, And look they did not cry: And two long miles he led them on, While they for food complain: "Stay here," quoth he, "I'll bring you bread, When I come back again." These pretty babes, with hand in hand, Went wandering up and down, But never more could see the man Approaching from the town; Their pretty lips with black-berries Were all besmeared and dyed, And, when they saw the darksome night, They sat them down and cried. Thus wandered these poor innocents, Till death did end their grief; In one another's arms they died, As wanting due relief: No burial this pretty pair Of any man receives, Till Robin-red-breast piously Did cover them with leaves. And now the heavy wrath of God Upon their uncle fell; Yea, fearful fiends did haunt his house, His conscience felt an hell: His barns were fired, his goods consumed, His lands were barren made, His cattle died within the field, And nothing with him stayed. And in a voyage to Portugal Two of his sons did die; And, to conclude, himself was brought To want and misery: He pawned and mortgaged all his land Ere seven years came about, And now at length his wicked act Did by this means come out: The fellow, that did take in hand These children for to kill, Was for a robbery judged to die, Such was God's blessed will: Who did confess the very truth As here hath been displayed: Their uncle having died in jail, Where he for debt was laid. You that executors be made, And overseers eke Of children that be fatherless, And infants mild and meek; Take you example by this thing, And yield to each his right, Lest God with such like misery Your wicked minds requite. Unknown GOD'S JUDGMENT ON A WICKED BISHOP The summer and autumn had been so wet, That in winter the corn was growing yet: 'Twas a piteous sight to see, all around, The grain lie rotting on the ground. Every day the starving poor Crowded around Bishop Hatto's door; For he had a plentiful last-year's store, And all the neighborhood could tell His granaries were furnished well. At last Bishop Hatto appointed a day To quiet the poor without delay; He bade them to his great barn repair, And they should have food for the winter there. Rejoiced such tidings good to hear, The poor folk flocked from far and near; The great barn was full as it could hold Of women and children, and young and old. Then, when he saw it could hold no more, Bishop Hatto he made fast the door; And, while for mercy on Christ they call, He set fire to the barn, and burnt them all. "I' faith, 'tis an excellent bonfire!" quoth he; "And the country is greatly obliged to me For ridding it, in these times forlorn, Of rats that only consume the corn." So then to his palace returned he, And he sat down to supper merrily, And he slept that night like an innocent man; But Bishop Hatto never slept again. In the morning, as he entered the hall, Where his picture hung against the wall, A sweat like death all over him came, For the rats had eaten it out of the frame. As he looked, there came a man from his farm,-- He had a countenance white with alarm: "My Lord, I opened your granaries this morn, And the rats had eaten all your corn." Another came running presently, And he was pale as pale could be. "Fly! my Lord Bishop, fly!" quoth he, "Ten thousand rats are coming this way,-- The Lord forgive you for yesterday!" "I'll go to my tower in the Rhine," replied he; "'Tis the safest place in Germany,-- The walls are high, and the shores are steep, And the tide is strong, and the water deep." Bishop Hatto fearfully hastened away, And he crossed the Rhine without delay, And reached his tower, and barred with care All the windows, and doors, and loop-holes there. He laid him down and closed his eyes, But soon a scream made him arise; He started, and saw two eyes of flame On his pillow, from whence the screaming came. He listened and looked,--it was only the cat; But the Bishop he grew more fearful for that, For she sat screaming, mad with fear, At the army of rats that were drawing near. For they have swum over the river so deep, And they have climbed the shores so steep, And now by thousands up they crawl To the holes and the windows in the wall. Down on his knees the Bishop fell, And faster and faster his beads did he tell, As louder and louder, drawing near, The saw of their teeth without he could hear. And in at the windows, and in at the door, And through the walls by thousands they pour; And down from the ceiling and up through the floor, From the right and the left, from behind and before, From within and without, from above and below,-- And all at once to the Bishop they go. They have whetted their teeth against the stones, And now they pick the Bishop's bones; They gnawed the flesh from every limb, For they were sent to do judgment on him! Robert Southey [1774-1843] THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN A Child's Story I Hamelin Town's in Brunswick, By famous Hanover city; The river Weser, deep and wide, Washes its wall on the southern side; A pleasanter spot you never spied; But, when begins my ditty, Almost five hundred years ago, To see the townsfolk suffer so From vermin was a pity. II Rats! They fought the dogs and killed the cats, And bit the babies in the cradles, And ate the cheeses out of the vats, And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles, Split open the kegs of salted sprats, Made nests inside men's Sunday hats, And even spoiled the women's chats By drowning their speaking With shrieking and squeaking In fifty different sharps and flats. III At last the people in a body To the Town Hall came flocking: "'Tis clear," cried they, "our Mayor's a noddy; And as for our Corporation,--shocking To think we buy gowns lined with ermine For dolts that can't or won't determine What's best to rid us of our vermin! You hope, because you're old and obese, To find in the furry civic robe ease? Rouse up, sirs! Give your brains a racking, To find the remedy we're lacking, Or, sure as fate, we'll send you packing!" At this the Mayor and Corporation Quaked with a mighty consternation. IV An hour they sat in council,-- At length the Mayor broke silence: "For a guilder I'd my ermine gown sell; I wish I were a mile hence! It's easy to bid one rack one's brain,-- I'm sure my poor head aches again, I've scratched it so, and all in vain. Oh for a trap, a trap, a trap!" Just as he said this, what should hap At the chamber-door but a gentle tap? "Bless us," cried the Mayor, "what's that?" (With the Corporation as he sat, Looking little though wondrous fat; Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister Than a too-long-opened oyster, Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous For a plate of turtle green and glutinous) "Only a scraping of shoes on the mat? Anything like the sound of a rat Makes my heart go pit-a-pat!" V "Come in!" the Mayor cried, looking bigger: And in did come the strangest figure! His queer long coat from heel to head Was half of yellow and half of red, And he himself was tall and thin, With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin, No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin, But lips where smiles went out and in; There was no guessing his kith and kin: And nobody could enough admire The tall man and his quaint attire. Quoth one: "It's as my great-grandsire, Starting up at the Trump of Doom's tone, Had walked this way from his painted tombstone!" VI He advanced to the council-table: And, "Please your honors," said he, I'm able, By means of a secret charm, to draw All creatures living beneath the sun, That creep or swim or fly or run, After me so as you never saw! And I chiefly use my charm On creatures that do people harm, The mole and toad and newt and viper; And people call me the Pied Piper." (And here they noticed round his neck A scarf of red and yellow stripe, To match with his coat of the self-same check, And at the scarf's end hung a pipe; And his fingers, they noticed, were ever straying As if impatient to be playing Upon this pipe, as low it dangled Over his vesture so old-fangled.) "Yet," said he, "poor piper as I am, In Tartary I freed the Cham, Last June, from his huge swarms of gnats; I eased in Asia the Nizam Of a monstrous brood of vampire-bats; And as for what your brain bewilders,-- If I can rid your town of rats, Will you give me a thousand guilders?" "One? fifty thousand!" was the exclamation Of the astonished Mayor and Corporation. VII Into the street the Piper stepped, Smiling first a little smile, As if he knew what magic slept In his quiet pipe the while; Then, like a musical adept, To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled, And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled, Like a candle-flame where salt is sprinkled; And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered, You heard as if an army muttered; And the muttering grew to a grumbling; And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling; And out of the houses the rats came tumbling. Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats, Brown rats, black rats, gray rats, tawny rats, Grave old plodders, gay young friskers, Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, Cocking tails and pricking whiskers; Families by tens and dozens, Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives,-- Followed the Piper for their lives. From street to street he piped advancing, And step for step they followed dancing, Until they came to the river Weser, Wherein all plunged and perished! --Save one who, stout as Julius Caesar, Swam across and lived to carry (As he, the manuscript he cherished) To Rat-land home his commentary, Which was: "At the first shrill notes of the pipe, I heard a sound as of scraping tripe, And putting apples, wondrous ripe, Into a cider-press's gripe,-- And a moving away of pickle-tub-boards, And a leaving ajar of conserve-cupboards, And a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks, And a breaking the hoops of butter-casks; And it seemed as if a voice (Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery Is breathed) called out, 'Oh rats, rejoice! The world is grown to one vast drysaltery! So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon, Breakfast, supper, dinner, luncheon!' And just as a bulky sugar-puncheon, Already staved, like a great sun shone Glorious scarce an inch before me, Just as methought it said, 'Come, bore me!'-- I found the Weser rolling o'er me." VIII You should have heard the Hamelin people Ringing the bells till they rocked the steeple; "Go," cried the Mayor, "and get long poles! Poke out the nests and block up the holes! Consult with carpenters and builders, And leave in our town not even a trace Of the rats!"--when suddenly, up the face Of the Piper perked in the market-place, With a "First, if you please, my thousand guilders!" IX A thousand guilders! the Mayor looked blue; So did the Corporation too. For council-dinners made rare havoc With Claret, Moselle, Via-de-Grave, Hock; And half the money would replenish Their cellar's biggest butt with Rhenish. To pay this sum to a wandering fellow With a gypsy coat of red and yellow! "Beside," quoth the Mayor, with a knowing wink, "Our business was done at the river's brink; We saw with our eyes the vermin sink, And what's dead can't come to life, I think. So, friend, we're not the folks to shrink From the duty of giving you something to drink, And a matter of money to put in your poke; But as for the guilders, what we spoke Of them, as you very well know, was in joke. Beside, our losses have made us thrifty; A thousand guilders! Come, take fifty!" X The Piper's face fell, and he cried, "No trifling! I can't wait! beside, I've promised to visit by dinner time Bagdat, and accept the prime Of the Head Cook's pottage, all he's rich in, For having left, in the Caliph's kitchen, Of a nest of scorpions no survivor: With him I proved no bargain-driver; With you, don't think I'll bate a stiver! And folks who put me in a passion May find me pipe after another fashion." XI "How?" cried the Mayor, "d'ye think I brook Being worse treated than a Cook? Insulted by a lazy ribald With idle pipe and vesture piebald? You threaten us, fellow? Do your worst, Blow your pipe there till you burst!" XII Once more he stepped into the street; And to his lips again Laid his long pipe of smooth straight cane; And ere he blew three notes (such sweet Soft notes as yet musician's cunning Never gave the enraptured air) There was a rustling that seemed like a bustling Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling; Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering, Little hands clapping, and little tongues chattering; And, like fowls in a farm-yard when barley is scattering, Out came the children running: All the little boys and girls, With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls, And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls, Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after The wonderful music with shouting and laughter. XIII The Mayor was dumb, and the Council stood As if they were changed into blocks of wood, Unable to move a step, or cry To the children merrily skipping by,-- And could only follow with the eye That joyous crowd at the Piper's back. But how the Mayor was on the rack, And the wretched Council's bosoms beat, As the Piper turned from the High Street To where the Weser rolled its waters Right in the way of their sons and daughters! However, he turned from south to west, And to Koppelberg Hill his steps addressed, And after him the children pressed; Great was the joy in every breast. "He never can cross that mighty top! He's forced to let the piping drop, And we shall see our children stop!" When, lo, as they reached the mountain-side, A wondrous portal opened wide, As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed; And the Piper advanced and the children followed; And when all were in, to the very last, The door in the mountain-side shut fast. Did I say, all? No! One was lame, And could not dance the whole of the way; And in after years, if you would blame His sadness, he was used to say,-- "It's dull in our town since my playmates left! I can't forget that I'm bereft Of all the pleasant sights they see, Which the Piper also promised me; For he led us, he said, to a joyous land, Joining the town and just at hand, Where waters gushed, and fruit-trees grew, And flowers put forth a fairer hue, And everything was strange and new; The sparrows were brighter than peacocks here, And their dogs outran our fallow deer, And honey-bees had lost their stings, And horses were born with eagles' wings; And just as I became assured My lame foot would be speedily cured, The music stopped and I stood still, And found myself outside the hill, Left alone against my will, To go now limping as before, And never hear of that country more! XIV Alas, alas for Hamelin! There came into many a burgher's pate A text which says that heaven's gate Opes to the rich at as easy rate As the needle's eye takes a camel in! The Mayor sent East, West, North and South, To offer the Piper, by word of mouth, Wherever it was men's lot to find him, Silver and gold to his heart's content, If he'd only return the way he went, And bring the children behind him. But when they saw 'twas a lost endeavor, And piper and dancers were gone forever, They made a decree that lawyers never Should think their records dated duly If, after the day of the month and year, These words did not as well appear, "And so long after what happened here On the Twenty-second of July, Thirteen hundred and seventy-six:" And the better in memory to fix The place of the children's last retreat, They called it, the Pied Piper's Street-- Where any one playing on pipe or tabor Was sure for the future to lose his labor. Nor suffered they hostlery or tavern To shock with mirth a street so solemn; But opposite the place of the cavern They wrote the story on a column, And on the great church-window painted The same, to make the world acquainted How their children were stolen away, And there it stands to this very day. And I must not omit to say That in Transylvania there's a tribe Of alien people who ascribe The outlandish ways and dress On which their neighbors lay such stress, To their fathers and mothers having risen Out of some subterraneous prison Into which they were trepanned Long time ago in a mighty band Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land, But how or why, they don't understand. XV So, Willy, let me and you be wipers Of scores out with all men--especially pipers! And, whether they pipe us free from rats or from mice, If we've promised them aught, let us keep our promise! Robert Browning [1812-1889] THE GLAD EVANGEL A CAROL He came all so still Where His mother was, As dew in April That falleth on the grass. He came all so still Where His mother lay, As dew in April That falleth on the spray. He came all so still To His mother's bower, As dew in April That falleth on the flower. Mother and maiden Was never none but she! Well might such a lady God's mother be. Unknown "GOD REST YOU MERRY, GENTLEMEN" God rest you merry, gentlemen, Let nothing you dismay, For Jesus Christ, our Saviour, Was born upon this day, To save us all from Satan's power When we were gone astray. O tidings of comfort and joy! For Jesus Christ, our Saviour, Was born on Christmas Day. In Bethlehem, in Jewry, This blessed babe was born, And laid within a manger, Upon this blessed morn; The which His mother, Mary, Nothing did take in scorn. From God our Heavenly Father, A blessed angel came; And unto certain shepherds Brought tidings of the same: How that in Bethlehem was born The Son of God by name. "Fear not," then said the angel, "Let nothing you affright, This day is born a Saviour Of virtue, power, and might, So frequently to vanquish all The friends of Satan quite." The shepherds at these tidings Rejoiced much in mind, And left their flocks a-feeding In tempest, storm, and wind, And went to Bethlehem straightway, This blessed babe to find. But when to Bethlehem they came, Whereat this infant lay, They found Him in a manger, Where oxen feed on hay, His mother Mary kneeling, Unto the Lord did pray. Now to the Lord sing praises, All you within this place, And with true love and brotherhood Each other now embrace; This holy tide of Christmas All others doth deface. O tidings of comfort and joy! For Jesus Christ, our Saviour, Was born in Christmas Day. Unknown "O LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM" O little town of Bethlehem, How still we see thee lie! Above thy deep and dreamless sleep The silent stars go by; Yet in thy dark streets shineth The everlasting Light; The hopes and fears of all the years Are met in thee to-night. For Christ is born of Mary, And, gathered all above, While mortals sleep, the angels keep Their watch of wondering love. O morning stars, together Proclaim the holy birth! And praises sing to God the King, And peace to men on earth. How silently, how silently, The wondrous gift is given! So God imparts to human hearts The blessings of His heaven. No ear may hear His coming, But in this world of sin, Where meek souls will receive Him still, The dear Christ enters in. O holy Child of Bethlehem! Descend to us, we pray; Cast out our sin, and enter in, Be born in us to-day. We hear the Christmas angels The great glad tidings tell; Oh come to us, abide with us, Our Lord Emmanuel! Phillips Brooks [1835-1893] A CHRISTMAS HYMN Old Style: 1837 It was the calm and silent night! Seven hundred years and fifty-three Had Rome been growing up to might, And now was Queen of land and sea. No sound was heard of clashing wars; Peace brooded o'er the hushed domain; Apollo, Pallas, Jove and Mars, Held undisturbed their ancient reign, In the solemn midnight Centuries ago. 'Twas in the calm and silent night! The senator of haughty Rome Impatient urged his chariot's flight, From lordly revel rolling home. Triumphal arches gleaming swell His breast with thoughts of boundless sway; What recked the Roman what befell A paltry province far away, In the solemn midnight Centuries ago! Within that province far away Went plodding home a weary boor: A streak of light before him lay, Fall'n through a half-shut stable door Across his path. He passed--for naught Told what was going on within; How keen the stars! his only thought; The air how calm and cold and thin, In the solemn midnight Centuries ago! O strange indifference!--low and high Drowsed over common joys and cares: The earth was still--but knew not why; The world was listening--unawares. How calm a moment may precede One that shall thrill the world for ever! To that still moment none would heed, Man's doom was linked, no more to sever, In the solemn midnight Centuries ago. It is the calm and solemn night! A thousand bells ring out, and throw Their joyous peals abroad, and smite The darkness, charmed and holy now. The night that erst no name had worn, To it a happy name is given; For in that stable lay new-born The peaceful Prince of Earth and Heaven, In the solemn midnight Centuries ago. Alfred Domett [1811-1887] "WHILE SHEPHERDS WATCHED THEIR FLOCKS BY NIGHT" While shepherds watched their flocks by night, All seated on the ground, The angel of the Lord came down, And glory shone around. "Fear not," said he, for mighty dread Had seized their troubled mind; "Glad tidings of great joy I bring To you and all mankind. "To you, in David's town, this day Is born, of David's line, The Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, And this shall be the sign: "The heavenly babe you there shall find To human view displayed, All meanly wrapped in swaddling bands, And in a manger laid." Thus spake the seraph; and forthwith Appeared a shining throng Of angels, praising God, who thus Addressed their joyful song: "All glory be to God on high, And to the earth be peace; Good will henceforth from Heaven to men Begin and never cease." Nahum Tate [1652-1715] CHRISTMAS CAROLS It came upon the midnight clear, That glorious song of old, From angels bending near the earth To touch their harps of gold: "Peace on the earth, good will to men From heaven's all-gracious King"-- The world in solemn stillness lay To hear the angels sing. Still through the cloven skies they come With peaceful wings unfurled, And still their heavenly music floats O'er all the weary world; Above its sad and lowly plains They bend on hovering wing, And ever o'er its Babel-sounds The blessed angels sing. But with the woes of sin and strife The world has suffered long; Beneath the angel-strain have rolled Two thousand years of wrong; And man, at war with man, hears not The love-song which they bring;-- Oh, hush the noise, ye men of strife, And hear the angels sing! And ye, beneath life's crushing load, Whose forms are bending low, Who toil along the climbing way With painful steps and slow, Look now! for glad and golden hours Come swiftly on the wing;-- Oh, rest beside the weary road And hear the angels sing! For lo! the days are hastening on By prophet bards foretold, When with the ever circling years Comes round the age of gold; When Peace shall over all the earth Its ancient splendors fling, And the whole world give back the song Which now the angels sing. Edmund Hamilton Sears [1810-1876] THE ANGELS From "Flowers of Sion" Run, shepherds, run where Bethlehem blest appears. We bring the best of news; be not dismayed: A Saviour there is born more old than years, Amidst heaven's rolling heights this earth who stayed. In a poor cottage inned, a virgin maid, A weakling did him bear, who all upbears; There is he poorly swaddled, in manger laid, To whom too narrow swaddlings are our spheres: Run, shepherds, run, and solemnize his birth. This is that night--no, day, grown great with bliss, In which the power of Satan broken is: In heaven be glory, peace unto the earth! Thus singing, through the air the angels swarm, And cope of stars re-echoed the same. William Drummond [1585-1649] THE BURNING BABE As I in hoary winter's night Stood shivering in the snow, Surprised I was with sudden heat Which made my heart to glow; And lifting up a fearful eye To view what fire was near, A pretty babe all burning bright Did in the air appear; Who, scorched with excessive heat, Such floods of tears did shed, As though His floods should quench His flames, Which with His tears were bred: "Alas!" quoth He, "but newly born In fiery heats I fry, Yet none approach to warm their hearts Or feel my fire but I! "My faultless breast the furnace is; The fuel, wounding thorns; Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke; The ashes, shames and scorns; The fuel Justice layeth on, And Mercy blows the coals, The metal in this furnace wrought Are men's defiled souls: For which, as now on fire I am To work them to their good, So will I melt into a bath, To wash them in my blood." With this He vanished out of sight And swiftly shrunk away, And straight I called unto mind That it was Christmas Day. Robert Southwell [1561?-1595] TRYSTE NOEL The Ox he openeth wide the Doore, And from the Snowe he calls her inne, And he hath seen her Smile therefor, Our Ladye without Sinne. Now soone from Sleep A Starre shall leap, And soone arrive both King and Hinde: Amen, Amen: But O, the Place co'd I but finde! The Ox hath hushed his voyce and bent Trewe eyes of Pitty ore the Mow, And on his lovelie Neck, forspent, The Blessed layes her Browe. Around her feet Full Warme and Sweete His bowerie Breath doth meeklie dwell: Amen, Amen: But sore am I with Vaine Travel! The Ox is host in Judah stall And Host of more than onelie one, For close she gathereth withal Our Lorde her littel Sonne. Glad Hinde and King Their Gyfte may bring, But wo'd to-night my Teares were there, Amen, Amen: Between her Bosom and His hayre! Louise Imogen Guiney [1861-1920] CHRISTMAS CAROL As Joseph was a-waukin', He heard an angel sing, "This night shall be the birthnight Of Christ our heavenly King. "His birth-bed shall be neither In housen nor in hall, Nor in the place of paradise, But in the oxen's stall. "He neither shall be rocked In silver nor in gold, But in the wooden manger That lieth in the mould. "He neither shall be washen With white wine nor with red, But with the fair spring water That on you shall be shed. "He neither shall be clothed In purple nor in pall, But in the fair, white linen That usen babies all." As Joseph was a-waukin', Thus did the angel sing, And Mary's son at midnight Was born to be our King. Then be you glad, good people, At this time of the year; And light you up your candles, For His star it shineth clear. Unknown "BRIGHTEST AND BEST OF THE SONS OF THE MORNING" Brightest and best of the Sons of the morning! Dawn on our darkness and lend us thine aid! Star of the East, the horizon adorning, Guide where our Infant Redeemer is laid! Cold on His cradle the dewdrops are shining, Low lies His head with the beasts of the stall; Angels adore Him in slumber reclining, Maker and Monarch and Saviour of all! Say, shall we yield Him, in costly devotion, Odors of Edom and offerings divine? Gems of the mountain and pearls of the ocean, Myrrh from the forest, or gold from the mine? Vainly we offer each ample oblation; Vainly with gifts would His favor secure: Richer by far is the heart's adoration; Dearer to God are the prayers of the poor. Brightest and best of the Sons of the morning! Dawn on our darkness and lend us thine aid! Star of the East, the horizon adorning, Guide where our Infant Redeemer is laid! Reginald Heber [1783-1826] CHRISTMAS BELLS I heard the bells on Christmas Day Their old, familiar carols play, And wild and sweet The words repeat Of peace on earth, good-will to men! And thought how, as the day had come, The belfries of all Christendom Had rolled along The unbroken song Of peace on earth, good-will to men! Till, ringing, singing on its way, The world revolved from night to day, A voice, a chime, A chant sublime Of peace on earth, good-will to men! Then from each black, accursed mouth The cannon thundered in the South, And with the sound The carols drowned Of peace on earth, good-will to men! It was as if an earthquake rent The hearth-stones of a continent, And made forlorn The households born Of peace on earth, good-will to men! And in despair I bowed my head; "There is no peace on earth," I said, "For hate is strong, And mocks the song Of peace on earth, good-will to men!" Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: "God is not dead, nor doth He sleep! The Wrong shall fail, The Right prevail, With peace on earth, good-will to men!" Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [1807-1882] A CHRISTMAS CAROL The Christ-child lay on Mary's lap, His hair was like a light. (O weary, weary were the world, But here is all aright.) The Christ-child lay on Mary's breast, His hair was like a star. (O stern and cunning are the kings, But here the true hearts are.) The Christ-child lay on Mary's heart, His hair was like a fire. (O weary, weary is the world, But here the world's desire.) The Christ-child stood at Mary's knee, His hair was like a crown, And all the flowers looked up at Him, And all the stars looked down. Gilbert Keith Chesterton [1874-1936] THE HOUSE OF CHRISTMAS There fared a mother driven forth Out of an inn to roam; In the place where she was homeless All men are at home. The crazy stable close at hand, With shaking timber and shifting sand, Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand Than the square stones of Rome. For men are homesick in their homes, And strangers under the sun, And they lay their heads in a foreign land Whenever the day is done. Here we have battle and blazing eyes, And chance and honor and high surprise, But our homes are under miraculous skies Where the yule tale was begun. A Child in a foul stable, Where the beasts feed and foam, Only where He was homeless Are you and I at home; We have hands that fashion and heads that know, But our hearts we lost--how long ago! In a place no chart nor ship can show Under the sky's dome. This world is wild as an old wives' tale, And strange the plain things are, The earth is enough and the air is enough For our wonder and our war; But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings And our peace is put in impossible things Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings Round an incredible star. To an open house in the evening Home shall men come, To an older place than Eden And a taller town than Rome. To the end of the way of the wandering star, To the things that cannot be and that are, To the place where God was homeless And all men are at home. Gilbert Keith Chesterton [1874-1936] THE FEAST OF THE SNOW There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim, And never before or again, When the nights are strong with a darkness long, And the dark is alive with rain. Never we know but in sleet and snow The place where the great fires are, That the midst of earth is a raging mirth, And the heart of the earth a star. And at night we win to the ancient inn, Where the Child in the frost is furled, We follow the feet where all souls meet, At the inn at the end of the world. The gods lie dead where the leaves lie red, For the flame of the sun is flown; The gods lie cold where the leaves are gold, And a Child comes forth alone. Gilbert Keith Chesterton [1874-1936] MARY'S BABY Joseph, mild and noble, bent above the straw: A pale girl, a frail girl, suffering he saw; "O my Love, my Mary, my bride, I pity thee!" "Nay, Dear," said Mary, "all is well with me!" "Baby, my baby, O my babe," she sang. Suddenly the golden night all with music rang. Angels leading shepherds, shepherds leading sheep: The silence of worship broke the mother's sleep. All the meek and lowly of all the world were there; Smiling, she showed them that her Child was fair, "Baby, my baby," kissing Him she said. Suddenly a flaming star through the heavens sped. Three old men and weary knelt them side by side, The world's wealth forswearing, majesty and pride; Worldly might and wisdom before the Babe bent low: Weeping, maid Mary said, "I love Him so!" "Baby, my baby," and the Baby slept. Suddenly on Calvary all the olives wept. Shaemas OSheel [1886- GATES AND DOORS A Ballad of Christmas Eve There was a gentle hostler (And blessed be his name!) He opened up the stable The night Our Lady came. Our Lady and St. Joseph, He gave them food and bed, And Jesus Christ has given him A glory round his head. So let the gate swing open However poor the yard, Lest weary People visit you And find their Passage barred. Unlatch the door at midnight And let your lantern's glow Shine out to guide the traveler's feet To you across the snow. There was a courteous hostler (He is in Heaven to-night) He held Our Lady's bridle And helped her to alight. He spread clean straw before her Whereon she might lie down, And Jesus Christ has given him An everlasting crown. Unlock the door this evening And let your gate swing wide, Let all who ask for shelter Come speedily inside. What if your yard be narrow? What if your house be small? There is a Guest is coming Will glorify it all. There was a joyous hostler Who knelt on Christmas morn Beside the radiant manger Wherein his Lord was born. His heart was full of laughter, His soul was full of bliss When Jesus, on His Mother's lap, Gave him His hand to kiss. Unbar your heart this evening And keep no stranger out, Take from your soul's great portal The barrier of doubt. To humble folk and weary Give hearty welcoming, Your breast shall be to-morrow The cradle of a King. Joyce Kilmer [1886-1918] THE THREE KINGS Three Kings came riding from far away, Melchior and Gaspar and Baltasar; Three Wise Men out of the East were they, And they travelled by night and they slept by day, For their guide was a beautiful, wonderful star. The star was so beautiful, large and clear, That all the other stars of the sky Became a white mist in the atmosphere; And by this they knew that the coming was near Of the Prince foretold in the prophecy. Three caskets they bore on their saddle-bows, Three caskets of gold with golden keys; Their robes were of crimson silk, with rows Of bells and pomegranates and furbelows, Their turbans like blossoming almond-trees. And so the Three Kings rode into the West, Through the dusk of night, over hill and dell, And sometimes they nodded with beard on breast, And sometimes talked, as they paused to rest, With the people they met at some wayside well. "Of the child that is born," said Baltasar, "Good people, I pray you, tell us the news, For we in the East have seen his star, And have ridden fast, and have ridden far, To find and worship the King of the Jews." And the people answered, "You ask in vain; We know of no king but Herod the Great!" They thought the Wise Men were men insane, As they spurred their horses across the plain Like riders in haste, and who cannot wait. And when they came to Jerusalem, Herod the Great, who had heard this thing, Sent for the Wise Men and questioned them; And said, "Go down unto Bethlehem, And bring me tidings of this new king." So they rode away, and the star stood still, The only one in the gray of morn; Yes, it stopped,--it stood still of its own free will, Right over Bethlehem on the hill, The city of David, where Christ was born. And the Three Kings rode through the gate and the guard, Through the silent street, till their horses turned And neighed as they entered the great inn-yard; But the windows were closed, and the doors were barred, And only a light in the stable burned. And cradled there in the scented hay, In the air made sweet by the breath of kine, The little child in the manger lay, The Child that would be King one day Of a kingdom not human, but divine. His mother, Mary of Nazareth, Sat watching beside his place of rest, Watching the even flow of his breath, For the joy of life and the terror of death Were mingled together in her breast. They laid their offerings at his feet: The gold was their tribute to a King; The frankincense, with its odor sweet, Was for the Priest, the Paraclete; The myrrh for the body's burying. And the mother wondered and bowed her head, And sat as still as a statue of stone; Her heart was troubled yet comforted, Remembering what the Angel had said Of an endless reign and of David's throne. Then the Kings rode out of the city gate, With a clatter of hoofs in proud array; But they went not back to Herod the Great, For they knew his malice and feared his hate, And returned to their homes by another way. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [1807-1882] LULLABY IN BETHLEHEM There hath come an host to see Thee, Baby dear, Bearded men with eyes of flame And lips of fear, For the heavens, they say, have broken Into blinding gulfs of glory, And the Lord, they say, hath spoken In a little wondrous story, Baby dear. There have come three kings to greet Thee, Baby dear, Crowned with gold, and clad in purple, They draw near. They have brought rare silks to bind Thee, At Thy feet, behold, they spread them, From their thrones they sprang to find Thee, And a blazing star hath led them, Baby dear. I have neither jade nor jasper, Baby dear, Thou art all my hope and glory, And my fear, Yet for all the gems that strew Thee, And the costly gowns that fold Thee, Yea, though all the world should woo Thee, Thou art mine--and fast I hold Thee, Baby dear. Henry Howarth Bashford [1880- A CHILD'S SONG OF CHRISTMAS My counterpane is soft as silk, My blankets white as creamy milk. The hay was soft to Him, I know, Our little Lord of long ago. Above the roofs the pigeons fly In silver wheels across the sky. The stable-doves they cooed to them, Mary and Christ in Bethlehem. Bright shines the sun across the drifts, And bright upon my Christmas gifts. They brought Him incense, myrrh, and gold, Our little Lord who lived of old. Oh, soft and clear our mother sings Of Christmas joys and Christmas things. God's holy angels sang to them, Mary and Christ in Bethlehem. Our hearts they hold all Christmas dear, And earth seems sweet and heaven seems near, Oh, heaven was in His sight, I know, That little Child of long ago. Marjorie L. C. Pickthall [1883-1922] JEST 'FORE CHRISTMAS Father calls me William, sister calls me Will, Mother calls me Willie, but the fellers call me Bill! Mighty glad I ain't a girl--ruther be a boy, Without them sashes, curls, an' things that's worn by Fauntleroy! Love to chawnk green apples an' go swimmin' in the lake-- Hate to take the castor-ile they give for belly-ache! 'Most all the time, the whole year round, there ain't no flies on me, But jest 'fore Christmas I'm as good as I kin be! Got a yeller dog named Sport, sick him on the cat; First thing she knows she doesn't know where she is at! Got a clipper sled, an' when us kids goes out to slide, 'Long comes the grocery cart an' we all hook a ride! But sometimes when the grocery man is worrited an' cross, He reaches at us with his whip, an' larrups up his hoss, An' then I laff an' holler, "Oh, ye never teched me!" But jest 'fore Christmas I'm as good as I kin be! Gran'ma says she hopes that when I git to be a man, I'll be a missionarer like her oldest brother, Dan, As was et up by the cannibuls that lives in Ceylon's Isle, Where every prospeck pleases, an' only man is vile! But gran'ma she has never been to see a Wild West show, Nor read the Life of Daniel Boone, or else I guess she'd know That Buff'lo Bill and cow-boys is good enough for me! Excep' jest 'fore Christmas, when I'm good as I kin be! And then old Sport he hangs around, so solemn-like an' still, His eyes they keep a-sayin': "What's the matter, little Bill?" The old cat sneaks down off her perch an' wonders what's become Of them two enemies of hern that used to make things hum! But I am so perlite an' 'tend so earnestly to biz, That mother says to father: "How improved our Willie is!" But father, havin' been a boy hisself, suspicions me When jest 'fore Christmas, I'm as good as I kin be! For Christmas, with its lots an' lots of candies, cakes an' toys, Was made, they say, for proper kids an' not for naughty boys; So wash yer face an' bresh yer hair, an' mind yer p's an' q's, An' don't bust out yer pantaloons, an' don't wear out yer shoes; Say "Yessum" to the ladies, an' "Yessur" to the men, An' when they's company, don't pass yer plate for pie again; But, thinking of the things yer'd like to see upon that tree, Jest 'fore Christmas be as good as yer kin be! Eugene Field [1850-1895] A VTSTT FROM ST. NICHOLAS 'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there; The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads; And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap, Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap, When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash, Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash. The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below, When, what to my wondering eyes should appear, But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer, With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick. More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name; "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet! on Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen! To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall! Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!" As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky, So up to the house-top the coursers they flew, With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too. And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof The prancing and pawing of each little hoof. As I drew in my head, and was turning around, Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound. He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot; A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack. His eyes--how they twinkled! his dimples how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry! His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow; The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath; He had a broad face and a little round belly, That shook, when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly. He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf, And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself; A wink of his eye and a twist of his head, Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread; He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk, And laying his finger aside of his nose, And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose; He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, And away they all flew like the down of a thistle. But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight, "Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night." Clement Clarke Moore [1779-1863] CEREMONIES FOR CHRISTMAS Come, bring with a noise, My merry, merry boys, The Christmas log to the firing; While my good dame, she Bids ye all be free; And drink to your hearts' desiring. With the last year's brand Light the new block, and For good success in his spending, On your psaltries play, That sweet luck may Come while the log is a-tending. Drink now the strong beer, Cut the white loaf here, The while the meat is a-shredding; For the rare mince-pie And the plums stand by To fill the paste that's a-kneading. Robert Herrick [1591-1674] ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY This is the month, and this the happy morn Wherein the Son of Heaven's Eternal King, Of wedded maid and virgin mother born, Our great redemption from above did bring; For so the holy sages once did sing That he our deadly forfeit should release, And with his Father work us a perpetual peace. That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable, And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty Wherewith he wont at Heaven's high council-ta To sit the midst of Trinal Unity, He laid aside; and, here with us to be, Forsook the courts of everlasting day, And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay. Say, Heavenly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein Afford a present to the Infant God? Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain To welcome him to this his new abode, Now while the heaven, by the sun's team untrod, Hath took no print of the approaching light, And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright? See how from far, upon the eastern road, The star-led wizards haste with odors sweet! O run, prevent them with thy humble ode And lay it lowly at his blessed feet; Have thou the honor first thy Lord to greet, And join thy voice unto the angel choir From out his secret altar touched with hallowed fire. THE HYMN It was the winter wild While the heaven-born Child All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies; Nature in awe to Him Had doffed her gaudy trim, With her great Master so to sympathize: It was no season then for her To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour. Only with speeches fair She woos the gentle air To hide her guilty front with innocent snow; And on her naked shame, Pollute with sinful blame, The saintly veil of maiden white to throw; Confounded, that her Maker's eyes Should look so near upon her foul deformities. But he, her fears to cease, Sent down the meek-eyed Peace; She, crowned with olive green, came softly sliding Down through the turning sphere, His ready harbinger, With turtle wing and amorous clouds dividing; And waving wide her myrtle wand, She strikes a universal peace through sea and land. No war, or battle's sound Was heard the world around: The idle spear and shield were high uphung; The hooked chariot stood Unstained with hostile blood; The trumpet spake not to the armed throng; And kings sat still with awful eye, As if they surely knew their sovereign Lord was by. But peaceful was the night Wherein the Prince of Light His reign of peace upon the earth began: The winds, with wonder whist, Smoothly the waters kissed, Whispering new joys to the mild ocean-- Who now hath quite forgot to rave, While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave. The stars, with deep amaze, Stand fixed in steadfast gaze, Bending one way their precious influence; And will not take their flight For all the morning light, Or Lucifer that often warned them thence; But in their glimmering orbs did glow Until their Lord himself bespake, and bid them go. And though the shady gloom Had given day her room, The sun himself withheld his wonted speed, And hid his head for shame, As his inferior flame The new-enlightened world no more should need; He saw a greater Sun appear Than his bright throne, or burning axletree, could bear. The shepherds on the lawn Or ere the point of dawn Sat simply chatting in a rustic row; Full little thought they then That the mighty Pan Was kindly come to live with them below; Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep, Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep. When such music sweet Their hearts and ears did greet As never was by mortal finger strook-- Divinely-warbled voice Answering the stringed noise, As all their souls in blissful rapture took: The air, such pleasure loth to lose, With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close. Nature, that heard such sound Beneath the hollow round Of Cynthia's seat the airy region thrilling, Now was almost won To think her part was done, And that her reign had here its last fulfilling; She knew such harmony alone Could hold all heaven and earth in happier union. At last surrounds their sight A globe of circular light That with long beams the shamefaced night arrayed; The helmed Cherubim And sworded Seraphim Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displayed, Harping in loud and solemn choir With unexpressive notes, to Heaven's new-born Heir. Such music (as 'tis said) Before was never made But when of old the sons of morning sung, While the Creator great His constellations set And the well-balanced world on hinges hung; And cast the dark foundations deep, And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep. Ring out, ye crystal spheres! Once bless our human ears, If ye have power to touch our senses so; And let your silver chime Move in melodious time; And let the bass of Heaven's deep organ blow; And with your ninefold harmony Make up full consort to the angelic symphony. For if such holy song Enwrap our fancy long, Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold; And speckled vanity Will sicken soon and die, And leprous sin will melt from earthly mould; And Hell itself will pass away, And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day. Yea, Truth and Justice then Will down return to men, Orbed in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing, Mercy will sit between Throned in celestial sheen, With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering; And Heaven, as at some festival, Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall. But wisest Fate says No; This must not yet be so; The Babe yet lies in smiling infancy That on the bitter cross Must redeem our loss; So both himself and us to glorify: Yet first, to those ychained in sleep The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep; With such a horrid clang As on Mount Sinai rang While the red fire and smouldering clouds outbrake: The aged Earth aghast With terror of that blast Shall from the surface to the centre shake, When, at the world's last session, The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread His throne. And then at last our bliss Full and perfect is, But now begins; for from this happy day The old Dragon under ground, In straiter limits bound, Not half so far casts his usurped sway; And, wroth to see his kingdom fail, Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail. The oracles are dumb; No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving: No nightly trance or breathed spell Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell. The lonely mountains o'er And the resounding shore A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament; From haunted spring and dale Edged with poplar pale The parting Genius is with sighing sent; With flower-inwoven tresses torn The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn. In consecrated earth And on the holy hearth The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint; In urns, and altars round A drear and dying sound Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint; And the chill marble seems to sweat, While each peculiar Power foregoes his wonted seat. Peor and Baalim Forsake their temples dim, With that twice-battered god of Palestine; And mooned Ashtaroth Heaven's queen and mother both, Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine; The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn: In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn. And sullen Moloch, fled, Hath left in shadows dread His burning idol all of blackest hue; In vain with cymbals' ring They call the grisly king, In dismal dance about the furnace blue; The brutish gods of Nile as fast, Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis, haste. Nor is Osiris seen In Memphian grove, or green, Trampling the unshowered grass with lowings loud: Nor can he be at rest Within his sacred chest; Naught but profoundest Hell can be his shroud; In vain with timbrelled anthems dark The sable stoled sorcerers bear his worshiped ark. He feels from Juda's land The dreaded Infant's hand; The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyen; Nor all the gods beside Longer dare abide Nor Typhon huge ending in snaky twine: Our Babe, to show his Godhead true, Can in His swaddling bands control the damned crew. So, when the sun in bed Curtained with cloudy red Pillows his chin upon an orient wave, The flocking shadows pale Troop to the infernal jail, Each fettered ghost slips to his several grave: And the yellow-skirted fays Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze. But see! the Virgin blest Hath laid her Babe to rest; Time is, our tedious song should here have ending: Heaven's youngest teemed star Hath fixed her polished car, Her sleeping Lord with hand-maid lamp attending: And all about the courtly stable Bright-harnessed Angels sit in order serviceable. John Milton [1608-1674] FAIRYLAND THE FAIRY BOOK In summer, when the grass is thick, if mother has the time, She shows me with her pencil how a poet makes a rhyme, And often she is sweet enough to choose a leafy nook, Where I cuddle up so closely when she reads the Fairybook. In winter, when the corn's asleep, and birds are not in song, And crocuses and violets have been away too long, Dear mother puts her thimble by in answer to my look, And I cuddle up so closely when she reads the Fairybook. And mother tells the servants that of course they must contrive To manage all the household things from four till half-past five, For we really cannot suffer interruption from the cook, When we cuddle close together with the happy Fairybook. Norman Gale [1862- FAIRY SONGS I From "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" Over hill, over dale, Through bush, through brier, Over park, over pale, Through flood, through fire, I do wander everywhere, Swifter than the moon's sphere; And I serve the fairy queen, To dew her orbs upon the green: The cowslips tall her pensioners be; In their gold coats spots you see; Those be rubies, fairy favors, In those freckles live their savors: I must go seek some dew-drops here, And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. II From "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" You spotted snakes with double tongue, Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen; Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong; Come not near our fairy queen. Philomel, with melody, Sing in our sweet lullaby; Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby! Never harm, Nor spell nor charm, Come our lovely lady nigh; So, good night, with lullaby. Weaving spiders, come not here; Hence, you long-legged spinners, hence! Beetles black, approach not near; Worm nor snail, do no offence. Philomel, with melody, Sing in our sweet lullaby; Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby! Never harm, Nor spell nor charm, Come our lovely lady nigh; So, good-night, with lullaby. III From "The Tempest" Come unto these yellow sands, And then take hands: Court'sied when you have, and kissed,-- The wild waves whist,-- Foot it featly here and there; And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear. Hark, hark! Bow, wow, The watch-dogs bark: Bow, wow. Hark, hark! I hear The strain of strutting chanticleer Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow! IV From "The Tempest" Where the bee sucks, there suck I: In a cowslip's bell I lie; There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat's back I do fly After summer merrily: Merrily, merrily, shall I live now, Under the blossom that hangs on the bough. William Shakespeare [1564-1616] QUEEN MAB From "The Satyr" This is Mab, the Mistress-Fairy, That doth nightly rob the dairy And can hurt or help the churning, As she please without discerning. She that pinches country wenches If they rub not clean their benches, And with sharper nails remembers When they rake not up their embers: But if so they chance to feast her, In a shoe she drops a tester. This is she that empties cradles, Takes out children, puts in ladles: Trains forth old wives in their slumber With a sieve the holes to number; And then leads them from her burrows, Home through ponds and water-furrows. She can start our Franklins' daughters, In their sleep, with shrieks and laughters: And on sweet Saint Anna's night Feed them with a promised sight, Some of husbands, some of lovers, Which an empty dream discovers. Ben Jonson [1573?-1637] THE ELF AND THE DORMOUSE Under a toadstool crept a wee Elf, Out of the rain, to shelter himself. Under the toadstool sound asleep, Sat a big Dormouse all in a heap. Trembled the wee Elf, frightened, and yet Fearing to fly away lest he get wet. To the next shelter--maybe a mile! Sudden the wee Elf smiled a wee smile, Tugged till the toadstool toppled in two. Holding it over him, gayly he flew. Soon he was safe home, dry as could be. Soon woke the Dormouse--"Good gracious me! "Where is my toadstool?" loud he lamented. --And that's how umbrellas first were invented. Oliver Herford [1863-1935] "OH! WHERE DO FAIRIES HIDE THEIR HEADS?" Oh! where do fairies hide their heads, When snow lies on the hills, When frost has spoiled their mossy beds, And crystallized their rills? Beneath the moon they cannot trip In circles o'er the plain; And draughts of dew they cannot sip, Till green leaves come again. Perhaps, in small, blue diving-bells They plunge beneath the waves, Inhabiting the wreathed shells That lie in coral caves. Perhaps, in red Vesuvius Carousals they maintain; And cheer their little spirits thus, Till green leaves come again. When they return, there will be mirth And music in the air. And fairy wings upon the earth, And mischief everywhere. The maids, to keep the elves aloof, Will bar the doors in vain; No key-hole will he fairy-proof When green leaves come again. Thomas Haynes Bayly [1797-1839] FAIRY SONG From "Amyntas" We the Fairies, blithe and antic, Of dimensions not gigantic, Though the moonshine mostly keep us, Oft in orchards frisk and peep us. Stolen sweets are always sweeter, Stolen kisses much completer, Stolen looks are nice in chapels, Stolen, stolen be your apples. When to bed the world is bobbing, Then's the time for orchard-robbing; Yet the fruit were scarce worth peeling Were it not for stealing, stealing. Translated by Leigh Hunt from the Latin of Thomas Randolph [1605-1635] DREAM SONG I come from woods enchaunted, Starlit and pixey-haunted, Where 'twixt the bracken and the trees The goblins lie and take their ease By winter moods undaunted. There down the golden gravel The laughing rivers travel; Elves wake at nights and whisper low Between the bracken and the snow Their dreamings to unravel. Twisted and lank and hairy, With wanton eyes and wary, They stretch and chuckle in the wind, For one has found a mermaid kind, And one has kissed a fairy. They know no melancholy, But fashion crowns of holly, And gather sleep within the brake To deck a kingdom when they wake, And bless the dreamer's folly. Ah! would that I might follow The servants of Apollo! But it is sweet to heap the hours With quiet dreams and poppy-flowers, Down in the pixies' hollow. Richard Middleton [1882-1911] FAIRY SONG Shed no tear! O, shed no tear! The flower will bloom another year. Weep no more! O, weep no more! Young buds sleep in the root's white core. Dry your eyes! O, dry your eyes! For I was taught in Paradise To ease my breast of melodies,-- Shed no tear. Overhead! look overhead! 'Mong the blossoms white and red,-- Look up, look up! I flutter now On this flush pomegranate bough. See me! 'tis this silvery bill Ever cures the good man's ill,-- Shed no tear! O, shed no tear! The flower will bloom another year. Adieu, adieu--I fly--adieu! I vanish in the heaven's blue,-- Adieu, adieu! John Keats [1795-1821] QUEEN MAB A little fairy comes at night, Her eyes are blue, her hair is brown, With silver spots upon her wings, And from the moon she flutters down. She has a little silver wand, And when a good child goes to bed She waves her hand from right to left, And makes a circle round its head. And then it dreams of pleasant things, Of fountains filled with fairy fish, And trees that bear delicious fruit, And bow their branches at a wish: Of arbors filled with dainty scents From lovely flowers that never fade; Bright flies that glitter in the sun, And glow-worms shining in the shade: And talking birds with gifted tongues, For singing songs and telling tales, And pretty dwarfs to show the way Through fairy hills and fairy dales. But when a bad child goes to bed, From left to right she weaves her rings, And then it dreams all through the night Of only ugly horrid things! Then lions come with glaring eyes, And tigers growl, a dreadful noise, And ogres draw their cruel knives, To shed the blood of girls and boys. Then stormy waves rush on to drown, Or raging flames come scorching round, Fierce dragons hover in the air, And serpents crawl along the ground. Then wicked children wake and weep, And wish the long black gloom away; But good ones love the dark, and find The night as pleasant as the day. Thomas Hood [1799-1845] THE FAIRIES OF THE CALDON-LOW A Midsummer Legend "And where have you been, my Mary, And where have you been from me?" "I've been to the top of the Caldon-Low, The midsummer night to see!" "And what did you see, my Mary, All up on the Caldon-Low?" "I saw the glad sunshine come down, And I saw the merry winds blow." "And what did you hear, my Mary, All up on the Caldon-Hill?" "I heard the drops of the water made, And the ears of the green corn fill." "Oh, tell me all, my Mary-- All--all that ever you know; For you must have seen the fairies Last night on the Caldon-Low!" "Then take me on your knee, mother, And listen, mother of mine: A hundred fairies danced last night, And the harpers they were nine. "And their harp-strings rang so merrily To their dancing feet so small; But, oh! the words of their talking Were merrier far than all!" "And what were the words, my Mary, That you did hear them say?" "I'll tell you all, my mother, But let me have my way. "Some of them played with the water, And rolled it down the hill; 'And this,' they said, 'shall speedily turn The poor old miller's mill. "'For there has been no water Ever since the first of May; And a busy man will the miller be At the dawning of the day! "'Oh! the miller, how he will laugh, When he sees the mill-dam rise! The jolly old miller, how he will laugh, Till the tears fill both his eyes!' "And some they seized the little winds, That sounded over the hill, And each put a horn into his mouth, And blew both loud and shrill: "'And there,' said they, 'the merry winds go Away from every horn; And they shall clear the mildew dank From the blind old widow's corn: "'Oh, the poor blind widow-- Though she has been blind so long, She'll be merry enough when the mildew's gone, And the corn stands tall and strong!' "And some they brought the brown linseed And flung it down the Low: 'And this,' said they, 'by the sunrise In the weaver's croft shall grow! "'Oh, the poor lame weaver! How will he laugh outright When he sees his dwindling flax-field All full of flowers by night!' "And then outspoke a brownie, With a long beard on his chin: 'I have spun up all the tow,' said he, 'And I want some more to spin. "'I've spun a piece of hempen cloth And I want to spin another-- A little sheet for Mary's bed, And an apron for her mother!' "With that I could not help but laugh, And I laughed out loud and free; And then on the top of the Caldon-Low There was no one left but me. "And all on the top of the Caldon-Low The mists were cold and gray, And nothing I saw but the mossy stones That round about me lay. "But, coming down from the hill-top, I heard, afar below, How busy the jolly miller was, And how merry the wheel did go! "And I peeped into the widow's field, And, sure enough, was seen The yellow ears of the mildewed corn All standing stout and green. "And down the weaver's croft I stole, To see if the flax were sprung; And I met the weaver at his gate With the good news on his tongue! "Now, this is all I heard, mother, And all that I did see; So, prithee, make my bed, mother, For I'm tired as I can be!" Mary Howitt [1799-1888] THE FAIRIES Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren't go a-hunting For fear of little men; Wee folk, good folk, Trooping all together; Green jacket, red cap, And white owl's feather! Down along the rocky shore Some make their home, They live on crispy pancakes Of yellow tide-foam; Some in the reeds Of the black mountain lake, With frogs for their watch-dogs, All night awake. High on the hill-top The old King sits; He is now so old and gray He's nigh lost his wits. With a bridge of white mist Columbkill he crosses, On his stately journeys From Slieveleague to Rosses; Or going up with music On cold starry nights To sup with the Queen Of the gay Northern Lights. They stole little Bridget For seven years long; When she came down again Her friends were all gone. They took her lightly back, Between the night and morrow, They thought that she was fast asleep, But she was dead with sorrow. They have kept her ever since Deep within the lake, On a bed of flag-leaves, Watching till she wake. By the craggy hill-side, Through the mosses bare, They have planted thorn-trees For pleasure here and there. If any man so daring As dig them up in spite, He shall find their sharpest thorns In his bed at night. Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren't go a-hunting For fear of little men; Wee folk, good folk, Trooping all together; Green jacket, red cap, And white owl's feather! William Allingham [1824-1889] THE FAIRY THRALL On gossamer nights when the moon is low, And stars in the mist are hiding, Over the hill where the foxgloves grow You may see the fairies riding. Kling! Klang! Kling! Their stirrups and their bridles ring, And their horns are loud and their bugles blow, When the moon is low. They sweep through the night like a whistling wind, They pass and have left no traces; But one of them lingers far behind The flight of the fairy faces. She makes no moan, She sorrows in the dark alone, She wails for the love of human kind, Like a whistling wind. "Ah! why did I roam where the elfins ride, Their glimmering steps to follow? They bore me far from my loved one's side, To wander o'er hill and hollow. Kling! Klang! Kling! Their stirrups and their bridles ring, But my heart is cold in the cold night-tide, Where the elfins ride." Mary C. G. Byron [1861- FAREWELL TO THE FAIRIES Farewell, rewards and fairies! Good housewives now may say, For now foul sluts in dairies Do fare as well as they. And though they sweep their hearths no less Than maids were wont to do, Yet who of late, for cleanliness, Finds sixpence in her shoe? Lament, lament, old abbeys, The fairies' lost command! They did but change priests' babies, But some have changed your land; And all your children sprung from thence, Are now grown Puritanes; Who live as changelings ever since, For love of your demains. At morning and at evening both You merry were and glad; So little care of sleep or sloth These pretty ladies had; When Tom came home from labor, Or Ciss to milking rose, Then merrily merrily went their tabor And nimbly went their toes. Witness those rings and roundelays Of theirs, which yet remain, Were footed in Queen Mary's days On many a grassy plain; But since of late, Elizabeth, And later, James came in, They never danced on any heath As when the time hath been. By which we note the fairies Were of the old profession; Their songs were Ave-Maries, Their dances were procession. But now, alas! they all are dead, Or gone beyond the seas; Or farther for religion fled; Or else they take their ease. A tell-tale in their company They never could endure; And whoso kept not secretly Their mirth, was punished sure; It was a just and Christian deed To pinch such black and blue: Oh, how the Commonwealth doth need Such justices as you! Richard Corbet [1582-1635] THE FAIRY FOLK Come cuddle close in daddy's coat Beside the fire so bright, And hear about the fairy folk That wander in the night. For when the stars are shining clear And all the world is still, They float across the silver moon From hill to cloudy hill. Their caps of red, their cloaks of green, Are hung with silver bells, And when they're shaken with the wind Their merry ringing swells. And riding on the crimson moth, With black spots on her wings, They guide them down the purple sky With golden bridle rings. They love to visit girls and boys To see how sweet they sleep, To stand beside their cosy cots And at their faces peep. For in the whole of fairy-land They have no finer sight Than little children sleeping sound With faces rosy bright. On tip-toe crowding round their heads, When bright the moonlight beams, They whisper little tender words That fill their minds with dreams; And when they see a sunny smile, With lightest finger tips They lay a hundred kisses sweet Upon the ruddy lips. And then the little spotted moths Spread out their crimson wings, And bear away the fairy crowd With shaking bridle rings. Come, bairnies, hide in daddy's coat, Beside the fire so bright-- Perhaps the little fairy folk Will visit you to-night. Robert Bird [1867- THE FAIRY BOOK When Mother takes the Fairy Book And we curl up to hear, 'Tis "All aboard for Fairyland!" Which seems to be so near. For soon we reach the pleasant place Of Once Upon a Time, Where birdies sing the hour of day, And flowers talk in rhyme; Where Bobby is a velvet Prince, And where I am a Queen; Where one can talk with animals, And walk about unseen; Where Little People live in nuts, And ride on butterflies, And wonders kindly come to pass Before your very eyes; Where candy grows on every bush, And playthings on the trees, And visitors pick basketfuls As often as they please. It is the nicest time of day-- Though Bedtime is so near,-- When Mother takes the Fairy Book And we curl up to hear. Abbie Farwell Brown [1875-1927] THE VISITOR The white goat Amaryllis, She wandered at her will At time of daffodillies Afar and up the hill: We hunted and we holloa'd And back she came at dawn, But what d'you think had followed?-- A little, pagan Faun! His face was like a berry. His ears were high and pricked: Tip-tap--his hoofs came merry As up the path he clicked; A junket for his winning We set in dairy delf; He eat it--peart and grinning As Christian as yourself! He stayed about the steading A fortnight, say, or more; A blanket for his bedding We spread beside the door; And when the cocks crowed clearly Before the dawn was ripe, He'd call the milkmaids cheerly Upon a reedy pipe! That fortnight of his staying The work went smooth as silk: The hens were all in laying, The cows were all in milk; And then--and then one morning The maids woke up at day Without his oaten warning,-- And found he'd gone away. He left no trace behind him; But still the milkmaids deem That they, perhaps, may find him With butter and with cream: Beside the door they set them In bowl and golden pat, But no one comes to get them-- Unless, maybe, the cat. The white goat Amaryllis, She wanders at her will At time of daffodillies, Away up Woolcombe hill; She stays until the morrow, Then back she comes at dawn; But never--to our sorrow-- The little, pagan Faun. Patrick R. Chalmers [18 THE LITTLE ELF I met a little Elf-man, once, Down where the lilies blow. I asked him why he was so small, And why he didn't grow. He slightly frowned, and with his eye He looked me through and through. "I'm quite as big for me," said he, "As you are big for you." John Kendrick Bangs [1862-1922] THE SATYRS AND THE MOON Within the wood behind the hill The moon got tangled in the trees. Her splendor made the branches thrill And thrilled the breeze. The satyrs in the grotto bent Their heads to see the wondrous sight. "It is a god in banishment That stirs the night." The little satyr looked and guessed: "It is an apple that one sees, Brought from that garden of the West-- Hesperides." "It is a cyclops' glaring eye." "A temple dome from Babylon." "A Titan's cup of ivory." "A little sun." The tiny satyr jumped for joy, And kicked hoofs in utmost glee. "It is a wondrous silver toy-- Bring it to me!" A great wind whistled through the blue And caught the moon and tossed it high; A bubble of pale fire it flew Across the sky. The satyrs gasped and looked and smiled, And wagged their heads from side to side, Except their shaggy little child, Who cried and cried. Herbert S. Gorman [1893- THE CHILDREN THE CHILDREN When the lessons and tasks are all ended, And the school for the day is dismissed, The little ones gather around me, To bid me good night and be kissed; Oh, the little white arms that encircle My neck in their tender embrace! Oh, the smiles that are halos of heaven, Shedding sunshine of love on my face! And when they are gone, I sit dreaming Of my childhood too lovely to last,-- Of joy that my heart will remember, While it wakes to the pulse of the past, Ere the world and its wickedness made me A partner of sorrow and sin, When the glory of God was about me, And the glory of gladness within. All my heart grows as weak as a woman's, And the fountain of feeling will flow, When I think of the paths steep and stony, Where the feet of the dear ones must go,-- Of the mountains of sin hanging o'er them, Of the tempest of fate blowing wild;-- Oh, there's nothing on earth half so holy As the innocent heart of a child! They are idols of hearts and of households; They are angels of God in disguise; His sunlight still sleeps in their tresses, His glory still shines in their eyes; Those truants from home and from heaven,-- They have made me more manly and mild; And I know now how Jesus could liken The kingdom of God to a child. I ask not a life for the dear ones, All radiant, as others have done, But that life may have just enough shadow To temper the glare of the sun; I would pray God to guard them from evil, But my prayer would bound back to myself;-- Ah! a seraph may pray for a sinner, But a sinner must pray for himself. The twig is so easily bended, I have banished the rule and the rod I have taught them the goodness of knowledge, They have taught me the goodness of God: My heart is the dungeon of darkness Where I shut them for breaking a rule; My frown is sufficient correction; My love is the law of the school. I shall leave the old house in the autumn, To traverse its threshold no more; Ah, how I shall sigh for the dear ones That meet me each morn at the door! I shall miss the "good nights" and the kisses, And the gush of their innocent glee, The group on the green, and the flowers That are brought every morning for me. I shall miss them at morn and at even, Their song in the school and the street; I shall miss the low hum of their voices, And the tread of their delicate feet. When the lessons of life are all ended, And death says: "The school is dismissed!" May the little ones gather around me, To bid me good night and be kissed! Charles Monroe Dickinson [1842-1924] THE CHILDREN'S HOUR Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupations, That is known as the Children's Hour. I hear in the chamber above me The patter of little feet, The sound of a door that is opened, And voices soft and sweet. From my study I see in the lamplight, Descending the broad hall stair, Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, And Edith with golden hair. A whisper, and then a silence: Yet I know by their merry eyes They are plotting and planning together To take me by surprise. A sudden rush from the stairway, A sudden raid from the hall! By three doors left unguarded They enter my castle wall! They climb up into my turret O'er the arms and back of my chair; If I try to escape, they surround me; They seem to be everywhere. They almost devour me with kisses, Their arms about me entwine, Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine! Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti, Because you have scaled the wall, Such an old mustache as I am Is not a match for you all! I have you fast in my fortress, And will not let you depart, But put you down into the dungeon In the round-tower of my heart. And there will I keep you forever, Yes, forever and a day, Till the walls shall crumble to ruin, And moulder in dust away. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [1807-1882] LAUS INFANTIUM In praise of little children I will say God first made man, then found a better way For woman, but his third way was the best. Of all created things, the loveliest And most divine are children. Nothing here Can be to us more gracious or more dear. And though, when God saw all his works were good, There was no rosy flower of babyhood, 'Twas said of children in a later day That none could enter Heaven save such as they. The earth, which feels the flowering of a thorn, Was glad, O little child, when you were born; The earth, which thrills when skylarks scale the blue, Soared up itself to God's own Heaven in you; And Heaven, which loves to lean down and to glass Its beauty in each dewdrop on the grass,-- Heaven laughed to find your face so pure and fair, And left, O little child, its reflex there. William Canton [1845- THE DESIRE Give me no mansions ivory white Nor palaces of pearl and gold; Give me a child for all delight, Just four years old. Give me no wings of rosy shine Nor snowy raiment, fold on fold, Give me a little boy all mine, Just four years old. Give me no gold and starry crown Nor harps, nor palm branches unrolled; Give me a nestling head of brown, Just four years old. Give me a cheek that's like the peach, Two arms to clasp me from the cold; And all my heaven's within my reach, Just four years old. Dear God, You give me from Your skies A little paradise to hold, As Mary once her Paradise, Just four years old. Katherine Tynan Hinkson [1861-1931] A CHILD'S LAUGHTER All the bells of heaven may ring, All the birds of heaven may sing, All the wells on earth may spring, All the winds on earth may bring All sweet sounds together; Sweeter far then all things heard, Hand of harper, tone of bird, Sound of woods at sundawn stirred, Welling water's winsome word, Wind in warm, wan weather. One thing yet there is, that none, Hearing ere its chime be done, Knows not well the sweetest one Heard of man beneath the sun, Hoped in heaven hereafter; Soft and strong and loud and light, Very sound of very light, Heard from morning's rosiest height, When the soul of all delight, Fills a child's clear laughter. Golden bells of welcome rolled Never forth such note, nor told Hours so blithe in tones so bold, As the radiant mouth of gold Here that rings forth heaven. If the golden-crested wren Were a nightingale--why, then Something seen and heard of men Might be half as sweet as when Laughs a child of seven. Algernon Charles Swinburne [1837-1909] SEVEN YEARS OLD Seven white roses on one tree, Seven white loaves of blameless leaven, Seven white sails on one soft sea, Seven white swans on one lake's lea, Seven white flowerlike stars in Heaven, All are types unmeet to be For a birthday's crown of seven. Not the radiance of the roses, Not the blessing of the bread, Not the breeze that ere day grows is Fresh for sails and swans, and closes Wings above the sun's grave spread When the starshine on the snows is Sweet as sleep on sorrow shed. Nothing sweeter, nothing best, Holds so good and sweet a treasure As the love wherewith once blest Joy grows holy, grief takes rest, Life, half tired with hours to measure, Fills his eyes and lips and breast With most light and breath of pleasure; As the rapture unpolluted, As the passion undefiled, By whose force all pains heart-rooted Are transfigured and transmuted, Recompensed and reconciled, Through the imperial, undisputed, Present godhead of a child. Brown bright eyes and fair bright head, Worth a worthier crown than this is, Worth a worthier song instead, Sweet grave wise round mouth, full fed With the joy of love, whose bliss is More than mortal wine and bread, Lips whose words are sweet as kisses. Little hands so glad of giving, Little heart so glad of love, Little soul so glad of living, While the strong swift hours are weaving Light with darkness woven above, Time for mirth and time for grieving, Plume of raven and plume of dove. I can give you but a word Warm with love therein for leaven, But a song that falls unheard Yet on ears of sense unstirred Yet by song so far from Heaven, Whence you came the brightest bird, Seven years since, of seven times seven. Algernon Charles Swinburne [1837-1909] CREEP AFORE YE GANG Creep awa', my bairnie, creep afore ye gang, Cock ye baith your lugs to your auld Grannie's sang: Gin ye gang as far ye will think the road lang, Creep awa', my bairnie, creep afore ye gang. Creep awa', my bairnie, ye're ower young to learn To tot up and down yet, my bonnie wee bairn; Better creepin' cannie, than fa'in' wi' a bang, Duntin' a' your wee brow,--creep afore ye gang. Ye'll creep, an' ye'll hotch, an' ye'll nod to your mither, Watchin' ilka step o' your wee dousy brither; Rest ye on the floor till your wee limbs grow strang, An' ye'll be a braw chiel yet,--creep afore ye gang. The wee birdie fa's when it tries ower soon to flee, Folks are sure to tumble, when they climb ower hie; They wha canna walk right are sure to come to wrang, Creep awa', my bairnie, creep afore ye gang. James Ballantine [1808-1877] CASTLES IN THE AIR The bonnie, bonnie bairn who sits poking in the ase, Glowering in the fire wi' his wee round face, Laughing at the fuffin' lowe--what sees he there? Ha! the young dreamer's bigging castles in the air. His wee chubby face and his touzie curly pow Are laughing and nodding to the dancing lowe; He'll brown his rosy cheeks, and singe his sunny hair, Glowering at the imps wi' their castles in the air. He sees muckle castles towering to the moon; He sees little sodgers pu'ing them a' doun; Warlds whommlin' up and doun, bleezing wi' a flare,-- See how he loups as they glimmer in the air! For a' sae sage he looks, what can the laddie ken? He's thinking upon naething, like mony mighty men: A wee thing mak's us think, a sma' thing mak's us stare,-- There are mair folk than him bigging castles in the air. Sic a night in winter may weel mak' him cauld: His chin upon his buffy hand will soon mak' him auld; His brow is brent sae braid--O pray that daddy Care Wad let the wean alane wi' his castles in the air! He'll glower at the fire, and he'll keek at the light; But mony sparkling stars are swallowed up by Night: Aulder e'en than his are glamored by a glare,-- Hearts are broken, heads are turned, wi' castles in the air. James Ballantine [1808-1877] UNDER MY WINDOW Under my window, under my window, All in the Midsummer weather, Three little girls with fluttering curls Flit to and fro together:-- There's Bell with her bonnet of satin sheen, And Maud with her mantle of silver-green, And Kate with her scarlet feather. Under my window, under my window, Leaning stealthily over, Merry and clear, the voice I hear Of each glad-hearted rover. Ah! sly little Kate, she steals my roses; And Maud and Bell twine wreaths and posies, As merry as bees in clover. Under my window, under my window, In the blue Midsummer weather, Stealing slow, on a hushed tiptoe, I catch them all together:-- Bell with her bonnet of satin sheen, And Maud with her mantle of silver-green, And Kate with her scarlet feather. Under my window, under my window, And off through the orchard closes; While Maud she flouts, and Bell she pouts, They scamper and drop their posies; But dear little Kate takes naught amiss, And leaps in my arms with a loving kiss, And I give her all my roses. Thomas Westwood [1814?-1888] LITTLE BELL He prayeth well who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. The Ancient Mariner Piped the blackbird on the beechwood spray "Pretty maid, slow wandering this way, What's your name?" quoth he-- "What's your name? Oh stop and straight unfold, Pretty maid with showery curls of gold,"-- "Little Bell," said she. Little Bell sat down beneath the rocks-- Tossed aside her gleaming golden locks-- "Bonny bird," quoth she, "Sing me your best song before I go." "Here's the very finest song I know, Little Bell," said he. And the blackbird piped; you never heard Half so gay a song from any bird-- Full of quips and wiles, Now so round and rich, now soft and slow. All for love of that sweet face below, Dimpled o'er with smiles. And the while the bonny bird did pour His full heart out freely o'er and o'er 'Neath the morning skies. In the little childish heart below All the sweetness seemed to grow and grow, And shine forth in happy overflow From the blue, bright eyes. Down the dell she tripped and through the glade, Peeped the squirrel from the hazel shade, And from out the tree Swung, and leaped, and frolicked, void of fear,-- While bold blackbird piped that all might hear-- "Little Bell," piped he. Little Bell sat down amid the fern-- "Squirrel, to your task return-- Bring me nuts," quoth she. Up, away the frisky squirrel hies-- Golden wood-lights glancing in his eyes-- And adown the tree, Great ripe nuts, kissed brown by July sun, In the little lap dropped one by one-- Hark, how blackbird pipes to see the fun! "Happy Bell," pipes he. Little Bell looked up and down the glade-- "Squirrel, squirrel, if you're not afraid, Come and share with me!" Down came squirrel eager for his fare-- Down came bonny blackbird I declare; Little Bell gave each his honest share-- Ah the merry three! And the while these frolic playmates twain Piped and frisked from bough to bough again, 'Neath the morning skies, In the little childish heart below All the sweetness seemed to grow and grow, And shine out in happy overflow From her blue, bright eyes. By her snow-white cot at close of day, Knelt sweet Bell, with folded palms to pray-- Very calm and clear Rose the praying voice to where, unseen, In blue heaven, an angel shape serene Paused awhile to hear-- "What good child is this," the angel said, "That, with happy heart, beside her bed Prays so lovingly?" Low and soft, oh! very low and soft, Crooned the blackbird in the orchard croft, "Bell, dear Bell!" crooned he. "Whom God's creatures love," the angel fair Murmured, "God doth bless with angels' care; Child, thy bed shall be Folded safe from harm--Love deep and kind Shall watch around and leave good gifts behind, Little Bell, for thee!" Thomas Westwood [1814?-1888] THE BAREFOOT BOY Blessings on thee, little man, Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan! With thy turned-up pantaloons, And thy merry whistled tunes; With thy red lip, redder still Kissed by strawberries on the hill; With the sunshine on thy face, Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace; From my heart I give thee joy,-- I was once a barefoot boy! Prince thou art,--the grown-up man Only is republican. Let the million-dollared ride! Barefoot, trudging at his side, Thou hast more than he can buy In the reach of ear and eye,-- Outward sunshine, inward joy: Blessings on thee, barefoot boy! Oh for boyhood's painless play, Sleep that wakes in laughing day, Health that mocks the doctor's rules, Knowledge never learned of schools, Of the wild bee's morning chase, Of the wild flower's time and place, Flight of fowl and habitude Of the tenants of the wood; How the tortoise bears his shell, How the woodchuck digs his cell, And the ground-mole sinks his well; How the robin feeds her young, How the oriole's nest is hung; Where the whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries grow, Where the ground-nut trails its vine, Where the wood-grape's clusters shine; Of the black wasp's cunning way, Mason of his walls of clay, And the architectural plans Of gray hornet artisans! For, eschewing books and tasks, Nature answers all he asks; Hand in hand with her he walks, Face to face with her he talks, Part and parcel of her joy,-- Blessings on the barefoot boy! Oh for boyhood's time of June, Crowding years in one brief moon, When all things I heard or saw, Me, their master, waited for. I was rich in flowers and trees, Humming-birds and honey-bees; For my sport the squirrel played, Plied the snouted mole his spade; For my taste the blackberry cone Purpled over hedge and stone; Laughed the brook for my delight Through the day and through the night, Whispering at the garden wall, Talked with me from fall to fall; Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond Mine the walnut slopes beyond, Mine, on bending orchard trees, Apples of Hesperides! Still as my horizon grew, Larger grew my riches too; All the world I saw or knew Seemed a complex Chinese toy, Fashioned for a barefoot boy! Oh for festal dainties spread, Like my bowl of milk and bread; Pewter spoon and bowl of wood, On the door-stone, gray and rude! O'er me, like a regal tent, Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent, Purple-curtained, fringed with gold, Looped in many a wind-swung fold; While for music came the play Of the pied frogs' orchestra; And, to light the noisy choir, Lit the fly his lamp of fire. I was monarch: pomp and joy Waited on the barefoot boy! Cheerily, then, my little man, Live and laugh, as boyhood can! Though the flinty slopes be hard, Stubble-speared the new-mown sward, Every morn shall lead thee through Fresh baptisms of the dew; Every evening from thy feet Shall the cool wind kiss the heat: All too soon these feet must hide In the prison cells of pride, Lose the freedom of the sod, Like a colt's for work be shod, Made to tread the mills of toil, Up and down in ceaseless moil: Happy if their track be found Never on forbidden ground; Happy if they sink not in Quick and treacherous sands of sin. Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy, Ere it passes, barefoot boy! John Greenleaf Whittier [1807-1892] THE HERITAGE Thee rich man's son inherits lands, And piles of brick and stone, and gold, And he inherits soft white hands, And tender flesh that fears the cold, Nor dares to wear a garment old; A heritage, it seems to me, One scarce would wish to hold in fee. The rich man's son inherits cares; The bank may break, the factory burn, A breath may burst his bubble shares, And soft white hands could hardly earn A living that would serve his turn; A heritage, it seems to me, One scarce would wish to hold in fee. The rich man's son inherits wants, His stomach craves for dainty fare; With sated heart, he hears the pants Of toiling hinds with brown arms bare, And wearies in his easy-chair; A heritage, it seems to me, One scarce would wish to hold in fee. What doth the poor man's son inherit? Stout muscles and a sinewy heart, A hardy frame, a hardier spirit, King of two hands, he does his part In every useful toil and art; A heritage, it seems to me, A king might wish to hold in fee. What doth the poor man's son inherit? Wishes o'erjoyed with humble things, A rank adjudged by toil-won merit, Content that from employment springs, A heart that in his labor sings; A heritage, it seems to me, A king might wish to hold in fee. What doth the poor man's son inherit? A patience learned of being poor, Courage, if sorrow come, to bear it, A fellow-feeling that is sure To make the outcast bless his door; A heritage, it seems to me, A king might wish to hold in fee. O rich man's son! there is a toil That with all others level stands; Large charity doth never soil, But only whiten, soft white hands; This is the best crop from thy lands, A heritage, it seems to me, Worth being rich to hold in fee. O poor man's son! scorn not thy state; There is worse weariness than thine, In merely being rich and great; Toil only gives the soul to shine, And makes rest fragrant and benign; A heritage, it seems to me, Worth being poor to hold in fee. Both, heirs to some six feet of sod, Are equal in the earth at last; Both, children of the same dear God, Prove title to your heirship vast By record of a well-filled past; A heritage, it seems to me, Well worth a life to hold in fee. James Russell Lowell [1819-1891] LETTY'S GLOBE Or Some Irregularities In A First Lesson In Geography When Letty had scarce passed her third glad year, And her young artless words began to flow, One day we gave the child a colored sphere Of the wide Earth, that she might mark and know, By tint and outline, all its sea and land. She patted all the world; old Empires peeped Between her baby fingers; her soft hand Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leaped, And laughed and prattled in her world-wide bliss! But when we turned her sweet unlearned eye On our own Isle, she raised a joyous cry,-- "O yes! I see it, Letty's home is there!" And while she hid all England with a kiss, Bright over Europe fell her golden hair. Charles Tennyson Turner [1808-1879] DOVE'S NEST "Sylvia, hush!" I said, "come here, Come see a fairy-tale, my dear! Tales told are good, tales seen are best!" The dove was brooding on the nest In the lowest crotch of the apple tree. I lifted her up so quietly, That when she could have touched the bird The soft gray creature had not stirred. It looked at us with a wild dark eye. But, "Birdie, fly!" was Sylvia's cry, Impatient Sylvia, "Birdie, fly." Ah, well: but when I touched the nest, The child recoiled upon my breast. Was ever such a startling thing? Sudden silver and purple wing, The dove was out, away, across, Struggling heart-break on the grass. And there in the cup within the tree Two milk-white eggs were ours to see. Was ever thing so pretty? Alack, "Birdie!" Sylvia cried, "come back!" Joseph Russell Taylor [1868-1933] THE ORACLE I lay upon the summer grass. A gold-haired, sunny child came by, And looked at me, as loath to pass, With questions in her lingering eye. She stopped and wavered, then drew near, (Ah! the pale gold around her head!) And o'er my shoulder stopped to peer. "Why do you read?" she said. "I read a poet of old time, Who sang through all his living hours-- Beauty of earth--the streams, the flowers-- And stars, more lovely than his rhyme. "And now I read him, since men go, Forgetful of these sweetest things; Since he and I love brooks that flow, And dawns, and bees, and flash of wings!" She stared at me with laughing look, Then clasped her hands upon my knees: "How strange to read it in a book! I could have told you all of these!" Arthur Davison Ficke [1883- TO A LITTLE GIRL You taught me ways of gracefulness and fashions of address, The mode of plucking pansies and the art of sowing cress, And how to handle puppies, with propitiatory pats For mother dogs, and little acts of courtesy to cats. O connoisseur of pebbles, colored leaves and trickling rills, Whom seasons fit as do the sheaths that wrap the daffodils, Whose eyes' divine expectancy foretells some starry goal, You taught me here docility--and how to save my soul. Helen Parry Eden [18 TO A LITTLE GIRL Her eyes are like forget-me-nots, So loving, kind and true; Her lips are like a pink sea-shell Just as the sun shines through; Her hair is like the waving grain In summer's golden light; And, best of all, her little soul Is, like a lily, white. Gustav Kobbe [1857-1918] A PARENTAL ODE TO MY SON Aged Three Years And Five Months Thou happy, happy elf! (But stop,--first let me kiss away that tear!) Thou tiny image of myself! (My love, he's poking peas into his ear!) Thou merry, laughing sprite, With spirits feather-light, Untouched by sorrow, and unsoiled by sin,-- (My dear, the child is swallowing a pin!) Thou little tricksy Puck! With antic toys so funnily bestuck, Light as the singing bird that wings the air,-- (The door! the door! he'll tumble down the stair!) Thou darling of thy sire! (Why, Jane, he'll set his pinafore afire!) Thou imp of mirth and joy! In Love's dear chain so strong and bright a link, Thou idol of thy parents,--(Drat the boy! There goes my ink!) Thou cherub,--but of earth; Fit playfellow for Fays, by moonlight pale, In harmless sport and mirth, (That dog will bite him, if he pulls its tail!) Thou human humming-bee, extracting honey From every blossom in the world that blows, Singing in youth's Elysium ever sunny.-- (Another tumble! That's his precious nose!) Thy father's pride and hope! (He'll break the mirror with that skipping-rope!) With pure heart newly stamped from nature's mint, (Where did he learn that squint?) Thou young domestic dove! (He'll have that jug off with another shove!) Dear nursling of the hymeneal nest! (Are these torn clothes his best?) Little epitome of man! (He'll climb upon the table, that's his plan!) Touched with the beauteous tints of dawning life,-- (He's got a knife!) Thou enviable being! No storms, no clouds, in thy blue sky foreseeing, Play on, play on, My elfin John! Toss the light ball, bestride the stick,-- (I knew so many cakes would make him sick!) With fancies, buoyant as the thistle-down, Prompting the face grotesque, and antic brisk, With many a lamb-like frisk! (He's got the scissors, snipping at your gown!) Thou pretty opening rose! (Go to your mother, child, and wipe your nose!) Balmy and breathing music like the South,-- (He really brings my heart into my mouth!) Fresh as the morn, and brilliant as its star,-- (I wish that window had an iron bar!) Bold as the hawk, yet gentle as the dove;-- (I'll tell you what, my love, I cannot write unless he's sent above.) Thomas Hood [1799-1845] A NEW POET I write. He sits beside my chair, And scribbles, too, in hushed delight, He dips his pen in charmed air: What is it he pretends to write? He toils and toils; the paper gives No clue to aught he thinks. What then? His little heart is glad; he lives The poems that he cannot pen. Strange fancies throng that baby brain. What grave, sweet looks! What earnest eyes! He stops--reflects--and now again His unrecording pen he plies. It seems a satire on myself,-- These dreamy nothings scrawled in air, This thought, this work! Oh tricksy elf, Wouldst drive thy father to despair? Despair! Ah, no; the heart, the mind Persists in hoping,--schemes and strives That there may linger with our kind Some memory of our little lives. Beneath his rock in the early world Smiling the naked hunter lay, And sketched on horn the spear he hurled, The urus which he made his prey. Like him I strive in hope my rhymes May keep my name a little while,-- O child, who knows how many times We two have made the angels smile! William Canton [1845- TO LAURA W--, TWO YEARS OLD Bright be the skies that cover thee, Child of the sunny brow,-- Bright as the dream flung over thee By all that meets thee now,-- Thy heart is beating joyously, Thy voice is like a bird's, And sweetly breaks the melody Of thy imperfect words. I know no fount that gushes out As gladly as thy tiny shout. I would that thou might'st ever be As beautiful as now, That time might ever leave as free Thy yet unwritten brow. I would life were all poetry To gentle measure set, That naught but chastened melody Might stain thine eye of jet, Nor one discordant note be spoken, Till God the cunning harp hath broken. I would--but deeper things than these With woman's lot are wove: Wrought of intensest sympathies, And nerved by purest love; By the strong spirit's discipline, By the fierce wrong forgiven, By all that wrings the heart of sin, Is woman won to heaven. "Her lot is on thee," lovely child-- God keep thy spirit undefiled! I fear thy gentle loveliness, Thy witching tone and air, Thine eye's beseeching earnestness May be to thee a snare. The silver stars may purely shine, The waters taintless flow: But they who kneel at woman's shrine Breathe on it as they bow. Peace may fling back the gift again, But the crushed flower will leave a stain. What shall preserve thee, beautiful child? Keep thee as thou art now? Bring thee, a spirit undefiled, At God's pure throne to bow? The world is but a broken reed, And life grows early dim-- Who shall be near thee in thy need, To lead thee up to Him? He who himself was "undefiled?" With Him we trust thee, beautiful child! Nathaniel Parker Willis [1806-1867] TO ROSE Rose, when I remember you, Little lady, scarcely two, I am suddenly aware Of the angels in the air. All your softly gracious ways Make an island in my days Where my thoughts fly back to be Sheltered from too strong a sea. All your luminous delight Shines before me in the night When I grope for sleep and find Only shadows in my mind. Rose, when I remember you, White and glowing, pink and new, With so swift a sense of fun Although life has just begun; With so sure a pride of place In your very infant face, I should like to make a prayer To the angels in the air: "If an angel ever brings Me a baby in her wings, Please be certain that it grows Very, very much like Rose." Sara Teasdale [1884-1933] TO CHARLOTTE PULTENEY Timely blossom, Infant fair, Fondling of a happy pair, Every morn and every night Their solicitous delight, Sleeping, waking, still at ease, Pleasing, without skill to please; Little gossip, blithe and hale, Tattling many a broken tale, Singing many a tuneless song, Lavish of a heedless tongue; Simple maiden, void of art, Babbling out the very heart, Yet abandoned to thy will, Yet imagining no ill, Yet too innocent to blush; Like the linnet in the bush To the mother-linnet's note Moduling her slender throat; Chirping forth thy pretty joys, Wanton in the change of toys, Like the linnet green, in May Flitting to each bloomy spray; Wearied then and glad of rest, Like the linnet in the nest:-- This thy present happy lot, This, in time will be forgot: Other pleasures, other cares, Ever-busy Time prepares; And thou shalt in thy daughter see, This picture, once, resembled thee. Ambrose Philips [1675?-1749] THE PICTURE OF LITTLE T. C. IN A PROSPECT OF FLOWERS See with what simplicity This nymph begins her golden days! In the green grass she loves to lie, And there with her fair aspect tames The wilder flowers, and gives them names; But only with the roses plays, And them does tell What color best becomes them, and what smell. Who can foretell for what high cause This darling of the gods was born? Yet this is she whose chaster laws The wanton Love shall one day fear, And, under her command severe, See his bow broke, and ensigns torn. Happy who can Appease this virtuous enemy of man! O then let me in time compound And parley with those conquering eyes, Ere they have tried their force to wound, Ere with their glancing wheels they drive In triumph over hearts that strive, And them that yield but more despise: Let me be laid Where I may see the glories from some shade. Meantime, whilst every verdant thing Itself does at thy beauty charm, Reform the errors of the Spring; Make that the tulips may have share Of sweetness, seeing they are fair, And roses of their thorns disarm But most procure That violets may a longer age endure. But O young beauty of the woods, Whom Nature courts with fruits and flowers, Gather the flowers, but spare the buds; Lest Flora, angry at thy crime To kill her infants in their prime, Do quickly make the example yours; And, ere we see, Nip, in the blossom, all our hopes and thee. Andrew Marvell [1621-1678] TO HARTLEY COLERIDGE Six Years Old O thou! whose fancies from afar are brought: Who of thy words dost make a mock apparel, And fittest to unutterable thought The breeze-like motion and the self-born carol; Thou fairy voyager! that dost float In such clear water, that thy boat May rather seem To brood on air than on an earthly stream; Suspended in a stream as clear as sky, Where earth and heaven do make one imagery: O blessed vision! happy child! Thou art so exquisitely wild, I think of thee with many fears For what may be thy lot in future years. I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest, Lord of thy house and hospitality; And Grief, uneasy lover! never rest But when she sate within the touch of thee. O too industrious folly! O vain and causeless melancholy! Nature will either end thee quite; Or, lengthening out thy season of delight, Preserve for thee, by individual right, A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks. What hast thou to do with sorrow, Or the injuries of to-morrow? Thou art a dew-drop, which the morn brings forth, Ill-fitted to sustain unkindly shocks, Or to be trailed along the soiling earth; A gem that glitters while it lives, And no forewarning gives; But, at the touch of wrong, without a strife, Slips in a moment out of life. William Wordsworth [1770-1850] TO A CHILD OF QUALITY Five Years Old, 1704, The Author Then Forty Lords, knights, and squires, the numerous band That wear the fair Miss Mary's fetters, Were summoned by her high command To show their passions by their letters. My pen amongst the rest I took, Lest those bright eyes, that cannot read, Should dart their kindling fires, and look The power they have to be obeyed. Nor quality, nor reputation, Forbids me yet my flame to tell; Dear Five-years-old befriends my passion, And I may write till she can spell. For, while she makes her silkworms' beds With all the tender things I swear; Whilst all the house my passion reads, In papers round her baby's hair; She may receive and own my flame; For, though the strictest prudes should know it, She'll pass for a most virtuous dame, And I for an unhappy poet. Then too, alas! when she shall tear The rhymes some younger rival sends, She'll give me leave to write, I fear, And we shall still continue friends. For, as our different ages move, 'Tis so ordained (would Fate but mend it!), That I shall be past making love When she begins to comprehend it. Matthew Prior [1664-1721] EX ORE INFANTIUM Little Jesus, wast Thou shy Once, and just so small as I? And what did it feel like to be Out of Heaven, and just like me? Didst Thou sometimes think of there, And ask where all the angels were? I should think that I would cry For my house all made of sky; I would look about the air, And wonder where my angels were; And at waking 'twould distress me-- Not an angel there to dress me! Hadst Thou ever any toys, Like us little girls and boys? And didst Thou play in Heaven with all The angels, that were not too tall, With stars for marbles? Did the things Play Can you see me? through their wings? Didst Thou kneel at night to pray, And didst Thou join Thy hands, this way? And did they tire sometimes, being young, And make the prayer seem very long? And dost Thou like it best, that we Should join our hands to pray to Thee? I used to think, before I knew, The prayer not said unless we do. And did Thy Mother at the night Kiss Thee, and fold the clothes in right? And didst Thou feel quite good in bed, Kissed, and sweet, and Thy prayers said? Thou canst not have forgotten all That it feels like to be small: And Thou know'st I cannot pray To Thee in my father's way-- When Thou wast so little, say, Could'st Thou talk Thy Father's way?-- So, a little Child, come down And hear a child's tongue like Thy own; Take me by the hand and walk, And listen to my baby-talk. To Thy Father show my prayer (He will look, Thou art so fair), And say: "O Father, I, Thy Son, Bring the prayer of a little one." And He will smile, that children's tongue Has not changed since Thou wast young! Francis Thompson [1859-1907] OBITUARY Finding Francesca full of tears, I said, "Tell me thy trouble." "Oh, my dog is dead! Murdered by poison!--no one knows for what!-- Was ever dog born capable of that?" "Child,"--I began to say, but checked my thought,-- "A better dog can easily be bought." For no--what animal could him replace? Those loving eyes! That fond, confiding face! Those dear, dumb touches! Therefore I was dumb. From word of mine could any comfort come? A bitter sorrow 'tis to lose a brute Friend, dog or horse, for grief must then be mute,-- So many smile to see the rivers shed Of tears for one poor, speechless creature dead. When parents die there's many a word to say-- Kind words, consoling_--one can always pray; When children die 'tis natural to tell Their mother, "Certainly, with them 'tis well!" But for a dog, 'twas all the life he had, Since death is end of dogs, or good or bad. This was his world; he was contented here; Imagined nothing better, naught more dear, Than his young mistress; sought no brighter sphere; Having no sin, asked not to be forgiven; Ne'er guessed at God nor ever dreamed of heaven. Now he has passed away, so much of love Goes from our life, without one hope above! When a dog dies there's nothing to be said But--kiss me, darling!--dear old Smiler's dead. Thomas William Parsons [1819-1892] THE CHILD'S HERITAGE On, there are those, a sordid clan, With pride in gaud and faith in gold, Who prize the sacred soul of man For what his hands have sold. And these shall deem thee humbly bred: They shall not hear, they shall not see The kings among the lordly dead Who walk and talk with thee! A tattered cloak may be thy dole, And thine the roof that Jesus had: The broidered garment of the soul Shall keep thee purple-clad! The blood of men hath dyed its brede, And it was wrought by holy seers With sombre dream and golden deed, And pearled with women's tears. With Eld thy chain of days is one: The seas are still Homeric seas; Thy skies shall glow with Pindar's sun, The stars of Socrates! Unaged the ancient tide shall surge, The old Spring burn along the bough: For thee, new and old converge In one eternal Now! I give thy feet the hopeful sod, Thy mouth, the priceless boon of breath; The glory of the search for God Be thine in life and death! Unto thy flesh, the soothing dust; Thy soul, the gift of being free: The torch my fathers gave in trust, Thy father gives to thee! John G. Neihardt [1881- A GIRL OF POMPEII A public haunt they found her in: She lay asleep, a lovely child; The only thing left undefiled Where all things else bore taint of sin. Her supple outlines fixed in clay The universal law suspend, And turn Time's chariot back, and blend A thousand years with yesterday. A sinless touch, austere yet warm, Around her girlish figure pressed, Caught the sweet imprint of her breast, And held her, surely clasped, from harm. Truer than work of sculptor's art Comes this dear maid of long ago, Sheltered from woeful chance, to show A spirit's lovely counterpart, And bid mistrustful men be sure That form shall fate of flesh escape, And, quit of earth's corruptions, shape Itself, imperishably pure. Edward Sandford Martin [1856- ON THE PICTURE OF A "CHILD TIRED OF PLAY" Tired of play! Tired of play! What hast thou done this live-long day! The bird is silent and so is the bee, The shadow is creeping up steeple and tree; The doves have flown to the sheltering eaves, And the nests are dark with the drooping leaves; Twilight gathers, and day is done,-- How hast thou spent it, restless one? Playing! And what hast thou done beside To tell thy mother at eventide? What promise of morn is left unbroken? What kind word to thy playmate spoken? Whom hast thou pitied, and whom forgiven? How with thy faults has duty striven? What hast thou learned by field and hill, By greenwood path and by singing rill? There will come an eve to a longer day That will find thee tired,--but not with play! And thou wilt learn, as thou learnest now, With wearied limbs and aching brow, And wish the shadows would faster creep And long to go to thy quiet sleep. Well will it be for thee then if thou Art as free from sin and shame as now! Well for thee if thy tongue can tell A tale like this, of a day spent well! If thine open hand hath relieved distress, And thy pity hath sprung to wretchedness-- If thou hast forgiven the sore offence And humbled thy heart with penitence; If Nature's voices have spoken to thee With her holy meanings, eloquently-- If every creature hath won thy love, From the creeping worm to the brooding dove-- If never a sad, low-spoken word Hath plead with thy human heart unheard-- Then, when the night steals on, as now It will bring relief to thine aching brow, And, with joy and peace at the thought of rest, Thou wilt sink to sleep on thy mother's breast. Nathaniel Parker Willis [1806-1867] THE REVERIE OF POOR SUSAN At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears, Hangs a Thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years: Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard In the silence of morning the song of the Bird. 'Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? She sees A mountain ascending, a vision of trees; Bright volumes of vapor through Lothbury glide, And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside. Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale, Down which she so often has tripped with her pail; And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's, The one only dwelling on earth that she loves. She looks, and her heart is in heaven: but they fade, The mist and the river, the hill and the shade: The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise, And the colors have all passed away from her eyes! William Wordsworth [1770-1850] CHILDREN'S SONG Sometimes wind and sometimes rain, Then the sun comes back again; Sometimes rain and sometimes snow, Goodness, how we'd like to know Why the weather alters so. When the weather's really good We go nutting in the wood; When it rains we stay at home, And then sometimes other some Of the neighbors' children come. Sometimes we have jam and meat, All the things we like to eat; Sometimes we make do with bread And potatoes boiled instead. Once when we were put to bed We had nowt and mother cried, But that was after father died. So, sometimes wind and sometimes rain, Then the sun comes back again; Sometimes rain and sometimes snow, Goodness, how we'd like to know If things will always alter so. Ford Madox Ford [1873- THE MITHERLESS BAIRN When a' other bairnies are hushed to their hame By aunty, or cousin, or frecky grand-dame, Wha stands last and lanely, an' naebody carin'? 'Tis the puir doited loonie,--the mitherless bairn! The mitherless bairn gangs to his lane bed; Nane covers his cauld back, or haps his bare head; His wee hackit heelies are hard as the airn, An' litheless the lair o' the mitherless bairn. Aneath his cauld brow siccan dreams hover there, O' hands that wont kindly to kame his dark hair; But mornin' brings clutches, a' reckless an' stern, That lo'e na the locks o' the mitherless bairn! Yon sister that sang o'er his saftly rocked bed Now rests in the mools where her mammie is laid; The father toils sair their wee bannock to earn, An' kens na the wrangs o' his mitherless bairn. Her spirit, that passed in yon hour o' his birth, Still watches his wearisome wanderings on earth; Recording in heaven the blessings they earn Wha couthilie deal wi' the mitherless bairn! O, speak him na harshly,--he trembles the while, He bends to your bidding, and blesses your smile; In their dark hour o' anguish the heartless shall learn That God deals the blow, for the mitherless bairn! William Thom [1798?-1848] THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, And that cannot stop their tears. The young lambs are bleating in the meadows, The young birds are chirping in the nest, The young fawns are playing with the shadows, The young flowers are blowing toward the west-- But the young, young children, O my brothers, They are weeping bitterly! They are weeping in the playtime of the others, In the country of the free. Do you question the young children in the sorrow, Why their tears are falling so? The old man may weep for his to-morrow Which is lost in Long Ago; The old tree is leafless in the forest, The old year is ending in the frost, The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest, The old hope is hardest to be lost: But the young, young children, O my brothers, Do you ask them why they stand Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers, In our happy Fatherland? They look up with their pale and sunken faces, And their looks are sad to see, For the man's hoary anguish draws and presses Down the cheeks of infancy; "Your old earth," they say, "is very dreary; Our young feet" they say, "are very weak; Few paces have we taken, yet are weary-- Our grave-rest is very far to seek: Ask the aged why they weep, and not the children For the outside earth is cold, And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering, And the graves are for the old. "True," say the children, "it may happen That we die before our time: Little Alice died last year--her grave is shapen Like a snowball, in the rime. We looked into the pit prepared to take her: Was no room for any work in the close clay! From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her, Crying, 'Get up, little Alice! it is day.' If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower, With your ear down, little Alice never cries; Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her, For the smile has time for growing in her eyes: And merry go her moments, lulled and stilled in The shroud by the kirk-chime. It is good when it happens," say the children, "That we die before our time." Alas, alas, the children! they are seeking Death in life, as best to have! They are binding up their hearts away from breaking, With a cerement from the grave. Go out, children, from the mine and from the city, Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do; Pluck your handfuls of the meadow cowslips pretty; Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through! But they answer, "Are your cowslips of the meadows Like our weeds anear the mine? Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows, From your pleasures fair and fine! "For oh," say the children, "we are weary, And we cannot run or leap; If we cared for any meadows, it were merely To drop down in them and sleep. Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping, We fall upon our faces, trying to go; And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping, The reddest flower would look as pale as snow. For, all day, we drag our burden tiring, Through the coal-dark, underground; Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron In the factories, round and round. "For, all day, the wheels are droning, turning; Their wind comes in our faces, Till our hearts turn, our heads, with pulses burning, And the walls turn in their places: Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling, Turns the long light that drops adown the wall, Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling: All are turning, all the day, and we with all. And all day, the iron wheels are droning; And sometimes we could pray, 'O ye wheels, (breaking out in a mad moaning) 'Stop! be silent for to-day!'" Ay, be silent! Let them hear each other breathing For a moment, mouth to mouth! Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing Of their tender human youth! Let them feel that this cold metallic motion Is not all the life God fashions or reveals: Let them prove their living souls against the notion That they live in you, or under you, O wheels! Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward, Grinding life down from its mark; And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward, Spin on blindly in the dark. Now tell the poor young children, O my brothers, To look up to Him and pray; So the blessed One, who blesseth all the others, Will bless them another day. They answer, "Who is God that He should hear us, While the rushing of the iron wheels is stirred? When we sob aloud, the human creatures near us Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a word! And we hear not (for the wheels in their resounding) Strangers speaking at the door: Is it likely God, with angels singing round Him, Hears our weeping any more? "Two words, indeed, of praying we remember, And at midnight's hour of harm, 'Our Father,' looking upward in the chamber, We say softly for a charm. We know no other words except 'Our Father,' And we think that, in some pause of angels' song, God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather, And hold both within his right hand which is strong. 'Our Father!' If He heard us, He would surely (For they call Him good and mild) Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely, 'Come and rest with me, my child.' "But no!" say the children, weeping faster, "He is speechless as a stone; And they tell us, of His image is the master Who commands us to work on. Go to!" say the children,--"Up in Heaven, Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find. Do not mock us; grief has made us unbelieving: We look up for God, but tears have made us blind." Do you hear the children weeping and disproving, O my brothers, what ye preach? For God's possible is taught by His world's loving, And the children doubt of each. And well may the children weep before you! They are weary ere they run; They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory Which is brighter than the sun. They know the grief of man, without its wisdom; They sink in man's despair, without its calm; Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom, Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm: Are worn as if with age, yet unretrievingly The harvest of its memories cannot reap,-- Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly. Let them weep! let them weep! They look up, with their pale and sunken faces, And their look is dread to see, For they mind you of their angels in high places, With eyes turned on Deity. "How long," they say, "how long, O cruel nation, Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart,-- Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation, And tread onward to your throne amid the mart? Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper, And your purple shows your path; But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper Than the strong man in his wrath!" Elizabeth Barrett Browning [1806-1861] THE SHADOW-CHILD Why do the wheels go whirring round, Mother, mother? Oh, mother, are they giants bound, And will they growl forever? Yes, fiery giants underground, Daughter, little daughter, Forever turn the wheels around, And rumble-grumble ever. Why do I pick the threads all day, Mother, mother? While sunshine children are at play? And must I work forever? Yes, shadow-child; the live-long day, Daughter, little daughter, Your hands must pick the threads away, And feel the sunshine never. Why do the birds sing in the sun, Mother, mother? If all day long I run and run, Run with the wheels forever? The birds may sing till day is done, Daughter, little daughter, But with the wheels your feet must run-- Run with the wheels forever. Why do I feel so tired each night, Mother, mother? The wheels are always buzzing bright; Do they grow sleepy never? Oh, baby thing, so soft and white, Daughter, little daughter, The big wheels grind us in their might, And they will grind forever. And is the white thread never spun, Mother, mother? And is the white cloth never done, For you and me done never? Oh, yes, our thread will all be spun, Daughter, little daughter, When we lie down out in the sun, And work no more forever. And when will come that happy day, Mother, mother? Oh, shall we laugh and sing and play Out in the sun forever? Nay, shadow-child, we'll rest all day, Daughter, little daughter, Where green grass grows and roses gay, There in the sun forever. Harriet Monroe [1860-1936] MOTHER WEPT Mother wept, and father sighed; With delight aglow Cried the lad, "To-morrow," cried, "To the pit I go." Up and down the place he sped,-- Greeted old and young; Far and wide the tidings spread; Clapt his hands and sung. Came his cronies; some to gaze Wrapped in wonder; some Free with counsel; some with praise: Some with envy dumb. "May he," many a gossip cried, "Be from peril kept." Father hid his face and sighed, Mother turned and wept. Joseph Skipsey [1832-1903] DUTY So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, "Thou must," The youth replies, "I can." Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-1882] LUCY GRAY Or Solitude Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray: And, when I crossed the wild, I chanced to see, at break of day, The solitary child. No mate, no comrade Lucy knew; She dwelt on a wide moor, The sweetest thing that ever grew Beside a human door! You yet may spy the fawn at play, The hare upon the green; But the sweet face of Lucy Gray Will never more be seen. "To-night will be a stormy night,-- You to the town must go; And take a lantern, Child, to light Your mother through the snow." "That, Father, will I gladly do: 'Tis scarcely afternoon,-- The minster-clock has just struck two, And yonder is the moon!" At this the Father raised his hook, And snapped a fagot-brand. He plied his work;--and Lucy took The lantern in her hand. Not blither is the mountain roe: With many a wanton stroke Her feet disperse the powdery snow, That rises up like smoke. The storm came on before its time: She wandered up and down: And many a hill did Lucy climb: But never reached the town. The wretched parents all that night Went shouting far and wide; But there was neither sound nor sight To serve them for a guide. At daybreak on the hill they stood That overlooked the moor; And thence they saw the bridge of wood, A furlong from their door. They wept,--and, turning homeward, cried, "In heaven we all shall meet;" When in the snow the mother spied The print of Lucy's feet. Then downwards from the steep hill's edge They tracked the footmarks small: And through the broken hawthorn-hedge, And by the low stone-wall; And then an open field they crossed-- The marks were still the same-- They tracked them on, nor ever lost; And to the bridge they came. They followed from the snowy bank Those footmarks, one by one, Into the middle of the plank; And further there were none! --Yet some maintain that to this day She is a living child; That you may see sweet Lucy Gray Upon the lonesome wild. O'er rough and smooth she trips along, And never looks behind; And sings a solitary song That whistles in the wind. William Wordsworth [1770-1850] IN THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL Emmie Our doctor had called in another, I never had seen him before, But he sent a chill to my heart when I saw him come in at the door, Fresh from the surgery-schools of France and of other lands-- Harsh red hair, big voice, big chest, big merciless hands! Wonderful cures he had done, O yes, but they said too of him He was happier using the knife than in trying to save the limb, And that I can well believe, for he looked so coarse and so red, I could think he was one of those who would break their jests on the dead, And mangle the living dog that had loved him and fawned at his knee-- Drenched with the hellish oorali--that ever such things should be! Here was a boy--I am sure that some of our children would die But for the voice of love, and the smile, and the comforting eye-- Here was a boy in the ward, every bone seemed out of its place-- Caught in a mill and crushed--it was all but a hopeless case: And he handled him gently enough; but his voice and his face were not kind, And it was but a hopeless case, he had seen it and made up his mind, And he said to me roughly "The lad will need little more of your care." "All the more need," I told him, "to seek the Lord Jesus in prayer; They are all His children here, and I pray for them all as my own:" But he turned to me, "Ay, good woman, can prayer set a broken bone?" Then he muttered half to himself, but I know that I heard him say, "All very well--but the good Lord Jesus has had his day." Had? has it come? It has only dawned. It will come by and by. O, how could I serve in the wards if the hope of the world were a lie? How could I bear with the sights and the loathsome smells of disease But that He said "Ye do it to me, when ye do it to these"? So he went. And we passed to this ward where the younger children are laid: Here is the cot of our orphan, our darling, our meek little maid; Empty you see just now! We have lost her who loved her so much-- Patient of pain though as quick as a sensitive plant to the touch; Hers was the prettiest prattle, it often moved me to tears, Hers was the gratefullest heart I have found in a child of her years-- Nay you remember our Emmie; you used to send her the flowers; How she would smile at 'em, play with 'em, talk to 'em hours after hours! They that can wander at will where the works of the Lord are revealed Little guess what joy can be got from a cowslip out of the field; Flowers to these "spirits in prison" are all they can know of the spring, They freshen and sweeten the wards like the waft of an angel's wing; And she lay with a flower in one hand and her thin hands crossed on her breast-- Wan, but as pretty as heart can desire, and we thought her at rest, Quietly sleeping--so quiet, our doctor said, "Poor little dear, Nurse, I must do it to-morrow; she'll never live through it, I fear." I walked with our kindly old doctor as far as the head of the stair, Then I returned to the ward; the child didn't see I was there. Never since I was nurse, had I been so grieved and so vexed! Emmie had heard him. Softly she called from her cot to the next, "He says I shall never live through it; O Annie, what shall I do?" Annie considered. "If I," said the wise little Annie, "was you, I should cry to the dear Lord Jesus to help me, for, Emmie, you see, It's all in the picture there: 'Little children should come to Me.'"-- (Meaning the print that you gave us, I find that it always can please Our children, the dear Lord Jesus with children about His knees.) "Yes, and I will," said Emmie, "but then if I call to the Lord, How should He know that it's me? such a lot of beds in the ward?" That was a puzzle for Annie. Again she considered and said: "Emmie, you put out your arms, and you leave 'em outside on the bed-- The Lord has so much to see to! but, Emmie, you tell it Him plain, It's the little girl with her arms lying out on the counterpane." I had sat three nights by the child--I could not watch her for four-- My brain had begun to reel--I felt I could do it no more. That was my sleeping-night, but I thought that it never would pass. There was a thunderclap once, and a clatter of hail on the glass, And there was a phantom cry that I heard as I tossed about, The motherless bleat of a lamb in the storm and the darkness without; My sleep was broken besides with dreams of the dreadful knife And fears for our delicate Emmie who scarce would escape with her life; Then in the gray of the morning it seemed she stood by me and smiled, And the doctor came at his hour, and we went to see the child. He had brought his ghastly tools: we believed her asleep again-- Her dear, long, lean, little arms lying out on the counterpane;-- Say that His day is done! Ah, why should we care what they say? The Lord of the children had heard her, and Emmie had passed away. Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892] "IF I WERE DEAD" "If I were dead, you'd sometimes say, Poor Child!" The dear lips quivered as they spake, And the tears brake From eyes which, not to grieve me, brightly smiled. Poor Child, poor Child! I seem to hear your laugh, your talk, your song. It is not true that Love will do no wrong. Poor Child! And did you think, when you so cried and smiled, How I, in lonely nights, should lie awake, And of those words your full avengers make? Poor Child, poor Child! And now, unless it be That sweet amends thrice told are come to thee, O God, have Thou no mercy upon me! Poor Child! Coventry Patmore [1823-1896] THE TOYS My little Son, who looked from thoughtful eyes And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise, Having my law the seventh time disobeyed, I struck him, and dismissed With hard words and unkissed, --His Mother, who was patient, being dead. Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep, I visited his bed, But found him slumbering deep, With darkened eyelids, and their lashes yet From his late sobbing wet. And I, with moan, Kissing away his tears, left others of my own; For, on a table drawn beside his head, He had put, within his reach, A box of counters and a red-veined stone, A piece of glass abraded by the beach, And six or seven shells, A bottle with bluebells, And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art, To comfort his sad heart. So when that night I prayed To God, I wept, and said: Ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath, Not vexing Thee in death, And Thou rememberest of what toys We made our joys, How weakly understood Thy great commanded good, Then, fatherly not less Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay, Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say, "I will be sorry for their childishness." Coventry Patmore [1823-1896] A SONG OF TWILIGHT Oh, to come home once more, when the dusk is falling, To see the nursery lighted and the children's table spread; "Mother, mother, mother!" the eager voices calling, "The baby was so sleepy that he had to go to bed!" Oh, to come home once more, and see the smiling faces, Dark head, bright head, clustered at the pane; Much the years have taken, when the heart its path retraces, But until time is not for me, the image will remain. Men and women now they are, standing straight and steady, Grave heart, gay heart, fit for life's emprise; Shoulder set to shoulder, how should they be but ready! The future shines before them with the light of their own eyes. Still each answers to my call; no good has been denied me, My burdens have been fitted to the little strength that's mine, Beauty, pride and peace have walked by day beside me, The evening closes gently in, and how can I repine? But oh, to see once more, when the early dusk is falling, The nursery windows glowing and the children's table spread; "Mother, mother, mother!" the high child voices calling, "He couldn't stay awake for you, he had to go to bed!" Unknown LITTLE BOY BLUE The little toy dog is covered with dust, But sturdy and stanch he stands; And the little toy soldier is red with rust, And his musket moulds in his hands. Time was when the little toy dog was new, And the soldier was passing fair; And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue Kissed them and put them there. "Now, don't you go till I come," he said, "And don't you make any noise!" So, toddling off to his trundle-bed, He dreamt of the pretty toys; And, as he was dreaming, an angel song Awakened our Little Boy Blue-- Oh! the years are many, the years are long, But the little toy friends are true! Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand, Each in the same old place, Awaiting the touch of a little hand, The smile of a little face; And they wonder, as waiting the long years through In the dust of that little chair, What has become of our Little Boy Blue, Since he kissed them and put them there. Eugene Field [1850-1895] THE DISCOVERER I have a little kinsman Whose earthly summers are but three, And yet a voyager is he Greater then Drake or Frobisher, Than all their peers together! He is a brave discoverer, And, far beyond the tether Of them who seek the frozen Pole, Has sailed where the noiseless surges roll. Ay, he has travelled whither A winged pilot steered his bark Through the portals of the dark, Past hoary Mimir's well and tree, Across the unknown sea. Suddenly, in his fair young hour, Came one who bore a flower, And laid it in his dimpled hand With this command: "Henceforth thou art a rover! Thou must make a voyage far, Sail beneath the evening star, And a wondrous land discover." --With his sweet smile innocent Our little kinsman went. Since that time no word From the absent has been heard. Who can tell How he fares, or answer well What the little one has found Since he left us, outward bound? Would that he might return! Then should we learn From the pricking of his chart How the skyey roadways part. Hush! does not the baby this way bring, To lay beside this severed curl, Some starry offering Of chrysolite or pearl? Ah, no! not so! We may follow on his track, But he comes not back. And yet I dare aver He is a brave discoverer Of climes his elders do not know. He has more learning than appears On the scroll of twice three thousand years, More than in the groves is taught, Or from furthest Indies brought; He knows, perchance, how spirits fare,-- What shapes the angels wear, What is their guise and speech In those lands beyond our reach,-- And his eyes behold Things that shall never, never be to mortal hearers told. Edmund Clarence Stedman [1833-1908] A CHRYSALIS My little Madchen found one day A curious something in her play, That was not fruit, nor flower, nor seed; It was not anything that grew, Or crept, or climbed, or swam, or flew; Had neither legs nor wings, indeed; And yet she was not sure, she said, Whether it was alive or dead. She brought in her tiny hand To see if I would understand, And wondered when I made reply, "You've found a baby butterfly." "A butterfly is not like this," With doubtful look she answered me. So then I told her what would be Some day within the chrysalis; How, slowly, in the dull brown thing Now still as death, a spotted wing, And then another, would unfold, Till from the empty shell would fly A pretty creature, by and by, All radiant in blue and gold. "And will it, truly?" questioned she-- Her laughing lips and eager eyes All in a sparkle of surprise-- "And shall your little Madchen see?" "She shall! I said. How could I tell That ere the worm within its shell Its gauzy, splendid wings had spread, My little Madchen would be dead? To-day the butterfly has flown,-- She was not here to see it fly,-- And sorrowing I wonder why The empty shell is mine alone. Perhaps the secret lies in this: I too had found a chrysalis, And Death that robbed me of delight Was but the radiant creature's flight! Mary Emily Bradley [1835-1898] MATER DOLOROSA I'd a dream to-night As I fell asleep, O! the touching sight Makes me still to weep: Of my little lad, Gone to leave me sad, Ay, the child I had, But was not to keep. As in heaven high, I my child did seek, There in train came by Children fair and meek, Each in lily white, With a lamp alight; Each was clear to sight, But they did not speak. Then, a little sad, Came my child in turn, But the lamp he had, O it did not burn! He, to clear my doubt, Said, half-turned about, "Your tears put it out; Mother, never mourn." William Barnes [1801-1886] THE LITTLE GHOST The stars began to peep Gone was the bitter day. She heard the milky ewes Bleat to their lambs astray. Her heart cried for her lamb Lapped cold in the churchyard sod, She could not think on the happy children At play with the Lamb of God. She heard the calling ewes And the lambs' answer, alas! She heard her heart's blood drip in the night As the ewes' milk on the grass. Her tears that burnt like fire So bitter and slow ran down She could not think on the new-washed children Playing by Mary's gown. Oh who is this comes in Over her threshold stone? And why is the old dog wild with joy Who all day long made moan? This fair little radiant ghost, Her one little son of seven, New 'scaped from the band of merry children In the nurseries of Heaven. He was all clad in white Without a speck or stain; His curls had a ring of light That rose and fell again. "Now come with me, my own mother, And you shall have great ease, For you shall see the lost children Gathered to Mary's knees." Oh, lightly sprang she up Nor waked her sleeping man, And hand in hand with the little ghost Through the dark night she ran. She is gone swift as a fawn, As a bird homes to its nest, She has seen them lie, the sleepy children Twixt Mary's arm and breast. At morning she came back; Her eyes were strange to see. She will not fear the long journey, However long it be. As she goes in and out She sings unto hersel'; For she has seen the mothers' children And knows that it is well. Katherine Tynan Hinkson [1861-1931] MOTHERHOOD The night throbs on; O, let me pray, dear lad! Crush off his name a moment from my mouth. To Thee my eyes would turn, but they go back, Back to my arm beside me, where he lay-- So little, Lord, so little and so warm! I cannot think that Thou hadst need of him! He was so little, Lord, he cannot sing, He cannot praise Thee; all his life had learned Was to hold fast my kisses in the night. Give him to me--he is not happy there! He had not felt this life; his lovely eyes Just knew me for his mother, and he died. Hast Thou an angel there to mother him? I say he loves me best--if he forgets, If Thou allow it that my child forgets And runs not out to meet me when I come-- What are my curses to Thee? Thou hast heard The curse of Abel's mother, and since then We have not ceased to threaten at Thy throne, To threat and pray Thee that Thou hold them still In memory of us. See Thou tend him well, Thou God of all the mothers. If he lack One of his kisses--ah, my heart, my heart, Do angels kiss in heaven? Give him back! Forgive me, Lord, but I am sick with grief, And tired of tears, and cold to comforting. Thou art wise, I know, and tender, aye, and good, Thou hast my child, and he is safe in Thee, And I believe-- Ah, God, my child shall go Orphaned among the angels! All alone. So little and alone! He knows not Thee, He only knows his mother--give him back. Josephine Daskam Bacon [1876- THE MOTHER'S PRAYER The good Lord gave, the Lord has taken from me, Blessed be His name, His holy will be done. The mourners all have gone, all save I, his mother, The little grave lies lonely in the sun. Nay! I would not follow, though they did beseech me, For the angels come now waiting for my dead. Heaven's door is open, so my whispers soar there, While the gentle angels lift him from his bed. Oh Lord, when Thou gavest he was weak and helpless, Could not rise nor wander from my shielding arm; Lovely is he now and strong with four sweet summers, Laughing, running, tumbling, hard to keep from harm. If some tender mother, whose babe on earth is living, Takes his little hand to guide his stranger feet 'Mid the countless hosts that cross the floor of heaven, Thou wilt not reprove her for Thy pity sweet. If upon her breast she holds his baby beauty, All his golden hair will fall about her hand, Laughing let her fingers pull it into ringlets-- Long and lovely ringlets. She will understand. Wilful are his ways and full of merry mischief; If he prove unruly, lay the blame on me. Never did I chide him for his noise or riot, Smiled upon his folly, glad his joy to see. Each eve shall I come beside his bed so lowly; "Hush-a-by, my baby," softly shall I sing, So, if he be frightened, full of sleep and anger, The song he loved shall reach him and sure comfort bring. Lord, if in my praying, Thou shouldst hear me weeping, Ever was I wayward, always full of tears, Take no heed of this grief. Sweet the gift Thou gavest All the cherished treasure of those golden years. Do not, therefore, hold me to Thy will ungrateful: Soon I shall stand upright, smiling, strong, and brave, With a son in heaven the sad earth forgetting, But 'tis lonely yet, Lord, by the little grave. Oh, 'tis lonely, lonely, by the little grave! Dora Sigerson Shorter [1862-1918] DA LEETLA BOY Da spreeng ees com'; but oh, da joy Eet ees too late! He was so cold, my leetla boy, He no could wait. I no can count how manny week, How manny day, dat he ees seeck; How manny night I seet an' hold Da leetla hand dat was so cold. He was so patience, oh, so sweet! Eet hurts my throat for theenk of eet; An' all he evra ask ees w'en Ees gona com' da spreeng agen. Wan day, wan brighta sunny day, He see, across da alleyway, Da leetla girl dat's livin' dere Ees raise her window for da air, An' put outside a leetla pot Of--w'at-you-call?--forgat-me-not. So smalla flower, so leetla theeng! But steell eet mak' hees hearta seeng: "Oh, now, at las', ees com' da spreeng! Da leetla plant ees glad for know Da sun ees com' for mak' eet grow. So, too, I am grow warm and strong." So lika dat he seeng hees song. But, ah! da night com' down an' den Da weenter ees sneak back agen, An' een da alley all da night Ees fall da snow, so cold, so white, An' cover up da leetla pot Of--w'at-you-call?--forgat-me-not. All night da leetla hand I hold Ees grow so cold, so cold, so cold! Da spreeng ees com'; but, oh, da joy Eet ees too late! He was so cold, my leetla boy, He no could wait. Thomas Augustin Daly [1871- ON THE MOOR I I met a child upon the moor A-wading down the heather; She put her hand into my own, We crossed the fields together. I led her to her father's door-- A cottage midst the clover. I left her--and the world grew poor To me, a childless rover. II I met a maid upon the moor, The morrow was her wedding. Love lit her eyes with lovelier hues Than the eve-star was shedding. She looked a sweet good-bye to me, And o'er the stile went singing. Down all the lonely night I heard But bridal bells a-ringing. III I met a mother on the moor, By a new grave a-praying. The happy swallows in the blue Upon the winds were playing. "Would I were in his grave," I said, "And he beside her standing!" There was no heart to break if death For me had made demanding. Cale Young Rice [1872- EPITAPH OF DIONYSIA Here doth Dionysia lie: She whose little wanton foot, Tripping (ah, too carelessly!) Touched this tomb, and fell into 't. Trip no more shall she, nor fall. And her trippings were so few! Summers only eight in all Had the sweet child wandered through. But, already, life's few suns Love's strong seeds had ripened warm. All her ways were winning ones; All her cunning was to charm. And the fancy, in the flower, While the flesh was in the bud, Childhood's dawning sex did dower With warm gusts of womanhood. Oh what joys by hope begun, Oh what kisses kissed by thought, What love-deeds by fancy done, Death to endless dust hath wrought! Had the fates been kind as thou, Who, till now, was never cold, Once Love's aptest scholar, now Thou hadst been his teacher bold; But, if buried seeds upthrow Fruits and flowers; if flower and fruit By their nature fitly show What the seeds are, whence they shoot, Dionysia, o'er this tomb, Where thy buried beauties be, From their dust shall spring and bloom Loves and graces like to thee. Unknown FOR CHARLIE'S SAKE The night is late, the house is still; The angels of the hour fulfil Their tender ministries, and move From couch to couch in cares of love. They drop into thy dreams, sweet wife, The happiest smile of Charlie's life, And lay on baby's lips a kiss, Fresh from his angel-brother's bliss; And, as they pass, they seem to make A strange, dim hymn, "For Charlie's sake." My listening heart takes up the strain, And gives it to the night again, Fitted with words of lowly praise, And patience learned of mournful days, And memories of the dead child's ways. His will be done, His will be done! Who gave and took away my son, In "the far land" to shine and sing Before the Beautiful, the King, Who every day doth Christmas make, All starred and belled for Charlie's sake. For Charlie's sake I will arise; I will anoint me where he lies, And change my raiment, and go in To the Lord's house, and leave my sin Without, and seat me at his board, Eat, and be glad, and praise the Lord. For wherefore should I fast and weep, And sullen moods of mourning keep? I cannot bring him back, nor he, For any calling, come to me. The bond the angel Death did sign, God sealed--for Charlie's sake, and mine. I'm very poor--this slender stone Marks all the narrow field I own; Yet, patient husbandman, I till With faith and prayers, that precious hill, Sow it with penitential pains, And, hopeful, wait the latter rains; Content if, after all, the spot Yield barely one forget-me-not-- Whether or figs or thistles make My crop, content for Charlie's sake. I have no houses, builded well-- Only that little lonesome cell, Where never romping playmates come, Nor bashful sweethearts, cunning-dumb-- An April burst of girls and boys, Their rainbowed cloud of glooms and joys Born with their songs, gone with their toys; Nor ever is its stillness stirred By purr of cat, or chirp of bird, Or mother's twilight legend, told Of Horner's pie, or Tiddler's gold, Or fairy hobbling to the door, Red-cloaked and weird, banned and poor, To bless the good child's gracious eyes, The good child's wistful charities, And crippled changeling's hunch to make Dance on his crutch, for good child's sake. How is it with the child? 'Tis well; Nor would I any miracle Might stir my sleeper's tranquil trance, Or plague his painless countenance: I would not any seer might place His staff on my immortal's face, Or lip to lip, and eye to eye, Charm back his pale mortality. No, Shunamite! I would not break God's stillness. Let them weep who wake. For Charlie's sake my lot is blest: No comfort like his mother's breast, No praise like hers; no charm expressed In fairest forms hath half her zest. For Charlie's sake this bird's caressed That death left lonely in the nest; For Charlie's sake my heart is dressed, As for its birthday, in its best; For Charlie's sake we leave the rest To Him who gave, and who did take, And saved us twice, for Charlie's sake. John Williamson Palmer [1825-1906] "ARE THE CHILDREN AT HOME?" Each day, when the glow of sunset Fades in the western sky, And the wee ones, tired of playing, Go tripping lightly by, I steal away from my husband, Asleep in his easy-chair, And watch from the open doorway Their faces fresh and fair. Alone in the dear old homestead That once was full of life, Ringing with girlish laughter, Echoing boyish strife, We two are waiting together; And oft, as the shadows come, With tremulous voice he calls me, "It is night! are the children home?" "Yes, love!" I answer him gently, "They're all home long ago;"-- And I sing, in my quivering treble, A song so soft and low, Till the old man drops to slumber, With his head upon his hand, And I tell to myself the number At home in the better land. At home, where never a sorrow Shall dim their eyes with tears! Where the smile of God is on them Through all the summer years! I know,--yet my arms are empty, That fondly folded seven, And the mother-heart within me Is almost starved for heaven. Sometimes, in the dusk of evening, I only shut my eyes, And the children are all about me, A vision from the skies: The babes whose dimpled fingers Lost the way to my breast, And the beautiful ones, the angels, Passed to the world of the blest. With never a cloud upon them, I see their radiant brows; My boys that I gave to freedom,-- The red sword sealed their vows! In a tangled Southern forest, Twin brothers bold and brave, They fell; and the flag they died for, Thank God! floats over their grave. A breath, and the vision is lifted Away on wings of light, And again we two are together, All alone in the night. They tell me his mind is failing, But I smile at idle fears; He is only back with the children, In the dear and peaceful years. And still, as the summer sunset Fades away in the west, And the wee ones, tired of playing, Go trooping home to rest, My husband calls from his corner, "Say, love, have the children come?" And I answer, with eyes uplifted, "Yes, dear! they are all at home." Margaret Sangster [1838-1919] THE MORNING-GLORY We wreathed about our darling's head The morning-glory bright; Her little face looked out beneath, So full of life and light, So lit as with a sunrise, That we could only say, "She is the morning-glory true, And her poor types are they." So always from that happy time We called her by their name, And very fitting did it seem-- For, sure as morning came, Behind her cradle bars she smiled To catch the first faint ray, As from the trellis smiles the flower And opens to the day. But not so beautiful they rear Their airy cups of blue, As turned her sweet eyes to the light, Brimmed with sleep's tender dew; And not so close their tendrils fine Round their supports are thrown, As those dear arms whose outstretched plea Clasped all hearts to her own. We used to think how she had come, Even as comes the flower, The last and perfect added gift To crown Love's morning hour; And how in her was imaged forth The love we could not say, As on the little dewdrops round Shines back the heart of day. We never could have thought, O God, That she must wither up, Almost before a day was flown, Like the morning-glory's cup; We never thought to see her droop Her fair and noble head, Till she lay stretched before our eyes, Wilted, and cold, and dead! The morning-glory's blossoming Will soon be coming round-- We see the rows of heart-shaped leaves Upspringing from the ground; The tender things the winter killed Renew again their birth, But the glory of our morning Has passed away from earth. O Earth! in vain our aching eyes Stretch over thy green plain! Too harsh thy dews, too gross thine air Her spirit to sustain; But up in groves of Paradise Full surely we shall see Our morning-glory beautiful Twine round our dear Lord's knee. Maria White Lowell [1821-1855] SHE CAME AND WENT As a twig trembles, which a bird Lights on to sing, then leaves unbent, So is my memory thrilled and stirred;-- I only know she came and went. As clasps some lake, by gusts unriven, The blue dome's measureless content, So my soul held that moment's heaven;-- I only know she came and went. As, at one bound, our swift spring heaps The orchards full of bloom and scent, So clove her May my wintry sleeps;-- I only know she came and went. An angel stood and met my gaze, Through the low doorway of my tent; The tent is struck, the vision stays;-- I only know she came and went. Oh, when the room grows slowly dim, And life's last oil is nearly spent, One gush of light these eyes will brim, Only to think she came and went. James Russell Lowell [1819-1891] THE FIRST SNOW-FALL The snow had begun in the gloaming, And busily all the night Had been heaping field and highway With a silence deep and white. Every pine and fir and hemlock Wore ermine too dear for an earl, And the poorest twig on the elm-tree Was ridged inch deep with pearl. From sheds new-roofed with Carrara Came Chanticleer's muffled crow, The stiff rails softened to swan's-down, And still fluttered down the snow. I stood and watched by the window The noiseless work of the sky, And the sudden flurries of snow-birds, Like brown leaves whirling by. I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn Where a little headstone stood; How the flakes were folding it gently, As did robins the babes in the wood. Up spoke our own little Mabel, Saying, "Father, who makes it snow?" And I told of the good All-father Who cares for us here below. Again I looked at the snow-fall, And thought of the leaden sky That arched o'er our first great sorrow, When that mound was heaped so high. I remembered the gradual patience That fell from that cloud like snow, Flake by flake, healing and hiding The scar that renewed our woe. And again to the child I whispered, "The snow that husheth all, Darling, the merciful Father Alone can make it fall" Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her; And she, kissing back, could not know That my kiss was given to her sister, Folded close under deepening snow. James Russell Lowell [1819-1891] "WE ARE SEVEN" A simple Child, That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death? I met a little cottage Girl: She was eight years old, she said: Her hair was thick with many a curl That clustered round her head. She had a rustic, woodland air, And she was wildly clad: Her eyes were fair, and very fair; --Her beauty made me glad. "Sisters and brothers, little Maid, How many may you be?" "How many? Seven in all," she said, And wondering looked at me. "And where are they? I pray you tell." She answered, "Seven are we; And two of us at Conway dwell, And two are gone to sea; "Two of us in the church-yard lie, My sister and my brother; And, in the church-yard cottage, I Dwell near them with my mother." "You say that two at Conway dwell, And two are gone to sea, Yet ye are seven--I pray you tell, Sweet Maid, how this may be." Then did the little Maid reply, "Seven boys and girls are we; Two of us in the church-yard lie Beneath the church-yard tree." "You run about, my little Maid; Your limbs they are alive; If two are in the church-yard laid, Then ye are only five." "Their graves are green, they may be seen," The little Maid replied: "Twelve steps or more from my mother's door, And they are side by side. "My stockings there I often knit, My kerchief there I hem; And there upon the ground I sit, And sing a song to them. "And often after sunset, Sir, When it is light and fair, I take my little porringer, And eat my supper there. "The first that died was sister Jane; In bed she moaning lay, Till God released her of her pain; And then she went away. "So in the church-yard she was laid; And, when the grass was dry, Together round her grave we played, My brother John and I. "And when the ground was white with snow, And I could run and slide, My brother John was forced to go, And he lies by her side." "How many are you, then," said I, "If they two are in heaven?" Quick was the little Maid's reply, "O Master! we are seven." "But they are dead; those two are dead! Their spirits are in heaven!" 'Twas throwing words away; for still The little Maid would have her will, And said, "Nay, we are seven!" William Wordsworth [1770-1850] MY CHILD I cannot make him dead! His fair sunshiny head Is ever bounding round my study chair; Yet when my eyes, now dim With tears, I turn to him, The vision vanishes,--he is not there! I walk my parlor floor, And, through the open door, I hear a footfall on the chamber stair; I'm stepping toward the hall To give my boy a call; And then bethink me that--he is not there! I thread the crowded street; A satchelled lad I meet, With the same beaming eyes and colored hair; And, as he's running by, Follow him with my eye, Scarcely believing that--he is not there! I know his face is hid Under the coffin-lid; Closed are his eyes; cold is his forehead fair; My hand that marble felt; O'er it in prayer I knelt; Yet my heart whispers that--he is not there! I cannot make him dead! When passing by the bed, So long watched over with parental care, My spirit and my eye, Seek him inquiringly, Before the thought comes that--he is not there! When, at the cool gray break Of day, from sleep I wake, With my first breathing of the morning air My soul goes up, with joy, To Him who gave my boy; Then comes the sad thought that--he is not there! When at the day's calm close, Before we seek repose, I'm with his mother, offering up our prayer; Whate'er I may be saying, I am, in spirit, praying For our boy's spirit, though--he is not there! Not there!--Where, then, is he? The form I used to see Was but the raiment that he used to wear. The grave, that now doth press Upon that cast-off dress, Is but his wardrobe locked;--he is not there! He lives!--In all the past He lives; nor, to the last, Of seeing him again will I despair; In dreams I see him now; And on his angel brow, I see it written, "Thou shalt see me there!" Yes, we all live to God! Father, thy chastening rod So help us, thine afflicted ones, to bear, That, in the spirit-land, Meeting at thy right hand, 'Twill be our heaven to find that--he is there! John Pierpont [1785-1866] THE CHILD'S WISH GRANTED Do you remember, my sweet, absent son, How in the soft June days forever done You loved the heavens so warm and clear and high; And when I lifted you, soft came your cry,-- "Put me 'way up--'way, 'way up in blue sky"? I laughed and said I could not;--set you down, Your gray eyes wonder-filled beneath that crown Of bright hair gladdening me as you raced by. Another Father now, more strong than I, Has borne you voiceless to your dear blue sky. George Parsons Lathrop [1851-1898] CHALLENGE This little child, so white, so calm, Decked for her grave, Encountered death without a qualm. Are you as brave? So small, and armed with naught beside Her mother's kiss, Alone she stepped, unterrified, Into the abyss. "Ah," you explain, "she did not know-- This babe of four-- Just what it signifies to go." Do you know more? Kenton Foster Murray [18-- TIRED MOTHERS A little elbow leans upon your knee, Your tired knee that has so much to bear; A child's dear eyes are looking lovingly From underneath a thatch of tangled hair. Perhaps you do not heed the velvet touch Of warm, moist fingers, folding yours so tight; You do not prize this blessing overmuch,-- You almost are too tired to pray to-night. But it is blessedness! A year ago I did not see it as I do to-day,-- We are so dull and thankless; and too slow To catch the sunshine till it slips away. And now it seems surpassing strange to me That, while I wore the badge of motherhood, I did not kiss more oft and tenderly The little child that brought me only good. And if some night when you sit down to rest, You miss this elbow from your tired knee,-- This restless, curling head from off your breast-- This lisping tongue that chatters constantly; If from your own the dimpled hands had slipped, And ne'er would nestle in your palm again; If the white feet into, their grave had tripped, I could not blame you for your heartache then! I wonder so that mothers ever fret At little children clinging to their gown; Or that the footprints, when the days are wet, Are ever black enough to make them frown. If I could find a little muddy boot, Or cap, or jacket, on my chamber-floor,-- If I could kiss a rosy, restless foot, And hear its patter in my house once more,-- If I could mend a broken cart to-day, To-morrow make a kite to reach the sky, There is no woman in God's world could say She was more blissfully content than I. But ah! the dainty pillow next my own Is never rumpled by a shining head; My singing birdling from its nest has flown, The little boy I used to kiss is dead. May Riley Smith [1842-1927] MY DAUGHTER LOUISE In the light of the moon, by the side of the water, My seat on the sand and her seat on my knees, We watch the bright billows, do I and my daughter, My sweet little daughter Louise. We wonder what city the pathway of glory, That broadens away to the limitless west, Leads up to--she minds her of some pretty story And says: "To the city that mortals love best." Then I say: "It must lead to the far away city, The beautiful City of Rest." In the light of the moon, by the side of the water, Stand two in the shadow of whispering trees, And one loves my daughter, my beautiful daughter, My womanly daughter Louise. She steps to the boat with a touch of his fingers, And out on the diamonded pathway they move; The shallop is lost in the distance, it lingers, It waits, but I know that its coming will prove That it went to the walls of the wonderful city, The magical City of Love. In the light of the moon, by the side of the water, I wait for her coming from over the seas; I wait but to welcome the dust of my daughter, To weep for my daughter Louise. The path, as of old, reaching out in its splendor, Gleams bright, like a way that an angel has trod; I kiss the cold burden its billows surrender, Sweet clay to lie under the pitiful sod: But she rests, at the end of the path, in the city Whose "builder and maker is God." Homer Greene [1853- "I AM LONELY" From "The Spanish Gypsy" The world is great: the birds all fly from me, The stars are golden fruit upon a tree All out of reach: my little sister went, And I am lonely. The world is great: I tried to mount the hill Above the pines, where the light lies so still, But it rose higher: little Lisa went And I am lonely. The world is great: the wind comes rushing by. I wonder where it comes from; sea birds cry And hurt my heart: my little sister went, And I am lonely. The world is great: the people laugh and talk, And make loud holiday: how fast they walk! I'm lame, they push me: little Lisa went, And I am lonely. George Eliot [1819-1880] SONNETS From "Mimma Bella" I Have dark Egyptians stolen Thee away, Oh Baby, Baby, in whose cot we peer As down some empty gulf that opens sheer And fathomless, illumined by no ray? And wilt thou come, on some far distant day, With unknown face, and say, "Behold! I'm here, The child you lost;" while we in sudden fear, Dumb with great doubt, shall find no word to say? One darker than dark gipsy holds thee fast; One whose strong fingers none has forced apart Since first they closed on things that were too fair; Nor shall we see thee other than thou wast, But such as thou art printed in the heart, In changeless baby loveliness still there. II Two springs she saw--two radiant Tuscan springs, What time the wild red tulips are aflame In the new wheat, and wreaths of young vine frame The daffodils that every light breeze swings; And the anemones that April brings Make purple pools, as if Adonis came Just there to die; and Florence scrolls her name In every blossom Primavera flings. Now, when the scented iris, straight and tall, Shall hedge the garden gravel once again With pale blue flags, at May's exulting call, And when the amber roses, wet with rain, Shall tapestry the old gray villa wall, We, left alone, shall seek one bud in vain. IV Oh, rosy as the lining of a shell Were the wee hands that now are white as snows; And like pink coral, with their elfin toes, The feet that on life's brambles never fell. And with its tiny smile, adorable The mouth that never knew life's bitter sloes; And like the incurved petal of a rose The little ear, now deaf in Death's strong spell. Now, while the seasons in their order roll, And sun and rain pour down from God's great dome, And deathless stars shine nightly overhead, Near other children, with her little doll, She waits the wizard that will never come To wake the sleep-struck playground of the dead. VI Oh, bless the law that veils the Future's face; For who could smile into a baby's eyes, Or bear the beauty of the evening skies, If he could see what cometh on apace? The ticking of the death-watch would replace The baby's prattle, for the over-wise; The breeze's murmur would become the cries Of stormy petrels where the breakers race. We live as moves the walker in his sleep, Who walks because he sees not the abyss His feet are skirting as he goes his way: If we could see the morrow from the steep Of our security, the soul would miss Its footing, and fall headlong from to-day. VIII One day, I mind me, now that she is dead, When nothing warned us of the dark decree, I crooned, to lull her, in a minor key, Such fancies as first came into my head. I crooned them low, beside her little bed; And the refrain was somehow "Come with me, And we will wander by the purple sea;" I crooned it, and--God help me!--felt no dread. O Purple Sea, beyond the stress of storms, Where never ripple breaks upon the shore Of Death's pale Isles of Twilight as they dream, Give back, give back, O Sea of Nevermore, The frailest of the unsubstantial forms That leave the shores that are for those that seem! XX What essences from Idumean palm, What ambergris, what sacerdotal wine, What Arab myrrh, what spikenard, would be thine, If I could swathe thy memory in such balm! Oh, for wrecked gold, from depths for ever calm, To fashion for thy name a fretted shrine; Oh, for strange gems, still locked in virgin mine, To stud the pyx, where thought would bring sweet psalm! I have but this small rosary of rhyme,-- No rubies but heart's drops, no pearls but tears, To lay upon the altar of thy name, O Mimma Bella;--on the shrine that Time Makes ever holier for the soul, while years Obliterate the rolls of human fame. Eugene Lee-Hamilton [1845-1907] ROSE-MARIE OF THE ANGELS Little Sister Rose-Marie, Will thy feet as willing-light Run through Paradise, I wonder, As they run the blue skies under, Willing feet, so airy-light? Little Sister Rose-Marie, Will thy voice as bird-note clear Lift and ripple over Heaven As its mortal sound is given, Swift bird-voice, so young and clear? How God will be glad of thee, Little Sister Rose-Marie! Adelaide Crapsey [1878-1914] MAIDENHOOD MAIDENHOOD Maiden! with the meek, brown eyes, In whose orbs a shadow lies Like the dusk in evening skies! Thou whose locks outshine the sun, Golden tresses, wreathed in one, As the braided streamlets run! Standing, with reluctant feet, Where the brook and river meet, Womanhood and childhood fleet! Gazing, with, a timid glance, On the brooklet's swift advance, On the river's broad expanse! Deep and still, that gliding stream Beautiful to thee must seem, As the river of a dream. Then why pause with indecision, When bright angels in thy vision Beckon thee to fields Elysian? Seest thou shadows sailing by, As the dove, with startled eye, Sees the falcon's shadow fly? Hearest thou voices on the shore, That our ears perceive no more, Deafened by the cataract's roar? Oh, thou child of many prayers! Life hath quicksands,--Life hath snares! Care and age come unawares! Like the swell of some sweet tune, Morning rises into noon, May glides onward into June. Childhood is the bough, where slumbered Birds and blossoms many-numbered;-- Age, that bough with snows encumbered. Gather, then, each flower that grows, When the young heart overflows, To embalm that tent of snows. Bear a lily in thy hand; Gates of brass cannot withstand One touch of that magic wand. Bear through sorrow, wrong, and ruth, In thy heart the dew of youth, On thy lips the smile of truth. Oh, that dew, like balm, shall steal Into wounds that cannot heal, Even as sleep our eyes doth seal; And that smile, like sunshine, dart Into many a sunless heart For a smile of God thou art. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [1807-1882] TO THE VIRGINS, TO MAKE MUCH OF TIME Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying: And this same flower that smiles to-day To-morrow will be dying. The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, The higher he's a-getting, The sooner will his race be run, And nearer he's to setting, That age is best which is the first, When youth and blood are warmer; But being spent, the worse, and worst Times still succeed the former. Then be not coy, but use your time, And while ye may, go marry: For having lost but once your prime, You may for ever tarry. Robert Herrick [1591-1674] TO MISTRESS MARGARET HUSSEY Merry Margaret As midsummer flower, Gentle as falcon, Or hawk of the tower: With solace and gladness, Much mirth and no madness, All good and no badness; So joyously, So maidenly, So womanly Her demeaning In every thing, Far, far passing That I can indite, Or suffice to write Of merry Margaret As midsummer flower, Gentle as falcon, Or hawk of the tower, As patient and still And as full of good will As fair Isaphill, Coliander, Sweet pomander, Good Cassander; Steadfast of thought, Well made, well wrought, Far may be sought, Eye that ye can find So courteous, so kind, As merry Margaret, This midsummer flower, Gentle as falcon, Or hawk of the tower. John Skelton [1460?-1529] ON HER COMING TO LONDON What's she, so late from Penshurst come, More gorgeous than the mid-day sun, That all the world amazes? Sure 'tis some angel from above, Or 'tis the Cyprian Queen of Love Attended by the Graces. Or is't not Juno, Heaven's great dame, Or Pallas armed, as on she came To assist the Greeks in fight, Or Cynthia, that huntress bold, Or from old Tithon's bed so cold, Aurora chasing night? No, none of those, yet one that shall Compare, perhaps exceed them all, For beauty, wit, and birth; As good as great, as chaste as fair, A brighter nymph none breathes the air, Or treads upon the earth. 'Tis Dorothee, a maid high-born, And lovely as the blushing morn, Of noble Sidney's race; Oh! could you see into her mind, The beauties there locked-up outshine The beauties of her face. Fair Dorothea, sent from heaven To add more wonders to the seven, And glad each eye and ear, Crown of her sex, the Muse's port, The glory of our English court, The brightness of our sphere. To welcome her the Spring breathes forth Elysian sweets, March strews the earth With violets and posies, The sun renews his darting fires, April puts on her best attires, And May her crown of roses. Go, happy maid, increase the store Of graces born with you, and more Add to their number still; So neither all-consuming age, Nor envy's blast, nor fortune's rage Shall ever work you ill. Edmund Waller [1606-1687] "O, SAW YE BONNY LESLEY" O saw ye bonny Lesley As she gaed owre the Border? She's gane, like Alexander, To spread her conquests farther. To see her is to love her, And love but her for ever; For nature made her what she is, And ne'er made sic anither! Thou art a queen, fair Lesley, Thy subjects we, before thee; Thou art divine, fair Lesley, The hearts o' men adore thee. The deil he couldna scaith thee, Or aught that wad belang thee; He'd look into thy bonny face, And say, "I canna wrang thee!" The powers aboon will tent thee; Misfortune sha' na steer thee; Thou'rt like themselves sae lovely That ill they'll ne'er let near thee. Return again, fair Lesley, Return to Caledonie! That we may brag we hae a lass There's nane again sae bonny. Robert Burns [1759-1796] TO A YOUNG LADY Sweet stream, that winds through yonder glade, Apt emblem of a virtuous maid!-- Silent and chaste she steals along, Far from the world's gay busy throng: With gentle yet prevailing force, Intent upon her destined course; Graceful and useful all she does, Blessing and blest where'er she goes; Pure-bosomed as that watery glass, And Heaven reflected in her face! William Cowper [1731-1800] RUTH She stood breast high among the corn, Clasped by the golden light of morn, Like the sweetheart of the sun, Who many a glowing kiss had won. On her cheek an autumn flush, Deeply ripened;--such a blush In the midst of brown was born, Like red poppies grown with corn. Round her eyes her tresses fell, Which were blackest none could tell. But long lashes veiled a light, That had else been all too bright. And her hat, with shady brim, Made her tressy forehead dim; Thus she stood amid the stooks, Praising God with sweetest looks: Sure, I said, Heaven did not mean, Where I reap thou shouldst but glean; Lay thy sheaf adown and come, Share my harvest and my home. Thomas Hood [1799-1845] THE SOLITARY REAPER Behold her, single in the field, Yon solitary Highland Lass! Reaping and singing by herself; Stop here, or gently pass! Alone she cuts and binds the grain, And sings a melancholy strain; O listen! for the Vale profound Is overflowing with the sound. No Nightingale did ever chaunt More welcome notes to weary bands Of Travellers in some shady haunt, Among Arabian sands: A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird, Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides. Will no one tell me what she sings? Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago: Or is it some more humble lay, Familiar matter of to-day? Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, That has been, and may be again! Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang As if her song could have no ending; I saw her singing at her work, And o'er the sickle bending;-- I listened, motionless and still; And, as I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more. William Wordsworth [1770-1850] THE THREE COTTAGE GIRLS I How blest the Maid whose heart--yet free From Love's uneasy sovereignty-- Beats with a fancy running high, Her simple cares to magnify; Whom Labor, never urged to toil, Hath cherished on a healthful soil; Who knows not pomp, who heeds not pelf; Whose heaviest sin it is to look Askance upon her pretty Self Reflected in some crystal brook; Whom grief hath spared--who sheds no tear But in sweet pity; and can hear Another's praise from envy clear. II Such (but O lavish Nature! why That dark unfathomable eye, Where lurks a Spirit that replies To stillest mood of softest skies, Yet hints at peace to be o'erthrown, Another's first, and then her own?) Such haply, yon Italian Maid, Our Lady's laggard Votaress, Halting beneath the chestnut shade To accomplish there her loveliness: Nice aid maternal fingers lend; A Sister serves with slacker hand; Then, glittering like a star, she joins the festal band. III How blest (if truth may entertain Coy fancy with a bolder strain) The Helvetian Girl--who daily braves, In her light skiff, the tossing waves, And quits the bosom of the deep Only to climb the rugged steep! --Say whence that modulated shout! From Wood-nymph of Diana's throng? Or does the greeting to a rout Of giddy Bacchanals belong? Jubilant outcry! rock and glade Resounded--but the voice obeyed The breath of an Helvetian Maid. IV Her beauty dazzles the thick wood; Her courage animates the flood; Her steps the elastic greensward meets Returning unreluctant sweets; The mountains (as ye heard) rejoice Aloud, saluted by her voice! Blithe Paragon of Alpine grace, Be as thou art--for through thy veins The blood of Heroes runs its race! And nobly wilt thou brook the chains That, for the virtuous, Life prepares; The fetter which the Matron wears; The patriot Mother's weight of anxious cares! "Sweet Highland Girl! a very shower Of beauty was thy earthly dower," When thou didst flit before mine eyes, Gay Vision under sullen skies, While Hope and Love around thee played, Near the rough falls of Inversneyd! Have they, who nursed the blossom, seen No breach of promise in the fruit? Was joy, in following joy, as keen As grief can be in grief's pursuit? When youth had flown did hope still bless Thy goings--or the cheerfulness Of innocence survive to mitigate distress? VI But from our course why turn--to tread A way with shadows overspread; Where what we gladliest would believe Is feared as what may most deceive? Bright Spirit, not with amaranth crowned But heath-bells from thy native ground, Time cannot thin thy flowing hair, Nor take one ray of light from Thee; For in my Fancy thou dost share The gift of immortality; And there shall bloom, with Thee allied, The Votaress by Lugano's side; And that intrepid Nymph, on Uri's steep descried! William Wordsworth [1770-1850] BLACKMWORE MAIDENS The primrwose in the sheade do blow, The cowslip in the zun, The thyme upon the down do grow, The cote where streams do run; An' where do pretty maidens grow An' blow, but where the tower Do rise among the bricken tuns, In Blackmwore by the Stour. If you could zee their comely gait, An' pretty feaces' smiles, A-trippen on so light o' waight, An' steppen off the stiles; A-gwain to church, as bells do swing An' ring within the tower, You'd own the pretty maidens' pleace Is Blackmwore by the Stour. If you vrom Wimborne took your road, To Stower or Paladore, An' all the farmers' housen showed Their daughters at the door; You'd cry to bachelors at hwome-- "Here, come: 'ithin an hour You'll vind ten maidens to your mind, In Blackmwore by the Stour." An' if you looked 'ithin their door, To zee em in their pleace, A-doen housework up avore Their smilen mother's feace; You'd cry--"Why if a man would wive An' thrive, 'ithout a dower, Then let en look en out a wife In Blackmwore by the Stour." As I upon my road did pass A school-house back in May, There out upon the beaten grass Wer maidens at their play; An' as the pretty souls did tweil An' smile, I cried, "The flower O' beauty, then, is still in bud In Blackmwore by the Stour." William Barnes [1801-1886] A PORTRAIT "One name is Elizabeth" Ben Jonson I will paint her as I see her. Ten times have the lilies blown Since she looked upon the sun. And her face is lily-clear, Lily-shaped, and dropped in duty To the law of its own beauty. Oval cheeks encolored faintly, Which a trail of golden hair Keeps from fading off to air: And a forehead fair and saintly, Which two blue eyes undershine, Like meek prayers before a shrine. Face and figure of a child,-- Though too calm, you think, and tender, For the childhood you would lend her. Yet child-simple, undefiled, Frank, obedient, waiting still On the turnings of your will. Moving light, as all young things, As young birds, or early wheat When the wind blows over it. Only, free from flutterings Of loud mirth that scorneth measure-- Taking love for her chief pleasure. Choosing pleasures, for the rest, Which come softly--just as she, When she nestles at your knee. Quiet talk she liketh best, In a bower of gentle looks,-- Watering flowers, or reading books. And her voice, it murmurs lowly, As a silver stream may run, Which yet feels (you feel) the sun. And her smile it seems half holy, As if drawn from thoughts more far Than our common jestings are. And if any poet knew her, He would sing of her with falls Used in lovely madrigals. And if any painter drew her, He would paint her unaware With a halo round her hair. And if reader read the poem, He would whisper--"You have done a Consecrated little Una!" And a dreamer (did you show him That same picture) would exclaim, "'Tis my angel, with a name!" And a stranger,--when he sees her In the street even--smileth stilly, Just as you would at a lily. And all voices that address her, Soften, sleeken every word, As if speaking to a bird. And all fancies yearn to cover The hard earth, whereon she passes, With the thymy-scented grasses. And all hearts do pray, "God love her!" Ay and always, in good sooth, We may all be sure HE DOTH. Elizabeth Barrett Browning [1806-1861] TO A CHILD OF FANCY The nests are in the hedgerows, The lambs are on the grass; With laughter sweet as music The hours lightfooted pass, My darling child of fancy, My winsome prattling lass. Blue eyes, with long brown lashes, Thickets of golden curl, Red little lips disclosing Twin rows of fairy pearl, Cheeks like the apple blossom, Voice lightsome as the merle. A whole Spring's fickle changes, In every short-lived day, A passing cloud of April, A flowery smile of May, A thousand quick mutations From graver moods to gay. Far off, I see the season When thy childhood's course is run, And thy girlhood opens wider Beneath the growing sun, And the rose begins to redden, But the violets are done. And further still the summer, When thy fair tree, fully grown, Shall bourgeon, and grow splendid With blossoms of its own, And the fruit begins to gather, But the buttercups are mown. If I should see thy autumn, 'Twill not be close at hand, But with a spirit vision, From some far-distant land. Or, perhaps, I hence may see thee Amongst the angels stand. I know not what of fortune The future holds for thee, Nor if skies fair or clouded Wait thee in days to be, But neither joy nor sorrow Shall sever thee from me. Dear child, whatever changes Across our lives may pass, I shall see thee still for ever, Clearly as in a glass, The same sweet child of fancy, The same dear winsome lass. Lewis Morris [1833-1907] DAISY Where the thistle lifts a purple crown Six foot out of the turf, And the harebell shakes on the windy hill-- O the breath of the distant surf!-- The hills look over on the South, And southward dreams the sea; And with the sea-breeze hand in hand Came innocence and she. Where 'mid the gorse the raspberry Red for the gatherer springs, Two children did we stray and talk Wise, idle, childish things. She listened with big-lipped surprise, Breast-deep 'mid flower and spine: Her skin was like a grape, whose veins Run snow instead of wine. She knew not those sweet words she spake, Nor knew her own sweet way; But there's never a bird, so sweet a song Thronged in whose throat that day! Oh, there were flowers in Storrington On the turf and on the spray; But the sweetest flower on Sussex hills Was the Daisy-flower that day! Her beauty smoothed earth's furrowed face! She gave me tokens three:-- A look, a word of her winsome mouth, And a wild raspberry. A berry red, a guileless look, A still word,--strings of sand! And yet they made my wild, wild heart Fly down to her little hand. For standing artless as the air, And candid as the skies, She took the berries with her hand, And the love with her sweet eyes. The fairest things have fleetest end: Their scent survives their close, But the rose's scent is bitterness To him that loved the rose! She looked a little wistfully, Then went her sunshine way:-- The sea's eye had a mist on it, And the leaves fell from the day. She went her unremembering way, She went and left in me The pang of all the partings gone, And partings yet to be. She left me marveling why my soul Was sad that she was glad; At all the sadness in the sweet, The sweetness in the sad. Still, still I seemed to see her, still Look up with soft replies, And take the berries with her hand, And the love with her lovely eyes. Nothing begins, and nothing ends, That is not paid with moan; For we are born in others' pain, And perish in our own. Francis Thompson [1859?-1907] TO PETRONILLA WHO HAS PUT UP HER HAIR Yesterday it blew alway, Yesterday is dead, Now forever must it stay Coiled about your head, Tell me Whence the great Command Hitherward has sped. "Silly boy, as if I knew," Petronilla said. Nay, but I am very sure, Since you left my side, Something has befallen you, You are fain to hide, Homage has been done to you, Innocents have died. "Silly boy, and what of that?" Petronilla cried. Petronilla, much I fear Scarcely have you wept All those merry yesterdays, Slaughtered whilst you slept, Slain to bind that pretty crown Closer round your head. "Silly boy, as if I cared," Petronilla said. Henry Howarth Bashford [1880- THE GYPSY GIRL Passing I saw her as she stood beside A lonely stream between two barren wolds; Her loose vest hung in rudely gathered folds On her swart bosom, which in maiden pride Pillowed a string of pearls; among her hair Twined the light bluebell and the stone-crop gay; And not far thence the small encampment lay, Curling its wreathed smoke into the air. She seemed a child of some sun-favored clime; So still, so habited to warmth and rest; And in my wayward musings on past time, When my thought fills with treasured memories, That image nearest borders on the blest Creations of pure art that never dies. Henry Alford [1810-1871] FANNY A Southern Blossom Come and see her as she stands, Crimson roses in her hands; And her eyes Are as dark as Southern night, Yet than Southern dawn more bright, And a soft, alluring light In them lies. None deny if she beseech With that pretty, liquid speech Of the South. All her consonants are slurred, And the vowels are preferred; There's a poem in each word From that mouth. Even Cupid is her slave; Of her arrows, half he gave Her one day In a merry, playful hour. Dowered with these and beauty's dower, Strong indeed her magic power, So they say. Venus, not to be outdone By her generous little son, Shaped the mouth Very like to Cupid's bow. Lack-a-day! Our North can show No such lovely flowers as grow In the South! Anne Reeve Aldrich [1866-1892] SOMEBODY'S CHILD Just a picture of Somebody's child,-- Sweet face set in golden hair, Violet eyes, and cheeks of rose, Rounded chin, with a dimple there, Tender eyes where the shadows sleep, Lit from within by a secret ray,-- Tender eyes that will shine like stars When love and womanhood come this way: Scarlet lips with a story to tell,-- Blessed be he who shall find it out, Who shall learn the eyes' deep secret well, And read the heart with never a doubt. Then you will tremble, scarlet lips, Then you will crimson, loveliest cheeks: Eyes will brighten and blushes will burn When the one true lover bends and speaks. But she's only a child now, as you see, Only a child in her careless grace: When Love and Womanhood come this way Will anything sadden the flower-like face? Louise Chandler Moulton [1835-1908] EMILIA Halfway up the Hemlock valley turnpike, In the bend of Silver Water's arm, Where the deer come trooping down at even, Drink the cowslip pool, and fear no harm, Dwells Emilia, Flower of the fields of Camlet Farm. Sitting sewing by the western window As the too brief mountain sunshine flies, Hast thou seen a slender-shouldered figure With a chestnut braid, Minerva-wise, Round her temples, Shadowing her gray, enchanted eyes? When the freshets flood the Silver Water, When the swallow flying northward braves Sleeting rains that sweep the birchen foothills Where the windflowers' pale plantation waves-- (Fairy gardens Springing from the dead leaves in their graves),-- Falls forgotten, then, Emilia's needle; Ancient ballads, fleeting through her brain, Sing the cuckoo and the English primrose, Outdoors calling with a quaint refrain; And a rainbow Seems to brighten through the gusty rain. Forth she goes, in some old dress and faded, Fearless of the showery shifting wind; Kilted are her skirts to clear the mosses, And her bright braids in a 'kerchief pinned, Younger sister Of the damsel-errant Rosalind. While she helps to serve the harvest supper In the lantern-lighted village hall, Moonlight rises on the burning woodland, Echoes dwindle from the distant Fall. Hark, Emilia! In her ear the airy voices call. Hidden papers in the dusty garret, Where her few and secret poems lie,-- Thither flies her heart to join her treasure, While she serves, with absent-musing eye, Mighty tankards Foaming cider in the glasses high. "Would she mingle with her young companions!" Vainly do her aunts and uncles say; Ever, from the village sports and dances, Early missed, Emilia slips away. Whither vanished? With what unimagined mates to play? Did they seek her, wandering by the water, They should find her comrades shy and strange: Queens and princesses, and saints and fairies, Dimly moving in a cloud of change:-- Desdemona; Mariana of the Moated Grange. Up this valley to the fair and market When young farmers from the southward ride, Oft they linger at a sound of chanting In the meadows by the turnpike side; Long they listen, Deep in fancies of a fairy bride. Sarah N. Cleghorn [1876- TO A GREEK GIRL With breath of thyme and bees that hum, Across the years you seem to come,-- Across the years with nymph-like head, And wind-blown brows unfilleted; A girlish shape that slips the bud In lines of unspoiled symmetry; A girlish shape that stirs the blood With pulse of Spring, Autonoe! Where'er you pass,--where'er you go, I hear the pebbly rillet flow; Where'er you go,--where'er you pass, There comes a gladness on the grass; You bring blithe airs where'er you tread,-- Blithe airs that blow from down and sea; You wake in me a Pan not dead,-- Not wholly dead!--Autonoe! How sweet with you on some green sod To wreathe the rustic garden-god; How sweet beneath the chestnut's shade With you to weave a basket-braid; To watch across the stricken chords Your rosy-twinkling fingers flee; To woo you in soft woodland words, With woodland pipe, Autonoe! In vain,--in vain! The years divide: Where Thamis rolls a murky tide, I sit and fill my painful reams, And see you only in my dreams;-- A vision, like Alcestis, brought From under-lands of Memory,-- A dream of Form in days of Thought,-- A dream,--a dream, Autonoe! Austin Dobson [1840-1921] "CHAMBER SCENE" An Exquisite Picture In The Studio Of A Young Artist At Rome She rose from her untroubled sleep, And put away her soft brown hair, And, in a tone as low and deep As love's first whisper, breathed a prayer-- Her snow-white hands together pressed, Her blue eyes sheltered in the lid, The folded linen on her breast, Just swelling with the charms it hid; And from her long and flowing dress Escaped a bare and slender foot, Whose shape upon the earth did press Like a new snow-flake, white and "mute"; And there, from slumber pure and warm, Like a young spirit fresh from heaven, She bowed her slight and graceful form, And humbly prayed to be forgiven. Oh God! if souls unsoiled as these Need daily mercy from Thy throne; If she upon her bended knees, Our loveliest and our purest one,-- She, with a face so clear and bright, We deem her some stray child of light;-- If she, with those soft eyes in tears, Day after day in her first years, Must kneel and pray for grace from Thee, What far, far deeper need have we! How hardly, if she win not heaven, Will our wild errors be forgiven! Nathaniel Parker Willis [1806-1867] "AH, BE NOT FALSE" Ah, be not false, sweet Splendor! Be true, be good; Be wise as thou art tender; Be all that Beauty should. Not lightly be thy citadel subdued; Not ignobly, not untimely, Take praise in solemn mood; Take love sublimely. Richard Watson Gilder [1844-1909] A LIFE-LESSON There! little girl, don't cry! They have broken your doll, I know; And your tea-set blue, And your play-house, too, Are things of the long ago; But childish troubles will soon pass by.-- There! little girl, don't cry! There! little girl, don't cry! They have broken your slate, I know; And the glad, wild ways Of your school-girl days Are things of the long ago; But life and love will soon come by.-- There! little girl, don't cry! There! little girl, don't cry! They have broken your heart, I know; And the rainbow gleams Of your youthful dreams Are things of the long ago; But Heaven holds all for which you sigh.-- There! little girl, don't cry! James Whitcomb Riley [1849-1916] THE MAN THE BREAKING The Lord God Speaks To A Youth Bend now thy body to the common weight: (But oh, that vine-clad head, those limbs of morn! Those proud young shoulders, I myself made straight! How shall ye wear the yoke that must be worn?) Look thou, my son, what wisdom comes to thee: (But oh, that singing mouth, those radiant eyes! Those dancing feet--that I myself made free! How shall I sadden them to make them wise?) Nay, then, thou shalt! Resist not--have a care! (Yea, I must work my plans who sovereign sit; Yet do not tremble so! I cannot bear-- Though I am God--to see thee so submit!) Margaret Steele Anderson [1869-1921] THE FLIGHT OF YOUTH There are gains for all our losses, There are balms for all our pain: But when youth, the dream, departs, It takes something from our hearts, And it never comes again. We are stronger, and are better, Under manhood's sterner reign: Still we feel that something sweet Followed youth, with flying feet, And will never come again. Something beautiful is vanished, And we sigh for it in vain: We behold it everywhere, On the earth, and in the air, But it never comes again. Richard Henry Stoddard [1825-1903] "DAYS OF MY YOUTH" Days of my youth, Ye have glided away; Hairs of my youth, Ye are frosted and gray; Eyes of my youth, Your keen sight is no more; Cheeks of my youth, Ye are furrowed all o'er; Strength of my youth, All your vigor is gone; Thoughts of my youth, Your gay visions are flown. Days of my youth, I wish not your recall; Hairs of my youth, I'm content ye should fall; Eyes of my youth, You much evil have seen; Cheeks of my youth, Bathed in tears have you been; Thoughts of my youth, You have led me astray; Strength of my youth, Why lament your decay? Days of my age, Ye will shortly be past; Pains of my age, Yet awhile ye can last; Joys of my age, In true wisdom delight; Eyes of my age, Be religion your light; Thoughts of my age, Dread ye not the cold sod; Hopes of my age, Be ye fixed on your God. St. George Tucker [1752-1827] AVE ATQUE VALE Farewell my Youth! for now we needs must part, For here the paths divide; Here hand from hand must sever, heart from heart,-- Divergence deep and wide. You'll wear no withered roses for my sake, Though I go mourning for you all day long, Finding no magic more in bower or brake, No melody in song. Gray Eld must travel in my company To seal this severance more fast and sure. A joyless fellowship, i' faith, 'twill be, Yet must we fare together, I and he, Till I shall tread the footpath way no more. But when a blackbird pipes among the boughs, On some dim, iridescent day in spring, Then I may dream you are remembering Our ancient vows. Or when some joy foregone, some fate forsworn, Looks through the dark eyes of the violet, I may re-cross the set, forbidden bourne, I may forget Our long, long parting for a little while, Dream of the golden splendors of your smile, Dream you remember yet. Rosamund Marriott Watson [1863-1911] TO YOUTH Where art thou gone, light-ankled Youth? With wing at either shoulder, And smile that never left thy mouth Until the Hours grew colder: Then somewhat seemed to whisper near That thou and I must part; I doubted it; I felt no fear, No weight upon the heart. If aught befell it, Love was by And rolled it off again; So, if there ever was a sigh, 'Twas not a sigh of pain. I may not call thee back; but thou Returnest when the hand Of gentle Sleep waves o'er my brow His poppy-crested wand; Then smiling eyes bend over mine, Then lips once pressed invite; But sleep hath given a silent sign, And both, alas! take flight. Walter Savage Landor [1775-1864] STANZAS WRITTEN ON THE ROAD BETWEEN FLORENCE AND PISA Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story; The days of our youth are the days of our glory; And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty. What are garlands and crowns to the brow that is wrinkled? 'Tis but as a dead-flower with May-dew besprinkled: Then away with all such from the head that is hoary! What care I for the wreaths that can only give glory? Oh Fame!--if I e'er took delight in thy praises, 'Twas less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases, Than to see the bright eyes of the dear one discover, She thought that I was not unworthy to love her. There chiefly I sought thee, there only I found thee; Her glance was the best of the rays that surround thee; When it sparkled o'er aught that was bright in my story, I knew it was love, and I felt it was glory. George Gordon Byron [1788-1824] STANZAS FOR MUSIC There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away, When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay; 'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast, But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past. Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt or ocean of excess: The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain The shore to which their shivered sail shall never stretch again. Then the mortal coldness of the soul like death itself comes down; It cannot feel for others' woes, it dare not dream its own; That heavy chill has frozen o'er the fountain of our tears, And though the eye may sparkle still, 'tis where the ice appears. Though wit may flash from fluent lips, and mirth distract the breast, Through midnight hours that yield no more their former hope of rest; 'Tis but as ivy-leaves around the ruined turret wreathe, All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and gray beneath. Oh could I feel as I have felt,--or be what I have been, Or weep as I could once have wept o'er many a vanished scene; As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish though they be, So, midst the withered waste of life, those tears would flow to me. George Gordon Byron [1788-1824] "WHEN AS A LAD" When, as a lad, at break of day I watched the fishers sail away, My thoughts, like flocking birds, would follow Across the curving sky's blue hollow, And on and on- Into the very heart of dawn! For long I searched the world! Ah me! I searched the sky, I searched the sea, With much of useless grief and rueing, Those winged thoughts of mine pursuing-- So dear were they, So lovely and so far away! I seek them still and always will Until my laggard heart is still, And I am free to follow, follow, Across the curving sky's blue hollow, Those thoughts too fleet For any save the soul's swift feet! Isabel Ecclestone Mackay [1875- "AROUND THE CHILD" Around the child bend all the three Sweet Graces--Faith, Hope, Charity. Around the man bend other faces Pride, Envy, Malice, are his Graces. Walter Savage Landor [1775-1864] ALADDIN When I was a beggarly boy, And lived in a cellar damp, I had not a friend nor a toy, But I had Aladdin's lamp; When I could not sleep for the cold, I had fire enough in my brain, And builded, with roofs of gold, My beautiful castles in Spain! Since then I have toiled day and night, I have money and power good store, But I'd give all my lamps of silver bright For the one that is mine no more. Take, Fortune, whatever you choose; You gave, and may snatch again; I have nothing 'twould pain me to lose, For I own no more castles in Spain! James Russell Lowell [1819-1891] THE QUEST It was a heavenly time of life When first I went to Spain, The lovely land of silver mists, The land of golden grain. My little ship through unknown seas Sailed many a changing day; Sometimes the chilling winds came up And blew across her way; Sometimes the rain came down and hid The shining shores of Spain, The beauty of the silver mists And of the golden grain. But through the rains and through the winds, Upon the untried sea, My fairy ship sailed on and on, With all my dreams and me. And now, no more a child, I long For that sweet time again, When on the far horizon bar Rose up the shores of Spain. O lovely land of silver mists, O land of golden grain, I look for you with smiles, with tears, But look for you in vain! Ellen Mackay Hutchinson Cortissoz [?-1933] MY BIRTH-DAY "My birth-day"--what a different sound That word had in my youthful ears! And how, each time the day comes round, Less and less white its mark appears! When first our scanty years are told, It seems like pastime to grow old; And, as Youth counts the shining links That Time around him binds so fast, Pleased with the task, he little thinks How hard that chain will press at last. Vain was the man, and false as vain, Who said--"were he ordained to run His long career of life again, He would do all that he had done." Ah, 'tis not thus the voice, that dwells In sober birth-days, speaks to me; Far otherwise--of time it tells Lavished unwisely, carelessly; Of counsel mocked: of talents, made Haply for high and pure designs, But oft, like Israel's incense, laid Upon unholy, earthly shrines; Of nursing many a wrong desire; Of wandering after Love too far, And taking every meteor-fire That crossed my pathway, for a star. All this it tells, and, could I trace The imperfect picture o'er again, With power to add, retouch, efface The lights and shades, the joy and pain, How little of the past would stay! How quickly all should melt away-- All--but that Freedom of the Mind, Which hath been more than wealth to me; Those friendships, in my boyhood twined, And kept till now unchangingly; And that dear home, that saving-ark, Where Love's true light at last I've found, Cheering within, when all grows dark, And comfortless, and stormy round! Thomas Moore [1779-1852] SONNET On His Having Arrived To The Age of Twenty-Three How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year! My hasting days fly on with full career, But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th. Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth That I to manhood am arrived so near; And inward ripeness doth much less appear, That some more timely-happy spirits endu'th. Yet, be it less or more, or soon or slow, It shall be still in strictest measure even To that same lot, however mean or high, Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven: All is, if I have grace to use it so, As ever in my great Task-master's eye. John Milton [1608-1674] ON THIS DAY I COMPLETE MY THIRTY-SIXTH YEAR 'Tis time this heart should be unmoved, Since others it hath ceased to move: Yet, though I cannot be beloved, Still let me love! My days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of love are gone; The worm, the canker, and the grief Are mine alone! The fire that on my bosom preys Is lone as some volcanic isle; No torch is kindled at its blaze-- A funeral pile. The hope, the fear, the jealous care, The exalted portion of the pain And power of love, I cannot share, But wear the chain. But 'tis not thus--and 'tis not here-- Such thoughts should shake my soul, nor now, Where glory decks the hero's bier, Or binds his brow. The sword, the banner, and the field, Glory and Greece, around me see! The Spartan, borne upon his shield, Was not more free. Awake! (not Greece--she is awake!) Awake, my spirit! Think through whom Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake, And then strike home! Tread those reviving passions down, Unworthy manhood I--unto thee Indifferent should the smile or frown Of beauty be. If thou regret'st thy youth, why live? The land of honorable death Is here:--up to the field, and give Away thy breath! Seek out--less often sought than found-- A soldier's grave, for thee the best; Then look around, and choose thy ground, And take thy rest. George Gordon Byron [1788-1824] GROWING GRAY "On a l'age de son caeur." A. D'Houdetot A little more toward the light;-- Me miserable! Here's one that's white; And one that's turning; Adieu to song and "salad days;" My Muse, let's go at once to Jay's, And order mourning. We must reform our rhymes, my Dear,-- Renounce the gay for the severe,-- Be grave, not witty; We have, no more, the right to find That Pyrrha's hair is neatly twined,-- That Chloe's pretty. Young Love's for us a farce that's played; Light canzonet and serenade No more may tempt us; Gray hairs but ill accord with dreams; From aught but sour didactic themes Our years exempt us. Indeed! you really fancy so? You think for one white streak we grow At once satiric? A fiddlestick! Each hair's a string To which our ancient Muse shall sing A younger lyric. The heart's still sound. Shall "cakes and ale" Grow rare to youth because we rail At schoolboy dishes? Perish the thought! 'Tis ours to chant When neither Time nor Tide can grant Belief with wishes. Austin Dobson [1840-1921] THE ONE WHITE HAIR The wisest of the wise Listen to pretty lies And love to hear'em told. Doubt not that Solomon Listened to many a one,-- Some in his youth, and more when he grew old. I never was among The choir of Wisdom's song, But pretty lies loved I As much as any king, When youth was on the wing, And (must it then be told?) when youth had quite gone by. Alas! and I have not The pleasant hour forgot When one pert lady said, "O Walter! I am quite Bewildered with affright! I see (sit quiet now) a white hair on your head!" Another more benign Snipped it away from mine, And in her own dark hair Pretended it was found... She leaped, and twirled it round... Fair as she was, she never was so fair! Walter Savage Landor [1775-1864] BALLADE OF MIDDLE AGE Our youth began with tears and sighs, With seeking what we could not find; Our verses all were threnodies, In elegiacs still we whined; Our ears were deaf, our eyes were blind, We sought and knew not what we sought. We marvel, now we look behind: Life's more amusing than we thought! Oh, foolish youth, untimely wise! Oh, phantoms of the sickly mind! What? not content with seas and skies, With rainy clouds and southern wind, With common cares and faces kind, With pains and joys each morning brought? Ah, old, and worn, and tired we find Life's more amusing than we thought! Though youth "turns spectre-thin and dies," To mourn for youth we're not inclined; We set our souls on salmon flies, We whistle where we once repined. Confound the woes of human-kind! By Heaven we're "well deceived," I wot; Who hum, contented or resigned, "Life's more amusing than we thought"! ENVOY O nate mecum, worn and lined Our faces show, but that is naught; Our hearts are young 'neath wrinkled rind: Life's more amusing than we thought! Andrew Lang [1844-1912] MIDDLE AGE When that my days were fewer, Some twenty years ago, And all that is was newer, And time itself seemed slow, With ardor all impassioned, I let my hopes fly free, And deemed the world was fashioned My playing-field to be. The cup of joy was filled then With Fancy's sparkling wine; And all the things I willed then Seemed destined to be mine. Friends had I then in plenty, And every friend was true; Friends always are at twenty, And on to twenty-two. The men whose hair was sprinkled With little flecks of gray, Whose faded brows were wrinkled-- Sure they had had their day. And though we bore no malice, We knew their hearts were cold, For they had drained their chalice, And now were spent and old. At thirty, we admitted, A man may be alive, But slower, feebler witted; And done at thirty-five. If Fate prolongs his earth-days, His joys grow fewer still; And after five more birthdays He totters down the hill. We were the true immortals Who held the earth in fee; For us were flung the portals Of fame and victory. The days were bright and breezy, And gay our banners flew, And every peak was easy To scale at twenty-two. And thus we spent our gay time As having much to spend; Swift, swift, that pretty playtime Flew by and had its end. And lo! without a warning I woke, as others do, One fine mid-winter morning, A man of forty-two. And now I see how vainly Is youth with ardor fired; How fondly, how insanely I formerly aspired. A boy may still detest age, But as for me I know, A man has reached his best age At forty-two or so. For youth it is the season Of restlessness and strife; Of passion and unreason, And ignorance of life. Since, though his cheeks have roses, No boy can understand That everything he knows is A graft at second hand. But we have toiled and wandered With weary feet and numb; Have doubted, sifted, pondered,-- How else should knowledge come? Have seen too late for heeding, Our hopes go out in tears, Lost in the dim receding, Irrevocable years. Yet, though with busy fingers No more we wreathe the flowers, An airy perfume lingers, A brightness still is ours. And though no rose our cheeks have, The sky still shines as blue; And still the distant peaks have The glow of twenty-two. Rudolph Chambers Lehmann [1856-1929] TO CRITICS When I was seventeen I heard From each censorious tongue, "I'd not do that if I were you; You see you're rather young." Now that I number forty years, I'm quite as often told Of this or that I shouldn't do Because I'm quite too old. O carping world! If there's an age Where youth and manhood keep An equal poise, alas! I must Have passed it in my sleep. Walter Learned [1847-1915] THE RAINBOW My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety. William Wordsworth [1770-1850] LEAVETAKING Pass, thou wild light, Wild light on peaks that so Grieve to let go The day. Lovely thy tarrying, lovely too is night: Pass thou away. Pass, thou wild heart, Wild heart of youth that still Hast half a will To stay. I grow too old a comrade, let us part: Pass thou away. William Watson [1858-1935] EQUINOCTIAL The sun of life has crossed the line; The summer-shine of lengthened light Faded and failed, till, where I stand, 'Tis equal day and equal night. One after one, as dwindling hours, Youth's glowing hopes have dropped away, And soon may barely leave the gleam That coldly scores a winter's day. I am not young; I am not old; The flush of morn, the sunset calm, Paling and deepening, each to each, Meet midway with a solemn charm. One side I see the summer fields, Not yet disrobed of all their green; While westerly, along the hills, Flame the first tints of frosty sheen. Ah, middle-point, where cloud and storm Make battle-ground of this my life! Where, even-matched, the night and day Wage round me their September strife! I bow me to the threatening gale: I know when that is overpast, Among the peaceful harvest days, An Indian Summer comes at last! Adeline D. T. Whitney [1824-1906] "BEFORE THE BEGINNING OF YEARS" From "Atalanta in Calydon" Before the beginning of years, There came to the making of man Time, with a gift of tears; Grief, with a glass that ran; Pleasure, with pain for leaven; Summer, with flowers that fell; Remembrance, fallen from heaven; And madness, risen from hell; Strength, without hands to smite; Love, that endures for a breath; Night, the shadow of light; And life, the shadow of death. And the high gods took in hand Fire, and the falling of tears, And a measure of sliding sand From under the feet of the years; And froth and drift of the sea, And dust of the laboring earth; And bodies of things to be In the houses of death and of birth; And wrought with weeping and laughter, And fashioned with loathing and love, With life before and after, And death beneath and above, For a day and a night and a morrow, That his strength might endure for a span, With travail and heavy sorrow, The holy Spirit of man. From the winds of the north and the south They gathered as unto strife; They breathed upon his mouth, They filled his body with life; Eyesight and speech they wrought For the veils of the soul therein, A time for labor and thought, A time to serve and to sin; They gave him light in his ways, And love, and a space for delight, And beauty and length of days, And night, and sleep in the night. His speech is a burning fire; With his lips he travaileth; In his heart is a blind desire, In his eyes foreknowledge of death; He weaves, and is clothed with derision Sows, and he shall not reap; His life is a watch or a vision Between a sleep and a sleep. Algernon Charles Swinburne [1837-1909] MAN Weighing the steadfastness and state Of some mean things which here below reside, Where birds, like watchful clocks, the noiseless date And intercourse of times divide. Where bees at night get home and hive, and flowers, Early as well as late, Rise with the sun, and set in the same bowers; I would, said I, my God would give The staidness of these things to man! for these To His divine appointments ever cleave, And no new business breaks their peace; The birds nor sow nor reap, yet sup and dine, The flowers without clothes live, Yet Solomon was never dressed so fine. Man hath still either toys, or care; He hath no root, nor to one place is tied, But ever restless and irregular About this earth doth run and ride; He knows he hath a home, but scarce knows where; He says it is so far, That he hath quite forgot how to go there. He knocks at all doors, strays and roams; Nay, hath not so much wit as some stones have, Which in the darkest nights point to their homes By some hid sense their Maker gave; Man is the shuttle, to whose winding quest And passage through these looms God ordered motion, but ordained no rest. Henry Vaughan [1622-1695] THE PULLEY When God at first made Man, Having a glass of blessings standing by-- Let us (said He) pour on him all we can; Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie, Contract into a span. So strength first made a way, Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honor, pleasure: When almost all was out, God made a stay, Perceiving that, alone of all His treasure, Rest in the bottom lay. For if I should (said He) Bestow this jewel also on My creature, He would adore My gifts instead of Me, And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature: So both should losers be. Yet let him keep the rest, But keep them with repining restlessness; Let him be rich and weary, that at least, If goodness lead him not, yet weariness May toss him to My breast. George Herbert [1593-1633] ODE ON THE INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD I There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore;-- Turn wheresoe'er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more. II The Rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the Rose; The Moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare; Waters on a starry night Are beautiful and fair; The sunshine is a glorious birth; But yet I know, where'er I go, That there hath passed away a glory from the earth. III Now, while the Birds thus sing a joyous song, And while the young Lambs bound As to the tabor's sound, To me alone there came a thought of grief: A timely utterance gave that thought relief, And I again am strong. The Cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep: No more shall grief of mine the season wrong; I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng, The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep, And all the earth is gay; Land and Sea Give themselves up to jollity, And with the heart of May Doth every Beast keep holiday;-- Thou Child of Joy, Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy! IV Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call Ye to each other make; I see The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee; My heart is at your festival, My head hath its coronal, The fulness of your bliss, I feel--I feel it all. O evil day! if I were sullen While Earth herself is adorning This sweet May morning, And the Children are culling On every side, In a thousand valleys far and wide, Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm, And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm:-- I hear, I hear, with joy I hear! --But there's a Tree, of many, one, A single Field which I have looked upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone: The Pansy at my feet Doth the same tale repeat: Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream? V Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy; The Youth, who daily farther from the East Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, And by the vision spendid Is on his way attended; At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day. VI Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, And even with something of a Mother's mind, And no unworthy aim, The homely Nurse doth all she can, To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man, Forget the glories he hath known, And that imperial palace whence he came. VII Behold the Child among his new-born blisses, A six years' darling of a pigmy size! See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies, Fretted by sallies of his Mother's kisses, With light upon him from his Father's eyes! See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newly-learned art; A wedding or a festival, A mourning or a funeral; And this hath now his heart, And unto this he frames his song: Then will he fit his tongue To dialogues of business, love, or strife: But it will not be long Ere this be thrown aside, And with new joy and pride The little Actor cons another part; Filling from time to time his "humorous stage" With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, That Life brings with her in her equipage; As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation. VIII Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thy Soul's immensity; Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind, That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep, Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,-- Mighty Prophet! Seer blest! On whom those truths do rest, Which we are toiling all our lives to find, In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave: Thou, over whom thy Immortality Broods like the Day, a master o'er a Slave, A Presence which is not to be put by; Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height, Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke The years to bring the inevitable yoke, Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight, And Custom lie upon thee with a weight Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life! IX O joy! that in our embers Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive! The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction: not indeed For that which is most worthy to be blest-- Delight and liberty, the simple creed Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest, With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:-- Not for these I raise The song of thanks and praise; But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings; Blank misgivings of a Creature Moving about in worlds not realized, High instincts before which our mortal Nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised: But for those first affections, Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain-light of all our day, Are yet a master-light of all our seeing; Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake, To perish never; Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor, Nor Man nor Boy, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy! Hence, in a season of calm weather, Though inland far we be, Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither, Can in a moment travel thither And see the children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. X Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song! And let the young Lambs bound As to the tabor's sound! We in thought will join your throng, Ye that pipe and ye that play, Ye that through your hearts to-day Feel the gladness of the May! What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; In the primal sympathy Which having been must ever be; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind. XI And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, Forebode not any severing of our loves! Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might; I only have relinquished one delight To live beneath your more habitual sway. I love the Brooks, which down their channels fret, Even more than when I tripped lightly as they: The innocent brightness of a new-born Day Is lovely yet; The Clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober coloring from an eye That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality; Another race hath been, and other palms are won. Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. William Wordsworth [1770-1850] THE WOMAN WOMAN Not she with traitorous kiss her Saviour stung, Not she denied him with unholy tongue; She, while apostles shrank, could dangers brave, Last at the cross and earliest at the grave. Eaton Stannard Barrett [1786-1820] WOMAN There in the fane a beauteous creature stands, The first best work of the Creator's hands, Whose slender limbs inadequately bear A full-orbed bosom and a weight of care; Whose teeth like pearls, whose lips like cherries, show, And fawn-like eyes still tremble as they glow. From the Sanskrit of Calidasa SIMPLEX MUNDITIIS From "Epicoene" Still to be neat, still to be dressed As you were going to a feast; Still to be powdered, still perfumed: Lady, it is to be presumed, Though art's hid causes are not found, All is not sweet, all is not sound. Give me a look, give me a face, That makes simplicity a grace; Robes loosely flowing, hair as free: Such sweet neglect more taketh me Than all the adulteries of art; They strike mine eyes, but not my heart. Ben Jonson [1573?-1637] DELIGHT IN DISORDER A sweet disorder in the dress Kindles in clothes a wantonness: A lawn about the shoulders thrown Into a fine distraction: An erring lace, which here and there Enthrals the crimson stomacher: A cuff neglectful, and thereby Ribbons to flow confusedly: A winning wave, deserving note, In the tempestuous petticoat: A careless shoe-string, in whose tie I see a wild civility: Do more bewitch me than when art Is too precise in every part. Robert Herrick [1591-1674] A PRAISE OF HIS LADY Give place, you ladies, and begone! Boast not yourselves at all! For here at hand approacheth one Whose face will stain you all. The virtue of her lively looks Excels the precious stone; I wish to have none other books To read or look upon. In each of her two crystal eyes Smileth a naked boy; It would you all in heart suffice To see that lamp of joy. I think Nature hath lost the mould Where she her shape did take; Or else I doubt if Nature could So fair a creature make. She may be well compared Unto the Phoenix kind, Whose like was never seen nor heard, That any man can find. In life she is Diana chaste, In truth Penelope; In word and eke in deed steadfast. What will you more we say? If all the world were sought so far, Who could find such a wight? Her beauty twinkleth like a star Within the frosty night. Her roseal color comes and goes With such a comely grace, More ruddier, too, than doth the rose Within her lively face. At Bacchus' feast none shall her meet, Nor at no wanton play, Nor gazing in an open street, Nor gadding as a stray. The modest mirth that she doth use Is mixed with shamefastness; All vice she doth wholly refuse, And hateth idleness. O Lord! it is a world to see How virtue can repair, And deck her in such honesty, Whom Nature made so fair. Truly she doth so far exceed Our women nowadays, As doth the gillyflower a weed; And more a thousand ways. How might I do to get a graff Of this unspotted tree? For all the rest are plain but chaff, Which seem good corn to be. This gift alone I shall her give: When death doth what he can, Her honest fame shall ever live Within the mouth of man. John Heywood [1497?-1580?] ON A CERTAIN LADY AT COURT I know a thing that's most uncommon; (Envy, be silent and attend!) I know a reasonable woman, Handsome and witty, yet a friend. Not warped by passion, awed by rumor; Not grave through pride, nor gay through folly; An equal mixture of good-humor And sensible soft melancholy. "Has she no faults then, (Envy says), Sir?" Yes, she has one, I must aver: When all the world conspires to praise her, The woman's deaf, and does not hear. Alexander Pope [1688-1744] PERFECT WOMAN She was a phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight; A lovely apparition, sent To be a moment's ornament; Her eyes as stars of twilight fair; Like twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful dawn; A dancing shape, an image gay, To haunt, to startle, and waylay. I saw her upon nearer view, A Spirit, yet a Woman too! Her household motions light and free, And steps of virgin liberty; A countenance in which did meet Sweet records, promises as sweet; A creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food; For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles. And now I see with eye serene The very pulse of the machine; A being breathing thoughtful breath, A traveller between life and death; The reason firm, the temperate will, Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; A perfect Woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command; And yet a Spirit still, and bright With something of angelic light. William Wordsworth [1770-1850] THE SOLITARY-HEARTED She was a queen of noble Nature's crowning, A smile of hers was like an act of grace; She had no winsome looks, no pretty frowning, Like daily beauties of the vulgar race: But if she smiled, a light was on her face, A clear, cool kindliness, a lunar beam Of peaceful radiance, silvering o'er the stream Of human thought with unabiding glory; Not quite a waking truth, not quite a dream, A visitation, bright and transitory. But she is changed,--hath felt the touch of sorrow, No love hath she, no understanding friend; O grief! when Heaven is forced of earth to borrow What the poor niggard earth has not to lend; But when the stalk is snapped, the rose must bend. The tallest flower that skyward rears its head Grows from the common ground, and there must shed Its delicate petals. Cruel fate, too surely, That they should find so base a bridal bed, Who lived in virgin pride, so sweet and purely. She had a brother, and a tender father, And she was loved, but not as others are From whom we ask return of love,--but rather As one might love a dream; a phantom fair Of something exquisitely strange and rare, Which all were glad to look on, men and maids, Yet no one claimed--as oft, in dewy glades, The peering primrose, like a sudden gladness, Gleams on the soul, yet unregarded fades;-- The joy is ours, but all its own the sadness. 'Tis vain to say--her worst of grief is only The common lot, which all the world have known; To her 'tis more, because her heart is lonely, And yet she hath no strength to stand alone,-- Once she had playmates, fancies of her own, And she did love them. They are passed away As Fairies vanish at the break of day; And like a spectre of an age departed, Or unsphered Angel wofully astray, She glides along--the solitary-hearted. Hartley Coleridge [1796-1849] OF THOSE WHO WALK ALONE Women there are on earth, most sweet and high, Who lose their own, and walk bereft and lonely, Loving that one lost heart until they die, Loving it only. And so they never see beside them grow Children, whose coming is like breath of flowers; Consoled by subtler loves the angels know Through childless hours. Good deeds they do: they comfort and they bless In duties others put off till the morrow; Their look is balm, their touch is tenderness To all in sorrow. Betimes the world smiles at them, as 'twere shame, This maiden guise, long after youth's departed; But in God's Book they bear another name-- "The faithful-hearted." Faithful in life, and faithful unto death, Such souls, in sooth, illume with lustre splendid That glimpsed, glad land wherein, the Vision saith, Earth's wrongs are ended. Richard Burton [1861- "SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY" She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies. One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impaired the nameless grace Which waves in every raven tress Or softly lightens o'er her face; Where thoughts serenely sweet express How pure, how dear their dwelling-place. And on that cheek, and o'er that brow So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, The smiles that win, the tints that glow, But tell of days in goodness spent, A mind at peace with all below, A heart whose love is innocent! George Gordon Byron [1788-1824] PRELUDES From "The Angel in the House" I UNTHRIFT Ah, wasteful woman, she that may On her sweet self set her own price, Knowing man cannot choose but pay, How has she cheapened paradise; How given for nought her priceless gift, How spoiled the bread, and spilled the wine, Which, spent with due, respective thrift, Had made brutes men, and men divine. II HONOR AND DESERT O Queen, awake to thy renown, Require what 'tis our wealth to give, And comprehend and wear the crown Of thy despised prerogative! I, who in manhood's name at length With glad songs come to abdicate The gross regality of strength, Must yet in this thy praise abate, That, through thine erring humbleness And disregard of thy degree, Mainly, has man been so much less Than fits his fellowship with thee. High thoughts had shaped the foolish brow, The coward had grasped the hero's sword, The vilest had been great, hadst thou, Just to thyself, been worth's reward. But lofty honors undersold Seller and buyer both disgrace; And favors that make folly bold Banish the light from virtue's face. III THE ROSE OF THE WORLD Lo, when the Lord made North and South, And sun and moon ordained, He, Forthbringing each by word of mouth In order of its dignity Did man from the crude clay express By sequence, and all else decreed, He formed the woman; nor might less Than Sabbath such a work succeed. And still with favor singled out, Marred less than man by mortal fall, Her disposition is devout, Her countenance angelical: The best things that the best believe Are in her face so kindly writ The faithless, seeing her, conceive Not only heaven, but hope of it; No idle thought her instinct shrouds, But fancy chequers settled sense, Like alteration of the clouds On noonday's azure permanence. Pure dignity, composure, ease, Declare affections nobly fixed, And impulse sprung from due degrees Of sense and spirit sweetly mixed. Her modesty, her chiefest grace, The cestus clasping Venus' side, How potent to deject the face Of him who would affront its pride! Wrong dares not in her presence speak, Nor spotted thought its taint disclose Under the protest of a cheek Outbragging Nature's boast, the rose. In mind and manners how discreet; How artless in her very art; How candid in discourse; how sweet The concord of her lips and heart! How simple and how circumspect; How subtle and how fancy-free; Though sacred to her love, how decked With unexclusive courtesy; How quick in talk to see from far The way to vanquish or evade; How able her persuasions are To prove, her reasons to persuade. How (not to call true instinct's bent And woman's very nature, harm), How amiable and innocent Her pleasure in her power to charm; How humbly careful to attract, Though crowned with all the soul desires, Connubial aptitude exact, Diversity that never tires! IV THE TRIBUTE Boon Nature to the woman bows; She walks in earth's whole glory clad, And, chiefest far herself of shows, All others help her and are glad: No splendor 'neath the sky's proud dome But serves her for familiar wear; The far-fetched diamond finds its home Flashing and smouldering in her hair; For her the seas their pearls reveal; Art and strange lands her pomp supply With purple, chrome, and cochineal, Ochre, and lapis lazuli; The worm its golden woof presents; Whatever runs, flies, dives, or delves, All doff for her their ornaments, Which suit her better than themselves; And all, by this their power to give, Proving her right to take, proclaim Her beauty's clear prerogative To profit so by Eden's blame. V NEAREST THE DEAREST Till Eve was brought to Adam, he A solitary desert trod, Though in the great society Of nature, angels, and of God. If one slight column counterweighs The ocean, 'tis the Maker's law, Who deems obedience better praise Than sacrifice of erring awe. VI THE FOREIGN LAND A woman is a foreign land, Of which, though there he settle young, A man will ne'er quite understand The customs, politics, and tongue. The foolish hie them post-haste through, See fashions odd and prospects fair, Learn of the language, "How d'ye do," And go and brag they have been there. The most for leave to trade apply, For once, at Empire's seat, her heart, Then get what knowledge ear and eye Glean chancewise in the life-long mart. And certain others, few and fit, Attach them to the Court, and see The Country's best, its accent hit, And partly sound its polity. Coventry Patmore [1823-1896] A HEALTH I fill this cup to one made up Of loveliness alone, A woman, of her gentle sex The seeming paragon; To whom the better elements And kindly stars have given A form so fair, that, like the air, 'Tis less of earth than heaven. Her every tone is music's own, Like those of morning birds, And something more than melody Dwells ever in her words; The coinage of her heart are they, And from her lips each flows As one may see the burdened bee Forth issue from the rose. Affections are as thoughts to her, The measures of her hours; Her feelings have the fragrancy, The freshness of young flowers; And lovely passions, changing oft, So fill her, she appears The image of themselves by turns,-- The idol of past years! Of her bright face one glance will trace A picture on the brain, And of her voice in echoing hearts A sound must long remain; But memory, such as mine of her, So very much endears, When death is nigh my latest sigh Will not be life's, but hers. I fill this cup to one made up Of loveliness alone, A woman, of her gentle sex The seeming paragon-- Her health! and would on earth there stood Some more of such a frame, That life might be all poetry, And weariness a name. Edward Coote Pinkney [1802-1828] OUR SISTER Her face was very fair to see, So luminous with purity:-- It had no roses, but the hue Of lilies lustrous with their dew-- Her very soul seemed shining through! Her quiet nature seemed to be Tuned to each season's harmony. The holy sky bent near to her; She saw a spirit in the stir Of solemn woods. The rills that beat Their mosses with voluptuous feet, Went dripping music through her thought. Sweet impulse came to her unsought From graceful things, and beauty took A sacred meaning in her look. In the great Master's steps went she With patience and humility. The casual gazer could not guess Half of her veiled loveliness; Yet ah! what precious things lay hid Beneath her bosom's snowy lid:-- What tenderness and sympathy, What beauty of sincerity, What fancies chaste, and loves, that grew In heaven's own stainless light and dew! True woman was she day by day In suffering, toil, and victory. Her life, made holy and serene By faith, was hid with things unseen. She knew what they alone can know Who live above but dwell below. Horatio Nelson Powers [1826-1890] FROM LIFE Her thoughts are like a flock of butterflies. She has a merry love of little things, And a bright flutter of speech, whereto she brings A threefold eloquence--voice, hands and eyes. Yet under all a subtle silence lies As a bird's heart is hidden by its wings; And you shall search through many wanderings The fairyland of her realities. She hides herself behind a busy brain-- A woman, with a child's laugh in her blood; A maid, wearing the shadow of motherhood-- Wise with the quiet memory of old pain, As the soft glamor of remembered rain Hallows the gladness of a sunlit wood. Brian Hooker [1880- THE ROSE OF THE WORLD Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? For these red lips, with all their mournful pride, Mournful that no new wonder may betide, Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam, And Usna's children died. We and the laboring world are passing by: Amid men's souls, that waver and give place, Like the pale waters in their wintry race, Under the passing stars, foam of the sky, Lives on this lonely face. Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode: Before you were, or any hearts to beat, Weary and kind one lingered by His seat; He made the world to be a grassy road Before her wandering feet. William Butler Yeats [1865- DAWN OF WOMANHOOD Thus will I have the woman of my dream. Strong must she be and gentle, like a star Her soul burn whitely; nor its arrowy beam May any cloud of superstition mar: True to the earth she is, patient and calm. Her tranquil eyes shall penetrate afar Through centuries, and her maternal arm Enfold the generations yet unborn; Nor she, by passing glamor nor alarm, Will from the steadfast way of life be drawn. Gray-eyed and fearless, I behold her gaze Outward into the furnace of the dawn. Sacred shall be the purport of her days, Yet human; and the passion of the earth Shall be for her adornment and her praise. She is most often joyous, with a mirth That rings true-tempered holy womanhood, She cannot fear the agonies of birth, Nor sit in pallid lethargy and brood Upon the coming seasons of her pain: By her the mystery is understood Of harvest, and fulfilment in the grain. Yea, she is wont to labor in the field, Delights to heap, at sunset, on the wain Festoons and coronals of the golden yield. A triumph is the labor of her soul, Sublime along eternity revealed. Lo, everlastingly in her control, Under the even measure of her breath, Like crested waves the onward centuries roll. Nor to far heaven her spirit wandereth, Nor lifteth she her voice in barren prayer, Nor trembleth at appearances of death. She, godlike in her womanhood, will fare Calm-visaged and heroic to the end. The homestead is her most especial care; She loves the sacred hearth: she will defend Her gods from desecration of the vile. Fierce, like a wounded tigress, she can rend Whatever may have entered to defile. I see her in the evening by the fire, And in her eyes, illumined from the pile Of blazing logs, a motherly desire Glows like the moulded passion of a rose; Beautiful is her presence in the bower: Her spirit is the spirit of repose. Mankind shall hold her motherhood in awe: Woman is she indeed, and not of those That he with sacramental gold must draw Discreetly to his chamber in the night, Or bind to him with fetters of the law. He holds her by a spiritual right. With diamond and with pearl he need not sue; Nor will she deck herself for his delight: Beauty is the adornment of the true. She shall possess for ornament and gem A flower, the glowworm, or the drop of dew: More innocently fair than all of them, It will not even shame her if she make A coronal of stars her diadem. Though she is but a vision, I can take Courage from her. I feel her arrowy beam Already, for her spirit is awake, And passes down the future like a gleam,-- Thus have I made the woman of my dream. Harold Monro [1879-1932] THE SHEPHERDESS She walks--the lady of my delight-- A shepherdess of sheep. Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white; She guards them from the steep. She feeds them on the fragrant height, And folds them in for sleep. She roams maternal hills and bright, Dark valleys safe and deep. Into that tender breast at night The chastest stars may peep. She walks--the lady of my delight-- A shepherdess of sheep. She holds her little thoughts in sight, Though gay they run and leap. She is so circumspect and right; She has her soul to keep. She walks--the lady of my delight-- A shepherdess of sheep. Alice Meynell [1853-1922] A PORTRAIT Mother and maid and soldier, bearing best Her girl's lithe body under matron gray, And opening new eyes on each new day With faith concealed and courage unconfessed; Jealous to cloak a blessing in a jest, Clothe beauty carefully in disarray, And love absurdly, that no word betray The worship all her deeds make manifest: Armored in smiles, a motley Britomart-- Her lance is high adventure, tipped with scorn; Her banner to the suns and winds unfurled, Washed white with laughter; and beneath her heart, Shrined in a garland of laborious thorn, Blooms the unchanging Rose of all the World. Brian Hooker [1880- THE WIFE The little Dreams of Maidenhood-- I put them all away As tenderly as mother would The toys of yesterday, When little children grow to men Too over-wise for play. The little dreams I put aside-- I loved them every one, And yet since moon-blown buds must hide Before the noon-day sun, I close them wistfully away And give the key to none. O little Dreams of Maidenhood-- Lie quietly, nor care If some day in an idle mood I, searching unaware Through some closed corner of my heart, Should laugh to find you there. Theodosia Garrison [1874- "TRUSTY, DUSKY, VIVID, TRUE" Trusty, dusky, vivid, true, With eyes of gold and bramble-dew, Steel true and blade straight The great Artificer made my mate. Honor, anger, valor, fire, A love that life could never tire, Death quench, or evil stir, The mighty Master gave to her. Teacher, tender comrade, wife, A fellow-farer true through life, Heart-whole and soul-free, The August Father gave to me. Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-1894] THE SHRINE There is a shrine whose golden gate Was opened by the Hand of God; It stands serene, inviolate, Though millions have its pavement trod; As fresh, as when the first sunrise Awoke the lark in Paradise. 'Tis compassed with the dust and toil Of common days, yet should there fall A single speck, a single soil Upon the whiteness of its wall, The angels' tears in tender rain Would make the temple theirs again. Without, the world is tired and old, But, once within the enchanted door, The mists of time are backward rolled, And creeds and ages are no more; But all the human-hearted meet In one communion vast and sweet. I enter--all is simply fair, Nor incense-clouds, nor carven throne; But in the fragrant morning air A gentle lady sits alone; My mother--ah! whom should I see Within, save ever only thee? Digby Mackworth Dolben [1848-1867] THE VOICE As I went down the hill I heard The laughter of the countryside; For, rain being past, the whole land stirred With new emotion, like a bride. I scarce had left the grassy lane, When something made me catch my breath: A woman called, and called again, Elizabeth! Elizabeth! It was my mother's name. A part Of wounded memory sprang to tears, And the few violets of my heart Shook in the wind of happier years. Quicker than magic came the face That once was sun and moon for me; The garden shawl, the cap of lace, The collie's head against her knee. Mother, who findest out a way To pass the sentinels, and stand Behind my chair at close of day, To touch me--almost--with thy hand, Deep in my breast, how sure, how clear, The lamp of love burns on till death!-- How trembles if I chance to hear Elizabeth! Elizabeth! Norman Gale [1862- MOTHER I have praised many loved ones in my song, And yet I stand Before her shrine, to whom all things belong, With empty hand. Perhaps the ripening future holds a time For things unsaid; Not now; men do not celebrate in rhyme Their daily bread. Theresa Helburn [1888- AD MATREM Oft in the after days, when thou and I Have fallen from the scope of human view, When, both together, under the sweet sky, We sleep beneath the daisies and the dew, Men will recall thy gracious presence bland, Conning the pictured sweetness of thy face; Will pore o'er paintings by thy plastic hand, And vaunt thy skill and tell thy deeds of grace. Oh, may they then, who crown thee with true bays, Saying, "What love unto her son she bore!" Make this addition to thy perfect praise, "Nor ever yet was mother worshipped more!" So shall I live with Thee, and thy dear fame Shall link my love unto thine honored name. Julian Fane [1827-1870] C. L. M. In the dark womb where I began, My mother's life made me a man. Through all the months of human birth Her beauty fed my common earth. I cannot see, nor breathe, nor stir, But through the death of some of her. Down in the darkness of the grave She cannot see the life she gave. For all her love, she cannot tell Whether I use it ill or well, Nor knock at dusty doors to find Her beauty dusty in the mind. If the grave's gates could be undone, She would not know her little son, I am so grown. If we should meet, She would pass by me in the street, Unless my soul's face let her see My sense of what she did for me. What have I done to keep in mind My debt to her and womankind? What woman's happier life repays Her for those months of wretched days? For all my mouthless body leeched Ere Birth's releasing hell was reached? What have I done, or tried, or said In thanks to that dear woman dead? Men triumph over women still, Men trample women's rights at will, And man's lust roves the world untamed... O grave, keep shut lest I be shamed. John Masefield [1878- STEPPING WESTWARD STEPPING WESTWARD "What, you are stepping westward?"--"Yea." --'Twould be a wildish destiny, If we, who thus together roam In a strange Land, and far from home, Were in this place the guests of Chance: Yet who would stop, or fear to advance Though home or shelter he had none, With such a sky to lead him on? The dewy ground was dark and cold; Behind, all gloomy to behold; And stepping westward seemed to be A kind of heavenly destiny: I liked the greeting; 'twas a sound Of something without place or bound; And seemed to give me spiritual right To travel through that region bright. The voice was soft, and she who spake Was walking by her native lake: The salutation had to me The very sound of courtesy: Its power was felt; and while my eye Was fixed upon the glowing Sky, The echo of the voice enwrought A human sweetness with the thought Of travelling through the world that lay Before me in my endless way. William Wordsworth [1770-1850] A FAREWELL TO ARMS (To Queen Elizabeth) His golden locks Time hath to silver turned; O Time too swift, O swiftness never ceasing! His youth 'gainst time and age hath ever spurned, But spurned in vain; youth waneth by increasing: Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen; Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green. His helmet now shall make a hive for bees; And lovers' sonnets turned to holy psalms, A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees, And feed on prayers, which are Age his alms: But though from court to cottage he depart, His Saint is sure of his unspotted heart. And when he saddest sits in homely cell, He'll teach his swains this carol for a song,-- "Blest be the hearts that wish my sovereign well, Curst be the souls that think her any wrong." Goddess, allow this aged man his right To be your beadsman now that was your knight. George Peele [1558?-1597?] THE WORLD The World's a bubble, and the life of Man Less than a span: In his conception wretched,--from the womb, So to the tomb; Curst from his cradle, and brought up to years With cares and fears. Who then to frail mortality shall trust, But limns on water, or but writes in dust. Yet whilst with sorrow here we live oppressed, What life is best? Courts are but only superficial schools To dandle fools: The rural parts are turned into a den Of savage men; And where's a city from foul vice so free, But may be termed the worst of all the three? Domestic cares afflict the husband's bed, Or pains his head: Those that live single, take it for a curse, Or do things worse: Some would have children; those that have them moan Or wish them gone: What is it, then, to have, or have no wife, But single thraldom, or a double strife? Our own affections still at home to please Is a disease; To cross the seas to any foreign soil, Peril and toil; Wars with their noise affright us; when they cease, We are worse in peace: --What then remains, but that we still should cry For being born, or, being born, to die? Francis Bacon [1561-1626] "WHEN THAT I WAS AND A LITTLE TINY BOY" From "Twelfth Night" When that I was and a little tiny boy, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, A foolish thing was but a toy, For the rain it raineth every day. But when I came to man's estate, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, 'Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate, For the rain it raineth every day. But when I came, alas! to wive, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, By swaggering could I never thrive, For the rain it raineth every day. But when I came unto my beds, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, With toss-pots still had drunken heads; For the rain it raineth every day. A great while ago the world begun, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, But that's all one, our play is done, And we'll strive to please you every day. William Shakespeare [1564-1616] OF THE LAST VERSES IN THE BOOK When we for age could neither read nor write, The subject made us able to indite; The soul, with nobler resolutions decked, The body stooping does herself erect. No mortal parts are requisite to raise Her that, unbodied, can her Maker praise. The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er; So calm are we when passions are no more. For then we know how vain it was to boast Of fleeting things, so certain to be lost. Clouds of affection from our younger eyes Conceal that emptiness which age descries. The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made: Stronger by weakness, wiser, men become As they draw near to their eternal home. Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view That stand upon the threshold of the new. Edmund Waller [1606-1687] A LAMENT The Night Before His Execution My prime of youth is but a frost of cares; My feast of joy is but a dish of pain; My crop of corn is but a field of tares; And all my good is but vain hope of gain; The day is fled, and yet I saw no sun; And now I live, and now my life is done! The spring is past, and yet it is not sprung; The fruit is dead, and yet the leaves be green; My youth is gone, and yet I am but young; I saw the world, and yet I was not seen; My thread is cut, and yet it is not spun; And now I live, and now my life is done! I sought my death, and found it in my womb; I looked for life, and saw it was a shade; I trod the earth, and knew it was my tomb; And now I die, and now I am but made; The glass is full, and now my glass is run; And now I live, and now my life is done! Chidiock Tichborne [1558?-1586] TOMORROW In the down-hill of life, when I find I'm declining, May my fate no less fortunate be Than a snug elbow-chair will afford for reclining, And a cot that o'erlooks the wide sea; With an ambling pad-pony to pace o'er the lawn, While I carol away idle sorrow, And blithe as the lark that each day hails the dawn, Look forward with hope for Tomorrow. With a porch at my door, both for shelter and shade too, As the sunshine or rain may prevail, And a small spot of ground for the use of the spade too, With a barn for the use of the flail: A cow for my dairy, a dog for my game, And a purse when a friend wants to borrow; I'll envy no Nabob his riches or fame, Nor what honors may wait him Tomorrow. From the bleak northern blast may my cot be completely Secured by a neighboring hill; And at night may repose steal upon me more sweetly By the sound of a murmuring rill. And while peace and plenty I find at my board, With a heart free from sickness and sorrow, With my friends may I share what Today may afford, And let them spread the table Tomorrow. And when I at last must throw off this frail covering, Which I've worn for three-score years and ten, On the brink of the grave I'll not seek to keep hovering, Nor my thread wish to spin o'er again; But my face in the glass I'll serenely survey, And with smiles count each wrinkle and furrow; And this old worn-out stuff, which is threadbare Today, May become everlasting Tomorrow. John Collins [1742?-1808] LATE WISDOM We've trod the maze of error round, Long wandering in the winding glade; And now the torch of truth is found, It only shows us where we strayed: By long experience taught, we know-- Can rightly judge of friends and foes; Can all the worth of these allow, And all the faults discern in those. Now, 'tis our boast that we can quell The wildest passions in their rage, Can their destructive force repel, And their impetuous wrath assuage.-- Ah, Virtue! dost thou arm when now This bold rebellious race are fled? When all these tyrants rest, and thou Art warring with the mighty dead? George Crabbe [1754-1832] YOUTH AND AGE Verse, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying, Where Hope clung feeding like a bee,-- Both were mine! Life went a-maying With Nature, Hope, and Poesy When I was young! When I was young?--Ah, woful When! Ah, for the change 'twixt Now and Then! This breathing house not built with hands, This body that does me grievous wrong, O'er aery cliffs and glittering sands, How lightly then it flashed along:-- Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore, On winding lakes and rivers wide, That ask no aid of sail or oar, That fear no spite of wind or tide! Naught cared this body for wind or weather When Youth and I lived in't together. Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like; Friendship is a sheltering tree; Oh! the joys that came down shower-like, Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty Ere I was old! Ere I was old? Ah, woful Ere, Which tells me, Youth's no longer here! O Youth! for years so many and sweet, 'Tis known that Thou and I were one. I'll think it but a fond conceit-- It cannot be that Thou art gone! Thy vesper-bell hath not yet tolled:-- And thou wert aye a masker bold! What strange disguise hast now put on To make believe that thou art gone? I see these locks in silvery slips, This drooping gait, this altered size: But Springtide blossoms on thy lips, And tears take sunshine from thine eyes! Life is but thought: so think I will That Youth and I are house-mates still. Dewdrops are the gems of morning, But the tears of mournful eve! Where no hope is, life's a warning That only serves to make us grieve When we are old: That only serves to make us grieve With oft and tedious taking-leave, Like some poor nigh-related guest, That may not rudely be dismissed, Yet hath outstayed his welcome while, And tells the jest without the smile. Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1772-1834] THE OLD MAN'S COMFORTS And How He Gained Them "You are old, Father William," the young man cried; "The few locks which are left you are gray; You are hale, Father William,--a hearty old man: Now tell me the reason, I pray." "In the days of my youth," Father William replied, "I remembered that youth would fly fast, And abused not my health and my vigor at first, That I never might need them at last." "You are old, Father William," the young man cried, "And pleasures with youth pass away; And yet you lament not the days that are gone: Now tell me the reason, I pray." "In the days of my youth," Father William replied, "I remembered that youth could not last; I thought of the future, whatever I did, That I never might grieve for the past." "You are old, Father William," the young man cried, "And life must be hastening away; You are cheerful, and love to converse upon death: Now tell me the reason, I pray." "I am cheerful, young man," Father William replied; "Let the cause thy attention engage; In the days of my youth, I remembered my God, And He hath not forgotten my age." Robert Southey [1774-1843] TO AGE Welcome, old friend! These many years Have we lived door by door: The Fates have laid aside their shears Perhaps for some few more. I was indocile at an age When better boys were taught, But thou at length hast made me sage, If I am sage in aught. Little I know from other men, Too little they from me, But thou hast pointed well the pen That writes these lines to thee. Thanks for expelling Fear and Hope, One vile, the other vain; One's scourge, the other's telescope, I shall not see again: Rather what lies before my feet My notice shall engage.-- He who hath braved Youth's dizzy heat Dreads not the frost of Age. Walter Savage Landor [1775-1864] LATE LEAVES The leaves are falling; so am I; The few late flowers have moisture in the eye; So have I too. Scarcely on any bough is heard Joyous, or even unjoyous, bird The whole wood through. Winter may come: he brings but nigher His circle (yearly narrowing) to the fire Where old friends meet. Let him; now heaven is overcast, And spring and summer both are past, And all things sweet. Walter Savage Landor [1775-1864] YEARS Years, many parti-colored years, Some have crept on, and some have flown Since first before me fell those tears I never could see fall alone. Years, not so many, are to come, Years not so varied, when from you One more will fall: when, carried home, I see it not, nor hear Adieu. Walter Savage Landor [1775-1864] THE RIVER OF LIFE The more we live, more brief appear Our life's succeeding stages: A day to childhood seems a year, And years like passing ages. The gladsome current of our youth, Ere passion yet disorders, Steals, lingering like a river smooth Along its grassy borders. But as the careworn cheek grows wan, And sorrow's shafts fly thicker, Ye Stars, that measure life to man, Why seem your courses quicker? When joys have lost their bloom and breath, And life itself is vapid, Why, as we reach the Falls of Death, Feel we its tide more rapid? It may be strange--yet who would change Time's course to slower speeding, When one by one our friends have gone And left our bosoms bleeding? Heaven gives our years of fading strength Indemnifying fleetness; And those of youth, a seeming length, Proportioned to their sweetness. Thomas Campbell [1777-1844] "LONG TIME A CHILD" Long time a child, and still a child, when years Had painted manhood on my check, was I,-- For yet I lived like one not born to die; A thriftless prodigal of smiles and tears, No hope I needed, and I knew no fears. But sleep, though sweet, is only sleep; and waking, I waked to sleep no more; at once o'ertaking The vanguard of my age, with all arrears Of duty on my back. Nor child, nor man, Nor youth, nor sage, I find my head is gray, For I have lost the race I never ran: A rathe December blights my lagging May; And still I am a child, though I be old: Time is my debtor for my years untold. Hartley Coleridge [1796-1849] THE WORLD I AM PASSING THROUGH Few, in the days of early youth, Trusted like me in love and truth. I've learned sad lessons from the years; But slowly, and with many tears; For God made me to kindly view The world that I was passing through. How little did I once believe That friendly tones could e'er deceive! That kindness, and forbearance long, Might meet ingratitude and wrong! I could not help but kindly view The world that I was passing through. And though I've learned some souls are base, I would not, therefore, hate the race; I still would bless my fellow men, And trust them, though deceived again. God help me still to kindly view The world that I am passing through! Through weary conflicts I have passed, And struggled into rest at last; Such rest as when the rack has broke A joint, or nerve, at every stroke. The wish survives to kindly view The world that I am passing through. From all that fate has brought to me I strive to learn humility, And trust in Him who rules above, Whose universal law is love. Thus only can I kindly view The world that I am passing through. When I approach the setting sun, And feel my journey nearly done, May earth be veiled in genial light, And her last smile to me seem bright! Help me till then to kindly view The world that I am passing through! And all who tempt a trusting heart From faith and hope to drift apart,-- May they themselves be spared the pain Of losing power to trust again! God help us all to kindly view The world that we are passing through! Lydia Maria Child [1802-1880] TERMINUS It is time to be old, To take in sail:-- The god of bounds, Who sets to seas a shore, Came to me in his fatal rounds, And said: "No more! No farther shoot Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root. Fancy departs: no more invent; Contract thy firmament To compass of a tent. There's not enough for this and that, Make thy option which of two; Economize the failing river, Not the less revere the Giver, Leave the many and hold the few. Timely wise accept the terms, Soften the fall with wary foot; A little while Still plan and smile, And,--fault of novel germs,-- Mature the unfallen fruit. Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires, Bad husbands of their fires, Who, when they gave thee breath, Failed to bequeath The needful sinew stark as once, The Baresark marrow to thy bones, But left a legacy of ebbing veins, Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,-- Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb, Amid the Gladiators, halt and numb." As the bird trims her to the gale, I trim myself to the storm of time, I man the rudder, reef the sail, Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime: "Lowly faithful, banish fear, Right onward drive unharmed; The port, well worth the cruise, is near, And every wave is charmed." Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-1882] RABBI BEN EZRA Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made: Our times are in his hand Who saith "A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!" Not that, amassing flowers, Youth sighed, "Which rose make ours, Which lily leave and then as best recall?" Not that, admiring stars, It yearned, "Nor Jove, nor Mars; Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!" Not for such hopes and fears Annulling youth's brief years, Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark! Rather I prize the doubt Low kinds exist without. Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark. Poor vaunt of life indeed, Were man but formed to feed On joy, to solely seek and find and feast: Such feasting ended, then As sure an end to men; Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast? Rejoice we are allied To that which doth provide And not partake, effect and not receive! A spark disturbs our clod; Nearer we hold of God Who gives, than of his tribes that take, I must believe. Then, welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go! Be our joys three-parts pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe! For thence,--a paradox Which comforts while it mocks,-- Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail: What I aspired to be, And was not, comforts me: A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale. What is he but a brute Whose flesh has soul to suit, Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play? To man, propose this test-- Thy body at its best, How far can that project thy soul on its lone way? Yet gifts should prove their use: I own the Past profuse Of power each side, perfection every turn: Eyes, ears took in their dole, Brain treasured up the whole: Should not the heart beat once "How good to live and learn"? Not once beat "Praise be thine! I see the whole design, I, who saw power, see now Love perfect too: Perfect I call thy plan: Thanks that I was a man! Maker, remake, complete,--I trust what thou shalt do!" For pleasant is this flesh; Our soul, in its rose-mesh Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest: Would we some prize might hold To match those manifold Possessions of the brute,--gain most, as we did best! Let us not always say, "Spite of this flesh to-day I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!" As the bird wings and sings; Let us cry, "All good things Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!" Therefore I summon age To grant youth's heritage, Life's struggle having so far reached its term: Thence shall I pass, approved A man, for aye removed From the developed brute; a God though in the germ. And I shall thereupon Take rest, ere I be gone Once more on my adventure brave and new: Fearless and unperplexed, When I wage battle next, What weapons to select, what armor to indue. Youth ended, I shall try My gain or loss thereby; Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold: And I shall weigh the same, Give life its praise or blame: Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old. For note, when evening shuts, A certain moment cuts The deed off, calls the glory from the gray: A whisper from the west Shoots--"Add this to the rest, Take it and try its worth: here dies another day." So, still within this life, Though lifted o'er its strife, Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last, "This rage was right i' the main, That acquiescence vain: The Future I may face now I have proved the Past." For more is not reserved To man, with soul just nerved To act to-morrow what he learns to-day: Here, work enough to watch The Master work, and catch Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play. As it was better, youth Should strive, through acts uncouth, Toward making, than repose on aught found made: So, better, age, exempt From strife, should know, than tempt Further. Thou waitedest age: wait death nor be afraid! Enough now, if the Right And Good and Infinite Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own, With knowledge absolute, Subject to no dispute From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone. Be there, for once and all, Severed great minds from small, Announced to each his station in the Past! Was I, the world arraigned, Were they, my soul disdained, Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last! Now, who shall arbitrate? Ten men love what I hate, Shun what I follow, slight what I receive; Ten, who in ears and eyes Match me: we all surmise, They this thing, and I that: whom shall my soul believe? Not on the vulgar mass Called "work," must sentence pass, Things done, that took the eye and had the price; O'er which, from level stand, The low world laid its hand, Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice: But all, the world's coarse thumb And finger failed to plumb, So passed in making up the main account; All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount: Thoughts hardly to be packed Into a narrow act, Fancies that broke through language and escaped; All I could never be, All, men ignored in me, This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped. Ay, note that Potter's wheel, That metaphor! and feel Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,-- Thou, to whom fools propound, When the wine makes its round, "Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day?" Fool! All that is, at all, Lasts ever, past recall; Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure: What entered into thee, That was, is, and shall be: Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure. He fixed thee 'mid this dance Of plastic circumstance, This Present, thou, forsooth, would fain arrest: Machinery just meant To give thy soul its bent, Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed. What though the earlier grooves Which ran the laughing loves Around thy base, no longer pause and press? What though, about thy rim, Scull-things in order grim Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress? Look not thou down but up! To uses of a cup, The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal, The new wine's foaming flow, The Master's lips a-glow! Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needest thou with earth's wheel? But I need, now as then, Thee, God, who mouldest men; And since, not even while the whirl was worst, Did I--to the wheel of life With shapes and colors rife, Bound dizzily,--mistake my end, to slake thy thirst: So, take and use thy work: Amend what flaws may lurk, What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim! My times be in thy hand! Perfect the cup as planned! Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same! Robert Browning [1812-1889] HUMAN LIFE Sad is our youth, for it is ever going, Crumbling away beneath our very feet; Sad is our life, for onward it is flowing, In current unperceived because so fleet; Sad are our hopes for they were sweet in sowing, But tares, self-sown, have overtopped the wheat; Sad are our joys, for they were sweet in blowing; And still, O still, their dying breath is sweet: And sweet is youth, although it hath bereft us Of that which made our childhood sweeter still; And sweet our life's decline, for it hath left us A nearer Good to cure an older Ill: And sweet are all things, when we learn to prize them Not for their sake, but His who grants them or denies them. Aubrey Thomas de Vere [1814-1902] YOUNG AND OLD From "The Water Babies" When all the world is young, lad, And all the trees are green; And every goose a swan, lad, And every lass a queen; Then hey for boot and horse, lad, And round the world away; Young blood must have its course, lad, And every dog his day. When all the world is old, lad, And all the trees are brown; And all the sport is stale, lad, And all the wheels run down: Creep home, and take your place there, The spent and maimed among: God grant you find one face there You loved when all was young. Charles Kingsley [1819-1875] THE ISLE OF THE LONG AGO Oh, a wonderful stream is the River Time, As it flows through the realm of Tears, With a faultless rhythm and a musical rhyme, And a broader sweep and a surge sublime As it blends with the ocean of Years. How the winters are drifting like flakes of snow! And the summers like buds between; And the year in the sheaf--so they come and they go On the River's breast with its ebb and flow, As they glide in the shadow and sheen. There's a magical Isle up the River Time Where the softest of airs are playing; There's a cloudless sky and a tropical clime, And a voice as sweet as a vesper chime, And the Junes with the roses are staying. And the name of this Isle is the Long Ago, And we bury our treasures there; There are brows of beauty and bosoms of snow-- They are heaps of dust, but we loved them so! There are trinkets and tresses of hair. There are fragments of song that nobody sings, And a part of an infant's prayer, There's a harp unswept and a lute without strings, There are broken vows and pieces of rings, And the garments that she used to wear. There are hands that are waved when the fairy shore By the mirage is lifted in air; And we sometimes hear through the turbulent roar Sweet voices we heard in the days gone before, When the wind down the River is fair. Oh, remembered for aye be the blessed Isle All the day of our life till night, And when evening comes with its beautiful smile, And our eyes are closing in slumber awhile, May that "Greenwood" of soul be in sight. Benjamin Franklin Taylor [1819-1887] GROWING OLD What is it to grow old? Is it to lose the glory of the form, The lustre of the eye? Is it for beauty to forego her wealth? --Yes, but not this alone. Is it to feel our strength-- Not our bloom only, but our strength--decay? Is it to feel each limb Grow stiffer, every function less exact, Each nerve more loosely strung? Yes, this, and more; but not-- Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dreamed 'twould be! 'Tis not to have our life Mellowed and softened as with sunset glow, A golden day's decline. 'Tis not to see the world As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes, And heart profoundly stirred; And weep, and feel the fulness of the past, The years that are no more. It is to spend long days And not once feel that we were ever young; It is to add, immured In the hot prison of the present, month To month with weary pain. It is to suffer this, And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel. Deep in our hidden heart Festers the dull remembrance of a change, But no emotion--none. It is!--last stage of all-- When we are frozen up within, and quite The phantom of ourselves, To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blessed the living man. Matthew Arnold [1822-1888] PAST The clocks are chiming in my heart Their cobweb chime; Old murmurings of days that die, The sob of things a-drifting by. The clocks are chiming in my heart! The stars have twinkled, and gone out-- Fair candles blown! The hot desires burn low, and wan Those ashy fires, that flamed anon. The stars have twinkled, and gone out! John Galsworthy [1867-1933] TWILIGHT When I was young the twilight seemed too long. How often on the western window-seat I leaned my book against the misty pane And spelled the last enchanting lines again, The while my mother hummed an ancient song, Or sighed a little and said: "The hour is sweet!" When I, rebellious, clamored for the light. But now I love the soft approach of night, And now with folded hands I sit and dream While all too fleet the hours of twilight seem; And thus I know that I am growing old. O granaries of Age! O manifold And royal harvest of the common years! There are in all thy treasure-house no ways But lead by soft descent and gradual slope To memories more exquisite than hope. Thine is the Iris born of olden tears, And thrice more happy are the happy days That live divinely in the lingering rays. A. Mary F. Robinson [1857- YOUTH AND AGE Youth hath many charms,-- Hath many joys, and much delight; Even its doubts, and vague alarms, By contrast make it bright: And yet--and yet--forsooth, I love Age as well as Youth! Well, since I love them both, The good of both I will combine,-- In women, I will look for Youth, And look for Age, in wine: And then--and then--I'll bless This twain that gives me happiness! George Arnold [1834-1865] FORTY YEARS ON Forty years on, when afar and asunder Parted are those who are singing today, When you look back, and forgetfully wonder What you were like in your work and your play; Then, it may be, there will often come o'er you Glimpses of notes like the catch of a song-- Visions of boyhood shall float them before you, Echoes of dreamland shall bear them along. Follow up! Follow up! Follow up! Follow up! Till the field ring again and again, With the tramp of the twenty-two men, Follow up! Follow up! Routs and discomfitures, rushes and rallies, Bases attempted, and rescued, and won, Strife without anger, and art without malice,-- How will it seem to you forty years on? Then, you will say, not a feverish minute Strained the weak heart, and the wavering knee, Never the battle raged hottest, but in it Neither the last nor the faintest were we! Follow up! Follow up! O the great days, in the distance enchanted, Days of fresh air, in the rain and the sun, How we rejoiced as we struggled and panted-- Hardly believable forty years on! How we discoursed of them, one with another, Auguring triumph, or balancing fate, Loved the ally with the heart of a brother, Hated the foe with a playing at hate! Follow up! Follow up! Forty years on, growing older and older, Shorter in wind, and in memory long, Feeble of foot and rheumatic of shoulder, What will it help you that once you were strong? God gives us bases to guard or beleaguer, Games to play out, whether earnest or fun, Fights for the fearless, and goals for the eager, Twenty, and thirty, and forty years on! Follow up! Follow up! Edward Ernest Bowen [1836-1901] DREGS The fire is out, and spent the warmth thereof, (This is the end of every song man sings!) The golden wine is drunk, the dregs remain, Bitter as wormwood and as salt as pain; And health and hope have gone the way of love Into the drear oblivion of lost things. Ghosts go along with us until the end; This was a mistress, this, perhaps, a friend. With pale, indifferent eyes, we sit and wait For the dropped curtain and the closing gate: This is the end of all the songs man sings. Ernest Dowson [1867-1900] THE PARADOX OF TIME A Variation On Ronsard "Le temps s'en va, le temps s'en va, ma dame! Las! le temps non: mais nous nous en allons!" Time goes, you say? Ah no! Alas, Time stays, we go; Or else, were this not so, What need to chain the hours, For Youth were always ours? Time goes, you say?--ah no! Ours is the eyes' deceit Of men whose flying feet Lead through some landscape low; We pass, and think we see The earth's fixed surface flee:-- Alas, Time stays--we go! Once in the days of old, Your locks were curling gold, And mine had shamed the crow. Now, in the self-same stage, We've reached the silver age; Time goes, you say?--ah no! Once, when my voice was strong, I filled the woods with song To praise your "rose" and "snow"; My bird, that sang, is dead; Where are your roses fled? Alas, Time stays--we go! See, in what traversed ways, What backward Fate delays The hopes we used to know; Where are our old desires?-- Ah, where those vanished fires? Time goes, you say?--ah no! How far, how far, O sweet, The past behind our feet Lies in the even-glow! Now, on the forward way, Let us fold hands, and pray; Alas, Time stays,--we go! Austin Dobson [1840-1921] AGE Snow and stars, the same as ever In the days when I was young,-- But their silver song, ah never, Never now is sung! Cold the stars are, cold the earth is, Everything is grim and cold! Strange and drear the sound of mirth is-- Life and I are old! William Winter [1836-1917] OMNIA SOMNIA Dawn drives the dreams away, yet some abide. Once, in a tide of pale and sunless weather, I dreamed I wandered on a bare hillside, When suddenly the birds sang all together. Still it was Winter, even in the dream; There was no leaf nor bud nor young grass springing; The skies shone cold above the frost-bound stream: It was not Spring, and yet the birds were singing. Blackbird and thrush and plaintive willow-wren, Chaffinch and lark and linnet, all were calling; A golden web of music held me then, Innumerable voices, rising, falling. O, never do the birds of April sing More sweet than in that dream I still remember: Perchance the heart may keep its songs of Spring Even through the wintry dream of life's December. Rosamund Marriott Watson [1863-1911] THE YEAR'S END Full happy is the man who comes at last Into the safe completion of his year; Weathered the perils of his spring, that blast How many blossoms promising and dear! And of his summer, with dread passions fraught That oft, like fire through the ripening corn, Blight all with mocking death and leave distraught Loved ones to mourn the ruined waste forlorn. But now, though autumn gave but harvest slight, Oh, grateful is he to the powers above For winter's sunshine, and the lengthened night By hearth-side genial with the warmth of love. Through silvered days of vistas gold and green Contentedly he glides away, serene. Timothy Cole [1852-1931] AN OLD MAN'S SONG Ye are young, ye are young, I am old, I am old; And the song has been sung And the story been told. Your locks are as brown As the mavis in May, Your hearts are as warm As the sunshine to-day, But mine white and cold As the snow on the brae. And Love, like a flower, Is growing for you, Hands clasping, lips meeting, Hearts beating so true; While Fame like a star In the midnight afar Is flashing for you. For you the To-come, But for me the Gone-by, You are panting to live, I am waiting to die; The meadow is empty, No flower groweth high, And naught but a socket The face of the sky. Yea, how so we dream, Or how bravely we do; The end is the same, Be we traitor or true: And after the bloom And the passion is past, Death cometh at last. Richard Le Gallienne [1866- SONGS OF SEVEN Seven Times One.--EXULTATION There's no dew left on the daisies and clover, There's no rain left in heaven; I've said my "seven times" over and over, Seven times one are seven. I am old, so old, I can write a letter; My birthday lessons are done; The lambs play always, they know no better; They are only one times one. O moon! in the night I have seen you sailing And shining so round and low; You were bright! ah, bright! but your light is failing,-- You are nothing now but a bow. You moon, have you done something wrong in heaven That God has hidden your face? I hope if you have, you will soon be forgiven, And shine again in your place. O velvet bee, you're a dusty fellow, You've powdered your legs with gold! O brave marsh marybuds, rich and yellow, Give me your money to hold! O columbine, open your folded wrapper, Where two twin turtle-doves dwell? O cuckoopint, toll me the purple clapper That hangs in your clear green bell! And show me your nest with the young ones in it; I will not steal them away; I am old! you may trust me, linnet, linnet,-- I am seven times one to-day. Seven Times Two.--ROMANCE You bells in the steeple, ring, ring out your changes, How many soever they be, And let the brown meadow-lark's note as he ranges Come over, come over to me. Yet birds' clearest carol by fall or by swelling No magical sense conveys, And bells have forgotten their old art of telling The fortune of future days "Turn again, turn again," once they rang cheerily, While a boy listened alone; Made his heart yearn again, musing so wearily All by himself on a stone. Poor bells! I forgive you; your good days are over, And mine, they are yet to be; No listening, no longing shall aught, aught discover: You leave the story to me. The foxglove shoots out of the green matted heather Preparing her hoods of snow; She was idle, and slept till the sunshiny weather: Oh! children take long to grow. I wish and I wish that the spring would go faster, Nor long summer bide so late; And I could grow on like the foxglove and aster, For some things are ill to wait. I wait for the day when dear hearts shall discover, While dear hands are laid on my head; "The child is a woman, the book may close over, For all the lessons are said." I wait for my story,--the birds cannot sing it, Not one, as he sits on the tree; The bells cannot ring it, but long years, oh, bring it! Such as I wish it to be. Seven Times Three.--LOVE I leaned out of window, I smelt the white clover, Dark, dark was the garden, I saw not the gate, "Now, if there be footsteps, he comes, my one lover,-- Hush, nightingale, hush! O sweet nightingale, wait Till I listen and hear If a step draweth near, For my love he is late! "The skies in the darkness stoop nearer and nearer, A cluster of stars hangs like fruit in the tree, The fall of the water comes sweeter, comes clearer: To what art thou listening, and what dost thou see? Let the star-clusters grow, Let the sweet waters flow, And cross quickly to me. "You night-moths that hover, where honey brims over From sycamore blossoms, or settle or sleep; You glowworms, shine out, and the pathway discover To him that comes darkling along the rough steep. Ah, my sailor, make haste, For the time runs to waste, And my love lieth deep,-- "Too deep for swift telling; and yet, my one lover, I've conned thee an answer, it waits thee to-night." By the sycamore passed he, and through the white clover, Then all the sweet speech I had fashioned took flight; But I'll love him more, more Than e'er wife loved before, Be the days dark or bright. Seven Times Four.--MATERNITY Heigh-ho! daisies and buttercups! Fair yellow daffodils, stately and tall! When the wind wakes how they rock in the grasses, And dance with the cuckoo-buds slender and small! Here's two bonny boys, and here's mother's own lasses, Eager to gather them all. Heigh-ho! daisies and buttercups; Mother shall thread them a daisy chain; Sing them a song of the pretty hedge-sparrow, That loved her brown little ones, loved them full fain; Sing, "Heart, thou art wide though the house be but narrow,"-- Sing once, and sing it again. Heigh-ho! daisies and buttercups! Sweet wagging cowslips, they bend and they bow; A ship sails afar over warm ocean waters, And haply one musing doth stand at her prow. O bonny brown sons, and O sweet little daughters, Maybe he thinks of you now. Heigh-ho! daisies and buttercups! Fair yellow daffodils, stately and tall! A sunshiny world full of laughter and leisure, And fresh hearts unconscious of sorrow and thrall! Send down on their pleasure smiles passing its measure, God that is over us all! Seven Times Five.--WIDOWHOOD I sleep and rest, my heart makes moan Before I am well awake; "Let me bleed! O let me alone, Since I must not break!" For children wake, though fathers sleep With a stone at foot and at head: O sleepless God, forever keep, Keep both living and dead! I lift mine eyes, and what to see But a world happy and fair! I have not wished it to mourn with me,-- Comfort is not there. Oh, what anear but golden brooms, But a waste of reedy rills! Oh, what afar but the fine glooms On the rare blue hills! I shall not die, but live forlore,-- How bitter it is to part! Oh, to meet thee, my love, once more! O my heart, my heart! No more to hear, no more to see! Oh, that an echo might wake And waft one note of thy psalm to me Ere my heart-strings break! I should know it how faint soe'er, And with angel voices blent; Oh, once to feel thy spirit anear; I could be content! Or once between the gates of gold, While an entering angel trod, But once,--thee sitting to behold On the hills of God! Seven Times Six.--GIVING IN MARRIAGE To bear, to nurse, to rear, To watch, and then to lose: To see my bright ones disappear, Drawn up like morning dews,-- To bear, to nurse, to rear, To watch and then to lose: This have I done when God drew near Among his own to choose. To hear, to heed, to wed, And with thy lord depart In tears, that he, as soon as shed, Will let no longer smart,-- To hear, to heed, to wed, This while thou didst I smiled, For now it was not God who said, "Mother, give ME thy child." O fond, O fool, and blind! To God I gave with tears; But when a man like grace would find, My soul put by her fears,-- O fond, O fool, and blind! God guards in happier spheres; That man will guard where he did bind Is hope for unknown years. To hear, to heed, to wed, Fair lot that maidens choose, Thy mother's tenderest words are said, Thy face no more she views; Thy mother's lot, my dear, She doth in naught accuse; Her lot to bear, to nurse, to rear, To love,--and then to lose. Seven Times Seven.--LONGING FOR HOME A song of a boat:-- There was once a boat on a billow: Lightly she rocked to her port remote, And the foam was white in her wake like snow, And her frail mast bowed when the breeze would blow, And bent like a wand of willow. I shaded mine eyes one day when a boat Went curtsying over the billow, I marked her course till a dancing mote, She faded out on the moonlit foam, And I stayed behind in the dear-loved home; And my thoughts all day were about the boat, And my dreams upon the pillow. I pray you hear my song of a boat For it is but short:-- My boat you shall find none fairer afloat, In river or port. Long I looked out for the lad she bore, On the open desolate sea, And I think he sailed to the heavenly shore, For he came not back to me-- Ah me! A song of a nest:-- There was once a nest in a hollow: Down in the mosses and knot-grass pressed, Soft and warm and full to the brim-- Vetches leaned over it purple, and dim, With buttercup buds to follow. I pray you hear my song of a nest, For it is not long:-- You shall never light in a summer quest The bushes among-- Shall never light on a prouder sitter, A fairer nestful, nor ever know A softer sound than their tender twitter, That wind-like did come and go. I had a nestful once of my own, Ah, happy, happy I! Right dearly I loved them; but when they were grown They spread out their wings to fly-- Oh, one after one they flew away Far up to the heavenly blue, To the better country, the upper day, And--I wish I was going too. I pray you what is the nest to me, My empty nest? And what is the shore where I stood to see My boat sail down to the west? Can I call that home where I anchor yet, Though my good man has sailed? Can I call that home where my nest was set, Now all its hope hath failed? Nay, but the port where my sailor went, And the land where my nestlings be: There is the home where my thoughts are sent The only home for me-- Ah me! Jean Ingelow [1820-1897] AUSPEX My heart, I cannot still it, Nest that had song-birds in it; And when the last shall go, The dreary days, to fill it, Instead of lark or linnet, Shall whirl dead leaves and snow. Had they been swallows only, Without the passion stronger That skyward longs and sings,-- Woe's me, I shall be lonely When I can feel no longer The impatience of their wings! A moment, sweet delusion, Like birds the brown leaves hover; But it will not be long Before their wild confusion Fall wavering down to cover The poet and his song. James Russell Lowell [1819-1891] LOOKING BACKWARD THE RETREAT Happy those early days, when I Shined in my Angel-infancy! Before I understood this place Appointed for my second race, Or taught my soul to fancy aught But a white, celestial thought; When yet I had not walked above A mile or two from my first Love, And looking back, at that short space, Could see a glimpse of His bright face; When on some gilded cloud or flower My gazing soul would dwell an hour, And in those weaker glories spy Some shadows of eternity; Before I taught my tongue to wound My Conscience with a sinful sound, Or had the black art to dispense A several sin to every sense; But felt through all this fleshly dress Bright shoots of everlastingness. O how I long to travel back, And tread again that ancient track! That I might once more reach that plain Where first I left my glorious train; From whence the enlightened spirit sees That shady City of Palm-trees. But ah! my soul with too much stay Is drunk, and staggers in the way! Some men a forward motion love, But I by backward steps would move; And, when this dust falls to the urn, In that state I came, return. Henry Vaughan [1622-1695] A SUPERSCRIPTION Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been; I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell; Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between; Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell Is now a shaken shadow intolerable, Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen. Mark me, how still I am! But should there dart One moment through thy soul the soft surprise Of that winged Peace which lulls the breath of sighs,-- Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart Thy visage to mine ambush at thy heart Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes. Dante Gabriel Rossetti [1828-1882] THE CHILD IN THE GARDEN When to the garden of untroubled thought I came of late, and saw the open door, And wished again to enter, and explore The sweet, wild ways with stainless bloom inwrought, And bowers of innocence with beauty fraught, It seemed some purer voice must speak before I dared to tread that garden loved of yore, That Eden lost unknown and found unsought. Then just within the gate I saw a child,-- A stranger-child, yet to my heart most dear,-- Who held his hands to me and softly smiled With eyes that knew no shade of sin or fear; "Come in," he said, "and play awhile with me; I am the little child you used to be." Henry Van Dyke [1852-1933] CASTLES IN THE AIR My thoughts by night are often filled With visions false as fair: For in the Past alone I build My castles in the air. I dwell not now on what may be; Night shadows o'er the scene; But still my fancy wanders free Through that which might have been. Thomas Love Peacock [1785-1866] SOMETIMES Across the fields of yesterday He sometimes comes to me, A little lad just back from play-- The lad I used to be. And yet he smiles so wistfully Once he has crept within, I wonder if he hopes to see The man I might have been. Thomas S. Jones, Jr. [1882-1932] THE LITTLE GHOSTS Where are they gone, and do you know If they come back at fall o' dew, The little ghosts of long ago, That long ago were you? And all the songs that ne'er were sung. And all the dreams that ne'er came true, Like little children dying young-- Do they come back to you? Thomas S. Jones, Jr. [1882-1932] MY OTHER ME Children, do you ever, In walks by land or sea, Meet a little maiden Long time lost to me? She is gay and gladsome, Has a laughing face, And a heart as sunny; And her name is Grace. Naught she knows of sorrow, Naught of doubt or blight; Heaven is just above her-- All her thoughts are white. Long time since I lost her, That other Me of mine; She crossed, into Time's shadow Out of Youth's sunshine. Now the darkness keeps her; And, call her as I will, The years that lie between us Hide her from me still. I am dull and pain-worn, And lonely as can be-- Oh, children, if you meet her, Send back my other Me! Grace Denio Litchfield [1849- A SHADOW BOAT Under my keel another boat Sails as I sail, floats as I float; Silent and dim and mystic still, It steals through that weird nether-world, Mocking my power, though at my will The foam before its prow is curled, Or calm it lies, with canvas furled. Vainly I peer, and fain would see What phantom in that boat may be; Yet half I dread, lest I with ruth Some ghost of my dead past divine, Some gracious shape of my lost youth, Whose deathless eyes once fixed on mine Would draw me downward through the brine! Arlo Bates [1850-1918] A LAD THAT IS GONE Sing me a song of a lad that is gone; Say, could that lad be I? Merry of soul he sailed on a day Over the sea to Skye. Mull was astern, Rum on the port, Eigg on the starboard bow; Glory of youth glowed in his soul: Where is that glory now? Sing me a song of a lad that is gone; Say, could that lad be I? Merry of soul he sailed on a day Over the sea to Skye. Give me again all that was there, Give me the sun that shone! Give me the eyes, give me the soul, Give me the lad that's gone! Sing me a song of a lad that is gone; Say, could that lad be I? Merry of soul he sailed on a day Over the sea to Skye. Billow and breeze, islands and seas, Mountains of rain and sun, All that was good, all that was fair, All that was me is gone. Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-1894] CARCASSONNE "I'm growing old, I've sixty years; I've labored all my life in vain. In all that time of hopes and fears, I've failed my dearest wish to gain. I see full well that here below Bliss unalloyed there is for none; My prayer would else fulfilment know-- Never have I seen Carcassonne! "You see the city from the hill, It lies beyond the mountains blue; And yet to reach it one must still Five long and weary leagues pursue, And, to return, as many more. Had but the vintage plenteous grown-- But, ah! the grape withheld its store. I shall not look on Carcassonne! "They tell me every day is there Not more or less than Sunday gay; In shining robes and garments fair The people walk upon their way. One gazes there on castle walls As grand as those of Babylon, A bishop and two generals! What joy to dwell in Carcassonne! "The vicar's right: he says that we Are ever wayward, weak, and blind; He tells us in his homily Ambition ruins all mankind; Yet could I there two days have spent, While still the autumn sweetly shone, Ah, me! I might have died content When I had looked on Carcassonne. "Thy pardon, Father, I beseech, In this my prayer if I offend; One something sees beyond his reach From childhood to his journey's end. My wife, our little boy, Aignan, Have travelled even to Narbonne; My grandchild has seen Perpignan; And I--have not seen Carcassonne!" So crooned, one day, close by Limoux, A peasant, double-bent with age. "Rise up, my friend," said I; "with you I'll go upon this pilgrimage." We left, next morning, his abode, But (Heaven forgive him!) half-way on The old man died upon the road. He never gazed on Carcassonne. Translated by John R. Thompson from the French of Gustave Nadaud [1820-? ] CHILDHOOD Old Sorrow I shall meet again, And Joy, perchance--but never, never, Happy Childhood, shall we twain See each other's face forever! And yet I would not call thee back, Dear Childhood, lest the sight of me, Thine old companion, on the rack Of Age, should sadden even thee. John Banister Tabb [1845-1909] THE WASTREL Once, when I was little, as the summer night was falling, Among the purple upland fields I lost my barefoot way; The road to home was hidden fast, and frightful shadows, crawling Along the sky-line, swallowed up the last kind light of day; And then I seemed to hear you In the twilight; and be near you; Seemed to hear your dear voice calling-- Through the meadows, calling, calling-- And I followed and I found you, Flung my tired arms around you, And rested on the mother-breast, returned, tired out from play. Down the days from that day, though I trod strange paths unheeding, Though I chased the jack-o'-lanterns of so many maddened years, Though I never looked behind me, where the home-lights were receding, Though I never looked enough ahead to ken the Inn of Fears; Still I knew your heart was near me, That your ear was strained to hear me, That your love would need no pleading To forgive me, but was pleading Of its self that, in disaster, I should run to you the faster And be sure that I was dearer for your sacrifice of tears. Now on life's last Summertime the long last dusk is falling, And I, who trod one way so long, can tread no other way Until at death's dim crossroads I watch, hesitant, the crawling Night-passages that maze me with the ultimate dismay. Then when Death and Doubt shall blind me-- Even then--I know you'll find me: I shall hear you, Mother, calling-- Hear you calling--calling--calling: I shall fight and follow--find you Though the grave-clothes swathe and bind you, And I know your love will answer: "Here's my laddie home from play!" Reginald Wright Kauffman [1877- TROIA FUIT The world was wide when I was young, My schoolday hills and dales among; But, oh, it needs no Puck to put, With whipping wing and flying foot, A girdle 'round the narrow sphere In which I labor now and here! Life's face was fair when careless I First loved beneath an April sky, And wept those fine-imagined woes That youth at nineteen thinks it knows; Now love and woe both run so deep I have not any time to weep. No matter; though at last we see That what was could not always be, It girds our loins and steels our hands In duller days and smaller lands To recollect the country where The world was wide and life was fair. Reginald Wright Kauffman [1877- TEMPLE GARLANDS There is a temple in my heart Where moth or rust can never come, A temple swept and set apart, To make my soul a home. And round about the doors of it Hang garlands that forever last, That gathered once are always sweet; The roses of the Past! A. Mary F. Robinson [1857- TIME LONG PAST Like the ghost of a dear friend dead Is Time long past. A tone which is now forever fled, A hope which is now forever past, A love so sweet it could not last, Was Time long past. There were sweet dreams in the night Of Time long past: And, was it sadness or delight, Each day a shadow onward cast Which made us wish it yet might last,-- That Time long past. There is regret, almost remorse, For Time long past. 'Tis like a child's beloved corse A father watches, till at last Beauty is like remembrance, cast From Time long past. Percy Bysshe Shelley [1792-1822] "I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER" I remember, I remember The house where I was born, The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn; He never came a wink too soon Nor brought too long a day; But now, I often wish the night Had borne my breath away. I remember, I remember The roses, red and white, The violets, and the lily-cups-- Those flowers made of light! The lilacs where the robin built, And where my brother set The laburnum on his birthday,-- The tree is living yet! I remember, I remember Where I was used to swing, And though the air must rush as fresh To swallows on the wing; My spirit flew in feathers then That is so heavy now, The summer pools could hardly cool The fever on my brow. I remember, I remember The fir-trees dark and high; I used to think their slender tops Were close against the sky: It was a childish ignorance, But now 'tis little joy To know I'm farther off from Heaven Than when I was a boy. Thomas Hood [1799-1845] MY LOST YOUTH Often I think of the beautiful town That is seated by the sea; Often in thought go up and down The pleasant streets of that dear old town, And my youth comes back to me. And a verse of a Lapland song Is haunting my memory still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth, are long, long thoughts." I can see the shadowy lines of its trees, And catch, in sudden gleams, The sheen of the far-surrounding seas, And islands that were the Hesperides Of all my boyish dreams. And the burden of that old song, It murmurs and whispers still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." I remember the black wharves and the slips, And the sea-tides tossing free; And Spanish sailors with bearded lips, And the beauty and mystery of the ships, And the magic of the sea. And the voice of that wayward song Is singing and saying still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." I remember the bulwarks by the shore, And the fort upon the hill; The sunrise gun, with its hollow roar, The drum-beat repeated o'er and o'er, And the bugle wild and shrill. And the music of that old song Throbs in my memory still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." I remember the sea-fight far away, How it thundered o'er the tide! And the dead captains, as they lay In their graves, o'erlooking the tranquil bay Where they in battle died. And the sound of that mournful song Goes through me with a thrill: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." I can see the breezy dome of groves, The shadows of Deering's Woods; And the friendships old and the early loves Come back with a Sabbath sound, as of doves In quiet neighborhoods. And the verse of that sweet old song, It flutters and murmurs still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." I remember the gleams and glooms that dart Across the school-boy's brain; The song and the silence in the heart, That in part are prophecies, and in part Are longings wild and vain. And the voice of that fitful song Sings on, and is never still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." There are things of which I may not speak; There are dreams that cannot die; There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak, And bring a pallor into the cheek, And a mist before the eye. And the words of that fatal song Come over me like a chill: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts" Strange to me are the forms I meet When I visit the dear old town; But the native air is pure and sweet, And the trees that o'ershadow each well-known street, As they balance up and down, Are singing the beautiful song, Are sighing and whispering still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." And Deering's Woods are fresh and fair, And with joy that is almost pain My heart goes back to wander there, And among the dreams of the days that were I find my lost youth again. And the strange and beautiful song, The groves are repeating it still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [1807-1882] "VOICE OF THE WESTERN WIND" Voice of the western wind! Thou singest from afar, Rich with the music of a land Where all my memories are; But in thy song I only hear The echo of a tone That fell divinely on my ear In days forever flown. Star of the western sky! Thou beamest from afar, With lustre caught from eyes I knew Whose orbs were each a star; But, oh, those orbs--too wildly bright-- No more eclipse thine own, And never shall I find the light Of days forever flown! Edmund Clarence Stedman [1833-1908] LANGSYNE, WHEN LIFE WAS BONNIE" Langsyne, when life was bonnie, An' a' the skies were blue, When ilka thocht took blossom, An' hung its heid wi' dew, When winter wasna winter, Though snaws cam' happin' doon, Langsyne, when life was bonnie, Spring gaed a twalmonth roun'. Langsyne, when life was bonnie, An' a' the days were lang; When through them ran the music That comes to us in sang, We never wearied liltin' The auld love-laden tune; Langsyne, when life was bonnie, Love gaed a twalmonth roun'. Langsyne, when life was bonnie, An' a' the warld was fair, The leaves were green wi' simmer, For autumn wasna there. But listen hoo they rustle, Wi' an eerie, weary soun', For noo, alas, 'tis winter That gangs a twalmonth roun'. Alexander Anderson [1845-1909] THE SHOOGY-SHOO I do be thinking, lassie, of the old days now; For oh! your hair is tangled gold above your Irish brow; And oh! your eyes are fairy flax! no other eyes so blue; Come nestle in my arms, and swing upon the shoogy-shoo. Sweet and slow, swinging low, eyes of Irish blue, All my heart is swinging, dear, swinging here with you; Irish eyes are like the flax, and mine are wet with dew, Thinking of the old days upon the shoogy-shoo. When meadow-larks would singing be in old Glentair, Was one sweet lass had eyes of blue and tangled golden hair; She was a wee bit girleen then, dear heart, the like of you, When we two swung the braes among, upon the shoogy-shoo. Ah well, the world goes up and down, and some sweet day Its shoogy-shoo will swing us two where sighs will pass away; So nestle close your bonnie head, and close your eyes so true, And swing with me, and memory, upon the shoogy-shoo. Sweet and slow, swinging low, eyes of Irish blue, All my heart is swinging, dear, swinging here with you; Irish eyes are like the flax, and mine are wet with dew, Thinking of the old days upon the shoogy-shoo. Winthrop Packard [1862- BABYLON "We shall meet again in Babylon." I'm going softly all my years in wisdom if in pain-- For, oh, the music stirs my blood as once it did before, And still I hear in Babylon, in Babylon, in Babylon, The dancing feet in Babylon, of those who took my floor. I'm going silent all my years, but garnered in my brain Is that swift wit which used to flash and cut them like a sword-- And now I hear in Babylon, in Babylon, in Babylon, The foolish tongues in Babylon, of those who took my word. I'm going lonely all my days, who was the first to crave The second, fierce, unsteady voice, that struggled to speak free-- And now I watch in Babylon, in Babylon, in Babylon, The pallid loves in Babylon of men who once loved me. I'm sleeping early by a flame as one content and gray, But, oh, I dream a dream of dreams beneath a winter moon, I breathe the breath of Babylon, of Babylon, of Babylon, The scent of silks in Babylon that floated to a tune. A band of years has flogged me out--an exile's fate is mine, To sit with mumbling crones and still a heart that cries with youth. But, oh, to walk in Babylon, in Babylon, in Babylon, The happy streets in Babylon, when once the dream was truth. Viola Taylor [18 THE ROAD OF REMEMBRANCE The old wind stirs the hawthorn tree; The tree is blossoming; Northward the road runs to the sea, And past the House of Spring. The folk go down it unafraid; The still roofs rise before; When you were lad and I was maid, Wide open stood the door. Now, other children crowd the stair, And hunt from room to room; Outside, under the hawthorn fair, We pluck the thorny bloom. Out in the quiet road we stand, Shut in from wharf and mart, The old wind blowing up the land, The old thoughts at our heart. Lizette Woodworth Reese [1856-1935] THE TRIUMPH OF FORGOTTEN THINGS There is a pity in forgotten things, Banished the heart they can no longer fill, Since restless Fancy, spreading swallow wings, Must seek new pleasures still! There is a patience, too, in things forgot; They wait--they find the portal long unused; And knocking there, it shall refuse them not,-- Nor aught shall be refused! Ah, yes! though we, unheeding years on years, In alien pledges spend the heart's estate, They bide some blessed moment of quick tears-- Some moment without date-- Some gleam on flower, or leaf, or beaded dew, Some tremble at the ear of memoried sound Of mother-song,--they seize the slender clew,-- The old loves gather round! When that which lured us once now lureth not, But the tired hands their garnered dross let fall, This is the triumph of the things forgot-- To hear the tired heart call! And they are with us at Life's farthest reach, A light when into shadow all else dips, As, in the stranger's land, their native speech Returns to dying lips! Edith M. Thomas [1854-1925] IN THE TWILIGHT Men say the sullen instrument, That, from the Master's bow, With pangs of joy or woe, Feels music's soul through every fibre sent, Whispers the ravished strings More than he knew or meant; Old summers in its memory glow; The secrets of the wind it sings; It hears the April-loosened springs; And mixes with its mood All it dreamed when it stood In the murmurous pine-wood Long ago! The magical moonlight then Steeped every bough and cone; The roar of the brook in the glen Came dim from the distance blown; The wind through its glooms sang low, And it swayed to and fro, With delight as it stood, In the wonderful wood, Long ago! O my life, have we not had seasons That only said, Live and rejoice? That asked not for causes and reasons, But made us all feeling and voice? When we went with the winds in their blowing, When Nature and we were peers, And we seemed to share in the flowing Of the inexhaustible years? Have we not from the earth drawn juices Too fine for earth's sordid uses? Have I heard, have I seen All I feel, all I know? Doth my heart overween? Or could it have been Long ago? Sometimes a breath floats by me, An odor from Dreamland sent, That makes the ghost seem nigh me Of a splendor that came and went, Of a life lived somewhere, I know not In what diviner sphere, Of memories that stay not and go not, Like music heard once by an ear That cannot forget or reclaim it, A something so shy, it would shame it To make it a show, A something too vague, could I name it, For others to know, As if I had lived it or dreamed it, As if I had acted or schemed it, Long ago! And yet, could I live it over, This life that stirs in my brain, Could I be both maiden and lover, Moon and tide, bee and clover, As I seem to have been, once again, Could I but speak it and show it, This pleasure more sharp than pain, That baffles and lures me so, The world should once more have a poet, Such as it had In the ages glad, Long ago! James Russell Lowell [1819-1891] AN IMMORALITY Sing we for love and idleness, Naught else is worth the having. Though I have been in many a land, There is naught else in living. And I would rather have my sweet, Though rose-leaves die of grieving, Than do high deeds in Hungary To pass all men's believing. Ezra Pound [1885- THREE SEASONS "A cup for hope!" she said, In springtime ere the bloom was old: The crimson wine was poor and cold By her mouth's richer red. "A cup for love!" how low, How soft the words; and all the while Her blush was rippling with a smile Like summer after snow. "A cup for memory!" Cold cup that one must drain alone: While autumn winds are up and moan Across the barren sea. Hope, memory, love: Hope for fair morn, and love for day, And memory for the evening gray And solitary dove. Christina Georgina Rossetti [1830-1894] THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES I have had playmates, I have had companions, In my days of childhood, in my joyful schooldays,-- All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. I have been laughing, I have been carousing, Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies,-- All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. I loved a Love once, fairest among women: Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her,-- All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man: Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly; Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces. Ghost-like, I paced round the haunts of my childhood. Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse, Seeking to find the old familiar faces. Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling? So might we talk of the old familiar faces-- How some they have died, and some they have left me, And some are taken from me; all are departed,-- All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. Charles Lamb [1775-1834] THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS Oft in the stilly night, Ere Slumber's chain hath bound me, Fond memory brings the light Of other days around me: The smiles, the tears, Of boyhood's years, The words of love then spoken; The eyes that shone, Now dimmed and gone, The cheerful hearts now broken! Thus in the stilly night, Ere Slumber's chain hath bound me, Sad Memory brings the light Of other days around me. When I remember all The friends, so linked together, I've seen around me fall, Like leaves in wintry weather, I feel like one Who treads alone Some banquet-hall deserted, Whose lights are fled, Whose garlands dead, And all but he departed! Thus in the stilly night, Ere Slumber's chain hath bound me, Sad Memory brings the light Of other days around me. Thomas Moore [1779-1852] "TEARS, IDLE TEARS" From "The Princess" Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy Autumn-fields, And thinking of the days that are no more. Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, That brings our friends up from the underworld, Sad as the last which reddens over one That sinks with all we love below the verge; So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds To dying ears, when unto dying eyes The casement slowly grows a glimmering square; So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. Dear as remembered kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life, the days that are no more! Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892] THE PET NAME "... the name Which from their lips seemed a caress." ---Miss Milford's "Dramatic Scenes" I have a name, a little name, Uncadenced for the ear, Unhonored by ancestral claim, Unsanctified by prayer and psalm The solemn font anear. It never did to pages wove For gay romance belong; It never dedicate did move As "Sacharissa" unto love, "Orinda" unto song. Though I write books, it will be read Upon the leaves of none, And afterward, when I am dead, Will ne'er be graved for sight or tread, Across my funeral-stone. This name, whoever chance to call, Perhaps your smile may win: Nay, do not smile! mine eyelids fall Over mine eyes and feel withal The sudden tears within. Is there a leaf, that greenly grows Where summer meadows bloom, But gathereth the winter snows, And changeth to the hue of those, If lasting till they come? Is there a word, or jest, or game, But time incrusteth round With sad associate thoughts the same? And so to me my very name Assumes a mournful sound. My brother gave that name to me When we were children twain, When names acquired baptismally Were hard to utter, as to see That life had any pain. No shade was on us then, save one Of chestnuts from the hill; And through the word our laugh did run As part thereof: the mirth being done, He calls me by it still. Nay, do not smile! I hear in it What none of you can hear,-- The talk upon the willow seat, The bird and wind that did repeat Around, our human cheer. I hear the birthday's noisy bliss My sisters' woodland glee, My father's praise I did not miss When stooping down, he cared to kiss The poet at his knee,-- And voices which, to name me, aye Their tenderest tones were keeping,-- To some I nevermore can say An answer till God wipes away In heaven these drops of weeping. My name to me a sadness wears: No murmurs cross my mind-- Now God be thanked for these thick tears, Which show, of those departed years, Sweet memories left behind. Now God be thanked for years enwrought With love which softens yet: Now God be thanked for every thought Which is so tender it has caught Earth's guerdon of regret. Earth saddens, never shall remove Affections purely given; And e'en that mortal grief shall prove The immortality of love, And heighten it with Heaven. Elizabeth Barrett Browning [1806-1861] THREESCORE AND TEN Who reach their threescore years and ten, As I have mine, without a sigh, Are either more or less than men-- Not such am I. I am not of them; life to me Has been a strange, bewildering dream, Wherein I knew not things that be From things that seem. I thought, I hoped, I knew one thing, And had one gift, when I was young-- The impulse and the power to sing, And so I sung. To have a place in the high choir Of poets, and deserve the same-- What more could mortal man desire Than poet's fame? I sought it long, but never found; The choir so full was and so strong The jubilant voices there, they drowned My simple song. Men would not hear me then, and now I care not, I accept my fate, When white hairs thatch the furrowed brow Crowns come too late! The best of life went long ago From me; it was not much at best; Only the love that young hearts know, The dear unrest. Back on my past, through gathering tears, Once more I cast my eyes, and see Bright shapes that in my better years Surrounded me! They left me here, they left me there, Went down dark pathways, one by one-- The wise, the great, the young, the fair; But I went on. And I go on! And bad or good, The old allotted years of men I have endured as best I could, Threescore and ten! Richard Henry Stoddard [1825-1903] RAIN ON THE ROOF When the humid shadows hover Over all the starry spheres, And the melancholy darkness Gently weeps in rainy tears, What a bliss to press the pillow Of a cottage-chamber bed, And to listen to the patter Of the soft rain overhead! Every tinkle on the shingles Has an echo in the heart; And a thousand dreamy fancies Into busy being start, And a thousand recollections Weave their air-threads into woof, As I listen to the patter Of the rain upon the roof. Now in memory comes my mother, As she used, in years agone, To regard the darling dreamers Ere she left them till the dawn; And I feel her fond look on me, As I list to this refrain Which is played upon the shingles By the patter of the rain. Then my little seraph sister, With her wings and waving hair, And her star-eyed cherub brother-- A serene angelic pair-- Glide around my wakeful pillow, With their praise or mild reproof, As I listen to the murmur Of the soft rain on the roof. And another comes, to thrill me With her eyes' delicious blue; And I mind not, musing on her, That her heart was all untrue: I remember but to love her With a passion kin to pain, And my heart's quick pulses vibrate To the patter of the rain. Art hath naught of tone or cadence That can work with such a spell In the soul's mysterious fountains, Whence the tears of rapture well, As that melody of nature, That subdued, subduing strain Which is played upon the shingles By the patter of the rain. Coates Kinney [1826-1904] ALONE BY THE HEARTH Here, in my snug little fire-lit chamber, Sit I alone: And, as I gaze in the coals, I remember Days long agone. Saddening it is when the night has descended, Thus to sit here, Pensively musing on episodes ended Many a year. Still in my visions a golden-haired glory Flits to and fro; She whom I loved--but 'tis just the old story: Dead, long ago. 'Tis but a wraith of love; yet I linger (Thus passion errs), Foolishly kissing the ring on my finger-- Once it was hers. Nothing has changed since her spirit departed, Here, in this room Save I, who, weary, and half broken-hearted, Sit in the gloom. Loud 'gainst the window the winter rain dashes, Dreary and cold; Over the floor the red fire-light flashes Just as of old. Just as of old--but the embers are scattered, Whose ruddy blaze Flashed o'er the floor where the fairy feet pattered In other days! Then, her dear voice, like a silver chime ringing, Melted away; Often these walls have re-echoed her singing, Now hushed for aye! Why should love bring naught but sorrow, I wonder? Everything dies! Time and death, sooner or later, must sunder Holiest ties. Years have rolled by; I am wiser and older-- Wiser, but yet Not till my heart and its feelings grow colder, Can I forget. So, in my snug little fire-lit chamber, Sit I alone; And, as I gaze in the coals, I remember Days long agone! George Arnold [1834-1865] THE OLD MAN DREAMS Oh for one hour of youthful joy! Give back my twentieth spring! I'd rather laugh, a bright-haired boy, Than reign, a gray-beard king. Off with the spoils of wrinkled age! Away with Learning's crown! Tear out life's Wisdom-written page, And dash its trophies down! One moment let my life-blood stream From boyhood's fount of flame! Give me one giddy, reeling dream Of life all love and fame! My listening angel heard the prayer, And, calmly smiling, said, "If I but touch thy silvered hair, Thy hasty wish hath sped. "But is there nothing in thy track To bid thee fondly stay, While the swift seasons hurry back To find the wished-for day?" "Ah, truest soul of womankind! Without thee what were life? One bliss I cannot leave behind: I'll take--my--precious--wife!" The angel took a sapphire pen And wrote in rainbow dew, The man would be a boy again, And be a husband, too! "And is there nothing yet unsaid, Before the change appears? Remember, all their gifts have fled With those dissolving years." "Why, yes;" for memory would recall My fond paternal joys; "I could not bear to leave them all-- I'll take--my--girl--and--boys." The smiling angel dropped his pen,-- "Why, this will never do; The man would be a boy again, And be a father, too!" And so I laughed,--my laughter woke The household with its noise,-- And wrote my dream, when morning broke, To please the gray-haired boys. Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-1894] THE GARRET After Beranger With pensive eyes the little room I view, Where, in my youth, I weathered it so long; With a wild mistress, a stanch friend or two, And a light heart still breaking into song: Making a mock of life, and all its cares, Rich in the glory of my rising sun, Lightly I vaulted up four pair of stairs, In the brave days when I was twenty-one. Yes; 'tis a garret--let him know't who will-- There was my bed--full hard it was and small; My table there--and I decipher still Half a lame couplet charcoaled on the wall. Ye joys, that Time hath swept with him away, Come to mine eyes, ye dreams of love and fun; For you I pawned my watch how many a day, In the brave days when I was twenty-one. And see my little Jessy, first of all; She comes with pouting lips and sparkling eyes: Behold, how roguishly she pins her shawl Across the narrow casement, curtain-wise; Now by the bed her petticoat glides down, And when did woman look the worse in none? I have heard since who paid for many a gown, In the brave days when I was twenty-one. One jolly evening, when my friends and I Made happy music with our songs and cheers, A shout of triumph mounted up thus high, And distant cannon opened on our ears: We rise,--we join in the triumphant strain,-- Napoleon conquers--Austerlitz is won-- Tyrants shall never tread us down again, In the brave days when I was twenty-one. Let us begone--the place is sad and strange-- How far, far off, these happy times appear; All that I have to live I'd gladly change For one such month as I have wasted here-- To draw long dreams of beauty, love, and power, From founts of hope that never will outrun, And drink all life's quintessence in an hour, Give me the days when I was twenty-one! William Makepeace Thackeray [1811-1863] AULD LANG SYNE Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to min'? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And days o' lang syne? For auld lang syne, my dear, For auld lang syne, We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet For auld lang syne. We twa hae rin about the braes, And pu'd the gowans fine; But we've wandered monie a weary fit Sin' auld lang syne. We twa hae paidl't i' the burn, Frae mornin' sun till dine; But seas between us braid hae roared Sin' auld lang syne. And here's a hand, my trusty fiere, And gie's a hand o' thine; And we'll tak a right guid willie-waught For auld lang syne. And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp, And surely I'll be mine, And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet For auld lang syne! Robert Burns [1759-1796] ROCK ME TO SLEEP Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight, Make me a child again, just for to-night! Mother, come back from the echoless shore, Take me again to your heart as of yore; Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care, Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair; Over my slumbers your loving watch keep;-- Rock me to sleep, mother,--rock me to sleep! Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years! I am so weary of toil and of tears,-- Toil without recompense, tears all in vain,-- Take them, and give me my childhood again! I have grown weary of dust and decay,-- Weary of flinging my soul-wealth away; Weary of sowing for others to reap;-- Rock me to sleep, mother,--rock me to sleep! Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue, Mother, O mother, my heart calls for you! Many a summer the grass has grown green, Blossomed and faded, our faces between: Yet, with strong yearning and passionate pain, Long I to-night for your presence again. Come from the silence so long and so deep;-- Rock me to sleep, mother,--rock me to sleep! Over my heart, in the days that are flown, No love like mother-love ever has shone; No other worship abides and endures,-- Faithful, unselfish, and patient, like yours: None like a mother can charm away pain From the sick soul and the world-weary brain. Slumber's soft calms o'er my heavy lids creep;-- Rock me to sleep, mother,--rock me to sleep! Come, let your brown hair, just lighted with gold. Fall on your shoulders again as of old; Let it drop over my forehead to-night, Shading my faint eyes away from the light; For with its sunny-edged shadows once more Haply will throng the sweet visions of yore; Lovingly, softly, its bright billows sweep;-- Rock me to sleep, mother,--rock me to sleep! Mother, dear mother, the years have been long Since I last listened your lullaby song: Sing, then, and unto my soul it shall seem Womanhood's years have been only a dream. Clasped to your heart in a loving embrace, With your light lashes just sweeping my face, Never hereafter to wake or to weep;-- Rock me to sleep, mother,--rock me to sleep! Elizabeth Akers [1832-1911] THE BUCKET How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood, When fond recollection presents them to view! The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled wild-wood, And every loved spot which my infancy knew! The wide-spreading pond, and the mill that stood by it, The bridge, and the rock where the cataract fell, The cot of my father, the dairy-house nigh it, And e'en the rude bucket that hung in the well-- The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, The moss-covered bucket which hung in the well. That moss-covered vessel I hailed as a treasure, For often at noon, when returned from the field, I found it the source of an exquisite pleasure, The purest and sweetest that nature can yield. How ardent I seized it, with hands that were glowing, And quick to the white-pebbled bottom it fell; Then soon, with the emblem of truth overflowing, And dripping with coolness, it rose from the well-- The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, The moss-covered bucket arose from the well. How sweet from the green mossy brim to receive it, As poised on the curb it inclined to my lips! Not a full blushing goblet would tempt me to leave it, The brightest that beauty or revelry sips. And now, far removed from the loved habitation, The tear of regret will intrusively swell, As fancy reverts to my father's plantation, And sighs for the bucket that hangs in the well-- The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, The moss-covered bucket that hangs in the well! Samuel Woodworth [1785-1842] THE GRAPE-VINE SWING Lithe and long as the serpent train, Springing and clinging from tree to tree, Now darting upward, now down again, With a twist and a twirl that are strange to see; Never took serpent a deadlier hold, Never the cougar a wilder spring, Strangling the oak with the boa's fold, Spanning the beach with the condor's wing. Yet no foe that we fear to seek,-- The boy leaps wild to thy rude embrace; Thy bulging arms bear as soft a cheek As ever on lover's breast found place; On thy waving train is a playful hold Thou shalt never to lighter grasp persuade; While a maiden sits in thy drooping fold, And swings and sings in the noonday shade! O giant strange of our Southern woods! I dream of thee still in the well-known spot, Though our vessel strains o'er the ocean floods, And the Northern forest beholds thee not; I think of thee still with a sweet regret, As the cordage yields to my playful grasp,-- Dost thou spring and cling in our woodlands yet? Does the maiden still swing in thy giant clasp? William Gilmore Simms [1806-1870] THE OLD SWIMMIN'-HOLE Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! whare the crick so still and deep Looked like a baby-river that was laying half asleep, And the gurgle of the worter round the drift jest below Sounded like the laugh of something we onc't ust to know Before we could remember anything but the eyes Of the angels lookin' out as we left Paradise; But the merry days of youth is beyond our controle, And it's hard to part ferever with the old swimmin'-hole. Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! In the happy days of yore, When I ust to lean above it on the old sickamore, Oh! it showed me a face in its warm sunny tide That gazed back at me so gay and glorified, It made me love myself as I leaped to caress My shadder smilin' up at me with sich tenderness. But them days is past and gone, and old Time's tuck his toll From the old man come back to the old swimmin'-hole. Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! In the long, lazy days When the hum-drum of school made so many run-a-ways, How pleasant was the journey down the old dusty lane, Whare the tracks of our bare feet was all printed so plane You could tell by the dent of the heel and the sole They was lots o' fun on hand at the old swimmin'-hole. But the lost joys is past! Let your tears in sorrow roll Like the rain that ust to dapple up the old swimmin'-hole. Thare the bulrushes growed, and the cattails so tall, And the sunshine and shadder fell over it all; And it mottled the worter with amber and gold Tel the glad lilies rocked in the ripples that rolled; And the snake-feeder's four gauzy wings fluttered by Like the ghost of a daisy dropped out of the sky, Or a wownded apple-blossom in the breeze's controle As it cut acrost some orchurd to'rds the old swimmin'-hole. Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! When I last saw the place, The scenes was all changed, like the change in my face; The bridge of the railroad now crosses the spot Whare the old divin'-log lays sunk and fergot. And I stray down the banks whare the trees ust to be-- But never again will theyr shade shelter me! And I wish in my sorrow I could strip to the soul, And dive off in my grave like the old swimmin'-hole. James Whitcomb Riley [1849-1916] FORTY YEARS AGO I've wandered to the village, Tom, I've sat beneath the tree, Upon the schoolhouse playground, that sheltered you and me; But none were there to greet me, Tom; and few were left to know, Who played with us upon that green some forty years ago. The grass is just as green, Tom; barefooted boys at play Were sporting, just as we did then, with spirits just as gay. But the "master" sleeps upon the hill, which, coated o'er with snow, Afforded us a sliding-place some forty years ago. The old schoolhouse is altered some; the benches are replaced By new ones, very like the same our jackknives once defaced; But the same old bricks are in the wall, the bell swings to and fro; Its music's just the same, dear Tom, 'twas forty years ago. The boys were playing some old game, beneath that same old tree; I have forgot the name just now--you've played the same with me, On that same spot; 'twas played with knives, by throwing so and so; The loser had a task to do, there, forty years ago. The river's running just as still; the willows on its side Are larger than they were, Tom; the stream appears less wide; But the grape-vine swing is ruined now, where once we played the beau, And swung our sweethearts--pretty girls--just forty years ago. The spring that bubbled 'neath the hill, close by the spreading beech, Is very low--'twas then so high that we could scarcely reach; And, kneeling down to get a drink, dear Tom, I started so, To see how sadly I am changed since forty years ago. Near by that spring, upon an elm, you know I cut your name, Your sweetheart's just beneath it, Tom, and you did mine the same; Some heartless wretch has peeled the bark, 'twas dying sure but slow, Just as she died, whose name you cut, some forty years ago. My lids have long been dry, Tom, but tears came to my eyes; I thought of her I loved so well, those early broken ties; I visited the old churchyard, and took some flowers to strow Upon the graves of those we loved some forty years ago. Some are in the churchyard laid, some sleep beneath the sea, And none are left of our old class, excepting you and me; But when our time shall come, Tom, and we are called to go, I hope we'll meet with those we loved some forty years ago. Unknown [Sometimes called "Twenty Years Ago." Claimed for A. J. Gault (1818-1903) by his family] BEN BOLT Don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt,-- Sweet Alice whose hair was so Brown, Who wept with delight when you gave her a smile, And trembled with fear at your frown? In the old churchyard in the valley, Ben Bolt, In a corner obscure and alone, They have fitted a slab of the granite so gray, And Alice lies under the stone. Under the hickory tree, Ben Bolt, Which stood at the foot of the hill, Together we've lain in the noonday shade, And listened to Appleton's mill. The mill-wheel has fallen to pieces, Ben Bolt, The rafters have tumbled in, And a quiet which crawls round the walls as you gaze Has followed the olden din. Do you mind of the cabin of logs, Ben Bolt. At the edge of the pathless wood, And the button-ball tree with its motley limbs, Which nigh by the doorstep stood? The cabin to ruin has gone, Ben Bolt, The tree you would seek for in vain; And where once the lords of the forest waved Are grass and the golden grain. And don't you remember the school, Ben Bolt, With the master so cruel and grim, And the shaded nook in the running brook Where the children went to swim? Grass grows on the master's grave, Ben Bolt, The spring of the brook is dry, And of all the boys who were schoolmates then There are only you and I. There is change in the things I loved, Ben Bolt, They have changed from the old to the new; But I feel in the deeps of my spirit the truth, There never was change in you. Twelvemonths twenty have passed, Ben Bolt, Since first we were friends--yet I hail Your presence a blessing, your friendship a truth, Ben Bolt of the salt-sea gale. Thomas Dunn English [1819-1902] "BREAK, BREAK, BREAK" Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me. O, well for the fisherman's boy, That he shouts with his sister at play! O, well for the sailor lad, That he sings in his boat on the bay! And the stately ships go on, To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still! Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me. Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892] 
2678	----	None 
2679	----	None 
26864	----	produced from images generously made available by The Kentuckiana Digital Library) Poems for Pale People A Volume of Verse By Edwin C. Ranck Humanity Printing and Publishing Co. St. Louis, Mo. Copyrighted 1906 by EDWIN C. RANCK PREFACE _This little volume was written for no reason on earth and with no earthly reason. It just simply happened, on the principle, I suppose that "murder will out." Murder is a bad thing and so are nonsense rhymes. There is often a valid excuse for murder; there is none for nonsense rhymes. They seem to be a necessary evil to be classed with smallpox, chicken-pox, yellow fever and other irruptive diseases. They are also on the order of the boomerang and eventually rebound and inflict much suffering on the unlucky verse-slinger. So you see nonsense, like a little learning is a dangerous thing and should be handled with as much care as the shotgun which is never known to be loaded._ _A man who writes nonsense may become in time a big gun. But this is rare; more often he becomes a small bore. This appears paradoxical and will probably require thinking over, but the more you think it over the less you will understand. This is true of parlor magic. It is also true of the magazine poets. It really never pays to think. Thinking is too much like work. After reading these rhymes you will not think that the writer ever did think, which after all is the right way to think._ _When Dryden wrote "Alexander's Feast" he modestly stated that it was the grandest poem ever written. Mr. Dryden evidently believed this or he wouldn't have said so. But then every one did not agree with Mr. Dryden. Now I am going one step further and will positively state that the writer of this volume is the greatest poetical genius who has not yet died in infancy._ _This is an astounding statement but it can be corroborated by admiring friends, for the writer is like a certain brand of children's food in that he is advertised by his loving friends._ _Speaking of "Alexander's Feast" it simply cannot be compared to any one of the finished, poetic gems in this collection because it is so utterly different. The difference is what made Dryden famous. But comparisons are odious, and Mr. Dryden has been dead several years._ _"But what," you may ask, "is the object of nonsense verse?" Most assuredly to make one laugh. That masterpiece of nonsense "Alice In Wonderland" and its companion volume "Through The Looking Class" are absurd books, but their very absurdity is what appeals to us most. Their author, Mr. Lewis Carroll was, in private life a very sober gentleman (at least we hope so). Nonsense is the salt of life with which we season the dry food of everyday cooking._ _"A little nonsense now and then Is relished by the wisest men."_ _Even serious old Longfellow had this feeling in his bones when he wrote the immortal lines which all of us recall from childhood:_ _"There was a little girl And she had a little curl Which hung way down on her forehead; And when she was good, She was very good indeed, But when she was bad, she was horrid."_ _This is nonsense pure and simple and even the most ardent admirers of Mr. Longfellow must, when they try to make "forehead" and "horrid" rhyme, admit that it was very poor verse for the author of "Evangeline."_ _Bret Harte flew off at a tangent when he wrote about "Ah Sin, The Chinaman," a nonsense poem that gave "Bill Nye" his pseudonym. Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote "The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay." Rudyard Kipling is often "caught with the goods on him" and Mark Twain wrote an "Ode to Stephen Dowling Botts."_ _And Great Scott! I almost forgot that even such a gentle, domestic creature as the cow has been the unconscious inspiration of much nonsense and has doubtless often chewed the bitter cud of reflection in deploring her undesired popularity. First she was forced (very much against her will, no doubt) to jump over the moon to the undignified strains of "Hey Diddle, Diddle." Then, just when beginning to breathe easily again after that astounding performance, Gelett Burgess came along and gave her more notoriety by raising the question as to whether there was such a thing as a "purple cow." And even today in many of the rural districts there are old farmers who never heard of Burgess and his "purple cow" who will tell you solemnly that "there is a cow of a sort of purplish color." Which goes to prove that after all nonsense is only sense plus--NON._ The poems in this collection have appeared from time to time in The Kentucky Post, The Cincinnati Post, The Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, Humanity and The Valley Magazine. WHY THE MOLE IS BLIND. In days gone by, when cows could fly And goblins rode on bears; When fairies danced upon the green And giants moped in lairs, There lived alone upon a shelf A tinsie, winsie little elf. Just when the stars came out at night And moonbeams filled the earth with light, Down from his perch this little elf Would jump and wander by himself. He wore a pair of little wings Tied in their place by golden strings. One day he took a kind of notion To take a trip upon the ocean. He combed his hair and washed his face And put his little wings in place, Then from his shelf he softly stole And went to see his friend the mole Who gave to him a pea-green boat And guaranteed that it would float. A funny thing about this boat 'Twas patterned from a ten-pound note. The little elf was greatly pleased And laughed until he sneezed and sneezed; He launched his boat upon the sea And kicked his little heels in glee. The mole looked on in glad surprise (For in those days all moles had eyes.) He shouted out a loud farewell As the little row-boat rose and fell. The elf picked up a golden oar And soon lost sight of mole and shore. The elf rowed out for quite a way And in the waves did sport and play, Until at length the sun sank low And then he thought it time to go. Now just as luck would have it then A prowling sea gull left his den. The savage sea gull loudly laughed To see an elf in such a craft, And swooping down upon the water He did a thing he hadn't oughter, For with his strong and sturdy beak He caused the boat to spring a leak. He said he longed for a little change And the bank-note boat was just in range; The poor young elf gave one big holler Just as the sea gull made a swallow (And this is strange indeed to follow For a gull himself is just a swallow.) The faithful mole heard this loud yell And rushed down to the shore pell-mell. Alas, alas he was too late And saw his friend's unhappy fate; He groaned, and shrieked and tore his fur And raised an awful din and stir. The sea gull heard this awful racket And seized the mole, just like a packet. He carried him across the seas To teach the young gulls A B C's. But the loving mole went blind with rage And they had to put him in a cage, And ever since that fatal night The moles have all been out of sight. NOW THERE'S A COON IN THE MOON. There was once an eccentric old coon, Who ate dynamite with a spoon, But when he got loaded The powder exploded-- And now there's a coon in the moon. THE COUNTY FAIR. Oh, let's go out to the county fair And breathe the balmy country air, And whittle a stick and look at the hosses, Discuss the farmer's profit and losses. We'll take a look at the country stock And drink some milk from a dairy crock; Look at the pigs and admire the chickens, And try to forget it's hot as the dickens. Forget there are any political rings Just think of the butter and eggs and things; So wash off the buggy and hitch up the mare, And we'll all go out to the county fair. O'DOWD OF THE JEFFERSON CLUB. A maddened horse comes down the street, With waving mane and flying feet. The crowd scatters in every direction; It looks like a fight at a city election. A big policeman waves his hands, And the air is full of vague commands, While across the street a retail grocer Shrieks to his child as the horse draws closer When suddenly out of the mad hubbub, Steps Jimmie O'Dowd of the Jefferson Club. Every man there holds his breath-- To stop the horse means sudden death. But quick as a flash, O'Dowd makes a dash. With all his might and the horse's mane, He brings the old plug to a halt again. Then every man there doffs his hat And cries "Well, what do you think of that?" Never since the days of Nero Has there been a greater hero. HALLOWEEN. A night when witches skim the air, When spooks and goblins climb the stair; When bats rush out with muffled wings, And now and then the door-bell rings; But just the funniest thing of all Is 'cause you can't see when they call. SATURDAY ON THE FARM. 'Tis Saturday morn and all is bright By nature's own endowing; The sun is fiercely giving light, And only me-- Plowing. Across the river I hear the sound Of a boatman slowly rowing; I have no time to fool around, Especially when I'm-- Hoeing. And when the dinner hour has come, And thoughts of work are fleeting, I only hear the insects hum, Because I'm busy-- Eating. At night when all things are at rest, Safe in Old Morpheus' keeping, No troubles do my mind infest, For I am soundly-- Sleeping. LOVING JOHN. John went into the garden one day And found his baby sister at play; John hit baby with a brick And laughed because it made her sick. John is only two and six And loves to do these funny tricks. THE CIRCUS. O, the circus parade! O, the circus parade! It lays all the politics back in the shade, And the merchants forget that they've got any trade, While many remember they've never been paid As they rushed out to look at the circus parade; And preachers who used to be terribly staid Yell just like boys at the circus parade. Every one's there, both the mistress and maid, All looking on at the circus parade. And out at the grounds, when you've seen the parade, How delicious it is to drink pink lemonade; And look at the elephant twirling his trunk, And laugh at the capers cut by the monk; Watch the old clown who is acting a dunce, And try hard to see three rings going at once; Gaze at the ringmaster cracking his whip, And watch the tight-rope artist skip. I saw that circus, Yes Sirree! Saw about enough for three. LENT. "Oh lend me five," the young man cried, "My money all is spent." The maiden shook her head and sighed, "I'm sorry but it's Lent." THE PROCESSIONAL. (Written in collaboration with R. B. Hamilton.) When Julius Caesar met his death, He muttered in his dying breath: "It is not patriotism now Prompts you to break your friendship's vow." Quoth Brutus, as he stabbed again The greatest of his countrymen: "You're in this fix Through politics." As on his path Columbus sped, A sailor to the great man said: "Without a break, without a bend, The broad Atlantic has no end." And to the sailor at his side, 'Tis rumored, that great man replied: "I guess I know. You go below." The snow fell fast on Russia's soil, The soldiers, wearied with their toil, Cried: "'Tis not possible that we Our native France again shall see." Stern ever in the face of death, Napoleon said beneath his breath: "Go take a walk, I hate such talk." A cherry tree lay on the ground, On George's body, pa did pound; "But pa," George cried, "It seems to me That you are wrong; dis ain't your tree." The old man sadly shook his head And to his wayward son he said: "Don't lie to me I know my tree." When Dewey on his flagship sailed, The Spaniards never even quailed. "Oh, it ain't possible," said they, "For him to reach Manila Bay." But Dewey merely smiled in glee, "It isn't possible?" quoth he, "Why, hully gee, Just wait and see." MORAL. Thus onward as through life we go, Amid the pomp, and glare, and show, We oft some proverb misconstrue And mutter boldly, "'Tis not true." But in their calm, majestic way, We hear the tongues of wise men say: "You go way back And then sit down." AT THE TELEPHONE. Ting-ling--"South, please, 1085; Why hello, Jim--Oh, Saints alive! It's south, I told you--hello; no, I said once that I could not go. "Say, can you meet me there tonight? Confound it, Jim, you must be tight. What are you saying anyhow, I've got the wrong ear by the sow? "Not pretty? Why, she's out o'sight, Oh, shut up; that will be all right. You can't walk there? Why it ain't far; We get there on a 'lectric car. "Well, Great Scott, man, don't talk all day, But let me know now right away. Miss B----, Oh, let the old girl wait; We won't be out so very late. "You will? All right then--eight o'clock; Be sure and meet me on the block, Remember now, don't get it wrong; All right, old man (Ting-ling), so long." A HARDSHIP. I never saw a loaf of bread Conspicuous in its purity, But that I sadly shook my head And left five-cents as surety. CHRISTMAS TOYS. Say, I like toys, Christmas toys. Remember when we were boys Long ago? Then you were a kid Not a beau. And on Christmas Day, Oh, say, We got up in the dark And had a jolly lark Round the fire. The cold air was shocking As we peeped in our stocking-- And, way down in the toe, Now say this is so-- Dad placed a dollar. Made me holler. Yes, sirree, They were good to me. Remember Jim? Mean trick I did him. You know Jim was surly? Well I got up early Took his dollar out, And put a rock In his sock. Gee, he was mad, Went and told dad; But dad he just laughed And said: Might's well be dead If you couldn't have fun. Then for spite, I kept that dollar 'til night. Funny, seein' these toys Made me think of us boys. But now, Gee! Christmas ain't like it used to be. THE RUBAIYAT OF A KENTUCKIAN. Wake for the sun, that scatters into flight, The poker players who have stayed all night; Drives husbands home with reeling steps, and then-- Gives to the sleepy "cops" an awful fright. I sometimes think that never blows so red The nose, as when the spirits strike the head; That every step one takes upon the way Makes him wish strongly he were home in bed. The moving finger writes, but having "pull", You think that you can settle things in full, But when you interview the Police Judge, You find that you have made an awful bull. Some nonsense verses underneath the bough, A little "booze", a time to loaf, and thou-- Beside me howling in the wilderness, Would be enough for one day anyhow. THE MEDICINE MAN. Good people if you have the mumps, Or ever get down with the dumps; Or have bad cold or aching pains, Or ever suffer with chilblains-- Don't seek your doctor for advice, And pay him some tremendous price, But buy a drug that's safe and sure-- In fact, get Blank's Consumptive Cure. ALAS. He led her out across the sand, And by her side did sit: He asked to hold her little hand, She sweetly answered, "Nit." THE GLORIOUS FOURTH AND ITS MEMORIES. Have you ever mused in silence upon a summer's day And let your thoughts run riot and your feelings have full sway, As you sprawled full length upon the grass in some secluded dell And breathed the balmy country air, and smelt the country smell? Then as you muse, And gently snooze, Between thinks You remember those jinks When spirits were high On the Fourth of July. There was little Willie Browning, the worst of all the boys Who had a sure-nuff cannon that made all kinds of noise; And when the cannon wouldn't go he blew into the muzzle, But what became of Willie's teeth has always been a puzzle. How the folks looked askance At the seats of our pants, When those giant skyrockets Went off in our pockets! Gee whiz! What fun the Fourth is! When the red-hot July sun began to wink the clouds away, We were out with whoops and shoutings to celebrate the day. With piece of punk in one hand and crackers in the other, We would troop home later in the day for linseed oil and mother. But our burns Were small concerns. Our hearts were light, Injuries slight. Not even a sigh On the Fourth of July. And as you lie and ponder, the thought comes home to you That your youngest boy now celebrates the way you used to do; And the mother that he bawls for to have those small wounds dressed Is the woman whom long years ago you swore you loved the best. But what funny things Memory brings. Who would have thought That I would be caught With a tear in my eye On the Fourth of July. KEEP TRYIN'. When you're feelin' blue as ink An' your spirits 'gin to sink, Don't be weak an' take a drink But Keep Tryin'. There are times when all of us Get riled up and start a muss, But there ain't no use to cuss, Just Keep Tryin'. When things seem to go awry, And the sun deserts your sky, Don't sit down somewhere and cry, But Keep Tryin'. Everybody honors grit, Men who never whine a bit-- Men who tell the world, "I'm IT" And Keep Tryin'. Get a hustle on you NOW, Make a great, big solemn vow That you'll win out anyhow, And Keep Tryin'. All the world's a battlefield Where the true man is revealed, But the ones who never yield Keep Tryin'. GENIUS. There was once a young man quite erratic Who lived all alone in an attic, He wrote magazine verse That made editors curse, But his friends thought it fine and dramatic. TALE OF THREE CITIES. A seedy young man in Savanah Fell in love with a rich girl named Anna, But her papa got mad And swore that "By Gad, The fellow shall never Havana!" But the couple eloped to Caracas, Where the Germans kicked up such a fracas; And he said to his wife, "You can bet your sweet life That papa dear never will track us." MODERN MAUD MULLER. Maud Muller on a summer's day, Raked the meadows, sweet with hay. Nor was this just a grand-stand play; Maud got a rake-off, so they say. NOCTURNE. A cat duet. A silhouette. A high brick wall, An awful squall. A moonlit night, A mortal fight. A man in bed, Sticks out his head. Gee Whiz! The man has riz. His arm draws back A big bootjack-- A loud swish, Squish! "What's that?" A dead cat. THE SISSY BOY. Beware the Sissy Boy my child, Not because he's very wild; The Sissy Boy is never that, Although he'll run if you say "Scat!" The Sissy Boy's infinitesimal, He is not worth a duodecimal. If you should take a custard pie And hit a Sissy in the eye, He would not go before a jury, He'd only blush and say "Oh Fury!" For he is perfumed, sweet and mild, That's just his kind, my dearest child. One should never strike a Sissy, He is too lady-like and prissy. You do not need to use your fist But merely slap him on the wrist, And if this will not make him budge, Then glare at him and say "Oh Fudge!" The Sissy sports a pink cravat And often wears a high silk hat; His voice is like a turtle dove's And he always wears the "cutest" gloves. At playing ping-pong he's inured, And his finger-nails are manicured. He uses powder on his face And his handkerchiefs are trimmed with lace; He loves to play progressive euchre And spend his papa's hard-earned lucre. He wears an air of nonchalance And always takes in every dance. Socially, he's quite a pet And always fashionably in debt. He hates to be considered slow And poses as a famous beau. He loves to cut a swath and dash When papa dear puts up the cash. This, my child, is the Sissy Boy Who acts so womanly and coy. His head's as soft as new-made butter; His aim in life is just to flutter; Yet he goes along with unconcern And marries a woman with money to burn. TO GELETT BURGESS. I never saw a purple cow, You say you never saw one; But this I'll tell you anyhow, I know that I can draw one. THE LOBSTER. Lobsters haven't any feet, But they have lots of claws; Yet lobster meat is good to eat, And this is strange, because-- A dog is never good to eat, And yet a dog has paws, And so have cats, and so have rats And so have other kind of brats. A lobster then, so to speak, Is, my child, an awful freak; For if you get him in a stew, He'll blush quite red and glare at you. Yet if you eat much lobster salad, It will make you very pallid. A PUN FROM THE DEEP. A funny thing once happened to a German from Berlin, For once he got too gay and seized a swordfish by the fin, This made the big fish angry, and he sawed the German's chin. "Just Tell Them That I Saw You" said the swordfish with a grin. STYLISH. There once was an old crocodile Who lived on the banks of the Nile. One day, for a meal, He swallowed a wheel, And ate for dessert, an automobile. IF I COULD FLY. (What the Little Boy Thought.) If I had wings just like a bird Do you know what I'd do? I'd fly way up into the sky An' holler down at you. I'd fly along the Milky Way Feelin' fine and chipper, An' then I'd drink some buttermilk Fresh from out the Dipper. I'd skim along through fleecy clouds, An' see the great, Big Bear An' ask him how he liked to live So high up in the air. Wouldn't it be dandy To fly just when you please, An' go an' ask the Dog-star If he worried much with fleas? I'd do all kinds of other things If I could only fly, But I am just a little boy An' so I dassn't try. A HAND-ME-DOWN. Said Sue to her suitor: "You'll get a new suit, or I'll sue for a suitor to suit." "Why Sue," said her suitor Who tried hard to suit her, "Your suitor is suited to suit." FAREWELL SNOW. (After Walt Whitman.) That light, that white, that weird, uncanny substance we call snow Is slowly sifting through the bare branches--and ever and anon My thoughts sift with the drifting snow, and I am full of pale regret. Yes, full of pale regret and other things--you know what I mean. And why? Because the snow must go; the time has came to part. Yes, it cannot wait much longer--like the flakes my thoughts are melting 'Tis here, 'tis there, in fact, 'tis everywhere--the snow I mean. Like the thick syrup which covers buckwheat cakes it lies. The man who says he don't regret its passing also lies. And wilt thou never come again? Yes, thou ilt never come again. Alas! How well I remember thee! 'Twas but yesterday, methinks. When a great daub of snow fell from a nearby housetop And when I ventured--poor foolish mortal that I was--to look, Caught me fairly in the mouth (an awful swat) and nearly smothered me. There is another little trick of thine, most lovely snow-- It is but a proof of thine affection to cling around our necks, But still we swear--we cannot help it, Snow. Now it is "Skidoo," or "23 for you." Oh, cursed inconstancy of man! THE SAD TURKEY GOBBLER. O a fat turkey gobbler once sat on a limb And he sighed at the wind, and the wind sighed at him. But the grief of the gobbler one could not diminish, For it was Thanksgiving and he saw his finish. So the heart of the gobbler was heavy as lead And he muttered the words of the poet who said: "Backward, turn backward, O Time in thy flight, Make me a boy again, just for to-night!" SPRIG HAS CUB. Sprig, Sprig--Oh lovely Sprig! Oh, hast thou cub to stay? Add wilt the little birdies sig Throughout the livelog day? What bessage dost thou brig to be, Fair Lady of by dreabs-- Dost whisper of the babblig brook Ad fishig poles ad streabs? Those happy days have cub agaid, The sweetest of the year, Whed bad cad raise ad appetite Ad wholesub thirst for beer. I've often thought id wudder, Sprig, Of how the lily grows, But the thig that's botherig be dow Is how to sprig dew clothes. Sprig, Sprig--Oh lovely Sprig! By thoughts are all of you I saw a robid yesterday-- How strange it seebs--ad dew! I've got a dreadful cold, Fair Sprig, Or else I'd sig to thee Ad air frob Beddelssohd, perhaps, Or "The Shade of the Old Apple Tree." THE HOT WEATHER FIEND. Ah, somewhere in another world There is a warmer spot, Where the fire is burning always. And always it is hot; And always fiends are shouting, And always flames are blue, And always Satan's asking: "IS IT HOT ENOUGH FOR YOU?" WHEN THE LID WAS ON. They were seated there in silence Each one busy with a frown, It was midnight in the city, And the lid was on the town. They had all been playing poker 'Mid the rattle of the chink, When a gloom fell o'er the party, For they couldn't buy a drink, But a little fellow whispered As he held a poker hand, "Can't we get as drunk on water As we can upon the land?" Then we kicked the little rascal, And we spoke without a frown, And we anchored safe in harbor When the lid was on the town. THE DOODLE BUG. Why that's a doodle bug, my child Who lives alone, remote and wild. His domicile's a hole in the ground And when at home he's easily found. The only plan allowed by law Is to lure him forth upon a straw, For the doodle bug is a misanthrope And otherwise is sure to elope. GRIT. I hate the fellow who sits around And knocks the livelong day-- Who tells of the work he might have done; If things had come his way. But I love the fellow who pushes ahead And smiles at his work or play-- You can wager when things do come around, They will come his way--and stay. THE NEXT MORNING. What a difference in the morning When you try to raise your head; When your eyelids seem so heavy You could swear they were of lead; When your tongue is thickly coated And you have an awful thirst; When you drink so much cold water That you feel about to burst; When you lift your hand towards heaven And solemnly do say: "I'm going to 'cut out' drinking And I'll swear off right to-day." A WONDERFUL FEAT. I never walk along the street Because I haven't any feet; Nor is this strange when I repeat That I am but a garden beet. APRIL FOOL. 'Twas on the f-f-f-first of April D-D-Day, W-w-w-when Nature s-s-smiled and all w-w-was gay, And I--w-w-why I was in a w-w-whirl, 'C-c-cause I w-w-was w-w-walking w-w-with my g-g-girl. We w-w-wandered through a leafless w-w-wood W-w-where many giant oak-t-t-trees s-s-stood, And p-p-paused beside a d-d-dark g-g-green pool And sat d-d-down on a rustic s-s-stool. T-t-then out I s-s-spoke in accents b-b-bold, And all m-m-my l-love for her I t-t-told. She answered w-w-with a sweet, s-s-hy g-g-glance That pierced m-m-my h-h-heart like C-C-Cupid's l-lance. I seized her in a t-t-tight embrace, And s-s-showered k-k-kisses on her f-f-face, And t-t-told her that I'd g-g-give my l-life If she would only b-b-be my w-w-wife. "Please k-k-keep your l-l-life," the m-m-maid replied "F-f-for I w-w-will gladly b-b-be your b-b-bride, And y-y-you" she s-s-said, in t-t-tones quite c-c-cool, "W-w-why you c-c-can b-b-be my April F-F-Fool." BRUTAL MARY. Mary had a little lamb, The lamb was always buttin' So Mary killed the little lamb And turned him into mutton. YOU COULDN'T HARDLY NOTICE IT AT ALL. There was a girl in our town Who dearly loved to flirt, But the home folks never noticed it at all. The women in the neighborhood All said she was too pert, But she never even noticed them at all. One night a young man came to call Who was considered slow, But when he got alone with her, He turned the lights down low. He begged her for a little kiss, She softly murmured "No," But you couldn't hardly notice it at all. THE ALARM CLOCK. With a clatter and a jangle, And a wrangle and a screech, How the old alarm clock wheezes As it sneezes out of reach! How you groan and yawn and stretch In the chilly morning air, As you pull the blankets tight, With your head clear out of sight-- How you swear! A NEW VERSION. Old Mother Hubbard She went to the cupboard, To find a nice bone for her dog. But when she got there The cupboard was bare, And now they are both on the hog. OH SCISSORS! I knew a young man so conceited That a glance at his face made you heated. One night, playing whist, He was slapped on the wrist, Because some one said that he cheated. HE APED HER. An impudent Barbary ape Once tried on a lady's new cape. As he gave a big grin, The lady came in, And--his children are still wearing crepe. TAKE UP THE HOUSEHOLD BURDEN. Take up the household burden, No iron rule of kings, But make your family understand That you are running things, Don't storm around and bluster, And don't get mad and swear If in the soup is floating-- A rag and a hank of hair. Take up the household burden In patience to abide, To curse the irate grocer And make your wife confide By open speech and simple And hundred times made plain How she has sought to profit In spending all you gain. Take up the household burden-- The little baby boy, And walk the floor in anguish And don't let it annoy. For when the kid seems sleepy And you are feeling "sold," There comes a cry from baby boy That makes your blood run cold. Take up the household burden And try and be a man, Just simply grin and bear it And do the best you can. Come now and try your manhood And let the future go, And listen to your elders-- They've tried it and they know. VITASCOPE PICTURES. A young girl stands Upon the sands, And waves her hands-- Flirtation. A fresh young man With shoes of tan, Looks spick and span-- Expectation. They walk the beach, She seems a peach Just out of reach-- Vexation. Ah what is this? A sound of bliss A kiss, a kiss-- Elation. A father lean Upon the scene, Looks awful mean-- (Curtain.) AN IRISH TOAST. Here's to dear Ould Ireland, Here's to the Irish lass, Here's to Dennis and Mike and Pat, Here's to the sparkling glass. Here's to the Irish copper, He may be green all right, But you bet he's Mickie on the spot Whenever it comes to a fight. Here's to Robert Emmet, too, And here's to our dear Tom Moore. Here's to the Irish shamrock, Here's to the land we adore. MY LIFE AND DEATH. (By A. Turkey Gobbler.) I'm just a turkey gobbler, But I've got a word to say And I'd like to say it quickly Before I pass away, For I will get it in the neck Upon Thanksgiving Day. I cannot keep from thinking Of poor Marie Antoinette, She lost her head completely, But this is what I'll get-- They'll knock the stuffin' out o' me Without the least regret. I've just a few days left now Before I meet my fate, For every turkey gets the axe, The little and the great. There never was a turkey born Who didn't fill a plate. Only three days left now, Goodness, how time flies! It brings a sadness to my heart And teardrops to my eyes. Does every turkey feel that way Three days before he dies? This is a very cruel world (I'm talking sober facts), For I was only raised to be The victim of an axe-- The butt of all your silly jokes, And all your funny cracks. And when you sit down Thursday How happy you will be, Every person gathered there Will eat enough for three. I'll be the guest of honor 'Cause that dinner is on ME. L'ENVOI. I'm the ghost of that poor gobbler Who used to be so great, They took my poor, neglected bones And piled them on a plate. Reader, shed a kindly tear For my unhappy fate. This is the common lot of all Upon the world's great chart; We've got to leave a pile of bones-- The stupid and the smart. Even when Napoleon died He left a Bonaparte. We are merely puppets Moving on a string, And when we think that we are IT, The axe will fall--"Gezing!" O, Grave, where is thy victory? O, Death, where is thy sting? IF I WERE CITY EDITOR. (After Ben King, Dedicated to E. Jesse Conway.) If I were City Editor And you should come to my cold desk and choke, And say, "Old man I'm actually dead broke." I say, if I were City Editor, And you should come in deepest grief and woe And say, "Oh Lordy let me have the dough," I might arise with slow and solemn wink And lecture you upon the curse of drink. If I were City Editor And you should come to my hotel and reel, Clasping my beer to quench the thirst you feel, I say if I were City Editor And you should come in trembling and in fear And even hint about licking up that beer, I'd hit you just one swat, and then, I guess I'd have to order one more bier. TRANSCENDENTALISM. What is transcendentalism? Merely sentimentalism With a dash of egotism Somewhat mixed with mysticism. Not at all like Socialism, Nor a bit like Atheism, Hinges not on pessimism, Treats of man's asceticism, Quite opposes anarchism. Can't you name another "Ism?" Yes, it's transcendentalism. THE EPIC OF THE HOG. (Man's Inhumanity to Hogs Makes Countless Thousands Squeal.) I lived upon a little farm, A happy hog was I, I never dreamed of any harm Nor ever thought to die. All day I wallowed in the mud, And ate the choicest slops. I watched the brindles chew their cud-- The farmer tend his crops. Upon the hottest days I'd go And flounder in the river-- I thought that hogs might come and go, But I would live forever. Then finally I waxed so fat That I could hardly walk, And then the farmers gather 'round And all began to talk. I couldn't understand a word, All I did was grunt; You see that's all a hog can do-- It is his only stunt. But finally they took me out And put me on a train. I really couldn't move about And squealed with might and main. I grunted, grunted as I flew And moved in vain endeavor, But even then I thought it true That I would live forever. And so we came to Packingtown Where there were hogs galore, I never saw so many hogs In all my life before. Then we had to shoot the chutes And climb a flight of stairs, We never had a chance to stop Or time to say our prayers. Loud-squealing hogs above, below They formed a seething river, For men may come and men may go But hogs go on forever. And then I saw an iron wheel Which stood alone in state, And then I heard an awful squeal-- A hog had met his fate. A devilish chain upon the wheel Had seized him by the leg; It was no use to kick and squeal, It was no use to beg. I longed in deepest grief and woe To leave that brimming river; If once into that room you go Your fate is sealed forever. Farewell, Farewell, a long farewell, Around the room I spin, And then a fellow with a knife Smites me below the chin. L'Envoi. Dear reader I was just a hog, But O it's awful hard To die disgraced, and then to be-- Turned into "Pure Leaf Lard." IN KENTUCKY. (A Response to Judge Mulligan's Famous Toast.) The moonlight may be softest In Kentucky, And summer days come oftest In Kentucky, But friendship is the strongest When the money lasts the longest Or you sometimes get in wrongest In Kentucky. Sunshine is the brightest In Kentucky, And a right is often rightest In Kentucky, While plain girls are the fewest, They work their eyes the truest, They leave a fellow bluest In Kentucky. All debts are treated lightest In Kentucky, So make your home the brightest In Kentucky, If you have the social entree You need never think of pay, Or, at least, that's what they say In Kentucky. Orators are the proudest In Kentucky, And they always talk the loudest In Kentucky. While boys may be the fliest, Their money is the shyest, They carry bluffs the highest In Kentucky. Pedigrees are longest In Kentucky, Family trees the strongest In Kentucky. For blue blood is a pride, But, if you've ever tried You'll find 'sporting blood' inside In Kentucky. Society is exclusive In Kentucky, So do not be intrusive In Kentucky. If you want the right of way, And have the coin to pay, You'll be in the swim to stay In Kentucky. The race track's all the money In Kentucky, But don't you go there, sonny In Kentucky. For, while thoroughbreds are fleetest, They get your coin the neatest, And leave you looking seediest In Kentucky. Short-skates are the thickest In Kentucky, They spot a sucker quickest In Kentucky. They'll set up to a drink, Get your money 'fore you think, And you get the "dinky dink" In Kentucky. If you want to be fraternal In Kentucky, Just call a fellow "Colonel" In Kentucky, Or, give a man a nudge And say, "How are you, Judge?" For they never call that "fudge" In Kentucky. But when you have tough luck In Kentucky, In other words "get stuck" In Kentucky, Just raise your voice and holler And you'll always raise a dollar, While a drink is sure to follow In Kentucky. 'Tis true that birds sing sweetest In Kentucky, That women folk are neatest In Kentucky, But there are things you shouldn't tell About our grand old State--and, well-- Politics is h----l In Kentucky. IN DEEPER VEIN. The Incubus. The way was dark within the gloomy church-yard, As I wandered through the woodland near the stream, With slow and heavy tread Through a city of the dead, When suddenly I heard a dreadful scream. My heart gave frantic leap, as when the roebuck Is started by the clamor of the chase, And I halted all atremble In the vain hope to dissemble, Or cloak the leaden pallor on my face. 'Twas in the ghostly month of grim December, The frozen winds were bitter in their cry And I muttered half aloud To that white and silent crowd: "'Tis a somber month to live in or to die." And then as if in answer to my whisper, Came a voice of some foul fiend from Hell: "No longer live say I, 'Tis better far to die And let the falling snow-flakes sound the knell." Perched upon a tombstone sat the creature Grewsome as an unquenched, burning lust. Sitting livid there With an open-coffin stare-- A stare that seemed the mocking of the just. And in my thoughts the dreadful thing is sitting-- Sitting there with eyelids red and blear, And see it there I will 'Til my restless soul is still And the earth-clods roll and rumble on my bier. TO CLARA MORRIS. In days gone by, the poets wrote Sweet verses to the ladies fair; Described the nightingale's clear note, Or penned an Ode to Daphne's hair. To dare all for a woman's smile Or breathe one's heart out in a rose-- Such trifles now are out of style, The scented manuscript must close. Yet Villon wrote his roundelays, And that sweet singer Horace; But I will sing of other days In praise of Clara Morris. Youth is but the joy of life, Not the eternal moping; We get no happiness from strife Nor yet by blindly groping. All the world's a stage you know The men and women actors; A little joy, a little woe-- These are but human factors. The mellow days still come and go, The earth is full of beauty; If we would only think it so, Life is not all a duty. And you are young in heart not years, Is this not true because You mingle happiness with tears And do not look for flaws? Your silver hair is but the snow That drifts above the roses, And though the years may come and go They can but scatter posies. REQUIESCAT. (Mrs. Jefferson Davis, widow of the President of the Southern Confederacy died October 16, 1906.) Oh weep fair South, and bow thy head For one is gone beyond recall! Cast flowers on the sainted dead Who sleeps beneath a funeral pall. To the sound of muffled drum, To the sound of muffled drum. She saw a noble husband's fame Grow more enduring with the years, And in the land his honored name Loom brighter through a mist of tears, But the sound of muffled drum! O the sound of muffled drum! Our fate is but to meet and part Upon Life's dark and troubled sea, Yet recollection stirs the heart, Of men in gray who used to be, But the sound of muffled drum! O the sound of muffled drum! Brave South, 'tis but a moment's pause E'er on that dim and distant shore, The heroes of thy Fallen Cause Will meet again to part no more To the sound of muffled drum. To the sound of muffled drum. CRABBED. A college professor one day Was fishing in Chesapeake Bay; Said a crab to his mate, "Let's kick off the bait, This business is too old to pay." LIFE. The list is long, the stories read the same; Strong mortal man is but a flesh-hued toy; Some have their ending in a life of shame; Others drink deeply from the glass of joy; Some see the cup dashed dripping from their lip Or drinking, find the wine has turned to gall, While others taste the sweets they fain would sip And then Death comes--the sequel to it all. TO POE. You lived in a land horror-haunted, And wrote with a pen half-divine; You drank bitter sorrow, undaunted And cast precious pearls before swine. TO A CHILD AT CHRISTMAS TIME. May the day that gave Christ birth Bring you boundless joy and mirth, Fill the golden hours with gladness, Raise no thought to cause you sadness. [1]THE WAR OF THE RATS AND MICE. Far back within an age remote, Which common history fails to note, When dogs could talk, and pigs could sing, And frogs obeyed a wooden king, There lived a tribe of rats so mean, That such a set was never seen. For during all the livelong day They fought and quarrelled in the hay, And then at night they robbed the mice, Who always were so kind and nice. They stole their bread, they stole their meat, And all the jam they had to eat; They gobbled up their pies and cake, And everything the mice could bake; They stuffed themselves with good fresh meal, And ruined all they could not steal; They slapped their long tails in the butter Until they made a frightful splutter; Then, sleek and fine in coats of silk, They swam about in buttermilk. They ate up everything they found, And flung the plates upon the ground. And catching three mice by their tails, They drowned them in the water-pails; Then seeing it was morning light, They scampered home with all their might. The mouse-tribe living far and near, At once this awful thing did hear, And all declared with cries of rage, A war against the rats they'd wage. The mouse-king blew a trumpet blast, And soon the mice came thick and fast From every place, in every manner, And crowded round the royal banner. Each had a sword, a bow and arrow; Each felt as brave as any sparrow, And promised, in the coming fight, To die or put the rats to flight. The king put on a coat of mail, And tied a bow-knot to his tail; He wore a pistol by his side, And on a bull-frog he did ride. "March on!" he cried. And, hot and thick, His army rushed, in double quick. And hardly one short hour had waned, Before the ranks the rat-camp gained, With sounding drum and screaming fife, Enough to raise the dead to life. The rats, awakened by the clatter, Rushed out to see what was the matter, Then down the whole mouse-army flew, And many thieving rats it slew. The mice hurrahed, the rats they squealed, And soon the dreadful battle-field Was blue with smoke and red with fire, And filled with blood and savage ire. The rats had eaten so much jam, So many pies and so much ham, And were so fat and sick and swollen With all the good things they had stolen That they could neither fight nor run; And so the mice the battle won. They threw up rat-fur in the air; They piled up rat-tails everywhere; And slaughtered rats bestrewed the ground For ten or twenty miles around. The rat-king galloped from the field When all the rest were forced to yield; But though he still retained his skin, He nearly fainted with chagrin, To think that in that bloody tide So many of his rats had died. Fierce anger blazed within his breast; He would not stop to eat or rest; But spurring up his fiery steed, He seized a sharp and trusty reed-- Then, wildly shouting, rushed like hail To cut off little mouse-king's tail. The mouse-king's face turned red with passion To see a rat come in such fashion, For he had just that minute said That every thieving rat was dead. The rat was scared, and tried to run, And vowed that he was just in fun; But nought could quell the mouse-king's fury-- He cared not then for judge or jury; And with his sharp and quivering spear, He pierced the rat right through the ear. The rat fell backward in the clover, Kicked up his legs, and all was over. The mice, with loud and joyful tones, Now gathered all the bad rats' bones, And with them built a pyramid, Down which their little children slid. And after that eventful day The mice in peace and joy could play, For now no wicked rats could steal Their cakes and jam and pies and meal, Nor catch them by their little tails, And drown them in the water-pails. [1] Written by the author's father, the late George W. Ranck. It first appeared in St. Nicholas and is reprinted by permission of The Century Company. Things Worth While. To sit and dream in a shady nook While the phantom clouds roll by; To con some long-remembered book When the pulse of youth beats high. To thrill when the dying sunset glows Through the heart of a mystic wood, To drink the sweetness of some wild rose, And to find the whole world good. To bring unto others joy and mirth, And keep what friends you can; To learn that the rarest gift on earth Is the love of your fellow man. To hold the respect of those you know, To scorn dishonest pelf; To sympathize with another's woe, And just be true to yourself. To find that a woman's honest love In this great world of strife Gleams steadfast like a star, above The dark morass of life. To feel a baby's clinging hand, To watch a mother's smile; To dwell once more in fairyland-- These are the things worth while. 
26918	----	SPECTRA A BOOK OF POETIC EXPERIMENTS BY ANNE KNISH AND EMANUEL MORGAN NEW YORK MITCHELL KENNERLEY 1916 COPYRIGHT 1916 BY MITCHELL KENNERLEY PRINTED IN AMERICA CONTENTS PAGE To Remy de Gourmont (Emanuel Morgan) vii Preface (Anne Knish) ix SPECTRA BY EMANUEL MORGAN OPUS PAGE 1 Drums 53 2 Hope 14 6 If I Were Only Dafter 56 7 A Bunch of Grapes 8 9 Frogs' Legs on a Plate 57 13 A Peacock-Feather 11 14 I Had Put Out My Leaves 51 15 Despair Comes 6 16 The Guillotine 20 17 Needles and Pins 46 29 Knives 31 31 Thank God that We Can Laugh 27 40 Two Cocktails Round a Smile 35 41 Spectres 2 45 The Locust-Tree 49 46 No Other Angle 40 47 Giver of Bribes in the Brightness of Morning 37 55 The Impossible 43 62 Three Little Creatures 16 63 Spears 23 78 I Am Beset 63 79 Only Lovers 66 101 The Piano 61 104 Madagascar 59 SPECTRA BY ANNE KNISH OPUS PAGE 1 The Seconds Bob By 41 40 I Have not Written--That You May Read 26 50 The Piano Lives in a Dusk 1 67 I Would Not in the Early Morning 10 76 Years Are Nothing 4 80 Oh, My Little House of Glass 52 88 So We Came Back Again 36 96 You Are the Delphic Oracle 33 118 If Bathing Were a Virtue 7 122 Upstairs There Lies a Sodden Thing 39 126 His Eyes 12 131 I Am Weary 18 134 Listen, My Friend 21 135 In a Tomb of Argolis 64 150 Sounds 29 151 Candle, Candle 15 181 Skeptical Cat 62 182 He's the Remnant of a Suit 60 187 I Do Not Know Very Much 58 191 The Black Bark of a Dog 48 195 Her Soul Was Freckled 55 200 If I Should Enter to his Chamber 45 TO REMY DE GOURMONT POET, a wreath!-- No matter how we had combined our flowers, You would have worn them--being ours. . . . On you, on them, the showers-- O roots beneath! EMANUEL MORGAN. PREFACE THIS volume is the first compilation of the recent experiments in Spectra. It is the aim of the Spectric group to push the possibilities of poetic expression into a new region,--to attain a fresh brilliance of impression by a method not so wholly different from the methods of Futurist Painting. An explanation of the term "Spectric" will indicate something of the nature of the technique which it describes. "Spectric" has, in this connection, three separate but closely related meanings. In the first place, it speaks, to the mind, of that process of diffraction by which are disarticulated the several colored and other rays of which light is composed. It indicates our feeling that the theme of a poem is to be regarded as a prism, upon which the colorless white light of infinite existence falls and is broken up into glowing, beautiful, and intelligible hues. In its second sense, the term Spectric relates to the reflex vibrations of physical sight, and suggests the luminous appearance which is seen after exposure of the eye to intense light, and, by analogy, the after-colors of the poet's initial vision. In its third sense, Spectric connotes the overtones, adumbrations, or spectres which for the poet haunt all objects both of the seen and the unseen world,--those shadowy projections, sometimes grotesque, which, hovering around the real, give to the real its full ideal significance and its poetic worth. These spectres are the manifold spell and true essence of objects,--like the magic that would inevitably encircle a mirror from the hand of Helen of Troy. Just as the colors of the rainbow recombine into a white light,--just as the reflex of the eye's picture vividly haunts sleep,--just as the ghosts which surround reality are the vital part of that existence,--so may the Spectric vision, if successful, synthesize, prolong, and at the same time multiply the emotional images of the reader. The rays which the poet has dissociated into colorful beauty should recombine in the reader's brain into a new intensity of unified brilliance. The reflex of the poet's sight should sustain the original perception with a haunting keenness. The insubstantiality of the poet's spectres should touch with a tremulous vibrancy of ultimate fact the reader's sense of the immediate theme. If the Spectrist wishes to describe a landscape, he will not attempt a map, but will put down those winged emotions, those fantastic analogies, which the real scene awakens in his own mind. In practice this will be found to be the vividest of all modes of communication, as the touch of hands quickens a mere exchange of names. It may be noted that to Spectra, to these reflected experiences of life, as we perceive them, adheres often a tinge of humor. Occidental art, in contrast to art in the Orient, has until lately been afraid of the flash of humor in its serious works. But a growing acquaintance with Chinese painting is surely liberating in our poets and painters a happy sense of the disproportion of man to his assumed place in the universe, a sense of the tortuous grotesque vanity of the individual. By this weapon, man helps defend his intuition of the Absolute and of his own obscure but real relation to it. The Spectric method is as yet in its infancy; and the poems that follow are only experimental efforts toward the desired end. Among them, the most obvious illustrations of the method are perhaps _Opus 41_ by Emanuel Morgan and _Opus 76_ by Anne Knish. Emanuel Morgan, with whom the Spectric theory originated, has found the best expression of his genius in regular metrical forms and rhyme. Anne Knish, on the other hand, has used only free verse. We wish to make it clear that the Spectric manner does hot necessitate the employment of either of these metrical systems to the exclusion of the other. Although the members of our group would by no means attempt to establish a claim as actual inventors of the Spectric method, yet we can justifiably say that we have for the first time used the method consciously and consistently, and formulated its possibilities by means of elaborate experiment. Among recent poets in English, we have noted few who can be regarded in a sure sense as Spectrists. ANNE KNISH. ANNE KNISH _Opus 50_ THE piano lives in a dusk Where rich amber lights Quiver obscurely. It exists only at twilight; And somewhere afar In the depths of a tropic forest The sun is now setting, and the phoenix looks Mysteriously toward the gold. I think I must have been born in such a forest, Or in the tangle of a Chinese screen. There is indigo in this music; This dusk is filled with amber lights; Through the tangled evening of heavy flower-scents Come footfalls That surely I can almost remember. EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 41_ SPECTRES came dancing up the wind, Trailing down the long grass, Shooting high, undisciplined, To join the sun and see you pass . . . The colors of the pointed glass. Under a willow-maze you went Unsaddened . . . But a violet beam Fell on the white face, backward bent, Of a body in a stream. Into the sun you came again, With sun-red light your feet were shod . . . And round you stood a ring of feathered men With naked arms acknowledging a god. Indigo-birds and squirrels on a tree And orioles flashed in and out . . . The yellow outline of Eurydice Waited for Orpheus in a black redoubt With a beaded fern you waved away a gnat . . . And maidens, hung with vivid beads of green, One of them bearing in her arms an orange cat, Held palms about a queen. Then you were lost to sight And locking trees became the clouds of you, Till you emerged, the moon upon your shoulder, and the night Bloomed blue. ANNE KNISH _Opus 76_ YEARS are nothing; Days alone count; These, and the nights. I have seen the grey stars marching, And the green bubbles in wine, And there are Gothic vaults of sleep. My cathedral Has one great spire Tawny in the sunlight. Gargoyles haunt its nave; High up amid its dark-arches Forgotten songs live shadowy. Gold and sardonyx Deck its altars. Its mighty roof Is copper rivering with the rain. Tomorrow lightning swords will come And thunder of cannon. They will unrivet this roof Of mighty copper. Before the eyes of my gargoyles, In the sound of my forgotten songs, They will take it. And as the rain sluices down I shall have to follow my roof into the war. EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 15_ DESPAIR comes when all comedy Is tame And there is left no tragedy In any name, When die round and wounded breathing Of love upon the breast Is not so glad a sheathing As an old brown vest. Asparagus is feathery and tall, And the hose lies rotting by the garden-wall. ANNE KNISH _Opus 118_ IF bathing were a virtue, not a lust, I would be dirtiest. To some, housecleaning is a holy rite. For myself, houses would be empty But for the golden motes dancing in sunbeams. Tax-assessors frequently overlook valuables. Today they noted my jade. But my memory of you escaped them. EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 7_ BEYOND her lips in the dark are a man's feet Composed and dead . . . In the light between her lips is a moving tongue-rip sweet, Red. Her arms are his white robes, They cover a king, His ornaments her crescent lobes And two moons on a string. Sheba, Sheba, Proserpina, Salome, See, I am come!--king, god, saint!-- With the stone of a volcano O show that you know me, Pound till the true blood pricks through the paint! Twitch of the dead man's feet if he remembers A bunch of grapes and a ripped-open gown.-- And the live man's eyes are night after embers, Two black spots on a white-faced down . . . And in the dawn, lava . . . rolling down . . . Down-rolling lava on an up-pointing town. ANNE KNISH _Opus 67_ I WOULD not in the early morning Start my mind on its inevitable journey Toward the East. There are white domes somewhere Under that blue enameled sky, white domes, white domes; Therefore even the cream Is safest yellow. Cream is better than lemon In tea at breakfast I think of tigers as eating lemons. Thank God this tea comes from the green grocer, Not from Ceylon. EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 13_ O PEACOCK-FEATHER Drawn through a death-dim hole, With colors blurred together, Persian pattern of a soul-- Is it enough to have belonged To the exaltation of a bird Round whom they thronged Each time her high tail stirred? . . . I loved a woman whose two eyes, One blue, one gray, Would block Like cliffs my foothold in the skies . . . She is dead, they say-- Dead as a peacock. ANNE KNISH _Opus 126_ HIS eyes Are the resurrection. Once when beneath the moonrise They looked into mine, Grey mists held mastery between us, And I knew that his soul Had gone down into death. But tonight a golden star-dust Is pouring through space, And the mist is burned away by it. Tonight his soul awakens Out of its splendid cerements, And through his eyes the miracle Arises to the earth. I have prayed long beside the tomb And touched the grave-cloths With living fingers. I have lain my breasts Against the granite Of the sarcophagus Where he was. Prayers for the dead I offered up And hecatombs. Today there was a wonder in the sunrise. I knew that there were glories in the sky And new branches of willow on the earth. And my soul trembled with prophecy. I prophesied The resurrection. Now it has come. And I lie shaken Before its tumult. EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 2_ HOPE Is the antelope Over the hills; Fear Is the wounded deer Bleeding in rills; Care Is the heavy bear Tearing at meat; Fun Is the mastodon Vanished complete . . . And I am the stag with the golden horn Waiting till my day is born. ANNE KNISH _Opus 151_ CANDLE, candle, Flicker and flow-- I knew you once-- But it was not long ago, it was Last night. And you spoiled my otherwise bright evening. EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 62_ THREE little creatures gloomed across the floor And stood profound in front of me, And one was Faith, and one was Hope, And one was Charity. Faith looked for what it could not find, Hope looked for what was lost, (Love looked and looked but Love was blind), Charity's eyes were crossed. Then with a leap a single shape, With beauty on its chin, Brandished a little screaming ape . . . And each one, like a pin, Fell to a pattern on the rug As flat as they could be-- And died there comfortable and snug, Faith, Hope and Charity. That shape, it was my shining soul Bludgeoning every sham . . . O little ape, be glad that I Can be the thing I am! ANNE KNISH _Opus 131_ I AM weary of salmon dawns And of cinnamon sunsets; Silver-grey and iron-grey Of winter dusk and morn Torture me; and in the amethystine shadows Of snow, and in the mauve of curving clouds Some poison has dwelling. Ivory on a fan of Venice, Black-pearl of a bowl of Japan, Prismatic lustres of Phoenician glass, Fawn-tinged embroideries from looms of Bagdad, The green of ancient bronze, cinereous tinge Of iron gods,-- These, and the saffron of old cerements, Violet wine, Zebra-striped onyx, Are to me like the narrow walls of home To the land-locked sailor. I must have fire-brands! I must have leaves! I must have sea-deeps! EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 16_ DEATH on a cross was not the blade In Mary's heart . . . For the mother of man and the son of the maid Had walked one night apart, When his beard was not yet grown--and, afraid, She had seen his young words dart. Between a mother and a son, The guillotine . . . It falls, it falls, and one by one, Unseeing and unseen, They face the great sharp shining ton That time has eaten green. Between the shoulder and the head The guillotine must play And cleave with clash unmerited The generating day . . . Till the separated parts, not dead, Rise and walk away. ANNE KNISH _Opus 134_ LISTEN, my friend, That you may understand me.-- In my earliest youth I dreamed in hues volcanic. I saw each day open Like a curtain of flame. Black slaves attended My waking moments; Three ebony slaves Washed sleep from my white body. Three ebony slaves Around my ivory smoothness Folded heavy robes Of crimson and white. And as I issued forth Into the blue vault of the daylight A grey ape pranced before me And a leopard crept behind. This was the state Of my young heritage. Scarlet as the voice of trumpets Was the pageant of my days. Can I accept now The twilight? And soon the dark, where all colors Die? Before I die, I will hold one last revel! I will have golden cups and poppy curtains!-- And yet-- No! . . . In a black hall The black table shall spread far down before me And all the feasters garbed in black. Then, at the feast's height, I arising Shall with a gesture like the midnight Throw back my midnight robe and suddenly stand Naked, the sole white flame of the world. EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 63_ THE seven deathly spears of memory Setting behind a god, a golden glorious Halo of land and sea Even for you and me, Even for us . . . The spear of Egypt, Orange, Through the sleeping lid, With all the power of the bulk of a pyramid. The spear of Chile, Yellow, Through the thrilling cheek, With all the push of an upturned Andean peak. The spear of Thibet, Violet, Through the eager hand, The thrust of the iron of a silent land. The spear of the Ice-Poles, Green, Through the warm-breathing breast, The glacial east and the glacial west The spear of Norway, Blue, Through the curved arm-pit, The cheerless sun majestic in a jagged slit. The spear of India, Indigo, Through the holy side, A heaven-touching temple-roof down a mountain-slide. The spear of Europe, Red, In the mouth's breath, The million-splintering scream of death . . . Even to us, The seven-spearing sun, The sword of separation before our love is done; Even for us, A simian shape Throwing seven souls on the sea-wet cape; Even for us Who smile mouth to mouth, The full tornado from the seven-forked south; Even to us Who clasp with our knees, The scattering upheaval of the seven cold seas! And this is as near as lovers ever come, Their words are dumb; This is as near as they have ever kissed, Their lips are ocean-mist. Yet what avail the seven Spears of memory Against the obstinate archery Of light, the spears of heaven? ANNE KNISH _Opus 40_ I HAVE not written, reader, That you may read. . . . They sit in rows in the bare school-room Reading. Throwing rocks at windows is better, And oh the tortoise-shell cat with the can tied on! I would rather be a can-tier Than a writer for readers. I have written, reader, For abstruse reasons. Gold in the mine . . . Black water seeping into tunnels . . . A plank breaks, and the roof falls . . . Three men suffocated. The wife of one now works in a laundry; The wife of another has married a fat man; I forget about the third. EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 31_ THE night is growing deep with snow O put your hand in mine, While the mirthful secrets that we know Bloom in the fire-shine-- Flakes falling with an undertow Of delicate design. Hushed are the courts where ladies went Unquestioning to quaff Goblets of liquid firmament-- Thank God that we can laugh! Hushed are the plains where Asia poured The blood of peacock kings-- But we can echo, thank the Lord, What the China teapot sings: Nothing bereaves The eternal tune Of little crisp leaves Green in the moon. The night is deeper still with snow . . . O let us never stir From the mirthful secrets that we know Of old diameter! Eve laughed at Adam long ago, And Adam laughed at her. ANNE KNISH _Opus 150_ SOUNDS, pure sounds-- Nothing-- Vibrancies of the air-- And yet-- This summer night There are crickets shrilling Beyond the deep bassoon of frogs. They cease for a moment As the rattling clangor Of the trolley Bumps by. I hear footsteps Hollow on the pavement Now deserted And blank of sound. They die. The crickets now are sleeping; Even the leaves Grow still. And slowly Out of the blankness, out of the silence Emerges on soundless wings! The long sweet-sloping Rise and fall of far viol notes,-- The mad Nirvana, The faint and spectral Dream-music Of my heart's desire. EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 29_ KNIVES for feet, and wheels for a chin, And the long smooth iron bore for a neck, And bullets for hands. . . . And the root runs in, The root of blood no stone can check, From the breasts of the grinding crash of sin, From engines hugging in a wreck. A thousand round-red mouths of pain Blaring black, A twisting comrade on his back In a round-red stain, Clotted stalks of red sumac, Discs of the sun on a bayonet-stack . . . Blood, flame, a cataract Thrown upward from a desert place: Flame and blood, the one blind fact, Contained, or spouting from the face, Or coiling out of bellies, packed In a stinking spent embrace . . . Country, a babble of black spume . . . Faith, an eyeball in the sand . . . Mother, a nail through a broken hand-- A kissing fume-- And out of her breast the bloody bubbling milk-red breath Of death. ANNE KNISH _Opus 96_ YOU are the Delphic Oracle Of the Under-World. As we sit talking, All of us together, You flash forth sudden utterance Of buried things That writhe in obscure life Within our minds' last darkness. That which we think and say not You say and think not. In us these thoughts Like worms stir vilely. But from you they depart as sudden butterflies Crimson and green against the pure sky. Many are the revelers; Few are the thyrsus-bearers; And sole is Dionysus. This I inscribe to you, Singer, In memory of the crags of Delphi And the Thessalian vales beyond. EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 40_ TWO cocktails round a smile, A grapefruit after grace, Flowers in an aisle . . . Were your face. A strap in a street-car, A sea-fan on the sand, A beer on a bar . . . Were your hand The pillar of a porch, The tapering of an egg, The pine of a torch . . . Were your leg.-- Sun on the Hellespont, White swimmers in the bowl Of the baptismal font Are your soul. ANNE KNISH _Opus 88_ SO we came back again After some years-- Just revisiting The scenes of our sin. Nothing is there but the garden; And we had expected That we would be there. I heard a wind blowing Down the sky. It came with heavy auguries And passed. There was a soothsayer once in Rome Who on a white altar Inspected the purple entrails of victims. EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 47_ GIVER of bribes in the brightness of morning, Cities have wavered and rocked and gone down . . . But the lamps of the altars hang round you, adorning The niche of your neck and the drift of your gown. O bribe-giver, marked with purple metal-- Cut in your naked contentment there shows On the curve of your breast one carven petal From heaven's impenetrable rose! You open the window to myriad windows, The high triangular door of the world . . . Till the walls and the roofs and the curious keystone, The carven rose with its petals uncurled, Are swayed in the swathe of the uppermost ether, Where stars are the columns upholding a dome, And the edifice rolls on a corner of ocean, Lifts on a wave, poises on foam . . . We stand on the rose, we are images golden, We move interchanging, attaining one crest: One chin and one mouth and one nose and one forehead, One mouth and one chin and one neck and one breast . . . I pull you apart from me, struggle to bind you, I free you, I rend you in seven great rays . . . And we cling to them all . . . but we lose them, and slowly-- We slip with the rainbow down the blue bays. ANNE KNISH _Opus 122_ UPSTAIRS there lies a sodden thing Sleeping. Soon it will come down And drink coffee. I shall have to smile at it across the table. How can I? For I know that at this moment It sleeps without a sign of life; it is as good as dead. I will not consort with reformed corpses, I the life-lover, I the abundant. I have known living only; I will not acknowledge kinship with death. White graves or black, linen or porphyry, Are all one to me. And yet, on the Lybian plains Where dust is blown, A king once Built of baked clay and bulls of bronze A tomb that makes me waver. EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 46_ I ONLY know that you are given me For my delight. No other angle finishes my soul But you, you white. I know that I am given you, Black whirl to white, To lift the seven colors up . . . Focus of light! ANNE KNISH _Opus 1_ REITERATION! . . . The seconds bob by, So many, so many, Each ugly in its own way As raw meats are all ugly. Why do we feed on the dead? Or would at least it were with cries and lust Of slaying our human food Beneath a cannibal sun! But these old corpses of alien creatures! . . . I loathe them! And too many heads go by the window, All alien-- Filers of saws, doubtless, Or lechers Or Sabbath-keepers. Morality comes from God. He was busy. He forgot to make beauty. Why does he not call back into their hen-house This ugly straggling flock of seconds That trail by With pin-feathers showing? EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 55_ WHY ask it of me?--the impossible!-- Shall I pick up the lightning in my hand? Have I not given homages too well For words to understand?-- Words take you from me, bring you back again, Dance in our presence, cover your proud face With the incredible counterpane, Break our embrace . . . No, not to you Your wish, But to some kangaroo Or cuttle-fish Or octopus or eagle or tarantula Or elephant or dove Or some peninsula Let me speak love-- Or call some battle or some temple-bell Or many-curving pine Or some cool truth-containing well Or thin cathedral--mine! ANNE KNISH _Opus 200_ IF I should enter to his chamber And suddenly touch him, Would he fade to a thin mist, Or glow into a fire-ball, Or burst like a punctured light-globe? It is impossible that he would merely yawn and rub And say--"What is it?" EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 17_ MAN-THUNDER, woman-lightning, Rumble, gleam; Refusal, Scream. Needles and pins of pain All pointed the same way; Parellel lines of pain When the lips are gray And know not what they say: Rain, Rain. But after the whirl of fright And great shouts and flashes, The pounding clashes And deep slashes, After the scattered ashes Of the night, Heaven's height Abashes With a gleam through unknown lashes Of delicious points of light. ANNE KNISH _Opus 191_ THE black bark of a dog Made patterns against the night. And little leaves flute-noted across the moon. I seemed to feel your soft looks Steal across that quiet evening room Where once our souls spoke, long ago. For that was of a vastness; And this night is of a vastness . . . There was a dog-bark then-- It was the sound Of my rebellious and incredulous heart Its patterns twined about the stars And drew them down And devoured them. EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 45_ AN angel, bringing incense, prays Forever in that tree . . . I go blind still when the locust sways Those honey-domes for me. All the fragrances of dew, O angel, are there, The myrrhic rapture of young hair, The lips of lust; And all the stenches of dust, Even the palm and the fingers of a hand burnt bare With a curling sweet-smelling crust, And the bitter staleness of old hair, Powder on a withering bust . . . The moon came through the window to our bed. And the shadows of the locust-tree On your white sweet body made of me, Of my lips, a drunken bee. . . . O tree-like Spring, O blossoming days, I, who some day shall be dead, Shall have ever a lover to sway with me. For when my face decays And the earth moulds in my nostrils, shall there not be The breath therein of a locust-tree, The seed, the shoot of a locust-tree, The honey-domes of a locust-tree, Till lovers go blind and sway with me?-- O tree-like Spring, O blossomy days, To sway as long as the locust sways! EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 14_ BESIDE the brink of dream I had put out my willow-roots and leaves As by a stream Too narrow for the invading greaves Of Rome in her trireme . . . Then you came--like a scream Of beeves. ANNE KNISH _Opus 80_ OH my little house of glass! How carefully I have planted shrubbery To plume before your transparency. Light is too amorous of you, Transfusing through and through Your panes with an effulgence never new. Sometimes I am terribly tempted To throw the stones myself. EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 1_ THEY enter with long trailing of shadowy cloth, And each with one hand praying in the air, And the softness of their garments is the grayness of a moth-- The lost and broken night-moth of despair. And they keep a wounded distance With following bare feet, A distance Isadoran-- And the dark moons beat Their drums. More desolate than they are Isadora stands, The blaze of the sun on her grief; The stars of a willow are in both her hands, And her heart is the shape of a leaf. And they come to her for comfort And her black-thrown hair Is a harp of consolation Singing anthems in the air. With the dark she wrestles, daring alone, Though their young arms would aid; Her body wreathes and brightens, never thrown, Unvanquished, unafraid . . . Till light comes leaping On little children's feet, Comes leaping Isadoran-- And the white stars beat Their drums. ANNE KNISH _Opus 195_ HER soul was freckled Like the bald head Of a jaundiced Jewish banker. Her fair and featurous face Writhed like An albino boa-constrictor. She thought she resembled the Mona Lisa. This demonstrates the futility of thinking. EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 6_ IF I were only dafter I might be making hymns To the liquor of your laughter And the lacquer of your limbs. But you turn across the table A telescope of eyes. And it lights a Russian sable Running circles in the skies. . . . Till I go running after, Obeying all your whims-- For the liquor of your laughter And the lacquer of your limbs. EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 9_ WHEN frogs' legs on a plate are brought to me As though I were divinity in France, I feel as God would feel were He to see Imperial Russians dance. These people's thoughts and gestures and concerns Move like a Russian ballet made of eggs; A bright-smirched canvas heaven heaves and burns Above their arms and legs. Society hops this way and that, well-taught; But while I watch, in cloudy state, I feel as God would feel if he were brought Frogs' legs on a plate. ANNE KNISH _Opus 187_ I DO not know very much, But I know this-- That the storms of contempt that sweep over us, Ready to blast any edifice before then Rise from the fathomless maelstrom Of contempt for ourselves. If there be a god, May he preserve me From striking with these lightnings Those whom I love. Saying which, Zarathustra strolled on Down Fifth Avenue. The last three lines Are symptomatic. EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 104_ HOW terrible to entertain a lunatic! To keep his earnestness from coming close! A Madagascar land-crab once Lifted blue claws at me And rattled long black eyes That would have got me Had I not been gay. ANNE KNISH _Opus 182_ "HE'S the remnant of a suit that has been drowned; That's what decided me," said Clarice. "And so I married him, I really wanted a merman; And this slimy quality in him Won me. No one forbade the banns. Ergo--will you love me?" EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 101_ HE not only plays One note But holds another note Away from it-- As a lover Lifts A waft of hair From loved eyes. The piano shivers, When he touches it, And the leg shines. ANNE KNISH _Opus 181_ SKEPTICAL cat, Calm your eyes, and come to me. For long ago, in some palmed forest, I too felt claws curling Within my fingers . . . Moons wax and wane; My eyes, too, once narrowed and widened Why do you shrink back? Come to me: let me pat you-- Come, vast-eyed one . . . Or I will spring upon you And with steel-hook fingers Tear you limb from limb. . . . There were twins in my cradle. . . . EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 78_ I AM beset by liking so many people. What can I do but hide my face away?-- Lest, looking up in love, I see no eyes or lids In the gleaming whirl of day, Lest, reaching for the fingers of love, I know not which are they, Lest the dear-lipped multitude, Kissing me, choke me dead!-- O green eyes in the breakers, White heave unquieted, What can I do but dive again, again--again-- To hide my head! ANNE KNISH _Opus 135_ IN a tomb of Argolis, Under an arch of great stones, Where my eyes were sightless, groping, I touched this figment of clay. Forgotten vase of immemorial Greece, Colorless form! I have entered to the blind dark Of the tomb where you have slept forever And with the dreams of my importunate hands I touch you in the profound darkness. You are cold and estranged; Yet the ends of my fingers cling to your porous surface. You are thin and very tall; My palm can cover your mouth. Your lip curves but a little; Around your throat My two hands meet, And then part as I follow the swelling Rhythm that downward widens, And I pass around and under, And the returning line Ebbs home. Beneath your feet I touch cold marble; My hand returns To sleep upon your breast Dreaming it warm. EMANUEL MORGAN _Opus 79_ ONLY the wise can see me in the mist, For only lovers know that I am here After his piping, shall the organist Be portly and appear? Pew after pew, Wave after wave . . . Shall the digger dig and then undo His own dear grave? Hear me in the playing Of a big brass band . . . See me, straying With children hand in hand . . . Smell me, a dead fish . . . Taste me, a rotten tree. . . . Someday touch me, all you wish, In the wide sea. 
2621	----	THE HOME BOOK OF VERSE, Volume 3 By Burton Egbert Stevenson Contents of Volumes 1 through 4 of our Etext editions: PART I POEMS OF YOUTH AND AGE The Human Seasons John Keats THE BABY "Only a Baby Small" Matthias Barr Only Harriet Prescott Spofford Infant Joy William Blake Baby George Macdonald To a New-Born Baby Girl Grace Hazard Conkling To Little Renee William Aspenwall Bradley A Rhyme of One Frederick Locker-Lampson To a New-Born Child Cosmo Monkhouse Baby May William Cox Bennett Alice Herbert Bashford Songs for Fragoletta Richard Le Gallienne Choosing a Name Mary Lamb Weighing the Baby Ethel Lynn Beers Etude Realiste Algernon Charles Swinburne Little Feet Elizabeth Akers The Babie Jeremiah Eames Rankin Little Hands Laurence Binyon Bartholomew Norman Gale The Storm-Child May Byron "On Parent Knees" William Jones "Philip, My King" Dinah Maria Mulock Craik The King of the Cradle Joseph Ashby-Sterry The Firstborn John Arthur Goodchild No Baby in the House Clara Dolliver Our Wee White Rose Gerald Massey Into the World and Out Sarah M. P. Piatt "Baby Sleeps" Samuel Hinds Baby Bell Thomas Bailey Aldrich IN THE NURSERY Mother Goose's Melodies Unknown Jack and Jill Unknown The Queen of Hearts Unknown Little Bo-Peep Unknown Mary's Lamb Sarah Josepha Hale The Star Jane Taylor "Sing a Song of Sixpence" Unknown Simple Simon Unknown A Pleasant Ship Unknown "I Had a Little Husband" Unknown "When I Was a Bachelor" Unknown "Johnny Shall Have a New Bonnet" Unknown The City Mouse and the Garden Mouse Christina Rossetti Robin Redbreast Unknown Solomon Grundy Unknown "Merry Are the Bells" Unknown "When Good King Arthur Ruled This Land" Unknown The Bells of London Unknown "The Owl and the Eel and the Warming Pan" Laura E. Richards The Cow Ann Taylor The Lamb William Blake Little Raindrops Unknown "Moon, So Round and Yellow" Matthias Barr The House That Jack Built Unknown Old Mother Hubbard Unknown The Death and Burial of Cock Robin Unknown Baby-Land George Cooper The First Tooth William Brighty Rands Baby's Breakfast Emilie Poulsson The Moon Eliza Lee Follen Baby at Play Unknown The Difference Laura E. Richards Foot Soldiers John Banister Tabb Tom Thumb's Alphabet Unknown Grammar in Rhyme Unknown Days of the Month Unknown The Garden Year Sara Coleridge Riddles Unknown Proverbs Unknown Kind Hearts Unknown Weather Wisdom Unknown Old Superstitions Unknown THE ROAD TO SLUMBERLAND Wynken, Blynken, and Nod Eugene Field The Sugar-Plum Tree Eugene Field When the Sleepy Man Comes Charles G. D. Roberts Auld Daddy Darkness James Ferguson Willie Winkle William Miller The Sandman Margaret Thomson Janvier The Dustman Frederick Edward Weatherly Sephestia's Lullaby Robert Greene "Golden Slumbers Kiss Your Eyes" Thomas Dekker "Sleep, Baby, Sleep" George Wither Mother's Song Unknown A Lullaby Richard Rowlands A Cradle Hymn Isaac Watts Cradle Song William Blake Lullaby Carolina Nairne Lullaby of an Infant Chief Walter Scott Good-Night Jane Taylor "Lullaby, O Lullaby" William Cox Bennett Lullaby Alfred Tennyson The Cottager to Her Infant Dorothy Wordsworth Trot, Trot! Mary F. Butts Holy Innocents Christina Georgina Rossetti Lullaby Josiah Gilbert Holland Cradle Song Josiah Gilbert Holland An Irish Lullaby Alfred Perceval Graves Cradle Song Josephine Preston Peabody Mother-Song from "Prince Lucifer" Alfred Austin Kentucky Babe Richard Henry Buck Minnie and Winnie Alfred Tennyson Bed-Time Song Emilie Poulsson Tucking the Baby In Curtis May "Jenny Wi' the Airn Teeth" Alexander Anderson Cuddle Doon Alexander Anderson Bedtime Francis Robert St. Clair Erskine THE DUTY OF CHILDREN Happy Thought Robert Louis Stevenson Whole Duty of Children Robert Louis Stevenson Politeness Elizabeth Turner Rules of Behavior Unknown Little Fred Unknown The Lovable Child Emilie Poulsson Good and Bad Children Robert Louis Stevenson Rebecca's After-Thought Elizabeth Turner Kindness to Animals Unknown A Rule for Birds' Nesters Unknown "Sing on, Blithe Bird" William Motherwell "I Like Little Pussy" Jane Taylor Little Things Julia Fletcher Carney The Little Gentleman Unknown The Crust of Bread Unknown "How Doth the Little Busy Bee" Isaac Watts The Brown Thrush Lucy Larcom The Sluggard Isaac Watts The Violet Jane Taylor Dirty Jim Jane Taylor The Pin Ann Taylor Jane and Eliza Ann Taylor Meddlesome Matty Ann Taylor Contented John Jane Taylor Friends Abbie Farwell Brown Anger Charles and Mary Lamb "There Was a Little Girl" H. W. Longfellow The Reformation of Godfrey Gore William Brighty Rands The Best Firm Walter G. Doty A Little Page's Song William Alexander Percy How the Little Kite Learned to Fly Unknown The Butterfly and the Bee William Lisle Bowles The Butterfly Adelaide O'Keefe Morning Jane Taylor Buttercups and Daisies Mary Howitt The Ant and the Cricket Unknown After Wings Sarah M. B. Piatt Deeds of Kindness Epes Sargent The Lion and the Mouse Jeffreys Taylor The Boy and the Wolf John Hookham Frere The Story of Augustus, Who Would Not Have Any Soup Heinrich Hoffman The Story of Little Suck-A-Thumb Heinrich Hoffman Written in a Little Lady's Little Album Frederick William Faber My Lady Wind Unknown To a Child William Wordsworth A Farewell Charles Kingsley RHYMES OF CHILDHOOD Reeds of Innocence William Blake The Wonderful World William Brighty Rands The World's Music Gabriel Setoun A Boy's Song James Hogg Going Down Hill On a Bicycle Henry Charles Beeching Playgrounds Laurence Alma-Tadema "Who Has Seen the Wind?" Christina Georgina Rossetti The Wind's Song Gabriel Setoun The Piper on the Hill Dora Sigerson Shorter The Wind and the Moon George Macdonald Child's Song in Spring Edith Nesbit Baby Seed Song Edith Nesbit Little Dandelion Helen Barron Bostwick Little White Lily George Macdonald Wishing William Allingham In the Garden Ernest Crosby The Gladness of Nature William Cullen Bryant Glad Day W. Graham Robertson The Tiger William Blake Answer to a Child's Question Samuel Taylor Coleridge How the Leaves Came Down Susan Coolidge A Legend of the Northland Phoebe Cary The Cricket's Story Emma Huntington Nason The Singing-Lesson Jean Ingelow Chanticleer Katherine Tynan "What Does Little Birdie Say?" Alfred Tennyson Nurse's Song William Blake Jack Frost Gabriel Setoun October's Party George Cooper The Shepherd William Blake Nikolina Celia Thaxter Little Gustava Celia Thaxter Prince Tatters Laura E. Richards The Little Black Boy William Blake The Blind Boy Colley Cibber Bunches of Grapes Walter de la Mare My Shadow Robert Louis Stevenson The Land of Counterpane Robert Louis Stevenson The Land of Story-Books Robert Louis Stevenson The Gardener Robert Louis Stevenson Foreign Lands Robert Louis Stevenson My Bed is a Boat Robert Louis Stevenson The Peddler's Caravan William Brighty Rands Mr. Coggs Edward Verrall Lucas The Building of the Nest Margaret Sangster "There was a Jolly Miller" Isaac Bickerstaff One and One Mary Mapes Dodge A Nursery Song Laura E. Richards A Mortifying Mistake Anna Maria Pratt The Raggedy Man James Whitcomb Riley The Man in the Moon James Whitcomb Riley Little Orphant Annie James Whitcomb Riley Our Hired Girl James Whitcomb Riley See'n Things Eugene Field The Duel Eugene Field Holy Thursday William Blake A Story for a Child Bayard Taylor The Spider and the Fly Mary Howitt The Captain's Daughter James Thomas Fields The Nightingale and the Glow-Worm William Cowper Sir Lark and King Sun: A Parable George Macdonald The Courtship, Merry Marriage, and Picnic Dinner of Cock Robin and Jenny Wren Unknown The Babes in the Wood Unknown God's Judgment on a Wicked Bishop Robert Southey The Pied Piper of Hamelin Robert Browning THE GLAD EVANGEL A Carol Unknown "God Rest You Merry Gentlemen" Unknown 'O Little Town of Bethlehem" Phillips Brooks A Christmas Hymn Alfred Domett "While Shepherds Watched their Flocks by Night" Nahum Tate Christmas Carols Edmund Hamilton Sears The Angels William Drummond The Burning Babe Robert Southwell Tryste Noel Louise Imogen Guiney Christmas Carol Unknown "Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning" Reginald Heber Christmas Bells Henry Wadsworth Longfellow A Christmas Carol Gilbert Keith Chesterton The House of Christmas Gilbert Keith Chesterton The Feast of the Snow Gilbert Keith Chesterton Mary's Baby Shaemas OSheel Gates and Doors Joyce Kilmer The Three Kings Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Lullaby in Bethlehem Henry Howarth Bashford A Child's Song of Christmas Marjorie L. C. Pickthall Jest 'Fore Christmas Eugene Field A Visit from St. Nicholas Clement Clarke Moore Ceremonies for Christmas Robert Herrick On the Morning of Christ's Nativity John Milton FAIRYLAND The Fairy Book Norman Gale Fairy Songs William Shakespeare Queen Mab Ben Jonson The Elf and the Dormouse Oliver Herford "Oh! Where Do Fairies Hide Their Heads?" Thomas Haynes Bayly Fairy Song Leigh Hunt Dream Song Richard Middleton Fairy Song John Keats Queen Mab Thomas Hood The Fairies of the Caldon-Low Mary Howitt The Fairies William Allingham The Fairy Thrall Mary C. G. Byron Farewell to the Fairies Richard Corbet The Fairy Folk Robert Bird The Fairy Book Abbie Farwell Brown The Visitor Patrick R. Chalmers The Little Elf John Kendrick Bangs The Satyrs and the Moon Herbert S. Gorman THE CHILDREN The Children Charles Monroe Dickinson The Children's Hour Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Laus Infantium William Canton The Desire Katherine Tynan A Child's Laughter Algernon Charles Swinburne Seven Years Old Algernon Charles Swinburne Creep Afore Ye Gang James Ballantine Castles in the Air James Ballantine Under My Window Thomas Westwood Little Bell Thomas Westwood The Barefoot Boy John Greenleaf Whittier The Heritage James Russell Lowell Letty's Globe Charles Tennyson Turner Dove's Nest Joseph Russell Taylor The Oracle Arthur Davison Ficke To a Little Girl Helen Parry Eden To a Little Girl Gustav Kobbe A Parental Ode to My Son Thomas Hood A New Poet William Canton To Laura W-, Two Years Old Nathaniel Parker Willis To Rose Sara Teasdale To Charlotte Pulteney Ambrose Philips The Picture of Little T. C. in a Prospect of Flowers Andrew Marvell To Hartley Coleridge William Wordsworth To a Child of Quality Matthew Prior Ex Ore Infantium Francis Thompson Obituary Thomas William Parsons The Child's Heritage John G. Neihardt A Girl of Pompeii Edward Sandford Martin On the Picture of a "Child Tired of Play" Nathaniel Parker Willis The Reverie of Poor Susan William Wordsworth Children's Song Ford Madox Hueffer The Mitherless Bairn William Thom The Cry of the Children Elizabeth Barrett Browning The Shadow-Child Harriet Monroe Mother Wept Joseph Skipsey Duty Ralph Waldo Emerson Lucy Gray William Wordsworth In the Children's Hospital Alfred Tennyson "If I Were Dead" Coventry Patmore The Toys Coventry Patmore A Song of Twilight Unknown Little Boy Blue Eugene Field The Discoverer Edmund Clarence Stedman A Chrysalis Mary Emily Bradley Mater Dolorosa William Barnes The Little Ghost Katherine Tynan Motherhood Josephine Daskam Bacon The Mother's Prayer Dora Sigerson Shorter Da Leetla Boy Thomas Augustin Daly On the Moor Gale Young Rice Epitaph of Dionysia Unknown For Charlie's Sake John Williamson Palmer "Are the Children at Home?" Margaret Sangster The Morning-Glory Maria White Lowell She Came and Went James Russell Lowell The First Snow-fall James Russell Lowell "We Are Seven" William Wordsworth My Child John Pierpont The Child's Wish Granted George Parsons Lathrop Challenge Kenton Foster Murray Tired Mothers May Riley Smith My Daughter Louise Homer Greene "I Am Lonely" George Eliot Sonnets from "Mimma Bella" Eugene Lee-Hamilton Rose-Marie of the Angels Adelaide Crapsey MAIDENHOOD Maidenhood Henry Wadsworth Longfellow To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time Robert Herrick To Mistress Margaret Hussey John Skelton On Her Coming To London Edmund Waller "O, Saw Ye Bonny Lesley" Robert Burns To a Young Lady William Cowper Ruth Thomas Hood The Solitary Reaper William Wordsworth The Three Cottage Girls William Wordsworth Blackmwore Maidens William Barnes A Portrait Elizabeth Barrett Browning To a Child of Fancy Lewis Morris Daisy Francis Thompson To Petronilla, Who Has Put Up Her Hair Henry Howarth Bashford The Gipsy Girl Henry Alford Fanny Anne Reeve Aldrich Somebody's Child Louise Chandler Moulton Emilia Sarah N. Cleghorn To a Greek Girl Austin Dobson "Chamber Scene" Nathaniel Parker Willis "Ah, Be Not False" Richard Watson Gilder A Life-Lesson James Whitcomb Riley THE MAN The Breaking Margaret Steele Anderson The Flight of Youth Richard Henry Stoddard "Days of My Youth" St. George Tucker Ave Atque Vale Rosamund Marriott Watson To Youth Walter Savage Landor Stanzas Written on the Road Between Florence and Pisa George Gordon Byron Stanzas for Music George Gordon Byron "When As a Lad" Isabel Ecclestone Mackay "Around the Child" Walter Savage Landor Aladdin James Russell Lowell The Quest Ellen Mackey Hutchinson Cortissoz My Birth-Day Thomas Moore Sonnet on His having Arrived to the Age of Twenty-Three John Milton On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year George Gordon Byron Growing Gray Austin Dobson The One White Hair Walter Savage Landor Ballade of Middle Age Andrew Lang Middle Age Rudolph Chambers Lehmann To Critics Walter Learned The Rainbow William Wordsworth Leavetaking William Watson Equinoctial Adeline D. T. Whitney "Before the Beginning of Years" Algernon Charles Swinburne Man Henry Vaughan The Pulley George Herbert Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood William Wordsworth THE WOMAN Woman Eaton Stannard Barrett Woman From the Sanskrit of Calidasa Simplex Munditiis Ben Jonson Delight in Disorder Robert Herrick A Praise of His Lady John Heywood On a Certain Lady at Court Alexander Pope Perfect Woman William Wordsworth The Solitary-Hearted Hartley Coleridge Of Those Who Walk Alone Richard Burton "She Walks in Beauty" George Gordon Byron Preludes from "The Angel in The House" Coventry Patmore A Health Edward Coote Pinkney Our Sister Horatio Nelson Powers From Life Brian Hooker The Rose of the World William Butler Yeats Dawn of Womanhood Harold Monro The Shepherdess Alice Meynell A Portrait Brian Hooker The Wife Theodosia Garrison "Trusty, Dusky, Vivid, True" Robert Louis Stevenson The Shrine Digby Mackworth Dolben The Voice Norman Gale Mother Theresa Helburn Ad Matrem Julian Fane C.L.M John Masefield STEPPING WESTWARD Stepping Westward William Wordsworth A Farewell to Arms George Peele The World Francis Bacon "When That I Was and a Little Tiny Boy" William Shakespeare Of the Last Verses in the Book Edmund Waller A Lament Chidiock Tichborne To-morrow John Collins Late Wisdom George Crabbe Youth and Age Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Old Man's Comforts Robert Southey To Age Walter Savage Lander Late Leaves Walter Savage Lander Years Walter Savage Lander The River of Life Thomas Campbell "Long Time a Child" Hartley Coleridge The World I am Passing Through Lydia Maria Child Terminus Ralph Waldo Emerson Rabbi Ben Ezra Robert Browning Human Life Audrey Thomas de Vere Young and Old Charles Kingsley The Isle of the Long Ago Benjamin Franklin Taylor Growing Old Matthew Arnold Past John Galsworthy Twilight A. Mary F. Robinson Youth and Age George Arnold Forty Years On Edward Ernest Bowen Dregs Ernest Dowson The Paradox of Time Austin Dobson Age William Winter Omnia Sonmia Rosamund Marriott Watson The Year's End Timothy Cole An Old Man's Song Richard Le Gallienne Songs of Seven Jean Ingelow Auspex James Russell Lowell LOOKING BACKWARD The Retreat Henry Vaughan A Superscription Dante Gabriel Rossetti The Child in the Garden Henry Van Dyke Castles in the Air Thomas Love Peacock Sometimes Thomas S. Jones, Jr The Little Ghosts Thomas S. Jones, Jr My Other Me Grace Denio Litchfield A Shadow Boat Arlo Bates A Lad That is Gone Robert Louis Stevenson Carcassonne John R. Thompson Childhood John Banister Tabb The Wastrel Reginald Wright Kauffman Troia Fuit Reginald Wright Kauffman Temple Garlands A. Mary F. Robinson Time Long Past Percy Bysshe Shelley "I Remember, I Remember" Thomas Hood My Lost Youth Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "Voice of the Western Wind" Edmund Clarence Stedman "Langsyne, When Life Was Bonnie" Alexander Anderson The Shoogy-Shoo Winthrop Packard Babylon Viola Taylor The Road of Remembrance Lizette Woodworth Reese The Triumph of Forgotten Things Edith M. Thomas In the Twilight James Russell Lowell An Immorality Ezra Pound Three Seasons Christina Georgina Rossetti The Old Familiar Faces Charles Lamb The Light of Other Days Thomas Moore "Tears, Idle Tears" Alfred Tennyson The Pet Name Elizabeth Barrett Browning Threescore and Ten Richard Henry Stoddard Rain on the Roof Coates Kinney Alone by the Hearth George Arnold The Old Man Dreams Oliver Wendell Holmes The Garret William Makepeace Thackeray Auld Lang Syne Robert Burns Rock Me to Sleep Elizabeth Akers The Bucket Samuel Woodworth The Grape-Vine Swing William Gilmore Simms The Old Swimmin'-Hole James Whitcomb Riley Forty Years Ago Unknown Ben Bolt Thomas Dunn English "Break, Break, Break" Alfred Tennyson PART II POEMS OF LOVE Eros Ralph Waldo Emerson "NOW WHAT IS LOVE" "Now What is Love" Walter Raleigh Wooing Song, "Love is the Blossom where there blows" Giles Fletcher Rosalind's Madrigal, "Love in My bosom" Thomas Lodge Song, "Love is a sickness full of woes" Samuel Daniel Love's Perjuries William Shakespeare Venus' Runaway Ben Jonson What is Love John Fletcher Love's Emblems John Fletcher The Power of Love John Fletcher Advice to a Lover Unknown Love's Horoscope Richard Crashaw "Ah, how Sweet it is to Love" John Dryden Song, "Love still has something of the sea" Charles Sedley The Vine James Thomson Song, "Fain would I change that Note" Unknown Cupid Stung Thomas Moore Cupid Drowned Leigh Hunt Song, "Oh! say not woman's love is bought" Isaac Pocock "In the Days of Old" Thomas Love Peacock Song, "How delicious is the winning" Thomas Campbell Stanzas, "Could love for ever" George Gordon Byron "They Speak o' Wiles" William Thom "Love will Find Out the Way" Unknown A Woman's Shortcomings Elizabeth Barrett Browning "Love hath a Language" Helen Selina Sheridan Song, "O, let the solid ground" Alfred Tennyson Amaturus William Johnson-Cory The Surface and the Depths Lewis Morris A Ballad of Dreamland Algernon Charles Swinburne Endymion Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Fate Susan Marr Spalding "Give all to Love" Ralph Waldo Emerson "O, Love is not a Summer Mood" Richard Watson Gilder "When will Love Come" Pakenham Beatty "Awake, My Heart" Robert Bridges The Secret George Edward Woodberry The Rose of Stars George Edward Woodberry Song of Eros from "Agathon" George Edward Woodberry Love is Strong Richard Burton "Love once was like an April Dawn" Robert Underwood Johnson The Garden of Shadow Ernest Dowson The Call Reginald Wright Kauffman The Highway Louise Driscoll Song, "Take it, love" Richard Le Gallienne "Never Give all the Heart" William Butler Yeats Song, "I came to the door of the house of love" Alfred Noyes "Child, Child" Sara Teasdale Wisdom Ford Madox Hueffer Epilogue from "Emblems of Love" Lascelles Abercrombie On Hampstead Heath Wilfrid Wilson Gibson Once on a Time Kendall Banning IN PRAISE OF HER First Song from "Astrophel and Stella" Philip Sidney Silvia William Shakespeare Cupid and Campaspe John Lyly Apollo's Song from "Midas" John Lyly "Fair is my Love for April's in her Face" Robert Greene Samela Robert Greene Damelus' Song of His Diaphenia Henry Constable Madrigal, "My Love in her attire doth show her wit" Unknown On Chloris Walking in the Snow William Strode "There is a Lady Sweet and Kind" Unknown Cherry-Ripe Thomas Campion Amarillis Thomas Campion Elizabeth of Bohemia Henry Wotton Her Triumph Ben Jonson Of Phillis William Drummond A Welcome William Browne The Complete Lover William Browne Rubies and Pearls Robert Herrick Upon Julia's Clothes Robert Herrick To Cynthia on Concealment of her Beauty Francis Kynaston Song, "Ask me no more where Jove bestows" Thomas Carew A Devout Lover Thomas Randolph On a Girdle Edmund Waller Castara William Habington To Amarantha that She would Dishevel her Hair Richard Lovelace Chloe Divine Thomas D'Urfey My Peggy Allan Ramsay Song, "O ruddier than the cherry" John Gay "Tell me, my Heart, if this be Love" George Lyttleton The Fair Thief Charles Wyndham Amoret Mark Akenside Song, "The shape alone let others Prize" Mark Akenside Kate of Aberdeen John Cunningham Song, "Who has robbed the ocean cave" John Shaw Chloe Robert Burns "O Mally's Meek, Mally's Sweet" Robert Burns The Lover's Choice Thomas Bedingfield Rondeau Redouble John Payne "My Love She's but a Lassie yet" James Hogg Jessie, the Flower o' Dunblane Robert Tannahill Margaret and Dora Thomas Campbell Dagonet's Canzonet Ernest Rhys Stanzas for Music, "There be none of Beauty's daughters" George Gordon Byron "Flowers I would Bring" Aubrey Thomas de Vere "It is not Beauty I Demand" George Darley Song, "She is not fair to outward view" Hartley Coleridge Song, "A violet in her lovely hair" Charles Swain Eileen Aroon Gerald Griffin Annie Laurie Unknown To Helen Edgar Allan Poe "A Voice by the Cedar Tree" Alfred Tennyson Song, "Nay, but you, who do not love her" Robert Browning The Henchman John Green1eaf Whittier Lovely Mary Donnelly William Allingham Love in the Valley George Meredith Marian George Meredith Praise of My Lady William Morris Madonna Mia Algernon Charles Swinburne "Meet we no Angels, Pansie" Thomas Ashe To Daphne Walter Besant "Girl of the Red Mouth" Martin MacDermott The Daughter of Mendoza Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar "If She be made of White and Red" Herbert P. Horne The Lover's Song Edward Rowland Sill "When First I Saw Her" George Edward Woodberry My April Lady Henry Van Dyke The Milkmaid Austin Dobson Song, "This peach is pink with such a pink" Norman Gale In February Henry Simpson "Love, I Marvel What You Are" Trumbull Stickney Ballade of My Lady's Beauty Joyce Kilmer Ursula Robert Underwood Johnson Villanelle of His Lady's Treasures Ernest Dowson Song, "Love, by that loosened hair" Bliss Carman Song, "O, like a queen's her happy tread" William Watson Any Lover, Any Lass Richard Middleton Songs Ascending Witter Bynner Song, "'Oh! Love,' they said, 'is King of Kings'" Rupert Brooke Song, "How do I love you" Irene Rutherford McLeod To.... In Church Alan Seeger After Two Years Richard Aldington Praise Seumas O'Sullivan PLAINTS AND PROTESTATIONS "Forget not Yet" Thomas Wyatt Fawnia Robert Greene The Passionate Shepherd to His Love Christopher Marlowe The Nymph's Reply to the Passionate Shepherd Walter Raleigh "Wrong not, Sweet Empress of My Heart" Walter Raleigh To His Coy Love Michael Drayton Her Sacred Bower Thomas Campion To Lesbia Thomas Campion "Love me or Not" Thomas Campion "There is None, O None but You" Thomas Campion Of Corinna's Singing Thomas Campion "Were my Heart as some Men's are" Thomas Campion "Kind are her Answers" Thomas Campion To Celia Ben Jonson Song, "O, do not wanton with those eyes" Ben Jonson Song, "Go and catch a falling star" John Donne The Message John Donne Song, "Ladies, though to your conquering eyes" George Etherege To a Lady Asking Him how Long He would Love Her" George Etherege To Aenone Robert Herrick To Anthea, who may Command him Anything Robert Herrick The Bracelet: To Julia Robert Herrick To the Western Wind Robert Herrick To my Inconstant Mistress Thomas Carew Persuasions to Enjoy Thomas Carew Mediocrity in Love Rejected Thomas Carew The Message Thomas Heywood "How Can the Heart forget Her" Francis Davison To Roses in the Bosom of Castara William Habington To Flavia Edmund Waller "Love not Me for Comely Grace" Unknown "When, Dearest, I but Think of Thee" Suckling or Felltham A Doubt of Martyrdom John Suckling To Chloe William Cartwright I'll Never Love Thee More James Graham To Althea, from Prison Richard Lovelace Why I Love Her Alexander Brome To his Coy Mistress Andrew Marvell A Deposition from Beauty Thomas Stanley "Love in thy Youth, Fair Maid" Unknown To Celia Charles Cotton To Celia Charles Sedley A Song, "My dear mistress Has a Heart" John Wilmot Love and Life John Wilmot Constancy John Wilmot Song, "Too late, alas, I must Confess" John Wilmot Song, "Come, Celia, let's agree at last" John Sheffield The Enchantment Thomas Otway Song, "Only tell her that I love" John Cutts "False though She be" William Congreve To Silvia Anne Finch "Why, Lovely Charmer" Unknown Against Indifference Charles Webbe A Song to Amoret Henry Vaughan The Lass of Richmond Hill James Upton Song, "Let my voice ring out and over the earth" James Thomson Gifts James Thomson Amynta Gilbert Elliot "O Nancy! wilt Thou go with Me" Thomas Percy Cavalier's Song Robert Cunninghame-Graham "My Heart is a Lute" Anne Barnard Song, "Had I a heart for falsehood framed" Richard Brinsley Sheridan Meeting George Crabbe "O Were my Love you Lilac Fair" Robert Burns "Bonnie Wee Thing" Robert Burns Rose Aylmer Walter Savage Landor "Take back the Virgin Page" Thomas Moore "Believe me, if all Those Endearing Young Charms" Thomas Moore The Nun Leigh Hunt Only of Thee and Me Louis Untermeyer To-- Percy Bysshe Shelley From the Arabic Percy Bysshe Shelley The Wandering Knight's Song John Gibson Lockhart Song, "Love's on the highroad" Dana Burnett The Secret Love A. E. The Flower of Beauty George Darley My Share of the World Alice Furlong Song, "A lake and a fairy boat" Thomas Hood "Smile and Never Heed Me" Charles Swain Are They not all Ministering Spirits Robert Stephen Hawker Maiden Eyes Gerald Griffin Hallowed Places Alice Freeman Palmer The Lady's "Yes" Elizabeth Barrett Browning Song, "It is the miller's daughter" Alfred Tennyson Lilian Alfred Tennyson Bugle Song, from "The Princess" Alfred Tennyson Ronsard to His Mistress William Makepeace Thackeray "When You are Old" William Butler Yeats Song, "You'll love me yet, and I can tarry" Robert Browning Love in a Life Robert Browning Life in a Love Robert Browning The Welcome Thomas Osborne Davis Urania Matthew Arnold Three Shadows Dante Gabriel Rossetti Since we Parted Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton A Match Algernon Charles Swinburne A Ballad of Life Algernon Charles Swinburne A Leave-Taking Algernon Charles Swinburne A Lyric Algernon Charles Swinburne Maureen John Todhunter A Love Symphony Arthur O'Shaughnessy Love on the Mountain Thomas Boyd Kate Temple's Song Mortimer Collins My Queen Unknown "Darling, Tell me Yes" John Godfrey Saxe "Do I Love Thee" John Godfrey Saxe "O World, be Nobler" Laurence Binyon "In the Dark, in the Dew" Mary Newmarch Prescott Nanny Francis Davis A Trifle Henry Timrod Romance Robert Louis Stevenson "Or Ever the Knightly Years were Gone" William Ernest Henley Rus in Urbe Clement Scott My Road Oliver Opdyke A White Rose John Boyle O'Reilly "Some Day of Days" Nora Perry The Telephone Robert Frost Where Love is Amelia Josephine Burr That Day You Came Lizette Woodworth Reese Amantium Irae Ernest Dowson In a Rose Garden John Bennett "God Bless You, Dear, To-day" John Bennett To-day Benjamin R. C. Low To Arcady Charles Buxton Going Wild Wishes Ethel M. Hewitt "Because of You" Sophia Almon Hensley Then Rose Terry Cooke The Missive Edmund Gosse Plymouth Harbor Mrs. Ernest Radford The Serf's Secret William Vaughn Moody "O, Inexpressible as Sweet" George Edward Woodberry The Cyclamen Arlo Bates The West-Country Lover Alice Brown "Be Ye in Love with April-Tide" Clinton Scollard Unity Alfred Noyes The Queen William Winter A Lover's Envy Henry Van Dyke Star Song Robert Underwood Johnson "My Heart Shall be Thy Garden" Alice Meynell At Night Alice Meynell Song, "Song is so old" Hermann Hagedorn "All Last Night" Lascelles Abercrombie The Last Word Frederic Lawrence Knowles "Heart of my Heart" Unknown My Laddie Amelie Rives The Shaded Pool Norman Gale Good-Night S. Weir Mitchell The Mystic Witter Bynner "I Am the Wind" Zoe Akins "I Love my Life, But not Too Well" Harriet Monroe "This is my Love for You" Grace Fallow Norton MY LADY'S LIPS Lips and Eyes Thomas Middleton The Kiss Ben Jonson "Take, O Take Those Lips Away" John Fletcher A Stolen Kiss George Wither Song, "My Love bound me with a kiss" Unknown To Electra Robert Herrick "Come, Chloe, and Give Me Sweet Kisses" Charles Hanbury Williams A Riddle William Cowper To a Kiss John Wolcot Song, "Often I have heard it said" Walter Savage Landor The First Kiss of Love George Gordon Byron "Jenny Kissed Me" Leigh Hunt "I Fear Thy Kisses, Gentle Maiden" Percy Bysshe Shelley Love's Philosophy Percy Bysshe Shelley Song, "The moth's kiss, first" Robert Browning Summum Bonum Robert Browning The First Kiss Theodore Watts-Dunton To My Love John Godfrey Saxe To Lesbia John Godfrey Saxe Make Believe Alice Cary Kissing's No Sin Unknown To Anne William Maxwell Song, "There is many a love in the land, my love" Joaquin Miller Phyllis and Corydon Arthur Colton AT HER WINDOW "Hark, Hark, the Lark" William Shakespeare "Sleep, Angry Beauty" Thomas Campion Matin Song Nathaniel Field The Night-Piece: To Julia Robert Herrick Morning William D'Avenant Matin Song Thomas Heywood The Rose Richard Lovelace Song, "See, see, she wakes! Sabina wakes" William Congreve Mary Morison Robert Burns Wake, Lady Joanna Baillie The Sleeping Beauty Samuel Rogers "The Young May Moon" Thomas Moore "Row Gently Here" Thomas Moore Morning Serenade Madison Cawein Serenade Aubrey Thomas De Vere Lines to an Indian Air Percy Bysshe Shelley Good-Night Percy Bysshe Shelley Serenade George Darley Serenade Thomas Hood Serenade Edward Coote Pinkney Serenade Henry Timrod Serenade Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "Come into the Garden, Maud" Alfred Tennyson At Her Window Frederick Locker-Lampson Bedouin Song Bayard Taylor Night and Love Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton Nocturne Thomas Bailey Aldrich Palabras Carinosas Thomas Bailey Aldrich Serenade Oscar Wilde The Little Red Lark Alfred Perceval Graves Serenade Richard Middleton THE COMEDY OF LOVE A Lover's Lullaby George Gascoigne Phillida and Corydon Nicholas Breton "Crabbed Age and Youth" William Shakespeare "It Was a Lover and His Lass" William Shakespeare "I Loved a Lass" George Wither To Chloris Charles Sedley Song, "The merchant, to secure his Treasure" Matthew Prior Pious Selinda William Congreve Fair Hebe John West A Maiden's Ideal of a Husband Henry Carey "Phillada Flouts Me" Unknown "When Molly Smiles" Unknown Contentions Unknown "I Asked My Fair, One Happy Day" Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Exchange Samuel Taylor Coleridge "Comin' Through the Rye" Robert Burns "Green Grow the Rashes, O" Robert Burns Defiance Walter Savage Landor Of Clementina Walter Savage Landor "The Time I've Lost in Wooing" Thomas Moore Dear Fanny Thomas Moore A Certain Young Lady Washington Irving "Where Be You Going, You Devon Maid" John Keats Love in a Cottage Nathaniel Parker Willis Song of the Milkmaid from "Queen Mary" Alfred Tennyson "Wouldn't You Like to Know" John Godfrey Saxe "Sing Heigh-ho" Charles Kingsley The Golden Fish George Arnold The Courtin' James Russell Lowell L'Eau Dormante Thomas Bailey Aldrich A Primrose Dame Gleeson White If James Jeffrey Roche Don't James Jeffrey Roche An Irish Love-Song Robert Underwood Johnson Growing Old Walter Learned Time's Revenge Walter Learned In Explanation Walter Learned Omnia Vincit Alfred Cochrane A Pastoral Norman Gale A Rose Arlo Bates "Wooed and Married and A'" Alexander Ross "Owre the Moor Amang the Heather" Jean Glover Marriage and the Care O't Robert Lochore The Women Folk James Hogg "Love is Like a Dizziness" James Hogg "Behave Yoursel' before Folk" Alexander Rodger Rory O'More; or, Good Omens Samuel Lover Ask and Have Samuel Lover Kitty of Coleraine Charles Dawson Shanly The Plaidie Charles Sibley Kitty Neil John Francis Waller "The Dule's i' this Bonnet o' Mine" Edwin Waugh The Ould Plaid Shawl Francis A. Fahy Little Mary Cassidy Francis A. Fahy The Road Patrick R. Chalmers Twickenham Ferry Theophile Marzials THE HUMOR OF LOVE Song, "I prithee send me back my Heart" John Suckling A Ballad Upon a Wedding John Suckling To Chloe Jealous Matthew Prior Jack and Joan Thomas Campion Phillis and Corydon Richard Greene Sally in Our Alley Henry Carey The Country Wedding Unknown "O Merry may the Maid be" John Clerk The Lass o' Gowrie Carolina Nairne The Constant Swain and Virtuous Maid Unknown When the Kye Comes Hame James Hogg The Low-Backed Car Samuel Lover The Pretty Girl of Loch Dan Samuel Ferguson Muckle-Mouth Meg Robert Browning Muckle-Mou'd Meg James Ballantine Glenlogie Unknown Lochinvar Walter Scott Jock of Hazeldean Walter Scott Candor Henry Cuyler Bunner "Do you Remember" Thomas Haynes Bayly Because Edward Fitzgerald Love and Age Thomas Love Peacock To Helen Winthrop Mackworth Praed At the Church Gate William Makepeace Thackeray Mabel, in New Hampshire James Thomas Fields Toujours Amour Edmund Clarence Stedman The Doorstep Edmund Clarence Stedman The White Flag John Hay A Song of the Four Seasons Austin Dobson The Love-Knot Nora Perry Riding Down Nora Perry "Forgettin'" Moira O'Neill "Across the Fields to Anne" Richard Burton Pamela in Town Ellen Mackay Hutchinson Cortissoz Yes? Henry Cuyler Bunner The Prime of Life Walter Learned Thoughts on the Commandments George Augustus Baker THE IRONY OF LOVE "Sigh no More, Ladies" William Shakespeare A Renunciation Edward Vere A Song, "Ye happy swains, whose hearts are free" George Etherege To His Forsaken Mistress Robert Ayton To an Inconstant Robert Ayton Advice to a Girl Thomas Campion Song, "Follow a shadow, it still flies you" Ben Jonson True Beauty Francis Beaumont The Indifferent Francis Beaumont The Lover's Resolution George Wither His Further Resolution Unknown Song, "Shall I tell you whom I love" William Browne To Dianeme Robert Herrick Ingrateful Beauty Threatened Thomas Carew Disdain Returned Thomas Carew "Love Who Will, for I'll Love None" William Browne Valerius on Women Thomas Heywood Dispraise of Love, and Lovers' Follies Francis Davison The Constant Lover John Suckling Song, "Why so pale and wan, fond Lover" John Suckling Wishes to His Supposed Mistress Richard Crashaw Song, "Love in fantastic Triumph sate" Aphra Behn Les Amours Charles Cotton Rivals William Walsh I Lately Vowed, but 'Twas in Haste John Oldmixon The Touchstone Samuel Bishop Air, "I ne'er could any luster see" Richard Brinsley Sheridan "I Took a Hansom on Today" William Ernest Henley Da Capo Henry Cuyler Bunner Song Against Women Willard Huntington Wright Song of Thyrsis Philip Freneau The Test Walter Savage Landor "The Fault is not Mine" Walter Savage Landor The Snake Thomas Moore "When I Loved You" Thomas Moore A Temple to Friendship Thomas Moore The Glove and the Lions Leigh Hunt To Woman George Gordon Byron Love's Spite Aubrey Thomas de Vere Lady Clara Vere de Vere Alfred Tennyson Shadows Richard Monckton Milnes Sorrows of Werther William Makepeace Thackeray The Age of Wisdom William Makepeace Thackeray Andrea del Sarto Robert Browning My Last Duchess Robert Browning Adam, Lilith, and Eve Robert Browning The Lost Mistress Robert Browning Friend and Lover Mary Ainge de Vere Lost Love Andrew Lang Vobiscum est Iope Thomas Campion Four Winds Sara Teasdale To Marion Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Crowned Amy Lowell Hebe James Russell Lowell "Justine, You Love me Not" John Godfrey Saxe Snowdrop William Wetmore Story When the Sultan Goes to Ispahan Thomas Bailey Aldrich The Shadow Dance Louise Chandler Moulton "Along the Field as we Came by" Alfred Edward Housman "When I was One-and-Twenty" Alfred Edward Housman "Grieve Not, Ladies" Anna Hempstead Branch Suburb Harold Monro The Betrothed Rudyard Kipling LOVE'S SADNESS "The Night has a Thousand Eyes" Francis William Bourdillon "I Saw my Lady Weep" Unknown Love's Young Dream Thomas Moore "Not Ours the Vows" Bernard Barton The Grave of Love Thomas Love Peacock "We'll go no More a Roving" George Gordon Byron Song, "Sing the old song, amid the sounds dispersing" Aubrey Thomas de Vere The Question Percy Bysshe Shelley The Wanderer Austin Dobson Egyptian Serenade George William Curtis The Water Lady Thomas Hood "Tripping Down the Field-path" Charles Swain Love Not Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton "A Place in Thy Memory" Gerald Griffin Inclusions Elizabeth Barrett Browning Mariana Alfred Tennyson Ask Me no More Alfred Tennyson A Woman's Last Word Robert Browning The Last Ride Together Robert Browning Youth and Art Robert Browning Two in the Campagna Robert Browning One Way of Love Robert Browning "Never the Time and the Place" Robert Browning Song, "Oh! that we two were Maying" Charles Kingsley For He Had Great Possessions Richard Middleton Windle-straws Edward Dowden Jessie Thomas Edward Brown The Chess-board Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton Aux Italiens Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton Song, "I saw the day's white rapture" Charles Hanson Towne The Lonely Road Kenneth Rand Evensong Ridgely Torrence The Nymph's Song to Hylas William Morris No and Yes Thomas Ashe Love in Dreams John Addington Symonds "A Little While I fain would Linger Yet" Paul Hamilton Hayne Song, "I made another garden, yea" Arthur O'Shaughnessy Song, "Has summer come without the rose" Arthur O'Shaughnessy After Philip Bourke Marston After Summer Philip Bourke Marston Rococo Algernon Charles Swinburne Rondel Algernon Charles Swinburne The Oblation Algernon Charles Swinburne The Song of the Bower Dante Gabriel Rossetti Song, "We break the glass, whose sacred wine" Edward Coote Pinkney Maud Muller John Greenleaf Whittier La Grisette Oliver Wendell Holmes The Dark Man Nora Hopper Eurydice Francis William Bourdillon A Woman's Thought Richard Watson Gilder Laus Veneris Louise Chandler Moulton Adonais Will Wallace Harney Face to Face Frances Cochrane Ashore Laurence Hope Khristna and His Flute Laurence Hope Impenitentia Ultima Ernest Dowson Non Sum Quails Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae Ernest Dowson Quid non Speremus, Amantes? Ernest Dowson "So Sweet Love Seemed" Robert Bridges An Old Tune Andrew Lang Refuge William Winter Midsummer Ella Wheeler Wilcox Ashes of Roses Elaine Goodale Sympathy Althea Gyles The Look Sara Teasdale "When My Beloved Sleeping Lies" Irene Rutherford McLeod Love and Life Julie Mathilde Lippman Love's Prisoner Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer Rosies Agnes I. Hanrahan At the Comedy Arthur Stringer "Sometime It may Be" Arthur Colton "I heard a Soldier" Herbert Trench The Last Memory Arthur Symonds "Down by the Salley Gardens" William Butler Yates Ashes of Life Edna St. Vincent Millay A Farewell Alice Brown THE PARTED LOVERS Song, "O mistress mine, where are you roaming" William Shakespeare "Go, Lovely Rose" Edmund Waller To the Rose: A Song Robert Herrick Memory William Browne To Lucasta, Going to the Wars Richard Lovelace To Lucasta, Going beyond the Seas Richard Lovelace Song to a Fair Young Lady, Going out of the Town in the Spring John Dryden Song, "To all you ladies now at land" Charles Sackville Song, "In vain you tell your parting lover" Matthew Prior Black-Eyed Susan John Gay Irish Molly O Unknown Song, "At setting day and rising morn" Allan Ramsay Lochaber no More Allan Ramsey Willie and Helen Hew Ainslie Absence Richard Jago "My Mother Bids me Bind my Hair" Anne Hunter "Blow High! Blow Low" Charles Dibdin The Siller Croun Susanna Blamire "My Nannie's Awa" Robert Burns "Ae Fond Kiss" Robert Burns "The Day Returns" Robert Burns My Bonnie Mary Robert Burns A Red, Red Rose Robert Burns I Love My Jean Robert Burns and John Hamilton The Rover's Adieu, from "Rokeby" Walter Scott "Loudoun's Bonnie Woods and Braes" Robert Tannahill "Fare Thee Well" George Gordon Byron "Maid of Athens, Ere We Part" George Gordon Byron "When We Two Parted" George Gordon Byron "Go, Forget Me" Charles Wolfe Last Night George Darley Adieu Thomas Carlyle Jeanie Morrison William Motherwell The Sea-lands Orrick Johns Fair Ines Thomas Hood A Valediction Elizabeth Barrett Browning Farewell John Addington Symonds "I Do Not Love Thee" Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton The Palm-tree and the Pine Richard Monckton Milnes "O Swallow, Swallow Flying South" Alfred Tennyson The Flower's Name Robert Browning To Marguerite Matthew Arnold Separation Matthew Arnold Longing Matthew Arnold Divided Jean Ingelow My Playmate John Greenleaf Whittier A Farewell Coventry Patmore Departure Coventry Patmore A song of Parting H. C. Compton Mackenzie Song, "Fair is the night, and fair the day" William Morris At Parting Algernon Charles Swinburne "If She But Knew" Arthur O'Shaughnessy Kathleen Mavourneen Louisa Macartney Crawford Robin Adair Caroline Keppel "If You Were Here" Philip Bourke Marston "Come to Me, Dearest" Joseph Brenan Song, "'Tis said that absence Conquers love" Frederick William Thomas Parting Gerald Massey The Parting Hour Olive Custance A Song of Autumn Rennell Rodd The Girl I Left Behind Me Unknown "When We are Parted" Hamilton Aide Remember or Forget Hamilton Aide Nancy Dawson Herbert P. Horne My Little Love Charles B. Hawley For Ever William Caldwell Roscoe Auf Wiedersehen James Russell Lowell "Forever and a Day" Thomas Bailey Aldrich Old Gardens Arthur Upson Ferry Hinksey Laurence Binyon Wearyin' fer You Frank L. Stanton The Lovers of Marchaid Marjorie L. C. Pickthall Song, "She's somewhere in the sunlight strong" Richard Le Gallienne The Lover Thinks of His Lady in the North Shaemas O Sheel Chanson de Rosemonde Richard Hovey Ad Domnulam Suam Ernest Dawson Marian Drury Bliss Carman Love's Rosary Alfred Noyes When She Comes Home James Whitcomb Riley THE TRAGEDY OF LOVE Song, "My silks and fine array" William Blake The Flight of Love Percy Bysshe Shelley "Farewell! If ever Fondest Prayer" George Gordon Byron Porphyria's Lover Robert Browning Modern Beauty Arthur Symons La Belle Dame Sans Merci John Keats Tantalus--Texas Joaquin Miller Enchainment Arthur O'Shaughnessy Auld Robin Gray Anne Barnard Lost Light Elizabeth Akers A Sigh Harriet Prescott Spofford Hereafter Harriet Prescott Spofford Endymion Oscar Wilde "Love is a Terrible Thing" Grace Fallow Norton The Ballad of the Angel Theodosia Garrison "Love Came Back at Fall o' Dew" Lizette Woodworth Reese I Shall not Care Sara Teasdale Outgrown Julia C. R. Dorr A Tragedy Edith Nesbit Left Behind Elizabeth Akers The Forsaken Merman Matthew Arnold The Portrait Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton The Rose and Thorn Paul Hamilton Hayne To Her--Unspoken Amelia Josephine Burr A Light Woman Robert Browning From the Turkish George Gordon Byron A Summer Wooing Louise Chandler Moulton Butterflies John Davidson Unseen Spirits Nathaniel Parker Willis "Grandmither, Think Not I Forget" Willa Sibert Cather Little Wild Baby Margaret Thomson Janvier A Cradle Song Nicholas Breton Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament Unknown A Woman's Love John Hay A Tragedy Theophile Marzials "Mother, I Cannot Mind My Wheel" Walter Savage Landor Airly Beacon Charles Kingsley A Sea Child Bliss Carman From the Harbor Hill Gustav Kobbe Allan Water Matthew Gregory Lewis Forsaken Unknown Bonnie Doon Robert Burns The Two Lovers Richard Hovey The Vampire Rudyard Kipling Agatha Alfred Austin "A Rose Will Fade" Dora Sigerson Shorter Affaire d'Amour Margaret Deland A Casual Song Roden Noel The Way of It John Vance Cheney "When Lovely Woman Stoops to Folly" Oliver Goldsmith Folk-Song Louis Untermeyer A Very Old Song William Laird "She Was Young and Blithe and Fair" Harold Monro The Lass that Died of Love Richard Middleton The Passion-Flower Margaret Fuller Norah Zoe Akins Of Joan's Youth Louise Imogen Guiney There's Wisdom in Women Rupert Brooke Goethe and Frederika Henry Sidgwick The Song of the King's Minstrel Richard Middleton Annie Shore and Johnnie Doon Patrick Orr Emmy Arthur Symons The Ballad of Camden Town James Elroy Flecker LOVE AND DEATH Helen of Kirconnell Unknown Willy Drowned in Yarrow Unknown Annan Water Unknown The Lament of the Border Widow Unknown Aspatia's Song from "The Maid's Tragedy" John Fletcher A Ballad, "'Twas when the seas were roaring" John Gay The Braes of Yarrow John Logan The Churchyard on the Sands Lord de Tabley The Minstrel's Song from "Aella" Thomas Chatterton Highland Mary Robert Burns To Mary in Heaven Robert Burns Lucy William Wordsworth Proud Maisie Walter Scott Song, "Earl March looked on His dying child" Thomas Campbell The Maid's Lament Walter Savage Landor "She is Far from the Land" Thomas Moore "At the Mid Hour of Night" Thomas Moore On a Picture by Poussin John Addington Symonds Threnody Ruth Guthrie Harding Strong as Death Henry Cuyler Banner "I Shall not Cry Return" Ellen M. H. Gates "Oh! Snatched away in Beauty's Bloom" George Gordon Byron To Mary Charles Wolfe My Heart and I Elizabeth Barrett Browning Rosalind's Scroll Elizabeth Barrett Browning Lament of the Irish Emigrant Helen Selina Sheridan The King of Denmark's Ride Caroline E. S. Norton The Watcher James Stephens The Three Sisters Arthur Davison Ficke Ballad May Kendall "O that 'Twere Possible" Alfred Tennyson "Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead" Alfred Tennyson Evelyn Hope Robert Browning Remembrance Emily Bronte Song,"The linnet in the rocky dells" Emily Bronte Song of the Old Love Jean Ingelow Requiescat Matthew Arnold Too Late Dinah Maria Mulock Craik Four Years Dinah Maria Mulock Craik Barbara Alexander Smith Song, "When I am dead, my dearest" Christina Georgina Rossetti Sarrazine's Song to Her Dead Lover Arthur O'Shaughnessy Love and Death Rosa Mulholland To One in Paradise Edgar Allan Poe Annabel Lee Edgar Allan Poe For Annie Edgar Allan Poe Telling the Bees John Greenleaf Whittier A Tryst Louise Chandler Moulton Love's Resurrection Day Louise Chandler Moulton Heaven Martha Gilbert Dickinson Janette's Hair Charles Graham Halpine The Dying Lover Richard Henry Stoddard "When the Grass Shall Cover Me" Ina Coolbrith Give Love Today Ethel Talbot Until Death Elizabeth Akers Florence Vane Phillip Pendleton Cooke "If Spirits Walk" Sophie Jewett Requiescat Oscar Wilde Lyric, "You would have understood me, had you waited" Ernest Dowson Romance Andrew Lang Good-Night Hester A. Benedict Requiescat Rosamund Marriott Watson The Four Winds Charles Henry Luders The King's Ballad Joyce Kilmer Heliotrope Harry Thurston Peck "Lydia is Gone this Many a Year" Lizette Woodworth Reese After Lizette Woodworth Reese Memories Arthur Stringer To Diane Helen Hay Whitney "Music I Heard" Conrad Aiken Her Dwelling-place Ada Foster Murray The Wife from Fairyland Richard Le Gallienne In the Fall o' Year Thomas S. Jones, Jr The Invisible Bride Edwin Markham Rain on a Grave Thomas Hardy Patterns Amy Lowell Dust Rupert Brooke Ballad, "The roses in my garden" Maurice Baring "The Little Rose is Dust, My Dear" Grace Hazard Conkling Dirge Adelaide Crapsey The Little Red Ribbon James Whitcomb Riley The Rosary Robert Cameron Rogers LOVE'S FULFILLMENT "My True-love Hath My Heart" Philip Sidney Song, "O sweet delight" Thomas Campion The Good-Morrow John Donne "There's Gowd in the Breast" James Hogg The Beggar Maid Alfred Tennyson Refuge A.E. At Sunset Louis V. Ledoux "One Morning Oh! so Early" Jean Ingelow Across the Door Padraic Colum May Margaret Theophile Marzials Rondel, "Kissing her hair, I sat against her feet" Algernon Charles Swinburne A Spring Journey Alice Freeman Palmer The Brookside Richard Monckton Milnes Song, "For me the jasmine buds unfold" Florence Earle Coates What My Lover Said Homer Greene May-Music Rachel Annand Taylor Song, "Flame at the core of the World" Arthur Upson A Memory Frederic Lawrence Knowles Love Triumphant Frederic Lawrence Knowles Lines, "Love within the lover's breast" George Meredith Love among the Ruins Robert Browning Earl Mertoun's Song Robert Browning Meeting at Night Robert Browning Parting at Morning Robert Browning The Turn of the Road Alice Rollit Coe "My Delight and Thy Delight" Robert Bridges "O, Saw Ye the Lass" Richard Ryan Love at Sea Algernon Charles Swinburne Mary Beaton's Song Algernon Charles Swinburne Plighted Dinah Maria Mulock Craik A Woman's Question Adelaide Anne Procter "Dinna Ask Me" John Dunlop A Song, "Sing me a sweet, low song of night" Hildegarde Hawthorne The Reason James Oppenheim "My Own Cailin Donn" George Sigerson Nocturne Amelia Josephine Burr Surrender Amelia Josephine Burr "By Yon Burn Side" Robert Tannahill A Pastoral, "Flower of the medlar" Theophile Marzials "When Death to Either shall Come" Robert Bridges The Reconciliation Alfred Tennyson Song, "Wait but a little while" Norman Gale Content Norman Gale Che Sara Sara Victor Plarr "Bid Adieu to Girlish Days" James Joyce To F.C. Mortimer Collins Spring Passion Joel Elias Spingarn Advice to a Lover S. Charles Jellicoe "Yes" Richard Doddridge Blackmore Love Samuel Taylor Coleridge Nested Habberton Lulham The Letters Alfred Tennyson Prothalamion Edmund Spenser Epithalamion Edmund Spenser The Kiss Sara Teasdale Marriage Wilfrid Wilson Gibson The Newly-wedded Winthrop Mackworth Praed I Saw Two Clouds at Morning John Gardiner Calkins Brainard Holy Matrimony John Keble The Bride Laurence Hope A Marriage Charm Nora Hopper "Like a Laverock in the Lift" Jean Ingelow My Owen Ellen Mary Patrick Downing Doris: A Pastoral Arthur Joseph Munby "He'd Nothing but His Violin" Mary Kyle Dallas Love's Calendar William Bell Scott Home Dora Greenwell Two Lovers George Eliot The Land of Heart's Desire Emily Huntington Miller My Ain Wife Alexander Laing The Irish Wife Thomas D'Arcy McGee My Wife's a Winsome Wee Thing Robert Burns Lettice Dinah Maria Mulock Craik "If Thou Wert by My Side, My Love" Reginald Heber The Shepherd's Wife's Song Robert Greene "Truth doth Truth Deserve" Philip Sidney The Married Lover Coventry Patmore My Love James Russell Lowell Margaret to Dolcino Charles Kingsley Dolcino to Margaret Charles Kingsley At Last Richard Henry Stoddard The Wife to Her Husband Unknown A Wife's Song William Cox Bennett The Sailor's Wife William Julius Mickle Jerry an' Me Hiram Rich "Don't be Sorrowful, Darling" Rembrandt Peale Winifreda Unknown An Old Man's Idyl Richard Realf The Poet's Song to his Wife Bryan Waller Procter John Anderson Robert Burns To Mary Samuel Bishop The Golden Wedding David Gray Moggy and Me James Hogg "O, Lay Thy Hand in Mine, Dear" Gerald Massey The Exequy Henry King LOVE SONNETS Sonnets from "Amoretti" Edmund Spenser Sonnets from "Astrophel and Stella" Philip Sidney Sonnets from "To Delia" Samuel Daniel Sonnets from "Idea" Michael Drayton Sonnets from "Diana" Henry Constable Sonnets William Shakespeare "Alexis, Here She Stayed" William Drummond "Were I as Base as is the Lowly Plain" Joshua Sylvester A Sonnet of the Moon Charles Best To Mary Unwin William Cowper "Why art Thou Silent" William Wordsworth Sonnets from "The House of Life" Dante Gabriel Rossetti Sonnets Christina Georgina Rossetti How My Songs of Her Began Philip Bourke Marston At the Last Philip Bourke Marston To One who Would Make a Confession Wilfrid Scawen Blunt The Pleasures of Love Wilfrid Scawen Blunt "Were but my Spirit Loosed upon the Air" Louise Chandler Moulton Renouncement Alice Meynell "My Love for Thee" Richard Watson Gilder Sonnets after the Italian Richard Watson Gilder Stanzas from "Modern Love" George Meredith Love in the Winds Richard Hovey "Oh, Death Will Find Me" Rupert Brooke The Busy Heart Rupert Brooke The Hill Rupert Brooke Sonnets from "Sonnets to Miranda" William Watson Sonnets from "Thysia" Morton Luce Sonnets from "Sonnets from the Portuguese" Elizabeth Barrett Browning One Word More Robert Browning PART III POEMS OF NATURE "The World is too Much With Us" William Wordsworth MOTHER NATURE The Book of the World William Drummond Nature Jones Very Compensation Celia Thaxter The Last Hour Ethel Clifford Nature Henry David Thoreau Song of Nature Ralph Waldo Emerson "Great Nature is an Army Gay" Richard Watson Gilder To Mother Nature Frederic Lawrence Knowles Quiet Work Matthew Arnold Nature Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "As an Old Mercer" Mahlon Leonard Fisher Good Company Karle Wilson Baker "Here is the Place where Loveliness Keeps House" Madison Cawein God's World Edna St. Vincent Millay Wild Honey Maurice Thompson Patmos Edith M. Thomas DAWN AND DARK Song, "Phoebus, arise" William Drummond Hymn of Apollo Percy Bysshe Shelley Prelude to "The New Day" Richard Watson Gilder Dawn on the Headland William Watson The Miracle of the Dawn Madison Cawein Dawn-angels A. Mary F. Robinson Music of the Dawn Virginia Bioren Harrison Sunrise on Mansfield Mountain Alice Brown Ode to Evening William Collins "It is a Beauteous Evening Calm and Free" William Wordsworth Gloaming Robert Adger Bowen Evening Melody Aubrey de Vere In the Cool of the Evening Alfred Noyes Twilight Olive Custance Twilight at Sea Amelia C. Welby "This is My Hour" Zoe Akins Song to the Evening Star Thomas Campbell The Evening Cloud John Wilson Song: To Cynthia Ben Jonson My Star Robert Browning Night William Blake To Night Percy Bysshe Shelly To Night Joseph Blanco White Night John Addington Symonds Night James Montgomery He Made the Night Lloyd Mifflin Hymn to the Night Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Night's Mardi Gras Edward J. Wheeler Dawn and Dark Norman Gale Dawn George B. Logan, Jr A Wood Song Ralph Hodgson THE CHANGING YEAR A Song for the Seasons Bryan Waller Procter A Song of the Seasons Cosmo Monkhouse Turn o' the Year Katherine Tynan The Waking Year Emily Dickinson Song, "The year's at the spring" Robert Browning Early Spring Alfred Tennyson Lines Written in Early Spring William Wordsworth In Early Spring Alice Meynell Spring Thomas Nashe A Starling's Spring Rondel James Cousins "When Daffodils begin to Peer" William Shakespeare Spring, from "In Memoriam" Alfred Tennyson The Spring Returns Charles Leonard Moore "When the Hounds of Spring" Algernon Charles Swinburne Song, "Again rejoicing Nature sees" Robert Burns To Spring William Blake An Ode on the Spring Thomas Gray Spring Henry Timrod The Meadows in Spring Edward Fitzgerald The Spring William Barnes "When Spring Comes Back to England" Alfred Noyes New Life Amelia Josephine Burr "Over the Wintry Threshold" Bliss Carman March William Morris Song in March William Gilmore Simms March Nora Hopper Written in March William Wordsworth The Passing of March Robert Burns Wilson Home Thoughts, from Abroad Robert Browning Song, "April, April" William Watson An April Adoration Charles G. D. Roberts Sweet Wild April William Force Stead Spinning in April Josephine Preston Peabody Song: On May Morning John Milton A May Burden Francis Thompson Corinna's Going a-Maying Robert Herrick "Sister, Awake" Unknown May Edward Hovell-Thurlow May Henry Sylvester Cornwell A Spring Lilt Unknown Summer Longings Denis Florence MacCarthy Midsummer John Townsend Trowbridge A Midsummer Song Richard Watson Gilder June, from "The Vision of Sir Launfal" James Russell Lowell June Harrison Smith Morris Harvest Ellen Mackay Hutchinson Cortissoz Scythe Song Andrew Lang September George Arnold Indian Summer Emily Dickinson Prevision Ada Foster Murray A Song of Early Autumn Richard Watson Gilder To Autumn John Keats Ode to Autumn Thomas Hood Ode to the West Wind Percy Bysshe Shelley Autumn: a Dirge Percy Bysshe Shelley Autumn Emily Dickinson "When the Frost is on the Punkin" James Whitcomb Riley Kore Frederic Manning Old October Thomas Constable November C. L. Cleaveland November Mahlon Leonard Fisher Storm Fear Robert Frost Winter: a Dirge Robert Burns Old Winter Thomas Noel The Frost Hannah Flagg Gould The Frosted Pane Charles G. D. Roberts The Frost Spirit John Greenleaf Whittier Snow Elizabeth Akers To a Snowflake Francis Thompson The Snow-Shower William Cullen Bryant Midwinter John Townsend Trowbridge A Glee for Winter Alfred Domett The Death of the Old Year Alfred Tennyson Dirge for the Year Percy Bysshe Shelley WOOD AND FIELD AND RUNNING BROOK Waldeinsamkeit Ralph Waldo Emerson "When in the Woods I Wander All Alone" Edward Hovell-Thurlow Aspects of the Pines Paul Hamilton Hayne Out in the Fields Unknown Under the Leaves Albert Laighton "On Wenlock Edge" Alfred Edward Housman "What Do We Plant" Henry Abbey The Tree Jones Very The Brave Old Oak Henry Fothergill Chorley "The Girt Woak Tree that's in the Dell" William Barnes To the Willow-tree Robert Herrick Enchantment Madison Cawein Trees Joyce Kilmer The Holly-tree Robert Southey The Pine Augusta Webster "Woodman, Spare that Tree" George Pope Morris The Beech Tree's Petition Thomas Campbell The Poplar Field William Cowper The Planting of the Apple-Tree William Cullen Bryant Of an Orchard Katherine Tynan An Orchard at Avignon A. Mary F. Robinson The Tide River Charles Kingsley The Brook's Song Alfred Tennyson Arethusa Percy Bysshe Shelley The Cataract of Lodore Robert Southey Song of the Chattahoochee Sidney Lanier "Flow Gently, Sweet Afton" Robert Burns Canadian Boat-Song Thomas Moore The Marshes of Glynn Sidney Lanier The Trosachs William Wordsworth Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Peaks Stephen Crane Kinchinjunga Cale Young Rice The Hills Julian Grenfell Hemlock Mountain Sarah N. Cleghorn Sunrise on Rydal Water John Drinkwater The Deserted Pasture Bliss Carman To Meadows Robert Herrick The Cloud Percy Bysshe Shelley April Rain Robert Loveman Summer Invocation William Cox Bennett April Rain Mathilde Blind To the Rainbow Thomas Campbell GREEN THINGS GROWING My Garden Thomas Edward Brown The Garden Andrew Marvell A Garden Andrew Marvell A Garden Song Austin Dobson In Green Old Gardens Violet Fane A Benedictine Garden Alice Brown An Autumn Garden Bliss Carman Unguarded Ada Foster Murray The Deserted Garden Elizabeth Barrett Browning A Forsaken Garden Algernon Charles Swinburne Green Things Growing Dinah Maria Mulock Craik A Chanted Calendar Sydney Dobell Flowers Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Flowers Thomas Hood A Contemplation Upon Flowers Henry King Almond Blossom Edwin Arnold White Azaleas Harriet McEwen Kimball Buttercups Wilfrid Thorley The Broom Flower Mary Howitt The Small Celandine William Wordsworth To the Small Celandine William Wordsworth Four-leaf Clover Ella Higginson Sweet Clover Wallace Rice "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" William Wordsworth To Daffodils Robert Herrick To a Mountain Daisy Robert Burns A Field Flower James Montgomery To Daisies, Not to Shut so Soon Robert Herrick Daisies Bliss Carman To the Daisy William Wordsworth To Daisies Francis Thompson To the Dandelion James Russell Lowell Dandelion Annie Rankin Annan The Dandelions Helen Gray Cone To the Fringed Gentian William Cullen Bryant Goldenrod Elaine Goodale Eastman Lessons from the Gorse Elizabeth Barrett Browning The Voice of The Grass Sarah Roberts Boyle A Song the Grass Sings Charles G. Blanden The Wild Honeysuckle Philip Freneau The Ivy Green Charles Dickens Yellow Jessamine Constance Fenimore Woolson Knapweed Arthur Christopher Benson Moly Edith Matilda Thomas The Morning-Glory Florence Earle Coates The Mountain Heart's-Ease Bret Harte The Primrose Robert Herrick To Primroses filled with Morning Dew Robert Herrick To an Early Primrose Henry Kirke White The Rhodora Ralph Waldo Emerson The Rose William Browne Wild Roses Edgar Fawcett The Rose of May Mary Howitt A Rose Richard Fanshawe The Shamrock Maurice Francis Egan To Violets Robert Herrick The Violet William Wetmore Story To a Wood-Violet John Banister Tabb The Violet and the Rose Augusta Webster To a Wind-Flower Madison Cawein To Blossoms Robert Herrick "'Tis the Last Rose of Summer" Thomas Moore The Death of the Flowers William Cullen Bryant GOD'S CREATURES Once on a Time Margaret Benson To a Mouse Robert Burns The Grasshopper Abraham Cowley On the Grasshopper and Cricket John Keats To the Grasshopper and the Cricket Leigh Hunt The Cricket William Cowper To a Cricket William Cox Bennett To an Insect Oliver Wendell Holmes The Snail William Cowper The Housekeeper Charles Lamb The Humble-Bee Ralph Waldo Emerson To a Butterfly William Wordsworth Ode to a Butterfly Thomas Wentworth Higginson The Butterfly Alice Freeman Palmer Fireflies Edgar Fawcett The Blood Horse Bryan Waller Procter Birds Moira O'Neill Birds Richard Henry Stoddard Sea-Birds Elizabeth Akers The Little Beach Bird Richard Henry Dana The Blackbird Frederick Tennyson The Blackbird Alfred Edward Housman The Blackbird William Ernest Henley The Blackbird William Barnes Robert of Lincoln William Cullen Bryant The O'Lincon Family Wilson Flagg The Bobolink Thomas Hill My Catbird William Henry Venable The Herald Crane Hamlin Garland The Crow William Canton To the Cuckoo John Logan The Cuckoo Frederick Locker-Lampson To the Cuckoo William Wordsworth The Eagle Alfred Tennyson The Hawkbit Charles G. D. Roberts The Heron Edward Hovell-Thurlow The Jackdaw William Cowper The Green Linnet William Wordsworth To the Man-of-War-Bird Walt Whitman The Maryland Yellow-Throat Henry Van Dyke Lament of a Mocking-bird Frances Anne Kemble "O Nightingale! Thou Surely Art" William Wordsworth Philomel Richard Barnfield Philomela Matthew Arnold On a Nightingale in April William Sharp To the Nightingale William Drummond The Nightingale Mark Akenside To the Nightingale John Milton Philomela Philip Sidney Ode to a Nightingale John Keats Song, 'Tis sweet to hear the merry lark Hartley Coleridge Bird Song Laura E. Richards The Song the Oriole Sings William Dean Howells To an Oriole Edgar Fawcett Song: the Owl Alfred Tennyson "Sweet Suffolk Owl" Thomas Vautor The Pewee John Townsend Trowbridge Robin Redbreast George Washington Doane Robin Redbreast William Allingham The Sandpiper Celia Thaxter The Sea-Mew Elizabeth Barrett Browning To a Skylark William Wordsworth To a Skylark William Wordsworth The Skylark James Hogg The Skylark Frederick Tennyson To a Skylark Percy Bysshe Shelley The Stormy Petrel Bryan Waller Procter The First Swallow Charlotte Smith To a Swallow Building Under our Eaves Jane Welsh Carlyle Chimney Swallows Horatio Nelson Powers Itylus Algernon Charles Swinburne The Throstle Alfred Tennyson Overflow John Banister Tabb Joy-Month David Atwood Wasson My Thrush Mortimer Collins "Blow Softly, Thrush" Joseph Russell Taylor The Black Vulture George Sterling Wild Geese Frederick Peterson To a Waterfowl William Cullen Bryant The Wood-Dove's Note Emily Huntington Miller THE SEA Song for all Seas, all Ships Walt Whitman Stanzas from "The Triumph of Time" Algernon Charles Swinburne The Sea from "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" George Gordon Byron On the Sea John Keats "With Ships the Sea was Sprinkled" William Wordsworth A Song of Desire Frederic Lawrence Knowles The Pines and the Sea Christopher Pearse Cranch Sea Fever John Masefield Hastings Mill C. Fox Smith "A Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea" Allan Cunningham The Sea Bryan Waller Procter Sailor's Song from "Death's Jest Book" Thomas Lovell Beddoes "A Life on the Ocean Wave" Epes Sargent Tacking Ship off Shore Walter Mitchell In Our Boat Dinah Maria Mulock Craik Poor Jack Charles Dibdin "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep" Emma Hart Willard Outward John G. Neihardt A Passer-by Robert Bridges Off Riviere du Loup Duncan Campbell Scott Christmas at Sea Robert Louis Stevenson The Port o' Heart's Desire John S. McGroarty On the Quay John Joy Bell The Forging of the Anchor Samuel Ferguson Drifting Thomas Buchanan Read "How's My Boy" Sydney Dobell The Long White Seam Jean Ingelow Storm Song Bayard Taylor The Mariner's Dream William Dimond The Inchcape Rock Robert Southey The Sea Richard Henry Stoddard The Sands of Dee Charles Kingsley The Three Fishers Charles Kingsley Ballad Harriet Prescott Spofford The Northern Star Unknown The Fisher's Widow Arthur Symons Caller Herrin' Carolina Nairne Hannah Binding Shoes Lucy Larcom The Sailor William Allingham The Burial of the Dane Henry Howard Brownell Tom Bowling Charles Dibdin Messmates Henry Newbolt The Last Buccaneer Charles Kingsley The Last Buccaneer Thomas Babington Macaulay The Leadman's Song Charles Dibdin Homeward Bound William Allingham THE SIMPLE LIFE The Lake Isle of Innisfree William Butler Yeats A Wish Samuel Rogers Ode on Solitude Alexander Pope "Thrice Happy He" William Drummond "Under the Greenwood Tree" William Shakespeare Coridon's Song John Chalkhill The Old Squire Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Inscription in a Hermitage Thomas Warton The Retirement Charles Cotton The Country Faith Norman Gale Truly Great William H. Davies Early Morning at Bargis Hermann Hagedorn The Cup John Townsend Trowbridge A Strip of Blue Lucy Larcom An Ode to Master Anthony Stafford Thomas Randolph "The Midges Dance Aboon the Burn" Robert Tannahill The Plow Richard Hengist Horne The Useful Plow Unknown "To One Who has Been Long in City Pent" John Keats The Quiet Life William Byrd The Wish Abraham Cowley Expostulation and Reply William Wordsworth The Tables Turned William Wordsworth Simple Nature George John Romanes "I Fear no Power a Woman Wields" Ernest McGaffey A Runnable Stag John Davidson Hunting Song Richard Hovey "A-Hunting We Will Go" Henry Fielding The Angler's Invitation Thomas Tod Stoddart The Angler's Wish Izaak Walton The Angler John Chalkhill WANDERLUST To Jane: the Invitation Percy Bysshe Shelley "My Heart's in the Highlands" Robert Burns "Afar in the Desert" Thomas Pringle Spring Song in the City Robert Buchanan In City Streets Ada Smith The Vagabond Robert Louis Stevenson In the Highlands Robert Louis Stevenson The Song my Paddle Sings E. Pauline Johnson The Gipsy Trail Rudyard Kipling Wanderlust Gerald Gould The Footpath Way Katherine Tynan A Maine Trail Gertrude Huntington McGiffert Afoot Charles G. D. Roberts From Romany to Rome Wallace Irwin The Toil of the Trail Hamlin Garland "Do You Fear the Wind?" Hamlin Garland The King's Highway John S. McGroarty The Forbidden Lure Fannie Stearns Davis The Wander-Lovers Richard Hovey The Sea-Gipsy Richard Hovey A Vagabond Song Bliss Carman Spring Song Bliss Carman The Mendicants Bliss Carman The Joys of the Road Bliss Carman The Song of the Forest Ranger Herbert Bashford A Drover Padraic Colum Ballad of Low-lie-down Madison Cawein The Good Inn Herman Knickerbocker Viele Night for Adventures Victor Starbuck Song, "Something calls and whispers" Georgiana Goddard King The Voortrekker Rudyard Kipling The Long Trail Rudyard Kipling PART IV FAMILIAR VERSE, AND POEMS HUMOROUS AND SATIRIC Ballade of the Primitive Jest Andrew Lang THE KINDLY MUSE Time to be Wise Walter Savage Landor Under the Lindens Walter Savage Landor Advice Walter Savage Landor To Fanny Thomas Moore "I'd be a Butterfly" Thomas Haynes Bayly "I'm not a Single Man" Thomas Hood To ----- Winthrop Mackworth Praed The Vicar Winthrop Mackworth Praed The Belle of the Ball-room Winthrop Mackworth Praed The Fine Old English Gentleman Unknown A Ternerie of Littles, upon a Pipkin of Jelly Sent to a Lady Robert Herrick Chivalry at a Discount Edward Fitzgerald The Ballad of Bouillabaisse William Makepeace Thackeray To my Grandmother Frederick Locker-Lampson My Mistress's Boots Frederick Locker-Lampson A Garden Lyric Frederick Locker-Lampson Mrs. Smith Frederick Locker-Lampson The Skeleton in the Cupboard Frederick Locker-Lampson A Terrible Infant Frederick Locker-Lampson Companions Charles Stuart Calverley Dorothy Q Oliver Wendell Holmes My Aunt Oliver Wendell Holmes The Last Leaf Oliver Wendell Holmes Contentment Oliver Wendell Holmes The Boys Oliver Wendell Holmes The Jolly Old Pedagogue George Arnold On an Intaglio Head of Minerva Thomas Bailey Aldrich Thalia Thomas Bailey Aldrich Pan in Wall Street Edmund Clarence Stedman Upon Lesbia--Arguing Alfred Cochrane To Anthea, who May Command Him Anything Alfred Cochrane The Eight-Day Clock Alfred Cochrane A Portrait Joseph Ashby-Sterry "Old Books are Best" Beverly Chew Impression Edmund Gosse "With Strawberries" William Ernest Henley Ballade of Ladies' Names William Ernest Henley To a Pair of Egyptian Slippers Edwin Arnold Without and Within James Russell Lowell "She was a Beauty" Henry Cuyler Bunner Nell Gwynne's Looking-Glass Laman Blanchard Mimnermus in Church William Johnson-Cory Clay Edward Verrall Lucas Aucassin and Nicolete Francis William Bourdillon Aucassin and Nicolette Edmund Clarence Stedman On the Hurry of This Time Austin Dobson "Good-Night, Babette" Austin Dobson A Dialogue from Plato Austin Dobson The Ladies of St. James's Austin Dobson The Cure's Progress Austin Dobson A Gentleman of the Old School Austin Dobson On a Fan Austin Dobson "When I Saw You Last, Rose" Austin Dobson Urceus Exit Austin Dobson A Corsage Bouquet Charles Henry Luders Two Triolets Harrison Robertson The Ballad of Dead Ladies Dante Gabriel Rossetti Ballade of Dead Ladies Andrew Lang A Ballad of Dead Ladies Justin Huntly McCarthy If I Were King Justin Huntly McCarthy A Ballade of Suicide Gilbert Keith Chesterton Chiffons! William Samuel Johnson The Court Historian Walter Thornbury Miss Lou Walter de La Mare The Poet and the Wood-louse Helen Parry Eden Students Florence Wilkinson "One, Two, Three" Henry Cuyler Bunner The Chaperon Henry Cuyler Bunner "A Pitcher of Mignonette" Henry Cuyler Bunner Old King Cole Edwin Arlington Robinson The Master Mariner George Sterling A Rose to the Living Nixon Waterman A Kiss Austin Dobson Biftek aux Champignons Henry Augustin Beers Evolution Langdon Smith A Reasonable Affliction Matthew Prior A Moral in Sevres Mildred Howells On the Fly-leaf of a Book of Old Plays Walter Learned The Talented Man Winthrop Mackworth Praed A Letter of Advice Winthrop Mackworth Praed A Nice Correspondent Frederick Locker-Lampson Her Letter Bret Harte A Dead Letter Austin Dobson The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn Andrew Marvell On the Death of a Favorite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes Thomas Gray Verses on a Cat Charles Daubeny Epitaph on a Hare William Cowper On the Death of Mrs. Throckmorton's Bullfinch William Cowper An Elegy on a Lap-Dog John Gay My Last Terrier John Halsham Geist's Grave Matthew Arnold "Hold" Patrick R. Chalmers THE BARB OF SATIRE The Vicar of Bray Unknown The Lost Leader Robert Browning Ichabod John Greenleaf Whittier What Mr. Robinson Thinks James Russell Lowell The Debate in the Sennit James Russell Lowell The Marquis of Carabas Robert Brough A Modest Wit Selleck Osborn Jolly Jack William Makepeace Thackeray The King of Brentford William Makepeace Thackeray Kaiser & Co A. Macgregor Rose Nongtongpaw Charles Dibdin The Lion and the Cub John Gay The Hare with Many Friends John Gay The Sycophantic Fox and the Gullible Raven Guy Wetmore Carryl The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder George Canning Villon's Straight Tip to all Cross Coves William Ernest Henley Villon's Ballade Andrew Lang A Little Brother of the Rich Edward Sandford Martin The World's Way Thomas Bailey Aldrich For My Own Monument Matthew Prior The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church Robert Browning Up at a Villa--Down in the City Robert Browning All Saints' Edmund Yates An Address to the Unco Guid Robert Burns The Deacon's Masterpiece Oliver Wendell Holmes Ballade of a Friar Andrew Lang The Chameleon James Merrick The Blind Men and the Elephant John Godfrey Saxe The Philosopher's Scales Jane Taylor The Maiden and the Lily John Fraser The Owl-Critic James Thomas Fields The Ballad of Imitation Austin Dobson The Conundrum of the Workshops Rudyard Kipling The V-a-s-e James Jeffrey Roche Hem and Haw Bliss Carmen Miniver Cheevy Edwin Arlington Robinson Then Ag'in Sam Walter Foss A Conservative Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman Similar Cases Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman Man and the Ascidian Andrew Lang The Calf-Path Sam Walter Foss Wedded Bliss Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman Paradise: A Hindoo Legend George Birdseye Ad Chloen, M. A. Mortimer Collins "As Like the Woman as You Can" William Ernest Henley "No Fault in Women" Robert Herrick "Are Women Fair" Francis Davison (?) A Strong Hand Aaron Hill Women's Longing John Fletcher Triolet Robert Bridges The Fair Circassian Richard Garnett The Female Phaeton Matthew Prior The Lure John Boyle O'Reilly The Female of the Species Rudyard Kipling The Woman with the Serpent's Tongue William Watson Suppose Anne Reeve Aldrich Too Candid by Half John Godfrey Saxe Fable Ralph Waldo Emerson Woman's Will Unknown Woman's Will John Godfrey Saxe Plays Walter Savage Landor Remedy Worse than the Disease Matthew Prior The Net of Law James Jeffrey Roche Cologne Samuel Taylor Coleridge Epitaph on Charles II John Wilmot Certain Maxims of Hafiz Rudyard Kipling A Baker's Duzzen uv Wise Sawz Edward Rowland Sill Epigram Samuel Taylor Coleridge Epigram Unknown Epigram Richard Garnett Epigram Richard Garnett Epigram Walter Savage Landor Epigram William Erskine Epigram Richard Brinsley Sheridan Epigram Alexander Pope Epigram Samuel Johnson Epigram John Gay Epigram Alexander Pope Epigram Samuel Taylor Coleridge Epigram Unknown Epigram Samuel Taylor Coleridge Epigram Unknown Epigram Matthew Prior Epigram George Macdonald Epigram Jonathan Swift Epigram Byron's epitaph for Pitt Epigram David Garrick Epigram John Harington Epigram John Byrom Epigram Richard Garnett Epigram Thomas Moore Epigram Unknown Epigram Samuel Taylor Coleridge Epigram John Dryden Epigram Thomas Hood Written on a Looking-glass Unknown An Epitaph George John Cayley On the Aristocracy of Harvard John Collins Bossidy On the Democracy of Yale Frederick Scheetz Jones A General Summary Rudyard Kipling THE MIMICS An Omar for Ladies Josephine Daskam Bacon "When Lovely Woman" Phoebe Cary Fragment in Imitation of Wordsworth Catherine M. Fanshaw Only Seven Henry Sambrooke Leigh Lucy Lake Newton Mackintosh Jane Smith Rudyard Kipling Father William Lewis Carroll The New Arrival George Washington Cable Disaster Charles Stuart Calverley 'Twas Ever Thus Henry Sambrooke Leigh A Grievance James Kenneth Stephen "Not a Sou Had he Got" Richard Harris Barham The Whiting and the Snail Lewis Carroll The Recognition William Sawyer The Higher Pantheism in a Nutshell Algernon Charles Swinburne The Willow-tree William Makepeace Thackeray Poets and Linnets Tom Hood, the Younger The Jam-pot Rudyard Kipling Ballad Charles Stuart Calverley The Poster-girl Carolyn Wells After Dilletante Concetti Henry Duff Traill If Mortimer Collins Nephilidia Algernon Charles Swinburne Commonplaces Rudyard Kipling The Promissory Note Bayard Taylor Mrs. Judge Jenkins Bret Harte The Modern Hiawatha George A. Strong How Often Ben King "If I should Die To-night" Ben King Sincere Flattery James Kenneth Stephen Culture in the Slums William Ernest Henley The Poets at Tea Barry Pain Wordsworth James Kenneth Stephen PART III POEMS OF NATURE The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This sea that bares her bosom to the moon, The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. William Wordsworth [1770-1850] MOTHER NATURE THE BOOK OF THE WORLD Of this fair volume which we World do name, If we the sheets and leaves could turn with care, Of him who it corrects, and did it frame, We clear might read the art and wisdom rare; Find out his power which wildest powers doth tame, His providence extending everywhere, His justice which proud rebels doth not spare, In every page, no, period of the same. But silly we, like foolish children, rest Well pleased with colored vellum, leaves of gold, Fair dangling ribbons, leaving what is best, On the great Writer's sense ne'er taking hold; Or, if by chance we stay our minds on aught, It is some picture on the margin wrought. William Drummond [1585-1649] NATURE The bubbling brook doth leap when I come by, Because my feet find measure with its call; The birds know when the friend they love is nigh, For I am known to them, both great and small. The flower that on the lonely hillside grows Expects me there when spring its bloom has given; And many a tree and bush my wanderings knows, And e'en the clouds and silent stars of heaven; For he who with his Maker walks aright, Shall be their lord as Adam was before; His ear shall catch each sound with new delight, Each object wear the dress that then it wore; And he, as when erect in soul he stood, Hear from his Father's lips that all is good. Jones Very [1813-1880] COMPENSATION In that new world toward which our feet are set, Shall we find aught to make our hearts forget Earth's homely joys and her bright hours of bliss? Has heaven a spell divine enough for this? For who the pleasure of the spring shall tell When on the leafless stalk the brown buds swell, When the grass brightens and the days grow long, And little birds break out in rippling song? O sweet the dropping eve, the blush of morn, The starlit sky, the rustling fields of corn, The soft airs blowing from the freshening seas, The sunflecked shadow of the stately trees, The mellow thunder and the lulling rain, The warm, delicious, happy summer rain, When the grass brightens and the days grow long, And little birds break out in rippling song! O beauty manifold, from morn till night, Dawn's flush, noon's blaze and sunset's tender light! O fair, familiar features, changes sweet Of her revolving seasons, storm and sleet And golden calm, as slow she wheels through space, From snow to roses,--and how dear her face, When the grass brightens, when the days grow long, And little birds break out in rippling song! O happy earth! O home so well beloved! What recompense have we, from thee removed? One hope we have that overtops the whole,-- The hope of finding every vanished soul, We love and long for daily, and for this Gladly we turn from thee, and all thy bliss, Even at thy loveliest, when the days are long, And little birds break out in rippling song. Celia Thaxter [1835-1894] THE LAST HOUR O joys of love and joys of fame, It is not you I shall regret; I sadden lest I should forget The beauty woven in earth's name: The shout and battle of the gale, The stillness of the sun-rising, The sound of some deep hidden spring, The glad sob of the filling sail, The first green ripple of the wheat, The rain-song of the lifted leaves, The waking birds beneath the eaves, The voices of the summer heat. Ethel Clifford [18-- NATURE O Nature! I do not aspire To be the highest in thy choir,-- To be a meteor in thy sky, Or comet that may range on high; Only a zephyr that may blow Among the reeds by the river low; Give me thy most privy place Where to run my airy race. In some withdrawn, unpublic mead Let me sigh upon a reed, Or in the woods, with leafy din, Whisper the still evening in: Some still work give me to do,-- Only--be it near to you! For I'd rather be thy child And pupil, in the forest wild, Than be the king of men elsewhere, And most sovereign slave of care; To have one moment of thy dawn, Than share the city's year forlorn. Henry David Thoreau [1817-1862] SONG OF NATURE Mine are the night and morning, The pits of air, the gull of space, The sportive sun, the gibbous moon, The innumerable days. I hide in the solar glory, I am dumb in the pealing song, I rest on the pitch of the torrent, In slumber I am strong. No numbers have counted my tallies, No tribes my house can fill, I sit by the shining Fount of Life And pour the deluge still; And ever by delicate powers Gathering along the centuries From race on race the rarest flowers, My wreath shall nothing miss. And many a thousand summers My gardens ripened well, And light from meliorating stars With firmer glory fell. I wrote the past in characters Of rock and fire the scroll, The building in the coral sea, The planting of the coal. And thefts from satellites and rings And broken stars I drew, And out of spent and aged things I formed the world anew; What time the gods kept carnival, Tricked out in star and flower, And in cramp elf and saurian forms They swathed their too much power. Time and Thought were my surveyors, They laid their courses well, They boiled the sea, and piled the layers Of granite, marl and shell. But he, the man-child glorious,-- Where tarries he the while? The rainbow shines his harbinger, The sunset gleams his smile. My boreal lights leap upward, Forthright my planets roll, And still the man-child is not born, The summit of the whole. Must time and tide forever run? Will never my winds go sleep in the west? Will never my wheels which whirl the sun And satellites have rest? Too much of donning and doffing, Too slow the rainbow fades, I weary of my robe of snow, My leaves and my cascades; I tire of globes and races, Too long the game is played; What without him is summer's pomp, Or winter's frozen shade? I travail in pain for him, My creatures travail and wait; His couriers come by squadrons, He comes not to the gate. Twice I have moulded an image, And thrice outstretched my hand, Made one of day and one of night And one of the salt sea-sand. One in a Judaean manger, And one by Avon stream, One over against the mouths of Nile, And one in the Academe. I moulded kings and saviors, And bards o'er kings to rule;-- But fell the starry influence short, The cup was never full. Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more, And mix the bowl again; Seethe, Fate! the ancient elements, Heat, cold, wet, dry, and peace, and pain. Let war and trade and creeds and song Blend, ripen race on race, The sunburnt world a man shall breed Of all the zones and countless days. No ray is dimmed, no atom worn, My oldest force is good as new, And the fresh rose on yonder thorn Gives back the bending heavens in dew. Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-1882] "GREAT NATURE IS AN ARMY GAY" Great nature is an army gay, Resistless marching on its way; I hear the bugles clear and sweet, I hear the tread of million feet. Across the plain I see it pour; It tramples down the waving grass; Within the echoing mountain-pass I hear a thousand cannon roar. It swarms within my garden gate; My deepest well it drinketh dry. It doth not rest; it doth not wait; By night and day it sweepeth by; Ceaseless it marcheth by my door; It heeds me not, though I implore. I know not whence it comes, nor where It goes. For me it doth not care-- Whether I starve, or eat, or sleep, Or live, or die, or sing, or weep. And now the banners all are bright, Now torn and blackened by the fight. Sometimes its laughter shakes the sky, Sometimes the groans of those who die. Still through the night and through the livelong day The infinite army marches on its remorseless way. Richard Watson Gilder [1844-1909] TO MOTHER NATURE Nature, in thy largess, grant I may be thy confidant! Taste who will life's roadside cheer (Though my heart doth hold it dear-- Song and wine and trees and grass, All the joys that flash and pass), I must put within my prayer Gifts more intimate and rare. Show me how dry branches throw Such blue shadows on the snow,-- Tell me how the wind can fare On his unseen feet of air,-- Show me how the spider's loom Weaves the fabric from her womb,-- Lead me to those brooks of morn Where a woman's laugh is born,-- Let me taste the sap that flows Through the blushes of a rose, Yea, and drain the blood which runs From the heart of dying suns,-- Teach me how the butterfly Guessed at immortality,-- Let me follow up the track Of Love's deathless Zodiac Where Joy climbs among the spheres Circled by her moon of tears,-- Tell me how, when I forget All the schools have taught me, yet I recall each trivial thing In a golden far off Spring,-- Give me whispered hints how I May instruct my heart to fly Where the baffling Vision gleams Till I overtake my dreams, And the impossible be done When the Wish and Deed grow one! Frederic Lawrence Knowles [1869-1905] QUIET WORK One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee, One lesson which in every wind is blown, One lesson of two duties kept at one Though the loud world proclaim their enmity-- Of toil unsevered from tranquillity; Of labor, that in lasting fruit outgrows Far noisier schemes, accomplished in repose, Too great for haste, too high for rivalry. Yes, while on earth a thousand discords ring, Man's fitful uproar mingling with his toil, Still do thy sleepless ministers move on, Their glorious tasks in silence perfecting; Still working, blaming still our vain turmoil; Laborers that shall not fail, when man is gone. Matthew Arnold [1822-1888] NATURE As a fond mother, when the day is o'er, Leads by the hand her little child to bed, Half willing, half reluctant to be led, And leave his broken playthings on the floor, Still gazing at them through the open door, Nor wholly reassured and comforted By promises of others in their stead, Which, though more splendid, may not please him more; So Nature deals with us, and takes away Our playthings one by one, and by the hand Leads us to rest so gently, that we go Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay, Being too full of sleep to understand How far the unknown transcends the what we know. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [1807-1882] "AS AN OLD MERCER" As an old mercer in some sleepy town Swings wide his windows new day after day, Sets all his wares around in arch array To please the taste of passers up and down,-- His hoard of handy things of trite renown, Of sweets and spices and of faint perfumes, Of silks and prints,--and at the last illumes His tiny panes to foil the evening's frown; So Nature spreads her proffered treasures: such As daily dazzle at the morning's rise,-- Fair show of isle and ocean merchandise, And airy offerings filmy to the touch; Then, lest we like not these, in Dark's bazaars She nightly tempts us with her store of stars. Mahlon Leonard Fisher [1874- GOOD COMPANY To-day I have grown taller from walking with the trees, The seven sister-poplars who go softly in a line; And I think my heart is whiter for its parley with a star That trembled out at nightfall and hung above the pine. The call-note of a redbird from the cedars in the dusk Woke his happy mate within me to an answer free and fine; And a sudden angel beckoned from a column of blue smoke-- Lord, who am I that they should stoop--these holy folk of thine? Karle Wilson Baker [1878- "HERE IS THE PLACE WHERE LOVELINESS KEEPS HOUSE" Here is the place where Loveliness keeps house, Between the river and the wooded hills, Within a valley where the Springtime spills Her firstling wind-flowers under blossoming boughs: Where Summer sits braiding her warm, white brows With bramble-roses; and where Autumn fills Her lap with asters; and old Winter frills With crimson haw and hip his snowy blouse. Here you may meet with Beauty. Here she sits Gazing upon the moon, or all the day Tuning a wood-thrush flute, remote, unseen; Or when the storm is out, 'tis she who flits From rock to rock, a form of flying spray, Shouting, beneath the leaves' tumultuous green. Madison Cawein [1865-1914] GOD'S WORLD O world, I cannot hold thee close enough! Thy winds, thy wide gray skies! Thy mists, that roll and rise! Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag And all but cry with color! That gaunt crag To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff! World, world, I cannot get thee close enough! Long have I known a glory in it all But never knew I this. Here such a passion is As stretcheth me apart. Lord, I do fear Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year. My soul is all but out of me--let fall No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call. Edna St. Vincent Millay [1892- WILD HONEY Where hints of racy sap and gum Out of the old dark forest come; Where birds their beaks like hammers wield, And pith is pierced and bark is peeled; Where the green walnut's outer rind Gives precious bitterness to the wind; There lurks the sweet creative power, As lurks the honey in the flower. In winter's bud that bursts in spring, In nut of autumn's ripening, In acrid bulb beneath the mold, Sleeps the elixir, strong and old, That Rosicrucians sought in vain,-- Life that renews itself again! What bottled perfume is so good As fragrance of split tulip-wood? What fabled drink of god or muse Was rich as purple mulberry juice? And what school-polished gem of thought Is like the rune from Nature caught? He is a poet strong and true Who loves wild thyme and honey-dew; And like a brown bee works and sings With morning freshness on his wings, And a golden burden on his thighs,-- The pollen-dust of centuries! Maurice Thompson [1844-1901] PATMOS All around him Patmos lies, Who hath spirit-gifted eyes, Who his happy sight can suit To the great and the minute. Doubt not but he holds in view A new earth and heaven new; Doubt not but his ear doth catch Strain nor voice nor reed can match: Many a silver, sphery note Shall within his hearing float. All around him Patmos lies, Who unto God's priestess flies: Thou, O Nature, bid him see, Through all guises worn by thee, A divine apocalypse. Manifold his fellowships: Now the rocks their archives ope; Voiceless creatures tell their hope In a language symbol-wrought; Groves to him sigh out their thought; Musings of the flower and grass Through his quiet spirit pass. 'Twixt new earth and heaven new He hath traced and holds the clue, Number his delights ye may not; Fleets the year but these decay not. Now the freshets of the rain, Bounding on from hill to plain, Show him earthly streams have rise In the bosom of the skies. Now he feels the morning thrill, As upmounts, unseen and still, Dew the wing of evening drops. Now the frost, that meets and stops Summer's feet in tender sward, Greets him, breathing heavenward. Hieroglyphics writes the snow, Through the silence falling slow; Types of star and petaled bloom A white missal-page illume. By these floating symbols fine, Heaven-truth shall be divine. All around him Patmos lies, Who hath spirit-gifted eyes; He need not afar remove, He need not the times reprove, Who would hold perpetual lease Of an isle in seas of peace. Edith M. Thomas [1854-1925] DAWN AND DARK SONG Phoebus, arise, And paint the sable skies With azure, white, and red: Rouse Memnon's mother from her Tithon's bed, That she thy career may with roses spread: The nightingales thy coming each where sing, Make an eternal Spring! Give life to this dark world which lieth dead; Spread forth thy golden hair In larger locks than thou wast wont before, And, emperor-like, decore With diadem of pearl thy temples fair: Chase hence the ugly night, Which serves but to make dear thy glorious light. This is that happy morn, That day, long-wished day, Of all my life so dark, (If cruel stars have not my ruin sworn, And fates not hope betray,) Which, only white, deserves A diamond for ever should it mark. This is the morn should bring unto this grove My Love, to hear and recompense my love. Fair king, who all preserves, But show thy blushing beams, And thou two sweeter eyes Shalt see, than those which by Peneus' streams Did once thy heart surprise. Nay, suns, which shine as clear As thou, when two thou didst to Rome appear. Now, Flora, deck thyself in fairest guise: If that ye, winds, would hear A voice surpassing far Amphion's lyre, Your stormy chiding stay; Let Zephyr only breathe, And with her tresses play, Kissing sometimes these purple ports of death. --The winds all silent are, And Phoebus in his chair Ensaffroning sea and air, Makes vanish every star: Night like a drunkard reels Beyond the hills, to shun his flaming wheels; The fields with flowers are decked in every hue, The clouds bespangle with bright gold their blue: Here is the pleasant place, And everything save her, who all should grace. William Drummond [1585-1649] HYMN OF APOLLO The sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie, Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries, From the broad moonlight of the sky, Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,-- Waken me when their Mother, the gray Dawn, Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone. Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome, I walk over the mountains and the waves, Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam; My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves Are filled with my bright presence, and the air Leaves the green Earth to my embraces bare. The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day; All men who do or even imagine ill Fly me, and from the glory of my ray Good minds and open actions take new might, Until diminished by the reign of Night. I feed the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers, With their ethereal colors; the Moon's globe, And the pure stars in their eternal bowers, Are cinctured with my power as with a robe; Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine, Are portions of one power, which is mine. I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven; Then with unwilling steps I wander down Into the clouds of the Atlantic even; For grief that I depart they weep and frown: What look is more delightful than the smile With which I soothe them from the western isle? I am the eye with which the Universe Beholds itself, and knows it is divine; All harmony of instrument or verse, All prophecy, all medicine, is mine, All light of art or nature;--to my song Victory and praise in its own right belong. Percy Bysshe Shelley [1792-1822] PRELUDE From "The New Day" The night was dark, though sometimes a faint star A little while a little space made bright. The night was dark and still the dawn seemed far, When, o'er the muttering and invisible sea, Slowly, within the East, there grew a light Which half was starlight, and half seemed to be The herald of a greater. The pale white Turned slowly to pale rose, and up the height Of heaven slowly climbed. The gray sea grew Rose-colored like the sky. A white gull flew Straight toward the utmost boundary of the East Where slowly the rose gathered and increased. There was light now, where all was black before: It was as on the opening of a door By one who in his hand a lamp doth hold (Its flame being hidden by the garment's fold),-- The still air moves, the wide room is less dim. More bright the East became, the ocean turned Dark and more dark against the brightening sky-- Sharper against the sky the long sea line. The hollows of the breakers on the shore Were green like leaves whereon no sun doth shine, Though sunlight make the outer branches hoar. From rose to red the level heaven burned; Then sudden, as if a sword fell from on high, A blade of gold flashed on the ocean's rim. Richard Watson Gilder [1844-1909] DAWN ON THE HEADLAND Dawn--and a magical stillness: on earth, quiescence profound; On the waters a vast Content, as of hunger appeased and stayed; In the heavens a silence that seems not mere privation of sound, But a thing with form and body, a thing to be touched and weighed! Yet I know that I dwell in the midst of the roar of the cosmic wheel, In the hot collision of Forces, and clangor of boundless Strife, Mid the sound of the speed of the worlds, the rushing worlds, and the peal Of the thunder of Life. William Watson [1858-1935] THE MIRACLE OF THE DAWN What would it mean for you and me If dawn should come no more! Think of its gold along the sea, Its rose above the shore! That rose of awful mystery, Our souls bow down before. What wonder that the Inca kneeled, The Aztec prayed and pled And sacrificed to it, and sealed,-- With rites that long are dead,-- The marvels that it once revealed To them it comforted. What wonder, yea! what awe, behold! What rapture and what tears Were ours, if wild its rivered gold,-- That now each day appears,-- Burst on the world, in darkness rolled, Once every thousand years! Think what it means to me and you To see it even as God Evolved it when the world was new! When Light rose, earthquake-shod, And slow its gradual splendor grew O'er deeps the whirlwind trod. What shoutings then and cymballings Arose from depth and height! What worship-solemn trumpetings, And thunders, burning-white, Of winds and waves, and anthemings Of Earth received the Light. Think what it meant to see the dawn! The dawn, that comes each day!-- What if the East should ne'er grow wan, Should nevermore grow gray! That line of rose no more be drawn Above the ocean's spray! Madison Cawein [1865-1914] DAWN-ANGELS All night I watched awake for morning, At last the East grew all a flame, The birds for welcome sang, or warning, And with their singing morning came. Along the gold-green heavens drifted Pale wandering souls that shun the light, Whose cloudy pinions, torn and rifted, Had beat the bars of Heaven all night. These clustered round the moon, but higher A troop of shining spirits went, Who were not made of wind or fire, But some divine dream-element. Some held the Light, while those remaining Shook out their harvest-colored wings, A faint unusual music raining, (Whose sound was Light) on earthly things. They sang, and as a mighty river Their voices washed the night away, From East to West ran one white shiver, And waxen strong their song was Day. A. Mary F. Robinson [1857- MUSIC OF THE DAWN At Sea, October 23, 1907 In far forests' leafy twilight, now is stealing gray dawn's shy light, And the misty air is tremulous with songs of many a bird; While from mountain steeps descending, every streamlet's voice is blending With the anthems of great pine trees, by the breath of daylight stirred. But I turn from Fancy's dreaming of the green earth, to the gleaming Of the fluttering wings of morning rushing o'er the jewelled deep; And the ocean's rhythmic pounding, with each lucent wave resounding, Seems the music made when God's own hands His mighty harpstrings sweep. Virginia Bioren Harrison [1847- SUNRISE ON MANSFIELD MOUNTAIN O swift forerunners, rosy with the race! Spirits of dawn, divinely manifest Behind your blushing banners in the sky, Daring invaders of Night's tenting-ground,-- How do ye strain on forward-bending foot, Each to be first in heralding of joy! With silence sandalled, so they weave their way, And so they stand, with silence panoplied, Chanting, through mystic symbollings of flame, Their solemn invocation to the light. O changeless guardians! O ye wizard firs! What strenuous philter feeds your potency, That thus ye rest, in sweet wood-hardiness. Ready to learn of all and utter naught? What breath may move ye, or what breeze invite To odorous hot lendings of the heart? What wind--but all the winds are yet afar, And e'en the little tricksy zephyr sprites, That fleet before them, like their elfin locks, Have lagged in sleep, nor stir nor waken yet To pluck the robe of patient majesty. Too still for dreaming, too divine for sleep, So range the firs, the constant, fearless ones. Warders of mountain secrets, there they wait, Each with his cloak about him, breathless, calm, And yet expectant, as who knows the dawn, And all night thrills with memory and desire, Searching in what has been for what shall be: The marvel of the ne'er familiar day, Sacred investiture of life renewed, The chrism of dew, the coronal of flame. Low in the valley lies the conquered rout Of man's poor trivial turmoil, lost and drowned Under the mist, in gleaming rivers rolled, Where oozy marsh contends with frothing main. And rounding all, springs one full, ambient arch, One great good limpid world--so still, so still! For no sound echoes from its crystal curve Save four clear notes, the song of that lone bird Who, brave but trembling, tries his morning hymn, And has no heart to finish, for the awe And wonder of this pearling globe of dawn. Light, light eternal! veiling-place of stars! Light, the revealer of dread beauty's face! Weaving whereof the hills are lambent clad! Mighty libation to the Unknown God! Cup whereat pine-trees slake their giant thirst And little leaves drink sweet delirium! Being and breath and potion! Living soul And all-informing heart of all that lives! How can we magnify thine awful name Save by its chanting: Light! and light! and light! An exhalation from far sky retreats, It grows in silence, as 'twere self-create, Suffusing all the dusky web of night. But one lone corner it invades not yet, Where low above a black and rimy crag Hangs the old moon, thin as a battered shield, The holy, useless shield of long-past wars, Dinted and frosty, on the crystal dark. But lo! the east,--let none forget the east, Pathway ordained of old where He should tread. Through some sweet magic common in the skies The rosy banners are with saffron tinct: The saffron grows to gold, the gold is fire, And led by silence more majestical Than clash of conquering arms, He comes! He comes! He holds his spear benignant, sceptrewise, And strikes out flame from the adoring hills. Alice Brown [1857- ODE TO EVENING If aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song, May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear, Like thy own solemn springs, Thy springs and dying gales; O Nymph reserved, while now the bright-haired sun Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts, With brede ethereal wove, O'erhang his wavy bed: Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing, Or where the beetle winds His small but sullen horn, As oft he rises, 'midst the twilight path Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum: Now teach me, maid composed, To breathe some softened strain, Whose numbers, stealing through thy darkening vale, May not unseemly with its stillness suit, As, musing slow, I hail Thy genial loved return! For when thy folding-star arising shows His paly circlet, at his warning lamp The fragrant Hours, and Elves Who slept in buds the day, And many a Nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge, And sheds the freshening dew, and, lovelier still, The pensive Pleasures sweet, Prepare thy shadowy car: Then lead, calm votaress, where some sheety lake Cheers the lone heath, or some time-hallowed pile, Or upland fallows gray Reflect its last cool gleam. Or, if chill blustering winds, or driving rain, Prevent my willing feet, be mine the hut That, from the mountain's side, Views wilds and swelling floods, And hamlets brown, and dim-discovered spires, And hears their simple bell, and marks o'er all Thy dewy fingers draw The gradual dusky veil. While Spring shall pour his showers, as of the wont, And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve! While Summer loves to sport Beneath thy lingering light; While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves, Or Winter, yelling through the troublous air, Affrights thy shrinking train, And rudely rends thy robes: So long, regardful of thy quiet rule, Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, smiling Peace, Thy gentlest influence own, And hymn thy favorite name! William Collins [1721-1759] "IT IS A BEAUTEOUS EVENING, CALM AND FREE" It is a beauteous evening, calm and free; The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration; the broad sun Is sinking down in his tranquility; The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea; Listen! the mighty Being is awake, And doth with his eternal motion make A sound like thunder--everlastingly. Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here, If thou appear untouched by solemn thought, Thy nature is not therefore less divine: Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year, And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine, God being with thee when we know it not. William Wordsworth [1770-1850] GLOAMING Skies to the West are stained with madder; Amber light on the rare blue hills; The sough of the pines is growing sadder; From the meadow-lands sound the whippoorwills. Air is sweet with the breath of clover; Dusk is on, and the day is over. Skies to the East are streaked with golden; Tremulous light on the darkening pond; Glow-worms pale, to the dark beholden; Twitterings hush in the hedge beyond. Air is sweet with the breath of clover; Silver the hills where the moon climbs over. Robert Adger Bowen [1868- EVENING MELODY O that the pines which crown yon steep Their fires might ne'er surrender! O that yon fervid knoll might keep, While lasts the world, its splendor! Pale poplars on the breeze that lean, And in the sunset shiver, O that your golden stems might screen For aye yon glassy river! That yon white bird on homeward wing Soft-sliding without motion, And now in blue air vanishing Like snow-flake lost in ocean, Beyond our sight might never flee, Yet forward still be flying; And all the dying day might be Immortal in its dying! Pellucid thus in saintly trance, Thus mute in expectation, What waits the earth? Deliverance? Ah no! Transfiguration! She dreams of that "New Earth" divine, Conceived of seed immortal; She sings "Not mine the holier shrine, Yet mine the steps and portal!" Aubrey Thomas de Vere [1814-1902] "IN THE COOL OF THE EVENING" In the cool of the evening, when the low sweet whispers waken, When the laborers turn them homeward, and the weary have their will, When the censers of the roses o'er the forest aisles are shaken, Is it but the wind that cometh o'er the far green hill? For they say 'tis but the sunset winds that wander through the heather, Rustle all the meadow-grass and bend the dewy fern; They say 'tis but the winds that bow the reeds in prayer together, And fill the shaken pools with fire along the shadowy burn. In the beauty of the twilight, in the Garden that He loveth, They have veiled His lovely vesture with the darkness of a name! Through His Garden, through His Garden, it is but the wind that moveth, No more! But O the miracle, the miracle is the same. In the cool of the evening, when the sky is an old story, Slowly dying, but remembered, ay, and loved with passion still... Hush!... the fringes of His garment, in the fading golden glory Softly rustling as He cometh o'er the far green hill. Alfred Noyes [1880- TWILIGHT Spirit of Twilight, through your folded wings I catch a glimpse of your averted face, And rapturous on a sudden, my soul sings "Is not this common earth a holy place?" Spirit of Twilight, you are like a song That sleeps, and waits a singer,--like a hymn That God finds lovely and keeps near Him long, Till it is choired by aureoled cherubim. Spirit of Twilight, in the golden gloom Of dreamland dim I sought you, and I found A woman sitting in a silent room Full of white flowers that moved and made no sound. These white flowers were the thoughts you bring to all, And the room's name is Mystery where you sit, Woman whom we call Twilight, when night's pall You lift across our Earth to cover it. Olive Custance [1874- TWILIGHT AT SEA The twilight hours, like birds, flew by, As lightly and as free, Ten thousand stars were in the sky, Ten thousand on the sea; For every wave, with dimpled face, That leaped upon the air, Had caught a star in its embrace, And held it trembling there. Amelia C. Welby [1819-1852] "THIS IS MY HOUR" I The ferries ply like shuttles in a loom, And many barques come in across the bay To lights and bells that signal through the gloom Of twilight gray; And like the brown soft flutter of the snow The wide-winged sea-birds droop from closing skies, And hover near the water, circling low, As the day dies. The city like a shadowed castle stands, Its turrets indistinctly touching night; Like earth-born stars far fetched from faerie lands, Its lamps are bright. This is my hour,--when wonder springs anew To see the towers ascending, pale and high, And the long seaward distances of blue, And the dim sky. II This is my hour, between the day and night; The sun has set and all the world is still, The afterglow upon the distant hill Is as a holy light. This is my hour, between the sun and moon; The little stars are gathering in the sky, There is no sound but one bird's startled cry,-- One note that ceases soon. The gardens and, far off, the meadow-land, Are like the fading depths beneath a sea, While over waves of misty shadows we Drift onward, hand in hand. This is my hour, that you have called your own; Its hushed beauty silently we share,-- Touched by the wistful wonder in the air That leaves us so alone. III In rain and twilight mist the city street, Hushed and half-hidden, might this instant be A dark canal beneath our balcony, Like one in Venice, Sweet. The street-lights blossom, star-wise, one by one; A lofty tower the shadows have not hid Stands out--part column and part pyramid-- Holy to look upon. The dusk grows deeper, and on silver wings The twilight flutters like a weary gull Toward some sea-island, lost and beautiful, Where a sea-syren sings. "This is my hour," you breathe with quiet lips; And filled with beauty, dreaming and devout, We sit in silence, while our thoughts go out-- Like treasure-seeking ships. Zoe Akins [1886- SONG TO THE EVENING STAR Star that bringest home the bee, And sett'st the weary laborer free! If any star shed peace, 'tis thou That send'st it from above, Appearing when Heaven's breath and brow Are sweet as hers we love. Come to the luxuriant skies, Whilst the landscape's odors rise, Whilst far-off lowing herds are heard And songs when toil is done, From cottages whose smoke unstirred Curls yellow in the sun. Star of love's soft interviews, Parted lovers on thee muse; Their remembrancer in Heaven Of thrilling vows thou art, Too delicious to be riven By absence from the heart. Thomas Campbell [1777-1844] THE EVENING CLOUD A cloud lay cradled near the setting sun, A gleam of crimson tinged its braided snow; Long had I watched the glory moving on O'er the still radiance of the lake below. Tranquil its spirit seemed, and floated slow! Even in its very motion there was rest; While every breath of eve that chanced to blow Wafted the traveller to the beauteous west. Emblem, methought, of the departed soul! To whose white robe the gleam of bliss is given, And by the breath of mercy made to roll Right onwards to the golden gates of heaven, Where to the eye of faith it peaceful lies, And tells to man his glorious destinies. John Wilson [1785-1854] SONG: TO CYNTHIA From "Cynthia's Revels" Queen and huntress, chaste and fair, Now the sun is laid to sleep, Seated in thy silver chair, State in wonted manner keep: Hesperus entreats thy light, Goddess excellently bright. Earth, let not thy envious shade Dare itself to interpose; Cynthia's shining orb was made Heaven to clear, when day did close: Bless us then with wished sight, Goddess excellently bright. Lay thy bow of pearl apart, And thy crystal-shining quiver; Give unto the flying hart Space to breathe, how short soever: Thou that mak'st a day of night, Goddess excellently bright. Ben Jonson [1573?-1637] MY STAR All that I know Of a certain star Is, it can throw (Like the angled spar) Now a dart of red, Now a dart of blue, Till my friends have said They would fain see, too, My star that dartles the red and the blue! Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled: They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. What matter to me if their star is a world? Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it. Robert Browning [1812-1889] NIGHT The sun descending in the West, The evening star does shine; The birds are silent in their nest, And I must seek for mine. The moon, like a flower In heaven's high bower, With silent delight Sits and smiles on the night. Farewell, green fields and happy grove, Where flocks have ta'en delight; Where lambs have nibbled, silent move The feet of angels bright: Unseen, they pour blessing, And joy without ceasing, On each bud and blossom, On each sleeping bosom. They look in every thoughtless nest, Where birds are covered warm; They visit caves of every beast, To keep them all from harm. If they see any weeping That should have been sleeping, They pour sleep on their head, And sit down by their bed. When wolves and tigers howl for prey They pitying stand and weep, Seeking to drive their thirst away, And keep them from the sheep. But, if they rush dreadful, The angels, most heedful, Receive each mild spirit New worlds to inherit. And there the lion's ruddy eyes Shall flow with tears of gold: And pitying the tender cries, And walking round the fold, Saying: "Wrath by His meekness, And by His health, sickness, Are driven away From our immortal day. "And now beside thee, bleating lamb, I can lie down and sleep. Or think on Him who bore thy name, Graze after thee, and weep. For, washed in life's river, My bright mane for ever Shall shine like the gold, As I guard o'er the fold." William Blake [1757-1827] TO NIGHT Swiftly walk o'er the western wave, Spirit of Night! Out of the misty eastern cave Where, all the long and lone daylight, Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear, Which make thee terrible and dear, Swift be thy flight! Wrap thy form in a mantle gray, Star-inwrought! Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day; Kiss her until she be wearied out, Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land, Touching all with thine opiate wand-- Come, long-sought! When I arose and saw the dawn, I sighed for thee; When light rode high, and the dew was gone, And noon lay heavy on flower and tree, And the weary Day turned to his rest, Lingering like an unloved guest, I sighed for thee. Thy brother Death came, and cried, "Would'st thou me?" Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed, Murmured like a noontide bee, "Shall I nestle near thy side? Would'st thou me?"--And I replied, "No, not thee." Death will come when thou art dead, Soon, too soon-- Sleep will come when thou art fled; Of neither would I ask the boon I ask of thee, beloved Night-- Swift be thine approaching flight, Come soon, soon! Percy Bysshe Shelley [1792-1822] TO NIGHT Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew Thee from report divine, and heard thy name, Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, This glorious canopy of light and blue? Yet 'neath the curtain of translucent dew, Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, Hesperus with the host of heaven came, And lo! creation widened on man's view. Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find, While fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed, That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind! Why do we, then, shun Death with anxious strife?-- If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life? Joseph Blanco White [1775-1841] NIGHT Mysterious night! Spread wide thy silvery plume! Soft as swan's down, brood o'er the sapphirine Breadth of still shadowy waters dark as wine; Smooth out the liquid heavens that stars illume! Come with fresh airs breathing the faint perfume Of deep-walled gardens, groves of whispering pine; Scatter soft dews, waft pure sea-scent of brine; In sweet repose man's pain, man's love resume! Deep-bosomed night! Not here where down the marge Marble with palaces those lamps of earth Tremble on trembling blackness; nay, far hence, There on the lake where space is lone and large, And man's life lost in broad indifference, Lilt thou the soul to spheres that gave her birth! John Addington Symonds [1840-1893] NIGHT Night is the time for rest; How sweet, when labors close, To gather round an aching breast The curtain of repose, Stretch the tired limbs, and lay the head Down on our own delightful bed! Night is the time for dreams; The gay romance of life, When truth that is, and truth that seems, Blend in fantastic strife; Ah! visions, less beguiling far Than waking dreams by daylight are! Night is the time for toil; To plough the classic field, Intent to find the buried spoil Its wealthy furrows yield; Till all is ours that sages taught, That poets sang, or heroes wrought. Night is the time to weep; To wet with unseen tears Those graves of Memory, where sleep The joys of other years; Hopes, that were Angels at their birth, But perished young, like things of earth. Night is the time to watch; O'er ocean's dark expanse, To hail the Pleiades, or catch The full moon's earliest glance, That brings into the homesick mind All we have loved and left behind. Night is the time for care; Brooding on hours misspent, To see the spectre of Despair Come to our lonely tent; Like Brutus, 'midst his slumbering host, Summoned to die by Caesar's ghost. Night is the time to think; When, from the eye, the soul Takes flight; and, on the utmost brink, Of yonder starry pole Descries beyond the abyss of night The dawn of uncreated light. Night is the time to pray; Our Saviour oft withdrew To desert mountains far away; So will his followers do,-- Steal from the throng to haunts untrod, And hold communion there with God. Night is the time for Death; When all around is peace, Calmly to yield the weary breath, From sin and suffering cease, Think of heaven's bliss, and give the sign To parting friends;--such death be mine! James Montgomery [1771-1854] HE MADE THE NIGHT Vast Chaos, of eld, was God's dominion, 'Twas His beloved child, His own first born; And He was aged ere the thought of morn Shook the sheer steeps of dim Oblivion. Then all the works of darkness being done Through countless aeons hopelessly forlorn, Out to the very utmost verge and bourne, God at the last, reluctant, made the sun. He loved His darkness still, for it was old; He grieved to see His eldest child take flight; And when His Fiat Lux the death-knell tolled, As the doomed Darkness backward by Him rolled, He snatched a remnant flying into light And strewed it with the stars, and called it Night. Lloyd Mifflin [1846-1921] HYMN TO THE NIGHT I heard the trailing garments of the Night Sweep through her marble halls! I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light From the celestial walls! I felt her presence, by its spell of might, Stoop o'er me from above; The calm, majestic presence of the Night, As of the one I love. I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight, The manifold, soft chimes, That fill the haunted chambers of the Night, Like some old poet's rhymes. From the cool cisterns of the midnight air My spirit drank repose; The fountain of perpetual peace flows there,-- From those deep cisterns flows. O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear What man has borne before! Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care, And they complain no more. Peace! Peace! Orestes-like I breathe this prayer! Descend with broad-winged flight, The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair, The best-beloved Night! Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [1807-1882] NIGHT'S MARDI GRAS Night is the true democracy. When day Like some great monarch with his train has passed. In regal pomp and splendor to the last, The stars troop forth along the Milky Way, A jostling crowd, in radiant disarray, On heaven's broad boulevard in pageants vast. And things of earth, the hunted and outcast, Come from their haunts and hiding-places; yea, Even from the nooks and crannies of the mind Visions uncouth and vagrant fancies start, And specters of dead joy, that shun the light, And impotent regrets and terrors blind, Each one, in form grotesque, playing its part In the fantastic Mardi Gras of Night. Edward J. Wheeler [1859-1922] DAWN AND DARK God with His million cares Went to the left or right, Leaving our world; and the day Grew night. Back from a sphere He came Over a starry lawn, Looked at our world; and the dark Grew dawn. Norman Gale [1862- DAWN His radiant fingers so adorning Earth that in silent joy she thrills, The ancient day stands every morning Above the flowing eastern hills. This day the new-born world hath taken Within his mantling arms of white, And sent her forth by fear unshaken To walk among the stars in light. Risen with laughter unto leaping, His feet untired, undimmed his eyes, The old, old day comes up from sleeping, Fresh as a flower, for new emprise. The curtain of the night is parted That once again the dawn may tread, In spotless garments, ways uncharted And death a million times is dead. Slow speechless music robed in splendor The deep sky sings eternally, With childlike wonderment to render Its own unwearied symphony. Reborn between the great suns spinning Forever where men's prayers ascend, God's day in love hath its beginning, And the beginning hath no end. George B. Logan, Jr. [1892- A WOOD SONG Now one and all, you Roses, Wake up, you lie too long! This very morning closes The Nightingale his song; Each from its olive chamber His babies every one This very morning clamber Into the shining sun. You Slug-a-beds and Simples, Why will you so delay! Dears, doff your olive wimples, And listen while you may. Ralph Hodgson [1871- THE CHANGING YEAR A SONG FOR THE SEASONS When the merry lark doth gild With his song the summer hours, And their nests the swallows build In the roofs and tops of towers, And the golden broom-flower burns All about the waste, And the maiden May returns With a pretty haste,-- Then, how merry are the times! The Spring times! the Summer times! Now, from off the ashy stone The chilly midnight cricket crieth, And all merry birds are flown, And our dream of pleasure dieth; Now the once blue, laughing sky Saddens into gray, And the frozen rivers sigh, Pining all away! Now, how solemn are the times! The Winter times! the Night times! Yet, be merry; all around Is through one vast change revolving; Even Night, who lately frowned, Is in paler dawn dissolving; Earth will burst her fetters strange, And in Spring grow free; All things in the world will change, Save--my love for thee! Sing then, hopeful are all times! Winter, Spring, Summer times! Bryan Waller Procter [1787-1874] A SONG OF THE SEASONS Sing a song of Spring-time, The world is going round, Blown by the south wind: Listen to its sound. "Gurgle" goes the mill-wheel, "Cluck" clucks the hen; And it's O for a pretty girl To kiss in the glen. Sing a song of Summer, The world is nearly still, The mill-pond has gone to sleep, And so has the mill. Shall we go a-sailing, Or shall we take a ride, Or dream the afternoon away Here, side by side? Sing a song of Autumn, The world is going back; They glean in the corn-field, And stamp on the stack. Our boy, Charlie, Tall, strong, and light: He shoots all the day And dances all the night. Sing a song of Winter, The world stops dead; Under snowy coverlid Flowers lie abed. There's hunting for the young ones And wine for the old, And a sexton in the churchyard Digging in the cold. Cosmo Monkhouse [1840-1901] TURN O' THE YEAR This is the time when bit by bit The days begin to lengthen sweet And every minute gained is joy-- And love stirs in the heart of a boy. This is the time the sun, of late Content to lie abed till eight, Lifts up betimes his sleepy head-- And love stirs in the heart of a maid. This is the time we dock the night Of a whole hour of candlelight; When song of linnet and thrush is heard-- And love stirs in the heart of a bird. This is the time when sword-blades green, With gold and purple damascene, Pierce the brown crocus-bed a-row-- And love stirs in a heart I know. Katherine Tynan Hinkson [1861-1931] THE WAKING YEAR A lady red upon the hill Her annual secret keeps; A lady white within the field In placid lily sleeps! The tidy breezes with their brooms Sweep vale, and hill, and tree! Prithee, my pretty housewives! Who may expected be? The neighbors do not yet suspect! The woods exchange a smile,-- Orchard, and buttercup, and bird, In such a little while! And yet how still the landscape stands, How nonchalant the wood, As if the resurrection Were nothing very odd! Emily Dickinson [1830-1886] SONG From "Pippa Passes" The year's at the spring, And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hill-side's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in His Heaven-- All's right with the world! Robert Browning [1812-1889] EARLY SPRING Once more the Heavenly Power Makes all things new, And domes the red-plowed hills With loving blue; The blackbirds have their wills, The throstles too. Opens a door in Heaven; From skies of glass A Jacob's ladder falls On greening grass, And o'er the mountain-walls Young angels pass. Before them fleets the shower, And burst the buds, And shine the level lands, And flash the floods; The stars are from their hands Flung through the woods, The woods with living airs How softly fanned, Light airs from where the deep, All down the sand, Is breathing in his sleep, Heard by the land. O, follow, leaping blood, The season's lure! O heart, look down and up, Serene, secure, Warm as the crocus cup, Like snow-drops, pure! Past, Future glimpse and fade Through some slight spell, A gleam from yonder vale, Some far blue fell; And sympathies, how frail, In sound and smell! Till at thy chuckled note, Thou twinkling bird, The fairy fancies range, And, lightly stirred, Ring little bells of change From word to word. For now the Heavenly Power Makes all things new, And thaws the cold, and fills The flower with dew; The blackbirds have their wills, The poets too. Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892] LINES WRITTEN IN EARLY SPRING I heard a thousand blended notes, While in a grove I sat reclined, In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts Bring sad thoughts to the mind. To her fair works did Nature link The human soul that through me ran; And much it grieved my heart to think What Man has made of Man. Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower, The periwinkle trailed its wreaths; And 'tis my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes. The birds around me hopped and played, Their thoughts I cannot measure,-- But the least motion which they made It seemed a thrill of pleasure. The budding twigs spread out their fan To catch the breezy air; And I must think, do all I can, That there was pleasure there. If this belief from heaven be sent, If such be Nature's holy plan, Have I not reason to lament What Man has made of Man? William Wordsworth [1770-1850] IN EARLY SPRING O Spring, I know thee! Seek for sweet surprise In the young children's eyes. But I have learnt the years, and know the yet Leaf-folded violet. Mine ear, awake to silence, can foretell The cuckoo's fitful bell. I wander in a gray time that encloses June and the wild hedge-roses. A year's procession of the flowers doth pass My feet, along the grass. And all you sweet birds silent yet, I know The notes that stir you so, Your songs yet half devised in the dim dear Beginnings of the year. In these young days you meditate your part; I have it all by heart. I know the secrets of the seeds of flowers Hidden and warm with showers, And how, in kindling Spring, the cuckoo shall Alter his interval. But not a flower or song I ponder is My own, but memory's. I shall be silent in those days desired Before a world inspired. O dear brown birds, compose your old song-phrases, Earth, thy familiar daisies. The poet mused upon the dusky height, Between two stars towards night, His purpose in his heart. I watched, a space, The meaning of his face: There was the secret, fled from earth and skies, Hid in his gray young eyes. My heart and all the Summer wait his choice, And wonder for his voice. Who shall foretell his songs, and who aspire But to divine his lyre? Sweet earth, we know thy dimmest mysteries, But he is lord of his. Alice Meynell [1850-1922] SPRING From "Summer's Last Will and Testament" Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year's pleasant king; Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring, Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing-- Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo! The palm and may make country houses gay, Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day, And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay-- Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo! The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet, Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit, In every street these tunes our ears do greet-- Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-too! Spring, the sweet Spring! Thomas Nashe [1567-1601] A STARLING'S SPRING RONDEL I clink my castanet And beat my little drum; For spring at last has come, And on my parapet, Of chestnut, gummy-wet, Where bees begin to hum, I clink my castanet, And beat my little drum. "Spring goes," you say, "suns set." So be it! Why be glum? Enough, the spring has come; And without fear or fret I clink my castanet, And beat my little drum. James Cousins [1873- "WHEN DAFFODILS BEGIN TO PEER" From "The Winter's Tale" When daffodils begin to peer, With heigh! the doxy, over the dale, Why, then comes in the sweet o' the year; For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale. The white sheet bleaching on the hedge, With heigh! the sweet birds, O, how they sing! Doth set my pugging tooth on edge; For a quart of ale is a dish for a king. The, lark, that tirra-lirra chants, With heigh! with heigh! the thrush and the jay, Are summer songs for me and my aunts, While we lie tumbling in the hay. William Shakespeare [1564-1616] SPRING From "In Memoriam" LXXXIII Dip down upon the northern shore, O sweet new-year, delaying long; Thou doest expectant Nature wrong, Delaying long, delay no more. What stays thee from the clouded noons, Thy sweetness from its proper place? Can trouble live with April days, Or sadness in the summer moons? Bring orchis, bring the fox-glove spire, The little speedwell's darling blue, Deep tulips dashed with fiery dew, Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire. O thou, new-year, delaying long, Delayest the sorrow in my blood, That longs to burst a frozen bud, And flood a fresher throat with song. CXV Now fades the last long streak of snow, Now burgeons every maze of quick About the flowering squares, and thick By ashen roots the violets blow. Now rings the woodland loud and long, The distance takes a lovelier hue, And drowned in yonder living blue The lark becomes a sightless song. Now dance the lights on lawn and lea, The flocks are whiter down the vale, And milkier every milky sail, On winding stream or distant sea; Where now the seamew pipes, or dives In yonder greening gleam, and fly The happy birds, that change their sky To build and brood, that live their lives From land to land; and in my breast Spring wakens too: and my regret Become an April violet, And buds and blossoms like the rest. Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892] "THE SPRING RETURNS" The Spring returns! What matters then that War On the horizon like a beacon burns, That Death ascends, man's most desired star, That Darkness is his hope? The Spring returns! Triumphant through the wider-arched cope She comes, she comes, unto her tyranny, And at her coronation are set ope The prisons of the mind, and man is free! The beggar-garbed or over-bent with snows, Each mortal, long defeated, disallowed, Feeling her touch, grows stronger limbed, and knows The purple on his shoulders and is proud. The Spring returns! O madness beyond sense, Breed in our bones thine own omnipotence! Charles Leonard Moore [1854- "WHEN THE HOUNDS OF SPRING" Chorus from "Atalanta in Calydon" When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces, The mother of months in meadow or plain Fills the shadows and windy places With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain; And the brown bright nightingale amorous Is half assuaged for Itylus, For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces, The tongueless vigil, and all the pain. Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers, Maiden most perfect, lady of light, With a noise of winds and many rivers, With a clamor of waters, and with might; Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet, Over the splendor and speed of thy feet; For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers, Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night. Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her, Fold our hands round her knees, and cling? O that man's heart were as fire and could spring to her, Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring! For the stars and the winds are unto her As raiment, as songs of the harp-player; For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her, And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing. For winter's rains and ruins are over, And all the season of snows and sins; The days dividing lover and lover, The light that loses, the night that wins; And time remembered, is grief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and cover Blossom by blossom the spring begins. The full streams feed on flower of rushes, Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot, The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes From leaf to flower and flower to fruit; And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire, And the oat is heard above the lyre, And the hoofed heel of a satyr crushes The chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root. And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night, Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid, Follows with dancing and fills with delight The Maenad and the Bassarid; And soft as lips that laugh and hide The laughing leaves of the trees divide, And screen from seeing and leave in sight The god pursuing, the maiden hid. The ivy falls with the Bacchanal's hair Over her eyebrows hiding her eyes; The wild vine slipping down leaves bare Her bright breast shortening into sighs; The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves, But the berried ivy catches and cleaves To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies. Algernon Charles Swinburne [1837-1909] SONG Again rejoicing Nature sees Her robe assume its vernal hues; Her leafy locks wave in the breeze, All freshly steeped in morning dews. In vain to me the cowslips blaw, In vain to me the violets spring; In vain to me in glen or shaw, The mavis and the lintwhite sing. The merry ploughboy cheers his team, Wi' joy the tentie seedsman stalks, But life to me's a weary dream, A dream of ane that never wauks. The wanton coot the water skims, Amang the reeds the ducklings cry, The stately swan majestic swims, And everything is blest but I. The shepherd steeks his faulding slap, And owre the moorland whistles shrill; Wi' wild, unequal, wand'ring step I meet him on the dewy hill. And when the lark, 'tween light and dark, Blithe waukens by the daisy's side, And mounts and sings on flittering wings, A woe-worn ghaist I hameward glide. Come, Winter, with thine angry howl, And raging bend the naked tree; Thy gloom will soothe my cheerless soul, When Nature all is sad like me! Robert Burns [1759-1796] TO SPRING O thou with dewy locks, who lookest down Through the clear windows of the morning, turn Thine angel eyes upon our western isle, Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring! The hills tell one another, and the listening Valleys hear; all our longing eyes are turned Up to thy bright pavilions: issue forth And let thy holy feet visit our clime! Come o'er the eastern hills, and let our winds Kiss thy perfumed garments; let us taste Thy morn and evening breath; scatter thy pearls Upon our lovesick land that mourns for thee. O deck her forth with thy fair fingers; pour Thy soft kisses on her bosom; and put Thy golden crown upon her languished head, Whose modest tresses are bound up for thee! William Blake [1757-1827] AN ODE ON THE SPRING Lo! where the rosy-bosomed Hours, Fair Venus' train, appear, Disclose the long-expecting flowers, And wake the purple year! The Attic warbler pours her throat Responsive to the cuckoo's note, The untaught harmony of spring: While, whispering pleasure as they fly, Cool Zephyrs through the clear blue sky Their gathered fragrance fling. Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch A broader browner shade, Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech O'er-canopies the glade, Beside some water's rushy brink With me the Muse shall sit, and think (At ease reclined in rustic state) How vain the ardor of the crowd, How low, how little are the proud, How indigent the great! Still is the toiling hand of Care: The panting herds repose: Yet, hark, how through the peopled air The busy murmur glows! The insect-youth are on the wing, Eager to taste the honied spring And float amid the liquid noon; Some lightly o'er the current skim, Some show their gaily-gilded trim Quick-glancing to the sun. To Contemplation's sober eye Such is the race of Man: And they that creep, and they that fly, Shall end where they began. Alike the Busy and the Gay But flutter through life's little day, In Fortune's varying colors dressed: Brushed by the hand of rough Mischance, Or chilled by Age, their airy dance They leave, in dust to rest. Methinks I hear, in accents low, The sportive kind reply: Poor moralist! and what art thou? A solitary fly! Thy joys no glittering female meets, No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets, No painted plumage to display; On hasty wings thy youth is flown; Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone-- We frolic, while 'tis May. Thomas Gray [1716-1771] SPRING Spring, with that nameless pathos in the air Which dwells with all things fair, Spring, with her golden suns and silver rain, Is with us once again. Out in the lonely woods the jasmine burns Its fragrant lamps, and turns Into a royal court with green festoons The banks of dark lagoons. In the deep heart of every forest tree The blood is all aglee, And there's a look about the leafless bowers As if they dreamed of flowers. Yet still on every side we trace the hand Of Winter in the land, Save where the maple reddens on the lawn, Flushed by the season's dawn; Or where, like those strange semblances we find That age to childhood bind, The elm puts on, as if in Nature's scorn, The brown of Autumn corn. As yet the turf is dark, although you know That, not a span below, A thousand germs are groping through the gloom, And soon will burst their tomb. Already, here and there, on frailest stems Appear some azure gems, Small as might deck, upon a gala day, The forehead of a fay. In gardens you may note amid the dearth, The crocus breaking earth; And near the snowdrop's tender white and green, The violet in its screen. But many gleams and shadows needs must pass Along the budding grass, And weeks go by, before the enamored South Shall kiss the rose's mouth. Still there's a sense of blossoms yet unborn In the sweet airs of morn; One almost looks to see the very street Grow purple at his feet. At times a fragrant breeze comes floating by, And brings, you know not why, A feeling as when eager crowds await Before a palace gate Some wondrous pageant; and you scarce would start, If from a beech's heart A blue-eyed Dryad, stepping forth, should say, "Behold me! I am May!" Henry Timrod [1829-1867] THE MEADOWS IN SPRING 'Tis a dull sight To see the year dying, When winter winds Set the yellow wood sighing: Sighing, oh! sighing. When such a time cometh, I do retire Into an old room Beside a bright fire: Oh, pile a bright fire! And there I sit Reading old things, Of knights and lorn damsels, While the wind sings-- Oh, drearily sings! I never look out Nor attend to the blast; For all to be seen Is the leaves falling fast: Falling, falling! But close at the hearth, Like a cricket, sit I, Reading of summer And chivalry-- Gallant chivalry! Then with an old friend I talk of our youth! How 'twas gladsome, but often Foolish, forsooth: But gladsome, gladsome! Or to get merry We sing some old rhyme, That made the wood ring again In summer time-- Sweet summer time! Then go we to smoking, Silent and snug: Naught passes between us, Save a brown jug-- Sometimes! And sometimes a tear Will rise in each eye, Seeing the two old friends So merrily-- So merrily! And ere to bed Go we, go we, Down on the ashes We kneel on the knee, Praying together! Thus, then, live I, Till, 'mid all the gloom, By heaven! the bold sun Is with me in the room Shining, shining! Then the clouds part, Swallows soaring between; The spring is alive, And the meadows are green! I jump up, like mad, Break the old pipe in twain, And away to the meadows, The meadows again! Edward Fitzgerald [1809-1883] THE SPRING When wintry weather's all a-done, An' brooks do sparkle in the zun, An' naisy-builden rooks do vlee Wi' sticks toward their elem tree; When birds do zing, an' we can zee Upon the boughs the buds o' spring,-- Then I'm as happy as a king, A-vield wi' health an' zunsheen. Vor then the cowlsip's hangen flower A-wetted in the zunny shower, Do grow wi' vi'lets, sweet o' smell, Bezide the wood-screened graegle's bell; Where drushes' aggs, wi' sky-blue shell, Do lie in mossy nest among The thorns, while they do zing their zong At evenen in the zunsheen. An' God do meake his win' to blow An' rain to vall vor high an' low, An' bid his mornen zun to rise Vor all alike, an' groun' an' skies Ha' colors vor the poor man's eyes: An' in our trials He is near, To hear our mwoan an' zee our tear, An' turn our clouds to zunsheen. An' many times when I do vind Things all goo wrong, an' v'ok unkind, To zee the happy veeden herds, An' hear the zingen o' the birds, Do soothe my sorrow mwore than words; Vor I do zee that 'tis our sin Do meake woone's soul so dark 'ithin, When God would gi'e woone zunsheen. William Barnes [1801-1886] "WHEN SPRING COMES BACK TO ENGLAND" When Spring comes back to England And crowns her brows with May, Round the merry moonlit world She goes the greenwood way: She throws a rose to Italy, A fleur-de-lys to France; But round her regal morris-ring The seas of England dance. When Spring comes back to England And dons her robe of green, There's many a nation garlanded But England is the Queen; She's Queen, she's Queen of all the world Beneath the laughing sky, For the nations go a-Maying When they hear the New Year cry-- "Come over the water to England, My old love, my new love, Come over the water to England, In showers of flowery rain; Come over the water to England, April, my true love; And tell the heart of England The Spring is here again!" Alfred Noyes [1880- NEW LIFE Spring comes laughing down the valley All in white, from the snow Where the winter's armies rally Loth to go. Beauty white her garments shower On the world where they pass,-- Hawthorn hedges, trees in flower, Daisies in the grass. Tremulous with longings dim, Thickets by the river's rim Have begun to dream of green. Every tree is loud with birds. Bourgeon, heart,--do thy part! Raise a slender stalk of words From a root unseen. Amelia Josephine Burr [1878- "OVER THE WINTRY THRESHOLD" Over the wintry threshold Who comes with joy today, So frail, yet so enduring, To triumph o'er dismay? Ah, quick her tears are springing, And quickly they are dried, For sorrow walks before her, But gladness walks beside. She comes with gusts of laughter,-- The music as of rills; With tenderness and sweetness, The wisdom of the hills. Her hands are strong to comfort, Her heart is quick to heed; She knows the signs of sadness, She knows the voice of need; There is no living creature, However poor or small, But she will know its trouble, And hearken to its call. Oh, well they fare forever, By mighty dreams possessed, Whose hearts have lain a moment On that eternal breast. Bliss Carman [1861-1929] MARCH Slayer of winter, art thou here again? O welcome, thou that bring'st the summer nigh! The bitter wind makes not thy victory vain, Nor will we mock thee for thy faint blue sky. Welcome, O March! whose kindly days and dry Make April ready for the throstle's song, Thou first redresser of the winter's wrong! Yea, welcome, March! and though I die ere June, Yet for the hope of life I give thee praise, Striving to swell the burden of the tune That even now I hear thy brown birds raise, Unmindful of the past or coming days; Who sing, "O joy! a new year is begun! What happiness to look upon the sun!" O, what begetteth all this storm of bliss, But Death himself, who, crying solemnly, Even from the heart of sweet Forgetfulness, Bids us, "Rejoice! lest pleasureless ye die. Within a little time must ye go by. Stretch forth your open hands, and, while ye live, Take all the gifts that Death and Life may give." William Morris [1834-1896] SONG IN MARCH Now are the winds about us in their glee, Tossing the slender tree; Whirling the sands about his furious car, March cometh from afar; Breaks the sealed magic of old Winter's dreams, And rends his glassy streams; Chafing with potent airs, he fiercely takes Their fetters from the lakes, And, with a power by queenly Spring supplied, Wakens the slumbering tide. With a wild love he seeks young Summer's charms And clasps her to his arms; Lifting his shield between, he drives away Old Winter from his prey;-- The ancient tyrant whom he boldly braves, Goes howling to his caves; And, to his northern realm compelled to fly, Yields up the victory; Melted are all his bands, o'erthrown his towers, And March comes bringing flowers. William Gilmore Simms [1806-1870] MARCH Blossom on the plum, Wild wind and merry; Leaves upon the cherry, And one swallow come. Red windy dawn, Swift rain and sunny; Wild bees seeking honey, Crocus on the lawn; Blossom on the plum. Grass begins to grow, Dandelions come; Snowdrops haste to go After last month's snow; Rough winds beat and blow, Blossom on the plum. Nora Hopper [1871-1906] WRITTEN IN MARCH The Cock is crowing, The stream is flowing, The small birds twitter, The lake doth glitter, The green field sleeps in the sun; The oldest and youngest Are at work with the strongest; The cattle are grazing, Their heads never raising; There are forty feeding like one! Like an army defeated The snow hath retreated, And now doth fare ill On the top of the bare hill; The ploughboy is whooping--anon--anon There's joy in the mountains; There's life in the fountains; Small clouds are sailing, Blue sky prevailing; The rain is over and gone! William Wordsworth [1770-1850] THE PASSING OF MARCH The braggart March stood in the season's door With his broad shoulders blocking up the way, Shaking the snow-flakes from the cloak he wore, And from the fringes of his kirtle gray. Near by him April stood with tearful face, With violets in her hands, and in her hair Pale, wild anemones; the fragrant lace Half-parted from her breast, which seemed like fair, Dawn-tinted mountain snow, smooth-drifted there. She on the blusterer's arm laid one white hand, But he would none of her soft blandishment, Yet did she plead with tears none might withstand, For even the fiercest hearts at last relent. And he, at last, in ruffian tenderness, With one swift, crushing kiss her lips did greet. Ah, poor starved heart!--for that one rude caress, She cast her violets underneath his feet. Robert Burns Wilson [1850-1916] HOME THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD Oh, to be in England Now that April's there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England--now! And after April, when May follows And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows! Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge Leans to the field and scatters on the clover Blossoms and dewdrops--at the bent spray's edge-- That's the wise thrush: he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture! And though the fields look rough with hoary dew, All will be gay when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children's dower --Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! Robert Browning [1812-1889] SONG April, April, Laugh thy girlish laughter; Then, the moment after, Weep thy girlish tears! April, that mine ears Like a lover greetest, If I tell thee, sweetest, All my hopes and fears, April, April, Laugh thy golden laughter, But, the moment after, Weep thy golden tears! William Watson [1858-1935] AN APRIL ADORATION Sang the sun rise on an amber morn-- "Earth, be glad! An April day is born. "Winter's done, and April's in the skies, Earth, look up with laughter in your eyes!" Putting off her dumb dismay of snow, Earth bade all her unseen children grow. Then the sound of growing in the air Rose to God a liturgy of prayer; And the thronged succession of the days Uttered up to God a psalm of praise. Laughed the running sap in every vein, Laughed the running flurries of warm rain, Laughed the life in every wandering root, Laughed the tingling cells of bud and shoot. God in all the concord of their mirth Heard the adoration-song of Earth. Charles G. D. Roberts [1860- SWEET WILD APRIL O sweet wild April Came over the hills, He skipped with the winds And he tripped with the rills; His raiment was all Of the daffodils. Sing hi, Sing hey, Sing ho! O sweet wild April Came down the lea, Dancing along With his sisters three: Carnation, and Rose, And tall Lily. Sing hi, Sing hey, Sing ho! O sweet wild April, On pastoral quill Came piping in moonlight By hollow and hill, In starlight at midnight, By dingle and rill. Sing hi, Sing hey, Sing ho! Where sweet wild April His melody played, Trooped cowslip, and primrose, And iris, the maid, And silver narcissus, A star in the shade. Sing hi, Sing hey, Sing ho! When sweet wild April Dipped down the dale, Pale cuckoopint brightened, And windflower trail, And white-thorn, the wood-bride, In virginal veil. Sing hi, Sing hey, Sing ho! When sweet wild April Through deep woods pressed, Sang cuckoo above him, And lark on his crest, And Philomel fluttered Close under his breast. Sing hi, Sing hey, Sing ho! O sweet wild April, Wherever you went The bondage of winter Was broken and rent, Sank elfin ice-city And frost-goblin's tent. Sing hi, Sing hey, Sing ho! Yet sweet wild April, The blithe, the brave, Fell asleep in the fields By a windless wave And Jack-in-the-Pulpit Preached over his grave. Sing hi, Sing hey, Sing ho! O sweet wild April, Farewell to thee! And a deep sweet sleep To thy sisters three,-- Carnation, and Rose, And tall Lily. Sing hi, Sing hey, Sing ho! William Force Stead [18-- SPINNING IN APRIL Moon in heaven's garden, among the clouds that wander, Crescent moon so young to see, above the April ways, Whiten, bloom not yet, not yet, within the twilight yonder; All my spinning is not done, for all the loitering days. Oh, my heart has two wild wings that ever would be flying! Oh, my heart's a meadow-lark that ever would be free! Well it is that I must spin until the light be dying; Well it is the little wheel must turn all day for me! All the hill-tops beckon, and beyond the western meadows Something calls me ever, calls me ever, low and clear: A little tree as young as I, the coming summer shadows,-- The voice of running waters that I ever thirst to hear. Oftentime the plea of it has set my wings a-beating; Oftentimes it coaxes, as I sit in weary-wise, Till the wild life hastens out to wild things all entreating, And leaves me at the spinning-wheel, with dark, unseeing eyes. Josephine Preston Peabody [1874-1922] SONG: ON MAY MORNING Now the bright morning-star, day's harbinger, Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose. Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire Mirth and youth and warm desire! Woods and groves are of thy dressing, Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing. Thus we salute thee with our early song, And welcome thee, and wish thee long. John Milton [1608-1674] A MAY BURDEN Though meadow-ways as I did tread, The corn grew in great lustihead, And hey! the beeches burgeoned. By Goddes fay, by Goddes fay! It is the month, the jolly month, It is the jolly month of May. God ripe the wines and corn, I say, And wenches for the marriage-day, And boys to teach love's comely play. By Goddes fay, by Goddes fay! It is the month, the jolly month, It is the jolly month of May. As I went down by lane and lea, The daisies reddened so, pardie! "Blushets!" I said, "I well do see, By Goddes fay, by Goddes fay! The thing ye think of in this month, Heigho! this jolly month of May." As down I went by rye and oats, The blossoms smelt of kisses; throats Of birds turned kisses into notes; By Goddes fay, by Goddes fay! The kiss it is a growing flower, I trow, this jolly month of May. God send a mouth to every kiss, Seeing the blossom of this bliss By gathering doth grow, certes! By Goddes fay, by Goddes fay! Thy brow-garland pushed all aslant Tells--but I tell not, wanton May! Francis Thompson [1859?-1907] CORINNA'S GOING A-MAYING Get up, get up for shame, the blooming morn Upon her wings presents the god unshorn. See how Aurora throws her fair Fresh-quilted colors through the air: Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see The dew bespangling herb and tree. Each flower has wept, and bowed toward the east, Above an hour since: yet you not dressed; Nay! not so much as out of bed; When all the birds have matins said And sung their thankful hymns: 'tis sin, Nay, profanation, to keep in, When as a thousand virgins on this day Spring, sooner than the lark, to fetch in May. Rise and put on your foliage, and be seen To come forth, like the spring-time, fresh and green, And sweet as Flora. Take no care For jewels for your gown or hair: Fear not; the leaves will strew Gems in abundance upon you: Besides, the childhood of the day has kept, Against you come, some orient pearls unwept; Come, and receive them while the light Hangs on the dew-locks of the night, And Titan on the eastern hill Retires himself, or else stands still Till you come forth. Wash, dress, be brief in praying: Few beads are best, when once we go a-Maying. Come, my Corinna, come; and, coming, mark How each field turns a street, each street a park Made green and trimmed with trees; see how Devotion gives each house a bough Or branch: each porch, each door, ere this, An ark, a tabernacle is, Made up of white-thorn, neatly interwove; As if here were those cooler shades of love. Can such delights be in the street And open fields, and we not see't? Come, we'll abroad; and let's obey The proclamation made for May: And sin no more, as we have done, by staying; But, my Corinna, come, let's go a-Maying. There's not a budding boy or girl, this day, But is got up, and gone to bring in May. A deal of youth, ere this, is come Back, and with white-thorn laden home. Some have despatched their cakes and cream Before that we have left to dream: And some have wept, and wooed and plighted troth, And chose their priest, ere we can cast off sloth: Many a green gown has been given; Many a kiss, both odd and even: Many a glance, too, has been sent From out the eye, love's firmament; Many a jest told of the keys betraying This night, and locks picked, yet we're not a-Maying. Come, let us go, while we are in our prime, And take the harmless folly of the time. We shall grow old apace, and die Before we know our liberty. Our life is short, and our days run As fast away as does the sun; And, as a vapor or a drop of rain, Once lost, can ne'er be found again: So when or you or I are made A fable, song, or fleeting shade, All love, all liking, all delight Lies drowned with us in endless night. Then while time serves, and we are but decaying, Come, my Corinna, come, let's go a-Maying. Robert Herrick [1591-1674] "SISTER, AWAKE!" Sister, awake! close not your eyes! The day her light discloses, And the bright morning doth arise Out of her bed of roses. See the clear sun, the world's bright eye, In at our window peeping: Lo, how he blusheth to espy Us idle wenches sleeping! Therefore awake! make haste, I say, And let us, without staying, All in our gowns of green so gay Into the Park a-maying! Unknown MAY May! queen of blossoms, And fulfilling flowers, With what pretty music Shall we charm the hours? Wilt thou have pipe and reed, Blown in the open mead? Or to the lute give heed In the green bowers? Thou hast no need of us, Or pipe or wire; Thou hast the golden bee Ripened with fire; And many thousand more Songsters, that thee adore, Filling earth's grassy floor With new desire. Thou hast thy mighty herds, Tame and free-livers; Doubt not, thy music too In the deep rivers, And the whole plumy flight Warbling the day and night-- Up at the gates of light, See, the lark quivers! Edward Hovell-Thurlow [1781-1829] MAY Come walk with me along this willowed lane, Where, like lost coinage from some miser's store, The golden dandelions more and more Glow, as the warm sun kisses them again! For this is May! who with a daisy chain Leads on the laughing Hours; for now is o'er Long winter's trance. No longer rise and roar His forest-wrenching blasts. The hopeful swain, Along the furrow, sings behind his team; Loud pipes the redbreast--troubadour of spring, And vocal all the morning copses ring; More blue the skies in lucent lakelets gleam; And the glad earth, caressed by murmuring showers, Wakes like a bride, to deck herself with flowers! Henry Sylvester Cornwell [1831-1886] A SPRING LILT Through the silver mist Of the blossom-spray Trill the orioles: list To their joyous lay! "What in all the world, in all the world," they say, Is half so sweet, so sweet, is half so sweet as May?" "June! June! June!" Low croon The brown bees in the clover. "Sweet! sweet! sweet!" Repeat The robins, nested over. Unknown SUMMER LONGINGS Ah! my heart is weary waiting, Waiting for the May,-- Waiting for the pleasant rambles Where the fragrant hawthorn-brambles, With the woodbine alternating, Scent the dewy way. Ah! my heart is weary waiting, Waiting for the May. Ah! my heart is sick with longing, Longing for the May,-- Longing to escape from study To the young face fair and ruddy, And the thousand charms belonging To the summer's day. Ah! my heart is sick with longing, Longing for the May. Ah! my heart is sore with sighing, Sighing for the May,-- Sighing for their sure returning, When the summer beams are burning, Hopes and flowers that, dead or dying, All the winter lay. Ah! my heart is sore with sighing, Sighing for the May. Ah! my heart is pained with throbbing, Throbbing for the May,-- Throbbing for the seaside billows, Or the water-wooing willows; Where, in laughing and in sobbing, Glide the streams away. Ah! my heart, my heart is throbbing, Throbbing for the May. Waiting sad, dejected, weary, Waiting for the May: Spring goes by with wasted warnings,-- Moonlit evenings, sunbright mornings,-- Summer comes, yet dark and dreary Life still ebbs away; Man is ever weary, weary, Waiting for the May! Denis Florence MacCarthy [1817-1882] MIDSUMMER Around this lovely valley rise The purple hills of Paradise. O, softly on yon banks of haze, Her rosy face the Summer lays! Becalmed along the azure sky, The argosies of cloudland lie, Whose shores, with many a shining rift, Far off their pearl-white peaks uplift. Through all the long midsummer-day The meadow-sides are sweet with hay. I seek the coolest sheltered seat, Just where the field and forest meet,- Where grow the pine-trees tall and bland, The ancient oaks austere and grand, And fringy roots and pebbles fret The ripples of the rivulet. I watch the mowers, as they go Through the tall grass, a white-sleeved row. With even stroke their scythes they swing, In tune their merry whetstones ring. Behind the nimble youngsters run, And toss the thick swaths in the sun. The cattle graze, while, warm and still, Slopes the broad pasture, basks the hill, And bright, where summer breezes break, The green wheat crinkles like a lake. The butterfly and humblebee Come to the pleasant woods with me; Quickly before me runs the quail, Her chickens skulk behind the rail; High up the lone wood-pigeon sits, And the woodpecker pecks and flits. Sweet woodland music sinks and swells, The brooklet rings its tinkling bells, The swarming insects drone and hum, The partridge beats its throbbing drum. The squirrel leaps among the boughs, And chatters in his leafy house. The oriole flashes by; and, look! Into the mirror of the brook, Where the vain bluebird trims his coat, Two tiny feathers fall and float. As silently, as tenderly, The down of peace descends on me. O, this is peace! I have no need Of friend to talk, of book to read: A dear Companion here abides; Close to my thrilling heart He hides; The holy silence is His Voice: I lie and listen, and rejoice. John Townsend Trowbridge [1827-1916] A MIDSUMMER SONG O, Father's gone to market-town, he was up before the day, And Jamie's after robins, and the man is making hay, And whistling down the hollow goes the boy that minds the mill, While mother from the kitchen-door is calling with a will: "Polly!--Polly!--The cows are in the corn! O, where's Polly?" From all the misty morning air there comes a summer sound-- A murmur as of waters from skies and trees and ground. The birds they sing upon the wing, the pigeons bill and coo, And over hill and hollow rings again the loud halloo: "Polly!--Polly!--The cows are in the corn! O, where's Polly?" Above the trees the honey-bees swarm by with buzz and boom, And in the field and garden a thousand blossoms bloom. Within the farmer's meadow a brown-eyed daisy blows, And down at the edge of the hollow a red and thorny rose. But Polly!--Polly!--The cows are in the corn! O, where's Polly? How strange at such a time of day the mill should stop its clatter! The farmer's wife is listening now and wonders what's the matter. O, wild the birds are singing in the wood and on the hill, While whistling up the hollow goes the boy that minds the mill. But Polly!--Polly!--The cows are in the corn! O, where's Polly? Richard Watson Glider [1844-1909] JUNE From the Prelude to "The Vision of Sir Launfal" Over his keys the musing organist, Beginning doubtfully and far away, First lets his fingers wander as they list, And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay: Then, as the touch of his loved instrument Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme, First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent Along the wavering vista of his dream. Not only around our infancy Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not. Over our manhood bend the skies; Against our fallen and traitor lives The great winds utter prophecies; With our faint hearts the mountain strives; Its arms outstretched, the druid wood Waits with its benedicite; And to our age's drowsy blood Still shouts the inspiring sea. Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us; The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in, The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us, We bargain for the graves we lie in; At the devil's booth are all things sold, Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold; For a cap and bells our lives we pay, Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking: 'Tis heaven alone that is given away, 'Tis only God may be had for the asking; No price is set on the lavish summer; June may be had by the poorest corner. And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays; Whether we look, or whether we listen, We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; Every clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers, And, groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; The flush of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in meadows green, The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean To be some happy creature's palace; The little bird sits at his door in the sun, Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, And lets his illumined being o'errun With the deluge of summer it receives; His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings; He sings to the wide world and she to her nest,-- In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best? Now is the high-tide of the year, And whatever of life hath ebbed away Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer, Into every bare inlet and creek and bay; Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, We are happy now because God wills it; No matter how barren the past may have been, 'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green; We sit in the warm shade and feel right well How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell; We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing That skies are clear and grass is growing; The breeze comes whispering in our ear, That dandelions are blossoming near, That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, That the river is bluer than the sky, That the robin is plastering his house hard by; And if the breeze kept the good news back, For other couriers we should not lack; We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing, And hark! how clear bold chanticleer, Warmed with the new wine of the year, Tells all in his lusty crowing! James Russell Lowell [1819-1891] JUNE When the bubble moon is young, Down the sources of the breeze, Like a yellow lantern hung In the tops of blackened trees, There is promise she will grow Into beauty unforetold, Into all unthought-of gold. Heigh ho! When the Spring has dipped her foot, Like a bather, in the air, And the ripples warm the root Till the little flowers dare, There is promise she will grow Sweeter than the Springs of old, Fairer than was ever told. Heigh ho! But the moon of middle night, Risen, is the rounded moon; And the Spring of budding light Eddies into just a June. Ah, the promise--was it so? Nay, the gift was fairy gold; All the new is over-old. Heigh ho! Harrison Smith Morris [1856- HARVEST Sweet, sweet, sweet, Is the wind's song, Astir in the rippled wheat All day long, It hath the brook's wild gayety, The sorrowful cry of the sea. Oh, hush and hear! Sweet, sweet and clear, Above the locust's whirr And hum of bee Rises that soft, pathetic harmony. In the meadow-grass The innocent white daisies blow, The dandelion plume doth pass Vaguely to and fro,-- The unquiet spirit of a flower That hath too brief an hour. Now doth a little cloud all white, Or golden bright, Drift down the warm, blue sky; And now on the horizon line, Where dusky woodlands lie, A sunny mist doth shine, Like to a veil before a holy shrine, Concealing, half-revealing, things divine. Sweet, sweet, sweet, Is the wind's song, Astir in the rippled wheat All day long. That exquisite music calls The reaper everywhere-- Life and death must share. The golden harvest falls. So doth all end,-- Honored Philosophy, Science and Art, The bloom of the heart;-- Master, Consoler, Friend, Make Thou the harvest of our days To fall within Thy ways. Ellen Mackay Hutchinson Cortissoz [?-1933] SCYTHE SONG Mowers, weary and brown, and blithe, What is the word methinks ye know, Endless over-word that the Scythe Sings to the blades of the grass below? Scythes that swing in the grass and clover, Something, still, they say as they pass; What is the word that, over and over, Sings the Scythe to the flowers and grass? Hush, ah hush, the Scythes are saying, Hush, and heed not, and fall asleep; Hush, they say to the grasses swaying, Hush, they sing to the clover deep! Hush--'tis the lullaby Time is singing-- Hush, and heed not, for all things pass, Hush, ah hush! and the Scythes are swinging Over the clover, over the grass! Andrew Lang [1844-1912] SEPTEMBER Sweet is the voice that calls From babbling waterfalls In meadows where the downy seeds are flying; And soft the breezes blow, And eddying come and go, In faded gardens where the rose is dying. Among the stubbled corn The blithe quail pipes at morn, The merry partridge drums in hidden places, And glittering insects gleam Above the reedy stream, Where busy spiders spin their filmy laces. At eve, cool shadows fall Across the garden wall, And on the clustered grapes to purple turning; And pearly vapors lie Along the eastern sky, Where the broad harvest-moon is redly burning. Ah, soon on field and hill The winds shall whistle chill, And patriarch swallows call their flocks together To fly from frost and snow, And seek for lands where blow The fairer blossoms of a balmier weather. The pollen-dusted bees Search for the honey-lees That linger in the last flowers of September, While plaintive mourning doves Coo sadly to their loves Of the dead summer they so well remember. The cricket chirps all day, "O fairest summer, stay!" The squirrel eyes askance the chestnuts browning; The wild fowl fly afar Above the foamy bar, And hasten southward ere the skies are frowning. Now comes a fragrant breeze Through the dark cedar-trees, And round about my temples fondly lingers, In gentle playfulness, Like to the soft caress Bestowed in happier days by loving fingers. Yet, though a sense of grief Comes with the falling leaf, And memory makes the summer doubly pleasant, In all my autumn dreams A future summer gleams, Passing the fairest glories of the present! George Arnold [1834-1865] INDIAN SUMMER These are the days when birds come back, A very few, a bird or two, To take a backward look. These are the days when skies put on The old, old sophistries of June,-- A blue and gold mistake. Oh, fraud that cannot cheat the bee, Almost thy plausibility Induces my belief, Till ranks of seeds their witness bear, And softly through the altered air Hurries a timid leaf! Oh, sacrament of summer days, Oh, last communion in the haze, Permit a child to join, Thy sacred emblems to partake, Thy consecrated bread to break, Taste thine immortal wine! Emily Dickinson [1830-1886] PREVISION Oh, days of beauty standing veiled apart, With dreamy skies and tender, tremulous air, In this rich Indian summer of the heart Well may the earth her jewelled halo wear. The long brown fields--no longer drear and dull-- Burn with the glow of these deep-hearted hours. Until the dry weeds seem more beautiful, More spiritlike than even summer's flowers. But yesterday the world was stricken bare, Left old and dead in gray, enshrouding gloom; To-day what vivid wonder of the air Awakes the soul of vanished light and bloom? Sharp with the clean, fine ecstasy of death, A mightier wind shall strike the shrinking earth, An exhalation of creative breath Wake the white wonder of the winter's birth. In her wide Pantheon--her temple place-- Wrapped in strange beauty and new comforting, We shall not miss the Summer's full-blown grace, Nor hunger for the swift, exquisite Spring. Ada Foster Murray [1857-1936] A SONG OF EARLY AUTUMN When late in summer the streams run yellow, Burst the bridges and spread into bays; When berries are black and peaches are mellow, And hills are hidden by rainy haze; When the goldenrod is golden still, But the heart of the sunflower is darker and sadder; When the corn is in stacks on the slope of the hill, And slides o'er the path the striped adder; When butterflies flutter from clover to thicket, Or wave their wings on the drooping leaf; When the breeze comes shrill with the call of the cricket, Grasshopper's rasp, and rustle of sheaf; When high in the field the fern-leaves wrinkle, And brown is the grass where the mowers have mown; When low in the meadow the cow-bells tinkle, And small brooks crinkle o'er stock and stone; When heavy and hollow the robin's whistle And shadows are deep in the heat of noon; When the air is white with the down o' the thistle, And the sky is red with the harvest moon; O, then be chary, young Robert and Mary, No time let slip, not a moment wait! If the fiddle would play it must stop its tuning; And they who would wed must be done with their mooning; So let the churn rattle, see well to the cattle, And pile the wood by the barn-yard gate! Richard Watson Gilder [1844-1909] TO AUTUMN Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness! Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells. Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep, Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers; And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cider-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours. Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river shallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft, And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. John Keats [1795-1821] ODE TO AUTUMN I saw old Autumn in the misty morn Stand shadowless like Silence, listening To silence, for no lonely bird would sing Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn, Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;-- Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright With tangled gossamer that fell by night, Pearling his coronet of golden corn. Where are the songs of Summer?--With the sun, Oping the dusky eyelids of the South, Till shade and silence waken up as one, And Morning sings with a warm odorous mouth. Where are the merry birds?--Away, away, On panting wings through the inclement skies, Lest owls should prey Undazzled at noonday, And tear with horny beak their lustrous eyes. Where are the blooms of Summer?--In the West, Blushing their last to the last sunny hours, When the mild Eve by sudden Night is pressed Like tearful Prosperine, snatched from her flowers, To a most gloomy breast. Where is the pride of Summer,--the green prime,-- The many, many leaves all twinkling?--Three On the mossed elm; three on the naked lime Trembling,--and one upon the old oak-tree! Where is the Dryad's immortality?-- Gone into mournful cypress and dark yew, Or wearing the long gloomy Winter through In the smooth holly's green eternity. The squirrel gloats on his accomplished hoard, The ants have brimmed their garners with ripe grain, And honey bees have stored The sweets of Summer in their luscious cells; The swallows all have winged across the main; But here the Autumn melancholy dwells, And sighs her tearful spells Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain. Alone, alone, Upon a mossy stone, She sits and reckons up the dead and gone, With the last leaves for a love-rosary, Whilst all the withered world looks drearily, Like a dim picture of the drowned past In the hushed mind's mysterious far away, Doubtful what ghostly thing will steal the last Into that distance, gray upon the gray. O go and sit with her, and be o'ershaded Under the languid downfall of her hair: She wears a coronal of flowers faded Upon her forehead, and a face of care;-- There is enough of withered everywhere To make her bower,--and enough of gloom; There is enough of sadness to invite, If only for the rose that died, whose doom Is Beauty's,--she that with the living bloom Of conscious cheeks most beautifies the light: There is enough of sorrowing, and quite Enough of bitter fruits the earth doth bear,-- Enough of chilly droppings for her bowl; Enough of fear and shadowy despair, To frame her cloudy prison for the soul! Thomas Hood [1799-1845] ODE TO THE WEST WIND I O Wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Yellow and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence stricken multitudes! O thou Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odors plain and hill; Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear! II Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean, Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread On the blue surface of thine airy surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge Of the horizon to the zenith's height, The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, Vaulted with all thy congregated might Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: O hear! III Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams, Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave's intenser day, All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou For whose path the Atlantic's level powers Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean, know Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear! IV If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even I were as in my boyhood, and could be The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed Scarce seemed a vision--I would ne'er have striven As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed One too like thee--tameless, and swift, and proud. V Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own? The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe, Like withered, leaves, to quicken a new birth; And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? Percy Bysshe Shelley [1792-1822] AUTUMN: A DIRGE The warm sun is failing; the bleak wind is wailing; The bare boughs are sighing; the pale flowers are dying; And the Year On the earth, her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Is lying. Come, months, come away, From November to May; In your saddest array Follow the bier Of the dead, cold Year, And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre. The chill rain is falling; the nipped worm is crawling; The rivers are swelling; the thunder is knelling For the Year; The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone To his dwelling; Come, months, come away; Put on white, black, and gray; Let your light sisters play-- Ye, follow the bier Of the dead, cold Year, And make her grave green with tear on tear. Percy Bysshe Shelley [1792-1822] AUTUMN The morns are meeker than they were, The nuts are getting brown; The berry's cheek is plumper, The rose is out of town. The maple wears a gayer scarf, The field a scarlet gown. Lest I should be old-fashioned, I'll put a trinket on. Emily Dickinson [1830-1886] "WHEN THE FROST IS ON THE PUNKIN" When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock, And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin' turkey-cock, And the clackin' of the guineys, and the cluckin' of the hens, And the rooster's hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence; O, it's then's the times a feller is a-feelin' at his best, With the risin' sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest, As he leaves the house, bareheaded and goes out to feed the stock, When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock. They's something kindo' harty-like about the atmusfere When the heat of summer's over and the coolin' fall is here-- Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossoms on the trees, And the mumble of the hummin'-birds and buzzin' of the bees; But the air's so appetizin'; and the landscape through the haze Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days Is a pictur' that no painter has the colorin' to mock-- When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock. The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn, And the raspin' of the tangled leaves, as golden as the morn; The stubble in the furries--kindo' lonesome-like, but still A-preachin' sermuns to us of the barns they growed to fill; The strawstack in the medder, and the reaper in the shed; The hosses in theyr stalls below--the clover overhead!-- O, it sets my hart a-clickin' like the tickin' of a clock, When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock. Then your apples all is getherd, and the ones a feller keeps Is poured around the celler-floor in red and yeller heaps; And your cider-makin's over, and your wimmern-folks is through With their mince and apple-butter, and theyr souse and saussage, too!... I don't know how to tell it--but ef sich a thing could be As the Angels wantin' boardin', and they'd call around on me-- I'd want to 'commodate 'em--all the whole-indurin' flock-- When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock. James Whitcomb Riley [1849-1916] KORE Yea, she hath passed hereby, and blessed the sheaves, And the great garths, and stacks, and quiet farms, And all the tawny, and the crimson leaves. Yea, she hath passed with poppies in her arms, Under the star of dusk, through stealing mist, And blessed the earth, and gone, while no man wist. With slow, reluctant feet, and weary eyes, And eye-lids heavy with the coming sleep, With small breasts lifted up in stress of sighs, She passed, as shadows pass, among the sheep; While the earth dreamed, and only I was ware Of that faint fragrance blown from her soft hair. The land lay steeped in peace of silent dreams; There was no sound amid the sacred boughs. Nor any mournful music in her streams: Only I saw the shadow on her brows, Only I knew her for the yearly slain, And wept, and weep until she come again. Frederic Manning [18 -- OLD OCTOBER Hail, old October, bright and chill, First freedman from the summer sun! Spice high the bowl, and drink your fill! Thank heaven, at last the summer's done! Come, friend, my fire is burning bright, A fire's no longer out of place, How clear it glows! (there's frost to-night,) It looks white winter in the face. You've been to "Richard" Ah! you've seen A noble play: I'm glad you went; But what on earth does Shakespeare mean By "winter of our discontent?" Be mine the tree that feeds the fire! Be mine the sun knows when to set! Be mine the months when friends desire To turn in here from cold and wet! The sentry sun, that glared so long O'erhead, deserts his summer post; Ay, you may brew it hot and strong: "The joys of winter"--come, a toast! Shine on the kangaroo, thou sun! Make far New Zealand faint with fear! Don't hurry back to spoil our fun, Thank goodness, old October's here! Thomas Constable [1812-1881] NOVEMBER When thistle-blows do lightly float About the pasture-height, And shrills the hawk a parting note, And creeps the frost at night, Then hilly ho! though singing so, And whistle as I may, There comes again the old heart pain Through all the livelong day. In high wind creaks the leafless tree And nods the fading fern; The knolls are dun as snow-clouds be, And cold the sun does burn. Then ho, hollo! though calling so, I cannot keep it down; The tears arise unto my eyes, And thoughts are chill and brown. Far in the cedars' dusky stoles, Where the sere ground-vine weaves, The partridge drums funereal rolls Above the fallen leaves. And hip, hip, ho! though cheering so, It stills no whit the pain; For drip, drip, drip, from bare-branch tip, I hear the year's last rain. So drive the cold cows from the hill, And call the wet sheep in; And let their stamping clatter fill The barn with warming din. And ho, folk, ho! though it be so That we no more may roam, We still will find a cheerful mind Around the fire at home! C. L. Cleaveland [18--? ] NOVEMBER Hark you such sound as quivers? Kings will hear, As kings have heard, and tremble on their thrones; The old will feel the weight of mossy stones; The young alone will laugh and scoff at fear. It is the tread of armies marching near, From scarlet lands to lands forever pale; It is a bugle dying down the gale; It is the sudden gushing of a tear. And it is hands that grope at ghostly doors; And romp of spirit-children on the pave; It is the tender sighing of the brave Who fell, ah! long ago, in futile wars; It is such sound as death; and, after all, 'Tis but the forest letting dead leaves fall. Mahlon Leonard Fisher [1874- STORM FEAR When the wind works against us in the dark, And pelts with snow The lower chamber window on the east, And whispers with a sort of stifled bark, The beast, "Come out! Come out!"-- It costs no inward struggle not to go, Ah, no! I count our strength, Two and a child, Those of us not asleep subdued to mark How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length,-- How drifts are piled, Dooryard and road ungraded, Till even the comforting barn grows far away And my heart owns a doubt Whether 'tis in us to arise with day And save ourselves unaided. Robert Frost [1875- WINTER: A DIRGE The wintry west extends his blast, And hail and rain does blaw; Or the stormy north sends driving forth The blinding sleet and snaw: While, tumbling brown, the burn comes down, And roars frae bank to brae; And bird and beast in covert rest, And pass the heartless day. "The sweeping blast, the sky o'ercast," The joyless winter day. Let others fear,--to me more dear Than all the pride of May; The tempest's howl, it soothes my soul, My griefs it seems to join; The leafless trees my fancy please, Their fate resembles mine! Thou Power Supreme, whose mighty scheme These woes of mine fulfil, Here, firm, I rest,--they must be best, Because they are Thy will. Then all I want (oh, do Thou grant This one request of mine!) Since to enjoy Thou dost deny, Assist me to resign! Robert Burns [1759-1796] OLD WINTER Old Whiter sad, in snow yclad, Is making a doleful din; But let him howl till he crack his jowl, We will not let him in. Ay, let him lift from the billowy drift His hoary, haggard form, And scowling stand, with his wrinkled hand Outstretching to the storm. And let his weird and sleety beard Stream loose upon the blast, And, rustling, chime to the tinkling rime From his bald head falling fast. Let his baleful breath shed blight and death On herb and flower and tree; And brooks and ponds in crystal bonds Bind fast, but what care we? Let him push at the door,--in the chimney roar, And rattle the window-pane; Let him in at us spy with his icicle eye, But he shall not entrance gain. Let him gnaw, forsooth, with his freezing tooth, On our roof-tiles, till he tire; But we care not a whit, as we jovial sit Before our blazing fire. Come, lads, let's sing, till the rafters ring; Come, push the can about;-- From our snug fire-side this Christmas-tide We'll keep old Winter out. Thomas Noel [1799-1861] THE FROST The Frost looked forth, one still, clear night, And he said, "Now I shall be out of sight; So through the valley and over the height In silence I'll take my way. I will not go like that blustering train, The wind and the snow, the hail and the rain, Who make so much bustle and noise in vain, But I'll be as busy as they!" Then he went to the mountain, and powdered its crest, He climbed up the trees, and their boughs he dressed With diamonds and pearls, and over the breast Of the quivering lake he spread A coat of mail, that it need not fear The downward point of many a spear That he hung on its margin, far and near, Where a rock could rear its head. He went to the windows of those who slept, And over each pane like a fairy crept; Wherever he breathed, wherever he stepped, By the light of the moon were seen Most beautiful things. There were flowers and trees, There were bevies of birds and swarms of bees, There were cities, thrones, temples, and towers, and these All pictured in silver sheen! But he did one thing that was hardly fair,-- He peeped in the cupboard, and, finding there That all had forgotten for him to prepare,-- "Now, just to set them a-thinking, I'll bite this basket of fruit," said he; "This costly pitcher I'll burst in three, And the glass of water they've left for me Shall 'tchick!' to tell them I'm drinking." Hannah Flagg Gould [1789-1865] THE FROSTED PANE One night came Winter noiselessly and leaned Against my window-pane. In the deep stillness of his heart convened The ghosts of all his slain. Leaves, and ephemera, and stars of earth, And fugitives of grass,-- White spirits loosed from bonds of mortal birth, He drew them on the glass. Charles G. D. Roberts [1860- THE FROST SPIRIT He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes! You may trace his footsteps now On the naked woods and the blasted fields and the brown hill's withered brow. He has smitten the leaves of the gray old trees where their pleasant green came forth, And the winds, which follow wherever he goes, have shaken them down to earth. He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes! from the frozen Labrador, From the icy bridge of the Northern seas, which the white bear wanders o'er, Where the fisherman's sail is stiff with ice and the luckless forms below In the sunless cold of the lingering night into marble statues grow! He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes! on the rushing Northern blast, And the dark Norwegian pines have bowed as his fearful breath went past. With an unscorched wing he has hurried on, where the fires of Hecla glow On the darkly beautiful sky above and the ancient ice below. He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes! and the quiet lake shall feel The torpid touch of his glazing breath, and ring to the skater's heel; And the streams which danced on the broken rocks, or sang to the leaning grass, Shall bow again to their winter chain, and in mournful silence pass. He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes! Let us meet him as we may, And turn with the light of the parlor-fire his evil power away; And gather closer the circle round, when that firelight dances high, And laugh at the shriek of the baffled Fiend as his sounding wing goes by! John Greenleaf Whittier [1807-1892] SNOW Lo, what wonders the day hath brought, Born of the soft and slumbrous snow! Gradual, silent, slowly wrought; Even as an artist, thought by thought, Writes expression on lip and brow. Hanging garlands the eaves o'erbrim, Deep drifts smother the paths below; The elms are shrouded, trunk and limb, And all the air is dizzy and dim With a whirl of dancing, dazzling snow. Dimly out of the baffled sight Houses and church-spires stretch away; The trees, all spectral and still and white, Stand up like ghosts in the failing light, And fade and faint with the blinded day. Down from the roofs in gusts are hurled The eddying drifts to the waste below; And still is the banner of storm unfurled, Till all the drowned and desolate world Lies dumb and white in a trance of snow. Slowly the shadows gather and fall, Still the whispering snow-flakes beat; Night and darkness are over all: Rest, pale city, beneath their pall! Sleep, white world, in thy winding-sheet! Clouds may thicken, and storm-winds breathe: On my wall is a glimpse of Rome,-- Land of my longing!--and underneath Swings and trembles my olive-wreath; Peace and I are at home, at home! Elizabeth Akers [1832-1911] TO A SNOW-FLAKE What heart could have thought you?-- Past our devisal (O filigree petal!) Fashioned so purely, Fragilely, surely, From what Paradisal Imagineless metal, Too costly for cost? Who hammered you, wrought you, From argentine vapor?-- God was my shaper. Passing surmisal, He hammered, He wrought me, From curled silver vapor, To lust of His mind:-- Thou couldst not have thought me! So purely, so palely, Tinily, surely, Mightily, frailly, Insculped and embossed, With His hammer of wind, And His graver of frost." Francis Thompson [1859?-1907] THE SNOW-SHOWER Stand here by my side and turn, I pray, On the lake below thy gentle eyes; The clouds hang over it, heavy and gray, And dark and silent the water lies; And out of that frozen mist the snow In wavering flakes begins to flow; Flake after flake They sink in the dark and silent lake. See how in a living swarm they come From the chambers beyond that misty veil; Some hover in air awhile, and some Rush prone from the sky like summer hail. All, dropping swiftly, or settling slow, Meet, and are still in the depths below; Flake after flake Dissolved in the dark and silent lake. Here delicate snow-stars, out of the cloud, Come floating downward in airy play, Like spangles dropped from the glistening crowd That whiten by night the Milky Way; There broader and burlier masses fall; The sullen water buries them all,-- Flake after flake,-- All drowned in the dark and silent lake. And some, as on tender wings they glide From their chilly birth-cloud, dim and gray, Are joined in their fall, and, side by side, Come clinging along their unsteady way; As friend with friend, or husband with wife, Makes hand in hand the passage of life; Each mated flake Soon sinks in the dark and silent lake. Lo! while we are gazing, in swifter haste Stream down the snows, till the air is white, As, myriads by myriads madly chased, They fling themselves from their shadowy height. The fair, frail creatures of middle sky, What speed they make, with their grave so nigh; Flake after flake To lie in the dark and silent lake. I see in thy gentle eyes a tear; They turn to me in sorrowful thought; Thou thinkest of friends, the good and dear, Who were for a time, and now are not; Like these fair children of cloud and frost, That glisten a moment and then are lost,-- Flake after flake,-- All lost in the dark and silent lake. Yet look again, for the clouds divide; A gleam of blue on the water lies; And far away, on the mountain-side, A sunbeam falls from the opening skies; But the hurrying host that flew between The cloud and the water no more is seen; Flake after flake, At rest in the dark and silent lake. William Cullen Bryant [1794-1878] MIDWINTER The speckled sky is dim with snow, The light flakes falter and fall slow; Athwart the hill-top, rapt and pale, Silently drops a silvery veil; And all the valley is shut in By flickering curtains gray and thin. But cheerily the chickadee Singeth to me on fence and tree; The snow sails round him as he sings, White as the down of angels' wings. I watch the slow flakes as they fall On bank and brier and broken wall; Over the orchard, waste and brown, All noiselessly they settle down, Tipping the apple-boughs, and each Light quivering twig of plum and peach. On turf and curb and bower-roof The snow-storm spreads its ivory woof; It paves with pearl the garden-walk; And lovingly round tattered stalk And shivering stem its magic weaves A mantle fair as lily-leaves. The hooded beehive, small and low, Stands like a maiden in the snow; And the old door-slab is half hid Under an alabaster lid. All day it snows: the sheeted post Gleams in the dimness like a ghost; All day the blasted oak has stood A muffled wizard of the wood; Garland and airy cap adorn The sumach and the wayside thorn, And clustering spangles lodge and shine In the dark tresses of the pine. The ragged bramble, dwarfed and old, Shrinks like a beggar in the cold; In surplice white the cedar stands, And blesses him with priestly hands. Still cheerily the chickadee Singeth to me on fence and tree: But in my inmost ear is heard The music of a holier bird; And heavenly thoughts, as soft and white As snow-flakes, on my soul alight, Clothing with love my lonely heart, Healing with peace each bruised part, Till all my being seems to be Transfigured by their purity. John Townsend Trowbridge [1827-1916] A GLEE FOR WINTER Hence, rude Winter! crabbed old fellow, Never merry, never mellow! Well-a-day! in rain and snow What will keep one's heart aglow? Groups of kinsmen, old and young, Oldest they old friends among; Groups of friends, so old and true That they seem our kinsmen too; These all merry all together Charm away chill Winter weather. What will kill this dull old fellow? Ale that's bright, and wine that's mellow! Dear old songs for ever new; Some true love, and laughter too; Pleasant wit, and harmless fun, And a dance when day is done. Music, friends so true and tried, Whispered love by warm fireside, Mirth at all times all together, Make sweet May of Winter weather. Alfred Domett [1811-1887] THE DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR Full knee-deep lies the winter snow, And the winter winds are wearily sighing: Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow, And tread softly and speak low, For the old year lies a-dying. Old year, you must not die; You came to us so readily, You lived with us so steadily, Old year, you shall not die. He lieth still, he doth not move; He will not see the dawn of day. He hath no other life above, He gave me a friend, and a true true-love, And the New-year will take 'em away. Old year, you must not go; So long as you have been with us, Such joy as you have seen with us, Old year, you shall not go. He frothed his bumpers to the brim; A jollier year we shall not see. But though his eyes are waxing dim, And though his foes speak ill of him, He was a friend to me. Old year, you shall not die; We did so laugh and cry with you, I've half a mind to die with you, Old year, if you must die. He was full of joke and jest, But all his merry quips are o'er. To see him die, across the waste His son and heir doth ride post-haste, But he'll be dead before. Every one for his own. The night is starry and cold, my friend, And the New-year, blithe and bold, my friend, Comes up to take his own. How hard he breathes! over the snow I heard just now the crowing cock. The shadows flicker to and fro: The cricket chirps; the light burns low; 'Tis nearly twelve o'clock. Shake hands before you die. Old year, we'll dearly rue for you. What is it we can do for you? Speak out before you die. His face is growing sharp and thin. Alack! our friend is gone. Close up his eyes; tie up his chin; Step from the corpse, and let him in That standeth there alone, And waiteth at the door. There's a new foot on the floor, my friend, And a new face at the door, my friend, A new face at the door. Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892] DIRGE FOR THE YEAR "Orphan Hours, the Year is dead: Come and sigh, come and weep." "Merry Hours, smile instead, For the Year is but asleep. See, it smiles as it is sleeping, Mocking your untimely weeping." "As an earthquake rocks a corse In its coffin in the clay, So white Winter, that rough nurse, Rocks the death-cold Year to-day; Solemn Hours! wail aloud For your mother in her shroud." "As the wild air stirs and sways The tree-swung cradle of a child, So the breath of these rude days Rocks the Year:--be calm and mild, Trembling Hours; she will arise With new love within her eyes. "January gray is here, Like a sexton by her grave; February bears the bier; March with grief doth howl and rave, And April weeps--but, O, ye Hours, Follow with May's fairest flowers." Percy Bysshe Shelley [1792-1822] WOOD AND FIELD AND RUNNING BROOK WALDEINSAMKEIT I do not count the hours I spend In wandering by the sea; The forest is my loyal friend, Like God it useth me. In plains that room for shadows make Of skirting hills to lie, Bound in by streams which give and take Their colors from the sky; Or on the mountain-crest sublime, Or down the oaken glade, O what have I to do with time? For this the day was made. Cities of mortals woe-begone Fantastic care derides, But in the serious landscape lone Stern benefit abides. Sheen will tarnish, honey cloy, And merry is only a mask of sad, But, sober on a fund of joy, The woods at heart are glad. There the great Planter plants Of fruitful worlds the grain, And with a million spells enchants The souls that walk in pain. Still on the seeds of all he made The rose of beauty burns; Through times that wear and forms that fade, Immortal youth returns. The black ducks mounting from the lake, The pigeon in the pines, The bittern's boom, a desert make Which no false art refines. Down in yon watery nook, Where bearded mists divide, The gray old gods whom Chaos knew, The sires of Nature, hide. Aloft, in secret veins of air, Blows the sweet breath of song, O, few to scale those uplands dare, Though they to all belong! See thou bring not to field or stone The fancies found in books; Leave authors' eyes, and fetch your own, To brave the landscape's looks. Oblivion here thy wisdom is, Thy thrift, the sleep of cares; For a proud idleness like this Crowns all thy mean affairs. Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-1882] "WHEN IN THE WOODS I WANDER ALL ALONE" When in the woods I wander all alone, The woods that are my solace and delight, Which I more covet than a prince's throne, My toil by day and canopy by night; (Light heart, light foot, light food, and slumber light, These lights shall light us to old age's gate, While monarchs, whom rebellious dreams affright, Heavy with fear, death's fearful summons wait;) Whilst here I wander, pleased to be alone, Weighing in thought the worlds no-happiness, I cannot choose but wonder at its moan, Since so plain joys the woody life can bless: Then live who may where honied words prevail, I with the deer, and with the nightingale! Edward Hovell-Thurlow [1781-1829] OUT IN THE FIELDS The little cares that fretted me, I lost them yesterday Among the fields above the sea, Among the winds at play, Among the lowing of the herds, The rustling of the trees, Among the singing of the birds, The humming of the bees. The foolish fears of what might pass I cast them all away Among tile clover-scented grass, Among the new-mown hay, Among the hushing of the corn, Where drowsy poppies nod, Where ill thoughts die and good are born-- Out in the fields of God. Unknown [Has been erroneously attributed to Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Louise Imogen Guiney] ASPECTS OF THE PINES Tall, somber, grim, against the morning sky They rise, scarce touched by melancholy airs, Which stir the fadeless foliage dreamfully, As if from realms of mystical despairs. Tall, somber, grim, they stand with dusky gleams Brightening to gold within the woodland's core, Beneath the gracious noontide's tranquil beams,-- But the weird winds of morning sigh no more. A stillness, strange, divine, ineffable, Broods round and o'er them in the wind's surcease, And on each tinted copse and shimmering dell Rests the mute rapture of deep hearted peace. Last, sunset comes--the solemn joy and might Borne from the West when cloudless day declines-- Low, flute-like breezes sweep the waves of light, And, lifting dark green tresses of the pines, Till every lock is luminous, gently float, Fraught with hale odors up the heavens afar, To faint when twilight on her virginal throat Wears for a gem the tremulous vesper star. Paul Hamilton Hayne [1830-1886] UNDER THE LEAVES Oft have I walked these woodland paths, Without the blessed foreknowing That underneath the withered leaves The fairest buds were growing. To-day the south-wind sweeps away The types of autumn's splendor, And shows the sweet arbutus flowers,-- Spring's children, pure and tender. O prophet-flowers!--with lips of bloom, Outvying in your beauty The pearly tints of ocean shells,-- Ye teach me faith and duty! Walk life's dark ways, ye seem to say, With love's divine foreknowing That where man sees but withered leaves, God sees sweet flowers growing. Albert Laighton [1829-1887] "ON WENLOCK EDGE" On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble; His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves; The gale, it plies the saplings double, And thick on Severn snow the leaves. 'Twould blow like this through holt and hanger When Uricon the city stood: 'Tis the old wind in the old anger, But then it threshed another wood. Then, 'twas before my time, the Roman At yonder heaving hill would stare: The blood that warms an English yeoman, The thoughts that hurt him, they were there. There, like the wind through woods in riot, Through him the gale of life blew high; The tree of man was never quiet: Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I. The gale, it plies the saplings double, It blows so hard, 'twill soon be gone: To-day the Roman and his trouble Are ashes under Uricon. Alfred Edward Housman [1859-1936] "WHAT DO WE PLANT?" What do we plant when we plant the tree? We plant the ship, which will cross the sea. We plant the mast to carry the sails; We plant the planks to withstand the gales-- The keel, the keelson, the beam, the knee; We plant the ship when we plant the tree. What do we plant when we plant the tree? We plant the houses for you and me. We plant the rafters, the shingles, the floors, We plant the studding, the lath, the doors, The beams and siding, all parts that be; We plant the house when we plant the tree. What do we plant when we plant the tree? A thousand things that we daily see; We plant the spire that out-towers the crag, We plant the staff for our country's flag, We plant the shade, from the hot sun free; We plant all these when we plant the tree. Henry Abbey [1842-1911] THE TREE I love thee when thy swelling buds appear, And one by one their tender leaves unfold, As if they knew that warmer suns were near, Nor longer sought to hide from winter's cold; And when with darker growth thy leaves are seen To veil from view the early robin's nest, I love to lie beneath thy waving screen, With limbs by summer's heat and toil oppressed; And when the autumn winds have stripped thee bare, And round thee lies the smooth, untrodden snow, When naught is thine that made thee once so fair, I love to watch thy shadowy form below, And through thy leafless arms to look above On stars that brighter beam when most we need their love. Jones Very [1813-1880] THE BRAVE OLD OAK A song to the oak, the brave old oak, Who hath ruled in the greenwood long; Here's health and renown to his broad green crown, And his fifty arms so strong. There's fear in his frown when the sun goes down, And the fire in the west fades out; And he showeth his might on a wild midnight, When the storms through his branches shout. Then here's to the oak, the brave old oak, Who stands in his pride alone; And still flourish he, a hale green tree, When a hundred years are gone! In the days of old, when the spring with cold Had, brightened his branches gray, Through the grass at his feet crept maidens sweet, To gather the dew of May. And on that day to the rebeck gay They frolicked with lovesome swains; They are gone, they are dead, in the churchyard laid, But the tree it still remains. He saw the rare times when the Christmas chimes Were a merry sound to hear, When the squire's wide hall and the cottage small Were filled with good English cheer. Now gold hath sway we all obey, And a ruthless king is he; But he never shall send our ancient friend To be tossed on the stormy sea. Henry Fothergill Chorley [1808-1872] "THE GIRT WOAK TREE THAT'S IN THE DELL" The girt woak tree that's in the dell! There's noo tree I do love so well; Vor times an' times when I wer young, I there've a-climbed, an' there've a-zwung, An' picked the eacorns green, a-shed In wrestlen storms vrom his broad head. An' down below's the cloty brook Where I did vish with line an' hook, An' beat, in playsome dips and zwims, The foamy stream, wi' white-skinned lim's. An' there my mother nimbly shot Her knitten-needles, as she zot At evenen down below the wide Woak's head, wi' father at her zide. An' I've a-played wi' many a bwoy, That's now a man an' gone awoy; Zoo I do like noo tree so well 'S the girt woak tree that's in the dell. An' there, in leater years, I roved Wi' thik poor maid I fondly loved,-- The maid too feair to die so soon,-- When evenen twilight, or the moon, Cast light enough 'ithin the pleace To show the smiles upon her feace, Wi' eyes so clear's the glassy pool, An' lips an' cheaks so soft as wool. There han' in han', wi' bosoms warm, Wi' love that burned but thought noo harm, Below the wide-boughed tree we passed The happy hours that went too vast; An' though she'll never be my wife, She's still my leaden star o' life. She's gone: an' she've a-left to me Her mem'ry in the girt woak tree; Zoo I do love noo tree so well 'S the girt woak tree that's in the dell. An' oh! mid never ax nor hook Be brought to spweil his steately look; Nor ever roun' his ribby zides Mid cattle rub ther heairy hides; Nor pigs rout up his turf, but keep His lwonesome sheade vor harmless sheep; An' let en grow, an' let en spread, An' let en live when I be dead. But oh! if men should come an' vell The girt woak tree that's in the dell, An' build his planks 'ithin the zide O' zome girt ship to plough the tide, Then, life or death! I'd goo to sea, A sailen wi' the girt woak tree: An' I upon his planks would stand, An' die a-fighten vor the land,-- The land so dear,--the land so free,-- The land that bore the girt woak tree; Vor I do love noo tree so well 'S the girt woak tree that's in the dell. William Barnes [1801-1886] TO THE WILLOW-TREE Thou art to all lost love the best, The only true plant found, Wherewith young men and maids distressed, And left of love, are crowned. When once the lover's rose is dead, Or laid aside forlorn: Then willow-garlands 'bout the head Bedewed with tears are worn. When with neglect, the lovers' bane, Poor maids rewarded be For their love lost, their only gain Is but a wreath from thee. And underneath thy cooling shade, When weary of the light, The love-spent youth and love-sick maid Come to weep out the night. Robert Herrick [1591-1674] ENCHANTMENT The deep seclusion of this forest path,-- O'er which the green boughs weave a canopy; Along which bluet and anemone Spread dim a carpet; where the Twilight hath Her cool abode; and, sweet as aftermath, Wood-fragrance roams,--has so enchanted me, That yonder blossoming bramble seems to be A Sylvan resting, rosy from her bath: Has so enspelled me with tradition's dreams, That every foam-white stream that, twinkling, flows, And every bird that flutters wings of tan, Or warbles hidden, to my fancy seems A Naiad dancing to a Faun who blows Wild woodland music on the pipes of Pan. Madison Cawein [1865-1914] TREES I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed Against the earth's sweet flowing breast; A tree that looks at God all day And lifts her leafy arms to pray; A tree that may in summer wear A nest of robins in her hair; Upon whose bosom snow has lain; Who intimately lives with rain. Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree. Joyce Kilmer [1886-1918] THE HOLLY-TREE O reader! hast thou ever stood to see The Holly-tree? The eye that contemplates it well perceives Its glossy leaves Ordered by an Intelligence so wise As might confound the Atheist's sophistries. Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen, Wrinkled and keen; No grazing cattle, through their prickly round, Can reach to wound; But, as they grow where nothing is to fear, Smooth and unarmed the pointless leaves appear. I love to view these things with curious eyes, And moralize; And in this wisdom of the Holly-tree Can emblem see Wherewith, perchance, to make a pleasant rhyme,-- One which may profit in the after-time. Thus, though abroad, perchance, I might appear Harsh and austere; To those who on my leisure would intrude, Reserved and rude; Gentle at home amid my friends I'd be, Like the high leaves upon the Holly-tree. And should my youth--as youth is apt, I know,-- Some harshness show, All vain asperities I, day by day, Would wear away, Till the smooth temper of my age should be Like the high leaves upon the Holly-tree. And as, when all the summer trees are seen So bright and green, The Holly-leaves their fadeless hues display Less bright than they; But when the bare and wintry woods we see, What then so cheerful as the Holly-tree?-- So, serious should my youth appear among The thoughtless throng; So would I seem, amid the young and gay, More grave than they; That in my age as cheerful I might be As the green winter of the Holly-tree. Robert Southey [1774-1843] THE PINE The elm lets fall its leaves before the frost, The very oak grows shivering and sere, The trees are barren when the summer's lost: But one tree keeps its goodness all the year. Green pine, unchanging as the days go by, Thou art thyself beneath whatever sky: My shelter from all winds, my own strong pine, 'Tis spring, 'tis summer, still, while thou art mine. Augusta Webster [1837-1894] "WOODMAN, SPARE THAT TREE" Woodman, spare that tree! Touch not a single bough! In youth it sheltered me, And I'll protect it now. 'Twas my forefather's hand That placed it near his cot; There, woodman, let it stand, Thy axe shall harm it not! That old familiar tree, Whose glory and renown Are spread o'er land and sea,-- And wouldst thou hew it down? Woodman, forbear thy stroke! Cut not its earth-bound ties; O, spare that aged oak, Now towering to the skies! When but an idle boy I sought its grateful shade; In all their gushing joy Here, too, my sisters played. My mother kissed me here; My father pressed my hand-- Forgive this foolish tear, But let that old oak stand! My heart-strings round thee cling, Close as thy bark, old friend! Here shall the wild-bird sing, And still thy branches bend. Old tree! the storm still brave! And, woodman, leave the spot; While I've a hand to save, Thy axe shall harm it not. George Pope Morris [1802-1864] THE BEECH TREE'S PETITION O leave this barren spot to me! Spare, woodman, spare the beechen tree! Though bush or floweret never grow My dark unwarming shade below; Nor summer bud perfume the dew Of rosy blush, or yellow hue; Nor fruits of autumn, blossom-born, My green and glossy leaves adorn; Nor murmuring tribes from me derive Th' ambrosial amber of the hive; Yet leave this barren spot to me: Spare, woodman, spare the beechen tree! Thrice twenty summers I have seen The sky grow bright, the forest green; And many a wintry wind have stood In bloomless, fruitless solitude, Since childhood in my pleasant bower First spent its sweet and sportive hour; Since youthful lovers in my shade Their vows of truth and rapture made, And on my trunk's surviving frame Carved many a long-forgotten name. Oh! by the sighs of gentle sound, First breathed upon this sacred ground; By all that Love has whispered here, Or Beauty heard with ravished ear; As Love's own altar honor me: Spare, woodman, spare the beechen tree! Thomas Campbell [1777-1844] THE POPLAR FIELD The poplars are felled; farewell to the shade; And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade; The winds play no longer and sing in the leaves, Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives. Twelve years have elapsed since I first took a view Of my favorite field, and the bank where they grew; And now in the grass behold they are laid, And the tree is my seat that once lent me a shade. The blackbird has fled to another retreat, Where the hazels afford him a screen from the heat; And the scene where his melody charmed me before Resounds with his sweet-flowing ditty no more. My fugitive years are all hasting away, And I must ere long lie as lowly as they, With a turf on my breast and a stone at my head, Ere another such grove shall arise in its stead. 'Tis a sight to engage me, if anything can, To muse on the perishing pleasures of man; Though his life be a dream, his enjoyments, I see, Have a being less durable even than he. William Cowper [1731-1800] THE PLANTING OF THE APPLE-TREE Come, let us plant the apple-tree. Cleave the tough greensward with the spade; Wide let its hollow bed be made; There gently lay the roots, and there Sift the dark mould with kindly care, And press it o'er them tenderly, As, round the sleeping infant's feet, We softly fold the cradle-sheet; So plant we the apple-tree. What plant we in this apple-tree? Buds, which the breath of summer days Shall lengthen into leafy sprays; Boughs where the thrush, with crimson breast, Shall haunt, and sing, and hide her nest; We plant, upon the sunny lea, A shadow for the noontide hour, A shelter from the summer shower, When we plant the apple-tree. What plant we in this apple-tree? Sweets for a hundred flowery springs To load the May-winds restless wings, When, from the orchard-row, he pours Its fragrance through our open doors; A world of blossoms for the bee, Flowers for the sick girl's silent room, For the glad infant sprigs of bloom, We plant with the apple-tree. What plant we in this apple-tree? Fruits that shall swell in sunny June, And redden in the August noon, And drop, when gentle airs come by, That fan the blue September sky, While children come, with cries of glee, And seek them where the fragrant grass Betrays their bed to those who pass, At the foot of the apple-tree. And when, above this apple-tree, The winter stars are quivering bright, And winds go howling through the night, Girls, whose young eyes o'erflow with mirth, Shall peel its fruit by cottage-hearth, And guests in prouder homes shall see, Heaped with the grape of Cintra's vine And golden orange of the line, The fruit of the apple-tree. The fruitage of this apple-tree Winds and our flag of stripe and star Shall bear to coasts that lie afar, Where men shall wonder at the view, And ask in what fair groves they grew; And sojourners beyond the sea Shall think of childhood's careless day, And long, long hours of summer play, In the shade of the apple-tree. Each year shall give this apple-tree A broader flush of roseate bloom, A deeper maze of verdurous gloom, And loosen, when the frost-clouds lower, The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower. The years shall come and pass, but we Shall hear no longer, where we lie, The summer's songs, the autumn's sigh, In the boughs of the apple-tree. And time shall waste this apple-tree. Oh, when its aged branches throw Thin shadows on the ground below, Shall fraud and force and iron will Oppress the weak and helpless still? What shall the tasks of mercy be, Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears Of those who live when length of years Is wasting this little apple-tree? "Who planted this old apple-tree?" The children of that distant day Thus to some aged man shall say; And, gazing on its mossy stem, The gray-haired man shall answer them: "A poet of the land was he, Born in the rude but good old times; 'Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes, On planting the apple-tree." William Cullen Bryant [1794-1878] OF AN ORCHARD Good is an Orchard, the Saint saith, To meditate on life and death, With a cool well, a hive of bees, A hermit's grot below the trees. Good is an Orchard: very good, Though one should wear no monkish hood. Right good, when Spring awakes her flute, And good in yellowing time of fruit. Very good in the grass to lie And see the network 'gainst the sky, A living lace of blue and green, And boughs that let the gold between. The bees are types of souls that dwell With honey in a quiet cell; The ripe fruit figures goldenly The soul's perfection in God's eye. Prayer and praise in a country home, Honey and fruit: a man might come, Fed on such meats, to walk abroad, And in his Orchard talk with God. Katherine Tynan Hinkson [1861-1931] AN ORCHARD AT AVIGNON The hills are white, but not with snow: They are as pale in summer time, For herb or grass may never grow Upon their slopes of lime. Within the circle of the hills A ring, all flowering in a round, An orchard-ring of almond fills The plot of stony ground. More fair than happier trees, I think, Grown in well-watered pasture land These parched and stunted branches, pink Above the stones and sand. O white, austere, ideal place, Where very few will care to come, Where spring hath lost the waving grace She wears for us at home! Fain would I sit and watch for hours The holy whiteness of thy hills, Their wreath of pale auroral flowers, Their peace the silence fills. A place of secret peace thou art, Such peace as in an hour of pain One moment fills the amazed heart, And never comes again. A. Mary F. Robinson [1857- THE TIDE RIVER From "The Water Babies" Clear and cool, clear and cool, By laughing shallow and dreaming pool; Cool and clear, cool and clear, By shining shingle and foaming weir; Under the crag where the ouzel sings, And the ivied wall where the church-bell rings, Undefiled, for the undefiled; Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child. Dank and foul, dank and foul, By the smoky town in its murky cowl; Foul and dank, foul and dank, By wharf and sewer and slimy bank; Darker and darker the farther I go, Baser and baser the richer I grow; Who dare sport with the sin-defiled? Shrink from me, turn from me, mother and child. Strong and free, strong and free, The flood-gates are open, away to the sea. Free and strong, free and strong, Cleansing my streams as I hurry along, To the golden sands, and the leaping bar, And the taintless tide that awaits me afar. As I lose myself in the infinite main, Like a soul that has sinned and is pardoned again, Undefiled, for the undefiled; Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child. Charles Kingsley [1819-1875] THE BROOK'S SONG From "The Brook" I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally, And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down a valley. By thirty hills I hurry down, Or slip between the ridges, By twenty thorps, a little town, And half a hundred bridges. Till last by Philip's farm I flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever. I chatter over stony ways, In little sharps and trebles, I bubble into eddying bays, I babble on the pebbles. With many a curve my banks I fret By many a field and fallow, And many a fairy foreland set With willow-weed and mallow. I chatter, chatter, as I flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever. I wind about, and in and out, With here a blossom sailing, And here and there a lusty trout, And here and there a grayling, And here and there a foamy flake Upon me, as I travel With many a silvery water-break Above the golden gravel, And draw them all along, and flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever. I steal by lawns and grassy plots, I slide by hazel covers; I move the sweet forget-me-nots That grow for happy lovers. I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance, Among my skimming swallows; I make the netted sunbeam dance Against my sandy shallows. I murmur under moon and stars In brambly wildernesses; I linger by my shingly bars; I loiter round my cresses; And out again I curve and flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever. Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892] ARETHUSA Arethusa arose From her couch of snows In the Acroceraunian mountains,-- From cloud and from crag, With many a jag, Shepherding her bright fountains. She leapt down the rocks With her rainbow locks Streaming among the streams; Her steps paved with green The downward ravine Which slopes to the western gleams: And gliding and springing, She went, ever singing, In murmurs as soft as sleep; The Earth seemed to love her, And Heaven smiled above her, As she lingered towards the deep. Then Alpheus bold, On his glacier cold, With his trident the mountains strook, And opened a chasm In the rocks;--with the spasm All Erymanthus shook. And the black south wind It unsealed behind The urns of the silent snow, And earthquake and thunder Did rend in sunder The bars of the springs below: And the beard and the hair Of the River-god were Seen through the torrent's sweep, As he followed the light Of the fleet nymph's flight To the brink of the Dorian deep. "Oh, save me! Oh, guide me! And bid the deep hide me! For he grasps me now by the hair!" The loud Ocean heard, To its blue depth stirred, And divided at her prayer; And under the water The Earth's white daughter Fled like a sunny beam; Behind her descended, Her billows, unblended With the brackish Dorian stream. Like a gloomy stain On the emerald main, Alpheus rushed behind,-- As an eagle pursuing A dove to its ruin Down the streams of the cloudy wind. Under the bowers Where the Ocean Powers Sit on their pearled thrones; Through the coral woods Of the weltering floods, Over heaps of unvalued stones; Through the dim beams Which amid the streams Weave a network of colored light; And under the caves Where the shadowy waves Are as green as the forest's night:-- Outspeeding the shark, And the swordfish dark,-- Under the Ocean's foam, And up through the rifts Of the mountain clifts, They passed to their Dorian home. And now from their fountains In Enna's mountains, Down one vale where the morning basks, Like friends once parted Grown single-hearted, They ply their watery tasks. At sunrise they leap From their cradles steep In the cave of the shelving hill; At noontide they flow Through the woods below And the meadows of asphodel; And at night they sleep In the rocking deep Beneath the Ortygian shore;-- Like spirits that lie In the azure sky. When they love but live no more. Percy Bysshe Shelley [1792-1822] THE CATARACT OF LODORE "How does the water Come down at Lodore?" My little boy asked me Thus, once on a time; And moreover he tasked me To tell him in rhyme. Anon, at the word, There first came one daughter, And then came another, To second and third The request of their brother, And to hear how the water Comes down at Lodore, With its rush and its roar, As many a time They had seen it before. So I told them in rhyme, For of rhymes I had store; And 'twas in my vocation For their recreation That so I should sing; Because I was Laureate To them and the King. From its sources which well In the tarn on the fell; From its fountains In the mountains, Its rills and its gills; Through moss and through brake, It runs and it creeps For a while, till it sleeps In its own little lake. And thence at departing, Awakening and starting, It runs through the reeds, And away it proceeds, Through meadow and glade, In sun and in shade, And through the wood-shelter, Among crags in its flurry, Helter-skelter, Hurry-skurry. Here it comes sparkling, And there it lies darkling; Now smoking and frothing Its tumult and wrath in, Till, in this rapid race On which it is bent, It reaches the place Of its steep descent. The cataract strong Then plunges along, Striking and raging As if a war raging Its caverns and rocks among; Rising and leaping, Sinking and creeping, Swelling and sweeping, Showering and springing, Flying and flinging, Writhing and ringing, Eddying and whisking, Spouting and frisking, Turning and twisting, Around and around With endless rebound: Smiting and fighting, A sight to delight in; Confounding, astounding, Dizzying and deafening the ear with its sound. Collecting, projecting, Receding and speeding, And shocking and rocking, And darting and parting, And threading and spreading, And whizzing and hissing, And dripping and skipping, And hitting and splitting, And shining and twining, And rattling and battling, And shaking and quaking, And pouring and roaring, And waving and raving, And tossing and crossing, And flowing and going, And running and stunning, And foaming and roaming, And dinning and spinning, And dropping and hopping, And working and jerking, And guggling and struggling, And heaving and cleaving, And moaning and groaning; And glittering and frittering, And gathering and feathering, And whitening and brightening, And quivering and shivering, And hurrying and skurrying, And thundering and floundering; Dividing and gliding and sliding, And falling and brawling and sprawling, And driving and riving and striving, And sprinkling and twinkling and wrinkling, And sounding and bounding and rounding, And bubbling and troubling and doubling, And grumbling and rumbling and tumbling, And clattering and battering and shattering; Retreating and beating and meeting and sheeting, Delaying and straying and playing and spraying, Advancing and prancing and glancing and dancing, Recoiling, turmoiling and toiling and boiling, And gleaming and streaming and steaming and beaming, And rushing and flushing and brushing and gushing, And flapping and rapping and clapping and slapping, And curling and whirling and purling and twirling, And thumping and plumping and bumping and jumping, And dashing and flashing and splashing and clashing; And so never ending, but always descending, Sounds and motions for ever and ever are blending All at once and all o'er, with a mighty uproar,-- And this way the water comes down at Lodore. Robert Southey [1774-1843] SONG OF THE CHATTAHOOCHEE Out of the hills of Habersham, Down the valleys of Hall, I hurry amain to reach the plain, Run the rapid and leap the fall, Split at the rock and together again, Accept my bed, or narrow or wide, And flee from folly on every side With a lover's pain to attain the plain Far from the hills of Habersham, Far from the valleys of Hall. All down the hills of Habersham, All through the valleys of Hall, The rushes cried Abide, abide, The wilful waterweeds held me thrall, The laying laurel turned my tide, The ferns and the fondling grass said Stay, The dewberry dipped for to work delay, And the little reeds sighed Abide, abide, Here in the hills of Hahersham, Here in the valleys of Hall. High o'er the hills of Habersham, Veiling the valleys of Hall, The hickory told me manifold Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall Wrought me her shadowy self to hold, The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine, Overleaning, with flickering meaning and sign, Said, Pass not, so cold, these manifold Deep shades of the hills of Habersham, These glades in the valleys of Hall. And oft in the hills of Habersham, And oft in the valleys of Hall, The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook-stone Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl, And many a luminous jewel lone --Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist, Ruby, garnet and amethyst-- Made lures with the lights of streaming stone In the clefts of the hills of Habersham, In the beds of the valleys of Hall. But oh, not the hills of Habersham, And oh, not the valleys of Hall Avail: I am fain for to water the plain. Downward the voices of Duty call-- Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main. The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn, And a myriad flowers mortally yearn, And the lordly main from beyond the plain Calls o'er the hills of Habersham, Calls through the valleys of Hall. Sidney Lanier [1842-1881] "FLOW GENTLY, SWEET AFTON" Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes; Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise; My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream, Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream. Thou stock-dove whose echo resounds through the glen, Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den, Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear; I charge you disturb not my slumbering fair. How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighboring hills, Far marked with the courses of clear-winding rill; There daily I wander as noon rises high, My flocks and my Mary's sweet cot in my eye. How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below, Where wild in the woodlands the primroses blow; There oft as mild evening weeps over the lea, The sweet-scented birk shades my Mary and me. Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides, And winds by the cot where my Mary resides; How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave, As, gathering sweet flowerets, she stems thy clear wave. Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes; Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays; My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream, Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream. Robert Burns [1759-1796] CANADIAN BOAT-SONG Written On The River St. Lawrence Faintly as tolls the evening chime Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time. Soon as the woods on shore look dim, We'll sing at St. Ann's our parting hymn. Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast, The rapids are near and the daylight's past. Why should we yet our sail unfurl? There is not a breath the blue wave to curl, But, when the wind blows off the shore, Oh, sweetly we'll rest our weary oar. Blow, breezes, blow, the stream runs fast, The rapids are near and the daylight's past. Utawas' tide! this trembling moon Shall see us float over thy surges soon. Saint of this green isle! hear our prayers, Oh, grant us cool heavens and favoring airs. Blow, breezes, blow, the stream runs fast, The rapids are near and the daylight's past. Thomas Moore [1779-1852] THE MARSHES OF GLYNN Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs,-- Emerald twilights,-- Virginal shy lights, Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows, When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods, Of the heavenly woods and glades, That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within The wide sea-marshes of Glynn;-- Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noonday fire,-- Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire, Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves,-- Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves, Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood, Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good;-- O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine, While the riotous noonday sun of the June-day long did shine Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in mine; But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest, And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West, And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream,-- Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak, And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low, And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know, And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within, That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore, And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain,-- Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face The vast sweet visage of space. To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn, Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn, For a mete and a mark To the forest-dark:-- So: Affable live-oak, leaning low,-- Thus--with your favor--soft, with a reverent hand, (Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land!) Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand On the firm-packed sand, Free By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea. Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmering band Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land. Inward and outward to northward and southward the beach-lines linger and curl As a silver wrought garment that clings to and follows the firm sweet limbs of a girl. Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight, Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light. And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high? The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky! A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade, Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade, Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain, To the terminal blue of the main. Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea? Somehow my soul seems suddenly free From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin, By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn. Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea! Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun, Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain. As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod, Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God: I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies: By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God: Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn. And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out of his plenty the sea Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood-tide must be: Look how the grace of the sea doth go About and about through the intricate channels that flow Here and there, Everywhere, Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes, And the marsh is meshed with a million veins, That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow In the rose-and-silver evening glow. Farewell, my lord Sun! The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run 'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir; Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr; Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run; And the sea and the marsh are one. How still the plains of the waters be! The tide is in his ecstasy; The tide is at his highest height: And it is night. And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep Roll in on the souls of men, But who will reveal to our waking ken The forms that swim and the shapes that creep Under the waters of sleep? And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in On the length and the breadth of the marvelous marshes of Glynn. Sidney Lanier [1842-1881] THE TROSACHS There's not a nook within this solemn Pass But were an apt confessional for one Taught by his summer spent, his autumn gone, That Life is but a tale of morning grass Withered at eve. From scenes of art which chase That thought away, turn, and with watchful eyes Feed it 'mid Nature's old felicities, Rocks, rivers, and smooth lakes more clear than glass Untouched, unbreathed upon. Thrice happy quest, If from a golden perch of aspen spray (October's workmanship to rival May) The pensive warbler of the ruddy breast That moral sweeten by a heaven-taught lay, Lulling the year, with all its cares, to rest! William Wordsworth [1700-1850] HYMN Before Sunrise, In The Vale Of Chamouni Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star In his steep course? So long he seems to pause On thy bald, awful head, O sovereign Blanc! The Arve and Arveiron at thy base Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form, Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines, How silently! Around thee and above Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black, An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it, As with a wedge! But when I look again, It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, Thy habitation from eternity! O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee, Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer I worshiped the Invisible alone. Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody, So sweet, we know not we are listening to it, Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought, Yea, with my Life and Life's own secret joy: Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused, Into the mighty vision passing--there, As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven! Awake, my soul! not only passive praise Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears, Mute thanks and secret ecstasy! Awake, Voice of sweet song! Awake, my Heart, awake! Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my Hymn. Thou first and chief, sole sovereign of the Vale! O, struggling with the darkness all the night, And visited all night by troops of stars, Or when they climb the sky or when they sink: Companion of the morning-star at dawn, Thyself Earth's rosy star, and of the dawn Co-herald: wake, O wake, and utter praise! Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in Earth? Who filled thy countenance with rosy light? Who made thee parent of perpetual streams? And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad! Who called you forth from night and utter death, From dark and icy caverns called you forth, Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks, For ever shattered and the same for ever? Who gave you your invulnerable life, Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, Unceasing thunder and eternal foam? And who commanded (and the silence came), Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest? Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow Adown enormous ravines slope amain-- Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice, And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge! Motionless torrents! silent cataracts! Who made you glorious as the Gates of Heaven Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?-- God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God! God! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice! Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds! And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God! Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost! Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest! Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm! Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! Ye signs and wonders of the elements! Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise! Thou too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks, Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard, Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene, Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast-- Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low In adoration, upward from thy base Slow traveling with dim eyes suffused with tears, Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud, To rise before me--Rise, O ever rise! Rise like a cloud of incense, from the Earth! Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills, Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven, Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky, And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun, Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God. Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1772-1834] THE PEAKS In the night Gray, heavy clouds muffled the valleys, And the peaks looked toward God alone. "O Master, that movest the wind with a finger, Humble, idle, futile peaks are we. Grant that we may run swiftly across the world To huddle in worship at Thy feet." In the morning A noise of men at work came through the clear blue miles, And the little black cities were apparent. "O Master, that knowest the meaning of raindrops, Humble, idle, futile peaks are we. Give voice to us, we pray, O Lord, That we may sing Thy goodness to the sun." In the evening The far valleys were sprinkled with tiny lights. "O Master, Thou that knowest the value of kings and birds, Thou hast made us humble, idle, futile peaks. Thou only needest eternal patience; We bow to Thy wisdom, O Lord-- Humble, idle, futile peaks." In the night Gray, heavy clouds muffled the valleys, And the peaks looked toward God alone. Stephen Crane [1871-1900] KINCHINJUNGA Next To Everest Highest Of Mountains O white priest of Eternity, around Whose lofty summit veiling clouds arise Of the earth's immemorial sacrifice To Brahma, in whose breath all lives and dies; O hierarch enrobed in timeless snows, First-born of Asia, whose maternal throes Seem changed now to a million human woes, Holy thou art and still! Be so, nor sound One sigh of all the mystery in thee found. For in this world too much is overclear, Immortal ministrant to many lands, From whose ice altars flow, to fainting sands, Rivers that each libation poured expands. Too much is known, O Ganges-giving sire: Thy people fathom life, and find it dire; Thy people fathom death, and, in it, fire To live again, though in Illusion's sphere, Behold concealed as grief is in a tear. Wherefore continue, still enshrined, thy rites, Though dark Tibet, that dread ascetic, falls, In strange austerity, whose trance appals,-- Before thee, and a suppliant on thee calls. Continue still thy silence high and sure, That something beyond fleeting may endure-- Something that shall forevermore allure Imagination on to mystic flights Wherein alone no wing of evil lights. Yea, wrap thy awful gulfs and acolytes Of lifted granite round with reachless snows. Stand for eternity, while pilgrim rows Of all the nations envy thy repose. Ensheath thy swart sublimities, unscaled; Be that alone on earth which has not failed; Be that which never yet has yearned nor ailed, But since primeval Power upreared thy heights Has stood above all deaths and all delights. And though thy loftier brother shall be king, High-priest be thou to Brahma unrevealed, While thy white sanctity forever sealed In icy silence leaves desire congealed. In ghostly ministrations to the sun, And to the mendicant stars and the moon-nun, Be holy still, till east to west has run, And till no sacrificial suffering On any shrine is left to tell life's sting. Cale Young Rice [1872- THE HILLS Mussoorie and Chakrata Hill The Jumna flows between And from Chakrata's hills afar Mussoorie's vale is seen. The mountains sing together In cloud or sunny weather, The Jumna, through their tether, Foams white or plunges green. The mountains stand and laugh at Time, They pillar up the Earth, They watch the ages pass, they bring New centuries to birth. They feel the daybreak shiver, They see Time passing ever, As flows the Jumna River As breaks the white sea-surf. They drink the sun in a golden cup And in blue mist the rain; With a sudden brightening they meet the lightning Or ere it strikes the plain. They seize the sullen thunder And take it up for plunder And cast it down and under, And up and back again.... ... Here, in the hills of ages I met thee face to face; O mother Earth, O lover Earth, Look down on me with grace. Give me thy passion burning, And thy strong patience, turning All wrath to power, all yearning To truth, thy dwelling-place. Julian Grenfell [1888-1915] HEMLOCK MOUNTAIN By orange grove and palm-tree, we walked the southern shore, Each day more still and golden than was the day before. That calm and languid sunshine! How faint it made us grow To look on Hemlock Mountain when the storm hangs low! To see its rocky pastures, its sparse but hardy corn, The mist roll off its forehead before a harvest morn; To hear the pine-trees crashing across its gulfs of snow Upon a roaring midnight when the whirlwinds blow. Tell not of lost Atlantis, or fabled Avalon; The olive, or the vineyard, no winter breathes upon; Away from Hemlock Mountain we could not well forego, For all the summer islands where the gulf tides flow. Sarah N. Cleghorn [1876- SUNRISE ON RYDAL WATER Come down at dawn from windless hills Into the valley of the lake, Where yet a larger quiet fills The hour, and mist and water make With rocks and reeds and island boughs One silence and one element, Where wonder goes surely as once It went By Galilean prows. Moveless the water and the mist, Moveless the secret air above, Hushed, as upon some happy tryst The poised expectancy of love; What spirit is it that adores What mighty presence yet unseen? What consummation works apace Between These rapt enchanted shores? Never did virgin beauty wake Devouter to the bridal feast Than moves this hour upon the lake In adoration to the east. Here is the bride a god may know, The primal will, the young consent, Till surely upon the appointed mood Intent The god shall leap--and, lo, Over the lake's end strikes the sun-- White, flameless fire; some purity Thrilling the mist, a splendor won Out of the world's heart. Let there be Thoughts, and atonements, and desires; Proud limbs, and undeliberate tongue; Where now we move with mortal care Among Immortal dews and fires. So the old mating goes apace, Wind with the sea, and blood with thought, Lover with lover; and the grace Of understanding comes unsought When stars into the twilight steer, Or thrushes build among the may, Or wonder moves between the hills, And day Comes up on Rydal mere. John Drinkwater [1882- THE DESERTED PASTURE I love the stony pasture That no one else will have. The old gray rocks so friendly seem, So durable and brave. In tranquil contemplation It watches through the year, Seeing the frosty stars arise, The slender moons appear. Its music is the rain-wind, Its choristers the birds, And there are secrets in its heart Too wonderful for words. It keeps the bright-eyed creatures That play about its walls, Though long ago its milking herds Were banished from their stalls. Only the children come there, For buttercups in May, Or nuts in autumn, where it lies Dreaming the hours away. Long since its strength was given To making good increase, And now its soul is turned again To beauty and to peace. There in the early springtime The violets are blue, And adder-tongues in coats of gold Are garmented anew. There bayberry and aster Are crowded on its floors, When marching summer halts to praise The Lord of Out-of-doors. And there October passes In gorgeous livery,-- In purple ash, and crimson oak, And golden tulip tree. And when the winds of winter Their bugle blasts begin, The snowy hosts of heaven arrive To pitch their tents therein. Bliss Carman [1861-1929] TO MEADOWS Ye have been fresh and green; Ye have been filled with flowers; And ye the walks have been Where maids have spent their hours. Ye have beheld how they With wicker arks did come To kiss and bear away The richer cowslips home. Ye've heard them sweetly sing, And seen them in a round, Each virgin, like a Spring, With honeysuckles crowned. But now we see none here Whose silvery feet did tread, And with dishevelled hair Adorned this smoother mead. Like unthrifts, having spent Your stock, and needy grown, Ye're left here to lament Your poor estates, alone. Robert Herrick [1591-1674] THE CLOUD I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, As she dances about the sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under; And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder. I sift the snow on the mountains below, And their great pines groan aghast; And all the night 'tis my pillow white, While I sleep in the arms of the blast. Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers Lightning my pilot sits; In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, It struggles and howls at fits. Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion, This pilot is guiding me, Lured by the love of the Genii that move In the depths of the purple sea; Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, Over the lakes and the plains, Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, The Spirit he loves remains; And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, Whilst he is dissolving in rains. The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes, And his burning plumes outspread, Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, When the morning star shines dead, As on the jag of a mountain-crag, Which an earthquake rocks and swings, An eagle alit one moment may sit In the light of its golden wings. And, when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath, Its ardors of rest and of love, And the crimson pall of eve may fall From the depth of heaven above, With wings folded I rest on mine airy nest, As still as a brooding dove. That orbed maiden with white fire laden, Whom mortals call the Moon, Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor, By the midnight breezes strewn; And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, Which only the angels hear, May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, The Stars peep behind her and peer. And I laugh to see them whirl and flee Like a swarm of golden bees, When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, Are each paved with the moon and these. I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone, And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl; The volcanoes are dim, and the Stars reel and swim, When the Whirlwinds my banner unfurl. From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, Over a torrent sea, Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof; The mountains its columns be. The triumphal arch through which I march, With hurricane, fire, and snow, When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair, Is the million-colored bow; The Sphere-fire above its soft colors wove, While the moist Earth was laughing below. I am the daughter of Earth and Water, And the nursling of the Sky: I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die. For after the rain, when with never a stain The pavilion of heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb I arise, and unbuild it again. Percy Bysshe Shelley [1792-1822] APRIL RAIN It is not raining rain for me, It's raining daffodils; In every dimpled drop I see Wild flowers on the hills. The clouds of gray engulf the day And overwhelm the town; It is not raining rain to me, It's raining roses down. It is not raining rain to me, But fields of clover bloom, Where any buccaneering bee Can find a bed and room. A health unto the happy, A fig for him who frets! It is not raining rain to me, It's raining violets. Robert Loveman [1864-1923] SUMMER INVOCATION O gentle, gentle summer rain, Let not the silver lily pine, The drooping lily pine in vain To feel that dewy touch of thine,-- To drink thy freshness once again, O gentle, gentle summer rain! In heat the landscape quivering lies; The cattle pant beneath the tree; Through parching air and purple skies The earth looks up, in vain, for thee; For thee--for thee, it looks in vain O gentle, gentle summer rain. Come thou, and brim the meadow streams, And soften all the hills with mist, O falling dew! from burning dreams By thee shall herb and flower be kissed, And Earth shall bless thee yet again, O gentle, gentle summer rain. William Cox Bennett [1820-1895] APRIL RAIN The April rain, the April rain, Comes slanting down in fitful showers, Then from the furrow shoots the grain, And banks are edged with nestling flowers; And in gray shaw and woodland bowers The cuckoo through the April rain Calls once again. The April sun, the April sun, Glints through the rain in fitful splendor, And in gray shaw and woodland dun The little leaves spring forth and tender Their infant hands, yet weak and slender, For warmth towards the April sun, One after one. And between shower and shine hath birth The rainbow's evanescent glory; Heaven's light that breaks on mist of earth! Frail symbol of our human story, It flowers through showers where, looming hoary, The rain-clouds flash with April mirth, Like Life on earth. Mathilde Blind [1841-1896] TO THE RAINBOW Triumphal arch, that fill'st the sky When storms prepare to part, I ask not proud Philosophy To teach me what thou art;-- Still seem; as to my childhood's sight, A midway station given For happy spirits to alight Betwixt the earth and heaven. Can all that Optics teach unfold Thy form to please me so, As when I dreamt of gems and gold Hid in thy radiant bow? When Science from Creation's face Enchantment's veil withdraws, What lovely visions yield their place To cold material laws! And yet, fair bow, no fabling dreams, But words of the Most High, Have told why first thy robe of beams Was woven in the sky. When o'er the green, undeluged earth Heaven's covenant thou didst shine, How came the world's gray fathers forth To watch thy sacred sign! And when its yellow luster smiled O'er mountains yet untrod, Each mother held aloft her child To bless the bow of God. Methinks, thy jubilee to keep, The first-made anthem rang On earth, delivered from the deep, And the first poet sang. Nor ever shall the Muse's eye Unraptured greet thy beam; Theme of primeval prophecy, Be still the prophet's theme! The earth to thee her incense yields, The lark thy welcome sings, When, glittering in the freshened fields, The snowy mushroom springs. How glorious is thy girdle, cast O'er mountain, tower, and town, Or mirrored in the ocean vast, A thousand fathoms down! As fresh in yon horizon dark, As young thy beauties seem, As when the eagle from the ark First sported in thy beam: For, faithful to its sacred page, Heaven still rebuilds thy span; Nor lets the type grow pale with age, That first spoke peace to man. Thomas Campbell [1777-1844] GREEN THINGS GROWING MY GARDEN A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot! Rose plot, Fringed pool, Ferned grot-- The veriest school Of peace; and yet the fool Contends that God is not-- Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool? Nay, but I have a sign: 'Tis very sure God walks in mine. Thomas Edward Brown [1830-1897] THE GARDEN How vainly men themselves amaze To win the palm, the oak, or bays, And their incessant labors see Crowned from some single herb or tree, Whose short and narrow-verged shade Does prudently their toils upbraid; While all the flowers and trees do close To weave the garlands of repose! Fair Quiet, have I found thee here, And Innocence, thy sister dear? Mistaken long, I sought you then In busy companies of men: Your sacred plants, if here below, Only among the plants will grow; Society is all but rude To this delicious solitude. No white nor red was ever seen So amorous as this lovely green. Fond lovers, cruel as their flame, Cut in these trees their mistress' name: Little, alas! they know or heed How far these beauties hers exceed! Fair trees! where'er your barks I wound, No name shall but your own he found. When we have run our passions' heat, Love hither makes his best retreat: The gods, that mortal beauty chase, Still in a tree did end their race; Apollo hunted Daphne so Only that she might laurel grow; And Pan did after Syrinx speed, Not as a nymph, but for a reed. What wondrous life is this I lead! Ripe apples drop about my head; The luscious clusters of the vine Upon my mouth do crush their wine; The nectarine and curious peach Into my hands themselves do reach; Stumbling on melons, as I pass, Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass. Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness; The mind, that ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find; Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds, and other seas; Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green shade. Here at the fountain's sliding foot, Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, Casting the body's vest aside, My soul into the boughs does glide; There, like a bird, it sits and sings, Then whets and combs its silver wings, And, till prepared for longer flight, Waves in its plumes the various light. Such was that happy Garden-state While man there walked without a mate: After a place so pure and sweet, What other help could yet be meet! But 'twas beyond a mortal's share To wander solitary there: Two paradises 'twere in one, To live in Paradise alone. How well the skilful gardener drew Of flowers and herbs this dial new! Where, from above, the milder sun Does through a fragrant zodiac run: And, as it works, the industrious bee Computes its time as well as we. How could such sweet and wholesome hours Be reckoned, but with herbs and flowers Andrew Marvell [1621-1678] A GARDEN Written After The Civil Wars See how the flowers, as at parade, Under their colors stand displayed: Each regiment in order grows, That of the tulip, pink, and rose. But when the vigilant patrol Of stars walks round about the pole, Their leaves, that to the stalks are curled, Seem to their staves the ensigns furled. Then in some flower's beloved hut Each bee, as sentinel, is shut, And sleeps so too; but if once stirred, She runs you through, nor asks the word. O thou, that dear and happy Isle, The garden of the world erewhile, Thou Paradise of the four seas Which Heaven planted us to please, But, to exclude the world, did guard With watery if not flaming sword; What luckless apple did we taste To make us mortal and thee waste! Unhappy! shall we never more That sweet militia restore, When gardens only had their towers, And all the garrisons were flowers; When roses only arms might bear, And men did rosy garlands wear? Andrew Marvell [1621-1678] A GARDEN SONG Here, in this sequestered close Bloom the hyacinth and rose; Here beside the modest stock Flaunts the flaring hollyhock; Here, without a pang, one sees Ranks, conditions, and, degrees. All the seasons run their race In this quiet resting-place; Peach, and apricot, and fig Here will ripen, and grow big; Here is store and overplus,-- More had not Alcinous! Here, in alleys cool and green, Far ahead the thrush is seen; Here along the southern wall Keeps the bee his festival; All is quiet else--afar Sounds of toil and turmoil are. Here be shadows large and long; Here be spaces meet for song; Grant, O garden-god, that I, Now that none profane is nigh,-- Now that mood and moment please, Find the fair Pierides! Austin Dobson [1840-1921] "IN GREEN OLD GARDENS" In green old gardens, hidden away From sight of revel and sound of strife, Where the bird may sing out his soul ere he die, Nor fears for the night, so he lives his day; Where the high red walls, which are growing gray With their lichen and moss embroideries, Seem sadly and sternly to shut out life, Because it is often as red as they; Where even the bee has time to glide (Gathering gayly his honey's store) Right to the heart of the old-world flowers-- China-asters and purple stocks, Dahlias and tall red hollyhocks, Laburnums raining their golden showers, Columbines prim of the folded core, And lupins, and larkspurs, and "London pride"; Where the heron is waiting amongst the reeds, Grown tame in the silence that reigns around, Broken only, now and then, By shy woodpecker or noisy jay, By the far-off watch-dog's muffled bay; But where never the purposeless laughter of men, Or the seething city's murmurous sound Will float up over the river-weeds. Here may I live what life I please, Married and buried out of sight,-- Married to pleasure, and buried to pain,-- Hidden away amongst scenes like these, Under the fans of the chestnut trees; Living my child-life over again, With the further hope of a fallen delight, Blithe as the birds and wise as the bees. In green old gardens, hidden away From sight of revel and sound of strife,-- Here have I leisure to breathe and move, And to do my work in a nobler way; To sing my songs, and to say my say; To dream my dreams, and to love my love; To hold my faith, and to live my life, Making the most of its shadowy day. Violet Fane [1843-1905] A BENEDICTINE GARDEN Through all the wind-blown aisles of May, Faint bells of perfume swing and fall. Within this apple-petalled wall (A gray east, flecked with rosy day) The pink laburnum lays her cheek In married, matchless, lovely bliss, Against her golden mate, to seek His airy kiss. Tulips, in faded splendor drest, Brood o'er their beds, a slumbrous gloom. Dame Peony, red and ripe with bloom, Swells the silk housing of her breast. The Lilac, drunk to ecstasy, Breaks her full flagons on the air, And drenches home the reeling bee Who found her fair. O cowled Legion of the Cross, What solemn pleasantry is thine, Vowing to seek the life divine Through abnegation and through loss! Men but make monuments of sin Who walk the earth's ambitious round; Thou hast the richer realm within This garden ground. No woman's voice takes sweeter note Than chanting of this plumed choir. No jewel ever wore the fire Hung on a dewdrop's quivering throat. A ruddier pomp and pageantry Than world's delight o'erfleets thy sod; And choosing this, thou hast in fee The peace of God. Alice Brown [1857- AN AUTUMN GARDEN My tent stands in a garden Of aster and golden-rod, Tilled by the rain and the sunshine, And sown by the hand of God,-- An old New England pasture Abandoned to peace and time, And by the magic of beauty Reclaimed to the sublime. About it are golden woodlands Of tulip and hickory; On the open ridge behind it You may mount to a glimpse of sea,-- The far-off, blue, Homeric Rim of the world's great shield, A border of boundless glamor For the soul's familiar field. In purple and gray-wrought lichen The boulders lie in the sun; Along its grassy footpath, The white-tailed rabbits run. The crickets work and chirrup Through the still afternoon; And the owl calls at twilight Under the frosty moon. The odorous wild grape clambers Over the tumbling wall, And through the autumnal quiet The chestnuts open and fall. Sharing time's freshness and fragrance, Part of the earth's great soul, Here man's spirit may ripen To wisdom serene and whole. Shall we not grow with the asters?-- Never reluctant nor sad, Not counting the cost of being, Living to dare and be glad. Shall we not lift with the crickets A chorus of ready cheer, Braving the frost of oblivion, Quick to be happy here? The deep red cones of the sumach And the woodbine's crimson sprays Have bannered the common roadside For the pageant of passing days. These are the oracles Nature Fills with her holy breath, Giving them glory of color, Transcending the shadow of death. Here in the sifted sunlight A spirit seems to brood On the beauty and worth of being, In tranquil, instinctive mood; And the heart, athrob with gladness Such as the wise earth knows, Wells with a full thanksgiving For the gifts that life bestows: For the ancient and virile nurture Of the teeming primordial ground, For the splendid gospel of color, The rapt revelations of sound; For the morning-blue above us And the rusted gold of the fern, For the chickadee's call to valor Bidding the faint-heart turn; For fire and running water, Snowfall and summer rain; For sunsets and quiet meadows, The fruit and the standing grain; For the solemn hour of moonrise Over the crest of trees, When the mellow lights are kindled In the lamps of the centuries. For those who wrought aforetime, Led by the mystic strain To strive for the larger freedom, And live for the greater gain; For plenty and peace and playtime, The homely goods of earth, And for rare immaterial treasures Accounted of little worth; For art and learning and friendship, Where beneficent truth is supreme, Those everlasting cities Built on the hills of dream; For all things growing and goodly That foster this life, and breed The immortal flower of wisdom Out of the mortal seed. But most of all for the spirit That can not rest nor bide In stale and sterile convenience, Nor safety proven and tried, But still inspired and driven, Must seek what better may be, And up from the loveliest garden Must climb for a glimpse of sea. Bliss Carman [1861-1929] UNGUARDED The Mistress of the Roses Is haply far away, And through her garden closes What strange intruders stray. See on its rustic spindles The sundrop's amber fire! And the goldenrod enkindles The embers on its spire. The dodder's shining tangle From the meadow brook steals in, Where in this shadowed angle The pale lace-makers spin. Here's Black-Eyed Susan weeping Into exotic air, And Bouncing Bet comes creeping Back to her old parterre. Now in this pleasant weather-- So sweetly reconciled-- They dwell and dream together, The kin of court and wild. Ada Foster-Murray [1857-1936] THE DESERTED GARDEN I mind me in the days departed, How often underneath the sun, With childish bounds I used to run To a garden long deserted. The beds and walks were vanished quite; And wheresoe'er had struck the spade, The greenest grasses Nature laid To sanctify her right. I called the place my wilderness; For no one entered there but I; The sheep looked in, the grass to espy, And passed it ne'ertheless. The trees were interwoven wild, And spread their boughs enough about To keep both sheep and shepherd out, But not a happy child. Adventurous joy it was for me! I crept beneath the boughs, and found A circle smooth of mossy ground Beneath a poplar tree. Old garden rose-trees hedged it in, Bedropt with roses waxen-white, Well satisfied with dew and light And careless to be seen. Long years ago, it might befall, When all the garden flowers were trim, The grave old gardener prided him On these the most of all. Some lady, stately overmuch, Here moving with a silken noise, Has blushed beside them at the voice That likened her to such. Or these, to make a diadem, She often may have plucked and twined, Half-smiling as it came to mind, That few would look at them. Oh, little thought that lady proud, A child would watch her fair white rose, When buried lay her whiter brows, And silk was changed for shroud! Nor thought that gardener, (full of scorns For men unlearned and simple phrase,) A child would bring it all its praise By creeping through the thorns! To me upon my low moss seat, Though never a dream the roses sent, Of science or love's compliment, I ween they smelt as sweet. It did not move my grief to see The trace of human step departed: Because the garden was deserted, The blither place for me! Friends, blame me not! a narrow ken Hath childhood 'twixt the sun and sward; We draw the moral afterward, We feel the gladness then. And gladdest hours for me did glide In silence at the rose-tree wall: A thrush made gladness musical Upon the other side. Nor he nor I did e'er incline To peck or pluck the blossoms white; How should I know but roses might Lead lives as glad as mine? To make my hermit-home complete, I brought clear water from the spring Praised in its own low murmuring, And cresses glossy wet. And so, I thought, my likeness grew (Without the melancholy tale) To "gentle hermit of the dale," And Angelina too. For oft I read within my nook Such minstrel stories; till the breeze Made sounds poetic in the trees, And then I shut the book. If I shut this wherein I write, I hear no more the wind athwart Those trees, nor feel that childish heart Delighting in delight. My childhood from my life is parted, My footstep from the moss which drew Its fairy circle round: anew The garden is deserted. Another thrush may there rehearse The madrigals which sweetest are; No more for me! myself afar Do sing a sadder verse. Ah me, ah me! when erst I lay In that child's-nest so greenly wrought, I laughed unto myself and thought "The time will pass away." And still I laughed, and did not fear But that, whene'er was passed away The childish time, some happier play My womanhood would cheer. I knew the time would pass away, And yet, beside the rose-tree wall, Dear God, how seldom, if at all, Did I look up to pray! The time is past; and now that grows The cypress high among the trees, And I behold white sepulchres As well as the white rose,-- When graver, meeker thoughts are given, And I have learnt to lift my face, Reminded how earth's greenest place The color draws from heaven,-- It something saith for earthly pain, But more for Heavenly promise free, That I who was, would shrink to be That happy child again. Elizabeth Barrett Browning [1806-1861] A FORSAKEN GARDEN In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland, At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee, Walled round with rocks as an inland island, The ghost of a garden fronts the sea. A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses The steep square slope of the blossomless bed Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses Now lie dead. The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken, To the low last edge of the long lone land. If a step should sound or a word be spoken, Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest's hand? So long have the gray, bare walks lain guestless, Through branches and briers if a man make way, He shall find no life but the sea-wind's, restless Night and day. The dense, hard passage is blind and stifled That crawls by a track none turn to climb To the strait waste place that the years have rifled Of all but the thorns that are touched not of Time. The thorns he spares when the rose is taken; The rocks are left when he wastes the plain. The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken, These remain. Not a flower to be pressed of the foot that falls not; As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry; From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not, Could she call, there were never a rose to reply. Over the meadows that blossom and wither Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song; Only the sun and the rain come hither All year long. The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath. Only the wind here hovers and revels In a round where life seems barren as death. Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping, Haply, of lovers none ever will know, Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping Years ago. Heart handfast in heart as they stood, "Look thither," Did he, whisper? "Look forth from the flowers to the sea; For the foam-flowers endure when the rose-blossoms wither, And men that love lightly may die--but we?" And the same wind sang and the same waves whitened, And or ever the garden's last petals were shed, In the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened, Love was dead. Or they loved their life through, and then went whither? And were one to the end--but what end who knows? Love deep as the sea as a rose must wither, As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose. Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them? What love was ever as deep as a grave? They are loveless now as the grass above them Or the wave. All are at one now, roses and lovers, Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea. Not a breath of the time that has been hovers In the air now soft with a summer to be. Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or weep, When, as they that are free now of weeping and laughter, We shall sleep. Here death may deal not again forever; Here change may come not till all change end. From the graves they have made they shall rise up never, Who have left naught living to ravage and rend. Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground growing, While the sun and the rain live, these shall be; Till a last wind's breath, upon all these blowing, Roll the sea. Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble, Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink, Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink; Here now in his triumph where all things falter, Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread, As a god self-slain on his own strange altar, Death lies dead. Algernon Charles Swinburne [1837-1909] GREEN THINGS GROWING O the green things growing, the green things growing, The faint sweet smell of the green things growing! I should like to live, whether I smile or grieve, Just to watch the happy life of my green things growing. O the fluttering and the pattering of those green things growing! How they talk each to each, when none of us are knowing; In the wonderful white of the weird moonlight Or the dim dreamy dawn when the cocks are crowing. I love, I love them so--my green things growing! And I think that they love me, without false showing; For by many a tender touch, they comfort me so much, With the soft mute comfort of green things growing. And in the rich store of their blossoms glowing Ten for one I take they're on me bestowing: Oh, I should like to see, if God's will it may be, Many, many a summer of my green things growing! But if I must be gathered for the angel's sowing, Sleep out of sight awhile, like the green things growing, Though dust to dust return, I think I'll scarcely mourn, If I may change into green things growing. Dinah Maria Mulock Craik [1826-1887] A CHANTED CALENDAR From "Balder" First came the primrose, On the bank high, Like a maiden looking forth From the window of a tower When the battle rolls below, So looked she, And saw the storms go by. Then came the wind-flower In the valley left behind, As a wounded maiden, pale With purple streaks of woe, When the battle has rolled by Wanders to and fro, So tottered she, Dishevelled in the wind. Then came the daisies, On the first of May, Like a bannered show's advance While the crowd runs by the way, With ten thousand flowers about them they came trooping through the fields. As a happy people come, So came they, As a happy people come When the war has rolled away, With dance and tabor, pipe and drum, And all make holiday. Then came the cowslip, Like a dancer in the fair, She spread her little mat of green, And on it danced she. With a fillet bound about her brow, A fillet round her happy brow, A golden fillet round her brow, And rubies in her hair. Sydney Dobell [1824-1874] FLOWERS Spare full well, in language quaint and olden One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine, When he called the flowers, so blue and golden, Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine. Stars they are, wherein we read our history, As astrologers and seers of eld; Yet not wrapped about with awful mystery, Like the burning stars, which they beheld. Wondrous truths, and manifold as wondrous, God hath written in those stars above; But not less in the bright flowerets under us Stands the revelation of his love. Bright and glorious is that revelation, Writ all over this great world of ours; Making evident our own creation, In these stars of earth, these golden flowers. And the Poet, faithful and far-seeing, See, alike in stars and flowers, a part Of the self-same, universal being, Which is throbbing in his brain and heart. Gorgeous flowerets in the sunlight shining, Blossoms flaunting in the eye of day, Tremulous leaves, with soft and silver lining, Buds that open only to decay; Brilliant hopes, all woven in gorgeous tissues, Flaunting gayly in the golden light; Large desires, with most uncertain issues, Tender wishes, blossoming at night! These in flowers and men are more than seeming; Workings are they of the self-same powers Which the Poet, in no idle dreaming, Seeth in himself and in the flowers. Everywhere about us are they glowing, Some like stars, to tell us Spring is born; Others, their blue eyes with tears o'erflowing, Stand like Ruth amid the golden corn; Not alone in Spring's armorial bearing, And in Summer's green-emblazoned field, But in arms of brave old Autumn's wearing, In the centre of his brazen shield; Not alone in meadows and green alleys, On the mountain-top, and by the brink Of sequestered pools in woodland valleys, Where the slaves of nature stoop to drink; Not alone in her vast dome of glory, Not on graves of bird and beast alone, But in old cathedrals, high and hoary, On the tombs of heroes, carved in stone; In the cottage of the rudest peasant; In ancestral homes, whose crumbling towers, Speaking of the Past unto the Present, Tell us of the ancient Games of Flowers; In all places, then, and in all seasons, Flowers expand their light and soul-like wings, Teaching us, by most persuasive reasons, How akin they are to human things. And with childlike, credulous affection, We behold their tender buds expand; Emblems of our own great resurrection, Emblems of the bright and better land. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [1807-1882] FLOWERS I will not have the mad Clytie, Whose head is turned by the sun; The tulip is a courtly quean, Whom, therefore, I will shun: The cowslip is a country wench, The violet is a nun;-- But I will woo the dainty rose, The queen of every one. The pea is but a wanton witch, In too much haste to wed, And clasps her rings on every hand; The wolfsbane I should dread; Nor will I dreary rosemarye, That always mourns the dead; But I will woo the dainty rose, With her cheeks of tender red. The lily is all in white, like a saint, And so is no mate for me; And the daisy's cheek is tipped with a blush, She is of such low degree; Jasmine is sweet, and has many loves, And the broom's betrothed to the bee;-- But I will plight with the dainty rose, For fairest of all is she. Thomas Hood [1799-1845] A CONTEMPLATION UPON FLOWERS Brave flowers--that I could gallant it like you, And be as little vain! You come abroad, and make a harmless show, And to your beds of earth again. You are not proud: you know your birth: For your embroidered garments are from earth. You do obey your months and times, but I Would have it ever Spring: My fate would know no Winter, never die, Nor think of such a thing. O that I could my bed of earth but view And smile, and look as cheerfully as you! O teach me to see Death and not to fear, But rather to take truce! How often have I seen you at a bier, And there look fresh and spruce! You fragrant flowers! then teach me, that my breath Like yours may sweeten and perfume my death. (?) Henry King [1592-1669] ALMOND BLOSSOM Blossom of the almond trees, April's gift to April's bees, Birthday ornament of Spring, Flora's fairest daughterling; Coming when no flowerets dare Trust the cruel outer air; When the royal kingcup bold Dares not don his coat of gold; And the sturdy black-thorn spray Keeps his silver for the May;-- Coming when no flowerets would, Save thy lowly sisterhood, Early violets; blue and white, Dying for their love of light;-- Almond blossom, sent to teach us That the spring days soon will reach us, Lest, with longing over-tried, We die, as the violets died;-- Blossom, clouding all the tree With thy crimson broidery, Long before a leaf of green On the bravest bough is seen;-- Ah! when winter winds are swinging All thy red bells into ringing, With a bee in every bell, Almond bloom, we greet thee well. Edwin Arnold [1832-1904] WHITE AZALEAS Azaleas--whitest of white! White as the drifted snow Fresh-fallen out of the night, Before the coming glow. Tinges the morning light; When the light is like the snow, White, And the silence is like the light: Light, and silence, and snow,-- All--white! White! not a hint Of the creamy tint A rose will hold, The whitest rose, in its inmost fold; Not a possible blush; White as an embodied hush; A very rapture of white; A wedlock Of silence and light: White, white as the wonder undefiled Of Eve just wakened in Paradise; Nay, white as the angel of a child That looks into God's own eyes! Harriet McEwen Kimball [1834-1917] BUTTERCUPS There must be fairy miners Just underneath the mould, Such wondrous quaint designers Who live in caves of gold. They take the shining metals, And beat them into shreds, And mould them into petals To make the flowers' heads. Sometimes they melt the flowers To tiny seeds like pearls, And store them up in bowers For little boys and girls. And still a tiny fan turns Above a forge of gold, To keep, with fairy lanterns, The world from growing old. Wilfrid Thorley [1878- THE BROOM FLOWER Oh the Broom, the yellow Broom, The ancient poet sung it, And dear it is on summer days To lie at rest among it. I know the realms where people say The flowers have not their fellow; I know where they shine out like suns, The crimson and the yellow. I know where ladies live enchained In luxury's silken fetters, And flowers as bright as glittering gems Are used for written letters. But ne'er was flower so fair as this, In modern days or olden; It groweth on its nodding stem Like to a garland golden. And all about my mother's door Shine out its glittering bushes, And down the glen, where clear as light The mountain-water gushes. Take all the rest; but give me this, And the bird that nestles in it; I love it, for it loves the Broom-- The green and yellow linnet. Well call the rose the queen of flowers, And boast of that of Sharon, Of lilies like to marble cups, And the golden rod of Aaron: I care not how these flowers may be Beloved of man and woman; The Broom it is the flower for me, That groweth on the common. Oh the Broom, the yellow Broom, The ancient poet sung it, And dear it is on summer days To lie at rest among it. Mary Howitt [1799-1888] THE SMALL CELANDINE There is a Flower, the lesser Celandine, That shrinks, like many more, from cold and rain; And, the first moment that the sun may shine, Bright as the sun himself, 'tis out again! When hailstones have been falling, swarm on swarm, Or blasts the green field and the trees distressed, Oft have I seen it muffled up from harm, In close self-shelter, like a thing at rest. But lately, one rough day, this Flower I passed And recognized it, though an altered form, Now standing forth an offering to the blast, And buffeted at will by rain and storm. I stopped, and said with inly-muttered voice, "It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold: This neither is its courage, nor its choice, But its necessity in being old. "The sunshine may not cheer it, nor the dew; It cannot help itself in its decay; Stiff in its members, withered, changed of hue." And, in my spleen, I smiled that it was gray. To be a Prodigal's Favorite--then, worse truth, A Miser's Pensioner--behold our lot! O Man, that from thy fair and shining youth Age might but take the things Youth needed not! William Wordsworth [1770-1850] TO THE SMALL CELANDINE Pansies, lilies, kingcups, daisies, Let them live upon their praises; Long as there's a sun that sets, Primroses will have their glory; Long as there are violets, They will have a place in story: There's a flower that shall be mine, 'Tis the little Celandine. Eyes of some men travel far For the finding of a star; Up and down the heavens they go, Men that keep a mighty rout! I'm as great as them, I trow, Since the day I found thee out. Little Flower!--I'll make a stir, Like a sage astronomer. Modest, yet withal an Elf Bold, and lavish of thyself; Since we needs must first have met, I have seen thee, high and low, Thirty years or more, and yet 'Twas a face I did not know; Thou hast now, go where I may, Fifty greetings in a day. Ere a leaf is on a bush, In the time before the thrush Has a thought about her nest, Thou wilt come with half a call, Spreading out thy glossy breast Like a careless Prodigal; Telling tales about the sun, When we've little warmth, or none. Poets, vain men in their mood! Travel with the multitude: Never heed them; I aver That they all are wanton wooers; But the thrifty cottager, Who stirs little out of doors, Joys to spy thee near her home; Spring is coming, Thou art come! Comfort have thou of thy merit, Kindly, unassuming Spirit! Careless of thy neighborhood, Thou dost show thy pleasant face On the moor, and in the wood, In the lane;--there's not a place, Howsoever mean it be, But 'tis good enough for thee. Ill befall the yellow flowers, Children of the flaring hours! Buttercups, that will be seen, Whether we will see or no; Others, too, of lofty mien; They have done as worldings do, Taken praise that should be thine, Little, humble Celandine! Prophet of delight and mirth, Ill-requited upon earth; Herald of a mighty band, Of a joyous train ensuing, Serving at my heart's command, Tasks that are no tasks renewing, I will sing, as dost behove, Hymns in praise of what I love! William Wordsworth [1770-1850] FOUR-LEAF CLOVER I know a place where the sun is like gold, And the cherry blossoms burst with snow, And down underneath is the loveliest nook, Where the four-leaf clovers grow. One leaf is for hope, and one is for faith, And one is for love, you know, And God put another in for luck,-- If you search, you will find where they grow. But you must have hope, and you must have faith, You must love and be strong--and so, If you work, if you wait, you will find the place Where the four-leaf clovers grow. Ella Higginson [1862- SWEET CLOVER Within what weeks the melilot Gave forth its fragrance, I, a lad, Or never knew or quite forgot, Save that 'twas while the year is glad. Now know I that in bright July It blossoms; and the perfume fine Brings back my boyhood, until I Am steeped in memory as with wine. Now know I that the whole year long, Though Winter chills or Summer cheers, It writes along the weeks its song, Even as my youth sings through my years. Wallace Rice [1859- "I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD" I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle in the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed--and gazed--but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. William Wordsworth [1770-1850] TO DAFFODILS Fair Daffodils, we weep to see You haste away so soon; As yet the early-rising sun Has not attained his noon. Stay, stay, Until the hasting day Has run But to the even-song; And, having prayed together, we Will go with you along. We have short time to stay as you, We have as short a spring; As quick a growth to meet decay, As you, or any thing. We die As your hours do, and dry Away, Like to the summer's rain; Or as the pearls of morning's dew, Ne'er to be found again. Robert Herrick [1591-1674] TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY On Turing One Down With The Plough, In April 1786 Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower, Thou's met me in an evil hour; For I maun crush amang the stoure Thy slender stem: To spare thee now is past my power, Thou bonny gem. Alas! it's no thy neibor sweet, The bonny lark, companion meet, Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet, Wi' speckled breast, When upward-springing, blithe, to greet The purpling east! Cauld blew the bitter-biting north Upon thy early, humble birth; Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth Amid the storm, Scarce reared above the parent earth Thy tender form. The flaunting flowers our gardens yield High sheltering woods and wa's maun shield; But thou, beneath the random bield O' clod, or stane, Adorns the histie stibble-fleld, Unseen, alane. There, in thy scanty mantle clad, Thy snawie bosom sunward spread, Thou lifts thy unassuming head In humble guise; But now the share uptears thy bed, And low thou lies! Such is the fate of artless maid, Sweet floweret of the rural shade! By love's simplicity betrayed, And guileless trust, Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid Low i' the dust. Such is the fate of simple bard, On life's rough ocean luckless starred! Unskillful he to note the card Of prudent lore, Till billows rage, and gales blow hard, And whelm him o'er! Such fate to suffering worth is given, Who long with wants and woes has striven, By human pride or cunning driven To misery's brink, Till, wrenched of every stay but Heaven, He, ruined, sink! Even thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate, That fate is thine--no distant date; Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives, elate, Full on thy bloom, Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight Shall be thy doom. Robert Burns [1759-1796] A FIELD FLOWER There is a flower, a little flower With silver crest and golden eye, That welcomes every changing hour, And weathers every sky. The prouder beauties of the field In gay but quick succession shine; Race after race their honors yield, They flourish and decline. But this small flower, to Nature dear, While moons and stars their courses run, Wreathes the whole circle of the year, Companion of the Sun. It smiles upon the lap of May, To sultry August spreads its charms, Lights pale October on his way, And twines December's arms. The purple heath and golden broom On moory mountains catch the gale; O'er lawns the lily sheds perfume, The violet in the vale. But this bold floweret climbs the hill, Hides in the forest, haunts the glen, Plays on the margin of the rill, Peeps round the fox's den. Within the garden's cultured round It shares the sweet carnation's bed; And blooms on consecrated ground In honor of the dead. The lambkin crops its crimson gem; The wild bee murmurs on its breast; The blue-fly bends its pensile stem Light o'er the skylark's nest. 'Tis Flora's page,--in every place, In every season, fresh and fair; It opens with perennial grace, And blossoms everywhere. On waste and woodland, rock and plain, Its humble buds unheeded rise; The Rose has but a summer reign; The Daisy never dies! James Montgomery [1771-1854] TO DAISIES, NOT TO SHUT SO SOON Shut not so soon; the dull-eyed night Has not as yet begun To make a seizure on the light, Or to seal up the sun. No marigolds yet closed are, No shadows great appear; Nor doth the early shepherd's star Shine like a spangle here. Stay but till my Julia close Her life-begetting eye, And let the whole world then dispose Itself to live or die. Robert Herrick [1591-1674] DAISIES Over the shoulders and slopes of the dune I saw the white daisies go down to the sea, A host in the sunshine, an army in June, The people God sends us to set our heart free. The bobolinks rallied them up from the dell, The orioles whistled them out of the wood; And all of their saying was, "Earth, it is well!" And all of their dancing was, "Life, thou art good!" Bliss Carman [1861-1929] TO THE DAISY With little here to do or see Of things that in the great world be, Daisy! again I talk to thee, For thou art worthy: Thou unassuming common-place Of Nature, with that homely face, And yet with something of a grace, Which love makes for thee! Oft on the dappled turf at ease, I sit, and play with similes, Loose types of things through all degrees, Thoughts of thy raising: And many a fond and idle name I give to thee, for praise or blame, As is the humor of the game, While I am gazing. A nun demure, of lowly port; Or sprightly maiden of love's court, In thy simplicity the sport Of all temptations; A queen in crown of rubies dressed A starveling in a scanty vest; Are all, as seem to suit thee best, Thy appellations. A little Cyclops, with one eye Staring to threaten and defy-- That thought comes next--and instantly The freak is over. The shape will vanish,--and behold! A silver shield with boss of gold, That spreads itself, some fairy bold In fight to cover. I see thee glittering from afar;-- And then thou art a pretty star; Not quite so fair as many are In heaven above thee! Yet like a star, with glittering crest, Self-poised in air, thou seem'st to rest;-- May peace come never to his nest Who shall reprove thee! Bright Flower! for by that name at last, When all my reveries are past, I call thee, and to that cleave fast, Sweet silent creature! That breath'st with me in sun and air, Do thou, as thou art wont, repair My heart with gladness, and a share Of thy meek nature! William Wordsworth [1770-1850] TO DAISIES Ah, drops of gold in whitening flame Burning, we know your lovely name-- Daisies, that little children pull! Like all weak things, over the strong Ye do not know your power for wrong, And much abuse your feebleness. Daisies, that little children pull, As ye are weak, be merciful! O hide your eyes! they are to me Beautiful insupportably. Or be but conscious ye are fair, And I your loveliness could bear, But, being fair so without art, Ye vex the silted memories of my heart! As a pale ghost yearning strays With sundered gaze, 'Mid corporal presences that are To it impalpable--such a bar Sets you more distant than the morning-star. Such wonder is on you, and amaze, I look and marvel if I be Indeed the phantom, or are ye? The light is on your innocence Which fell from me. The fields ye still inhabit whence My world-acquainted treading strays, The country where I did commence; And though ye shine to me so near, So close to gross and visible sense,-- Between us lies impassable year on year. To other time and far-off place Belongs your beauty: silent thus, Though to other naught you tell, To me your ranks are rumorous Of an ancient miracle. Vain does my touch your petals graze, I touch you not; and though ye blossom here, Your roots are fast in alienated days. Ye there are anchored, while Time's stream Has swept me past them: your white ways And infantile delights do seem To look in on me like a face, Dead and sweet, come back through dream, With tears, because for old embrace It has no arms. These hands did toy, Children, with you, when I was child, And in each other's eyes we smiled: Not yours, not yours the grievous-fair Apparelling With which you wet mine eyes; you wear, Ah me, the garment of the grace I wove you when I was a boy; O mine, and not the year's your stolen Spring! And since ye wear it, Hide your sweet selves! I cannot bear it. For when ye break the cloven earth With your young laughter and endearment, No blossomy carillon 'tis of mirth To me; I see my slaughtered joy Bursting its cerement. Francis Thompson [1859?-1907] TO THE DANDELION Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, First pledge of blithesome May, Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold, High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they An Eldorado in the grass have found, Which not the rich earth's ample round May match in wealth, thou art more dear to me Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be. Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow Through the primeval hush of Indian seas, Nor wrinkled the lean brow Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease; 'Tis the Spring's largess, which she scatters now To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand, Though most hearts never understand To take it at God's value, but pass by The offered wealth with unrewarded eye. Thou art my tropics and mine Italy; To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime; The eyes thou givest me Are in the heart, and heed not space or time: Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment In the white lily's breezy tent, His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first From the dark green thy yellow circles burst. Then think I of deep shadows on the grass, Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze, Where, as the breezes pass, The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways, Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass, Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue That from the distance sparkle through Some woodland gap, and of a sky above, Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move. My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with thee; The sight of thee calls back the robin's song, Who, from the dark old tree Beside the door, sang clearly all day long, And I, secure in childish piety, Listened as if I heard an angel sing With news from heaven, which he could bring Fresh every day to my untainted ears When birds and flowers and I were happy peers. How like a prodigal doth nature seem, When thou, for all thy gold, so common art! Thou teachest me to deem More sacredly of every human heart, Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show, Did we but pay the love we owe, And with a child's undoubting wisdom look On all these living pages of God's book. James Russell Lowell [1819-1891] DANDELION At dawn, when England's childish tongue Lisped happy truths, and men were young, Her Chaucer, with a gay content Hummed through the shining fields, scarce bent By poet's foot, and, plucking, set, All lusty, sunny, dewy-wet, A dandelion in his verse, Like the first gold in childhood's purse. At noon, when harvest colors die On the pale azure of the sky, And dreams through dozing grasses creep Of winds that are themselves asleep, Rapt Shelley found the airy ghost Of that bright flower the spring loves most, And ere one silvery ray was blown From its full disk made it his own. Now from the stubble poets glean Scant flowers of thought; the Muse would wean Her myriad nurslings, feeding them On petals plucked from a dry stem. For one small plumule still adrift, The wind-blown dandelion's gift, The fields once blossomy we scour Where the old poets plucked the flower. Annie Rankin Annan [1848-1925] THE DANDELIONS Upon a showery night and still, Without a sound of warning, A trooper band surprised the hill, And held it in the morning. We were not waked by bugle-notes, No cheer our dreams invaded, And yet, at dawn, their yellow coats On the green slopes paraded. We careless folk the deed forgot; Till one day, idly walking, We marked upon the self-same spot A crowd of veterans talking. They shook their trembling heads and gray With pride and noiseless laughter; When, well-a-day! they blew away, And ne'er were heard of after! Helen Gray Cone [1859-1934] TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN Thou blossom bright with autumn dew, And colored with the heaven's own blue, That openest when the quiet light Succeeds the keen and frosty night, Thou comest not when violets lean O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen, Or columbines, in purple dressed, Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest. Thou waitest late and com'st alone, When woods are bare and birds are flown, And frost and shortening days portend The aged year is near his end. Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye Look through its fringes to the sky, Blue--blue--as if that sky let fall A flower from its cerulean wall. I would that thus, when I shall see The hour of death draw near to me, Hope, blossoming within my heart, May look to heaven as I depart. William Cullen Bryant [1794-1878] GOLDENROD When the wayside tangles blaze In the low September sun, When the flowers of Summer days Droop and wither, one by one, Reaching up through bush and brier, Sumptuous brow and heart of fire, Flaunting high its wind-rocked plume, Brave with wealth of native bloom,-- Goldenrod! When the meadow, lately shorn, Parched and languid, swoons with pain, When her life-blood, night and morn, Shrinks in every throbbing vein, Round her fallen, tarnished urn Leaping watch-fires brighter burn; Royal arch o'er Autumn's gate, Bending low with lustrous weight,-- Goldenrod! In the pasture's rude embrace, All o'errun with tangled vines, Where the thistle claims its place, And the straggling hedge confines, Bearing still the sweet impress Of unfettered loveliness, In the field and by the wall, Binding, clasping, crowning all,-- Goldenrod! Nature lies disheveled pale, With her feverish lips apart,-- Day by day the pulses fail, Nearer to her bounding heart; Yet that slackened grasp doth hold Store of pure and genuine gold; Quick thou comest, strong and free, Type of all the wealth to be,-- Goldenrod! Elaine Goodale Eastman [1863- LESSONS FROM THE GORSE Mountain gorses, ever-golden, Cankered not the whole year long! Do ye teach us to be strong, Howsoever pricked and holden, Like your thorny blooms, and so Trodden on by rain and snow, Up the hill-side of this life, as bleak as where ye grow? Mountain blossoms, shining blossoms, Do ye teach us to be glad When no summer can be had, Blooming in our inward bosoms? Ye whom God preserveth still, Set as lights upon a hill, Tokens to the wintry earth that Beauty liveth still! Mountain gorses, do ye teach us From that academic chair Canopied with azure air, That the wisest word man reaches Is the humblest he can speak? Ye, who live on mountain peak, Yet live low along the ground, beside the grasses meek! Mountain gorses, since Linnaeus Knelt beside you on the sod, For your beauty thanking God,-- For your teaching, ye should see us Bowing in prostration new! Whence arisen,--if one or two Drops be on our cheeks--O world, they are not tears but dew. Elizabeth Barrett Browning [1806-1861] THE VOICE OF THE GRASS Here I come creeping, creeping everywhere; By the dusty roadside, On the sunny hillside, Close by the noisy brook, In every shady nook, I come creeping, creeping everywhere. Here I come creeping, smiling everywhere; All round the open door, Where here sit the aged poor; Here where the children play, In the bright and merry May, I come creeping, creeping everywhere. Here I come creeping, creeping everywhere; In the noisy city street My pleasant face you'll meet, Cheering the sick at heart Toiling his busy part,-- Silently creeping, creeping everywhere. Here I come creeping, creeping everywhere; You cannot see me coming, Nor hear my low sweet humming; For in the starry night, And the glad morning light, I come quietly creeping everywhere. Here I come creeping, creeping everywhere; More welcome than the flowers In summer's pleasant hours; The gentle cow is glad, And the merry bird not sad, To see me creeping, creeping everywhere. Here I come creeping, creeping everywhere; When you're numbered with the dead In your still and narrow bed, In the happy spring I'll come And deck your silent home,-- Creeping, silently creeping everywhere. Here I come creeping, creeping everywhere; My humble song of praise Most joyfully I raise To Him at whose command I beautify the land, Creeping, silently creeping everywhere. Sarah Roberts Boyle [1812-1869] A SONG THE GRASS SINGS The violet is much too shy, The rose too little so; I think I'll ask the buttercup If I may be her beau. When winds go by, I'll nod to her And she will nod to me, And I will kiss her on the cheek As gently as may be. And when the mower cuts us down, Together we will pass, I smiling at the buttercup, She smiling at the grass. Charles G. Blanden [1857- THE WILD HONEYSUCKLE Fair flower, that dost so comely grow, Hid in this silent, dull retreat, Untouched thy honied blossoms blow, Unseen thy little branches greet: No roving foot shall crush thee here, No busy hand provoke a tear. By Nature's self in white arrayed, She bade thee shun the vulgar eye, And planted here the guardian shade, And sent soft waters murmuring by; Thus quietly thy summer goes, Thy days declining to repose. Smit with those charms, that must decay, I grieve to see your future doom; They died--nor were those flowers more gay, The flowers that did in Eden bloom; Unpitying frosts and Autumn's power Shall leave no vestige of this flower. From morning suns and evening dews At first thy little being came; If nothing once, you nothing lose, For when you die you are the same; The space between is but an hour, The frail duration of a flower. Philip Freneau [1752-1832] THE IVY GREEN Oh, a dainty plant is the Ivy green, That creepeth o'er ruins old! Of right choice food are his meals I ween, In his cell so lone and cold. The wall must be crumbled, the stone decayed, To pleasure his dainty whim; And the mouldering dust that years have made Is a merry meal for him. Creeping where no life is seen, A rare old plant is the Ivy green. Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings, And a staunch old heart has he. How closely he twineth, how tight he clings To his friend the huge Oak Tree! And slily he traileth along the ground, And his leaves he gently waves, As he joyously hugs and crawleth round The rich mould of dead men's graves. Creeping where grim death has been, A rare old plant is the Ivy green. Whole ages have fled and their works decayed, And nations have scattered been; But the stout old Ivy shall never fade, From its hale and hearty green. The brave old plant, in its lonely days, Shall fatten upon the past: For the stateliest building man can raise Is the Ivy's food at last. Creeping on, where time has been, A rare old plant is the Ivy green. Charles Dickens [1812-1870] YELLOW JESSAMINE In tangled wreaths, in clustered gleaming stars, In floating, curling sprays, The golden flower comes shining through the woods These February days; Forth go all hearts, all hands, from out the town, To bring her gayly in, This wild, sweet Princess of far Florida-- The yellow jessamine. The live-oaks smile to see her lovely face Peep from the thickets; shy, She hides behind the leaves her golden buds Till, bolder grown, on high She curls a tendril, throws a spray, then flings Herself aloft in glee, And, bursting into thousand blossoms, swings In wreaths from tree to tree. The dwarf-palmetto on his knees adores This Princess of the air; The lone pine-barren broods afar and sighs, "Ah! come, lest I despair;" The myrtle-thickets and ill-tempered thorns Quiver and thrill within, As through their leaves they feel the dainty touch Of yellow jessamine. The garden-roses wonder as they see The wreaths of golden bloom, Brought in from the far woods with eager haste To deck the poorest room, The rich man's house, alike; the loaded hands Give sprays to all they meet, Till, gay with flowers, the people come and go, And all the air is sweet. The Southern land, well weary of its green Which may not fall nor fade, Bestirs itself to greet the lovely flower With leaves of fresher shade; The pine has tassels, and the orange-trees Their fragrant work begin: The spring has come--has come to Florida, With yellow jessamine. Constance Fenimore Woolson [1840-1894] KNAP WEED By copse and hedgerow, waste and wall, He thrusts his cushions red; O'er burdock rank, o'er thistles tall, He rears his hardy head: Within, without, the strong leaves press, He screens the mossy stone, Lord of a narrow wilderness, Self-centred and alone. He numbers no observant friends, He soothes no childish woes, Yet nature nurtures him, and tends As duly as the rose; He drinks the blessed dew of heaven, The wind is in his ears, To guard his growth the planets seven Swing in their airy spheres. The spirits of the fields and woods Throb in his sturdy veins: He drinks the secret, stealing floods, And swills the volleying rains: And when the bird's note showers and breaks The wood's green heart within, He stirs his plumy brow and wakes To draw the sunlight in. Mute sheep that pull the grasses soft Crop close and pass him by, Until he stands alone, aloft, In surly majesty. No fly so keen, no bee so bold, To pierce that knotted zone; He frowns as though he guarded gold, And yet he garners none. And so when autumn winds blow late, And whirl the chilly wave, He bows before the common fate, And drops beside his grave. None ever owed him thanks or said "A gift of gracious heaven." Down in the mire he droops his head; Forgotten, not forgiven. Smile on, brave weed! let none inquire What made or bade thee rise: Toss thy tough fingers high and higher To flout the drenching skies. Let others toil for others' good, And miss or mar their own; Thou hast brave health and fortitude To live and die alone! Arthur Christopher Benson [1862-1925] MOLY The root is hard to loose From hold of earth by mortals; but God's power Can all things do. 'Tis black, but bears a flower As white as milk. --Chapman's Homer Traveler, pluck a stem of moly, If thou touch at Circe's isle,-- Hermes' moly, growing solely To undo enchanter's wile! When she proffers thee her chalice,-- Wine and spices mixed with malice,-- When she smites thee with her staff, To transform thee, do thou laugh! Safe thou art if thou but bear The least leaf of moly rare. Close it grows beside her portal, Springing from a stock immortal,-- Yes! and often has the Witch Sought to tear it from its niche; But to thwart her cruel will The wise God renews it still. Though it grows in soil perverse, Heaven hath been its jealous nurse, And a flower of snowy mark Springs from root and sheathing dark; Kingly safeguard, only herb That can brutish passion curb! Some do think its name should be Shield-Heart, White Integrity. Traveler, pluck a stem of moly, If thou touch at Circe's isle,-- Hermes' moly, growing solely To undo enchanter's wile! Edith M. Thomas [1854-1925] THE MORNING-GLORY Was it worth while to paint so fair Thy every leaf--to vein with faultless art Each petal, taking the boon light and air Of summer so to heart? To bring thy beauty unto perfect flower, Then, like a passing fragrance or a smile, Vanish away, beyond recovery's power-- Was it, frail bloom, worth while? Thy silence answers: "Life was mine! And I, who pass without regret or grief, Have cared the more to make my moment fine, Because it was so brief. "In its first radiance I have seen The sun!--why tarry then till comes the night? I go my way, content that I have been Part of the morning light!" Florence Earle Coates [1850-1927] THE MOUNTAIN HEART'S-EASE By scattered rocks and turbid waters shifting, By furrowed glade and dell, To feverish men thy calm, sweet face uplifting, Thou stayest them to tell The delicate thought that cannot find expression, For ruder speech too fair, That, like thy petals, trembles in possession, And scatters on the air. The miner pauses in his rugged labor, And, leaning on his spade, Laughingly calls unto his comrade-neighbor To see thy charms displayed. But in his eyes a mist unwonted rises, And for a moment clear Some sweet home face his foolish thought surprises And passes in a tear,-- Some boyish vision of his Eastern village, Of uneventful toil, Where golden harvests followed quiet tillage Above a peaceful soil. One moment only, for the pick, uplifting, Through root and fibre cleaves, And on the muddy current slowly drifting Are swept thy bruised leaves. And yet, O poet, in thy homely fashion, Thy work thou dost fulfil, For on the turbid current of his passion Thy face is shining still! Bret Harte [1839-1902] THE PRIMROSE Ask me why I send you here This sweet Infanta of the year? Ask me why I send to you This Primrose, thus bepearled with dew? I will whisper to your ears:-- The sweets of love are mixed with tears. Ask me why this flower does show So yellow-green, and sickly too? Ask me why the stalk is weak And bending, yet it doth not break? I will answer:--These discover What fainting hopes are in a lover. Robert Herrick [1591-1674] TO PRIMROSES FILLED WITH MORNING DEW Why do ye weep, sweet babes? Can tears Speak grief in you, Who were but born Just as the modest morn Teemed her refreshing dew? Alas, you have not known that shower That mars a flower, Nor felt the unkind Breath of a blasting wind, Nor are ye worn with years, Or warped, as we, Who think it strange to see Such pretty flowers, like to orphans young, To speak by tears, before ye have a tongue. Speak, whimpering younglings, and make known The reason why Ye droop and weep; Is it for want of sleep, Or childish lullaby? Or that ye have not seen as yet The violet? Or brought a kiss From that Sweet-heart, to this? --No, no, this sorrow shown By your tears shed, Would have this lecture read, That things of greatest, so of meanest worth, Conceived with grief are, and with tears brought forth. Robert Herrick [1591-1674] TO AN EARLY PRIMROSE Mild offspring of a dark and sullen sire! Whose modest form, so delicately fine, Was nursed in whirling storms And cradled in the winds; Thee, when young Spring first questioned Winter's sway, And dared the sturdy blusterer to the fight, Thee on this bank he threw To mark his victory. In this low vale, the promise of the year, Serene, thou openest to the nipping gale, Unnoticed and alone, Thy tender elegance. So Virtue blooms, brought forth amid the storms Of chill adversity; in some lone walk Of life she rears her head, Obscure and unobserved; While every bleaching breeze that on her blows Chastens her spotless purity of breast, And hardens her to bear Serene the ills of life. Henry Kirke White [1785-1806] THE RHODORA On Being Asked Whence Is The Flower In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook. The purple petals, fallen in the pool, Made the black water with their beauty gay; Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, And court the flower that cheapens his array. Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being: Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose! I never thought to ask, I never knew: But, in my simple ignorance, suppose The self-same Power that brought me there brought you. Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-1882] THE ROSE A rose, as fair as ever saw the North, Grew in a little garden all alone; A sweeter flower did Nature ne'er put forth, Nor fairer garden yet was never known: The maidens danced about it morn and noon, And learned bards of it their ditties made; The nimble fairies by the pale-faced moon Watered the root and kissed her pretty shade. But well-a-day!--the gardener careless grew; The maids and fairies both were kept away, And in a drought the caterpillars threw Themselves upon the bud and every spray. God shield the stock! If heaven send no supplies, The fairest blossom of the garden dies. William Browne [1591-1643] WILD ROSES On long, serene midsummer days Of ripening fruit and yellow grain, How sweetly, by dim woodland ways, In tangled hedge or leafy lane, Fair wild-rose thickets, you unfold Those pale pink stars with hearts of gold! Your sleek patrician sisters dwell On lawns where gleams the shrub's trim bosk, In terraced gardens, tended well, Near pebbled walk and quaint kiosk. In costliest urns their colors rest; They beam on beauty's fragrant breast! But you in lowly calm abide, Scarce heeded save by breeze or bee; You know what splendor, pomp and pride Full oft your brilliant sisters see; What sorrow too, and bitter fears; What mad farewells and hopeless tears. How some are kept in old, dear books, That once in bridal wreaths were worn; How some are kissed, with tender looks, And later tossed aside with scorn; How some their taintless petals lay On icy foreheads, pale as they! So, while these truths you vaguely guess, A-bloom in many a lonesome spot, Shy roadside roses, may you bless The fate that rules your modest lot, Like rustic maids that meekly stand Below the ladies of their land! Edgar Fawcett [1847-1904] THE ROSE OF MAY Ah! there's the lily, marble pale, The bonny broom, the cistus frail; The rich sweet pea, the iris blue, The larkspur with its peacock hue; All these are fair, yet hold I will That the Rose of May is fairer still. 'Tis grand 'neath palace walls to grow, To blaze where lords and ladies go; To hang o'er marble founts, and shine In modern gardens, trim and fine; But the Rose of May is only seen Where the great of other days have been. The house is mouldering stone by stone, The garden-walks are overgrown; The flowers are low, the weeds are high, The fountain-stream is choked and dry, The dial-stone with moss is green, Where'er the Rose of May is seen. The Rose of May its pride displayed Along the old stone balustrade; And ancient ladies, quaintly dight, In its pink blossoms took delight; And on the steps would make a stand To scent its fragrance--fan in hand. Long have been dead those ladies gay; Their very heirs have passed away; And their old portraits, prim and tall, Are mouldering in the mouldering hall; The terrace and the balustrade Lie broken, weedy and decayed. But blithe and tall the Rose of May Shoots upward through the ruin gray; With scented flower, and leaf pale green, Such rose as it hath never been, Left, like a noble deed, to grace The memory of an ancient race. Mary Howitt [1799-1888] A ROSE Blown in the morning, thou shalt fade ere noon. What boots a life which in such haste forsakes thee? Thou'rt wondrous frolic, being to die so soon, And passing proud a little color makes thee. If thee thy brittle beauty so deceives, Know then the thing that swells thee is thy bane; For the same beauty cloth, in bloody leaves, The sentence of thy early death contain. Some clown's coarse lungs will poison thy sweet flower, If by the careless plough thou shalt be torn; And many Herods lie in wait each hour To murder thee as soon as thou art born-- Nay, force thy bud to blow--their tyrant breath Anticipating life, to hasten death! Richard Fanshawe [1608-1666] THE SHAMROCK When April rains make flowers bloom And Johnny-jump-ups come to light, And clouds of color and perfume Float from the orchards pink and white, I see my shamrock in the rain, An emerald spray with raindrops set, Like jewels on Spring's coronet, So fair, and yet it breathes of pain. The shamrock on an older shore Sprang from a rich and sacred soil Where saint and hero lived of yore, And where their sons in sorrow toil; And here, transplanted, it to me Seems weeping for the soil it left: The diamonds that all others see Are tears drawn from its heart bereft. When April rain makes flowers grow, And sparkles on their tiny buds That in June nights will over-blow And fill the world with scented floods, The lonely shamrock in our land-- So fine among the clover leaves-- For the old springtime often grieves,-- I feel its tears upon my hand. Maurice Francis Egan [1852-1924] TO VIOLETS Welcome, maids of honor, You do bring In the Spring, And wait upon her. She has virgins many, Fresh and fair; Yet you are More sweet than any. You're the maiden posies, And, so graced, To be placed 'Fore damask roses. Yet, though thus respected, By and by Ye do lie, Poor girls, neglected. Robert Herrick [1591-1674] THE VIOLET O faint, delicious, spring-time violet! Thine odor, like a key, Turns noiselessly in memory's wards to let A thought of sorrow free. The breath of distant fields upon my brow Blows through that open door The sound of wind-borne bells, more sweet and low, And sadder than of yore. It comes afar, from that beloved place, And that beloved hour, When life hung ripening in love's golden grace, Like grapes above a bower. A spring goes singing through its reedy grass; The lark sings o'er my head, Drowned in the sky--O, pass, ye visions, pass! I would that I were dead!-- Why hast thou opened that forbidden door, From which I ever flee? O vanished Joy! O Love, that art no more, Let my vexed spirit be! O violet! thy odor through my brain Hath searched, and stung to grief This sunny day, as if a curse did stain Thy velvet leaf. William Wetmore Story [1819-1895] TO A WOOD-VIOLET In this secluded shrine, O miracle of grace, No mortal eye but mine Hath looked upon thy face. No shadow but mine own Hath screened thee from the sight Of Heaven, whose love alone Hath led me to thy light. Whereof--as shade to shade Is wedded in the sun-- A moment's glance hath made Our souls forever one. John Banister Tabb [1845-1909] THE VIOLET AND THE ROSE The violet in the wood, that's sweet to-day, Is longer sweet than roses of red June; Set me sweet violets along my way, And bid the red rose flower, but not too soon. Ah violet, ah rose, why not the two? Why bloom not all fair flowers the whole year through? Why not the two, young violet, ripe rose? Why dies one sweetness when another blows? Augusta Webster [1837-1894] TO A WIND-FLOWER Teach me the secret of thy loveliness, That, being made wise, I may aspire to be As beautiful in thought, and so express Immortal truths to earth's mortality; Though to my soul ability be less Than 'tis to thee, O sweet anemone. Teach me the secret of thy innocence, That in simplicity I may grow wise, Asking from Art no other recompense Than the approval of her own just eyes; So may I rise to some fair eminence, Though less than thine, O cousin of the skies. Teach me these things, through whose high knowledge, I,-- When Death hath poured oblivion through my veins, And brought me home, as all are brought, to lie In that vast house, common to serfs and thanes,-- I shall not die, I shall not utterly die, For beauty born of beauty--that remains. Madison Cawein [1865-1914] TO BLOSSOMS Fair pledges of a fruitful tree, Why do ye fall so fast? Your date is not so past But you may stay yet here awhile To blush and gently smile, And go at last. What! were ye born to be An hour or half's delight, And so to bid good-night? 'Twas pity Nature brought you forth Merely to show your worth And lose you quite. But you are lovely leaves, where we May read how soon things have Their end, though ne'er so brave: And after they have shown their pride Like you awhile, they glide Into the grave. Robert Herrick [1591-1674] "TIS THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER" 'Tis the last rose of summer, Left blooming alone; All her lovely companions Are faded and gone; No flower of her kindred, No rose-bud is nigh, To reflect back her blushes, Or give sigh for sigh. I'll not leave thee, thou lone one! To pine on the stem; Since the lovely are sleeping, Go, sleep thou with them. Thus kindly I scatter Thy leaves o'er the bed Where thy mates of the garden Lie scentless and dead. So soon may I follow, When friendships decay, And from Love's shining circle The gems drop away. When true hearts lie withered, And fond ones are flown, O who would inhabit This bleak world alone? Thomas Moore [1779-1852] THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere. Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead; They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread; The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay, And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day. Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood? Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours. The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again. The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow; But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sun-flower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen. And now, when comes the calm mild day, as still such days will come, To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home; When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still, And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill, The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore, And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more. And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died, The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side. In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forest cast the leaf, And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief: Yet not unmeet it was that one like that young friend of ours, So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers. William Cullen Bryant [1794-1878] GOD'S CREATURES ONCE ON A TIME Once on a time I used to dream Strange spirits moved about my way, And I might catch a vagrant gleam, A glint of pixy or of fay; Their lives were mingled with my own, So far they roamed, so near they drew; And when I from a child had grown, I woke--and found my dream was true. For one is clad in coat of fur, And one is decked with feathers gay; Another, wiser, will prefer A sober suit of Quaker gray: This one's your servant from his birth, And that a Princess you must please, And this one loves to wake your mirth, And that one likes to share your ease. O gracious creatures, tiny souls! You seem so near, so far away, Yet while the cloudland round us rolls, We love you better every day. Margaret Benson [18-- TO A MOUSE On Turning Up Her Nest With The Plow, November, 1785 Wee, sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie, O, what a panic's in thy breastie! Thou need na start awa' sae hasty, Wi' bickering brattle! I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee, Wi' murd'ring pattle! I'm truly sorry man's dominion Has broken Nature's social union, An' justifies that ill opinion, Which makes thee startle At me, thy poor, earth-born companion, An' fellow-mortal! I doubt na, whiles, but thou may thieve; What then? poor beastie, thou maun live! A daimen icker in a thrave 'S a sma' request; I'll get a blessin' wi' the laive, And never miss't! Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin! Its silly wa's the win's are strewin'! An' naething, now, to big a new ane, O' faggage green! An' bleak December's winds ensuin', Baith snell an' keen! Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste, An' weary winter comin' fast, An' cozie here, beneath the blast, Thou thought to dwell,-- Till, crash! the cruel coulter passed Out through thy cell. That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble Has cost thee mony a weary nibble! Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble, But house or hald, To thole the winter's sleety dribble, An' cranreuch cauld! But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane, In proving foresight may be vain:-- The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men, Gang aft a-gley, An' lea'e us naught but grief an' pain, For promised joy! Still thou art blest, compared wi' me! The present only toucheth thee: But, och! I backward cast my e'e On prospects drear! An' forward, though I canna see, I guess an' fear! Robert Burns [1759-1796] THE GRASSHOPPER Happy insect, what can be In happiness compared to thee? Fed with nourishment divine, The dewy morning's gentle wine! Nature waits upon thee still, And thy verdant cup does fill; 'Tis filled wherever thou dost tread, Nature's self's thy Ganymede. Thou dost drink, and dance, and sing, Happier than the happiest king! All the fields which thou dost see, All the plants belong to thee; All the summer hours produce, Fertile made with early juice. Man for thee does sow and plow, Farmer he, and landlord thou! Thou dost innocently enjoy; Nor does thy luxury destroy. The shepherd gladly heareth thee, More harmonious than he. Thee country hinds with gladness hear, Prophet of the ripened year! Thee Phoebus loves, and does inspire Phoebus is himself thy sire. To thee, of all things upon earth, Life is no longer than thy mirth. Happy insect! happy thou, Dost neither age nor winter know; But when thou'st drunk, and danced, and sung Thy fill, the flowery leaves among, (Voluptuous and wise withal, Epicurean animal!) Sated with thy summer feast, Thou retir'st to endless rest. After Anacreon, by Abraham Cowley [1618-1667] ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET The poetry of earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead: That is the Grasshopper's--he takes the lead In summer luxury,--he has never done With his delights, for when tired out with fun, He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. The poetry of earth is ceasing never: On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one in drowsiness half-lost, The Grasshopper's among the grassy hills. John Keats [1795-1821] TO THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE CRICKET Green little vaulter in the sunny grass, Catching your heart up at the feel of June; Sole voice that's heard amidst the lazy noon, When even the bees lag at the summoning brass; And you, warm little housekeeper, who class With those who think the candles come too soon, Loving the fire, and with your tricksome tune Nick the glad silent moments as they pass; O sweet and tiny cousins, that belong One to the fields, the other to the hearth, Both have your sunshine; both, though small, are strong At your clear hearts; and both seem given to earth To sing in thoughtful ears their natural song-- In-doors and out, summer and winter, Mirth. Leigh Hunt [1784-1859] THE CRICKET Little inmate, full of mirth, Chirping on my kitchen hearth, Wheresoe'er be thine abode Always harbinger of good, Pay me for thy warm retreat With a song more soft and sweet; In return thou shalt receive Such a strain as I can give. Thus thy praise shall be expressed, Inoffensive, welcome guest! While the rat is on the scout, And the mouse with curious snout, With what vermin else infest Every dish, and spoil the best; Frisking thus before the fire, Thou hast all thy heart's desire. Though in voice and shape they be Formed as if akin to thee, Thou surpassest, happier far, Happiest grasshoppers that are; Theirs is but a summer's song, Thine endures the winter long, Unimpaired, and shrill, and clear, Melody throughout the year. Neither night nor dawn of day Puts a period to thy play: Sing then--and extend thy span Far beyond the date of man; Wretched man, whose years are spent In repining discontent, Lives not, aged though he be, Half a span, compared with thee. From the Latin of Vincent Bourne, by William Cowper [1731-1800] TO A CRICKET Voice of summer, keen and shrill, Chirping round my winter fire, Of thy song I never tire, Weary others as they will, For thy song with summer's filled-- Filled with sunshine, filled with June; Firelight echo of that noon Heard in fields when all is stilled In the golden light of May, Bringing scents of new-mown hay, Bees, and birds, and flowers away, Prithee, haunt my fireside still, Voice of summer, keen and shrill. William Cox Bennett [1820-1895] TO AN INSECT I love to hear thine earnest voice, Wherever thou art hid, Thou testy little dogmatist, Thou pretty Katydid! Thou mindest me of gentlefolks,-- Old gentlefolks are they,-- Thou say'st an undisputed thing In such a solemn way. Thou art a female, Katydid! I know it by the trill That quivers through thy piercing notes, So petulant and shrill; I think there is a knot of you Beneath the hollow tree,-- A knot of spinster Katydids,-- Do Katydids drink tea? Oh, tell me where did Katy live, And what did Katy do? And was she very fair and young, And yet so wicked, too? Did Katy love a naughty man, Or kiss more cheeks than one? I warrant Katy did no more Than many a Kate has done. Dear me! I'll tell you all about My fuss with little Jane, And Ann, with whom I used to walk So often down the lane, And all that tore their locks of black, Or wet their eyes of blue,-- Pray tell me, sweetest Katydid, What did poor Katy do? Ah no! the living oak shall crash, That stood for ages still, The rock shall rend its mossy base And thunder down the hill, Before the little Katydid Shall add one word, to tell The mystic story of the maid Whose name she knows so well. Peace to the ever-murmuring race! And when the latest one Shall fold in death her feeble wings Beneath the autumn sun, Then shall she raise her fainting voice, And lift her drooping lid, And then the child of future years Shall hear what Katy did. Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-1894] THE SNAIL To grass, or leaf, or fruit, or wall, The snail sticks close, nor fears to fall, As if he grew there, house and all Together. Within that house secure he hides, When danger imminent betides, Of storm, or other harm besides Of weather. Give but his horns the slightest touch, His self-collecting power is such, He shrinks into his house with much Displeasure. Where'er he dwells, he dwells alone, Except himself, has chattels none, Well satisfied to be his own Whole treasure. Thus, hermit-like, his life he leads, Nor partner of his banquet needs, And if he meets one, only feeds The faster. Who seeks him must be worse than blind (He and his house are so combined), If, finding it, he fails to find Its master. From the Latin of Vincent Bourne, by William Cowper [1731-1800] THE HOUSEKEEPER The frugal snail, with forecast of repose, Carries his house with him where'er he goes; Peeps out,--and if there comes a shower of rain, Retreats to his small domicile amain. Touch but a tip of him, a horn,--'tis well,-- He curls up in his sanctuary shell. He's his own landlord, his own tenant; stay Long as he will, he dreads no Quarter Day. Himself he boards and lodges; both invites And feasts himself; sleeps with himself o' nights. He spares the upholsterer trouble to procure Chattels; himself is his own furniture, And his sole riches. Whereso'er he roam,-- Knock when you will,--he's sure to be at home. From the Latin of Vincent Bourne, by Charles Lamb [1775-1834] THE HUMBLE-BEE Burly, dozing humble-bee, Where thou art is clime for me. Let them sail for Porto Rique, Far-off heats through seas to seek; I will follow thee alone, Thou animated torrid-zone! Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer, Let me chase thy waving lines; Keep me nearer, me thy hearer, Singing over shrubs and vines. Insect lover of the sun, Joy of thy dominion! Sailor of the atmosphere; Swimmer through the waves of air; Voyager of light and noon; Epicurean of June; Wait, I prithee, till I come Within earshot of thy hum,-- All without is martyrdom. When the south wind, in May days, With a net of shining haze Silvers the horizon wall, And with softness touching all, Tints the human countenance With a color of romance, And infusing subtle heats, Turns the sod to violets, Thou, in sunny solitudes, Rover of the underwoods, The green silence dost displace With thy mellow, breezy bass. Hot midsummer's petted crone, Sweet to me thy drowsy tone Tells of countless sunny hours, Long days, and solid banks of flowers; Of gulfs of sweetness without bound In Indian wildernesses found; Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure, Firmest cheer, and birdlike pleasure. Aught unsavory or unclean Hath my insect never seen; But violets and bilberry bells, Maple-sap and daffodels, Grass with green flag half-mast high, Succory to match the sky, Columbine with horn of honey, Scented fern, and agrimony, Clover, catchfly, adder's tongue And brier-roses, dwelt among; All beside was unknown waste, All was picture as he passed. Wiser far than human seer, Yellow-breeched philosopher! Seeing only what is fair, Sipping only what is sweet, Thou dost mock at fate and care, Leave the chaff, and take the wheat. When the fierce northwestern blast Cools sea and land so far and fast, Thou already slumberest deep; Woe and want thou canst outsleep; Want and woe, which torture us, Thy sleep makes ridiculous. Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-1882] TO A BUTTERFLY I've watched you now a full half-hour, Self-poised upon that yellow flower; And, little Butterfly! indeed I know not if you sleep or feed. How motionless! not frozen seas More motionless! and then What joy awaits you, when the breeze Has found you out among the trees, And calls you forth again! This plot of orchard-ground is ours; My trees they are, my Sister's flowers; Here rest your wings when they are weary; Here lodge as in a sanctuary! Come often to us, fear no wrong; Sit near us on the bough! We'll talk of sunshine and of song, And summer days, when we are young; Sweet childish days, that were as long As twenty days are now. William Wordsworth [1770-1850] ODE TO A BUTTERFLY Thou spark of life that wavest wings of gold, Thou songless wanderer mid the songful birds, With Nature's secrets in thy tints unrolled Through gorgeous cipher, past the reach of words, Yet dear to every child In glad pursuit beguiled, Living his unspoiled days mid flowers and flocks and herds! Thou winged blossom, liberated thing, What secret tie binds thee to other flowers, Still held within the garden's fostering? Will they too soar with the completed hours, Take flight, and be like thee Irrevocably free, Hovering at will o'er their parental bowers? Or is thy luster drawn from heavenly hues,-- A sumptuous drifting fragment of the sky, Caught when the sunset its last glance imbues With sudden splendor, and the tree-tops high Grasp that swift blazonry, Then lend those tints to thee, On thee to float a few short hours, and die? Birds have their nests; they rear their eager young, And flit on errands all the livelong day; Each fieldmouse keeps the homestead whence it sprung; But thou art Nature's freeman,--free to stray Unfettered through the wood, Seeking thine airy food, The sweetness spiced on every blossomed spray. The garden one wide banquet spreads for thee, O daintiest reveller of the joyous earth! One drop of honey gives satiety; A second draught would drug thee past all mirth. Thy feast no orgy shows; Thy calm eyes never close, Thou soberest sprite to which the sun gives birth. And yet the soul of man upon thy wings Forever soars in aspiration; thou His emblem of the new career that springs When death's arrest bids all his spirit bow. He seeks his hope in thee Of immortality. Symbol of life, me with such faith endow! Thomas Wentworth Higginson [1823-1911] THE BUTTERFLY I hold you at last in my hand, Exquisite child of the air. Can I ever understand How you grew to be so fair? You came to my linden tree To taste its delicious sweet, I sitting here in the shadow and shine Playing around its feet. Now I hold you fast in my hand, You marvelous butterfly, Till you help me to understand The eternal mystery. From that creeping thing in the dust To this shining bliss in the blue! God give me courage to trust I can break my chrysalis too! Alice Freeman Palmer [1855-1902] FIREFLIES I saw, one sultry night above a swamp, The darkness throbbing with their golden pomp! And long my dazzled sight did they entrance With the weird chaos of their dizzy dance! Quicker than yellow leaves, when gales despoil, Quivered the brilliance of their mute turmoil, Within whose light was intricately blent Perpetual rise, perpetual descent. As though their scintillant flickerings had met In the vague meshes of some airy net! And now mysteriously I seemed to guess, While watching their tumultuous loveliness, What fervor of deep passion strangely thrives In the warm richness of these tropic lives, Whose wings can never tremble but they show These hearts of living fire that beat below! Edgar Fawcett [1847-1904] THE BLOOD HORSE Gamarra is a dainty steed, Strong, black, and of a noble breed, Full of fire, and full of bone, With all his line of fathers known; Fine his nose, his nostrils thin, But blown abroad by the pride within! His mane is like a river flowing, And his eyes like embers glowing In the darkness of the night, And his pace as swift as light. Look,--how 'round his straining throat Grace and shifting beauty float! Sinewy strength is in his reins, And the red blood gallops through his veins; Richer, redder, never ran Through the boasting heart of man. He can trace his lineage higher Than the Bourbon dare aspire,-- Douglas, Guzman, or the Guelph, Or O'Brien's blood itself! He, who hath no peer, was born, Here, upon a red March morn; But his famous fathers dead Were Arabs all, and Arab bred, And the last of that great line Trod like one of a race divine! And yet,--he was but friend to one Who fed him at the set of sun, By some lone fountain fringed with green: With him, a roving Bedouin, He lived, (none else would he obey Through all the hot Arabian day), And died untamed upon the sands Where Balkh amidst the desert stands. Bryan Waller Procter [1787-1874] BIRDS Sure maybe ye've heard the storm-thrush Whistlin' bould in March, Before there's a primrose peepin' out, Or a wee red cone on the larch; Whistlin' the sun to come out o' the cloud, An' the wind to come over the sea, But for all he can whistle so clear an' loud, He's never the bird for me. Sure maybe ye've seen the song-thrush After an April rain Slip from in-undher the drippin' leaves, Wishful to sing again; An' low wi' love when he's near the nest, An' loud from the top o' the tree, But for all he can flutter the heart in your breast, He's never the bird for me. Sure maybe ye've heard the cushadoo Callin' his mate in May, When one sweet thought is the whole of his life, An' he tells it the one sweet way. But my heart is sore at the cushadoo Filled wid his own soft glee, Over an' over his "me an' you!" He's never the bird for me. Sure maybe ye've heard the red-breast Singin' his lone on a thorn, Mindin' himself o' the dear days lost, Brave wid his heart forlorn. The time is in dark November, An' no spring hopes has he: "Remember," he sings, "remember!" Ay, thon's the wee bird for me. Moira O'Neill [18-- BIRDS Birds are singing round my window, Tunes the sweetest ever heard, And I hang my cage there daily, But I never catch a bird. So with thoughts my brain is peopled, And they sing there all day long: But they will not fold their pinions In the little cage of Song! Richard Henry Stoddard [1825-1903] SEA-BIRDS O lonesome sea-gull, floating far Over the ocean's icy waste, Aimless and wide thy wanderings are, Forever vainly seeking rest:-- Where is thy mate, and where thy nest? 'Twixt wintry sea and wintry sky, Cleaving the keen air with thy breast, Thou sailest slowly, solemnly; No fetter on thy wing is pressed:-- Where is thy mate, and where thy nest? O restless, homeless human soul, Following for aye thy nameless quest, The gulls float, and the billows roll; Thou watchest still, and questionest:-- Where is thy mate, and where thy nest? Elizabeth Akers [1832-1911] THE LITTLE BEACH-BIRD Thou little bird, thou dweller by the sea, Why takest thou its melancholy voice, And with that boding cry Why o'er the waves dost fly? O, rather, bird, with me Through the fair land rejoice! Thy flitting form comes ghostly dim and pale, As driven by a beating storm at sea; Thy cry is weak and scared, As if thy mates had shared The doom of us. Thy wail,-- What doth it bring to me? Thou call'st along the sand, and haunt'st the surge, Restless, and sad; as if, in strange accord With the motion and the roar Of waves that drive to shore, One spirit did ye urge-- The Mystery--the Word. Of thousands, thou, both sepulchre and pall, Old Ocean! A requiem o'er the dead, From out thy gloomy cells, A tale of mourning tells,-- Tells of man's woe and fall, His sinless glory fled. Then turn thee, little bird, and take thy flight Where the complaining sea shall sadness bring Thy spirit nevermore. Come, quit with me the shore, For gladness and the light, Where birds of summer sing. Richard Henry Dana [1787-1879] THE BLACKBIRD How sweet the harmonies of afternoon: The Blackbird sings along the sunny breeze His ancient song of leaves, and summer boon; Rich breath of hayfields streams through whispering trees; And birds of morning trim their bustling wings, And listen fondly--while the Blackbird sings. How soft the lovelight of the West reposes On this green valley's cheery solitude, On the trim cottage with its screen of roses, On the gray belfry with its ivy hood, And murmuring mill-race, and the wheel that flings Its bubbling freshness--while the Blackbird sings. The very dial on the village church Seems as 'twere dreaming in a dozy rest; The scribbled benches underneath the porch Bask in the kindly welcome of the West; But the broad casements of the old Three Kings Blaze like a furnace--while the Blackbird sings. And there beneath the immemorial elm Three rosy revellers round a table sit, And through gray clouds give laws unto the realm, Curse good and great, but worship their own wit. And roar of fights, and fairs, and junketings, Corn, colts, and curs--the while the Blackbird sings. Before her home, in her accustomed seat, The tidy Grandam spins beneath the shade Of the old honeysuckle, at her feet The dreaming pug, and purring tabby laid; To her low chair a little maiden clings, And spells in silence--while the Blackbird sings. Sometimes the shadow of a lazy cloud Breathes o'er the hamlet with its gardens green. While the far fields with sunlight overflowed Like golden shores of Fairyland are seen; Again, the sunshine on the shadow springs, And fires the thicket where the Blackbird sings. The woods, the lawn, the peaked Manorhouse, With its peach-covered walls, and rookery loud, The trim, quaint garden alleys, screened with boughs. The lion-headed gates, so grim and proud, The mossy fountain with its murmurings, Lie in warm sunshine--while the Blackbird sings. The ring of silver voices, and the sheen Of festal garments--and my Lady streams With her gay court across the garden green; Some laugh, and dance, some whisper their love-dreams; And one calls for a little page; he strings Her lute beside her--while the Blackbird sings. A little while--and lo! the charm is heard, A youth, whose life has been all Summer, steals Forth from the noisy guests around the board, Creeps by her softly; at her footstool kneels; And, when she pauses, murmurs tender things Into her fond ear--while the Blackbird sings. The smoke-wreaths from the chimneys curl up higher, And dizzy things of eve begin to float Upon the light; the breeze begins to tire; Half way to sunset with a drowsy note The ancient clock from out the valley swings; The Grandam nods--and still the Blackbird sings. Far shouts and laughter from the farmstead peal, Where the great stack is piling in the sun; Through narrow gates o'erladen wagons reel, And barking curs into the tumult run; While the inconstant wind bears off, and brings The merry tempest--and the Blackbird sings. On the high wold the last look of the sun Burns, like a beacon, over dale and stream; The shouts have ceased, the laughter and the fun; The Grandam sleeps, and peaceful be her dream; Only a hammer on an anvil rings; The day is dying--still the Blackbird sings. Now the good Vicar passes from his gate Serene, with long white hair; and in his eye Burns the clear spirit that hath conquered Fate, And felt the wings of immortality; His heart is thronged with great imaginings, And tender mercies--while the Blackbird sings. Down by the brook he bends his steps, and through A lowly wicket; and at last he stands Awful beside the bed of one who grew From boyhood with him--who, with lifted hands And eyes, seems listening to far welcomings, And sweeter music than the Blackbird sings. Two golden stars, like tokens from the Blest, Strike on his dim orbs from the setting sun; His sinking hands seem pointing to the West; He smiles as though he said--"Thy will be done": His eyes, they see not those illuminings; His ears, they hear not what the Blackbird sings. Frederick Tennyson [1807-1898] THE BLACKBIRD When smoke stood up from Ludlow And mist blew off from Teme, And blithe afield to ploughing Against the morning beam I strode beside my team, The blackbird in the coppice Looked out to see me stride, And hearkened as I whistled The trampling team beside, And fluted and replied: "Lie down, lie down, young yeoman; What use to rise and rise? Rise man a thousand mornings Yet down at last he lies, And then the man is wise." I heard the tune he sang me, And spied his yellow bill; I picked a stone and aimed it And threw it with a will: Then the bird was still. Then my soul within me Took up the blackbird's strain, And still beside the horses Along the dewy lane It sang the song again: "Lie down, lie down, young yeoman; The sun moves always west; The road one treads to labor Will lead one home to rest, And that will be the best." Alfred Edward Housman [1859-1936] THE BLACKBIRD The nightingale has a lyre of gold; The lark's is a clarion call, And the blackbird plays but a box-wood flute, But I love him best of all. For his song is all of the joy of life, And we in the mad, spring weather, We too have listened till he sang Our hearts and lips together. William Ernest Henley [1849-1903] THE BLACKBIRD Ov all the birds upon the wing Between the zunny showers o' spring,- Vor all the lark, a-swingen high, Mid zing below a cloudless sky, An' sparrows, clust'ren roun' the bough, Mid chatter to the men at plough,-- The blackbird, whisslen in among The boughs, do zing the gayest zong. Vor we do hear the blackbird zing His sweetest ditties in the spring, When nippen win's noo mwore do blow Vrom northern skies, wi' sleet or snow, But dreve light doust along between The leane-zide hedges, thick an' green; An' zoo the blackbird in among The boughs do zing the gayest zong. 'Tis blithe, wi' newly-opened eyes, To zee the mornen's ruddy skies; Or, out a-haulen frith or lops Vrom new-pleshed hedge or new-velled copse, To rest at noon in primrwose beds Below the white-barked woak-trees' heads; But there's noo time, the whole day long, Lik' evenen wi' the blackbird's zong. Vor when my work is all a-done Avore the zetten o' the zun, Then blushen Jeane do walk along The hedge to meet me in the drong, An' stay till all is dim an' dark Bezides the ashen tree's white bark; An' all bezides the blackbird's shrill An' runnen evenen-whissle's still. An' there in bwoyhood I did rove Wi' pryen eyes along the drove To vind the nest the blackbird meade O' grass-stalks in the high bough's sheade; Or climb aloft, wi' clingen knees, Vor crows' aggs up in swayen trees, While frightened blackbirds down below Did chatter o' their little foe. An' zoo there's noo pleace lik' the drong, Where I do hear the blackbird's zong. William Barnes [1801-1886] ROBERT OF LINCOLN Merrily swinging on brier and weed Near to the nest of his little dame, Over the mountain-side or mead, Robert of Lincoln is telling his name: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; Snug and safe is that nest of ours, Hidden among the summer flowers. Chee, chee, chee. Robert of Lincoln is gayly dressed, Wearing a bright black wedding-coat; White are his shoulders and white his crest. Hear him call in his merry note: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; Look, what a nice new coat is mine, Sure there was never a bird so fine. Chee, chee, chee. Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife, Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings, Passing at home a patient life, Broods in the grass while her husband sings: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; Brood, kind creature; you need not fear Thieves and robbers while I am here. Chee, chee, chee. Modest and shy as a nun is she; One weak chirp is her only note. Braggart and prince of braggarts is he, Pouring boasts from his little throat: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; Never was I afraid of man; Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you can! Chee, chee, chee. Six white eggs on a bed of hay, Flecked with purple, a pretty sight! There as the mother sits all day, Robert is singing with all his might: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; Nice good wife, that never goes out, Keeping house while I frolic about. Chee, chee, chee. Soon as the little ones chip the shell, Six wide mouths are open for food; Robert of Lincoln bestirs him well, Gathering seeds for the hungry brood. Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; This new life is likely to be Hard for a gay young fellow like me. Chee, chee, chee. Robert of Lincoln at length is made Sober with work, and silent with care; Off is his holiday garment laid. Half forgotten that merry air: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; Nobody knows but my mate and I Where our nest and our nestlings lie. Chee, chee, chee. Summer wanes; the children are grown; Fun and frolic no more he knows; Robert of Lincoln's a humdrum crone; Off he flies, and we sing as he goes: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; When you can pipe that merry old strain, Robert of Lincoln, come back again. Chee, chee, chee. William Cullen Bryant [1794-1878] THE O'LINCON FAMILY A flock of merry singing-birds were sporting in the grove; Some were warbling cheerily, and some were making love: There were Bobolincon, Wadolincon, Winterseeble, Conquedle,-- A livelier set was never led by tabor, pipe, or fiddle,-- Crying, "Phew, shew, Waldolincon, see, see, Bobolincon, Down among the tickletops, hiding in the buttercups! I know a saucy chap, I see his shining cap Bobbing in the clover there--see, see, see!" Up flies Bobolincon, perching on an apple-tree, Startled by his rival's song, quickened by his raillery, Soon he spies the rogue afloat, curveting in the air, And merrily he turns about, and warns him to beware! "'Tis you that would a-wooing go, down among the rushes O! But wait a week, till flowers are cheery,--wait a week, and, ere you marry, Be sure of a house wherein to tarry! Wadolink, Whiskodink, Tom Denny, wait, wait, wait!" Every one's a funny fellow; every one's a little mellow; Follow, follow, follow, follow, o'er the hill and in the hollow! Merrily, merrily, there they hie; now they rise and now they fly; They cross and turn, and in and out, and down in the middle and wheel about,-- With a "Phew, shew, Wadolincon! listen to me, Bobolincon!-- Happy's the wooing that's speedily doing, that's speedily doing, That's merry and over with the bloom of the clover! Bobolincon, Wadolincon, Winterseeble, follow, follow, follow me!" Wilson Flagg [1805-1884] THE BOBOLINK Bobolink! that in the meadow, Or beneath the orchard's shadow, Keepest up a constant rattle Joyous as my children's prattle, Welcome to the north again! Welcome to mine ear thy strain, Welcome to mine eye the sight Of thy buff, thy black and white. Brighter plumes may greet the sun By the banks of Amazon; Sweeter tones may weave the spell Of enchanting Philomel; But the tropic bird would fail, And the English nightingale, If we should compare their worth With thine endless, gushing mirth. When the ides of May are past, June and Summer nearing fast, While from depths of blue above Comes the mighty breath of love. Calling out each bud and flower With resistless, secret power, Waking hope and fond desire, Kindling the erotic fire, Filling youths' and maidens' dreams With mysterious, pleasing themes; Then, amid the sunlight clear Floating in the fragrant air, Thou dost fill each heart with pleasure By thy glad ecstatic measure. A single note, so sweet and low, Like a full heart's overflow, Forms the prelude; but the strain Gives no such tone again, For the wild and saucy song Leaps and skips the notes among, With such quick and sportive play, Ne'er was madder, merrier lay. Gayest songster of the Spring! Thy melodies before me bring Visions of some dream-built land, Where, by constant zephyrs fanned, I might walk the livelong day, Embosomed in perpetual May. Nor care nor fear thy bosom knows; For thee a tempest never blows; But when our northern Summer's o'er, By Delaware's or Schuylkil's shore The wild rice lifts its airy head, And royal feasts for thee are spread. And when the Winter threatens there, Thy tireless wings yet own no fear. But bear thee to more southern coasts, Far beyond the reach of frosts. Bobolink! still may thy gladness Take from me all taint of sadness; Fill my soul with trust unshaken In that Being who has taken Care for every living thing, In Summer, Winter, Fall, and Spring. Thomas Hill [1818-1891] MY CATBIRD A Capriccio Nightingale I never heard, Nor skylark, poet's bird; But there is an aether-winger So surpasses every singer, (Though unknown to lyric fame,) That at morning, or at nooning, When I hear his pipe a-tuning, Down I fling Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth,-- What are all their songs of birds worth? All their soaring Souls' outpouring? When my Mimus Carolinensis, (That's his Latin name,) When my warbler wild commences Song's hilarious rhapsody, Just to please himself and me! Primo Cantante! Scherzo! Andante! Piano, pianissimo! Presto, prestissimo! Hark! are there nine birds or ninety and nine? And now a miraculous gurgling gushes Like nectar from Hebe's Olympian bottle, The laughter of tune from a rapturous throttle! Such melody must be a hermit-thrush's! But that other caroler, nearer, Outrivaling rivalry with clearer Sweetness incredibly fine! Is it oriole, redbird, or bluebird, Or some strange, un-Auduboned new bird? All one, sir, both this bird and that bird, The whole flight are all the same catbird! The whole visible and invisible choir you see On one lithe twig of yon green tree. Flitting, feathery Blondel! Listen to his rondel! To his lay romantical! To his sacred canticle! Hear him lilting, See him tilting His saucy head and tail, and fluttering While uttering All the difficult operas under the sun Just for fun; Or in tipsy revelry, Or at love devilry, Or, disdaining his divine gift and art, Like an inimitable poet Who captivates the world's heart And don't know it. Hear him lilt! See him tilt! Then suddenly he stops, Peers about, flirts, hops, As if looking where he might gather up The wasted ecstasy just spilt From the quivering cup Of his bliss overrun. Then, as in mockery of all The tuneful spells that e'er did fall From vocal pipe, or evermore shall rise, He snarls, and mews, and flies. William Henry Venable [1836-1920] THE HERALD CRANE Oh! say you so, bold sailor In the sun-lit deeps of sky! Dost thou so soon the seed-time tell In thy imperial cry, As circling in yon shoreless sea Thine unseen form goes drifting by? I cannot trace in the noon-day glare Thy regal flight, O crane! From the leaping might of the fiery light Mine eyes recoil in pain, But on mine ear, thine echoing cry Falls like a bugle strain. The mellow soil glows beneath my feet, Where lies the buried grain; The warm light floods the length and breadth Of the vast, dim, shimmering plain, Throbbing with heat and the nameless thrill Of the birth-time's restless pain. On weary wing, plebeian geese Push on their arrowy line Straight into the north, or snowy brant In dazzling sunshine, gloom and shine; But thou, O crane, save for thy sovereign cry, At thy majestic height On proud, extended wings sweep'st on In lonely, easeful flight. Then cry, thou martial-throated herald! Cry to the sun, and sweep And swing along thy mateless, tireless course Above the clouds that sleep Afloat on lazy air--cry on! Send down Thy trumpet note--it seems The voice of hope and dauntless will, And breaks the spell of dreams. Hamlin Garland [1860- THE CROW With rakish eye and plenished crop, Oblivious of the farmer's gun, Upon the naked ash-tree top The Crow sits basking in the sun. An old ungodly rogue, I wot! For, perched in black against the blue, His feathers, torn with beak and shot, Let woeful glints of April through. The year's new grass, and, golden-eyed, The daisies sparkle underneath, And chestnut-trees on either side Have opened every ruddy sheath. But doubtful still of frost and snow, The ash alone stands stark and bare, And on its topmost twig the Crow Takes the glad morning's sun and air. William Canton [1845- TO THE CUCKOO Hail, beauteous stranger of the grove! Thou messenger of Spring! Now Heaven repairs thy rural seat, And woods thy welcome ring. What time the daisy decks the green, Thy certain voice we hear: Hast thou a star to guide thy path, Or mark the rolling year? Delightful visitant! with thee I hail the time of flowers, And hear the sound of music sweet From birds among the bowers. The school-boy, wandering through the wood To pull the primrose gay, Starts, the new voice of Spring to hear, And imitates thy lay. What time the pea puts on the bloom, Thou fli'st thy vocal vale, An annual guest in other lands, Another Spring to hail. Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green, Thy sky is ever clear; Thou hast no sorrow in thy song, No Winter in thy year! O could I fly, I'd fly with thee! We'd make, with joyful wing, Our annual visit o'er the globe, Companions of the Spring. John Logan [1748-1788] THE CUCKOO We heard it calling, clear and low, That tender April morn; we stood And listened in the quiet wood, We heard it, ay, long years ago. It came, and with a strange, sweet cry, A friend, but from a far-off land; We stood and listened, hand in hand, And heart to heart, my Love and I. In dreamland then we found our joy, And so it seemed as 'twere the Bird That Helen in old times had heard At noon beneath the oaks of Troy. O time far off, and yet so near! It came to her in that hushed grove, It warbled while the wooing throve, It sang the song she loved to hear. And now I hear its voice again, And still its message is of peace, It sings of love that will not cease-- For me it never sings in vain. Frederick Locker-Lampson [1821-1895] TO THE CUCKOO O blithe New-comer! I have heard, I hear thee and rejoice. O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird, Or but a wandering Voice? While I am lying on the grass Thy twofold shout I hear; From hill to hill it seems to pass, At once far off, and near. Though babbling only to the Vale Of sunshine and of flowers, Thou bringest unto me a tale Of visionary hours. Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring! Even yet thou art to me No bird, but an invisible thing, A voice, a mystery; The same whom in my school-boy days I listened to; that Cry Which made me look a thousand ways, In bush, and tree, and sky. To seek thee did I often rove Through woods and on the green; And thou wert still a hope, a love; Still longed for, never seen. And I can listen to thee yet; Can lie upon the plain And listen, till I do beget That golden time again. O blessed Bird! the earth we pace Again appears to be An unsubstantial, faery place; That is fit home for Thee! William Wordsworth [1770-1850] THE EAGLE A Fragment He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ringed with the azure world, he stands. The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls. Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892] THE HAWKBIT How sweetly on the autumn scene, When haws are red amid the green, The hawkbit shines with face of cheer, The favorite of the faltering year! When days grow short and nights grow cold, How fairly gleams its eye of gold On pastured field and grassy hill, Along the roadside and the rill! It seems the spirit of a flower, This offspring of the autumn hour, Wandering back to earth to bring Some kindly afterthought of spring. A dandelion's ghost might so Amid Elysian meadows blow, Become more fragile and more fine Breathing the atmosphere divine. Charles G. D. Roberts [1860- THE HERON O melancholy bird, a winter's day Thou standest by the margin of the pool, And, taught by God, dost thy whole being school To Patience, which all evil can allay. God has appointed thee the Fish thy prey; And given thyself a lesson to the Fool Unthrifty, to submit to moral rule, And his unthinking course by thee to weigh. There need not schools, nor the Professor's chair, Though these be good, true wisdom to impart; He, who has not enough for these to spare Of time, or gold, may yet amend his heart, And teach his soul, by brooks and rivers fair: Nature is always wise in every part. Edward Hovell-Thurlow [1781-1829] THE JACKDAW There is a bird, who by his coat, And by the hoarseness of his note, Might be supposed a crow; A great frequenter of the church, Where bishop-like he finds a perch, And dormitory too. Above the steeple shines a plate, That turns and turns, to indicate From what point blows the weather; Look up--your brains begin to swim, 'Tis in the clouds--that pleases him, He chooses it the rather. Fond of the speculative height, Thither he wings his airy flight, And thence securely sees The bustle and the raree-show, That occupy mankind below, Secure and at his ease. You think, no doubt, he sits and muses On future broken bones and bruises, If he should chance to fall. No: not a single thought like that Employs his philosophic pate, Or troubles it at all. He sees that this great roundabout, The world, with all its medley rout, Church, army, physic, law, Its customs, and its businesses Is no concern at all of his, And says--what says he?--"Caw." Thrice happy bird! I too have seen Much of the vanities of men; And, sick of having seen 'em, Would cheerfully these limbs resign For such a pair of wings as thine, And such a head between 'em. From the Latin of Vincent Bourne, by William Cowper [1731-1800] THE GREEN LINNET Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed Their snow-white blossoms on my head, With brightest sunshine round me spread Of Spring's unclouded weather, In this sequestered nook how sweet To sit upon my orchard-seat! And flowers and birds once more to greet, My last year's friends together. One have I marked, the happiest guest In all this covert of the blest: Hail to Thee, far above the rest In joy of voice and pinion! Thou, Linnet! in thy green array Presiding Spirit here to-day Dost lead the revels of the May, And this is thy dominion. While birds, and butterflies, and flowers Make all one band of paramours, Thou, ranging up and down the bowers, Art sole in thy employment; A Life, a Presence like the air, Scattering thy gladness without care, Too blest with any one to pair, Thyself thy own enjoyment. Amid yon tuft of hazel trees, That twinkle to the gusty breeze, Behold him perched in ecstasies, Yet seeming still to hover; There! where the flutter of his wings Upon his back and body flings Shadows and sunny glimmerings, That cover him all over. My dazzled sight he oft deceives-- A Brother of the dancing leaves; Then flits, and from the cottage-eaves Pours forth his song in gushes, As if by that exulting strain He mocked and treated with disdain The voiceless Form he chose to feign While fluttering in the bushes. William Wordsworth [1770-1850] TO THE MAN-OF-WAR-BIRD Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm, Waking renewed on thy prodigious pinions, (Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascended'st, And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee,) Now a blue point, far, far in heaven floating, As to the light emerging here on deck I watch thee, (Myself a speck, a point on the world's floating vast.) Far, far at sea, After the night's fierce drifts have strewn the shore with wrecks, With re-appearing day as now so happy and serene, The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun, The limpid spread of air cerulean, Thou also re-appearest. Thou born to match the gale, (thou art all wings,) To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane, Thou ship of air that never furl'st thy sails, Days, even weeks untired and onward, through spaces, realms gyrating, At dusk that look'st on Senegal, at morn America, That sport'st amid the lightning-flash and thunder-cloud, In them, in thy experiences, hadst thou my soul, What joys! what joys were thine! Walt Whitman [1819-1892] THE MARYLAND YELLOW-THROAT When May bedecks the naked trees With tassels and embroideries, And many blue-eyed violets beam Along the edges of the stream, I hear a voice that seems to say, Now near at hand, now far away, "Witchery--witchery--witchery." An incantation so serene, So innocent, befits the scene: There's magic in that small bird's note-- See, there he flits--the Yellow-throat; A living sunbeam, tipped with wings, A spark of light that shines and sings "Witchery--witchery--witchery." You prophet with a pleasant name, If out of Mary-land you came, You know the way that thither goes Where Mary's lovely garden grows: Fly swiftly back to her, I pray, And try, to call her down this way, "Witchery--witchery--witchery!" Tell her to leave her cockle-shells, And all her little silver bells That blossom into melody, And all her maids less fair than she. She does not need these pretty things, For everywhere she comes, she brings "Witchery--witchery--witchery!" The woods are greening overhead, And flowers adorn each mossy bed; The waters babble as they run-- One thing is lacking, only one: If Mary were but here to-day, I would believe your charming lay, "Witchery--witchery--witchery!" Along the shady road I look-- Who's coming now across the brook? A woodland maid, all robed in white-- The leaves dance round her with delight, The stream laughs out beneath her feet-- Sing, merry bird, the charm's complete, "Witchery--witchery--witchery!" Henry Van Dyke [1852-1933] LAMENT OF A MOCKING-BIRD Silence instead of thy sweet song, my bird, Which through the darkness of my winter days Warbling of summer sunshine still was heard; Mute is thy song, and vacant is thy place. The spring comes back again, the fields rejoice, Carols of gladness ring from every tree; But I shall hear thy wild triumphant voice No more: my summer song has died with thee. What didst thou sing of, O my summer bird? The broad, bright, brimming river, whose swift sweep And whirling eddies by the home are heard, Rushing, resistless, to the calling deep. What didst thou sing of, thou melodious sprite? Pine forests, with smooth russet carpets spread, Where e'en at noonday dimly falls the light, Through gloomy blue-green branches overhead. What didst thou sing of, O thou jubilant soul? Ever-fresh flowers and never-leafless trees, Bending great ivory cups to the control Of the soft swaying, orange scented breeze. What didst thou sing of, thou embodied glee? The wide wild marshes with their clashing reeds And topaz-tinted channels, where the sea Daily its tides of briny freshness leads. What didst thou sing of, O thou winged voice? Dark, bronze-leaved oaks, with silver mosses crowned, Where thy free kindred live, love, and rejoice, With wreaths of golden jasmine curtained round. These didst thou sing of, spirit of delight! From thy own radiant sky, thou quivering spark! These thy sweet southern dreams of warmth and light, Through the grim northern winter drear and dark. Frances Anne Kemble [1809-1893] "O NIGHTINGALE! THOU SURELY ART" O nightingale! thou surely art A creature of a "fiery heart":-- These notes of thine--they pierce and pierce; Tumultuous harmony and fierce! Thou sing'st as if the God of wine Had helped thee to a Valentine; A song in mockery and despite Of shades, and dews, and silent night; And steady bliss, and all the loves Now sleeping in these peaceful groves. I heard a Stock-dove sing or say His homely tale, this very day; His voice was buried among trees, Yet to be come at by the breeze: He did not cease, but cooed--and cooed; And somewhat pensively he wooed: He sang of love, with quiet blending, Slow to begin, and never ending; Of serious faith, and inward glee; That was the Song--the Song for me! William Wordsworth [1770-1850] PHILOMEL As it fell upon a day In the merry month of May, Sitting in a pleasant shade Which a grove of myrtles made, Beasts did leap and birds did sing, Trees did grow and plants did spring; Everything did banish moan Save the Nightingale alone: She, poor bird, as all forlorn Leaned her breast up-till a thorn, And there sung the doleful'st ditty, That to hear it was great pity. Fie, fie, fie! now would she cry; Tereu, Tereu! by and by; That to hear her so complain Scarce I could from tears refrain; For her griefs so lively shown Made me think upon mine own. Ah! thought I, thou mourn'st in vain, None takes pity on thy pain: Senseless trees they cannot hear thee, Ruthless beasts they will not cheer thee: King Pandion he is dead, All thy friends are lapped in lead; All thy fellow birds do sing Careless of thy sorrowing: Even so, poor bird, like thee, None alive will pity me. Richard Barnfield [1574-1627] PHILOMELA Hark! ah, the nightingale-- The tawny-throated! Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst! What triumph! hark!--what pain! O wanderer from a Grecian shore, Still, after many years, in distant lands, Still nourishing in thy bewildered brain That wild, unquenched, deep-sunken, old-world pain-- Say, will it never heal? And can this fragrant lawn With its cool trees, and night, And the sweet, tranquil Thames, And moonshine, and the dew, To thy racked heart and brain Afford no balm? Dost thou to-night behold, Here, through the moonlight on this English grass, The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild? Dost thou again peruse With hot cheeks and seared eyes The too clear web, and thy dumb sister's shame? Dost thou once more assay Thy flight, and feel come over thee, Poor fugitive, the feathery change Once more, and once more seem to make resound With love and hate, triumph and agony, Lone Daulis, and the high Cephissian vale? Listen, Eugenia-- How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves! Again--thou hearest? Eternal passion! Eternal pain! Matthew Arnold [1822-1888] ON A NIGHTINGALE IN APRIL The yellow moon is a dancing phantom Down secret ways of the flowing shade; And the waveless stream has a murmuring whisper Where the alders wave. Not a breath, not a sigh, save the slow stream's whisper: Only the moon is a dancing blade That leads a host of the Crescent warriors To a phantom raid. Out of the Lands of Faerie a summons, A long, strange cry that thrills through the glade:-- The gray-green glooms of the elm are stirring, Newly afraid. Last heard, white music, under the olives Where once Theocritus sang and played-- Thy Thracian song is the old new wonder, O moon-white maid! William Sharp [1855-1905] TO THE NIGHTINGALE Dear chorister, who from those shadows sends, Ere that the blushing morn dare show her light, Such sad lamenting strains, that night attends, Become all ear, stars stay to hear thy plight: If one whose grief even reach of thought transcends, Who ne'er, not in a dream, did taste delight, May thee importune who like care pretends, And seems to joy in woe, in woe's despite; Tell me (so may thou fortune milder try, And long, long sing) for what thou thus complains, Since, winter gone, the sun in dappled sky Now smiles on meadows, mountains, woods, and plains? The bird, as if my questions did her move, With trembling wings sobbed forth, I love! I love!" William Drummond [1585-1649] THE NIGHTINGALE To-night retired, the queen of heaven With young Endymion stays; And now to Hesper it is given Awhile to rule the vacant sky, Till she shall to her lamp supply A stream of brighter rays.... Propitious send thy golden ray, Thou purest light above: Let no false flame seduce to stray Where gulf or steep lie hid for harm; But lead where music's healing charm May soothe afflicted love. To them, by many a grateful song In happier seasons vowed, These lawns, Olympia's haunt, belong: Oft by yon silver stream we walked, Or fixed, while Philomela talked, Beneath yon copses stood. Nor seldom, where the beechen boughs That roofless tower invade, We came, while her enchanting Muse The radiant moon above us held: Till, by a clamorous owl compelled, She fled the solemn shade. But hark! I hear her liquid tone! Now, Hesper, guide my feet Down the red marl with moss o'ergrown, Through yon wild thicket next the plain, Whose hawthorns choke the winding lane Which leads to her retreat. See the green space: on either hand Enlarged it spreads around: See, in the midst she takes her stand, Where one old oak his awful shade Extends o'er half the level mead, Enclosed in woods profound. Hark! how through many a melting note She now prolongs her lays: How sweetly down the void they float! The breeze their magic path attends; The stars shine out; the forest bends; The wakeful heifers gaze. Whoe'er thou art whom chance may bring To this sequestered spot, If then the plaintive Siren sing, O softly tread beneath her bower And think of Heaven's disposing power, Of man's uncertain lot. O think, o'er all this mortal stage What mournful scenes arise: What ruin waits on kingly rage; How often virtue dwells with woe; How many griefs from knowledge flow; How swiftly pleasure flies! O sacred bird! let me at eve, Thus wandering all alone, Thy tender counsel oft receive, Bear witness to thy pensive airs, And pity Nature's common cares, Till I forget my own. Mark Akenside [1721-1770] TO THE NIGHTINGALE O nightingale that on yon bloomy spray Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still, Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill, While the jolly hours lead on propitious May. Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day, First heard before the shallow cuckoo's bill, Portend success in love. O, if Jove's will Have linked that amorous power to thy soft lay, Now timely sing, ere the rude bird of hate Foretell my hopeless doom, in some grove nigh; As thou from year to year hast sung too late For my relief, yet hadst no reason why. Whether the Muse or Love call thee his mate, Both them I serve, and of their train am I. John Milton [1608-1674] PHILOMELA The Nightingale, as soon as April bringeth Unto her rested sense a perfect waking, While late-bare Earth, proud of new clothing, springeth, Sings out her woes, a thorn her song-book making; And mournfully bewailing, Her throat in tunes expresseth What grief her breast oppresseth, For Tereus' force on her chaste will prevailing. O Philomela fair, O take some gladness That here is juster cause of plaintful sadness! Thine earth now springs, mine fadeth; Thy thorn without, my thorn my heart invadeth. Alas! she hath no other cause of anguish But Tereus' love, on her by strong hand wroken; Wherein she suffering, all her spirits languish, Full womanlike, complains her will was broken, But I, who, daily craving, Cannot have to content me, Have more cause to lament me, Since wanting is more woe than too much having. O Philomela fair, O take some gladness That here is juster cause of plaintful sadness! Thine earth now springs, mine fadeth; Thy thorn without, my thorn my heart invadeth. Philip Sidney [1554-1586] ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thy happiness,-- That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease. O for a draught of vintage, that hath been Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green, Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth; That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim: Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret, Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, Where youth grows pale, and specter-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow And leaden-eyed despairs; Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. Away! away! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy, Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thee! tender is the night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Clustered around by all her starry Fays; But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet Wherewith the seasonable month endows The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine; Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves; And mid-May's eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy! Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain-- To thy high requiem become a sod. Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown: Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that oft-times hath Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. Forlorn! the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:--Do I wake or sleep? John Keats [1795-1821] SONG 'Tis sweet to hear the merry lark, That bids a blithe good-morrow; But sweeter to hark, in the twinkling dark, To the soothing song of sorrow. Oh nightingale! What doth she ail? And is she sad or jolly? For ne'er on earth was sound of mirth So like to melancholy. The merry lark, he soars on high, No worldly thought o'ertakes him; He sings aloud to the clear blue sky, And the daylight that awakes him. As sweet a lay, as loud, as gay, The nightingale is trilling; With feeling bliss, no less than his, Her little heart is thrilling. Yet ever and anon, a sigh Peers through her lavish mirth; For the lark's bold song is of the sky, And hers is of the earth. By night and day, she tunes her lay, To drive away all sorrow; For bliss, alas! to-night must pass, And woe may come to-morrow. Hartley Coleridge [1796-1840] BIRD SONG The robin sings of willow-buds, Of snowflakes on the green; The bluebird sings of Mayflowers, The crackling leaves between; The veery has a thousand tales To tell to girl and boy; But the oriole, the oriole, Sings, "Joy! joy! joy!" The pewee calls his little mate, Sweet Phoebe, gone astray, The warbler sings, "What fun, what fun, To tilt upon the spray!" The cuckoo has no song, but clucks, Like any wooden toy; But the oriole, the oriole, Sings, "Joy! joy! joy!" The grosbeak sings the rose's birth, And paints her on his breast; The sparrow sings of speckled eggs, Soft brooded in the nest. The wood-thrush sings of peace, "Sweet peace, Sweet peace," without alloy; But the oriole, the oriole, Sings "Joy! joy! joy!" Laura E. Richards [1850- THE SONG THE ORIOLE SINGS There is a bird that comes and sings In a professor's garden-trees; Upon the English oak he swings, And tilts and tosses in the breeze. I know his name, I know his note, That so with rapture takes my soul; Like flame the gold beneath his throat, His glossy cope is black as coal. O oriole, it is the song You sang me from the cottonwood, Too young to feel that I was young, Too glad to guess if life were good. And while I hark, before my door, Adown the dusty Concord Road, The blue Miami flows once more As by the cottonwood it flowed. And on the bank that rises steep, And pours a thousand tiny rills, From death and absence laugh and leap My school-mates to their flutter-mills. The blackbirds jangle in the tops Of hoary-antlered sycamores; The timorous killdee starts and stops Among the drift-wood on the shores. Below, the bridge--a noonday fear Of dust and shadow shot with sun-- Stretches its gloom from pier to pier, Far unto alien coasts unknown. And on these alien coasts, above, Where silver ripples break the stream's Long blue, from some roof-sheltering grove A hidden parrot scolds and screams. Ah, nothing, nothing! Commonest things: A touch, a glimpse, a sound, a breath-- It is a song the oriole sings-- And all the rest belongs to death. But oriole, my oriole, Were some bright seraph sent from bliss With songs of heaven to win my soul From simple memories such as this, What could he tell to tempt my ear From you? What high thing could there be, So tenderly and sweetly dear As my lost boyhood is to me? William Dean Howells [1837-1920] TO AN ORIOLE How falls it, oriole, thou hast come to fly In tropic splendor through our Northern sky? At some glad moment was it nature's choice To dower a scrap of sunset with a voice? Or did some orange tulip, flaked with black, In some forgotten garden, ages back, Yearning toward Heaven until its wish was heard, Desire unspeakably to be a bird? Edgar Fawcett [1847-1904] SONG: THE OWL When cats run home and light is come, And dew is cold upon the ground, And the far-off stream is dumb, And the whirring sail goes round, And the whirring sail goes round; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits. When merry milkmaids click the latch, And rarely smells the new-mown hay, And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch Twice or thrice his roundelay, Twice or thrice his roundelay; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits. Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892] SWEET SUFFOLK OWL Sweet Suffolk owl, so trimly dight With feathers, like a lady bright; Thou sing'st alone, sitting by night, "Te whit! Te whoo!" Thy note that forth so freely rolls With shrill command the mouse controls; And sings a dirge for dying souls. "Te whit! Te whoo!" Thomas Vautor [fl. 1616] THE PEWEE The listening Dryads hushed the woods; The boughs were thick, and thin and few The golden ribbons fluttering through; Their sun-embroidered, leafy hoods The lindens lifted to the blue: Only a little forest-brook The farthest hem of silence shook: When in the hollow shades I heard,-- Was it a spirit, or a bird? Or, strayed from Eden, desolate, Some Peri calling to her mate, Whom nevermore her mate would cheer? Pe-ri! pe-ri! peer!" Through rocky clefts the brooklet fell With plashy pour, that scarce was sound, But only quiet less profound, A stillness fresh and audible: A yellow leaflet to the ground Whirled noiselessly: with wing of gloss A hovering sunbeam brushed the moss, And, wavering brightly over it, Sat like a butterfly alit: The owlet in his open door Stared roundly: while the breezes bore The plaint to far-off places drear,-- "Pe-ree! pe-ree! peer!" To trace it in its green retreat I sought among the boughs in vain; And followed still the wandering strain, So melancholy and so sweet The dim-eyed violets yearned with pain. 'Twas now a sorrow in the air, Some nymph's immortalized despair Haunting the woods and waterfalls; And now, at long, sad intervals, Sitting unseen in dusky shade, His plaintive pipe some fairy played, With long-drawn cadence thin and clear,-- "Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!" Long-drawn and clear its closes were,-- As if the hand of Music through The somber robe of Silence drew A thread of golden gossamer: So pure a flute the fairy blew. Like beggared princes of the wood, In silver rags the birches stood; The hemlocks, lordly counselors, Were dumb; the sturdy servitors, In beechen jackets patched and gray, Seemed waiting spellbound all the day That low, entrancing note to hear,-- "Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!" I quit the search, and sat me down Beside the brook, irresolute, And watched a little bird in suit Of sober olive, soft and brown, Perched in the maple-branches, mute: With greenish gold its vest was fringed, Its tiny cap was ebon-tinged, With ivory pale its wings were barred, And its dark eyes were tender-starred. "Dear bird," I said, "what is thy name?" And thrice the mournful answer came, So faint and far, and yet so near,-- "Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!" For so I found my forest bird,-- The pewee of the loneliest woods, Sole singer in these solitudes, Which never robin's whistle stirred, Where never bluebird's plume intrudes. Quick darting through the dewy morn, The redstart trilled his twittering horn, And vanished in thick boughs: at even, Like liquid pearls fresh showered from heaven, The high notes of the lone wood-thrush Fall on the forest's holy hush: But thou all day complainest here,-- "Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!" Hast thou, too, in thy little breast, Strange longings for a happier lot,-- For love, for life, thou know'st not what,-- A yearning, and a vague unrest, For something still which thou hast not?-- Thou soul of some benighted child That perished, crying in the wild! Or lost, forlorn, and wandering maid, By love allured, by love betrayed, Whose spirit with her latest sigh Arose, a little winged cry, Above her chill and mossy bier! "Dear me! dear me! dear!" Ah, no such piercing sorrow mars The pewee's life of cheerful ease! He sings, or leaves his song to seize An insect sporting in the bars Of mild bright light that gild the trees. A very poet he! For him All pleasant places still and dim: His heart, a spark of heavenly fire, Burns with undying, sweet desire: And so he sings; and so his song, Though heard not by the hurrying throng, Is solace to the pensive ear: Pewee! pewee! peer! John Townsend Trowbridge [1827-1916] ROBIN REDBREAST Sweet Robin, I have heard them say That thou wert there upon the day The Christ was crowned in cruel scorn And bore away one bleeding thorn,-- That so the blush upon thy breast, In shameful sorrow, was impressed; And thence thy genial sympathy With our redeemed humanity. Sweet Robin, would that I might be Bathed in my Saviour's blood, like thee; Bear in my breast, whate'er the loss, The bleeding blazon of the cross; Live ever, with thy loving mind, In fellowship with human-kind; And take my pattern still from thee, In gentleness and constancy. George Washington Doane [1799-1859] ROBIN REDBREAST Good-by, good-by to Summer! For Summer's nearly done;-- The garden smiling faintly, Cool breezes in the sun; Our thrushes now are silent, Our swallows flown away,-- But Robin's here in coat of brown, And scarlet breast-knot gay. Robin, Robin Redbreast, O Robin dear! Robin sings so sweetly In the falling of the year. Bright yellow, red, and orange, The leaves come down in hosts; The trees are Indian princes, But soon they'll turn to ghosts; The scanty pears and apples Hang russet on the bough; It's Autumn, Autumn, Autumn late, 'Twill soon be Winter now. Robin, Robin Redbreast, O Robin dear! And what will this poor Robin do? For pinching days are near. The fireside for the cricket, The wheat-stack for the mouse, When trembling night-winds whistle And moan all round the house. The frosty ways like iron, The branches plumed with snow,-- Alas! in Winter dead and dark, Where can poor Robin go? Robin, Robin Redbreast, O Robin dear! And a crumb of bread for Robin, His little heart to cheer! William Allingham [1824-1889] THE SANDPIPER Across the narrow beach we flit, One little sandpiper and I, And fast I gather, bit by bit, The scattered driftwood bleached and dry. The wild waves reach their hands for it, The wild wind raves, the tide runs high, As up and down the beach we flit,-- One little sandpiper and I. Above our heads the sullen clouds Scud black and swift across the sky; Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds Stand out the white lighthouses high. Almost as far as eye can reach I see the close-reefed vessels fly, As fast we flit along the beach,-- One little sandpiper and I. I watch him as he skims along, Uttering his sweet and mournful cry. He starts not at my fitful song, Or flash of fluttering drapery. He has no thought of any wrong; He scans me with a fearless eye: Staunch friends are we, well tried and strong, The little sandpiper and I. Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night When the loosed storm breaks furiously? My driftwood fire will burn so bright! To what warm shelter canst thou fly? I do not fear for thee, though wroth The tempest rushes through the sky: For are we not God's children both, Thou, little sandpiper, and I? Celia Thaxter [1835-1894] THE SEA-MEW How joyously the young sea-mew Lay dreaming on the waters blue, Whereon our little bark had thrown A little shade, the only one,-- But shadows ever man pursue. Familiar with the waves and free As if their own white foam were he, His heart upon the heart of ocean Lay learning all its mystic motion, And throbbing to the throbbing sea. And such a brightness in his eye, As if the ocean and the sky Within him had lit up and nursed A soul God gave him not at first To comprehend their majesty. We were not cruel, yet did sunder His white wing from the blue waves under, And bound it, while his fearless eyes Shone up to ours in calm surprise, As deeming us some ocean wonder! We bore our ocean bird unto A grassy place, where he might view The flowers that curtsey to the bees, The waving of the tall green trees, The falling of the silver dew. But flowers of earth were pale to him Who had seen the rainbow fishes swim; And when earth's dew around him lay He thought of ocean's winged spray, And his eye waxed sad and dim. The green trees round him only made A prison with their darksome shade; And dropped his wing, and mourned he For his own boundless glittering sea-- Albeit he knew not they could fade. Then One her gladsome face did bring, Her gentle voice's murmuring, In ocean's stead his heart to move And teach him what was human love: He thought it a strange, mournful thing. He lay down in his grief to die (First looking to the sea-like sky That hath no waves!), because, alas! Our human touch did on him pass, And, with our touch, our agony. Elizabeth Barrett Browning [1806-1861] TO A SKYLARK Up with me! up with me into the clouds! For thy song, Lark, is strong; Up with me, up with me into the clouds! Singing, singing, With clouds and sky about thee ringing, Lift me, guide me till I find That spot which seems so to thy mind! I have walked through wildernesses dreary And to-day my heart is weary; Had I now the wings of a Fairy, Up to thee would I fly. There is madness about thee, and joy divine In that song of thine; Lift me, guide me high and high To thy banqueting-Place in the sky. Joyous as morning Thou art laughing and scorning; Thou hast a nest for thy love and thy rest. And, though little troubled with sloth, Drunken Lark! thou would'st be loth To be such a traveler as I. Happy, happy Liver, With a soul as strong as a mountain river Pouring out praise to the Almighty Giver, Joy and jollity be with us both! Alas! my journey, rugged and uneven, Through prickly moors or dusty ways must wind; But hearing thee, or others of thy kind, As full of gladness and as free of heaven, I, with my fate contented, will plod on, And hope for higher raptures, when life's day is done. William Wordsworth [1770-1850] TO A SKYLARK Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky! Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound? Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground? Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will, Those quivering wings composed, that music still! To the last point of vision, and beyond, Mount, daring warbler!--that love-prompted strain --'Twixt thee and thine a never-failing bond-- Thrills not the less the bosom of the plain: Yet might'st thou seem, proud privilege! to sing All independent of the leafy spring. Leave to the nightingale her shady wood; A privacy of glorious light is thine, Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood Of harmony, with instinct more divine: Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam-- True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home! William Wordsworth [1770-1850] THE SKYLARK Bird of the wilderness, Blithesome and cumberless, Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea! Emblem of happiness, Blest is thy dwelling-place-- O to abide in the desert with thee! Wild is thy lay and loud, Far in the downy cloud, Love gives it energy, love gave it birth. Where, on thy dewy wing, Where art thou journeying? Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth. O'er fell and fountain sheen, O'er moor and mountain green, O'er the red streamer that heralds the day, Over the cloudlet dim, Over the rainbow's rim, Musical cherub, soar, singing, away! Then, when the gloaming comes, Low in the heather blooms Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be! Emblem of happiness, Blest is thy dwelling-place-- O to abide in the desert with thee! James Hogg [1770-1835] THE SKYLARK How the blithe Lark runs up the golden stair That leans through cloudy gates from Heaven to Earth, And all alone in the empyreal air Fills it with jubilant sweet songs of mirth; How far he seems, how far With the light upon his wings, Is it a bird, or star That shines, and sings? What matter if the days be dark and frore, That sunbeam tells of other days to be, And singing in the light that floods him o'er In joy he overtakes Futurity; Under cloud-arches vast He peeps, and sees behind Great Summer coming fast Adown the wind! And now he dives into a rainbow's rivers, In streams of gold and purple he is drowned, Shrilly the arrows of his song he shivers, As though the stormy drops were turned to sound; And now he issues through, He scales a cloudy tower, Faintly, like falling dew, His fast notes shower. Let every wind be hushed, that I may hear The wondrous things he tells the World below, Things that we dream of he is watching near, Hopes that we never dreamed he would bestow; Alas! the storm hath rolled Back the gold gates again, Or surely he had told All Heaven to men! So the victorious Poet sings alone, And fills with light his solitary home, And through that glory sees new worlds foreshown, And hears high songs, and triumphs yet to come; He waves the air of Time With thrills of golden chords, And makes the world to climb On linked words. What if his hair be gray, his eyes be dim, If wealth forsake him, and if friends be cold, Wonder unbars her thousand gates to him, Truth never fails, nor Beauty waxes old; More than he tells his eyes Behold, his spirit hears, Of grief, and joy, and sighs 'Twixt joy and tears. Blest is the man who with the sound of song Can charm away the heartache, and forget The frost of Penury, and the stings of Wrong, And drown the fatal whisper of Regret! Darker are the abodes Of Kings, though his be poor, While Fancies, like the Gods, Pass through his door. Singing thou scalest Heaven upon thy wings, Thou liftest a glad heart into the skies; He maketh his own sunrise, while he sings, And turns the dusty Earth to Paradise; I see thee sail along Far up the sunny streams, Unseen, I hear his song, I see his dreams. Frederick Tennyson [1807-1898] TO A SKYLARK Hail to thee, blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert, That from heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Higher still and higher, From the earth thou springest Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are bright'ning, Thou dost float and run; Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. The pale purple even Melts around thy flight; Like a star of heaven In the broad daylight Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight. Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere, Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear, Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. All the earth and air With thy voice is loud, As, when night is bare, From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed. What thou art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. Like a poet hidden In the light of thought, Singing hymns unbidden Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: Like a high-born maiden In a palace tower, Soothing her love-laden Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower: Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aerial hue Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view: Like a rose embowered In its own green leaves, By warm winds deflowered, Till the scent it gives Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves: Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain-awakened flowers, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. Chorus hymeneal, Or triumphal chaunt, Matched with thine would be all But an empty vaunt-- A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains? What shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? With thy clear keen joyance Languor cannot be: Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee: Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. Waking or asleep, Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. Yet if we could scorn Hate, and pride, and fear; If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow, The world should listen then, as I am listening now. Percy Bysshe Shelley [1792-1822] THE STORMY PETREL A thousand miles from land are we, Tossing about on the roaring sea,-- From billow to bounding billow cast, Like fleecy snow on the stormy blast. The sails are scattered abroad like weeds; The strong masts shake like quivering reeds; The mighty cables and iron chains, The hull, which all earthly strength disdains,-- They strain and they crack; and hearts like stone Their natural, hard, proud strength disown. Up and down!--up and down! From the base of the wave to the billow's crown, And amidst the flashing and feathery foam The stormy petrel finds a home,-- A home, if such a place may be For her who lives on the wide, wide sea, On the craggy ice, in the frozen air, And only seeketh her rocky lair To warm her young, and to teach them to spring At once o'er the waves on their stormy wing! O'er the deep!--o'er the deep! Where the whale and the shark and the swordfish sleep,-- Outflying the blast and the driving rain, The petrel telleth her tale--in vain; For the mariner curseth the warning bird Which bringeth him news of the storm unheard! Ah! thus does the prophet, of good or ill, Meet hate from the creatures he serveth still; Yet he ne'er falter,--so, petrel, spring Once more o'er the waves on thy stormy wing! Bryan Waller Procter [1787-1874] THE FIRST SWALLOW The gorse is yellow on the heath, The banks with speedwell flowers are gay, The oaks are budding, and, beneath, The hawthorn soon will bear the wreath, The silver wreath, of May. The welcome guest of settled Spring, The swallow, too, has come at last; Just at sunset, when thrushes sing, I saw her dash with rapid wing, And hailed her as she passed. Come, summer visitant, attach To my reed roof your nest of clay, And let my ear your music catch, Low twittering underneath the thatch At the gray dawn of day. Charlotte Smith [1749-1806] TO A SWALLOW BUILDING UNDER OUR EAVES Thou too hast traveled, little fluttering thing,-- Hast seen the world, and now thy weary wing Thou too must rest. But much, my little bird, could'st thou but tell, I'd give to know why here thou lik'st so well To build thy nest. For thou hast passed fair places in thy flight; A world lay all beneath thee where to light; And, strange thy taste, Of all the varied scenes that met thine eye, Of all the spots for building 'neath the sky, To choose this waste! Did fortune try thee?--was thy little purse Perchance run low, and thou, afraid of worse, Felt here secure? Ah, no! thou need'st not gold, thou happy one! Thou know'st it not. Of all God's creatures, man Alone is poor. What was it, then?--some mystic turn of thought, Caught under German eaves, and hither brought, Marring thine eye For the world's loveliness, till thou art grown A sober thing that dost but mope and moan, Not knowing why? Nay, if thy mind be sound, I need not ask, Since here I see thee working at thy task With wing and beak. A well-laid scheme doth that small head contain, At which thou work'st, brave bird, with might and main, Nor more need'st seek. In truth, I rather take it thou hast got By instinct wise much sense about thy lot, And hast small care Whether an Eden or a desert be Thy home, so thou remain'st alive, and free To skim the air. God speed thee, pretty bird! May thy small nest With little ones all in good time be blest. I love thee much; For well thou managest that life of thine, While I--oh, ask not what I do with mine! Would I were such! Jane Welsh Carlyle [1801-1866] CHIMNEY SWALLOWS I slept in an old homestead by the sea: And in their chimney nest, At night the swallows told home-lore to me, As to a friendly guest. A liquid twitter, low, confiding, glad, From many glossy throats, Was all the voice; and yet its accents had A poem's golden notes. Quaint legends of the fireside and the shore, And sounds of festal cheer, And tones of those whose tasks of love are o'er, Were breathed into mine ear; And wondrous lyrics, felt but never sung, The heart's melodious bloom; And histories, whose perfumes long have clung About each hallowed room. I heard the dream of lovers, as they found At last their hour of bliss, And fear and pain and long suspense were drowned In one heart-healing kiss. I heard the lullaby of babes, that grew To sons and daughters fair; And childhood's angels, singing as they flew, And sobs of secret prayer. I heard the voyagers who seemed to sail Into the sapphire sky, And sad, weird voices in the autumn gale, As the swift ships went by; And sighs suppressed and converse soft and low About the sufferer's bed, And what is uttered when the stricken know That the dear one is dead; And steps of those who, in the Sabbath light, Muse with transfigured face; And hot lips pressing, through the long, dark night, The pillow's empty place; And fervent greetings of old friends, whose path In youth had gone apart, But to each other brought life's aftermath, With uncorroded heart. The music of the seasons touched the strain, Bird-joy and laugh of flowers, The orchard's bounty and the yellow grain, Snow storm and sunny showers; And secrets of the soul that doubts and yearns And gropes in regions dim, Till, meeting Christ with raptured eye, discerns Its perfect life in Him. So, thinking of the Master and his tears, And how the birds are kept, I sank in arms that folded me from fears, And like an infant, slept. Horatio Nelson Powers [1826-1890] ITYLUS Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow, How can thine heart be full of the spring? A thousand summers are over and dead. What hast thou found in the spring to follow? What hast thou found in thine heart to sing? What wilt thou do when the summer is shed? O swallow, sister, O fair swift swallow, Why wilt thou fly after spring to the south, The soft south whither thine heart is set? Shall not the grief of the old time follow? Shall not the song thereof cleave to thy mouth? Hast thou forgotten ere I forget? Sister, my sister, O fleet sweet swallow, Thy way is long to the sun and the south; But I, fulfilled of my heart's desire, Shedding my song upon height, upon hollow, From tawny body and sweet small mouth Feed the heart of the night with fire. I the nightingale all spring through, O swallow, sister, O changing swallow, All spring through till the spring be done, Clothed with the light of the night on the dew, Sing, while the hours and the wild birds follow, Take flight and follow and find the sun. Sister, my sister, O soft light swallow, Though all things feast in the spring's guest-chamber, How hast thou heart to be glad thereof yet? For where thou fliest I shall not follow, Till life forget and death remember, Till thou remember and I forget. Swallow, my sister, O singing swallow, I know not how thou hast heart to sing. Hast thou the heart? is it all passed over? Thy lord the summer is good to follow, And fair the feet of thy lover the spring: But what wilt thou say to the spring thy lover? O swallow, sister, O fleeting swallow, My heart in me is a molten ember And over my head the waves have met. But thou wouldst tarry or I would follow Could I forget or thou remember, Couldst thou remember and I forget. O sweet stray sister, O shifting swallow, The heart's division divideth us. Thy heart is light as a leaf of a tree; But mine goes forth among sea-gulfs hollow To the place of the slaying of Itylus, The feast of Daulis, the Thracian sea. O swallow, sister, O rapid swallow, I pray thee sing not a little space. Are not the roofs and the lintels wet? The woven web that was plain to follow, The small slain body, the flower-like face, Can I remember if thou forget? O sister, sister, thy first-begotten! The hands that cling and the feet that follow, The voice of the child's blood crying yet, Who hath remembered me? who hath forgotten? Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow, But the world shall end when I forget. Algernon Charles Swinburne [1837-1909] THE THROSTLE "Summer is coming, summer is coming, I know it, I know it, I know it. Light again, leaf again, life again, love again," Yes, my wild little Poet. Sing the new year in under the blue. Last year you sang it as gladly. "New, new, new, new!" Is it then so new That you should carol so madly? "Love again, song again, nest again, young again," Never a prophet so crazy! And hardly a daisy as yet, little friend, See, there is hardly a daisy. "Here again, here, here, here, happy year!" O warble unchidden, unbidden! Summer is coming, is coming, my dear, And all the winters are hidden. Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892] OVERFLOW Hush! With sudden gush As from a fountain, sings in yonder bush The Hermit Thrush. Hark! Did ever Lark With swifter scintillations fling the spark That fires the dark? Again, Like April rain Of mist and sunshine mingled, moves the strain O'er hill and plain. Strong As love, O Song, In flame or torrent sweep through Life along, O'er grief and wrong. John Banister Tabb [1845-1909] JOY-MONTH Oh, hark to the brown thrush! hear how he sings! How he pours the dear pain of his gladness! What a gush! and from out what golden springs! What a rage of how sweet madness! And golden the buttercup blooms by the way, A song of the joyous ground; While the melody rained from yonder spray Is a blossom in fields of sound. How glisten the eyes of the happy leaves! How whispers each blade, "I am blest!" Rosy Heaven his lips to flowered earth gives, With the costliest bliss of his breast. Pour, pour of the wine of thy heart, O Nature! By cups of field and of sky, By the brimming soul of every creature!-- Joy-mad, dear Mother, am I. Tongues, tongues for my joy, for my joy! more tongues!-- Oh, thanks to the thrush on the tree, To the sky, and to all earth's blooms and songs! They utter the heart in me. David Atwood Wasson [1823-1887] MY THRUSH All through the sultry hours of June, From morning blithe to golden noon, And till the star of evening climbs The gray-blue East, a world too soon, There sings a Thrush amid the limes. God's poet, hid in foliage green, Sings endless songs, himself unseen; Right seldom come his silent times. Linger, ye summer hours serene! Sing on, dear Thrush, amid the limes! Nor from these confines wander out, Where the old gun, bucolic lout, Commits all day his murderous crimes: Though cherries ripe are sweet, no doubt, Sweeter thy song amid the limes. May I not dream God sends thee there, Thou mellow angel of the air, Even to rebuke my earthlier rhymes With music's soul, all praise and prayer? Is that thy lesson in the limes? Closer to God art thou than I: His minstrel thou, whose brown wings fly Through silent ether's summer climes. Ah, never may thy music die! Sing on, dear Thrush, amid the limes! Mortimer Collins [1827-1876] "BLOW SOFTLY, THRUSH" Blow softly, thrush, upon the hush That makes the least leaf loud, Blow, wild of heart, remote, apart From all the vocal crowd, Apart, remote, a spirit note That dances meltingly afloat, Blow faintly, thrush! And build the green-hid waterfall I hated for its beauty, and all The unloved vernal rapture and flush, The old forgotten lonely time, Delicate thrush! Spring's at the prime, the world's in chime, And my love is listening nearly; O lightly blow the ancient woe, Flute of the wood, blow clearly! Blow, she is here, and the world all dear, Melting flute of the hush, Old sorrow estranged, enriched, sea-changed, Breathe it, veery thrush! Joseph Russell Taylor [1868-1933] THE BLACK VULTURE Aloof within the day's enormous dome, He holds unshared the silence of the sky. Far down his bleak, relentless eyes descry The eagle's empire and the falcon's home-- Far down, the galleons of sunset roam; His hazards on the sea of morning lie; Serene, he hears the broken tempest sigh Where cold sierras gleam like scattered foam. And least of all he holds the human swarm-- Unwitting now that envious men prepare To make their dream and its fulfillment one When, poised above the caldrons of the storm, Their hearts, contemptuous of death, shall dare His roads between the thunder and the sun. George Sterling [1869-1926] WILD GEESE How oft against the sunset sky or moon I watched that moving zigzag of spread wings In unforgotten Autumns gone too soon, In unforgotten Springs! Creatures of desolation, far they fly Above all lands bound by the curling foam; In misty lens, wild moors and trackless sky These wild things have their home. They know the tundra of Siberian coasts. And tropic marshes by the Indian seas; They know the clouds and night and starry hosts From Crux to Pleiades. Dark flying rune against the western glow-- It tells the sweep and loneliness of things, Symbol of Autumns vanished long ago. Symbol of coming Springs! Frederick Peterson [1859- TO A WATERFOWL Whither, midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way? Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along. Seek'st thou the plashy brink Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, Or where the rocking billows rise and sink On the chafed ocean-side? There is a Power whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,-- The desert and illimitable air,-- Lone wandering, but not lost. All day thy wings have fanned At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, Though the dark night is near. And soon that toil shall end; Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, And shall not soon depart. He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright. William Cullen Bryant [1794-1878] THE WOOD-DOVE'S NOTE Meadows with yellow cowslips all aglow, Glory of sunshine on the uplands bare, And faint and far, with sweet elusive flow, The Wood-dove's plaintive call, "O where! where! where!" Straight with old Omar in the almond grove From whitening boughs I breathe the odors rare And hear the princess mourning for her love With sad unwearied plaint, "O where! where! where!" New madrigals in each soft pulsing throat-- New life upleaping to the brooding air-- Still the heart answers to that questing note, "Soul of the vanished years, O where! where! where!" Emily Huntington Miller [1833-1913] THE SEA SONG FOR ALL SEAS, ALL SHIPS I To-day a rude brief recitative, Of ships sailing the seas, each with its special flag or ship-signal, Of unnamed heroes in the ships--of waves spreading and spreading far as the eye can reach, Of dashing spray, and the winds piping and blowing, And out of these a chant for the sailors of all nations, Fitful, like a surge. Of sea-captains young or old, and the mates, and of all intrepid sailors, Of the few, very choice, taciturn, whom fate can never surprise nor death dismay, Picked sparingly without noise by thee, old ocean, chosen by thee, Thou sea that pickest and cullest the race in time, and unitest nations, Suckled by thee, old husky nurse, embodying thee, Indomitable, untamed as thee. (Ever the heroes on water or on land, by ones or twos appearing, Ever the stock preserved and never lost, though rare, enough for seed preserved.) II Flaunt out, O sea, your separate flags of nations! Flaunt out visible as ever the various ship-signals! But do you reserve especially for yourself and for the soul of man one flag above all the rest, A spiritual woven signal for all nations, emblem of man elate above death, Token of all brave captains and all intrepid sailors and mates, And all that went down doing their duty, Reminiscent of them, twined from all intrepid captains young or old, A pennant universal, subtly waving all time, o'er all brave sailors, All seas, all ships. Walt Whitman [1819-1892] STANZAS From "The Triumph of Time" I will go back to the great sweet mother,-- Mother and lover of men, the Sea. I will go down to her, I and none other, Close with her, kiss her, and mix her with me; Cling to her, strive with her, hold her fast; O fair white mother, in days long past Born without sister, born without brother, Set free my soul as thy soul is free. O fair green-girdled mother of mine, Sea, that art clothed with the sun and the rain, Thy sweet hard kisses are strong like wine, Thy large embraces are keen like pain. Save me and hide me with all thy waves, Find me one grave of thy thousand graves, Those pure cold populous graves of thine, Wrought without hand in a world without stain. I shall sleep, and move with the moving ships, Change as the winds change, veer in the tide; My lips will feast on the foam of thy lips, I shall rise with thy rising, with thee subside; Sleep, and not know if she be, if she were, Filled full with life to the eyes and hair. As a rose is fulfilled to the rose-leaf tips With splendid summer and perfume and pride. This woven raiment of nights and days, Were it once cast off and unwound from me, Naked and glad would I walk in thy ways, Alive and aware of thy waves and thee; Clear of the whole world, hidden at home, Clothed with the green, and crowned with the foam, A pulse of the life of thy straits and bays, A vein in the heart of the streams of the Sea. Fair mother, fed with the lives of men, Thou art subtle and cruel of heart, men say; Thou hast taken, and shalt not render again; Thou art full of thy dead, and cold as they. But death is the worst that comes of thee; Thou art fed with our dead, O Mother, O Sea, But when hast thou fed on our hearts? or when Having given us love, hast thou taken away? O tender-hearted, O perfect lover, Thy lips are bitter, and sweet thine heart. The hopes that hurt and the dreams that hover, Shall they not vanish away and apart? But thou, thou art sure, thou art older than earth; Thou art strong for death and fruitful of birth; Thy depths conceal and thy gulfs discover; From the first thou wert; in the end thou art. Algernon Charles Swinburne [1837-1909] THE SEA From "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes By the deep Sea, and music in its roar: I love not Man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe, and feel What I can ne'er express, yet can not all conceal. Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean, roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; Man marks the earth with ruin, his control Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown. His steps are not upon thy paths, thy fields Are not a spoil for him,--thou dost arise And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies His petty hope in some near port or bay, And dashest him again to earth:--there let him lay. The armaments which thunderstrike the walls Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake And monarchs tremble in their capitals, The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make Their clay creator the vain title take Of lord of thee and arbiter of war,-- These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar Alike the Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar. Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee;-- Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters washed them power while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts:--not so thou; Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play, Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow; Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Glasses itself in tempests; in all time, Calm or convulsed,--in breeze, or gale, or storm, Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime Dark-heaving;--boundless, endless, and sublime,-- The image of Eternity,--the throne Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone. And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be Borne, like thy bubbles, onward. From a boy I wantoned with thy breakers,--they to me Were a delight; and if the freshening sea Made them a terror, 'twas a pleasing fear; For I was as it were a child of thee, And trusted to thy billows far and near, And laid my hand upon thy mane,--as I do here. George Gordon Byron [1788-1824] ON THE SEA It keeps eternal whisperings around Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound. Often 'tis in such gentle temper found, That scarcely will the very smallest shell Be moved for days from whence it sometime fell, When last the winds of heaven were unbound. Oh ye! who have your eye-balls vexed and tired, Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea; Oh ye! whose ears are dinned with uproar rude, Or fed too much with cloying melody,-- Sit ye near some old cavern's mouth, and brood Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quired! John Keats [1795-1821] "WITH SHIPS THE SEA WAS SPRINKLED" With ships the sea was sprinkled far and nigh, Like stars in heaven, and joyously it showed; Some lying fast at anchor in the road, Some veering up and down, one knew not why. A goodly vessel did I then espy Come like a giant from a haven broad; And lustily along the bay she strode, Her tackling rich, and of apparel high. This ship was naught to me, nor I to her, Yet I pursued her with a lover's look; This ship to all the rest did I prefer: When will she turn, and whither? She will brook No tarrying; where she comes the winds must stir: On went she,--and due north her journey took. William Wordsworth [1770-1850] A SONG OF DESIRE Thou dreamer with the million moods, Of restless heart like me, Lay thy white hands against my breast And cool its pain, O Sea! O wanderer of the unseen paths, Restless of heart as I, Blow hither, from thy caves of blue, Wind of the healing sky! O treader of the fiery way, With passionate heart like mine, Hold to my lips thy healthful cup Brimmed with its blood-red wine! O countless watchers of the night, Of sleepless heart like me, Pour your white beauty in my soul, Till I grow calm as ye! O sea, O sun, O wind and stars, (O hungry heart that longs!) Feed my starved lips with life, with love, And touch my tongue with songs! Frederic Lawrence Knowles [1869-1905] THE PINES AND THE SEA Beyond the low marsh-meadows and the beach, Seen through the hoary trunks of windy pines, The long blue level of the ocean shines. The distant surf, with hoarse, complaining speech, Out from its sandy barrier seems to reach; And while the sun behind the woods declines, The moaning sea with sighing boughs combines, And waves and pines make answer, each to each. O melancholy soul, whom far and near, In life, faith, hope, the same sad undertone Pursues from thought to thought! thou needs must hear An old refrain, too much, too long thine own: 'Tis thy mortality infects thine ear; The mournful strain was in thyself alone. Christopher Pearse Cranch [1813-1892] SEA FEVER I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by; And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking, And a gray mist on the sea's face, and a gray dawn breaking. I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied; And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying, And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the seagulls crying. I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gipsy life, To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife; And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover, And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over. John Masefield [1878- HASTINGS MILL As I went down by Hastings Mill I lingered in my going To smell the smell of piled-up deals and feel the salt wind blowing, To hear the cables fret and creak and the ropes stir and sigh (Shipmate, my shipmate!) as in days gone by. As I went down by Hastings Mill I saw a ship there lying, About her tawny yards the little clouds of sunset flying; And half I took her for the ghost of one I used to know (Shipmate, my shipmate!) many years ago. As I went down by Hastings Mill I saw while I stood dreaming The flicker of her riding light along the ripples streaming, The bollards where we made her fast and the berth where she did lie (Shipmate, my shipmate!) in the days gone by. As I went down by Hastings Mill I heard a fellow singing, Chipping off the deep sea rust above the tide a-swinging, And well I knew the queer old tune and well the song he sung (Shipmate, my shipmate!) when the world was young. And past the rowdy Union Wharf, and by the still tide sleeping, To a randy dandy deep sea tune my heart in time was keeping, To the thin far sound of a shadowy watch a-hauling, And the voice of one I knew across the high tide calling (Shipmate, my shipmate!) and the late dusk falling! Cecily Fox-Smith [1882- "A WET SHEET AND A FLOWING SEA" A wet sheet and a flowing sea, A wind that follows fast, And fills the white and rustling sail, And bends the gallant mast; And bends the gallant mast, my boys, While, like the eagle free, Away the good ship flies, and leaves Old England on the lee. O for a soft and gentle wind! I heard a fair one cry; But give to me the snoring breeze And white waves heaving high; And white waves heaving high, my boys, The good ship tight and free-- The world of waters is our home, And merry men are we. There's tempest in yon horned moon, And lightning in yon cloud; And hark the music, mariners! The wind is piping loud; The wind is piping loud, my boys, The lightning flashes free-- While the hollow oak our palace is, Our heritage the sea. Allan Cunningham [1784-1842] THE SEA The sea! the sea! the open sea! The blue, the fresh, the ever free! Without a mark, without a bound, It runneth the earth's wide regions round; It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies; Or like a cradled creature lies. I'm on the sea! I'm on the sea! I am where I would ever be; With the blue above, and the blue below, And silence wheresoe'er I go; If a storm should come and awake the deep, What matter? I shall ride and sleep. I love, O, how I love to ride On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide, When every mad wave drowns the moon Or whistles aloft his tempest tune, And tells how goeth the world below, And why the sou'west blasts do blow. I never was on the dull, tame shore, But I loved the great sea more and more. And backwards flew to her billowy breast, Like a bird that seeketh its mother's nest; And a mother she was, and is, to me; For I was born on the open sea! The waves were white, and red the morn, In the noisy hour when I was born; And the whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled, And the dolphins bared their backs of gold; And never was heard such an outcry wild As welcomed to life the ocean-child! I've lived since then, in calm and strife, Full fifty summers, a sailor's life, With wealth to spend and a power to range, But never have sought nor sighed for change; And Death, whenever he comes to me, Shall come on the wild, unbounded sea! Bryan Waller Procter [1787-1874] SAILOR'S SONG From "Death's Jest-Book" To sea, to sea! The calm is o'er; The wanton water leaps in sport, And rattles down the pebbly shore; The dolphin wheels, the sea-cows snort, And unseen mermaids' pearly song Comes bubbling up, the weeds among. Fling broad the sail, dip deep the oar; To sea, to sea! the calm is o'er. To sea, to sea! our wide-winged bark Shall billowy cleave its sunny way, And with its shadow, fleet and dark, Break the caved Tritons' azure day, Like mighty eagle soaring light O'er antelopes on Alpine height. The anchor heaves, the ship swings free, The sails swell full. To sea, to sea! Thomas Lovell Beddoes [1803-1849] "A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE" A life on the ocean wave, A home on the rolling deep, Where the scattered waters rave, And the winds their revels keep! Like an eagle caged, I pine On this dull, unchanging shore: Oh! give me the flashing brine, The spray and the tempest's roar! Once more on the deck I stand Of my own swift-gliding craft: Set sail! farewell to the land! The gale follows fair abaft. We shoot through the sparkling foam Like an ocean-bird set free;-- Like the ocean-bird, our home We'll find far out on the sea. The land is no longer in view, The clouds have begun to frown; But with a stout vessel and crew, We'll say, Let the storm come down! And the song of our hearts shall be, While the winds and the waters rave, A home on the rolling sea! A life on the ocean wave! Epes Sargent [1813-1880] TACKING SHIP OFF SHORE The weather-leech of the topsail shivers, The bowlines strain, and the lee-shrouds slacken, The braces are taut, the lithe boom quivers, And the waves with the coming squall-cloud blacken. Open one point on the weather-bow, Is the lighthouse tall on Fire Island Head. There's a shade of doubt on the captain's brow, And the pilot watches the heaving lead. I stand at the wheel, and with eager eye To sea and to sky and to shore I gaze, Till the muttered order of "Full and by!" Is suddenly changed for "Full for stays!" The ship bends lower before the breeze, As her broadside fair to the blast she lays; And she swifter springs to the rising seas, As the pilot calls, "Stand by for stays!" It is silence all, as each in his place, With the gathered coil in his hardened hands, By tack and bowline, by sheet and brace, Waiting the watchword impatient stands. And the light on Fire Island Head draws near, As, trumpet-winged, the pilot's shout From his post on the bowsprit's heel I hear, With the welcome call of "Ready! About!" No time to spare! It is touch and go; And the captain growls, "Down helm! hard down!" As my weight on the whirling spokes I throw, While heaven grows black with the storm-cloud's frown. High o'er the knight-heads flies the spray, As we meet the shock of the plunging sea; And my shoulder stiff to the wheel I lay, As I answer, "Ay, ay, sir! Ha-a-rd a-lee!" With the swerving leap of a startled steed The ship flies fast in the eye of the wind, The dangerous shoals on the lee recede, And the headland white we have left behind. The topsails flutter, the jibs collapse, And belly and tug at the groaning cleats; The spanker slats, and the mainsail flaps; And thunders the order, "Tacks and sheets!" Mid the rattle of blocks and the tramp of the crew, Hisses the rain of the rushing squall: The sails are aback from clew to clew, And now is the moment for "Mainsail, haul!" And the heavy yards, like a baby's toy, By fifty strong arms are swiftly swung: She holds her way, and I look with joy For the first white spray o'er the bulwarks flung. "Let go, and haul!" 'Tis the last command, And the head-sails fill to the blast once more: Astern and to leeward lies the land, With its breakers white on the shingly shore. What matters the reef, or the rain, or the squall? I steady the helm for the open sea; The first mate clamors, "Belay, there, all!" And the captain's breath once more comes free. And so off shore let the good ship fly; Little care I how the gusts may blow, In my fo'castle bunk, in a jacket dry. Eight bells have struck, and my watch is below. Walter Mitchell [1826-1908] IN OUR BOAT Stars trembling o'er us and sunset before us, Mountains in shadow and forests asleep; Down the dim river we float on forever, Speak not, ah, breathe not--there's peace on the deep. Come not, pale sorrow, flee till to-morrow; Rest softly falling o'er eyelids that weep; While down the river we float on forever, Speak not, ah, breathe not--there's peace on the deep. As the waves cover the depths we glide over, So let the past in forgetfulness sleep, While down the river we float on forever, Speak not, ah, breathe not--there's peace on the deep. Heaven shine above us, bless all that love us; All whom we love in thy tenderness keep! While down the river we float on forever, Speak not, ah, breathe not--there's peace on the deep. Dinah Maria Mulock Craik [1826-1887] POOR JACK Go, patter to lubbers and swabs, do ye see, 'Bout danger, and fear, and the like; A water-tight boat and good sea-room for me, And it ain't to a little I'll strike. Though the tempest topgallant-masts smack smooth should smite, And shiver each splinter of wood,-- Clear the deck, stow the yards, and house everything tight, And under reefed foresail we'll scud: Avast! nor don't think me a milksop so soft To be taken for trifles aback; For they say there's a Providence sits up aloft, To keep watch for the life of poor Jack! I heard our good chaplain palaver one day About souls, heaven, mercy, and such; And, my timbers! what lingo he'd coil and belay; Why, 'twas just all as one as High Dutch; For he said how a sparrow can't founder, d'ye see, Without orders that come down below; And a many fine things that proved clearly to me That Providence takes us in tow: "For," says he, "do you mind me, let storms e'er so oft Take the topsails of sailors aback, There's a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft, To keep watch for the life of poor Jack!" I said to our Poll,--for, d'ye see, she would cry, When last we weighed anchor for sea,-- "What argufies sniveling and piping your eye? Why, what a blamed fool you must be! Can't you see, the world's wide, and there's room for us all, Both for seamen and lubbers ashore? And if to old Davy I should go, friend Poll, You never will hear of me more. What then? All's a hazard: come, don't be so soft: Perhaps I may laughing come back; For, d'ye see, there's a cherub sits smiling aloft, To keep watch for the life of poor Jack!" D'ye mind me, a sailor should be every inch All as one as a piece of the ship, And with her brave the world, without offering to flinch From the moment the anchor's a-trip. As for me, in all weathers, all times, sides, and ends, Naught's a trouble from duty that springs, For my heart is my Poll's, and my rhino's my friend's, And as for my will, 'tis the king's. Even when my time comes, ne'er believe me so soft As for grief to be taken aback; For the same little cherub that sits up aloft Will look out a good berth for poor Jack! Charles Dibdin [1745-1814] "ROCKED IN THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP" Rocked in the cradle of the deep I lay me down in peace to sleep; Secure I rest upon the wave, For Thou, O Lord! hast power to save. I know Thou wilt not slight my call, For Thou dost mark the sparrow's fall; And calm and peaceful shall I sleep, Rocked in the cradle of the deep. When in the dead of night I lie And gaze upon the trackless sky, The star-bespangled heavenly scroll, The boundless waters as they roll,-- I feel Thy wondrous power to save From perils of the stormy wave: Rocked in the cradle of the deep, I calmly rest and soundly sleep. And such the trust that still were mine, Though stormy winds swept o'er the brine, Or though the tempest's fiery breath Roused me from sleep to wreck and death. In ocean cave, still safe with Thee The germ of immortality! And calm and peaceful shall I sleep, Rocked in the cradle of the deep. Emma Hart Willard [1787-1870] OUTWARD Wither away, O Sailor! say? Under the night, under the day, Yearning sail and flying spray Out of the black into the blue, Where are the great Winds bearing you? Never port shall lift for me Into the sky, out of the sea! Into the blue or into the black, Onward, outward, never back! Something mighty and weird and dim Calls me under the ocean rim! Sailor under sun and moon, 'Tis the ocean's fatal rune. Under yon far rim of sky Twice ten thousand others lie. Love is sweet and home is fair, And your mother calls you there. Onward, outward I must go Where the mighty currents flow. Home is anywhere for me On this purple-tented sea. Star and Wind and Sun my brothers, Ocean one of many mothers. Onward under sun and star Where the weird adventures are! Never port shall lift for me-- I am Wind and Sky and Sea! John G. Neihardt [1881- A PASSER-BY Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding, Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West, That fearest nor sea rising, nor sky clouding, Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest? Ah! soon, when Winter has all our vales oppressed, When skies are cold and misty, and hail is hurling, Wilt thou glide on the blue Pacific, or rest In a summer haven asleep, thy white sails furling. I there before thee, in the country that well thou knowest, Already arrived, am inhaling the odorous air: I watch thee enter unerringly where thou goest, And anchor queen of the strange shipping there, Thy sails for awnings spread, thy masts bare: Nor is aught from the foaming reef to the snow-capped grandest Peak, that is over the feathery palms, more fair Than thou, so upright, so stately and still thou standest. And yet, O splendid ship, unhailed and nameless, I know not if, aiming a fancy, I rightly divine That thou hast a purpose joyful, a courage blameless, Thy port assured in a happier land than mine. But for all I have given thee, beauty enough is thine, As thou, aslant with trim tackle and shrouding, From the proud nostril curve of a prow's line In the offing scatterest foam, thy white sails crowding. Robert Bridges [1844-1930] OFF RIVIERE DU LOUP O ship incoming from the sea With all your cloudy tower of sail, Dashing the water to the lee, And leaning grandly to the gale, The sunset pageant in the west Has filled your canvas curves with rose, And jeweled every toppling crest That crashes into silver snows! You know the joy of coming home, After long leagues to France or Spain You feel the clear Canadian foam And the gulf water heave again. Between these somber purple hills That cool the sunset's molten bars, You will go on as the wind wills, Beneath the river's roof of stars. You will toss onward toward the lights That spangle over the lonely pier, By hamlets glimmering on the heights, By level islands black and clear. You will go on beyond the tide, Through brimming plains of olive sedge, Through paler shadows light and wide, The rapids piled along the ledge. At evening off some reedy bay You will swing slowly on your chain, And catch the scent of dewy hay, Soft blowing from the pleasant plain. Duncan Campbell Scott [1862- CHRISTMAS AT SEA The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand; The decks were like a slide, where a seaman scarce could stand; The wind was a nor'-wester, blowing squally off the sea; And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee. They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day; But 'twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay. We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout, And we gave her the maintops'l, and stood by to go about. All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North; All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further forth; All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread, For very life and nature we tacked from head to head. We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race roared; But every tack we made brought the North Head close aboard; So's we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running high, And the coastguard in his garden, with his glass against his eye. The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam; The good red fires were burning bright in every 'longshore home; The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed out; And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about. The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial cheer; For it's just that I should tell you how (of all days in the year) This day of our adversity was blessed Christmas morn, And the house above the coastguard's was the house where I was born. O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there, My mother's silver spectacles, my father's silver hair; And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves, Go dancing round the china-plates that stand upon the shelves. And well I knew the talk they had, the talk that was of me, Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to sea; And O the wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way, To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessed Christmas Day. They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall. "All hands to loose topgallant sails," I heard the captain call. "By the Lord, she'll never stand it," our first mate, Jackson, cried. "It's the one way or the other, Mr. Jackson," he replied. She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and good, And the ship smelt up to windward, just as though she understood. As the winter's day was ending, in the entry of the night, We cleared the weary headland, and passed below the light. And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board but me, As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out to sea; But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold, Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were growing old. Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-1894] THE PORT O' HEART'S DESIRE Down around the quay they lie, the ships that sail to sea, On shore the brown-cheeked sailormen they pass the jest with me, But soon their ships will sail away with winds that never tire, And there's one that will be sailing to the Port o' Heart's Desire. The Port o' Heart's Desire, and it's, oh, that port for me, And that's the ship that I love best of all that sail the sea; Its hold is filled with memories, its prow it points away To the Port o' Heart's Desire, where I roamed a boy at play. Ships that sail for gold there be, and ships that sail for fame, And some were filled with jewels bright when from Cathay they came, But give me still yon white sail in the sunset's mystic fire, That the running tides will carry to the Port o' Heart's Desire. It's you may have the gold and fame, and all the jewels, too, And all the ships, if they were mine, I'd gladly give to you, I'd give them all right gladly, with their gold and fame entire, If you would set me down within the Port o' Heart's Desire. Oh, speed you, white-winged ship of mine, oh, speed you to the sea, Some other day, some other tide, come back again for me; Come back with all the memories, the joys and e'en the pain, And take me to the golden hills of boyhood once again. John S. McGroarty [1862- ON THE QUAY I've never traveled for more'n a day, I never was one to roam, But I likes to sit on the busy quay, Watchin' the ships that says to me-- "Always somebody goin' away, Somebody gettin' home." I likes to think that the world's so wide-- 'Tis grand to be livin' there, Takin' a part in its goin's on.... Ah, now ye're laughin' at poor old John, Talkin' o' works o' the world wi' pride As if he was doin' his share! But laugh if ye will! When ye're old as me Ye'll find 'tis a rare good plan To look at the world--an' love it too!-- Though never a job are ye fit to do.... Oh! 'tisn't all sorrow an' pain to see The work o' another man. 'Tis good when the heart grows big at last, Too big for trouble to fill-- Wi' room for the things that was only stuff When workin' an' winnin' seemed more'n enough-- Room for the world, the world so vast, Wi' its peoples an' all their skill. That's what I'm thinkin' on all the days I'm loafin' an' smokin' here, An' the ships do make me think the most (Of readin' in books 'tis little I'd boast),-- But the ships, they carries me long, long ways, An' draws far places near. I sees the things that a sailor brings, I hears the stories he tells.... 'Tis surely a wonderful world, indeed! 'Tis more'n the peoples can ever need! An' I praises the Lord--to myself I sings-- For the world in which I dwells. An' I loves the ships more every day Though I never was one to roam. Oh! the ships is comfortin' sights to see, An' they means a lot when they says to me-- "Always somebody goin' away, Somebody gettin' home." John Joy Bell [1871-1934] THE FORGING OF THE ANCHOR Come, see the Dolphin's anchor forged! 'tis at a white heat now-- The bellows ceased, the flames decreased; though, on the forge's brow, The little flames still fitfully play through the sable mound, And fitfully you still may see the grim smiths ranking round; All clad in leathern panoply, their broad hands only bare, Some rest upon their sledges here, some work the windlass there. The windlass strains the tackle-chains--the black mold heaves below; And red and deep, a hundred veins burst out at every throe. It rises, roars, rends all outright--O Vulcan, what a glow! 'Tis blinding white, 'tis blasting bright--the high sun shines not so! The high sun sees not, on the earth, such fiery fearful show! The roof-ribs swarth, the candent hearth, the ruddy lurid row Of smiths that stand, an ardent band, like men before the foe! As, quivering through his fleece of flame, the sailing monster slow Sinks on the anvil--all about, the faces fiery grow: "Hurrah!" they shout, "leap out, leap out!" bang, bang! the sledges go; Hurrah! the jetted lightnings are hissing high and low; A hailing fount of fire is struck at every squashing blow; The leathern mail rebounds the hail; the rattling cinders strow The ground around; at every bound the sweltering fountains flow; And, thick and loud, the swinking crowd at every stroke pant "ho!" Leap out, leap out, my masters! leap out, and lay on load! Let's forge a goodly anchor--a bower thick and broad; For a heart of oak is hanging on every blow, I bode; And I see the good ship riding, all in a perilous road,-- The low reef roaring on her lee; the roll of ocean poured From stem to stern, sea after sea; the mainmast by the board; The bulwarks down; the rudder gone; the boats stove at the chains; But courage still, brave mariners--the bower yet remains! And not an inch to flinch he deigns--save when ye pitch sky high; Then moves his head, as though he said, "Fear nothing--here am I!" Swing in your strokes in order; let foot and hand keep time; Your blows make music sweeter far than any steeple's chime. But while ye swing your sledges, sing, and let the burthen be-- The anchor is the anvil king, and royal craftsmen we! Strike in, strike in!--the sparks begin to dull their rustling red; Our hammers ring with sharper din--our work will soon be sped; Our anchor soon must change his bed of fiery rich array For a hammock at the roaring bows, or an oozy couch of clay; Our anchor soon must change the lay of merry craftsmen here For the yeo-heave-o, and the heave-away, and the sighing seamen's cheer-- When, weighing slow, at eve they go, far, far from love and home; And sobbing sweethearts, in a row, wail o'er the ocean--foam. In livid and obdurate gloom, he darkens down at last; A shapely one he is, and strong, as e'er from cat was cast. O trusted and trustworthy guard! if thou hadst life like me, What pleasure would thy toils reward beneath the deep-green sea! O deep sea-diver, who might then behold such sights as thou?-- The hoary monster's palaces!--Methinks what joy 'twere now To go plumb-plunging down, amid the assembly of the whales, And feel the churned sea round me boil beneath their scourging tails! Then deep in tangle-woods to fight the fierce sea-unicorn, And send him foiled and bellowing back, for all his ivory horn; To leave the subtle sworder-fish of bony blade forlorn; And for the ghastly-grinning shark, to laugh his jaws to scorn: To leap down on the kraken's back, where 'mid Norwegian isles He lies, a lubber anchorage for sudden shallowed miles-- Till, snorting like an under-sea volcano, off he rolls; Meanwhile to swing, a-buffeting the far astonished shoals Of his back-browsing ocean-calves; or, haply, in a cove Shell-strown, and consecrate of old to some Undine's love, To find the long-haired mermaidens; or, hard by icy lands, To wrestle with the sea-serpent, upon cerulean sands. O broad-armed fisher of the deep! whose sports can equal thine? The Dolphin weighs a thousand tons, that tugs thy cable--line; And night by night 'tis thy delight, thy glory day by day, Through sable sea and breaker white the giant game to play. But, shamer of our little sports! forgive the name I gave: A fisher's joy is to destroy--thine office is to save. O lodger in the sea-kings' halls! couldst thou but understand Whose be the white bones by thy side--or who that dripping band, Slow swaying in the heaving wave, that round about thee bend, With sounds like breakers in a dream blessing their ancient friend-- Oh, couldst thou know what heroes glide with larger steps round thee, Thine iron side would swell with pride---thou'dst leap within the sea! Give honor to their memories who left the pleasant strand To shed their blood so freely for the love of fatherland-- Who left their chance of quiet age and grassy churchyard grave So freely, for a restless bed amid the tossing wave! Oh, though our anchor may not be all I have fondly sung, Honor him for their memory whose bones he goes among! Samuel Ferguson [1810-1886] DRIFTING My soul to-day Is far away, Sailing the Vesuvian Bay; My winged boat, A bird afloat, Swings round the purple peaks remote:-- Round purple peaks It sails, and seeks Blue inlets and their crystal creeks, Where high rocks throw, Through deeps below, A duplicated golden glow. Far, vague, and dim, The mountains swim; While on Vesuvius' misty brim, With outstretched hands, The gray smoke stands O'erlooking the volcanic lands. Here Ischia smiles O'er liquid miles; And yonder, bluest of the isles, Calm Capri waits, Her sapphire gates Beguiling to her bright estates. I heed not, if My rippling skiff Float swift or slow from cliff to cliff; With dreamful eyes My spirit lies Under the walls of Paradise. Under the walls Where swells and falls The Bay's deep breast at intervals, At peace I lie, Blown softly by, A cloud upon this liquid sky. The day, so mild, Is Heaven's own child, With Earth and Ocean reconciled; The airs I feel Around me steal Are murmuring to the murmuring keel. Over the rail My hand I trail Within the shadow of the sail, A joy intense, The cooling sense Glides down my drowsy indolence. With dreamful eyes My spirit lies Where Summer sings and never dies,-- O'erveiled with vines She glows and shines Among her future oil and wines. Her children, hid The cliffs amid, Are gamboling with the gamboling kid; Or down the walls, With tipsy calls, Laugh on the rocks like waterfalls. The fisher's child, With tresses wild, Unto the smooth, bright sand beguiled, With glowing lips Sings as she skips, Or gazes at the far-off ships. Yon deep bark goes Where traffic blows, From lands of sun to lands of snows;-- This happier one, Its course is run From lands of snow to lands of sun. O happy ship, To rise and dip, With the blue crystal at your lip! O happy crew, My heart with you Sails, and sails, and sings anew! No more, no more The worldly shore Upbraids me with its loud uproar! With dreamful eyes My spirit lies Under the walls of Paradise! Thomas Buchanan Read [1822-1872] "HOW'S MY BOY?" "Ho, sailor of the sea! How's my boy--my boy?" "What's your boy's name, good wife, And in what good ship sailed he?" "My boy John-- He that went to sea-- What care I for the ship, sailor? My boy's my boy to me. "You come back from sea And not know my John? I might as well have asked some landsman Yonder down in the town. There's not an ass in all the parish But he knows my John. "How's my boy--my boy? And unless you let me know, I'll swear you are no sailor, Blue jacket or no, Brass button or no, sailor, Anchor and crown or no! Sure his ship was the Jolly Briton."-- "Speak low, woman, speak low!" "And why should I speak low, sailor, About my own boy John? If I was loud as I am proud I'd sing him o'er the town! Why should I speak low, sailor?" "That good ship went down." "How's my boy--my boy? What care I for the ship, sailor, I never was aboard her. Be she afloat, or be she aground, Sinking or swimming, I'll be bound, Her owners can afford her! I say, how's my John?" "Every man on board went down, Every man aboard her." "How's my boy--my boy? What care I for the men, sailor? I'm not their mother-- How's my boy--my boy? Tell me of him and no other! How's my boy--my boy?" Sydney Dobell [1824-1874] THE LONG WRITE SEAM As I came round the harbor buoy, The lights began to gleam, No wave the land-locked water stirred, The crags were white as cream; And I marked my love by candlelight Sewing her long white seam. It's aye sewing ashore, my dear, Watch and steer at sea, It's reef and furl, and haul the line, Set sail and think of thee. I climbed to reach her cottage door; O sweetly my love sings! Like a shaft of light her voice breaks forth, My soul to meet it springs As the shining water leaped of old, When stirred by angel wings. Aye longing to list anew, Awake and in my dream, But never a song she sang like this, Sewing her long white seam. Fair fall the lights, the harbor lights, That brought me in to thee, And peace drop down on that low roof For the sight that I did see, And the voice, my dear, that rang so clear All for the love of me. For O, for O, with brows bent low By the candle's flickering gleam, Her wedding-gown it was she wrought. Sewing the long white seam. Jean Ingelow [1820-1897] STORM SONG The clouds are scudding across the moon; A misty light is on the sea; The wind in the shrouds has a wintry tune, And the foam is flying free. Brothers, a night of terror and gloom Speaks in the cloud and gathering roar; Thank God, He has given us broad sea-room, A thousand miles from shore. Down with the hatches on those who sleep! The wild and whistling deck have we; Good watch, my brothers, to-night we'll keep, While the tempest is on the sea! Though the rigging shriek in his terrible grip, And the naked spars be snapped away, Lashed to the helm, we'll drive our ship In the teeth of the whelming spray! Hark! how the surges o'erleap the deck! Hark! how the pitiless tempest raves! Ah, daylight will look upon many a wreck Drifting over the desert waves. Yet, courage, brothers! we trust the wave, With God above us, our guiding chart. So, whether to harbor or ocean-grave, Be it still with a cheery heart! Bayard Taylor [1825-1878] THE MARINER'S DREAM In slumbers of midnight the sailor-boy lay; His hammock swung loose at the sport of the wind; But watch-worn and weary, his cares flew away, And visions of happiness danced o'er his mind. He dreamed of his home, of his dear native bowers, And pleasures that waited on life's merry morn; While Memory stood sideways, half covered with flowers, And restored every rose, but secreted its thorn. Then Fancy her magical pinions spread wide, And bade the young dreamer in ecstasy rise; Now far, far behind him the green waters glide, And the cot of his forefathers blesses his eyes. The jessamine clambers in flowers o'er the thatch, And the swallow sings sweet from her nest in the wall; All trembling with transport he raises the latch, And the voices of loved ones reply to his call. A father bends o'er him with looks of delight; His cheek is impearled with a mother's warm tear; And the lips of the boy in a love-kiss unite With the lips of the maid whom his bosom holds dear. The heart of the sleeper beats high in his breast; Joy quickens his pulses, his hardships seem o'er; And a murmur of happiness steals through his rest,-- "O God! thou hast blessed me,--I ask for no more." Ah! whence is that flame which now bursts on his eye? Ah! what is that sound which now larums his ear? 'Tis the lightning's red glare, painting hell on the sky! 'Tis the crash of the thunder, the groan of the sphere! He springs from his hammock, he flies to the deck; Amazement confronts him with images dire; Wild winds and mad waves drive the vessel a wreck; The masts fly in splinters; the shrouds are on fire. Like mountains the billows tremendously swell; In vain the lost wretch calls on mercy to save; Unseen hands of spirits are ringing his knell, And the death-angel flaps his broad wing o'er the wave! O sailor-boy, woe to thy dream of delight! In darkness dissolves the gay frost-work of bliss. Where now is the picture that Fancy touched bright,-- Thy parents' fond pressure, and love's honeyed kiss? O sailor-boy! sailor-boy! never again Shall home, love, or kindred thy wishes repay; Unblessed and unhonored, down deep in the main, Full many a fathom, thy frame shall decay. No tomb shall e'er plead to remembrance for thee, Or redeem form or fame from the merciless surge; But the white foam of waves shall thy winding-sheet be, And winds, in the midnight of winter, thy dirge! On a bed of green sea-flowers thy limbs shall be laid,-- Around thy white bones the red coral shall grow; Of thy fair yellow locks threads of amber be made, And every part suit to thy mansion below. Days, months, years, and ages shall circle away, And still the vast waters above thee shall roll; Earth loses thy pattern forever and aye,-- O sailor-boy! sailor-boy! peace to thy soul! William Dimond [1780?-1837?] THE INCHCAPE ROCK No stir in the air, no stir in the sea, The ship was still as she could be; Her sails from Heaven received no motion, Her keel was steady in the ocean. Without either sign or sound of their shock, The waves flowed over the Inchcape Rock; So little they rose, so little they fell, They did not move the Inchcape Bell. The holy Abbot of Aberbrothok Had placed that bell on the Inchcape Rock; On a buoy in the storm it floated and swung, And over the waves its warning rung. When the rock was hid by the surges' swell, The mariners heard the warning bell; And then they knew the perilous Rock, And blessed the Abbot of Aberbrothok. The Sun in heaven was shining gay, All things were joyful on that day; The sea-birds screamed as they wheeled around, And there was joyance in their sound. The buoy of the Inchcape Bell was seen, A darker speck on the ocean green; Sir Ralph, the Rover, walked his deck, And he fixed his eye on the darker speck. He felt the cheering power of spring, It made him whistle, it made him sing; His heart was mirthful to excess; But the Rover's mirth was wickedness. His eye was on the Inchcape float; Quoth he, "My men, put out the boat; And row me to the Inchcape Rock, And I'll plague the Abbot of Aberbrothok." The boat is lowered, the boatmen row, And to the Inchcape Rock they go; Sir Ralph bent over from the boat, And cut the Bell from the Inchcape float. Down sank the Bell with a gurgling sound; The bubbles rose, and burst around. Quoth Sir Ralph, "The next who comes to the Rock Will not bless the Abbot of Aberbrothok." Sir Ralph, the Rover, sailed away, He scoured the seas for many a day; And now, grown rich with plundered store, He steers his course for Scotland's shore. So thick a haze o'erspreads the sky They cannot see the Sun on high; The wind hath blown a gale all day; At evening it hath died away. On the deck the Rover takes his stand; So dark it is they see no land. Quoth Sir Ralph, "It will be lighter soon, For there is the dawn of the rising Moon." "Canst hear," said one, "the breakers roar? For yonder, methinks, should be the shore." "Now where we are I cannot tell, But I wish we could hear the Inchcape Bell." They hear no sound; the swell is strong; Though the wind hath fallen, they drift along, Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock,-- "O Christ! it is the Inchcape Rock." Sir Ralph, the Rover, tore his hair; He cursed himself in his despair. The waves rush in on every side; The ship is sinking beneath the tide. But, even in his dying fear, One dreadful sound he seemed to hear,-- A sound as if, with the Inchcape Bell, The Devil below was ringing his knell. Robert Southey [1774-1843] THE SEA Through the night, through the night, In the saddest unrest, Wrapped in white, all in white, With her babe on her breast, Walks the mother so pale, Staring out on the gale, Through the night! Through the night, through the night, Where the sea lifts the wreck, Land in sight, close in sight, On the surf-flooded deck, Stands the father so brave, Driving on to his grave Through the night! Richard Henry Stoddard [1825-1903] THE SANDS OF DEE "O Mary, go and call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, And call the cattle home Across the sands of Dee!" The western wind was wild and dank with foam, And all alone went she. The western tide crept up along the sand, And o'er and o'er the sand, And round and round the sand, As far as eye could see. The rolling mist came down and hid the land: And never home came she. "Oh! is it weed, or fish, or floating hair-- A tress of golden hair, A drowned maiden's hair Above the nets at sea? Was never salmon yet that shone so fair Among the stakes on Dee." They rowed her in across the rolling foam, The cruel crawling foam, The cruel hungry foam, To her grave beside the sea: But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home Across the sands of Dee! Charles Kingsley [1819-1875] THE THREE FISHERS Three fishers went sailing away to the West, Away to the West as the sun went down; Each thought on the woman who loved him the best, And the children stood watching them out of the town; For men must work, and women must weep, And there's little to earn, and many to keep, Though the harbor bar be moaning. Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower And they trimmed the lamps as the sun went down; They looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower, And the night-rack came rolling up ragged and brown. But men must work, and women must weep, Though storms be sudden, and waters deep, And the harbor bar be moaning. Three corpses lay out on the shining sands In the morning gleam as the tide went down, And the women are weeping and wringing their hands For those who will never come home to the town; For men must work, and women must weep, And the sooner it's over, the sooner to sleep; And good-by to the bar and its moaning. Charles Kingsley [1819-1875] BALLAD In the summer even, While yet the dew was hoar, I went plucking purple pansies, Till my love should come to shore. The fishing-lights their dances Were keeping out at sea, And come, I sung, my true love! Come hasten home to me! But the sea, it fell a-moaning, And the white gulls rocked thereon; And the young moon dropped from heaven, And the lights hid one by one. All silently their glances Slipped down the cruel sea, And wait! cried the night and wind and storm,-- Wait, till I come to thee! Harriet Prescott Spofford [1835-1921] THE NORTHERN STAR A Tynemouth Ship The Northern Star Sailed over the bar Bound to the Baltic Sea; In the morning gray She stretched away:-- 'Twas a weary day to me! For many an hour In sleet and shower By the lighthouse rock I stray; And watch till dark For the winged bark Of him that is far away. The castle's bound I wander round, Amidst the grassy graves: But all I hear Is the north wind drear, And all I see are the waves. The Northern Star Is set afar! Set in the Baltic Sea: And the waves have spread The sandy bed That holds my Love from me. Unknown THE FISHER'S WIDOW The boats go out and the boats come in Under the wintry sky; And the rain and foam are white in the wind, And the white gulls cry. She sees the sea when the wind is wild Swept by a windy rain; And her heart's a-weary of sea and land As the long days wane. She sees the torn sails fly in the foam, Broad on the sky-line gray; And the boats go out and the boats come in, But there's one away. Arthur Symons [1865- CALLER HERRIN' Wha'll buy my caller herrin'? They're bonny fish and halesome farin'; Wha'll buy my caller herrin', New drawn frae the Forth? When ye were sleepin' on your pillows, Dreamed ye aught o' our puir fellows, Darkling as they faced the billows, A' to fill the woven willows? Buy my caller herrin', New drawn frae the Forth! Wha'll buy my caller herrin'? They're no brought here without brave darin'; Buy my caller herrin', Hauled through wind and rain. Wha'll buy my caller herrin', New drawn frae the Forth? Wha'll buy my caller herrin'? Oh, ye may ca' them vulgar farin'; Wives and mithers, maist despairin', Ca' them lives o' men. Wha'll buy my caller herrin', New drawn frae the Forth? When the creel o' herrin' passes, Ladies, clad in silks and laces, Gather in their braw pelisses, Cast their heads, and screw their faces. Wha'll buy my caller herrin', New drawn frae the Forth? Caller herrin's no got lightly:-- Ye can trip the spring fu' tightlie; Spite o' tauntin', flauntin', flingin', Gow has set you a' a-singin' Wha'll buy my caller herrin', New drawn frae the Forth?" Neebor wives! now tent my tellin': When the bonny fish ye're sellin', At ae word be, in ye're dealin'! Truth will stand, when a' thing's failin', Wha'll buy my caller herrin', New drawn frae the Forth? Carolina Nairne [1766-1845] HANNAH BINDING SHOES Poor lone Hannah, Sitting at the window, binding shoes: Faded, wrinkled, Sitting, stitching, in a mournful muse. Bright-eyed beauty once was she, When the bloom was on the tree;-- Spring and winter, Hannah's at the window, binding shoes. Not a neighbor Passing, nod or answer will refuse To her whisper, "Is there from the fishers any news?" Oh, her heart's adrift with one On an endless voyage gone;-- Night and morning, Hannah's at the window, binding shoes. Fair young Hannah, Ben, the sunburnt fisher, gaily wooes; Hale and clever, For a willing heart and hand he sues. May-day skies are all aglow, And the waves are laughing so! For her wedding Hannah leaves her window and her shoes. May is passing; 'Mid the apple-boughs a pigeon cooes: Hannah shudders, For the mild south-wester mischief brews. Round the rocks of Marblehead, Outward bound, a schooner sped; Silent, lonesome, Hannah's at the window, binding shoes. 'Tis November: Now no tear her wasted cheek bedews, From Newfoundland Not a sail returning will she lose, Whispering hoarsely: "Fishermen, Have you, have you heard of Ben?" Old with watching, Hannah's at the window, binding shoes. Twenty winters Bleak and drear the ragged shore she views. Twenty seasons:-- Never one has brought her any news. Still her dim eyes silently Chase the white sails o'er the sea;-- Hopeless, faithful, Hannah's at the window, binding shoes. Lucy Larcom [1824-1893] THE SAILOR A Romaic Ballad Thou that hast a daughter For one to woo and wed, Give her to a husband With snow upon his head; Oh, give her to an old man, Though little joy it be, Before the best young sailor That sails upon the sea! How luckless is the sailor When sick and like to die; He sees no tender mother, No sweetheart standing by. Only the captain speaks to him,-- Stand up, stand up, young man, And steer the ship to haven, As none beside thee can. Thou says't to me, "Stand, stand up"; I say to thee, take hold, Lift me a little from the deck, My hands and feet are cold. And let my head, I pray thee, With handkerchiefs be bound; There, take my love's gold handkerchief, And tie it tightly round. Now bring the chart, the doleful chart; See, where these mountains meet-- The clouds are thick around their head, The mists around their feet: Cast anchor here; 'tis deep and safe Within the rocky cleft; The little anchor on the right, The great one on the left. And now to thee, O captain, Most earnestly I pray, That they may never bury me In church or cloister gray;-- But on the windy sea-beach, At the ending of the land, All on the surly sea-beach, Deep down into the sand. For there will come the sailors, Their voices I shall hear, And at casting of the anchor The yo-ho loud and clear; And at hauling of the anchor The yo-ho and the cheer,-- Farewell, my love, for to thy bay I never more may steer! William Allingham [1824-1889] THE BURIAL OF THE DANE Blue gulf all around us, Blue sky overhead-- Muster all on the quarter, We must bury the dead! It is but a Danish sailor, Rugged of front and form; A common son of the forecastle, Grizzled with sun and storm. His name, and the strand he hailed from We know, and there's nothing more! But perhaps his mother is waiting In the lonely Island of Fohr. Still, as he lay there dying, Reason drifting awreck, "'Tis my watch." he would mutter, "I must go upon deck!" Aye, on deck, by the foremast! But watch and lookout are done; The Union Jack laid o'er him, How quiet he lies in the sun! Slow the ponderous engine, Stay the hurrying shaft; Let the roll of the ocean Cradle our giant craft; Gather around the grating, Carry your messmate aft! Stand in order, and listen To the holiest page of prayer! Let every foot be quiet, Every head be bare-- The soft trade-wind is lifting A hundred locks of hair. Our captain reads the service, (A little spray on his cheeks) The grand old words of burial, And the trust a true heart seeks:-- "We therefore commit his body To the deep"--and, as he speaks, Launched from the weather railing, Swift as the eye can mark, The ghastly, shotted hammock Plunges, away from the shark, Down, a thousand fathoms, Down into the dark! A thousand summers and winters The stormy Gulf shall roll High o'er his canvas coffin; But, silence to doubt and dole:-- There's a quiet harbor somewhere For the poor aweary soul. Free the fettered engine, Speed the tireless shaft, Loose to'gallant and topsail, The breeze is fair abaft! Blue sea all around us, Blue sky bright o'erhead-- Every man to his duty, We have buried our dead! Henry Howard Brownell [1820-1872] TOM BOWLING Here, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling, The darling of our crew; No more he'll hear the tempest howling, For death has broached him to. His form was of the manliest beauty, His heart was kind and soft; Faithful, below, he did his duty; But now he's gone aloft. Tom never from his word departed, His virtues were so rare; His friends were many and true-hearted, His Poll was kind and fair: And then he'd sing, so blithe and jolly, Ah, many's the time and oft! But mirth is turned to melancholy, For Tom is gone aloft. Yet shall poor Tom find pleasant weather, When He, who all commands, Shall give, to call Life's crew together, The word to "pipe all hands." Thus Death, who Kings and Tars despatches, In vain Tom's life has doffed; For, though his body's under hatches, His soul is gone aloft. Charles Dibdin [1745-1814] MESSMATES Ha gave us all a good-by cheerily At the first dawn of day; We dropped him down the side full drearily When the light died away. It's a dead dark watch that he's a-keeping there, And a long, long night that lags a-creeping there, Where the Trades and the tides roll over him And the great ships go by. He's there alone with green seas rocking him For a thousand miles around; He's there alone with dumb things mocking him, And we're homeward bound. It's a long, lone watch that he's a-keeping there, And a dead cold night that lags a-creeping there, While the months and the years roll over him And the great ships go by. I wonder if the tramps come near enough, As they thrash to and fro, And the battleships' bells ring clear enough To be heard down below; If through all the lone watch that he's a-keeping there, And the long, cold night that lags a-creeping there, The voices of the sailor-men shall comfort him When the great ships go by. Henry Newbolt [1862- THE LAST BUCCANEER Oh, England is a pleasant place for them that's rich and high, But England is a cruel place for such poor folks as I; And such a port for mariners I ne'er shall see again As the pleasant Isle of Aves, beside the Spanish main. There were forty craft in Aves that were both swift and stout, All furnished well with small arms and cannons round about; And a thousand men in Aves made laws so fair and free To choose their valiant captains and obey them loyally. Thence we sailed against the Spaniard with his hoards of plate and gold, Which he wrung with cruel tortures from Indian folk of old; Likewise the merchant captains, with hearts as hard as stone, Who flog men and keelhaul them, and starve them to the bone. Oh, the palms grew high in Aves, and fruits that shone like gold, And the colibris and parrots they were gorgeous to behold; And the negro maids to Aves from bondage fast did flee, To welcome gallant sailors, a-sweeping in from sea. Oh, sweet it was in Aves to hear the landward breeze, A-swing with good tobacco in a net between the trees, With a negro lass to fan you, while you listened to the roar Of the breakers on the reef outside, that never touched the shore. But Scripture saith, an ending to all fine things must be; So the King's ships sailed on Aves, and quite put down were we. All day we fought like bulldogs, but they burst the booms at night; And I fled in a piragua, sore wounded, from the fight. Nine days I floated starving, and a negro lass beside, Till for all I tried to cheer her, the poor young thing she died; But as I lay a-gasping, a Bristol sail came by, And brought me home to England here, to beg until I die. And now I'm old and going--I'm sure I can't tell where; One comfort is, this world's so hard, I can't be worse off there: If I might but be a sea-dove, I'd fly across the main, To the pleasant Isle of Aves, to look at it once again. Charles Kingsley [1819-1875] THE LAST BUCCANEER The winds were yelling, the waves were swelling, The sky was black and drear, When the crew with eyes of flame brought the ship without a name Alongside the last Buccaneer. "Whence flies your sloop full sail before so fierce a gale, When all others drive bare on the seas? Say, come ye from the shore of the holy Salvador, Or the gulf of the rich Caribbees?" "From a shore no search hath found, from a gull no line can sound, Without rudder or needle we steer; Above, below our bark dies the sea-fowl and the shark, As we fly by the last Buccaneer. "To-night there shall be heard on the rocks of Cape de Verde A loud crash and a louder roar; And to-morrow shall the deep with a heavy moaning sweep The corpses and wreck to the shore." The stately ship of Clyde securely now may ride In the breath of the citron shades; And Severn's towering mast securely now hies fast, Through the seas of the balmy Trades. From St. Jago's wealthy port, from Havannah's royal fort, The seaman goes forth without fear; For since that stormy night not a mortal hath had sight Of the flag of the last Buccaneer. Thomas Babington Macaulay [1800-1859] THE LEADSMAN'S SONG For England, when with favoring gale, Our gallant ship up Channel steered, And scudding, under easy sail, The high blue western lands appeared, To heave the lead the seaman sprang, And to the pilot cheerly sang, "By the deep--Nine." And bearing up to gain the port, Some well-known object kept in view, An abbey tower, a ruined fort, A beacon to the vessel true; While oft the lead the seaman flung, And to the pilot cheerly sung, "By the mark--Seven." And as the much-loved shore we near, With transport we behold the roof Where dwelt a friend or partner dear, Of faith and love and matchless proof. The lead once more the seaman flung, And to the watchful pilot sung, "Quarter less--Five." Now to her berth the ship draws nigh, With slackened sail she feels the tide, Stand clear the cable is the cry, The anchor's gone, we safely ride. The watch is set, and through the night, We hear the seaman with delight Proclaim--"All's well." Charles Dibdin [1745-1814] HOMEWARD BOUND Head the ship for England! Shake out every sail! Blithe leap the billows, Merry sings the gale. Captain, work the reckoning; How many knots a day?-- Round the world and home again, That's the sailor's way! We've traded with the Yankees, Brazilians and Chinese; We've laughed with dusky beauties In shade of tall palm-trees; Across the line and Gulf-Stream-- Round by Table Bay-- Everywhere and home again, That's the sailor's way! Nightly stands the North Star Higher on our bow; Straight we run for England; Our thoughts are in it now. Jolly times with friends ashore, When we've drawn our pay!-- All about and home again, That's the sailor's way! Tom will to his parents, Jack will to his dear, Joe to wife and children, Bob to pipes and beer; Dicky to the dancing-room, To hear the fiddles play;-- Round the world and home again, That's the sailor's way! William Allingham [1824-1889] THE SIMPLE LIFE THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings. I will arise and go now, for always, night and day, I hear lake-water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart's core. William Butler Yeats [1865- A WISH Mine be a cot beside the hill; A bee-hive's hum shall soothe my ear; A willowy brook, that turns a mill, With many a fall shall linger near. The swallow, oft, beneath my thatch Shall twitter from her clay-built nest; Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch, And share my meal, a welcome guest. Around my ivied porch shall spring Each fragrant flower that drinks the dew; And Lucy, at her wheel, shall sing In russet-gown and apron blue. The village-church among the trees, Where first our marriage-vows were given, With merry peals shall swell the breeze And point with taper spire to Heaven. Samuel Rogers [1763-1855] ODE ON SOLITUDE Happy the man, whose wish and care A few paternal acres bound, Content to breathe his native air In his own ground. Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, Whose flocks supply him with attire, Whose trees in summer yield him shade, In winter, fire. Blest, who can unconcernedly find Hours, days, and years, slide soft away In health of body, peace of mind, Quiet by day; Sound sleep by night; study and ease Together mixed, sweet recreation, And innocence, which most does please, With meditation. Thus let me live, unseen, unknown; Thus unlamented let me die; Steal from the world, and not a stone Tell where I lie. Alexander Pope [1688-1744] "THRICE HAPPY HE" Thrice happy he, who by some shady grove, Far from the clamorous world, doth live his own; Though solitary, who is not alone, But doth converse with that eternal love. O how more sweet is birds' harmonious moan, Or the soft sobbings of the widowed dove, Than those smooth whisperings near a prince's throne, Which good make doubtful, do the evil approve! Or how more sweet is Zephyr's wholesome breath, And sighs perfumed which do the flowers unfold, Than that applause vain honor doth bequeath! How sweet are streams to poison drunk in gold! The world is full of horrors, falsehoods, slights; Woods' silent shades have only true delights. William Drummond [1585-1649] "UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE" From "As You Like It" Under the greenwood tree, Who loves to lie with me, And turn his merry note Unto the sweet bird's throat, Come hither, come hither, come hither: Here shall he see No enemy But winter and rough weather. Who doth ambition shun, And loves to live i' the sun, Seeking the food he eats, And pleased with what he gets, Come hither, come hither, come hither: Here shall he see No enemy But winter and rough weather. William Shakespeare [1564-1616] CORIDON'S SONG In "The Complete Angler" Oh, the sweet contentment The countryman doth find. High trolollie lollie loe, High trolollie lee, That quiet contemplation Possesseth all my mind: Then care away, And wend along with me. For courts are full of flattery, As hath too oft been tried; High trolollie lollie loe, High trolollie lee, The city full of wantonness, And both are full of pride: But oh, the honest countryman Speaks truly from his heart, High trolollie lollie loe, High trolollie lee, His pride is in his tillage, His horses and his cart: Our clothing is good sheepskins, Gray russet for our wives, High trolollie lollie loe, High trolollie lee, Tis warmth and not gay clothing That doth prolong our lives: The plowman, though he labor hard, Yet on the holiday, High trolollie lollie loe, High trolollie lee, No emperor so merrily Does pass his time away: To recompense our tillage The heavens afford us showers; High trolollie lollie loe, High trolollie lee, And for our sweet refreshments The earth affords us bowers: The cuckoo and the nightingale Full merrily do sing, High trolollie lollie loe, High trolollie lee, And with their pleasant roundelays Bid welcome to the spring: This is not half the happiness The countryman enjoys; High trolollie lollie loe, High trolollie lee, Though others think they have as much Yet he that says so lies: Then come away, turn Countryman with me. John Chalkhill [fl. 1648] THE OLD SQUIRE I like the hunting of the hare Better than that of the fox; I like the joyous morning air, And the crowing of the cocks. I like the calm of the early fields, The ducks asleep by the lake, The quiet hour which nature yields Before mankind is awake. I like the pheasants and feeding things Of the unsuspicious morn; I like the flap of the wood-pigeon's wings As she rises from the corn. I like the blackbird's shriek, and his rush From the turnips as I pass by, And the partridge hiding her head in a bush, For her young ones cannot fly. I like these things, and I like to ride, When all the world is in bed, To the top of the hill where the sky grows wide, And where the sun grows red. The beagles at my horse-heels trot In silence after me; There's Ruby, Roger, Diamond, Dot, Old Slut and Margery,-- A score of names well used, and dear, The names my childhood knew; The horn with which I rouse their cheer, Is the horn my father blew. I like the hunting of the hare Better than that of the fox; The new world still is all less fair Than the old world it mocks. I covet not a wider range Than these dear manors give; I take my pleasures without change, And as I lived I live. I leave my neighbors to their thought; My choice it is, and pride, On my own lands to find my sport, In my own fields to ride. The hare herself no better loves The field where she was bred, Than I the habit of these groves, My own inherited. I know my quarries every one, The meuse where she sits low; The road she chose to-day was run A hundred years ago. The lags, the gills, the forest ways, The hedgerows one and all, These are the kingdoms of my chase, And bounded by my wall; Nor has the world a better thing, Though one should search it round, Than thus to live one's own sole king, Upon one's own sole ground. I like the hunting of the hare; It brings me, day by day, The memory of old days as fair, With dead men passed away. To these, as homeward still I ply And pass the churchyard gate, Where all are laid as I must lie I stop and raise my hat. I like the hunting of the hare; New sports I hold in scorn. I like to be as my fathers were, In the days ere I was born. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt [1840-1922] INSCRIPTION IN A HERMITAGE Beneath this stony roof reclined, I soothe to peace my pensive mind; And while, to shade my lowly cave, Embowering elms their umbrage wave; And while the maple dish is mine-- The beechen cup, unstained with wine-- I scorn the gay licentious crowd, Nor heed the toys that deck the proud. Within my limits, lone and still, The blackbird pipes in artless trill; Fast by my couch, congenial guest, The wren has wove her mossy nest; From busy scenes and brighter skies, To lurk with innocence, she flies, Here hopes in safe repose to dwell, Nor aught suspects the sylvan cell. At morn I take my customed round, To mark how buds yon shrubby mound, And every opening primrose count, That trimly paints my blooming mount; Or o'er the sculptures, quaint and rude, That grace my gloomy solitude, I teach in winding wreaths to stray Fantastic ivy's gadding spray. At eve, within yon studious nook, I ope my brass-embossed book, Portrayed with many a holy deed Of martyrs, crowned with heavenly meed; Then, as my taper waxes dim, Chant, ere I sleep, my measured hymn, And at the close, the gleams behold Of parting wings, be-dropt with gold. While such pure joys my bliss create, Who but would smile at guilty state? Who but would wish his holy lot In calm oblivion's humble grot? Who but would cast his pomp away, To take my staff, and amice gray; And to the world's tumultuous stage Prefer the blameless hermitage? Thomas Warton [1728-1790] THE RETIREMENT Farewell, thou busy world, and may We never meet again; Here I can eat and sleep and pray, And do more good in one short day Than he who his whole age outwears Upon the most conspicuous theaters, Where naught but vanity and vice appears. Good God! how sweet are all things here! How beautiful the fields appear! How cleanly do we feed and lie! Lord! what good hours do we keep! How quietly we sleep! What peace, what unanimity! How innocent from the lewd fashion Is all our business, all our recreation! O, how happy here's our leisure! O, how innocent our pleasure! O ye valleys! O ye mountains! O ye groves, and crystal fountains! How I love, at liberty, By turns to come and visit ye! Dear solitude, the soul's best friend, That man acquainted with himself dost make, And all his Maker's wonders to attend, With thee I here converse at will, And would be glad to do so still, For it is thou alone that keep'st the soul awake. How calm and quiet a delight Is it, alone, To read and meditate and write, By none offended, and offending none! To walk, ride, sit, or sleep at one's own ease; And, pleasing a man's self, none other to displease. O my beloved nymph, fair Dove, Princess of rivers, how I love Upon thy flowery banks to lie, And view thy silver stream, When gilded by a Summer's beam! And in it all thy wanton fry Playing at liberty, And, with my angle, upon them The all of treachery I ever learned industriously to try! Such streams Rome's yellow Tiber cannot show, The Iberian Tagus, or Ligurian Po; The Maese, the Danube, and the Rhine, Are puddle-water, all, compared with thine; And Loire's pure streams yet too polluted are With thine, much purer, to compare; The rapid Garonne and the winding Seine Are both too mean, Beloved Dove, with thee To vie priority; Nay, Tame and Isis, when conjoined, submit, And lay their trophies at thy silver feet. O my beloved rocks, that rise To awe the earth and brave the skies! From some aspiring mountain's crown How dearly do I love, Giddy with pleasure to look down; And from the vales to view the noble heights above; O my beloved caves! from dog-star's heat, And all anxieties, my safe retreat; What safety, privacy, what true delight, In the artificial light Your gloomy entrails make, Have I taken, do I take! How oft, when grief has made me fly, To hide me from society E'en of my dearest friends, have I, In your recesses' friendly shade, All my sorrows open laid, And my most secret woes intrusted to your privacy! Lord! would men let me alone, What an over-happy one Should I think myself to be-- Might I in this desert place, (Which most men in discourse disgrace) Live but undisturbed and free! Here, in this despised recess, Would I, maugre Winter's cold, And the Summer's worst excess, Try to live out to sixty full years old, And, all the while, Without an envious eye On any thriving under Fortune's smile, Contented live, and then contented die. Charles Cotton [1630-1687] THE COUNTRY FAITH Here in the country's heart, Where the grass is green, Life is the same sweet life As it e'er hath been. Trust in a God still lives, And the bell at morn Floats with a thought of God O'er the rising corn. God comes down in the rain, And the crop grows tall-- This is the country faith And best of all! Norman Gale [1862- TRULY GREAT My walls outside must have some flowers, My walls within must have some books; A house that's small; a garden large, And in it leafy nooks: A little gold that's sure each week; That comes not from my living kind, But from a dead man in his grave, Who cannot change his mind: A lovely wife, and gentle too; Contented that no eyes but mine Can see her many charms, nor voice To call her beauty fine: Where she would in that stone cage live, A self made prisoner, with me; While many a wild bird sang around, On gate, on bush, on tree. And she sometimes to answer them, In her far sweeter voice than all; Till birds, that loved to look on leaves, Will doat on a stone wall. With this small house, this garden large, This little gold, this lovely mate, With health in body, peace at heart-- Show me a man more great. William H. Davies [1870- EARLY MORNING AT BARGIS Clear air and grassy lea, Stream-song and cattle-bell-- Dear man, what fools are we In prison-walls to dwell! To live our days apart From green things and wide skies, And let the wistful heart Be cut and crushed with lies! Bright peaks!--And suddenly Light floods the placid dell, The grass-tops brush my knee: A good crop it will be, So all is well! O man, what fools are we In prison-walls to dwell! Hermann Hagedorn [1882- THE CUP The cup I sing is a cup of gold Many and many a century old, Sculptured fair, and over-filled With wine of a generous vintage, spilled In crystal currents and foaming tides All round its luminous, pictured sides. Old Time enameled and embossed This ancient cup at an infinite cost. Its frame he wrought of metal that run Red from the furnace of the sun. Ages on ages slowly rolled Before the glowing mass was cold, And still he toiled at the antique mold,-- Turning it fast in his fashioning hand, Tracing circle, layer, and band, Carving figures quaint and strange, Pursuing, through many a wondrous change, The symmetry of a plan divine. At last he poured the lustrous wine, Crowned high the radiant wave with light, And held aloft the goblet bright, Half in shadow, and wreathed in mist Of purple, amber, and amethyst. This is the goblet from whose brink All creatures that have life must drink: Foemen and lovers, haughty lord, And sallow beggar with lips abhorred. The new-born infant, ere it gain The mother's breast, this wine must drain. The oak with its subtle juice is fed, The rose drinks till her cheeks are red, And the dimpled, dainty violet sips The limpid stream with loving lips. It holds the blood of sun and star, And all pure essences that are: No fruit so high on the heavenly vine, Whose golden hanging clusters shine On the far-off shadowy midnight hills, But some sweet influence it distils That slideth down the silvery rills. Here Wisdom drowned her dangerous thought, The early gods their secrets brought; Beauty, in quivering lines of light, Ripples before the ravished sight: And the unseen mystic spheres combine To charm the cup and drug the wine. All day I drink of the wine, and deep In its stainless waves my senses steep; All night my peaceful soul lies drowned In hollows of the cup profound; Again each morn I clamber up The emerald crater of the cup, On massive knobs of jasper stand And view the azure ring expand: I watch the foam-wreaths toss and swim In the wine that o'erruns the jeweled rim:-- Edges of chrysolite emerge, Dawn-tinted, from the misty surge: My thrilled, uncovered front I lave, My eager senses kiss the wave, And drain, with its viewless draught, the lore That kindles the bosom's secret core, And the fire that maddens the poet's brain With wild sweet ardor and heavenly pain. John Townsend Trowbridge [1827-1916] A STRIP OF BLUE I do not own an inch of land, But all I see is mine,-- The orchards and the mowing-fields, The lawns and gardens fine. The winds my tax-collectors are, They bring me tithes divine,-- Wild scents and subtle essences, A tribute rare and free; And, more magnificent than all, My window keeps for me A glimpse of blue immensity,-- A little strip of sea. Richer am I than he who owns Great fleets and argosies; I have a share in every ship Won by the inland breeze To loiter on yon airy road Above the apple-trees. I freight them with my untold dreams; Each bears my own picked crew; And nobler cargoes wait for them Than ever India knew,-- My ships that sail into the East Across that outlet blue. Sometimes they seem like living shapes, The people of the sky,-- Guests in white raiment coming down From Heaven, which is close by; I call them by familiar names, As one by one draws nigh, So white, so light, so spirit-like, From violet mists they bloom! The aching wastes of the unknown Are half reclaimed from gloom, Since on life's hospitable sea All souls find sailing-room. The ocean grows a weariness With nothing else in sight; Its east and west, its north and south, Spread out from morn to night; We miss the warm, caressing shore, Its brooding shade and light. A part is greater than the whole; By hints are mysteries told. The fringes of eternity,-- God's sweeping garment-fold, In that bright shred of glittering sea, I reach out for, and hold. The sails, like flakes of roseate pearl, Float in upon the mist; The waves are broken precious stones,-- Sapphire and amethyst, Washed from celestial basement walls By suns unsetting kissed. Out through the utmost gates of space, Past where the gray stars drift, To the widening Infinite, my soul Glides on, a vessel swift; Yet loses not her anchorage In yonder azure rift. Here sit I, as a little child: The threshold of God's door Is that clear band of chrysoprase; Now the vast temple floor, The blinding glory of the dome I bow my head before: Thy universe, O God, is home, In height or depth, to me; Yet here upon thy footstool green Content am I to be; Glad, when is opened unto my need Some sea-like glimpse of thee. Lucy Larcom [1824-1893] AN ODE TO MASTER ANTHONY STAFFORD To Hasten Him Into The Country Come, spur away! I have no patience for a longer stay, But must go down And leave the chargeable noise of this great town: I will the country see, Where old simplicity, Though hid in gray, Doth look more gay Than foppery in plush and scarlet clad. Farewell, you city wits, that are Almost at civil war-- 'Tis time that I grow wise, when all the world grows mad. More of my days I will not spend to gain an idiot's praise; Or to make sport For some slight Puisne of the Inns of Court. Then, worthy Stafford, say, How shall we spend the day? With what delights Shorten the nights? When from this tumult we are got secure, Where mirth with all her freedom goes, Yet shall no finger lose; Where every word is thought, and every thought is pure? There from the tree We'll cherries pluck, and pick the strawberry; And every day Go see the wholesome country girls make hay, Whose brown hath lovelier grace Than any painted face That I do know Hyde Park can show: Where I had rather gain a kiss than meet (Though some of them in greater state Might court my love with plate) The beauties of the Cheap, and wives of Lombard Street. But think upon Some other pleasures: these to me are none. Why do I prate Of women, that are things against my fate! I never mean to wed That torture to my bed: My Muse is she My love shall be. Let clowns get wealth and heirs: when I am gone And that great bugbear, grisly Death, Shall take this idle breath, If I a poem leave, that poem is my son. Of this no more! We'll rather taste the bright Pomona's store. No fruit shall 'scape Our palates, from the damson to the grape. Then, full, we'll seek a shade, And hear what music's made; How Philomel Her tale doth tell, And how the other birds do fill the choir; The thrush and blackbird lend their throats, Warbling melodious notes; We will all sports enjoy which others but desire. Ours is the sky, Where at what fowl we please our hawk shall fly: Nor will we spare To hunt the crafty fox or timorous hare; But let our hounds run loose In any ground they'll choose; The buck shall fall, The stag, and all. Our pleasures must from their own warrants be, For to my Muse, if not to me, I'm sure all game is free: Heaven, earth, are all but parts of her great royalty. And when we mean To taste of Bacchus' blessings now and then, And drink by stealth A cup or two to noble Barkley's health, I'll take my pipe and try The Phrygian melody; Which he that hears, Lets through his ears A madness to distemper all the brain: Then I another pipe will take And Done music make, To civilize with graver notes our wits again. Thomas Randolph [1605-1635] "THE MIDGES DANCE ABOON THE BURN" The midges dance aboon the burn; The dews begin to fa'; The paitricks doun the rushy holm Set up their e'ening ca'. Now loud and clear the blackbird's sang Rings through the briery shaw, While, flitting gay, the swallows play Around the castle wa'. Beneath the golden gloamin' sky The mavis mends her lay; The redbreast pours his sweetest strains To charm the lingering day; While weary yeldrins seem to wail Their little nestlings torn, The merry wren, frae den to den, Gaes jinking through the thorn. The roses fauld their silken leaves, The foxglove shuts its bell; The honeysuckle and the birk Spread fragrance through the dell.-- Let others crowd the giddy court Of mirth and revelry, The simple joys that Nature yields Are dearer far to me. Robert Tannahill [1774-1810] THE PLOW Above yon somber swell of land Thou seest the dawn's grave orange hue, With one pale streak like yellow sand, And over that a vein of blue. The air is cold above the woods; All silent is the earth and sky, Except with his own lonely moods The blackbird holds a colloquy. Over the broad hill creeps a beam, Like hope that gilds a good man's brow; And now ascends the nostril-steam Of stalwart horses come to plow. Ye rigid plowmen, bear in mind Your labor is for future hours! Advance--spare not--nor look behind-- Plow deep and straight with all your powers. Richard Hengist Horne [1803-1884] THE USEFUL PLOW A country life is sweet! In moderate cold and heat, To walk in the air how pleasant and fair! In every field of wheat, The fairest of flowers adorning the bowers, And every meadow's brow; So that I say, no courtier may Compare with them who clothe in gray, And follow the useful plow. They rise with the morning lark, And labor till almost dark, Then, folding their sheep, they hasten to sleep While every pleasant park Next morning is ringing with birds that are singing On each green, tender bough. With what content and merriment Their days are spent, whose minds are bent To follow the, useful plow. Unknown "TO ONE WHO HAS BEEN LONG IN CITY PENT" To one who has been long in city pent, 'Tis very sweet to look into the fair And open face of heaven,--to breathe a prayer Full in the smile of the blue firmament. Who is more happy, when, with heart's content, Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair And gentle tale of love and languishment? Returning home at evening, with an ear Catching the notes of Philomel,--and eye Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career, He mourns that day so soon has glided by, E'en like the passage of an angel's tear That falls through the clear ether silently. John Keats [1795-1821] THE QUIET LIFE What pleasure have great princes More dainty to their choice Than herdsmen wild, who careless In quiet life rejoice, And fortune's fate not fearing Sing sweet in summer morning? Their dealings plain and rightful, Are void of all deceit; They never know how spiteful It is to kneel and wait On favorite, presumptuous, Whose pride is vain and sumptuous. All day their flocks each tendeth; At night, they take their rest; More quiet than who sendeth His ship unto the East, Where gold and pearl are plenty; But getting, very dainty. For lawyers and their pleading, They 'steem it not a straw; They think that honest meaning Is of itself a law: Whence conscience judgeth plainly, They spend no money vainly. O happy who thus liveth! Not caring much for gold; With clothing which sufficeth To keep him from the cold. Though poor and plain his diet Yet merry it is, and quiet. William Byrd [1538?-1623] THE WISH Well then, I now do plainly see This busy world and I shall ne'er agree; The very honey of all earthly joy Does, of all meats, the soonest cloy; And they, methinks, deserve my pity Who for it can endure the stings, The crowd, and buzz, and murmurings Of this great hive, the city! Ah, yet, ere I descend to the grave, May I a small house and large garden have; And a few friends, and many books, both true, Both wise, and both delightful too! And since Love ne'er will from me flee,-- A mistress moderately fair, And good as guardian-angels are, Only beloved, and loving me! O fountains! when in you shall I Myself eased of unpeaceful thoughts espy? O fields! O woods! when, when shall I be made The happy tenant of your shade? Here's the spring-head of pleasure's flood! Here's wealthy Nature's treasury, Where all the riches lie, that she Has coined and stamped for good. Pride and ambition here Only in far-fetched metaphors appear; Here naught but winds can hurtful murmurs scatter, And naught but echo flatter. The gods, when they descended, hither From heaven did always choose their way; And therefore we may boldly say That 'tis the way too thither. How happy here should I And one dear She live, and embracing die! She who is all the world, and can exclude In deserts solitude. I should have then this only fear: Lest men, when they my pleasures see, Should hither throng to live like me, And so make a city here. Abraham Cowley [1618-1667] EXPOSTULATION AND REPLY "Why, William, on that old gray stone, Thus for the length of half a day, Why, William, sit you thus alone, And dream your time away? "Where are your books?--that light bequeathed To beings else forlorn and blind! Up! up! and drink the spirit breathed From dead men to their kind. "You look round on your Mother Earth, As if she for no purpose bore you; As if you were her first-born birth, And none had lived before you!" One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake, When life was sweet, I knew not why, To me my good friend Matthew spake And thus I made reply: "The eye--it cannot choose but see; We cannot bid the ear be still; Our bodies feel, where'er they be, Against or with our will. "Nor less I dream that there are Powers Which of themselves our minds impress; That we can feed this mind of ours In a wise passiveness. "Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum Of things forever speaking, That nothing of itself will come, But we must still be seeking? "--Then ask not wherefore, here, alone, Conversing as I may, I sit upon this old gray stone, And dream my time away." William Wordsworth [1770-1850] THE TABLES TURNED An Evening Scene On The Same Subject Up! up! my friend, and quit your books; Or surely you'll grow double: Up! up! my friend, and clear your looks; Why all this toil and trouble? The sun, above the mountain's head, A freshening luster mellow Through all the long green fields has spread, His first sweet evening yellow. Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife: Come, hear the woodland linnet, How sweet his music! on my life There's more of wisdom in it. And hark! how blithe the throstle sings! He, too, is no mean preacher: Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher. She has a world of ready wealth, Our minds and hearts to bless-- Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health, Truth breathed by cheerfulness. One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can. Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect Misshapes the beauteous forms of things:-- We murder to dissect. Enough of Science and of Art; Close up those barren leaves; Come forth, and bring with you a heart That watches and receives. William Wordsworth [1770-1850] SIMPLE NATURE Be it not mine to steal the cultured flower From any garden of the rich and great, Nor seek with care, through many a weary hour, Some novel form of wonder to create. Enough for me the leafy woods to rove, And gather simple cups of morning dew, Or, in the fields and meadows that I love, Find beauty in their bells of every hue. Thus round my cottage floats a fragrant air, And though the rustic plot be humbly laid, Yet, like the lilies gladly growing there, I have not toiled, but take what God has made. My Lord Ambition passed, and smiled in scorn; I plucked a rose, and, lo! it had no thorn. George John Romanes [1848-1894] "I FEAR NO POWER A WOMAN WIELDS" I fear no power a woman wields While I can have the woods and fields, With comradeship alone of gun, Gray marsh-wastes and the burning sun. For aye the heart's most poignant pain Will wear away 'neath hail and rain, And rush of winds through branches bare With something still to do and dare,-- The lonely watch beside the shore, The wild-fowl's cry, the sweep of oar, The paths of virgin sky to scan Untrod, and so uncursed by man. Gramercy, for thy haunting face, Thy charm of voice and lissome grace, I fear no power a woman wields While I can have the woods and fields. Ernest McGaffey [1861- A RUNNABLE STAG When the pods went pop on the broom, green broom And apples began to be golden-skinned, We harbored a stag in the Priory coomb, And we feathered his trail up-wind, up-wind, We feathered his trail up-wind-- A stag of warrant, a stag, a stag, A runnable stag, a kingly crop, Brow, bay and tray and three on top, A stag, a runnable stag. Then the huntsman's horn rang yap, yap, yap, And "Forwards" we heard the harborer shout; But 'twas only a brocket that broke a gap In the beechen underwood, driven out, From the underwood antlered out By warrant and might of the stag, the stag, The runnable stag, whose lordly mind Was bent on sleep, though beamed and tined He stood, a runnable stag. So we tufted the covert till afternoon With Tinkerman's Pup and Bell-of-the-North; And hunters were sulky and hounds out of tune Before we tufted the right stag forth, Before we tufted him forth, The stag of warrant, the wily stag, The runnable stag with his kingly crop, Brow, bay and tray and three on top, The royal and runnable stag. It was Bell-of-the-North and Tinkerman's Pup That stuck to the scent till the copse was drawn. "Tally ho! tally ho!" and the hunt was up, The tufters whipped and the pack laid on, The resolute pack laid on, And the stag of warrant away at last, The runnable stag, the same, the same, His hoofs on fire, his horns like flame, A stag, a runnable stag. "Let your gelding be: if you check or chide He stumbles at once and you're out of the hunt; For three hundred gentlemen, able to ride, On hunters accustomed to bear the brunt, Accustomed to bear the brunt, Are after the runnable stag, the stag, The runnable stag with his kingly crop Brow, bay and tray and three on top, The right, the runnable stag." By perilous paths in coomb and dell, The heather, the rocks, and the river-bed, The pace grew hot, for the scent lay well, And a runnable stag goes right ahead, The quarry went right ahead-- Ahead, ahead, and fast and far; His antlered crest, his cloven hoof, Brow, bay and tray and three aloof, The stag, the runnable stag. For a matter of twenty miles and more, By the densest hedge and the highest wall, Through herds of bullocks he baffled the lore Of harborer, huntsman, hounds and all, Of harborer, hounds and all-- The stag of warrant, the wily stag, For twenty miles, and five and five, He ran, and he never was caught alive, This stag, this runnable stag. When he turned at bay in the leafy gloom, In the emerald gloom where the brook ran deep, He heard in the distance the rollers boom, And he saw in a vision of peaceful sleep, In a wonderful vision of sleep, A stag of warrant, a stag, a stag, A runnable stag in a jewelled bed, Under the sheltering ocean dead, A stag, a runnable stag. So a fateful hope lit up his eye, And he opened his nostrils wide again, And he tossed his branching antlers high As he headed the hunt down the Charloch glen, As he raced down the echoing glen-- For five miles more, the stag, the stag, For twenty miles, and five and five, Not to be caught now, dead or alive, The stag, the runnable stag. Three hundred gentlemen, able to ride, Three hundred horses as gallant and free, Beheld him escape on the evening tide, Far out till he sank in the Severn Sea, Till he sank in the depths of the sea-- The stag, the buoyant stag, the stag That slept at last in a jewelled bed Under the sheltering ocean spread, The stag, the runnable stag. John Davidson [1857-1909] HUNTING-SONG From "King Arthur" Oh, who would stay indoor, indoor, When the horn is on the hill? (Bugle: Tarantara! With the crisp air stinging, and the huntsmen singing, And a ten-tined buck to kill! Before the sun goes down, goes down, We shall slay the buck of ten; (Bugle: Tarantara! And the priest shall say benison, and we shall ha'e venison, When we come home again. Let him that loves his ease, his ease, Keep close and house him fair; (Bugle: Tarantara! He'll still be a stranger to the merry thrill of danger And the joy of the open air. But he that loves the hills, the hills, Let him come out to-day! (Bugle: Tarantara! For the horses are neighing, and the hounds are baying, And the hunt's up, and away! Richard Hovey [1864-1900] "A-HUNTING WE WILL GO" From "Don Quixote in England" The dusky night rides down the sky, And ushers in the morn; The hounds all join in glorious cry, The huntsman winds his horn. And a-hunting we will go. The wife around her husband throws Her arms to make him stay; "My dear, it rains, it hails, it blows; You cannot hunt to-day." Yet a-hunting we will go. Away they fly to 'scape the rout, Their steeds they soundly switch; Some are thrown in, and some thrown out, And some thrown in the ditch. Yet a-hunting we will go. Sly Reynard now like lightning flies, And sweeps across the vale; And when the hounds too near he spies, He drops his bushy tail. Then a-hunting we will go. Fond Echo seems to like the sport, And join the jovial cry; The woods, the hills, the sound retort, And music fills the sky, When a-hunting we do go. At last his strength to faintness worn, Poor Reynard ceases flight; Then hungry, homeward we return, To feast away the night. And a-drinking we do go. Ye jovial hunters, in the morn Prepare then for the chase; Rise at the sounding of the horn And health with sport embrace, When a-hunting we do go. Henry Fielding [1707-1754] THE ANGLER'S INVITATION Come when the leaf comes, angle with me, Come when the bee hums over the lea, Come with the wild flowers-- Come with the wild showers-- Come when the singing bird calleth for thee! Then to the stream side, gladly we'll hie, Where the gray trout glide silently by, Or in some still place Over the hill face Hurrying onward, drop the light fly. Then, when the dew falls, homeward we'll speed To our own loved walls down on the mead, There, by the bright hearth, Holding our night mirth, We'll drink to sweet friendship in need and in deed. Thomas Tod Stoddart [1810-1880] THE ANGLER'S WISH From "The Complete Angler" I in these flowery mends would be, These crystal streams should solace me; To whose harmonious bubbling noise I, with my angle, would rejoice, Sit here, and see the turtle-dove Court his chaste mate to acts of love; Or, on that bank, feel the west-wind Breathe health and plenty; please my mind, To see sweet dewdrops kiss these flowers, And then washed off by April showers; Here, hear my Kenna sing a song: There, see a blackbird feed her young, Or a laverock build her nest; Here, give my weary spirits rest, And raise my low-pitched thoughts above Earth, or what poor mortals love: Thus, free from lawsuits, and the noise Of princes' courts, I would rejoice; Or, with my Bryan and a book, Loiter long days near Shawford brook; There sit by him, and eat my meat; There see the sun both rise and set; There bid good morning to next day; There meditate my time away; And angle on; and beg to have A quiet passage to a welcome grave. Izaak Walton [1593-1683] THE ANGLER In "The Complete Angler" O the gallant fisher's life, It is the best of any! 'Tis full of pleasure, void of strife, And 'tis beloved by many; Other joys Are but toys; Only this Lawful is; For our skill Breeds no ill, But content and pleasure. In a morning, up we rise, Ere Aurora's peeping; Drink a cup to wash our eyes, Leave the sluggard sleeping; Then we go To and fro, With our knacks At our backs, To such streams As the Thames, If we have the leisure. When we please to walk abroad For our recreation, In the fields is our abode, Full of delectation, Where, in a brook, With a hook,-- Or a lake,-- Fish we take; There we sit, For a bit, Till we fish entangle. We have gentles in a horn, We have paste and worms too; We can watch both night and morn, Suffer rain and storms too; None do here Use to swear: Oaths do fray Fish away; We sit still, Watch our quill: Fishers must not wrangle. If the sun's excessive heat Make our bodies swelter, To an osier hedge we get, For a friendly shelter; Where, in a dike, Perch or pike, Roach or dace, We do chase, Bleak or gudgeon, Without grudging; We are still contented. Or we sometimes pass an hour Under a green willow, That defends us from a shower, Making earth our pillow; Where we may Think and pray, Before death Stops our breath; Other joys Are but toys, And to be lamented. John Chalkhill [fl. 1648] WANDERLUST TO JANE: THE INVITATION Best and Brightest, come away! Fairer far than this fair day, Which, like thee, to those in sorrow, Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow To the rough year just awake In its cradle on the brake. The brightest hour of unborn Spring Through the winter wandering, Found, it seems, the halcyon morn To hoar February born; Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth, It kissed the forehead of the earth, And smiled upon the silent sea, And bade the frozen streams be free, And waked to music all their fountains, And breathed upon the frozen mountains, And like a prophetess of May Strewed flowers upon the barren way, Making the wintry world appear Like one on whom thou smilest, Dear. Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs-- To the silent wilderness Where the soul need not repress Its music, lest it should not find An echo in another's mind, While the touch of Nature's art Harmonizes heart to heart. I leave this notice on my door For each accustomed visitor:-- "I am gone into the fields To take what this sweet hour yields;-- Reflection, you may come to-morrow, Sit by the fireside with Sorrow.-- You with the unpaid bill, Despair,-- You tiresome verse-reciter, Care,-- I will pay you in the grave,-- Death will listen to your stave. Expectation too, be off! To-day is for itself enough; Hope, in pity mock not Woe With smiles, nor follow where I go; Long having lived on thy sweet food, At length I find one moment's good Alter long pain--with all your love, This you never told me of." Radiant Sister of the Day Awake! arise! and come away! To the wild woods and the plains, To the pools where winter rains Image all their roof of leaves, Where the pine its garland weaves Of sapless green, and ivy dun, Round sterns that never kiss the sun. Where the lawns and pastures be, And the sandhills of the sea;-- Where the melting hoar-frost wets The daisy-star that never sets, And wind-flowers, and violets, Which yet join not scent to hue, Crown the pale year weak and new; When the night is left behind In the deep east, dun and blind, And the blue noon is over us, And the multitudinous Billows murmur at our feet, Where the earth and ocean meet, And all things seem only one In the universal sun. Percy Bysshe Shelley [1792-1822] "MY HEART'S IN THE HIGHLANDS" My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here; My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer; A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe,-- My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go. Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North, The birthplace of valor, the country of worth; Wherever I wander, wherever I rove, The hills of the Highlands for ever I love. Farewell to the mountains high covered with snow; Farewell to the straths and green valleys below; Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods; Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods. My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here; My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer, A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe,-- My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go. Robert Burns [1759-1796] "AFAR IN THE DESERT" Afar in the desert I love to ride, With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side. When the sorrows of life the soul o'ercast, And, sick of the present, I cling to the past; When the eye is suffused with regretful tears, From the fond recollections of former years; And shadows of things that have long since fled Flit over the brain, like the ghosts of the dead: Bright visions of glory that vanished too soon; Day-dreams that departed ere manhood's noon; Attachments by fate or falsehood reft; Companions of early days lost or left-- And my native land--whose magical name Thrills to the heart like electric flame; The home of my childhood; the haunts of my prime; All the passions and scenes of that rapturous time When the feelings were young, and the world was new, Like the fresh bowers of Eden unfolding to view; All--all now forsaken--forgotten--foregone! And I--a lone exile remembered of none-- My high aims abandoned,--my good acts undone-- Aweary of all that is under the sun-- With that sadness of heart which no stranger may scan, I fly to the desert afar from man. Afar in the desert I love to ride, With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side, When the wild turmoil of this wearisome life, With its scenes of oppression, corruption, and strife-- The proud man's frown, and the base man's fear-- The scorner's laugh, and the sufferer's tear-- And malice, and meanness, and falsehood, and folly, Dispose me to musing and dark melancholy; When my bosom is full, and my thoughts are high, And my soul is sick with the bondman's sigh-- Oh! then there is freedom, and joy, and pride, Afar in the desert alone to ride! There is rapture to vault on the champing steed, And to bound away with the eagle's speed, With the death-fraught firelock in my hand-- The only law of the Desert Land! Afar in the desert I love to ride, With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side. Away--away from the dwellings of men, By the wild deer's haunt, by the buffalo's glen; By valleys remote where the oribi plays, Where the gnu, the gazelle, and the hartebeest graze, And the kudu and eland unhunted recline By the skirts of gray forest o'erhung with wild vine: Where the elephant browses at peace in his wood, And the river-horse gambols unscared in the flood, And the mighty rhinoceros wallows at will In the fen where the wild ass is drinking his fill. Afar in the desert I love to ride, With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side. O'er the brown karroo, where the bleating cry Of the springbok's fawn sounds plaintively: And the timorous quagga's shrill whistling neigh Is heard by the fountain at twilight gray; Where the zebra wantonly tosses his mane, With wild hoof scouring the desolate plain; And the fleet-footed ostrich over the waste Speeds like a horseman who travels in haste, Hieing away to the home of her rest, Where she and her mate have scooped their nest, Far hid from the pitiless plunderer's view In the pathless depths of the parched karroo. Afar in the desert I love to ride, With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side. Away--away--in the wilderness vast Where the white man's foot hath never passed, And the quivered Coranna or Bechuan Hath rarely crossed with his roving clan: A region of emptiness, howling and drear, Which man hath abandoned from famine and fear; Which the snake and the lizard inhabit alone, With the twilight bat from the yawning stone; Where grass, nor herb, nor shrub takes root, Save poisonous thorns that pierce the foot; And the bitter melon, for food and drink, Is the pilgrim's fare by the salt-lake's brink; A region of drought, where no river glides, Nor rippling brook with osiered sides; Where sedgy pool, nor bubbling fount, Nor tree, nor cloud, nor misty mount, Appears, to refresh the aching eye; But the barren earth and the burning sky, And the blank horizon, round and round, Spread--void of living sight or sound. And here, while the night-winds round me sigh, And the stars burn bright in the midnight sky, As I sit apart by the desert stone, Like Elijah at Horeb's cave, alone, "A still small voice" comes through the wild, Like a father consoling his fretful child, Which banishes bitterness, wrath, and fear, Saying--Man is distant, but God is near! Thomas Pringle [1789-1834] SPRING SONG IN THE CITY Who remains in London, In the streets with me, Now that Spring is blowing Warm winds from the sea; Now that trees grow green and tall, Now the sun shines mellow, And with moist primroses all English lanes are yellow? Little barefoot maiden, Selling violets blue, Hast thou ever pictured Where the sweetlings grew? Oh, the warm wild woodland ways, Deep in dewy grasses, Where the wind-blown shadow strays, Scented as it passes! Peddler breathing deeply, Toiling into town, With the dusty highway You are dusky brown; Hast thou seen by daisied leas, And by rivers flowing, Lilac-ringlets which the breeze Loosens lightly blowing? Out of yonder wagon Pleasant hay-scents float, He who drives it carries A daisy in his coat: Oh, the English meadows, fair Far beyond all praises! Freckled orchids everywhere Mid the snow of daisies! Now in busy silence Broods the nightingale, Choosing his love's dwelling In a dimpled dale; Round the leafy bower they raise Rose-trees wild are springing; Underneath, through the green haze, Bounds the brooklet singing. And his love is silent As a bird can be, For the red buds only Fill the red rose-tree; Just as buds and blossoms blow He'll begin his tune, When all is green and roses glow Underneath the moon. Nowhere in the valleys Will the wind be still, Everything is waving, Wagging at his will: Blows the milkmaid's kirtle clean With her hand pressed on it; Lightly o'er the hedge so green Blows the plowboy's bonnet. Oh, to be a-roaming In an English dell! Every nook is wealthy, All the world looks well, Tinted soft the Heavens glow, Over Earth and Ocean, Waters flow, breezes blow, All is light and motion! Robert Buchanan [1841-1901] IN CITY STREETS Yonder in the heather there's a bed for sleeping, Drink for one athirst, ripe blackberries to eat; Yonder in the sun the merry hares go leaping, And the pool is clear for travel-wearied feet. Sorely throb my feet, a-tramping London highways, (Ah! the springy moss upon a northern moor!) Through the endless streets, the gloomy squares and byways, Homeless in the City, poor among the poor! London streets are gold--ah, give me leaves a-glinting 'Midst gray dykes and hedges in the autumn sun! London water's wine, poured out for all unstinting-- God! For the little brooks that tumble as they run! Oh, my heart is fain to hear the soft wind blowing, Soughing through the fir-tops up on northern fells! Oh, my eye's an ache to see the brown burns flowing Through the peaty soil and tinkling heather-bells. Ada Smith [18-- THE VAGABOND (To an Air of Schubert) Give to me the life I love, Let the lave go by me, Give the jolly heaven above And the byway nigh me. Bed in the bush with stars to see, Bread I dip in the river-- There's the life for a man like me, There's the life for ever. Let the blow fall soon or late, Let what will be o'er me; Give the face of earth around And the road before me. Wealth I seek not, hope nor love, Nor a friend to know me; All I seek, the heaven above And the road below me. Or let autumn fall on me Where afield I linger, Silencing the bird on tree, Biting the blue finger. White as meal the frosty field-- Warm the fireside haven-- Not to autumn will I yield, Not to winter even! Let the blow fall soon or late, Let what will be o'er me; Give the face of earth around, And the road before me. Wealth I ask not, hope nor love, Nor a friend to know me; All I ask, the heaven above And the road below me. Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-1894] IN THE HIGHLANDS In the highlands, in the country places, Where the old plain men have rosy faces, And the young fair maidens Quiet eyes; Where essential silence cheers and blesses And for ever in the hill-recesses Her more lovely music Broods and dies.-- O to mount again where erst I haunted; Where the old red hills are bird-enchanted, And the low green meadows Bright with sward; And when even dies, the million-tinted, And the night has come, and planets glinted, Lo, the valley hollow Lamp-bestarred! O to dream, O to awake and wander There, and with delight to take and render, Through the trance of silence, Quiet breath! Lo! for there, among the flowers and grasses, Only the mightier movement sounds and passes; Only winds and rivers, Life and Death. Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-1894] THE SONG MY PADDLE SINGS West wind, blow from your prairie nest, Blow from the mountains, blow from the west. The sail is idle, the sailor too; O wind of the west, we wait for you! Blow, blow! I have wooed you so, But never a favor you bestow. You rock your cradle the hills between, But scorn to notice my white lateen. I stow the sail and unship the mast: I wooed you long, but my wooing's past; My paddle will lull you into rest: O drowsy wind of the drowsy west, Sleep, sleep! By your mountains steep, Or down where the prairie grasses sweep, Now fold in slumber your laggard wings, For soft is the song my paddle sings. Be strong, O paddle! be brave, canoe! The reckless waves you must plunge into. Reel, reel, On your trembling keel, But never a fear my craft will feel. We've raced the rapids; we're far ahead: The river slips through its silent bed. Sway, sway, As the bubbles spray And fall in tinkling tunes away. And up on the hills against the sky, A fir tree rocking its lullaby Swings, swings, Its emerald wings, Swelling the song that my paddle sings. E. Pauline Johnson [1862-1913] THE GIPSY TRAIL The white moth to the closing vine, The bee to the opened clover, And the gipsy blood to the gipsy blood Ever the wide world over. Ever the wide world over, lass, Ever the trail held true, Over the world and under the world, And back at the last to you. Out of the dark of the gorgio camp, Out of the grime and the gray (Morning waits at the end of the world), Gipsy, come away! The wild boar to the sun-dried swamp, The red crane to her reed, And the Romany lass to the Romany lad By the tie of a roving breed. Morning waits at the end of the world Where winds unhaltered play, Nipping the flanks of their plunging ranks, Till the white sea-horses neigh. The pied snake to the rifted rock, The buck to the stony plain, And the Romany lass to the Romany lad, And both to the road again. Both to the road again, again! Out on a clean sea-track-- Follow the cross of the gipsy trail Over the world and back! Follow the Romany patteran North where the blue bergs sail, And the bows are gray with the frozen spray, And the masts are shod with mail. Follow the Romany patteran Sheer to the Austral Light, Where the besom of God is the wild south wind, Sweeping the sea-floors white. Follow the Romany patteran West to the sinking sun, Till the junk-sails lift through the houseless drift, And the east and the west are one. Follow the Romany patteran East where the silence broods By a purple wave on an opal beach In the hush of the Mahirn woods. The wild hawk to the wind-swept sky, The deer to the wholesome wold, And the heart of a man to the heart of a maid, As it was in the days of old. The heart of a man to the heart of a maid-- Light of my tents, be fleet! Morning waits at the end of the world, And the world is all at our feet! Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936] WANDERLUST Beyond the East the sunrise, beyond the West the sea, And East and West the wanderlust that will not let me be; It works in me like madness, dear, to bid me say good-by! For the seas call and the stars call, and oh, the call of the sky! I know not where the white road runs, nor what the blue hills are, But man can have the sun for friend, and for his guide a star; And there's no end of voyaging when once the voice is heard, For the river calls and the road calls, and oh, the call of a bird! Yonder the long horizon lies, and there by night and day The old ships draw to home again, the young ships sail away; And come I may, but go I must, and if men ask you why, You may put the blame on the stars and the sun and the white road and the sky! Gerald Gould [1885-1936] THE FOOTPATH WAY The winding road lies white and bare, Heavy in dust that takes the glare; The thirsty hedgerows and parched grass Dream of a time when no road was. Beyond, the fields are full in view, Heavy in herbage and in dew; The great-eyed kine browse thankfully; Come, take the footpath way with me! This stile, where country lovers tryst, Where many a man and maid have kissed, Invites us sweetly, and the wood Beckons us to her solitude. Leave men and lumbering wains behind, And dusty roads, all blank and blind; Come tread on velvet and on silk, Damasked with daisies, white as milk. Those dryads of the wood, that some Call the wild hyacinths, now are come, And hold their revels in a night Of emerald flecked with candle-light. The fountains of the meadows play, This is the wild bee's holiday; When summer-snows have sweetly dressed The pasture like a wedding-guest, By fields of beans that shall eclipse The honey on the rose's lips, With woodruff and the new hay's breath, And wild thyme sweetest in her death, Skirting the rich man's lawn and hall, The footpath way is free to all; For us his pinks and roses blow: Fling him thanksgiving ere we go! By orchards yet in rosy veils, By hidden nests of nightingales, Through lonesome valleys where all day The rabbit people scurry and play, The footpath sets her tender lure. This is the country for the poor; The high-road seeks the crowded sea; Come, take the footpath way with me! Katherine Tynan Hinkson [1861-1931] A MAINE TRAIL Come follow, heart upon your sleeve, The trail, a-teasing by, Past tasseled corn and fresh-mown hay, Trim barns and farm-house shy, Past hollyhocks and white well-sweep, Through pastures bare and wild, Oh come, let's fare to the heart-o'-the-wood With the faith of a little child. Strike in by the gnarled way through the swamp Where late the laurel shone, An intimate close where you meet yourself And come unto your own, By bouldered brook to the hidden spring Where breath of ferns blows sweet And swift birds break the silence as Their shadows cross your feet. Stout-hearted thrust through gold-green copse To garner the woodland glee; To weave a garment of warm delight, Of sunspun ecstasy; 'Twill shield you all winter from frosty eyes, 'Twill shield your heart from cold; Such greens!--how the Lord Himself loves green! Such sun!--how He loves the gold! Then on till flaming fireweed Is quenched in forest deep; Tread soft! The sumptuous paven moss Is spread for Dryads sleep; And list ten thousand thousand spruce Lift up their voice to God-- We can a little understand, Born of the self-same sod. Oh come, the welcoming trees lead on, Their guests are we to-day; Shy violets smile, proud branches bow, Gay mushrooms mark the way; The silence is a courtesy, The well-bred calm of kings; Come haste! the hour sets its face Unto great Happenings. Gertrude Huntington McGiffert [18- AFOOT Comes the lure of green things growing, Comes the call of waters flowing-- And the wayfarer desire Moves and wakes and would be going. Hark the migrant hosts of June Marching nearer noon by noon! Hark the gossip of the grasses Bivouacked beneath the moon! Long the quest and far the ending When my wayfarer is wending-- When desire is once afoot, Doom behind and dream attending! In his ears the phantom chime Of incommunicable rhyme, He shall chase the fleeting camp-fires Of the Bedouins of Time. Farer by uncharted ways, Dumb as death to plaint or praise, Unreturning he shall journey, Fellow to the nights and days; Till upon the outer bar Stilled the moaning currents are, Till the flame achieves the zenith, Till the moth attains the star, Till through laughter and through tears Fair the final peace appears, And about the watered pastures Sink to sleep the nomad years! Charles G. D. Roberts [1860- FROM ROMANY TO ROME Upon the road to Romany It's stay, friend, stay! There's lots o' love and lots o' time To linger on the way; Poppies for the twilight, Roses for the noon, It's happy goes as lucky goes To Romany in June. But on the road to Rome--oh, It's march, man, march! The dust is on the chariot wheels, The sere is on the larch, Helmets and javelins And bridles flecked with foam-- The flowers are dead, the world's ahead Upon the road to Rome. But on the road to Rome--ah, It's fight, man, fight! Footman and horseman Treading left and right, Camp-fires and watch-fires Ruddying the gloam-- The fields are gray and worn away Along the road to Rome. Upon the road to Romany It's sing, boys, sing! Though rag and pack be on our back We'll whistle to the King. Wine is in the sunshine, Madness in the moon, And de'il may care the road we fare To Romany in June. Along the road to Rome, alas! The glorious dust is whirled, Strong hearts are fierce to see The City of the World; Yet footfall or bugle-call Or thunder as ye will, Upon the road to Romany The birds are calling still! Wallace Irwin [1875- THE TOIL OF THE TRAIL What have I gained by the toil of the trail? I know and know well. I have found once again the lore I had lost In the loud city's hell. I have broadened my hand to the cinch and the axe, I have laid my flesh to the rain; I was hunter and trailer and guide; I have touched the most primitive wildness again. I have threaded the wild with the stealth of the deer, No eagle is freer than I; No mountain can thwart me, no torrent appall, I defy the stern sky. So long as I live these joys will remain, I have touched the most primitive wildness again. Hamlin Garland [1860- DO YOU FEAR THE WIND? Do you fear the force of the wind, The slash of the rain? Go face them and fight them, Be savage again. Go hungry and cold like the wolf, Go wade like the crane: The palms of your hands will thicken, The skin of your cheek will tan, You'll grow ragged and weary and swarthy, But you'll walk like a man! Hamlin Garland [1860- THE KING'S HIGHWAY "El Camino Real" All in the golden weather, forth let us ride to-day, You and I together, on the King's Highway, The blue skies above us, and below the shining sea; There's many a road to travel, but it's this road for me. It's a long road and sunny, and the fairest in the world-- There are peaks that rise above it in their snowy mantles curled, And it leads from the mountains through a hedge of chaparral, Down to the waters where the sea gulls call. It's a long road and sunny, it's a long road and old, And the brown padres made it for the flocks of the fold; They made it for the sandals of the sinner-folk that trod From the fields in the open to the shelter-house of God. They made it for the sandals of the sinner-folk of old; Now the flocks they are scattered and death keeps the fold; But you and I together we will take the road to-day, With the breath in our nostrils, on the King's Highway. We will take the road together through the morning's golden glow, And we'll dream of those who trod it in the mellowed long ago; We will stop at the Missions where the sleeping padres lay, And we'll bend a knee above them for their souls' sake to pray. We'll ride through the valleys where the blossom's on the tree, Through the orchards and the meadows with the bird and the bee, And we'll take the rising hills where the manzanitas grow, Past the gray tails of waterfalls where blue violets blow. Old Conquistadores, O brown priests and all, Give us your ghosts for company when night begins to fall; There's many a road to travel, but it's this road to-day, With the breath of God about us on the King's Highway. John S. McGroarty [1862- THE FORBIDDEN LURE "Leave all and follow--follow!" Lure of the sun at dawn, Lure of a wind-paced hollow, Lure of the stars withdrawn; Lure of the brave old singing Brave perished minstrels knew; Of dreams like sea-fog clinging To boughs the night sifts through: "Leave all and follow--follow!" The sun goes up the day; Flickering wing of swallow, Blossoms that blow away,-- What would you, luring, luring, When I must bide at home? My heart will break her mooring And die in reef-flung foam! Oh, I must never listen, Call not outside my door. Green leaves, you must not glisten Like water, any more. Oh, Beauty, wandering Beauty, Pass by; speak not. For see, By bed and board stands Duty To snatch my dreams from me! Fannie Stearns Davis [1884- THE WANDER-LOVERS Down the world with Marna! That's the life for me! Wandering with the wandering wind, Vagabond and unconfined! Roving with the roving rain Its unboundaried domain! Kith and kin of wander-kind, Children of the sea! Petrels of the sea-drift! Swallows of the lea! Arabs of the whole wide girth Of the wind-encircled earth! In all climes we pitch our tents, Cronies of the elements, With the secret lords of birth Intimate and free. All the seaboard knows us From Fundy to the Keys; Every bend and every creek Of abundant Chesapeake; Ardise hills and Newport coves And the far-off orange groves, Where Floridian oceans break, Tropic tiger seas. Down the world with Marna, Tarrying there and here! Just as much at home in Spain As in Tangier or Touraine! Shakespeare's Avon knows us well, And the crags of Neufchatel; And the ancient Nile is fain Of our coming near. Down the world with Marna, Daughter of the air! Marna of the subtle grace, And the vision in her face! Moving in the measures trod By the angels before God! With her sky-blue eyes amaze And her sea-blue hair! Marna with the trees' life In her veins a-stir! Marna of the aspen heart Where the sudden quivers start! Quick-responsive, subtle, wild! Artless as an artless child, Spite of all her reach of art! Oh, to roam with her! Marna with the wind's will, Daughter of the sea! Marna of the quick disdain, Starting at the dream of stain! At a smile with love aglow, At a frown a statued woe, Standing pinnacled in pain Till a kiss sets free! Down the world with Marna, Daughter of the fire! Marna of the deathless hope, Still alert to win new scope Where the wings of life may spread For a flight unhazarded! Dreaming of the speech to cope With the heart's desire! Marna of the far quest After the divine! Striving ever for some goal Past the blunder-god's control! Dreaming of potential years When no day shall dawn in fears! That's the Marna of my soul, Wander-bride of mine! Richard Hovey [1864-1900] THE SEA GIPSY I am fevered with the sunset, I am fretful with the bay, For the wander-thirst is on me And my soul is in Cathay. There's a schooner in the offing, With her topsails shot with fire, And my heart has gone aboard her For the Islands of Desire. I must forth again to-morrow! With the sunset I must be Hull down on the trail of rapture In the wonder of the Sea. Richard Hovey [1864-1900] A VAGABOND SONG There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood-- Touch of manner, hint of mood; And my heart is like a rhyme, With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time. The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry Of bugles going by. And my lonely spirit thrills To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills. There is something in October sets the gipsy blood astir; We must rise and-follow her, When from every hill of flame She calls and calls each vagabond by name. Bliss Carman [1861-1929] SPRING SONG Make me over, Mother April, When the sap beings to stir! When thy flowery hand delivers All the mountain-prisoned rivers, And thy great heart beats and quivers To revive the days that were, Make me over, Mother April, When the sap begins to stir! Take my dust and all my dreaming, Count my heart-beats one by one, Send them where the winters perish; Then some golden noon recherish And restore them in the sun, Flower and scent and dust and dreaming, With their heart-beats every one! Set me in the urge and tide-drift Of the streaming hosts a-wing! Breast of scarlet, throat of yellow, Raucous challenge, wooings mellow-- Every migrant is my fellow, Making northward with the spring. Loose me in the urge and tide-drift Of the streaming hosts a-wing! Shrilling pipe or fluting whistle, In the valleys come again; Fife of frog and call of tree-toad, All my brothers, five or three-toed, With their revel no more vetoed, Making music in the rain; Shrilling pipe or fluting whistle, In the valleys come again. Make me of thy seed to-morrow, When the sap begins to stir! Tawny light-foot, sleepy bruin, Bright-eyes in the orchard ruin, Gnarl the good life goes askew in, Whiskey-jack, or tanager,-- Make me anything to-morrow, When the sap begins to stir! Make me even (How do I know?) Like my friend the gargoyle there; It may be the heart within him Swells that doltish hands should pin him Fixed forever in mid-air. Make me even sport for swallows, Like the soaring gargoyle there! Give me the old clue to follow, Through the labyrinth of night! Clod of clay with heart of fire, Things that burrow and aspire, With the vanishing desire, For the perishing delight,-- Only the old clue to follow, Through the labyrinth of night! Make me over, Mother April, When the sap begins to stir! Fashion me from swamp or meadow, Garden plot or ferny shadow, Hyacinth or humble burr! Make me over, Mother April, When the sap begins to stir! Let me hear the far, low summons, When the silver winds return; Rills that run and streams that stammer, Goldenwing with his loud hammer, Icy brooks that brawl and clamor, Where the Indian willows burn; Let me hearken to the calling, When the silver winds return, Till recurring and recurring, Long since wandered and come back, Like a whim of Grieg's or Gounod's, This same self, bird, bud, or Bluenose, Some day I may capture (Who knows?) Just the one last joy I lack, Waking to the far new summons, When the old spring winds come back. For I have no choice of being, When the sap begins to climb,-- Strong insistence, sweet intrusion, Vasts and verges of illusion,-- So I win, to time's confusion, The one perfect pearl of time, Joy and joy and joy forever, Till the sap forgets to climb! Make me over in the morning From the rag-bag of the world! Scraps of dream and duds of daring, Home-brought stuff from far sea-faring, Faded colors once so flaring, Shreds of banners long since furled! Hues of ash and glints of glory, In the rag-bag of the world! Let me taste the old immortal Indolence of life once more; Not recalling nor foreseeing, Let the great slow joys of being Well my heart through as of yore! Let me taste the old immortal Indolence of life once more! Give me the old drink for rapture, The delirium to drain, All my fellows drank in plenty At the Three Score Inns and Twenty From the mountains to the main! Give me the old drink for rapture, The delirium to drain! Only make me over, April, When the sap begins to stir! Make me man or make me woman, Make me oaf or ape or human, Cup of flower or cone of fir; Make me anything but neuter When the sap begins to stir! Bliss Carman [1861-1929] THE MENDICANTS We are as mendicants who wait Along the roadside in the sun. Tatters of yesterday and shreds Of morrow clothe us every one. And some are dotards, who believe And glory in the days of old; While some are dreamers, harping still Upon an unknown age of gold. Hopeless or witless! Not one heeds, As lavish Time comes down the way And tosses in the suppliant hat One great new-minted gold To-day. Ungrateful heart and grudging thanks, His beggar's wisdom only sees Housing and bread and beer enough; He knows no other things than these. O foolish ones, put by your care! Where wants are many, joys are few; And at the wilding springs of peace, God keeps an open house for you. But that some Fortunatus' gift Is lying there within his hand, More costly than a pot of pearls, His dullness does not understand. And so his creature heart is filled; His shrunken self goes starved away. Let him wear brand-new garments still, Who has a threadbare soul, I say. But there be others, happier few, The vagabondish sons of God, Who know the by-ways and the flowers, And care not how the world may plod. They idle down the traffic lands, And loiter through the woods with spring; To them the glory of the earth Is but to hear a bluebird sing. They too receive each one his Day; But their wise heart knows many things Beyond the sating of desire, Above the dignity of kings. One I remember kept his coin, And laughing flipped it in the air; But when two strolling pipe-players Came by, he tossed it to the pair. Spendthrift of joy, his childish heart Danced to their wild outlandish bars; Then supperless he laid him down That night, and slept beneath the stars. Bliss Carman [1861-1929] THE JOYS OF THE ROAD Now the joys of the road are chiefly these: A crimson touch on the hard-wood trees; A vagrant's morning wide and blue, In early fall, when the wind walks, too; A shadowy highway cool and brown Alluring up and enticing down From rippled water to dappled swamp, From purple glory to scarlet pomp; The outward eye, the quiet will, And the striding heart from hill to hill; The tempter apple over the fence; The cobweb bloom on the yellow quince; The palish asters along the wood,-- A lyric touch of the solitude; An open hand, an easy shoe, And a hope to make the day go through,-- Another to sleep with, and a third To wake me up at the voice of a bird; The resonant far-listening morn, And the hoarse whisper of the corn; The crickets mourning their comrades lost, In the night's retreat from the gathering frost; (Or is it their slogan, plaintive and shrill, As they beat on their corselets, valiant still?) A hunger fit for the kings of the sea, And a loaf of bread for Dickon and me; A thirst like that of the Thirsty Sword, And a jug of cider on the board; An idle noon, a bubbling spring, The sea in the pine-tops murmuring; A scrap of gossip at the ferry; A comrade neither glum nor merry, Asking nothing, revealing naught, But minting his words from a fund of thought. A keeper of silence eloquent, Needy, yet royally well content, Of the mettled breed, yet abhorring strife, And full of the mellow juice of life, A taster of wine, with an eye for a maid Never too bold, and never afraid, Never heart-whole, never heart-sick, (These are the things I worship in Dick) No fidget and no reformer, just A calm observer of ought and must, A lover of books, but a reader of man, No cynic and no charlatan, Who never defers and never demands, But, smiling, takes the world in his hands,-- Seeing it good as when God first saw And gave it the weight of his will for law. And O the joy that is never won, But follows and follows the journeying sun, By marsh and tide, by meadow and stream, A will-o'-the-wind, a light-o'-dream, Delusion afar, delight anear, From morrow to morrow, from year to year, A jack-o'-lantern, a fairy fire, A dare, a bliss, and a desire! The racy smell of the forest loam, When the stealthy, sad-heart leaves go home; (O leaves, O leaves, I am one with you, Of the mould and the sun and the wind and the dew!) The broad gold wake of the afternoon; The silent fleck of the cold new moon; The sound of the hollow sea's release From stormy tumult to starry peace; With only another league to wend; And two brown arms at the journey's end! These are the joys of the open road-- For him who travels without a load. Bliss Carman [1861-1929] THE SONG OF THE FOREST RANGER Oh, to feel the fresh breeze blowing From lone ridges yet untrod! Oh, to see the far peak growing Whiter as it climbs to God! Where the silver streamlet rushes I would follow--follow on Till I heard the happy thrushes Piping lyrics to the dawn. I would hear the wild rejoicing Of the wind-blown cedar tree, Hear the sturdy hemlock voicing Ancient epics of the sea. Forest aisles would I be winding, Out beyond the gates of Care; And, in dim cathedrals, finding Silence at the shrine of Prayer. When the mystic night comes stealing Through my vast, green room afar, Never king had richer ceiling-- Beaded bough and yellow star! Ah, to list the sacred preaching Of the forest's faithful fir, With his strong arms upward reaching-- Mighty, trustful worshipper! Come and learn the joy of living! Come and you will understand How the sun his gold is giving With a great, impartial hand! How the patient pine is climbing, Year by year to gain the sky; How the rill makes sweetest rhyming, Where the deepest shadows lie. I am nearer the great Giver, Where His handiwork is crude; Friend am I of peak and river, Comrade of old Solitude. Not for me the city's riot! Not for me the towers of Trade! I would seek the house of Quiet, That the Master Workman made! Herbert Bashford [1871-1928] A DROVER To Meath of the pastures, From wet hills by the sea, Through Leitrim and Longford, Go my cattle and me. I hear in the darkness Their slipping and breathing-- I name them the bye-ways They're to pass without heeding; Then, the wet, winding roads, Brown bogs with black water; And my thoughts on white ships And the King o' Spain's daughter. O! farmer, strong farmer! You can spend at the fair; But your face you must turn To your crops and your care. And soldiers--red soldiers! You've seen many lands; But you walk two by two, And by captain's commands. O! the smell of the beasts, The wet wind in the morn; And the proud and hard earth Never broken for corn; And the crowds at the fair, The herds loosened and blind, Loud words and dark faces And the wild blood behind. (O! strong men; with your best I would strive breast to breast, I could quiet your herds With my words, with my words.) I will bring you, my kine, Where there's grass to the knee; But you'll think of scant croppings Harsh with salt of the sea. Padraic Colum [1881- BALLAD OF LOW-LIE-DOWN John-a-Dreams and Harum-Scarum Came a-riding into town: At the Sign o' the Jug-and-Jorum There they met with Low-lie-down. Brave in shoes of Romany leather, Bodice blue and gypsy gown, And a cap of fur and feather, In the inn sat Low-lie-down. Harum-Scarum kissed her lightly; Smiled into her eyes of brown: Clasped her waist and held her tightly, Laughing, "Love me, Low-lie-down!" Then with many an oath and swagger, As a man of great renown, On the board he clapped his dagger, Called for sack and sat him down. So a while they laughed together; Then he rose and with a frown Sighed, "While still 'tis pheasant weather, I must leave thee, Low-lie-down." So away rode Harum-Scarum; With a song rode out of town; At the Sign o' the Jug-and-Jorum Weeping tarried Low-lie-down. Then this John-a-dreams, in tatters, In his pocket ne'er a crown, Touched her, saying, "Wench, what matters! Dry your eyes and, come, sit down. "Here's my hand: we'll roam together, Far away from thorp and town. Here's my heart,--for any weather,-- And my dreams, too, Low-lie-down. "Some men call me dreamer, poet: Some men call me fool and clown-- What I am but you shall know it, Only you, sweet Low-lie-down." For a little while she pondered: Smiled: then said, "Let care go drown!" Up and kissed him.... Forth they wandered, John-a-dreams and Low-lie-down. Madison Cawein [1865-1914] THE GOOD INN From "The Inn of the Silver Moon." What care if the day Be turned to gray, What care if the night come soon! We may choose the pace Who bow for grace At the Inn of the Silver Moon. Ah, hurrying Sirs, Drive deep your spurs, For it's far to the steepled town-- Where the wallet's weight Shall fix your state And buy for ye smile or frown. Through our tiles of green Do the stars between Laugh down from the skies of June, And there's naught to pay For a couch of hay At the Inn of the Silver Moon. You laboring lout, Pull out, pull out, With a hand to the creaking tire, For it's many a mile By path and stile To the old wife crouched by the fire. But the door is wide In the hedgerow side, And we ask not bowl nor spoon Whose draught of must Makes soft the crust At the Inn of the Silver Moon. Then, here's to the Inn Of the empty bin, To the Host of the trackless dune! And here's to the friend Of the journey's end At the Inn of the Silver Moon. Herman Knickerbocker Viele [1856-1908] NIGHT FOR ADVENTURES Sometimes when fragrant summer dusk comes in with scent of rose and musk And scatters from their sable husk the stars like yellow grain, Oh, then the ancient longing comes that lures me like a roll of drums To follow where the cricket strums his banjo in the lane. And when the August moon comes up and like a shallow, silver cup Pours out upon the fields and roads her amber-colored beams, A leafy whisper mounts and calls from out the forest's moss grown halls To leave the city's somber walls and take the road of dreams. A call that bids me rise and strip, and, naked all from toe to lip, To wander where the dewdrops drip from off the silent trees, And where the hairy spiders spin their nets of silver, fragile-thin, And out to where the fields begin, like down upon the breeze. Into a silver pool to plunge, and like a great trout wheel and lunge Among the lily-bonnets and the stars reflected there; With face upturned to lie afloat, with moonbeams rippling round my throat, And from the slimy grasses plait a chaplet for my hair. Then, leaping from my rustic bath, to take some winding meadow-path: Across the fields of aftermath to run with flying feet, And feel the dewdrop-weighted grass that bends beneath me as I pass, Where solemn trees in shadowy mass beyond the highway meet. And, plunging deep within the woods, among the leaf-hung solitudes Where scarce one timid star intrudes into the breathless gloom, Go leaping down some fern-hid way to scare the rabbits in their play, And see the owl, a fantom gray, drift by on silent plume. To fling me down at length and rest upon some damp and mossy nest, And hear the choir of surpliced frogs strike up a bubbling tune; And watch, above the dreaming trees, Orion and the Hyades And all the stars, like golden bees, around the lily-moon. Then who can say if I have gone a-gipsying from dusk till dawn In company with fay and faun, where firefly-lanterns gleam? And have I danced on cobwebs thin to Master Locust's mandolin-- Or I have spent the night in bed, and was it all a dream? Victor Starbuck [1887- SONG From "The Way Of Perfect Love" Something calls and whispers, along the city street, Through shrill cries of children and soft stir of feet, And makes my blood to quicken and makes my flesh to pine. The mountains are calling; the winds wake the pine. Past the quivering poplars that tell of water near The long road is sleeping, the white road is clear. Yet scent and touch can summon, afar from brook and tree, The deep boom of surges, the gray waste of sea. Sweet to dream and linger, in windless orchard close, On bright brows of ladies to garland the rose, But all the time are glowing, beyond this little world, The still light of planets and the star-swarms whirled. Georgiana Goddard King [1871- THE VOORTREKKER The gull shall whistle in his wake, the blind wave break in fire, He shall fulfill God's utmost will unknowing His desire; And he shall see old planets pass and alien stars arise, And give the gale his seaworn sail in shadow of new skies. Strong lust of gear shall drive him forth and hunger arm his hand To win his food from the desert rude, his foothold from the sand. His neighbors' smoke shall vex his eyes, their voices break his rest, He shall go forth till South is North, sullen and dispossessed. He shall desire loneliness, and his desire shall bring Hard on his heels a thousand wheels, a People, and a King; He shall come back in his own track, and by his scarce cooled camp; There shall he meet the roaring street, the derrick, and the stamp; There he shall blaze a nation's ways with hatchet and with brand, Till on his last-won wilderness an Empire's outposts stand! Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936] THE LONG TRAIL There's a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield, And the ricks stand gray to the sun, Singing: "Over then, come over, for the bee has quit the clover, And your English summer's done." You have heard the beat of the off-shore wind, And the thresh of the deep-sea rain; You have heard the song--how long? how long? Pull out on the trail again! Ha' done with the Tents of Shem, dear lass, We've seen the seasons through, And it's time to turn on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, Pull out, pull out, on the Long Trail--the trail that is always new! It's North you may run to the rime-ringed sun, Or South to the blind Horn's hate; Or East all the way into Mississippi Bay, Or West to the Golden Gate; Where the blindest bluffs hold good, dear lass, And the wildest tales are true, And the men bulk big on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, And life runs large on the Long Trail--the trail that is always new. The days are sick and cold, and the skies are gray and old, And the twice-breathed airs blow damp; And I'd sell my tired soul for the bucking beam-sea roll Of a black Bilbao tramp; With her load-line over her hatch, dear lass, And a drunken Dago crew, And her nose held down on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, From Cadiz south on the Long Trail--the trail that is always new. There be triple ways to take, of the eagle or the snake, Or the way of a man with a maid; But the sweetest way to me is a ship's upon the sea In the heel of the North-East Trade. Can you hear the crash on her bows, dear lass, And the drum of the racing screw, As she ships it green on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, As she lifts and 'scends on the Long Trail--the trail that is always new? See the shaking funnels roar, with the Peter at the fore, And the fenders grind and heave, And the derricks clack and grate, as the tackle hooks the crate, And the fall-rope whines through the sheave; It's "Gang-plank up and in," dear lass, It's "Hawsers warp her through!" And it's "All clear aft" on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, We're backing down on tile Long Trail--the trail that is always new. O the mutter overside, when the port-fog holds us tied, And the sirens hoot their dread! When foot by foot we creep o'er the hueless viewless deep To the sob of the questing lead! It's down by the Lower Hope, dear lass, With the Gunfleet Sands in view, Till the Mouse swings green on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, And the Gull Light lifts on the Long Trail--the trail that is always new. O the blazing tropic night, when the wake's a welt of light That holds the hot sky tame, And the steady fore-foot snores through the planet-powdered floors Where the scared whale flukes in flame! Her plates are flaked by the sun, dear lass, And her ropes are taut with the dew, For we're booming down on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, We're sagging south on the Long Trail--the trail that is always new. Then home, get her home, where the drunken rollers comb, And the shouting seas drive by, And the engines stamp and ring, and the wet bows reel and swing, And the Southern Cross rides high! Yes, the old lost stars wheel back, dear lass, That blaze in the velvet blue. They're all old friends on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, They're God's own guides on the Long Trail--the trail that is always new. Fly forward, O my heart, from the Foreland to the Start-- We're steaming all too slow, And it's twenty thousand mile to our little lazy isle Where the trumpet-orchids blow! You have heard the call of the off-shore wind And the voice of the deep-sea rain; You have heard the song--how long--how long? Pull out on the trail again! The Lord knows what we may find, dear lass, And the Deuce knows what we may do-- But we're back once more on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, We're down, hull down, on the Long Trail--the trail that is always new! Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936] 
27024	----	file was produced from images generously made available by The Kentuckiana Digital Library) [Illustration: Leigh Gordon Giltner] The Path of Dreams _POEMS_ _BY LEIGH GORDON GILTNER_ [Illustration] Fleming H. Revell Company Chicago : New York : Toronto COPYRIGHT 1900 BY LEIGH GORDON GILTNER _TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER_ Contents In Woodland Ways 9 Ashes of Roses 11 A Challenge 13 And Yet ... 15 The Master-Player 16 Afterbloom 17 To Bliss Carman 18 When Love Passed By 19 Hedonism ... Euthumism 21-22 Under the Leaves 23 Carmen 23 To R. D. MacLean 26 Love and Death 26 A Winter Landscape 27 Roses and Rue 28 Severance 47 Spartacus 48 The Dead Leader 50 Hagar 51 Flower-Fancies 52-53 Circe 54 To A. M. M. 55 Loveless 56 Clytie--The Sunflower 57 In Bondage 61 To a Singer 63 Blossom of Brine 64 A Memory 65 To Margaret 66 Regret 67 "God Bless You, Dear" 69 Roses 71 The Poet 72 Shylock 72 To Charles J. O'Malley 73 Antithesis 74 In Fortune's Twilight 74 Fate 75 The Path of Dreams 76 An Autumn Song 78 Vain 79 Sartor Resartus 80 Illumed 82 In The Play 83 To E. P. B. 84 Through The Dark 85 Preluding 86 The Heights of Silence 87 Andromeda 88 Requital 90 When Fades the Light 91 Butterflies 92 In the Dark Forest 93 Insatiate 95 To One Who Sleeps (Obiit, June 8th, 1894.) _Tho' storm and summer shine for long have shed Or blight or bloom above thy quiet bed, Tho' loneliness and longing cry thee dead-- Thou art not dead, belovèd. Still with me Are whilom hopings that encompass thee And dreams of dear delights that may not be. Asleep--adream perchance, dost thou forget The sometime sorrow and the fevered fret, Sting of salt tears and long unbreathed regret? Liest thou here thro' long sunshiny hours, Holding sweet converse with the springing flowers, Harking the singing of the warm sweet showers That fall like happy tears ... dost hear The birds that unafraid assail thine ear-- And yet art silent when I whisper? Dear, Dost thou not hear?_ _Lying so low beneath the bending grass In long, still smiling tranced for aye--alas! Thou dost not harken when my footsteps pass. If haply I some tender thing should tell Thee of the springtime flowers thou once loved well-- Anemone and shining asphodel; Should steal from Nature some enchanted lay, Some bird-song lilted where green branches sway-- Heart-music that could stir thy heart alway; Should call thee by the old fond name again, Should tell thee all a heart's enduring pain And long rememb'ring, would'st thou mute remain? Alas! nor sigh nor song can thrill the ear Tuned to Israfel's music in the sphere Where things to thee erst dear no more are dear. Thou dost not hear!_ THE PATH OF DREAMS In Woodland Ways Out of the poignant glare, the shadeless heat Of summer noon, beseech thee follow me Into the dim, dream-haunted secrecy The cool, green glooms, the grottoed deep retreat, Of yon old wood; down aisles of lichened trees-- Grey Merlins clasped by lissom Viviens Of clinging vine--to cloistered sylvan glens, Where Nature weaves her fairest mysteries. Here let us rest a little--find surcease For feet grown weary of the thridded street That echoes ever to the ceaseless beat Of human tread;--a brief while know the ease Of dreamful rest, to slumb'rous languors stilled On Orient rugs of dappled mosses spread In nooks where blossom, purple, white and red, The flowers Summer's lavish hands have spilled. Wild woodland creatures near us unafraid, Some strange enchantment doth the forest hold-- Was that a sungleam, or a wand of gold By tricksy Puck or wanton Ariel swayed? Old oaks and beeches open wide their doors And hamadryads veiled in golden sheen Floating diaphanous o'er robes of green Walk with still feet the forest's russet floors. Lo, here are fairies hid in flower-bells, There wood-nymphs fleeing from pursuing fauns, And naiads fleshed with hues of rosy dawns Lie dreaming by white streams in dusky dells; We tread dim paths untrod by foot of man And hark the horn of Dian ringing clear; While faint, elusive, thin--now far, now near, Meseems I hear the oaten pipe of Pan. And while o'erhead the plaining wood-dove grieves, The cardinal--a wingèd, scarlet flower-- Sprays all the air with song, a golden shower Of flutes-notes sifting downward thro' the leaves. Ah, sweet enchantment doth the forest hold, For Nature's self doth haunt these woodland ways, My fevered brow on her cool breast she lays And care slips from me as a garment old. Ashes of Roses Skies glooming overhead, Autumn winds sighing; Bare yonder garden bed, Flowers low lying. All their rich radiance fled, All their pale petals shed, Wan wraiths of Summer sped, In Autumn's closes; Crimson and cream and gold Strewn on earth's bosom cold, Mingling with umber mold-- Ashes of roses. See, in yon waning West Rich roses blowing On Heaven's palimpsest God's message glowing; Rose hues and amethyst Drenched in purpureate mist, Darkness with Day keeps tryst, Night's curtain closes; Quenched is the burning gold, Shadowed the upland wold, Day's fires grow dull and cold Ashes of roses. So on this heart of mine Shadows are lying; Lotus and rue entwine, Dim dreams are dying; Stilled is the thrill divine, Spilled is the amber wine, Dimly the cold stars shine; Wan age discloses All youth's bright blossoms dead, All love's rare radiance sped, All hope's pure petals shed-- Ashes of roses. A Challenge To have lived, to have loved, to have triumphed!--what more can the world bestow? I stand at the close of the conflict, my foot on the neck of my foe. Prone in the dust lies the demon Despair, still shouting his shibboleth To the treacherous Amazon dark-browed Fate, and her grisly comrade, Death. To have lived! To have felt in my veins the surge of the rich, red tide of life, The quickening stir of the strong man's heart that thrills to the sound of strife; To have wrested success from defeat, to have striven, and struggled, and won-- Shall this seem a small thing, think you, when the Battle of Ages is done? To have loved! To have known of all raptures, the rapture supernal, divine, To have felt the throb of your heart on my heart and the bloom of your lips pressed to mine; To have ranked with the gods on Olympus--myths tell us immortal Jove Cleft with his swan-wings the blue of the sky for boon of a mortal's love.... I have lived, I have loved, I have triumphed! Let Death come, or early or late! I hurl my challenging gauntlet full in the face of Fate! Fate may make wreck of a future--how can she alter the past? I have tasted the sweets of life's chalice--why shrink from the lees at the last? How should I cavil at aught that shall come--I stand with your head on my breast-- I have fought as I might--I have gained _you_, beloved ... to God's mercy the rest! Tho' the heavens darken above me and the sky be shrunk as a scroll, In the wreck and ruin of riven worlds, should I falter, O Soul of my soul? Tho' the demon Despair, where he vanquished lies, still utter his shibboleth-- I fling my glove in the face of Fate and smile in the eyes of Death! And Yet ... Upon the meads where we were wont to stray, 'Guiling with springtime hopes the winter hours, The Spring has smiled; yon slope that late gloomed gray And sternly sad, 'neath April's tender showers Grows green and glad again. The rippled grass, A soundless sea o'er which white cloud-sails pass, Breaks at my feet in billows foamed with flowers; And blue-eyed myrtle blooms with lashes wet Smile to me thro' their tears. The skies are blue, And life is sweet to-day and hope seems true; My heart is barren of its long regret-- And yet... The willow wears a wistful green. A dream Of Summer warmth the wine-sweet breezes hold, Fair wildings blow--bright buttercups agleam Like shining sequins scattered on the wold, And daffodills--a wealth of faery gold. The building birds their coming bliss presage With lilt and lyric brimming o'er the page Of Nature's volume bound in green and gold. Here 'mid the birds and blossoms 'neath the blue-- My heart unburthened of the old regret-- Let me forget long striving to forget; For life is sweet to-day and hope seems true-- And yet... The Master-Player Mute was the mighty organ. None might break The silence that had thralled it since was stilled The master-hand beneath whose touch it thrilled To music such as choiring seraphs make-- Until a mightier Master came to wake Th' elusive chords and subtle harmonies That lay imprisoned in the cold white keys And once again the soul of Music spake. Methought my soul's most perfect melodies No hand again to sonance could evoke-- A silent harp whose potence none might prove-- But, lo! one came who swept its chords and woke Celestial strains, divinest harmonies, Responsive to the master-touch of Love. Afterbloom Gay was her garden as some gorgeous fabric Weft on an Orient loom, Star-set upon the sward quaint, old-time blossoms Wrought broidery of bloom. Verbenas, dahlias, asters, scarlet cannas Like torches flaming tall; (Methought the fair, old face, enframed in silver, The sweetest flower of all!) And one rare rose she watched each year with hoping Till the dear eyes grew dim-- But ere a single blossom burst in beauty God took her home to Him. Yet when the Spring next woke the earth to laughter And boon of blossom gave, Starred was the rose with white, unearthly flowers-- We laid them on her grave. * * * * * And so, meseems, the buds we woo most fondly Nor light nor perfume shed; And Love's gold-hearted rose and Hope's star-flower Oft bloom when we are dead. To Bliss Carman Great hearted brother to the wilderness, Comrade of Wind and Sea! Interpreter Of nomad Nature! Ere the quick'ning stir Of Spring-sap thrills the wood from sullen stress Of Winter's spell--away from throngèd press Of urban ways thy wild feet wander far Tracking the steps of some white Northern star Whose rays are beacon to thy restlessness. Weird mystic of the Northland's mystery, Thou 'front'st the Unseen Shadow, nor dost fear To meet the Scarlet Hunter on the trail; Pagan as Pan; to all things sylvan dear, Nature's own vagrant, buoyant, driftless, free-- All winds and woods and waters cry thee hail! When Love Passed By I dreamt of love in the golden glory Of youth unshadowed by cloud or care; Steeped in the love-lore of song and story, I said, "My Love shall be wondrous fair." I said, "Her hands shall be filled with flowers, (My heart shall tell me when Love draws nigh!) She shall steal sweet boon from the graceless hours, Her eyes shall be blue as the cerule sky. "Her hair shall be bright as the stars' gold gleaming, Her lips shall be red with her heart's rich wine, Her face shall be fair as my fondest dreaming, Each pulse of my being shall call her mine!" Then long for the voice of my heart I harkened, Tranced in love's hoping--all hope else forgot-- I waited lonely; the daylight darkened, The twilight deepened--but love came not. Then One passed by in the dusking shadows, The night's dusk shadows slept on her hair-- She passed like a gleam o'er the dew-drenched meadows, And my heart throbbed fast--but she was not fair. Her face was pale and her dark eyes pleading, Her smile was wistful and gravely sweet; She passed me by where I stood unheeding, And dropped a violet at my feet. She went her way o'er the silent meadows, (Ah, traitorous heart that you tricked me so!) I sat alone in the deepening shadows-- Love had passed by--and I did not know. Hedonism Since we must sleep the endless Sleep at last, Since Life's grim juggernaut 'neath ruthless wheels Crushes the heart; since Age like Winter steals On Youth's fair-flowered fields with blighting blast-- Then to the gods our doubts and fears be cast! Enough of Sorrow! Joyance is our due. Gather the roses! Spurn th' envenomed rue. Fling to the waiting winds the pallid past. Steep thee in mellow moods and dear desires; Pluck Love's flame-hearted flower ere it dies; Cull nectared kisses sweet as morning's breath, Warm Chastity at Passion's purple fires; Nepenthe quaff--till drained the chalice lies. After ... the shrouded sleep, the dreamless dark of Death. * * * * * Euthumism If in the spirit glows no spark divine; If soulless dust return to dust again; If, after life, but death and dark remain-- Then it were well to make the moment thine, Bacchante-steeping soul and sense in wine, In lotus-lulling languors, fond desires That heat the heart with fierce, unhallowed fires-- Till Pleasure, Circe-like, transform us into swine. But if some subtler spirit thrill our clay, Some God-like flame illume this fleeting dust-- Promethean fire snatched from the Olympian height-- Then must we choose the nobler, higher Way, Seeking the Beautiful, the Pure, the Just-- The ultimate crowned triumph of the Right! Under the Leaves The phalanxes of corn stand grim and serried, Dull gold the sodden sheaves, The violets that smiled with Spring are buried Under the leaves. Along the land the Winter's doom is creeping All vainly Autumn grieves; And she who made my heart's sweet Spring is sleeping Under the leaves. Carmen Night in Seville, and the twinkle Of stars in the far azure set, The mandolin's torturing tinkle, The click of the castanet! Music and wine and low laughter, Love and a torment of tune-- Hate and a poignard thereafter, Under the yellow moon. Here in the night I await her, Under the slumberous moon; Yearns my fierce spirit to mate her-- All my sick senses aswoon Beneath the wild sway of her dancing Passion and pride are at war;-- Thrall to her amorous glancing, Grandee and toreador. Carmen Gitana, behold her! Bright passion-flower of the South; Soft Southern languors enfold her, Scarlet the bloom of her mouth; Passionate, sensuous, cruel, Raying warm laughter and light, A ruby--a scintillant jewel-- Set on the brow of the Night! Ah, the wild rhythm of her dancing! Lithe with the jaguar's grace, Ah, the sweet fire of her glancing, The love-litten lure of her face! And ah, in my fierce arms to hold her This strange scarlet flower of the South. Close to my heart-beat to fold her Drinking the wine of her mouth! Sweet, thou art weary with dancing, Sick of the music and light Praises and overbold glancing-- Steal with me into the night; Out of the riot of laughter, Out of the torment of tune-- Love and close kisses thereafter Under the sensuous moon! Carmen, my fierce arms enfold thee, Bright passion-flower of the South, Close to my hot heart I hold thee, Crushing the flower of thy mouth. Love--for the loving that swayed me, Passion--for passion long past-- Hate--for the hate that betrayed me ... My dirk in your side at the last! To R. D. MacLean If words were wingèd arrows tipped with flame, Far-flying thro' the vast of time and space, If Erato should lend me some rare grace, Then might I dare to breathe in song your name. Ah, Player-king, unmoved by all renown, Acclaim and praise that wait upon your name, You pluck a laurel from the wreath of fame, Then, careless of the guerdon, cast it down. Love and Death Ever athwart Life's sunlit, upland ways Falleth the shadow of impending Death, And still Life's flowers beneath his blighting breath To ashes wither, and to dust, her bays. What were the worth of hard-won power or praise? Awaits us all the grave-cell dark and deep, The greedy grave-worm's maw, the awful sleep When Death his cold hand on our pulses lays. What then the end of action or of strife? The sphinxèd riddle of the Universe, Nature's unsolved enigma, who may prove? Life's Passion Play all blindly men rehearse.... But yet our recompense for birth, for life, For death itself, meseems, is deathless Love! A Winter Landscape A mystic world mantled in white simarre Arachne-spun with argent woof; her wede Starred with strange crystals wrought from frozen spar, Sprent with pearl frost-flowers; girt with diamond brede, Rubied with berries red as drops of blood, Befringed with gelid, many-irised gems; Broidered with lace weft of an elfin brood-- Hoar filagree to deck her garment hems. Sheer slanting down the sky an opal light Pierces the snow-blur's veil of wannish gray, In iridescent sheen, tingeing the dazzling white With amethystine, gold or beryl ray. Along the West the transient sunset gleam-- An ardor brief! Crimson on crimson grows Till all the waning sky, incarnadine, Glows like blown petals of a shattered rose. Roses and Rue I. A swift thought flashed to my mind that day When I first saw you, regally tall 'Mid a throng of pigmies--a very Saul-- How some woman's heart must admit your sway, Some woman's soul to your soul be thrall; (And though not for me were the rapture to prove you, I thrilled as I thought how a woman might love you!) Then--strange that our eyes for a moment should meet And hold each other a breathless space, That a light as of dawn should leap into your face, That the lips that were stern should an instant grow sweet-- Ere you turned, at a word, with a courtier's grace. (And I knew that tho' many a woman had loved you, Till that moment, the glance of no woman had moved you!) Then you stood at my side and one murmured your name, The proud old name that you worthily wore, And I drank the soul-chalice Fate's mandate upbore To my lips, as the fire of your glance leapt to flame; What need were of words? heart speaks heart evermore-- (And I knew that were mine but the rapture to prove you, How deeply, how dearly one woman might love you!) II. Do I idly dream, as the village maid, Who thinks, as she spins, of a princekin gay On a prancing steed, who shall come her way To woo her and win her and bear her away Thro' the vasty depths of the forest shade To a palace set in a sylvan glade,-- To love her for aye and a day? Is it like that he with his princely pride-- The son of a proud old race, Shall stoop with Cophetua's kingly grace To lift me up to the vacant place, To reign like a queen at his side? Can the world afford him no worthier bride-- No bride with a queenlier grace? Aye, a foolish dream for a sordid day When men seek power--and women, gold-- Gone is the chivalrous age of old When maids were loving and men were bold, And good King Arthur held knightly sway! Ah, love and knighthood were laid away With the cuirass and helm of old. * * * * * But a horseman rides to the wicket gate-- All my pulses proclaim it he, My knight who has parted the waves of the sea, Who has cleft the wide world in his searching for me.... Fond, foolish, dreaming!--for surely Fate Decrees him the winning a worthier mate Than a simple girl like me! III. Why does he come to me, With his deep, impassioned eyes, Stealing my soul from me? Surely a high emprise For such an one as he To smile an hour on me-- To win a worthless prize, Would he might let me be! Proud am I--proud as he For my name as his is old-- What should he say to me? I have neither lands nor gold. Ah, a merry jest 'twill be To win my heart from me-- (The tale will be soon told!) Would he might let me be! IV. Swept, swept away is my vaunted pride On a flood-tide of tenderness; I envy the dog that bounds to his side, And the chestnut mare he is wont to ride 'Cross moor and mead when the day is fine, As she lays her head in a mute caress 'Gainst the arm of _her_ lord--and _mine!_ V. Ah, silver and gold of the glad June morning-- Gold of the sunshine and silver of dew, Dew drop gems all the meads adorning-- Are love and the rose-time a theme for scorning? Roses, roses,--dream not of rue! Am I not loved by you? Antiphonal to sweet sylvan singers, The brook with its maddening, gladdening rune! And my lover's kiss still thrills and lingers, Lingers and burns on my tremulous fingers! Ah, birds in a very riot of tune Pour out my joy to the heart of June! He loves me--loves me! My heart is singing.-- (Heart, oh heart of my heart is it true?) Song on my lips from my soul upringing, A passion of bliss to the breezes flinging, Roses, roses--nor dream of rue! I am beloved by you. VI. To be his wife! Calm all my soul is filling, A calm too deep for smiles--or even tears; A perfect trust to slumber subtly stilling My whilom doubts and fears. Each little common thing to me seems rarer, My life each day becomes more dear to me; Love, am I fair? Ah, fain would I be fairer-- And yet more fair for thee. Like to a priestess some loved shrine adorning, I deck the charms but poorly prized, till late, The beauty once I held too slight for scorning-- To thee, now consecrate! As if some god of old had stooped to love me-- Some star had pierced my darkness with its ray-- I worship thee--an idol throned above me-- Forgetting thou art clay. Rejoicing in the gift that God has given, I may forget the Giver. Love, I fear Lest I shall e'en forget to sigh for Heaven-- When heaven for me is here! VII. Strange that a love supreme Should be swayed by a petty pride, As a straw might turn aside The swift onflowing tide Of a mighty seaward stream! I know that the fault was mine, But I cannot, will not speak; How should I, suppliant, meek, His gracious pardon seek-- Tho' the fault were mine--all mine? Aye, tho' my heart should break, Something--or pride or shame-- Forbids me that I should claim As mine the fault, the blame-- Aye, tho' my heart should break! VIII. Last night he came to me, His dark eyes grave and sweet-- (Eyes that I could not meet!) To crave my pardon--_mine!_ With that kingly courtesy Which makes his least deed fine. What fiend took hold on me? I would nor speak nor heed, Tho' he bent his pride to plead-- (He, all unused to sue!) Though he sought full tenderly For a pardon not _his_ due. Fool! to have played with fire-- Had I not full often heard How when his wrath was stirred It burst all bounds and leapt Higher and ever higher Like flames by the storm-wind swept? Yet--tho' his face was white With a passion that shook his soul-- Not once did he waive control, Tho' his heart to its depths was stirred-- He leashed his wrath that night Nor uttered one bitter word. Pride held me stubbornly dumb, Stilling what words I would say, While I flung my heart's treasure away, While I tampered with fire--to my cost; Till I knew the ultimate end had come-- I had matched pride with love--and lost! IX. What poisoned pen has written The words that bar my breath; What hard, harsh hand has smitten My soul with death? "_Love, my love_"--these the words I read-- "_The vision and dream of a life have died. Hurt to the heart by the words you said,_ Angered, stung by a wounded pride, Mad with the thought that your love was dead-- I have wedded a loveless, unloved bride-- Would I had died instead!_" My heart refuses to understand The words that burn my brain; Palsied, stunned by a felling blow Struck by a cherished hand, I am all too numb for pain; Dead to a deathless woe, Helpless to understand, Shall I ever feel again? X. Awake, alive to pain! The first steel gleam of morn Stabs deep the heart I thought had shrunk to dust, The love I prayed might die to loveless scorn Awakes and cries ... Ah, God, how is it just A fault so slight such meed of pain should pay, That one mad word in pride and anger spoken Should leave two lives forever crushed and broken, Should plait a scourge to lash my soul for aye? How can a just God see men suffer thus?-- Unheedful of the cosmic cry of pain, Unmoved by all the pangs that torture us, Knowing our prayers and tears alike are vain-- Like to a wanton boy who feels no thrill Of pity for the weak his strength holds thrall, Who pins a helpless butterfly against a wall, Watching the bright wings flutter and grow still. We are the sport of some malignant Power Who nails us to our crosses, hard and fast, Who sees us flutter for a little hour, Struggle and suffer ... and grow still at last; Who hears untouched the ceaseless, cosmic groan Wrung from his creatures' tortured lips alway; He will not hear or heed! What need to pray? There is no hand to help. We stand alone. * * * * * Father, forgive! I know not what I say, Frenzied, tortured, torn on the rack of pain; Teach these pain-writhen lips once more to pray-- Help me to trust again! XI. A year! How slight a space When winged with ecstasy! (An æon dark to me.) He has brought her home--God lend me grace! To-night in the throng I shall see his face-- He has long forgotten me. A year! I have learned to smile, I have taught my eyes to lie, I have lived and laughed and sung--the while I have only longed to die. XII. I have seen him once again, There in the throng with his wife (An eagle matched with a pitiful wren!) Bitter in sooth has his portion been-- Chained to a clog for life! Strange that our eyes as of yore should meet And hold each other a breathless space, That the dawn-light of old should illumine his face, That the lips that were stern should an instant grow sweet, Touched with the old-time tender grace. But his eyes were haggard and old with pain (Traitors to thwart his resolute will!) They told me the struggle was vain--all vain! He loves me--loves me still. XIII. Cruel! that I should be glad That he loves and suffers still, Yet how should my soul be sad That his passionate, resolute will Cannot crush the love that is stronger than he, The love that is all for me! The year has left its trace (Cover it how he will!) On the proud, impassive face And I know how he suffers still-- Thrall to a love that is stronger than he, A love that is all for me. Surely, ah surely, I know I who have known his love, I who have loved him so, What such a bond must prove, Linked to a loveless, unloved wife, Chained to a clog for life! XIV. She loves him not, they say, Save for his lands and gold; She is narrow, selfish, cold, Stabbing and wounding his soul each day, Growing further and further away From the heart it was hers to hold. Yet not all blameless he, A woman is quick to feel What man would fain conceal; Surely she can but see That naught to his life is she, Nay--nor can ever be! I am happier--happier far--than he; He is meshed in a galling silken hold, Bound with a jewelled band of gold; While I, at least, am free. And I know what his daily life must be. Linked with a nature paltry, slight, He with his generous, kingly soul, Stung and goaded past all control By a thousand petty barbs of venom and spite. Once, but once have we met, And we spoke of trivial things, Of the changes a twelvemonth brings, Of late Summer, lingering yet... (Ah, how should a heart that has loved forget?) Traitors ever to thwart his will His eyes confirm what I half divine. A bitter, bootless victory mine, He cannot choose but to love me still! XV. Whose was the fault, the blame? She has fled and left him free, Free! but a stain of shame Rests on the proud old name. At a bitter cost she has set him free-- Free! with a blemished fame. And he with the pride of his race, With a resolute, calm control, Locks in his heart the heart's disgrace, Shows of his shame no subtlest trace, Hiding the hurt of a stricken soul 'Neath the calm of a passionless face. He had deemed it a cowardly thing to fly While the village prated anent his shame, And an added blot on his noble name By his own hand to die. But oft in the deep of night I hear Borne on the wild night wind, The beat of the mare's hoofs thundering past, And my heart is clutched by an icy fear Of a direful thing that may chance at last; For ride he never so far, so fast-- Black Care rides hard behind. XVI. Last night as I stood in the gloaming's gray, Ere the moon came into the sky, He came to me for a last good-bye-- At last he is going away. His face in the dusk showed stern and set, Old and haggard and worn with pain; "Dear, I may never see you again-- Mine but the meed regret! How can I ask you to share my shame, How can I give you my blemished name, Yet how shall the heart forget? Naught in my life save a dream have I, A dream--a vision, too fair to be, A rose that blooms 'mid the rue for me-- Naught but a dream ... Good-bye." And then, ere he lifted his bridle rein To ride away down the dark'ning land, He bent and touched with his lips the hand I had laid on the chestnut's mane. XVII. Something ... my senses will scarce recall ... The horror they came in the night to tell ... The mare had galloped riderless home, Blown and bleeding and flecked with foam, And they found him there by the sunken wall, Hurt to the death by the desperate fall. How it had chanced, he could only tell, Ere the merciful numbness stole his brain; How the chestnut rose to the leap and fell.... Then his senses closed on the shocks of pain. He spoke, they told me, but once again-- To whisper my name with his struggling breath-- (Thank God, he suffered so brief a while) Then peacefully sank on the breast of Death, Dead, with his lips asmile. How can I wish him alive again, Lying so peacefully, placidly still, With that carven smile on his marble face. How can I pray that his heart should thrill To waking and waking's pain? Lying so peacefully, placidly still. With the old, sweet smile on his quiet face, Dead to the sting of a heart's disgrace.... How should I wish him a lesser grace, How should I strive with a wiser Will? Yet how can the heart that is reft divine Death's mystical, measureless charity? The cry of the stricken king is mine: "Would I had died for thee!" Severance Not severed by long leagues of lonely land, Nor sundered by wide wastes of sounding sea; But ever side by side and hand in hand, And yet--apart are we. Spartacus He stands storm-browed, imperial, chief Of all Rome's gladiators; brave Beyond all others; fearless in belief, A captive--but no slave. His brow is like a god's--a brow of power, Lips soft with human sweetness--ere the day He entered the arena, and the hour He first beheld man's life-blood mixed with clay. Felt rise within him bestial strange desires And savage instincts in a brutal heart That battened on men's blood; burned with unhallowed fires Of slaughter--till--a thing apart, A hired butcher of his fellow men, he stands Daring the fasting lion in his den, Or some fierce gladiator on the blood-stained sands,-- A savage chief of yet more savage men! He stands, with massive throat and thews of steel, While loud acclaims the listening heavens fill, And Roman women smile. He does not know; or feel A moment's joy or one triumphant thrill. He heeds them not. He sees as in a dream His home and Cyrasella's citron groves; A youth again, beside some purling stream, With gladsome heart and joyous pipe he roves. He sees anon that gentle shepherd boy, Who knew no harsher sound than plaining flute, In the arena stand--Rome's sport and toy-- A bestial, blood-stained hireling brute.... Then swift thro' every throbbing, pulsing vein The fierce unconquered spirit of old Sparta ran. Rome's fiercest gladiator is to-day again A Thracian--and a man! The Dead Leader After the waiting and the anguished weeping He lies at rest at last. How should we mourn him tranced in peaceful sleeping, His pain all past! The Right's Excalibur his strong arm wielded A little space lies low; The victor in life's sometime strife has yielded To man's last Foe. Late--all too late--our loyal tribute giving A loyal, fearless soul! He whom we honored late--so late--while living, Lies dead beside the goal. Yet this the solace of these long sad hours While we who loved him weep, We breathe an answering message in our flowers To him who lies asleep. To him whom soon the deep, cold earth must cover, To him whose dying breath Left to our hearts a message bridging over The dark abyss of Death. Hagar To have known Heaven and then to walk in Hell! Is it not hell to know his face no more, Supplanted, spurned and thrust without his door. Seeing another with my loved lord dwell Sheltered within the tents of wedded love While I must roam the desert of Despair? Ah, God above me harken to my prayer! Send down thy mercy on me as a dove Folding its white wings on my tortured breast. Let me not see the anguish of my child With hunger torn, with thirst's consuming wild, Strike us, oh God, into Thy deep dark Rest! Lo! I have sinned. I kneel and kiss the rod, But she, the wife, who cast us forth to die ... I curse her not! Judge Thou between us, God, Which in Thy sight is guiltier, she or I? Water-Lilies They float ethereal, unearthly white Upon the bosom of the darkling mere, Raying the dusk with slumbrous silver light-- Eidolons of lost moons erst mirrored there. Salvias Wooing the wind's wild caresses, Courting the sun's fierce flame-- Wantons in cardinal dresses Flaunting their scarlet shame. Yellow Jessamine Like little yellow stars that, fallen down, Hang pendulous, enmeshed among the boughs, Mild golden radiances they gem the crown Fair Summer sets upon her beauteous brows. Sunflowers They bloom in lowly places-- Unmeet for fairer beds-- Like swarthy Ethiop faces With yellow-turbaned heads. The Rose All Orient odors, spikenard, balm and myrrh, Perfumes of Araby and farthest Ind-- Sweet incense from the chaliced heart of her She pours upon the feet of every wind. Circe I. Where fair Ææia smiles across the sea To olive-crowned Italia, th' enchantress dwells-- A woman set about with dreams and spells, Weird incantations, charms and mystery. Most strangely pale and strangely fair is she-- Yet deadlier than the hemlock draught her smile, Darker than Stygian glooms her subtle guile.... Drawn by her deep eyes' spell, across the sea The Argive galleys wing, till beached they lie Upon the fatal strand. The Greeks beguile The hasting hours with revelry and wine Within her halls.... Eftsoon strange sorcery The Circe weaves. They who were men erewhile Now grovel at her feet, transformed to swine. II. 'Neath myriad mellow tapers' golden glow A woman stands, proud, insolent and fair; A single gem meshed in the dusk-dyed hair Burns like the evening star descending low Adown the dark'ning sky. Upon the snow Of her full-blossomed breast deep rubies lie. Her fragrant presence breathes sweet sorcery; The shimmering saffron satin's flexile flow Outlines each sinuous curve; a sensuous smile, A touch that fires to flame each pulsant vein-- One draught of eyes more deep than depths of wine The senses steal, the soul and brain beguile Till all seem merged in feeling ... and again A Circe's spells transform men into swine. To A. M. M. She is so shy, this little love of mine, So pale and pure, almost I fear to speak The love that thrills my every pulse like wine Yet brings no answering flush to her fair cheek. She is so calm that Passion's stirring strain To chanson soft and low unbidden dies; The while her longing lover sighs in vain For one soft love-glance from her down-dropped eyes. A lily she that from its garden bed, Into the golden sunshine glad and sweet Lifts to far sapphire skies its radiant head, Unheedful of the base weeds at its feet. Yet--should one loving reverently kneel And draw the lily's close-shut leaves apart, Perchance those waxen petals might reveal Enshrined within, a glowing golden heart. Loveless As some poor starveling at a palace gate Sees curtained gleams from banquet-litten halls, Hears song out-ringing from the festal walls, Scents viands that shall princely palates sate, Yet in the outer gloom may only wait, Crouched in the cold, thrice-thankful for some least Mean morsel flung him from the plenteous feast-- Poor bondman to the ball and chain of Fate! So, lonely at Love's outer gate I stand And glimpse the brightness and the bliss within, Where love-lit smiles transmute the dark to day-- I wait without--I may not enter in; Long, wistfully, I gaze--then void of hand And starved of spirit, sadly turn away. Clytie--The Sunflower (To F. H.) In pale green twilight lands Under the sea Her rainbow palace stands, Irised and opaline; Agate and almondine, Corals and pearly shells Swept from deep ocean dells, Strewing the silver strands, Starring the golden sands In the green twilight lands Under the sea. All thro' the dreamy day Under the sea Where the sea-maidens play, Twining foam-garlands fair, Girding their golden hair, Clad in her moss-robe green Veiled in her bright locks' sheen-- Where the dim seaweeds sway, Trackless her white feet stray All thro' the dreamy day Under the sea. Or like a star she glides Over the sea, Deftly her steeds she guides-- Gold-fish that glint and gleam, Jewels alive they seem-- Softly the surges swell, Rocking the rosy shell Where the sea-maiden rides, Wafture of wooing tides, Swift as a star she glides Over the sea. One day she lifts her eyes Up from the sea Where the great sun-god flies Over the world afar, Guiding his golden car-- All his star brow aglow, All his bright hair aflow; Dawn in his radiance lies, Dusk at his coming dies-- Hapless she lifts her eyes Up from the sea. Swiftly his steeds speed on Over the sea, Soon is the splendor flown, Lone on the shore she stands. Stretching imploring hands, Lifting impassioned eyes Where the last sun-gleam dies; All the day's brightness gone, Hapless she stands alone, Heedless the god speeds on Over the sea. Ever her wistful gaze Over the sea Yearns on the sun-god's rays-- Till by some subtle power Changed to a golden flower-- Still in her robe of green, Crowned with her gold hair's sheen Slight on her stem she sways ... Yet does her yearning gaze Follow the sun-god's rays Over the sea. In Bondage What can it profit a man tho' he have the soul of a god Sunk in the form of a beast, with a senseless simian face-- What can the world perceive of the subtler inward grace Breathing upon the dust of the coarse clay clod? What knows the world of me--the Me that is prisoned within-- Seeing only the self that sickens its sensitive eyes-- How can it know that this hateful mask hides not the sneer of Sin, That this cloak of crass, crude flesh, is a trusty soul's disguise? What can I hope to win? Which of the gifts men prize? What can I have or hold of the bounteous boon I crave-- I, with the coarse stubbed hands, the dull and narrow eyes, The low-browed leer of the brutal, base-born slave? What can I know of Love? I, with my ape-like face, Frighting the tender trust of the timorous, shrinking maid, Who, drawn by my deep soul's spell, half-yields to the soul's embrace Then looks on its hideous mask and trembles and flees dismayed. Yet must the soul of fire chained to this cursed clay, Galled by its fetters of flesh, seared with a thousand scars, Shriek and struggle and beat its breast on its prison bars Thro' the night's long dark of despair till the dawning of ultimate day, Till the glow of that ultimate dawn transfigure the tortured face And the sacred fire within crumble the coarse clay clod. Till the Soul, breathed on by an unseen, unknown Grace, Stripped of its bonds of flesh, stand face to face with its God! To a Singer Beneath thy Midas touch life's sullen grays Are thrilled to sudden gold; as some far gleam From wings of Helios athwart thy dream Irradiates for thee earth's darksome ways. Wild woodland voices ripple thro' thy lays; Sweet silvern murmurs from some deep-delled spring, Brook, tree and flower and each insensate thing, The throstle's call, the calm of sun-steeped days, A glint of sunshine on the swallow's wing, Fern-filagrees, the drowsy drone of bee Made drunk with draughts of purple wild-grape wine; All these Orphèan music holds for thee, And all thy days and dreams companioning Walks Nature with her hand close-clasped in thine. Blossom of Brine Morn! and a white sail winging Over the sunlit waves; A song on the breezes ringing Up from the coral caves Where sea-nymphs, white arms lifting Wreaths for the sea-god twine Of the frail foam-flowers drifting On the wave-crests--blossom of brine. Night! and a dark rack flying Over the sullen waves; A dirge on the night winds sighing Up from the cold sea caves Where sea-nymphs white arms lifting Wreaths for a pall entwine For a still white face is drifting On the wave-crest--blossom of brine. A Memory Strange that across the vast of varied years, Fraught with life's wonted alloy--mingled joy and pain-- Sun-kissed with smiles or gloomed with mists of tears, Old memories should wake to life again. Old thoughts and dreams, words breathed by lips long dumb, Songs sung by voices silent now for aye, Like hosts of speechless spectres thronging come Dim formless wraiths of each dear vanished day. Strange that a fragment of a life replete, A few brief hours as men measure time, A chapter in life's book, closed now--yet vaguely sweet As odor-laden zephyrs from some far-off clime-- Should drift across my heart while joysome memories rise Of golden moments snatched from Arcady, Of silver sails and opal-tinted skies, Of viridescent earth and sapphire sea. Of Lotus-land where pleasure dreamful lies, Of kindred souls responsive each to each, Of thoughts half hidden by deep-tinted eyes-- (Sweet traitors telling that denied to speech!) The merest fragment of a life replete, A sun-gleam 'mid existence's sombre grays, Eyes, hands and hearts that for one moment meet In strange, sweet yearning ... then--divided ways. To Margaret Maiden of varying mood, Thalia thou hast wooed, Thespis thereafter, Till 'neath thy lyric sway Each heart must tribute pay-- Tears blent with laughter. So in the days to be This do we crave for thee, Through life's hereafter, Throughout the changing years, May all thy griefs and tears Be blent with laughter. Regret Shimmer of rose and pearl, Sheen on an opal sky; Day's crimson banners unfurl, Purple-pleached shadow-gleams die; Dawn flowers bourgeoning fair, Meads with the dawn-dews wet; Rare is the morn--ah, rare! But in the heart, regret-- A vague regret. Clouds like the scattered snow Stippling a sapphire sky; Fervor and heat and glow, Zephyrs that swoon and die. Drowseth the nooning air On meads with red poppies set; Fair is the day--ah, fair! But in the heart, regret-- And still ... regret. Flashes of burning gold, Flushes of crimson light Faint on a waning wold, Stealeth the silent night. One from a casement bar Leaneth with lashes wet, Watching the last wan star Fade like a heart's regret-- A vain regret. "God Bless You, Dear" Dear patient face and placid brow, Dear lips that smiled despite of pain, Brave toil-worn hands, so helpful now, Sweet spirit free from earthly stain. Within the doorway Mother stands, The while a merry barefoot lad, Across the springtime meadow-lands Goes whistling schoolward, blithe and glad; And where the pathway breasts the hill, I stay my steps and turn to hear Her loving voice, as lingering still, She calls, "Good-bye! God bless you, dear." Dear patient face and furrowed brow, Dear lips that smile thro' all life's pain, Brave toil-worn hands, so weary now, Sweet soul unmarred by earthly stain. Within the doorway Mother stands, The while a man oppressed with care, Across the waning Autumn lands, Goes toil-ward, fain to strive and bear; And where the pathway breasts the hill, I stay my steps and turn to hear Her trembling voice, as ling'ring still, She calls, "Good-bye! God bless you, dear." Dear peaceful face and placid brow, Dear lips that smile secure from pain, Brave toil-worn hands, soft-folded now, Sweet spirit freed from earthly stain. Within God's portal Mother stands, The while a man forspent with care Seeketh the far-off meadow-lands, By faith made strong to strive and bear. And as I breast life's weary hill, I ofttimes pause--meseems I hear The well-loved accents breathing still The old fond prayer, "God bless you, dear." Roses "Where leaves the Rose of Yesterday?"--Rubàiyat. A red rose burns upon his breast Where erst a white rose lay; Above his fervent heart-throb pressed-- The red rose of To-day. What recks he of the flower that dies-- (For roses bloom alway!) Low in the dust, forgotten, lies The rose of Yesterday. But yet, To-day's red rose must die, (For roses fade alway!) To-morrow crushed, forgot, 'twill lie-- A rose of Yesterday. The Poet One fluting on sad wolds Pan's flight left drear, One crying down the wayward wind of Chance, One piping unto feet that will not dance And mourning unto ears that will not hear. Shylock Cold craft and avarice look from out his eyes, His face with evil passion marred and seamed, Looks frowningly upon a Christian world. Behind that hateful mask a demon lurks To urge the narrow soul to darksome deeds Of violence and greed, of hate and ruth. His God, a God of wrath, a tyrant force To mete to helpless souls eternal doom; A Juggernaut, a hard unsentient power,-- But yet less potent than the yellow gold Those crooked talons clutch, and for the which The miser Shylock fain would sell his soul. Sonnet (To Charles J. O'Malley.) As when above orchestral undertone, The plaining wail of muted violin, The hushed oböe and the distant din, Of muffled drum or viol's raucous groan-- Sudden arises one pure voice-like tone, A silver trumpet's tongue that stirs the soul To feel the theme, and the harmonious whole A sonant setting seems for that alone; So, high above earth's murmurous stir and strife, Riseth thy voice in clear enringing song-- No minor plaint of dull despairing pain, But one true note of hope that bids us long For higher things; and all the din of life Seems to subserve the sweetness of thy strain. Antithesis The poet wrought a song of sadness, fraught With all the pain the world's sad heart hath proved; He sang of doubt, and dreams that end in naught ... Then, smiling, turned and kissed the lips he loved. The poet wrought a song of joyance, thrilled With all the peace the world's glad heart hath kept; He sang of hope and happy dreams fulfilled ... Then bent his face upon his hands and wept. In Fortune's Twilight The old house totters 'neath its weight of years, Bowed, like the form of him who shelters there, Old, friendless, lone--save for the wanton, Care, Who flouts him, mocks his grief with gibes and jeers And laughs to see his piteous hopes grow fears. Not his the joy of placid, sun-crowned age-- His dim eyes falter as he scans the page Of Life's worn album, blotted with his tears. He sees in dreams the wife he loved--long dead; The son--once proud to bear his father's name-- Who mixed his honest blood with dire disgrace; The wayward girl who wrought her father shame ... He sits alone with Care; the day has fled And twilight falls, upon the furrowed face. Fate Thro' countless æons sunless and remote A Soul went searching for its spirit mate, Thro' star-stained space, o'er wind-swept deep, afloat, Forever desolate. Anon, another spirit, lone of heart Goes forth thro' voiceless void to seek its mate; Eftsoon they meet, these twain, strike hands ... and part! And this is Fate. The Path of Dreams Beside the stream that silverly steals on To swell the song of that far-sounding sea Which breaks upon the utmost shore of Thought, They who have drunk at Song's immortal spring Walk with glad feet the upland path of dreams That whitely winds thro' long low-lying lands-- By one, yclept the Way of Fools--a plain Of dust and ashes and of Dead Sea fruit; But by another called the Path of Hope That leads far up the slope of heart's desire;-- And haply both speak truth--for oft the way Is set with stones that tear the climbing feet, And oft for roses there is bitter rue, And oft for singing there is idle scorn, And sneers full oft for smiles. Yet well we know The upland Path of Dreams that whitely winds (Yclept or Way of Fools or Path of Hope) Leads upward ever to the Hills of Song! Beside the silent stream whose soundless tide Sets ever to the unknown tideless sea They who have drunk of Slumber's poppied draught Walk with unsandalled feet the path of dreams That winds thro' gray, low-lying fields of sleep To dim dream shores girt with dim spectre-trees, Swayed ever by the sweep of unseen wings, Slow-stirring palms and arabesques of ferns And fields of sombre bloom and scentless flowers Not of their wonted hue, but dimly gray, Where songless birds like shades of shadows flit, And silent winds from poppied meadows blow-- And here dear presences to us denied By sterner Day, approach to cry us hail; And here a little do we taste the joy Of kisses dreamed on lips forever mute, A little know the bliss of Hope fulfilled, And dreams that seem as true as very Truth ... Yet well we know that with the stir of dawn, Waking, we must return from Sleep's far fields! Beside the Lethean stream whose soundless tide Sets ever to the unknown tideless Sea That breaks upon the farthest unknown shore-- They who have quaffed dark Asrael's mystic draught Walk with still feet the viewless Path of Dreams That winds thro' long, low-lying fields of Sleep To fields Elysian or Tartarian glooms; And haply, longed-for presences denied By sterner Life shall come to cry us hail,-- Bright radiances from realms of light eterne, Or shadows from the shades of awful Dis-- But whether here we taste of Hope fulfilled, Or find our dreams are but as drifted dust-- From dark of Dis or realms of Light eterne, Full well we know we shall return no more! An Autumn Song The dim sun slips adown the sky That dies from gold to gray; The homing birds that Southward fly To my heart's hailing make reply, Piping "Good-bye, good-bye!" Southward I turn my wistful eyes, Southward, where all my treasure lies, Whither the homing sparrow flies, Piping, "Good-bye, good-bye!" The chill blast sweeps the steely sky That glooms a sullen gray; Soft summer winds that Southward fly To my soul's sighing make reply Breathing "Good-bye, good-bye!" Southward I turn my longing eyes, Southward my yearning spirit hies, Whither or bird or zephyr flies Sighing "Good-bye, good-bye!" Vain Wreath of laurel and crown of bay And the noisy trump of Fame, Praise for the singer's deathless lay, And a listening world's acclaim. But the singer sits with his grief alone Where love lies cold and dead. The plaudits fall on a heart of stone; The Soul of the song has fled. Sartor Resartus Ah, God be merciful to him who sees Thro' ermined pomp and pageantry of kings, Thro' regal mien and beauty's witcheries The poor, weak, shrivelled soul that crouches hid Within the body's hold! Thrice-cursed is he Whose soul sees souls of others face to face, Who strips the outer man like vestments off And views the naked heart in all its shame And poverty; who still must rend the veil Of motive, purpose, false humanity And futile pretense! God! to walk this world Doomed still to see what others fain would hide, Reading men's thoughts as scholars read the page Of some old language dead to all save them; Seeing beneath the tender woman flesh, The woman-grace, the pleading woman-eyes, The grisly skeleton, the hollow ribs, The eyeless sockets and the grinning jaw; Reading for aye the sneer beneath the smile, The lie that lurks behind the seeming truth; To know that such, or haply worse, am I, A living lie, false prophet to myself, Clothed on with shimmering robes of fallacy And vain deceit! Ah God, where is the truth? Are all men false or lies the fault in me Who, vulture-like, seize only on the taint, And leave the pure? If haply thus it be In pity take away the subtle sight That pierces thought. Give back the old fond faith, The young belief in all humanity; Hide from my view the canker in the rose, The taint in truth, the blight upon the bloom. Far better 'twere to drink the hemlock draught And, happy, deem it nectar than to find The drop of gall within the nectared cup. Far better trust repaid with treachery Than doubt confirmed! Ah, Thou all-seeing God Who art the Truth, make me to see the truth; Lift from my soul the shadow; in the room Of doubt, send trust. Let me believe again; Help me to see the highest in mankind! Illumed Like to a little child, whose straying feet, Tracking the fox-fire's guiling glint and gleam, Have wandered far afield by marsh and stream While just before the wavering glimmers fleet On and still on where sky and meadow meet, Till, spent and fearful in the gathering gloom, At last he sees the guiding light of home, Where love awaits and mother-kisses sweet. So was it mine through fens of doubt to stray Pursuing still some fair ephemeron, Or fleeting gleam, or shimmering fallacy, Till through the deepening dusk a beacon shone Set by the hand of Love to light the way O Father, to implicit trust in Thee! In the Play In a painted "Forest of Arden," in the glare of the garish light, In doublet and hose, be-powdered and rouged, you sigh to me night by night; Attuned to the sway of your cadenced voice, as a harp to the wooing wind, I thrill at the touch of your painted lips--for--"_I am your Rosalind!_" Could you know that my art in seeming was a dearer thing than art, That the love-words spoken nightly spring straight from a loving heart; Could you know that my soul speaks to you--aye soul and spirit and mind! When I gaze deep into your eyes and breathe--"_And I am your Rosalind!_" To you 'tis a vain dissembling--a part of the work of the day, And the words that your voice makes music, but the dull, dead lines of the play. Little you care for the woman you woo, save as a foil designed. To prove your skill as a lover--yet--"_I am your Rosalind!_" I merge in the player, the woman! The actress good at her art Must needs look well to each glance and tone, must needs play still her part-- Tho' the woman's soul that must else be mute; aye soul and spirit and mind! Cry to your soul in another's words--"_And I am your Rosalind!_" To E. P. B. Imperial as that famed Elizabeth Before whose feet a knight his cloak cast down-- A sovereign--altho' thine only crown Love's roses 'twine for thee, Elizabeth. Ah, maiden sweeter than morn's nectared breath, Across thy path no regal robe I fling-- Only a living, loving heart I bring To lay at thy dear feet, Elizabeth. Through the Dark Last night they laid me in my winding sheet, Set burning tapers at my feet and head, Decked me with wan white blossoms faint and sweet, And told each other softly, "She is dead." Ay, dumb and dead! Enshrouded, cold and stark I lay where waned the tawny tapers dim, Pulseless and pale; yet thro' the dreadful dark I lived in thoughts of _him_. The morning came. One who had loved me bent Above my face with tears and bated breath; Laid on my heart the roses _he_ had sent-- And I--was glad of death! Preluding Frail fronds of ferns uncurling, Blue iris flags unfurling, Pale showers of blossoms swirling Like clouds of wind-blown snow; With fragile wildings playing, Like two blithe children maying, Across the glad meads straying, Together, dear, we go. The silver clouds far-drifting, Vague lights and shadows shifting, The sungleams gold-dust sifting Down thro' the latticed leaves; Gray brooks the meadows lacing, Young flow'rs the uplands gracing, Her faery 'broidery tracing The skillful spider weaves. From long, long day-dreams shaken, The vivid violets waken; His Southern haunts forsaken, The bluebird flecks the sky; Ah, breath of bloom-bright heather, Ah, golden Maytime weather, We drift in dreams together-- Together, you and I. The Heights of Silence (Transcribed from "The Choir Invisible.") Above the valleys, peopled, fair and warm, Rise the bleak, silent uplands where abide Wraiths of lost loves, love's recompense denied, Unspoken, unconfessed, unsatisfied.... Cold, silent heights, engirt with zones of storm, Where Love for aye unmated must abide. The broad, sweet downward vistas of the flesh Stretch fair and far; the calm white spirit-height Is lone and chill; there dimly shines the light Of sun and star that burns and beacons bright Where Sin spreads still her guiling, glitt'ring mesh. Ah, warm the valley! Lone and chill the height! Yet he who wins the height's sublimity-- The silent height where loves unlived abide, Loves stainless, sublimated, purified-- Shall glimpse that land, to grosser view denied, Where love and longing infinite shall be Or ever stilled--or ever satisfied. Andromeda Bound ever to a great grey rock of Doom, Striving with futile hands to rive the chain Of woven fear, distrust and subtle pain, While gaunt wolf-waves that leap from out the gloom Of doubt's cold sea are snarling at my feet, As nearer writhes the dragon of Despair Foul with dank horrors of his caverned lair, And like a clock of doom the dark tides beat.... I lift my eyes; Lo! sudden sweeps along Thought's empyrean and the vast of dreams One star-browed, Jove-like, human-orbed; meseems His feet are winged with music, shod with song; Ah, Perseus, should'st thou, pitying, leave the sky To loose my bonds--then all the fear were gone, Soul touching soul, trust from distrust were won, Like god and goddess 'fronted, thou and I; Despair were slain, closed the unequal strife, Thy great soul's strength should make weak purpose strong, Thy hand should lead me up the slopes of Song, Thy winged feet guide me to the peaks of Life! Requital What tho' you loved me once? Man's love at best Is but a mood--the fancy of an hour, You held all faith and truth a theme for jest, Love's recompense, a smile. You knew your power. What tho' you loved me then? You went away And left my life an arid waste of pain; And now--your best years spent, your idols clay-- You stretch imploring arms to me again. What tho' you love me still? What tho' you say The current of your life toward mine is set, As vagrant stars obey the planets' sway, Or perfume clingeth to the violet? What tho' I once loved you? See in yon West Day's fires have burned to ashes cold and gray; So in my quiet heart love's wild unrest By its own flame consumed, is dead for aye. When Fades the Light When fades the light along the western sky, When dies the last dim rose to subtlest gray, When darkling mere and mead enshadowed lie, And Night's wide arms enfold the wearied Day; When tired lilies ring their vesper bells And dusking leaves speak whispered orison, When cassocked Twilight breathing benison His rosary of flashing fireflies tells-- Then ends the day-long struggle. Strong no more I drift far out on Fancy's phantom sea, Setting full sail for that forbidden shore Where waiteth Love for me. * * * * * When fades the light from out my dying eyes, And soul and sense seem slipping soft away, When Death's swift shallop launched on Lethe lies Waiting to wing me to the unknown Gray; When things of time and thought grow strangely dim, And the pent spirit strains to loose its bands Till from the fettered feet and helpless hands Shall fall life's shackles pitiless and grim-- Then shall the conflict cease. Enchained no more My soul shall sail the silent unknown sea Until it touch the unforbidden shore Where Love awaiteth me. Butterflies As if a bed of bloom had taken wing-- Bright marigolds, nasturtiums, zinnias gay-- They breast the breeze or, lightly poising, cling To other flowers not animate as they. In the Dark Forest The long gray twilight falls and deeper glooms Close round the graying wood that dimmer grows As dies the Day's last yearning tint of rose, And Dusk spins shadows on her eldritch looms. The black bat flits, the eerie white moth flies-- Wan ghost of yesterday's bright butterfly-- The dusking forest pools uplooking lie Like graveless dead men's staring, sightless eyes. Ah, eerie, eerie is the lonely wood, But lo! the faeries light their firefly lamps, Elusive foxfire flames from marish damps; Hastes to the morris-dance an elfin brood; A far bell chimes, the cricket cheerly shrills, The droning beetle sounds his hoarse bassoon And hylas trill; eftsoon the rising moon The ambient air to molten silver thrills. Then all the lyric night is set to song! The cuckoo calls, the plaining whippoorwill Cries faint and far away; more distant still The hoopoe, hid his marshy haunts among, Wails with the cry of some lost soul in pain; The nightingale engilds the pulsant dark With golden-throated melody--but hark! The night-jar's discord mars the perfect strain. The night wears on, black shadows throng apace, The wood is still, the moon grows wan and old, White marsh-mists wreathe like clammy arms, death-cold, And moth-wings like dead fingers sweep my face; The bittern wailing leaves the sombre pool, Voicing the world-old pain that never dies; The owl with ghoulish laughter outward flies Like some weird Vivien shrieking, "Fool!" and "Fool!" Insatiate What though she lieth mute on yonder hill? Though ivy green and shadowy eglatere Have held in tender fold through many a year Her quiet grave, I fear her--fear her still. He loved her once. Ay, though he hold me fast And sear my lips with kisses burning-sweet, No touch of mine can make his life replete For man's first love is oftentimes his last. A still face glimmers through my dreams for aye. E'en when I strain him close with feverish grasp Wan grave-cold fingers loose the clinging clasp, And grave-cold lips my fervid kisses stay. She lives incarnate in each flower fair, Her eyes illume the violets in my hand, The golden-rod that lights the Autumn land Seems but the scattered star-dust of her hair. Love's perfect flower may never bloom for me-- For me his wife. For ah! I fear her still Who lies forever mute on yonder hill. He loved her once. Would God that I were she! * * * * * Transcriber's Notes Table of Contents: Slight listing changes were made to match poem titles. Page 29: Added opening parenthesis: (And I knew that tho' many a woman had loved you, Till that moment, the glance of no woman had moved you!) Page 47: Added closing parenthesis: (Thank God, he suffered so brief a while) Page 70: Corrected wathway to pathway: And where the pathway breasts the hill, Page 79: Added a blank line after first stanza: Piping "Good-bye, good-bye!" 
27297	----	file was produced from images generously made available by The Kentuckiana Digital Library) PATH FLOWER _All rights reserved_ PATH FLOWER AND OTHER VERSES BY OLIVE T. DARGAN [Device] MCMXIV LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS LTD. NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS CONTENTS PAGE PATH FLOWER 1 THE PIPER 6 TO A HERMIT THRUSH 8 THANKSGIVING 14 THE ROAD 16 LA DAME REVOLUTION 23 THE REBEL 24 THESE LATTER DAYS 25 ABNEGATION 26 THE LITTLE TREE 27 THE GAME 28 BALLAD 31 A DIRGE 37 HIS ARGUMENT 39 THE CONQUEROR 40 TO MOINA 41 "THERE'S ROSEMARY" 42 AT THE GRAVE OF HEINE 43 TO A LOST COMRADE 45 FOR M. L. P. 46 TO SLEEP 47 "LE PENSEUR" 48 VISION 49 SAFE 50 ON BOSWORTH FIELD 52 OLD FAIRINGDOWN 53 THE KISS 58 YOUTH 60 TO MIRIMOND 62 SOROLLA 63 IN THE BLUE RIDGE 66 YE WHO ARE TO SING 70 "AND THE LAST SHALL BE FIRST" 73 MAGDALEN TO HER POET 76 FRIENDS 85 TRYST 89 IN THE STUDIO 90 LOVERS' LEAP 91 HAVENED 94 MID-MAY 102 THE LOSS 104 CALLED 105 SONG OF TO-MORROW 108 LITTLE DAUGHTERS 110 _The author thanks the editors of "Scribner's Magazine," "The Century," "The Atlantic Monthly," and "M'Clure's" for permission to reprint the greater part of the verse included in this volume._ PATH FLOWER A red-cap sang in Bishop's wood, A lark o'er Golder's lane, As I the April pathway trod Bound west for Willesden. At foot each tiny blade grew big And taller stood to hear, And every leaf on every twig Was like a little ear. As I too paused, and both ways tried To catch the rippling rain,-- So still, a hare kept at my side His tussock of disdain,-- Behind me close I heard a step, A soft pit-pat surprise, And looking round my eyes fell deep Into sweet other eyes; The eyes like wells, where sun lies too, So clear and trustful brown, Without a bubble warning you That here's a place to drown. "How many miles?" Her broken shoes Had told of more than one. She answered like a dreaming Muse, "I came from Islington." "So long a tramp?" Two gentle nods, Then seemed to lift a wing, And words fell soft as willow-buds, "I came to find the Spring." A timid voice, yet not afraid In ways so sweet to roam, As it with honey bees had played And could no more go home. Her home! I saw the human lair, I heard the hucksters bawl, I stifled with the thickened air Of bickering mart and stall. Without a tuppence for a ride, Her feet had set her free. Her rags, that decency defied, Seemed new with liberty. But she was frail. Who would might note The trail of hungering That for an hour she had forgot In wonder of the Spring. So shriven by her joy she glowed It seemed a sin to chat. (A tea-shop snuggled off the road; Why did I think of that?) Oh, frail, so frail! I could have wept,-- But she was passing on, And I but muddled "You'll accept A penny for a bun?" Then up her little throat a spray Of rose climbed for it must; A wilding lost till safe it lay Hid by her curls of rust; And I saw modesties at fence With pride that bore no name; So old it was she knew not whence It sudden woke and came; But that which shone of all most clear Was startled, sadder thought That I should give her back the fear Of life she had forgot. And I blushed for the world we'd made, Putting God's hand aside, Till for the want of sun and shade His little children died; And blushed that I who every year With Spring went up and down, Must greet a soul that ached for her With "penny for a bun!" Struck as a thief in holy place Whose sin upon him cries, I watched the flowers leave her face, The song go from her eyes. Then she, sweet heart, she saw my rout, And of her charity A hand of grace put softly out And took the coin from me. A red-cap sang in Bishop's wood, A lark o'er Golder's lane; But I, alone, still glooming stood, And April plucked in vain; Till living words rang in my ears And sudden music played: _Out of such sacred thirst as hers The world shall be remade._ Afar she turned her head and smiled As might have smiled the Spring, And humble as a wondering child I watched her vanishing. THE PIPER I met a crone 'twixt wood and wood, Who pointed down the piper's road With shaken staff and fearsome glance,-- "Ware, ware the dance!" But when the piper me did greet, The wind, the wind was in my feet, The rose and leaf on eager boughs Unvestalled them of dew-writ vows, And I as light as leaf and rose Danced to the summer's close. Now every tree is weary grown, Of singing birds there is not one; All, all the world droops into grey,-- O piper Love, must thou yet play? The wildest note of all he blew, And fast my worn feet flew. Old is the year, the leaf and rose Are long, long gone; So chill, so chill the grey wind blows Through heart and bone; No grasses warm the winter ways That wound my feet; But with unwearied fingers yet, Bold, undelayed on stop and fret, Unmercifully sweet, The piper plays.... TO A HERMIT THRUSH Dweller among leaves, and shining twilight boughs That fold cool arms about thine altar place, What joyous race Of gods dost serve with such unfaltering vows? Weave me a time-fringed tale Of slumbering, haunted trees, And star-sweet fragrances No day defiled; Of bowering nights innumerable, And nestling hours breath-nigh a dryad's heart That sleeping yet was wild With dream-beat that thou mad'st a part Of thy dawn-fluting; ay, and keep'st it still, Striving so late these godless woods to fill With undefeated strain, And in one hour build the old world again. Wast thou found singing when Diana drew Her skirts from the first night? Didst feel the sun-breath when the valleys grew Warm with the love of light, Till blades of flower-lit green gave to the wind The mystery that made sweet The earth forever,--strange and undefined As life, as God, as this thy song complete That holds with me twin memories Of time ere men, And ere our ways Lay sundered with the abyss of air between? _List, I will lay The world, my song, Deep in the heart of day, Day that is long As the ages dream or the stars delay! Keep thou from me, Sigh-throated man, Forever to be Under the songless wanderer's ban. I am of time That counteth no dawn; Thy æons yet climb To skies I have won, Seeking for aye an unrisen sun!_ Soft as a shadow slips Before the moon, I creep beneath the trees, Even to the boughs whose lowest circling tips Whisper with the anemones Thick-strewn as though a cloud had made Its drifting way through spray and leafy braid And sunk with unremembering ease To humbler heaven upon the mossy heaps. And here a warmer flow Urges thy melody, yet keeps The cool of bowers; as might a rose blush through Its unrelinquished dew; Or bounteous heart that knows not woe, Put on the robe of sighs, and fain Would hold in love's surmise a neighbour's pain. Ah, I have wronged thee, sprite! So tender now thy song in flight, So sweet its lingerings are, It seems the liquid memory Of time when thou didst try Thy gleaning wing through human years, And met, ay, knew the sigh Of men who pray, the tears That hide the woman's star, The brave ascending fire That is youth's beacon and too soon his pyre,-- Yea, all our striving, bateless and unseeing, That builds each day our Heaven new. More deep in time's unnearing blue, Farther and ever fleeing The dream that ever must pursue. _Heart-need is sorest When the song dies: Come to the forest, Brother of the sighs. Heart-need is song-need, Brother, give me thine! Song-meed is heart-meed, Brother, take mine! I go the still way, Cover me with night; Thou goest the will way Into the light. Dust and the burden Thou shall outrun; Bear then my guerdon, Song, to the sun!_ O little pagan with the heart of Christ, I go bewildered from thine altar place, These brooding boughs and grey-lit forest wings, Nor know if thou deniest My destiny and race, Man's goalward falterings, To sing the perfect joy that lay Along the path we missed somewhere, That led thee to thy home in air, While we, soil-creepers, bruise our way Toward heights and sunrise bounds That wings may know nor feet may win For all their scars, for all their wounds; Or have I heard within thy strain Not sorrow's self, but sorrowing That thou did'st seek the way more free, Nor took with us the trail of pain That endeth not, e'er widening To life that knows what Life may be; And ere thou fall'st to silence long Would golden parting fling: _Go, man, through death unto thy star; I journey not so far; My wings must fail e'en with my song._ THANKSGIVING Supremest Life and Lord of All, I bring my thanks to thee; Not for the health that does not fail, And wings me over land and sea; Not for this body's pearl and rose, And radiance made sure By thine enduring life that flows In sky-print swift and pure; Not for the thought whose glowing power Glides far, eternal, free, And surging back in thy full hour Bears the wide world to me; Not for the friends whose presence is The warm, sweet heart of things Where leans the body for the kiss That gives the soul its wings; Not for the little hands that cling, The little feet that run, And make the earth a fitter thing For thee to look upon; Not for mine ease within my door, My roof when rains beat strong, My bed, my fire, my food in store, My book when nights are long; But, Lord, I know where on lone sands A leper rots and cries; Find thou my offering in his hands, My worship in his eyes. As thou dost give to him, thy least, Thou givest unto me; As he is fed I make my feast, And lift my thanks to thee. THE ROAD On Gilead road the shadows creep; ('Tis noon, and I forget;) By Gilead road the ferns are deep, And waves run emerald, wind-beset, To some unsanded shore Of doe and dove and fay; And I for love of that before, Forget the hindward way. By Gilead road a river runs, (To what unshadowed sea?) Bough-hidden here,--there by the sun's Gold treachery unbared to me. O Beauty in retreat, From beckoned eyes you steal, But the pursuing heart, more fleet, Lifts your secretest veil. A thrush! What unbuilt temples rear Their domes where thrushes sing! My heart glides in, a worshipper At shrines that ne'er knew offering, Nor eye hath seen, and yet What soul hath not been there, Deep in song's fane where we forget To pray, for we are prayer. And now the shadows start and glide; I hear soft, woodland feet; And who are they that deeper bide Where beechen twilights meet? What trancèd beings smile On things I may not see? As with a dream they would beguile Their own eternity? I too shall find my own as they; ('Tis eve, and I forget;) Here in this world where mortals play As gods with no god's leave or let. My hope in high purlieus Desire erst lockt and kept, On wing unbarred shall seek and choose,-- Ay, choose, when I have slept. For happy roads may yet be long, And bliss must sometime bed. Fern-deep I fall, lose sight and song, The slim palms close above my head, And Life, the Shadow, weaves The charm on sleepers laid Till Time's spent ghost comes not nor grieves An hourless Gilead. Ay me, I dream my eyes are wet; I sigh, I turn, I weep. Alack, that waking we forget But to remember when we sleep! O vision of closed eyes, That burns the heart awake! O the forgotten truth's reprise For the forsaken's sake! Far land, blood-red, I feel again Thy hot, unsilenced breath; Meet thy unburied eyes of pain That, dying ever, find no death; See childhood's one gold hour Bartered for crust and bed, And man's o'erdriven noon devour His evening peace and bread. I hear men sob,--ay, men,--and shout To souls on Gilead road: "Tell us the way--we sent ye out-- We bought ye free--we paid our blood!" Gaunt arms make signal mad; O, feel the woe-waves break! Does no one hear in Gilead? Will one, not one turn back? Rolls higher from the land blood-red That sea-surge of despair! A flame creeps over Gilead, Unseen, unfelt by any there. They look not back, the while Doom shadows round them dance, And smile meets slow, unstartled smile As in it sleep's mid-chance. "We give our days, we give our blood, We send ye far to see! We break beneath the double load That ye may walk unbowed and free! 'Tis ours, the healing shade; 'Tis ours, the singing stream; 'Tis ours, the charm on sleepers laid; 'Tis ours, the toil-won dream!" Dim grown is Gilead, ashen, lost To me who hear that cry. "Our every star is hid with dust; The way, the way! Let us not die!" Up from the trampled ferns, (O Beauty's praying hands!) I stricken start, as one who turns From plague's unholy lands. Pale is the dream we dream alone, An unresolving fire, Till beacon hearts make it their own And men are lit with man's desire. I mourn no Gilead fair, Back to my own I speed, And all my tears are falling where They sell the sun for bread. Mine too the blow, the unwept scar; Mine too the flames that sere; And on my breast not one proud star That leaves a brother's heaven bare. Life is the search of God For His own unity; I walk stone-bare till all are shod, No gold may sandal me. I come, O comrades, faster yet! For me no bough-hung shade Till every burning foot be set In ferns of Gilead. The old, old pain of kind, Once mine, is mine once more; And I forget the way behind, So dear is that before. LA DAME REVOLUTION Red was the Might that sired thee, White was the Hope that bore thee, Heaven and Earth desired thee, And Hell from thy lovers tore thee; But barren to the ravisher, Thou bearest Love thy child, Immortal daughter, Peace; for her Waits Man, the Undefiled. THE REBEL A riot-maker! Can the fruit Of frenzy be a gracious thing? His soul has hands; above the bruit They lift a song-bird quivering. World-wrecker! Shall he trampling go Till Beauty's drenched and lonely eyes Mourn a deserted earth? But no! Men go not down till men arise. The game is Life's. She plays to win; And whirls to dust her overlings; Her abluent winds shall spare no sin, Though hidden in the breast of kings; And Earth is smiling as she takes To her old lap their fallen bones, For down the throbbing ways there wakes The laughter of her greater sons. THESE LATTER DAYS Take down thy stars, O God! We look not up. In vain thou hangest there thy changeless sign. We lift our eyes to power's glowing cup, Nor care if blood make strong that wizard wine, So we but drink and feel the sorcery Of conquest in our veins, of wits grown keen In strain and strife for flesh-sweet sovereignty,-- The fatal thrill of kingship over men. What though the soul be from the body shrunk, And we array the temple, but no god? What though, the cup of golden greed once drunk, Our dust be laid in a dishonoured sod, While thy loud hosts proclaim the end of wars? We read no sign. O God, take down thy stars! ABNEGATION Christ, dear Christ, were the wood-ways sweet By the long, white highway bare, Where the hot road dust made grey Thy feet? Ay,--but the woman's hair! Brother, my Christ, when thou camest down The cup of water to give, Did a poet die on the mount's cool crown? Ay,--and for that dost thou live! THE LITTLE TREE It pushed a guided way between The pebbles of her grave; A poplar hastening to be green And silver signals wave. And we who sought her with the moon, Were met by branches stirred, And whiter grew as grew the croon That seemed her hidden word. "O, she would speak!" my heart-beat said; My eyes were on the mound; And lowlier hung my waiting head Above the prisoning ground. Then smiled the lad and whispered me,-- The lad who most did love; "She stoops to us; the little tree Is wakened from above!" THE GAME 'Tis played with eyes; one uttered word Would cast the game away. As silent as a sailing bird, The shift and change of play. So many eyes to me are dear, So many do me bless; The hazel, deep as deep wood-mere Where leaves are flutterless; The brown that most bewildereth With dusking, golden play Of shadows like betraying breath From some shy, hidden day; The black whose torch is ever trimmed, Let stars be soon or late; The blue, a morning never dimmed, Opposing Heaven to fate; The grey as soft as farthest skies That hold horizon rain; Or when, steel-darkling, stoic-wise, They bring the gods again; And wavelit eyes of nameless glow, Fed from far-risen streams; But oh, the eyes, the eyes that know The silent game of dreams! Three times I've played. Once 'twas a child, Lap-held, not half a year From Heaven, looked at me and smiled, And far I went with her. Out past the twilight gates of birth, And past Time's blindfold day, Beyond the star-ring of the earth, We found us room to play. And once a woman, spent and old With unavailing tears, Who from her hair's down-tangled fold Shook out the grey-blown years, Sat by the trampled way alone, And lifted eyes--what themes! I could not pass, I sat me down To play the game of dreams. And once ... a poet's eyes they were, Though earth heard not his strain; And since he went no eyes can stir My own to play again. BALLAD When I with Death have gone on quest, And grief is mellowed in your breast; When you do nothing fret If jest come gently in with tea, And Purr is stroked for want of me; When thought robust bestirs your mind, And with a candid start you find The world must move To living love And you forthright on travel set; I do not ask you strive to keep Awake the woe that winks for sleep, Or swell the lessening tear; I do not ask; dear to me still May be the eyes regret would fill; And, sooth, in vain I'd Nature sue To go a little out for you; But whether 'tis Or that or this Is from the matter there and here. Forget the kisses dying not Till each a thousand more begot; Such easy progeny You with small trouble still may have; (Though women die, love has no grave;) Forget the quaint, the nest-born ways, And ponder things more to my praise, That I may long Be worth a song Though deep in tongueless clay I be. Admit my eye, than yours less keen, Still knew a bead of Hippocrene From baser bubbles bright; My ear could catch, or short or long, The echo of true-hammered song; And many a book we journeyed through; Some turned us home again, 'tis true, (Not all who pen Are more than men,) And some, like stars, outwore the night. Say I could break a lance with Fate, Took half, at least, my troubles straight, (Let women have their boast;) Homed well with chance, and passing where The gods kept house would take a chair, Perchance at ease, with naught ado, With Jove would toss a quip or two; The nectar stale, A mug of ale On goodly earth would serve a toast. And if I left thee by a stile Where thou didst choose to dream, the while I sought a farther mead, Or clomb a ridge for flowers that wore Of earth the less, of stars the more, I hastened back, confess of me, To lay my treasure on thy knee; Nor didst thou hear Of stone or brere, Or how my hidden feet did bleed. And in the piping season when The whole round world takes heart again To rise and dance with Spring; When robin drives the snow-wind home, And sweetened is the warmèd loam, When deeper root the violets, And every bud its fear forgets With upward glance For lovers' chance In Venus' dear and fateful ring; Let not a thought of my cold bed Bechill thy warm heart beating red, And thy new ardours dim; But if, good hap, you rove where I Beneath the twinkling moss then lie, Be glad to see me decked so gay, (Spring's the best handmaid without pay,) I like things new, In season too, And fain must smile to be so trim. Then hie thee to some bonny brake Another mate to woo and take, And as thy soul to love. Rise with the dew, stay not the noon, What's good cannot be found too soon, The wind will not be always south, Nor like a rose is every mouth, Time's quick to press, Do thou no less, And may the night thy wisdom prove. And as all love doth live again In great or small that loved hath been, Keep this sole troth with me,-- Forget my name, my form, my face, But meet me still in every place, Since we are what we love, and I Loved everything beneath the sky. So may I long Be worth a song, Though I who sang forgotten be. A DIRGE Mortal child, lay thee where Earth is gift and giver; Midnight owl, witch, or bear Shall disturb thee never! Softly, softly take thy place, Turn from man thy waning face; Fear not thou must lie alone, Sleep-mates thou shalt have anon. (Clock of Time none commands, Driveth not the winter floods, Where the silent, tireless sands Run the ages of the gods.) Thine is not a jealous bed; Pillow here hath every head; All that are and all to be Shall ask a little room of thee. (Feet of flame, haste nor creep Where the stars are of thy pace; Heart of fire, in shadows sleep, With the sun in thy embrace.) Babe of Time, old in care, Sweet is Earth, the giver; Owlet, witch, or midnight bear Shall disturb thee never. HIS ARGUMENT One time I wooed a maid (dear is she yet!) All in the revel eye of young Love's moon. Content she made me,--ah, my dimpling mate, My Springtime girl, who walked with flower-shoon! But near me, nearer, steals a deep-eyed maid With creeping glance that sees and will not see, And blush that would those yea-sweet eyes upbraid,-- O, might I woo her nor inconstant be! But is not Autumn dreamtime of the Spring? (Yon scarlet fruit-bell is a flower asleep;) And I am not forsworn if yet I keep Dream-faith with Spring in Autumn's deeper kiss. Then so, brown maiden, take this true-love ring, And lay thy long, soft locks where my heart is. THE CONQUEROR O Spring, that flutter'st the slow Winter by, To drop thy buds before his frosty feet, Dost thou not grieve to see thy darlings lie In trodden death, and weep their beauty sweet? Yet must thou cast thy tender offering, And make thy way above thy mournèd dead, Or frowning Winter would be always king, And thou wouldst never walk with crownèd head. So gentle Love must make his venturous way Among the shaken buds of his own pain; And many a hope-blown garland meekly lay Before the chilly season of disdain; But as no beauty may the Spring outglow, So he, when throned, no greater lord doth know. TO MOINA There were no heaven but for lovers' eyes; Save in their depths do all Elysiums fade; And gods were dead but for the life that lies In kisses sweet on sweeter altars laid. There were no heroes did not lovers ride, And pyramid high deeds upon new time; Nor tale for feast, or field, or chimney-side, And harps were dumb and song had ne'er a rhyme. Then live, proud heart, in happy fealty, Nor sigh thee more thy dear bonds to remove; Thou art not thrall to liege of mean degree, For all are kings who bear the lance of love; No wight so poor but may his tatters lose, And find his purple if his lady choose. "THERE'S ROSEMARY" O love that is not love, but dear, so dear! That is not love because it goes so soon, Like flower born and dead within one moon, And yet is love for that it comes full near The guarded fane where love alone may peer, Ere like young Spring by Summer soon outshone, It trembles into death, but comes anon, As thoughts of Spring will come though Summer's here. O star full sweet, though one arose more fair, Within my heart I'll keep a heaven for thee Where thou mayst freely come and freely go, Touching with thy pale gold the twilight air Where dream-closed buds could never flower show, Yet fragrant keep the shadowy way for me. AT THE GRAVE OF HEINE South-heart of song In winter drest, Death mends thy wrong; That is life's best. Bird, who didst sing From a bare bough, Call, and what Spring Will answer now! And haste with her Bud-legacy,-- O, not to share, To take of thee! Thy night, slow, dark, Yet song-lit shone, Till who did hark Missed not the moon; When Morning found Thy cold, pierced breast, 'Twas she who moaned, To thy thorn pressed. _Here lies the thorn-wound of the dawn Through whose high morn the bird sings on._ TO A LOST COMRADE We found the spring at eager noon, And from one cup we drank; Then on until the forest croon In twilight tangle sank; The night was ours, the stars, the dawn; The manna crust, bird-shared; And never failed our magic shoon, Whatever way we fared. If caged at last, ceased not the flow Of sky-gleam through the bars; And where were wounds I only know Tear-kisses hid the scars. And when, as round the world death-free We wind-embodied roam, I hear the gale that once was thee Cry "Hollo!" I will come. FOR M. L. P. Rose Love lay dreaming where I passed, Like flower blown from careless stem; So still I dared to touch at last Her white robe's hem. Rose Love looked up and caught my hand, Though in her eyes the sea-birds were; When o'er my brow there blew a strand Of cold, grey hair. Rose Love stood up unriddling this, Till shadows in my eyes grew old; Then warmed the lock with sudden kiss; Now flames it gold. TO SLEEP O silent lover of a world day-worn, Taking the weary light to thy dusk arms, Stealing where pale forms lie, sun-hurt and torn, Waiting the balm of thy oblivious charms, Make me thy captive ere I guess pursuit, And cast me deep within some dreamless close, Where hopes stir not, and white, wronged lips are mute, And Pain's hot wings fold down o'er hushèd woes. And if ere morn thou choosest me to free, Let it not be, dear jailer, through the door That timeward opes, but to eternity Set thou the soul that needs thee nevermore; So I from sleep to death may softly wend As one would pass from gentle friend to friend. "LE PENSEUR" Warm in this marble, that is stone no more, Life at wound-pause lifts ear to woundless mind; Backward the ages their slow clew unwind, And step by step, and star by star, lead o'er The trail again, where eyeless passion tore Its red way to a soul. Mist-bound and blind No more, the thinker waits, and God grown kind Flashes a foot-print where He goes before. Not to be followed! Falls the cloud again; Folds the stern form around the striving doubt, And curve betrays to curve the silent birth That shall be voice to later times and men; While lone in unlit dark, within, without, He sits immortal on a godless earth. VISION Look in, O Mystic, on thy lease, Thou tenant soul in God's demesne; Forego the show of eyes that fail, And walk the world that cannot pale, Thine by a sealed and termless lien Within His met eternities. Yet look thou out from thy still hour With eyes that know and bear His fire; Till kindling on thy wonder's verge The transient days immortal merge In Him fulfilled as worlds expire In nestled love, a song, a flower. SAFE My dream-fruit tree a palace bore In stone's reality, And friends and treasure, art and lore, Came in to dwell with me. But palaces for gods are made; I shrank to man, or less; Gold-barriered, yet chill, afraid, My soul shook shelterless. I found a cottage in a wood, Warmed by a hearth and maid, And fed and slept, and said 'twas good,-- Ah, love-nest in the shade! The walls grew close, the roof pressed low, Soft arms my jailers were; My naked soul arose to go, And shivered bright and bare. No more I sought for covert kind; The blast blew on my head; And lo, with tempest and with wind I felt me garmented. Here on the hills the writhing storm Cloaks well and shelters me; I wrap me round and I am warm, Warm for eternity. ON BOSWORTH FIELD Here, Richard, didst thou fall, caparisoned With kingdoms of thy lust; And here wouldst lie, by Fame's bent gleaners shunned, But came unto thy dust A swaggerer, perdy! Who cried "A horse, a horse!" and straight Thou wert abroad again on kingly feet To tread eternity. OLD FAIRINGDOWN Soft as a treader on mosses I go through the village that sleeps; The village too early abed, For the night still shuffles, a gipsy, In the woods of the east, And the west remembers the sun. Not all are asleep; there are faces That lean from the walls of the gardens; Look sharply, or you will not see them, Or think them another stone in the wall. I spoke to a stone, and it answered Like an aged rock that crumbles; Each falling piece was a word. "Five have I buried," it said, "And seven are over the sea." Here is a hut that I pass, So lowly it has no brow, And dwarfs sit within at a table. A boy waits apart by the hearth; On his face the patience of firelight, But his eyes seek the door and a far world. It is not the call to the table he waits, But the call of the sea-rimmed forests, And cities that stir in a dream. I haste by the low-browed door, Lest my arms go in and betray me, A mother jealously passing. He will go, the pale dwarf, and walk tall among giants; The child with his eyes on the far land, And fame like a young, curled leaf in his heart. The stream that darts from the hanging hill Like a silver wing that must sing as it flies, Is folded and still on the breast Of the village that sleeps. Each mute, old house is more old than the other, And each wears its vines like ragged hair Round the half-blind windows. If a child should laugh, if a girl should sing, Would the houses rub the vines from their eyes, And listen and live? A voice comes now from a cottage, A voice that is young and must sing, A honeyed stab on the air, And the houses do not wake. I look through the leaf-blowzed window, And start as a gazer who, passing a death-vault, Sees life sitting hopeful within. She is young, but a woman, round-breasted, Waiting the peril of Eve; And she makes the shadows about her sweet As the glooms that play in a pine-wood. She sits at a harpsichord (old as the walls are), And longing flows in the trickling, fairy notes Like a hidden brook in a forest Seeking and seeking the sun. I have watched a young tree on the edge of a wood When the mist is weaving and drifting. Slowly the boughs disappear and the leaves reach out Like the drowning hands of children, Till a grey blur quivers cold Where the green grace drank of the sun. So now, as I gaze, the morrows Creep weaving and winding their mist Round the beauty of her who sings. They hide the soft rings of her hair, Dear as a child's curling fingers; They shut out the trembling sun of eyes That are deep as a bending mother's; And her bridal body is scarfed with their chill. For old and old is the story; Over and over I listen to murmurs That are always the same in these towns that sleep; Where grey and unwed a woman passes, Her cramped, drab gown the bounds of a world She holds with grief and silence; And a gossip whose tongue alone is unwithered Mumbles the tale by her affable gate; How the lad must go, and the girl must stay, Singing alone to the years and a dream; Then a letter, a rumour, a word From the land that reaches for lovers And gives them not back; And the maiden looks up with a face that is old; Her smile, as her body, is evermore barren, Her cheek like the bark of the beech-tree Where climbs the grey winter. Now have I seen her young, The lone girl singing, With the full round breast and the berry lip, And heart that runs to a dawn-rise On new-world mountains. The weeping ash in the dooryard Gathers the song in its boughs, And the gown of dawn she will never wear. I can listen no more; good-bye, little town, old Fairingdown. I climb the long, dark hillside, But the ache I have found here I cannot outclimb. O Heart, if we had not heard, if we did not know There is that in the village that never will sleep! THE KISS I stole into the secret room Where Love lay dying; Mystic and faint perfume Met me like sighing; As heaven had cast a still-born star He lay nor stirred; the shell-thin hand Nerveless of high command Where once the lord-veins sped their fire. And I had thought me glad To let him go. "He reaps His own," I pious said. But this, ah, this Unpleading helplessness! "Give me thy death," I cried, And took it from his lips. The windows burst them wide. The sun came in; And Love high at my side Stood sovereign. YOUTH He hears the hour's low hint and springs To the chariot-side of Truth, while fast The wild car swings Through dust and cloud; And the watchful elders, prophet-proud, Give o'er his bones To the wracking stones-- But he has passed! A weft of sky, and castles stare High from a wizard shore, Sun-arrowed, tower-strong; Gold parapets in air Down-pour, down-pour Sea-falls of peri song; Then earth, the dragon's lair; Cave eyes and burning breath; And the lance the Grail lords bore This day flies swift and fair, This day of the dragon's death. Must doff the wind-wreath, find thee lone? Put on meek age's hood? Feel but the frost within the dawn? Wrap courage in a swaddling mood? His bare throat flings All-powered nay; The world, his vast, unfingered lyre, Stirs in her thousand strings; Lit with redemptive flame Burns miracle desire, And dedicated day Is long as freedom's dream. Youth of the lance, youth of the lyre, How far, how far shalt go? Where will the halting be? Sun-courier, whose roads of fire Bridge God's delay, The hearts that know thee, ah, they know, Ageless in clay, Sole immortality! TO MIRIMOND (HER BIRTHDAY, IN DECEMBER) Dost think that Time, to whom stars vainly sue, Will for thy beauty keep one fixèd place? Or that he may, o'er-weighed with seasons due, Forget one Spring where veinlet tendrils lace Rose over rose to make this flower, thy face? Look round thee now, dear dupe of sweet hey-day! Of what once blooming joy canst thou find trace Save in the bosom of a cold decay? What violet of Summer's yester sway Usurps these clouds to throne her slender moon? Look on the wrinkling year, the shrunken way, The wintry bier of all that gaudy shone, And gather love ere loveliness wear pall, If thou, when all is gone, wouldst still have all. SOROLLA "I am fleet," said the joy of the sun, Trembling then on the breast Of the summer, white, still; "I am fleet, I am gone!" Smiling came one With brush and a will, Undelaying, unpressed, And the glancing gold of the tremulous sun Lingers for man, inescapable, won. "Not here, nor yet there," Cried the waves that fled, "Shall ye set us a snare. Motion is breath of us, Stillness is death of us; We live as we run, We pause and are sped!" Laughing came one With brush and a will, And the waves never die and are nevermore still. "I pass," said the light On the joy-child's face; But softly came one And it leaves not its place. Here Time shall replight His faith with the dawn, And his ages, gaunt grey, Ever cycling, behold Their youth never flown In a world never old, Though they pass and repass with their trailing decay. "We stay," said the shadows, and hung On the brush of the master; "we are thine own." Fearless he flung The magical chains around them, and said, "Ye too shall be light, and to life bring the sun!" And man delayed By the captive pain's revealing glow Feeleth earth's breathing woe, And his vow is made; "Ye shall pass, ye shadows, yea; And life, as the sun, be free; The God in me saith!" And the shadows go; For joy is the breath Of eternity, And sorrow the sigh of a day. IN THE BLUE RIDGE The mountain night is shining, Jim of Tellico, Shining so it hurts the heart to see The gleam upon the laurel leaf, the locust shaking snow To the rippling Nantahala that is laughing up to me, Hurts till the cry comes and the big tears are free. O, why should my heart cry to you that will not hear, Yonder where the ridges lie so still above the town? But the pain that's calling seems to bring you near, As the tears in my eyes bring the stars a-swimming down. Mother sits and cries, with my baby on her knee; Father curses deep, a-breathing hard your name; But never do I hear and never do I see, I with my head low, working out my shame, Eyes burning dry and my heart like a flame; For I hate you then--I hate you, Jim of Tellico, And grip my needle tighter, every stitch a sin, The hate growing bigger till the thing I sew Seems a shroud I'm glad a-making just to lay you in. But the slow sun passes with its day-long stare, Like a bold eye at the window when the blind Is missing and you mustn't know the eye is there,-- Just shut your heart up close and hide the thing you mind; And comes the blessed twilight calling of its kind, When all the little creatures with soft voices stir, Little hiding things that cry so tremblingly, Till I lay my needle by,--O, how the sweet woods whirr! And fly down to the river that is laughing up to me. Then the hate goes out o' me with the moonlight creeping in, And the water crooning cool-like in my veins. Who could smell the white azalea thinking then of sin, Or look on laurel buds a-caring for her pains? It's just my heart breaks open and the wild flood rains. O beauty of the moon-mist winding, winding slow, Till the tall lynns quiver vainly up to hold One leafy moment more the breathing, gliding flow Of the loosened wreath of silver lifting into gold! The moosewood bride is glowing, all her curls awave, The colt's-foot in millions makes the ground like a bed, So sweet-breathed and green now, in winter scarlet brave, And blossom lips of tulip trees are meeting overhead, But never shall a tear fall for their love spent and dead. Doves are building yonder in that clump of maples deep, Do maple leaves come soonest for they love to hide The earliest nest and hear the first faint cheep Telling them of joy too dear, too sweet to bide? The joy that was my own, Jim, when our birdling came, Telling me that love is never spent and dead,-- Though you left the tears to me, and left to me the shame,-- For the wildwood broke in blossoms round my bed, And the fairest on my bosom laid its stainless head. Can God who made this night His own great heart to please, And made that other night like this a year ago, Be mad at us for loving? I fall upon my knees And beg Him bless you, bless you ever, Jim of Tellico! YE WHO ARE TO SING O silence of all silences, where wait Fame's unblown years whose choir my soul would greet! Graves, nor dead Time, are sealed so dumb in fate, For Death and Time must pass on echoing feet. No grass-locked vault, no sculptured winding-sheet, No age-embalmèd hour with mummied wing, Is bosomed in such stillness, vast, complete, As wraps the future, and no prayer may bring From that unfathomed pause one minstrel murmuring. Yet never earth a lyreless dawn shall know; No moon shall move unharped to her pale home; No midnight wreathe its chain of choric glow But answering eye flash rhythmic to the dome. No path shall lie too deep in forest gloam For the blithe singer's tread; no winds fore'er Blow lute-lorn barks o'er unawakened foam; Nor hidden isle sleep so enwaved but there Shall touch and land at last Apollo's mariner. And soon shall wake that morrow's melody, When men of labour shall be men of dream, With hand seer-guided, knowing Deity That breathes in sonant wood and fluting stream, Shapes too the wheel, the shaft, the shouldering beam, Nor ceased to build when Magian toil began To lift its towered world. What chime supreme Shall turn our tuneless march to music when Sings the achieving God in conscious hearts of men! And one voice shall be woman's, lifting lay Till all the lark-heights of her being ring; Majestic she shall take the chanted way, And every song-peak's golden bourgeoning Shall thrill beneath her feet that lyric spring From ventured crest to crest. Strong, masterless, She, last in freedom, as the first shall sing, Who, great in freedom, takes by Love her place, Wife, mother,--more, her starward moving self--the race. Ay, ye shall come, ye spirits girt with light That falls o'er heaven's hills from dawn to be; Ye warders in the planet house of night, Gliding to unguessed doors with prophet key, And out where dim paths stir with minstrelsy Wordless and strange to man until your clear Doubt-shriven strain interprets to the clay. Oh, might I hear ye as the world shall hear, Nearer, a poet's journey, to the Golden Year! Dear, honoured bards of centuries dim and sped, Yet glowing ever in your fadeless song, No dust shall heap its silence o'er ye dead, No cadent seas shall drown your chorus strong In more melodious waves. I've lingered long By your brave harps strung for eternity; But now runs my wild heart to meet the throng Who yet shall choir. O wondrous company, If graves may listen then, I then shall listening be! "AND THE LAST SHALL BE FIRST" Of the dumb, bayed god in men, Of the burdened mother eyes, Of the little, lifted hands, Of the passion and the dream Sighing up from trodden lands, Fearless, he is born again; Bold inquisitor of skies, Treading earth unmastered, free, And the way grows wide for him Walking with the day to be. Dead the grasp of custom then, Silent grows her voice and pen; Part as air the birth-wrong bands, Break as thread the steel-drawn strands, Graves no longer over-awe, Dust is dust and men are men; A living tongue again gives living law. Trophies ours by gold and gun, Little treasures, houses,--nay, Guerdons of our dearest fight, Now are fuel for his sun, And the dreams that lit the night Burn as candles in the day. Yet we made thee, Man of Right, As our being plead to rise; Of our straining arm thy might; Even as we prayed for sight, Lo, afar thou hadst thy prophet eyes. Ay, thy gleaming spear is ours; Ours thy fearless, golden bow; And our shining arrows go From thy bright untaken towers. Thou art what we will to be, Sceptre, star, and wingèd cloud; We are blood and brawn of thee, Glowing up through sod and stone, Burning through thy rended shroud, Moving with thee, chainless, on, Till the world, a quickened whole, Truth-delivered, naked, free, Once again hath found its deathless soul. MAGDALEN TO HER POET Take back thy song; or let me hear what thou Heardst anciently from me, The woman; now This wassail drift on boughless shores; Once lyre-veined leading thee To singing doors Out of the coiling dark; Teaching thee hark Earth's virgin candours, blossomed wonderings, And sanctities inaudible till strings Of lyric gentleness Wooed Heaven to confess Her world, and I was near, The earliest listener, Who of my bosom then made Arcady, And drew thy forest feet to Castaly. Take back thy pity. Is it not from man Who made that world his own? As barbican Sends out its darts, and after flings A dole of myrrh where groan Is loudest, sings Thy grace to me, me thus Unbeauteous By thee. Uneased thy covenanted bit From Levite ark till now. Thy judges sit, Gods ruminant, to keep Earth pure for dulcet sleep Of babe and mother. Ay, Drones yet the lulling lie, Whilst I, Disease uncinctured, darkly mate With guard and sentry of thy hierarchate. Thine ages, are they fair? Shall they yet draw Child-homage from our eyes? The woman awe As her own babe? Far stretch the avid spans Of fame-drunk emperies, And all are man's; But from what tower of praise Does Justice gaze? Art is thy boast? "See how we garland her, The goddess of our hands?" Yea, yea, but where Is Truth, save by whose breath Art is a laurelled death? "Our churches these, and this Our Holy Writ; there wis Our altars high, and sanctuarised sod!" But what, care-taking soul, hast done with God? The bairning time I knew, the whispering breast, But in thy world no place Was for my nest, Fragrant for perilous brooding pause. Thou went'st thy pace; My gathered straws And grasses cast to dust To make thy lust A wayside couch. Deep from the nation's root, The bower-tree where homes are nesting fruit, Thy blight creeps up unseen On bitten way to the green, Till no hope-banneret Makes Spring in windy fret Of flagellant boughs that whip my fingers bare, Too chill at last to build, to bleed, to care. Must surge so late with Nature's spawning ruse? Her stintless passioning Lest she should lose The younglet of her dearest pang? To thee, her tenderling, She gave lust-fang To run the jungle's harm; Now strives thee to disarm, And fend Life from that weapon lent thy wear Till thou, forsaking dust, mightst capture her. What need now of the blood Whose wasteful plenitude Swept thee through hostile slime To shores of light and time, Man-minim safe mid frost and poison dews Where naught could live that had not life to lose? Yet dost thou foster it as thy veinèd sun; Thy Heaven and Holy Rood Build toppling on Its strifeful hell; root there thy art, Thy dreams of tenderest bud; Gaze on the heart Of its fetidity, This wreck of me, And sing. O God, what death, in eyes so bound, They see Life's beauty in her draining wound! Lay thou the blind thing down With saurian tusk and bone, With dust of sworded maw And peril's fossil claw, Lest sexton Earth even Man inter, nor trover Of after-law untomb for Love her Lover! Her lover yet uncarnate; of thy race To be; long-dreamèd mate Of her embrace; Whose godling fruit, too prized, too dear For bandit breath, shall wait The Garnerer. Not then mute, anguished wives, Dumb in law's gyves, Shall shrink to mother a soul-famined brood,-- Unbudding sentiencies of flowerhood, Shut miracles no wand May touch, that from the hand Of Toil, the reaver, fall To dust, their grudgèd pall, Leaving imperial web to those who wear That woof of blood and tears as gossamer. Not then! Where now the wailing way o'erteems, And baffled starvelings bar The way of dreams; Pouring to Want, grey-veined Disease, To Greed, and lurking War,-- Brute goblinries With horde-lip sateless on God-food dust-thrown,-- Lover and Love shall pass, each babe of theirs, Darling of Life, born for the higher wars Where knights of spirit sway, Summoned to holiest fray By heralds never bare To clodded vision. There, Shriven and sure, the sun-dipped lance shall leap Till Dream uncorselet clay and put off sleep. For me one rift! Through this sepultural blight A breath runs living, new; Unburdening light As when the flame-borne prophet on The Syrian ploughman threw A people's dawn. The world is Heaven worth, The cradle earth Casts orphanhood, a Bethlehem God-swung From crimson grapple with his lyric young. Here triumph I, so low, Knowing that Lust shall go, With whited, anarch train,-- Shall pass, this curbless, vain Usurping deity that would compel The Mary-longing Love to yet mould Jezebel. Drag me with life that keeps Death shadow-near Till I, unfrighted, wake His charnel fear In every face that wariful Meets mine; this bud-mouth make Unkissable With kisses; and up-lap My soul's youth sap Till 't withers to a clutch about the gold You think pays all; yet from this reedy mould, This swamped, unfructant sedge, Gentility's marsh edge, I, on free wing, shall take My swan-course o'er the brake, Leaving the chanson of thy sin to thee Who hast not seen, not touched the unstainable me. Yet art thou dear, O singer! When we rest Past all Life's hostel doors, On her home crest; And 'neath our feet the dark vat night From pain's crushed star-grapes pours The climbing light; There thou, beside me then, With moteless ken, Remembering these, thy pity and thy song, Dropped at the cross where thou didst nail me long, Shalt sereless 'scape the aim Of hot, lance-darting shame, For over thee shall fall The dawn-tressed coronal Of Love I then shall be, wrapping thee in The pity at whose touch dies every sin. FRIENDS There's one comes often as the sun And fills my room with morning; comes with step Light as a youth's that joy has hurried home. If he should greet my cheek, so might a wind Blow roses till they touch, silk leaf to leaf, And on their beauty leave no deeper dye; But with that touch an old world is untombed, Gay, festal-gowned; and two with nuptial eyes Walk arm-locked there, flinging the curls of Greece From proud, smooth brows. As trapped between two throbs, Their laughter dies in silent passion's kiss; And I from glow of ancient dust look up To meet the untroubled eyes of my friend's bride, Her pretty, depthless eyes that smile and smile Possessingly, not grudging alien me A footstool place about her sceptred love. And I, too, from imperial largess, smile. Another comes more rarely than new moon, And always with a flower,--one; pours tea Like an old picture softly made alive, Sings me a ballad that once teased the ears Of golden Bess, and reads the book I love. If he must journey, first he comes to lay Knight-service on my hand; no passion then More swift than when a last cool petal falls To faded summer grass; but as he goes I see a girl deep in a forest lane, A narrow lane dark-roofed with locking firs; And there are purple foxgloves shoulder high, And round the girl's knees Canterbury bells. Upon the air is scent of wounded trees, As though a storm had passed there, and great owls Ruffle a shade unloved of birds that sing. But at the green lane's end, far down A bit of heart-shaped sun tells where the road Lies wide and open; on the sun the still Dark shadow of a steed: and by the girl One who shall ride,--unvisored now, and pale. "And when I come," he says, to me who know He'll come that way no more; then hear my door Closed softly on a sob ten centuries old. And there is one whom never sun or moon Brings to my gate; but when amid a throng That fills some worldly room I see him pass. The light about me is of regions where Cold peaks are blue against a colder sky, And in the dusk-line where begins the Doubt Men call the Known, we stand in wingless pause, Unheavened weariness in untaught feet, And in our hearts sad longing for the fire Of stars from whence we came. "The earth," he says, And warms in his my hand amazed to lie In strange, near comfort,--blossom of first pain. Then low we dip into the clinging night That is the Lethe of God-memories; Stumble and sink in chains of time and sense Tangle in treacheries of a weed-hung globe, And tread the dun, dim verges of defeat Till spirit chafes to vision, and we learn What morning is, and where the way of love. In that gold dawn we part, knowing at last That earth can not divide us. With a smile He goes, and Fate leads not but runs before Like an indulgèd child. That smile again I sometimes see across the world--a room. TRYST (AFTER READING FROM SHAKESPEARE) Night, thou art heavy, with no stars to chain Thy darkness unto heaven, that thy feet May dance along these cliffs in gay retreat Of the pursuing sea; heavy as pain Where eyes see not the end, or tears that stain The joy of him who conquers by defeat; Or this dark sea whose heart doth climb and beat The stones that make no sign, then falls again. Cry with the night and wrestle with the wave, Ye two-edged winds that cut this shore and me; I warm me still with thinking of a grave That can not hold the dust's eternal part; For here across the centuries and the sea, A dead hand lies like flame upon my heart. IN THE STUDIO Bowed in the firelight's softly climbing gleam, I sit a shadow, in a shadow's place; While through the great, grey window vaguely stream Twilight caresses on each pictured face That one hour gone was cold in art's repose; Now each still canvas answers tremblingly, Till eyes unveil and living spirit glows Where no light was while the rude Day went by. And rudest Day, that passed so sternly bare, Cold as the life that walks without desire, Unbeauteous as duty or despair, Plucked by a hope that will not set her free, Turns back, while memory's soft, informing fire Falls on her face, and Beauty looks at me. LOVERS' LEAP In Greece I found the place, though earth Has many such; and wandering there alone, One Autumn evening when the moon rose late, I heard this song, though none was there to sing. A ghostly rune, yet left the alarmèd dark Quivering with life, tear-warm and murmuring: No morrow is if hearts say no; Life is gone when love doth go. No tear to weep, no prayer to pray; Endeth time with lovers' day. This trailing night will pale and flee, And dawn again creep o'er the sea; Light's tender hands will earth attire, Aloft will swim the golden fire, And every bird begin his lay, But I shall know there is no day. And Spring shall come. With teary cheek, But heart of Bacchus, she will seek With healing eyes each winter wound, Till little minstrels of the ground, The choral buds, in wonder wake To croon the dewy songs they take From brooks that haunt the woodman's glade And lose a dream in every shade. And ere the Spring has vanished, Summer will make her rosy bed And new loves take with every wind Till earth be laden with her kind And foster-bosomed Autumn come To nurse the darlings of her womb. But naught of season, change, or sun, Recks the heart whose love is done. Oh, ne'er again will beauty wear For my sad eyes a robe more fair, And ne'er again will music make A sweeter song for my poor sake. No tear to weep, no prayer to pray! Endeth time with lover's day. No morrow is if hearts say no; Life is gone when love doth go. Death, O Death, why dost thou flee From one whose wish is but for thee? Here is thy pillow, on my breast. No dove but would its spicèd nest Forego to couch in this sweet bed That here I open for thy head. Thou wilt not hear? Thou wilt not come? Then must I seek thee in thy home. Once more lift up this stone-dead heart, And leap to find thee where thou art! HAVENED Come, Flower of Life, and lay thy beauty's rose Upon the breast that storm and thee divide; And like true knights whose queen no laggard knows, Forth gently shall my love-bid fancies ride To serve thy heart, and bring thy wishes in; And shuttling rhyme a web shall make thee then Whilst thou dost gaze, nor thy poor weaver chide. Sweet wonder lay upon my opening eyes That showed me in a gracious court of trees Whose leaves were clouds that caught and lost sunrise, And fell in mist upon a twirling breeze That traced the ground and to a river grew, Casting its tender spray in tinted dew As curved its silver way with laughing ease. I followed, forest deep, this wooing guide Through fragrant gloom of cliff and bower o'ergrown, Free as a fawn the stream 'twas born beside, Nor held my step with fear at sounds unknown,-- High murmurings among the cloudy leaves, As when some dull and dreamy throng receives Strange lyric stir from power not its own. And more and more the murmurs grew like song, Save that no song could drop such honey-rain; The lyre-god's self would do it unsweet wrong, Were he that golden sound to breathe again; And as my guide into a cave did pass, That closèd seemed, and yet unclosèd was, That airy cadence stooped and bore me in. Then wandered life from out my memory, Gone from desire, as ghost at last must go; Nor shadow fell, where shadow could not be, From those dark lures that make our worldly woe. O Sweet, forgive that my inconstant tongue Should dim the glories that I moved among With name of gloom that wrongs the world we know. The dome was fair as Heaven, or Heaven, in sooth, It might have been, but that there shone, The centre 'neath, a fountain-featured truth That might no rival of its radiance own. Ah, this was Heaven's heart, if Heaven be, And the bright dome but its gold boundary; Yet gleamèd here no crown or mounted throne. The music budded till it dropped soft showers; All things to other changed, though here no mage; Clouds turned to light, and light to sweeter powers, And chance and change to all was privilege; The air was full of phantom-stirring things, And I not breathed but that I touched new wings, And sent some dream on airy pilgrimage. Ere my delight had held me pausing long Beneath a cloud that rained me lilies cool, A stir awoke amid a ferny throng That leaned their trembling grace above a pool, And following the flutter of a song To feathery rest where blossoms minute-young Oped arms of vermeil soft, and dawning gule, Mine eye saw Love. White on a verge's mount, That swelled to show its burden dear, she lay; A sighing mist that partly filled the fount, And o'er the brink sought tenderly to stray, For her fair body pillowed soft the ground, Growing glad upward arms to clasp her round And of each grace take new and sweet account. In nymphlike mould her gentle figure ran, Though nymph so bright did never sport in dell; Her eyes an angel's were, if angels' can Be thousand times more fair than dream can tell; Unfalling tears they held, yet so could please They might have hermits made forget their knees And kings find out they had them, such their spell. Above her forehead hovered close a star, Like spirit guard, whose ever-changing ray Was fed with fires of sacrifice that are Love's life,--the offerings earth lovers lay Upon her shrine, and as they pale or glow She smiles or droops as this true star doth show,-- Or dim or bright as serve we or betray. Beside her was an instrument of tune, Of changeful beauty as her couch of cloud, And as I looked she woke it to strange rune, As in low murmur moved her thoughts aloud,-- For all Love's thoughts are music,--but to make That ditty o'er, what heart would undertake, And with a mortal chant her utterance shroud? Anear her stood a youth bare of all guise Save when a light enwrapped him in its flame; He bore the ages in his listening eyes, And prophecy there waited for a name; Joy loved him best, and gave eternity, And his lithe, lustrous being seemed to say "I am the aspiration of all dream." Upward he gazed as though he would read o'er The scroll of rising winds, the burst of suns, And lists--ah, might it be earth's shore Freed of her epic hates and tunèd groans! War's passion beat, and woe's sad chorus past, And all her song pure-winnowed, clear at last, Pouring the music of her happy moons! Then moved his lips, but yet unborn is he Who may with their resound make sweet his own; He who shall come as morning walks the sea, Mate of the Wind when all her harps are one; So much we know by frail yet quenchless light That creeps through shadows of our lute-poor night,-- The brave rose-glimmers of his singing dawn. Lo, every dream new-homing from far ways On silent wing or spirit wave of air, Came circling o'er his head in hovering maze, Seen not, nor heard, albeit I knew them there; But as each passed before his lifted face, They gleamed to sight, and grace so mounted grace My eyes seemed there anointed, though afar. Then radiant couriers shook the fountain Heart And turned me thither. Sweet and bold surprise Took all my being with such tremorous start I marvelled how aught else had held my eyes. I could not tell what the bright wonder was Whose garner-breast held every beauteous cause Makes earth remember, and forget, the skies. There shone the star that lit man's first desire, And there his hope that latest fluttered bare; One look translating made me as a lyre Swept with a joy the heart of Truth might share,-- Truth that is silent, wanting joy to sing,-- But ere I breathèd had for wondering, A face out-flashed wreathed with sun-flinging hair. Youth was the angel of that countenance, Where graces sprang in ever fairer throng; Yet she was old ere any star's birth-dance, If word of earthly time, or old or young, Means aught of eyes whose brooding splendour swept The silences when Uncreation slept And gave the dream that woke the suns in song. Each age that left a glory left it writ Upon her brow, as with a pen of light Whose track was pearls, and as each whiter lit The story there, the court grew softlier bright; Each dullsome thing--Oh, no thing there was dull! Flushed o'er itself with glow more beautiful, As might fair, sleeping gods wake to delight. Then all the wonder that made vague her form, Oped on a figure splendent so to view; Mine eyes an instant swooned; and as from storm Of warring rainbows it endearèd grew To shape of her who 'gan descending slow, Fair Love looked up, and Poesy knelt low: 'Twas Beauty's self, and mother of the two. Whilst yet I gazed all vanished were the three; And as a sighing shore no more may hold The mermaid wave that would go out to sea, So slipped the vision from my fancy bold. O Flower of Life, no rest for me but this, To dream awhile, and then awake to press Upon my heart thy curls' beloved gold! MID-MAY Hand clamped to desk, And eyes on task undone, I see a meadow pool, With shaken willows silvering. O, gods that trouble me, Wherefore, wherefore?-- Pan is at the door. An arabesque Of sifted sun And forest star-grass, cool With shadows tunnelling: Witch-work that tauntingly Webs my bare floor: Ah, Pan is at the door. I'm civilized, And in my veins The mountain brook is still As water in a jar; But oh, the heart hill-born, It paineth sore, For Pan is at the door. Ye sacrificed Of earth, what rains Have wept their will And drowned your rebel star, That ye should sit forlorn, Telling Greed's score, When Pan is at the door? THE LOSS When thou shalt search thy glass nor find the flower That there so long smiled gay, unwithering, And from sad vantage of a forlorn hour That fore nor aft unmasks one hint of Spring, Thou mourn'st the barrenness of beauty spent With no reservèd treasure for the day When all that youth and sunny fortune lent No more should light adoring eyes to thee, And fear'st thyself a-cold, by the last storm Beat to thine inn, a still, uncarping guest, Thy once bright eye a pilot to the worm Making his dungeon way to his new feast, Drop not a tear then for thy beauty fled, But for the wounds it healed not bow thy head. CALLED I rise, I pass; The feast is on, bright is the board, Undrained the comrade glass; Love's sheltering eyes are deep and nigh; Fame waits with shining word; But sweeter, goldening the sphere, A voice falls from another sky; The wasting world I do not hear, And no god laughs as I pass by, A wanderer. Unpausing lowers The gleam of her from other airs, And Being's guarded doors Are open wide for journey free Where wait my chosen stars; And o'er me, O what lustres break Of that desire, Reality, That burns a thousand suns to make One nightingale to sing for me, A soul awake! Far, far I sped Down moonless lanes from doubt to doubt; With hasting, hungry tread Up slopes of frost unpitying Where the last star went out; There fell I in unlifting dark, And lying while an æon's wing Dragged o'er me bare, wind-stript and stark, As leafless planets dream of Spring, Dreamed she would hark. Then by me bound, Came one who wore my lost career With star on star pinned round, And stood him by my bones to stare. With pity's ancient sneer He mocked my bleachen nudity; Then did she turn, then did she care, And pausing where I might not see She let the winds blow back her hair And cover me. SONG OF TO-MORROW Sound, O Harp of Being, set Deathless in the winds of time! All thine ancient part forget, Wailing lust, and strife, and crime! Clouds of hate are now sweet rain: Thou shall never moan again. Harp of Being, O forget Hesper dead that played on thee, All her golden fingers wet With the blood of misery! Morning sweeps along thy strings; Thou art done with yester things. Bright thou art with drops that fell Watering earth's long-buried Spring; Thou hast quivered safe through Hell Where Love found immortal wing; Sound, while Life unfrenzied calls Joy to hallowed Bacchanals! Harp of Dawn, forget, forget! Sound thee of the hours now come When the vine and violet Bind to earth the fallen drum. Palsied as a dying star Fails the shaken torch of war! From each pennoned pinnacle Of the cities of the free, Clasped in time invisible, Flows the wonder flown to thee; Thou so swift to throb and start With the singing earth's new heart! By the light that sets mind free, By the night that once it wore, By the soul man is to be, By the beast he is no more; By thy past, unmeasured pain, Thou shalt never moan again. LITTLE DAUGHTERS I What is sweeter, sweet, than you? Not the fairy dew Of these bee-sipped pastures where Time, unsandalled, unaware, Rests him ere he tire. Shall I his forgotten hour Strike for thee? Fatefully, Lift the wand that wakes Woman in the flower? Then o'er dream's horizon breaks Rose of other fire; From a world more sweet Rival rise the fragrant floods; Breath that makes Thy morning meadows dun, Mutes their dew-bells, misty hoods Every leaf that shone; Sets thy daisy-fondled feet Twinkling to be gone; Down the ways and up the ways, Hope-fleet, trampling care As curling buds, Iris goal joy-near; Then a-creep on praying knees, Frail shoulders bent to bear Heaven's falling sphere. Ah, not yet, heart's wonder! A little hour we'll stay, And thou wilt give me grace of dawn For travelled, dusk array. This gown of mottled years, By noon and gnome-light spun, Enchant me to surrender To Ariel ministers; Here poised with thee before Thy summer world's wide door, And glory that is hers; This soft, unclamorous sky That makes a lotus ship of every eye Upventuring; song's sail that pilotless Drifts down, a wing's caress On billowed field and climbing shore Whose veiny tidelets beat and cling, Bloom-labouring, Invincibly sweet and far, Up looming cone and scaur, And clambering spill To lap of ledge and aproned hill The heaped and whispering greenery Of beauty's burden that unburdens me! And thou, the fairest thing In this fair shaman-ring, Shall my sore magic loose thee wandering? Has Life such faltering need, Mid outlands where she runs, She cannot reach the suns Save thou dost bleed? Shall she go fleet, With heart of stouter cheer, Because thou givest her Thy little, bruisèd feet? Thou'dst earn thy Heaven? Dear, I know Heaven must not ban thee shining so! Why shouldst thou laden bow, And climb, and slip, and toil, And blanch thy cheek to keep thy soul as white, Inviolate as now? O, we have dreams we shall not put away Till earth be fair as they; When all this work-night coil Shall be unwound by wizard fingers bright That send our own to play; And wisdom, wiser than we know, shall find The birth trail to the mind; Nor spirit waver, panting here and yon Seeking sun-vantage, for all heights are won. Shall not we then be as the flowers, Drinking dew dowers As now thou dost? Glad petals that unclose About Life's heart,--at last the perfect Rose? Sweet, I will trust Love and the morn; Fold here the wakeful wand, Leave thee in dewy bond Of blossomy sleep. Who knows but thou hast won the steep By silent, angel way, Hidden and heavenly, That leaves no trace of thorn? Star-flower, keep thy sky; If man must climb, let him go up to thee; A daisy may be nearer God than he-- Than I. II What crime was hers, that she lies hushed, Dead with the price, while you and I, With lifted head, walk sinless by? Pause then,--but spare That easy tear; the tale I'll bare. Mid stones that pushed Her eager life back, grudged her room For root without one bloom, There strangely blushed Some little dreams,--not gloriously fine As yours and mine, But vague, and veiled, and few; She hardly knew their names, but felt the stir That filled her heart with whispers as they grew, And knew that life lay in them, life for her. When Hunger came she turned her breast And let him feed. Cold followed, gripped Her veins and sipped The thin blood thinner; both she pressed As close as lovers, lest A darker fiend might creep within Her empty arms; lest she might buy, With one swift hour of sin, A poisoned ease from tooth of need,-- A little food, a little fire, and die; And she had dreams to shelter, little dreams to feed. Oh, unresisting dumb! In wide earth's harvest-gold She asked no share, If in the dust a crumb Might be for her; If she might round her aching body fold One hour's undriven sleep,-- But one hour more, Safe from the Want that pried Her thin and shaken door,-- That hour the shivering dawn denied With scream that cut life through, And made her wretched pillow seem a rose Her clinging cheek would keep In soft, ungoaded death! And ah, suppose A few more pence the day Were richly hers, to make youth gay With ribbon or a flower ere it flew! (So soon toil's wrinkles come!) Then would she make her dreams a fairer home; Then would her heart be stronger where they grew; Then would she walk more bravely knowing them; Then would her eyes be brighter showing them. Yet did they whisper, yet they stirred Uptremblingly, till half their breath Was music, half was song; Told of free hours and a wild heath Where wind and sun ran dappling; of a bird Bough-throned, whose trill Turned all the forest leaves to wings,-- His singing young; Of a moon-goldened hill Where blossoms danced; of sweeter, holier things; A sea-beach grey, Where waves were drownèd twilight, and the day Hung in a pause that softly, suddenwise, Became a soul. She too would have a soul, And hours with God and friends; no more give all, Now there were dreams, to the machine. Then rose with young, star-driven eyes To face the lords of gain, And here she lies. Lift up the cotton, thinned with wear, That hides the poor, starved shoulder; bare The bruise shows, like a printed paw. Haste, draw the dumb, frayed sheet again, And think you cover so the stain Upon our hearts; for--have the truth!-- 'Twas we who put the club of law Into bought hands to strike her battling youth. She kept her virtue's gold, Fought hunger, fiend, and cold Unvanquished; when the might of Hell Rose in law's name and ours, she broken fell. O friend, when next you smooth the golden head Like nestled morning 'gainst your knee, Look farther,--see Fair girlhood dead. These lips, unvisited by love, were sweet As are thy fondling's; this want-hollowed cheek A little ease had made Playground of dimples, joy's rose-seat; And could these eyes ope they would speak Of one who bought her dreams of Death and paid. If blind thou shrinkest yet To meet Truth bare, Then as thou'st dealt with this pale maid Life shall thine own besiege. Injustice holds No sanctuary folds; To fence out care We must the planet hedge; Justice is God, and waits Behind our blood-built tower-gates; And as indifference Was once our soul's pretence, Who then shall heed us, who shall understand, When our crushed hearts lie in the vengeant hand? But is she dead? Faint on my ears A far-off singing falls, Sweet from time's sleep Amid the stainless years Yet unawake to men. Nearer it calls, Like music through a rain, And o'er the distant ridges sweep Soft garments and young feet. O maidens, ye Are like a cloud in beauty,--nay, more swift! If that the milky stream of stars could lift Its clustered glory, hasten free, And while we marvelled pass from east to west, Then ye would mirrored be! The hills seem lit with brides, And she whose death-cold breast Was shrouded here, is't she who guides This fearless company Sure of earth's welcome as a maiden Spring? And in their eyes the dreams she fought for, In their hands the flowers she sought for, On their lips the songs that here she did not sing! Not dead! While Destiny hath need Of living dream and deed, Ay, she shall deathless be! While aught availeth, and God is, For in her hope lay His! O, ye who mar Love's face Ere Love be born, leave not this place, Pass not this white form by, Till from assaulted skies ye hear the cry, "She is not dead till ye have murdered Me!" Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. at Paul's Work, Edinburgh Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Original spellings have been retained. 
27912	----	(This file was produced from images generously made available by The Kentuckiana Digital Library) By William Vaughn Moody GLOUCESTER MOORS and Other Poems. 12mo, $1.25. THE FIRE-BRINGER. 12mo, $1.10, _net_. Postage 8 cents. THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT. 12mo, $1.50. THE GREAT DIVIDE. 12mo, $1.00, _net_. Postage 10 cents. THE FAITH HEALER. 12mo, $1.00, _net_. Postage 10 cents. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON AND NEW YORK GLOUCESTER MOORS AND OTHER POEMS BY WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY [Illustration: TOUT BIEN OU RIEN] BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED NOTE Several poems of this collection, including "An Ode in Time of Hesitation," "The Brute," and "On a Soldier Fallen in the Philippines," have appeared in the _Atlantic Monthly_; "Gloucester Moors" and "Faded Pictures," in _Scribner's Magazine_; and "The Ride Back," under a different title in the _Chap-Book_. The author is indebted to the editors of these periodicals for leave to reprint. CONTENTS PAGE GLOUCESTER MOORS 1 GOOD FRIDAY NIGHT 5 ROAD-HYMN FOR THE START 9 AN ODE IN TIME OF HESITATION 12 THE QUARRY 22 ON A SOLDIER FALLEN IN THE PHILIPPINES 24 UNTIL THE TROUBLING OF THE WATERS 26 JETSAM 39 THE BRUTE 49 THE MENAGERIE 55 THE GOLDEN JOURNEY 62 HEART'S WILD-FLOWER 65 HARMONICS 67 ON THE RIVER 68 THE BRACELET OF GRASS 70 THE DEPARTURE 72 FADED PICTURES 74 A GREY DAY 75 THE RIDE BACK 76 SONG-FLOWER AND POPPY 80 I. IN NEW YORK II. AT ASSISI HOW THE MEAD-SLAVE WAS SET FREE 86 A DIALOGUE IN PURGATORY 89 THE DAGUERREOTYPE 98 POEMS GLOUCESTER MOORS A mile behind is Gloucester town Where the fishing fleets put in, A mile ahead the land dips down And the woods and farms begin. Here, where the moors stretch free In the high blue afternoon, Are the marching sun and talking sea, And the racing winds that wheel and flee On the flying heels of June. Jill-o'er-the-ground is purple blue, Blue is the quaker-maid, The wild geranium holds its dew Long in the boulder's shade. Wax-red hangs the cup From the huckleberry boughs, In barberry bells the grey moths sup, Or where the choke-cherry lifts high up Sweet bowls for their carouse. Over the shelf of the sandy cove Beach-peas blossom late. By copse and cliff the swallows rove Each calling to his mate. Seaward the sea-gulls go, And the land-birds all are here; That green-gold flash was a vireo, And yonder flame where the marsh-flags grow Was a scarlet tanager. This earth is not the steadfast place We landsmen build upon; From deep to deep she varies pace, And while she comes is gone. Beneath my feet I feel Her smooth bulk heave and dip; With velvet plunge and soft upreel She swings and steadies to her keel Like a gallant, gallant ship. These summer clouds she sets for sail, The sun is her masthead light, She tows the moon like a pinnace frail Where her phosphor wake churns bright. Now hid, now looming clear, On the face of the dangerous blue The star fleets tack and wheel and veer, But on, but on does the old earth steer As if her port she knew. God, dear God! Does she know her port, Though she goes so far about? Or blind astray, does she make her sport To brazen and chance it out? I watched when her captains passed: She were better captainless. Men in the cabin, before the mast, But some were reckless and some aghast, And some sat gorged at mess. By her battened hatch I leaned and caught Sounds from the noisome hold,-- Cursing and sighing of souls distraught And cries too sad to be told. Then I strove to go down and see; But they said, "Thou art not of us!" I turned to those on the deck with me And cried, "Give help!" But they said, "Let be: Our ship sails faster thus." Jill-o'er-the-ground is purple blue, Blue is the quaker-maid, The alder-clump where the brook comes through Breeds cresses in its shade. To be out of the moiling street With its swelter and its sin! Who has given to me this sweet, And given my brother dust to eat? And when will his wage come in? Scattering wide or blown in ranks, Yellow and white and brown, Boats and boats from the fishing banks Come home to Gloucester town. There is cash to purse and spend, There are wives to be embraced, Hearts to borrow and hearts to lend, And hearts to take and keep to the end,-- O little sails, make haste! But thou, vast outbound ship of souls, What harbor town for thee? What shapes, when thy arriving tolls, Shall crowd the banks to see? Shall all the happy shipmates then Stand singing brotherly? Or shall a haggard ruthless few Warp her over and bring her to, While the many broken souls of men Fester down in the slaver's pen, And nothing to say or do? GOOD FRIDAY NIGHT At last the bird that sang so long In twilight circles, hushed his song: Above the ancient square The stars came here and there. Good Friday night! Some hearts were bowed, But some amid the waiting crowd Because of too much youth Felt not that mystic ruth; And of these hearts my heart was one: Nor when beneath the arch of stone With dirge and candle flame The cross of passion came, Did my glad spirit feel reproof, Though on the awful tree aloof, Unspiritual, dead, Drooped the ensanguined Head. To one who stood where myrtles made A little space of deeper shade (As I could half descry, A stranger, even as I), I said, "These youths who bear along The symbols of their Saviour's wrong, The spear, the garment torn, The flaggel, and the thorn,-- "Why do they make this mummery? Would not a brave man gladly die For a much smaller thing Than to be Christ and king?" He answered nothing, and I turned. Throned in its hundred candles burned The jeweled eidolon Of her who bore the Son. The crowd was prostrate; still, I felt No shame until the stranger knelt; Then not to kneel, almost Seemed like a vulgar boast. I knelt. The doll-face, waxen white, Flowered out a living dimness; bright Dawned the dear mortal grace Of my own mother's face. When we were risen up, the street Was vacant; all the air hung sweet With lemon-flowers; and soon The sky would hold the moon. More silently than new-found friends To whom much silence makes amends For the much babble vain While yet their lives were twain, We walked along the odorous hill. The light was little yet; his will I could not see to trace Upon his form or face. So when aloft the gold moon broke, I cried, heart-stung. As one who woke He turned unto my cries The anguish of his eyes. "Friend! Master!" I cried falteringly, "Thou seest the thing they make of thee. Oh, by the light divine My mother shares with thine, "I beg that I may lay my head Upon thy shoulder and be fed With thoughts of brotherhood!" So through the odorous wood, More silently than friends new-found We walked. At the first meadow bound His figure ashen-stoled Sank in the moon's broad gold. ROAD-HYMN FOR THE START Leave the early bells at chime, Leave the kindled hearth to blaze, Leave the trellised panes where children linger out the waking-time, Leave the forms of sons and fathers trudging through the misty ways, Leave the sounds of mothers taking up their sweet laborious days. Pass them by! even while our soul Yearns to them with keen distress. Unto them a part is given; we will strive to see the whole. Dear shall be the banquet table where their singing spirits press; Dearer be our sacred hunger, and our pilgrim loneliness. We have felt the ancient swaying Of the earth before the sun, On the darkened marge of midnight heard sidereal rivers playing; Rash it was to bathe our souls there, but we plunged and all was done. That is lives and lives behind us--lo, our journey is begun! Careless where our face is set, Let us take the open way. What we are no tongue has told us: Errand-goers who forget? Soldiers heedless of their harry? Pilgrim people gone astray? We have heard a voice cry "Wander!" That was all we heard it say. Ask no more: 't is much, 't is much! Down the road the day-star calls; Touched with change in the wide heavens, like a leaf the frost winds touch, Flames the failing moon a moment, ere it shrivels white and falls; Hid aloft, a wild throat holdeth sweet and sweeter intervals. Leave him still to ease in song Half his little heart's unrest: Speech is his, but we may journey toward the life for which we long. God, who gives the bird its anguish, maketh nothing manifest, But upon our lifted foreheads pours the boon of endless quest. AN ODE IN TIME OF HESITATION (After seeing at Boston the statue of Robert Gould Shaw, killed while storming Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, at the head of the first enlisted negro regiment, the 54th Massachusetts.) I Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe, And set here in the city's talk and trade To the good memory of Robert Shaw, This bright March morn I stand, And hear the distant spring come up the land; Knowing that what I hear is not unheard Of this boy soldier and his negro band, For all their gaze is fixed so stern ahead, For all the fatal rhythm of their tread. The land they died to save from death and shame Trembles and waits, hearing the spring's great name, And by her pangs these resolute ghosts are stirred. II Through street and mall the tides of people go Heedless; the trees upon the Common show No hint of green; but to my listening heart The still earth doth impart Assurance of her jubilant emprise, And it is clear to my long-searching eyes That love at last has might upon the skies. The ice is runneled on the little pond; A telltale patter drips from off the trees; The air is touched with southland spiceries, As if but yesterday it tossed the frond Of pendent mosses where the live-oaks grow Beyond Virginia and the Carolines, Or had its will among the fruits and vines Of aromatic isles asleep beyond Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. III Soon shall the Cape Ann children shout in glee, Spying the arbutus, spring's dear recluse; Hill lads at dawn shall hearken the wild goose Go honking northward over Tennessee; West from Oswego to Sault Sainte-Marie, And on to where the Pictured Rocks are hung, And yonder where, gigantic, willful, young, Chicago sitteth at the northwest gates, With restless violent hands and casual tongue Moulding her mighty fates, The Lakes shall robe them in ethereal sheen; And like a larger sea, the vital green Of springing wheat shall vastly be outflung Over Dakota and the prairie states. By desert people immemorial On Arizonan mesas shall be done Dim rites unto the thunder and the sun; Nor shall the primal gods lack sacrifice More splendid, when the white Sierras call Unto the Rockies straightway to arise And dance before the unveiled ark of the year, Sounding their windy cedars as for shawms, Unrolling rivers clear For flutter of broad phylacteries; While Shasta signals to Alaskan seas That watch old sluggish glaciers downward creep To fling their icebergs thundering from the steep, And Mariposa through the purple calms Gazes at far Hawaii crowned with palms Where East and West are met,-- A rich seal on the ocean's bosom set To say that East and West are twain, With different loss and gain: The Lord hath sundered them; let them be sundered yet. IV Alas! what sounds are these that come Sullenly over the Pacific seas,-- Sounds of ignoble battle, striking dumb The season's half-awakened ecstasies? Must I be humble, then, Now when my heart hath need of pride? Wild love falls on me from these sculptured men; By loving much the land for which they died I would be justified. My spirit was away on pinions wide To soothe in praise of her its passionate mood And ease it of its ache of gratitude. Too sorely heavy is the debt they lay On me and the companions of my day. I would remember now My country's goodliness, make sweet her name. Alas! what shade art thou Of sorrow or of blame Liftest the lyric leafage from her brow, And pointest a slow finger at her shame? V Lies! lies! It cannot be! The wars we wage Are noble, and our battles still are won By justice for us, ere we lift the gage, We have not sold our loftiest heritage. The proud republic hath not stooped to cheat And scramble in the market-place of war; Her forehead weareth yet its solemn star. Here is her witness: this, her perfect son, This delicate and proud New England soul Who leads despisèd men, with just-unshackled feet, Up the large ways where death and glory meet, To show all peoples that our shame is done, That once more we are clean and spirit-whole. VI Crouched in the sea fog on the moaning sand All night he lay, speaking some simple word From hour to hour to the slow minds that heard, Holding each poor life gently in his hand And breathing on the base rejected clay Till each dark face shone mystical and grand Against the breaking day; And lo, the shard the potter cast away Was grown a fiery chalice crystal-fine Fulfilled of the divine Great wine of battle wrath by God's ring-finger stirred. Then upward, where the shadowy bastion loomed Huge on the mountain in the wet sea light, Whence now, and now, infernal flowerage bloomed, Bloomed, burst, and scattered down its deadly seed,-- They swept, and died like freemen on the height, Like freemen, and like men of noble breed; And when the battle fell away at night By hasty and contemptuous hands were thrust Obscurely in a common grave with him The fair-haired keeper of their love and trust. Now limb doth mingle with dissolvèd limb In nature's busy old democracy To flush the mountain laurel when she blows Sweet by the southern sea, And heart with crumbled heart climbs in the rose:-- The untaught hearts with the high heart that knew This mountain fortress for no earthly hold Of temporal quarrel, but the bastion old Of spiritual wrong, Built by an unjust nation sheer and strong, Expugnable but by a nation's rue And bowing down before that equal shrine By all men held divine, Whereof his band and he were the most holy sign. VII O bitter, bitter shade! Wilt thou not put the scorn And instant tragic question from thine eyes? Do thy dark brows yet crave That swift and angry stave-- Unmeet for this desirous morn-- That I have striven, striven to evade? Gazing on him, must I not deem they err Whose careless lips in street and shop aver As common tidings, deeds to make his cheek Flush from the bronze, and his dead throat to speak? Surely some elder singer would arise, Whose harp hath leave to threaten and to mourn Above this people when they go astray. Is Whitman, the strong spirit, overworn? Has Whittier put his yearning wrath away? I will not and I dare not yet believe! Though furtively the sunlight seems to grieve, And the spring-laden breeze Out of the gladdening west is sinister With sounds of nameless battle overseas; Though when we turn and question in suspense If these things be indeed after these ways, And what things are to follow after these, Our fluent men of place and consequence Fumble and fill their mouths with hollow phrase, Or for the end-all of deep arguments Intone their dull commercial liturgies-- I dare not yet believe! My ears are shut! I will not hear the thin satiric praise And muffled laughter of our enemies, Bidding us never sheathe our valiant sword Till we have changed our birthright for a gourd Of wild pulse stolen from a barbarian's hut; Showing how wise it is to cast away The symbols of our spiritual sway, That so our hands with better ease May wield the driver's whip and grasp the jailer's keys. VIII Was it for this our fathers kept the law? This crown shall crown their struggle and their ruth? Are we the eagle nation Milton saw Mewing its mighty youth, Soon to possess the mountain winds of truth, And be a swift familiar of the sun Where aye before God's face his trumpets run? Or have we but the talons and the maw, And for the abject likeness of our heart Shall some less lordly bird be set apart?-- Some gross-billed wader where the swamps are fat? Some gorger in the sun? Some prowler with the bat? IX Ah no! We have not fallen so. We are our fathers' sons: let those who lead us know! 'T was only yesterday sick Cuba's cry Came up the tropic wind, "Now help us, for we die!" Then Alabama heard, And rising, pale, to Maine and Idaho Shouted a burning word. Proud state with proud impassioned state conferred, And at the lifting of a hand sprang forth, East, west, and south, and north, Beautiful armies. Oh, by the sweet blood and young Shed on the awful hill slope at San Juan, By the unforgotten names of eager boys Who might have tasted girls' love and been stung With the old mystic joys And starry griefs, now the spring nights come on, But that the heart of youth is generous,-- We charge you, ye who lead us, Breathe on their chivalry no hint of stain! Turn not their new-world victories to gain! One least leaf plucked for chaffer from the bays Of their dear praise, One jot of their pure conquest put to hire, The implacable republic will require; With clamor, in the glare and gaze of noon, Or subtly, coming as a thief at night, But surely, very surely, slow or soon That insult deep we deeply will requite. Tempt not our weakness, our cupidity! For save we let the island men go free, Those baffled and dislaureled ghosts Will curse us from the lamentable coasts Where walk the frustrate dead. The cup of trembling shall be drainèd quite, Eaten the sour bread of astonishment, With ashes of the hearth shall be made white Our hair, and wailing shall be in the tent; Then on your guiltier head Shall our intolerable self-disdain Wreak suddenly its anger and its pain; For manifest in that disastrous light We shall discern the right And do it, tardily.--O ye who lead, Take heed! Blindness we may forgive, but baseness we will smite. 1900. THE QUARRY Between the rice swamps and the fields of tea I met a sacred elephant, snow-white. Upon his back a huge pagoda towered Full of brass gods and food of sacrifice. Upon his forehead sat a golden throne, The massy metal twisted into shapes Grotesque, antediluvian, such as move In myth or have their broken images Sealed in the stony middle of the hills. A peacock spread his thousand dyes to screen The yellow sunlight from the head of one Who sat upon the throne, clad stiff with gems, Heirlooms of dynasties of buried kings,-- Himself the likeness of a buried king, With frozen gesture and unfocused eyes. The trappings of the beast were over-scrawled With broideries--sea-shapes and flying things, Fan-trees and dwarfed nodosities of pine, Mixed with old alphabets, and faded lore Fallen from ecstatic mouths before the Flood, Or gathered by the daughters when they walked Eastward in Eden with the Sons of God Whom love and the deep moon made garrulous. Between the carven tusks his trunk hung dead; Blind as the eyes of pearl in Buddha's brow His beaded eyes stared thwart upon the road; And feebler than the doting knees of eld, His joints, of size to swing the builder's crane Across the war-walls of the Anakim, Made vain and shaken haste. Good need was his To hasten: panting, foaming, on the slot Came many brutes of prey, their several hates Laid by until the sharing of the spoil. Just as they gathered stomach for the leap, The sun was darkened, and wide-balanced wings Beat downward on the trade-wind from the sea. A wheel of shadow sped along the fields And o'er the dreaming cities. Suddenly My heart misgave me, and I cried aloud, "Alas! What dost thou here? What dost _thou_ here?" The great beasts and the little halted sharp, Eyed the grand circler, doubting his intent. Straightway the wind flawed and he came about, Stooping to take the vanward of the pack; Then turned, between the chasers and the chased, Crying a word I could not understand,-- But stiller-tongued, with eyes somewhat askance, They settled to the slot and disappeared. 1900. ON A SOLDIER FALLEN IN THE PHILIPPINES Streets of the roaring town, Hush for him, hush, be still! He comes, who was stricken down Doing the word of our will. Hush! Let him have his state, Give him his soldier's crown. The grists of trade can wait Their grinding at the mill, But he cannot wait for his honor, now the trumpet has been blown. Wreathe pride now for his granite brow, lay love on his breast of stone. Toll! Let the great bells toll Till the clashing air is dim. Did we wrong this parted soul? We will make it up to him. Toll! Let him never guess What work we set him to. Laurel, laurel, yes; He did what we bade him do. Praise, and never a whispered hint but the fight he fought was good; Never a word that the blood on his sword was his country's own heart's-blood. A flag for the soldier's bier Who dies that his land may live; O, banners, banners here, That he doubt not nor misgive! That he heed not from the tomb The evil days draw near When the nation, robed in gloom, With its faithless past shall strive. Let him never dream that his bullet's scream went wide of its island mark, Home to the heart of his darling land where she stumbled and sinned in the dark. UNTIL THE TROUBLING OF THE WATERS Two hours, two hours: God give me strength for it! He who has given so much strength to me And nothing to my child, must give to-day What more I need to try and save my child And get for him the life I owe to him. To think that I may get it for him now, Before he knows how much he might have missed That other boys have got! The bitterest thought Of all that plagued me when he came was this, How some day he would see the difference, And drag himself to me with puzzled eyes To ask me why it was. He would have been Cruel enough to do it, knowing not That was the question my rebellious heart Cried over and over one whole year to God, And got no answer and no help at all. If he had asked me, what could I have said? What single word could I have found to say To hide me from his searching, puzzled gaze? Some coward thing at best, never the truth; The truth I never could have told him. No, I never could have said, "God gave you me To fashion you a body, right and strong, With sturdy little limbs and chest and neck For fun and fighting with your little mates, Great feats and voyages in the breathless world Of out-of-doors,--He gave you me for this, And I was such a bungler, that is all!" O, the old lie--that thought was not the worst. I never have been truthful with myself. For by the door where lurked one ghostly thought I stood with crazy hands to thrust it back If it should dare to peep and whisper out Unbearable things about me, hearing which The women passing in the streets would turn To pity me and scold me with their eyes, Who was so bad a mother and so slow To learn to help God do his wonder in her That she--O my sweet baby! It was not The fear that you would see the difference Between you and the other boys and girls; No, no, it was the dimmer, wilder fear, That you might never see it, never look Out of your tiny baby-house of mind, But sit your life through, quiet in the dark, Smiling and nodding at what was not there! A foolish fear: God could not punish so. Yet until yesterday I thought He would. My soul was always cowering at the blow I saw suspended, ready to be dealt The moment that I showed my fear too much. Therefore I hid it from Him all I could, And only stole a shaking glance at it Sometimes in the dead minutes before dawn When He forgets to watch. Till yesterday. For yesterday was wonderful and strange From the beginning. When I wakened first And looked out at the window, the last snow Was gone from earth; about the apple-trees Hung a faint mist of bloom; small sudden green Had run and spread and rippled everywhere Over the fields; and in the level sun Walked something like a presence and a power, Uttering hopes and loving-kindnesses To all the world, but chiefly unto me. It walked before me when I went to work, And all day long the noises of the mill Were spun upon a core of golden sound, Half-spoken words and interrupted songs Of blessed promise, meant for all the world, But most for me, because I suffered most. The shooting spindles, the smooth-humming wheels, The rocking webs, seemed toiling to some end Beneficent and human known to them, And duly brought to pass in power and love. The faces of the girls and men at work Met mine with intense greeting, veiled at once, As if they knew a secret they must keep For fear the joy would harm me if they told Before some inkling filtered to my mind In roundabout ways. When the day's work was done There lay a special silence on the fields; And, as I passed, the bushes and the trees, The very ruts and puddles of the road Spoke to each other, saying it was she, The happy woman, the elected one, The vessel of strange mercy and the sign Of many loving wonders done in Heaven To help the piteous earth. At last I stopped And looked about me in sheer wonderment. What did it mean? What did they want with me? What was the matter with the evening now That it was just as bound to make me glad As morning and the live-long day had been? Me, who had quite forgot what gladness was, Who had no right to anything but toil, And food and sleep for strength to toil again, And that fierce frightened anguish of my love For the poor little spirit I had wronged With life that was no life. What had befallen Since yesterday? No need to stop and ask! Back there in the dark places of my mind Where I had thrust it, fearing to believe An unbelievable mercy, shone the news Told by the village neighbors coming home Last night from the great city, of a man Arisen, like the first evangelists, With power to heal the bodies of the sick, In testimony of his master Christ, Who heals the soul when it is sick with sin. Could such a thing be true in these hard days? Was help still sent in such a way as that? No, no! I did not dare to think of it, Feeling what weakness and despair would come After the crazy hope broke under me. I turned and started homeward, faster now, But never fast enough to leave behind The voices and the troubled happiness That still kept mounting, mounting like a sea, And singing far-off like a rush of wings. Far down the road a yellow spot of light Shone from my cottage window, rayless yet, Where the last sunset crimson caught the panes. Alice had lit the lamp before she went; Her day of pity and unmirthful play Was over, and her young heart free to live Until to-morrow brought her nursing-task Again, and made her feel how dark and still That life could be to others which to her Was full of dreams that beckoned, reaching hands, And thrilling invitations young girls hear. My boy was sleeping, little mind and frame More tired just lying there awake two hours Than with a whole day's romp he should have been. He would not know his mother had come home; But after supper I would sit awhile Beside his bed, and let my heart have time For that worst love that stabs and breaks and kills. This I thought over to myself by rote And habit, but I could not feel my thoughts; For still that dim unmeaning happiness Kept mounting, mounting round me like a sea, And singing inward like a wind of wings. Before I lifted up the latch, I knew. I felt no fear; the One who waited there In the low lamplight by the bed, had come Because I was his sister and in need. My word had got to Him somehow at last, And He had come to help me or to tell Where help was to be found. It was not strange. Strange only He had stayed away so long; But that should be forgotten--He was here. I pushed the door wide open and looked in. He had been kneeling by the bed, and now, Half-risen, kissed my boy upon the lips, Then turned and smiled and pointed with his hand. I must have fallen on the threshold stone, For I remember that I felt, not saw, The resurrection glory and the peace Shed from his face and raiment as He went Out by the door into the evening street. But when I looked, the place about the bed Was yet all bathed in light, and in the midst My boy lay changed,--no longer clothed upon With scraps and shreds of life, but like the child Of some most fortunate mother. In a breath The image faded. There he lay again The same as always; and the light was gone. I sank with moans and cries beside the bed. The cruelty, O Christ, the cruelty! To come at last and then to go like that, Leaving the darkness deeper than before! Then, though I heard no sound, I grew aware Of some one standing by the open door Among the dry vines rustling in the porch. My heart laughed suddenly. He had come back! He had come back to make the vision true. He had not meant to mock me: God was God, And Christ was Christ; there was no falsehood there. I heard a quiet footstep cross the room And felt a hand laid gently on my hair,-- A human hand, worn hard by daily toil, Heavy with life-long struggle after bread. Alice's father. The kind homely voice Had in it such strange music that I dreamed Perhaps it was the Other speaking in him, Because His own bright form had made me swoon With its too much of glory. What he brought Was news as good as ever heavenly lips Had the dear right to utter. He had been All day among the crowds of curious folk From the great city and the country-side Gathered to watch the Healer do his work Of mercy on the sick and halt and blind, And with his very eyes had seen such things As awestruck men had witnessed long ago In Galilee, and writ of in the Book. To-morrow morning he would take me there If I had strength and courage to believe. It might be there was hope; he could not say, But knew what he had seen. When he was gone I lay for hours, letting the solemn waves Thundering joy go over and over me. Just before midnight baby fretted, woke; He never yet has slept a whole night through Without his food and petting. As I sat Feeding and petting him and singing soft, I felt a jealousy begin to ache And worry at my heartstrings, hushing down The gladness. Jealousy of what or whom? I hardly knew, or could not put in words; At least it seemed too foolish and too wrong When said, and so I shut the thought away. Only, next minute, it came stealing back. After the change, would my boy be the same As this one? Would he be my boy at all, And not another's--his who gave the life I could not give, or did not anyhow? How could I look in his new eyes to claim The whole of him, the body and the breath, When some one not his mother, a strange man, Had clothed him in that beauty of the flesh-- Perhaps (for who could know?), perhaps, by some Hateful disfiguring miracle, had even Transformed his spirit to a better one, Better, but not the same I prayed for him Down out of Heaven through the sleepless nights,-- The best that God would send to such as me. I tried to strangle back the wicked pain; Fancied him changed and tried to love him so. No use; it was another, not my child, Not my frail, broken, priceless little one, My cup of anguish, and my trembling star Hung small and sad and sweet above the earth, So sure to fall but for my cherishing! When he had dropped asleep again, I rose And wrestled with the sinful selfishness, The dark injustice, the unnatural pain. Fevered at last with pacing to and fro, I raised the bedroom window and leaned out. The white moon, low behind the sycamores, Silvered the silent country; not a voice Of all the myriads summer moves to sing Had yet awakened; in the level moon Walked that same presence I had heard at dawn Uttering hopes and loving-kindnesses, But now, dispirited and reticent, It walked the moonlight like a homeless thing. O, how to cleanse me of the cowardice! How to be just! Was I a mother, then, A mother, and not love her child as well As her own covetous and morbid love? Was it for this the Comforter had come, Smiling at me and pointing with His hand? --What had He meant to have me think or do, Smiling and pointing? All at once I saw A way to save my darling from myself And make atonement for my grudging love! Under the sycamores and up the hill And down across the river, the wet road Went stretching cityward, silvered in the moon. I who had shrunk from sacrifice, even I, Who had refused God's blessing for my boy, Would take him in my arms and carry him Up to the altar of the miracle. I would not wait for daylight, nor the help Of any human friendship; I alone, Through the still miles of country, I alone, Only my arms to shield him and my feet To bear him: he should have no one to thank But me for that. I knew the way was long, But knew strength would be given. So I came. Soon the stars failed; the late moon faded too: I think my heart had sucked their beams from them To build more blue amid the murky night Its own miraculous day. From creeks and fields The fog climbed slowly, blotted out the road; And hid the signposts telling of the town; After a while rain fell, with sleet and snow. What did I care? Baby was snug and dry. Some day, when I was telling him of this, He would but hug me closer, hearing how The night conspired against us. Better hard Than easy, then: I almost felt regret My body was so capable and strong To do its errand. Honeyed drop by drop, The ghostly jealousy, loosening at my breast, Distilled into a dew of quiet tears And fell with splash of music in the wells And on the hidden rivers of my soul. The hardest part was coming through the town. The country, even when it hindered most, Seemed conscious of the thing I went to find. The rocks and bushes looming through the mist Questioned and acquiesced and understood; The trees and streams believed; the wind and rain, Even they, for all their temper, had some words Of faith and comfort. But the glaring streets, The dizzy traffic, the piled merchandise, The giant buildings swarming with fierce life-- Cared nothing for me. They had never heard Of me nor of my business. When I asked My way, a shade of pity or contempt Showed through men's kindness--for they all were kind. Daunted and chilled and very sick at heart, I walked the endless pavements. But at last The streets grew quieter; the houses seemed As if they might be homes where people lived; Then came the factories and cottages, And all was well again. Much more than well, For many sick and broken went my way, Alone or helped along by loving hands; And from a thousand eyes the famished hope Looked out at mine--wild, patient, querulous, But always hope and hope, a thousand tongues Speaking one word in many languages. In two hours He will come, they say, will stand There on the steps, above the waiting crowd, And touch with healing hands whoever asks Believingly, in spirit and in truth. Can such a mercy be, in these hard days? Is help still sent in such a way as that? Christ, I believe; pity my unbelief! JETSAM I wonder can this be the world it was At sunset? I remember the sky fell Green as pale meadows, at the long street-ends, But overhead the smoke-wrack hugged the roofs As if to shut the city from God's eyes Till dawn should quench the laughter and the lights. Beneath the gas flare stolid faces passed, Too dull for sin; old loosened lips set hard To drain the stale lees from the cup of sense; Or if a young face yearned from out the mist Made by its own bright hair, the eyes were wan With desolate fore-knowledge of the end. My life lay waste about me: as I walked, From the gross dark of unfrequented streets The face of my own youth peered forth at me, Struck white with pity at the thing I was; And globed in ghostly fire, thrice-virginal, With lifted face star-strong, went one who sang Lost verses from my youth's gold canticle. Out of the void dark came my face and hers One vivid moment--then the street was there; Bloat shapes and mean eyes blotted the sear dusk; And in the curtained window of a house Whence sin reeked on the night, a shameful head Was silhouetted black as Satan's face Against eternal fires. I stumbled on Down the dark slope that reaches riverward, Stretching blind hands to find the throat of God And crush Him in his lies. The river lay Coiled in its factory filth and few lean trees. All was too hateful--I could not die there! I whom the Spring had strained unto her breast, Whose lips had felt the wet vague lips of dawn. So under the thin willows' leprous shade And through the tangled ranks of riverweed I pushed--till lo, God heard me! I came forth Where, 'neath the shoreless hush of region light, Through a new world, undreamed of, undesired, Beyond imagining of man's weary heart, Far to the white marge of the wondering sea This still plain widens, and this moon rains down Insufferable ecstasy of peace. My heart is man's heart, strong to bear this night's Unspeakable affliction of mute love That crazes lesser things. The rocks and clods Dissemble, feign a busy intercourse; The bushes deal in shadowy subterfuge, Lurk dull, dart spiteful out, make heartless signs, Utter awestricken purpose of no sense,-- But I walk quiet, crush aside the hands Stretched furtively to drag me madmen's ways. I know the thing they suffer, and the tricks They must be at to help themselves endure. I would not be too boastful; I am weak, Too weak to put aside the utter ache Of this lone splendor long enough to see Whether the moon is still her white strange self Or something whiter, stranger, even the face Which by the changed face of my risen youth Sang, globed in fire, her golden canticle. I dare not look again; another gaze Might drive me to the wavering coppice there, Where bat-winged madness brushed me, the wild laugh Of naked nature crashed across my blood. So rank it was with earthy presences, Faun-shapes in goatish dance, young witches' eyes Slanting deep invitation, whinnying calls Ambiguous, shocks and whirlwinds of wild mirth,-- They had undone me in the darkness there, But that within me, smiting through my lids Lowered to shut in the thick whirl of sense, The dumb light ached and rummaged, and with out, The soaring splendor summoned me aloud To leave the low dank thickets of the flesh Where man meets beast and makes his lair with him, For spirit reaches of the strenuous vast, Where stalwart stars reap grain to make the bread God breaketh at his tables and is glad. I came out in the moonlight cleansed and strong, And gazed up at the lyric face to see All sweetness tasted of in earthen cups Ere it be dashed and spilled, all radiance flung Beyond experience, every benison dream, Treasured and mystically crescent there. O, who will shield me from her? Who will place A veil between me and the fierce in-throng Of her inexorable benedicite? See, I have loved her well and been with her! Through tragic twilights when the stricken sea Groveled with fear, or when she made her throne In imminent cities built of gorgeous winds And paved with lightnings; or when the sobering stars Would lead her home 'mid wealth of plundered May Along the violet slopes of evensong. Of all the sights that starred the dreamy year, For me one sight stood peerless and apart: Bright rivers tacit; low hills prone and dumb; Forests that hushed their tiniest voice to hear; Skies for the unutterable advent robed In purple like the opening iris buds; And by some lone expectant pool, one tree Whose gray boughs shivered with excess of awe,-- As with preluding gush of amber light, And herald trumpets softly lifted through, Across the palpitant horizon marge Crocus-filleted came the singing moon. Out of her changing lights I wove my youth A place to dwell in, sweet and spiritual, And all the bitter years of my exile My heart has called afar off unto her. Lo, after many days love finds its own! The futile adorations, the waste tears, The hymns that fluttered low in the false dawn, She has uptreasured as a lover's gifts; They are the mystic garment that she wears Against the bridal, and the crocus flowers She twined her brow with at the going forth; They are the burden of the song she made In coming through the quiet fields of space, And breathe between her passion-parted lips Calling me out along the flowering road Which summers through the dimness of the sea. Hark, where the deep feels round its thousand shores To find remembered respite, and far drawn Through weed-strewn shelves and crannies of the coast The myriad silence yearns to myriad speech. O sea that yearns a day, shall thy tongues be So eloquent, and heart, shall all thy tongues Be dumb to speak thy longing? Say I hold Life as a broken jewel in my hand, And fain would buy a little love with it For comfort, say I fain would make it shine Once in remembering eyes ere it be dust,-- Were life not worthy spent? Then what of this, When all my spirit hungers to repay The beauty that has drenched my soul with peace? Once at a simple turning of the way I met God walking; and although the dawn Was large behind Him, and the morning stars Circled and sang about his face as birds About the fieldward morning cottager, My coward heart said faintly, "Let us haste! Day grows and it is far to market-town." Once where I lay in darkness after fight, Sore smitten, thrilled a little thread of song Searching and searching at my muffled sense Until it shook sweet pangs through all my blood, And I beheld one globed in ghostly fire Singing, star-strong, her golden canticle; And her mouth sang, "The hosts of Hate roll past, A dance of dust motes in the sliding sun; Love's battle comes on the wide wings of storm, From east to west one legion! Wilt thou strive?" Then, since the splendor of her sword-bright gaze Was heavy on me with yearning and with scorn My sick heart muttered, "Yea, the little strife, Yet see, the grievous wounds! I fain would sleep." O heart, shalt thou not once be strong to go Where all sweet throats are calling, once be brave To slake with deed thy dumbness? Let us go The path her singing face looms low to point, Pendulous, blanched with longing, shedding flame Of silver on the brown grope of the flood; For all my spirit's soilure is put by And all my body's soilure, lacking now But the last lustral sacrament of death To make me clean for those near-searching eyes That question yonder whether all be well, And pause a little ere they dare rejoice. Question and be thou answered, passionate face! For I am worthy, worthy now at last After so long unworth; strong now at last To give myself to beauty and be saved; Now, being man, to give myself to thee, As once the tumult of my boyish heart Companioned thee with rapture through the world, Forth from a land whereof no poet's lip Made mention how the leas were lily-sprent, Into a land God's eyes had looked not on To love the tender bloom upon the hills. To-morrow, when the fishers come at dawn Upon that shell of me the sea has tossed To land, as fit for earth to use again, Men, meeting at the shops and corner streets, Will speak a word of pity, glossing o'er With altered accent, dubious sweep of hand, Their virile, just contempt for one who failed. But they can never cast my earnings up, Who know so well my losses. Even you Who in the mild light of the spirit walk And hold yourselves acquainted with the truth, Be not too swift to judge and cast me out! You shall find other, nobler ways than mine To work your soul's redemption,--glorious noons Of battle 'neath the heaven-suspended sign, And nightly refuge 'neath God's ægis-rim; Increase of wisdom, and acquaintance held With the heart's austerities; still governance, And ripening of the blood in the weekday sun To make the full-orbed consecrated fruit At life's end for the Sabbath supper meet. I shall not sit beside you at that feast, For ere a seedling of my golden tree Pushed off its petals to get room to grow, I stripped the boughs to make an April gaud And wreathe a spendthrift garland for my hair. But mine is not the failure God deplores; For I of old am beauty's votarist, Long recreant, often foiled and led astray, But resolute at last to seek her there Where most she does abide, and crave with tears That she assoil me of my blemishment. Low looms her singing face to point the way, Pendulous, blanched with longing, shedding flame Of silver on the brown grope of the flood. The stars are for me; the horizon wakes Its pilgrim chanting; and the little sand Grows musical of hope beneath my feet. The waves that leap to meet my swimming breast Gossip sweet secrets of the light-drenched way, And when the deep throbs of the rising surge Pulse upward with me, and a rain of wings Blurs round the moon's pale place, she stoops to reach Still welcome of bright hands across the wave, And sings low, low, globed all in ghostly fire, Lost verses from my youth's gold canticle. THE BRUTE Through his might men work their wills. They have boweled out the hills For food to keep him toiling in the cages they have wrought; And they fling him, hour by hour, Limbs of men to give him power; Brains of men to give him cunning; and for dainties to devour Children's souls, the little worth; hearts of women, cheaply bought: He takes them and he breaks them, but he gives them scanty thought. For about the noisy land, Roaring, quivering 'neath his hand, His thoughts brood fierce and sullen or laugh in lust of pride O'er the stubborn things that he, Breaks to dust and brings to be. Some he mightily establishes, some flings down utterly. There is thunder in his stride, nothing ancient can abide, When he hales the hills together and bridles up the tide. Quietude and loveliness, Holy sights that heal and bless, They are scattered and abolished where his iron hoof is set; When he splashes through the brae Silver streams are choked with clay, When he snorts the bright cliffs crumble and the woods go down like hay; He lairs in pleasant cities, and the haggard people fret Squalid 'mid their new-got riches, soot-begrimed and desolate. They who caught and bound him tight Laughed exultant at his might, Saying, "Now behold, the good time comes for the weariest and the least! We will use this lusty knave: No more need for men to slave; We may rise and look about us and have knowledge ere the grave." But the Brute said in his breast, "Till the mills I grind have ceased, The riches shall be dust of dust, dry ashes be the feast! "On the strong and cunning few Cynic favors I will strew; I will stuff their maw with overplus until their spirit dies; From the patient and the low I will take the joys they know; They shall hunger after vanities and still an-hungered go. Madness shall be on the people, ghastly jealousies arise; Brother's blood shall cry on brother up the dead and empty skies. "I will burn and dig and hack Till the heavens suffer lack; God shall feel a pleasure fail him, crying to his cherubim, 'Who hath flung yon mud-ball there Where my world went green and fair?' I shall laugh and hug me, hearing how his sentinels declare, ''T is the Brute they chained to labor! He has made the bright earth dim. Store of wares and pelf a plenty, but they got no good of him.'" So he plotted in his rage: So he deals it, age by age. But even as he roared his curse a still small Voice befell; Lo, a still and pleasant voice bade them none the less rejoice, For the Brute must bring the good time on; he has no other choice. He may struggle, sweat, and yell, but he knows exceeding well He must work them out salvation ere they send him back to hell. All the desert that he made He must treble bless with shade, In primal wastes set precious seed of rapture and of pain; All the strongholds that he built For the powers of greed and guilt-- He must strew their bastions down the sea and choke their towers with silt; He must make the temples clean for the gods to come again, And lift the lordly cities under skies without a stain. In a very cunning tether He must lead the tyrant weather; He must loose the curse of Adam from the worn neck of the race; He must cast out hate and fear, Dry away each fruitless tear, And make the fruitful tears to gush from the deep heart and clear. He must give each man his portion, each his pride and worthy place; He must batter down the arrogant and lift the weary face, On each vile mouth set purity, on each low forehead grace. Then, perhaps, at the last day, They will whistle him away, Lay a hand upon his muzzle in the face of God, and say, "Honor, Lord, the Thing we tamed! Let him not be scourged or blamed. Even through his wrath and fierceness was thy fierce wroth world reclaimed! Honor Thou thy servants' servant; let thy justice now be shown." Then the Lord will heed their saying, and the Brute come to his own, 'Twixt the Lion and the Eagle, by the armpost of the Throne. THE MENAGERIE Thank God my brain is not inclined to cut Such capers every day! I 'm just about Mellow, but then--There goes the tent-flap shut. Rain 's in the wind. I thought so: every snout Was twitching when the keeper turned me out. That screaming parrot makes my blood run cold. Gabriel's trump! the big bull elephant Squeals "Rain!" to the parched herd. The monkeys scold, And jabber that it 's rain water they want. (It makes me sick to see a monkey pant.) I 'll foot it home, to try and make believe I 'm sober. After this I stick to beer, And drop the circus when the sane folks leave. A man 's a fool to look at things too near: They look back, and begin to cut up queer. Beasts do, at any rate; especially Wild devils caged. They have the coolest way Of being something else than what you see: You pass a sleek young zebra nosing hay, A nylghau looking bored and distingué,-- And think you 've seen a donkey and a bird. Not on your life! Just glance back, if you dare. The zebra chews, the nylghau has n't stirred; But something 's happened, Heaven knows what or where, To freeze your scalp and pompadour your hair. I 'm not precisely an æolian lute Hung in the wandering winds of sentiment, But drown me if the ugliest, meanest brute Grunting and fretting in that sultry tent Did n't just floor me with embarrassment! 'T was like a thunder-clap from out the clear, One minute they were circus beasts, some grand, Some ugly, some amusing, and some queer: Rival attractions to the hobo band, The flying jenny, and the peanut stand. Next minute they were old hearth-mates of mine! Lost people, eyeing me with such a stare! Patient, satiric, devilish, divine; A gaze of hopeless envy, squalid care, Hatred, and thwarted love, and dim despair. Within my blood my ancient kindred spoke,-- Grotesque and monstrous voices, heard afar Down ocean caves when behemoth awoke, Or through fern forests roared the plesiosaur Locked with the giant-bat in ghastly war. And suddenly, as in a flash of light, I saw great Nature working out her plan; Through all her shapes from mastodon to mite Forever groping, testing, passing on To find at last the shape and soul of Man. Till in the fullness of accomplished time, Comes brother Forepaugh, upon business bent, Tracks her through frozen and through torrid clime, And shows us, neatly labeled in a tent, The stages of her huge experiment; Blabbing aloud her shy and reticent hours; Dragging to light her blinking, slothful moods; Publishing fretful seasons when her powers Worked wild and sullen in her solitudes, Or when her mordant laughter shook the woods. Here, round about me, were her vagrant births; Sick dreams she had, fierce projects she essayed; Her qualms, her fiery prides, her crazy mirths; The troublings of her spirit as she strayed, Cringed, gloated, mocked, was lordly, was afraid, On that long road she went to seek mankind; Here were the darkling coverts that she beat To find the Hider she was sent to find; Here the distracted footprints of her feet Whereby her soul's Desire she came to greet. But why should they, her botch-work, turn about And stare disdain at me, her finished job? Why was the place one vast suspended shout Of laughter? Why did all the daylight throb With soundless guffaw and dumb-stricken sob? Helpless I stood among those awful cages; The beasts were walking loose, and I was bagged! I, I, last product of the toiling ages, Goal of heroic feet that never lagged,-- A little man in trousers, slightly jagged. Deliver me from such another jury! The Judgment-day will be a picnic to 't. Their satire was more dreadful than their fury, And worst of all was just a kind of brute Disgust, and giving up, and sinking mute. Survival of the fittest, adaptation, And all their other evolution terms, Seem to omit one small consideration, To wit, that tumblebugs and angleworms Have souls: there 's soul in everything that squirms. And souls are restless, plagued, impatient things, All dream and unaccountable desire; Crawling, but pestered with the thought of wings; Spreading through every inch of earth's old mire Mystical hanker after something higher. Wishes _are_ horses, as I understand. I guess a wistful polyp that has strokes Of feeling faint to gallivant on land Will come to be a scandal to his folks; Legs he will sprout, in spite of threats and jokes. And at the core of every life that crawls Or runs or flies or swims or vegetates-- Churning the mammoth's heart-blood, in the galls Of shark and tiger planting gorgeous hates, Lighting the love of eagles for their mates; Yes, in the dim brain of the jellied fish That is and is not living--moved and stirred From the beginning a mysterious wish, A vision, a command, a fatal Word: The name of Man was uttered, and they heard. Upward along the æons of old war They sought him: wing and shank-bone, claw and bill Were fashioned and rejected; wide and far They roamed the twilight jungles of their will; But still they sought him, and desired him still. Man they desired, but mind you, Perfect Man, The radiant and the loving, yet to be! I hardly wonder, when they came to scan The upshot of their strenuosity, They gazed with mixed emotions upon _me_. Well, my advice to you is, Face the creatures, Or spot them sideways with your weather eye, Just to keep tab on their expansive features; It is n't pleasant when you 're stepping high To catch a giraffe smiling on the sly. If nature made you graceful, don't get gay Back-to before the hippopotamus; If meek and godly, find some place to play Besides right where three mad hyenas fuss: You may hear language that we won't discuss. If you 're a sweet thing in a flower-bed hat, Or her best fellow with your tie tucked in, Don't squander love's bright springtime girding at An old chimpanzee with an Irish chin: _There may be hidden meaning in his grin._ THE GOLDEN JOURNEY All day he drowses by the sail With dreams of her, and all night long The broken waters are at song Of how she lingers, wild and pale, When all the temple lights are dumb, And weaves her spells to make him come. The wide sea traversed, he will stand With straining eyes, until the shoal Green water from the prow shall roll Upon the yellow strip of sand-- Searching some fern-hid tangled way Into the forest old and grey. Then he will leap upon the shore, And cast one look up at the sun, Over his loosened locks will run The dawn breeze, and a bird will pour Its rapture out to make life seem Too sweet to leave for such a dream. But all the swifter will he go Through the pale, scattered asphodels, Down mote-hung dusk of olive dells, To where the ancient basins throw Fleet threads of blue and trembling zones Of gold upon the temple stones. There noon keeps just a twilight trace; Twixt love and hate, and death and birth, No man may choose; nor sobs nor mirth May enter in that haunted place. All day the fountain sphynx lets drip Slow drops of silence from her lip. To hold the porch-roof slender girls Of milk-white marble stand arow; Doubt never blurs a single brow, And never the noon's faintness curls From their expectant hush of pride The lips the god has glorified. But these things he will barely view, Or if he stay to heed them, still But as the lark the lights that spill From out the sun it soars unto, Where, past the splendors and the heats, The sun's heart's self forever beats. For wide the brazen doors will swing Soon as his sandals touch the pave; The anxious light inside will wave And tremble to a lunar ring About the form that lieth prone Before the dreadful altar-stone. She will not look or speak or stir, But with drowned lips and cheeks death-white Will lie amid the pool of light, Until, grown faint with thirst of her, He shall bow down his face and sink Breathless beneath the eddying brink. Then a swift music will begin, And as the brazen doors shut slow, There will be hurrying to and fro, And lights and calls and silver din, While through the star-freaked swirl of air The god's sweet cruel eyes will stare. HEART'S WILD-FLOWER To-night her lids shall lift again, slow, soft, with vague desire, And lay about my breast and brain their hush of spirit fire, And I shall take the sweet of pain as the laborer his hire. And though no word shall e'er be said to ease the ghostly sting, And though our hearts, unhoused, unfed, must still go wandering, My sign is set upon her head while stars do meet and sing. Not such a sign as women wear who make their foreheads tame With life's long tolerance, and bear love's sweetest, humblest name, Nor such as passion eateth bare with its crown of tears and flame. Nor such a sign as happy friend sets on his friend's dear brow When meadow-pipings break and blend to a key of autumn woe, And the woodland says playtime 's at end, best unclasp hands and go. But where she strays, through blight or blooth, one fadeless flower she wears, A little gift God gave my youth,--whose petals dim were fears, Awes, adorations, songs of ruth, hesitancies, and tears. O heart of mine, with all thy powers of white beatitude, What are the dearest of God's dowers to the children of his blood? How blow the shy, shy wilding flowers in the hollows of his wood? HARMONICS This string upon my harp was best beloved: I thought I knew its secrets through and through; Till an old man, whose young eyes lightened blue 'Neath his white hair, bent over me and moved His fingers up and down, and broke the wire To such a laddered music, rung on rung, As from the patriarch's pillow skyward sprung Crowded with wide-flung wings and feet of fire. O vibrant heart! so metely tuned and strung That any untaught hand can draw from thee One clear gold note that makes the tired years young-- What of the time when Love had whispered me Where slept thy nodes, and my hand pausefully Gave to the dim harmonics voice and tongue? ON THE RIVER The faint stars wake and wonder, Fade and find heart anew; Above us and far under Sphereth the watchful blue. Silent she sits, outbending, A wild pathetic grace, A beauty strange, heart-rending, Upon her hair and face. O spirit cries that sever The cricket's level drone! O to give o'er endeavor And let love have its own! Within the mirrored bushes There wakes a little stir; The white-throat moves, and hushes Her nestlings under her. Beneath, the lustrous river, The watchful sky o'erhead. God, God, that Thou should'st ever Poison thy children's bread! THE BRACELET OF GRASS The opal heart of afternoon Was clouding on to throbs of storm, Ashen within the ardent west The lips of thunder muttered harm, And as a bubble like to break Hung heaven's trembling amethyst, When with the sedge-grass by the lake I braceleted her wrist. And when the ribbon grass was tied, Sad with the happiness we planned, Palm linked in palm we stood awhile And watched the raindrops dot the sand; Until the anger of the breeze Chid all the lake's bright breathing down, And ravished all the radiancies From her deep eyes of brown. We gazed from shelter on the storm, And through our hearts swept ghostly pain To see the shards of day sweep past, Broken, and none might mend again. Broken, that none shall ever mend; Loosened, that none shall ever tie. O the wind and the wind, will it never end? O the sweeping past of the ruined sky! THE DEPARTURE I I sat beside the glassy evening sea, One foot upon the thin horn of my lyre, And all its strings of laughter and desire Crushed in the rank wet grasses heedlessly; Nor did my dull eyes care to question how The boat close by had spread its saffron sails, Nor what might mean the coffers and the bales, And streaks of new wine on the gilded prow. Neither was wonder in me when I saw Fair women step therein, though they were fair Even to adoration and to awe, And in the gracious fillets of their hair Were blossoms from a garden I had known, Sweet mornings ere the apple buds were blown. II One gazed steadfast into the dying west With lips apart to greet the evening star; And one with eyes that caught the strife and jar Of the sea's heart, followed the sunward breast Of a lone gull; from a slow harp one drew Blind music like a laugh or like a wail; And in the uncertain shadow of the sail One wove a crown of berries and of yew. Yet even as I said with dull desire, "All these were mine, and one was mine indeed," The smoky music burst into a fire, And I was left alone in my great need, One foot upon the thin horn of my lyre And all its strings crushed in the dripping weed. FADED PICTURES Only two patient eyes to stare Out of the canvas. All the rest-- The warm green gown, the small hands pressed Light in the lap, the braided hair That must have made the sweet low brow So earnest, centuries ago, When some one saw it change and glow-- All faded! Just the eyes burn now. I dare say people pass and pass Before the blistered little frame, And dingy work without a name Stuck in behind its square of glass. But I, well, I left Raphael Just to come drink these eyes of hers, To think away the stains and blurs And make all new again and well. Only, for tears my head will bow, Because there on my heart's last wall, Scarce one tint left to tell it all, A picture keeps its eyes, somehow. A GREY DAY Grey drizzling mists the moorlands drape, Rain whitens the dead sea, From headland dim to sullen cape Grey sails creep wearily. I know not how that merchantman Has found the heart; but 't is her plan Seaward her endless course to shape. Unreal as insects that appall A drunkard's peevish brain, O'er the grey deep the dories crawl, Four-legged, with rowers twain: Midgets and minims of the earth, Across old ocean's vasty girth Toiling--heroic, comical! I wonder how that merchant's crew Have ever found the will! I wonder what the fishers do To keep them toiling still! I wonder how the heart of man Has patience to live out its span, Or wait until its dreams come true. THE RIDE BACK _Before the coming of the dark, he dreamed An old-world faded story: of a knight, Much like in need to him, who was no knight! And of a road, much like the road his soul Groped over, desperate to meet Her soul. Beside the bed Death waited. And he dreamed._ His limbs were heavy from the fight, His mail was dark with dust and blood; On his good horse they bound him tight, And on his breast they bound the rood To help him in the ride that night. When he crashed through the wood's wet rim, About the dabbled reeds a breeze Went moaning broken words and dim; The haggard shapes of twilight trees Caught with their scrawny hands at him. Between the doubtful aisles of day Strange folk and lamentable stood To maze and beckon him astray, But through the grey wrath of the wood He held right on his bitter way. When he came where the trees were thin, The moon sat waiting there to see; On her worn palm she laid her chin, And laughed awhile in sober glee To think how strong this knight had been. When he rode past the pallid lake, The withered yellow stems of flags Stood breast-high for his horse to break; Lewd as the palsied lips of hags The petals in the moon did shake. When he came by the mountain wall, The snow upon the heights looked down And said, "The sight is pitiful. The nostrils of his steed are brown With frozen blood; and he will fall." The iron passes of the hills With question were importunate; And, but the sharp-tongued icy rills Had grown for once compassionate, The spiteful shades had had their wills. Just when the ache in breast and brain And the frost smiting at his face Had sealed his spirit up with pain, He came out in a better place, And morning lay across the plain. He saw the wet snails crawl and cling On fern-stalks where the rime had run, The careless birds went wing and wing, And in the low smile of the sun Life seemed almost a pleasant thing. Right on the panting charger swung Through the bright depths of quiet grass; The knight's lips moved as if they sung, And through the peace there came to pass The flattery of lute and tongue. From the mid-flowering of the mead There swelled a sob of minstrelsy, Faint sackbuts and the dreamy reed, And plaintive lips of maids thereby, And songs blown out like thistle seed. Forth from her maidens came the bride, And as his loosened rein fell slack He muttered, "In their throats they lied Who said that I should ne'er win back To kiss her lips before I died!" SONG-FLOWER AND POPPY I IN NEW YORK He plays the deuce with my writing time, For the penny my sixth-floor neighbor throws; He finds me proud of my pondered rhyme, And he leaves me--well, God knows It takes the shine from a tunester's line When a little mate of the deathless Nine Pipes up under your nose! For listen, there is his voice again, Wistful and clear and piercing sweet. Where did the boy find such a strain To make a dead heart beat? And how in the name of care can he bear To jet such a fountain into the air In this gray gulch of a street? Tuscan slopes or the Piedmontese? Umbria under the Apennine? South, where the terraced lemon-trees Round rich Sorrento shine? Venice moon on the smooth lagoon?-- Where have I heard that aching tune, That boyish throat divine? Beyond my roofs and chimney pots A rag of sunset crumbles gray; Below, fierce radiance hangs in clots O'er the streams that never stay. Shrill and high, newsboys cry The worst of the city's infamy For one more sordid day. But my desire has taken sail For lands beyond, soft-horizoned: Down languorous leagues I hold the trail, From Marmalada, steeply throned Above high pastures washed with light, Where dolomite by dolomite Looms sheer and spectral-coned, To purple vineyards looking south On reaches of the still Tyrrhene; Virgilian headlands, and the mouth Of Tiber, where that ship put in To take the dead men home to God, Whereof Casella told the mode To the great Florentine. Up stairways blue with flowering weed I climb to hill-hung Bergamo; All day I watch the thunder breed Golden above the springs of Po, Till the voice makes sure its wavering lure, And by Assisi's portals pure I stand, with heart bent low. O hear, how it blooms in the blear dayfall, That flower of passionate wistful song! How it blows like a rose by the iron wall Of the city loud and strong. How it cries "Nay, nay" to the worldling's way, To the heart's clear dream how it whispers, "Yea; Time comes, though the time is long." Beyond my roofs and chimney piles Sunset crumbles, ragged, dire; The roaring street is hung for miles With fierce electric fire. Shrill and high, newsboys cry The gross of the planet's destiny Through one more sullen gyre. Stolidly the town flings down Its lust by day for its nightly lust; Who does his given stint, 't is known, Shall have his mug and crust.-- Too base of mood, too harsh of blood, Too stout to seize the grosser good, Too hungry after dust! O hark! how it blooms in the falling dark, That flower of mystical yearning song: Sad as a hermit thrush, as a lark Uplifted, glad, and strong. Heart, we have chosen the better part! Save sacred love and sacred art Nothing is good for long. II AT ASSISI Before St. Francis' burg I wait, Frozen in spirit, faint with dread; His presence stands within the gate, Mild splendor rings his head. Gently he seems to welcome me: Knows he not I am quick, and he Is dead, and priest of the dead? I turn away from the gray church pile; I dare not enter, thus undone: Here in the roadside grass awhile I will lie and watch for the sun. Too purged of earth's good glee and strife, Too drained of the honied lusts of life, Was the peace these old saints won! And lo! how the laughing earth says no To the fear that mastered me; To the blood that aches and clamors so How it whispers "Verily." Here by my side, marvelous-dyed, Bold stray-away from the courts of pride, A poppy-bell flaunts free. St. Francis sleeps upon his hill, And a poppy flower laughs down his creed; Triumphant light her petals spill, His shrines are dim indeed. Men build and plan, but the soul of man, Coming with haughty eyes to scan, Feels richer, wilder need. How long, old builder Time, wilt bide Till at thy thrilling word Life's crimson pride shall have to bride The spirit's white accord, Within that gate of good estate Which thou must build us soon or late, Hoar workman of the Lord? HOW THE MEAD-SLAVE WAS SET FREE Nay, move not! Sit just as you are, Under the carved wings of the chair. The hearth-glow sifting through your hair Turns every dim pearl to a star Dawn-drowned in floods of brightening air. I have been thinking of that night When all the wide hall burst to blaze With spears caught up, thrust fifty ways To find my throat, while I lay white And sick with joy, to think the days I dragged out in your hateful North-- A slave, constrained at banquet's need To fill the black bull's horns with mead For drunken sea-thieves--were henceforth Cast from me as a poison weed, While Death thrust roses in my hands! But you, who knew the flowers he had Were no such roses ripe and glad As nod in my far southern lands, But pallid things to make men sad, Put back the spears with one calm hand, Raised on your knee my wondering head, Wiped off the trickling drops of red From my torn forehead with a strand Of your bright loosened hair, and said: "Sea-rovers! would you kill a skald? This boy has hearkened Odin sing Unto the clang and winnowing Of raven's wings. His heart is thralled To music, as to some strong king; "And this great thraldom works disdain Of lesser serving. Once release These bonds he bears, and he may please To give you guerdon sweet as rain To sailors calmed in thirsty seas." Then, having soothed their rage to rest, You led me to old Skagi's throne, Where yellow gold rims in the stone; And in my arms, against my breast, Thrust his great harp of walrus bone. How they came crowding, tunes on tunes! How good it was to touch the strings And feel them thrill like happy things That flutter from the gray cocoons On hedge rows, in your gradual springs! All grew a blur before my sight, As when the stealthy white fog slips At noonday on the staggering ships; I saw one single spot of light, Your white face, with its eager lips-- And so I sang to that. O thou Who liftedst me from out my shame! Wert thou content when Skagi came, Put his own chaplet on my brow, And bent and kissed his own harp-frame? A DIALOGUE IN PURGATORY _Poi disse un altro.... "Io son Buonconte: Giovanna o altri non ha di me cura; Per ch' io vo tra costor con bassa fronte."_ _Seguito il terzo spirito al secondo, "Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia; Siena mi fe, disfecemi Maremma. Salsi colui che inannellata pria Disposata m' avea colla sua gemma."_ PURGATORIO, CANTO V. I BUONCONTE Sister, the sun has ceased to shine; By companies of twain and trine Stars gather; from the sea The moon comes momently. On all the roads that ring our hill The sighing and the hymns are still: It is our time to gain Strength for to-morrow's pain. Yet still your eyes are wholly bent Upon the way that Virgil went, Following Sordello's sign, With the dark Florentine. Night now has barred their upward track: There where the mountain-side folds back And in the Vale of Flowers The Princes count their hours Those three friends sit in the clear starlight With the green-clad angels left and right,-- Soul made by wakeful soul More earnest for the goal. So let us, sister, though our place Is barren of that Valley's grace, Sit hand in hand, till we Seem rich as those friends be. II LA PIA Brother, 't were sweet your hand to feel In mine; it would a little heal The shame that makes me poor, And dumb at the heart's core. But where our spirits felt Love's dearth, Down on the green and pleasant earth, Remains the fleshly shell, Love's garment tangible. So now our hands have naught to say: Heart unto heart some other way Must utter forth its pain, Must glee or comfort gain. Ah, no! For souls like you and me Some comfort waits, but never glee: Not yours the young men's singing In Heaven, at the bride-bringing; Not mine, beside God's living waters, Dance of the marriageable daughters, The laughter and the ease Beneath His summer trees. III BUONCONTE In fair Arezzo's halls and bowers My Giovanna speeds her hours Delicately, nor cares To shorten by her prayers My days upon this mount of ruth: If those who come from earth speak sooth, Though still I call and call, She does not heed at all. And if aright your words I read At Dante's passing, he you wed Dipped from the drains of Hell The marriage hydromel. O therefore, while the moon intense Holds yonder dreaming sea suspense, And round the shadowy coasts Gather the wistful ghosts, Let us sit quiet all the night, And wonder, wonder on the light Worn by those spirits fair Whom Love has not left bare. IV LA PIA Even as theirs, the chance was mine To meet and mate beneath Love's sign, To feel in soul and sense The solemn influence Which, breathed upon a man or maid, Maketh forever unafraid, Though life with death unite That spirit to affright,-- Which lifts the changèd heart high up, As the priest lifts the changèd cup, Boldens the feet to pace Before God's proving face. O just a thought beyond the blue The wings of the dove yearned down and through! Even now I hear and hear How near they were, how near! I murmur not. Rightly disgraced, The weak hand stretched abroad in haste For gifts barely allowed The tacit, strong, and proud. But therefore was I so intent To watch where Dante onward went With the Roman spirit pure And the grave troubadour, Because my mind was busy then With the loves that wait those gentle men: Cunizza one; and one Bice, above the sun; And for the other, more and less Than woman's near-felt tenderness, A million voices dim Praising him, praising him. V BUONCONTE The waves that wash this mountain's base Were crimson in the sun's low rays, When, singing high and fast, An angel downward passed, To bid some patient soul arise And make it fair for Paradise; And upward, so attended, That soul its journey wended; Yet you, who in these lower rings Wait for the coming of such wings, Turned not your eyes to view Whether they came for you, But watched, but watched great Virgil stayed Greeting Sordello's couchant shade, Which to salute him rose Like lion from its pose; While humbly by those lords of song Stood he whose living limbs are strong To mount where Mary's bliss Is shed on Beatrice. On him your gaze was fastened, more Than on those great names Mantua bore; Your eyes hold the distress Still, of that wistfulness. Yea, fit he seemed much love to rouse! His pilgrim lips and iron brows Grew like a woman's, dim, While you held speech with him; And troubled came his mortal breath The while I told him of my death; His looks were changed and wan When Virgil led him on. VI LA PIA E'er since Casella came this morn, Newly o'er yonder ocean borne, Bound upward for the choir Who purge themselves in fire, And from that meinie he was of Stayed backward at my cry of love, To speak awhile with me Of life and Tuscany, And, parting, told us how e'er day Was done, Dante would come this way, With mortal feet, to find His sweetheart, sky-enshrined,-- E'er since Casella spoke such news My heart has lain in a golden muse, Picturing him and her, What starry ones they were. And now the moon sheds its compassion O'er the hushed mount, I try to fashion The manner of their meeting, Their few first words of greeting. O well for them, with claspèd hands, Unshamed amid the heavenly bands! They hear no pitying pair Of old-time lovers there Look down and say in an undertone, "This latest-come, who comes alone, Was still alone on earth, And lonely from his birth." Nor feel a sudden whisper mar God's weather, "Dost thou see the scar That spirit hideth so? Who dealt her such a blow "That God can hardly wipe it out?" And answer, "She gave love, no doubt, To one who saw not fit To set much store by it." THE DAGUERREOTYPE This, then, is she, My mother as she looked at seventeen, When she first met my father. Young incredibly, Younger than spring, without the faintest trace Of disappointment, weariness, or tean Upon the childlike earnestness and grace Of the waiting face. These close-wound ropes of pearl (Or common beads made precious by their use) Seem heavy for so slight a throat to wear; But the low bodice leaves the shoulders bare And half the glad swell of the breast, for news That now the woman stirs within the girl. And yet, Even so, the loops and globes Of beaten gold And jet Hung, in the stately way of old, From the ears' drooping lobes On festivals and Lord's-day of the week, Show all too matron-sober for the cheek,-- Which, now I look again, is perfect child, Or no--or no--'t is girlhood's very self, Moulded by some deep, mischief-ridden elf So meek, so maiden mild, But startling the close gazer with the sense Of passions forest-shy and forest-wild, And delicate delirious merriments. As a moth beats sidewise And up and over, and tries To skirt the irresistible lure Of the flame that has him sure, My spirit, that is none too strong to-day, Flutters and makes delay,-- Pausing to wonder on the perfect lips, Lifting to muse upon the low-drawn hair And each hid radiance there, But powerless to stem the tide-race bright, The vehement peace which drifts it toward the light Where soon--ah, now, with cries Of grief and giving-up unto its gain It shrinks no longer nor denies, But dips Hurriedly home to the exquisite heart of pain,-- And all is well, for I have seen them plain, The unforgettable, the unforgotten eyes! Across the blinding gush of these good tears They shine as in the sweet and heavy years When by her bed and chair We children gathered jealously to share The sunlit aura breathing myrrh and thyme, Where the sore-stricken body made a clime Gentler than May and pleasanter than rhyme, Holier and more mystical than prayer. God, how thy ways are strange! That this should be, even this, The patient head Which suffered years ago the dreary change! That these so dewy lips should be the same As those I stooped to kiss And heard my harrowing half-spoken name, A little ere the one who bowed above her, Our father and her very constant lover, Rose stoical, and we knew that she was dead. Then I, who could not understand or share His antique nobleness, Being unapt to bear The insults which time flings us for our proof, Fled from the horrible roof Into the alien sunshine merciless, The shrill satiric fields ghastly with day, Raging to front God in his pride of sway And hurl across the lifted swords of fate That ringed Him where He sat My puny gage of scorn and desolate hate Which somehow should undo Him, after all! That this girl face, expectant, virginal, Which gazes out at me Boon as a sweetheart, as if nothing loth (Save for the eyes, with other presage stored) To pledge me troth, And in the kingdom where the heart is lord Take sail on the terrible gladness of the deep Whose winds the gray Norns keep,-- That this should be indeed The flesh which caught my soul, a flying seed, Out of the to and fro Of scattering hands where the seedsman Mage, Stooping from star to star and age to age Sings as he sows! That underneath this breast Nine moons I fed Deep of divine unrest, While over and over in the dark she said, "Blessèd! but not as happier children blessed"-- That this should be Even she.... God, how with time and change Thou makest thy footsteps strange! Ah, now I know They play upon me, and it is not so. Why, 't is a girl I never saw before, A little thing to flatter and make weep, To tease until her heart is sore, Then kiss and clear the score; A gypsy run-the-fields, A little liberal daughter of the earth, Good for what hour of truancy and mirth The careless season yields Hither-side the flood o' the year and yonder of the neap; Then thank you, thanks again, and twenty light good-byes.-- O shrined above the skies, Frown not, clear brow, Darken not, holy eyes! Thou knowest well I know that it is thou! Only to save me from such memories As would unman me quite, Here in this web of strangeness caught And prey to troubled thought Do I devise These foolish shifts and slight; Only to shield me from the afflicting sense Of some waste influence Which from this morning face and lustrous hair Breathes on me sudden ruin and despair. In any other guise, With any but this girlish depth of gaze, Your coming had not so unsealed and poured The dusty amphoras where I had stored The drippings of the winepress of my days. I think these eyes foresee, Now in their unawakened virgin time, Their mother's pride in me, And dream even now, unconsciously, Upon each soaring peak and sky-hung lea You pictured I should climb. Broken premonitions come, Shapes, gestures visionary, Not as once to maiden Mary The manifest angel with fresh lilies came Intelligibly calling her by name; But vanishingly, dumb, Thwarted and bright and wild, As heralding a sin-defiled, Earth-encumbered, blood-begotten, passionate man-child, Who yet should be a trump of mighty call Blown in the gates of evil kings To make them fall; Who yet should be a sword of flame before The soul's inviolate door To beat away the clang of hellish wings; Who yet should be a lyre Of high unquenchable desire In the day of little things.-- Look, where the amphoras, The yield of many days, Trod by my hot soul from the pulp of self And set upon the shelf In sullen pride The Vineyard-master's tasting to abide-- O mother mine! Are these the bringings-in, the doings fine, Of him you used to praise? Emptied and overthrown The jars lie strown. These, for their flavor duly nursed, Drip from the stopples vinegar accursed; These, I thought honied to the very seal, Dry, dry,--a little acid meal, A pinch of mouldy dust, Sole leavings of the amber-mantling must; These, rude to look upon, But flasking up the liquor dearest won, Through sacred hours and hard, With watching and with wrestlings and with grief, Even of these, of these in chief, The stale breath sickens, reeking from the shard. Nothing is left. Ay, how much less than naught! What shall be said or thought Of the slack hours and waste imaginings, The cynic rending of the wings, Known to that froward, that unreckoning heart Whereof this brewage was the precious part, Treasured and set away with furtive boast? O dear and cruel ghost, Be merciful, be just! See, I was yours and I am in the dust. Then look not so, as if all things were well! Take your eyes from me, leave me to my shame, Or else, if gaze they must, Steel them with judgment, darken them with blame; But by the ways of light ineffable You bade me go and I have faltered from, By the low waters moaning out of hell Whereto my feet have come, Lay not on me these intolerable Looks of rejoicing love, of pride, of happy trust! Nothing dismayed? By all I say and all I hint not made Afraid? O then, stay by me! Let These eyes afflict me, cleanse me, keep me yet. Brave eyes and true! See how the shriveled heart, that long has lain Dead to delight and pain, Stirs, and begins again To utter pleasant life, as if it knew The wintry days were through; As if in its awakening boughs it heard The quick, sweet-spoken bird. Strong eyes and brave, Inexorable to save! +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Transcriber's Note: | | | | | | Spacing for contractions has been retained to match the original | | 1901 text. | | | | Both "gray" and "grey" are used in this text, as per the original. | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ 
28352	----	THE CHILDREN'S LONGFELLOW TOLD IN PROSE BY DORIS HAYMAN _ILLUSTRATED_ GRAHAM & MATLACK NEW YORK. * * * * * CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION 1 THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP 3 HIAWATHA 12 KING ROBERT OF SICILY 26 THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH 37 THE GOLDEN LEGEND 42 THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 56 LADY WENTWORTH 67 ELIZABETH 73 THE MONK AND THE ASS 82 EVANGELINE 93 THE FALCON OF SER FEDERIGO 111 * * * * * LONGFELLOW'S POEMS IN PROSE The home of the American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, during the greater part of his life was in the picturesque town of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and there many of his best known poems were written. The forge of the Village Blacksmith really stood there beneath the shelter of a "spreading chestnut tree," in Cambridge, and when, as the town grew larger, the smithy was removed and the tree cut down, all the school children in Cambridge subscribed together to buy the wood of the famous tree and had a chair made from it which they gave to the poet. Longfellow was deeply interested in all Indian lore, and in the poem of Hiawatha he has embodied many of the old legends of the North American Indians. Hiawatha, who was known among the different tribes under various names, was supposed to be a person of miraculous birth, sent among them by the Great Spirit to clear their rivers and forests and to teach them the arts of peace. In the Golden Legend we find quite a different form of story. This is a legend written down by one of the old German Minnesinger and called, "Der arme Heinrich" (Unhappy Henry). The American poet has faithfully followed the outlines of the story, but has added a good deal to it, including the appearance of Lucifer with his train of evil spirits, and his attempts to lead Prince Henry astray. Five of the remaining stories are taken from the "Tales of a Wayside Inn"--a series of poems whose plan was evidently suggested by the Canterbury Tales. DORIS HAYMAN. * * * * * _The Building Of the Ship_ It was in bygone days, long before the use of steam was even thought about; trains were unknown, and when people wished to get from one part of the country to another they were obliged to make the journey on horseback or in coaches, and distances, which nowadays we can cover in a few hours, used to take our ancestors several days. It was the same thing in regard to journeys by sea. To cross the Atlantic, for instance, by an old-fashioned sailing vessel was a far more venturesome undertaking than it is to step aboard one of the great ocean liners and be conveyed swiftly and safely to one's destination. A sailing ship ran far greater risks of being wrecked by storms, and, if the winds were unfavorable, she would toss about for weeks, perhaps even for months, instead of being able to make straight for her port. And yet there was a charm about a sailing ship which no steamer with all its complicated machinery can replace, and in the good old days we hear of men who have weathered storms as violent and sailed on voyages quite as perilous as any which have been undertaken since. Well, it happened in the times of which we are speaking, that a wealthy merchant in the New Country came to a great ship-builder, who was known to all by the name of the Master, and bade him build a strong and goodly ship. "It must be beautiful to behold," said the merchant, "and yet strong enough to wrestle with wind and storm." The Master was delighted to receive this commission, for his heart was in his work and he felt that here was a chance to build a ship worthy of his reputation, so he answered joyfully: "Before long we will launch as goodly and strong a vessel as ever weathered a wintry gale." At these words the merchant departed content, because he knew that whatever the Master promised he would surely fulfill. The Master made no delay but set to work at once on a little model of the ship, making it perfect in every part, so that when the great ship came to be built he would have every detail already clear before him. As he labored, his mind was busy recalling all the famous ships which had been built before this one. A picture of one of the most renowned, the _Great Harry_, was hanging on the wall before him. It was a strange sight, with its cumbersome form, its bow and stern raised high and its eight round towers like those of some old castle. The Master smiled as he looked on it and murmured to himself: "Our ship shall be of another form to this." And when the model was finished, it was indeed of a very different build. She was a beautiful little vessel built for freight and yet for speed; broad in the beam so as to resist storm, but tapering off at the bow and stern so that the force of the waves might drive her on instead of checking her course. When the model was quite finished, the Master carried it down to the ship-yard and looked round searchingly to see that all the necessary preparations had been made. Gigantic heaps of timber lay piled in the ship-yard; there were beams of chestnut, elm, and oak, and, scattered among them, cedar wood brought from regions far away. Every country, every soil must send its tribute and help to build the wooden walls of each ship that is launched. The sun was rising when the Master came down to the ship-yard; with him was a young man, who stood leaning against an anchor and who listened eagerly to every word which fell from the Master's lips. These two were alone and the old man's speech flowed on, interrupted by nothing but the waves which broke in long ripples on the pebbly shore. This young man had for a long time been a pupil and worker of the master; though his years were fewer, his brain was as quick, his hands as dexterous as those of the elder man, and to him was now entrusted the important task of building and launching the ship on the lines that the Master had planned. [Illustration] "We will build the ship thus," said the old man. "Lay the blocks of wood on the slip, following my plans closely, and be sure to choose the timber with the greatest care; the framework is to be of cedar and pine and every inch of wood must be sound. When the ship is finished she shall be named _Union_, and the day she is launched my daughter shall become your bride." [Illustration] Joy filled the youth's heart, and, turning his head, he caught sight of the maiden standing before her father's door. Young and fair was the Master's daughter, with golden hair and sparkling eyes, and, as he gazed at her, he felt that no task could be too difficult for him to accomplish, since he had the promise of a reward so fair as this. Love is a splendid master; no task seems too difficult when love fills the heart and guides the hand, and he who is urged by love far outstrips all others. And thus it was with this youth; love of his bride and love of his work made him strong and skillful, and, so impatient was he to see the completion of the ship, that he summoned his workmen and set about his noble task without an instant's delay. Soon the sound of axes and mallets plied by sturdy arms was heard on all sides of the ship-yard. Before the shadows of evening fell, the oaken keel of a noble ship was lying ready stretched along the blocks. The work was well begun and all seemed to promise fair for a happy ending. When the long hot day was over, the young man and his promised bride sat before the door of the Master's house while the old man rested within the sheltered porch and recounted tales of wrecks which had taken place at the time of the great September gales, and of pirates who had made the Spanish seas a place of danger for harmless merchant ships; then he spoke of ships which had sailed for distant shores but had never returned, and of the chances and changes of a sailor's life. The Master himself had sailed to many far-off lands and he told his attentive listeners of their wondrous charm; of their palms and shining sands, the coral reefs and the dark-skinned natives who dwelt there in savage freedom. And, as he related these tales of the dark and cruel sea, which, like death, unites man to his fellows and yet holds them far asunder, the maiden held her breath and clung to her lover, dreading the days when perchance they too might be divided by the pitiless ocean. The three sat for a while in thoughtful silence as the darkness deepened around them, broken only from time to time by the fitful gleam of the old man's pipe. Work was resumed afresh the next morning, and the vessel grew day by day till at length a skeleton ship rose to view. Weeks passed on and the ship made rapid progress till the whole hulk stood ready. Then a great cauldron was heated, and the bubbling tar within was used to smear over the planks and thus sheathe the ship. The rudder of oak banded with copper, which was to control the whole vessel, lay ready on the sand, and near it the anchor, whose mighty grip was to hold the great ship secure against raging storms. The figure-head was in the shape of a maiden clad in white robes which seemed to be fluttering in the wind; a great artist had carved it in wood and had taken the Master's daughter as his model. In after days many a signal light was flashed on to her, and her graceful form became well known to those who watched as the ship sped by through the dark and rainy nights. In the forests near the snow-covered mountains and plains, majestic pine trees were hewn down and dragged by oxen along the winding road to the shore. Here they were stripped of their branches and bark and used for the tall and tapering masts of the noble ship. Only the roar of the wind and waves would remind them of their native forests which they would never see again. When the masts were swung into place, they were made fast with shrouds and stays; and finally a flag of red, white, and blue was unfurled at the masthead and displayed its stars and stripes to an admiring throng. At length there came the day of the double bridal--that of the gray old sea to the ship, and the wedding of the young master and his bride. The _Union_ was decked out with gay flags and streamers, and the bridal party came on board. The service was read and the Master, with tears in his eyes, shook the brown hand of his son and kissed his daughter's fair cheek. The worthy pastor spoke kindly words of warning and cheer to the young couple and bade them Godspeed on their journey through life. Then the Master waved his hand, and, at this signal, there was heard all around the noise of hammers knocking away the vessel's supports. Suddenly the ship moved, a thrill seemed to run all through her frame, and with a sudden leap she bounded into the ocean. Loud shouts and cheers uprose from the crowds assembled on the beach, and the staunch ship _Union_ sailed gayly forth on her first voyage. HIAWATHA Long, long ago, in days that are now forgotten, the West-Wind wooed a lovely Indian maiden, but soon, cruelly and faithlessly, he deserted her and she died of grief, leaving her baby son, Hiawatha, to the care of his grandmother, old Nokomis. Deep in the forest was Hiawatha's home, and Nature herself was his schoolmistress. He learned all about the birds, how they built their nests in summer, and where they hid themselves in winter, the names and habits of all the wild beasts which roamed through the woods, and, best of all, he learned their language and all their secrets. Skilled in the craft of Indian hunters, and all the lore the wise men of his tribe could teach him, Hiawatha grew from childhood into manhood, and by much questioning learned from old Nokomis the story of his mother's cruel desertion. Full of wrath, he determined to be revenged on his father, Mudjekeewis, and in spite of his grandmother's warnings, the youth set out on his long journey. Wearing his magic moccasins (or deerskin shoes), with which he measured a mile every stride, Hiawatha journeyed westward, ever westward, until at length he reached the kingdom of Mudjekeewis, ruler of all the winds of heaven, who joyfully welcomed the handsome youth. But anger rose in the heart of Hiawatha, and, rending asunder a huge rock with his magic mittens, he flung the fragments full at Mudjekeewis. For three days a terrible fight raged between the two warriors, till at last Mudjekeewis cried: "Hold, my son, it is impossible to kill me for I am immortal; I did but fight with you to test your valor. Go back now to your people; live with them, work with them, and free the land from all monsters and giants. And when Death at last lays his icy hand upon you, you shall share my kingdom and be ruler of the Northwest-Wind." Then all anger departed from Hiawatha and he went on his homeward way; only once did he turn aside, to buy arrow-heads from the ancient arrow-maker in the land of a neighboring Indian tribe. But do you not think that arrow-heads could equally well have been bought in his own village? It was to see the arrow-maker's dark-eyed daughter, Minnehaha, that Hiawatha halted in the land of the Dacotahs, and when he reached home he told Nokomis of the meeting with his father and the great fight, but not a word did he say of arrows or of the maiden. Hiawatha had two beloved friends, the sweet-voiced singer, Chibiabos, and Kwasind, strongest of all men. Even the birds could not sing so sweetly or the brooks murmur so gently as Chibiabos, and all the hearts of men were softened by the pathos of his music. But dear as he was to Hiawatha, no less dear was Kwasind. Idle and dreamy was Kwasind so that even his mother taunted him. "Lazy Kwasind," said she one winter's day, "you never help me in my work. The fishing nets are hanging at the door, dripping, freezing with the water--go and wring them out for me!" Slowly Kwasind rose from his seat, and going to the doorway did as she bade him, but, to his mother's dismay, the nets broke beneath his powerful fingers as if they were wisps of straw! Sometimes Kwasind used his vast strength to good purpose; for instance, when Hiawatha built himself a swift canoe, Kwasind dived into the water and cleared the whole river-bed of sunken logs and sandbars in order to insure a safe passage for his friend. [Illustration] Shortly after this Hiawatha set out in his canoe to catch the sturgeon Nahma, king of fishes. The monster fish lay on the white sand at the bottom of the river, and Hiawatha, line in hand, sat in his canoe, shouting: "Take my bait, O Nahma; come up and let us see which is the stronger!" At length Nahma grew weary of this clamor, and said to the pike: "Take the bait of this rude fellow and break his line." The pike tugged at the line till the birch canoe stood almost endwise, but Hiawatha only pulled the harder, and when the fish rose to the surface he cried with scorn: "You are but the pike; you are not the king of fishes," and the pike sank down ashamed to the bottom of the river. Then Nahma bade the sun-fish break Hiawatha's tackle, but again Hiawatha pulled the great fish to the surface of the water and again cast him down, crying: "You are not the fish I wanted; you are not the king of fishes!" Then Nahma grew angry, and, opening his huge jaws, swallowed both canoe and Hiawatha. Finding himself in utter darkness, Hiawatha groped about till he felt the monster's heart which he smote so fiercely that he killed him. Anxious to escape from his dark prison, Hiawatha waited till the giant sturgeon drifted on to the shore, then called for aid to his friends the sea-gulls, who worked with their claws and beaks till they made a wide rift in Nahma's side and set Hiawatha free. [Illustration] Proud of her grandson's bravery, old Nokomis now set him a difficult task. "In a land lying westward, a land of fever and pestilence, lives the mighty magician, Pearl-Feather, who slew my father. Take your canoe and smear its sides with the oil I have made from the body of Nahma, so that you may pass swiftly through the black pitch-water and avenge my father's murder." Thus spoke old Nokomis, and Hiawatha did as she bade him, smeared the sides of his boat with oil and passed swiftly through the black water, which was guarded by fiery serpents. All these Hiawatha slew, and then journeyed on unmolested till he reached the desolate realm he sought. Here he shot an arrow at Pearl-Feather's lodge as a challenge, and the magician, tall of stature, dark and terrible to behold, came forth to meet him. All day long raged the greatest fight that ever the sun had looked on, but no weapon could penetrate Pearl-Feather's magic shirt of wampum, and at sunset, wounded and weary, with three useless arrows in his hand, Hiawatha paused a while to rest beneath the shade of a pine tree. As he stood there, despairing of victory, a wood-pecker sang from the branches above him: "Aim your arrows at the roots of his long hair; there alone he can be wounded." Well it was for Hiawatha that he understood the bird's language! Stringing the first of his arrows to his bow he let fly at Pearl-Feather, who was stooping to pick up a heavy stone. The arrow struck him full on the crown, and the second and third arrows, swiftly following, penetrated deep into the wound, so that the mighty magician fell lifeless at Hiawatha's feet. Then Hiawatha stripped the magic shirt of wampum off his dead foe and took from his wigwam (or tent) all his wealth of furs, belts, and silver-tipped arrows. And our hero sailed homeward in triumph and shared his spoils equally among his people. Now there came a time in the life of Hiawatha when he wished to wed, and his thoughts turned to Minnehaha, whom they called Laughing Water, loveliest maiden in all the land of the Dacotahs. He spoke to Nokomis of this, telling her that his wedding with the fair Dacotah should heal all strife between the two tribes. So eloquently did he speak of the maiden's beauty and skillfulness in household matters, that he overruled Nokomis' many objections to his choice of a stranger, and set out in all haste to seek his bride. After a long journey he reached the home of the arrow-maker, whom he found seated in the doorway of his wigwam making arrow-heads, with his daughter at his side, busily engaged in plaiting mats of rushes. Hearing a rustling in the woods they looked up and saw Hiawatha standing before them, carrying on his shoulders a deer he had just slain. This offer he laid at the feet of Laughing Water, and the old man and the maiden both bade the young hunter welcome; then Minnehaha prepared a meal and set it before the two men. When they had finished eating, Hiawatha spoke of his childhood, his friends, and of the happiness and plenty in his land. "After many years of strife," said he, "there is now peace between your tribe and mine. In order to make the peace more lasting and our hearts more united, give me this maiden for my wife." And the ancient arrow-maker answered gravely: "Yes, if Minnehaha wishes; let your heart speak, Minnehaha!" Then the maiden rose up and took the seat beside Hiawatha, saying softly: "I will follow you, my husband." Thus was Hiawatha's wooing, and hand in hand the young couple went away together, leaving the old arrow-maker in his loneliness. When Hiawatha and his fair bride reached their home, old Nokomis prepared a sumptuous wedding-feast to which many guests were bidden. Among them was a handsome but idle and mischievous youth named Pau-Puk-Keewis, who was renowned for his skill in all sports and pastimes. To please the company he rose from his seat and danced his merry dances to the music of flutes and drums. Then the sweet singer, Chibiabos, sang a melodious love-song, and when this was finished, Iagoo the Boaster, jealous of the praise and applause bestowed on the musician, told one of his most marvelous stories, and well pleased the wedding-guests took their departure. As the days went on, old Nokomis found that her grumblings about the uselessness of a wife from a far-off land had not been justified, for Minnehaha was as skilled with her fingers as she was beautiful, and Hiawatha loved her more and more dearly. [Illustration] Once, when all the maize was planted, Hiawatha bade his wife go alone at night, clothed only in her dark tresses, and draw a magic circle round the cornfield, so that no blight or insect might injure the harvest. This Minnehaha did, but the King of Ravens and his band of followers, who were perched on the tree-tops overlooking the cornfield, laughed with glee to think that Hiawatha had forgotten what mischief they could do. So early on the morrow all the black thieves, crows and blackbirds, jays and ravens, flew down on the field, and with claws and beak began to dig up the buried grain. But the wary Hiawatha had over-heard the birds' mocking laughter and, rising before daybreak, had scattered snares over the fields. Thus it happened that the birds found their claws all entangled in the snares, and Hiawatha, coming out from the hiding-place where he had been watching them, killed them without mercy; only one was spared, the King of Ravens himself, whom Hiawatha pinioned with a strong rope and fastened to the ridge-pole of his wigwam as a warning to all other thieves. [Illustration] Now it chanced one day that the mischievous Pau-Puk-Keewis wandered through the village and reaching the farthest wigwam, which was that of Hiawatha, found it deserted. The raven perched on the ridge-pole, flapped his wings, and screamed at the intruder; but Pau-Puk-Keewis twisted the poor bird's neck and left the lifeless body dangling from the roof; then he entered the lodge and threw all the household things into the wildest disorder as an insult to the careful Nokomis and the beautiful Minnehaha. Satisfied with the mischief he had done, Pau-Puk-Keewis climbed a rocky headland overlooking the lake and amused himself by killing the sea-gulls as they fluttered round him. When Hiawatha returned, fierce anger rose in his heart. "I will slay this mischief-maker," said he, "even if I have to search the world for him." Together with other hunters he set out in hot pursuit, but cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis outstripped them all and ran, swift as an antelope, till he came to a stream in the midst of a forest where the beavers had built a dam. "Change me into a beaver," he entreated them, "and make me larger than yourselves, so that I may be your ruler and king." "Yes," said one of the beavers, "let yourself down into the water, and we will make you into a beaver ten times larger than any of ourselves." This they did, but not long had Pau-Puk-Keewis sat in state among the beavers when they heard a trampling and a crashing above the water, and the watchman cried: "Here is Hiawatha with his hunters!" All the other beavers made their escape through the doorway of their lodge into deeper water, but so large had Pau-Puk-Keewis become that he could not pass through the opening. Then Hiawatha, peering through the water, recognized Pau-Puk-Keewis, in spite of his disguise, and slew him. Six tall hunters bore the dead body of the beaver homeward, but the spirit of Pau-Puk-Keewis was still alive within it, and escaping, took its human form again and vanished into the forest. [Illustration] Only the wary Hiawatha saw the figure as it disappeared and followed in hot pursuit. Hard pressed, Pau-Puk-Keewis reached the edge of the lake and besought a brant (or wild goose) to change him into one of themselves, and to make him ten times larger than the others. Straightway they changed him into an enormous brant, and, with a whirr of wings, the whole flock rose in the air and flew northward. "Take good heed and look not downward, lest some great mishap befall you," cried the other birds to Pau-Puk-Keewis, and he heeded their words. But on the morrow, as they continued their flight, Pau-Puk-Keewis heard a great shouting in the village beneath and knew the voices of Hiawatha and Iagoo. Forgetful of his warning, he looked downward, and the wind caught his plumage and sent him whirling towards the earth. In vain he struggled to regain his balance--he fell heavily to the ground and lay dead with broken pinions. But his spirit was still alive, and, taking its human form, again fled from Hiawatha. This time Hiawatha pursued his cunning foe so closely that he could almost touch him, but Pau-Puk-Keewis changed himself into a serpent and glided into a tree. While Hiawatha was groping in the hollow trunk, the mischief-maker once more took his human shape and sped away until he came to the sandstone rocks overlooking the Big Lake; and the Old Man of the Mountain opened his rocky doorway and gave Pau-Puk-Keewis shelter. Hiawatha stood without and battered against the caverns shouting, "Open! I am Hiawatha!" But the Old Man of the Mountain neither opened nor made answer. Then Hiawatha raised his hands to heaven and called the thunder and lightning to his aid. Stronger than any mortal power, the tempest smote the rocks till they fell to fragments, and there beneath the crags lay Pau-Puk-Keewis dead in his own human form. This was Hiawatha's last victory--grief and loss were now to be his portion. The death of his two friends, Chibiabos and Kwasind, weighed on his mind, and, hardest of all, a long and dreary winter, bringing the specters of famine and fever in its train, came upon the land and robbed Hiawatha of his dearest treasure, his beautiful young wife. Clad in her richest garments, Minnehaha was laid to rest deep beneath the snow, and, as Hiawatha watched the fire which was kindled at night on her grave, his heart grew less heavy, for he felt that their parting was not for long. The time was soon to come when he too could depart to the Islands of the Blessed, where the spirit of his wife awaited him. KING ROBERT OF SICILY There was once a proud and selfish monarch, named King Robert, who ruled over the kingdom of Sicily. One of his brothers was the mighty Pope Urbane, and the other the rich Emperor Valmond, and King Robert spent as lavishly and held even a more magnificent court than either of them. But the Sicilian monarch was not beloved by his subjects, for he treated them all with disdain, and in fact only looked on them as mere slaves, whose duty it was to carry out all his orders, no matter at what inconvenience to themselves. One evening King Robert sat in state in the royal chapel and listened idly to the priests chanting the service. Clad in his magnificent robes he looked every inch a king, but his handsome face was marred by its look of conceit and weariness. He soon grew tired of listening to the service and let his thoughts wander, but suddenly his ear was caught by some Latin words which were repeated over and over again, and, turning to a learned clerk who stood near him, he asked: "What mean these words?" The learned man at once made reply: "He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and has exalted them of low degree." "'Tis well," said King Robert scornfully, "that such treason is only uttered by priests and in the Latin tongue. My subjects, whether priests or common people, know full well that there is no power which can hurl me from my throne." Saying these words he yawned and leaned back in his throne, and soon, lulled by the monotonous chanting, he fell fast asleep. When he awoke it was late at night. All the lights in the church had been extinguished, except a few flickering candles, which were burning before the shrine of some saint. The King started up from his seat and gazed with anger and amazement round the empty church. He groped his way towards the great door, but it was locked; then he shouted for assistance, uttered angry threats, and hammered against the door, but all in vain. At length the sexton, who lived hard by, was roused by the tumult, and, fearful lest thieves or some drunken revelers had made their way into the church, he came to the door, lantern in hand, and cried in a quavering voice: "Who is there?" "Open the door; 'tis I, the King!" shouted King Robert, almost choking with rage. "This is some drunken rogue," muttered the sexton, as, with trembling fingers, he fumbled for the key. Pushing open the door, he stood timidly aside, and suddenly the disheveled figure of a man without cloak or hat rushed wildly past him. He neither turned nor spoke, but passed swiftly out into the darkness of the night, and the bewildered sexton soon lost sight of him. Despoiled of his kingly garments, breathless and splashed with mire, King Robert rushed on till he came to the palace gates. He strode through the courtyard, thrusting aside the men-servants and pages who tried to bar his path, and hurried up the broad marble staircase. Rapidly he passed through the royal apartments, his face white with anger rendered still more ghastly by the glare of the torches; he heeded no one, nor stopped in his headlong course till he reached the great banqueting-hall. [Illustration] Here a grand feast was in progress, and the hall blazed with the light of thousands of wax candles. And to Robert's utter amazement, on the throne sat another king wearing his robes and crown, and, to all outward appearance, King Robert himself. None present, not even Robert himself, recognized that the supposed king was an angel in disguise. Wearied of the King's evil ways he had come down to earth to punish the monarch of Sicily and humble his pride, and this was the way he had chosen to carry out his purpose. For a while the throneless King gazed with mingled anger and astonishment at the angel, who met his glance with a look of compassion, and then said: "Who art thou, and why comest thou hither?" to which the King haughtily replied: "I am the King, and come to claim my throne from the impostor who usurps it." At these audacious words the guests sprang up in anger and drew their swords to slay the man who dared speak thus to the King, but the angel answered calmly: "Thou art not the King, but henceforth thou shalt be the king's jester and wear cap and bells and motley. As counselor thou shalt lead an ape, and thou shalt obey my servants and wait on my hench-men." No sooner said than done. Deaf to King Robert's cries, prayers, and entreaties, the men-at-arms thrust him from the hall. A group of tittering pages ran before him and threw wide open the great folding-doors. And now the King's heart was filled with alarm, for he heard shouts of rude laughter and mocking cries of "Long live the King!" and he realized that no one in the kingdom either knew or cared who he really was. Thrust from out his palace, the outcast King was led to some small shed adjoining the stables. A door was opened, an armful of straw thrown down within, and here he was bidden to sleep. When he awoke the next morning he thought to himself it must all have been a dream, but, as he turned his head, his couch of straw rustled beneath him, and he heard the horses neighing in the stable hard by. Beside his bed lay cap and bells and the parti-colored dress of a court-jester and in one corner of the bare cell sat a shivering, chattering ape. Then King Robert realized that it was not a dream but a dreadful reality, and that the most wretched beggar in the kingdom would have scorned to change places with the poor jester--the butt and laughing-stock of every underling at court. Days lengthened into months, and, under the angel's wise government, a time of prosperity returned to Sicily and the land produced rich harvests of corn and wine. The people no longer groaned under the burden of taxation, and the King's ministers rejoiced greatly at the welcome change which had come over their young master. Meanwhile the real King Robert yielded sullenly to his fate. Mocked at by all, his only friend the ape, his food the scraps left by others, his heart was still haughty, his pride unsubdued. And when sometimes the angel meeting him would ask, half in jest, half in earnest, "Art thou the King?" he would draw himself up and fling back the haughty answer: "I am, I am the King!" [Illustration] Almost three years had passed away when there came ambassadors from Valmond, Emperor of Allemaine, to the King of Sicily, saying that their brother, Pope Urbane, had summoned them both by letter to the city of Rome to celebrate Easter week with him there. The angel received his guests with great joy and gave them rich presents of velvet cloaks lined with ermine, rings, and rare jewels. Then he made his preparations and set out with his retinue over the sea to the land of Italy. Crowds of people came out to watch the progress of the royal procession. The horses had gold and silver trappings, jeweled bridles, the knights wore velvet cloaks and waving plumes, and their silver spurs glittered in the sun. Then came the angel-monarch in rich attire surrounded by his counselors and the flower of his knights. The men-at-arms and servants brought up the rear of the procession, and among them, on a shambling piebald steed, his ape perched behind him and his cloak of foxtails flapping in the wind, rode the jester-king--a strange sight which caused unbounded merriment in all the country towns through which the procession passed. Arrived in Rome, the Emperor and his supposed brother were received with great pomp in the great square before St. Peter's. Little did the Pope dream, as he bestowed his blessing and prayers on his younger brother, that he was entertaining an angel unawares. Suddenly a wild, unkempt figure rushed from among the crowd and into the royal assembly. Forcing his way to the place where the Pope was seated he cried loudly, "I am your brother Robert, King of Sicily. This man who stands before you in my semblance is an impostor disguised as the King. Do you not know me? Is there no voice within you that says I speak truly, and that I am indeed your brother?" The Pope made no reply, but gazed with troubled look at the angel's unruffled face. Then the Emperor Valmond laughed and said: "Brother, methinks you have strange taste to keep a madman for your court-jester!" It seemed quite evident to the bystanders that what the Emperor said was very true, and once more, baffled and disgraced, the poor jester was roughly thrust back among the wondering crowd. [Illustration] The week was spent in prayer and stately rejoicing till at length Easter Sunday dawned upon the world. The presence of the angel filled the city with gladness and the hearts of men with piety. Even the wretched jester felt the influence of some gracious power, and, kneeling on the floor of his cell, he humbly bowed his head in prayer. He felt new strength rising within him, and new resolves, strangely meek ones for so proud a King, were made by him on that glorious Easter morn. The next day the three royal brothers bade each other farewell. Emperor Valmond made his way northward to his kingdom by the Danube, while the angel journeyed southward through the towns of Italy. Once more the people marveled at the magnificence of his train, and once more the jester became the laughing-stock of all the watching crowds, but he rode on unheeding. His mad anger was stilled and he began at last to realize that he had indeed deserved his dreadful punishment. When the town of Salerno was reached the journey was continued by sea, and soon the royal retinue was safe within the walls of Palermo. Seated on his throne in the great hall, the angel listened dreamily to the convent bells, which sounded to him like voices from another world. Presently he roused himself from his meditations, and, with a gesture of his hand, bade the rest of the court retire, and beckoned the jester to draw near him. When the two were left alone, the angel said: "Art thou the King?" King Robert crossed his hands upon his breast, and, bending his head, answered meekly: "Thou knowest best. My sins are very heavy; let me go at once and do penance in a cloister. There I will school my spirit to humility, and walk barefooted across the stones till my guilty soul is shriven." The angel smiled, and his radiant face seemed to illumine the hall with a holy light. Then loud and clear through the open window the monks were heard chanting in the chapel hard by: "He has put down the mighty from their seat, and has exalted them of low degree." And through the chant rose a second melody, a single melodious voice, and the King seemed to hear the words: "I am an angel, and thou art the King." King Robert, who was standing near the throne, at length ventured to lift his eyes, and, behold! he was alone in the hall! Looking round in wonderment, his eye was caught by his attire; instead of the sorry garb of the jester he was clothed in royal robes of ermine and cloth of gold. Kneeling at the foot of the throne, King Robert gave heartfelt thanks to the Divine Power which had taught him the error of his ways, and, when his courtiers came to seek their royal master, they found him still kneeling, absorbed in silent prayer. THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH Have you ever peeped into a forge and seen a blacksmith at work? It is quite exciting, I assure you, to see the flames being fanned by the bellows, and myriads of sparks flying upwards and outwards on all sides, while the blacksmith hammers the red-hot metal on the anvil and shapes it into horseshoes and other useful things made of iron. But there is one particular blacksmith whose acquaintance I want you to make. He lives in a little village and his forge stands beneath the shade of an immense chestnut tree with wide out-spreading branches. The smith is a mighty man, and well he needs to be, for his work requires great strength. His hands are large and sinewy and his muscles like iron; his face is bronzed by the sun and his black hair is long and curls crisply. He does not make a great deal of money in spite of all his hard work, but he earns quite sufficient for his own modest wants and to provide his only daughter with all the necessaries of life, and even a pretty gown to wear in church on Sundays. His one modest boast is that he is able to look every one honestly in the face, for he is not in debt for a single farthing. [Illustration] The village blacksmith works hard from morning till night; at any time in the day you pass by the forge you can hear the bellows being blown by one of his boys, while he himself swings his heavy sledge-hammer, keeping such regular time with his strokes that it calls to mind the tolling of the village bell--a custom which the old sexton never omits as the day draws to its close. On their way home from school, all the village children love to peep in at the open door of the smithy to see the flaming forge and hear the roar of the bellows. They have a fine game at pretending to catch the sparks, which fly about as the chaff does when the corn is being threshed in the barns at harvest time. But on Sunday the blacksmith puts aside all his labor and goes with the other villagers to church, where he takes his usual seat among his boys. He listens attentively to the praying and preaching, and above all to the singing, for his daughter is in the village choir and the sound of her sweet voice brings joy into his heart. His thoughts go back to the time when his young wife sang in tones as clear and pure as these, but God thought fit to call her from him years ago to sing in the heavenly choir. As he thinks of her lonely grave in the churchyard close by tears rise in the blacksmith's eyes, but he wipes them away with his hard rough hand and resolves to be grateful for the many blessings still left to him. When the service is over and the congregation leaves the church, after greeting his friends, the blacksmith turns aside and, standing by his wife's grave, reads once more the simple inscription on the stone which he has put up to her memory. But you may be sure that the blacksmith's pretty daughter knows where he is to be found, and, taking him gently by the arm, leads him homeward, beguiling the way with cheerful words. [Illustration] This is how the busy blacksmith spends his life--toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing. Every morning he begins some fresh task and he works so hard that by evening he has finished it. He has attempted something and he has completed something--surely he has well earned his night's rest. We may all learn a useful lesson from the life of the village blacksmith. Let us try to live as honestly, as uprightly, and as laboriously as he, so that one day we may deserve to hear the words, "Well done, My good and faithful servants!" Let us try so to live that each action of our lives shall be a good and shapely thing, a help and a benefit to others, like the horseshoes made by the honest blacksmith are to our four-footed friends. GOLDEN LEGEND The land of Germany has always been famous for its store of wonderful songs and legends. Its poets of olden days, who were known as the Minnesinger, used to wander round the country singing or reciting these tales and everywhere they went they were sure of a warm welcome. The "Golden Legend" is one of these old stories, and runs as follows: Lucifer, who was once one of the good angels, had been cast out of Heaven for the sin of pride. He gathered all the spirits of evil around him and made himself their leader. His one desire now was to do harm to all mankind and, by putting wicked thoughts into men's minds, make them themselves do evil so that he might grieve the good angels and thus take revenge for the punishment which had been inflicted on him. Among other wicked deeds he sought to tear down the spire of Strasburg Cathedral, but was defeated by the good spirits, who kept unceasing watch and ward over the holy place. Baffled in this attempt, Lucifer betook himself to a castle on the Rhine, the dwelling of young Prince Henry of Hoheneck. Prince though he was, his lot was a most unhappy one, for he was suffering from a deadly disease which the most famous physicians had been unable to cure. Ill and restless, Prince Henry was sitting alone at midnight in a tower of his castle, when suddenly there came a flash of lightning, and Lucifer, disguised as a doctor, stood before him. "All hail, Prince Henry!" said the stranger. "Who are you," asked the Prince, "and what may be your purpose in coming hither?" "I am a traveling physician," replied the cunning spirit, "and I can cure all diseases." "But not mine," said Prince Henry, mournfully. "I have consulted almost every famous doctor, but the case is quite beyond their science. Even the learned doctors of Salerno have sent me back word that they know of no cure for a malady like this save one, which from its very nature is impossible." "What is this mysterious remedy?" "Read, and you shall see," answered the Prince, handing Lucifer a scroll on which were these words: "Not to be cured, yet not incurable! The only remedy that remains Is the blood that flows from a maiden's veins, Who of her own free will shall die, And give her life as the price of yours!" "A strange remedy, indeed," said the false physician, "and one which you will never be able to try. However, I have with me here a wonderful draught which cures all pain--will you not taste it?" Prince Henry hesitated, but finally drank from the crystal flask which Lucifer gave him. The evil spirit disappeared with mocking laughter and Prince Henry fell to the ground in a swoon. The magic draught which the false doctor had given him was nothing but an enchantment destined to work still more harm on the victim. The next morning the unfortunate Prince was found by his attendants stretched on the floor of the tower chamber and seemingly lifeless. When he began to recover, further troubles were in store for him. He was summoned to appear in church before a council of priests, who pronounced him to be a leper and an outcast, and decreed that henceforth he was to be looked upon as one dead. The burial service was read over him and then Prince Henry, clothed in a cloak of hodden gray, and carrying a beggar's wallet, was thrust from the door of the church into perpetual banishment. A lonely exile, Prince Henry wandered through the land till he came to a farm in the Odenwald, where dwelt the worthy peasant Gottlieb, with his wife, Dame Ursula, and his daughter, Elsie, a beautiful maiden of fifteen summers. These good people took compassion on their Prince and begged him to dwell with them and share all they had. Glad to find a resting-place among kindly folk, the Prince stayed for some months at the farm, but each day he seemed to become a little weaker. The disease from which he was suffering had made such rapid progress that he felt his death rapidly drawing near. In these days of weakness and despair the Prince tried to console himself by reading the old legends, and watching Elsie as she flitted about the garden, gathering flowers to lay at the shrine of her favorite saint. He would read aloud to her, and she would give him some of her flowers and try in her gentle way to make her dear Prince forget his heavy troubles. Gradually Elsie grew to love the Prince with such devotion that it seemed to her that no task could be too difficult, no sacrifice too great for her to make, if only she could save his life. And then the thought suddenly came to her that she would make the greatest sacrifice of all and give her life, so that the cure of which the learned doctors of Salerno had written might be carried out. Filled with this resolve, she told her father and mother, who wept bitterly and sought by every means in their power to dissuade her, but all in vain. Then Elsie sought the Prince and begged him to allow her to do this for him. His life, she said, was valuable to his country and his people, for he would be restored to health and rule over them again, whereas she was but a poor peasant girl and her place could easily be filled. Prince Henry struggled for some time against the temptation to accept the sacrifice of this young life, and finally determined to go to the village church and ask the advice of the priest in the matter. But the Prince delayed his coming, and the priest had to leave the church at sunset and go forth to visit the sick and needy. Lucifer, who was watching his opportunity, slipped into the church, disguised this time as a priest, and took his seat in the confessional. When the Prince at length appeared and besought the priest to tell him whether he might justly allow the maiden to give her life for his, instead of showing him how wicked such an action would be and that it would be far better in God's eyes that he should bear his sufferings uncomplainingly, the evil spirit persuaded the wavering youth that the deed was right and necessary and had the Church's full approval. [Illustration] Heedless of the voice of his good angel, which whispered to his conscience that he was doing wrong, the Prince returned to the farm and announced that he was prepared to accept the divine gift of life from Elsie's hands. One request only did the maiden make, that, on their pilgrimage to Salerno, neither by word nor deed should Prince Henry attempt to dissuade her from her purpose. Elsie had no fear of death and, when she had taken a last farewell of her grief-stricken parents, the Prince set out with her on their long journey. Easter Sunday found them in Strasburg, where the Prince tarried with Elsie in order that they might witness the Miracle Play, which was acted within the cathedral. After that, the next stage of their journey brought them to Hirschau, where Prince Henry sought a night's shelter at the monastery, after having placed Elsie under the charge of the Abbess Irmingard in the nunnery a short distance away. Lucifer, ever watchful lest the Prince should escape from his evil influence, was here too. Disguised as a monk, he mingled with the brethren at the convent and stirred up strife among them, so that the Abbot grew very wrathful and inflicted severe penances on all the offenders. After vespers had been sung, the monks retired, but one lingered, for he was blind and walked slowly, led by a little chorister. As he drew near, Prince Henry started back in amazement. "Do my eyes deceive me in this dim light," he exclaimed, "or can this be Count Hugo of the Rhine, my most deadly foe?" The old monk, who had come so close that he could hear Prince Henry's words, replied sadly: "Count Hugo of the Rhine was once my name, but now you behold the wreck of my former self. My pride and headstrong will have brought me to this plight. Deserted by my friends, defeated by my enemies, alone and blind, I heard a voice call me by name and say: 'Kneel down and pray.' So now you behold me a member of the holy brotherhood, ever striving by prayer and repentance to blot out the remembrance of my evil deeds. You, who by your voice I know to be Prince Henry of Hoheneck, are one of those who have most cause to hate me. Curse and revile me if you will; I will bear it patiently." "We both have erred," sadly answered the Prince, "but the hand of God has chastened us both. Let us therefore pray for forgiveness together." Hand in hand the two former enemies humbly knelt in prayer, and Lucifer, himself the spirit of arrogance and pride, slunk away, powerless to do evil to those who truly repent of their sins. Meanwhile, Elsie sat with the Abbess Irmingard in the moonlight, while the latter told the sad story of her life to her young companion. "Years ago, when I was a maiden freshly returned from the convent school, wandering Minnesinger used to come to my father's castle where they were always made welcome. The noblest and most gallant of all these bards was Walter of the Vogelweid; his voice was the sweetest and his songs the most beautiful. We looked on each other and loved, but a foreign prince sought my hand and my stern father bade me wed him and forget the wandering minstrel. I refused to be the bride of any other than Walter. 'Either you obey me,' said my father, 'or you shall become a nun and die unwed.' That very night I secretly left the castle and stole away with my lover. We went swiftly on horseback through the forest, but our flight was soon discovered--we were pursued and overtaken. I remember nothing more till I awoke in my own room, ill with a raging fever. When I recovered, I was sent to this nunnery and the convent gates, clanging behind me, seemed to be those of a prison. But all this was many years ago and now I am content and have found peace. "I have told thee this tale," said the Abbess to Elsie, "for I feel strangely drawn to thee. In thy young life there is too a tale of mystery and pain, and, as my way has been made clear, so shall be thine." The next day Elsie and the Prince bade farewell to their kindly hosts and traveled, as swiftly as horses could carry them, through Germany and Switzerland. After leaving Lucerne they hired a trusty guide to lead them through the mountain passes, which were steep and dangerous. On one part of the journey they had to cross a single arch bridge, which spanned a terrible abyss, and their guide told them the story of how it came to be built. [Illustration] "For years and years people had tried in vain to make a bridge at this point, but all their efforts had been fruitless, for whatever was built by day the devil swept away at night. At last a holy abbot built this one with a single arch and made a compact with the evil one that it should be allowed to stand, on the condition that the first living thing which crossed it should be surrendered into his clutches. When the bridge was completed, the abbot, standing at one end, threw a loaf of bread across, which a hungry dog sprang after, and the rocks re-echoed with laughter to see the devil thus defeated." "Defeated," sneered Lucifer, who was standing beneath the bridge. "It was for journeys and crimes like this that I allowed the bridge to stand!" Unconscious that Lucifer was dogging their steps, the princely train finished its journey through Italy in safety, took ship at Genoa, and reached the town of Salerno, renowned for its learned doctors and its schools. Entering the town, Prince Henry inquired for Friar Angelo, and Lucifer, appearing before him in fresh disguise, said: "He stands before you." "You know, then, on what errand I have come," said the Prince. "I am Prince Henry of Hoheneck and this is the maiden I spoke of in my letters." "This is a grave business, and we must not be over-hasty," answered the crafty Lucifer. "Does the maiden consent to this of her own free will?" "No prayers or entreaties can dissuade her." "Strange, indeed. Have you thought well over it?" asked Lucifer, turning to Elsie. [Illustration] "I do not come here to argue, but to die," replied Elsie. "Your business is not to question but to kill me, and I am ready." With a last farewell to Prince Henry and her weeping attendants, Elsie followed Lucifer into a gloomy building. The Prince tried to follow them, but Lucifer thrust him back and barred the door. Suddenly the Prince's better angel prevailed and he realized what a vile thing it was that he should purchase health and strength at such a cost. Sooner would he himself die a lingering death than that harm should come to Elsie, who had grown so dear to him during their long journey together. Shouting to his men to aid him, he burst open the door and rushed in to save her. * * * * * A few weeks later, Dame Ursula was sitting in her cottage spinning and thinking sadly of her child's untimely death, when a forester stopped at the farm and inquired for Gottlieb. "I am his wife," said the dame. "Then I have news for you. The Prince is strong and well again." "Then Elsie, my poor child, is dead," she rejoined, mournfully. "It is true that your daughter is no longer the humble peasant she once was." "Nay, do not mock a mother's agony, and tell me truly what has befallen my child," she implored. Then the forester told Ursula his wonderful news; how at Salerno the Prince's nobler self had prevailed, and the maiden's life had been spared, whereupon a miracle had been worked on the Prince and he had straightway been healed. "They call your daughter the Lady Alicia now," continued the messenger, "for the Prince made a vow in Salerno that he would wed no one but Elsie. At this very moment the Prince and his bride are sailing homeward down the Rhine in a splendid barge decked with banners, and all the people are gathered on the banks, shouting with joy." Dame Ursula's raptures can be better imagined than described, and she rushed away to tell her husband the glad tidings, while the forester calmly sat down and helped himself to Gottlieb's supper. And so we may leave the Prince and his young bride with the feeling that their wedded life proved to be a very happy one, for their love had been tried by pain and suffering, and a love which can conquer these is one which will endure. [Illustration] THE COURTSHIP OF _MILES STANDISH_ In olden days, a ship called the _Mayflower_ left the shores of England and set sail for a distant and unknown land, carrying a number of Puritan pilgrims on board. Among their number were two men who were close friends, though they were utterly different both in character and looks. Miles Standish was a short, strongly built man with muscles and sinews like iron; his reddish beard was already flaked with patches of white and his face browned from his out-of-door life. Hasty and passionate, Miles Standish was, nevertheless, a born leader of men, and was greatly respected by all who knew him. His friend, John Alden, was a much younger man, with fair hair and blue eyes. He was no soldier, but skilled in all manual labor, and, moreover, a scholar and a scribe. The two friends settled in the village of Plymouth, and Miles Standish soon distinguished himself by his warlike qualities and was made captain of the town, while John Alden, who lived with him, acted as his secretary and household companion. One day they were sitting together, Miles reading about Caesar's great victories, and John occupied in writing letters to his people at home, filled mostly with accounts of the beautiful Puritan maiden, Priscilla. Presently Miles Standish looked up from his reading and said to John: "When you have finished writing I have something important to tell you." "I am ready to listen," cheerfully replied the young man. "Since Rose Standish died years ago," said the Captain, "my life has been a very dreary one. In my hours of loneliness I have often thought of the maiden, Priscilla, who is as friendless as I am. She is quite alone in the world, for her mother, father, and brother all died in the winter. I have never dared speak my thoughts to her, but I want you to do so for me. Go to Priscilla and tell her that a blunt old captain, readier at action than words, loves her dearly. You are a scholar and can speak to her in tender words such as are best suited to win the heart of a maiden." Bewildered and dismayed at his friend's request, John replied: "Indeed I cannot give such a message as this. If you would have a thing well done you must do it yourself, not leave it to others--these are your own words." The Captain gravely shook his head. "I cannot, indeed," said he. "I can march up to a fortress and summon the place to surrender, but I dare not face a woman with such a proposal. Surely you will not refuse to do what I ask in the name of our friendship." John Alden felt he could no longer withstand the Captain's earnest request, so he reluctantly consented and went forth on his errand. His way led him through the woods, where he gathered some may-flowers as a gift for Priscilla. When he drew near Priscilla's home he found her spinning industriously and singing as she worked. As John entered, she rose and held out her hand to him, saying: "I knew it was you when I heard your step in the passage; I was thinking of you as I sat there spinning and singing." John was so pleased that she should have been thinking of him that he could frame no reply, but held out the flowers to her in silent answer. Then they sat down and talked of their friends at home and of the _Mayflower_, which was to return to England the next day. Priscilla confessed she felt so lonely and wretched that she wished she could return to England too, and John answered: "I cannot blame you for that wish. A woman requires someone stronger than herself to lean on, so I have come to you now with an offer of marriage from a good and true man, Miles Standish, the Captain of Plymouth." Not even the Captain himself could have spoken more bluntly than did John, and Priscilla looked at him in amazement. At length she exclaimed: "If the great Captain of Plymouth is so very eager to wed me, why does he not come himself and take the trouble to woo me?" Poor John tried to smooth matters over. Quite forgetful of himself, he pleaded the Captain's cause, said how kindly, generous, and brave he was, what a splendid soldier and leader, and added that any woman might be proud to be called the wife of Miles Standish. But all his eloquence was wasted, for the maiden only looked at him and said smilingly: "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" Here was a pretty pass for an honest man to be in! Joyful to think that Priscilla loved him and yet saddened for his friend's sake, John left the house and wandered down to the seashore, undecided what he ought to do in the matter. Suddenly he looked up and saw the shadowy form of the _Mayflower_ riding at anchor, ready to set sail on the morrow, and he made up his mind that it was his duty to return to England on the ship. Strong in his resolution, he returned home and related to the Captain all that had happened. But when he came to the words Priscilla had spoken, the Captain stamped on the floor and shouted, angrily: "John Alden, you have betrayed me! We are no longer friends, and there can be nothing between us henceforth but war and hatred!" [Illustration] In the midst of his angry words a man came in bringing a message of urgent importance. There were rumors of danger, threats of war from hostile Indian tribes, and the Captain was summoned to a council meeting. Still enraged, the Captain hastened away to the council and found it already assembled and impatiently waiting his coming. A ferocious-looking Indian was standing by a table on which lay a rattlesnake's skin filled with arrows; this was the Indians' signal of warfare. The council was debating whether it would be better to reply to the challenge or try peaceful measures, but Miles Standish settled the matter without more ado. Advancing to the table, he picked up the rattlesnake's skin, and with a gesture of contempt jerked the Indian arrows from it. Then he filled the skin to the brim with powder and bullets and handed it back to the Indian, saying in a tone of thunder: [Illustration] "Here, take it! This is your answer!" The savage took the challenge in silence, glided from the room, and soon disappeared into the recesses of the forest. Miles Standish returned late from the council and threw himself, dressed as he was, on his pallet, so that he might be ready to set out at any moment. John Alden was lying awake, but he was resentful at the Captain's angry words to him and pretended to be asleep. At earliest dawn Standish awoke and, taking his musket, strode from the room. John Alden yearned to bid his friend farewell, but his pride would not let him, and he beheld the Captain depart in anger and spoke no word. Then he arose, made his own preparations, and went down to the shore. A boat was waiting to convey him to the ship, but, as he was already standing with one foot on the gunwale, he caught sight of Priscilla looking at him with a sad and reproachful gaze. At once his purpose changed. He determined that he would not go away, but would remain and protect her. The captain of the ship bade farewell to his friends and pushed off his boat. Not one of all who had set out in the _Mayflower_ returned with her. The pilgrims wished the captain and his men Godspeed and went back to their life of toil in the new world. As John turned to depart, Priscilla stood beside him and they spoke together long and earnestly. She gently reproached John for pleading the cause of another. "I was hurt that you should urge me to marry Captain Miles Standish, even though he is your friend. I must tell you the truth; your friendship is more to me than all the love he could offer." Said John: "Of all your friends, let me be the nearest and dearest, and I promise that I will be true and faithful to you always." He would not say more than this, for, although he longed to tell Priscilla of his love for her, he had vowed not to do so. Loyalty to his absent friend forbade him and he thought to himself: "I will not speak to Priscilla of this until there is no longer any anger betwixt Miles Standish and myself." Meanwhile, Miles Standish was marching steadily northward with a small troop of soldiers led by their brave Indian guide, Hobomok. After a three days' march they reached an Indian encampment and saw the women at work by the tents and the warriors sitting round the fire in full war-paint. When the Indians saw the white men approaching, two of the mightiest warriors sprang up and came to parley with Standish, offering him a present of furs. Then they spoke through the Indian interpreter, begging the soldiers for muskets and powder, but when Standish refused and said he would give them a Bible instead, they changed their tone and began to boast and bluster. One of the chiefs cried: "Is this the mighty Captain the white men have sent to destroy us? He is a little man, let him go and work with the women!" Standish looked keenly round him and became aware of shadowy forms of Indians creeping round the bushes in ambush, but he feigned not to see them and stood his ground undaunted, listening calmly to the interpreter's words. But when the Indian chief began to taunt him, his hot blood rose within him, and, snatching the boaster's knife from him, he stabbed him to the heart. A flight of arrows immediately poured on the little band from all sides, but they replied with deadly fire from their guns and after a fierce fight the first victory lay with the white men. Month after month passed by and Miles Standish continued to scour the land with his forces till his name became a terror to all the hostile Indian tribes. In the little village of Plymouth the time passed peacefully on. John Alden built himself a new house, dug a well, and planted an orchard hard by. As he worked he thought ever of Priscilla and knew that his happiness would not be complete until he might venture to ask her to share the fruits of his toil. One day he was sitting with the maiden, awkwardly holding a skein of yarn for her to wind, when a messenger arrived in frantic haste bringing terrible news from the village. Miles Standish was dead, shot down by a poisoned arrow as he was leading his men to battle. Remorseful and yet glad that nothing now stood between him and the fulfillment of his hopes, John Alden turned to Priscilla and won her ready consent to become his bride. [Illustration] So one bright summer's day the simple wedding took place according to Puritan custom. Just as the service was ending, a somber figure clad in steel armor appeared on the threshold. The bridegroom turned pale at the sight and the bride hid her face on his shoulder. When the last prayer had been said, the figure strode into the room, and with amazement the people beheld the Captain of Plymouth whom they had mourned as dead. Grasping the bridegroom's hand Miles Standish begged his forgiveness, which was gladly granted; he then saluted the bride and a new bond of friendship was entered into by all three. Full of eager questions the guests then gathered round the Captain, all speaking at once, till the poor man declared he had far rather break into an Indian encampment than come to a wedding to which he had not been invited. When the confusion had at length subsided, John led out his snow-white steer covered with crimson cloth and with a cushion for a saddle. His wife, he declared, should ride to her home like a queen, not plod like a peasant. And so the bridal procession set out, Priscilla riding and John leading her gentle steed. No sad thoughts marred their homecoming, for their friend had been saved from a cruel death and his kindly words added a crowning joy to their happiness. _Lady Wentworth_ One bright summer morning, rather more than a hundred years ago, comely Mistress Stavers stood with folded arms at her tavern door and watched her husband drive his stage-coach, four-in-hand, down the long lane and out into the country. Above her head hung the tavern sign--a portrait of the Earl of Halifax, resplendent in his scarlet coat and flaxen wig. Looking down, he was struck afresh with the charms of the tavern-keeper's handsome wife, and, though he was in a somewhat battered condition owing to his advanced age and the extremes of weather to which he had been exposed, he almost made up his mind to fall at her feet and declare his love. At that moment, however, his train of thought was interrupted by the vision of a barefooted, ragged little girl hurrying down the street. In spite of her shabby, mean attire, you could hardly help noticing how pretty she was, with her rough curly hair falling over her shoulders and her eyes dancing with laughter; in her hand she carried a brimming pail of water which dripped on to her little bare feet as she tripped along. Smiles played over the childish face and rippling sun-beams danced in her pail. The susceptible Earl of Halifax gazed at this picture with feelings of delight, but Dame Stavers evidently did not approve of it, for the Earl heard her say, "Fie for shame, Martha Hilton! How dare you go about the town half-dressed and looking such a sight!" The little gypsy maid laughed and replied saucily, "No matter how I look now. One day you will see me riding in my own chariot, ma'am." Dame Stavers was too amazed at the audacity of these words to make any reply, but the Earl of Halifax smiled kindly at the little maid as she walked on with her heavy burden. When she reached the corner of the street, she looked back for a moment, then turned and passed out of sight. [Illustration] The Earl of Halifax swung for a while on his sign and pondered. His attention was next arrested by a magnificent carriage rolling rapidly by. Outriders in scarlet liveries bestrode the spirited horses, whose silver harness glittered brightly in the sun. Within the chariot a dignified gentleman sat in solitary state. He was a stately personage with powdered hair, wearing a three-cornered hat and a crimson velvet coat; diamond buckles sparkled at his knees, and in his hand he carried a gold-headed cane. As the carriage passed the inn, Mistress Stavers dropped several low curtseys, for this was General Wentworth driving out to his great house, which stood just outside the town overlooking the sea. A stately pile standing near the high road but hidden from it by trees, the Governor's house was indeed a pleasant abode. Within, it was magnificent to behold with its oak floors and carved chimney-pieces. All through the winter immense fires of logs blazed cheerily on the open hearths, while portraits of dead and gone Wentworths in heavy gilt frames looked placidly down from the tapestry-covered walls. Beneath the tapestry were doors which opened unawares and led into mysterious passages and up queer little flights of stairs. Here dwelt the great man, Governor Wentworth, but no one shared its comfort with him, for he was a widower and childless, and though no one ever heard him complain, sometimes he felt his loneliness very keenly. At this time Martha Hilton, the pretty little gypsy maid was thirteen years old, and soon after the day when we met her tripping down the main street of Portsmouth, she went to be a servant at the house of Governor Wentworth. For seven long years she worked hard and faithfully. "A maid of all work, whether coarse or fine, A servant who made service seem divine." Under her care the mirrors glistened and the brasses shone; the very knocker on the great front entrance looked brighter whenever she passed by. And all this time, as Martha grew from childhood into woman-hood, there was someone who watched, unknown to her, all her doings. Time passed on, bringing with it the Governor's sixtieth birthday, and at the great house it was determined to give a banquet in honor of the occasion. Invitations were sent out to all Governor Wentworth's friends in the neighborhood, and when the day arrived, a very noble assemblage sat down to the feast. At the commencement of the banquet the Reverend Arthur Brown, the rector, who was seated at the host's right hand, said grace, and then the feast went on merrily. After the guests had finished eating and the King's health had been drunk, the Governor gave a whispered message to a man-servant, who disappeared and presently returned with a beautiful girl, simply and neatly dressed. The guests scarcely noticed her presence, but the Governor stood up in his place and, looking down at the rector, said: "This is my birthday; it shall also be my wedding-day, and you shall marry me." The guests were greatly mystified, and the reverend gentleman not less so, but he answered politely: "It would indeed be a pleasant task, your Excellency, but may I ask to whom I am to marry you?" "To this lady," replied the Governor, and beckoned to Martha Hilton to stand by his side. Blushing and confused the maiden timidly obeyed, but the rector hesitated and said nothing. Then the Governor cried impatiently: "If you hesitate to do as I ask you, then, as chief magistrate, I command you." Seeing that all objections would be useless the rector obeyed, and read the marriage-service in loud, clear tones. The Governor placed a ring on the fourth finger of the bride's fair left hand, and Martha Hilton became Lady Wentworth of the Hall. Thus the saucy boast, which the little gypsy had uttered in jest seven years before, came true, and when Lady Wentworth drove in her chariot through the main street of Portsmouth none dropped a lower curtsey than the tavern-keeper's wife. The Earl of Halifax smiled serenely but said nothing. ELIZABETH Elizabeth Haddon, the gentle Quaker maiden, sat one winter evening in her farm-house kitchen, which served both for kitchen and parlor, and talked to Hannah the housemaid. "How short the days are," she said, "and how quickly night overtakes us. In the old country there is a long twilight, but here in the forest is hardly a moment between daylight and lamplight. Yet how grand winter is with its spotless mantle of snow." "Oh, yes, winter is beautiful enough," replied Hannah, "and if only we could walk with our feet on the ceiling like flies, I should not complain. But this great river, the Delaware, is not crowded with tall sailing vessels like the Thames. Here we see nothing but pine-trees already flecked with snow. There is snow in the air and to-morrow all the roads will be blocked. I pity Joseph, who will have to break through the snow-drifts with his sled and oxen, and how in all the world shall we get to Meeting on First Day (Sunday)?" Elizabeth gently reproved her talkative servant for grumbling, then rose and put her sewing away. Meanwhile, Hannah fastened the shutters, spread the cloth, and lighted the lamp. Then she made the tea and placed on the table a brown loaf and butter fresh from the dairy. As they partook of their simple meal, Elizabeth said: "Joseph is a long time on his errand. I sent him to the village with a hamper of food and clothing for the poor. He is a good lad, always ready and willing." Hannah smiled with pleasure at her mistress's praise of her fellow servant, and Elizabeth continued: "This house is a long way from the village, and we should be lonely if it were not for friends passing by who sometimes stay the night here." Hannah, who resembled John Gilpin's famous wife in that she had "a frugal mind," did not altogether approve of what her generous mistress said. "Many people do indeed pay us a visit," she remarked, "and they treat this house just as if it were an inn, coming and going exactly as they please." "All I have is the Lord's, not mine," replied Elizabeth gently. "I am only left here in trust to distribute His gifts among the poor and those who devote their lives to His service. It was for this purpose that my father built this house in the clearing, and, though he did not come here himself, I came in his stead. So we must not grudge to others the crumbs that fall from our table." [Illustration] A little ashamed of herself, Hannah was silent for a while, and Elizabeth went on to say in her gentle voice: "Dost thou remember, Hannah, the great May meeting in London when I was still a child? No sound was heard in all that great assembly till at length a young man, named John Estaugh, rose in his place and spoke so powerfully that all hearts were stirred. I cannot tell why, but to-day there is a strong feeling within me that I shall see him again." As she finished speaking, a sound of sleigh-bells came nearer and nearer and a sleigh drew up at the farm-house gate. Joseph had evidently returned from his errand but not alone, for the voices of two men were heard talking together. [Illustration] It was very dark in the yard, so Hannah lighted the great tin lantern and went out to give it to Joseph. Presently she returned, ushering in a tall and youthful stranger, whose cheeks were aglow from the wintry air. As he entered, Elizabeth advanced to meet him with outstretched hands, as if he were an expected guest, and said: "Thou art welcome, John Estaugh." "Dost thou remember me, Elizabeth?" replied the stranger. "It seems a wonderful thing that after so many years have passed I should find thee again. It was surely the hand of the Lord which conducted me to thy threshold. As I was on my journey, I saw a wayfarer standing at the roadside seemingly weary with travel. I greeted the man and offered to take him to his home. He mounted the sleigh beside me, and on the way he told me of thee and thy homestead. And, as I remembered thy name and thy father and mother in England, I have paused on my journey to see thee and wish thee strength in the good work thou art doing." At that moment Joseph came in carrying the lantern, which he carefully extinguished and hung on its nail. Then all sat down to supper together, for beneath that roof there was no distinction of person--they were one family, one household. When supper was over they drew their chairs to the fire-place and talked, that is, all except Hannah, who busied herself in clearing the table and making ready the guest-chamber. Then Elizabeth told John Estaugh how it was that she had come to live on the farm alone, except for her two faithful servants, secure in the belief that her duty lay here in the desert. Thus they talked till bed-time, and at daybreak Joseph cleared a pathway through the snow-drifts and made ready to conduct the stranger to his destination. Elizabeth and John bade each other farewell at the gate, the latter promising to return for the Meeting in May. Time went on, till at length the cold winter was at an end and balmy spring came over the land, bringing the song of birds and covering the earth with flowers. One pleasant morning in May a long procession of men and women, among them John Estaugh, came riding past on their way to the Meeting in the neighboring town. On the way they halted at Elizabeth's farm to rest and partake of the rye bread, currant wine, and honey fresh from the hives, which were offered to them in generous abundance. Then Elizabeth, Hannah, and Joseph mounted their horses and prepared to set out with the others, but when they had started, Elizabeth lingered a little behind and whispered to John, "Tarry a while, for I have something to tell thee which must not be lightly spoken in the presence of others since it concerns me and thee only." Slowly they rode through the woods together, and the morning was so bright and fair that it was a pleasure just to be alive. Then Elizabeth said slowly, as if it were a secret she felt compelled to reveal, though she would fain have kept it hidden: "I will no longer conceal what is laid upon me to tell thee; I have received from the Lord a charge to love thee, John Estaugh." [Illustration] Somewhat surprised at the frank words the maiden had spoken, John made answer: "All thy ways, thy words and meekness of spirit are indeed pleasant to me, but as yet I have no voice to direct me in this matter. When the work which the Lord has appointed for me is ended, I will commune with my own heart and wait for its guidance." Then Elizabeth said tranquilly: "It is best so. We will not speak further on the matter, but I had to tell thee this, for to-morrow thou art going away across the sea and I know not when I shall see thee again. But, if God wills, thou wilt return again to seek me and will find me still here." And they rode onward in silence to join the others and entered the town in their company. Thus Elizabeth and John met and parted once more like "Ships that pass in the night, and speak to each other in passing." The quiet life in the homestead went on just as it had done before. Always thoughtful and kind to others, Elizabeth lived and worked on her lonely farm, ever patient and uncomplaining. And Hannah too, urged by her mistress's example, was never idle; early and late she was always to be found at work, washing, scouring, or cooking, till her cheeks grew rosy from her exertions. She amused herself by teasing Joseph and, though at heart she was really very fond of him, whenever he attempted to make love to her, she would never listen seriously, but always laugh at him and make fun of his clumsy devotion. This was quite unlike the way a demure Puritan maiden should conduct herself, and at times Elizabeth was obliged to chide her housemaid for her light behavior. Meanwhile John Estaugh had sailed over the sea bearing in his heart a precious secret. He pondered over it, till at length it was borne in upon him that his duty might go hand-in-hand with his inclination, and that even if he accepted this wondrous gift of a true woman's love, he could also follow in the way he deemed the right one. So he returned from his journey, and on the first Sabbath Day after his arrival he rose in the silent assembly and holding Elizabeth's hand, which trembled a little in his strong grasp, he promised, in the presence of the whole congregation, to be true and kind and faithful in all things to his wife. Such were the simple marriage rites of Elizabeth Haddon and John Estaugh. Then honest Joseph, who thus far had not fared over well in his wooing, ventured to urge Hannah the housemaid to join her lot with his and follow the example of their master and mistress. But although Hannah still said "Nay," she added: "Thee may make believe and see what comes of it, Joseph." So I am inclined to think that she did give in after all. _The Monk and the Ass_ Once upon a time, some centuries ago, two weary Franciscan monks were wending their way, in the hot glare of the noonday sun, to their convent, whose white walls and spires gleamed like a patch of snow on the hillside some distance away. The first of these monks was named Brother Anthony. He was a spare and silent man, much given to fasting and prayer. His monk's habit hung in loose folds on his thin body, his hair was thin and gray, and he stooped wearily as he walked along. A simple soul was the monk Anthony, accustomed only to listen and obey the commands of others. Of a very different stamp was his companion, Brother Timothy, large and robust with rosy cheeks and bristling red hair. He was tall and broad shouldered and his robe fitted tightly round his portly form. Brother Timothy had ever a jest on his lips, and the more sober monks were sometimes scandalized at the noise and uproar he created in the convent refectory. Moreover, it was useless to exhort Timothy to cease jesting and study his Mass-book, for the simple reason that the jovial monk had never learned to read. It was a very hot day. The monks' dark robes were covered with dust and torn by briers, and the two holy men made slow progress owing to the heavy wallets full of provisions which they were carrying on their backs. Now, as they passed the outskirts of a lonely wood, to their surprise they beheld an ass tethered to a tree, and blinking lazily at the passers-by. This donkey was the property of a certain Farmer Gilbert, who had come thither to gather faggots. He had wandered deep into the forest to collect enough wood, leaving his donkey to rest in the shade. No sooner did Brother Timothy catch sight of the patient animal than he cried out: "See, brother, what a piece of good fortune has befallen us! We will lay our wallets on this creature's back." This being done, he removed the halter from the ass's neck and proceeded to tether himself to the same tree where the donkey had been tied. Brother Anthony looked on at these queer doings in great amazement, which was not lessened when Brother Timothy broke out into a merry peal of laughter and cried: "Drive the ass before you with your staff to the convent, and, when you arrive there, tell the brethren that you were obliged to leave me at a farm, as I was worn out and ill with fever, and that the farmer lent you his ass to carry our heavy wallets, which are filled with provisions for their use." Brother Anthony knew quite well that it would be fruitless to try and reason with Brother Timothy when the latter was bent on playing one of his mad pranks, so he made no reply but obeyed in silence. Driving the ass before him, he arrived safely with the wallets at the convent and left his comrade to his fate. Presently Farmer Gilbert came forth from the wood laden with faggots and stood aghast to see the ponderous body of the friar fastened to the tree where he had left his ass. Dropping his load of wood, he stood open-mouthed and trembling and then hastily crossed himself, for he thought that this was the work of the Evil One. "Be not amazed," quoth Brother Timothy, "that where you left an ass you should find a poor, half-starved Franciscan friar. Set me free and you shall hear my piteous story." With shaking fingers the farmer unloosed the rope, and the monk continued: "Although I wear the garb of a holy friar, I am a sinful man. You imagine you have owned an ass, but it was myself, transformed into this shape for the deadly sin of gluttony, and condemned to do penance by feeding on grass and being beaten and starved by your household. Think of the miserable life I have endured, the windy shed which was my home, and the damp and musty straw which formed my bed; my scanty food was given me grudgingly and I have patiently endured toil and blows. But to-day my penance is at an end and I begin life as a monk again." [Illustration] Simple Farmer Gilbert was conscience-stricken at hearing such words as these, and, falling on his knees before the friar, implored his pardon. The deceitful monk, rejoiced to think that his tale had been so readily believed, generously forgave the farmer for his past conduct, and even consented to be his guest for the night as it was getting late and he stood in need of rest. The farmer led his guest to his humble white-washed cottage, which stood on a hillside covered with fruitful olive trees. Drawing near, they found the farmer's wife, comely Dame Cicely, his children, and his old father waiting the return of the master of the house, and, when the monk's wonderful tale was told anew, they were no less penitent and amazed than the farmer himself had been. Deeply they grieved over the harsh treatment the holy man had endured at their hands, and, poor as they were, set about forthwith to prepare a grand supper to satisfy Brother Timothy's hunger after such a long and rigid fast. The good wife killed her last two fowls, and made them into a salad; then she brought out her best wine and begged her honored guest to fall to. Brother Timothy played his part well. He ate and drank as though he had been starving for a twelve-month, and, all the while, he talked and laughed without stopping and wagged his red beard, till at length the farmer grew angry with his guest and ventured to reprove him in good round terms. "Good father," said he, "it is easy to see that for some persons punishment is right and needful. The manner in which you have behaved to-night after your long penance clearly proves that you have but little strength against temptation and shows in what peril you stand of relapsing into your deadly sin of greediness. Take my advice; return to your convent at sunrise to-morrow and there repent, fast and scourge yourself, for you are in great danger of becoming an ass again. Be wise and remain here no longer, or else I may be tempted to use the whip to you, and I should not deal so lightly with you as you would with yourself." [Illustration] Brother Timothy had the grace to blush deeply at this well-deserved reproof, but wisely made no reply, and soon the whole household sought their beds. The next morning they awoke at sunrise, at the hour when the cock should have crowed, only, as you know, they had eaten him for supper the previous evening. The monk, who had recovered his good spirits, rose betimes, and, having breakfasted, set out in haste, for he heard the distant matin bell ringing from the convent and so made his leave-taking a very brief one. It was a balmy summer morning, filled with the song of birds and the subdued lowing of cattle; the beautiful Italian countryside looked its loveliest, but Brother Timothy cared naught for all this. His thoughts were concerned only with his own affairs, and it was not till the convent walls appeared before him that he quickened his steps and began to take an interest in what was going on. As he entered the convent gate, he saw the ass standing patiently there just as he had found him in the wood. Brother Timothy at once hastened to the Abbot and, after telling him a plausible tale of sickness and weariness which had prevented him from returning to the convent on the previous day, he went on to explain that the ass had been sent as a present to the Brotherhood; the owner, who was a wealthy man, had bestowed it on the convent, so that it might ease the poor monks from always carrying such heavy burdens on their journeys to the neighboring village. Now this was a matter which required careful consideration, and for some days the Abbot thought over in his mind the difficult question of how he should dispose of the gift. On the one hand, it would be pleasant for the monks to be spared so much toil, but, on the other, it would make them lazy and self-indulgent, and the world would find reason for scandal and reproof. So finally he determined to sell the ass, in order to save the expense of his keep, and to put by the money which its sale would fetch. He would save himself from any annoyance and, in addition, gain a substantial sum of money for the Brotherhood. The ass was forthwith dispatched to the neighboring fair, whither it happened by chance that Farmer Gilbert had come. He soon caught sight of the ass and, coming up, he whispered in its ear: "Alas, good father, I see that my warnings were useless, and that your gluttony has changed you into an ass again." The ass, feeling something tickling its ear, turned round and shook its head as if to contradict what he had just heard. "I know you well," continued Gilbert, in a loud voice. "You cannot deny that you are the Franciscan friar named Timothy," But the ass still shook its head, and Gilbert continued to argue with the animal till a crowd gathered round them and began to mock and jeer. [Illustration] "If this ass is Brother Timothy," they cried, "you ought to buy him and feed him on the tenderest grass. It would surely be an act of charity to show some kindness to a poor unfortunate who has been transformed into an ass." The simple farmer took their advice, bought his own ass and led him homeward over hill and dale and, as they went, he exhorted the animal to behave well and be content. The children ran to meet their father and, when they saw what he was leading, they shouted for joy, for they could not understand that this creature was a holy friar, and not their own lost donkey. "Oh, Brother Timothy," they cried, "we are so glad you have come back to us; we were afraid that you were dead and that we would never see you any more!" Then they wove green garlands for his neck, patted him and kissed his head, and led him back to his stable. Henceforward, the donkey, who was always known as Brother Timothy, led a life of luxury; he had little work given him to do and so much hay and corn to eat, that he grew ungrateful and vicious. At length Farmer Gilbert lost his patience and said to the ass: "As our kindness is not repaid by good behavior, I shall have to see what a sound thrashing will do." It would be difficult to tell you of all the vices that this spoiled animal had fallen into; among others was a habit of flinging up his heels, breaking his halter, and running away through woods and over meadows, defying the efforts of everyone to catch him. But his gravest offense was breaking out of his shed at night and ravaging the cabbage patch. This was too much for even the long-suffering farmer to endure, and he determined to take strong measures to curb the donkey's wickedness, whether the animal were a holy friar or not. So Brother Timothy was sent back again to his old life of toil. He was beaten without mercy, and instead of luxuries and caresses he had to work harder than he had ever done before. And this was not the worst, for as his work grew more his food grew less, till at last the poor creature could only take his revenge on his hard taskmaster by dying. Great was the lamentation which then uprose, and sad was Farmer Gilbert to think that the unfortunate monk had died without repenting of his sins. Dame Cicely and the children cried for a week, and Farmer Gilbert recounted all the virtues of the deceased and added solemnly: "May Heaven pardon Brother Timothy and keep us from the deadly sin of greed!" EVANGELINE In the land of Acadia, within a fruitful and secluded valley, lay the little village of Grand-Pré. Its inhabitants were a sturdy race of French farmers, hard-working, kind, and generous. The land was exceedingly fruitful, and so freely did these simple farmers give to others that poverty was almost unknown in the village. The pleasant farmhouses had neither locks to the doors nor bars to the windows, but stood open like the hearts of their owners. At a short distance from the village dwelt the wealthy farmer, Benedict Bellefontaine, an upright and stately man, in spite of his seventy years. With him lived his only daughter, Evangeline, a lovely maiden of seventeen summers, and the pride and joy of his old age. Her black eyes gleamed brightly from beneath the shade of her brown tresses and when, on Sunday mornings she walked down the village street to church, wearing her Norman cap, blue kirtle and earrings, all eyes turned to look at her with admiration, for she was without doubt the most beautiful girl in the whole village. Of suitors she had many, but none found favor in her eyes save young Gabriel, the son of Basil the blacksmith. Basil and Benedict were old friends, and their children had grown up together almost as brother and sister, learning the same lessons and sharing the same sports and pastimes. As they grew up, their childish love deepened and strengthened, and now, with the warm approval of their respective fathers, their marriage was soon to take place. One evening, Benedict was sitting by his fireside, and near him Evangeline was busy spinning, for in those days it was the duty of an industrious housewife to make all the linen which would be required for her future home. Presently the latch was lifted and in came the stalwart blacksmith with his son. The two elders took their usual seats near the hearth and smoked their pipes, while the young couple stood apart by the window and talked of their future life. Said Basil: "I do not like the look of things just now. English ships with cannon pointed against us are at anchor in our harbor. We do not yet know whether their intention be good or ill, but we are all summoned to appear in the church to-morrow and hear his Majesty's command, which is to be made the law of the land." [Illustration] "Nonsense," replied Benedict, "you look on present circumstances too gloomily. After all, since this land now belongs to the English, it is only natural that we should have to obey fresh laws. We are an honest and law-abiding people and they cannot intend to harm us." "The English have not forgotten that we helped our kinsmen, the French, against them," replied the blacksmith. "Many of the villagers fear they mean to harm us, and have already fled to the forest, taking with them all the weapons they could lay hands on." "Fear no evil, my friend," said the jovial farmer. "To-night, at any rate, let no shadow of sorrow fall on this house, for we are assembled here to draw up our children's marriage contract. Their house is built, the barns filled with hay, and all is in readiness for them." As he spoke a knock was heard at the door and the worthy notary, Père Leblanc, came in. The disquieting news in the village was discussed anew, and the notary said: "Man is unjust, but God is just, and justice finally triumphs. When I was taken captive and lay imprisoned in a French fort I was often consoled by an old story which ran thus: 'Once in an ancient city, whose name I cannot recall, poised on a column, stood a brazen statue of Justice. In her right hand she held a sword, and in her left a pair of scales. The birds of the air had no fear of the sword which flashed and glittered in the sunshine, and some of the boldest among them even built their nests in the scales. Now it chanced that a necklace of pearls was lost in a nobleman's palace and suspicion fell on a young maid-servant. Although her guilt could not be proved, she was condemned to death, and her execution took place at the foot of the statue of Justice. But as her innocent spirit rose to heaven, lo! a terrible storm swept over the city and struck the statue with such force that the scales of the balance were hurled down on to the pavement. When they were picked up, in the hollow was found a magpie's nest, into the clay sides of which the pearl necklace was interwoven.'" [Illustration] The blacksmith was silent, though not convinced by the notary's tale, but he said nothing further on the subject. The notary produced his papers and ink-horn and drew out in due form the marriage contract between Gabriel and Evangeline; then, pocketing the substantial fee which the farmer offered him, he drank the young couple's health and withdrew. The old men settled down to their customary game of draughts, and the lovers sat in the window-seat watching the moon rise and the stars come out one by one. At nine the village curfew rang, and the guests rose up and departed. The next morning a betrothal feast was held in Benedict's orchard. The young men and maidens danced gayly to the sound of old Michael's fiddling, and of them all no maiden was so fair as Evangeline, no youth so handsome as Gabriel. Thus was the morning passed, and soon the church-bells and the beat of drums summoned the people to the appointed meeting-place. The women were bidden to wait in the churchyard, while the men thronged into the church. The guard came marching from the English ships, and, when they had entered the sacred building, the heavy doors were fastened and the crowd waited eagerly to hear what was coming. Speaking from the steps of the altar, the Commander said: "You are summoned here to-day by his Majesty the King's command, and he has given me a painful duty to perform. The will of our monarch is that all your lands, dwellings, and cattle be forfeited to the crown, and that you yourselves shall be transported to other lands. And now I declare you my prisoners." Loud was the clamor of sorrow and anger which uprose at these words and Basil the blacksmith shouted wildly: "Down with the tyrants of England!" In the midst of the angry tumult the door of the chancel opened and Father Felician entered the church. Ascending the steps of the altar, the good priest made a gesture to command silence and all were subdued by his noble words: "Even of our enemies let us say, 'O Father, forgive them!'" Then he calmly conducted the evening service, and never were prayers more earnestly said than on that dreadful night. For four days the men were imprisoned in the church, while their womenfolk, sick with sorrow, waited in their homes. On the fifth day a long procession of women and children came, driving in ponderous wagons laden with their household goods, down to the seashore. Then the church doors were unbarred, and, pale with grief and imprisonment, the Acadian peasants marched to the harbor under the escort of soldiers. Evangeline was on the watch for her dear ones; to her lover she whispered words of encouragement, and strove to cheer her father, though sadly affrighted by his dejection and the way he seemed suddenly to have grown much older. At the place of embarking the greatest confusion prevailed. Small boats plied between the shore and the ships and thus wives were torn from their husbands and mothers, too late, saw their children left behind. Half the task was not finished when night came on. Basil and Gabriel were among those who were taken to the ships, but Evangeline and her father were left standing in despair on the shore. Fires were kindled on the beach, and Father Felician wandered from group to group, consoling and blessing the poor homeless people. As he paused where Evangeline and her father were encamped, a sudden flare filled the sky behind them. All eyes were turned in that direction, and the whole village was seen to be in flames. Overwhelmed with sorrow the priest and the maiden gazed at the scene of terror, but Benedict uttered no word, and, when at last they turned to look at him, he had fallen to the ground and lay there dead. Separated from her lover and now alone in the world, the poor girl's courage at length failed her and her grief was piteous to behold. The next morning the old farmer received a hasty burial on the seashore, and the remainder of the exiles were carried to the ships and transported to far distant lands. [Illustration] PART II Many years had passed away since the burning of the village of Grand-Pré, and the exiles had been scattered far asunder. Among them a maiden, patient and meek in spirit, waited and wandered. Sometimes she lingered in towns, at others she passed through the country and wandered into churchyards, gazing sadly at the crosses and tombstones, but never did she remain long in the same place. It was Evangeline searching for her lover, and, though many sought to dissuade her from her quest, and urged her to listen to the wooing of her faithful suitor Baptista Leblanc, the notary's son, she only answered sadly: "I cannot, for whither my heart has gone, there follows my hand." And in all her doings she was upheld and cheered by her faithful friend, the priest Felician. Wherever she went she asked for news of Gabriel, and at last she found out that he and his father had become famous hunters, and had been met with on one of the vast prairies, but she was never able to trace his movements. [Illustration] Still she journeyed onward and onward till, one May, she joined a band of Acadian exiles who were sailing in a cumbrous boat down the broad river Mississippi. They were seeking for their kinsmen who, it was rumored, had settled down as farmers in that fertile district. Day after day the exiles glided down the river, and night after night they encamped on its banks and slept by the blazing camp-fires which they kindled. One night--if only Evangeline had known it--a boat rowed by hunters and trappers, Gabriel among them, passed by close to their camp. But the exiles' boat was hidden among the willows and they themselves screened from sight by thick shrubs, so the hunters sped northward and their passing was unheeded. Only when the sound of their oars had died away, the maiden awoke and said to the priest: "Father Felician, something tells me that Gabriel is near me. Chide me not for this foolish fancy." "Not far to the south," answered the faithful priest, "are the towns of St. Maur and St. Martin, where many of our kinsfolk have settled. There in that beautiful land, which its inhabitants call the Eden of Louisiana, the bride shall surely be restored to her bridegroom." Full of hope, the travelers continued their journey, and presently arrived at a herdsman's house which stood in a lovely garden close to the river. The owner himself, mounted on horseback, was watching his numerous herds which were grazing in the meadows around him. As he turned towards his house, he caught sight of the maiden and the priest coming toward him. With a cry of joy he sprang from his saddle and hastened towards them, and then the travelers saw that it was none other than Basil the blacksmith. You can imagine how cordial were the greetings, how numberless the questions and answers that passed between them. Only Evangeline grew silent and thoughtful when Gabriel did not appear, and at length Basil said, "If you came by way of the lakes, how is it that you did not meet my son's boat?" "Gone, is Gabriel gone?" murmured Evangeline piteously; she could not hide her disappointment, and shed bitter tears. "Be of good cheer, my child," returned honest Basil, "it is only to-day he went from here. He grew moody and restless ever thinking of thee, till at length he could no longer endure this quiet existence. Therefore I let him go among the Indians, hoping thus to divert his mind from his troubles. Early to-morrow thou and I will set out after him, and I doubt not but we shall overtake him and bring him back to his friends." A sound of many voices was now heard, and the other travelers came up joyously led by Michael the fiddler, who had lived with Basil since their exile, having no other task than that of cheering his companions by his merry music. Basil invited all the travelers to sup with them, and greatly did they marvel at the former blacksmith's wealth and many possessions. When they were seated at the table, Basil told his friends of the beauty of the country and the fertility of the soil, and, when he added that land might be had for the asking, they all resolved to settle there and help to form the new Acadian colony. On the morrow, according to his promise, Basil set out to overtake his son, and Evangeline went with him. Day after day they journeyed onward through a wild and desolate country, but could hear no tidings of the traveler. At length they arrived at the inn of a little Spanish town, where they heard that Gabriel had left that very place the previous day and had set out with his horses and guides for the prairies. Basil and Evangeline determined not to give up their search, and, hiring some Indian guides, they followed in the direction which Gabriel had taken. One evening as they were sitting by their camp-fire, there entered an Indian woman whose face bore the marks of heavy grief. She was returning from the far distant hunting-grounds, where her husband had been cruelly murdered by a hostile tribe. Touched by her sad story, the white people offered her food and a night's shelter, which she gratefully accepted. After the evening meal was over, Evangeline and the stranger sat apart, and the maiden, in her turn, related to the other the story of her lost lover and her other misfortunes. Early the next day the march was resumed, and as they journeyed along, the Indian woman said: "On the western slope of these mountains dwells the Black Robe, Chief of the Mission. He talks to the people of their Heavenly Father and they give heed to his teaching." Then said Evangeline: "Let us go to the Mission, for there good tidings await us." So they turned their steeds thither, and just as the sun was setting they reached a green meadow by the riverside. There the preacher knelt in prayer and with him a multitude of people. The travelers joined reverently in the prayers, and when the service was over, the priest came to welcome the strangers and offered them shelter and a share of his frugal meal of wheaten cakes and spring water. Afterwards they told the priest their story, and he said: "Only six days ago Gabriel sat by my side and told me this same sad tale, then he continued his journey. He has gone far to the north, but in autumn when the hunting is over he will return to the Mission." Then Evangeline pleaded: "Let me remain with thee, for my soul is sad and afflicted." This seemed to the others a wise thing to do, so thus it was arranged. Early on the morrow Basil returned homewards and Evangeline stayed on at the Mission. Slowly and wearily the days passed by, and Evangeline lived and worked at the Mission till autumn drew on. But still Gabriel did not come, and the maiden lived on there till the following summer. Then a rumor reached her ears that Gabriel had encamped in a far distant forest, and Evangeline took leave of her friends at the Mission and set forth again to seek her lover, but when she reached the hunter's lodge she found it deserted and fallen to ruin. [Illustration] And now her weary pilgrimage began anew. Her wanderings led her through towns and villages, now she tarried a while in mission tents, now she tended the sick and wounded in the camp of a battlefield. As the years went on, her beauty faded and streaks of gray appeared in her dark hair. She was fair and young when she began her long journey, faded and old when it ended in disappointment. At length poor Evangeline grew weary of wandering through strange places and resolved to end her days in the city founded by the great preacher, Penn. Here other of the Acadian exiles had settled, and Evangeline felt that there was something homelike in the pleasant streets of the little city and the friendly speech of the Quakers. There for many years she dwelt as a Sister of Mercy, bringing hope and comfort to the poor and suffering ones. Then it came to pass that a terrible pestilence fell on the city and thousands perished. The poor crept away to die in the almshouse, and thither by night and day came the Sister of Mercy to tend them. One Sabbath morning Evangeline passed through the deserted streets and entered the gates of the almshouse. On her way she paused to pluck some flowers from the garden, that the dying might be comforted by their fragrance. As she mounted the stairs she heard the chime of church-bells and the sound of distant psalm-singing, and a deep calm came over her soul, for something within her seemed to say, "At length thy trials are ended!" Suddenly, as she was passing down the wards, she stood still and uttered a cry of anguish. On the pallet before her lay an old man with long gray hair, and, as she gazed, she saw that this was none other than her lover, Gabriel. She knelt by his bedside and the dying man opened his eyes and tried to whisper her name, but his strength was spent, and with one last look he passed away from her. Evangeline's weary quest was over; sweetly and patiently she took up her life again and henceforth lived only for others. And now, in the little Catholic churchyard of this far-away city, side by side the lovers are sleeping. _The Falcon of Ser Federigo_ Not far from the fair town of Florence lived a wondrously beautiful maiden named Monna Giovanna. Of lovers she had no lack, but the two whom she most favored were gallant Ser Federigo, and his rival, Ser Enrico. Ser Federigo had inherited a great fortune and large estates from his father, and, anxious to win favor in the sight of his lady, he lavished his wealth in costly banquets and tournaments, never stopping to consider whether she would approve of his extravagance. So reckless was Ser Federigo that at last all his fortune was spent, and in order to obtain fresh supplies he sold his estates, reserving only one small farm for himself, and wasted all that money also. Monna Giovanna by no means approved of her wooer's extravagance--she refused his gifts, and disdained his banquets. "A spendthrift will not make a prudent husband," thought she, and so she married the more careful Ser Enrico, and for some years lived very happily with him in a distant land. Meanwhile Ser Federigo, become a sadder and wiser man, retired to his little farm on the outskirts of the city, taking with him his falcon, the only creature which remained true to him, for all his former friends shunned him in his poverty. One hot summer's morning, weary from working in his plot of garden, Ser Federigo sat on a wooden bench beneath the shelter of his cottage eaves thinking dreamily of the past and of the happiness which might have been his, while the falcon by his side was dreaming also. Suddenly he started up on his perch, shook his bells, and looked eagerly at his master as if to say, "Ser Federigo, shall we not go a-hunting?" But his master's thoughts were far away, and he did not stir. Presently he looked up in amazement. Peeping through the trellis he saw a lovely child, a boy with golden tresses and large wondering eyes. Without a glance at the man, the child walked straight up to the bird and said coaxingly, "Beautiful falcon, I wish I might hold you on my wrist, or see you fly." Ser Federigo started, for the child's voice seemed strangely familiar to him, and, laying his hand gently on the shining head, he asked, "Who is your mother, my fair boy?" "Monna Giovanna," replied the child. "Will you let me stay a little while and play with your falcon?" "Indeed I will, my child, but first tell me, where do you live?" "Just beyond your garden wall," was the reply. "In the great house hidden behind those tall poplar trees." So the boy chattered on, and Ser Federigo took him on his knee and told him stories of the noble falcon, and soon all three became close friends. As the days went on Ser Federigo set himself to find out why it was that his lady had returned to her native land, and he discovered that Monna Giovanna had been left a widow after a few years of marriage, and that she had come with a friend and her only child to pass the summer quietly in her grand villa overlooking the Arno. Rarely, or never, did the widow lady go beyond the grounds of her villa. Clad in sable robes she paced her stately halls, or read and worked with her friend, her one delight to see her boy growing in health and strength and watch over this treasure still left to her. The boy loved his free country life and spent the days racing up and down the terraces, chasing the screaming peacocks or climbing the garden trellises to pluck the ripe fruit. But his chief pastime was to watch the flight of a swift falcon which sometimes soared into sight above the tall poplars, and at others swooped down to earth at his master's call. The child had often wondered who the bird's master might be, and one morning he found out that the pair he sought dwelt in the little cottage-farm a short distance from his own home. The child came several times to see the falcon. Suddenly his visits ceased, but Ser Federigo had no inkling of the reason. The widow's only child had fallen ill, and was pining away from some unknown malady. His mother would not be comforted; she saw her darling already lying dead before her distracted gaze, and no physician could give her any hope for his cure. Sitting by the invalid's bedside she cried to him, "Is there anything I can do to comfort thee, my child?" At first the child remained silent, but when she besought him again and again to tell her if there was anything on earth she could obtain for him which might cause him to forget his suffering, he replied, "Yes, there is one thing I want. I pray you give me Ser Federigo's falcon for my own!" The astonished mother could make no reply. Even for her darling's sake she felt she could not ask such a favor from the lover she had once treated with scorn. Besides, though she knew that any request of hers would be at once granted by him, she knew also that the falcon was renowned as the finest bird throughout the countryside, as well as being the joy and pride of his master's heart. But the boy was fretful and restless, and, fearing to thwart his whim lest his life should depend on it, the poor mother promised to go and ask for the falcon on the very next day. "Will you promise faithfully to go, mother?" asked the boy. "I will, indeed," replied the distracted lady, and, soothed by her words, the child fell into a refreshing sleep. The morrow was a bright September day, and Monna Giovanna felt hope revive within her heart as she gazed on her child still peacefully sleeping. The birds were singing sweetly and the dew lay heavy on the grass as two lovely ladies, clothed in hoods and cloaks, passed through the garden-gate into the woods, where the trees had just donned their autumn dress of russet and gold. One of these ladies had her rich dark hair closely covered by her hood. Her eyes were wet with tears, but her face was only made more beautiful by its look of deep sorrow. Her companion was a young girl who walked with light steps, her hood thrown back, and her hair shining with its wealth of gold; her cheeks were tinted like the apple-blossom, and her heart full of joyous thoughts. These were Monna Giovanna and her friend, who, with thoughts intent on their errand, hastened towards the little farm. They found Ser Federigo digging the ground like Adam of old, and when he beheld these fair ladies, his garden seemed to become a second Eden and the river, flowing by, like the stream which watered Paradise. [Illustration] Beautiful as was Monna Giovanna's young companion, Ser Federigo had no eyes for anyone but his dear lady, who, at first doubtful as to how she should begin her errand, soon raised her stately head and addressed him in kindly tones. "Ser Federigo," said she, "I and my companion come hither to see you in friendship, trusting by this means to make some amends for my unkindness to you in the past. In former days I would not so much as cross the threshold of your door; I refused your banquets and rejected your gifts. But this morning I am here, self-invited, to put your generous nature to the test, and therefore ask if we may breakfast with you beneath your vine?" Humbly Ser Federigo made reply: "Speak not of your unkindness to me, for if there is within me any good or generous feeling it is to you I owe it, and this gracious favor you do me in seeking me here is sufficient to outweigh all my sorrows and regrets of former years." After a little further talk had passed between them, Ser Federigo asked his guests to wait in his garden for a brief space while he went to give orders for breakfast. As he entered his cottage his thoughts dwelt regretfully on the gold and silver plate and the ruby glass which had once been his, and it vexed him sorely that his humble abode was lacking in every luxury. Matters were even worse than the poor host had anticipated; he searched every cupboard and ransacked every shelf, but could find nothing. Then he summoned the maid and asked why it was that provisions had failed them. "The Signor forgets that he did not hunt to-day," replied the girl. "We have nothing but bread and wine in the house, and fruit from the garden." Then suddenly the falcon shook its bells and looked knowingly at his master as much as to say, "If anything is wanted, I am here!" "Yes, everything is wanted, my gallant bird," cried his master, and without more ado he seized hold of the poor creature and wrung its neck. Grieved as he was at being forced to sacrifice his only friend, his master had no time to mourn his untimely end. Hastily a snow-white cloth was spread on the rough table, and on it was laid a loaf of bread flanked by purple grapes and fragrant peaches; in the midst of these a flask of wine wreathed with bright autumnal flowers, and finally the falcon, stuffed with cloves and spice, was cooked and served to eke out the humble banquet. When all was ready the lady and her companion entered the cottage, and to Ser Federigo's dazzled gaze everything seemed transformed. The little room became a stately banqueting-hall, the rustic chair on which his lady sat was transformed into a throne, and the poor falcon seemed a peacock or a bird of paradise. When the repast was ended they rose and passed into the garden again, and then Monna Giovanna spoke in this wise to her host: "Though you are too courteous to show surprise that I come to you in this friendly manner after we have been parted so many years, I know you must wonder at my reason for doing so. You have no children, so you cannot know the anguish a mother feels when her child is lying ill, nor how eager she is to anticipate his every wish. My only child is dying, Ser Federigo, and I have come to beg of you the one thing which may save his life. It is your falcon, your only treasure, that I beseech you to give my child, though it grieves me to the heart to demand such a precious gift from your hands." Ser Federigo listened with tears of love and pity in his eyes, then sadly answered, "Alas, dear lady, how gladly would I have granted what you ask had you but expressed this wish one short hour ago. But, thinking I could best do honor to my guests by sacrificing what was most dear to me, I slew my gallant falcon to provide you with a fitting repast." Slowly the lady turned aside her head, grieved to think that this noble knight had slain his cherished falcon for her sake, and yet glad of this proof of his devotion. But her mind was now filled with alarm, for she must return empty-handed to her sick child; so, taking a hasty farewell of their host, the ladies sadly made their way homewards. The mother's fears were only too well founded. Three days later Ser Federigo heard the tolling of the passing-bell from the chapel on the hill, and, as he breathed a prayer, "Alas! her child is dead," he murmured. But happier times were in store for the bereaved lady and her faithful lover. Touched by his devotion Monna Giovanna plighted her troth with Ser Federigo, and by Christmas time the little farm was deserted, and a wedding-feast was held in the grand villa on the hill. Once more Monna Giovanna sat upon the rustic chair which had been brought from the cottage, but something had been added. On the chair-back was perched a wooden image of the gallant falcon, and round the cage Ser Federigo had caused this inscription to be carved: "All things come round to him who will but wait." * * * * * THE TOMMY TIPTOP SERIES By RAYMOND STONE A new series for outdoor boys. Every lad who likes Baseball, Football and other outdoor sports is going to be a friend of Tommy Tiptop--that is, if he reads these stories, and he would if he knew what was in store for him. Never was there a boy like Tommy Tiptop for doing things. Tommy could not be still a minute, and although only ten years of age he organized a baseball club, a football eleven, went into a winter camp, and did other things too numerous to mention. TOMMY TIPTOP and HIS BASEBALL NINE Or, The Boys of Riverdale and Their Good Times TOMMY TIPTOP and HIS FOOTBALL ELEVEN Or, A Great Victory and How It Was Won TOMMY TIPTOP and HIS WINTER SPORTS Or, Jolly Times on the Ice and in Camp Quarto size, 128 pages, 8 full-page illustrations, beautiful colored picture on the cover. _Price 40 cents per copy._ _For sale at all book stores or sent postpaid upon receipt of price by the publishers._ GRAHAM & MATLACK 251 West 19th Street New York * * * * * UP AND DOING SERIES By FREDERICK GORDEN The doings of real, live boys between the ages of 9 and 12. THE YOUNG CRUSOES OF PINE ISLAND Or, The Wreck of the Puff Here is a story full of thrills about three boys that lived on the edge of a large lake. They have plenty of fun fishing, swimming and sailing, etc., and one day while sailing their boat, "The Puff," she capsized and drifted to an island in the lake where they play Robinson Crusoe until rescued. SAMMY BROWN'S TREASURE HUNT Or, Lost in the Mountains The great desire of Sammy Brown and his chums to find a treasure leads them into many adventures, gets them lost and finally discloses the treasure--but not the one for which they were searching. Adventure-loving boys should not miss this great story. BOB BOUNCER'S SCHOOLDAYS Or, The Doings of a Real, Live, Everyday Boy Primary and Grammar School life affords boys plenty of fun, and Bob Bouncer's schooldays are "brimfull" of just such fun, adventures and some rivalries. Bob Bouncer was a boy with red blood in his veins, and you should read this story of his doings. Quarto, cloth, 128 pages. Eight full-page illustrations and beautiful colored picture on cover. _Price 40 cents per Volume_ _For Sale at all book stores or sent postpaid upon receipt of price by the publishers._ GRAHAM & MATLACK 251 West 19th Street New York * * * * * THE TRIPPERTROTS SERIES By HOWARD R. GARIS Author of the famous "BEDTIME STORIES" These stories have been told over the telephone nightly to thousands of children. The urgent demand has led us to publish them in book form for the first time. Get acquainted with the Trippertrots, you will not regret it. Read how they ran away and how they got back, the wonderful things they saw and the wonderful things they did. They will grip you and hold you interested and amazed to the very end. THE THREE LITTLE TRIPPERTROTS How They Ran Away and How They Got Back Again THE THREE LITTLE TRIPPERTROTS ON THEIR TRAVELS The Wonderful Things They Saw and the Wonderful Things They Did Both volumes uniformly bound in cloth with beautiful colored picture on cover. 8vo size, 160 pages, 12 full-page illustrations, four of them in color. _Price 60 cents Each._ _For Sale at all book stores or sent postpaid upon receipt of price by the publishers._ GRAHAM & MATLACK 251 West 19th Street New York * * * * * 
28706	----	Transcriber's note: Minor punctuation errors have been corrected without notice. Printer's errors have been corrected, and the changes are listed at the end of the book. All other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's spelling has been retained. OKLAHOMA SUNSHINE. by FREEMAN E. MILLER, Author of "Oklahoma and other Poems," "Songs from the South-West Country," etc. Stillwater, Oklahoma. The Advance Printing Company. 1905. Copyright, 1905, by Freeman E. Miller. All Rights Reserved. _The Gospel of Sunshine is the one Supreme Evangel, the Religion of Love is Mankind's most Universal Creed. They hold in their divine Baptisms the Winning of the Heart to Happiness, the Wooing of the Soul to Heaven._ _The Author._ Beginning with June 9, 1904, there was a column of verse and prose published in "The Stillwater Advance" under the caption "Oklahoma Sunshine." These were written in the moments of a busy life, amid the crowding of sterner things, and many of them found a wide circulation in the fugitive publications of the day. So many persons have offered expressions of being pleased and helped by them that they are here presented in a more permanent form. The following comprise the year from June, 1904, to June, 1905. CONTENTS. _VERSES._ PAGE. A Busy Family, 4 A Blazing Future, 185 A Contented Farmer, 19 A Date With Joy, 265 A Happy Farmer, 299 A Jolly Good Game, 18 A Little of Love, 6 All Fool's Day, 249 A Memory, 232 A Modern Love Story, 276 A New Year's Resolution, 174 A Prayer, 29 April 22, 1889-1905, 269 A Song of Green Valleys, 30 At Rest, 188 A True Hero, 181 At the End, 214 At the Turning of the Lane, 289 At the Twilight, 290 At Valentine's Day, 204 A Valentine, 207 A Welcome for Winter, 97 Away from the Winter, 222 Be Patient, 116 Be Strong to Dare, 69 Best of All, 39 Better Hide Out, 129 Better Hurry, 277 Brighter than the Dreams, 286 De Hant, 190 Doing Pretty Well, 62 Don't Fall out with Life, 220 Don't Frown, 8 Don't Grumble, 5 Don't Trade with Trouble, 227 Don't Worry or Fret, My Dearie, 40 Don't You Fret, 61 Don't You Grumble, 46 Dreaming, 17 Dreams, 1, 254 Evil Prophets, 173 Feelin' Fine, 71 Fields of May, 305 Finally, 167 Finis, 312 Fishing Time, 234 For the New Year, 166 Forgotten, 113 Give Us More, 113 Get in the Game, 15 God Give Us Change, 87 Good-bye, Dear Heart, 22 Good-bye to Trouble, 158 Good Morning,--Good Night, 216 Hands Around, My Honey, 38 He Voted "Graft", 182 Hear the Song, 106 Hope, 41 Howdy, Mister Summer, 287 If Love Abides, 277 If Santa Claus Don't Come, 162 In April Days, 260 In Prayer, 65 In Supplication, 57 In the Lap of Spring, 300 In the Light, 120 In the Orchards of Spring, 252 In the Shine, 138 In Yearning Mood, 114 Jist a-Wushin', 298 Jog Along, 9 Joy is Here, 184 June Time, 21 Just Be Patient, 223 Kansas Has her Dander up, 217 Keep Away from Trouble, 48 Keep Busy, 212 Keep in the Light, 229 Keep them Alive, 145 Life, 168 Life and Love, 228 Life's Way, 208 Loafing, 300 Look out for Trouble, 198 Love Brings the Song, 104 Love's Dream, 74 Minnows and Big Fish, 50 Mistah Cotton, 105 Mister Blue Bird, 239 Mister Cantaloupe, 13 Mister Ground Hog, 195 Move Along, 311 My Heritage, 284 My Philosophy, 2 Never Mind the Hills, 182 Never Worry, 142 Off the Reservation, 224 On Behalf of the Minority, 201 On the Road to Riches, 115 Our Joe's at Home Agin, 136 Playing the Game, 280 Pretty Good World, 83 Quit Grieving, 293 Rolling on to Glory, 219 Said, Governor Tom, 193 Say Good-bye to Sorrow, 241 See the Side-Show, 102 Shadow and Shine, 285 Signs of Winter, 144 Sing a Little, 172 Sing a Song of Sunshine, 128 Something Left, 184 So Santa Claus'll Come, 148 Stand Pat, 89 Still Going, 288 Still Onward, 312 Sunny Side Out, 233 Sunshine or Shadow, 253 Teddy's on a Hunting Trip, 255 Thanksgiving Hymn, 130 Thank the Lord for Work, 127 That New Year Resolution, 192 The Baby's Hand, 244 The Blossom Ways, 275 The Books, 310 The Bright Day, 81 The Call of the Fiddle, 163 The Call of the Master, 242 The Candidate, 21 The Charity Ball, 153 The Christmas Fiddles, 146 The Darky's Heaven, 49 The Days, 235 The Defeated, 102 The Glorious Fourth, 25 The Glory Train, 80 The Gods and the Man-Child, 266 The Good Times Song, 199 The Greatest Gift, 165 The Grip of the Prairies, 302 The Harvest Time, 11 The Journey, 306 The Legislative Pass, 186 The Lights of Home, 124 The Little Boy Land, 66 The Little Feet, 72 The Lord is Good to Me, 110 The Meadows of Morning, 304 The Meal Ticket Man, 134 The Negro's Warning, 37 The Rim of the Circle, 278 The Quest, 77, 285 The Quest for Joy, 93 There's No Use to Worry, 29 The Sage, 311 The Santa Claus Boy, 154 The Sunny Side, 212 The Sunshine Song, 122 The Sunshine Way, 140 The Third House, 170 The Valleys of Rest, 90 The Weather Man's Mistakes, 56 The Women and the Bill, 150 The World All Right, 86 Too Busy, 95 To One Departed, 42 To the Light, 118 To the Lonesome Fiddle, 160 To the Love Lands, 177 To the World, 78 Toss a Kiss to Care, 24 Trudge Along, 180 'Twill All Come Right, 157 Uncle Joe and Statehood, 209 Upward, 292 Wait Awhile, 213 We Sat and Talked of Other Days, 84 What Shall it Matter, Dear, 34 When Canderdates Git After Pa, 108 When Mr. Money Comes to Town, 70 When Pa Puts Up the Stove, 132 When Teddy Squares the Deal, 264 When the Bills Come Due, 26 When the Birds Come Back, 236 When the Campaign Liar Quits, 126 When the Crow's Feet Come, 96 When the Dollar Pounds the Door, 44 When the 'Phone Bell Rings, 36 When the Roas'in' Ears air Plenty, 58 When the Sad Time Ends, 308 When Trouble Came, 196 When Trouble Comes, My Honey, 116 Where Love Abides, 228 Willie's Easter, 272 With a Song, 189 Without Embarassment, 262 You Sang to me, Dear, 296 _PROSE_. A Doubtful Voter, 112 A Fine Job, 180 A Happy Dream, 288 A Hard Winter Ahead, 152 A Hard World, 175 An Incurable, 215 Another Vintage, 112 A Popular Preacher, 215 A Quartette of Don'ts, 176 Ate Boys Himself, 32 A Troublesome Set, 5 Caught on the Fly, 3, 7, 16, 20, 25, 33, 35, 41, 48, 55, 63, 68, 71, 73, 81, 85, 94, 98, 107, 111, 125, 128, 129, 137, 142, 156, 158, 169, 179, 183, 188, 191, 194, 208, 211, 219, 226, 246, 248, 254, 263, 268, 272, 283, 295, 297, 303. Duly Thankful, 131 Enough Heaven for Him, 47 He has Lived in Vain, 239 Hell and Heaven, 20 His Platform, 133 If we Were Wise, 168 In the Best Society, 69 In the Legislature, 200 It Died Young, 176 Its Principal Work, 207 Life's Eternities, 234 Little Sermons, 40, 51, 83, 104, 110, 119, 120, 121, 123, 143, 145, 153, 159, 175, 181, 187, 191, 195, 206, 213, 227, 233, 235, 246, 259, 261, 274, 281, 286, 287, 289, 295. Mighty Lonesome, 128 Nice Doctrine, 138 Nobody Hurt, 199 No Encouragement, 301 No Room for Bankruptcy, 49 Not Afraid, 185 One Drawback, 144 Play Ball, 171 Plenty of Exercise, 52 Providence Takes Care of his Own, 113 Rainy Weather, 14 Remembered by Santa Claus, 172 Richly Deserved, 232 Small Bills, 211 Snake Bit, 309 Sooner Sayings, 247, 248, 258, 259, 268, 275, 277, 288, 293, 299, 309. The Frying Pan, 76 The Ignorance of the Court, 92 The Real Article, 53 The Real Question, 139 The Same Old Gifts, 164 The Sooners, 88 The Spirit of Compromise, 38 The Kingbolt Philosopher, 4, 10, 12, 24, 28, 33, 37, 39, 45, 61, 64, 65, 68, 82, 86, 99. Too Much Prosperity, 159 Voting Around, 103 Wanted a Bill or Two, 197 Wanted to Hide, 121 Well Prepared, 27 Where Bill Was, 138 "What Think Ye, Masters, of These Things?" (A POEM READ ON OKLAHOMA DAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1904, AT THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE EXPOSITION.) O, ye who frame the sovereign law, And heal the hurts of ocean isles Till hid are savage tooth and claw And Peace above the battle smiles,-- If Justice reigns and Mercy clings, What think ye, Masters, of these things? The Father of the Waters greets Imperial sisters proud and great, And nation mighty nation meets At festal boards of lordly state: But one--one only,--maketh moan: Denied the Star, she weeps alone! The cycles fly on eagled wings: A hundred years have run their quest Since he who bought and sold with kings An empire added to the West: And all his regions rulers are Save her alone who mourns the Star. The wildness in a moment died; A garden bloomed and fruited full Across the plains and valleys wide At touch of hands invincible; But mute she stands where deserts were: The banner holds no Star for her! The race heaps high its conquered spoil; The braggart heirs of all men do Assemble where the Triumphs toil In marshaled columns for review; And she, the Starless, at your call Brings trophies that surpass them all! Are not her laurels rich and rare? Her apt attainments great with grace? You crown her here and everywhere Save where she pleads for power and place; The world amazed her praises rings: What think ye, Masters, of these things? She wonders wrought with wondrous hands: Her cities crowd the teeming plains, And church and school exalt the lands With all of mankind's greater gains;-- The last of all the waste, she brings The triumphs of her million kings! A million white and black and red Whose treble toils misunderstood Build happy homes and fondly wed The desert place with joyous good, And at your feet, uncrowned, unblest Kneel for the knighthood of their quest! Thralled in her chains, this fairest one Of all the realms that greatly found Rich largess on the barrens dun Pleads from her fetters, vassal-bound; And still the Star before her swings: What think ye, Masters, of these things? Oklahoma Sunshine Dreams. I. Day-dreams and play-dreams! From the rosy morn Till the ashy eventide and the stars new-born, Ever bringing life and heart aweary with their load Promises of hope and cheer while tramping down the road. II. Night dreams and bright dreams! In the house of sleep With their happy faces full and their gazes deep, World on world so beautiful there they brightly bring, Till the heart is happy in the songs they sing. III. Day-dreams and Night-dreams,--all the dreams you will,-- Beckon up the rocky slope and summon o'er the hill,-- Summon us to do and dare all the deeds of yore Till the battle ceases, and we strive no more! My Philosophy. I've made up my mind In spite of the cranks, 'Tis a pretty good world And we ought to give thanks; And whether it came From the God or the grime, The fellow that runs it Don't lose any time. I've made up my mind In spite of the tears. That the world clambers up With the roll of the years; And whether it gropes Or is led on and on, It will come by and by To the meadows of dawn. In spite of the sin And the folly around, 'Tis a much better place Than the fore-fathers found; And in spite of the fools And the devils that grieve I'm sure in no hurry To pull up and leave. So shut up your mouth And don't grumble nor croak; Go put your poor head And your poor heart in soak; Lay all of your sorrows And sins on the shelf, For the world is all right If you're all right yourself! Caught on the Fly. If the girl with a white muslin dress and a picture hat has any troubles in this world she has a wonderful skill in hiding her real feelings. Somehow, those men who are all the time telling how well money talks, never get well enough acquainted with it to speak with authority. "De worst objection to de wortersmillion in Oklahomy," said a Mississippi black man, "is de fact dat it gits ripe too late fer de wheat harvest an' too yarly fer de cotton-pickin." The average man grieves more when he runs out of chewing tobacco and the nearest neighbor who uses the filthy weed is three miles away, than he does when the mortgage takes the farm. Upon what little things doth happiness depend! A Busy Family. Mam's at a function where you hold your breath; Liz has got a feller, an' she's talkin' him to death; Andy has the measles, Susie's nussin' Bill, Pap is out fer office an' he's runnin' fit to kill; Pont an' me are fishin', all the signs are right, Fer the crick is up a-boomin' an' the big fish bite! The Kingbolt Philosopher. "Ive heerd tell," said Uncle Ezra Mudge, "thet every dog has his day. But I'm jest as sartin thet he don't know he's a havin' of it when he has it. "Now, thar was Bill Smith. Bill was a high-up chap, made money, had a rubber-tired buggy, four girls, and chawed terbacker thet cost a dollar a pound. But he never knowed he was a havin' of his day ontell he went busted on the Board of Trade. But now Bill knows it, and has knowed it ever sence he went busted." Don't Grumble. What's the use to grumble, what's the use to fret, 'Cause the cotton's weedy and the days go wet? 'Tis the Lord that sorts the weather and the sun and rain to you, And you needn't kick and holler 'cause he don't explain to you! When it rains, don't get to mopin! There's more sunny skies than clouds, And if sorrows drop in singly, why, the pleasures come in crowds; Black day or bright day, don't you fume and fret, When the cotton's weedy and the days go wet! A Troublesome Set. "Dese hyar white folks am a troublesome set," said a Guthrie coon. "We hab a great majority ob de city, but on 'lection day we nebber git ober half the city council an 'de school board, and four drinks apiece. We am a-talkin' of sendin' 'em back to Englan' whar dey belong ef dey don't do better!" A Little of Love. I. With a little of Love, Dear, and something of Song, There's a glorified courage that conquers each wrong, And the years fly as swift as the bird on the wing Through the snow days of winter and rose days of spring. II. With a little of Love, Dear, and something of Song, There's no hour that is heavy, no day that is long; And the soldier of hope scales the mountains that meet, Till they lay all their trophies and gifts at his feet. III. With a little of Love, Dear, and something of Song, All the mighty exalt, all the feeble are strong, And the breast bravely bares to the breast of the foe, And, forever full armored, gives blow for his blow! IV. Then a little of Love, Dear, and something of Song! What shall matter the struggle with error and wrong? For the lilies and roses of gladness shall bloom Till we sleep the long slumber as dust in the tomb! Caught on the Fly. It's no use to try to trot in a race where you are out-classed. Better be a good weed-puller at so much per pull, than a member of the legislature without any pull at all. If a woman's hair is smoothed up, her hat on straight and her belt all right behind, the other cares and responsibilities of this life sink at once and forever into insignificant nothingness. This thing of "hitching your wagon to a star" may be all right for a steady occupation, but the fellow who plants garden truck in his back-yard nights and mornings will have more on the table at meal-times. Don't Frown. Don't frown! In the world's market place, For a scowl there's no price, And a long, gloomy face Never cuts any ice! Look pleasant, look pleased, Or as pleased as you can;-- With a smile can be seized All the great things of man! Don't frown! Don't frown! With a smile on your lips You can reach to the end Of the world's last eclipse Or the heart of a friend; And the things the gods throw Over life's weary mile, Are the gifts they bestow In return for a smile. Don't frown! Don't frown! As you walk down the way Where the world scatters chaff, Light your labors with play And your griefs with a laugh! And when it's all o'er And you reach heaven's stile, You will get through the door If you carry a smile! Don't frown! Jog Along. Jog along, my brother, Jog along, I say; There's no cozy corner For one that wants to play; Don't stop to whistle,-- Whistle good and strong, But be careful that you always Jog along. Jog along, my brother, Jog along, I say; Keep yourself in motion,-- You needn't stop or stay; Someone will hear you And will help your song, If you do your part and always Jog along. Jog along, my brother, Jog along I say, Doing God good service Till the final day; For He will crown you After all the wrong, With his choicest blessings, if you Jog along. The Kingbolt Philosopher. "There be some things," says Uncle Ezra Mudge, "that it is best to take on faith. I don't know for certain that the devil has split hoofs and a forked tail and carries a four-tined fork along with him in the hope of finding a hay-field handy; but rather than make a private appointment with him to find out, I am willing to take the word of the picture books on the subject." Whatever weaknesses he may have, the man who is so thick-skinned that he can go on about his regular business and pay no attention to the little distractions of this life, has a great advantage in the world. The rhinoceros would not look well in a beauty show, but it can always sleep well, even if hundreds of mosquitoes are buzzing around hunting for a full meal. Spring is that season of the year when the new plow-boy and the old plow-mule patiently learn again the world-wide difference between "haw" and "gee." The Harvest Time. I. The harvest time is over! And across the fertile plain Stand the winrows of the meadows and the stocks of golden grain; And the aching limbs of labor take the rest of happy ease From the scorching suns of noon-day in the shadows of the trees. The harvest time is over! And the husbandman receives For the days of hard endeavor all the wealth of garnered sheaves;' And the land of hill and valley smiles exalt with joys untold Heaping high above the stubbles in the piles of ripened gold! Harvest time! Harvest time! Hours of toil are told; Hill and valley both rejoice With their wealth of gold! II. The harvest time is over! After all the years of strife There's a joy for every sorrow and a crown for every life; And the songs of Heaven's angels on the straining soul arise As the weary foot-steps falter on the walks of Paradise. The harvest time is over! All the struggle has surcease! After life, the stars above us! After battle, love and peace! And the glories of achievement that atone for sin and strife Are the sheaves of good we garner as we reap the fields of life! Harvest time! harvest time! Years of struggle gone, Joy shall crown the soul with light In eternal Dawn! The Kingbolt Philosopher. "Fer accumulatin' much experience in a short while and in a rapid manner," said Uncle Ezra Mudge, "thar is nothin' under the sun beats a-goin' to law. With only a toler'ble fair case and a good lively lawyer on the other side, a man can git enough out of one single law-suit suitably appealed, to decently equip a whole neighborhood fer at least three generations." Mister Cantaloupe. Hello, Mister Canteloupe, When did you arrive? Glad to see you, and I hope That you're all alive! How-dy do and how-dy do! Hope your folks are well, And are coming after you For to stay a spell! Hello, Mister Cantaloupe! Please excuse my smile, But I'm just so glad, and hope You will stay awhile; Put 'er here and put 'er there! If you've traveled far, Come with me and take a chair In the dining car! Life is neither comedy nor tragedy, but sometimes it pushes up so close to both that it keeps a fellow on the dodge between smiles and tears. Rainy Weather. Our Mud Creek correspondent sends us the following items, having to do with the recent wet weather: "Bill Hughes cut his wheat last week. He rigged up a header attachment to a row-boat, and nipped the heads off at the surface of the water. "It rained so fast last Saturday night at Tad Wilson's that the water couldn't all run off the roof of his new house. The water stood four inches deep on top of the comb for over half an hour. Then Tad took an ax and sharpened the comb so it would split the drops better, and the water soon ran down. "Jem Bilkins' incubator hatched last Wednesday during the heavy rain. Jem set only Plymouth Rock eggs; but, when they hatched, over half of his chickens were ducks. They were given web feet by an accommodating providence." Get in the Game. Get in the game of life, my boy, Get in the mighty game; There'll be something of care and somewhat of strife And something of sin and shame! But after the years and the toils they bring, There'll be a time of joy, If the heart stays sweet and the soul can sing, So get in the game, by boy. Got in the game of life, my boy,-- That is the game for all; For the hazards are sweet and the days are rife With the fortunes that rise and fall; But after the losses the triumphs stand Enemies can't destroy; So get in the game with a full, clean hand, So get in the game, by boy. Get in the game of life, by boy! That is the game men play, And whether it's gladness or whether it's strife, It lasts to the One Great Day; The crowns and the stars and the laughs of love Beckon with hands of joy, Till the soul grows vast in the home above,-- So get in the game, my boy! Caught on the Fly. My son, this world has so much work to do that it has not even room for a lazy man to sit down and rest. The hen that doesn't lay, the horse that balks, and the cow that refuses to give down her milk, don't get up to the feed-rack very long. The Athletic Clubs are always inventing some new way of giving a big strapping cub an adequate form of exercise, but the average farmer finds more kinds of it than he wants when the crab grass gets busy. It isn't every dude that wears patent leathers and parts his hair in the middle, who hasn't sense enough to flag the bread-wagon when it comes tearing down the pike. Dreaming. Let those who prefer it Keep hatching their schemes, But all through life's summer I'll cherish my dreams! Go on with your struggles, Your worries and wrongs; I'll camp with the lillies And list to their songs. I'll dream with the daisies That sweeten the sod; I'll dream with the roses That whisper of God; I'll dream with the wild birds That sing of the right, And out of the shadows Dream garlands of light. I'll dream through the darkness Of sorrow and strife, Till love brings the morning And laurels the life; And over the meadows My happy feet roam, Still dreaming, still dreaming, Till Love takes me home! A Jolly Good Game. I. You may talk as you please about Life's necromancy;-- 'Tis a journey of smiles or of tears as you fancy-- For I always have found,--and I'm happy to say it,-- 'Tis a jolly good game if one knows how to play it! II. The Dealer sits yonder,--the hands that he serves us-- The brains and the beauty and courage that nerves us,-- And strength for the struggle; and then he gives warning, To play to the ceiling till dawn of the morning! III. And mighty the stakes that he sets us to try for! Fame, Fortune and Honor, and Love, that men die for! The Sword, or the Crown, or the Star, or the Garter, And all the high winnings men bargain and barter! IV. He deals us the hand,--and no one may discard it! The game must go on with no power to retard it! And whether the hand be a good one or bad one, He asks of us only to play it a glad one. V. Then let people talk about life as they see it; You can make it for you what your heart may decree it; For I always have found--and I'm happy to say it,-- 'Tis a jolly good game if you know how to play it! A Contented Farmer. Wheat-crop heapin' in de shock, Corn jes' keeps a-bumpin'; Oats a-yallerin' in de sun,-- Cotton des a-jumpin'! Millet, Kafir-corn an' cane Bust their selves a-growin'; Oklahoma's home for me Till Gabriel goes to blowin'! Hell and Heaven. "Doan't tell me dat hell am away off yander," said an old darkey as he stood before the display window of the vegetable market where a dozen water-melons, the first of the season, reposed in unconscious temptation. "Dem millyuns cost a dollar apiece, an' I hain't got but thirty cents ter save me from the bad place. Go 'way, man! I tell you hell am right hyar, an' hebben only sebenty cents away!" Caught on the Fly. Of course, it is all right to aim high, but it's the fellow that never shoots at all that fails to bring down the game. After all, the alleged failures of life are not of much importance. It is what one does with his failures that tells the story of his despair or hope. When a man is always dressed and has his boots on ready for the journey, Opportunity comes along in her automobile and invites him to get in and ride with her. June Time. Pleasures fond are singing, Love, for you and me, And the moments bringing Joys of land and sea! June-time is tune-time! Don't you hear the song? All the time is love time Where the roses throng! Don't you sigh or sorrow! Raptures full and free Crown each glad tomorrow, Sweet, for you and me! June-time and tune-time, Where the roses throng, Life-time and love-time And the world of song! The Candidate. He's getting so busy, he makes the world dizzy, His smoke can be seen from afar; He kisses the babies and flatters the ladies And gives the old man a cigar! Good-bye, Dear Heart. I. Good-bye, Dear Heart! I go my own sad way, And you go yours, and Life is agony; And yet I must not weakly beg you stay, In spite of all your absence means to me. II. Though distance part, though sky and sea divide, To you I must not reach detaining hands; The years are many and the world is wide, And Love's fair roses bloom in many lands. III. With all the joys and all the wishes fond My soul sends after you, we can't regret; The raptures wait us in the sweet Beyond, And we shall teach our memories to forget. IV. We meet no more! The hand-clasp and embrace, The hot, mad kiss, the crush of lips to lips, The melt of eye and tender flush of face,-- These all for us have passed to last eclipse. V. So, good-bye, Dear! Good-bye for evermore! Adown the years our halting feet shall press, Our lone hearts wander, till the quest is o'er, And Love shall lead us back to happiness! The Kingbolt Philosopher. "I've knowed some mighty fine scholars in figgers," said Uncle Ezra Mudge, "that never could calkilate the problem of human life. Purty near every feller when he gets to figgerin' on it, tries to git the Almighty Dollar fer the answer, and it won't figger out. I've seen lots of men in my time an' I never seed one yit that money made happy. An' if happiness ain't the answer to all this here figgerin' an' foolin' an' fightin', then I give it up. "I'd ruther have Myrandy sing 'Ole Fokes at Home' when I'm lonesome like than to hev $10 Williams layin' around all over the place. It's more comp'ny to me, a whole lot more!" Toss a Kiss to Care. Toss a kiss to Care, and say, "You are only for a day"; You with all your woes and tears Never linger through the years. Toss a kiss to Care, and be Happy in your ecstasy; Bid your grief begone, and smile With the pleasures for awhile! Caught on the Fly. The bass-drum is all right at the head of the procession, but the still-hunt cuts the most ice in politics. The up-to-date dude, a-sport with patent-leathers and a Panama hat, puts on lots of style, but he began life as a bald headed and bare-foot boy along with the common herd. Whenever you see an old maid who giddily shies off from the croup when the little folks grow wheezy, you can put it down as a sure sign that she is trying to conceal her age. The Glorious Fourth. Sister got her new hat wet, An' her white dress fair; Mother got a cannon-crack 'Sploded in her hair; Pap got powder in his face Shootin' anville thayre; Billy got an' ear tore off, Sammy lost an eye; Got two fingers broke myself, Fourth o' ole July! When the Bills Come Due. There are many things that bother In this mixed up world of ours, And the paths we wander over Are not always filled with flowers; While some days are bright and sunny There are others black and blue,-- And the day that brings the trouble When the bills come due! When the bills come due, After all the debts accrue, O, it's all another story, When the bills come due! We blow in without a falter For most every thing in sight, From the dawn of Monday morning Till the dark of Sunday night; And we dinner on the dainties, Robe in garbs of gorgeous hue, But it's all another story When the bills came due. O, we chase the rounds of travel, On a cruise from shore to shore, And no diff'rence what we purchase Still we always buy the more; It's a barter every minute, Till possessions large accrue, But the clouds come down with darkness When the bills come due! When the bills come due, After all the debts accrue, O, it's all another story, When the bills come due! Well Prepared. "How are you getting on, Mose?" asked an anxious creditor of an impecunious colored farmer. "Wull, boss, pickin's kinder slim erroun' de cabin jes' now, but I'm a livin' in hopes. I've got two yakers er cotton's dat's middlin' fine, an' ten yakerser worter-millyuns dat am de bes' I ever see; an' ef I doan't git er millyun yakers er hebben dis fall, I miss my guess mighty bad!" The Kingbolt Philosopher. "Thar's nuthin' in all this world so dog-cheap ez advice," said Uncle Ezra Mudge. "I've give my seven boys enough advice off an' on to fix over the world an' finish up Heaven, an' 'en they don't know enough to let cigarettes alone, even. Thar's nuthin, arter all, that teaches a boy so quick es a lickin.' When he gits lammed all ter pieces by some kid thet he kep' a-pickin' at till good natur' fergot ter be a vartue, an' pasted him several between the eyes, he may not look so purty but he will know two or three things so blamed well he'll never fergit 'em ontell Gabriel blows his conk shell in the mornin'!" * * * * * Life may be One Grand Sweet Song but we are generally furnishing the music by pounding the bass-drum for the fellow who is pounding the bass-drum for us. * * * * * "Love's young dream" may be the sweetest thing in life, but there is nothing like pork gravy and hot biscuit for sticking to the ribs. "There's No Use to Worry." There's no use to worry, When trouble appears, For she leaves in a hurry And bottles her tears; There's a song for each sorrow, A smile for each grief, And the joys of tomorrow Bring happy relief. There's no use to worry! This world's a good place, If you fly from its flurry And keep a bright face; There is never a sorrow That sickens the soul, If you wait for the morrow And let the cares roll! A Prayer. Lord, as I journey down the way, Grant me good work for every day, And, till my labor here is past, To work with Thee until the last! Words are poor vehicles for the carrying of thought. The glance of only one bright eye can tell a sweeter story than was ever written out in all the books of men. A Song of Green Valleys. I. A Song of Green Valleys,--the valleys new born With the gold of the wheat and the green of the corn, Where the roses arise from the dews of the night And the paths for Love's feet are a-swoon with delight! II. The Voice of the Valleys! The brooks to the seas Mingle multiplied praises with Love's lullabies, And the shouts of glad children exultingly rise From the daisies of earth to the stars of the skies. III. The calm of the Valleys! The raptures increase With the calls of content and the pleasures of peace, And the homes of the happy their gladness engage From the rose-days of youth to the snow-days of age. IV. The bliss of the Valleys! There life blossoms sweet, And the night-time and noon time in melody meet, Till the sorrows that sadden the care-clouded day Find the smiles ever beaming and vanish away. V. A Song of Green Valleys! O, joys that they bring Where the breeze whispers love in the love-days of spring, And the songs of the thrush from the love gardens float With the music that spills from the mocking-bird's throat! VI. A Song of Green Valleys! O, valleys that spread From the croon of the babe to the dirge of the dead, Beyond the long journey we leave you,--but then, God grant we shall meet you and have you again! Ate Boys Himself. He was a four year old Oklahoma Fountleroy, in knee pants, and with golden curls that would make an angel envious. His face still wore the divine beauty of the cradle, and his large, luminous eyes reflected an innocence unspotted of the world. But the carpenter on the building did not appreciate his company. He was always in the way. So the carpenter thought he would frighten him away, by a story of horrible danger. "Do you see that big man coming there?" said the carpenter to him. The child nodded assent. "Well," continued the carpenter; "you would better run away before he gets you. That big man eats a boy for breakfast every morning, and he may eat you." A look of ineffable scorn slowly penetrated beneath the curls. The large, innocent eyes took on an expression of supreme contempt. Then the angel indifferently said: "I ate a boy once; he was a nigger!" Caught on the Fly. A drummer is known by the stories he tells. Don't be in a hurry to do a mean thing. You'll have plenty of time to get sorry if you put it off until day after tomorrow. When a man stops to count the cost of a noble deed, temptation has already stormed and captured the fortifications of his honor. The $1 bill is a very popular brand among the people, but if history makes no mistake, it takes the $1,000 bill to secure votes in the Missouri legislature. The Kingbolt Philosopher. "I notice," said Uncle Ezra Mudge, "Thet the self-made man is always kept so busy tellin' about the fine job of work he turned out, thet he never has time to get the roof on an' the doors an' winders hung. A self-made feller generally shows a rough job put together with dull tools an' in mighty poor taste when you git to lookin' at it real clost, an' it could be mightily improved on by a middlin' sight of polishin', wood-filler an' hard-oil, well rubbed in!" "What Shall It Matter, Dear?" I. What shall it matter, Dear, how goes the weather.-- We with our hands and our hearts linked together,-- We with our faces, till daisies we're under, Set to the skies with their welcomes of wonder. II. What shall it matter, Dear, how goes the battle? Something is greater than all of its rattle, Something that gladdens the heart with the story Telling of Love and Love's infinite glory. III. What shall it matter, Dear, how the world use us? 'Tis but a show and its antics amuse us! World that knows nothing of all our sweet gladness And of the love that dispels every sadness! IV. What shall it matter, then, what shall it matter? Peace still awaits after all of earth's clatter! Peace still awaits, all our love-dreams adorning, There in the bliss of the Glorified Morning! Caught on the Fly. Life's experiences are very much the same as when we go fishing. The biggest fish always gets away. But even then we have a pretty good feast on the minnows. Yesterday is life's departed king; tomorrow holds all the possibilities of clown and emperor. Only today wears the glittering crown and the purple robes of power. Don't pray for what you want, and quit with the prayer. Spit on your hands and grab it as it hurries by. The lawn-mower is quite a play thing for the city-bred man, but in the interest of humanity he ought to be vaccinated against the back ache. "When the 'Phone Bell Rings." It's no difference what you're doing, Whether you're asleep or ain't, When the 'phone begins pursuing It will catch you,--no complaint! For its call is strong and steady, And it always answer brings, For you hurry with your "ready!" When the 'phone bell rings! O, it interrupts your vision With its long, unceasing howl; It dispels your dreams elysian With insistence fresh and foul! O, it summons you at meal-times With a joy that stays and clings, Till you swear it's always de'il-times When the 'phone bell rings! It's no matter where you're straying,-- In the garden, barn or bed, There's no time to spend in praying. Or in playing, quick or dead; And if Gabriel "in that morning" Wants a good old trump that swings, Just let "central" sound his warning While the 'phone bells rings! The Negro's Warning. Doan't yuh grumble, brudder! Doan't yuh nebber doubt it, Debbil gwine ter git yuh 'Foh yuh think erbout it! Put yuh in de iurn-works Whar de sinnah weeps, Loadin' up de injines Shovelin' coal fer keeps! The Kingbolt Philosopher. "I've often noticed," said Uncle Ezra Mudge, as he slowly filled his Missouri meerschaum with Virginia twist,--"I've offen noticed thet nerve is the most vallyble asset in the credit items of human life. The pore man thet's got a plenty of it is an uncrowned king with pears's an' di'monds at his command, but the king thet lacks it will soon be uncrowned too. When a rich man er a famous man gits down in the mouth onct an' loses his nerve, it's all day with him in a minnet, an' a rope or a six-shooter ginerally winds him up. But if a feller hangs on to his nerve, he is alright fer the sights and scenes of this world an' he needn't be nussin' any worries 'bout the next one." "Hands Around, My Honey." Sparrow on the wagon-shed, Chirping with a will; Robin in the cherry-tree Warblin' fit to kill! Every thing's rejoicin', Hidin' of the wrong,-- So hands around, my honey, And we'll join the song! Mock-bird on the chimney top,-- How that rascal mocks,-- Spillin' songs of melody, From his music-box! Over all the live-long place All the pleasures throng, So hands around, my honey, And we'll join the song! The Spirit of Compromise. "I done heah dat de dimmycrats kinder comp'omised at de St. Looey convention meetin'," said old Black Mose. "I tell you, man, dat com'p'omisin' bis'ness am a great thing, suah! My ole woman en' me hez quahled en' fit en' fussed erroun' fer nigh fohty yeahs ober wheddah I should pack in de watah er chop de wood, en' we fin'ly comp'omised de mattah by hur a doin ob 'em bofe!" Best of All. Pie-million, cantaloope; Musk-million tall; But de blessed worter-million Am de bes' of all! Whar de worter-million grows, Hebben's dar bechune de rows! The Kingbolt Philosopher. "It hain't so much difference what kind of work you do as how you do it," said Uncle Ezra Mudge. "The feller thet sets around an' kicks on the kind of a job he has never gits many others offered him, while the chap thet does good work at whatsumever he gits giner'ly finds a ladder to climb up to the top. "I reckon David out there herdin' the sheep never kicked much on his job, an' I'll bet four 'coon-skins thet he wuz the best sheep-herder in all the Promised Land, er the Lord wouldent a-picked him out an' set him to work at the job of bein' king." Little Sermons. Where the world is going is not of much consequence. It's where you are going that cuts the ice. When the sermon gets over thirty minutes long, the Devil comes to church and takes a seat in the Amen corner. Heaven is in every man's easy reach, but some are too contrary to even tip-toe for the blessings of the other Kingdom. "Don't Worry or Fret, My Dearie!" Don't worry or fret, my dearie! The shadows will soon go by; Before half your tears have vanished The sun's in the happy sky; There's trouble enough, my dearie, In days of a glad life long, But Sorrows will die with no one to sigh With Love and a little of Song! There are some things about "our island possessions" which will bear imitation this hot weather. The costumes Of the Igorrotes, for instance. Caught on the Fly. Mr. Knowing How commands a princely salary while Hard Work is on the bum hunting for wages. Some people are so anxious for happiness that they make themselves miserable in running it down. Whether we learn much in the school of experience or not, we all register for the full term and pay the entire tuition mentioned in the catalogue. Charity is something of which the mills of human life never turn out an over-production. Even some of the blessed saints could use a little more in their daily walk and conversation. Hope. All the path is dark with shadows And the road is hard to see, But there's sunshine on the hill-tops And that's the way for me! There are many blessings in this world, but a shade-tree at the end of the cotton row, and a water-melon cooling in a seventy-foot well are two of its greatest joys. To One Departed. I. This life, Dear Heart, seems all so small and mean Since thou art gone,--its prizes vague and vain, Its efforts fruitless and its glories lean, And all its heaped-up treasures worthless gain! II. Amid them all my slow feet wander lone,-- My heart cries hopeless for its perfect mate; The fancies murmur and the longings moan For thee whose absence leaves me desolate. III. Yet, somewhere, somehow, in the years that shine With God's perfected wisdom throned above, I know thou wait'st my coming, with divine Enraptured welcomes of supremest love. IV. The Vision beckons, and I fix my gaze Unchanging to the promise of the skies: The full fruition of these lonely days Dwells in the heaven of thine angel eyes! V. What matter, Dear, though dullard thousands throng And jostle rudely at Life's holy feast? The dull ears hear no tender strains of Song, And they that know Love best know Love the least. VI. And still with yearning hands that longing grope And straining eyes that search to pierce the doom, I creep the path-ways of my only Hope, And seek the Loved One passed beyond the Gloom! When the Dollar Pounds the Door. It's no matter how exclusive Men may be in social ways, And how uppishly their manners Every one of them displays: Born to home-spun or the purple, Very rich or very poor, They're at home to every caller When the Dollar pounds the door! They may dwell in stately mansions With extensive yards and grounds; They may run their automobiles And play golf through all the rounds; But within their mountain villas Or resorts by ocean shore, They're at home to every caller When the Dollar pounds the door. Whether in the humble station Or the mighty seats of state, Eating crusts to banish hunger Or a-feast on fruits of fate,-- There's no one who's found forgetting That great lesson taught of yore, For they're home to every caller When the Dollar pounds the door. Mister Dollar, Mister Dollar! You have such a winning way, That I'd like you in the fam'ly Every hour of every day! And no matter where I'm staying, Please break in with rush and roar For I'm always glad to see you, Mr. Dollar, at the door? The Kingbolt Philosopher. "I've wunder'd through this vale of sunshine for about sev'nty years," said Uncle Ezra Mudge, as he filled his Missouri meerschaum for the twentieth time, "an' I never yit seen a feller thet amounted to shucks who wuz allus a-hangin' on to someone else. The pore soul thet hain't got enough git up an' git to him to strike out fer hisself an' find a path of his own through the woods is mighty nigh sartin to git lost in the brush. "Purty nigh ev'ry feller I ever knowed thet did anything wuth while did it by usin' the climbers on his own legs. Ef he stan's 'round waitin' to borry somebody else's tools, he wastes a mighty sight of his own time an' don't know how to use 'em when the other feller gits ready to be accommedatin'!" Don't You Grumble. I. Don't you grumble at the weather when the clouds are hanging flat, For the sun will soon be shining and you'll have to growl at that, And before in working order you your growler well have got, You will have to change its focus for another kind of shot! II. Don't you grumble at the fortune that the Fates incline to send! If it's good, rejoice with gladness; if it's bad, why, make it mend; And before you hit the gravel for the world beyond the years, Things will balance pretty even through the tangled smiles and tears. III. Don't you grumble at the meanness that heaps up your path with wrong! There are golden hearts of goodness that are full of love and song, And along the ways you wander all their anthems ever rise Like a chorus of the angels from the mansions in the skies! IV. Don't you grumble at the weather! Don't you growl around at fate! In this world of life and labor, you must fish or cut the bait; And if here you're always fretting o'er each little sob and sigh, You will hardly relish heaven when you reach the Bye and Bye. Enough Heaven for Him. "Go 'way, man!" said an obsarvant Logan county darkey. "Doan't yuh come en talk to me erbout gittin' rich er bein' pooah! Nary one ob dem things bodders me. Ef perlitical campaigns'll jes' las' all de time en canderdates run all de yar roun', dis worl'll be hebben ernuff fer me!" "Keep Away from Trouble." Keep away from trouble,-- Keep away, I say! He will double, double, If you walk his way; Go the other path-way; Pass the rascal by; Keep your face a-smiling For the glory-sky! Caught on the Fly. The man that can't find any heaven in this world of sunshine has no promise of getting a chance to hunt for it in the next. David said in his haste that all men are liars; and the Good Book does not record that he took it back after he had plenty of time to think it over. The sublime faith that moves mountains and conquers kingdoms is frequently helpless and hopeless against the clatter of a garrulous tongue. The Darky's Heaven. I sho'ly doan't know Whut soht ob a place Dat de Lawd's fixin' so Foh his own culled race; But ef he "in dat day" Wants de dahkeys ter catch, Give 'em banjoes ter play In a big millon patch! Millon patch thet's so long Dey can nevab git cross it, En a feller not strong Jes' purtendin' ter boss it; Whar nebber's a dog Ter molest whut yuh swipe, En wharebber yuh jog All de millons ah ripe! No Room for Bankruptcy. "Things ah sholy lookin' up ahroun' de cabin dese heah days!" said the jubilant darkey. "With watah-millons crowdin' de cohn-rows full, de cotton laid by, en fohty canderdates runnin' foh office, de bankrup'cy cou't am moah den foh hund'ed miles away, shuah!" Minnows and Big Fish. In the happy days of childhood, By the river's rushing tide, Where the crystal waters murmured Over all the ripples wide, It was perfect joy to angle Through the spring time's laughing day Though we only caught the minnows And the big fish got away. 'Twas no matter how we waited, How we watched with anxious eyes,-- For the finny tribe to yield us Captures of enormous size; There was always disappointment Filling us with deep dismay, For we only caught the minnows And the big fish got away! And it's much the same in manhood! As we line the stream of life, Fishing for the fame and fortune In the waters full of strife, It's no matter how we angle As the young years turn to gray, We can only catch the minnows And the big fish get away! But the sport, the sport, is royal, And it never had a match! So it's really unimportant As to what we lose or catch! Let us use our highest efforts Till the Father calls to say: "What a splendid mess of minnows Though the big fish got away!" Little Sermons. Christianity and religion are great things, but a holy life knocks the spots off them both in the long run. Wealth comes from toil and sacrifice, but the treasures of the heart are vaccinated with love and are the parents of all real happiness. There is no use to spend any time in worrying about the next world. Take care of the world you have, and the next one will take care of itself and you, too. It's better to whistle than cry, brother, It's better to whistle than cry; The day may be gloomy and dreary And black with the storms of the sky; But whistle your heart to the sorrows! They'll smile as they hurry you by! It's better to whistle than cry, brother, It's better to whistle than cry! Plenty of Exercise. "Mary Jane," said Farmer Jim to his wife as he pondered over the letter just received from their boy Silas who was away at College; "Mary Jane, what does Si mean about all this 'tarnal athletic business he's a-talkin' of?" Mary Jane had been a school-teacher before she married Farmer Jim, and so she quickly explained: "Why, he means dumb-bells and Indian clubs and trapezes and such things, to give exercise to the boys, father." "Wull, I'll be dumb-belled ef I had him out yander in the cottonfield a-choppin' out the crab-grass, I guess he'd git all the exercise he wanted!" snorted Farmer Jim. "Away With the Sorrow." Away with the sorrow, The troubles and tears! We'll laugh with the morrow Through all of the years. Away with the errors That scourge as a rod! Our sins and our terrors Shall vanish with God. The sob of our sadness Shall cease bye and bye; Away to the gladness,-- We're bound for the sky. The Real Article. "Doan't yuh talk ter me erbout yoh tahrpin en clam-bakes en yoistah fries!" exclaimed a recently arrived Guthrie coon. "Des' gib me sweet-'taters smotahed in 'possum gravy en all baked brown like we uster hab 'em down in ole Mississip! Go' way, niggah! Dat wuz high-libben like de real ahticle, I done tole ye!" The Bright Side. I. The bright side! The bright side! In spite of wind and snow, The summer comes in beauty and buds and blossoms grow, And whatsoe'er the fortune that brings the rose or rue, A kindly Heart in heaven is taking care of you! II. The bright side! The bright side! Through all the hours of night, The holy stars are watching you with sentinels of light, And no matter how the sorrows may darken all the day, The pleasures come in legions and drive their ghosts away. III. The bright side! The bright side! Though disappointments throng, Sweet labor lifts the burden and satisfies with song, And after all the sadness that shades the rugged life, There's glory for the struggle and slumber for the strife. IV. The bright side! The bright side! The side that's always there Across the ways I wander and all the paths of care; No matter what the darkness, the storm of land or sea, The bright side still is shining, and that's the side for me! Caught on the Fly. Don't cry over spilled milk. Tie up another cow, and try it again. Don't trail over the world hunting for happiness with a candle, when the sunshine Of God's mercy is over every thing. Who can understand the deeps and heights of another's nature? Nay, who can measure and comprehend even his own? Four-tined forks are splendid implements in the hay-field, but any fork is a mighty poor thing to impale the gorgeous bliss reposing in a ripe water-melon's ruddy heart. The Weather Man's Mistakes. No doubt, we all have troubles That arise from this and that, And we seldom make a home-run Though we're often at the bat; But the prince of all the fellows That performs the wildest breaks, Is the chap that brings the burdens Of the weather man's mistakes. "Sunday, fair and cool and pleasant" So you hie yourself away To the wild-wood sweet and shady For a joyous, happy day; Then the rain comes down in torrents Till it drowns the very snakes, And you have a high example Of the weather man's mistakes. "Wednesday, storm, perhaps a cyclone!" So you stay at home and wait, With your windows tightly shuttered For a hurricano great; But it's all as mild as morning, And you shout, "Of all the fakes!" While you grumble, wildly helpless, At the weather man's mistakes. And some day a patient people Turned to furies by their wrongs, Will arise and smite the building Where the weather man belongs; And whatever then shall happen, They will know the joy that wakes, When no longer made to suffer From the weatherman's mistakes! In Supplication. Dear Lord, I ask not that I live so long That all the joy is gathered, all the rose; But rather let me perish, ere the Song, The highest Hope and perfect Vision close! "When the Roas'in'-Ears Air Plenty." I. Talk about the joys of winter! Whut's the fun of foolin' round With the posies dead en buried, en the snows upon the ground? When the wind's a-tossin' blizzards in a most distressin' way Tell you have to set a-straddle of the fire-place all the day! But I tell ye life's a-livin' when the summer grows the grass Over all the nooks en crannies whayre a feller's feet kin pass, En the whole world seems of heaven but a half-forgotten type, When the roas'in'-ears air plenty en the worter-millons ripe! II. Roas'in'-ears is best of eatin', though not very much fer style! Shuck an arm-full fer yer dinner, sot 'em on en let 'em bile; Salt 'em well, en smear some butter on the juicy cobs ez sweet Ez the lips of maple-suger thet yer sweet-heart has to eat! Talk about ole Mount Olympus en the stuff them roosters spread On theyr tables when they feasted,--nectar drink, ambrosia bread,-- Why, I tell ye, fellers, never would I swop the grub I swipe When the roas'in'-ears air plenty en the worter millons ripe! III. Near the sugar camps of glory is the worter millon patch Like a great big nest of goodies thet is jest a-gone to hatch; En ye take yer thumb en finger in an ecstasy so drunk Thet ye hardly hear the music of theyr dreamy plunky-plunk! En the griefs air gone ferever, en the sorrers lose control Ez ye feed the angel in ye on the honeys of a soul, En ye smack yer lips with laughter while the birds of heaven pipe, When the roas'in'-ears air plenty en the worter-millons ripe! IV. O, the darlin' days of summer when the stars of plenty shine With the apples in the orchard en the graps upon the vine! When the hedges bud en blossom, en the medders rich en rare Breathe the perfumes of the clovers like an incense everywhayre! En the world seems like yer mother, with the tender hands thet bless All the restless race of struggle with a heaped-up happiness, En her han'kerchiefs of glory from yer eyes the weepin's wipe, When the roas'in'-ears is plenty en the worter-millons ripe! Don't You Fret. Don't you fret about the weather 'Cause it seems a little hot; You will find it rather sultry Over yonder, like as not! And unless you mend your manners You will land without a doubt, Where the brim-stone keeps a blazin' And the fire is never out! The Kingbolt Philosopher. "In spite of whut some fellers say, this world never owed anybody a livin' yit!" said Uncle Ezra Mudge, as he whetted his scythe and tried the edge on the broad part of his thumb. "Thet heresy wuz invented fer the lazy cuss thet wuz too ornery to git up in the mornin' and hustle fer grub while the grass wuz wet. "Some fellers seem ter act on the habit thet the world not only owes 'em a livin' but air willin' fer some body else to do the collectin' fer 'em. Leastways, they never do much hustlin' in thet direction theirselves. En I hev noticed thet when other fellers collect the livin' fer a feller, they giner'ly confisticate the most ov it in commissions!" "Doing Pretty Well." There are many that you meet with Who are always full of gloom, And they chew the rag forever 'Bout the darkness of their doom; But as through the world we journey, There's a joy that none may tell When we meet the pleasant people Who are "doing pretty well." There are fellows by the dozens Who are always in the skies, And forever capture fortunes Of the most gigantic size; But we stagger from their presence And their glories that repel, For the quiet-spoken persons Who are "doing pretty well." O, it's neither sun nor shadow All the time from year to year,-- And it's neither all of pleasure Or of pain,--the journey here! But whatever clouds may gather Or what sunshine, for a spell Let us keep a steady temper And keep "doing pretty well!" Caught on the Fly. Hitch your wagon to a star, if you will, but always stand ready to throw the harness on the mules, also. The man who masters the world may trust in Providence, but he climbs to greatness on the stepping stones of hard work. In the economy of farmers entirely up against the crab-grass in the cotton-patch, the mule is mightier than the sword. What shall it matter though sorrows distress us? God sends the sun and the shadows to bless us! And through all the years Joy ever appears, With a little of love and a little of laughter To fashion this life for a jolly hereafter! The Kingbolt Philosopher. "I want ter say," remarked Uncle Ezra Mudge as he began his Sunday shaving and stropped his razor on his thumb-nail, "I want ter say thet eddication is a big thing, but there air some things it can't do. One of 'em is ter give brains ter a fool. No school wuz ever yit found thet could change a wooden head ter flesh en blood; en the pore teachers air bein' continua'ly pestered ter death with idiotic payrents a-tryin' to have 'em stuff brains in their kids which the good Lord dident give any to. You kin plant jimson weeds in the garden, en tend 'em and water 'em, en nuss 'em the hull season through, en you'll hev only a leetle bigger crop of jimson seed at the wind-up. En it's jest thet way when brainless cubs air sent off ter collidge!" And the old man wiped his face with a hot towel and went on with his shaving. There are many pleasant things in this world, but it is the job that allows us to get up when we please in the morning that makes life one grand sweet song. In Prayer. Beyond the narrow years Thou sendest me, Flecked with their sun and shadow, tears and wrong, Grant me this glory, Father, this to see,-- A world made happy in a world made strong! The Kingbolt Philosopher. "Them millionairs kin hev all the money they want en all the fun they kin git outen it," said Uncle Ezra Mudge as he drew on his blue denim wampus and whistled for the hounds, "but I kin git more ra'al fun en pure enjoyment outen a three hour 'coon-hunt with ole Lead then they git outen all theyr tom-foolin' aroun' with awty-mobeels en yats en summer ree-sorts en sea-side foolishness. It takes mighty leetle money ter make a man happy thet loves his work, en all the millions they kin pile up in front of him wouldn't buy a single beller from ole Lead on a hot trail! Come on, Lead!" And the old man strode away through the clearing with all a boy's enthusiasm for the hunt. The Little Boy Land. I. Away in the dim and the dusk of the years Lies the Little Boy Land of the Soul, Where the days are alight with the love that endears And the lullabies tenderly roll; Where the cares never come with their burdens of woe To the gates of the kingdom of day, And the joys are supreme as the little feet go Through the glorified path ways of play. II. There are beautiful curls in the realms over there; There are cheeks that are rosy and glad; There are eyes full of glee, never clouded by care, Never shadowed by tears that are sad; There are toys for the wishing,--tops, marbles and strings,-- There are ponies no hand may control; And the moments go by on their wonderful wings In the Little Boy Land of the Soul. III. There are mother's fond kisses, enraptured with love; There are joys never sullied with stain; There are dreams brighter far than the dreams born above, And the raptures that banish all pain; And the world is so good that it cannot be true, And its paths lead to Heart's happy goal, While the joys of content every longing imbue In the Little Boy Land of the Soul. IV. O, Little Boy Land! How afar into wrong From the vales of your virtues I roam! How far, since the croon of her lullaby song I have wandered from mother and home! But here is a heart that can never forget Where the joys of our kingdom's yet roll, And I see through the mists of the eyes that are wet All the Little Boy Land of the Soul. Caught on the Fly. Faith and hope count a hundred, while idleness and discouragement are getting ready to figure. There are many different motives concealed in the various compartments of man's being, but Vanity holds the key that unlocks them all. The Kingbolt Philosopher. "The feller thet is so wibbly-wobbly thet he can't trust his own idees," said Uncle Ezra Mudge as he stopped in the midst of his wood-chopping and leaned up against a log to rest, "is the kind of a feller who never amounts ter shucks in a cow pen. It takes a man who hez kep' hisself in sich a condition thet he knows jist whut he kin depend on when the firin' begins, who allus wins in the bayonet charge. En it don't pay to fool aroun' huntin' up other people's idees before you strike hard licks. Ef you do, the chances air your wood'll be scarce when the cold days blow aroun'!" And the old man spat on his hardened palms and went on with his labor. In the Best Society. "It sho'ly costs like ebryti'ng to move in de bes' socieety at Saint Looey!" said a newly arrived Guthrie coon to an old resident. "It jes' erbout takes all de money yuh kin make to keep up wid de pace ob de high flyahs in dat ole town. So I jes' come down heah whar a pooah coon kin hab a good time en save some ob de coin on foh dollahs a week, en git in de bes' culled socieety foh an ole banjo in de week days en two bits in de collection hat on de Sunday mohnin's!" Be Strong to Dare. Not he whose craven soul rejects the fight And flees abjectly from the booming strife Achieves the summits of his greatest might Upon the blood-red battle-fields of life. Be strong to dare! And if the conflict's lost, Men boast the fight when misers count the cost! When Mr. Money Comes to Town. When Mister Money comes to town, The waiting thousands throng The crowded highways up and down To see him pass along; They cheer him as he passes by, They clap with loud acclaim, And shout applauses to the sky At mention of his name. They push and jostle with delight No matter what the day; They follow him through all the night To hear what he may say; They leave old friends divinely sweet To chase this new one down, And fall devoutly at his feet When Money comes to town. Forgotten all the scenes of yore,-- The joys of other years; The perfect bliss that went before And gladdened toils and tears; Behold! The old things pass away, And new ones come to crown The dazzling glories of the day When Money comes to town. O, Mister Money! What's your rush! Why do you hurry so! Entangled up in all the crush, I can't get next, you know! Just come and camp with me and mine! You'll never see us frown; To have you with us will be fine Whene'er you come to town! Caught on the Fly. When a man barters his honor for money, he never gets a chance to rue back. Running this big world must be quite a job, but every man who talks politics thinks himself capable of bossing the whole works. The next crop that needs looking up in the quotations is the length of the pole required for the persimmons about election day. Feelin' Fine. Roas'in' eahs dar on de stalk,-- Millons 'tween de rows; Eb'ry t'ing a-makin' talk Gin de crop ob woes; Hebben come en settles down On de millon vine; Dis heah dahkey's shuah in town Feelin' mos'ly fine! The Little Feet. Little feet that weary so Down the dusty roads, Pebbled are the paths you go With your heavy loads,-- When the restless hours are o'er And you cease to weep, Little limbs shall ache no more In the arms of sleep. Little feet that weary so On their journey long, You shall lose the hurts you know In the smiles of song! All the lullabies of light, All the smiles of play, Romp across the darks of night Into brighest day. Little feet that weary so! Come and let me take All the heart-aches of your woe For your baby's sake! Cuddle on my lap, and flee From the world's distress; Let us run away and be Where the fairies bless! Caught on the Fly. The fellow that "soldiers" too much in the hay-field generally soldiers too little in the battle-field of life. The smile is a lightning-express train that carries you fast and far, while the frown is only a wheel-barrow that you have to push along. In the battle of life, nothing is gained by deserting your guns to the enemy. Stand by them till the ammunition is gone, whether they are popguns or flint-locks. * * * * * If you ever feel inclined to blame a man for making mistakes, just look in the glass and behold the manner of man he is. * * * * * The Sunday School is undoubtedly a good place for a boy, but as a corrective measure it cannot be compared to an apple tree limb and a handy wood-shed. * * * * * The folks who sit on the back-steps and worry about the future never catch any smiles from the present as she passes the front gate. Love's Dream. I. Love gave me a Dream in the years that have fled From the glorified joys of her beautiful home, And over the world of the living and dead It has followed forever wherever I roam; And over the mountains and through the black night It has guided my feet with its wonderful light. II. It has joyed at the triumphs that came with renown, And its rapture surpassed what the multitudes knew; It has grieved at the failure that lost me the crown, With a faithful devotion unknown to but few; Through Despair's heavy shadow and Hope's holy gleam, How my lips still were kissed by the lips of the Dream! III. It has wept with my sorrow,--the sorrow that fell Where the heart battled hard with the merciless foe; It has laughed with my laughter when fortune was well And the blossoms of triumph were blooming below; And far through the black and the bright of each year It has followed my feet till it followed me here. IV. O, the Dream that has lived through the years of the lost, That with constancy shares all the paths I have trod, Never leave me alone till the harbor is crossed And I stand in the power and the presence of God; And on through the ages no glory shall seem Half so sweet as the love of my Dream,--of my Dream! The Frying Pan. "With all your talk about necessary house-hold implements," said Sooner Dave, "none of 'em is in it with the frying pan,--just the common, ordinary, every-day frying pan, that you chuck under your buck-board or tie to your saddle-horn. These parlor ornaments, side-boards, new-fangled stoves, potato-mashers, coffee-strainers and all the everlasting tribe of culinary jim-cracks have to turn out of the trail for the frying pan and give it the right of way. "With the frying pan for his companion, the civilized idiot is at home any where,--prairie or woods, creek bank or deer-lick or prairie-chicken trysting place. With a frying pan and some bacon fat, home is never far away, and a full meal is so near that heaven comes close to the hungry man. It has fought more battles, made more forced marches and won more victories than Napoleon. It has surveyed lands, bunched cattle and soonered claims. It has done all the pioneering for the frontiers-man. In this one divine utensil, the wanderer fries his meat, bakes his flap-jacks and brews his coffee; and as they all come steaming from its exalted circumference of life-sustaining food, what chafing-dish or modern steam-cooker was ever waited on by such a willing appetite? "When I die," continued Sooner Dave, "I want a frying pan chiseled on my tomb-stone; for it has been the sole companion of the truest happiness I have known in this world. And if over in the next world there is a chance to choose one's crown after the style and finish the wearer may desire, I am going to take my faithful old frying pan along and wear it for a few thousand years just to show the angels how much a man can appreciate good things!" The Quest. What matters bog or bramble of delay,-- The mountain slope or shore of ocean reeds? Pursue thy goal! Thy feet shall find the way Unerringly where thy One Vision leads! To the World! I. To the world! To the world! Let us carol its song, Let us conquer its grief and the wrath of its wrong, Till the lilt of its laughter shall sweeten the sod With the joys of the skies and the gladness of God! II. To the world! To the world! Where the gleam hides the gloom And the lilies of love on the battle-fields bloom,-- Where the light of the longing lies low on the stream, And the soul seeks the crown of his dream,--of his dream! III. To the world! To the world! To the world that we know With its sunlights of love and its shadows of woe,-- To the world lifted up, lifted far to His face, And the mercy that dwells in His bountiful grace! IV. To the world! To the world! It has beautiful years With the pleasurers of peace and the turmoil of tears, And wherever the feet wander fainting or far Every day is a sun, every night is a star! V. To the world! O, the world! Ah, the fruits of its soil From the gardens of love drive the terrors of toil, And the sins that embitter us leave us and then We shall stand in His presence perfected of men! The Glory Train. Yondah stan's de gospel station Whar de railroad runs away Foh de house ob many mansions Ober at de judgment day! Bettah git a move on, sinnah! Doan't yuh let yoh folks detain! Hurry up an' git yuh ticket Foh de glory train! It's on time an' sho'lly comin' Wid on measu'hed powah, Wid the ingine flames a-spoutin' Moah dan fohty miles an houah! Doan't yuh stan' dar jes' a-foolin'! Wid de judgment on yoh brain! Hurry up an git yoh ticket Foh de glory train! Preachah say yuh have ter hurry, 'Case de kyars go whizzin' by,-- Ef yuh want ter check yoh baggage Foh de mansions high; Bid farewell ter ebery pleasuah, An' de bad wo'ld's burnin' pain; Hurry up an' git yoh ticket Foh de glory train! There are many dainties that hold attractions for the epicure, but in the strenuous times of campaign struggles they all give way to "pie." The Bright Day. The bright day, the bright day, The shadows smiling through,-- The bright day, the bright day Where Love looks up at you! The bright day, the bright day! The sorrows fade from view; The white day, the light day, The child heart always knew! The bright day, the bright day! The sun is golden there; The sad clouds are glad clouds And gone is every care. The sky life, the high life, Is waiting at the shore; The bright day, the bright day, Shining evermore! Caught on the Fly. The wonder of it all is how a fool can ever have any money to be parted from. When the efficient man appears, there is no juggling with occasion or ceremonious tradition. The instinct of helpless selfishness clothes him on the spot with robe and crown. Shoot arrows at the sun, if you will; but before you proceed to unload your quiver in that direction, set aside a sufficient reserve fund to discharge squarely at beef-steak and potatoes. The Kingbolt Philosopher. "I heered tell," said Uncle Ezra Mudge, "thet one of them-air brass-collared fellers down at St. Looey thinks he hez a baboon thet is the connectin' link betwixt men en monkeys. I seed the same thing over to Lumpkinsville the last time I wuz thar. I guess thet feller must hev gone down thar en caught it en put it in a cage. It wuz in some respects much like a human. It walked on two legs en wore clothes, shoes, a shirt en a hat like a man. It wuz erbout the size ov a fourteen-yar ole boy, en it kep' on smokin' cigerretts all the time. A feller tole me thar it 'ud smoke six boxes ov 'em a day. I don't see whut's the use ov goin' clar to St. Looey to see a thing like thet, when they keep plenty ov 'em as near as Lumpkinsville! Stan'nin' right out on the main streets, too, en not chargin' a-cent to look at it all ye want to!" If you have the "good resolution habit" swear off on that and do business. Little Sermons. The man who has a good appetite needn't worry the Lord with any troubles. If faith without works is dead, that of the average loafer must be worse than an Egyptian mummy. The brother with the best lungs may pray the loudest, but that gives him no insurance of a cool place over yonder. Pretty Good World. Pretty good world, If you know how to use it, Pretty good life If you never abuse it; Jog along, brother, Through pleasure and sorrow; All will be lovely With sunshine tomorrow! There are many patent ways to keep young these days, but we have observed that they all fail after a woman passes forty-five. Don't estimate your engine power too high. Many a man with a $5,000 education is too small for a 30-cent job. We Sat and Talked of Other Days. I. We sat and talked of other days,--two old and wrinkled men,-- Beyond the dreams of boyish hours and all we fancied then,-- And as we talked our hearts grew warm, and down the noiseless night We romped again with golden feet and hearts of pure delight. II. The dreams we dreamed when life was young and all the world was new Came back again from vanished ways with raptures smiling through, And all the high resolves of heart and all the deeds of hand Returned equipped with robe and crown and showed the Promised Land! III. We sat and talked of other days,--the days that went away,-- Of child-hood's dreamy hours of joy and child-hood's heart of play; And as we talked of other days, forgetting weal or woe, The boys and girls came back again across the Long Ago. IV. We knew this life of men and things with all its griefs and glees Is not a dream of pleasures sweet or lilt of lullabies; And yet despite the shadows deep that o'er the sunshine fall, 'Tis always worth the living and its songs are all in all. V. We sat and talked of other days! O, days that died unfelt, Where innocence was crowned with love and all the virtues dwelt; And in our hearts we sadly knew, whate'er the sages say, That Heaven romps with us no more since those days went away! Caught on the Fly. Finding fault is not hard work, but it is a great waste of valuable time. "Food for thought" is a popular and necessary brand, but the hungry man entirely overlooks it on the bill of fare. If you would have a soft berth in this world, you must first run the full-feathered goose down and then do the plucking by your own main strength. The World All Right. Don't sing of a bright world That waits "over there," But warble of this world And banish your care; Beyond the dark valley Sweet heaven may be, But the world is all right And it's all here for me! It has a few shadows And something of tears, But they only make brighter The beautiful years; And this world is so jolly Whatever may grieve That I'm not in a hurry To pull up and leave! The Kingbolt Philosopher. "I've noticed," said Uncle Ezra Mudge, "thet many en many a time it ain't knowin' how to git up thet makes a success of a man so much ez knowin' how to git down. Sooner er later a tumble comes rollin' along fer the best of fellers, en before he knows what's a-comin' he's clear down at the bottom of the pile. The feller thet kin git up a-laffin' under sich peculierr sarcumstances is the feller thet wins out en is on top when Gabriel goes to tootin' of his horn; but the feller thet mopes aroun' en talks erbout whut he hez bin instid of tellin' whut he's a-goin' ter be is kivered over in the scrap-heap, world without end, ferever en ever, Amen!" And the old man knocked the ashes from his Missouri meerschaum and ambled into the kitchen where the long green hung. God Give Us Change! God give us change! The days are long With labors hard that make us weary, And o'er the gladness of each song There floats a cadence somewhat dreary; We'd like to loaf awhile, for--say-- Some five or ten sweet years, or twenty, And chase the dull cares all away; God give us change and give us plenty! God give us change! The dull days flow With quietude that palls a little; Just anything to make it go And heat the steam up in the kettle; No matter how the fortunes kind In dull monotony prove pleasant, We'd rather mix things up and find A stirring scramble of the present! We do not ask for all the gifts To fall upon us in a tumble; A very few where life's boat drifts Will keep us happy through the jumble; We only ask the mirth of men,-- Where'er we be we'll always love it, And if the big bills vanish, then God give us change and plenty of it! "The Sooners." The "Sooners" may have their faults, but as a general propositions they are to be preferred to the "laters." Every good thing that has blest mankind since Adam had his celebrated adventure with green goods in the Garden of Eden, has been discovered, invented, dug out or dug up, by a "sooner." He has always been a dare-devil whose courage was so prominent as to attract the envy and malice of every "later" that whittled dry-goods boxes into splinters and used his time to cuss "the government." God bless the whole "sooner" tribe, say I, from Adam down to General Kuroki! The home lights! The home lights! How they blaze and burn Through the darkness of the shadows Everywhere we turn! What if stormy weather gather On the hills we roam, We shall refuge find forever In the lights of home! Stand Pat. In the mighty game of life, Stand pat! Don't be moved by storm or strife, Stand pat! Keep within your heart a song, And the days will not be long, Till you conquer every wrong,-- Stand pat, stand pat! Don't be bluffed by this or that,-- Stand pat! Half the howls are chitter-chat,-- Stand pat! When you hold the ruling hand You are always in command, And you'll surely beat the band.-- Stand pat, stand pat! There's no need to draw or fill, Stand pat! Play your cards to make a kill, Stand pat! If there's one that wants to raise, Back your last chip while he plays Till the chump no longer stays,-- Stand pat, stand pat! There's a stack of reds and blues, Stand pat! For the chap that knows their use, Stand pat! When the game is o'er and won Are the stakes that urged us on, God will cash our chips at dawn,-- Stand pat, stand pat! The Valleys of Rest. I. What matters it, Dear, though the burdens be sore? In the Valleys of Rest we shall weary no more, And the music of mirth with its solace shall sing All the songs of delight the beatitudes bring! II. Nevermore shall the days with the sorrows be sad Where the love-roses bloom and the joy-mornings glad-- Where the violets dream through the east and the west Of the beautiful lands in the Valleys of Rest! III. There the heart from its grief in a moment shall cease, And the soul hush its cries in the cadence of peace, And the life with the laughter of rhapsody blest Shall rejoice through the years in the Valleys of Rest. IV. O, the dear dreams that fled down the deeps of the past That await with their welcomes our coming at last; And the lips of our love that our lips never pressed Smiling there for their own in the Valleys of Rest! V. O, the raptures that stay for our glorified feet When the joys of the past and the future shall meet,-- When the hopes of the years shall return from their quest For the love-crowns of life in the Valleys of Rest! VI. Ah, the days, Dear, the days with their griefs and their glees Sail away on swift ships o'er eternity's seas; But at last we shall anchor with Love for our guest On the Paradise shores by the Valleys of Rest! The Ignorance of the Court. They tell a good story over at Guthrie at Judge Burford's expense. Recently, an old Tennessee darkey, charged with stealing chickens, was brought into court for trial. The facts were all against him. He had no attorney, and when the Judge asked him if he wanted an attorney appointed to defend him, he declared that he did not. "But you are entitled to a lawyer," the court explained, "and you might as well have the benefit of his services!" "Yoh Honah would jes' a'pint me some ob dese hyah po'ah white trash lawyehs," the old darkey replied, "an' he wouldn't do me no good. Ef it's jes' de same to you, jedge, I'd ruthah depen' on de ignorance ob de couht!" The Quest for Joy. I. A phantom I follow forever through all of the shadow and shine, Whose face is fair as the blossom, whose form is as warm as the wine; Whose lips are as sweet as the dewfalls that velvet the mornings of June, And eyes as the deep stars of Autumn that glow in the glories of noon! II. A phantom I follow forever! Yet never on ocean or land Have I heard the sweet voice of her music or leaped at the thrill of her hand, And never, ah, never a greeting she gives that is tender and kind, As I follow through mazes of beauty where flowers in her foot-steps I find! III. A phantom I follow forever! What matter though careless of me, She drifts to the sands of the desert and sails on the wave-tossing sea? With foot never parched by the barrens, with boat never broken by storm, I follow, I follow her passing and clutch at the wraith of her form! IV. And still I will follow the phantom! Whatever the questing may seem I'll conquer the spoil of her glory and climb to the crown of her dream; And over the deeps of my yearning and over the hills of my hope, She leads and I follow forever, wherever her phantasies grope! V. And there at the last I shall find her--the angel that led me afar,-- And we shall rejoice in the raptures where all the beatitudes are, And whether the journey be little, or whether the journey be long, I press the red lips of her beauty and leap at the lilt of her song! Caught on the Fly. When Misfortune concludes to pay you a visit, she pushes the door open and walks in without knocking. Woman's inhumanity to man,--the one she has and the other she wants,--maketh the divorce lawyer fat with ali-money. Temptation is the dangerous banana-peel on the side-walk of upright conduct; and even the bare foot sometimes takes a fall-down. Too Busy. Trouble will double If trouble gets room, But will pine if you leave her And die in her gloom; For trouble is lonesome And moans from the start If you face her with firmness And lock up your heart Sorrow will borrow Wherever she can, But will leave when you tell her You're never her man; Don't flirt with the vixen, Don't welcome her face, But exhort her to leave you For some warmer place. Make Trouble and Sorrow,-- The couple that moans-- Keep out of your pathway And limp on the stones Just let them go weeping Through all of the years; For a man is too busy To join in their tears. "When the Crow's Feet Come." When we reach the Land of Forty, And the hot blood cools a jot, There's a mighty sight of changes In our vision, like as not; And we sober down a little As we figure up life's sum When we waken in the morning And the crow's feet come. When they scratch their little wrinkles Round the corner of the eyes We begin to chase the creatures In a horrified surprise; But they cling with cool persistence And our hearts are stricken dumb For we know they'll never leave us When the crow's feet come. We may tonic and cosmetic, We may take our beauty sleep; We may rub and punch and powder But the claws go deep and deep; And before we understand it All our beauty's on the bum For the years are turning yellow When the crow's feet come! But it's all the way of Nature! There's no use to sob or sigh, 'Cause the chin takes on a wobble And the wrinkles wrap the eye; If we heap our hearts with gladness Life with music still shall hum, Though we reach the Land of Forty And the crow's feet come! A Welcome for Winter. I. A welcome for Winter! Though summer shall fade, There is joy on the prairies her bounties have made, And the Land of the Sunshine all happiness knows Through the days of the shadows and nights of the snows! II. A welcome for Winter! What matters the cold Which the harvest has warmed with the russet and gold? All the valleys of plenty shall laugh through the white Of the snow-laden day and the storm-ridden night. III. A welcome for Winter! Though June, rosy-red, Has plucked all her blossoms and frightened far fled, There are hives with their honeys and granaries sweet, And the fiddles of music with spring for the feet! IV. A welcome for Winter! If far from the days All the lilies have gone from the violet ways, There is joy that will dance o'er the meadows and sing, Where the carols of plenty their blessedness bring. V. Then, ho, for the Winter! There's love on the hills, There is laughter and peace by the ice-covered rills, And the hearts shall rejoice in the songs that arise In the raptures that roll under storm-laden skies! Caught on the Fly. Some people act on an idea that work is so sacred they fear to touch it least they profane its divine nature. Opportunity is a beautiful bird, but so shy that it feeds on the wing and never alights long enough for a common man to pluck its plumage. Every man has within him the essentials of exalted greatness; but most of us are so enmeshed in small follies that the greatness cannot break through. The Kingbolt Philosopher. "I've lived off en on in this land of Trouble fer mor'n seventy years," said Uncle Ezra Mudge, as he adjusted a shingle-nail in place of a missing button for a suspender hold. "En I never yit got a chance ter shake han's with him. I hev hearn tell thet he is a mighty big feller, but my observation is thet when you onct git up close to whayre he's a-stayin', he shrivels up so under a brave look frum honest eyes thet you hev ter git a maggifyin' glass ter diskiver the kind ov an animile he actu'lly is!" When Willie Goes to School. When Willie goes to school, it seems The house has lost its light, And silence like a shadow dreams Of sunshine out of sight; The place assumes a somber air, And lonely musings rule The moments slowly passing there When Willie goes to school. We hustle him from bed, and tell To quickly wash and comb, His breakfast eat, and gather well The books he carried home; We brush his coat and fix his tie, And with him fuss and fool, And kiss him as he hurries by When Willie goes to school. And all day long we anxious wait To hear his foot-steps fast, Make music sweet there at the gate When he comes home at last! The lonely heart with rapture fills And life's hot warrings cool, And all the home with laughter thrills When Willie comes from school! Ah, World, the school that young hearts seek! We know full well that you Will keep him long at tasks that speak Of books and ferule, too! God grant that in the far-off years He finds no dunce's stool, Whereon to weep with foolish tears When Willie goes to school! 'Tis Morning on the Hill-tops. I. What though the valleys wander in shadows manifold? 'Tis morning on the hill-tops and all the skies are gold, And on the purple summits the raptures of the blest Are crooning their evangels and singing songs of rest! II. 'Tis morning on the hill-tops? The darkness at the feet Shall blossom at the dawning with all the roses sweet, And every grief we gather and every tear we know Shall vanish into gladness as up the paths we go. III. 'Tis morning on the hill-tops! The glories of His love With life and light supernal are waiting there above, And up the slopes of shadow our weary feet shall climb To kiss the smiles of rapture beyond the tears of time. IV. 'Tis morning on the hill-tops! What matters sob or sin? The Master waits our coming and welcomes us within; And there beyond the shadows where gladness reigns alway We'll meet the hosts of morning, and dwell with them for aye. V. O, Morning on the Hill-tops! The dim eyes look to you, Beyond the darkened valleys and all the griefs they knew, And to the sunshine waiting in realms of rhapsody, The paths lead on and upward to where you wait for me! The Defeated. Not he who loses but who fails to fight, In God's long years reaps harvestings of blame; Not he the blind but who destroys the sight Receives the curses of the ages' blame! See the Side-Show. When you visit at the circus And behold the steeds bedight, And the hoops and rings and races And the clowns that make delight,-- You will miss the happy touches That complete your broadest grin If you see the main performance And don't take the side-show in. There'll be high and lofty tumbles, There'll be acrobatic feats, There'll be leaps and bounds and twistings, That will lift you from your seats; But with all the glare and glitter, You'll but know the fun begin, If you see the main performance And don't take the side-show in. There'll be elephants and lions. There'll be bears and tigers, too; There'll be clowns in robes and spangles All to please the boy in you; But the raptures of your gladness Nothing can completely win, If you see the main performance And don't take the side-show in. Life is something of a circus: It has half a hundred rings Where its jumbled aggregation Earth's attractions to you brings; But they leave the heart still heavy As it stirs with stress and din, If you see the main performance And don't take the side-show in! Voting Around. "Well, Sam, how's cotton-picking getting along?" asked a white man of his colored neighbor. "Hain't doin' any cotton-pickin' yit," replied Sam. "'Lection time's a-comin' an' I'm jes' a-votin' erroun' tell the candahdates quit runnin'!" Little Sermons. Religion is too often what the other fellow ought to practice. Good never bears any fruit for you, except when cultivated in your own heart. The devil always has a patent medicine recommended to cure trouble and increase pleasure. Examine the looks of your conscience. It may be only prejudice that has placed its hand-baggage in the wrong room. We are always glad to gather the harvest, which is abundant for the whole world, but are willing to leave the weed-pulling to the other fellow. Love Brings the Song. What if there's trouble And what if there's wrong? God sends the sunshine And Love brings the song! What if you stumble When racing it strong? Love will uplift you, For Love brings the song! Bury your troubles, And life will be long: God sends the sunshine And Love brings the song! Mistah Cotton. Mistah Cotton come toh me In de young spring-time, En he say, say he toh me, "Sambo, bet yuh dime, Dat you'll never pick dat patch! Dat I'll fool yuh crap, Fer de weeds'll make a catch En de bolls'll drap!" Den I chase him up en down, En I take his bet; Chop dat cotton clar toh town; How dis niggah sweat! En I plow him sho'ly fine,-- Wo'k him day en night, En de fust t'ing, how he shine Wid de rows ob white! Mistah Cotton, doan't yuh t'ink Yuh kin fool me now; I'll dis pick yuh quick es wink,-- Lemme show yuh how! Pile yuh in de wagon-bed, Sell yuh, ting a ling! How de silvah-dallahs spread Dat sweet song dey sing! Don't use a telescope to discover your neighbor's faults. Even the sun has a few spots, but it would be a cold day for you without the glory of his shine. Hear the Song. I There are dark and gloomy corners full of sorrow, like as not, But the world is glad with music and it carols everywhere; And if now and then a shadow dwells upon a little spot, There is sunshine on the meadows and the wide ways laugh at care. O, my children! Don't you worry, As you go along; Let your life be glad and cheerful And you'll hear the Song! II. As we wander down the valleys where the griefs of life assail, We will find a few obstructions that are heaping in the road; But with feet that never weary and with hearts that never quail, We shall mount the glory-summits to the Summer-lands' abode. O, my children! Don't you weary As you go along; Climb the path-ways to the hill-tops, And you'll hear the Song! III. You will bend beneath the burdens as you meet the toils of life, And your arms will ache a little as you labor down the way; But the rest of God's perfection waits beyond the bitter strife And He crowns the souls that struggle with His Everlasting Day! O, my children! Don't you murmur, As you go along; Look above to God's Anointed, And you'll hear the Song! Caught on the Fly. When Love leaves life, Laughter packs up her things and gets ready to move. When Hope dies in the heart, all its poor relations refuse to remain for the funeral services. The people who are all the time trying to manage other people should remember that though Providence created Man in His own image, it has been unable to manage him ever since. "When Canderdates Git After Pa." When canderdates git after Pa, Set up seegars, an' tell him flat How big a man he is, and Ma How good she cooks, an' all of that, I slip aroun' an' let 'em know I'm something on the homestead, too, Fer onct upon a time or so They'll hand a nickel out fer you! When they come here, it's mighty fine! Pa stops the team, an' work we quit An' them there fellere stays to dine An' talk the day-lights outen it! They tell us how the gover'ment Is goin' on, an' quote the law An' tell their choice fer president, When canderdates git after Pa! An' then they'll brag about his farm; How fine his hogs an' hosses air; How slick his cattle, till my arm Gits tired at all the jollies there! An' then they tell Ma she's a peach, A honey-lulu without flaw, A angel fur beyond their reach, When canderdates git after Pa. When after dinner they hitch up He sends me out to feed the shoats, An' then they drink with nary cup An' talk about the township votes; An' after they git gone, Pa he Has got a breath that's orful raw; But I tell you it's nuts to me When canderdates git after Pa! Don't Worry. O, brother, don't you worry,-- Don't you sob or sigh; Just soak yourself with sunshine And let the world go by! What matters all, my brother. The world may do or say? For you and I outlive the sky And it lives but a day! * * * * * Keep at work, my brother; Keep at work I say! There's not a cosy corner For lazy ones that play; And as through life you labor And gladly jog along, Just soak yourself with sunshine And fill your heart with song! Little Sermons. If Heaven is too far away for you to reach out and shake hands with it, there is something wrong with your conduct. If this life isn't worth living well, how do you expect to take one with you into another world that will be worth any more? While you are praying for the unregenerate sinners of this world, don't forget to put in a word now and then for your own personal benefit. "The Lord is Good to Me." "The Lord is good to me!" he said, As on his bended knees he knelt Above his meager crust of bread And voiced the gratitude he felt; And from his supplications, he Arose with strength renewed to face The pinchings of his poverty, The sorrows of his humble place. "The Lord is good to me!" she prayed Above her sleeping babe at rest, While smiles of exaltation played Across her features, care oppressed; And from the crib of anguish where The fever-wasted baby slept She happy slipped away from care And all the anxious tears she wept. "The Lord is good to me!" he cried 'Mid life's wild wreck as close he grasped The scattered fragments to his side Of millions lost that once he clasped: And with a peace and thankfulness He never knew when Fortune smiled, He put behind him all distress And laughed as lightly as a child. "The Lord is good to me!" How slight The gifts of God we grateful bless, While countless treasures of delight Escape the praise of thankfulness! Through days of sunshine and of rain, Through nights of griefs and rhapsody, How I forget with high disdain How much the Lord is good to me! Caught on the Fly. In these days of beef trust domination, every man is known by the breakfast food he eats. The charity that covers a multitude of sins generally runs mighty short of blankets in the winter time. Fishing poles are now out of date, but the candidates are bidding mighty lively for the pole that is long enough to reach the persimmon. A Doubtful Voter. "Well, Jimmy, how's your Pa getting along with his corn-shucking and cotton picking?" inquired Bill Smith of his neighbor's son, which neighbor was noted for his industry and thrifty habits. "Pap's gittin' erlong fine with 'em," answered the boy. "Ye see there's five county tickets in the field a-runnin' this year, an' pap's a doubtful voter; an' whenever a candidate comes, pap jes' goes erlong shuckin' corn or pickin' cotton, an' the candidate helps him fer the sake of comp'ny. We've got all our corn shucked, en ef we hev no bad weather, there won't be cotton enough left to pick by 'lection day to lint yer whiskers with!" Another Vintage. "It is more of the Spirit of '76 that we need!" shouted the campaign orator. "I haven't any of the spirits of '76," broke in a bystander in the audience. "But I've a quart of 'white mule' here in my pocket as fine as was ever brewed, if that will relieve your wants any!" Providence Takes Care of his Own. "De Lawd am pow'ful good to de culled fokes," said a negro philosopher speaking from his dusky meditations. "No soonah am de wohtah-millions gone de way ob all de yarth dan de pahsimmons git ripe ernuff toh make de possum fat, bress de Lawd!" Forgotten. He conquered all the foes that bannered wrong; He strove with might and did heroic deeds; Yet nameless he; for to his lofty meeds None wrought the immortality of song. Give Us More. No matter how the world may go, How high it heaps our store, For all the joys that banish woe We always wish for more! And from the cares that fume and fret, We cry as e'er before: "We thank thee, Lord, for what we get, But give us more,--still more!" In Yearning Mood. I. Turn back, O Time, to where the young years rove And smile with rosy lips and sing through joyous days; The dull feet grow so heavy, and so far the ways They wander from my love! II. It was not this world where the dancing feet Kept pace with joy and leaped through lanes of perfect hours; It was that far-off world that sang with birds and flowers, And all the raptures sweet. III. It was not this world where our glad lips clung, And close between the long-drawn kisses fondly told Of dreams revealed not and of ecstasies that rolled From glad hearts always young! IV. The dream-face beckons yonder,--beckons o'er The long years fled afar and lapse of longing days, Who leaned against my bosom in the love-wreathed ways. Then fled, and came no more! V. Turn turn, O, Time, and lead with thy hard hands Me like a child back where two young hearts fondly met: A music laughs there always, and beyond the dim eyes wet Love rules her perfect lands! On the Road to Riches. "What are you foolin' with now, John?" Asked the inquisitive neighbor of John who was always inventing something that he thought would bring him fame and fortune. "I'm on the right track at last," replied John gleefully. "I'm inventin' a pole that will knock the persimmons, an' if I can only make it work, I'll be a millionaire in fourteen minutes, selling out to the candidates that are running for office this year!" A little life in which to do The little deeds that rise before; A little love, a song or two, And then the little life is o'er! "When Troubles Come, My Honey." When troubles come, my honey, And sorrows dark the sky, We'll seek the cave of faithful love And watch the clouds go by; A refuge safe, my honey, From all the storm and strife, Where joy shall keep the strong heart young Through all the cares of life. Then come with me, my honey; What though the wild winds blow? With hand and heart true love shall keep Us safe through weal and woe! The storm-clouds dark, my honey, May fret the deep blue sky, But love shall keep us smiling still Of bright days by and by! Be Patient. Don't you lose your stock of patience When the world seems going wrong; It was here before you found it With its happiness and song; And it's altogether likely That it's pretty sure to stay With its music and its blossoms After you have gone away. And no matter how you labor Smoothing down the rocky way, On the paths where men shall wander It is likely stones will stay. Here and there the little pebbles You may banish one by one, But the mountains rise forever And your work is never done. Don't despair! What use to worry When the load you have to leave? Other hands and hearts will follow And the heavy task receive; Do your own part to the limit! Give it all the strength you can, And as sure as God is ruling He will crown you all a Man! Step by step the world advances Up the long and slippery slope; Step by step it slow upwanders Through the valleys of its hope; Leave the tasks that rise beyond you! Do the little deeds you can, And the millions coming after Shall complete what you began! The Good Book tells us that the Master went about doing good while he stayed in the world, and so we are not surprised when it tells about his welcome to the glory-land. To the Light. I. To the Light! To the Light! Let us climb to the Star That is swinging above where the benisons are, Till we rest in the meadows where blossom above All the daisies of Peace and the roses of Love! II. From the dim and the dusk of the blood-sprinkled years, How the nations have toiled from the valleys of tears,-- How the races have groped through the shadows of Wrong To the gladness of Joy and the music of Song! III. And the Man with the Race, how he leaps from the woe Of the battle fields dead and the sorrows they know,-- How he gathers his tents from the dark of the night Till he finds a sweet home in the gardens of light! IV. Oh, the thousands that fell by the mountains and stream Where the men of the past spilt their blood for a dream! How the feet, ever striving, slow stepped from the past Till they found the sweet music of rapture at last! V. To the Light! To the Light! Yonder still shines the Star That is waiting for us where the benisons are, And there in the meadows that blossom above We shall gather in peace all the roses of Love! Little Sermons. Some people do all they can to make others uncomfortable, and call it their religion. The love which is so superfine that it can't find a place for its home in this world is entirely too good for a hearty welcome in the next one. The reason why the preachers don't have larger congregations must be on account of their not wanting to call the sinners but the righteous to repentance, and there is always plenty of room. In the Light. Keep in the sunshine, brother! Walk in the golden light; The shadows are over yonder, And there is the night, the Night! Keep in the sunshine, brother! It gleams on the grayest slope, It smiles with the lips of pleasure, And laughs with the lips of hope. Keep in the sunshine, brother! It gladdens the world with light; The shadows are over yonder, And there is the night, the Night! Little Sermons. However we may measure it, the heart of the world is always greatly bigger than its head. Love will stir the heart into laughter when all the gold of Ophir only brings a snow-storm to life's roses. That work is only worthy which adds something to the store of things that contribute multiplied joys to the lives of men. God loves a mute but kindly tongue six days in the week more than a yawping mouth of prayer on the seventh day. Wanted to Hide. "What art thou, miserable creature!" shouted Pluto in a great rage as he beheld a shrinking, cowering form, hiding away in the deepest shadows. "Pardon me, O, god of the realm of darkness," implored the miserable shade. "I am an ante-election prophecy, and am only trying to hide myself away and be forgotten forever more!" "Poor thing, go and sin no more!" replied the king of shadows with a great pity in his voice. "Thy punishment is, indeed, deserved!" And he strode away to stir up the animals in another quarter of his dominions. Little Sermons. The thankfulness of some people stops in saying grace at the table before meals. It isn't always the front seats that are occupied by His humblest children, when the collection plate gets busy. The religion that is so brief as to last only a few hours on Sunday can be at home in a place too warm to cut ice in the great hereafter. The Sunshine Song. I. It's no matter what your sorrows, they will vanish sure and soon If you'll only use your whistle on the sunshine's golden tune; And no matter what the weather nor how the troubles throng, If you practice on the music of the sunshine's happy song. II. What's the use to pout and pester when the joy-bells cease to chime? Sweet the daisies fill the meadow and they blossom all the time! Keep your heart heaped up with gladness and a faith that's full and strong. And through all the ways of winter sing the blessed sunshine song! III. If the mountain path is steeper than your easy fancies thought, Keep on climbing for the summits and the glories that you sought; And if winter comes and pelts you with the snows that crowd along, Lift your heart and feet together to the sunshine's golden song. IV. Over yonder bloom the lilies and the roses and the life; What shall matter all the brambles and the underbrush of strife? Don't you bear the angel carols rising o'er the cries of wrong? Ope your heart and fill to bursting with the sunshine's blessed song! V. O, my brother, don't you worry! Up and down this world we go Where the summer brings the blossoms and the winter brings the snow; But it's spring the wide world over as through life we push along If the heart is full of music and we sing the sunshine song! Little Sermons. In a glad smile from a clean heart there was never room for evil to find a place to plant a suggestion of wrong doing. It may be wrong for some folks to dance, but the devil would rather have some people talk about their neighbors a minute than to dance a whole week. They can do so much better job at it. The Lights of Home. I. Heave ho the anchor, laddies! The ocean rolls before; We'll climb the waves undaunted and search the far off shore; We'll breast the angry breakers that on the beaches comb And sail, ah, sail, my hearties, for harbor-lights of home! II. 'Tis far the ships have drifted across the booming seas; 'Tis far our sails have darkened with toils and agonies; 'Tis far that youth has wandered where life's deep sorrows come But ho, my lads, we're sailing for harbor-lights of home! III. Beyond the raging tempest, beyond the waves that roar, There waits the peaceful harbor and lights upon the shore; And when the voyage ceases, beyond the farthest foam We'll anchor there forever 'neath habor-lights of home! IV Then weigh the anchor, laddies! The ship of life shall sail Once more to youth's glad mornings and joys that never fail; No matter how the weather, how far the course may roam, There always shines a welcome in harbor-lights of home! Caught on the Fly. Life is a great university, but it offers no post-graduate course for its pupils. Prejudice plays the fool, when mere lack of sense would be the highest wisdom. Too many people forsake praising God for the pleasures they have in order to pray for trouble they haven't. However you may shape things up, there is more down fool prejudice about politics than anything else in this world except Mormonism and religion. One of the strangest things in the economies of this world is that the poor people who need money never have it and the rich people who don't need it have more than they can use. "When the Campaign Liar Quits." When the hurrah days are over And the ballots all are cast, There's perchance a tinge of sadness, Over glories that are past; But we have our compensations; For no matter how it flits There's a joy that beats unbounded When the campaign liar quits! While the red fire and the rockets Fill the skies with rosy glare, There's a kind of inspiration In the shouts and music there; But we pass it up with gladness And contentment on us sits, When the ballots all are counted And the campaign liar quits! He is trained in facts and figures, He's a prodigy, in sooth; He can tell the smoothest story, But he shies away from truth; So we gladly lose the glory, (It was never worth two bits!) When the ballots all are counted And the campaign liar quits! So, no matter how it ended! Whether your men lost or mine. We can shake hands all together O'er this recompense divine; For we have a joy that pleases,-- That exalts our blessed wits; And we know when all is over That the campaign liar quits! Thank the Lord for Work. Never pray for idle hours,-- Never try to shrink; But with all your honest powers Thank the Lord for work! Labor brings the pleasures high And the joys that thrive,-- Where men laugh and where men cry, Dearest thing alive! Thank the Lord for strength to toil,-- Thank him day by day,-- Son of sky or son of soil On life's vagrant way. With a soul that fearless grows And a good arm strong, Joyously the glad heart goes Up the world of song! There was a young lady from Beaver Who feared that her fellow would leave her; So she popped to her beau; But he answered her "Neau"! And she called him a heartless deceiver! "Sing a Song of Sunshine." Sing a song of sunshine! Life is full of bliss; 'Nother over yonder Just as good as this; When the trouble's over, And the waiting long, We will sing the music Of the sunshine song! Mighty Lonesome. "Things am might loneseme erroun' de cabin now," said old Black Mose. "'Lection is ober, en de candahdates am all quit runnin' so suddenly dat nary one ob em's bin hyar fer two whole days, en de chilluns am all outen side-meat!" Caught on the Fly. Merit generally wins, but sometimes it is the doped horse in the swift race. The fellow who starts out to do the greatest good to the greatest number, generally concludes that the greatest number is No. 1. Amid the thunder and the crash of worlds, the chief question after all is how to get the most bread and butter with the least hard work. Better Hide Out. Mockin' bird up yander, Singin' in de trees, Clean fohgit it's wintah, An' de time toh fieeze! Bettah hide out, Mistah, 'Foh yuh stahve to def! Wintah's gwine toh git yuh Foh yub ketch yoh bref! Though the world of care and the griefs that cry May burden the years with a sob and sigh, Yet with one true heart and a hand that stays There's a rose for the snows of the wintry days! Caught on the Fly. A little laughter, a little love and something of tears, and then the curtain falls on the great drama of this life. No doubt, Adam had many bad habits, but he never walked about with hands in his pockets until after Eve started the first tailor shop. Some men's consciences are so worthless that if put up and sold to the highest bidder, the auctioneer would have to call off the sale. Thanksgiving Hymn. Dear Lord, for all the joyous days Thy loving hands to us have told We thank thee humbly, and we praise Thy wondrous mercies manifold! We thank thee for thy gifts of love, Thy blessed benisons of good, For all thy mercies born above, And every fond beatitude. For all the blessings thou hast sent,-- For paths that led us far from wrong,-- For holy joys and sweet content, We praise thee with our hearts of song. From thy rich treasuries above Thy freest bounties full have come To swell the laughters of our love Around the happy hearths of home. The fields have borne abundant store; The roses and the lilies white Have crowned the prairies and the shore With raptures of their love and light. The orchards bend with fruitage tall, And plenty rules from sea to sea, And at the Harvest Home we call, Dear Lord, in thankfulness to thee! Through mingled ways of shine and shade Thou hast our foot-steps guided far, And all our pilgrimages made Glad journeys under sun and star. Our sacrifice, O Lord, we bring! Thou hast sufficed for every need; Bless thou the meager offering Of vagrant heart, imperfect deed! And be our Keeper through the night, And through the long years of our quest, Till thou shalt welcome to delight And lead us in the ways of rest! Duly Thankful. "Lawd, we am mighty thankful foh all dat we hab receibed fum thy bounteefu' han's!" prayed the reverent darkey; "en above all, we am thankful dat de sheriff nebber got erroun' to take de ole mule erway 'foh de cotton crop got tended to!" "When Pa Puts Up the Stove." 'Long in the fall when it gits cold An' Ma takes on the shakes, Then Ma at Pa will talk an' scold, "The kids'll freeze, my sakes!" Then Pa he ties a aprun on An' mittens double wove, An' we kids know we'll have some fun When Pa puts up the stove! He grabs the pipe he laid away There in the attic high, An' jumps aroun' jes' lively! Say, My Pa is orful spry! He dumps the soot upon the stairs, An' gits blacked like a cove, An' what he talks ain't sayin' prayers When Pa puts up the stove! He cuts his fingers some, an' grows All black an' white in turn, An' that bald place his old head knows Gits red ernough to burn; An' when we laugh, he snaps his eyes No matter where we rove,-- An' say! Ma gits so mad she cries When Pa puts up the stove! An' Ma she jaws erround an says He hain't no sense, an' we Hide out behind the barn a-ways To miss the jamboree. I tell ye, fellers, they're a sight! No picnic ever throve Such as we have of love an' light When Pa puts up the stove! His Platform. "My opponents are running on various platforms," said the ambitious candidate, "but none of them promise you full relief from the evils that beset you. None of them reach down into your hearts and search out your wants and comprehend the good measures that will bring relief." And he paused for a moment, in order that the full import of his language might sink deep into the hearts of the mighty throng before him. "I favor," he continued, extending his right arm toward heaven in an impressive gesture: "I favor pensions for all the republicans, offices for all the democrats, free passes on the railroads for all the niggers, the whole earth for the socialists and the five oceans of water for the prohibitionists!" And then the delighted crowd went wild with applause. The Meal Ticket Man. (Suggested by John Golobie's recent article, "The Apotheosis of the Meal Ticket Man") Away with the heroes that litter the past! Tear the crown from the brow of each unworthy pate! We have come to the truth and its virtues at last, And our heroes are modern and quite up to date! Neither warrior nor prelate is praiseworthy now; Neither saint nor philosopher cumbers our plan; Let us gather the laurels and twine o'er the brow In a crown of delight for the Meal-Ticket Man! Just search through the musty old mists of the years, For the men who have lifted the world to the stars! You will find it was never the sages or seers Who have healed human hearts from their terrible scars; They were those who from one vagrant week to the next In the garret or cellar lived life's little span, And whatever their thought or where ever their text, All the glory belongs to the Meal-Ticket Man. What matter though seedy his hat and his coat. That his pantaloons bagged and were ragged and frayed? Still the world by its modern, unanimous vote Says it danced to the tune that his chin-music played! At the touch of his hand, at the thrill of his thought, It leaped on the paths where the greater truths ran, And though in the ways that were humble he wrought Yet it crowns him at last--the great Meal-Ticket Man! Then hail to this hero of shadow and shine! Never doubt he's as great as the greatest in worth, And his greatness surpasses the greatness divine Of the sword and the miter that saddened the earth! From the poverty-ways where his fellows hard toil All the blessings arise that our sorrows shall ban; He's a hero, indeed! He's the king of the soil! Then a song and a crown for the Meal-Ticket Man! Our Joe's at Home Agin. Yaas, our Joe he run fer office: Said he'd try his hand a bit; Thet the kentry needed savin' An' he'd tinker some at it; But the 'lection now is over, An' our Joe he didn't win; But we're glad,--me an' his mother,-- 'Cause our Joe is home agin! Joe made quite a race fer sartin'! He's a pollytishun right, An' he's jest a bully feller At a foot-race er a fight; You jest ort ter hear his speeches! How they cheered with mighty din! But the 'lection now is over An' our Joe is home agin! Spent two months a polly-tickin'; Workin' every day and night; Says its harder work then thrashin'; Beats rail-splittin' out o' sight! But to hear the brass-ban's playin' Nerves him up, he says, like sin; But we're glad,--me an' his mother,-- 'Cause our Joe's at home agin! Course we'd like our Joe elected, But it makes no diff'rence now; If the kentry needed savin' Guess she'll manage it somehow; Fer she's got to do without him, An' we're glad he didn't win; An we'll keep him,--me an' mother,-- Sence our Joe's at home agin! Caught on the Fly. Nobody has to take a dog and gun and go out to hunt trouble. It generally calls you up by 'phone and says it's coming around for lunch. "Politics makes strange bed-fellows," no doubt; but the candidate for office seldom goes to bed, and he manages to get along on very little sleep till the returns get in. It may be doubted whether "the Devil takes care of his own" in every way, but we'll bet our old hat that he never allows them to get hard up for fire-wood in the winter season. In the Shine. I As through the world we wander Through comforts fair and fine, Let's miss the ways of shadow And travel in the shine! II. No matter what the weather, Just watch the danger sign; Keep off the roads of shadow And travel in the shine! III. The paths run every which way To fool you, brother mine! Pass out of every shadow And travel in the shine! Nice Doctrine. "Dat sunshine docterin' am mighty nice to read erbout," said old Black Mose; "but when dese yer blizzahds come en de clouds hang mighty low down, en de snow goes toh sniftin' erroun' de shanty, dat's de time when I want plenty ob back logs en' a hot fiah goin' day an' night!" Where Bill Was. "Where is Billy Spudder tonight?" inquired one of the boys the second night after the election as they lounged up to the bar and missed Bill's familiar presence. "Bill? Why, Bill, you know, was a candidate for constable on the Walkover ticket and got beat so bad they couldn't count the votes," answered another. "And now Bill's at home getting acquainted with his wife again and being introduced to the new baby that appeared since he started his 60 days campaign!" The Real Question. "But," argued the republican candidate for office; "the republican party freed the colored people and made them the equals of the white folks. Didn't you ever hear of Abraham Lincoln, who set your people free?" "Dat's all mighty true, Mistah man," said the hesitating darkey; "but flouah am mighty sca'ce erroun' de cabin en we hain't had no bacon since day befoh yistiddy; en I see a dimmycrat candahdate comin' down de big road a-whuppin' ob his hosses like he hed flouah en hog-meat on behin' en bringin' it all toh me!" The Sunshine Way. I. Wherever your feet may wander, wherever your fancies stray, The paths that you walk are golden, for there is the sunshine way; And roses are there with their beauties that over the path-ways twine, And all of the world is a blossom that smiles in the tender shine! II. There's never a murmur of evil, there's never a cry of wrong; The daisies are sweet with laughter the birds are alilt with song; The days dance by in their gladness as sweet as the sweetest wine, Where the swift feet linger in rapture through ways of the golden shine. III. What matters if shadows may hover o'er blue hills far and dim? A star on the beautiful summits of the clear horizon's rim! The calls of the happy lovers whose hearts beat swift and strong, As they carol the sunshine music and whistle the sunshine song! IV. The pleasures greet ever the seeker that comes to their doors and woos, And life with its sun and its shadow is whatsoever we choose; And like some resplendent mirror it frowns or it smiles as we Weep with the eyes of weeping or smile with the lips of glee! V. Then ever and on, my brother, through all of the golden days; Let us echo their music forever and keep in the sunshine ways! And whether we walk with the blossoms or stray where the red leaves fall, There is laughter for all of the sorrows and love for the griefs of all! Reports indicate that nine newspaper men will be members of the next Oklahoma legislature, and even the names are mentioned. There is no kindness in giving the fact undue publicity. The poor fellows will have hard enough time to live it down, so let us treat them as charitably as the circumstances will permit. Caught on the Fly. Love and loud lips soon part company. Accusation is fruitless. We all have our faults and are satisfied with them or we wouldn't keep them. If people only did the best they could half of the time, they would be amply prepared for the worst the other half of the time. Some men's dream of hell is a place where scolding women have the full run of the range and no one dares to talk back when they get busy. Divorce may be a great evil, but every lawyer knows it is often an effective crow-bar to pry some very good people loose from hell. Never Worry. Let us never worry! The flowers little care How much of the weather Is foul or is fair; They blossom at morning; They fade at the noon, And blooming and fading Their beauty dies soon. Let us never worry! The birds freely sing In autumn's drear weather As blithe as in spring; They chorus their music In joy's happy tune, And singing and singing Their songs vanish soon. Let us never worry! If short is the life, Whether laughing with music Or weeping with strife; 'Tis the shine of the morning,-- 'Tis late afternoon; Ah, the night-fall is coming And darkness so soon! Little Sermons. Love is the greatest thing in the world, and it carries the world's griefs on its shoulders. If vice were as safe and inexpensive as virtue, heaven would have few candidates for admission. I am always nervous when I meet these self-righteous people. I fear they will demand that I make the world over to fix it good enough for them, and when I fail they will blame me with all their troubles. One Drawback. "Well, did you have a good time Thanksgiving, Uncle Billy?" "Splendid, splendid! All the boys an' gals come home an' brung theyr kids along, an' me an' mother felt twenty years er more younger. An' mother an' the gals got up a spankin' dinner an' we had a plenty of raal fine enjoyment. If it hadn't a-been fer one unfortnit thing, it would a-been mighty nigh perfect." "What was that?" "The crusts to mother's mince-pies all soaked in the bottom, an' she couldn't eat fer grievin' over it!" Signs of Winter. Winter's comin', fellers! Blizzards soon'll blow! Cotton all is gethered,-- Money spent, ye know! Ole Thanksgivin's over,-- Weather's so and so, Kids a-lookin' Christmas Everywhayre ye go! Keep Them Alive. Keep Hope alive! Though failure comes Adown life's varied stream, Behold, joy beats her mighty drums And brave men toil and dream! Keep Faith alive! Though evil strays Across the paths you tread, Yet Goodness blesses all your ways,-- The living and the dead! Keep Love alive! Though burdens press And crush with anguish sore, Sweet Love shall crown with happiness The sad heart evermore! Little Sermons. Nothing takes a man down so much as to contrast what he is with what he meant to be. Some people are so sure they are going to miss hell in the hereafter that they proceed to make as much as possible while in this world. We don't know what Satan's steady occupation is, but if all reports are true he must saw lots of wood in order to keep up the fires in his settlement all the year 'round. The Christmas Fiddles. I. Tune up the Christmas fiddles! There's happiness about, And willing fingers waiting to coax the music out! There's music in the valley, there's music on the plain, And music in the measures of happy sun and rain; Then fix your fiddles, fellers! The music fond and sweet Is waiting,--waiting ever,--the music of the feet! II. Tune up the Christmas fiddles! The royal raptures flow From finger-tips of gladness to happy heel and toe, Till joyous hearts are beating and rosy lips of love Are sweet as fairy music from the heaven harps above! Then fix your fiddles, fellers! To match the merry sound We'll dance the Christmas chorus and swing the partners' round! III. Tune up the Christmas fiddles! They're lonely with the song Their bosoms kept so closely in silences so long; The boys and girls are weary with toilsomeness that grows Where labor drowns the music of melodies she knows; Then fix your fiddles, fellers! Each happy heart shall beat To glories of the raptures and trippings of the feet! IV. Tune up the Christmas fiddles! Where royal music rings, Where lips are red with laughter and romping rapture sings, We'll find surcease of sorrow and Care shall die away While the feet shall dance the music of happiness for aye! Then fix your fiddles, fellers! Our sweet-hearts laugh applause, And Love repeats the echoes in a kiss for Santa Claus! Mistah Trouble, Mistah Trouble! Happy dat yuh met me When de pleasuhes all am heah, En de joys beset me! Happy dat de house am full So yuh'll hab toh trabble; Mister Trouble, stretch yoh laigs Libely down de grabble! So Santa Claus'll Come. My Mommer says ef I ain't good, Thet Santa'll stay away, En never bring a top er thing Thet boys want Christmas day; En I'm jes' purfic now, I guess, Er purficker then some, En I'm behavin' like a man So Santa Claus'll come! I hop up out of bed, you know, 'Fore Mommer calls me thayre, En dress myse'f en wash my face En nicely comb my hair; En then I help my Mommer work, En make a happy home, En please my Popper all I kin, So Santa Claus'll come. I go to school through all the week, En never hookey play, En I'm so good I'm never made Tell after school to stay; En when the Sundays come, you bet, I quit each idle chum, En go to Sunday School ez nice, So Santa Claus'll come! En Mommer says I'm orful good, En teacher says so, too, En call me jes' a angel, all But havin' wings,--they do! En Popper says thayre at the store's A dandy big bass drum! You betcher life I'm bein' good So Santa Claus'll come! Mister Sorrow. Mister Sorrow came one day When the times were blue, And he said: "My brother, say Can I stay with you?" And he looked so mighty nice That I asked him in; Nothing said about the price; 'Fraid he'd go agin! Mister Sorrow from that day Hangs around here so! Makes himself at home, to play He's my friend, you know! When I hint it mighty strong That he'd better roam, Says he's boarded here so long That it seems like home! If the Kingdom of Heaven was like a mustard-seed two thousand years ago, it has not changed its appearance any since; it seems so small now-a-days that it is pretty hard to find down here below. The Women and the Bill. (EXPLANATORY NOTE:--The press reports state that the women of America are strenuously opposing the statehood bill, and demanding that it provide for Equal Suffrage and Prohibition in the new state.) It was years and years in coming, but it hove in sight at last, And we hoped our cares were over and our disappointments past; It was fought for on the hustings, in the platforms was declared, And with all the big campaigners it has every honor shared; And we thought we surely had it where no evil hands could kill, Till the women went to knocking on the Statehood Bill! Don't the last of you remember how we whooped it up with might Through the speeches of the daytime and orations of the night; How resolved and re-resolved, and then resolved again, That our people were the people, and our men the very men? And we shouted out the story of our deeds with honest will;-- But the women now are knocking on the Statehood Bill! Don't you now recall distinctly how we speechified till hoarse, Trying to convince the people what was just the proper course? How much time and toil we lavished in the beauty of our schemes Just to save the state from danger to the dearness of our dreams! But, alas! we see the finish! And alas! for manly skill! For the women all are knocking on the Statehood Bill! We have seen the new star rising from the territorial seas, We have seen it mount the zenith where the old flag split the breeze; And we boasted of our glories in rejoicings grand and great As we thought we raced for honors in the new-created state! Vanished now the dreams of sal'ry and the offices to fill, For the women all are knocking on the Statehood Bill! O, the grave and mighty Senate! Mr. Beveridge mighty too! We can understand your pickle and we know just what you'll do; There is only one escaping, only one to ransom us From the rumpus we have kicked up and the madness of the muss: Give the women all they ask for! We were chumps to treat them ill.-- We're undone if they keep knocking on the Statehood Bill! A Hard Winter Ahead. "Yessuh, we am lookin' foh de hahdest wintah dis yeah dar hez bin foh a long time; but ef de neighbohs keeps on erraisin' chickens en de possums doan't git too scahse, I belieb we kin pull thew toh grass widout a-sellin' ob de houn' pup!" The Charity Ball. Rich man foh de pooh man dance One night in de yeah; Pooh man foh de rich man prance All times, do yuh heah? Pooh man play de violin While de rich man swing; Pooh man squeeze de fiddle in When he wants toh sing! Mistah rich man, hab yoh fun Makin' grub foh us; Min' dat stohy ez yuh run 'Bout ole Lazaruss! Guess yuh'll dance some ober dah, Jes' ez like ez not; Swing dem pahtnehs fas' en fah 'Foh de fiah git hot! Little Sermons. The man who can't live right in this world can't expect to get the chance in the next. There may be more devotion in tears than in laughter, but I'll tie up with the latter and take the risk. No one except Christ ever called the devil Satan to his face; and then they went up into the high mountain and into a private place where no one else could hear the muss. The Santa Claus Boy. The Santa Claus boy is the latest thing out; He's the rage of the season, they say, And wherever you wander, you'll find him about With his beautiful, dutiful way; He's as spick and as span as a dandified man. And his look is a heavenly joy; And however he does it, whatever his plan, We know he's the Santa Claus boy! He jumps out of bed in the morning himself, And he never lies still for the rest; He dresses in haste with the skill of an elf, And he washes and combs with the best; He does up the chores while his small sister snores, And his whistle no longer annoys; He's the pride of the house and the king of out-doors,-- This wonderful Santa Claus boy! He hastens to school with a heart full of glees, And he never turns truant to play: His lessons he learns with the greatest of ease,-- He recites in a beautiful way; And the teacher's so glad that the boy who was bad All his failings has learned to destroy; And she smiles with delight as she breaks up her gad, At the change in the Santa Claus boy! When the Sabbath day comes with its Sunday School hours, He is never once absent or late; And the verses he speaks beat the memory powers Of the sages exalted and great; But he dreams of a Tree, full of presents to be, And with treasures that know not alloy; And the vision he sees fills his bosom with glee For the Sunday School Santa Claus boy! Ah, well, this old codger laid up on the shelf, In the rubbish piled high on life's ways, Knows how it all is,--he has been there himself,-- He has romped through the Santa Claus days; Whatever appears, whether laughter or tears, Let a song every moment employ, As the world tosses gifts through the beautiful years To the glad-hearted Santa Claus boy! Caught on the Fly. Young woman, learn to cook. No man wants his home turned into an experiment station for biscuit making. In these last days, a man is known by the patent medicine promoter to whom he sends his testimonial photograph. The man who gets stooped shoulders from carrying other people's heavy burdens went to the wrong school in his youth. Religion is a mighty good thing, but it never pays the rent bill; and the Christianity of warm clothes and wholesome food beats its balance on the record books of the angels. "'Twill All Come Right." O, brother, don't you worry, When the sorrow brings the night! It is never long till morning, And 'twill all come right. Do the loads seem hard and heavy As you bear them with your might? Love will lift the bending burdens, And 'twill all come right! Do you feel the hate and malice Of the foolish ones that fight? They will find your heart is worthy, And 'twill all come right! Do your duty to the utmost! Then the foes shall vanish quite; Let the world howl on with censure,-- It will all come right! God awaits us over yonder, Where his lilies blossom white; In his love the griefs shall perish, And 'twill all come right! The happy days when the mistletoe makes raptures for young hearts and loving lips will soon come 'round again. Heaven grant us all to be young and confiding enough for all the love and joy and the glad music of the Christmas times! Good-bye to Trouble. O, it's good-bye, Mister Trouble! There's a joy the angels know, With the mistletoe above us And our sweet-hearts here below! Then play the fiddle, Mister! Love and laughter are in sight; And swing your partners, fellers, Till the dawning of the light! O, its good-bye, Mister Trouble! For the fiddle says, "Be gay!" There's the mistletoe up yonder, And we kiss the griefs away! Caught on the Fly. All things are forgiven to the woman who holds her tongue. The greatest vice of the women is gossip, and the greatest folly of the men is greed. If some people get to heaven, no one will be more surprised at the achievement than themselves. Troubles have walked the highways of human life since the morning stars sang together; and yet when we meet them on the dusty roads we travel, we pretend astonishment and annoy high heaven with our cries. Too Much Prosperity. "Dis heah big cotton crap am a great calam'ty toh de cullud folks," said old Black Mose dejectedly. "How is that, Uncle?" inquired the astonished white man. "So many ob 'em hab sabed up emuff money toh buy tall hats en long--tailed coats dat de conf'rences will all be jam-full ob cullud preachehs befoh spring, en de cotton-fiel's'll miss some mighty good han's nex' season, shuah!" was the reply. Little Sermons. Don't go too much on the sensibilities. Feelings are a mighty poor regulator when it comes to determining the necessity for hard work. The days of the gray hairs and wrinkled brows utter few petitions to the merry god of all the happy Christmas eves; but if they asked of Santa Claus the supremest gift in all the world of men, they would implore him for one more Christmas as happy and as innocent as smiled upon them in the days of childhood long ago! To the Lonesome Fiddle. You needn't look so lonesome, Mr. Fiddle, hanging there With the pretty girls about you and the pleasures every where; For I know your heart is heaven with its music angel sweet, And it all will go to singing at the coming of the feet! Then don't you look so lonesome! The happy days we'll meet; For the Christmas times are coming And the dancing of the feet. You needn't look so lonesome! In your happy soul abound All the airs of royal rapture that the golden cycles found, And the willing fingers waiting are staying close about, Just to pick your heart to pieces and to coax the music out! Then don't you look so lonesome! The laughing lips shall meet With the mistletoe above us And the coming of the feet! You needn't look so lonesome! I can see you laughing there To the tune of "Old Dan Tucker" as you drop the loads of care, And the melodies immortal drive the troubles all away As you spill the tender music of "My Darling Nellie Gray." Then don't you look so lonesome! All your dreams will come complete, And Love will swing his partners To the tripping of the feet. O, you needn't look so lonesome! All the good times you shall feel As you shout the mighty chorus of the "Old Virginia Reel," And Love shall join the music with the raptures that abound, As we heel-and-toe-it lively and we "swing the ladies 'round!" Then don't you look so lonesome! Love and happiness shall meet, And we'll shout good-bye to trouble In the shuffle of the feet! Let the boy eat! The grocery-man is a less expensive guest than the doctor, and mush and milk are more palatable than medicine. "If Santa Claus Don't Come." If Santa Claus forgets to come, I don't know what I'll do; I 'spect I'll get as bad as some An' cry a little, too; I wrote an' told him plain as day What he should buy an' bring; An' if he don't, I'll always say That he's a mean old thing! I want a drum to pound all day Fer ev'ry passin' crowd; A punchin'-bag an' foot-ball,--say, An' gun that shoots out loud; I'd like to have a pony, too, An' big dog fer a chum; Dear me, I don't know what I'll do If Santa Claus don't come! I'll hang my stockin's anyway! They won't hold half enough, But I'll jes' write a note, an' say The place to leave the stuff! I'll jump in bed at candle-light, An' act both deaf an' dumb! But 'twill be awful here tonight If Santa Claus don't come! Of course, he may not have to spare Jes' ev'ry thing I lack, An' yet I hope he'll leave me there 'Bout all a boy can pack; But If he'll come an' bring a few, I'll not be very glum; But oh! I don't know what I'll do If Santa Claus don't come! The Call of the Fiddle. Don't you hear the fiddle, fellers? It is singing to the bow All the glory of the music Underneath the mistletoe! Then good-bye, Mister Sorrow! For the cares have run away; Love and music both are shouting And we answer them "Hooray!" Don't you hear the fiddle, fellers? It is calling us to know Joys that circle to the music Underneath the mistletoe. Then good-bye, Mister Sorrow, Good-bye for many a day! Love's lips are smiling at us, And our hearts respond "Hooray!" I have often thought it very appropriate that good resolutions come after instead of before the Christmas days. The heart is then in much better mood to give them pleasant welcome. A Queer Dream. "Ah done had a queeah dream las' night!" said Sambo. "How was that? Tell us about it," said the interested white listener. "Ah dreamed I wuz in hebben on Crissmuss eve, en de angels all had a Crissmuss tree en ole St. Petah played de Santa Claus, en de angels all got new French hawps in dey stockin's; en dey couldn't play 'em at all en de white angels all wanted fiddles en de black angels all wanted banjoes; en dey wuz a-havin' a awful time up dar, shuah!" "Well, how did it come out?" "Ah dunno how it come out! Jes' ez dey wus a'pintin' a ahbitratoh, my boy Jim sot up a howl foh 'possum en woke me up!" The Same Old Gifts. "What do you expect for Christmas, Major?" inquired the hospitable store-keeper as the gray-haired Major hobbled in with his crutch and rested his rheumatic leg on a sack of coffee. "The same as usual, sir, the same as usual! My wife always works me a pair of slippers two sizes too small, each one of the girls gives me a neck-tie I can't wear because of its color, and each of the boys a new-fangled revolver I can't shoot and have to turn over to them. Only my old army friend in Kentucky knows me well enough to know what I can use." "What is that?" inquired the amiable store-keeper. "Four gallons of mountain-dew fresh from the still, bless God! And I always get away with it in plenty of time for good resolutions on New Year's day!" replied the valiant Major, smiling and smacking his lips. The Greatest Gift. The Wise Men in the desert bare, Heart-hungry in their need, Behold a Star, and forth they fare Wherever it may lead; And find at last, full reconciled, God's greatest gift,--a little child! The ballot may be more powerful than the bullet, but sometimes the gun contains the wrong load. For the New Year. I. Through all this New Year's varied walks and ways, Let us like kings Truth's royal raiment wear, And whatsoe'er the burdens of the days, With brave hearts bear; For amid the starless night Love exalts the lilies white, And the hours of wrath and wrong Leap with laughters of her song. II. Wherever fate may lead the vagrant feet, Let us hail Duty as Life's holy guest, And in the shock of battle bravely meet Foes breast to breast; For unto the timid fields Love her staunchest courage yields, And her martial music thrills To the summits of the hills. III. Whatever fortune crowns imperfect deed, Let us keep Hope our comrade evermore, Nor fear to follow where her banners lead On sea and shore; For despite the tears of men, Love shall sing her songs again, And beyond the wintry snows Blooms the redness of her rose. IV. With Truth about us and with Duty near, With Hope beside and Love along the way, Life climbs the hills and all the darkness here Grows bright with day; For each fond beatitude Crowns the dreams of greater good, And the stars of living light Lead the footsteps through the night! Finally. Finally, brethren, finally, We are marching to the sky, And all this earthly music Tunes us up for bye and bye! If We Were Wise. "If we were wise," said the social philosopher, "civilization would be of a different metal. But we are not all of us wise, and therefore we build court-houses and churches and sanitariums, and lawyers, doctors and preachers become necessary, all being the inventions of our lack of wisdom." And the man knew, for he had just been through the alimony court, turned out of church, and was on his way to a winter resort for the tinkering of his health. Life. A little day through which we play In spite of wish and warning; A little love along the way, And then good-night,--till morning! Pluck thou now the Good Resolution from the topmost bough of the sublime tree of righteous will; and preserve it as the apple of gold in the silver pictures of the life that has no ending. Sighs and Songs. Don't begin your sighing When you see the snows; Yonder blooms the lily; Yonder burns the rose! What's the use to shiver When the blizzards blow? Yonder blazes August Hotter than you know! Hope is ever ringing All the bells she brings; Keep a life of laughter And a heart that sings. Good-bye to the trouble! Farewell to the wrong! Man forgets the sorrow When he sings a song! Caught on the Fly. The cart of imperfect deeds travels with more speed than the palace car of good intentions. If the pew would practice only one day in the week what the pulpit preaches on Sunday, the Devil would put out all the fires in his settlement and join the angels before Saturday night. The Third House. Yes, they say the Legislature Soon will come along and sit, And for sixty days of wonder We'll behold the likes of it; But with all the mighty glory That around it waves its wings, Don't forget who does the voting Nor the chaps who pull the strings! There's the grave and mighty Senate Full of statesmen wise and great, With profound deliberations Ere they choose to legislate: But with all their stores of wisdom They are slow at doing things, For they only do the voting While the Third House pulls the strings. There's the House, a wondrous body, Full of patriotic souls, Each with ideas that would hurry Up the world as on it rolls; But before they get in action Sober wisdom caution brings, And they only do the voting While the Third House pulls the strings! O, my dear, deluded people! When the statesmen cure your ills, Look around before you honor Those who pass the proper bills! To the fellows you elected There is little glory clings, For they only do the voting While the Third House pulls the strings! To the Third House bring your laurels! There you'll find the wisdom rare, Free to tell the verdant statesmen How to legislate with care; There you'll find the brain and virtue That afar the evil flings: While the others do the voting These delight to pull the strings! Play Ball. In the great orchestra of life, if you can't play the first violin, beat the drum; if you can't beat the drum, pound the triangle; and if you can't contribute anything at all to the music, get in step with it and do the best job of marching in the army of the hopeful-hearted. Sing a Little. When the times are sad with sorrow, Sing a little; Things will brighten up tomorrow, Sing a little; And when all the world is gloomy and the storms around you roar, Then stuff your heart with gladness and just sing a little more! When you meet the bleak Decembers, Sing a little; There's a June each heart remembers, Sing a little; And if winter comes and lingers as he never did before, Think of all the summer blossoms and then sing a little more! If the cares of life oppress you, Sing a little; Joy will gladly come and bless you, Sing a little; And the Love that never wavers shall reward with happy store While your heart is bright with sunshine and you sing a little more! Remembered by Santa Claus. "Well, what did Santa Claus bring you?" inquired Neighbor Jones of Neighbor Smith on Christmas morning. "Why, my wife got me a new silk dress and fur boa, my daughter bestowed a fine pair of No. 6 kid gloves, and each of my sons contributed a pair of skates and a sled. There is nothing like having Santa Claus remember you well, is there?" answered Neighbor Smith. They had both been there so often that they went off behind the barn and took something to bring the sunshine in. Evil Prophets. The doleful prophets sadly say That the world is going wrong; But out yonder blooms the May With its flowers and song. The moaning brothers come and say That the world is as dark as night; But out yonder shines the day With its laughing light. O, brothers, don't you worry so! Let us bravely march along; The roses blossom where we go Across the fields of song! A New Year's Resolution. I'm a New Year's Resolution: I'm as good as good can be, And the world will lose its follies If 'twill only follow me! I was sired by good intentions, I was nursed with loving care, Fully armed, like great Minerva, From my birth to do and dare. I'm a New Year's Resolution: You can see me robed in white Where the fortunes of the future Men and nations come to write; You have met my kith and kindred As you struggled in the strife, And you gave them love and praises All along the ways of life. I'm a New Year's Resolution: I'm as good as good can be, And the fates predict my goodness Soon will prove the death of me; But you'll honor me while living, And if I should pass away You will bury me in blossoms In remembrance of today. I'm a New Year's Resolution: Treat me kindly as you can; For I'm growing weak each moment, Starved to death by cruel man; Soon I'll sleep among my fathers,-- What a countless host they make! Who in childhood went to slaughter For a good intention's sake! Little Sermons. One lapse from sunshine makes the whole world sin. If you want to pluck nose-gays, you must wander in the sunshine to find the flowers. The Devil would rather tackle a a good man in a discouraged mood than a hardened criminal with Hope singing in his heart. A Hard World. "Ah done tole yuh, Mose, howebber yuh fix it up, dat dis hyar am a mighty hahd wohld we lib in?" said one colored brother to another. "How am dat, Sambo?" "Why, we am allus habin' ouah troubles. No soonah am de Santa Claus bills paid, den de legislachuh come erlong en stay foh sixty whole days!" and he shook his head and refused to be comforted. A Quartette of Don'ts. Don't sleep too much. Remember what happened to Adam when he tried an experiment of that kind. Don't talk too mean about the Devil. There is no telling how soon he may have the chance to roast you to a turn. Don't neglect your privileges, brethren. There is more opportunity to get through the eye of a needle in the collection baskets than in the sermon. Don't worry any about the dead. The good Lord will take care of them, and they don't cause him half as much sitting up at nights as the living do, and he always knows where to find them when the curfew blows. It Died Young. "Did you make a Good Resolution, Sandy?" inquired the inquisitive neighbor. "Yes, but it didn't live long." "Why, how's that?" "Well, the good die young, you know, and when I went home that night I found it had crossed the river when I wasn't watching." To the Love Lands! O, my Heart, the days are weary with the burdens that we know: Hand in hand we'll haste and hurry to the Love Lands long ago! Let us stroll as happy lovers down the roaring ways of men Till the lilies of contentment blossom sweetly once again. It was there we wove our Daydream, it was there the Promise sung, For the world from us was hidden and our little lives were young. There were happy lanes of laughter that our childish rambles knew, Where the roses gave their glories in a ruddy crown for you. Let us wander through the deserts and the dusty ways they know To the green fields and the meadows of the Love Lands long ago! On the road, perchance, we'll gather some of sweetness and of song, As we thread the dim aisles fearful and the pathways lorn and long. You remember how we pledged us all the glories of renown,-- Pledged the gold of Ind and Ophir and the greatness of the crown. You remember how we pledged us in the fancies of our youth, We would run the quest forever for the Holy Grail of Truth! You remember how we pledged us we would banish want and woe, As we laughed and sang the love-song in the Love Lands long ago! What if we have failed to keep it? Hard the struggle, fierce the throng, And the shoutings of the rabble drown the glory of the song! What if we have failed to keep it? All the maddened mobs of hate Hurl the stones of mirth and malice where Truth opes her timid gate! Shall we sorrow at the wreckage that is heaped along the shore Where the waters gnaw unceasing and endeavor sails no more! Shall we sorrow that the laughters, left the shadows of the way, And the cares of life unlifting fringed the rosy skies with gray? Shall we sorrow without comfort for the dreams that fled in tears,-- For the hopes forlorn and shattered on the shores of other years? We have lost the glare and glamor of the dreams we dreamed of old, But the Wise of earth have brought us of their frankincense and gold. We have lost the green of May-time, but the autumn gardens red Hang with all the fruited wisdom for the blossoms that are dead! We have lost our foolish boasting,--we are cleansed of evil pride, And we face the past and future with their vistas wild and wide! Still, my Heart, the days are heavy! Wisdom weights and wearies so! Let us run away together to the Love Lands long ago! Caught on the Fly. Beauty is not always skin-deep. Sometimes it is put on with a rag. If you don't want Trouble to bring her dogs and hunt all over your place for game, you should tack up warning signs over every fence-post on the premises. Lots of money is said to bring lots of trouble. But, Lord, our shoulders are mighty broad and we always did think we would like to have experiences of that kind. Trudge Along. Trudge along, my brother, Through the snows! Over yonder wait the summer And the rose. Trudge along, my brother, Trudge along! Over yonder wait the angels And the song! A Fine Job. "Ah done tole yuh, Mose, howsomevah de people conflastahgate, dese heah legislachuh pohsishuns am sho'ly de bes' places in all de wide woahld dat a cullahed man ebber had in de wintah time when de wood am skeerce en de snow flyin' high!" "How come, Rastus?" "Why, yuh fool niggah yuh, doan't yuh see dat Ah git foh dollahs a day jes' toh open en shut de dooah befoh en aftah de Sanatohs when dey come in en go out foh erbout two houahs a day, en den sot down by de hot fiah all de res' ob de time while anothah niggah shubbles in de coal whut anothah niggah totes in at de same good price!" A True Hero. He wore no crown, he had no sword, He sat him in no throne of state; He shed no blood, he spent no hoard, And therefore was not great; Yet to his tomb the nations throng: His heart was love, he sang a song! When Trouble comes to your front gate and hears you whistling in the back-yard it scares him so bad that he never stops running till he crosses the divide into the next settlement. Little Sermons. Taking it all up and down, this world is a pretty good place. Only so many of us never get up or down! Lord, we don't ask to see a thousand miles ahead. All we want is light enough to keep out of the holes two feet ahead when the Devil gets after us. Some folks are always boasting of how many miles they keep ahead of the Devil, but I'm always thankful when I just manage to keep out of his reach when he's grabbing at me. Never Mind the Hills. What matter the hills above us? What matter the dismal road? We're climbing to those that love us And crossing to their abode; And over the mountains we'll crown our quest With beautiful blossoms of all that's best! He Voted "Graft". He was quite a famous statesman From a district where the folk Were so honest that their honor Had become a standing joke; But this man that represented Such a people, such a craft, Always shouted for "retrenchment," While he always voted "graft." He was quite a famous "poser," And he had the nimble art Of deluding men to thinking That he owned an honest heart; He was always hinting "boodle," At which hints the lobby laughed For they knew he talked "retrenchment," But he always voted "graft!" He was frequent in the papers With a lengthy interview 'Bout the "welfare of the people," And the "octopi" he knew; And he made long-winded speeches As he raked things fore and aft, But he only talked "retrenchment," While he always voted "graft!" O, the dear, deluded people, Hear this Sermon from the Mount: When a Bill is up for passage It is only votes that count; And you'd better watch the fellow On the legislative raft Who forever talks "retrenchment," And then casts a vote for "graft!" Caught on the Fly. The worst thing about failure is that it makes so many good people most unhappy. The man who never laughs at all is as great a trial to his friends as is the one who laughs too much. No beauty of Nature, either of heart or flower or fruit, was ever grown without the lavish use of sunshine for its development. Joy is Here. What to us is Trouble? Joy is here today; Care is but a bubble Bursting with the May. Onward we are drifting; What if skies are gray? All the clouds are lifting,-- Joy is here today! Harbors over yonder; Billows die away; There we all shall anchor,-- Joy for aye and aye! Something Left. There's joy in Oklahoma! Let's go it good and strong; There's sunshine on the prairies, The land is glad with song; What though the cotton tumbled,-- What if the wheat was short? We've corn for hog and hominy Of every blessed sort! Charity not only covers a multitude of sins, but she also tucks the quilts in around the feet and gets up in the middle of the night to see if the blanket is on straight. Not Afraid. "Aren't you afraid some of these lobbyists will persuade you by their eloquence into supporting some bad measure?" asked a friend of a member of the legislature. "Not a bit of it, sir, not a bit of it! Just let them try it as often as they wish!" answered the confident statesman. "Just let me get at them one by one, privately, in a dark room with their pockets bulging with the eloquent long-green, and when they get away their pockets will be so dumb that they will be in no condition to make arguments again until they call on their employers for a new supply of oratory!" A Blazing Future. What's the use of getting blue When the joys are so amazing? This life's sunshine through and through And the other life is blazing! I have often noticed that the dog which uses up all his spare time in growling generally looks mighty hungry and seldom trees any game. The Legislative Pass. I'm a Legislative Pass: I'm a wonder now displayed In a large and growing class Marching out on dress parade; I am issued "on request" From a statesman full of might, And I'll never know a rest Till adjournment is in sight. I'm a Legislative Pass: I am given free as air, And I reach from shortest grass To the farthest every where; I am happy in the fame That around me fondly flits, Just to keep the statesmen tame Till the Legislature quits. I'm a Legislative Pass: I have wondrous work to do, And I use the mighty mass Of my glories daily, too; I'm considered pretty nice By the hundreds of my friends, That I carry without price Till the Legislature ends. I'm a Legislative Pass: I'm the master of the state, While the people think, alas! They are something wise and great; Treat me kindly every day, As I summon dear delight Down the legislative way Till adjournment is in sight. I'm a Legislative Pass: Fly with me,--there's no expense,-- From the weary ways of gas And the halls of eloquence; Let us travel far and fast! Soon we'll journey nevermore! For I know my day is past When the Legislature's o'er! Little Sermons. The dog that believes in you is more inspiration than the tawny lion that distrusts you. It was all right for the Christ to say, "Get thee behind me, Satan," but I'd rather keep him on in front where I can watch his tricks. The man of most exemplary habits never finds congenial spirits to herd with. The marvel is not that Christ was crucified, but that he was allowed to live till he was thirty-three years old. At Rest. Fold the hands and let him rest! He shall sorrow nevermore; Grief has done her worst and best, But his grief is o'er! What to him the dangers dark,-- Terrors of the waveless stream? God shall guide the helpless barque Through the shadowed dream! He has fought with storm and strife, He has conquered, all alone; He has plucked the rose of life For his very own. Farewell to the world of sighs! He has laid the burden down; Here each grief and sorrow dies, And he claims the crown! Caught on the Fly. Fate is blamed with all the failures for which laziness is responsible. The world may owe you a living, but you'll never be able to collect it till you foreclose the mortgage by hard hustling. However late some people get up in the morning, they always have plenty of time to spare for other people's business before bedtime. With a Song. No matter what the weeping, No matter what the wrong, Just toss a kiss to trouble And soothe him with a song. When all the world is winter And storms unceasing throng, Just clasp your hands with sunshine And warm them up with song. When fortune flies the window And leaves you lonely long, Still hum the happy music And sing it out in song. The summer time is coming,-- Is coming good and strong! A welcome for the roses, A greeting full of song! O, life is filled with shadows, And sorrow still is strong; But walk the ways with laughter And climb the hills with song! Live your own life so happily to yourself that neither men, women or devils can swerve you one degree from the divine light shining upon your direct pathway to the stars. De Hant! I. De Hant he come en hollah f'um de honey-locus' tree: "Ah'd thank yuh, Mistah Niggah, foh dat money yuh owe me!" But Ah gib Mis' Sal a banjo, en a silky scarf toh Chloe, En de cotton's sho'ly squandah'd en dat's all dis niggah know! II. De Hant he come en hollah f'um de bahn's ole gable deep: "Whah's dat New Yaar Resolution dat Ah gib you-all toh keep?" But Ah kep' it en Ah kep' it, twel ole Satan come erlong, En dat New Yaar Resolution got a move on mighty strong! III. De Hant he come en hollah right above de cabin doo': "What yuh done wif all dem good t'ings dat Ah tole yuh 'bout befo?" En Ah dassent answeh nothin'! En de ole Hant stay en stay! When dis niggah wuzzent lookin', all dem good things run away! Caught on the Fly. When Hope comes on the scene, Trouble has urgent business over in the next settlement. Don't wait to plant a flower for your neighbor until it has to blossom beside his tomb-stone. Growling at the weather may give the tongue plenty of exercise, but it never buys meat and potatoes or swells the bank account. Be confident. No coward heart ever won an important battle, and the battle-field of life is the one that demands the fullest courage. Little Sermons. Be thankful as long as there is a buttered side to your bread; and when the butter runs out, thank God for the bread! Charity covers the sins all right, but many a poor sinner gets mighty short of blankets in the cold winter times of folly. One heart of love and two glad lips of song have lifted many a mediocre soul up the slopes of happiness to the bright, eternal morning. That New Year Resolution. Dat New Yaar Resolution He come to me en say: "Ah likes de looks ob dis heah place,-- Ah hope yuh'll lemme stay!" O, listen, listen, bruddehs! Ah axed de angel in; Ole Satan come en raised a row, Ah tuhned him out again! Dat New Yaar Resolution, He scrumpshus company; But dat fust day Ah's satisfied He all too good foh me! O, listen, listen, bruddehs! A'll nebbeh tole yuh why, But when ole Satan come erlong Ah knowed it hed toh die! Dat New Yaar Resolution! Ah hollahed toh him: "Say! Dis house am mighty crowded; Ah wush yuh'd go erway!" O, listen, listen, bruddehs! Ah choke him in de th'oat; En when ole Satan come erlong, He wrop him in his coat! "Said Governor Tom." Said Governor Tom to the law-making boys: "You are green at the bus'ness, I know; It is well that you move rather slow; If you'll let me advise, You'll be worthy and wise, And the people secure in their joys,--" Said Governor Tom to the boys. Said Governor Tom to the law-making boys: "I will warn you of dangers that lurk In the ways of your dangerous work; If the lobbies entice, You should take my advice, And turn a deaf ear to their noise,--" Said Governor Tom to the boys. Said Governor Tom to the law-making boys: "In the passing of measures immense Is involved quite a lot of expense, And the armies that stand When there's peace in the land Are the most unproductive of toys,--" Said Governor Tom to the boys. Said Governor Tom to the law-making boys: "It is well to remember the wills Of the people who settle the bills, And the anger that lurks In the hosts at the works Is a matter that greatly annoys,--" Said Governor Tom to the boys! The boys heard the message, each sentiment seized, And then went ahead and did just as they pleased; And no one would know From the way that they go, From the money they spend and the peace they destroy, What the Governor said to each law-making boy! Caught on the Fly. If some people couldn't worry, or make others worry, they'd never have a moment of happiness. Don't go gunning for happiness. When you are least expecting it she squats at your feet and hops out to meet you. Little Sermons. If there wasn't a Devil, some people would have nobody but themselves to blame their sins on. When we link hands with pleasure for a few minutes, we forget all the wisdom Trouble has taught us through the years. Some people like to move about so much, that if they bought a ticket for heaven they'd insist on getting a round-trip in order to be on the safe side. If the golden streets could be dug up and carried off to the smelter, there'd be whole battalions of people lined up before daylight with grubbing-hoes on their shoulders waiting to stake off claims. Mister Ground Hog. Ole Mistah Groun'-hog rouse hisse'f Fum dat long nap he take; He say: "Ah 'spec' Ah'd bettah move,-- It's gittin' late, my sake!" So he jes' rub his ole eyes wide, En dress up foh a stroll; He wax his whiskehs up, en den He crawl out ob his hole! Up yondah shine de big red sun, Eh-blazin' in the sky, En at his side his shaddeh walk,-- So Mistah Groun'-hog fly! He skeehed so bad he tuhn him 'roun' En say, "Ah wake too soon; Ah'll jes' go home en take a nap 'Twel Sunday aftehnoon!" So Mistah Groun'-hog run en run En crawl his deep hole in, Toh snooze ehway foh six moah weeks 'Foh he wakes up ehgin! When Trouble Came. Ole Trouble come toh ouah house One stohmy day en say, "De road am hahd toh trabble,-- Ah hope you'll lemme stay!" He staht toh hang his hat up, En pull his ober-coat: Ah box him oh de eah-muffs En choke him in de tho'at! Ah say, "Ole Mistah Trouble, Ah'm pleased so much toh say Dis house am mighty crowded,-- You-all jes' go ehway!" Ah take my happy fiddle Up dah beside my hat,-- Ah play him Ole Dan Tuckeh, En what you t'ink ob dat! Wanted a Bill or Two. "Where are you going, Rastus?" inquired the reporter of an old negro at the depot. "Ah's gwine obah toh Guthrie whah dem legislachuh men am passin' dem bills!" was the reply. "Ah's done libed hyah long ernuff, anyhow, en ef Ah git obah whah de bills am a passin' dey may pass a few whah my pockets stay, sho'!" Whenever you find a man who has made an ignoble failure of managing himself properly, you'll always find one who thinks he could give the Lord pointers on running the universe. Look out for Trouble. When yuh see ole Mistah Trouble Jumpin' high ehlong yoh way, Jes' twis' yoh lips toh puckah, En whistle night en day! He'll nevah stop a minute Toh tell yuh how-de-doo, But take ehcrost de kentry En jump de fences, too! Doan' spen' yoh time eh-gazin' Up yondah at de sky: It shuah will make yoh dizzy En pain yoh lit'le eye; Jes' keep yohse'f eh-lookin' Clah down de way yuh go: De bulgine sho'ly comin' De fus' thing dat yuh know! Doan' twis' yoh neck, my bruddeh, Eh gawkin' at de sun; He'll shine up dah forebbeh No mattah whah yuh run; Jes' look out foh de bresh-piles En cross de mud-holes slow: 'Twill keep yuh mighty busy Watchin' dese hyah paths yuh go! Don't growl if Fortune didn't trust you with more. Just think what a fool she would have been to favor you with greater gifts! The Good Times Song. Sing a song of good times! Life is full of bliss, And the merry music Who shall dare to miss? Joy delights the valleys, Plenty's everywhere, And pleasure swells the chorus Till we conquer care. Sing a song of good times! That's the tune for me; The bow's upon the fiddle And the fiddle's full of glee! It's swing your pardners, honey, And swing them all the night; The good times call the measures And we're dancing to the light! Nobody Hurt. "I hear that Slugem and Hittem met last night." "Yes, so they did." "Which one of them got the worst of it?" "Oh, there was no damage done. They made it all up, and nothing suffered but their New Year Resolutions!" In the Legislature. "An' Oi say, Moike," said Patrick O'Ferrall, to his neighbor Mike O'Neill, "Oi say, Moike, have ye heerd from yer bye Dennis lately who wint out wist?" "Thet Oi hev, Pat." "An' how is the poor bye gettin' on?" "The divil take it, Pat, thet's whut breaks his mither's heart ontoirely. He wroites me thet he hez jest bin sintinced to the Legislachoor fer two years!" Life, and labor along its way, Life, and a shade of sorrow; But Love is there with her lips of song, And the sun shines out tomorrow! To live life happily, to work life earnestly, to leave life fearlessly,--what greater success ever crowned with ivied laurels the infinite brows of Adam's mortal sons? On Behalf of the Minority. Note--(The Oklahoma Legislature has a republican majority in both houses, and the following is supposed to be uttered by one of the democratic minority.) To the Sleek and Fat Majority: We recognize your smoke, And in meek and humble fashion we have passed beneath the yoke; We've no foolish reservations: all the earth is yours to claim With the grandeur of its glory and the fullness of its fame; So accept our due submission; all we ask is that you give Ample chance to filibuster and preserve the right to live! In the manner that Respectable Minorities behave, We shall justify the title while the heathen rage and rave; And according as 'tis written we shall every one be good, Though we smash the logs you're rolling into fancy kindling-wood, While we stir the sleeping animals with long and lively prods To the pleasure of the nations and the laughter of the gods! And we pity you sincerely! You had quite a job at hand To divide the loaves and fishes as the bosses made command! Fifty places for five hundred hungry souls that wild cavort Is a work requiring statesmen of the most exalted sort: And we weep our tears of sorrow as we're looking on at you, While you bump the heads of many and anoint the chosen few! You shall pass appropriations, tossing out the toothsome "pork," In a way to please the faithful and to keep the "boys at work;" And whatever seems the proper thing majorities should do, Why, the ocean's there before you and the course is up to you; But remember as you voyage that we have a little boat, And we're always steering madly tow'rd a record making vote! We'll play our own part bravely, and we'll play it o'er and o'er: Approve, condemn, and criticize, like statesmen gone before; We'll rant about "the people, sir!" and shout "economy!" And stab appropriation bills each opportunity; And long preserve our "honesty"--unstained and white as snow: Since you have swiped the offices, that's all we have, you know! And our task shall be most pleasant! Underneath the shade we'll flop While you fellows do the sweating for the legislative crop! We shall criticize your labors; if you reach the roads of doubt, We shall lend the hand of wisdom and in mercy lead you out; And at last, the harvest gathered, we shall sift the good and true For our own exalted portion while we leave the bad for you! And after while the time will come, howbeit soon or late, When we shall guide the government and steer the ship of state,-- When we shall trade our craft for yours, and our proud flag shall float O'er battle-ships of greater things as people then shall vote; And then we'll show you something else beyond the hearty strife, And do our best to visit you with touch of higher life! At Valentine's Day. The Wind came out of the poppied East, And said to heart of the lonely earth: "I bring you laughter and love increased, And all the music of might and mirth; I bring you dreams that were born above, And melting kisses as sweet as wine; And one waits lorn with her lips of love And dimpled arms, for her Valentine." The Wind came out of the brazen North, And said to heart of the grieving world: "I bring a message, I call you forth Where Love the flags of her faith unfurled; I tell of peace that is sweeter far Than song that croons where the tropics twine; For one waits long 'neath the northern star With eyes of love, for her Valentine." The Wind came out of the winsome West, And said to heart of the longing race: "I bring you tidings of all that's best, Of love and laughter and loved one's face; I come from red of the reeling sun, I bring you dreams of the things divine, And at the rim of the world waits one Who lists for the call of her Valentine." The Wind came out of the sweet-breathed South, And said: "I carry her call to thee; She waits with songs in her mellow mouth,-- She waits, and her lips like the corals be! She waits with embraces of long delights, And eyes that utter a language fine,-- There, there, in the aisles of the romping nights, She waits for the call of her Valentine." O, call of this world to the world that dreams,-- Sweet call of the Near to the Soul Afar,-- Beyond the shadows of earth's cold themes, There's one that waits where the love lights are! There's one that waits with her cheeks aglow, And eyes earth-round with a fearless shine, And Near and Far with their linked hands go To mate with the fate of their Valentine! Little Sermons. There is more religion in a home full of bread and butter than a hotel full of canvas-back and terrapin. If the Lord sends a tin-cup full of happiness, don't spend your time upbraiding Him for not supplying a ship-load. Some people are so unreasonable that if the Lord sent them a turkey they would raise a row because he didn't furnish a barrel of cranberries, too. A Valentine. Don't you dare to tell me Love is old and gray! He's as young and rosy As the blooms of May! Don't you dare to tell me Love is wed with wrong! All his deeds are holy With the smiles of song! Don't you dare to tell me Love is only strife! Hands of his shall lead us To the perfect life! Love and hope with happy Feet shall scale the sky, Through the dismal shadows To the bye and bye! Its Principal Work. "Has the Legislature done much?" inquired one anxious citizen of another. "No, not much," was the answer. "Its principal act was to pass a bill repealing Ground Hog day, but they fear the Governor will veto it." Life's Way. When the heart grows weary Of the storm and strife, Don't you worry, dearie, 'Tis the way of life! 'Tis the way we wander Through the world of wrong; Sorrow makes us fonder Of the smile and song. Don't you weep or weary At the storm and strife: Love shall lead us, dearie, Through this tangled life! Caught on the Fly. Some one's contrariness is responsible for nine-tenths of life's tragedies. Popularity is an ice-box where men are preserved in cold storage against the fickle mob's changes in temperature. When you board the train of life for the city of happiness, don't let Conductor Sorrow ring the bell and drop you off at the wrong station. Check your baggage through, and don't use the sleeping-car too much. Uncle Joe and Statehood. (Note: The press dispatches indicate that Uncle Joe Cannon, Speaker of the House of Representatives, is doing all he can to defeat the Statehood bill.) If Uncle Joe'd come off the perch and let us build a state We'd resolute to beat the band and call him wise and great; We'd hand him taffy, chunk on chunk, and sling the sugar out Till that old duffer'd surely think he's what you read about: But your Uncle Joe is mighty and he has a stubborn will, And he's done malicious murder to the Statehood bill! It is true the bill is faulty; it is true if we'd our way, It would need a lot of fixing ere it saw the light of day; But we beggars are not choosers, and just any sort of state Now would set the anvils roaring when we came to celebrate; And we think he's small potatoes and quite scanty in the hill When he sets himself to knocking on the Statehood bill! If he'd just be rather friendly, we would praise him up a bit And we'd give him such a jolly that he'd lose his nerve and quit; But he carries him so haughty and he bangs his hands so loud That he scares the day-lights out us and he frightens all the crowd; And whate'er his plan or purpose, it is plain he's bound to kill That sweet child of all the statesmen that we call the Statehood bill! If he'd listen to our troubles and his haughtiness relax, Then the bill we love and cherish would escape the butcher's ax But with him across the pathway, it as plain as day appears That our hopes are only rainbows and we chase them down the years; Oh, we wish him every gladness and we never wish him ill, But we hope he'll quit his meanness to the Statehood bill! Uncle Joey! Uncle Joey! Won't you for the once be good? Won't you let us find fruition for the hopes misunderstood? If you'll only mend your manners and repenting let us in We will jolly you forever, we will pat your cheek and chin; Or we'll lay for you till doom's-day and we'll then be hoping still That the boys will overrule you and will save the Statehood bill! Small Bills. "Is the Legislature passing any big bills?" inquired Weston. "No I think not," said Preston. "I was over there the other day, and I couldn't even hear the crinkle of one bigger than $10!" Caught on the Fly. The homely virtues may be old, but they are still young enough to carry the world's burdens. The crust on the pie at a charity dinner may be long, but it covers a multitude of culinary sins. Every good thing in this world costs money; and since experience is the best thing of life it is always expensive, also. The Sunny Side. Oh, no matter what the weeping, Or what awful ills betide! Let us walk the ways of gladness On the happy, sunny side! When the sorrows come and settle With their tears and cares and pride, Don't believe their tales of sadness, For there's still a sunny side! What's the use to go to weeping When the shadows wander wide? For the sun is shining somewhere And there's yet a sunny side! It's no diff'rence what the weather, What the flow of wind or tide; There's the holy joy of living And God keeps a sunny side! Keep Busy. Don't sit down so lonesome Through the speeding years; Drink the wines of gladness And forget the tears. Life goes down the distance Swift as eagle's flight; Stop to say "Good-morning." And it ends "Good-night!" Wait Awhile. Don't you worry at the winter! There's a streak of shine about, And before the storm is over There's a daisy peeping out! Spring is coming clothed in beauty, And her lilies laughing white Wait beneath the melting snow-drifts For the days of their delight! Over yonder smile the gardens, And the sky above is blue; And your sweet-heart trips the meadows With the roses red for you! Little Sermons. A man's conscience preaches more eloquent sermons than the Savior on the Mount. If men were less evil, it would be much easier for their fellows to walk the narrow way. If the Bible reduced virtue to a mathematical demonstration of its cheapness over Vice, the mourner's bench would break down with the repentant sinners. At the End. At the end of the day What reward shall we gain For the pleasures of play And the presence of pain? When the sun shall have set What reward shall we get? As we sing and we sigh Through the years' tangled ways, Through the winter's wild cry, Through the blooms of the Mays,-- When the years all have set, What reward shall we get? Through the battle and strife, Through the right and the wrong, We shall climb to the life Where the years are a song; When the sun shall have set, There's a crown we shall get! If the Luxuries and Vices were banished from this world, Virtue would get so rich in a twelve-month that she would summon them all back and give them greater liberties than they enjoyed before. A Popular Preacher. "Ah done tole yuh, Sam, dat new pweacheh ob ouahs am de bestes' man in de pulpit dat ebbeh Ah see." "How come, Rastus?" "Why, doan't yuh know, de otheh night when de weatheh wuz so mighty col', he nebbeh said a wohd ehbout hell-fiah, but jes' exhohted ehbout hebben bein' a wahm en pleasan' place whah de flowehs bloom en de wohteh millions git red heahts de whole yeah roun'; en sebenteen ob dem young sinnehs come up to de mohneh's bench en got 'ligion mighty quick!" An Incurable. "And what is the peculiar derangement of this patient?" asked a visitor of the Superintendent of the Insane Asylum, as an especially abject victim was seen writhing and cowering in a padded cell. "O, he is not insane,--he is just a common idiot," said the Superintendent. "He sent comic valentines, and they had no other place to put him!" Good Morning,--Good Night! As life with its glories Crowds close in the light, Tell pleasure good-morning And sorrow good-night. No matter what fortune Comes down in swift flight, Tell pleasure good-morning And sorrow good-night. Walk still in the sunshine, Where blossoms bloom bright; Tell pleasure good-morning And sorrow good-night. And out through the orchards Where mirth rules in might, Tell pleasure good-morning And sorrow good-night! It is always easy to find plenty of weeds in the garden of life, if you are looking for weeds; but then even the weeds have blossoms of love upon them! Kansas Has Her Dander Up. When Kansas gets her dander up and reaches for her gun, I think some folks will chase themselves and hike out on the run; I think the railroads will be good, John D. come off the perch And christianize the Standard Oil until it joins the church; I think the trusts and wicked men that once were all so bad Will mercy pray when once they know that Kansas can get mad! The people there have stood a lot since first the state began; They've passed through many trying times as varied seasons ran; They've had the drouth, survived the flood, and isms good and ill Have overcome with sturdy heart and never-dying will; But now with patience broken quite new battles must be won: And Kansas has her dander up and reaches for her gun! The Octopus must watch his ways and guard his awful arms, And keep his eyes peeled mighty close around the Kansas farms; The days of peace are over there! too long the robber-trust Has rifled all their pocket-books and left them but a crust; But Kansas has a sudden way of stopping all the fun, When once she gets her dander up and reaches for her gun! "John Brown of Ossawatomie!" There's freedom in the phrase! St. John with prohibition and old Peffer with his craze! And now the world is waiting for the fire-works and the sights When Trusts will get insomnia and lie awake of nights; For she will take the bakery and capture every bun, When Kansas gets her dander up and reaches for her gun! O, bold and reckless financiers! Take warning ere you fall! You'd better stop awhile and read the writing on the wall! Your hands are red with human blood, they're dripping human gore, And by the gods above they swear, you shall not rule them more; With hands that act, with hearts that dare, she'll get you every one, For Kansas has her dander up and reaches for her gun! Caught on the Fly. The language of love is mostly adjectives of the superlative degree. At twenty, life is purpose; at thirty, doubt; at forty, philosophy; and after that, experience. No woman ever was so much of a woman that she was not still enough of a child to enjoy being petted and flattered. Rolling on to Glory. Rolling on to glory, Still the old world goes! Still the ancient story Of the wants and woes; Here a little sighing, There a little song, Preaching, praying, dying, Down the ways of wrong! Rolling on to glory, Still the old world goes, Through the battles gory Of the friends and foes! Here it sees a vision, There it gains a truth, Moving with precision To immortal youth! Keep the laughter sunny As you walk the night: Neither might nor money Brings the living light! Still the ancient story Love, the Wonder, knows: Rolling on to glory Still the old world goes! Don't Fall Out with Life. Don't fall out with life, my brother; It will please, you like as not; If you'll sort its pleasures over, You will find it worth the living, And it's all the one you've got! You would better keep it friendly And not rib it up to fight: It will play you joyous music, It will give you love unceasing, If you only treat it right! Don't fall out with life, my brother, If it slaps you in the face: Every time it brings a shadow, Every time it gives a sorrow, There's a rain-bow 'round the place; O, its heart is filled with pleasure And its raptures slay the wrong; All the stars repeat its praises, All the suns exalt its glory, And you'd better join the song! Don't fall out with life, my brother! If it has the wintry snows, There's the scarlet of the summer, There's the russet of the autum, With the lily and the rose; It holds harvests for your labor, It has crowns for you to win; Open wide the glory-shutters, Fling the doors of deeds far-open, Till the sunshine saunters in! Not Extravagant. "Are the members of the legislature extravagant in their habits?" inquired a suspicious citizen of a press reporter. "No, not at all!" answered the veracious reporter. "I know several of them who came here at the beginning of the session with a clean shirt and a five-dollar bill, and they haven't changed either of them yet!" Away from the Winter. Away from the Winter and all his wild ways, To the blossoms that smile in the spring's laughing days,-- To the rivers that sing In the gladness of spring, Where the birds cleave the air on the love-laden wing! Away from the walks of the snow-smitten town To the fields where the bees for the honeys go down, To the vales and the hills, And the love-singing rills, And the song of disconsolate, grieved whippoor-wills! Away to the paths where the white lilies grow And the daisies besprinkle the meadows below; Where the roses blush new In the arms of the dew, And the stars toss the sweets of their kisses at you! Just be Patient. Don't you worry at stupidity! It may be trying some Just to keep your patience present when the dullard pounds the drum, And the discord of his rumpus fills the palace of your soul With a horrid inclination that you hardly can control; But the world keeps making music, and as on the ages fly It will learn the angel chorus, and will sing it bye and bye! Don't you worry at the darkness! It may seem a little thick As through life's entangled thickets you your pathways try to pick, And the struggle for advancement seems so bitter as you roam Through these vagrant ways of wonder to the beacon-lights of home; Over yonder shines God's lantern! And the shadows all shall die, In the glories of the sunshine when we reach the bye and bye! Don't you worry at the winter! When the snow is all about; It may seem a time of trouble for the blossoms peeping out, And the sere leases of the forest and the dead grass of the hills Bring a set-back to the roses and the lilies have the chills; But the world is rolling onward! and the spring is drawing nigh, When the birds will spill their music through the blossoms bye and bye! There's no need to get impatient! All the tangled ways will cease, All the outer darkness vanish, all the battles end in peace; All the griefs that vex and hurt us, all the ills that worry so, Shall forsake the roads we wander and the weary paths we go! Up and on the world forever! Up and on to meet the sky, And the Good shall slay the Evil in the blessed bye and bye! Off the Reservation. There is war throughout the country! Don't you hear it rage and roar From the West Virginia mountains to the California shore, O'er the Illinois prairies and the valleys of Mizzoo, Far across the plains of Kansas and of Oklahoma, too? 'Tis the people that are marching! They've a purpose that is just; They have left the reservation and are smashing at the Trust. It has been a time of patience; for the folks were slow to wrath, And they thought to go it easy down the Standard's stony path! But the loads were heaped too heavy, and the patient oxen broke From the proddings of the drivers and they splintered up the yoke; And however much the masters shout their curses through the dust, They have quit the reservation and are out to smash the trust! Yet it was no sudden movement that expanded in a night: It for months and years was coming with tornadoes full of might: And the fuse was in the powder and the sure result was seen When Tom Lawson stuck a fagot in the mighty magazine! Then the people knew the Issue! Either yield or fight they must, So they quit the reservation and went out to smash the trust! Tommy Lawson! Tommy Lawson! What a naughty boy you are, Stirring up the people this way till they rise and shout for war! Don't you wish you hadn't done it? You are like to break the rule Of the "System" and the Standard and disrupt the Sunday School! For the people are so earnest, in the ire of their disgust They have left the reservation and are out to smash the trust! Caught on the Fly. If the bad people never made scandal, what would the good people have to talk about? Opportunity may call once, but she never rings the bell for the servant when she finds us visiting our wife's folks. The lazy man is always willing to give the hustler a big percentage for collecting the living that the world owes him. Don't Trade with Trouble. Don't make a trade with Trouble! He would buy you bargain cheap, And you'd have to pay a ransom That would climb up mighty steep! Don't sell yourself to Trouble, 'Cause he banters you each day! Out beyond the snows of labor Wait the blossomings of play! Don't make a trade with Trouble! Never stop to name a price; Tell him plain he'd better travel Without any more advice! Trouble never paid a dollar Of the mighty debt he owes; Don't sell yourself to Trouble And the sorrows that he knows! Little Sermons. The Devil has such a good appetite that you can't afford to have him boarding at your hotel. Broken heads are more numerous than broken hearts, and they also pay more fines in the police court. When Faith and Hope leave a woman's heart, it is entirely empty of the graces; for Charity never had a home there. Life and Love. Life, and the trouble that comes along,-- Life and the griefs it carries; But Love comes by with her lips of song, And the joy that forever tarries! Life and the love and the bliss supreme,-- Life and the smiles of gladness; And the song she sings is a holy dream Where the soul forgets the sadness! Where Love Abides. We walk in the present as roamed we the past, With gladness before us and joys unsurpassed, And Love lights the new days as Love lit the old, With the smile of her joy and the laugh of her gold! The world and its sorrows no longer supreme Fade away in the smiles of the wonderful dream, And the light of its love overshines the abode Of the shadows that falleth on beautiful road. O, Sorrow, stay far in the desolate night, Where the black of your wings bears the black of your flight, And hasten, O tears, down the deserts that lie In the silences vast of the bleak bye-and-bye! O, Joy, tune the stars till they sing through the night, While Love wreaths the lilies of Good with delight,-- Till the stars fill the earth with the seraphim song, And Love with her garlands hides all of the wrong! Keep in the Light. It's no use to court the shadows! They will hide your heart in night! If you want to gather roses You must linger in the light! It's Good bye, Mr Speaker. O, it's good-bye, Mister Speaker, when the motion to adjourn Says the stuff is off forever and forbids us to return! And there's much of tears and laughter, much rejoicing and regret, At the measures we enacted and the things we didn't get; But the sixty days are over! And this hope each heart imbues That the people are forgiving and our errors will excuse! It was sixty days of labor with but little recompense; It was sixty days of struggle with the rivalries intense; It was sixty days of effort to enthrone the people's will, And to legislate the good things and the evil things to kill; And if we but scanty trophies for our battles can display, Still it's good-bye, Mister Speaker! We are going home today! We have found there's something mighty in the large affairs of state, And we know beyond a question it is hard to legislate! For there stand so many fellows plucking at the public goose, That it's moving lofty mountains when you try to pull 'em loose! But it's good-bye, Mister Speaker! If we failed to do the best, Let's be glad at what we purposed and surrender all the rest! It is pretty safe to figure that the legislature man Shall receive but scanty praises though he does the best he can, And with fellows on the left of him and fellows on the right, Full of sage advice and counsel, his is not a happy plight; But the record has been written and for us it stands for aye, So, it's good-bye, Mister Speaker! We are going home today! O, it's good-bye, Mister Speaker, and it's farewell this and that, And it's wish you well, my brother, with the work you labor at! And if we have missed our calling and we don't deserve applause, Nevermore we'll leave the furrow just to tinker at the laws; If we failed, 'twas worth the trying, whatsoe'er the people say, But it's good-bye, Mister Speaker! We are going home today! A Memory. A scarlet on the maples, A daisy down below, And perfumes of the gardens That blossomed long ago! Love lifts the face of morning, And walks the twilight late, And one is there beside me And leans across the gate! Love sings her angel music Through all the laughing days, And we, the lovers, loiter Adown the rosy ways. O, scarlet of the maples, O, daisies down below, And perfumes of the gardens That blossomed long ago! Richly Deserved. "I see Jingles is becoming quite a poet. I presume he must have got a good deal for that last poem of his." "Yes, I think he deserved six months for it, at least!" Sunny Side Out. Though the skies are gray and gloomy And the shadows hang about, Yet the world is bright and bloomy When the sunny side is out. There is still an angel chorus That shall put the griefs to rout, And the sorrows flee before us When the sunny side is out. Then ring the bells of glory And swing them with a shout! This life's a laughing story When the sunny side is out! And fill the lips with laughter! Let ancient worries pout! With joys before and after And the sunny side still out! Little Sermons. It's a mighty poor religion that isn't better than some of its devotees. If God is in your debt, you can meet the Devil's sight drafts on demand. The honest doubter will be welcomed to glory while the canting hypocrite is hustled into the patrol wagon for the infernal regions. Fishing Time. Yonder by the river Grasses growing green, And the wild birds singing Over all the scene! Yonder by the river Violets are blue, And the skies are dropping Tender dreams of you! Yonder by the river, Where the ripples sing, In the tangled thicket Burns a crimson wing! Yonder by the river! We have waited long; Let us greet the sunshine With a smile and song! Life's Eternities. Who can measure the dynamic force of one small life, or even of its smallest act? Verily, he that plants faith and hope in one brave heart and summons it with trumpet call to the lofty labors of the rolling years, has borrowed creative energies from the treasuries of God and throned eternal might to rule again among the skies! The Days. Day-time and night-time, Bright and black weather, Life-song and love-song Blended together! Sorrow's an exile At Joy's high endeavor; Tears for a moment, Then laughter forever! Little Sermons. A bowl of hot soup is sometimes more christian than a cup of cold water. Even a bald-headed man can be a prophet. There was Elijah, for instance, whom the bears revenged. Patience is sometimes imposed upon. Job not only had great suffering, but his friends lectured him about his sins. Spring is the creative season of the world. Then all the creatures of earth and air, of sky and sea, find their well-loved mates, and though the individuals pass away, the pair grows all immortal in the children of their love. When the Birds Come Back. When the birds come back! When the birds come back! There's a call of rolling music for the lonely hearts that lack, And across the hills and valleys that have silent been so long There's a lilt of love and laughter and a rhapsody of song; And the cares that brought the sorrows and the shadows bleak and black Hide away their gloomy faces, when the birds come back! When the birds come back! There's a sky of sweeter blue, With the breezes blowing softer and the blossoms peeping through; There's a daisy in the meadows and a green upon the trees With a welcome for the songsters and their swelling melodies; And the pleasures trip the measures and their happiness unpack Over all the waking wood-lands, when the birds come back! When the birds come back! Ah, the wonders of the spring And the blossoms that are longing for the choruses they sing! And the roses that are sleeping through the darkness of the night Till the love-song calls and summons to the lover and the light! Then we sail the seas of laughter, though the tempests lower black, As the blossoms greet the morning, when the birds come back! When the birds come back! Ah, the days of heaven when All the songs shall sing forever down the perfect ways of men, And the lilies and the roses in the fields of death and doom Shall engarland all the path-ways with the bright of bud and bloom! What if long the wait and watching? What if sky and sun are black? Songs and blossoms come to meet us, when the birds come back! When the birds come back! When the birds come back! O, the raptures and the rhapsodies that follow in their track! How the memories of by-gones and the joys of other days Smile again with angel faces down the world's entangled ways! And the pleasures come and crown us with the garlands that we lack, When the sunshine floods the valleys and the birds come back! The Ways of Life. The rough way, the hard way, The way that seems so long! Yet still the sweet and happy way Across the fields of song! The sad way, the dark way, The way that leads above; And still the bright and golden way Across the fields of love! The love way, the song way, The way we gladly go,-- The way of blossoms sweet and fair And all the dreams we know! What the world may think of a man is of small consequence either to him or the world; but what he thinks of himself is of infinite and imperishable importance to all the realms of creation. Mister Blue-bird. "Mister Blue-bird! Mister Blue-bird! Don't you think it's rather soon For the making of your music, And the striking of a tune?" "I have heard the lone trees calling And the meadows barren long, For the laughter of the lovers And the raptures of the song! "I have heard the dark buds waiting, And the roses red to be Sent the wailing of their wishes In a message after me! "Never think I come too early! I'm the messenger of spring, And the roses and the lilies Never waken till I sing!" He has Lived in Vain. The poor man who never was a country boy, and made cider, milked the cows, ran off and went swimming, kissed the girls at apple-cuttings and husking bees, bred stone-bruises on his heels, stacked hay in a high wind and mowed it away in a hot loft, swallowed quinine in scraped apple and castor oil in cold coffee, taught the calves to drink and fed them, manipulated the churn-dasher, ate molasses and sulphur and drank sassafras tea in the spring to purify his blood,--that poor man has lived his sinful life in vain! Good-bye to the shadows! Good-bye to the night! We'll walk in the sunshine And laugh in the light; And the roses and lilies of God's holy love With their garlands shall crown us for mansions above! The hewers of wood and the drawers of water do but little of the real work of the world. The horse, the ox, the insensate thing of steam and steel, does quite as much and more. But the men who dream,--who put something of brain and heart and soul into the clods and fashion them into things of beauty for mankind,--these lift the burdens off the shoulders of the race and plant a song upon the lips of toil! "Say Good-bye to Sorrow." Say good-bye to Sorrow, And her ways of night; Song for you will borrow Every sweet delight. Say good-bye to Sorrow,-- Put the rogue to flight; Pleasures come tomorrow With the blossoms bright. Say good-bye to Sorrow! When she pounds your door, Tell her there's the highway And to call no more! Caught on the Fly. The hired hand who needs no boss to keep him busy earns double wages. Money may buy bread and clothes, but every thing except happiness can be purchased on credit. The monument and the mausoleum both perish from the world; but the dreamer who created them lives forever in the hearts of his fellow-men, and fashions daily something of their lives. The Call of the Master. I. This the call of the Master, and this is the great Command: "Forward, march, to the shadows! Fare forth to the Slumber Land! There's the crown and the purple! And there is the smile and song, Past the ways of the weary, and over the hills of wrong!" II. Forth at call of the Master! Still forth for his perfect grace! Sweet the vision of valor, and fair is the loving face! Swift the cradle forgetting, and far from the sob between, March to reign of the rain-bow, and dreams of the years unseen! III. Rolls the sword in a circle! The whirl and the flash of fire, Burn the years like a cinder and claim for their monstrous hire! Croon of cradle, be silent! And down, thou curtain of doom! Weird as sobs of the midnight the dirge of the wailing tomb! IV. Brothers, step to the music! Still on with a shout and song! Flags above for the triumphs o'er struggles so lone and long! Croon of cradle and love-song! The ditty and dirge of strife, All are daughters of duty and call to the golden life! V. See, the purples of even! Lo, Love has a rosy hand! Hate fades dim in the distance and grief is a far-off land! Sweet, 'tis time for the slumber! With croon of the cradle-song, Rest we there in the Father's arms where the little ones belong! Dry your eyes, my love, and we Both shall laugh with rhapsody, Hand in hand through all the days And the world's peculiar ways! What to us unhappiness Of the sad heart's storm and stress? Joy shall hold our hands and twine Heart to heart through storm and shine! The Baby's Hand. In these days of loot and lucre When no chap can get enough, And the man that wins the praises Is the one that gets the stuff; When the fellow with a plenty Of the "long green" at command Is the one that knocks persimmons From the tall trees of the land,-- What for me shall such things matter? There's a glory more divine Than the jingle of the guinea with the baby's hand in mine! O, it's nice enough,--the money,-- When the weather's fierce and blue And the blankets of its comfort Come and warm the heart of you! But it soon demands the minutes Every hour and day and week, With the gall of angry despot And a most unmeasured cheek; So I'm reconciled to leave it and its tyrannies resign For the ways of love and laughter with the baby's hand in mine! For the jingle of the dollars Soon disturbs the dearest dreams With the thunders of their madness And the rumble of their schemes, Till the heart and brain are weary And the revel of their roar Drive away the mirth and music From the longings evermore! But the skies above are bluest and the heavens all a-shine With the faces of the angels when the baby's hand in mine! Mister Midas, take your millions And the glitter of your gold! Life has treasures where the heart is That have never yet been told! There are sweeter things to cherish, There's song of earth and sky, That are only faintest whispers Of the raptures bye and bye! You have little that I value! Let for me the roses twine With the laughter of the lovers and the baby's hand in mine! Little Sermons. The prophets only dared to preach what other men felt but chose to conceal. The Devil is only the personification of the evil things which men find in their own souls for conquering. Courage is so rare in the presence of priest-craft that when it once speaks it fashions creeds for all the centuries. Caught on the Fly. A Christian hand achieves more blessings than a religious heart. If virtue were as expensive as vice, we would all be malefactors. It takes plenty of grit to keep a proper edge on the tools of success. There is always a hole for the fellow that wants out, if he is dirty enough to crawl or dig. What matters it if the peaches are killed and the wheat crop proves a failure! The water-melon crop is still ahead of us, and a heaven of joy in every ruddy heart! Love and Song. Ah, Love is no phantom, Love's never a dream! One hour in her kingdom Is life all supreme! And ever and ever The scepter she swings For hearts that are happy With laughter that sings! And Song is her sister That makes for the feet All the carpets of roses And blossoms so sweet! With hands linked together They wander the ways! How joyous their kisses For grief-laden days! Sooner Sayings. The race is not to the swift but to the fellow who starts the night before. Money not only makes the mare go, but it saves you from standing in line at the land-office. A journey made before the proclamation is issued is a valuable experience and saves much perjury afterwards. Sooner Sayings. We'll all go to the Promised Land at the time of the big opening; and God grant that we get a filing on a fine claim and no contest. There is no use in trying to sooner past St. Peter. Have your booth certificate properly signed and ready for inspection or he won't put your name down on the books. Don't expect to hold down a claim in the New Jerusalem unless you live on it. This thing of using two poles and a hole in the ground for a homestead residence, won't work when you make your final proof. Caught on the Fly. Clouds are found where the most flowers bloom: only the desert is a land of clear skies. War may be a gentleman's game, but the Devil usually wins the most stakes before it breaks up. All the griefs and tears of the world would cease if Love could only have her way for a very little while. All Fool's Day. God bless the man who hallowed April First! (Or was it, after all, some saintly woman?) May countless barrels of honors brimming burst Across the realms he rules so super-human! A wondrous person he in every part With true affection filling all his heart! For 'tis but proper that one holy day From all the hundreds should be consecrated, While Nature triumphs over Arts' display And Life's dear memories are celebrated: This day is ours! Behold, no master rules! We all are equals in the Realm of Fools! The Cap and Bells to active work awake, All dressed in motley garbs for their appearing, With no disguises for the parts we take, Forgetful of the maskings so endearing; And we, the fools before we posed as men, In common claim our heritage again! E'en every dog, they tell us, has his day, On which fond fortune comes and cheers and blesses; And as the years roll on their endless way, This one and that go by with soft caresses,-- How proper, then, that one day from the throng Should unto Us and all the Fools belong! There are no wise men to contest our claim,-- This day is ours,--is ours without disputing! Who boasts his wisdom bows his head in shame And knows his folly ere it goes to fruiting; The truth we speak! Today we proudly know it, And in the open to each other show it! We meet as equals once for all the year! The wise and foolish shout with kindred laughter; No greater and no smaller fools appear, And Folly flouts the dullard calling after! No tryant reigns! No hoary falsehood waves Imperial scepters over willing slaves! Then doff the fetters and discard the chains! Today is ours and let us be rejoicing! Forget the wise men and their soggy brains While we our native follies now are voicing! We all are fools! Let all the Fools unmask! One great inheritance is all we ask! Some men throw a dollar in the contribution box and immediately figure compound interest on it at two per cent per month. In the Orchards of Spring. A cloud of white in the orchard And blossoms fair in the sun, When love comes by in the morning And sings till the day is done! A cloud of white in the orchard! O, branches hung with the bloom At touch of her fairy fingers And breath of her sweet perfume! A cloud of white in the orchard And skies with their deeps of blue, And songs of the purple morning That come at the thoughts of you! A cloud of white in the orchard, Where Love and her feet has run, Where you came by in the morning And stayed till the set of sun! O, cloud of white in the orchard And days with the skies of blue! And songs that were sweet with laughter And sang with the lips of you! The white is there in the orchard, The blossoms break as of yore, But silent the song and the laughter For you will return no more! Sunshine or Shadow. Sunshine or shadow, Righteousness or wrong, Here we pluck a blossom, There we sing a song; Whether morn or even, Whether noon or night, Stars are there above us With their love and light! Sunshine or shadow! Through the changing years, There is love and laughter, There is toil and tears! But the stars above us Blossom in the blue, And the days are singing Through the lips of you! The great souls of human history have come from the deserts and the waste places of the earth to wield the sword and to hold the scepter, to sing the great song and prophesy of holiness and peace. Solitude is the true mother of dauntless men, and from her divine ministrations they walk forth to lead and conquer and make new epochs in the history of the race. Dreams. Day-dreams and night-dreams,-- All the dreams you will; Black dreams and bright dreams Up and down the hill! What if nights are gloomy? What if days are sad? Life is always bloomy With the roses glad! Day-dreams and night-dreams,-- All the dreams you will; Love is there with kisses Through the good and ill! Love is there with music And her heart so true, And amid the shadows Still the eyes of you! Caught on the Fly. Back-bone is the chief ingredient in the hash mixture of greatness. There may be plenty of room at the top, but it's a mighty cold place to spend the winter. Love never has time to spare from joy while she demands or listens to explanations of a fault. Teddy's on a Hunting Trip. "Let the meeting be in order!" said the chairman, looking wise; (And a mountain lion was he of the most enormous size!) "There is business of importance to consider; for they say That a danger swift and sudden on a special comes this way; I can feel it in my whiskers, and I hear it in the air: Mister Teddy's gone a-huntin' and is loaded up for bear!" Then old Bruin rose: "This Terror has no pets among the brutes, And the first thing in his path-way is the first thing that he shoots! Even cotton-tails" (The rabbits in their burrows flattened out!) "Have no promises of safety when he wanders hereabout; From the grizzly to the chip-munk it is well to have a care; Mister Teddy's gone a-huntin' and he's loaded up for bear!" Then up rose the wolf in wisdom: "I am sure that Bruin's right, And this Mister Man with Big Teeth slaughters every thing in sight! Why, they say he wears a slicker and sleeps close beside his nag On the pommel of his saddle in a mammoth sleeping-bag! We must watch him mighty careful or a common fate we share;-- Mister Teddy's on a huntin' trip and loaded up for bear!" "Mister Chairman!" Said the Old Deer with broad antlers great and strong, "I have roamed the woods and prairies and endured the dangers long, I've escaped the hunter's rifle, I've survived the winter's cold And the summer's heat undaunted, with a courage brave and bold; But my coward legs now tremble, even I the panic share: Mister Teddy's on a-huntin' trip and loaded up for bear!" "Mister Chairman!" cried the Woodchuck in a voice, defiant, shrill, "By what right does Mister Big Teeth come to slaughter us and kill? Is not he our chosen ruler, sworn to keep the law intact, And to serve his faithful subjects with his every thought and act? Let us fight if he would slay us! Turn about is only fair, When he comes around a-huntin' and is loaded up for bear!" "Treason! Treason!" cried the rabbits; "Treason! Treason!" shouted they; "If he wants to come and hunt us, he must have his bloody way! It would be the direst folly for the timid, helpless ones To combat the deadly bullets of his thunder-spitting guns! There's a better way to foil him,--'tis a way beyond compare, When our Teddy's on a-huntin' trip and loaded up for bear!" "Resolved by all the animals through all the South and West, When Mister Roosevelt comes along we'll take a quiet rest! We'll stay at home delightedly and all his dogs and guns Will never find us where we dwell with wives and little ones! Every rabbit in his burrow and each lion to his lair, When this Teddy comes a-huntin' and all loaded up for bear!" They voted "aye" unanimous; and fast and far they hied O'er dale and desert, wood and plain, each to his ingle-side! They hid themselves so closely that no hunter cared to roam Where these the timid subjects each had fashioned him a home! They were too wise for Teddy and they still life's blessings share, Though Teddy went a-huntin' them all loaded up for bear! Sooner Sayings. Blood tells when it comes to annuities and allotments. God made the country, but it never fruited till the boomer boomed it. The greatest heroes of the world are not those extolled in song or glorified with monuments and statues. They are the undiscovered ones who in tears and darkness lived their uttermost for the accomplishments of lofty purposes and failed utterly just before the triumph came. All town-sites look alike on the map. A claim in the run is worth two in the lottery. One contest beats a fire, and two are worse than a ship-wreck. A stake on a home-stead is more valuable than a palace on an Indian allotment. As smoke to the eyes and vinegar to the teeth, so is a contest to the poor man seeking a home. Little Sermons. Eloquent sermons never saved a sin-sick soul. Hate would narrow heaven to a one man's closet. Charity is the first lesson in the school of righteousness. The religion that feeds only the heart can never hope to save hungry souls. If you shake hands with sin as you leave it, you will find it at the station to meet you when the train stops. In April Days. The budding trees Perfume the breeze With breath of blossomed mysteries, And soft winds play By grassy way Through every laughing April day! Suns rosy rise Through turquoise skies, And life looks out through tender eyes; While cloudlets lift Through rent and rift, Where floating islands drive and drift. Clear waters sing From stream and spring, With music in their murmuring, And where they drip, With thirsty sip A lonely violet lifts its lip. The balmy croons Of tender tunes Sing through the drowsy afternoons, And faint perfumes Of bursting blooms Haunt all the aisles of dying glooms! And dreams arise Of perfect skies And all the worlds of prophets wise, And tender hands Whose fond commands Lead fast and far through Love's sweet lands. And bending low We fondly know The love-songs of the Long Ago, So sweet and fair With raptures rare, And lips of welcome waiting there. O, fields afar, Whose echoes are Soft whispers flung from sun and star, Still faint and dim I hear your hymn Across the wide horizon's rim! Little Sermons. Drowning men were never rescued by eloquent preachers who stand on the shore and shout at them how to swim. The church that brings shadows to this world hangs no sunshine o'er the portals of the next. The noblest ambition of good men is to pluck the thorns from among the roses of upright living. Without Embarassment. (John D. Rockefeller has recently offered the Congregational Missionary Society $100,000; after much discussion, they have decided to take the money.) It must be very trying When the wicked millionaires Desire to trade the pulpits Dirty dollars for their prayers; But I miss the shame, you see, And am happy as can be, For John D. Rockyfeller he Hain't a-throwin' any of his awful coin at me! Of course, if some rich sinner Should attempt to subsidize, I certainly would see, sir, If I dared accept the prize; But I worry none, you see, And my fancies all are free, For John D. Rockyfeller he Hain't expressed a notion to be subsidizin' me! But I--I have the promise,-- You may spread the joyous news-- I get whatever millions That the churches may refuse; But I know still poor I'll be And from dirty dollars free, For John D. Rockyfeller he Will never have occasion to pass on the coin to me! In the Dark. It's all too lonely for speech, Too drear for a swift remark; I only grope till I faintly reach Your finger-tips in the dark. But there in the darkness near Where the shadows clutch and cling, Above the plash of the bitter tear, A song and the lips that sing! Caught on the Fly. Poor cooks make rich undertakers. Self confidence is the sharpest weapon in life's fierce battles. It is our own infirmities that lead us to suspect infirmities in our fellows. Because it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom may account for the wives of so many owning all the property. "When Teddy Squares the Deal." They tell us that the good old play We call the game of life, Is fair no more, and every day Leads on to more of strife; The cards are marked, the hands are stuffed, The players bunco feel, And graft has all the goodness bluffed Till Teddy squares the deal! The gamblers who have won the stakes By shady ways of wrong Will find of dough their biggest cakes And sing another song; The loaded dice so used of yore, The marks that help the steal, Will disappear forever more When Teddy squares the deal. Then honest men will have a chance To play an even game, And thrift and virtue swift advance To happiness and fame; No more will robbers ply their trade, Nor shout the tin-horn's spiel; The world will call a spade a spade When Teddy squares the deal! He'll slay the "bear", he'll rope the "bull," He'll make the brokers stare; He'll fill the jails with robbers full, And teach them to beware; He'll fill the rich man full of pains And millionaires shall reel, While poor men prosper in their gains, When Teddy squares the deal. I think that life will be worth while When force and fraud no more Confederate with smirk and smile To grab the people's store; Get in the game! The laws will cease To help the robbers steal, And all the land will live in peace When Teddy squares the deal! A Date with Joy. When Sorrow stops and hails you, Your pleasures to destroy, Just tell him, "Something ails you! I've got a date with Joy!" "The roads are good for travel,-- You'd better go away; Just hit the flying gravel, For Joy is here today!" The Gods and the Man-Child. I. The Gods of Life to the Man-Child crept They whispered low as the Man-Child slept,-- The God of Love and the God of Hate, And the God of the Glories Three; And smiles and frowns wove the Man-Child's fate In a crown that was sad to see! II. "Come worship me!" said the God of Love, "And life shall equal the realms above; My cheeks are ruddy and white in turn,-- And my lips are as red as wine, And Grief ne'er comes where the pleasures burn And the joys that are slaves of mine!" III. "Come worship me!" said the God of Hate; "Revenge is sweetest of faith and fate! To conquer foes that revile and leer With the scorn of the fiends of hell, Is work that brings to the soul good cheer And is worthy of doing well!" IV. "There is no worship like that of me!" Cried long the God of the Glories Three; "I have no love and I have no hate, But the Power and Wealth and Fame; The crowns I hold are the crowns of state And of gold and the world's acclaim!" V. The Man-Child woke from the world old dream, And launched his boat on the tossing stream; A God he sought that was none of these, But a greater and sweeter far, And question made of the rain and breeze, And the blossom and blazing star! VI. He heard faint calls from the far-off days; He saw faint steps in the lonely ways; He caught faint glimpses by wayside path, As he threaded the shadows dim, And through the years with their peace and wrath In the quest of the soul for Him! Caught on the Fly. Love heals the wound that truth only irritates. The world offers no standing-room for the lazy man. Palpitation of the tongue is the most chronic disease known to the race of women. Sooner Sayings. The swift horse plants the first stake. It is well enough to be early, but too early is worse than too late. A quarter section isn't big enough for a potato patch when two men claim it. April 22, 1889-1905. It is sixteen years since the race for homes,--it is sixteen years today Since we on that April morning lined up for the mighty race; And after the strenuous toiling and the griefs that have gone away, The fields are glad with their beauty and the land is a dream of grace. We raced for homes in the desert ways, and we won them fair and square; We built so well as the swift years fled that life was a laughing thing; And the joys that come as the crowns of life, the joys that are sweet and fair, Build close their nests by the brooding eaves where the rose-vines climb and cling. We knew when we entered the strange, new land there were labors of might to do; We knew that Want with his deadly sword stood guard at the desert gate, But far to the swarded prairies and valleys that no one knew, We spurred our steeds on the holy quest for the stars of a mighty state! The Drouth came out of the sere south-west and the corn died low in a day; The copper sun looked out of a sky that burned with a molten fire; While Hope sank deep in the bravest heart, and over the barren way The dumb feet trailed in the steps of Want and dead was the old desire. And Famine came with her sunken eyes from the dust of the parching fields And tapped the door with her bony hands and her fingers gaunt and thin; Ah, Hearts grow faint at the hunger-cry and the arm of the master yields When all the world is a heap of dust that its creatures wriggle in! But Plenty heard of our want and woe, and gave with a lavish hand, And Love loaned ever her cruise of oil that never of fullness fails; The God of the rains heard all our cries and He watered the thirsty land And sent us a patch of turnips instead of a flock of quails! O, years of the strife and struggle! O, years of the wrath and wrong! The hands of toil smote the sleeping fields and they woke with the blooms of light; The homes we wrought are the homes of peace, where life is a tender song, And the pleasures romp through the laughing days and the dreams go down the night! Between the seas of the big, round world there never was such a land! A land that walks in the paths of peace where the stars in their plenty shine; And the fields are fair with the harvests there and the gifts of the toiler's hand, And the fruit hangs red in the orchard trees and the grapes on the purple vine! It is sixteen years since we ran the race, it is sixteen mighty years, And the days have come and gone again, with the gifts that the strong men claim; And after the days of the struggle, the grief and toil and tears, The wilderness smiles in its beauty 'neath the stars of a wondrous fame. Caught on the Fly. The younger a bride, the sooner a grass widow. Lilies are pretty, but the old fashioned potato sticks closer to the ribs. A magnate and his money are different propositions to the missionary societies. Willie's Easter. When Easter Sunday comes along I hunt and hunt so hard, And find a nest of rabbit eggs Out yonder in the yard; They're red and yellow, blue and green, All colored every way, And when the rabbits lay their eggs I know it's Easter day. My Mamma cooks a lot of eggs For little Bud and me, And says for us to eat ourselves As full as we can be; And then we go to dress ourselves, And find in every shoe, The rabbits left a pile of eggs As Easter rabbits do. And Mamma tells us of the Christ Who came to earth and died, And was so good in all he did He soon got crucified; But when they took him from the Cross And buried him away, He came to life and rose again And started Easter day. And Mamma has some lilies, too, And glad flowers of the spring, And tells us how the world wakes up, And tells the birds to sing: And I like Easter mighty well, But what is best, I say, Is when you find the rabbit eggs And know it's Easter day! Little Sermons. Faith is a great heart-cleaner. The godly man never worries over hell-fire. Good intentions never make the dollars ring in the collection plate. A man's meanness and woman's frailty make a pair that prayer can't beat when they get together. The Devil never attends the church of a scolding preacher. He knows that his presence is unnecessary. If you want a balance in your favor on God's books, see to it that there is no balance against you on the books of men. At the birth-hour of every soul, there overhangs a divine plan directing its plans and purposes. That plan is holy and immaculate; it has neither spot nor blemish; and as the soul walks out upon the highways of its life, dim whispers and faint intuitions try to teach the road it ought to travel to the stars. Happy the man who understands the story and walks with unerring feet the divine lanes of life and light until the shadows fall again! The Blossom Ways. With one true heart and a hand that stays, This world rolls ever the blossom ways, And there as it roams the sweet paths over, The honey bees and the laughing clover! And Love comes by with her lips of song, To hush the cries and the calls of wrong, Till life romps on to a merry measure With dimpled hands and a heart of pleasure! Sooner Sayings. The swift horse makes the safe filing. Getting in line is easy, but it's where you want to get that costs the money. A mother-in-law may not be a popular member of the family, but your wife's folks will do to visit when the crops fail. A Modern Love Story. Anent the present divorce agitation, I find in an old paper the following skit which is still in point: Chapter I. They met in the Spring And admired everything. Chapter II. In the Summer she said, "Yes, dear, we will wed!" Chapter III. In the Autumn this pair Had a spat, I declare! Chapter IV. In the winter, of course, They procured a divorce! However it may happen, there are times when the common-place soul rebels at the petty chains of trifles and seeks acquaintance with the infinite. Then it is a companion of the stars, an associate of wind and wave, and all of Nature's immeasurable forces. Happy he whose sanity is so brave and strong as to walk with the blossoms at his feet and the stars above his head. Sooner Sayings. Usury knows no law in a new country. It's a poor claim that won't beat Arkansaw. It takes more than a map and a real-estate sign to make a city. All signs fail in dry weather,--except those of the money-lenders. Better Hurry. Man, you'd better hurry! Life is mighty swift, Fled before you know it With the stars adrift! Soak yourself with sunshine All the blessed day; Yonder come the shadows And the night of gray! If Love Abides. Old Mister Trouble hides his face And crosses o'er the slope, When Love is laughing on the place And links her hands with Hope. No matter if in darkest night Through tangled ways we grope, If Love abides with living light Still lip to lip with Hope! The Rim of the Circle. I. We travel the rim of the circle; the center is under the feet; Today is the sire of tomorrow, the noon and the night never meet; The mornings come out of the purple to die in the light of the day, And over the dead of the ages the living are up and away! II. We travel the rim of the circle! The roses are ruddy and red Where the blossoms that burst into beauty are sleeping the sleep of the dead; And the trees in the deeps of the forest wave scepters of laughter and light Where the monarchs have perished forever and sheathed are the swords of their might. III. We travel the rim of the circle! The peoples that struggled and wrought Are the dust of the ways that we wander, with truths they discovered and taught; And back to the morning we hasten,--the morning when nations were new,-- For the Voice of the Master is calling, and still there is labor to do. IV. We travel the rim of the circle, yet wider and wider it grows, Yet farther and farther it reaches till Love conquers all of her foes, And Faith to the far journey beckons, and Truth with her promises sweet Sounds the call of the masterful ages and hurries the march of the feet. V. We travel the rim of the circle! Its path is a way of delight; The morning brings ever the noon-day and conquers the shadows of night; And whether we walk it a little, or whether we wander it far, Still widens the rim of the circle, and yonder the sun and the star! Playing the Game. When Willie first began the game, He saw but little in it, And often wondered how he came To let himself begin it; But soon he learned the ball to hit A mighty blow elastic, And shouted at the rise of it With yells enthusiastic. He talked so much of hits and runs, Of strikes and fouls and bases, That we, the poor admiring ones, Could hardly hold our faces; His boasting never found an end, His bat was always ready, And every day he had to spend Some hours in practice steady. He never seemed prepared for meals,-- The game held him completely; He kept so busy making "steals." And running home so neatly; And if a "home run" batted he, We could forget it never; His talk would all about it be Forever and forever! Sometimes I think that Willie's game Is like the game life's playing: At first we wonder how we came Around here to be staying; And then we find the game is worth The stakes that humans stagger, And anxious are to win the earth With "home run" or "three-bagger." We practice up from day to day To gain applause and prizes, And fool the precious hours away With toilsome exercises; Yet 'tis worth while whate'er the strife, Whatever you are doing, To play your best the game of life And keep the prize pursuing. Little Sermons. Love pardons where the law condemns. It's a poor religion that joins the church for popularity. Both God and the Devil know that neither of them can depend on the hypocrite. A cup of cold water bestowed in mercy has more christian qualities than millions of dollars given for the astonishment of men. With the May-time Blossoms. I. Out with the May-time blossoms! How sweet is the May-time song, Far from the griefs and sorrows and all of the cries of wrong! II. Out with the May-time blossoms, where the pleasures dance the light, And Love is a laughing fairy that kisses the lilies white! III. Out with the May-time blossoms, where the mocking-bird is king, And the songs of the thrush in chorus with all of the laughters ring! IV. Out with the May-time blossoms! For the lilies lead the way, And the roses blush their greetings and Love is the Queen of May! V. And the breezes whisper "Welcome" and sweet is the vale and stream! And life with the rose and lily is only a lover's dream! VI. Out with the May-time blossoms! Let youth and her fancies play, For Love is the light of the lily and Love is the rose's way! Caught on the Fly. Even a dead lie has a poisonous sting. Social stars are not all of the first magnitude. Grit in men and granite in stone are similar qualities. Good opinions are valuable only as they come from good people. Love never yet held poison to the lips or poured vitriol in a wound. He only is truly rich who carries the sufficiencies of life within his soul. The musician who would be praised by the ravens must learn to croak in their serenades. Before great men can grow, the proper raw material must be provided. Pearls can't be made from putty. My Heritage. I am rich in the treasures of earth, In the deeds that the fathers have done, And for me from the moment of birth All the gifts of the stars and the sun! At my feet have the multitudes cast What the ages have conquered and wrought,-- All the wonders of present and past, All the truths that the sages have taught. I'm the heir of the sea and the sky, Of the storm and the sun and the star, And the morning of time toils for me Till I cross o'er the outermost bar. Every truth that the teachers attained, Every vision the dreamers have known Every thought the philosophers gained, Is forever and ever my own. I'm the heir of the land and the sea! 'Twas for me that they finished their quest; For they toiled the slow cycles for me And they wrought that my days may be blest! Shadow and Shine. "This world is full of trouble, And of sorrows, too, my boy!" But Love is here with laughter And she dwells along with Joy! "This life is full of grieving, Every pleasure to destroy!" But Love is here with gladness And she fills the days with Joy! "This path is full of darkness And the gloomy ways annoy!" But Love lights all her candles And unveils the stars of Joy! O, this world and all that's in it,-- Life and every tiny toy! Love is all we crave or care for,-- Love who links her hands with Joy! The Quest. Over the hills that rise Still pursue the quest, Seeking in the shadows For the best,--the best! And beyond the summits gleam All the glories of the dream! Brighter than the Dreams. Never mind the brooding shadows, Nor how dark they seem! Sweeter are the laughing meadows Than the dreams we dream. Never mind the waves that sever As we sail the stream; Lo, the harbor's brighter ever Than the dreams we dream! Never mind the griefs that wander Where no stars may beam; There's a heaven fairer yonder Than the dreams we dream! Never mind the Sword or Miter,-- Hard or holy theme; Brother mine, the world is brighter Than the dreams we dream! Still the dream and still the dreaming, Through the tangled scheme; But the stars of love are gleaming Brighter than the Dream! Little Sermons. The cup that runs over is the one that we neglect to empty. Those who would lie down in green pastures must not sow too many weeds and wild oats. Howdy, Mister Summer. It's howdy, Mister Summah! Ah's glad toh see yoh face; Ah hope yuh'll lak de kentry En visit all de place! It's howdy, Mistah Summah! We'll happy be, Ah knows, Wid shiny watah-melons Eh-crowdin' in de rows! So howdy, Mistah Summah! Ah's glad yuh back ehgin; We'll ten' de craps tohgetheh, En roll de melons in! Little Sermons. Fast people demand a religion trained to their own pace. Whatever may be thought of the teachings of conventional theology and its peculiar dogmas, it is undeniable that a moral and an upright manner of living secures the highest happiness for the human family. If death is only a passage-way to eternal sleep, still a goodly life is worth the living for the little years of this world only. Sooner Sayings. Every man's horse is the fleetest, in the contest records. Fortune favors the first man on the ground,--if he sets his stake and stays with it. Statehood and "manana" are putting up a fierce contest to become exact synonyms. A Happy Dream. "Ah had a happy dream the otheh night, Boss; jes' de happies' one I evah had in all my life!" "How was that, Rastus?" "Well, suh, Ah dreamed dat Ah wuz in a field of water-melons jes' eh-eatin' widout eitheh knife or spoon, en de juice a drippin' offen my chin in a reg'lah stream!" Still Going. The black way and the bright way, And still we trudge along, With sunshine o'er each path-way And life a summer song. The tear-drop and the heart-ache, And still we tread the years, With Love enough for gladness And Joy enough for tears! Little Sermons. When envy enters a man's heart, the devil never gives him any more attention. The devil needs no mortgage on the Pharisee. He already owns him in fee simple. When a man comes to believe he is better than his neighbors, it is high time he were hunting the mourner's bench. At the Turning of the Lane. Say good-bye to grief and sorrow, Leave them in a high disdain; All the raptures come tomorrow At the turning of the lane! What if over you the shadows And the nights of cold and rain? Yonder smile the laughing meadows At the turning of the lane! Still the rose and still the rapture Woven through the tangled skein, And the joys we still shall capture At the turning of the lane. All the rain-bows arch their story Bright above the hill and plain; If we wait, we'll see the glory At the turning of the lane! At the Twilight. I. As sure as the red years die, dear, as sure as the red years die, The day and the hour will come, dear, to whisper a last good-bye. When Love shall unloose the hand-clasp and under the heaping clays Shall hide in the shadows dark, dear, the dreams of the by-gone days! II. Whatever the paths we wander, they lead to the ways that part! One goes to the realm of shadows, one waits with a lonely heart; And tears that we weep together shall come at the cry of prayer And flow in a flood of grieving at pangs of the parting there. III. The roses will bloom as red, dear, through all of the laughing land; The lilies will grow as white, dear, but neither will understand; For what is the rose and lily to hearts that murmur and moan, With eyes that were bright all dim, dear, and one of us here alone! IV. Ah, one that is left shall murmur and ask of the bud and bloom, And question the awful silence and mourn at the gates of gloom; And call through the nights of darkness and sit at the doors of woe, And never an answer at all, dear, from lips that it used to know! V. And one at the darkened window and door of the heart's old home. Shall wait with an unspoke welcome for one that shall never come; And one at the gate stand watching as there in the years before, While the latch of the gate is silent and one shall return no more! VI. Whichever it be that goes, dear, whichever it be that stays, The lily and rose shall bloom, dear, through all of the lonely days; And all that we lived so bravely and all that we loved so long Shall dwell with the one that stays, dear, and lighten the lips with song. VII. Enough that the joys were many, that Love was a sun and star! Enough that we knew the raptures as tired feet wandered far! Enough that the years were happy and sweet was the golden light That came at the first "Good Morning" and stayed till the last "Good Night!" Upward. What matters the tempest, The storm and the night? Up yonder is glowing The rainbow of light: And o'er the red path-ways to glory we go The feet of our faith in their happiness know! Success in its true sense is a personal and subjective matter, after all. Many have commanded armies and sat upon the purple thrones of the world with tear-stained cheeks and the unhappiest of hearts. Unless life has brought happiness to the one who spends it royally, failure of the most ignominious kind has been its dark achievement. Sooner Sayings. The gate to a cow pasture has rusty hinges. A horse's swiftness is not determined by the saddle he sports. The hoe and the branding-iron can't dwell as friends in the same settlement. Quit Grieving. Don't you go to grievin' At the cry of grief; If you'll try to whistle You will find relief! Mockin'-bird up yonder. Robin down below, An' the world a-singin' All the song's they know! A rose is only a rose after all, however sweet and beautiful it may be. And a weed is no worse than a weed, however noxious or deadly its exhalations. Neither can reach into the realm of the other or invade the world of its supremacy. Stick to the world in which you are born, and throw no bouquets at the impossible or the unattainable. To the Dawn. Hand in hand to the dawn, dear, We go to the gates of day. Where the sweet light beckons on, dear, And the roses line the way; And whether the clouds are heavy Or whether the skies are blue, A song on the lips of love, dear, And a light in the eyes of you! Hand in hand to the dawn, dear, We go through the happy years, Where the feet of the joys have gone, dear, And the smile of the gold appears; And whether the fates are friendly And whether the blossoms few, The touch of the hand is brave, dear, And a song in the heart of you! Hand in hand to the dawn, dear, We travel the dusty road, With the bruise of the battle's brawn, dear, And the weight of the labor's load; But whether we lose or conquer, And whether the rose or rue, A song on the paths we go, dear, And a smile on the face of you! Hand in hand to the dawn, dear We go to the gates of day, Where the sweet light beckons on, dear, And the roses line the way; And whether the clouds are heavy, Or whether the skies are blue, A song on the lips of love, dear, And a light in the eyes of you! Caught on the Fly. A man is what he is, not what he heaps around him. When life passes into the rocking-chair existence, it has no energies for combat. To have one friend who believes in you is more than to be a favorite of extreme good fortune. Little Sermons. Untempted virtue is frequently only undeveloped vice. When a man's religion brings a long face, he simply got fooled in the article he found. So many people think heaven must be up yonder because they have never tried to find it here below. You Sang to Me, Dear! I. You sang to me, Dear, in the morns far away, When the birds of the spring sang the matins of May, And the songs that you sang to me then were as sweet As the whispers the daisies lisped low at your feet. II. You sang to me, Dear, in the noons far away, When the fairies of joy sang the love-songs of May, And the touch of your hand was as tender and true As the longings of love in the dear heart of you! III. You sang to me, Dear, in the nights far away, When the dews of the dusk kissed the rose-lips of May, And the dews of your lips were as soft as the dew, And your eyes were as bright as the stars over you! IV. O, the morn and the noon and the night, when your lips In the sweetest of raptures brought sorrow's eclipse! They have died with the years on the deserts of men, Yet your heart to my heart sings the love-songs again! V. And the blossoms still bloom on the beautiful way Where the dews of the dusk kiss the rose-lips of May, And the noon and the night from the far away shore Sing the songs that you sang, to my heart evermore! Caught on the Fly. A bar-room full of laughter is more attractive than a home used for rag-chewing. If a man stops to try on every shoe that fits him, he won't get dressed in time to build the fires in the morning. Strength to do and to endure is the rich, ripe fruit of trial and struggle, grown only in the gardens of supreme courage. Jist a-Wushin'! Jist a-wushin' fer the grass Whayre the brook's a-brimmin' An' the tow-head fellers thayre Strippin' off fer swimmin'! Wushin' fer to be a boy In the laughin' lan's o' joy, Whayre the rain-bows ring the medders with a rosy rim of joy! Wushin' fer the fields o' green, Cow-bells jingle, jangle, An' the kids thayre on the swing In the tree-tops' tangle! Wushin' fer to be a boy Whayre no sorrows fun destroy, An' the rain-bows ring the medders with a rosy rim of joy! Wushin' fer a fishin pole, Whayre the swallers chatter, An' the Bob-whites come an' call Through the cat-bird's clatter! Wushin' still to be a boy Whayre no grown-ups bring annoy, An' the rain-bows ring the medders with a rosy rim of joy! Jist a-wushin'! Only that, Fer tho perished pleasures! Jist a-wushin'! Fer the years An' their squandered treasures! Wushin' still to be a boy With the wide world fer a toy, While the rain-bows ring the medders with a rosy rim of joy! A Happy Farmer. What's the use to worry? Joy is coming nigh: Got the patches planted For the melons bye and bye! What's the use to worry? Trust the rain and sky; They will stuff the melons Full of heaven bye and bye! Sooner Sayings. When the cow-path fades, the section line appears. The testimony in a contest case is often a startling work of fiction. The booth certificate and the lottery number are worthless to the fellow that won't hustle. In the Lap of Spring. Took a walk one day to hear Mister Blue-bird sing; Found old Winter sittin' there In the lap of Spring! "Mister Winter!" So I said, "Guess you'd better hike! Give the lady here a chance At the rosy pike!" Loafing. Loafin' in the sunshine, On a grassy bed, Dreamin' of the melons An' their hearts of red! Loafin' in the sunshine,-- That is what I said! Mockin'-bird a-singin', Tree-tops overhead! Loafin' in the sunshine! All the cares are dead, Thinkin' of the melons An' their hearts of red! Loafin' in the sunshine,-- Work an' worry fled! Heart's a-dancin' hoe-downs With the roses red! No Encouragement. "Ah tole yuh, boss, dat book whut yuh calls de Bible ain't no frien' to de cullud people," said Black Mose in a sceptical moment. "Why, how is that Mose," said the preacher. "Bekaze it doan't hol' no encouragement out foh de cullud sinnah! Now, ef Hebben wuz a place full ob banjoes en wohtah-millions, all de black raskels would suah come eh-runnin' to de moahneh's bench so fas' dey coulden' be bapsoused!" And the old man slouched away full of indignation at the barrenness of the heavenly promises. Only the chemical tests of the long years can determine the true success or the utter failure,--the worth of a great deed or the nothingness of a mean act. The world's esteemed immortals have survived the shadows of oblivion only because of precious deeds they wrought for fellow men. The rags of yesterday are exchanged for purple robes as the centuries pass, while the crowns of today fade and crumble into forgetfulness. No man succeeds because he becomes a king or fails because he remains a peasant. The Grip of the Prairies. Up and down the world I've wandered, over land and over sea, With the rivers rolling under and the mountains over me, And as sure as truth is certain, you will find this saying so: When the prairies grab a feller, they will never let him go! For there's something in the stretches of the plains that comes and takes All the loves and all the longings for their own exalted sakes, And the man that gets to breathing of their glories day and night Finds the prairies hold his heartstrings in a grip that's good and tight. He may tread the balsam forests with their whiffs of fir and pine; He may sail the tossing oceans and inhale their breaths of brine; He may walk the rosy valleys, climb the mountains to the snow, But if once the prairies grab him they will never let him go! Ever see the sun rise proudly from the prairie's naked rim Filling up the world of wonder till it overflows the brim? 'Tis a glory that's unrivaled! 'Tis a most exalted sight, And the prairies that present it come and grab you good and tight! O, the grandeur of the prairies! O, the seas of grassy plain! How they soothe with satisfaction all the hopes of heart and brain! 'Tis a truth beyond disputing, and your own heart says it's so: When the prairies grab a feller, they will never let him go! Caught on the Fly. The man who has only two hands has none to spare for his neighbor's business. Some people get up and fool around in the dark so they can grumble at the lack of sunshine. The man who laughs in the sunshine and sleeps when the shadows fall will never suffer much with the heart-ache. The Meadows of Morning. The raptures grow the blossoms Over all the fields of May, And they bring the birds with music Just to sing the time away; O, brother, lift your voice In the anthems that rejoice While the roses rim the meadows of the morning! The glad hearts send the gladness Over all the fields we go, And the glory of the sunshine Brightens all the world we know; O, brothers, come along! Let us sing the rain-bow song While the roses rim the meadows of the morning! The good Lord gives his bounties To his children through the years, And his gifts of love and labor Conquer all the griefs and tears; O, brother, bye and bye We shall reach the home on high While the roses rim the meadows of the morning! Fields of May. Here's a road that's never long, Where it leads away Through the blossom and the song To the fields of May! There the rain-bow bends above Bags of gold, they say; And there's laughter, light and love In the fields of May! Here's the road that's never long! Come and let's away, Through the blossom and the song To the fields of May! With all the strife and struggle after riches, the greatest joys of life are forever more the gifts of nature, within the reach of rich and poor alike, and beyond the measurings of gold. The clear sky and the green grass, the sunshine of the noon, and the dew of the morning, the blossom and the bird-song, good health and sound sleep, and the love of a man for a woman and of a woman for a man,--these have no prices in the catalogues of wealth and poverty alike. The Journey. This life, my dear, is a varied journey And most of its ways are queer, But those who laugh through its work and wonder Will find that it holds good cheer; And whether we laugh or languish And whether we sigh or sing, I am sure that still There is good for ill And the flash of an angel wing! The world, my dear, and the folk that use it Care naught for our waste or worth; The smile and sorrow of hope and hurry Are small to the brave old earth; And whether with pain or pleasure And whether with smiles or tears, There is something glad For the dark and sad, And we go to the blessed years. The deeds, my dear, that we faint in doing, The dreams that we catch and cherish, To those that walk in the ways beside us Are naught when they fall and perish; But whether they fail or triumph And whether the rue or rose, To the hearts that hold They are more than gold Till the years of the gods unclose. It's up, my dear, with the purple morning, And death to the heart's annoy; No stop nor stay on the endless journey To rest on the hills of joy! And whether the paths are easy And whether the roads are long, There is rapture still For the ache and ill, As we wander the ways with song! Yes, life, my dear, is a varied journey And most of its ways are queer, But those who laugh as they wander onward Will find that it holds good cheer; And whether we laugh or languish And whether we sigh or sing, I am sure that still There is good for ill And the flash of an angel wing! "When the Sad Time Ends." What's the use to beckon trouble As you journey down the road? Life will find its burdens double If it cherishes the load! Keep a smile and be contented With the favors fortune sends, And the joys will romp around you Till the sad time ends. What's the use to keep complaining At the gifts the good days bring? For each tear that flows from heart-ache There's a hundred laughs that sing; For the day that's dark and gloomy, God a hundred bright days lends, And his sunshine will be ceaseless When the sad time ends. What's the use to go to growling When the comrades that you knew Turn their backs on all your kindness And unsheathe their knives for you? For the scamp that proves a traitor, You will find a hundred friends, And their golden hearts ne'er waver Till the sad time ends. What's the use to welcome trouble? Chase it from the paths you go! There is always plenty of it If you cherish every woe. Keep your life alight with gladness Till a song each day attends; You will reach the land of sunshine When the sad time ends. Sooner Sayings. The land office is the grave-yard of many a happy home. In driving a settlement stake, one man is company and two's a crowd. The ox-team makes a swift run when its owner understands how to drive them at the land-office window. Snake Bit. "Did you have any accidents on the fishing trip?" "No; none to speak of?" "Any one snake bit?" "Yes, but that's nothing. Bill Jones got snake-bit every time his clothes rubbed him, and hollered for whiskey; and in order to save any, we had to undress Bill and put him under guard for the general welfare." The Books. I. Close the book and put it by! What it held of song and sigh, What it held of smile and tear Laughs and sorrows through the year! Pages dark and pages fair Each to each are wedded there, And no sage e'er understood What was evil, what was good! II. Close the life and put it by! It was made of song and sigh, It was made of smiles and tears And the struggles of the years! Days of dark and days of fair Closely came and blended there, And but He who judges could Know the evil and the good! Every day and hour from which Love witholds her smiles and hides her happy face is a desert path in the rose-fields of this life. Only he who welcomes the laughing goddess to his heart and holds her dear hands close with an abiding faith, receives that holy happiness discerning souls call a success worth having. Move Along. Move along, brother! The way may be long, But yonder's the sunshine And here is the song. Move along, brother! The rain-bow is red; The clouds with the shadows And darkness have fled. Move along, brother! The turn of the lane! Here's laughing for weeping And pleasure for pain! The Sage. Removed from pygmy ways afar, He feels the heft of sun and star,-- He traces winding paths that go Beyond the ways that dullards know, And sails swift thoughts across the seas Of God's unsailed immensities. His vision sees the First and Last To present smallness welded fast, And he beholds with prophet eye The brotherhood of earth and sky, And, when Time's voyage wild is o'er The lights upon the farther shore! Still Onward. What if the paths be dark and shadowed still The summit roads and hope hides in eclipse! Beyond the tangled ways that murmur ill The touch of tender lips! Forth on the dark ways though still darker grow The paths before the groping finger-tips! Beyond the shadow years our visions know The touch of tender lips! Finis. A sigh and a song, And a song and a sigh; But the song helps along To the sky bye and bye! * * * * * Transcriber's note The following changes have been made to the text: In the Table of Contents: Poetry: Page number for "A Valentine" changed from 307 to 207. Page number for "Life" changed from 158 to 168. Page number for "Mistah Cotton" changed from 149 to 105. Page number for "Off the Reservation" changed from 225 to 224. "Our Joe's Home Again" changed to "Our Joe's Home Agin." "Governor Tom" changed to "Said Governor Tom" and moved to appropriate place in the list. "See the Side Show" changed to "See the Side-Show" and page number changed from 4 to 102. Page number for "The Legislative Pass" changed from 187 to 186 and moved to the appropriate place in the list. Page number for "The Little Boy Land" changed from 67 to 66. "The Valley of Rest" changed to "The Valleys of Rest". Prose: Page number for "Caught on the Fly" changed from 282 to 283. "Mighty Troublesome" changed to "Mighty Lonesome". Page number for "Wanted to Hide" changed from 151 to 121. Page 16: "dosen't lay" changed to "doesn't lay". Page 16: "hair is the middle" changed to "hair in the middle". Page 31: "the the care-clouded" changed to "the care-clouded". Page 34: Added "I." to the first stanza. Page 39: "Pie-millon" changed to "Pie-million". Page 59: "roas'in' ears" changed to "roas'in'-ears". Page 62: "And they they chew" changed to "And they chew". Page 74: "whereever I roam" changed to "wherever I roam". Page 76: "new-fangeled" changed to "new-fangled". Page 78: "it shadows of woe" changed to "its shadows of woe". Page 80: "Wid de jedgment" changed to "Wid de judgment". Page 82: "Lumkinsville" changed to "Lumpkinsville". Page 85: "all the vitrues" changed to "all the virtues". Page 102: "harvesings of blame" changed to "harvestings of blame". Page 104: "other fellow out" changed to "other fellow ought". Page 106: "These is sunshine" changed to "There is sunshine". Page 111: "food he easts" changed to "food he eats". Page 158: "Good Bye" changed to "Good-bye". Page 179: "Caugh on the Fly" changed to "Caught on the Fly". Page 195: "battallions" changed to "battalions". Page 217: "They ve passed through" changed to "They've passed through". Page 227: "Trou le" changed to "Trouble". Page 237: "when the birds!" changed to "when the birds come back!". Page 240: "molasses and sulpur" changed to "molasses and sulphur". Page 241: "Say Good bye" changed to "Say Good-bye". Page 249: "Fools Day" changed to "Fool's Day" to match Table of Contents. Page 253: "song and prophsy" changed to "song and prophesy". Page 265: "millionairs shall reel" changed to "millionaires shall reel". Page 266: "The whispered" changed to "They whispered". Page 282: "May time" changed to "May-time". Page 283: "vitrol" changed to "vitriol". Page 284: "sun and the star" changed to "the sun and the star". Page 293: "bouqets" changed to "bouquets". Page 309: "Snake Bite" changed to "Snake Bit". 
29273	----	A COMPLETE EDITION OF THE WORKS OF NANCY LUCE, OF WEST TISBURY, DUKES COUNTY, MASS., CONTAINING God's Words--Sickness--Poor Little Hearts--Milk--No Comfort--Prayers--Our Saviour's Golden Rule--Hen's Names, Etc. NEW BEDFORD: MERCURY JOB PRESS. 1875. COMPLETE WORKS OF NANCY LUCE. GOD'S WORDS. The Lord has put down In the Bible; He says: The sin in the world,-- It grieves him to his heart. The Lord he forbiddeth All cruelty to dumb creatures, And helpless human too. He will cut the sinners asunder hereafter. God says: "Ye shall not afflict any helpless or fatherless child. If thou afflict them in any wise, and they cry at all unto me, I will surely hear their cry." Human, they cannot get into heaven, Without they do God's commandments, in deeds, words, and thoughts, To human, and dumb creatures too. Consider how you would feel yourselves to be crueled. The greatest sin is to cruel the poor harmless dumb creatures, They cannot speak, nor help themselves, The next sin is to cruel sick human, The next sin is to cruel any who cannot help themselves. The Lord give human his word, To do justice to the afflicted and needy, To all poor sufferers, human and dumb creatures too, To be tender and kind to all. O may our sympathizing hearts, In generous pleasures know, Kindly to share in others' joy, And weep for others' woe. O Charity, thou heavenly grace, All tender, soft and kind; A friend to all the living race, To all that's good inclined. The Lord takes pleasure in them, Which will not hurt dumb creatures, nor human, In not any way whatever, Have holy hearts, tender and kind. The wicked shall their triumph see, And gnash their teeth in agony, They and their envy, pride, and spite, Sink down to everlasting punishment. The full rank of evil one wants all to be cruel, To the poor harmless dumb creatures, And cruel to sick human too, And take the advantage and cruel all. The full rank of evil one wants all to be murders, And lie, rob, cheat, and steal, And deceit, and contraryness, and so on, And plague every body they can. The good God of heaven, Will cast off such sinners, To their double rank, Punishment hereafter. Poor thoughtless sinners, Going on in sin, Minding the evil one, Their punishment they will have hereafter. God has given human his word, To have no evil conduct, And no evil speaking, And no evil thoughts. God wants all to be tender and kind, Soft be our hearts, their misery to feel, And swift Our hands to aid. This world a place of misery, Some of the worst of sinners have destroyed my head, I cannot bear it up, O my misery, Their heart is made of stone, to do such a thing. O Lord, my God of heaven, I pray for Thy holy spirit to go in all the needy hearts in the whole wide world around. O that they may be tender and kind to all the poor harmless dumb creatures, and sick human too, and others too. The sinners will have their punishment according to their sins, if they will not have the Holy Spirit. O Lord, my God of heaven, I pray Thee, enable me what to do, and what to say, and what to think, day after day. O Lord, my God, be with me. Love God with all your soul and strength, With all your heart and mind, Be faithful, just, and kind, Have tender feelings in your heart. Deal with another as you'd have Another deal with you, What you're unwilling to receive Be sure you never do. The wicked shall see it, and grieve away, And gnash with their teeth, and melt away, The desire of the wicked shall perish away, And away they will go, to punishment great. They slay the helpless, They murder the fatherless, God will hold up the fatherless child, If it is His own. O God, the father of the fatherless, Have mercy on me, Deliver me from the wicked. God says, depart from evil, and good they must do. Prepare ye the way of the Lord, and make your paths straight. Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father in heaven also is merciful. Thus saith the Lord of hosts: turn ye now from your evil ways, and from your evil doings. Thus saith the Lord of hosts; consider your ways. I am cast down to the dust of the earth, With trouble, trials, and sickness, I am grieved to my heart for sin in the world, For the poor harmless dumb creatures, And for the best human too. * * * * * LINES COMPOSED BY NANCY LUCE ABOUT POOR LITTLE TWEEDLE TEDEL BEEBEE PINKY, WHEN SHE WAS A LITTLE CHICKEN. AND YOU WILL FIND MORE READING IN THE BOOK ABOUT HER. When poor little heart Pinky, Was about six weeks old, She was taken with the chicken distemper, Chickens died off all over this island. She was catching grasshoppers, and crickets, In the forenoon smart, At twelve o'clock she was taken sick, And grew worse. At one o'clock she was past opening her eyes, And could not stand, Her body felt cold And stiff to my hand. I give her a portion of epsom salts, With a little black pepper in it, I wept over her that afternoon, I prayed to the Lord to save me her life. I sat up that night, With her in my lap, Till eleven o'clock that night, Then she seemed to be better. Then I put her in a thing, a good soft bed, And lay down and spoke to her often, Say how do you do, little dear, she answered me quick, Then I knew she was better. The next day I gave her Warm water to drink, The third day she was herself, Got well and smart. She remained well four years, And laid me pretty eggs, Then the Lord thought best to take her from the evil to come, Without being sick but a very little while. When I was raising poor little dear in my lap, And it rained on the window, She would look at the rain, And put her head under my cape. And take it out every once in a while, And look at the rain, And put it under my cape again, Up most to my shoulder. Poor cunning little dear, My heart is broken for her, She and I loved each other so well, And she had more than common wit. That dear little heart, Remembered four years, Ever since she was a little chicken, I know it by many things. Her dear friend is left in trouble, and undergo sickness too. Them that knew me once, know--me--no--more, Her death renewed me to seek for God, To land in heaven hereafter. NANCY LUCE West Tisbury, Dukes County, Mass., 1872. PRAYER. Hear my prayer, O Lord, my God of heaven, Grant me I beseech Thee, O Lord, Send Thy holy spirit into all the needy hearts, In the whole wide world around, Convince them of sin, give them the holy spirit, O that they may be kind and tender To the poor harmless dumb creatures, They cannot speak, nor help themselves, O Lord, prepare the inhabitants of the earth To live in this world and in the world to come. O Lord, I beseech Thee, protect me from committing sin, O Lord, help me to watch and pray, O Lord, I give Thee thanks for what blessings I have, O Lord, can thou deliver me from sickness, trouble and trials? O Lord, stand my friend in this world and in the world to come. O Lord, that the professing inhabitants may not fall back And go to sinning again. O that they may be true Christians, The holy spirit, love and tender kindness for dumb creatures And human too, love God and land in heaven, O Lord, enable me to have the holy spirit all the days of my life, O Lord, grant me I beseech Thee, I pray for Thy kingdom to come, to destroy all sin, For the poor harmless dumb creatures, And for sick human too. And for all the troubled in the wide world round, Human and dumb creatures too, For thine is the kingdom and the glory forever. Amen. SICKNESS. Sickness distressing, by trouble and trials, Walk, stir, or do a little in the house, It hurts me very bad, And I cannot ride to have comfort. My head a misery place all of my time, And part of my time in great misery, And noise sets my head In a dreadful condition. Most nothing hurts me, And most nothing beats me out, I am dreadful worn down with long sickness, And trials, and sometimes trouble too. Sick I do feel all my whole time, And misery feelings from head to feet. A number of years, I have undergone great sickness. Some of my diseases are cured a few years ago, And some of them helped some, And some of them patched along, And some of them not any better at all, But I am dreadful wore down with long sickness. A common thing in my sickness, Milk my cow, take care of my hens, In such misery, I felt as if I must fall at every step, But I must do it, I must do it. Oh, Thou who dry'st the mourner's tear, How dark this world would be. If when deceived and wounded here, We could not fly to Thee. When sore afflictions press me down, I need thy quickning powers, Thy word that I have rested on, Shall help my heaviest hours. POOR LITTLE HEARTS. A sketch of two Poor little Banties, They died with old age, over twelve years ago, Poor little Ada Queetie died over thirteen years ago, in 1858. Poor little Beauty Linna died over twelve years ago, in 1859. O my Poor deceased little Ada Queetie, She knew such a sight, and her love and mine, So deep in our hearts for each other, The parting of her and her undergoing sickness and death, O heart rending! She and I could never part, Do consider the night I was left, What I underwent, no tongue could express, Weeping the whole night through. Poor little Ada Queetie's sickness and death, Destroyed my health at an unknown rate, With my heart breaking and weeping, I kept fire going night after night, to keep Poor little dear warm, I kept getting up nights to see how she was, And see what I could do for her. Three her last days and nights, She breathed the breath of life here on earth, She was taken down very sick, then I was up all night long, The second night I was up till I was going to fall, Then I fixed her in her box warm, close by the fire, Put warm clothes under, over and around, And left fire burning and lay down, with all my clothes on, A very little while, and got up and up all the time. The third night I touched no bed at all, Poor little heart, she was struck with death at half past eleven o'clock. She died in my arms at twelve o'clock at night, O heart rending! I could been heard to the road, from that time till daylight, No tongue could express my misery of mind. She had more than common wit, And more than common love, Her heart was full of love for me, O do consider my Poor little heart. She was my dear and nearest friend, to love and pity me, And to believe that I was sick, She spoke to me, and looked at me most all the time, And could not go from me. Poor little heart, she used to jump down to the door to go out, She would look around, and call to me to go with her, She found I could not go, she would come in again, She loved her dear friendy so well she could not go out and leave me. O my dear beloved little heart, she was my own heart within me, When she was well and I was sick, and made out to sit in my chair, She knew I was sick, because I didn't say but a very little to her. She would stand close to me all the time, And speak to me, I could not take her eyes off my face, And look as grieved as it her heart must break, She was so worried for me, And if I was forced to lay down, Then she was more worried than ever. When Poor little heart happened to be out the room, And I was forced to lay down, She would come and peek at me, and take on, As if her heart must break, And come straight to me and lament my cause, And would not go from me, Her feelings was so deeply rooted in her heart for me. They was brought from Chilmark to New Town, And remained there one year For me to get able to take care of them. And then they was brought to me. Poor little Ada Queetie, She used to do everything I told her, Let it be what it would, And knew every word I said to her. If she was as far off as across the room, And I made signs to her with my fingers, She knew what it was, And would spring quick and do it. If she was far off and I only spoke her name, She would be sure to run to me quick, Without wanting anything to eat. She would do 54 wonderful cunning things, Poor Sissy would do 39, They would do part of them without telling, And do all the rest of them with telling. I use to dream distressing dreams, About what was coming to pass, And awoke making a dreadful noise, And Poor little Ada Queetie was making a mournful noise, She was so worried for me, Then I would speak to her and say: little dear, Nothing ails you friendy. Then she would stop and speak a few pretty words to me. She use to shake my cape, with all her strength and might, Every time I told her, They would both put one foot into my hand, Every time I told them, They would both scratch my hand, and peck on my cap, Every time I told them. When some one used to happen to shut them out the room, They would take on at a dreadful rate, I let them straight in, and as soon as the person was gone, Poor little Ada Queetie would not keep out of my lap, Squeezing me close up, talking to me, And Poor little Beauty Linna would not keep off my shoulders, With her face squeezed close to my face, talking to me, They was so glad they got back in this room with me, And I wasn't hurt and carried away. Consider those dear hearts, that loved me so well, And depended all on me to be their true friend. Poor little Beauty Linna, departed this life, My hands around her by the fire, my heart aching, I wept steady from that time, till next day, I took the best of care of her, days and nights, I did everything could be done, I did the best I could do, I sat up nights with her, till it made me very lame, Then I fixed her in her bed, warm, close by the fire, Put warm clothes under, over and around, And left fire burning and lay down with all my clothes on, And got up very often with her, and sat up as long as I could. I never took off none of my clothes for 18 days and nights. Poor little heart, never can call me back no more, When I go out the room, She did it as long as she was able, For eight months after Poor Sissy's decease, She would not let me go out the room, Called me straight back, as soon as I went out. I fed her with a teaspoon in her sickness, Good milk and nutmeg, and good porridge, And so I did Poor Sissy. I made fire days and nights, To keep Poor Beauty Linna warm, The day before Poor little dear was taken away, She opened her eyes and looked me up into my face, For the last time, O heart melting, Poor little Beauty Linna, She could not have the wind to blow on her, All her last summer through, She would keep out the wind. A mournful scene it was to me, To see their breath depart, Consider soon my time will come, And I must follow on. Anxiety of mind will keep any one up and doing, If they have a friend sick, If their own health is very miserable. No one here on earth can know, But only them that knows, How hard it is to undergo trouble and sickness. When I am taken away, I must be buried to the east side, Of my Poor little dears' graves. Poor little Beauty Linna, she remembered Poor Sissy, For eight months after Poor Sissy's decease, I know it by many things. They would always have the best of good cake, And best of good wheat, brought from the west. When they was both alive, and I had fire in the north room, And it came up too cold for them, They would go in the east room, and call me to come to them, They would stand side and side, and look at the fire place, and look at me, Deaning me to make fire there for them, Then I would make fire there, and they and I sat down together, Now they are gone and I am left broken hearted. When Poor little Ada Queetie Departed this life, That was the first cause Of my seeking for God. The path of sorrow, And that path alone, Leads to the land Where sorrows are unknown. The sick, the troubled, God hears when they complain, And all the sons of grief, With tender heart, delights to bless, And love to give relief. It is not every one that says, Lord, Lord, That can enter the Kingdom of heaven, It is them that doeth God's commandments, In deeds, words, and thoughts, To human and dumb creatures too, And love God and hate the evil one. MILK. You needn't talk against milk, if you make your victuals of water, what you put with water won't go half so far, and awful eating and distress ailing folks, and no nourishment to it. Make your victuals of milk, and what you put with milk will go twice as far, and good eating and nourishment to it. Milk is cooling to health, and strengthening, other victuals distress my stomach, because I am out of health; milk agrees with me, other victuals distress me. I cannot eat bread, &c., I must have milk to live on or go without eating till I die. NO COMFORT. You don't know how hard it is to me, Because I cannot ride somewhere, I cannot ride nor walk out, impossible yet, I used to ride once in a while, On a canter, galop, and run, O what comfort that was. I have had horses to run with me, So that the ground looked All in black and white streaks. There never was a horse That ever started me from their back, Now I am deprived from all comforts of life. Poor, sick I, days are very dark, To undergo sickness, And no comforts of life, I hope to have comfort in heaven. O how much better to go to house of mourning, Than to go to house of plays and frolicking, Sorrow is better than laughter, By sadness of the countenance the heart is made better. O how I love the Holy law, 'Tis daily my delight, And thence my meditations draw, Divine advice by night. Touched with sympathy within, Christ knows our feeble frame, He knows what sore temptations mean, For he has felt the same. Restraining prayer we cease to fight, Prayer makes the Christian's armor bright, And Satan trembles when he sees, The weakest saint upon his knees. Afflictions, though they seem severe, In mercy oft are sent, They stopped the prodigal's career, And forced him to repent. Prayer makes the darkened cloud withdraw, Prayer climbs the ladder Jacob saw, Gives exercise to faith and love, Brings every blessing from above. The Lord will sustain our weakest powers, With his almighty arm, And watch our most unguarded hours, Against surprising harm. Poor, weak, and worthless though I am, I have a rich, almighty friend, Jesus, the Saviour, is his name, He freely loves and without end. Human, God is love and truth, God requires human to consider dumb creatures, What a site of wit they have got, And what a site of love they have got for one another, And love for human too, if they are kind to them, If human are cruel to dumb creatures in any way, Or let them suffer in any way, God will cast off such sinners, to everlasting punishment. God requires human to take it to their own case, If they was dumb creatures, could not speak, nor help themselves, And human crueled them in any way, Or let them suffer in any way. Consider what you would undergo to be crueled, If you could not help yourselves. God requires human to leave off all their sins, And pray to the Lord with truth, to take away their heart of stone, And give them a good heart, the Holy spirit, Prepare them to both live, and die, Without true repentance, they will go to punishment, According to their sins, The thoughts are the ground work of all sin, And ground work of all goodness too, If any one is cruel to dumb creatures, they cannot get into Heaven, They have not love of God in their hearts, They will go to punishment hereafter. PRAYERS. Our Father in Heaven, O Lord, grant me I beseech Thee, send Thy Holy spirit to all the wicked inhabitants in this world, that they may see the evil of their ways, and have the Holy spirit, true Christians, love and tenderness for the poor harmless dumb creatures, and human too, love and serve the Lord all their days, and land in heaven hereafter. O that the professing inhabitants may not fall back, and go to sinning again, O that they may be true Christians, the Holy Spirit, love and tenderness for the poor harmless dumb creatures, and human too, love and serve the Lord all their days, and then land in Heaven, O grant me I beseech Thee, enable me to have the Holy spirit all my days, and not fall back, and love and serve the Lord all the days of my life, then land in Heaven. O Lord protect me from committing sin, O Lord, help me to watch, and pray, O Lord, enable me to put my whole trust in Thee, that I may be protected from all harm in this world, and in the world to come, O Lord, I beseech Thee, help me through this world of misery, and land me in Heaven, where no sickness, no trouble, no trials, distress me no more, Come quickly, Lord Jesus, come, and put a stop to all sin, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is done in Heaven, For Thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory forever. Amen. This world a place of misery, I am grieved to my heart, For sin in the world. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake: for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. The Lord give human his word to do justice to the afflicted and needy, to all the poor sufferers, human, and dumb creatures too, to be kind, and tender to all. God forbiddeth all profaning of any thing, thereby God maketh himself known. God says, all the horns of the wicked will be cut off, but the horns of the righteous will be exalted. Hear my prayer, O Lord, my God of Heaven, and let my cry come unto Thee, Grant me I beseech Thee, O Lord, send Thy Holy loving kindness into the whole wide world around, and protect all the poor harmless dumb creatures from all cruelty till the world ends, O that I may praise Thee for Thy Holy loving kindness, as long as I have breath to breathe. O Lord, I beseech Thee, send Thy Holy loving kindness and protect me from all cruelty, from the wicked, as long as I live. O there I may praise Thee as long as I live. O Lord, grant me, I beseech Thee, send thy Holy loving kindness and protect all the good folks from cruelty from the wicked, till the world ends. O that I may praise Thee as long as I live. O Lord, land me in the best place in Heaven. O deliver me from sickness, trouble, trials. The Lord is nigh unto them that call upon Him in truth. O God, my heart is fixed, I will praise Thee. The Lord will maintain the cause of the afflicted. The Lord is righteous, he will cut asunder the cords of the wicked. Amen. POOR LITTLE HEART. Poor Tweedle, Tedel, Bebbee, Pinky. She is gone. She died June 19th, 1871, at quarter past 7 o'clock in the evening, with my hands around her, aged 4 years. I never can see Poor little dear again. Poor Pinky, that dear little heart, She is gone, sore broke in her, Died in distress, Poor little heart, O it was heart rending. O sick I do feel ever since, I am left broken hearted, She was my own heart within me, She had more than common wit. Poor Pinky's wit, and she loved me so well, Them was the reasons, I set so much by her, And I raised her in my lap too. She is taken from the evil to come, If I had died and left her, She would mourn for me, And suffer, and die for me. I wept all that night, and by spells ever since, To God I cried, He supported me, God has held me up, through all my trials, And all I have to lean upon, in every cause. If I had died and left her, to mourn, and suffer, And could have known I should die and leave her, I should have felt a great deal worse to leave her, Than I do now, that she is gone before me. I must be as reconciled as I can, To part with Poor little dear, All I have to comfort me is, She is taken from the evil to come. I hope I never shall have a hen, to set so much by again, From over sea, she was brought to me, one week old, I raised her in my lap, She loved me dreadful dearly. She would jam close to me, Every chance she could get, And talk to me, and want to get in my lap, And set down close. And when she was out from me, If I only spoke her name, She would be sure to run to me quick, Without wanting anything to eat. She placed her whole affections on me; When she was alive, and saw me to the east window, She would put her head through the pickets, And look at me, as long as she could see my face. She had more wit than any hen I ever knew, Poor, sweet little dear, down in her silent grave, Turning to dust, O heart rending, I never can see her again. God is supporting me under my trouble, He took away my dear friend, He has done it for the best, It is all right and just. But O it was heart rending, For that Poor little heart, To undergo death, And for me to part with her. When overwhelmed with grief, My heart within me dies, Helpless, and far from all relief, To heaven I lift my eyes. This world a place of misery, O Lord land me in heaven, That Holy, happy place, When I bid adieu to this vain world. Blessed are they, Which have feelings to melt, For the poor harmless dumb creatures, And for sick human too. And for all the troubled, In the wide world around, Human and dumb creatures too, Great sympathy and love, they will have from the Lord. I must be as reconciled as I can, To part with Poor little dear, It is all for the best, From the evil to come. She was sick and died very sudden, Only two hours and a quarter, About fifteen minutes dying. Bloody water pouring out her mouth, And her breath agoing, Poor little heart. O dreadful melancholy I do feel for my dear, She laid eggs till three days before her death, She laid the most eggs, this four years around, Than any hen I have on earth. Soon my turn will come, and I must follow on, I hope to land on that blest shore, Where no sickness, no trouble, no trials, Distress me no more. My heart is fix'd on Thee, my God, I rest my hope on Thee alone, Christ wept so much himself, He counts, and treasures up my tears. Prayer an answer will obtain, Through the Lord a little delay; None shall seek his name in vain, None be empty sent away. The Lord takes pleasure in the just, Whom sinners treat with scorn, The meek, that lie despised in dust, Salvation shall adorn. Blest are the meek who stand afar, From rage and passion, noise and war, God will secure their happy state, And plead their cause against the great. To God I cried when troubles rose, He heard me and subdued my foes, He did my rising fears control, And strength diffused through all my soul. Consider how distressing sickness is to undergo, And how distressing in many ways, My parents' sickness, a number of years, Caused them to sell cows, oxen, horses, and sheep, English meadow, clear land, and wood land, Consider how distressing sickness is in many ways. OUR SAVIOUR'S GOLDEN RULE. Be you to others kind and true, As you'd have others be to you, And never do nor say to them, Whate'er you would not take again. HEN'S NAMES. TEEDIE LETE, PHEBEA PEADEO, LETOOGIE TICKLING, JAATIE JAFY, REANTY FYFANTE, SPEACKEKEY LEPURLYO, PONDY LILY, KALALLYPHE ROSEIEKEY, TEALSAY MEBLOOMIE, LEVENDY LUDANDY, APPE KALEANYO, MELEANY TEATOLLY, ATERRYRYREE ROSEENDY, VAILATEE PINKOATIE. * * * * * Hear my prayer, O Lord, my God of Heaven, Grant me I beseech Thee O Lord, I pray for Thy Kingdom to come, to ease this misery world, it is now a place of misery, for some human, and some poor harmless dumb creatures, Thy Kingdom come, be no more dying, no sickness, no crying, no misery of no kind, The sinners have their punishment for their sins. Thy Kingdom come. Amen. NANCY LUCE. _West Tisbury, Dukes Co., Mass.,_ 1871. HENS--THEIR DISEASES AND CURE. Human, do understand how to raise up sick hens to health. Some folks do not know how to doctor hens, they doctor them wrong, it hurts them, and it is dreadful cruel to let them die. It is as distressing to dumb creatures to undergo sickness, and death, as it is for human, and as distressing to be crueled, and as distressing to suffer. God requires human to take good care of dumb creatures, and be kind to them, or not keep any. Now do understand, and I will tell you exact. STOPPAGE IN STOMACH.--If a hen has stoppage in her stomach, her corn stops in her crop, hard and swell large, and she sick, first work with your fingers carefully, get it soft, then take a small teaspoon and measure it full of epsom salts, and dissolve it in water, and give it to her with a teaspoon; you must keep to work with your fingers often, to keep it from hardening again, and the next day, if her breath smells bad, there is a rottenness in her stomach, then give her most as much of epsom salts again. Put a little flour porridge in her mouth with a teaspoon, three times a day, and a little soaked cracker, soaked in water; put a little in her mouth if she can swallow it, in five days she eat with the hens and be well. This is the way I cure them. Folks bring hens to me in this disease, to the point of death, been sick a long time, I cure them in five days; they must not have any milk in this disease, it will kill them, do as I tell you and you can cure them. Once in a great while one of my hens have stoppage in their stomach; I cure them with only my fingers, because I take her as soon as the corn stops. Milk does not agree with hens in sickness nor health, it keeps up in their stomach, and they vomit it up. I think strange it does not agree with hens, because milk is so good for human. You must not give your hens any castor oil, nor rhubarb, in not any disease whatever; it is poison for them, my reason tells me so, and I hear of folks killing their hens by giving them such stuff. My hens all keep healthy, because I keep them clean, and keep victuals and clean water standing by them, and take good care of them. I can cure a good many diseases for hens, but I cannot cure every disease. Every once in a while a sick hen is brought to me, to the point of death, been sick a great while, most dead, some ail one disease, some ail a number of diseases; I receive them into my care, I doctor them, and take care of them, I raise them up to health, I am unable to do anything, but I must take pity. FROTH IN THROAT.--If a hen has froth in her throat and crop, measure a small teaspoonful of epsom salts, dissolve it, put in a little black pepper, and give it to her with a teaspoon, it will cure this disease; but if she make a screaming noise with it, and distressed with it, then a sore growing in her, then no cure. GAPES.--If a hen or chicken gapes a great deal, and sick, and complains of her throat, make pills of black pepper, cream, white flour, and put a pill in her mouth and make her swallow it till she takes down enough; the black pepper kills the worms. I cure them so. BAG STONE.--This is a seldom case, I have known this case once in a while. If a hen has a bag of stones grow in her, hang down under her, you must give her the best of good cake to eat, the stones will consume in a few weeks, then she will eat corn and oats with the hens, and lay you eggs; but if you do not give her the best of cake she will certainly die, she cannot eat anything else then, in this disease, but best of cake. I cured them so. SKIN IN HEN.--If a hen goes on her nest, and try to lay an egg, and cannot, and there most all day, then a skin of an egg is in her, she will certainly die if the skin of egg is not took out of her; some one has a small finger, and common sense, take the skin of egg out of her, then she is all right. I cure them so. BONES.--If a hen is wounded in her hips, or any of her bones, bathe freely with McQuesten's Extractor a number of times every day, put on a good deal, till she gets well; I have cured a number of hens with this Extractor, they could not stand nor walk, their bones was so spraint, and so wrenched, &c. If their bones stiff too, then put on Dr. Job Sweet's Sprain Liniment, if any sore, then put on castile soap. I cure them so. WILD.--I bought a young hen last year, she was dreadful wild, and when one week was at an end she came to me, and let me take her up, she keep still, and eat out of my hand, she remains gentle ever since, and a good hen to lay eggs. GREEN.--If a hen has bright green come from her, look same as bright green paint, with yellow in it, give her rice water with nutmeg grated in it, and Jamaica ginger, a number of times a day, till it cures this disease. I cure them in a few days. FEELING.--It is your duty to take good care, and not let anything hurt your hens, consider dear little hens. BIRDS.--When I step down to the door, the little harmless birds come fly down on the ground, only one yard off my feet, and some of them half a yard off my feet. I give them oats and dough to eat; they eat it. Will they come to any one else? so few folks have feeling. DIARRHOEA.---If a hen has diarrhoea, and pain with it, you must be as careful about what she eats, as her medicines; she must not have not any corn, and not any corn meal dough, not till she is well. Give her a little warm flour porridge, five times a day, with a teaspoon; her medicine, Jamaica ginger, put in warm rice water, and grate in good deal nutmeg, give it to her three times a day, take good care of her, and she get well. I cure them so. LICE.--Human, some of them, have lice on their hens, it is cruel, the reason is, the hen-house above the ground, and keep dirty, that breeds lice on hens, and breeds diseases too; have a cellar for your hens, and take up the dressing every morning, be no lice, lice will not breed in a cellar, I never have any lice on my hens, and they keep healthy. Folks bring sick hens to me, I cure them, and lice on them too, I put black pepper in their feathers, it kills the lice. God meant for human to take good care of dumb creatures, and be kind to them, or not keep any. Do by dumb creatures as you would wish to be done by if you was dumb creatures, consider how you would feel. COWS.--Meal is good for cows, but it will not do for her to have it dry, it gets in her nose and lungs, and hurt her, wet it; the best way is to scald it, and cool it, does more good. Cracked corn is better; boil it, put on cover, it steams it soft very soon, one quart makes two and a half. Cows must not have dusty hay, it hurts their lungs, &c. Cows ought not to have Timothy herds grass hay, it is physic. Hay ought to be wet. WARPED NECK.--If a hen has warped neck, rub on castor oil, faithful, a number of times, and give her a little Huile D'olive to take inside, a good chance, her neck come in place again. SWELLED HEAD.--If a hen has swelled head and face, and blue black, put on Huile D'olive, I had one so, I cured her. FEVER.--If a hen has a fever, and her crop swelled soft, take a small teaspoon full of epsom salts and dissolve it in warm water, and put in a little black pepper in it, and give it to her with a teaspoon, and give her as much warm water as she wants to drink in her sickness, I cure hens and chickens so in three days, and give her a little porridge with a teaspoon, five times a day, till she is able to eat. I cure them so. FEELING.--If any one is cruel to dumb creatures, they will go to everlasting punishment, and have the greatest punishment. SICK, I am, and very unable to do anything, but I must take pity,--dear little hens. * * * * * God is good, love and truth, merciful in all his ways. If the will of God could be done in full, it would be a great happiness among dumb creatures and human too. Cruelty is of the evil one. The good God is looking down upon such folks; He will cast them off to everlasting punishment. Human must do God's commandments in deeds, words and thoughts. Be kind to poor hens in every way, and not let them suffer with hunger nor cold; cruelty not in any way; must not affrighten them; doctor them when they have diseases. Be good and kind to them. Think how good God is. Act up to His will in all your ways and all your thoughts too. You must keep your hens from suffering with cold, and give them enough to eat, and keep them clean, and not affrighten them, &c., &c., or they cannot lay you eggs. If your hens or chickens have their crops swelled soft, and a fever, give them a portion of Epsom salts, with a little black pepper in it, and give them as much warm water as they can drink; in their sickness take good care of them, they get well. If they have stoppage in their stomach, their crop swelled hard, take your fingers and jam carefully till their crop is soft, then give them a portion of Epsom salts. I have cured them with only my fingers, they get well. If they have itching feet and scurfy, if mutton tallow will not cure it, then put their feet in a thing of warm water and wash them every morning till they get well. When they shed their feathers, their stomach is weak then, they must have soft victuals then, hard corn will distress their stomach then. If hen's body comes out, put it back in her and see to her, she be well by the next day. If it comes more than half way out, it can be put back if any one has common sense. If a string of hen's insides comes out, with a egg fast to it, break the egg, and take it off from her insides and put her insides back in her and see to her, she be well by the next day. If hen's legs chilled with cold for want of sun, and they cannot walk, take them by the fire and rub their legs and feet, faithful, half a day, then rub on black pepper mixed with warm water, they get well. If a hen is starved she must not have hard corn at first, give her flour bread soaked soft in milk, till she is able to eat corn. Hens must not go in snow, it hurts them. They must not have fat meat. They must not be crowded, their room must be large enough. Their roosts must not be too high, for them to fly down on hard floor, it hurts their feet and hips. I know it. Hens want sun in winter and shade in summer. If hens' feet crack, bleed, and sore places, melt mutton tallow and white sugar together, rub it on faithful, they get well. If they bleed great deal, put on warm alum water first, they get well. If hens' feet swell, put on sweet apple balsam every day, they get well. If hens' head turns over, give her Epsom salts and black pepper, she get over it for a while. If hens have diarrhoea, give them boiled rice, black pepper, nutmeg, mixed, they get well if you take good care of them. Hens must not have fish, it physics them. Hens must not have anything relaxing. If hens have rattling in their throat give them Epsom salts and black pepper, they get well. If hen has her head quiver, and stagger, give her Epsom salts, and keep her quiet, and her food soak cracker in milk, she get well. If hens taken lame in the afternoon without being hurt, rub on mutton tallow and black pepper, they get well. If hen's bones spraint or bruised, bathe freely with Mequesten's Extracter, take good care of her, she get well in time, must have little time for it. This medicine will cure burns, scalds, on human, no doubt on hens too. It will cure sores, put it on when they first begin to come. If anything ails hens' eyes, rain-water is good, new milk put on, mutton tallow put around her eyes, salve made of rose water and cream, put around her eyes. Hens must not be confined in wind, it hurts them, they cannot lay you eggs. God placed us in this world to be kind to dumb creatures, or not keep any, and kind to human too. Consider what a wickedness it is to go contrary from it. I keep cow and hens, I do my duty for them. If hens have watery stomachs give them black pepper, put it in their dough, if they are able to eat it, if not able, then mix the pepper with water, and give it to her with a teaspoon, be careful and not have it too strong, to take her breath. If hens have pip, give them the same medicine, it will cure pip and watery stomach. Help them in season. If hen has swelled throat, put on sweet oil and black pepper, she get well. You must not give your hens salt, it will kill them. You must not give them rye, it will hurt them. If hen lays soft shell eggs, let her set two or three weeks, she lay hard shell eggs again. You must take good care of your poor hens or they cannot lay you eggs. Hens must be kept clean and must not have any bad smell with them, it will poison them. You must not give them cayenne pepper, it will poison them, it drives a redness into their heads, then they fail till they die. Black pepper is good for them when they need it. Hens must have clean victuals and clean water to drink. Take the chill off the water in winter. Keep good yellow southern corn standing by them, they take a little when they want it, it does them more good, and it takes less to keep them. Give them boiled oats, it is good for them to lay eggs. I give my hens boiled oats all the time, and corn standing by them. I give them some other victuals too, sometimes, and sometimes I give them some boiled potatoes. I mash it with cream for them. My hens lay me more eggs than anybody's hens anywhere, by what I hear. Good flour bread is splendid to make them lay eggs, but I am not able to cook it for them. The bread must not be sour. Keep fine clam shells by them, and gravel sand. They must be kept warm in winter and cool in summer. They must have clean, warm cellar room, you will have double the eggs. Take up the dressing every morning certain, and oftener, if they stay down there days. When cold, keep them in the cellar, when the weather is suitable, let them out days. If cold morning, keep them in till the sun gets up warm. Be clever to them. They must not be affrighted. They can never get over it. I hear what folks do all my days, and their poor hens cannot lay much and they die off. It is wicked for folks to be so cruel. Be good and kind to all that breathes, Act up our good Saviour's laws, Have tender feelings in your hearts, For all the poor, harmless dumb creatures. My hens are all in better order since I had a cellar for them, than they were before, and lay me double the eggs. Hens must not suffer with the cold, nor no other sufferings, you cannot have eggs. Raise your chickens on good flour bread, it will make them healthy, grow fast and smart; they must be fed often; I do not think meal is very good for hens or chickens; meal is splendid for cows. If you are forced to give your hens or chickens meal, you must sift it fine and scald it and cool it. I used to raise my chickens on flour middlings dough, it is splendid for them. Flour bread is better. I do not set any hens now. You must not let young chickens go in cold nor wet ground, nor rain, &c., &c. You must boil some corn in winter, and give it to your hens warm, besides other victuals. Human, those that are cruel to dumb creatures and to human too, and murder, rob, steal, cheat, contrary, spite, deceit, and take the advantage of any one, to damage them in any way, &c., &c., those will go to everlasting punishment hereafter, and have the greatest punishment. Be tender hearted, be kind one to another, do your duty to those who still live. God requires human to do as they wish to be done by, In deeds, words and thoughts, to human and dumb creatures too. The greatest sin is, in the sight of God, is to cruel the poor harmless dumb creatures, They cannot speak nor help themselves. The next sin is to cruel sick human, The next sin is to cruel any who cannot help themselves, And especially the cruel to the poor, harmless dumb creatures. The Lord will cut asunder the cords of such sinners. This world a place of misery, I pray for thy kingdom to come, to destroy all sin, O Lord, land me in heaven, that holy, happy place, When I bid adieu to this vain world, My good God in heaven, my only true friend, Has held me up with His arm, and all I have to lean upon. Christ, a man of grief, he wept so much himself, On him I lean, who not in vain, He counts and treasures up my tears. NANCY LUCE. WEST TISBURY, DUKES COUNTY, MASS., 1871. * * * * * This reading below is on my gravestones: Poor little heart, ADA QUEETIE, O my heart is consumed In the coffin under ground, O how I feel for her, She and I could never part, She was my own heart within me, She had more than common love, And more than common wit. Poor little heart, BEAUTY LINNA, She has consumed, In the coffin under ground, O how I feel for her, She was a cunning little heart. Poor TWEEDLE, TEDEL, BEEBE, PINKY, Poor dear little heart, Sore broke in her, I am left broken-hearted, She was my own heart within me, She had more than common wit, She is taken from the evil to come. Them that knew me once, know--me--no--more, Till all things have their end, And they, and I, do meet in heaven. PRAYERS. O I pray for my Lord Jesus Christ, To destroy all sin, and all misery, for the afflicted, For the poor harmless dumb creatures, And for all the troubled, In the wide world around, For all that breathes the breath of life, Dumb creatures, and human too. O that I may leave this world of misery, O that I may see my Lord Jesus Christ, And live with him in heaven. O that I may meet my deceased friends in heaven; O that I may rise above those earthly afflictions, sickness, trials, and trouble. Amen. O Lord, my God of Heaven, Grant me, I beseech Thee, O Lord, I pray for Thy Kingdom to come, to destroy all sin, be done on earth as it is done in heaven, for the poor harmless dumb creatures, and for all the troubled in the wide world around. O I pray for all the inhabitants of the earth to be prepared to live in this world, and in the world to come. O that they may be true children of God, tender feelings, and kind to dear little hens, and other dumb creatures. O Lord, my God of Heaven, I know Thee will cut asunder the sinners hereafter and cast them to everlasting wo, if any one is cruel to dear little hens, and other dumb creatures. O Lord, I hope there is not any one so cruel, so sinful. Thy Kingdom come. Amen. O Lord protect me from committing sin. NANCY LUCE. 
29345	----	[Illustration: ROBERT FROST From the original in plaster by AROLDO DU CHÊNE _Copyright, Henry Holt and Company_] MOUNTAIN INTERVAL BY ROBERT FROST NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1916, 1921 BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY _May, 1931_ PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY RAHWAY, N. J. * * * * * TO YOU WHO LEAST NEED REMINDING that before this interval of the South Branch under black mountains, there was another interval, the Upper at Plymouth, where we walked in spring beyond the covered bridge; but that the first interval of all was the old farm, our brook interval, so called by the man we had it from in sale. CONTENTS PAGE THE ROAD NOT TAKEN 9 CHRISTMAS TREES 11 AN OLD MAN'S WINTER NIGHT 14 A PATCH OF OLD SNOW 15 IN THE HOME STRETCH 16 THE TELEPHONE 24 MEETING AND PASSING 25 HYLA BROOK 26 THE OVEN BIRD 27 BOND AND FREE 28 BIRCHES 29 PEA BRUSH 31 PUTTING IN THE SEED 32 A TIME TO TALK 33 THE COW IN APPLE TIME 34 AN ENCOUNTER 35 RANGE-FINDING 36 THE HILL WIFE 37 I LONELINESS--HER WORD 37 II HOUSE FEAR 37 III THE SMILE--HER WORD 38 IV THE OFT-REPEATED DREAM 38 V THE IMPULSE 39 THE BONFIRE 41 A GIRL'S GARDEN 45 THE EXPOSED NEST 48 "OUT, OUT--" 50 BROWN'S DESCENT OR THE WILLY-NILLY SLIDE 52 THE GUM-GATHERER 56 THE LINE-GANG 58 THE VANISHING RED 59 SNOW 61 THE SOUND OF THE TREES 75 _THE ROAD NOT TAKEN_ _Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;_ _Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,_ _And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back._ _I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference._ CHRISTMAS TREES (_A Christmas Circular Letter_) The city had withdrawn into itself And left at last the country to the country; When between whirls of snow not come to lie And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove A stranger to our yard, who looked the city, Yet did in country fashion in that there He sat and waited till he drew us out A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was. He proved to be the city come again To look for something it had left behind And could not do without and keep its Christmas. He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees; My woods--the young fir balsams like a place Where houses all are churches and have spires. I hadn't thought of them as Christmas Trees. I doubt if I was tempted for a moment To sell them off their feet to go in cars And leave the slope behind the house all bare, Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon. I'd hate to have them know it if I was. Yet more I'd hate to hold my trees except As others hold theirs or refuse for them, Beyond the time of profitable growth, The trial by market everything must come to. I dallied so much with the thought of selling. Then whether from mistaken courtesy And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether From hope of hearing good of what was mine, I said, "There aren't enough to be worth while." "I could soon tell how many they would cut, You let me look them over." "You could look. But don't expect I'm going to let you have them." Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close That lop each other of boughs, but not a few Quite solitary and having equal boughs All round and round. The latter he nodded "Yes" to, Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one, With a buyer's moderation, "That would do." I thought so too, but wasn't there to say so. We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over, And came down on the north. He said, "A thousand." "A thousand Christmas trees!--at what apiece?" He felt some need of softening that to me: "A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars." Then I was certain I had never meant To let him have them. Never show surprise! But thirty dollars seemed so small beside The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents (For that was all they figured out apiece), Three cents so small beside the dollar friends I should be writing to within the hour Would pay in cities for good trees like those, Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools Could hang enough on to pick off enough. A thousand Christmas trees I didn't know I had! Worth three cents more to give away than sell, As may be shown by a simple calculation. Too bad I couldn't lay one in a letter. I can't help wishing I could send you one, In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas. AN OLD MAN'S WINTER NIGHT All out of doors looked darkly in at him Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars, That gathers on the pane in empty rooms. What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand. What kept him from remembering what it was That brought him to that creaking room was age. He stood with barrels round him--at a loss. And having scared the cellar under him In clomping there, he scared it once again In clomping off;--and scared the outer night, Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar Of trees and crack of branches, common things, But nothing so like beating on a box. A light he was to no one but himself Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what, A quiet light, and then not even that. He consigned to the moon, such as she was, So late-arising, to the broken moon As better than the sun in any case For such a charge, his snow upon the roof, His icicles along the wall to keep; And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted, And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept. One aged man--one man--can't fill a house, A farm, a countryside, or if he can, It's thus he does it of a winter night. A PATCH OF OLD SNOW There's a patch of old snow in a corner That I should have guessed Was a blow-away paper the rain Had brought to rest. It is speckled with grime as if Small print overspread it, The news of a day I've forgotten-- If I ever read it. IN THE HOME STRETCH She stood against the kitchen sink, and looked Over the sink out through a dusty window At weeds the water from the sink made tall. She wore her cape; her hat was in her hand. Behind her was confusion in the room, Of chairs turned upside down to sit like people In other chairs, and something, come to look, For every room a house has--parlor, bed-room, And dining-room--thrown pell-mell in the kitchen. And now and then a smudged, infernal face Looked in a door behind her and addressed Her back. She always answered without turning. "Where will I put this walnut bureau, lady?" "Put it on top of something that's on top Of something else," she laughed. "Oh, put it where You can to-night, and go. It's almost dark; You must be getting started back to town." Another blackened face thrust in and looked And smiled, and when she did not turn, spoke gently, "What are you seeing out the window, _lady_?" "Never was I beladied so before. Would evidence of having been called lady More than so many times make me a lady In common law, I wonder." "But I ask, What are you seeing out the window, lady?" "What I'll be seeing more of in the years To come as here I stand and go the round Of many plates with towels many times." "And what is that? You only put me off." "Rank weeds that love the water from the dish-pan More than some women like the dish-pan, Joe; A little stretch of mowing-field for you; Not much of that until I come to woods That end all. And it's scarce enough to call A view." "And yet you think you like it, dear?" "That's what you're so concerned to know! You hope I like it. Bang goes something big away Off there upstairs. The very tread of men As great as those is shattering to the frame Of such a little house. Once left alone, You and I, dear, will go with softer steps Up and down stairs and through the rooms, and none But sudden winds that snatch them from our hands Will ever slam the doors." "I think you see More than you like to own to out that window." "No; for besides the things I tell you of, I only see the years. They come and go In alternation with the weeds, the field, The wood." "What kind of years?" "Why, latter years-- Different from early years." "I see them, too. You didn't count them?" "No, the further off So ran together that I didn't try to. It can scarce be that they would be in number We'd care to know, for we are not young now. And bang goes something else away off there. It sounds as if it were the men went down, And every crash meant one less to return To lighted city streets we, too, have known, But now are giving up for country darkness." "Come from that window where you see too much for me, And take a livelier view of things from here. They're going. Watch this husky swarming up Over the wheel into the sky-high seat, Lighting his pipe now, squinting down his nose At the flame burning downward as he sucks it." "See how it makes his nose-side bright, a proof How dark it's getting. Can you tell what time It is by that? Or by the moon? The new moon! What shoulder did I see her over? Neither. A wire she is of silver, as new as we To everything. Her light won't last us long. It's something, though, to know we're going to have her Night after night and stronger every night To see us through our first two weeks. But, Joe, The stove! Before they go! Knock on the window; Ask them to help you get it on its feet. We stand here dreaming. Hurry! Call them back!" "They're not gone yet." "We've got to have the stove, Whatever else we want for. And a light. Have we a piece of candle if the lamp And oil are buried out of reach?" Again The house was full of tramping, and the dark, Door-filling men burst in and seized the stove. A cannon-mouth-like hole was in the wall, To which they set it true by eye; and then Came up the jointed stovepipe in their hands, So much too light and airy for their strength It almost seemed to come ballooning up, Slipping from clumsy clutches toward the ceiling. "A fit!" said one, and banged a stovepipe shoulder. "It's good luck when you move in to begin With good luck with your stovepipe. Never mind, It's not so bad in the country, settled down, When people're getting on in life. You'll like it." Joe said: "You big boys ought to find a farm, And make good farmers, and leave other fellows The city work to do. There's not enough For everybody as it is in there." "God!" one said wildly, and, when no one spoke: "Say that to Jimmy here. He needs a farm." But Jimmy only made his jaw recede Fool-like, and rolled his eyes as if to say He saw himself a farmer. Then there was a French boy Who said with seriousness that made them laugh, "Ma friend, you ain't know what it is you're ask." He doffed his cap and held it with both hands Across his chest to make as 'twere a bow: "We're giving you our chances on de farm." And then they all turned to with deafening boots And put each other bodily out of the house. "Goodby to them! We puzzle them. They think-- I don't know what they think we see in what They leave us to: that pasture slope that seems The back some farm presents us; and your woods To northward from your window at the sink, Waiting to steal a step on us whenever We drop our eyes or turn to other things, As in the game 'Ten-step' the children play." "Good boys they seemed, and let them love the city. All they could say was 'God!' when you proposed Their coming out and making useful farmers." "Did they make something lonesome go through you? It would take more than them to sicken you-- Us of our bargain. But they left us so As to our fate, like fools past reasoning with. They almost shook _me_." "It's all so much What we have always wanted, I confess It's seeming bad for a moment makes it seem Even worse still, and so on down, down, down. It's nothing; it's their leaving us at dusk. I never bore it well when people went. The first night after guests have gone, the house Seems haunted or exposed. I always take A personal interest in the locking up At bedtime; but the strangeness soon wears off." He fetched a dingy lantern from behind A door. "There's that we didn't lose! And these!"-- Some matches he unpocketed. "For food-- The meals we've had no one can take from us. I wish that everything on earth were just As certain as the meals we've had. I wish The meals we haven't had were, anyway. What have you you know where to lay your hands on?" "The bread we bought in passing at the store. There's butter somewhere, too." "Let's rend the bread. I'll light the fire for company for you; You'll not have any other company Till Ed begins to get out on a Sunday To look us over and give us his idea Of what wants pruning, shingling, breaking up. He'll know what he would do if he were we, And all at once. He'll plan for us and plan To help us, but he'll take it out in planning. Well, you can set the table with the loaf. Let's see you find your loaf. I'll light the fire. I like chairs occupying other chairs Not offering a lady--" "There again, Joe! _You're tired._" "I'm drunk-nonsensical tired out; Don't mind a word I say. It's a day's work To empty one house of all household goods And fill another with 'em fifteen miles away, Although you do no more than dump them down." "Dumped down in paradise we are and happy." "It's all so much what I have always wanted, I can't believe it's what you wanted, too." "Shouldn't you like to know?" "I'd like to know If it is what you wanted, then how much You wanted it for me." "A troubled conscience! You don't want me to tell if _I_ don't know." "I don't want to find out what can't be known. But who first said the word to come?" "My dear, It's who first thought the thought. You're searching, Joe, For things that don't exist; I mean beginnings. Ends and beginnings--there are no such things. There are only middles." "What is this?" "This life? Our sitting here by lantern-light together Amid the wreckage of a former home? You won't deny the lantern isn't new. The stove is not, and you are not to me, Nor I to you." "Perhaps you never were?" "It would take me forever to recite All that's not new in where we find ourselves. New is a word for fools in towns who think Style upon style in dress and thought at last Must get somewhere. I've heard you say as much. No, this is no beginning." "Then an end?" "End is a gloomy word." "Is it too late To drag you out for just a good-night call On the old peach trees on the knoll to grope By starlight in the grass for a last peach The neighbors may not have taken as their right When the house wasn't lived in? I've been looking: I doubt if they have left us many grapes. Before we set ourselves to right the house, The first thing in the morning, out we go To go the round of apple, cherry, peach, Pine, alder, pasture, mowing, well, and brook. All of a farm it is." "I know this much: I'm going to put you in your bed, if first I have to make you build it. Come, the light." When there was no more lantern in the kitchen, The fire got out through crannies in the stove And danced in yellow wrigglers on the ceiling, As much at home as if they'd always danced there. THE TELEPHONE "When I was just as far as I could walk From here to-day, There was an hour All still When leaning with my head against a flower I heard you talk. Don't say I didn't, for I heard you say-- You spoke from that flower on the window sill-- Do you remember what it was you said?" "First tell me what it was you thought you heard." "Having found the flower and driven a bee away, I leaned my head, And holding by the stalk, I listened and I thought I caught the word-- What was it? Did you call me by my name? Or did you say-- _Someone_ said 'Come'--I heard it as I bowed." "I may have thought as much, but not aloud." "Well, so I came." MEETING AND PASSING As I went down the hill along the wall There was a gate I had leaned at for the view And had just turned from when I first saw you As you came up the hill. We met. But all We did that day was mingle great and small Footprints in summer dust as if we drew The figure of our being less than two But more than one as yet. Your parasol Pointed the decimal off with one deep thrust. And all the time we talked you seemed to see Something down there to smile at in the dust. (Oh, it was without prejudice to me!) Afterward I went past what you had passed Before we met and you what I had passed. HYLA BROOK By June our brook's run out of song and speed. Sought for much after that, it will be found Either to have gone groping underground (And taken with it all the Hyla breed That shouted in the mist a month ago, Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow)-- Or flourished and come up in jewel-weed, Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent Even against the way its waters went. Its bed is left a faded paper sheet Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat-- A brook to none but who remember long. This as it will be seen is other far Than with brooks taken otherwhere in song. We love the things we love for what they are. THE OVEN BIRD There is a singer everyone has heard, Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird, Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again. He says that leaves are old and that for flowers Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten. He says the early petal-fall is past When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers On sunny days a moment overcast; And comes that other fall we name the fall. He says the highway dust is over all. The bird would cease and be as other birds But that he knows in singing not to sing. The question that he frames in all but words Is what to make of a diminished thing. BOND AND FREE Love has earth to which she clings With hills and circling arms about-- Wall within wall to shut fear out. But Thought has need of no such things, For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings. On snow and sand and turf, I see Where Love has left a printed trace With straining in the world's embrace. And such is Love and glad to be. But Thought has shaken his ankles free. Thought cleaves the interstellar gloom And sits in Sirius' disc all night, Till day makes him retrace his flight, With smell of burning on every plume, Back past the sun to an earthly room. His gains in heaven are what they are. Yet some say Love by being thrall And simply staying possesses all In several beauty that Thought fares far To find fused in another star. BIRCHES When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy's been swinging them. But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay. Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning After a rain. They click upon themselves As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust-- Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed So low for long, they never right themselves: You may see their trunks arching in the woods Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair Before them over their heads to dry in the sun. But I was going to say when Truth broke in With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm (Now am I free to be poetical?) I should prefer to have some boy bend them As he went out and in to fetch the cows-- Some boy too far from town to learn baseball, Whose only play was what he found himself, Summer or winter, and could play alone. One by one he subdued his father's trees By riding them down over and over again Until he took the stiffness out of them, And not one but hung limp, not one was left For him to conquer. He learned all there was To learn about not launching out too soon And so not carrying the tree away Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise To the top branches, climbing carefully With the same pains you use to fill a cup Up to the brim, and even above the brim. Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. So was I once myself a swinger of birches. And so I dream of going back to be. It's when I'm weary of considerations, And life is too much like a pathless wood Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs Broken across it, and one eye is weeping From a twig's having lashed across it open. I'd like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate willfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and snatch me away Not to return. Earth's the right place for love: I don't know where it's likely to go better. I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree, And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk _Toward_ heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches. PEA BRUSH I walked down alone Sunday after church To the place where John has been cutting trees To see for myself about the birch He said I could have to bush my peas. The sun in the new-cut narrow gap Was hot enough for the first of May, And stifling hot with the odor of sap From stumps still bleeding their life away. The frogs that were peeping a thousand shrill Wherever the ground was low and wet, The minute they heard my step went still To watch me and see what I came to get. Birch boughs enough piled everywhere!-- All fresh and sound from the recent axe. Time someone came with cart and pair And got them off the wild flower's backs. They might be good for garden things To curl a little finger round, The same as you seize cat's-cradle strings, And lift themselves up off the ground. Small good to anything growing wild, They were crooking many a trillium That had budded before the boughs were piled And since it was coming up had to come. PUTTING IN THE SEED You come to fetch me from my work to-night When supper's on the table, and we'll see If I can leave off burying the white Soft petals fallen from the apple tree. (Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite, Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea;) And go along with you ere you lose sight Of what you came for and become like me, Slave to a springtime passion for the earth. How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed On through the watching for that early birth When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed, The sturdy seedling with arched body comes Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs. A TIME TO TALK When a friend calls to me from the road And slows his horse to a meaning walk, I don't stand still and look around On all the hills I haven't hoed, And shout from where I am, What is it? No, not as there is a time to talk. I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground, Blade-end up and five feet tall, And plod: I go up to the stone wall For a friendly visit. THE COW IN APPLE TIME Something inspires the only cow of late To make no more of a wall than an open gate, And think no more of wall-builders than fools. Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit, She scorns a pasture withering to the root. She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten. She leaves them bitten when she has to fly. She bellows on a knoll against the sky. Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry. AN ENCOUNTER Once on the kind of day called "weather breeder," When the heat slowly hazes and the sun By its own power seems to be undone, I was half boring through, half climbing through A swamp of cedar. Choked with oil of cedar And scurf of plants, and weary and over-heated, And sorry I ever left the road I knew, I paused and rested on a sort of hook That had me by the coat as good as seated, And since there was no other way to look, Looked up toward heaven, and there against the blue, Stood over me a resurrected tree, A tree that had been down and raised again-- A barkless spectre. He had halted too, As if for fear of treading upon me. I saw the strange position of his hands-- Up at his shoulders, dragging yellow strands Of wire with something in it from men to men. "You here?" I said. "Where aren't you nowadays And what's the news you carry--if you know? And tell me where you're off for--Montreal? Me? I'm not off for anywhere at all. Sometimes I wander out of beaten ways Half looking for the orchid Calypso." RANGE-FINDING The battle rent a cobweb diamond-strung And cut a flower beside a ground bird's nest Before it stained a single human breast. The stricken flower bent double and so hung. And still the bird revisited her young. A butterfly its fall had dispossessed A moment sought in air his flower of rest, Then lightly stooped to it and fluttering clung. On the bare upland pasture there had spread O'ernight 'twixt mullein stalks a wheel of thread And straining cables wet with silver dew. A sudden passing bullet shook it dry. The indwelling spider ran to greet the fly, But finding nothing, sullenly withdrew. THE HILL WIFE LONELINESS (_Her Word_) One ought not to have to care So much as you and I Care when the birds come round the house To seem to say good-bye; Or care so much when they come back With whatever it is they sing; The truth being we are as much Too glad for the one thing As we are too sad for the other here-- With birds that fill their breasts But with each other and themselves And their built or driven nests. HOUSE FEAR Always--I tell you this they learned-- Always at night when they returned To the lonely house from far away To lamps unlighted and fire gone gray, They learned to rattle the lock and key To give whatever might chance to be Warning and time to be off in flight: And preferring the out- to the in-door night, They learned to leave the house-door wide Until they had lit the lamp inside. THE SMILE (_Her Word_) I didn't like the way he went away. That smile! It never came of being gay. Still he smiled--did you see him?--I was sure! Perhaps because we gave him only bread And the wretch knew from that that we were poor. Perhaps because he let us give instead Of seizing from us as he might have seized. Perhaps he mocked at us for being wed, Or being very young (and he was pleased To have a vision of us old and dead). I wonder how far down the road he's got. He's watching from the woods as like as not. THE OFT-REPEATED DREAM She had no saying dark enough For the dark pine that kept Forever trying the window-latch Of the room where they slept. The tireless but ineffectual hands That with every futile pass Made the great tree seem as a little bird Before the mystery of glass! It never had been inside the room, And only one of the two Was afraid in an oft-repeated dream Of what the tree might do. THE IMPULSE It was too lonely for her there, And too wild, And since there were but two of them, And no child, And work was little in the house, She was free, And followed where he furrowed field, Or felled tree. She rested on a log and tossed The fresh chips, With a song only to herself On her lips. And once she went to break a bough Of black alder. She strayed so far she scarcely heard When he called her-- And didn't answer--didn't speak-- Or return. She stood, and then she ran and hid In the fern. He never found her, though he looked Everywhere, And he asked at her mother's house Was she there. Sudden and swift and light as that The ties gave, And he learned of finalities Besides the grave. THE BONFIRE "Oh, let's go up the hill and scare ourselves, As reckless as the best of them to-night, By setting fire to all the brush we piled With pitchy hands to wait for rain or snow. Oh, let's not wait for rain to make it safe. The pile is ours: we dragged it bough on bough Down dark converging paths between the pines. Let's not care what we do with it to-night. Divide it? No! But burn it as one pile The way we piled it. And let's be the talk Of people brought to windows by a light Thrown from somewhere against their wall-paper. Rouse them all, both the free and not so free With saying what they'd like to do to us For what they'd better wait till we have done. Let's all but bring to life this old volcano, If that is what the mountain ever was-- And scare ourselves. Let wild fire loose we will...." "And scare you too?" the children said together. "Why wouldn't it scare me to have a fire Begin in smudge with ropy smoke and know That still, if I repent, I may recall it, But in a moment not: a little spurt Of burning fatness, and then nothing but The fire itself can put it out, and that By burning out, and before it burns out It will have roared first and mixed sparks with stars, And sweeping round it with a flaming sword, Made the dim trees stand back in wider circle-- Done so much and I know not how much more I mean it shall not do if I can bind it. Well if it doesn't with its draft bring on A wind to blow in earnest from some quarter, As once it did with me upon an April. The breezes were so spent with winter blowing They seemed to fail the bluebirds under them Short of the perch their languid flight was toward; And my flame made a pinnacle to heaven As I walked once round it in possession. But the wind out of doors--you know the saying. There came a gust. You used to think the trees Made wind by fanning since you never knew It blow but that you saw the trees in motion. Something or someone watching made that gust. It put the flame tip-down and dabbed the grass Of over-winter with the least tip-touch Your tongue gives salt or sugar in your hand. The place it reached to blackened instantly. The black was all there was by day-light, That and the merest curl of cigarette smoke-- And a flame slender as the hepaticas, Blood-root, and violets so soon to be now. But the black spread like black death on the ground, And I think the sky darkened with a cloud Like winter and evening coming on together. There were enough things to be thought of then. Where the field stretches toward the north And setting sun to Hyla brook, I gave it To flames without twice thinking, where it verges Upon the road, to flames too, though in fear They might find fuel there, in withered brake, Grass its full length, old silver golden-rod, And alder and grape vine entanglement, To leap the dusty deadline. For my own I took what front there was beside. I knelt And thrust hands in and held my face away. Fight such a fire by rubbing not by beating. A board is the best weapon if you have it. I had my coat. And oh, I knew, I knew, And said out loud, I couldn't bide the smother And heat so close in; but the thought of all The woods and town on fire by me, and all The town turned out to fight for me--that held me. I trusted the brook barrier, but feared The road would fail; and on that side the fire Died not without a noise of crackling wood-- Of something more than tinder-grass and weed-- That brought me to my feet to hold it back By leaning back myself, as if the reins Were round my neck and I was at the plough. I won! But I'm sure no one ever spread Another color over a tenth the space That I spread coal-black over in the time It took me. Neighbors coming home from town Couldn't believe that so much black had come there While they had backs turned, that it hadn't been there When they had passed an hour or so before Going the other way and they not seen it. They looked about for someone to have done it. But there was no one. I was somewhere wondering Where all my weariness had gone and why I walked so light on air in heavy shoes In spite of a scorched Fourth-of-July feeling. Why wouldn't I be scared remembering that?" "If it scares you, what will it do to us?" "Scare you. But if you shrink from being scared, What would you say to war if it should come? That's what for reasons I should like to know-- If you can comfort me by any answer." "Oh, but war's not for children--it's for men." "Now we are digging almost down to China. My dears, my dears, you thought that--we all thought it. So your mistake was ours. Haven't you heard, though, About the ships where war has found them out At sea, about the towns where war has come Through opening clouds at night with droning speed Further o'erhead than all but stars and angels,-- And children in the ships and in the towns? Haven't you heard what we have lived to learn? Nothing so new--something we had forgotten: _War is for everyone, for children too_. I wasn't going to tell you and I mustn't. The best way is to come up hill with me And have our fire and laugh and be afraid." A GIRL'S GARDEN A neighbor of mine in the village Likes to tell how one spring When she was a girl on the farm, she did A childlike thing. One day she asked her father To give her a garden plot To plant and tend and reap herself, And he said, "Why not?" In casting about for a corner He thought of an idle bit Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood, And he said, "Just it." And he said, "That ought to make you An ideal one-girl farm, And give you a chance to put some strength On your slim-jim arm." It was not enough of a garden, Her father said, to plough; So she had to work it all by hand, But she don't mind now. She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow Along a stretch of road; But she always ran away and left Her not-nice load. And hid from anyone passing. And then she begged the seed. She says she thinks she planted one Of all things but weed. A hill each of potatoes, Radishes, lettuce, peas, Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn, And even fruit trees. And yes, she has long mistrusted That a cider apple tree In bearing there to-day is hers, Or at least may be. Her crop was a miscellany When all was said and done, A little bit of everything, A great deal of none. _Now_ when she sees in the village How village things go, Just when it seems to come in right, She says, "_I_ know! It's as when I was a farmer----" Oh, never by way of advice! And she never sins by telling the tale To the same person twice. THE EXPOSED NEST You were forever finding some new play. So when I saw you down on hands and knees In the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay, Trying, I thought, to set it up on end, I went to show you how to make it stay, If that was your idea, against the breeze, And, if you asked me, even help pretend To make it root again and grow afresh. But 'twas no make-believe with you to-day, Nor was the grass itself your real concern, Though I found your hand full of wilted fern, Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clover. 'Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground The cutter-bar had just gone champing over (Miraculously without tasting flesh) And left defenseless to the heat and light. You wanted to restore them to their right Of something interposed between their sight And too much world at once--could means be found. The way the nest-full every time we stirred Stood up to us as to a mother-bird Whose coming home has been too long deferred, Made me ask would the mother-bird return And care for them in such a change of scene And might our meddling make her more afraid. That was a thing we could not wait to learn. We saw the risk we took in doing good, But dared not spare to do the best we could Though harm should come of it; so built the screen You had begun, and gave them back their shade. All this to prove we cared. Why is there then No more to tell? We turned to other things. I haven't any memory--have you?-- Of ever coming to the place again To see if the birds lived the first night through, And so at last to learn to use their wings. "OUT, OUT--" The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it. And from there those that lifted eyes could count Five mountain ranges one behind the other Under the sunset far into Vermont. And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled, As it ran light, or had to bear a load. And nothing happened: day was all but done. Call it a day, I wish they might have said To please the boy by giving him the half hour That a boy counts so much when saved from work. His sister stood beside them in her apron To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw, As if to prove saws knew what supper meant, Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap-- He must have given the hand. However it was, Neither refused the meeting. But the hand! The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh, As he swung toward them holding up the hand Half in appeal, but half as if to keep The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all-- Since he was old enough to know, big boy Doing a man's work, though a child at heart-- He saw all spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off-- The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!" So. But the hand was gone already. The doctor put him in the dark of ether. He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath. And then--the watcher at his pulse took fright. No one believed. They listened at his heart. Little--less--nothing!--and that ended it. No more to build on there. And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs. BROWN'S DESCENT OR THE WILLY-NILLY SLIDE Brown lived at such a lofty farm That everyone for miles could see His lantern when he did his chores In winter after half-past three. And many must have seen him make His wild descent from there one night, 'Cross lots, 'cross walls, 'cross everything, Describing rings of lantern light. Between the house and barn the gale Got him by something he had on And blew him out on the icy crust That cased the world, and he was gone! Walls were all buried, trees were few: He saw no stay unless he stove A hole in somewhere with his heel. But though repeatedly he strove And stamped and said things to himself, And sometimes something seemed to yield, He gained no foothold, but pursued His journey down from field to field. Sometimes he came with arms outspread Like wings, revolving in the scene Upon his longer axis, and With no small dignity of mien. Faster or slower as he chanced, Sitting or standing as he chose, According as he feared to risk His neck, or thought to spare his clothes, He never let the lantern drop. And some exclaimed who saw afar The figures he described with it, "I wonder what those signals are Brown makes at such an hour of night! He's celebrating something strange. I wonder if he's sold his farm, Or been made Master of the Grange." He reeled, he lurched, he bobbed, he checked; He fell and made the lantern rattle (But saved the light from going out.) So half-way down he fought the battle Incredulous of his own bad luck. And then becoming reconciled To everything, he gave it up And came down like a coasting child. "Well--I--be--" that was all he said, As standing in the river road, He looked back up the slippery slope (Two miles it was) to his abode. Sometimes as an authority On motor-cars, I'm asked if I Should say our stock was petered out, And this is my sincere reply: Yankees are what they always were. Don't think Brown ever gave up hope Of getting home again because He couldn't climb that slippery slope; Or even thought of standing there Until the January thaw Should take the polish off the crust. He bowed with grace to natural law, And then went round it on his feet, After the manner of our stock; Not much concerned for those to whom, At that particular time o'clock, It must have looked as if the course He steered was really straight away From that which he was headed for-- Not much concerned for them, I say; No more so than became a man-- _And_ politician at odd seasons. I've kept Brown standing in the cold While I invested him with reasons; But now he snapped his eyes three times; Then shook his lantern, saying, "Ile's 'Bout out!" and took the long way home By road, a matter of several miles. THE GUM-GATHERER There overtook me and drew me in To his down-hill, early-morning stride, And set me five miles on my road Better than if he had had me ride, A man with a swinging bag for load And half the bag wound round his hand. We talked like barking above the din Of water we walked along beside. And for my telling him where I'd been And where I lived in mountain land To be coming home the way I was, He told me a little about himself. He came from higher up in the pass Where the grist of the new-beginning brooks Is blocks split off the mountain mass-- And hopeless grist enough it looks Ever to grind to soil for grass. (The way it is will do for moss.) There he had built his stolen shack. It had to be a stolen shack Because of the fears of fire and loss That trouble the sleep of lumber folk: Visions of half the world burned black And the sun shrunken yellow in smoke. We know who when they come to town Bring berries under the wagon seat, Or a basket of eggs between their feet; What this man brought in a cotton sack Was gum, the gum of the mountain spruce. He showed me lumps of the scented stuff Like uncut jewels, dull and rough. It comes to market golden brown; But turns to pink between the teeth. I told him this is a pleasant life To set your breast to the bark of trees That all your days are dim beneath, And reaching up with a little knife, To loose the resin and take it down And bring it to market when you please. THE LINE-GANG Here come the line-gang pioneering by. They throw a forest down less cut than broken. They plant dead trees for living, and the dead They string together with a living thread. They string an instrument against the sky Wherein words whether beaten out or spoken Will run as hushed as when they were a thought. But in no hush they string it: they go past With shouts afar to pull the cable taut, To hold it hard until they make it fast, To ease away--they have it. With a laugh, An oath of towns that set the wild at naught They bring the telephone and telegraph. THE VANISHING RED He is said to have been the last Red Man In Acton. And the Miller is said to have laughed-- If you like to call such a sound a laugh. But he gave no one else a laugher's license. For he turned suddenly grave as if to say, "Whose business,--if I take it on myself, Whose business--but why talk round the barn?-- When it's just that I hold with getting a thing done with." You can't get back and see it as he saw it. It's too long a story to go into now. You'd have to have been there and lived it. Then you wouldn't have looked on it as just a matter Of who began it between the two races. Some guttural exclamation of surprise The Red Man gave in poking about the mill Over the great big thumping shuffling mill-stone Disgusted the Miller physically as coming From one who had no right to be heard from. "Come, John," he said, "you want to see the wheel pit?" He took him down below a cramping rafter, And showed him, through a manhole in the floor, The water in desperate straits like frantic fish, Salmon and sturgeon, lashing with their tails. Then he shut down the trap door with a ring in it That jangled even above the general noise, And came up stairs alone--and gave that laugh, And said something to a man with a meal-sack That the man with the meal-sack didn't catch--then. Oh, yes, he showed John the wheel pit all right. SNOW The three stood listening to a fresh access Of wind that caught against the house a moment, Gulped snow, and then blew free again--the Coles Dressed, but dishevelled from some hours of sleep, Meserve belittled in the great skin coat he wore. Meserve was first to speak. He pointed backward Over his shoulder with his pipe-stem, saying, "You can just see it glancing off the roof Making a great scroll upward toward the sky, Long enough for recording all our names on.-- I think I'll just call up my wife and tell her I'm here--so far--and starting on again. I'll call her softly so that if she's wise And gone to sleep, she needn't wake to answer." Three times he barely stirred the bell, then listened. "Why, Lett, still up? Lett, I'm at Cole's. I'm late. I called you up to say Good-night from here Before I went to say Good-morning there.-- I thought I would.--I know, but, Lett--I know-- I could, but what's the sense? The rest won't be So bad.--Give me an hour for it.--Ho, ho, Three hours to here! But that was all up hill; The rest is down.--Why no, no, not a wallow: They kept their heads and took their time to it Like darlings, both of them. They're in the barn.-- My dear, I'm coming just the same. I didn't Call you to ask you to invite me home.--" He lingered for some word she wouldn't say, Said it at last himself, "Good-night," and then, Getting no answer, closed the telephone. The three stood in the lamplight round the table With lowered eyes a moment till he said, "I'll just see how the horses are." "Yes, do," Both the Coles said together. Mrs. Cole Added: "You can judge better after seeing.-- I want you here with me, Fred. Leave him here, Brother Meserve. You know to find your way Out through the shed." "I guess I know my way, I guess I know where I can find my name Carved in the shed to tell me who I am If it don't tell me where I am. I used To play--" "You tend your horses and come back. Fred Cole, you're going to let him!" "Well, aren't you? How can you help yourself?" "I called him Brother. Why did I call him that?" "It's right enough. That's all you ever heard him called round here. He seems to have lost off his Christian name." "Christian enough I should call that myself. He took no notice, did he? Well, at least I didn't use it out of love of him, The dear knows. I detest the thought of him With his ten children under ten years old. I hate his wretched little Racker Sect, All's ever I heard of it, which isn't much. But that's not saying--Look, Fred Cole, it's twelve, Isn't it, now? He's been here half an hour. He says he left the village store at nine. Three hours to do four miles--a mile an hour Or not much better. Why, it doesn't seem As if a man could move that slow and move. Try to think what he did with all that time. And three miles more to go!" "Don't let him go. Stick to him, Helen. Make him answer you. That sort of man talks straight on all his life From the last thing he said himself, stone deaf To anything anyone else may say. I should have thought, though, you could make him hear you." "What is he doing out a night like this? Why can't he stay at home?" "He had to preach." "It's no night to be out." "He may be small, He may be good, but one thing's sure, he's tough." "And strong of stale tobacco." "He'll pull through." "You only say so. Not another house Or shelter to put into from this place To theirs. I'm going to call his wife again." "Wait and he may. Let's see what he will do. Let's see if he will think of her again. But then I doubt he's thinking of himself He doesn't look on it as anything." "He shan't go--there!" "It _is_ a night, my dear." "One thing: he didn't drag God into it." "He don't consider it a case for God." "You think so, do you? You don't know the kind. He's getting up a miracle this minute. Privately--to himself, right now, he's thinking He'll make a case of it if he succeeds, But keep still if he fails." "Keep still all over. He'll be dead--dead and buried." "Such a trouble! Not but I've every reason not to care What happens to him if it only takes Some of the sanctimonious conceit Out of one of those pious scalawags." "Nonsense to that! You want to see him safe." "You like the runt." "Don't you a little?" "Well, I don't like what he's doing, which is what You like, and like him for." "Oh, yes you do. You like your fun as well as anyone; Only you women have to put these airs on To impress men. You've got us so ashamed Of being men we can't look at a good fight Between two boys and not feel bound to stop it. Let the man freeze an ear or two, I say.-- He's here. I leave him all to you. Go in And save his life.--All right, come in, Meserve. Sit down, sit down. How did you find the horses?" "Fine, fine." "And ready for some more? My wife here Says it won't do. You've got to give it up." "Won't you to please me? Please! If I say please? Mr. Meserve, I'll leave it to _your_ wife. What _did_ your wife say on the telephone?" Meserve seemed to heed nothing but the lamp Or something not far from it on the table. By straightening out and lifting a forefinger, He pointed with his hand from where it lay Like a white crumpled spider on his knee: "That leaf there in your open book! It moved Just then, I thought. It's stood erect like that, There on the table, ever since I came, Trying to turn itself backward or forward, I've had my eye on it to make out which; If forward, then it's with a friend's impatience-- You see I know--to get you on to things It wants to see how you will take, if backward It's from regret for something you have passed And failed to see the good of. Never mind, Things must expect to come in front of us A many times--I don't say just how many-- That varies with the things--before we see them. One of the lies would make it out that nothing Ever presents itself before us twice. Where would we be at last if that were so? Our very life depends on everything's Recurring till we answer from within. The thousandth time may prove the charm.--That leaf! It can't turn either way. It needs the wind's help. But the wind didn't move it if it moved. It moved itself. The wind's at naught in here. It couldn't stir so sensitively poised A thing as that. It couldn't reach the lamp To get a puff of black smoke from the flame, Or blow a rumple in the collie's coat. You make a little foursquare block of air, Quiet and light and warm, in spite of all The illimitable dark and cold and storm, And by so doing give these three, lamp, dog, And book-leaf, that keep near you, their repose; Though for all anyone can tell, repose May be the thing you haven't, yet you give it. So false it is that what we haven't we can't give; So false, that what we always say is true. I'll have to turn the leaf if no one else will. It won't lie down. Then let it stand. Who cares?" "I shouldn't want to hurry you, Meserve, But if you're going--Say you'll stay, you know? But let me raise this curtain on a scene, And show you how it's piling up against you. You see the snow-white through the white of frost? Ask Helen how far up the sash it's climbed Since last we read the gage." "It looks as if Some pallid thing had squashed its features flat And its eyes shut with overeagerness To see what people found so interesting In one another, and had gone to sleep Of its own stupid lack of understanding, Or broken its white neck of mushroom stuff Short off, and died against the window-pane." "Brother Meserve, take care, you'll scare yourself More than you will us with such nightmare talk. It's you it matters to, because it's you Who have to go out into it alone." "Let him talk, Helen, and perhaps he'll stay." "Before you drop the curtain--I'm reminded: You recollect the boy who came out here To breathe the air one winter--had a room Down at the Averys'? Well, one sunny morning After a downy storm, he passed our place And found me banking up the house with snow. And I was burrowing in deep for warmth, Piling it well above the window-sills. The snow against the window caught his eye. 'Hey, that's a pretty thought'--those were his words. 'So you can think it's six feet deep outside, While you sit warm and read up balanced rations. You can't get too much winter in the winter.' Those were his words. And he went home and all But banked the daylight out of Avery's windows. Now you and I would go to no such length. At the same time you can't deny it makes It not a mite worse, sitting here, we three, Playing our fancy, to have the snowline run So high across the pane outside. There where There is a sort of tunnel in the frost More like a tunnel than a hole--way down At the far end of it you see a stir And quiver like the frayed edge of the drift Blown in the wind. I _like_ that--I like _that_. Well, now I leave you, people." "Come, Meserve, We thought you were deciding not to go-- The ways you found to say the praise of comfort And being where you are. You want to stay." "I'll own it's cold for such a fall of snow. This house is frozen brittle, all except This room you sit in. If you think the wind Sounds further off, it's not because it's dying; You're further under in the snow--that's all-- And feel it less. Hear the soft bombs of dust It bursts against us at the chimney mouth, And at the eaves. I like it from inside More than I shall out in it. But the horses Are rested and it's time to say good-night, And let you get to bed again. Good-night, Sorry I had to break in on your sleep." "Lucky for you you did. Lucky for you You had us for a half-way station To stop at. If you were the kind of man Paid heed to women, you'd take my advice And for your family's sake stay where you are. But what good is my saying it over and over? You've done more than you had a right to think You could do--_now_. You know the risk you take In going on." "Our snow-storms as a rule Aren't looked on as man-killers, and although I'd rather be the beast that sleeps the sleep Under it all, his door sealed up and lost, Than the man fighting it to keep above it, Yet think of the small birds at roost and not In nests. Shall I be counted less than they are? Their bulk in water would be frozen rock In no time out to-night. And yet to-morrow They will come budding boughs from tree to tree Flirting their wings and saying Chickadee, As if not knowing what you meant by the word storm." "But why when no one wants you to go on? Your wife--she doesn't want you to. We don't, And you yourself don't want to. Who else is there?" "Save us from being cornered by a woman. Well, there's"--She told Fred afterward that in The pause right there, she thought the dreaded word Was coming, "God." But no, he only said "Well, there's--the storm. That says I must go on. That wants me as a war might if it came. Ask any man." He threw her that as something To last her till he got outside the door. He had Cole with him to the barn to see him off. When Cole returned he found his wife still standing Beside the table near the open book, Not reading it. "Well, what kind of a man Do you call that?" she said. "He had the gift Of words, or is it tongues, I ought to say?" "Was ever such a man for seeing likeness?" "Or disregarding people's civil questions-- What? We've found out in one hour more about him Than we had seeing him pass by in the road A thousand times. If that's the way he preaches! You didn't think you'd keep him after all. Oh, I'm not blaming you. He didn't leave you Much say in the matter, and I'm just as glad We're not in for a night of him. No sleep If he had stayed. The least thing set him going. It's quiet as an empty church without him." "But how much better off are we as it is? We'll have to sit here till we know he's safe." "Yes, I suppose you'll want to, but I shouldn't. He knows what he can do, or he wouldn't try. Get into bed I say, and get some rest. He won't come back, and if he telephones, It won't be for an hour or two." "Well then. We can't be any help by sitting here And living his fight through with him, I suppose." * * * * * Cole had been telephoning in the dark. Mrs. Cole's voice came from an inner room: "Did she call you or you call her?" "She me. You'd better dress: you won't go back to bed. We must have been asleep: it's three and after." "Had she been ringing long? I'll get my wrapper. I want to speak to her." "All she said was, He hadn't come and had he really started." "She knew he had, poor thing, two hours ago." "He had the shovel. He'll have made a fight." "Why did I ever let him leave this house!" "Don't begin that. You did the best you could To keep him--though perhaps you didn't quite Conceal a wish to see him show the spunk To disobey you. Much his wife'll thank you." "Fred, after all I said! You shan't make out That it was any way but what it was. Did she let on by any word she said She didn't thank me?" "When I told her 'Gone,' 'Well then,' she said, and 'Well then'--like a threat. And then her voice came scraping slow: 'Oh, you, Why did you let him go'?" "Asked why we let him? You let me there. I'll ask her why she let him. She didn't dare to speak when he was here. Their number's--twenty-one? The thing won't work. Someone's receiver's down. The handle stumbles. The stubborn thing, the way it jars your arm! It's theirs. She's dropped it from her hand and gone." "Try speaking. Say 'Hello'!" "Hello. Hello." "What do you hear?" "I hear an empty room-- You know--it sounds that way. And yes, I hear-- I think I hear a clock--and windows rattling. No step though. If she's there she's sitting down." "Shout, she may hear you." "Shouting is no good." "Keep speaking then." "Hello. Hello. Hello. You don't suppose--? She wouldn't go out doors?" "I'm half afraid that's just what she might do." "And leave the children?" "Wait and call again. You can't hear whether she has left the door Wide open and the wind's blown out the lamp And the fire's died and the room's dark and cold?" "One of two things, either she's gone to bed Or gone out doors." "In which case both are lost. Do you know what she's like? Have you ever met her? It's strange she doesn't want to speak to us." "Fred, see if you can hear what I hear. Come." "A clock maybe." "Don't you hear something else?" "Not talking." "No." "Why, yes, I hear--what is it?" "What do you say it is?" "A baby's crying! Frantic it sounds, though muffled and far off." "Its mother wouldn't let it cry like that, Not if she's there." "What do you make of it?" "There's only one thing possible to make, That is, assuming--that she has gone out. Of course she hasn't though." They both sat down Helpless. "There's nothing we can do till morning." "Fred, I shan't let you think of going out." "Hold on." The double bell began to chirp. They started up. Fred took the telephone. "Hello, Meserve. You're there, then!--And your wife? Good! Why I asked--she didn't seem to answer. He says she went to let him in the barn.-- We're glad. Oh, say no more about it, man. Drop in and see us when you're passing." "Well, She has him then, though what she wants him for I _don't_ see." "Possibly not for herself. Maybe she only wants him for the children." "The whole to-do seems to have been for nothing. What spoiled our night was to him just his fun. What did he come in for?--To talk and visit? Thought he'd just call to tell us it was snowing. If he thinks he is going to make our house A halfway coffee house 'twixt town and nowhere----" "I thought you'd feel you'd been too much concerned." "You think you haven't been concerned yourself." "If you mean he was inconsiderate To rout us out to think for him at midnight And then take our advice no more than nothing, Why, I agree with you. But let's forgive him. We've had a share in one night of his life. What'll you bet he ever calls again?" _THE SOUND OF THE TREES_ _I wonder about the trees. Why do we wish to bear Forever the noise of these More than another noise So close to our dwelling place? We suffer them by the day Till we lose all measure of pace, And fixity in our joys, And acquire a listening air. They are that that talks of going But never gets away; And that talks no less for knowing, As it grows wiser and older, That now it means to stay. My feet tug at the floor And my head sways to my shoulder Sometimes when I watch trees sway, From the window or the door. I shall set forth for somewhere, I shall make the reckless choice Some day when they are in voice And tossing so as to scare The white clouds over them on. I shall have less to say, But I shall be gone._ * * * * * SOME RECENT POETRY Stephen Vincent Benét's Heavens and Earth Thomas Burke's The Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse Richard Burton's Poems of Earth's Meaning Francis Carlin's My Ireland The Cairn of Stars Padraic Colum's Wild Earth and Other Poems Grace Hazard Conkling's Wilderness Songs Walter De La Mare's The Listeners and Other Poems Peacock Pie. Ill'd by W. H. Robinson Motley and Other Poems Collected Poems 1901-1918. 2 Vols. Robert Frost's North of Boston Mountain Interval. New Edition, with Portrait A Boy's Will Carl Sandburg's Cornhuskers Chicago Poems Lew Sarrett's Many Many Moons Louis Untermeyer's These Times ---- and Other Poets Poems of Heinrich Heine (Translated) The New Era in American Poetry Margaret Widdemer's The Old Road to Paradise Factories and Other Poems * * * * * THE HOME BOOK OF VERSE American and English 1580-1918 Selected and arranged by Burton Egbert Stevenson Third Edition Revised and Enlarged Over 4,000 pages of the best verse in English, ranging all the way from the classics to some of the best newspaper verse of to-day. In several different editions. * * * * * HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK * * * * * Transcriber Notes Typographical inconsistencies have been changed and are listed below. Archaic and variable spelling and hyphenation is preserved. Author's punctuation style is preserved, except where noted. Passages in italics indicated by _underscores_. Passages in bold indicated by =equal signs=. Transcriber Changes The following changes were made to the original text: Page 46: Added period after =trees= (Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn, And even fruit =trees.=) Page 63: Added stanza break between go and Don't (And three miles more to =go!" "Don't= let him go.) Page 63: Single quote changed to double after =through= ("He'll pull =through."=) Page 72: Removed extra stanza break after =stumbles= (The handle =stumbles. The= stubborn thing, the way it jars your arm!) Page 74: Removed extra stanza break after =wife= ("Hello, Meserve. You're there, then!--And your =wife? Good!= Why I asked--she didn't seem to answer.) 
29993	----	POEMS BY WILLIAM D. HOWELLS BOSTON TICKNOR AND COMPANY 211 TREMONT STREET MDCCCLXXXVI COPYRIGHT, 1873, BY JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY AND 1885, BY WILLIAM D. HOWELLS. _All rights reserved._ University Press: JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE. CONTENTS. PAGE The Pilot's Story 3 Forlorn 13 Pleasure-Pain 19 In August 26 The Empty House 27 Bubbles 29 Lost Beliefs 31 Louis Lebeau's Conversion 32 Caprice 49 Sweet Clover 51 The Royal Portraits 54 The Faithful of the Gonzaga 59 The First Cricket 77 The Mulberries 79 Before the Gate 84 Clement 86 By the Sea 97 Saint Christopher 98 Elegy on John Butler Howells 100 Thanksgiving 105 A Springtime 106 In Earliest Spring 108 The Bobolinks are Singing 110 Prelude 113 The Movers 115 Through the Meadow 120 Gone 122 The Sarcastic Fair 123 Rapture 124 Dead 125 The Doubt 127 The Thorn 129 The Mysteries 130 The Battle in the Clouds 131 For One of the Killed 133 The Two Wives 134 Bereaved 136 The Snow-Birds 138 Vagary 139 Feuerbilder 141 Avery 143 Bopeep: A Pastoral 148 While she sang 160 A Poet 163 Convention 164 The Poet Friends 165 No Love Lost 166 The Song the Oriole sings 199 Pordenone 201 The Long Days 223 THE PILOT'S STORY. I. It was a story the pilot told, with his back to his hearers,-- Keeping his hand on the wheel and his eye on the globe of the jack-staff, Holding the boat to the shore and out of the sweep of the current, Lightly turning aside for the heavy logs of the drift-wood, Widely shunning the snags that made us sardonic obeisance. II. All the soft, damp air was full of delicate perfume From the young willows in bloom on either bank of the river,-- Faint, delicious fragrance, trancing the indolent senses In a luxurious dream of the river and land of the lotus. Not yet out of the west the roses of sunset were withered; In the deep blue above light clouds of gold and of crimson Floated in slumber serene; and the restless river beneath them Rushed away to the sea with a vision of rest in its bosom; Far on the eastern shore lay dimly the swamps of the cypress; Dimly before us the islands grew from the river's expanses,-- Beautiful, wood-grown isles, with the gleam of the swart inundation Seen through the swaying boughs and slender trunks of their willows; And on the shore beside us the cotton-trees rose in the evening, Phantom-like, yearningly, wearily, with the inscrutable sadness Of the mute races of trees. While hoarsely the steam from her 'scape-pipes Shouted, then whispered a moment, then shouted again to the silence, Trembling through all her frame with the mighty pulse of her engines, Slowly the boat ascended the swollen and broad Mississippi, Bank-full, sweeping on, with tangled masses of drift-wood, Daintily breathed about with whiffs of silvery vapor, Where in his arrowy flight the twittering swallow alighted, And the belated blackbird paused on the way to its nestlings. III. It was the pilot's story:--"They both came aboard there, at Cairo, From a New Orleans boat, and took passage with us for Saint Louis. She was a beautiful woman, with just enough blood from her mother Darkening her eyes and her hair to make her race known to a trader: You would have thought she was white. The man that was with her,--you see such,-- Weakly good-natured and kind, and weakly good-natured and vicious, Slender of body and soul, fit neither for loving nor hating. I was a youngster then, and only learning the river,-- Not over-fond of the wheel. I used to watch them at monte, Down in the cabin at night, and learned to know all of the gamblers. So when I saw this weak one staking his money against them, Betting upon the turn of the cards, I knew what was coming: _They_ never left their pigeons a single feather to fly with. Next day I saw them together,--the stranger and one of the gamblers: Picturesque rascal he was, with long black hair and moustaches, Black slouch hat drawn down to his eyes from his villanous forehead. On together they moved, still earnestly talking in whispers, On toward the forecastle, where sat the woman alone by the gangway. Roused by the fall of feet, she turned, and, beholding her master, Greeted him with a smile that was more like a wife's than another's, Rose to meet him fondly, and then, with the dread apprehension Always haunting the slave, fell her eye on the face of the gambler,-- Dark and lustful and fierce and full of merciless cunning. Something was spoken so low that I could not hear what the words were; Only the woman started, and looked from one to the other, With imploring eyes, bewildered hands, and a tremor All through her frame: I saw her from where I was standing, she shook so. 'Say! is it so?' she cried. On the weak, white lips of her master Died a sickly smile, and he said, 'Louise, I have sold you.' God is my judge! May I never see such a look of despairing, Desolate anguish, as that which the woman cast on her master, Griping her breast with her little hands, as if he had stabbed her, Standing in silence a space, as fixed as the Indian woman Carved out of wood, on the pilot-house of the old Pocahontas! Then, with a gurgling moan, like the sound in the throat of the dying, Came back her voice, that, rising, fluttered, through wild incoherence, Into a terrible shriek that stopped my heart while she answered:-- 'Sold me? sold me? sold--And you promised to give me my freedom!-- Promised me, for the sake of our little boy in Saint Louis! What will you say to our boy, when he cries for me there in Saint Louis? What will you say to our God?--Ah, you have been joking! I see it!-- No? God! God! He shall hear it,--and all of the angels in heaven,-- Even the devils in hell!--and none will believe when they hear it! Sold me!'--Her voice died away with a wail, and in silence Down she sank on the deck, and covered her face with her fingers." IV. In his story a moment the pilot paused, while we listened To the salute of a boat, that, rounding the point of an island, Flamed toward us with fires that seemed to burn from the waters,-- Stately and vast and swift, and borne on the heart of the current. Then, with the mighty voice of a giant challenged to battle, Rose the responsive whistle, and all the echoes of island, Swamp-land, glade, and brake replied with a myriad clamor, Like wild birds that are suddenly startled from slumber at midnight, Then were at peace once more; and we heard the harsh cries of the peacocks Perched on a tree by a cabin-door, where the white-headed settler's White-headed children stood to look at the boat as it passed them, Passed them so near that we heard their happy talk and their laughter. Softly the sunset had faded, and now on the eastern horizon Hung, like a tear in the sky, the beautiful star of the evening. V. Still with his back to us standing, the pilot went on with his story:-- "All of us flocked round the woman. The children cried, and their mothers Hugged them tight to their breasts; but the gambler said to the captain,-- 'Put me off there at the town that lies round the bend of the river. Here, you! rise at once, and be ready now to go with me.' Roughly he seized the woman's arm and strove to uplift her. She--she seemed not to heed him, but rose like one that is dreaming, Slid from his grasp, and fleetly mounted the steps of the gangway, Up to the hurricane-deck, in silence, without lamentation. Straight to the stern of the boat, where the wheel was, she ran, and the people Followed her fast till she turned and stood at bay for a moment, Looking them in the face, and in the face of the gambler. Not one to save her,--not one of all the compassionate people! Not one to save her, of all the pitying angels in heaven! Not one bolt of God to strike him dead there before her! Wildly she waved him back, we waiting in silence and horror. Over the swarthy face of the gambler a pallor of passion Passed, like a gleam of lightning over the west in the night-time. White, she stood, and mute, till he put forth his hand to secure her; Then she turned and leaped,--in mid-air fluttered a moment,-- Down then, whirling, fell, like a broken-winged bird from a tree-top, Down on the cruel wheel, that caught her, and hurled her, and crushed her, And in the foaming water plunged her, and hid her forever." VI. Still with his back to us all the pilot stood, but we heard him Swallowing hard, as he pulled the bell-rope for stopping. Then, turning,-- "This is the place where it happened," brokenly whispered the pilot. "Somehow, I never like to go by here alone in the night-time." Darkly the Mississippi flowed by the town that lay in the starlight, Cheerful with lamps. Below we could hear them reversing the engines, And the great boat glided up to the shore like a giant exhausted. Heavily sighed her pipes. Broad over the swamps to the eastward Shone the full moon, and turned our far-trembling wake into silver. All was serene and calm, but the odorous breath of the willows Smote with a mystical sense of infinite sorrow upon us. FORLORN. I. Red roses, in the slender vases burning, Breathed all upon the air,-- The passion and the tenderness and yearning, The waiting and the doubting and despair. II. Still with the music of her voice was haunted, Through all its charméd rhymes, The open book of such a one as chanted The things he dreamed in old, old summer-times. III. The silvern chords of the piano trembled Still with the music wrung From them; the silence of the room dissembled The closes of the songs that she had sung. IV. The languor of the crimson shawl's abasement,-- Lying without a stir Upon the floor,--the absence at the casement, The solitude and hush were full of her. V. Without, and going from the room, and never Departing, did depart Her steps; and one that came too late forever Felt them go heavy o'er his broken heart. VI. And, sitting in the house's desolation, He could not bear the gloom, The vanishing encounter and evasion Of things that were and were not in the room. VII. Through midnight streets he followed fleeting visions Of faces and of forms; He heard old tendernesses and derisions Amid the sobs and cries of midnight storms. VIII. By midnight lamps, and from the darkness under That lamps made at their feet, He saw sweet eyes peer out in innocent wonder, And sadly follow after him down the street. IX. The noonday crowds their restlessness obtruded Between him and his quest; At unseen corners jostled and eluded, Against his hand her silken robes were pressed. X. Doors closed upon her; out of garret casements He knew she looked at him; In splendid mansions and in squalid basements, Upon the walls he saw her shadow swim. XI. From rapid carriages she gleamed upon him, Whirling away from sight; From all the hopelessness of search she won him Back to the dull and lonesome house at night. XII. Full early into dark the twilights saddened Within its closéd doors; The echoes, with the clock's monotony maddened, Leaped loud in welcome from the hollow floors; XIII. But gusts that blew all day with solemn laughter From wide-mouthed chimney-places, And the strange noises between roof and rafter, The wainscot clamor, and the scampering races XIV. Of mice that chased each other through the chambers, And up and down the stair, And rioted among the ashen embers, And left their frolic footprints everywhere,-- XV. Were hushed to hear his heavy tread ascending The broad steps, one by one, And toward the solitary chamber tending, Where the dim phantom of his hope alone XVI. Rose up to meet him, with his growing nearer, Eager for his embrace, And moved, and melted into the white mirror, And stared at him with his own haggard face. XVII. But, turning, he was 'ware _her_ looks beheld him Out of the mirror white; And at the window yearning arms she held him, Out of the vague and sombre fold of night. XVIII. Sometimes she stood behind him, looking over His shoulder as he read; Sometimes he felt her shadowy presence hover Above his dreamful sleep, beside his bed; XIX. And rising from his sleep, her shadowy presence Followed his light descent Of the long stair; her shadowy evanescence Through all the whispering rooms before him went. XX. Upon the earthy draught of cellars blowing His shivering lamp-flame blue, Amid the damp and chill, he felt her flowing Around him from the doors he entered through. XXI. The spiders wove their webs upon the ceiling; The bat clung to the wall; The dry leaves through the open transom stealing, Skated and danced adown the empty hall. XXII. About him closed the utter desolation, About him closed the gloom; The vanishing encounter and evasion Of things that were and were not in the room XXIII. Vexed him forever; and his life forever Immured and desolate, Beating itself, with desperate endeavor, But bruised itself, against the round of fate. XXIV. The roses, in their slender vases burning, Were quenchéd long before; A dust was on the rhymes of love and yearning; The shawl was like a shroud upon the floor. XXV. Her music from the thrilling chords had perished; The stillness was not moved With memories of cadences long cherished, The closes of the songs that she had loved. XXVI. But not the less he felt her presence never Out of the room depart; Over the threshold, not the less, forever He felt her going on his broken heart. PLEASURE-PAIN. "Das Vergnügen ist Nichts als ein höchst angenehmer Schmerz."--HEINRICH HEINE. I. Full of beautiful blossoms Stood the tree in early May: Came a chilly gale from the sunset, And blew the blossoms away; Scattered them through the garden, Tossed them into the mere: The sad tree moaned and shuddered, "Alas! the Fall is here." But all through the glowing summer The blossomless tree throve fair, And the fruit waxed ripe and mellow, With sunny rain and air; And when the dim October With golden death was crowned, Under its heavy branches The tree stooped to the ground. In youth there comes a west-wind Blowing our bloom away,-- A chilly breath of Autumn Out of the lips of May. We bear the ripe fruit after,-- Ah, me! for the thought of pain!-- We know the sweetness and beauty And the heart-bloom never again. II. One sails away to sea, One stands on the shore and cries; The ship goes down the world, and the light On the sullen water dies. The whispering shell is mute, And after is evil cheer: She shall stand on the shore and cry in vain, Many and many a year. But the stately, wide-winged ship Lies wrecked on the unknown deep; Far under, dead in his coral bed, The lover lies asleep. III. Through the silent streets of the city, In the night's unbusy noon, Up and down in the pallor Of the languid summer moon, I wander, and think of the village, And the house in the maple-gloom, And the porch with the honeysuckles And the sweet-brier all abloom. My soul is sick with the fragrance Of the dewy sweet-brier's breath: O darling! the house is empty, And lonesomer than death! If I call, no one will answer; If I knock, no one will come: The feet are at rest forever, And the lips are cold and dumb. The summer moon is shining So wan and large and still, And the weary dead are sleeping In the graveyard under the hill. IV. We looked at the wide, white circle Around the Autumn moon, And talked of the change of weather: It would rain, to-morrow, or soon. And the rain came on the morrow, And beat the dying leaves From the shuddering boughs of the maples Into the flooded eaves. The clouds wept out their sorrow; But in my heart the tears Are bitter for want of weeping, In all these Autumn years. V. The bobolink sings in the meadow, The wren in the cherry-tree: Come hither, thou little maiden, And sit upon my knee; And I will tell thee a story I read in a book of rhyme; I will but fain that it happened To me, one summer-time, When we walked through the meadow, And she and I were young. The story is old and weary With being said and sung. The story is old and weary: Ah, child! it is known to thee. Who was it that last night kissed thee Under the cherry-tree? VI. Like a bird of evil presage, To the lonely house on the shore Came the wind with a tale of shipwreck, And shrieked at the bolted door, And flapped its wings in the gables, And shouted the well-known names, And buffeted the windows Afeard in their shuddering frames. It was night, and it is morning,-- The summer sun is bland, The white-cap waves come rocking, rocking, In to the summer land. The white-cap waves come rocking, rocking, In the sun so soft and bright, And toss and play with the dead man Drowned in the storm last night. VII. I remember the burning brushwood, Glimmering all day long Yellow and weak in the sunlight, Now leaped up red and strong, And fired the old dead chestnut, That all our years had stood, Gaunt and gray and ghostly, Apart from the sombre wood; And, flushed with sudden summer, The leafless boughs on high Blossomed in dreadful beauty Against the darkened sky. We children sat telling stories, And boasting what we should be, When we were men like our fathers, And watched the blazing tree, That showered its fiery blossoms, Like a rain of stars, we said, Of crimson and azure and purple. That night, when I lay in bed, I could not sleep for seeing, Whenever I closed my eyes, The tree in its dazzling splendor Against the darkened skies. I cannot sleep for seeing, With closéd eyes to-night, The tree in its dazzling splendor Dropping its blossoms bright; And old, old dreams of childhood Come thronging my weary brain, Dear, foolish beliefs and longings: I doubt, are they real again? It is nothing, and nothing, and nothing, That I either think or see: The phantoms of dead illusions To-night are haunting me. IN AUGUST. All the long August afternoon, The little drowsy stream Whispers a melancholy tune, As if it dreamed of June And whispered in its dream. The thistles show beyond the brook Dust on their down and bloom, And out of many a weed-grown nook The aster-flowérs look With eyes of tender gloom. The silent orchard aisles are sweet With smell of ripening fruit. Through the sere grass, in shy retreat, Flutter, at coming feet, The robins strange and mute. There is no wind to stir the leaves, The harsh leaves overhead; Only the querulous cricket grieves, And shrilling locust weaves A song of Summer dead. THE EMPTY HOUSE. The wet trees hang above the walks Purple with damps and earthish stains, And strewn by moody, absent rains With rose-leaves from the wild-grown stalks. Unmown, in heavy, tangled swaths, The ripe June-grass is wanton blown; Snails slime the untrodden threshold-stone; Along the sills hang drowsy moths. Down the blank visage of the wall, Where many a wavering trace appears, Like a forgotten trace of tears, From swollen eaves the slow drops crawl. Where everything was wide before, The curious wind, that comes and goes, Finds all the latticed windows close, Secret and close the bolted door. And with the shrewd and curious wind, That in the archéd doorway cries, And at the bolted portal tries, And harks and listens at the blind,-- Forever lurks my thought about, And in the ghostly middle-night Finds all the hidden windows bright, And sees the guests go in and out, And lingers till the pallid dawn, And feels the mystery deeper there In silent, gust-swept chambers, bare, With all the midnight revel gone; But wanders through the lonesome rooms, Where harsh the astonished cricket calls, And, from the hollows of the walls Vanishing, start unshapen glooms; And lingers yet, and cannot come Out of the drear and desolate place, So full of ruin's solemn grace, And haunted with the ghost of home. BUBBLES. I. I stood on the brink in childhood, And watched the bubbles go From the rock-fretted, sunny ripple To the smoother tide below; And over the white creek-bottom, Under them every one, Went golden stars in the water, All luminous with the sun. But the bubbles broke on the surface, And under, the stars of gold Broke; and the hurrying water Flowed onward, swift and cold. II. I stood on the brink in manhood, And it came to my weary brain, And my heart, so dull and heavy After the years of pain,-- That every hollowest bubble Which over my life had passed Still into its deeper current Some heavenly gleam had cast; That, however I mocked it gayly, And guessed at its hollowness, Still shone, with each bursting bubble, One star in my soul the less. LOST BELIEFS. One after one they left us; The sweet birds out of our breasts Went flying away in the morning: Will they come again to their nests? Will they come again at nightfall, With God's breath in their song? Noon is fierce with the heats of summer, And summer days are long! O my Life, with thy upward liftings, Thy downward-striking roots, Ripening out of thy tender blossoms But hard and bitter fruits!-- In thy boughs there is no shelter For the birds to seek again. The desolate nest is broken And torn with storms and rain! LOUIS LEBEAU'S CONVERSION. Yesterday, while I moved with the languid crowd on the Riva, Musing with idle eyes on the wide lagoons and the islands, And on the dim-seen seaward glimmering sails in the distance, Where the azure haze, like a vision of Indian-Summer, Haunted the dreamy sky of the soft Venetian December,-- While I moved unwilled in the mellow warmth of the weather, Breathing air that was full of Old World sadness and beauty Into my thought came this story of free, wild life in Ohio, When the land was new, and yet by the Beautiful River Dwelt the pioneers and Indian hunters and boatmen. Pealed from the campanili, responding from island to island, Bells of that ancient faith whose incense and solemn devotions Rise from a hundred shrines in the broken heart of the city; But in my revery heard I only the passionate voices Of the people that sang in the virgin heart of the forest. Autumn was in the land, and the trees were golden and crimson, And from the luminous boughs of the over-elms and the maples Tender and beautiful fell the light in the worshippers' faces, Softer than lights that stream through the saints on the windows of churches, While the balsamy breath of the hemlocks and pines by the river Stole on the winds through the woodland aisles like the breath of a censer. Loud the people sang old camp-meeting anthems that quaver Quaintly yet from lips forgetful of lips that have kissed them; Loud they sang the songs of the Sacrifice and Atonement, And of the end of the world, and the infinite terrors of Judgment:-- Songs of ineffable sorrow, and wailing, compassionate warning Unto the generations that hardened their hearts to their Savior; Songs of exultant rapture for them that confessed him and followed, Bearing his burden and yoke, enduring and entering with him Into the rest of his saints, and the endless reward of the blessed. Loud the people sang; but through the sound of their singing Broke inarticulate cries and moans and sobs from the mourners, As the glory of God, that smote the apostle of Tarsus, Smote them and strewed them to earth like leaves in the breath of the whirlwind. Hushed at last was the sound of the lamentation and singing; But from the distant hill the throbbing drum of the pheasant Shook with its heavy pulses the depths of the listening silence, When from his place arose a white-haired exhorter, and faltered: "Brethren and sisters in Jesus! the Lord hath heard our petitions, So that the hearts of his servants are awed and melted within them,-- Even the hearts of the wicked are touched by his infinite mercy. All my days in this vale of tears the Lord hath been with me, He hath been good to me, he hath granted me trials and patience; But this hour hath crowned my knowledge of him and his goodness. Truly, but that it is well this day for me to be with you, Now might I say to the Lord,--'I know thee, my God, in all fulness; Now let thy servant depart in peace to the rest thou hast promised!'" Faltered and ceased. And now the wild and jubilant music Of the singing burst from the solemn profound of the silence, Surged in triumph, and fell, and ebbed again into silence. Then from the group of the preachers arose the greatest among them,-- He whose days were given in youth to the praise of the Savior, He whose lips seemed touched, like the prophet's of old, from the altar, So that his words were flame, and burned to the hearts of his hearers, Quickening the dead among them, reviving the cold and the doubting. There he charged them pray, and rest not from prayer while a sinner In the sound of their voices denied the Friend of the sinner: "Pray till the night shall fall,--till the stars are faint in the morning,-- Yea, till the sun himself be faint in that glory and brightness, Faint in the light which shall dawn in mercy for penitent sinners." Kneeling, he led them in prayer; and the quick and sobbing responses Spake how their souls were moved with the might and the grace of the Spirit. Then while the converts recounted how God had chastened and saved them,-- Children, whose golden locks yet shone with the lingering effulgence Of the touches of Him who blessed little children forever; Old men, whose yearning eyes were dimmed with the far-streaming brightness Seen through the opening gates in the heart of the heavenly city,-- Stealthily through the harking woods the lengthening shadows Chased the wild things to their nests, and the twilight died into darkness. Now the four great pyres that were placed there to light the encampment, High on platforms raised above the people, were kindled. Flaming aloof, as it were the pillar by night in the Desert Fell their crimson light on the lifted orbs of the preachers, Fell on the withered brows of the old men, and Israel's mothers, Fell on the bloom of youth, and the earnest devotion of manhood, Fell on the anguish and hope in the tearful eyes of the mourners. Flaming aloof, it stirred the sleep of the luminous maples With warm summer-dreams, and faint, luxurious languor. Near the four great pyres the people closed in a circle, In their midst the mourners, and, praying with them, the exhorters, And on the skirts of the circle the unrepentant and scorners,-- Ever fewer and sadder, and drawn to the place of the mourners, One after one, by the prayers and tears of the brethren and sisters, And by the Spirit of God, that was mightily striving within them, Till at the last alone stood Louis Lebeau, unconverted. Louis Lebeau, the boatman, the trapper, the hunter, the fighter, From the unlucky French of Gallipolis he descended, Heir to Old World want and New World love of adventure. Vague was the life he led, and vague and grotesque were the rumors Through which he loomed on the people,--the hero of mythical hearsay, Quick of hand and of heart, impatient, generous, Western, Taking the thought of the young in secret love and in envy. Not less the elders shook their heads and held him for outcast, Reprobate, roving, ungodly, infidel, worse than a Papist, With his whispered fame of lawless exploits at St. Louis, Wild affrays and loves with the half-breeds out on the Osage, Brawls at New Orleans, and all the towns on the rivers, All the godless towns of the many-ruffianed rivers. Only she who loved him the best of all, in her loving Knew him the best of all, and other than that of the rumors. Daily she prayed for him, with conscious and tender effusion, That the Lord would convert him. But when her father forbade him Unto her thought, she denied him, and likewise held him for outcast, Turned her eyes when they met, and would not speak, though her heart broke. Bitter and brief his logic that reasoned from wrong unto error: "This is their praying and singing," he said, "that makes you reject me,-- You that were kind to me once. But I think my fathers' religion, With a light heart in the breast and a friendly priest to absolve one, Better than all these conversions that only bewilder and vex me, And that have made men so hard and women fickle and cruel. Well, then, pray for my soul, since you would not have spoken to save me,-- Yes; for I go from these saints to my brethren and sisters, the sinners." Spoke and went, while her faint lips fashioned unuttered entreaties,-- Went, and came again in a year at the time of the meeting, Haggard and wan of face, and wasted with passion and sorrow. Dead in his eyes was the careless smile of old, and its phantom Haunted his lips in a sneer of restless, incredulous mocking. Day by day he came to the outer skirts of the circle, Dwelling on her, where she knelt by the white-haired exhorter, her father, With his hollow looks, and never moved from his silence. Now, where he stood alone, the last of impenitent sinners, Weeping, old friends and comrades came to him out of the circle, And with their tears besought him to hear what the Lord had done for them. Ever he shook them off, not roughly, nor smiled at their transports. Then the preachers spoke and painted the terrors of Judgment, And of the bottomless pit, and the flames of hell everlasting. Still and dark he stood, and neither listened nor heeded; But when the fervent voice of the white-haired exhorter was lifted, Fell his brows in a scowl of fierce and scornful rejection. "Lord, let this soul be saved!" cried the fervent voice of the old man; "For that the Shepherd rejoiceth more truly for one that hath wandered, And hath been found again, than for all the others that strayed not." Out of the midst of the people, a woman old and decrepit, Tremulous through the light, and tremulous into the shadow, Wavered toward him with slow, uncertain paces of palsy, Laid her quivering hand on his arm and brokenly prayed him: "Louis Lebeau, I closed in death the eyes of your mother. On my breast she died, in prayer for her fatherless children, That they might know the Lord, and follow him always, and serve him. O, I conjure you, my son, by the name of your mother in glory, Scorn not the grace of the Lord!" As when a summer-noon's tempest Breaks in one swift gush of rain, then ceases and gathers Darker and gloomier yet on the lowering front of the heavens, So broke his mood in tears, as he soothed her, and stilled her entreaties, And so he turned again with his clouded looks to the people. Vibrated then from the hush the accents of mournfullest pity,-- His who was gifted in speech, and the glow of the fires illumined All his pallid aspect with sudden and marvellous splendor: "Louis Lebeau," he spake, "I have known you and loved you from childhood; Still, when the others blamed you, I took your part, for I knew you. Louis Lebeau, my brother, I thought to meet you in heaven, Hand in hand with her who is gone to heaven before us, Brothers through her dear love! I trusted to greet you and lead you Up from the brink of the River unto the gates of the City. Lo! my years shall be few on the earth. O my brother, If I should die before you had known the mercy of Jesus, Yea, I think it would sadden the hope of glory within me!" Neither yet had the will of the sinner yielded an answer; But from his lips there broke a cry of unspeakable anguish, Wild and fierce and shrill, as if some demon within him Bent his soul with the ultimate pangs of fiendish possession; And with the outstretched arms of bewildered imploring toward them, Death-white unto the people he turned his face from the darkness. Out of the sedge by the creek a flight of clamorous killdees Rose from their timorous sleep with piercing and iterant challenge, Wheeled in the starlight, and fled away into distance and silence. White in the vale lay the tents, and beyond them glided the river, Where the broadhorn[1] drifted slow at the will of the current, And where the boatman listened, and knew not how, as he listened, Something touched through the years the old lost hopes of his childhood,-- Only his sense was filled with low, monotonous murmurs, As of a faint-heard prayer, that was chorused with deeper responses. Not with the rest was lifted her voice in the fervent responses, But in her soul she prayed to Him that heareth in secret, Asking for light and for strength to learn his will and to do it: "O, make me clear to know if the hope that rises within me Be not part of a love unmeet for me here, and forbidden! So, if it be not that, make me strong for the evil entreaty Of the days that shall bring me question of self and reproaches, When the unrighteous shall mock, and my brethren and sisters shall doubt me! Make me worthy to know thy will, my Savior, and do it!" In her pain she prayed, and at last, through her mute adoration, Rapt from all mortal presence, and in her rapture uplifted, Glorified she rose, and stood in the midst of the people, Looking on all with the still, unseeing eyes of devotion,-- Vague, and tender, and sweet, as the eyes of the dead, when we dream them Living and looking on us, but they cannot speak, and we cannot,-- Knowing only the peril that threatened his soul's unrepentance, Knowing only the fear and error and wrong that withheld him, Thinking, "In doubt of me, his soul had perished forever!" Touched with no feeble shame, but trusting her power to save him, Through the circle she passed, and straight to the side of her lover, Took his hand in her own, and mutely implored him an instant, Answering, giving, forgiving, confessing, beseeching him all things; Drew him then with her, and passed once more through the circle Unto her place, and knelt with him there by the side of her father, Trembling as women tremble who greatly venture and triumph,-- But in her innocent breast was the saint's sublime exultation. So was Louis converted; and though the lips of the scorners Spared not in after years the subtle taunt and derision (What time, meeker grown, his heart held his hand from its answer), Not the less lofty and pure her love and her faith that had saved him, Not the less now discerned was her inspiration from heaven By the people, that rose, and embracing and weeping together, Poured forth their jubilant songs of victory and of thanksgiving, Till from the embers leaped the dying flame to behold them, And the hills of the river were filled with reverberant echoes,-- Echoes that out of the years and the distance stole to me hither, While I moved unwilled in the mellow warmth of the weather; Echoes that mingled and fainted and fell with the fluttering murmurs In the hearts of the hushing bells, as from island to island Swooned the sound on the wide lagoons into palpitant silence. FOOTNOTE: [1] The old-fashioned flatboats were so called. CAPRICE. I. She hung the cage at the window: "If he goes by," she said, "He will hear my robin singing, And when he lifts his head, I shall be sitting here to sew, And he will bow to me, I know." The robin sang a love-sweet song, The young man raised his head; The maiden turned away and blushed: "I am a fool!" she said, And went on broidering in silk A pink-eyed rabbit, white as milk. II. The young man loitered slowly By the house three times that day; She took her bird from the window: "He need not look this way." She sat at her piano long, And sighed, and played a death-sad song. But when the day was done, she said, "I wish that he would come! Remember, Mary, if he calls To-night--I'm not at home." So when he rang, she went--the elf!-- She went and let him in herself. III. They sang full long together Their songs love-sweet, death-sad; The robin woke from his slumber, And rang out, clear and glad. "Now go!" she coldly said; "'tis late;" And followed him--to latch the gate. He took the rosebud from her hair, While, "You shall not!" she said; He closed her hand within his own, And, while her tongue forbade, Her will was darkened in the eclipse Of blinding love upon his lips. SWEET CLOVER. "... My letters back to me." I. I know they won the faint perfume, That to their faded pages clings, From gloves, and handkerchiefs, and things Kept in the soft and scented gloom Of some mysterious box--poor leaves Of summer, now as sere and dead As any leaves of summer shed From crimson boughs when autumn grieves! The ghost of fragrance! Yet I thrill All through with such delicious pain Of soul and sense, to breathe again The sweet that haunted memory still. And under these December skies, As bland as May's in other climes, I move, and muse my idle rhymes And subtly sentimentalize. I hear the music that was played,-- The songs that silence knows by heart!-- I see sweet burlesque feigning art, The careless grace that curved and swayed Through dances and through breezy walks; I feel once more the eyes that smiled, And that dear presence that beguiled The pauses of the foolish talks, When this poor phantom of perfume Was the Sweet Clover's living soul, And breathed from her as if it stole, Ah, heaven! from her heart in bloom! II. We have not many ways with pain: We weep weak tears, or else we laugh; I doubt, not less the cup we quaff, And tears and scorn alike are vain. But let me live my quiet life; I will not vex my calm with grief, I only know the pang was brief, And there an end of hope and strife. And thou? I put the letters by: In years the sweetness shall not pass; More than the perfect blossom was I count its lingering memory. Alas! with Time dear Love is dead, And not with Fate. And who can guess How weary of our happiness We might have been if we were wed? Venice. THE ROYAL PORTRAITS. (AT LUDWIGSHOF.) I. Confronting each other the pictures stare Into each other's sleepless eyes; And the daylight into the darkness dies, From year to year in the palace there: But they watch and guard that no device Take either one of them unaware. Their majesties the king and the queen, The parents of the reigning prince: Both put off royalty many years since, With life and the gifts that have always been Given to kings from God, to evince His sense of the mighty over the mean. I cannot say that I like the face Of the king; it is something fat and red; And the neck that lifts the royal head Is thick and coarse; and a scanty grace Dwells in the dull blue eyes that are laid Sullenly on the queen in her place. He must have been a king in his day 'Twere well to pleasure in work and sport: One of the heaven-anointed sort Who ruled his people with iron sway, And knew that, through good and evil report, God meant him to rule and them to obey. There are many other likenesses Of the king in his royal palace there; You find him depicted everywhere,-- In his robes of state, in his hunting-dress, In his flowing wig, in his powdered hair,-- A king in all of them, none the less; But most himself in this on the wall Over against his consort, whose Laces, and hoops, and high-heeled shoes Make her the finest lady of all The queens or courtly dames you choose, In the ancestral portrait hall. A glorious blonde: a luxury Of luring blue and wanton gold, Of blanchéd rose and crimson bold, Of lines that flow voluptuously In tender, languorous curves to fold Her form in perfect symmetry. She might have been false. Of her withered dust There scarcely would be enough to write Her guilt in now; and the dead have a right To our lenient doubt if not to our trust: So if the truth cannot make her white, Let us be as merciful as we--must. II. The queen died first, the queen died young, But the king was very old when he died, Rotten with license, and lust, and pride; And the usual Virtues came and hung Their cypress wreaths on his tomb, and wide Throughout his kingdom his praise was sung. How the queen died is not certainly known, And faithful subjects are all forbid To speak of the murder which some one did One night while she slept in the dark alone: History keeps the story hid, And Fear only tells it in undertone. Up from your startled feet aloof, In the famous Echo-Room, with a bound Leaps the echo, and round and round Beating itself against the roof,-- A horrible, gasping, shuddering sound,-- Dies ere its terror can utter proof Of that it knows. A door is fast, And none is suffered to enter there. His sacred majesty could not bear To look at it toward the last, As he grew very old. It opened where The queen died young so many years past. III. How the queen died is not certainly known; But in the palace's solitude A harking dread and horror brood, And a silence, as if a mortal groan Had been hushed the moment before, and would Break forth again when you were gone. The present king has never dwelt In the desolate palace. From year to year In the wide and stately garden drear The snows and the snowy blossoms melt Unheeded, and a ghastly fear Through all the shivering leaves is felt. By night the gathering shadows creep Along the dusk and hollow halls, And the slumber-broken palace calls With stifled moans from its nightmare sleep; And then the ghostly moonlight falls Athwart the darkness brown and deep. At early dawn the light wind sighs, And through the desert garden blows The wasted sweetness of the rose; At noon the feverish sunshine lies Sick in the walks. But at evening's close, When the last, long rays to the windows rise, And with many a blood-red, wrathful streak Pierce through the twilight glooms that blur His cruel vigilance and her Regard, they light fierce looks that wreak A hopeless hate that cannot stir, A voiceless hate that cannot speak In the awful calm of the sleepless eyes; And as if she saw her murderer glare On her face, and he the white despair Of his victim kindle in wild surmise, Confronted the conscious pictures stare,-- And their secret back into darkness dies. THE FAITHFUL OF THE GONZAGA.[2] I. Federigo, the son of the Marquis, Downcast, through the garden goes: He is hurt with the grace of the lily, And the beauty of the rose. For what is the grace of the lily But her own slender grace? And what is the rose's beauty But the beauty of her face?-- Who sits beside her window Waiting to welcome him, That comes so lothly toward her With his visage sick and dim. "Ah! lily, I come to break thee! Ah! rose, a bitter rain Of tears shall beat thy light out That thou never burn again!" II. Federigo, the son of the Marquis, Takes the lady by the hand: "Thou must bid me God-speed on a journey, For I leave my native land. "From Mantua to-morrow I go, a banished man; Make me glad for truth and love's sake Of my father's curse and ban. "Our quarrel has left my mother Like death upon the floor; And I come from a furious presence I never shall enter more. "I would not wed the woman He had chosen for my bride, For my heart had been before him, With his statecraft and his pride. "I swore to him by my princehood In my love I would be free; And I swear to thee by my manhood, I love no one but thee. "Let the Duke of Bavaria marry His daughter to whom he will: There where my love was given My word shall be faithful still. "There are six true hearts will follow My truth wherever I go, And thou equal truth wilt keep me In welfare and in woe." The maiden answered him nothing Of herself, but his words again Came back through her lips like an echo From an abyss of pain; And vacantly repeating "In welfare and in woe," Like a dream from the heart of fever From her arms she felt him go. III. Out of Mantua's gate at daybreak Seven comrades wander forth On a path that leads at their humor, East, west, or south, or north. The prince's laugh rings lightly, "What road shall we take from home?" And they answer, "We never shall lose it If we take the road to Rome." And with many a jest and banter The comrades keep their way, Journeying out of the twilight Forward into the day, When they are aware beside them Goes a pretty minstrel lad, With a shy and downward aspect, That is neither sad nor glad. Over his slender shoulder, His mandolin was slung, And around its chords the treasure Of his golden tresses hung. Spoke one of the seven companions, "Little minstrel, whither away?"-- "With seven true-hearted comrades On their journey, if I may." Spoke one of the seven companions, "If our way be hard and long?"-- "I will lighten it with my music And shorten it with my song." Spoke one of the seven companions, "But what are the songs thou know'st?"-- "O, I know many a ditty, But this I sing the most: "How once was an humble maiden Beloved of a great lord's son, That for her sake and his troth's sake Was banished and undone. "And forth of his father's city He went at break of day, And the maiden softly followed Behind him on the way "In the figure of a minstrel, And prayed him of his love, 'Let me go with thee and serve thee Wherever thou may'st rove. "'For if thou goest in exile I rest banished at home, And where thou wanderest with thee My fears in anguish roam, "'Besetting thy path with perils, Making thee hungry and cold, Filling thy heart with trouble And heaviness untold. "'But let me go beside thee, And banishment shall be Honor, and riches, and country, And home to thee and me!'" Down falls the minstrel-maiden Before the Marquis' son, And the six true-hearted comrades Bow round them every one. Federigo, the son of the Marquis, From its scabbard draws his sword: "Now swear by the honor and fealty Ye bear your friend and lord, "That whenever, and wherever, As long as ye have life, Ye will honor and serve this lady As ye would your prince's wife!" IV. Over the broad expanses Of garlanded Lombardy, Where the gentle vines are swinging In the orchards from tree to tree; Through Padua from Verona, From the sculptured gothic town, Carved from ruin upon ruin, And ancienter than renown; Through Padua from Verona To fair Venice, where she stands With her feet on subject waters, Lady of many lands; From Venice by sea to Ancona; From Ancona to the west; Climbing many a gardened hillside And many a castled crest; Through valleys dim with the twilight Of their gray olive trees; Over plains that swim with harvests Like golden noonday seas; Whence the lofty campanili Like the masts of ships arise, And like a fleet at anchor Under them, the village lies; To Florence beside her Arno, In her many-marbled pride, Crowned with infamy and glory By the sons she has denied; To pitiless Pisa, where never Since the anguish of Ugolin The moon in the Tower of Famine[3] Fate so dread as his hath seen; Out through the gates of Pisa To Livorno on her bay, To Genoa and to Naples The comrades hold their way, Past the Guelph in his town beleaguered, Past the fortressed Ghibelline, Through lands that reek with slaughter, Treason, and shame, and sin; By desert, by sea, by city, High hill-cope and temple-dome, Through pestilence, hunger, and horror, Upon the road to Rome; While every land behind them Forgets them as they go, And in Mantua they are remembered As is the last year's snow; But the Marchioness goes to her chamber Day after day to weep,-- For the changeless heart of a mother The love of a son must keep. The Marchioness weeps in her chamber Over tidings that come to her Of the exiles she seeks, by letter And by lips of messenger, Broken hints of their sojourn and absence, Comfortless, vague, and slight,-- Like feathers wafted backwards From passage birds in flight.[4] The tale of a drunken sailor, In whose ship they went to sea; A traveller's evening story At a village hostelry, Of certain comrades sent him By our Lady, of her grace, To save his life from robbers In a lonely desert place; Word from the monks of a convent Of gentle comrades that lay One stormy night at their convent, And passed with the storm at day; The long parley of a peasant That sold them wine and food, The gossip of a shepherd That guided them through a wood; A boatman's talk at the ferry Of a river where they crossed, And as if they had sunk in the current All trace of them was lost; And so is an end of tidings But never an end of tears, Of secret and friendless sorrow Through blank and silent years. V. To the Marchioness in her chamber Sends word a messenger, Newly come from the land of Naples, Praying for speech with her. The messenger stands before her, A minstrel slender and wan: "In a village of my country Lies a Mantuan gentleman, "Sick of a smouldering fever, Of sorrow and poverty; And no one in all that country Knows his title or degree. "But six true Mantuan peasants, Or nobles, as some men say, Watch by the sick man's bedside, And toil for him, night and day, "Hewing, digging, reaping, sowing, Bearing burdens, and far and nigh Begging for him on the highway Of the strangers that pass by; "And they look whenever you meet them Like broken-hearted men, And I heard that the sick man would not If he could, be well again; "For they say that he for love's sake Was gladly banishèd, But she for whom he was banished Is worse to him, now, than dead,-- "A recreant to his sorrow, A traitress to his woe." From her place the Marchioness rises, The minstrel turns to go. But fast by the hand she takes him,-- His hand in her clasp is cold,-- "If gold may be thy guerdon Thou shalt not lack for gold; "And if the love of a mother Can bless thee for that thou hast done, Thou shalt stay and be his brother, Thou shalt stay and be my son." "Nay, my lady," answered the minstrel, And his face is deadly pale, "Nay, this must not be, sweet lady, But let my words prevail. "Let me go now from your presence, And I will come again, When you stand with your son beside you, And be your servant then." VI. At the feet of the Marquis Gonzaga Kneels his lady on the floor; "Lord, grant me before I ask it The thing that I implore." "So it be not of that ingrate."-- "Nay, lord, it is of him." 'Neath the stormy brows of the Marquis His eyes are tender and dim. "He lies sick of a fever in Naples, Near unto death, as they tell, In his need and pain forsaken By the wanton he loved so well. "Now send for him and forgive him, If ever thou loved'st me, Now send for him and forgive him As God shall be good to thee." "Well so,--if he turn in repentance And bow himself to my will; That the high-born lady I chose him May be my daughter still." VII. In Mantua there is feasting For the Marquis' grace to his son; In Mantua there is rejoicing For the prince come back to his own. The pomp of a wedding procession Pauses under the pillared porch, With silken rustle and whisper, Before the door of the church. In the midst, Federigo the bridegroom Stands with his high-born bride; The six true-hearted comrades Are three on either side. The bridegroom is gray as his father, Where they stand face to face, And the six true-hearted comrades Are like old men in their place. The Marquis takes the comrades And kisses them one by one: "That ye were fast and faithful And better than I to my son, "Ye shall be called forever, In the sign that ye were so true, The Faithful of the Gonzaga, And your sons after you." VIII. To the Marchioness comes a courtier: "I am prayed to bring you word That the minstrel keeps his promise Who brought you news of my lord; "And he waits without the circle To kiss your highness' hand; And he asks no gold for guerdon, But before he leaves the land "He craves of your love once proffered That you suffer him for reward, In this crowning hour of his glory, To look on your son, my lord." Through the silken press of the courtiers The minstrel faltered in. His claspèd hands were bloodless, His face was white and thin; And he bent his knee to the lady, But of her love and grace To her heart she raised him and kissed him Upon his gentle face. Turned to her son the bridegroom, Turned to his high-born wife, "I give you here for your brother Who gave back my son to life. "For this youth brought me news from Naples How thou layest sick and poor, By true comrades kept, and forsaken By a false paramour. "Wherefore I charge you love him For a brother that is my son." The comrades turned to the bridegroom In silence every one. But the bridegroom looked on the minstrel With a visage blank and changed, As his whom the sight of a spectre From his reason hath estranged; And the smiling courtiers near them On a sudden were still as death; And, subtly-stricken, the people Hearkened and held their breath With an awe uncomprehended For an unseen agony:-- Who is this that lies a-dying, With her head on the prince's knee? A light of anguish and wonder Is in the prince's eye, "O, speak, sweet saint, and forgive me, Or I cannot let thee die! "For now I see thy hardness Was softer than mortal ruth, And thy heavenly guile was whiter, My saint, than martyr's truth." She speaks not and she moves not, But a blessed brightness lies On her lips in their silent rapture And her tender closèd eyes. Federigo, the son of the Marquis, He rises from his knee: "Aye, you have been good, my father, To them that were good to me. "You have given them honors and titles, But here lies one unknown-- Ah, God reward her in heaven With the peace he gives his own!" FOOTNOTES: [2] The author of this ballad has added a thread of evident love-story to a most romantic incident of the history of Mantua, which occurred in the fifteenth century. He relates the incident so nearly as he found it in the _Cronache Montovane_, that he is ashamed to say how little his invention has been employed in it. The hero of the story, Federigo, became the third Marquis of Mantua, and was a prince greatly beloved and honored by his subjects. [3] "Breve pertugio dentro dalla Muda, La qual per me ha il titol della fame E in che conviene ancor ch'altri si chiuda, M'avea mostrato per lo suo forame Piu lune gia." DANTE, _L'Inferno_. [4] "As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle in its flight." THE FIRST CRICKET. Ah me! is it then true that the year has waxed unto waning, And that so soon must remain nothing but lapse and decay,-- Earliest cricket, that out of the midsummer midnight complaining, All the faint summer in me takest with subtle dismay? Though thou bringest no dream of frost to the flowers that slumber, Though no tree for its leaves, doomed of thy voice, maketh moan, Yet with th' unconscious earth's boded evil my soul thou dost cumber, And in the year's lost youth makest me still lose my own. Answerest thou, that when nights of December are blackest and bleakest, And when the fervid grate feigns me a May in my room, And by my hearthstone gay, as now sad in my garden, thou creakest,-- Thou wilt again give me all,--dew and fragrance and bloom? Nay, little poet! full many a cricket I have that is willing, If I but take him down out of his place on my shelf, Me blither lays to sing than the blithest known to thy shrilling, Full of the rapture of life, May, morn, hope, and--himself: Leaving me only the sadder; for never one of my singers Lures back the bee to his feast, calls back the bird to his tree. Hast thou no art can make me believe, while the summer yet lingers, Better than bloom that has been red leaf and sere that must be? THE MULBERRIES. I. On the Rialto Bridge we stand; The street ebbs under and makes no sound; But, with bargains shrieked on every hand, The noisy market rings around. "_Mulberries, fine mulberries, here!_" A tuneful voice,--and light, light measure; Though I hardly should count these mulberries dear, If I paid three times the price for my pleasure. Brown hands splashed with mulberry blood, The basket wreathed with mulberry leaves Hiding the berries beneath them;--good! Let us take whatever the young rogue gives. For you know, old friend, I haven't eaten A mulberry since the ignorant joy Of anything sweet in the mouth could sweeten All this bitter world for a boy. II. O, I mind the tree in the meadow stood By the road near the hill: when I clomb aloof On its branches, this side of the girdled wood, I could see the top of our cabin roof. And, looking westward, could sweep the shores Of the river where we used to swim Under the ghostly sycamores, Haunting the waters smooth and dim; And eastward athwart the pasture-lot And over the milk-white buckwheat field I could see the stately elm, where I shot The first black squirrel I ever killed. And southward over the bottom-land I could see the mellow breadths of farm From the river-shores to the hills expand, Clasped in the curving river's arm. In the fields we set our guileless snares For rabbits and pigeons and wary quails, Content with the vaguest feathers and hairs From doubtful wings and vanished tails. And in the blue summer afternoon We used to sit in the mulberry-tree: The breaths of wind that remembered June Shook the leaves and glittering berries free; And while we watched the wagons go Across the river, along the road, To the mill above, or the mill below, With horses that stooped to the heavy load, We told old stories and made new plans, And felt our hearts gladden within us again, For we did not dream that this life of a man's Could ever be what we know as men. We sat so still that the woodpeckers came And pillaged the berries overhead; From his log the chipmonk, waxen tame, Peered, and listened to what we said. III. One of us long ago was carried To his grave on the hill above the tree; One is a farmer there, and married; One has wandered over the sea. And, if you ask me, I hardly know Whether I'd be the dead or the clown,-- The clod above or the clay below,-- Or this listless dust by fortune blown To alien lands. For, however it is, So little we keep with us in life: At best we win only victories, Not peace, not peace, O friend, in this strife. But if I could turn from the long defeat Of the little successes once more, and be A boy, with the whole wide world at my feet, Under the shade of the mulberry-tree,-- From the shame of the squandered chances, the sleep Of the will that cannot itself awaken, From the promise the future can never keep, From the fitful purposes vague and shaken,-- Then, while the grasshopper sang out shrill In the grass beneath the blanching thistle, And the afternoon air, with a tender thrill, Harked to the quail's complaining whistle,-- Ah me! should I paint the morrows again In quite the colors so faint to-day, And with the imperial mulberry's stain Re-purple life's doublet of hodden-gray? Know again the losses of disillusion? For the sake of the hope, have the old deceit?-- In spite of the question's bitter infusion, Don't you find these mulberries over-sweet? All our atoms are changed, they say; And the taste is so different since then; We live, but a world has passed away With the years that perished to make us men. BEFORE THE GATE. They gave the whole long day to idle laughter, To fitful song and jest, To moods of soberness as idle, after, And silences, as idle too as the rest. But when at last upon their way returning, Taciturn, late, and loath, Through the broad meadow in the sunset burning, They reached the gate, one fine spell hindered them both. Her heart was troubled with a subtile anguish Such as but women know That wait, and lest love speak or speak not languish, And what they would, would rather they would not so; Till he said,--man-like nothing comprehending Of all the wondrous guile That women won win themselves with, and bending Eyes of relentless asking on her the while,-- "Ah, if beyond this gate the path united Our steps as far as death, And I might open it!--" His voice, affrighted At its own daring, faltered under his breath. Then she--whom both his faith and fear enchanted Far beyond words to tell, Feeling her woman's finest wit had wanted The art he had that knew to blunder so well-- Shyly drew near, a little step, and mocking, "Shall we not be too late For tea?" she said. "I'm quite worn out with walking: Yes, thanks, your arm. And will you--open the gate?" CLEMENT. I. That time of year, you know, when the summer, beginning to sadden, Full-mooned and silver-misted, glides from the heart of September, Mourned by disconsolate crickets, and iterant grasshoppers, crying All the still nights long, from the ripened abundance of gardens; Then, ere the boughs of the maples are mantled with earliest autumn, But the wind of autumn breathes from the orchards at nightfall, Full of winy perfume and mystical yearning and languor; And in the noonday woods you hear the foraging squirrels, And the long, crashing fall of the half-eaten nut from the tree-top; When the robins are mute, and the yellow-birds, haunting the thistles, Cheep, and twitter, and flit through the dusty lanes and the loppings, When the pheasant booms from your stealthy foot in the cornfield, And the wild-pigeons feed, few and shy, in the scoke-berry bushes; When the weary land lies hushed, like a seer in a vision, And your life seems but the dream of a dream which you cannot remember,-- Broken, bewildering, vague, an echo that answers to nothing! That time of year, you know. They stood by the gate in the meadow, Fronting the sinking sun, and the level stream of its splendor Crimsoned the meadow-slope and woodland with tenderest sunset, Made her beautiful face like the luminous face of an angel, Smote through the painéd gloom of his heart like a hurt to the sense, there. Languidly clung about by the half-fallen shawl, and with folded Hands, that held a few sad asters: "I sigh for this idyl Lived at last to an end; and, looking on to my prose-life," With a smile, she said, and a subtle derision of manner, "Better and better I seem, when I recollect all that has happened Since I came here in June: the walks we have taken together Through these darling meadows, and dear, old, desolate woodlands; All our afternoon readings, and all our strolls through the moonlit Village,--so sweetly asleep, one scarcely could credit the scandal, Heartache, and trouble, and spite, that were hushed for the night, in its silence. Yes, I am better. I think I could even be civil to _him_ for his kindness, Letting me come here without him.... But open the gate, Cousin Clement; Seems to me it grows chill, and I think it is healthier in-doors. --No, then I you need not speak, for I know well enough what is coming: Bitter taunts for the past, and discouraging views of the future? Tragedy, Cousin Clement, or comedy,--just as you like it;-- Only not here alone, but somewhere that people can see you. Then I'll take part in the play, and appear the remorseful young person Full of divine regrets at not having smothered a genius Under the feathers and silks of a foolish, extravagant woman. O you selfish boy! what was it, just now, about anguish? Bills would be your talk, Cousin Clement, if you were my husband." Then, with her summer-night glory of eyes low-bending upon him, Dark'ning his thoughts as the pondered stars bewilder and darken, Tenderly, wistfully drooping toward him, she faltered in whisper,-- All her mocking face transfigured,--with mournful effusion: "Clement, do not think it is you alone that remember,-- Do not think it is you alone that have suffered. Ambition, Fame, and your art,--you have all these things to console you. I--what have I in this world? Since my child is dead--a bereavement." Sad hung her eyes on his, and he felt all the anger within him Broken, and melting in tears. But he shrank from her touch while he answered (Awkwardly, being a man, and awkwardly, being a lover), "Yes, you know how it is done. You have cleverly fooled me beforetime, With a dainty scorn, and then an imploring forgiveness! Yes, you might play it, I think,--that _rôle_ of remorseful young person, That, or the old man's darling, or anything else you attempted. Even your earnest is so much like acting I fear a betrayal, Trusting your speech. You say that you have not forgotten. I grant you-- Not, indeed, for your word--that is light--but I wish to believe you. Well, I say, since you have not forgotten, forget now, forever! I--I have lived and loved, and you have lived and have married. Only receive this bud to remember me when we have parted,-- Thorns and splendor, no sweetness, rose of the love that I cherished!" There he tore from its stalk the imperial flower of the thistle, Tore, and gave to her, who took it with mocking obeisance, Twined it in her hair, and said, with her subtle derision: "You are a wiser man than I thought you could ever be, Clement,-- Sensible, almost. So! I'll try to forget and remember." Lightly she took his arm, but on through the lane to the farm-house, Mutely together they moved through the lonesome, odorous twilight. II. High on the farm-house hearth, the first autumn fire was kindled; Scintillant hickory bark and dryest limbs of the beech-tree Burned, where all summer long the boughs of asparagus flourished. Wild were the children with mirth, and grouping and clinging together, Danced with the dancing flame, and lithely swayed with its humor; Ran to the window-panes, and peering forth into the darkness, Saw there another room, flame-lit, and with frolicking children. (Ah! by such phantom hearths, I think that we sit with our first-loves!) Sometimes they tossed on the floor, and sometimes they hid in the corners, Shouting and laughing aloud, and never resting a moment, In the rude delight, the boisterous gladness of childhood,-- Cruel as summer sun and singing-birds to the heartsick. Clement sat in his chair unmoved in the midst of the hubbub, Rapt, with unseeing eyes; and unafraid in their gambols, By his tawny beard the children caught him, and clambered Over his knees, and waged a mimic warfare across them, Made him their battle-ground, and won and lost kingdoms upon him. Airily to and fro, and out of one room to another Passed his cousin, and busied herself with things of the household, Nonchalant, debonair, blithe, with bewitching housewifely importance, Laying the cloth for the supper, and bringing the meal from the kitchen; Fairer than ever she seemed, and more than ever she mocked him, Coming behind his chair, and clasping her fingers together Over his eyes in a girlish caprice, and crying, "Who is it?" Vexed his despair with a vision of wife and of home and of children, Calling his sister's children around her, and stilling their clamor, Making believe they were hers. And Clement sat moody and silent, Blank to the wistful gaze of his mother bent on his visage With the tender pain, the pitiful, helpless devotion Of the mother that looks on the face of her son in his trouble, Grown beyond her consoling, and knows that she cannot befriend him. Then his cousin laughed, and in idleness talked with the children; Sometimes she turned to him, and then when the thistle was falling, Caught it and twined it again in her hair, and called it her keepsake, Smiled, and made him ashamed of his petulant gift there, before them. But, when the night was grown old and the two by the hearthstone together Sat alone in the flickering red of the flame, and the cricket Carked to the stillness, and ever, with sullen throbs of the pendule Sighed the time-worn clock for the death of the days that were perished,-- It was her whim to be sad, and she brought him the book they were reading. "Read it to-night," she said, "that I may not seem to be going." Said, and mutely reproached him with all the pain she had wrought him. From her hand he took the volume and read, and she listened,-- All his voice molten in secret tears, and ebbing and flowing, Now with a faltering breath, and now with impassioned abandon,-- Read from the book of a poet the rhyme of the fatally sundered, Fatally met too late, and their love was their guilt and their anguish, But in the night they rose, and fled away into the darkness, Glad of all dangers and shames, and even of death, for their love's sake. Then, when his voice brake hollowly, falling and fading to silence, Thrilled in the silence they sat, and durst not behold one another, Feeling that wild temptation, that tender, ineffable yearning, Drawing them heart to heart. One blind, mad moment of passion With their fate they strove; but out of the pang of the conflict, Through such costly triumph as wins a waste and a famine, Victors they came, and Love retrieved the error of loving. So, foreknowing the years, and sharply discerning the future, Guessing the riddle of life, and accepting the cruel solution,-- Side by side they sat, as far as the stars are asunder. Carked the cricket no more, but while the audible silence Shrilled in their ears, she, suddenly rising and dragging the thistle Out of her clinging hair, laughed mockingly, casting it from her: "Perish the thorns and splendor,--the bloom and the sweetness are perished. Dreary, respectable calm, polite despair, and one's Duty,-- These and the world, for dead Love!--The end of these modern romances! Better than yonder rhyme?... Pleasant dreams and good night, Cousin Clement." BY THE SEA. I walked with her I love by the sea, The deep came up with its chanting waves, Making a music so great and free That the will and the faith, which were dead in me, Awoke and rose from their graves. Chanting, and with a regal sweep Of their 'broidered garments up and down The strand, came the mighty waves of the deep, Dragging the wave-worn drift from its sleep Along the sea-sands bare and brown. "O my soul, make the song of the sea!" I cried. "How it comes, with its stately tread, And its dreadful voice, and the splendid pride Of its regal garments flowing wide Over the land!" to my soul I said. My soul was still; the deep went down. "What hast thou, my soul," I cried, "In thy song?" "The sea-sands bare and brown, With broken shells and sea-weed strown, And stranded drift," my soul replied. SAINT CHRISTOPHER. In the narrow Venetian street, On the wall above the garden gate (Within, the breath of the rose is sweet, And the nightingale sings there, soon and late), Stands Saint Christopher, carven in stone, With the little child in his huge caress, And the arms of the baby Jesus thrown About his gigantic tenderness; And over the wall a wandering growth Of darkest and greenest ivy clings, And climbs around them, and holds them both In its netted clasp of knots and rings, Clothing the saint from foot to beard In glittering leaves that whisper and dance To the child, on his mighty arm upreared, With a lusty summer exuberance. To the child on his arm the faithful saint Looks up with a broad and tranquil joy; His brows and his heavy beard aslant Under the dimpled chin of the boy, Who plays with the world upon his palm, And bends his smiling looks divine On the face of the giant mild and calm, And the glittering frolic of the vine. He smiles on either with equal grace,-- On the simple ivy's unconscious life, And the soul in the giant's lifted face, Strong from the peril of the strife: For both are his own,--the innocence That climbs from the heart of earth to heaven, And the virtue that gently rises thence Through trial sent and victory given. Grow, ivy, up to his countenance, But it cannot smile on my life as on thine; Look, Saint, with thy trustful, fearless glance, Where I dare not lift these eyes of mine. Venice, 1863. ELEGY ON JOHN BUTLER HOWELLS, Who died, "with the first song of the birds," Wednesday morning, April 27, 1864. I. In the early morning when I wake At the hour that is sacred for his sake, And hear the happy birds of spring In the garden under my window sing, And through my window the daybreak blows The sweetness of the lily and rose, A dormant anguish wakes with day, And my heart is smitten with strange dismay: Distance wider than thine, O sea, Darkens between my brother and me! II. A scrap of print, a few brief lines, The fatal word that swims and shines On my tears, with a meaning new and dread, Make faltering reason know him dead, And I would that my heart might feel it too, And unto its own regret be true; For this is the hardest of all to bear, That his life was so generous and fair, So full of love, so full of hope, Broadening out with ample scope, And so far from death, that his dying seems The idle agony of dreams To my heart, that feels him living yet,-- And I forget, and I forget. III. He was almost grown a man when he passed Away, but when I kissed him last He was still a child, and I had crept Up to the little room where he slept, And thought to kiss him good-by in his sleep; But he was awake to make me weep With terrible homesickness, before My wayward feet had passed the door. Round about me clung his embrace, And he pressed against my face his face, As if some prescience whispered him then That it never, never should be again. IV. Out of far-off days of boyhood dim, When he was a babe and I played with him, I remember his looks and all his ways; And how he grew through childhood's grace, To the hopes, and strifes, and sports, and joys, And innocent vanity of boys; I hear his whistle at the door, His careless step upon the floor, His song, his jest, his laughter yet,-- And I forget, and I forget. V. Somewhere in the graveyard that I know, Where the strawberries under the chestnuts grow, They have laid him; and his sisters set On his grave the flowers their tears have wet; And above his grave, while I write, the song Of the matin robin leaps sweet and strong From the leafy dark of the chestnut-tree; And many a murmuring honey-bee On the strawberry blossoms in the grass Stoops by his grave and will not pass; And in the little hollow beneath The slope of the silent field of death, The cow-bells tinkle soft and sweet, And the cattle go by with homeward feet, And the squirrel barks from the sheltering limb, At the harmless noises not meant for him; And Nature, unto her loving heart Has taken our darling's mortal part, Tenderly, that he may be, Like the song of the robin in the tree, The blossoms, the grass, the reeds by the shore, A part of Summer evermore. VI. I write, and the words with my tears are wet,-- But I forget, O, I forget! Teach me, Thou that sendest this pain, To know and feel my loss and gain! Let me not falter in belief On his death, for that is sorest grief: O, lift me above this wearing strife, Till I discern his deathless life, Shining beyond this misty shore, A part of Heaven evermore. Venice, Wednesday Morning, at Dawn, May 16, 1864. THANKSGIVING. I. Lord, for the erring thought Not into evil wrought: Lord, for the wicked will Betrayed and baffled still: For the heart from itself kept, Our thanksgiving accept. II. For ignorant hopes that were Broken to our blind prayer: For pain, death, sorrow, sent Unto our chastisement: For all loss of seeming good, Quicken our gratitude. A SPRINGTIME. One knows the spring is coming: There are birds; the fields are green; There is balm in the sunlight and moonlight, And dew in the twilights between. But over there is a silence, A rapture great and dumb, That day when the doubt is ended, And at last the spring is come. Behold the wonder, O silence! Strange as if wrought in a night,-- The waited and lingering glory, The world-old, fresh delight! O blossoms that hang like winter, Drifted upon the trees, O birds that sing in the blossoms, O blossom-haunting bees,-- O green, green leaves on the branches, O shadowy dark below, O cool of the aisles of orchards, Woods that the wild flowers know,-- O air of gold and perfume, Wind, breathing sweet and sun, O sky of perfect azure-- Day, Heaven and Earth in one!-- Let me draw near thy secret, And in thy deep heart see How fared, in doubt and dreaming, The spring that is come in me. For my soul is held in silence, A rapture, great and dumb,-- For the mystery that lingered, The glory that is come! 1861. IN EARLIEST SPRING. Tossing his mane of snows in wildest eddies and tangles, Lion-like, March cometh in, hoarse, with tempestuous breath, Through all the moaning chimneys, and thwart all the hollows and angles Round the shuddering house, threating of winter and death. But in my heart I feel the life of the wood and the meadow Thrilling the pulses that own kindred with fibres that lift Bud and blade to the sunward, within the inscrutable shadow, Deep in the oak's chill core, under the gathering drift. Nay, to earth's life in mine some prescience, or dream, or desire (How shall I name it aright?) comes for a moment and goes,-- Rapture of life ineffable, perfect,--as if in the brier, Leafless there by my door, trembled a sense of the rose. THE BOBOLINKS ARE SINGING. Out of its fragrant heart of bloom,-- The bobolinks are singing! Out of its fragrant heart of bloom The apple-tree whispers to the room, "Why art thou but a nest of gloom, While the bobolinks are singing?" The two wan ghosts of the chamber there,-- The bobolinks are singing! The two wan ghosts of the chamber there Cease in the breath of the honeyed air, Sweep from the room and leave it bare, While the bobolinks are singing. Then with a breath so chill and slow,-- The bobolinks are singing! Then with a breath so chill and slow, It freezes the blossoms into snow, The haunted room makes answer low, While the bobolinks are singing. "I know that in the meadow-land,-- The bobolinks are singing! I know that in the meadow-land The sorrowful, slender elm-trees stand, And the brook goes by on the other hand, While the bobolinks are singing. "But ever I see, in the brawling stream,-- The bobolinks are singing! But ever I see in the brawling stream A maiden drowned and floating dim, Under the water, like a dream, While the bobolinks are singing. "Buried, she lies in the meadow-land!-- The bobolinks are singing! Buried, she lies in the meadow-land, Under the sorrowful elms where they stand. Wind, blow over her soft and bland, While the bobolinks are singing. "O blow, but stir not the ghastly thing,-- The bobolinks are singing! O blow, but stir not the ghastly thing The farmer saw so heavily swing From the elm, one merry morn of spring, While the bobolinks were singing. "O blow, and blow away the bloom,-- The bobolinks are singing! O blow, and blow away the bloom That sickens me in my heart of gloom, That sweetly sickens the haunted room, While the bobolinks are singing!" PRELUDE. (TO AN EARLY BOOK OF VERSE.) In March the earliest bluebird came And caroled from the orchard-tree His little tremulous songs to me, And called upon the summer's name, And made old summers in my heart All sweet with flower and sun again; So that I said, "O, not in vain Shall be thy lay of little art, "Though never summer sun may glow, Nor summer flower for thee may bloom; Though winter turn in sudden gloom, And drowse the stirring spring with snow"; And learned to trust, if I should call Upon the sacred name of Song, Though chill through March I languish long, And never feel the May at all, Yet may I touch, in some who hear, The hearts, wherein old songs asleep Wait but the feeblest touch to leap In music sweet as summer air! I sing in March brief bluebird lays, And hope a May, and do not know: May be, the heaven is full of snow,-- May be, there open summer days. THE MOVERS. SKETCH. Parting was over at last, and all the good-bys had been spoken. Up the long hillside road the white-tented wagon moved slowly, Bearing the mother and children, while onward before them the father Trudged with his gun on his arm, and the faithful house-dog beside him, Grave and sedate, as if knowing the sorrowful thoughts of his master. April was in her prime, and the day in its dewy awaking: Like a great flower, afar on the crest of the eastern woodland, Goldenly bloomed the sun, and over the beautiful valley, Dim with its dew and shadow, and bright with its dream of a river, Looked to the western hills, and shone on the humble procession, Paining with splendor the children's eyes, and the heart of the mother. Beauty, and fragrance, and song filled the air like a palpable presence. Sweet was the smell of the dewy leaves and the flowers in the wild-wood, Fair the long reaches of sun and shade in the aisles of the forest. Glad of the spring, and of love, and of morning, the wild birds were singing: Jays to each other called harshly, then mellowly fluted together; Sang the oriole songs as golden and gay as his plumage; Pensively piped the querulous quails their greetings unfrequent, While, on the meadow elm, the meadow lark gushed forth in music, Rapt, exultant, and shaken with the great joy of his singing; Over the river, loud-chattering, aloft in the air, the kingfisher Hung, ere he dropped, like a bolt, in the water beneath him; Gossiping, out of the bank flew myriad twittering swallows; And in the boughs of the sycamores quarrelled and clamored the blackbirds. Never for these things a moment halted the Movers, but onward, Up the long hillside road the white-tented wagon moved slowly. Till, on the summit, that overlooked all the beautiful valley, Trembling and spent, the horses came to a standstill unbidden; Then from the wagon the mother in silence got down with her children, Came, and stood by the father, and rested her hand on his shoulder. Long together they gazed on the beautiful valley before them; Looked on the well-known fields that stretched away to the woodlands, Where, in the dark lines of green, showed the milk-white crest of the dogwood, Snow of wild-plums in bloom, and crimson tints of the red-bud; Looked on the pasture-fields where the cattle were lazily grazing,-- Soft, and sweet, and thin came the faint, far notes of the cow-bells,-- Looked on the oft-trodden lanes, with their elder and blackberry borders, Looked on the orchard, a bloomy sea, with its billows of blossoms. Fair was the scene, yet suddenly strange and all unfamiliar, As are the faces of friends, when the word of farewell has been spoken. Long together they gazed; then at last on the little log-cabin-- Home for so many years, now home no longer forever-- Rested their tearless eyes in the silent rapture of anguish. Up on the morning air no column of smoke from the chimney Wavering, silver and azure, rose, fading and brightening ever; Shut was the door where yesterday morning the children were playing; Lit with a gleam of the sun the window stared up at them blindly. Cold was the hearthstone now, and the place was forsaken and empty. Empty? Ah no! but haunted by thronging and tenderest fancies, Sad recollections of all that had been, of sorrow or gladness. Still they sat there in the glow of the wide red fire in the winter, Still they sat there by the door in the cool of the still summer evening, Still the mother seemed to be singing her babe there to slumber, Still the father beheld her weep o'er the child that was dying, Still the place was haunted by all the Past's sorrow and gladness! Neither of them might speak for the thoughts that came crowding their hearts so, Till, in their ignorant trouble aloud the children lamented; Then was the spell of silence dissolved, and the father and mother Burst into tears and embraced, and turned their dim eyes to the Westward. Ohio, 1859. THROUGH THE MEADOW. The summer sun was soft and bland, As they went through the meadow land. The little wind that hardly shook The silver of the sleeping brook Blew the gold hair about her eyes,-- A mystery of mysteries! So he must often pause, and stoop, And all the wanton ringlets loop Behind her dainty ear--emprise Of slow event and many sighs. Across the stream was scarce a step,-- And yet she feared to try the leap; And he, to still her sweet alarm, Must lift her over on his arm. She could not keep the narrow way, For still the little feet would stray, And ever must he bend t' undo The tangled grasses from her shoe,-- From dainty rosebud lips in pout, Must kiss the perfect flowér out! Ah! little coquette! Fair deceit! Some things are bitter that were sweet. GONE. Is it the shrewd October wind Brings the tears into her eyes? Does it blow so strong that she must fetch Her breath in sudden sighs? The sound of his horse's feet grows faint, The Rider has passed from sight; The day dies out of the crimson west, And coldly falls the night. She presses her tremulous fingers tight Against her closéd eyes, And on the lonesome threshold there, She cowers down and cries. THE SARCASTIC FAIR. Her mouth is a honey-blossom, No doubt, as the poet sings; But within her lips, the petals, Lurks a cruel bee, that stings. RAPTURE. In my rhyme I fable anguish, Feigning that my love is dead, Playing at a game of sadness, Singing hope forever fled,-- Trailing the slow robes of mourning, Grieving with the player's art, With the languid palms of sorrow Folded on a dancing heart. I must mix my love with death-dust, Lest the draught should make me mad; I must make believe at sorrow, Lest I perish, over-glad. DEAD. I. Something lies in the room Over against my own; The windows are lit with a ghastly bloom Of candles, burning alone,-- Untrimmed, and all aflare In the ghastly silence there! II. People go by the door, Tiptoe, holding their breath, And hush the talk that they held before, Lest they should waken Death, That is awake all night There in the candlelight! III. The cat upon the stairs Watches with flamy eye For the sleepy one who shall unawares Let her go stealing by. She softly, softly purrs, And claws at the banisters. IV. The bird from out its dream Breaks with a sudden song, That stabs the sense like a sudden scream; The hound the whole night long Howls to the moonless sky, So far, and starry, and high. THE DOUBT. She sits beside the low window, In the pleasant evening-time, With her face turned to the sunset, Reading a book of rhyme. And the wine-light of the sunset, Stolen into the dainty nook, Where she sits in her sacred beauty, Lies crimson on the book. O beautiful eyes so tender, Brown eyes so tender and dear, Did you leave your reading a moment Just now, as I passed near? Maybe, 'tis the sunset flushes Her features, so lily-pale; Maybe, 'tis the lover's passion, She reads of in the tale. O darling, and darling, and darling, If I dared to trust my thought; If I dared to believe what I must not, Believe what no one ought,-- We would read together the poem Of the Love that never died, The passionate, world-old story Come true, and glorified. THE THORN. "Every Rose, you sang, has its Thorn, But this has none, I know." She clasped my rival's Rose Over her breast of snow. I bowed to hide my pain, With a man's unskilful art; I moved my lips, and could not say The Thorn was in my heart! THE MYSTERIES. Once on my mother's breast, a child, I crept, Holding my breath; There, safe and sad, lay shuddering, and wept At the dark mystery of Death. Weary and weak, and worn with all unrest, Spent with the strife,-- O mother, let me weep upon thy breast At the sad mystery of Life! THE BATTLE IN THE CLOUDS. "The day had been one of dense mists and rains, and much of General Hooker's battle was fought above the clouds, on the top of Lookout Mountain."--GENERAL MEIG'S _Report of the Battle before Chattanooga_. Where the dews and the rains of heaven have their fountain, Like its thunder and its lightning our brave burst on the foe, Up above the clouds on Freedom's Lookout Mountain Raining life-blood like water on the valleys down below. O, green be the laurels that grow, O sweet be the wild-buds that blow, In the dells of the mountain where the brave are lying low. Light of our hope and crown of our story, Bright as sunlight, pure as starlight shall their deeds of daring glow, While the day and the night out of heaven shed their glory, On Freedom's Lookout Mountain whence they routed Freedom's foe. O, soft be the gales when they go Through the pines on the summit where they blow, Chanting solemn music for the souls that passed below. FOR ONE OF THE KILLED. There on the field of battle Lies the young warrior dead: Who shall speak in the soldier's honor? How shall his praise be said? Cannon, there in the battle, Thundered the soldier's praise, Hark! how the volumed volleys echo Down through the far-off days! Tears for the grief of a father, For a mother's anguish, tears; But for him that died in his country's battle, Glory and endless years. THE TWO WIVES. (TO COLONEL J. G. M., IN MEMORY OF THE EVENT BEFORE ATLANTA.) I. The colonel rode by his picket-line In the pleasant morning sun, That glanced from him far off to shine On the crouching rebel picket's gun. II. From his command the captain strode Out with a grave salute, And talked with the colonel as he rode;-- The picket levelled his piece to shoot. III. The colonel rode and the captain walked,-- The arm of the picket tired; Their faces almost touched as they talked, And, swerved from his aim, the picket fired. IV. The captain fell at the horse's feet, Wounded and hurt to death, Calling upon a name that was sweet As God is good, with his dying breath. V. And the colonel that leaped from his horse and knelt To close the eyes so dim, A high remorse for God's mercy felt, Knowing the shot was meant for him. VI. And he whispered, prayer-like, under his breath, The name of his own young wife: For Love, that had made his friend's peace with Death, Alone could make his with life. BEREAVED. The passionate humming-birds cling To the honeysuckles' hearts; In and out at the open window The twittering house-wren darts, And the sun is bright. June is young, and warm, and sweet; The morning is gay and new; Glimmers yet the grass of the door-yard, Pearl-gray with fragrant dew, And the sun is bright. From the mill, upon the stream, A busy murmur swells; On to the pasture go the cattle, Lowing, with tinkling bells, And the sun is bright. She gathers his playthings up, And dreamily puts them by; Children are playing in the meadow, She hears their joyous cry, And the sun is bright. She sits and clasps her brow, And looks with swollen eyes On the landscape that reels and dances,-- To herself she softly cries, And the sun is bright. THE SNOW-BIRDS. The lonesome graveyard lieth, A deep with silent waves Of night-long snow, all white, and billowed Over the hidden graves. The snow-birds come in the morning, Flocking and fluttering low, And light on the graveyard brambles, And twitter there in the snow. The Singer, old and weary, Looks out from his narrow room: "Ah, me! but my thoughts are snow-birds, Haunting a graveyard gloom, "Where all the Past is buried And dead, these many years, Under the drifted whiteness Of frozen falls of tears. "Poor birds! that know not summer, Nor sun, nor flowèrs fair,-- Only the graveyard brambles, And graves, and winter air!" VAGARY. Up and down the dusty street, I hurry with my burning feet; Against my face the wind-waves beat, Fierce from the city-sea of heat. Deep in my heart the vision is, Of meadow grass and meadow trees Blown silver in the summer breeze, And ripe, red, hillside strawberries. My sense the city tumult fills,-- The tumult that about me reels Of strokes and cries, and feet and wheels. Deep in my dream I list, and, hark! From out the maple's leafy dark, The fluting of the meadow lark! About the throngéd street I go: There is no face here that I know; Of all that pass me to and fro There is no face here that I know. Deep in my soul's most sacred place, With a sweet pain I look and trace The features of a tender face, All lit with love and girlish grace. Some spell is on me, for I seem A memory of the past, a dream Of happiness remembered dim, Unto myself that walk the street Scathed with the city's noontide heat, With puzzled brain and burning feet. FEUERBILDER. The children sit by the fireside With their little faces in bloom; And behind, the lily-pale mother, Looking out of the gloom, Flushes in cheek and forehead With a light and sudden start; But the father sits there silent, From the firelight apart. "Now, what dost thou see in the embers? Tell it to me, my child," Whispers the lily-pale mother To her daughter sweet and mild. "O, I see a sky and a moon In the coals and ashes there, And under, two are walking In a garden of flowers so fair. "A lady gay, and her lover, Talking with low-voiced words, Not to waken the dreaming flowers And the sleepy little birds." Back in the gloom the mother Shrinks with a sudden sigh. "Now, what dost thou see in the embers?" Cries the father to the boy. "O, I see a wedding-procession Go in at the church's door,-- Ladies in silk and knights in steel,-- A hundred of them, and more. "The bride's face is as white as a lily, And the groom's head is white as snow; And without, with plumes and tapers, A funeral paces slow." Loudly then laughed the father, And shouted again for cheer, And called to the drowsy housemaid To fetch him a pipe and beer. AVERY. [NIAGARA, 1853.] I. All night long they heard in the houses beside the shore, Heard, or seemed to hear, through the multitudinous roar, Out of the hell of the rapids as 'twere a lost soul's cries,-- Heard and could not believe; and the morning mocked their eyes, Showing, where wildest and fiercest the waters leaped up and ran Raving round him and past, the visage of a man Clinging, or seeming to cling, to the trunk of a tree that, caught Fast in the rocks below, scarce out of the surges raught. Was it a life, could it be, to yon slender hope that clung? Shrill, above all the tumult the answering terror rung. II. Under the weltering rapids a boat from the bridge is drowned, Over the rocks the lines of another are tangled and wound; And the long, fateful hours of the morning have wasted soon, As it had been in some blessed trance, and now it is noon. Hurry, now with the raft! But O, build it strong and stanch, And to the lines and treacherous rocks look well as you launch! Over the foamy tops of the waves, and their foam-sprent sides, Over the hidden reefs, and through the embattled tides, Onward rushes the raft, with many a lurch and leap,-- Lord! if it strike him loose from the hold he scarce can keep! No! through all peril unharmed, it reaches him harmless at last, And to its proven strength he lashes his weakness fast. Now, for the shore! But steady, steady, my men, and slow; Taut, now, the quivering lines; now slack; and so, let her go! Thronging the shores around stand the pitying multitude; Wan as his own are their looks, and a nightmare seems to brood Heavy upon them, and heavy the silence hangs on all, Save for the rapids' plunge, and the thunder of the fall. But on a sudden thrills from the people still and pale, Chorussing his unheard despair, a desperate wail: Caught on a lurking point of rock it sways and swings, Sport of the pitiless waters, the raft to which he clings. III. All the long afternoon it idly swings and sways; And on the shore the crowd lifts up its hands and prays: Lifts to heaven and wrings the hands so helpless to save, Prays for the mercy of God on him whom the rock and the wave Battle for, fettered betwixt them, and who, amidst their strife, Struggles to help his helpers, and fights so hard for his life,-- Tugging at rope and at reef, while men weep and women swoon. Priceless second by second, so wastes the afternoon, And it is sunset now; and another boat and the last Down to him from the bridge through the rapids has safely passed. IV. Wild through the crowd comes flying a man that nothing can stay, Maddening against the gate that is locked athwart his way. "No! we keep the bridge for them that can help him. You, Tell us, who are you?" "His brother!" "God help you both! Pass through." Wild, with wide arms of imploring he calls aloud to him, Unto the face of his brother, scarce seen in the distance dim; But in the roar of the rapids his fluttering words are lost As in a wind of autumn the leaves of autumn are tossed. And from the bridge he sees his brother sever the rope Holding him to the raft, and rise secure in his hope; Sees all as in a dream the terrible pageantry,-- Populous shores, the woods, the sky, the birds flying free; Sees, then, the form,--that, spent with effort and fasting and fear, Flings itself feebly and fails of the boat that is lying so near,-- Caught in the long-baffled clutch of the rapids, and rolled and hurled Headlong on to the cataract's brink, and out of the world. BOPEEP: A PASTORAL. "O, to what uses shall we put The wildweed flower that simply blows? And is there any moral shut Within the bosom of the rose?" TENNYSON. I. She lies upon the soft, enamoured grass, I' the wooing shelter of an apple-tree, And at her feet the trancéd brook is glass, And in the blossoms over her the bee Hangs charméd of his sordid industry; For love of her the light wind will not pass. II. Her golden hair, blown over her red lips, That seem two rose-leaves softly breathed apart, Athwart her rounded throat like sunshine slips; Her small hand, resting on her beating heart, The crook that tells her peaceful shepherd-art Scarce keeps with light and tremulous finger-tips. III. She is as fair as any shepherdess That ever was in mask or Christmas scene: Bright silver spangles hath she on her dress, And of her red-heeled shoes appears the sheen; And she hath ribbons of such blue or green As best suits pastoral people's comeliness. IV. She sleeps, and it is in the month of May, And the whole land is full of the delight Of music and sweet scents; and all the day The sun is gold; the moon is pearl all night, And like a paradise the world is bright, And like a young girl's hopes the world is gay. V. So waned the hours; and while her beauteous sleep Was blest with many a happy dream of Love, Untended still, her silly, vagrant sheep Afar from that young shepherdess did rove, Along the vales and through the gossip grove, O'er daisied meads and up the thymy steep. VI. Then (for it happens oft when harm is nigh, Our dreams grow haggard till at last we wake) She thought that from the little runnel by There crept upon a sudden forth a snake, And stung her hand, and fled into the brake; Whereat she sprang up with a bitter cry, VII. And wildly over all that place did look, And could not spy her ingrate, wanton flock,-- Not there among tall grasses by the brook, Not there behind the mossy-bearded rock; And pitiless Echo answered with a mock When she did sorrow that she was forsook. VIII. Alas! the scattered sheep might not be found, And long and loud that gentle maid did weep, Till in her blurréd sight the hills went round, And, circling far, field, wood, and stream did sweep; And on the ground the miserable Bopeep Fell and forgot her troubles in a swound. IX. When she awoke, the sun long time had set, And all the land was sleeping in the moon, And all the flowers with dim, sad dews were wet, As they had wept to see her in that swoon. It was about the night's low-breathing noon; Only the larger stars were waking yet. X. Bopeep, the fair and hapless shepherdess, Rose from her swooning in a sore dismay, And tried to smooth her damp and rumpled dress, That showed in truth a grievous disarray; Then where the brook the wan moon's mirror lay, She laved her eyes, and curled each golden tress. XI. And looking to her ribbons, if they were As ribbons of a shepherdess should be, She took the hat that she was wont to wear (Bedecked it was with ribbons flying free As ever man in opera might see), And set it on her curls of yellow hair. XII. "And I will go and seek my sheep," she said, "Through every distant land until I die; But when they bring me hither, cold and dead, Let me beneath these apple-blossoms lie, With this dear, faithful, lovely runnel nigh, Here, where my cru--cru--cruel sheep have fed." XIII. Thus sorrow and despair make bold Bopeep, And forth she springs, and hurries on her way: Across the lurking rivulet she can leap, No sombre forest shall her quest delay, No crooked vale her eager steps bewray: What dreadeth she that seeketh her lost sheep? XIV. By many a pond, where timorous water-birds, With clattering cries and throbbing wings, arose, By many a pasture, where the soft-eyed herds Looked shadow-huge in their unmoved repose, Long through the lonesome night that sad one goes And fills the solitude with wailing words; XV. So that the little field-mouse dreams of harm, Snuggled away from harm beneath the weeds; The violet, sleeping on the clover's arm, Wakes, and is cold with thoughts of dreadful deeds; The pensive people of the water-reeds Hark with a mute and dolorous alarm. XVI. And the fond hearts of all the turtle-doves Are broken in compassion of her woe, And every tender little bird that loves Feels in his breast a sympathetic throe; And flowers are sad wherever she may go, And hoarse with sighs the waterfalls and groves. XVII. The pale moon droppeth low; star after star Grows faint and slumbers in the gray of dawn; And still she lingers not, but hurries far, Till in a dreary wilderness withdrawn Through tangled woods she lorn and lost moves on, Where griffins dire and dreadful dragons are. XVIII. Her ribbons all are dripping with the dew, Her red-heeled shoes are torn, and stained with mire, Her tender arms the angry sharpness rue Of many a scraggy thorn and envious brier; And poor Bopeep, with no sweet pity nigh her, Wrings her small hands, and knows not what to do. XIX. And on that crude and rugged ground she sinks, And soon her seeking had been ended there, But through the trees a fearful glimmer shrinks, And of a hermit's dwelling she is 'ware: At the dull pane a dull-eyed taper blinks, Drowsed with long vigils and the morning air. XX. Thither she trembling moves, and at the door Falls down, and cannot either speak or stir: The hermit comes,--with no white beard before, Nor coat of skins, nor cap of shaggy fur: It was a comely youth that lifted her, And to his hearth, and to his breakfast, bore. XXI. Arrayed he was in princeliest attire, And of as goodly presence sooth was he As any little maiden might admire, Or any king-beholding cat might see "My poor Bopeep," he sigheth piteously, "Rest here, and warm you at a hermit's fire." XXII. She looked so beautiful, there, mute and white, He kissed her on the lips and on the eyes (The most a prince could do in such a plight); But chiefly gazed on her in still surprise, And when he saw her lily eyelids rise, For him the whole world had no fairer sight. XXIII. "Rude is my fare: a bit of venison steak, A dish of honey and a glass of wine, With clean white bread, is the poor feast I make. Be served, I pray: I think this flask is fine," He said. "Hard is this hermit life of mine: This day I will its weariness forsake." XXIV. And then he told her how it chanced that he, King Cole's son, in that forest held his court, And the sole reason that there seemed to be Was, he was being hermit there for sport; But he confessed the life was not his forte, And therewith both laughed out right jollily. XXV. And sly Bopeep forgot her sheep again In gay discourse with that engaging youth: Love hath such sovran remedies for pain! But then he was a handsome prince, in truth, And both were young, and both were silly, sooth, And everything to Love but love seems vain. XXVI. They took them down the silver-claspéd book That this young anchorite's predecessor kept,-- A holy seer,--and through it they did look; Sometimes their idle eyes together crept, Sometimes their lips; but still the leaves they swept, Until they found a shepherd's pictured crook. XXVII. And underneath was writ it should befall On such a day, in such a month and year, A maiden fair, a young prince brave and tall, By such a chance should come together here. They were the people, that was very clear: "O love," the prince said, "let us read it all!" XXVIII. And thus the hermit's prophecy ran on: Though she her lost sheep wist not where to find, Yet should she bid her weary care begone, And banish every doubt from her sweet mind: They, with their little snow-white tails behind, Homeward would go, if they were left alone. XXIX. They closed the book, and in her happy eyes The prince read truth and love forevermore,-- Better than any hermit's prophecies! They passed together from the cavern's door; Embraced, they turned to look at it once more, And over it beheld the glad sun rise, XXX. That streamed before them aisles of dusk and gold Under the song-swept arches of the wood, And forth they went, tranced in each other's hold, Down through that rare and luminous solitude, Their happy hearts enchanted in the mood Of morning, and of May, and romance old. XXXI. Sometimes the saucy leaves would kiss her cheeks, And he must kiss their wanton kiss away; To die beneath her feet the wood-flower seeks, The quivering aspen feels a fine dismay, And many a scented blossom on the spray In odorous sighs its passionate longing speaks. XXXII. And forth they went down to that stately stream, Bowed over by the ghostly sycamores (Awearily, as if some heavy dream Held them in languor), but whose opulent shores With pearléd shells and dusts of precious ores Were tremulous brilliance in the morning beam; XXXIII. Where waited them, beside the lustrous sand, A silk-winged shallop, sleeping on the flood; And smoothly wafted from the hither strand, Across the calm, broad stream they lightly rode, Under them still the silver fishes stood; The eager lilies, on the other land, XXXIV. Beckonéd them; but where the castle shone With diamonded turrets and a wall Of gold-embedded pearl and costly stone, Their vision to its peerless splendor thrall The maiden fair, the young prince brave and tall, Thither with light, unlingering feet pressed on. XXXV. A gallant train to meet this loving pair, In silk and steel, moves from the castle door, And up the broad and ringing castle stair They go with gleeful minstrelsy before, And "Hail our prince and princess evermore!" From all the happy throng is greeting there. XXXVI. And in the hall the prince's sire, King Cole, Sitting with crown and royal ermine on, His fiddlers three behind with pipe and bowl, Rises and moves to lift his kneeling son, Greeting his bride with kisses many a one, And tears and laughter from his jolly soul; XXXVII. Then both his children to a window leads That over daisied pasture-land looks out, And shows Bopeep where her lost flock wide feeds, And every frolic lambkin leaps about. She hears Boy-Blue, that lazy shepherd, shout, Slow pausing from his pipe of mellow reeds; XXXVIII. And, turning, peers into her prince's eyes; Then, caught and clasped against her prince's heart, Upon her breath her answer wordless dies, And leaves her gratitude to sweeter art,-- To lips from which the bloom shall never part, To looks wherein the summer never dies! WHILE SHE SANG. I. She sang, and I heard the singing, Far out of the wretched past, Of meadow-larks in the meadow, In a breathing of the blast. Cold through the clouds of sunset The thin red sunlight shone, Staining the gloom of the woodland Where I walked and dreamed alone; And glinting with chilly splendor The meadow under the hill, Where the lingering larks were lurking In the sere grass hid and still. Out they burst with their singing, Their singing so loud and gay; They made in the heart of October A sudden ghastly May, That faded and ceased with their singing. The thin red sunlight paled, And through the boughs above me The wind of evening wailed;-- Wailed, and the light of evening Out of the heaven died; And from the marsh by the river The lonesome killdee cried. II. The song is done, but a phantom Of music haunts the chords, That thrill with its subtile presence, And grieve for the dying words. And in the years that are perished, Far back in the wretched past, I see on the May-green meadows The white snow falling fast;-- Falling, and falling, and falling, As still and cold as death, On the bloom of the odorous orchard, On the small, meek flowers beneath; On the roofs of the village-houses, On the long, silent street, Where its plumes are soiled and broken Under the passing feet; On the green crest of the woodland, On the cornfields far apart; On the cowering birds in the gable, And on my desolate heart. A POET. From wells where Truth in secret lay He saw the midnight stars by day. "O marvellous gift!" the many cried, "O cruel gift!" his voice replied. The stars were far, and cold, and high, That glimmered in the noonday sky; He yearned toward the sun in vain, That warmed the lives of other men. CONVENTION. He falters on the threshold, She lingers on the stair: Can it be that was his footstep? Can it be that she is there? Without is tender yearning, And tender love is within; They can hear each other's heart-beats, But a wooden door is between. THE POET'S FRIENDS. The robin sings in the elm; The cattle stand beneath, Sedate and grave, with great brown eyes And fragrant meadow-breath. They listen to the flattered bird, The wise-looking, stupid things; And they never understand a word Of all the robin sings. NO LOVE LOST. A ROMANCE OF TRAVEL. 1862. BERTHA--_Writing from Venice_. I. On your heart I feign myself fallen--ah, heavier burden, Darling, of sorrow and pain than ever shall rest there! I take you Into these friendless arms of mine, that you cannot escape me; Closer and closer I fold you, and tell you all, and you listen Just as you used at home, and you let my sobs and my silence Speak, when the words will not come--and you understand and forgive me. --Ah! no, no! but I write, with the wretched bravado of distance, What you must read unmoved by the pity too far for entreaty. II. Well, I could never have loved him, but when he sought me and asked me,-- When to the men that offered their lives, the love of a woman Seemed so little to give!--I promised the love that he asked me, Sent him to war with my kiss on his lips, and thought him my hero. Afterward came the doubt, and out of long question, self-knowledge,-- Came that great defeat, and the heart of the nation was withered; Mine leaped high with the awful relief won of death. But the horror, Then, of the crime that was wrought in that guilty moment of rapture,-- Guilty as if my will had winged the bullet that struck him,-- Clung to me day and night, and dreaming I saw him forever, Looking through battle-smoke with sorrowful eyes of upbraiding, Or, in the moonlight lying gray, or dimly approaching, Holding toward me his arms, that still held nearer and nearer, Folded about me at last ... and I would I had died in the fever!-- Better then than now, and better than ever hereafter! III. Weary as some illusion of fever to me was the ocean-- Storm-swept, scourged with bitter rains, and wandering always Onward from sky to sky with endless processions of surges, Knowing not life nor death, but since the light was, the first day, Only enduring unrest till the darkness possess it, the last day. Over its desolate depths we voyaged away from all living: All the world behind us waned into vaguest remoteness; Names, and faces, and scenes recurred like that broken remembrance Of the anterior, bodiless life of the spirit,--the trouble Of a bewildered brain, or the touch of the Hand that created,-- And when the ocean ceased at last like a faded illusion, Europe itself seemed only a vision of eld and of sadness. Naught but the dark in my soul remained to me constant and real, Growing and taking the thoughts bereft of happier uses, Blotting all sense of lapse from the days that with swift iteration Were and were not. They fable the bright days the fleetest: These that had nothing to give, that had nothing to bring or to promise, Went as one day alone. For me was no alternation Save from my dull despair to wild and reckless rebellion, When the regret for my sin was turned to ruthless self-pity-- When I hated him whose love had made me its victim, Through his faith and my falsehood yet claiming me. Then I was smitten With so great remorse, such grief for him, and compassion, That, if he could have come back to me, I had welcomed and loved him More than man ever was loved. Alas, for me that another Holds his place in my heart evermore! Alas, that I listened When the words, whose daring lured my spirit and lulled it, Seemed to take my blame away with my will of resistance! Do not make haste to condemn me: my will was the will of a woman,-- Fain to be broken by love. Yet unto the last I endeavored What I could to be faithful still to the past and my penance; And as we stood that night in the old Roman garden together-- By the fountain whose passionate tears but now had implored me In his pleading voice--and he waited my answer, I told him All that had been before of delusion and guilt, and conjured him Not to darken his fate with mine. The costly endeavor Only was subtler betrayal. O me, from the pang of confession, Sprang what strange delight, as I tore from its lurking that horror-- Brooded upon so long--with the hope that at last I might see it Through his eyes, unblurred by the tears that disordered my vision! Oh, with what rapturous triumph I humbled my spirit before him, That he might lift me and soothe me, and make that dreary remembrance, All this confused present, seem only some sickness of fancy, Only a morbid folly, no certain and actual trouble! If from that refuge I fled with words of too feeble denial-- Bade him hate me, with sobs that entreated his tenderest pity, Moved mute lips and left the meaningless farewell unuttered-- She that never has loved, alone can wholly condemn me. IV. How could he other than follow? My heart had bidden him follow, Nor had my lips forbidden; and Rome yet glimmered behind me, When my soul yearned towards his from the sudden forlornness of absence. Everywhere his face looked from vanishing glimpses of faces, Everywhere his voice reached my senses in fugitive cadence. Sick, through the storied cities, with wretched hopes, and upbraidings Of my own heart for its hopes, I went from wonder to wonder, Blind to them all, or only beholding them wronged, and related, Through some trick of wayward thought, to myself and my trouble. Not surprise nor regret, but a fierce, precipitate gladness Sent the blood to my throbbing heart when I found him in Venice. "Waiting for you," he whispered; "you would so." I answered him nothing. V. Father, whose humor grows more silent and ever more absent (Changed in all but love for me since the death of my mother), Willing to see me contented at last, and trusting us wholly, Left us together alone in our world of love and of beauty. So, by noon and by night, we two have wandered in Venice, Where the beautiful lives in vivid and constant caprices, Yet, where the charm is so perfect that nothing fantastic surprises More than in dreams, and one's life with the life of the city is blended In a luxurious calm, and the tumult without and beyond it Seems but the emptiest fable of vain aspiration and labor. Yes, from all that makes this Venice sole among cities, Peerless forever,--the still lagoons that sleep in the sunlight, Lulled by their island-bells; the night's mysterious waters Lit through their shadowy depths by stems of splendor, that blossom Into the lamps that float, like flamy lotuses, over; Narrow and secret canals, that dimly gleaming and glooming Under palace-walls and numberless arches of bridges, List no sound but the dip of the gondolier's oar and his warning Cried from corner to corner; the sad, superb Canalazzo Mirroring marvellous grandeur and beauty, and dreaming of glory Out of the empty homes of her lords departed; the footways Wandering sunless between the walls of the houses, and stealing Glimpses, through rusted cancelli, of lurking greenness of gardens, Wild-grown flowers and broken statues and mouldering frescos; Thoroughfares filled with traffic, and throngs ever ebbing and flowing To and from the heart of the city, whose pride and devotion, Lifting high the bells of St. Mark's like prayers unto heaven, Stretch a marble embrace of palaces toward the cathedral Orient, gorgeous, and flushed with color and light, like the morning!-- From the lingering waste that is not yet ruin in Venice, And her phantasmal show, through all, of being and doing-- Came a strange joy to us, untouched by regret for the idle Days without yesterdays that died into nights without morrows. Here, in our paradise of love we reigned, new-created, As in the youth of the world, in the days before evil and conscience. Ah! in our fair, lost world was neither fearing nor doubting, Neither the sickness of old remorse nor the gloom of foreboding,-- Only the glad surrender of all individual being Unto him whom I loved, and in whose tender possession, Fate-free, my soul reposed from its anguish. --Of these things I write you As of another's experience; part of my own they no longer Seem to me now, through the doom that darkens the past like the future. VI. Golden the sunset gleamed, above the city behind us, Out of a city of clouds as fairy and lovely as Venice, While we looked at the fishing-tails of purple and yellow Far on the rim of the sea, whose light and musical surges Broke along the sands with a faint, reiterant sadness. But, when the sails had darkened into black wings, through the twilight Sweeping away into night--past the broken tombs of the Hebrews Homeward we sauntered slowly, through dew-sweet, blossomy alleys; So drew near the boat by errant and careless approaches, Entered, and left with indolent pulses the Lido behind us. All the sunset had paled, and the campanili of Venice Rose like the masts of a mighty fleet moored there in the water. Lights flashed furtively to and fro through the deepening twilight. Massed in one thick shade lay the Gardens; the numberless islands Lay like shadows upon the lagoons. And on us as we loitered By their enchanted coasts, a spell of ineffable sweetness Fell and made us at one with them; and silent and blissful Shadows we seemed, that drifted on through a being of shadow, Vague, indistinct to ourselves, unbounded by hope or remembrance. Yet we knew the beautiful night, as it grew from the evening: Far beneath us and far above us the vault of the heavens Glittered and darkened; and now the moon, that had haunted the daylight Thin and pallid, dimmed the stars with her fulness of splendor, And over all the lagoons fell the silvery rain of the moonbeams, As in the song the young girls sang while their gondolas passed us,-- Sang in the joy of love, or youth's desire of loving. Balmy night of the South! O perfect night of the Summer! Night of the distant dark, of the near and tender effulgence!-- How from my despair are thy peace and loveliness frightened! For, while our boat lay there at the will of the light undulations, Idle as if our mood imbued and controlled it, yet ever Seeming to bear us on athwart those shining expanses Out to shining seas beyond pursuit or returning-- There, while we lingered, and lingered, and would not break from our rapture, Down the mirrored night another gondola drifted Nearer and slowly nearer our own, and moonlighted faces Stared. And that sweet trance grew a rigid and dreadful possession, Which, if no dream indeed, yet mocked with such semblance of dreaming, That, as it happens in dreams, when a dear face, stooping to kiss us, Takes, ere the lips have touched, some malign and horrible aspect, _His_ face faded away, and the face of the Dead--of that other-- Flashed on mine, and writhing, through every change of emotion,-- Wild amaze and scorn, accusation and pitiless mocking,-- Vanished into the swoon whose blackness encompassed and hid me. PHILIP--_To Bertha_. I am not sure, I own, that if first I had seen my delusion When I saw _you_, last night, I should be so ready to give you Now your promises back, and hold myself nothing above you, That it is mine to offer a freedom you never could ask for. Yet, believe me, indeed, from no bitter heart I release you: You are as free of me now as though I had died in the battle, Or as I never had lived. Nay, if it is mine to forgive you, Go without share of the blame that could hardly be all upon your side. Ghosts are not sensitive things; yet, after my death in the papers, Sometimes a harrowing doubt assailed this impalpable essence: Had I done so well to plead my cause at that moment, When your consent must be yielded less to the lover than soldier? "Not so well," I was answered by that ethereal conscience Ghosts have about them, "and not so nobly or wisely as might be." --Truly, I loved you, then, as now I love you no longer. I was a prisoner then, and this doubt in the languor of sickness Came; and it clung to my convalescence, and grew to the purpose, After my days of captivity ended, to seek you and solve it, And, if I haply had erred, to undo the wrong, and release you. Well, you have solved me the doubt. I dare to trust that you wept me, Just a little, at first, when you heard of me dead in the battle? For we were plighted, you know, and even in this saintly humor, I would scarce like to believe that my loss had merely relieved you. Yet, I say, it was prudent and well not to wait for my coming Back from the dead. If it may be I sometimes had cherished a fancy That I had won some right to the palm with the pang of the martyr,-- Fondly intended, perhaps, some splendor of self-abnegation,-- Doubtless all that was a folly which merciful chances have spared me. No, I am far from complaining that Circumstance coolly has ordered Matters of tragic fate in such a commonplace fashion. How do I know, indeed, that the easiest isn't the best way? Friendly adieux end this note, and our little comedy with it. FANNY--_To Clara_. I. Yes, I promised to write, but how shall I write to you, darling? Venice we reached last Monday, wild for canals and for color, Palaces, prisons, lagoons, and gondolas, bravoes, and moonlight, All the mysterious, dreadful, beautiful things in existence. Fred had joined us at Naples, insuff'rably knowing and travelled, Wise in the prices of things and great at tempestuous bargains, Rich in the costly nothing our youthful travellers buy here, At a prodigious outlay of time and money and trouble; Utter confusion of facts, and talking the wildest of pictures,-- Pyramids, battle-fields, bills, and examinations of luggage, Passports, policemen, porters, and how he got through his tobacco,-- Ignorant, handsome, full-bearded, brown, and good-natured as ever: Annie thinks him perfect, and I well enough for a brother. Also, a friend of Fred's came with us from Naples to Venice; And, altogether, I think, we are rather agreeable people, For we've been taking our pleasure at all times in perfect good-humor; Which is an excellent thing that you'll understand when you've travelled, Seen Recreation dead-beat and cross, and learnt what a burden Frescos, for instance, can be, and, in general, what an affliction Life is apt to become among the antiques and old masters. Venice we've thoroughly done, and it's perfectly true of the pictures-- Titians and Tintorettos, and Palmas and Paul Veroneses; Neither are gondolas fictions, but verities, hearse-like and swan-like, Quite as the heart could wish. And one finds, to one's infinite comfort, Venice just as unique as one's fondest visions have made it: Palaces and mosquitoes rise from the water together, And, in the city's streets, the salt-sea is ebbing and flowing Several inches or more. --Ah! let me not wrong thee, O Venice! Fairest, forlornest, and saddest of all the cities, and dearest! Dear, for my heart has won here deep peace from cruel confusion; And in this lucent air, whose night is but tenderer noon-day, Fear is forever dead, and hope has put on the immortal! --There! and you need not laugh. I'm coming to something directly. One thing: I've bought you a chain of the famous fabric of Venice-- Something peculiar and quaint, and of such a delicate texture That you must wear it embroidered upon a riband of velvet, If you would have the effect of its exquisite fineness and beauty. "Isn't it very frail?" I asked of the workman who made it. "Strong enough, if you will, to bind a lover, signora,"-- With an expensive smile. 'Twas bought near the Bridge of Rialto. (Shylock, you know.) In our shopping, Aunt May and Fred do the talking: Fred begins always in French, with the most delicious effront'ry, Only to end in profoundest humiliation and English. Aunt, however, scorns to speak any tongue but Italian: "Quanto per these ones here?" and "What did you say was the prezzo?" "Ah! troppo caro! _Too much!_ No, no! Don't I _tell_ you it's troppo?" All the while insists that the gondolieri shall show us What she calls Titian's palazzo, and pines for the house of Othello. Annie, the dear little goose, believes in Fred and her mother With an enchanting abandon. She doesn't at all understand them, But she has some twilight views of their cleverness. Father is quiet, Now and then ventures some French when he fancies that nobody hears him, In an aside to the valet-de-place--I never detect him-- Buys things for mother and me with a quite supernatural sweetness, Tolerates all Fred's airs, and is indispensably pleasant. II. Prattling on of these things, which I think cannot interest deeply, So I hold back in my heart its dear and wonderful secret (Which I must tell you at last, however I falter to tell you), Fain to keep it all my own for a little while longer,-- Doubting but it shall lose some part of its strangeness and sweetness, Shared with another, and fearful that even _you_ may not find it Just the marvel that I do--and thus turn our friendship to hatred. Sometimes it seems to me that this love, which I feel is eternal, Must have begun with my life, and that only an absence was ended When we met and knew in our souls that we loved one another. For from the first was no doubt. The earliest hints of the passion, Whispered to girlhood's tremulous dream, may be mixed with misgiving, But, when the very love comes, it bears no vagueness of meaning; Touched by its truth (too fine to be felt by the ignorant senses, Knowing but looks and utterance) soul unto soul makes confession, Silence to silence speaks. And I think that this subtile assurance, Yet unconfirmed from without, is even sweeter and dearer Than the perfected bliss that comes when the words have been spoken. --Not that I'd have them unsaid, now! But 't was delicious to ponder All the miracle over, and clasp it, and keep it, and hide it,-- While I beheld him, you know, with looks of indifferent languor, Talking of other things, and felt the divine contradiction Trouble my heart below! And yet, if no doubt touched our passion, Do not believe for that, our love has been wholly unclouded. All best things are ours when pain and patience have won them: Peace itself would mean nothing but for the strife that preceded; Triumph of love is greatest, when peril of love has been sorest. (That's to say, I dare say. I'm only repeating what _he_ said.) Well, then, of all wretched things in the world, a mystery, Clara, Lurked in this life dear to mine, and hopelessly held us asunder When we drew nearest together, and all but his speech said, "I love you." Fred had known him at college, and then had found him at Naples, After several years,--and called him a capital fellow. Thus far his knowledge went, and beyond this began to run shallow Over troubled ways, and to break into brilliant conjecture, Harder by far to endure than the other's reticent absence-- Absence wherein at times he seemed to walk like one troubled By an uneasy dream, whose spell is not broken with waking, But it returns all day with a vivid and sudden recurrence, Like a remembered event. Of the past that was closest the present, This we knew from himself: He went at the earliest summons, When the Rebellion began, and falling, terribly wounded, Into the enemy's hands, after ages of sickness and prison, Made his escape at last; and, returning, found all his virtues Grown out of recognition and shining in posthumous splendor,-- Found all changed and estranged, and, he fancied, more wonder than welcome. So, somewhat heavy of heart, and disabled for war, he had wandered Hither to Europe for perfecter peace. Abruptly his silence, Full of suggestion and sadness, made here a chasm between us; But we spanned the chasm with conversational bridges, Else talked all around it, and feigned an ignorance of it, With that absurd pretence which is always so painful, or comic, Just as you happen to make it or see it. In spite of our fictions, Severed from his by that silence, my heart grew ever more anxious, Till last night when together we sat in Piazza San Marco (Then, when the morrow must bring us parting--forever, it might be), Taking our ices al fresco. Some strolling minstrels were singing Airs from the Trovatore. I noted with painful observance, With the unwilling minuteness at such times absolute torture, All that brilliant scene, for which I cared nothing, before me: Dark-eyed Venetian leoni regarding the forestieri With those compassionate looks of gentle and curious wonder Home-keeping Italy's nations bend on the voyaging races,-- Taciturn, indolent, sad, as their beautiful city itself is; Groups of remotest English--not just the traditional English (Lavish Milor is no more, and your travelling Briton is frugal)-- English, though, after all, with the Channel always between them, Islanded in themselves, and the Continent's sociable races; Country-people of ours--the New World's confident children, Proud of America always, and even vain of the Troubles As of disaster laid out on a scale unequalled in Europe; Polyglot Russians that spoke all languages better than natives; White-coated Austrian officers, anglicized Austrian dandies; Gorgeous Levantine figures of Greek, and Turk, and Albanian-- These, and the throngs that moved through the long arcades and Piazza, Shone on by numberless lamps that flamed round the perfect Piazza, Jewel-like set in the splendid frame of this beautiful picture, Full of such motley life, and so altogether Venetian. Then we rose and walked where the lamps were blanched by the moonlight Flooding the Piazzetta with splendor, and throwing in shadow All the façade of Saint Mark's, with its pillars, and horses, and arches; But the sculptured frondage, that blossoms over the arches Into the forms of saints, was touched with tenderest lucence, And the angel that stands on the crest of the vast campanile Bathed his golden vans in the liquid light of the moonbeams. Black rose the granite pillars that lift the Saint and the Lion; Black sank the island campanili from distance to distance; Over the charmèd scene there brooded a presence of music, Subtler than sound, and felt, unheard, in the depth of the spirit. How can I gather and show you the airy threads of enchantment Woven that night round my life and forever wrought into my being, As in our boat we glided away from the glittering city? Dull at heart I felt, and I looked at the lights in the water, Blurring their brilliance with tears, while the tresses of eddying seaweed, Whirled in the ebbing tide, like the tresses of sea-maidens drifting Seaward from palace-haunts, in the moonshine glistened and darkened. Sad and vague were my thoughts, and full of fear was the silence; And, when he turned to speak at last, I trembled to hear him, Feeling he now must speak of his love, and his life and its secret,-- Now that the narrowing chances had left but that cruel conclusion, Else the life-long ache of a love and a trouble unuttered. Better, my feebleness pleaded, the dreariest doubt that had vexed me, Than my life left nothing, not even a doubt to console it; But, while I trembled and listened, his broken words crumbled to silence, And, as though some touch of fate had thrilled him with warning, Suddenly from me he turned. Our gondola slipped from the shadow Under a ship lying near, and glided into the moonlight, Where, in its brightest lustre, another gondola rested. _I_ saw two lovers there, and he, in the face of the woman, Saw what has made him mine, my own belovèd, forever! Mine!--but through _what_ tribulation, and awful confusion of spirit! Tears that I think of with smiles, and sighs I remember with laughter, Agonies full of absurdity, keen, ridiculous anguish, Ending in depths of blissful shame, and heavenly transports! III. White, and estranged as a man who has looked on a spectre, he mutely Sank to the place at my side, nor while we returned to the city Uttered a word of explaining, or comment, or comfort, but only, With his good-night, incoherently craved my forgiveness and patience, Parted, and left me to spend the night in hysterical vigils, Tending to Annie's supreme dismay, and postponing our journey One day longer at least; for I went to bed in the morning, Firmly rejecting the pity of friends, and the pleasures of travel, Fixed in a dreadful purpose never to get any better. Later, however, I rallied, when Fred, with a maddening prologue Touching the cause of my sickness, including his fever at Jaffa, Told me that some one was waiting; and could he see me a moment? See me? Certainly not. Or,--yes. But why did he want to? So, in the dishabille of a morning-gown and an arm-chair, Languid, with eloquent wanness of eye and of cheek, I received him-- Willing to touch and reproach, and half-melted myself by my pathos, Which, with a reprobate joy, I wholly forgot the next instant, When, with electric words, few, swift, and vivid, he brought me, Through a brief tempest of tears, to this heaven of sunshine and sweetness. Yes, he had looked on a ghost--the phantom of love that was perished!-- When, last night, he beheld the scene of which I have told you. For to the woman he saw there, his troth had been solemnly plighted Ere he went to the war. His return from the dead found her absent In the belief of his death; and hither to Europe he followed,-- Followed to seek her, and keep, if she would, the promise between them, Or, were a haunting doubt confirmed, to break it and free her. Then, at Naples we met, and the love that, before he was conscious, Turned his life toward mine, laid torturing stress to the purpose Whither it drove him forever, and whence forever it swerved him. How could he tell me his love, with this terrible burden upon him? How could he linger near me, and still withhold the avowal? And what ruin were that, if the other were doubted unjustly, And should prove fatally true! With shame, he confessed he had faltered, Clinging to guilty delays, and to hopes that were bitter with treason, Up to the eve of our parting. And then the last anguish was spared him. _Her_ love for him was dead. But the heart that leaped in his bosom With a great, dumb throb of joy and wonder and doubting, Still must yield to the spell of his silencing will till that phantom Proved an actual ghost by common-place tests of the daylight, Such as speech with the lady's father. And now, could I pardon-- Nay, did I think I could love him? I sobbingly answered, I thought so. And we are all of us going to Lago di Como to-morrow, With an ulterior view at the first convenient Legation. Patientest darling, good-by! Poor Fred, whose sense of what's proper Never was touched till now, is shocked at my glad self-betrayals, And I am pointed out as an awful example to Annie, Figuring all she must never be. But, oh, if _he_ loves me!-- POSTSCRIPT. Since, he has shown me a letter in which he absolves and forgives her (Philip, of course, not Fred; and the _other_, of course, and not Annie). Don't you think him generous, noble, unselfish, heroic? L'ENVOY.--_Clara's Comment_. Well, I'm glad, I am sure, if Fanny supposes she's happy. I've no doubt her lover is good and noble--as men go. But, as regards his release of a woman who'd wholly forgot him, And whom he loved no longer, for one whom he loves, and who loves him, _I_ don't exactly see where the _heroism_ commences. THE SONG THE ORIOLE SINGS. There is a bird that comes and sings In the Professor's garden-trees; Upon the English oak he swings, And tilts and tosses in the breeze. I know his name, I know his note, That so with rapture takes my soul; Like flame the gold beneath his throat, His glossy cope is black as coal. O oriole, it is the song You sang me from the cottonwood, Too young to feel that I was young, Too glad to guess if life were good. And while I hark, before my door, Adown the dusty Concord Road, The blue Miami flows once more As by the cottonwood it flowed. And on the bank that rises steep, And pours a thousand tiny rills, From death and absence laugh and leap My school-mates to their flutter-mills. The blackbirds jangle in the tops Of hoary-antlered sycamores; The timorous killdee starts and stops Among the drift-wood on the shores. Below, the bridge--a noonday fear Of dust and shadow shot with sun-- Stretches its gloom from pier to pier, Far unto alien coasts unknown. And on those alien coasts, above, Where silver ripples break the stream's Long blue, from some roof-sheltering grove A hidden parrot scolds and screams. Ah, nothing, nothing! Commonest things: A touch, a glimpse, a sound, a breath-- It is a song the oriole sings-- And all the rest belongs to death. But oriole, my oriole, Were some bright seraph sent from bliss With songs of heaven to win my soul From simple memories such as this, What could he tell to tempt my ear From you? What high thing could there be, So tenderly and sweetly dear As my lost boyhood is to me? PORDENONE. I. Hard by the Church of Saint Stephen, in sole and beautiful Venice, Under the colonnade of the Augustinian Convent, Every day, as I passed, I paused to look at the frescos Painted upon the ancient walls of the court of the Convent By a great master of old, who wore his sword and his dagger While he wrought the figures of patriarchs, martyrs, and virgins Into the sacred and famous scenes of Scriptural story. II. Long ago the monks from their snug self-devotion were driven, Wistful and fat and slow: looking backward, I fancied them going Out through the sculptured doorway, and down the Ponte de'Frati, Cowled and sandalled and beaded, a plump and pensive procession; And in my day their cells were barracks for Austrian soldiers, Who in their turn have followed the Augustinian Friars. As to the frescos, little remained of work once so perfect. Summer and winter weather of some three cycles had wasted; Plaster had fallen, and left unsightly blotches of ruin; Wanton and stupid neglect had done its worst to the pictures: Yet to the sympathetic and reverent eye was apparent-- Where the careless glance but found, in expanses of plaster, Touches of incoherent color and lines interrupted-- Somewhat still of the life of surpassing splendor and glory Filling the frescos once; and here and there was a figure, Standing apart, and out from the common decay and confusion, Flushed with immortal youth and ineffaceable beauty, Such as that figure of Eve in pathetic expulsion from Eden, Taking--the tourist remembers--the wrath of Heaven al fresco, As is her well-known custom in thousands of acres of canvas. III. I could make out the much-bepainted Biblical subjects, When I had patience enough: The Temptation, of course, and Expulsion; Cain killing Abel, his Brother--the merest fragment of murder; Noah's Debauch--the trunk of the sea-faring patriarch naked, And the garment, borne backward to cover it, fearfully tattered; Abraham offering Isaac--no visible Isaac, and only Abraham's lifted knife held back by the hovering angel; Martyrdom of Saint Stephen--a part of the figure of Stephen; And the Conversion of Paul--the greaves on the leg of a soldier Held across the back of a prostrate horse by the stirrup; But when I looked at the face of that tearful and beauteous figure,-- Eve in the fresco there, and, in Venice of old, Violante, As I must fain believe (the lovely daughter of Palma, Who was her father's Saint Barbara, and was the Bella of Titian),-- Such a meaning and life shone forth from its animate presence As could restore those vague and ineffectual pictures, With their pristine colors, and fill them with light and with movement. Nay, sometimes it could blind me to all the present about me, Till I beheld no more the sausage-legged Austrian soldiers, Where they stood on guard beside one door of the Convent, Nor the sentinel beggars that watched the approach to the other; Neither the bigolanti, the broad-backed Friulan maidens, Drawing the water with clatter and splashing, and laughter and gossip, Out of the carven well in the midst of the court of the Convent-- No, not even the one with the mole on her cheek and the sidelong Look, as she ambled forth with her buckets of bronze at her shoulder, Swinging upon the yoke to and fro, a-drip and a-glimmer. All in an instant was changed, and once more the cloister was peopled By the serene monks of old, and against walls of the cloisters, High on his scaffolding raised, Pordenone[5] wrought at his frescos. Armed with dagger and sword, as the legend tells, against Titian, Who was his rival in art and in love. IV. It seemed to be summer, In the forenoon of the day; and the master's diligent pencil Laid its last light touches on Eve driven forth out of Eden, Otherwise Violante, and while his pupils about him Wrought and chattered, in silence ran the thought of the painter: "She, and forever she! Is it come to be my perdition? Shall I, then, never more make the face of a beautiful woman But it must take her divine, accursèd beauty upon it, And, when I finish my work, stand forth her visible presence? Ah! I could take this sword and strike it into her bosom! Though I believe my own heart's blood would stream from the painting, So much I love her! Yes, that look is marvellous like you, Wandering, tender--such as I'd give my salvation to win you Once to bend upon me! But I knew myself better than make you, Lest I should play the fool about you here before people, Helpless to turn away from your violet eyes, Violante, That have turned all my life to a vision of madness." The painter Here unto speech betraying the thoughts he had silently pondered, "Visions, visions, my son?" said a gray old friar who listened, Seated there in the sun, with his eye on the work of the painter Fishily fixed, while the master blasphemed behind his mustaches. "Much have I envied your Art, who vouchsafeth to those who adore her Visions of heavenly splendor denied to fastings and vigils. I have spent days and nights of faint and painful devotion, Scourged myself almost to death, without one glimpse of the glory Which your touch has revealed in the face of that heavenly maiden. Pleasure me to repeat what it was you were saying of visions: Fain would I know how they come to you, though _I_ never see them, And in my thickness of hearing I fear some words have escaped me." Then, while the painter glared on the lifted face of the friar, Baleful, breathless, bewildered, fiercer than noon in the dog-days, Round the circle of pupils there ran a tittering murmur; From the lips to the ears of those nameless Beppis and Gigis Buzzed the stinging whisper: "Let's hear Pordenone's confession." Well they knew the master's luckless love, and whose portrait He had unconsciously painted there, and guessed that his visions Scarcely were those conceived by the friar, who constantly blundered Round the painter at work, mistaking every subject-- Noah's drunken Debauch for the Stoning of Stephen the Martyr, And the Conversion of Paul for the Flight into Egypt; forever Putting his hand to his ear and shouting, "Speak louder, I pray you!" So they waited now, in silent, amused expectation, Till Pordenone's angry scorn should gather to bursting. Long the painter gazed in furious silence, then slowly Uttered a kind of moan, and turned again to his labor. Tears gathered into his eyes, of mortification and pathos, And when the dull old monk, who forgot, while he waited the answer, Visions and painter, and all, had maundered away in his error, Pordenone half envied the imbecile peace of his bosom; "For in my own," he mused, "is such a combat of devils, That I believe torpid age or stupid youth would be better Than this manhood of mine that has climbed aloft to discover Heights which I never can reach, and bright on the pinnacle standing In the unfading light, my rival crowned victor above me. If I could hint what I feel, what forever escapes from my pencil, All after-time should know my will was not less than my failure, Nor should any one dare remember me merely in pity. All should read my sorrows and do my discomfiture homage, Saying: 'Not meanly at any time this painter meant or endeavored; His was the anguish of one who falls short of the highest achievement, Conscious of doing his utmost, and knowing how vast his defeat is. Life, if he would, might have had some second guerdon to give him, But he would only the first; and behold! Let us honor Grief such as his must have been; no other sorrow can match it! There are certainly some things here that are nobly imagined: Look! here is masterly power in this play of light, and these shadows Boldly are massed; and what color! One can well understand Buonarotti Saying the sight of his Curtius was worth the whole journey from Florence. Here is a man at least never less than his work; you can feel it As you can feel in Titian's the painter's inferior spirit. He and this Pordenone, you know, were rivals; and Titian Knew how to paint to the popular humor, and spared not Foul means or fair (his way with rivals) to crush Pordenone, Who with an equal chance'-- "Alas, if the whole world should tell me I was his equal in art, and the lie could save me from torment, So must I be lost, for my soul could never believe it! Nay, let my envy snarl as fierce as it will at his glory, Still, when I look on his work, my soul makes obeisance within me, Humbling itself before the touch that shall never be equalled." He who sleeps in continual noise is wakened by silence, And Pordenone was roused from these thoughts anon by the sudden Hush that had fallen upon the garrulous group of his pupils; And ere he turned half-way with instinctive looks of inquiry, He was already warned, with a shock at the heart, of a presence Long attended, not feared; and he laid one hand on his sword-hilt, Seizing the sheath with the other hand, that the pallet had dropped from. Then he fronted Titian, who stood with his arms lightly folded, And with a curious smile, half of sarcasm, half of compassion, Bent on th' embattled painter, cried: "Your slave, Messere Antonio! What good friend has played this bitter jest with your humor? As I beheld you just now full-armed with your pencil and palette, I was half awed by your might; but these sorry trappings of bravo Make me believe you less fit to be the rival of Titian, Here in the peaceful calm of our well-ordered city of Venice, Than to take service under some Spanish lordling at Naples, Needy in blades for work that can not wait for the poison." Pordenone flushed with anger and shame to be taken At an unguarded point; but he answered with scornful defiance: "Oh, you are come, I see, with the favorite weapon of Titian, And you would make a battle of words. If you care for my counsel, Listen to me: I say you are skilfuller far in my absence, And your tongue can inflict a keener and deadlier mischief When it is dipped in poisonous lies, and wielded in secret." "Nay, then," Titian responded, "methinks that our friend Aretino[6] Makes a much better effect than either of us in that tongue-play. But since Messer Robusti has measured our wit for his portrait, Even _he_ has grown shyer of using his tongue than he once was. Have you not heard the tale? Tintoretto was told Aretino Meant to make him the subject of one of his merry effusions; And with his naked dirk he went carefully over his person, Promising, if the poet made free with him in his verses, He would immortalize my satirical friend with that pencil. Doubtless the tale is not true. Aretino says nothing about it; Always speaks, in fact, with the highest respect of Robusti. True or not, 'tis well found." Then looking around on the frescos: "Good, very good indeed! Your breadth and richness and softness No man living surpasses; those heads are truly majestic. Yes, Buonarotti was right, when he said that to look at your Curtius Richly repaid him the trouble and cost of a journey from Florence. Surely the world shall know you the first of painters in fresco! Well? You will not strike me unarmed? This was hardly expected By the good people that taught you to think our rivalry blood-red. Let us be friends, Pordenone!" "Be patron and patronized, rather; Nay, if you spoke your whole mind out, be assassin and victim. Could the life beat again in the broken heart of Giorgione, He might tell us, I think, something pleasant of friendship with Titian." Suddenly over the shoulder of Titian peered an ironical visage, Smiling, malignly intent--the leer of the scurrilous poet: "You know--all the world knows--who dug the grave of Giorgione.[7] Titian and he were no friends--our Lady of Sorrows forgive 'em! But for all hurt that Titian did him he might have been living, Greater than any living, and lord of renown and such glory As would have left you both dull as yon withered moon in the sunshine." Loud laughed the listening group at the insolent gibe of the poet, Stirring the gall to its depths in the bitter soul of their master, Who with his tremulous fingers tapped the hilt of his poniard, Answering naught as yet. Anon the glance of the ribald, Carelessly ranging from Pordenone's face to the picture, Dwelt with an absent light on its marvellous beauty, and kindled Into a slow recognition, with "Ha! Violante!" Then, erring Wilfully as to the subject, he cackled his filthy derision: "What have we here! More Magdalens yet of the painter's acquaintance? Ah--!" The words had scarce left his lips, when the painter Rushed upon him, and clutching his throat, thrust him backward and held him Over the scaffolding's edge in air, and straightway had flung him Crashing down on the pave of the cloister below, but for Titian, Who around painter and poet alike wound his strong arms and stayed them Solely, until the bewildered pupils could come to the rescue. Then, as the foes relaxed that embrace of frenzy and murder-- White, one with rage and the other with terror, and either with hatred-- Grimly the great master smiled: "You were much nearer paradise, Piero, Than you have been for some time. Be ruled now by me and get homeward Fast as you may, and be thankful." And then, as the poet, Looking neither to right nor to left, amid the smiles of the pupils Tottered along the platform, and trembling descended the ladder Down to the cloister pave, and, still without upward or backward Glance, disappeared beneath the outer door of the Convent, Titian turned again to the painter: "Farewell, Pordenone! Learn more fairly to know me. I envy you not; and no rival Now, or at any time, have I held you, or ever shall hold you. Prosper and triumph still, for all me: you shall but do me honor, Seeing that I too serve the art that your triumphs illustrate. I for my part find life too short for work and for pleasure; If it should touch a century's bound, I should think it too precious Even to spare a moment for rage at another's good fortune. Do not be fooled by the purblind flatterers who would persuade you Either of us shall have greater fame through the fall of the other. We can thrive only in common. The tardily blossoming cycles, Flowering at last in this glorious age of our art, had not waited, Folded calyxes still, for Pordenone or Titian. Think you if we had not been, our pictures had never been painted? Others had done them, or better, the same. We are only Pencils God paints with. And think you that He had wanted for pencils But for our being at hand? And yet--for some virtue creative Dwells and divinely exists in the being of every creature, So that the thing done through him is dear as if he had done it-- If I should see your power, a tint of this great efflorescence, Fading, methinks I should feel myself beginning to wither. They have abused your hate who told you that Titian was jealous. Once, in my youth that is passed, I too had my hates and my envies. 'Sdeath! how it used to gall me--that power and depth of Giorgione! I could have turned my knife in his heart when I looked at his portraits. Ah! we learn somewhat still as the years go. Now, when I see you Doing this good work here, I am glad in my soul of its beauty. Art is not ours, O friend! but if we are not hers, we are nothing. Look at the face you painted last year--or yesterday, even: Far, so far, it seems from you, so utterly, finally, parted, Nothing is stranger to you than this child of your soul; and you wonder-- 'Did I indeed then do it?' No thrill of the rapture of doing Stirs in your breast at the sight. Nay, then, not even the beauty Which we had seemed to create is our own: the frame universal Is as much ours. And shall I hate you because you are doing That which when done you cannot feel yours more than I mine can feel it? It shall belong hereafter to all who perceive and enjoy it, Rather than him who made it; he, least of all, shall enjoy it. They of the Church conjure us to look on death and be humble; I say, look upon life and keep your pride if you can, then: See how to-day's achievement is only to-morrow's confusion; See how possession always cheapens the thing that was precious To our endeavor; how losses and gains are equally losses; How in ourselves we are nothing, and how we are anything only As indifferent parts of the whole, that still, on our ceasing, Whole remains as before, no less without us than with us. Were it not for the delight of doing, the wonderful instant Ere the thing done is done and dead, life scarce were worth living. Ah, but that makes life divine! We are gods, for that instant immortal, Mortal for evermore, with a few days' rumor--or ages'-- What does it matter? We, too, have our share of eating and drinking, Love, and the liking of friends--mankind's common portion and pleasure. Come, Pordenone, with me; I would fain have you see my Assumption While it is still unfinished, and stay with me for the evening: You shall send home for your lute, and I'll ask Sansovino to supper.[8] After what happened just now I scarcely could ask Aretino; Though, for the matter of that, the dog is not one to bear malice. Will you not come?" V. I listen with Titian, and wait for the answer. But, whatever the answer that comes to Titian, I hear none. Nay, while I linger, all those presences fade into nothing, In the dead air of the past; and the old Augustinian Convent Lapses to picturesque profanation again as a barrack; Lapses and changes once more, and this time vanishes wholly, Leaving me at the end with the broken, shadowy legend, Broken and shadowy still, as in the beginning. I linger, Teased with its vague unfathomed suggestion, and wonder, As at first I wondered, what happened about Violante, And am but ill content with those metaphysical phrases Touching the strictly impersonal nature of personal effort, Wherewithal Titian had fain avoided the matter at issue. FOOTNOTES: [5] Giovanni Antonio Licinio, called _Pordenone_ from his birth-place in the Friuli, was a contemporary of Titian's, whom he equalled in many qualities, and was one of the most eminent Venetian painters in fresco. [6] Pietro Aretino, the satirical poet, was a friend of Titian, whose house he frequented. The story of Tintoretto's measuring him for a portrait with his dagger is well known. [7] Giorgione (Giorgio Barbarelli) was Titian's fellow-pupil and rival in the school of Bellini. He died at thirty-four, after a life of great triumphs and excesses. [8] Sansovino, the architect, was a familiar guest at Titian's table, in his house near the Fondamenta Nuove. THE LONG DAYS. Yes! they are here again, the long, long days, After the days of winter, pinched and white; Soon, with a thousand minstrels comes the light, Late, the sweet robin-haunted dusk delays. But the long days that bring us back the flowers, The sunshine, and the quiet-dripping rain, And all the things we knew of spring again, The long days bring not the long-lost long hours. The hours that now seem to have been each one A summer in itself, a whole life's bound, Filled full of deathless joy--where in his round, Have these forever faded from the sun? The fret, the fever, the unrest endures, But the time flies.... Oh, try, my little lad, Coming so hot and play-worn, to be glad And patient of the long hours that are yours! * * * * * Transcriber Notes Archaic and variable spelling and hypenation preserved, including words like chorussing and chipmonk. Author's punctuation style is preserved, including some inconsistent quotes in "Pordenone". Passages in italics indicated by _underscores_. 
3021	----	A BOY'S WILL By Robert Frost CONTENTS Part I Into My Own The youth is persuaded that he will be rather more than less himself for having forsworn the world. Ghost House He is happy in society of his choosing. My November Guest He is in love with being misunderstood. Love and a Question He is in doubt whether to admit real trouble to a place beside the hearth with love. A Late Walk He courts the autumnal mood. Stars There is no oversight of human affairs. Storm Fear He is afraid of his own isolation. Wind and Window Flower Out of the winter things he fashions a story of modern love. To the Thawing Wind (audio) He calls on change through the violence of the elements. A Prayer in Spring He discovers that the greatness of love lies not in forward-looking thoughts; Flower-gathering nor yet in any spur it may be to ambition. Rose Pogonias He is no dissenter from the ritualism of nature; Asking for Roses nor from the ritualism of youth which is make-believe. Waiting--Afield at Dusk He arrives at the turn of the year. In a Vale Out of old longings he fashions a story. A Dream Pang He is shown by a dream how really well it is with him. In Neglect He is scornful of folk his scorn cannot reach. The Vantage Point And again scornful, but there is no one hurt. Mowing He takes up life simply with the small tasks. Going for Water Part II Revelation He resolves to become intelligible, at least to himself, since there is no help else; The Trial by Existence and to know definitely what he thinks about the soul; In Equal Sacrifice about love; The Tuft of Flowers about fellowship; Spoils of the Dead about death; Pan with Us about art (his own); The Demiurge's Laugh about science. Part III Now Close the Windows It is time to make an end of speaking. A Line-storm Song It is the autumnal mood with a difference. October He sees days slipping from him that were the best for what they were. My Butterfly There are things that can never be the same. Reluctance Into My Own ONE of my wishes is that those dark trees, So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze, Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom, But stretched away unto the edge of doom. I should not be withheld but that some day Into their vastness I should steal away, Fearless of ever finding open land, Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand. I do not see why I should e'er turn back, Or those should not set forth upon my track To overtake me, who should miss me here And long to know if still I held them dear. They would not find me changed from him they knew-- Only more sure of all I thought was true. Ghost House I DWELL in a lonely house I know That vanished many a summer ago, And left no trace but the cellar walls, And a cellar in which the daylight falls, And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow. O'er ruined fences the grape-vines shield The woods come back to the mowing field; The orchard tree has grown one copse Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops; The footpath down to the well is healed. I dwell with a strangely aching heart In that vanished abode there far apart On that disused and forgotten road That has no dust-bath now for the toad. Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart; The whippoorwill is coming to shout And hush and cluck and flutter about: I hear him begin far enough away Full many a time to say his say Before he arrives to say it out. It is under the small, dim, summer star. I know not who these mute folk are Who share the unlit place with me-- Those stones out under the low-limbed tree Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar. They are tireless folk, but slow and sad, Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,-- With none among them that ever sings, And yet, in view of how many things, As sweet companions as might be had. My November Guest MY Sorrow, when she's here with me, Thinks these dark days of autumn rain Are beautiful as days can be; She loves the bare, the withered tree; She walks the sodden pasture lane. Her pleasure will not let me stay. She talks and I am fain to list: She's glad the birds are gone away, She's glad her simple worsted gray Is silver now with clinging mist. The desolate, deserted trees, The faded earth, the heavy sky, The beauties she so truly sees, She thinks I have no eye for these, And vexes me for reason why. Not yesterday I learned to know The love of bare November days Before the coming of the snow, But it were vain to tell her so, And they are better for her praise. Love and a Question A STRANGER came to the door at eve, And he spoke the bridegroom fair. He bore a green-white stick in his hand, And, for all burden, care. He asked with the eyes more than the lips For a shelter for the night, And he turned and looked at the road afar Without a window light. The bridegroom came forth into the porch With, 'Let us look at the sky, And question what of the night to be, Stranger, you and I.' The woodbine leaves littered the yard, The woodbine berries were blue, Autumn, yes, winter was in the wind; 'Stranger, I wish I knew.' Within, the bride in the dusk alone Bent over the open fire, Her face rose-red with the glowing coal And the thought of the heart's desire. The bridegroom looked at the weary road, Yet saw but her within, And wished her heart in a case of gold And pinned with a silver pin. The bridegroom thought it little to give A dole of bread, a purse, A heartfelt prayer for the poor of God, Or for the rich a curse; But whether or not a man was asked To mar the love of two By harboring woe in the bridal house, The bridegroom wished he knew. A Late Walk WHEN I go up through the mowing field, The headless aftermath, Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew, Half closes the garden path. And when I come to the garden ground, The whir of sober birds Up from the tangle of withered weeds Is sadder than any words. A tree beside the wall stands bare, But a leaf that lingered brown, Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought, Comes softly rattling down. I end not far from my going forth By picking the faded blue Of the last remaining aster flower To carry again to you. Stars HOW countlessly they congregate O'er our tumultuous snow, Which flows in shapes as tall as trees When wintry winds do blow!-- As if with keenness for our fate, Our faltering few steps on To white rest, and a place of rest Invisible at dawn,-- And yet with neither love nor hate, Those stars like some snow-white Minerva's snow-white marble eyes Without the gift of sight. Storm Fear WHEN the wind works against us in the dark, And pelts with snow The lowest chamber window on the east, And whispers with a sort of stifled bark, The beast, 'Come out! Come out!'-- It costs no inward struggle not to go, Ah, no! I count our strength, Two and a child, Those of us not asleep subdued to mark How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length,-- How drifts are piled, Dooryard and road ungraded, Till even the comforting barn grows far away And my heart owns a doubt Whether 'tis in us to arise with day And save ourselves unaided. Wind and Window Flower LOVERS, forget your love, And list to the love of these, She a window flower, And he a winter breeze. When the frosty window veil Was melted down at noon, And the cagèd yellow bird Hung over her in tune, He marked her through the pane, He could not help but mark, And only passed her by, To come again at dark. He was a winter wind, Concerned with ice and snow, Dead weeds and unmated birds, And little of love could know. But he sighed upon the sill, He gave the sash a shake, As witness all within Who lay that night awake. Perchance he half prevailed To win her for the flight From the firelit looking-glass And warm stove-window light. But the flower leaned aside And thought of naught to say, And morning found the breeze A hundred miles away. To the Thawing Wind (audio) COME with rain, O loud Southwester! Bring the singer, bring the nester; Give the buried flower a dream; Make the settled snow-bank steam; Find the brown beneath the white; But whate'er you do to-night, Bathe my window, make it flow, Melt it as the ices go; Melt the glass and leave the sticks Like a hermit's crucifix; Burst into my narrow stall; Swing the picture on the wall; Run the rattling pages o'er; Scatter poems on the floor; Turn the poet out of door. A Prayer in Spring OH, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day; And give us not to think so far away As the uncertain harvest; keep us here All simply in the springing of the year. Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white, Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night; And make us happy in the happy bees, The swarm dilating round the perfect trees. And make us happy in the darting bird That suddenly above the bees is heard, The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill, And off a blossom in mid air stands still. For this is love and nothing else is love, The which it is reserved for God above To sanctify to what far ends He will, But which it only needs that we fulfil. Flower-gathering I LEFT you in the morning, And in the morning glow, You walked a way beside me To make me sad to go. Do you know me in the gloaming, Gaunt and dusty grey with roaming? Are you dumb because you know me not, Or dumb because you know? All for me? And not a question For the faded flowers gay That could take me from beside you For the ages of a day? They are yours, and be the measure Of their worth for you to treasure, The measure of the little while That I've been long away. Rose Pogonias A SATURATED meadow, Sun-shaped and jewel-small, A circle scarcely wider Than the trees around were tall; Where winds were quite excluded, And the air was stifling sweet With the breath of many flowers,-- A temple of the heat. There we bowed us in the burning, As the sun's right worship is, To pick where none could miss them A thousand orchises; For though the grass was scattered, Yet every second spear Seemed tipped with wings of color, That tinged the atmosphere. We raised a simple prayer Before we left the spot, That in the general mowing That place might be forgot; Or if not all so favoured, Obtain such grace of hours, That none should mow the grass there While so confused with flowers. Asking for Roses A HOUSE that lacks, seemingly, mistress and master, With doors that none but the wind ever closes, Its floor all littered with glass and with plaster; It stands in a garden of old-fashioned roses. I pass by that way in the gloaming with Mary; 'I wonder,' I say, 'who the owner of those is. 'Oh, no one you know,' she answers me airy, 'But one we must ask if we want any roses.' So we must join hands in the dew coming coldly There in the hush of the wood that reposes, And turn and go up to the open door boldly, And knock to the echoes as beggars for roses. 'Pray, are you within there, Mistress Who-were-you?' 'Tis Mary that speaks and our errand discloses. 'Pray, are you within there? Bestir you, bestir you! 'Tis summer again; there's two come for roses. 'A word with you, that of the singer recalling-- Old Herrick: a saying that every maid knows is A flower unplucked is but left to the falling, And nothing is gained by not gathering roses.' We do not loosen our hands' intertwining (Not caring so very much what she supposes), There when she comes on us mistily shining And grants us by silence the boon of her roses. Waiting Afield at Dusk WHAT things for dream there are when spectre-like, Moving among tall haycocks lightly piled, I enter alone upon the stubble field, From which the laborers' voices late have died, And in the antiphony of afterglow And rising full moon, sit me down Upon the full moon's side of the first haycock And lose myself amid so many alike. I dream upon the opposing lights of the hour, Preventing shadow until the moon prevail; I dream upon the night-hawks peopling heaven, Each circling each with vague unearthly cry, Or plunging headlong with fierce twang afar; And on the bat's mute antics, who would seem Dimly to have made out my secret place, Only to lose it when he pirouettes, And seek it endlessly with purblind haste; On the last swallow's sweep; and on the rasp In the abyss of odor and rustle at my back, That, silenced by my advent, finds once more, After an interval, his instrument, And tries once--twice--and thrice if I be there; And on the worn book of old-golden song I brought not here to read, it seems, but hold And freshen in this air of withering sweetness; But on the memory of one absent most, For whom these lines when they shall greet her eye. In a Vale WHEN I was young, we dwelt in a vale By a misty fen that rang all night, And thus it was the maidens pale I knew so well, whose garments trail Across the reeds to a window light. The fen had every kind of bloom, And for every kind there was a face, And a voice that has sounded in my room Across the sill from the outer gloom. Each came singly unto her place, But all came every night with the mist; And often they brought so much to say Of things of moment to which, they wist, One so lonely was fain to list, That the stars were almost faded away Before the last went, heavy with dew, Back to the place from which she came-- Where the bird was before it flew, Where the flower was before it grew, Where bird and flower were one and the same. And thus it is I know so well Why the flower has odor, the bird has song. You have only to ask me, and I can tell. No, not vainly there did I dwell, Nor vainly listen all the night long. A Dream Pang I HAD withdrawn in forest, and my song Was swallowed up in leaves that blew alway; And to the forest edge you came one day (This was my dream) and looked and pondered long, But did not enter, though the wish was strong: You shook your pensive head as who should say, 'I dare not--too far in his footsteps stray-- He must seek me would he undo the wrong. Not far, but near, I stood and saw it all Behind low boughs the trees let down outside; And the sweet pang it cost me not to call And tell you that I saw does still abide. But 'tis not true that thus I dwelt aloof, For the wood wakes, and you are here for proof. In Neglect THEY leave us so to the way we took, As two in whom they were proved mistaken, That we sit sometimes in the wayside nook, With mischievous, vagrant, seraphic look, And try if we cannot feel forsaken. The Vantage Point IF tired of trees I seek again mankind, Well I know where to hie me--in the dawn, To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn. There amid lolling juniper reclined, Myself unseen, I see in white defined Far off the homes of men, and farther still, The graves of men on an opposing hill, Living or dead, whichever are to mind. And if by moon I have too much of these, I have but to turn on my arm, and lo, The sun-burned hillside sets my face aglow, My breathing shakes the bluet like a breeze, I smell the earth, I smell the bruisèd plant, I look into the crater of the ant. Mowing THERE was never a sound beside the wood but one, And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground. What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself; Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun, Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound-- And that was why it whispered and did not speak. It was no dream of the gift of idle hours, Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf: Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows, Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers (Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake. The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows. My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make. Going for Water THE well was dry beside the door, And so we went with pail and can Across the fields behind the house To seek the brook if still it ran; Not loth to have excuse to go, Because the autumn eve was fair (Though chill), because the fields were ours, And by the brook our woods were there. We ran as if to meet the moon That slowly dawned behind the trees, The barren boughs without the leaves, Without the birds, without the breeze. But once within the wood, we paused Like gnomes that hid us from the moon, Ready to run to hiding new With laughter when she found us soon. Each laid on other a staying hand To listen ere we dared to look, And in the hush we joined to make We heard, we knew we heard the brook. A note as from a single place, A slender tinkling fall that made Now drops that floated on the pool Like pearls, and now a silver blade. Revelation WE make ourselves a place apart Behind light words that tease and flout, But oh, the agitated heart Till someone find us really out. 'Tis pity if the case require (Or so we say) that in the end We speak the literal to inspire The understanding of a friend. But so with all, from babes that play At hide-and-seek to God afar, So all who hide too well away Must speak and tell us where they are. The Trial by Existence EVEN the bravest that are slain Shall not dissemble their surprise On waking to find valor reign, Even as on earth, in paradise; And where they sought without the sword Wide fields of asphodel fore'er, To find that the utmost reward Of daring should be still to dare. The light of heaven falls whole and white And is not shattered into dyes, The light for ever is morning light; The hills are verdured pasture-wise; The angel hosts with freshness go, And seek with laughter what to brave;-- And binding all is the hushed snow Of the far-distant breaking wave. And from a cliff-top is proclaimed The gathering of the souls for birth, The trial by existence named, The obscuration upon earth. And the slant spirits trooping by In streams and cross- and counter-streams Can but give ear to that sweet cry For its suggestion of what dreams! And the more loitering are turned To view once more the sacrifice Of those who for some good discerned Will gladly give up paradise. And a white shimmering concourse rolls Toward the throne to witness there The speeding of devoted souls Which God makes his especial care. And none are taken but who will, Having first heard the life read out That opens earthward, good and ill, Beyond the shadow of a doubt; And very beautifully God limns, And tenderly, life's little dream, But naught extenuates or dims, Setting the thing that is supreme. Nor is there wanting in the press Some spirit to stand simply forth, Heroic in its nakedness, Against the uttermost of earth. The tale of earth's unhonored things Sounds nobler there than 'neath the sun; And the mind whirls and the heart sings, And a shout greets the daring one. But always God speaks at the end: 'One thought in agony of strife The bravest would have by for friend, The memory that he chose the life; But the pure fate to which you go Admits no memory of choice, Or the woe were not earthly woe To which you give the assenting voice.' And so the choice must be again, But the last choice is still the same; And the awe passes wonder then, And a hush falls for all acclaim. And God has taken a flower of gold And broken it, and used therefrom The mystic link to bind and hold Spirit to matter till death come. 'Tis of the essence of life here, Though we choose greatly, still to lack The lasting memory at all clear, That life has for us on the wrack Nothing but what we somehow chose; Thus are we wholly stripped of pride In the pain that has but one close, Bearing it crushed and mystified. In Equal Sacrifice THUS of old the Douglas did: He left his land as he was bid With the royal heart of Robert the Bruce In a golden case with a golden lid, To carry the same to the Holy Land; By which we see and understand That that was the place to carry a heart At loyalty and love's command, And that was the case to carry it in. The Douglas had not far to win Before he came to the land of Spain, Where long a holy war had been Against the too-victorious Moor; And there his courage could not endure Not to strike a blow for God Before he made his errand sure. And ever it was intended so, That a man for God should strike a blow, No matter the heart he has in charge For the Holy Land where hearts should go. But when in battle the foe were met, The Douglas found him sore beset, With only strength of the fighting arm For one more battle passage yet-- And that as vain to save the day As bring his body safe away-- Only a signal deed to do And a last sounding word to say. The heart he wore in a golden chain He swung and flung forth into the plain, And followed it crying 'Heart or death!' And fighting over it perished fain. So may another do of right, Give a heart to the hopeless fight, The more of right the more he loves; So may another redouble might For a few swift gleams of the angry brand, Scorning greatly not to demand In equal sacrifice with his The heart he bore to the Holy Land. The Tuft of Flowers I WENT to turn the grass once after one Who mowed it in the dew before the sun. The dew was gone that made his blade so keen Before I came to view the leveled scene. I looked for him behind an isle of trees; I listened for his whetstone on the breeze. But he had gone his way, the grass all mown, And I must be, as he had been,--alone, 'As all must be,' I said within my heart, 'Whether they work together or apart.' But as I said it, swift there passed me by On noiseless wing a 'wildered butterfly, Seeking with memories grown dim o'er night Some resting flower of yesterday's delight. And once I marked his flight go round and round, As where some flower lay withering on the ground. And then he flew as far as eye could see, And then on tremulous wing came back to me. I thought of questions that have no reply, And would have turned to toss the grass to dry; But he turned first, and led my eye to look At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook, A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared. I left my place to know them by their name, Finding them butterfly weed when I came. The mower in the dew had loved them thus, By leaving them to flourish, not for us, Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him. But from sheer morning gladness at the brim. The butterfly and I had lit upon, Nevertheless, a message from the dawn, That made me hear the wakening birds around, And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground, And feel a spirit kindred to my own; So that henceforth I worked no more alone; But glad with him, I worked as with his aid, And weary, sought at noon with him the shade; And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach. 'Men work together,' I told him from the heart, 'Whether they work together or apart.' Spoils of the Dead TWO fairies it was On a still summer day Came forth in the woods With the flowers to play. The flowers they plucked They cast on the ground For others, and those For still others they found. Flower-guided it was That they came as they ran On something that lay In the shape of a man. The snow must have made The feathery bed When this one fell On the sleep of the dead. But the snow was gone A long time ago, And the body he wore Nigh gone with the snow. The fairies drew near And keenly espied A ring on his hand And a chain at his side. They knelt in the leaves And eerily played With the glittering things, And were not afraid. And when they went home To hide in their burrow, They took them along To play with to-morrow. When you came on death, Did you not come flower-guided Like the elves in the wood? I remember that I did. But I recognised death With sorrow and dread, And I hated and hate The spoils of the dead. Pan with Us PAN came out of the woods one day,-- His skin and his hair and his eyes were gray, The gray of the moss of walls were they,-- And stood in the sun and looked his fill At wooded valley and wooded hill. He stood in the zephyr, pipes in hand, On a height of naked pasture land; In all the country he did command He saw no smoke and he saw no roof. That was well! and he stamped a hoof. His heart knew peace, for none came here To this lean feeding save once a year Someone to salt the half-wild steer, Or homespun children with clicking pails Who see no little they tell no tales. He tossed his pipes, too hard to teach A new-world song, far out of reach, For a sylvan sign that the blue jay's screech And the whimper of hawks beside the sun Were music enough for him, for one. Times were changed from what they were: Such pipes kept less of power to stir The fruited bough of the juniper And the fragile bluets clustered there Than the merest aimless breath of air. They were pipes of pagan mirth, And the world had found new terms of worth. He laid him down on the sun-burned earth And ravelled a flower and looked away-- Play? Play?--What should he play? The Demiurge's Laugh IT was far in the sameness of the wood; I was running with joy on the Demon's trail, Though I knew what I hunted was no true god. It was just as the light was beginning to fail That I suddenly heard--all I needed to hear: It has lasted me many and many a year. The sound was behind me instead of before, A sleepy sound, but mocking half, As of one who utterly couldn't care. The Demon arose from his wallow to laugh, Brushing the dirt from his eye as he went; And well I knew what the Demon meant. I shall not forget how his laugh rang out. I felt as a fool to have been so caught, And checked my steps to make pretence It was something among the leaves I sought (Though doubtful whether he stayed to see). Thereafter I sat me against a tree. Now Close the Windows NOW close the windows and hush all the fields; If the trees must, let them silently toss; No bird is singing now, and if there is, Be it my loss. It will be long ere the marshes resume, It will be long ere the earliest bird: So close the windows and not hear the wind, But see all wind-stirred. A Line-storm Song THE line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift, The road is forlorn all day, Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift, And the hoof-prints vanish away. The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee, Expend their bloom in vain. Come over the hills and far with me, And be my love in the rain. The birds have less to say for themselves In the wood-world's torn despair Than now these numberless years the elves, Although they are no less there: All song of the woods is crushed like some Wild, easily shattered rose. Come, be my love in the wet woods; come, Where the boughs rain when it blows. There is the gale to urge behind And bruit our singing down, And the shallow waters aflutter with wind From which to gather your gown. What matter if we go clear to the west, And come not through dry-shod? For wilding brooch shall wet your breast The rain-fresh goldenrod. Oh, never this whelming east wind swells But it seems like the sea's return To the ancient lands where it left the shells Before the age of the fern; And it seems like the time when after doubt Our love came back amain. Oh, come forth into the storm and rout And be my love in the rain. October O HUSHED October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; To-morrow's wind, if it be wild, Should waste them all. The crows above the forest call; To-morrow they may form and go. O hushed October morning mild, Begin the hours of this day slow, Make the day seem to us less brief. Hearts not averse to being beguiled, Beguile us in the way you know; Release one leaf at break of day; At noon release another leaf; One from our trees, one far away; Retard the sun with gentle mist; Enchant the land with amethyst. Slow, slow! For the grapes' sake, if they were all, Whose leaves already are burnt with frost, Whose clustered fruit must else be lost-- For the grapes' sake along the wall. My Butterfly THINE emulous fond flowers are dead, too, And the daft sun-assaulter, he That frighted thee so oft, is fled or dead: Save only me (Nor is it sad to thee!) Save only me There is none left to mourn thee in the fields. The gray grass is not dappled with the snow; Its two banks have not shut upon the river; But it is long ago-- It seems forever-- Since first I saw thee glance, With all the dazzling other ones, In airy dalliance, Precipitate in love, Tossed, tangled, whirled and whirled above, Like a limp rose-wreath in a fairy dance. When that was, the soft mist Of my regret hung not on all the land, And I was glad for thee, And glad for me, I wist. Thou didst not know, who tottered, wandering on high, That fate had made thee for the pleasure of the wind, With those great careless wings, Nor yet did I. And there were other things: It seemed God let thee flutter from his gentle clasp: Then fearful he had let thee win Too far beyond him to be gathered in, Snatched thee, o'er eager, with ungentle grasp. Ah! I remember me How once conspiracy was rife Against my life-- The languor of it and the dreaming fond; Surging, the grasses dizzied me of thought, The breeze three odors brought, And a gem-flower waved in a wand! Then when I was distraught And could not speak, Sidelong, full on my cheek, What should that reckless zephyr fling But the wild touch of thy dye-dusty wing! I found that wing broken to-day! For thou are dead, I said, And the strange birds say. I found it with the withered leaves Under the eaves. Reluctance OUT through the fields and the woods And over the walls I have wended; I have climbed the hills of view And looked at the world, and descended; I have come by the highway home, And lo, it is ended. The leaves are all dead on the ground, Save those that the oak is keeping To ravel them one by one And let them go scraping and creeping Out over the crusted snow, When others are sleeping. And the dead leaves lie huddled and still, No longer blown hither and thither; The last lone aster is gone; The flowers of the witch-hazel wither; The heart is still aching to seek, But the feet question 'Whither?' Ah, when to the heart of man Was it ever less than a treason To go with the drift of things, To yield with a grace to reason, And bow and accept and accept the end Of a love or a season? 
3026	----	NORTH OF BOSTON By Robert Frost TO E. M. F. THIS BOOK OF PEOPLE THE PASTURE I'M going out to clean the pasture spring; I'll only stop to rake the leaves away (And wait to watch the water clear, I may): I sha'n't be gone long.--You come too. I'm going out to fetch the little calf That's standing by the mother. It's so young, It totters when she licks it with her tongue. I sha'n't be gone long.--You come too. CONTENTS Mending Wall The Death of the Hired Man The Mountain A Hundred Collars Home Burial The Black Cottage Blueberries A Servant to Servants After Apple-picking The Code The Generations of Men The Housekeeper The Fear The Self-seeker The Wood-pile Good Hours Mending Wall SOMETHING there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbour know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: "Stay where you are until our backs are turned!" We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of out-door game, One on a side. It comes to little more: There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours." Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: "Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him, But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather He said it for himself. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours." The Death of the Hired Man MARY sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table Waiting for Warren. When she heard his step, She ran on tip-toe down the darkened passage To meet him in the doorway with the news And put him on his guard. "Silas is back." She pushed him outward with her through the door And shut it after her. "Be kind," she said. She took the market things from Warren's arms And set them on the porch, then drew him down To sit beside her on the wooden steps. "When was I ever anything but kind to him? But I'll not have the fellow back," he said. "I told him so last haying, didn't I? 'If he left then,' I said, 'that ended it.' What good is he? Who else will harbour him At his age for the little he can do? What help he is there's no depending on. Off he goes always when I need him most. 'He thinks he ought to earn a little pay, Enough at least to buy tobacco with, So he won't have to beg and be beholden.' 'All right,' I say, 'I can't afford to pay Any fixed wages, though I wish I could.' 'Someone else can.' 'Then someone else will have to.' I shouldn't mind his bettering himself If that was what it was. You can be certain, When he begins like that, there's someone at him Trying to coax him off with pocket-money,-- In haying time, when any help is scarce. In winter he comes back to us. I'm done." "Sh! not so loud: he'll hear you," Mary said. "I want him to: he'll have to soon or late." "He's worn out. He's asleep beside the stove. When I came up from Rowe's I found him here, Huddled against the barn-door fast asleep, A miserable sight, and frightening, too-- You needn't smile--I didn't recognise him-- I wasn't looking for him--and he's changed. Wait till you see." "Where did you say he'd been?" "He didn't say. I dragged him to the house, And gave him tea and tried to make him smoke. I tried to make him talk about his travels. Nothing would do: he just kept nodding off." "What did he say? Did he say anything?" "But little." "Anything? Mary, confess He said he'd come to ditch the meadow for me." "Warren!" "But did he? I just want to know." "Of course he did. What would you have him say? Surely you wouldn't grudge the poor old man Some humble way to save his self-respect. He added, if you really care to know, He meant to clear the upper pasture, too. That sounds like something you have heard before? Warren, I wish you could have heard the way He jumbled everything. I stopped to look Two or three times--he made me feel so queer-- To see if he was talking in his sleep. He ran on Harold Wilson--you remember-- The boy you had in haying four years since. He's finished school, and teaching in his college. Silas declares you'll have to get him back. He says they two will make a team for work: Between them they will lay this farm as smooth! The way he mixed that in with other things. He thinks young Wilson a likely lad, though daft On education--you know how they fought All through July under the blazing sun, Silas up on the cart to build the load, Harold along beside to pitch it on." "Yes, I took care to keep well out of earshot." "Well, those days trouble Silas like a dream. You wouldn't think they would. How some things linger! Harold's young college boy's assurance piqued him. After so many years he still keeps finding Good arguments he sees he might have used. I sympathise. I know just how it feels To think of the right thing to say too late. Harold's associated in his mind with Latin. He asked me what I thought of Harold's saying He studied Latin like the violin Because he liked it--that an argument! He said he couldn't make the boy believe He could find water with a hazel prong-- Which showed how much good school had ever done him. He wanted to go over that. But most of all He thinks if he could have another chance To teach him how to build a load of hay----" "I know, that's Silas' one accomplishment. He bundles every forkful in its place, And tags and numbers it for future reference, So he can find and easily dislodge it In the unloading. Silas does that well. He takes it out in bunches like big birds' nests. You never see him standing on the hay He's trying to lift, straining to lift himself." "He thinks if he could teach him that, he'd be Some good perhaps to someone in the world. He hates to see a boy the fool of books. Poor Silas, so concerned for other folk, And nothing to look backward to with pride, And nothing to look forward to with hope, So now and never any different." Part of a moon was falling down the west, Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills. Its light poured softly in her lap. She saw And spread her apron to it. She put out her hand Among the harp-like morning-glory strings, Taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves, As if she played unheard the tenderness That wrought on him beside her in the night. "Warren," she said, "he has come home to die: You needn't be afraid he'll leave you this time." "Home," he mocked gently. "Yes, what else but home? It all depends on what you mean by home. Of course he's nothing to us, any more Than was the hound that came a stranger to us Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail." "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in." "I should have called it Something you somehow haven't to deserve." Warren leaned out and took a step or two, Picked up a little stick, and brought it back And broke it in his hand and tossed it by. "Silas has better claim on us you think Than on his brother? Thirteen little miles As the road winds would bring him to his door. Silas has walked that far no doubt to-day. Why didn't he go there? His brother's rich, A somebody--director in the bank." "He never told us that." "We know it though." "I think his brother ought to help, of course. I'll see to that if there is need. He ought of right To take him in, and might be willing to-- He may be better than appearances. But have some pity on Silas. Do you think If he'd had any pride in claiming kin Or anything he looked for from his brother, He'd keep so still about him all this time?" "I wonder what's between them." "I can tell you. Silas is what he is--we wouldn't mind him-- But just the kind that kinsfolk can't abide. He never did a thing so very bad. He don't know why he isn't quite as good As anyone. He won't be made ashamed To please his brother, worthless though he is." "I can't think Si ever hurt anyone." "No, but he hurt my heart the way he lay And rolled his old head on that sharp-edged chair-back. He wouldn't let me put him on the lounge. You must go in and see what you can do. I made the bed up for him there to-night. You'll be surprised at him--how much he's broken. His working days are done; I'm sure of it." "I'd not be in a hurry to say that." "I haven't been. Go, look, see for yourself. But, Warren, please remember how it is: He's come to help you ditch the meadow. He has a plan. You mustn't laugh at him. He may not speak of it, and then he may. I'll sit and see if that small sailing cloud Will hit or miss the moon." It hit the moon. Then there were three there, making a dim row, The moon, the little silver cloud, and she. Warren returned--too soon, it seemed to her, Slipped to her side, caught up her hand and waited. "Warren," she questioned. "Dead," was all he answered. The Mountain THE mountain held the town as in a shadow I saw so much before I slept there once: I noticed that I missed stars in the west, Where its black body cut into the sky. Near me it seemed: I felt it like a wall Behind which I was sheltered from a wind. And yet between the town and it I found, When I walked forth at dawn to see new things, Were fields, a river, and beyond, more fields. The river at the time was fallen away, And made a widespread brawl on cobble-stones; But the signs showed what it had done in spring; Good grass-land gullied out, and in the grass Ridges of sand, and driftwood stripped of bark. I crossed the river and swung round the mountain. And there I met a man who moved so slow With white-faced oxen in a heavy cart, It seemed no hand to stop him altogether. "What town is this?" I asked. "This? Lunenburg." Then I was wrong: the town of my sojourn, Beyond the bridge, was not that of the mountain, But only felt at night its shadowy presence. "Where is your village? Very far from here?" "There is no village--only scattered farms. We were but sixty voters last election. We can't in nature grow to many more: That thing takes all the room!" He moved his goad. The mountain stood there to be pointed at. Pasture ran up the side a little way, And then there was a wall of trees with trunks: After that only tops of trees, and cliffs Imperfectly concealed among the leaves. A dry ravine emerged from under boughs Into the pasture. "That looks like a path. Is that the way to reach the top from here?-- Not for this morning, but some other time: I must be getting back to breakfast now." "I don't advise your trying from this side. There is no proper path, but those that have Been up, I understand, have climbed from Ladd's. That's five miles back. You can't mistake the place: They logged it there last winter some way up. I'd take you, but I'm bound the other way." "You've never climbed it?" "I've been on the sides Deer-hunting and trout-fishing. There's a brook That starts up on it somewhere--I've heard say Right on the top, tip-top--a curious thing. But what would interest you about the brook, It's always cold in summer, warm in winter. One of the great sights going is to see It steam in winter like an ox's breath, Until the bushes all along its banks Are inch-deep with the frosty spines and bristles-- You know the kind. Then let the sun shine on it!" "There ought to be a view around the world From such a mountain--if it isn't wooded Clear to the top." I saw through leafy screens Great granite terraces in sun and shadow, Shelves one could rest a knee on getting up-- With depths behind him sheer a hundred feet; Or turn and sit on and look out and down, With little ferns in crevices at his elbow. "As to that I can't say. But there's the spring, Right on the summit, almost like a fountain. That ought to be worth seeing." "If it's there. You never saw it?" "I guess there's no doubt About its being there. I never saw it. It may not be right on the very top: It wouldn't have to be a long way down To have some head of water from above, And a good distance down might not be noticed By anyone who'd come a long way up. One time I asked a fellow climbing it To look and tell me later how it was." "What did he say?" "He said there was a lake Somewhere in Ireland on a mountain top." "But a lake's different. What about the spring?" "He never got up high enough to see. That's why I don't advise your trying this side. He tried this side. I've always meant to go And look myself, but you know how it is: It doesn't seem so much to climb a mountain You've worked around the foot of all your life. What would I do? Go in my overalls, With a big stick, the same as when the cows Haven't come down to the bars at milking time? Or with a shotgun for a stray black bear? 'Twouldn't seem real to climb for climbing it." "I shouldn't climb it if I didn't want to-- Not for the sake of climbing. What's its name?" "We call it Hor: I don't know if that's right." "Can one walk around it? Would it be too far?" "You can drive round and keep in Lunenburg, But it's as much as ever you can do, The boundary lines keep in so close to it. Hor is the township, and the township's Hor-- And a few houses sprinkled round the foot, Like boulders broken off the upper cliff, Rolled out a little farther than the rest." "Warm in December, cold in June, you say?" "I don't suppose the water's changed at all. You and I know enough to know it's warm Compared with cold, and cold compared with warm. But all the fun's in how you say a thing." "You've lived here all your life?" "Ever since Hor Was no bigger than a----" What, I did not hear. He drew the oxen toward him with light touches Of his slim goad on nose and offside flank, Gave them their marching orders and was moving. A Hundred Collars LANCASTER bore him--such a little town, Such a great man. It doesn't see him often Of late years, though he keeps the old homestead And sends the children down there with their mother To run wild in the summer--a little wild. Sometimes he joins them for a day or two And sees old friends he somehow can't get near. They meet him in the general store at night, Pre-occupied with formidable mail, Rifling a printed letter as he talks. They seem afraid. He wouldn't have it so: Though a great scholar, he's a democrat, If not at heart, at least on principle. Lately when coming up to Lancaster His train being late he missed another train And had four hours to wait at Woodsville Junction After eleven o'clock at night. Too tired To think of sitting such an ordeal out, He turned to the hotel to find a bed. "No room," the night clerk said. "Unless----" Woodsville's a place of shrieks and wandering lamps And cars that shook and rattle--and one hotel. "You say 'unless.'" "Unless you wouldn't mind Sharing a room with someone else." "Who is it?" "A man." "So I should hope. What kind of man?" "I know him: he's all right. A man's a man. Separate beds of course you understand." The night clerk blinked his eyes and dared him on. "Who's that man sleeping in the office chair? Has he had the refusal of my chance?" "He was afraid of being robbed or murdered. What do you say?" "I'll have to have a bed." The night clerk led him up three flights of stairs And down a narrow passage full of doors, At the last one of which he knocked and entered. "Lafe, here's a fellow wants to share your room." "Show him this way. I'm not afraid of him. I'm not so drunk I can't take care of myself." The night clerk clapped a bedstead on the foot. "This will be yours. Good-night," he said, and went. "Lafe was the name, I think?" "Yes, Layfayette. You got it the first time. And yours?" "Magoon. Doctor Magoon." "A Doctor?" "Well, a teacher." "Professor Square-the-circle-till-you're-tired? Hold on, there's something I don't think of now That I had on my mind to ask the first Man that knew anything I happened in with. I'll ask you later--don't let me forget it." The Doctor looked at Lafe and looked away. A man? A brute. Naked above the waist, He sat there creased and shining in the light, Fumbling the buttons in a well-starched shirt. "I'm moving into a size-larger shirt. I've felt mean lately; mean's no name for it. I just found what the matter was to-night: I've been a-choking like a nursery tree When it outgrows the wire band of its name tag. I blamed it on the hot spell we've been having. 'Twas nothing but my foolish hanging back, Not liking to own up I'd grown a size. Number eighteen this is. What size do you wear?" The Doctor caught his throat convulsively. "Oh--ah--fourteen--fourteen." "Fourteen! You say so! I can remember when I wore fourteen. And come to think I must have back at home More than a hundred collars, size fourteen. Too bad to waste them all. You ought to have them. They're yours and welcome; let me send them to you. What makes you stand there on one leg like that? You're not much furtherer than where Kike left you. You act as if you wished you hadn't come. Sit down or lie down, friend; you make me nervous." The Doctor made a subdued dash for it, And propped himself at bay against a pillow. "Not that way, with your shoes on Kike's white bed. You can't rest that way. Let me pull your shoes off." "Don't touch me, please--I say, don't touch me, please. I'll not be put to bed by you, my man." "Just as you say. Have it your own way then. 'My man' is it? You talk like a professor. Speaking of who's afraid of who, however, I'm thinking I have more to lose than you If anything should happen to be wrong. Who wants to cut your number fourteen throat! Let's have a show down as an evidence Of good faith. There is ninety dollars. Come, if you're not afraid." "I'm not afraid. There's five: that's all I carry." "I can search you? Where are you moving over to? Stay still. You'd better tuck your money under you And sleep on it the way I always do When I'm with people I don't trust at night." "Will you believe me if I put it there Right on the counterpane--that I do trust you?" "You'd say so, Mister Man.--I'm a collector. My ninety isn't mine--you won't think that. I pick it up a dollar at a time All round the country for the Weekly News, Published in Bow. You know the Weekly News?" "Known it since I was young." "Then you know me. Now we are getting on together--talking. I'm sort of Something for it at the front. My business is to find what people want: They pay for it, and so they ought to have it. Fairbanks, he says to me--he's editor-- Feel out the public sentiment--he says. A good deal comes on me when all is said. The only trouble is we disagree In politics: I'm Vermont Democrat-- You know what that is, sort of double-dyed; The News has always been Republican. Fairbanks, he says to me, 'Help us this year,' Meaning by us their ticket. 'No,' I says, 'I can't and won't. You've been in long enough: It's time you turned around and boosted us. You'll have to pay me more than ten a week If I'm expected to elect Bill Taft. I doubt if I could do it anyway.'" "You seem to shape the paper's policy." "You see I'm in with everybody, know 'em all. I almost know their farms as well as they do." "You drive around? It must be pleasant work." "It's business, but I can't say it's not fun. What I like best's the lay of different farms, Coming out on them from a stretch of woods, Or over a hill or round a sudden corner. I like to find folks getting out in spring, Raking the dooryard, working near the house. Later they get out further in the fields. Everything's shut sometimes except the barn; The family's all away in some back meadow. There's a hay load a-coming--when it comes. And later still they all get driven in: The fields are stripped to lawn, the garden patches Stripped to bare ground, the apple trees To whips and poles. There's nobody about. The chimney, though, keeps up a good brisk smoking. And I lie back and ride. I take the reins Only when someone's coming, and the mare Stops when she likes: I tell her when to go. I've spoiled Jemima in more ways than one. She's got so she turns in at every house As if she had some sort of curvature, No matter if I have no errand there. She thinks I'm sociable. I maybe am. It's seldom I get down except for meals, though. Folks entertain me from the kitchen doorstep, All in a family row down to the youngest." "One would suppose they might not be as glad To see you as you are to see them." "Oh, Because I want their dollar. I don't want Anything they've not got. I never dun. I'm there, and they can pay me if they like. I go nowhere on purpose: I happen by. Sorry there is no cup to give you a drink. I drink out of the bottle--not your style. Mayn't I offer you----?" "No, no, no, thank you." "Just as you say. Here's looking at you then.-- And now I'm leaving you a little while. You'll rest easier when I'm gone, perhaps-- Lie down--let yourself go and get some sleep. But first--let's see--what was I going to ask you? Those collars--who shall I address them to, Suppose you aren't awake when I come back?" "Really, friend, I can't let you. You--may need them." "Not till I shrink, when they'll be out of style." "But really I--I have so many collars." "I don't know who I rather would have have them. They're only turning yellow where they are. But you're the doctor as the saying is. I'll put the light out. Don't you wait for me: I've just begun the night. You get some sleep. I'll knock so-fashion and peep round the door When I come back so you'll know who it is. There's nothing I'm afraid of like scared people. I don't want you should shoot me in the head. What am I doing carrying off this bottle? There now, you get some sleep." He shut the door. The Doctor slid a little down the pillow. Home Burial HE saw her from the bottom of the stairs Before she saw him. She was starting down, Looking back over her shoulder at some fear. She took a doubtful step and then undid it To raise herself and look again. He spoke Advancing toward her: "What is it you see From up there always--for I want to know." She turned and sank upon her skirts at that, And her face changed from terrified to dull. He said to gain time: "What is it you see," Mounting until she cowered under him. "I will find out now--you must tell me, dear." She, in her place, refused him any help With the least stiffening of her neck and silence. She let him look, sure that he wouldn't see, Blind creature; and a while he didn't see. But at last he murmured, "Oh," and again, "Oh." "What is it--what?" she said. "Just that I see." "You don't," she challenged. "Tell me what it is." "The wonder is I didn't see at once. I never noticed it from here before. I must be wonted to it--that's the reason. The little graveyard where my people are! So small the window frames the whole of it. Not so much larger than a bedroom, is it? There are three stones of slate and one of marble, Broad-shouldered little slabs there in the sunlight On the sidehill. We haven't to mind those. But I understand: it is not the stones, But the child's mound----" "Don't, don't, don't, don't," she cried. She withdrew shrinking from beneath his arm That rested on the banister, and slid downstairs; And turned on him with such a daunting look, He said twice over before he knew himself: "Can't a man speak of his own child he's lost?" "Not you! Oh, where's my hat? Oh, I don't need it! I must get out of here. I must get air. I don't know rightly whether any man can." "Amy! Don't go to someone else this time. Listen to me. I won't come down the stairs." He sat and fixed his chin between his fists. "There's something I should like to ask you, dear." "You don't know how to ask it." "Help me, then." Her fingers moved the latch for all reply. "My words are nearly always an offence. I don't know how to speak of anything So as to please you. But I might be taught I should suppose. I can't say I see how. A man must partly give up being a man With women-folk. We could have some arrangement By which I'd bind myself to keep hands off Anything special you're a-mind to name. Though I don't like such things 'twixt those that love. Two that don't love can't live together without them. But two that do can't live together with them." She moved the latch a little. "Don't--don't go. Don't carry it to someone else this time. Tell me about it if it's something human. Let me into your grief. I'm not so much Unlike other folks as your standing there Apart would make me out. Give me my chance. I do think, though, you overdo it a little. What was it brought you up to think it the thing To take your mother-loss of a first child So inconsolably--in the face of love. You'd think his memory might be satisfied----" "There you go sneering now!" "I'm not, I'm not! You make me angry. I'll come down to you. God, what a woman! And it's come to this, A man can't speak of his own child that's dead." "You can't because you don't know how. If you had any feelings, you that dug With your own hand--how could you?--his little grave; I saw you from that very window there, Making the gravel leap and leap in air, Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly And roll back down the mound beside the hole. I thought, Who is that man? I didn't know you. And I crept down the stairs and up the stairs To look again, and still your spade kept lifting. Then you came in. I heard your rumbling voice Out in the kitchen, and I don't know why, But I went near to see with my own eyes. You could sit there with the stains on your shoes Of the fresh earth from your own baby's grave And talk about your everyday concerns. You had stood the spade up against the wall Outside there in the entry, for I saw it." "I shall laugh the worst laugh I ever laughed. I'm cursed. God, if I don't believe I'm cursed." "I can repeat the very words you were saying. 'Three foggy mornings and one rainy day Will rot the best birch fence a man can build.' Think of it, talk like that at such a time! What had how long it takes a birch to rot To do with what was in the darkened parlour. You couldn't care! The nearest friends can go With anyone to death, comes so far short They might as well not try to go at all. No, from the time when one is sick to death, One is alone, and he dies more alone. Friends make pretence of following to the grave, But before one is in it, their minds are turned And making the best of their way back to life And living people, and things they understand. But the world's evil. I won't have grief so If I can change it. Oh, I won't, I won't!" "There, you have said it all and you feel better. You won't go now. You're crying. Close the door. The heart's gone out of it: why keep it up. Amy! There's someone coming down the road!" "You--oh, you think the talk is all. I must go-- Somewhere out of this house. How can I make you----" "If--you--do!" She was opening the door wider. "Where do you mean to go? First tell me that. I'll follow and bring you back by force. I will!--" The Black Cottage WE chanced in passing by that afternoon To catch it in a sort of special picture Among tar-banded ancient cherry trees, Set well back from the road in rank lodged grass, The little cottage we were speaking of, A front with just a door between two windows, Fresh painted by the shower a velvet black. We paused, the minister and I, to look. He made as if to hold it at arm's length Or put the leaves aside that framed it in. "Pretty," he said. "Come in. No one will care." The path was a vague parting in the grass That led us to a weathered window-sill. We pressed our faces to the pane. "You see," he said, "Everything's as she left it when she died. Her sons won't sell the house or the things in it. They say they mean to come and summer here Where they were boys. They haven't come this year. They live so far away--one is out west-- It will be hard for them to keep their word. Anyway they won't have the place disturbed." A buttoned hair-cloth lounge spread scrolling arms Under a crayon portrait on the wall Done sadly from an old daguerreotype. "That was the father as he went to war. She always, when she talked about war, Sooner or later came and leaned, half knelt Against the lounge beside it, though I doubt If such unlifelike lines kept power to stir Anything in her after all the years. He fell at Gettysburg or Fredericksburg, I ought to know--it makes a difference which: Fredericksburg wasn't Gettysburg, of course. But what I'm getting to is how forsaken A little cottage this has always seemed; Since she went more than ever, but before-- I don't mean altogether by the lives That had gone out of it, the father first, Then the two sons, till she was left alone. (Nothing could draw her after those two sons. She valued the considerate neglect She had at some cost taught them after years.) I mean by the world's having passed it by-- As we almost got by this afternoon. It always seems to me a sort of mark To measure how far fifty years have brought us. Why not sit down if you are in no haste? These doorsteps seldom have a visitor. The warping boards pull out their own old nails With none to tread and put them in their place. She had her own idea of things, the old lady. And she liked talk. She had seen Garrison And Whittier, and had her story of them. One wasn't long in learning that she thought Whatever else the Civil War was for It wasn't just to keep the States together, Nor just to free the slaves, though it did both. She wouldn't have believed those ends enough To have given outright for them all she gave. Her giving somehow touched the principle That all men are created free and equal. And to hear her quaint phrases--so removed From the world's view to-day of all those things. That's a hard mystery of Jefferson's. What did he mean? Of course the easy way Is to decide it simply isn't true. It may not be. I heard a fellow say so. But never mind, the Welshman got it planted Where it will trouble us a thousand years. Each age will have to reconsider it. You couldn't tell her what the West was saying, And what the South to her serene belief. She had some art of hearing and yet not Hearing the latter wisdom of the world. White was the only race she ever knew. Black she had scarcely seen, and yellow never. But how could they be made so very unlike By the same hand working in the same stuff? She had supposed the war decided that. What are you going to do with such a person? Strange how such innocence gets its own way. I shouldn't be surprised if in this world It were the force that would at last prevail. Do you know but for her there was a time When to please younger members of the church, Or rather say non-members in the church, Whom we all have to think of nowadays, I would have changed the Creed a very little? Not that she ever had to ask me not to; It never got so far as that; but the bare thought Of her old tremulous bonnet in the pew, And of her half asleep was too much for me. Why, I might wake her up and startle her. It was the words 'descended into Hades' That seemed too pagan to our liberal youth. You know they suffered from a general onslaught. And well, if they weren't true why keep right on Saying them like the heathen? We could drop them. Only--there was the bonnet in the pew. Such a phrase couldn't have meant much to her. But suppose she had missed it from the Creed As a child misses the unsaid Good-night, And falls asleep with heartache--how should I feel? I'm just as glad she made me keep hands off, For, dear me, why abandon a belief Merely because it ceases to be true. Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt It will turn true again, for so it goes. Most of the change we think we see in life Is due to truths being in and out of favour. As I sit here, and oftentimes, I wish I could be monarch of a desert land I could devote and dedicate forever To the truths we keep coming back and back to. So desert it would have to be, so walled By mountain ranges half in summer snow, No one would covet it or think it worth The pains of conquering to force change on. Scattered oases where men dwelt, but mostly Sand dunes held loosely in tamarisk Blown over and over themselves in idleness. Sand grains should sugar in the natal dew The babe born to the desert, the sand storm Retard mid-waste my cowering caravans-- "There are bees in this wall." He struck the clapboards, Fierce heads looked out; small bodies pivoted. We rose to go. Sunset blazed on the windows. Blueberries "YOU ought to have seen what I saw on my way To the village, through Mortenson's pasture to-day: Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb, Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum In the cavernous pail of the first one to come! And all ripe together, not some of them green And some of them ripe! You ought to have seen!" "I don't know what part of the pasture you mean." "You know where they cut off the woods--let me see-- It was two years ago--or no!--can it be No longer than that?--and the following fall The fire ran and burned it all up but the wall." "Why, there hasn't been time for the bushes to grow. That's always the way with the blueberries, though: There may not have been the ghost of a sign Of them anywhere under the shade of the pine, But get the pine out of the way, you may burn The pasture all over until not a fern Or grass-blade is left, not to mention a stick, And presto, they're up all around you as thick And hard to explain as a conjuror's trick." "It must be on charcoal they fatten their fruit. I taste in them sometimes the flavour of soot. And after all really they're ebony skinned: The blue's but a mist from the breath of the wind, A tarnish that goes at a touch of the hand, And less than the tan with which pickers are tanned." "Does Mortenson know what he has, do you think?" "He may and not care and so leave the chewink To gather them for him--you know what he is. He won't make the fact that they're rightfully his An excuse for keeping us other folk out." "I wonder you didn't see Loren about." "The best of it was that I did. Do you know, I was just getting through what the field had to show And over the wall and into the road, When who should come by, with a democrat-load Of all the young chattering Lorens alive, But Loren, the fatherly, out for a drive." "He saw you, then? What did he do? Did he frown?" "He just kept nodding his head up and down. You know how politely he always goes by. But he thought a big thought--I could tell by his eye-- Which being expressed, might be this in effect: 'I have left those there berries, I shrewdly suspect, To ripen too long. I am greatly to blame.'" "He's a thriftier person than some I could name." "He seems to be thrifty; and hasn't he need, With the mouths of all those young Lorens to feed? He has brought them all up on wild berries, they say, Like birds. They store a great many away. They eat them the year round, and those they don't eat They sell in the store and buy shoes for their feet." "Who cares what they say? It's a nice way to live, Just taking what Nature is willing to give, Not forcing her hand with harrow and plow." "I wish you had seen his perpetual bow-- And the air of the youngsters! Not one of them turned, And they looked so solemn-absurdly concerned." "I wish I knew half what the flock of them know Of where all the berries and other things grow, Cranberries in bogs and raspberries on top Of the boulder-strewn mountain, and when they will crop. I met them one day and each had a flower Stuck into his berries as fresh as a shower; Some strange kind--they told me it hadn't a name." "I've told you how once not long after we came, I almost provoked poor Loren to mirth By going to him of all people on earth To ask if he knew any fruit to be had For the picking. The rascal, he said he'd be glad To tell if he knew. But the year had been bad. There had been some berries--but those were all gone. He didn't say where they had been. He went on: 'I'm sure--I'm sure'--as polite as could be. He spoke to his wife in the door, 'Let me see, Mame, we don't know any good berrying place?' It was all he could do to keep a straight face. "If he thinks all the fruit that grows wild is for him, He'll find he's mistaken. See here, for a whim, We'll pick in the Mortensons' pasture this year. We'll go in the morning, that is, if it's clear, And the sun shines out warm: the vines must be wet. It's so long since I picked I almost forget How we used to pick berries: we took one look round, Then sank out of sight like trolls underground, And saw nothing more of each other, or heard, Unless when you said I was keeping a bird Away from its nest, and I said it was you. 'Well, one of us is.' For complaining it flew Around and around us. And then for a while We picked, till I feared you had wandered a mile, And I thought I had lost you. I lifted a shout Too loud for the distance you were, it turned out, For when you made answer, your voice was as low As talking--you stood up beside me, you know." "We sha'n't have the place to ourselves to enjoy-- Not likely, when all the young Lorens deploy. They'll be there to-morrow, or even to-night. They won't be too friendly--they may be polite-- To people they look on as having no right To pick where they're picking. But we won't complain. You ought to have seen how it looked in the rain, The fruit mixed with water in layers of leaves, Like two kinds of jewels, a vision for thieves." A Servant to Servants I DIDN'T make you know how glad I was To have you come and camp here on our land. I promised myself to get down some day And see the way you lived, but I don't know! With a houseful of hungry men to feed I guess you'd find.... It seems to me I can't express my feelings any more Than I can raise my voice or want to lift My hand (oh, I can lift it when I have to). Did ever you feel so? I hope you never. It's got so I don't even know for sure Whether I am glad, sorry, or anything. There's nothing but a voice-like left inside That seems to tell me how I ought to feel, And would feel if I wasn't all gone wrong. You take the lake. I look and look at it. I see it's a fair, pretty sheet of water. I stand and make myself repeat out loud The advantages it has, so long and narrow, Like a deep piece of some old running river Cut short off at both ends. It lies five miles Straight away through the mountain notch From the sink window where I wash the plates, And all our storms come up toward the house, Drawing the slow waves whiter and whiter and whiter. It took my mind off doughnuts and soda biscuit To step outdoors and take the water dazzle A sunny morning, or take the rising wind About my face and body and through my wrapper, When a storm threatened from the Dragon's Den, And a cold chill shivered across the lake. I see it's a fair, pretty sheet of water, Our Willoughby! How did you hear of it? I expect, though, everyone's heard of it. In a book about ferns? Listen to that! You let things more like feathers regulate Your going and coming. And you like it here? I can see how you might. But I don't know! It would be different if more people came, For then there would be business. As it is, The cottages Len built, sometimes we rent them, Sometimes we don't. We've a good piece of shore That ought to be worth something, and may yet. But I don't count on it as much as Len. He looks on the bright side of everything, Including me. He thinks I'll be all right With doctoring. But it's not medicine-- Lowe is the only doctor's dared to say so-- It's rest I want--there, I have said it out-- From cooking meals for hungry hired men And washing dishes after them--from doing Things over and over that just won't stay done. By good rights I ought not to have so much Put on me, but there seems no other way. Len says one steady pull more ought to do it. He says the best way out is always through. And I agree to that, or in so far As that I can see no way out but through-- Leastways for me--and then they'll be convinced. It's not that Len don't want the best for me. It was his plan our moving over in Beside the lake from where that day I showed you We used to live--ten miles from anywhere. We didn't change without some sacrifice, But Len went at it to make up the loss. His work's a man's, of course, from sun to sun, But he works when he works as hard as I do-- Though there's small profit in comparisons. (Women and men will make them all the same.) But work ain't all. Len undertakes too much. He's into everything in town. This year It's highways, and he's got too many men Around him to look after that make waste. They take advantage of him shamefully, And proud, too, of themselves for doing so. We have four here to board, great good-for-nothings, Sprawling about the kitchen with their talk While I fry their bacon. Much they care! No more put out in what they do or say Than if I wasn't in the room at all. Coming and going all the time, they are: I don't learn what their names are, let alone Their characters, or whether they are safe To have inside the house with doors unlocked. I'm not afraid of them, though, if they're not Afraid of me. There's two can play at that. I have my fancies: it runs in the family. My father's brother wasn't right. They kept him Locked up for years back there at the old farm. I've been away once--yes, I've been away. The State Asylum. I was prejudiced; I wouldn't have sent anyone of mine there; You know the old idea--the only asylum Was the poorhouse, and those who could afford, Rather than send their folks to such a place, Kept them at home; and it does seem more human. But it's not so: the place is the asylum. There they have every means proper to do with, And you aren't darkening other people's lives-- Worse than no good to them, and they no good To you in your condition; you can't know Affection or the want of it in that state. I've heard too much of the old-fashioned way. My father's brother, he went mad quite young. Some thought he had been bitten by a dog, Because his violence took on the form Of carrying his pillow in his teeth; But it's more likely he was crossed in love, Or so the story goes. It was some girl. Anyway all he talked about was love. They soon saw he would do someone a mischief If he wa'n't kept strict watch of, and it ended In father's building him a sort of cage, Or room within a room, of hickory poles, Like stanchions in the barn, from floor to ceiling,-- A narrow passage all the way around. Anything they put in for furniture He'd tear to pieces, even a bed to lie on. So they made the place comfortable with straw, Like a beast's stall, to ease their consciences. Of course they had to feed him without dishes. They tried to keep him clothed, but he paraded With his clothes on his arm--all of his clothes. Cruel--it sounds. I 'spose they did the best They knew. And just when he was at the height, Father and mother married, and mother came, A bride, to help take care of such a creature, And accommodate her young life to his. That was what marrying father meant to her. She had to lie and hear love things made dreadful By his shouts in the night. He'd shout and shout Until the strength was shouted out of him, And his voice died down slowly from exhaustion. He'd pull his bars apart like bow and bow-string, And let them go and make them twang until His hands had worn them smooth as any ox-bow. And then he'd crow as if he thought that child's play-- The only fun he had. I've heard them say, though, They found a way to put a stop to it. He was before my time--I never saw him; But the pen stayed exactly as it was There in the upper chamber in the ell, A sort of catch-all full of attic clutter. I often think of the smooth hickory bars. It got so I would say--you know, half fooling-- "It's time I took my turn upstairs in jail"-- Just as you will till it becomes a habit. No wonder I was glad to get away. Mind you, I waited till Len said the word. I didn't want the blame if things went wrong. I was glad though, no end, when we moved out, And I looked to be happy, and I was, As I said, for a while--but I don't know! Somehow the change wore out like a prescription. And there's more to it than just window-views And living by a lake. I'm past such help-- Unless Len took the notion, which he won't, And I won't ask him--it's not sure enough. I 'spose I've got to go the road I'm going: Other folks have to, and why shouldn't I? I almost think if I could do like you, Drop everything and live out on the ground-- But it might be, come night, I shouldn't like it, Or a long rain. I should soon get enough, And be glad of a good roof overhead. I've lain awake thinking of you, I'll warrant, More than you have yourself, some of these nights. The wonder was the tents weren't snatched away From over you as you lay in your beds. I haven't courage for a risk like that. Bless you, of course, you're keeping me from work, But the thing of it is, I need to be kept. There's work enough to do--there's always that; But behind's behind. The worst that you can do Is set me back a little more behind. I sha'n't catch up in this world, anyway. I'd rather you'd not go unless you must. After Apple-picking MY long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree Toward heaven still, And there's a barrel that I didn't fill Beside it, and there may be two or three Apples I didn't pick upon some bough. But I am done with apple-picking now. Essence of winter sleep is on the night, The scent of apples: I am drowsing off. I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight I got from looking through a pane of glass I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough And held against the world of hoary grass. It melted, and I let it fall and break. But I was well Upon my way to sleep before it fell, And I could tell What form my dreaming was about to take. Magnified apples appear and disappear, Stem end and blossom end, And every fleck of russet showing clear. My instep arch not only keeps the ache, It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round. I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend. And I keep hearing from the cellar bin The rumbling sound Of load on load of apples coming in. For I have had too much Of apple-picking: I am overtired Of the great harvest I myself desired. There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall. For all That struck the earth, No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble, Went surely to the cider-apple heap As of no worth. One can see what will trouble This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is. Were he not gone, The woodchuck could say whether it's like his Long sleep, as I describe its coming on, Or just some human sleep. The Code THERE were three in the meadow by the brook Gathering up windrows, piling cocks of hay, With an eye always lifted toward the west Where an irregular sun-bordered cloud Darkly advanced with a perpetual dagger Flickering across its bosom. Suddenly One helper, thrusting pitchfork in the ground, Marched himself off the field and home. One stayed. The town-bred farmer failed to understand. "What is there wrong?" "Something you just now said." "What did I say?" "About our taking pains." "To cock the hay?--because it's going to shower? I said that more than half an hour ago. I said it to myself as much as you." "You didn't know. But James is one big fool. He thought you meant to find fault with his work. That's what the average farmer would have meant. James would take time, of course, to chew it over Before he acted: he's just got round to act." "He is a fool if that's the way he takes me." "Don't let it bother you. You've found out something. The hand that knows his business won't be told To do work better or faster--those two things. I'm as particular as anyone: Most likely I'd have served you just the same. But I know you don't understand our ways. You were just talking what was in your mind, What was in all our minds, and you weren't hinting. Tell you a story of what happened once: I was up here in Salem at a man's Named Sanders with a gang of four or five Doing the haying. No one liked the boss. He was one of the kind sports call a spider, All wiry arms and legs that spread out wavy From a humped body nigh as big's a biscuit. But work! that man could work, especially If by so doing he could get more work Out of his hired help. I'm not denying He was hard on himself. I couldn't find That he kept any hours--not for himself. Daylight and lantern-light were one to him: I've heard him pounding in the barn all night. But what he liked was someone to encourage. Them that he couldn't lead he'd get behind And drive, the way you can, you know, in mowing-- Keep at their heels and threaten to mow their legs off. I'd seen about enough of his bulling tricks (We call that bulling). I'd been watching him. So when he paired off with me in the hayfield To load the load, thinks I, Look out for trouble. I built the load and topped it off; old Sanders Combed it down with a rake and says, 'O. K.' Everything went well till we reached the barn With a big catch to empty in a bay. You understand that meant the easy job For the man up on top of throwing down The hay and rolling it off wholesale, Where on a mow it would have been slow lifting. You wouldn't think a fellow'd need much urging Under these circumstances, would you now? But the old fool seizes his fork in both hands, And looking up bewhiskered out of the pit, Shouts like an army captain, 'Let her come!' Thinks I, D'ye mean it? 'What was that you said?' I asked out loud, so's there'd be no mistake, 'Did you say, Let her come?' 'Yes, let her come.' He said it over, but he said it softer. Never you say a thing like that to a man, Not if he values what he is. God, I'd as soon Murdered him as left out his middle name. I'd built the load and knew right where to find it. Two or three forkfuls I picked lightly round for Like meditating, and then I just dug in And dumped the rackful on him in ten lots. I looked over the side once in the dust And caught sight of him treading-water-like, Keeping his head above. 'Damn ye,' I says, 'That gets ye!' He squeaked like a squeezed rat. That was the last I saw or heard of him. I cleaned the rack and drove out to cool off. As I sat mopping hayseed from my neck, And sort of waiting to be asked about it, One of the boys sings out, 'Where's the old man?' 'I left him in the barn under the hay. If ye want him, ye can go and dig him out.' They realized from the way I swobbed my neck More than was needed something must be up. They headed for the barn; I stayed where I was. They told me afterward. First they forked hay, A lot of it, out into the barn floor. Nothing! They listened for him. Not a rustle. I guess they thought I'd spiked him in the temple Before I buried him, or I couldn't have managed. They excavated more. 'Go keep his wife Out of the barn.' Someone looked in a window, And curse me if he wasn't in the kitchen Slumped way down in a chair, with both his feet Stuck in the oven, the hottest day that summer. He looked so clean disgusted from behind There was no one that dared to stir him up, Or let him know that he was being looked at. Apparently I hadn't buried him (I may have knocked him down); but my just trying To bury him had hurt his dignity. He had gone to the house so's not to meet me. He kept away from us all afternoon. We tended to his hay. We saw him out After a while picking peas in his garden: He couldn't keep away from doing something." "Weren't you relieved to find he wasn't dead?" "No! and yet I don't know--it's hard to say. I went about to kill him fair enough." "You took an awkward way. Did he discharge you?" "Discharge me? No! He knew I did just right." The Generations of Men A GOVERNOR it was proclaimed this time, When all who would come seeking in New Hampshire Ancestral memories might come together. And those of the name Stark gathered in Bow, A rock-strewn town where farming has fallen off, And sprout-lands flourish where the axe has gone. Someone had literally run to earth In an old cellar hole in a by-road The origin of all the family there. Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe That now not all the houses left in town Made shift to shelter them without the help Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard. They were at Bow, but that was not enough: Nothing would do but they must fix a day To stand together on the crater's verge That turned them on the world, and try to fathom The past and get some strangeness out of it. But rain spoiled all. The day began uncertain, With clouds low trailing and moments of rain that misted. The young folk held some hope out to each other Till well toward noon when the storm settled down With a swish in the grass. "What if the others Are there," they said. "It isn't going to rain." Only one from a farm not far away Strolled thither, not expecting he would find Anyone else, but out of idleness. One, and one other, yes, for there were two. The second round the curving hillside road Was a girl; and she halted some way off To reconnoitre, and then made up her mind At least to pass by and see who he was, And perhaps hear some word about the weather. This was some Stark she didn't know. He nodded. "No fête to-day," he said. "It looks that way." She swept the heavens, turning on her heel. "I only idled down." "I idled down." Provision there had been for just such meeting Of stranger cousins, in a family tree Drawn on a sort of passport with the branch Of the one bearing it done in detail-- Some zealous one's laborious device. She made a sudden movement toward her bodice, As one who clasps her heart. They laughed together. "Stark?" he inquired. "No matter for the proof." "Yes, Stark. And you?" "I'm Stark." He drew his passport. "You know we might not be and still be cousins: The town is full of Chases, Lowes, and Baileys, All claiming some priority in Starkness. My mother was a Lane, yet might have married Anyone upon earth and still her children Would have been Starks, and doubtless here to-day." "You riddle with your genealogy Like a Viola. I don't follow you." "I only mean my mother was a Stark Several times over, and by marrying father No more than brought us back into the name." "One ought not to be thrown into confusion By a plain statement of relationship, But I own what you say makes my head spin. You take my card--you seem so good at such things-- And see if you can reckon our cousinship. Why not take seats here on the cellar wall And dangle feet among the raspberry vines?" "Under the shelter of the family tree." "Just so--that ought to be enough protection." "Not from the rain. I think it's going to rain." "It's raining." "No, it's misting; let's be fair. Does the rain seem to you to cool the eyes?" The situation was like this: the road Bowed outward on the mountain half-way up, And disappeared and ended not far off. No one went home that way. The only house Beyond where they were was a shattered seedpod. And below roared a brook hidden in trees, The sound of which was silence for the place. This he sat listening to till she gave judgment. "On father's side, it seems, we're--let me see----" "Don't be too technical.--You have three cards." "Four cards, one yours, three mine, one for each branch Of the Stark family I'm a member of." "D'you know a person so related to herself Is supposed to be mad." "I may be mad." "You look so, sitting out here in the rain Studying genealogy with me You never saw before. What will we come to With all this pride of ancestry, we Yankees? I think we're all mad. Tell me why we're here Drawn into town about this cellar hole Like wild geese on a lake before a storm? What do we see in such a hole, I wonder." "The Indians had a myth of Chicamoztoc, Which means The Seven Caves that We Came out of. This is the pit from which we Starks were digged." "You must be learned. That's what you see in it?" "And what do you see?" "Yes, what do I see? First let me look. I see raspberry vines----" "Oh, if you're going to use your eyes, just hear What I see. It's a little, little boy, As pale and dim as a match flame in the sun; He's groping in the cellar after jam, He thinks it's dark and it's flooded with daylight." "He's nothing. Listen. When I lean like this I can make out old Grandsir Stark distinctly,-- With his pipe in his mouth and his brown jug-- Bless you, it isn't Grandsir Stark, it's Granny, But the pipe's there and smoking and the jug. She's after cider, the old girl, she's thirsty; Here's hoping she gets her drink and gets out safely." "Tell me about her. Does she look like me?" "She should, shouldn't she, you're so many times Over descended from her. I believe She does look like you. Stay the way you are. The nose is just the same, and so's the chin-- Making allowance, making due allowance." "You poor, dear, great, great, great, great Granny!" "See that you get her greatness right. Don't stint her." "Yes, it's important, though you think it isn't. I won't be teased. But see how wet I am." "Yes, you must go; we can't stay here for ever. But wait until I give you a hand up. A bead of silver water more or less Strung on your hair won't hurt your summer looks. I wanted to try something with the noise That the brook raises in the empty valley. We have seen visions--now consult the voices. Something I must have learned riding in trains When I was young. I used the roar To set the voices speaking out of it, Speaking or singing, and the band-music playing. Perhaps you have the art of what I mean. I've never listened in among the sounds That a brook makes in such a wild descent. It ought to give a purer oracle." "It's as you throw a picture on a screen: The meaning of it all is out of you; The voices give you what you wish to hear." "Strangely, it's anything they wish to give." "Then I don't know. It must be strange enough. I wonder if it's not your make-believe. What do you think you're like to hear to-day?" "From the sense of our having been together-- But why take time for what I'm like to hear? I'll tell you what the voices really say. You will do very well right where you are A little longer. I mustn't feel too hurried, Or I can't give myself to hear the voices." "Is this some trance you are withdrawing into?" "You must be very still; you mustn't talk." "I'll hardly breathe." "The voices seem to say----" "I'm waiting." "Don't! The voices seem to say: Call her Nausicaa, the unafraid Of an acquaintance made adventurously." "I let you say that--on consideration." "I don't see very well how you can help it. You want the truth. I speak but by the voices. You see they know I haven't had your name, Though what a name should matter between us----" "I shall suspect----" "Be good. The voices say: Call her Nausicaa, and take a timber That you shall find lies in the cellar charred Among the raspberries, and hew and shape it For a door-sill or other corner piece In a new cottage on the ancient spot. The life is not yet all gone out of it. And come and make your summer dwelling here, And perhaps she will come, still unafraid, And sit before you in the open door With flowers in her lap until they fade, But not come in across the sacred sill----" "I wonder where your oracle is tending. You can see that there's something wrong with it, Or it would speak in dialect. Whose voice Does it purport to speak in? Not old Grandsir's Nor Granny's, surely. Call up one of them. They have best right to be heard in this place." "You seem so partial to our great-grandmother (Nine times removed. Correct me if I err.) You will be likely to regard as sacred Anything she may say. But let me warn you, Folks in her day were given to plain speaking. You think you'd best tempt her at such a time?" "It rests with us always to cut her off." "Well then, it's Granny speaking: 'I dunnow! Mebbe I'm wrong to take it as I do. There ain't no names quite like the old ones though, Nor never will be to my way of thinking. One mustn't bear too hard on the new comers, But there's a dite too many of them for comfort. I should feel easier if I could see More of the salt wherewith they're to be salted. Son, you do as you're told! You take the timber-- It's as sound as the day when it was cut-- And begin over----' There, she'd better stop. You can see what is troubling Granny, though. But don't you think we sometimes make too much Of the old stock? What counts is the ideals, And those will bear some keeping still about." "I can see we are going to be good friends." "I like your 'going to be.' You said just now It's going to rain." "I know, and it was raining. I let you say all that. But I must go now." "You let me say it? on consideration? How shall we say good-bye in such a case?" "How shall we?" "Will you leave the way to me?" "No, I don't trust your eyes. You've said enough. Now give me your hand up.--Pick me that flower." "Where shall we meet again?" "Nowhere but here Once more before we meet elsewhere." "In rain?" "It ought to be in rain. Sometime in rain. In rain to-morrow, shall we, if it rains? But if we must, in sunshine." So she went. The Housekeeper I LET myself in at the kitchen door. "It's you," she said. "I can't get up. Forgive me Not answering your knock. I can no more Let people in than I can keep them out. I'm getting too old for my size, I tell them. My fingers are about all I've the use of So's to take any comfort. I can sew: I help out with this beadwork what I can." "That's a smart pair of pumps you're beading there. Who are they for?" "You mean?--oh, for some miss. I can't keep track of other people's daughters. Lord, if I were to dream of everyone Whose shoes I primped to dance in!" "And where's John?" "Haven't you seen him? Strange what set you off To come to his house when he's gone to yours. You can't have passed each other. I know what: He must have changed his mind and gone to Garlands. He won't be long in that case. You can wait. Though what good you can be, or anyone-- It's gone so far. You've heard? Estelle's run off." "Yes, what's it all about? When did she go?" "Two weeks since." "She's in earnest, it appears." "I'm sure she won't come back. She's hiding somewhere. I don't know where myself. John thinks I do. He thinks I only have to say the word, And she'll come back. But, bless you, I'm her mother-- I can't talk to her, and, Lord, if I could!" "It will go hard with John. What will he do? He can't find anyone to take her place." "Oh, if you ask me that, what will he do? He gets some sort of bakeshop meals together, With me to sit and tell him everything, What's wanted and how much and where it is. But when I'm gone--of course I can't stay here: Estelle's to take me when she's settled down. He and I only hinder one another. I tell them they can't get me through the door, though: I've been built in here like a big church organ. We've been here fifteen years." "That's a long time To live together and then pull apart. How do you see him living when you're gone? Two of you out will leave an empty house." "I don't just see him living many years, Left here with nothing but the furniture. I hate to think of the old place when we're gone, With the brook going by below the yard, And no one here but hens blowing about. If he could sell the place, but then, he can't: No one will ever live on it again. It's too run down. This is the last of it. What I think he will do, is let things smash. He'll sort of swear the time away. He's awful! I never saw a man let family troubles Make so much difference in his man's affairs. He's just dropped everything. He's like a child. I blame his being brought up by his mother. He's got hay down that's been rained on three times. He hoed a little yesterday for me: I thought the growing things would do him good. Something went wrong. I saw him throw the hoe Sky-high with both hands. I can see it now-- Come here--I'll show you--in that apple tree. That's no way for a man to do at his age: He's fifty-five, you know, if he's a day." "Aren't you afraid of him? What's that gun for?" "Oh, that's been there for hawks since chicken-time. John Hall touch me! Not if he knows his friends. I'll say that for him, John's no threatener Like some men folk. No one's afraid of him; All is, he's made up his mind not to stand What he has got to stand." "Where is Estelle? Couldn't one talk to her? What does she say? You say you don't know where she is." "Nor want to! She thinks if it was bad to live with him, It must be right to leave him." "Which is wrong!" "Yes, but he should have married her." "I know." "The strain's been too much for her all these years: I can't explain it any other way. It's different with a man, at least with John: He knows he's kinder than the run of men. Better than married ought to be as good As married--that's what he has always said. I know the way he's felt--but all the same!" "I wonder why he doesn't marry her And end it." "Too late now: she wouldn't have him. He's given her time to think of something else. That's his mistake. The dear knows my interest Has been to keep the thing from breaking up. This is a good home: I don't ask for better. But when I've said, 'Why shouldn't they be married,' He'd say, 'Why should they?' no more words than that." "And after all why should they? John's been fair I take it. What was his was always hers. There was no quarrel about property." "Reason enough, there was no property. A friend or two as good as own the farm, Such as it is. It isn't worth the mortgage." "I mean Estelle has always held the purse." "The rights of that are harder to get at. I guess Estelle and I have filled the purse. 'Twas we let him have money, not he us. John's a bad farmer. I'm not blaming him. Take it year in, year out, he doesn't make much. We came here for a home for me, you know, Estelle to do the housework for the board Of both of us. But look how it turns out: She seems to have the housework, and besides, Half of the outdoor work, though as for that, He'd say she does it more because she likes it. You see our pretty things are all outdoors. Our hens and cows and pigs are always better Than folks like us have any business with. Farmers around twice as well off as we Haven't as good. They don't go with the farm. One thing you can't help liking about John, He's fond of nice things--too fond, some would say. But Estelle don't complain: she's like him there. She wants our hens to be the best there are. You never saw this room before a show, Full of lank, shivery, half-drowned birds In separate coops, having their plumage done. The smell of the wet feathers in the heat! You spoke of John's not being safe to stay with. You don't know what a gentle lot we are: We wouldn't hurt a hen! You ought to see us Moving a flock of hens from place to place. We're not allowed to take them upside down, All we can hold together by the legs. Two at a time's the rule, one on each arm, No matter how far and how many times We have to go." "You mean that's John's idea." "And we live up to it; or I don't know What childishness he wouldn't give way to. He manages to keep the upper hand On his own farm. He's boss. But as to hens: We fence our flowers in and the hens range. Nothing's too good for them. We say it pays. John likes to tell the offers he has had, Twenty for this cock, twenty-five for that. He never takes the money. If they're worth That much to sell, they're worth as much to keep. Bless you, it's all expense, though. Reach me down The little tin box on the cupboard shelf, The upper shelf, the tin box. That's the one. I'll show you. Here you are." "What's this?" "A bill-- For fifty dollars for one Langshang cock-- Receipted. And the cock is in the yard." "Not in a glass case, then?" "He'd need a tall one: He can eat off a barrel from the ground. He's been in a glass case, as you may say, The Crystal Palace, London. He's imported. John bought him, and we paid the bill with beads-- Wampum, I call it. Mind, we don't complain. But you see, don't you, we take care of him." "And like it, too. It makes it all the worse." "It seems as if. And that's not all: he's helpless In ways that I can hardly tell you of. Sometimes he gets possessed to keep accounts To see where all the money goes so fast. You know how men will be ridiculous. But it's just fun the way he gets bedeviled-- If he's untidy now, what will he be----? "It makes it all the worse. You must be blind." "Estelle's the one. You needn't talk to me." "Can't you and I get to the root of it? What's the real trouble? What will satisfy her?" "It's as I say: she's turned from him, that's all." "But why, when she's well off? Is it the neighbours, Being cut off from friends?" "We have our friends. That isn't it. Folks aren't afraid of us." "She's let it worry her. You stood the strain, And you're her mother." "But I didn't always. I didn't relish it along at first. But I got wonted to it. And besides-- John said I was too old to have grandchildren. But what's the use of talking when it's done? She won't come back--it's worse than that--she can't." "Why do you speak like that? What do you know? What do you mean?--she's done harm to herself?" "I mean she's married--married someone else." "Oho, oho!" "You don't believe me." "Yes, I do, Only too well. I knew there must be something! So that was what was back. She's bad, that's all!" "Bad to get married when she had the chance?" "Nonsense! See what's she done! But who, who----" "Who'd marry her straight out of such a mess? Say it right out--no matter for her mother. The man was found. I'd better name no names. John himself won't imagine who he is." "Then it's all up. I think I'll get away. You'll be expecting John. I pity Estelle; I suppose she deserves some pity, too. You ought to have the kitchen to yourself To break it to him. You may have the job." "You needn't think you're going to get away. John's almost here. I've had my eye on someone Coming down Ryan's Hill. I thought 'twas him. Here he is now. This box! Put it away. And this bill." "What's the hurry? He'll unhitch." "No, he won't, either. He'll just drop the reins And turn Doll out to pasture, rig and all. She won't get far before the wheels hang up On something--there's no harm. See, there he is! My, but he looks as if he must have heard!" John threw the door wide but he didn't enter. "How are you, neighbour? Just the man I'm after. Isn't it Hell," he said. "I want to know. Come out here if you want to hear me talk. I'll talk to you, old woman, afterward. I've got some news that maybe isn't news. What are they trying to do to me, these two?" "Do go along with him and stop his shouting." She raised her voice against the closing door: "Who wants to hear your news, you--dreadful fool?" The Fear A LANTERN light from deeper in the barn Shone on a man and woman in the door And threw their lurching shadows on a house Near by, all dark in every glossy window. A horse's hoof pawed once the hollow floor, And the back of the gig they stood beside Moved in a little. The man grasped a wheel, The woman spoke out sharply, "Whoa, stand still!" "I saw it just as plain as a white plate," She said, "as the light on the dashboard ran Along the bushes at the roadside--a man's face. You must have seen it too." "I didn't see it. Are you sure----" "Yes, I'm sure!" "--it was a face?" "Joel, I'll have to look. I can't go in, I can't, and leave a thing like that unsettled. Doors locked and curtains drawn will make no difference. I always have felt strange when we came home To the dark house after so long an absence, And the key rattled loudly into place Seemed to warn someone to be getting out At one door as we entered at another. What if I'm right, and someone all the time-- Don't hold my arm!" "I say it's someone passing." "You speak as if this were a travelled road. You forget where we are. What is beyond That he'd be going to or coming from At such an hour of night, and on foot too. What was he standing still for in the bushes?" "It's not so very late--it's only dark. There's more in it than you're inclined to say. Did he look like----?" "He looked like anyone. I'll never rest to-night unless I know. Give me the lantern." "You don't want the lantern." She pushed past him and got it for herself. "You're not to come," she said. "This is my business. If the time's come to face it, I'm the one To put it the right way. He'd never dare-- Listen! He kicked a stone. Hear that, hear that! He's coming towards us. Joel, go in--please. Hark!--I don't hear him now. But please go in." "In the first place you can't make me believe it's----" "It is--or someone else he's sent to watch. And now's the time to have it out with him While we know definitely where he is. Let him get off and he'll be everywhere Around us, looking out of trees and bushes Till I sha'n't dare to set a foot outdoors. And I can't stand it. Joel, let me go!" "But it's nonsense to think he'd care enough." "You mean you couldn't understand his caring. Oh, but you see he hadn't had enough-- Joel, I won't--I won't--I promise you. We mustn't say hard things. You mustn't either." "I'll be the one, if anybody goes! But you give him the advantage with this light. What couldn't he do to us standing here! And if to see was what he wanted, why He has seen all there was to see and gone." He appeared to forget to keep his hold, But advanced with her as she crossed the grass. "What do you want?" she cried to all the dark. She stretched up tall to overlook the light That hung in both hands hot against her skirt. "There's no one; so you're wrong," he said. "There is.-- What do you want?" she cried, and then herself Was startled when an answer really came. "Nothing." It came from well along the road. She reached a hand to Joel for support: The smell of scorching woollen made her faint. "What are you doing round this house at night?" "Nothing." A pause: there seemed no more to say. And then the voice again: "You seem afraid. I saw by the way you whipped up the horse. I'll just come forward in the lantern light And let you see." "Yes, do.--Joel, go back!" She stood her ground against the noisy steps That came on, but her body rocked a little. "You see," the voice said. "Oh." She looked and looked. "You don't see--I've a child here by the hand." "What's a child doing at this time of night----?" "Out walking. Every child should have the memory Of at least one long-after-bedtime walk. What, son?" "Then I should think you'd try to find Somewhere to walk----" "The highway as it happens-- We're stopping for the fortnight down at Dean's." "But if that's all--Joel--you realize-- You won't think anything. You understand? You understand that we have to be careful. This is a very, very lonely place. Joel!" She spoke as if she couldn't turn. The swinging lantern lengthened to the ground, It touched, it struck it, clattered and went out. The Self-seeker "WILLIS, I didn't want you here to-day: The lawyer's coming for the company. I'm going to sell my soul, or, rather, feet. Five hundred dollars for the pair, you know." "With you the feet have nearly been the soul; And if you're going to sell them to the devil, I want to see you do it. When's he coming?" "I half suspect you knew, and came on purpose To try to help me drive a better bargain." "Well, if it's true! Yours are no common feet. The lawyer don't know what it is he's buying: So many miles you might have walked you won't walk. You haven't run your forty orchids down. What does he think?--How are the blessed feet? The doctor's sure you're going to walk again?" "He thinks I'll hobble. It's both legs and feet." "They must be terrible--I mean to look at." "I haven't dared to look at them uncovered. Through the bed blankets I remind myself Of a starfish laid out with rigid points." "The wonder is it hadn't been your head." "It's hard to tell you how I managed it. When I saw the shaft had me by the coat, I didn't try too long to pull away, Or fumble for my knife to cut away, I just embraced the shaft and rode it out-- Till Weiss shut off the water in the wheel-pit. That's how I think I didn't lose my head. But my legs got their knocks against the ceiling." "Awful. Why didn't they throw off the belt Instead of going clear down in the wheel-pit?" "They say some time was wasted on the belt-- Old streak of leather--doesn't love me much Because I make him spit fire at my knuckles, The way Ben Franklin used to make the kite-string. That must be it. Some days he won't stay on. That day a woman couldn't coax him off. He's on his rounds now with his tail in his mouth Snatched right and left across the silver pulleys. Everything goes the same without me there. You can hear the small buzz saws whine, the big saw Caterwaul to the hills around the village As they both bite the wood. It's all our music. One ought as a good villager to like it. No doubt it has a sort of prosperous sound, And it's our life." "Yes, when it's not our death." "You make that sound as if it wasn't so With everything. What we live by we die by. I wonder where my lawyer is. His train's in. I want this over with; I'm hot and tired." "You're getting ready to do something foolish." "Watch for him, will you, Will? You let him in. I'd rather Mrs. Corbin didn't know; I've boarded here so long, she thinks she owns me. You're bad enough to manage without her." "And I'm going to be worse instead of better. You've got to tell me how far this is gone: Have you agreed to any price?" "Five hundred. Five hundred--five--five! One, two, three, four, five. You needn't look at me." "I don't believe you." "I told you, Willis, when you first came in. Don't you be hard on me. I have to take What I can get. You see they have the feet, Which gives them the advantage in the trade. I can't get back the feet in any case." "But your flowers, man, you're selling out your flowers." "Yes, that's one way to put it--all the flowers Of every kind everywhere in this region For the next forty summers--call it forty. But I'm not selling those, I'm giving them, They never earned me so much as one cent: Money can't pay me for the loss of them. No, the five hundred was the sum they named To pay the doctor's bill and tide me over. It's that or fight, and I don't want to fight-- I just want to get settled in my life, Such as it's going to be, and know the worst, Or best--it may not be so bad. The firm Promise me all the shooks I want to nail." "But what about your flora of the valley?" "You have me there. But that--you didn't think That was worth money to me? Still I own It goes against me not to finish it For the friends it might bring me. By the way, I had a letter from Burroughs--did I tell you?-- About my Cyprepedium reginæ; He says it's not reported so far north. There! there's the bell. He's rung. But you go down And bring him up, and don't let Mrs. Corbin.-- Oh, well, we'll soon be through with it. I'm tired." Willis brought up besides the Boston lawyer A little barefoot girl who in the noise Of heavy footsteps in the old frame house, And baritone importance of the lawyer, Stood for a while unnoticed with her hands Shyly behind her. "Well, and how is Mister----" The lawyer was already in his satchel As if for papers that might bear the name He hadn't at command. "You must excuse me, I dropped in at the mill and was detained." "Looking round, I suppose," said Willis. "Yes, Well, yes." "Hear anything that might prove useful?" The Broken One saw Anne. "Why, here is Anne. What do you want, dear? Come, stand by the bed; Tell me what is it?" Anne just wagged her dress With both hands held behind her. "Guess," she said. "Oh, guess which hand? My my! Once on a time I knew a lovely way to tell for certain By looking in the ears. But I forget it. Er, let me see. I think I'll take the right. That's sure to be right even if it's wrong. Come, hold it out. Don't change.--A Ram's Horn orchid! A Ram's Horn! What would I have got, I wonder, If I had chosen left. Hold out the left. Another Ram's Horn! Where did you find those, Under what beech tree, on what woodchuck's knoll?" Anne looked at the large lawyer at her side, And thought she wouldn't venture on so much. "Were there no others?" "There were four or five. I knew you wouldn't let me pick them all." "I wouldn't--so I wouldn't. You're the girl! You see Anne has her lesson learned by heart." "I wanted there should be some there next year." "Of course you did. You left the rest for seed, And for the backwoods woodchuck. You're the girl! A Ram's Horn orchid seedpod for a woodchuck Sounds something like. Better than farmer's beans To a discriminating appetite, Though the Ram's Horn is seldom to be had In bushel lots--doesn't come on the market. But, Anne, I'm troubled; have you told me all? You're hiding something. That's as bad as lying. You ask this lawyer man. And it's not safe With a lawyer at hand to find you out. Nothing is hidden from some people, Anne. You don't tell me that where you found a Ram's Horn You didn't find a Yellow Lady's Slipper. What did I tell you? What? I'd blush, I would. Don't you defend yourself. If it was there, Where is it now, the Yellow Lady's Slipper?" "Well, wait--it's common--it's too common." "Common? The Purple Lady's Slipper's commoner." "I didn't bring a Purple Lady's Slipper To You--to you I mean--they're both too common." The lawyer gave a laugh among his papers As if with some idea that she had scored. "I've broken Anne of gathering bouquets. It's not fair to the child. It can't be helped though: Pressed into service means pressed out of shape. Somehow I'll make it right with her--she'll see. She's going to do my scouting in the field, Over stone walls and all along a wood And by a river bank for water flowers, The floating Heart, with small leaf like a heart, And at the sinus under water a fist Of little fingers all kept down but one, And that thrust up to blossom in the sun As if to say, 'You! You're the Heart's desire.' Anne has a way with flowers to take the place Of that she's lost: she goes down on one knee And lifts their faces by the chin to hers And says their names, and leaves them where they are." The lawyer wore a watch the case of which Was cunningly devised to make a noise Like a small pistol when he snapped it shut At such a time as this. He snapped it now. "Well, Anne, go, dearie. Our affair will wait. The lawyer man is thinking of his train. He wants to give me lots and lots of money Before he goes, because I hurt myself, And it may take him I don't know how long. But put our flowers in water first. Will, help her: The pitcher's too full for her. There's no cup? Just hook them on the inside of the pitcher. Now run.--Get out your documents! You see I have to keep on the good side of Anne. I'm a great boy to think of number one. And you can't blame me in the place I'm in. Who will take care of my necessities Unless I do?" "A pretty interlude," The lawyer said. "I'm sorry, but my train-- Luckily terms are all agreed upon. You only have to sign your name. Right--there." "You, Will, stop making faces. Come round here Where you can't make them. What is it you want? I'll put you out with Anne. Be good or go." "You don't mean you will sign that thing unread?" "Make yourself useful then, and read it for me. Isn't it something I have seen before?" "You'll find it is. Let your friend look at it." "Yes, but all that takes time, and I'm as much In haste to get it over with as you. But read it, read it. That's right, draw the curtain: Half the time I don't know what's troubling me.-- What do you say, Will? Don't you be a fool, You! crumpling folkses legal documents. Out with it if you've any real objection." "Five hundred dollars!" "What would you think right?" "A thousand wouldn't be a cent too much; You know it, Mr. Lawyer. The sin is Accepting anything before he knows Whether he's ever going to walk again. It smells to me like a dishonest trick." "I think--I think--from what I heard to-day-- And saw myself--he would be ill-advised----" "What did you hear, for instance?" Willis said. "Now the place where the accident occurred----" The Broken One was twisted in his bed. "This is between you two apparently. Where I come in is what I want to know. You stand up to it like a pair of cocks. Go outdoors if you want to fight. Spare me. When you come back, I'll have the papers signed. Will pencil do? Then, please, your fountain pen. One of you hold my head up from the pillow." Willis flung off the bed. "I wash my hands-- I'm no match--no, and don't pretend to be----" The lawyer gravely capped his fountain pen. "You're doing the wise thing: you won't regret it. We're very sorry for you." Willis sneered: "Who's we?--some stockholders in Boston? I'll go outdoors, by gad, and won't come back." "Willis, bring Anne back with you when you come. Yes. Thanks for caring. Don't mind Will: he's savage. He thinks you ought to pay me for my flowers. You don't know what I mean about the flowers. Don't stop to try to now. You'll miss your train. Good-bye." He flung his arms around his face. The Wood-pile OUT walking in the frozen swamp one grey day I paused and said, "I will turn back from here. No, I will go on farther--and we shall see." The hard snow held me, save where now and then One foot went down. The view was all in lines Straight up and down of tall slim trees Too much alike to mark or name a place by So as to say for certain I was here Or somewhere else: I was just far from home. A small bird flew before me. He was careful To put a tree between us when he lighted, And say no word to tell me who he was Who was so foolish as to think what he thought. He thought that I was after him for a feather-- The white one in his tail; like one who takes Everything said as personal to himself. One flight out sideways would have undeceived him. And then there was a pile of wood for which I forgot him and let his little fear Carry him off the way I might have gone, Without so much as wishing him good-night. He went behind it to make his last stand. It was a cord of maple, cut and split And piled--and measured, four by four by eight. And not another like it could I see. No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it. And it was older sure than this year's cutting, Or even last year's or the year's before. The wood was grey and the bark warping off it And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle. What held it though on one side was a tree Still growing, and on one a stake and prop, These latter about to fall. I thought that only Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks Could so forget his handiwork on which He spent himself, the labour of his axe, And leave it there far from a useful fireplace To warm the frozen swamp as best it could With the slow smokeless burning of decay. Good Hours I HAD for my winter evening walk-- No one at all with whom to talk, But I had the cottages in a row Up to their shining eyes in snow. And I thought I had the folk within: I had the sound of a violin; I had a glimpse through curtain laces Of youthful forms and youthful faces. I had such company outward bound. I went till there were no cottages found. I turned and repented, but coming back I saw no window but that was black. Over the snow my creaking feet Disturbed the slumbering village street Like profanation, by your leave, At ten o'clock of a winter eve. 
30276	----	SOME IMAGIST POETS SOME IMAGIST POETS AN ANTHOLOGY BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1915 COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED _Published April 1915_ PREFACE In March, 1914, a volume appeared entitled "Des Imagistes." It was a collection of the work of various young poets, presented together as a school. This school has been widely discussed by those interested in new movements in the arts, and has already become a household word. Differences of taste and judgment, however, have arisen among the contributors to that book; growing tendencies are forcing them along different paths. Those of us whose work appears in this volume have therefore decided to publish our collection under a new title, and we have been joined by two or three poets who did not contribute to the first volume, our wider scope making this possible. In this new book we have followed a slightly different arrangement to that of the former Anthology. Instead of an arbitrary selection by an editor, each poet has been permitted to represent himself by the work he considers his best, the only stipulation being that it should not yet have appeared in book form. A sort of informal committee--consisting of more than half the authors here represented--have arranged the book and decided what should be printed and what omitted, but, as a general rule, the poets have been allowed absolute freedom in this direction, limitations of space only being imposed upon them. Also, to avoid any appearance of precedence, they have been put in alphabetical order. As it has been suggested that much of the misunderstanding of the former volume was due to the fact that we did not explain ourselves in a preface, we have thought it wise to tell the public what our aims are, and why we are banded together between one set of covers. The poets in this volume do not represent a clique. Several of them are personally unknown to the others, but they are united by certain common principles, arrived at independently. These principles are not new; they have fallen into desuetude. They are the essentials of all great poetry, indeed of all great literature, and they are simply these:-- 1. To use the language of common speech, but to employ always the _exact_ word, not the nearly-exact, nor the merely decorative word. 2. To create new rhythms--as the expression of new moods--and not to copy old rhythms, which merely echo old moods. We do not insist upon "free-verse" as the only method of writing poetry. We fight for it as for a principle of liberty. We believe that the individuality of a poet may often be better expressed in free-verse than in conventional forms. In poetry, a new cadence means a new idea. 3. To allow absolute freedom in the choice of subject. It is not good art to write badly about aeroplanes and automobiles; nor is it necessarily bad art to write well about the past. We believe passionately in the artistic value of modern life, but we wish to point out that there is nothing so uninspiring nor so old-fashioned as an aeroplane of the year 1911. 4. To present an image (hence the name: "Imagist"). We are not a school of painters, but we believe that poetry should render particulars exactly and not deal in vague generalities, however magnificent and sonorous. It is for this reason that we oppose the cosmic poet, who seems to us to shirk the real difficulties of his art. 5. To produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite. 6. Finally, most of us believe that concentration is of the very essence of poetry. The subject of free-verse is too complicated to be discussed here. We may say briefly, that we attach the term to all that increasing amount of writing whose cadence is more marked, more definite, and closer knit than that of prose, but which is not so violently nor so obviously accented as the so-called "regular verse." We refer those interested in the question to the Greek Melic poets, and to the many excellent French studies on the subject by such distinguished and well-equipped authors as Remy de Gourmont, Gustave Kahn, Georges Duhamel, Charles Vildrac, Henri Ghéon, Robert de Souza, André Spire, etc. We wish it to be clearly understood that we do not represent an exclusive artistic sect; we publish our work together because of mutual artistic sympathy, and we propose to bring out our coöperative volume each year for a short term of years, until we have made a place for ourselves and our principles such as we desire. CONTENTS RICHARD ALDINGTON Childhood 3 The Poplar 10 Round-Pond 12 Daisy 13 Epigrams 15 The Faun sees Snow for the First Time 16 Lemures 17 H. D. The Pool 21 The Garden 22 Sea Lily 24 Sea Iris 25 Sea Rose 27 Oread 28 Orion Dead 29 JOHN GOULD FLETCHER The Blue Symphony 33 London Excursion 39 F. S. FLINT Trees 53 Lunch 55 Malady 56 Accident 58 Fragment 60 Houses 62 Eau-Forte 63 D. H. LAWRENCE Ballad of Another Ophelia 67 Illicit 69 Fireflies in the Corn 70 A Woman and Her Dead Husband 72 The Mowers 75 Scent of Irises 76 Green 78 AMY LOWELL Venus Transiens 81 The Travelling Bear 83 The Letter 85 Grotesque 86 Bullion 87 Solitaire 88 The Bombardment 89 BIBLIOGRAPHY 93 Thanks are due to the editors of _Poetry_, _The Smart Set_, _Poetry and Drama_, and _The Egoist_ for their courteous permission to reprint certain of these poems which have been copyrighted to them. RICHARD ALDINGTON RICHARD ALDINGTON CHILDHOOD I The bitterness, the misery, the wretchedness of childhood Put me out of love with God. I can't believe in God's goodness; I can believe In many avenging gods. Most of all I believe In gods of bitter dullness, Cruel local gods Who seared my childhood. II I've seen people put A chrysalis in a match-box, "To see," they told me, "what sort of moth would come." But when it broke its shell It slipped and stumbled and fell about its prison And tried to climb to the light For space to dry its wings. That's how I was. Somebody found my chrysalis And shut it in a match-box. My shrivelled wings were beaten, Shed their colours in dusty scales Before the box was opened For the moth to fly. And then it was too late, Because the beauty a child has, And the beautiful things it learns before its birth, Were shed, like moth-scales, from me. III I hate that town; I hate the town I lived in when I was little; I hate to think of it. There were always clouds, smoke, rain In that dingy little valley. It rained; it always rained. I think I never saw the sun until I was nine-- And then it was too late; Everything's too late after the first seven years. That long street we lived in Was duller than a drain And nearly as dingy. There were the big College And the pseudo-Gothic town-hall. There were the sordid provincial shops-- The grocer's, and the shops for women, The shop where I bought transfers, And the piano and gramaphone shop Where I used to stand Staring at the huge shiny pianos and at the pictures Of a white dog looking into a gramaphone. How dull and greasy and grey and sordid it was! On wet days--it was always wet-- I used to kneel on a chair And look at it from the window. The dirty yellow trams Dragged noisily along With a clatter of wheels and bells And a humming of wires overhead. They threw up the filthy rain-water from the hollow lines And then the water ran back Full of brownish foam bubbles. There was nothing else to see-- It was all so dull-- Except a few grey legs under shiny black umbrellas Running along the grey shiny pavements; Sometimes there was a waggon Whose horses made a strange loud hollow sound With their hoofs Through the silent rain. And there was a grey museum Full of dead birds and dead insects and dead animals And a few relics of the Romans--dead also. There was the sea-front, A long asphalt walk with a bleak road beside it, Three piers, a row of houses, And a salt dirty smell from the little harbour. I was like a moth--- Like one of those grey Emperor moths Which flutter through the vines at Capri. And that damned little town was my match-box, Against whose sides I beat and beat Until my wings were torn and faded, and dingy As that damned little town. IV At school it was just dull as that dull High Street. They taught me pothooks-- I wanted to be alone, although I was so little, Alone, away from the rain, the dingyness, the dullness, Away somewhere else-- The town was dull; The front was dull; The High Street and the other street were dull-- And there was a public park, I remember, And that was damned dull too, With its beds of geraniums no one was allowed to pick, And its clipped lawns you weren't allowed to walk on, And the gold-fish pond you mustn't paddle in, And the gate made out of a whale's jaw-bones, And the swings, which were for "Board-School children," And its gravel paths. And on Sundays they rang the bells, From Baptist and Evangelical and Catholic churches. They had the Salvation Army. I was taken to a High Church; The parson's name was Mowbray, "Which is a good name but he thinks too much of it--" That's what I heard people say. I took a little black book To that cold, grey, damp, smelling church, And I had to sit on a hard bench, Wriggle off it to kneel down when they sang psalms, And wriggle off it to kneel down when they prayed-- And then there was nothing to do Except to play trains with the hymn-books. There was nothing to see, Nothing to do, Nothing to play with, Except that in an empty room upstairs There was a large tin box Containing reproductions of the Magna Charta, Of the Declaration of Independence And of a letter from Raleigh after the Armada. There were also several packets of stamps, Yellow and blue Guatemala parrots, Blue stags and red baboons and birds from Sarawak, Indians and Men-of-war From the United States, And the green and red portraits Of King Francobollo Of Italy. V I don't believe in God. I do believe in avenging gods Who plague us for sins we never sinned But who avenge us. That's why I'll never have a child, Never shut up a chrysalis in a match-box For the moth to spoil and crush its bright colours, Beating its wings against the dingy prison-wall. THE POPLAR Why do you always stand there shivering Between the white stream and the road? The people pass through the dust On bicycles, in carts, in motor-cars; The waggoners go by at dawn; The lovers walk on the grass path at night. Stir from your roots, walk, poplar! You are more beautiful than they are. I know that the white wind loves you, Is always kissing you and turning up The white lining of your green petticoat. The sky darts through you like blue rain, And the grey rain drips on your flanks And loves you. And I have seen the moon Slip his silver penny into your pocket As you straightened your hair; And the white mist curling and hesitating Like a bashful lover about your knees. I know you, poplar; I have watched you since I was ten. But if you had a little real love, A little strength, You would leave your nonchalant idle lovers And go walking down the white road Behind the waggoners. There are beautiful beeches down beyond the hill. Will you always stand there shivering? ROUND-POND Water ruffled and speckled by galloping wind Which puffs and spurts it into tiny pashing breakers Dashed with lemon-yellow afternoon sunlight. The shining of the sun upon the water Is like a scattering of gold crocus-petals In a long wavering irregular flight. The water is cold to the eye As the wind to the cheek. In the budding chestnuts Whose sticky buds glimmer and are half-burst open The starlings make their clitter-clatter; And the blackbirds in the grass Are getting as fat as the pigeons. Too-hoo, this is brave; Even the cold wind is seeking a new mistress. DAISY "_Plus quam se atque suos amavit omnes, Nunc_..." CATULLUS. You were my playmate by the sea. We swam together. Your girl's body had no breasts. We found prawns among the rocks; We liked to feel the sun and to do nothing; In the evening we played games with the others. It made me glad to be by you. Sometimes I kissed you, And you were always glad to kiss me; But I was afraid--I was only fourteen. And I had quite forgotten you, You and your name. To-day I pass through the streets. She who touches my arm and talks with me Is--who knows?--Helen of Sparta, Dryope, Laodamia.... And there are you A whore in Oxford Street. EPIGRAMS A GIRL You were that clear Sicilian fluting That pains our thought even now. You were the notes Of cold fantastic grief Some few found beautiful. NEW LOVE She has new leaves After her dead flowers, Like the little almond-tree Which the frost hurt. OCTOBER The beech-leaves are silver For lack of the tree's blood. At your kiss my lips Become like the autumn beech-leaves. THE FAUN SEES SNOW FOR THE FIRST TIME Zeus, Brazen-thunder-hurler, Cloud-whirler, son-of-Kronos, Send vengeance on these Oreads Who strew White frozen flecks of mist and cloud Over the brown trees and the tufted grass Of the meadows, where the stream Runs black through shining banks Of bluish white. Zeus, Are the halls of heaven broken up That you flake down upon me Feather-strips of marble? Dis and Styx! When I stamp my hoof The frozen-cloud-specks jam into the cleft So that I reel upon two slippery points.... Fool, to stand here cursing When I might be running! LEMURES In Nineveh And beyond Nineveh In the dusk They were afraid. In Thebes of Egypt In the dusk They chanted of them to the dead. In my Lesbos and Achaia Where the God dwelt We knew them. Now men say "They are not": But in the dusk Ere the white sun comes-- A gay child that bears a white candle-- I am afraid of their rustling, Of their terrible silence, The menace of their secrecy. H. D. H. D. THE POOL Are you alive? I touch you. You quiver like a sea-fish. I cover you with my net. What are you--banded one? THE GARDEN I You are clear, O rose, cut in rock, hard as the descent of hail. I could scrape the colour from the petal, like spilt dye from a rock. If I could break you I could break a tree. If I could stir I could break a tree, I could break you. II O wind, rend open the heat, cut apart the heat, rend it sideways. Fruit can not drop through this thick air: fruit can not fall into heat that presses up and blunts the points of pears and rounds the grapes. Cut the heat, plough through it, turning it on either side of your path. SEA LILY Reed, slashed and torn, but doubly rich-- such great heads as yours drift upon temple-steps, but you are shattered in the wind. Myrtle-bark is flecked from you, scales are dashed from your stem, sand cuts your petal, furrows it with hard edge, like flint on a bright stone. Yet though the whole wind slash at your bark, you are lifted up, aye--though it hiss to cover you with froth. SEA IRIS I Weed, moss-weed, root tangled in sand, sea-iris, brittle flower, one petal like a shell is broken, and you print a shadow like a thin twig. Fortunate one, scented and stinging, rigid myrrh-bud, camphor-flower, sweet and salt--you are wind in our nostrils. II Do the murex-fishers drench you as they pass? Do your roots drag up colour from the sand? Have they slipped gold under you; rivets of gold? Band of iris-flowers above the waves, You are painted blue, painted like a fresh prow stained among the salt weeds. SEA ROSE Rose, harsh rose, marred and with stint of petals, meagre flower, thin, sparse of leaf. more precious than a wet rose, single on a stem-- you are caught in the drift. Stunted, with small leaf, you are flung on the sands, you are lifted in the crisp sand that drives in the wind. Can the spice-rose drip such acrid fragrance hardened in a leaf? OREAD Whirl up, sea-- Whirl your pointed pines, Splash your great pines On our rocks, Hurl your green over us, Cover us with your pools of fir. ORION DEAD [_Artemis speaks_] The cornel-trees uplift from the furrows, the roots at their bases strike lower through the barley-sprays. So arise and face me. I am poisoned with the rage of song. _I once pierced the flesh of the wild-deer, now am I afraid to touch the blue and the gold-veined hyacinths?_ _I will tear the full flowers and the little heads of the grape-hyacinths. I will strip the life from the bulb until the ivory layers lie like narcissus petals on the black earth._ _Arise, lest I bend an ash-tree into a taut bow, and slay--and tear all the roots from the earth._ The cornel-wood blazes and strikes through the barley-sprays, but I have lost heart for this. I break a staff. I break the tough branch. I know no light in the woods. I have lost pace with the winds. JOHN GOULD FLETCHER JOHN GOULD FLETCHER THE BLUE SYMPHONY I The darkness rolls upward. The thick darkness carries with it Rain and a ravel of cloud. The sun comes forth upon earth. Palely the dawn Leaves me facing timidly Old gardens sunken: And in the gardens is water. Sombre wreck--autumnal leaves; Shadowy roofs In the blue mist, And a willow-branch that is broken. O old pagodas of my soul, how you glittered across green trees! Blue and cool: Blue, tremulously, Blow faint puffs of smoke Across sombre pools. The damp green smell of rotted wood; And a heron that cries from out the water. II Through the upland meadows I go alone. For I dreamed of someone last night Who is waiting for me. Flower and blossom, tell me do you know of her? Have the rocks hidden her voice? They are very blue and still. Long upward road that is leading me, Light hearted I quit you, For the long loose ripples of the meadow-grass Invite me to dance upon them. Quivering grass Daintily poised For her foot's tripping. O blown clouds, could I only race up like you, Oh, the last slopes that are sun-drenched and steep! Look, the sky! Across black valleys Rise blue-white aloft Jagged, unwrinkled mountains, ranges of death. Solitude. Silence. III One chuckles by the brook for me: One rages under the stone. One makes a spout of his mouth, One whispers--one is gone. One over there on the water Spreads cold ripples For me Enticingly. The vast dark trees Flow like blue veils Of tears Into the water. Sour sprites, Moaning and chuckling, What have you hidden from me? "In the palace of the blue stone she lies forever Bound hand and foot." Was it the wind That rattled the reeds together? Dry reeds, A faint shiver in the grasses. IV On the left hand there is a temple: And a palace on the right-hand side. Foot-passengers in scarlet Pass over the glittering tide. Under the bridge The old river flows Low and monotonous Day after day. I have heard and have seen All the news that has been: Autumn's gold and Spring's green! Now in my palace I see foot-passengers Crossing the river: Pilgrims of Autumn In the afternoons. Lotus pools: Petals in the water. Such are my dreams. For me silks are outspread. I take my ease, unthinking. V And now the lowest pine-branch Is drawn across the disk of the sun. Old friends who will forget me soon I must go on, Towards those blue death-mountains I have forgot so long. In the marsh grasses There lies forever My last treasure, With the hope of my heart. The ice is glazing over, Torn lanterns flutter, On the leaves is snow. In the frosty evening Toll the old bell for me Once, in the sleepy temple. Perhaps my soul will hear. Afterglow: Before the stars peep I shall creep out into darkness. LONDON EXCURSION 'BUS Great walls of green, City that is afar. We gallop along Alert and penetrating, Roads open about us, Housetops keep at a distance. Soft-curling tendrils, Swim backwards from our image: We are a red bulk, Projecting the angular city, in shadows, at our feet. Black coarse-squared shapes, Hump and growl and assemble. It is the city that takes us to itself, Vast thunder riding down strange skies. An arch under which we slide Divides our lives for us: After we have passed it We know we have left something behind We shall not see again. Passivity, Gravity, Are changed into hesitating, clanking pistons and wheels. The trams come whooping up one by one, Yellow pulse-beats spreading through darkness. Music-hall posters squall out: The passengers shrink together, I enter indelicately into all their souls. It is a glossy skating rink, On which winged spirals clasp and bend each other: And suddenly slide backwards towards the centre, After a too-brief release. A second arch is a wall To separate our souls from rotted cables Of stale greenness. A shadow cutting off the country from us, Out of it rise red walls. Yet I revolt: I bend, I twist myself I curl into a million convolutions: Pink shapes without angle, Anything to be soft and woolly, Anything to escape. Sudden lurch of clamours, Two more viaducts Stretch out red yokes of steel, Crushing my rebellion. My soul Shrieking Is jolted forwards by a long hot bar-- Into direct distances. It pierces the small of my back. APPROACH Only this morning I sang of roses; Now I see with a swift stare, The city forcing up through the air Black cubes close piled and some half-crumbling over. My roses are battered into pulp: And there swells up in me Sudden desire for something changeless, Thrusts of sunless rock Unmelted by hissing wheels. ARRIVAL Here is too swift a movement, The rest is too still. It is a red sea Licking The housefronts. They quiver gently From base to summit. Ripples of impulse run through them, Flattering resistance. Soon they will fall; Already smoke yearns upward. Clouds of dust, Crash of collapsing cubes. I prefer deeper patience, Monotony of stalled beasts. O angle-builders, Vainly have you prolonged your effort, For I descend amid you, Past rungs and slopes of curving slippery steel. WALK Sudden struggle for foothold on the pavement, Familiar ascension. I do not heed the city any more, It has given me a duty to perform. I pass along nonchalantly, Insinuating myself into self-baffling movements. Impalpable charm of back streets In which I find myself: Cool spaces filled with shadow. Passers-by, white hammocks in the sunlight. Bulging outcrush into old tumult; Attainment, as of a narrow harbour, Of some shop forgotten by traffic With cool-corridored walls. 'BUS-TOP Black shapes bending, Taxicabs crush in the crowd. The tops are each a shining square Shuttles that steadily press through woolly fabric. Drooping blossom, Gas-standards over Spray out jingling tumult Of white-hot rays. Monotonous domes of bowler-hats Vibrate in the heat. Silently, easily we sway through braying traffic, Down the crowded street. The tumult crouches over us, Or suddenly drifts to one side. TRANSPOSITION I am blown like a leaf Hither and thither. The city about me Resolves itself into sound of many voices, Rustling and fluttering, Leaves shaken by the breeze. A million forces ignore me, I know not why, I am drunken with it all. Suddenly I feel an immense will Stored up hitherto and unconscious till this instant. Projecting my body Across a street, in the face of all its traffic. I dart and dash: I do not know why I go. These people watch me, I yield them my adventure. Lazily I lounge through labyrinthine corridors, And with eyes suddenly altered, I peer into an office I do not know, And wonder at a startled face that penetrates my own. Roses--pavement-- I will take all this city away with me-- People--uproar--the pavement jostling and flickering-- Women with incredible eyelids: Dandies in spats: Hard-faced throng discussing me--I know them all. I will take them away with me, I insistently rob them of their essence, I must have it all before night, To sing amid my green. I glide out unobservant In the midst of the traffic Blown like a leaf Hither and thither, Till the city resolves itself into a clamour of voices, Crying hollowly, like the wind rustling through the forest, Against the frozen housefronts: Lost in the glitter of a million movements. PERIPETEIA I can no longer find a place for myself: I go. There are too many things to detain me, But the force behind is reckless. Noise, uproar, movement Slide me outwards, Black sleet shivering Down red walls. In thick jungles of green, this gyration, My centrifugal folly, Through roaring dust and futility spattered, Will find its own repose. Golden lights will gleam out sullenly into silence, Before I return. MID-FLIGHT We rush, a black throng, Straight upon darkness: Motes scattered By the arc's rays. Over the bridge fluttering, It is theatre-time, No one heeds. Lost amid greenness We will sleep all night; And in the morning Coming forth, we will shake wet wings Over the settled dust of to-day. The city hurls its cobbled streets after us, To drive us faster. We must attain the night Before endless processions Of lamps Push us back. A clock with quivering hands Leaps to the trajectory-angle of our departure. We leave behind pale traces of achievement: Fires that we kindled but were too tired to put out, Broad gold fans brushing softly over dark walls, Stifled uproar of night. We are already cast forth: The signal of our departure Jerks down before we have learned we are to go. STATION We descend Into a wall of green. Straggling shapes: Afterwards none are seen. I find myself Alone. I look back: The city has grown. One grey wall Windowed, unlit. Heavily, night Crushes the face of it. I go on. My memories freeze Like birds' cry In hollow trees. I go on. Up and outright To the hostility Of night. F. S. FLINT F. S. FLINT TREES Elm trees and the leaf the boy in me hated long ago-- rough and sandy. Poplars and their leaves, tender, smooth to the fingers, and a secret in their smell I have forgotten. Oaks and forest glades, heart aching with wonder, fear: their bitter mast. Willows and the scented beetle we put in our handkerchiefs; and the roots of one that spread into a river: nakedness, water and joy. Hawthorn, white and odorous with blossom, framing the quiet fields, and swaying flowers and grasses, and the hum of bees. Oh, these are the things that are with me now, in the town; and I am grateful for this minute of my manhood. LUNCH Frail beauty, green, gold and incandescent whiteness, narcissi, daffodils, you have brought me Spring and longing, wistfulness, in your irradiance. Therefore, I sit here among the people, dreaming, and my heart aches with all the hawthorn blossom, the bees humming, the light wind upon the poplars, and your warmth and your love and your eyes ... they smile and know me. MALADY I move; perhaps I have wakened; this is a bed; this is a room; and there is light.... Darkness! Have I performed the dozen acts or so that make me the man men see? The door opens, and on the landing-- quiet! I can see nothing: the pain, the weariness! Stairs, banisters, a handrail: all indistinguishable. One step farther down or up, and why? But up is harder. Down! Down to this white blur; it gives before me. Me? I extend all ways: I fit into the walls and they pull me. Light? Light! I know it is light. Stillness, and then, something moves: green, oh green, dazzling lightning! And joy! this is my room; there are my books, there the piano, there the last bar I wrote, there the last line, and oh the sunlight! A parrot screeches. ACCIDENT Dear one! you sit there in the corner of the carriage; and you do not know me; and your eyes forbid. Is it the dirt, the squalor, the wear of human bodies, and the dead faces of our neighbours? These are but symbols. You are proud; I praise you; your mouth is set; you see beyond us; and you see nothing. I have the vision of your calm, cold face, and of the black hair that waves above it; I watch you; I love you; I desire you. There is a quiet here within the thud-thud of the wheels upon the railway. There is a quiet here within my heart, but tense and tender.... This is my station.... FRAGMENT ... That night I loved you in the candlelight. Your golden hair strewed the sweet whiteness of the pillows and the counterpane. O the darkness of the corners, the warm air, and the stars framed in the casement of the ships' lights! The waves lapped into the harbour; the boats creaked; a man's voice sang out on the quay; and you loved me. In your love were the tall tree fuchsias, the blue of the hortensias, the scarlet nasturtiums, the trees on the hills, the roads we had covered, and the sea that had borne your body before the rocks of Hartland. You loved me with these and with the kindness of people, country folk, sailors and fishermen, and the old lady who had lodged us and supped us. You loved me with yourself that was these and more, changed as the earth is changed into the bloom of flowers. HOUSES Evening and quiet: a bird trills in the poplar trees behind the house with the dark green door across the road. Into the sky, the red earthenware and the galvanised iron chimneys thrust their cowls. The hoot of the steamers on the Thames is plain. No wind; the trees merge, green with green; a car whirs by; footsteps and voices take their pitch in the key of dusk, far-off and near, subdued. Solid and square to the world the houses stand, their windows blocked with venetian blinds. Nothing will move them. EAU-FORTE On black bare trees a stale cream moon hangs dead, and sours the unborn buds. Two gaunt old hacks, knees bent, heads low, tug, tired and spent, an old horse tram. Damp smoke, rank mist fill the dark square; and round the bend six bullocks come. A hobbling, dirt-grimed drover guides their clattering feet to death and shame. D. H. LAWRENCE D. H. LAWRENCE BALLAD OF ANOTHER OPHELIA Oh, the green glimmer of apples in the orchard, Lamps in a wash of rain, Oh, the wet walk of my brown hen through the stackyard, Oh, tears on the window pane! Nothing now will ripen the bright green apples, Full of disappointment and of rain, Brackish they will taste, of tears, when the yellow dapples Of Autumn tell the withered tale again. All round the yard it is cluck, my brown hen, Cluck, and the rain-wet wings, Cluck, my marigold bird, and again Cluck for your yellow darlings. For the grey rat found the gold thirteen Huddled away in the dark, Flutter for a moment, oh the beast is quick and keen, Extinct one yellow-fluffy spark. * * * * * * Once I had a lover bright like running water, Once his face was laughing like the sky; Open like the sky looking down in all its laughter On the buttercups--and buttercups was I. What then is there hidden in the skirts of all the blossom, What is peeping from your wings, oh mother hen? 'T is the sun who asks the question, in a lovely haste for wisdom-- What a lovely haste for wisdom is in men? Yea, but it is cruel when undressed is all the blossom, And her shift is lying white upon the floor, That a grey one, like a shadow, like a rat, a thief, a rain-storm Creeps upon her then and gathers in his store. Oh, the grey garner that is full of half-grown apples, Oh, the golden sparkles laid extinct--! And oh, behind the cloud sheaves, like yellow autumn dapples, Did you see the wicked sun that winked? ILLICIT In front of the sombre mountains, a faint, lost ribbon of rainbow, And between us and it, the thunder; And down below, in the green wheat, the labourers Stand like dark stumps, still in the green wheat. You are near to me, and your naked feet in their sandals, And through the scent of the balcony's naked timber I distinguish the scent of your hair; so now the limber Lightning falls from heaven. Adown the pale-green, glacier-river floats A dark boat through the gloom--and whither? The thunder roars. But still we have each other. The naked lightnings in the heaven dither And disappear. What have we but each other? The boat has gone. FIREFLIES IN THE CORN _A Woman taunts her Lover_ Look at the little darlings in the corn! The rye is taller than you, who think yourself So high and mighty: look how its heads are borne Dark and proud in the sky, like a number of knights Passing with spears and pennants and manly scorn. And always likely!--Oh, if I could ride With my head held high-serene against the sky Do you think I'd have a creature like you at my side With your gloom and your doubt that you love me? O darling rye, How I adore you for your simple pride! And those bright fireflies wafting in between And over the swaying cornstalks, just above All their dark-feathered helmets, like little green Stars come low and wandering here for love Of this dark earth, and wandering all serene--! How I adore you, you happy things, you dears Riding the air and carrying all the time Your little lanterns behind you: it cheers My heart to see you settling and trying to climb The cornstalks, tipping with fire their spears. All over the corn's dim motion, against the blue Dark sky of night, the wandering glitter, the swarm Of questing brilliant things:--you joy, you true Spirit of careless joy: ah, how I warm My poor and perished soul at the joy of you! _The Man answers and she mocks_ You're a fool, woman. I love you and you know I do! --Lord, take his love away, it makes him whine. And I give you everything that you want me to. --Lord, dear Lord, do you think he ever _can_ shine? A WOMAN AND HER DEAD HUSBAND Ah, stern cold man, How can you lie so relentless hard While I wash you with weeping water! Ah, face, carved hard and cold, You have been like this, on your guard Against me, since death began. You masquerader! How can you shame to act this part Of unswerving indifference to me? It is not you; why disguise yourself Against me, to break my heart, You evader? You've a warm mouth, A good warm mouth always sooner to soften Even than your sudden eyes. Ah cruel, to keep your mouth Relentless, however often I kiss it in drouth. You are not he. Who are you, lying in his place on the bed And rigid and indifferent to me? His mouth, though he laughed or sulked Was always warm and red And good to me. And his eyes could see The white moon hang like a breast revealed By the slipping shawl of stars, Could see the small stars tremble As the heart beneath did wield Systole, diastole. And he showed it me So, when he made his love to me; And his brows like rocks on the sea jut out, And his eyes were deep like the sea With shadow, and he looked at me, Till I sank in him like the sea, Awfully. Oh, he was multiform-- Which then was he among the manifold? The gay, the sorrowful, the seer? I have loved a rich race of men in one-- --But not this, this never-warm Metal-cold--! Ah, masquerader! With your steel face white-enamelled Were you he, after all, and I never Saw you or felt you in kissing? --Yet sometimes my heart was trammelled With fear, evader! You will not stir, Nor hear me, not a sound. --Then it was you-- And all this time you were Like this when I lived with you. It is not true, I am frightened, I am frightened of you And of everything. O God!--God too Has deceived me in everything, In everything. THE MOWERS There's four men mowing down by the river; I can hear the sound of the scythe strokes, four Sharp breaths swishing:--yea, but I Am sorry for what's i' store. The first man out o' the four that's mowin' Is mine: I mun claim him once for all: --But I'm sorry for him, on his young feet, knowin' None o' the trouble he's led to stall. As he sees me bringin' the dinner, he lifts His head as proud as a deer that looks Shoulder-deep out o' th' corn: and wipes His scythe blade bright, unhooks His scythe stone, an' over the grass to me! --Lad, tha 's gotten a chilt in me, An' a man an' a father tha 'lt ha'e to be, My young slim lad, an' I'm sorry for thee. SCENT OF IRISES A faint, sickening scent of irises Persists all morning. Here in a jar on the table A fine proud spike of purple irises Rising above the class-room litter, makes me unable To see the class's lifted and bended faces Save in a broken pattern, amid purple and gold and sable. I can smell the gorgeous bog-end, in its breathless Dazzle of may-blobs, when the marigold glare overcast You with fire on your brow and your cheeks and your chin as you dipped Your face in your marigold bunch, to touch and contrast Your own dark mouth with the bridal faint lady-smocks Dissolved in the golden sorcery you should not outlast. You amid the bog-end's yellow incantation, You sitting in the cowslips of the meadows above, --Me, your shadow on the bog-flame, flowery may-blobs, Me full length in the cowslips, muttering you love-- You, your soul like a lady-smock, lost, evanescent, You, with your face all rich, like the sheen on a dove--! You are always asking, do I remember, remember The buttercup bog-end where the flowers rose up And kindled you over deep with a coat of gold? You ask again, do the healing days close up The open darkness which then drew us in, The dark that swallows all, and nought throws up. You upon the dry, dead beech-leaves, in the fire of night Burnt like a sacrifice;--you invisible-- Only the fire of darkness, and the scent of you! --And yes, thank God, it still is possible The healing days shall close the darkness up Wherein I breathed you like a smoke or dew. Like vapour, dew, or poison. Now, thank God, The golden fire has gone, and your face is ash Indistinguishable in the grey, chill day, The night has burnt you out, at last the good Dark fire burns on untroubled without clash Of you upon the dead leaves saying me yea. GREEN The sky was apple-green, The sky was green wine held up in the sun, The moon was a golden petal between. She opened her eyes, and green They shone, clear like flowers undone, For the first time, now for the first time seen. AMY LOWELL AMY LOWELL VENUS TRANSIENS Tell me, Was Venus more beautiful Than you are, When she topped The crinkled waves, Drifting shoreward On her plaited shell? Was Botticelli's vision Fairer than mine; And were the painted rosebuds He tossed his lady, Of better worth Than the words I blow about you To cover your too great loveliness As with a gauze Of misted silver? For me, You stand poised In the blue and buoyant air, Cinctured by bright winds, Treading the sunlight. And the waves which precede you Ripple and stir The sands at my feet. THE TRAVELLING BEAR Grass-blades push up between the cobblestones And catch the sun on their flat sides Shooting it back, Gold and emerald, Into the eyes of passers-by. And over the cobblestones, Square-footed and heavy, Dances the trained bear. Tho cobbles cut his feet, And he has a ring in his nose Which hurts him; But still he dances, For the keeper pricks him with a sharp stick, Under his fur. Now the crowd gapes and chuckles, And boys and young women shuffle their feet in time to the dancing bear. They see him wobbling Against a dust of emerald and gold, And they are greatly delighted. The legs of the bear shake with fatigue And his back aches, And the shining grass-blades dazzle and confuse him. But still he dances, Because of the little, pointed stick. THE LETTER Little cramped words scrawling all over the paper Like draggled fly's legs, What can you tell of the flaring moon Through the oak leaves? Or of my uncurtained window and the bare floor Spattered with moonlight? Your silly quirks and twists have nothing in them Of blossoming hawthorns, And this paper is dull, crisp, smooth, virgin of loveliness Beneath my hand. I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against The want of you; Of squeezing it into little inkdrops, And posting it. And I scald alone, here, under the fire Of the great moon. GROTESQUE Why do the lilies goggle their tongues at me When I pluck them; And writhe, and twist, And strangle themselves against my fingers, So that I can hardly weave the garland For your hair? Why do they shriek your name And spit at me When I would cluster them? Must I kill them To make them lie still, And send you a wreath of lolling corpses To turn putrid and soft On your forehead While you dance? BULLION My thoughts Chink against my ribs And roll about like silver hail-stones. I should like to spill them out, And pour them, all shining, Over you. But my heart is shut upon them And holds them straitly. Come, You! and open my heart; That my thoughts torment me no longer, But glitter in your hair. SOLITAIRE When night drifts along the streets of the city, And sifts down between the uneven roofs, My mind begins to peek and peer. It plays at ball in old, blue Chinese gardens, And shakes wrought dice-cups in Pagan temples, Amid the broken flutings of white pillars. It dances with purple and yellow crocuses in its hair, And its feet shine as they flutter over drenched grasses. How light and laughing my mind is, When all the good folk have put out their bed-room candles, And the city is still! THE BOMBARDMENT Slowly, without force, the rain drops into the city. It stops a moment on the carved head of Saint John, then slides on again, slipping and trickling over his stone cloak. It splashes from the lead conduit of a gargoyle, and falls from it in turmoil on the stones in the Cathedral square. Where are the people, and why does the fretted steeple sweep about in the sky? Boom! The sound swings against the rain. Boom, again! After it, only water rushing in the gutters, and the turmoil from the spout of the gargoyle. Silence. Ripples and mutters. Boom! The room is damp, but warm. Little flashes swarm about from the firelight. The lustres of the chandelier are bright, and clusters of rubies leap in the bohemian glasses on the _étagère_. Her hands are restless, but the white masses of her hair are quite still. Boom! Will it never cease to torture, this iteration! Boom! The vibration shatters a glass on the _étagère_. It lies there formless and glowing, with all its crimson gleams shot out of pattern, spilled, flowing red, blood-red. A thin bell-note pricks through the silence. A door creaks. The old lady speaks: "Victor, clear away that broken glass." "Alas! Madame, the bohemian glass!" "Yes, Victor, one hundred years ago my father brought it--" Boom! The room shakes, the servitor quakes. Another goblet shivers and breaks. Boom! It rustles at the window-pane, the smooth, streaming rain, and he is shut within its clash and murmur. Inside is his candle, his table, his ink, his pen, and his dreams. He is thinking, and the walls are pierced with beams of sunshine, slipping through young green. A fountain tosses itself up at the blue sky, and through the spattered water in the basin he can see copper carp, lazily floating among cold leaves. A wind-harp in a cedar-tree grieves and whispers, and words blow into his brain, bubbled, iridescent, shooting up like flowers of fire, higher and higher. Boom! The flame-flowers snap on their slender stems. The fountain rears up in long broken spears of disheveled water and flattens into the earth. Boom! And there is only the room, the table, the candle, and the sliding rain. Again, Boom!--Boom!--Boom! He stuffs his fingers into his ears. He sees corpses, and cries out in fright. Boom! It is night, and they are shelling the city! Boom! Boom! A child wakes and is afraid, and weeps in the darkness. What has made the bed shake? "Mother, where are you? I am awake." "Hush, my Darling, I am here." "But, Mother, something so queer happened, the room shook." Boom! "Oh! What is it? What is the matter?" Boom! "Where is Father? I am so afraid." Boom! The child sobs and shrieks. The house trembles and creaks. Boom! Retorts, globes, tubes, and phials lie shattered. All his trials oozing across the floor. The life that was his choosing, lonely, urgent, goaded by a hope, all gone. A weary man in a ruined laboratory, that was his story. Boom! Gloom and ignorance, and the jig of drunken brutes. Diseases like snakes crawling over the earth, leaving trails of slime. Wails from people burying their dead. Through the window he can see the rocking steeple. A ball of fire falls on the lead of the roof, and the sky tears apart on a spike of flame. Up the spire, behind the lacings of stone, zig-zagging in and out of the carved tracings, squirms the fire. It spouts like yellow wheat from the gargoyles, coils round the head of Saint John, and aureoles him in light. It leaps into the night and hisses against the rain. The Cathedral is a burning stain on the white, wet night. Boom! The Cathedral is a torch, and the houses next to it begin to scorch. Boom! The bohemian glass on the _étagère_ is no longer there. Boom! A stalk of flame sways against the red damask curtains. The old lady cannot walk. She watches the creeping stalk and counts. Boom!--Boom!--Boom! The poet rushes into the street, and the rain wraps him in a sheet of silver. But it is threaded with gold and powdered with scarlet beads. The city burns. Quivering, spearing, thrusting, lapping, streaming, run the flames. Over roofs, and walls, and shops, and stalls. Smearing its gold on the sky the fire dances, lances itself through the doors, and lisps and chuckles along the floors. The child wakes again and screams at the yellow petalled flower flickering at the window. The little red lips of flame creep along the ceiling beams. The old man sits among his broken experiments and looks at the burning Cathedral. Now the streets are swarming with people. They seek shelter and crowd into the cellars. They shout and call, and over all, slowly and without force, the rain drops into the city. Boom! And the steeple crashes down among the people. Boom! Boom, again! The water rushes along the gutters. The fire roars and mutters. Boom! THE END BIBLIOGRAPHY BIBLIOGRAPHY JOHN GOULD FLETCHER _Fire and Wine._ Grant Richards, Ltd., London, 1913. _Fool's Gold._ Max Goschen, London, 1913. _The Dominant City._ Max Goschen, London, 1913. _The Book of Nature._ Constable & Co., London, 1913. _Visions of the Evening._ Erskine McDonald, London, 1913. _Irradiations: Sand and Spray._ Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1914. F. S. FLINT _The Net of Stars._ Elkin Mathews, London, 1909. D. H. LAWRENCE _Love Poems and Others._ Duckworth & Co., London, 1913. Prose: _The White Peacock._ William Heinemann, London, 1911. _The Trespasser._ Duckworth & Co., London, 1912. _Sons and Lovers._ Duckworth & Co., London, 1913. Drama: _The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd._ Mitchell Kennerley, New York, 1914. AMY LOWELL _A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass._ Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1912. The Macmillan Company, New York, 1914. _Sword Blades and Poppy Seed._ The Macmillan Company, New York; and Macmillan & Co., London, 1914. The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A 
30279	----	[Illustration: Y^e Deacon] The One Hoss Shay _With its Companion Poems_ How the Old Horse Won the Bet & The Broomstick Train By Oliver Wendell Holmes _With Illustrations by_ Howard Pyle [Illustration] _Boston and New York_ Houghton, Mifflin and Company The Riverside Press, Cambridge M DCCC XCII Copyright, 1858, 1877, 1886, and 1890, BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. Copyright, 1891, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. _All rights reserved._ _The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A._ Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. Preface My publishers suggested the bringing together of the three poems here presented to the reader as being to some extent alike in their general character. "The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay" is a perfectly intelligible conception, whatever material difficulties it presents. It is conceivable that a being of an order superior to humanity should so understand the conditions of matter that he could construct a machine which should go to pieces, if not into its constituent atoms, at a given moment of the future. The mind may take a certain pleasure in this picture of the impossible. The event follows as a logical consequence of the presupposed condition of things. There is a practical lesson to be got out of the story. Observation shows us in what point any particular mechanism is most likely to give way. In a wagon, for instance, the weak point is where the axle enters the hub or nave. When the wagon breaks down, three times out of four, I think, it is at this point that the accident occurs. The workman should see to it that this part should never give way; then find the next vulnerable place, and so on, until he arrives logically at the perfect result attained by the deacon. * * * * * Unquestionably there is something a little like extravagance in "How the Old Horse won the Bet," which taxes the credulity of experienced horsemen. Still there have been a good many surprises in the history of the turf and the trotting course. The Godolphin Arabian was taken from ignoble drudgery to become the patriarch of the English racing stock. Old Dutchman was transferred from between the shafts of a cart to become a champion of the American trotters in his time. "Old Blue," a famous Boston horse of the early decades of this century, was said to trot a mile in less than three minutes, but I do not find any exact record of his achievements. Those who have followed the history of the American trotting horse are aware of the wonderful development of speed attained in these last years. The lowest time as yet recorded is by Maud S. in 2.08-3/4. * * * * * If there are any anachronisms or other inaccuracies in this story, the reader will please to remember that the narrator's memory is liable to be at fault, and if the event recorded interests him, will not worry over any little slips or stumbles. * * * * * The terrible witchcraft drama of 1692 has been seriously treated, as it well deserves to be. The story has been told in two large volumes by the Rev. Charles Wentworth Upham, and in a small and more succinct volume, based upon his work, by his daughter-in-law, Caroline E. Upham. The delusion commonly spoken of, as if it belonged to Salem, was more widely diffused through the towns of Essex County. Looking upon it as a pitiful and long dead and buried superstition, I trust my poem will no more offend the good people of Essex County than Tam O'Shanter worries the honest folk of Ayrshire. The localities referred to are those with which I am familiar in my drives about Essex County. O. W. H. _July, 1891._ [Illustration] List of Illustrations THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE. PAGE The Deacon _Frontispiece._ Half Title 11 The Masterpiece 12 "A chaise breaks down" 14 "The Deacon inquired of the village folk" 16 "Naow she'll dew" 18 "She was a wonder, and nothing less" 19 "Deacon and deaconess dropped away" 20 "Eighteen Hundred" 21 "Fifty-Five" 21 "Its hundredth year" 22 "A general flavor of mild decay" 23 "In another hour it will be worn out" 24 "The parson takes a drive" 25 "All at once the horse stood still" 26 "Then something decidedly like a spill" 27 "Just as bubbles do when they burst" 28 "End of the wonderful one-hoss-shay" 29 HOW THE OLD HORSE WON THE BET. Half Title 30 "The famous trotting ground" 31 "Many a noted steed" 32 "The Sunday swell" 33 "The jointed tandem" 34 "So shy with us, so free with these" 35 "The lovely bonnets beamed their smiles" 36 "I'll bet you two to one" 37 "Harnessed in his one-hoss-shay" 38 "The sexton ... led forth the horse" 40 "A sight to see" 41 "They lead him, limping, to the track" 42 "To limber out each stiffened joint" 43 "Something like a stride" 45 "A mighty stride he swung" 47 "Off went a shoe" 48 "And now the stand he rushes by" 50 "And off they spring" 51 "They follow at his heels" 52 "They're losing ground" 52 "He's distanced all the lot" 53 "Some took his time" 54 "Back in the one-hoss shay he went" 56 "A horse _can_ trot, for all he's old" 57 THE BROOMSTICK TRAIN. Half Title 58 "Clear the track" 59 "An Essex Deacon dropped in to call" 60 "The old dwellings" 61 "The small square windows" 61 "Dark, dim, Dante-like solitudes" 63 "Norman's Woe" 64 "The Screeching Woman of Marblehead" 65 "It isn't fair" 66 "You're a good old--fellow--come, let us go" 68 "See how tall they've grown" 69 "They called the cats" 70 "The Essex people had dreadful times" 71 "The withered hags were free" 72 "A strange sea-monster stole their bait" 74 "They could hear him twenty miles" 75 "They came ... at their master's call" 76 "You can hear her black cat's purr" 78 "Catch a gleam from her wicked eye" 79 Tail Piece 80 [Illustration] _The_ Deacon's Masterpiece _or the_ _Wonderful_ One-Hoss-Shay _A Logical Story_ [Illustration] The Deacon's Masterpiece Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, That was built in such a logical way It ran a hundred years to a day, And then, of a sudden, it--ah, but stay, I'll tell you what happened without delay, Scaring the parson into fits, Frightening people out of their wits,-- Have you ever heard of that, I say? Seventeen hundred and fifty-five, _Georgius Secundus_ was then alive,-- Snuffy old drone from the German hive; That was the year when Lisbon-town Saw the earth open and gulp her down, And Braddock's army was done so brown, Left without a scalp to its crown. It was on the terrible earthquake-day That the Deacon finished the one-hoss-shay. Now in building of chaises, I tell you what, There is always _somewhere_ a weakest spot,-- In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill, In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill, [Illustration: "A chaise breaks down but doesn't wear out"] In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace,--lurking still, Find it somewhere you must and will,-- Above or below, or within or without,-- And that's the reason, beyond a doubt, A chaise _breaks down_, but doesn't _wear out_. But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do, With an "I dew vum," or an "I tell _yeou_,") He would build one shay to beat the taown 'n' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun'; It should be so built that it _couldn'_ break daown! --"Fur," said the Deacon, "'t's mighty plain Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain; 'n' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain, Is only jest T' make that place uz strong uz the rest." So the Deacon inquired of the village folk Where he could find the strongest oak, That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke,-- [Illustration] That was for spokes and floor and sills; He sent for lancewood to make the thills; The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees, The panels of whitewood, that cuts like cheese, But lasts like iron for things like these; The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"-- Last of its timber,--they couldn't sell 'em, Never an axe had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lip Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died. That was the way he "put her through." "There!" said the Deacon, "naow she'll dew." Do! I tell you, I rather guess She was a wonder, and nothing less! [Illustration] [Illustration: "She was a wonder, and nothing less"] Colts grew horses, beards turned gray, Deacon and deaconess dropped away, Children and grandchildren--where were they? But there stood the stout old one-hoss-shay As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day! [Illustration] [Illustration: 1800] Eighteen Hundred;--it came and found The Deacon's Masterpiece strong and sound. Eighteen hundred increased by ten;-- "Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then. Eighteen hundred and twenty came;-- Running as usual; much the same. Thirty and forty at last arrive, And then come fifty, and FIFTY-FIVE. [Illustration: 1855] [Illustration] Little of all we value here Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year Without both feeling and looking queer. In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth, So far as I know, but a tree and truth. (This is a moral that runs at large; Take it.--You're welcome.--No extra charge.) [Illustration] First of November,--the Earthquake-day.-- There are traces of age in the one-hoss-shay, A general flavor of mild decay, But nothing local, as one may say. There couldn't be,--for the Deacon's art Had made it so like in every part That there wasn't a chance for one to start. For the wheels were just as strong as the thills, And the floor was just as strong as the sills, And the panels just as strong as the floor, And the whippletree neither less nor more, And the back-crossbar as strong as the fore, And spring and axle and hub _encore_, And yet, _as a whole_, it is past a doubt In another hour it will be _worn out_! [Illustration] First of November, 'Fifty-five! This morning the parson takes a drive. Now, small boys, get out of the way! Here comes the wonderful one-hoss-shay, Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay. "Huddup!" said the parson.--Off went they. [Illustration] [Illustration] The parson was working his Sunday's text,-- Had got to _fifthly_, and stopped perplexed At what the--Moses--was coming next. All at once the horse stood still, Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill. --First a shiver, and then a thrill, Then something decidedly like a spill,-- [Illustration: Then something decidedly like a spill] And the parson was sitting upon a rock, At half-past nine by the meet'n'-house clock,-- Just the hour of the Earthquake shock! --What do you think the parson found, When he got up and stared around? The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, As if it had been to the mill and ground! You see, of course, if you're not a dunce, How it went to pieces all at once,-- All at once, and nothing first,-- Just as bubbles do when they burst. [Illustration] End of the wonderful one-hoss-shay. Logic is logic. That's all I say. [Illustration] _How the_ Old Horse _Won the_ BET _Dedicated by a Contributor to the_ Collegian 1830 _To the Editor of the_ Advocate 1876 [Illustration] HOW THE OLD HORSE WON THE BET 'T was on the famous trotting-ground, The betting men were gathered round From far and near; the "cracks" were there Whose deeds the sporting prints declare: The swift g. m., Old Hiram's nag, The fleet s. h., Dan Pfeiffer's brag, With these a third--and who is he That stands beside his fast b. g.? Budd Doble, whose catarrhal name So fills the nasal trump of fame. [Illustration] There too stood many a noted steed Of Messenger and Morgan breed; Green horses also, not a few; Unknown as yet what they could do; And all the hacks that know so well The scourgings of the Sunday swell. [Illustration: The Sunday Swell] Blue are the skies of opening day; The bordering turf is green with May; The sunshine's golden gleam is thrown On sorrel, chestnut, bay, and roan; The horses paw and prance and neigh, Fillies and colts like kittens play, And dance and toss their rippled manes Shining and soft as silken skeins; Wagons and gigs are ranged about, And fashion flaunts her gay turn-out; Here stands,--each youthful Jehu's dream,-- The jointed tandem, ticklish team! [Illustration] And there in ampler breadth expand The splendors of the four-in-hand; On faultless ties and glossy tiles The lovely bonnets beam their smiles; (The style's the man, so books avow; The style's the woman, anyhow;) From flounces frothed with creamy lace Peeps out the pug-dog's smutty face, Or spaniel rolls his liquid eye, Or stares the wiry pet of Skye;-- O woman, in your hours of ease So shy with us, so free with these! [Illustration] [Illustration: On faultless ties and glossy tiles The lovely bonnets beam their smiles] "Come on! I'll bet you two to one I'll make him do it!" "Will you? Done!" What was it who was bound to do? I did not hear and can't tell you,-- Pray listen till my story's through. [Illustration] [Illustration] Scarce noticed, back behind the rest, By cart and wagon rudely prest, The parson's lean and bony bay Stood harnessed in his one-horse shay-- Lent to his sexton for the day; (A funeral--so the sexton said; His mother's uncle's wife was dead.) Like Lazarus bid to Dives' feast, So looked the poor forlorn old beast; His coat was rough, his tail was bare, The gray was sprinkled in his hair; Sportsmen and jockeys knew him not, And yet they say he once could trot Among the fleetest of the town, Till something cracked and broke him down,-- The steed's, the statesman's, common lot! "And are we then so soon forgot?" Ah me! I doubt if one of you Has ever heard the name "Old Blue," Whose fame through all this region rung In those old days when I was young! "Bring forth the horse!" Alas! he showed Not like the one Mazeppa rode; Scant-maned, sharp-backed, and shaky-kneed, The wreck of what was once a steed, Lips thin, eyes hollow, stiff in joints; Yet not without his knowing points. The sexton laughing in his sleeve, As if 't were all a make-believe, Led forth the horse, and as he laughed [Illustration] Unhitched the breeching from a shaft, Unclasped the rusty belt beneath, Drew forth the snaffle from his teeth, Slipped off his head-stall, set him free From strap and rein,--a sight to see! [Illustration] So worn, so lean in every limb, It can't be they are saddling him! It is! his back the pig-skin strides And flaps his lank, rheumatic sides; With look of mingled scorn and mirth They buckle round the saddle-girth; With horsey wink and saucy toss A youngster throws his leg across, And so, his rider on his back, They lead him, limping, to the track, Far up behind the starting-point, To limber out each stiffened joint. [Illustration] [Illustration: "To limber out each stiffened joint"] As through the jeering crowd he past, One pitying look old Hiram cast; "Go it, ye cripple, while ye can!" Cried out unsentimental Dan; "A Fast-Day dinner for the crows!" Budd Doble's scoffing shout arose. Slowly, as when the walking-beam First feels the gathering head of steam, With warning cough and threatening wheeze The stiff old charger crooks his knees; At first with cautious step sedate, As if he dragged a coach of state; He's not a colt; he knows full well That time is weight and sure to tell; No horse so sturdy but he fears The handicap of twenty years. As through the throng on either hand The old horse nears the judges' stand, Beneath his jockey's feather-weight He warms a little to his gait, And now and then a step is tried That hints of something like a stride. [Illustration] "Go!"--Through his ear the summons stung As if a battle-trump had rung; The slumbering instincts long unstirred Start at the old familiar word; It thrills like flame through every limb-- What mean his twenty years to him? The savage blow his rider dealt Fell on his hollow flanks unfelt; The spur that pricked his staring hide Unheeded tore his bleeding side; Alike to him are spur and rein,-- He steps a five-year-old again! Before the quarter pole was past, Old Hiram said, "He's going fast." Long ere the quarter was a half, The chuckling crowd had ceased to laugh; Tighter his frightened jockey clung As in a mighty stride he swung, The gravel flying in his track, His neck stretched out, his ears laid back, His tail extended all the while Behind him like a rat-tail file! [Illustration] Off went a shoe,--away it spun, Shot like a bullet from a gun; The quaking jockey shapes a prayer From scraps of oaths he used to swear; He drops his whip, he drops his rein, He clutches fiercely for a mane; [Illustration] He'll lose his hold--he sways and reels-- He'll slide beneath those trampling heels! The knees of many a horseman quake, The flowers on many a bonnet shake, And shouts arise from left and right, "Stick on! Stick on!" "Hould tight! Hould tight!" "Cling round his neck and don't let go--" "That pace can't hold,--there! steady! whoa!" But like the sable steed that bore The spectral lover of Lenore, His nostrils snorting foam and fire, No stretch his bony limbs can tire; And now the stand he rushes by, And "Stop him!--stop him!" is the cry. [Illustration: "And now the stand he rushes by"] Stand back! he's only just begun,-- He's having out three heats in one! "Don't rush in front! he'll smash your brains; But follow up and grab the reins!" Old Hiram spoke. Dan Pfeiffer heard, And sprang impatient at the word; Budd Doble started on his bay, Old Hiram followed on his gray, And off they spring, and round they go, The fast ones doing "all they know." [Illustration] [Illustration] Look! twice they follow at his heels, As round the circling course he wheels, And whirls with him that clinging boy Like Hector round the walls of Troy; Still on, and on, the third time round! They're tailing off! they're losing ground! [Illustration] Budd Doble's nag begins to fail! Dan Pfeiffer's sorrel whisks his tail! And see! in spite of whip and shout, Old Hiram's mare is giving out! Now for the finish! at the turn, The old horse--all the rest astern,-- Comes swinging in, with easy trot; By Jove! he's distanced all the lot! [Illustration] [Illustration] That trot no mortal could explain; Some said, "Old Dutchman come again!" Some took his time,--at least they tried, But what it was could none decide; One said he couldn't understand What happened to his second hand; One said 2.10; _that_ couldn't be-- More like two twenty two or three; Old Hiram settled it at last; "The time was two--too dee-vel-ish fast!" The parson's horse had won the bet; It cost him something of a sweat; Back in the one-hoss shay he went; The parson wondered what it meant, And murmured, with a mild surprise And pleasant twinkle of the eyes, "That funeral must have been a trick, Or corpses drive at double-quick; I shouldn't wonder, I declare, If brother--Jehu--made the prayer!" And this is all I have to say About that tough old trotting bay. Huddup! Huddup! G'lang!--Good-day! [Illustration: "Back in the one-horse-shay he went"] Moral for which this tale is told: A horse _can_ trot, for all he's old. [Illustration] The BROOMSTICK TRAIN or The Return of the WITCHES [Illustration] THE BROOMSTICK TRAIN Look out! Look out, boys! Clear the track! The witches are here! They've all come back! They hanged them high,--No use! No use! What cares a witch for a hangman's noose? They buried them deep, but they wouldn't lie still, For cats and witches are hard to kill; They swore they shouldn't and wouldn't die,-- Books said they did, but they lie! they lie! --A couple of hundred years, or so, They had knocked about in the world below, When an Essex Deacon dropped in to call, And a homesick feeling seized them all; For he came from a place they knew full well, And many a tale he had to tell. [Illustration] [Illustration] They long to visit the haunts of men, To see the old dwellings they knew again, And ride on their broomsticks all around Their wide domain of unhallowed ground. In Essex county there's many a roof Well known to him of the cloven hoof; The small square windows are full in view Which the midnight hags went sailing through, [Illustration] On their well-trained broomsticks mounted high, Seen like shadows against the sky; Crossing the track of owls and bats, Hugging before them their coal-black cats. Well did they know, those gray old wives, The sights we see in our daily drives: Shimmer of lake and shine of sea, Brown's bare hill with its lonely tree, (It wasn't then as we see it now, With one scant scalp-lock to shade its brow;) Dusky nooks in the Essex woods, Dark, dim, Dante-like solitudes, Where the tree-toad watches the sinuous snake Glide through his forests of fern and brake; [Illustration: "Dark, dim, Dante-like solitudes"] Ipswich River; its old stone bridge; Far off Andover's Indian Ridge, And many a scene where history tells Some shadow of bygone terror dwells,-- Of "Norman's Woe" with its tale of dread, [Illustration] [Illustration] Of the Screeching Woman of Marblehead, (The fearful story that turns men pale: Don't bid me tell it,--my speech would fail.) Who would not, will not, if he can, Bathe in the breezes of fair Cape Ann,-- Rest in the bowers her bays enfold, Loved by the sachems and squaws of old? Home where the white magnolias bloom, Sweet with the bayberry's chaste perfume, Hugged by the woods and kissed by the sea! Where is the Eden like to thee? For that "couple of hundred years, or so," There had been no peace in the world below; The witches still grumbling, "It isn't fair; Come, give us a taste of the upper air! We've had enough of your sulphur springs, And the evil odor that round them clings; We long for a drink that is cool and nice,-- Great buckets of water with Wenham ice; [Illustration] We've served you well up-stairs, you know; You're a good old--fellow--come, let us go!" I don't feel sure of his being good, But he happened to be in a pleasant mood,-- As fiends with their skins full sometimes are,-- (He'd been drinking with "roughs" at a Boston bar.) So what does he do but up and shout To a graybeard turnkey, "Let 'em out!" To mind his orders was all he knew; The gates swung open, and out they flew "Where are our broomsticks?" the beldams cried. [Illustration: "You're a good old-fellow-come, let us go"] "Here are your broomsticks," an imp replied. "They've been in--the place you know--so long They smell of brimstone uncommon strong; But they've gained by being left alone,-- Just look, and you'll see how tall they've grown." [Illustration] [Illustration] --"And where is my cat?" a vixen squalled. "Yes, where are our cats?" the witches bawled, And began to call them all by name: As fast as they called the cats, they came: There was bob-tailed Tommy and long-tailed Tim, And wall-eyed Jacky and green-eyed Jim, And splay-foot Benny and slim-legged Beau, And Skinny and Squally, and Jerry and Joe, And many another that came at call,-- It would take too long to count them all. All black,--one could hardly tell which was which, But every cat knew his own old witch; And she knew hers as hers knew her,-- Ah, didn't they curl their tails and purr! No sooner the withered hags were free Than out they swarmed for a midnight spree; I couldn't tell all they did in rhymes, But the Essex people had dreadful times. [Illustration] [Illustration: "The withered hags were free"] The Swampscott fishermen still relate How a strange sea-monster stole their bait; How their nets were tangled in loops and knots, And they found dead crabs in their lobster-pots. Poor Danvers grieved for her blasted crops, And Wilmington mourned over mildewed hops. A blight played havoc with Beverly beans,-- It was all the work of those hateful queans! A dreadful panic began at "Pride's," Where the witches stopped in their midnight rides, And there rose strange rumors and vague alarms 'Mid the peaceful dwellers at Beverly Farms. [Illustration: "A strange sea-monster stole their bait"] Now when the Boss of the Beldams found That without his leave they were ramping round, He called,--they could hear him twenty miles, From Chelsea beach to the Misery Isles; The deafest old granny knew his tone Without the trick of the telephone. [Illustration] "Come here, you witches! Come here!" says he,-- "At your games of old, without asking me! I'll give you a little job to do That will keep you stirring, you godless crew!" They came, of course, at their master's call, The witches, the broomsticks, the cats, and all; [Illustration] He led the hags to a railway train The horses were trying to drag in vain. "Now, then," says he, "you've had your fun, And here are the cars you've got to run. The driver may just unhitch his team, We don't want horses, we don't want steam You may keep your old black cats to hug, But the loaded train you've got to lug." Since then on many a car you'll see A broomstick plain as plain can be; On every stick there's a witch astride,-- The string you see to her leg is tied. She will do a mischief if she can, But the string is held by a careful man, And whenever the evil-minded witch Would cut some caper, he gives a twitch. [Illustration] As for the hag, you can't see her, But hark! you can hear her black cat's purr, And now and then, as a car goes by, You may catch a gleam from her wicked eye. Often you've looked on a rushing train, But just what moved it was not so plain. It couldn't be those wires above, For they could neither pull nor shove; Where was the motor that made it go You couldn't guess, _but now you know_. [Illustration: "Catch a gleam from her wicked eye"] Remember my rhymes when you ride again On the rattling rail by the broomstick train! [Illustration: The End] Transcriber's Note The following typographical errors were corrected. Page Error 9 one-hoss-shay changed to one-hoss shay 49 let go-- changed to let go--" 
30830	----	file was produced from images generously made available by The Kentuckiana Digital Library) Weeds by the Wall _VERSES_ BY MADISON CAWEIN Author of "Myth and Romance," "Undertones," "Garden of Dreams," "Shapes and Shadows," etc., etc. _"I am God in nature; I am a weed by the wall."_ --EMERSON. LOUISVILLE JOHN P. MORTON & COMPANY 1901 COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY MADISON J. CAWEIN TO DR. HENRY A. COTTELL _Whose Kind Words of Friendship and Approval have Encouraged me when I Most Needed Encouragement._ _For permission to reprint most of the poems included in this volume thanks are due to the "Atlantic Monthly," "Harper's Magazine" and "Bazar," "Lippincott's," "Saturday Evening Post," "New England Magazine," "Leslie's Monthly," "Smart Set," "Truth," "Outlook," "Independent," "Youth's Companion," "Woman's Home Companion," "Munsey's," and a number of other periodicals and magazines._ CONTENTS. PAGE A Wild Iris 1 The Path by the Creek 2 The Road Home 5 A Twilight Moth 6 Along the Stream 8 The Cricket 9 Voices 11 The Grasshopper 12 The Tree Toad 13 The Screech-Owl 14 The Chipmunk 15 Love and a Day 16 Drouth 18 Before the Rain 20 The Broken Drouth 20 Feud 21 Unanointed 22 The End of All 24 Sunset and Storm 25 Beech Blooms 25 Worship 27 Unheard 28 Reincarnation 28 On Chenoweth's Run 29 Home Again 30 A Street of Ghosts 31 In the Shadow of the Beeches 33 Requiescat 34 The Quest 35 Meeting and Parting 36 Love in a Garden 37 Floridian 39 The Golden Hour 40 Reed Call for April 41 "The Years Wherein I Never Knew" 42 Mignon 42 Qui Docet, Discit 43 Transubstantiation 44 Helen 44 A Cameo 45 La Jeunesse et la Mort 46 Love and Loss 47 Sunset Clouds 47 Masked 48 Out of the Depths 49 Riches 50 Beauty and Art 50 The Age of Gold 51 The Love of Loves 52 Three Things 52 Immortelles 53 A Lullaby 54 Dum Vivimus 56 Failure 57 The Cup of Joy 58 Pestilence 59 Musings 60 At the Sign of the Skull 62 A Cavalier's Toast 63 Sleep is a Spirit 64 Kennst du das Land 65 At Midnight 65 The Man in Gray 66 Hallowe'en 67 The Image in the Glass 68 Her Prayer 70 The Message of the Lilies 71 A Legend of the Lily 72 The End of the Century 74 The Isle of Voices 77 A. D. Nineteen Hundred 81 Caverns 81 Of the Slums 82 The Winds 82 Prototypes 83 Touches 83 The Woman Speaks 84 Love, the Interpreter 84 Unanswered 85 Earth and Moon 85 Pearls 86 In the Forest 86 Enchantment 87 Dusk 87 The Blue Bird 88 Can Such Things Be? 88 The Passing Glory 89 September 89 Hoodoo 90 The Other Woman 91 A Song for Labor 92 FOREWORD. _In the first rare spring of song, In my heart's young hours, In my youth 't was thus I sang, Choosing 'mid the flowers:--_ _"Fair the Dandelion is, But for me too lowly; And the winsome Violet Is, forsooth, too holy. 'But the Touchmenot?' Go to! What! a face that's speckled Like a common milking-maid's, Whom the sun hath freckled. Then the Wild-Rose is a flirt; And the trillium Lily, In her spotless gown, 's a prude, Sanctified and silly. By her cap the Columbine, To my mind, 's too merry; Gossips, I would sooner wed Some plebeian Berry. And the shy Anemone-- Well, her face shows sorrow; Pale, goodsooth! alive to-day, Dead and gone to-morrow. Then that bold-eyed, buxom wench, Big and blond and lazy,-- She's been chosen overmuch!-- Sirs, I mean the Daisy. Pleasant persons are they all, And their virtues many; Faith I know but good of each, And naught ill of any. But I choose a May-apple; She shall be my Lady; Blooming, hidden and refined, Sweet in places shady."_ _In my youth 'twas thus I sang, In my heart's young hours, In the first rare spring of song, Choosing 'mid the flowers. So I hesitated when Time alone was reckoned By the hours that Fancy smiled, Love and Beauty beckoned. Hard it was for me to choose From the flowers that flattered; And the blossom that I chose Soon lay dead and scattered. Hard I found it then, ah, me! Hard I found the choosing; Harder, harder since I've found, Ah, too hard the losing. Haply had I chosen then From the weeds that tangle Wayside, woodland and the wall Of my garden's angle, I had chosen better, yea, For these later hours-- Longer last the weeds, and oft Sweeter are than flowers._ WEEDS BY THE WALL. A WILD IRIS. That day we wandered 'mid the hills,--so lone Clouds are not lonelier,--the forest lay In emerald darkness 'round us. Many a stone And gnarly root, gray-mossed, made wild our way; And many a bird the glimmering light along Showered the golden bubbles of its song. Then in the valley, where the brook went by, Silvering the ledges that it rippled from,-- An isolated slip of fallen sky, Epitomizing heaven in its sum,-- An iris bloomed--blue, as if, flower-disguised, The gaze of Spring had there materialized. I have forgotten many things since then-- Much beauty and much happiness and grief; And toiled and dreamed among my fellow-men, Rejoicing in the knowledge life is brief. "'T is winter now," so says each barren bough; And face and hair proclaim 't is winter now. I would forget the gladness of that spring! I would forget that day when she and I, Between the bird-song and the blossoming, Went hand in hand beneath the soft spring sky!-- Much is forgotten, yea--and yet, and yet, The things we would we never can forget.-- Nor I how May then minted treasuries Of crowfoot gold; and molded out of light The sorrel's cups, whose elfin chalices Of limpid spar were streaked with rosy white. Nor all the stars of twinkling spiderwort, And mandrake moons with which her brows were girt. But most of all, yea, it were well for me, Me and my heart, that I forget that flower, The wild blue iris, azure fleur-de-lis, That she and I together found that hour. Its recollection can but emphasize The pain of loss, remindful of her eyes. THE PATH BY THE CREEK. There is a path that leads Through purple iron-weeds, By button-bush and mallow Along a creek; A path that wildflowers hallow, That wild birds seek; Roofed thick with eglantine And grape and trumpet-vine. This side, blackberries sweet Glow cobalt in the heat; That side, a creamy yellow, In summertime The pawpaws slowly mellow; And autumn's prime Strews red the Chickasaw, Persimmon brown and haw. The glittering dragon-fly, A wingéd flash, goes by; And tawny wasp and hornet Seem gleams that drone; The beetle, like a garnet, Slips from the stone; And butterflies float there, Spangling with gold the air. Here the brown thrashers hide, The chat and cat-bird chide; The blue kingfisher houses Above the stream, And here the heron drowses Lost in his dream; The vireo's flitting note Haunts all the wild remote. And now a cow's slow bell Tinkles along the dell; Where breeze-dropped petals winnow From blossomy limbs On waters, where the minnow, Faint-twinkling, swims; Where, in the root-arched shade, Slim prisms of light are laid. When in the tangled thorn The new-moon hangs a horn, Or, 'mid the sunset's islands, Guides a canoe, The brown owl in the silence Calls, and the dew Beads here its orbs of damp, Each one a firefly lamp. Then when the night is still Here sings the whippoorwill; And stealthy sounds of crickets, And winds that pass, Whispering, through bramble thickets Along the grass, Faint with far scents of hay, Seem feet of dreams astray. And where the water shines Dark through tree-twisted vines, Some water-spirit, dreaming, Braids in her hair A star's reflection; seeming A jewel there; While all the sweet night long Ripples her quiet song.... Would I could imitate, O path, thy happy state! Making my life all beauty, All bloom and beam; Knowing no other duty Than just to dream, And far from pain and woe Lead feet that come and go. Leading to calm content, O'er ways the Master went, Through lowly things and humble, To peace and love; Teaching the lives that stumble To look above, Forget the world of toil And all its sad turmoil. THE ROAD HOME. Over the hills, as the pewee flies, Under the blue of the Southern skies; Over the hills, where the red-bird wings Like a scarlet blossom, or sits and sings: Under the shadow of rock and tree, Where the warm wind drones with the honey-bee; And the tall wild-carrots around you sway Their lace-like flowers of cloudy gray: By the black-cohosh with its pearly plume A nod in the woodland's odorous gloom; By the old rail-fence, in the elder's shade, That the myriad hosts of the weeds invade: Where the butterfly-weed, like a coal of fire, Blurs orange-red through bush and brier; Where the pennyroyal and mint smell sweet, And blackberries tangle the summer heat, The old road leads; then crosses the creek, Where the minnow dartles, a silvery streak; Where the cows wade deep through the blue-eyed grass, And the flickering dragonflies gleaming pass. That road is easy, however long, Which wends with beauty as toil with song; And the road we follow shall lead us straight Past creek and wood to a farmhouse gate. Past hill and hollow, whence scents are blown Of dew-wet clover that scythes have mown; To a house that stands with porches wide And gray low roof on the green hill-side. Colonial, stately; 'mid shade and shine Of the locust-tree and the Southern pine; With its orchard acres and meadowlands Stretched out before it like welcoming hands. And gardens, where, in the myrrh-sweet June, Magnolias blossom with many a moon Of fragrance; and, in the feldspar light Of August, roses bloom red and white. In a woodbine arbor, a perfumed place, A slim girl sits with a happy face; Her bonnet by her, a sunbeam lies On her lovely hair, in her earnest eyes. Her eyes, as blue as the distant deeps Of the heavens above where the high hawk sleeps; A book beside her, wherein she read Till she saw _him_ coming, she heard _his_ tread. Come home at last; come back from the war; In his eyes a smile, on his brow a scar; To the South come back--who wakes from her dream To the love and peace of a new regime. A TWILIGHT MOTH. Dusk is thy dawn; when Eve puts on her state Of gold and purple in the marbled west, Thou comest forth like some embodied trait, Or dim conceit, a lily-bud confessed; Or, of a rose, the visible wish; that, white, Goes softly messengering through the night, Whom each expectant flower makes its guest. All day the primroses have thought of thee, Their golden heads close-haremed from the heat; All day the mystic moonflowers silkenly Veiled snowy faces,--that no bee might greet Or butterfly that, weighed with pollen, passed;-- Keeping Sultana charms for thee, at last, Their lord, who comest to salute each sweet. Cool-throated flowers that avoid the day's Too fervid kisses; every bud that drinks The tipsy dew and to the starlight plays Nocturnes of fragrance, thy winged shadow links In bonds of secret brotherhood and faith; O bearer of their order's shibboleth, Like some pale symbol fluttering o'er these pinks. What dost thou whisper in the balsam's ear That sets it blushing, or the hollyhock's,-- A syllabled silence that no man may hear,-- As dreamily upon its stem it rocks? What spell dost bear from listening plant to plant, Like some white witch, some ghostly ministrant, Some spectre of some perished flower of phlox? O voyager of that universe which lies Between the four walls of this garden fair,-- Whose constellations are the fireflies That wheel their instant courses everywhere,-- 'Mid fairy firmaments wherein one sees Mimic Boötes and the Pleiades, Thou steerest like some fairy ship-of-air. Gnome-wrought of moonbeam fluff and gossamer, Silent as scent, perhaps thou chariotest Mab or king Oberon; or, haply, her His queen, Titania, on some midnight quest.-- O for the herb, the magic euphrasy, That should unmask thee to mine eyes, ah, me! And all that world at which my soul hath guessed! ALONG THE STREAM. Where the violet shadows brood Under cottonwoods and beeches, Through whose leaves the restless reaches Of the river glance, I've stood, While the red-bird and the thrush Set to song the morning hush. There,--when woodland hills encroach On the shadowy winding waters, And the bluets, April's daughters, At the darling Spring's approach, Star their myriads through the trees,-- All the land is one with peace. Under some imposing cliff, That, with bush and tree and boulder, Thrusts a gray, gigantic shoulder O'er the stream, I've oared a skiff, While great clouds of berg-white hue Lounged along the noonday blue. There,--when harvest heights impend Over shores of rippling summer, And to greet the fair new-comer,-- June,--the wildrose thickets bend In a million blossoms dressed,-- All the land is one with rest. On some rock, where gaunt the oak Reddens and the sombre cedar Darkens, like a sachem leader, I have lain and watched the smoke Of the steamboat, far away, Trailed athwart the dying day. There,--when margin waves reflect Autumn colors, gay and sober, And the Indian-girl, October, Wampum-like in berries decked, Sits beside the leaf-strewn streams,-- All the land is one with dreams. Through the bottoms where,--out-tossed By the wind's wild hands,--ashiver Lean the willows o'er the river, I have walked in sleet and frost, While beneath the cold round moon, Frozen, gleamed the long lagoon. There,--when leafless woods uplift Spectral arms the storm-blasts splinter, And the hoary trapper, Winter, Builds his camp of ice and drift, With his snow-pelts furred and shod,-- All the land is one with God. THE CRICKET. I. First of the insect choir, in the spring We hear his faint voice fluttering in the grass, Beneath some blossom's rosy covering Or frond of fern upon a wildwood pass. When in the marsh, in clamorous orchestras, The shrill hylodes pipe; when, in the haw's Bee-swarming blooms, or tasseling sassafras, Sweet threads of silvery song the sparrow draws, Bow-like, athwart the vibrant atmosphere,-- Like some dim dream low-breathed in slumber's ear,-- We hear his "Cheer, cheer, cheer." II. All summer through the mellowing meadows thrill To his blithe music. Be it day or night, Close gossip of the grass, on field and hill He serenades the silence with delight: Silence, that hears the melon slowly split With ripeness; and the plump peach, hornet-bit, Loosen and fall; and everywhere the white, Warm, silk-like stir of leafy lights that flit As breezes blow; above which, loudly clear,-- Like joy who sings of life and has no fear,-- We hear his "Cheer, cheer, cheer." III. Then in the autumn, by the waterside, Leaf-huddled; or along the weed-grown walks, He dirges low the flowers that have died, Or with their ghosts holds solitary talks. Lover of warmth, all day above the click And crunching of the sorghum-press, through thick Sweet steam of juice; all night when, white as chalk, The hunter's-moon hangs o'er the rustling rick, Within the barn 'mid munching cow and steer,-- Soft as a memory the heart holds dear,-- We hear his "Cheer, cheer, cheer." IV. Kinsman and cousin of the Faëry Race, All winter long he sets his sober mirth,-- That brings good-luck to many a fire-place,-- To folk-lore song and story of the hearth. Between the back-log's bluster and the slim High twittering of the kettle,--sounds that hymn Home-comforts,--when, outside, the starless Earth Is icicled in every laden limb,-- Defying frost and all the sad and sear,-- Like love that dies not and is always near,-- We hear his "Cheer, cheer, cheer." VOICES. When blood-root blooms and trillium flowers Unclasp their stars to sun and rain, My heart strikes hands with winds and showers And wanders in the woods again. O urging impulse, born of spring, That makes glad April of my soul, No bird, however wild of wing, Is more impatient of control. Impetuous of pulse it beats Within my blood and bears me hence; Above the housetops and the streets I hear its happy eloquence. It tells me all that I would know, Of birds and buds, of blooms and bees; I seem to _hear_ the blossoms blow, And leaves unfolding on the trees. I seem to hear the blue-bells ring Faint purple peals of fragrance; and The honey-throated poppies fling Their golden laughter o'er the land. It calls to me; it sings to me; I hear its far voice night and day; I can not choose but go when tree And flower clamor, "Come, away!" THE GRASSHOPPER. What joy you take in making hotness hotter, In emphasizing dullness with your buzz, Making monotony more monotonous! When Summer comes, and drouth hath dried the water In all the creeks, we hear your ragged rasp Filing the stillness. Or,--as urchins beat A stagnant pond whereon the bubbles gasp,-- Your switch-like music whips the midday heat. O bur of sound caught in the Summer's hair, We hear you everywhere! We hear you in the vines and berry-brambles, Along the unkempt lanes, among the weeds, Amid the shadeless meadows, gray with seeds, And by the wood 'round which the rail-fence rambles, Sawing the sunlight with your sultry saw. Or,--like to tomboy truants, at their play With noisy mirth among the barn's deep straw,-- You sing away the careless summer-day. O brier-like voice that clings in idleness To Summer's drowsy dress! You tramp of insects, vagrant and unheeding, Improvident, who of the summer make One long green mealtime, and for winter take No care, aye singing or just merely feeding! Happy-go-lucky vagabond,--'though frost Shall pierce, ere long, your green coat or your brown, And pinch your body,--let no song be lost, But as you lived into your grave go down-- Like some small poet with his little rhyme, Forgotten of all time. THE TREE TOAD. I. Secluded, solitary on some underbough, Or cradled in a leaf, 'mid glimmering light, Like Puck thou crouchest: Haply watching how The slow toad-stool comes bulging, moony white, Through loosening loam; or how, against the night, The glow-worm gathers silver to endow The darkness with; or how the dew conspires To hang at dusk with lamps of chilly fires Each blade that shrivels now. II. O vague confederate of the whippoorwill, Of owl and cricket and the katydid! Thou gatherest up the silence in one shrill Vibrating note and send'st it where, half hid In cedars, twilight sleeps--each azure lid Drooping a line of golden eyeball still.-- Afar, yet near, I hear thy dewy voice Within the Garden of the Hours apoise On dusk's deep daffodil. III. Minstrel of moisture! silent when high noon Shows her tanned face among the thirsting clover And parching meadows, thy tenebrious tune Wakes with the dew or when the rain is over. Thou troubadour of wetness and damp lover Of all cool things! admitted comrade boon Of twilight's hush, and little intimate Of eve's first fluttering star and delicate Round rim of rainy moon! IV. Art trumpeter of Dwarfland? does thy horn Inform the gnomes and goblins of the hour When they may gambol under haw and thorn, Straddling each winking web and twinkling flower? Or bell-ringer of Elfland? whose tall tower The liriodendron is? from whence is borne The elfin music of thy bell's deep bass, To summon fairies to their starlit maze, To summon them or warn. THE SCREECH-OWL. When, one by one, the stars have trembled through Eve's shadowy hues of violet, rose, and fire-- As on a pansy-bloom the limpid dew Orbs its bright beads;--and, one by one, the choir Of insects wakes on nodding bush and brier: Then through the woods--where wandering winds pursue A ceaseless whisper--like an eery lyre Struck in the Erl-king's halls, where ghosts and dreams Hold revelry, your goblin music screams, Shivering and strange as some strange thought come true. Brown as the agaric that frills dead trees, Or those fantastic fungi of the woods That crowd the dampness--are you kin to these In some mysterious way that still eludes My fancy? you, who haunt the solitudes With witch-like wailings? voice, that seems to freeze Out of the darkness,--like the scent which broods, Rank and rain-sodden, over autumn nooks,-- That, to the mind, might well suggest such looks, Ghastly and gray, as pale clairvoyance sees. You people night with weirdness: lone and drear, Beneath the stars, you cry your wizard runes; And in the haggard silence, filled with fear, Your shuddering hoot seems some bleak grief that croons Mockery and terror; or,--beneath the moon's Cloud-hurrying glimmer,--to the startled ear, Crazed, madman snatches of old, perished tunes, The witless wit of outcast Edgar there In the wild night; or, wan with all despair, The mirthless laughter of the Fool in Lear. THE CHIPMUNK. He makes a roadway of the crumbling fence, Or on the fallen tree,--brown as a leaf Fall stripes with russet,--gambols down the dense Green twilight of the woods. We see not whence He comes, nor whither--'tis a time too brief!-- He vanishes;--swift carrier of some Fay, Some pixy steed that haunts our child-belief-- A goblin glimpse from woodland way to way. What harlequin mood of nature qualified Him so with happiness? and limbed him with Such young activity as winds, that ride The ripples, have, that dance on every side? As sunbeams know, that urge the sap and pith Through hearts of trees? yet made him to delight, Gnome-like, in darkness,--like a moonlight myth,-- Lairing in labyrinths of the under night. Here, by a rock, beneath the moss, a hole Leads to his home, the den wherein he sleeps; Lulled by near noises of the cautious mole Tunnelling its mine--like some ungainly Troll-- Or by the tireless cricket there that keeps Picking its drowsy and monotonous lute; Or slower sounds of grass that creeps and creeps, And trees unrolling mighty root on root. Such is the music of his sleeping hours. Day hath another--'tis a melody He trips to, made by the assembled flowers, And light and fragrance laughing 'mid the bowers, And ripeness busy with the acorn-tree. Such strains, perhaps, as filled with mute amaze-- The silent music of Earth's ecstasy-- The Satyr's soul, the Faun of classic days. LOVE AND A DAY. I. In girandoles of gladioles The day had kindled flame; And Heaven a door of gold and pearl Unclosed when Morning,--like a girl, A red rose twisted in a curl,-- Down sapphire stairways came. Said I to Love: "What must I do? What shall I do? what can I do?" Said I to Love: "What must I do? All on a summer's morning." Said Love to me: "Go woo, go woo." Said Love to me: "Go woo. If she be milking, follow, O! And in the clover hollow, O! While through the dew the bells clang clear, Just whisper it into her ear, All on a summer's morning." II. Of honey and heat and weed and wheat The day had made perfume; And Heaven a tower of turquoise raised, Whence Noon, like some wan woman, gazed-- A sunflower withering at her waist-- Within a crystal room. Said I to Love: "What must I do? What shall I do? what can I do?" Said I to Love: "What must I do, All in the summer nooning?" Said Love to me: "Go woo, go woo." Said Love to me: "Go woo. If she be 'mid the rakers, O! Among the harvest acres, O! While every breeze brings scents of hay, Just hold her hand and not take 'nay,' All in the summer nooning." III. With song and sigh and cricket cry The day had mingled rest; And Heaven a casement opened wide Of opal, whence, like some young bride, The Twilight leaned, all starry-eyed, A moonflower on her breast. Said I to Love: "What must I do? What shall I do? what can I do?" Said I to Love: "What must I do, All in the summer gloaming?" Said Love to me: "Go woo, go woo." Said Love to me: "Go woo. Go meet her at the trysting, O! And, 'spite of her resisting, O! Beneath the stars and afterglow, Just clasp her close and kiss her so, All in the summer gloaming." DROUTH. I. The hot sunflowers by the glaring pike Lift shields of sultry brass; the teasel tops, Pink-thorned, advance with bristling spike on spike Against the furious sunlight. Field and copse Are sick with summer: now, with breathless stops, The locusts cymbal; now grasshoppers beat Their castanets: and rolled in dust, a team,-- Like some mean life wrapped in its sorry dream,-- An empty wagon rattles through the heat. II. Where now the blue, blue flags? the flow'rs whose mouths Are moist and musky? Where the sweet-breathed mint, That made the brook-bank herby? Where the South's Wild morning-glories, rich in hues, that hint At coming showers that the rainbows tint? Where all the blossoms that the wildwood knows?-- The frail oxalis hidden in its leaves; The Indian-pipe, pale as a soul that grieves; The freckled touch-me-not and forest-rose. III. Dead! dead! all dead besides the drouth-burnt brook, Shrouded in moss or in the shriveled grass. Where waved their bells,--from which the wild-bee shook The dew-drop once,--gaunt, in a nightmare mass, The rank weeds crowd; through which the cattle pass, Thirsty and lean, seeking some meagre spring, Closed in with thorns, on which stray bits of wool The panting sheep have left, that sought the cool, From morn till evening wearily wandering. IV. No bird is heard; no throat to whistle awake The sleepy hush; to let its music leak Fresh, bubble-like, through bloom-roofs of the brake: Only the green-blue heron, famine weak,-- Searching the stale pools of the minnowless creek,-- Utters its call; and then the rain-crow, too, False prophet now, croaks to the stagnant air; While overhead,--still as if painted there,-- A buzzard hangs, black on the burning blue. BEFORE THE RAIN. Before the rain, low in the obscure east, Weak and morose the moon hung, sickly gray; Around its disc the storm mists, cracked and creased, Wove an enormous web, wherein it lay Like some white spider hungry for its prey. Vindictive looked the scowling firmament, In which each star, that flashed a dagger ray, Seemed filled with malice of some dark intent. The marsh-frog croaked; and underneath the stone The peevish cricket raised a creaking cry. Within the world these sounds were heard alone, Save when the ruffian wind swept from the sky, Making each tree like some sad spirit sigh; Or shook the clumsy beetle from its weed, That, in the drowsy darkness, bungling by, Sharded the silence with its feverish speed. Slowly the tempest gathered. Hours passed Before was heard the thunder's sullen drum Rumbling night's hollow; and the Earth at last, Restless with waiting,--like a woman, dumb With doubting of the love that should have clomb Her casement hours ago,--avowed again, 'Mid protestations, joy that he had come. And all night long I heard the Heavens explain. THE BROKEN DROUTH. It seemed the listening forest held its breath Before some vague and unapparent form Of fear, approaching with the wings of death, On the impending storm. Above the hills, big, bellying clouds loomed, black And ominous, yet silent as the blue That pools calm heights of heaven, deepening back 'Twixt clouds of snowdrift hue. Then instantly, as when a multitude Shout riot and war through some tumultuous town, Innumerable voices swept the wood As wild the wind rushed down. And fierce and few, as when a strong man weeps, Great rain-drops dashed the dust; and, overhead, Ponderous and vast down the prodigious deeps, Went slow the thunder's tread. And swift and furious, as when giants fence, The lightning foils of tempest went insane; Then far and near sonorous Earth grew dense With long sweet sweep of rain. FEUD. A mile of lane,--hedged high with iron-weeds And dying daisies,--white with sun, that leads Downward into a wood; through which a stream Steals like a shadow; over which is laid A bridge of logs, worn deep by many a team, Sunk in the tangled shade. Far off a wood-dove lifts its lonely cry; And in the sleepy silver of the sky A gray hawk wheels scarce larger than a hand. From point to point the road grows worse and worse, Until that place is reached where all the land Seems burdened with some curse. A ragged fence of pickets, warped and sprung,-- On which the fragments of a gate are hung,-- Divides a hill, the fox and ground-hog haunt, A wilderness of briers; o'er whose tops A battered barn is seen, low-roofed and gaunt, 'Mid fields that know no crops. Fields over which a path, o'erwhelmed with burs And ragweeds, noisy with the grasshoppers, Leads,--lost, irresolute as paths the cows Wear through the woods,--unto a woodshed; then, With wrecks of windows, to a huddled house, Where men have murdered men. A house, whose tottering chimney, clay and rock, Is seamed and crannied; whose lame door and lock Are bullet-bored; around which, there and here, Are sinister stains.--One dreads to look around.-- The place seems thinking of that time of fear And dares not breathe a sound. Within is emptiness: the sunlight falls On faded journals papering its walls; On advertisement chromos, torn with time, Around a hearth where wasps and spiders build.-- The house is dead; meseems that night of crime It, too, was shot and killed. UNANOINTED. I. Upon the Siren-haunted seas, between Fate's mythic shores, Within a world of moon and mist, where dusk and daylight wed, I see a phantom galley and its hull is banked with oars, With ghostly oars that move to song, a song of dreams long dead: "Oh, we are sick of rowing here! With toil our arms are numb; With smiting year on weary year Salt-furrows of the foam: Our journey's end is never near, And will no nearer come-- Beyond our reach the shores appear Of far Elysium." II. Within a land of cataracts and mountains old and sand, Beneath whose heavens ruins rise, o'er which the stars burn red, I see a spectral cavalcade with crucifix in hand And shadowy armor march and sing, a song of dreams long dead: "Oh, we are weary marching on! Our limbs are travel-worn; With cross and sword from dawn to dawn We wend with raiment torn: The leagues to go, the leagues we've gone Are sand and rock and thorn-- The way is long to Avalon Beyond the deeps of morn." III. They are the curs'd! the souls who yearn and evermore pursue The vision of a vain desire, a splendor far ahead; To whom God gives the poet's dream without the grasp to do, The artist's hope without the scope between the quick and dead: I, too, am weary toiling where The winds and waters beat; When shall I ease the oar I bear And rest my tired feet? When will the white moons cease to glare, The red suns veil their heat? And from the heights blow sweet the air Of Love's divine retreat? THE END OF ALL. I. I do not love you now, O narrow heart, that had no heights but pride! You, whom mine fed; to whom yours still denied Food when mine hungered, and of which love died-- I do not love you now. II. I do not love you now, O shallow soul, with depths but to deceive! You, whom mine watered; to whom yours did give No drop to drink to help my love to live-- I do not love you now. III. I do not love you now! But did I love you in the old, old way, And knew you loved me--'though the words should slay Me and your love forever, I would say, "I do not love you now! I do not love you now!" SUNSET AND STORM. Deep with divine tautology, The sunset's mighty mystery Again has traced the scroll-like West With hieroglyphs of burning gold: Forever new, forever old, Its miracle is manifest. Time lays the scroll away. And now Above the hills a giant brow Night lifts of cloud; and from her arm, Barbaric black, upon the world, With thunder, wind and fire, is hurled Her awful argument of storm. What part, O man, is yours in such? Whose awe and wonder are in touch With Nature,--speaking rapture to Your soul,--yet leaving in your reach No human word of thought or speech Expressive of the thing you view. BEECH BLOOMS. The wild oxalis Among the valleys Lifts up its chalice Of pink and pearl; And, balsam-breathing, From out their sheathing, The myriad wreathing Green leaves uncurl. The whole world brightens With spring, that lightens The foot that frightens The building thrush; Where water tosses On ferns and mosses The squirrel crosses The beechen hush. And vision on vision,-- Like ships elysian On some white mission,-- Sails cloud on cloud; With scents of clover The winds brim over, And in the cover The stream is loud. 'Twixt bloom that blanches The orchard branches Old farms and ranches Gleam in the gloam; 'Mid blossoms blowing, Through fields for sowing, The cows come lowing, The cows come home. Where ways are narrow, A vesper-sparrow Flits like an arrow Of living rhyme; The red sun poises, And farmyard noises Mix with glad voices Of milking-time. When dusk disposes Of all its roses, And darkness closes, And work is done, A moon's white feather In starry weather And two together Whose hearts are one. WORSHIP. I. The mornings raise Voices of gold in the Almighty's praise; The sunsets soar In choral crimson from far shore to shore: Each is a blast, Reverberant, of color,--seen as vast Concussions,--that the vocal firmament In worship sounds o'er every continent. II. Not for our ears The cosmic music of the rolling spheres, That sweeps the skies! Music we hear, but only with our eyes. For all too weak Our mortal frames to bear the words these speak, Those detonations that we name the dawn And sunset--hues Earth's harmony puts on. UNHEARD. All things are wrought of melody, Unheard, yet full of speaking spells; Within the rock, within the tree, A soul of music dwells. A mute symphonic sense that thrills The silent frame of mortal things; Its heart beats in the ancient hills, In every flower sings. To harmony all growth is set-- Each seed is but a music mote, From which each plant, each violet, Evolves its purple note. Compact of melody, the rose Woos the soft wind with strain on strain Of crimson; and the lily blows Its white bars to the rain. The trees are pæans; and the grass One long green fugue beneath the sun-- Song is their life; and all shall pass, Shall cease, when song is done. REINCARNATION. High in the place of outraged liberty, He ruled the world, an emperor and god His iron armies swept the land and sea, And conquered nations trembled at his nod. By him the love that fills man's soul with light, And makes a Heaven of Earth, was crucified; Lust-crowned he lived, yea, lived in God's despite, And old in infamies, a king he died. Justice begins now.--Many centuries In some vile body must his soul atone As slave, as beggar, loathsome with disease, Less than the dog at which we fling a stone. ON CHENOWETH'S RUN. I thought of the road through the glen, With its hawk's nest high in the pine; With its rock, where the fox had his den, 'Mid tangles of sumach and vine, Where she swore to be mine. I thought of the creek and its banks, Now glooming, now gleaming with sun; The rustic bridge builded of planks, The bridge over Chenoweth's Run, Where I wooed her and won. I thought of the house in the lane, With its pinks and its sweet mignonette; Its fence and the gate with the chain, Its porch where the roses hung wet, Where I kissed her and met. Then I thought of the family graves, Walled rudely with stone, in the West, Where the sorrowful cedar-tree waves, And the wind is a spirit distressed, Where they laid her to rest. And my soul, overwhelmed with despair, Cried out on the city and mart!-- How I longed, how I longed to be there, Away from the struggle and smart, By her and my heart! By her and my heart in the West,-- Laid sadly together as one;-- On her grave for a moment to rest, Far away from the noise and the sun, On Chenoweth's Run. HOME AGAIN. Far down the lane A window pane Gleams 'mid the trees through night and rain. The weeds are dense Through which a fence Of pickets rambles, none sees whence, Before a porch, all indistinct of line, O'er-grown and matted with wistaria-vine. No thing is heard, No beast or bird, Only the rain by which are stirred The draining leaves, And trickling eaves Of crib and barn one scarce perceives; And garden-beds where old-time flow'rs hang wet The phlox, the candytuft, and mignonette. The hour is late-- At any rate She has not heard him at the gate: Upon the roof The rain was proof Against his horse's galloping hoof: And when the old gate with its weight and chain Creaked, she imagined 'twas the wind and rain. Along he steals With cautious heels, And by the lamplit window kneels: And there she sits, And rocks and knits Within the shadowy light that flits On face and hair, so sweetly sad and gray, Dreaming of him she thinks is far away. Upon his cheeks-- Is it the streaks Of rain, as now the old porch creaks Beneath his stride? Then, warm and wide, The door flings and she's at his side-- "Mother!"--and he, back from the war, her boy, Kisses her face all streaming wet with joy. A STREET OF GHOSTS. The drowsy day, with half-closed eyes, Dreams in this quaint forgotten street, That, like some old-world wreckage, lies,-- Left by the sea's receding beat,-- Far from the city's restless feet. Abandoned pavements, that the trees' Huge roots have wrecked, whose flagstones feel No more the sweep of draperies; And sunken curbs, whereon no wheel Grinds, nor the gallant's spur-bound heel. Old houses, walled with rotting brick, Thick-creepered, dormered, weather-vaned,-- Like withered faces, sad and sick,-- Stare from each side, all broken paned, With battered doors the rain has stained. And though the day be white with heat, Their ancient yards are dim and cold; Where now the toad makes its retreat, 'Mid flower-pots green-caked with mold, And naught but noisome weeds unfold. The slow gray slug and snail have trailed Their slimy silver up and down The beds where once the moss-rose veiled Rich beauty; and the mushroom brown Swells where the lily tossed its crown. The shadowy scents, that haunt and flit Along the walks, beneath the boughs, Seem ghosts of sweethearts here who sit, Or wander 'round each empty house, Wrapped in the silence of dead vows. And, haply, when the evening droops Her amber eyelids in the west, Here one might hear the swish of hoops, Or catch the glint of hat or vest, As two dim lovers past him pressed. And, instant as some star's slant flame, That scores the swarthy cheek of night, Perhaps behold Colonial dame And gentleman in stately white Go glimmering down the pale moonlight. In powder, patch, and furbelow, Cocked-hat and sword; and every one,-- Tory and whig of long ago,-- As real as in the days long done, The courtly days of Washington. IN THE SHADOW OF THE BEECHES. In the shadow of the beeches, Where the fragile wildflowers bloom; Where the pensive silence pleaches Green a roof of cool perfume, Have you felt an awe imperious As when, in a church, mysterious Windows paint with God the gloom? In the shadow of the beeches, Where the rock-ledged waters flow; Where the sun's sloped splendor bleaches Every wave to foaming snow, Have you felt a music solemn As when minster arch and column Echo organ-worship low? In the shadow of the beeches, Where the light and shade are blent; Where the forest-bird beseeches, And the breeze is brimmed with scent,-- Is it joy or melancholy That o'erwhelms us partly, wholly, To our spirit's betterment? In the shadow of the beeches Lay me where no eye perceives; Where,--like some great arm that reaches Gently as a love that grieves,-- One gnarled root may clasp me kindly While the long years, working blindly, Slowly change my dust to leaves. REQUIESCAT. The roses mourn for her who sleeps Within the tomb; For her each lily-flower weeps Dew and perfume. In each neglected flower-bed Each blossom droops its lovely head,-- They miss her touch, they miss her tread, Her face of bloom, Of happy bloom. The very breezes grieve for her, A lonely grief; For her each tree is sorrower, Each blade and leaf. The foliage rocks itself and sighs, And to its woe the wind replies,-- They miss her girlish laugh and cries, Whose life was brief, Was very brief. The sunlight, too, seems pale with care, Or sick with woe; The memory haunts it of her hair, Its golden glow. No more within the bramble-brake The sleepy bloom is kissed awake-- The sun is sad for her dear sake, Whose head lies low, Lies dim and low. The bird, that sang so sweet, is still At dusk and dawn; No more it makes the silence thrill Of wood and lawn. In vain the buds, when it is near, Open each pink and perfumed ear,-- The song it sings she will not hear Who now is gone, Is dead and gone. Ah, well she sleeps who loved them well, The birds and bowers; The fair, the young, the lovable, Who once was ours. Alas! that loveliness must pass! Must come to lie beneath the grass! That youth and joy must fade, alas! And die like flowers, Earth's sweetest flowers! THE QUEST. I. First I asked the honey-bee, Busy in the balmy bowers; Saying, "Sweetheart, tell it me: Have you seen her, honey-bee? She is cousin to the flowers-- Wild-rose face and wild-rose mouth, And the sweetness of the south."-- But it passed me silently. II. Then I asked the forest-bird, Warbling to the woodland waters; Saying, "Dearest, have you heard, Have you heard her, forest-bird? She is one of Music's daughters-- Music is her happy laugh; Never song so sweet by half."-- But it answered not a word. III. Next I asked the evening sky, Hanging out its lamps of fire; Saying, "Loved one, passed she by? Tell me, tell me, evening sky! She, the star of my desire-- Planet-eyed and hair moon-glossed, Sister whom the Pleiads lost."-- But it never made reply. IV. Where is she? ah, where is she? She to whom both love and duty Bind me, yea, immortally.-- Where is she? ah, where is she? Symbol of the Earth-soul's beauty. I have lost her. Help my heart Find her, nevermore to part.-- Woe is me! ah, woe is me! MEETING AND PARTING. I. When from the tower, like some sweet flower, The bell drops petals of the hour, That says the world is homing, My heart puts off its garb of care And clothes itself in gold and vair, And hurries forth to meet her there Within the purple gloaming. It's--Oh! how slow the hours go, How dull the moments move! Till soft and clear the bells I hear, That say, like music, in my ear, "Go meet the one you love." II. When curved and white, a bugle bright, The moon blows glamour through the night, That sets the world a-dreaming, My heart, where gladness late was guest, Puts off its joy, as to my breast At parting her dear form is pressed, Within the moon's faint gleaming. It's--Oh! how fast the hours passed!-- They were not slow enough! Too soon, too soon, the sinking moon Says to my soul, like some sad tune, "Come! part from her you love." LOVE IN A GARDEN. I. Between the rose's and the canna's crimson, Beneath her window in the night I stand; The jeweled dew hangs little stars, in rims, on The white moonflowers--each a spirit hand That points the path to mystic shadowland. Awaken, sweet and fair! And add to night thy grace! Suffer its loveliness to share The white moon of thy face, The darkness of thy hair. Awaken, sweet and fair! II. A moth, like down, swings on th' althæa's pistil,-- Ghost of a tone that haunts its bell's deep dome;-- And in the August-lily's cone of crystal A firefly blurs, the lantern of a gnome, Green as a gem that gleams through hollow foam. Approach! the moment flies! Thou sweetheart of the South! Come! mingle with night's mysteries The red rose of thy mouth, The starlight of thine eyes.-- Approach! the moment flies! III. Dim through the dusk, like some unearthly presence, Bubbles the Slumber-song of some wild bird; And with it borne, faint on a breeze-sweet essence, The rainy murmur of a fountain's heard-- As if young lips had breathed a perfumed word. How long, my love, my bliss! How long must I await With night,--that all impatience is,-- Thy greeting at the gate, And at the gate thy kiss? How long, my love, my bliss! FLORIDIAN. I. The cactus and the aloe bloom Beneath the window of your room; Your window where, at evenfall, Beneath the twilight's first pale star, You linger, tall and spiritual, And hearken my guitar. It is the hour When every flower Is wooed by moth or bee-- Would, would you were the flower, dear, And I the moth to draw you near, To draw you near to me, My dear, To draw you near to me. II. The jasmine and bignonia spill Their balm around your windowsill; The sill where, when magnolia-white, In foliage mists, the moon hangs far, You lean with bright deep eyes of night And hearken my guitar. It is the hour When from each flower The wind woos fragrances-- Would, would you were the flower, love, And I the wind to breathe above, To breathe above and kiss, My love, To breathe above and kiss. THE GOLDEN HOUR. I. She comes,--the dreamy daughter Of day and night,--a girl, Who o'er the western water Lifts up her moon of pearl: Like some Rebecca at the well, Who fills her jar of crystal shell, Down ways of dew, o'er dale and dell, Dusk comes with dreams of you, Of you, Dusk comes with dreams of you. II. She comes, the serious sister Of all the stars that strew The deeps of God, and glister Bright on the darkling blue: Like some loved Ruth, who heaps her arm With golden gleanings of the farm, Down fields of stars, where shadows swarm, Dusk comes with thoughts of you, Of you, Dusk comes with thoughts of you. III. She comes, and soft winds greet her, And whispering odors woo; She is the words and meter They set their music to: Like Israfel, a spirit fair, Whose heart's a silvery dulcimer, Down listening slopes of earth and air Dusk comes with love of you, Of you, Dusk comes with love of you. REED CALL FOR APRIL. I. When April comes, and pelts with buds And apple-blooms each orchard space, And takes the dog-wood-whitened woods With rain and sunshine of her moods, Like your fair face, like your fair face: It's honey for the bloom and dew, And honey for the heart! And, oh, to be away with you Beyond the town and mart. II. When April comes, and tints the hills With gold and beryl that rejoice, And from her airy apron spills The laughter of the winds and rills, Like your young voice, like your young voice: It's gladness for God's bending blue, And gladness for the heart! And, oh, to be away with you Beyond the town and mart. III. When April comes, and binds and girds The world with warmth that breathes above, And to the breeze flings all her birds, Whose songs are welcome as the words Of you I love, of you I love: It's music for all things that woo, And music for the heart! And, oh, to be away with you Beyond the town and mart. "THE YEARS WHEREIN I NEVER KNEW." The years, wherein I never knew Such beauty as is yours,--so fraught With truth and kindness looking through Your loveliness,--I count them naught, O girl, so like a lily wrought! The years wherein I knew not you. Ah, let me see you always so!-- A dream that haunts my memory's sight-- Your hair of moonlight, face of snow, And eyes, blue stars of laughing light, O girl, so like a lily white! Through all the years that come and go. True to you only, in my heart I wear your spirit miniature, Sincere in simpleness of art, That makes my love to still endure, O girl, so like a lily pure! Through years that keep us still apart. MIGNON. Oh, Mignon's mouth is like a rose, A red, red rose, that half uncurls Sweet petals o'er a crimson bee: Or like a shell, that, opening, shows Within its rosy curve white pearls, White rows of pearls, Is Mignon's mouth that smiles at me. Oh, Mignon's eyes are like blue gems, Two azure gems, that gleam and glow, Soft sapphires set in ivory: Or like twin violets, whose stems Bloom blue beneath the covering snow, The lidded snow, Are Mignon's eyes that laugh at me. O mouth of Mignon, Mignon's eyes! O eyes of violet, mouth of fire!-- Within which lies all ecstasy Of tears and kisses and of sighs:-- O mouth, O eyes, and O desire, O love's desire, Have mercy on the soul of me! QUI DOCET, DISCIT. I. When all the world was white with flowers, And Summer, in her sun-built towers, Stood smiling 'mid her handmaid Hours, Who robed her limbs for bridal; Somewhere between the golden sands And purple hills of Folly's lands, Love, with a laugh, let go our hands, And left our sides to idle. II. Now all the world is red with doom, And Autumn, in her frost-carved room, Bends darkly o'er the gipsy loom Of memories she weaves there; Who knocks at night upon the door, All travel-worn and pale and poor?-- Open! and let him in once more, The Love that stands and grieves there. TRANSUBSTANTIATION. I. A sunbeam and a drop of dew Lay on a red rose in the South: God took the three and made her mouth, Her sweet, sweet mouth, So red of hue,-- The burning baptism of His kiss Still fills my heart with heavenly bliss. II. A dream of truth and love come true Slept on a star in daybreak skies: God mingled these and made her eyes, Her dear, dear eyes, So gray of hue,-- The high communion of His gaze Still fills my soul with deep amaze. HELEN. Heaped in raven loops and masses Over temples smooth and fair, Have you marked it, as she passes, Gleam and shadow mingled there,-- Braided strands of midnight air,-- Helen's hair? Deep with dreams and starry mazes Of the thought that in them lies, Have you seen them, as she raises Them in gladness or surprise,-- Two gray gleams of daybreak skies,-- Helen's eyes? Moist with dew and honied wafters Of a music sweet that slips, Have you marked them, brimmed with laughter's Song and sunshine to their tips, Rose-buds whence the fragrance drips,-- Helen's lips? He who sees her needs must love her: But, beware! avoid love's dart! He who loves her must discover Nature overlooked one part, In this masterpiece of art-- Helen's heart. A CAMEO. Why speak of Giamschid rubies Whence rosy starlight drips? I know a richer crimson,-- The ruby of her lips. Why speak of pearls of Oman That shells of ocean sheathe? I know a purer nacre,-- The white pearls of her teeth. Why tell me of the sapphires That Kings and Khalifs prize? I know a lovelier azure,-- The sapphires of her eyes. Go search the far Earth over, Go search the farthest sea, You will not find a cameo Like her God carved for me. LA JEUNESSE ET LA MORT. I. Unto her fragrant face and hair,-- As some wild bee unto a rose, That blooms in splendid beauty there Within the South,--my longing goes: My longing, that is over fain To call her mine, but all in vain; Since jealous Death, as each one knows, Is guardian of La belle Heléne; Of her whose face is very fair-- To my despair, Sweet belle Heléne. II. The sweetness of her face suggests The sensuous scented Jacqueminots; Magnolia blooms her throat and breasts; Her hands long lilies in repose: Fair flowers all without a stain, That grow for Death to pluck again, Within that garden's radiant close, The body of La belle Heléne; The garden glad that she suggests,-- That Death invests. Sweet belle Heléne. III. God had been kinder to me,--when He dipped His hands in fires and snows And made you like a flow'r to ken, A flow'r that in Earth's garden grows,-- Had He, for pleasure or for pain, Instead of Death in that demesne, Made Love the gardener to that rose, Your loveliness, O belle Heléne; God had been kinder to me then-- And to all men, Sweet belle Heléne. LOVE AND LOSS. Loss molds our lives in many ways, And fills our souls with guesses; Upon our hearts sad hands it lays Like some grave priest that blesses. Far better than the love we win, That earthly passions leaven, Is love we lose, that knows no sin, That points the path to Heaven. Love, whose soft shadow brightens Earth, Through whom our dreams are nearest; And loss, through whom we see the worth Of all that we held dearest. Not joy it is, but misery That chastens us, and sorrow;-- Perhaps to make us all that we Expect beyond To-morrow. Within that life where time and fate Are not; that knows no seeming: That world to which death keeps the gate Where love and loss sit dreaming. SUNSET CLOUDS. Low clouds, the lightning veins and cleaves, Torn from the forest of the storm, Sweep westward like enormous leaves O'er field and farm. And in the west, on burning skies, Their wrath is quenched, their hate is hushed, And deep their drifted thunder lies With splendor flushed. The black turns gray, the gray turns gold; And, seaed in deeps of radiant rose, Summits of fire, manifold They now repose. What dreams they bring! what thoughts reveal! That have their source in loveliness, Through which the doubts I often feel Grow less and less. Through which I see that other night, That cloud called Death, transformed of Love To flame, and pointing with its light To life above. MASKED. Lying alone I dreamed a dream last night: Methought that Joy had come to comfort me For all the past, its suffering and slight, Yet in my heart I felt this could not be. All that he said unreal seemed and strange, Too beautiful to last beyond to-morrow; Then suddenly his features seemed to change,-- The mask of joy dropped from the face of Sorrow. OUT OF THE DEPTHS. I. Let me forget her face! So fresh, so lovely! the abiding place Of tears and smiles that won my heart to her; Of dreams and moods that moved my soul's dim deeps, As strong winds stir Dark waters where the starlight glimmering sleeps.-- In every lineament the mind can trace, Let me forget her face! II. Let me forget her form! Soft and seductive, that contained each charm, Each grace the sweet word maidenhood implies; And all the sensuous youth of line and curve, That makes men's eyes Bondsmen of beauty eager still to serve.-- In every part that memory can warm, Let me forget her form! III. Let me forget her, God! Her who made honeyed love a bitter rod To scourge my heart with, barren with despair; To tear my soul with, sick with vain desire!-- Oh, hear my prayer! Out of the hell of love's unquenchable fire I cry to thee, with face against the sod, Let me forget her, God! RICHES. What mines the morning heavens unfold! What far Alaskas of the skies! That, veined with elemental gold, Sierra on Sierra rise. Heap up the gold of all the world, The ore that makes men fools and slaves; What is it to the gold, cloud-curled, That rivers through the sunset's caves! Search Earth for riches all who will, The gold that soils, that turns to dust-- Be mine the wealth no thief can steal, The gold of God that can not rust. BEAUTY AND ART. The gods are dead; but still for me Lives on in wildwood brook and tree Each myth, each old divinity. For me still laughs among her rocks The Naiad; and the Dryad's locks Drop perfume on the wild-flower flocks. The Satyr hoof still prints the loam; And, whiter than the wind-blown foam, The Oread haunts her mountain home. To him, whose mind is fain to dwell With loveliness no time can quell, All things are real, imperishable. To him--whatever facts may say-- Who sees the soul beneath the clay, Is proof of a diviner day. The very stars and flowers preach A gospel old as God, and teach Philosophy a child may reach; That can not die, that shall not cease, That lives through idealities Of beauty, ev'n as Rome and Greece; That lift the soul above the clod, And, working out some period Of art, are part and proof of God. THE AGE OF GOLD. The clouds, that tower in storm, that beat Arterial thunder in their veins; The wildflowers lifting, shyly sweet, Their perfect faces from the plains,-- All high, all lowly things of Earth For no vague end have had their birth. Low strips of mist, that mesh the moon Above the foaming waterfall; And mountains that God's hand hath hewn, And forests where the great winds call,-- Within the grasp of such as see Are parts of a conspiracy; To seize the soul with beauty; hold The heart with love, and so fulfill Within ourselves the Age of Gold, That never died, and never will,-- So long as one true nature feels The wonders that the world reveals. THE LOVE OF LOVES. I have not seen her face, and yet She is more sweet than any thing Of Earth--than rose or violet That Mayday winds and sunbeams bring. Of all we know, past or to come, That beauty holds within its net, She is the high compendium: And yet-- I have not touched her robe, and still She is more dear than lyric words And music; or than strains that fill The throbbing throats of forest birds. Of all we mean by poetry, That rules the soul and charms the will, She is the deep epitome: And still-- She is my world; ah, pity me! A dream that flies whom I pursue; Whom all pursue, whoe'er they be, Who toil for art and dare and do. The shadow-love for whom they sigh, The far ideal affinity, For whom they live and gladly die-- Ah, me! THREE THINGS. There are three things of Earth That help us more Than those of heavenly birth That all implore-- Than Love or Faith or Hope, For which we strive and grope. The first one is Desire,-- Who takes our hand And fills our hearts with fire None may withstand;-- Through whom we're lifted far Above both moon and star. The second one is Dream,-- Who leads our feet By an immortal gleam To visions sweet;-- Through whom our forms put on Dim attributes of dawn. The last of these is Toil,-- Who maketh true, Within the world's turmoil The other two;-- Through whom we may behold Ourselves with kings enrolled. IMMORTELLES. I. As some warm moment of repose In one rich rose Sums all the summer's lovely bloom And pure perfume-- So did her soul epitomize All hopes that make life wise, Who lies before us now with lidded eyes, Faith's amaranth of truth Crowning her youth. II. As some melodious note or strain May so contain All of sweet music in one chord, Or lyric word-- So did her loving heart suggest All dreams that make life blest, Who lies before us now with pulseless breast, Love's asphodel of duty Crowning her beauty. A LULLABY. I. In her wimple of wind and her slippers of sleep The twilight comes like a little goose-girl, Herding her owls with many "tu-whoos," Her little brown owls in the woodland deep, Where dimly she walks in her whispering shoes, And gown of glimmering pearl. Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep; This is the road to Rockaby Town. Rockaby, lullaby, where dreams are cheap; Here you can buy any dream for a crown. Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep; The cradle you lie in is soft and is deep, The wagon that takes you to Rockaby Town. Now you go up, sweet, now you go down, Rockaby, lullaby, now you go down. II. And after the twilight comes midnight, who wears A mantle of purple so old, so old! Who stables the lily-white moon, it is said, In a wonderful chamber with violet stairs, Up which you can see her come, silent of tread, On hoofs of pale silver and gold. Dream, dream, little one, dream; This is the way to Lullaby Land. Lullaby, rockaby, where, white as cream, Sugar-plum bowers drop sweets in your hand. Dream, dream, little one, dream; The cradle you lie in is tight at each seam, The boat that goes sailing to Lullaby Land. Over the sea, sweet, over the sand, Lullaby, rockaby, over the sand. III. The twilight and midnight are lovers, you know, And each to the other is true, is true! And there on the moon through the heavens they ride, With the little brown owls all huddled arow, Through meadows of heaven where, every side, Blossom the stars and the dew. Rest, rest, little one, rest; Rockaby Town is in Lullaby Isle. Rockaby, lullaby, set like a nest Deep in the heart of a song and a smile. Rest, rest, little one, rest; The cradle you lie in is warm as my breast, The white bird that bears you to Lullaby Isle. Out of the East, sweet, into the West, Rockaby, lullaby, into the West. DUM VIVIMUS. I. Now with the marriage of the lip and beaker Let Joy be born! and in the rosy shine, The slanting starlight of the lifted liquor, Let Care, the hag, be drowned! No more repine At all life's ills! Come, bury them in wine! Room for great guests! Yea, let us usher in Philosophies of old Anacreon And Omar, that, from dawn to glorious dawn, Shall lesson us in love and song and sin. II. Some lives need less than others.--Who can ever Say truly "Thou art mine," of Happiness? Death comes to all. And one, to-day, is never Sure of to-morrow, that may ban or bless; And what's beyond is but a shadowy guess. "All, all is vanity," the preacher sighs; And in this world what has more right than Wrong? Come! let us hush remembrance with a song, And learn with folly to be glad and wise. III. There was a poet of the East named Hafiz, Who sang of wine and beauty. Let us go Praising them too. And where good wine to quaff is And maids to kiss, doff life's gray garb of woe; For soon that tavern's reached, that inn, you know, Where wine and love are not, where, sans disguise, Each one must lie in his strait bed apart, The thorn of sleep deep-driven in his heart, And dust and darkness in his mouth and eyes. FAILURE. There are some souls Whose lot it is to set their hearts on goals That adverse Fate controls. While others win With little labor through life's dust and din, And lord-like enter in Immortal gates; And, of Success the high-born intimates, Inherit Fame's estates.... Why is 't the lot Of merit oft to struggle and yet not Attain? to toil--for what? Simply to know The disappointment, the despair and woe Of effort here below? Ambitious still to reach Those lofty peaks, which men aspiring preach, For which their souls beseech: Those heights that swell Remote, removed, and unattainable, Pinnacle on pinnacle: Still yearning to attain Their far repose, above life's stress and strain, But all in vain, in vain!... Why hath God put Great longings in some souls and straightway shut All doors of their clay hut? The clay accurst That holds achievement back; from which, immersed, The spirit may not burst. Were it, at least, Not better to have sat at Circe's feast, If afterwards a beast? Than aye to bleed, To strain and strive, to toil in thought and deed, And nevermore succeed? THE CUP OF JOY. Let us mix a cup of Joy That the wretched may employ, Whom the Fates have made their toy. Who have given brain and heart To the thankless world of Art, And from Fame have won no part. Who have labored long at thought; Starved and toiled and all for naught; Sought and found not what they sought.... Let our goblet be the skull Of a fool; made beautiful With a gold nor base nor dull: Gold of madcap fancies, once It contained, that,--sage or dunce,-- Each can read whoever runs. First we pour the liquid light Of our dreams in; then the bright Beauty that makes day of night. Let this be the must wherefrom, In due time, the mettlesome Care-destroying drink shall come. Folly next: with which mix in Laughter of a child of sin, And the red of mouth and chin. These shall give the tang thereto, Effervescence and rich hue Which to all good wine are due. Then into our cup we press One wild kiss of wantonness, And a glance that says not less. Sparkles both that give a fine Lustre to the drink divine, Necessary to good wine. Lastly in the goblet goes Sweet a love-song, then a rose Warmed upon _her_ breast's repose. These bouquet our drink.--Now measure With your arm the waist you treasure-- Lift the cup and, "Here's to Pleasure!" PESTILENCE. High on a throne of noisome ooze and heat, 'Mid rotting trees of bayou and lagoon, Ghastly she sits beneath the skeleton moon, A tawny horror coiling at her feet-- Fever, whose eyes keep watching, serpent-like, Until _her_ eyes shall bid him rise and strike. MUSINGS. INSPIRATION. All who have toiled for Art, who've won or lost, Sat equal priests at her high Pentecost; Only the chrism and sacrament of flame, Anointing all, inspired not all the same. APPORTIONMENT. How often in our search for joy below Hoping for happiness we chance on woe. VICTORY. They who take courage from their own defeat Are victors too, no matter how much beat. PREPARATION. How often hope's fair flower blooms richest where The soul was fertilized with black despair. DISILLUSION. Those unrequited in their love who die Have never drained life's chief illusion dry. SUCCESS. Success allures us in the earth and skies: We seek to win her, but, too amorous, Mocking, she flees us.--Haply, were we wise, We would not strive and she would come to us. SCIENCE. Miranda-like, above the world she waves The wand of Prospero; and, beautiful, Ariel the airy, Caliban the dull,-- Lightning and steam,--are her unwilling slaves. ECHO. Dweller in hollow places, hills and rocks, Daughter of Silence and old Solitude, Tip-toe she stands within her cave or wood, Her only life the noises that she mocks. THE UNIVERSAL WIND. Wild son of Heav'n, with laughter and alarm, Now East, now West, now North, now South he goes, Bearing in one harsh hand dark death and storm, And in the other, sunshine and a rose. COMPENSATION. Yea, whom He loves the Lord God chasteneth With disappointments, so that this side death, Through suffering and failure, they know Hell To make them worthy in that Heaven to dwell Of Love's attainment, where they come to be Parts of its beauty and divinity. POPPIES. Summer met Sleep at sunset, Dreaming within the south,-- Drugged with his soul's deep slumber, Red with her heart's hot drouth, These are the drowsy kisses She pressed upon his mouth. HER EYES AND MOUTH. There is no Paradise like that which lies Deep in the heavens of her azure eyes: There is no Eden here on Earth that glows Like that which smiles rich in her mouth's red rose. HER SOUL. To me not only does her soul suggest Palms and the peace of tropic shore and wood, But, oceaned far beyond the golden West, The Fortunate Islands of true Womanhood. HER FACE. The gladness of our Southern spring; the grace Of summer; and the dreaminess of fall Are parts of her sweet nature.--Such a face Was Ruth's, methinks, divinely spiritual. AT THE SIGN OF THE SKULL. _It's "Gallop and go!" and "Slow, now, slow!" With every man in this life below-- But the things of this world are a fleeting show._ The postchaise Time that all must take Is old with clay and dust; Two horses strain its rusty brake Named Pleasure and Disgust. Our baggage totters on its roof, Of Vanity and Care, As Hope, the postboy, spurs each hoof, Or heavy-eyed Despair. And now a comrade with us rides, Love, haply, or Remorse; And that dim traveler besides, Gaunt Memory on a horse. And be we king or be we kern Who ride the roads of Sin, No matter how the roads may turn They lead us to that Inn. Unto that Inn within that land Of silence and of gloom, Whose ghastly landlord takes our hand And leads us to our room. _It's "Gallop and go!" and "Slow, now, slow!" With every man in this life below-- But the things of this world are a fleeting show._ A CAVALIER'S TOAST. I. Some drink to Friendship, some to Love,-- Through whom the world is fair, perdie!-- But I to one these others prove, Who leaps 'mid lions for a glove, Or dies to set another free-- I drink to Loyalty. II. No dagger his, no cloak and mask, Free-faced he stands so all may see; Let Friendship set him any task, Or Love--reward he does not ask, The deed is done whate'er it be-- So here's to Loyalty. SLEEP IS A SPIRIT. Sleep is a spirit, who beside us sits, Or through our frames like some dim glamour flits; From out her form a pearly light is shed, As from a lily, in a lily-bed, A firefly's gleam. Her face is pale as stone, And languid as a cloud that drifts alone In starry heav'n. And her diaphanous feet Are easy as the dew or opaline heat Of summer. Lo! with ears--aurora pink As Dawn's--she leans and listens on the brink Of being, dark with dreadfulness and doubt, Wherein vague lights and shadows move about, And palpitations beat--like some huge heart Of Earth--the surging pulse of which we're part. One hand, that hollows her divining eyes, Glows like the curved moon over twilight skies; And with her gaze she fathoms life and death-- Gulfs, where man's conscience, like a restless breath Of wind, goes wand'ring; whispering low of things, The irremediable, where sorrow clings. Around her limbs a veil of woven mist Wavers, and turns from fibered amethyst To textured crystal; through which symboled bars Of silver burn, and cabalistic stars Of nebulous gold. Shrouding her feet and hair, Within this woof, fantastic, everywhere, Dreams come and go; the instant images Of things she sees and thinks; realities, Shadows, with which her heart and fancy swarm That in the veil take momentary form: Now picturing heaven in celestial fire, And now the hell of every soul's desire; Hinting at worlds, God wraps in mystery, Beyond the world we know and touch and see. KENNST DU DAS LAND. FROM THE GERMAN OF GOETHE. Know'st thou the land where the lemon-tree flowers; The orange glows gold in the darkness of bowers, Out of blue heaven a softer zephyr blows, And still the myrtle, tall the laurel grows? Know'st it indeed? Thither, ah, me! ah, me! Would I with thee, O my belovéd, flee. Know'st thou the house? Columns support its beams, Its long hall glitters and its gallery gleams; And sculpture glows and asks, in marble mild, "What have they done to thee, thou poor, poor child?" Know'st it indeed? Thither, ah, me! ah, me! Would I with thee, O my protector, flee. Know'st thou the mountain and its cloud-built bridge? In mist the mule treads cautiously its ridge; The dragon's ancient brood still haunts its caves; Down the loud crag the plunging torrent raves. Know'st it indeed? Thither, ah, me! ah, me! Our pathway leads! O father, let us flee! AT MIDNIGHT. At midnight in the trysting wood I wandered by the waterside, When, soft as mist, before me stood My sweetheart who had died. But so unchanged was she, meseemed That I had only dreamed her dead; Glad in her eyes the love-light gleamed; Her lips were warm and red. What though the stars shone shadowy through Her form as by my side she went, And by her feet no drop of dew Was stirred, no blade was bent! What though through her white loveliness The wildflower dimmed, the moonlight paled, Real to my touch she was; no less Than when the earth prevailed. She took my hand. My heart beat wild. She kissed my mouth. I bowed my head. Then gazing in my eyes, she smiled: "When did'st thou die?" she said. THE MAN IN GRAY. _Written for the Reunion of the Confederate Veterans at Louisville, Ky., May and June, 1900._ I. Again, in dreams, the veteran hears The bugle and the drum; Again the boom of battle nears, Again the bullets hum: Again he mounts, again he cheers, Again his charge speeds home-- O memories of those long gone years! O years that are to come! We live in dreams as well as deeds, in thoughts as well as acts; And life through things we feel, not know, is realized the most; The conquered are the conquerors, despite the face of facts, If they still feel their cause was just who fought for it and lost. II. Again, in thought, he hears at dawn The far reveille die; Again he marches stern and wan Beneath a burning sky: He bivouacs; the night comes on; His comrades 'round him lie-- O memories of the years long gone! O years that now go by! The vintager of Earth is War, is War whose grapes are men; Into his wine-vats armies go, his wine-vats steaming red: The crimson vats of battle where he stalks, as in a den, Drunk with the must of Hell that spurts beneath his iron tread. III. Again, in mind, he's lying where The trenches slay with heat; Again his flag floats o'er him, fair In charge or fierce retreat: Again all's lost; again despair Makes death seem three times sweet-- O years of tears that crowned his hair With laurels of defeat! There is reward for those who dare, for those who dare and do: Who face the dark inevitable, who fall and know no shame; Upon their banner triumph sits and in the horn they blew,-- Naught's lost if honor be not lost, defeat is but a name. HALLOWE'EN. It was down in the woodland on last Hallowe'en, Where silence and darkness had built them a lair, That I felt the dim presence of her, the unseen, And heard her still step on the ghost-haunted air. It was last Hallowe'en in the glimmer and swoon Of mist and of moonlight that thickened and thinned, That I saw the gray gleam of her eyes in the moon, And hair, like a raven, blown wild in the wind. It was last Hallowe'en where starlight and dew Made mystical marriage on flower and leaf, That she led me with looks of a love that I knew, And lured with the voice of a heart-buried grief. It was last Hallowe'en in the forest of dreams, Where trees are eidolons and shadows have eyes, That I saw her pale face like the foam of far streams, And heard, like the leaf-lisp, her tears and her sighs. It was last Hallowe'en, the haunted, the dread, In the wind-tattered wood by the storm-twisted pine, That I, who am living, kept tryst with the dead, And clasped her a moment and dreamed she was mine. THE IMAGE IN THE GLASS. I. The slow reflection of a woman's face Grew, as by witchcraft, in the oval space Of that strange glass on which the moon looked in:-- As cruel as death beneath the auburn hair The dark eyes burned; and, o'er the faultless chin,-- Evil as night yet as the daybreak fair,-- Rose-red and sensual smiled the mouth of sin. II. The glorious throat and shoulders and, twin crests Of snow, the splendid beauty of the breasts, Filled soul and body with the old desire.-- Daughter of darkness! how could this thing be? You, whom I loathed! for whom my heart's fierce fire Had burnt to ashes of satiety! You, who had sunk my soul in all that's dire! III. How came your image there? and in that room! Where she, the all adored, my life's sweet bloom, Died poisoned! She, my scarcely one week's bride-- Yea, poisoned by a gift you sent to her, Thinking her death would win me to your side. And so it did! but ... well, it made some stir-- By your own hand, I think, they said you died. IV. Time passed. And then--was it the curse of crime, That night of nights, which forced my feet to climb To that locked bridal-room?--'Twas midnight when A longing, like to madness, mastered me, Compelled me to that chamber, which for ten Sad years was sealed; a dark necessity To gaze upon--I knew not what again. V. Love's ghost, perhaps. Or, in the curvature Of that strange mirror, something that might cure The ache in me--some message, said perchance Of her dead loveliness, which once it glassed, That might repeat again my lost romance In momentary pictures of the past, While in its depths her image swam in trance. VI. I did not dream to see the soulless eyes Of you I hated; nor the lips where lies And kisses curled; your features,--that were tuned To all demonic,--smiling up as might Some deep damnation! while.... my God! I swooned!... Oozed slowly out, between the breast's dead white, The ghastly red of that wide dagger-wound. HER PRAYER. She kneels with haggard eyes and hair Unto the Christ upon the Cross: Her gown is torn; her feet are bare. What is this thing she begs of him, The gentle Christ upon the Cross? Her hands are clasped; her face is dim. Is it forgiveness for her sin, She asks of Christ upon the Cross? And mercy for the soul within? With anguished face, so sad and sweet, She kneels to Christ upon the Cross: Her arms embrace his nail-pierced feet. Her tears run slowly down her face, O piteous Christ upon the Cross! And through her tears she sighs and says:-- "The thing that I would crave of Thee, O Christ upon the cruel Cross, Is not a thing to comfort me. "Thou, who hast taught us to forgive, O tender Christ upon the Cross, Help Thou my love for _him_ to live. "Oh, let the love that was my fall, O loving Christ upon the Cross, Still to my life be all in all. "With love for him who loves no more, O patient Christ upon the Cross, Make Thou my punishment full sore." She kneels with haggard eyes and hair Unto the Christ upon the Cross: Her gown is torn; her feet are bare. THE MESSAGE OF THE LILIES. My soul and I went walking Beneath the moon of Spring; The lilies pale were talking, Were faintly murmuring. From dimly moonlit places They thrust long throats of white, And lovely lifted faces Of fragrant snow and light. Their language was an essence, Yet clearer than a bird's; And from it grew a presence As music grows from words. A spirit born of silence And chastity and dew Among Elysian islands Were not more white to view. A spirit born of fire And holiness and snow Within the Heavens' desire, Were not more pure to know. He smiled amid them lifting Pale hands of prayer and peace-- And through the moonlight, drifting, Came words to me like these: "We are His lilies, lilies, Whose praises aye we sing! We are the lilies, lilies Of Christ our Lord and King!" A LEGEND OF THE LILY. Pale as a star that shines through rain Her face was seen at the window-pane, Her sad, frail face that watched in vain. The face of a girl whose brow was wan, To whom the kind sun spoke at dawn, And a star and the moon when the day was gone. And oft and often the sun had said-- "O fair, white face, O sweet, fair head, Come talk with me of the love that's dead." And she would sit in the sun awhile, Down in the garth by the old stone-dial, Where never again would he make her smile. And often the first bright star o'erhead Had whispered, "Sweet, where the rose blooms red, Come look with me for the love that's dead." And she would wait with the star she knew, Where the fountain splashed and the roses blew, Where never again would he come to woo. And oft the moon, when she lay in bed, Had sighed, "Dear heart, in the orchardstead. Come, dream with me of the love that's dead." And she would stand in the moon, the dim, Where the fruit made heavy the apple limb, Where never again would she dream with him. So summer passed and the autumn came; And the wind-torn boughs were touched with flame; But her life and her sorrow remained the same. Or, if she changed, as it comes about A life may change through trouble and doubt,-- As a candle flickers and then goes out,-- 'Twas only to grow more quiet and wan, Sadly waiting at dusk and at dawn For the coming of love forever gone. And so, one night, when the star looked in, It kissed her face that was white and thin, And murmured, "Come! thou free of sin!" And when the moon, on another night, Beheld her lying still and white, It sighed, "'Tis well! now all is right." And when one morning the sun arose, And they bore her bier down the garden-close, It touched her, saying, "At last, repose." And they laid her down, so young and fair, Where the grass was withered, the bough was bare, All wrapped in the light of her golden hair.... So autumn passed and the winter went; And spring, like a blue-eyed penitent, Came, telling her beads of blossom and scent. And, lo! to the grave of the beautiful The strong sun cried, "Why art thou dull? Awake! awake! Forget thy skull!" And the evening star and the moon above Called out, "O dust, now speak thereof! Proclaim thyself! Arise, O love!" And the skull and the dust in the darkness beard. Each icy germ in its cerements stirred, As Lazarus moved at the Lord's loud word. And a flower arose on the mound of green, White as the robe of the Nazarene; To testify of the life unseen. And I paused by the grave; then went my way: And it seemed that I heard the lily say-- "Here was a miracle wrought to-day." THE END OF THE CENTURY. There are moments when, as missions, God reveals to us strange visions; When, within their separate stations, We may see the Centuries, Like revolving constellations Shaping out Earth's destinies. I have gazed in Time's abysses, Where no smallest thing Earth misses That was hers once. 'Mid her chattels, There the Past's gigantic ghost Sits and dreams of thrones and battles In the night of ages lost. Far before her eyes, unholy Mist was spread; that darkly, slowly Rolled aside,--like some huge curtain Hung above the land and sea;-- And beneath it, wild, uncertain, Rose the wraiths of memory. First I saw colossal spectres Of dead cities: Troy--once Hector's Pride; then Babylon and Tyre; Karnac, Carthage, and the gray Walls of Thebes,--Apollo's lyre Built;--and Rome and Nineveh. Empires followed: first, in seeming, Old Chaldea lost in dreaming; Egypt next, a bulk Memnonian Staring from her pyramids; Then Assyria, Babylonian Night beneath her hell-lit lids. Greece, in classic white, sidereal Armored; Rome, in dark, imperial Purple, crowned with blood and fire, Down the deeps barbaric strode; Gaul and Britain stalking by her, Skin-clad and tattooed with woad. All around them, rent and scattered, Lay their gods with features battered, Brute and human, stone and iron, Caked with gems and gnarled with gold; Temples, that did once environ These, in wreck around them rolled. While I stood and gazed and waited, Slowly night obliterated All; and other phantoms drifted Out of darkness pale as stars; Shapes that tyrant faces lifted, Sultans, kings, and emperors. Man and steed in ponderous metal Panoplied, they seemed to settle, Condors gaunt of devastation, On the world: behind their march-- Desolation; conflagration Loomed before them with her torch. Helmets flamed like fearful flowers; Chariots rose and moving towers; Captains passed; each fierce commander With his gauntlet on his sword: Agamemnon, Alexander, Cæsar, each led on his horde. Huns and Vandals; wild invaders: Goths and Arabs; stern Crusaders: Each, like some terrific torrent, Rolled above a ruined world; Till a cataract abhorrent Seemed the swarming spears uphurled. Banners and escutcheons, kindled By the light of slaughter, dwindled-- in darkness;--the chimera Of the Past was laid at last. But, behold, another era From her corpse rose, vague and vast. Demogorgon of the Present! Who in one hand raised a Crescent, In the other, with submissive Fingers, lifted up a Cross; Reverent and yet derisive Seemed she, robed in gold and dross. In her skeptic eyes professions Of great faith I saw; expressions, Christian and humanitarian, Played around her cynic lip; Still I knew her a barbarian By the sword upon her hip. And she cherished strange eidolons, Pagan shadows--Platos, Solons-- From whose teachings she indentured Forms of law and sophistry; Seeking still for truth she ventured Just so far as these could see. When she vanished, I--uplifting Eyes to where the dawn was rifting Darkness,--lo! beheld a shadow Towering on Earth's utmost peaks; 'Round whom morning's eldorado Rivered gold in blinding streaks. On her brow I saw the stigma Still of death; and life's enigma Filled her eyes: around her shimmered Folds of silence; and afar, Faint above her forehead, glimmered Lone the light of one pale star. Then a voice,--above or under Earth,--against her seemed to thunder Questions, wherein was repeated, "Christ or Cain?" and "God or beast?" And the Future, shadowy-sheeted, Turning, pointed towards the East. THE ISLE OF VOICES. The wind blew free that morn that we, High-hearted, sailed away; Bound for Favonian islands blest, Remote within the utmost West, Beyond the golden day. There, we were told, each dream of old, Each deed and dream of youth, Each myth of life's divinest prime, And every romance, dear to time, Put on immortal truth. The love undone, the aim unwon, The hope that turned despair; The thought unborn; the dream that died; The unattained, unsatisfied, Should be accomplished there. So we believed. And, undeceived, A little crew set sail; A little crew with hearts as stout As any yet that faced a doubt And tore away its veil. And time went by; and sea and sky Had worn our masts and decks; When, lo! one morn with canvas torn, A phantom ship, we came forlorn Into the Sea of Wrecks. There, day and night, the mist lay white, And pale stars shone at noon; The sea around was foam and fire, And overhead hung wan a wire, A will-o'-wisp of moon. And through the mist, all white and whist, Gaunt ships, with sea-weed wound, With rotting masts, upon whose spars The corposants lit spectre stars, Sailed by without a sound. And all about,--now in, now out,-- Their ancient hulls was shed The worm-like glow of green decay, That writhed and glimmered in the gray Of canvas overhead. And each that passed, in hull and mast, Seemed that wild ship that flees Before the tempest--seamen tell-- Deep-cargoed with the curse of Hell, Through roaring night and seas. Ay! many a craft we left abaft Upon that haunted sea; But never a hulk that clewed a sail, Or waved a hand, or answered hail, And never a man saw we. At last we came where--pouring flame-- In darkness and in storm, A vast volcano westward reared An awful summit, lava-seared, Like some terrific arm. And we could feel beneath our keel The ocean throb and swell, As if the Earthquake there uncoiled Its monster bulk, or Titans toiled At the red heart of Hell. Like madmen now we turned our prow North, towards an ocean weird Of Northern Lights and icy blasts; And for ten moons with reeling masts And leaking hold we steered. Then black as blood through streaming scud Land loomed above our boom, A land of iron gulfs and crags And cataracts, like wind-tossed rags, And caverns lost in gloom. And burning white on every height, And white in every cave, A naked spirit, with a flame, Now gleamed, now vanished; went and came Above the whining wave. No mortal thing of foot or wing Made glad its steep and strand; But voices, voices seemingly-- Vague voices of the sky and sea-- Peopled the demon land. Yea, everywhere, in earth and air, A lamentation wept; That, gathering strength above, below, Now like a mighty wind of woe, Around the island swept. And in that sound, it seemed, was bound All life's despair of art; The bitterness of joy that died; The anguish of faith's crucified; And love that broke its heart. The ghost it seemed of all we'd dreamed, Of all we had desired; That--turned a curse, an empty cry-- With wailing words went trailing by In hope's dead robes attired. And could this be the land that we Had sought for soon and late? Those Islands of the Blest, the fair, Where we had hoped to ease our care And end the fight with fate? O lie that lured! O pain endured! O years of toil and thirst! Where we had looked for blesséd ground The Islands of the Damned we found, And in the end--were curst! A. D. NINETEEN HUNDRED. War and Disaster, Famine and Pestilence, Vaunt-couriers of the Century that comes, Behold them shaking their tremendous plumes Above the world! where all the air grows dense With rumors of destruction and a sense, Cadaverous, of corpses and of tombs Predestined; while,--like monsters in the glooms,-- Bristling with battle, shadowy and immense, The Nations rise in wild apocalypse.-- Where now the boast Earth makes of civilization? Its brag of Christianity?--In vain We seek to see them in the dread eclipse Of hell and horror, all the devastation Of Death triumphant on his hills of slain. CAVERNS. _Written of Colossal Cave, Kentucky._ Aisles and abysses; leagues no man explores, Of rock that labyrinths and night that drips; Where everlasting silence broods, with lips Of adamant, o'er earthquake-builded floors. Where forms, such as the Demon-World adores, Laborious water carves; whence echo ships Wild-tongued o'er pools where petrifaction strips Her breasts of crystal from which crystal pours.-- Here where primordial fear, the Gorgon, sits Staring all life to stone in ghastly mirth, I seem to tread, with awe no tongue can tell,-- Beneath vast domes, by torrent-tortured pits, 'Mid wrecks terrific of the ruined Earth,-- An ancient causeway of forgotten Hell. OF THE SLUMS. Red-faced as old carousal, and with eyes A hard, hot blue; her hair a frowsy flame, Bold, dowdy-bosomed, from her widow-frame She leans, her mouth all insult and all lies. Or slattern-slippered and in sluttish gown, With ribald mirth and words too vile to name, A new Doll Tearsheet, glorying in her shame, Armed with her Falstaff now she takes the town. The flaring lights of alley-way saloons, The reek of hideous gutters and black oaths Of drunkenness from vice-infested dens, Are to her senses what the silvery moon's Chaste splendor is, and what the blossoming growths Of earth and bird-song are to innocence. THE WINDS. Those hewers of the clouds, the winds,--that lair At the four compass-points,--are out to-night; I hear their sandals trample on the height, I hear their voices trumpet through the air. Builders of Storm, God's workmen, now they bear, Up the steep stair of sky, on backs of might, Huge tempest bulks, while,--sweat that blinds their sight,-- The rain is shaken from tumultuous hair: Now, sweepers of the firmament, they broom, Like gathered dust, the rolling mists along Heaven's floors of sapphire; all the beautiful blue Of skyey corridor and aëry room Preparing, with large laughter and loud song, For the white moon and stars to wander through. PROTOTYPES. Whether it be that we in letters trace The pure exactness of a woodbird's strain, And name it song; or with the brush attain The high perfection of a wildflower's face; Or mold in difficult marble all the grace We know as man; or from the wind and rain Catch elemental rapture of refrain And mark in music to due time and place: The aim of art is nature; to unfold Her truth and beauty to the souls of men In close suggestions; in whose forms is cast Nothing so new but 'tis long eons old; Nothing so old but 'tis as young as when The mind conceived it in the ages past. TOUCHES. In heavens of rivered blue, that sunset dyes With glaucous flame, deep in the west the Day Stands Midas-like; or, wading on his way, Touches with splendor all the twilight skies. Each cloud that, like a stepping-stone, he tries With rosy foot, transforms its sober gray To burning gold; while, ray on crystal ray, Within his wake the stars like bubbles rise. So should the artist in his work accord All things with beauty, and communicate His soul's high magic and divinity To all he does; and, hoping no reward, Toil onward, making darkness aureate With light of worlds that are and worlds to be. THE WOMAN SPEAKS. Why have you come? to see me in my shame? A thing to spit on, to despise and scorn?-- And then to ask me! You, by whom was torn And then cast by, like some vile rag, my name! What shelter could you give me, now, that blame And loathing would not share? that wolves of vice Would not besiege with eyes of glaring ice? Wherein Sin sat not with her face of flame? "You love me"?--God!--If yours be love, for lust Hell must invent another synonym! If yours be love, then hatred is the way To Heaven and God! and not with soul but dust Must burn the faces of the Cherubim,-- O lie of lies, if yours be love, I say! LOVE, THE INTERPRETER. Thou art the music that I hear in sleep, The poetry that lures me on in dreams; The magic, thou, that holds my thought with themes Of young romance in revery's mystic keep. The lily's aura, and the damask deep That clothes the rose; the whispering soul that seems To haunt the wind; the rainbow light that streams, Like some wild spirit, 'thwart the cataract's leap-- Are glimmerings of thee and thy loveliness, Pervading all my world; interpreting The marvel and the wonder these disclose: For, lacking thee, to me were meaningless Life, love and hope, the joy of every thing, And all the beauty that the wide world knows. UNANSWERED. How long ago it is since we went Maying! Since she and I went Maying long ago! The years have left my forehead lined, I know, Have thinned my hair around the temples graying. Ah, time will change us; yea, I hear it saying,-- "She, too, grows old: the face of rose and snow Has lost its freshness: in the hair's brown glow Some strands of silver sadly, too, are straying. The form you knew, whose beauty so enspelled, Has lost the litheness of its loveliness: And all the gladness that her blue eyes held Tears and the world have hardened with distress."-- "True! true!" I answer, "O ye years that part! These things are changed, but is her heart, her heart?" EARTH AND MOON. I saw the day like some great monarch die, Gold-couched, behind the clouds' rich tapestries. Then, purple-sandaled, clad in silences Of sleep, through halls of skyey lazuli. The twilight, like a mourning queen, trailed by, Dim-paged of dreams and shadowy mysteries; And now the night, the star-robed child of these, In meditative loveliness draws nigh. Earth,--like to Romeo,--deep in dew and scent, Beneath Heaven's window, watching till a light, Like some white blossom, in its square be set,-- Lifts a faint face unto the firmament, That, with the moon, grows gradually bright, Bidding him climb and clasp his Juliet. PEARLS. Baroque, but beautiful, between the lanes, The valves of nacre of a mussel-shell, Behold, a pearl! shaped like the burnished bell Of some strange blossom that long afternoons Of summer coax to open: all the moon's Chaste lustre in it; hues that only dwell With purity.... It takes me, like a spell, Back to a day when, whistling truant tunes, A barefoot boy I waded 'mid the rocks, Searching for shells deep in the creek's slow swirl, Unconscious of the pearls that 'round me lay: While, 'mid wild-roses,--all her tomboy locks Blond-blowing,--stood, unnoticed then, a girl, My sweetheart once, the pearl I flung away. IN THE FOREST. One well might deem, among these miles of woods, Such were the Forests of the Holy Grail,-- Broceliand and Dean; where, clothed in mail, The Knights of Arthur rode, and all the broods Of legend laired.--And, where no sound intrudes Upon the ear, except the glimmering wail Of some far bird; or, in some flowery swale, A brook that murmurs to the solitudes, Might think he hears the laugh of Vivien Blent with the moan of Merlin, muttering bound By his own magic to one stony spot; And in the cloud, that looms above the glen,-- In which the sun burns like the Table Round,-- Might dream he sees the towers of Camelot. ENCHANTMENT. The deep seclusion of this forest path,-- O'er which the green boughs weave a canopy, Along which bluet and anemone Spread a dim carpet; where the twilight hath Her dark abode; and, sweet as aftermath. Wood-fragrance breathes,--has so enchanted me, That yonder blossoming bramble seems to be Some sylvan resting, rosy from her bath: Has so enspelled me with tradition's dreams, That every foam-white stream that twinkling flows, And every bird that flutters wings of tan, Or warbles hidden, to my fancy seems A Naiad dancing to a Faun who blows Wild woodland music on the pipes of Pan. DUSK. Corn-colored clouds upon a sky of gold, And 'mid their sheaves,--where, like a daisy bloom Left by the reapers to the gathering gloom, The star of twilight flames,--as Ruth, 'tis told, Dreamed homesick 'mid the harvest fields of old, The Dusk goes gleaning color and perfume From Bible slopes of heaven, that illume Her pensive beauty deep in shadows stoled. Hushed is the forest; and blue vale and hill Are still, save for the brooklet, sleepily Stumbling the stone, its foam like some white foot: Save for the note of one far whippoorwill, And in my heart _her_ name,--like some sweet bee Within a flow'r,--blowing a fairy flute. THE BLUE BIRD. From morn till noon upon the window-pane The tempest tapped with rainy finger-nails, And all the afternoon the blustering gales Beat at the door with furious feet of rain. The rose, near which the lily bloom lay slain, Like some red wound dripped by the garden rails, On which the sullen slug left slimy trails-- Meseemed the sun would never shine again. Then in the drench, long, loud and full of cheer,-- A skyey herald tabarded in blue,-- A bluebird bugled ... and at once a bow Was bent in heaven, and I seemed to hear God's sapphire spaces crystallizing through The strata'd clouds in azure tremolo. CAN SUCH THINGS BE? Meseemed that while she played, while lightly yet Her fingers fell, as roses bloom by bloom, I listened--dead within a mighty room Of some old palace where great casements let Gaunt moonlight in, that glimpsed a parapet Of statued marble: in the arrased gloom Majestic pictures towered, dim as doom, The dreams of Titian and of Tintoret. And then, it seemed, along a corridor, A mile of oak, a stricken footstep came. Hurrying, yet slow ... I thought long centuries Passed ere she entered--she, I loved of yore, For whom I died, who wildly wailed my name And bent and kissed me on the mouth and eyes. THE PASSING GLORY. Slow sinks the sun,--a great carbuncle ball Red in the cavern of a sombre cloud,-- And in her garden, where the dense weeds crowd. Among her dying asters stands the Fall, Like some lone woman in a ruined hall, Dreaming of desolation and the shroud; Or through decaying woodlands goes, down-bowed, Hugging the tatters of her gipsy shawl. The gaunt wind rises, like an angry hand, And sweeps the sprawling spider from its web, Smites frantic music in the twilight's ear; And all around, like melancholy sand, Rains dead leaves down--wild leaves, that mark the ebb, In Earth's dark hour-glass, of another year. SEPTEMBER. The bubbled blue of morning-glory spires, Balloon-blown foam of moonflowers, and sweet snows Of clematis, through which September goes, Song-hearted, rich in realized desires, Are flanked by hotter hues: by tawny fires Of acrid marigolds,--that light long rows Of lamps,--and salvias, red as day's red close,-- That torches seem,--by which the Month attires Barbaric beauty; like some Asian queen, Towering imperial in her two-fold crown Of harvest and of vintage; all her form Majestic gold and purple: in her mien The might of motherhood; her baby brown, Abundance, high on one exultant arm. HOODOO. She mutters and stoops by the lone bayou-- The little green leaves are hushed on the trees-- An owl in an oak cries "Who-oh-who," And a fox barks back where the moon slants through The moss that sways to a sudden breeze ... Or _That_ she sees. Whose eyes are coals in the light o' the moon-- "_Soon, oh, soon_," hear her croon, "_Woe, oh, woe to the octoroon!_" She mutters and kneels and her bosom is bare-- The little green leaves are stirred on the trees-- A black bat brushes her unkempt hair, And the hiss of a snake glides 'round her there ... Or is it the voice of the ghostly breeze, Or _That_ she sees, Whose mouth is flame in the light o' the moon?-- "_Soon, oh, soon_," hear her croon, "_Woe, oh, woe to the octoroon!_" She mutters and digs and buries it deep-- The little green leaves are wild on the trees-- And nearer and nearer the noises creep, That gibber and maunder and whine and weep ... Or is it the wave and the weariless breeze, Or _That_ she sees, Which hobbles away in the light o' the moon?-- "_Soon, oh, soon_," hear her croon, "_Woe, oh, woe to the octoroon!_" In the hut where the other girl sits with him-- The little green leaves hang limp on the trees-- All on a sudden the moon grows dim ... Is it the shadow of cloud or of limb, Cast in the door by the moaning breeze? Or _That_ she sees, Which limps and leers in the light o' the moon?-- "_Soon, oh, soon_," hear it croon, "_Woe, oh, woe to the octoroon!_" It has entered in at the open door-- The little green leaves fall dead from the trees-- And she in the cabin lies stark on the floor, And she in the woods has her lover once more ... And--is it the hoot of the dying breeze? Or _him_ who sees, Who mocks and laughs in the light o' the moon:-- "_Soon, oh, soon_," hear him croon, "_Woe, oh, woe to the octoroon!_" THE OTHER WOMAN. You have shut me out from your tears and grief Over the man laid low and hoary. Listen to me now: I am no thief!-- You have shut me out from your tears and grief,-- Listen to me, I will tell my story. The love of a man is transitory.-- What do you know of his past? the years He gave to another his manhood's glory?-- The love of a man is transitory. Listen to me now: open your ears. Over the dead have done with tears! Over the man who loved to madness Me the woman you met with sneers,-- Over the dead have done with tears! Me the woman so sunk in badness. He loved me ever, and that is gladness!-- There by the dead now tell _her_ so; There by the dead where she bows in sadness.-- He loved me ever, and that is gladness!-- Mine the gladness and hers the woe. The best of his life was mine. Now go, Tell her this that her pride may perish, Her with his name, his wife, you know! The best of his life was mine. Now go, Tell her this so she cease to cherish. Bury him then with pomp and flourish! Bury him now without my kiss! Here is a thing for your hearts to nourish,-- Bury him then with pomp and flourish! Bury him now I have told you this. A SONG FOR LABOR. I. Oh, the morning meads, the dewy meads, Where he ploughs and harrows and sows the seeds, Singing a song of manly deeds, In the blossoming springtime weather; The heart in his bosom as high as the word Said to the sky by the mating bird, While the beat of an answering heart is heard, His heart and love's together. II. Oh, the noonday heights, the sunny heights, Where he stoops to the harvest his keen scythe smites, Singing a song of the work that requites, In the ripening summer weather; The soul in his body as light as the sigh Of the little cloud-breeze that cools the sky, While he bears an answering soul reply, His soul and love's together. III. Oh, the evening vales, the twilight vales, Where he labors and sweats to the thud of flails, Singing a song of the toil that avails, In the fruitful autumn weather; In heart and in soul as free from fears As the first white star in the sky that clears, While the music of life and of love he hears, Of life and of love together. AFTERWORD. _What vague traditions do the golden eves. What legends do the dawns Inscribe in fire on Heaven's azure leaves, The red sun colophons?_ _What ancient Stories do the waters verse? What tales of war and love Do winds within the Earth's vast house rehearse, God's stars stand guard above?--_ _Would I could know them as they are expressed In hue and melody! And say, in words, the beauties they suggest. Language their mystery!_ _And in one song magnificently rise, The music of the spheres, That more than marble should immortalize My name in after years._ TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES 1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_. 2. The original text incorrectly listed "The Path by the Creek" as beginning on page 3 in the Contents. The poem actually starts on page 2 and this printer error has been corrected in the Contents section. 3. The listing "Sunset and Song" in Contents has been changed to "Sunset and Storm" in accordance with the title above the poem. 4. The original indentation for "Poppies" stanza has been ignored for consistency with other stanzas' indentation in the "Musings" section. 5. Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been retained. 
312	----	YOUNG ADVENTURE A Book of Poems by by Stephen Vincent Benet [Stephen Vincent Bene't, American Poet and short-story writer -- 1898-1943.] [Note on text: Italicized stanzas will be indented 5 spaces. Italicized words or phrases have been capitalized. Lines longer than 77 characters have been broken, and the continuation is indented two spaces.] [Note: This etext was transcribed from the 1918 American (original) edition. There are some slight differences, such as making the titles in the contents conform exactly to the titles of the individual sections, for ease of searching, and correction of mistakes which are very obviously mistakes, and not merely archaic or unorthodox usage, but great care has been taken not to change the text, and hopefully this has been accomplished.] Some of these poems were originally printed in various periodicals. To W. R. B. Dedication And so, to you, who always were Perseus, D'Artagnan, Lancelot To me, I give these weedy rhymes In memory of earlier times. Now all those careless days are not. Of all my heroes, you endure. Words are such silly things! too rough, Too smooth, they boil up or congeal, And neither of us likes emotion -- But I can't measure my devotion! And you know how I really feel -- And we're together. There, enough,...! Foreword by Chauncey Brewster Tinker In these days when the old civilisation is crumbling beneath our feet, the thought of poetry crosses the mind like the dear memory of things that have long since passed away. In our passionate desire for the new era, it is difficult to refrain oneself from the commonplace practice of speculating on the effects of warfare and of prophesying all manner of novel rebirths. But it may be well for us to remember that the era which has recently closed was itself marked by a mad idealisation of all novelties. In the literary movements of the last decade --when, indeed, any movement at all has been perceptible -- we have witnessed a bewildering rise and fall of methods and ideals. We were captivated for a time by the quest of the golden phrase and the accompanying cultivation of exotic emotions; and then, wearying of the pretty and the temperamental, we plunged into the bloodshot brutalities of naturalism. From the smooth-flowing imitations of Tennyson and Swinburne, we passed into a false freedom that had at its heart a repudiation of all law and standards, for a parallel to which one turns instinctively to certain recent developments in the political world. We may hope that the eager search for novelty of form and subject may have its influence in releasing us from our old bondage to the commonplace and in broadening the scope of poetry; but we cannot blind ourselves to the fact that it has at the same time completed that estrangement between the poet and the general public which has been developing for half a century. The great mass of the reading world, to whom the arts should minister, have now forgotten that poetry is a consolation in times of doubt and peril, a beacon, and "an ever-fixed mark" in a crazed and shifting world. Our poetry --and I am speaking in particular of American poetry -- has been centrifugal; our poets have broken up into smaller and ever smaller groups. Individualism has triumphed. To the general confusion, critics, if they may be said to have existed at all, have added by their paltry conception of the art. They have deemed it a sufficient denunciation of a poet to accuse him of imitating his masters; as though the history of an art were rather a series of violent rebellions than a growth and a progressive illumination. Not all generations are privileged to see the working of a great creative impulse, but the want, keen though it be, furnishes no reason for the utter rejection of A tremulous murmur from great days long dead. But this fear of echoing the past may work us a yet greater misfortune. In the rejection of the manner of an earlier epoch may be implicit also the rejection of the very sources from which springs the life of the fair art. Melody, and a love of the green earth, and a yearning for God are of the very fabric of poetry, deny it who will. The Muses still reign on Parnassus, wax the heathen never so furious. Poets who love poetry better than their own fame in Grub Street will do well to remember The flame, the noble pageant of our life; The burning seal that stamps man's high indenture To vain attempt and most forlorn adventure; Romance and purple seas, and toppling towns, And the wind's valiance crying o'er the downs. It is a poor business to find in such words only the illusions of youth and a new enthusiasm. The desire for novelty, the passion for force and dirt, and the hankering after freakishness of mood, which many have attempted to substitute for the older and simpler things, are themselves the best evidence of disillusion and jaded nerves. There is a weariness and a disgust in our recent impatience with beauty which indicate too clearly the exhaustion of our spiritual resources. It may well be that the rebirth of poetry is to be manifest in a reappearance of the obvious, --in a love of the sea and of the beauty of clouds, in the adventure of death and the yet more amazing adventure of living, in a vital love of colour, whether of the Orient or the drug-shop, in childlike love of melody, and the cool cleansing of rain, in strange faces and old memories. This, in the past, has been poetry, and this will be poetry again. The singer who, out of a full heart, can offer to the world his vision of its beauty, and out of a noble mind, his conception of its destiny, will bestow upon his time the most precious gift which we can now receive, the gift of his healing power. C. B. T. Contents Dedication Foreword by Chauncey Brewster Tinker I. The Drug-Shop, or, Endymion in Edmonstoun II. Rain after a Vaudeville Show The City Revisited Going Back to School Nos Immortales Young Blood The Quality of Courage Campus Sonnets: 1. Before an Examination 2. Talk 3. May Morning 4. Return -- 1917 Alexander VI Dines with the Cardinal of Capua The Breaking Point Lonely Burial Dinner in a Quick Lunch Room The Hemp Poor Devil! Ghosts of a Lunatic Asylum The White Peacock Colors A Minor Poet The Lover in Hell Winged Man Music The Innovator Love in Twilight The Fiddling Wood Portrait of a Boy Portrait of a Baby The General Public Road and Hills Elegy for an Enemy I. The Drug-Shop, or, Endymion in Edmonstoun Prefatory Note. This poem received the nineteenth award of the prize offered by Professor Albert Stanburrough Cook to Yale University for the best unpublished verse, the Committee of Award consisting of Professors C. F. Tucker Brooke, of Yale University, Robert Frost, of Amherst College, and Charles M. Gayley, of the University of California. "Oh yes, I went over to Edmonstoun the other day and saw Johnny, mooning around as usual! He will never make his way." --Letter of George Keats, 18-- Night falls; the great jars glow against the dark, Dark green, dusk red, and, like a coiling snake, Writhing eternally in smoky gyres, Great ropes of gorgeous vapor twist and turn Within them. So the Eastern fisherman Saw the swart genie rise when the lead seal, Scribbled with charms, was lifted from the jar; And -- well, how went the tale? Like this, like this?... No herbage broke the barren flats of land, No winds dared loiter within smiling trees, Nor were there any brooks on either hand, Only the dry, bright sand, Naked and golden, lay before the seas. One boat toiled noiselessly along the deep, The thirsty ripples dying silently Upon its track. Far out the brown nets sweep, And night begins to creep Across the intolerable mirror of the sea. Twice the nets rise, a-trail with sea-plants brown, Distorted shells, and rocks green-mossed with slime, Nought else. The fisher, sick at heart, kneels down; "Prayer may appease God's frown," He thinks, then, kneeling, casts for the third time. And lo! an earthen jar, bound round with brass, Lies tangled in the cordage of his net. About the bright waves gleam like shattered glass, And where the sea's rim was The sun dips, flat and red, about to set. The prow grates on the beach. The fisherman Stoops, tearing at the cords that bind the seal. Shall pearls roll out, lustrous and white and wan? Lapis? carnelian? Unheard-of stones that make the sick mind reel With wonder of their beauty? Rubies, then? Green emeralds, glittering like the eyes of beasts? Poisonous opals, good to madden men? Gold bezants, ten and ten? Hard, regal diamonds, like kingly feasts? He tugged; the seal gave way. A little smoke Curled like a feather in the darkening sky. A blinding gush of fire burst, flamed, and broke. A voice like a wind spoke. Armored with light, and turbaned terribly, A genie tramped the round earth underfoot; His head sought out the stars, his cupped right hand Made half the sky one darkness. He was mute. The sun, a ripened fruit, Drooped lower. Scarlet eddied o'er the sand. The genie spoke: "O miserable one! Thy prize awaits thee; come, and hug it close! A noble crown thy draggled nets have won For this that thou hast done. Blessed are fools! A gift remains for those!" His hand sought out his sword, and lightnings flared Across the sky in one great bloom of fire. Poised like a toppling mountain, it hung bared; Suns that were jewels glared Along its hilt. The air burnt like a pyre. Once more the genie spoke: "Something I owe To thee, thou fool, thou fool. Come, canst thou sing? Yea? Sing then; if thy song be brave, then go Free and released -- or no! Find first some task, some overmastering thing I cannot do, and find it speedily, For if thou dost not thou shalt surely die!" The sword whirled back. The fisherman uprose, And if at first his voice was weak with fear And his limbs trembled, it was but a doze, And at the high song's close He stood up straight. His voice rang loud and clear. The Song. Last night the quays were lighted; Cressets of smoking pine Glared o'er the roaring mariners That drink the yellow wine. Their song rolled to the rafters, It struck the high stars pale, Such worth was in their discourse, Such wonder in their tale. Blue borage filled the clinking cups, The murky night grew wan, Till one rose, crowned with laurel-leaves, That was an outland man. "Come, let us drink to war!" said he, "The torch of the sacked town! The swan's-bath and the wolf-ships, And Harald of renown! "Yea, while the milk was on his lips, Before the day was born, He took the Almayne Kaiser's head To be his drinking-horn! "Yea, while the down was on his chin, Or yet his beard was grown, He broke the gates of Micklegarth, And stole the lion-throne! "Drink to Harald, king of the world, Lord of the tongue and the troth! To the bellowing horns of Ostfriesland, And the trumpets of the Goth!" Their shouts rolled to the rafters, The drink-horns crashed and rang, And all their talk was a clangor of war, As swords together sang! _But dimly, through the deep night, Where stars like flowers shone, A passionate shape came gliding -- I saw one thing alone. I only saw my young love Shining against the dark, The whiteness of her raiment, The head that bent to hark. I only saw my young love, Like flowers in the sun -- Her hands like waxen petals, Where yawning poppies run. I only felt there, chrysmal, Against my cheek her breath, Though all the winds were baying, And the sky bright with Death._ Red sparks whirled up the chimney, A hungry flaught of flame, And a lean man from Greece arose; Thrasyllos was his name. "I praise all noble wines!" he cried, "Green robes of tissue fine, Peacocks and apes and ivory, And Homer's sea-loud line, "Statues and rings and carven gems, And the wise crawling sea; But most of all the crowns of kings, The rule they wield thereby! "Power, fired power, blank and bright! A fit hilt for the hand! The one good sword for a freeman, While yet the cold stars stand!" Their shouts rolled to the rafters, The air was thick with wine. _I only knew her deep eyes, And felt her hand in mine. Softly as quiet water, One finger touched my cheek; Her face like gracious moonlight -- I might not move nor speak. I only saw that beauty, I only felt that form There, in the silken darkness -- God wot my heart was warm!_ Their shouts rolled to the rafters, Another chief began; His slit lips showed him for a Hun; He was an evil man. "Sing to the joys of women!" he yelled, "The hot delicious tents, The soft couch, and the white limbs; The air a steam of scents!" His eyes gleamed, and he wet his lips, The rafters shook with cheers, As he sang of woman, who is man's slave For all unhonored years. "Whether the wanton laughs amain, With one white shoulder bare, Or in a sacked room you unbind Some crouching maiden's hair; "This is the only good for man, Like spices of the South -- To see the glimmering body laid As pasture to his mouth! "To leave no lees within the cup, To see and take and rend; To lap a girl's limbs up like wine, And laugh, knowing the end!" _Only, like low, still breathing, I heard one voice, one word; And hot speech poured upon my lips, As my hands held a sword._ "Fools, thrice fools of lust!" I cried, "Your eyes are blind to see Eternal beauty, moving far, More glorious than horns of war! But though my eyes were one blind scar, That sight is shown to me! "You nuzzle at the ivory side, You clasp the golden head; Fools, fools, who chatter and sing, You have taken the sign of a terrible thing, You have drunk down God with your beeswing, And broken the saints for bread! "For God moves darkly, In silence and in storm; But in the body of woman He shows one burning form. "For God moves blindly, In darkness and in dread; But in the body of woman He raises up the dead. "Gracile and straight as birches, Swift as the questing birds, They fill true-lovers' drink-horns up, Who speak not, having no words. "Love is not delicate toying, A slim and shimmering mesh; It is two souls wrenched into one, Two bodies made one flesh. "Lust is a sprightly servant, Gallant where wines are poured; Love is a bitter master, Love is an iron lord. "Satin ease of the body, Fattened sloth of the hands, These and their like he will not send, Only immortal fires to rend -- And the world's end is your journey's end, And your stream chokes in the sands. "Pleached calms shall not await you, Peace you shall never find; Nought but the living moorland Scourged naked by the wind. "Nought but the living moorland, And your love's hand in yours; The strength more sure than surety, The mercy that endures. "Then, though they give you to be burned, And slay you like a stoat, You have found the world's heart in the turn of a cheek, Heaven in the lift of a throat. "Although they break you on the wheel, That stood so straight in the sun, Behind you the trumpets split the sky, Where the lost and furious fight goes by -- And God, our God, will have victory When the red day is done!" Their mirth rolled to the rafters, They bellowed lechery; Light as a drifting feather My love slipped from my knee. Within, the lights were yellow In drowsy rooms and warm; Without, the stabbing lightning Shattered across the storm. Within, the great logs crackled, The drink-horns emptied soon; Without, the black cloaks of the clouds Strangled the waning moon. My love crossed o'er the threshold -- God! but the night was murk! I set myself against the cold, And left them to their work. Their shouts rolled to the rafters; A bitterer way was mine, And I left them in the tavern, Drinking the yellow wine! The last faint echoes rang along the plains, Died, and were gone. The genie spoke: "Thy song Serves well enough -- but yet thy task remains; Many and rending pains Shall torture him who dares delay too long!" His brown face hardened to a leaden mask. A bitter brine crusted the fisher's cheek -- "Almighty God, one thing alone I ask, Show me a task, a task!" The hard cup of the sky shone, gemmed and bleak. "O love, whom I have sought by devious ways; O hidden beauty, naked as a star; You whose bright hair has burned across my days, Making them lamps of praise; O dawn-wind, breathing of Arabia! "You have I served. Now fire has parched the vine, And Death is on the singers and the song. No longer are there lips to cling to mine, And the heart wearies of wine, And I am sick, for my desire is long. "O love, soft-moving, delicate and tender! In her gold house the pipe calls querulously, They cloud with thin green silks her body slender, They talk to her and tend her; Come, piteous, gentle love, and set me free!" He ceased -- and, slowly rising o'er the deep, A faint song chimed, grew clearer, till at last A golden horn of light began to creep Where the dumb ripples sweep, Making the sea one splendor where it passed. A golden boat! The bright oars rested soon, And the prow met the sand. The purple veils Misting the cabin fell. Fair as the moon When the morning comes too soon, And all the air is silver in the dales, A gold-robed princess stepped upon the beach. The fisher knelt and kissed her garment's hem, And then her lips, and strove at last for speech. The waters lapped the reach. "Here thy strength breaks, thy might is nought to stem!" He cried at last. Speech shook him like a flame: "Yea, though thou plucked the stars from out the sky, Each lovely one would be a withered shame -- Each thou couldst find or name -- To this fire-hearted beauty!" Wearily The genie heard. A slow smile came like dawn Over his face. "Thy task is done!" he said. A whirlwind roared, smoke shattered, he was gone; And, like a sudden horn, The moon shone clear, no longer smoked and red. They passed into the boat. The gold oars beat Loudly, then fainter, fainter, till at last Only the quiet waters barely moved Along the whispering sand -- till all the vast Expanse of sea began to shake with heat, And morning brought soft airs, by sailors loved. And after?... Well... The shop-bell clangs! Who comes? Quinine -- I pour the little bitter grains Out upon blue, glazed squares of paper. So. And all the dusk I shall sit here alone, With many powers in my hands -- ah, see How the blurred labels run on the old jars! Opium -- and a cruel and sleepy scent, The harsh taste of white poppies; India -- The writhing woods a-crawl with monstrous life, Save where the deodars are set like spears, And a calm pool is mirrored ebony; Opium -- brown and warm and slender-breasted She rises, shaking off the cool black water, And twisting up her hair, that ripples down, A torrent of black water, to her feet; How the drops sparkle in the moonlight! Once I made a rhyme about it, singing softly: Over Damascus every star Keeps his unchanging course and cold, The dark weighs like an iron bar, The intense and pallid night is old, Dim the moon's scimitar. Still the lamps blaze within those halls, Where poppies heap the marble vats For girls to tread; the thick air palls; And shadows hang like evil bats About the scented walls. The girls are many, and they sing; Their white feet fall like flakes of snow, Making a ceaseless murmuring -- Whispers of love, dead long ago, And dear, forgotten Spring. One alone sings not. Tiredly She sees the white blooms crushed, and smells The heavy scent. They chatter: "See! White Zira thinks of nothing else But the morn's jollity -- "Then Haroun takes her!" But she dreams, Unhearing, of a certain field Of poppies, cut by many streams, Like lines across a round Turk shield, Where now the hot sun gleams. The field whereon they walked that day, And splendor filled her body up, And his; and then the trampled clay, And slow smoke climbing the sky's cup From where the village lay. And after -- much ache of the wrists, Where the cords irked her -- till she came, The price of many amethysts, Hither. And now the ultimate shame Blew trumpet in the lists. And so she trod the poppies there, Remembering other poppies, too, And did not seem to see or care. Without, the first gray drops of dew Sweetened the trembling air. She trod the poppies. Hours passed Until she slept at length -- and Time Dragged his slow sickle. When at last She woke, the moon shone, bright as rime, And night's tide rolled on fast. She moaned once, knowing everything; Then, bitterer than death, she found The soft handmaidens, in a ring, Come to anoint her, all around, That she might please the king. Opium -- and the odor dies away, Leaving the air yet heavy -- cassia -- myrrh -- Bitter and splendid. See, the poisons come, Trooping in squat green vials, blazoned red With grinning skulls: strychnine, a pallid dust Of tiny grains, like bones ground fine; and next The muddy green of arsenic, all livid, Likest the face of one long dead -- they creep Along the dusty shelf like deadly beetles, Whose fangs are carved with runnels, that the blood May run down easily to the blind mouth That snaps and gapes; and high above them there, My master's pride, a cobwebbed, yellow pot Of honey from Mount Hybla. Do the bees Still moan among the low sweet purple clover, Endlessly many? Still in deep-hushed woods, When the incredible silver of the moon Comes like a living wind through sleep-bowed branches, Still steal dark shapes from the enchanted glens, Which yet are purple with high dreams, and still Fronting that quiet and eternal shield Which is much more than Peace, does there still stand One sharp black shadow -- and the short, smooth horns Are clear against that disk? O great Diana! I, I have praised thee, yet I do not know What moves my mind so strangely, save that once I lay all night upon a thymy hill, And watched the slow clouds pass like heaped-up foam Across blue marble, till at last no speck Blotted the clear expanse, and the full moon Rose in much light, and all night long I saw Her ordered progress, till, in midmost heaven, There came a terrible silence, and the mice Crept to their holes, the crickets did not chirp, All the small night-sounds stopped -- and clear pure light Rippled like silk over the universe, Most cold and bleak; and yet my heart beat fast, Waiting until the stillness broke. I know not For what I waited -- something very great -- I dared not look up to the sky for fear A brittle crackling should clash suddenly Against the quiet, and a black line creep Across the sky, and widen like a mouth, Until the broken heavens streamed apart, Like torn lost banners, and the immortal fires, Roaring like lions, asked their meat from God. I lay there, a black blot upon a shield Of quivering, watery whiteness. The hush held Until I staggered up and cried aloud, And then it seemed that something far too great For knowledge, and illimitable as God, Rent the dark sky like lightning, and I fell, And, falling, heard a wild and rushing wind Of music, and saw lights that blinded me With white, impenetrable swords, and felt A pressure of soft hands upon my lips, Upon my eyelids -- and since then I cough At times, and have strange thoughts about the stars, That some day -- some day -- Come, I must be quick! My master will be back soon. Let me light Thin blue Arabian pastilles, and sit Like a dead god incensed by chanting priests, And watch the pungent smoke wreathe up and up, Until he comes -- though he may rage because They cost good money. Then I shall walk home Over the moor. Already the moon climbs Above the world's edge. By the time he comes She will be fully risen. -- There's his step! II. Miscellaneous. Rain after a Vaudeville Show The last pose flickered, failed. The screen's dead white Glared in a sudden flooding of harsh light Stabbing the eyes; and as I stumbled out The curtain rose. A fat girl with a pout And legs like hams, began to sing "His Mother". Gusts of bad air rose in a choking smother; Smoke, the wet steam of clothes, the stench of plush, Powder, cheap perfume, mingled in a rush. I stepped into the lobby -- and stood still Struck dumb by sudden beauty, body and will. Cleanness and rapture -- excellence made plain -- The storming, thrashing arrows of the rain! Pouring and dripping on the roofs and rods, Smelling of woods and hills and fresh-turned sods, Black on the sidewalks, gray in the far sky, Crashing on thirsty panes, on gutters dry, Hurrying the crowd to shelter, making fair The streets, the houses, and the heat-soaked air, -- Merciful, holy, charging, sweeping, flashing, It smote the soul with a most iron clashing!... Like dragons' eyes the street-lamps suddenly gleamed, Yellow and round and dim-low globes of flame. And, scarce-perceived, the clouds' tall banners streamed. Out of the petty wars, the daily shame, Beauty strove suddenly, and rose, and flowered.... I gripped my coat and plunged where awnings lowered. Made one with hissing blackness, caught, embraced, By splendor and by striving and swift haste -- Spring coming in with thunderings and strife -- I stamped the ground in the strong joy of life! The City Revisited The grey gulls drift across the bay Softly and still as flakes of snow Against the thinning fog. All day I sat and watched them come and go; And now at last the sun was set, Filling the waves with colored fire Till each seemed like a jewelled spire Thrust up from some drowned city. Soon From peak and cliff and minaret The city's lights began to wink, Each like a friendly word. The moon Began to broaden out her shield, Spurting with silver. Straight before The brown hills lay like quiet beasts Stretched out beside a well-loved door, And filling earth and sky and field With the calm heaving of their breasts. Nothing was gone, nothing was changed, The smallest wave was unestranged By all the long ache of the years Since last I saw them, blind with tears. Their welcome like the hills stood fast: And I, I had come home at last. So I laughed out with them aloud To think that now the sun was broad, And climbing up the iron sky, Where the raw streets stretched sullenly About another room I knew, In a mean house -- and soon there, too, The smith would burst the flimsy door And find me lying on the floor. Just where I fell the other night, After that breaking wave of pain. -- How they will storm and rage and fight, Servants and mistress, one and all, "No money for the funeral!" I broke my life there. Let it stand At that. The waters are a plain, Heaving and bright on either hand, A tremulous and lustral peace Which shall endure though all things cease, Filling my heart as water fills A cup. There stand the quiet hills. So, waiting for my wings to grow, I watch the gulls sail to and fro, Rising and falling, soft and swift, Drifting along as bubbles drift. And, though I see the face of God Hereafter -- this day have I trod Nearer to Him than I shall tread Ever again. The night is dead. And there's the dawn, poured out like wine Along the dim horizon-line. And from the city comes the chimes -- We have our heaven on earth -- sometimes! Going Back to School The boat ploughed on. Now Alcatraz was past And all the grey waves flamed to red again At the dead sun's last glimmer. Far and vast The Sausalito lights burned suddenly In little dots and clumps, as if a pen Had scrawled vague lines of gold across the hills; The sky was like a cup some rare wine fills, And stars came as he watched -- and he was free One splendid instant -- back in the great room, Curled in a chair with all of them beside And the whole world a rush of happy voices, With laughter beating in a clamorous tide.... Saw once again the heat of harvest fume Up to the empty sky in threads like glass, And ran, and was a part of what rejoices In thunderous nights of rain; lay in the grass Sun-baked and tired, looking through a maze Of tiny stems into a new green world; Once more knew eves of perfume, days ablaze With clear, dry heat on the brown, rolling fields; Shuddered with fearful ecstasy in bed Over a book of knights and bloody shields... The ship slowed, jarred and stopped. There, straight ahead, Were dock and fellows. Stumbling, he was whirled Out and away to meet them -- and his back Slumped to the old half-cringe, his hands fell slack; A big boy's arm went round him -- and a twist Sent shattering pain along his tortured wrist, As a voice cried, a bloated voice and fat, "Why it's Miss Nancy! Come along, you rat!" Nos Immortales Perhaps we go with wind and cloud and sun, Into the free companionship of air; Perhaps with sunsets when the day is done, All's one to me -- I do not greatly care; So long as there are brown hills -- and a tree Like a mad prophet in a land of dearth -- And I can lie and hear eternally The vast monotonous breathing of the earth. I have known hours, slow and golden-glowing, Lovely with laughter and suffused with light, O Lord, in such a time appoint my going, When the hands clench, and the cold face grows white, And the spark dies within the feeble brain, Spilling its star-dust back to dust again. Young Blood "But, sir," I said, "they tell me the man is like to die!" The Canon shook his head indulgently. "Young blood, Cousin," he boomed. "Young blood! Youth will be served!" -- D'Hermonville's Fabliaux. He woke up with a sick taste in his mouth And lay there heavily, while dancing motes Whirled through his brain in endless, rippling streams, And a grey mist weighed down upon his eyes So that they could not open fully. Yet After some time his blurred mind stumbled back To its last ragged memory -- a room; Air foul with wine; a shouting, reeling crowd Of friends who dragged him, dazed and blind with drink Out to the street; a crazy rout of cabs; The steady mutter of his neighbor's voice, Mumbling out dull obscenity by rote; And then... well, they had brought him home it seemed, Since he awoke in bed -- oh, damn the business! He had not wanted it -- the silly jokes, "One last, great night of freedom ere you're married!" "You'll get no fun then!" "H-ssh, don't tell that story! He'll have a wife soon!" -- God! the sitting down To drink till you were sodden!... Like great light She came into his thoughts. That was the worst. To wallow in the mud like this because His friends were fools.... He was not fit to touch, To see, oh far, far off, that silver place Where God stood manifest to man in her.... Fouling himself.... One thing he brought to her, At least. He had been clean; had taken it A kind of point of honor from the first... Others might do it... but he didn't care For those things.... Suddenly his vision cleared. And something seemed to grow within his mind.... Something was wrong -- the color of the wall -- The queer shape of the bedposts -- everything Was changed, somehow... his room. Was this his room? ... He turned his head -- and saw beside him there The sagging body's slope, the paint-smeared face, And the loose, open mouth, lax and awry, The breasts, the bleached and brittle hair... these things. ... As if all Hell were crushed to one bright line Of lightning for a moment. Then he sank, Prone beneath an intolerable weight. And bitter loathing crept up all his limbs. The Quality of Courage Black trees against an orange sky, Trees that the wind shook terribly, Like a harsh spume along the road, Quavering up like withered arms, Writhing like streams, like twisted charms Of hot lead flung in snow. Below The iron ice stung like a goad, Slashing the torn shoes from my feet, And all the air was bitter sleet. And all the land was cramped with snow, Steel-strong and fierce and glimmering wan, Like pale plains of obsidian. -- And yet I strove -- and I was fire And ice -- and fire and ice were one In one vast hunger of desire. A dim desire, of pleasant places, And lush fields in the summer sun, And logs aflame, and walls, and faces, -- And wine, and old ambrosial talk, A golden ball in fountains dancing, And unforgotten hands. (Ah, God, I trod them down where I have trod, And they remain, and they remain, Etched in unutterable pain, Loved lips and faces now apart, That once were closer than my heart -- In agony, in agony, And horribly a part of me.... For Lethe is for no man set, And in Hell may no man forget.) And there were flowers, and jugs, bright-glancing, And old Italian swords -- and looks, A moment's glance of fire, of fire, Spiring, leaping, flaming higher, Into the intense, the cloudless blue, Until two souls were one, and flame, And very flesh, and yet the same! As if all springs were crushed anew Into one globed drop of dew! But for the most I thought of heat, Desiring greatly.... Hot white sand The lazy body lies at rest in, Or sun-dried, scented grass to nest in, And fires, innumerable fires, Great fagots hurling golden gyres Of sparks far up, and the red heart In sea-coals, crashing as they part To tiny flares, and kindling snapping, Bunched sticks that burst their string and wrapping And fall like jackstraws; green and blue The evil flames of driftwood too, And heavy, sullen lumps of coke With still, fierce heat and ugly smoke.... ... And then the vision of his face, And theirs, all theirs, came like a sword, Thrice, to the heart -- and as I fell I thought I saw a light before. I woke. My hands were blue and sore, Torn on the ice. I scarcely felt The frozen sleet begin to melt Upon my face as I breathed deeper, But lay there warmly, like a sleeper Who shifts his arm once, and moans low, And then sinks back to night. Slow, slow, And still as Death, came Sleep and Death And looked at me with quiet breath. Unbending figures, black and stark Against the intense deeps of the dark. Tall and like trees. Like sweet and fire Rest crept and crept along my veins, Gently. And there were no more pains.... Was it not better so to lie? The fight was done. Even gods tire Of fighting.... My way was the wrong. Now I should drift and drift along To endless quiet, golden peace... And let the tortured body cease. And then a light winked like an eye. ... And very many miles away A girl stood at a warm, lit door, Holding a lamp. Ray upon ray It cloaked the snow with perfect light. And where she was there was no night Nor could be, ever. God is sure, And in his hands are things secure. It is not given me to trace The lovely laughter of that face, Like a clear brook most full of light, Or olives swaying on a height, So silver they have wings, almost; Like a great word once known and lost And meaning all things. Nor her voice A happy sound where larks rejoice, Her body, that great loveliness, The tender fashion of her dress, I may not paint them. These I see, Blazing through all eternity, A fire-winged sign, a glorious tree! She stood there, and at once I knew The bitter thing that I must do. There could be no surrender now; Though Sleep and Death were whispering low. My way was wrong. So. Would it mend If I shrank back before the end? And sank to death and cowardice? No, the last lees must be drained up, Base wine from an ignoble cup; (Yet not so base as sleek content When I had shrunk from punishment) The wretched body strain anew! Life was a storm to wander through. I took the wrong way. Good and well, At least my feet sought out not Hell! Though night were one consuming flame I must go on for my base aim, And so, perhaps, make evil grow To something clean by agony... And reach that light upon the snow... And touch her dress at last... So, so, I crawled. I could not speak or see Save dimly. The ice glared like fire, A long bright Hell of choking cold, And each vein was a tautened wire, Throbbing with torture -- and I crawled. My hands were wounds. So I attained The second Hell. The snow was stained I thought, and shook my head at it How red it was! Black tree-roots clutched And tore -- and soon the snow was smutched Anew; and I lurched babbling on, And then fell down to rest a bit, And came upon another Hell... Loose stones that ice made terrible, That rolled and gashed men as they fell. I stumbled, slipped... and all was gone That I had gained. Once more I lay Before the long bright Hell of ice. And still the light was far away. There was red mist before my eyes Or I could tell you how I went Across the swaying firmament, A glittering torture of cold stars, And how I fought in Titan wars... And died... and lived again upon The rack... and how the horses strain When their red task is nearly done.... I only know that there was Pain, Infinite and eternal Pain. And that I fell -- and rose again. So she was walking in the road. And I stood upright like a man, Once, and fell blind, and heard her cry... And then there came long agony. There was no pain when I awoke, No pain at all. Rest, like a goad, Spurred my eyes open -- and light broke Upon them like a million swords: And she was there. There are no words. Heaven is for a moment's span. And ever. So I spoke and said, "My honor stands up unbetrayed, And I have seen you. Dear..." Sharp pain Closed like a cloak.... I moaned and died. Here, even here, these things remain. I shall draw nearer to her side. Oh dear and laughing, lost to me, Hidden in grey Eternity, I shall attain, with burning feet, To you and to the mercy-seat! The ages crumble down like dust, Dark roses, deviously thrust And scattered in sweet wine -- but I, I shall lift up to you my cry, And kiss your wet lips presently Beneath the ever-living Tree. This in my heart I keep for goad! Somewhere, in Heaven she walks that road. Somewhere... in Heaven... she walks... that... road.... Campus Sonnets: 1. Before an Examination The little letters dance across the page, Flaunt and retire, and trick the tired eyes; Sick of the strain, the glaring light, I rise Yawning and stretching, full of empty rage At the dull maunderings of a long dead sage, Fling up the windows, fling aside his lies; Choosing to breathe, not stifle and be wise, And let the air pour in upon my cage. The breeze blows cool and there are stars and stars Beyond the dark, soft masses of the elms That whisper things in windy tones and light. They seem to wheel for dim, celestial wars; And I -- I hear the clash of silver helms Ring icy-clear from the far deeps of night. 2. Talk Tobacco smoke drifts up to the dim ceiling From half a dozen pipes and cigarettes, Curling in endless shapes, in blue rings wheeling, As formless as our talk. Phil, drawling, bets Cornell will win the relay in a walk, While Bob and Mac discuss the Giants' chances; Deep in a morris-chair, Bill scowls at "Falk", John gives large views about the last few dances. And so it goes -- an idle speech and aimless, A few chance phrases; yet I see behind The empty words the gleam of a beauty tameless, Friendship and peace and fire to strike men blind, Till the whole world seems small and bright to hold -- Of all our youth this hour is pure gold. 3. May Morning I lie stretched out upon the window-seat And doze, and read a page or two, and doze, And feel the air like water on me close, Great waves of sunny air that lip and beat With a small noise, monotonous and sweet, Against the window -- and the scent of cool, Frail flowers by some brown and dew-drenched pool Possesses me from drowsy head to feet. This is the time of all-sufficing laughter At idiotic things some one has done, And there is neither past nor vague hereafter. And all your body stretches in the sun And drinks the light in like a liquid thing; Filled with the divine languor of late spring. 4. Return -- 1917 "The College will reopen Sept. --." `Catalogue'. I was just aiming at the jagged hole Torn in the yellow sandbags of their trench, When something threw me sideways with a wrench, And the skies seemed to shrivel like a scroll And disappear... and propped against the bole Of a big elm I lay, and watched the clouds Float through the blue, deep sky in speckless crowds, And I was clean again, and young, and whole. Lord, what a dream that was! And what a doze Waiting for Bill to come along to class! I've cut it now -- and he -- Oh, hello, Fred! Why, what's the matter? -- here -- don't be an ass, Sit down and tell me! -- What do you suppose? I dreamed I... AM I... wounded? "YOU ARE DEAD." Alexander VI Dines with the Cardinal of Capua Next, then, the peacock, gilt With all its feathers. Look, what gorgeous dyes Flow in the eyes! And how deep, lustrous greens are splashed and spilt Along the back, that like a sea-wave's crest Scatters soft beauty o'er th' emblazoned breast! A strange fowl! But most fit For feasts like this, whereby I honor one Pure as the sun! Yet glowing with the fiery zeal of it! Some wine? Your goblet's empty? Let it foam! It is not often that you come to Rome! You like the Venice glass? Rippled with lines that float like women's curls, Neck like a girl's, Fierce-glowing as a chalice in the Mass? You start -- 'twas artist then, not Pope who spoke! Ave Maria stella! -- ah, it broke! 'Tis said they break alone When poison writhes within. A foolish tale! What, you look pale? Caraffa, fetch a silver cup!... You own A Birth of Venus, now -- or so I've heard, Lovely as the breast-plumage of a bird. Also a Dancing Faun, Hewn with the lithe grace of Praxiteles; Globed pearls to please A sultan; golden veils that drop like lawn -- How happy I could be with but a tithe Of your possessions, fortunate one! Don't writhe But take these cushions here! Now for the fruit! Great peaches, satin-skinned, Rough tamarind, Pomegranates red as lips -- oh they come dear! But men like you we feast at any price -- A plum perhaps? They're looking rather nice! I'll cut the thing in half. There's yours! Now, with a one-side-poisoned knife One might snuff life And leave one's friend with -- "fool" for epitaph! An old trick? Truth! But when one has the itch For pretty things and isn't very rich.... There, eat it all or I'll Be angry! You feel giddy? Well, it's hot! This bergamot Take home and smell -- it purges blood of bile! And when you kiss Bianca's dimpled knee, Think of the poor Pope in his misery! Now you may kiss my ring! Ho there, the Cardinal's litter! -- You must dine When the new wine Is in, again with me -- hear Bice sing, Even admire my frescoes -- though they're nought Beside the calm Greek glories you have bought! Godspeed, Sir Cardinal! And take a weak man's blessing! Help him there To the cool air!... Lucrezia here? You're ready for the ball? -- He'll die within ten hours, I suppose -- MhM! Kiss your poor old father, little rose! The Breaking Point It was not when temptation came, Swiftly and blastingly as flame, And seared me white with burning scars; When I stood up for age-long wars And held the very Fiend at grips; When all my mutinous body rose To range itself beside my foes, And, like a greyhound in the slips, The Beast that dwells within me roared, Lunging and straining at his cord.... For all the blusterings of Hell, It was not then I slipped and fell; For all the storm, for all the hate, I kept my soul inviolate! But when the fight was fought and won, And there was Peace as still as Death On everything beneath the sun. Just as I started to draw breath, And yawn, and stretch, and pat myself, -- The grass began to whisper things -- And every tree became an elf, That grinned and chuckled counsellings: Birds, beasts, one thing alone they said, Beating and dinning at my head. I could not fly. I could not shun it. Slimily twisting, slow and blind, It crept and crept into my mind. Whispered and shouted, sneered and laughed, Screamed out until my brain was daft.... One snaky word, "WHAT IF YOU'D DONE IT?" And I began to think... Ah, well, What matter how I slipped and fell? Or you, you gutter-searcher say! Tell where you found me yesterday! Lonely Burial There were not many at that lonely place, Where two scourged hills met in a little plain. The wind cried loud in gusts, then low again. Three pines strained darkly, runners in a race Unseen by any. Toward the further woods A dim harsh noise of voices rose and ceased. -- We were most silent in those solitudes -- Then, sudden as a flame, the black-robed priest, The clotted earth piled roughly up about The hacked red oblong of the new-made thing, Short words in swordlike Latin -- and a rout Of dreams most impotent, unwearying. Then, like a blind door shut on a carouse, The terrible bareness of the soul's last house. Dinner in a Quick Lunch Room Soup should be heralded with a mellow horn, Blowing clear notes of gold against the stars; Strange entrees with a jangle of glass bars Fantastically alive with subtle scorn; Fish, by a plopping, gurgling rush of waters, Clear, vibrant waters, beautifully austere; Roast, with a thunder of drums to stun the ear, A screaming fife, a voice from ancient slaughters! Over the salad let the woodwinds moan; Then the green silence of many watercresses; Dessert, a balalaika, strummed alone; Coffee, a slow, low singing no passion stresses; Such are my thoughts as -- clang! crash! bang! -- I brood And gorge the sticky mess these fools call food! The Hemp (A Virginia Legend.) The Planting of the Hemp. Captain Hawk scourged clean the seas (Black is the gap below the plank) From the Great North Bank to the Caribbees (Down by the marsh the hemp grows rank). His fear was on the seaport towns, The weight of his hand held hard the downs. And the merchants cursed him, bitter and black, For a red flame in the sea-fog's wrack Was all of their ships that might come back. For all he had one word alone, One clod of dirt in their faces thrown, "The hemp that shall hang me is not grown!" His name bestrode the seas like Death. The waters trembled at his breath. This is the tale of how he fell, Of the long sweep and the heavy swell, And the rope that dragged him down to hell. The fight was done, and the gutted ship, Stripped like a shark the sea-gulls strip, Lurched blindly, eaten out with flame, Back to the land from where she came, A skimming horror, an eyeless shame. And Hawk stood upon his quarter-deck, And saw the sky and saw the wreck. Below, a butt for sailors' jeers, White as the sky when a white squall nears, Huddled the crowd of the prisoners. Over the bridge of the tottering plank, Where the sea shook and the gulf yawned blank, They shrieked and struggled and dropped and sank, Pinioned arms and hands bound fast. One girl alone was left at last. Sir Henry Gaunt was a mighty lord. He sat in state at the Council board; The governors were as nought to him. From one rim to the other rim Of his great plantations, flung out wide Like a purple cloak, was a full month's ride. Life and death in his white hands lay, And his only daughter stood at bay, Trapped like a hare in the toils that day. He sat at wine in his gold and his lace, And far away, in a bloody place, Hawk came near, and she covered her face. He rode in the fields, and the hunt was brave, And far away his daughter gave A shriek that the seas cried out to hear, And he could not see and he could not save. Her white soul withered in the mire As paper shrivels up in fire, And Hawk laughed, and he kissed her mouth, And her body he took for his desire. The Growing of the Hemp. Sir Henry stood in the manor room, And his eyes were hard gems in the gloom. And he said, "Go dig me furrows five Where the green marsh creeps like a thing alive -- There at its edge, where the rushes thrive." And where the furrows rent the ground, He sowed the seed of hemp around. And the blacks shrink back and are sore afraid At the furrows five that rib the glade, And the voodoo work of the master's spade. For a cold wind blows from the marshland near, And white things move, and the night grows drear, And they chatter and crouch and are sick with fear. But down by the marsh, where the gray slaves glean, The hemp sprouts up, and the earth is seen Veiled with a tenuous mist of green. And Hawk still scourges the Caribbees, And many men kneel at his knees. Sir Henry sits in his house alone, And his eyes are hard and dull like stone. And the waves beat, and the winds roar, And all things are as they were before. And the days pass, and the weeks pass, And nothing changes but the grass. But down where the fireflies are like eyes, And the damps shudder, and the mists rise, The hemp-stalks stand up toward the skies. And down from the poop of the pirate ship A body falls, and the great sharks grip. Innocent, lovely, go in grace! At last there is peace upon your face. And Hawk laughs loud as the corpse is thrown, "The hemp that shall hang me is not grown!" Sir Henry's face is iron to mark, And he gazes ever in the dark. And the days pass, and the weeks pass, And the world is as it always was. But down by the marsh the sickles beam, Glitter on glitter, gleam on gleam, And the hemp falls down by the stagnant stream. And Hawk beats up from the Caribbees, Swooping to pounce in the Northern seas. Sir Henry sits sunk deep in his chair, And white as his hand is grown his hair. And the days pass, and the weeks pass, And the sands roll from the hour-glass. But down by the marsh in the blazing sun The hemp is smoothed and twisted and spun, The rope made, and the work done. The Using of the Hemp. Captain Hawk scourged clean the seas (Black is the gap below the plank) From the Great North Bank to the Caribbees (Down by the marsh the hemp grows rank). He sailed in the broad Atlantic track, And the ships that saw him came not back. And once again, where the wide tides ran, He stooped to harry a merchantman. He bade her stop. Ten guns spake true From her hidden ports, and a hidden crew, Lacking his great ship through and through. Dazed and dumb with the sudden death, He scarce had time to draw a breath Before the grappling-irons bit deep, And the boarders slew his crew like sheep. Hawk stood up straight, his breast to the steel; His cutlass made a bloody wheel. His cutlass made a wheel of flame. They shrank before him as he came. And the bodies fell in a choking crowd, And still he thundered out aloud, "The hemp that shall hang me is not grown!" They fled at last. He was left alone. Before his foe Sir Henry stood. "The hemp is grown, and my word made good!" And the cutlass clanged with a hissing whir On the lashing blade of the rapier. Hawk roared and charged like a maddened buck. As the cobra strikes, Sir Henry struck, Pouring his life in a single thrust, And the cutlass shivered to sparks and dust. Sir Henry stood on the blood-stained deck, And set his foot on his foe's neck. Then from the hatch, where the rent decks slope, Where the dead roll and the wounded grope, He dragged the serpent of the rope. The sky was blue, and the sea was still, The waves lapped softly, hill on hill, And between one wave and another wave The doomed man's cries were little and shrill. The sea was blue, and the sky was calm; The air dripped with a golden balm. Like a wind-blown fruit between sea and sun, A black thing writhed at a yard-arm. Slowly then, and awesomely, The ship sank, and the gallows-tree, And there was nought between sea and sun -- Nought but the sun and the sky and the sea. But down by the marsh where the fever breeds, Only the water chuckles and pleads; For the hemp clings fast to a dead man's throat, And blind Fate gathers back her seeds. Poor Devil! Well, I was tired of life; the silly folk, The tiresome noises, all the common things I loved once, crushed me with an iron yoke. I longed for the cool quiet and the dark, Under the common sod where louts and kings Lie down, serene, unheeding, careless, stark, Never to rise or move or feel again, Filled with the ecstasy of being dead.... I put the shining pistol to my head And pulled the trigger hard -- I felt no pain, No pain at all; the pistol had missed fire I thought; then, looking at the floor, I saw My huddled body lying there -- and awe Swept over me. I trembled -- and looked up. About me was -- not that, my heart's desire, That small and dark abode of death and peace -- But all from which I sought a vain release! The sky, the people and the staring sun Glared at me as before. I was undone. My last state ten times worse than was my first. Helpless I stood, befooled, betrayed, accursed, Fettered to Life forever, horribly; Caught in the meshes of Eternity, No further doors to break or bars to burst! Ghosts of a Lunatic Asylum Here, where men's eyes were empty and as bright As the blank windows set in glaring brick, When the wind strengthens from the sea -- and night Drops like a fog and makes the breath come thick; By the deserted paths, the vacant halls, One may see figures, twisted shades and lean, Like the mad shapes that crawl an Indian screen, Or paunchy smears you find on prison walls. Turn the knob gently! There's the Thumbless Man, Still weaving glass and silk into a dream, Although the wall shows through him -- and the Khan Journeys Cathay beside a paper stream. A Rabbit Woman chitters by the door -- -- Chilly the grave-smell comes from the turned sod -- Come -- lift the curtain -- and be cold before The silence of the eight men who were God! The White Peacock (France -- Ancient Regime.) I. Go away! Go away; I will not confess to you! His black biretta clings like a hangman's cap; under his twitching fingers the beads shiver and click, As he mumbles in his corner, the shadow deepens upon him; I will not confess!... Is he there or is it intenser shadow? Dark huddled coilings from the obscene depths, Black, formless shadow, Shadow. Doors creak; from secret parts of the chateau come the scuffle and worry of rats. Orange light drips from the guttering candles, Eddying over the vast embroideries of the bed Stirring the monstrous tapestries, Retreating before the sable impending gloom of the canopy With a swift thrust and sparkle of gold, Lipping my hands, Then Rippling back abashed before the ominous silences Like the swift turns and starts of an overpowered fencer Who sees before him Horror Behind him darkness, Shadow. The clock jars and strikes, a thin, sudden note like the sob of a child. Clock, buhl clock that ticked out the tortuous hours of my birth, Clock, evil, wizened dwarf of a clock, how many years of agony have you relentlessly measured, Yardstick of my stifling shroud? I am Aumaury de Montreuil; once quick, soon to be eaten of worms. You hear, Father? Hsh, he is asleep in the night's cloak. Over me too steals sleep. Sleep like a white mist on the rotting paintings of cupids and gods on the ceiling; Sleep on the carven shields and knots at the foot of the bed, Oozing, blurring outlines, obliterating colors, Death. Father, Father, I must not sleep! It does not hear -- that shadow crouched in the corner... Is it a shadow? One might think so indeed, save for the calm face, yellow as wax, that lifts like the face of a drowned man from the choking darkness. II. Out of the drowsy fog my body creeps back to me. It is the white time before dawn. Moonlight, watery, pellucid, lifeless, ripples over the world. The grass beneath it is gray; the stars pale in the sky. The night dew has fallen; An infinity of little drops, crystals from which all light has been taken, Glint on the sighing branches. All is purity, without color, without stir, without passion. Suddenly a peacock screams. My heart shocks and stops; Sweat, cold corpse-sweat Covers my rigid body. My hair stands on end. I cannot stir. I cannot speak. It is terror, terror that is walking the pale sick gardens And the eyeless face no man may see and live! Ah-h-h-h-h! Father, Father, wake! wake and save me! In his corner all is shadow. Dead things creep from the ground. It is so long ago that she died, so long ago! Dust crushes her, earth holds her, mold grips her. Fiends, do you not know that she is dead?... "Let us dance the pavon!" she said; the waxlights glittered like swords on the polished floor. Twinkling on jewelled snuffboxes, beaming savagely from the crass gold of candelabra, From the white shoulders of girls and the white powdered wigs of men... All life was that dance. The mocking, resistless current, The beauty, the passion, the perilous madness -- As she took my hand, released it and spread her dresses like petals, Turning, swaying in beauty, A lily, bowed by the rain, -- Moonlight she was, and her body of moonlight and foam, And her eyes stars. Oh the dance has a pattern! But the clear grace of her thrilled through the notes of the viols, Tremulous, pleading, escaping, immortal, untamed, And, as we ended, She blew me a kiss from her hand like a drifting white blossom -- And the starshine was gone; and she fled like a bird up the stair. Underneath the window a peacock screams, And claws click, scrape Like little lacquered boots on the rough stone. Oh the long fantasy of the kiss; the ceaseless hunger, ceaselessly, divinely appeased! The aching presence of the beloved's beauty! The wisdom, the incense, the brightness! Once more on the ice-bright floor they danced the pavon But I turned to the garden and her from the lighted candles. Softly I trod the lush grass between the black hedges of box. Softly, for I should take her unawares and catch her arms, And embrace her, dear and startled. By the arbor all the moonlight flowed in silver And her head was on his breast. She did not scream or shudder When my sword was where her head had lain In the quiet moonlight; But turned to me with one pale hand uplifted, All her satins fiery with the starshine, Nacreous, shimmering, weeping, iridescent, Like the quivering plumage of a peacock... Then her head drooped and I gripped her hair, Oh soft, scented cloud across my fingers! -- Bending her white neck back.... Blood writhed on my hands; I trod in blood.... Stupidly agaze At that crumpled heap of silk and moonlight, Where like twitching pinions, an arm twisted, Palely, and was still As the face of chalk. The buhl clock strikes. Thirty years. Christ, thirty years! Agony. Agony. Something stirs in the window, Shattering the moonlight. White wings fan. Father, Father! All its plumage fiery with the starshine, Nacreous, shimmering, weeping, iridescent, It drifts across the floor and mounts the bed, To the tap of little satin shoes. Gazing with infernal eyes. Its quick beak thrusting, rending, devil's crimson... Screams, great tortured screams shake the dark canopy. The light flickers, the shadow in the corner stirs; The wax face lifts; the eyes open. A thin trickle of blood worms darkly against the vast red coverlet and spreads to a pool on the floor. Colors (For D. M. C.) The little man with the vague beard and guise Pulled at the wicket. "Come inside!" he said, "I'll show you all we've got now -- it was size You wanted? -- oh, dry colors! Well" -- he led To a dim alley lined with musty bins, And pulled one fiercely. Violent and bold A sudden tempest of mad, shrieking sins Scarlet screamed out above the battered gold Of tins and picture-frames. I held my breath. He tugged another hard -- and sapphire skies Spread in vast quietude, serene as death, O'er waves like crackled turquoise -- and my eyes Burnt with the blinding brilliance of calm sea! "We're selling that lot there out cheap!" said he. A Minor Poet I am a shell. From me you shall not hear The splendid tramplings of insistent drums, The orbed gold of the viol's voice that comes, Heavy with radiance, languorous and clear. Yet, if you hold me close against the ear, A dim, far whisper rises clamorously, The thunderous beat and passion of the sea, The slow surge of the tides that drown the mere. Others with subtle hands may pluck the strings, Making even Love in music audible, And earth one glory. I am but a shell That moves, not of itself, and moving sings; Leaving a fragrance, faint as wine new-shed, A tremulous murmur from great days long dead. The Lover in Hell Eternally the choking steam goes up From the black pools of seething oil.... How merry Those little devils are! They've stolen the pitchfork From Bel, there, as he slept... Look! -- oh look, look! They've got at Nero! Oh it isn't fair! Lord, how he squeals! Stop it... it's, well -- indecent! But funny!... See, Bel's waked. They'll catch it now! ... Eternally that stifling reek arises, Blotting the dome with smoky, terrible towers, Black, strangling trees, whispering obscene things Amongst their branches, clutching with maimed hands, Or oozing slowly, like blind tentacles Up to the gates; higher than that heaped brick Man piled to smite the sun. And all around Are devils. One can laugh... but that hunched shape The face one stone, like those Assyrian kings! One sees in carvings, watching men flayed red Horribly laughable in leaps and writhes; That face -- utterly evil, clouded round With evil like a smoke -- it turns smiles sour! ... And Nero there, the flabby cheeks astrain And sweating agony... long agony... Imperishable, unappeasable For ever... well... it droops the mouth. Till I Look up. There's one blue patch no smoke dares touch. Sky, clear, ineffable, alive with light, Always the same... Before, I never knew Rest and green peace. She stands there in the sun. ... It seems so quaint she should have long gold wings. I never have got used -- folded across Her breast, or fluttering with fierce, pure light, Like shaken steel. Her crown too. Well, it's queer! And then she never cared much for the harp On earth. Here, though... She is all peace, all quiet, All passionate desires, the eloquent thunder Of new, glad suns, shouting aloud for joy, Over fresh worlds and clean, trampling the air Like stooping hawks, to the long wind of horns, Flung from the bastions of Eternity... And she is the low lake, drowsy and gentle, And good words spoken from the tongues of friends, And calmness in the evening, and deep thoughts, Falling like dreams from the stars' solemn mouths. All these. They said she was unfaithful once. Or I remembered it -- and so, for that, I lie here, I suppose. Yes, so they said. You see she is so troubled, looking down, Sorrowing deeply for my torments. I Of course, feel nothing while I see her -- save That sometimes when I think the matter out, And what earth-people said of us, of her, It seems as if I must be, here, in heaven, And she -- ... Then I grow proud; and suddenly There comes a splatter of oil against my skin, Hurting this time. And I forget my pride: And my face writhes. Some day the little ladder Of white words that I build up, up, to her May fetch me out. Meanwhile it isn't bad.... But what a sense of humor God must have! Winged Man The moon, a sweeping scimitar, dipped in the stormy straits, The dawn, a crimson cataract, burst through the eastern gates, The cliffs were robed in scarlet, the sands were cinnabar, Where first two men spread wings for flight and dared the hawk afar. There stands the cunning workman, the crafty past all praise, The man who chained the Minotaur, the man who built the Maze. His young son is beside him and the boy's face is a light, A light of dawn and wonder and of valor infinite. Their great vans beat the cloven air, like eagles they mount up, Motes in the wine of morning, specks in a crystal cup, And lest his wings should melt apace old Daedalus flies low, But Icarus beats up, beats up, he goes where lightnings go. He cares no more for warnings, he rushes through the sky, Braving the crags of ether, daring the gods on high, Black 'gainst the crimson sunset, golden o'er cloudy snows, With all Adventure in his heart the first winged man arose. Dropping gold, dropping gold, where the mists of morning rolled, On he kept his way undaunted, though his breaths were stabs of cold, Through the mystery of dawning that no mortal may behold. Now he shouts, now he sings in the rapture of his wings, And his great heart burns intenser with the strength of his desire, As he circles like a swallow, wheeling, flaming, gyre on gyre. Gazing straight at the sun, half his pilgrimage is done, And he staggers for a moment, hurries on, reels backward, swerves In a rain of scattered feathers as he falls in broken curves. Icarus, Icarus, though the end is piteous, Yet forever, yea, forever we shall see thee rising thus, See the first supernal glory, not the ruin hideous. You were Man, you who ran farther than our eyes can scan, Man absurd, gigantic, eager for impossible Romance, Overthrowing all Hell's legions with one warped and broken lance. On the highest steeps of Space he will have his dwelling-place, In those far, terrific regions where the cold comes down like Death Gleams the red glint of his pinions, smokes the vapor of his breath. Floating downward, very clear, still the echoes reach the ear Of a little tune he whistles and a little song he sings, Mounting, mounting still, triumphant, on his torn and broken wings! Music My friend went to the piano; spun the stool A little higher; left his pipe to cool; Picked up a fat green volume from the chest; And propped it open. Whitely without rest, His fingers swept the keys that flashed like swords, ... And to the brute drums of barbarian hordes, Roaring and thunderous and weapon-bare, An army stormed the bastions of the air! Dreadful with banners, fire to slay and parch, Marching together as the lightnings march, And swift as storm-clouds. Brazen helms and cars Clanged to a fierce resurgence of old wars Above the screaming horns. In state they passed, Trampling and splendid on and sought the vast -- Rending the darkness like a leaping knife, The flame, the noble pageant of our life! The burning seal that stamps man's high indenture To vain attempt and most forlorn adventure; Romance, and purple seas, and toppling towns, And the wind's valiance crying o'er the downs; That nerves the silly hand, the feeble brain, From the loose net of words to deeds again And to all courage! Perilous and sharp The last chord shook me as wind shakes a harp! ... And my friend swung round on his stool, and from gods we were men, "How pretty!" we said; and went on with our talk again. The Innovator (A Pharaoh Speaks.) I said, "Why should a pyramid Stand always dully on its base? I'll change it! Let the top be hid, The bottom take the apex-place!" And as I bade they did. The people flocked in, scores on scores, To see it balance on its tip. They praised me with the praise that bores, My godlike mind on every lip. -- Until it fell, of course. And then they took my body out From my crushed palace, mad with rage, -- Well, half the town WAS wrecked, no doubt -- Their crazy anger to assuage By dragging it about. The end? Foul birds defile my skull. The new king's praises fill the land. He clings to precept, simple, dull; HIS pyramids on bases stand. But -- Lord, how usual! Love in Twilight There is darkness behind the light -- and the pale light drips Cold on vague shapes and figures, that, half-seen loom Like the carven prows of proud, far-triumphing ships -- And the firelight wavers and changes about the room, As the three logs crackle and burn with a small still sound; Half-blotting with dark the deeper dark of her hair, Where she lies, head pillowed on arm, and one hand curved round To shield the white face and neck from the faint thin glare. Gently she breathes -- and the long limbs lie at ease, And the rise and fall of the young, slim, virginal breast Is as certain-sweet as the march of slow wind through trees, Or the great soft passage of clouds in a sky at rest. I kneel, and our arms enlace, and we kiss long, long. I am drowned in her as in sleep. There is no more pain. Only the rustle of flames like a broken song That rings half-heard through the dusty halls of the brain. One shaking and fragile moment of ecstasy, While the grey gloom flutters and beats like an owl above. And I would not move or speak for the sea or the sky Or the flame-bright wings of the miraculous Dove! The Fiddling Wood Gods, what a black, fierce day! The clouds were iron, Wrenched to strange, rugged shapes; the red sun winked Over the rough crest of the hairy wood In angry scorn; the grey road twisted, kinked, Like a sick serpent, seeming to environ The trees with magic. All the wood was still -- Cracked, crannied pines bent like malicious cripples Before the gusty wind; they seemed to nose, Nudge, poke each other, cackling with ill mirth -- Enchantment's days were over -- sh! -- Suppose That crouching log there, where the white light stipples Should -- break its quiet! WAS THAT CRIMSON -- EARTH? It smirched the ground like a lewd whisper, "Danger!" -- I hunched my cloak about me -- then, appalled, Turned ice and fire by turns -- for -- someone stirred The brown, dry needles sharply! Terror crawled Along my spine, as forth there stepped -- a Stranger! And all the pines crooned like a drowsy bird! His stock was black. His great shoe-buckles glistened. His fur cuffs ended in a sheen of rings. And underneath his coat a case bulged blackly -- He swept his beaver in a rush of wings! Then took the fiddle out, and, as I listened, Tightened and tuned the yellowed strings, hung slackly. Ping! Pang! The clear notes swooped and curved and darted, Rising like gulls. Then, with a finger skinny, He rubbed the bow with rosin, said, "Your pardon Signor! -- Maestro Nicolo Paganini They used to call me! Tchk! -- The cold grips hard on A poor musician's fingers!" -- His lips parted. A tortured soul screamed suddenly and loud, From the brown, quivering case! Then, faster, faster, Dancing in flame-like whorls, wild, beating, screaming, The music wailed unutterable disaster; Heartbroken murmurs from pale lips once proud, Dead, choking moans from hearts once nobly dreaming. Till all resolved in anguish -- died away Upon one minor chord, and was resumed In anguish; fell again to a low cry, Then rose triumphant where the white fires fumed, Terrible, marching, trampling, reeling, gay, Hurling mad, broken legions down to die Through everlasting hells -- The tears were salt Upon my fingers -- Then, I saw, behind The fury of the player, all the trees Crouched like violinists, boughs crooked, jerking, blind, Sweeping mad bows to music without fault, Grey cheeks to greyer fiddles, withered knees. Gasping, I fled! -- but still that devilish tune Stunned ears and brain alike -- till clouds of dust Blotted the picture, and the noise grew dim -- Shaking, I reached the town -- and turned -- in trust -- Wind-smitten, dread, against the sky-line's rim, Black, dragon branches whipped below a moon! Portrait of a Boy After the whipping he crawled into bed, Accepting the harsh fact with no great weeping. How funny uncle's hat had looked striped red! He chuckled silently. The moon came, sweeping A black, frayed rag of tattered cloud before In scorning; very pure and pale she seemed, Flooding his bed with radiance. On the floor Fat motes danced. He sobbed, closed his eyes and dreamed. Warm sand flowed round him. Blurts of crimson light Splashed the white grains like blood. Past the cave's mouth Shone with a large, fierce splendor, wildly bright, The crooked constellations of the South; Here the Cross swung; and there, affronting Mars, The Centaur stormed aside a froth of stars. Within, great casks, like wattled aldermen, Sighed of enormous feasts, and cloth of gold Glowed on the walls like hot desire. Again, Beside webbed purples from some galleon's hold, A black chest bore the skull and bones in white Above a scrawled "Gunpowder!" By the flames, Decked out in crimson, gemmed with syenite, Hailing their fellows with outrageous names, The pirates sat and diced. Their eyes were moons. "Doubloons!" they said. The words crashed gold. "Doubloons!" Portrait of a Baby He lay within a warm, soft world Of motion. Colors bloomed and fled, Maroon and turquoise, saffron, red, Wave upon wave that broke and whirled To vanish in the grey-green gloom, Perspectiveless and shadowy. A bulging world that had no walls, A flowing world, most like the sea, Compassing all infinity Within a shapeless, ebbing room, An endless tide that swells and falls... He slept and woke and slept again. As a veil drops Time dropped away; Space grew a toy for children's play, Sleep bolted fast the gates of Sense -- He lay in naked impotence; Like a drenched moth that creeps and crawls Heavily up brown, light-baked walls, To fall in wreck, her task undone, Yet somehow striving toward the sun. So, as he slept, his hands clenched tighter, Shut in the old way of the fighter, His feet curled up to grip the ground, His muscles tautened for a bound; And though he felt, and felt alone, Strange brightness stirred him to the bone, Cravings to rise -- till deeper sleep Buried the hope, the call, the leap; A wind puffed out his mind's faint spark. He was absorbed into the dark. He woke again and felt a surge Within him, a mysterious urge That grew one hungry flame of passion; The whole world altered shape and fashion. Deceived, befooled, bereft and torn, He scourged the heavens with his scorn, Lifting a bitter voice to cry Against the eternal treachery -- Till, suddenly, he found the breast, And ceased, and all things were at rest, The earth grew one warm languid sea And he a wave. Joy, tingling, crept Throughout him. He was quenched and slept. So, while the moon made broad her ring, He slept and cried and was a king. So, worthily, he acted o'er The endless miracle once more. Facing immense adventures daily, He strove still onward, weeping, gaily, Conquered or fled from them, but grew As soil-starved, rough pine-saplings do. Till, one day, crawling seemed suspect. He gripped the air and stood erect And splendid. With immortal rage He entered on man's heritage! The General Public "Ah, did you once see Shelley plain?" -- Browning. "Shelley? Oh, yes, I saw him often then," The old man said. A dry smile creased his face With many wrinkles. "That's a great poem, now! That one of Browning's! Shelley? Shelley plain? The time that I remember best is this -- A thin mire crept along the rutted ways, And all the trees were harried by cold rain That drove a moment fiercely and then ceased, Falling so slow it hung like a grey mist Over the school. The walks were like blurred glass. The buildings reeked with vapor, black and harsh Against the deepening darkness of the sky; And each lamp was a hazy yellow moon, Filling the space about with golden motes, And making all things larger than they were. One yellow halo hung above a door, That gave on a black passage. Round about Struggled a howling crowd of boys, pell-mell, Pushing and jostling like a stormy sea, With shouting faces, turned a pasty white By the strange light, for foam. They all had clods, Or slimy balls of mud. A few gripped stones. And there, his back against the battered door, His pile of books scattered about his feet, Stood Shelley while two others held him fast, And the clods beat upon him. `Shelley! Shelley!' The high shouts rang through all the corridors, `Shelley! Mad Shelley! Come along and help!' And all the crowd dug madly at the earth, Scratching and clawing at the streaming mud, And fouled each other and themselves. And still Shelley stood up. His eyes were like a flame Set in some white, still room; for all his face Was white, a whiteness like no human color, But white and dreadful as consuming fire. His hands shook now and then, like slender cords Which bear too heavy weights. He did not speak. So I saw Shelley plain." "And you?" I said. "I? I threw straighter than the most of them, And had firm clods. I hit him -- well, at least Thrice in the face. He made good sport that night." Road and Hills I shall go away To the brown hills, the quiet ones, The vast, the mountainous, the rolling, Sun-fired and drowsy! My horse snuffs delicately At the strange wind; He settles to a swinging trot; his hoofs tramp the dust. The road winds, straightens, Slashes a marsh, Shoulders out a bridge, Then -- Again the hills. Unchanged, innumerable, Bowing huge, round backs; Holding secret, immense converse: In gusty voices, Fruitful, fecund, toiling Like yoked black oxen. The clouds pass like great, slow thoughts And vanish In the intense blue. My horse lopes; the saddle creaks and sways. A thousand glittering spears of sun slant from on high. The immensity, the spaces, Are like the spaces Between star and star. The hills sleep. If I put my hand on one, I would feel the vast heave of its breath. I would start away before it awakened And shook the world from its shoulders. A cicada's cry deepens the hot silence. The hills open To show a slope of poppies, Ardent, noble, heroic, A flare, a great flame of orange; Giving sleepy, brittle scent That stings the lungs. A creeping wind slips through them like a ferret; they bow and dance, answering Beauty's voice... The horse whinnies. I dismount And tie him to the grey worn fence. I set myself against the javelins of grass and sun; And climb the rounded breast, That flows like a sea-wave. The summit crackles with heat, there is no shelter, no hollow from the flagellating glare. I lie down and look at the sky, shading my eyes. My body becomes strange, the sun takes it and changes it, it does not feel, it is like the body of another. The air blazes. The air is diamond. Small noises move among the grass... Blackly, A hawk mounts, mounts in the inane Seeking the star-road, Seeking the end... But there is no end. Here, in this light, there is no end.... Elegy for an Enemy (For G. H.) Say, does that stupid earth Where they have laid her, Bind still her sullen mirth, Mirth which betrayed her? Do the lush grasses hold, Greenly and glad, That brittle-perfect gold She alone had? Smugly the common crew, Over their knitting, Mourn her -- as butchers do Sheep-throats they're slitting! She was my enemy, One of the best of them. Would she come back to me, God damn the rest of them! Damn them, the flabby, fat, Sleek little darlings! We gave them tit for tat, Snarlings for snarlings! Squashy pomposities, Shocked at our violence, Let not one tactful hiss Break her new silence! Maids of antiquity, Look well upon her; Ice was her chastity, Spotless her honor. Neighbors, with breasts of snow, Dames of much virtue, How she could flame and glow! Lord, how she hurt you! She was a woman, and Tender -- at times! (Delicate was her hand) One of her crimes! Hair that strayed elfinly, Lips red as haws, You, with the ready lie, Was that the cause? Rest you, my enemy, Slain without fault, Life smacks but tastelessly Lacking your salt! Stuck in a bog whence naught May catapult me, Come from the grave, long-sought, Come and insult me! WE knew that sugared stuff Poisoned the other; Rough as the wind is rough, Sister and brother! Breathing the ether clear Others forlorn have found -- Oh, for that peace austere She and her scorn have found! Biographical Note: Stephen Vincent Bene't (22 July 1898 - 13 March 1943) was from a family with roots in Florida, which explains the Spanish name. Although born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, his father was a colonel in the U.S. Army, and hence he grew up in California and Georgia. He attended Yale starting in 1915 and that same year published his first book of poems, `Five Men and Pompey'. `Young Adventure' (1918) is considered his first mature book of poetry, and he went on to win two Pulitzer Prizes, in 1929 for `John Brown's Body' and in 1944 for `Western Star'. It appears that the whole family had great talents, as his grandfather was a Brigadier General, his father a Colonel, and both Stephen and his brother William Rose Benet won Pulitzer Prizes for poetry. 
31712	----	produced from images generously made available by The Kentuckiana Digital Library) THE GARDEN OF DREAMS MADISON CAWEIN _Author of "Intimations of the Beautiful," "Undertones," and several other books of verse_ LOUISVILLE JOHN P MORTON & COMPANY MDCCCXCVI COPYRIGHT, 1896, JOHN P. MORTON & COMPANY. TO MY BROTHERS. _Not while I live may I forget That garden which my spirit trod! Where dreams were flowers, wild and wet, And beautiful as God._ _Not while I breathe, awake adream, Shall live again for me those hours, When, in its mystery and gleam, I met her 'mid the flowers._ _Eyes, talismanic heliotrope, Beneath mesmeric lashes, where The sorceries of love and hope Had made a shining lair._ _And daydawn brows, whereover hung The twilight of dark locks; and lips, Whose beauty spoke the rose's tongue Of fragrance-voweled drips._ _I will not tell of cheeks and chin, That held me as sweet language holds; Nor of the eloquence within Her bosom's moony molds._ _Nor of her large limbs' languorous Wind-grace, that glanced like starlight through Her ardent robe's diaphanous Web of the mist and dew._ _There is no star so pure and high As was her look; no fragrance such At her soft presence; and no sigh Of music like her touch._ _Not while I live may I forget That garden of dim dreams! where I And Song within the spirit met, Sweet Song, who passed me by._ CONTENTS. PAGE A Fallen Beech 1 The Haunted Woodland 3 Discovery 4 Comradery 5 Occult 6 Wood-Words 7 The Wind at Night 10 Airy Tongues 11 The Hills 13 Imperfection 14 Arcanna 15 Spring 15 Response 16 Fulfillment 16 Transformation 17 Omens 17 Abandoned 18 The Creek Road 19 The Covered Bridge 19 The Hillside Grave 20 Simulacra 20 Before the End 21 Winter 21 Hoar Frost 22 The Winter Moon 22 In Summer 23 Rain and Wind 24 Under Arcturus 25 October 27 Bare Boughs 28 A Threnody 30 Snow 31 Vagabonds 31 An Old Song 32 A Rose o' the Hills 33 Dirge 34 Rest 35 Clairvoyance 36 Indifference 37 Pictured 37 Serenade 38 Kinship 39 She is So Much 40 Her Eyes 41 Messengers 42 At Twenty-One 43 Baby Mary 44 A Motive in Gold and Gray 45 A Reed Shaken with the Wind 50 A Flower of the Fields 71 The White Vigil 73 Too Late 74 Intimations 74 Two 80 Tones 81 Unfulfilled 83 Home 86 Ashly Mere 87 Before the Tomb 88 Revisited 89 At Vespers 91 The Creek 92 Answered 93 Woman's Portion 95 Finale 97 The Cross 98 The Forest of Dreams 99 Lynchers 101 Ku Klux 102 Rembrandts 103 The Lady of The Hills 104 Revealment 106 Heart's Encouragement 107 Nightfall 108 Pause 108 Above the Vales 109 A Sunset Fancy 110 The Fen-Fire 110 To One Reading the Morte D'Arthure 111 Strollers 112 Haunted 114 Præterita 115 The Swashbuckler 115 The Witch 116 The Somnambulist 116 Opium 117 Music and Sleep 118 Ambition 118 Despondency 119 Despair 119 Sin 120 Insomnia 120 Encouragement 121 Quatrains 122 A Last Word 123 THE GARDEN OF DREAMS A FALLEN BEECH Nevermore at doorways that are barken Shall the madcap wind knock and the noonlight; Nor the circle, which thou once didst darken, Shine with footsteps of the neighboring moonlight, Visitors for whom thou oft didst hearken. Nevermore, gallooned with cloudy laces, Shall the morning, like a fair freebooter, Make thy leaves his richest treasure-places; Nor the sunset, like a royal suitor, Clothe thy limbs with his imperial graces. And no more, between the savage wonder Of the sunset and the moon's up-coming, Shall the storm, with boisterous hoof-beats, under Thy dark roof dance, Faun-like, to the humming Of the Pan-pipes of the rain and thunder. Oft the satyr spirit, beauty-drunken, Of the Spring called; and the music-measure Of thy sap made answer; and thy sunken Veins grew vehement with youth, whose pressure Swelled thy gnarly muscles, winter-shrunken. And the germs, deep down in darkness rooted, Bubbled green from all thy million oilets, Where the spirits, rain-and-sunbeam-suited, Of the April made their whispering toilets, Or within thy stately shadow footed. Oft the hours of blonde Summer tinkled At the windows of thy twigs, and found thee Bird-blithe; or, with shapely bodies, twinkled Lissom feet of naked flowers around thee, Where thy mats of moss lay sunbeam-sprinkled. And the Autumn with his gipsy-coated Troop of days beneath thy branches rested, Swarthy-faced and dark of eye; and throated Songs of hunting; or with red hand tested Every nut-bur that above him floated. Then the Winter, barren-browed, but rich in Shaggy followers of frost and freezing, Made the floor of thy broad boughs his kitchen, Trapper-like, to camp in; grimly easing Limbs snow-furred and moccasoned with lichen. Now, alas! no more do these invest thee With the dignity of whilom gladness! They--unto whose hearts thou once confessed thee Of thy dreams--now know thee not! and sadness Sits beside thee where forgot dost rest thee. THE HAUNTED WOODLAND Here in the golden darkness And green night of the woods, A flitting form I follow, A shadow that eludes-- Or is it but the phantom Of former forest moods? The phantom of some fancy I knew when I was young, And in my dreaming boyhood, The wildwood flow'rs among, Young face to face with Faery Spoke in no unknown tongue. Blue were her eyes, and golden The nimbus of her hair; And crimson as a flower Her mouth that kissed me there; That kissed and bade me follow, And smiled away my care. A magic and a marvel Lived in her word and look, As down among the blossoms She sate me by the brook, And read me wonder-legends In Nature's Story Book. Loved fairy-tales forgotten, She never reads again, Of beautiful enchantments That haunt the sun and rain, And, in the wind and water, Chant a mysterious strain. And so I search the forest, Wherein my spirit feels, In tree or stream or flower Herself she still conceals-- But now she flies who followed, Whom Earth no more reveals. DISCOVERY What is it now that I shall seek, Where woods dip downward, in the hills?-- A mossy nook, a ferny creek, And May among the daffodils. Or in the valley's vistaed glow, Past rocks of terraced trumpet-vines, Shall I behold her coming slow, Sweet May, among the columbines? With redbud cheeks and bluet eyes, Big eyes, the homes of happiness, To meet me with the old surprise, Her hoiden hair all bonnetless. Who waits for me, where, note for note, The birds make glad the forest-trees? A dogwood blossom at her throat, My May among the anemones. As sweetheart breezes kiss the blooms, And dewdrops drink the moonlight's gleams, My soul shall kiss her lips' perfumes, And drink the magic of her dreams. COMRADERY With eyes hand-arched he looks into The morning's face, then turns away With schoolboy feet, all wet with dew, Out for a holiday. The hill brook sings, incessant stars, Foam-fashioned, on its restless breast; And where he wades its water-bars Its song is happiest. A comrade of the chinquapin, He looks into its knotted eyes And sees its heart; and, deep within, Its soul that makes him wise. The wood-thrush knows and follows him, Who whistles up the birds and bees; And 'round him all the perfumes swim Of woodland loam and trees. Where'er he pass the supple springs' Foam-people sing the flowers awake; And sappy lips of bark-clad things Laugh ripe each fruited brake. His touch is a companionship; His word, an old authority: He comes, a lyric at his lip, Unstudied Poesy. OCCULT Unto the soul's companionship Of things that only seem to be, Earth points with magic fingertip And bids thee see How Fancy keeps thee company. For oft at dawn hast not beheld A spirit of prismatic hue Blow wide the buds, which night has swelled? And stain them through With heav'n's ethereal gold and blue? While at her side another went With gleams of enigmatic white? A spirit who distributes scent, To vale and height, In footsteps of the rosy light? And oft at dusk hast thou not seen The star-fays bring their caravans Of dew, and glitter all the green, Night's shadow tans, From many starbeam sprinkling-cans? Nor watched with these the elfins go Who tune faint instruments? whose sound Is that moon-music insects blow When all the ground Sleeps, and the night is hushed around? WOOD-WORDS I. The spirits of the forest, That to the winds give voice-- I lie the livelong April day And wonder what it is they say That makes the leaves rejoice. The spirits of the forest, That breathe in bud and bloom-- I walk within the black-haw brake And wonder how it is they make The bubbles of perfume. The spirits of the forest, That live in every spring-- I lean above the brook's bright blue And wonder what it is they do That makes the water sing. The spirits of the forest. That haunt the sun's green glow-- Down fungus ways of fern I steal And wonder what they can conceal, In dews, that twinkles so. The spirits of the forest, They hold me, heart and hand-- And, oh! the bird they send by light, The jack-o'-lantern gleam by night, To guide to Fairyland! II. The time when dog-tooth violets Hold up inverted horns of gold,-- The elvish cups that Spring upsets With dripping feet, when April wets The sun-and-shadow-marbled wold,-- Is come. And by each leafing way The sorrel drops pale blots of pink; And, like an angled star a fay Sets on her forehead's pallid day, The blossoms of the trillium wink. Within the vale, by rock and stream,-- A fragile, fairy porcelain,-- Blue as a baby's eyes a-dream, The bluets blow; and gleam in gleam The sun-shot dog-woods flash with rain. It is the time to cast off care; To make glad intimates of these:-- The frank-faced sunbeam laughing there; The great-heart wind, that bids us share The optimism of the trees. III. The white ghosts of the flowers, The green ghosts of the trees: They haunt the blooming bowers, They haunt the wildwood hours, And whisper in the breeze. For in the wildrose places, And on the beechen knoll, My soul hath seen their faces, My soul hath met their races, And felt their dim control. IV. Crab-apple buds, whose bells The mouth of April kissed; That hang,--like rosy shells Around a naiad's wrist,-- Pink as dawn-tinted mist. And paw-paw buds, whose dark Deep auburn blossoms shake On boughs,--as 'neath the bark A dryad's eyes awake,-- Brown as a midnight lake. These, with symbolic blooms Of wind-flower and wild-phlox, I found among the glooms Of hill-lost woods and rocks, Lairs of the mink and fox. The beetle in the brush, The bird about the creek, The bee within the hush, And I, whose heart was meek, Stood still to hear these speak. The language, that records, In flower-syllables, The hieroglyphic words Of beauty, who enspells The world and aye compels. THE WIND AT NIGHT I. Not till the wildman wind is shrill, Howling upon the hill In every wolfish tree, whose boisterous boughs, Like desperate arms, gesture and beat the night, And down huge clouds, in chasms of stormy white The frightened moon hurries above the house, Shall I lie down; and, deep,-- Letting the mad wind keep Its shouting revel round me,--fall asleep. II. Not till its dark halloo is hushed, And where wild waters rushed,-- Like some hoofed terror underneath its whip And spur of foam,--remains A ghostly glass, hill-framed; whereover stains Of moony mists and rains, And stealthy starbeams, like vague specters, slip; Shall I--with thoughts that take Unto themselves the ache Of silence as a sound--from sleep awake. AIRY TONGUES I. I hear a song the wet leaves lisp When Morn comes down the woodland way; And misty as a thistle-wisp Her gown gleams windy gray; A song, that seems to say, "Awake! 'tis day!" I hear a sigh, when Day sits down Beside the sunlight-lulled lagoon; While on her glistening hair and gown The rose of rest is strewn; A sigh, that seems to croon, "Come sleep! 'tis noon!" I hear a whisper, when the stars, Upon some evening-purpled height, Crown the dead Day with nenuphars Of dreamy gold and white; A voice, that seems t' invite, "Come love! 'tis night!" II. Before the rathe song-sparrow sings Among the hawtrees in the lane, And to the wind the locust flings Its early clusters fresh with rain; Beyond the morning-star, that swings Its rose of fire above the spire, Between the morning's watchet wings, A voice that rings o'er brooks and boughs-- "Arouse! arouse!" Before the first brown owlet cries Among the grape-vines on the hill, And in the dam with half-shut eyes The lilies rock above the mill; Beyond the oblong moon, that flies Its pearly flower above the tower, Between the twilight's primrose skies, A voice that sighs from east to west-- "To rest! to rest!" THE HILLS There is no joy of earth that thrills My bosom like the far-off hills! Th' unchanging hills, that, shadowy, Beckon our mutability To follow and to gaze upon Foundations of the dusk and dawn. Meseems the very heavens are massed Upon their shoulders, vague and vast With all the skyey burden of The winds and clouds and stars above. Lo, how they sit before us, seeing The laws that give all Beauty being! Behold! to them, when dawn is near, The nomads of the air appear, Unfolding crimson camps of day In brilliant bands; then march away; And under burning battlements Of twilight plant their tinted tents. The faith of olden myths, that brood By haunted stream and haunted wood, They see; and feel the happiness Of old at which we only guess: The dreams, the ancients loved and knew, Still as their rocks and trees are true: Not otherwise than presences The tempest and the calm to these: One shouting on them, all the night, Black-limbed and veined with lambent light: The other with the ministry Of all soft things that company With music--an embodied form, Giving to solitude the charm Of leaves and waters and the peace Of bird-begotten melodies-- And who at night doth still confer With the mild moon, who telleth her Pale tale of lonely love, until Wan images of passion fill The heights with shapes that glimmer by Clad on with sleep and memory. IMPERFECTION Not as the eye hath seen, shall we behold Romance and beauty, when we've passed away; That robed the dull facts of the intimate day In life's wild raiment of unusual gold: Not as the ear hath heard, shall we be told, Hereafter, myth and legend once that lay Warm at the heart of Nature, clothing clay In attribute of no material mold. These were imperfect of necessity, That wrought thro' imperfection for far ends Of perfectness--As calm philosophy, Teaching a child, from his high heav'n descends To Earth's familiar things; informingly Vesting his thoughts with that it comprehends. ARCANNA Earth hath her images of utterance, Her hieroglyphic meanings which elude; A symbol language of similitude, Into whose secrets science may not glance; In which the Mind-in-Nature doth romance In miracles that baffle if pursued-- No guess shall search them and no thought intrude Beyond the limits of her sufferance. So doth the great Intelligence above Hide His own thought's creations; and attire Forms in the dream's ideal, which He dowers With immaterial loveliness and love-- As essences of fragrance and of fire-- Preaching th' evangels of the stars and flowers. SPRING First came the rain, loud, with sonorous lips; A pursuivant who heralded a prince: And dawn put on a livery of tints, And dusk bound gold about her hair and hips: And, all in silver mail, then sunlight came, A knight, who bade the winter let him pass, And freed imprisoned beauty, naked as The Court of Love, in all her wildflower shame. And so she came, in breeze-borne loveliness, Across the hills; and heav'n bent down to bless: Before her face the birds were as a lyre; And at her feet, like some strong worshiper, The shouting water pæan'd praise of her, Who, with blue eyes, set the wild world on fire. RESPONSE There is a music of immaculate love, That breathes within the virginal veins of Spring:-- And trillium blossoms, like the stars that cling To fairies' wands; and, strung on sprays above, White-hearts and mandrake blooms, that look enough Like the elves' washing, white with laundering Of May-moon dews; and all pale-opening Wild-flowers of the woods, are born thereof. There is no sod Spring's white foot brushes but Must feel the music that vibrates within, And thrill to the communicated touch Responsive harmonies, that must unshut The heart of beauty for song's concrete kin, Emotions--that be flowers--born of such. FULFILLMENT Yes, there are some who may look on these Essential peoples of the earth and air-- That have the stars and flowers in their care-- And all their soul-suggestive secrecies: Heart-intimates and comrades of the trees, Who from them learn, what no known schools declare, God's knowledge; and from winds, that discourse there, God's gospel of diviner mysteries: To whom the waters shall divulge a word Of fuller faith; the sunset and the dawn Preach sermons more inspired even than The tongues of Penticost; as, distant heard In forms of change, through Nature upward drawn, God doth address th' immortal soul of Man. TRANSFORMATION It is the time when, by the forest falls, The touchmenots hang fairy folly-caps; When ferns and flowers fill the lichened laps Of rocks with color, rich as orient shawls: And in my heart I hear a voice that calls Me woodward, where the Hamadryad wraps Her limbs in bark, or, bubbling in the saps, Laughs the sweet Greek of Pan's old madrigals. There is a gleam that lures me up the stream-- A Naiad swimming with wet limbs of light? Perfume, that leads me on from dream to dream-- An Oread's footprints fragrant with her flight? And, lo! meseems I am a Faun again, Part of the myths that I pursue in vain. OMENS Sad o'er the hills the poppy sunset died. Slow as a fungus breaking through the crusts Of forest leaves, the waning half-moon thrusts, Through gray-brown clouds, one milky silver side; In her vague light the dogwoods, vale-descried, Seem nervous torches flourished by the gusts; The apple-orchards seem the restless dusts Of wind-thinned mists upon the hills they hide. It is a night of omens whom late May Meets, like a wraith, among her train of hours; An apparition, with appealing eye And hesitant foot, that walks a willowed way, And, speaking through the fading moon and flowers, Bids her prepare her gentle soul to die. ABANDONED The hornets build in plaster-dropping rooms, And on its mossy porch the lizard lies; Around its chimneys slow the swallow flies, And on its roof the locusts snow their blooms. Like some sad thought that broods here, old perfumes Haunt its dim stairs; the cautious zephyr tries Each gusty door, like some dead hand, then sighs With ghostly lips among the attic glooms. And now a heron, now a kingfisher, Flits in the willows where the riffle seems At each faint fall to hesitate to leap, Fluttering the silence with a little stir. Here Summer seems a placid face asleep, And the near world a figment of her dreams. THE CREEK-ROAD Calling, the heron flies athwart the blue That sleeps above it; reach on rocky reach Of water sings by sycamore and beech, In whose warm shade bloom lilies not a few. It is a page whereon the sun and dew Scrawl sparkling words in dawn's delicious speech; A laboratory where the wood-winds teach, Dissect each scent and analyze each hue. Not otherwise than beautiful, doth it Record the happ'nings of each summer day; Where we may read, as in a catalogue, When passed a thresher; when a load of hay; Or when a rabbit; or a bird that lit; And now a bare-foot truant and his dog. THE COVERED BRIDGE There, from its entrance, lost in matted vines,-- Where in the valley foams a water-fall,--- Is glimpsed a ruined mill's remaining wall; Here, by the road, the oxeye daisy mines Hot brass and bronze; the trumpet-trailer shines Red as the plumage of the cardinal. Faint from the forest comes the rain-crow's call Where dusty Summer dreams among the pines. This is the spot where Spring writes wildflower verses In primrose pink, while, drowsing o'er his reins, The ploughman, all unnoticing, plods along: And where the Autumn opens weedy purses Of sleepy silver, while the corn-heaped wains Rumble the bridge like some deep throat of song. THE HILLSIDE GRAVE Ten-hundred deep the drifted daisies break Here at the hill's foot; on its top, the wheat Hangs meagre-bearded; and, in vague retreat, The wisp-like blooms of the moth-mulleins shake. And where the wild-pink drops a crimson flake, And morning-glories, like young lips, make sweet The shaded hush, low in the honeyed heat, The wild-bees hum; as if afraid to wake One sleeping there; with no white stone to tell The story of existence; but the stem Of one wild-rose, towering o'er brier and weed, Where all the day the wild-birds requiem; Within whose shade the timid violets spell An epitaph, only the stars can read. SIMULACRA Dark in the west the sunset's somber wrack Unrolled vast walls the rams of war had split, Along whose battlements the battle lit Tempestuous beacons; and, with gates hurled back, A mighty city, red with ruin and sack, Through burning breaches, crumbling bit by bit, Showed where the God of Slaughter seemed to sit With conflagration glaring at each crack. Who knows? perhaps as sleep unto us makes Our dreams as real as our waking seems With recollections time can not destroy, So in the mind of Nature now awakes Haply some wilder memory, and she dreams The stormy story of the fall of Troy. BEFORE THE END How does the Autumn in her mind conclude The tragic masque her frosty pencil writes, Broad on the pages of the days and nights, In burning lines of orchard, wold, and wood? What lonelier forms--that at the year's door stood At spectral wait--with wildly wasted lights Shall enter? and with melancholy rites Inaugurate their sadder sisterhood?-- Sorrow, who lifts a signal hand, and slow The green leaf fevers, falling ere it dies; Regret, whose pale lips summon, and gaunt Woe Wakes the wild-wind harps with sonorous sighs; And Sleep, who sits with poppied eyes and sees The earth and sky grow dream-accessories. WINTER The flute, whence Autumn's misty finger-tips Drew music--ripening the pinched kernels in The burly chestnut and the chinquapin, Red-rounding-out the oval haws and hips,-- Now Winter crushes to his stormy lips And surly songs whistle around his chin: Now the wild days and wilder nights begin When, at the eaves, the crooked icicle drips. Thy songs, O Autumn, are not lost so soon! Still dwells a memory in thy hollow flute, Which, unto Winter's masculine airs, doth give Thy own creative qualities of tune, By which we see each bough bend white with fruit, Each bush with bloom, in snow commemorative. HOAR-FROST The frail eidolons of all blossoms Spring, Year after year, about the forest tossed, The magic touch of the enchanter, Frost, Back from the Heaven of the Flow'rs doth bring; Each branch and bush in silence visiting With phantom beauty of its blooms long lost: Each dead weed bends, white-haunted of its ghost, Each dead flower stands ghostly with blossoming. This is the wonder-legend Nature tells To the gray moon and mist a winter's night; The fairy-tale, which her weird fancy 'spells With all the glamour of her soul's delight: Before the summoning sorcery of her eyes Making her spirit's dream materialize. THE WINTER MOON Deep in the dell I watched her as she rose, A face of icy fire, o'er the hills; With snow-sad eyes to freeze the forest rills, And snow-sad feet to bleach the meadow snows: Pale as some young witch who, a-listening, goes To her first meeting with the Fiend; whose fears Fix demon eyes behind each bush she nears; Stops, yet must on, fearful of following foes. And so I chased her, startled in the wood, Like a discovered Oread, who flies The Faun who found her sleeping, each nude limb Glittering betrayal through the solitude; Till in a frosty cloud I saw her swim, Like a drowned face, a blur beneath the ice. IN SUMMER When in dry hollows, hilled with hay, The vesper-sparrow sings afar; And, golden gray, dusk dies away Beneath the amber evening-star: There, where a warm and shadowy arm The woodland lays around the farm, To meet you where we kissed, dear heart, To kiss you at the tryst, dear heart, To kiss you at the tryst! When clover fields smell cool with dew, And crickets cry, and roads are still; And faint and few the fire-flies strew The dark where calls the whippoorwill; There, in the lane, where sweet again The petals of the wild-rose rain, To stroll with head to head, dear heart, And say the words oft said, dear heart, And say the words oft said! RAIN AND WIND I hear the hoofs of horses Galloping over the hill, Galloping on and galloping on, When all the night is shrill With wind and rain that beats the pane-- And my soul with awe is still. For every dripping window Their headlong rush makes bound, Galloping up, and galloping by, Then back again and around, Till the gusty roofs ring with their hoofs, And the draughty cellars sound. And then I hear black horsemen Hallooing in the night; Hallooing and hallooing, They ride o'er vale and height, And the branches snap and the shutters clap With the fury of their flight. Then at each door a horseman,-- With burly bearded lip Hallooing through the keyhole,-- Pauses with cloak a-drip; And the door-knob shakes and the panel quakes 'Neath the anger of his whip. All night I hear their gallop, And their wild halloo's alarm; The tree-tops sound and vanes go round In forest and on farm; But never a hair of a thing is there-- Only the wind and storm. UNDER ARCTURUS I. "I belt the morn with ribboned mist; With baldricked blue I gird the noon, And dusk with purple, crimson-kissed, White-buckled with the hunter's moon. "These follow me," the season says: "Mine is the frost-pale hand that packs Their scrips, and speeds them on their ways, With gipsy gold that weighs their backs." II. A daybreak horn the Autumn blows, As with a sun-tanned band he parts Wet boughs whereon the berry glows; And at his feet the red-fox starts. The leafy leash that holds his hounds Is loosed; and all the noonday hush Is startled; and the hillside sounds Behind the fox's bounding brush. When red dusk makes the western sky A fire-lit window through the firs, He stoops to see the red-fox die Among the chestnut's broken burs. Then fanfaree and fanfaree, Down vistas of the afterglow His bugle rings from tree to tree, While all the world grows hushed below. III. Like some black host the shadows fall, And darkness camps among the trees; Each wildwood road, a Goblin Hall, Grows populous with mysteries. Night comes with brows of ragged storm, And limbs of writhen cloud and mist; The rain-wind hangs upon her arm Like some wild girl that will be kissed. By her gaunt hand the leaves are shed Like nightmares an enchantress herds; And, like a witch who calls the dead, The hill-stream whirls with foaming words. Then all is sudden silence and Dark fear--like his who can not see, Yet hears, aye in a haunted land, Death rattling on a gallow's tree. IV. The days approach again; the days, Whose mantles stream, whose sandals drag; When in the haze by puddled ways Each gnarled thorn seems a crookéd hag. When rotting orchards reek with rain; And woodlands crumble, leaf and log; And in the drizzling yard again The gourd is tagged with points of fog. Oh, let me seat my soul among Your melancholy moods! and touch Your thoughts' sweet sorrow without tongue, Whose silence says too much, too much! OCTOBER Long hosts of sunlight, and the bright wind blows A tourney trumpet on the listed hill: Past is the splendor of the royal rose And duchess daffodil. Crowned queen of beauty, in the garden's space, Strong daughter of a bitter race and bold, A ragged beggar with a lovely face, Reigns the sad marigold. And I have sought June's butterfly for days, To find it--like a coreopsis bloom-- Amber and seal, rain-murdered 'neath the blaze Of this sunflower's plume. Here basks the bee; and there, sky-voyaging wings Dare God's blue gulfs of heaven; the last song, The red-bird flings me as adieu, still rings Upon yon pear-tree's prong. No angry sunset brims with rosier red The bowl of heaven than the days, indeed, Pour in each blossom of this salvia-bed, Where each leaf seems to bleed. And where the wood-gnats dance, a tiny mist, Above the efforts of the weedy stream, The girl, October, tired of the tryst, Dreams a diviner dream. One foot just dipping the caressing wave, One knee at languid angle; locks that drown Hands nut-stained; hazel-eyed, she lies, and grave, Watching the leaves drift down. BARE BOUGHS O heart, that beat the bird's blithe blood, The blithe bird's message that pursued, Now song is dead as last year's bud, What dost thou in the wood? O soul, that kept the brook's glad flow, The glad brook's word to sun and moon, What dost thou here where song lies low As all the dreams of June? Where once was heard a voice of song, The hautboys of the mad winds sing; Where once a music flowed along, The rain's wild bugles ring. The weedy water frets and ails, And moans in many a sunless fall; And, o'er the melancholy, trails The black crow's eldritch call. Unhappy brook! O withered wood! O days, whom death makes comrades of! Where are the birds that thrilled the blood When life struck hands with love? A song, one soared against the blue; A song, one bubbled in the leaves; A song, one threw where orchards grew All appled to the eaves. But now the birds are flown or dead; And sky and earth are bleak and gray; The wild winds sob i' the boughs instead, The wild leaves sigh i' the way. A THRENODY I. The rainy smell of a ferny dell, Whose shadow no sunray flaws, When Autumn sits in the wayside weeds Telling her beads Of haws. II. The phantom mist, that is moonbeam-kissed, On hills where the trees are thinned, When Autumn leans at the oak-root's scarp, Playing a harp Of wind. III. The crickets' chirr 'neath brier and burr, By leaf-strewn pools and streams, When Autumn stands 'mid the dropping nuts, With the book, she shuts, Of dreams. IV. The gray "alas" of the days that pass, And the hope that says "adieu," A parting sorrow, a shriveled flower, And one ghost's hour With you. SNOW The moon, like a round device On a shadowy shield of war, Hangs white in a heaven of ice With a solitary star. The wind is sunk to a sigh, And the waters are stern with frost; And gray, in the eastern sky, The last snow-cloud is lost. White fields, that are winter-starved, Black woods, that are winter-fraught, Cold, harsh as a face death-carved With the iron of some black thought. VAGABONDS Your heart's a-tune with April and mine a-tune with June, So let us go a-roving beneath the summer moon: Oh, was it in the sunlight, or was it in the rain, We met among the blossoms within the locust lane? All that I can remember's the bird that sang aboon, And with its music in our hearts we'll rove beneath the moon. A love-word of the wind, dear, of which we'll read the rune, While we still go a-roving beneath the summer moon: A love-kiss of the water we'll often stop to hear-- The echoed words and kisses of our own love, my dear: And all our path shall blossom with wild-rose sweets that swoon, And with their fragrance in our hearts we'll rove beneath the moon. It will not be forever, yet merry goes the tune While we still go a-roving beneath the summer moon: A cabin, in the clearing, of flickering firelight When old-time lanes we strolled in the winter snows make white: Where we can nod together above the logs and croon The songs we sang when roving beneath the summer moon. AN OLD SONG It's Oh, for the hills, where the wind's some one With a vagabond foot that follows! And a cheer-up hand that he claps upon Your arm with the hearty words, "Come on! We'll soon be out of the hollows, My heart! We'll soon be out of the hollows!" It's Oh, for the songs, where the hope's some one With a renegade foot that doubles! And a kindly look that he turns upon Your face with the friendly laugh, "Come on! We'll soon be out of the troubles, My heart! We'll soon be out of the troubles!" A ROSE O' THE HILLS The hills look down on wood and stream, On orchard-land and farm; And o'er the hills the azure-gray Of heaven bends the livelong day With thoughts of calm and storm. On wood and stream the hills look down, On farm and orchard-land; And o'er the hills she came to me Through wildrose-brake and blackberry, The hill wind hand in hand. The hills look down on home and field, On wood and winding stream; And o'er the hills she came along, Upon her lips a woodland song, And in her eyes, a dream. On home and field the hills look down, On stream and vistaed wood; And breast-deep, with disordered hair, Fair in the wildrose tangle there, A sudden space she stood. O hills, that look on rock and road, On grove and harvest-field, To whom God giveth rest and peace, And slumber, that is kin to these, And visions unrevealed! O hills, that look on road and rock, On field and fruited grove, What now is mine of peace and rest In you! since entered at my breast God's sweet unrest of love! DIRGE What shall her silence keep Under the sun? Here, where the willows weep And waters run; Here, where she lies asleep, And all is done. Lights, when the tree-top swings; Scents that are sown; Sounds of the wood-bird's wings; And the bee's drone: These be her comfortings Under the stone. What shall watch o'er her here When day is fled? Here, when the night is near And skies are red; Here, where she lieth dear And young and dead. Shadows, and winds that spill Dew; and the tune Of the wild whippoorwill; And the white moon; These be the watchers still Over her stone. REST Under the brindled beech, Deep in the mottled shade, Where the rocks hang in reach Flower and ferny blade, Let him be laid. Here will the brooks, that rove Under the mossy trees, Grave with the music of Underworld melodies, Lap him in peace. Here will the winds, that blow Out of the haunted west, Gold with the dreams that glow There on the heaven's breast, Lull him to rest. Here will the stars and moon, Silent and far and deep, Old with the mystic rune Of the slow years that creep, Charm him with sleep. Under the ancient beech, Deep in the mossy shade, Where the hill moods may reach, Where the hill dreams may aid, Let him be laid. CLAIRVOYANCE The sunlight that makes of the heaven A pathway for sylphids to throng; The wind that makes harps of the forests For spirits to smite into song, Are the image and voice of a vision That comforts my heart and makes strong. I look in one's face, and the shadows Are lifted: and, lo, I can see, Through windows of evident being, That open on eternity, The form of the essence of Beauty God clothes with His own mystery. I lean to one's voice, and the wrangle Of living hath pause: and I hear Through doors of invisible spirit, That open on light that is clear, The radiant raiment of Music In the hush of the heavens sweep near. INDIFFERENCE She is so dear the wildflowers near Each path she passes by, Are over fain to kiss again Her feet and then to die. She is so fair the wild birds there That sing upon the bough, Have learned the staff of her sweet laugh, And sing no other now. Alas! that she should never see, Should never care to know, The wildflower's love, the bird's above, And his, who loves her so! PICTURED This is the face of her I've dreamed of long; Here in my heart's despair, This is the face of her Pictured in song. Look on the lily lids, The eyes of dawn, Deep as a Nereid's, Swimming with dewy lids In waters wan. Look on the brows of snow, The locks brown-bright; Only young sleep can show Such brows of placid snow, Such locks of night. The cheeks, like rosy moons, The lips of fire; Love thinks no sweeter tunes Under enchanted moons Than their desire. Loved lips and eyes and hair, Lo, this is she! She, who sits smiling there Over my heart's despair, Never for me! SERENADE The pink rose drops its petals on The moonlit lawn, the moonlit lawn; The moon, like some wide rose of white, Drops down the summer night. No rose there is As sweet as this-- Thy mouth, that greets me with a kiss. The lattice of thy casement twines With jasmine vines, with jasmine vines; The stars, like jasmine blossoms, lie About the glimmering sky. No jasmine tress Can so caress As thy white arms' soft loveliness. About thy door magnolia blooms Make sweet the glooms, make sweet the glooms; A moon-magnolia is the dusk Closed in a dewy husk. However much, No bloom gives such Soft fragrance as thy bosom's touch. The flowers, blooming now, shall pass, And strew the grass, and strew the grass; The night, like some frail flower, dawn Shall soon make gray and wan. Still, still above, The flower of True love shall live forever, love. KINSHIP I. There is no flower of wood or lea, No April flower, as fair as she: O white anemone, who hast The wind's wild grace, Know her a cousin of thy race, Into whose face A presence like the wind's hath passed. II. There is no flower of wood or lea, No Maytime flower, as fair as she: O bluebell, tender with the blue Of limpid skies, Thy lineage hath kindred ties In her, whose eyes The heav'n's own qualities imbue. III. There is no flower of wood or lea, No Juneday flower, as fair as she: Rose,--odorous with beauty of Life's first and best,-- Behold thy sister here confessed! Whose maiden breast Is fragrant with the dreams of love. SHE IS SO MUCH She is so much to me, to me, And, oh! I love her so, I look into my soul and see How comfort keeps me company In hopes she, too, may know. I love her, I love her, I love her, This I know. So dear she is to me, so dear, And, oh! I love her so, I listen in my heart and hear The voice of gladness singing near In thoughts she, too, may know. I love her, I love her, I love her, This I know. So much she is to me, so much, And, oh! I love her so, In heart and soul I feel the touch Of angel callers, that are such Dreams as she, too, may know. I love her, I love her, I love her, This I know. HER EYES In her dark eyes dreams poetize; The soul sits lost in love: There is no thing in all the skies, To gladden all the world I prize, Like the deep love in her dark eyes, Or one sweet dream thereof. In her dark eyes, where thoughts arise, Her soul's soft moods I see: Of hope and faith, that make life wise; And charity, whose food is sighs-- Not truer than her own true eyes Is truth's divinity. In her dark eyes the knowledge lies Of an immortal sod, Her soul once trod in angel-guise, Nor can forget its heavenly ties, Since, there in Heaven, upon her eyes Once gazed the eyes of God. MESSENGERS The wind, that gives the rose a kiss With murmured music of the south, Hath kissed a sweeter thing than this,-- The wind, that gives the rose a kiss-- The perfume of her mouth. The brook, that mirrors skies and trees, And echoes in a grottoed place, Hath held a fairer thing than these,-- The brook, that mirrors skies and trees,-- The image of her face. O happy wind! O happy brook! So dear before, so free of cares! How dearer since her kiss and look,-- O happy wind! O happy brook!-- Have blessed you unawares! AT TWENTY-ONE The rosy hills of her high breasts, Whereon, like misty morning, rests The breathing lace; her auburn hair, Wherein, a star point sparkling there, One jewel burns; her eyes, that keep Recorded dreams of song and sleep; Her mouth, with whose comparison The richest rose were poor and wan; Her throat, her form--what masterpiece Of man can picture half of these! She comes! a classic from the hand Of God! wherethrough I understand What Nature means and Art and Love, And all the lovely Myths thereof. BABY MARY TO LITTLE M. E. C. G. Deep in baby Mary's eyes, Baby Mary's sweet blue eyes, Dwell the golden memories Of the music once her ears Heard in far-off Paradise; So she has no time for tears,-- Baby Mary,-- Listening to the songs she hears. Soft in baby Mary's face, Baby Mary's lovely face, If you watch, you, too, may trace Dreams her spirit-self hath seen In some far-off Eden-place, Whence her soul she can not wean,-- Baby Mary,-- Dreaming in a world between. A MOTIVE IN GOLD AND GRAY I. To-night he sees their star burn, dewy-bright, Deep in the pansy, eve hath made for it, Low in the west; a placid purple lit At its far edge with warm auroral light: Love's planet hangs above a cedared height; And there in shadow, like gold music writ Of dusk's dark fingers, scale-like fire-flies flit Now up, now down the balmy bars of night. How different from that eve a year ago! Which was a stormy flower in the hair Of dolorous day, whose sombre eyes looked, blurred, Into night's sibyl face, and saw the woe Of parting near, and imaged a despair, As now a hope caught from a homing word. II. She came unto him--as the springtime does Unto the land where all lies dead and cold, Until her rosary of days is told And beauty, prayer-like, blossoms where death was.-- Nature divined her coming--yea, the dusk Seemed thinking of that happiness: behold, No cloud it had to blot its marigold Moon, great and golden, o'er the slopes of musk; Whereon earth's voice made music; leaf and stream Lilting the same low lullaby again, To coax the wind, who romped among the hills All day, a tired child, to sleep and dream: When through the moonlight of the locust-lane She came, as spring comes through her daffodils. III. White as a lily molded of Earth's milk That eve the moon swam in a hyacinth sky; Soft in the gleaming glens the wind went by, Faint as a phantom clothed in unseen silk: Bright as a naiad's leap, from shine to shade, The runnel twinkled through the shaken brier; Above the hills one long cloud, pulsed with fire, Flashed like a great, enchantment-welded blade. And when the western sky seemed some weird land, And night a witching spell at whose command One sloping star fell green from heav'n; and deep The warm rose opened for the moth to sleep; Then she, consenting, laid her hands in his, And lifted up her lips for their first kiss. IV. There where they part, the porch's step is strewn With wind-tossed petals of the purple vine; Athwart the porch the shadow of a pine Cleaves the white moonlight; and, like some calm rune Heaven says to Earth, shines the majestic moon; And now a meteor draws a lilac line Across the welkin, as if God would sign The perfect poem of this night of June. The wood-wind stirs the flowering chestnut-tree, Whose curving blossoms strew the glimmering grass Like crescents that wind-wrinkled waters glass; And, like a moonstone in a frill of flame, The dew-drop trembles on the peony, As in a lover's heart his sweetheart's name. V. In after years shall she stand here again, In heart regretful? and with lonely sighs Think on that night of love, and realize Whose was the fault whence grew the parting pain? And, in her soul, persuading still in vain, Shall doubt take shape, and all its old surmise Bid darker phantoms of remorse arise Trailing the raiment of a dead disdain? Masks, unto whom shall her avowal yearn, With looks clairvoyant seeing how each is A different form, with eyes and lips that burn Into her heart with love's last look and kiss?-- And, ere they pass, shall she behold them turn To her a face which evermore is his? VI. In after years shall he remember how Dawn had no breeze soft as her murmured name? And day no sunlight that availed the same As her bright smile to cheer the world below? Nor had the conscious twilight's golds and grays Her soul's allurement, that was free of blame,-- Nor dusk's gold canvas, where one star's white flame Shone, more bewitchment than her own sweet ways.-- Then as the night with moonlight and perfume, And dew and darkness, qualifies the whole Dim world with glamour, shall the past with dreams-- That were the love-theme of their lives--illume The present with remembered hours, whose gleams, Unknown to him, shall face them soul to soul? VII. No! not for her and him that part;---the Might- Have-Been's sad consolation;--where had bent, Haply, in prayer and patience penitent, Both, though apart, before no blown-out light. The otherwise of fate for them, when white The lilacs bloom again, and, innocent, Spring comes with beauty for her testament, Singing the praises of the day and night. When orchards blossom and the distant hill Is vague with haw-trees as a ridge with mist, The moon shall see him where a watch he keeps By her young form that lieth white and still, With lidded eyes and passive wrist on wrist, While by her side he bows himself and weeps. VIII. And, oh, what pain to see the blooms appear Of haw and dogwood in the spring again; The primrose leaning with the dragging rain, And hill-locked orchards swarming far and near. To see the old fields, that her steps made dear, Grow green with deepening plenty of the grain, Yet feel how this excess of life is vain,-- How vain to him!--since she no more is here. What though the woodland burgeon, water flow, Like a rejoicing harp, beneath the boughs! The cat-bird and the hermit-thrush arouse Day with the impulsive music of their love! Beneath the graveyard sod she will not know, Nor what his heart is all too conscious of! IX. How blessed is he who, gazing in the tomb, Can yet behold, beneath th' investing mask Of mockery,--whose horror seems to ask Sphinx-riddles of the soul within the gloom,-- Upon dead lips no dust of Love's dead bloom; And in dead hands no shards of Faith's rent flask; But Hope, who still stands at her starry task, Weaving the web of comfort on her loom! Thrice blessed! who, 'though he hear the tomb proclaim, How all is Death's and Life Death's other name; Can yet reply: "O Grave, these things are yours! But that is left which life indeed assures-- Love, through whose touch I shall arise the same! Love, of whose self was wrought the universe!" A REED SHAKEN WITH THE WIND I. Not for you and me the path Winding through the shadowless Fields of morning's dewiness! Where the brook, that hurries, hath Laughter lighter than a boy's; Where recurrent odors poise, Romp-like, with irreverent tresses, In the sun; and birds and boughs Build a music-haunted house For the winds to hang their dresses, Whisper-silken, rustling in. Ours a path that led unto Twilight regions gray with dew; Where moon-vapors gathered thin Over acres sisterless Of all healthy beauty; where Fungus growths made sad the air With a phantom-like caress: Under darkness and strange stars, To the sorrow-silenced bars Of a dubious forestland, Where the wood-scents seemed to stand, And the sounds, on either hand, Clad like sleep's own servitors In the shadowy livery Of the ancient house of dreams; That before us,--fitfully, With white intermittent gleams Of its pale-lamped windows,--shone; Echoing with the dim unknown. II. To say to hope,--Take all from me, And grant me naught: The rose, the song, the melody, The word, the thought: Then all my life bid me be slave,-- Is all I crave. To say to time,--Be true to me, Nor grant me less The dream, the sigh, the memory, The heart's distress; Then unto death set me a task, Is all I ask. III. I came to you when eve was young. And, where the park went downward to The river, and, among the dew, One vesper moment lit and sung A bird, your eyes said something dear. How sweet it was to walk with you! How, with our souls, we seemed to hear The darkness coming with its stars! How calm the moon sloped up her sphere Of fire-filled pearl through passive bars Of clouds that berged the tender east! While all the dark inanimate Of nature woke; initiate With th' moon's arrival, something ceased In nature's soul; she stood again Another self, that seemed t' have been Dormant, suppressed and so unseen All day; a life, unknown and strange And dream-suggestive, that had lain,-- Masked on with light,--within the range Of thought, but unrevealed till now. It was the hour of love. And you, With downward eyes and pensive brow, Among the moonlight and the dew,-- Although no word of love was spoken,-- Heard the sweet night's confession broken Of something here that spoke in me; A love, depth made inaudible, Save to your soul, that answered well, With eyes replying silently. IV. Fair you are as a rose is fair, There where the shadows dew it; And the deeps of your brown, brown hair, Sweet as the cloud that lingers there With the sunset's auburn through it. Eyes of azure and throat of snow, Tell me what my heart would know! Every dream I dream of you Has a love-thought in it, And a hope, a kiss or two, Something dear and something true, Telling me each minute, With three words it whispers clear, What my heart from you would hear. V. Summer came; the days grew kind With increasing favors; deep Were the nights with rest and sleep: Fair, with poppies intertwined On their blonde locks, dreamy hours, Sunny-hearted as the rose, Went among the banded flowers, Teaching them, how no one knows, Fresher color and perfume.-- In the window of your room Bloomed a rich azalea. Pink, As an egret's rosy plumes, Shone its tender-tufted blooms. From your care and love, I think, Love's rose-color it did drink, Growing rosier day by day Of your 'tending hand's caress; And your own dear naturalness Had imbued it in some way. Once you gave a blossom of it, Smiling, to me when I left: Need I tell you how I love it Faded though it is now!--Reft Of its fragrance and its color, Yet 'tis dearer now than then, As past happiness is when We regret. And dimmer, duller Though its beauty be, when I Look upon it, I recall Every part of that old wall; And the dingy window high, Where you sat and read; and all The fond love that made your face A soft sunbeam in that place: And the plant, that grew this bloom Withered here, itself long dead, Makes a halo overhead There again--and through my room, Like faint whispers of perfume, Steal the words of love then said. VI. All of my love I send to you, I send to you, On thoughts, like paths, that wend to you, Here in my heart's glad garden, Wherein, its lovely warden, Your face, a lily seeming, Is dreaming. All of my life I bring to you, I bring to you, In deeds, like birds, that sing to you, Here, in my soul's sweet valley, Wherethrough, most musically, Your love, a fountain, glistens, And listens. My love, my life, how blessed in you! How blessed in you! Whose thoughts, whose deeds find rest in you, Here, on my self's dark ocean, Whereo'er, in heavenly motion, Your soul, a star, abideth, And guideth. VII. Where the old Kentucky wound Through the land,--its stream between Hills of primitive forest green,-- Like a goodly belt around Giant breasts of grandeur; with Many an unknown Indian myth, On the boat we steamed. The land Like an hospitable hand Welcomed us. Alone we sat On the under-deck, and saw Farm-house and plantation draw Near and vanish. 'Neath your hat, Your young eyes laughed; and your hair, Blown about them by the air Of our passage, clung and curled. Music, and the summer moon; And the hills' great shadows hewn Out of silence; and the tune Of the whistle, when we whirled Round a moonlit bend in sight of Some lone landing heaped with hay Or tobacco; where the light of One dim solitary lamp Signaled through the evening's damp: Then a bell; and, dusky gray, Shuffling figures on the shore With the cable; rugged forms On the gang-plank; backs and arms With their cargo bending o'er; And the burly mate before. Then an iron bell, and puff Of escaping steam; and out Where the stream is wheel-whipped rough; Music, and a parting shout From the shore; the pilot's bell Beating on the deck below; Then the steady, quivering, slow Smooth advance again. Until Twinkling lights beyond us tell There's a lock or little town, Clasped between a hill and hill, Where the blue-grass fields slope down.-- So we went. That summer-time Lingers with me like a rhyme Learned for dreamy beauty of Its old-fashioned faith and love, In some musing moment; sith Heart-associated with Joy that moment's quiet bore, Thought repeated evermore. VIII. Three sweet things love lives upon: Music, at whose fountain's brink Still he stoops his face to drink; Seeing, as the wave is drawn, His own image rise and sink. Three sweet things love lives upon. Three sweet things love lives upon: Odor, whose red roses wreathe His bright brow that shines beneath; Hearing, as each bud is blown, His own spirit breathe and breathe. Three sweet things love lives upon. Three sweet things love lives upon: Color, to whose rainbow he Lifts his dark eyes burningly; Feeling, as the wild hues dawn, His own immortality. Three sweet things love lives upon. IX. Memories of other days, With the whilom happiness, Rise before my musing gaze In the twilight ... And your dress Seems beside me, like a haze Shimmering white; as when we went 'Neath the star-strewn firmament, Love-led, with impatient feet Down the night that, summer-sweet, Sparkled o'er the lamp-lit street. Every look love gave us then Comes before my eyes again, Making music for my heart On that path, that grew for us Roses, red and amorous, On that path, from which oft start, Out of recollected places, With remembered forms and faces, Dreams, love's ardent hands have woven In my life's dark tapestry, Beckoning, soft and shadowy, To the soul. And o'er the cloven Gulf of time, I seem to hear Words, once whispered in the ear, Calling--as might friends long dead, With familiar voices, deep, Speak to those who lie asleep, Comforting--So I was led Backward to forgotten things, Contiguities that spread Sudden unremembered wings; And across my mind's still blue From the nest they fledged in, flew Dazzling shapes affection knew. X. Ah! over full my heart is Of sadness and of pain; As a rose-flower in the garden The dull dusk fills with rain; As a blown red rose that shivers And bends to the wind and rain. So give me thy hands and speak me As once in the days of yore, When love spoke sweetly to us, The love that speaks no more; The sound of thy voice may help him To speak in our hearts once more. Ah! over grieved my soul is, And tired and sick for sleep, As a poppy-bloom that withers, Forgotten, where reapers reap; As a harvested poppy-flower That dies where reapers reap. So bend to my face and kiss me As once in the days of yore, When the touch of thy lips was magic That restored to life once more; The thought of thy kiss, which awakens To life that love once more. XI. Sitting often I have, oh! Often have desired you so-- Yearned to kiss you as I did When your love to me you gave, In the moonlight, by the wave, And a long impetuous kiss Pressed upon your mouth that chid, And upon each dewy lid-- That, all passion-shaken, I With love language will address Each dear thing I know you by, Picture, needle-work or frame: Each suggestive in the same Perfume of past happiness: Till, meseems, the ways we knew Now again I tread with you From the oldtime tryst: and there Feel the pressure of your hair Cool and easy on my cheek, And your breath's aroma: bare Hand upon my arm, as weak As a lily on a stream: And your eyes, that gaze at me With the sometime witchery, To my inmost spirit speak. And remembered ecstacy Sweeps my soul again ... I seem Dreaming, yet I do not dream. XII. When day dies, lone, forsaken, And joy is kissed asleep; When doubt's gray eyes awaken, And love, with music taken From hearts with sighings shaken, Sits in the dusk to weep: With ghostly lifted finger What memory then shall rise?-- Of dark regret the bringer-- To tell the sorrowing singer Of days whose echoes linger, Till dawn unstars the skies. When night is gone and, beaming, Faith journeys forth to toil; When hope's blue eyes wake gleaming, And life is done with dreaming The dreams that seem but seeming, Within the world's turmoil: Can we forget the presence Of death who walks unseen? Whose scythe casts shadowy crescents Around life's glittering essence, As lessens, slowly lessens, The space that lies between. XIII. Bland was that October day, Calm and balmy as the spring, When we went a forest-way, 'Neath paternal beeches gray, To a valleyed opening: Where the purple aster flowered, And, like torches shadow-held, Red the fiery sumach towered; And, where gum-trees sentineled Vistas, robed in gold and garnet, Ripe the thorny chestnut shelled Its brown plumpness. Bee and hornet Droned around us; quick the cricket, Tireless in the wood-rose thicket, Tremoloed; and, to the wind All its moon-spun silver casting, Swung the milk-weed pod unthinned; And, its clean flame on the sod By the fading golden-rod, Burned the white life-everlasting. It was not so much the time, Nor the place, nor way we went, That made all our moods to rhyme, Nor the season's sentiment, As it was the innocent Carefree childhood of our hearts, Reading each expression of Death and care as life and love: That impression joy imparts Unto others and retorts On itself, which then made glad All the sorrow of decay, As the memory of that day Makes this day of spring, now, sad. XIV. The balsam-breathed petunias Hang riven of the rain; And where the tiger-lily was Now droops a tawny stain; While in the twilight's purple pause Earth dreams of Heaven again. When one shall sit and sigh, And one lie all alone Beneath the unseen sky-- Whose love shall then deny? Whose love atone? With ragged petals round its pod The rain-wrecked poppy dies; And where the hectic rose did nod A crumbled crimson lies; While distant as the dreams of God The stars slip in the skies. When one shall lie asleep, And one be dead and gone-- Within the unknown deep, Shall we the trysts then keep That now are done? XV. Holding both your hands in mine, Often have we sat together, While, outside, the boisterous weather Hung the wild wind on the pine Like a black marauder, and With a sudden warning hand At the casement rapped. The night Read no sentiment of light, Starbeam-syllabled, within Her romance of death and sin, Shadow-chaptered tragicly.-- Looking in your eyes, ah me! Though I heard, I did not heed What the night read unto us, Threatening and ominous: For love helped my heart to read Forward through unopened pages To a coming day, that held More for us than all the ages Past, that it epitomized In its sentence; where we spelled What our present realized Only--all the love that was Past and yet to be for us. XVI. 'Though in the garden, gray with dew, All life lies withering, And there's no more to say or do, No more to sigh or sing, Yet go we back the ways we knew, When buds were opening. Perhaps we shall not search in vain Within its wreck and gloom; 'Mid roses ruined of the rain There still may live one bloom; One flower, whose heart may still retain The long-lost soul-perfume. And then, perhaps, will come to us The dreams we dreamed before; And song, who spoke so beauteous, Will speak to us once more; And love, with eyes all amorous, Will ope again his door. So 'though the garden's gray with dew, And flowers are withering, And there's no more to say or do, No more to sigh or sing, Yet go we back the ways we knew When buds were opening. XVII. Looking on the desolate street, Where the March snow drifts and drives, Trodden black of hurrying feet, Where the athlete storm-wind strives With each tree and dangling light,-- Centers, sphered with glittering white,-- Hissing in the dancing snow ... Backward in my soul I go To that tempest-haunted night Of two autumns past, when we, Hastening homeward, were o'ertaken Of the storm; and 'neath a tree, With its wild leaves whisper-shaken, Sheltered us in that forsaken, Sad and ancient cemetery,-- Where folk came no more to bury.-- Haggard grave-stones, mossed and crumbled, Tottered 'round us, or o'ertumbled In their sunken graves; and some, Urned and obelisked above Iron-fenced in tombs, stood dumb Records of forgotten love. And again I see the west Yawning inward to its core Of electric-spasmed ore, Swiftly, without pause or rest. And a great wind sweeps the dust Up abandoned sidewalks; and, In the rotting trees, the gust Shouts again--a voice that would Make its gaunt self understood Moaning over death's lean land. And we sat there, hand in hand; On the granite; where we read, By the leaping skies o'erhead, Something of one young and dead. Yet the words begot no fear In our souls: you leaned your cheek Smiling on mine: very near Were our lips: we did not speak. XVIII. And suddenly alone I stood With scared eyes gazing through the wood. For some still sign of ill or good, To lead me from the solitude. The day was at its twilighting; One cloud o'erhead spread a vast wing Of rosy thunder; vanishing Above the far hills' mystic ring. Some stars shone timidly o'erhead; And toward the west's cadaverous red-- Like some wild dream that haunts the dead In limbo--the lean moon was led. Upon the sad, debatable Vague lands of twilight slowly fell A silence that I knew too well, A sorrow that I can not tell. What way to take, what path to go, Whether into the east's gray glow, Or where the west burnt red and low-- What road to choose, I did not know. So, hesitating, there I stood Lost in my soul's uncertain wood: One sign I craved of ill or good, To lead me from its solitude. XIX. It was autumn: and a night, Full of whispers and of mist, With a gray moon, wanly whist, Hanging like a phantom light O'er the hills. We stood among Windy fields of weed and flower, Where the withered seed pod hung, And the chill leaf-crickets sung. Melancholy was the hour With the mystery and loneness Of the year, that seemed to look On its own departed face; As our love then, in its oneness, All its dead past did retrace, And from that sad moment took Presage of approaching parting.-- Sorrowful the hour and dark: Low among the trees, now starting, Now concealed, a star's pale spark-- Like a fen-fire--winked and lured On to shuddering shadows; where All was doubtful, unassured, Immaterial; and the bare Facts of unideal day Changed to substance such as dreams. And meseemed then, far away-- Farther than remotest gleams Of the stars--lost, separated, And estranged, and out of reach, Grew our lives away from each, Loving lives, that long had waited. XX. There is no gladness in the day Now you're away; Dull is the morn, the noon is dull, Once beautiful; And when the evening fills the skies With dusky dyes, With tired eyes and tired heart I sit alone, I sigh apart, And wish for you. Ah! darker now the night comes on Since you are gone; Sad are the stars, the moon is sad, Once wholly glad; And when the stars and moon are set, And earth lies wet, With heart's regret and soul's hard ache, I dream alone, I lie awake, And wish for you. These who once spake me, speak no more, Now all is o'er; Day hath forgot the language of Its hopes of love; Night, whose sweet lips were burdensome With dreams, is dumb; Far different from what used to be, With silence and despondency They speak to me. XXI. So it ends--the path that crept Through a land all slumber-kissed; Where the sickly moonlight slept Like a pale antagonist. Now the star, that led us onward,-- Reassuring with its light,-- Fails and falters; dipping downward Leaves us wandering in night, With old doubts we once disdained ... So it ends. The woods attained-- Where our heart's desire builded A fair temple, fire-gilded, With hope's marble shrine within, Where the lineaments of our love Shone, with lilies clad and crowned, 'Neath white columns reared above Sorrow and her sister sin, Columns, rose and ribbon-wound,-- In the forest we have found But a ruin! All around Lie the shattered capitals, And vast fragments of the walls ... Like a climbing cloud,--that plies, Wind-wrecked, o'er the moon that lies 'Neath its blackness,--taking on Gradual certainties of wan, Soft assaults of easy white, Pale-approaching; till the skies' Emptiness and hungry night Claim its bulk again, while she Rides in lonely purity: So we found our temple, broken, And a musing moment's space Love, whose latest word was spoken, Seemed to meet us face to face, Making bright that ruined place With a strange effulgence; then Passed, and left all black again. A FLOWER OF THE FIELDS. Bee-bitten in the orchard hung The peach; or, fallen in the weeds, Lay rotting: where still sucked and sung The gray bee, boring to its seed's Pink pulp and honey blackly stung. The orchard path, which led around The garden,--with its heat one twinge Of dinning locusts,--picket-bound, And ragged, brought me where one hinge Held up the gate that scraped the ground. All seemed the same: the martin-box-- Sun-warped with pigmy balconies-- Still stood with all its twittering flocks, Perched on its pole above the peas And silvery-seeded onion-stocks. The clove-pink and the rose; the clump Of coppery sunflowers, with the heat Sick to the heart: the garden stump, Red with geranium-pots and sweet With moss and ferns, this side the pump. I rested, with one hesitant hand Upon the gate. The lonesome day, Droning with insects, made the land One dry stagnation; soaked with hay And scents of weeds, the hot wind fanned. I breathed the sultry scents, my eyes Parched as my lips. And yet I felt My limbs were ice. As one who flies To some strange woe. How sleepy smelt The hay-sweet heat that soaked the skies! Noon nodded; dreamier, lonesomer, For one long, plaintive, forestside Bird-quaver.--And I knew me near Some heartbreak anguish ... She had died. I felt it, and no need to hear! I passed the quince and peartree; where All up the porch a grape-vine trails-- How strange that fruit, whatever air Or earth it grows in, never fails To find its native flavor there! And she was as a flower, too, That grows its proper bloom and scent No matter what the soil: she, who, Born better than her place, still lent Grace to the lowliness she knew.... They met me at the porch, and were Sad-eyed with weeping. Then the room Shut out the country's heat and purr, And left light stricken into gloom-- So love and I might look on her. THE WHITE VIGIL. Last night I dreamed I saw you lying dead, And by your sheeted form stood all alone: Frail as a flow'r you lay upon your bed, And on your still face, through the casement, shone The moon, as lingering to kiss you there Fall'n asleep, white violets in your hair. Oh, sick to weeping was my soul, and sad To breaking was my heart that would not break; And for my soul's great grief no tear I had, No lamentation for my heart's deep ache; Yet all I bore seemed more than I could bear Beside you dead, white violets in your hair. A white rose, blooming at your window-bar, And glimmering in it, like a fire-fly caught Upon the thorns, the light of one white star, Looked on with me; as if they felt and thought As did my heart,--"How beautiful and fair And young she lies, white violets in her hair!" And so we watched beside you, sad and still, The star, the rose, and I. The moon had past, Like a pale traveler, behind the hill With all her echoed radiance. At last The darkness came to hide my tears and share My watch by you, white violets in your hair. TOO LATE. I looked upon a dead girl's face and heard What seemed the voice of Love call unto me Out of her heart; whereon the charactery Of her lost dreams I read there word for word:-- How on her soul no soul had touched, or stirred Her Life's sad depths to rippling melody, Or made the imaged longing, there, to be The realization of a hope deferred. So in her life had Love behaved to her. Between the lonely chapters of her years And her young eyes making no golden blur With god-bright face and hair; who led me to Her side at last, and bade me, through my tears, With Death's dumb face, too late, to see and know. INTIMATIONS. I. Is it uneasy moonlight, On the restless field, that stirs? Or wild white meadow-blossoms The night-wind bends and blurs? Is it the dolorous water, That sobs in the wood and sighs? Or heart of an ancient oak-tree, That breaks and, sighing, dies? The wind is vague with the shadows That wander in No-Man's Land; The water is dark with the voices That weep on the Unknown's strand. O ghosts of the winds who call me! O ghosts of the whispering waves! As sad as forgotten flowers, That die upon nameless graves! What is this thing you tell me In tongues of a twilight race, Of death, with the vanished features, Mantled, of my own face? II. The old enigmas of the deathless dawns, And riddles of the all immortal eves,-- That still o'er Delphic lawns Speak as the gods spoke through oracular leaves-- I read with new-born eyes, Remembering how, a slave, I lay with breast bared for the sacrifice, Once on a temple's pave. Or, crowned with hyacinth and helichrys, How, towards the altar in the marble gloom,-- Hearing the magadis Dirge through the pale amaracine perfume,-- 'Mid chanting priests I trod, With never a sigh or pause, To give my life to pacify a god, And save my country's cause. Again: Cyrenian roses on wild hair, And oil and purple smeared on breasts and cheeks, How with mad torches there-- Reddening the cedars of Cithæron's peaks-- With gesture and fierce glance, Lascivious Mænad bands Once drew and slew me in the Pyrrhic dance, With Bacchanalian hands. III. The music now that lays Dim lips against my ears, Some wild sad thing it says, Unto my soul, of years Long passed into the haze Of tears. Meseems, before me are The dark eyes of a queen, A queen of Istakhar: I seem to see her lean More lovely than a star Of mien. A slave, I stand before Her jeweled throne; I kneel, And, in a song, once more My love for her reveal; How once I did adore I feel. Again her dark eyes gleam; Again her red lips smile; And in her face the beam Of love that knows no guile; And so she seems to dream A while. Out of her deep hair then A rose she takes--and I Am made a god o'er men! Her rose, that here did lie When I, in th' wild-beasts' den, Did die. IV. Old paintings on its wainscots, And, in its oaken hall, Old arras; and the twilight Of slumber over all. Old grandeur on its stairways; And, in its haunted rooms, Old souvenirs of greatness, And ghosts of dead perfumes. The winds are phantom voices Around its carven doors; The moonbeams, specter footsteps Upon its polished floors. Old cedars build around it A solitude of sighs; And the old hours pass through it With immemorial eyes. But more than this I know not; Nor where the house may be; Nor what its ancient secret And ancient grief to me. All that my soul remembers Is that,--forgot almost,-- Once, in a former lifetime, 'Twas here I loved and lost. V. In eöns of the senses, My spirit knew of yore, I found the Isle of Circe, And felt her magic lore; And still the soul remembers What flesh would be once more. She gave me flowers to smell of That wizard branches bore, Of weird and sorcerous beauty, Whose stems dripped human gore-- Their scent when I remember I know that world once more. She gave me fruits to eat of That grew beside the shore, Of necromantic ripeness, With human flesh at core-- Their taste when I remember I know that life once more. And then, behold! a serpent, That glides my face before, With eyes of tears and fire That glare me o'er and o'er-- I look into its eyeballs, And know myself once more. VI. I have looked in the eyes of poesy, And sat in song's high place; And the beautiful spirits of music Have spoken me face to face; Yet here in my soul there is sorrow They never can name nor trace. I have walked with the glamour gladness, And dreamed with the shadow sleep; And the presences, love and knowledge, Have smiled in my heart's red keep; Yet here in my soul there is sorrow For the depth of their gaze too deep. The love and the hope God grants me, The beauty that lures me on, And the dreams of folly and wisdom That thoughts of the spirit don, Are but masks of an ancient sorrow Of a life long dead and gone. Was it sin? or a crime forgotten? Of a love that loved too well? That sat on a throne of fire A thousand years in hell? That the soul with its nameless sorrow Remembers but can not tell? TWO. With her soft face half turned to me, Like an arrested moonbeam, she Stood in the cirque of that deep tree. I took her by the hands; she raised Her face to mine; and, half amazed, Remembered; and we stood and gazed. How good to kiss her throat and hair, And say no word!--Her throat was bare; As some moon-fungus white and fair. Had God not giv'n us life for this? The world-old, amorous happiness Of arms that clasp, and lips that kiss! The eloquence of limbs and arms! The rhetoric of breasts, whose charms Say to the sluggish blood what warms! Had God or Fiend assigned this hour That bloomed,--where love had all of power,-- The senses' aphrodisiac flower? The dawn was far away. Nude night Hung savage stars of sultry white Around her bosom's Ethiop light. Night! night, who gave us each to each, Where heart with heart could hold sweet speech, With life's best gift within our reach. And here it was--between the goals Of flesh and spirit, sex controls-- Took place the marriage of our souls. TONES. I. A woman, fair to look upon, Where waters whiten with the moon; While down the glimmer of the lawn The white moths swoon. A mouth of music; eyes of love; And hands of blended snow and scent, That touch the pearl-pale shadow of An instrument. And low and sweet that song of sleep After the song of love is hushed; While all the longing, here, to weep, Is held and crushed. Then leafy silence, that is musk With breath of the magnolia-tree, While dwindles, moon-white, through the dusk Her drapery. Let me remember how a heart, Romantic, wrote upon that night! My soul still helps me read each part Of it aright. And like a dead leaf shut between A book's dull chapters, stained and dark, That page, with immemorial green, Of life I mark. II. It is not well for me to hear That song's appealing melody: The pain of loss comes all too near, Through it, to me. The loss of her whose love looks through The mist death's hand hath hung between: Within the shadow of the yew Her grave is green. Ah, dream that vanished long ago! Oh, anguish of remembered tears! And shadow of unlifted woe Athwart the years! That haunt the sad rooms of my days, As keepsakes of unperished love, Where pale the memory of her face Is framed above. This olden song, she used to sing, Of love and sleep, is now a charm To open mystic doors and bring Her spirit form. In music making visible One soul-assertive memory, That steals unto my side to tell My loss to me. UNFULFILLED. In my dream last night it seemed I stood With a boy's glad heart in my boyhood's wood. The beryl green and the cairngorm brown Of the day through the deep leaves sifted down. The rippling drip of a passing shower Rinsed wild aroma from herb and flower. The splash and urge of a waterfall Spread stairwayed rocks with a crystal caul. And I waded the pool where the gravel gray, And the last year's leaf, like a topaz lay. And searched the strip of the creek's dry bed For the colored keel and the arrow-head. And I found the cohosh coigne the same, Tossing with torches of pearly flame. The owlet dingle of vine and brier, That the butterfly-weed flecked fierce with fire. The elder edge with its warm perfume, And the sapphire stars of the bluet bloom; The moss, the fern, and the touch-me-not I breathed, and the mint-smell keen and hot. And I saw the bird, that sang its best, In the moted sunlight building its nest. And I saw the chipmunk's stealthy face, And the rabbit crouched in a grassy place. And I watched the crows, that cawed and cried, Hunting the hawk at the forest-side; The bees that sucked in the blossoms slim, And the wasps that built on the lichened limb. And felt the silence, the dusk, the dread Of the spot where they buried the unknown dead. The water murmur, the insect hum, And a far bird calling, _Come, oh, come!_-- What sweeter music can mortals make To ease the heart of its human ache!-- And it seemed in my dream, that was all too true, That I met in the woods again with you. A sun-tanned face and brown bare knees, And a hand stained red with dewberries. And we stood a moment some thing to tell, And then in the woods we said farewell. But once I met you; yet, lo! it seems Again and again we meet in dreams. And I ask my soul what it all may mean; If this is the love that should have been. And oft and again I wonder, _Can_ _What God intends be changed by man?_ HOME. Among the fields the camomile Seems blown steam in the lightning's glare. Unusual odors drench the air. Night speaks above; the angry smile Of storm within her stare. The way for me to-night?--To-night, Is through the wood whose branches fill The road with dripping rain-drops. Till, Between the boughs, a star-like light-- Our home upon the hill. The path for me to take?--It goes Around a trailer-tangled rock, 'Mid puckered pink and hollyhock, Unto a latch-gate's unkempt rose, And door whereat I knock. Bright on the old-time flower-place The lamp streams through the foggy pane. The door is opened to the rain; And in the door--her happy face, And eager hands again. ASHLY MERE. Come! look in the shadowy water here, The stagnant water of Ashly Mere: Where the stirless depths are dark but clear, What is the thing that lies there?-- A lily-pod half sunk from sight? Or spawn of the toad all water-white? Or ashen blur of the moon's wan light? Or a woman's face and eyes there? Now lean to the water a listening ear, The haunted water of Ashly Mere: What is the sound that you seem to hear In the ghostly hush of the deeps there?-- A withered reed that the ripple lips? Or a night-bird's wing that the surface whips? Or the rain in a leaf that drips and drips? Or a woman's voice that weeps there? Now look and listen! but draw not near The lonely water of Ashly Mere!-- For so it happens this time each year As you lean by the mere and listen: And the moaning voice I understand,-- For oft I have watched it draw to land, And lift from the water a ghastly hand And a face whose eyeballs glisten. And this is the reason why every year To the hideous water of Ashly Mere I come when the woodland leaves are sear, And the autumn moon hangs hoary: For here by the mere was wrought a wrong ... But the old, old story is over long-- And woman is weak and man is strong ... And the mere's and mine is the story. BEFORE THE TOMB. The way went under cedared gloom To moonlight, like a cactus bloom, Before the entrance of her tomb. I had an hour of night and thin Sad starlight; and I set my chin Against the grating and looked in. A gleam, like moonlight, through a square Of opening--I knew not where-- Shone on her coffin resting there. And on its oval silver-plate I read her name and age and date, And smiled, soft-thinking on my hate. There was no insect sound to chirr; No wind to make a little stir. I stood and looked and thought on her. The gleam stole downward from her head, Till at her feet it rested red On Gothic gold, that sadly said:-- "God to her love lent a weak reed Of strength: and gave no light to lead: Pray for her soul; for it hath need." There was no night-bird's twitter near, No low vague water I might hear To make a small sound in the ear. The gleam, that made a burning mark Of each dim word, died to a spark; Then left the tomb and coffin dark. I had a little while to wait; And prayed with hands against the grate, And heart that yearned and knew too late. There was no light below, above, To point my soul the way thereof,-- The way of hate that led to love. REVISITED. It was beneath a waning moon when all the woods were sear, And winds made eddies of the leaves that whispered far and near, I met her on the old mill-bridge we parted at last year. At first I deemed it but a mist that faltered in that place, An autumn mist beneath the trees that sentineled the race; Until I neared and in the moon beheld her face to face. The waver of the summer-heat upon the drouth-dry leas; The shimmer of the thistle-drift a down the silences; The gliding of the fairy-fire between the swamp and trees; They qualified her presence as a sorrow may a dream-- The vague suggestion of a self; the glimmer of a gleam; The actual unreal of the things that only seem. Where once she came with welcome and glad eyes all loving-wise, She passed and gave no greeting that my heart might recognize, With far-set face unseeing and sad unremembering eyes. It was beneath a waning moon when woods were bleak and sear, And winds made whispers of the leaves that eddied far and near, I met her ghost upon the bridge we parted at last year. AT VESPERS. High up in the organ-story A girl stands slim and fair; And touched with the casement's glory Gleams out her radiant hair. The young priest kneels at the altar, Then lifts the Host above; And the psalm intoned from the psalter Is pure with patient love. A sweet bell chimes; and a censer Swings gleaming in the gloom; The candles glimmer and denser Rolls up the pale perfume. Then high in the organ choir A voice of crystal soars, Of patience and soul's desire, That suffers and adores. And out of the altar's dimness An answering voice doth swell, Of passion that cries from the grimness And anguish of its own hell. High up in the organ-story One kneels with a girlish grace; And, touched with the vesper glory, Lifts her madonna face. One stands at the cloudy altar, A form bowed down and thin; The text of the psalm in the psalter He reads, is sorrow and sin. THE CREEK. O cheerly, cheerly by the road And merrily down the billet; And where the acre-field is sowed With bristle-bearded millet. Then o'er a pebbled path that goes, Through vista and through dingle, Unto a farmstead's windowed rose, And roof of moss and shingle. O darkly, darkly through the bush, And dimly by the bowlder, Where cane and water-cress grow lush, And woodland wilds are older. Then o'er the cedared way that leads, Through burr and bramble-thickets, Unto a burial-ground of weeds Fenced in with broken pickets. Then sadly, sadly down the vale, And wearily through the rushes, Where sunlight of the noon is pale, And e'en the zephyr hushes. For oft her young face smiled upon My deeps here, willow-shaded; And oft with bare feet in the sun My shallows there she waded. No more beneath the twinkling leaves Shall stand the farmer's daughter!-- Sing softly past the cottage eaves, O memory-haunted water! No more shall bend her laughing face Above me where the rose is!-- Sigh softly past the burial-place, Where all her youth reposes! ANSWERED. Do you remember how that night drew on? That night of sorrow, when the stars looked wan As eyes that gaze reproachful in a dream, Loved eyes, long lost, and sadder than the grave? How through the heaven stole the moon's gray gleam, Like a nun's ghost down a cathedral nave?-- Do you remember how that night drew on? Do you remember the hard words then said? Said to the living,--now denied the dead,-- That left me dead,--long, long before I died,-- In heart and spirit?--me, your words had slain, Telling how love to my poor life had lied, Armed with the dagger of a pale disdain.-- Do you remember the hard words then said? Do you remember, now this night draws down The threatening heavens, that the lightnings crown With wrecks of thunder? when no moon doth give The clouds wild witchery?--as in a room, Behind the sorrowful arras, still may live The pallid secret of the haunted gloom.-- Do you remember, now this night draws down? Do you remember, now it comes to pass Your form is bowed as is the wind-swept grass? And death hath won from you that confidence Denied to life? now your sick soul rebels Against your pride with tragic eloquence, That self-crowned demon of the heart's fierce hells.-- Do you remember, now it comes to pass? Do you remember?--Bid your soul be still. Here passion hath surrendered unto will, And flesh to spirit. Quiet your wild tongue And wilder heart. Your kiss is naught to me. The instrument love gave you lies unstrung, Silent, forsaken of all melody. Do you remember?--Bid your soul be still. WOMAN'S PORTION. I. The leaves are shivering on the thorn, Drearily; And sighing wakes the lean-eyed morn, Wearily. I press my thin face to the pane, Drearily; But never will he come again. (Wearily.) The rain hath sicklied day with haze, Drearily; My tears run downward as I gaze, Wearily. The mist and morn spake unto me, Drearily: "What is this thing God gives to thee?" (Wearily.) I said unto the morn and mist, Drearily: "The babe unborn whom sin hath kissed." (Wearily.) The morn and mist spake unto me, Drearily: "What is this thing which thou dost see?" (Wearily.) I said unto the mist and morn, Drearily: "The shame of man and woman's scorn." (Wearily.) "He loved thee not," they made reply. Drearily. I said, "Would God had let me die!" (Wearily.) II. My dreams are as a closed up book, (Drearily.) Upon whose clasp of love I look, Wearily. All night the rain raved overhead, Drearily; All night I wept awake in bed, Wearily. I heard the wind sweep wild and wide, Drearily; I turned upon my face and sighed, Wearily. The wind and rain spake unto me, Drearily: "What is this thing God takes from thee?" (Wearily.) I said unto the rain and wind, Drearily: "The love, for which my soul hath sinned." (Wearily.) The rain and wind spake unto me, Drearily: "What are these things thou still dost see?" (Wearily.) I said unto the wind and rain, Drearily: "Regret, and hope despair hath slain." (Wearily.) "Thou lov'st him still," they made reply, Drearily. I said, "That God would let me die!" (Wearily.) FINALE. So let it be. Thou wilt not say 't was I! Here in life's temple, where thy soul may see, Look how the beauty of our love doth lie, Shattered in shards, a dead divinity! Approach: kneel down: yea, render up one sigh! This is the end. What need to tell it thee! So let it be. So let it be. Care, who hath stood with him, And sorrow, who sat by him deified, For whom his face made comfort, lo! how dim They heap his altar which they can not hide, While memory's lamp swings o'er it, burning slim. This is the end. What shall be said beside? So let it be. So let it be. Did we not drain the wine, Red, of love's sacramental chalice, when He laid sweet sanction on thy lips and mine? Dash it aside! Lo, who will fill again Now it is empty of the god divine! This is the end. Yea, let us say Amen. So let it be. THE CROSS. The cross I bear no man shall know-- No man can ease the cross I bear!-- Alas! the thorny path of woe Up the steep hill of care! There is no word to comfort me; No sign to help my bended head; Deep night lies over land and sea, And silence dark and dread. To strive, it seems, that I was born, For that which others shall obtain; The disappointment and the scorn Alone for me remain. One half my life is overpast; The other half I contemplate-- Meseems the past doth but forecast A darker future state. Sick to the heart of that which makes Me hope and struggle and desire, The aspiration here that aches With ineffectual fire; While inwardly I know the lack, The insufficiency of power, Each past day's retrospect makes black Each morrow's coming hour. Now in my youth would I could die!-- As others love to live,--go down Into the grave without a sigh, Oblivious of renown! THE FOREST OF DREAMS. I. Where was I last Friday night?-- Within the forest of dark dreams Following the blur of a goblin-light, That led me over ugly streams, Whereon the scum of the spawn was spread, And the blistered slime, in stagnant seams; Where the weed and the moss swam black and dead, Like a drowned girl's hair in the ropy ooze: And the jack-o'-lantern light that led, Flickered the fox-fire trees o'erhead, And the owl-like things at airy cruise. II. Where was I last Friday night?-- Within the forest of dark dreams Following a form of shadowy white With my own wild face it seems. Did a raven's wing just flap my hair? Or a web-winged bat brush by my face? Or the hand of--something I did not dare Look round to see in that obscene place? Where the boughs, with leaves a-devil's-dance, And the thorn-tree bush, where the wind made moan, Had more than a strange significance Of life and of evil not their own. III. Where was I last Friday night?-- Within the forest of dark dreams Seeing the mists rise left and right, Like the leathery fog that heaves and steams From the rolling horror of Hell's red streams. While the wind, that tossed in the tattered tree, And danced alone with the last mad leaf ... Or was it the wind?... kept whispering me-- "Now bury it here with its own black grief, And its eyes of fire you can not brave!"-- And in the darkness I seemed to see My own self digging my soul a grave. LYNCHERS. At the moon's down-going, let it be On the quarry bill with its one gnarled tree.... The red-rock road of the underbrush, Where the woman came through the summer hush. The sumach high, and the elder thick, Where we found the stone and the ragged stick. The trampled road of the thicket, full Of foot-prints down to the quarry pool. The rocks that ooze with the hue of lead, Where we found her lying stark and dead. The scraggy wood; the negro hut, With its doors and windows locked and shut. A secret signal; a foot's rough tramp; A knock at the door; a lifted lamp. An oath; a scuffle; a ring of masks; A voice that answers a voice that asks. A group of shadows; the moon's red fleck; A running noose and a man's bared neck. A word, a curse, and a shape that swings; The lonely night and a bat's black wings.... At the moon's down-going, let it be On the quarry hill with its one gnarled tree. KU KLUX. We have sent him seeds of the melon's core, And nailed a warning upon his door; By the Ku Klux laws we can do no more. Down in the hollow, 'mid crib and stack, The roof of his low-porched house looms black; Not a line of light at the doorsill's crack. Yet arm and mount! and mask and ride! The hounds can sense though the fox may hide! And for a word too much men oft have died. The clouds blow heavy towards the moon. The edge of the storm will reach it soon. The killdee cries and the lonesome loon. The clouds shall flush with a wilder glare Than the lightning makes with its angled flare, When the Ku Klux verdict is given there. In the pause of the thunder rolling low, A rifle's answer--who shall know From the wind's fierce burl and the rain's blackblow? Only the signature written grim At the end of the message brought to him-- A hempen rope and a twisted limb. So arm and mount! and mask and ride! The hounds can sense though the fox may hide! And for a word too much men oft have died. REMBRANDTS. I. I shall not soon forget her and her eyes, The haunts of hate, where suffering seemed to write Its own dark name, whose syllables are sighs, In strange and starless night. I shall not soon forget her and her face, So quiet, yet uneasy as a dream, That stands on tip-toe in a haunted place And listens for a scream. She made me feel as one, alone, may feel In some grand ghostly house of olden time, The presence of a treasure, walls conceal, The secret of a crime. II. With lambent faces, mimicking the moon, The water lilies lie; Dotting the darkness of the long lagoon Like some black sky. A face, the whiteness of a water-flower, And pollen-golden hair, In shadow half, half in the moonbeams' glower, Lifts slowly there. A young girl's face, death makes cold marble of, Turned to the moon and me, Sad with the pathos of unspeakable love, Floating to sea. III. One listening bent, in dread of something coming, He can not see nor balk-- A phantom footstep, in the ghostly gloaming, That haunts a terraced walk. Long has he given his whole heart's hard endeavor Unto the work begun, Still hoping love would watch it grow and ever Turn kindly eyes thereon. Now in his life he feels there nears an hour, Inevitable, alas! When in the darkness he shall cringe and cower, And see his dead self pass. THE LADY OF THE HILLS. Though red my blood hath left its trail For five far miles, I shall not fail, As God in Heaven wills!-- The way was long through that black land. With sword on hip and horn in hand, At last before thy walls I stand, O Lady of the Hills! No seneschal shall put to scorn The summons of my bugle-horn! No man-at-arms shall stay!-- Yea! God hath helped my strength too far By bandit-caverned wood and scar To give it pause now, or to bar My all-avenging way. This hope still gives my body strength-- To kiss her eyes and lips at length Where all her kin can see; Then 'mid her towers of crime and gloom, Sin-haunted like the Halls of Doom, To smite her dead in that wild room Red-lit with revelry. Madly I rode; nor once did slack. Before my face the world rolled, black With nightmare wind and rain. Witch-lights mocked at me on the fen; And through the forest followed then Gaunt eyes of wolves; and ghosts of men Moaned by me on the plain. Still on I rode. My way was clear From that wild time when, spear to spear, Deep in the wind-torn wood, I met him!... Dead he lies beneath Their trysting oak. I clenched my teeth And rode. My wound scarce let me breathe, That filled my eyes with blood. And here I am. The blood may blind My eyesight now ... yet I shall find Her by some inner eye! For God--He hath this deed in care!-- Yea! I shall kiss again her hair, And tell her of her leman there, Then smite her dead--and die. REVEALMENT. At moonset when ghost speaks with ghost, And spirits meet where once they sinned, Between the bournes of found and lost, My soul met her soul on the wind, My late-lost Evalind. I kissed her mouth. Her face was wild. Two burning shadows were her eyes, Wherefrom the maiden love, that smiled A heartbreak smile of severed ties, Gazed with a wan surprise. Then suddenly I seemed to see No more her shape where beauty bloomed ... My own sad self gazed up at me-- My sorrow, that had so assumed The form of her entombed. HEART'S ENCOURAGEMENT. Nor time nor all his minions Of sorrow or of pain, Shall dash with vulture pinions The cup she fills again Within the dream-dominions Of life where she doth reign. Clothed on with bright desire And hope that makes her strong, With limbs of frost and fire, She sits above all wrong, Her heart, a living lyre, Her love, its only song. And in the waking pauses Of weariness and care, And when the dark hour draws his Black weapon of despair, Above effects and causes We hear its music there. The longings life hath near it Of love we yearn to see; The dreams it doth inherit Of immortality; Are callings of her spirit To something yet to be. NIGHTFALL. O day, so sicklied o'er with night! O dreadful fruit of fallen dusk!-- A Circe orange, golden-bright, With horror 'neath its husk. And I, who gave the promise heed That made life's tempting surface fair, Have I not eaten to the seed Its ashes of despair! O silence of the drifted grass! And immemorial eloquence Of stars and winds and waves that pass! And God's indifference! Leave me alone with sleep that knows Not any thing that life may keep-- Not e'en the pulse that comes and goes In germs that climb and creep. Or if an aspiration pale Must quicken there--oh, let the spot Grow weeds! that dost may so prevail, Where spirit once could not! PAUSE. So sick of dreams! the dreams, that stain The aisle, along which life must pass, With hues of mystic colored glass, That fills the windows of the brain. So sick of thoughts! the thoughts, that carve The house of days with arabesques And gargoyles, where the mind grotesques In masks of hope and faith who starve. Here lay thy over weary head Upon my bosom! Do not weep!-- "He giveth His beloved sleep."-- Heart of my heart, be comforted. ABOVE THE VALES. We went by ways of bygone days, Up mountain heights of story, Where lost in vague, historic haze, Tradition, crowned with battle-bays, Sat 'mid her ruins hoary. Where wing to wing the eagles cling And torrents have their sources, War rose with bugle voice to sing Of wild spear thrust, and broadsword swing, And rush of men and horses. Then deep below, where orchards show A home here, here a steeple, We heard a simple shepherd go, Singing, beneath the afterglow, A love-song of the people. As in the trees the song did cease, With matron eyes and holy Peace, from the cornlands of increase. And rose-beds of love's victories, Spake, smiling, of the lowly. A SUNSET FANCY. Wide in the west, a lake Of flame that seems to shake As if the Midgard snake Deep down did breathe: An isle of purple glow, Where rosy rivers flow Down peaks of cloudy snow With fire beneath. And there the Tower-of-Night, With windows all a-light, Frowns on a burning height; Wherein she sleeps,-- Young through the years of doom,-- Veiled with her hair's gold gloom, The pale Valkyrie whom Enchantment keeps. THE FEN-FIRE. The misty rain makes dim my face, The night's black cloak is o'er me; I tread the dripping cypress-place, A flickering light before me. Out of the death of leaves that rot And ooze and weedy water, My form was breathed to haunt this spot, Death's immaterial daughter. The owl that whoops upon the yew, The snake that lairs within it, Have seen my wild face flashing blue For one fantastic minute. But should you follow where my eyes Like some pale lamp decoy you, Beware! lest suddenly I rise With love that shall destroy you. TO ONE READING THE MORTE D'ARTHURE. O daughter of our Southern sun, Sweet sister of each flower, Dost dream in terraced Avalon A shadow-haunted hour? Or stand with Guinevere upon Some ivied Camelot tower? Or in the wind dost breathe the musk That blows Tintagel's sea on? Or 'mid the lists by castled Usk Hear some wild tourney's pæon? Or 'neath the Merlin moons of dusk Dost muse in old Cærleon? Or now of Launcelot, and then Of Arthur, 'mid the roses, Dost speak with wily Vivien? Or where the shade reposes, Dost walk with stately armored men In marble-fountained closes? So speak the dreams within thy gaze. The dreams thy spirit cages, Would that Romance--which on thee lays The spell of bygone ages-- Held me! a memory of those days, A portion of its pages! STROLLERS. I. We have no castles, We have no vassals, We have no riches, no gems and no gold; Nothing to ponder, Nothing to squander-- Let us go wander As minstrels of old. II. You with your lute, love, I with my flute, love, Let us make music by mountain and sea; You with your glances, I with my dances, Singing romances Of old chivalry. III. "Derry down derry! Good folk, be merry! Hither, and hearken where happiness is!-- Never go borrow Care of to-morrow, Never go sorrow While life hath a kiss." IV. Let the day gladden Or the night sadden, We will be merry in sunshine or snow; You with your rhyme, love, I with my chime, love, We will make time, love, Dance as we go. V. Nothing is ours, Only the flowers, Meadows, and stars, and the heavens above; Nothing to lie for, Nothing to sigh for, Nothing to die for While still we have love. VI. "Derry down derry! Good folk, be merry! Hither, and hearken a word that is sooth:-- Care ye not any, If ye have many Or not a penny, If still ye have youth!" HAUNTED. When grave the twilight settles o'er my roof, And from the haggard oaks unto my door The rain comes, wild as one who rides before His enemies that follow, hoof to hoof; And in each window's gusty curtain-woof The rain-wind sighs, like one who mutters o'er Some tale of love and crime; and, on the floor, The sunset spreads red stains as bloody proof; From hall to hall and stealthy stair to stair, Through all the house, a dread that drags me toward The ancient dusk of that avoided room, Wherein she sits with ghostly golden hair, And eyes that gaze beyond her soul's sad doom, Bending above an unreal harpsichord. PRÆTERITA. Low belts of rushes ragged with the blast; Lagoons of marish reddening with the west; And o'er the marsh the water-fowl's unrest While daylight dwindles and the dusk falls fast. Set in sad walls, all mossy with the past, An old stone gateway with a crumbling crest; A garden where death drowses manifest; And in gaunt yews the shadowy house at last. Here, like some unseen spirit, silence talks With echo and the wind in each gray room Where melancholy slumbers with the rain: Or, like some gentle ghost, the moonlight walks In the dim garden, which her smile makes bloom With all the old-time loveliness again. THE SWASHBUCKLER. Squat-nosed and broad, of big and pompous port; A tavern visage, apoplexy haunts, All pimple-puffed; the Falstaff-like resort Of fat debauchery, whose veined cheek flaunts A flabby purple: rusty-spurred he stands In rakehell boots and belt, and hanger that Claps when, with greasy gauntlets on his hands, He swaggers past in cloak and slouch-plumed hat. Aggression marches armies in his words; And in his oaths great deeds ride cap-a-pie; His looks, his gestures breathe the breath of swords; And in his carriage camp all wars to be: With him of battles there shall be no lack While buxom wenches are and stoops of sack. THE WITCH. She gropes and hobbies, where the dropsied rocks Are hairy with the lichens and the twist Of knotted wolf's-bane, mumbling in the mist, Hawk-nosed and wrinkle-eyed with scrawny locks. At her bent back the sick-faced moonlight mocks, Like some lewd evil whom the Fiend hath kissed; Thrice at her feet the slipping serpent hissed, And thrice the owl called to the forest fox.-- What sabboth brew dost now intend? What root Dost seek for, seal for what satanic spell Of incantations and demoniac fire? From thy rude hut, hill-huddled in the brier, What dark familiar points thy sure pursuit, With burning eyes, gaunt with the glow of Hell? THE SOMNAMBULIST. Oaks and a water. By the water--eyes, Ice-green and steadfast as cold stars; and hair Yellow as eyes deep in a she-wolf's lair; And limbs, like darkness that the lightning dyes. The humped oaks stand black under iron skies; The dry wind whirls the dead leaves everywhere; Wild on the water falls a vulture glare Of moon, and wild the circling raven flies. Again the power of this thing hath laid Illusion on him: and he seems to hear A sweet voice calling him beyond his gates To longed-for love; he comes; each forest glade Seems reaching out white arms to draw him near-- Nearer and nearer to the death that waits. OPIUM. _On reading De Quincey's "Confessions of an Opium Eater."_ I seemed to stand before a temple walled From shadows and night's unrealities; Filled with dark music of dead memories, And voices, lost in darkness, aye that called. I entered. And, beneath the dome's high-halled Immensity, one forced me to my knees Before a blackness--throned 'mid semblances And spectres--crowned with flames of emerald. Then, lo! two shapes that thundered at mine ears The names of Horror and Oblivion, Priests of this god,--and bade me die and dream. Then, in the heart of hell, a thousand years Meseemed I lay--dead; while the iron stream Of Time beat out the seconds, one by one. MUSIC AND SLEEP. These have a life that hath no part in death; These circumscribe the soul and make it strong; Between the breathing of a dream and song, Building a world of beauty in a breath. Unto the heart the voice of this one saith Ideals, its emotions live among; Unto the mind the other speaks a tongue Of visions, where the guess, we christen faith, May face the fact of immortality-- As may a rose its unembodied scent, Or star its own reflected radiance. We do not know these save unconsciously. To whose mysterious shadows God hath lent No certain shape, no certain countenance. AMBITION. Now to my lips lift then some opiate Of black forgetfulness! while in thy gaze Still lures the loveless beauty that betrays, And in thy mouth the music that is hate. No promise more hast thou to make me wait; No smile to cozen my sick heart with praise! Far, far behind thee stretch laborious days, And far before thee, labors soon and late. Thine is the fen-fire that we deem a star, Flying before us, ever fugitive, Thy mocking policy still holds afar: And thine the voice, to which our longings give Hope's siren face, that speaks us sweet and fair, Only to lead us captives to Despair. DESPONDENCY. Not all the bravery that day puts on Of gold and azure, ardent or austere, Shall ease my soul of sorrow; grown more dear Than all the joy that heavenly hope may don. Far up the skies the rumor of the dawn May run, and eve like some wild torch appear; These shall not change the darkness, gathered here, Of thought, that rusts like an old sword undrawn. Oh, for a place deep-sunken from the sun! A wildwood cave of primitive rocks and moss! Where Sleep and Silence--breast to married breast-- Lie with their child, night-eyed Oblivion; Where, freed from all the trouble of my cross, I might forget, I might forget, and rest! DESPAIR. Shut in with phantoms of life's hollow hopes, And shadows of old sins satiety slew, And the young ghosts of the dead dreams love knew, Out of the day into the night she gropes. Behind her, high the silvered summit slopes Of strength and faith, she will not turn to view; But towards the cave of weakness, harsh of hue, She goes, where all the dropsied horror ropes. There is a voice of waters in her ears, And on her brow a wind that never dies: One is the anguish of desired tears; One is the sorrow of unuttered sighs; And, burdened with the immemorial years, Downward she goes with never lifted eyes. SIN. There is a legend of an old Hartz tower That tells of one, a noble, who had sold His soul unto the Fiend; who grew not old On this condition: That the demon's power Cease every midnight for a single hour, And in that hour his body should be cold, His limbs grow shriveled, and his face, behold! Become a death's-head in the taper's glower.-- So unto Sin Life gives his best. Her arts Make all his outward seeming beautiful Before the world; but in his heart of hearts Abides an hour when her strength is null; When he shall feel the death through all his parts Strike, and his countenance become a skull. INSOMNIA. It seems that dawn will never climb The eastern hills; And, clad in mist and flame and rime, Make flashing highways of the rills. The night is as an ancient way Through some dead land, Whereon the ghosts of Memory And Sorrow wander hand in hand. By which man's works ignoble seem, Unbeautiful; And grandeur, but the ruined dream Of some proud queen, crowned with a skull. A way past-peopled, dark and old, That stretches far-- Its only real thing, the cold Vague light of sleep's one fitful star. ENCOURAGEMENT. To help our tired hope to toil, Lo! have we not the council here Of trees, that to all hope appear As sermons of the soil? To help our flagging faith to rise, Lo! have we not the high advice Of stars, that for all faith suffice As gospels of the skies? Sustain us, Lord! and help us climb, With hope and faith made strong and great, The rock-rough pathway of our fate, The care-dark way of time! QUATRAINS. PENURY. Above his misered embers, gnarled and gray, With toil-twitched limbs he bends; around his hut, Want, like a hobbling hag, goes night and day, Scolding at windows and at doors tight-shut. STRATEGY. Craft's silent sister and the daughter deep Of Contemplation, she, who spreads below A hostile tent soft comfort for her foe, With eyes of Jael watching till he sleep. TEMPEST. With helms of lightning, glittering in the skies, On steeds of thunder, cloudy form on form, Terrific beauty in their hair and eyes, Behold the wild Valkyries of the storm. THE LOCUST BLOSSOM. The spirit Spring, in rainy raiment, met The spirit Summer for a moonlit hour: Sweet from their greeting kisses, warm and wet, Earth shaped the fragrant purity of this flower. MELANCHOLY. With shadowy immortelles of memory About her brow, she sits with eyes that look Upon the stream of Lethe wearily, In hesitant hands Death's partly-opened book. CONTENT. Among the meadows of Life's sad unease-- In labor still renewing her soul's youth-- With trust, for patience, and with love, for peace, Singing she goes with the calm face of Ruth. LIFE AND DEATH. Of our own selves God makes a glass, wherein Two shadows image them as might a breath: And one is Life, whose other name is Sin; And one is Love, whose other name is Death. SORROW. Death takes her hand and leads her through the waste Of her own soul, wherein she hears the voice Of lost Love's tears, and, famishing, can but taste The dead-sea fruit of Life's remembered joys. A LAST WORD. Not for thyself, but for the sake of Song, Strive to succeed as others have, who gave Their lives unto her; shaping sure and strong Her lovely limbs that made them god and slave. Not for thyself, but for the sake of Art, Strive to advance beyond the others' best; Winning a deeper secret from her heart To hang it moonlike 'mid the starry rest. _For permission to reprint a number of the poems included in this volume, thanks are due to The Chap-Book, Cosmopolitan, Lippincott's, Century, New England, Atlantic, and Harper's._ 
31764	----	file was produced from images generously made available by The Kentuckiana Digital Library) DAYS AND DREAMS POEMS BY MADISON CAWEIN AUTHOR OF "LYRICS AND IDYLS," "THE TRIUMPH OF MUSIC," ETC., ETC. G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK LONDON 27 West Twenty-third St. 27 King William St., Strand The Knickerbocker Press 1891 COPYRIGHT, 1891 BY MADISON CAWEIN The Knickerbocker Press, New York Printed and Bound by G. P. Putnam's Sons TO JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY WITH ADMIRATION AND REGARD _O lyrist of the lowly and the true, The song I sought for you Hides yet unsung. What hope for me to find, Lost in the dædal mind, The living utterance with lovely tongue! To say, as erst was sung By Ariosto of Knight-errantry,-- Through lands of Poesy, Song's Paladin, knight of the dream and day, The wizard shield you sway Of that Atlantes power, sweet and terse, The skyey-builded verse: The shield that dazzles, brilliant with surprise, Our unanointed eyes.-- Oh, had I written as 't were worthy you, Each line, a spark of dew,-- As once Ferdusi shone in Persia,-- Had strung each rosy spray Of the unfolding flower of each song; And Iran's bulbul tongue Had sobbed its heart out o'er the fountain's slab In gardens of Afrasiab._ CONTENTS. PAGE ONE DAY AND ANOTHER 1 DAYS AND DREAMS 93 DEITY 95 SELF 97 SELF AND SOUL 99 THE DREAM OF DREAD 102 DEATH IN LIFE 105 THE EVE OF ALL-SAINTS 110 MATER DOLOROSA 116 THE OLD INN 119 LAST DAYS 121 THE ROMANZA 123 MY ROMANCE 125 THE EPIC 127 THE BLIND HARPER 129 ELPHIN 131 PRE-ORDINATION 134 AT THE STILE 138 THE ALCALDE'S DAUGHTER 140 AT THE CORREGIDOR'S 142 THE PORTRAIT 145 ISMAEL 150 A PRE-EXISTENCE 154 BEHRAM AND EDDETMA 158 THE KHALIF AND THE ARAB 166 ONE DAY AND ANOTHER. PART I. 1. _He waits musing._ Herein the dearness of her is: The thirty perfect days of June Made one, in beauty and in bliss Were not more white to have to kiss, To love not more in tune. And oft I think she is too true, Too innocent for our day; For in her eyes her soul looks new-- Two crowfoot-blossoms watchet-blue Are not more soft than they. So good, so kind is she to me, In darling ways and happy words, Sometimes my heart fears she may be Too much with God and secretly Sweet sister to the birds. 2. _Becoming impatient._ The owls are quavering, two, now three, And all the green is graying; The owls our trysting dials be-- There is no time for staying. I wait you where this buckeye throws Its tumbled shadow over Wood-violet and the bramble-rose, Long lady-fern and clover. Spice-seeded sassafras weighs deep Rough rail and broken paling, Where all day long the lizards sleep Like lichen on the railing. Behind you you will feel the moon's Gold stealing like young laughter; And mists--gray ghosts of picaroons-- Its phantom treasure after. And here together, youth and youth, Love will be doubly able; Each be to each as true as truth, And dear as fairy fable. The owls are calling and the maize With fallen dew is dripping-- Ah, girlhood, through the dewy haze Come like a moonbeam slipping. 3. _He hums._ There is a fading inward of the day, And all the pansy sunset hugs one star; To eastward dwindling all the land is gray, While barley meadows westward smoulder far. Now to your glass will you pass For the last time? Pass, Humming that ballad we know?-- Here while I wait it is late And is past time-- Late, And love's hours they go, they go. There is a drawing downward of the night; The wedded Heaven wends married to the Moon; Above, the heights hang golden in her light, Below, the woods bathe dewy in the June. There through the dew is it you Coming lawny? You, Or a moth in the vines? You!--at your throat I may note Twinkling tawny, Note, A glow-worm, your brooch that shines. 4. _She speaks._ How many smiles in the asking?-- Herein I can not deceive you; My "yes" in a "no" was a-masking, Nor thought, dear, once to grieve you. I hid. The humming-bird happiness here Danced up i' the blood ... but what are words When the speech of two souls all truth affords? Affirmative, negative what in love's ear?-- I wished to say "yes" and somehow said "no"; The woman within me knew you would know, For it held you six times dear. _He speaks._ So many hopes in a wooing!-- Therein you could not deceive me; The heart was here and the hope pursuing, Knew that you loved, believe me.-- Bunched bells o' the blush pomegranate--to fix At your throat; three drops of fire they are; And the maiden moon and the maiden star Sink silvery over yon meadow ricks. Will you look?--till I hug your head back, so-- For I know it is "yes" though you whisper "no,"-- And my kisses, sweet, are six. 5. _She speaks._ Could I recall every joy that befell me There in the past with its anguish and bliss, Here in my heart it has whispered to tell me, These were no joys to this. Were it not well if our love could forget them, Veiling the _was_ with the dawn of the _is_? Dead with the past we should never regret them, These were no joys to this. When they were gone and the present stood speechful, Ardent with word and with look and with kiss, What though we know that their eyes are beseechful, These were no joys to this. Is it not well to have more of the spirit, Living high futures this earthly must miss? Less of the flesh with the past pining near it?-- Such is the joy of this. 6. _She sings._ We will leave reason, Dear, for a season; Reason were treason Since yonder nether Foot-hills are clad now In nothing sad now; We will be glad now, Glad as this weather. Heart and heart! in the Maytime, Maytime, Youth and Love take playtime, playtime ... I in the dairy; you are the airy Majesty passing; Love is the fairy Bringing us two together. _He sings._ Starlight in masses Of mist that passes, Stars in the grasses; Star-bud and flower Laughingly know us; Secretly show us Earth is below us And for the hour Soul has soul. In the Maytime, Maytime, Youth and Love take playtime, playtime ... You are a song; a singer I hear it Whispered in star and in flower; the spirit, Love, is the power. 7. _He speaks._ And say we can not wed us now, Since roses and the June are here, Meseems, beneath the beechen bough 'T is just as sweet, my doubly dear, To swear anew each old love vow, And love another year. When breathe green woodlands through and through Wild scents of heliotrope and rain, Where deep the moss mounds cool with dew, Beyond the barley-blowing lane, More wise than wedding, is to woo-- So we will woo again. All night I lie awake and mark The hours by no clanging clock, But in the dim and dewy dark Far crowing of some punctual cock; Until the lyric of the lark Mounts and Morn's gates unlock. And would you be a nun and miss All this delightful ache of love? Not have the moon for what she is? Love's honey-horn God holds above-- No world, for worlds are in a kiss If worlds are good enough. So say we can not wed us now, Since roses and the June are here We 'll stroll beneath the doddered bough, Heaven's mated songsters singing near, To swear anew each old love vow, And love another year. 8. _He opens his heart._ And had we lived in the days Of the Khalif Haroun er Reshid, We had loved, as the story says, Did the Sultan's favorite one And the Persian Emperor's son Ali ben Bekkar, he Of the Kisra dynasty. Do you know the story well Of the Khalif Haroun's sultana?-- When night on the palace fell, A slave through a secret door, Low-arched on the Tigris' shore, By a hidden winding stair Ben Bekkar brought to his fair? Then there was laughter and mirth, And feasting and singing together, In a chamber of marvellous worth; In a chamber vaulted high On columns of ivory; Its dome, like the irised skies, Mooned over with peacock eyes; And the curtains and furniture, Damask and juniper. Ten slave-girls--so many blooms-- Stand sconcing tamarisk torches, Silk-clad from the Irak looms; Ten handmaidens serve the feast, Each like to a star in the East; Ten singers, their lutes a-tune, Each like to a bosomed moon. For her in the stuff of Merv Blue-clad, unveiled, and jewelled, No metaphor made may serve; Scarved deep with her own dark hair, The jewels like fire-flies there-- Blossom and moon and star, The Lady Shemsennehar. The zone embracing her waist,-- The ransom of forty princes,-- But her form more priceless is placed; Carbuncles of Istakhar In her coronet burning are-- Though gems of the Jamshid race, Far rarer the gem of her face. Tall-shaped like the letter I, With a face like an Orient morning; Eyes of the bronze-black sky; Lips, of the pomegranate split, With the light of her language lit; Cheeks, which the young blood dares Make blood-red anemone lairs. Kohled with voluptuous look, From opaline casting-bottles, Handmaidens over them shook Rose-water, and strewed with bloom Mosaics old of the room; Torch-rays on the walls made bars, Or minted down golden dinars. Roses of Rocknabad, Hyacinths of Bokhara;-- Not a spray of cypress sad;-- Narcissus and jessamine o'er Carved pillar and cedarn door; Pomegranates and bells of clear Tulips of far Kashmeer. And the chamber glows like a flower Of the Tuba, or vale of El Liwa; And the bronzen censers glower; And scents of ambergris pour With myrrh brought out of Lahore, And musk of Khoten, and good Aloes and sandal-wood. Rubies, a tragacanth-red, Angered in armlet and anklet Dragon-like eyes that bled: Bangles and necklaces dangled Diamonds, whose prisms were angled, Over veil and from coiffure, each Or apricot-colored or peach. And Ghoram now smites her lute, Sings loves of Mejnoon and Leila, Or amorous ghazals may suit:-- And the flambeaux snap and wave Barbaric on free and slave, Rich fabrics and bezels of gems, And roses in anadems. Sherbets in ewers of gold, Fruits in salvers carnelian; Flagons of grotesque mold, Made of a sapphire glass, Stained with wine of Shirâz; Shaddock and melon and grape On plate of an antique shape: Vases of frost and of rose, An alabaster graven, Filled with the mountain snows; Goblets of mother-of-pearl, One filigree silver-swirl; Vessels of gold foamed up With spray of spar on the cup.-- When a slave bursts in with the cry: "The eunuchs! the Khalif's eunuchs! With scimitars bared draw nigh! Wesif and Afif and he, Chief of the hideous three, Mesrour! the Sultan 's seen 'Mid a hundred weapons' sheen!"... _We_, never had parted, no! As parted those lovers fearful; But kissing you so and so, When they came they had found us dead On the flowers our blood dyed red; Our lips together and The dagger in my hand. 9. _She speaks, musing._ O cities built by music! lyres of love Strung to a songful sea! did I but own One harp chord of one broken barbiton What had I budded for our life thereof? In docile shadows under bluebell skies A home upon the poppied edge of eve, Beneath lone peaks the splendors never leave, In lemon orchards whence the egret flies. Where pitying gray the pitiless eyes of Death Blight no slight bud unfostered, I have thought; Deep, lily-deep, pearl-pale daturas, fraught With dewy fragrance like an angel's breath. Sleep in the days; the twilights tuned and tame Through mockbirds throating to attentive stars; Each morn outrivalling each in opal bars; Eves preaching beauty with rose-tongues of flame. O country by the undiscovered sea! The dream infolds thee and the way is dim-- With head not high, what if I follow him, Love--with the madness and the melody? 10. _He, after a pause, lightly._ An elf there is who stables the hot Red wasp that stings o' the apricot; An elf who rowels his spiteful bay, Like a mote on a ray, away, away; An elf who saddles the hornet lean To din i' the ear o' the swinging bean; Who hunts with a hat cocked half awry The bottle-blue o' the dragon-fly:-- O ho, O hi! Oh, well know I. An elf there is where the clover tips A horn whence the summer leaks and drips, Where lanthorns of mustard-flowers bloom, In the dusk awaits the bee's dull boom; Gay gold brocade from head to knee, Who robs the caravan bumble-bee; Big bags of honey bee-merchants pay To the bandit elf of the Fairy way,-- O ho, O hey! I have heard them say. Another ouphen the butterflies know, Who paints their wings like the buds that blow; Flowers, staining the dew-drops through, Seals their colors in tubes of dew; Colors to dazzle the butterflies' wing-- The evening moth is another thing: The butterfly's glory he got at dawn, The moon-moth's got when the moon was wan; He it is, that the hollyhocks hear, Who dangles a brilliant i' each one's ear; Teases at noon the pane's green fly, And lights at night the glow-worm's eye:-- O ho, O hi! Oh, well know I. But the dearest elf, so the poets say, Is the elf who hides in an eye of gray; Who curls in a dimple and slips along The strings of a lute or a lover's song; Shines in a scent, or wings a rhyme, And laughs in the bells of a wedding chime; Hides unhidden, where none may know, In her bosom's blossom or throat's blue bow-- O ho, O ho!--a friend or foe? 11. _She, seriously._ Who the loser, who the winner, If the Fancy fail as preacher?-- None who loved was yet beginner Though another's love-beseecher; Love's revealment 's of the inner Life and deity, the teacher. Who may falsify the feeling To the lover who is loser? Has she felt:--the mere revealing Of the passion 's his accuser; She conceals it; the concealing Is her own love's self-abuser. One hath said, no flower knoweth Of the fragrance it revealeth; Song, its soul that overfloweth, Never nightingale's heart feeleth-- Such the love the spirit groweth, Love unconscious if it healeth. 12. _He._ Handsels of anemones The surrendered hours Pour about the sweet Spring's knees-- Crowding babies of the breeze, Her unstudied flowers. When 't is dawn, bestowing Day Strews with coins of golden Every furlong of his way-- Like a Sultan gone to pray At a Kaaba olden. Warlock Night, when dips the dark, Opens, tire on tire, Windows of an heavenly ark, Whence the stars swarm, spark on spark, Butterflies of fire. With the night, the day, the spring,-- Godly chords of beauty,-- We the instrument will string Of our lives and love shall sing Songs of truth and duty. 13. _She._ How it was I can not tell, For I know not where nor why, And the beautiful befell In a land that does not lie East or West where mortals dwell-- But beneath a vaguer sky. Was it in the golden ages, Or the iron, that I heard, In prophetic speech of sages, How had come a snowy bird 'Neath whose wing lay written pages Of an unknown lover's word? I forget; you may remember How the earthquake shook our ships; How our city, one huge ember, Blazed within the thick eclipse; When you found me--deep December Sealed on icy eyes and lips. I forget. No one may say Pre-existences are true: Here 's a flower dies to-day, Resurrected blooms anew: Death is dumb and Life is gray-- Who shall doubt what God can do! 14. _He._ As to this, nothing to tell, You being all my belief; Doubt may not enter or dwell Here where your image is chief, Royal, to quicken or quell, Swaying no sceptre of grief. Wise with the wisdom of Spring-- Dew-drops, a world in each prism, Gems from the universe ring:-- Free of all creed and all schism, Buds that are speechless but bring God-uttered God aphorism. See how the synod is met There of the planets to preach us-- Freed from the frost's oubliette, Here how the flowers beseech us-- Were it not well to forget Winter and night as they teach us? Dew-drop, a bud, and a star, These--each a separate thought Over man's logic how far!-- God to a unit hath wrought-- Love, making these what they are, For without love they were naught. Millions of stars; and they roll Over your path that is white, Here where we end the long stroll.-- Seen of the innermost sight, All of the love of my soul Kisses your spirit. Good-night. PART II. 1. _She delays, meditating._ Sad skies and a foggy rain Dripping from streaming eaves; Over and over again Dead drop of the trickling leaves; And the woodward winding lane, And the hill with its shocks of sheaves, One scarce perceives. Must I go in such sad weather By the lane or over the hill? Where the splitting milk-weed's feather Dim, diamond-like rain-drops fill? Or where, ten stars together, Buff ox-eyes rank the rill By the old corn-mill? The creek by this is swollen, And its foaming cascades sound; And the lilies, smeared with pollen, In the race look dull and drowned;-- 'T is the path we oft have stolen To the bridge, that rambles round With willows crowned. Through a bottom wild with berry Or packed with the iron-weeds, With their blue combs washed and very Purple; the sorghum meads Glint green near a wilding cherry; Where the high wild-lettuce seeds The fenced path leads. A bird in the rain beseeches; And the balsams' budding balls Smell drenched by the way which reaches The wood where the water falls; Where the warty water-beeches Hang leaves one blister of galls, The mill-wheel drawls. My shawl instead of a bonnet!... Though the wood be soaking yet Through the wet to the rock I 'll run it-- How sweet to meet in the wet!-- Our rock with the vine upon it, Each flower a fiery jet-- ... He won't forget! 2. _He speaks, rowing._ Deep are the lilies here that lay Lush, lambent leaves along our way, Or pollen-dusty bob and float White nenuphars about our boat This side the woodland we have reached; Two rapid strokes our skiff is beached. There is no path. Heaped foxgrapes choke Huge trunks they wrap. This giant oak Floods from the Alleghanies bore To wedge here by this sycamore; Its wounded bulk, heart-rotted white, Lights ghostly foxfire in the night. Now oar we through this willow fringe The bulging shore that bosks,--a tinge Of green mists down the marge;--where old, Scarred cottonwoods build walls of shade With breezy balsam pungent; bowled Around vined trunks the floods have made Concentric hollows. On we pass. As we pass, we pass, we pass, In daisy jungles deep as grass, A bubbling sparrow flirts above In wood-words with its woodland love: A white-streaked woodpecker afar Knocks: slant the sun dashed, each a star, Three glittering jays flash over: slim The piping sand-snipes skip and skim Before us: and a finch or thrush-- Who may discover where such sing?-- The silence rinses with a gush Of mellow music gurgling. On we pass, and onward oar To yon long lip of ragged shore, Where from yon rock spouts, babbling frore A ferny spring; where dodging by Rests sulphur-disced that butterfly; Mallows, rank crowded in for room, 'Mid wild bean and wild mustard bloom; Where fishers 'neath those cottonwoods Last Spring encamped those ashes say And charcoal boughs.--'T is long till buds!-- Here who in August misses May? 3. _He speaks, resting._ Here the shores are irised; grasses Clump the water gray that glasses Broken wood and deepened distance: Far the musical persistence Of a field-lark lingers low In the west where tulips blow. White before us flames one pointed Star; and Day hath Night anointed King; from out her azure ewer Pouring starry fire, truer Than true gold. Star-crowned he stands With the starlight in his hands. Will the moon bleach through the ragged Tree-tops ere we reach yon jagged Rock, that rises gradually? Pharos of our homeward valley. Down the dusk burns golden-red; Embers are the stars o'erhead. At my soul some Protean elf is: You 're Simaetha, I am Delphis; You are Sappho and her Phaon-- I. We love. There lies a ray on All the dark Æolian seas 'Round the violet Lesbian leas. On we drift. He loves you. Nearer Looms our island. Rosier, clearer The Leucadian cliff we follow, Where the temple of Apollo Lifts a pale and pillared fire-- Strike, oh, strike the Lydian lyre; Out of Hellas blows the breeze Singing to the Sapphic seas. 4. _He sings._ Night, Night, 't is night. The moon before to love us, And all the moonlight tangled in the stream: Love, love, my love, and all the stars above us, The stars above and every star a dream. In odorous purple, where the falling warble Of water cascades and the plunged foam glows, A columned ruin heaps its sculptured marble Curled with the chiselled rebeck and the rose. _She sings._ Sleep, Sleep, sweet Sleep sleeps at the drifting tiller, And in our sail the Spirit of the Rain-- Love, love, my love, ah bid thy heart be stiller, And, hark! the music of the harping main. What flowers are those that blow their balm unto us? Bow white their brows' aromas each a flame? Ah, child, too kind the love we know, that knew us, That kissed our eyes that we might see the same. _He._ Night! night! good night! no dream it is to vanish, The temple and the nightingale are there; The thornless roses bruising none to banish, The moon and one wild poppy in thy hair. _She._ Night! night! good night! and love's own star before thee, And love's star-image in the starry sea; Yes, yes, ah yes! a presence to watch o'er thee-- Night! night! good night and good the gods to thee! 5. _Homeward through flowers: she speaks._ O simple offerings of the common hills; Love's lowly names, that make you trebly sweet! One Johnny-jump-up, but an apron-full Of starry crowfoot, making mossy dells Dim with heaven's morning blue; dew-dripping plumes Of waxen "dog-mouths"; red the tippling cups Of gypsy-lilies all along the creek, Where dull the freckled silence sleeps, and dark The water runs when, at high noon, the cows Wade knee-deep and the heat hums drowsy with The drone of dizzy flies;--one Samson-flower Blue-streaked and crystal as a summer's cloud; White violets, milk-weed, scarlet Indian-pinks, All fragile-scented and familiar as Pink baby faces and blue infant eyes. O fair suggestions of a life more fair! Love's fragrant whispers of an untaught faith, High habitations 'neath a godlier blue Beyond the sin of Earth, in heavens prepared-- What is it?--halcyon to utter calm, Faith? such as wrinkled wisdom, doubting, has Yearned for and sought in miser'd lore of worlds, And vainly?--Love?--Oh, have I learned to live? 6. _He speaks._ Would you have known it seeing it? Could you have seen it being it? Waving me out of the budding land Sunbeam-jewelled a bloom-white hand, Wafting me life and hope and love, Life with the hope of the love thereof, Love. --"What is the value of knowing it?"-- Only the worth of owing it; Need of the bud contents the light; Dew at dawn and nard at night, Beauty, aroma, honey at heart, Which is debtor, part for part, Heart? Thoughts, when the heart is heedable, Then to the heart are readable; I in the texts of your eyes have read Deep as the depth of the living dead, Measures of truth in unsaid song Learned from the soul to haunt me long, Song. Love perpends each laudable Thought of the soul made audible, Said in gardens of bliss or pain: Moonlight rays in drops of rain, Feels the faith in its sleep awake, Wish of the silent words that shake Sleep. 7. _She hums and muses._ _If love I have had of thee thou hadst of me, No loss was in giving it over; Could I give aught but that I had of thee, Being no more than thy lover?_ And let it cease. When what befalls befalls, You cannot love me less, Loving me much now. Neither weeks nor walls, With bitterest distress, Shall all avail. Despair will find reprieve, Though dark the soul be tossed, In past possession of that love you grieve, The love which you have lost. Ponder the morning, or the midnight moon, The wilding of the wold, The morning slitting from night's brown cocoon Wide wings of flaxen gold: The moon that, had not darkness been before, Had never shone to lead; And think that, though you are, you are not poor, Since you have loved indeed. From flower to star read upward; you shall see The purposes of loss, Deep hierograms of gracious deity, And comfort in your cross. 8. _She speaks._ Sunday shall we ride together? Not the root-rough, rambling way Through the woods we went that day, In the sultry summer weather, Past the Methodist Camp-Meeting, Where religion helped the hymn Gather volume, and a slim Minister with textful greeting Welcomed us and still expounded. From the service on the hill We had rode three hills and still Far away the singing sounded. Nor that road through weed and berry Drowsy days led me and you To the old-time barbecue, Where the country-side made merry. Dusty vehicles together; Darkies with the horses by 'Neath the soft Kentucky sky, And a smell of bark and leather; When you smiled, "Our modern tourney: Gallantry and politics Dinner, dance and intermix." As we went the homeward journey 'Twixt hot chaparrals and thickets, Heard brisk fiddles, scraping still, Drone and thump the quaint quadrille, Like a worried band of crickets.-- Neither road. The shady quiet Of that way by beech and birch, Winding to the ruined church On the Fork that sparkles by it. Where the silent Sundays listen For the preacher whom we bring, In our hearts to preach and sing Week-day shade to Sabbath glisten. 9. _He, at parting._ Yes, to-morrow; when the morn, Pentecost of flame, uncloses Portals that the stars adorn, Whence a golden presence throws his Fiery swords and burning roses At the wide wood's world of wall, Spears of sparkle at each fall; Then together let us ride Down deep-wood cathedral places, Where the pilgrim wild-flowers hide, Praying Sabbath in their faces; Where in truest untaught phrases, Worship in each rhythmic word, Sings no migratory bird.... Pearl on pearl the high stars dight Jewels of divine devices 'Round the Afric throat of Night; Where yon misty glimmer rises Soon the white moon crystallizes Out of darkness, like a spell.-- Late, 't is late. Till dawn, farewell. PART III. 1. Now rests the season in forgetfulness, Careless in beauty of maturity; The ripened roses 'round brown temples, she Fulfils completion in a dreamy guess: Now Time grants night the more and day the less; The gray decides; and brown Dim golds and reds in dulling greens express Themselves and broaden as the year goes down. Sadder the croft where, thrusting gray and high Their balls of seeds, the hoary onions die, Where, Falstaff-like, buff-bellied pumpkins lie: Deeper each wilderness; Sadder the blue of hills that lounge along The lonesome west; sadder the song Of the wild red-bird in the leafage yellow, Deeper and dreamier, aye! Than woods or waters, leans the languid sky Above lone orchards where the cider-press Drips and the russets mellow. Nature grows liberal; under woodland leaves The beech-nuts' burs their little pockets poke, Plump with the copper of the nuts that choke; Above our bristling way the spider weaves A glittering web for which the Dawn designs Thrice twenty rows of sparkles. By the oak, That rolls old roots in many gnarly lines, The acorn thimble, smoothly broke, Shines by its saucer. On sonorous pines The far wind organs; but the forest here To no weak breeze hath woke; Far off the wind, but crumbling near and near,-- Each tingling twig expectant, and the gray Surmise of heaven pilots it the way, Rippling the leafy spines, Until the wildwood, one exultant sway, Booms, and the sunlight, arrowing through it, shines Visible applause you hear. How glows the garden! though the white mists keep The vagabond in flowers reminded of Decay that comes to slay in open love, When the full moon hangs cold and night is deep, Unheeding such their cardinal colors leap Gay in the crescent of the blade of death; Spaced innocents in swaths he weeps to reap, Waiting his scythe a breath, To gravely lay them dead with one last sweep.-- Long, long admire Their splendors manifold:-- The scarlet salvia showered with spurts of fire; Cascading lattices, dark vines that creep, Nightshade and cypress; there the marigold Burning--a shred of orange sunset caught And elfed in petals that eve's goblins brought From elfland; there, predominant red, The dahlia lifts its head By the white balsams' red-bruised horns of honey, In humming spaces sunny. The crickets singing dirges noon and night For morn-born flowers, at dusk already dead, For dusk-dead flowers weep; While tired Summer white, Where yonder aster whispering odor rocks,-- The withered poppies knotted in her locks,-- Sighs, 'mong her sleepy hollyhocks asleep. 2. The hips were reddening on the rose, The haws hung slips of fire; We went the woodland way that goes Up hills of branch and briar. The hooked thorn held her gown and seemed Imploring her be staying The sunlight of herself that beamed Beside it gently swaying. Low bent the golden saxifrage; Its yellow bells like bangles The foxglove fluttered. Like a page-- From out the rail-fence angles-- With crimson plume the sumach, hosed In Lincoln green, attended My lady of the elder, posed In blue-black jewels splendid. And as we mounted up the hill The rocky path that stumbled Spread smooth; and all the day was still And odorous with umbled Tops of wild-carrots drying gray; And there, soft-sunned before us, An orchard dwindling away With dappled boughs bent o'er us. An orchard where the pippin fell Worm-bitten, bruised, and dusty; And hornet-stung, each like a bell, The Bartlett ripened rusty; The smell of tawny peach and plum, That offered luscious yellow; Of wasp and bee the hidden hum, Made all the warm air mellow. And on we went where many-hued Hung wild the morning-glory, Their blue balloons in shadows, dewed With frost-white dew-drops hoary; In bush and burgrass far away Beneath us stretched the valley, Cleft by one creek that laughed with day And babbled musically. The brown, the bronze, the gray, the red Of weed and briar ran riot Flush to dark woodland walls that led To nooks of whispering quiet. Long, feathering bursts of golden-rod Ran golden woolly patches-- Bloom-sunsets of the withered sod The dying summer catches. Then o'er the hills, loose-tumbling rolled-- O'erleaping expectation-- The sunset, flaming marigold, A system's conflagration: And homeward turning, she and I Went as one self in being-- God met us in the earth and sky And Love had purged our seeing. 3. Say, my dear, O my dear, These are the eves for speaking; There is no wight will work us spite Beneath the sunset's streaking. Yes, my dear, O my dear, These are the eves for telling; To walk together in starry weather Ere springs o' the moon are welling. O my dear, yes, my dear, These are the dusks for staying; When twilight dreams of night who seems Among long-purples praying. "No, my dear!"--"Yes, my dear!" These are the nights to kiss it Times twice-a-twenty: they grow a-plenty On lips that will not miss it. 4. To dream where silence sleeps A sorrow's sleep that sighs; Where all heaven's azure peeps Blue from one wildflower's eyes Where, in reflecting deeps,-- Of cloudier woods and skies,-- Another gray world lies. Divining God from things Humble as weeds and bees; From songs the free bird sings Learn all are vain but these; In light-delighted springs, Wise, star-familiar trees, Seek love's philosophies. 5. Here where the days are dimmest, Each old, big-hearted tree Gives bounteous sympathy; Here where dead nights sit grimmest In druid company; Here where the days are dimmest. Leaves of my lone communion, Leaves; and the listening sigh Of silence wanders by; While on my soul the union Is--of the wood and sky-- Leaves of my lone communion. And eyes with tears are aching, While life waits wistfully For love that may not be: In visions vain of waking Lives all it can not see.-- And eyes with tears are aching, And eyes with tears are aching. 6. And here alone I sit and see it so. A vale of willows swelling into knobs, A bulwark eastward. Sloping low Westward the scooping waters flow Under a rocky culvert's arch that throbs With clanging wheels of transient trains that go Screaming to north and south. Here all the weary waters, stagnant stayed, Sleep at the culvert's mouth; The current's hungry hiccup still afraid, Haply, that I should never know The secret 'neath the striate scum o' the stream The devil and the dream, I, dropping gravels so the echo sob Mocking and thin as music of a shade In shades that wring from rocks a hollow woe, Complaining phantoms of faint whispers rob. There, up the valley where the lank grass leaps Blades each a crooked kris, The currents strike or miss Dream melodies: No wide-belled mallow sleeps Monandrous flowers oval as a kiss; No mandrake curling convolutions up Loops heavy blossoms, each a conical cup That swoons moon-nectar and a serpent's hiss; No tiger-lily, where the crayfish play, Mirrors a savage face, a copper hue Streaked with a crimson dew; No dragon-fly in endless error keeps Sewing the pale-gold gown of day With tangled stitches of a burning blue,-- Whose brilliant body but a needle is, An azurn and incarnate ray:-- But here, where haunted with the shade, The dull stream stales and dies, Are beauties none or few, Such sinister and new; And one at widest noon-gaze shrinks afraid Beneath the timid skies; So, if you ask me why I answer this:-- You know not; only where the kildees wade There in the foamy scum, There where the wet rocks ail,-- Low rocks to which the water-reptiles come, Basking pied bodies in the brindled shade,-- Dim as a bubble's prism on the grail Below, an angled sparkle rayed, While lights and shadows aid From breeze-blown clouds that lounge at sunny loss, Deep down, a sense of wavy features quail The heart; with lips that writhe and fade And clench; tough, rooty limbs that twist and cross, And flabby hair of smoky moss. A brimstone sunset. And at night The twinkling flies in will-o'-the-wisp dance wheel Through copse and open, all a gnomish green. I hear the water, and the wave is white There where the boulder plants a keel, And each taunt ripple 's sheen.-- Where instant insects dot The dark with spurts of sulphur--bright, Beneath the hazy height, No bitter-almond trees make wan the night, Building bloom ridges of a ghostly lustre, But white-tops tossing cluster over cluster: Huge-seen within that twilight spot-- As if a hill-born giant, half asleep, Had dropped his night-cap while he drove his sheep Foldward through fallow browns And foxy grays,--a something crowns The knoll--is it the odorous peak Of one June-savory timothy stack? Now, one dead ash behind, A weak moon shows a withered cheek Of Quaker quiet, wasted o'er the vines' Appentice ruins roofing pillared pines: Beyond these, back and back, An oak-wood stretches black-- And here the whining were-wolves of the wind Snuff snarling: but their eyes are blind, Although their fangs are fierce; And though they never pierce Beyond the bad, bedevilled woodland streak, I hear them, yes, I hear A padding o' footsteps near, A prowling pant in ear And can not fly!--yes!--no!-- What horror holds me?--That uncoiling slow, Sure, mastering chimera there, Hooping firm unseen feelers 'round my neck A binding, bruising coil ... The waters burn and boil; The fire-flies the dappled darkness fleck With impish dabs of blazing wizard's oil ... Deep, deep into the black eye of the beck I stare, magnetic fixed, and little reck If all the writhing shadow slips, Dripping around me, to the eyes and hips, Where grinning murder leers with lupine lips. 7. What can it mean for me? what have I done to her? I in our freedom of love as a sun to her; She to our liberty goddess and slumberless Moon of the stars shining silver and numberless: Who on my life, that was thorny and showery, Came--and made dewyness; smiled--and made flowery; Mine! the affinitized one of humanity: Mine! the elected of soul over vanity-- What have I done to her, what have I done! What can it mean for me? what have I said to her? I, who have idolized, worshipped, and pled to her; Sung for her, laughed for her, sorrowed and sighed for her, Lived for her, hated and gladly had died for her! See; she has written me thus! she has written me-- Sooner would dagger or serpent had smitten me! Would they had shrivelled or ever they'd read of it! Eyes, that are wide to the bitterest dread of it-- What have I said to her, what have I said! What shall I make of it, I, who am trembling Fearful of loss?--Oh, enamored, dissembling Flame!--of the candle that burning, but guttering, Flatters the moth that comes circling and fluttering Out of the summer night; trusting, importunate, Quitting cool flowers for this--O unfortunate!-- Such has she been to me making me such to her, Slaying me, saying I never was much to her-- What shall I make of it, what can I make! Love, in thy everglades, moaning and motionless Look, I have fallen; the evil is potionless: I, with no thought but the heavens that lock us in, Set naked feet 'mid the cottonmouth, moccasin Under wild-roses, the Cherokee, eying me:-- In the sweet blue with the egrets that, flying me, Loosened like blooms from magnolias, rose slenderly White and pale pink; where the mocking-bird tenderly Sang, making vistas of mosses melodious, Wandered unheeding my steps in the odious Slime that was venom; I followed the fiery Violet curve of thy star falling wiry-- So was I lost in night, thus am undone!... Have I not told to her--living alone for her-- Purposed unfoldments of love I had sown for her Here in the soil of my soul? their variety Endless; and ever she answered with piety.-- See! it has come to this ... all the tale's suavity At the ninth chapter grows stupid with gravity; Duller than death all our beautiful history-- Close it!--the _finis_ is more than a mystery.-- Yes, I will tell her this; yes, I will tell. 8. I seem to hear her speak and see That blue-hung room. Her perfume comes From lavender folds vined dreamily-- A-blossom with brocaded blooms,-- A stuff of Orient looms. Again I hear her speak and back, Where steals the showery sunlight, piles A whatnot dainty bric-a-brac Beside a tall clock; each glazed tile's Blue-patterned profile smiles. I hear her say, "Ah, had we known, Could what has been have ever been?-- And now!"... How hurt the hard ache shone In eyes whose sadness seemed to lean On something far, unseen! And as in sleep my own self seems Outside my suffering self: I flush In mists of undetermined dreams; Behold her musing in that hush Of lilac light and plush. Smiling but tortured. Yes, I feel Despite that face, not seeming sad, In those calm temples thoughts like steel Remorseless bore. I had gone mad Had I once deemed her glad. Unconsciously, with eyes that yearn To pierce beyond the present far, Searching some future hope, I turn;-- There in her garden one fierce star, Beyond the window's bar,-- Vermilion as a storm-sunk sun,-- A phyllocactus?--all the life Of torrid middays in but one Rich crimson bloom--flames red as strife; And near it, rankly rife-- Deep coreopsis?--heavy hues Of soft seal-bronze and satiny gold, Sway girandoles whose jets of dews Burn points of starlight diamond-cold, Warm-colored, manifold. She dare not speak; I can not. Yet An intercourse 'twixt brain and brain Goes feverish on.--Crushed, smelling wet, Through silken curtains drift again Verbena-scents of rain. I in the doorway turn and stay; Angry her cameo beauty mark Set in that smile--Oh! will she say No farewell? no regret? one spark Of hope to cheer the dark? That sepia-sketch--conceive it so-- A roguish head with jaunty eyes Laughing beneath a rose-chapeau, Silk-masked, unmasking--it denies The full-faced flower surprise; Hung o'er her davenport.... We read The true beneath the false; perceive The smile that hides the ache.--Indeed! _Whose_ soul unmasks?... not mine!--I grieve Here, here, but laugh and leave.... 9. Beyond the knotty apple-trees That fade about the old brick-barn, Its tattered arms and tattered knees A scare-crow tosses to the breeze Among the shocks of corn. All things grow gray in earth and sky; The cold wind sounding drearily Makes all the rusty branches fly; The rustling leaves a-rotting lie; The year is waning wearily. At night I hear the far wild geese Honk in frost-bitten heavens, under Arcturus. Though I seem to cease Outside myself and sleep in peace, I drowse awake and wonder. I know torn thistles by the creek Hang hairy with the frost; the tented Brown acres of the corn stretch bleak And ghostly in the moonlight, weak In hollows bitter-scented. Dream back the ways we strolled at morn Through woods of summer ever singing; Moon-trysts beneath the crooked thorn, The tasselled meads of cane and corn Their restless shadows swinging.... I stand and oar our boat among The dripping lilies of the river; I reach her hat the grape-vine long Struck in the stream; we sing a song, That song ... I wake and shiver. And then my feverish mind reverts To our sad words and sadder parting In days long gone; and, oh! it hurts Within here, for the soul asserts Mine the fool fault from starting. And I must lie awake and think Of her with such regrets as gladly No unrebuking conscience shrink; And hear the wild-fowls' clangor sink Through plaintive starlight sadly. When all are overflown and deep The stoic night is left forsaken, For company I well would weep, Since all my spirit fears to sleep, Sleep of such visions shaken. Grave visions of dead deeds that flaw Our waking hours, ever haunting; Else were we, lacking love and law, Rude scare-crow things of sticks and straw Undaunted and undaunting. 10. The sun a splintered splendor was In sober trees that broke and blurred, That afternoon we went together In droning hum and whirling buzz, Where hard the dinning locust whirred, Through fields of golden-rod a-feather. So sweet it was to look and lean To your young face and feel the light Of eyes that fondled mine unsaddened! The laugh that left lips more serene; The words that blossomed like the white Life-everlasting there and gladdened. Maturing Summer, you were fraught With wiser beauties then than now Parades rich Autumn's red November; This stuns: there dreams no subtle thought As then on hinting bush and bough-- But now I am alone, remember. 11. Through iron-weeds and roses And bronzing beech and oak, Old porches it discloses, Above the briars and roses Fall's feeble sunbeams soak. Neglected walks that tangle The dodder-strangled grass; Its chimney shows one angle Heaped with dead leaves that spangle The paths that round it pass. The early mists that bury And hide them in its rooms, From spider closets--very Dim with old webs--will hurry Out in the raining glooms. They haunt each stair and basement; They stand on hearth and porch; Lean from each paneless casement, Or in the moonlight's lacement Fly with a phantom torch. There is a sense of frost here; And gusts that sob away Of something that was lost here, Long, long ago was lost here, But what, they can not say. There croons no owl to startle Despondency within; No raven o'er its portal To scare the daring mortal And guard its cellared sin. The creaking road descries it This side the dusty toll; The farmer passing eyes it; None stops t' philosophize it, This symbol of a soul. 12. Though the dog-tooth violet come With the shower, And the wild-bee haunt and hum Every flower, We shall never wend as when Love laughed leading us from men Over violet vale and glen, Where the red-bird sang an hour, And we heard the partridge drum. Here October shadows pray, Till one stills Joyance, where for buried May Sob the rills: So love's vision has arisen Of the long ago: I listen-- Memory, tears in eyes that glisten Points but Indiana hills Fading dark-blue far away. PART IV. 1. When in her cloudy chiton Spring freed the donjoned rills, And trumpeting, a Triton, Wind-war was on the hills; O'er ways, hope's buds bedizen, Long ways the glory lies on, Love spread us an horizon Of gold beyond life's ills. When Summer came with sickle Stuck in a sheaf of gleams, And eves were honey-trickle From bee-hives of the beams; Scrolls of the days blue-blotted, Scrolls of the night star-dotted, To love and us allotted A world of woven dreams. When Autumn waited tired-- A fair-faced heretic-- _Auto-de-fés_ Frost fired In Winter's Bishopric; Our loves, a song had started, Grew with the song sad-hearted, Sweet loves long-sworn were parted, Though life for love was sick. Now is the Winter waited 'Neath skies of frozen gold, Or raining heavens hated Of winds that curse and scold.-- Shall this be so: that never Shall sunlight snowlight sever? Forever and forever The heart wait winter-cold? 2. Soft music bring that seems to weep All this dull sorrow of the soul; Vague music soft to utter sleep, Sleep and undying dole: Forgetting not--forgotten most-- How love is well though lost. So weary, oh! and yet so fain In silent service of the heart; Still feeling if it be in vain Love's spirit hath His part; And if in death God grant the rest Life were but kind at best. 3. Last night I slept till midnight Then woke, and far away A cock crowed; lonely and distant Came mournful a watch-dog's bay; But lonelier, slower the tedious Old clock ticked on towards day. And what a day!--remember The morns of a Summer and Spring, That bound two lives together? Each morn a wedding ring Of dew and dreams and sparkle, Of flowers and birds a-wing? Broad morns when I strolled the garden Awaiting one the rose Expected, fresh in its blushes-- The Giant of Battle that grows A head of radiance and fragrance, The champion of the close. Not in vain did I wait, departed Summer, this morning mocks; 'Mid the powdery crystal and crimson Of your hollow hollyhocks; Your fairy-bells and poppies, And the bee that in them rocks. Cool-clad 'mid the pendulous purple Of the morning-glory vine, By the giant pearls pellucid Of the peonies a-line, The snapdragons' and the pansies' Deep-colored jewel mine. Shall I ever see my mealy, Drunk dusty-millers gay; My lady-slippers bashful Of butterfly and ray; My gillyflowers as spicy Each as a day of May? Oh, dear when I think of the handfuls Of little gold coin a-mass, My bachelor's-buttons scatter Over the garden grass; Of the marigold that boasts its One bit of burning brass; More bitter I feel the winter Tighten to spirit and heart; And dream of the days remembered As lost--of the past a part; Of the ways we went, all blotted, Tear-blotted on love's chart. And I see the mill and the diamonds Of foam tossed from its wheel; Red lilies tumbled together, The madcap wind at heel; And the timid veronicas' blossoms-- Those prayers the woods conceal. The wild-cat gray of the meadows That the ox-eyed daisies dot, Fawn-eyed and a leopard-yellow, That tangle a tawny spot-- As if some panther tired Lay dozing tame and hot. Ah! back again with the present, With winds that pinch and twist Each leaf in their peevish passion, And whirl wherever they list; With the morning hoary and nipping, Whose mausolean mist Builds white a tomb for the daylight-- A frosty, shaggy fog, That fits gray wigs on the cedars, And furs with wool each log; Carpets with satin the meadow, And velvets white the bog. Alone at morn--indifferent; Alone at eve--I sigh; And wait, like the wind complaining, Complain and know not why; But ailing and longing and hating Because I cannot die. How dull are the sunsets! dreary Cold, hard and harsh and dead! Far richer were those of August, One stain of wine-dark red-- The juice of a mulberry vintage-- To the new moon overhead. But now I sit with the sighing Dead wests of a dying year! Like the fallen leaves and the acorns Am worthless and feel as sear; For the soul and the body sicken, And the heart's one scalding tear. And I stare from my window! The darkness, Like a bravo, his cloak throws on; The moon, like a hidden lanthorn, Glitters--or dagger drawn; All my heart cries out beseeching: "Strike here! strike and be gone!" 4. When friends are sighing Round one and one Nearer is lying, Nearer the sun, When one is dying And all is done; I may remember, You may forget Words, each an ember, Burning here yet-- In dead December One will regret. Love we have given, Over and o'er, All, who has driven Us from his door, Is he forgiven When he is poor? What if you wept once, What though he knew! What if he slept once! Still he was true, If he but kept once Something of you. Never forgetful, Love may forget; Froward and fretful, Child, he will fret; Ever regretful, He will regret. Love would be sweeter If we but knew; Lives be completer To themselves true; Hearts more in metre, Truth looking through. Flesh never near it, Being impure, Mind must endear it Making it sure-- Love in the spirit, That will endure. So when to-morrow Ceases and we Quit this we borrow, Mortality, Such chastens sorrow So it may see. There will be weeping, Weary and deep,-- God's be the keeping Of those that weep!-- When our loved, sleeping, Sleep their long sleep; Then they are dearer Than we're aware; Character clearer, Being more fair; Then they are nearer, Nearer by prayer. 5. They will not say I can not live beyond the weary night, But then I know that I shall die before comes morning's light. How frail is flesh!--but you 'll forgive me now I tell you how I loved you, love you; and the pain it gives to leave you now? This could not be on earth; the flesh, that clothes the soul of me-- Ordained at birth a sacrifice to this heredity-- Denied, forbade.--Ah, you have seen the bright spots in my cheeks Grow hectic, as before comes night blood dyes the sunset's streaks? Consumption. "But I promised you my love"--'t is left forlorn Of life God summons unto him, and is it then forsworn? Oh, I was glad in love of you; but think: if I had died Ere babe of mine had come to be a solace at your side? Had it been little then, your grief, when Heaven had made us one In everything that's good on earth and then the good undone? No! no!--and had I lived to raise a boy we saw each day Bud into beauty, with that blight born in him that must slay! Just when we cherish him the most, and youthful, sunny pride Sits on his curly front, he pines and dies ere I have died. Whose fault?--not mine! but hers or his, that ancestor who gave Escutcheon to our humble house--a death's-head and a grave. Beneath the pomp of those grim arms we live and may not move; Nor faith, nor fame, nor wealth avail to hurl them down, nor love. How could I tell you this?--not then! when all the world was spun Of morning colors for our love to walk and dance upon. I could not tell you how disease hid here a viper germ, Precedence slowly claiming and so slowly fixing firm. And when I broke our plighted troth and would not tell you why, I loved you, thinking "time enough when I have come to die." Draw off my rings and let my hands rest so ... the wretched cough Will interrupt my feeble speech and will not be put off.... Ah, anyhow, my anodyne is this--to feel that you Are near me, that your healthy hand soothes mine's unhealthy dew. And that your heart excuses all, and that you will not fret Because you understand me now and never will forget.-- Now bring me roses pale and pure and tell me death's a lie, --Late was it hard for me to live, now it is hard to die. PART V. 1. Vased in her bedroom window, white As her glad girlhood, never lost, I smelt the roses; and the night Outside was fog and frost. What though I claimed her dying there! God nor one angel understood Nor cared, who from loved feet to hair Had changed to mist her blood. Love, love had claimed us long, and long Our hearts sang harp-strung, late and soon; But God!--God jangles thus the song And makes discord of tune. What lily lilier than her face! More virgin than her lips I kissed! When morn like God, with gold and grace Broke massed in mist! broke massed in mist! 2. Love, to your face farewell now, Pillowed a flower on flowers; Eyes, white-weighed with a spell now; Lips, with nothing to tell now, That bade adieu to ours. Dear, is your soul so daggered There by a world that hates? Love--is _he_ ever laggard? Hope--is _her_ face so haggard? You, who are one with the Fates? Never to wait to-morrow Under such worldly skies! Never to sleep with sorrow! Hour by hour to borrow Joy that has only sighs! Sweet, farewell forever; And a burning tear or two-- Will they reach your knowledge ever, And touch through the dreams that sever My life from the life of you? O Life, in my flesh so fearful Medicine me this pain! Thy eyes with a science cheerful, But mine, with a mystery tearful, Tearful and slumber-fain. Love, to your lips farewell now-- Your spirit through them I kiss; Lips--so sealed with a spell now! Lips, with nothing to tell now But this! but this! but this!... 3. So long it seems since last I saw her face, So long ago it seems, Like some sad soul, in unconjectured space, Lost in the happiness of some dead grace Remembered--I. And, oh! a little while The sorrow stabs and Death conceals no smile From Love bowed weeping in a thorny place-- So long ago, our love is what are dreams! Since she is gone no more I feel the light, Since she is gone beyond, Burst like a revelation out of night,-- Golden convictions of far futures bright,-- Whiles clouds around the west take marble tones; For Hope sits sighing in a place of stones, Dark locks dishevelled and face very white,-- Since she is gone and life's an iron bond. Now she is dead the doubt Love dulled with awe, Now she is dead to me, Questions the wisdom of diviner law. Self-solved of self I search to find a flaw-- O egotism of Earth's fools and slaves!-- For Faith leans thoughtful in a place of graves, On that unseen from this seen known to draw, Now she is dead and it is hard to see. 4. Ridged and bleak the gray forsaken Twilight at the night has guessed, Where no star of dusk has taken Flame unshaken in the west. All the day the woodlands dying Moaned, and drippings as of grief Tossed from barren boughs with sighing Death of flying twig and leaf. Ah, to be a dream unbroken, Past the ironies of Fate! Born a tree; with branches oaken Dear unspoken intimate. Who may say that man has never Lived the mighty hearts of trees? Graduating Godward ever, The Forever finds through these? Colors, we have lived, are cherished; Odors, we have been, are ours; Entity alone has perished; Beauty-nourished souls were flowers. Music, when the fancy guesses, Lifts us loftier thoughts among; Spirit that the flesh distresses, But expresses self with song.... Heaven in darkness bends upbraiding Without moonlight, without star; Darkness and the reason aiding, All but fading phantoms are. Still philosophy is saying: "Now that hope with life seems gone, Some are cursing, some are praying, God smiles raying in the dawn!" 5. Wild weather; the whip of the sleet On the shuttered casement tapping; A shadow from face to feet, Like a shroud, my spirit wrapping, Wild weather; and how is she Now the sting of the storm beats serried, Over the stone and the tree Of the grave where she is buried? Wild weather; I cannot weep-- But the skies weep on and worry; So I sleep, and dream in my sleep How I hear dim garments hurry.... Star weather and footsteps of stars; And I see white raiment glisten, Like the glow on the face of Mars When the stars to the angels listen. And with me I see how she stands With lips high thought has weighted; With testifying hands, And eyes with purity mated. Have I spoken and have I kneeled To the prayer I worship, I wonder?-- What waits on her lips that are sealed? God-sealed and who shall sunder! I sob, "Oh your stay was long! You are come, but your feet were laggard, With mansuetude and song For a heart your death has daggered." And I lift wet eyes to her Unutterable with weeping, And beg for the loves that were, Now passed into Heaven's keeping.... I wake and a clock tolls three-- And the night and the storm lie serried On the testament that's she, Closed, clasped, and forever buried. 6. The night is shrewd with storm and sleet; Each loose-warped casement raps or groans; I hear the wailing woodland beat The tempest with long blatant moans, Like one who fears defeat. And sitting here beyond the storm, Alone within the lonely house, It seems of Sleep the Fairy charm Weaves incantations; even the mouse That scratched has come to harm. And in this grave light, stolen o'er Familiar objects, grown severe, I 'm strange--as, opening a door, One finds one's dead self standing near, One knew not dead before. The old stair rings with growling gusts; Each hearth's flue gasps a gorgon throat That snores and sleeps; the spectral dusts, Which yonder Shawnee war-gear coat, Whose quiver hangs and rusts, Are shaken; till I feel that he, Who wore it in the wild war-dance, And died in it, fills shadowy Its wampumed skins; its plume, perchance, Shakes, scowling eyes at me. And so the Swedenborge I toss Aside, contented with the dark That takes me. O'er the fire-light cross; Pass where the andirons spit and spark, And ponder o'er her loss. Or from the flaw-splashed window yearn Out toward the waste, where sway and dip Dank, dark December boughs, where burn Some late last leaves, that icy drip No matter where you turn. Where sodden soil, you scarce have trod, Fills oozy footprints; and the night So ugly that it mocks at God, Creating monsters which the sight Fancies, unseen, abroad. The months I count: how long it seems Since that bland summer when with her, There on her porch, in rainy gleams We watched the mellow lightning stir In rain-clouds gray as dreams! When all the west a torn gold sheet-- Swift openings of some Titan's forge-- Laid bald with storm; in quivering heat Pitched precipice and nightmare gorge, Where thunder torrents beat. And strong the wind was as again Storm lit the instant earth; and how The wood sprang out one virent stain; We read no more--lost is it now!-- In _Romance of a Reign_; A tale of nowhere; then that we Were reading till we heard the plunge Of distant thunder sullenly, And left to mark long lightnings lunge Convulsions fiery. What worlds love wrought us, dreaming there, Of sorcery and necromance! With spirits lustrous of the air, A land like one great pearl, a trance Of floods and forests fair. Where white-faced flowers sang and thought; Where fragrant birds flew, brilliant-blown, In winging odors; feather-fraught With light, where breathing colors shone, On throbbing music brought. Or built us some snug country home Among the hills; with terraces Vine-hung and orchared o'er the foam Of the Ohio, far one sees Wind crimson in the gloam. And this! and this!--alone! alone! To hear the sweep of winter rain, The missiled sleet's sharp arrows blown; Dark shadow on the freezing pane, And on my heart a moan! DAYS AND DREAMS. He dreamed of hills so deep with woods Storm-barriers on the summer sky Are not more dark, where plunged loud floods Down rocks of sullen dye. Flat ways were his where sparsely grew Gnarled, iron-colored oaks, with rifts, Between dead boughs, of Eden-blue: Ways where the speedwell lifts Its shy appeal, and spreading far-- The gold, the fallen gold of dawn Staining each blossom's balanced star-- Hollows of cowslips wan. Where 'round the feet the lady-smock And pearl-pale lady-slipper creep; White butterflies upon them rock Or seal-brown suck and sleep. At eve the west shoots crooked fire Athwart a half-moon leaning low; While one white, arrowy star throbs higher In curdled honey-glow. Was it some elfin euphrasy That purged his spirit so that there Blue harebells, by those ways that be, Seemed summoning to prayer? For all the death within him prays; Not he--his higher self, whose love Fire-filled the flesh. Its light still stays Touched by the soul above. They found him dead his songs beside, Six stairs above the din and dust Of life: and that for which he died Denied him even a crust. DEITY. No personal; a God divinely crowned With gold and raised upon a golden throne Deep in a golden glory, whence he nods Man this or that--and little more than man! And shalt thou see Him individual? Not till the freed intelligence hath sought Ten hundred hundred years to rise and love, Piercing the singing cycles under God,-- Their iridescent evolutions orbed In wild prismatic splendors,--shall it see-- Through God-propinquity become a god-- See, lightening out of spheric harmonies, Resplendencies of empyrean light, Prisms and facets of ten million beams Starring a crystal of berainbowed rays, And in this--eyes of burning sapphire, eyes Deep as the music of the beautiful; And o'er the eyes, limpid hierarchal brows, As they were lilies of seraphic fire; Lips underneath, of trembling ruby--lips Whose tongue's a chord, and every sound a song: Cherubic faces of intensity In multiplying myriads to a word Forming the unit--God; Supremity Creative and ubiquitous. From this Thy intellect, detached, expelled and breathed Exaltant into flesh endowed with soul, One sparkle of the Essence clothed with clay.-- O high development! devolvings up From matter to unmattered potencies, Up to the source and fountain of all mind, Beauty and truth, inviolable Love, And so resumed and reabsorbed in God, One more expression of eternity! SELF. A Sufi debauchee of dreams Spake this:--From Sodomite to Peri Earth tablets us; we live and are Man's own long commentary. Is one begat in Bassora, One lies in Damietta dying-- The plausibilities of God All possibles o'erlying. But burns the lust within the flesh?-- Hell's but a homily to Heaven,-- Put then the individual first, And of thyself be shriven. Neither in adamant nor brass The scrutinizing eye records it; The arm is rooted in the heart, The heart that rules and lords it. Be that it is and thou art all; And what thou art so thou hast written Thee of the lutanists of Love, Or of the torture-smitten. SELF AND SOUL. It came to me in my sleep, And I rose from my sleep and went Out in the night to weep, Over the bristling bent. With my soul, it seemed, I stood Alone in a moaning wood. And my soul said, gazing at me, "Shall I show you another land Than other this flesh can see?" And took into hers my hand.-- We passed from the wood to a heath As starved as the ribs of Death. Three skeleton trees we pass, Bare bones on an iron moor, Where every leaf and the grass Was a thorn and a thistle hoar. And my soul said, looking on me, "_The past of your life you see._" And a swine-herd passed with his swine, Deformed; and I heard him growl; Two eyes of a sottish shine Leered under two brows as foul. And my soul said, "_This is the lust_ _That soils my limbs with the dust._" And a goose wife hobbled by On a crutch, with the devil's geese; A-mumbling how life is a lie, And cursing my soul without cease. And my soul said, "_This is desire;_ _The meaning of life is higher._" And we came to a garden, close To a hollow of graves and tombs; A garden as red as a rose Hung over of obscene glooms; The heart of each rose was a spark That smouldered or splintered the dark. And I was aware of a girl With a wild-rose face, who came With a mouth like a shell's split pearl, Rose-clad in a robe of flame; And she plucked the roses and gave, And my flesh was her veriest slave. She vanished. My lips would have kissed The flowers she gave me with sighs, But they writhed in my hands and hissed, In their hearts were a serpent's eyes. And my soul said, "_Pleasure is she;_ _The joys of the flesh you see_." And I bowed with a heart too weary, That longed for rest, for sleep; And my eyes were heavy and teary, And yearned for a way to weep. And my soul smiled, "_This may be!_ _Will you know me and follow me?_" THE DREAM OF DREAD. I have lain for an hour or twain Awake, and the tempest is beating On the roof, and the sleet on the pane, And the winds are three enemies meeting; And I listen and hear it again, My name, in the silence, repeating. Then dumbness of death that must slay, Till the midnight is burst like a bubble; And out of the darkness a ray-- 'T is she! the all beautiful double; With a face like the breaking of day, Eyes dark with the magic of trouble. I move not; she lies with her lips At mine; and I feel she is drawing My life from my heart to their tips, My heart where the horror is gnawing; My life in a thousand slow sips, My flesh with her sorcery awing. She binds me with merciless eyes; She drinks of my blood, and I hear it Drain up with a shudder and rise To the lips, like the serpent's, that steer it And she lies and she laughs as she lies, Saying, "Lo, thy affinitized spirit!" Then I hear--as if torturing swords Had shivered and torments had grated Hoarse iron deep under; and words As of sins that howled out and awaited A fiend who lashed into their hords, And a demon who lacerated. And I shriek and lie clammy and stark, As the curse of a devil mounts higher, Up--out of damnation and dark, Up--a hobble of hoofs that is dire; I feel that his mouth is a spark, His features, of filth and of fire. "To thy body's corruption, thy grave! Thy hell! from which thou hast stolen!" And a blackness rolls down like a wave With a clamor of tongues that are swollen-- And I feel that my flesh is the slave Of a--vampire, diakka, eidolon? DEATH IN LIFE. Within my veins it beats And burns within my brain; For when the year is sad and sear I dream the dream again. Ah! over young am I God knows! yet in this sleep More pain and woe than women know I know, and doubly deep!... Seven towers of shaggy rock Rise red to ragged skies, Built in a marsh that, black and harsh, To dead horizons lies. Eternal sunset pours, Around its warlock towers, A glowing urn where garnets burn With fire-dripping flowers. O'er bat-like turrets high, Stretched in a scarlet line, The crimson cranes through rosy rains Drop like a ruby wine. Once in the banquet-hall These scarlet storks are heard:-- I sit at board with men o' th' sword And knights of noble word; Cased all in silver mail; But he, I love and fear, In glittering gold beside me bold Sits like a lover near. Wild music echoes in The hollow towers there; Behind bright bars o' his visor, stars Beam in his eyes and glare. Wild music oozes from Arched ceilings, caked with white Groined pearl; and floors like mythic shores That sing to seas of light. Wild music and a feast, And one's belovèd near In burning mail--why am I pale, So pale with grief and fear? Red heavens and slaughter-red The marsh to west and east; Seven slits of sky, seven casements high, Flare on the blood-red feast. Our torches tall are these, Our revel torches seven, That spill from gold soft splendors old-- The hour of night--eleven. No word. The sparkle aches In cups of diamond-spar, That prism the light of ruddy white In royal wines of war. No word. Rich plate that rays, Splashes of splitting fires, Off beryl brims; while sobs and swims Enchantment of lost lyres. I lean to him I love, And in the silence say: "Would thy dear grace reveal thy face, If love should crave and pray?" Grave Silence, like a king, At that strange feast is set; Grave Silence still as the soul's will, That rules the reason yet. But when I speak, behold! The charm is snapped, for low Speaks out the mask o' his golden casque, "At midnight be it so!" And Silence waits severe, Till one sonorous tower, Owl-swarmed, that looms in glaring glooms, Sounds slow the midnight hour. Three strokes; the knights arise, The palsy from them flung, To meward mock like some hoarse rock When wrecking waves give tongue. Six strokes; and wailing out The music hoots away; The fiery glimmer of eve dies dimmer, The red grows ghostly gray. Nine strokes; and dropping mould The crumbling hall is lead; The plate is rust, the feast is dust, The banqueters are dead. Twelve strokes pound out and roll; The huge walls writhe and shake O'er hissing things with taloned wings-- Christ Jesus, let me wake! Then rattling in the night _His_ iron visor slips-- In rotting mail a death's-head pale Kisses my loathing lips. Two hell-fierce lusts its eyes, Sharp-pointed like a knife, That flaming seem to say, "_No dream!_ _No dream! the truth of Life!_" THE EVE OF ALL-SAINTS. 1. This is the tale they tell, Of an Hallowe'en; This is the thing that befell Me and the village Belle, Beautiful Aimee Dean. 2. Did I love her?--God and she, They know and I! And love was the life of me-- Whatever else may be, Would God that I could die! 3. That All-Saints' eve was dim; The frost lay white Under strange stars and a slim Moon in the graveyard grim, An Autumn ghost of light. 4. They told her: "Go alone, With never a word, To the burial plot's unknown Grave with the grayest stone, When the clock on twelve is heard; 5. "Three times around it pass, With never a sound; Each time a wisp of grass And myrtle pluck, and pass Out of the ghostly ground; 6. "And the bridegroom that's to be At smiling wait, With a face like mist to see, With graceful gallantry Will bow you to the gate." 7. She laughed at this, and so Bespoke us how To the burial place she'd go:-- And I was glad to know, For I'd be there to bow. 8. An acre from the farm The homestead graves Lay walled from sun and storm; Old cedars of priestly form Around like sentinel slaves. 9. I loved, but never could say Such words to her, And waited from day to day, Nursing the hope that lay Under the doubts that were.-- 10. She passed 'neath the iron arch Of the legended ground, And the moon like a twisted torch Burned over one lonesome larch; She passed with never a sound. 11. Three times had the circle traced, Three times had bent To the grave that the myrtle graced; Three times, then softly faced Homeward, and slowly went. 12. Had the moonlight changed me so? Or fear undone Her stepping strange and slow? Did she see and did not know? Or loved she another one? 13. Who knows?--She turned to flee With a face so white That it haunts and will haunt me; The wind blew gustily, The graveyard gate clanged tight. 14. Did she think it me or--what, Clutching her dress? Her face so pinched that not A star in a stormy spot Shows half as much distress. 15. Did I speak? did she answer aught? O God! had I said "Aimee, 't is I!" but naught!-- And the mist and the moon distraught Stared with me on her--dead.... 16. This is the tale they tell Of the Hallowe'en; This is the thing that befell Me and the village Belle, Beautiful Aimee Dean. MATER DOLOROSA. The nuns sing, "_ora pro nobis_," The lancets glitter above; And the beautiful Virgin whose robe is Woven of infinite love, Infinite love and sorrow, Prays for them there on high;-- Who has most need of her prayers,--to-morrow Shall tell them,--they or I? Up in the hills together We loved, where the world seemed true; Our world of the whin and heather, Our skies of a nearer blue, A blue from which one borrows A faith that helps one die-- O Mother, sweet Mother of Sorrows, None needs such more than I! We lived, we loved unwedded-- Love's sin and its shame that slays!-- No ill of the year we dreaded, No day of its coming days; Its coming days, their many Trials by morn and night, And I know no land, not any, Where love's lilies grow so white! Was he false to me, my Mother! Or I to him, my God!-- Who gave thee right, O brother! To take God's right and rod! God's rod of avenging morrows, And the life here in my side! O Mother, God's Mother of Sorrows, For both I would have died! By the wall of the Chantry kneeling, I pray and the organ rings, "_Gloria! gloria!_" pealing, "_Sancta Maria_" sings! They will find us dead to-morrow By the wall of their nunnery, O Mother, sweet Mother of Sorrow! His unborn babe and me. THE OLD INN. 1. Red-winding from the sleepy town, One takes the lone, forgotten lane Straight through the hills. A brush-bird brown Bubbles in thorn-flowers sweet with rain; Light shivers sink the gleaming grain; The cautious drip of higher leaves The lower dips that drip again.-- Above the tangled tops it heaves Its gables and its haunted eaves. 2. One creeper, gnarled to bloomlessness, O'er-forests all its eastern wall; The sighing cedars rake and press Dark boughs along the panes they sprawl; While, where the sun beats, breaks a drawl Of hiving wasps; one bushy bee, Gold-dusty, hurls along the hall To hum into a crack.--To me The shadows seem too scared to flee. 3. Of ragged chimneys martins make Huge pipes of music; twittering here Build, breed, and roost.--My footfalls wake Strange stealing echoes, till I fear I'll meet my pale self coming near; My phantom face as in a glass; Or one men murdered, buried--where? Dim in gray, stealthy glimmer, pass With lips that seem to moan "Alas." LAST DAYS. Aye! heartbreak of the tattered hills, And mourning of the raining sky! Heartbreak and mourning, since God wills, Are mine, and God knows why! The brutal wind that herds the storm In hail-big clouds that freeze along, As this gray heart are doubly warm With thrice the joy of song. I held one dearer than each day Of life God sets in limpid gold-- What thief hath stole that gem away To leave me poor and old! The heartbreak of the hills be mine, Of trampled twig and mired leaf, Of rain that sobs through thorn and pine An unavailing grief! The sorrow of the childless skies' _Good-nights_, long said, yet never said, As when I kissed my child's blue eyes And lips ice-dumb and dead. THE ROMANZA. In a kingdom of mist and moonlight, Or ever the world was known, Past leagues of unsailed water, There reigned a king with a daughter That shone like a starry stone. The day grew out o' the moonlight; But never a day was there. The king was wise as hoary, And his daughter, like the glory Of seven kingdoms, fair. And the night dimmed over the moonlight,-- And ever the mist was gray,-- With slips of dull stars, bluer Where the princess met her wooer, A page like the month o' May. In her eyes the mist, and the moonlight In hair of a crumpled gold; By day they wooed a-hawking, A-hawking laughed, a-mocking The good, white king and old. On the sea the mist, and the moonlight Poured pale to the lilies' tips;-- At eve, when the hawks were feeding, In courts to the kennels leading, He kissed her mouth and lips. On towers the mist, and the moonlight On a dead face staring up;-- His kingly couch was ready, But and her hand was steady Giving the poisoned cup. MY ROMANCE. If it so befalls that the midnight hovers In mist no moonlight breaks, The leagues of years my spirit covers, And myself myself forsakes. And I live in a land of stars and flowers, White cliffs by a silver sea; And the pearly points of her opal towers From the mountains beckon me. And I think that I know that I hear her calling From a casement bathed with light-- The music of waters in waters falling To palms from a rocky height. And I feel that I think my love's awaited By the romance of her charms; That her feet are early and mine belated In a world that chains my arms. But I break my chains and the rest is easy-- In the shadow of the rose Snow-white, that blooms in her garden breezy, We meet and no one knows. To dream sweet dreams and kiss sweet kisses; The world--it may live or die; The world that forgets, the soul that misses The life that has long gone by. We speak old vows that have long been spoken, And weep a long-gone woe,-- For you must know our hearts were broken Hundreds of years ago. THE EPIC. "To arms!" the battle bugles blew. The daughter of their Earl was she, Lord of a thousand swords and true; He but a squire of low degree. The horns of war blew up to horse: He kissed her mouth; her face was white; "God grant they bear thee back no corse!"-- "God give I win my spurs to-night!" Each watch-tower's blazing beacon scarred A blood-blot in the wounded dark: She heard knights gallop battleward, And from the turret leaned to mark. "My God, deliver me and mine! My child! my God!" all night she prayed: She saw the battle beacons shine; She saw the battle beacons fade. They brought him on a bier of spears.-- For him--the death-won spurs and name; For her--the sting of secret tears, And convent walls to hide her shame. THE BLIND HARPER. And thus it came my feet were led To wizard walls that hairy hung Old as their rock the moss made dead; And, like a ditch of fire flung Around it, uncouth flowers red Thrust spur and fang and tongue. And here I harped. Did dead men list? Or was it hollow hinges gnarred Huge, iron scorn in donjon-twist? And when I thought a face sword-scarred Would curse me, lo! a woman kissed At me hands ringed and starred. And so I sang; for she had leaned Rare beauty to me, dark and tall; I sang of Love, whose Court is queened Of Aliénor the virginal, Nor saw how rolled on me a fiend Wolf-eyeballs from the wall. Oh, how I sang! until she laughed Red lips that made lute harmony; I sang of knights who fought and quaffed To Love's own paragon, Marie-- Nor saw the suzerain whose shaft Was bowed and bent on me. And I had harped until she wept; But when I sang of Ermengarde Of Anjou,--where her Court is kept By brave, by beauty, and by bard,-- She turned a raven there and swept Me, like a fury, 'ward. A bleeding beak had pierced my sight; A crimson claw each cheek had lined; One glimpse: wild walls of threatening night Heaped raven battlements behind A moat of blazing serpents bright-- And then I wandered blind. ELPHIN. The eve was a burning copper, The night was a boundless black Where wells of the lightning crumbled And boiled with blazing rack, When I came to the coal-black castle With the wild rain on my back. Thrice under its goblin towers, Where the causey of rock was laid, Thrice, there at its spider portal, My scornful bugle brayed, But never a warder questioned,-- An owl's was the answer made. When the heaven above was blistered One scald of blinding storm, And the blackness clanged like a cavern Of iron where demons swarm, I rode in the court of the castle With the shield upon my arm. My sword unsheathed and certain Of the visor of my casque, My steel steps challenged the donjon My gauntlet should unmask; But never a knight or varlet To stay or slay or ask. My heels on the stone ground iron, My fists on the bolts clashed steel;-- In the hall, the roar of the torrent, In the turret, the thunder's peal;-- And I found her there in the turret Alone by her spinning-wheel. She spun the flax of a spindle, And I wondered on her face; She spun the flax of a spindle, And I marvelled on her grace; She spun the flax of a spindle, And I watched a little space. But nerves of my manhood weakened; The heart in my breast was wax; Myself but the hide of an image Out-stuffed with the hards of flax:-- She spun and she smiled a-spinning A spindle of blood-red flax. She spun and she laughed a-spinning The blood of my veins in a skein; But I knew how the charm was mastered, And snapped in the hissing vein; So she wove but a fiery scorpion That writhed from her hands again.... Fleeing in rain and in tempest, Saw by the cataract's bed,-- Cancers of ulcerous fire, Wounds of a bloody red,-- Its windows glare in the darkness Eyes of a dragon's head. PRE-ORDINATION. She bewitched me in my childhood, And the witch's charm is hidden-- Far beyond the wicked wildwood I shall find it, I am bidden. She commands me, she who bound me With soft sorcery to follow; In a golden snare who wound me To her bosom's snowy hollow.... Comes a night-dark stallion sired Of the wind; a mare his mother Whom Thessalian madness fired, And the hurricane his brother. Then my soul delays no longer: Though the night around is scowling, Keenly mount him blacker, stronger Than the tempest that is howling. At our ears wild shadows whistle; Brazen forks the lightning o'er us Flames; and huge the thunder's missile Bursts behind us, drags before us. Over fire-scorched fields of stubble; Iron forests dark with wonder; Evil marshes black with trouble; Nightmare torrents thundering under: In the thorn that past us races, Harelipped hags like crows are rocking; Stunted oaks have dwarf-like faces Gnarled that leer an impish mocking: Rocks, in which the storm is hooting, Thrust a humpbacked murder over; Bristling heaths, dead thistles shooting, Raven-haunted gibbets cover: Each and all are passed, like water Under-rolled into a cavern, Till we see the Devil's daughter Waiting at the Devil's tavern. And we stay; I drain the beaker In her hand; the draught is fire; World-remembrances grow weaker, And my spirit, one desire. Course it! course it! Darkness passes Like an uprolled banner tattered; Walled before us mountain masses Rise like centuries unscattered. And the storm flies ragged. Slowly Comes a moon of copper-color, And the evil night grows holy, Mists the wild ride growing duller. In the round moon's angry scanning, Demon-swift cross spider arches Of the web-thick bridges spanning Chasms of her kingdom's marches. We have reached her kingdom, olden As the sea that sighs its sadness; Rocks and trees and sands are golden, And the air a golden gladness. Shapely ingots are the flowers, And the waters, amber brightness; Gold-bright, song-birds in the bowers Sing with eyes of diamond whiteness. And she meets me with a chalice Like the Giamschid ruby burning, And I drain it without malice, To her towers of topaz turning. Many hundred years forgetting All that's earth: within her power I possess her: naught regretting Since each year is as an hour. AT THE STILE. Young Harry leapt over the stile and kissed her, Over the stile the stars a-winking; He thought it was Mary--'t was Mary's sister-- And love hath a way of thinking. "Thy pail, sweetheart, I will take and carry."-- Over the stile the stars hang yellow.-- "Just to the spring, my sweetheart Harry."-- And love is a heartless fellow. "Thou saidst me _yea_ when the frost did shower Over the stile from stars a-shiver."-- "I say thee _nay_ now the cherry-trees flower, And love is taker and giver." "O false! thou art false to me, sweetheart!"-- Over the stile the stars a-glister. "To thee, the stars, and myself, sweetheart, I never was aught save Mary's sister. "Sweet Mary's sister and thou my Harry, Her Harry and mine, but mine the weeping: In a month or twain you two will marry-- And I in my grave be sleeping." Alone among the meadows of millet, Over the stile the stars pursuing, Some tears in her pail as she stoops to fill it-- And love hath a way of doing. THE ALCALDE'S DAUGHTER. The times they had kissed and parted That night were over a score; Each time that the cavalier started, Each time she would swear him o'er, "Thou art going to Barcelona!-- To make Naxera thy bride! Seduce the Lady Yöna!-- And thy lips have lied! have lied! "I love thee! I love thee, thou knowest! And thou shalt not give away The love to my life thou owest; And my heart commands thee stay!-- "I say thou hast lied and liest!-- For where is there war in the state?-- Thou goest, by Heaven the highest! To choose thee a fairer mate. "Wilt thou go to Barcelona When thy queen in Toledo is? To wait on the haughty Yöna, When thou hast these lips to kiss?" And they stood in the balcony over The old Toledo square: And weeping she took for her lover A red rose out of her hair. And they kissed farewell; and higher The moon made amber the air: And she drew for the traitor and liar A stiletto out of her hair.... When the night-watch lounged through the quiet With the stir of halberds and swords, Not a bravo was there to defy it, Not a gallant to brave with words. One man, at the corner's turning, Quite dead. And they stoop or stand-- In his heart a dagger burning, And a red rose crushed in his hand. AT THE CORREGIDOR'S. To Don Odora says Donna De Vine: "I yield to thy long endeavor!-- At my balcony be on the stroke of nine, And, Signor, am thine forever!" This beauty but once had the Don descried As she quit the confessional; followed; "What a foot for silk! a face for a bride-- Hem--!" the rest Odora swallowed. And with vows as soft as his oaths were sweet Her heart he barricaded; And pressed this point with a present meet, And that point serenaded. What else could the enemy do but yield To a handsome importuning! A gallant blade with a lute for shield All night at her lattice mooning! "_Que es estrella!_ O lily of girls! Here's that for thy fierce duenna: A purse of pistoles and a rosary o' pearls And gold as yellow as henna. "She will drop from thy balcony's rail, my sweet! My seraph! this silken ladder; And then--sweet then!--my soul at thy feet No lover of lovers gladder!" And the end of it was!--But I will not say How he won to the room of the lady:-- Ah! to love is life and to live is gay, For the rest--a maravedi! Now comes her betrothed from the wars, and he, A Count of the Court Castilian, A Don Diabolus, sword at knee, And moustaches--uncivilian. And his is a jealous love; and--for He marks that this marriage makes sadder-- He watches, and sees a robber to her, Or gallant, ascend a ladder. So he pushes inquiry unto her room, With his naked sword demanding-- An Alquazil with the face of Doom, Sure of a stout withstanding. And weapon to weapon they foined and fought; Diabolus' thrusts were vicious; Three thrusts to the floor Odora had brought, A fourth was more malicious, Through the offered bosom of Donna De Vine-- And this is the Count's condition ... Was he right, was he wrong? the question is mine, To judge--for the Inquisition. THE PORTRAIT. In some quaint Nürnberg _maler-atelier_ Uprummaged. When and where was never clear, Nor yet how he obtained it. When, by whom 'T was painted--who shall say? itself a gloom Resisting inquisition. I opine It is a Dürer. Humph?--that touch, this line Are not deniable; distinguished grace In the pure oval of the noble face; The color badly tarnished. Half in light Extend it, so; incline; the exquisite Expression leaps abruptly: piercing scorn, Imperial beauty; icy, each a thorn Of light--disdainful eyes and ... well! no use! Effaced and but beheld, a sad abuse Of patience. Often, vaguely visible, The portrait fills each feature, making swell The soul with hope: avoiding face and hair Alive with lively warmth; astonished there "Occult substantial!" you exult, when, ho! You hold a blur; an undetermined glow Dislimns a daub.--Restore?--ah, I have tried Our best restorers, all! it has defied ... Storied, mysterious, say, mayhap a ghost Lives in the canvas; hers, some artist lost, A duchess', haply. Her he worshipped; dared Not tell he worshipped; from his window stared Of Nuremburg one sunny morn when she Passed paged to court. Her cold nobility Loved, lived for like a purpose; seized and plied A feverish brush--her face! despaired and died. The narrow Judengasse; gables frown Around a skinny usurer's, where brown And dirty in a corner long it lay, Heaped in a pile of riff-raff, such as--say, Retables done in tempora and old Panels by Wohlgemuth; stiff paintings cold Of martyrs and apostles, names forgot; Holbeins and Dürers, say, a haloed lot Of praying saints, madonnas: such, perchance, Mid wine-stained purples mothed; a whole romance Of crucifixes, rosaries; inlaid Arms Saracen-elaborate; a strayed Niello of Byzantium; rich work In bronze, of Florence; here a delicate dirk, There holy patens. So, my ancestor, The first De Herancour, esteemed by far This piece most precious, most desirable; Purchased and brought to Paris. It looked well In the dark panelling above the old Hearth of his room. The head's religious gold, The soft severity of the nun face, Made of the room an apostolic place Revered and feared.-- Like some lived scene I see That Gothic room; its Flemish tapestry: Embossed above the aged lintel, shield-- Deep Or-enthistled, in an Argent field Three Sable mallets--arms De Herancour, Carved with the torso of the crest that bore, Outstretched, two mallets. Lozenge-paned, embayed, Its slender casements; on a lectern laid, A vellum volume of black-lettered text; Near by a blinking taper--as if vexed With silken gusts a nervous curtain sends, Behind which, maybe, daggered Murder bends;-- Waxed floors of rosy oak, whereon the red Torchlight of Medicean wrath is shed, Down knightly corridors; a carven couch Sword-slashed; dark velvets of the chairs that crouch, It seems, with fright; clear-clashing near, more near, The stir of searching steel. What find they here?-- 'T is St. Bartholomew's--a Huguenot Dead in his chair?--dead! violently shot With horror, eyes glued on a portrait there, Coiling his neck one blood line, like a hair Of finest fire; the portrait, like a fiend,-- Looking exalted visitation,--leaned From its black panel; in its eyes a hate Demonic; hair--a glowing auburn, late A dim, enduring golden. "Just one thread Of the fierce hair around his throat," they said, "Twisting a burning ray, he--staring-dead." ISMAEL. Ismael, the Sultan, in the Ramazan, Girdled with guards and many a yataghan, Pachas and amins, viziers wisdom-gray, And holy marabouts, betook his way Through Mekinez.--Written the angel's word, Of Eden's Kauther, reads, "Slay! praying the Lord! Pray! slaying the victims!" so the Sultan went, The Cruel Sultan, with this good intent, In white bournouse and sea-green caftan clad First to the mosque. Long each muezzin had Summoned the faithful unto prayer and let The "Allah Akbar!" from each minaret, Call to their thousand lamps of blazing gold. Prostrated prayed the Sultan. On the old Mosaics of the mosque--whose hollow steamed With aloes-incense--lean ecstatics dreamed On Allah and his Prophet, and how great Is God, and how unstable man's estate. Conviction on him, in this chanting low Of Koran texts, the Caliph's passion so Exalted rose,--lamps of religious awe, Loud smitings of the everlasting law On unbelievers,--trebly manifest The Faith's anointed sword he feels confessed. So from the mosque, whose arabesques above-- The marvellous work of Oriental love-- Seen with new splendors of Heaven's blue and gold, Applauding all, he, as the gates are rolled Ogival back to let the many forth, Cries war to all the unbelieving North. Soon have they passed the tight bazaar; along Close, crooked streets, too narrow for the throng; The place of owls and tombs; the merloned wall, Camel and steed and ass. Projecting all Its towering battlements, his palace gray, Seraglios and courts, against the day Lifts, vanishes. And now, soul-set on hate, From Mekinez they pass the scolloped gate. Two dozing beggars, baking each a sore, Sprawl in the sun the city gate before; A leprous cripple and a thief, whose eyes-- Burnt out with burning iron,--as supplies The law for thieves,--two fly-thick wounds blood-raw, Lifted shrill voices as they heard or saw; Praised God, and flung into the dust each face With words of "victory and Allah's grace Attend our Caliph, Mouley-Ismael! Even at the cost of ours his days be well!" And grimly smiling as he grimly passed, "While God most merciful, who is, shall last,-- Now by Es Sirat!--will a liar's word And thief's prevail or prosper?--Pray the Lord!-- What! at your lives' cost?--my devout intent! Even as 't is bidden let their necks be bent! Though words be pious, evil at the soul Naught is the prayer!--So let their prayer be whole. Nay! give them gold; but when the sequins cease From the slaves' hands, by these my Soudanese They die!" he said; and even as he said Rolled in the dust each writhing, withered head. And frowning westward, as the day grew late, Four bleeding heads stared from the city gate 'Neath this inscription, for the passer-by, "There is no virtue but in God the High." A PRE-EXISTENCE. An intimation of some previous life, Or dark dream, in the present dim-divined, Of some uncertain sleep--or lived or dreamed In some dead life--between a dusk and dawn; From heathen battles to Toledo's gates, Far off defined, his corselet and camail, Damascened armet, shattered; in an eve's Anger of brass a galloping glitter, one Rode arrow-wounded. And the city caught A cry before him and a wail behind, Of walls beleaguered; battles; conquered kings; Triumphant Taric; broken Spain and slaves. And I, a Moslem slave, a miser Jew's, Housed near the Tagus--squalid and alone Save for his slave, held dear--to beat and starve-- Leaner than my lank shadow when the moon, A burning beacon, westerns; and my bones A visible hunger; famished with the fear, Soul-garb of slaves, I bore him--I, who held Him soul and self, more hated than his God, Stood silent; fools had laughed; I saw my way. War-time crops weapons; and the blade I bought Was subtly pointed. For, I knew his ways: The nightly nuptials of his jars of gems And bags of doublas--oh, I knew his ways. A shadow, woven in the hangings, hid Till time said _now_; gaunt from the hangings stole Behind him; humped and stooping so, his heart Clove through the faded tunic, murrey-dyed; Grinned exultation while the grim, slow blood Drenched black and darkened round the oblong wound, And his old face thinned grayer than morn's moon. Rubies from Badakhshân in rose lights dripped Slim tears of poppy-purple crystal; dull, Red, ember-pregnant, carbuncles wherein Fevered a captive crimson; bugles wan Of cat-eyed hyacinths; moon-emeralds With starry greenness stabbed; in limpid stains Of liquid lilac, Persian amethysts; Fire-opals savage and mesmeric with Voluptuous flame, long, sweet, and sensuous as Soft eyes of Orient women; sapphires beamed With talismanic violet, from tombs, Deev-guarded, of primordial Solimans; Length-agonized with fire, diamonds of Golconda--This, a sandaled dervise bare Seven days, beneath a red Arabian sun, Seven nights, beneath a round Arabian moon, Under his tongue; an Emeer's ransom, held Of some wild tribe.... Bleached in the perishing waste A Bedouin Arab found sand-strangled bones, A skeleton, vulture-torn, fierce in whose skull One blazing eye--the diamond. At Aleppo Bartered--a bauble for his desert love.-- Jacinth and Indian pearl, gem jolting gem, Flashed, rutilating in the irised light, A rain of splintered fire; and his head, Long-haired, white-sunk among them. Yet I took All--though his eyes burned in them; though, meseemed, Each several jewel glared a separate curse.... Well! dead men work us mischief from the grave. Richer than all Castile and yet not dare Drink but from cups of Roman murra, spar Bowl-sprayed with fibrile gold! spar sensitive Of poison! I, no slave, yet all a slave To fear a dead fool's malice!--Still, how else! Feasting within the music of my halls, While perfumed beauty danced in sinuous robes, Diaphanous, more silken than those famed Of loomed Amorgos or of classic Kos, Draining the unflawed murrhine, Xeres-brimmed, Had I reeled poisoned, dying wolfsbane-slain! BEHRAM AND EDDETMA. Against each prince now she had held her own, An easy victor for the seven years O'er kings and sons of kings; Eddetma, she Who, when much sought in marriage, hating men, Espoused their ways to win beyond their worth Through martial exercise and hero deeds: She, who accomplished in all warlike arts, Let cry through every kingdom of the kings:-- "Eddetma weds with none but him who proves Himself her master in the push of arms, Her suitor's foeman she. And he who fails, So overcome of woman, woman-scorned, Disarmed, dishonored, yet shall he depart, Brow-bearing, forehead-stigmatized with fire, 'Behold, a freedman of Eddetma this.' Let cry, and many princes put to shame, Pretentious courtiers small in thew and thigh, Proud-palanquined from principalities Of Irak and of Hind and farther Sind. Though she was queenly as that Empress of The proud Amalekites, Tedmureh, and More beautiful, yet she had held her own. To Behram of the Territories, one Son of a Persian monarch swaying kings, Came bruit of her and her noised victories, Her maiden beauty and her warrior strength; Eastward he journeyed from his father's court, With men and steeds and store of wealth and arms, To the rich city where her father reigned, Its seven citadels by Seven Seas. And messengered the monarch with a gift Of savage vessels wroughten out of gold, Of foreign fabrics stiff with gems and gold. Vizier-ambassadored the old king gave His answer to the suitor:--"I, my son, What grace have I above the grace of God? What power is mine but a material? What rule have I unto the substanceless? Me, than the shadow of the Prophet's shade Less, God invests with power but of man; Man! and the right beyond man's right is God's; His the dominion of the secret soul-- And His her soul! Now hath my daughter sworn, By all her vestal soul, that none shall know Her but her better in the listed field, Determining spear and sword.--Grant Fate thy trust; She hangs her hand upon to-morrow's joust, A prize to win.--My greeting and farewell." Informed Eddetma and the lists arose. Armored and keen with a Chorasmian mace, Davidean hauberk came she. Her the prince, Harnessed in scaly gold Arabian, met; So clanged the prologue of the battle. As Closer it waxed, Prince Behram, who a while Withheld his valor,--in that she he loved Opposed him and beset him, woman whom He had not scathed for the Chosroës' wealth,-- Beheld his madness; how he were undone With shining shame unless he strove withal, Whirled fiery sword and smote; the bassinet Rushed from the haughty face that long had scorned The wide world's vanquished royalty, and so Rushed on his own defeat. For like unto A moon gray clouds have caverned all the eve, The thunder splits and, virgin triumph, there She sails a silver aspect, vanquished so Was Behram by his blow. A wavering strength Swerved in its purpose; with no final stroke Stunned stood he and surrendered; stared and stared, All his strong life absorbed into her face, All the wild warrior, arrowed by her eyes, Tamed, and obedient to lip and look. Then she on him, as condor on a kite, Plunged pitiless and beautiful and fierce, One trophy more to added victories; Haled off his arms, amazement dazing him; Seized steed and garb, confusion filling him; And scoffed him forth brow-branded with his shame. Dazzled, six days he sat, a staring trance; But on the seventh, casting stupor off, Rose, and the straitness of the case that held Him as with manacles of knitted fire, Considered, and decided on a way.... Once when Eddetma with a houri band Of high-born damsels, under eunuch guard, In the walled palace pleasaunce took her ease, Under a myrrh-bush by a fountain side, Where Afrits' nostrils snorted diamond rain In scooped cornelian, one, a dim, hoar head,-- A patriarch mid gardener underlings,-- Bent spreading gems and priceless ornaments Of jewelled amulets of hollow gold Sweet with imprisoned ambergris and musk; Symbolic stones in sorcerous carcanets, Gem-talismans in cabalistic gold. Whereon the princess marvelled and bade ask, What did the elder with his riches there? Who, questioned, mumbled in his bushy beard, "To buy a wife withal"; whereat they laughed As oafs when wisdom stumbles. Quoth a maid, With orient midnight in her starry eyes, And tropic music on her languid tongue, "And what if I should wed with thee, O beard Grayer than my great-grandfather's, what then?" "One kiss, no more, and, child, thou wert divorced," He; and the humor took them till the birds, That listened in the spice-tree and the plane, Sang gayly of the gray-beard and his kiss. Then quoth the princess, "Thou wilt wed with him Ansada?" mirth in her two eyes' gazelles, And gravity bird-nestled in her speech; And took Ansada's hand and laid it in The old man's staggering hand, and he unbent Thin, wrinkled brows and on his staff arose, Weighed with the weight of many heavy years, And kissed her leaning on his shaking staff, And heaped her bosom with an Amir's wealth, And left them laughing at his foolish beard. Now on the next day, as she took her ease With her glad troop of girlhood,--maidens who So many royal tulips seemed,--behold, Bowed with white years, upon a flowery sward The ancient with new jewelry and gems, Wherefrom the sun coaxed wizard fires and lit Glimmers in glowing green and pendent pearl, Ultramarine and beaded, vivid rose; And so they stood to wonder, and one asked As yesternoon wherefore the father there Displayed his Sheikh locks and the genie gems? --"Another marriage and another kiss?-- What! doth the tomb-ripe court his youth again? O aged, libertine in wish not deed! O prodigal of wives as well as wealth! Here stands thy damsel"; trilled the Peri-tall Diarra with the raven in her hair, Two lemon-flowers blowing in her cheeks, And took the dotard's jewels with the kiss In merry mockery. Ere the morrow's dawn, Bethought Eddetma: "Shall my handmaidens, Teasing a gray-beard's whim to wrinkled smiles, For withered kisses still divide his wealth? While I stand idle, lose the caravan Whose least is notable?--My right and mine-- Betide me what betides."... And with the morn Before the man,--for privily she came, Stood habited as of her tire-maids In humble raiment. Now the ancient saw And knew her for the princess that she was, And kindling gladness of the knowledge made Two sparkling forges of his deep dark eyes Beneath the ashes of his priestly brows. Not timidly she came; but coy approach Became the maiden of Eddetma's suite; And humbly answered he, "All my old heart!"-- Responsive to her quavering request-- "The daughter of the king did give thee leave? And thou wouldst well?--Then wed with me forth-right. Thy hand, thy lips." So he arose and gave Her of barbaric jewelry and gems, And seized her hand and from her lips the kiss, When from his age, behold, the dotage fell, And from the man all palsied hoariness; Victorious-eyed and amorous with youth, A god in ardent capabilities Resistless held her; and she, swooning, saw Gloating the branded brow of Prince Behram. THE KHALIF AND THE ARAB. _A Transcript._ Among the tales, wherein it hath been told, In golden letters in a book of gold, Of Hatim Taï's hospitality, Who, substanceless in death and shadowy, Made men his guests upon that mountain top Whereon his tomb grayed from a thistle crop;-- A tomb of rock where women hewn of stone, Rude figures, spread dishevelled hair; whose moan From dark to daybreak made the silence cry; The camel drivers, being tented nigh, "Ghouls or hyenas," shuddering would say But only girls of granite find at day:-- And of that city, Sheddad son of Aad Built mid the Sebaa sands.--A king who had Dominion of the world and many kings.-- Builded in pride and power out of things Unstable of the earth. For he had read Of Paradise, and to his soul had said, "Now in this life the like of Paradise I 'll build me and the Prophet's may despise, Knowing no need of that he promises." So for this city taxed the lands and seas, And Columned Irem, on a blinding height, Blazed in the desert like a chrysolite; The manner of its building, it is told, Alternate bricks of silver and of gold: How Sheddad with his women and his slaves, His thousand viziers, armored troops as waves Of ocean countless, God with awful flame-- Shot sheer in thunder on him--God, his shame Confounded and abolished, ere his eyes Had glimpsed bright follies of that Paradise; Lay blotted to a wilderness the land Accurséd, and the city lost in sand: Among such tales--who questions of their sooth?-- One is recorded of an Arab youth: The Khalif Hisham ben Abdulmelik Hunting one day, by some unwonted freak Rode parted from his retinue and gave Chase to an antelope. Without or slave, Amir or vizier to a pasture place Of sheep he came, where dark, in tattered grace, Watched one, an Arab youth. And as it came The antelope drew off, with mouth of flame And tongue of fire to the youth he turned Shouting, "Ho! fellow! in what school hast learned! Seest not the buck escapes me? worthless one! O desert dullard!" Rising in the sun, "O ignorant," he said, "of that just worth Of those the worthy of our Muslim earth! In that thou look'st upon me--what thou art!-- As one fit for contempt, thou lack'st no part Of my disdain?--Allah! I would not own A dog of thine for friend no other known-- Of speech a tyrant, manners of an ass!" And flung him, rags and rage, into the grass. Provoked, astonished, wrinkled angrily, Hissed Hisham, "Slave! thou know'st me not I see!" Calmly the youth, "Aye, verily I know, O mannerless! thy tongue hath told me so, Thy tongue commanding ere it spake me _peace_-- Soon art thou known, nor late may knowledge cease." "O dog! I am thy Khalif! by a hair Thy life hangs rav'ling." "May it dangle there Till thou art rotted!--Whiles, upon thy head Misfortunes shower!--Of his dwelling place, Allah, be thou forgetful!--What! his grace Hisham ben Merwan, king of many words-- Few generosities!"... A flash of swords In drifts of dust and lo! the Khalif's troops Surrounding ride. As when a merlin stoops Some stranger quarry, prey that swims the wind, Heron or eagle; kenning not its kind There whence 'tis cast until it, towering, feels An eagle's tearing talons, falling reels In broken circles downward--so the youth, An Arab fearless as the face of Truth Of all that made him instant of his death, Waited with eyes indifferent, equal breath. The palace reached, "Bring in the prisoner Before the Khalif," and he came as were He in no wise concerned: unquestioning went Chin bowed on breast, and on his feet a bent Dark gaze of scornful freedom unafraid, Till at the Khalif's throne his steps were staid; And unsaluting, standing head held down, An armed attendant blazed him with a frown, "Dog of the Bedouins! thy eyes rot out! Insulter! must the whole big world needs shout 'Commander of the Faithful,' so thou see?" To him the Arab sneering, "Verily, Packsaddle of an ass." The Khalif's rage Exceeded now, and, "By my realm and rage! Arab, thy hour is come, thy very last; Thy hope is vanished and thy life is past." The shepherd answered, "Aye?--by Allah, then, O Hisham, if my time be stretched again, Unscissored of what Destiny ordain, Little or great, thy words give little pain." Then the chief Chamberlain, "O vilest one Of all the Arabs! wilt thou not be done Bandying thy baseness with the Ruler of The Faithful?" spat upon his face. A scoff Fiery made answer: "There be some have heard The nonsense of our God, the text absurd, 'One day each soul whatever shall be prompt To bow before me and to give accompt.'" Then wroth indeed was Hisham; hotly said, "He braves us!--headsman, ho! his peevish head! See; canst thou medicine its speech anew, Doctor its multiplying words to few; Divorce them well." So, where the Arab stood, Bound him; made kneel upon the cloth of blood: With curving sword the headsman leaned at pause, And, even as 'tis custom made of laws, To the descendant of the Prophet quoth, "O Khalif, shall I strike?" "By Iblis' oath! Strike!" answered Hisham; but again the slave Questioned; and yet again the Khalif gave His nodded "yea"; and for the third time then He asked--and knowing neither men nor Jinn Might save him if the Khalif spake assent, Signalled the sword, the youth with body bent Laughed--till the wang-teeth of each jaw appeared, Laughed--as with scorn the King of kings he 'd beard, Insulting death. So, with redoubled spleen Roared Hisham rising, "It is truly seen That thou art mad who mockest Azrael!" The Arab answered: "Listen!--Once befell, Commander of the Faithful, that a hawk, A hungry hawk, pounced on a sparrow-cock; And winging nestward with his meal in claw, To him the sparrow, for the creature saw The hawk's conceit, addressed this slyly, 'Oh, Most great, most royal, there is not, I know, That in me which will stay thy stomach's stress, I am too paltry for thy mightiness'; With which the hawk was pleased, and flattered so In his self-praise, he let the sparrow go." Then smiled the Khalif Hisham; and a sign Staying the scimitar, that hung malign A threatening crescent, said, "God bless, preserve The Prophet whom all true believers serve!-- Now by my kinship to the Prophet, and Had he at first but spake us thus this hand Had ne'er been reckless, and instead of hate He had had all--except the Khalifate." Bade stuff his mouth with jewels and entreat Him courteously, then from the palace beat. THE END. 
317	----	Transcribed from the 1836 George Dearborn edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org THE CULPRIT FAY, AND OTHER POEMS BY JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE. {Cro' Nest, from above West Point, on the Hudson River: p0.jpg} New York: GEORGE DEARBORN, PUBLISHER. 1836. [Entered according to the Act of Congress of the United States of America, October 31, 1835, by George Dearborn, in the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New-York.] SCATCHERD AND ADAMS, PRINTERS, No. 38 Gold-street. TO HER FATHER'S FRIEND, FITZ-GREENE HALLECK, THESE POEMS ARE RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED, BY THE AUTHOR'S DAUGHTER. Index. The Culprit Fay To a Friend Leon Niagara Song Song Lines written in a Lady's Album Lines to a Lady Lines on leaving New Rochelle Hope Fragment To --- Lines To Eva To a Lady with a Violet Bronx Song To Sarah The American Flag THE CULPRIT FAY. "My visual orbs are purged from film, and lo! "Instead of Anster's turnip-bearing vales "I see old fairy land's miraculous show! "Her trees of tinsel kissed by freakish gales, "Her Ouphs that, cloaked in leaf-gold, skim the breeze, "And fairies, swarming--" TENNANT'S ANSTER FAIR. I. 'Tis the middle watch of a summer's night-- The earth is dark, but the heavens are bright; Nought is seen in the vault on high But the moon, and the stars, and the cloudless sky, And the flood which rolls its milky hue, A river of light on the welkin blue. The moon looks down on old Cronest, She mellows the shades on his shaggy breast, And seems his huge gray form to throw In a sliver cone on the wave below; His sides are broken by spots of shade, By the walnut bough and the cedar made, And through their clustering branches dark Glimmers and dies the fire-fly's spark-- Like starry twinkles that momently break Through the rifts of the gathering tempest's rack. II. The stars are on the moving stream, And fling, as its ripples gently flow, A burnished length of wavy beam In an eel-like, spiral line below; The winds are whist, and the owl is still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid, And nought is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket's chirp, and the answer shrill Of the gauze-winged katy-did; And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will, Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings, Ever a note of wail and wo, Till morning spreads her rosy wings, And earth and sky in her glances glow. III. 'Tis the hour of fairy ban and spell: The wood-tick has kept the minutes well; He has counted them all with click and stroke, Deep in the heart of the mountain oak, And he has awakened the sentry elve Who sleeps with him in the haunted tree, To bid him ring the hour of twelve, And call the fays to their revelry; Twelve small strokes on his tinkling bell-- ('Twas made of the white snail's pearly shell:--) "Midnight comes, and all is well! Hither, hither, wing your way! 'Tis the dawn of the fairy day." IV. They come from beds of lichen green, They creep from the mullen's velvet screen; Some on the backs of beetles fly From the silver tops of moon-touched trees, Where they swung in their cobweb hammocks high, And rock'd about in the evening breeze; Some from the hum-bird's downy nest-- They had driven him out by elfin power, And pillowed on plumes of his rainbow breast, Had slumbered there till the charmed hour; Some had lain in the scoop of the rock, With glittering ising-stars inlaid; And some had opened the four-o'clock, And stole within its purple shade. And now they throng the moonlight glade, Above--below--on every side, Their little minim forms arrayed In the tricksy pomp of fairy pride! V. They come not now to print the lea, In freak and dance around the tree, Or at the mushroom board to sup, And drink the dew from the buttercup;-- A scene of sorrow waits them now, For an Ouphe has broken his vestal vow; He has loved an earthly maid, And left for her his woodland shade; He has lain upon her lip of dew, And sunned him in her eye of blue, Fann'd her cheek with his wing of air, Played in the ringlets of her hair, And, nestling on her snowy breast, Forgot the lily-king's behest. For this the shadowy tribes of air To the elfin court must haste away:-- And now they stand expectant there, To hear the doom of the Culprit Fay. VI. The throne was reared upon the grass Of spice-wood and of sassafras; On pillars of mottled tortoise-shell Hung the burnished canopy-- And o'er it gorgeous curtains fell Of the tulip's crimson drapery. The monarch sat on his judgment-seat, On his brow the crown imperial shone, The prisoner Fay was at his feet, And his peers were ranged around the throne. He waved his sceptre in the air, He looked around and calmly spoke; His brow was grave and his eye severe, But his voice in a softened accent broke: VII. "Fairy! Fairy! list and mark, Thou hast broke thine elfin chain, Thy flame-wood lamp is quenched and dark, And thy wings are dyed with a deadly stain-- Thou hast sullied thine elfin purity In the glance of a mortal maiden's eye, Thou hast scorned our dread decree, And thou shouldst pay the forfeit high, But well I know her sinless mind Is pure as the angel forms above, Gentle and meek, and chaste and kind, Such as a spirit well might love; Fairy! had she spot or taint, Bitter had been thy punishment. Tied to the hornet's shardy wings; Tossed on the pricks of nettles' stings; Or seven long ages doomed to dwell With the lazy worm in the walnut-shell; Or every night to writhe and bleed Beneath the tread of the centipede; Or bound in a cobweb dungeon dim, Your jailer a spider huge and grim, Amid the carrion bodies to lie, Of the worm, and the bug, and the murdered fly: These it had been your lot to bear, Had a stain been found on the earthly fair. Now list, and mark our mild decree-- Fairy, this your doom must be: VIII. "Thou shalt seek the beach of sand Where the water bounds the elfin land, Thou shalt watch the oozy brine Till the sturgeon leaps in the bright moonshine, Then dart the glistening arch below, And catch a drop from his silver bow. The water-sprites will wield their arms And dash around, with roar and rave, And vain are the woodland spirits' charms, They are the imps that rule the wave. Yet trust thee in thy single might, If thy heart be pure and thy spirit right, Thou shalt win the warlock fight. IX. "If the spray-bead gem be won, The stain of thy wing is washed away, But another errand must be done Ere thy crime be lost for aye; Thy flame-wood lamp is quenched and dark, Thou must re-illume its spark. Mount thy steed and spur him high To the heaven's blue canopy; And when thou seest a shooting star, Follow it fast, and follow it far-- The last faint spark of its burning train Shall light the elfin lamp again. Thou hast heard our sentence, Fay; Hence! to the water-side, away!" X. The goblin marked his monarch well; He spake not, but he bowed him low, Then plucked a crimson colen-bell, And turned him round in act to go. The way is long, he cannot fly, His soiled wing has lost its power, And he winds adown the mountain high, For many a sore and weary hour. Through dreary beds of tangled fern, Through groves of nightshade dark and dern, Over the grass and through the brake, Where toils the ant and sleeps the snake; Now o'er the violet's azure flush He skips along in lightsome mood; And now he thrids the bramble bush, Till its points are dyed in fairy blood. He has leapt the bog, he has pierced the briar, He has swum the brook, and waded the mire, Till his spirits sank, and his limbs grew weak, And the red waxed fainter in his cheek. He had fallen to the ground outright, For rugged and dim was his onward track, But there came a spotted toad in sight, And he laughed as he jumped upon her back; He bridled her mouth with a silk-weed twist; He lashed her sides with an osier thong; And now through evening's dewy mist, With leap and spring they bound along, Till the mountain's magic verge is past, And the beach of sand is reached at last. XI. Soft and pale is the moony beam, Moveless still the glassy stream, The wave is clear, the beach is bright With snowy shells and sparkling stones; The shore-surge comes in ripples light, In murmurings faint and distant moans; And ever afar in the silence deep Is heard the splash of the sturgeon's leap, And the bend of his graceful bow is seen-- A glittering arch of silver sheen, Spanning the wave of burnished blue, And dripping with gems of the river dew. XII. The elfin cast a glance around, As he lighted down from his courser toad, Then round his breast his wings he wound, And close to the river's brink he strode; He sprang on a rock, he breathed a prayer, Above his head his arms he threw, Then tossed a tiny curve in air, And headlong plunged in the waters blue. XIII. Up sprung the spirits of the waves, From sea-silk beds in their coral caves, With snail-plate armour snatched in haste, They speed their way through the liquid waste; Some are rapidly borne along On the mailed shrimp or the prickly prong, Some on the blood-red leeches glide, Some on the stony star-fish ride, Some on the back of the lancing squab, Some on the sidelong soldier-crab; And some on the jellied quarl, that flings At once a thousand streamy stings-- They cut the wave with the living oar And hurry on to the moonlight shore, To guard their realms and chase away The footsteps of the invading Fay. XIV. Fearlessly he skims along, His hope is high, and his limbs are strong, He spreads his arms like the swallow's wing, And throws his feet with a frog-like fling; His locks of gold on the waters shine, At his breast the tiny foam-beads rise, His back gleams bright above the brine, And the wake-line foam behind him lies. But the water-sprites are gathering near To check his course along the tide; Their warriors come in swift career And hem him round on every side; On his thigh the leech has fixed his hold, The quarl's long arms are round him roll'd, The prickly prong has pierced his skin, And the squab has thrown his javelin, The gritty star has rubbed him raw, And the crab has struck with his giant claw; He howls with rage, and he shrieks with pain, He strikes around, but his blows are vain; Hopeless is the unequal fight, Fairy! nought is left but flight. XV. He turned him round and fled amain With hurry and dash to the beach again; He twisted over from side to side, And laid his cheek to the cleaving tide. The strokes of his plunging arms are fleet, And with all his might he flings his feet, But the water-sprites are round him still, To cross his path and work him ill. They bade the wave before him rise; They flung the sea-fire in his eyes, And they stunned his ears with the scallop stroke, With the porpoise heave and the drum-fish croak. Oh! but a weary wight was he When he reached the foot of the dog-wood tree; --Gashed and wounded, and stiff and sore, He laid him down on the sandy shore; He blessed the force of the charmed line, And he banned the water-goblin's spite, For he saw around in the sweet moonshine, Their little wee faces above the brine, Giggling and laughing with all their might At the piteous hap of the Fairy wight. XVI. Soon he gathered the balsam dew From the sorrel leaf and the henbane bud; Over each wound the balm he drew, And with cobweb lint he stanched the blood. The mild west wind was soft and low, It cooled the heat of his burning brow, And he felt new life in his sinews shoot, As he drank the juice of the cal'mus root; And now he treads the fatal shore, As fresh and vigorous as before. XVII. Wrapped in musing stands the sprite: 'Tis the middle wane of night, His task is hard, his way is far, But he must do his errand right Ere dawning mounts her beamy car, And rolls her chariot wheels of light; And vain are the spells of fairy-land, He must work with a human hand. XVIII. He cast a saddened look around, But he felt new joy his bosom swell, When, glittering on the shadowed ground, He saw a purple muscle shell; Thither he ran, and he bent him low, He heaved at the stern and he heaved at the bow, And he pushed her over the yielding sand, Till he came to the verge of the haunted land. She was as lovely a pleasure boat As ever fairy had paddled in, For she glowed with purple paint without, And shone with silvery pearl within; A sculler's notch in the stern he made, An oar he shaped of the bootle blade; Then spung to his seat with a lightsome leap, And launched afar on the calm blue deep. XIX. The imps of the river yell and rave; They had no power above the wave, But they heaved the billow before the prow, And they dashed the surge against her side, And they struck her keel with jerk and blow, Till the gunwale bent to the rocking tide. She wimpled about in the pale moonbeam, Like a feather that floats on a wind tossed-stream; And momently athwart her track The quarl upreared his island back, And the fluttering scallop behind would float, And patter the water about the boat; But he bailed her out with his colen-bell, And he kept her trimmed with a wary tread, While on every side like lightening fell The heavy strokes of his bootle-blade. XX. Onward still he held his way, Till he came where the column of moonshine lay, And saw beneath the surface dim The brown-backed sturgeon slowly swim: Around him were the goblin train-- But he sculled with all his might and main, And followed wherever the sturgeon led, Till he saw him upward point his head; Then he dropped his paddle blade, And held his colen goblet up To catch the drop in its crimson cup. XXI. With sweeping tail and quivering fin, Through the wave the sturgeon flew, And, like the heaven-shot javelin, He sprung above the waters blue. Instant as the star-fall light, He plunged him in the deep again, But left an arch of silver bright The rainbow of the moony main. It was a strange and lovely sight To see the puny goblin there; He seemed an angel form of light, With azure wing and sunny hair, Throned on a cloud of purple fair, Circled with blue and edged with white, And sitting at the fall of even Beneath the bow of summer heaven. XXII. A moment and its lustre fell, But ere it met the billow blue, He caught within his crimson bell, A droplet of its sparkling dew-- Joy to thee, Fay! thy task is done, Thy wings are pure, for the gem is won-- Cheerly ply thy dripping oar, And haste away to the elfin shore. XXIII. He turns, and lo! on either side The ripples on his path divide; And the track o'er which his boat must pass Is smooth as a sheet of polished glass. Around, their limbs the sea-nymphs lave, With snowy arms half swelling out, While on the glossed and gleamy wave Their sea-green ringlets loosely float; They swim around with smile and song; They press the bark with pearly hand, And gently urge her course along, Toward the beach of speckled sand; And, as he lightly leapt to land, They bade adieu with nod and bow, Then gayly kissed each little hand, And dropped in the crystal deep below. XXIV. A moment staied the fairy there; He kissed the beach and breathed a prayer, Then spread his wings of gilded blue, And on to the elfin court he flew; As ever ye saw a bubble rise, And shine with a thousand changing dyes, Till lessening far through ether driven, It mingles with the hues of heaven: As, at the glimpse of morning pale, The lance-fly spreads his silken sail, And gleams with blendings soft and bright, Till lost in the shades of fading night; So rose from earth the lovely Fay-- So vanished, far in heaven away! * * * * * Up, Fairy! quit thy chick-weed bower, The cricket has called the second hour, Twice again, and the lark will rise To kiss the streaking of the skies-- Up! thy charmed armour don, Thou'lt need it ere the night be gone. XXV. He put his acorn helmet on; It was plumed of the silk of the thistle down: The corslet plate that guarded his breast Was once the wild bee's golden vest; His cloak, of a thousand mingled dyes, Was formed of the wings of butterflies; His shield was the shell of a lady-bug queen, Studs of gold on a ground of green; And the quivering lance which he brandished bright, Was the sting of a wasp he had slain in fight. Swift he bestrode his fire-fly steed; He bared his blade of the bent grass blue; He drove his spurs of the cockle seed, And away like a glance of thought he flew, To skim the heavens and follow far The fiery trail of the rocket-star. XXVI. The moth-fly, as he shot in air, Crept under the leaf, and hid her there; The katy-did forgot its lay, The prowling gnat fled fast away, The fell mosqueto checked his drone And folded his wings till the Fay was gone, And the wily beetle dropped his head, And fell on the ground as if he were dead; They crouched them close in the darksome shade, They quaked all o'er with awe and fear, For they had felt the blue-bent blade, And writhed at the prick of the elfin spear; Many a time on a summer's night, When the sky was clear and the moon was bright, They had been roused from the haunted ground, By the yelp and bay of the fairy hound; They had heard the tiny bugle horn, They had heard of twang of the maize-silk string, When the vine-twig bows were tightly drawn, And the nettle-shaft through the air was borne, Feathered with down the hum-bird's wing. And now they deemed the courier ouphe, Some hunter sprite of the elfin ground; And they watched till they saw him mount the roof That canopies the world around; Then glad they left their covert lair, And freaked about in the midnight air. XXVII. Up to the vaulted firmament His path the fire-fly courser bent, And at every gallop on the wind, He flung a glittering spark behind; He flies like a feather in the blast Till the first light cloud in heaven is past, But the shapes of air have begun their work, And a drizzly mist is round him cast, He cannot see through the mantle murk, He shivers with cold, but he urges fast, Through storm and darkness, sleet and shade, He lashes his steed and spurs amain, For shadowy hands have twitched the rein, And flame-shot tongues around him played, And near him many a fiendish eye Glared with a fell malignity, And yells of rage, and shrieks of fear, Came screaming on his startled ear. XXVIII. His wings are wet around his breast, The plume hangs dripping from his crest, His eyes are blur'd with the lightning's glare, And his ears are stunned with the thunder's blare, But he gave a shout, and his blade he drew, He thrust before and he struck behind, Till he pierced their cloudy bodies through, And gashed their shadowy limbs of wind; Howling the misty spectres flew, They rend the air with frightful cries, For he has gained the welkin blue, And the land of clouds beneath him lies. XXIX. Up to the cope careering swift In breathless motion fast, Fleet as the swallow cuts the drift, Or the sea-roc rides the blast, The sapphire sheet of eve is shot, The sphered moon is past, The earth but seems a tiny blot On a sheet of azure cast. O! it was sweet in the clear moonlight, To tread the starry plain of even, To meet the thousand eyes of night, And feel the cooling breath of heaven! But the Elfin made no stop or stay Till he came to the bank of the milky-way, Then he checked his courser's foot, And watched for the glimpse of the planet-shoot. XXX. Sudden along the snowy tide That swelled to meet their footstep's fall, The sylphs of heaven were seen to glide, Attired in sunset's crimson pall; Around the Fay they weave the dance, They skip before him on the plain, And one has taken his wasp-sting lance, And one upholds his bridle rein; With warblings wild they lead him on To where through clouds of amber seen, Studded with stars, resplendent shone The palace of the sylphid queen. Its spiral columns gleaming bright Were streamers of the northern light; Its curtain's light and lovely flush Was of the morning's rosy blush, And the ceiling fair that rose aboon The white and feathery fleece of noon. XXXI. But oh! how fair the shape that lay Beneath a rainbow bending bright, She seemed to the entranced Fay The loveliest of the forms of light; Her mantle was the purple rolled At twilight in the west afar; 'Twas tied with threads of dawning gold, And buttoned with a sparkling star. Her face was like the lily roon That veils the vestal planet's hue; Her eyes, two beamlets from the moon, Set floating in the welkin blue. Her hair is like the sunny beam, And the diamond gems which round it gleam Are the pure drops of dewy even That ne'er have left their native heaven. XXXII. She raised her eyes to the wondering sprite, And they leapt with smiles, for well I ween Never before in the bowers of light Had the form of an earthly Fay been seen. Long she looked in his tiny face; Long with his butterfly cloak she played; She smoothed his wings of azure lace, And handled the tassel of his blade; And as he told in accents low The story of his love and wo, She felt new pains in her bosom rise, And the tear-drop started in her eyes. And 'O sweet spirit of earth,' she cried, 'Return no more to your woodland height, But ever here with me abide In the land of everlasting light! Within the fleecy drift we'll lie, We'll hang upon the rainbow's rim; And all the jewels of the sky Around thy brow shall brightly beam! And thou shalt bathe thee in the stream That rolls its whitening foam aboon, And ride upon the lightning's gleam, And dance upon the orbed moon! We'll sit within the Pleiad ring, We'll rest on Orion's starry belt, And I will bid my sylphs to sing The song that makes the dew-mist melt; Their harps are of the umber shade, That hides the blush of waking day, And every gleamy string is made Of silvery moonshine's lengthened ray; And thou shalt pillow on my breast, While heavenly breathings float around, And, with the sylphs of ether blest, Forget the joys of fairy ground.' XXXIII. She was lovely and fair to see And the elfin's heart beat fitfully; But lovelier far, and still more fair, The earthly form imprinted there; Nought he saw in the heavens above Was half so dear as his mortal love, For he thought upon her looks so meek, And he thought of the light flush on her cheek; Never again might he bask and lie On that sweet cheek and moonlight eye, But in his dreams her form to see, To clasp her in his reverie, To think upon his virgin bride, Was worth all heaven and earth beside. XXXIV. 'Lady,' he cried, 'I have sworn to-night, On the word of a fairy knight, To do my sentence-task aright; My honour scarce is free from stain, I may not soil its snows again; Betide me weal, betide me wo, Its mandate must be answered now.' Her bosom heaved with many a sigh, The tear was in her drooping eye; But she led him to the palace gate, And called the sylphs who hovered there, And bade them fly and bring him straight Of clouds condensed a sable car. With charm and spell she blessed it there, From all the fiends of upper air; Then round him cast the shadowy shroud, And tied his steed behind the cloud; And pressed his hand as she bade him fly Far to the verge of the northern sky, For by its wane and wavering light There was a star would fall to-night. XXXV. Borne after on the wings of the blast, Northward away, he speeds him fast, And his courser follows the cloudy wain Till the hoof-strokes fall like pattering rain. The clouds roll backward as he flies, Each flickering star behind him lies, And he has reached the northern plain, And backed his fire-fly steed again, Ready to follow in its flight The streaming of the rocket-light. XXXVI. The star is yet in the vault of heaven, But its rocks in the summer gale; And now 'tis fitful and uneven, And now 'tis deadly pale; And now 'tis wrapp'd in sulphur smoke, And quenched is its rayless beam, And now with a rattling thunder-stroke It bursts in flash and flame. As swift as the glance of the arrowy lance That the storm-spirit flings from high, The star-shot flew o'er the welkin blue, As it fell from the sheeted sky. As swift as the wind in its trail behind The elfin gallops along, The fiends of the clouds are bellowing loud, But the sylphid charm is strong; He gallops unhurt in the shower of fire, While the cloud-fiends fly from the blaze; He watches each flake till its sparks expire, And rides in the light of its rays. But he drove his steed to the lightning's speed, And caught a glimmering spark; Then wheeled around to the fairy ground, And sped through the midnight dark. * * * * * Ouphe and goblin! imp and sprite! Elf of eve! and starry Fay! Ye that love the moon's soft light, Hither--hither wend your way; Twine ye in the jocund ring, Sing and trip it merrily, Hand to hand, and wing to wing, Round the wild witch-hazel tree. Hail the wanderer again, With dance and song, and lute and lyre, Pure his wing and strong his chain, And doubly bright his fairy fire. Twine ye in an airy round, Brush the dew and print the lea; Skip and gambol, hop and bound, Round the wild witch-hazel tree. The beetle guards our holy ground, He flies about the haunted place, And if mortal there be found, He hums in his ears and flaps his face; The leaf-harp sounds our roundelay, The owlet's eyes our lanterns be; Thus we sing, and dance and play, Round the wild witch-hazel tree. But hark! from tower on tree-top high, The sentry elf his call has made, A streak is in the eastern sky, Shapes of moonlight! flit and fade! The hill-tops gleam in morning's spring, The sky-lark shakes his dappled wing, The day-glimpse glimmers on the lawn, The cock has crowed, the Fays are gone. TO A FRIEND. "You damn me with faint praise." I. Yes, faint was my applause and cold my praise, Though soul was glowing in each polished line; But nobler subjects claim the poet's lays, A brighter glory waits a muse like thine. Let amorous fools in love-sick measure pine; Let Strangford whimper on, in fancied pain, And leave to Moore his rose leaves and his vine; Be thine the task a higher crown to gain, The envied wreath that decks the patriot's holy strain. II. Yet not in proud triumphal song alone, Or martial ode, or sad sepulchral dirge, There needs no voice to make our glories known; There needs no voice the warrior's soul to urge To tread the bounds of nature's stormy verge; Columbia still shall win the battle's prize; But be it thine to bid her mind emerge To strike her harp, until its soul arise From the neglected shade, where low in dust it lies. III. Are there no scenes to touch the poet's soul? No deeds of arms to wake the lordly strain? Shall Hudson's billows unregarded roll? Has Warren fought, Montgomery died in vain? Shame! that while every mountain stream and plain Hath theme for truth's proud voice or fancy's wand, No native bard the patriot harp hath ta'en, But left to minstrels of a foreign strand To sing the beauteous scenes of nature's loveliest land. IV. Oh! for a seat on Appalachia's brow, That I might scan the glorious prospect round, Wild waving woods, and rolling floods below, Smooth level glades and fields with grain embrown'd, High heaving hills, with tufted forests crown'd, Rearing their tall tops to the heaven's blue dome, And emerald isles, like banners green unwound, Floating along the lake, while round them roam Bright helms of billowy blue and plumes of dancing foam. V. 'Tis true no fairies haunt our verdant meads, No grinning imps deform our blazing hearth; Beneath the kelpie's fang no traveller bleeds, Nor gory vampyre taints our holy earth, Nor spectres stalk to frighten harmless mirth, Nor tortured demon howls adown the gale; Fair reason checks these monsters in their birth. Yet have we lay of love and horrid tale Would dim the manliest eye and make the bravest pale. VI. Where is the stony eye that hath not shed Compassion's heart-drops o'er the sweet Mc Rea? Through midnight's wilds by savage bandits led, "Her heart is sad--her love is far away!" Elate that lover waits the promised day When he shall clasp his blooming bride again-- Shine on, sweet visions! dreams of rapture, play! Soon the cold corse of her he loved in vain Shall blight his withered heart and fire his frenzied brain. VII. Romantic Wyoming! could none be found Of all that rove thy Eden groves among, To wake a native harp's untutored sound, And give thy tale of wo the voice of song? Oh! if description's cold and nerveless tongue From stranger harps such hallowed strains could call, How doubly sweet the descant wild had rung, From one who, lingering round thy ruined wall, Had plucked thy mourning flowers and wept thy timeless fall. VIII. The Huron chief escaped from foemen nigh, His frail bark launches on Niagara's tides, "Pride in his port, defiance in his eye," Singing his song of death the warrior glides; In vain they yell along the river sides, In vain the arrow from its sheaf is torn, Calm to his doom the willing victim rides, And, till adown the roaring torrent borne, Mocks them with gesture proud, and laughs their rage to scorn. IX. But if the charms of daisied hill and vale, And rolling flood, and towering rock sublime, If warrior deed or peasant's lowly tale Of love or wo should fail to wake the rhyme, If to the wildest heights of song you climb, (Tho' some who know you less, might cry, beware!) Onward! I say--your strains shall conquer time; Give your bright genius wing, and hope to share Imagination's worlds--the ocean, earth, and air. X. Arouse, my friend--let vivid fancy soar, Look with creative eye on nature's face, Bid airy sprites in wild Niagara roar, And view in every field a fairy race. Spur thy good Pacolet to speed apace, And spread a train of nymphs on every shore; Or if thy muse would woo a ruder grace, The Indian's evil Manitou's explore, And rear the wondrous tale of legendary lore. XI. Away! to Susquehannah's utmost springs, Where, throned in mountain mist, Areouski reigns, Shrouding in lurid clouds his plumeless wings, And sternly sorrowing o'er his tribes remains; His was the arm, like comet ere it wanes That tore the streamy lightnings from the skies, And smote the mammoth of the southern plains; Wild with dismay the Creek affrighted flies, While in triumphant pride Kanawa's eagles rise. XII. Or westward far, where dark Miami wends, Seek that fair spot as yet to fame unknown; Where, when the vesper dew of heaven descends, Soft music breathes in many a melting tone, At times so sadly sweet it seems the moan Of some poor Ariel penanced in the rock; Anon a louder burst--a scream! a groan! And now amid the tempest's reeling shock, Gibber, and shriek, and wail--and fiend-like laugh and mock. XIII. Or climb the Pallisado's lofty brows, Were dark Omana waged the war of hell, Till, waked to wrath, the mighty spirit rose And pent the demons in their prison cell; Full on their head the uprooted mountain fell, Enclosing all within its horrid womb Straight from the teeming earth the waters swell, And pillared rocks arise in cheerless gloom Around the drear abode--their last eternal tomb! XIV. Be these your future themes--no more resign The soul of song to laud your lady's eyes; Go! kneel a worshipper at nature's shrine! For you her fields are green, and fair her skies! For you her rivers flow, her hills arise! And will you scorn them all, to pour forth tame And heartless lays of feigned or fancied sighs? Still will you cloud the muse? nor blush for shame To cast away renown, and hide your head from fame? EXTRACTS FROM LEON. AN UNFINISHED POEM. * * * * * It is a summer evening, calm and fair, A warm, yet freshening glow is in the air; Along its bank, the cool stream wanders slow, Like parting friends that linger as they go. The willows, as its waters meekly glide, Bend their dishevelled tresses to the tide, And seem to give it, with a moaning sigh, A farewell touch of tearful sympathy. Each dusky copse is clad in darkest green: A blackening mass, just edged with silver sheen From yon clear moon, who in her glassy face Seems to reflect the risings of the place. For on her still, pale orb, the eye may see Dim spots of shadowy brown, like distant tree Or far-off hillocks on a moonlight lea. The stars have lit in heaven their lamps of gold, The viewless dew falls lightly on the wold, The gentle air, that softly sweeps the leaves, A strain of faint, unearthly music weaves; As when the harp of heaven remotely plays, Or cygnet's wail--or song of sorrowing fays That float amid the moonshine glimmerings pale, On wings of woven air in some enchanted vale. It is an eve that drops a heavenly balm, To lull the feelings to a sober calm, To bid wild passion's fiery flush depart; And smooth the troubled waters of the heart; To give a tranquil fixedness to grief, A cherished gloom, that wishes not relief. Torn is that heart, and bitter are its throes, That cannot feel on such a night, repose; And yet one breast there is that breathes this air, An eye that wanders o'er the prospect fair, That sees yon placid moon, and the pure sky Of mild, unclouded blue; and still that eye Is thrown in restless vacancy around, Or cast, in gloomy trance, on the cold ground; And still, that breast with maddening passion burns, And hatred, love, and sorrow, rule by turns. A lovely figure! and in happier hour, When pleasure laugh'd abroad from hall and bower, The general eye had deem'd her smiling face The brightest jewel in the courtly place: So glossy is her hair's ensabled wreath, So glowing warm the eye that burns beneath With so much graceful sweetness of address, And such a form of rounded slenderness; Ah! where is he on whom these beauties shine, But deems a spotless soul inhabits such a shrine? And yet a keen observer might espy Strange passions lurking in her deep black eye, And in the lines of her fine lip, a soul That in its every feeling spurned control. They passed unnoted--who will stop to trace A sullying spot on beauty's sparkling face? And no one deemed, amid her glances sweet, Hers was a bosom of impetuous heat; A heart too wildly in its joys elate, Formed but to madly love--or madly hate; A spirit of strong throbs, and steadfast will; To doat, detest, to die for, or to kill; Which, like the Arab chief, would fiercely dare To stab the heart she might no longer share; And yet so tender, if he loved again, Would die to save his breast one moment's pain. But he who cast his gaze upon her now, And read the traces written on her brow, Had scarce believed hers was that form of light That beamed like fabled wonder on the sight; Her raven hair hung down in loosen'd tress Before her wan cheek's pallid ghastliness; And, thro' its thick locks, showed the deadly white, Like marble glimpses of a tomb, at night. In fixed and horrid musings now she stands, Her eyes now bent to earth, and her cold hands, Prest to her heart, now wildly thrown on high, They wander o'er her brow--and now a sigh Breaks deep and full--and, more composedly, She half exclaims--"No! no!--it cannot be; "He loves not, never loved-- not even when "He pressed my wedded hand--I knew it then; "And yet--fool that I was--I saw he strove "In vain to kindle pity into love. "But Florence! she so loved--a sister too! "My earliest, dearest playmate--one who grew "Upon my very heart--to rend it so! "His falsehood I could bear--but hers! ah! no. "She is not false--I feel she loves me yet, "And if my boding bosom could forget "Its wild imaginings, with what sweet pain "I'd clasp my Florence to my breast again." With that came many a thought of days gone by, Remembered joys of mirthful infancy; And youth's gay frolic, and the short-lived flow Of showering tears, in childhood's fleeting wo, And life's maturer friendship--and the sense Of heart-warm, open, fearless confidence; All these came thronging with a tender call, And her own Florence mingled with them all. And softened feelings rose amid her pain, While from her eyes, the clouds, melted in gentle rain. A hectic pleasure flushed her faded face; It fled--and deeper paleness took its place; Then a cold shudder thrill'd her--and, at last, Her lip a smile of bitter sarcasm cast, As if she scorned herself, that she could be A moment lulled by that sweet sophistry; For in that little minute memory's sting Gave word and look, sigh, gesture--every thing, To bid these dear delusive phantoms fly, And fix her fears in dreadful certainty. It traced the very progress of their love, From the first meeting in the locust grove; When from the chase Leon came bounding there, Backing his courser with a noble air; His brown cheek flushed with healthful exercise, And his warm spirits leaping in his eyes; It told how lovely looked her sister then, To long-lost friends, and home just come again; How on her cheek the tears of meeting lay, That tear which only feeling hearts can pay; While the quick pleasure glistened in her eye, Like clouds and sunshine in an April sky; And then it told, as their acquaintance grew, How close the unseen bonds of union drew Their souls together, and how pleased they were The same blythe pastimes and delights to share; How the same chord in each at once would strike, Their taste, their wishes, and their joys alike. All this was innocent, but soon there came Blushes and starts of consciousness and shame; That, when she entered, upon either cheek The hasty blood in guilty red would speak Of something that should not be known--and still Sighs half suppressed seemed struggling with the will. It told how oft at eve was Leon gone In moody wandering to the wood alone; And in the night, how many a broken dream Of bliss, or terror, seemed to shake his frame. How Florence too, in long abstracted fit Of soul-wrapt musing, for whole hours would sit; Nor even the power of music, friend, or book, Could chase her deep forgetfulness of look; And how, when questioned--with an indrawn sigh, In vague and far-off phrase, she made reply, And smiled and struggled to be gay and free, And then relapsed in dreaming reverie. How when of Leon she was forced to speak, Unbidden crimson mantled in her cheek; And when he entered, how her eye would swim, And strive to look on every one but him; Yet, by unconscious fascination led, In quick short glance each moment tow'rds him fled. How he, too, seemed to shun her speech and gaze, And yet he always lingered where she was; Though nothing in his aspect or his air Told that he knew she was in presence there; But an appearance of constrained distress, And a dull tongue of moveless silentness, And a down drooping eye of gloom and sadness, Oh! how unlike his former face of gladness. "'Tis plain! too plain! and I am lost," she cried; And in that thought her last good feeling died. That thought of hopeless sorrow seemed to dart A thousand stings at once into her heart; But a strong effort quelled it, and she gave The next to hatred, vengeance, and the grave. Her face was calmly stern, and but a glare Within her eyes--there was no feature there That told what lashing fiends her inmates were; Within--there was no thought to bid her swerve From her intent--but every strained nerve Was settled and bent up with terrible force, To some deep deed, far, far beyond remorse; No glimpse of mercy's light her purpose crost, Love, nature, pity, in its depths were lost; Or lent an added fury to the ire That seared her soul with unconsuming fire; All that was dear in the wide earth was gone, She loved but two, and these she doted on With passionate ardour--and the close strong press Of woman's heart-cored, clinging tenderness; These links were torn, and now she stood alone, Bereft of all, her husband, sister--gone! Ah! who can tell that ne'er has known such fate, What wild and dreadful strength it gives to hate? What had she left? Revenge! Revenge! was there; He crushed remorse and wrestled down despair: Held his red torch to memory's page, and threw A bloody stain on every line she drew; She felt dark pleasure with her frenzy blend, And hugged him to her heart, and called him friend. When sorrowing clouds the face of heaven deform, And hope's bright star sets darkly in the storm, Around us ghastly shapes and phantoms swim, And all beyond is formless, vague, and dim, Or life's cold barren path before us lies, A wild and weary waste of tears and sighs; From the lorn heart each sweetening solace gone, Abandoned, friendless, withered, lost, and lone; And when with keener pangs we bleed to know That hands beloved have struck the deepest blow; That friends we deemed most true, and held most dear, Have stretched the pall of death o'er pleasure's bier; Repaid our trusting faith with serpent guile, Cursed with a kiss, and stabbed beneath a smile; What then remains for souls of tender mould? One last and silent refuge, calm and cold-- A resting place for misery's gentle slave; Hearts break but once, no wrongs can reach the grave. Rest ye, mild spirits of afflicted worth! Sweet is your slumber in the quiet earth; And soon the voice of heaven shall bid you rise To meet rewarding smiles in yonder skies. But where, for solace, shall the bosom turn For death too strong--for tears--too proudly stern? When shall the lulling dews of peace descend On hearts that cannot break and will not bend? Ah! never, never--they are doomed to feel Pains that no balm of heaven or earth can heal; To live in groans, and yield their parting breath Without a joy in life--or hope in death. Yet, for a while, one living hope remains, That nerves each fibre and the soul sustains; One desperate hope, whose agonizing throes Are bitterer far than all the worst of woes; A hope of crime and horrors, wild and strange As demon thoughts--that hope is thine, Revenge! 'Twas this that gave, oh! Ellinor, to thee A strength to bear thy matchless misery: Though the hot blood ran boiling in her brain, And rolled a tide of fire through every vein, Though many a rushing voice of blighted bliss Struck on her mental ears, like adders' hiss; That hope gave gloomy fierceness to her eye, Dash'd down the tear, repress'd the unloading sigh; Fixed her wan quivering lip, and steeled her breast To crush the hearts that robbed her own of rest. She wound her way within a heavy shade Of arching boughs, in broad-spread leaves arrayed; Which, clustering close and thick, shut out the light, And tinged with black the shadowy robe of night; Save here and there a melancholy spark Of flickering moonshine glimmered through the dark, Cheerless and dim, as when upon a pall, Through suffering tears, the looks of sorrow fall; But opening farther on, on either side A wider space the severing trees divide; And longer gleams upon the pathway meet, And the soft grass is wet beneath her feet. And now emerging from the darksome shade, She pressed the silken carpet of the glade. Beyond the green, within its western close, A little vine-hung, leafy arbor rose, Where the pale lustre of the moony flood Dimm'd the vermillion'd woodbine's scarlet bud; And glancing through the foliage fluttering round, In tiny circles gemm'd the freckled ground. Beside the porch, beneath the friendly screen Of two tall trees, a mossy bank was seen; And all around, amid the silvery dew, The wild-wood pansy rear'd her petals blue; And gold cups and the meadow cowslip red, Upon the evening air their odours shed. Unheeded all the grove's deep gloom had been, Unseen the moonlight brightness of the green; In vain the stream's blue burnish met her eye, Lovely its wave, but pass'd unnoticed by: The airs of heaven had breath'd around her brow Their cooling sighs--she felt them not--but now That lonely bower appeared, and with a start Convulsive shudders thrill'd her throbbing heart. For there, in days, alas! for ever gone, When love's young torch with beams of rapture shone, When she had felt her heart's impassioned swell, And almost deem'd her Leon loved as well; There had she sat, beneath the evening skies, Felt his warm kiss and heard his murmur'd sighs; Hung on his breast, caressing and carest, Her husband smiled, and Ellinor was blest. And when his injured country's rights to shield, Blazed his red banner on the battle field, There had she lingered in the shadows dim, And sat till morning watch and thought of him; And wept to think that she might not be there, His toils, his dangers, and his wounds to share. And when the foe had bowed beneath his brand, And to his home he led his conquering band, There she first caught his long-expected face, And sprung to smile and weep in his embrace. These scenes of bliss across her memory fled, Like lights that haunt the chambers of the dead, She saw the bower, and read the image there Of joys that had been, and of woes that were; She clench'd her hand in agony, and cast A glance of tears upon it as she past, A look of weeping sorrow--'twas the last! She check'd the gush of feeling, turned her face, And faster sped along her hurried pace. No longer now from Leon's lips were heard The sigh of bliss--the rapture breathing word; No longer now upon his features dwelt The glance that sweetly thrills--the looks that melt; No speaking gaze of fond attachment told, But all was dull and gloomy, sad and cold. Yet he was kind, or laboured to be kind, And strove to hide the workings of his mind; And cloak'd his heart, to soothe his wife's distress, Under a mask of tender gentleness. It was in vain--for ah! how light and frail To love's keen eye is falsehood's gilded veil. Sweet winning words may for a time beguile, Professions lull, and oaths deceive a while; But soon the heart, in vague suspicion tost, Must feel a void unfilled, a something lost; Something scarce heeded, and unprized till gone, Felt while unseen, and, tho' unnoticed, known: A hidden witchery, a nameless charm, Too fine for actions and for words too warm; That passing all the worthless forms of art, Eludes the sense, and only woos the heart: A hallowed spell, by fond affection wove, The mute, but matchless eloquence of love! * * * * * Oh! there were times, when to my heart there came All that the soul can feel, or fancy frame; The summer party in the open air, When sunny eyes and cordial hearts were there; Where light came sparkling thro' the greenwood eaves, Like mirthful eyes that laugh upon the leaves; Where every bush and tree in all the scene, In wind-kiss'd wavings shake their wings of green, And all the objects round about dispense Reviving freshness to the awakened sense; The golden corslet of the humble bee, The antic kid that frolics round the lea; Or purple lance-flies circling round the place, On their light shards of green, an airy race; Or squirrel glancing from the nut-wood shade An arch black eye, half pleas'd and half afraid; Or bird quick darting through the foliage dim, Or perched and twittering on the tendril slim; Or poised in ether sailing slowly on, With plumes that change and glisten in the sun, Like rainbows fading into mist--and then, On the bright cloud renewed and changed again; Or soaring upward, while his full sweet throat Pours clear and strong a pleasure-speaking note; And sings in nature's language wild and free, His song of praise for light and liberty. And when within, with poetry and song, Music and books led the glad hours along; Worlds of the visioned minstrel, fancy-wove, Tales of old time, of chivalry and love; Or converse calm, or wit-shafts sprinkled round, Like beams from gems, too light and fine to wound; With spirits sparkling as the morning's sun, Light as the dancing wave he smiles upon, Like his own course--alas! too soon to know Bright suns may set in storms, and gay hearts sink in wo. * * * * * NIAGARA. I. Roar, raging torrent! and thou, mighty river, Pour thy white foam on the valley below; Frown, ye dark mountains! and shadow for ever The deep rocky bed where the wild rapids flow. The green sunny glade, and the smooth flowing fountain, Brighten the home of the coward and slave; The flood and the forest, the rock and the mountain, Rear on their bosoms the free and the brave. II. Nurslings of nature, I mark your bold bearing, Pride in each aspect and strength in each form, Hearts of warm impulse, and souls of high daring, Born in the battle and rear'd in the storm. The red levin flash and the thunder's dread rattle, The rock-riven wave and the war trumpet's breath, The din of the tempest, the yell of the battle, Nerve your steeled bosoms to danger and death. III. High on the brow of the Alps' snowy towers The mountain Swiss measures his rock-breasted moors, O'er his lone cottage the avalanche lowers, Round its rude portal the spring-torrent pours. Sweet is his sleep amid peril and danger, Warm is his greeting to kindred and friends, Open his hand to the poor and the stranger, Stern on his foeman his sabre descends. IV. Lo! where the tempest the dark waters sunder Slumbers the sailor boy, reckless and brave, Warm'd by the lighting and lulled by the thunder, Fann'd by the whirlwind and rock'd on the wave; Wildly the winter wind howls round his pillow, Cold on his bosom the spray showers fall; Creaks the strained mast at the rush of the billow, Peaceful he slumbers, regardless of all. V. Mark how the cheek of the warrior flushes, As the battle drum beats and the war torches glare; Like a blast of the north to the onset he rushes, And his wide-waving falchion gleams brightly in air. Around him the death-shot of foemen are flying, At his feet friends and comrades are yielding their breath; He strikes to the groans of the wounded and dying, But the war cry he strikes with is, 'conquest or death!' VI. Then pour thy broad wave like a flood from the heavens, Each son that thou rearest, in the battle's wild shock, When the death-speaking note of the trumpet is given, Will charge like thy torrent or stand like thy rock. Let his roof be the cloud and the rock be his pillow, Let him stride the rough mountain, or toss on the foam, He will strike fast and well on the field or the billow, In triumph and glory, for God and his home! SONG. Oh! go to sleep, my baby dear, And I will hold thee on my knee; Thy mother's in her winding sheet, And thou art all that's left to me. My hairs are white with grief and age, I've borne the weight of every ill, And I would lay me with my child, But thou art left to love me still. Should thy false father see thy face, The tears would fill his cruel e'e, But he has scorned thy mother's wo, And he shall never look on thee: But I will rear thee up alone, And with me thou shalt aye remain; For thou wilt have thy mother's smile, And I shall see my child again. SONG. Oh the tear is in my eye, and my heart it is breaking, Thou hast fled from me, Connor, and left me forsaken; Bright and warm was our morning, but soon has it faded, For I gave thee a true heart, and thou hast betrayed it. Thy footsteps I followed in darkness and danger, From the home of my love to the land of the stranger; Thou wert mine through the tempest, the blight, and the burning; Could I think thou wouldst change when the morn was returning. Yet peace to thy heart, though from mine it must sever, May she love thee as I loved, alone and for ever; I may weep for thy loss, but my faith is unshaken, And the heart thou hast widowed will bless thee in breaking. WRITTEN IN A LADY'S ALBUM. Grant me, I cried, some spell of art, To turn with all a lover's care, That spotless page, my Eva's heart, And write my burning wishes there. But Love, by faithless Laia taught How frail is woman's holiest vow, Look'd down, while grace attempered thought Sate serious on his baby brow. "Go! blot her album," cried the sage, "There none but bards a place may claim; But woman's heart's a worthless page, Where every fool may write his name." Until by time or fate decayed, That line and leaf shall never part; Ah! who can tell how soon shall fade The lines of love from woman's heart. LINES TO A LADY, ON HEARING HER SING "CUSHLAMACHREE." Yes! heaven protect thee, thou gem of the ocean; Dear land of my sires, though distant thy shores; Ere my heart cease to love thee, its latest emotion, The last dying throbs of its pulse must be o'er. And dark were the bosom, and cold and unfeeling, That tamely could listen unmoved at the call, When woman, the warm soul of melody stealing, Laments for her country and sighs o'er its fall. Sing on, gentle warbler, the tear-drop appearing Shall fall for the woes of the queen of the sea; And the spirit that breathes in the harp of green Erin, Descending, shall hail thee her "Cushlamachree." LINES WRITTEN ON LEAVING NEW ROCHELLE. Whene'er thy wandering footstep bends Its pathway to the Hermit tree, Among its cordial band of friends, Sweet Mary! wilt thou number me? Though all too few the hours have roll'd That saw the stranger linger here, In memory's volume let them hold One little spot to friendship dear. I oft have thought how sweet 'twould be To steal the bird of Eden's art; And leave behind a trace of me On every kind and friendly heart, And like the breeze in fragrance rolled, To gather as I wander by, From every soul of kindred mould, Some touch of cordial sympathy. 'Tis the best charm in life's dull dream, To feel that yet there linger here Bright eyes that look with fond esteem, And feeling hearts that hold me dear. HOPE. See through yon cloud that rolls in wrath, One little star benignant peep, To light along their trackless path The wanderers of the stormy deep. And thus, oh Hope! thy lovely form In sorrow's gloomy night shall be The sun that looks through cloud and storm Upon a dark and moonless sea. When heaven is all serene and fair, Full many a brighter gem we meet; 'Tis when the tempest hovers there, Thy beam is most divinely sweet. The rainbow, when the sun declines, Like faithless friend will disappear; Thy light, dear star! more brightly shines When all is wail and weeping here. And though Aurora's stealing beam May wake a morning of delight, 'Tis only thy consoling beam Will smile amid affliction's night. FRAGMENT. I. Tuscara! thou art lovely now, Thy woods, that frown'd in sullen strength Like plumage on a giant's brow, Have bowed their massy pride at length. The rustling maize is green around, The sheep is in the Congar's bed; And clear the ploughman's whistlings sound Where war-whoop's pealed o'er mangled dead. Fair cots around thy breast are set, Like pearls upon a coronet; And in Aluga's vale below The gilded grain is moving slow Like yellow moonlight on the sea, Where waves are swelling peacefully; As beauty's breast, when quiet dreams Come tranquilly and gently by; When all she loves and hopes for seems To float in smiles before her eye. II. And hast thou lost the grandeur rude That made me breathless, when at first Upon my infant sight you burst, The monarch of the solitude? No; there is yet thy turret rock, The watch-tower of the skies, the lair Of Indian Gods, who, in the shock Of bursting thunders, slumbered there; And trim thy bosom is arrayed In labour's green and glittering vest, And yet thy forest locks of shade Shake stormy on that turret crest. Still hast thou left the rocks, the floods, And nature is the loveliest then, When first amid her caves and woods She feels the busy tread of men; When every tree, and bush, and flower, Springs wildly in its native grace; Ere art exerts her boasted power, That brightened only to deface. III. Yes! thou art lovelier now than ever; How sweet 'twould be, when all the air In moonlight swims, along thy river To couch upon the grass, and hear Niagara's everlasting voice, Far in the deep blue west away; That dreaming and poetic noise We mark not in the glare of day, Oh! how unlike its torrent-cry, When o'er the brink the tide is driven, As if the vast and sheeted sky In thunder fell from heaven. IV. Were I but there, the daylight fled, With that smooth air, the stream, the sky, And lying on that minstrel bed Of nature's own embroidery With those long tearful willows o'er me, That weeping fount, that solemn light, With scenes of sighing tales before me, And one green, maiden grave in sight; How mournfully the strain would rise Of that true maid, whose fate can yet Draw rainy tears from stubborn eyes; From lids that ne'er before were wet. She lies not here, but that green grave Is sacred from the plough--and flowers, Snow-drops, and valley-lilies, wave Amid the grass; and other showers Than those of heaven have fallen there. TO --- When that eye of light shall in darkness fall, And thy bosom be shrouded in death's cold pall, When the bloom of that rich red lip shall fade, And thy head on its pillow of dust be laid; Oh! then thy spirit shall see how true Are the holy vows I have breathed to you; My form shall moulder thy grave beside, And in the blue heavens I'll seek my bride. Then we'll tell, as we tread yon azure sphere, Of the woes we have known while lingering here; And our spirits shall joy that, their pilgrimage o'er, They have met in the heavens to sever no more. LINES. Day gradual fades, in evening gray, Its last faint beam hath fled, And sinks the sun's declining ray In ocean's wavy bed. So o'er the loves and joys of youth Thy waves, Indifference, roll; So mantles round our days of truth That death-pool of the soul. Spreads o'er the heavens the shadowy night Her dim and shapeless form, So human pleasures, frail and light, Are lost in passion's storm. So fades the sunshine of the breast, So passion's dreamings fall, So friendship's fervours sink to rest, Oblivion shrouds them all. TO EVA. A beam upon the myrtle fell From dewy evening's purest sky, 'Twas like the glance I love so well, Dear Eva, from thy moonlight eye. I looked around the summer grove, On every tree its lustre shone; For all had felt that look of love The silly myrtle deemed its own. Eva! behold thine image there, As fair, as false thy glances fall; But who the worthless smile would share That sheds its light alike on all. TO A LADY WITH A WITHERED VIOLET. Though fate upon this faded flower His withering hand has laid, Its odour'd breath defies his power, Its sweets are undecayed. And thus, although thy warbled strains No longer wildly thrill, The memory of the song remains, Its soul is with me still. BRONX. I sat me down upon a green bank-side, Skirting the smooth edge of a gentle river, Whose waters seemed unwillingly to glide, Like parting friends who linger while they sever; Enforced to go, yet seeming still unready, Backward they wind their way in many a wistful eddy. Gray o'er my head the yellow-vested willow Ruffled its hoary top in the fresh breezes, Glancing in light, like spray on a green billow, Or the fine frost-work which young winter freezes; When first his power in infant pastime trying, Congeals sad autumn's tears on the dead branches lying. From rocks around hung the loose ivy dangling, And in the clefts sumach of liveliest green, Bright ising-stars the little beach was spangling, The gold-cup sorrel from his gauzy screen Shone like a fairy crown, enchased and beaded, Left on some morn, when light flashed in their eyes unheeded. The hum-bird shook his sun-touched wings around, The bluefinch caroll'd in the still retreat; The antic squirrel capered on the ground Where lichens made a carpet for his feet: Through the transparent waves, the ruddy minkle Shot up in glimmering sparks his red fin's tiny twinkle. There were dark cedars with loose mossy tresses, White powdered dog-trees, and stiff hollies flaunting Gaudy as rustics in their May-day dresses, Blue pelloret from purple leaves upslanting A modest gaze, like eyes of a young maiden Shining beneath dropt lids the evening of her wedding. The breeze fresh springing from the lips of morn, Kissing the leaves, and sighing so to lose 'em, The winding of the merry locust's horn, The glad spring gushing from the rock's bare bosom: Sweet sights, sweet sounds, all sights, all sounds excelling, Oh! 'twas a ravishing spot formed for a poet's dwelling. And did I leave thy loveliness, to stand Again in the dull world of earthly blindness? Pained with the pressure of unfriendly hands, Sick of smooth looks, agued with icy kindness? Left I for this thy shades, were none intrude, To prison wandering thought and mar sweet solitude? Yet I will look upon thy face again, My own romantic Bronx, and it will be A face more pleasant than the face of men. Thy waves are old companions, I shall see A well-remembered form in each old tree, And hear a voice long loved in thy wild minstrelsy. SONG. 'Tis not the beam of her bright blue eye, Nor the smile of her lip of rosy dye, Nor the dark brown wreaths of her glossy hair, Nor her changing cheek, so rich and rare. Oh! these are the sweets of a fairy dream, The changing hues of an April sky. They fade like dew in the morning beam, Or the passing zephyr's odour'd sigh. 'Tis a dearer spell that bids me kneel, 'Tis the heart to love, and the soul to feel: 'Tis the mind of light, and the spirit free, And the bosom that heaves alone for me. Oh! these are the sweets that kindly stay From youth's gay morning to age's night; When beauty's rainbow tints decay, Love's torch still burns with a holy light. Soon will the bloom of the fairest fade, And love will droop in the cheerless shade, Or if tears should fall on his wing of joy, It will hasten the flight of the laughing boy. But oh! the light of the constant soul Nor time can darken nor sorrow dim; Though wo may weep in life's mingled bowl, Love still shall hover around its brim. TO SARAH. I. One happy year has fled, Sall, Since you were all my own, The leaves have felt the autumn blight, The wintry storm has blown. We heeded not the cold blast, Nor the winter's icy air; For we found our climate in the heart, And it was summer there. II. The summer's sun is bright, Sall, The skies are pure in hue; But clouds will sometimes sadden them, And dim their lovely blue; And clouds may come to us, Sall, But sure they will not stay; For there's a spell in fond hearts To chase their gloom away. III. In sickness and in sorrow Thine eyes were on me still, And there was comfort in each glance To charm the sense of ill. And were they absent now, Sall, I'd seek my bed of pain, And bless each pang that gave me back Those looks of love again. IV. Oh, pleasant is the welcome kiss, When day's dull round is o'er, And sweet the music of the step That meets me at the door. Though worldly cares may visit us, I reck not when they fall, While I have thy kind lips, my Sall, To smile away them all. THE AMERICAN FLAG. I. When Freedom from her mountain height Unfurled her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of night, And set the stars of glory there. She mingled with its gorgeous dyes The milky baldric of the skies, And striped its pure celestial white, With streakings of the morning light; Then from his mansion in the sun She called her eagle bearer down, And gave into his mighty hand, The symbol of her chosen land. II. Majestic monarch of the cloud, Who rear'st aloft thy regal form, To hear the tempest trumpings loud And see the lightning lances driven, When strive the warriors of the storm, And rolls the thunder-drum of heaven, Child of the sun! to thee 'tis given To guard the banner of the free, To hover in the sulphur smoke, To ward away the battle stroke, And bid its blendings shine afar, Like rainbows on the cloud of war, The harbingers of victory! III. Flag of the brave! thy folds shall fly, The sign of hope and triumph high, When speaks the signal trumpet tone, And the long line comes gleaming on. Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet, Has dimm'd the glistening bayonet, Each soldier eye shall brightly turn To where thy sky-born glories burn; And as his springing steps advance, Catch war and vengeance from the glance. And when the cannon-mouthings loud Heave in wild wreaths the battle shroud, And gory sabres rise and fall Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall; Then shall thy meteor glances glow, And cowering foes shall shrink beneath Each gallant arm that strikes below That lovely messenger of death. IV. Flag of the seas! on ocean wave Thy stars shall glitter o'er the brave; When death, careering on the gale, Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail, And frighted waves rush wildly back Before the broadside's reeling rack, Each dying wanderer of the sea Shall look at once to heaven and thee, And smile to see thy splendours fly In triumph o'er his closing eye. V. Flag of the free heart's hope and home! By angel hands to valour given; The stars have lit the welkin dome, And all thy hues were born in heaven. For ever float that standard sheet! Where breathes the foe but falls before us, With Freedom's soil beneath our feet, And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us? 
31878	----	THE TEMPERS THE TEMPERS BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS LONDON ELKIN MATHEWS, CORK STREET M CM XIII TO CARLOS HOHEB CONTENTS PAGE Peace on Earth 7 Postlude 8 First Praise 9 Homage 10 The Fool's Song 11 From "The Birth of Venus," Song 12 Immortal 13 Mezzo Forte 14 An After Song 15 Crude Lament 16 The Ordeal 17 The Death of Franco of Cologne: His Prophecy of Beethoven 18 Portent 21 Con Brio 22 Ad Infinitum 23 Translations from the Spanish, "El Romancero" 24 Hic Jacet 30 Contemporania 31 To wish Myself Courage 32 Peace on Earth The Archer is wake! The Swan is flying! Gold against blue An Arrow is lying. There is hunting in heaven-- Sleep safe till to-morrow. The Bears are abroad! The Eagle is screaming! Gold against blue Their eyes are gleaming! Sleep! Sleep safe till to-morrow. The Sisters lie With their arms intertwining; Gold against blue Their hair is shining! The Serpent writhes! Orion is listening! Gold against blue His sword is glistening! Sleep! There is hunting in heaven-- Sleep safe till to-morrow. Postlude Now that I have cooled to you Let there be gold of tarnished masonry, Temples soothed by the sun to ruin That sleep utterly. Give me hand for the dances, Ripples at Philae, in and out, And lips, my Lesbian, Wall flowers that once were flame. Your hair is my Carthage And my arms the bow, And our words arrows To shoot the stars Who from that misty sea Swarm to destroy us. But you there beside me-- Oh how shall I defy you, Who wound me in the night With breasts shining Like Venus and like Mars? The night that is shouting Jason When the loud eaves rattle As with waves above me Blue at the prow of my desire. First Praise Lady of dusk wood fastnesses, Thou art my Lady. I have known the crisp splintering leaf-tread with thee on before, White, slender through green saplings; I have lain by thee on the grey forest floor Beside thee, my Lady. Lady of rivers strewn with stones, Only thou art my Lady. Where thousand the freshets are crowded like peasants to a fair; Clear skinned, wild from seclusion, They jostle white armed down the tent-bordered thoroughfare Praising my Lady. Homage Elvira, by love's grace There goeth before you A clear radiance Which maketh all vain souls Candles when noon is. The loud clangour of pretenders Melteth before you Like the roll of carts passing, But you come silently And homage is given. Now the little by-path Which leadeth to love Is again joyful with its many; And the great highway From love Is without passers. The Fool's Song I tried to put a bird in a cage. O fool that I am! For the bird was Truth. Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put Truth in a cage! And when I had the bird in the cage, O fool that I am! Why, it broke my pretty cage. Sing merrily, Truth; I tried to put Truth in a cage! And when the bird was flown from the cage, O fool that I am! Why, I had nor bird nor cage. Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put Truth in a cage! Heigh-ho! Truth in a cage. From "The Birth of Venus," Song Come with us and play! See, we have breasts as women! From your tents by the sea Come play with us: it is forbidden! Come with us and play! Lo, bare, straight legs in the water! By our boats we stay, Then swimming away Come to us: it is forbidden! Come with us and play! See, we are tall as women! Our eyes are keen: Our hair is bright: Our voices speak outright: We revel in the sea's green! Come play: It is forbidden! Immortal Yes, there is one thing braver than all flowers; Richer than clear gems; wider than the sky; Immortal and unchangeable; whose powers Transcend reason, love and sanity! And thou, beloved, art that godly thing! Marvellous and terrible; in glance An injured Juno roused against Heaven's King! And thy name, lovely One, is Ignorance. Mezzo Forte Take that, damn you; and that! And here's a rose To make it right again! God knows I'm sorry, Grace; but then, It's not my fault if you will be a cat. An After Song So art thou broken in upon me, Apollo, Through a splendour of purple garments-- Held by the yellow-haired Clymène To clothe the white of thy shoulders-- Bare from the day's leaping of horses. This is strange to me, here in the modern twilight. Crude Lament Mother of flames, The men that went ahunting Are asleep in the snow drifts. You have kept the fire burning! Crooked fingers that pull Fuel from among the wet leaves, Mother of flames You have kept the fire burning! The young wives have fallen asleep With wet hair, weeping, Mother of flames! The young men raised the heavy spears And are gone prowling in the darkness. O mother of flames, You who have kept the fire burning! Lo, I am helpless! Would God they had taken me with them! The Ordeal O Crimson salamander, Because of love's whim sacred! Swim the winding flame Predestined to disman him And bring our fellow home to us again. Swim in with watery fang, Gnaw out and drown The fire roots that circle him Until the Hell-flower dies down And he comes home again. Aye, bring him home, O crimson salamander, That I may see he is unchanged with burning-- Then have your will with him, O crimson salamander. The Death of Franco of Cologne: His Prophecy of Beethoven It is useless, good woman, useless: the spark fails me. God! yet when the might of it all assails me It seems impossible that I cannot do it. Yet I cannot. They were right, and they all knew it Years ago, but I--never! I have persisted Blindly (they say) and now I am old. I have resisted Everything, but now, now the strife's ended. The fire's out; the old cloak has been mended For the last time, the soul peers through its tatters. Put a light by and leave me; nothing more matters Now; I am done; I am at last well broken! Yet, by God, I'll still leave them a token That they'll swear it was no dead man writ it; A morsel that they'll mark well the day they bit it, That there'll be sand between their gross teeth to crunch yet When goodman Gabriel blows his concluding trumpet. Leave me! And now, little black eyes, come you out here! Ah, you've given me a lively, lasting bout, year After year to win you round me darlings! Precious children, little gambollers! "farlings" They might have called you once, "nearlings" I call you now, I, first of all the yearlings, Upon this plain, for I it was that tore you Out of chaos! It was I bore you! Ah, you little children that go playing Over the five-barred gate, and will still be straying Spite of all that I have ever told you Of counterpoint and cadence which does not hold you-- No more than chains will for this or that strange reason, But you're always at some new loving treason To be away from me, laughing, mocking, Witlessly, perhaps, but for all that forever knocking At this stanchion door of your poor father's heart till--oh, well At least you've shown that you can grow well However much you evade me faster, faster. But, black eyes, some day you'll get a master, For he will come! He shall, he must come! And when he finishes and the burning dust from His wheels settles--what shall men see then? You, you, you, my own lovely children! Aye, all of you, thus with hands together Playing on the hill or there in a tether, Or running free, but all mine! Aye, my very namesakes Shall be his proper fame's stakes. And he shall lead you! And he shall meed you! And he shall build you gold palaces! And he shall wine you from clear chalices! For I have seen it! I have seen it Written where the world-clouds screen it From other eyes Over the bronze gates of paradise! Portent Red cradle of the night, In you The dusky child Sleeps fast till his might Shall be piled Sinew on sinew. Red cradle of the night, The dusky child Sleeping sits upright. Lo how The winds blow now! He pillows back; The winds are again mild. When he stretches his arms out, Red cradle of the night, The alarms shout From bare tree to tree, Wild In afright! Mighty shall he be, Red cradle of the night, The dusky child!! Con Brio Miserly, is the best description of that poor fool Who holds Lancelot to have been a morose fellow, Dolefully brooding over the events which had naturally to follow The high time of his deed with Guinevere. He has a sick historical sight, if I judge rightly, To believe any such thing as that ever occurred. But, by the god of blood, what else is it that has deterred Us all from an out and out defiance of fear But this same perdamnable miserliness, Which cries about our necks how we shall have less and less Than we have now if we spend too wantonly? Bah, this sort of slither is below contempt! In the same vein we should have apple trees exempt From bearing anything but pink blossoms all the year, Fixed permanent lest their bellies wax unseemly, and the dear Innocent days of them be wasted quite. How can we have less? Have we not the deed? Lancelot thought little, spent his gold and rode to fight Mounted, if God was willing, on a good steed. Ad Infinitum Still I bring flowers Although you fling them at my feet Until none stays That is not struck across with wounds: Flowers and flowers That you may break them utterly As you have always done. Sure happily I still bring flowers, flowers, Knowing how all Are crumpled in your praise And may not live To speak a lesser thing. Translations from the Spanish, "El Romancero" I Although you do your best to regard me With an air seeming offended, Never can you deny, when all's ended, Calm eyes, that you _did_ regard me. However much you're at pains to Offend me, by which I may suffer, What offence is there can make up for The great good he finds who attains you? For though with mortal fear you reward me, Until my sorry sense is plenished, Never can you deny, when all's ended, Calm eyes, that you did regard me. Thinking thus to dismay me You beheld me with disdain, But instead of destroying the gain, In fact with doubled good you paid me. For though you show them how hardly They keep off from leniency bended, Never can you deny, when all's ended, Calm eyes, that you did regard me. II Ah, little green eyes, Ah, little eyes of mine, Ah, Heaven be willing That you think of me somewise. The day of departure You came full of grieving And to see I was leaving The tears 'gan to start sure With the heavy torture Of sorrows unbrightened When you lie down at night and When there to you dreams rise, Ah, Heaven be willing That you think of me somewise. Deep is my assurance Of you, little green eyes, That in truth you realise Something of my durance Eyes of hope's fair assurance And good premonition By virtue of whose condition All green colours I prize. Ah, Heaven be willing That you think of me somewise. Would God I might know you To which quarter bended And why comprehended When sighings overflow you, And if you must go through Some certain despair, For that you lose his care Who was faithful always. Ah, Heaven be willing That you think of me these days. Through never a moment I've known how to live lest All my thoughts but as one pressed You-ward for their concernment. May God send chastisement If in this I belie me And if it truth be My own little green eyes. Ah, Heaven be willing That you think of me somewise. III Poplars of the meadow, Fountains of Madrid, Now I am absent from you All are slandering me. Each of you is telling How evil my chance is The wind among the branches, The fountains in their welling To every one telling You were happy to see. Now I am absent from you All are slandering me. With good right I may wonder For that at my last leaving The plants with sighs heaving And the waters in tears were. That you played double, never Thought I this could be, Now I am absent from you All are slandering me. There full in your presence Music you sought to waken, Later I'm forsaken Since you are ware of my absence. God, wilt Thou give me patience Here while suffer I ye, Now I am absent from you All are slandering me. IV The day draweth nearer, And morrow ends our meeting, Ere they take thee sleeping Be up--away, my treasure! Soft, leave her breasts all unheeded, Far hence though the master still remaineth! For soon uptil our earth regaineth The sun all embraces dividing. N'er grew pleasure all unimpeded, N'er was delight lest passion won, And to the wise man the fit occasion Has not yet refused a full measure: Be up--away, my treasure! If that my love thy bosom inflameth With honest purpose and just intention, To free me from my soul's contention Give over joys the day shameth; Who thee lameth he also me lameth, And my good grace builds all in thy good grace; Be up--away! Fear leaveth place, That thou art here, no more unto pleasure, Be up--away, my treasure! Although thou with a sleep art wresting, 'Tis rightful thou bringst it close, That of the favour one meeting shows An hundred may hence be attesting. 'Tis fitting too thou shouldst be mindful That the ease which we lose now, in kind, full Many a promise holds for our leisure; Ere they take thee sleeping; Be up--away, my treasure! Hic Jacet The coroner's merry little children Have such twinkling brown eyes. Their father is not of gay men And their mother jocular in no wise, Yet the coroner's merry little children Laugh so easily. They laugh because they prosper. Fruit for them is upon all branches. Lo! how they jibe at loss, for Kind heaven fills their little paunches! It's the coroner's merry, merry children Who laugh so easily. Contemporania The corner of a great rain Steamy with the country Has fallen upon my garden. I go back and forth now And the little leaves follow me Talking of the great rain, Of branches broken, And the farmer's curses! But I go back and forth In this corner of a garden And the green shoots follow me Praising the great rain. We are not curst together, The leaves and I, Framing devices, flower devices And other ways of peopling The barren country. Truly it was a very great rain That makes the little leaves follow me. To wish Myself Courage On the day when youth is no more upon me I will write of the leaves and the moon in a tree top! I will sing then the song, long in the making-- When the stress of youth is put away from me. How can I ever be written out as men say? Surely it is merely an interference with the long song-- This that I am now doing. But when the spring of it is worn like the old moon And the eaten leaves are lace upon the cold earth-- Then I will rise up in my great desire-- Long at the birth--and sing me the youth-song! * * * * * LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED. 
31896	----	file was produced from images generously made available by The Kentuckiana Digital Library) Transcriber's note Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Printer errors have been changed and are listed at the end. All other inconsistencies are as in the original. IDYLLIC MONOLOGUES Poems by Madison Cawein OLD AND NEW WORLD VERSES BY THE AUTHOR OF "Undertones" "Garden of Dreams" JOHN P. MORTON AND COMPANY Publishers--Louisville, Kentucky Copyrighted 1898 BY MADISON CAWEIN TO MY FRIEND: R. E. LEE GIBSON This collection of poems is entirely new with the exception of three or four which appeared in two earlier volumes, published some ten years ago. The reprinted poems have been carefully re-written, and so changed throughout as to hardly bear any resemblance, except that of subject, to the original. CONTENTS PAGE The Brothers 1 Geraldine 15 The Moated Manse 20 The Forester 35 My Lady of Verne 48 An Old Tale Re-told 55 The Water Witch 65 At Nineveh 70 How They Brought Aid to Bryan's Station 72 On the Jellico Spur of the Cumberlands 77 A Confession 83 Lilith 84 Content 86 Berrying 88 To a Pansy-Violet 90 Heart of my Heart 93 Witnesses 94 Wherefore 95 Pagan 96 "The Fathers of our Fathers" 97 "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin" 99 Her Vivien Eyes 101 There was a Rose 102 The Artist 103 Poetry and Philosophy 103 "Quo Vadis" 104 To a Critic 105 FOREWORD. _And one, perchance, will read and sigh: "What aimless songs! Why will he sing Of nature that drags out her woe Through wind and rain, and sun, and snow, From miserable spring to spring?" Then put me by._ _And one, perhaps, will read and say: "Why write of things across the sea; Of men and women, far and near, When we of things at home would hear-- Well, who would call this poetry?" Then toss away._ _A hopeless task have we, meseems, At this late day; whom fate hath made Sad, bankrupt heirs of song; who, filled With kindred yearnings, try to build A tower like theirs, that will not fade, Out of our dreams._ Only One Hundred and Fifty Copies Printed for Private Distribution. A Few Copies For Sale. IDYLLIC MONOLOGUES The Brothers Not far from here, it lies beyond That low-hilled belt of woods. We'll take This unused lane where brambles make A wall of twilight, and the blond Brier-roses pelt the path and flake The margin waters of a pond. This is its fence--or that which was Its fence once--now, rock rolled from rock, One tangle of the vine and dock, Where bloom the wild petunias; And this its gate, the iron-weeds block, Hot with the insects' dusty buzz. Two wooden posts, wherefrom has peeled The weather-crumbled paint, still rise; Gaunt things--that groan when someone tries The gate whose hinges, rust-congealed, Snarl open:--on each post still lies Its carven lion with a shield. We enter; and between great rows Of locusts winds a grass-grown road; And at its glimmering end,--o'erflowed With quiet light,--the white front shows Of an old mansion, grand and broad, With grave Colonial porticoes. Grown thick around it, dark and deep, The locust trees make one vast hush; Their brawny branches crowd and crush Its very casements, and o'ersweep Its rotting roofs; their tranquil rush Haunts all its spacious rooms with sleep. Still is it called The Locusts; though None lives here now. A tale's to tell Of some dark thing that here befell; A crime that happened years ago, When by its walls, with shot and shell, The war swept on and left it so. For one black night, within it, shame Made revel, while, all here about, With prayer or curse or battle-shout, Men died and homesteads leapt in flame: Then passed the conquering Northern rout, And left it silent and the same. Why should I speak of what has been? Or what dark part I played in all? Why ruin sits in porch and hall Where pride and gladness once were seen; And why beneath this lichened wall The grave of Margaret is green. Heart-broken Margaret! whose fate Was sadder yet than his who won Her hand--my brother Hamilton-- Or mine, who learned to know too late; Who learned to know, when all was done, And nothing could exonerate. To expiate is still my lot,-- And, like the Ancient Mariner, To show to others how things are And what I am, still helps me blot A little from that crime's red scar, That on my soul is branded hot. He was my only brother. She A sister of my brother's friend. They met, and married in the end. And I remember well when he Brought her rejoicing home, the trend Of war moved towards us sullenly. And scarce a year of wedlock when Its red arms took him from his bride. With lips by hers thrice sanctified He left to ride with Morgan's men. And I--I never could decide-- Remained at home. It happened then. For days went by. And, oft delayed, A letter came of loving word Scrawled by some camp-fire, sabre-stirred, Or by a pine-knot's fitful aid, When in the saddle, armed and spurred And booted for some hurried raid. Then weeks went by. I do not know How long it was before there came, Blown from the North, the clarion fame Of Morgan, who, with blow on blow, Had drawn a line of blood and flame From Tennessee to Ohio. Then letters ceased; and days went on. No word from him. The war rolled back, And in its turgid crimson track A rumor grew, like some wild dawn, All ominous and red and black, With news of our lost Hamilton, That hinted death or capture. Yet No thing was sure; till one day,--fed By us,--some men rode up who said They'd been with Morgan and had met Disaster, and that he was dead, My brother.--I and Margaret Believed them. Grief was ours too: But mine was more for her than him; Grief, that her eyes with tears were dim; Grief, that became the avenue For love, who crowned the sombre brim Of death's dark cup with rose-red hue. In sympathy,--unconsciously Though it be given--I hold, doth dwell The germ of love that time shall swell To blossom. Sooner then in me-- When close relations so befell-- That love should spring from sympathy. Our similar tastes and mutual bents Combined to make us intimates From our first meeting. Different states Of interest then our temperaments Begot. Then friendship, that abates No love, whose self it represents. These led to talks and dreams: how oft We sat at some wide window while The sun sank o'er the hills' far file, Serene; and of the cloud aloft Made one vast rose; and mile on mile Of firmament grew sad and soft. And all in harmony with these Dim clemencies of dusk, afar Our talks and dreams went; while the star Of evening brightened o'er the trees: We spoke of home; the end of war: We dreamed of life and love and peace. How on our walks in listening lanes Or confidences of the wood, We paused to hear the dove that cooed; Or gathered wild-flowers, taking pains To find the fairest; or her hood Filled with wild fruit that left deep stains. No echo of the drum or fife, No hint of conflict entered in Our thoughts then. Will you call it sin-- Indifference to a nation's strife? What side might lose, what side might win, Both immaterial to our life. Into the past we did not look; Beyond what was we did not dream; While onward rushed the thunderous stream Of war, that, in its torrent, took One of our own. No crimson gleam Of its wild course around us shook. At last we knew. And when we learned How he had fallen, Margaret Wept; and, albeit my eyes were wet, Within my soul I half discerned A joy that mingled with regret, A grief that to relief was turned. As time went on and confidence Drew us more strongly each to each, Why did no intimation reach Its warning hand into the dense Soul-silence, and confuse the speech Of love's unbroken eloquence! But, no! no hint to turn the poise, Or check the impulse of our youth; To chill it with the living truth As with the awe of God's own voice; No hint, to make our hope uncouth; No word, to warn us from our choice. To me a wall seemed overthrown That social law had raised between; And o'er its ruin, broad and green A path went, I possessed alone; The sky above seemed all serene; The land around seemed all my own. What shall I say of Margaret To justify her part in this? That her young heart was never his? But had been mine since first we met? So would you say!--Enough it is That when he left she loved him yet. So passed the Spring, and Summer sped; And early Autumn brought the day When she her hand in mine should lay, And I should take her hand and wed. And still no hint that might gainsay, No warning word of quick or dead. The day arrived; and, with it born, A battle, sullying the East With boom of cannon, that increased, And throb of musket and of horn: Until at last, towards dusk, it ceased; And men with faces wild and worn, In fierce retreat swept past; now groups; Now one by one; now sternly white, Or blood-stained; now with looks whose fright Said all was lost. Then sullen troops That, beaten, still kept up the fight. Then came the victors; shadowy loops Of men and horse, that left a crowd Of officers in hall and porch.... While through the land around the torch Circled, and many a fiery cloud Marked out the army's iron march In furrows red, that pillage plowed, Here we were wedded.--Ask the years How such could be, while over us A sword of wrath swung ominous, And on our cheeks its breath was fierce! All I remember is--'twas thus, And Margaret's eyes were wet with tears. No other cause my memory sees Save this, _that night was set_; and when I found my home filled with armed men With whom were all my sympathies Of Union--why postpone it then? So argued conscience into peace. And then it was, when night had passed There came to me an orderly With word of a confederate spy Late taken, who, with head downcast, Had asked one favor, this: "That I Would see him ere he breathed his last." I stand alone here. Heavily My thoughts go back. Had I not gone, The dead had still been dead!--for none Had yet believed his story--he, My dead-deemed brother, Hamilton, Who in the spy confronted me. O you who never have been tried, How can you judge me!--in my place I saw him standing--who can trace My heart thoughts then!--I turned aside, A thing of some unnatural race, And did not speak; and so he died. In hospital or prison, when It was he lay; what had forbid His home return so long: amid What hardships he had suffered, then I dared not ask; and when I did, Long afterwards, inquire of men, No thing I learned. But this I feel-- He who had so returned to life Was not a spy. Through stress and strife,-- This makes my conscience hard to heal!-- He had escaped; he sought his wife; He sought his home that should conceal. And Margaret! Oh, pity her! A criminal I sought her side, Still thinking love was justified In all for her--whatever were The price, a brother thrice denied, Or thrice a brother's murderer. Since then long years have passed away. And through those years, perhaps, you'll ask How to the world I wore my mask Of honesty?--I can but say Beyond my powers it was a task; Before my time it turned me gray. And when at last the ceaseless hiss Of conscience drove, and I betrayed All to her, she knelt down and prayed, Then rose; and 'twixt us an abyss Was opened; and she seemed to fade Out of my life: I came to miss The sweet attentions of a bride: For each appealing heart's caress In me, her heart assumed a dress Of dull indifference; till denied To me was all responsiveness; And then I knew her love had died. Ah, had she loaded me, perchance, With wild reproach or even hate, Such would have helped a hope to wait Forgiveness and returned romance; But 'twixt our souls, instead, a gate She closed of silent tolerance. Yet, 't was for love of her I lent My soul to crime ... I question me Often, if less entirely I'd loved her, then, in that event, She had been justified to see The deed alone stand prominent. The deed alone! But love records In his own heart, I will aver, No depth I did not feel for her Beyond the plummet-reach of words: And though there may be worthier, No truer love this world affords Than mine was, though it could not rise Above itself. And so 't was best, Perhaps, that she saw manifest Its crime, that I, as saw her eyes, Might see; and so, in soul confessed, Some life atonement might devise. Sadly my heart one comfort keeps, That, towards the end, she took my hands And said, as one who understands, "Had I but seen! But love that weeps, Sees only as its loss commands," And sighed. Beneath this stone she sleeps. Yes; I have suffered for that sin; Yet in no instance would I shun What I should suffer. Many a one, Who heard my tale, has tried to win Me to believe that Hamilton It was not; and, though proven kin, This had not saved him. Still the stain Of the intention--had I erred And 't was not he--had writ the word Red on my soul that branded Cain; For still my error had incurred The fact of guilt that would remain. Ah, love at best is insecure, And lives with doubt and vain regret; And hope and faith, with faces set Upon the past, are never sure; And through their fever, grief, and fret The heart may fail that should endure. For in ourselves, however blend The passions that make heaven and hell, Is evil not accountable For most the good we comprehend? And through these two, or ill, or well, Man must evolve his spiritual end. It is with deeds that we must ask Forgiveness; for upon this earth, Life walks alone from very birth With death, hope tells us is a mask For life beyond of vaster worth, Where sin no more sets love a task. Geraldine Ah, Geraldine, lost Geraldine, That night of love, when first we met, You have forgotten, Geraldine-- I never dreamed you would forget. Ah, Geraldine, sweet Geraldine, More lovely than that Asian queen, Scheherazade, the beautiful, Who in her orient palace cool Of India, for a thousand nights And one, beside her monarch lay, Telling--while sandal-scented lights And music stole the soul away-- Love tales of old Arabia, Full of enchantments and emprise-- But no enchantments like your eyes. Ah, Geraldine, loved Geraldine, More lovely than those maids, I ween, Pampinea and Lauretta, who, In gardens old of dusk and dew, Sat with their lovers, maid and man, In stately days Italian, And in quaint stories, that we know Through grace of good Boccaccio, Told of fond loves, some false, some true,-- But, Geraldine, none false as you. Ah, Geraldine, lost Geraldine, That night of love, when first we met, You have forgotten, Geraldine-- I never dreamed you would forget. 'T was summer, and the moon swam high, A great pale pearl within the sky: And down that purple night of love The stars, concurrent spark on spark, Seemed fiery moths that swarmed above: And through the roses, o'er the park, Star-like the fire-flies filled the dark: A mocking-bird in some deep tree, Drowsy with dreams and melody, Like a magnolia bud, that, dim, Opens and pours its soul in musk, Gave to the moonlight and the dusk Its heart's pure song, its evening hymn. Oh, night of love! when in the dance Your heart thrilled rapture into mine, As in a state of necromance A mortal hears a voice divine. Oh, night of love! when from your glance I drank sweet death as men drink wine. You wearied of the waltz at last. I led you out into the night. Warm in my hand I held yours fast. Your face was flushed; your eyes were bright. The moon hung like a shell of light Above the lake, above the trees: And borne to us with fragrances Of roses that were ripe to fall, The soul of music from the hall Beat in the moonlight and the breeze, As youth's wild heart grown weary of Desire and its dream of love. I held your arm and, for awhile, We walked along the balmy aisle Of flowers that, like velvet, dips Unto the lake which lilies tile Like stars; and hyacinths, like strips Of heaven: and beside a fall, That, down a ferned and mossy wall, Fell in the lake,--deep, woodbine-wound, A latticed summer-house we found; A green kiosk,--through which the sound Of waters and of breezes swayed, And honeysuckle bugles played Soft serenades of perfume sweet,-- Around which ran a rustic seat. And seated in that haunted nook,-- I know not how it was,--a word, A touch, perhaps, a sigh, a look, Was father to the kiss I took; Great things grow out of small I've heard. And then it was I took between My hands your face, loved Geraldine, And gazed into your eyes, and told The story ever new though old. You did not look away, but met My eyes with eyes whose lids were wet With tears of truth; and you did lean Your cheek to mine, sweet Geraldine,-- I never dreamed you would forget. The night-wind and the water sighed: And through the leaves, that stirred above, The moonbeams swooned with music of The dance--soft things in league with love: I never dreamed that you had lied. How all comes back now, Geraldine! The melody; the glimmering scene; Your angel face; and ev'n, between Your lawny breasts, the heart-shaped jewel,-- To which your breath gave fluctuant fuel,-- A rosy star of stormy fire; The snowy drift of your attire, Lace-deep and fragrant: and your hair, Disordered in the dance, held back By one gemmed pin,--a moonbeam there, Half-drowned within its night-like black. And I who sat beside you then, Seemed blessed above all mortal men. I loved you for the way you sighed; The way you said, "I love but you;" The smile with which your lips replied; Your lips, that from my bosom drew The soul; your looks, like undenied Caresses, that seemed naught but true: I loved you for the violet scent That clung about you as a flower; Your moods, where shine and shadow blent, An April-tide of sun and shower; You were my creed, my testament, Wherein I read of God's high power. Was it because the loving see Only what they desire shall be There in the well-belovéd's soul, Affection and affinity, That I beheld in you the whole Of my love's image? and believed You loved as I did? nor perceived 'T was but a mask, a mockery! Ah, Geraldine, lost Geraldine, That night of love, when first we met, You have forgotten, Geraldine-- I never dreamed you would forget. The Moated Manse I. And now once more we stood within the walls Of her old manor near the riverside; Dead leaves lay rotting in its empty halls, And here and there the ivy could not hide The year-old scars, made by the Royalists' balls, Around the doorway, where so many died In that last effort to defend the stair, When Rupert, like a demon, entered there. II. The basest Cavalier who yet wore spurs Or drew a sword, I count him; with his grave Eyes 'neath his plumed hat like a wolf's whom curs Rouse, to their harm, within a forest cave; And hair like harvest; and a voice like verse For smoothness. Ay, a handsome man and brave!-- Brave?--who would question it! although 't is true He warred with one weak woman and her few. III. Lady Isolda of the Moated Manse, Whom here, that very noon, it happened me To meet near her old home. A single glance Told me 't was she. I marveled much to see How lovely still she was! as fair, perchance, As when Red Rupert thrust her brutally,-- Her long hair loosened,--down the shattered stair, And cast her, shrieking, 'mid his followers there. IV. "She is for you! Take her! I promised it! She is for you!"--he shouted, as he flung Her in their midst. Then, on her poor hands (split, And beaten by his dagger when she clung Resisting him) and knees, she crept a bit Nearer his feet and begged for death. No tongue Can tell the way he turned from her and cursed, Then bade his men draw lots for which were first. V. I saw it all from that low parapet, Where, bullet-wounded in the hip and head, I lay face-upward in the whispering wet, Exhausted 'mid the dead and left for dead. We had held out two days without a let Against these bandits. You could trace with red, From room to room, how we resisted hard Since the great door crashed in to their petard. VI. The rain revived me, and I leaned with pain And saw her lying there, all soiled and splashed And miserable; on her cheek a stain, A dull red bruise, made when his hand had dashed Her down upon the stones; the wretched rain Dripped from her dark hair; and her hands were gashed.-- Oh, for a musket or a petronel With which to send his devil's soul to hell! VII. But helpless there I lay, no weapon near, Only the useless sword I could not reach His traitor's heart with, while I chafed to hear The laugh, the insult and the villain speech Of him to her. Oh, God! could I but clear The height between and, hanging like a leech, My fingers at his throat, there tear his base Vile tongue out, yea, and lash it in his face! VIII. But, badly wounded, what could I but weep With rage and pity of my helplessness And her misfortune! Could I only creep A little nearer so that she might guess I was not dead; that I my life would keep But to avenge her!--Oh, the wild distress Of that last moment when, half-dead, I saw Them mount and bear her swooning through the shaw. IX. Long time I lay unconscious. It befell Some woodsmen found me, having heard the sound Of fighting cease that, for two days, made dell And dingle echo; ventured on the ground For plunder; and it had not then gone well With me, I fear, had not their leader found That in some way I would repay his care; So bore me to his hut and nursed me there. X. How roughly kind he was. For weeks I hung 'Twixt life and death; health, like a varying, sick, And fluttering pendulum, now this way swung, Now that, until at last its querulous tick Beat out life's usual time, and slowly rung The long loud hours that exclaimed, "Be quick!-- Arise--Go forth!--Hear how her black wrongs call!-- Make them the salve to cure thy wounds withal!" XI. They were my balsam: for, ere autumn came, Weak still, but over eager to be gone, I took my leave of him. A little lame From that hip-wound, and somewhat thin and wan, I sought the village. Here I heard her name And shame's made one. How Rupert passed one dawn, And she among his troopers rode--astride Like any man--pale-faced and feverish-eyed. XII. Which way these took they pointed, and I went Like fire after. Oh, the thought was good That they were on before! And much it meant To know she lived still; she, whose image stood Ever before me, making turbulent Each heart-beat with her wrongs, that were fierce food Unto my hate that, "Courage!" cried, "Rest not! Think of her there, and let thy haste be hot!" XIII. But months passed by and still I had not found: Yet here and there, as wearily I sought, I caught some news: how he had held his ground Against the Roundhead troops; or how he'd fought Then fled, returned and conquered. Like a hound, Questing a boar, I followed; but was brought Never to see my quarry. Day by day It seemed that Satan kept him from my way. XIV. A woman rode beside him, so they said, A fair-faced wanton, mounted like a man-- Isolda!--my Isolda!--better dead, Yea, dead and damned! than thus the courtesan, Bold, unreluctant, of such men! A dread, That such should be, unmanned me. Doubt began To whisper at my heart.--But I was mad, To insult her with such thoughts, whose love I had. XV. At last one day I rested in a glade Near that same woodland which I lay in when Sore wounded; and, while sitting in the shade Of an old beech--what! did I dream, or men Like Rupert's own ride near me? and a maid-- Isolda or her spirit!--Wildly then I rose and, shouting, leapt upon my horse; Unsheathed my sword and rode across their course. XVI. Mainly I looked for Rupert, and by name Challenged him forth:--"Dog! dost thou hide behind?-- Insulter of women! Coward! save where shame And rapine call thee! God at last is kind, And my sword waits!"--Like an upbeating flame, My voice rose to a windy shout; and blind I seemed to sit, till, with an outstretched hand, Isolda rode before me from that band. XVII. "Gerald!" she cried; not as a heart surprised With gladness that the loved, deemed dead, still lives; But like the heart that long hath realized Only misfortune and to fortune gives No confidence, though it be recognized As good. She spoke: "Lo, we are fugitives. Rupert is slain. And I am going home." Then like a child asked simply, "Wilt thou come?... XVIII. "Oh, I have suffered, Gerald, oh, my God! What shame, what vileness! Once my soul was clean-- Stained and defiled behold it!--I have trod Sad ways of hell and horror. I have seen And lived all depths of lust. Yet, oh, my God! Blameless I hold myself of what hath been, Though through it all, yea, this thou too must know, I loved him! my betrayer and thy foe!" XIX. Sobbing she spoke as if but half awake, Her eyes far-fixed beyond me, far beyond All hope of mine.--So it was for his sake, His love, that she had suffered!... blind and fond, For what return!... And I to nurse a snake, And never dream its nature would respond With some such fang of venom! 'T was for this That I had ventured all, to find her his! XX. At first half-stunned I stood; then blood and brain, Like two stern judges, who had slept, awoke, Rose up and thundered, "Slay her!" Every vein And nerve responded, "Slay her at a stroke!"-- And I had done it, but my heart again, Like a strong captain in a tumult, spoke, And the fierce discord fell. And quietly I sheathed my sword and said, "I'll go with thee." XXI. But this was my reward for all I'd borne, My loyalty and love! To see her eyes Hollow from tears for him; her pale cheeks worn With grief for him; to know them all for lies, Her vows of faith to me; to come forlorn, Where I had hoped to come on Paradise, On Hell's black gulf; and, as if not enough, Soiled as she was and outcast, still to love! XXII. Then rode one ruffian from the rest, clay-flecked From spur to plume with hurry; seized my rein, And--"What art thou," demanded, "who hast checked Our way, and challenged?"--Then, with some disdain, Isolda, "Sir, my kinsman did expect Your captain here. What honor may remain To me I pledge for him. Hold off thy hands! He but attends me to the Moated Manse." XXIII. We rode in silence. And at twilight came Into the Moated Manse.--Great clouds had grown Up in the West, on which the sunset's flame Lay like the hand of slaughter.--Very lone Its rooms and halls: a splintered door that, lame, Swung on one hinge; a cabinet o'erthrown; Or arras torn; or blood-stain turning wan, Showed us the way the battle once had gone. XXIV. We reached the tower-chamber towards the West, In which on that dark day she thought to hide From Rupert when, at last, 't was manifest We could not hold the Manse. There was no pride In her deep eyes now; nor did scorn invest Her with such dignity as once defied Him bursting in to find her standing here Prepared to die like some dog-hunted deer. XXV. She took my hand, and, as if naught of love Had ever been between us, said,--"All know The madness of that day when with his glove He struck then slew my brother, and brought woe On all our house; and thou, incensed above The rest, came here, and made my foe thy foe. But he had left. 'T was then I promised thee My hand, but, ah! my heart was gone from me. XXVI. "Yea, he had won me, this same Rupert, when He was our guest.--Thou know'st how gallantry And beauty can make heroes of all men To us weak women!--And so secretly I vowed to be his wife. It happened then My brother found him in some villainy; The insult followed; he was killed ... and thou Dost still remember how I made a vow. XXVII. "But still this man pursued me, and I held Firm to my vow, albeit I loved him still, Unknown to all, with all the love unquelled Of first impressions, and against my will. At last despair of winning me compelled Him to the oath he swore: He would not kill, But take me living and would make my life A living death. No man should make me wife. XXVIII. The war, that now consumes us, did, indeed, Give him occasion.--I had not been warned, When down he came against me in the lead Of his marauders. With thy help I scorned His mad attacks two days. I would not plead Nor parley with him, who came hoofed and horned, Like Satan's self in soul, and, with his aid, Took this strong house and kept the oath he made. XXIX. "Months passed. Alas! it needs not here to tell What often thou hast heard--Of how he led His troopers here now there; nor what befell Me of dishonor. Oft I wished me dead, Loathing my life, than which the nether hell Hath less of horror ... So we fought or fled From place to place until a year had passed, And Parliament forces hemmed us in at last. XXX. "Yea, I had only lived for this--to right With death my wrongs sometime. And love and hate Contended in my bosom when, that night Before the fight that should decide our fate, I entered where he slept. There was no light Save of the stars to see by. Long and late I leaned above him there, yet could not kill-- Hate raised the dagger but love held it still. XXXI. "The woman in me conquered. What a slave To our emotions are we! To relent At this long-waited moment!--Wave on wave Of pitying weakness swept me, and I bent And kissed his face. Then prayed to God; and gave My trust to God; and left to God th' event.-- I never looked on Rupert's face again, For in that morning's combat--he was slain. XXXII. "Out of defeat escaped some scant three score Of all his followers. And night and day They fled; and while the Roundheads pressed them sore, And in their road, good as a fortress, lay The Moated Manse, where their three score or more Might well hold out, I pointed them the way. And they are come, amid its wrecks to end The crime begun here.--Thou must go, my friend! XXXIII. "Go quickly! For the time approaches when Destruction must arrive.--Oh, well I know All thou wouldst say to me.--What boots it then?-- I tell thee thou must go, that thou must go!-- Yea, dost thou think I'd have thee die 'mid men Like these, for such an one as I!--No! no!-- Thy life is clean. Thou shalt not cast away Thy clean life for my soiled one. Go, I pray!" XXXIV. She ceased. I spoke--I know not what it was. Then took her hand and kissed it and so said-- "Thou art my promised wife. Thou hast no cause That is not mine. I love thee. We will wed. I love thee. Come!"--A moment did she pause, Then shook her head and sighed, "My heart is dead. This can not be. Behold, that way is thine. I will not let thee share this way that's mine." XXXV. Then turning from me ere I could prevent Passed like a shadow from the shadowy room, Leaving my soul in shadow ... Naught was meant By my sweet flower of love then! bloom by bloom I'd watched it wither; then its fragrance went, And naught was left now.--It was dark as doom, And bells were tolling far off through the rain, When from that house I turned my face again. XXXVI. Then in the night a trumpet; and the dull Close thud of horse and clash of Puritan arms; And glimmering helms swept by me. Sorrowful I stood and waited till upon the storm's Black breast, the Manse, a burning carbuncle, Blazed like a battle-beacon, and alarms Of onslaught clanged around it; then, like one Who bears with him God's curse, I galloped on. The Forester I met him here at Ammendorf one Spring. It was the end of April and the Harz, Veined to their ruin-crested summits, seemed One pulse of tender green and delicate gold, Beneath a heaven that was like the face Of girlhood waking into motherhood. Along the furrowed meadow, freshly ploughed, The patient oxen, loamy to the knees, Plodded or lowed or snuffed the fragrant soil; And in each thorntree hedge the wild bird sang A song to Spring, made of its own wild heart And soul, that heard the dairy-maiden May's Heart beating like a star at break of day, As, kissing ripe the blossoms, she drew near, Her mouth's sweet rose all dew-drops and perfume. Here at this inn and underneath this tree We took our wine, the morning prismed in its Flame-angled gold.--A goodly vintage that! Tang with the ripeness of full twenty years. Rare! I remember!--wine that spurred the blood, That brought the heart glad to the limbered lip, And made the eyes unlatticed casements where A man's true soul you could not help but see. As royal a Rhenish, I will vouch to say, As that, old legends tell, which Necromance And Magic keep, gnome-guarded, in huge casks Of antique make deep in the Kyffhäuser, The Cellar of the Knights near Sittendorf.-- So solaced of that wine we sat an hour. He told me his intent in coming here. His name was Rudolf; and his native home, Franconia; but no word of parentage: Only his mind to don the buff and green And live a forester with us and be Enfellowed in the Duke of Brunswick's train, And for the Duke's estate even now was bound. Tall was he for his age and strong and brown, And lithe of limb; and with a face that seemed Hope's counterpart--but with the eyes of doubt; Deep restless disks, instinct with gleaming night, That seemed to say, "We're sure of earth, at least For some short space, my friend; but afterward-- Nay! ransack not to-morrow till to-day, Lest it engulf thy joy before it is!"-- And when he spoke, the fire in his eyes Worked stealthy as a hunted animal's; Or like the Count von Hackelnburg's that turn, Feeling the unseen presence of a fiend. Then, as it chanced, old Kurt had come that morn With some six of his jerkined foresters From the Thuringian forest; wet with dew, And fresh as morn with early travel; bound For Brunswick, Dummburg and the Hakel passed. Chief huntsman he then to our lord the Duke, And father of the loveliest maiden here In Ammendorf, the sunny Ilsabe: Her mother dead, the gray-haired father prized His daughter more than all that men hold dear; His only happiness, who was beloved Of all as Lora of Thuringia was, For gentle ways that spoke a noble soul, Winning all hearts to love her and to praise, As might a great and beautiful thought that holds Us by the simplest words.--Her eyes were blue As the high influence of a summer day. Her hair,--serene and braided over brows White as a Harz dove's wing,--was auburn brown, And deep as mists the sun has drenched with gold. And her young presence--well, 't was like a song, A far Tyrolean melody of love, Heard on an Alpine path at close of day When shepherds homeward lead their tinkling flocks. And when she left, being with you awhile,-- How shall I say it?--'t was as when one hath Beheld an Undine by the moonlit Rhine, Who, ere the mind adjusts a thought, is gone, And in your soul you wonder if a dream. Some thirty years ago it was;--and I, Commissioner of the Duke--(no sinecure I can assure you)--had scarce reached the age Of thirty,--that we sat here at our wine; And 't was through me that Rudolf,--whom at first, From some rash words dropped then in argument, The foresterhood was like to be denied,-- Was then enfellowed. "Yes," said I, "he's young. Kurt, he is young; but see, a wiry frame; A chamois footing and a face for deeds; An eye that likes me not; too quick to turn; But that may be the restless soul within; A soul perhaps with virtues that have been Severely tried and could not stand the test; These be thy care, Kurt; and if not too deep In vices of the flesh, discover them, As divers bring lost riches up from ooze. Thou hast a daughter; let him be thy son." A year thereafter was it that I heard Of Rudolf's passion for Kurt's Ilsabe; Then their betrothal. And it was from this,-- Good Mother Mary! how she haunts me still! Sweet Ilsabe! whose higher womanhood, True as the touchstone which philosophers feign Transmutes to gold base metals it may touch, Had turned to good all evil in this man,-- Surmised I of the excellency which Refinement of her purer company, And contact with her innocence, had resolved His fiery nature to, conditioning slave. And so I came from Brunswick--as, you know, Is custom of the Duke or, by his seal Commissioned proxy, his commissioner-- To test the marksmanship of Rudolf, who Succeeded Kurt with marriage of his child, An heir of Kuno.--He?--Greatgrandfather Of Kurt; and of this forestkeepership The first possessor; thus established here-- Or this the tale they tell on winter nights: Kuno, once in the Knight of Wippach's train, Rode on a grand hunt with the Duke, who came,-- Grandfather of the father of our Duke,-- With much magnificence of knights and squires, Great velvet-vestured nobles, cloaked and plumed, To hunt Thuringian deer. Then morn,--too quick To bid good-morrow,--was too slow for these, And on the wind-trod hills recumbent yawned Disturbed an hour too soon; all sleepy-eyed, Like some young milkmaid whom the cock hath roused, Who sits and rubs stiff eyes that still will close. Horns sang and deer-hounds tugged a whimpering leash, Or, loosened, bounded through the baying glens: And ere the mountain mists, compact of white, Broke wild before the azure spears of day, The far-off hunt, that woke the woods to life, Seemed but the heart-beat of the ancient hills. And then, near noon, within a forest brake, The ban-dogs roused a red gigantic stag, Lashed to whose back with gnarly-knotted cords, And borne along like some pale parasite, A man shrieked: tangle-bearded, and wild hair A mane of forest-burs. The man himself, Emaciated and half-naked from The stag's mad flight through headlong rocks and trees, One bleeding bruise, with eyes like holes of fire. For such the law then: when the peasant chased Or slew the dun deer of his tyrant lords, If seized, as punishment the withes and spine Of some strong stag, a gift to him of game, Enough till death--death in the antlered herd, Or slow starvation in the haggard hills. Then was the great Duke glad, and forthwith cried To all his hunting train a rich reward For him who slew the stag and saved the man, But death for him who slew both man and stag. So plunged the hunt after the hurrying slot, A shout and glimmer through the sounding woods,-- Like some mad torrent that the hills have loosed With death for goal.--'T was late; and none had risked That shot as yet,--too desperate the risk Beside the poor life and a little gold,-- When this young Kuno, with fierce eyes, wherein Hunt and impatience kindled reckless flame, Cried, "Has the dew then made our powder wet? Or have we left our marksmanship at home? Here's for its heart! the Fiend direct my ball!"-- And fired into a covert deeply packed, An intertangled wall of matted night, Wherein the eye might vainly strive and strive To pierce one fathom, earn one foot beyond. But, ha! the huge stag staggered from the brake Hit full i' the heart. And that wan wretch, unbound, Was ta'en and cared for. Then his grace, the Duke, Charmed with the eagle aim, called Kuno up, And there to him and his forever gave The forestkeepership. But envious tongues Were soon at wag; and whispered went the tale Of how the shot was free, and how the balls Used by young Kuno were free bullets--which To say is: Lead by magic moulded, in The influence and directed, of the Fiend. Of some effect these tales, and had some force Even with the Duke, who lent an ear so far As to ordain Kuno's descendants all To proof of skill ere their succession to The father's office. Kurt himself hath shot The silver ring out o' the popinjay's beak-- A good shot he, you see, who would succeed. Of these enchanted bullets let me speak: There may be such; our Earth has things as strange, Perhaps, and stranger, that we doubt not of, While we behold, not only 'neath the thatch Of Ignorance's hovel, but within The pictured halls of Wisdom's palaces, How Superstition sits an honored guest. A cross-way let it be among the hills; A cross-way in a solitude of pines; And on the lonely cross-way you must draw A blood-red circle with a bloody sword; And round the circle, runic characters, Gaunt and satanic; here a skull, and there A scythe and cross-bones, and an hour-glass here; And in the centre, fed with coffin-wood, Stol'n from the grave of one, a murderer, A smouldering fire. Eleven of the clock The first ball leaves the mold--the sullen lead Mixed with three bullets that have hit their mark, And blood, the wounded Sacramental Host Stolen, and hence unhallowed, oozed, when shot Fixed to a riven pine. Ere twelve o'clock With never a word until that hour sound, Must all the balls be cast; and these must be In number three and sixty; three of which The Fiend's dark agent, demon Sammael, Claims for his master and stamps for his own To hit aside their mark, askew for harm. The other sixty shall not miss their mark. No cry, no word, no whisper, even though Vague, gesturing shapes, that loom like moonlit mists, Their faces human but with animal forms, Rise thick around and threaten to destroy. No cry, no word, no whisper should there come, Weeping, a wandering shadow like the girl You love, or loved, now lost to you, her eyes Hollow with tears; all palely beckoning With beautiful arms, or censuring; her face Sad with a desolate love; who, if you speak Or waver from that circle--hideous change!-- Shrinks to a wrinkled hag, whose harpy hands Shall tear you limb from limb with horrible mirth. Nor be deceived if some far midnight bell Strike that anticipated hour; nor leave By one short inch the circle, for, unseen Though now they be, Hell's minions still are there, Watching with flaming eyes to seize your soul. But when the hour of midnight sounds, be sure You have your bullets, neither more nor less; For if through fear one more or less you have, Your soul is forfeit to Hell's majesty.-- Then while the hour of midnight strikes, will come A noise of galloping hoofs and outriders, Shouting; six midnight steeds,--their nostrils, pits Of burning blood,--postilioned, roll a stage, Black and with groaning wheels of spinning fire: "Room there!--ho! ho!--who bars the mountain-way? On over him!"--But fear not, nor fare forth; 'T is but the last trick of your bounden slave. And ere the red moon rushes through the clouds And dives again, high the huge leaders leap, Their fore-hoofs fire, and their eye-balls flame, And, spun a spiral spark into the night, Whistling the phantom flies and fades away. Some say there comes no stage; that Hackelnburg, Wild-huntsman of the Harz, comes dark as storm, With rain and wind and demon dogs of Hell, The terror of his hunting-horn, an owl, And the dim deer he hunts, rush on before; The forests crash, and whirlwinds are the leaves, And all the skies a-thunder, as he hurls Straight on the circle, horse and hounds and stag. And at the last, plutonian-cloaked, there comes, Upon a stallion gaunt and lurid black, The minister of Satan, Sammael, Who greets you, and informs you, and assures. Enough! these wives'-tales told, to what I've seen: To Ammendorf I came; and Rudolf here With Kurt and his assembled men, I met. The abundant year,--like some sweet wife,--a-smile At her brown baby, Autumn, in her arms, Stood 'mid the garnered harvests of her fields Dreaming of days that pass like almoners Scattering their alms in minted gold of flowers; Of nights, that forest all the skies with stars, Wherethrough the moon--bare-bosomed huntress--rides, One cloud before her like a flying fawn. Then I proposed the season's hunt; till eve The test of Rudolf's skill postponed, at which He seemed impatient. And 't was then I heard How he an execrable marksman was; And tales that told of near, incredible shots, That missed their mark; or how his flint-lock oft Flashed harmless powder, while the curious deer Stood staring; as in pity of such aim Bidding him try his marksmanship again. Howbeit, he that day acquitted him Of all this gossip; in that day's long hunt Missing no shot, however rashly made Or distant through the intercepting trees. And the piled, various game brought down of all Good marksmen of Kurt's train had not sufficed, Doubled, nay, trebled, there to match his heap. And marvelling the hunters saw, nor knew How to excuse them. My indulgence giv'n, Some told me that but yesterday old Kurt Had made his daughter weep and Rudolf frown, By vowing end to their betrothéd love, Unless that love developed better aim Against the morrow's test; his ancestors' High fame should not be tarnished. So he railed; And bowed his gray head and sat moodily; But looking up, forgave all when he saw Tears in his daughter's eyes and Rudolf gone Out in the night black with approaching storm. Before this inn, yonder and here, they stood, The holiday village come to view the trial: Fair maidens and their comely mothers with Their sweethearts and their husbands. And I marked Kurt and his daughter here; his florid face All jubilant at Rudolf's great success; Hers, radiant with happiness; for this Her marriage eve--so had her father said-- Should Rudolf come successful from the hunt. So pleased was I with what I'd seen him do, The trial of skill superfluous seemed, and so Was on the bare brink of announcing, when Out of the western heaven's deepening red,-- Like a white message dropped by rosy lips,-- A wild dove clove the luminous winds and there, Upon that limb, a peaceful moment sat. Then I, "Thy rifle, Rudolf! pierce its head!" Cried pointing, "and chief-forester art thou!"-- Why did he falter with a face as strange As a dark omen? did his soul foresee What was to be with tragic prescience?-- What a bad dream it all seems now!--Again I see him aim. Again I hear the cry, "My dove! O Rudolf, do not kill my dove!" And from the crowd, like some sweet dove herself, A fluttering whiteness, came our Ilsabe-- Too late! the rifle cracked ... The unhurt dove Rose, beating frightened wings--but Ilsabe!... The sight! the sight!... lay smitten; a red stain, Sullying the pureness of her bridal bodice, Showed where the ball had pierced her through the heart. And Rudolf?--Ah, of him you still would know?-- When he beheld this thing that he had done, Why he went mad--I say--but others not. An hour he raved of how her life had paid For the unholy bullets he had used, And how his soul was three times lost and damned. I say that he went mad and fled forthwith Into the haunted Harz.--Some say, to die The prey of demons of the Dummburg ruin. I, one of those less superstitious, say, He in the Bodé--from that blackened rock,-- Whereon were found his hunting-cap and gun,-- The Devil's Dancing Place, did leap and die. My Lady of Verne It all comes back as the end draws near; All comes back like a tale of old! Shall I tell you all? Will you lend an ear? You, with your face so stern and cold; You, who have found me dying here ... Lady Leona's villa at Verne-- You have walked its terraces, where the fount And statue gleam and the fluted urn; Its world-old elms, that are avenues gaunt Of shadow and flame when the West is a-burn. 'T is a lonely region of tarns and trees, And hollow hills that circle the West; Haunted of rooks and the far-off sea's Immemorial vague unrest; A land of sorrowful memories. A gray sad land, where the wind has its will, And the sun its way with the fruits and flowers; Where ever the one all night is shrill, And ever the other all day brings hours Of glimmering silence that dead days fill. A gray sad land, where her girlhood grew To womanhood proud, that the hill-winds seemed To give their heart, like melody, to; And the stars, their soul, like a dream undreamed-- The only glad thing that the sad land knew. My Lady, you know, how nobly born! Haughty of form, with a head that rose Like a dream of empire; love and scorn Made haunts of her eyes; and her lips were bows Whence pride imperious flashed flower and thorn. And I--oh, I was nobody: one Her worshiper only; who chose to be Silent, seeing that love alone Was his only badge of nobility, Set in his heart's escutcheon. How long ago does the springtime look, When we wandered away to the hills! the hills,-- Like the land in the tale in the fairy-book,-- Covered with gold of the daffodils, And gemmed with the crocus by brae and brook! When I gathered a branch from a hawthorn tree, For her hair or bosom, from boughs that hung Odorous of heaven and purity; And she thanked me smiling; then merrily sung, Laughingly sung, while she looked at me:-- "There dwelt a princess over the sea-- Right fair was she, right fair was she-- Who loved a squire of low degree, But married a king of Brittany-- Ah, woe is me! "And it came to pass on the wedding-day-- So people say, so people say-- That they found her dead in her bridal array, Dead, and her lover beside her lay-- Ah, well-away! "A sour stave for your sweets," she said, Pressing the blossoms against her lips: Then petal by petal the branch she shred, Snowing the blooms from her finger-tips, Tossing them down for her feet to tread. What to her was the look I gave Of love despised! though she seemed to start, Seeing, and said, with a quick hand-wave, "Why, one would think that _that_ was your heart," While her face with a sudden thought grew grave. But I answered nothing. And so to her home We came in the twilight; falling clear, With a few first stars and a moon's curved foam, Over the hush of meadow and mere, Whence the boom of the bittern would often come. Would you think that she loved me?--Who can say?-- What a riddle unread was she to me!-- When I kissed her fingers and turned away I wanted to speak, but--what cared she, Though her eyes looked soft and she begged me stay! Though she lingered to watch me--that might be A slim moon-beam or the evening haze,-- But never my Lady's drapery Or wistful face!--in the ivy maze.... Leona of Verne--why, what cared she! So the days went by, and the Summer wore Her hot heart out; and, a mighty slayer, The Autumn harried the land and shore, And the world was red with his wrecks; but grayer That land with the ghosts of the nevermore. The sheaves of the Summer had long been bound; The harvests of Autumn had long been past; And the snows of the Winter lay deep around, When the dark news came and I knew at last; And the reigning woe of my heart was crowned. So I sought her here, the young Earl's bride; In the ancient room at the oriel dreaming, Pale as the blooms in her hair; and, wide, Her robe's rich satin, flung stormily, gleaming, Like shimmering silver, twilight-dyed. I marked as I stole to her side that tears Were vaguely large in her beautiful eyes; That the loops of pearls on her throat, and years Old lace on her bosom were heaved with sighs; So I spoke what I thought--"Then, it appears"-- And stopped with, it seemed, my soul in my gaze-- "That you are not happy, Leona of Verne? There is that at your heart which--well, betrays These mocking mummeries.--Live and learn!-- And this is the truth that the poet says:-- "'I went to my love and I told with my heart, In words of the soul, that are silent in speech, All of my passion, too sacred for art; But she heard me not--for I could not reach Her in that world of which she is part.'-- "That world, where I saw you as one afar Sees palms and waters, and knows that sands, Pitiless sands, before him are; Yet follows ever with helpless hands Till he sinks at last.--You were my star, "My hope, my heaven!--I loved you!... Life Is less than nothing to me!"... She turned, With a wild look, saying--"Now I am his wife You come and tell me!--Indeed you are learn'd In the language of hearts that's unheard!"... A Knife, As she ceased and leaned on a cabinet,-- A curve of scintillant steel, keen, cold,-- Fell icily clashing; some curio met Among Asian antiques, bronze and gold, Mystical, curiously graven and set. A Bactrian dagger, whose slightest prick Through its ancient poison was death, I knew; If true that she loved me--then!--And quick To the unspoken thought she replied, "'T is true! I have loved you long, and my soul was sick, "Sick for the love that has made me weak, Weak to your will even now!"--And more She said, in my arms, that I shall not speak-- And the dagger there on the polished floor Ever her eyes, while she spoke, would seek. "'And it came to pass on the wedding-day'"-- Then my lips for a moment were crushed to hers-- "'That they found her dead in her bridal array,'" She sang; then said, "You finish the verse! Finish the song, for you know the way." And I whispered "yes," for my mind had thought Her own thought through--that life were a hell To her as to me,--So the blade I caught With a sudden hand; and she leaned, and--well, What a little wound, and the blood it brought To crimson her bosom!--I set her there In that carven chair; then turned the blade,-- With its glittering haft one savage glare Of gold and jewels, wildly inlaid,-- To my breast, for the poisonous point rent bare. A stain of blood on her bosom, and one Black red o'er my heart.--You see, 't is good To die so for love!... Does the sinking sun, Through the dull vast west burst banked with blood?-- Or is it that life will at last have done?... So you are her husband? and--well, you see, You see she is dead ... But your face, how white! --Is it with hate or with misery?-- What matters it now!--For, at last, the night Falls and the silence covers me. An Old Tale Re-told From the terrace here, where the hills indent, You can see the uttermost battlement Of the castle there; the Cliffords' home; Where the seasons go and the seasons come And never a footstep else doth fall Save the prowling fox's; the ancient hall Echoes no voice save the owlet's call: Its turret chambers are homes for the bat; And its courts are tangled and wild to see; And where in the cellar was once the rat, The viper and toad move stealthily. Long years have passed since the place was burned, And he sailed to the wars in France and earned The name that he bears of the bold and true On his tomb. Long years, since my lord, Sir Hugh, Lived; and I was his favorite page, And the thing then happened; and he of an age When a man will love and be loved again, Or hie to the wars or a monastery, Or toil till he conquer his heart's sore pain, Or drink and forget it and finally bury. I was his page. And often we fared Through the Clare demesnes, in autumn, hawking; If the Baron had known, how they would have glared 'Neath their bushy brows, those eyes of mocking!-- That last of the Strongbows, Richard, I mean-- And growling some six of his henchmen lean To mount and after this Clifford and hang With his crop-eared page to the nearest oak, How he would have cursed us while he spoke! For Clare and Clifford had ever a fang In the other's side ... And I hear the clang Of his rage in the hall when the hawker told-- If he told!--how we met on the autumn wold His daughter, sweet Clara of Clare, the day Her hooded tiercel its brails did burst, And trailing its jesses, came flying our way-- An untrained haggard the falconer cursed While he tried to secure:--as the eyas flew Slant, low and heavily over us, Hugh,-- Who saw it coming, and had just then cast His peregrine hawk at a heron quarry,-- In his saddle rising, so, as it passed, By the jesses caught, and to her did carry, Where she stood near the wood. Her face flushed rose With the glad of the meeting. No two foes Her eyes and my Lord's, I swear, who saw 'Twas love from the start. And I heard him speak Some words; then he knelt; and the sombre shaw, With the rust of the autumn waste and bleak, Grew spring with her smile, as the hawk she took On her lily wrist, where it pruned and shook Its ragged wings. Then I saw him seize The hand, that she reached to him, long and white, As she smilingly bade him rise from his knees-- When he kissed its fingers, her eyes grew bright. But her cheeks grew pallid when, lashing through The woodland there, with a face a-flare With the sting of the wind, and his gipsy hair Flying, the falconer came, and two Or three of the people of Castle Clare. And the leaves of the autumn made a frame For the picture there in the morning's flame. What was said in that moment, I do not know, That moment of meeting, between those lovers; But whatever it was, 't was whispered low, And soft as a leaf that swings and hovers, A twinkling gold, when the leaves are yellow. And her face with the joy was still aglow, When down through the wood that burly fellow Came with his frown, and made a pause In the pulse of their words. My lord, Sir Hugh, Stood with the soil on his knee. No cause Had he, but his hanger he partly drew, Then clapped it sharp in its sheath again, And bowed to my Lady, and strode away; And mounting his horse, with a swinging rein Rode with a song in his heart all day. He loved and was loved, I knew; for, look! All other sports for the chase he forsook. And strange that he never went to hawk, Or hunt, but Clara would meet him there In the Strongbow forest! I know the rock, With its fern-filled moss, by the bramble lair, Were oft and again he met--by chance, Shall I say?--the daughter of Clare; as fair Of face as a queen in an old romance, Who waits with her sweet face pale; her hair Night-deep; and eyes dove-gray with dreams;-- By the fountain-side where the statue gleams And the moonbeam lolls in the lily white,-- For the knightly lover who comes at night. Heigho! they ceased, those meetings; I wot, Betrayed to the Baron by some of his crew Of menials who followed and saw and knew. For she loved too well to have once forgot The time and the place of their trysting true. "Why and when?" would ask Sir Hugh In the labored letters he used to lock-- The lovers' post--in a coigne of that rock. She used to answer, but now did not. But nearing Yule, love got them again A twilight tryst--through frowardness sure!-- They met. And that day was gray with rain, Or snow: and the wind did ever endure A long bleak moaning thorough the wood, That chapped i' the cheek and smarted the blood; And a brook in the forest went throb and throb, And over it all was the wild-beast sob Of the rushing boughs like a thing pursued. And then it was that he learned how she, (God's blood! how it makes my old limbs quiver To think what a miserable tyrant he-- The Baron Richard--aye and ever To his daughter was!) forsooth! must wed With an eastern earl, a Lovell: to whom (Would God o' his mercy had struck him dead!) Clara of Clare when only a child,-- With a face like a flower, that blooms in the wild Of the hills, and a soul like its soft perfume,-- Was given; to seal, or strengthen, some ties Of power and wealth--say bartered, then, Like the merest chattel. With tearful eyes And trembling lips she spoke; and when Her lover, the Clifford, had learned and heard,-- He'd have had her flee with him then, 'sdeath! In spite of them all! Let her speak the word, They would fly together; the Baron's men Might follow, and if ... and he touched his sword, It should answer! But she, while she seemed to stay, With a hand on her bosom, her heart's quick breath, Replied to his heat, "They would take and slay Thee who art life of me!--No! not thus Shall we fly! there's another way for us; A way that is sure; an only way; I have thought it out this many a day."-- The words that she spoke, how well I remember! As well as the mood o' that day of December, That bullied and blustered and seemed in league, Like a spiteful shrew, with the wind and snow, To drown the words of their sweet intrigue, With the boom of the boughs tossed to and fro. Her last words these, "By curfew sure, On Christmas eve, at the postern door." And we were there; with a led horse too; Armed for a journey I hardly knew Whither, but why, you well can guess. For often he whispered a certain name, The talisman of his happiness, That warmed his blood like a yule-log's flame. While we waited there, till its owner came, We saw how the castle's baronial girth, Like a giant's, loosed for reveling more, Shone; and we heard the wassail and mirth Where the mistletoe hung in the hearth's red roar, And the holly brightened the weaponed wall Of ancient oak in the banqueting hall. And the spits, I trow, by the scullions turned O'er the snoring logs, rich steamed and burned, While the whole wild-boar and the deer were roasted, And the half of an ox and the roe-buck haunches; While tuns of ale, that the cellars boasted, And casks of sack, were broached for paunches Of vassals who reveled in stable and hall. The song of the minstrel; the yeomen's quarrel O'er the dice and the drink; and the huntsman's bawl In the baying kennels, its hounds a-snarl O'er the bones of the banquet; now loud, now low, We could hear where we crouched in the drifting snow. Was she long? did she come?... By the postern we Like shadows waited. My lord, Sir Hugh, Spoke, pointing a tower, "That casement, see? When a stealthy light in its slit burns blue And signals thrice slowly, thus--'t is she." And close to his breast his gaberdine drew, For the wind it whipped and the snow beat through. Did she come?--We had waited an hour or twain, When the taper flashed in the central pane, And flourished three times and vanished so. And under the arch of the postern's portal, Holding the horses, we stood in the snow, Stiff with the cold. Ah, me! immortal Minutes we waited, breath-bated, and listened Shivering there in the hiss of the gale: The parapets whistled, the angles glistened, And the night around seemed one black wail Of death, whose ominous presence over The stormy battlements seemed to hover. Said my lord, Sir Hugh,--to himself he spoke,-- "She feels for the spring in the sliding panel 'Neath the arras, hid in the carven oak. It opens. The stair, like a well's dark channel, Yawns; and the draught makes her taper slope. Wrapped deep in her mantle she stoops, now puts One foot on the stair; now a listening pause As nearer and nearer the mad search draws Of the thwarted castle. No smallest hope That they find her now that the panel shuts!... If the wind, that howls like a tortured thing, Would throttle itself with itself, then I Might hear how her hurrying footsteps ring Down the hollow ... there! 't is her fingers try The postern's bolts that the rust makes cling."-- But ever some whim of the storm that shook A clanging ring or a creaking hook In buttress or wall. And we waited, numb With the cold, till dawn--but she did not come. I must tell you why and have done: 'T is said, On the brink of the marriage she fled the side Of the guests and the bridegroom there; she fled With a mischievous laugh,--"I'll hide! I'll hide! Seek! and be sure that you find!"--so led A long search after her; but defied All search for--a score and ten long years.... Well, the laughter of Yule was turned to tears For them and for us. We saw the glare Of torches that hurried from chamber to stair; And we heard the castle re-echo her name, But neither to them nor to us she came. And that was the last of Clara of Clare. That winter it was, a month thereafter, That the home of the Cliffords, roof and rafter, Burned.--I could swear 't was the Strongbow's doing, Were I sure that he knew of the Clifford's wooing His daughter; and so, by the Rood and Cross! Had burned Hugh's home to avenge his loss.-- So over the channel to France with his King, The Black Prince, sailed to the wars--to deaden The ache of the mystery--Hugh that spring, And fell at Poitiers; for his loss made leaden His heart; and his life was a weary sadness, So he flung it away in a moment's madness. And the Baron died. And the bridegroom?--well, Unlucky was he in truth!--to tell Of him there is nothing. The Baron died, The last of the Strongbows he--gramercy! And the Clare estate with its wealth and pride Devolved to the Bloets, Walter and Percy. And years went by. And it happened that they Ransacked the old castle; and so, one day, In a lonesome tower uprummaged a chest, From Flanders; of ebon, and wildly carved All over with things: a sinister crest, And evil faces, distorted and starved; Fast-locked with a spring, which they forced and, lo! When they opened it--Death, like a lady dressed, Grinned up at their terror!--but no, not so! A skeleton, jeweled and laced, and wreathed With flowers of dust; and a miniver Around it clasped, that the ruin sheathed Of a once rich raiment of silk and fur. I'd have given my life to hear him tell, The courtly Clifford, how this befell! He'd have known how it was: For, you see, in groping For the secret spring of that panel, hoping And fearing as nearer and nearer drew The search of retainers, why, out she blew The tell-tale taper; and, seeing this chest, Would hide her a minute in it, mayhap, Till the hurry had passed; but the death-lock, pressed By the lid's great weight, closed fast with a snap, Ere her heart was aware of the fiendish trap. The Water Witch See! the milk-white doe is wounded. He will follow as it bounds Through the woods. His horn has sounded. Echoing, for his men and hounds. But no answering bugle blew. He has lost his retinue For the shapely deer that bounded Past him when his bow he drew. Not one hound or huntsman follows. Through the underbrush and moss Goes the slot; and in the hollows Of the hills, that he must cross, He has lost it. He must fare Over rocks where she-wolves lair; Wood-pools where the wild-boar wallows; So he leaves his good steed there. Through his mind then flashed an olden Legend told him by the monks:-- Of a girl, whose hair is golden, Haunting fountains and the trunks Of the woodland; who, they say, Is a white doe all the day; But when woods are night-enfolden Turns into an evil fay. Then the story oft his teacher Told him; of a mountain lake Demons dwell in; vague of feature, Human-like, but each a snake, She is queen of.--Did he hear Laughter at his startled ear? Or a bird? And now, what creature Is it, or the wind, stirs near? Fever of the hunt. This water, Murmuring here, will cool his head. Through the forest, fierce as slaughter, Slants the sunset; ruby red Are the drops that slip between His cupped hands, while on the green,-- Like the couch of some wild daughter Of the forest,--he doth lean. But the runnel, bubbling, dripping, Seems to bid him to be gone; As with crystal words, and tripping Steps of sparkle luring on. Now a spirit in the rocks Calls him; now a face that mocks, From behind some bowlder slipping, Laughs at him with lilied locks. So he follows through the flowers, Blue and gold, that blossom there; Thridding twilight-haunted bowers Where each ripple seems the bare Beauty of white limbs that gleam Rosy through the running stream; Or bright-shaken hair, that showers Starlight in the sunset's beam. Till, far in the forest, sleeping Like a luminous darkness, lay A deep water, wherein, leaping, Fell the Fountain of the Fay, With a singing, sighing sound, As of spirit things around, Musically laughing, weeping In the air and underground. Not a ripple o'er it merried: Like the round moon 'neath a cloud, In its rocks the lake lay buried: And strange creatures seemed to crowd Its dark depths; vague limbs and eyes To the surface seemed to rise Spawn-like and, as formless, ferried Through the water, shadow-wise. Foliage things with human faces, Demon-dreadful, pale and wild As the forms the lightning traces On the clouds the storm has piled, Seeming now to draw to land, Now away--Then up the strand Comes a woman; and she places On his arm a spray-white hand. Ah! an untold world of sorrow Were her eyes; her hair, a place Whence the moon its gold might borrow; And a dream of ice her face: 'Round her hair and throat in rims Pearls of foam hung; and through whims Of her robe, as breaks the morrow, Shone the rose-light of her limbs. Who could help but look with gladness On such beauty? though within, Deep within the beryl sadness Of those eyes, the serpent sin Coil?--When she hath placed her cheek Chilly upon his, and weak, With love longing and its madness, Is his will grown, then she'll speak: "Dost thou love me?"--"If surrender Is to love thee, then I love."-- "Hast no fear then?"--"In the splendor Of thy gaze who knows thereof? Yet I fear--I fear to lose Thee, thy love!"--"And thou dost choose Aye to be my heart's defender?"-- "Take me. I am thine to use." "Follow then. Ah, love, no lowly Home I give thee."--With fixed eyes, To the water's edge she slowly Drew him.... And he did surmise 'Twas her lips on his, until O'er his face the foam closed chill, Whisp'ring, and the lake unholy Rippled, rippled and was still. At Nineveh Written for my friend Walter S. Mathews. There was a princess once, who loved the slave Of an Assyrian king, her father; known At Nineveh as Hadria; o'er whose grave The sands of centuries have long been blown; Yet sooner shall the night forget its stars Than love her story:--How, unto his throne, One day she came, where, with his warriors, The king sat in the hall of audience, 'Mid pillared trophies of barbaric wars, And, kneeling to him, asked, "O father, whence Comes love and why?"--He, smiling on her, said,-- "O Hadria, love is of the gods, and hence Divine, is only soul-interpreted. But why love is, ah, child, we do not know, Unless 'tis love that gives us life when dead."-- And then his daughter, with a face aglow With all the love that clamored in her blood Its sweet avowal, lifted arms of snow, And, like Aurora's rose, before him stood, Saying,--"Since love is of the powers above, I love a slave, O Asshur! Let the good The gods have giv'n be sanctioned. Speak not of Dishonor and our line's ancestral dead! They are imperial dust. I live and love."-- Black as black storm then rose the king and said,-- A lightning gesture at her standing there,-- "Enough! ho, Rhana, strike me off her head!" And at the mandate, with his limbs half bare A slave strode forth. Majestic was his form As some young god's. He, gathering up her hair, Wound it three times around his sinewy arm. Then drew his sword. It for one moment shone A semicircling light, and, dripping warm, Lifting the head he stood before the throne. Then cried the despot, "By the horn of Bel! This was no child of mine!"--Like chiselled stone Still stood the slave, a son of Israel. Then striding towards the monarch, in his eye The wrath of heaven and the hate of hell, Shrieked, "Lust! I loved her! look on us and die!" Swifter than fire clove him to the brain. Then kissed the dead fair face of her held high, And crying, "Judge, O God, between us twain!" A thousand daggers in his heart, fell slain. How They Brought Aid to Bryan's Station During the siege of Bryan's Station, Kentucky, August 16, 1782, Nicholas Tomlinson and Thomas Bell, two inhabitants of the Fort, undertook to ride through the besieging Indian and Tory lines to Lexington, Ky., for aid. It happened also during this siege that the pioneer women of the Fort, when the water supply was exhausted, heroically carried water from a spring, at a considerable distance outside the palisades of the Station, to its inmates, under the very guns of the enemy. With saddles girt and reins held fast, Our rifles well in front, at last Tom Bell and I were mounted. The gate swung wide. We said, "Good-bye." No time for talk had Bell and I. One said, "God speed!" another, "Fly!" Then out we galloped. Live or die, We felt each moment counted. The trace, the buffaloes had worn, Stretched broad before us; and the corn And cane through which it wended, We knew for acres from the gate Hid Indian guile and Tory hate. We rode with hearts that seemed to wait For instant death; and on our fate The Station's fate depended. No rifle cracked. No creature stirred, As on towards Lexington we spurred Unflinchingly together. We reached the woods: no savage shout Of all the wild Wyandotte rout And Shawanese had yet rung out: But now and then an Indian scout Showed here a face and feather. We rode expecting death each stride From thicket depth or tree-trunk side, Where some red foe might huddle-- For well we knew that renegade, The blood-stained Girty, had not stayed His fiends from us, who rode for aid,-- The dastard he who had betrayed The pioneers of Ruddle. And when an arrow grazed my hair I did not turn, I did not spare To spur as men spur warward: A war-whoop rang this side a rock: Then painted faces swarmed, to block Our way, with brandished tomahawk And rifle: then a shout, a shock-- And we again rode forward. They followed; but 'twas no great while Before from them by some long mile Of forest we were sundered. We galloped on. I'd lost my gun; And Bell, whose girth had come undone, Rode saddleless. The summer sun Was up when into Lexington Side unto side we thundered. Too late. For Todd had left that day With many men. Decoyed away To Hoy's by some false story. And we must after. Bryan's needs Said, "On!" although our gallant steeds Were blown--Enough! we must do deeds! Must follow where our duty leads, Be it to death or glory. The way was wild and often barred By trees and rocks; and it was hard To keep our hearts from sinking; But thoughts of those we'd left behind Gave strength to muscle and to mind To help us onward through the blind Deep woods. And often we would find Ourselves of loved ones thinking. The hot stockade. No water left. The fierce attack. All hope bereft The powder-grimed defender. The war-cry and the groan of pain. All day the slanting arrow-rain Of fire from the corn and cane. The stern defence, but all in vain. And then at last--surrender. But not for Bryan's!--no! too well Must they remember what befell At Ruddle's and take warning. So thought we as, all dust and sweat, We rode with faces forward set, And came to Station Boone while yet An hour from noon ... We had not let Our horses rest since morning. Here Ellis met us with his men. They did not stop nor tarry then. That little band of lions; But setting out at once with aid, Right well you know how unafraid They charged the Indian ambuscade, And through a storm of bullets made Their entrance into Bryan's. And that is all I have to tell. No more the Huron's hideous yell Sounds to assault and slaughter.-- Perhaps to us some praise is due; But we are men, accustomed to Such dangers, which we often woo. Much more is due our women who Brought to the Station--water. On the Jellico Spur of the Cumberlands TO J. FOX, JR. You remember how the mist, When we climbed to Devil's Den, Pearly in the mountain glen, And above us, amethyst, Throbbed or circled? then away, Through the wildwoods opposite, Torn and scattered, morning-lit, Vanished into dewy gray?-- Vague as in romance we saw, From the fog, one riven trunk, Talon-like with branches shrunk, Thrust a monster dragon claw. And we climbed for hours through The dawn-dripping Jellicoes, To a wooded rock that shows Undulating leagues of blue Summits; mountain-chains that lie Dark with forests; bar on bar, Ranging their irregular Purple peaks beneath a sky Soft as slumber. Range on range Billow their enormous spines, Where the rocks and priestly pines Sit eternal, without change. We were sons of Nature then: She had taken us to her, Signalized by brier and burr, Something more to her than men: Pupils of her lofty moods, From her bloom-anointed looks, Wisdom of no man-made books Learned we in those solitudes: How the seed supplied the flower; How the sapling held the oak; How within the vine awoke The wild impulse still to tower; How in fantasy or mirth, Springing from her footsteps there, Curious fungi everywhere Bulged, exuded from the earth; Coral vegetable things, That the underworld exhaled, Bulbous, crystal-ribbed and scaled, Many colored and in rings, Like the Indian-Pipe that grew Pink and white in loamy cracks, Flowers of a natural wax, She had turned her fancy to.-- On that laureled precipice, Where the chestnuts dropped their burrs, Sweet with balsam of the firs, First we felt her mother kiss Full of heaven and the wind; While the forests, wood on wood, Murmured like a multitude Giving praise where none hath sinned.-- Freedom met us there; we saw Freedom giving audience; In her face the eloquence, Lightning-like, of love and law: Round her, with majestic hips, Lay the giant mountains; there Near her, cataracts tossed their hair, God and thunder on their lips.-- Oft an eagle, or a hawk, Or a scavenger, we knew Winged through altitudes of blue, By its shadow on the rock. Or a cloud of templed white Moved, a lazy berg of pearl, Through the sky's pacific swirl, Shot with cool cerulean light. So we dreamed an hour upon That warm rock the lichens mossed, While around us foliage tossed Coins, gold-minted of the sun: Then arose; and a ravine, Which a torrent once had worn, Made our roadway to the corn, In the valley, deep and green; And the farm house with its bees, Where old-fashioned flowers spun Gay rag-carpets in the sun, Hid among the apple trees. Here we watched the twilight fall; O'er Wolf-Mountain sunset made A huge rhododendron rayed Round the sun's cloud-centered ball. Then through scents of herb and soil, To the mining-camp we turned, In the twinkling dusk discerned With its white-washed homes of toil. Ah, those nights!--We wandered forth On some haunted mountain path, When the moon was late, and rathe The large stars, sowed south and north, Splashed with gold the purple skies; And the milky zodiac, Rolled athwart the belted black, Seemed a path to Paradise. And we walked or lingered till, In the valley-land beneath, Like the vapor of a breath Breathed in frost, arose the still Architecture of the mist: And the moon-dawn's necromance Touched the mist and made it glance Like a town of amethyst. Then around us, sharp and brusque, Night's shrill insects strident strung Instruments that buzzed and sung Pixy music of the dusk. And we seemed to hear soft sighs, And hushed steps of ghostly things, Fluttered feet or rustled wings, Moved before us. Fire-flies, Gleaming in the tangled glade, Seemed the eyes of warriors Stealing under watching stars To some midnight ambuscade; To the Indian village there, Wigwamed with the mist, that slept By the woodland side, whence crept Shadowy Shawnees of the air. When the moon rose, like a cup Lay the valley, brimmed with wine Of mesmeric shade and shine, To the moon's pale face held up. As she rose from out the mines Of the eastern darkness, night Met her, clad in dewy light 'Mid Pine Mountain's sachem pines. As from clouds in pearly parts Her serene circumference grew, Home we turned. And all night through Dreamed the dreams of happy hearts. A Confession These are the facts:--I was to blame: I brought her here and wrought her shame: She came with me all trustingly. Lovely and innocent her face: And in her perfect form, the grace Of purity and modesty. I think I loved her then: 'would dote On her ambrosial breast and throat, Young as a blossom's tenderness: Her eyes, that were both glad and sad: Her cheeks and chin, that dimples had: Her mouth, red-ripe to kiss and kiss. Three months passed by; three moons of fire; When in me sickened all desire: And in its place a devil,--who Filled all my soul with deep disgust, And on the victim of my lust Turned eyes of loathing,--swiftly grew. One night, when by my side she slept, I rose: and leaning, while I kept The dagger hid, I kissed her hair And throat: and, when she smiled asleep, Into her heart I drove it deep: And left her dead, still smiling there. Lilith Yea, there are some who always seek The love that lasts an hour; And some who in love's language speak, Yet never know his power. Of such was I, who knew not what Sweet mysteries may rise Within the heart when 't is its lot To love and realize. Of such was I, ah me! till, lo, Your face on mine did gleam, And changed that world, I used to know, Into an evil dream. That world wherein, on hill and plain, Great blood-red poppies bloomed, Their hot hearts thirsty for the rain, And sleepily perfumed. Above, below, on every part A crimson shadow lay, As if the red sun streamed athwart And sunset was alway. I know not how, I know not when, I only know that there She met me in the haunted glen, A poppy in her hair. Her face seemed fair as Mary's is, That knows no sin or wrong; Her presence filled the silences As music fills a song. And she was clad like the Mother of God, As 't were for Christ's sweet sake, But when she moved and where she trod A hiss went of a snake. Though seeming sinless, till I die I shall not know for sure Why to my soul she seemed a lie And otherwise than pure. Nor why I kissed her soon and late And for her felt desire, While loathing of her passion ate Into my soul like fire. Was it because my soul could tell That, like the poppy-flower, She had no soul? a thing of Hell, That o'er it had no power. Or was it that your love at last My soul so long had craved, From the sweet sin that held me fast At that last moment saved? Content When I behold how some pursue Fame, that is care's embodiment, Or fortune, whose false face looks true,-- A humble home with sweet content Is all I ask for me and you. A humble home, where pigeons coo, Whose path leads under breezy lines Of frosty-berried cedars to A gate, one mass of trumpet-vines, Is all I ask for me and you. A garden, which, all summer through, The roses old make redolent, And morning-glories, gay of hue, And tansy, with its homely scent, Is all I ask for me and you. An orchard, that the pippins strew, From whose bruised gold the juices spring; A vineyard, where the grapes hang blue, Wine-big and ripe for vintaging, Is all I ask for me and you. A lane, that leads to some far view Of forest and of fallow-land, Bloomed o'er with rose and meadow-rue, Each with a bee in its hot hand, Is all I ask for me and you. At morn, a pathway deep with dew, And birds to vary time and tune; At eve, a sunset avenue, And whippoorwills that haunt the moon, Is all I ask for me and you. Dear heart, with wants so small and few, And faith, that's better far than gold, A lowly friend, a child or two, To care for us when we are old, Is all I ask for me and you. Berrying I. My love went berrying Where brooks were merrying And wild wings ferrying Heaven's amethyst; The wildflowers blessed her, My dearest Hester, The winds caressed her, The sunbeams kissed. II. I followed, carrying Her basket; varying Fond hopes of marrying With hopes denied; Both late and early She deemed me surly, And bowed her curly Fair head and sighed: III. "The skies look lowery; It will he showery; No longer flowery The way I find. No use in going. 'T will soon be snowing If you keep growing Much more unkind." IV. Then looked up tearfully. And I, all fearfully, Replied, "My dear, fully Will I explain: I love you dearly, But look not cheerly Since all says clearly I love in vain." V. Then smiled she airily; And answered merrily With words that--verily Made me decide: And drawing tow'rd her, I there implored her-- I who adored her-- To be my bride. VI. O sweet simplicity Of young rusticity, Without duplicity, Whom love made know, That hearts in meter Make earth completer; And kisses, sweeter Than--berries grow. To a Pansy-Violet Found Solitary Among the Hills. I. O pansy-violet, With early April wet, How frail and pure you look Lost in this glow-worm nook Of heaven-holding hills: Down which the hurrying rills Fling scrolls of melodies: O'er which the birds and bees Weave gossamers of song, Invisible, but strong: Sweet music webs they spin To snare the spirit in. II. O pansy-violet, Unto your face I set My lips, and--do you speak? Or is it but some freak Of fancy, love imparts Through you unto the heart's Desire? whispering low A secret none may know, But such as sit and dream By forest-side and stream. III. O pansy-violet, O darling floweret, Hued like the timid gem That stars the diadem Of Fay or Sylvan Sprite, Who, in the woods, all night Is busy with the blooms, Young leaves and wild perfumes, Through you I seem t' have seen All that such dreams may mean. IV. O pansy-violet, Long, long ago we met-- 'T was in a Fairy-tale: Two children in a vale Sat underneath glad stars, Far from the world of wars; Each loved the other well: Her eyes were like the spell Of dusk and dawning skies-- The purple dark that dyes The midnight: his were blue As heaven the day shines through. V. O pansy-violet, What is this vague regret, This yearning, so like tears, That touches through the years Long past, when Myth and Fable In all strange things were able To beautify the Earth, Things of immortal worth?-- This longing, that to me Is like a memory Lived long ago, of those Fair children who, it knows, Loved with no mortal love; Whom smiling heaven above Fostered, and when they died Laid side by loving side. VI. O pansy-violet, I dream, remembering yet A wood-god-guarded tomb, Out of whose moss a bloom Sprang, with three petals wan As are the eyes of dawn; And two as darkly deep As are the eyes of sleep.-- O flower,--that seems to hold Some memory of old, A hope, a happiness, At which I can but guess,-- You are a sign to me Of immortality: Through you my spirit sees The deathless purposes Of death, that still evolves The beauty it resolves; The change that aye fulfills Life's meaning as God wills. Heart of my Heart Here where the season turns the land to gold, Among the fields our feet have known of old,-- When we were children who would laugh and run, Glad little playmates of the wind and sun,-- Before came toil and care and years went ill, And one forgot and one remembered still, Heart of my heart, among the old fields here, Give me your hands and let me draw you near. Heart of my heart. Stars are not truer than your soul is true-- What need I more of heaven then than you? Flowers are not sweeter than your face is sweet-- What need I more to make my world complete? O woman nature, love that still endures, What strength hath ours that is not born of yours? Heart of my heart, to you, whatever come, To you the lead, whose love hath led me home. Heart of my heart. Witnesses I. You say I do not love you!--Tell me why, When I have gazed a little on your face, And then gone forth into the world of men, A beauty, neither of the Earth or Sky, A glamour, that transforms each common place, Attends my spirit then? II. You say I do not love you!--Yet I know When I have heard you speak and dwelt upon Your words awhile, my heart has gone away Filled with strange music, very soft and low, A dim companion, touching with sweet tone The discords of the day. III. You say I do not love you!--Yet it seems, When I have kissed your hand and said farewell, A fragrance, sweeter than did flower yet bloom, Accompanies my soul and fills, with dreams, The sad and sordid streets, where people dwell, Dreams of spring's wild perfume. Wherefore I would not see, yet must behold The truth they preach in church and hall; And question so,--Is death then all, And life an idle tale that's told? The myriad wonders art hath wrought I deemed eternal as God's love: No more than shadows these shall prove, And insubstantial as a thought. And love and labor, who have gone, Hand in close hand, and civilized The wilderness, these shall be prized No more than if they had not done. Then wherefore strive? Why strain and bend Beneath a burden so unjust? Our works are builded out of dust, And dust their universal end. Pagan The gods, who could loose and bind In the long ago, The gods, who were stern and kind To men below, Where shall we seek and find, Or, finding, know? Where Greece, with king on king, Dreamed in her halls; Where Rome kneeled worshiping, The owl now calls, And whispering ivies cling To mouldering walls. They have served, and have passed away From the earth and sky, And their Creed is a record gray, Where the passer-by Reads, "Live and be glad to-day, For to-morrow ye die." And shall it be so, indeed, When we are no more, That nations to be shall read,-- As we have before,-- In the dust of a Christian Creed, But pagan lore? "The Fathers of our Fathers" Written February 24, 1898, on reading the latest news concerning the battleship Maine, blown up in Havana harbor, February 15th. I. The fathers of our fathers they were men!-- What are we who now stand idle while we see our seamen slain? Who behold our flag dishonored, and still pause! Are we blind to her duplicity, the treachery of Spain? To the rights, she scorns, of nations and their laws? Let us rise, a mighty people, let us wipe away the stain! Must we wait till she insult us for a cause?-- The fathers of our fathers they were men! II. The fathers of our fathers they were men!-- Had they nursed delay as we do? had they sat thus deaf and dumb, With these cowards compromising year by year? Never hearing what they should hear, never saying what should come, While the courteous mask of Spain still hid a sneer! No! such news had roused their natures like a rolling battle-drum-- God of earth! and God of heaven! do we fear?-- The fathers of our fathers they were men! III. The fathers of our fathers they were men!-- What are we who are so cautious, never venturing too far! Shall we, at the cost of honor, still keep peace? While we see the thousands starving and the struggling Cuban star, And the outraged form of Freedom on her knees! Let our long, steel ocean-bloodhounds, adamantine dogs of war, Sweep the yellow Spanish panther from the seas!-- The fathers of our fathers they were men! "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin" I. Behold! we have gathered together our battleships near and afar; Their decks they are cleared for action, their guns they are shotted for war: From the East to the West there is hurry, in the North and the South a peal Of hammers in fort and shipyard, and the clamor and clang of steel; And the roar and the rush of engines, and clanking of derrick and crane-- Thou art weighed in the Scales and found wanting, the balance of God, O Spain! II. Behold! I have stood on the mountains, and this was writ in the sky:-- "She is weighed in the Scales and found wanting, the balance God holds on high!" The balance He once weighed Babylon, the Mother of Harlots, in: One scale holds thy pride and thy power and empire, begotten of sin; Heavy with woe and torture, the crimes of a thousand years, Mortared and welded together with fire and blood and tears; In the other, for justice and mercy, a blade with never a stain, Is laid the Sword of Liberty, and the balance dips, O Spain! III. Summon thy vessels together! great is thy need for these!-- Cristobal Colon, Vizcaya, Oquendo, and Maria Terese-- Let them be strong and many, for a vision I had by night, That the ancient wrongs thou hast done the world came howling to the fight; From the New-World shores they gathered, Inca and Aztec slain, To the Cuban shot but yesterday, and our own dead seamen, Spain! IV. Summon thy ships together, gather a mighty fleet! For a strong young Nation is arming, that never hath known defeat. Summon thy ships together, there on thy blood-stained sands! For a shadowy army gathers with manacled feet and hands, A shadowy host of sorrows and shames, too black to tell, That reach, with their horrible wounds, for thee to drag thee down to Hell; A myriad phantoms and spectres, thou warrest against in vain-- Thou art weighed in the Scales and found wanting, the balance of God, O Spain! Her Vivien Eyes Her Vivien eyes,--beware! beware!-- Though they be stars, a deadly snare They set beneath her night of hair. Regard them not! lest, drawing near-- As sages once in old Chaldee-- Thou shouldst become a worshiper, And they thy evil destiny. Her Vivien eyes,--away! away!-- Though they be springs, remorseless they Gleam underneath her brow's bright day. Turn, turn aside, whate'er the cost! Lest in their deeps thou lures behold, Through which thy captive soul were lost, As was young Hylas once of old. Her Vivien eyes,--take heed! take heed!-- Though they be bibles, none may read Therein of God or Holy Creed. Look, look away! lest thou be cursed,-- As Merlin was, romances tell,-- And in their sorcerous spells immersed, Hoping for Heaven thou chance on Hell. There Was a Rose There was a rose in Eden once: it grows On Earth now, sweeter for its rare perfume: And Paradise is poorer by one bloom, And Earth is richer. In this blossom glows More loveliness than old seraglios Or courts of kings did ever yet illume: More purity, than ever yet had room In soul of nun or saint.--O human rose,-- Who art initial and sweet period of My heart's divinest sentence, where I read Love, first and last, and in the pauses love; Who art the dear ideal of each deed My life aspires by to some high goal,-- Set in the haunted garden of my soul! The Artist In story books, when I was very young, I knew you first, one of the Fairy Race; And then it was your picture took its place, Framed in with love's deep gold, and draped and hung High in my heart's red room: no song was sung, No tale of passion told, I did not grace With your associated form and face, And intimated charm of touch and tongue. As years went on you grew to more and more, Until each thing, symbolic to my heart Of beauty,--such as honor, truth, and fame,-- Within the studio of my soul's thought wore Your lineaments, whom I, with all my art, Strove to embody and to give a name. Poetry and Philosophy Out of the past the dim leaves spoke to me The thoughts of Pindar with a voice so sweet Hyblæan bees seemed swarming my retreat Around the reedy well of Poesy. I closed the book. Then, knee to neighbor knee, Sat with the soul of Plato, to repeat Doctrines, till mine seemed some Socratic seat High on the summit of Philosophy. Around the wave of one Religion taught Her first rude children. From the stars that burned Above the mountained other, Science learned The first vague lessons of the work she wrought. Daughters of God, in whom we still behold The Age of Iron and the Age of Gold. "Quo Vadis" It is as if imperial trumpets broke Again the silence on War's iron height; And Cæsar's armored legions marched to fight, While Rome, blood-red upon her mountain-yoke, Blazed like an awful sunset. At a stroke, Again I see the living torches light The horrible revels, and the bloated, white, Bayed brow of Nero smiling through the smoke: And here and there a little band of slaves Among dark ruins; and the form of Paul, Bearded and gaunt, expounding still the Word: And towards the North the tottering architraves Of empire; and, wild-waving over all, The flaming figure of a Gothic sword. To a Critic Song hath a catalogue of lovely things Thy kind hath oft defiled,--whose spite misleads The world too often!--where the poet reads, As in a fable, of old envyings, Crows, such as thou, which hush the bird that sings, Or kill it with their cawings; thorns and weeds, Such as thyself, 'midst which the wind sows seeds Of flow'rs, these crush before one blossom swings. But here and there the wisdom of a School Unknown to these hath often written down "Fame" in white ink the future hath turned brown; When every beauty, heaped with ridicule, In their ignoble prose, proved their renown, Making each famous--as an ass or fool. _AFTERWORD._ _The old enthusiasms Are dead, quite dead, in me; Dead the aspiring spasms Of art and poesy, That opened magic chasms, Once, of wild mystery, In youth's rich Araby. That opened magic chasms._ _The longing and the care Are mine; and, helplessly, The heartache and despair For what can never be. More than my mortal share Of sad mortality, It seems, God gives to me, More than my mortal share._ _O world! O time! O fate! Remorseless trinity! Let not your wheel abate Its iron rotary!-- Turn round! nor make me wait, Bound to it neck and knee, Hope's final agony!-- Turn round! nor make me wait._ * * * * * Transcriber's note The following changes have been made to the text: Page 25: "beach" changed to "beech". Page 46: "marrige" changed to "marriage". Page 53: "slighest" changed to "slightest". 
31913	----	file was produced from images generously made available by The Kentuckiana Digital Library) UNDERTONES By Madison Cawein OATEN STOP SERIES III VNDERTONES BY MADISON CAWEIN BOSTON COPELAND AND DAY M D CCC XCVI COPYRIGHT 1896 BY COPELAND AND DAY INSCRIBED TO THE PATHETIC MEMORY OF THE POET HENRY TIMROD _Long are the days, and three times long the nights. The weary hours are a heavy chain Upon the feet of all Earth's dear delights, Holding them ever prisoners to pain. What shall beguile me to believe again In hope, that faith within her parable writes Of life, care reads with eyes whose tear-drops stain? Shall such assist me to subdue the heights? Long is the night, and over long the day.-- The burden of all being!--is it worse Or better, lo! that they who toil and pray May win not more than they who toil and curse? A little sleep, a little love, ah me! And the slow weigh up the soul's Calvary!_ CONTENTS PAGE THE DREAMER 1 QUIET 2 UNQUALIFIED 3 UNENCOURAGED ASPIRATION 3 THE WOOD 4 WOOD NOTES 5 SUCCESS 7 SONG 7 THE OLD SPRING 8 HILLS OF THE WEST 10 FLOWERS 11 SECOND SIGHT 12 DEAD SEA FRUIT 13 THE WOOD WITCH 14 AT SUNSET 16 MAY 17 THE WIND OF SPRING 18 INTERPRETED 19 THE WILLOW BOTTOM 20 THE OLD BARN 22 CLEARING 23 REQUIEM 25 AT LAST 26 A DARK DAY 27 FALL 28 UNDERTONE 29 CONCLUSION 30 MONOCHROMES 32 DAYS AND DAYS 34 DROUTH IN AUTUMN 35 MID-WINTER 36 COLD 37 IN WINTER 38 ON THE FARM 39 PATHS 41 A SONG IN SEASON 43 APART 44 FAËRY MORRIS 45 THE WORLD'S DESIRE 46 THE UNATTAINABLE 47 REMEMBERED 51 THE SEA SPIRIT 52 A DREAM SHAPE 53 THE VAMPIRE 54 WILL-O'-THE-WISP 56 THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN 57 THE WERE-WOLF 59 THE TROGLODYTE 62 THE CITY OF DARKNESS 63 TRANSMUTATION 65 * * * * * UNDERTONES THE DREAMER Even as a child he loved to thrid the bowers, And mark the loafing sunlight's lazy laugh; Or, on each season, spell the epitaph Of its dead months repeated in their flowers; Or list the music of the strolling showers, Whose vagabond notes strummed through a twinkling staff; Or read the day's delivered monograph Through all the chapters of its dædal hours. Still with the same child-faith and child-regard He looks on Nature, hearing, at her heart, The beautiful beat out the time and place, Whereby no lesson of this life is hard, No struggle vain of science or of art, That dies with failure written on its face. QUIET A log-hut in the solitude, A clapboard roof to rest beneath! This side, the shadow-haunted wood; That side, the sunlight-haunted heath. At daybreak Morn shall come to me In raiment of the white winds spun; Slim in her rosy hand the key That opes the gateway of the sun. Her smile shall help my heart enough With love to labor all the day, And cheer the road, whose rocks are rough, With her smooth footprints, each a ray. At dusk a voice shall call afar, A lone voice like the whippoorwill's; And, on her shimmering brow one star, Night shall descend the western hills. She at my door till dawn shall stand, With Gothic eyes, that, dark and deep, Are mirrors of a mystic land, Fantastic with the towns of sleep. UNQUALIFIED Not his the part to win the goal, The flaming goal that flies before, Into whose course the apples roll Of self that stay his feet the more. Beyond himself he shall not win Whose flesh is as a driven dust, That his own soul must wander in, Seeing no farther than his lust. UNENCOURAGED ASPIRATION Is mine the part of no companion hand Of help, except my shadow's silent self? A moonlight traveller in Fancy's land Of leering gnome and hollow-laughing elf; Whose forests deepen and whose moon goes down, When Night's blind shadow shall usurp my own; And, mid the dust and wreck of some old town, The City of Dreams, I grope and fall alone. THE WOOD Witch-hazel, dogwood, and the maple here; And there the oak and hickory; Linn, poplar, and the beech-tree, far and near As the eased eye can see. Wild-ginger; wahoo, with its wan balloons; And brakes of briers of a twilight green; And fox-grapes plumed with summer; and strung moons Of mandrake flowers between. Deep gold-green ferns, and mosses red and gray,-- Mats for what naked myth's white feet?-- And, cool and calm, a cascade far away With even-falling beat. Old logs, made sweet with death; rough bits of bark; And tangled twig and knotted root; And sunshine splashes and great pools of dark; And many a wild-bird's flute. Here let me sit until the Indian, Dusk, With copper-colored feet, comes down; Sowing the wildwood with star-fire and musk, And shadows blue and brown. Then side by side with some magician dream, To take the owlet-haunted lane, Half-roofed with vines; led by a firefly gleam, That brings me home again. WOOD NOTES I. There is a flute that follows me From tree to tree: A water flute a spirit sets To silver lips in waterfalls, And through the breath of violets A sparkling music calls: "Hither! halloo! Oh, follow! Down leafy hill and hollow, Where, through clear swirls, With feet like pearls, Wade up the blue-eyed country girls. Hither! halloo! Oh, follow!" II. There is a pipe that plays to me From tree to tree: A bramble pipe an elfin holds To golden lips in berry brakes, And, swinging o'er the elder wolds, A flickering music makes: "Come over! Come over The new-mown clover! Come over the new-mown hay! Where, there by the berries, With cheeks like cherries, And locks with which the warm wind merries, Brown girls are hilling the hay, All day! Come over the fields and away! Come over! Come over!" SUCCESS How some succeed who have least need, In that they make no effort for! And pluck, where others pluck a weed, The burning blossom of a star, Grown from no earthly seed. For some shall reap that never sow; And some shall toil and not attain,-- What boots it in ourselves to know Such labor here is not in vain, When we still see it so! SONG Unto the portal of the House of Song, Symbols of wrong and emblems of unrest, And mottoes of despair and envious jest, And stony masks of scorn and hate belong. Who enters here shall feel his soul denied All welcome: lo! the chiselled form of Love, That stares in marble on the shrine above The tomb of Beauty, where he dreamed and died! Who enters here shall know no poppyflowers Of Rest, or harp-tones of serene Content; Only sad ghosts of music and of scent Shall mock the mind with their remembered powers. Here must he wait till striving patience carves His name upon the century-storied floor; His heart's blood staining one dim pane the more In Fame's high casement while he sings and starves. THE OLD SPRING I. Under rocks whereon the rose, Like a strip of morning, glows; Where the azure-throated newt Drowses on the twisted root; And the brown bees, humming homeward, Stop to suck the honey-dew; Fern and leaf-hid, gleaming gloamward, Drips the wildwood spring I knew, Drips the spring my boyhood knew. II. Myrrh and music everywhere Haunt its cascades;--like the hair That a naiad tosses cool, Swimming strangely beautiful, With white fragrance for her bosom, For her mouth a breath of song;-- Under leaf and branch and blossom Flows the woodland spring along, Sparkling, singing, flows along. III. Still the wet wan morns may touch Its gray rocks, perhaps; and such Slender stars as dusk may have Pierce the rose that roofs its wave; Still the thrush may call at noontide, And the whippoorwill at night; Nevermore, by sun or moontide, Shall I see it gliding white, Falling, flowing, wild and white. HILLS OF THE WEST Hills of the west, that gird Forest and farm, Home of the nestling bird, Housing from harm, When on your tops is heard Storm: Hills of the west, that bar Belts of the gloam, Under the twilight star, Where the mists roam, Take ye the wanderer Home. Hills of the west, that dream Under the moon, Making of wind and stream, Late-heard and soon, Parts of your lives that seem Tune. Hills of the west, that take Slumber to ye, Be it for sorrow's sake Or memory, Part of such slumber make Me. FLOWERS Oh, why for us the blighted bloom! The blossom that lies withering! The Master of Life's changeless loom Hath wrought for us no changeless thing. Where grows the rose of fadeless Grace? Wherethrough the Spirit manifests The fact of an immortal race, The dream on which religion rests. Where buds the lily of our Faith? That grows for us in unknown wise, Out of the barren dust of death, The pregnant bloom of Paradise. In Heaven! so near that flowers know! That flowers see how near!--and thus Reflect the knowledge here below Of love and life unknown to us. SECOND SIGHT They lean their faces to me through Green windows of the woods; Their white throats sweet with honey-dew Beneath low leafy hoods-- No dream they dream but hath been true Here in the solitudes. Star trillium, in the underbrush, In whom Spring bares her face; Sun eglantine, that breathes the blush Of Summer's quiet grace; Moon mallow, in whom lives the hush Of Autumn's tragic pace. For one hath heard the dryad's sighs Behind the covering bark; And one hath felt the satyr's eyes Gleam in the bosky dark; And one hath seen the naiad rise In waters all a-spark. I bend my soul unto them, stilled In worship man hath lost; The old-world myths that science killed Are living things almost To me through these whose forms are filled With Beauty's pagan ghost. And through new eyes I seem to see The world these live within,-- A shuttered world of mystery, Where unreal forms begin The real of ideality That has no unreal kin. DEAD SEA FRUIT All things have power to hold us back. Our very hopes build up a wall Of doubt, whose shadow stretches black O'er all. The dreams, that helped us once, become Dread disappointments, that oppose Dead eyes to ours, and lips made dumb With woes. The thoughts that opened doors before Within the mind's house, hide away; Discouragement hath locked each door For aye. Come, loss, more frequently than gain! And failure than success! until The spirit's struggle to attain Is still! THE WOOD WITCH There is a woodland witch who lies With bloom-bright limbs and beam-bright eyes, Among the water-flags, that rank The slow brook's heron-haunted bank: The dragon-flies, in brass and blue, Are signs she works her sorcery through; Weird, wizard characters she weaves Her spells by under forest leaves,-- These wait her word, like imps, upon The gray flag-pods; their wings, of lawn And gauze; their bodies gleamy green. While o'er the wet sand,--left between The running water and the still,-- In pansy hues and daffodil, The fancies that she meditates Take on most sumptuous shapes, with traits Like butterflies. 'Tis she you hear, Whose sleepy rune, hummed in the ear Of silence, bees and beetles purr, And the dry-droning locusts whirr; Till, where the wood is very lone, Vague monotone meets monotone, And slumber is begot and born, A faery child, beneath the thorn. There is no mortal who may scorn The witchery she spreads around Her dim demesne, wherein is bound The beauty of abandoned time, As some sweet thought 'twixt rhyme and rhyme. And by her spell you shall behold The blue turn gray, the gray turn gold Of hollow heaven; and the brown Of twilight vistas twinkled down With fire-flies; and, in the gloom, Feel the cool vowels of perfume Slow-syllabled of weed and bloom. But, in the night, at languid rest,-- When like a spirit's naked breast The moon slips from a silver mist,-- With star-bound brow, and star-wreathed wrist, If you should see her rise and wave You welcome,--ah! what thing shall save You then? forevermore her slave! AT SUNSET Into the sunset's turquoise marge The moon dips, like a pearly barge Enchantment sails through magic seas, To fairyland Hesperides, Over the hills and away. Into the fields, in ghost-gray gown, The young-eyed Dusk comes slowly down; Her apron filled with stars she stands, And one or two slip from her hands Over the hills and away. Above the wood's black caldron bends The witch-faced Night and, muttering, blends The dew and heat, whose bubbles make The mist and musk that haunt the brake Over the hills and away. Oh, come with me, and let us go Beyond the sunset lying low, Beyond the twilight and the night, Into Love's kingdom of long light, Over the hills and away. MAY The golden disks of the rattlesnake-weed, That spangle the woods and dance-- No gleam of gold that the twilights hold Is strong as their necromance: For, under the oaks where the wood-paths lead, The golden disks of the rattlesnake-weed Are the May's own utterance. The azure stars of the bluet bloom That sprinkle the woodland's trance-- No blink of blue that a cloud lets through Is sweet as their countenance: For, over the knolls that the woods perfume, The azure stars of the bluet bloom Are the light of the May's own glance. With her wondering words and her looks she comes, In a sunbeam of a gown; She needs but think and the blossoms wink, But look, and they shower down. By orchard ways, where the wild-bee hums, With her wondering words and her looks she comes, Like a little maid to town. THE WIND OF SPRING The wind that breathes of columbines And bleeding-hearts that crowd the rocks; That shakes the balsam of the pines With music from his flashing locks, Stops at my city door and knocks. He calls me far a-forest; where The twin-leaf and the blood-root bloom; And, circled by the amber air, Life sits with beauty and perfume Weaving the new web of her loom. He calls me where the waters run Through fronding ferns where haunts the hern; And, sparkling in the equal sun, Song leans beside her brimming urn, And dreams the dreams that love shall learn. The wind has summoned, and I go,-- To con God's meaning in each line The flowers write, and, walking slow, God's purpose, of which song is sign,-- The wind's great, gusty hand in mine. INTERPRETED What magic shall solve us the secret Of beauty that's born for an hour? That gleams like the flight of an egret, Or burns like the scent of a flower, With death for a dower? What leaps in the bosk but a satyr? What pipes on the wind but a faun? Or laughs in the waters that scatter, But limbs of a nymph who is gone, When we walk in the dawn? What sings on the hills but a fairy? Or sighs in the fields but a sprite? What breathes through the leaves but the airy Soft spirits of shadow and light, When we walk in the night? Behold how the world-heart is eager To draw us and hold us and claim! Through truths of the dreams that beleaguer Her soul she makes ours the same, And death but a name. THE WILLOW BOTTOM Lush green the grass that grows between The willows of the bottom-land; Verged by the careless water, tall and green, The brown-topped cat-tails stand. The cows come gently here to browse, Slow through the great-leafed sycamores; You hear a dog bark from a low-roofed house With cedars round its doors. Then all is quiet as the wings Of the high buzzard floating there; Anon a woman's high-pitched voice that sings An old camp-meeting air. A flapping cock that crows; and then-- Heard drowsy through the rustling corn-- A flutter, and the cackling of a hen Within a hay-sweet barn. How still again! no water stirs; No wind is heard; although the weeds Are waved a little; and from silk-filled burrs Drift by a few soft seeds. So drugged with sleep and dreams, that you Expect to see her gliding by,-- Hummed round of bees, through blossoms spilling dew,-- The Spirit of July. THE OLD BARN Low, swallow-swept and gray, Between the orchard and the spring, All its wide windows overflowing hay, And crannied doors a-swing, The old barn stands to-day. Deep in its hay the Leghorn hides A round white nest; and, humming soft On roof and rafter, or its log-rude sides, Black in the sun-shot loft, The building hornet glides. Along its corn-crib, cautiously As thieving fingers, skulks the rat; Or, in warped stalls of fragrant timothy, Gnaws at some loosened slat, Or passes shadowy. A dream of drouth made audible Before its door, hot, smooth, and shrill All day the locust sings.... What other spell Shall hold it, lazier still Than the long day's, now tell?-- Dusk and the cricket and the strain Of tree-toad and of frog; and stars That burn above the rich west's ribbéd stain; And dropping pasture bars, And cow-bells up the lane. Night and the moon and katydid, And leaf-lisp of the wind-touched boughs; And mazy shadows that the fire-flies thrid; And sweet breath of the cows; And the lone owl here hid. CLEARING Before the wind, with rain-drowned stocks, The pleated crimson hollyhocks Are bending; And, smouldering in the breaking brown, Above the hills that edge the town, The day is ending. The air is heavy with the damp; And, one by one, each cottage lamp Is lighted; Infrequent passers of the street Stroll on or stop to talk or greet, Benighted. I look beyond my city yard, And watch the white moon struggling hard, Cloud-buried; The wind is driving toward the east, A wreck of pearl, all cracked and creased And serried. At times the moon, erupting, streaks Some long cloud; like Andean peaks That double Horizon-vast volcano chains, The earthquake scars with lava veins That bubble. The wind that blows from out the hills Is like a woman's touch that stills A sorrow: The moon sits high with many a star In the deep calm: and fair and far Abides to-morrow. REQUIEM I. No more for him, where hills look down, Shall Morning crown Her rainy brow with blossom bands!-- Whose rosy hands Drop wild flowers of the breaking skies Upon the sod 'neath which he lies.-- No more! no more! II. No more for him where waters sleep, Shall Evening heap The long gold of the perfect days! Whose pale hand lays Great poppies of the afterglow Upon the turf he rests below.-- No more! no more! III. No more for him, where woodlands loom, Shall Midnight bloom The star-flow'red acres of the blue! Whose brown hands strew Dead leaves of darkness, hushed and deep, Upon the grave where he doth sleep.-- No more! no more! IV. The hills that Morning's footsteps wake; The waves that take A brightness from the Eve; the woods O'er which Night broods, Their spirits have, whose parts are one With his whose mortal part is done. Whose part is done! AT LAST What shall be said to him, Now he is dead? Now that his eyes are dim, Low lies his head? What shall be said to him, Now he is dead? One word to whisper of Low in his ear; Sweet, but the one word "love" Haply he'll hear. One word to whisper of Low in his ear. What shall be given him, Now he is dead? Now that his eyes are dim, Low lies his head? What shall be given him, Now he is dead? Hope, that life long denied Here to his heart, Sweet, lay it now beside, Never to part. Hope, that life long denied Here to his heart. A DARK DAY Though Summer walks the world to-day With corn-crowned hours for her guard, Her thoughts have clad themselves in gray, And wait in Autumn's weedy yard. And where the larkspur and the phlox Spread carpets wheresoe'er she pass, She seems to stand with sombre locks Bound bleak with fog-washed zinnias.-- Fall's terra-cotta-colored flowers, Whose disks the trickling wet has tinged With dingy lustre when the bower's Thin, flame-flecked leaves the frost has singed; Or with slow feet, 'mid gaunt gold blooms Of marigolds her fingers twist, She seems to pass with Fall's perfumes, And dreams of sullen rain and mist. FALL Sad-hearted spirit of the solitudes, Who comest through the ruin-wedded woods! Gray-gowned with fog, gold-girdled with the gloom Of tawny twilights; burdened with perfume Of rain-wet uplands, chilly with the mist; And all the beauty of the fire-kissed Cold forests crimsoning thy indolent way, Odorous of death and drowsy with decay. I think of thee as seated 'mid the showers Of languid leaves that cover up the flowers,-- The little flower-sisterhoods, whom June Once gave wild sweetness to, as to a tune A singer gives her soul's wild melody,-- Watching the squirrel store his granary. Or, 'mid old orchards I have pictured thee: Thy hair's profusion blown about thy back; One lovely shoulder bathed with gipsy black; Upon thy palm one nestling cheek, and sweet The rosy russets tumbled at thy feet. Was it a voice lamenting for the flowers? A heart-sick bird, that sang of happier hours? A cricket dirging days that soon must die? Or did the ghost of Summer wander by? UNDERTONE Ah me! too soon the Autumn comes Among these purple-plaintive hills! Too soon among the forest gums Premonitory flame she spills, Bleak, melancholy flame that kills. Her white fogs veil the morn that rims With wet the moonflow'r's elfin moons; And, like exhausted starlight, dims The last slim lily-disk; and swoons With scents of hazy afternoons. Her gray mists haunt the sunset skies, And build the west's cadaverous fire, Where Sorrow sits with lonely eyes, And hands that wake her ancient lyre, Beside the ghost of dead Desire. CONCLUSION The songs Love sang to us are dead: Yet shall he sing to us again, When the dull days are wrapped in lead, And the red woodland drips with rain. The lily of our love is gone, That touched our spring with golden scent; Now in the garden low upon The wind-stripped way its stalk is bent. Our rose of dreams is passed away, That lit our summer with sweet fire; The storm beats bare each thorny spray, And its dead leaves are trod in mire. The songs Love sang to us are dead; Yet shall he sing to us again, When the dull days are wrapped in lead, And the red woodland drips with rain. The marigold of memory Shall fill our autumn then with glow; Haply its bitterness will be Sweeter than love of long ago. The cypress of forgetfulness Shall haunt our winter with its hue; The apathy to us not less Dear than the dreams our summer knew. MONOCHROMES I. The last rose falls, wrecked of the wind and rain; Where once it bloomed the thorns alone remain: Dead in the wet the slow rain strews the rose. The day was dim; now eve comes on again, Grave as a life weighed down by many woes,-- So is the joy dead, and alive the pain. The brown leaf flutters where the green leaf died; Bare are the boughs, and bleak the forest side: The wind is whirling with the last wild leaf. The eve was strange; now dusk comes weird and wide, Gaunt as a life that lives alone with grief,-- So doth the hope go and despair abide. An empty nest hangs where the wood-bird pled; Along the west the dusk dies, stormy red: The frost is subtle as a serpent's breath. The dusk was sad; now night is overhead, Grim as a soul brought face to face with death-- So life lives on when love, its life, lies dead. II. Go your own ways. Who shall persuade me now To seek with high face for a star of hope? Or up endeavor's unsubmissive slope Advance a bosom of desire, and bow A back of patience in a thankless task? Alone beside the grave of love I ask, Shalt thou? or thou? Leave go my hands. Fain would I walk alone The easy ways of silence and of sleep. What though I go with eyes that cannot weep, And lips contracted with no uttered moan, Through rocks and thorns, where every footprint bleeds, A dead-sea path of desert night that leads To one white stone! Though sands be black and bitter black the sea, Night lie before me and behind me night, And God within far Heaven refuse to light The consolation of the dawn for me,-- Between the shadowy bournes of Heaven and Hell, It is enough love leaves my soul to dwell With memory. DAYS AND DAYS The days that clothed white limbs with heat, And rocked the red rose on their breast, Have passed with amber-sandalled feet Into the ruby-gated west. These were the days that filled the heart With overflowing riches of Life; in whose soul no dream shall start But hath its origin in love. Now come the days gray-huddled in The haze; whose foggy footsteps drip; Who pin beneath a gipsy chin The frosty marigold and hip.-- The days, whose forms fall shadowy Athwart the heart; whose misty breath Shapes saddest sweets of memory Out of the bitterness of death. DROUTH IN AUTUMN Gnarled acorn-oaks against a west Of copper, cavernous with fire; A wind of frost that gives no rest To such lean leaves as haunt the brier, And hide the cricket's vibrant wire. Sear, shivering shocks, and stubble blurred With bramble-blots of dull maroon; And creekless hills whereon no herd Finds pasture, and whereo'er the loon Flies, haggard as the rainless moon. MID-WINTER All day the clouds hung ashen with the cold; And through the snow the muffled waters fell; The day seemed drowned in grief too deep to tell, Like some old hermit whose last bead is told. At eve the wind woke, and the snow-clouds rolled Aside to leave the fierce sky visible; Harsh as an iron landscape of wan hell The dark hills hung framed in with gloomy gold. And then, towards night, the wind seemed some one at My window wailing: now a little child Crying outside the door; and now the long Howl of some starved beast down the flue. I sat And knew 'twas Winter with his madman song Of miseries, whereon he stared and smiled. COLD A mist that froze beneath the moon and shook Minutest frosty fire in the air. All night the wind was still as lonely Care Who sighs before her shivering ingle-nook. The face of Winter wore a crueler look Than when he shakes the icicles from his hair, And, in the boisterous pauses, lets his stare Freeze through the forest, fettering bough and brook. He is the despot now who sits and dreams Of Desolation and Despair, and smiles At Poverty, who hath no place to rest, Who wanders o'er Life's snow-made pathless miles, And sees the Home-of-Comfort's window gleams, And hugs her rag-wrapped baby to her breast. IN WINTER I. When black frosts pluck the acorns down, And in the lane the waters freeze; And 'thwart red skies the wild-fowl flies, And death sits grimly 'mid the trees; When home-lights glitter in the brown Of dusk like shaggy eyes,-- Before the door his feet, sweetheart, And two white arms that greet, sweetheart, And two white arms that greet. II. When ways are drifted with the leaves, And winds make music in the thorns; And lone and lost above the frost The new moon shows its silver horns; When underneath the lamp-lit eaves The opened door is crossed,-- A happy heart and light, sweetheart, And lips to kiss good-night, sweetheart, And lips to kiss good-night. ON THE FARM I. He sang a song as he sowed the field, Sowed the field at break of day: "When the pursed-up leaves are as lips that yield Balm and balsam, and Spring,--concealed In the odorous green,--is so revealed, Halloo and oh! Hallo for the woods and the far away!" II. He trilled a song as he mowed the mead, Mowed the mead as noon begun: "When the hills are gold with the ripened seed, As the sunset stairs that loom and lead To the sky where Summer knows naught of need, Halloo and oh! Hallo for the hills and the harvest sun!" III. He hummed a song as he swung the flail, Swung the flail in the afternoon: "When the idle fields are a wrecker's tale, That the Autumn tells to the twilight pale, As the Year turns seaward a crimson sail, Halloo and oh! Hallo for the fields and the hunter's-moon!" IV. He whistled a song as he shouldered his axe, Shouldered his axe in the evening storm: "When the snow of the road shows the rabbit's tracks, And the wind is a whip that the Winter cracks, With a herdsman's cry, o'er the clouds' black backs, Halloo and oh! Hallo for home and a hearth to warm!" PATHS I. What words of mine can tell the spell Of garden ways I know so well?-- The path that takes me, in the spring, Past quinces where the blue-birds sing, Where peonies are blossoming, Unto a porch, wistaria-hung, Around whose steps May-lilies blow, A fair girl reaches down among, Her arm more white than their sweet snow. II. What words of mine can tell the spell Of garden ways I know so well?-- Another path that leads me, when The summer-time is here again, Past hollyhocks that shame the west When the red sun has sunk to rest; To roses bowering a nest, A lattice, 'neath which mignonette And deep geraniums surge and sough, Where, in the twilight, starless yet, A fair girl's eyes are stars enough. III. What words of mine can tell the spell Of garden ways I know so well?-- A path that takes me, when the days Of autumn wrap themselves in haze, Beneath the pippin-pelting tree, 'Mid flitting butterfly and bee; Unto a door where, fiery, The creeper climbs; and, garnet-hued, The cock's-comb and the dahlia flare, And in the door, where shades intrude, Gleams out a fair girl's sunbeam hair. IV. What words of mine can tell the spell Of garden ways I know so well?-- A path that brings me o'er the frost Of winter, when the moon is tossed In clouds; beneath great cedars, weak With shaggy snow; past shrubs blown bleak With shivering leaves; to eaves that leak The tattered ice, whereunder is A fire-flickering window-space; And in the light, with lips to kiss, A fair girl's welcome-giving face. A SONG IN SEASON I. When in the wind the vane turns round, And round, and round; And in his kennel whines the hound; When all the gable eaves are bound With icicles of ragged gray, A glinting gray; There is little to do, and much to say, And you hug your fire and pass the day With a thought of the springtime, dearie. II. When late at night the owlet hoots, And hoots, and hoots; And wild winds make of keyholes flutes; When to the door the goodman's boots Stamp through the snow the light stains red, The fire-light's red; There is nothing to do, and all is said, And you quaff your cider and go to bed With a dream of the summer, dearie. III. When, nearing dawn, the black cock crows, And crows, and crows; And from the barn the milch-cow lows; And the milkmaid's cheeks have each a rose, And the still skies show a star or two, Or one or two; There is little to say, and much to do, And the heartier done the happier you, With a song of the winter, dearie. APART I. While sunset burns and stars are few, And roses scent the fading light, And like a slim urn, dripping dew, A spirit carries through the night, The pearl-pale moon hangs new,-- I think of you, of you. II. While waters flow, and soft winds woo The golden-hearted bud with sighs; And, like a flower an angel threw, Out of the momentary skies A star falls burning blue,-- I dream of you, of you. III. While love believes, and hearts are true, So let me think, so let me dream; The thought and dream so wedded to Your face, that, far apart, I seem To see each thing you do, And be with you, with you. FAËRY MORRIS I. The winds are whist; and, hid in mist, The moon hangs o'er the wooded height; The bushy bee, with unkempt head, Hath made the sunflower's disk his bed, And sleeps half-hid from sight. The owlet makes us melody-- Come dance with us in Faëry, Come dance with us to-night. II. The dew is damp; the glow-worm's lamp Blurs in the moss its tawny light; The great gray moth sinks, half-asleep, Where, in an elfin-laundered heap, The lily-gowns hang white. The crickets make us minstrelsy-- Come dance with us in Faëry, Come dance with us to-night. III. With scents of heat, dew-chilled and sweet, The new-cut hay smells by the bight; The ghost of some dead pansy bloom, The butterfly dreams in the gloom, Its pied wings folded tight. The world is lost in fantasy,-- Come dance with us in Faëry, Come dance with us to-night. THE WORLD'S DESIRE The roses of voluptuousness Wreathe her dark locks and hide her eyes; Her limbs are flower-like nakedness, Wherethrough the fragrant blood doth press, The blossom-blood of Paradise. She stands with Lilith finger tips, With Lilith hands; and gathers up The wild wine of all life; and sips With Lilith-laughter-lightened lips The soul as from a crystal cup. What though she cast the cup away! The empty bowl that flashed with wine! Her curled lips' kiss, that stained the clay, Her fingers' touch--shall not these stay, That made its nothingness divine? Through one again shall live the glow, Immortalizing, of her touch; And through the other, sweet to know How life swept flame once 'neath the snow Of her mooned breasts,--and this is much! THE UNATTAINABLE Mark thou! a shadow crowned with fire of hell. Man holds her in his heart as night doth hold The moonlight memories of day's dead gold; Or as a winter-withered asphodel In its dead loveliness holds scents of old. And looking on her, lo, he thinks 'tis well. Who would not follow her whose glory sits, Imperishably lovely on the air? Who, from the arms of Earth's desire, flits With eyes defiant and rebellions hair?-- Hers is the beauty that no man shall share. He who hath seen, what shall it profit him? He who doth love, what shall his passion gain? When disappointment at her cup's bright brim Poisons the pleasure with the hemlock pain? Hers is the passion that no man shall drain. How long, how long since Life hath touched her eyes, Making their night clairvoyant! And how long Since Love hath kissed her lips and made them wise, Binding her brow with prophecy and song! Hope clad her nakedness in lovely lies, Giving into her hands the right of wrong! Lo! in her world she sets pale tents of thought, Unearthly bannered; and her dreams' wild bands Besiege the heavens like a twilight fraught With recollections of lost stars. She stands Radiant as Lilith given from God's hands. The golden rose of patience at her throat Drops fragrant petals--as a pensive tune Drops its surrendered sweetness note by note;-- And from her hands the buds of hope are strewn, Moon-flowers, mothered of the barren moon. So in her flowers man seats him at her feet In star-faced worship, knowing all of this; And now to him to die seems very sweet, Fed with the fire of her look and kiss; While in his heart the blood's tumultuous beat Drowns, in her own, the drowsing serpent's hiss. He who hath dreamed but of her world shall give All of his soul unto her restlessly: He who hath seen but her far face shall live No more for things we name reality: Such is the power of her tyranny. He, whom she wins, hath nothing 'neath the sun; Forgetting all that she may not forget He loves her, who still feeds his soul upon Dreams and desires, and doubt and vain regret,-- Life's bitter bread his heart's fierce tears make wet. What word of wisdom hast thou, Life, to wake Him now! or song of magic now to dull The dreams he lives in! or what charm to break The spell that makes her evil beautiful! What charm to show her beauty hides a snake, Whose basilisk eyes burn dark behind a skull. REMEMBERED Here in the dusk I see her face again As then I knew it, ere she fell asleep; Renunciation glorifying pain Of her soul's inmost deep. I shall not see its like again! the brow Of passive marble, purely aureoled,-- As some pale lily in the afterglow,-- With supernatural gold. As if a rose should speak and, somehow heard By some strange sense, the unembodied sound Grow visible, her mouth was as a word A sweet thought falters 'round. So do I still remember eyes imbued With far reflections--as the stars suggest The silence, purity and solitude Of infinite peace and rest. She was my all. I loved her as men love A high desire, religion, an ideal-- The meaning purpose in the loss whereof God shall alone reveal. THE SEA SPIRIT Ah me! I shall not waken soon From dreams of such divinity! A spirit singing in the moon To me. White sea-spray driven of the storm Were not so wildly white as she! She beckoned with a foam-white arm To me. With eyes dark green, and golden-green Loose locks that sparkled drippingly, Out of the green wave she did lean To me. And sang; till Earth and Heaven were A far, forgotten memory; For more than Heaven seemed hid in her To me:-- Sleep, sweeter than love's face or home; Love, more than immortality; And music of the dreamy foam For me. Pass over her with all thy ships With all thy stormy tides, O sea! The memory of immortal lips For me! A DREAM SHAPE With moon-white hearts that held a gleam, I gathered wild flowers in a dream, And shaped a woman, whose sweet blood Was odor of the wildwood bud. From dew, the starlight arrowed through, I wrought a woman's eyes of blue; The lids, that on her eyeballs lay, Were rose-pale petals of the May. I took the music of the breeze, And water whispering in the trees, And shaped the soul that breathed below A woman's blossom breasts of snow. Out of a rose-bud's veins I drew The fragrant crimson beating through The languid lips of her, whose kiss Was as a poppy's drowsiness. Out of the moonlight and the air I wrought the glory of her hair, That o'er her eyes' blue heaven lay Like some gold cloud o'er dawn of day. A shadow's shadow in the glass Of sleep, my spirit saw her pass: And, thinking of it now, meseems We only live within our dreams. For in that time she was to me More real than our reality; More real than Earth, more real than I-- The unreal things that pass and die. THE VAMPIRE A lily in a twilight place? A moonflow'r in the lonely night?-- Strange beauty of a woman's face Of wildflow'r-white! The rain that hangs a star's green ray Slim on a leaf-point's restlessness, Is not so glimmering green and gray As was her dress. I drew her dark hair from her eyes, And in their deeps beheld a while Such shadowy moonlight as the skies Of Hell may smile. She held her mouth up redly wan, And burning cold,--I bent and kissed Such rosy snow as some wild dawn Makes of a mist. God shall not take from me that hour, When round my neck her white arms clung! When 'neath my lips, like some fierce flower, Her white throat swung! Or words she murmured while she leaned! Witch-words, she holds me softly by,-- The spell that binds me to a fiend Until I die. WILL-O'-THE-WISP I. There in the calamus he stands With frog-webbed feet and bat-winged hands; His glow-worm garb glints goblin-wise; And elfishly, and elfishly, Above the gleam of owlet eyes, A death's-moth cap of downy dyes Nods out at me, nods out at me. II. Now in the reeds his face looks white As witch-down on a witches' night; Now through the dark old haunted mill, So eerily, so eerily, He flits; and with a whippoorwill Mouth calls, and seems to syllable, "Come follow me! come follow me!" III. Now o'er the sluggish stream he wends, A slim light at his finger-ends; The spotted spawn, the toad hath clomb, Slips oozily, slips oozily; His easy footsteps seem to come-- Like bubble-gaspings of the scum-- Now near to me, now near to me. IV. There by the stagnant pool he stands, A fox-fire lamp in flickering hands; The weeds are slimy to the tread, And mockingly, and mockingly, With slanted eyes and eldritch head He leans above a face long dead,-- The face of me! the face of me! THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN On the black road through the wood As I rode, There the Headless Horseman stood; By the wild pool in the wood, As I rode. From the shadow of an oak, As I rode, Demon steed and rider broke; By the thunder-shattered oak, As I rode. On the waste road through the plain, As I rode, At my back he whirled like rain; On the tempest-blackened plain, As I rode. Four fierce hoofs shod red with fire, As I rode, Woke the wild rocks, dark and dire; Eyes and nostrils streamed with fire, As I rode. On the deep road through the rocks, As I rode, I could reach his horse's locks; Through the echo-hurling rocks, As I rode. And again I looked behind, As I rode,-- Dark as night and swift as wind, Towering, he rode behind, As I rode. On the steep road down the dell, As I rode, In the night I heard a bell, In the village in the dell, As I rode. And my soul called out in prayer, As I rode,-- Lo! the demon went in air, Leaving me alone in prayer, As I rode. THE WERE-WOLF SHE. Nay; still amort, my love? Why dost thou lag? HE. The strix-owl cried. SHE. Nay! yon wild stream that leaps Hoarse from the black pines of the Hakel steeps, A moon-tipped water, down a glittering crag.-- Why so aghast, sweetheart? Why dost thou stop? HE. The demon-huntsman passed with hooting horn! SHE. Nay! 't was the blind wind sweeping through the thorn Around the ruins of the Dumburg's top. HE. My limbs are cold. SHE. Come! warm thee in mine arms. HE. Mine eyes are weary. SHE. Rest them, love, on mine. HE. I am athirst. SHE. Quench on my lips thy thirst.-- O dear belovéd, how thy last kiss warms My blood again! HE. Off!... How thy eyeballs shine! Thy face!... thy form!... So do I die accursed! THE TROGLODYTE In ages dead, a troglodyte, At the hollow roots of a monster height,-- That grew from the heart of the world to light,-- I dwelt in caverns: over me Were mountains older than the moon; And forests vaster than the sea, And gulfs, that the earthquake's hand had hewn, Hung under me. And late and soon I heard the dæmon of change that sighed A cosmic language of mystery; While life sat silent, primeval-eyed, With the infant spirit of prophecy. Gaunt stars glared down on the Titan peaks; And the gaunter glare of the cratered streaks Of the sunset's ruin heard condor shrieks. The roar of cataracts hurled in air, And the hurricane laying his thunders bare, And rush of battling beasts,--whose lair Was the antechamber of nadir-gloom,-- Were my outworld joys. But who shall tell The awe of the depths that heard the boom Of the iron rivers that fashioned Hell! THE CITY OF DARKNESS Wide-walled it stands in heathen lands Beside a mystic sea, With streets strange-trod of many a god, And templed blasphemy. Far in the night, a rose of light It shines beside the sea; But overhead an unknown dread Impends eternally. There is a sound above, around Of music by the sea; And weird and wide the torches glide Of pagan revelry. There is a noise as of a voice That calls beneath the sea; And all the deep grows pale with sleep And vague expectancy. Then slowly up--as from a cup Seethes poison--lifts the sea; Wild mass on mass, as in black glass, The town glows fiery. Red-lit it glowers like Hell's dark towers Set in the iron sea; And monster swarms with awful forms Roll though it cloudily. Still overhead the unknown dread, Whose shadow dyes the sea, At wrath-winged wait behind its gate Till God shall set it free. A taloned flash, an earthquake crash, And, lo! upon the sea, Black wall on wall, a giant pall, Night settles hideously. And where it burned, a rose inurned, Red in the vasty sea, The phantasm of the dread above Sits in immensity. TRANSMUTATION To me all beauty that I see Is melody made visible: An earth-translated state, may be, Of music heard in Heaven or Hell. Out of some love-impassioned strain Of saints, the rose evolved its bloom; And, dreaming of it here again, Perhaps re-lives it as perfume. Out of some chant that demons sing Of hate and pain, the sunset grew; And, haply, still remembering, Re-lives it here as some wild hue. THE END FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY COPIES OF THIS BOOK (THIRTY-FIVE COPIES OF WHICH ARE ON HANDMADE PAPER) WERE PRINTED DURING MARCH BY JOHN WILSON AND SON CAMBRIDGE 
31919	----	file was produced from images generously made available by The Kentuckiana Digital Library.) BLOOMS OF THE BERRY. BY MADISON J. CAWEIN. "I fain would tune my fancy to your key."--_Sir John Suckling._ LOUISVILLE: JOHN P. MORTON AND COMPANY, PRINTERS. 1887 COPYRIGHTED By MADISON J. CAWEIN. 1887 PROEM. Wine-warm winds that sigh and sing, Led me, wrapped in many moods, Thro' the green sonorous woods Of belated Spring; Till I came where, glad with heat, Waste and wild the fields were strewn, Olden as the olden moon, At my weary feet; Wild and white with starry bloom, One far milky-way that dashed, When some mad wind o'er it flashed, Into billowy foam. I, bewildered, gazed around, As one on whose heavy dreams Comes a sudden burst of beams, Like a mighty sound. If the grander flowers I sought, But these berry-blooms to you, Evanescent as their dew, Only these I brought. JULY 3, 1887. I.--BY WOLD AND WOOD. THE HOLLOW. I. Fleet swallows soared and darted 'Neath empty vaults of blue; Thick leaves close clung or parted To let the sunlight through; Each wild rose, honey-hearted, Bowed full of living dew. II. Down deep, fair fields of Heaven, Beat wafts of air and balm, From southmost islands driven And continents of calm; Bland winds by which were given Hid hints of rustling palm. III. High birds soared high to hover; Thick leaves close clung to slip; Wild rose and snowy clover Were warm for winds to dip, And one ungentle lover, A bee with robber lip. IV. Dart on, O buoyant swallow! Kiss leaves and willing rose! Whose musk the sly winds follow, And bee that booming goes;-- But in this quiet hollow I'll walk, which no one knows. V. None save the moon that shineth At night through rifted trees; The lonely flower that twineth Frail blooms that no one sees; The whippoorwill that pineth; The sad, sweet-swaying breeze; VI. The lone white stars that glitter; The stream's complaining wave; Gray bats that dodge and flitter; Black crickets hid that rave; And me whose life is bitter, And one white head stone grave. BY WOLD AND WOOD. I. Green, watery jets of light let through The rippling foliage drenched with dew; Bland glow-worm glamours warm and dim Above the mystic vistas swim, Where, 'round the fountain's oozy urn, The limp, loose fronds of limber fern Wave dusky tresses thin and wet, Blue-filleted with violet. O'er roots that writhe in snaky knots The moss in amber cushions clots; From wattled walls of brier and brush The elder's misty attars gush; And, Argus-eyed, by knoll and bank The affluent wild rose flowers rank; And stol'n in shadowy retreats, In black, rich soil, your vision greets The colder undergrowths of woods, Damp, lushy-leaved, whose gloomier moods Turn all the life beneath to death And rottenness for their own breath. May-apples waxen-stemmed and large With their bloom-screening breadths of targe; Wake robins dark-green leaved, their stems Tipped with green, oval clumps of gems, As if some woodland Bacchus there A-braiding of his yellow hair With ivy-tod had idly tost His thyrsus there, and so had lost. Low blood root with its pallid bloom, The red life of its mother's womb Through all its ardent pulses fine Beating in scarlet veins of wine. And where the knotty eyes of trees Stare wide, like Fauns' at Dryades That lave smooth limbs in founts of spar, Shines many a wild-flower's tender star. II. The scummy pond sleeps lazily, Clad thick with lilies, and the bee Reels boisterous as a Bassarid Above the bloated green frog hid In lush wan calamus and grass, Beside the water's stagnant glass. The piebald dragon-fly, like one A-weary of the world and sun, Comes blindly blundering along, A pedagogue, gaunt, lean, and long, Large-headed naturalist with wise, Great, glaring goggles on his eyes. And dry and hot the fragrant mint Pours grateful odors without stint From cool, clay banks of cressy streams, Rare as the musks of rich hareems, And hot as some sultana's breath With turbulent passions or with death. A haze of floating saffron; sound Of shy, crisp creepings o'er the ground; The dip and stir of twig and leaf; Tempestuous gusts of spices brief From elder bosks and sassafras; Wind-cuffs that dodge the laughing grass; Sharp, sudden songs and whisperings That hint at untold hidden things, Pan and Sylvanus that of old Kept sacred each wild wood and wold. A wily light beneath the trees Quivers and dusks with ev'ry breeze; Mayhap some Hamadryad who, Culling her morning meal of dew From frail accustomed cups of flowers-- Some Satyr watching through the bowers-- Had, when his goat hoof snapped and pressed A brittle branch, shrunk back distressed, Startled, her wild, tumultuous hair Bathing her limbs one instant there. ANTICIPATION. Windy the sky and mad; Surly the gray March day; Bleak the forests and sad, Sad for the beautiful May. On maples tasseled with red No blithe bird swinging sung; The brook in its lonely bed Complained in an unknown tongue. We walked in the wasted wood: Her face as the Spring's was fair, Her blood was the Spring's own blood, The Spring's her radiant hair, And we found in the windy wild One cowering violet, Like a frail and tremulous child In the caked leaves bowed and wet. And I sighed at the sight, with pain For the May's warm face in the wood, May's passions of sun and rain, May's raiment of bloom and of bud. But she said when she saw me sad, "Tho' the world be gloomy as fate, And we yearn for the days to be glad, Dear heart, we can afford to wait. "For, know, one beautiful thing On the dark day's bosom curled, Makes the wild day glad to sing, Content to smile at the world. "For the sinless world is fair, And man's is the sin and gloom; And dead are the days that were, But what are the days to come? "Be happy, dear heart, and wait! For the past is a memory: Tho' to-day seem somber as fate, Who knows what to-morrow will be?" * * * * * * * And the May came on in her charms, With a twinkle of rustling feet; Blooms stormed from her luminous arms, And honey of smiles that were sweet. Now I think of her words that day, This day that I longed so to see, That finds her dead with the May, And the March but a memory. A LAMENT. I. White moons may come, white moons may go, She sleeps where wild wood blossoms blow, Nor knows she of the rosy June, Star-silver flowers o'er her strewn, The pearly paleness of the moon,-- Alas! how should she know! II. The downy moth at evening comes To suck thin honey from wet blooms; Long, lazy clouds that swimming high Brood white about the western sky, Grow red as molten iron and lie Above the fragrant glooms. III. Rare odors of the weed and fern, Dry whisp'rings of dim leaves that turn, A sound of hidden waters lone Frothed bubbling down the streaming stone, And now a wood-dove's plaintive moan Drift from the bushy burne. IV. Her garden where deep lilacs blew, Where on old walls old roses grew Head-heavy with their mellow musk, Where, when the beetle's drone was husk, She lingered in the dying dusk, No more shall know that knew. V. When orchards, courting the wan Spring, Starred robes of buds around them fling, Their beauty now to her is naught, Once a sweet passion, when she fraught Dark curls with blooms that nodding caught Impulse from the bee's wing. VI. White moons may come, white moons may go, She sleeps where wildwood blossoms blow; Cares naught for fairy fern or weed, White wand'rings of the plumy seed, Of hart or hind she takes no heed; Alas! her head lies low! DISTANCE. I. I dreamed last night once more I stood Knee-deep in purple clover leas; Your old home glimmered thro' its wood Of dark and melancholy trees, Where ev'ry sudden summer breeze That wantoned o'er the solitude The water's melody pursued, And sleepy hummings of the bees. II. And ankle-deep in violet blooms Methought I saw you standing there, A lawny light among the glooms, A crown of sunlight on your hair; Wild songsters singing every where Made lightning with their glossy plumes; About you clung the wild perfumes And swooned along the shining air. III. And then you called me, and my ears Grew flattered with the music, led In fancy back to sweeter years, Far sweeter years that now are dead; And at your summons fast I sped, Buoyant as one a goal who nears. Ah! lost, dead love! I woke in tears; For as I neared you farther fled! ASPIRATION. God knows I strive against low lust and vice, Wound in the net of their voluptuous hair; God knows that all their kisses are as ice To me who do not care. God knows, against the front of Fate I set Eyes still and stern, and lips as bitter prest; Raised clenched and ineffectual palms to let Her rock-like pressing breast! God knows what motive such large zeal inspires, God knows the star for which I climb and crave, God knows, and only God, the eating fires That in my bosom rave. I will not fall! I will not; thou dost lie! Deep Hell! that seethest in thy simmering pit; Thy thousand throned horrors shall not vie, Or ever compass it! But as thou sinkest from my soul away, So shall I rise, rolled in the morning's rose, Beyond this world, this life, this little day-- God knows! God knows! God knows! SPRING TWILIGHT. The sun set late, and left along the West One furious ruby rare, whose rosy rays Poured in a slumb'rous cloud's pear-curdled breast, Blossomed to peachy sprays. The sun set late, and wafts of wind arose, And cuffed the blossom from the blossoming quince; Shatter red attar vials of the rose, And made the clover wince. By dusking forests, thro' whose fretful boughs In flying fragments shot the evening's flame, Adown the tangled lane the quiet cows With dreary tinklings came. The sun set late; but hardly had he gone When o'er the moon's gold-litten crescent there, Clean Phosphor, polished as a precious stone, Pulsed in fair deeps of air. As from faint stars the glory waned and waned, The fussy insects made the garden shrill; Beyond the luminous pasture lands complained One lonely whippoorwill. FRAGMENTS. I. STARS. The fields of space gleam bright, as if some ancient giant, old As the moon and her extinguished mountains, Had dipped his fingers huge into the twilight's sea of gold And sprinkled all the heavens from these fountains. II. GHOSTS. In soft sad nights, when all the still lagoon Lolls in a wealth of golden radiance, I sit like one enchanted in a trance, And see them 'twixt the haunted mist and moon. Lascivious eyes 'neath snow-pale sensual brows, Flashing hot, killing lust, and tresses light, Lose, satin streaming, purple as the night, Night when the storm sings and the forest bows. And then, meseems, along the wild, fierce hills A whisper and a rustle of fleet feet, As if tempestuous troops of Mænads meet To drain deep bowls and shout and have their wills. And once I see large, lustrous limbs revealed, Moth-white and lawny, 'twixt sonorous trees; And then a song, faint as of fairy seas, Lulls all my senses till my eyes are sealed. III. MOONRISE AT SEA. With lips that were hoarse with a fury Of foam and of winds that are strewn, Of storm and of turbulent hurry, The ocean roared, heralding soon A birth of miraculous glory, Of madness, affection--the moon. And soon from her waist with a slipping And shudder and clinging of light, With a loos'ning and pushing and ripping Of the raven-laced bodice of Night, With a silence of feet and a dripping The goddess came, virginal white. And the air was alive with the twinkle And tumult of silver-shod feet, The hurling of stars, and the sprinkle Of loose, lawny limbs and a sweet Murmur and whisper and tinkle Of beam-weaponed moon spirits fleet. THE RAIN. We stood where the fields were tawny, Where the redolent woodland was warm, And the summer above us, now lawny, Was alive with the pulse winds of storm. And we watched weak wheat waves lighten, And wince and hiss at each gust, And the turbulent maples whiten, And the lane grow gray with dust. White flakes from the blossoming cherry, Pink snows of the peaches were blown, And star-fair blooms of the berry And the dogwood's flowers were strewn. And the luminous hillocks grew sullied, And shadowed and thrilled with alarm, When the body of the blackness was gullied With the rapid, keen flame of the storm. And the birds to dry coverts had hurried, And the musical rillet ran slow, And the buccaneer bee was worried, And the red lilies swung to and fro. Till the elf-cuirassiers of the showers Came, bright with slant lances of rain, And charged the bare heads of the flowers, And trampled the grass of the plain. And the armies of the leaves were shattered, Their standards drenched, heavy and lank; And the iron weed's purple was spattered, And the lily lay broke on the bank. But high in the storm was the swallow, And the rain-strong voice of the fall In the bough-grottoed dingle sang hollow To the sky-blue flags on its wall. But the storm and its clouds passed over, And left but one cloud in the West, Wet wafts that were fragrant with clover, And the sun low sunken to rest; Soft spices of rain-studded poppies, Of honey unfilched of a bee, And balm of the mead and the coppice, And musk of the rain-breathing tree. Then the cloud in the West was riven, And bubbled and bursten with gold, Blown out through deep gorges of heaven, And spilled on the wood and the wold. TO S. McK. I. Shall we forget how, in our day, The Sabine fields about us lay In amaranth and asphodel, And bubbling, cold Bandusian well, Fair Pyrrhas haunting every way? In dells of forest faun and fay, Moss-lounged within the fountain's spray, How drained we wines too rare to tell, Shall we forget? The fine Falernian or the ray Of fiery Cæcuban, while gay We heard Bacchantes shout and yell, Filled full of Bacchus, and so fell To dreaming of some Lydia; Shall we forget? II. If we forget in after years, My comrade, all the hopes and fears That hovered all our walks around When ent'ring on that mystic ground Of ghostly legends, where one hears By bandit towers the chase that nears Thro' cracking woods, the oaths and cheers Of demon huntsman, horn and hound; If we forget. Lenora's lover and her tears, Fierce Wallenstein, satanic sneers Of the red devil Goethe bound,-- Why then, forsooth, they soon are found In burly stoops of German beers, If we forget! MORNING AND NIGHT. FROM "THE TRIUMPH OF MUSIC." ... Fresh from bathing in orient fountains, In wells of rock water and snow, Comes the Dawn with her pearl-brimming fingers O'er the thyme and the pines of yon mountain; Where she steps young blossoms fresh blow.... And sweet as the star-beams in fountains, And soft as the fall of the dew, Wet as the hues of the rain-arch, To me was the Dawn when on mountains Pearl-capped o'er the hyaline blue, Saint-fair and pure thro' the blue, Her spirit in dimples comes dancing, In dimples of light and of fire, Planting her footprints in roses On the floss of the snow-drifts, while glancing Large on her brow is her tire, Gemmed with the morning-star's fire. But sweet as the incense from altars, And warm as the light on a cloud, Sad as the wail of bleak woodlands, To me was the Night when she falters In the sorrowful folds of her shroud, In the far-blowing black of her shroud, O'er the flower-strewn bier of her lover, The Day lying faded and fair In the red-curtained chambers of air. When disheveled I've seen her uncover Her gold-girdled raven of hair-- All hooped with the gold of the even-- And for this sad burial prepare, The spirit of Night in the heaven To me was most wondrously fair, So fair that I wished it were given To die in the rays of her hair, Die wrapped in her gold-girdled hair. THE TOLL-MAN'S DAUGHTER. Once more the June with her great moon Poured harvest o'er the golden fields; Once more her days in hot, bright shields She bore from morn to drooping noon. A rhymer, sick of work and rhyme, Disheartened by a poor success, I sought the woods to loll the time In one long month of quietness. It was the time when one will thrill For indolent fields, serener skies; For Nature's softening subtleties Of higher cloud and gullied rill. When crumpled poppies strew the halls Of all the East, where mounts the Dawn, And in the eve the skyey lawn Gold kingcups heap 'neath Night's gray walls. The silver peace of distant wolds, Of far-seen lakes a glimmering dance, Fresh green of undulating hills, Old woodlands silent with romance. Intenser stars, a lazier moon, The moonlit torrent on the peak, And at one's side a maiden meek And lovely as the balmy June. The toll-gate stood beside the road, The highway from the city's smoke; Its long, well white-washed spear-point broke The clean sky o'er the pike and showed The draught-horse where his rest should be. The locusts tall with shade on shade The trough of water cool beneath, From heat and toil a Sabbath made. Beyond were pastures where the kine Would browse, and where a young bull roared; And here would pass a peeping hoard Of duck and brood in waddling line. A week flew by on wings of ease. I walked along a rutty lane; I stopped to list some picker's strain Sung in a patch of raspberries. Upon the fence's lanky rails I leaned to stare into great eyes Glooming beneath a bonnet white Bowed 'neath a chin of dimpled prize. Phoebe, the toll-man's daughter she; I knew her by a slow, calm smile, Whose source seemed distant many a mile, Brimming her eyes' profundity. Elastic as a filly's tread Her modest step, and full and warm The graceful contour of her form Harmonious swelled from foot to head. And such a head!--You'd thought that there The languid night, in frowsy bliss, Had curled brown rays for her deep hair And stained them with the starlight's kiss. A face as beautiful and bright, As crystal fair as twilight skies, Lit with the stars of hazel eyes, And lashed with black of dusky night. She stood waist-deep amid the briers; Above in twisted lengths were rolled The sunset's tangled whorls of gold, Blown from the West's mist-fueled fires. A shuddering twilight dashed with gold Down smouldering hills the fierce day fell, And bubbling over star on star The night's blue cisterns 'gan to well, With the dusk crescent of his wings A huge crane cleaves the wealthy West, While up the East a silver breast Of chastity the full moon brings. For her, I knew, where'er she trod, Each dew-drop raised a limpid glass To flash her beauty from the grass; That wild flowers bloomed along the sod, Or, whisp'ring, murmured when she smiled; The wood-bird hushed to hark her song, Or, all enamored, from his wild Before her feet flew flutt'ring long. The brook droned mystic melodies, Eddied in laughter when she kissed With naked feet its amethyst Of waters stained by blooming trees. THE BERRIERS. MORN. Down silver precipices drawn The red-wine cataracts of dawn Pour soundless torrents wide and far, Deluging each warm, floating star. A sound of winds and brooks and wings, Sweet woodland-fluted carolings, Star radiance dashed on moss and fern, Wet leaves that quiver, breathe, and burn; Wet hills, hung heavily with woods, Dew-drenched and drunken solitudes Faint-murmuring elfin canticles; Sound, light, and spicy boisterous smells, And flowers and buds; tumultuous bees, Wind-wafts and genii of the trees. Thro' briers that trammel, one by one, With swinging pails comes laughing on A troop of youthful berriers, Their wet feet glitt'ring where they pass Thro' dew-drop studded tufts of grass: And oh! their cheers, their merry cheers, Wake Echo on her shrubby rock, Whom dale and mountain answering mock With rapid fairy horns, as if Each mossy hill and weedy cliff Had its imperial Oberon, Who, seeking his Titania hid In bloomy coverts him to shun, In kingly wrath had called and chid. EVENING. Cloud-feathers oozing rich with light, Slow trembling in the locks of Night, Her dusky waist with sultry gold Girdled and buckled fold on fold. High stars; a sound of bleating flocks; Gray, burly shadows fall'n 'mid rocks, Like giant curses overthrown By some Arthurian champion; Soft-swimming sorceries of mist Haunting glad glens of amethyst; Low tinklings in dim clover dells Of bland-eyed kine with brazen bells; And where the marsh in reed and grass Burns angry as a shattered glass. The flies blur sudden blasts of shine, Like wasted draughts of amber wine Spun high by reeling Bacchanals When Bacchus bredes his curling hair With vine-leaves, and from ev'ry lair Voluptuous Mænads lovely calls. They come, they come, a happy throng, The berriers with gibe and song; Deep pails brimmed black to tin-white eaves With luscious fruit kept cool with leaves Of aromatic sassafras, 'Twixt which some sparkling berry slips, Like laughter, from the purple mass, Wine swollen as Silenus' lips. HARVESTING. I. NOON. The tanned and sultry noon climbs high Up gleaming reaches of the sky; Below the balmy belts of pines The cliff-lunged river laps and shines; Adown the aromatic dell Sifts the warm harvest's musky smell. And, oh! above one sees and hears The brawny-throated harvesters; Their red brows beaded with the heat, By twos and threes among the wheat Flash their hot sickles' slenderness In loops of shine; and sing, and sing, Like some mad troop of piping Pan, Along the hills that swoon or ring With sounds of Ariel airiness That haunted freckled Caliban: "O ho! O ho! 'tis noon, I say; The roses blow. Away, away, above the hay The burly bees to the roses gay Hum love-tunes all the livelong day, So low! so low! The roses' Minnesingers they." II. TWILIGHT. Up velvet lawns of lilac skies The tawny moon begins to rise Behind low blue-black hills of trees, As rises from faint Siren seas, To rock in purple deeps, hip-hid, A virgin-bosom'd Oceanid. Gaunt shadows crouch by rock and wood, Like hairy Satyrs, grim and rude, Till the white Dryads of the moon Come noiseless in their silver shoon To beautify them with their love. The sweet, sad notes I hear, I hear, Beyond dim pines and mellow hills, Of some fair maiden harvester, The lovely Limnad of the grove Whose singing charms me while it kills: "O deep! O deep! the twilight rare Pales on to sleep; And fair, so fair! fades the rich air. The fountain shines in its ferny lair, Where the cold Nymph sits in her oozy hair To weep, to weep, For a mortal youth who is not there." GOING FOR THE COWS. I. The juice-big apples' sullen gold, Like lazy Sultans laughed and lolled 'Mid heavy mats of leaves that lay Green-flatten'd 'gainst the glaring day; And here a pear of rusty brown, And peaches on whose brows the down Waxed furry as the ears of Pan, And, like Diana's cheeks, whose tan Burnt tender secresies of fire, Or wan as Psyche's with desire Of lips that love to kiss or taste Voluptuous ripeness there sweet placed. And down the orchard vistas he,-- Barefooted, trousers out at knee, Face shadowing from the sloping sun A hat of straw, brim-sagging broad,-- Came, lowly whistling some vague tune, Upon the sunbeam-sprinkled road. Lank in his hand a twig with which In boyish thoughtlessness he crushed Rare pennyroyal myriads rich In pungent souls that warmly gushed. Before him whirled in rattling fear The saffron-bellied grasshopper; And ringing from the musky dells Came faint the cows' melodious bells, Where whimp'ring like a fretful hound The fountain bubbled up in sound. II. Yellow as sunset skies and pale As fairy clouds that stay or sail Thro' azure vaults of summer, blue As summer heavens the violets grew; And mosses on which spurts of light Fell laughing, like the lips one might Feign for a Hebe or a girl Whose mouth heat-lightens up with pearl; Limp ferns in murmuring shadows shrunk And silent as if stunned or drunk With moist aromas of the wood; Dry rustlings of the quietude; On silver fronds' thin tresses new Cold limpid blisters of the dew. Across the rambling fence she leaned: A gingham gown to ankles bare; Her artless beauty, bonnet-screened, Tempestuous with its stormy hair. A rain-crow gurgled in a vine,-- She heard it not--a step she hears; The wild rose smelt like delicate wine,-- She knew it not--'tis he that nears. With smiles of greeting all her face Grew musical; with rustic grace He leant beside her, and they had Some parley, with light laughter glad; I know not what; I know but this, Its final period was a kiss. SONG OF THE SPIRITS OF SPRING. I. Wafted o'er purple seas, From gold Hesperides, Mixed with the southern breeze, Hail to us spirits! Dripping with fragrant rains, Fire of our ardent veins, Life of the barren plains, Woodlands and germs that the woodland inherits. II. Wan as the creamy mist, Tinged with pale amethyst, Warm with the sun that kissed Vine-tangled mountains Looming o'er tropic lakes, Where ev'ry air that shakes Tamarisk coverts makes Music that haunts like the falling of fountains. III. Swift are our flashing feet, Fleet with the winds that meet, Winds that, blown, billow sweet, And with light porous, Boom with the drunken bees, Sigh with the surge of seas, Rush with the rush of trees, Birds and wild wings and of torrents sonorous. IV. Stars in our liquid eyes, Stars of the darkest skies, And on our fingers lies Starlight; and shadows, Unmooned, of nights that creep Hide in our tresses deep, And in our limbs white sleep Dreams like a baby in asphodel meadows. V. Music of many streams, Strength of a million beams, Fire and sainted dreams, Murmuring lowly, Pulse on hot lips of light, Which, what they kiss of blight, Quicken and blossom white, Raise to be beautiful, perfect, and holy. VI. Oh, will you sit and wait, When fields, erst desolate, Now are intoxicate With life that flowers? Purple with love and rife With their fierce budded life, Passion and rosy strife Drained from warm winds and the turbulent showers? VII. Nay! at our feet you'll lie: For the winds lullaby, For our completest sky, And largess flying Of pinky pearls of blooms, For the one bee that booms, And the warm-spilled perfumes Forget for a moment already we're dying! THE SPIRITS OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS. [VOICES SINGING.] FIRST CHORUS. Ere the birth of Death and of Time, Ere the birth of Hell and its torments, Ere the orbs of heat and of rime And the winds to the heavens were as garments, Worm-like in the womb of Space, Worm-like from her monster womb, We sprung, a myriad race Of thunder and tempest and gloom. SECOND CHORUS. As from the evil good Springs like a fire, As bland beatitude Wells from the dire, So was the Chaos brood Of us the sire. FIRST CHORUS. We had lain for gaunt ages asleep 'Neath her breast in a bulk of torpor, When down through the vasts of the deep Clove a sound like the notes of a harper; Clove a sound, and the horrors grew Tumultuous with turbulent night, With whirlwinds of blackness that blew, And storm that was godly in might. And the walls of our prison were shattered Like the crust of a fire-wrecked world; Like torrents of clouds that are scattered On the face of the Night we are hurled. SECOND CHORUS. Us, in unholy thought Patiently lying, Eons of violence wrought, Violence defying. When on a mighty wind,-- Born of a godly mind Large with a motive kind,-- Girdled with wonder, Flame and a strength of song Rushed in a voice along, Burst and, lo! we were strong-- Strong as the thunder. FIRST CHORUS. We lurk in the upper spaces, Where the oceans of tempest are born, Where the scowls of our shadowy faces Are safe from the splendors of morn. Our homes are wrecked worlds and each planet Whose sun is a light that is sped; Bleak moons whose cold bodies of granite Are hollow and flameless and dead. SECOND CHORUS. We in the living sun Live like a passion; Ere all his stars begun We and the sun were one, As God did fashion. Lo! from our burning hands, Flung like inspired brands, Hurled we the stars, like sands Whirled in the ocean; And all our breath was life, Life to those worlds and rife With ever-moving strife, Passion for motion. FIRST CHORUS. Our beds are the tombs of the mortals; We feed on their crimes and the thought That falters and halts at the portals Of actions, intentions unwrought. We cover the face of to-morrow; We frown in the hours that be; We breathe in the presence of sorrow, And death and destruction are we. SECOND CHORUS. We are the hope and ease, Joy and the pleasure, Authors of love and peace, Love that shall never cease, Free as the azure. Birth of our eyes--the might, Power and strength of light, Victor o'er death and night, Flesh and its yearnings: And from our utt'rance streams Beauty with burnings After completer dreams, Fuller discernings. Morning and birth are ours, Dew that is blown From our light lips like flowers; Clouds and the beating showers, Stars that are sown; Song and the bursting buds, Life of the many floods, Winds that are strown. Ye in your darkness are Dark and infernal; Subject to death and mar! But in the spaces far, Like our effulgent star, We are eternal! TO SORROW. I. O tear-eyed goddess of the marble brow, Who showerest snows of tresses on the night Of anguished temples! lonely watcher, thou Who bendest o'er the couch of life's dead light! Who in the hollow hours of night's noon Rockest the cradle of the child, Whose fever-blooded eyeballs seek the moon To cool their pulses wild. Thou who dost stoop to kiss a sister's cheek, Which rules the alabastar death with youth; Thou who art mad and strangely meek,-- Empress of passions, couth, uncouth, We kneel to thee! II. O Sorrow, when the sapless world grows white, And singing gathers on her springtide robes, On some bleak steep which takes the ruby light Of day, braid in thy locks the spirit globes Of cool, weak snowdrops dashed with frozen dew, And hasten to the leas below Where Spring may wandered be from the rich blue Which rims yon clouds of snow. From the pied crocus and the violet's hues, Think then how thou didst rake the bosoming snow, To show some mother the soft blues Of baby eyes, the sparkling glow Of dimple-dotted cheeks. III. On some hoar upland, hoar with clustered thorns, Hard by a river's wind-blown lisp of waves, Sit with young white-skinned Spring, whose dewy morns Laugh in his pouting cheeks which Health enslaves. There feast thee on the brede of his long hair, Where half-grown roses royal blaze. And cool-eyed primroses wide-diskéd bare, Frail stars of moonish haze, Contented lie wound in his breathing arms:-- 'Tis meet that grief should mingle with the wan, That blue of calms and gloom of storms Reign on the burning throne of dawn To glorify the world. IV. Or in the peaceful calm of stormy evens, When the sick, bloodless West doth winding spread A sheeted shroud of silver o'er the heavens And brooches it with one rich star's gold head, Low lay thee down beside a mountain lake, Which dimples at the twilight's sigh, Couched on plush mosses 'neath green bosks that shake Storm fragrance from on high,-- The cold, pure spice of rain-drenched forests deep,-- And gorge thy grief upon the nightingale, Who with the hush a war doth keep That bubbles down the starlit vale To Silence's rapt ear. THE PASSING OF THE BEAUTIFUL. On southern winds shot through with amber light, Breeding soft balm, and clothed in cloudy white, The lily-fingered Spring came o'er the hills Waking the crocus and the daffodils. O'er the cold earth she breathed a tender sigh,-- The maples sang and flung their banners high, Their crimson-tasseled pennons, and the elm Bound his dark brows with a green-crested helm. Beneath the musky rot of Autumn's leaves, Under the forest's myriad naked eaves, Life woke and rose in gold and green and blue, Robed in the star-light of the twinkling dew. With timid tread adown the barren wood Spring held her way, when, lo! before her stood White-mantled Winter wagging his white head, Stormy his brow, and stormily he said:-- "Sole lord of terror, and the fiend of storm, Crowned king of despots, my envermeiled arm Slew these vast woodlands crimsoning all their bowers! Thou, Spirit of Beauty, with thy bursting flowers, Swollen with pride, wouldst thou usurp my throne, Long planted here deep in the waste's wild moan? Sworn foe of beauty, with a band of ice I'll strangle thee tho' thou be welcomer thrice!" So round her throat a band of blasting frost, Her sainted throat of snow, he coiled and crossed, And cast her on the dark, unfeeling mold; Her tender blossoms, blighted in the fold Of her warm bosoms, trembling bowed their brows In holy meekness, or in scattered rows Huddled about her white and silent feet, Or on pale lips laid fond last kisses sweet, And died: lilacs all musky for the May, And bluer violets, and snow drops lay Silent and dead, but yet divinely fair, Like ice gems glist'ning in Spring's lovely hair. The Beautiful, so innocent, sweet, and pure, Why must thou perish, and the evil still endure? Too soon must pass the Beautiful away! Too long doth Terror hold anarchal sway! Alas! sad heart, bow not beneath the pain, Time changeth all, the Beautiful wakes again! We can not question such; a higher power Knows best what bud is ripest in its flower; Silently plucks it at the fittest hour. A NOVEMBER SKETCH. The hoar-frost hisses 'neath the feet, And the worm-fence's straggling length, Smote by the morning's slanted strength, Sparkles one rib of virgin sleet. To withered fields the crisp breeze talks, And silently and sadly lifts The bronz'd leaves from the beech and drifts Them wadded down the woodland walks. Reluctantly and one by one The worthless leaves sift slowly down, And thro' the mournful vistas blown Drop rustling, and their rest is won. Where stands the brook beneath its fall, Thin-scaled with ice the pool is bound, And on the pebbles scattered 'round The ooze is frozen; one and all White as rare crystals shining fair. There stirs no life: the faded wood Mourns sighing, and the solitude Seems shaken with a mighty care. Decay and silence sadly drape The vigorous limbs of oldest trees, The rotting leaves and rocks whose knees Are shagged with moss, with misty crape. To sullenness the surly crow All his derisive feeling yields, And o'er the barren stubble-fields Flaps cawless, wrapped in hungry woe. The eve comes on: the teasel stoops Its spike-crowned head before the blast; The tattered leaves drive whirling past Like skeletons in whistling troops. The pithy elder copses sigh; Their broad blue combs with berries weighed, Like heavy pendulums are swayed With ev'ry gust that hurries by. Thro' matted walls of tangled brier That hedge the lane, the sumachs thrust Their scarlet torches red as rust, Burning with flames of stolid fire. The evening's here--cold, hard, and drear; The lavish West with bullion bright Of molten silver walls the night Far as one star's thin rays appear. Wedged toward the West's cold luridness The wild geese fly 'neath roseless domes; The wild cry of the leader comes Distant and harsh with loneliness. The pale West dies, and in its cup Bubble on bubble pours the night: The East glows with a mystic light; The stars are keen; the moon is up. THE WHITE EVENING. From gray, bleak hills 'neath steely skies Thro' beards of ice the forests roar; Along the river's humming shore The skimming skater bird-like flies. On windy meads where wave white breaks, Where fettered briers' glist'ning hands Reach to the cold moon's ghastly lands, Hoots the lorn owl, and crouching quakes. With frowsy snow blanched is the world; Stiff sweeps the wind thro' murmuring pines, Then fiend-like deep-entangled whines Thro' the dead oak, that vagrant twirled Phantoms the cliff o'er the wild wold: Ghost-vested willows rim the stream, Low hang lank limbs where in a dream The houseless hare leaps o'er the cold On snow-tressed crags that twinkling flash, Like champions mailed for clanking war, Glares down large Phosphor's quiv'ring star, Where teeth of foam the fierce seas gnash. Slim o'er the tree-tops weighed with white The country church's spire doth swell, A scintillating icicle, While fitfully the village light In sallow stars stabs the gray dark; Homeward the creaking wagons strain Thro' knee-deep drifts; the steeple's vane A flitting ghost whirls in its sark. Down from the flaky North with clash, Swathed in his beard of flashing sleet, With steeds of winds that jangling beat Life from the world, and roaring dash,-- Loud Winter! ruddy as a rose Blown by the June's mild, musky lips; The high moon dims her horn that dips, And fold on fold roll down the snows. SUMMER. I. Now Lucifer ignites her taper bright To greet the wild-flowered Dawn, Who leads the tasseled Summer draped with light Down heaven's gilded lawn. Hark to the minstrels of the woods, Tuning glad harps in haunted solitudes! List to the rillet's music soft, The tree's hushed song: Flushed from her star aloft Comes blue-eyed Summer stepping meek along. II. And as the lusty lover leads her in, Clad in soft blushes red, With breezy lips her love he tries to win, Doth many a tear-drop shed: While airy sighs, dyed in his heart, Like Cupid's arrows, flame-tipped o'er her dart, He bends his yellow head and craves The timid maid For one sweet kiss, and laves Her rose-crowned locks with tears until 'tis paid. III. Come to the forest or the musky meadows Brown with their mellow grain; Come where the cascades shake green shadows, Where tawny orchards reign. Come where fall reapers ply the scythe, Where golden sheaves are heaped by damsels blithe: Come to the rock-rough mountain old, Tree-pierced and wild; Where freckled flowers paint the wold, Hail laughing Summer, sunny-haired, blonde child! IV. Come where the dragon-flies in coats of blue Flit o'er the wildwood streams, And fright the wild bee from the honey-dew Where if long-sipping dreams. Come where the touch-me-nots shy peep Gold-horned and speckled from the cascades steep: Come where the daisies by the rustic bridge Display their eyes, Or where the lilied sedge From emerald forest-pools, lance-like, thick rise. V. Come where the wild deer feed within the brake As red as oak and strong; Come where romantic echoes wildly wake Old hills to mystic song. Come to the vine-hung woodlands hoary, Come to the realms of hunting song and story; But come when Summer decks the land With garb of gold, With colors myriad as the sand-- A birth-fair child, tho' thousand summers old. VI. Come where the trees extend their shining arms Unto the star-sown skies; Displaying wrinkled age in limb-gnarled charms When Night, moon-eyed, brown lies Upon their bending lances seen With fluttered pennons in the moon's broad sheen. Come where the pearly dew is spread Upon the rose; Come where the fire-flies wed The drowsy Night flame-stained with sudden glows. VII. Come to the vine-dark dingle's whispering glens White with their blossoms pale; Come to the willowed weed-haired lakes and fens; Come to the tedded vale. Come all, and greet the brown-browed child With lips of honey red as a poppy wild, Clothed in her vernal robes of old, Her hair with wheat All tawny as with gold; Hail Summer with her sandaled grain-bound feet! NIGHT. Lo! where the car of Day down slopes of flame On burnished axle quits the drowsy skies! And as his snorting steeds of glowing brass Rush 'neath the earth, a glimmering dust of gold From their fierce hoofs o'er heaven's azure meads Rolls to yon star that burns beneath the moon. With solemn tread and holy-stoled, star-bound, The Night steps in, sad votaress, like a nun, To pace lone corridors of th' ebon-archéd sky. How sad! how beautiful! her raven locks Pale-filleted with stars that dance their sheen On her deep, holy eyes, and woo to sleep, Sleep or the easeful slumber of white Death! How calm o'er this great water, in its flow Silent and vast, smoothes yon cold sister sphere, Her lucid chasteness feathering the wax-white foam! As o'er a troubled brow falls calm content: As clear-eyed chastity in this bleak world Tinges and softens all the darker dross. See, where the roses blow at the wood's edge In many a languid bloom, bowed to the moon And the dim river's lisp; sleep droops their lids With damask lashes trimmed and fragile rayed, Which the mad, frolic bee--rough paramour-- So often kissed beneath th' enlivening sun. How cool the breezes touch the tired head With unseen fingers long and soft! and there From its white couch of thorn-tree blossoms sweet, Pillowed with one milk cluster, floating, swooning, Drops the low nocturne of a dreaming bird, _Ave Maria_, nun-like, slumb'ring sung. See, there the violet mound in many an eye, A deep-blue eye, meek, delicate, and sad, As Sorrow's own sad eyes, great with far dreams, When haltingly she bends o'er Lethe's waves Falt'ring to drink, and falt'ring still remains, The Night with feet of moon-tinged mist swept o'er Them now, but as she passed she bent and kissed Each modest orb that selfless hung as tho' Thought-freighted low; then groped her train of jet Which billowing by did merely waft the sound Of a brief gust to each wild violet, To kiss each eye and laugh; then shed a tear Upon each downward face which nestled there. She weeping from her silent vigil turns, As some pale mother from her cradled child, Frail, sick, and wan, with kisses warm and songs Wooed to a peaceful ease and tranquil rest, When the rathe cock crows to the graying East. DAWN. I. Mist on the mountain height Silvery creeping; Incarnate beads of light Bloom-cradled sleeping, Dripped from the brow of Night. II. Shadows, and winds that rise Over the mountain; Stars in the spar that lies Cold in the fountain, Pale as the quickened skies. III. Sheep in the wattled folds Dreamily bleating, Dim on the thistled wolds, Where, glad with meeting, Morn the thin Night enfolds. IV. Sleep on the moaning sea Hushing his trouble; Rest on the cares that be Hued in Life's bubble, Calm on the woes of me.... V. Mist from the mountain height Hurriedly fleeting; Star in the locks of Night Throbbing and beating, Thrilled with the coming light. VI. Flocks on the musky strips; Pearl in the fountain; Winds from the forest's lips; Red on the mountain; Dawn from the Orient trips. JUNE. I. Hotly burns the amaryllis With its stars of red; Whitely rise the stately lilies From the lily bed; Withered shrinks the wax May-apple 'Neath its parasol; Chilly dies the violet dapple In its earthly hall. II. March is but a blust'ring liar, April a sad love, May a milkmaid from the byre Flirting in the grove. June is rich in many blossoms, She's the one I'll woo; Health swells in her sunny bosoms, She's my sweetheart true. THE JESSAMINE AND THE MORNING-GLORY. I. On a sheet of silver the morning-star lay Fresh, white as a baby child, And laughed and leaped in his lissome way, On my parterre of flowers smiled. For a morning-glory's spiral bud Of shell-coned tallness slim Stood ready to burst her delicate hood And bloom on the dawning dim: A princess royal in purple born To beauty and pride in the balmy morn. II. And she shook her locks at the morning-star And her raiment scattered wide; Low laughed at a hollyhock's scimetar, Its jewels of buds to deride. The pomegranate near, with fingers of flame, The hot-faced geraniums nigh, Their proud heads bowed to the queenly dame For they knew her state was high: The fuchsia like a bead of blood Bashfully blushed in her silvery hood. III. All wit that this child of the morning light Was queen of the morn and them, That the orient star in his beams of white Was her prince in a diadem; For lavish he showered those pearls that flash And cluster the front of her smock; From his lordly fingers of rays did dash Down zephyrs her crib to rock. But a jessamine pale 'neath the arbor grew, Meek, selfless, and sweet, and a virgin true. IV. But the morning-glory disdained her birth, Of her chastity made a scorn: "I marvel," she said, "if thy mother earth Was not sick when thou wast born! Thou art pale as an infant an hour dead-- Wan thing, dost weary our eye!" And she weakly laughed and stiffened her head And turned to her love i' the sky. But the jessamine turned to the rose beside With a heavy glance and but sadly sighed. V. And the orient grew to a wealth of bars 'Neath which foam-fires churned, And the princess proud saw her lord of stars In a torrid furnace burned; And the giant of life with his breath of flame Glared down with one red eye, And 'neath his breath this gorgeous dame In her diamonds did wilt and die; But the jessamine fragrant waxed purer with light; For my lady's bosom I culled it that night. THE HEREMITE TOAD. A human skull in a church-yard lay; For the church was a wreck, and the tombstones old On the graves of their dead were rotting away To the like of their long-watched mould. And an heremite toad in this desolate seat Had made him an hermitage long agone, Where the ivy frail with its delicate feet Could creep o'er his cell of bone. And the ground was dark, and the springing dawn, When it struck from the tottering stones of each grave A glimmering silver, the dawn drops wan This skull and its ivy would lave. * * * * * * * The night her crescent had thinly hung From a single star o'er the shattered wall, And its feeble light on the stone was flung Where I sat to hear him call. And I heard this heremite toad as he sate In the gloom of his ghastly hermitage, To himself and the gloom all hollowly prate, Like a misanthropic sage: "O, beauty is well and is wealth to all, But wealth without beauty _makes_ fair; And beauty with wealth brings wooers tall Whom she snares in her golden hair. "Tho' beauty be well and be wealth to all, And wealth without beauty draw men, Beauty must come to the vaulted wall, And what is wealth to her then?... "This skeleton face was beautiful erst; These sockets could mammonites sway; So she barter'd her beauty for gold accurs'd-- But both have vanished away. "But beauty is well when the mind it reveals More beautiful is than the head; For beauty and wealth the tomb congeals, But the mind grows lovelier dead." And he blinked at the moon from his grinning cell, And the darnels and burdocks around Bowed down in the night, and I murmured "Well!" For I deemed his judgment sound. THE HEART OF SPRING. I. Whiten, O whiten, ye clouds of fleece! Whiten like lilies floating above, Blown wild about like a flock of white geese! But never, O never; so cease! so cease! Never as white as the throat of my love! II. Blue-black night on the mountain peaks, Blacker the locks of my maiden love! Silvery star 'mid the evening streaks Over the torrent that flashes and breaks, Brighter the eyes of my laughing love! III. Horn of a new moon golden 'mid gold, Broken, fluted in the tarn's close skies; Shattered and beaten, wave-like and cold, Crisper my love's locks fold on fold, Cooler and brighter where dreaming she lies! IV. Silvery star o'er the precipice snow, Mist in the vale where the rivulet sings, Dropping from ledge to ledge below, Where we stood in the roseate glow, Softer the voice of her whisperings! V. Sound o' May winds in the blossoming trees, Sweeter the breeze my love's breath brings! Song of wild birds on the morning breeze, Song o' wild birds and murmur o' wild bees, Sweeter my love's voice when she sings! VI. To the star of dawning bathed with dew, Blow, moony Sylph, your bugle of gold! Blow thro' the hyaline over the blue, Blow from the sunset the morning lands thro', Let the star of love of our love be told! THE OLD HOUSE BY THE MERE. Five rotten gables look upon Wan rotting roses and rank weeds, Old iron gates on posts of stone, Dim dingles where the vermin breeds. Five rotten gables black appear Above bleak yews and cedars sad, And thence they see the sleepy mere In lazy lilies clad. At morn the slender dragon-fly, A burnished ray of light, darts past; The knightly bee comes charging by Winding a surly blast. At noon amid the fervid leaves The quarreling insects gossip hot, And thro' the grass the spider weaves A weft with silver shot. At eve the hermit cricket rears His vesper song in shrillful shrieks; The bat a blund'ring voyage steers Beneath the sunset's streaks. The slimy worm gnaws at the bud, The Katydid talks dreamily; The sullen owl in monkish hood Chants in the old beech tree. At night the blist'ring dew comes down And lies as white as autumn frost Upon the green, upon the brown, You'd deem each bush a ghost. The crescent moon with golden prow Plows thro' the frothy cloud and 's gone; A large blue star comes out to glow Above the house alone. The oozy lilies lie asleep On glist'ring beds of welt'ring leaves; The starlight through the trees doth peep, And fairy garments weaves. And in the mere, all lily fair, A maiden's corpse floats evermore, Naked, and in her raven hair Wrapped o'er and o'er. And when the clock of yon old town Peals midnight o'er the fenny heath, In haunted chambers up and down Marches the pomp of Death: And stiff, stiff silks make rustlings, Sweep sable satins murmuringly; And then a voice so sweetly sings An olden melody. And foam-white creatures flit and dance Along the dusty galleries, With long, loose locks that strangely glance And demon-glaring eyes. But in one chamber, when the moon Casts her cold silver wreath on wreath, Holds there proud state on ghastly throne The skeleton Death. SUBSTRATUM. Hear you r o music in the creaks Made by the sallow grasshopper, Who in the hot weeds sharply breaks The mellow dryness with his cheer? Or did you by the hearthstones hear The cricket's kind, shrill strain when frost Worked mysteries of silver near Upon the casement's panes, and lost Without the gate-post seemed a sheeted ghost? Or through the dank, dim Springtide's night Green minstrels of the marshlands tune Their hoarse lyres in the pale twilight, Hailing the sickle of the moon From flag-thronged pools that glassed her lune? Or in the Summer, dry and loud, The hard cicada whirr aboon His long lay in a poplar's cloud, When the thin heat rose wraith-like in a shroud? The cloud that lids the naked moon, And smites the myriad leaves with night Of stormy lashes, livid strewn With veins of branched and splintered light; The fruitful glebe with blossoms white, The thistle's purple plume; the tears Pearling the matin buds' delight, Contain a something, it appears, 'Neath their real selves--a poetry that cheers. Nor scoff at those who on the wold See fairies whirling in the shine Of prodigal moons, whose lavish gold Paves wood-ways, forests wild with vine, When all the wilderness with wine Of tipsy dew is dazed; nor say Our God's restricted to confine His wonders solely to the day, That yields the abstract tangible to clay. Ponder the entrance of the Morn When from her rubric forehead far Shines one clean star, and the dead tarn, The wooded river's red as war: Where arid splinters of the scar Lock horns above a blue abyss, How roses prank each icy bar, While piled aloft the mountains press, Fling dawn below from many a hoary tress. The jutting crags, all stubborn-veined With iron life, where eaglets scream In dizzy flocks, and cleave the stained Mist-rainbows of the mountain stream; Thus you will drink the thickest cream Of nature if you do not scan The bald external; and must deem A plan existent in a plan-- As life in thrifty trees or soul in man. ALONG THE OHIO. Athwart a sky of brass rich ribs of gold; A bullion bulk the wide Ohio lies; Beneath the sunset, billowing manifold, The purple hill-tops rise. And lo! the crescent of a crystal moon, And great cloud-feathers flushed with crimson light Drifting above the pureness of her lune, Rent from the wings of night. A crescent boat slips o'er the burnished stream; A silver wake, that broadens far behind, Follows in ripples, and the paddles gleam Against the evening wind. So, in this solitude and evening hush, Again to me the Old Kentucky glooms Behold the red man lurking in yon bush In paint and eagle plumes. And now the breaking of the brittle brush-- An altered forehead hirsute swells in view, And now comes stealing down the river's gush The dip of the canoe. The wigwams glimmer in night's settling waves, And, wildly clad, around the camp-fire's glow Sit long-haired chieftains 'mid their wily braves, Each grasping his war-bow. But now yon boat on fading waters fades; The ostrich-feathered clouds have lost their light, And from the West, like somber sachem shades, Gallop the shades of night. The broad Ohio wavers 'neath the stars, And many murmurs whisper 'mid the woods-- Tumultuous mournings of dead warriors For their lost solitudes. And like a silver curl th' Ohio lies Among the earth's luxuriance of hair; Majestic as she met the red man's eyes-- As beautiful and fair. No marvel that the warrior's love waxed flame Fighting for thee, Kentucky, till he wound Inseparably 'round thee that old name Of dark and bloody ground! But peace to those wild braves whose bones are thine! And peace to those rude pioneers whose moon Of glory rose, 'mid stars of lesser shine, In name of Daniel Boone! "Peace! peace!" the lips of all thy forests roar; The rivers mutter peace unto thy strand: Thy past is dead, and let us name thee o'er, THE HOSPITABLE LAND! THE OHIO FALLS. Here on this jutting headland, where the trees Spread a dusk carpet for the sun to cast And count his golden guineas on, we'll stay; For hence is the best prospect of the Falls, Whose roar no more astounds the startled ear, As when we bent and marked it from the bridge Seething beneath and bounding like a steed-- A tameless steed with mane of flying spray-- Between the pillars rising sheer above. But mark how soft its clamor now is grown, Incessant rush like that of vernal groves When, like some sweet surprise, a wand'ring wind, Precursor of the coming rain, rides down From a gray cloud and sets their leafy tongues A-gabbing of the fresh, impending shower. There runs the dam, and where its dark line cuts The river's sheen, already you may see The ripples glancing to the fervid sun, As if the waves had couched a hundred spears And tossed a hundred plumes of fleecy foam In answer to the challenge of the Falls, Blown on his bugle from the battlements Of his subaqueous city's rocky walls. And now you see their maddened coursers charge, Hear wavy hoof-strokes on the jagged stones, That pave the pathway of the current, beat, While billowing they ride to ringing lists, With shout and yell, and toss their hundred plumes, And shock their riply spears in tournament Upon the opposing billows' shining shields. Now sinks a pennon, but 'tis raised again; There falls or breaks a spear or sparkling sword; A shattered helmet flies in flakes of foam And on the frightened wind hisses away: And o'er it all you hear the sound, the roar Of waves that fall in onset or that strive. On, on they come, a beautiful, mad troop! On, on, along the sandy banks that fling Red pebble-freckled arms far out to stay The riotous waves that ride and hurl along In casque and shield and wind their wat'ry horns. And there where thousand oily eddies whirl, And turn and turn like busy wheels of steel, Is the Big Eddy, whose deep bottom none As yet have felt with sounding plummet-line. Like a huge giant, wily in its strength, The Eddy lies; and bending from the shore The spotted sycamores have looked and looked, Watching his motions as a school boy might A sleeping serpent coiled upon his path. So long they've watched that their old backs have grown Hump'd, gnarl'd, and crooked, nor seem they this to heed, But gaze and gaze, and from the glossy waves Their images stare back their wonderment. Mayhap they've seen the guardian Genius lie At its dark bottom in an oozy cave Of shattered rock, recumbent on his mace Of mineral; his locks of dripping green Circling a crown of ore; his fishy eyes Dull with the monotony of his aqueous realms. But when the storm's abroad and smites the waves With stinging lashes of the myriad rain, Or scars with thunder some ancestral oak, Sire of a forest, then he wakes in wrath, And on the dark foundations of the stream Stands monarch of the flood in iron crown, And murmurs till the tempest fiends above Stand stark with awe, and all the eddy breaks To waves like those whose round and murky bulks. Ribbed white with foam, wallow like battened swine Along yon ridge of ragged rock o'erstrewn With petrifactions of Time's earliest dawn; Mollusks and trilobites and honey-combs Of coral white; and here and there a mass Of what seems writhing reptiles there convolved, And in one moment when the change did come, Which made and unmade continents and seas, That teemed and groaned with dire monstrosities, Had froze their glossy spines to sable stones. There where uprises a dun knoll o'erstrewn With black and rotten stumps in the mid river, Erst rose an island green and beautiful With willows, beeches, dappled sycamores; Corn Island, on whose rich and fertile soil The early pioneers a colony Attempted once to found, ere ever this Fair "City of the Falls"--now echoing to The tingling bustle of its busy trade-- Was dreamed of. Here the woodman built His rude log cabin; here he sowed his maize; Here saw it tassel 'neath the Summer's smile, And glance like ranks of feathered Indians thro' The misty vistas of the broken woods; Here reaped and sheaved its wealth of ivory ears When Autumn came like a brown Indian maid Tripping from the pink sunset o'er the hills, That blushed for love and cast beneath her feet Untold of gold in leaves and yellow fruit. Here lived the pioneer and here he died, And mingled his rough dust with the raw earth Of that long isle which now disparted stands, And nothing save a bed of limestone rock,-- Where in the quarry you may see the blast Spout heavenward the dust and dirt and stone, And flap and pound its echoes 'round the hills Like giant strokes of some huge airy hammer,-- And that lone mound of stumpy earth to show That there once stood an isle as rich and fair As any isle that rises up to kiss The sun and dream in tropic seas of balm. There lies the other half of what was once Corn Island; a broad channel flows between. And this low half, mantled with a dwarf growth Of what was once high brakes and forest land, Goose Island now is named. In the dim morn, Ere yet the East assumes her faintest blush. Here may you hear the melancholy snipe Piping, or see her paddling in the pools That splash the low bed of the rocky isle. Once here the Indian stole in natural craft From brush to brush, his head plumes like a bird Flutt'ring and nodding 'mid the undergrowth; In his brown hand the pliant, polished bow, And at his back his gaudy quiver filled With tufted arrows headed with blue flint. And while the deep flamingo colored West Flamed on his ruddy cheek its airy fire, Strung his quick bow and thro' the gray wild goose, That rose with clamor from the rushy pool, Launched a fleet barb, crested with quills--perchance Plucked yestere'en from its dead mate's gray wing To decorate the painted shaft that should Dabble to-day their white in its mate's blood;-- It falling, gasping at its moccasined feet, Its wild life breathed away, while the glad brave Whooped to the sunset, and yon faint blue hills Answered his exultation with a whoop. THE RUINED MILL. There is the ruined water-mill With its rotten wheel, that stands as still As its image that sleeps in the glassy pool Where the water snake coils dim and cool In the flaky light of the setting sun Showering his gold in bullion. And the languid daisies nod and shine By the trickling fall in a starry line; The drowsy daisies with eyes of gold-- Large as the eyes of a queen of old Dreaming of revels by day and night-- Coyly o'erdropped with lashes white. The hawk sails high in the sleepy air, The buzzard on wings as strong and fair Circles and stoops 'neath the lazy cloud, And crows in the wood are cawing aloud. Will ye enter with me this ruined mill When the shades of night its chambers fill, Stand and lurk in the heavy dark Like scowling fiends, each eye a spark, A spark of moonlight shot thro' gloom? While a moist, rank, stifling, dead perfume Of rotting timbers and rotting grain, And roofs all warped with the sun and rain Makes of the stagnant air a cell, In the haunted chambers broods like a spell? A spell that makes the awed mind run To the thoughts of a hidden skeleton, A skeleton ghastly and livid and lank 'Neath the mossy floors in a cellar dank, Grinning and glow'ring, moisture wet, In its hollow eyes a mad regret. Or with me enter when the evening star In the saffron heaven is sparkling afar, In all its glory of light divine, Like a diamond bathed in kingly wine. Or when the heavens hang wild and gray, And the chilly clouds are hurrying away Like the driven leaves of an Autumn day; When the night-rain sounds on the sodden roof, And the spider lulls in his dusty woof; When the wet wind whines like a hound that's lashed, 'Round the crazy angles strongly dashed, Or wails in a cranny--'tis she who plays On her airy harp sad, olden lays, And sings and moans in a room above Of a vague despair and a blighted love. You will see her sit on the shattered sill, Her sable tresses dropped loose at will; And down in the West 'neath the storm's black bank A belt of wild green, cold, livid, and lank, And a crescent moon, like a demon's barque, Into the green dips a horn from the dark, While a lurid light of ghoulish gold On the eldrich creature falls strangely cold. Her insane eyes bulge mad with desire, And her face's beauty is darkly dire; For she sees in the pool, that solidly lies 'Neath the mill's great wheel and the stormy skies, Her murdered lover lie faint and white, A haunting horror, a loadstone's might Drawing and dragging her soul from its seat To the glimmering ice of his ghastly feet. FROST. White artist he, who, breezeless nights, From tingling stars jocosely whirls, A harlequin in spangled tights, His wand a pot of pounded pearls. The field a hasty pallet; for, In thin or thick, with daub and streak, It stretches from the barn-gate's bar To the bleached ribbon of the creek. A great geometer is he; For, on the creek's diaphanous silk, Sphere, cone, and star exquisitely He's drawn in crystal lines of milk. Most delicate, his talent keen On casement panes he lavishes, In many a Lilliputian scene Of vague white hives and milky bees, That sparkling in still swarms delight, Or bow the jeweled bells of flowers;-- Of dim, deep landscapes of the night, Hanging down limpid domes quaint showers Of feathery stars and meteors Above an upland's glimmering ways, Where gambol 'neath the feverish stars The erl-king and the fleecy fays. Or last, one arabesque of ferns, Chrysanthemums and mistletoe, And death-pale roses bunched in urns That with an innate glory glow. In leafless woodlands saturnine, Where reckless winds, like goblins mad, Screech swinging in each barren vine, His wagship shapes a lesson sad: When slyly touched by his white hand Of Midas-magic, forests old Dariuses of pomp then stand Barbaric-crowned with living gold.... Patrician state, plebeian blood Soon foster sybarites, and they, Squand'ring their riches, wood by wood, Die palsied wrecks debauched and gray. INVOCATION. I. O Life! O Death! O God! Have I not striven? Have I not known thee, God, As thy stars know Heaven? Have I not held thee true, True as thy deepest, Sweet and immaculate blue, Of nights that feel thy dew? Have I not _known_ thee true, O God that keepest? II. O God, my father, God! Didst give me fire To rise above the clod, And soar, aspire! What tho' I strive and strive, And all my life says live, The sneerful scorn of men But beats it down again; And, O! sun-centered high, O God! grand poet! Beneath thy tender sky Each day new Keatses die, And thou dost know it! III. They know thee beautiful! They know thee bitter! And all their eyes are full, O God! most beautiful! Of tears that glitter. Thou art above their tears; Thou art beyond their years; Thou sittest, God of Hosts, Among thy glorious ghosts, So high and holy; And canst thou know the tears, The strivings and the fears, O God of godly peers! Of such so lowly? IV. They who were fondly fain To tell what mother pain Of Nature makes the rain; They who were glad to know The sorrow of her snow, Of her wild winds the woe; The magic of her light, The passion of her night, And of her death the might; They who had tears and sighs For every bud that dies While the dew on it lies; They who had utterance for Each warm, rose-hearted star That stammers from afar; The demon of vast seas, The lips of lyric trees, Lays of sonorous bees; The fragrance-fays that dower Each wildwood bosk and bower With its faint musk of flower; Of Time the feverish flight; Earth, man, and, last, man's right To thee, O Infinite! FAIRIES. On the tremulous coppice, From her plenteous hair, Large golden-rayed poppies Of moon-litten air The Night hath flung there. In the fern-favored hollow The fire-flies fleet Uncertainly follow Pale phantoms of heat, Druid shadows that meet. Hidden flowers are fragrant; The night hazes furl O'er the solitudes vagrant In purple and pearl, Sway-swinging and curl. From moss-cushioned valley Where the red sunlight fails, Rocks where musically The hollow spring wails, And the limber fern trails, With a ripple and twinkle Of luminous arms, Of voices that tinkle, And feet that are storms Of chaste, naked charms, Like echoes that revel On hills, where the brier Vaults roofs of dishevel And green, greedy fire, They come as a choir. At the root of the mountain Where the dim forest lies, By the spar-spouting fountain Where the low lily dies, With their star-stinging eyes. They gather sweet singing In voices that seem Faint ringing and clinging In dreams that we dream, In visions that gleam. Sweet lisping of kisses, Dry rustle of hair; A footfall that hisses Like a leaf in the air When the brown boughs are bare. The music that scatters From love-litten eyes; The music that flatters In words and low sighs, In laughter that dies: "Come hither, come hither, In the million-eyed night, Ere the moon-flowers wither And the harvester white, Morning reaps them with light. "Come hither, where singing Is pleasant as tears, Or dead kisses, clinging To the murdering years, In memory's ears. "Come hither where kisses Are waiting for you, For lips and long tresses, As for wild flowers blue The moon-heated dew. "Come hither from coppice And violet dale, The mountain whose top is In vapors that sail With pearly hail pale. "Why tarry? come hither While the molten moon beams, Ere the golden spark wither Of the glow-worm that gleams Like a star in still streams!" THE TRYST. Had fallen a fragrant shower; The leaves were dripping yet; Each fern and rain-weighed flower Around were gleaming wet; On ev'ry bosky bower A million gems were set. The dust's moist odors sifted Cool with the summer rain, Mixed with the musk that drifted From orchard and from plain;-- Her garden's fence white lifted Its length along the lane. The moon the clouds had shattered In curdled peaks of pearl; The honeysuckle scattered Warm odors from each curl, Where the white moonlight, flattered, Hung molten 'round a girl. Then grew the night completer With light and cloud and air; Aromas sweet blew sweeter, Sweet flowers fair, more fair; Fleet feet and fast grew fleeter Thro' that fair sorceress there. AN ANTIQUE. Mildewed and gray the marble stairs Rise from their balustraded urns To where a chiseled satyr glares From a luxuriant bed of ferns; A pebbled walk that labyrinths 'Twixt parallels of verdant box To where, broad-based on grotesque plinths, 'Mid cushions of moss-padded rocks, Rises a ruined pleasure-house, Of shattered column, broken dome, Where, reveling in thick carouse, The buoyant ivy makes its home. And here from bank, and there from bed, Down the mad rillet's jubilant lymph, The lavish violet's odors shed In breathings of a fountain nymph. And where, in lichened hoariness, The broken marble dial-plate Basks in the Summer's sultriness, Rich houri roses palpitate. Voluptuous, languid with perfumes, As were the beauties that of old, In damask satins, jeweled plumes, With powdered gallants here that strolled. When slender rapiers, proud with gems, Sneered at the sun their haughty hues, And Touchstone wit and apothegms Laughed down the long, cool avenues. Two pleated bowers of woodbine pave, 'Neath all their heaviness of musk, Two fountains of pellucid wave, With sunlight-tessellated dusk. Beholding these, I seem to feel An exodus of earthly sight, An influx of ecstatic weal Poured thro' my eyes in jets of light. And so I see the fountains twain Of hate and love in Arden there; The time of regal Charlemagne, Of Roland and of Oliver. Rinaldo of Montalban's towers Sleeps by the spring of hate; above Bows, spilling all his face with flowers, Angelica, who quaffed of love. A GUINEVERE. Sullen gold down all the sky, In the roses sultry musk; Nightingales hid in the dusk Yonder sob and sigh. You are here; and I could weep, Weep for joy and suffering. "Where is he?" He'd have me sing;-- There he sits asleep. Think not of him! he is dead For the moment to us twain; He were dead but for this pain Drumming in my head. "Am I happy?" Ask the fire When it bursts its bounds and thrills Some mad hours as it wills If those hours tire. He had gold. As for the rest-- Well you know how they were set, Saying that I must forget, And 'twas for the best. I forget! but let it go!-- Kiss me as you did of old. There! your kisses are not cold! Can you love me so, Knowing what I am to him Sitting in his gouty chair On the breezy terrace where Amber fire-flies swim? "Yes?"--Your cheek a tear-drop wets, But your kisses on my lip Fall as warm as bees that sip Sweets from violets. See! the moon has risen white As this bursten lily here Rocking on the dusky mere Like a silent light. Let us walk. We soon must part-- All too soon! but he may miss! Give me but another kiss; It will heat my heart And the bitter winter there. So; we part, my Launcelot, My true knight! and am I not Your true Guinevere? Oft they parted thus they tell In that mystical romance. Were they placed, think you, perchance, For such love in hell? No! it can not, can not be! Love is God and God is love, And they live and love above, Guinevere and he! I must go now. See! there fell, Molten into purple light, One wild star. Kiss me good-night; And, once more, farewell! CLOUDS. All through the tepid Summer night The starless sky had poured a cool Monotony of pleasant rain In music beautiful. And for an hour I'd sat to watch Clouds moving on majestic feet, Had heard down avenues of night Their hearts of thunder beat; Saw ponderous limbs far-veined with gold Pulse fiery life o'er wood and plain, While scattered, fell from monstrous palms The largess of the rain; Beholding at each lightning's flash The generous silver on the sod, In meek devotion bowed, I thanked These almoners of God. NO MORE. I. The slanted storm tossed at their feet The frost-nipped Autumn leaves; The park's high pines were caked with sleet And ice-spears armed the eaves. They strolled adown the pillared pines To part where wet and twisted vines About the gate-posts flapped and beat. She watched him dimming in the rain Along the river's misty shore, And laughed with lips that sneered disdain "To meet no more!" II. 'Mong heavy roses weighed with dew The chirping crickets hid; Down the honeysuckle avenue Creaked the green katydid. The scattered stars smiled thro' the pines; Thro' stately windows draped with vines The rising moonlight's silver blew. He stared at lips proud, white, and dead, A chiseled calm that wore; Despair moaned on the lips that said "To meet no more." DESERTED. A broken rainbow on the skies of May Touching the sodden roses and low clouds, And in wet clouds like scattered jewels lost: Upon the heaven of a soul the ghost Of a great love, perfect in its pure ray, Touching the roses moist of memory To die within the Present's grief of clouds-- A broken rainbow on the skies of May. A flashing humming-bird amid strange flowers, Or red or white; its darting length of tongue Sucking and drinking all the cell-stored sweet, And now the surfeit and the hurried fleet: A love that put into expanding bowers Of one's large heart a tongue's persuasive powers To cream with joy, and riffled, so was gone-- A flashing humming-bird amid strange flowers. A foamy moon which thro' a night of fleece Moves amber girt into a bulk of dark, And, lost to eye, rims all the black with froth: A love of smiles, that, tinctured like a moth, Moved thro' a soul's night-dun and made a peace-- More bland than Melancholy's white--to cease In blanks of Time zoned with pale Memory's spark-- A foamy moon that brinks a storm with fleece. A blaze of living thunder--not a leap-- Momental spouting balds the piléd storm, The ghastly mountains and the livid ocean, The pine-roared crag, then blots the sight's commotion: A love that swiftly pouring bared the deep, Which cleaves white Life from Death, Death from white Sleep, And, ceasing, gave a brain one blur of storm-- Blank blast of midnight, love for Death and Sleep. THE DREAM OF CHRIST. I saw her twins of eyelids listless swoon Mesmeric eyes, Like the mild lapsing of a lulling tune On wide surprise, While slow the graceful presence of a moon Mellowed the purple skies. And had she dreamed or had in fancy gone As one who sought To hail the influx of a godly dawn Of heavenly thought, Trod trembling o'er old sainted hill and lawn With intense angels fraught? Sailed thro' majestic domes of the deep night By isles of stars, Wand'ring like some pure blessing warm with light From worldly jars To the high halls of morning, pearly white, And heaped with golden bars. Past temples vast, deluged with sandy seas, Whose ruins stand Like bleaching bones of dead monstrosities Crashed to the land, Stupendous homes of cursed idolatries Fallen to dust and sand. Ugly and bestial gods caked thick with gold-- Their hideousness Blaspheming Christ--'mid shattered altars rolled To rottenness, Their slaves abolished and their priests of old Trodden to nothingness. Thro' Syrian plains curtained with curling mist The grass she trailed, Where the shy floweret; by the dew-drop kissed, Sweet blushing quailed; And drowned in purple vales of amethyst The moon-mad bulbuls wailed. On glimmering wolds had seemed to hear the bleat Of folded flocks; Seen broad-browed sages pass with sandaled feet And hoary locks, While swimming in a bath of molten heat A great star glorious rocks. In fancy o'er a beaming baby bent-- Cradled amiss In a rude manger--on its brow to print One holy kiss, While down the slant winds faint aromas went And anthems deep of bliss.... And then she woke. The winter moon above Burst on her sight; And with strange sweetness all her dream was wove In its far flight, For jubilant bells rocked booming "peace and love" Down all the aisles of night. TO AUTUMN. I oft have net thee, Autumn, wandering Beside a misty stream, thy locks flung wild; Thy cheeks a hectic flush more fair than Spring, As if on thee the scarlet copse had smiled. Or thee I've seen a twisted oak beneath, Thy gentle eyes with foolish weeping dim, Beneath a faded oak from whose tinged leaves Thou woundedst drowsy wreaths, while the soft breath Of Morn did kiss thy locks and make them swim Far out behind, brown as the rustling sheaves. Oft have I thee upon a hillock seen, Dream-visaged, all agaze at glimpses faint Of glimmering woods that glanced the hills between With Indian faces from thy airy paint. Or I have met thee 'twixt two dappled hills Within a dingled valley nigh a fall, Clasped in thy tinted hand a ruddy flower, And lowly stooping where the leaf-dammed rills Went babbling low thro' wildwood's arrased hall, Where burned the beech and maples glared their power. Oft have I seen thee in a ruined mill, Where basked the crimson creeper serpentine; Where fallen leaves did stir and rustle chill, And saw thee rest beneath a wild grape-vine. While Echo, sad amid his deep-voiced mountains-- More sad than erst--did raise a dreamy speech And call thee to his youthful, amorous arms, Where splashed the murmuring forest's limpid fountains; And tho' his words thy pink-shell ears did reach, Thou wouldst not heed or guile him with thy charms. Once saw thee in a hollow girt with trees, A-dream amid the harvest's tawny grain; Thy plushy cheek faint flushing in the breeze, In thy deep eyes a drowsy sky's blue stain. And where within the woodland's twilight path The cloud-winged skies did peep all speechless down, And stirred the gaudy leaves with fragrant breath, I've seen thee walk, nor fear the Winter's wrath; There drop asleep clad in thy gipsy gown, While Echo bending o'er dropp'd tears upon thy wreath. AN ADDRESS TO NIGHT. Like some sad spirit from an unknown shore Thou comest with two children in thine arms: Flushed, poppied Sleep, whom mortals aye adore, Her flowing raiment sculptured to her charms. Soft on thy bosom in pure baby rest Clasped as a fair white rose in musky nest; But on thy other, like a thought of woe, Her brother, lean, cold Death doth thin recline, To thee as dear as she, thy maid divine, Whose frowsy hair his hectic breathings blow In poppied ringlets billowing all her marble brow. Oft have I taken Sleep from thy vague arms And fondled her faint head, with poppies wreath'd, Within my bosom's depths, until its storms With her were hushed and I but mildly breath'd. And then this child, O Night! with frolic art Arose from rest, and on my panting heart Blew bubbles of dreams where elfin worlds were lost, Until my airy soul smiled light on me From some far land too dim for day to see, And wandered in a shape of limpid frost Within a dusky dale where soundless streams did flee. Welcome to Earth, O Night the saintly garbed! Slip meek as love into the Day's flushed heart! Drop in a dream from where the meteors orbed Wander past systems scorning map or chart; Or sit aloft, thy hands brimmed full of stars, Or come in garb of storms 'mid thunder jars, When lightning-frilled gleams wide thy cloud-frounced dress, Then art thou grand! but, oh, when thy pure feet Along the star-strewn floors of Heaven beat, And thy cool breath the heated world doth bless, Thou art God's angel of true love and gentleness! THE HERON. EVENING. As slaughter red the long creek crawls From solitary forest walls, Out where the eve's wild glory falls. One wiry leg drowned in his breast, Neck-shrunk, flame-gilded with the West, Stark-stately he the evening wears. NIGHT. The whimp'ring creek breaks on the stone; The new moon came, but now is gone; White, tingling stars wink out alone. Lank specter of wet, windy lands, The melancholy heron stands; Then, clamoring, dives into the stars. A DIRGE. I. Life has fled; she is dead, Sleeping in the flow'ry vale Where the fleeting shades are shed Ghost-like o'er her features pale. Lay her 'neath the violets wild, Lay her like a dreaming child 'Neath the waving grass Where the shadows pass. II. Gone she has to happy rest With white flowers for her pillow; Moons look sadly on her breast Thro' an ever-weeping willow. Fold her hands, frail flakes of snow, Waxen as white roses blow Like herself so fair, Free from world and care. III. Twine this wreath of lilies wan 'Round her sculptured brow so white; Let her rest here, white as dawn, Like a lily quenched in night. Wreath this rosebud wild and pale, Wreath it 'mid her fingers frail; On her dreamless breast Let it dreaming rest. IV. Gently, gently lay her down, Gently lay her form to sleep; Gently let her soul be blown Far away, while low we weep. Hush! the earth no more can harm her Now that choirs of angels charm her! Dreams of life are brief; Naught amendeth grief. V. Speed away! speed away! Angels called her here to sleep; Let us leave her here to stay: Speed away! and, speeding, weep. Where the roses blow and die, 'Neath them she a rose doth lie Wilted in the grass Where the shadows pass. THE HAUNTED HOUSE. I. The shadows sit and stand within its door Like uninvited guests and poor, And all the long, hot summer day A dry green locust whirs its roundelay, And the shadows halt at the door. The sheeted iron upon the roof Stretches its weary hide and cracks; The spider weaves his windy woof In dingy closet cracks, And all a something lacks. The freckled snake crawls o'er the floor, Tongues at the shadows in the door, And where the musty mosses run Basks in the sun. II. The children of the fathers sleep Beneath the melancholy pines; Earth-worms within grim skulls forever creep And the glow-worm shines; The orchards in the meadow deep Lift up their stained, gnarled arms, Mossed, lichened where limp lizards peep. No youth swells up to make them leap And cry against the storms; No blossom lulls their age asleep, Each wind brings sad alarms. Big-bellied apples gold or bell-round pears No maiden gathers now; The moistures drip great reeking tears From each old, crippled bough. III. The orchards are yellow and solitary, The winds beat down their hands; The sunlight is sad and the moonlight is dreary, The hum of the country is lonesome and weary, And the bees go by in bands To other happier lands. The grasses are rotting in walk and in bower; The orchards smell dank and rank As a chamber where lay for a lonely hour A corpse unclad in the taper's glower, Chill, white, and lank. So the bees go by in murmurous bands, Drowsily wand'ring to happier lands Where the lilies draggle the bank. IV. In the desolate halls are lying, Gold, blood-red, and browned, Shriveled leaves of Autumn dying, And the shadows o'er them flying Turn them 'round and 'round, Make a dreary sound Thro' the echoing chambers crying In the haunted house. V. Gazing down in her white shroud From the edging cloud Comes at night the dimpled moon, Comes, and like a ghost is gone 'Neath the flying cloud O'er the haunted house. PERLE DES JARDINS. What am I, and what is he Who can cull and tear a heart, As one might a rose for sport In its royalty? What am I, that he has made All this love a bitter foam, Blown about a life of loam That must break and fade? He who of my heart could make Hollow crystal where his face Like a passion had its place Holy and then break! Shatter with insensate jeers!-- But these weary eyes are dry, Tearless clear, and if I die They shall know no tears. Yet my heart weeps;--let it weep! Let it weep in sullen pain, And this anguish in my brain Cry itself to sleep. Ah! the afternoon is warm, And yon fields are glad and fair; Many happy creatures there Thro' the woodland swarm. All the summer land is still, And the woodland stream is dark Where the lily rocks its barque Just below the mill. If they found me icy there 'Mid the lilies and pale whorls Of the cresses in my curls Wet of raven hair-- Fool and coward! are you such? Would you have him thus to know That you died for utter woe And despair o'ermuch? No! my face a marble bust! As the Sphynx, impassioned, stern!-- Passions hid, as in an urn, Burnt to bitter dust! And I'll write him as he wrote, Making, with his worded scorn, Tyrant,--crowned with stinging thorn,-- His cold, cruel note. "You'll forget," he says, "and I Feel 'tis better for us twain: It may give you some small pain, But, 'twill soon be by. "You are dark, and Maud is light; I am dark; and it is said Opposites are better wed;-- So I think I'm right." "You are dark and Maud is fair!" I could laugh at this excuse If this aching, mad abuse Were not more than hair! But I'll write him as a-glad Some few happy words and light, Touching on some past delight, That last year we had. Not one line of broken vows, Sighs or hurtful tears unshed, Faithless lips far better dead, Nor a withered rose. But a rose, this _Perle_ to wear,-- _Perle des Jardins_ delicate With faint fragrant life elate,-- When he weds her there. So; 'tis finished! It is well! Go, thou rose! I have no tear, Kiss, or word for thee to bear, And no woe to tell. Only be thus full of life, Cold and calm, impassionate, Filled with neither love nor hate, When he calls her wife! OSSIAN'S POEMS. Here I have heard on hills the battle clash Roar to the windy sea that roared again: When, drunk with wrath, upon the clanking plain Barbaric kings did meet in war and dash Their mailéd thousands down, heard onset crash Like crags contending 'gainst the battering main. Torrents of helms, beaming like streams of rain, Blue-billowing 'neath the pale moon's fitful flash; Saw the scared moon hang over the black wood Like a pale wreath of foam; shields, spears, and swords Shoot green as meteors thro' the steely flood, Or shine like ripples 'round their heathen lords Standing like stubborn rocks, whence the wild wave Of war circled in steel and foamed out brave on brave. II.--IN MYTHIC SEAS. IN MYTHIC SEAS. 'Neath saffron stars and satin skies, dark-blue, Between dim sylvan isles, a happy two. We sailed, and from the siren-haunted shore, All mystic in its mist, the soft gale bore The Siren's song, while on the ghostly steeps Strange foliage grew, deeps folding upon deeps, That hung and beamed with blossom and with bud, Thick-powdered, pallid, or like urns of blood Dripping, and blowing from wide mouths of blooms On our bare brows cool gales of sweet perfumes. While from the yellow stars that splashed the skies O'er our light shallop dropped soft mysteries Of calm and sleep, until the yellower moon Rose full of fire above a dark lagoon; And as she rose the nightingales on sprays Of heavy, shadowy roses burst in praise Of her wild loveliness, with boisterous pain Wailing far off around a ruined fane. And 'round our lazy keel that dipped to swing The spirits of the foam came whispering; And from dank Neptune's coral-columned caves Heard the Oceanids rise thro' the waves; Saw their smooth limbs cold-glimmering in the spray, Tumultuous bosoms panting with their play; Their oozy tresses, tossed unto the breeze, Flash sea-green brightness o'er the tumbled seas. 'Mid columned isles, glance vaguely thro' the trees, We watched the Satyrs chase the Dryades; Heard Pan's fierce trebles and the Triton's horn Sound from the rock-lashed foam when rose the Morn With chilly fingers dewing all the skies, That blushed for love and closed their starry eyes. The Naiad saw sweet smiling, in white mist, Half hidden in a bay of amethyst Her polished limbs, and at her hollow ear A shell's pink labyrinth held up to hear Dim echoes of the Siren's haunting strains Emprisoned in its chords of crimson veins. And stealing wily from a grove of pines The Oread in cincture of green vines, One twinkling foot half buried in the red Of a deep dimpled, crumpled poppy bed-- Like to the star of eve, when, lapsing low, Faint clouds that with the sunset colors glow Slip down in scarlet o'er its crystal white, It shining, tear-like, partly veils its light. Her wine-red lips half-parted in surprise, And expectation in her bright blue eyes, While slyly from a young oak coppice peers The wanton Faun with furry, pointed ears. He leaps, she flies as flies the startled nymph When Pan pursues her from her wonted lymph, Diana sees, and on her wooded hills Stays her fair band, the stag hounds' clamor stills. Already nearer glow the Oread's charms; To seize them Faunus strains his hairy arms-- A senseless statue of white, weeping stone Fills his embrace; the Oread is gone. The stag-hounds bay, Dian resumes the chase, While the astonished Faun's bewildered face Paints all his wonderment, and, wondering, He bends above the sculpture of the spring. We sailed; and many a morn of breathing balm, Purpureal, graced us in that season calm; And it was life to thee and me and love With the fair myths below, our God above, To sail in golden sunsets and emerge In golden morns upon a fretless surge. But ah, alas! the stars that dot the blue Shine not alway; the clouds must gather too. I knew not how it came, but in a while Myself I found cast on an arid isle Alone and barkless, soaked and wan with dread, The seas in wrath and thunder overhead, Deep down in coral caverns my pale love, No myths below, no God, it seemed, above. THE DEAD OREAD. Her heart is still and leaps no more With holy passion when the breeze, Her whilom playmate, as before, Comes with the language of the bees, Sad songs her mountain ashes sing And hidden fountains' whispering. Her calm, white feet, erst fleet and fast As Daphne's when a Faun pursued, No more will dance like sunlight past The dim-green vistas of the wood, Where ev'ry quailing floweret Smiled into life where they were set. Hers were the limbs of living light Most beautiful and virginal, God-graceful and as godly white, And wild as beautiful withal, And hyacinthine curls that broke In color when a wind awoke. The wild aromas weird that haunt Moist bloomy dells and solitudes About her presence seemed to pant, The happy life of all her moods; Ambrosial smiles and amorous eyes Whose luster would a god surprise. Her grave be by a dripping rock, A mossy dingle of the hill, Remote from Bacchanals that mock, Wine-wild, the long, mad nights and still, Where no unhallowed Pan with lust May mar her melancholy dust. APHRODITE. Apollo never smote a lovelier strain, When swan-necked Hebe paused her thirsty bowl A-sparkle with its wealth of nectar-draughts To lend a list'ners ear and smile on him, As that the Tritons blew on wreathed horns When Aphrodite, the cold ocean-foam Bursting its bubbles, from the hissing snow Whirled her nude form on Hyperion's gaze, Naked and fresh as Indian Ocean shell Dashed landward from its bed of sucking sponge And branching corals by the changed monsoon. Wind-rocked she swung her white feet on the sea, And music raved down the slant western winds; With swollen jowls the Tritons puffed the conch, Where, breasting with cold bosoms the green waves, That laughed in ripples at Love's misty feet, Oceanids with dimple-dented palms Smote sidewise the pale bubbles of the foam, Which wove a silver iris 'round her form. Where dolphins tumbling stained the garish arch Nerëides sang, braiding their wet locks, Or flung them streaming on the broken foam, Till evetide showed her loveliest of stars-- Lost passion-flower of the sinking sun-- In the cool sheen of shadowy waters deep, That moaned wild sea-songs at the Sirens' caves; Then in a hollow pearl, o'er moon-white waves, The creatures of the ocean danced their queen, Till Cytherea like a rosy mist Beneath the star rose blushing from the deep. On the pearled sands of a moon-glassing sea Beneath the moon, narcissus-like, they met, She naked as a star and crowned with stars, Child of the airy foam and queen of love. PERSEPHONE. O Hades! O false gods! false to yourselves! O Hades, 'twas thy brother gave her thee Without a mother's sanction or her knowledge! He bare her to the horrid gulfs below, And made her queen, a shadowy queen of shades, Queen of the fiery flood and mournful realms Of grating iron and the clank of chains. On blossomed plains in far Trinacria A maiden, the dark cascade of whose hair Seemed gleaming rays of midnight 'mid the stars, Rays slowly bright'ning 'neath a mellow moon, She 'mid the flowers with the Oceanids Sought Echo's passion, loved Narcissus pale, 'Ghast staring in the mirror of a lake, Whose smoothness brake his image, flickering seen, E'en with the fast tears of his dewy eyes. A shape there rose with iron wain and steeds 'Mid sallow fume of sulphur and pale fires; Its countenance meager, and its eyes e'en such As the wild, ghastly sulphur. In its arms, Its sooty arms, where like to supple steel The muscles rigid lay, unto its breast, Such as its arms, it rushed her fragile form As bosomed bulks of tempest in their joy With arms of winds drag to their black embrace A fairy mist of white that flecks the summer With shadeless wings of gauze, and 'tis no more Heaved on the rapture of its thundering heart. The snowy flowers shuddered and grew still With withered faces bowed, and on the stream-- Where all the day it was their wont to stand In silent sisterhood down-gazing at their charms-- Withered and limp and dead laid their fair brows. Flames hissed aloft like fiery whips of snakes Blasting and killing all the fragrant sprites That make the dewy zephyrs their dim haunts. O foam-fair daughters of Oceanus! In vain you seek your mate and chide the flowers For hiding her 'neath their broad, snowy palms; Nor is she hidden in that pearly shell, Which, like a pinky babe cast from the sea, Moans at your pallid feet washed with white spray. But, sitting by the tumbling blue of waves, Mourn to your billows on the foamy sands The falseness of the god who grasps the storm! DEMETER. Demeter sad! the wells of sorrow lay Eternal gushing in thy lonely path. Methinks I see her now--an awful shape Tall o'er a dragon team in frenzied search From Argive plains unto the jeweled shores Of the remotest Ind, where Usha's hand Tinged her grief-cloven brow with kindly touch, And Savitar wheeled genial thro' the skies O'er palmy regions of the faneless Brahm. In melancholy search I see her roam O'er the steep peaks of Himalayas keen With the unmellowed frosts of Boreal storms, Then back again with that wild mother woe Writ in the anguished fire of her eyes,-- Back where old Atlas groans 'neath weight of worlds, And the Cimmerian twilight glooms the soul. Deep was her sleep in Persia's haunted vales, Where many a languid Philomela moaned The bursting sorrow of a bursting soul. I see her nigh Ionia's swelling seas Cull from the sands a labyrinthine shell, And hark the mystery of its eery voice Float from the hollow windings of its curl, Then cast it far into the weedy sea To view the salt-spray flash, like one soft plume Dropped from the wings of Eros, 'gainst the flame Of Helios' car down-sloping toward his bath. I see her beg a coral flute of red From a tailed Triton; and on Ithakan rocks High seated at the starry death of day, When Selene rose from off her salty couch To smile a glory on her face of sorrow, Pipe forth sad airs that made the Sirens weep In their green caves beneath the sodden sands, And hoar Poseidon clear his wrinkled front And still his surgy clamors to a sigh. This do I see, and more; ah! yes, far more: I see her, 'mid the lonely groves of Crete, The wild hinds fright from the o'ervaulted green Of thickest boscage, tangling their close covert, With horror of her torches and her wail, "Persephone! Persephone!" till the pines Of rugged Dicte shuddered thro' their cones, And Echo shrieked down in her deepest chasms A wild reply unto her wild complaint; As wild as when she voiced those maidens' woe, Athenian tribute to stern Minos, king, When coiling grim the Minotaur they saw Far in his endless labyrinth of stone. DIONYSOS. "O Dionysos! Dionysos! the ivy-crowned! O let me sing thy triumph ere I die!" Within my sleep a Maenad came to me: A harp of crimson agate strung with gold Wailed 'neath her waxen fingers, and her heart 'Neath the white gauze, thro' which a moonlight shone, Kept time with its wild throbbings to her song. "Aegeus sleeps, O Dionysos! sleeps Pale 'neath the tumbling waves that sing his name Eternally at my dew-glist'ning feet. And so he died, O Dionysos! died! O let me sing thy triumph ere I die! "With the shrill syrinx and the kissing clang Of silver cymbals clashed by Ethiopes swart, O, pard-drawn youth, thou didst awake the world To joy and pleasure with thy sunny wine! Mad'st India bow and the dun, flooding Nile Grow purple in the radiance of the wine Cast from the richness of Silenus' cup, Whiles yet the heavens of heat saw dances wild Whirl mid the redness of the Libic sands, Which greedy drank the Bacchanalian draught Spun from the giddy bowl, a rose-tinged mist, O'er the slant edge, red twinkling in the eye Of brazen Ra, fierce turning overhead. What made gold Horus smile with golden lips? Anubis dire forget his ghosts to lead To Hell's profoundness, and then stay to sip One winking bubble from the wine-god's cup? What made Osiris, 'mid the palms of Nile, Leave Isis dreaming, and the frolic Pan's Harsh trebles follow as a roaring bull, Far as the gleaming temples of Indra, And mourned in Memphis by his tawny priests? It was thy joys, sun-nourished fire of wine! The brimming purple of the hollow gold They tasted and they worshiped--gods themselves! "Wan Echo sat once in a spiral shell; She, from its sea-dyed maziness of pearl, Saw the mixed pageant dancing on the strand, Where Nereus slept upon an isle of crags, And o'er the slope of his far-foaming head The strangeness of the orgies wildly cried, Till the frore god shook many a billow curl, Serened his face and stretched a welcome hand With civil utt'rance for the Bacchus horn. But now there tarries in her eye-balls' disks That nomad troop, and naught her tongue may say Save jostling words that haunt her muffled ears Like feeble wave-beats in a deep sea-cave. "Ah! the white stars, O Dionysos! now Have dropped their glittering blossoms slowly down Behind the snowy mountains in the West. Aegeus sleeps, hushed by my murmuring harp, And I have sung thy triumph; let me die!" HACKELNBERG. When down the Hartz the echoes swarm He rides beneath the sounding storm With mad "halloo!" and wild alarm Of hound and horn--a wonder, With his hunter black as night, Ban-dogs fleet and fast as light, And a stag as silver white Drives before, like mist, in flight, Glimmering 'neath the bursten thunder. The were-wolf shuns his ruinous track, Long-howling hid in braken black; Around the forests reel and crack And mountain torrents tumble; And the spirits of the air Whistling whirl with scattered hair, Teeth that flash and eyes that glare, 'Round him as he chases there With a noise of rains that rumble. From thick Thuringian thickets growl Fierce, fearful monsters black and foul; And close before him a stritch-owl Wails like a ghost unquiet: Then the clouds aside are driven And the moonlight, stormy striven. Falls around the castle riven Of the Dumburg, and the heaven Maddens then with blacker riot. THE LIMNAD. I. The lake she haunts lies dreamily 'Neath sleepy boughs of melody, And far away an olden sea, An olden sea booms mellow; And the sunset's glamours smite Its clean water with strong light Wov'n to wondrous flowers, where fight Breezy blue and winking white, Ruby red and tarnished yellow. II. 'Mid green rushes there that swing, Flowering flags where voices sing When low winds are murmuring, Murmuring to stars that glitter; Blossom-white with purple locks, 'Neath unfolded starry flocks, In the dusky waves she rocks, Rocks and all the landscape mocks With a song most sweet and bitter. III. Low it comes like sighs in dreams; Tears that fall in burning streams; Then a sudden burst of beams, Beams of song that soar and wrangle, Till the woods are taken quite, And red stars are waxen white, Lilies tall, bowed left and right, Gasp and die with very might Of the serpent notes that strangle. IV. Dark, dim, and sad on mournful lands White-throated stars heaped in her hands, Like wild-wood buds, the Twilight stands, The Twilight standing lingers, Till the Limnad coming sings Witcheries whose beauty brings A great moon from hidden springs, Mad with amorous quiverings, Feet of fire and silver fingers. V. In the vales Auloniads, On the mountains Oreads, On the meads Leimoniads, That in naked beauty glisten; Pan and Satyrs, Dryades, Fountain-lisping Naiades, Foam-lipped Oceanides, Breathless 'mid their seas or trees, Stay mad sports to look and listen. VI. Large-limbed, Egypt-eyed she stands-- Night on dim and ghostly lands, And in rapture from her hands Some wild molten stars are shaken. Let her stand and rushes swing; Let lank flags dip murmuring, Low, lost winds come like a wing; _They_ will waken though she sing, But one mortal ne'er will waken. THE MERMAID. The moon in the East is glowing; I sit by the moaning sea; The mists down the sea are blowing, Down the sea all dewily. The sands at my feet are shaking, The stars in the sky are wan; The mists for the shore are making, With a glimmer drifting on. From the mist comes a song, sweet wailing In the voice of a love-lorn maid, And I hear her gown soft trailing As she doth lightly wade. The night hangs pale above me Upon her starry throne, And I know the maid doth love me Who maketh such sweet moan. From out the mist comes tripping A Mermaiden full fair, Across the white sea skipping With locks of tawny hair. Her locks with sea-ooze dripping She wrings with a snowy hand; Her dress is thinly clipping Two breasts which perfect stand. Oh, she was fair as the heaven On an autumnal eve, And my love to her was given When I saw how she did grieve. Amort o'er the sea came speeding This sea sprite samite-clad, And my heart for love was bleeding, But its beating I forbade. On the strand where the sand was rocking She stood and sang an air, And the winds in her hair kept locking Their fingers cool and bare. Soft in her arms did she fold me, While sweet and low she moaned; Her love and her grief she told me, And the ocean sighed and groaned. But I stilled my heart's wild beating, For I knew her love was dim; Full coldly received her greeting, Tho' my life burnt in each limb. In my ear right sweet she was sighing With the voice of the pink-veined shells; Her arms 'round my neck kept tying, And gazed in mine eyes' deep wells. With her kisses cold did she woo me, But I dimmed my heart's wild beat; With the stars of her eyes did she sue me, But their passion did mine defeat. With the cloud of her sea-dipped tresses She veiled her beautiful face;-- And oh! how I longed for her kisses And sighed for her soft embrace! But out in the mist she went wailing When the dawn besilvered the night, With her robes of samite trailing In the foam-flowers sad and white. Like a spirit grieved went moaning In a twilight over the sea, And it seemed the night was groaning, And my heart beat wild in me. But I hushed my heart's fierce beating, For a Mermaid false was she; Yet I sighed at her faintly fleeting Across the dim, dark sea. The moon all withered is glowing, The mist and she are gone; My heart to ice is growing, And I sob at the coming dawn. THE PUNISHMENT OF LOKE. The gods of Asaheim, incensed with Loke, A whirlwind yoked with thunder-footed steeds, And, carried thus, boomed o'er the booming seas, Far as the teeming wastes of Jotunheim, To punish Loke for all his wily crimes. They found him sitting nigh a mountain-force, Which flashing roared from crags of ribbed snow, Lamenting strange and weird in rushing notes Of the old Strömkarl, who therein smote a harp And sang in mystic syllables of runes. For 'tis the wild man's harp and voice you hear: He sits behind the crackling cataract Within a grotto dim of mist and foam, His long, thin beard, white as the flying spray Flung to the midnight in a sounding cave By the blind fish that leap against the winds; Gemmed with the large dews of the cataract, Swings in the sucking breeze, and swinging beats Time to his harp's strains quav'ring soft and sad Beneath the talons of his pale, lean hand. And all the waters, leaping, tingling shake Like shivering stars within the frozen skies, When as the Giants of Frost rule o'er the deep, And nip their buds with fingers hoar of ice. Here banished found they mischief-making Loke Beneath the faint arch of young Bifrost sate, His foxy face between large, naked knees; Deep, wily eyes fixed on the darting fish In seeming thought, but aye one corner wan Flashed at the Asas where they clustered fair, Soft on a mountain's aged locks of snow, Their tawny tresses ruddy in the wind. Then great-limbed Thor sprang wind-like forth:-- Red was his beard forked with the livid light, That clings among the tempest's locks of bale, Or fillets her tumultuous temples black. And drops with wild confusion on the hills; And thro' his beard, like to the storm's strong voice, His sullen words were strained, and when he spake The oldest forests bowed their crowns of leaves, And barmy skulls of mead half-raised were stayed Within Valhalla, and heroes great were dumb. As when, the horror of the spear-shock o'er, And all the plains and skies of Thule are gorged With gore and screams of those that fight or die, The Valkyries in their far-glimmering helms Flash from the windy sunset's mists of red Unto the chalk-faced dead,--whose beaten casques And sea-swol'n shields, with sapless, red-hewn limbs, Wave 'mid the dead-green billows, stormy-browed, That roar along the Baltic's wintry coast, And wail amid the iron-circled coves,-- To cull dead heroes for the hall of shields,-- Where yells the toast and rings the tournament,-- A dumbness falls upon the shattered field; The clinging billows 'mid the restless dead Moan o'er their wide-stretched eyes and glassy sleep; And all the blood-blurred banners, gustless, dark Hard ashen faces waiting for the choice. The thunderer did Loke shrewd ensnare, Incensed for pristine evil wrought on him. When erst dark Loke deflowered his spouse, fair Sif The blue eyed, of her golden, baby locks. Him the Asas dragged beneath a burning mount Into a cavern black, by earthquakes rent When Earth was young to heave her spawn of Trolls, The vermin which engendered in the corpse Of Ymer huge, whose flesh did make the world. Here where the stars ne'er shone, nor nature's strains Of legendary woodlands, peaks, and streams Ere came, they pinned him supine to the rocks, Whose frigid touch filed at his brittle bones, And tore a groan from lips of quiv'ring froth, That made the warty reptiles cold and huge Hiss from their midnight lairs and blaze great eyes. Lone in the night he heard the white bear roar From some green-glancing berge that stemmed dark seas With all its moan of torrents foaming down The ice-crags of its crystal mountain crests. And 'neath the firry steep a wild swine shrieked, And fought the snarling wolf; his midriff ripped With spume-flaked ivories where the moss was brok'n Far down within the horror of a gorge; And once he saw souls of dead mortals whirl With red-strown hair within the Arctic skies, And all his stolid face was eddied o'er By one faint smile, which grimly flash'd and pass'd, And he knew not its stonyness had changed. And all was rock above him, rock beneath: And all the clammy crawling things that spat Black venom at him from deep dens of rock, And that swart boundless flood of flowing death, Which with its sooty spray clung to a cliff And slid beside his marble gaze, to him Were as the rock that curled above and hung; Were as the rock that spread beneath and pierced; For as to the blind to him were lidless eyes. And pity 'twas not darker than it was, And crammed with terrors populous as Hel's Or that cursed dome of corpses, Naastrand dire, Whose roofs and walls of yawning serpents slick Hang writhing down, flat heads--reed-beds of snakes-- From whose red, hissing fangs flow slimy streams Of blist'ring venom, gath'ring to a flood, Wherein the basest shades eternal wade And feel the anguish crawling down the neck, Or glue the hair, or glut the dull, dead ear, Or choke the blasted eye until it swims In lurid pain and blazes 'gainst the source. The roar of waters and the wail of pines When whirlwinds roll the granite bowlders down From flinty crags of storm to bellowing seas-- On noisome winds the howls of torture roll, And rising die, cause the live dome to writhe, And swift pour down a tempest steep of woe. Huge Skade, of Winter daughter, giantess, One twisting serpent hung above Loke's head, So that the blistering slaver might splash down Upon his chalky face, and torture him,-- For so the Asas willed for his vast crimes. But Loke's wife, Sigin, endured not this, And brooked not to behold her husband's pain. She sate herself beside his writhen limbs, And held a cup to cull the venomed dew Which flamed the scowling blackness as it fell. To him she spake, who swelled his breast and groaned E'en as some mighty sea, when 'neath its waves The huge leviathan by whalers chased,-- Cleaving thick waters in his spinning flight, The barbèd harpoon feasting on his life,-- Rolls up pale mounded billows o'er black fins Far in the North Atlantic's sounding seas:-- "O Loke! lock those wide-drawn eyes of thine, And let white silver-lidded slumber fall In the soft utterance of my low speech! And I will flutter all my amber curls To cast wind currents o'er thy pallid brow!-- Drink deepest sleep, for, see, I catch thy doom!-- So pale thy face which glimmers thro' the night! So pale! and knew I death as mortals know I'd say that he mysterious had on thee Laid hands of talons and so slain thy soul! So still! and all the night bears down my heart! So pale!--and sleep is lost to thee and me!-- Sleep, that were welcome in this heavy gloom!-- It clings to me like pestilential fogs! I seem but clodded filth and float in filth! It chokes my words and claws them from my tongue To sound as dull confusèd as the boom Heard thro' the stagnant earth when armies meet With ring of war-ax on the brazen helms, And all the mountains clash unto the sound Of shocking spears that splinter on gray ore! For by dead banks of stone my words are yelled While yet they touch the tongue to grasp the thought; And all the creatures huddled in their holes Creep forth to glare and hiss them back again! Yet, for thy love, O Loke, could I brave All trebled horrors that wise Odin may Heap on, and, suff'ring, love thee all the more! "For thou dost love me, and this life is naught Without thy majesty of form and mind, For, dark to all, alone art fair to me! And to thy level and thy passions all I raise the puny hillock of my soul, Tho' oft it droops below thy lofty height, Far 'mid the crimson clouds of windless dawns Reaching the ruby of a glorious crest. And then aspire I not, but cower in awe Down 'mid low, printless winds that take no morn.-- "At least my countenance may win from thee A reflex of that alabaster cold That stones thy brow, and pale in kindred woe! And when this stony brow of thine is cleft By myriad furrows, tortures of slow Time, And all the beauties of thy locks are past, Now glossy as the brown seal's velvet fur, Their drifts of winter strown around this cave To gray the glutton gloom that hangs like lead,-- For Idunn's fruit is now debarred thy lips, And thou shalt age e'en as I age with thee!-- Then will the thought of that dread twilight cheer The burthen of thy anguish; for wilt thou Not in the great annihilation aid Of gods and worlds, that roll thro' misty grooves Of cycled ages to wild Ragnaroke? Then shalt thou joy! for all those stars which glue Their blinking scales unto old Ymer's skull In clots shall fall! and as this brooding night Sticks to and gluts us till we strangling clutch With purple lips for air--and feel but frost Drag laboring down the throat to swell the freight That cuddles to the heart and clogs its life, So shall those falling flakes spread sea-like far In lakes of flame and foggy pestilence O'er the hot earth, and drown all men and gods. "But, oh, thy face! pale, pale its marble gleams Thro' the thick night! and low the serpent wreathes And twists his scaly coils that livid hang Above thee alabaster as a shrine!-- Oh, could I kiss the lips toward which he writhes And yield them the last spark of living flame That burns in my wan blood, and, yielding--die! Oh, could I gaze once more into large eyes Whose liquid depths glassed domes of molten stars, And see them as they glowed when Morning danced O'er scattered flowers from the rosy hills That lined the orient skies beneath one star! When first we met and loved among the pines, The melancholy pines that plumed the cliffs And rocked and sang unto the smooth fiords Like old wild women to their sleeping babes! Then could I die e'en as the mortals die, And smile in dying!--But the reptile baulks All effort to behold, or on white lips To feast the ardor of my vain desire! Thy face alone shines on my straining sight Like some dim moon beneath a night of mist,-- And now the creatures come to feel at me-- The serpent swings above and darts his fang, And I can naught but hold the cup and breathe." Then thro' the blackness of the dripping cave Tumultuous spake he, rage his utterance; Large as the thunder when it lunging rolls, Heavy with earthquake and portending ruin, Tempestuous words o'er everlasting seas Dumb with the silence of eternal ice; His eyes in horrid spasms, and his throat, Corded and gnarled with veins of boisterous blood, Swollen with fury, and stern, wintery lips Flaked with rebellious foam and agony For thwarted rage and baulkment of designs. Rash vaunter of loud wrath, one brawny fist, Convulsed with clenchment in its gyve of ore, Clutched mad defiance and bold blasphemy, Headlong for battle-launching at all gods That bow meek necks before high Odin's throne; Yet all unhurled and vain as mists of morn, Or foam wind-wasted on the sterile sands Of rainy seas where Ran, from whistling caves Watching the tempest ravened dragon wreck, Feels 'twixt lean miser fingers slippery Already oily gold of Vikings' drowned. Reverberated, the loud-scoffing rock All his unburdened blasphemies again Flung back a million fold from riotous throats In which demoniac laughter howled and roared, Bellowing tremendous tumult, till his ears, Flooded and gorged with maniac curses, grew Stunned, deaf and senseless, and the rebel words, Erst rolled and thundered in his godly speech, Recoiled in oaths that, shrunk in serpent loops, Coiled mad anathemas of violence, Voluminous-ringed, about his heart of ice, That now in wasted wrath of bitter foam,-- Which burst and bare big ineffectual groans, Wretched and huge with infinite weariness,-- Spent all its storm of ponderous misery. Her sorrow found some vent in rain of tears, And all the cave was dumb and dead with night, Unbroken save of Sigin's heaving sobs, Or the baulked god's deep groans where chain'd he lay To see the spotted serpent crisp above And aye gape poison at his lidless eyes. And when her bowl was brimmed till one more drop Had cast the fifth white o'er the scorching edge, Into the black, deep flood beside she poured Its stagnant torture; one second's tithe the time-- The reptile's bale blurs all his milky cheek, Burns to his bones; he starting fell, stiff twists The sinewy steel that hugs his massive limbs And shrieks so loud within those solitudes, The caverns yawn unto the stormy skies, The orey mountains rock and groan for fear, High spew their fiery thunders, smoke, and stones. And this all in a mist-land dim and numb, Where giants reign, rude kings in holds of ice Based crag-like on high vivid frozen cliffs, The bandit castles of the Northern wastes. Beneath the shimmering dance of Arctic lights, Which lamp them on, they storm to fight the gods; Swathed in their stubborn mail of sleet and snow, Embattled 'mid the clouds with fiends of ruin, In militant throng-legions scorn the gods; From yawning trumpets wrought of whirling clouds Snarl war to Thor, who, in his goat-dragged wain, Hurls thundering forth to fight their lowering troops, That lift black 'scutcheons of tempests orbed, Great brands of wind, and slings of whistling storm, From which are flung their hurricanes of hail. With such they oft withstand the strength of Thor's Dwarf-stithied mace, Mjolner, when he rings To find admittance to their brains of mist, And, cleaving, drives them to their barren realms, Where echoes of lost wars and wars to be Rumble 'mid ruined icebergs to the caves, Or clang with northern shock of icy spears; While Balder, from the abyss of deathful fogs Restored, smiles kindlier on the whit'ning lands. Here Loke is doomed to lie in tortures chained Until that last dread twilight of the gods, Wild Ragnaroke, when Odin's self shall pass: The moon and sun consumed, the fiery host From Muspelheim shall flaming split the heavens, Blot out the stars with lustre of their arms; And down the squarèd legions led by Surt Swift whirl in fogs of flame to war with gods; Nor Thor avail, but suffocated fall In contest with the Midgard serpent vast. All men and gods abolished with the world, Which into an abyss of fume and flame Sinks like a meteor of the Summer night, That slides into the gold of burning eve And with eve's gold is burning, blent and lost. But, like an exhalation, from the wreck A new and lovelier world with juster gods And better men shall rise, and soar away On wings of Love thro' skies where Truth displays The glory of her form, Wisdom her eyes.-- Behold! the Golden Age again returns! SEA DREAMS. I. Oh, to see in the night in a May moon's light A nymph from siren caves, With a crown of pearl, sea-gems in each curl Dance down white, star-stained waves! Oh, to list in the gloam by the pearly foam Of a sad, far-sounding shore The strain of the shell of an ocean belle From caves where the waters roar! With a hollow shell drift up in the moon To sigh in my ears this ocean tune:-- II. "Wilt follow, wilt follow to caverns hollow, That echo the tumbling spry? Wilt follow thy queen to islands green, Vague islands of witchery? O follow, follow to grottoes hollow, And isles in a purple sea, Where rich roses twine and the lush woodbine Weaves a musky canopy!" III. Oh, to float in the gloam on the bubbly foam With her lily face above! Oh, to lie in a barque and a wild song hark, And a billow-nymph to love! I'd lie at her feet and my heart should beat To the music of her sighs; But the stars in her face my passion should trace, Unseen all the stars of the skies. IV. Away, away with the witch of spray To her Aidenn islands far; And the blue above, drunk-mad with love, Dance down each singing star. Leave, leave to the heaven its morning star In a cloud of bolted snow, To laugh at the world and herald far Our wedlock and joy below. III.--IN THE GARDENS OF FALERINA. FALERINA. The night is hung above us, love, With heavy stars that love us, love, With clouds that curl in purple and pearl, And winds that whisper of us, love: On burly hills and valleys, that lie dimmer, The amber foot-falls of the moon-sylphs glimmer. The moon is still a crescent, love; And here with thee 'tis pleasant, love, To sit and dream in its thin gleam, And list thy sighs liquescent, love: To see thy eyes and fondle thy dark tresses, Set on warm lips imperishable kisses. The sudden-glaring fire-flies Swim o'er the hollow gyre-wise, And spurt and shine like jostled wine At lips on which desire lies: Or like the out-flashed hair of elf or fairy In rapid morrice whirling feat and airy. Up,--all the blue West sundering,-- A creamy cloud comes blundering O'er star and steep, and opening deep Grows gold with silent thundering: Gold flooding crystal crags immeasurable, Lost Avalons of old Romance and Fable. The bee dreams in the cherry bloom That sways above the berry bloom; The katydid grates where she's hid In leafy deeps of dreary gloom: The forming dew is globing on the grasses, Like rich spilled gems of some dark queen that passes. The mere brief gusts are wrinkling; A thousand ripples twinkling Have caught the stars on polished spars Their rustling ridges sprinkling: And all the shadow lurking in its bosom Is touched and bursten into golden blossom. Stoop! and my being flatter, love; With sudden starlight scatter, love, From the starry grace of thy rare face, Whose might can make or shatter, love! Come, raiment love in love's own radiant garments. And kindle all my soul to rapturous torments! Bow all thy beauty to me, love, Lips, eyes, and hair to woo me, love, As bows and blows some satin rose Snow-soft and tame, that knew thee, love. Unto the common grass, that worshiping cowers, Dowering its love with all her musk of flowers. THE DREAM. My dream was such: It seemed the afternoon Of some deep tropic day, and yet a moon Stood round and full with largeness of white gleams High in a Heaven that knew not a sun's beams; A vast, still Heaven of unremembered dreams. Long, lawny lengths of perishable cloud Hung in a West o'er rolling forests bowed; Clouds raining colors, gold and violet That, opening, seemed from hidden worlds to let Down hints of mystic beauty and old charms Wrought of frail creatures fair with silvery forms. And all about me fruited orchards grew Of quince and peach and dusty plums of blue; Wan apricots and apples red with fire, Kissed into ripeness by some sun's desire, And big with juice; and on far, fading hills, Down which it seemed a hundred torrent rills Flashed leaping silver, vines and vines and vines Of purple vintage swollen with cool wines; Pale pleasant wines and fragrant as the June, Their delicate life robbed from the foam-fair moon. And from the clouds o'er this sweet world there dripp'd An odorous music strange and feverish lipped, That swung and swooned and panted in mad sighs, Invoking at each wave sad rapturous eyes Of limpid, willowy beings fair as night, Decked spangly with crisp flower-like stars of white; Dim honeyed booming of the boisterous bee In purple myriads of faint fleurs-de-lis; Of surf far-foaming on forgotten strands Of immemorial seas in fairy lands Of melting passion, who, with crimson lips Of many shells laid to each swell that dips, Sigh secret hope of unrequited love In murmurous language to wan winds above. HAWKING. I. I see them still, when poring o'er Old volumes of romantic lore, Ride forth to hawk in days of yore, By woods and promontories; Knights in gold lace, plumes and gems, Maidens crowned with anadems,-- Whose falcons on round wrists of milk Sit in jesses green of silk,-- From bannered Miraflores. II. The laughing earth is young with dew; The deeps above are violet blue; And in the East a cloud or two Empearled with airy glories: And with laughter, jest and singing, Silver bells of falcons ringing, Hawkers, rosy with the dawn, Gayly ride o'er hill and lawn From courtly Miraflores. III. The torrents silver down the crags; Down dim-green vistas browse the stags; And from wet beds of reeds and flags The frightened lapwing hurries; And the brawny wild-boar peereth At the cavalcade that neareth; Oft his shaggy-throated grunt Brings the king and court to hunt At royal Miraflores. IV. The May itself in soft sea-green Is Oriana, Spring's high queen, And Amadis beside her seen Some prince of Fairy stones: Where her castle's ivied towers Drowse above her budded bowers, Flaps the heron thro' the sky, And the wild swan gives a cry By woody Miraflores. LA BEALE ISOUD. I. With bloodshot eyes the morning rose Upon a world of gloom and tears; A kindred glance queen Isoud shows-- Come night, come morn, cease not her fears. The fog-clouds whiten all the vale, The sunlight draws them to its love; The diamond dews wash ev'ry dale, Where bays the hunt within the grove. Her lute--the one her touch he taught To wake beneath the stars a song Of swan-caught music--is as naught And on yon damask lounge is flung. Down o'er her cheeks her hair she draws In golden rays 'twixt lily tips, And gazes sad on gloomy shaws 'Neath which had often touched their lips. II. With irised eyes, from morn to noon. And noon to middle night she stoops From her high lattice 'neath the moon, Hoping to see him 'mid the groups Of mail-swathed braves come jingling by. And once there came a dame in weft All pearl besprent, as when the sky A springtide day hath wept and left A stormy eve one flash of gems. "'Mid neatherds he's a naked waif Unwitted," said she, lipping scorn: And shook deep curls with a weak laugh Tib clinked the gold thick in them worn. III. "How long to wait!" and far she bent From her tall casement toward the lawn; A prospect of a wide extent Glassed in her eyes and hateful shown. Along the white lake windy crags Blue with coarse brakes and ragged pines; A bandit keep with trembling flags; And barren scars, and waste marsh lines, And now a palfried dame and knight. Deep deer-behaunted forests old, Whose sinewy boughs dark blocked the cave Of Heav'n o'er Earth; a blasted hold 'Mid livid fields; a torrent's wave. And o'er the bridge whose marble arched The torrent's foam, dim in the dew Of morning, one all glimmering marched In glittering steel from helm to shoe, With lance whose fang smote back the dawn. IV. Selled on a barb whose trappings shone Red brass,--a morning star of jousts Upon the dawning beaming lone Burst from the hills' empurpled crusts. A lying star, whose double tongue Was slave to gold: "I saw him die!-- 'Tis ruth, for he was brave and young,-- I saw him in the close clay lie." Then passed he rattling from the court.... So grief in furrows ploughed her front's Smooth surface wan, and toward the eve,-- The bloodshot eve upon the mounts, Who o'er day's flow'ry bier did grieve And bow her melancholy star,-- O'er teenful eyes she bent the light Of her crown-crescent's gem, and far She lingered till the full-mooned night Showered ripple-stars the gray mere o'er. V. "And I'm like her who trims a flame Of sickly color, bowing low To balk the wind; in wanton game One stoops in secret toward her brow With wind-bulged cheeks, a quick breath sends-- And then the world is blind with gloom, And filled with phantoms and with fiends, That strain huge eyes and jibe her doom." Thus thought Isoud in her despair, Of Launcelot then thoughts grew on, And Arthur's lovely queen away In castled courts of Caerleon, And all their joy and dalliance gay. Until she could have thawed the spars Of her clear-fountained eyes to tears, And gush wild grief long-seared by wars Of passionate anguish and great fears: "Oh Tristram gone! oh death in life!" Soft down below in the thick dark A fountain throbbed monotonous foam, Unseen within the starlit park, Deep in the tower's shadowed dome. "And thus my heart drums frigid life In hateful gloom of fear and woe! One flood of sorrow, cataract-rife, My full-flush heart streams come and go Since Tristram's gone and I'm alone!" VI. Then sunk the moon, and far away, Beside the bickering lake, the towers Of bandit braves shone tall and gray, Like specters in her lonely hours. And 'twixt the nodding grove and lake A glimmering fawn stalked thro' the night; And with full brow the musks did take, Then bowed to drink--she veiled her sight And moaning said, "Death is but life! The fawn 'mid lilies from the mere Sucks genial draughts to dull its thirsts; O fondest spirit, art thou near? Draw to thy soul this soul that bursts! The vivid lilies to the stars Clasp their white eyes and sink to sleep: O anguish, to thy burning wars Lock my sad heart and drag it deep!"-- Albeit she slept, she dreamed in grief. BELTENEBROS AT MIRAFLORES. I. The quickening East climbs to yon star, That, cradled, rocks herself in morn; The liquid silver broad'ning far Dawn drencheth cliff, holt, down and tarn. The trembling splendors gild the sky, Breath'd from her tawny champion's lips; The clear green dews above me lie, Their lustre the dark eyelash tips Of Oriana sitting by. The crested cock 'mid his stout dames Crows from the purple-clover hill; His glossy coat the morn enflames, And all his leaping heart doth thrill. His curving tail sickles the plume That rosy nods against his eye. Laughs from deep beds of twinkling bloom The lilied East when wand'reth nigh My Oriana in the gloom. The rooks swarm clatt'ring 'round the tow'rs; The falcon jingles in the air; The bursting dawn around him show'rs A clinging glory of wan glare. From the green knoll the shouting hunt With swollen cheeks clangs his alarms; Mayhap I hear the bristler's grunt: But where my Oriana charms The wood, hushed is its ev'ry haunt. The willowed lake is cool with cloud Breaking and dimming into shreds, Which gauze the azure, thinly crowd The mist-pink West with hazy threads. A wild swan ruffles o'er the mere Soft as the drifting of a soul; A double swan she doth appear In mirage fixed 'twixt pole and pole When Oriana singeth near. II. Spring high into the shuddering stars, O florid sunset, burning gold! Flash on our eyeballs lurid bars To beam them with air-fires cold! The blowing dingles soak with light, The purple coppice hang with blaze; But where we stand a meeker white Bloom on us thro' the hill's soft haze, For Oriana stars the night! Float from the East, O silver world, Unto the ocean of the West; And the foam-sparkles upward hurled, That fringe the twilight's surging crest, Snatch up and gather 'round thy brow In lustrous twine of rosy heat, And rain on us its starry glow,-- O fragment of the evetide's sheet,-- And Oriana's eyes o'erflow. O courting cricket, with thy pipe Now shrill true love thro' the warm grain O feathered buds, that nodding stripe The blue glen's night, sigh love again! Thou glimmering bird, that aye doth wail From some wind-wavered branch of snow, Sweep down the moonlit, hay-sweet dale Thy bubbled anguish, swooning low, For Oriana walks the vale! The moon comes sowing all the eve With myriad star-grains of her light; The torrent on the crag doth grieve; The glittering lake is smooth with night. O mellow lights that o'er us slide, O wrinkled woods that ridge the steep, O bearded stems that billowing glide, With laughing night-dews happy weep, For Oriana'll be my bride! THE IDEAL. Thee have I seen in some waste Arden old, A white-browed maiden by a foaming stream, With eyes profound and looks like threaded gold, And features like a dream. Upon thy wrist the jessied falcon fleet, A silver poniard chased with imageries Hung at a buckled belt, while at thy feet The gasping heron dies. Have fancied thee in some quaint ruined keep A maiden in chaste samite, and her mien Like that of loved ones visiting our sleep, Or of a fairy queen. She, where the cushioned ivy dangling hoar Disturbs the quiet of her sable hair, Pores o'er a volume of romantic lore, Or hums an olden air. Or a fair Bradamant both brave and just, Intense with steel, her proud face lit with scorn, At heathen castles, demons' dens of lust, Winding her bugle horn. Just as stern Artegal; in chastity A second Britomart; in hardihood Like him who 'mid King Charles' chivalry A pillared sunbeam stood. Or one in Avalon's deep-dingled bowers, On which old yellow stars and waneless moons Look softly, while white downy-lippèd flowers Lisp faint and fragrant tunes. Where haze-like creatures with smooth houri forms Stoop thro' the curling clouds and float and smile, While calm as hope in all her dreamy charms Sleeps the enchanted isle. And where cool, heavy bow'rs unstirred entwine, Upon a headland breasting purple seas, A crystal castle like a thought divine Rises in mysteries. And there a sorceress full beautiful Looks down the surgeless reaches of the deep, And, bubbling from her lily throat, songs lull The languid air to sleep. About her brow a diadem of spars, At her fair casement seated fleecy white Heark'ning wild sirens choiring to the stars Thro' all the raven night. And when she bends above the glow-lit waves She sees the sea-king's templed city old Wrought from huge shells and labyrinthine caves Ribbed red with rusty gold. But nor the sirens' nor the ocean king's Love will she heed, but still sits yearning there To have the secret bird that vaguely sings Her aching heart to share. TREACHERY. I. Came a spicy smell of showers On the purple wings of night, And a pearl-encrusted crescent On the lake looked still and white, While a sound of distant singing From the vales rose sad and light. II. Dripped the musk of sodden roses From their million heavy sprays, And the nightingales were sobbing Of the roses amorous praise Where the raven down of even Caught the moonlight's bleaching rays. III. And the turrets of the palace, From its belt of ancient trees, On the mountain rose romantic White as foam from troubled seas; And the murmur of an ocean Smote the chords of ev'ry breeze. IV. Where the moon shone on the terrace And its fountain's lisping foam; Where the bronzen urns of flowers Breathed faint perfume thro' the gloam, By the alabaster Venus 'Neath the quiet stars we'd roam. V. And we stopped beside the statue Of the marble Venus there Deeply pedestaled 'mid roses, Who their crimson hearts laid bare, Breathing out their lives in fragrance At her naked feet and fair. VI. And we marked the purple dingles Where the lazy vapors lolled, Like thin, fleecy ribs of moonlight Touched with amethyst and gold; And we marked the wild deer glimmer Like dim specters where they strolled.... VII. But from out those treach'rous roses Crept a serpent and it stung, Poisoned him who'd tuned my heart-strings Till for him alone they sung, Froze the nerves of hands that only From its chords a note had wrung. VIII. Now the nightingales in anguish To cold, ashen roses moan; Now a sound of desolate wailing In the darkened palace lone From a harp Æolian quavers Broken on an empty throne. ORLANDO MAD. I. In mail of black my limbs I girt, Angelica! And when the bugles clanged the charge, The rolling battle's bristling marge Beheld me a black storm of war Dash on the foe; While Durindana glitt'ring far Made many a foeman mouth the dirt In bleeding woe:-- For thou didst fire me to the war 'Mid many a Paynim scimetar, Angelica! II. No more the battle fires my blood, Angelica! No more gay lists flaunt all their guiles, And chivalry's charge, and beauty's smiles! I wander lone the thistly wold When night-snows fall, And crispy frosts the wild grass hold. Great knights go glimmering thro' the wood, The clarion's call Wakes War upon his desert wold-- I see the dawning breaking cold, Angelica! III. When Southern winds sowed all the skies, Angelica! With bloom-storms of the flowering May; When all the battle-field was gay With scented garb of sainted flowers, I found a stream Cold as thy heart to paramours! Deep as the depth of thy blue eyes! And like a dream I found a grotto 'mid the flowers, Cool 'mid the sunlight-sprinkled bowers, Angelica! IV. My casque I dofft to scoop the fount, Angelica! With beaded pureness bubbling cool-- It clashed into the purling pool;-- Thy name lay chiseled in the rock, And underneath-- And then meseemed deep night did block My steel-chained heart in one huge mount Foreshadowing death!-- _Medoro_ deep in every rock! The Moorish name my soul did mock, Angelica! V. No more wild war my veins ensteeps, Angelica! No more gay lists flaunt all their guiles!-- White wastes before me miles on miles With one low, ruby sunset bound-- Thou fleest before, I follow on: a far off sound Of oceans gnawing at dark steeps Swells to a roar.-- 'Mid foam thou smil'st: I spurn the ground-- I sink, I swim, waves hiss around-- Oh, could I sink 'neath the profound, And think of thee no more! THE HAUNTED ROOM. Its casements' diamond disks of glass Stare myriad on a terrace old, Where urns, unkempt with ragged grass, Foam o'er with frothy cold. The snow rounds o'er each stair of stone; The frozen fount is hooped with pearl; Down desolate walks, like phantoms lone, Thin, powd'ry snow-wreaths whirl. And to each rose-tree's stem that bends With silver snow-combs, glued with frost, It seems each summer rosebud sends Its airy, scentless ghost. The stiff Elizabethan pile Chatters with cold thro' all its panes, And rumbling down each chimney file The mad wind shakes his reins. * * * * * * * Lone in the Northern angle, dim With immemorial dust, it lay, Where each gaunt casement's stony rim Stared lidless to the day. Drear in the Northern angle, hung With olden arras dusky, where Tall, shadowy Tristrams fought and sung For shadowy Isolds fair. Lies by a dingy cabinet A tarnished lute upon the floor; A talon-footed chair is set Grotesquely by the door. A carven, testered bedstead stands With rusty silks draped all about; And like a moon in murky lands A mirror glitters out. Dark in the Northern angle, where In musty arras eats and clings The drowsy moth; and frightened there The wild wind sighs and sings Adown the roomy flue and takes And swings the ghostly mirror till It shrieks and creaks, then pulls and shakes The curtains with a will. A starving mouse forever gnaws Behind a polished panel dark, And 'long the floor its shadow draws A poplar in the park. I have been there when blades of light Stabbed each dull, stained, and dusty pane; I have been there at dead of night, But never will again.... She grew upon my vision as Heat sucked from the dry summer sod; In taffetas as green as grass Silent and faint she trod; And angry jewels winked and frowned In serpent coils on neck and wrist, And 'round her dainty waist was wound A zone of silver mist. And icy fair as some bleak land Her pale, still face stormed o'er with night Of raven tresses, and her hand Was beautiful and white. Before the ebon mirror old Full tearfully she made her moan, And then a cock crew far and cold; I looked and she was gone. As if had come a sullying breath And from the limpid mirror passed, Her presence past, like some near death Leaving my blood aghast. Tho' I've been there when blades of light Stabbed each dull, stained, and dusty pane; Tho' I've been there at dead of night, I never will again. SERENADE. By the burnished laurel line Glimmering flows the singing stream; Oily eddies crease and shine O'er white pebbles, white as cream. Richest roses bud or die All about the splendid park; Fountains glass a wily eye Where the fawns browse in the dark. Amber-belted through the night Floats the alabaster moon, Stooping o'er th' acacia white Where my mandolin I tune. By the twinkling mere I sing Where lake lilies stretch pale eyes, And a bulbul there doth fling Music at the moon who flies. With a broken syrinx there, From enameled beds of buds, Rises Pan in hoof and hair-- Moonlight his dim sculpture floods. The pale jessamines have felt The large passion of her gaze; See! they part--their glories melt Round her in a starry haze. THE MIRROR. An antique mirror this, I like it not at all, In this lonely room where the goblin gloom Scowls from the arrased wall. A mystic mirror framed In ebon, wildly carved; And the prisoned air in the crevice there Moans like a man that's starved. A truthful mirror where, In the broad, chaste light of day, From the window's arches, like fairy torches, Red roses swing and sway. They blush and bow and gaze, Proud beauties desolate, In their tresses cold the sunlight's gold, In their hearts a jealous hate. A small green worm that gnaws, For the nightingale that low Each eve doth rave, the passionate slave Of the wild white rose below. The night-bird wails below; The stars creep out above; And the roses soon in the sultry moon Shall palpitate with love. The night-bird sobs below; The roses blow and bloom; Thro' the diamond panes the moonlight rains In the dim unholy room. Ancestors grim that stare Stiff, starched, and haughty down From the oaken wall of the noble hall Put on a sterner frown. The old, bleak castle clock Booms midnight overhead, And the rose is wan and the bird is gone When walk the shrouded dead. And grim ancestors gaunt In smiles and tears faint flit; By the mirror there they stand and stare, And weep and sigh to it. In rare, rich ermine earls With rapiers jeweled rare, With a powdered throng of courtiers long Pass with stiff and stately air. With diamonds and perfumes In ruff and golden lace, Tall ladies pass by the looking-glass, Each sighing at her face. An awful mirror this, I like it not at all, In this lonely room where the goblin gloom Scowls from the arrased wall. THE RIDE. She rode o'er hill, she rode o'er plain, She rode by fields of barley, By morning-glories filled with rain, And beechen branches gnarly. She rode o'er plain, she rode o'er hill, By orchard land and berry; Her face was buoyant as the rill, Her eyes and heart were merry, A bird sang here, a bird sang there, Then blithely sang together, Sang sudden greetings every where, "Good-morrow!" and "good weather!" The sunlight's laughing radiance Laughed in her radiant tresses; The bold breeze set her curls a-dance, Made red her lips with kisses. "Why ride ye here, why ride ye there, Why ride ye here so merry? The sunlight living in your hair, And in your cheek the cherry? "Why ride ye with your sea-green plumes, Your sea-green silken habit, By balmy bosks of faint perfumes Where squats the cunning rabbit?" "The morning's feet are wrought of gold, The hunter's horn is jolly; Sir Richard bold was rich and old, Was old and melancholy. "A wife they'd have me to his bed, And to the kirk they hurried; But now, gramercy! he is dead, Perdie! is dead and buried. "I ride by tree, I ride by rill, I ride by rye and clover, For by the kirk beyond the hill Awaits a better lover." THE SLEEPER. She sleeps and dreams; one milk-white, lawny arm Pillowing her heavy hair, as might cold Night Meeting her sister Day, with glory warm, Subside in languor on her bosom's white. The naked other on the damask cloth,-- White, smooth, and light as the light thistle-down, Or the pink, fairy, fluffy evening moth On June-drunk beds of roses red,--lies thrown. And one sweet cheek, kissed with the enamored moon, Grown pale with anger at the liberty. While, dusk in darkness, at the favor shown The pouting other frowns still envity. Hangs fall'n in folds the rich, dark covering, With fretfulness thrust partly from her breast; As through storm-broken clouds the moon might spring, From this the orb of one pure bosom prest. She sleeps; and where the silent moonbeams sink Thro' diamond panes,--soft as a ghost of snow,-- In wide, white jets, the lion-fur seems to drink With tawny jaws its wasted, winey glow. Light-lidded sleep and holy dreams to her, Unborn of feverish sorrow or of care, Soft as the gust that makes the arras stir, Tangling gold moonbeams in her fragrant hair. A MELODY. I. There be Fairies bright of eye, Who the wild-flowers warders are; There be Fairies subtlely Nourished in a blossom's star; Fairies tripping merrily Singing in faint echoes far, Singing fairy melodies Murmured by the burly bees, By the wild brown bees. II. Well I wot that Fairies be there,-- Fairies, Fairies that at eve Lurking in a blossom-lair, In some rose-bud's scented hair From white beams of starlight weave Glinting gown and shining shoe. I have proven sure and true Fairies be there, fays of dew, Lying laughing in its spark Floating in a rose's sark; Singing fairy melodies, When asleep the dusty bees Can not steal their melodies, Fairy melodies. THE ELF'S SONG. I. Where thronged poppies with globed shields Of fierce red Warrior all the harvest fields Is my bed. Here I tumble with the bee, Robber bee of low degree Gay with dust: Wit ye of a bracelet bold Broadly belting him with gold? It was I who bound it on When a-gambol on the lawn-- It can never rust. II. Where the glow-worm lights his lamp There am I; Where within the grasses damp Crickets cry. Cheer'ly, cheer'ly in the burne Where the lins the torrents churn Into foam, Leap I on a whisp of broom,-- Cheer'ly, cheer'ly through the gloom,-- All aneath a round-cheeked moon, Treading on her silver shoon Lightly o'er the gloam, III. Or the cowslip on the bent Lift her head, Or the glow-worm's lamp be spent, Whitely dead: 'Neath lank ferns I laughing lie, 'Neath the ferns full warily Hid away, Where the drowsy musk-rose blows And a fussy runnel flows, Sleeping with the Faëry Under leafy canopy All the holyday. THE NIXES' SONG. Vague, vague 'neath darkling waves, With emerald-curving caves For the arched skies, Red-walled with dark dull gold The Nixes' city old Deep-glimmering lies. And thro' the long green nights the spangling spars Twinkle like milky stars. Where the wind-ripple plays On tufts of dipping sprays Sparkling we rock; With blooming fingers bare Comb down our golden hair In many a lock; While, poured o'er naked ease of cool, moist limbs, An amber glamour swims. Or in the middle night When cold damp fire-flies light Pale flitting brands Down all the woodland aisles, With swift mysterious smiles Link we white hands, And where the moonlight haunts the drowsy lake Bask in its silver wake. Come join, come join our dance While the warm starbeams glance, And the kind moon Spills all her flowers of light At the dark feet of Night, And soon, full soon, Thou'lt sleep in shadowy halls where dim and cold Our city's walled with gold. "THE FAIRY RADE." I. Ai me! why stood I on the bent When Summer wept o'er dying June! I saw the Fairy Folk ride faint Aneath the moon. II. The haw-trees hedged the russet lea Where cuckoo-buds waxed rich with gold; The wealthy corn rose yellowly Endlong the wold. III. Betwixt the haw-trees and the mead "The Fairy Rade" came glimmering on; A creamy cavalcade did speed O'er the green lawn. IV. The night was ringing with their reins; Loud laughed they till the cricket hushed; The whistles on their coursers' manes Shrill music gushed. V. The whistles tagged their horses' manes All crystal clear; on these a wind Forever played, and waked the plains Before, behind. VI. These flute-notes and the Fairy song Took the dim holts with many a qualm, And eke their silver bridles rung A far-off psalm. VII. All rid upon pale ouphen steeds With flying tails, uncouthly seen; Each wore a scarf athwart his weeds Of freshest green. VIII. And aye a beam of silver light Fairer than moonshine danced aboon, And shook their locks--a glimmering white Not of the moon. IX. Small were they that the hare-bell's blue Had helmeted each tiny head; Save one damsel, who, tall as two, The Faeries led. X. Long tresses floated from a tire Of diamond sparks, which cast a light, And o'er her white sark shook, in fire Rippling the night. XI. I would have thrown me 'neath her feet, And told her all my dole and pain, There while her rein was jingling sweet O'er all the plain. XII. Alas! a black and thwarting cock Crew from the thatch with long-necked cry-- The Elfin queen and her wee flock In the night did die. IN AN OLD GARDEN. The Autumn pines and fades Upon the withered trees; And over there, a choked despair, You hear the moaning breeze. The violets are dead; Dead the tall hollyhocks, That hang like rags on the wind-crushed flags, And the lilies' livid stocks. The wild gourd clambers free Where the clematis was wont; Where nenuphars waxed thick as stars Rank weeds stagnate the font. Yet in my dreams I hear A tinkling mandolin; In the dark blue light of a fragrant night Float in and out and in. And the dewy vine that climbs To my lady's lattice sways, And behind the vine there come to shine Two pleasant eyes and gaze. And now a perfume comes, A swift Favonian gust; And the shrinking grass where it doth pass Bows slave-like to the dust. In dreams I see her drift A mist of drapery; In her jeweled shawl divinely tall, A Dian deity. The moon broods high and full O'er the broken Psyche cold, And there she stands her dainty hands And thin wrists warm with gold. But lovers now are dead, The air is stung with frosts; And naught may you find save the homeless wind, Dead violets' ghosts and ghosts. 
32146	----	FUGITIVE POETRY. FUGITIVE POETRY: BY N.P. WILLIS. "If, however, I can, by lucky chance, in these days of evil, rub out one wrinkle from the brow of care, or beguile the heavy heart of one moment of sorrow; if I can, now and then, penetrate the gathering film of misanthropy, prompt a benevolent view of human nature, and make my reader more in good humor with his fellow beings and himself, surely, surely, I shall not then have written entirely in vain." WASHINGTON IRVING. BOSTON: PUBLISHED BY PEIRCE AND WILLIAMS. 1829. DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS, _to wit_: DISTRICT CLERK'S OFFICE. Be it remembered, that on the eleventh day of September, A.D. 1829, in the fifty-fourth year of the Independence of the United States of America, PEIRCE AND WILLIAMS, of the said district, have deposited in this office the title of a book, the right whereof they claim as proprietors in the words following, _to wit_: "Fugitive Poetry: By N.P. WILLIS. "'If, however, I can, by lucky chance, in these days of evil, rub out one wrinkle from the brow of care, or beguile the heart of one moment of sorrow; if I can, now and then, penetrate the gathering film of misanthropy, prompt a benevolent view of human nature, and make my reader more in good humor with his fellow beings, and himself, surely, surely, I shall not then have written entirely in vain.' _Washington Irving._" In conformity to the Act of the Congress of the United States, entitled "An Act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned;" and also to an Act entitled "An Act supplementary to an Act, entitled 'An Act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies during the times therein mentioned;' and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of designing, engraving, and etching historical and other prints." JNO. W. DAVIS,} _Clerk of the District_ _of Massachusetts._ TO GEORGE JAMES PUMPELLY, MY BEST AND MOST VALUED FRIEND, THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. CONTENTS. Page. The Shunamite 9 Scene in Gethsemane 13 Contemplation 15 Sketch of a Schoolfellow 18 Idleness 21 On the Death of Edward Payson D.D. 24 The Tri-Portrait 26 January 1st, 1828 29 January 1st, 1829 30 Psyche, before the Tribunal of Venus 32 On seeing a beautiful Boy at play 34 The Child's first impression of a Star 36 Dedication Hymn 37 The Baptism 38 The Table of Emerald 39 The Annoyer 42 Starlight 44 Lassitude 45 Roaring Brook 46 The Declaration 48 Isabel 49 Mere Accident 51 The Earl's Minstrel 53 The Serenade 57 Hero 60 April 62 To ---- 64 Twenty-two 66 On the Picture of a child playing. By FISHER. 68 To a sleeping Boy 70 Sonnet 73 Sonnet 74 Sonnet 75 Sonnet 76 Sonnet 77 Andre's Request 78 Discrimination 79 The Solitary 80 Lines on the death of Miss Fanny V. Apthorp 82 A Portrait 83 May 84 On seeing through a window a Belle completing her Toilet for a Ball 86 To a Belle 88 FUGITIVE POETRY. THE SHUNAMITE.[A] It was a sultry day of summer time. The sun pour'd down upon the ripen'd grain With quivering heat, and the suspended leaves Hung motionless. The cattle on the hills Stood still, and the divided flock were all Laying their nostrils to the cooling roots, And the sky look'd like silver, and it seem'd As if the air had fainted, and the pulse Of nature had run down, and ceas'd to beat. 'Haste thee, my child!' the Syrian mother said, 'Thy father is athirst'--and from the depths Of the cool well under the leaning tree, She drew refreshing water, and with thoughts Of God's sweet goodness stirring at her heart, She bless'd her beautiful boy, and to his way Committed him. And he went lightly on, With his soft hands press'd closely to the cool Stone vessel, and his little naked feet Lifted with watchful care, and o'er the hills, And thro' the light green hollows, where the lambs Go for the tender grass, he kept his way, Wiling its distance with his simple thoughts, Till, in the wilderness of sheaves, with brows Throbbing with heat, he set his burden down. Childhood is restless ever, and the boy Stay'd not within the shadow of the tree, But with a joyous industry went forth Into the reapers' places, and bound up His tiny sheaves, and plaited cunningly The pliant withs out of the shining straw, Cheering their labor on, till they forgot The very weariness of their stooping toil In the beguiling of his earnest mirth. Presently he was silent, and his eye Closed as with dizzy pain, and with his hand Press'd hard upon his forehead, and his breast Heaving with the suppression of a cry, He uttered a faint murmur, and fell back Upon the loosen'd sheaf, insensible. They bore him to his mother, and he lay Upon her knees till noon--and then he died! She had watch'd every breath, and kept her hand Soft on his forehead, and gaz'd in upon The dreamy languor of his listless eye, And she had laid back all his sunny curls, And kiss'd his delicate lip, and lifted him Into her bosom, till her heart grew strong-- His beauty was so unlike death! She leaned Over him now, that she might catch the low Sweet music of his breath, that she had learn'd To love when he was slumbering at her side In his unconscious infancy-- --"So still! 'Tis a soft sleep! How beautiful he lies, With his fair forehead, and the rosy veins Playing so freshly in his sunny cheek! How could they say that he would die! Oh God! I could not lose him! I have treasured all His childhood in my heart, and even now, As he has slept, my memory has been there, Counting like ingots all his winning ways-- His unforgotten sweetness-- --"Yet so still!-- How like this breathless slumber is to death! I could believe that in that bosom now There were no pulse--it beats so languidly! I cannot see it stir; but his red lip!-- Death would not be so very beautiful! And that half smile--would death have left _that_ there? --And should I not have felt that he would die? And have I not wept over him?--and prayed Morning and night for him?--and _could_ he die? --No--God will keep him. He will be my pride Many long years to come, and this fair hair Will darken like his father's, and his eye Be of a deeper blue when he is grown; And he will be so tall, and I shall look With such a pride upon him!--_He_ to die!" And the fond mother lifted his soft curls, And smiled, as if 'twere mockery to think That such fair things could perish-- --Suddenly Her hand shrunk from him, and the color fled From her fix'd lip, and her supporting knees Were shook beneath her child. Her hand had touch'd His forehead, as she dallied with his hair-- And it was cold--like clay!--slow--very slow Came the misgiving that her child was dead. She sat a moment and her eyes were clos'd In a still prayer for strength, and then she took His little hand and press'd it earnestly-- And put her lip to his--and look'd again Fearfully on him--and then, bending low, She whisper'd in his ear, "My son!--My son!" And as the echo died, and not a sound Broke on the stillness, and he lay there still, Motionless on her knee--the truth _would_ come! And with a sharp, quick cry, as if her heart Were crush'd, she lifted him and held him close Into her bosom--with a mother's thought-- As if death had no power to touch him there! * * * * * The man of God came forth, and led the child Unto his mother, and went on his way. And he was there--her beautiful--her own-- Living and smiling on her--with his arms Folded about her neck, and his warm breath Breathing upon her lips, and in her ear The music of his gentle voice once more! Oh for a burning word that would express The measure of a mother's holy joy, When God has given back to her her child From death's dark portal! It surpasseth words. [Footnote A: 2 KINGS, iv. 18-37.] SCENE IN GETHSEMANE. The moon was shining yet. The Orient's brow, Set with the morning star, was not yet dim; And the deep silence which subdues the breath Like a strong feeling, hung upon the world As sleep upon the pulses of a child. 'Twas the last watch of night. Gethsemane, With its bath'd leaves of silver, seem'd dissolv'd In visible stillness, and as Jesus' voice With its bewildering sweetness met the ear Of his disciples, it vibrated on Like the first whisper in a silent world. They came on slowly. Heaviness oppress'd The Saviour's heart, and when the kindnesses Of his deep love were pour'd, he felt the need Of near communion, for his gift of strength Was wasted by the spirit's weariness. He left them there, and went a little on, And in the depth of that hush'd silentness, Alone with God, he fell upon his face, And as his heart was broken with the rush Of his surpassing agony, and death, Wrung to him from a dying universe, Were mightier than the Son of man could bear, He gave his sorrows way, and in the deep Prostration of his soul, breathed out the prayer, "Father, if it be possible with thee, Let this cup pass from me." Oh, how a word, Like the forc'd drop before the fountain breaks, Stilleth the press of human agony! The Saviour felt its quiet in his soul; And though his strength was weakness, and the light Which led him on till now was sorely dim, He breathed a new submission--"Not my will, But thine be done, oh Father!" As he spoke, Voices were heard in heaven, and music stole Out from the chambers of the vaulted sky, As if the stars were swept like instruments. No cloud was visible, but radiant wings Were coming with a silvery rush to earth, And as the Saviour rose, a glorious one, With an illumin'd forehead, and the light Whose fountain is the mystery of God Encalm'd within his eye, bow'd down to him, And nerv'd him with a ministry of strength. It was enough--and with his godlike brow Re-written, of his Father's messenger, With meekness, whose divinity is more Than power and glory, he return'd again To his disciples, and awak'd their sleep, For "he that should betray him was at hand." CONTEMPLATION. 'They are all up--the innumerable stars-- And hold their place in heaven. My eyes have been Searching the pearly depths through which they spring Like beautiful creations, till I feel As if it were a new and perfect world, Waiting in silence for the word of God To breathe it into motion. There they stand, Shining in order, like a living hymn Written in light, awaking at the breath Of the celestial dawn, and praising Him Who made them, with the harmony of spheres. I would I had an angel's ear to list That melody! I would that I might float Up in that boundless element, and feel Its ravishing vibrations, like a pulse Beating in heaven! My spirit is athirst For music--rarer music! I would bathe My soul in a serener atmosphere Than this! I long to mingle with the flock Led by the "living waters," and lie down In the "green pastures" of the better land! When wilt thou break, dull fetter! When shall I Gather my wings; and, like a rushing thought, Stretch onward, star by star, up into heaven!' Thus mused Alethe. She was one to whom Life had been like the witching of a dream, Of an untroubled sweetness. She was born Of a high race, and laid upon the knee, With her soft eye perusing listlessly The fretted roof, or, on Mosaic floors, Grasped at the tessellated squares, inwrought With metals curiously. Her childhood pass'd Like faery--amid fountains and green haunts-- Trying her little feet upon a lawn Of velvet evenness, and hiding flowers In her sweet bosom, as it were a fair And pearly altar to crush incense on. Her youth--oh! that was queenly! She was like A dream of poetry that may not be Written or told--exceeding beautiful! And so came worshippers; and rank bow'd down, And breathed upon her heart, as with a breath Of pride, and bound her forehead gorgeously With dazzling scorn, and gave unto her step A majesty as if she trod the sea, And the proud waves, unbidden, lifted her. And so she grew to woman--her mere look Strong as a monarch's signet, and her hand The ambition of a kingdom. From all this Turn'd her high heart away! She had a mind, Deep and immortal, and it would not feed On pageantry. She thirsted for a spring Of a serener element, and drank Philosophy, and for a little while She was allay'd--till, presently, it turn'd Bitter within her, and her spirit grew Faint for undying waters. Then she came To the pure fount of God--and is athirst No more--save when the "fever of the world" Falleth upon her, she will go, sometimes, Out in the starlight quietness, and breathe A holy aspiration after heaven! SKETCH OF A SCHOOLFELLOW. He sat by me in school. His face is now Vividly in my mind, as if he went From me but yesterday--its pleasant smile And the rich, joyous laughter of his eye, And the free play of his unhaughty lip, So redolent of his heart! He was not fair, Nor singular, nor over-fond of books, And never melancholy when alone. He was the heartiest in the ring, the last Home from the summer's wanderings, and the first Over the threshold when the school was done. All of us loved him. We shall speak his name In the far years to come, and think of him When we have lost life's simplest passages, And pray for him--forgetting he is dead-- Life was in him so passing beautiful! His childhood had been wasted in the close And airless city. He had never thought That the blue sky was ample, or the stars Many in heaven, or the chainless wind Of a medicinal freshness. He had learn'd Perilous tricks of manhood, and his hand Was ready, and his confidence in himself Bold as a quarreller's. Then he came away To the unshelter'd hills, and brought an eye New as a babe's to nature, and an ear As ignorant of its music. He was sad. The broad hill sides seem'd desolate, and the woods Gloomy and dim, and the perpetual sound Of wind and waters and unquiet leaves Like the monotony of a dirge. He pined For the familiar things until his heart Sicken'd for home!--and so he stole away To the most silent places, and lay down To weep upon the mosses of the slopes, And follow'd listlessly the silver streams, Till he found out the unsunn'd shadowings, And the green openings to the sky, and grew Fond of them all insensibly. He found Sweet company in the brooks, and loved to sit And bathe his fingers wantonly, and feel The wind upon his forehead; and the leaves Took a beguiling whisper to his ear, And the bird-voices music, and the blast Swept like an instrument the sounding trees. His heart went back to its simplicity As the stirr'd waters in the night grow pure-- Sadness and silence and the dim-lit woods Won on his love so well--and he forgot His pride and his assumingness, and lost The mimicry of the man, and so unlearn'd His very character till he became As diffident as a girl. 'Tis very strange How nature sometimes wins upon a child. Th' experience of the world is not on him, And poetry has not upon his brain Left a mock thirst for solitude, nor love Writ on his forehead the effeminate shame Which hideth from men's eyes. He has a full, Shadowless heart, and it is always toned More merrily than the chastened voice of winds And waters--yet he often, in his mirth, Stops by the running brooks, and suddenly Loiters, he knows not why, and at the sight Of the spread meadows and the lifted hills Feels an unquiet pleasure, and forgets To listen for his fellows. He will grow Fond of the early star, and lie awake Gazing with many thoughts upon the moon, And lose himself in the deep chamber'd sky With his untaught philosophies. It breeds Sadness in older hearts, but not in his; And he goes merrier to his play, and shouts Louder the joyous call--but it will sink Into his memory like his mother's prayer, For after years to brood on. Cheerful thoughts Came to the homesick boy as he became Wakeful to beauty in the summer's change, And he came oftener to our noisy play, Cheering us on with his delightful shout Over the hills, and giving interest With his keen spirit to the boyish game. We loved him for his carelessness of himself, And his perpetual mirth, and tho' he stole Sometimes away into the woods alone, And wandered unaccompanied when the night Was beautiful, he was our idol still, And we have not forgotten him, tho' time Has blotted many a pleasant memory Of boyhood out, and we are wearing old With the unplayfulness of this grown up world. IDLENESS. The rain is playing its soft pleasant tune Fitfully on the skylight, and the shade Of the fast flying clouds across my book Passes with delicate change. My merry fire Sings cheerfully to itself; my musing cat Purrs as she wakes from her unquiet sleep, And looks into my face as if she felt Like me the gentle influence of the rain. Here have I sat since morn, reading sometimes, And sometimes listening to the faster fall Of the large drops, or rising with the stir Of an unbidden thought, have walked awhile With the slow steps of indolence, my room, And then sat down composedly again To my quaint book of olden poetry. It is a kind of idleness, I know; And I am said to be an idle man-- And it is very true. I love to go Out in the pleasant sun, and let my eye Rest on the human faces that pass by, Each with its gay or busy interest; And then I muse upon their lot, and read Many a lesson in their changeful cast, And so grow kind of heart, as if the sight Of human beings were humanity. And I am better after it, and go More gratefully to my rest, and feel a love Stirring my heart to every living thing, And my low prayer has more humility, And I sink lightlier to my dreams--and this, 'Tis very true, is only idleness! I love to go and mingle with the young In the gay festal room--when every heart Is beating faster than the merry tune, And their blue eyes are restless, and their lips Parted with eager joy, and their round cheeks Flushed with the beautiful motion of the dance. 'Tis sweet, in the becoming light of lamps, To watch a brow half shaded, or a curl Playing upon a neck capriciously, Or, unobserved, to watch in its delight, The earnest countenance of a child. I love To look upon such things, and I can go Back to my solitude, and dream bright dreams For their fast coming years, and speak of them Earnestly in my prayer, till I am glad With a benevolent joy--and this, I know, To the world's eye, is only idleness! And when the clouds pass suddenly away, And the blue sky is like a newer world, And the sweet growing things--forest and flower, Humble and beautiful alike--are all Breathing up odors to the very heaven-- Or when the frost has yielded to the sun In the rich autumn, and the filmy mist Lies like a silver lining on the sky, And the clear air exhilarates, and life Simply, is luxury--and when the hush Of twilight, like a gentle sleep, steals on, And the birds settle to their nests, and stars Spring in the upper sky, and there is not A sound that is not low and musical-- At all these pleasant seasons I go out With my first impulse guiding me, and take Woodpath, or stream, or sunny mountain side, And, in my recklessness of heart, stray on, Glad with the birds, and silent with the leaves, And happy with the fair and blessed world-- And this, 'tis true, is only idleness! And I should love to go up to the sky, And course the heaven like stars, and float away Upon the gliding clouds that have no stay In their swift journey--and 'twould be a joy To walk the chambers of the deep, and tread The pearls of its untrodden floor, and know The tribes of its unfathomable depths-- Dwellers beneath the pressure of a sea! And I should love to issue with the wind On a strong errand, and o'ersweep the earth, With its broad continents and islands green, Like to the passing of a presence on!-- And this, 'tis true, were only idleness! ON THE DEATH OF EDWARD PAYSON, D.D. A servant of the living God is dead! His errand hath been well and early done, And early hath he gone to his reward. He shall come no more forth, but to his sleep Hath silently lain down, and so shall rest. Would ye bewail our brother? He hath gone To Abraham's bosom. He shall no more thirst, Nor hunger, but forever in the eye, Holy and meek, of Jesus, he may look, Unchided, and untempted, and unstained. Would ye bewail our brother? He hath gone To sit down with the prophets by the clear And crystal waters; he hath gone to list Isaiah's harp and David's, and to walk With Enoch, and Elijah, and the host Of the just men made perfect. He shall bow At Gabriel's Hallelujah, and unfold The scroll of the Apocalypse with John, And talk of Christ with Mary, and go back To the last supper, and the garden prayer With the belov'd disciple. He shall hear The story of the Incarnation told By Simeon, and the Triune mystery Burning upon the fervent lips of Paul. He shall have wings of glory, and shall soar To the remoter firmaments, and read The order and the harmony of stars; And, in the might of knowledge, he shall bow In the deep pauses of Archangel harps, And humble as the Seraphim, shall cry-- _Who by his searching, finds thee out, Oh God!_ There shall he meet his children who have gone Before him, and as other years roll on, And his loved flock go up to him, his hand Again shall lead them gently to the Lamb, And bring them to the living waters there. Is it so good to die! and shall we mourn That he is taken early to his rest? Tell me! Oh mourner for the man of God! Shall we bewail our brother that he died? THE TRI-PORTRAIT. 'Twas a rich night in June. The air was all Fragrance and balm, and the wet leaves were stirred By the soft fingers of the southern wind, And caught the light capriciously, like wings Haunting the greenwood with a silvery sheen. The stars might not be numbered, and the moon Exceeding beautiful, went up in heaven, And took her place in silence, and a hush, Like the deep Sabbath of the night, came down And rested upon nature. I was out With three sweet sisters wandering, and my thoughts Took color of the moonlight, and of them, And I was calm and happy. Their deep tones, Low in the stillness, and by that soft air Melted to reediness, bore out, like song, The language of high feelings, and I felt How excellent is woman when she gives To the fine pulses of her spirit way. One was a noble being, with a brow Ample and pure, and on it her black hair Was parted, like a raven's wing on snow. Her tone was low and sweet, and in her smile You read intense affections. Her moist eye Had a most rare benignity; her mouth, Bland and unshadowed sweetness; and her face Was full of that mild dignity that gives A holiness to woman. She was one Whose virtues blossom daily, and pour out A fragrance upon all who in her path Have a blest fellowship. I longed to be Her brother, that her hand might lie upon My forehead, and her gentle voice allay The fever that is at my heart sometimes. There was a second sister who might witch An angel from his hymn. I cannot tell The secret of her beauty. It is more Than her slight penciled lip, and her arch eye Laughing beneath its lashes, as if life Were nothing but a merry mask; 'tis more Than motion, though she moveth like a fay; Or music, though her voice is like a reed Blown by a low south wind; or cunning grace, Though all she does is beautiful; or thought, Or fancy, or a delicate sense, though mind Is her best gift, and poetry her world, And she will see strange beauty in a flower As by a subtle vision. I care not To know how she bewitches; 'tis enough For me that I can listen to her voice And dream rare dreams of music, or converse Upon unwrit philosophy, till I Am wildered beneath thoughts I cannot bound And the red lip that breathes them. On my arm Leaned an unshadowed girl, who scarcely yet Had numbered fourteen summers. I know not How I shall draw her picture--the young heart Has such a restlessness of change, and each Of its wild moods so lovely! I can see Her figure in its rounded beauty now, With her half-flying step, her clustering hair Bathing a neck like Hebe's, and her face By a glad heart made radiant. She was full Of the romance of girlhood. The fair world Was like an unmarred Eden to her eye, And every sound was music, and the tint Of every cloud a silent poetry. Light to thy path, bright creature! I would charm Thy being if I could, that it should be Ever as now thou dreamest, and flow on Thus innocent and beautiful to heaven! We walked beneath the full and mellow moon Till the late stars had risen. It was not In silence, though we did not seem to break The hush with our low voices; but our thoughts Stirred deeply at their sources; and when night Divided us, I slumbered with a peace Floating about my heart, which only comes From high communion. I shall never see That silver moon again without a crowd Of gentle memories, and a silent prayer, That when the night of life shall oversteal Your sky, ye lovely sisters! there may be A light as beautiful to lead you on. JANUARY 1, 1828. Fleetly hath past the year. The seasons came Duly as they are wont--the gentle Spring, And the delicious Summer, and the cool, Rich Autumn, with the nodding of the grain, And Winter, like an old and hoary man, Frosty and stiff--and so are chronicled. We have read gladness in the new green leaf, And in the first blown violets; we have drunk Cool water from the rock, and in the shade Sunk to the noon-tide slumber;--we have eat The mellow fruitage of the bending tree, And girded to our pleasant wanderings When the cool wind came freshly from the hills; And when the tinting of the Autumn leaves Had faded from its glory, we have sat By the good fires of Winter, and rejoiced Over the fulness of the gathered sheaf. "God hath been very good!" 'Tis He whose hand Moulded the sunny hills, and hollowed out The shelter of the valleys, and doth keep The fountains in their secret places cool; And it is He who leadeth up the sun, And ordereth the starry influences, And tempereth the keenness of the frost-- And therefore, in the plenty of the feast, And in the lifting of the cup, let HIM Have praises for the well-completed year. JANUARY 1, 1829. Winter is come again. The sweet south west Is a forgotten wind, and the strong earth Has laid aside its mantle to be bound By the frost fetter. There is not a sound Save of the skaiter's heel, and there is laid An icy finger on the lip of streams, And the clear icicle hangs cold and still, And the snow-fall is noiseless as a thought. Spring has a rushing sound, and Summer sends Many sweet voices with its odors out, And Autumn rustleth its decaying robe With a complaining whisper. Winter's dumb! God made his ministry a silent one, And he has given him a foot of steel And an unlovely aspect, and a breath Sharp to the senses--and we know that He Tempereth well, and hath a meaning hid Under the shadow of his hand. Look up! And it shall be interpreted--Your home Hath a temptation now. There is no voice Of waters with beguiling for your ear, And the cool forest and the meadows green Witch not your feet away; and in the dells There are no violets, and upon the hills There are no sunny places to lie down. You must go in, and by your cheerful fire Wait for the offices of love, and hear Accents of human tenderness, and feast Your eye upon the beauty of the young. It is a season for the quiet thought, And the still reckoning with thyself. The year Gives back the spirits of its dead, and time Whispers the history of its vanished hours; And the heart, calling its affections up, Counteth its wasted ingots. Life stands still And settles like a fountain, and the eye Sees clearly through its depths, and noteth all That stirred its troubled waters. It is well That Winter with the dying year should come! PSYCHE, BEFORE THE TRIBUNAL OF VENUS. Lift up thine eyes, sweet Psyche! What is she That those soft fringes timidly should fall Before her, and thy spiritual brow Be shadowed as her presence were a cloud? A loftier gift is thine than she can give-- That queen of beauty. She may mould the brow To perfectness, and give unto the form A beautiful proportion; she may stain The eye with a celestial blue--the cheek With carmine of the sunset; she may breathe Grace into every motion, like the play Of the least visible tissue of a cloud; She may give all that is within her own Bright cestus--and one silent look of thine, Like stronger magic, will outcharm it all. Ay, for the soul is better than its frame, The spirit than its temple. What's the brow, Or the eye's lustre, or the step of air, Or color, but the beautiful links that chain The mind from its rare element? There lies A talisman in intellect which yields Celestial music, when the master hand Touches it cunningly. It sleeps beneath The outward semblance, and to common sight Is an invisible and hidden thing; But when the lip is faded, and the cheek Robbed of its daintiness, and when the form Witches the sense no more, and human love Falters in its idolatry, this spell Will hold its strength unbroken, and go on Stealing anew the affections. Marvel not That Love leans sadly on his bended bow. He hath found out the loveliness of mind, And he is spoilt for beauty. So 'twill be Ever--the glory of the human form Is but a perishing thing, and Love will droop When its brief grace hath faded; but the mind Perisheth not, and when the outward charm Hath had its brief existence, it awakes, And is the lovelier that it slept so long-- Like wells that by the wasting of their flow Have had their deeper fountains broken up. ON SEEING A BEAUTIFUL BOY AT PLAY. Down the green slope he bounded. Raven curls From his white shoulders by the winds were swept, And the clear color of his sunny cheek Was bright with motion. Through his open lips Shone visibly a delicate line of pearl, Like a white vein within a rosy shell, And his dark eye's clear brilliance, as it lay Beneath his lashes, like a drop of dew Hid in the moss, stole out as covertly As starlight from the edging of a cloud. I never saw a boy so beautiful. His step was like the stooping of a bird, And his limbs melted into grace like things Shaped by the wind of summer. He was like A painter's fine conception--such an one As he would have of Ganymede, and weep Upon his pallet that he could not win The vision to his easel. Who could paint The young and shadowless spirit? Who could chain The visible gladness of a heart that lives, Like a glad fountain, in the eye of light, With an unbreathing pencil? Nature's gift Has nothing that is like it. Sun and stream, And the new leaves of June, and the young lark That flees away into the depths of heaven, Lost in his own wild music, and the breath Of springtime, and the summer eve, and noon In the cool autumn, are like fingers swept Over sweet-toned affections--but the joy That enters to the spirit of a child Is deep as his young heart: his very breath, The simple sense of being, is enough To ravish him, and like a thrilling touch He feels each moment of his life go by. Beautiful, beautiful childhood! with a joy That like a robe is palpable, and flung Out by your every motion! delicate bud Of the immortal flower that will unfold And come to its maturity in heaven! I weep your earthly glory. 'Tis a light Lent to the new born spirit that goes out With the first idle wind. It is the leaf Fresh flung upon the river, that will dance Upon the wave that stealeth out its life, Then sink of its own heaviness. The face Of the delightful earth will to your eye Grow dim; the fragrance of the many flowers Be noticed not, and the beguiling voice Of nature in her gentleness will be To manhood's senseless ear inaudible. I sigh to look upon thy face, young boy! A CHILD'S FIRST IMPRESSION OF A STAR. She had been told that God made all the stars That twinkled up in heaven, and now she stood Watching the coming of the twilight on, As if it were a new and perfect world, And this were its first eve. How beautiful Must be the work of nature to a child In its first fresh impression! Laura stood By the low window, with the silken lash Of her soft eye upraised, and her sweet mouth Half parted with the new and strange delight Of beauty that she could not comprehend, And had not seen before. The purple folds Of the low sunset clouds, and the blue sky That look'd so still and delicate above, Fill'd her young heart with gladness, and the eve Stole on with its deep shadows, and she still Stood looking at the west with that half smile, As if a pleasant thought were at her heart. Presently, in the edge of the last tint Of sunset, where the blue was melted in To the faint golden mellowness, a star Stood suddenly. A laugh of wild delight Burst from her lips, and putting up her hands, Her simple thought broke forth expressively-- "Father! dear Father! God has made a star!" DEDICATION HYMN. The perfect world by Adam trod, Was the first temple--built by God-- His fiat laid the corner stone, And heav'd its pillars, one by one. He hung its starry roof on high-- The broad illimitable sky; He spread its pavement, green and bright, And curtain'd it with morning light. The mountains in their places stood-- The sea--the sky--and "all was good;" And, when its first pure praises rang, The "morning stars together sang." Lord! 'tis not ours to make the sea And earth and sky a house for thee; But in thy sight our off'ring stands-- A humbler temple, "made with hands." THE BAPTISM. She stood up in the meekness of a heart Resting on God, and held her fair young child Upon her bosom, with its gentle eyes Folded in sleep, as if its soul had gone To whisper the baptismal vow in Heaven. The prayer went up devoutly, and the lips Of the good man glowed fervently with faith That it would be, even as he had pray'd, And the sweet child be gather'd to the fold Of Jesus. As the holy words went on Her lips mov'd silently, and tears, fast tears Stole from beneath her lashes, and upon The forehead of the beautiful child lay soft With the baptismal water. Then I thought That, to the eye of God, that mother's tears Would be a deeper covenant, which sin And the temptations of the world, and death Would leave unbroken, and that she would know In the clear light of heaven, how very strong The prayer which press'd them from her heart had been In leading its young spirit up to God. THE TABLE OF EMERALD. Deep, it is said, under yonder pyramid, has for ages lain concealed the Table of Emerald, on which the thrice-great Hermes engraved, before the flood, the secret of Alchemy that gives gold at will. _Epicurean._ That 'Emerald Green of the Pyramid'-- Were I where it is laid, I'd ask no king for his heavy crown, As its hidden words were said. The pomp and the glitter of worldly pride Should fetter my moments not, And the natural thought of an open mind, Should govern alone my lot. Would I feast all day? revel all night? Laugh with a weary heart? Would I sleep away the breezy morn? And wake till the stars depart? Would I gain no knowledge, and search no deep For the wisdom that sages knew? Would I run to waste with a human mind-- To its noble trust untrue? Oh! knew I the depth of that 'Emerald Green,' And knew I the spell of gold, I would never poison a fresh young heart With the taint of customs old. I would bind no wreath to my forehead free In whose shadow a thought would die, Nor drink from the cup of revelry, The ruin my gold would buy. But I'd break the fetters of care worn things, And be spirit and fancy free, My mind should go up where it longs to go, And the limitless wind outflee. I'd climb to the eyries of eagle men Till the stars became a scroll; And pour right on, like the even sea, In the strength of a governed soul. Ambition! Ambition! I've laughed to scorn Thy robe and thy gleaming sword; I would follow sooner a woman's eye, Or the spell of a gentle word; But come with the glory of human mind, And the light of the scholar's brow, And my heart shall be taught forgetfulness, And alone at thy altar bow. There was one dark eye--it hath passed away! There was one deep tone--'tis not! Could I see it now--could I hear it now, Ye were all too well forgot. My heart brought up, from its chambers deep, The sum of its earthly love; But it might not--could not--buy like Heaven, And she stole to her rest above. That first deep love I have taken back, In my rayless heart to hide; With the tear it brought for a burning seal, 'Twill there forever bide. I may stretch on now to a nobler ken, I may live in my thoughts of flame-- The tie is broken that kept me back, And my spirit is on, for fame! But alas! I am dreaming as if I knew The spell of the tablet green; I forgot how like to a broken reed, Is the lot on which I lean. There is nothing true of my idle dream, But the wreck of my early love; And my mind is coined for my daily bread, And how can it soar above? THE ANNOYER. Sogna il guerriér le schiere, Le sel ve il cacciatór; E sogna il pescatór; Le reti, e l' amo. _Metastatio._ Love knoweth every form of air, And every shape of earth, And comes, unbidden, everywhere, Like thought's mysterious birth. The moonlight sea and the sunset sky Are written with Love's words, And you hear his voice unceasingly, Like song in the time of birds. He peeps into the warrior's heart From the tip of a stooping plume, And the serried spears, and the many men May not deny him room. He'll come to his tent in the weary night, And be busy in his dream; And he'll float to his eye in morning light Like a fay on a silver beam. He hears the sound of the hunter's gun, And rides on the echo back, And sighs in his ear like a stirring leaf, And flits in his woodland track. The shade of the wood, and the sheen of the river, The cloud, and the open sky-- He will haunt them all with his subtle quiver, Like the light of your very eye. The fisher hangs over the leaning boat, And ponders the silver sea, For Love is under the surface hid, And a spell of thought has he. He heaves the wave like a bosom sweet, And speaks in the ripple low, Till the bait is gone from the crafty line, And the hook hangs bare below. He blurs the print of the scholar's book, And intrudes in the maiden's prayer. And profanes the cell of the holy man, In the shape of a lady fair. In the darkest night, and the bright daylight, In earth, and sea, and sky, In every home of human thought, Will Love be lurking nigh. STARLIGHT. The evening star will twinkle presently. The last small bird is silent, and the bee Has gone into his hive, and the shut flowers Are bending as if sleeping on the stem, And all sweet living things are slumbering In the deep hush of nature's resting time. The faded West looks deep, as if its blue Were searchable, and even as I look, The twilight hath stole over it, and made Its liquid eye apparent, and above To the far-stretching zenith, and around, As if they waited on her like a queen, Have stole out the innumerable stars To twinkle like intelligence in heaven. Is it not beautiful, my fair Adel? Fit for the young affections to come out And bathe in like an element! How well The night is made for tenderness--so still That the low whisper, scarcely audible, Is heard like music, and so deeply pure That the fond thought is chastened as it springs And on the lip made holy. I have won Thy heart, my gentle girl! but it hath been When that soft eye was on me, and the love I told beneath the evening influence Shall be as constant as its gentle star. LASSITUDE. I will throw by my book. The weariness Of too much study presses on my brain, And thought's close fetter binds upon my brow Like a distraction, and I must give o'er. Morning hath seen me here, and noon, and eve; And midnight with its deep and solemn hush Has look'd upon my labors, and the dawn, With its sweet voices, and its tempting breath Has driven me to rest--and I can bear The burden of such weariness no more. I have foregone society, and fled From a sweet sister's fondness, and from all A home's alluring blandishments, and now When I am thirsting for them, and my heart Would leap at the approaches of their kind And gentle offices, they are not here, And I must feel that I am all alone. Oh, for the fame of this forgetful world How much we suffer! Were it _all_ for this-- Were nothing but the empty praise of men The guerdon of this sedentary toil-- Were this world's perishable honors _all_-- I'd bound from its confinement as a hart Leaps from its hunters--but I know, that when My name shall be forgotten, and my frame Rests from its labors, I shall find above A work for the capacities I win, And, as I discipline my spirit here, My lyre shall have a nobler sweep in Heaven. "ROARING BROOK:"--CHESHIRE, CON. It was a mountain stream that with the leap Of its impatient waters had worn out A channel in the rock, and wash'd away The earth that had upheld the tall old trees, Till it was darken'd with the shadowy arch Of the o'er-leaning branches. Here and there It loiter'd in a broad and limpid pool That circled round demurely, and anon Sprung violently over where the rock Fell suddenly, and bore its bubbles on, Till they were broken by the hanging moss, As anger with a gentle word grows calm. In spring-time, when the snows were coming down, And in the flooding of the Autumn rains, No foot might enter there--but in the hot And thirsty summer, when the fountains slept, You could go its channel in the shade, To the far sources, with a brow as cool As in the grotto of the anchorite. Here when an idle student have I come, And in a hollow of the rock lain down And mus'd until the eventide, or read Some fine old Poet till my nook became A haunt of faery, or the busy flow Of water to my spell-bewilder'd ear Seem'd like the din of some gay tournament. Pleasant have been such hours, and tho' the wise Have said that I was indolent, and they Who taught me have reprov'd me that I play'd The truant in the leafy month of June, I deem it true philosophy in him Whose spirit must be temper'd of the world, To loiter with these wayside comforters. THE DECLARATION. 'Twas late, and the gay company was gone, And light lay soft on the deserted room From alabaster vases, and a scent Of orange leaves, and sweet verbena came Through the unshutter'd window on the air, And the rich pictures with their dark old tints Hung like a twilight landscape, and all things Seem'd hush'd into a slumber. Isabel, The dark eyed, spiritual Isabel Was leaning on her harp, and I had staid To whisper what I could not when the crowd Hung on her look like worshippers. I knelt, And with the fervor of a lip unused To the cool breath of reason, told my love. There was no answer, and I took the hand That rested on the strings, and pressed a kiss Upon it unforbidden--and again Besought her, that this silent evidence That I was not indifferent to her heart, Might have the seal of one sweet syllable. I kissed the small white fingers as I spoke, And she withdrew them gently, and upraised Her forehead from its resting place, and looked Earnestly on me--She had been asleep! ISABEL. They said that I was strange. I could not bear Confinement, and I lov'd to feel the wind Blowing upon my forehead, and when morn Came like an inspiration from the East, And the cool earth, awaking like a star In a new element, sent out its voice, And tempted me with music, and the breath Of a delicious perfume, and the dye Of the rich forests and the pastures green, To come out and be glad--I would not stay To bind my gushing spirit with a book. Fourteen bright summers--and my heart had grown Impatient in its loneliness, and yearn'd For something that was like itself, to love. She came--the stately Isabel--as proud And beautiful, and gentle as my dream; And with my wealth of feeling, lov'd I her. Older by years, and wiser of the world, She was in thought my equal, and we rang'd The pleasant wood together, and sat down Impassion'd with the same delicious sweep Of water, and I pour'd into her ear My passion and my hoarded thoughts like one, Till I forgot that there was any world But Isabel and nature. She was pleas'd And flatter'd with my wild and earnest love, And suffer'd my delirious words to burn Upon my lip unchided. It was new To be so worshipped like a deity By a pure heart from nature, and she gave Her tenderness its way, and when I kiss'd Her fingers till I thought I was in Heaven, She gaz'd upon me silently, and wept. * * * * * I have seen eighteen summers--and the child Of stately Isabel hath learn'd to come And win me from my sadness. I have school'd My feelings to affection for that child, And I can see his father fondle him, And give him to his mother with a kiss Upon her holy forehead--and be calm! MERE ACCIDENT. It was a shady nook that I had found Deep in the greenwood. A delicious stream Ran softly by it on a bed of grass, And to the border leant a sloping bank Of moss as delicate as Tempe e'er Spread for the sleep of Io. Overhead The spreading larch was woven with the fir, And as the summer wind stole listlessly, And dallied with the tree tops, they would part And let in sprinklings of the sunny light, Studding the moss like silver; and again Returning to their places, there would come A murmur from the touched and stirring leaves, That like a far-off instrument, beguiled Your mood into the idleness of sleep. Here did I win thee, Viola! We came-- Thou knowest how carelessly--and never thought Love lived in such a wilderness; and thou-- I had a cousin's kindness for thy lip, And in the meshes of thy chesnut hair I loved to hide my fingers--that was all! And when I saw thy figure on the grass, And thy straw bonnet flung aside, I thought A fairy would be pretty, painted so Upon a ground of green--but that was all! And when thou playfully wouldst bathe thy foot, And the clear water of the stream ran off And left the white skin polished, why, I thought It looked like ivory--but that was all! And when thou wouldst be serious, and I Was serious too, and thy mere fairy's hand Lay carelessly in mine, and just for thought I mused upon thy innocence and gaz'd Upon the pure transparence of thy brow-- I pressed thy fingers half unconsciously, And fell in love. Was _that_ all, Viola? THE EARL'S MINSTREL. I had a passion when I was a child For a most pleasant idleness. In June, When the thick masses of the leaves were stirr'd With a just audible murmur, and the streams Fainted in their cool places to a low Unnotic'd tinkle, and the reapers hung Their sickles in the trees and went to sleep, Then might you find me in an antique chair Cushion'd with cunning luxury, which stood In the old study corner, by a nook Crowded with volumes of the old romance; And there, the long and quiet summer day, Lay I with half clos'd eyelids, turning o'er Leaf after leaf, until the twilight blurr'd Their singular and time-stain'd characters. 'Twas a forgetful lore, and it is blent With dreams that in my fitful slumber came, And is remember'd faintly. But to-day With the strange waywardness of human thought, A story has come back to me which I Had long forgotten, and I tell it now Because it hath a savour that I find But seldom in the temper of the world. Angelo turn'd away. He was a poor Unhonor'd minstrel, and he might not breathe Love to the daughter of an Earl. She rais'd Proudly her beautiful head, and shook away From her clear temples the luxuriant hair, And told him it would ever please her well To listen to his minstrelsy, but love Was for a loftier lip--and then the tear Stole to her flashing eye, for as she spoke There rose up a remembrance of his keen, Unstooping spirit, and his noble heart Given her like a sacrifice, and she held Her hand for him to kiss, and said, "Farewell! Think of me, Angelo!" and so pass'd on. The color to his forehead mounted high, And his thin lip curl'd haughtily, and then As if his mood had chang'd, he bow'd his head Low on his bosom, and remain'd awhile Lost in his bitter thoughts--and then again He lifted to its height his slender form, And his moist eye grew clear, and his hand pass'd Rapidly o'er his instrument while thus He gave his spirit voice:-- It did not need that alter'd look, Nor that uplifted brow-- I had not ask'd thy haughty love, Were I as proud as now. My love was like a beating heart-- Unbidden and unstayed; And had I known but half its power, It had not been betray'd. I did not seek thy titled hand; I thought not of thy name; I only granted utterance To one wild thought of flame. I did not dream thou couldst be mine, Or I a thought to thee-- I only knew my lip must let Some burning thought go free. I lov'd thee for thy high born grace, Thy deep and lustrous eye, For the sweet meaning of thy brow, And for thy bearing high; I lov'd thee for thy stainless truth, Thy thirst for higher things; For all that to our common lot A better temper brings-- And are they not all thine? still thine? Is not thy heart as true? Holds not thy step its noble grace-- Thy cheek its dainty hue? And have I not an ear to hear-- A cloudless eye to see-- And a thirst for beautiful human thought, That first was stirr'd with thee? Then why should I turn from thee now? Why should not I love on-- Dreaming of thee by night, by day, As I have ever done? My service shall be still as leal, My love as quenchless burn It shames me of my selfish thought That dream'd of a return! He married her! Perhaps it spoils the tale-- But she had listen'd to his song, unseen, And kept it in her heart, and, by and by, When Angelo did service for his king, And was prefer'd to honor, she betray'd Her secret in some delicate way that I Do not remember, and so ends the tale. THE SERENADE. Innocent dreams be thine! The silver night Is a fit curtain for thy lovely sleep. The stars keep watch above thee, and the moon Sits like a brooding spirit up in Heaven, Ruling the night's deep influences, and life Hath a hushed pulse, and the suspended leaves Sleep with their whisperings as if the dew Were a soft finger on the lip of sound. Innocent dreams be thine! thy heart sends up Its thoughts of purity like pearly bells Rising in crystal fountains, and the sin That thou hast seen by day, will, like a shade, Pass from thy memory, as if the pure Had an unconscious ministry by night. Midnight--and now for music! Would I were A sound that I might steal upon thy dreams, And, like the breathing of my flute, distil Sweetly upon thy senses. Softly, boy! Breathe the low cadences as if the words Fainted upon thy lip--I would not break Her slumber quite--but only, as she dreams, Witch the lull'd sense till she believes she hears Celestial melody:-- SONG. "Sleep, like a lover, woo thee, Isabel! And golden dreams come to thee, Like a spell By some sweet angel drawn! Noiseless hands shall seal thy slumber, Setting stars its moments number, So, sleep thou on! The night above thee broodeth, Hushed and deep; But no dark thought intrudeth On the sleep Which folds thy senses now. Gentle spirits float around thee, Gentle rest hath softly bound thee, For pure art thou! And now thy spirit fleeth On rare wings, And fancy's vision seeth Holy things In its high atmosphere. Music strange thy sense unsealeth, And a voice to thee revealeth What angels hear. Thou'lt wake when morning breaketh, Pure and calm; As one who mourns, awaketh When the balm Of peace hath on him fell. Purer thoughts shall stir within thee, Softer cords to virtue win thee-- Farewell! Farewell!" HERO. _Claudio_. Know you any Hero? _Hero_. None my lord! _As You Like it._ Gentle and modest Hero! I can see Her delicate figure, and her soft blue eye, Like a warm vision--lovely as she stood, Veiled in the presence of young Claudio. Modesty bows her head, and that young heart That would endure all suffering for the love It hideth, is as tremulous as the leaf Forsaken of the Summer. She hath flung Her all upon the venture of her vow, And in her trust leans meekly, like a flower By the still river tempted from its stem, And on its bosom floating. Once again I see her, and she standeth in her pride, With her soft eye enkindled, and her lip Curled with its sweet resentment, like a line Of lifeless coral. She hath heard the voice That was her music utter it, and still To her affection faithful, she hath turned And questioned in her innocent unbelief, "Is my lord well, that he should speak so wide?"-- How did they look upon that open brow, And not read purity? Alas for truth! It hath so many counterfeits. The words, That to a child were written legibly, Are by the wise mistaken, and when light Hath made the brow transparent, and the face Is like an angel's--virtue is so fair-- They read it like an over-blotted leaf, And break the heart that wrote it. APRIL. A violet by a mossy stone, Half hidden from the eye, Fair as a star, when only one, Is shining in the sky. _Wordsworth_ I have found violets. April hath come on, And the cool winds feel softer, and the rain Falls in the beaded drops of summer time. You may hear birds at morning, and at eve The tame dove lingers till the twilight falls, Cooing upon the eaves, and drawing in His beautiful bright neck, and from the hills, A murmur like the hoarseness of the sea Tells the release of waters, and the earth Sends up a pleasant smell, and the dry leaves Are lifted by the grass--and so I know That Nature, with her delicate ear, hath heard The dropping of the velvet foot of Spring. Smell of my violets! I found them where The liquid South stole o'er them, on a bank That lean'd to running water. There's to me A daintiness about these early flowers That touches me like poetry. They blow With such a simple loveliness among The common herbs of pasture, and breathe out Their lives so unobtrusively, like hearts Whose beatings are too gentle for the world. I love to go in the capricious days Of April and hunt violets; when the rain Is in the blue cups trembling, and they nod So gracefully to the kisses of the wind. It may be deem'd unmanly, but the wise Read nature like the manuscript of heaven And call the flowers its poetry. Go out! Ye spirits of habitual unrest, And read it when the "fever of the world" Hath made your hearts impatient, and, if life Hath yet one spring unpoison'd, it will be Like a beguiling music to its flow, And you will no more wonder that I love To hunt for violets in the April time. TO A BRIDE. Pass thou on! for the vow is said That is never broken; The hand of blessing hath, trembling, laid On snowy forehead and simple braid, And the word is spoken By lips that never their words betray'd. Pass thou on! for thy human all Is richly given, And the voice that claim'd its holy thrall Must be sweeter for life than music's fall, And, this side Heaven, Thy lip may never that trust recal. Pass thou on! yet many an eye Will droop and glisten; And the hushing heart in vain will try To still its pulse as thy step goes by And we "vainly listen For thy voice of witching melody." Pass thou on! yet a sister's tone In its sweetness lingers, Like some twin echo sent back alone, Or the bird's soft note when its mate hath flown, And a sister's fingers Will again o'er the thrilling harp be thrown. And our eyes will rest on their foreheads fair, And our hearts awaken Whenever we come where their voices are-- But oh, we shall think how musical were, Ere of thee forsaken, The mingled voices we listed there. Pass on! there is not of our blessings one That may not perish-- Like visiting angels whose errand is done, They are never at rest till their home is won, And we may not cherish The beautiful gift of _thy_ light--Pass on! TWENTY-TWO. I'm twenty-two--I'm twenty-two-- They gaily give me joy, As if I should be glad to hear That I was less a boy. They do not know how carelessly Their words have given pain, To one whose heart would leap to be A happy boy again. I had a light and careless heart When this brief year began, And then I pray'd that I might be A grave and perfect man. The world was like a blessed dream Of joyous coming years-- I did not know its manliness Was but to wake in tears. A change has on my spirit come, I am forever sad; The light has all departed now My early feelings had; I used to love the morning grey, The twilight's quiet deep, But now like shadows on the sea, Upon my thoughts they creep. And love was like a holy star, When this brief year was young, And my whole worship of the sky On one sweet ray was flung; But worldly things have come between, And shut it from my sight, And though the star shines purely yet, I mourn its hidden light. And fame! I bent to it the knee, And bow'd to it my brow, And it is like a coal upon My living spirit now-- But when I pray'd for burning fire To touch the soul I bow'd, I did not know the lightning flash Would come in such a cloud. Ye give me joy! Is it because Another year has fled?-- That I am farther from my youth, And nearer to the dead? Is it because my cares have come?-- My happy boyhood o'er?-- Because the visions I have lov'd Will visit me no more? Oh, tell me not that ye are glad! I cannot smile it back; I've found no flower, and seen no light On manhood's weary track. My love is deep--ambition deep-- And heart and mind _will_ on-- But love is fainting by the way, And fame consumes ere won. ON A PICTURE OF CHILDREN PLAYING. BY FISHER. I love to look on a scene like this, Of wild and careless play, And persuade myself that I am not old And my locks are not yet gray; For it stirs the blood in old man's heart, And makes his pulses fly, To catch the thrill of a happy voice, And the light of a pleasant eye. I have walked the world for fourscore years, And they say that I am old; That my heart is ripe for the reaper, Death, And my years are well nigh told. It is very true--it is very true-- I'm old, and 'I bide my time'-- But my heart will leap at a scene like this, And I half renew my prime. Play on! play on! I am with you there, In the midst of your merry ring; I can feel the thrill of the daring jump, And the rush of the breathless swing. I hide with you in the fragrant hay, And I whoop the smothered call, And my feet slip up on the seedy floor, And I care not for the fall. I am willing to die when my time shall come, And I shall be glad to go; For the world, at best, is a weary place, And my pulse is getting low; But the grave is dark, and the heart will fail In treading its gloomy way; And it wiles my heart from its dreariness, To see the young so gay. TO A SLEEPING BOY. Sleep on! Sleep on! beguiling The hours with happy rest. Sleep!--by that dreamy smiling, I know that thou art blest. Thy mother over thee hath leant To guard thee from annoy, And the angel of the innocent Was in that dream, my boy! The tinting of the summer rose Is on that pillowed cheek, And the quietness of summer thought Has made thy forehead meek. And yet that little ample brow, And arching lip, are fraught With pledges of high manliness, And promises of thought. Thy polished limbs are rounded out As is the Autumn fruit, And full and reedy is the voice That slumber hath made mute. And, looking on thy perfect form-- Hearing thy pleasant tone-- I almost weep for joy, my son, To know thee for my own. Sleep on! thine eye seems looking thro' The half transparent lid, As if its free and radiant glance Impatiently were hid; But ever as I kneel to pray, And in my fulness weep, I thank the Giver of my child For that pure gift of sleep-- I half believe they take thee, then, Back to a better world again. And so, sleep on! If thou hast worn An angel's shining wing, The watch that I have loved to keep Hath been a blessed thing. And if thy spirit hath been here, With spotless thoughts alone-- A mother's silent ministry Is still a holy one; And I will pray that there may be A shining wing in wait for thee. SONNET. WINTER. The frozen ground looks gray. 'Twill shut the snow Out from its bosom, and the flakes will fall Softly and lie upon it. The hushed flow Of the ice-covered waters, and the call Of the cold driver to his oxen slow, And the complaining of the gust, are all That I can hear of music--would that I With the green summer like a leaf might die? So will a man grow gray, and on his head The snow of years lie visibly, and so Will come a frost when his green years have fled, And his chilled pulses sluggishly will flow, And his deep voice be shaken--would that I In the green summer of my youth might die! SONNET. Storm had been on the hills. The day had worn As if a sleep upon the hours had crept; And the dark clouds that gather'd at the morn In dull, impenetrable masses slept, And the wept leaves hung droopingly, and all Was like the mournful aspect of a pall. Suddenly on the horizon's edge, a blue And delicate line, as of a pencil, lay, And, as it wider and intenser grew, The darkness removed silently away, And, with the splendor of a God, broke through The perfect glory of departing day-- So, when his stormy pilgrimage is o'er, Will light upon the dying Christian pour. SONNET. Elegance floats about thee like a dress, Melting the airy motion of thy form Into one swaying grace, and loveliness, Like a rich tint that makes a picture warm, Is lurking in the chesnut of thy tress, Enriching it, as moonlight after storm Mingles dark shadows into gentleness. A beauty that bewilders like a spell Reigns in thine eye's clear hazel, and thy brow So pure in vein'd transparency doth tell How spiritually beautiful art thou-- A temple where angelic love might dwell. Life in thy presence were a thing to keep, Like a gay dreamer clinging to his sleep. SONNET. Beautiful robin! with thy feathers red Contrasting sweetly with the soft green tree, Making thy little flights as thou art led By things that tempt a simple one like thee-- I would that thou couldst warble me to tears As lightly as the birds of other years. Idly to lie beneath an April sun, Pressing the perfume from the tender grass; To watch a joyous rivulet leap on With the clear tinkle of a music glass, And as I saw the early robin pass, To hear him thro' his little compass run-- Hath been a joy that I shall no more know Before I to my better portion go. SONNET. Exquisite Laura! with thy pouting lip, And the arch smile that makes me constant so-- Tempting me still like a dull bee to sip The flower I should have left so long ago-- Beautiful Laura! who art just so fair That I can think thee lovely when alone, And still art not so wonderfully rare That I could never find a prettier one-- Spirited Laura! laughing, weeping, crying In the same breath, and gravest with the gay-- So wild, that Cupid ever shoots thee flying, And knows his archery is thrown away-- Inconstant as I am, I cannot yet Break thy sweet fetter, exquisite coquette! SONNET. There was a beautiful spirit in her air, As of a fay at revel. Hidden springs, Too delicate for knowledge, should be there, Moving her gently like invisible wings; And then her lip out-blushing the red fruit That bursts with ripeness in the Autumn time, And the arch eye you would not swear was mute, And the clear cheek, as of a purer clime, And the low tone, soft as a pleasant flute Sent over water with the vesper chime; And then her forehead with its loose, dark curl, And the bewildering smile that made her mouth Like a torn rose-leaf moistened of the South-- She has an angel's gifts--the radiant girl! ANDRE'S REQUEST. It is not the fear of death That damps my brow; It is not for another breath I ask thee now; I can die with a lip unstirr'd And a quiet heart-- Let but this prayer be heard Ere I depart. I can give up my mother's look-- My sister's kiss; I can think of love--yet brook A death like this! I can give up the young fame I burn'd to win-- All--but the spotless name I glory in! Thine is the power to give, Thine to deny, Joy for the hour I live-- Calmness to die. By all the brave should cherish, By my dying breath, I ask that I may perish With a soldier's death! DISCRIMINATION. I used to love a radiant girl-- Her lips were like a rose leaf torn; Her heart was as free as a floating curl, Or a breeze at morn; Her step as light as a Peri's daughter, And her eye as soft as gliding water. Witching thoughts like things half hid Lurk'd beneath her silken lashes, And a modest droop of the veined lid Oft hid their flashes-- But to me the charm was more complete As the blush stole up its fringe to meet. Paint me love as a honey bee! Rosy mouths are things to sip; Nothing was ever so sweet to me As Marion's lip-- Till I learned that a deeper magic lies In kissing the lids of her closed eyes. Her sweet brow I seldom touch, Save to part her raven hair; Her bright cheek I gaze on much, Her white hand is fair; But none of these--I've tried them all-- Is like kissing her eyes as the lashes fall. THE SOLITARY. Alone! alone! How drear it is Always to be alone! In such a depth of wilderness, The only thinking one! The waters in their path rejoice, The trees together sleep-- But I have not one silver voice Upon my ear to creep! The sun upon the silent hills His mesh of beauty weaves, There's music in the laughing rills And in the whispering leaves. The red deer like the breezes fly To meet the bounding roe, But I have not a human sigh To cheer me as I go. I've hated men--I hate them now-- But, since they are not here, I thirst for the familiar brow-- Thirst for the stealing tear. And I should love to see the one, And feel the other creep, And then again I'd be alone Amid the forest deep. I thought that I should love my hound, And hear my cracking gun Till I forgot the thrilling sound Of voices--one by one. I thought that in the leafy hush Of nature, they would die; But, as the hindered waters rush, Resisted feelings fly I'm weary of my lonely hut And of its blasted tree, The very lake is like my lot, So silent constantly. I've lived amid the forest gloom Until I almost fear-- When will the thrilling voices come My spirit thirsts to hear? ON THE DEATH OF MISS FANNY V. APTHORP. 'Tis difficult to feel that she is dead. Her presence, like the shadow of a wing That is just given to the upward sky, Lingers upon us. We can hear her voice, And for her step we listen, and the eye Looks for her wonted coming with a strange, Forgetful earnestness. We cannot feel That she will no more come--that from her cheek The delicate flush has faded, and the light Dead in her soft dark eye, and on her lip, That was so exquisitely pure, the dew Of the damp grave has fallen! Who, so lov'd, Is left among the living? Who hath walk'd The world with such a winning loveliness, And on its bright, brief journey, gather'd up Such treasures of affection? She was lov'd Only as idols are. She was the pride Of her familiar sphere--the daily joy Of all who on her gracefulness might gaze, And, in the light and music of her way, Have a companion's portion. Who could feel, While looking upon beauty such as hers, That it would ever perish! It is like The melting of a star into the sky While you are gazing on it, or a dream In its most ravishing sweetness rudely broken. A PORTRAIT. She was not very beautiful, if it be beauty's test To match a classic model when perfectly at rest; And she did not look bewitchingly, if witchery it be, To have a forehead and a lip transparent as the sea. The fashion of her gracefulness was not a follow'd rule, And her effervescent sprightliness was never learnt at school; And her words were all peculiar, like the fairy's who 'spoke pearls;' And her tone was ever sweetest midst the cadences of girls. Said I she was not beautiful? Her eyes upon your sight Broke with the lambent purity of planetary light, And an intellectual beauty, like a light within a vase, Touched every line with glory of her animated face. Her mind with sweets was laden, like a morning breath in June, And her thoughts awoke in harmony, like dreamings of a tune, And you heard her words like voices that o'er the waters creep, Or like a serenader's lute that mingles with your sleep. She had an earnest intellect--a perfect thirst of mind, And a heart by elevated thoughts and poetry refin'd, And she saw a subtle tint or shade with every careless look, And the hidden links of nature were familiar as a book. She's made of those rare elements that now and then appear, As if remov'd by accident unto a lesser sphere, Forever reaching up, and on, to life's sublimer things, As if they had been used to track the universe with wings. MAY. Oh the merry May has pleasant hours, And dreamily they glide, As if they floated like the leaves Upon a silver tide. The trees are full of crimson buds, And the woods are full of birds, And the waters flow to music Like a tune with pleasant words. The verdure of the meadow-land Is creeping to the hills, The sweet, blue-bosom'd violets Are blowing by the rills; The lilac has a load of balm For every wind that stirs, And the larch stands green and beautiful Amid the sombre firs. There's perfume upon every wind-- Music in every tree-- Dews for the moisture-loving flowers-- Sweets for the sucking bee; The sick come forth for the healing South, The young are gathering flowers; And life is a tale of poetry, That is told by golden hours. If 'tis not a true philosophy, That the spirit when set free Still lingers about its olden home, In the flower and the tree, It is very strange that our pulses thrill At the tint of a voiceless thing, And our hearts yearn so with tenderness In the beautiful time of Spring. ON SEEING THROUGH A DISTANT WINDOW A BELLE COMPLETING HER TOILET FOR A BALL. 'Tis well--'tis well--that clustering shade Is on thy forehead sweetly laid; And that light curl that slumbers by Makes deeper yet thy depth of eye; And that white rose that decks thy hair Just wins the eye to linger there, Yet makes it not to note the less The beauty of that raven tress. Thy coral necklace?--ear-rings too? Nay--nay--not them--no darker hue Than thy white bosom be to-night On that fair neck the bar of light, Or hide the veins that faintly glow And wander in its living snow. What!--yet another? can it be That neck needs ornament to thee?-- Yet not thy jewels!--they are bright, But that dark eye has softer light, And tho' each gem had been a star, Thy simple self were lovelier far-- Yet stay!--that string of matchless pearl? Nay--wear it--wear it--radiant girl! For ocean's best of pure and white Should only be thy foil to-night. Aye, turn thee round! 'tis lovely all-- Thou'lt have no peer at that gay ball! And that proud toss!--it makes thee smile To see how deep is thine own wile; And that slow look that seems to stray As each sweet feature made it stay-- And that small finger, lightly laid On dimpled cheek and glossy braid, As if to know that all they seem Is really there, and not a dream-- I wish I knew the gentle thought By all this living beauty wrought! I wish I knew if that sweet brow, That neck on which thou gazest now-- If thy rich lip and brilliant face-- Thy perfect figure's breezy grace-- If these are half the spell to thee That will, this night, bewilder me! TO A BELLE. All that thou art, I thrillingly And sensibly do feel; For my eye doth see, and my ear doth hear, And my heart is not of steel; I meet thee in the festal hall-- I turn thee in the dance-- And I wait, as would a worshipper, The giving of thy glance. Thy beauty is as undenied As the beauty of a star; And thy heart beats just as equally, Whate'er thy praises are; And so long without a parallel Thy loveliness hath shone, That, follow'd like the tided moon, Thou mov'st as calmly on. Thy worth I, for myself, have seen-- I know that thou art leal; Leal to a woman's gentleness, And thine own spirit's weal; Thy thoughts are deeper than a dream, And holier than gay; And thy mind is a harp of gentle strings, Where angel fingers play. I know all this--I feel all this-- And my heart believes it true; And my fancy hath often borne me on, As a lover's fancies do; And I have a heart, that is strong and deep, And would love with its human all, And it waits for a fetter that's sweet to wear, And would bound to a silken thrall. But it loves not thee.--It would sooner bind Its thoughts to the open sky; It would worship as soon a familiar star, That is bright to every eye. 'Twere to love the wind that is sweet to all-- The wave of the beautiful sea-- 'Twere to hope for all the light in Heaven, To hope for the love of thee. But wert thou lowly--yet leal as now; Rich but in thine own mind; Humble--in all but the queenly brow; And to thine own glory blind-- Were the world to prove but a faithless thing, And worshippers leave thy shrine-- My love were, then, but a gift for thee, And my strong deep heart were thine. A PORTRAIT. She's beautiful! Her raven curls Have broken hearts in envious girls-- And then they sleep in contrast so, Like raven feathers upon snow, And bathe her neck--and shade the bright Dark eye from which they catch the light, As if their graceful loops were made To keep that glorious eye in shade, And holier make its tranquil spell, Like waters in a shaded well. I cannot rhyme about that eye-- I've match'd it with a midnight sky-- I've said 'twas deep, and dark, and wild, Expressive, liquid, witching, mild-- But the jewell'd star, and the living air Have nothing in them half so fair. She's noble--noble--one to keep Embalm'd for dreams of fever'd sleep-- An eye for nature--taste refin'd, Perception swift, and ballanc'd mind,-- And more than all, a gift of thought To such a spirit-fineness wrought, That on my ear her language fell, As if each word dissolv'd a spell. Yet I half hate her. She has all That would ensure an angel's fall-- But there's a cool collected look, As if her pulses beat by book-- A measure'd tone, a cold reply, A management of voice and eye, A calm, possess'd, authentic air, That leaves a doubt of softness there, 'Till--look and worship as I may-- My fever'd thoughts will pass away. And when she lifts her fringing lashes, And her dark eye like star-light flashes-- And when she plays her quiet wile Of that calm look, and measur'd smile, I go away like one who's heard In some fine scene the prompter's word, And make a vow to break her chain, And keep it--till we meet again. ERRATA.--16th page, 10th line from top, "as _if_ it were" for "as it were." Same page 11th line from top "incense" for "insense." 46th page, 11th line from the bottom, "go its channel" for "go _up_ its channel." Page 60, 2nd line, "As you like it," for "Much ado about Nothing." In the table of Contents "A Portrait," page 90, is omitted. Transcriber's notes Original spelling retain'd. Errata not corrected. The Table of Contents is also missing a reference to Sonnet. Winter Page 72. Typographical errors corrected. Page 86 to night corrected to to-night. 
32335	----	Transcriber's Note: Dialect has been retained as it appears in the original publication. THE OLD SOLDIER'S STORY _Poems and Prose Sketches_ JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY Indianapolis The Bobbs-Merrill Company Publishers Copyright 1913, 1914, 1915 James Whitcomb Riley Press of Braunworth & Co. Bookbinders and Printers Brooklyn, N. Y. TO GEORGE THOMPSON, ESQ. "_Apples ben ripe in my gardayne_" CONTENTS PAGE THE OLD SOLDIER'S STORY 1 SOMEP'N COMMON-LIKE 5 MONSIEUR LE SECRETAIRE 6 A PHANTOM 7 IN THE CORRIDOR 8 LOUELLA WAINIE 9 THE TEXT 11 WILLIAM BROWN 12 WHY 14 THE TOUCH OF LOVING HANDS 15 A TEST 16 A SONG FOR CHRISTMAS 17 SUN AND RAIN 19 WITH HER FACE 20 MY NIGHT 21 THE HOUR BEFORE THE DAWN 22 GOOD-BY, OLD YEAR 23 FALSE AND TRUE 24 A BALLAD FROM APRIL 25 BRUDDER SIMS 27 DEFORMED 28 FAITH 30 THE LOST THRILL 31 AT DUSK 32 ANOTHER RIDE FROM GHENT TO AIX 33 IN THE HEART OF JUNE 36 DREAMS 37 BECAUSE 42 TO THE CRICKET 43 THE OLD-FASHIONED BIBLE 44 UNCOMFORTED 46 WHAT THEY SAID 48 AFTER THE FROST 50 CHARLES H. PHILLIPS 51 WHEN IT RAINS 53 AN ASSASSIN 55 BEST OF ALL 56 BIN A-FISHIN' 57 UNCLE DAN'L IN TOWN OVER SUNDAY 59 SOLDIERS HERE TO-DAY 61 SHADOW AND SHINE 65 THAT NIGHT 66 AUGUST 67 THE GUIDE 68 SUTTER'S CLAIM 71 HER LIGHT GUITAR 73 WHILE CIGARETTES TO ASHES TURN 74 TWO SONNETS TO THE JUNE-BUG 77 AUTOGRAPHIC 79 AN IMPROMPTU ON ROLLER SKATES 80 WRITTEN IN BUNNER'S "AIRS FROM ARCADY" 81 IN THE AFTERNOON 82 AT MADAME MANICURE'S 84 A CALLER FROM BOONE 86 LORD BACON 98 MY FIRST WOMERN 99 AS WE READ BURNS 101 TO JAMES NEWTON MATTHEWS 102 SONG 103 WHEN WE THREE MEET 105 JOSH BILLINGS 106 WHICH ANE 108 THE EARTHQUAKE 111 A FALL-CRICK VIEW OF THE EARTHQUAKE 112 LEWIS D. HAYES 114 IN DAYS TO COME 116 LUTHER A. TODD 117 WHEN THE HEARSE COMES BACK 121 OUR OLD FRIEND NEVERFAIL 124 DAN O'SULLIVAN 126 JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY 127 MEREDITH NICHOLSON 129 GOD'S MERCY 130 CHRISTMAS GREETING 131 TO RUDYARD KIPLING 132 THE GUDEWIFE 133 TENNYSON 134 ROSAMOND C. BAILEY 135 MRS. BENJAMIN HARRISON 136 GEORGE A. CARR 138 TO ELIZABETH 139 TO ALMON KEEFER 140 TO--"THE J. W. R. LITERARY CLUB" 142 LITTLE MAID-O'-DREAMS 143 TO THE BOY WITH A COUNTRY 145 CLAUDE MATTHEWS 146 TO LESLEY 147 THE JUDKINS PAPERS 148 TO THE QUIET OBSERVER--ERASMUS WILSON 165 AMERICA'S THANKSGIVING 166 WILLIAM PINKNEY FISHBACK 168 JOHN CLARK RIDPATH 170 NEW YEAR'S NURSERY JINGLE 173 TO THE MOTHER 174 TO MY SISTER 175 A MOTTO 176 TO A POET ON HIS MARRIAGE 177 ART AND POETRY 178 HER SMILE OF CHEER AND VOICE OF SONG 179 OLD INDIANY 180 ABE MARTIN 183 O. HENRY 185 "MONA MACHREE" 186 WILLIAM MCKINLEY 187 BENJAMIN HARRISON 190 LEE O. HARRIS 192 THE HIGHEST GOOD 194 MY CONSCIENCE 195 MY BOY 197 THE OBJECT LESSON 198 THE OLD SOLDIER'S STORY AS TOLD BEFORE THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY IN NEW YORK CITY Since we have had no stories to-night I will venture, Mr. President, to tell a story that I have heretofore heard at nearly all the banquets I have ever attended. It is a story simply, and you must bear with it kindly. It is a story as told by a friend of us all, who is found in all parts of all countries, who is immoderately fond of a funny story, and who, unfortunately, attempts to tell a funny story himself--one that he has been particularly delighted with. Well, he is not a story-teller, and especially he is not a funny story-teller. His funny stories, indeed, are oftentimes touchingly pathetic. But to such a story as he tells, being a good-natured man and kindly disposed, we have to listen, because we do not want to wound his feelings by telling him that we have heard that story a great number of times, and that we have heard it ably told by a great number of people from the time we were children. But, as I say, we can not hurt his feelings. We can not stop him. We can not kill him; and so the story generally proceeds. He selects a very old story always, and generally tells it in about this fashion:-- I heerd an awful funny thing the other day--ha! ha! I don't know whether I kin git it off er not, but, anyhow, I'll tell it to you. Well!--le's see now how the fool-thing goes. Oh, yes!--W'y, there was a feller one time--it was durin' the army, and this feller that I started in to tell you about was in the war, and--ha! ha!--there was a big fight a-goin' on, and this feller was in the fight, and it was a big battle and bullets a-flyin' ever' which way, and bombshells a-bu'stin', and cannon-balls a-flyin' 'round promiskus; and this feller right in the midst of it, you know, and all excited and het up, and chargin' away; and the fust thing you know along come a cannon-ball and shot his head off--ha! ha! ha! Hold on here a minute!--no sir; I'm a-gittin' ahead of my story; no, no; it didn't shoot his _head_ off--I'm gittin' the cart before the horse there--shot his _leg_ off; that was the way; shot his leg off; and down the poor feller drapped, and, of course, in that condition was perfectly he'pless, you know, but yit with presence o' mind enough to know that he was in a dangerous condition ef somepin' wasn't done fer him right away. So he seen a comrade a-chargin' by that he knowed, and he hollers to him and called him by name--I disremember now what the feller's name was.... Well, that's got nothin' to do with the story, anyway; he hollers to him, he did, and says, "Hello, there," he says to him; "here, I want you to come here and give me a lift; I got my leg shot off, and I want you to pack me back to the rear of the battle"--where the doctors always is, you know, during a fight--and he says, "I want you to pack me back there where I can get med-dy-cinal attention er I'm a dead man, fer I got my leg shot off," he says, "and I want you to pack me back there so's the surgeons kin take keer of me." Well--the feller, as luck would have it, ricko-nized him and run to him and throwed down his own musket, so's he could pick him up; and he stooped down and picked him up and kindo' half-way shouldered him and half-way helt him betwixt his arms like, and then he turned and started back with him--ha! ha! ha! Now, mind, the fight was still a-goin' on--and right at the hot of the fight, and the feller, all excited, you know, like he was, and the soldier that had his leg shot off gittin' kindo fainty like, and his head kindo' stuck back over the feller's shoulder that was carryin' him. And he hadn't got more'n a couple o' rods with him when another cannon-ball come along and tuk his head off, shore enough!--and the curioust thing about it was--ha! ha!--that the feller was a-packin' him didn't know that he had been hit ag'in at all, and back he went--still carryin' the deceased back--ha! ha! ha!--to where the doctors could take keer of him--as he thought. Well, his cap'n happened to see him, and he thought it was a ruther cur'ous p'ceedin's--a soldier carryin' a dead body out o' the fight--don't you see? And so he hollers at him, and he says to the soldier, the cap'n did, he says, "Hullo, there; where you goin' with that thing?" the cap'n said to the soldier who was a-carryin' away the feller that had his leg shot off. Well, his head, too, by that time. So he says, "Where you goin' with that thing?" the cap'n said to the soldier who was a-carryin' away the feller that had his leg shot off. Well, the soldier he stopped--kinder halted, you know, like a private soldier will when his presidin' officer speaks to him--and he says to him, "W'y," he says, "Cap, it's a comrade o' mine and the pore feller has got his leg shot off, and I'm a-packin' him back to where the doctors is; and there was nobody to he'p him, and the feller would 'a' died in his tracks--er track ruther--if it hadn't a-been fer me, and I'm a-packin' him back where the surgeons can take keer of him; where he can get medical attendance--er his wife's a widder!" he says, "'cause he's got his leg shot off!" Then _Cap'n_ says, "You blame fool you, he's got his _head_ shot off." So then the feller slacked his grip on the body and let it slide down to the ground, and looked at it a minute, all puzzled, you know, and says, "W'y, he told me it was his leg!" Ha! ha! ha! SOMEP'N COMMON-LIKE Somep'n 'at's common-like, and good And plain, and easy understood; Somep'n 'at folks like me and you Kin understand, and relish, too, And find some sermint in 'at hits The spot, and sticks and benefits. We don't need nothin' extry fine; 'Cause, take the run o' minds like mine, And we'll go more on good horse-sense Than all your flowery eloquence; And we'll jedge best of honest acts By Nature's statement of the facts. So when you're wantin' to express Your misery, er happiness, Er anything 'at's wuth the time O' telling in plain talk er rhyme-- Jes' sort o' let your subject run As ef the Lord wuz listenun. MONSIEUR LE SECRETAIRE [JOHN CLARK RIDPATH] Mon cher Monsieur le Secretaire, Your song flits with me everywhere; It lights on Fancy's prow and sings Me on divinest voyagings: And when my ruler love would fain Be laid upon it--high again It mounts, and hugs itself from me With rapturous wings--still dwindlingly-- On!--on! till but a _ghost_ is there Of song, Monsieur le Secretaire! A PHANTOM Little baby, you have wandered far away, And your fairy face comes back to me to-day, But I can not feel the strands Of your tresses, nor the play Of the dainty velvet-touches of your hands. Little baby, you were mine to hug and hold; Now your arms cling not about me as of old-- O my dream of rest come true, And my richer wealth than gold, And the surest hope of Heaven that I knew! O for the lisp long silent, and the tone Of merriment once mingled with my own-- For the laughter of your lips, And the kisses plucked and thrown In the lavish wastings of your finger-tips! Little baby, O as then, come back to me, And be again just as you used to be, For this phantom of you stands All too cold and silently, And will not kiss nor touch me with its hands. IN THE CORRIDOR Ah! at last alone, love! Now the band may play Till its sweetest tone, love, Swoons and dies away! They who most will miss us We're not caring for-- Who of them could kiss us In the corridor? Had we only known, dear, Ere this long delay, Just how all alone, dear, We might waltz away, Then for hours, like this, love, We are longing for, We'd have still to kiss, love, In the corridor! Nestle in my heart, love; Hug and hold me close-- Time will come to part, love, Ere a fellow knows; There! the Strauss is ended-- Whirl across the floor: Isn't waltzing splendid In the corridor? LOUELLA WAINIE Louella Wainie! where are you? Do you not hear me as I cry? Dusk is falling; I feel the dew; And the dark will be here by and by: I hear no thing but the owl's hoo-hoo! Louella Wainie! where are you? Hand in hand to the pasture bars We came loitering, Lou and I, Long ere the fireflies coaxed the stars Out of their hiding-place on high. O how sadly the cattle moo! Louella Wainie! where are you? Laughingly we parted here-- "I will go this way," said she, "And you will go that way, my dear"-- Kissing her dainty hand at me-- And the hazels hid her from my view. Louella Wainie! where are you? Is there ever a sadder thing Than to stand on the farther brink Of twilight, hearing the marsh-frogs sing? Nothing could sadder be, I think! And ah! how the night-fog chills one through. Louella Wainie! where are you? Water-lilies and oozy leaves-- Lazy bubbles that bulge and stare Up at the moon through the gloom it weaves Out of the willows waving there! Is it despair I am wading through? Louella Wainie! where are you? Louella Wainie, listen to me, Listen, and send me some reply, For so will I call unceasingly Till death shall answer me by and by-- Answer, and help me to find you too! Louella Wainie! where are you? THE TEXT The text: Love thou thy fellow man! He may have sinned;--One proof indeed, He is thy fellow, reach thy hand And help him in his need! Love thou thy fellow man. He may Have wronged thee--then, the less excuse Thou hast for wronging him. Obey What he has dared refuse! Love thou thy fellow man--for, be His life a light or heavy load, No less he needs the love of thee To help him on his road. WILLIAM BROWN "He bore the name of William Brown"-- His name, at least, did not go down With him that day He went the way Of certain death where duty lay. He looked his fate full in the face-- He saw his watery resting-place Undaunted, and With firmer hand Held others' hopes in sure command.-- The hopes of full three hundred lives-- Aye, babes unborn, and promised wives! "The odds are dread," He must have said, "Here, God, is one poor life instead." No time for praying overmuch-- No time for tears, or woman's touch Of tenderness, Or child's caress-- His last "God bless them!" stopped at "bless"-- Thus man and engine, nerved with steel, Clasped iron hands for woe or weal, And so went down Where dark waves drown All but the name of William Brown. WHY Why are they written--all these lovers' rhymes? I catch faint perfumes of the blossoms white That maidens drape their tresses with at night, And, through dim smiles of beauty and the din Of the musicians' harp and violin, I hear, enwound and blended with the dance, The voice whose echo is this utterance,-- Why are they written--all these lovers' rhymes? Why are they written--all these lovers' rhymes? I see but vacant windows, curtained o'er With webs whose architects forevermore Race up and down their slender threads to bind The buzzing fly's wings whirless, and to wind The living victim in his winding sheet.-- I shudder, and with whispering lips repeat, Why are they written--all these lovers' rhymes? Why are they written--all these lovers' rhymes? What will you have for answer?--Shall I say That he who sings the merriest roundelay Hath neither joy nor hope?--and he who sings The lightest, sweetest, tenderest of things But utters moan on moan of keenest pain, So aches his heart to ask and ask in vain, Why are they written--all these lovers' rhymes? THE TOUCH OF LOVING HANDS IMITATED Light falls the rain-drop on the fallen leaf, And light o'er harvest-plain and garnered sheaf-- But lightlier falls the touch of loving hands. Light falls the dusk of mild midsummer night, And light the first star's faltering lance of light On glimmering lawns,--but lightlier loving hands. And light the feathery flake of early snows, Or wisp of thistle-down that no wind blows, And light the dew,--but lightlier loving hands. Light-falling dusk, or dew, or summer rain, Or down of snow or thistle--all are vain,-- Far lightlier falls the touch of loving hands. A TEST 'Twas a test I designed, in a quiet conceit Of myself, and the thoroughly fixed and complete Satisfaction I felt in the utter control Of the guileless young heart of the girl of my soul. So--we parted. I said it were better we should-- That she could forget me--I knew that she could; For I never was worthy so tender a heart, And so for her sake it were better to part. She averted her gaze, and she sighed and looked sad As I held out my hand--for the ring that she had-- With the bitterer speech that I hoped she might be Resigned to look up and be happy with me. 'Twas a test, as I said--but God pity your grief, At a moment like this when a smile of relief Shall leap to the lips of the woman you prize, And no mist of distress in her glorious eyes. A SONG FOR CHRISTMAS Chant me a rhyme of Christmas-- Sing me a jovial song,-- And though it is filled with laughter, Let it be pure and strong. Let it be clear and ringing, And though it mirthful be, Let a low, sweet voice of pathos Run through the melody. Sing of the hearts brimmed over With the story of the day-- Of the echo of childish voices That will not die away.-- Of the blare of the tasselled bugle, And the timeless clatter and beat Of the drum that throbs to muster Squadrons of scampering feet.-- Of the wide-eyed look of wonder, And the gurgle of baby-glee, As the infant hero wrestles From the smiling father's knee. Sing the delights unbounded Of the home unknown of care, Where wealth as a guest abideth, And want is a stranger there. But O let your voice fall fainter, Till, blent with a minor tone, You temper your song with the beauty Of the pity Christ hath shown: And sing one verse for the voiceless; And yet, ere the song be done, A verse for the ears that hear not, And a verse for the sightless one: And one for the outcast mother, And one for the sin-defiled And hopeless sick man dying, And one for his starving child. For though it be time for singing A merry Christmas glee, Let a low, sweet voice of pathos Run through the melody. SUN AND RAIN All day the sun and rain have been as friends, Each vying with the other which shall be Most generous in dowering earth and sea With their glad wealth, till each, as it descends, Is mingled with the other, where it blends In one warm, glimmering mist that falls on me As once God's smile fell over Galilee. The lily-cup, filled with it, droops and bends Like some white saint beside a sylvan shrine In silent prayer; the roses at my feet, Baptized with it as with a crimson wine, Gleam radiant in grasses grown so sweet, The blossoms lift, with tenderness divine, Their wet eyes heavenward with these of mine. WITH HER FACE With her face between his hands! Was it any wonder she Stood atiptoe tremblingly? As his lips along the strands Of her hair went lavishing Tides of kisses, such as swing Love's arms to like iron bands.-- With her face between his hands! And the hands--the hands that pressed The glad face--Ah! where are they? Folded limp, and laid away Idly over idle breast? He whose kisses drenched her hair, As he caught and held her there, In Love's alien, lost lands, With her face between his hands? Was it long and long ago, When her face was not as now, Dim with tears? nor wan her brow As a winter-night of snow? Nay, anointing still the strands Of her hair, his kisses flow Flood-wise, as she dreaming stands, With her face between his hands. MY NIGHT Hush! hush! list, heart of mine, and hearken low! You do not guess how tender is the Night, And in what faintest murmurs of delight Her deep, dim-throated utterances flow Across the memories of long-ago! Hark! do your senses catch the exquisite Staccatos of a bird that dreams he sings? Nay, then, you hear not rightly,--'tis a blur Of misty love-notes, laughs and whisperings The Night pours o'er the lips that fondle her, And that faint breeze, filled with all fragrant sighs,-- That is her breath that quavers lover-wise-- O blessed sweetheart, with thy swart, sweet kiss, Baptize me, drown me in black swirls of bliss! THE HOUR BEFORE THE DAWN The hour before the dawn! O ye who grope therein, with fear and dread And agony of soul, be comforted, Knowing, ere long, the darkness will be gone, And down its dusky aisles the light be shed; Therefore, in utter trust, fare on--fare on, This hour before the dawn! GOOD-BY, OLD YEAR Good-by, Old Year! Good-by! We have been happy--you and I; We have been glad in many ways; And now, that you have come to die, Remembering our happy days, 'Tis hard to say, "Good-by-- Good-by, Old Year! Good-by!" Good-by, Old Year! Good-by! We have seen sorrow--you and I-- Such hopeless sorrow, grief and care, That now, that you have come to die, Remembering our old despair, 'Tis sweet to say, "Good-by-- Good-by, Old Year! Good-by!" FALSE AND TRUE One said: "Here is my hand to lean upon As long as you may need it." And one said: "Believe me true to you till I am dead." And one, whose dainty way it was to fawn About my face, with mellow fingers drawn Most soothingly o'er brow and drooping head, Sighed tremulously: "Till my breath is fled Know I am faithful!" ... Now, all these are gone And many like to them--and yet I make No bitter moan above their grassy graves-- Alas! they are not dead for me to take Such sorry comfort!--but my heart behaves Most graciously, since one who never spake A vow is true to me for true love's sake. A BALLAD FROM APRIL I am dazed and bewildered with living A life but an intricate skein Of hopes and despairs and thanksgiving Wound up and unravelled again-- Till it seems, whether waking or sleeping, I am wondering ever the while At a something that smiles when I'm weeping, And a something that weeps when I smile. And I walk through the world as one dreaming Who knows not the night from the day, For I look on the stars that are gleaming, And lo, they have vanished away: And I look on the sweet-summer daylight, And e'en as I gaze it is fled, And, veiled in a cold, misty, gray light, The winter is there in its stead. I feel in my palms the warm fingers Of numberless friends--and I look, And lo, not a one of them lingers To give back the pleasure he took; And I lift my sad eyes to the faces All tenderly fixed on my own, But they wither away in grimaces That scorn me, and leave me alone. And I turn to the woman that told me Her love would live on until death-- But her arms they no longer enfold me, Though barely the dew of her breath Is dry on the forehead so pallid That droops like the weariest thing O'er this most inharmonious ballad That ever a sorrow may sing. So I'm dazed and bewildered with living A life but an intricate skein Of hopes and despairs and thanksgiving Wound up and unravelled again-- Till it seems, whether waking or sleeping, I am wondering ever the while At a something that smiles when I'm weeping, And a something that weeps when I smile. BRUDDER SIMS Dah's Brudder Sims! Dast slam yo' Bible shet An' lef' dat man alone--kase he's de boss Ob all de preachahs ev' I come across! Day's no twis' in dat gospil book, I bet, Ut Brudder Sims cain't splanify, an' set You' min' at eaze! W'at's Moses an' de Laws? W'at's fo'ty days an' nights ut Noey toss Aroun' de Dil-ooge?--W'at dem Chillen et De Lo'd rain down? W'at s'prise ole Joney so In dat whale's inna'ds?--W'at dat laddah mean Ut Jacop see?--an' wha' dat laddah go?-- Who clim dat laddah?--Wha' dat laddah lean?-- An' wha' dat laddah now? "Dast chalk yo' toe Wid Faith," sez Brudder Sims, "an' den you know!" DEFORMED Crouched at the corner of the street She sits all day, with face too white And hands too wasted to be sweet In anybody's sight. Her form is shrunken, and a pair Of crutches leaning at her side Are crossed like homely hands in prayer At quiet eventide. Her eyes--two lustrous, weary things-- Have learned a look that ever aches, Despite the ready jinglings The passer's penny makes. And, noting this, I pause and muse If any precious promise touch This heart that has so much to lose If dreaming overmuch-- And, in a vision, mistily Her future womanhood appears,-- A picture framed with agony And drenched with ceaseless tears-- Where never lover comes to claim The hand outheld so yearningly-- The laughing babe that lisps her name Is but a fantasy! And, brooding thus, all swift and wild A daring fancy, strangely sweet, Comes o'er me, that the crippled child That crouches at my feet-- Has found her head a resting-place Upon my shoulder, while my kiss Across the pallor of her face Leaves crimson trails of bliss. FAITH The sea was breaking at my feet, And looking out across the tide, Where placid waves and heaven meet, I thought me of the Other Side. For on the beach on which I stood Were wastes of sands, and wash, and roar, Low clouds, and gloom, and solitude, And wrecks, and ruins--nothing more. "O, tell me if beyond the sea A heavenly port there is!" I cried, And back the echoes laughingly "There is! there is!" replied. THE LOST THRILL I grow so weary, someway, of all thing That love and loving have vouchsafed to me, Since now all dreamed-of sweets of ecstasy Am I possessed of: The caress that clings-- The lips that mix with mine with murmurings No language may interpret, and the free, Unfettered brood of kisses, hungrily Feasting in swarms on honeyed blossomings Of passion's fullest flower--For yet I miss The essence that alone makes love divine-- The subtle flavoring no tang of this Weak wine of melody may here define:-- A something found and lost in the first kiss A lover ever poured through lips of mine. AT DUSK A something quiet and subdued In all the faces that we meet; A sense of rest, a solitude O'er all the crowded street; The very noises seem to be Crude utterings of harmony, And all we hear, and all we see, Has in it something sweet. Thoughts come to us as from a dream Of some long-vanished yesterday; The voices of the children seem Like ours, when young as they; The hand of Charity extends To meet Misfortune's, where it blends, Veiled by the dusk--and oh, my friends, Would it were dusk alway! ANOTHER RIDE FROM GHENT TO AIX We sprang for the side-holts--my gripsack and I-- It dangled--I dangled--we both dangled by. "Good speed!" cried mine host, as we landed at last-- "Speed?" chuckled the watch we went lumbering past; Behind shut the switch, and out through the rear door I glared while we waited a half hour more. I had missed the express that went thundering down Ten minutes before to my next lecture town, And my only hope left was to catch this "wild freight," Which the landlord remarked was "most luckily late-- But the twenty miles distance was easily done, If they run half as fast as they usually run!" Not a word to each other--we struck a snail's pace-- Conductor and brakeman ne'er changing a place-- Save at the next watering-tank, where they all Got out--strolled about--cut their names on the wall, Or listlessly loitered on down to the pile Of sawed wood just beyond us, to doze for a while. 'Twas high noon at starting, but while we drew near "Arcady" I said, "We'll not make it, I fear! I must strike Aix by eight, and it's three o'clock now; Let me stoke up that engine, and I'll show you how!" At which the conductor, with patience sublime, Smiled up from his novel with, "Plenty of time!" At "Trask," as we jolted stock-still as a stone, I heard a cow bawl in a five o'clock tone; And the steam from the saw-mill looked misty and thin, And the snarl of the saw had been stifled within: And a frowzy-haired boy, with a hat full of chips, Came out and stared up with a smile on his lips. At "Booneville," I groaned, "Can't I telegraph on?" No! Why? "'Cause the telegraph-man had just gone To visit his folks in Almo"--and one heard The sharp snap of my teeth through the throat of a word, That I dragged for a mile and a half up the track, And strangled it there, and came skulkingly back. Again we were off. It was twilight, and more, As we rolled o'er a bridge where beneath us the roar Of a river came up with so wooing an air I mechanic'ly strapped myself fast in my chair As a brakeman slid open the door for more light, Saying: "Captain, brace up, for your town is in sight!" "How they'll greet me!"--and all in a moment--"chewang!" And the train stopped again, with a bump and a bang. What was it? "The section-hands, just in advance." And I spit on my hands, and I rolled up my pants, And I clumb like an imp that the fiends had let loose Up out of the depths of that deadly caboose. I ran the train's length--I lept safe to the ground-- And the legend still lives that for five miles around They heard my voice hailing the hand-car that yanked Me aboard at my bidding, and gallantly cranked, As I grovelled and clung, with my eyes in eclipse, And a rim of red foam round my rapturous lips. Then I cast loose my ulster--each ear-tab let fall-- Kicked off both my shoes--let go arctics and all-- Stood up with the boys--leaned--patted each head As it bobbed up and down with the speed that we sped; Clapped my hands--laughed and sang--any noise, bad or good, Till at length into Aix we rotated and stood. And all I remember is friends flocking round As I unsheathed my head from a hole in the ground; And no voice but was praising that hand-car divine, As I rubbed down its spokes with that lecture of mine. Which (the citizens voted by common consent) Was no more than its due. 'Twas the lecture they meant. IN THE HEART OF JUNE In the heart of June, love, You and I together, On from dawn till noon, love, Laughing with the weather; Blending both our souls, love, In the selfsame tune, Drinking all life holds, love, In the heart of June. In the heart of June, love, With its golden weather, Underneath the moon, love, You and I together. Ah! how sweet to seem, love, Drugged and half aswoon With this luscious dream, love, In the heart of June. DREAMS "Do I sleep, do I dream, Do I wonder and doubt-- Are things what they seem Or is visions about?" There has always been an inclination, or desire, rather, on my part to believe in the mystic--even as far back as stretches the gum-elastic remembrance of my first "taffy-pullin'" given in honor of my fifth birthday; and the ghost-stories, served by way of ghastly dessert, by our hired girl. In fancy I again live over all the scenes of that eventful night:-- The dingy kitchen, with its haunting odors of a thousand feasts and wash-days; the old bench-legged stove, with its happy family of skillets, stewpans and round-bellied kettles crooning and blubbering about it. And how we children clustered round the genial hearth, with the warm smiles dying from our faces just as the embers dimmed and died out in the open grate, as with bated breath we listened to how some one's grandmother had said that her first man went through a graveyard once, one stormy night, "jest to show the neighbors that he wasn't afeard o' nothin'," and how when he was just passing the grave of his first wife "something kind o' big and white-like, with great big eyes like fire, raised up from behind the headboard, and kind o' re'ched out for him"; and how he turned and fled, "with that air white thing after him as tight as it could jump, and a hollerin' 'wough-yough-yough!' till you could hear it furder'n you could a bullgine," and how, at last, just as the brave and daring intruder was clearing two graves and the fence at one despairing leap, the "white thing," had made a grab at him with its iron claws, and had nicked him so close his second wife was occasioned the onerous duty of affixing another patch in his pantaloons. And in conclusion, our hired girl went on to state that this blood-curdling incident had so wrought upon the feelings of "the man that wasn't afeard o' nothin'," and had given him such a distaste for that particular graveyard, that he never visited it again, and even entered a clause in his will to the effect that he would ever remain an unhappy corpse should his remains be interred in said graveyard. I forgot my pop-corn that night; I forgot my taffy; I forgot all earthly things; and I tossed about so feverishly in my little bed, and withal so restlessly, that more than once my father's admonition above the footboard of the big bed, of "Drat you! go to sleep, there!" foreshadowed my impending doom. And once he leaned over and made a vicious snatch at me, and holding me out at arm's length by one leg, demanded in thunder-tones, "what in the name o' flames and flashes I meant, anyhow!" I was afraid to stir a muscle from that on, in consequence of which I at length straggled off in fitful dreams--and heavens! what dreams!--A very long and lank, and slim and slender old woman in white knocked at the door of my vision, and I let her in. She patted me on the head--and oh! how cold her hands were! And they were very hard hands, too, and very heavy--and, horror of horrors!--they were not hands--they were claws!--they were iron!--they were like the things I had seen the hardware man yank nails out of a keg with. I quailed and shivered till the long and slim and slender old woman jerked my head up and snarled spitefully, "What's the matter with you, bub," and I said, "Nawthin'!" and she said, "Don't you dare to lie to me!" I moaned. "Don't you like me?" she asked. I hesitated. "And lie if you dare!" she said--"Don't you like me?" "Oomh-oomh!" said I. "Why?" said she. "Cos, you're too long--and slim--an'"-- "Go on!" said she. "--And tall!" said I. "Ah, ha!" said she,--"and that's it, hey?" And then she began to grow shorter and thicker, and fatter and squattier. "And how do I suit you now?" she wheezed at length, when she had wilted down to about the size of a large loaf of bread. I shook more violently than ever at the fearful spectacle. "How do you like me now?" she yelped again,--"And don't you lie to me neither, or I'll swaller you whole!" I writhed and hid my face. "Do you like me?" "No-o-oh!" I moaned. She made another snatch at my hair. I felt her jagged claws sink into my very brain. I struggled and she laughed hideously. "You don't, hey?" "Yes, yes, I do. I love you!" said I. "You lie! You lie!" She shrieked derisively. "You know you lie!" and as I felt the iron talons sinking and gritting in my very brain, with one wild, despairing effort, I awoke. I saw the fire gleaming in the grate, and by the light it made I dimly saw the outline of the old mantelpiece that straddled it, holding the old clock high upon its shoulders. I was awake then, and the little squatty woman with her iron talons was a dream! I felt an oily gladness stealing over me, and yet I shuddered to be all alone. If only some one were awake, I thought, whose blessed company would drown all recollections of that fearful dream; but I dared not stir or make a noise. I could only hear the ticking of the clock, and my father's sullen snore. I tried to compose my thoughts to pleasant themes, but that telescopic old woman in white would rise up and mock my vain appeals, until in fancy I again saw her altitudinous proportions dwindling into that repulsive and revengeful figure with the iron claws, and I grew restless and attempted to sit up. Heavens! something yet held me by the hair. The chill sweat that betokens speedy dissolution gathered on my brow. I made another effort and arose, that deadly clutch yet fastened in my hair. Could it be possible! The short, white woman still held me in her vengeful grasp! I could see her white dress showing from behind either of my ears. She still clung to me, and with one wild, unearthly cry of "Pap!" I started round the room. I remember nothing further, until as the glowing morn sifted through the maple at the window, powdering with gold the drear old room, and baptizing with its radiance the anxious group of old home-faces leaning over my bed, I heard my father's voice once more rasping on my senses--"Now get the booby up, and wash that infernal wax out of his hair!" BECAUSE Why did we meet long years of yore? And why did we strike hands and say: "We will be friends, and nothing more"; Why are we musing thus to-day? Because because was just because, And no one knew just why it was. Why did I say good-by to you? Why did I sail across the main? Why did I love not heaven's own blue Until I touched these shores again? Because because was just because, And you nor I knew why it was. Why are my arms about you now, And happy tears upon your cheek? And why my kisses on your brow? Look up in thankfulness and speak! Because because was just because, And only God knew why it was. TO THE CRICKET The chiming seas may clang; and Tubal Cain May clink his tinkling metals as he may; Or Pan may sit and pipe his breath away; Or Orpheus wake his most entrancing strain Till not a note of melody remain!-- But thou, O cricket, with thy roundelay, Shalt laugh them all to scorn! So wilt thou, pray, Trill me thy glad song o'er and o'er again: I shall not weary; there is purest worth In thy sweet prattle, since it sings the lone Heart home again. Thy warbling hath no dearth Of childish memories--no harsher tone Than we might listen to in gentlest mirth, Thou poor plebeian minstrel of the hearth. THE OLD-FASHIONED BIBLE How dear to my heart are the scenes of my childhood That now but in mem'ry I sadly review; The old meeting-house at the edge of the wildwood, The rail fence and horses all tethered thereto; The low, sloping roof, and the bell in the steeple, The doves that came fluttering out overhead As it solemnly gathered the God-fearing people To hear the old Bible my grandfather read. The old-fashioned Bible-- The dust-covered Bible-- The leathern-bound Bible my grandfather read. The blessed old volume! The face bent above it-- As now I recall it--is gravely severe, Though the reverent eye that droops downward to love it Makes grander the text through the lens of a tear, And, as down his features it trickles and glistens, The cough of the deacon is stilled, and his head Like a haloéd patriarch's leans as he listens To hear the old Bible my grandfather read. The old-fashioned Bible-- The dust-covered Bible-- The leathern-bound Bible my grandfather read. Ah! who shall look backward with scorn and derision And scoff the old book though it uselessly lies In the dust of the past, while this newer revision Lisps on of a hope and a home in the skies? Shall the voice of the Master be stifled and riven? Shall we hear but a tithe of the words He has said, When so long He has, listening, leaned out of Heaven To hear the old Bible my grandfather read? The old-fashioned Bible-- The dust-covered Bible-- The leathern-bound Bible my grandfather read. UNCOMFORTED Lelloine! Lelloine! Don't you hear me calling? Calling through the night for you, and calling through the day; Calling when the dawn is here, and when the dusk is falling-- Calling for my Lelloine the angels lured away! Lelloine! I call and listen, starting from my pillow-- In the hush of midnight, Lelloine! I cry, And o'er the rainy window-pane I hear the weeping willow Trail its dripping leaves like baby-fingers in reply. Lelloine, I miss the glimmer of your glossy tresses, I miss the dainty velvet palms that nestled in my own; And all my mother-soul went out in answerless caresses, And a storm of tears and kisses when you left me here alone. I have prayed, O Lelloine, but Heaven will not hear me, I can not gain one sign from Him who leads you by the hand; And O it seems that ne'er again His mercy will come near me-- That He will never see my need, nor ever understand. Won't you listen, Lelloine?--just a little leaning O'er the walls of Paradise--lean and hear my prayer, And interpret death to Him in all its awful meaning, And tell Him you are lonely without your mother there. WHAT THEY SAID Whispering to themselves apart, They who knew her said of her, "Dying of a broken heart-- Death her only comforter-- For the man she loved is dead-- She will follow soon!" they said. Beautiful? Ah! brush the dust From Raphael's fairest face, And restore it, as it must First have smiled back from its place On his easel as he leant Wrapt in awe and wonderment! Why, to kiss the very hem Of the mourning-weeds she wore, Like the winds that rustled them, I had gone the round world o'er; And to touch her hand I swear All things dareless I would dare! But unto themselves apart, Whispering, they said of her, "Dying of a broken heart-- Death her only comforter-- For the man she loved is dead-- She will follow soon!" they said. So I mutely turned away, Turned with sorrow and despair, Yearning still from day to day For that woman dying there, Till at last, by longing led, I returned to find her--dead? "Dead?"--I know that word would tell Rhyming there--but in this case "Wed" rhymes equally as well In the very selfsame place-- And, in fact, the latter word Is the one she had preferred. Yet unto themselves apart, Whisp'ring they had said of her-- "Dying of a broken heart-- Death her only comforter-- For the man she loved is dead-- She will follow soon!" they said. AFTER THE FROST After the frost! O the rose is dead, And the weeds lie pied in the garden-bed, And the peach tree's shade in the wan sunshine, Faint as the veins in these hands of mine, Streaks the gray of the orchard wall Where the vine rasps loose, and the last leaves fall, And the bare boughs writhe, and the winds are lost-- After the frost--the frost! After the frost! O the weary head And the hands and the heart are quietéd; And the lips we loved are locked at last, And kiss not back, though the rain falls fast And the lashes drip, and the soul makes moan, And on through the dead leaves walks alone Where the bare boughs writhe and the winds are lost-- After the frost--the frost! CHARLES H. PHILLIPS OBIT NOVEMBER 5TH, 1881 O friend! There is no way To bid farewell to thee! The words that we would say Above thy grave to-day Still falter and delay And fail us utterly. When walking with us here, The hand we loved to press Was gentle, and sincere As thy frank eyes were clear Through every smile and tear Of pleasure and distress. In years, young; yet in thought Mature; thy spirit, free, And fired with fervor caught Of thy proud sire, who fought His way to fame, and taught Its toilsome way to thee. So even thou hast gained The victory God-given-- Yea, as our cheeks are stained With tears, and our souls pained And mute, thou hast attained Thy high reward in Heaven! WHEN IT RAINS When it rains, and with the rain Never bird has heart to sing, And across the window-pane Is no sunlight glimmering; When the pitiless refrain Brings a tremor to the lips, Our tears are like the rain As it drips, drips, drips-- Like the sad, unceasing rain as it drips. When the light of heaven's blue Is blurred and blotted quite, And the dreary day to you Is but a long twilight; When it seems that ne'er again Shall the sun break its eclipse, Our tears are like the rain As it drips, drips, drips-- Like the endless, friendless rain as it drips. When it rains! weary heart, O be of better cheer! The leaden clouds will part, And the morrow will be clear; Take up your load again, With a prayer upon your lips, Thanking Heaven for the rain As it drips, drips, drips-- With the golden bow of promise as it drips. AN ASSASSIN Cat-like he creeps along where ways are dim, From covert unto covert's secrecy; His shadow in the moonlight shrinks from him And crouches warily. He hugs strange envies to his breast, and nurses Wild hatreds, till the murderous hand he grips Falls, quivering with the tension of the curses He launches from his lips. Drenched in his victim's blood he holds high revel; He mocks at justice, and in all men's eyes Insults his God--and no one but the devil Is sorry when he dies. BEST OF ALL Of all good gifts that the Lord lets fall, Is not silence the best of all? The deep, sweet hush when the song is closed, And every sound but a voiceless ghost; And every sigh, as we listening leant, A breathless quiet of vast content? The laughs we laughed have a purer ring With but their memory echoing; And the joys we voiced, and the words we said, Seem so dearer for being dead. So of all good gifts that the Lord lets fall, Is not silence the best of all? BIN A-FISHIN' W'en de sun's gone down, un de moon is riz, Bin a-fishin'! Bin a-fishin'! It's I's aguine down wha' the by-o is! Bin a-fishin' all night long! Chorus Bin a-fishin'! Bin a-fishin'! Bin a-fishin' clean fum de dusk of night Twell away 'long on in de mornin' light. Bait my hook, un I plunk her down! Bin a-fishin'! Bin a-fishin'! Un I lay dat catfish weigh five pound! Bin a-fishin' all night long! Chorus Folks tells me ut a sucker won't bite, Bin a-fishin'! Bin a-fishin'! Yit I lif' out fo' last Chuesday night, Bin a-fishin' all night long! Chorus Little fish nibble un de big fish come; Bin a-fishin'! Bin a-fishin'! "Go way, little fish! I want some!" Bin a-fishin' all night long! Chorus Sez de bull frog, "D-runk!" sez de ole owl, "Whoo!" Bin a-fishin'! Bin a-fishin'! 'Spec, Mr. Nigger, dey's a-meanin' you, Bin a-fishin' all night long! Chorus UNCLE DAN'L IN TOWN OVER SUNDAY I cain't git used to city ways-- Ner never could, I' bet my hat! Jevver know jes' whur I was raised?-- Raised on a farm! D' ever tell you that? Was undoubtatly, I declare! And now, on Sunday--fun to spare Around a farm! Why jes' to set Up on the top three-cornered rail Of Pap's old place, nigh La Fayette, I'd swap my soul off, hide and tail! You fellers in the city here, You don't know nothin'!--S'pose to-day, This clatterin' Sunday, you waked up Without no jinglin'-janglin' bells, Ner rattlin' of the milkman's cup, Ner any swarm of screechin' birds Like these here English swallers--S'pose Ut you could miss all noise like those, And git shet o' thinkin' of 'em afterwerds, And then, in the country, wake and hear Nothin' but silence--wake and see Nothin' but green woods fur and near?-- What sort o' Sunday would that be?... Wisht I hed you home with me! Now think! The laziest of all days-- To git up any time--er sleep-- Er jes' lay round and watch the haze A-dancin' 'crost the wheat, and keep My pipe a-goern laisurely, And puff and whiff as pleases me-- And ef I leave a trail of smoke Clean through the house, no one to say, "Wah! throw that nasty thing away; Hev some regyard fer decency!" To walk round barefoot, if you choose; Er saw the fiddle--er dig some bait And go a-fishin'--er pitch hoss shoes Out in the shade somewhurs, and wait For dinner-time, with an appetite Ut folks in town cain't equal quite! To laze around the barn and poke Fer hens' nests--er git up a match Betwixt the boys, and watch 'em scratch And rassle round, and sweat and swear And quarrel to their hearts' content; And me a-jes' a-settin' there A-hatchin' out more devilment! What sort o' Sunday would that be?... Wisht I hed you home with me! SOLDIERS HERE TO-DAY I Soldiers and saviours of the homes we love; Heroes and patriots who marched away, And who marched back, and who marched on above-- All--all are here to-day! By the dear cause you fought for--you are here; At summons of bugle, and the drum Whose palpitating syllables were ne'er More musical, you come! Here--by the stars that bloom in fields of blue, And by the bird above with shielding wings; And by the flag that floats out over you, With silken beckonings-- Ay, here beneath its folds are gathered all Who warred unscathed for blessings that it gave-- Still blessed its champion, though it but fall A shadow on his grave! II We greet you, Victors, as in vast array You gather from the scenes of strife and death-- From spectral fortress walls where curls away The cannon's latest breath. We greet you--from the crumbling battlements Where once again the old flag feels the breeze Stroke out its tattered stripes and smooth its rents With rippling ecstasies. From living tombs where every hope seemed lost-- With famine quarantined by bristling guns-- The prison pens--the guards--the "dead-line" crossed By--riddled skeletons! From furrowed plains, sown thick with bursting shells-- From mountain gorge, and toppling crags o'erhead-- From wards of pestilential hospitals, And trenches of the dead. III In fancy all are here. The night is o'er, And through dissolving mists the morning gleams; And clustered round their hearths we see once more The heroes of our dreams. Strong, tawny faces, some, and some are fair, And some are marked with age's latest prime, And, seer-like, browed and aureoled with hair As hoar as winter-time. The faces of fond lovers, glorified-- The faces of the husband and the wife-- The babe's face nestled at the mother's side, And smiling back at life; A bloom of happiness in every cheek-- A thrill of tingling joy in every vein-- In every soul a rapture they will seek In Heaven, and find again! IV 'Tis not a vision only--we who pay But the poor tribute of our praises here Are equal sharers in the guerdon they Purchased at price so dear. The angel, Peace, o'er all uplifts her hand, Waving the olive, and with heavenly eyes Shedding a light of love o'er sea and land As sunshine from the skies-- Her figure pedestalled on Freedom's soil-- Her sandals kissed with seas of golden grain-- Queen of a realm of joy-requited toil That glories in her reign. O blessed land of labor and reward! O gracious Ruler, let Thy reign endure; In pruning-hook and ploughshare beat the sword, And reap the harvest sure! SHADOW AND SHINE Storms of the winter, and deepening snows, When will you end? I said, For the soul within me was numb with woes, And my heart uncomforted. When will you cease, O dismal days? When will you set me free? For the frozen world and its desolate ways Are all unloved of me! I waited long, but the answer came-- The kiss of the sunshine lay Warm as a flame on the lips that frame The song in my heart to-day. Blossoms of summer-time waved in the air, Glimmers of sun in the sea; Fair thoughts followed me everywhere, And the world was dear to me. THAT NIGHT You and I, and that night, with its perfume and glory!-- The scent of the locusts--the light of the moon; And the violin weaving the waltzers a story, Enmeshing their feet in the weft of the tune, Till their shadows uncertain Reeled round on the curtain, While under the trellis we drank in the June. Soaked through with the midnight the cedars were sleeping, Their shadowy tresses outlined in the bright Crystal, moon-smitten mists, where the fountain's heart, leaping Forever, forever burst, full with delight; And its lisp on my spirit Fell faint as that near it Whose love like a lily bloomed out in the night. O your love was an odorous sachet of blisses! The breath of your fan was a breeze from Cathay! And the rose at your throat was a nest of spilled kisses!-- And the music!--in fancy I hear it to-day, As I sit here, confessing Our secret, and blessing My rival who found us, and waltzed you away. AUGUST O mellow month and merry month, Let me make love to you, And follow you around the world As knights their ladies do. I thought your sisters beautiful, Both May and April, too, But April she had rainy eyes, And May had eyes of blue. And June--I liked the singing Of her lips--and liked her smile-- But all her songs were promises Of something, after while; And July's face--the lights and shades That may not long beguile With alterations o'er the wheat The dreamer at the stile. But you!--ah, you are tropical, Your beauty is so rare; Your eyes are clearer, deeper eyes Than any, anywhere; Mysterious, imperious, Deliriously fair, O listless Andalusian maid, With bangles in your hair! THE GUIDE IMITATED We rode across the level plain-- We--my sagacious guide and I.-- He knew the earth--the air--the sky; He knew when it would blow or rain, And when the weather would be dry: The blended blades of grass spake out To him when Redskins were about; The wagon tracks would tell him too, The very day that they rolled through: He knew their burden--whence they came-- If any horse along were lame, And what its owner ought to do; He knew when it would snow; he knew, By some strange intuition, when The buffalo would overflow The prairies like a flood, and then Recede in their stampede again. He knew all things--yea, he did know The brand of liquor in my flask, And many times did tilt it up, Nor halt or hesitate one whit, Nor pause to slip the silver cup From off its crystal base, nor ask Why I preferred to drink from it. And more and more I plied him, and Did query of him o'er and o'er, And seek to lure from him the lore By which the man did understand These hidden things of sky and land: And, wrought upon, he sudden drew His bridle--wheeled, and caught my hand-- Pressed it, as one that loved me true, And bade me listen. ................... There be few Like tales as strange to listen to! He told me all--How, when a child, The Indians stole him--there he laughed-- "They stole me, and I stole their craft!" Then slowly winked both eyes, and smiled, And went on ramblingly,--"And they-- They reared me, and I ran away-- 'Twas winter, and the weather wild; And, caught up in the awful snows That bury wilderness and plain, I struggled on until I froze My feet ere human hands again Were reached to me in my distress,-- And lo, since then not any rain May fall upon me anywhere, Nor any cyclone's cussedness Slip up behind me unaware,-- Nor any change of cold, or heat, Or blow, or snow, but I do know It's coming, days and days before;-- I know it by my frozen feet-- I know it by my itching heels, And by the agony one feels Who knows that scratching nevermore Will bring to him the old and sweet Relief he knew ere thus endowed With knowledge that a certain cloud Will burst with storm on such a day, And when a snow will fall, and--nay, I speak not falsely when I say That by my tingling heels and toes I measure time, and can disclose The date of month--the week--and lo, The very day and minute--yea-- Look at your watch!--An hour ago And twenty minutes I did say Unto myself with bitter laugh, 'In less than one hour and a half Will I be drunken!' Is it so?" SUTTER'S CLAIM IMITATED Say! _you_ feller! _You_-- With that spade and the pick!-- What do you 'pose to do On this side o' the crick? Goin' to tackle this claim? Well, I reckon You'll let up ag'in, purty quick! No bluff, understand,-- But the same has been tried, And the claim never panned-- Or the fellers has lied,-- For they tell of a dozen that tried it, And quit it most onsatisfied. The luck's dead ag'in it!-- The first man I see That stuck a pick in it Proved _that_ thing to me,-- For he sort o' took down, and got homesick, And went back whar he'd orto be! Then others they worked it Some--more or less, But finally shirked it, In grades of distress,-- With an eye out--a jaw or skull busted, Or some sort o' seriousness. The _last_ one was plucky-- He wasn't afeerd, And bragged he was "lucky," And said that "he'd heerd A heap of bluff-talk," and swore awkard He'd work any claim that he keered! Don't you strike nary lick With that pick till I'm through; This-here feller talked slick And as peart-like as you! And he says: "I'll abide here As long as I please!" But he didn't.... He died here-- And I'm his disease! HER LIGHT GUITAR She twankled a tune on her light guitar-- A low, sweet jangle of tangled sounds, As blurred as the voices of the fairies are, Dancing in moondawn dales and downs; And the tinkling drip of the strange refrain Ran over the rim of my soul like rain. The great blond moon in the midnight skies Paused and poised o'er the trellis eaves, And the stars, in the light of her upturned eyes, Sifted their love through the rifted leaves, Glittered and splintered in crystal mist Down the glittering strings that her fingers kissed. O the melody mad! O the tinkle and thrill Of the ecstasy of the exquisite thing! The red rose dropped from the window-sill And lay in a long swoon quivering; While the dying notes of the strain divine Rippled in glee up my spellbound spine. WHILE CIGARETTES TO ASHES TURN I "He smokes--and that's enough," says Ma-- "And cigarettes, at that!" says Pa. "He must not call again," says she-- "He _shall_ not call again!" says he. They both glare at me as before-- Then quit the room and bang the door.-- While I, their wilful daughter, say, "I guess I'll love him, anyway!" II At twilight, in his room, alone, His careless feet inertly thrown Across a chair, my fancy can But worship this most worthless man! I dream what joy it is to set His slow lips round a cigarette, With idle-humored whiff and puff-- Ah! this is innocent enough! To mark the slender fingers raise The waxen match's dainty blaze, Whose chastened light an instant glows On drooping lids and arching nose, Then, in the sudden gloom, instead, A tiny ember, dim and red, Blooms languidly to ripeness, then Fades slowly, and grows ripe again. III I lean back, in my own boudoir-- The door is fast, the sash ajar; And in the dark, I smiling stare At one wide window over there, Where some one, smoking, pinks the gloom, The darling darkness of his room! I push my shutters wider yet, And lo! I light a cigarette; And gleam for gleam, and glow for glow, Each pulse of light a word we know, We talk of love that still will burn While cigarettes to ashes turn. TWO SONNETS TO THE JUNE-BUG I You make me jes' a little nervouser Than any dog-gone bug I ever see! And you know night's the time to pester me-- When any tetch at all 'll rub the fur Of all my patience back'ards! You're the myrrh And ruburb of my life! A bumblebee Cain't hold a candle to you; and a he Bald hornet, with a laminated spur In his hip pocket, daresent even cheep When you're around! And, dern ye! you have made Me lose whole ricks and stacks and piles of sleep,-- And many of a livelong night I've laid And never shut an eye, hearin' you keep Up that eternal buzzin' serenade! II And I've got up and lit the lamp, and clum On cheers and trunks and wash-stands and bureaus, And all such dangerous articles as those, And biffed at you with brooms, and never come 'In two feet of you,--maybe skeered you some,-- But what does that amount to when it throws A feller out o' balance, and his nose Gits barked ag'inst the mantel, while you hum Fer joy around the room, and churn your head Ag'inst the ceilin', and draw back and butt The plasterin' loose, and drop--behind the bed, Where never human-bein' ever putt Harm's hand on you, er ever truthful said He'd choked yer dern infernal wizzen shut! AUTOGRAPHIC _For an Album_ I feel, if aught I ought to rhyme, I ought 'a' thought a longer time, And ought 'a' caught a higher sense, Of autocratic eloquence. I ought 'a' sought each haughty Muse That taught a thought I ought to use, And fought and fraught, and so devised A poem _unmonotonized_.-- But since all this was vain, I thought I ought to simply say,--I ought To thank you, as I ought to do, And ought to bow my best to you; And ought to trust not to intrude A rudely wrought-up gratitude, But ought to smile, and ought to laugh, And ought to write--an autograph. AN IMPROMPTU ON ROLLER SKATES Rumble, tumble, growl, and grate! Skip, and trip, and gravitate! Lunge, and plunge, and thrash the planks With your blameless, shameless shanks: In excruciating pain, Stand upon your head again, And, uncoiling kink by kink, Kick the roof out of the rink! In derisive bursts of mirth, Drop ka-whop and jar the earth! Jolt your lungs down in your socks, Oh! tempestuous equinox Of dismembered legs and arms! Strew your ways with wild alarms; Fameward skoot and ricochet On your glittering vertebræ! WRITTEN IN BUNNER'S "AIRS FROM ARCADY" O ever gracious Airs from Arcady! What lack is there of any jocund thing In glancing wit or glad imagining Capricious fancy may not find in thee?-- The laugh of Momus, tempered daintily To lull the ear and lure its listening; The whistled syllables the birds of spring Flaunt ever at our guessings what they be; The wood, the seashore, and the clanging town; The pets of fashion, and the ways of such; The _robe de chambre_, and the russet gown; The lordling's carriage, and the pilgrim's crutch-- From hale old Chaucer's wholesomeness, clean down To our artistic Dobson's deftest touch! IN THE AFTERNOON You in the hammock; and I, near by, Was trying to read, and to swing you, too; And the green of the sward was so kind to the eye, And the shade of the maples so cool and blue, That often I looked from the book to you To say as much, with a sigh. You in the hammock. The book we'd brought From the parlor--to read in the open air,-- Something of love and of Launcelot And Guinevere, I believe, was there-- But the afternoon, it was far more fair Than the poem was, I thought. You in the hammock; and on and on I droned and droned through the rhythmic stuff-- But, with always a half of my vision gone Over the top of the page--enough To caressingly gaze at you, swathed in the fluff Of your hair and your odorous "lawn." You in the hammock--and that was a year-- Fully a year ago, I guess-- And what do we care for their Guinevere And her Launcelot and their lordliness!-- You in the hammock still, and--Yes-- Kiss me again, my dear! AT MADAME MANICURE'S Daintiest of Manicures! What a cunning hand is yours; And how awkward, rude and great Mine, as you manipulate! Wonderfully cool and calm Are the touches of your palm To my fingers, as they rest In their rosy, cosey nest, While your own, with deftest skill, Dance and caper as they will,-- Armed with instruments that seem Gathered from some fairy dream-- Tiny spears, and simitars Such as pixy armorers Might have made for jocund fays To parade on holidays, And flash round in dewy dells, Lopping down the lily-bells; Or in tilting, o'er the leas, At the clumsy bumblebees, Splintering their stings, perchance, As the knights in old romance Snapped the spears of foes that fought In the jousts at Camelot! Smiling? Dainty Manicure?-- 'Twould delight me, but that you're Simply smiling, as I see, At my nails and not at me! Haply this is why they glow And light up and twinkle so! A CALLER FROM BOONE BENJ. F. JOHNSON VISITS THE EDITOR It was a dim and chill and loveless afternoon in the late fall of eighty-three when I first saw the genial subject of this hasty sketch. From time to time the daily paper on which I worked had been receiving, among the general literary driftage of amateur essayists, poets and sketch-writers, some conceits in verse that struck the editorial head as decidedly novel; and, as they were evidently the production of an unlettered man, and an _old_ man, and a farmer at that, they were usually spared the waste-basket, and preserved--not for publication, but to pass from hand to hand among the members of the staff as simply quaint and mirth-provoking specimens of the verdancy of both the venerable author and the Muse inspiring him. Letters as quaint as were the poems invariably accompanied them, and the oddity of these, in fact, had first called attention to the verses. I well remember the general merriment of the office when the first of the old man's letters was read aloud, and I recall, too, some of his comments on his own verse, verbatim. In one place he said: "I make no doubt you will find some purty _sad_ spots in my poetry, considerin'; but I hope you will bear in mind that I am a great sufferer with rheumatizum, and have been, off and on, sence the cold New Year's. In the main, however," he continued, "I allus aim to write in a cheerful, comfortin' sperit, so's ef the stuff hangs fire, and don't do no good, it hain't a-goin' to do no harm,--and them's my honest views on poetry." In another letter, evidently suspecting his poem had not appeared in print because of its dejected tone, he said: "The poetry I herewith send was wrote off on the finest Autumn day I ever laid eyes on! I never felt better in my life. The morning air was as invigoratin' as bitters with tanzy in it, and the folks at breakfast said they never saw such a' appetite on mortal man before. Then I lit out for the barn, and after feedin', I come back and tuck my pen and ink out on the porch, and jest cut loose. I writ and writ till my fingers was that cramped I couldn't hardly let go of the penholder. And the poem I send you is the upshot of it all. Ef you don't find it cheerful enough fer your columns, I'll have to knock under, that's all!" And that poem, as I recall it, certainly was cheerful enough for publication, only the "copy" was almost undecipherable, and the ink, too, so pale and vague, it was thought best to reserve the verses, for the time, at least, and later on revise, copy, punctuate, and then print it sometime, as much for the joke of it as anything. But it was still delayed, neglected, and in a week's time almost entirely forgotten. And so it was, upon this chill and sombre afternoon I speak of that an event occurred which most pleasantly reminded me of both the poem with the "sad spots" in it, and the "cheerful" one, "writ out on the porch" that glorious autumn day that poured its glory through the old man's letter to us. Outside and in the sanctum the gloom was too oppressive to permit an elevated tendency of either thought or spirit. I could do nothing but sit listless and inert. Paper and pencil were before me, but I could not write--I could not even think coherently, and was on the point of rising and rushing out into the streets for a wild walk, when there came a hesitating knock at the door. "Come in!" I snarled, grabbing up my pencil and assuming a frightfully industrious air: "Come in!" I almost savagely repeated, "Come in! And shut the door behind you!" and I dropped my lids, bent my gaze fixedly upon the blank pages before me and began scrawling some disconnected nothings with no head or tail or anything. "Sir; howdy," said a low and pleasant voice. And at once, in spite of my perverse resolve, I looked up. I someway felt rebuked. The speaker was very slowly, noiselessly closing the door. I could hardly face him when he turned around. An old man, of sixty-five, at least, but with a face and an eye of the most cheery and wholesome expression I had ever seen in either youth or age. Over his broad bronzed forehead and white hair he wore a low-crowned, wide-brimmed black felt hat, somewhat rusted now, and with the band grease-crusted, and the binding frayed at intervals, and sagging from the threads that held it on. An old-styled frock coat of black, dull brown in streaks, and quite shiny about the collar and lapels. A waistcoat of no describable material or pattern, and a clean white shirt and collar of one piece, with a black string-tie and double bow, which would have been entirely concealed beneath the long white beard but for its having worked around to one side of the neck. The front outline of the face was cleanly shaven, and the beard, growing simply from the under chin and throat, lent the old pioneer the rather singular appearance of having hair all over him with this luxurious growth pulled out above his collar for mere sample. I arose and asked the old man to sit down, handing him a chair decorously. "No--no," he said--"I'm much obleeged. I hain't come in to bother you no more'n I can he'p. All I wanted was to know ef you got my poetry all right. You know I take yer paper," he went on, in an explanatory way, "and seein' you printed poetry in it once-in-a-while, I sent you some of mine--neighbors kindo' advised me to," he added apologetically, "and so I sent you some--two or three times I sent you some, but I hain't never seed hide-ner-hair of it in your paper, and as I wus in town to-day, anyhow, I jest thought I'd kindo' drap in and git it back, ef you ain't goin' to print it--'cause I allus save up most the things I write, aimin' sometime to git 'em all struck off in pamphlet-form, to kindo' distribit round 'mongst the neighbors, don't you know." Already I had begun to suspect my visitor's identity, and was mechanically opening the drawer of our poetical department. "How was your poetry signed?" I asked. "Signed by my own name," he answered proudly,--"signed by my own name,--Johnson--Benjamin F. Johnson, of Boone County--this state." "And is this one of them, Mr. Johnson?" I asked, unfolding a clumsily-folded manuscript, and closely scrutinizing the verse. "How does she read?" said the old man eagerly, and searching in the meantime for his spectacles. "How does she read?--Then I can tell you!" "It reads," said I, studiously conning the old man's bold but bad chirography, and tilting my chair back indolently,--"it reads like this--the first verse does,"--and I very gravely read:-- "Oh! the old swimmin'-hole!" "Stop! Stop!" said the old man excitedly--"Stop right there! That's my poetry, but that's not the way to read it by a long shot! Give it to me!" and he almost snatched it from my hand. "Poetry like this ain't no poetry at all, 'less you read it _natchurl_ and _in jes the same sperit 'at it's writ in_, don't you understand. It's a' old man a-talkin', rickollect, and a-feelin' kindo' sad, and yit kindo' sorto' good, too, and I opine he wouldn't got that off with a face on him like a' undertaker, and a voice as solemn as a cow-bell after dark! He'd say it more like this."--And the old man adjusted his spectacles and read:-- "THE OLD SWIMMIN'-HOLE" "Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! whare the crick so still and deep Looked like a baby-river that was laying half asleep, And the gurgle of the worter round the drift jest below Sounded like the laugh of something we onc't ust to know Before we could remember anything but the eyes Of the angels lookin' out as we left Paradise; But the merry days of youth is beyond our controle, And it's hard to part ferever with the old swimmin'-hole." I clapped my hands in genuine applause. "Read on!" I said,--"Read on! Read all of it!" The old man's face was radiant as he continued:-- "Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! In the happy days of yore, When I ust to lean above it on the old sickamore, Oh! it showed me a face in its warm sunny tide That gazed back at me so gay and glorified, It made me love myself, as I leaped to caress My shadder smilin' up at me with sich tenderness. But them days is past and gone, and old Time's tuck his toll From the old man come back to the old swimmin'-hole. "Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! In the long, lazy days When the hum-drum of school made so many run-a-ways, How pleasant was the jurney down the old dusty lane, Whare the tracks of our bare feet was all printed so plane You could tell by the dent of the heel and the sole They was lots o' fun on hands at the old swimmin'-hole. But the lost joys is past! Let your tears in sorrow roll Like the rain that ust to dapple up the old swimmin'-hole. "Thare the bullrushes growed, and the cattails so tall, And the sunshine and shadder fell over it all; And it mottled the worter with amber and gold Tel the glad lillies rocked in the ripples that rolled; And the snake-feeder's four gauzy wings fluttered by Like the ghost of a daisy dropped out of the sky, Or a wownded apple-blossom in the breeze's controle As it cut acrost some orchurd to'rds the old swimmin'-hole. "Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! When I last saw the place, The scenes was all changed, like the change in my face; The bridge of the railroad now crosses the spot Whare the old divin'-log lays sunk and fergot. And I strayed down the banks whare the trees ust to be-- But never again will theyr shade shelter me! And I wisht in my sorrow I could strip to the soul, And dive off in my grave like the old swimmin'-hole." My applause was long and loud. The old man's interpretation of the poem was a positive revelation, though I was glad enough to conceal from him my moistened eyes by looking through the scraps for other specimens of his verse. "Here," said I enthusiastically, "is another one, signed 'Benj. F. Johnson,' read me this," and I handed him the poem. The old man smiled and took the manuscript. "This-here one's on '_The Hoss_,'" he said, simply clearing his throat. "They ain't so much fancy-work about this as the other'n, but they's jest as much _fact_, you can bet--'cause, they're no animal a-livin' 'at I love better 'an "THE HOSS" "The hoss he is a splendud beast; He is man's friend, as heaven desined, And, search the world from west to east, No honester you'll ever find! "Some calls the hoss 'a pore dumb brute,' And yit, like Him who died fer you, I say, as I theyr charge refute, 'Fergive; they know not what they do!' "No wiser animal makes tracks Upon these earthly shores, and hence Arose the axium, true as facts, Extoled by all, as 'Good hoss-sense!' "The hoss is strong, and knows his stren'th,-- You hitch him up a time er two And lash him, and he'll go his len'th And kick the dashboard out fer you! "But, treat him allus good and kind, And never strike him with a stick, Ner aggervate him, and you'll find He'll never do a hostile trick. "A hoss whose master tends him right And worters him with daily care, Will do your biddin' with delight, And act as docile as _you_ air. "He'll paw and prance to hear your praise, Because he's learnt to love you well; And, though you can't tell what he says, He'll nicker all he wants to tell. "He knows you when you slam the gate At early dawn, upon your way Unto the barn, and snorts elate, To git his corn, er oats, er hay. "He knows you, as the orphant knows The folks that loves her like theyr own, And raises her and 'finds' her clothes, And 'schools' her tel a womern-grown! "I claim no hoss will harm a man, Ner kick, ner run away, cavort, Stump-suck, er balk, er 'catamaran,' Ef you'll jest treat him as you ort. "But when I see the beast abused And clubbed around as I've saw some, I want to see his owner noosed, And jest yanked up like Absolum! "Of course they's differunce in stock,-- A hoss that has a little yeer, And slender build, and shaller hock, Can beat his shadder, mighty near! "Whilse one that's thick in neck and chist And big in leg and full in flank, That tries to race, I still insist He'll have to take the second rank. "And I have jest laid back and laughed, And rolled and wallered in the grass At fairs, to see some heavy-draft Lead out at _first_, yit come in _last_! "Each hoss has his appinted place,-- The heavy hoss should plow the soil;-- The blooded racer, he must race, And win big wages fer his toil. "I never bet--ner never wrought Upon my feller-man to bet-- And yit, at times, I've often thought Of my convictions with regret. "I bless the hoss from hoof to head-- From head to hoof, and tale to mane!-- I bless the hoss, as I have said, From head to hoof, and back again! "I love my God the first of all, Then Him that perished on the cross, And next, my wife,--and then I fall Down on my knees and love the hoss." Again I applauded, handing the old man still another of his poems, and the last received. "Ah!" said he, as his gentle eyes bent on the title; "this-here's the cheerfullest one of 'em all. This is the one writ, as I wrote you about--on that glorious October morning two weeks ago--I thought your paper would print this-un, shore!" "Oh, it _will_ print it," I said eagerly; "and it will print the other two as well! It will print _anything_ that you may do us the honor to offer, and we'll reward you beside just as you may see fit to designate.--But go on--go on! Read me the poem." The old man's eyes were glistening as he responded with the poem entitled "WHEN THE FROST IS ON THE PUNKIN" "When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock, And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin' turkey-cock, And the clackin' of the guineys, and the cluckin' of the hens, And the rooster's hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence; O, it's then's the times a feller is a-feelin' at his best, With the risin' sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest, As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock, When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock. "They's something kindo' harty-like about the atmusfere When the heat of summer's over and the coolin' fall is here-- Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossums on the trees, And the mumble of the hummin'-birds and buzzin' of the bees; But the air's so appetizin'; and the landscape through the haze Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days Is a pictur' that no painter has the colorin' to mock-- When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock. "The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn, And the raspin' of the tangled leaves, as golden as the morn; The stubble in the furries--kindo' lonesome-like, but still A-preachin' sermuns to us of the barns they growed to fill; The strawstack in the medder, and the reaper in the shed; The hosses in theyr stalls below--the clover overhead!-- O, it sets my hart a-clickin' like the tickin' of a clock, When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock! "Then your apples all is getherd, and the ones a feller keeps Is poured around the celler-floor in red and yeller heaps; And your cider-makin' 's over, and your wimmern-folks is through With theyr mince and apple-butter, and theyr souse and saussage, too!... I don't know how to tell it--but ef sich a thing could be As the Angels wantin' boardin', and they'd call around on _me_-- I'd want to 'commodate 'em--all the whole-indurin' flock-- When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock!" That was enough! "Surely," thought I, "here is a diamond in the rough, and a 'gem,' too, 'of purest ray serene'!" I caught the old man's hand and wrung it with positive rapture; and it is needless to go further in explanation of how the readers of our daily came to an acquaintance through its columns with the crude, unpolished, yet most gentle genius of Benj. F. Johnson, of Boone. LORD BACON WRITTEN AS A JOKE AND ASCRIBED TO A VERY PRACTICAL BUSINESS MAN, AMOS J. WALKER Master of masters in the days of yore, When art met insult, with no law's redress; When Law itself insulted Righteousness, And Ignorance thine own scholastic lore, And thou thine own judicial office more,-- What master living now canst love thee less, Seeing thou didst thy greatest art repress And leave the years its riches to restore To us, thy long neglectors. Yield us grace To make becoming recompense, and dawn On us thy poet-smile; nor let us trace, In fancy, where the old-world myths have gone, The shade of Shakespeare, with averted face, Withdrawn to uttermost oblivion. MY FIRST WOMERN I buried my first womern In the spring; and in the fall I was married to my second, And hain't settled yit at all!-- Fer I'm allus thinkin'--thinkin' Of the first one's peaceful ways, A-bilin' soap and singin' Of the Lord's amazin' grace. And I'm thinkin' of her, constant, Dyin' carpet chain and stuff, And a-makin' up rag carpets, When the _floor_ was good enough! And I mind her he'p a-feedin', And I riccollect her now A-drappin' corn, and keepin' Clos't behind me and the plow! And I'm allus thinkin' of her Reddin' up around the house; Er cookin' fer the farm-hands; Er a-drivin' up the cows.-- And there she lays out yander By the lower medder fence, Where the cows was barely grazin', And they're usin' ever sence. And when I look acrost there-- Say it's when the clover's ripe, And I'm settin', in the evenin', On the porch here, with my pipe, And the _other'n_ hollers "Henry!"-- W'y they ain't no sadder thing Than to think of my first womern And her funeral last spring Was a year ago-- AS WE READ BURNS Who is speaking? Who has spoken? Whose voice ceasing thus has broken The sweet pathos of our dreams? Sweetest bard of sweetest themes, Pouring in each poet-heart Some rare essence of your art Till it seems your singing lip Kisses every pencil tip! Far across the unknown lands-- Reach of heavenly isle and sea-- How we long to touch the hands You outhold so lovingly! TO JAMES NEWTON MATTHEWS IN ANSWER TO A LETTER ON THE ANATOMY OF THE SONNET Oho! ye sunny, sonnet-singin' vagrant, Flauntin' your simmer sangs in sic a weather! Ane maist can straik the bluebells and the heather Keekin' aboon the snaw and bloomin' fragrant! Whiles you, ye whustlin' brither, sic a lay grant O' a' these janglin', wranglin' sweets thegither, I weel maun perk my ain doon-drappin' feather And pipe a wee: Tho' boisterous and flagrant The winds blow whuzzle-whazzle rhymes that trickle Fra' aff my tongue less limpid than I'd ha'e them, I in their little music hap a mickle O' canty praises, a' asklent to weigh them Agen your pride, and smile to see them tickle The warm nest o' the heart wherein I lay them. SONG O I would I had a lover! A lover! a lover! O I would I had a lover With a twinkering guitar, To come beneath my casement Singing "There is none above her," While I, leaning, seemed to hover In the scent of his cigar! Then at morn I'd want to meet him-- To meet him! to meet him! O at morn I'd want to meet him, When the mist was in the sky, And the dew along the path I went To casually greet him, And to cavalierly treat him, And regret it by and by. And I'd want to meet his brother-- His brother! his brother! O I'd want to meet his brother At the german or the play, To pin a rose on his lapel And lightly press the other, And love him like a mother-- While he thought the other way. O I'd pitilessly test him! And test him! and test him! O I'd pitilessly test him Far beyond his own control; And every tantalizing lure With which I could arrest him, I'd loosen to molest him, Till I tried his very soul. But ah, when I relented-- Relented, relented! But ah, when I relented When the stars were blurred and dim, And the moon above, with crescent grace, Looked off as I repented, And with rapture half demented, All my heart went out to him! WHEN WE THREE MEET When we three meet? Ah! friend of mine Whose verses well and flow as wine,-- My thirsting fancy thou dost fill With draughts delicious, sweeter still Since tasted by those lips of thine. I pledge thee, through the chill sunshine Of autumn, with a warmth divine, Thrilled through as only I shall thrill When we three meet. I pledge thee, if we fast or dine, We yet shall loosen, line by line, Old ballads, and the blither trill Of our-time singers--for there will Be with us all the Muses nine When we three meet. JOSH BILLINGS DEAD IN CALIFORNIA, OCTOBER 15, 1885 Jolly-hearted old Josh Billings, With his wisdom and his wit, And his gravity of presence, And the drollery of it! Has he left us, and forever? When so many merry years He has only left us laughing-- And he leaves us now in tears? Has he turned from his "Deer Publik," With his slyly twinkling eyes Now grown dim and heavy-lidded In despite of sunny skies?-- Yet with rugged brow uplifted, And the long hair tossed away, Like an old heroic lion, With a mane of iron-gray. Though we lose him, still we find him In the mirth of every lip, And we fare through all his pages In his glad companionship: His voice is wed with Nature's, Laughing in each woody nook With the chirrup of the robin And the chuckle of the brook. But the children--O the children!-- They who leaped to his caress, And felt his arms about them, And his love and tenderness,-- Where--where will they find comfort As their tears fall like the rain, And they swarm his face with kisses That he answers not again? WHICH ANE Which ane, an' which ane, An' which ane for thee?-- Here thou hast thy vera choice, An' which sall it be?-- Ye hae the Holy Brither, An' ye hae the Scholarly; An', last, ye hae the butt o' baith-- Which sall it be? Ane's oot o' Edinborough, Wi' the Beuk an' Gown; An' ane's cam frae Cambridge; An' ane frae scaur an' down: An' Deil tak the hindmaist! Sae the test gaes roun': An' here ye hae the lairdly twa, An' ane frae scaur an' down. Yon's Melancholy-- An' the pipes a-skirlin'-- Gangs limp an' droopet, Like a coof at hirlin',-- Droopet aye his lang skirts I' the wins unfurlin'; Yon's Melancholy-- An' the pipes a-skirlin'! Which ane, an' which ane, An' which ane for thee?-- Here thou hast thy vera choice, An' which sall it be? Ye hae the Holy Brither, An' ye hae the Scholarly; An', last, ye hae the butt o' baith-- Which sall it be? Elbuck ye'r bag, mon! An' pipe as ye'd burst! Can ye gie's a waur, mon E'en than the first?-- Be it Meister Wisemon, I' the classics versed, An' a slawer gait yet E'en than the first? Then gie us Merriment: Loose him like a linnet Teeterin' on a bloomin' spray-- We ken him i' the minute,-- Twinklin' is ane ee asklent, Wi' auld Clootie in it-- Auld Sawney Lintwhite, We ken him i' the minute! An' which ane, an' which ane, An' which ane for thee?-- For thou shalt hae thy vera choice, An' which sall it be?-- Ye hae the Holy Brither, An' ye hae the Scholarly; A' last, ye hae the butt o' baith-- Which sall it be? THE EARTHQUAKE CHARLESTON, SEPTEMBER 1, 1886 An hour ago the lulling twilight leant Above us like a gentle nurse who slips A slow palm o'er our eyes, in soft eclipse Of feigned slumber of most sweet content. The fragrant zephyrs of the tropic went And came across the senses, like to sips Of lovers' kisses, when upon her lips Silence sets finger in grave merriment. Then--sudden--did the earth moan as it slept, And start as one in evil dreams, and toss Its peopled arms up, as the horror crept, And with vast breast upheaved and rent across, Fling down the storied citadel where wept, And still shall weep, a world above its loss. A FALL-CRICK VIEW OF THE EARTHQUAKE I kin hump my back and take the rain, And I don't keer how she pours; I kin keep kind o' ca'm in a thunder-storm, No matter how loud she roars; I hain't much skeered o' the lightnin', Ner I hain't sich awful shakes Afeard o' _cyclones_--but I don't want none O' yer dad-burned old earthquakes! As long as my legs keeps stiddy, And long as my head keeps plum', And the buildin' stays in the front lot, I still kin whistle, _some_! But about the time the old clock Flops off'n the mantel-shelf, And the bureau skoots fer the kitchen, I'm a-goin' to skoot, myself! Plague-take! ef you keep me stabled While any earthquakes is around!-- I'm jes' like the stock,--I'll beller And break fer the open ground! And I 'low you'd be as nervous And in jes' about my fix, When yer whole farm slides from in-under you, And on'y the mor'gage sticks! Now cars hain't a-goin' to kill you Ef you don't drive 'crost the track; Crediters never'll jerk you up Ef you go and pay 'em back; You kin stand all moral and mundane storms Ef you'll on'y jes' behave-- But a' EARTHQUAKE:--Well, ef it wanted you It 'ud husk you out o' yer grave! LEWIS D. HAYES OBIT DECEMBER 28, 1886 In the midmost glee of the Christmas And the mirth of the glad New Year, A guest has turned from the revel, And we sit in silence here. The band chimes on, yet we listen Not to the air's refrain, But over it ever we strive to catch The sound of his voice again;-- For the sound of his voice was music, Dearer than any note Shook from the strands of harp-strings, Or poured from the bugle's throat.-- A voice of such various ranges, His utterance rang from the height Of every rapture, down to the sobs Of every lost delight. Though he knew Man's force and his purpose, As strong as his strongest peers, He knew, as well, the kindly heart, And the tenderness of tears. So is it the face we remember Shall be always as a child's That, grieved some way to the very soul, Looks bravely up and smiles. O brave it shall look, as it looked its last On the little daughter's face-- Pictured only--against the wall, In its old accustomed place-- Where the last gleam of the lamplight Out of the midnight dim Yielded its grace, and the earliest dawn Gave it again to him. IN DAYS TO COME In days to come--whatever ache Of age shall rack our bones, or quake Our slackened thews--whatever grip Rheumatic catch us i' the hip,-- We, each one, for the other's sake, Will of our very wailings make Such quips of song as well may shake The spasm'd corners from the lip-- In days to come. Ho! ho! how our old hearts shall rake The past up!--how our dry eyes slake Their sight upon the dewy drip Of juicy-ripe companionship, And blink stars from the blind opaque-- In days to come. LUTHER A. TODD OBIT JULY 27, 1887, KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI Gifted, and loved, and praised By every friend; Never a murmur raised Against him, to the end! With tireless interest He wrought as he thought best,-- And--lo, we bend Where now he takes his rest! His heart was loyal, to Its latest thrill, To the home-loves he knew-- And now forever will,-- Mother and brother--they The first to pass away,-- And, lingering still, The sister bowed to-day. Pure as a rose might be, And sweet, and white, His father's memory Was with him day and night:-- He spoke of him, as one May now speak of the son,-- Sadly and tenderly,-- Yet as a trump had done. Say, then, of him: He knew Full depths of care And stress of pain, and you Do him scant justice there,-- Yet in the lifted face Grief left not any trace, Nor mark unfair, To mar its manly grace. It was as if each day Some new hope dawned-- Each blessing in delay, To him, was just beyond; Between whiles, waiting, he Drew pictures, cunningly-- Fantastic--fond-- Things that we laughed to see. Sometimes, as we looked on His crayon's work, Some angel-face would dawn Out radiant, from the mirk Of features old and thin, Or jowled with double-chin, And eyes asmirk, And gaping mouths agrin. That humor in his art, Of genius born, Welled warmly from a heart That could not but adorn All things it touched with love-- The eagle, as the dove-- The burst of morn-- The night--the stars above. Sometimes, amid the wild Of faces queer, A mother, with her child Pressed warm and close to her; This, I have thought, somehow, The wife, with head abow, Unreconciled, In the great shadow now. * * * * * O you of sobbing breath, Put by all sighs Of anguish at his death-- Turn--as he turned _his_ eyes, In that last hour, unknown In strange lands, all alone-- Turn thine eyes toward the skies, And, smiling, cease thy moan. WHEN THE HEARSE COMES BACK A thing 'at's 'bout as tryin' as a healthy man kin meet Is some poor feller's funeral a-joggin' 'long the street: The slow hearse and the hosses--slow enough, to say the least, Fer to even tax the patience of the gentleman deceased! The low scrunch of the gravel--and the slow grind of the wheels,-- The low, slow go of ev'ry woe 'at ev'rybody feels! So I ruther like the contrast when I hear the whiplash crack A quickstep fer the hosses, When the Hearse Comes Back! Meet it goin' to'rds the cimet'ry, you'll want to drap yer eyes-- But ef the plumes don't fetch you, it'll ketch you otherwise-- You'll haf to see the caskit, though you'd ort to look away And 'conomize and save yer sighs fer any other day! Yer sympathizin' won't wake up the sleeper from his rest-- Yer tears won't thaw them hands o' his 'at's froze acrost his breast! And this is why--when airth and sky's a-gittin' blurred and black I like the flash and hurry When the Hearse Comes Back! It's not 'cause I don't 'preciate it ain't no time fer jokes, Ner 'cause I' got no common human feelin' fer the folks;-- I've went to funerals myse'f, and tuk on some, perhaps-- Fer my heart's 'bout as mal'able as any other chap's,-- I've buried father, mother--but I'll haf to jes' git _you_ To "excuse _me_," as the feller says.--The p'int I'm drivin' to Is, simply, when we're plum broke down and all knocked out o' whack, It he'ps to shape us up, like, When the Hearse Comes Back! The idy! wadin' round here over shoe-mouth deep in woe, When they's a graded 'pike o' joy and sunshine, don't you know! When evening strikes the pastur', cows'll pull out fer the bars And skittish-like from out the night'll prance the happy stars: And so when _my_ time comes to die, and I've got ary friend 'At wants expressed my last request--I'll, mebby, rickommend To drive slow, ef they haf to, goin' 'long the _out'ard_ track, But I'll smile and say, "You speed 'em When the Hearse Comes Back!" OUR OLD FRIEND NEVERFAIL O it's good to ketch a relative 'at's richer and don't run When you holler out to hold up, and'll joke and have his fun; It's good to hear a man called bad and then find out he's not, Er strike some chap they call lukewarm 'at's really red-hot; It's good to know the Devil's painted jes' a leetle black, And it's good to have most anybody pat you on the back;-- But jes' the best thing in the world's our old friend Neverfail, When he wags yer hand as honest as an old dog wags his tail! I like to strike the man I owe the same time I can pay, And take back things I've borried, and su'prise folks thataway; I like to find out that the man I voted fer last fall, That didn't git elected, was a scoundrel after all; I like the man that likes the pore and he'ps 'em when he can; I like to meet a ragged tramp 'at's still a gentleman; But most I like--with you, my boy--our old friend Neverfail, When he wags yer hand as honest as an old dog wags his tail! DAN O'SULLIVAN Dan O'Sullivan: It's your Lips have kissed "The Blarney," sure!-- To be trillin' praise av me, Dhrippin' shwate wid poethry!-- Not that I'd not have ye sing-- Don't lave off for anything-- Jusht be aisy whilst the fit Av me head shwells up to it! Dade and thrue, I'm not the man, Whilst yer singin', loike ye can, To cry shtop because ye've blesht My songs more than all the resht:-- I'll not be the b'y to ax Any shtar to wane or wax, Or ax any clock that's woun', To run up inshtid av down! Whist yez! Dan O'Sullivan!-- Him that made the Irishman Mixt the birds in wid the dough, And the dew and mistletoe Wid the whusky in the quare Muggs av us--and here we air, Three parts right, and three parts wrong, Shpiked wid beauty, wit, and song! JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY SEPULTURE--BOSTON, AUGUST 13, 1890 Dead? this peerless man of men-- Patriot, Poet, Citizen!-- Dead? and ye weep where he lies Mute, with folded eyes! Courage! All his tears are done; Mark him, dauntless, face the sun! He hath led you.--Still, as true, He is leading you. Folded eyes and folded hands Typify divine commands He is hearkening to, intent Beyond wonderment. 'Tis promotion that has come Thus upon him. Stricken dumb Be your moanings dolorous! God knows what He does. Rather as your chief, _aspire_!-- Rise and seize his toppling lyre, And sing Freedom, Home, and Love, And the rights thereof! Ere in selfish grief ye sink, Come! catch rapturous breath and think-- Think what sweep of wing hath he, Loosed in endless liberty. MEREDITH NICHOLSON Keats, and Kirk White, David Gray and the rest of you Heavened and blest of you young singers gone,-- Slender in sooth though the theme unexpressed of you, Leave us this like of you yet to sing on! Let your Muse mother him and your souls brother him, Even as now, or in fancy, you do: Still let him sing to us ever, and bring to us Musical musings of glory and--you. Never a note to do evil or wrong to us-- Beauty of melody--beauty of words,-- Sweet and yet strong to us comes his young song to us Rippled along to us clear as the bird's. No fame elating him falsely, nor sating him-- Feasting and fêting him faint of her joys, But singing on where the laurels are waiting him, Young yet in art, and his heart yet a boy's. GOD'S MERCY Behold, one faith endureth still-- Let factions rail and creeds contend-- God's mercy _was_, and _is_, and _will_ Be with us, foe and friend. CHRISTMAS GREETING A word of Godspeed and good cheer To all on earth--or far or near, Or friend or foe, or thine or mine-- In echo of the voice divine, Heard when the Star bloomed forth and lit The world's face, with God's smile on it. TO RUDYARD KIPLING To do some worthy deed of charity In secret and then have it found out by Sheer accident, held gentle Elia-- That--that was the best thing beneath the sky! Confirmed in part, yet somewhat differing-- (Grant that his gracious wraith will pardon me If impious!)--I think a better thing Is: being found out when one strives to be. So, Poet and Romancer--old as young, And wise as artless--masterful as mild,-- If there be sweet in any song I've sung, 'Twas savored for that palate, O my Child! For thee the lisping of the children all-- For thee the youthful voices of old years-- For thee all chords untamed or musical-- For thee the laughter, and for thee the tears. And thus, borne to me o'er the seas between Thy land and mine, thy Song of certain wing Circles above me in the "pure serene" Of our high heaven's vast o'er-welcoming; While, packeted with joy and thankfulness, And fair hopes many as the stars that shine, And bearing all love's loyal messages, Mine own goes homing back to thee and thine. THE GUDEWIFE My gudewife--she that is tae be-- O she sall seeme sang-sweete tae me As her ain croon tuned wi' the chiel's Or spinnin'-wheel's. An' faire she'll be, an' saft, an' light, An' muslin-bright As her spick apron, jimpy laced The-round her waiste.-- Yet aye as rosy sall she bloome Intil the roome (The where alike baith bake an' dine) As a full-fine Ripe rose, lang rinset wi' the raine, Sun-kist againe,-- Sall seate me at her table-spread, White as her bread.-- Where I, sae kissen her for _grace_, Sall see her face Smudged, yet aye sweeter, for the bit O' floure on it, Whiles, witless, she sall sip wi' me Luve's tapmaist-bubblin' ecstasy. TENNYSON ENGLAND, OCTOBER 5, 1892 We of the New World clasp hands with the Old In newer fervor and with firmer hold And nobler fellowship,-- O Master Singer, with the finger-tip Of Death laid thus on thy melodious lip! All ages thou has honored with thine art, And ages yet unborn thou wilt be part Of all songs pure and true! Thine now the universal homage due From Old and New World--ay, and still The New! ROSAMOND C. BAILEY Thou brave, good woman! Loved of every one; Not only that in singing thou didst fill Our thirsty hearts with sweetness, trill on trill, Even as a wild bird singing in the sun-- Not only that in all thy carols none But held some tincturing of tears to thrill Our gentler natures, and to quicken still Our human sympathies; but thou hast won Our equal love and reverence because That thou wast ever mindful of the poor, And thou wast ever faithful to thy friends. So, loving, serving all, thy best applause Thy requiem--the vast throng at the door Of the old church, with mute prayers and amens. MRS. BENJAMIN HARRISON WASHINGTON, OCTOBER 25, 1892 Now utter calm and rest; Hands folded o'er the breast In peace the placidest, All trials past; All fever soothed--all pain Annulled in heart and brain, Never to vex again-- She sleeps at last. She sleeps; but O most dear And best beloved of her Ye sleep not--nay, nor stir, Save but to bow The closer each to each, With sobs and broken speech, That all in vain beseech Her answer now. And lo! we weep with you, One grief the wide world through: Yet with the faith she knew We see her still, Even as here she stood-- All that was pure and good And sweet in womanhood-- God's will her will. GEORGE A. CARR GREENFIELD, JULY 21, 1914 O playmate of the far-away And dear delights of Boyhood's day, And friend and comrade true and tried Through length of years of life beside, I bid you thus a fond farewell Too deep for words or tears to tell. But though I lose you, nevermore To greet you at the open door, To grasp your hand or see your smile, I shall be thankful all the while Because your love and loyalty Have made a happier world for me. So rest you, Playmate, in that land Still hidden from us by His hand, Where you may know again in truth All of the glad days of your youth-- As when in days of endless ease We played beneath the apple trees. TO ELIZABETH OBIT JULY 8, 1893 O noble, true and pure and lovable As thine own blessed name, ELIZABETH!-- Ay, even as its cadence lingereth Upon the lips that speak it, so the spell Of thy sweet memory shall ever dwell As music in our hearts. Smiling at Death As on some later guest that tarrieth, Too gratefully o'erjoyed to say farewell, Thou hast turned from us but a little space-- We miss thy presence but a little while, Thy voice of sympathy, thy word of cheer, The radiant glory of thine eyes and face, The glad midsummer morning of thy smile,-- For still we feel and know that thou art here. TO ALMON KEEFER INSCRIBED IN "TALES OF THE OCEAN" This first book that I ever knew Was read aloud to me by you! Friend of my boyhood, therefore take It back from me, for old times' sake-- The selfsame "Tales" first read to me, Under "the old sweet apple tree," Ere I myself could read such great Big words,--but listening all elate, At your interpreting, until Brain, heart, and soul were all athrill With wonder, awe, and sheer excess Of wildest childish happiness. So take the book again--forget All else,--long years, lost hopes, regret; Sighs for the joys we ne'er attain, Prayers we have lifted all in vain; Tears for the faces seen no more, Once as the roses at the door! Take the enchanted book--And lo, On grassy swards of long ago, Sprawl out again, beneath the shade The breezy old-home orchard made, The veriest barefoot boy indeed-- And I will listen as you read. TO--"THE J. W. R. LITERARY CLUB" Well, it's enough to turn his head to have a feller's name Swiped with a _Literary_ Club!--But _you're_ the ones to blame!-- I call the World to witness that I never _agged_ ye to it By ever writin' _Classic-like_--_because I couldn't_ do it: I never run to "Hellicon," ner writ about "Per-nassus," Ner ever tried to rack or ride around on old "P-_gassus_"! When "Tuneful Nines" has cross'd my lines, the ink 'ud blot and blur it, And pen 'ud jest putt back fer home, and take the short way fer it! And so, as I'm a-sayin',--when you name your Literary In honor o' this name o' mine, it's railly nessessary-- Whilse I'm _a-thankin'_ you and all--to _warn_ you, ef you do it, I'll haf to jine the thing myse'f 'fore I can live up to it! LITTLE MAID-O'-DREAMS Little Maid-o'-Dreams, with your Eery eyes so clear and pure Gazing, where we fain would see Into far futurity,-- Tell us what you there behold, In your visions manifold! What is on beyond our sight, Biding till the morrow's light, Fairer than we see to-day, As our dull eyes only may? Little Maid-o'-Dreams, with face Like as in some woodland place Lifts a lily, chaste and white, From the shadow to the light;-- Tell us, by your subtler glance, What strange sorcery enchants You as now,--here, yet afar As the realms of moon and star?-- Have you magic lamp and ring, And genii for vassaling? Little Maid-o'-Dreams, confess You're divine and nothing less,-- For with mortal palms, we fear, Yet must pet you, dreaming here-- Yearning, too, to lift the tips Of your fingers to our lips; Fearful still you may rebel, High and heav'nly oracle! Thus, though all unmeet our kiss, Pardon this!--and this!--and this! Little Maid-o'-Dreams, we call Truce and favor, knowing all!-- All your magic is, in truth, Pure foresight and faith of youth-- You're a child, yet even so, You're a sage, in embryo-- Prescient poet--artist--great As your dreams anticipate.-- Trusting God and Man, you do Just as Heaven inspires you to. TO THE BOY WITH A COUNTRY DAN WALLINGFORD Dan Wallingford, my jo Dan!-- Though but a child in years, Your patriot spirit thrills the land And wakens it to cheers,-- You lift the flag--you roll the drums-- We hear the bugle blow,-- Till all our hearts are one with yours, Dan Wallingford, my jo! CLAUDE MATTHEWS GOVERNOR OF INDIANA Steadfastly from his childhood's earliest hour-- From simplest country life to state and power-- His worth has known advancement,--each new height A newer glory in his fellow's sight. So yet his happy fate--though mute the breath Of thronging multitudes and thundrous cheers,-- Faith sees him raised still higher, through our tears, By this divine promotion of his death. TO LESLEY Burns sang of bonny Lesley As she gaed o'er the border,-- Gaed like vain Alexander, To spread her conquests farther. I sing another Lesley, Wee girlie, more alluring, Who stays at home, the wise one, Her conquests there securing. A queen, too, is my Lesley, And gracious, though blood-royal, My heart her throne, her kingdom, And I a subject loyal. Long shall you reign, my Lesley, My pet, my darling dearie, For love, oh, little sweetheart, Grows never old or weary. THE JUDKINS PAPERS FATHER AND SON Mr. Judkins' boy came home yesterday with a bottle of bugs in his pocket, and as the quiet little fellow sat on the back porch in his favorite position, his legs elbowed and flattened out beneath him like a letter "W," his genial and eccentric father came suddenly upon him. "And what's the blame' boy up to now?" said Mr. Judkins, in an assumed tone of querulous displeasure, as he bent over the boy from behind and gently tweaked his ear. "Oh, here, mister!" said the boy, without looking up; "you thist let up on that, will you!" "What you got there, I tell you!" continued the smiling Mr. Judkins, in a still gruffer tone, relinquishing the boy's ear, and gazing down upon the fluffy towhead with more than ordinary admiration. "What you got there?" "Bugs," said the boy--"you know!" "Dead, are they?" said Mr. Judkins. "Some of 'em's dead," said the boy, carefully running a needle through the back of a large bumblebee. "All these uns is, you kin bet! You don't think a feller 'ud try to string a live bumblebee, I reckon?" "Well, no, 'Squire," said Mr. Judkins, airily, addressing the boy by one of the dozen nicknames he had given him; "not a live bumblebee--a real stem-winder, of course not. But what in the name o' limpin' Lazarus air you stringin' 'em fer?" "Got a live snake-feeder," said the boy, ignoring the parental inquiry. "See him down there in the bottom, 'ith all th' other uns on top of him. Thist watch him now, an' you kin see him pant. I kin. Yes, an' I got a beetle 'at's purt' nigh alive, too--on'y he can't pull in his other wings. See 'em?" continued the boy, with growing enthusiasm, twirling the big-mouthed bottle like a kaleidoscope. "Hate beetles! 'cause they allus act so big, an' make s'much fuss about theirselves, an' don't know nothin' neither! Bet ef I had as many wings as a beetle I wouldn't let no boy my size knock the stuffin' out o' me with no bunch o' weeds, like I done him!" "Howd'ye know you wouldn't?" said Mr. Judkins, austerely, biting his nails and winking archly to himself. "W'y, I know I wouldn't," said the boy, "'cause I'd keep up in the air where I could fly, an' wouldn't come low down ut all--bumpin' around 'mongst them bushes, an' buzzin' against things, an' buttin' my brains out a-tryin' to git thue fence cracks." "'Spect you'd ruther be a snake-feeder, wouldn't you, Bud?" said Mr. Judkins suggestively. "Snake-feeders has got about enough wings to suit you, ef you want more'n one pair, and ever' day's a picnic with a snake-feeder, you know. Nothin' to do but jes' loaf up and down the crick, and roost on reeds and cat-tails, er fool around a feller's fish-line and light on the cork and bob up and down with it till she goes clean under, don't you know?" "Don't want to be no snake-feeder, neither," said the boy, "'cause they gits gobbled up, first thing they know, by these 'ere big green bullfrogs ut they can't ever tell from the skum till they've lit right in their mouth--and then they're goners! No, sir;" continued the boy, drawing an extra quinine-bottle from another pocket, and holding it up admiringly before his father's eyes: "There's the feller in there ut I'd ruther be than have a pony!" "W'y, it's a nasty p'izen spider!" exclaimed Mr. Judkins, pushing back the bottle with affected abhorrence, "and he's alive, too!" "You bet he's alive!" said the boy, "an' you kin bet he'll never come to no harm while I own him!" and as the little fellow spoke his face glowed with positive affection, and the twinkle of his eyes, as he continued, seemed wonderfully like his father's own. "Tell you, I like spiders! Spiders is awful fat--all but their head--and that's level, you kin bet! Flies hain't got no business with a spider. Ef a spider ever reaches fer a fly, he's his meat! The spider, he likes to loaf an' lay around in the shade an' wait fer flies an' bugs an' things to come a-foolin' round his place. He lays back in the hole in the corner of his web, an' waits till somepin' lights on it an' nen when he hears 'em buzzin', he thist crawls out an' fixes 'em so's they can't buzz, an' he's got the truck to do it with! I bet ef you'd unwind all the web-stuff out of thist one little spider not bigger'n a pill, it 'ud be long enough fer a kite-string! Onc't they wuz one in our wood-house, an' a taterbug got stuck in his web, an' the spider worked purt' nigh two days 'fore he got him so's he couldn't move. Nen he couldn't eat him neither--'cause they's shells on 'em, you know, an' the spider didn't know how to hull him. Ever' time I'd go there the spider, he'd be a-wrappin' more stuff around th' ole bug, an' stoopin' down like he wuz a-whisperin' to him. An' one day I went in ag'in, an' he was a-hangin', alas an' cold in death! An' I poked him with a splinter an' his web broke off--'spect he'd used it all up on the wicked bug--an' it killed him; an' I buried him in a' ink-bottle an' mashed the old bug 'ith a chip!" "Yes," said Judkins, in a horrified tone, turning away to conceal the real zest and enjoyment his face must have betrayed; "yes, and some day you'll come home p'izened, er somepin'! And I want to say right here, my young man, ef ever you do, and it don't kill you, I'll lint you within an inch of your life!" And as the eccentric Mr. Judkins whirled around the corner of the porch he heard the boy murmur in his low, absent-minded way, "Yes, you will!" MR. JUDKINS' REMARKS Judkins stopped us in front of the post-office yesterday to say that that boy of his was "the blamedest boy outside o' the annals o' history!" "Talk about this boy-naturalist out here at Indianapolis," says Judkins,--"w'y, he ain't nowhere to my boy! The little cuss don't do nothin' either only set around and look sleepy, and dern him, he gits off more dry things than you could print in your paper. Of late he's been a-displayin' a sort o' weakness fer Nature, don't you know; and he's allus got a bottle o' bugs in his pocket. He come home yesterday evening with a blame' mud-turtle as big as an unabridged dictionary, and turned him over in the back yard and commenced biffin' away at him with a hammer and a cold-chisel. 'W'y, you're a-killin' the turtle,' says I. 'Kill nothin'!' says he, 'I'm thist a-takin' the lid off so's I can see his clock works.' Hoomh!" says Judkins: "He's a good one!--only," he added, "I wouldn't have the _boy_ think so fer the world!" JUDKINS' BOY ON THE MUD-TURTLE The mud-turtle is not a beast of pray, but he dearly loves catfish bait. If a mud-turtle gits your big toe in his mouth he will hang on till it thunders. Then he will spit it out like he was disgusted. The mud-turtle kin swim and keep his chin out of water ef he wants to but he don't care ef he does sink. The turtle kin stay under water until his next birthday, an' never crack a smile. He kin breathe like a grown person, but he don't haf to, on'y when he is on dry land, an' then I guess he thist does it to be soshibul. Allus when you see bubbles a-comin' up in the swimmin' hole, you kin bet your galluses they's a mud-turtle a-layin' down there, studyin' up some cheap way to git his dinner. Mud-turtles never dies, on'y when they make soup out of 'em. They is seven kinds of meat in the turtle, but I'd ruther eat thist plain burnt liver. ON FROGS Frogs is the people's friend, but they can't fly. Onc't they wuz tadpoles about as big as lickerish drops, an' after while legs growed on 'em. Oh, let us love the frog--he looks so sorry. Frogs kin swim better'n little boys, and they don't haf to hold their nose when they dive, neither. Onc't I had a pet frog; an' the cars run over him. It thist squshed him. Bet he never knowed what hurt him! Onc't they wuz a rich lady swallered one--when he wuz little, you know; an' he growed up in her, an' it didn't kill him ut all. An' you could hear him holler in her bosom. It was a tree-toad; and so ever' time he'd go p-r-r-r-r- w'y, nen the grand lady she'd know it was goin' to rain, an' make her little boy run an' putt the tub under the spout. Wasn't that a b'utiful frog? ON PIRUTS Piruts is reckless to a fault. They ain't afeard of nobody ner nothin'. Ef ever you insult a pirut onc't, he'll foller you to the grave but what he will revenge his wrongs. Piruts all looks like pictures of "Buffalo Bill"--on'y they don't shave off the whiskers that sticks out over the collar of their low-necked shirt. Ever' day is a picknick fer the piruts of the high seas. They eat gunpowder an' drink blood to make 'em savage, and then they kill people all day, an' set up all night an' tell ghost stories an' sing songs such as mortal ear would quail to listen to. Piruts never comes on shore on'y when they run out of tobacker; an' then it's a cold day ef they don't land at midnight, an' disguize theirselves an' slip up in town like a sleuth houn', so's the Grand Jury can't git on to 'em. They don't care fer the police any more than us people who dwells right in their midst. Piruts makes big wages an' spends it like a king. "Come easy, go easy," is the fatal watchword of them whose deeds is Deth. Onc't they wuz a pirut turned out of the house an' home by his cruel parents when he wuz but a kid, an' so he always went by that name. He was thrust adrift without a nickel, an' sailed fer distant shores to hide his shame fer those he loved. In the dead of night he stol'd a new suit of the captain's clothes. An' when he growed up big enough to fit 'em, he gaily dressed hissef and went up an' paced the quarter-deck in deep thought. He had not fergot how the captain onc't had lashed him to the jib-boom-poop an' whipped him. That stung his proud spirit even then; an' so the first thing he done was to slip up behind the cruel officer an' push him over-board. Then the ship wuz his fer better er fer worse. An' so he took command, an' hung high upon the beetling mast the pirut flag. Then he took the Bible his old mother give him, an' tied a darnic round it an' sunk it in the sand with a mocking laugh. Then it wuz that he wuz ready fer the pirut's wild seafaring life. He worked the business fer all they wuz in it fer many years, but wuz run in ut last. An', standin' on the gallus-tree, he sung a song which wuz all wrote off by hissef. An' then they knocked the trap on him. An' thus the brave man died and never made a kick. In life he wuz allus careful with his means, an' saved up vast welth, which he dug holes and buried, an' died with the secret locked in his bosom to this day. ON HACKMENS Hackmens has the softest thing in the bizness. They hain't got nothin' to do but look hump-shouldered an' chaw tobacker an' wait. Hackmens all looks like detectives, an' keeps still, an' never even spits when you walk past 'em. An' they're allus cold. A hackman that stands high in the p'fession kin wear a overcoat in dog-days an' then look chilly an' like his folks wuz all dead but the old man, an' he wuz a drunkard. Ef a hackman would on'y be a blind fiddler he'd take in more money than a fair-ground. Hackmens never gives nothin' away. You kin trust a hackman when you can't trust your own mother. Some people thinks when they hire a hack to take 'em some place that the hackman has got some grudge ag'in' 'em--but he hain't--he's allus that way. He loves you but he knows his place, and smothers his real feelings. In life's giddy scenes hackmens all wears a mask; but down deep in their heart you kin bet they are yourn till deth. Some hackmens look like they wuz stuck up, but they hain't--it's only 'cause they got on so much clothes. Onc't a hackman wuz stabbed by a friend of his in the same bizness, an' when the doctors wuz seein' how bad he wuz karved up, they found he had on five shurts. They said that wuz all that saved his life. They said ef he'd on'y had on four shurts, he'd 'a' been a ded man. An' the hackman hissef, when he got well, used to brag it wuz the closetest call he ever had, an' laid fer the other hackman, an' hit him with a car couplin' an' killed him, an' come mighty nigh goin' to the penitenchary fer it. Influenshal friends wuz all that saved him that time. No five shurts would 'a' done it. The mayor said that when he let him off, an' brought down the house, an' made hissef a strong man fer another term. Some mayors is purty slick, but a humble hackman may sometimes turn out to be thist as smooth. The on'y thing w'y a hackman don't show up no better is 'cause he loses so much sleep. That's why he allus looks like he had the headache, an' didn't care ef he did. Onc't a hackman wuz waitin' in front of a hotel one morning an' wuz sort o' dozin' like, an' fell off his seat. An' they run an' picked him up, an' he wuz unconshus, an' they worked with him till 'way long in the afternoon 'fore they found out he wuz thist asleep; an' he cussed fearful cause they waked him up, an' wondered why people couldn't never tend to their own bizness like he did. ON DUDES Ever'body is allus a-givin' it to Dudes. Newspapers makes fun of 'em, an' artists makes pictures of 'em; an' the on'y ones in the wide world that stuck on Dudes is me an' the Dudes theirse'f, an' we love an' cherish 'em with all a parent's fond regards. An' nobody knows much about Dudes neither, 'cause they hain't been broke out long enough yit to tell thist what the disease is. Some say it's softinning of the brains, an' others claim it can't be that, on the groun's they hain't got material fer the softinning to work on, &c., &c., till even "Sientests is puzzled," as the good book says. An' ef I wuz a-goin' to say what ails Dudes I'd have to give it up, er pernounce it a' aggervated case of Tyfoid blues, which is my 'onnest convictions. That's what makes me kind o' stand in with 'em--same as ef they wuz the under-dog. I am willing to aknolege that Dudes has their weakness, but so has ever'thing. Even Oscar Wild, ef putt to the test; an' I allus feel sorry fer George Washington 'cause he died 'fore he got to see Oscar Wild. An' then another reason w'y you oughten't to jump on to Dudes is, they don't know what's the matter with 'em any more than us folks in whom they come in daily contack. Dudes all walks an' looks in the face like they wuz on their way to fill an engagement with a revolvin' lady wax-figger in some milliner-winder, an' had fergot the number of her place of bizness. Some folks is mean enough to bitterly a'sert that Dudes is strained in their manner an' fools from choice; but they ain't. It's a gift--Dudes is Geenuses--that's what Dudes is! ON RED HAIR Onc't a pore boy wuz red-hedded, an' got mad at the other boys when they'd throw it up to him. An' when they'd laugh at his red hed, an' ast him fer a light, er wuzn't he afeard he'd singe his cap, an' orto' wear a tin hat, er pertend to warm their hands by him,--w'y, sometimes the red-hedded boy'd git purty hot indeed; an' onc't he told another boy that wuz a-bafflin' him about his red hair that ef he wuz him he'd git a fine comb an' go to canvassin' his own hed, and then he'd be liabul to sceer up a more livelier subjeck to talk about than red hair. An' then the other boy says, "You're a liar" an' that got the red-hedded boy into more trouble; fer the old man whipped him shameful' fer breakin' up soil with the other boy. An' this here red-hedded boy had freckles, too. An' warts. An' nobody ortn't to 'a' jumpt on to him fer that. Ef anybody wuz a red-hedded boy they'd have also warts an' freckles--an' thist red-hair's bad enough. Onc't another boy told him ef he wuz him he bet he could make a big day look sick some night. An' when the red-hedded boy says "How?" w'y, the other boy he says "Easy enough. I'd thist march around bare-hedded in the torch-light p'cession."--"Yes, you would," says the red-hedded boy, an' pasted him one with a shinny club, an' got dispelled from school 'cause he wuz so high-tempered an' impulsiv. Ef I wuz the red-hedded boy I'd be a pirut; but he allus said he wuz goin' to be a baker. THE CROSS-EYED GIRL "You don't want to never tamper with a cross-eyed girl," said Mr. Judkins, "and I'll tell you w'y: They've natur'lly got a better focus on things than a man would ever guess--studyin' their eyes, you understand. A man may think he's a-foolin' a cross-eyed girl simply because she's apparently got her eyes tangled on other topics as he's a-talkin' to her, but at the same time that girl may be a-lookin' down the windin' stairway of the cellar of his soul with one eye, and a-winkin' in a whisper to her own soul with the other, and her unconscious victim jes' a-takin' it fer granted that nothin' is the matter with the girl, only jes' cross-eyes! You see I've studied 'em," continued Judkins, "and I'm on to one fact dead sure--and that is, their natures is as deceivin' as their eyes is! Knowed one onc't that had her eyes mixed up thataway--sensitive little thing she was, and always referrin' to her 'misfortune,' as she called it, and eternally threatenin' to have some surgeon straighten 'em out like other folks'--and, sir, that girl so worked on my feelin's, and took such underholts on my sympathies that, blame me, before I knowed it I confessed to her that ef it hadn't 'a' been fer her defective eyes (I made it 'defective') I never would have thought of lovin' her, and, furthermore ef ever she did have 'em changed back normal, don't you understand, she might consider our engagement at an end--I did, honest. And that girl was so absolute cross-eyed it warped her ears, and she used to amuse herself by watchin' 'em curl up as I'd be a-talkin' to her, and that maddened me, 'cause I'm natur'lly of a jealous disposition, you know, and so, at last, I jes' casually hinted that ef she was really a-goin' to git them eyes carpentered up, w'y she'd better git at it: and that ended it. "And then the blame' girl turned right around and married a fellow that had a better pair of eyes than mine this minute! Then I struck another cross-eyed girl--not really a legitimate case, 'cause, in reality, she only had one off eye--the right eye, ef I don't disremember--the other one was as square as a gouge. And that girl was, ef any difference, a more confusin' case than the other, and besides all that, she had some money in her own right, and warn't a-throwin' off no big discount on one game eye. But I finally got her interested, and I reckon something serious might 'a' come of it--but, you see, her father was dead, and her stepmother sort o' shet down on my comin' to the house; besides that, she had three grown uncles, and you know how uncles is. I didn't want to marry no family, of course, and so I slid out of the scheme, and tackled a poor girl that clerked in a post-office. Her eyes was bad! I never did git the hang of them eyes of hern. She had purty hair, and a complexion, I used to tell her, which outrivalled the rose. But them eyes, you know! I didn't really appreciate how bad they was crossed, at first. You see, it took time. Got her to give me her picture, and I used to cipher on that, but finally worked her off on a young friend of mine who wanted to marry intellect--give her a good send-off to him--and she was smart--only them eyes, you know! Why, that girl could read a postal card, both sides at once, and smile at a personal friend through the office window at the same time!" HOMESICKNESS There was a more than ordinary earnestness in the tone of Mr. Judkins as he said: "Referrin' to this thing of bein' homesick, I want to say right here that of all diseases, afflictions er complaints, this thing of bein' homesick takes the cookies! A man may think when he's got a' aggrivated case of janders, er white-swellin', say, er bone-erysipelas, that he's to be looked up to as bein' purty well fixed in this vale of trouble and unrest, but I want to tell you, when I want my sorrow blood-raw, don't you understand, you may give me homesickness--straight goods, you know--and I'll git more clean, legitimate agony out of that than you can out of either of the other attractions--yes, er even ef you'd ring in the full combination on me! You see, there's no way of treatin' homesickness only one--and that is to git back home--but as that's a remedy you can't git at no drug store, at so much per box--and ef you could, fer instance, and only had enough ready money anyhow to cover half the cost of a full box--and nothin' but a full box ever reached the case--w'y, it follers that your condition still remains critical. And homesickness don't show no favors. It's jes' as liable to strike you as me. High er low, er rich er poor, all comes under her jurishdiction, and whenever she once reaches fer a citizen, you can jes' bet she gits there Eli, ever' time! "She don't confine herse'f to youth, ner make no specialty of little children either, but she stalks abroad like a census-taker, and is as conscientious. She visits the city girl clean up to Maxinkuckee, and makes her wonder how things really is back home without her. And then she haunts her dreams, and wakes her up at all hours of the night, and sings old songs over fer her, and talks to her in low thrillin' tones of a young man whose salary ain't near big enough fer two; and then she leaves her photograph with her and comes away, and makes it lively fer the boys on the train, the conductor, the brakeman and the engineer. She even nests out the travellin' man, and yanks him out of his reclinin' chair, and walks him up and down the car, and runs him clean out of cigars and finecut, and smiles to hear him swear. Then she gits off at little country stations and touches up the night operator, who grumbles at his boy companion, and wishes to dernation 'six' was in, so's he could 'pound his ear.' "And I'll never forgit," continued Mr. Judkins, "the last case of homesickness I had, and the cure I took fer it. 'Tain't been more'n a week ago neither. You see my old home is a'most too many laps from this base to make it very often, and in consequence I hadn't been there fer five years and better, till this last trip, when I jes' succumbed to the pressure, and th'owed up my hands and went. Seemed like I'd 'a' died if I hadn't. And it was glorious to rack around the old town again--things lookin' jes' the same, mighty nigh, as they was when I was a boy, don't you know. Run acrost an old schoolmate, too, and tuck supper at his happy little home, and then we got us a good nickel cigar, and walked and walked, and talked and talked! Tuck me all around, you understand, in the meller twilight--till, the first thing you know, there stood the old schoolhouse where me and him first learnt to chew tobacco, and all that! Well, sir! you hain't got no idea of the feelin's that was mine! W'y, I felt like I could th'ow my arms around the dear old buildin' and squeeze it till the cupolo would jes' pop out of the top of the roof like the core out of a b'ile! And I think if they ever was a' epoch in my life when I could 'a' tackled poetry without no compunctions, as the feller says, w'y, then was the time--shore!" TO THE QUIET OBSERVER ERASMUS WILSON, AFTER HIS LONG SILENCE Dear old friend of us all in need Who know the worth of a friend indeed, How rejoiced are we all to learn Of your glad return. We who have missed your voice so long-- Even as March might miss the song Of the sugar-bird in the maples when They're tapped again. Even as the memory of these _Blended_ sweets,--the sap of the trees And the song of the birds, and the old camp too, We think of you. Hail to you, then, with welcomes deep As grateful hearts may laugh or weep!-- You give us not only the bird that sings, But all good things. AMERICA'S THANKSGIVING 1900 Father all bountiful, in mercy bear With this our universal voice of prayer-- The voice that needs must be Upraised in thanks to Thee, O Father, from Thy Children everywhere. A multitudinous voice, wherein we fain Wouldst have Thee hear no lightest sob of pain-- No murmur of distress, Nor moan of loneliness, Nor drip of tears, though soft as summer rain. And, Father, give us first to comprehend, No ill can come from Thee; lean Thou and lend Us clearer sight to see Our boundless debt to Thee, Since all thy deeds are blessings, in the end. And let us feel and know that, being Thine, We are inheritors of hearts divine, And hands endowed with skill, And strength to work Thy will, And fashion to fulfilment Thy design. So, let us thank Thee, with all self aside, Nor any lingering taint of mortal pride; As here to Thee we dare Uplift our faltering prayer, Lend it some fervor of the glorified. We thank Thee that our land is loved of Thee The blessèd home of thrift and industry, With ever-open door Of welcome to the poor-- Thy shielding hand o'er all abidingly. Even thus we thank Thee for the wrong that grew Into a right that heroes battled to, With brothers long estranged, Once more as brothers ranged Beneath the red and white and starry blue. Ay, thanks--though tremulous the thanks expressed-- Thanks for the battle at its worst, and best-- For all the clanging fray Whose discord dies away Into a pastoral song of peace and rest. WILLIAM PINKNEY FISHBACK Say first he loved the dear home-hearts, and then He loved his honest fellow citizen-- He loved and honored him, in any post Of duty where he served mankind the most. All that he asked of him in humblest need Was but to find him striving to succeed; All that he asked of him in highest place Was justice to the lowliest of his race. When he found these conditions, proved and tried, He owned he marvelled, but was satisfied-- Relaxed in vigilance enough to smile And, with his own wit, flay himself a while. Often he liked real anger--as, perchance, The summer skies like storm-clouds and the glance Of lightning--for the clearer, purer blue Of heaven, and the greener old earth, too. All easy things to do he did with care, Knowing the very common danger there; In noblest conquest of supreme debate The facts are simple as the victory great. That which had been a task to hardiest minds To him was as a pleasure, such as finds The captive-truant, doomed to read throughout The one lone book he really cares about. Study revived him: Howsoever dim And deep the problem, 'twas a joy to him To solve it wholly; and he seemed as one Refreshed and rested as the work was done. And he had gathered, from all wealth of lore That time has written, such a treasure store, His mind held opulence--his speech the rare Fair grace of sharing all his riches there-- Sharing with all, but with the greatest zest Sharing with those who seemed the neediest: The young he ever favored; and through these Shall he live longest in men's memories. JOHN CLARK RIDPATH To the lorn ones who loved him first and best, And knew his dear love at its tenderest, We seem akin--we simplest friends who knew His fellowship, of heart and spirit too: We who have known the happy summertide Of his ingenuous nature, glorified With the inspiring smile that ever lit The earnest face and kindly strength of it: His presence, all-commanding, as his thought Into unconscious eloquence was wrought, Until the utterance became a spell That awed us as a spoken miracle. Learning, to him, was native--was, in truth, The earliest playmate of his lisping youth, Likewise, throughout a life of toil and stress, It was as laughter, health and happiness: And so he played with it--joyed at its call-- Ran rioting with it, forgetting all Delights of childhood, and of age and fame,-- A devotee of learning, still the same! In fancy, even now we catch the glance Of the rapt eye and radiant countenance, As when his discourse, like a woodland stream, Flowed musically on from theme to theme: The skies, the stars, the mountains, and the sea, He worshipped as their high divinity-- Nor did his reverent spirit find one thing On earth too lowly for his worshipping. The weed, the rose, the wildwood or the plain, The teeming harvest, or the blighted grain-- All--all were fashioned beautiful and good, As the soul saw and senses understood. Thus broadly based, his spacious faith and love Enfolded all below as all above-- Nay, ev'n if overmuch he loved mankind, He gave his love's vast largess as designed. Therefore, in fondest, faithful service, he Wrought ever bravely for humanity-- Stood, first of heroes for the Right allied-- Foes, even, grieving, when (for them) he died. This was the man we loved--are loving yet, And still shall love while longing eyes are wet With selfish tears that well were brushed away Remembering his smile of yesterday.-- For, even as we knew him, smiling still, Somewhere beyond all earthly ache or ill, He waits with the old welcome--just as when We met him smiling, we shall meet again. NEW YEAR'S NURSERY JINGLE Of all the rhymes of all the climes Of where and when and how, We best and most can boost and boast The Golden Age of NOW! TO THE MOTHER The mother-hands no further toil may know; The mother-eyes smile not on you and me; The mother-heart is stilled, alas!--But O The mother-love abides eternally. TO MY SISTER A BELATED OFFERING FOR HER BIRTHDAY These books you find three weeks behind Your honored anniversary Make me, I fear, to here appear Mayhap a trifle cursory.-- Yet while the Muse must thus refuse The chords that fall caressfully, She seems to stir the publisher And dealer quite successfully. As to our _birthdays_--let 'em run Until they whir and whiz! Read Robert Louis Stevenson, And hum these lines of his:-- "The eternal dawn, beyond a doubt, Shall break on hill and plain And put all stars and candles out Ere we be young again." A MOTTO The _Brightest_ Star's the _modestest_, And more'n likely writes His motto like the lightnin'-bug's-- _Accordin' To His Lights_. TO A POET ON HIS MARRIAGE MADISON CAWEIN Ever and ever, on and on, From winter dusk to April dawn, This old enchanted world we range From night to light--from change to change-- Or path of burs or lily-bells, We walk a world of miracles. The morning evermore must be A newer, purer mystery-- The dewy grasses, or the bloom Of orchards, or the wood's perfume Of wild sweet-williams, or the wet Blent scent of loam and violet. How wondrous all the ways we fare-- What marvels wait us, unaware!... But yesterday, with eyes ablur And heart that held no hope of Her, You paced the lone path, but the true That led to where she waited you. ART AND POETRY TO HOMER C. DAVENPORT "Wess," he says, and sort o' grins, "Art and Poetry is twins. 'F I could draw as you have drew, Like to jes' swap pens with you." HER SMILE OF CHEER AND VOICE OF SONG ANNA HARRIS RANDALL Spring fails, in all its bravery of brilliant gold and green,-- The sun, the grass, the leafing tree, and all the dazzling scene Of dewy morning--orchard blooms, And woodland blossoms and perfumes With bird-songs sown between. Yea, since _she_ smiles not any more, so every flowery thing Fades, and the birds seem brooding o'er her silence as they sing-- Her smile of cheer and voice of song Seemed so divinely to belong To ever-joyous Spring! Nay, still she smiles.--Our eyes are blurred and see not through our tears: And still her rapturous voice is heard, though not of mortal ears:-- Now ever doth she smile and sing Where Heaven's unending clime of Spring Reclaims those gifts of hers. OLD INDIANY FRAGMENT INTENDED FOR A DINNER OF THE INDIANA SOCIETY OF CHICAGO Old Indiany, 'course we know Is first, and best, and _most_, also, Of _all_ the States' whole forty-four:-- She's first in ever'thing, that's shore!-- And _best_ in ever'way as yet Made known to man; and you kin bet She's _most_, because she won't confess She ever was, or will be, _less_! And yet, fer all her proud array Of sons, how many gits away!-- No doubt about her bein' _great_ But, fellers, she's a leaky State! And them that boasts the most about Her, them's the ones that's dribbled out. Law! jes' to think of all you boys 'Way over here in Illinoise A-celebratin', like ye air, Old Indiany, 'way back there In the dark ages, so to speak, A-prayin' for ye once a week And wonderin' what's a-keepin' you From comin', like you ort to do. You're all a-lookin' well, and like You wasn't "sidin' up the pike," As the tramp-shoemaker said When "he sacked the boss and shed The blame town, to hunt fer one Where they didn't work fer fun!" Lookin' _extry_ well, I'd say, Your old home so fur away.-- Maybe, though, like the old jour., Fun hain't all yer workin' fer. So you've found a job that pays Better than in them old days You was on _The Weekly Press_, Heppin' run things, more er less; Er a-learnin' telegraph Operatin', with a half Notion of the tinner's trade, Er the dusty man's that laid Out designs on marble and Hacked out little lambs by hand, And chewed fine-cut as he wrought, "Shapin' from his bitter thought" Some squshed mutterings to say,-- "Yes, hard work, and porer pay!" Er you'd kind o' thought the far- Gazin' kuss that owned a car And took pictures in it, had Jes' the snap you wanted--bad! And you even wondered why He kep' foolin' with his sky- Light the same on shiny days As when rainin'. ('T leaked always.) Wondered what strange things was hid In there when he shet the door And smelt like a burnt drug store Next some orchard-trees, i swan! With whole roasted apples on! That's why Ade is, here of late, Buyin' in the dear old State,-- So's to cut it up in plots Of both town and country lots. ABE MARTIN Abe Martin!--dad-burn his old picture! P'tends he's a Brown County fixture-- A kind of a comical mixture Of hoss-sense and no sense at all! His mouth, like his pipe, 's allus goin', And his thoughts, like his whiskers, is flowin', And what he don't know ain't wuth knowin'-- From Genesis clean to baseball! The artist, Kin Hubbard, 's so keerless He draws Abe most eyeless and earless, But he's never yet pictured him cheerless Er with fun 'at he tries to conceal,-- Whuther onto the fence er clean over A-rootin' up ragweed er clover, Skeert stiff at some "Rambler" er "Rover" Er newfangled automo_beel_! It's a purty steep climate old Brown's in; And the rains there his ducks nearly drowns in The old man hisse'f wades his rounds in As ca'm and serene, mighty nigh As the old handsaw-hawg, er the mottled Milch cow, er the old rooster wattled Like the mumps had him 'most so well throttled That it was a pleasure to die. But best of 'em all's the fool-breaks 'at Abe don't see at all, and yit makes 'at Both me and you lays back and shakes at His comic, miraculous cracks Which makes him--clean back of the power Of genius itse'f in its flower-- This Notable Man of the Hour, Abe Martin, The Joker on Facts. O. HENRY WRITTEN IN THE CHARACTER OF "SHERRARD PLUMMER" O. Henry, Afrite-chef of all delight!-- Of all delectables conglomerate That stay the starved brain and rejuvenate The mental man. Th' esthetic appetite-- So long anhungered that its "in'ards" fight And growl gutwise,--its pangs thou dost abate And all so amiably alleviate, Joy pats its belly as a hobo might Who haply hath attained a cherry pie With no burnt bottom in it, ner no seeds-- Nothin' but crispest crust, and thickness fit, And squshin'-juicy, and jes' mighty nigh Too dratted drippin'-sweet fer human needs, But fer the sosh of milk that goes with it. "MONA MACHREE" "_Mona Machree, I'm the wanderin' cr'ature now, Over the sea; Slave of no lass, but a lover of Nature now Careless and free._" --T. A. Daly. Mona Machree! och, the sootherin' flow of it, Soft as the sea, Yet, in-under the mild, moves the wild undertow of it Tuggin' at me, Until both the head and the heart o' me's fightin' For breath, nigh a death all so grandly invitin' That--barrin' your own livin' yet--I'd delight in, Drowned in the deeps of this billowy song to you Sung by a lover your beauty has banned, Not alone from your love but his dear native land, Whilst the kiss of his lips, and touch of his hand, And his song--all belong to you, Mona Machree! WILLIAM McKINLEY CANTON, OHIO, SEPTEMBER 30, 1907 He said: "It is God's way: His will, not ours be done." And o'er our land a shadow lay That darkened all the sun. The voice of jubilee That gladdened all the air, Fell sudden to a quavering key Of suppliance and prayer. He was our chief--our guide-- Sprung of our common Earth, From youth's long struggle proved and tried To manhood's highest worth: Through toil, he knew all needs Of all his toiling kind-- The favored striver who succeeds-- The one who falls behind. The boy's young faith he still Retained through years mature-- The faith to labor, hand and will, Nor doubt the harvest sure-- The harvest of man's love-- A nation's joy that swells To heights of Song, or deeps whereof But sacred silence tells. To him his Country seemed Even as a Mother, where He rested--slept; and once he dreamed-- As on her bosom there-- And thrilled to hear, within That dream of her, the call Of bugles and the clang and din Of war.... And o'er it all His rapt eyes caught the bright Old Banner, winging wild And beck'ning him, as to the fight ... When--even as a child-- He wakened--And the dream Was real! And he leapt As led the proud Flag through a gleam Of tears the Mother wept. His was a tender hand-- Even as a woman's is-- And yet as fixed, in Right's command, As this bronze hand of his: This was the Soldier brave-- This was the Victor fair-- This is the Hero Heaven gave To glory here--and There. BENJAMIN HARRISON ON THE UNVEILING OF HIS MONUMENT AT INDIANAPOLIS OCTOBER 27, 1908 As tangible a form in History The Spirit of this man stands forth as here He towers in deathless sculpture, high and clear Against the bright sky of his destiny. Sprung of our oldest, noblest ancestry, His pride of birth, as lofty as sincere, Held kith and kin, as Country, ever dear-- Such was his sacred faith in you and me. Thus, natively, from youth his work was one Unselfish service in behalf of all-- Home, friends, and sharers of his toil and stress; Ay, loving all men and despising none, And swift to answer every righteous call, His life was one long deed of worthiness. The voice of Duty's faintest whisper found Him as alert as at her battle-cry-- When awful War's battalions thundered by, High o'er the havoc still he heard the sound Of mothers' prayers and pleadings all around; And ever the despairing sob and sigh Of stricken wives and orphan children's cry Made all our Land thrice consecrated ground. So rang his "Forward!" and so swept his sword-- On!--on!--till from the fire-and-cloud once more Our proud Flag lifted in the glad sunlight As though the very Ensign of the Lord Unfurled in token that the strife was o'er, And victory--as ever--with the right. LEE O. HARRIS CHRISTMAS DAY--1909 O say not he is dead, The friend we honored so; Lift up a grateful voice instead And say: He lives, we know-- We know it by the light Of his enduring love Of honor, valor, truth, and right, And man, and God above. Remember how he drew The child-heart to his own, And taught the parable anew, And reaped as he had sown; Remember with what cheer He filled the little lives, And stayed the sob and dried the tear With mirth that still survives. All duties to his kind It was his joy to fill; With nature gentle and refined, Yet dauntless soul and will, He met the trying need Of every troublous call, Yet high and clear and glad indeed He sung above it all. Ay, listen! Still we hear The patriot song, the lay Of love, the woodland note so dear-- These will not die away. Then say not he is dead, The friend we honor so, But lift a grateful voice instead And say: He lives, we know. THE HIGHEST GOOD WRITTEN FOR A HIGH-SCHOOL ANNUAL To attain the highest good Of true man and womanhood, Simply do your honest best-- God with joy will do the rest. MY CONSCIENCE Sometimes my Conscience says, says he, "Don't you know me?" And I, says I, skeered through and through, "Of course I do. You air a nice chap ever' way, I'm here to say! You make me cry--you make me pray, And all them good things thataway-- That is, at _night_. Where do you stay Durin' the day?" And then my Conscience says, onc't more, "You know me--shore?" "Oh, yes," says I, a-trimblin' faint, "You're jes' a saint! Your ways is all so holy-right, I love you better ever' night You come around,--tel' plum daylight, When you air out o' sight!" And then my Conscience sort o' grits His teeth, and spits On his two hands and grabs, of course, Some old remorse, And beats me with the big butt-end O' _that_ thing--tel my clostest friend 'Ud hardly know me. "Now," says he, "Be keerful as you'd orto be And _allus_ think o' me!" MY BOY You smile and you smoke your cigar, my boy; You walk with a languid swing; You tinkle and tune your guitar, my boy, And you lift up your voice and sing; The midnight moon is a friend of yours, And a serenade your joy-- And it's only an age like mine that cures A trouble like yours, my boy! THE OBJECT LESSON Barely a year ago I attended the Friday afternoon exercises of a country school. My mission there, as I remember, was to refresh my mind with such material as might be gathered, for a "valedictory," which, I regret to say, was to be handed down to posterity under another signature than my own. There was present, among a host of visitors, a pale young man of perhaps thirty years, with a tall head and bulging brow and a highly intellectual pair of eyes and spectacles. He wore his hair without roach or "part" and the smile he beamed about him was "a joy forever." He was an educator--from the East, I think I heard it rumoured--anyway he was introduced to the school at last, and he bowed, and smiled, and beamed upon us all, and entertained us after the most delightfully edifying manner imaginable. And although I may fail to reproduce the exact substance of his remarks upon that highly important occasion, I think I can at least present his theme in all its coherency of detail. Addressing more particularly the primary department of the school, he said:-- "As the little exercise I am about to introduce is of recent origin, and the bright, intelligent faces of the pupils before me seem rife with eager and expectant interest, it will be well for me, perhaps, to offer by way of preparatory preface, a few terse words of explanation. "The Object Lesson is designed to fill a long-felt want, and is destined, as I think, to revolutionize, in a great degree, the educational systems of our land.--In my belief, the Object Lesson will supply a want which I may safely say has heretofore left the most egregious and palpable traces of mental confusion and intellectual inadequacies stamped, as it were, upon the gleaming reasons of the most learned--the highest cultured, and the most eminently gifted and promising of our professors and scientists both at home and abroad. "Now this deficiency--if it may be so termed--plainly has a beginning; and probing deeply with the bright, clean scalpel of experience we discover that--'As the twig is bent the tree's inclined.' To remedy, then, a deeply seated error which for so long has rankled at the very root of educational progress throughout the land, many plausible, and we must admit, many helpful theories have been introduced to allay the painful errors resulting from the discrepancy of which we speak: but until now, nothing that seemed wholly to eradicate the defect has been discovered, and that, too, strange as it may seem, is, at last, emanating, like the mighty river, from the simplest source, but broadening and gathering in force and power as it flows along, until, at last, its grand and mighty current sweeps on in majesty to the vast illimitable ocean of--of--of--Success! Ahem! "And, now, little boys and girls, that we have had by implication, a clear and comprehensive explanation of the Object Lesson and its mission, I trust you will give me your undivided attention while I endeavor--in my humble way--to direct your newly acquired knowledge through the proper channel. For instance:-- "This little object I hold in my hand--who will designate it by its proper name? Come, now, let us see who will be the first to answer. 'A peanut,' says the little boy here at my right. Very good--very good! I hold, then, in my hand, a peanut. And now who will tell me, what is the peanut? A very simple question--who will answer? 'Something good to eat,' says the little girl. Yes, 'something good to eat,' but would it not be better to say simply that the peanut is an edible? I think so, yes. The peanut, then, is--an edible--now, all together, an edible! "To what kingdom does the peanut belong? The animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdom? A very easy question. Come, let us have prompt answers. 'The animal kingdom,' does the little boy say? Oh, no! The peanut does not belong to the animal kingdom! Surely the little boy must be thinking of a larger object than the peanut--the elephant, perhaps. To what kingdom, then, does the peanut belong? The v-v-veg--'The vegetable kingdom,' says the bright-faced little girl on the back seat. Ah! that is better. We find then that the peanut belongs to the--what kingdom? The 'vegetable kingdom.' Very good, very good! "And now who will tell us of what the peanut is composed. Let us have quick responses now. Time is fleeting! Of what is the peanut composed? 'The hull and the goody,' some one answers. Yes, 'the hull and the goody' in vulgar parlance, but how much better it would be to say simply, the shell and the kernel. Would not that sound better? Yes, I thought you would agree with me there! "And now who will tell me the color of the peanut! And be careful now! for I shouldn't like to hear you make the very stupid blunder I once heard a little boy make in reply to the same question. Would you like to hear what color the stupid little boy said the peanut was? You would, eh? Well, now, how many of you would like to hear what color the stupid little boy said the peanut was? Come now, let's have an expression. All who would like to hear what color the stupid little boy said the peanut was, may hold up their right hands. Very good, very good--there, that will do. "Well, it was during a professional visit I was once called upon to make to a neighboring city, where I was invited to address the children of a free school--Hands down, now, little boy--founded for the exclusive benefit of the little newsboys and bootblacks, who, it seems, had not the means to defray the expenses of the commonest educational accessories, and during an object lessen--identical with the one before us now--for it is a favorite one of mine--I propounded the question, what is the color of the peanut? Many answers were given in response, but none as sufficiently succinct and apropos as I deemed the facts demanded; and so at last I personally addressed a ragged, but, as I then thought, a bright-eyed little fellow, when judge of my surprise, in reply to my question what is the color of the peanut, the little fellow, without the slightest gleam of intelligence lighting up his face, answered, that 'if not scorched in roasting, the peanut was a blond.' Why, I was almost tempted to join in the general merriment his inapposite reply elicited. But I occupy your attention with trivial things; and as I notice the time allotted to me has slipped away, we will drop the peanut for the present. Trusting the few facts gleaned from a topic so homely and unpromising will sink deep in your minds, in time to bloom and blossom in the fields of future usefulness--I--I----I thank you." THE END 
3305	----	BALLADS OF PEACE IN WAR By Michael Earls HIS LIGHT Gray mist on the sea, And the night coming down, She stays with sorrow In a far town. He goes the sea-ways By channel lights dim, Her love, a true light, Watches for him. They would be wedded On a fair yesterday, But the quick regiment Saw him away. Gray mist in her eyes And the night coming down: He feels a prayer From a far town. He goes the sea-ways, The land lights are dim; She and an altar light Keep watch for him. THE COUNTERSIGN Along Virginia's wondering roads While armies hastened on, To Beauregard's great Southern host, Manassas fields upon, Came Colonel Smith's good regiment, Eager for Washington. But Colonel Smith must halt his men In a dangerous delay, Though well he knows the countryside To the distant host of grey. He cannot join with Beauregard For Bull Run's bloody fray. And does he halt for storm or ford, Or does he stay to dine? Say, No! but death will meet his men, Onward if moves the line: He dares not hurry to Beauregard, Not knowing the countersign. Flashed in the sun his waving sword; "Who rides for me?" he cried, "And ask of the Chief the countersign, Upon a daring ride; Though never the lad come back again With the good that will betide. "I will send a letter to Beauregard," The Colonel slowly said; "The bearer dies at the pickets' line, But the letter shall be read When the pickets find it for the Chief, In the brave hand of the dead." THE COUNTERSIGN "Ready I ride to the Chief for the sign," Said little Dan O'Shea, "Though never I come from the picket's line, But a faded suit of grey: Yet over my death will the road be safe, And the regiment march away." "In a mother's name, I bless thee, lad," The Colonel drew him near: "But first in the name of God," said Dan, "And then is my mother's dear-- Her own good lips that taught me well, With the Cross of Christ no fear." Quickly he rode by valley and hill, On to the outpost line, Till the pickets arise by wall and mound, And the levelled muskets shine; "Halt!" they cried, "count three to death, Or give us the countersign." Lightly the lad leaped from his steed, No fear was in his sigh, But a mother's face and a home he loved Under an Irish sky: He made the Sign of the Cross and stood, Bravely he stood to die. Lips in a prayer at the blessed Sign, And calmly he looked around, And wonder seized his waiting soul To hear no musket sound, But only the pickets calling to him, Heartily up the mound. For this was the order of Beauregard Around his camp that day-- The Sign of the Cross was countersign, (And a blessing to Dan O'Shea) And the word came quick to Colonel Smith For the muster of the grey. A HILL O' LIGHTS Turn from Kerry crossroads and leave the wooded dells, Take the mountain path and find where Tip O'Leary dwells; Tip O'Leary is the name, I sing it all day long, And every bird whose heart is wise will have it for a song. Tip O'Leary keeps the lights of many lamps aglow, Little matters it to him the seasons come or go, Sure if spring is in the air his hedges are abloom, And fairy buds like candles shine across his garden room. Roses in the June days are light the miles around, Tapers of the fuchsias move along the August ground, Sumachs light the flaming torches by October's grave And like the campfires on the hills the oaks and maples wave. All the lights but only one die out when summer goes, One that Tip O'Leary keeps is brighter than the rose, Through the window comes the bloom on any winter night, And every sense goes wild to it, soft and sweet and bright. Lamps are fair that have the light from flowers all day long, When the birds are here and sing the Tip O'Leary song, But a winter window is the fairest rose of all, When Tip O'Leary's hearth is lit and lamps upon the wall. OFF TO THE WAR (For Jack) In a little ship and down the bay, Out to the calling sea, A young brave lad sailed off today, To the one great war went he: The one long war all men must know Greater than land or gold, Soul is the prince and flesh the foe Of a kingdom Christ will hold. With arms of faith and hope well-wrought The brave lad went away, And the voice of Christ fills all his thought, Under two hands that pray: The tender love of a mother's hands That guarded all his years, Fitted the armor, plate and bands, And blessed them with her tears. Older than Rhodes and Ascalon And the farthest forts of sea, Is the Master voice that calls him on From the hills in Galilee: From hills where Christ in gentle guise Called, as He calls again, With His heart of love and His love-lit eyes Unto His warrior men. Christ with the brave young lad to-day Who goes to the sweet command, Strengthen his heart wherever the way, Whether he march or stand: And whether he die in a peaceful cell, Or alone in the lonely night, The Cross of Christ shall keep him well, And be his death's delight. THE TOWERS OF HOLY CROSS (For W. M. Letts) The roads look up to Holy Cross, The sturdy towers look down, And show a kindly word to all Who pass by Worcester Town; And once you'd see the boys at play, Or marching cap and gown. The gallant towers at Holy Cross Are silent night and day, A few young lads are left behind Who still may take their play; The Cross and Flag look out afar For them that went away. And mine are gone, says Beaven Hall, To camps by hill and plain, And mine along by Newport Sea, Says the high tower of O'Kane; I follow mine, Alumni calls, Across the watery main. Their sires were in the old Brigade That won at Fontenoy, Stood true at Washington's right hand, that were his faith and joy: From Holy Cross to Fredericksburg Is many a gallant boy. Then God be with you, says the Cross, And the brave towers looking down; I'll be your cloth, sings out the Flag, For other cap and gown, And may we see you safe again, On the hills of Worcester Town. ALWAYS MAYTIME (for Gerry) When May has spent its little song, And richer comes the June, Through former eyes the heart will long For May again in tune; Though large with promise hope may be, By future visions cast, Our memoried thoughts will yearn to see The happy little past. And you, my loyal little friend, (From May to June you go), What years of loyalty attend Great comradeship we know; Yet joy have me in place of tears To see your road depart, For whether east or west your years, A friend stays home at heart. Then gladly let the Springtime pass And Summer in its wake; Ahead are fields of flower and grass All fragrant for your sake: With hearts of joy we say farewell, With laughter, wave and nod, It's always May for us who dwell In seasons close to God. THE STORYTELLER Tim of the Tales they call me, With a welcome heart and hand; But little they hold my brother For all his cattle and land. If I be walking the high road From Clare that goes to the sea, A troop of the young run leaping To gather a story from me. Tim of the Tales, the folk say, Is known the world around, For children by taking his stories To their homes in foreign ground. I pity my brother his fortunes, And how he sits alone, With the money that keeps his body, But leaves his heart a stone. And sometimes do I be feeling A dream of death in my ear, And a heaven of children calling, "Tim of the Tales is here." MY FATHER'S TUNES My father had the gay good tunes, the like you'd seldom hear, A whole day could he whistle them, an' thin he'd up an' sing, The merry tunes an' twists o'them that suited all the year, An' you wouldn't ask but listen if yourself stood there a king. Early of a mornin' would he give "The Barefoot Boy" to us, An' later on "The Rocky Road" or maybe "Mountain Lark," "Trottin' to the Fair" was a liltin' heart of joy to us, An' whin we heard "The Coulin" sure the night was never dark. An' what's the good o' foolish tunes, the moilin' folks 'ud say, It's better teach the children work an' get the crock o' gold; Thin sorra take their wisdom whin it makes them sad an' gray,-- A man is fitter have a song that never lets him old. A stave of "Gillan's Apples" or a snatch of "Come Along With Me" Will warm the cockles o' your heart, an' life will keep its prime. Yarra, gold is all the richer whin it's "Danny, sing a song for me" Or what's the good o' money if you're dead afore your time. It's sense to do your turn o' work, it's healthy to be wise, An' have the little crock o' gold agin the day o' rain; But whin the ground is heaviest, your heart will feel the skies, If you know a little Irish song to lift the road o' pain. The learnin' an' the wealth we have are never sad an' gray with us, The dullest times in all the year are merry as the June: For we've the heart to up an' sing "Arise, an' come away with us," The way my father gave it, an' we laughin' in the tune. A SONG (For John McCormack) June of the trees in glory, June of the meadows gay! O, and it works a story To tell an October day. Blooms of the apple and cherry Toil for the far-off hours; Never is idleness merry, In song of the garden bowers. Brooks to the sea from mountains, Yea, and from field and vine: Rain and the sun are fountains That gather for wheat and wine. Cellar and loft shall glory, Table and hearth shall praise, Hearing October's story Of June and the merry days. A BALLAD OF FRANCE Ye who heed a nation's call And speed to arms therefor, Ye who fear your children's march To perils of the war,-- Soldiers of the deck and camp And mothers of our men, Hearken to a tale of France And tell it oft again. * * * In the east of France by the roads of war, (God save us evermore from Mars and Thor!) Up and down the fair land iron armies came, (Pity, Jesu, all who fell, calling Thy name). Pleasant all the fields were round every town, Garden airs went sweetly up, heaven smiled down; Till under leaden hail with flaming breath, Graves and ashen harvest were the keep of death. One little town stood, white on a hill, Chapel and hostel gates, farms and windmill, Chapel and countryside met the gunner's path, Till no blade of kindly grass hid from his wrath. Lo! When the terrain cleared out of murky air, When mid the ruins stalked death and despair, One figure stood erect, bright with day,-- Christ the Crucified, though His Cross was shot away. Flame and shot tore away all the tender wood, Yet with arms uplifted Christ His Figure stood; Out reached the blessing hands, meek bowed the head, Christ! The saving solace o'er the waste of dead. France tells the story, make our hearts know well, Christ His Figure stands against the gates of hell: Flame and shot may rive the fortress walls apart, Christ the Crucified will heal the breaking heart. Wear Him day and night, wherever be the war, (God save us evermore from Mars and Thor!) Flag and heart that keep Him fear not shot and flame, (Strengthen, Jesu, all who stand, calling Thy name). * * * Ye who guard a nation's call And speed to arms therefor, Ye who pray for brave lads gone To perils of the war; Soldiers of the fleet and fort And mothers of our men, In the shadow of the Cross Shall we find peace again. TO ONE IN SUCCESS A world's new faces greet you, Ten thousand quick with praise, But truer stay to meet you Old friends and other days: Let fickle changes hurt you, (The new go quick apart) One fame shall ne'er desert you In true hearts like this heart. THE LIFELONG WAR Still goes the strife; the anguish does not die. Stronger the flesh is grown from earthy years, In siege about my soul that upward peers To see and hold its Good. The spirit's eye Approves the better things; but senses spy The passing sweets, spurning the present fears, And take their moment's prize. Ah, then hot tears Deluge my soul, and contrite moans my cry! Courage, my heart: bright patience to the end! Few years remain; then goes the warring wall Of sensely flesh, that men will throw to earth. So be it; so the contrite soul shall wend A homeward way unto the Captain's call, Eternally to know contrition's worth. LINDEN LANE HOLY CROSS: MAY, 1917 (For Major Joseph W. O'Connor, '03) Birds are merry and the buds Come along with May: Lonely is the linden land For lads that went today. What calls the May of song But the fair young spring? Heard our boys another tune Sterner voices sing. Bugles blew by land and sea, And the tocsin drum; See, brave hearts go down the hill, Shouting, "Hail, we come." From the towers that show the Cross, Staunch the Flag waved out, And the royal Purple shook Joyous with the shout. Heigh-ho! And a lusty cheer, Down the linden lane: The pine grove looked but cannot tell If they'll come home again. Few may take the homeward road When the war is done: Where they fall or when they come, Hail, to the cause they won. Till the buds and the merry birds Come another May, Cross and Flag aloft shall bless Brave lads who went today. THE BOUNDARIES OF A HOUSE Along the north a mountain crest, A row of trees runs towards the west; The south is all a field for play, For work the east has marked a way; The night shows all the stars above, And the long, long day, a mother's love. ATTAINMENT Let me go back again. There is the road, O memory! The humble garden lane So young with me. Let me rebuild again The start of faith and hope by that abode; Amend with morning freshness all the code Of youth's desire; remap my chart's demesne With tuneful joy, and plan a far campaign For better marches in ambition's mode. Ah, no, my heart! More certain now the skies For joy abide: the cage of tree and sod, Horizons firm that faith and hope attain, Far realms of innocence in children's eyes, And hearts harmonious with the will of God:-- These might I miss if I were back again. THE PHILOSOPHERS The best of true philosophers Are the children, after all,-- The children with laughing hearts And the serious field and ball: They have a bowl and bubbles, And hours where rainbows are; They find, if ever the sun is hid, In every dark a star. But, O, the sorry men that make The wise books of our day! They cannot smile athwart a cloud, When black thoughts lead astray; They cannot add a simple sum, But talk like drunken men, And shut their eyes to keep out God When spring comes in again. Far simpler than the Rule of Three Are the laws of earth and sky; Yet fools will muddle all true thought, And pride will have its cry; The banners with their deadly words Go reeling on unfurled, And sin and sadness march along To the heartbreak of the world. THE PHILOSOPHERS But the children are the wise men, With the clearest heart and mind; If two and one are three, they say, Then truth is near to find; If this be now that once was not, If things must have a cause, Then very simple is the sum That God is in His laws. The world's men that are fools enough, They will not speak that way, But with a cloud of muddled thought They hide the light of day; Yet laughing words and candid truth Abide by field and hall, Where the best of true philosophers Are the children, after all. PREPAREDNESS I. THE DRUMMER BOY You never know when war may come, And that is why I keep a drum: For if all sudden in the night From east or west came battle fright, And you were sound asleep in bed, And very soon to join the dead, You then would gladly wish my drum Would warn you that the war had come. So that is why on afternoons I tell the neighborhood my tunes: Sometimes behind a fortress bench, Or where the hedges make a trench, I beat the drum with all my might, While people look with awful fright, Just as they would if war had come, And heard the warning of my drum. They must be thankful, I am sure, Because they now may feel secure, And rest so safe and sound in bed, Without wild dreams of fearful dread; For now they hear me all the day, As round the yard I march and play, To let them know if war should come They'll get the warning of my drum. II. THE SAILOR A sailor that rides the ocean wave, And I in my room at home: Where are the seas I fear to brave, Or the lands I may not roam? At the attic window I take my stand, And tighten the curtain sail, Then, ahoy! I ride the leagues of land, Whether in calm or gale. Tree at anchor along the road Bow as I speed along; At sunny brooks in the valley I load Cargoes of blossom and song; Stories I take on the passing wind From the plains and forest seas, And the Golden Fleece I yet will find, And the fruit of Hesperides. Steady I keep my watchful eyes, As I range the thousand miles, Till evening tides in western skies Turn gold the cloudland isles; Then fast is the hatch and dark the screen, And I bring my cabin light; With a wink I change to a submarine And drop in the sea of Night. WAR IN THE NORTH Not from Mars and not from Thor Comes the war, the welcome war, Many months we waited for To free us from the bondage Of Winter's gloomy reign: Valor to our hope is bound, Songs of courage loud resound, Vowed is Spring to win her ground Through all our northern country, From Oregon to Maine. All our loyal brave allies In the Southlands mobilize, Faith is sworn to our emprise, The scouting breezes whisper That help is sure today: Vanguards of the springtime rains Cannonade the hills and plains, Freeing them from Winter's chains, So birds and buds may flourish Around the throne of May. Hark! and hear the clarion call Bluebirds give by fence and wall! Look! The darts of sunlight fall, And red shields of the robins Ride boldly down the leas; Hail! The cherry banners shine, Onward comes the battle line,-- On! White dogwood waves the sign, And exile troops of blossoms Are sailing meadow seas. Winter's tyrant king retires; Spring leads on her legion choirs Where the hedges sound their lyres; The victor hills and valleys Ring merrily the tune: April cohorts guard the way For the great enthroning day, When the Princess of May Shall wed within our northlands The charming Prince of June. THE HAPPY TIME Two gloomy scenes may be, Or count you three: A building hope all crushed at morn, A bridal day in clouds of rain, And night that keeps a mother's pain For tidings of a child forlorn. Of happy times count more, Admit these four: A flower of promise rich with day, A son with victories that wear A halo on his mother's way: And friends whose hearts ring like a chime Across the world at Christmas time. THE TIME OF TRUCE Two young lads from childhood up Drank together friendship's cup: Joe was glad with Bill at play, Bill was home to Joe alway. On their friendship came the blight Of a little thoughtless fight; Then, alas! each passing day Farther bore these friends away. There was grief in either heart, Bleeding deep from sorrow's dart, When in thoughtfulness again Each beheld the other's pain. But the shades of night are furled When the morning takes the world, And the Christmas days of peace Make our little quarrels cease. Bill and Joe on Christmas Day Met as in the olden way; Bill put out his hand to Joe,-- It was Christmas Day, you know. Bill and Joe are friends again, And to them long years remain; Time may take them far away, They keep Christmas every day. BETHLEHEM O ye who sail Potomac's even tide To Vernon's shades, our Chieftain's hallowed mound; Or who at distant shrines high paeans sound In Alfred's cult, old England's morning pride; Or seek Versailles, conceited as a bride, With garish memories of kins strewn round; Or lay your spirit's cheek on Forum ground, For here a mighty Caesar lived and died: To these and other stones, O ye who speed, Since there, forsooth, a prince was passing great, More zealous let your heart's adoring heed The Child most Royal in a crib's estate. No poor so poor, no king more king than He: Come, better pilgrims, to this mystery. A VOW-DAY FLOWER (POVERTY, CHASTITY, OBEDIENCE) Three little leaves like shamrock, And the trefoil's love-lit eyes, Whether it takes the sunshine Or the shadows from the skies. And richer than rose or lily Is the flower he wears today, With triune bloom and fragrance From earth to heaven alway. Poverty is the low leaf, And one is chastely white, And the red love of obedience Goes up to God a light. Grow, good flower, and keep him Who wears your bloom today, Shadow and sunshine bless him, And the trefoil's heavenward way. THE TREE IN THE TENEMENT YARD (For T. A. Daly) America, Ireland and Italy, All have known this poor old tree. * * * A rickety fence goes round the yard And the noisy streets stand high: The grassless ground is brown and hard, And the cinder pathways, lined with shard, Sees but a bit of sky. Once the yard was fertile and fair, And lilac bushes near: And a Yankee counted with fretful care, Under the solacing shadows there, The gain of every year. The crowded walls of trade arose And gloomed the avenue: But a Munster man at each day's close Built in the tree his hope's rainbows, And saw his dreams come true. The years have thickened the darkened air, But the tree is still on guard: It comforts the young Italian there, Who sees the future blossoming fair From the tree in the tenement yard. * * * America, Ireland and Italy All have loved this poor old tree. OLD HUDSON ROVERS (For Joyce Kilmer) When the dreamy night is on, up the Hudson river, And the sheen of modern taste is dim and far away, Ghostly men on phantom rafts make the waters shiver, Laughing in the sibilance of the silver spray. Yea, and up the woodlands, staunch in moonlit weather, Go the ghostly horsemen, adventuresome to ride, White as mist the doublet-braize, bandolier and feather, Fleet as gallant Robin Hood in an eventide. Times are gone that knew the craft in the role of rovers, Fellows of the open, care could never load: Unalarmed for bed or board, they were leisure's lovers, Summer bloomed in story on the Hyde Park Road. Summer was a blossom, but the fruit was autumn, Fragrant haylofts for a bed, cider-cakes in store, Warmer was a cup they know, when the north wind caught 'em Down at Benny Havens' by the West Point shore. Idlers now-and loafers pass, joy is out of fashion, Honest fun that fooled a dog or knew a friendly gate, Now the craft are vagabonds, sick with modern passion, Riding up and down the shore, on an aching freight; Sullen are the battered looks, cheerless talk or tipsy, Sickly in the smoky air, starving in the day, Pining for a city's noise at Kingston or Po'keepsie, Eager more for Gotham and a great White Way. Rich is all the countryside, but glory has departed, What if yachts and mansions be, by the river's marge! Dim though was a hillside, lamps were happy-hearted, Near the cove of Rondout in a hut or barge. Silken styles are tyrants, fashion kills the playtime, Robs the heart of largess that is kindly to the poor, Richer were the freemen, welcome as the Maytime, Glad was boy or maiden, seeing Brennan of the moor. Send us back the olden knights, tell no law to track 'em, Give to boy and maid the storytellers as of yore, Millionaires in legend-wealth, though no bank would back 'em, But old Benny Havens by the West Point Shore. Off with lazy vagabonds, social ghosts that shiver, Give to worthy road-men the great green way, And we'll hear a song again up the Hudson river, Ringing from a drifting raft, set in silver spray. A WINTER MINSTER (For Fr. C. L. O'Donnell) The interlacing trees Arise in Gothic traceries, As if a vast cathedral deep and dim; And through the solemn atmosphere The low winds hymn Such thoughts as solitude will hear. To lead your way across Gray carpet aisles of moss Unto the chantry stalls, The sumach candelabra are alight; Along the cloister walls, Like chorister and acolyte, The shrubs are vested white; The dutiful monastic oak In his gray-friar cloak Keeps penitential ways And solemn orisons of praise; For beads upon the cincture-vine Red berries warm with color shine, And to their constant rosary The bedesmen firs incline; And fair as frescoes be Among the shrines of Italy, These lights and shadows are, Impalpable in gray and green Upon the hills afar And the gold westering sun between. The music! Hark! Oh, an it be no rapturous lark, Yet has the lesser chant The blessedness of song. The snowbird mendicant Intones the antiphon-- Et laboremus nos; And all the grottoed aisles along, Where servitors rejoice, The chorused echoes run-- Oremus nos. The inspiration of the breeze Gives every reed a voice From tenebrae and silences; Over the valleys borne, Come organ harmonies; And when the low winds call, The pines with miserere mourn A requiem musical, Softer than moonbeams fall Across the starry oriels of night, Flooding the azure round With hushed delight And sanctity of sound. THE DARK LITTLE ROSE IRELAND When shall we find the spring come in, And the fragrant air it blows? And when shall the bounty of summer win Fairer than fields of Camolin For the dark little Rose? Long was the winter, the storms how long! What flower may live i' the snows! No bloom shall last under heels of wrong, If the heart-blood be not deathless strong, As the dark little Rose. Sing hers the culture sweeter than rain That healed old Europe's woes; Older than bowers of Lille and Louvain Grew by the Rhine and the towns of Spain From the dark little Rose. Leagues in the sunlight never shall fail While the broad, round ocean flows; Though never a fleet goes up Kinsale, See, all the world is within the pale Of the dark little Rose. THE MONK MAELANFAID Maelanfaid saw a tiny bird A-grieving on the ground, And O, the sad lament he heard, That sorrow's self might sound: He could not read a note or word The song of grief inwound. Maelanfaid went within his cell To keep a fast and pray, To listen to a voice would tell The mystery away: What was the red long pain befell The bird of grief all day? "Maelanfaid," airy voices call, "MacOcha Molv is dead, Who killed no creature great or small, Who helped all life instead: Now griefs of bird and blossom fall Around his funeral bed." THE YOUNG ADVENTURERS We will go adventuring, will you come adventuring, Hail, to all who sail with us the seven pleasant seas: All the shores with lily bells, all the flutes of woodland dells Are calling like a legend upon a fragrant breeze. Throw away the haughty cares, children here are millionaires, Laughter take for baggage and give your laugh a song; We must sail the seas of grass, round the isles of clover pass, And delve in leagues of shadowland, when clouds come along. Caves are walled with treasure trove, rich as any south-sea cove, Bullion of the meadow where the gold sun flows; Round the reefs of mignonette, up the waves of violet, Fragrant go our sails and spars with attar of the rose. On, gay adventurers, bravely ride the billowy furze, Golden foil and dewy pearls are swaying to a tune: Quaff the brew of red raspberry through the vine veils gossamery. Till we turn when night comes down alleys of the moon. Yea, with laughter in our sails and our hearts a book of tales, Down the silver roadways, a homeward hymn we say:-- Praise the Lord ye great and small, flower and weed majestical, For pleasant seas that God gave adventurers today. THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH (For Osceola and Pocahontas) Was it a hundred years ago, Or was it but yesterday, When we found the roads that grow Blossom and song of May? Maybe it was but yesterday, Or a hundred years ago. The roads from Bersabee to Dan Are old and quickly tire, But to the heart of child or man Youth is a fairy fire: Our youthful roads, they never tire From Bersabee to Dan. Ponce de Leon found no spring, But legend's long, long ruth; But the grace of God is a magic thing Abides with chivalrous youth: The grace of God that brings no ruth For them who find the spring. There is a land, there is a May Beyond the graveyard tree; Ten thousand years are like a day Of a youth that we shall see: Our young hearts pass the graveyard tree To a land forever in May. THE BONNIE PRINCE O' SPRING The little green soldiers are here at last, With their waving blades and spears; And across the hills they are marching fast With the drill of a thousand years: And I wave afar, and I shout, Hurrah! Till I hear their echoing cheers. A bonnie prince is at their head, And his love the legions know: For he gives them rest where the twigs are red At the hedges cool in a row: And afoot are they soon to a birdlike tune On the northward march to go. Oh, I am leal to the marching men, To my bonnie Prince I'm true; For he tells me the way to his tented glen, And the secret password too: And he sets in my hair a blossom to wear, Like his own good horsemen do. Then I will follow on all the day Where the bonnie Prince has led, Till we drive the Winter foeman away And throne my Prince instead: And sing willaloo! With the birds, willaloo! For the Winter King is dead. ON A TRAIN (For Christine and Tom) Oases are charming 'mid the Afric sands, Beautiful is summer after rain; But the sweetest blossoms may be eyes and hands, And two playful children on a train. Aileen and her brother, home from holiday, Left behind them Narragansett town; Innocence like music followed all the way, Summer glowed upon the cheeks of brown. She that was their escort read a magazine: They were young, and trains are dull at night; All the passing signals, red and blue and green, Counted up the miles for young delight. I was there behind them, earnest in a book: Lo, the journey turned to fairyland, When, like magic mirrors, dusty windows took Aileen's dancing eyes and waving hand! That is how it happened on a creeping train, How a play began without a word,-- Peekaboo reflections in a window-pane, Such a story-hour was never heard. Aileen and her brother, strangers were to me; They were friendly for the cloth I wore; And through leagues of window, youthful play could see We were friends to be for evermore. So we passed the hamlets, passed the miles of night In a fairyland of silent games, Till the travel ended in the Worcester light,-- Yet we parted, strangers in our names. But a fortnight later, by an autumn tree, Aileen and her brother came my way, And another, glad to tell the names of them and me, And to hear how travellers can play. Life is but a journey, say we evermore, Passing lights the years have, like a train; Three good friends will travel up to heaven's door, With the world a merry window-pane. THE COLUMBINE Gray lonely rocks about thee stand, Ignored of sun and dew, Yet is thy breath upon the land, To thy vocation true. So come they character to me That works in sunless ways, And I shall learn to give with thee Dark hills a constant praise. TWO SEANICHIES (For Aedh) 'Tis the queerest trade we have, the two of us that go about, I that do the talkin', and the little lad that sings, We to tell the story of a Land you ought to know about,-- The wonder land of Erin and the memories it brings. Sure it is a wonder land, richer than the books it is, Full of magic stories and a hopeful heart of song; Faith, and near the mountains and the sunny lakes and brooks it is, Like the olden seanichies, the pair of us belong. Far and broad our journeyin', up and down the land we go, Today among the mountains and tomorrow by the sea; Pleasant are the roads with us, and to a welcome grand we go, Erin wins the heart of you, whoever you may be. Erin's heart will capture you, if you will but listen now, Great she was afore the Danes and all her Saxon foes, After that the sorrows came, sure your eyes will glisten now, Up, my lad, and sing for them "The Dark Little Rose." Rest awhile and I will tell the fame of Tara's Hall to them, All the deeds of valor and a thousand scenes of joy, Wicklow hills and Derry fields where Killarney calls to them. Come, my lad, it's Ninety-Eight and sing "The Croppy Boy." Long ago the stranger came and learned to love the ways of her, Irish more than Irish the Norman foe became; Sure and here across the sea you give your hearts to praise of her, The tear and smile within her eyes that ever are the same. Not for gold or little fame the two of us to go about, I that do the talkin', and the little lad that sings, We to win your love for her, the Land you're glad to know about, The wonder land of Erin and the memories it brings. THE GREEN BRIGADE ON THE FIELD OF CORN Where is the war ye march unto, From the early tents of morn? And what are the deeds ye hope to do, Brave Grenadiers of Corn? Pearls of the dew are on your hair, And the jewels of morning light, Pennants of green ye fling to the air, And the tall plumes waving bright. Gaily away and steady ye go, Never a faltering line: Forward! I follow and try to know Word of your countersign: Hist! The spies of the tyrant sun Eagerly watch your plan, Lavish with bribes of gold, they run Down to your outmost man. Steady, good lads, go bravely on By the parching hills of pain, An armor of shade ye soon may don And meet the allies of rain: And night in the bivouac hours will sing Praise of the march ye made, And into your pockets good gold will bring, Men of the Green Brigade. Yea, and upon September's field, When the long campaign is done, With arms up-stacked, your hearts will yield Conquest of rain and sun: The pennants and plumes will then be sere, Your pearls delight no morn, But tents of plenty will bless the year, Brave Grenadiers of Corn. ALLELUIA HEIGHT Obedience to the seasons' marshall-rod, That is a law of God, Here beauty passes with her gorgeous train, On paths that range from bud to grain. O, here the searching eyes In traffic for the soul's good gain Earn wealth of rare delight. Far pathways of surprise, In color's frumenty bedight, Lead off from avenues of day Through miles of pageantries: And from the starry chancels of the night And the inscrutable farther skies, Beyond where trackless comets stray, Outspreads a world in thought's array. And lo! the heart's true voices sing From the exulting reverent breast, And lips proclaim, with adoration blessed, Glad Alleluias to the King. Prompt is our praise unto a jewelled queen In all her courtly splendor set, (Fair as those fairylands are seen By childhood's other sight): But if in pauper mien, Too poor for stray regret Where crowded streets affright She stood in beggary, Unknown, though faithful to her high degree,-- O, then her praise 'twere easy to forget. Yet ever here, For all of time's prompt fickleness-- From plenteous June and wide largess Of full midsummer days, To dwarf December pitiless Amid the earth's uncomplimented ways-- Yea, constant through the changeful year, This queenly Height commands our praise. To stand in meek unflinching hardihood When fortune blows its storm of fright, And work to full effect that good Resolved in open days of clearer sight-- O, this is worth! That daily sees the soul To braver liberties give birth, That heeds not time's annoy, And hears surrounding voices roll Perennial circumstance of joy. Then come not only when the springtime blows The old familiar strangeness of its breath Across the long-lain snows, And chants her resurrected songs About the tombs of death; Nor yet when summer glows In roseate throngs And works her plenitude of deeds By tangled dells and waving meads, Come here in beauty's pilgrimage: Nor when the autumn reads Illuminate her page With tints of magicry besprent Of iridescent wonderment-- (As scrolls in old monastic towers, Done in an earnest far-off age). But choose to come in winter hours To see how character can live, How noble character will give Through desolate distress And cold neglect's duress, The fulness of its powers And win the soul its victor sign. Yea, come when in a peasant gown, Amid the ample banners of the pine, And the resounding harpers of the vine, Lone winter holds upon the Height Her court in full renown. Obedient her courtiers go, Their gonfalons aloft and bright, And scatter pearls of snow; Her sturdy knighthood wear for crown Prismatic sheen in young delight, And wave the cedar oriflamme on high; While windward heralds cry, Across the battlements of earth To parapets along the sky, The lauds of character's full worth. The winter passes and the days come in Vibrant with spring. And men find welcome at the Easter tomb, Reward they win, Who make their hearts with courage sing Through Lenten opportunity of gloom: (Not as the Pharisees, With faces lacrimose, Who wear pretence of ashen woes, And murmur like the tuneless bees, Whose honies are hypocrisies), But men of character's delight, Who like this valiant Height Still serving through the bleakest day, With humble offerings of sound and sight, Do steadfast stand and pray: O, count those souls of noble worth, And God's good pleasure on His earth, Who still, if joy or pain Brings sun or rain, Heroic sing The law of Alleluia to the King. 
3295	----	THE POEMS of EMMA LAZARUS in Two Volumes VOL. I. Narrative, Lyric, and dramatic TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES: "Sunrise" is an elegy to James A. Garfield, 20th President of the United States, who died on September 19, 1881, from a gunshot wound received in an assassination attempt in July of that year. "The New Colossus" is engraved on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. CONTENTS. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF EMMA LAZARUS. EPOCHS.-- I. Youth. II. Regret. III. Longing. IV. Storm. V. Surprise. VI. Grief. VII. Acceptance. VIII. Loneliness. IX. Sympathy. X. Patience. XI. Hope. XII. Compensation. XIII. Faith. XIV. Work. XV. Victory. XVI. Peace. HOW LONG! HEROES. ADMETUS. TANNHAUSER. LINKS. MATINS. SAINT ROMUALDO. AFTERNOON. PHANTASIES.-- I. Evening. II. Aspiration. III. Wherefore? IV. Fancies. V. In the Night. VI. Faerie. VII. Confused Dreams. ON THE PROPOSAL TO ERECT A MONUMENT IN ENGLAND TO LORD BYRON. ARABESQUE. AGAMEMNON'S TOMB. SIC SEMPER LIBERATORIBUS. DON RAFAEL. OFF ROUGH POINT MATER AMABILIS. FOG. THE ELIXIR. SONG. SPRING LONGING. Spring Longing. THE SOUTH. SPRING STAR. A JUNE NIGHT. MAGNETISM AUGUST MOON. SUNRISE. A MASQUE OF VENICE. AUTUMN SADNESS. SONNETS. Echoes. Success. The New Colossus. Chopin I., II., III., IV. Symphonic Studies Prelude, I., II., III., IV., V., VI., Epilogue. Long Island Sound. Destiny. 1879. From one Augur to Another. The Cranes of Ibycus. Critic and Poet. St. Michael's Chapel. Life and Art. Sympathy. Youth and Death. Age and Death. City Visions. Influence. Restlessness. THE SPAGNOLETTO: A Play in Five Acts. Publisher's note: Thanks are due to the Editors of "The Century," Lippincott's Magazine, and "The Critic," for their courtesy in allowing the poems published by them to be reprinted in these pages. EMMA LAZARUS. (Written for "The Century Magazine") Born July 22, 1849; Died November 19, 1887. One hesitates to lift the veil and throw the light upon a life so hidden and a personality so withdrawn as that of Emma Lazarus; but while her memory is fresh, and the echo of her songs still lingers in these pages, we feel it a duty to call up her presence once more, and to note the traits that made it remarkable and worthy to shine out clearly before the world. Of dramatic episode or climax in her life there is none; outwardly all was placid and serene, like an untroubled stream whose depths alone hold the strong, quick tide. The story of her life is the story of a mind, of a spirit, ever seeking, ever striving, and pressing onward and upward to new truth and light. Her works are the mirror of this progress. In reviewing them, the first point that strikes us is the precocity, or rather the spontaneity, of her poetic gift. She was a born singer; poetry was her natural language, and to write was less effort than to speak, for she was a shy, sensitive child, with strange reserves and reticences, not easily putting herself "en rapport" with those around her. Books were her world from her earliest years; in them she literally lost and found herself. She was eleven years old when the War of Succession broke out, which inspired her first lyric outbursts. Her poems and translations written between the ages of fourteen and seventeen were collected, and constituted her first published volume. Crude and immature as these productions naturally were, and utterly condemned by the writer's later judgment, they are, nevertheless, highly interesting and characteristic, giving, as they do, the keynote of much that afterwards unfolded itself in her life. One cannot fail to be rather painfully impressed by the profound melancholy pervading the book. The opening poem is "In Memoriam,"--on the death of a school friend and companion; and the two following poems also have death for theme. "On a Lock of my Mother's Hair" gives us reflections on growing old. These are the four poems written at the age of fourteen. There is not a wholly glad and joyous strain in the volume, and we might smile at the recurrence of broken vows, broken hearts, and broken lives in the experience of this maiden just entered upon her teens, were it not that the innocent child herself is in such deadly earnest. The two long narrative poems, "Bertha" and "Elfrida," are tragic in the extreme. Both are dashed off apparently at white heat: "Elfrida," over fifteen hundred lines of blank verse, in two weeks; "Bertha," in three and a half. We have said that Emma Lazarus was a born singer, but she did not sing, like a bird, for joy of being alive; and of being young, alas! there is no hint in these youthful effusions, except inasmuch as this unrelieved gloom, this ignorance of "values," so to speak, is a sign of youth, common especially among gifted persons of acute and premature sensibilities, whose imagination, not yet focused by reality, overreached the mark. With Emma Lazarus, however, this sombre streak has a deeper root; something of birth and temperament is in it--the stamp and heritage of a race born to suffer. But dominant and fundamental though it was, Hebraism was only latent thus far. It was classic and romantic art that first attracted and inspired her. She pictures Aphrodite the beautiful, arising from the waves, and the beautiful Apollo and his loves,--Daphne, pursued by the god, changing into the laurel, and the enamored Clytie into the faithful sunflower. Beauty, for its own sake, supreme and unconditional, charmed her primarily and to the end. Her restless spirit found repose in the pagan idea,--the absolute unity and identity of man with nature, as symbolized in the Greek myths, where every natural force becomes a person, and where, in turn, persons pass with equal readiness and freedom back into nature again. In this connection a name would suggest itself even if it did not appear,--Heine, the Greek, Heine the Jew, Heine the Romanticist, as Emma Lazarus herself has styled him; and already in this early volume of hers we have trace of the kinship and affinity that afterwards so plainly declared itself. Foremost among the translations are a number of his songs, rendered with a finesse and a literalness that are rarely combined. Four years later, at the age of twenty-one, she published her second volume, "Admetus and Other Poems," which at once took rank as literature both in America and England, and challenged comparison with the work of established writers. Of classic themes we have "Admetus" and "Orpheus," and of romantic the legend of Tannhauser and of the saintly Lohengrin. All are treated with an artistic finish that shows perfect mastery of her craft, without detracting from the freshness and flow of her inspiration. While sounding no absolutely new note in the world, she yet makes us aware of a talent of unusual distinction, and a highly endowed nature,--a sort of tact of sentiment and expression, an instinct of the true and beautiful, and that quick intuition which is like second-sight in its sensitiveness to apprehend and respond to external stimulus. But it is not the purely imaginative poems in this volume that most deeply interest us. We come upon experience of life in these pages; not in the ordinary sense, however, of outward activity and movement, but in the hidden undercurrent of being. "The epochs of our life are not in the visible facts, but in the silent thoughts by the wayside as we walk." This is the motto, drawn from Emerson, which she chooses for her poem of "Epochs," which marks a pivotal moment in her life. Difficult to analyze, difficult above all to convey, if we would not encroach upon the domain of private and personal experience, is the drift of this poem, or rather cycle of poems, that ring throughout with a deeper accent and a more direct appeal than has yet made itself felt. It is the drama of the human soul,--"the mystic winged and flickering butterfly," "flitting between earth and sky," in its passage from birth to death. A golden morning of June! "Sweet empty sky without a stain." Sunlight and mist and "ripple of rain-fed rills." "A murmur and a singing manifold." "What simple things be these the soul to raise To bounding joy, and make young pulses beat With nameless pleasure, finding life so sweet!" Such is youth, a June day, fair and fresh and tender with dreams and longing and vague desire. The morn lingers and passes, but the noon has not reached its height before the clouds begin to rise, the sunshine dies, the air grows thick and heavy, the lightnings flash, the thunder breaks among the hills, rolls and gathers and grows, until Behold, yon bolt struck home, And over ruined fields the storm hath come." Now we have the phases of the soul,--the shock and surprise of grief in the face of the world made desolate. Loneliness and despair for a space, and then, like stars in the night, the new births of the spirit, the wonderful outcoming from sorrow: the mild light of patience at first; hope and faith kindled afresh in the very jaws of evil; the new meaning and worth of life beyond sorrow, beyond joy; and finally duty, the holiest word of all, that leads at last to victory and peace. The poem rounds and completes itself with the close of "the long, rich day," and the release of "The mystic winged and flickering butterfly, A human soul, that drifts at liberty, Ah! who can tell to what strange paradise, To what undreamed-of fields and lofty skies!" We have dwelt at some length upon this poem, which seems to us, in a certain sense, subjective and biographical; but upon closer analysis there is still another conclusion to arrive at. In "Epochs" we have, doubtless, the impress of a calamity brought very near to the writer, and profoundly working upon her sensibilities; not however by direct, but reflex action, as it were, and through sympathetic emotion--the emotion of the deeply-stirred spectator, of the artist, the poet who lives in the lives of others, and makes their joys and their sorrows his own. Before dismissing this volume we may point out another clue as to the shaping of mind and character. The poem of "Admetus" is dedicated "to my friend Ralph Waldo Emerson." Emma Lazarus was between seventeen and eighteen years of age when the writings of Emerson fell into her hands, and it would be difficult to over-estimate the impression produced upon her. As she afterwards wrote: "To how many thousand youthful hearts has not his word been the beacon--nay, more, the guiding star--that led them safely through periods of mental storm and struggle!" Of no one is this more true than herself. Left, to a certain extent, without compass or guide, without any positive or effective religious training, this was the first great moral revelation of her life. We can easily realize the chaos and ferment of an over-stimulated brain, steeped in romantic literature, and given over to the wayward leadings of the imagination. Who can tell what is true, what is false, in a world where fantasy is as real as fact? Emerson's word fell like truth itself, "a shaft of light shot from the zenith," a golden rule of thought and action. His books were bread and wine to her, and she absorbed them into her very being. She felt herself invincibly drawn to the master, "that fount of wisdom and goodness," and it was her great privilege during these years to be brought into personal relations with him. From the first he showed her a marked interest and sympathy, which became for her one of the most valued possessions of her life. He criticised her work with the fine appreciation and discrimination that made him quick to discern the quality of her talent as well as of her personality, and he was no doubt attracted by her almost transparent sincerity and singleness of soul, as well as by the simplicity and modesty that would have been unusual even in a person not gifted. He constituted himself, in a way, her literary mentor, advised her as to the books she should read and the attitude of mind she should cultivate. For some years he corresponded with her very faithfully; his letters are full of noble and characteristic utterances, and give evidence of a warm regard that in itself was a stimulus and a high incentive. But encouragement even from so illustrious a source failed to elate the young poetess, or even to give her a due sense of the importance and value of her work, or the dignity of her vocation. We have already alluded to her modesty in her unwillingness to assert herself or claim any prerogative,--something even morbid and exaggerated, which we know not how to define, whether as over- sensitiveness or indifference. Once finished, the heat and glow of composition spent, her writings apparently ceased to interest her. She often resented any allusion to them on the part of intimate friends, and the public verdict as to their excellence could not reassure or satisfy her. The explanation is not far, perhaps, to seek. Was it not the "Ewig-Weibliche" that allows no prestige but its own? Emma Lazarus was a true woman, too distinctly feminine to wish to be exceptional, or to stand alone and apart, even by virtue of superiority. A word now as to her life and surroundings. She was one of a family of seven, and her parents were both living. Her winters were passed in New York, and her summers by the sea. In both places her life was essentially quiet and retired. The success of her book had been mainly in the world of letters. In no wise tricked out to catch the public eye, her writings had not yet made her a conspicuous figure, but were destined slowly to take their proper place and give her the rank that she afterwards held. For some years now almost everything that she wrote was published in "Lippincott's Magazine," then edited by John Foster Kirk, and we shall still find in her poems the method and movement of her life. Nature is still the fount and mirror, reflecting, and again reflected, in the soul. We have picture after picture, almost to satiety, until we grow conscious of a lack of substance and body and of vital play to the thought, as though the brain were spending itself in dreamings and reverie, the heart feeding upon itself, and the life choked by its own fullness without due outlet. Happily, however, the heavy cloud of sadness has lifted, and we feel the subsidence of waves after a storm. She sings "Matins:"-- "Does not the morn break thus, Swift, bright, victorious, With new skies cleared for us Over the soul storm-tost? Her night was long and deep, Strange visions vexed her sleep, Strange sorrows bade her weep, Her faith in dawn was lost. "No halt, no rest for her, The immortal wanderer From sphere to higher sphere Toward the pure source of day. The new light shames her fears, Her faithlessness and tears, As the new sun appears To light her god-like way." Nature is the perpetual resource and consolation. "'T is good to be alive!" she says, and why? Simply, "To see the light That plays upon the grass, to feel (and sigh With perfect pleasure) the mild breeze stir Among the garden roses, red and white, With whiffs of fragrancy." She gives us the breath of the pines and of the cool, salt seas, "illimitably sparkling." Her ears drink the ripple of the tide, and she stops "To gaze as one who is not satisfied With gazing at the large, bright, breathing sea." "Phantasies" (after Robert Schumann) is the most complete and perfect poem of this period. Like "Epochs," it is a cycle of poems, and the verse has caught the very trick of music,--alluring, baffling, and evasive. This time we have the landscape of the night, the glamour of moon and stars,--pictures half real and half unreal, mystic imaginings, fancies, dreams, and the enchantment of "faerie," and throughout the unanswered cry, the eternal "Wherefore" of destiny. Dawn ends the song with a fine clear note, the return of day, night's misty phantoms rolled away, and the world itself, again green, sparkling and breathing freshness. In 1874 she published "Alide," a romance in prose drawn from Goethe's autobiography. It may be of interest to quote the letter she received from Tourgeneff on this occasion:-- "Although, generally speaking, I do not think it advisable to take celebrated men, especially poets and artists, as a subject for a novel, still I am truly glad to say that I have read your book with the liveliest interest. It is very sincere and very poetical at the same time; the life and spirit of Germany have no secrets for you, and your characters are drawn with a pencil as delicate as it is strong. I feel very proud of the approbation you give to my works, and of the influence you kindly attribute to them on your own talent; an author who write as you do is not a pupil in art any more; he is not far from being himself a master." Charming and graceful words, of which the young writer was justly proud. About this time occurred the death of her mother, the first break in the home and family circle. In August of 1876 she made a visit to Concord, at the Emersons', memorable enough for her to keep a journal and note down every incident and detail. Very touching to read now, in its almost childlike simplicity, is this record of "persons that pass and shadows that remain." Mr. Emerson himself meets her at the station, and drives with her in his little one-horse wagon to his home, the gray square house, with dark green blinds, set amidst noble trees. A glimpse of the family,--"the stately, white-haired Mrs. Emerson, and the beautiful, faithful Ellen, whose figure seems always to stand by the side of her august father." Then the picture of Concord itself, lovely and smiling, with its quiet meadows, quiet slopes, and quietest of rivers. She meets the little set of Concord people: Mr. Alcott, for whom she does not share Mr. Emerson's enthusiasm; and William Ellery Channing, whose figure stands out like a gnarled and twisted scrub-oak,--a pathetic, impossible creature, whose cranks and oddities were submitted to on account of an innate nobility of character. "Generally crabbed and reticent with strangers, he took a liking to me," says Emma Lazarus. "The bond of our sympathy was my admiration for Thoreau, whose memory he actually worships, having been his constant companion in his best days, and his daily attendant in the last years of illness and heroic suffering. I do not know whether I was most touched by the thought of the unique, lofty character that had inspired this depth and fervor of friendship, or by the pathetic constancy and pure affection of the poor, desolate old man before me, who tried to conceal his tenderness and sense of irremediable loss by a show of gruffness and philosophy. He never speaks of Thoreau's death," she says, "but always 'Thoreau's loss,' or 'when I lost Mr. Thoreau,' or 'when Mr. Thoreau went away from Concord;' nor would he confess that he missed him, for there was not a day, an hour, a moment, when he did not feel that his friend was still with him and had never left him. And yet a day or two after," she goes on to say, "when I sat with him in the sunlit wood, looking at the gorgeous blue and silver summer sky, he turned to me and said: 'Just half of the world died for me when I lost Mr. Thoreau. None of it looks the same as when I looked at it with him.'... He took me through the woods and pointed out to me every spot visited and described by his friend. Where the hut stood is a little pile of stones, and a sign, 'Site of Thoreau's Hut,' and a few steps beyond is the pond with thickly-wooded shore,--everything exquisitely peaceful and beautiful in the afternoon light, and not a sound to be heard except the crickets or the 'z-ing' of the locusts which Thoreau has described. Farther on he pointed out to me, in the distant landscape, a low roof, the only one visible, which was the roof of Thoreau's birthplace. He had been over there many times, he said, since he lost Mr. Thoreau, but had never gone in,--he was afraid it might look lonely! But he had often sat on a rock in front of the house and looked at it." On parting from his young friend, Mr. Channing gave her a package, which proved to be a copy of his own book on Thoreau, and the pocket compass which Thoreau carried to the Maine woods and on all his excursions. Before leaving the Emersons she received the proof-sheets of her drama of "The Spagnoletto," which was being printed for private circulation. She showed them to Mr. Emerson, who had expressed a wish to see them, and, after reading them, he gave them back to her with the comment that they were "good." She playfully asked him if he would not give her a bigger word to take home to the family. He laughed, and said he did not know of any; but he went on to tell her that he had taken it up, not expecting to read it through, and had not been able to put it down. Every word and line told of richness in the poetry, he said, and as far as he could judge the play had great dramatic opportunities. Early in the autumn "The Spagnoletto" appeared,--a tragedy in five acts, the scene laid in Italy, 1655. Without a doubt, every one in these days will take up with misgiving, and like Mr. Emerson "not expecting to read it through," a five-act tragedy of the seventeenth century, so far removed apparently from the age and present actualities,--so opposed to the "Modernite," which has come to be the last word of art. Moreover, great names at once appear; great shades arise to rebuke the presumptuous new-comer in this highest realm of expression. "The Spagnoletto" has grave defects that would probably preclude its ever being represented on the stage. The denoument especially is unfortunate, and sins against our moral and aesthetic instinct. The wretched, tiger-like father stabs himself in the presence of his crushed and erring daughter, so that she may forever be haunted by the horror and the retribution of his death. We are left suspended, as it were, over an abyss, our moral judgment thwarted, our humanity outraged. But "The Spagnoletto" is, nevertheless, a remarkable production, and pitched in another key from anything the writer has yet given us. Heretofore we have only had quiet, reflective, passive emotion: now we have a storm and sweep of passion for which we were quite unprepared. Ribera's character is charged like a thunder-cloud with dramatic elements. Maria Rosa is the child of her father, fired at a flash, "deaf, dumb, and blind" at the touch of passion. "Does love steal gently o'er our soul?" she asks; "What if he come, A cloud, a fire, a whirlwind?" and then the cry: "O my God! This awful joy in mine own heart is love." Again: "While you are here the one thing real to me In all the universe is love." Exquisitely tender and refined are the love scenes--at the ball and in the garden--between the dashing prince-lover in search of his pleasure and the devoted girl with her heart in her eyes, on her lips, in her hand. Behind them, always like a tragic fate, the somber figure of the Spagnoletto, and over all the glow and color and soul of Italy. In 1881 appeared the translation of Heine's poems and ballads, which was generally accepted as the best version of that untranslatable poet. Very curious is the link between that bitter, mocking, cynic spirit and the refined, gentle spirit of Emma Lazarus. Charmed by the magic of his verse, the iridescent play of his fancy, and the sudden cry of the heart piercing through it all, she is as yet unaware or only vaguely conscious of the of the real bond between them: the sympathy in the blood, the deep, tragic, Judaic passion of eighteen hundred years that was smouldering in her own heart, soon to break out and change the whole current of thought and feeling. Already, in 1879, the storm was gathering. In a distant province of Russia at first, then on the banks of the Volga, and finally in Moscow itself, the old cry was raised, the hideous mediaeval charge revived, and the standard of persecution unfurled against the Jews. Province after province took it up. In Bulgaria, Servia, and, above all, Roumania, where, we were told, the sword of the Czar had been drawn to protect the oppressed, Christian atrocities took the place of Moslem atrocities, and history turned a page backward into the dark annals of violence and crime. And not alone in despotic Russia, but in Germany, the seat of modern philosophic thought and culture, the rage of Anti-Semitism broke out and spread with fatal ease and potency. In Berlin itself tumults and riots were threatened. We in America could scarcely comprehend the situation or credit the reports, and for a while we shut our eyes and ears to the facts; but we were soon rudely awakened from our insensibility, and forced to face the truth. It was in England that the voice was first raised in behalf of justice and humanity. In January, 1881, there appeared in the "London Times" a series of articles, carefully compiled on the testimony of eye-witnesses, and confirmed by official documents, records, etc., giving an account of events that had been taking place in southern and western Russia during a period of nine months, between April and December of 1880. We do not need to recall the sickening details. The headings will suffice: outrage, murder, arson, and pillage, and the result,--100,000 Jewish families made homeless and destitute, and nearly $100,000,000 worth of property destroyed. Nor need we recall the generous outburst of sympathy and indignation from America. "It is not that it is the oppression of Jews by Russia," said Mr. Evarts in the meeting at Chickering Hall Wednesday evening, February 4; "it is that it is the oppression of men and women, and we are men and women." So spoke civilized Christendom, and for Judaism,--who can describe that thrill of brotherhood, quickened anew, the immortal pledge of the race, made one again through sorrow? For Emma Lazarus it was a trumpet call that awoke slumbering and unguessed echoes. All this time she had been seeking heroic ideals in alien stock, soulless and far removed; in pagan mythology and mystic, mediaeval Christianity, ignoring her very birthright,--the majestic vista of the past, down which, "high above flood and fire," had been conveyed the precious scroll of the Moral Law. Hitherto Judaism had been a dead letter to her. Of Portuguese descent, her family had always been members of the oldest and most orthodox congregation of New York, where strict adherence to custom and ceremonial was the watchword of faith; but it was only during her childhood and earliest years that she attended the synagogue, and conformed to the prescribed rites and usages which she had now long since abandoned as obsolete and having no bearing on modern life. Nor had she any great enthusiasm for her own people. As late as April, 1882, she published in "The Century Magazine" an article written probably some months before, entitled "Was the Earl of Beaconsfield a Representative Jew?" in which she is disposed to accept as the type of the modern Jew the brilliant, successful, but not over-scrupulous chevalier d'industrie. In view of subsequent, or rather contemporaneous events, the closing paragraph of the article in question is worthy of being cited:-- "Thus far their religion [the Jewish], whose mere preservation under such adverse conditions seems little short of a miracle, has been deprived of the natural means of development and progress, and has remained a stationary force. The next hundred years will, in our opinion be the test of their vitality as a people; the phase of toleration upon which they are only now entering will prove whether or not they are capable of growth." By a curious, almost fateful juxtaposition, in the same number of the magazine appeared Madame Ragozin's defense of Russian barbarity, and in the following (May) number Emma Lazarus's impassioned appeal and reply, "Russian Christianity versus Modern Judaism." From this time dated the crusade that she undertook in behalf of her race, and the consequent expansion of all her faculties, the growth of spiritual power which always ensues when a great cause is espoused and a strong conviction enters the soul. Her verse rang out as it had never rung before,--a clarion note, calling a people to heroic action and unity, to the consciousness and fulfillment of a grand destiny. When has Judaism been so stirred as by "The Crowing of the Red Cock" and THE BANNER OF THE JEW. Wake, Israel, wake! Recall to-day The glorious Maccabean rage, The sire heroic, hoary-gray, His five-fold lion-lineage; The Wise, the Elect, the Help-of-God, The Burst-of-Spring, the Avenging Rod. From Mizpeh's mountain ridge they saw Jerusalem's empty streets; her shrine Laid waste where Greeks profaned the Law With idol and with pagan sign. Mourners in tattered black were there With ashes sprinkled on their hair. Then from the stony peak there rang A blast to ope the graves; down poured The Maccabean clan, who sang Their battle anthem to the Lord. Five heroes lead, and following, see Ten thousand rush to victory! Oh for Jerusalem's trumpet now, To blow a blast of shattering power, To wake the sleeper high and low, And rouse them to the urgent hour! No hand for vengeance, but to save, A million naked swords should wave. Oh, deem not dead that martial fire, Say not the mystic flame is spent! With Moses' law and David's lyre, Your ancient strength remains unbent. Let but an Ezra rise anew, To lift the BANNER OF THE JEW! A rag, a mock at first,--erelong When men have bled and women wept, To guard its precious folds from wrong, Even they who shrunk, even they who slept, Shall leap to bless it and to save. Strike! for the brave revere the brave! The dead forms burst their bonds and lived again. She sings "Rosh Hashanah" (the Jewish New Year) and "Hanuckah (the Feast of Lights):-- "Kindle the taper like the steadfast star Ablaze on Evening's forehead o'er the earth, And add each night a lustre till afar An eight-fold splendor shine above thy hearth. Clash, Israel, the cymbals, touch the lyre, Blow the brass trumpet and the harsh-tongued horn; Chant psalms of victory till the heart take fire, The Maccabean spirit leap new-born." And "The New Ezekiel:"-- "What! can these dead bones live, whose sap is dried By twenty scorching centuries of wrong? Is this the House of Israel whose pride Is as a tale that's told, an ancient song? Are these ignoble relics all that live Of psalmist, priest, and prophet? Can the breath Of very heaven bid these bones revive, Open the graves, and clothe the ribs of death? Yea, Prophesy, the Lord hath said again: Say to the wind, come forth and breathe afresh, Even that they may live, upon these slain, And bone to bone shall leap, and flesh to flesh. The spirit is not dead, proclaim the word. Where lay dead bones a host of armed men stand! I ope your graves, my people, saith the Lord, And I shall place you living in your land." Her whole being renewed and refreshed itself at its very source. She threw herself into the study of her race, its language, literature, and history. Breaking the outward crust, she pierced to the heart of the faith and "the miracle" of its survival. What was it other than the ever-present, ever-vivifying spirit itself, which cannot die,--the religious and ethical zeal which fires the whole history of the people, and of which she herself felt the living glow within her own soul? She had come upon the secret and the genius of Judaism,--that absolute interpenetration and transfusion of spirit with body and substance which, taken literally, often reduces itself to a question of food and drink, a dietary regulation, and again, in proper splendor, incarnates itself and shines out before humanity in the prophets, teachers, and saviors of mankind. Those were busy, fruitful years for Emma Lazarus, who worked, not with the pen alone, but in the field of practical and beneficent activity. For there was an immense task to accomplish. The tide of immigration had set in, and ship after ship came laden with hunted human beings flying from their fellow-men, while all the time, like a tocsin, rang the terrible story of cruelty and persecution,--horrors that the pen refuses to dwell upon. By the hundreds and thousands they flocked upon our shores,--helpless, innocent victims of injustice and oppression, panic-stricken in the midst of strange and utterly new surroundings. Emma Lazarus came into personal contact with these people, and visited them in their refuge on Ward Island. While under the influence of all the emotions aroused by this great crisis in the history of her race, she wrote the "Dance of Death," a drama of persecution of the twelfth century, founded upon the authentic records,--unquestionably her finest work in grasp and scope, and, above all, in moral elevation and purport. The scene is laid in Nordhausen, a free city in Thuringia, where the Jews, living, as the deemed, in absolute security and peace, were caught up in the wave of persecution that swept over Europe at that time. Accused of poisoning the wells and causing the pestilence, or black death, as it was called, they were condemned to be burned. We do not here intend to enter upon a critical or literary analysis of the play, or to point out dramatic merits or defects, but we should like to make its readers feel with us the holy ardor and impulse of the writer and the spiritual import of the work. The action is without surprise, the doom fixed from the first; but so glowing is the canvas with local and historic color, so vital and intense the movement, so resistless, the "internal evidence," if we may call it thus, penetrating its very substance and form, that we are swept along as by a wave of human sympathy and grief. In contrast with "The Spagnoletto," how large is the theme and how all-embracing the catastrophe! In place of the personal we have the drama of the universal. Love is only a flash now,--a dream caught sight of and at once renounced at a higher claim. "Have you no smile to welcome love with, Liebhaid? Why should you tremble? Prince, I am afraid! Afraid of my own heart, my unfathomed joy, A blasphemy against my father's grief, My people's agony! "What good shall come, forswearing kith and God, To follow the allurements of the heart?" asks the distracted maiden, torn between her love for he princely wooer and her devotion to the people among whom her lot has been cast. "O God! How shall I pray for strength to love him less Than mine own soul! No more of that, I am all Israel's now. Till this cloud pass, I have no thought, no passion, no desire, Save for my people." Individuals perish, but great ideas survive,--fortitude and courage, and that exalted loyalty and devotion to principle which alone are worth living and dying for. The Jews pass by in procession--men, women, and children--on their way to the flames, to the sound of music, and in festal array, carrying the gold and silver vessels, the roll of the law, the perpetual lamp and the seven branched silver candle-stick of the synagogue. The crowd hoot and jeer at them. "The misers! they will take their gems and gold Down to the grave!" "Let us rejoice" sing the Jewish youths in chorus; and the maidens:-- "Our feet stand within thy gates, O Zion! Within thy portals, O Jerusalem!" The flames rise and dart among them; their garments wave, their jewels flash, as they dance and sing in the crimson blaze. The music ceases, a sound of crashing boards is heard and a great cry,--"Hallelujah!" What a glory and consecration of the martyrdom! Where shall we find a more triumphant vindication and supreme victory of spirit over matter? "I see, I see, How Israel's ever-crescent glory makes These flames that would eclipse it dark as blots Of candle-light against the blazing sun. We die a thousand deaths,--drown, bleed, and burn. Our ashes are dispersed unto the winds. Yet the wild winds cherish the sacred seed, The fire refuseth to consume. . . . . . . . . . Even as we die in honor, from our death Shall bloom a myriad heroic lives, Brave through our bright example, virtuous Lest our great memory fall in disrepute." The "Dance to Death" was published, along with other poems and translations from the Hebrew poets of mediaeval Spain, in a small column entitled "Songs of a Semite." The tragedy was dedicated, "In profound veneration and respect to the memory of George Eliot, the illustrious writer who did most among the artists of our day towards elevating and ennobling the spirit of Jewish nationality." For this was the idea that had caught the imagination of Emma Lazarus, --a restored and independent nationality and repatriation in Palestine. In her article in "The Century" of February, 1883, on the "Jewish Problem," she says:-- "I am fully persuaded that all suggested solutions other than this are but temporary palliatives.... The idea formulated by George Eliot has already sunk into the minds of many Jewish enthusiasts, and it germinates with miraculous rapidity. 'The idea that I am possessed with,' says Deronda, 'is that of restoring a political existence to my people; making them a nation again, giving them a national centre, such as the English have, though they, too, are scattered over the face of the globe. That task which presents itself to me as a duty.... I am resolved to devote my life to it. AT THE LEAST, I MAY AWAKEN A MOVEMENT IN OTHER MINDS SUCH HAS BEEN AWAKENED IN MY OWN.' Could the noble prophetess who wrote the above words have lived but till to-day to see the ever-increasing necessity of adopting her inspired counsel,... she would have been herself astonished at the flame enkindled by her seed of fire, and the practical shape which the movement projected by her poetic vision is beginning to assume." In November of 1882 appeared her first "Epistle to the Hebrews,"--one of a series of articles written for the "American Hebrew," published weekly through several months. Addressing herself now to a Jewish audience, she sets forth without reserve her views and hopes for Judaism, now passionately holding up the mirror for the shortcomings and peculiarities of her race. She says:-- "Every student of the Hebrew language is aware that we have in the conjugation of our verbs a mode known as the 'intensive voice,' which, by means of an almost imperceptible modification of vowel-points, intensifies the meaning of the primitive root. A similar significance seems to attach to the Jews themselves in connection with the people among whom they dwell. They are the 'intensive form' of any nationality whose language and customs they adopt.... Influenced by the same causes, they represent the same results; but the deeper lights and shadows of the Oriental temperament throw their failings, as well as their virtues, into more prominent relief." In drawing the epistles to a close, February 24, 1883, she thus summarizes the special objects she has had in view:-- "My chief aim has been to contribute my mite towards arousing that spirit of Jewish enthusiasm which might manifest itself: First, in a return to varied pursuits and broad system of physical and intellectual education adopted by our ancestors; Second, in a more fraternal and practical movement towards alleviating the sufferings of oppressed Jews in countries less favored than our own; Third, in a closer and wider study of Hebrew literature and history and finally, in a truer recognition of the large principals of religion, liberty, and law upon which Judaism is founded, and which should draw into harmonious unity Jews of every shade of opinion." Her interest in Jewish affairs was at its height when she planned a visit abroad, which had been a long-cherished dream, and May 15, 1883, she sailed for England, accompanied by a younger sister. We have difficulty in recognizing the tragic priestess we have been portraying in the enthusiastic child of travel who seems new-born into a new world. From the very outset she is in a maze of wonder and delight. At sea she writes:-- "Our last day on board ship was a vision of beauty from morning till night,--the sea like a mirror and the sky dazzling with light. In the afternoon we passed a ship in full sail, near enough to exchange salutes and cheers. After tossing about for six days without seeing a human being, except those on our vessel, even this was a sensation. Then an hour or two before sunset came the great sensation of--land! At first, nothing but a shadow on the far horizon, like the ghost of a ship; two or three widely scattered rocks which were the promontories of Ireland, and sooner than we expected we were steaming along low-lying purple hills." The journey to Chester gives her "the first glimpse of mellow England,"--a surprise which is yet no surprise, so well known and familiar does it appear. Then Chester, with its quaint, picturesque streets, "like the scene of a Walter Scott novel, the cathedral planted in greenness, and the clear, gray river where a boatful of scarlet dragoons goes gliding by." Everything is a picture for her special benefit. She "drinks in, at every sense, the sights, sounds, and smells, and the unimaginable beauty of it all." Then the bewilderment of London, and a whirl of people, sights, and impressions. She was received with great distinction by the Jews, and many of the leading men among them warmly advocated her views. But it was not alone from her own people that she met with exceptional consideration. She had the privilege of seeing many of the most eminent personages of the day, all of whom honored her with special and personal regard. There was, no doubt, something that strongly attracted people to her at this time,--the force of her intellect at once made itself felt, while at the same time the unaltered simplicity and modesty of her character, and her readiness and freshness of enthusiasm, kept her still almost like a child. She makes a flying visit to Paris, where she happens to be on the 14th of July, the anniversary of the storming of the Bastile, and of the beginning of the republic; she drives to Versailles, "that gorgeous shell of royalty, where the crowd who celebrate the birth of the republic wander freely through the halls and avenues, and into the most sacred rooms of the king.... There are ruins on every side in Paris," she says; "ruins of the Commune, or the Siege, or the Revolution; it is terrible--it seems as if the city were seared with fire and blood." Such was Paris to her then, and she hastens back to her beloved London, starting from there on the tour through England that has been mapped out for her. "A Day in Surrey with William Morris," published in "The Century Magazine," describes her visit to Merton Abbey, the old Norman monastery, converted into a model factory by the poet-humanitarian, who himself received her as his guest, conducted her all over the picturesque building and garden, and explained to her his views of art and his aims for the people. She drives through Kent, "where the fields, valleys, and slopes are garlanded with hops and ablaze with scarlet poppies." Then Canterbury, Windsor, and Oxford, Stratford, Warwick, the valley of the Wye, Wells, Exeter, and Salisbury,--cathedral after cathedral. Back to London, and then north through York, Durham, and Edinburgh, and on the 15th of September she sails for home. We have merely named the names, for it is impossible to convey an idea of the delight and importance of this trip, "a crescendo of enjoyment," as she herself calls it. Long after, in strange, dark hours of suffering, these pictures of travel arose before her, vivid and tragic even in their hold and spell upon her. The winter of 1883-84 was not especially productive. She wrote a few reminiscences of her journey and occasional poems on the Jewish themes, which appeared in the "American Hebrew;" but for the most part gave herself up to quiet retrospect and enjoyment with her friends of the life she had had a glimpse of, and the experience she had stored,--a restful, happy period. In August of the same year she was stricken with a severe and dangerous malady, from which she slowly recovered, only to go through a terrible ordeal and affliction. Her father's health, which had long been failing, now broke down completely, and the whole winter was one long strain of acute anxiety, which culminated in his death, in March, 1885. The blow was a crushing one for Emma. Truly, the silver cord was loosed, and the golden bowl broken. Life lost its meaning and charm. Her father's sympathy and pride in her work had been her chief incentive and ambition, and had spurred her on when her own confidence and spirit failed. Never afterwards did she find complete and spontaneous expression. She decided to go abroad as the best means of regaining composure and strength and sailed once more in May for England, where she was welcomed now by the friends she had made, almost as to another home. She spent the summer very quietly at Richmond,an ideally beautiful spot in Yorkshire, where she soon felt the beneficial influence of her peaceful surroundings. "The very air seems to rest one here," she writes; and inspired by the romantic loveliness of the place, she even composed the first few chapters of a novel, begun with a good deal of dash and vigor, but soon abandoned, for she was still struggling with depression and gloom. "I have neither ability, energy, nor purpose," she writes. "It is impossible to do anything, so I am forced to set it aside for the present; whether to take it up again or not in the future remains to be seen." In the autumn she goes on the Continent, visiting the Hague, which "completely fascinates" her, and where she feels "stronger and more cheerful" than she has "for many a day." Then Paris, which this time amazes her "with its splendor and magnificence. All the ghosts of the Revolution are somehow laid," she writes, and she spends six weeks here enjoying to the full the gorgeous autumn weather, the sights, the picture galleries, the bookshops, the whole brilliant panorama of the life; and early in December she starts for Italy. And now once more we come upon that keen zest of enjoyment, that pure desire and delight of the eyes, which are the prerogative of the poet,--Emma Lazarus was a poet. The beauty of the world,--what a rapture and intoxication it is, and how it bursts upon her in the very land of beauty, "where Dante and Petrarch trod!" A magic glow colours it all; no mere blues and greens anymore, but a splendor of purple and scarlet and emerald; "each tower, castle, and village shining like a jewel; the olive, the fig, and at your feet the roses, growing in mid-December." A day in Pisa seems like a week, so crowded is it with sensations and unforgettable pictures. Then a month in Florence, which is still more entrancing with its inexhaustible treasures of beauty and art; and finally Rome, the climax of it all,-- "wiping out all other places and impressions, and opening a whole new world of sensations. I am wild with the excitement of this tremendous place. I have been here a week, and have seen the Vatican and the Capitoline Museums, and the Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's, besides the ruins on the streets and on the hills, and the graves of Shelley and Keats. "It is all heart-breaking. I don't only mean those beautiful graves, overgrown with acanthus and violets, but the mutilated arches and columns and dumb appealing fragments looming up in the glowing sunshine under the Roman blue sky." True to her old attractions, it is pagan Rome that appeals to her most strongly,-- "and the far-away past, that seems so sad and strange and near. I am even out of humor with pictures; a bit of broken stone or a fragment of a bas-relief, or a Corinthian column standing out against this lapis-lazuli sky, or a tremendous arch, are the only things I can look at for the moment,-- except the Sistine Chapel, which is as gigantic as the rest, and forces itself upon you with equal might." Already, in February, spring is in the air; "the almond-trees are in bloom, violets cover the grass, and oh! the divine, the celestial, the unheard-of beauty of it all!" It is almost a pang for her, "with its strange mixture of longing and regret and delight," and in the midst of it she says, "I have to exert all my strength not to lose myself in morbidness and depression." Early in March she leaves Rome, consoled with the thought of returning the following winter. In June she was in England again, and spent the summer at Malvern. Disease was no doubt already beginning to prey upon her, for she was oppressed at times by a languor and heaviness amounting almost to lethargy. When she returned to London, however, in September, she felt quite well again, and started for another tour in Holland, which she enjoyed as much as before. She then settled in Paris, to await the time when she could return to Italy. But she was attacked at once with grave and alarming symptoms, that betokened a fatal end to her malady. Entirely ignorant, however, of the danger that threatened her, she kept up courage and hope, made plans for the journey, and looked forward to setting out at any moment. But the weeks passed and the months also; slowly and gradually the hope faded. The journey to Italy must be given up; she was not in condition to be brought home, and she reluctantly resigned herself to remain where she was and "convalesce," as she confidently believed, in the spring. Once again came the analogy, which she herself pointed out now, to Heine on his mattress-grave in Paris. She, too, the last time she went out, dragged herself to the Louvre, to the feet of the Venus, "the goddess without arms, who could not help." Only her indomitable will and intense desire to live seemed to keep her alive. She sunk to a very low ebb, but, as she herself expressed it, she "seemed to have always one little window looking out into life," and in the spring she rallied sufficiently to take a few drives and to sit on the balcony of her apartment. She came back to life with a feverish sort of thirst and avidity. "No such cure for pessimism," she says, "as a severe illness; the simplest pleasures are enough,--to breathe the air and see the sun." Many plans were made for leaving Paris, but it was finally decided to risk the ocean voyage and bring her home, and accordingly she sailed July 23rd, arriving in New York on the last day of that month. She did not rally after this; and now began her long agony, full of every kind of suffering, mental and physical. Only her intellect seemed kindled anew, and none but those who saw her during the last supreme ordeal can realize that wonderful flash and fire of the spirit before its extinction. Never did she appear so brilliant. Wasted to a shadow, and between acute attacks of pain, she talked about art, poetry, the scenes of travel, of which her brain was so full, and the phases of her own condition, with an eloquence for which even those who knew her best were quite unprepared. Every faculty seemed sharpened and every sense quickened as the "strong deliveress" approached, and the ardent soul was released from the frame that could no longer contain it. We cannot restrain a feeling of suddenness and incompleteness and a natural pang of wonder and regret for a life so richly and so vitally endowed thus cut off in its prime. But for us it is not fitting to question or repine, but rather to rejoice in the rare possession that we hold. What is any life, even the most rounded and complete, but a fragment and a hint? What Emma Lazarus might have accomplished, had she been spared, it is idle and even ungrateful to speculate. What she did accomplish has real and peculiar significance. It is the privilege of a favored few that every fact and circumstance of their individuality shall add lustre and value to what they achieve. To be born a Jewess was a distinction for Emma Lazarus, and she in turn conferred distinction upon her race. To be born a woman also lends a grace and a subtle magnetism to her influence. Nowhere is there contradiction or incongruity. Her works bear the imprint of her character, and her character of her works; the same directness and honesty, the same limpid purity of tone, and the same atmosphere of things refined and beautiful. The vulgar, the false, and the ignoble,--she scarcely comprehended them, while on every side she was open and ready to take in and respond to whatever can adorn and enrich life. Literature was no mere "profession" for her, which shut out other possibilities; it was only a free, wide horizon and background for culture. She was passionately devoted to music, which inspired some of her best poems; and during the last years of her life, in hours of intense physical suffering, she found relief and consolation in listening to the strains of Bach and Beethoven. When she went abroad, painting was revealed to her, and she threw herself with the same ardor and enthusiasm into the study of the great masters; her last work (left unfinished) was a critical analysis of the genius and personality of Rembrandt. And now, at the end, we ask, Has the grave really closed over all these gifts? Has that eager, passionate striving ceased, and "is the rest silence?" Who knows? But would we break, if we could, that repose, that silence and mystery and peace everlasting? EPOCHS. "The epochs of our life are not in the facts, but in the silent thought by the wayside as we walk."--Emerson I. Youth. Sweet empty sky of June without a stain, Faint, gray-blue dewy mists on far-off hills, Warm, yellow sunlight flooding mead and plain, That each dark copse and hollow overfills; The rippling laugh of unseen, rain-fed rills, Weeds delicate-flowered, white and pink and gold, A murmur and a singing manifold. The gray, austere old earth renews her youth With dew-lines, sunshine, gossamer, and haze. How still she lies and dreams, and veils the truth, While all is fresh as in the early days! What simple things be these the soul to raise To bounding joy, and make young pulses beat, With nameless pleasure finding life so sweet. On such a golden morning forth there floats, Between the soft earth and the softer sky, In the warm air adust with glistening motes, The mystic winged and flickering butterfly, A human soul, that hovers giddily Among the gardens of earth's paradise, Nor dreams of fairer fields or loftier skies. II. Regret. Thin summer rain on grass and bush and hedge, Reddening the road and deepening the green On wide, blurred lawn, and in close-tangled sedge; Veiling in gray the landscape stretched between These low broad meadows and the pale hills seen But dimly on the far horizon's edge. In these transparent-clouded, gentle skies, Wherethrough the moist beams of the soft June sun Might any moment break, no sorrow lies, No note of grief in swollen brooks that run, No hint of woe in this subdued, calm tone Of all the prospect unto dreamy eyes. Only a tender, unnamed half-regret For the lost beauty of the gracious morn; A yearning aspiration, fainter yet, For brighter suns in joyous days unborn, Now while brief showers ruffle grass and corn, And all the earth lies shadowed, grave, and wet; Space for the happy soul to pause again From pure content of all unbroken bliss, To dream the future void of grief and pain, And muse upon the past, in reveries More sweet for knowledge that the present is Not all complete, with mist and clouds and rain. III. Longing. Look westward o'er the steaming rain-washed slopes, Now satisfied with sunshine, and behold Those lustrous clouds, as glorious as our hopes, Softened with feathery fleece of downy gold, In all fantastic, huddled shapes uprolled, Floating like dreams, and melting silently, In the blue upper regions of pure sky. The eye is filled with beauty, and the heart Rejoiced with sense of life and peace renewed; And yet at such an hour as this, upstart Vague myriad longing, restless, unsubdued, And causeless tears from melancholy mood, Strange discontent with earth's and nature's best, Desires and yearnings that may find no rest. IV. Storm. Serene was morning with clear, winnowed air, But threatening soon the low, blue mass of cloud Rose in the west, with mutterings faint and rare At first, but waxing frequent and more loud. Thick sultry mists the distant hill-tops shroud; The sunshine dies; athwart black skies of lead Flash noiselessly thin threads of lightning red. Breathless the earth seems waiting some wild blow, Dreaded, but far too close to ward or shun. Scared birds aloft fly aimless, and below Naught stirs in fields whence light and life are gone, Save floating leaves, with wisps of straw and down, Upon the heavy air; 'neath blue-black skies, Livid and yellow the green landscape lies. And all the while the dreadful thunder breaks, Within the hollow circle of the hills, With gathering might, that angry echoes wakes, And earth and heaven with unused clamor fills. O'erhead still flame those strange electric thrills. A moment more,--behold! yon bolt struck home, And over ruined fields the storm hath come! V. Surprise. When the stunned soul can first lift tired eyes On her changed world of ruin, waste and wrack, Ah, what a pang of aching sharp surprise Brings all sweet memories of the lost past back, With wild self-pitying grief of one betrayed, Duped in a land of dreams where Truth is dead! Are these the heavens that she deemed were kind? Is this the world that yesterday was fair? What painted images of folk half-blind Be these who pass her by, as vague as air? What go they seeking? there is naught to find. Let them come nigh and hearken her despair. A mocking lie is all she once believed, And where her heart throbbed, is a cold dead stone. This is a doom we never preconceived, Yet now she cannot fancy it undone. Part of herself, part of the whole hard scheme, All else is but the shadow of a dream. VI. Grief. There is a hungry longing in the soul, A craving sense of emptiness and pain, She may not satisfy nor yet control, For all the teeming world looks void and vain. No compensation in eternal spheres, She knows the loneliness of all her years. There is no comfort looking forth nor back, The present gives the lie to all her past. Will cruel time restore what she doth lack? Why was no shadow of this doom forecast? Ah! she hath played with many a keen-edged thing; Naught is too small and soft to turn and sting. In the unnatural glory of the hour, Exalted over time, and death, and fate, No earthly task appears beyond her power, No possible endurance seemeth great. She knows her misery and her majesty, And recks not if she be to live or die. VII. Acceptance. Yea, she hath looked Truth grimly face to face, And drained unto the lees the proffered cup. This silence is not patience, nor the grace Of recognition, meekly offered up, But mere acceptance fraught with keenest pain, Seeing that all her struggles must be vain. Her future clear and terrible outlies,-- This burden to be borne through all her days, This crown of thorns pressed down above her eyes, This weight of trouble she may never raise. No reconcilement doth she ask nor wait; Knowing such things are, she endures her fate. No brave endeavor of the broken will To cling to such poor stays as will abide (Although the waves be wild and angry still) After the lapsing of the swollen tide. No fear of further loss, no hope of gain, Naught but the apathy of weary pain. VIII. Loneliness. All stupor of surprise hath passed away; She sees, with clearer vision than before, A world far off of light and laughter gay, Herself alone and lonely evermore. Folk come and go, and reach her in no wise, Mere flitting phantoms to her heavy eyes. All outward things, that once seemed part of her, Fall from her, like the leaves in autumn shed. She feels as one embalmed in spice and myrrh, With the heart eaten out, a long time dead; Unchanged without, the features and the form; Within, devoured by the thin red worm. By her own prowess she must stand or fall, This grief is to be conquered day by day. Who could befriend her? who could make this small, Or her strength great? she meets it as she may. A weary struggle and a constant pain, She dreams not they may ever cease nor wane. IX. Sympathy. It comes not in such wise as she had deemed, Else might she still have clung to her despair. More tender, grateful than she could have dreamed, Fond hands passed pitying over brows and hair, And gentle words borne softly through the air, Calming her weary sense and wildered mind, By welcome, dear communion with her kind. Ah! she forswore all words as empty lies; What speech could help, encourage, or repair? Yet when she meets these grave, indulgent eyes, Fulfilled with pity, simplest words are fair, Caressing, meaningless, that do not dare To compensate or mend, but merely soothe With hopeful visions after bitter Truth. One who through conquered trouble had grown wise, To read the grief unspoken, unexpressed, The misery of the blank and heavy eyes,-- Or through youth's infinite compassion guessed The heavy burden,--such a one brought rest, And bade her lay aside her doubts and fears, While the hard pain dissolved in blessed tears. X. Patience. The passion of despair is quelled at last; The cruel sense of undeserved wrong, The wild self-pity, these are also past; She knows not what may come, but she is strong; She feels she hath not aught to lose nor gain, Her patience is the essence of all pain. As one who sits beside a lapsing stream, She sees the flow of changeless day by day, Too sick and tired to think, too sad to dream, Nor cares how soon the waters slip away, Nor where they lead; at the wise God's decree, She will depart or bide indifferently. There is deeper pathos in the mild And settled sorrow of the quiet eyes, Than in the tumults of the anguish wild, That made her curse all things beneath the skies; No question, no reproaches, no complaint, Hers is the holy calm of some meek saint. XI. Hope. Her languid pulses thrill with sudden hope, That will not be forgot nor cast aside, And life in statelier vistas seems to ope, Illimitably lofty, long, and wide. What doth she know? She is subdued and mild, Quiet and docile "as a weaned child." If grief came in such unimagined wise, How may joy dawn? In what undreamed-of hour, May the light break with splendor of surprise, Disclosing all the mercy and the power? A baseless hope, yet vivid, keen, and bright, As the wild lightning in the starless night. She knows not whence it came, nor where it passed, But it revealed, in one brief flash of flame, A heaven so high, a world so rich and vast, That, full of meek contrition and mute shame, In patient silence hopefully withdrawn, She bows her head, and bides the certain dawn. XII. Compensation. 'T is not alone that black and yawning void That makes her heart ache with this hungry pain, But the glad sense of life hath been destroyed, The lost delight may never come again. Yet myriad serious blessings with grave grace Arise on every side to fill their place. For much abides in her so lonely life,-- The dear companionship of her own kind, Love where least looked for, quiet after strife, Whispers of promise upon every wind, A quickened insight, in awakened eyes, For the new meaning of the earth and skies. The nameless charm about all things hath died, Subtle as aureole round a shadow's head, Cast on the dewy grass at morning-tide; Yet though the glory and the joy be fled, 'T is much her own endurance to have weighed, And wrestled with God's angels, unafraid. XIII. Faith. She feels outwearied, as though o'er her head A storm of mighty billows broke and passed. Whose hand upheld her? Who her footsteps led To this green haven of sweet rest at last? What strength was hers, unreckoned and unknown? What love sustained when she was most alone? Unutterably pathetic her desire, To reach, with groping arms outstretched in prayer, Something to cling to, to uplift her higher From this low world of coward fear and care, Above disaster, that her will may be At one with God's, accepting his decree. Though by no reasons she be justified, Yet strangely brave in Evil's very face, She deems this want must needs be satisfied, Though here all slips from out her weak embrace. And in blind ecstasy of perfect faith, With her own dream her prayer she answereth. XIV. Work. Yet life is not a vision nor a prayer, But stubborn work; she may not shun her task. After the first compassion, none will spare Her portion and her work achieved, to ask. She pleads for respite,--she will come ere long When, resting by the roadside, she is strong. Nay, for the hurrying throng of passers-by Will crush her with their onward-rolling stream. Much must be done before the brief light die; She may not loiter, rapt in the vain dream. With unused trembling hands, and faltering feet, She staggers forth, her lot assigned to meet. But when she fills her days with duties done, Strange vigor comes, she is restored to health. New aims, new interests rise with each new sun, And life still holds for her unbounded wealth. All that seemed hard and toilsome now proves small, And naught may daunt her,--she hath strength for all. XV. Victory. How strange, in some brief interval of rest, Backward to look on her far-stretching past. To see how much is conquered and repressed, How much is gained in victory at last! The shadow is not lifted,--but her faith, Strong from life's miracles, now turns toward death. Though much be dark where once rare splendor shone, Yet the new light has touched high peaks unguessed In her gold, mist-bathed dawn, and one by one New outlooks loom from many a mountain crest. She breathes a loftier, purer atmosphere, And life's entangled paths grow straight and clear. Nor will Death prove an all-unwelcome guest; The struggle has been toilsome to this end, Sleep will be sweet, and after labor rest, And all will be atoned with him to friend. Much must be reconciled, much justified, And yet she feels she will be satisfied. XVI. Peace. The calm outgoing of a long, rich day, Checkered with storm and sunshine, gloom and light, Now passing in pure, cloudless skies away, Withdrawing into silence of blank night. Thick shadows settle on the landscape bright, Like the weird cloud of death that falls apace On the still features of the passive face. Soothing and gentle as a mother's kiss, The touch that stopped the beating of the heart. A look so blissfully serene as this, Not all the joy of living could impart. With dauntless faith and courage therewithal, The Master found her ready at his call. On such a golden evening forth there floats, Between the grave earth and the glowing sky In the clear air, unvexed with hazy motes, The mystic-winged and flickering butterfly, A human soul, that drifts at liberty, Ah! who can tell to what strange paradise, To what undreamed-of fields and lofty skies! HOW LONG? How long, and yet how long, Our leaders will we hail from over seas, Master and kings from feudal monarchies, And mock their ancient song With echoes weak of foreign melodies? That distant isle mist-wreathed, Mantled in unimaginable green, Too long hath been our mistress and our queen. Our fathers have bequeathed Too deep a love for her, our hearts within. She made the whole world ring With the brave exploits of her children strong, And with the matchless music of her song. Too late, too late we cling To alien legends, and their strains prolong. This fresh young world I see, With heroes, cities, legends of her own; With a new race of men, and overblown By winds from sea to sea, Decked with the majesty of every zone. I see the glittering tops Of snow-peaked mounts, the wid'ning vale's expanse, Large prairies where free herds of horses prance, Exhaustless wealth of crops, In vast, magnificent extravagance. These grand, exuberant plains, These stately rivers, each with many a mouth, The exquisite beauty of the soft-aired south, The boundless seas of grains, Luxuriant forests' lush and splendid growth. The distant siren-song Of the green island in the eastern sea, Is not the lay for this new chivalry. It is not free and strong To chant on prairies 'neath this brilliant sky. The echo faints and fails; It suiteth not, upon this western plain, Out voice or spirit; we should stir again The wilderness, and make the vales Resound unto a yet unheard-of strain. HEROES. In rich Virginian woods, The scarlet creeper reddens over graves, Among the solemn trees enlooped with vines; Heroic spirits haunt the solitudes,-- The noble souls of half a million braves, Amid the murmurous pines. Ah! who is left behind, Earnest and eloquent, sincere and strong, To consecrate their memories with words Not all unmeet? with fitting dirge and song To chant a requiem purer than the wind, And sweeter than the birds? Here, though all seems at peace, The placid, measureless sky serenely fair, The laughter of the breeze among the leaves, The bars of sunlight slanting through the trees, The reckless wild-flowers blooming everywhere, The grasses' delicate sheaves,-- Nathless each breeze that blows, Each tree that trembles to its leafy head With nervous life, revives within our mind, Tender as flowers of May, the thoughts of those Who lie beneath the living beauty, dead,-- Beneath the sunshine, blind. For brave dead soldiers, these: Blessings and tears of aching thankfulness, Soft flowers for the graves in wreaths enwove, The odorous lilac of dear memories, The heroic blossoms of the wilderness, And the rich rose of love. But who has sung their praise, Not less illustrious, who are living yet? Armies of heroes, satisfied to pass Calmly, serenely from the whole world's gaze, And cheerfully accept, without regret, Their old life as it was, With all its petty pain, Its irritating littleness and care; They who have scaled the mountain, with content Sublime, descend to live upon the plain; Steadfast as though they breathed the mountain-air Still, wheresoe'er they went. They who were brave to act, And rich enough their action to forget; Who, having filled their day with chivalry, Withdraw and keep their simpleness intact, And all unconscious add more lustre yet Unto their victory. On the broad Western plains Their patriarchal life they live anew; Hunters as mighty as the men of old, Or harvesting the plenteous, yellow grains, Gathering ripe vintage of dusk bunches blue, Or working mines of gold; Or toiling in the town, Armed against hindrance, weariness, defeat, With dauntless purpose not to serve or yield, And calm, defiant, they struggle on, As sturdy and as valiant in the street, As in the camp and field. And those condemned to live, Maimed, helpless, lingering still through suffering years, May they not envy now the restful sleep Of the dear fellow-martyrs they survive? Not o'er the dead, but over these, your tears, O brothers, ye may weep! New England fields I see, The lovely, cultured landscape, waving grain, Wide haughty rivers, and pale, English skies. And lo! a farmer ploughing busily, Who lifts a swart face, looks upon the plain,-- I see, in his frank eyes, The hero's soul appear. Thus in the common fields and streets they stand; The light that on the past and distant gleams, They cast upon the present and the near, With antique virtues from some mystic land, Of knightly deeds and dreams. ADMETUS. To my friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson. He who could beard the lion in his lair, To bind him for a girl, and tame the boar, And drive these beasts before his chariot, Might wed Alcestis. For her low brows' sake, Her hairs' soft undulations of warm gold, Her eyes clear color and pure virgin mouth, Though many would draw bow or shiver spear, Yet none dared meet the intolerable eye, Or lipless tusk, of lion or boar. This heard Admetus, King of Thessaly, Whose broad, fat pastures spread their ample fields Down to the sheer edge of Amphrysus' stream, Who laughed, disdainful, at the father's pride, That set such value on one milk-faced child. One morning, as he rode alone and passed Through the green twilight of Thessalian woods, Between two pendulous branches interlocked, As through an open casement, he descried A goddess, as he deemed,--in truth a maid. On a low bank she fondled tenderly A favorite hound, her floral face inclined above the glossy, graceful animal, That pressed his snout against her cheek and gazed Wistfully, with his keen, sagacious eyes. One arm with lax embrace the neck enwreathed, With polished roundness near the sleek, gray skin. Admetus, fixed with wonder, dare not pass, Intrusive on her holy innocence And sacred girlhood, but his fretful steed Snuffed the air, and champed and pawed the ground; And hearing this, the maiden raised her head. No let or hindrance then might stop the king, Once having looked upon those supreme eyes. The drooping boughs disparting, forth he sped, And then drew in his steed, to ask the path, Like a lost traveller in an alien land. Although each river-cloven vale, with streams Arrowy glancing to the blue Aegean, Each hallowed mountain, the abode of gods, Pelion and Ossa fringed with haunted groves, The height, spring-crowned, of dedicate Olympus, And pleasant sun-fed vineyards, were to him Familiar as his own face in the stream, Nathless he paused and asked the maid what path Might lead him from the forest. She replied, But still he tarried, and with sportsman's praise Admired the hound and stooped to stroke its head, And asked her if she hunted. Nay, not she: Her father Pelias hunted in these woods, Where there was royal game. He knew her now,-- Alcestis,--and he left her with due thanks: No goddess, but a mortal, to be won By such a simple feat as driving boars And lions to his chariot. What was that To him who saw the boar of Calydon, The sacred boar of Artemis, at bay In the broad stagnant marsh, and sent his darts In its tough, quivering flank, and saw its death, Stung by sure arrows of Arcadian nymph? To river-pastures of his flocks and herds Admetus rode, where sweet-breathed cattle grazed, Heifers and goats and kids, and foolish sheep Dotted cool, spacious meadows with bent heads, And necks' soft wool broken in yellow flakes, Nibbling sharp-toothed the rich, thick-growing blades. One herdsman kept the innumerable droves-- A boy yet, young as immortality-- In listless posture on a vine-grown rock. Around him huddled kids and sheep that left The mother's udder for his nighest grass, Which sprouted with fresh verdure where he sat. And yet dull neighboring rustics never guessed A god had been among them till he went, Although with him they acted as he willed, Renouncing shepherds' silly pranks and quips, Because his very presence made them grave. Amphryssius, after their translucent stream, They called him, but Admetus knew his name,-- Hyperion, god of sun and song and silver speech, Condemned to serve a mortal for his sin To Zeus in sending violent darts of death, A raising hand irreverent, against The one-eyed forgers of the thunderbolt. For shepherd's crook he held the living rod Of twisted serpents, later Hermes' wand. Him sought the king, discovering soon hard by, Idle as one in nowise bound to time, Watching the restless grasses blow and wave, The sparkle of the sun upon the stream, Regretting nothing, living with the hour: For him, who had his light and song within, Was naught that did not shine, and all things sang. Admetus prayed for his celestial aid To win Alcestis, which the god vouchsafed, Granting with smiles, as grant all gods, who smite With stern hand, sparing not for piteousness, But give their gifts in gladness. Thus the king Led with loose rein the beasts as tame as kine, And townsfolk thronged within the city streets, As round a god; and mothers showed their babes, And maidens loved the crowned intrepid youth, And men aloud worship, though the very god Who wrought the wonder dwelled unnoted nigh, Divinely scornful of neglect or praise. Then Pelias, seeing this would be his son, As he had vowed, called for his wife and child. With Anaxibia, Alcestis came, A warm flush spreading o'er her eager face In looking on the rider of the woods, And knowing him her suitor and the king. Admetus won Alcestis thus to wife, And these with mated hearts and mutual love Lived a life blameless, beautiful: the king Ordaining justice in the gates; the queen, With grateful offerings to the household gods, Wise with the wisdom of the pure in heart. One child she bore,--Eumelus,--and he throve. Yet none the less because they sacrificed The firstlings of their flocks and fruits and flowers, Did trouble come; for sickness seized the king. Alcestis watched with many-handed love, But unavailing service, for he lay With languid limbs, despite his ancient strength Of sinew, and his skill with spear and sword. His mother came, Clymene, and with her His father, Pheres: his unconscious child They brought him, while forlorn Alcestis sat Discouraged, with the face of desolation. The jealous gods would bind his mouth from speech, And smite his vigorous frame with impotence; And ruin with bitter ashes, worms, and dust, The beauty of his crowned, exalted head. He knew her presence,--soon he would not know, Nor feel her hand in his lie warm and close, Nor care if she were near him any more. Exhausted with long vigils, thus the queen Held hard and grievous thoughts, till heavy sleep Possessed her weary sense, and she dreamed. And even in her dream her trouble lived, For she was praying in a barren field To all the gods for help, when came across The waste of air and land, from distant skies, A spiritual voice divinely clear, Whose unimaginable sweetness thrilled Her aching heart with tremor of strange joy: "Arise, Alcestis, cast away white fear. A god dwells with you: seek, and you shall find." Then quiet satisfaction filled her soul Almost akin to gladness, and she woke. Weak as the dead, Admetus lay there still; But she, superb with confidence, arose, And passed beyond the mourners' curious eyes, Seeking Amphryssius in the meadow-lands. She found him with the godlike mien of one Who, roused, awakens unto deeds divine: "I come, Hyperion, with incessant tears, To crave the life of my dear lord the king. Pity me, for I see the future years Widowed and laden with disastrous days. And ye, the gods, will miss him when the fires Upon your shrines, unfed, neglected die. Who will pour large libations in your names, And sacrifice with generous piety? Silence and apathy will greet you there Where once a splendid spirit offered praise. Grant me this boon divine, and I will beat With prayer at morning's gates, before they ope Unto thy silver-hoofed and flame-eyed steeds. Answer ere yet the irremeable stream Be crossed: answer, O god, and save!" She ceased, With full throat salt with tears, and looked on him, And with a sudden cry of awe fell prone, For, lo! he was transmuted to a god; The supreme aureole radiant round his brow, Divine refulgences on his face,--his eyes Awful with splendor, and his august head With blinding brilliance crowned by vivid flame. Then in a voice that charmed the listening air: "Woman, arise! I have no influence On Death, who is the servant of the Fates. Howbeit for thy passion and thy prayer, The grace of thy fair womanhood and youth, Thus godlike will I intercede for thee, And sue the insatiate sisters for this life. Yet hope not blindly: loth are these to change Their purpose; neither will they freely give, But haggling lend or sell: perchance the price Will counterveil the boon. Consider this. Now rise and look upon me." And she rose, But by her stood no godhead bathed in light, But young Amphryssius, herdsman to the king, Benignly smiling. Fleet as thought, the god Fled from the glittering earth to blackest depths Of Tartarus; and none might say he sped On wings ambrosial, or with feet as swift As scouring hail, or airy chariot Borne by the flame-breathing steeds ethereal; But with a motion inconceivable Departed and was there. Before the throne Of Ades, first he hailed the long-sought queen, Stolen with violent hands from grassy fields And delicate airs of sunlit Sicily, Pensive, gold-haired, but innocent-eyed no more As when she laughing plucked the daffodils, But grave as on fulfilling a strange doom. And low at Ades' feet, wrapped in grim murk And darkness thick, the three gray women sat, Loose-robed and chapleted with wool and flowers, Purple narcissi round their horrid hair. Intent upon her task, the first one held The tender thread that at a touch would snap; The second weaving it with warp and woof Into strange textures, some stained dark and foul, Some sanguine-colored, and some black as night, And rare ones white, or with a golden thread Running throughout the web: the farthest hag With glistening scissors cut her sisters' work. To these Hyperion, but they never ceased, Nor raised their eyes, till with soft, moderate tones, But by their powerful persuasiveness Commanding all to listen and obey, He spoke, and all hell heard, and these three looked And waited his request: I come, a god, At pure mortal queen's request, who sues For life renewed unto her dying lord, Admetus; and I also pray this prayer." "Then cease, for when hath Fate been moved by prayer?" "But strength and upright heart should serve with you." "I ask ye not forever to forbear, But spare a while,--a moment unto us, A lifetime unto men." "The Fates swerve not For supplications, like the pliant gods. Have they not willed a life's thread should be cut? With them the will is changeless as the deed. O men! ye have not learned in all the past, Desires are barren and tears yield no fruit. How long will ye besiege the thrones of gods With lamentations? When lagged Death for all Your timorous shirking? We work not like you, Delaying and relenting, purposeless, With unenduring issues; but our deeds, Forever interchained and interlocked, Complete each other and explain themselves." "Ye will a life: then why not any life?" "What care we for the king? He is not worth These many words; indeed, we love not speech. We care not if he live, or lose such life As men are greedy for,--filled full with hate, Sins beneath scorn, and only lit by dreams, Or one sane moment, or a useless hope,-- Lasting how long?--the space between the green And fading yellow of the grass they tread." But he withdrawing not: "Will any life Suffice ye for Admetus?" "Yea," the crones Three times repeated. "We know no such names As king or queen or slave: we want but life. Begone, and vex us in our work no more." With broken blessings, inarticulate joy And tears, Alcestis thanked Hyperion, And worshipped. Then he gently: "Who will die, So that the king may live?" And she: "You ask? Nay, who will live when life clasps hands with shame, And death with honor? Lo, you are a god; You cannot know the highest joy of life,-- To leave it when 't is worthier to die. His parents, kinsmen, courtiers, subjects, slaves,-- For love of him myself would die, were none Found ready; but what Greek would stand to see A woman glorified, and falter? Once, And only once, the gods will do this thing In all the ages: such a man themselves Delight to honor,--holy, temperate, chaste, With reverence for his daemon and his god." Thus she triumphant to they very door Of King Admetus' chamber. All there saw Her ill-timed gladness with much wonderment. But she: "No longer mourn! The king is saved: The Fates will spare him. Lift your voice in praise; Sing paeans to Apollo; crown your brows With laurel; offer thankful sacrifice!" "O Queen, what mean these foolish words misplaced? And what an hour is this to thank the Fates?" "Thrice blessed be the gods!--for God himself Has sued for me,--they are not stern and deaf. Cry, and they answer: commune with your soul, And they send counsel: weep with rainy grief, And these will sweeten you your bitterest tears. On one condition King Admetus lives, And ye, on hearing, will lament no more, Each emulous to save." Then--for she spake Assured, as having heard an oracle-- They asked: "What deed of ours may serve the king?" "The Fates accept another life for his, And one of you may die." Smiling, she ceased. But silence answered her. "What! do ye thrust Your arrows in your hearts beneath your cloaks, Dying like Greeks, too proud to own the pang? This ask I not. In all the populous land But one need suffer for immortal praise. The generous Fates have sent no pestilence, Famine, nor war: it is as though they gave Freely, and only make the boon more rich By such slight payment. Now a people mourns, And ye may change the grief to jubilee, Filling the cities with a pleasant sound. But as for me, what faltering words can tell My joy, in extreme sharpness kin to pain? A monument you have within my heart, Wreathed with kind love and dear remembrances; And I will pray for you before I crave Pardon and pity for myself from God. Your name will be the highest in the land, Oftenest, fondest on my grateful lips, After the name of him you die to save. What! silent still? Since when has virtue grown Less beautiful than indolence and ease? Is death more terrible, more hateworthy, More bitter than dishonor? Will ye live On shame? Chew and find sweet its poisoned fruits? What sons will ye bring forth--mean-souled like you, Or, like your parents, brave--to blush like girls, And say,'Our fathers were afraid to die!' Ye will not dare to raise heroic eyes Unto the eyes of aliens. In the streets Will women and young children point at you Scornfully, and the sun will find you shamed, And night refuse to shield you. What a life Is this ye spin and fashion for yourselves! And what new tortures of suspense and doubt Will death invent for such as are afraid! Acastus, thou my brother, in the field Foremost, who greeted me with sanguine hands From ruddy battle with a conqueror's face,-- These honors wilt thou blot with infamy? Nay, thou hast won no honors: a mere girl Would do as much as thou at such a time, In clamorous battle,'midst tumultuous sounds, Neighing of war-steeds, shouts of sharp command, Snapping of shivered spears; for all are brave When all men look to them expectantly; But he is truly brave who faces death Within his chamber, at a sudden call, At night, when no man sees,--content to die When life can serve no longer those he loves." Then thus Acastus: "Sister, I fear not Death, nor the empty darkness of the grave, And hold my life but as a little thing, Subject unto my people's call, and Fate. But if 't is little, no greater is the king's; And though my heart bleeds sorely, I recall Astydamia, who thus would mourn for me. We are not cowards, we youth of Thessaly, And Thessaly--yea, all Greece--knoweth it; Nor will we brook the name from even you, Albeit a queen, and uttering these wild words Through your umwonted sorrow." Then she knew That he stood firm, and turning from him, cried To the king's parents: "Are ye deaf with grief, Pheres, Clymene? Ye can save your son, Yet rather stand and weep with barren tears. O, shame! to think that such gray, reverend hairs Should cover such unvenerable heads! What would ye lose?--a remnant of mere life, A few slight raveled threads, and give him years To fill with glory. Who, when he is gone, Will call you gentlest names this side of heaven,-- Father and mother? Knew ye not this man Ere he was royal,--a poor, helpless child, Crownless and kingdomless? One birth alone Sufficeth not, Clymene: once again You must give life with travail and strong pain. Has he not lived to outstrip your swift hopes? What mother can refuse a second birth To such a son? But ye denying him, What after-offering may appease the gods? What joy outweigh the grief of this one day? What clamor drown the hours' myriad tongues, Crying, 'Your son, your son? where is your son, Unnatural mother, timid foolish man?" Then Pheres gravely: "These are graceless words From you our daughter. Life is always life, And death comes soon enough to such as we. We twain are old and weak, have served our time, And made our sacrifices. Let the young Arise now in their turn and save the king." "O gods! look on your creatures! do ye see? And seeing, have ye patience? Smite them all, Unsparing, with dishonorable death. Vile slaves! a woman teaches you to die. Intrepid, with exalted steadfast soul, Scorn in my heart, and love unutterable, I yield the Fates my life, and like a god Command them to revere that sacred head. Thus kiss I thrice the dear, blind, holy eyes, And bid them see; and thrice I kiss this brow, And thus unfasten I the pale, proud lips With fruitful kissings, bringing love and life, And without fear or any pang, I breathe My soul in him." "Alcestis, I awake. I hear, I hear--unspeak thy reckless words! For, lo! thy life-blood tingles in my veins, And streameth through my body like new wine. Behold! thy spirit dedicate revives My pulse, and through thy sacrifice I breathe. Thy lips are bloodless: kiss me not again. Ashen thy cheeks, faded thy flower-like hands. O woman! perfect in thy womanhood And in thy wifehood, I adjure thee now As mother, by the love thou bearest our child, In this thy hour of passion and of love, Of sacrifice and sorrow, to unsay Thy words sublime!" "I die that thou mayest live." "And deemest thou that I accept the boon, Craven, like these my subjects? Lo, my queen, Is life itself a lovely thing,--bare life? And empty breath a thing desirable? Or is it rather happiness and love That make it precious to its inmost core? When these are lost, are there not swords in Greece, And flame and poison, deadly waves and plagues? No man has ever lacked these things and gone Unsatisfied. It is not these the gods refuse (Nay, never clutch my sleeve and raise thy lip),-- Not these I seek; but I will stab myself, Poison my life and burn my flesh, with words, And save or follow thee. Lo! hearken now: I bid the gods take back their loathsome gifts: O spurn them, and I scorn them, and I hate. Will they prove deaf to this as to my prayers? With tongue reviling, blasphemous, I curse, With mouth polluted from deliberate heart. Dishonored be their names, scorned be their priests, Ruined their altars, mocked their oracles! It is Admetus, King of Thessaly, Defaming thus: annihilate him, gods! So that his queen, who worships you, may live." He paused as one expectant; but no bolt From the insulted heavens answered him, But awful silence followed. Then a hand, A boyish hand, upon his shoulder fell, And turning, he beheld his shepherd boy, Not wrathful, but divinely pitiful, Who spake in tender, thrilling tones: "The gods Cannot recall their gifts. Blaspheme them not: Bow down and worship rather. Shall he curse Who sees not, and who hears not,--neither knows Nor understands? Nay, thou shalt bless and pray,-- Pray, for the pure heart purged by prayer, divines And seeth when the bolder eyes are blind. Worship and wonder,--these befit a man At every hour; and mayhap will the gods Yet work a miracle for knees that bend And hands that supplicate." Then all they knew A sudden sense of awe, and bowed their heads Beneath the stripling's gaze: Admetus fell, Crushed by that gentle touch, and cried aloud: "Pardon and pity! I am hard beset." ______________________ There waited at the doorway of the king One grim and ghastly, shadowy, horrible, Bearing the likeness of a king himself, Erect as one who serveth not,--upon His head a crown, within his fleshless hands A sceptre,--monstrous, winged, intolerable. To him a stranger coming 'neath the trees, Which slid down flakes of light, now on his hair, Close-curled, now on his bared and brawny chest, Now on his flexile, vine-like veined limbs, With iron network of strong muscle thewed, And godlike brows and proud mouth unrelaxed. Firm was his step; no superfluity Of indolent flesh impeded this man's strength. Slender and supple every perfect limb, Beautiful with the glory of a man. No weapons bare he, neither shield: his hands Folded upon his breast, his movements free Of all incumbrance. When his mighty strides Had brought him nigh the waiting one, he paused: "Whose palace this? and who art thou, grim shade?" "The palace of the King of Thessaly, And my name is not strange unto thine ears; For who hath told men that I wait for them, The one sure thing on earth? Yet all they know, Unasking and yet answered. I am Death, The only secret that the gods reveal. But who are thou who darest question me?" "Alcides; and that thing I dare not do Hath found no name. Whom here awaitest thou?" "Alcestis, Queen of Thessaly,--a queen Who wooed me as the bridegroom woos the bride, For her life sacrificed will save her lord Admetus, as the Fates decreed. I wait Impatient, eager; and I enter soon, With darkening wing, invisible, a god, And kiss her lips, and kiss her throbbing heart, And then the tenderest hands can do no more Than close her eyes and wipe her cold, white brow, Inurn her ashes and strew flowers above." "This woman is a god, a hero, Death. In this her sacrifice I see a soul Luminous, starry: earth can spare her not: It is not rich enough in purity To lose this paragon. Save her, O Death! Thou surely art more gentle than the Fates, Yet these have spared her lord, and never meant That she should suffer, and that this their grace, Beautiful, royal on one side, should turn Sudden and show a fearful, fatal face." "Nay, have they not? O fond and foolish man, Naught comes unlooked for, unforeseen by them. Doubt when they favor thee, though thou mayest laugh When they have scourged thee with an iron scourge. Behold, their smile is deadlier than their sting, And every boon of theirs is double-faced. Yea, I am gentler unto ye than these: I slay relentless, but when have I mocked With poisoned gifts, and generous hands that smite Under the flowers? for my name is Truth. Were this fair queen more fair, more pure, more chaste, I would not spare her for your wildest prayer Nor her best virtue. Is the earth's mouth full? Is the grave satisfied? Discrown me then, For life is lord, and men may mock the gods With immortality." "I sue no more, But I command thee spare this woman's life, Or wrestle with Alcides." "Wrestle with thee, Thou puny boy!" And Death laughed loud, and swelled To monstrous bulk, fierce-eyed, with outstretched wings, And lightnings round his brow; but grave and firm, Strong as a tower, Alcides waited him, And these began to wrestle, and a cloud Impenetrable fell, and all was dark. ______________________ "Farewell, Admetus and my little son, Eumelus,--O these clinging baby hands! Thy loss is bitter, for no chance, no fame, No wealth of love, can ever compensate for a dead mother. Thou, O king, fulfill The double duty: love him with my love, And make him bold to wrestle, shiver spears, Noble and manly, Grecian to the bone; And tell him that his mother spake with gods. Farewell, farewell! Mine eyes are growing blind: The darkness gathers. O my heart, my heart!" No sound made answer save the cries of grief From all the mourners, and the suppliance Of strick'n Admetus: "O have mercy, gods! O gods, have mercy, mercy upon us!" Then from the dying woman's couch again Her voice was heard, but with strange sudden tones: "Lo, I awake--the light comes back to me. What miracle is this?" And thunders shook The air, and clouds of mighty darkness fell, And the earth trembled, and weird, horrid sounds Were heard of rushing wings and fleeing feet, And groans; and all were silent, dumb with awe, Saving the king, who paused not in his prayer: "Have mercy, gods!" and then again, "O gods, Have mercy!" Through the open casement poured Bright floods of sunny light; the air was soft, Clear, delicate as though a summer storm Had passed away; and those there standing saw, Afar upon the plain, Death fleeing thence, And at the doorway, weary, well-nigh spent, Alcides, flushed with victory. TANNHAUSER. To my mother. May, 1870. The Landgrave Hermann held a gathering Of minstrels, minnesingers, troubadours, At Wartburg in his palace, and the knight, Sir Tannhauser of France, the greatest bard, Inspired with heavenly visions, and endowed With apprehension and rare utterance Of noble music, fared in thoughtful wise Across the Horsel meadows. Full of light, And large repose, the peaceful valley lay, In the late splendor of the afternoon, And level sunbeams lit the serious face Of the young knight, who journeyed to the west, Towards the precipitous and rugged cliffs, Scarred, grim, and torn with savage rifts and chasms, That in the distance loomed as soft and fair And purple as their shadows on the grass. The tinkling chimes ran out athwart the air, Proclaiming sunset, ushering evening in, Although the sky yet glowed with yellow light. The ploughboy, ere he led his cattle home, In the near meadow, reverently knelt, And doffed his cap, and duly crossed his breast, Whispering his "Ave Mary," as he heard The pealing vesper-bell. But still the knight, Unmindful of the sacred hour announced, Disdainful or unconscious, held his course. "Would that I also, like yon stupid wight, Could kneel and hail the Virgin and believe!" He murmured bitterly beneath his breath. "Were I a pagan, riding to contend For the Olympic wreath, O with what zeal, What fire of inspiration, would I sing The praises of the gods! How may my lyre Glorify these whose very life I doubt? The world is governed by one cruel God, Who brings a sword, not peace. A pallid Christ, Unnatural, perfect, and a virgin cold, They give us for a heaven of living gods, Beautiful, loving, whose mere names were song; A creed of suffering and despair, walled in On every side by brazen boundaries, That limit the soul's vision and her hope To a red hell or and unpeopled heaven. Yea, I am lost already,--even now Am doomed to flaming torture for my thoughts. O gods! O gods! where shall my soul find peace?" He raised his wan face to the faded skies, Now shadowing into twilight; no response Came from their sunless heights; no miracle, As in the ancient days of answering gods. With a long, shuddering sigh he glanced to earth, Finding himself among the Horsel cliffs. Gray, sullen, gaunt, they towered on either side; Scant shrubs sucked meagre life between the rifts Of their huge crags, and made small darker spots Upon their wrinkled sides; the jaded horse Stumbled upon loose, rattling, fallen stones, Amidst the gathering dusk, and blindly fared Through the weird, perilous pass. As darkness waxed, And an oppressive mystery enwrapped The roadstead and the rocks, Sir Tannhauser Fancied he saw upon the mountain-side The fluttering of white raiment. With a sense Of wild joy and horror, he gave pause, For his sagacious horse that reeked of sweat, Trembling in every limb, confirmed his thought, That nothing human scaled that haunted cliff. The white thing seemed descending,--now a cloud It looked, and now a rag of drifted mist, Torn in the jagged gorge precipitous, And now an apparition clad in white, Shapely and real,--then he lost it quite, Gazing on nothing with blank, foolish face. As with wide eyes he stood, he was aware Of a strange splendor at his very side, A presence and a majesty so great, That ere he saw, he felt it was divine. He turned, and, leaping from his horse, fell prone, In speechless adoration, on the earth, Before the matchless goddess, who appeared With no less freshness of immortal youth Than when first risen from foam of Paphian seas. He heard delicious strains of melody, Such as his highest muse had ne'er attained, Float in the air, while in the distance rang, Harsh and discordant, jarring with those tones, The gallop of his frightened horse's hoofs, Clattering in sudden freedom down the pass. A voice that made all music dissonance Then thrilled through heart and flesh of that prone knight, Triumphantly: "The gods need but appear, And their usurped thrones are theirs again!" Then tenderly: "Sweet knight, I pray thee, rise; Worship me not, for I desire thy love. Look on me, follow me, for I am fain Of thy fair, human face." He rose and looked, Stirred by that heavenly flattery to the soul. Her hair, unbraided and unfilleted, Rained in a glittering shower to the ground, And cast forth lustre. Round her zone was clasped The scintillant cestus, stiff with flaming gold, Thicker with restless gems than heaven with stars. She might have flung the enchanted wonder forth; Her eyes, her slightest gesture would suffice To bind all men in blissful slavery. She sprang upon the mountain's dangerous side, With feet that left their print in flowers divine,-- Flushed amaryllis and blue hyacinth, Impurpled amaranth and asphodel, Dewy with nectar, and exhaling scents Richer than all the roses of mid-June. The knight sped after her, with wild eyes fixed Upon her brightness, as she lightly leapt From crag to crag, with flying auburn hair, Like a gold cloud, that lured him ever on, Higher and higher up the haunted cliff. At last amidst a grove of pines she paused, Until he reached her, breathing hard with haste, Delight, and wonder. Then upon his hand She placed her own, and all his blood at once Tingled and hotly rushed to brow and cheek, At the supreme caress; but the mere touch Infused fresh life, and when she looked at him With gracious tenderness, he felt himself Strong suddenly to bear the blinding light Of those great eyes. "Dear knight," she murmured low, "For love of me, wilt thou accord this boon,-- To grace my weary home in banishment?" His hungry eyes gave answer ere he spoke, In tones abrupt that startled his own ears With their strange harshness; but with thanks profuse She guided him, still holding his cold hand In her warm, dainty palm, unto a cave, Whence a rare glory issued, and a smell Of spice and roses, frankincense and balm. They entering stood within a marble hall, With straight, slim pillars, at whose farther end The goddess led him to a spiral flight Of stairs, descending always 'midst black gloom Into the very bowels of the earth. Down these, with fearful swiftness, they made way, The knight's feet touching not the solid stair, But sliding down as in a vexing dream, Blind, feeling but that hand divine that still Empowered him to walk on empty air. Then he was dazzled by a sudden blaze, In vast palace filled with reveling folk. Cunningly pictured on the ivory walls Were rolling hills, cool lakes, and boscage green, And all the summer landscape's various pomp. The precious canopy aloft was carved In semblance of the pleached forest trees, Enameled with the liveliest green, wherethrough A light pierced, more resplendent than the day. O'er the pale, polished jasper of the floor Of burnished metal, fretted and embossed With all the marvelous story of her birth Painted in prodigal splendor of rich tincts, And carved by heavenly artists,--crystal seas, And long-haired Nereids in their pearly shells, And all the wonder of her lucent limbs Sphered in a vermeil mist. Upon the throne She took her seat, the knight beside her still, Singing on couches of fresh asphodel, And the dance ceased, and the flushed revelers came In glittering phalanx to adore their queen. Beautiful girls, with shining delicate heads, Crested with living jewels, fanned the air With flickering wings from naked shoulders soft. Then with preluding low, a thousand harps, And citherns, and strange nameless instruments, Sent through the fragrant air sweet symphonies, And the winged dancers waved in mazy rounds, With changing lustres like a summer sea. Fair boys, with charming yellow hair crisp-curled, And frail, effeminate beauty, the knight saw, But of strong, stalwart men like him were none. He gazed thereon bewitched, until the hand Of Venus, erst withdrawn, now fell again Upon his own, and roused him from his trance. He looked on her, and as he looked, a cloud Auroral, flaming as at sunrising, Arose from nothing, floating over them In luminous folds, like that vermilion mist Penciled upon the throne, and as it waxed In density and brightness, all the throng Of festal dancers, less and less distinct, Grew like pale spirits in a vague, dim dream, And vanished altogether; and these twain, Shut from the world in that ambrosial cloud, Now with a glory inconceivable, Vivid and conflagrant, looked each on each. All hours came laden with their own delights In that enchanted place, wherein Time Knew no divisions harsh of night and day, But light was always, and desire of sleep Was satisfied at once with slumber soft, Desire of food with magical repast, By unseen hands on golden tables spread. But these the knight accepted like a god, All less was lost in that excess of joy, The crowning marvel of her love for him, Assuring him of his divinity. Meanwhile remembrance of the earth appeared Like the vague trouble of a transient dream,-- The doubt, the scruples, the remorse for thoughts Beyond his own control, the constant thirst For something fairer than his life, more real Than airy revelations of his Muse. Here was his soul's desire satisfied. All nobler passions died; his lyre he flung Recklessly forth, with vows to dedicate His being to herself. She knew and seized The moment of her mastery, and conveyed The lyre beyond his sight and memory. With blandishment divine she changed for him, Each hour, her mood; a very woman now, Fantastic, voluble, affectionate, And jealous of the vague, unbodied air, Exacting, penitent, and pacified, All in a breath. And often she appeared Majestic with celestial wrath, with eyes That shot forth fire, and a heavy brow, Portentous as the lowering front of heaven, When the reverberant, sullen thunder rolls Among the echoing clouds. Thus she denounced Her ancient, fickle worshippers, who left Her altars desecrate, her fires unfed, Her name forgotten. "But I reign, I reign!" She would shrill forth, triumphant; "yea, I reign. Men name me not, but worship me unnamed, Beauty and Love within their heart of hearts; Not with bent knees and empty breath of words, But with devoted sacrifice of lives." Then melting in a moment, she would weep Ambrosial tears, pathetic, full of guile, Accusing her own base ingratitude, In craving worship, when she had his heart, Her priceless knight, her peerless paladin, Her Tannhauser; then, with an artful glance Of lovely helplessness, entreated him Not to desert her, like the faithless world, For these unbeautiful and barbarous gods, Or she would never cease her prayers to Jove, Until he took from her the heavy curse Of immortality. With closer vows, The knight then sealed his worship and forswore All other aims and deeds to serve her cause. Thus passed unnoted seven barren years Of reckless passion and voluptuous sloth, Undignified by any lofty thought In his degraded mind, that sometime was Endowed with noble capability. From revelry to revelry he passed, Craving more pungent pleasure momently, And new intoxications, and each hour The siren goddess answered his desires. Once when she left him with a weary sense Of utter lassitude, he sat alone, And, raising listless eyes, he saw himself In a great burnished mirror, wrought about With cunning imagery of twisted vines. He scarcely knew those sunken, red-rimmed eyes, For his who in the flush of manhood rode Among the cliffs, and followed up the crags The flying temptress; and there fell on him A horror of her beauty, a disgust For his degenerate and corrupted life, With irresistible, intense desire, To feel the breath of heaven on his face. Then as Fate willed, who rules above the gods, He saw, within the glass, behind him glide The form of Venus. Certain of her power, She had laid by, in fond security, The enchanted cestus, and Sir Tannhauser, With surfeited regard, beheld her now, No fairer than the women of the earth, Whom with serenity and health he left, Duped by a lovely witch. Before he moved, She knew her destiny; and when he turned, He seemed to drop a mask, disclosing thus An alien face, and eyes with vision true, That for long time with glamour had been blind. Hiding the hideous rage within her breast, With girlish simpleness of folded hands, Auroral blushes, and sweet, shamefast mien, She spoke: "Behold, my love, I have cast forth All magic, blandishments and sorcery, For I have dreamed a dream so terrible, That I awoke to find my pillow stained With tears as of real woe. I thought my belt, By Vulcan wrought with matchless skill and power, Was the sole bond between us; this being doffed, I seemed to thee an old, unlovely crone, Wrinkled by every year that I have seen. Thou turnedst from me with a brutal sneer, So that I woke with weeping. Then I rose, And drew the glittering girdle from my zone, Jealous thereof, yet full of fears, and said, 'If it be this he loves, then let him go! I have no solace as a mortal hath, No hope of change or death to comfort me Through all eternity; yet he is free, Though I could hold him fast with heavy chains, Bound in perpetual imprisonment.' Tell me my vision was a baseless dream; See, I am kneeling, and kiss thy hands,-- In pity, look on me, before thy word Condemns me to immortal misery!" As she looked down, the infernal influence Worked on his soul again; for she was fair Beyond imagination, and her brow Seemed luminous with high self-sacrifice. He bent and kissed her head, warm, shining, soft, With its close-curling gold, and love revived. But ere he spoke, he heard the distant sound Of one sweet, smitten lyre, and a gleam Of violent anger flashed across the face Upraised to his in feigned simplicity And singleness of purpose. Then he sprang, Well-nigh a god himself, with sudden strength to vanquish and resist, beyond her reach, Crying, "My old Muse calls me, and I hear! Thy fateful vision is no baseless dream; I will be gone from this accursed hall!" Then she, too, rose, dilating over him, And sullen clouds veiled all her rosy limbs, Unto her girdle, and her head appeared Refulgent, and her voice rang wrathfully: "Have I cajoled and flattered thee till now, To lose thee thus! How wilt thou make escape? ONCE BEING MINE THOU ART FOREVER MINE: Yea, not my love, but my poor slave and fool." But he, with both hands pressed upon his eyes, Against that blinding lustre, heeded not Her thundered words, and cried in sharp despair, "Help me, O Virgin Mary! and thereat, The very bases of the hall gave way, The roof was rived, the goddess disappeared, And Tannhauser stood free upon the cliff, Amidst the morning sunshine and fresh air. Around him were the tumbled blocks and crags, Huge ridges and sharp juts of flinty peaks, Black caves, and masses of the grim, bald rock. The ethereal, unfathomable sky, Hung over him, the valley lay beneath, Dotted with yellow hayricks, that exhaled Sweet, healthy odors to the mountain-top. He breathed intoxicate the infinite air, And plucked the heather blossoms where they blew, Reckless with light and dew, in crannies green, And scarcely saw their darling bells for tears. No sounds of labor reached him from the farms And hamlets trim, nor from the furrowed glebe; But a serene and sabbath stillness reigned, Till broken by the faint, melodious chimes Of the small village church that called to prayer. He hurried down the rugged, scarped cliff, And swung himself from shelving granite slopes To narrow foot-holds, near wide-throated chasms, Tearing against the sharp stones his bleeding hands, With long hair flying from his dripping brow, Uncovered head, and white, exalted face. No memory had he of his smooth ascent, No thought of fear upon those dreadful hills; He only heard the bell, inviting him To satisfy the craving of his heart, For worship 'midst his fellow men. He reached The beaten, dusty road, and passed thereon The pious peasants faring towards the church, And scarce refrained from greeting them like friends Dearly beloved, after long absence met. How more than fair the sunburnt wenches looked, In their rough, homespun gowns and coifs demure, After the beauty of bare, rosy limbs, And odorous, loose hair! He noted not Suspicious glances on his garb uncouth, His air extravagant and face distraught, With bursts of laughter from the red-cheeked boys, And prudent crossings of the women's breasts. He passed the flowering close about the church, And trod the well worn-path, with throbbing heart, The little heather-bell between his lips, And his eyes fastened on the good green grass. Thus entered he the sanctuary, lit With frequent tapers, and with sunbeams stained Through painted glass. How pure and innocent The waiting congregation seemed to him, Kneeling, or seated with calm brows upraised! With faltering strength, he cowered down alone, And held sincere communion with the Lord, For one brief moment, in a sudden gush Of blessed tears. The minister of God Rose to invoke a blessing on his flock, And then began the service,--not in words To raise the lowly, and to heal the sick, But an alien tongue, with phrases formed, And meaningless observances. The knight, Unmoved, yet thirsting for the simple word That might have moved him, held his bitter thoughts, But when in his own speech a new priest spake, Looked up with hope revived, and heard the text: "Go, preach the Gospel unto all the world. He that believes and is baptized, is saved. He that believeth not, is damned in hell!" He sat with neck thrust forth and staring eyes; The crowded congregation disappeared; He felt alone in some black sea of hell, While a great light smote one exalted face, Vivid already with prophetic fire, Whose fatal mouth now thundered forth his doom. He longed in that void circle to cry out, With one clear shriek, but sense and voice seemed bound, And his parched tongue clave useless to his mouth. As the last words resounded through the church, And once again the pastor blessed his flock, Who, serious and subdued, passed slowly down The arrow aisle, none noted, near the wall, A fallen man with face upon his knees, A heap of huddled garments and loose hair, Unconscious 'mid the rustling, murmurous stir, 'Midst light and rural smell of grass and flowers, Let in athwart the doorway. One lone priest, Darkening the altar lights, moved noiselessly, Now with the yellow glow upon his face, Now a black shadow gliding farther on, Amidst the smooth, slim pillars of hewn ash. But from the vacant aisles he heard at once A hollow sigh, heaved from a depth profound. Upholding his last light above his head, And peering eagerly amidst the stalls, He cried, "Be blest who cometh in God's name." Then the gaunt form of Tannhauser arose. "Father, I am a sinner, and I seek Forgiveness and help, by whatso means I can regain the joy of peace with God." "The Lord hath mercy on the penitent. 'Although thy sins be scarlet,' He hath said, 'Will I not make them white as wool?' Confess, And I will shrive you." Thus the good priest moved Towards the remorseful knight and pressed his hand. But shrinking down, he drew his fingers back From the kind palm, and kissed the friar's feet. "Thy pure hand is anointed, and can heal. The cool, calm pressure brings back sanity, And what serene, past joys! yet touch me not, My contact is pollution,--hear, O hear, While I disburden my charged soul." He lay, Casting about for words and strength to speak. "O father, is there help for such a one," In tones of deep abasement he began, "Who hath rebelled against the laws of God, With pride no less presumptuous than his Who lost thereby his rank in heaven?" "My son, There is atonement for all sins,--or slight Or difficult, proportioned to the crime. Though this may be the staining of thy hands With blood of kinsmen or of fellow-men." "My hands are white,--my crime hath found no name, This side of hell; yet though my heart-strings snap To live it over, let me make the attempt. I was a knight and bard, with such a gift Of revelation that no hour of life Lacked beauty and adornment, in myself The seat and centre of all happiness. What inspiration could my lofty Muse Draw from those common and familiar themes, Painted upon the windows and the walls Of every church,--the mother and her child, The miracle and mystery of the birth, The death, the resurrection? Fool and blind! That saw not symbols of eternal truth In that grand tragedy and victory, Significant and infinite as life. What tortures did my skeptic soul endure, At war against herself and all mankind! The restless nights of feverish sleeplessness, With balancing of reasons nicely weighed; The dawn that brought no hope nor energy, The blasphemous arraignment of the Lord, Taxing His glorious divinity With all the grief and folly of the world. Then came relapses into abject fear, And hollow prayer and praise from craven heart. Before a sculptured Venus I would kneel, Crown her with flowers, worship her, and cry, 'O large and noble type of our ideal, At least my heart and prayer return to thee, Amidst a faithless world of proselytes. Madonna Mary, with her virgin lips, And eyes that look perpetual reproach, Insults and is a blasphemy on youth. Is she to claim the worship of a man Hot with the first rich flush of ripened life?' Realities, like phantoms, glided by, Unnoted 'midst the torment and delights Of my conflicting spirit, and I doffed the modest Christian weeds of charity And fit humility, and steeled myself In pagan panoply of stoicism And self-sufficing pride. Yet constantly I gained men's charmed attention and applause, With the wild strains I smote from out my lyre, To me the native language of my soul, To them attractive and miraculous, As all things whose solution and whose source Remain a mystery. Then came suddenly The summons to attend the gathering Of minstrels at the Landgrave Hermann's court. Resolved to publish there my pagan creed In harmonies so high and beautiful That all the world would share my zeal and faith, I journeyed towards the haunted Horsel cliffs. O God! how may I tell you how SHE came, The temptress of a hundred centuries, Yet fresh as April? She bewitched my sense, Poisoned my judgment with sweet flatteries, And for I may not guess how many years Held me a captive in degrading bonds. There is no sin of lust so lewd and foul, Which I learned not in that alluring hell, Until this morn, I snapped the ignoble tie, By calling on the Mother of our Lord. O for the power to stand again erect, And look men in the eyes! What penitence, What scourging of the flesh, what rigid fasts, What terrible privations may suffice To cleanse me in the sight of God and man?" Ill-omened silence followed his appeal. Patient and motionless he lay awhile, Then sprang unto his feet with sudden force, Confronting in his breathless vehemence, With palpitating heart, the timid priest. "Answer me, as you hope for a response, One day, at the great judgment seat yourself." "I cannot answer," said the timid priest, "I have not understood." "Just God! is this The curse Thou layest upon me? I outstrip The sympathy and brotherhood of men, So far removed is my experience From their clean innocence. Inspire me, Prompt me to words that bring me near to them! Father," in gentler accents he resumed, "Thank Heaven at your every orison That sin like mine you cannot apprehend. More than the truth perchance I have confessed, But I have sinned, and darkly,--this is true; And I have suffered, and am suffering now. Is there no help in your great Christian creed Of liberal charity, for such a one?" "My son," the priest replied, "your speech distraught Hath quite bewildered me. I fain would hope That Christ's large charity can reach your sin, But I know naught. I cannot but believe That the enchantress who first tempted you Must be the Evil one,--your early doubt Was the possession of your soul by him. Travel across the mountain to the town, The first cathedral town upon the road That leads to Rome,--a sage and reverend priest, The Bishop Adrian, bides there. Say you have come From his leal servant, Friar Lodovick; He hath vast lore and great authority, And may absolve you freely of your sin." Over the rolling hills, through summer fields, By noisy villages and lonely lanes, Through glowing days, when all the landscape stretched Shimmering in the heat, a pilgrim fared Towards the cathedral town. Sir Tannhauser Had donned the mournful sackcloth, girt his loins With a coarse rope that ate into his flesh, Muffled a cowl about his shaven head, Hung a great leaden cross around his neck; And bearing in his hands a knotty staff, With swollen, sandaled feet he held his course. He snatched scant rest at twilight or at dawn, When his forced travel was least difficult. But most he journeyed when the sky, o'ercast, Uprolled its threatening clouds of dusky blue, And angry thunder grumbled through the hills, And earth grew dark at noonday, till the flash Of the thin lightning through the wide sky leapt. And tumbling showers scoured along the plain. Then folk who saw the pilgrim penitent, Drenched, weird, and hastening as as to some strange doom, Swore that the wandering Jew had crossed their land, And the Lord Christ had sent the deadly bolt Harmless upon his cursed, immortal head. At length the hill-side city's spires and roofs, With all its western windows smitten red By a rich sunset, and with massive towers Of its cathedral overtopping all, greeted his sight. Some weary paces more, And as the twilight deepened in the streets, He stood within the minster. How serene, In sculptured calm of centuries, it seemed! How cool and spacious all the dim-lit aisles, Still hazy with fumes of frankincense! The vesper had been said, yet here and there A wrinkled beldam, or mourner veiled, Or burly burgher on the cold floor knelt, And still the organist, with wandering hands, Drew from the keys mysterious melodies, And filled the church with flying waifs of song, That with ethereal beauty moved the soul To a more tender prayer and gentler faith Than choral anthems and the solemn mass. A thousand memories, sweet to bitterness, Rushed on the knight and filled his eyes with tears; Youth's blamelessness and faith forever lost, The love of his neglected lyre, his art, Revived by these aerial harmonies. He was unworthy now to touch the strings, Too base to stir men's soul to ecstasy And high resolves, as in the days agone; And yet, with all his spirit's earnestness, He yearned to feel the lyre between his hands, To utter all the trouble of his life Unto the Muse who understands and helps. Outworn with travel, soothed to drowsiness By dying music and sweet-scented air, His limbs relaxed, and sleep possessed his frame. Auroral light the eastern oriels touched, When with delicious sense of rest he woke, Amidst the cast and silent empty aisles. "God's peace hath fallen upon me in this place; This is my Bethel; here I feel again A holy calm, if not of innocence, Yet purest after that, the calm serene Of expiation and forgiveness." He spake, and passed with staff and wallet forth Through the tall portal to the open square, And turning, paused to look upon the pile. The northern front against the crystal sky Loomed dark and heavy, full of sombre shade, With each projecting buttress, carven cross, Gable and mullion, tipped with laughing light By the slant sunbeams of the risen morn. The noisy swallows wheeled above their nests, Builded in hidden nooks about the porch. No human life was stirring in the square, Save now and then a rumbling market-team, Fresh from the fields and farms without the town. He knelt upon the broad cathedral steps, And kissed the moistened stone, while overhead The circling swallows sang, and all around The mighty city lay asleep and still. To stranger's ears must yet again be made The terrible confession; yet again A deathly chill, with something worse than fear, Seized the knight's heart, who knew his every word Widened the gulf between his kind and him. The Bishop sat with pomp of mitred head, In pride of proven virtue, hearkening to all With cold, official apathy, nor made A sign of pity nor encouragement. The friar understood the pilgrim's grief, The language of his eyes; his speech alone Was alien to these kind, untutored ears. But this was truly to be misconstrued, To tear each palpitating word alive From out the depths of his remorseful soul, And have it weighed with the precision cool And the nice logic of a reasoning mind. This spiritual Father judged his crime As the mad mischief of a reckless boy, That call for strict, immediate punishment. But Tannhauser, who felt himself a man, Though base, yet fallen through passions and rare gifts Of an exuberant nature rankly rich, And knew his weary head was growing gray With a life's terrible experience, Found his old sense of proper worth revive; But modestly he ended: "Yet I felt, O holy Father, in the church, this morn, A strange security, a peace serene, As though e'en yet the Lord regarded me With merciful compassion; yea, as though Even so vile a worm as I might work Mine own salvation, through repentant prayers." "Presumptuous man, it is no easy task To expiate such sin; a space of prayer That deprecates the anger of the Lord, A pilgrimage through pleasant summer lands, May not atone for years of impious lust; Thy heart hath lied to thee in offering hope." "Is there no hope on earth?" the pilgrim sighed. "None through thy penance," said the saintly man. "Yet there may be through mediation, help. There is a man who by a blameless life Hath won the right to intercede with God. No sins of his own flesh hath he to purge,-- The Cardinal Filippo,--he abides, Within the Holy City. Seek him out; This is my only counsel,--through thyself Can be no help and no forgiveness." How different from the buoyant joy of morn Was this discouraged sense of lassitude, The Bishop's words were ringing in his ears, Measured and pitiless, and blent with these, The memory of the goddess' last wild cry,-- "ONCE BEING MINE, THOU ART FOREVER MINE." Was it the truth, despite his penitence, And the dedication of his thought to God, That still some portion of himself was hers, Some lust survived, some criminal regret, For her corrupted love? He searched his heart: All was remorse, religious and sincere, And yet her dreadful curse still haunted him; For all men shunned him, and denied him help, Knowing at once in looking on his face, Ploughed with deep lines and prematurely old, That he had struggled with some deadly fiend, And that he was no longer kin to them. Just past the outskirts of the town, he stopped, To strengthen will and courage to proceed. The storm had broken o'er the sultry streets, But now the lessening clouds were flying east, And though the gentle shower still wet his face, The west was cloudless while the sun went down, And the bright seven-colored arch stood forth, Against the opposite dull gray. There was A beauty in the mingled storm and peace, Beyond clear sunshine, as the vast, green fields Basked in soft light, though glistening yet with rain. The roar of all the town was now a buzz Less than the insects' drowsy murmuring That whirred their gauzy wings around his head. The breeze that follows on the sunsetting Was blowing whiffs of bruised and dripping grass Into the heated city. But he stood, Disconsolate with thoughts of fate and sin, Still wrestling with his soul to win it back From her who claimed it to eternity. Then on the delicate air there came to him The intonation of the minster bells, Chiming the vespers, musical and faint. He knew not what of dear and beautiful There was in those familiar peals, that spake Of his first boyhood and his innocence, Leading him back, with gracious influence, To pleasant thoughts and tender memories, And last, recalling the fair hour of hope He passed that morning in the church. Again, The glad assurance of God's boundless love Filled all his being, and he rose serene, And journeyed forward with a calm content. Southward he wended, and the landscape took A warmer tone, the sky a richer light. The gardens of the graceful, festooned with hops, With their slight tendrils binding pole to pole, Gave place to orchards and the trellised grape, The hedges were enwreathed with trailing vines, With clustering, shapely bunches, 'midst the growth Of tangled greenery. The elm and ash Less frequent grew than cactus, cypresses, And golden-fruited or large-blossomed trees. The far hills took the hue of the dove's breast, Veiled in gray mist of olive groves. No more He passed dark, moated strongholds of grim knights, But terraces with marble-paven steps, With fountains leaping in the sunny air, And hanging gardens full of sumptuous bloom. Then cloisters guarded by their dead gray walls, Where now and then a golden globe of fruit Or full-flushed flower peered out upon the road, Nodding against the stone, and where he heard Sometimes the voices of the chanting monks, Sometimes the laugh of children at their play, Amidst the quaint, old gardens. But these sights Were in the suburbs of the wealthy towns. For many a day through wildernesses rank, Or marshy, feverous meadow-lands he fared, The fierce sun smiting his close-muffled head; Or 'midst the Alpine gorges faced the storm, That drave adown the gullies melted snow And clattering boulders from the mountain-tops. At times, between the mountains and the sea Fair prospects opened, with the boundless stretch Of restless, tideless water by his side, And their long wash upon the yellow sand. Beneath this generous sky the country-folk Could lead a freer life,--the fat, green fields Offered rich pasturage, athwart the air Rang tinkling cow-bells and the shepherds' pipes. The knight met many a strolling troubadour, Bearing his cithern, flute, or dulcimer; And oft beneath some castle's balcony, At night, he heard their mellow voices rise, Blent with stringed instruments or tambourines, Chanting some lay as natural as a bird's. Then Nature stole with healthy influence Into his thoughts; his love of beauty woke, His Muse inspired dreams as in the past. But after this came crueler remorse, And he would tighten round his loins the rope, And lie for hours beside some wayside cross, And feel himself unworthy to enjoy The splendid gift and privilege of life. Then forth he hurried, spurred by his desire To reach the City of the Seven Hills, And gain his absolution. Some leagues more Would bring him to the vast Campagna land, When by a roadside well he paused to rest. 'T was noon, and reapers in the field hard by Lay neath the trees upon the sun-scorched grass. But from their midst one came towards the well, Not trudging like a man forespent with toil, But frisking like a child at holiday, With light steps. The pilgrim watched him come, And found him scarcely older than a child, A large-mouthed earthen pitcher in his hand, And a guitar upon his shoulder slung. A wide straw hat threw all his face in shade, But doffing this, to catch whatever breeze Might stir among the branches, he disclosed A charming head of rippled, auburn hair, A frank, fair face, as lovely as a girls, With great, soft eyes, as mild and grave as kine's. Above his head he slipped the instrument, And laid it with his hat upon the turf, Lowered his pitcher down the well-head cool, And drew it dripping upward, ere he saw The watchful pilgrim, craving (as he thought) The precious draught. "Your pardon, holy sir, Drink first," he cried, "before I take the jar Unto my father in the reaping-field." Touched by the cordial kindness of the lad, The pilgrim answered,--"Thanks, my thirst is quenched From mine own palm." The stranger deftly poised The brimming pitcher on his head, and turned Back to the reaping-folk, while Tannhauser Looked after him across the sunny fields, Clasping each hand about his waist to bear The balanced pitcher; then, down glancing, found The lad's guitar near by, and fell at once To striking its tuned string with wandering hands, And pensive eyes filled full of tender dreams. "Yea, holy sir, it is a worthless thing, And yet I love it, for I make it speak." The boy again stood by him and dispelled His train of fantasies half sweet, half sad. "That was not in my thought," the knight replied. "Its worth is more than rubies; whoso hath The art to make this speak is raised thereby Above all loneliness or grief or fear." More to himself than to the lad he spake, Who, understanding not, stood doubtfully At a loss for answer; but the knight went on: "How came it in your hands, and who hath tuned your voice to follow it." "I am unskilled, Good father, but my mother smote its strings To music rare." Diverted from one theme, Pleased with the winsome candor of the boy, The knight encouraged him to confidence; Then his own gift of minstrelsy revealed, And told bright tales of his first wanderings, When in lords' castles and kings' palaces Men still made place for him, for in his land The gift was rare and valued at its worth, And brought great victory and sounding fame. Thus, in retracing all his pleasant youth, His suffering passed as though it had not been. Wide-eyed and open-mouthed the boy gave ear, His fair face flushing with the sudden thoughts That went and came,--then, as the pilgrim ceased, Drew breath and spake: "And where now is your lyre?" The knight with both hands hid his changed, white face, Crying aloud, "Lost! lost! forever lost!" Then, gathering strength, he bared his face again Unto the frightened, wondering boy, and rose With hasty fear. "Ah, child, you bring me back Unwitting to remembrance of my grief, For which I donned eternal garb of woe; And yet I owe you thanks for one sweet hour Of healthy human intercourse and peace. 'T is not for me to tarry by the way. Farewell!" The impetuous, remorseful boy, Seeing sharp pain on that kind countenance, Fell at his feet and cried, "Forgive my words, Witless but innocent, and leave me not Without a blessing." Moved unutterably, The pilgrim kissed with trembling lips his head, And muttered, "At this moment would to God That I were worthy!" Then waved wasted hands Over the youth in act of blessing him, But faltered, "Cleanse me through his innocence, O heavenly Father!" and with quickening steps Hastened away upon the road to Rome. The noon was past, the reapers drew broad swaths With scythes sun-smitten 'midst the ripened crop. Thin shadows of the afternoon slept soft On the green meadows as the knight passed forth. He trudged amidst the sea of poisonous flowers On the Campagna's undulating plain, With Rome, the many-steepled, many-towered, Before him regnant on her throne of hills. A thick blue cloud of haze o'erhung the town, But the fast-sinking sun struck fiery light From shining crosses, roofs, and flashing domes. Across his path an arching bridge of stone Was raised above a shrunken yellow stream, Hurrying with the light on every wave Towards the great town and outward to the sea. Upon the bridge's crest he paused, and leaned Against the barrier, throwing back his cowl, And gazed upon the dull, unlovely flood That was the Tiber. Quaggy banks lay bare, Muddy and miry, glittering in the sun, And myriad insects hovered o'er the reeds, Whose lithe, moist tips by listless airs were stirred. When the low sun had dropped behind the hills, He found himself within the streets of Rome, Walking as in a sleep, where naught seemed real. The chattering hubbub of the market-place Was over now; but voices smote his ear Of garrulous citizens who jostled past. Loud cries, gay laughter, snatches of sweet song, The tinkling fountains set in gardens cool About the pillared palaces, and blent With trickling of the conduits in the squares, The noisy teams within the narrow streets,-- All these the stranger heard and did not hear, While ringing bells pealed out above the town, And calm gray twilight skies stretched over it. Wide open stood the doors of every church, And through the porches pressed a streaming throng. Vague wonderment perplexed him, at the sight Of broken columns raised to Jupiter Beside the cross, immense cathedrals reared Upon a dead faith's ruins; all the whirl And eager bustle of the living town Filling the storied streets, whose very stones Were solemn monuments, and spake of death. Although he wrestled with himself, the thought Of that poor, past religion smote his heart With a huge pity and deep sympathy, Beyond the fervor which the Church inspired. Where was the noble race who ruled the world, Moulded of purest elements, and stuffed With sternest virtues, every man a king, Wearing the purple native in his heart? These lounging beggars, stealthy monks and priests, And womanish patricians filled their place. Thus Tannhauser, still half an infidel, Pagan through mind and Christian through the heart, Fared thoughtfully with wandering, aimless steps, Till in the dying glimmer of the day He raised his eyes and found himself alone Amid the ruined arches, broken shafts, And huge arena of the Coliseum. He did not see it as it was, dim-lit By something less than day and more than night, With wan reflections of the rising moon Rather divined than seen on ivied walls, And crumbled battlements, and topless columns-- But by the light of all the ancient days, Ringed with keen eager faces, living eyes, Fixed on the circus with a savage joy, Where brandished swords flashed white, and human blood Streamed o'er the thirsty dust, and Death was king. He started, shuddering, and drew breath to see The foul pit choked with weeds and tumbled stones, The cross raised midmost, and the peaceful moon Shining o'er all; and fell upon his knees, Restored to faith in one wise, loving God. Day followed day, and still he bode in Rome, Waiting his audience with the Cardinal, And from the gates, on pretext frivolous, Passed daily forth,--his Eminency slept,-- Again, his Eminency was fatigued By tedious sessions of the Papal court, And thus the patient pilgrim was referred Unto a later hour. At last the page Bore him a missive with Filippo's seal, That in his name commended Tannhauser Unto the Pope. The worn, discouraged knight Read the brief scroll, then sadly forth again, Along the bosky alleys of the park, Passed to the glare and noise of summer streets. "Good God!" he muttered, "Thou hast ears for all, And sendest help and comfort; yet these men, Thy saintly ministers, must deck themselves With arrogance, and from their large delight In all the beauty of the beauteous earth, And peace of indolent, untempted souls, Deny the hungry outcast a bare word." Yet even as he nourished bitter thoughts, He felt a depth of clear serenity, Unruffled in his heart beneath it all. No outward object now had farther power To wound him there, for the brooding o'er those deeps Of vast contrition was boundless hope. Yet not to leave a human chance untried, He sought the absolution of the Pope. In a great hall with airy galleries, Thronged with high dignitaries of the Church, He took his seat amidst the humblest friars. Through open windows came sweet garden smells, Bright morning light, and twittered song of birds. Around the hall flashed gold and sunlit gems, And splendid wealth of color,--white-stoled priests, And scarlet cardinals, and bishops clad In violet vestments,--while beneath the shade Of the high gallery huddled dusky shapes, With faded, travel-tattered, sombre smocks, And shaven heads, and girdles of coarse hemp; Some, pilgrims penitent like Tannhauser; Some, devotees to kiss the sacred feet. The brassy blare of trumpets smote the air, Shrill pipes and horns with swelling clamor came, And through the doorway's wide-stretched tapestries Passed the Pope's trumpeters and mace-bearers, His vergers bearing slender silver wands, Then mitred bishops, red-clad cardinals, The stalwart Papal Guard with halberds raised, And then, with white head crowned with gold ingemmed, The vicar of the lowly Galilean, Holding his pastoral rod of smooth-hewn wood, With censer swung before and peacock fans Waved constantly by pages, either side. Attended thus, they bore him to his throne, And priests and laymen fell upon their knees. Then, after pause of brief and silent prayer, The pilgrims singly through the hall defiled, To kiss the borders of the papal skirts, Smiting their foreheads on the paven stone; Some silent, abject, some accusing them Of venial sins in accents of remorse, Craving his grace, and passing pardoned forth. Sir Tannhauser came last, no need for him To cry "Peccavi," and crook suppliant knees. His gray head rather crushed than bowed, his face Livid and wasted, his deep thoughtful eyes, His tall gaunt form in those unseemly weeds, Spake more than eloquence. His hollow voice Brake silence, saying, "I am Tannhauser. For seven years I lived apart from men, Within the Venusberg." A horror seized The assembled folk; some turbulently rose; Some clamored, "From the presence cast him forth!" But the knight never ceased his steady gaze Upon the Pope. At last,--"I have not spoken To be condemned," he said, "by such as these. Thou, spiritual Father, answer me. Look thou upon me with the eyes of Christ. Can I through expiation gain my shrift, And work mine own redemption?" "Insolent man!" Thundered the outraged Pope, "is this the tone Wherewith thou dost parade thy loathsome sin? Down on thy knees, and wallow on the earth! Nay, rather go! there is no ray of hope, No gleam, through cycles of eternity, For the redemption of a soul like thine. Yea, sooner shall my pastoral rod branch forth In leaf and blossom, and green shoots of spring, Than Christ will pardon thee." And as he spoke, He struck the rod upon the floor with force That gave it entrance 'twixt two loosened tiles, So that it stood, fast-rooted and alone. The knight saw naught, he only heard his judge Ring forth his curses, and the court cry out "Anathema!" and loud, and blent therewith, Derisive laughter in the very hall, And a wild voice that thrilled through flesh and heart: "ONCE BEING MINE, THOU ART FOREVER MINE!" Half-mad he clasped both hands upon his brow, Amidst the storm of voices, till they died, And all was silence, save the reckless song Of a young bird upon a twig without. Then a defiant, ghastly face he raised, And shrieked, "'T is false! I am no longer thine!" And through the windows open to the park, Rushed forth, beyond the sight and sound of men. By church nor palace paused he, till he passed All squares and streets, and crossed the bridge of stone, And stood alone amidst the broad expanse Of the Campagna, twinkling in the heat. He knelt upon a knoll of turf, and snapped The cord that held the cross about his neck, And far from him the leaden burden flung. "O God! I thank Thee, that my faith in Thee Subsists at last, through all discouragements. Between us must no type nor symbol stand, No mediator, were he more divine Than the incarnate Christ. All forms, all priests, I part aside, and hold communion free Beneath the empty sky of noon, with naught Between my nothingness and thy high heavens-- Spirit with spirit. O, have mercy, God! Cleanse me from lust and bitterness and pride, Have mercy in accordance with my faith." Long time he lay upon the scorching grass, With his face buried in the tangled weeds. Ah! who can tell the struggles of his soul Against its demons in that sacred hour, The solitude, the anguish, the remorse? When shadows long and thin lay on the ground, Shivering with fever, helpless he arose, But with a face divine, ineffable, Such as we dream the face of Israel, When the Lord's wrestling angel, at gray dawn, Blessed him, and disappeared. Upon the marsh, All night, he wandered, striving to emerge From the wild, pathless plain,--now limitless And colorless beneath the risen moon; Outstretching like a sea, with landmarks none, Save broken aqueducts and parapets, And ruined columns glinting 'neath the moon. His dress was dank and clinging with the dew; A thousand insects fluttered o'er his head, With buzz and drone; unseen cicadas chirped Among the long, rank grass, and far and near The fire-flies flickered through the summer air. Vague thoughts and gleams prophetic filled his brain. "Ah, fool!" he mused, "to look for help from men. Had they the will to aid, they lack the power. In mine own flesh and soul the sin had birth, Through mine own anguish it must be atoned. Our saviours are not saints and ministers, But tear-strung women, children soft of heart, Or fellow-sufferers, who, by some chance word, Some glance of comfort, save us from despair. These I have found, thank heaven! to strengthen trust In mine own kind, when all the world grew dark. Make me not proud in spirit, O my God! Yea, in thy sight I am one mass of sin, One black and foul corruption, yet I know My frailty is exceeded by thy love. Neither is this the slender straw of hope, Whereto I, drowning, cling, but firm belief, That fills my inmost soul with vast content. As surely as the hollow faiths of old Shriveled to dust before one ray of Truth, So will these modern temples pass away, Piled upon rotten doctrines, baseless forms, And man will look in his own breast for help, Yea, search for comfort his own inward reins, Revere himself, and find the God within. Patience and patience!" Through the sleepless night He held such thoughts; at times before his eyes Flashed glimpses of the Church that was to be, Sublimely simple in the light serene Of future ages; then the vision changed To the Pope's hall, thronged with high priests, who hurled Their curses on him. Staggering, he awoke Unto the truth, and found himself alone, Beneath the awful stars. When dawn's first chill Crept though the shivering grass and heavy leaves, Giddy and overcome, he fell and slept Upon the dripping weeds, nor dreamed nor stirred, Until the wide plain basked in noon's broad light. He dragged his weary frame some paces more, Unto a solitary herdsman's hut, Which, in the vagueness of the moonlit night, Was touched with lines of beauty, till it grew Fair as the ruined works of ancient art, Now squat and hideous with its wattled roof, Decaying timbers, and loose door wide oped, Half-fallen from the hinge. A drowsy man, Bearded and burnt, in shepherd habit lay, Stretched on the floor, slow-munching, half asleep, His frugal fare; for thus, at blaze of noon, The shepherds sought a shelter from the sun, Leaving their vigilant dogs beside their flock. The knight craved drink and bread, and with respect For pilgrim weeds, the Roman herdsman stirred His lazy length, and shared with him his meal. Refreshed and calm, Sir Tannhauser passed forth, Yearning with morbid fancy once again To see the kind face of the minstrel boy He met beside the well. At set of sun He reached the place; the reaping-folk were gone, The day's toil over, yet he took his seat. A milking-girl with laden buckets full, Came slowly from the pasture, paused and drank. From a near cottage ran a ragged boy, And filled his wooden pail, and to his home Returned across the fields. A herdsman came, And drank and gave his dog to drink, and passed, Greeting the holy man who sat there still, Awaiting. But his feeble pulse beat high When he descried at last a youthful form, Crossing the field, a pitcher on his head, Advancing towards the well. Yea, this was he, The same grave eyes, and open, girlish face. But he saw not, amidst the landscape brown, The knight's brown figure, who, to win his ear, Asked the lad's name. "My name is Salvator, To serve you, sir," he carelessly replied, With eyes and hands intent upon his jar, Brimming and bubbling. Then he cast one glance Upon his questioner, and left the well, Crying with keen and sudden sympathy, "Good Father, pardon me, I knew you not. Ah! you have travelled overmuch: your feet Are grimed with mud and wet, your face is changed, Your hands are dry with fever." But the knight: "Nay, as I look on thee, I think the Lord Wills not that I should suffer any more." "Then you have suffered much," sighed Salvator, With wondering pity. "You must come with me; My father knows of you, I told him all. A knight and minstrel who cast by his lyre, His health and fame, to give himself to God,-- Yours is a life indeed to be desired! If you will lie with us this night, our home Will verily be blessed." By kindness crushed, Wandering in sense and words, the broken knight Resisted naught, and let himself be led To the boy's home. The outcast and accursed Was welcomed now by kindly human hands; Once more his blighted spirit was revived By contact with refreshing innocence. There, when the morning broke upon the world, The humble hosts no longer knew their guest. His fleshly weeds of sin forever doffed, Tannhauser lay and smiled, for in the night The angel came who brings eternal peace. ____________________ Far into Wartburg, through all Italy, In every town the Pope sent messengers, Riding in furious haste; among them, one Who bore a branch of dry wood burst in bloom; The pastoral rod had borne green shoots of spring, And leaf and blossom. God is merciful. Note.--In spite of my unwillingness to imply any possible belief of mine that the preceding unrhymed narratives can enter into competition with the elaborate poems of the author of "The Earthly Paradise," yet the similarity of subjects, and the imputation of plagiarism already made in private circles, induce me to remark that "Admetus" was completed before the publication of the "Love of Alcestis," and "Tannhauser" before the "Hill of Venus." Emma Lazarus. LINKS. The little and the great are joined in one By God's great force. The wondrous golden sun Is linked unto the glow-worm's tiny spark; The eagle soars to heaven in his flight; And in those realms of space, all bathed in light, Soar none except the eagle and the lark. MATINS. Gray earth, gray mist, gray sky: Through vapors hurrying by, Larger than wont, on high Floats the horned, yellow moon. Chill airs are faintly stirred, And far away is heard, Of some fresh-awakened bird, The querulous, shrill tune. The dark mist hides the face Of the dim land: no trace Of rock or river's place In the thick air is drawn; But dripping grass smells sweet, And rustling branches meet, And sounding water greet The slow, sure, sacred dawn. Past is the long black night, With its keen lightnings white, Thunder and floods: new light The glimmering low east streaks. The dense clouds part: between Their jagged rents are seen Pale reaches blue and green, As the mirk curtain breaks. Above the shadowy world, Still more and more unfurled, The gathered mists upcurled Like phantoms melt and pass. In clear-obscure revealed, Brown wood, gray stream, dark field: Fresh, healthy odors yield Wet furrows, flowers, and grass. The sudden, splendid gleam Of one thin, golden beam Shoots from the feathered rim Of yon hill crowned with woods. Down its embowered side, As living waters slide, So the great morning tide Follows in sunny floods. From bush and hedge and tree Joy, unrestrained and free, Breaks forth in melody, Twitter and chirp and song: Alive the festal air With gauze-winged creatures fair, That flicker everywhere, Dart, poise, and flash along. The shining mists are gone, Slight films of gold swift-blown Before the strong, bright sun Or the deep-colored sky: A world of life and glow Sparkles and basks below, Where the soft meads a-row, Hoary with dew-fall, lie. Does not the morn break thus, Swift, bright, victorious, With new skies cleared for us, Over the soul storm-tost? Her night was long and deep, Strange visions vexed her sleep, Strange sorrows bade her weep: Her faith in dawn was lost. No halt, no rest for her, The immortal wanderer From sphere to higher sphere, Toward the pure source of day. The new light shames her fears, Her faithlessness, her tears, As the new sun appears To light her godlike way. SAINT ROMUALDO. I give God thanks that I, a lean old man, Wrinkled, infirm, and crippled with keen pains By austere penance and continuous toil, Now rest in spirit, and possess "the peace Which passeth understanding." Th' end draws nigh, Though the beginning is yesterday, And a broad lifetime spreads 'twixt this and that-- A favored life, though outwardly the butt Of ignominy, malice, and affront, Yet lighted from within by the clear star Of a high aim, and graciously prolonged To see at last its utmost goal attained. I speak not of mine Order and my House, Here founded by my hands and filled with saints-- A white society of snowy souls, Swayed by my voice, by mine example led; For this is but the natural harvest reaped From labors such as mine when blessed by God. Though I rejoice to think my spirit still Will work my purposes, through worthy hands, After my bones are shriveled into dust, Yet have I gleaned a finer, sweeter fruit Of holy satisfaction, sure and real, Though subtler than the tissue of the air-- The power completely to detach the soul From her companion through this life, the flesh; So that in blessed privacy of peace, Communing with high angels, she can hold, Serenely rapt, her solitary course. Ye know, O saints of heaven, what I have borne Of discipline and scourge; the twisted lash Of knotted rope that striped my shrinking limbs; Vigils and fasts protracted, till my flesh Wasted and crumbled from mine aching bones, And the last skin, one woof of pain and sores, Thereto like yellow parchment loosely clung; Exposure to the fever and the frost, When 'mongst the hollows of the hills I lurked From persecution of misguided folk, Accustoming my spirit to ignore The burden of the cross, while picturing The bliss of disembodied souls, the grace Of holiness, the lives of sainted men, And entertaining all exalted thoughts, That nowise touched the trouble of the hour, Until the grief and pain seemed far less real Than the creations of my brain inspired. The vision, the beatitude, were true: The agony was but an evil dream. I speak not now as one who hath not learned The purport of those lightly-bandied words, Evil and Fate, but rather one who knows The thunders of the terrors of the world. No mortal chance or change, no earthly shock, Can move or reach my soul, securely throned On heights of contemplation and calm prayer, Happy, serene, no less actual joy Of present peace than faith in joys to come. This soft, sweet, yellow evening, how the trees Stand crisp against the clear, bright-colored sky! How the white mountain-tops distinctly shine, Taking and giving radiance, and the slopes Are purpled with rich floods of peach-hued light! Thank God, my filmy, old dislustred eyes Find the same sense of exquisite delight, My heart vibrates to the same touch of joy In scenes like this, as when my pulse danced high, And youth coursed through my veins! This the one link That binds the wan old man that now I am To the wild lad who followed up the hounds Among Ravenna's pine-woods by the sea. For there how oft would I lose all delight In the pursuit, the triumph, or the game, To stray alone among the shadowy glades, And gaze, as one who is not satisfied With gazing, at the large, bright, breathing sea, The forest glooms, and shifting gleams between The fine dark fringes of the fadeless trees, On gold-green turf, sweet-brier, and wild pink rose! How rich that buoyant air with changing scent Of pungent pine, fresh flowers, and salt cool seas! And when all echoes of the chase had died, Of horn and halloo, bells and baying hounds, How mine ears drank the ripple of the tide On the fair shore, the chirp of unseen birds, The rustling of the tangled undergrowth, And the deep lyric murmur of the pines, When through their high tops swept the sudden breeze! There was my world, there would my heart dilate, And my aspiring soul dissolve in prayer Unto that Spirit of Love whose energies Were active round me, yet whose presence, sphered In the unsearchable, unbodied air, Made itself felt, but reigned invisible. This ere the day that made me what I am. Still can I see the hot, bright sky, the sea Illimitably sparkling, as they showed That morning. Though I deemed I took no note Of heaven or earth or waters, yet my mind Retains to-day the vivid portraiture Of every line and feature of the scene. Light-hearted 'midst the dewy lanes I fared Unto the sea, whose jocund gleam I caught Between the slim boles, when I heard the clink Of naked weapons, then a sudden thrust Sickening to hear, and then a stifled groan; And pressing forward I beheld the sight That seared itself for ever on my brain-- My kinsman, Ser Ranieri, on the turf, Fallen upon his side, his bright young head Among the pine-spurs, and his cheek pressed close Unto the moist, chill sod: his fingers clutched A handful of loose weeds and grass and earth, Uprooted in his anguish as he fell, And slowly from his heart the thick stream flowed, Fouling the green, leaving the fair, sweet face Ghastly, transparent, with blue, stony eyes Staring in blankness on that other one Who triumphed over him. With hot desire Of instant vengeance I unsheathed my sword To rush upon the slayer, when he turned In his first terror of blood-guiltiness. . . . . . . . Within my heart a something snapped and brake. What was it but the chord of rapturous joy For ever stilled? I tottered and would fall, Had I not leaned against the friendly pine; For all realities of life, unmoored From their firm anchorage, appeared to float Like hollow phantoms past my dizzy brain. The strange delusion wrought upon my soul That this had been enacted ages since. This very horror curdled at my heart, This net of trees spread round, these iron heavens, Were closing over me when I had stood, Unnumbered cycles back, and fronted HIM, My father; and he felt mine eyes as now, Yet saw me not; and then, as now, that form, The one thing real, lay stretched between us both. The fancy passed, and I stood sane and strong To grasp the truth. Then I remembered all-- A few fierce words between them yester eve Concerning some poor plot of pasturage, Soon silenced into courteous, frigid calm: This was the end. I could not meet him now, To curse him, to accuse him, or to save, And draw him from the red entanglement Coiled by his own hands round his ruined life. God pardon me! My heart that moment held No drop of pity toward this wretched soul; And cowering down, as though his guilt were mine, I fled amidst the savage silences Of that grim wood, resolved to nurse alone My boundless desolation, shame, and grief. There, in that thick-leaved twilight of high noon, The quiet of the still, suspended air, Once more my wandering thoughts were calmly ranged, Shepherded by my will. I wept, I prayed A solemn prayer, conceived in agony, Blessed with response instant, miraculous; For in that hour my spirit was at one With Him who knows and satisfies her needs. The supplication and the blessing sprang From the same source, inspired divinely both. I prayed for light, self-knowledge, guidance, truth, And these like heavenly manna were rained down To feed my hungered soul. His guilt was mine. What angel had been sent to stay mine arm Until the fateful moment passed away That would have ushered an eternity Of withering remorse? I found the germs In mine own heart of every human sin, That waited but occasion's tempting breath To overgrow with poisoned bloom my life. What God thus far had saved me from myself? Here was the lofty truth revealed, that each Must feel himself in all, must know where'er The great soul acts or suffers or enjoys, His proper soul in kinship there is bound. Then my life-purpose dawned upon my mind, Encouraging as morning. As I lay, Crushed by the weight of universal love, Which mine own thoughts had heaped upon myself, I heard the clear chime of a slow, sweet bell. I knew it--whence it came and what it sang. From the gray convent nigh the wood it pealed, And called the monks to prayer. Vigil and prayer, Clean lives, white days of strict austerity: Such were the offerings of these holy saints. How far might such not tend to expiate A riotous world's indulgence? Here my life, Doubly austere and doubly sanctified, Might even for that other one atone, So bound to mine, till both should be forgiven. They sheltered me, not questioning the need That led me to their cloistered solitude. How rich, how freighted with pure influence, With dear security of perfect peace, Was the first day I passed within those walls! The holy habit of perpetual prayer, The gentle greetings, the rare temperate speech, The chastening discipline, the atmosphere Of settled and profound tranquillity, Were even as living waters unto one Who perisheth of thirst. Was this the world That yesterday seemed one huge battlefield For brutish passions? Could the soul of man Withdraw so easily, and erect apart Her own fair temple for her own high ends? But this serene contentment slowly waned As I discerned the broad disparity Betwixt the form and spirit of the laws That bound the order in strait brotherhood. Yet when I sought to gain a larger love, More rigid discipline, severer truth, And more complete surrender of the soul Unto her God, this was to my reproach, And scoffs and gibes beset me on all sides. In mine own cell I mortified my flesh, I held aloof from all my brethren's feasts To wrestle with my viewless enemies, Till they should leave their blessing on my head; For nightly was I haunted by that face, White, bloodless, as I saw it 'midst the ferns, Now staring out of darkness, and it held Mine eyes from slumber and my brain from rest And drove me from my straw to weep and pray. Rebellious thoughts such subtle torture wrought Upon my spirit that I lay day-long In dumb despair, until the blessed hope Of mercy dawned again upon my soul, As gradual as the slow gold moon that mounts The airy steps of heaven. My faith arose With sure perception that disaster, wrong, And every shadow of man's destiny Are merely circumstance, and cannot touch The soul's fine essence: they exist or die Only as she affirms them or denies. This faith sustain me even to the end: It floods my heart with peace as surely now As on that day the friars drove me forth, Urging that my asceticism, too harsh, Endured through pride, would bring into reproach Their customs and their order. Then began My exile in the mountains, where I bode A hunted man. The elements conspired Against me, and I was the seasons' sport, Drenched, parched, and scorched and frozen alternately, Burned with shrewd frosts, prostrated by fierce heats, Shivering 'neath chilling dews and gusty rains, And buffeted by all the winds of heaven. Yet was this period my time of joy: My daily thoughts perpetual converse held With angels ministrant; mine ears were charmed With sweet accordance of celestial sounds, Song, harp and choir, clear ringing through the air. And visions were revealed unto mine eyes By night and day of Heaven's very courts, In shadowless, undimmed magnificence. I gave God thanks, not that He sheltered me, And fed me as He feeds the fowls of air-- For had I perished, this too had been well-- But for the revelation of His truth, The glory, the beatitude vouchsafed To exalt, to heal, to quicken, to inspire; So that the pinched, lean excommunicate Was crowned with joy more solid, more secure, Than all the comfort of the vales could bring. Then the good Lord touched certain fervid hearts, Aspiring toward His love, to come to me, Timid and few at first; but as they heard From mine own lips the precious oracles, That soothed the trouble of their souls, appeased Their spiritual hunger, and disclosed All of the God within them to themselves, They flocked about me, and they hailed me saint, And sware to follow and to serve the good Which my word published and my life declared. Thus the lone hermit of the mountain-top Descended leader of a band of saints, And midway 'twixt the summit and the vale I perched my convent. Yet I bated not One whit of strict restraint and abstinence. And they who love me and who serve the truth Have learned to suffer with me, and have won The supreme joy that is not of the flesh, Foretasting the delights of Paradise. This faith, to them imparted, will endure After my tongue hath ceased to utter it, And the great peace hath settled on my soul. AFTERNOON. Small, shapeless drifts of cloud Sail slowly northward in the soft-hued sky, With blur half-tints and rolling summits bright, By the late sun caressed; slight hazes shroud All things afar; shineth each leaf anigh With its own warmth and light. O'erblown by Southland airs, The summer landscape basks in utter peace: In lazy streams the lazy clouds are seen; Low hills, broad meadows, and large, clear-cut squares Of ripening corn-fields, rippled by the breeze, With shifting shade and sheen. Hark! and you may not hear A sound less soothing than the rustle cool Of swaying leaves, the steady wiry drone Of unseen crickets, sudden chirpings clear Of happy birds, the tinkle of the pool, Chafed by a single stone. What vague, delicious dreams, Born of this golden hour of afternoon, And air balm-freighted, fill the soul with bliss, Transpierced like yonder clouds with lustrous gleams, Fantastic, brief as they, and, like them, spun Of gilded nothingness! All things are well with her. 'T is good to be alive, to see the light That plays upon the grass, to feel (and sigh With perfect pleasure) the mild breezes stir Among the garden roses, red and white, With whiffs of fragrancy. There is no troublous thought, No painful memory, no grave regret, To mar the sweet suggestions of the hour: The soul, at peace, reflects the peace without, Forgetting grief as sunset skies forget The morning's transient shower. PHANTASIES. (After Robert Schumann). I. Evening. Rest, beauty, stillness: not a waif of a cloud From gray-blue east sheer to the yellow west-- No film of mist the utmost slopes to shroud. The earth lies grace, by quiet airs caressed, And shepherdeth her shadows, but each stream, Free to the sky, is by that glow possessed, And traileth with the splendors of a dream Athwart the dusky land. Uplift thine eyes! Unbroken by a vapor or a gleam, The vast clear reach of mild, wan twilight skies. But look again, and lo, the evening star! Against the pale tints black the slim elms rise, The earth exhales sweet odors nigh and far, And from the heavens fine influences fall. Familiar things stand not for what they are: What they suggest, foreshadow, or recall The spirit is alert to apprehend, Imparting somewhat of herself to all. Labor and thought and care are at an end: The soul is filled with gracious reveries, And with her mood soft sounds and colors blend; For simplest sounds ring forth like melodies In this weird-lighted air--the monotone Of some far bell, the distant farmyard cries, A barking dog, the thin, persistent drone Of crickets, and the lessening call of birds. The apparition of yon star alone Breaks on the sense like music. Beyond word The peace that floods the soul, for night is here, And Beauty still is guide and harbinger. II. Aspiration. Dark lies the earth, and bright with worlds the sky: That soft, large, lustrous star, that first outshone, Still holds us spelled with potent sorcery. Dilating, shrinking, lightening, it hath won Our spirit with its strange strong influence, And sways it as the tides beneath the moon. What impulse this, o'ermastering heart and sense? Exalted, thrilled, the freed soul fain would soar Unto that point of shining prominence, Craving new fields and some unheard-of shore, Yea, all the heavens, for her activity, To mount with daring flight, to hover o'er Low hills of earth, flat meadows, level sea, And earthly joy and trouble. In this hour Of waning light and sound, of mystery, Of shadowed love and beauty-veiled power, She feels her wings: she yearns to grasp her own, Knowing the utmost good to be her dower. A dream! a dream! for at a touch 't is gone. O mocking spirit! thy mere fools are we, Unto the depths from heights celestial thrown. From these blind gropings toward reality, This thirst for truth, this most pathetic need Of something to uplift, to justify, To help and comfort while we faint and bleed, May we not draw, wrung from the last despair, Some argument of hope, some blessed creed, That we can trust the faith which whispers prayer, The vanishings, the ecstasy, the gleam, The nameless aspiration, and the dream? III. Wherefore? Deep languor overcometh mind and frame: A listless, drowsy, utter weariness, A trance wherein no thought finds speech or name, The overstrained spirit doth possess. She sinks with drooping wing--poor unfledged bird, That fain had flown!--in fluttering breathlessness. To what end those high hopes that wildly stirred The beating heart with aspirations vain? Why proffer prayers unanswered and unheard To blank, deaf heavens that will not heed her pain? Where lead these lofty, soaring tendencies, That leap and fly and poise, to fall again, Yet seem to link her with the utmost skies? What mean these clinging loves that bind to earth, And claim her with beseeching, wistful eyes? This little resting-place 'twixt death and birth, Why is it fretted with the ceaseless flow Of flood and ebb, with overgrowth and dearth, And vext with dreams, and clouded with strange woe? Ah! she is tired of thought, she yearns for peace, Seeing all things one equal end must know. Wherefore this tangle of perplexities, The trouble or the joy? the weary maze Of narrow fears and hopes that may not cease? A chill falls on her from the skyey ways, Black with the night-tide, where is none to hear The ancient cry, the Wherefore of our days. IV. Fancies. The ceaseless whirr of crickets fills the ear From underneath each hedge and bush and tree, Deep in the dew-drenched grasses everywhere. The simple sound dispels the fantasy Of gloom and terror gathering round the mind. It seems a pleasant thing to breathe, to be, To hear the many-voiced, soft summer wind Lisp through the dark thick leafage overhead-- To see the rosy half-moon soar behind The black slim-branching elms. Sad thoughts have fled, Trouble and doubt, and now strange reveries And odd caprices fill us in their stead. From yonder broken disk the redness dies, Like gold fruit through the leaves the half-sphere gleams, Then over the hoar tree-tops climbs the skies, Blanched ever more and more, until it beams Whiter than crystal. Like a scroll unfurled, And shadowy as a landscape seen in dreams, Reveals itself the sleeping, quiet world, Painted in tender grays and whites subdued-- The speckled stream with flakes of light impearled, The wide, soft meadow and the massive wood. Naught is too wild for our credulity In this weird hour: our finest dreams hold good. Quaint elves and frolic flower-sprites we see, And fairies weaving rings of gossamer, And angels floating through the filmy air. V. In the Night. Let us go in: the air is dank and chill With dewy midnight, and the moon rides high O'er ghostly fields, pale stream, and spectral hill. This hour the dawn seems farthest from the sky So weary long the space that lies between That sacred joy and this dark mystery Of earth and heaven: no glimmering is seen, In the star-sprinkled east, of coming day, Nor, westward, of the splendor that hath been. Strange fears beset us, nameless terrors sway The brooding soul, that hungers for her rest, Out worn with changing moods, vain hopes' delay, With conscious thought o'erburdened and oppressed. The mystery and the shadow wax too deep; She longs to merge both sense and thought in sleep. VI. Faerie. From the oped lattice glance once more abroad While the ethereal moontide bathes with light Hill, stream, and garden, and white-winding road. All gracious myths born of the shadowy night Recur, and hover in fantastic guise, Airy and vague, before the drowsy sight. On yonder soft gray hill Endymion lies In rosy slumber, and the moonlit air Breathes kisses on his cheeks and lips and eyes. 'Twixt bush and bush gleam flower-white limbs, left bare, Of huntress-nymphs, and flying raiment thin, Vanishing faces, and bright floating hair. The quaint midsummer fairies and their kin, Gnomes, elves, and trolls, on blossom, branch, and grass Gambol and dance, and winding out and in Leave circles of spun dew where'er they pass. Through the blue ether the freed Ariel flies; Enchantment holds the air; a swarming mass Of myriad dusky, gold-winged dreams arise, Throng toward the gates of sense, and so possess The soul, and lull it to forgetfulness. VII. Confused Dreams. O strange, dim other-world revealed to us, Beginning there where ends reality, Lying 'twixt life and death, and populous With souls from either sphere! now enter we Thy twisted paths. Barred is the silver gate, But the wild-carven doors of ivory Spring noiselessly apart: between them straight Flies forth a cloud of nameless shadowy things, With harpies, imps, and monsters, small and great, Blurring the thick air with darkening wings. All humors of the blood and brain take shape, And fright us with our own imaginings. A trouble weighs upon us: no escape From this unnatural region can there be. Fixed eyes stare on us, wide mouths grin and gape, Familiar faces out of reach we see. Fain would we scream, to shatter with a cry The tangled woof of hideous fantasy, When, lo! the air grows clear, a soft fair sky Shines over head: sharp pain dissolves in peace; Beneath the silver archway quietly We float away: all troublous visions cease. By a strange sense of joy we are possessed, Body and spirit soothed in perfect rest. VIII. The End of the Song. What dainty note of long-drawn melody Athwart our dreamless sleep rings sweet and clear, Till all the fumes of slumber are brushed by, And with awakened consciousness we hear The pipe of birds? Look forth! The sane, white day Blesses the hilltops, and the sun is near. All misty phantoms slowly roll away With the night's vapors toward the western sky. The Real enchants us, the fresh breath of hay Blows toward us; soft the meadow-grasses lie, Bearded with dew; the air is a caress; The sudden sun o'ertops the boundary Of eastern hills, the morning joyousness Thrills tingling through the frame; life's pulse beats strong; Night's fancies melt like dew. So ends the song! ON THE PROPOSAL TO ERECT A MONUMENT IN ENGLAND TO LORD BYRON. The grass of fifty Aprils hath waved green Above the spent heart, the Olympian head, The hands crost idly, the shut eyes unseen, Unseeing, the locked lips whose song hath fled; Yet mystic-lived, like some rich, tropic flower, His fame puts forth fresh blossoms hour by hour; Wide spread the laden branches dropping dew On the low, laureled brow misunderstood, That bent not, neither bowed, until subdued By the last foe who crowned while he o'erthrew. Fair was the Easter Sabbath morn when first Men heard he had not wakened to its light: The end had come, and time had done its worst, For the black cloud had fallen of endless night. Then in the town, as Greek accosted Greek, 'T was not the wonted festal words to speak, "Christ is arisen," but "Our chief is gone," With such wan aspect and grief-smitten head As when the awful cry of "Pan is dead!" Filled echoing hill and valley with its moan. "I am more fit for death than the world deems," So spake he as life's light was growing dim, And turned to sleep as unto soothing dreams. What terrors could its darkness hold for him, Familiar with all anguish, but with fear Still unacquainted? On his martial bier They laid a sword, a helmet, and a crown-- Meed of the warrior, but not these among His voiceless lyre, whose silent chords unstrung Shall wait--how long?--for touches like his own. An alien country mourned him as her son, And hailed him hero: his sole, fitting tomb Were Theseus' temple or the Parthenon, Fondly she deemed. His brethren bare him home, Their exiled glory, past the guarded gate Where England's Abbey shelters England's great. Afar he rests whose very name hath shed New lustre on her with the song he sings. So Shakespeare rests who scorned to lie with kings, Sleeping at peace midst the unhonored dead. And fifty years suffice to overgrow With gentle memories the foul weeds of hate That shamed his grave. The world begins to know Her loss, and view with other eyes his fate. Even as the cunning workman brings to pass The sculptor's thought from out the unwieldy mass Of shapeless marble, so Time lops away The stony crust of falsehood that concealed His just proportions, and, at last revealed, The statue issues to the light of day, Most beautiful, most human. Let them fling The first stone who are tempted even as he, And have not swerved. When did that rare soul sing The victim's shame, the tyrant's eulogy, The great belittle, or exalt the small, Or grudge his gift, his blood, to disenthrall The slaves of tyranny or ignorance? Stung by fierce tongues himself, whose rightful fame Hath he reviled? Upon what noble name Did the winged arrows of the barbed wit glance? The years' thick, clinging curtains backward pull, And show him as he is, crowned with bright beams, "Beauteous, and yet not all as beautiful As he hath been or might be; Sorrow seems Half of his immortality."* He needs No monument whose name and song and deeds Are graven in all foreign hearts; but she His mother, England, slow and last to wake, Needs raise the votive shaft for her fame's sake: Hers is the shame if such forgotten be! May, 1875. *"Cain," Act I. Scene 1. ARABESQUE. On a background of pale gold I would trace with quaint design, Penciled fine, Brilliant-colored, Moorish scenes, Mosques and crescents, pages, queens, Line on line, That the prose-world of to-day Might the gorgeous Past's array Once behold. On the magic painted shield Rich Granada's Vega green Should be seen; Crystal fountains, coolness flinging, Hanging gardens' skyward springing Emerald sheen; Ruddy when the daylight falls, Crowned Alhambra's beetling walls Stand revealed; Balconies that overbrow Field and city, vale and stream. In a dream Lulled the drowsy landscape basks; Mark the gleam Silvery of each white-swathed peak! Mountain-airs caress the cheek, Fresh from the snow. Here in Lindaraxa's bower The immortal roses bloom; In the room Lion-guarded, marble-paven, Still the fountain leaps to heaven. But the doom Of the banned and stricken race Overshadows every place, Every hour. Where fair Lindaraxa dwelt Flits the bat on velvet wings; Mute the strings Of the broken mandoline; The Pavilion of the Queen Widely flings Vacant windows to the night; Moonbeams kiss the floor with light Where she knelt. Through these halls that people stepped Who through darkling centuries Held the keys Of all wisdom, truth, and art, In a Paradise apart, Lapped in ease, Sagely pondering deathless themes, While, befooled with monkish dreams, Europe slept. Where shall they be found today? Yonder hill that frets the sky "The last Sigh Of the Moor" is named still. There the ill-starred Boabdil Bade good-by To Granada and to Spain, Where the Crescent ne'er again Holdeth sway. Vanished like the wind that blows, Whither shall we seek their trace On earth's face? The gigantic wheel of fate, Crushing all things soon or late, Now a race, Now a single life o'erruns, Now a universe of suns, Now a rose. AGAMEMNON'S TOMB. Uplift the ponderous, golden mask of death, And let the sun shine on him as it did How many thousand years agone! Beneath This worm-defying, uncorrupted lid, Behold the young, heroic face, round-eyed, Of one who in his full-flowered manhood died; Of nobler frame than creatures of to-day, Swathed in fine linen cerecloths fold on fold, With carven weapons wrought of bronze and gold, Accoutred like a warrior for the fray. We gaze in awe at these huge-modeled limbs, Shrunk in death's narrow house, but hinting yet Their ancient majesty; these sightless rims Whose living eyes the eyes of Helen met; The speechless lips that ah! what tales might tell Of earth's morning-tide when gods did dwell Amidst a generous-fashioned, god-like race, Who dwarf our puny semblance, and who won The secret soul of Beauty for their own, While all our art but crudely apes their grace. We gather all the precious relics up, The golden buttons chased with wondrous craft, The sculptured trinkets and the crystal cup, The sheathed, bronze sword, the knife with brazen haft. Fain would we wrest with curious eyes from these Unnumbered long-forgotten histories, The deeds heroic of this mighty man, On whom once more the living daylight beams, To shame our littleness, to mock our dreams, And the abyss of centuries to span. Yet could we rouse him from his blind repose, How might we meet his searching questionings, Concerning all the follies, wrongs, and woes, Since his great day whom men call King of Kings, Victorious Agamemnon? How might we Those large, clear eyes confront, which scornfully Would view us as a poor, degenerate race, Base-souled and mean-proportioned? What reply Give to the beauty-loving Greek's heart-cry, Seeking his ancient gods in vacant space? What should he find within a world grown cold, Save doubt and trouble? To his sunny creed A thousand gloomy, warring sects succeed. How of the Prince of Peace might he be told, When over half the world the war-cloud lowers? How would he mock these faltering hopes of ours, Who knows the secret now of death and fate! Humbly we gaze on the colossal frame, And mutely we accept the mortal shame, Of men degraded from a high estate. SIC SEMPER LIBERATORIBUS! March 13, 1881. As one who feels the breathless nightmare grip His heart-strings, and through visioned horrors fares, Now on a thin-ledged chasm's rock-crumbling lip, Now on a tottering pinnacle that dare The front of heaven, while always unawares Weird monsters start above, around, beneath, Each glaring from some uglier mask of death, So the White Czar imperial progress made Through terror-haunted days. A shock, a cry Whose echoes ring the globe--the spectre's laid. Hurled o'er the abyss, see the crowned martyr lie Resting in peace--fear, change, and death gone by. Fit end for nightmare--mist of blood and tears, Red climax to the slow, abortive years. The world draws breath--one long, deep-shuddering sigh, At that which dullest brain prefigured clear As swift-sure bolt from thunder-threatening sky. How heaven-anointed humblest lots appear Beside his glittering eminence of fear; His spiked crown, sackcloth purple, poisoned cates, His golden palace honey-combed with hates. Well is it done! A most heroic plan, Which after myriad plots succeeds at last In robbing of his life this poor old man, Whose sole offense--his birthright--has but passed To fresher blood, with younger strength recast. What men are these, who, clamoring to be free, Would bestialize the world to what they be? Whose sons are they who made the snow-wreathed head Their frenzy's target? In their Russian veins, What alien current urged on to smite him dead, Whose word had loosed a million Russian chains? What brutes were they for whom such speechless pains, So royally endured, no human thrill Awoke, in hearts drunk with the lust to kill? Not brutes! No tiger of the wilderness, No jackal of the jungle, bears such brand As man's black heart, who shrinks not to confess The desperate deed of his deliberate hand. Our kind, our kin, have done this thing. We stand Bowed earthward, red with shame, to see such wrong Prorogue Love's cause and Truth's--God knows how long! DON RAFAEL. "I would not have," he said, "Tears, nor the black pall, nor the wormy grave, Grief's hideous panoply I would not have Round me when I am dead. "Music and flowers and light, And choric dances to guitar and flute, Be these around me when my lips are mute, Mine eyes are sealed from sight. "So let me lie one day, One long, eternal day, in sunshine bathed, In cerements of silken tissue swathed, Smothered 'neath flowers of May. "One perfect day of peace, Or ere clean flame consume my fleshly veil, My life--a gilded vapor--shall exhale, Brief as a sigh--and cease. "But ere the torch be laid To my unshrinking limbs by some true hand, Athwart the orange-fragrant laughing land, Bring many a dark-eyed maid "From the bright, sea-kissed town; My beautiful, beloved enemies, Gemmed as the dew, voluptuous as the breeze, Each in her festal gown. "All those through whom I learned The sweet of folly and the pains of love, My Rose, my Star, my Comforter, my Dove, For whom, poor moth, I burned. "Loves of a day, and hour, Or passions (vowed eternal) of a year, Though each be strange to each, to me all dear As to the bee the flower. "Around me they shall move In languid contra dances, and shall shed Their smiling eyebeams as I were not dead, But quick to flash back love. "Something not alien quite To tender ruth, perchance their breast shall fill, Seeing him that was so mobile grown so still, The fiery-veined so white. "And when the dance is o'er, The pinched guitar, the smitten tambourine, Have ceased their rhythmic beat,--oh, friends of mine, On my rich bier, then pour "The garlands that ye wear, The happy rose that on your bosom breathes, The fresh-culled clusters and the dewy wreaths That crown your fragrant hair. "Though blind, I still shall see, Though dead, shall feel your presence and shall know, I who was beauty's life-long slave, shall so Win her in death to me. "Thanks, sisters, and farewell! Back to your joys. My brother shall make room For my tried sword upon the high-piled bloom, And fire the pinnacle. "My soul, pure flame, shall leap To meet its parent essence once again My body dust and ashes shall remain, Tired heart and brain shall sleep. "Life has one gate alone, Obscure, beset with peril and fierce pain. Large death has many portals to his fane, Why choose we to make moan? "Why dwell with worms and clay When we may soar through air on wings of flame, Dissolve to small, white dust our perfect frame, And never know decay? "A brother's pious hand The pure, fire-winnowed ashes shall inurn, And lay them in the orange grove where burn Globed suns that scent the land. "The leaf shall be more green, Even for my dust--more snowy-soft the flower, More juicy-sweet the fruit's live pulp--the bower Richer that I have been. "For I would not," he said, "Tears and the black pall and the wormy grave, Grief's hideous panoply I would not have Round me when I am dead." OFF ROUGH POINT. We sat at twilight nigh the sea, The fog hung gray and weird. Through the thick film uncannily The broken moon appeared. We heard the billows crack and plunge, We saw nor waves nor ships. Earth sucked the vapors like a sponge, The salt spray wet our lips. Closer the woof of white mist drew, Before, behind, beside. How could that phantom moon break through, Above that shrouded tide? The roaring waters filled the ear, A white blank foiled the sight. Close-gathering shadows near, more near, Brought the blind, awful night. O friends who passed unseen, unknown! O dashing, troubled sea! Still stand we on a rock alone, Walled round by mystery. MATER AMABILIS. Down the goldenest of streams, Tide of dreams, The fair cradled man-child drifts; Sways with cadenced motion slow, To and fro, As the mother-foot poised lightly, falls and lifts. He, the firstling,--he, the light Of her sight,-- He, the breathing pledge of love, 'Neath the holy passion lies, Of her eyes,-- Smiles to feel the warm, life-giving ray above. She believes that in his vision, Skies elysian O'er an angel-people shine. Back to gardens of delight, Taking flight, His auroral spirit basks in dreams divine. But she smiles through anxious tears; Unborn years Pressing forward, she perceives. Shadowy muffled shapes, they come Deaf and dumb, Bringing what? dry chaff and tares, or full-eared sheaves? What for him shall she invoke? Shall the oak Bind the man's triumphant brow? Shall his daring foot alight On the height? Shall he dwell amidst the humble and the low? Through what tears and sweat and pain, Must he gain Fruitage from the tree of life? Shall it yield him bitter flavor? Shall its savor Be as manna midst the turmoil and the strife? In his cradle slept and smiled Thus the child Who as Prince of Peace was hailed. Thus anigh the mother breast, Lulled to rest, Child-Napoleon down the lilied river sailed. Crowned or crucified--the same Glows the flame Of her deathless love divine. Still the blessed mother stands, In all lands, As she watched beside thy cradle and by mine. Whatso gifts the years bestow, Still men know, While she breathes, lives one who sees (Stand they pure or sin-defiled) But the child Whom she crooned to sleep and rocked upon her knee. FOG. Light silken curtain, colorless and soft, Dreamlike before me floating! what abides Behind thy pearly veil's Opaque, mysterious woof? Where sleek red kine, and dappled, crunch day-long Thick, luscious blades and purple clover-heads, Nigh me I still can mark Cool fields of beaded grass. No more; for on the rim of the globed world I seem to stand and stare at nothingness. But songs of unseen birds And tranquil roll of waves Bring sweet assurance of continuous life Beyond this silvery cloud. Fantastic dreams, Of tissue subtler still Than the wreathed fog, arise, And cheat my brain with airy vanishings And mystic glories of the world beyond. A whole enchanted town Thy baffling folds conceal-- An Orient town, with slender-steepled mosques, Turret from turret springing, dome from dome, Fretted with burning stones, And trellised with red gold. Through spacious streets, where running waters flow, Sun-screened by fruit-trees and the broad-leaved palm, Past the gay-decked bazaars, Walk turbaned, dark-eyed men. Hark! you can hear the many murmuring tongues, While loud the merchants vaunt their gorgeous wares. The sultry air is spiced With fragrance of rich gums, And through the lattice high in yon dead wall, See where, unveiled, an arch, young, dimpled face, Flushed like a musky peach, Peers down upon the mart! From her dark, ringleted and bird-poised head She hath cast back the milk-white silken veil: 'Midst the blank blackness there She blossoms like a rose. Beckons she not with those bright, full-orbed eyes, And open arms that like twin moonbeams gleam? Behold her smile on me With honeyed, scarlet lips! Divine Scheherazade! I am thine. I come! I come!--Hark! from some far-off mosque The shrill muezzin calls The hour of silent prayer, And from the lattice he hath scared my love. The lattice vanisheth itself--the street, The mart, the Orient town; Only through still, soft air That cry is yet prolonged. I wake to hear The distant fog-horn peal: before mine eyes Stands the white wall of mist, Blending with vaporous skies. Elusive gossamer, impervious Even to the mighty sun-god's keen red shafts! With what a jealous art Thy secret thou dost guard! Well do I know deep in thine inmost folds, Within an opal hollow, there abides The lady of the mist, The Undine of the air-- A slender, winged, ethereal, lily form, Dove-eyed, with fair, free-floating, pearl-wreathed hair, In waving raiment swathed Of changing, irised hues. Where her feet, rosy as a shell, have grazed The freshened grass, a richer emerald glows: Into each flower-cup Her cool dews she distills. She knows the tops of jagged mountain-peaks, She knows the green soft hollows of their sides, And unafraid she floats O'er the vast-circled seas. She loves to bask within the moon's wan beams, Lying, night-long upon the moist, dark earth, And leave her seeded pearls With morning on the grass. Ah! that athwart these dim, gray outer courts Of her fantastic palace I might pass, And reach the inmost shrine Of her chaste solitude, And feel her cool and dewy fingers press My mortal-fevered brow, while in my heart She poured with tender love Her healing Lethe-balm! See! the close curtain moves, the spell dissolves! Slowly it lifts: the dazzling sunshine streams Upon a newborn world And laughing summer seas. Swift, snowy-breasted sandbirds twittering glance Through crystal air. On the horizon's marge, Like a huge purple wraith, The dusky fog retreats. THE ELIXIR. "Oh brew me a potion strong and good! One golden drop in his wine Shall charm his sense and fire his blood, And bend his will to mine." Poor child of passion! ask of me Elixir of death or sleep, Or Lethe's stream; but love is free, And woman must wait and weep. SONG. Venus. Frosty lies the winter-landscape, In the twilight golden-green. Down the Park's deserted alleys, Naked elms stand stark and lean. Dumb the murmur of the fountain, Birds have flown from lawn and hill. But while yonder star's ascendant, Love triumphal reigneth still. See the keen flame throb and tremble, Brightening in the darkening night, Breathing like a thing of passion, In the sky's smooth chrysolite. Not beneath the moon, oh lover, Thou shalt gain thy heart's desire. Speak to-night! The gods are with thee Burning with a kindred fire. SPRING LONGING. What art thou doing here, O Imagination? Go away I entreat thee by the gods, as thou didst come, for I want thee not. But thou art come according to thy old fashion. I am not angry with thee--only go away. --Marcus Antoninus Lilac hazes veil the skies. Languid sighs Breathes the mild, caressing air. Pink as coral's branching sprays, Orchard ways With the blossomed peach are fair. Sunshine, cordial as a kiss, Poureth bliss In this craving soul of mine, And my heart her flower-cup Lifteth up, Thirsting for the draught divine. Swift the liquid golden flame Through my frame Sets my throbbing veins afire. Bright, alluring dreams arise, Brim mine eyes With the tears of strong desire. All familiar scenes anear Disappear-- Homestead, orchard, field, and wold. Moorish spires and turrets fair Cleave the air, Arabesqued on skies of gold. Low, my spirit, this May morn, Outward borne, Over seas hath taken wing: Where the mediaeval town, Like a crown, Wears the garland of the Spring. Light and sound and odors sweet Fill the street; Gypsy girls are selling flowers. Lean hidalgos turn aside, Amorous-eyed, 'Neath the grim cathedral towers. Oh, to be in Spain to-day, Where the May Recks no whit of good or evil, Love and only love breathes she! Oh, to be 'Midst the olive-rows of Seville! Or on such a day to glide With the tide Of the berylline lagoon, Through the streets that mirror heaven, Crystal paven, In the warm Venetian noon. At the prow the gondolier May not hear, May not see our furtive kiss; But he lends with cadenced strain The refrain To our ripe and silent bliss. Golden shadows, silver light, Burnish bright Air and water, domes and skies; As in some ambrosial dream, On the stream Floats our bark in magic wise. Oh, to float day long just so! Naught to know Of the trouble, toil, and fret! This is love, and this is May: Yesterday And to-morrow to forget! Whither hast thou, Fancy free, Guided me, Wild Bohemian sister dear? All thy gypsy soul is stirred Since yon bird Warbled that the Spring was here. Tempt no more! I may not follow, Like the swallow, Gayly on the track of Spring. Bounden by an iron fate, I must wait, Dream and wonder, yearn and sing. THE SOUTH. Night, and beneath star-blazoned summer skies Behold the Spirit of the musky South, A creole with still-burning, languid eyes, Voluptuous limbs and incense-breathing mouth: Swathed in spun gauze is she, From fibres of her own anana tree. Within these sumptuous woods she lies at ease, By rich night-breezes, dewy cool, caressed: 'Twixt cypresses and slim palmetto trees, Like to the golden oriole's hanging nest, Her airy hammock swings, And through the dark her mocking-bird yet sings. How beautiful she is! A tulip-wreath Twines round her shadowy, free-floating hair: Young, weary, passionate, and sad as death, Dark visions haunt for her the vacant air, While movelessly she lies With lithe, lax, folded hands and heavy eyes. Full well knows she how wide and fair extend Her groves bright-flowered, her tangled everglades, Majestic streams that indolently wend Through lush savanna or dense forest shades, Where the brown buzzard flies To broad bayou 'neath hazy-golden skies. Hers is the savage splendor of the swamp, With pomp of scarlet and of purple bloom, Where blow warm, furtive breezes faint and damp, Strange insects whir, and stalking bitterns boom-- Where from stale waters dead Oft looms the great-jawed alligator's head. Her wealth, her beauty, and the blight on these,-- Of all she is aware: luxuriant woods, Fresh, living, sunlit, in her dream she sees; And ever midst those verdant solitudes The soldier's wooden cross, O'ergrown by creeping tendrils and rank moss. Was her a dream of empire? was it sin? And is it well that all was borne in vain? She knows no more than one who slow doth win, After fierce fever, conscious life again, Too tired, too weak, too sad, By the new light to be stirred or glad. From rich sea-islands fringing her green shore, From broad plantations where swart freemen bend Bronzed backs in willing labor, from her store Of golden fruit, from stream, from town, ascend Life-currents of pure health: Her aims shall be subserved with boundless wealth. Yet now how listless and how still she lies, Like some half-savage, dusky Indian queen, Rocked in her hammock 'neath her native skies, With the pathetic, passive, broken mien Of one who, sorely proved, Great-souled, hath suffered much and much hath loved! But look! along the wide-branched, dewy glade Glimmers the dawn: the light palmetto-trees And cypresses reissue from the shade, And SHE hath wakened. Through clear air she sees The pledge, the brightening ray, And leaps from dreams to hail the coming day. SPRING STAR. I. Over the lamp-lit street, Trodden by hurrying feet, Where mostly pulse and beat Life's throbbing veins, See where the April star, Blue-bright as sapphires are, Hangs in deep heavens far, Waxes and wanes. Strangely alive it seems, Darting keen, dazzling gleams, Veiling anon its beams, Large, clear, and pure. In the broad western sky No orb may shine anigh, No lesser radiancy May there endure. Spring airs are blowing sweet: Low in the dusky street Star-beams and eye-beams meet. Rapt in his dreams, All through the crowded mart Poet with swift-stirred heart, Passing beneath, must start, Thrilled by those gleams. Naught doth he note anear, Fain through Night's veil to peer, Reach that resplendent sphere, Reading her sign. Where point those sharp, thin rays, Guiding his weary maze, Blesseth she or betrays, Who may divine? "Guard me, celestial light, Lofty, serenely bright: Lead my halt feet aright," Prayerful he speaks. "For a new ray hath shone Over my spirit lone. Be this new soul the one whom my soul seeks." II. Beside her casement oped the maiden sits, Where the mild evening spirit of the Spring Gently between the city's homesteads flits To kiss her brows, and floats on languid wing, Vague longings in her breast awakening. While her heart trembles 'neath those dim, deep skies, As the quick sea that 'neath the globed moon lies. Where her eyes rest the full-orbed evening star Burns with white flame: it beckons, shrinks, dilates. She, dazzled by that shining world afar, May not withdraw her gaze: breathless she waits. Some promised joy from Heaven's very gates Unto her soul seems proffered. When shall be The bright fulfilment of that star's decree? Nor glad nor sad is she: she doth not know That through the city's throng one threads his way, Thrilled likewise by that planet's mystic glow, And hastes to seek her. What sweet change shall sway Her spirit at his coming? What new ray Upon his shadowy life from her shall fall? The silent star burns on, and knoweth all. A JUNE NIGHT. Ten o'clock: the broken moon Hangs not yet a half hour high, Yellow as a shield of brass, In the dewy air of June, Poised between the vaulted sky And the ocean's liquid glass. Earth lies in the shadow still; Low black bushes, trees, and lawn Night's ambrosial dews absorb; Through the foliage creeps a thrill, Whispering of yon spectral dawn And the hidden climbing orb. Higher, higher, gathering light, Veiling with a golden gauze All the trembling atmosphere, See, the rayless disk grows white! Hark, the glittering billows pause! Faint, far sounds possess the ear. Elves on such a night as this Spin their rings upon the grass; On the beach the water-fay Greets her lover with a kiss; Through the air swift spirits pass, Laugh, caress, and float away. Shut thy lids and thou shalt see Angel faces wreathed with light, Mystic forms long vanished hence. Ah, too fine, too rare, they be For the grosser mortal sight, And they foil our waking sense. Yet we feel them floating near, Know that we are not alone, Though our open eyes behold Nothing save the moon's bright sphere, In the vacant heavens shown, And the ocean's path of gold. MAGNETISM. By the impulse of my will, By the red flame in my blood, By me nerves' electric thrill, By the passion of my mood, My concentrated desire, My undying, desperate love, I ignore Fate, I defy her, Iron-hearted Death I move. When the town lies numb with sleep, Here, round-eyed I sit; my breath Quickly stirred, my flesh a-creep, And I force the gates of death. I nor move nor speak--you'd deem From my quiet face and hands, I were tranced--but in her dream, SHE responds, she understands. I have power on what is not, Or on what has ceased to be, From that deep, earth-hollowed spot, I can lift her up to me. And, or ere I am aware Through the closed and curtained door, Comes my lady white and fair, And embraces me once more. Though the clay clings to her gown, Yet all heaven is in her eyes; Cool, kind fingers press mine eyes, To my soul her soul replies. But when breaks the common dawn, And the city wakes--behold! My shy phantom is withdrawn, And I shiver lone and cold. And I know when she has left, She is stronger far than I, And more subtly spun her weft, Than my human wizardry. Though I force her to my will, By the red flame in my blood, By my nerves' electric thrill, By the passion of my mood, Yet all day a ghost am I. Nerves unstrung, spent will, dull brain. I achieve, attain, but die, And she claims me hers again. AUGUST MOON. Look! the round-cheeked moon floats high, In the glowing August sky, Quenching all her neighbor stars, Save the steady flame of Mars. White as silver shines the sea, Far-off sails like phantoms be, Gliding o'er that lake of light, Vanishing in nether night. Heavy hangs the tasseled corn, Sighing for the cordial morn; But the marshy-meadows bare, Love this spectral-lighted air, Drink the dews and lift their song, Chirp of crickets all night long; Earth and sea enchanted lie 'Neath that moon-usurped sky. To the faces of our friends Unfamiliar traits she lends-- Quaint, white witch, who looketh down With a glamour all her own. Hushed are laughter, jest, and speech, Mute and heedless each of each, In the glory wan we sit, Visions vague before us flit; Side by side, yet worlds apart, Heart becometh strange to heart. Slowly in a moved voice, then, Ralph, the artist spake again-- "Does not that weird orb unroll Scenes phantasmal to your soul? As I gaze thereon, I swear, Peopled grows the vacant air, Fables, myths alone are real, White-clad sylph-like figures steal 'Twixt the bushes, o'er the lawn, Goddess, nymph, undine, and faun. Yonder, see the Willis dance, Faces pale with stony glance; They are maids who died unwed, And they quit their gloomy bed, Hungry still for human pleasure, Here to trip a moonlit measure. Near the shore the mermaids play, Floating on the cool, white spray, Leaping from the glittering surf To the dark and fragrant turf, Where the frolic trolls, and elves Daintily disport themselves. All the shapes by poet's brain, Fashioned, live for me again, In this spiritual light, Less than day, yet more than night. What a world! a waking dream, All things other than they seem, Borrowing a finer grace, From yon golden globe in space; Touched with wild, romantic glory, Foliage fresh and billows hoary, Hollows bathed in yellow haze, Hills distinct and fields of maize, Ancient legends come to mind. Who would marvel should he find, In the copse or nigh the spring, Summer fairies gamboling Where the honey-bees do suck, Mab and Ariel and Puck? Ah! no modern mortal sees Creatures delicate as these. All the simple faith has gone Which their world was builded on. Now the moonbeams coldly glance On no gardens of romance; To prosaic senses dull, Baldur's dead, the Beautiful, Hark, the cry rings overhead, 'Universal Pan is dead!'" "Requiescant!" Claude's grave tone Thrilled us strangely. "I am one Who would not restore that Past, Beauty will immortal last, Though the beautiful must die-- This the ages verify. And had Pan deserved the name Which his votaries misclaim, He were living with us yet. I behold, without regret, Beauty in new forms recast, Truth emerging from the vast, Bright and orbed, like yonder sphere, Making the obscure air clear. He shall be of bards the king, Who, in worthy verse, shall sing All the conquests of the hour, Stealing no fictitious power From the classic types outworn, But his rhythmic line adorn With the marvels of the real. He the baseless feud shall heal That estrangeth wide apart Science from her sister Art. Hold! look through this glass for me? Artist, tell me what you see?" "I!" cried Ralph. "I see in place Of Astarte's silver face, Or veiled Isis' radiant robe, Nothing but a rugged globe Seamed with awful rents and scars. And below no longer Mars, Fierce, flame-crested god of war, But a lurid, flickering star, Fashioned like our mother earth, Vexed, belike, with death and birth." Rapt in dreamy thought the while, With a sphinx-like shadowy smile, Poet Florio sat, but now Spake in deep-voiced accents slow, More as one who probes his mind, Than for us--"Who seeks, shall find-- Widening knowledge surely brings Vaster themes to him who sings. Was veiled Isis more sublime Than yon frozen fruit of Time, Hanging in the naked sky? Death's domain--for worlds too die. Lo! the heavens like a scroll Stand revealed before my soul; And the hieroglyphs are suns-- Changeless change the law that runs Through the flame-inscribed page, World on world and age on age, Balls of ice and orbs of fire, What abides when these expire? Through slow cycles they revolve, Yet at last like clouds dissolve. Jove, Osiris, Brahma pass, Races wither like the grass. Must not mortals be as gods To embrace such periods? Yet at Nature's heart remains One who waxes not nor wanes. And our crowning glory still Is to have conceived his will." SUNRISE. September 26, 1881. Weep for the martyr! Strew his bier With the last roses of the year; Shadow the land with sables; knell The harsh-tongued, melancholy bell; Beat the dull muffled drum, and flaunt The drooping banner; let the chant Of the deep-throated organ sob-- One voice, one sorrow, one heart-throb, From land to land, from sea to sea-- The huge world quires his elegy. Tears, love, and honor he shall have, Through ages keeping green his grave. Too late approved, too early lost, His story is the people's boast. Tough-sinewed offspring of the soil, Of peasant lineage, reared to toil, In Europe he had been a thing To the glebe tethered--here a king! Crowned not for some transcendent gift, Genius of power that may lift A Caesar or a Bonaparte Up to the starred goal of his heart; But that he was the epitome Of all the people aim to be. Were they his dying trust? He was No less their model and their glass. In him the daily traits were viewed Of the undistinguished multitude. Brave as the silent myriads are, Crushed by the juggernaut world-car; Strong with the people's strength, yet mild, Simple and tender as a child; Wise with the wisdom of the heart, Able in council, field, and mart; Nor lacking in the lambent gleam, The great soul's final stamp--the beam Of genial fun, the humor sane Wherewith the hero sports with pain. His virtues hold within the span Of his obscurest fellow-man. To live without reproach, to die Without a fear--in these words lie His highest aims, for none too high. No triumph his beyond the reach Of patient courage, kindly speech; And yet so brave the soul outbreathed, The great example he bequeathed, Were all to follow, we should see A universal chivalry. His trust, the People! They respond From Maine to Florida, beyond The sea-walled continent's broad scope, Honor his pledge, confirm his hope. Hark! over seas the echo hence, The nations do him reverence. An Empress lays her votive wreath Where peoples weep with bated breath. The world-clock strikes a fateful hour, Bright with fair portents, big with power,-- The first since history's course has run, When kings' and peoples' cause is one; Those mourn a brother--these a son! O how he loved them! That gray morn, When his wound-wasted form was borne North, from the White House to the sea, Lifting his tired lids thankfully, "How good," he murmured in his pain, "To see the people once again!" Oh, how they loved him! They stood there, Thronging the road, the street, the square, With hushed lips locked in silent prayer, Uncovered heads and streaming eyes, Breathless as when a father dies. The records of the ghostly ride, Past town and field at morning-tide. When life's full stream is wont to gush Through all its ways with boisterous rush, --The records note that once a hound Had barked, and once was heard the sound Of cart-wheels rumbling on the stones-- And once, mid stifled sobs and groans, One man dared audibly lament, And cried, "God bless the president!" Always the waiting crowds to send A God-speed to his journey's end-- The anxious whisper, brow of gloom, As in a sickness-sacred room, Till his ear drank with ecstasy The rhythmic thunders of the sea. Tears for the smitten fatherless, The wife's, the mother's life-distress, To whom the million-throated moan From throne and hut, may not atone For one hushed voice, one empty chair, One presence missing everywhere. But only words of joy and sheer, The people from his grave shall hear. Were they not worthy of his trust, From whose seed sprang the sacred dust? He broke the bars that separate The humble from the high estate. And heirs of empire round his bed Mourn with the "disinherited." Oh, toil-worn, patient Heart that bleeds, Whose martyrdom even his exceeds, Wronged, cursed, despised, misunderstood-- Oh, all-enduring multitude, Rejoice! amid you tears, rejoice! There issues from this grave a voice, Proclaiming your long night is o'er, Your day-dawn breaks from shore to shore. You have redeemed his pledge, remained Secure, erect, and self-sustained, Holding more dear one thing alone, Even than the blood of dearest son, Revering with religious awe The inviolable might of Law. A MASQUE OF VENICE. (A Dream.) Not a stain, In the sun-brimmed sapphire cup that is the sky-- Not a ripple on the black translucent lane Of the palace-walled lagoon. Not a cry As the gondoliers with velvet oar glide by, Through the golden afternoon. From this height Where the carved, age-yellowed balcony o'erjuts Yonder liquid, marble pavement, see the light Shimmer soft beneath the bridge, That abuts On a labyrinth of water-ways and shuts Half their sky off with its ridge. We shall mark All the pageant from this ivory porch of ours, Masques and jesters, mimes and minstrels, while we hark To their music as they fare. Scent their flowers Flung from boat to boat in rainbow radiant showers Through the laughter-ringing air. See! they come, Like a flock of serpent-throated black-plumed swans, With the mandoline, viol, and the drum, Gems afire on arms ungloved, Fluttering fans, Floating mantles like a great moth's streaky vans Such as Veronese loved. But behold In their midst a white unruffled swan appear. One strange barge that snowy tapestries enfold, White its tasseled, silver prow. Who is here? Prince of Love in masquerade or Prince of Fear, Clad in glittering silken snow? Cheek and chin Where the mask's edge stops are of the hoar-frosts hue, And no eyebeams seem to sparkle from within Where the hollow rings have place. Yon gay crew Seem to fly him, he seems ever to pursue. 'T is our sport to watch the race. At his side Stands the goldenest of beauties; from her glance, From her forehead, shines the splendor of a bride, And her feet seem shod with wings, To entrance, For she leaps into a wild and rhythmic dance, Like Salome at the King's. 'T is his aim Just to hold, to clasp her once against his breast, Hers to flee him, to elude him in the game. Ah, she fears him overmuch! Is it jest,-- Is it earnest? a strange riddle lurks half-guessed In her horror of his touch. For each time That his snow-white fingers reach her, fades some ray From the glory of her beauty in its prime; And the knowledge grows upon us that the dance Is no play 'Twixt the pale, mysterious lover and the fay-- But the whirl of fate and chance. Where the tide Of the broad lagoon sinks plumb into the sea, There the mystic gondolier hath won his bride. Hark, one helpless, stifled scream! Must it be? Mimes and minstrels, flowers and music, where are ye? Was all Venice such a dream? AUTUMN SADNESS. Air and sky are swathed in gold Fold on fold, Light glows through the trees like wine. Earth, sun-quickened, swoons for bliss 'Neath his kiss, Breathless in a trance divine. Nature pauses from her task, Just to bask In these lull'd transfigured hours. The green leaf nor stays nor goes, But it grows Royaler than mid-June's flowers. Such impassioned silence fills All the hills Burning with unflickering fire-- Such a blood-red splendor stains The leaves' veins, Life seems one fulfilled desire. While earth, sea, and heavens shine, Heart of mine, Say, what art thou waiting for? Shall the cup ne'er reach the lip, But still slip Till the life-long thirst give o'er? Shall my soul, no frosts may tame, Catch new flame From the incandescent air? In this nuptial joy apart, Oh my heart, Whither shall we lonely fare? Seek some dusky, twilight spot, Quite forgot Of the Autumn's Bacchic fire. Where soft mists and shadows sleep, There outweep Barren longing's vain desire. SONNETS. ECHOES. Late-born and woman-souled I dare not hope, The freshness of the elder lays, the might Of manly, modern passion shall alight Upon my Muse's lips, nor may I cope (Who veiled and screened by womanhood must grope) With the world's strong-armed warriors and recite The dangers, wounds, and triumphs of the fight; Twanging the full-stringed lyre through all its scope. But if thou ever in some lake-floored cave O'erbrowed by hard rocks, a wild voice wooed and heard, Answering at once from heaven and earth and wave, Lending elf-music to thy harshest word, Misprize thou not these echoes that belong To one in love with solitude and song. SUCCESS. Oft have I brooded on defeat and pain, The pathos of the stupid, stumbling throng. These I ignore to-day and only long To pour my soul forth in one trumpet strain, One clear, grief-shattering, triumphant song, For all the victories of man's high endeavor, Palm-bearing, laureled deeds that live forever, The splendor clothing him whose will is strong. Hast thou beheld the deep, glad eyes of one Who has persisted and achieved? Rejoice! On naught diviner shines the all-seeing sun. Salute him with free heart and choral voice, 'Midst flippant, feeble crowds of spectres wan, The bold, significant, successful man. THE NEW COLOSSUS.* Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to be free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" *Written in aid of the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund, 1883. VENUS OF THE LOUVRE. Down the long hall she glistens like a star, The foam-born mother of Love, transfixed to stone, Yet none the less immortal, breathing on. Time's brutal hand hath maimed but could not mar. When first the enthralled enchantress from afar Dazzled mine eyes, I saw not her alone, Serenely poised on her world-worshipped throne, As when she guided once her dove-drawn car,-- But at her feet a pale, death-stricken Jew, Her life adorer, sobbed farewell to love. Here Heine wept! Here still we weeps anew, Nor ever shall his shadow lift or move, While mourns one ardent heart, one poet-brain, For vanished Hellas and Hebraic pain. CHOPIN. I. A dream of interlinking hands, of feet Tireless to spin the unseen, fairy woof, Of the entangling waltz. Bright eyebeams meet, Gay laughter echoes from the vaulted roof. Warm perfumes rise; the soft unflickering glow Of branching lights sets off the changeful charms Of glancing gems, rich stuffs, dazzling snow Of necks unkerchieft, and bare, clinging arms. Hark to the music! How beneath the strain Of reckless revelry, vibrates and sobs One fundamental chord of constant pain, The pulse-beat of the poet's heart that throbs. So yearns, though all the dancing waves rejoice, The troubled sea's disconsolate, deep voice. II. Who shall proclaim the golden fable false Of Orpheus' miracles? This subtle strain Above our prose-world's sordid loss and gain Lightly uplifts us. With the rhythmic waltz, The lyric prelude, the nocturnal song Of love and languor, varied visions rise, That melt and blend to our enchanted eyes. The Polish poet who sleeps silenced long, The seraph-souled musician, breathes again Eternal eloquence, immortal pain. Revived the exalted face we know so well, The illuminated eyes, the fragile frame, Slowly consuming with its inward flame, We stir not, speak not, lest we break the spell. III. A voice was needed, sweet and true and fine As the sad spirit of the evening breeze, Throbbing with human passion, yet divine As the wild bird's untutored melodies. A voice for him 'neath twilight heavens dim, Who mourneth for his dead, while round him fall The wan and noiseless leaves. A voice for him Who sees the first green sprout, who hears the call Of the first robin on the first spring day. A voice for all whom Fate hath set apart, Who, still misprized, must perish by the way, Longing with love, for that they lack the art Of their own soul's expression. For all these Sing the unspoken hope, the vague, sad reveries. IV. Then Nature shaped a poet's heart--a lyre From out whose chords the lightest breeze that blows Drew trembling music, wakening sweet desire. How shall she cherish him? Behold! she throws This precious, fragile treasure in the whirl Of seething passions; he is scourged and stung, Must dive in storm-vext seas, if but one pearl Of art or beauty therefrom may be wrung. No pure-browed pensive nymph his Muse shall be, An amazon of thought with sovereign eyes, Whose kiss was poison, man-brained, worldly-wise, Inspired that elfin, delicate harmony. Rich gain for us! But with him is it well? The poet who must sound earth, heaven, and hell! SYMPHONIC STUDIES. (After Robert Schumann.) Prelude. Blue storm-clouds in hot heavens of mid-July Hung heavy, brooding over land and sea: Our hearts, a-tremble, throbbed in harmony With the wild, restless tone of air and sky. Shall we not call him Prospero who held In his enchanted hands the fateful key Of that tempestuous hour's mystery, And with him to wander by a sun-bright shore, To hear fine, fairy voices, and to fly With disembodied Ariel once more Above earth's wrack and ruin? Far and nigh The laughter of the thunder echoed loud, And harmless lightnings leapt from cloud to cloud. I. Floating upon a swelling wave of sound, We seemed to overlook an endless sea: Poised 'twixt clear heavens and glittering surf were we. We drank the air in flight: we knew no bound To the audacious ventures of desire. Nigh us the sun was dropping, drowned in gold; Deep, deep below the burning billows rolled; And all the sea sang like a smitten lyre. Oh, the wild voices of those chanting waves! The human faces glimpsed beneath the tide! Familiar eyes gazed from profound sea-caves, And we, exalted, were as we had died. We knew the sea was Life, the harmonious cry The blended discords of humanity. II. Look deeper yet: mark 'midst the wave-blurred mass, In lines distinct, in colors clear defined, The typic groups and figures of mankind. Behold within the cool and liquid glass Bright child-folk sporting with smooth yellow shells, Astride of dolphins, leaping up to kiss Fair mother-faces. From the vast abyss How joyously their thought-free laughter wells! Lulled by the overwhelming water's sound, And some make mouths at dragons, undismayed. Oh dauntless innocence! The gulfs profound Reecho strangely with their ringing glee, And with wise mermaids' plaintive melody. III. What do the sea-nymphs in that coral cave? With wondering eyes their supple forms they bend O'er something rarely beautiful. They lend Their lithe white arms, and through the golden wave They lift it tenderly. Oh blinding sight! A naked, radiant goddess tranced in sleep, Full-limbed, voluptuous, 'neath the mantling sweep Of auburn locks that kiss her ankles white! Upward they bear her, chanting low and sweet: The clinging waters part before their way, Jewels of flame are dancing 'neath their feet. Up in the sunshine, in soft foam, they lay Their precious burden, and return forlorn. Oh, bliss! oh, anguish! Mortals, LOVE is born! IV. Hark! from unfathomable deeps a dirge Swells sobbing through the melancholy air: Where Love has entered, Death is also there. The wail outrings the chafed, tumultuous surge; Ocean and earth, the illimitable skies, Prolong one note, a mourning for the dead, The cry of souls not to be comforted. What piercing music! Funeral visions rise, And send the hot tears raining down our cheek. We see the silent grave upon the hill With its lone lilac-bush. O heart, be still! She will not rise, she will not stir nor speak. Surely, the unreturning dead are blest. Ring on, sweet dirge, and knell us to our rest! V. Upon the silver beach the undines dance With interlinking arms and flying hair; Like polished marble gleam their limbs left bare; Upon their virgin rites pale moonbeams glance. Softer the music! for their foam-bright feet Print not the moist floor where they trip their round: Affrighted they will scatter at a sound, Leap in their cool sea-chambers, nimbly fleet, And we shall doubt that we have ever seen, While our sane eyes behold stray wreaths of mist, Shot with faint colors by the moon-rays kissed, Floating snow-soft, snow-white, where these had been. Already, look! the wave-washed sands are bare, And mocking laughter ripples through the air. Epilogue. Forth in the sunlit, rain-bathed air we stepped, Sweet with the dripping grass and flowering vine, And saw through irised clouds the pale sun shine. Back o'er the hills the rain-mist slowly crept Like a transparent curtain's slivery sheen; And fronting us the painted bow was arched, Whereunder the majestic cloud-shapes marched: In the wet, yellow light the dazzling green Of lawn and bush and tree seemed stained with blue. Our hearts o'erflowed with peace. With smiles we spake Of partings in the past, of courage new, Of high achievement, of the dreams that make A wonder and a glory of our days, And all life's music but a hymn of praise. LONG ISLAND SOUND. I see it as it looked one afternoon In August,--by a fresh soft breeze o'erblown. The swiftness of the tide, the light thereon, A far-off sail, white as a crescent moon. The shining waters with pale currents strewn, The quiet fishing smacks, the Eastern cove, The semi-circle of its dark, green grove. The luminous grasses, and the merry sun In the grave sky; the sparkle far and wide, Laughter of unseen children, cheerful chirp Of crickets, and low lisp of rippling tide, Light summer clouds fantastical as sleep Changing unnoted while I gazed thereon. All these fair sounds and sights I made my own. DESTINY. 1856. Paris, from throats of iron, silver, brass, Joy-thundering cannon, blent with chiming bells, And martial strains, the full-voiced paean swells. The air is starred with flags, the chanted mass Throngs all the churches, yet the broad streets swarm With glad-eyed groups who chatter, laugh, and pass, In holiday confusion, class with class, And over all the spring, the sun-floods warm! In the Imperial palace that March morn, The beautiful young mother lay and smiled; For by her side just breathed the Prince, her child, Heir to an empire, to the purple born, Crowned with the Titan's name that stirs the heart Like a blown clarion--one more Bonaparte. 1879. Born to the purple, lying stark and dead, Transfixed with poisoned spears, beneath the sun Of brazen Africa! Thy grave is one, Fore-fated youth (on whom were visited Follies and sins not thine), whereat the world, Heartless howe'er it be, will pause to sing A dirge, to breathe a sigh, a wreath to fling Of rosemary and rue with bay-leaves curled. Enmeshed in toils ambitious, not thine own, Immortal, loved boy-Prince, thou tak'st thy stand With early doomed Don Carlos, hand in hand With mild-browed Arthur, Geoffrey's murdered son. Louis the Dauphin lifts his thorn-ringed head, And welcomes thee, his brother, 'mongst the dead. FROM ONE AUGUR TO ANOTHER. So, Calchas, on the sacred Palatine, Thou thought of Mopsus, and o'er wastes of sea A flower brought your message. I divine (Through my deep art) the kindly mockery That played about your lips and in your eyes, Plucking the frail leaf, while you dreamed of home. Thanks for the silent greeting! I shall prize, Beyond June's rose, the scentless flower of Rome. All the Campagna spreads before my sight, The mouldering wall, the Caesars' tombs unwreathed, Rome and the Tiber, and the yellow light, Wherein the honey-colored blossom breathed. But most I thank it--egoists that we be! For proving then and there you thought of me. THE CRANES OF IBYCUS. There was a man who watched the river flow Past the huge town, one gray November day. Round him in narrow high-piled streets at play The boys made merry as they saw him go, Murmuring half-loud, with eyes upon the stream, The immortal screed he held within his hand. For he was walking in an April land With Faust and Helen. Shadowy as a dream Was the prose-world, the river and the town. Wild joy possessed him; through enchanted skies He saw the cranes of Ibycus swoop down. He closed the page, he lifted up his eyes, Lo--a black line of birds in wavering thread Bore him the greetings of the deathless dead! CRITIC AND POET. An Apologue. ("Poetry must be simple, sensuous, or impassioned; this man is neither simple, sensuous, nor impassioned; therefore he is not a poet.") No man had ever heard a nightingale, When once a keen-eyed naturalist was stirred To study and define--what is a bird, To classify by rote and book, nor fail To mark its structure and to note the scale Whereon its song might possibly be heard. Thus far, no farther;--so he spake the word. When of a sudden,--hark, the nightingale! Oh deeper, higher than he could divine That all-unearthly, untaught strain! He saw The plain, brown warbler, unabashed. "Not mine" (He cried) "the error of this fatal flaw. No bird is this, it soars beyond my line, Were it a bird, 't would answer to my law." ST. MICHAEL'S CHAPEL. When the vexed hubbub of our world of gain Roars round about me as I walk the street, The myriad noise of Traffic, and the beat Of Toil's incessant hammer, the fierce strain Of struggle hand to hand and brain to brain, Ofttimes a sudden dream my sense will cheat, The gaudy shops, the sky-piled roofs retreat, And all at once I stand enthralled again Within a marble minster over-seas. I watch the solemn gold-stained gloom that creeps To kiss an alabaster tomb, where sleeps A lady 'twixt two knights' stone effigies, And every day in dusky glory steeps Their sculptured slumber of five centuries. LIFE AND ART. Not while the fever of the blood is strong, The heart throbs loud, the eyes are veiled, no less With passion than with tears, the Muse shall bless The poet-soul to help and soothe with song. Not then she bids his trembling lips express The aching gladness, the voluptuous pain. Life is his poem then; flesh, sense, and brain One full-stringed lyre attuned to happiness. But when the dream is done, the pulses fail, The day's illusion, with the day's sun set, He, lonely in the twilight, sees the pale Divine Consoler, featured like Regret, Enter and clasp his hand and kiss his brow. Then his lips ope to sing--as mine do now. SYMPATHY. Therefore I dare reveal my private woe, The secret blots of my imperfect heart, Nor strive to shrink or swell mine own desert, Nor beautify nor hide. For this I know, That even as I am, thou also art. Thou past heroic forms unmoved shalt go, To pause and bide with me, to whisper low: "Not I alone am weak, not I apart Must suffer, struggle, conquer day by day. Here is my very cross by strangers borne, Here is my bosom-sun wherefrom I pray Hourly deliverance--this my rose, my thorn. This woman my soul's need can understand, Stretching o'er silent gulfs her sister hand." YOUTH AND DEATH. What hast thou done to this dear friend of mine, Thou cold, white, silent Stranger? From my hand Her clasped hand slips to meet the grasp of thine; Here eyes that flamed with love, at thy command Stare stone-blank on blank air; her frozen heart Forgets my presence. Teach me who thou art, Vague shadow sliding 'twixt my friend and me. I never saw thee till this sudden hour. What secret door gave entrance unto thee? What power in thine, o'ermastering Love's own power? AGE AND DEATH. Come closer, kind, white, long-familiar friend, Embrace me, fold me to thy broad, soft breast. Life has grown strange and cold, but thou dost bend Mild eyes of blessing wooing to my rest. So often hast thou come, and from my side So many hast thou lured, I only bide Thy beck, to follow glad thy steps divine. Thy world is peopled for me; this world's bare. Through all these years my couch thou didst prepare. Thou art supreme Love--kiss me--I am thine! CITY VISIONS. I. As the blind Milton's memory of light, The deaf Beethoven's phantasy of tone, Wrought joys for them surpassing all things known In our restricted sphere of sound and sight,-- So while the glaring streets of brick and stone Vex with heat, noise, and dust from morn till night, I will give rein to Fancy, taking flight From dismal now and here, and dwell alone With new-enfranchised senses. All day long, Think ye 't is I, who sit 'twixt darkened walls, While ye chase beauty over land and sea? Uplift on wings of some rare poet's song, Where the wide billow laughs and leaps and falls, I soar cloud-high, free as the the winds are free. II. Who grasps the substance? who 'mid shadows strays? He who within some dark-bright wood reclines, 'Twixt sleep and waking, where the needled pines Have cushioned all his couch with soft brown sprays? He notes not how the living water shines, Trembling along the cliff, a flickering haze, Brimming a wine-bright pool, nor lifts his gaze To read the ancient wonders and the signs. Does he possess the actual, or do I, Who paint on air more than his sense receives, The glittering pine-tufts with closed eyes behold, Breathe the strong resinous perfume, see the sky Quiver like azure flame between the leaves, And open unseen gates with key of gold? INFLUENCE. The fervent, pale-faced Mother ere she sleep, Looks out upon the zigzag-lighted square, The beautiful bare trees, the blue night-air, The revelation of the star-strewn deep, World above world, and heaven over heaven. Between the tree-tops and the skies, her sight Rests on a steadfast, ruddy-shining light, High in the tower, an earthly star of even. Hers is the faith in saints' and angels' power, And mediating love--she breathes a prayer For yon tired watcher in the gray old tower. He the shrewd, skeptic poet unaware Feels comforted and stilled, and knows not whence Falls this unwonted peace on heart and sense. RESTLESSNESS.* Would I had waked this morn where Florence smiles, A-bloom with beauty, a white rose full-blown, Yet rich in sacred dust, in storied stone, Precious past all the wealth of Indian isles-- From olive-hoary Fiesole to feed On Brunelleschi's dome my hungry eye, And see against the lotus-colored sky, Spring the slim belfry graceful as a reed. To kneel upon the ground where Dante trod, To breathe the air of immortality From Angelo and Raphael--TO BE-- Each sense new-quickened by a demi-god. To hear the liquid Tuscan speech at whiles, From citizen and peasant, to behold The heaven of Leonardo washed with gold-- Would I had waked this morn where Florence smile! *Written before visiting Florence. THE SPAGNOLETTO. DRAMATIS PERSONAE. DON JOHN of AUSTRIA. JOSEF RIBERA, the Spagnoletto. LORENZO, noble young Italian artist, pupil of Ribera. DON TOMMASO MANZANO. LUCA, servant to Ribera. A GENTLEMAN. FIRST LORD. SECOND LORD. MARIA-ROSA, daughter to Ribera. ANNICCA, daughter to Ribera, and wife to Don Tommaso. FIAMETTA, servant to Maria-Rosa. ABBESS. LAY-SISTER. FIRST LADY. SECOND LADY. Lords, Ladies, Gentlemen, Servants. SCENE--During the first four acts, in Naples; latter part of the fifth act, in Palermo. Time, about 1655. ACT. I. SCENE I. The studio of the Spagnoletto. RIBERA at work before his canvas. MARIA seated some distance behind him; a piece of embroidery is in her hands, but she glances up from it incessantly toward her father with impatient movements. MARIA. Father! (RIBERA, absorbed in his work, makes no reply; she puts by her embroidery, goes toward him and kisses him gently. He starts, looks up at her, and returns her caress). RIBERA. My child! MARIA. Already you forget, Oh, heedless father! Did you not promise me To lay aside your brush to-day at noon, And tell me the great secret? RIBERA. Ah, 't is true, I am to blame. But it is morning yet; My child, wait still a little. MARIA. 'T is morning yet! Nay, it was noon one mortal hour ago. All patience I have sat till you should turn And beckon me. The rosy angels breathe Upon the canvas; I might sit till night, And, if I spake not, you would never glance From their celestial faces. Dear my father, Your brow is moist, and yet your hands are ice; Your very eyes are tired--pray, rest awhile. The Spagnoletto need no longer toil As in the streets of Rome for beggars' fare; Now princes bide his pleasure. RIBERA (throws aside his brush and palette). Ah, Maria, Thou speak'st in season. Let me ne'er forget Those days of degradation, when I starved Before the gates of palaces. The germs Stirred then within me of the perfect fruits Wherewith my hands have since enriched God's world. Vengeance I vowed for every moment's sting-- Vengeance on wealth, rank, station, fortune, genius. See, while I paint, all else escapes my sense, Save this bright throng of phantasies that press Upon my brain, each claiming from my hand Its immortality. But thou, my child, Remind'st me of mine oath, my sacred pride, The eternal hatred lodged within my breast. Philip of Spain shall wait. I will not deign To add to-day the final touch of life Unto this masterpiece. MARIA. So! that is well. Put by the envious brush that separates Father from daughter. Now you are all mine own. And now--your secret. RIBERA. Mine? 'T is none of mine; 'T is thine, Maria. John of Austria Desires our presence at his ball to-night. MARIA. Prince John? RIBERA. Ay, girl, Prince John. I looked to see A haughty joy dance sparkling in thine eyes And burn upon thy cheek. But what is this? Timid and pale, thou droop'st thy head abashed As a poor flower-girl whom a lord accosts. MARIA. Forgive me. Sure, 't is you Don John desires The prince of artists-- RIBERA. Art! Prate not of art! Think'st thou I move an artist 'midst his guests? As such I commune with a loftier race; Angels and spirits are my ministers. These do I part aside to grace his halls; A Spanish gentleman--and so, his peer. MARIA. Father, I am not well; my head throbs fast, Unwonted languor weighs upon my frame. RIBERA. Anger me not, Maria. 'T is my will, Thou shalt obey. Hell, what these women be! No obstacle would daunt them in the quest Of that which, freely given, they reject. Hold! Haply just occasion bids thee seem Unlike thyself. Speak fearlessly child; Confide to me thy knowledge, thy surmise. MARIA (hurriedly). No, father, you were right. I have no cause; Punish me--nay, forgive, and I obey. RIBERA. There spake my child; kiss me and be forgiven. Sometimes I doubt thou playest upon my love Willfully, knowing me as soft as clay, Whom the world knows of marble. In such moods, I see my spirit mirror's first, and then From thy large eyes thy sainted mother's soul Unclouded shine. MARIA. Can I be like to her? I only knew her faded, white, and grave, And so she still floats vaguely through my dreams, With eyes like your own angels', and a brow Worthy an aureole. RIBERA. An earthly crown, My princess, might more fitly rest on thine. Annicca hath her colors, blue-black hair, And pale, brown flesh, and gray, untroubled eyes; Yet thou more often bring'st her to mind, For all the tawny gold of thy thick locks, Thy rare white face, and brilliant Spanish orbs. Thine is her lisping trick of voice, her laugh, The blithest music still this side of heaven; Thine her free, springing gait, though therewithal A swaying, languid motion all thine own, Recalls Valencia more than Italy. Like and unlike thou art to her, as still My memory loves to hold her, as she first Beamed like the star of morning on my life. Hot, faint, and footsore, I had paced since dawn The sun-baked streets of Naples, seeking work, Not alms, despite the beggar that I looked. Now 't was nigh vespers, and my suit had met With curt refusal, sharp rebuff, and gibes. Praised be the saints! for every drop of gall In that day's brimming cup, I have upheld A poisoned beaker to another's lips. Many a one hath the Ribera taught To fare a vagabond through alien streets; A god unrecognized 'midst churls and clowns, With kindled soul aflame, and body faint Or lack of bread. Domenichino knows, And Gessi, Guido, Annibal Caracci-- MARIA. Dear father, calm yourself. You had begun To tell me how you saw my mother first. RIBERA. True, I forgot it not. Why, I AM calm; The old man now can well be grave and cold, Or laugh at his own youth's indignities, Past a long lifetime back. 'T was vespers' hour, Or nigh it, when I reached her father's door. Kind was his greeting, the first cordial words I heard in Naples; but I took small heed Of speech or toe, for all my sense was rapt In wonder at the angel by his side Who smiled upon me. Large, clear eyes that held The very soul of sunlight in their depths; Low, pure, pale brow, with masses of black hair Flung loosely back, and rippling unconfined In shadowy magnificence below The slim gold girdle o'er the snow-soft gown. Vested and draped about her throat and waist and wrists, A stately lily ere the dew of morn Hath passed away--such was thy mother, child. MARIA. Would I were like her! But what said she, father? How did she plead for you? RIBERA. Ah, cunning child, I see thy tricks; thou humorest my age, Knowing how much I love to tell this tale, Though thou hast heard it half a hundred times. MARIA. I find it sweet to hear as you to tell, Believe me, father. RIBERA. 'T was to pleasure her, Signor Cortese gave me all I lacked To prove my unfamed skill. A savage pride, Matched oddly with my rags, the haughtiness Wherewith I claimed rather than begged my tools, And my quaint aspect, oft she told me since, Won at a glance her faith. Before I left, She guessed my need, and served me meat and wine With her own flower-white hands. The parting grace I craved was granted, that my work might be The portrait of herself. Thou knowest the rest. MARIA. Why did she leave us, father? Oh, how oft I yearn to see her face, to hear her voice, Hushed in an endless silence! Strange that she, Whose rich love beggared our return, should bear Such separation! Though engirdled now By heavenly hosts of saints and seraphim, I cannot fancy it. What! shall her child, Whose lightest sigh reechoed in her heart, Have need of her and cry to her in vain? RIBERA. Now, for God's sake, Maria, speak not thus; Let me not see such tears upon thy cheek. Not unto us it has been given to guess The peace of disembodied souls like hers. The vanishing glimpses that my fancies catch Through heaven's half-opened gates, exalt even me, Poor sinner that I am. And what are these, The painted shadows that make all my life A glory, to the splendor of that light? For thee, my child, has not my doting love Sufficed, at least in part, to fill the breach Of that tremendous void? What dost thou lack? What help, what counsel, what most dear caress? What dost thou covet? What least whim remains Ungratified, because not yet expressed? MARIA. None, none, dear father! Pardon me! Thy love, Generous and wise as tender, shames my power To merit or repay. Fie o my lips! Look if they be not blistered. Let them smooth With contrite kisses the last frown away. We must be young to-night--no wrinkles then! Genius must show immortal as she is. RIBERA. Thou wilt unman me with thy pretty ways. I had forgot the ball. Yea, I grow old; This scanty morning's work has wearied me. Once I had thought it play to dream all day Before my canvas and then dance till dawn, And now must I give o'er and rest at noon. [Rises.] Enter LUCA, ushering in LORENZO, who carries a portfolio. LUCA. Signor Lorenzo. [LORENZO ceremoniously salutes RIBERA and MARIA. Exit LUCA.] LORENZO. Master, I bring my sketch. [Opens his portfolio and hands a sketch to RIBERA.] RIBERA. Humph! the design is not so ill-conceived; I note some progress; but your drawing's bad-- Yes, bad, sir. Mark you how this leg hangs limp, As though devoid of life; these hands seem clenched, Not loosely clasped, as you intended them. [He takes his pencil and makes a few strokes. Thus should it stand--a single line will mend. And here, what's this? Why, 't is a sloven's work. You dance too many nights away, young gallant. You shirk close labor as do all your mates. You think to win with service frivolous, Snatched 'twixt your cups, or set between two kisses, The favor of the mistress of the world. LORENZO. Your pardon, master, but you do me wrong. Mayhap I lack the gift. Alas, I fear it! But not the patience, not the energy Of earnest, indefatigable toil, That help to make the artist. RIBERA. 'S death! He dares Belie me, and deny the testimony Of his own handiwork, whose every line Betrays a sluggard soul, an indolent will, A brain that's bred to idleness. So be it! Master Lorenzo tells the Spagnoletto His own defects and qualities! 'T were best He find another teacher competent To guide so apt, so diligent a scholar. MARIA. Dear father, what hath given thee offence? Cast but another glance upon the sketch; Surely it hath some grace, some charm, some promise. RIBERA. Daughter, stand by! I know these insolent slips Of young nobility; they lack the stuff That makes us artists. What! to answer me! When next I drop a hint as to his colors, The lengthening or the shortening of a stroke, He'll bandy words with me about his error, To prove himself the master. LORENZO. If my defect Be an hereditary grain i' the blood, Even as you say, I must abide by it; But if patrician habits more than birth Beget such faults, then may I dare to hope. Not mine, I knew, I felt, to clear new paths, To win new kingdoms; yet were I content With such achievement as a strenuous will, A firm endeavor, unfaltering love, And an unwearying spirit might attain. Cast me not lightly back. Banish me not From this, my home of hope, of inspiration! MARIA. What, my ungentle father! Will you hear, And leave this worthy signor's suit unanswered? RIBERA. Well, he may bide. Sir, I will speak with you Anon upon this work. I judged in haste. Yea, it hath merit. I am weary now; To-morrow I shall be in fitter mood To give you certain hints. [LORENZO bows his thanks and advances to address MARIA. RIBERA silences and dismisses him with a wave of the hand. Exit LORENZO.] RIBERA. Should I o'ersleep Mine hour, Maria, thou must awaken me; But come what may, I will be fresh to-night, To triumph in thy triumph. [Exit RIBERA.] MARIA (alone). Could I have told, Then when he bade me? Nay, what is to tell? He had flouted me for prizing at such height Homage so slight from John of Austria, even. A glance exchanged, a smile, a fallen flower Dropped from my hair, and pressed against his lips. The Prince! my father gloats upon that name. Were he no more than gentleman, I think I should be glad. I cannot tell to-day If I be sad or gay. Now could I weep Warm, longing tears; anon, a fire of joy Leaps in my heart and dances through my veins. Why should I nurse such idle thoughts? Tonight We are to meet again. Will he remember?-- Nay, how should he forget? His heart is young; His eyes do mirror loyalty. Oh, day! Quicken thy dull, slow round of tedious hours! God make me beautiful this happy night! My father's sleeping saint rebukes my thought. Strange he has left his work, against his wont, Revealed before completed. I will draw The curtain. [She stands irresolute before the picture with her hand on the curtain.] Beautiful, oh, beautiful! The far, bright, opened heavens--the dark earth, Where the tranced pilgrim lies, with eyelids sealed, His calm face flushed with comfortable sleep, His weary limbs relaxed, his heavy head Pillowed upon the stone. Oh, blessed dream That visits his rapt sense, of airy forms, Mounting, descending on the shining ladder, With messages of peace. I will be true Unto my lineage divine, and breathe The passion of just pride that overfills HIS soul inspired. While she stands before the canvas, reenter, unperceived by her, LORENZO. LORENZO. Oh, celestial vision! What brush may reproduce those magic tints, Those lines ethereal?-- MARIA (turns suddenly). Is it not marvellous, Signor Lorenzo? I would draw the curtain, But, gazing, I forgot. You are the first, After the master and myself, to look Upon this wonder. LORENZO (with enthusiasm, looking for he first time at the picture). Ah, what an answer this For envious minds that would restrict his power To writhing limbs and shrivelled flesh! Repose, Beauty, and large simplicity are here. Yes, that is art! Before such work I stand And feel myself a dwarf. MARIA. There, you are wrong. My father even, who knows his proper worth, Before his best achievements I have seen In like dejection; 't is the curse of genius. Oft have I heard the master grace your name With flattering addition. LORENZO. 'T is your goodness, And not the echo of his praise, that speaks. My work was worthless--'t was your generous voice Alone secured the master's second glance. MARIA. Nay, signor, frankly, he esteems your talent. Because you are of well-assured means And gentle birth, he will be rude to you. Not without base is the deep grudge he owes To riches and prosperity. LORENZO. Signora, Why do I bear such harsh, injurious terms As he affronts me with? Why must I seem In mine own eyes a craven? Spiritless, Dishonorably patient? 'T is not his fame, His power, his gift, his venerable years That bind me here his willing slave. Maria, 'T is thou, 't is thou alone! 'T is that I love thee, And exile hence is death! [A pause. He kneels at her feet. She looks at him kindly but makes no reply.] At thy dear feet I lay my life with its most loyal service, The subject of thy pleasure. MARIA (tenderly). You are too humble. LORENZO. Too humble! Do you seek mine utter ruin, With words whose very tone is a caress? I say all. I love you!--you have known it. Why should I tell you? Yet, to-day you seem Other than you have been. A milder light Beams from your eyes--a gentler grace is throned Upon your brow--your words fall soft as dew To melt my fixed resolve. MARIA. You find me, signor, In an unguarded mood. I would be true To you; and to myself; yet, know no answer. Anon, I will be calm; pray you withdraw. LORENZO. Till when? Remember what mad hopes and fears Meantime will riot in my brain. MARIA. To-morrow-- Farewell, farewell. LORENZO (kisses her hand). Farewell. [Exit.] MARIA. A faithful heart, A name untainted, a fair home--yea, these Are what I need. Oh, lily soul in heaven, Who wast on earth my mother, guide thy child! While MARIA sits rapt in thought, enter from behind her, ANNICCA, who bends over her and kisses her brow. ANNICCA. What, sister! lost in dreams by daylight? Fie! Who is the monarch of thy thoughts? MARIA (starting). Annicca! My thoughts are bounden to no master yet; They fly from earth to heaven in a breath. Now are they all of earth. Hast heard the tidings? ANNICCA. Yea--of the Prince's ball? We go together. Braid in thy hair our mother's pearls, and wear The amulet ingemmed with eastern stones; 'T will bring good fortune. MARIA. Tell me, ere we go, What manner of man is John of Austria? ANNICCA. Scarce man at all--a madcap, charming boy; Well-favored--you have seen him--exquisite In courtly compliment, of simple manners; You may not hear a merrier laugh than his From any boatman on the bay; well-versed In all such arts as most become his station; Light in the dance as winged-foot Mercury, Eloquent on the zither, and a master Of rapier and-- MARIA. A puppet could be made To answer in all points your praise of him. Hath he no substance as of a man? ANNICCA. Why, sister, What may that be to us? MARIA. He is our Prince. ANNICCA. The promise of his youth is to outstrip The hero of Lepanto; bright and bold As fire, he is the very soul, the star Of Spanish chivalry; his last achievement Seems still the flower of his accomplishments. Musician, soldier, courtier, yea, and artist. "He had been a painter, were he not a prince," Says Messer Zurbaran. The Calderona, His actress-mother, hath bequeathed to him Her spirit with her beauty, and the power To win and hold men's hearts. MARIA. I knew it, sister! His eye hath a command in it; his brow Seems garlanded with laurel. ANNICCA. What is this? You kindle with his praise, your whole heart glows In light and color on your face, your words Take wing and fly as bold as reckless birds. What! can so rash a thought, a dream so wild, So hopeless an ambition, tempt your soul? MARIA. Pray you, what thought, what dream, and what ambition? I knew not I had uttered any such. ANNICCA. Nor have you in your speech; your eyes now veiled, Where the light leaped to hear me voice his fame, Your blushes and your pallor have betrayed That which should lie uncounted fathom deep-- The secret of a woman's foolish heart. MARIA. And there it lies, my sibyl sister, still! Your plummet hath not reached it. Yes, 't is love Flaunts his triumphant colors in my cheek, And quickens my lame speech--but not for him, Not for the Prince--so may I vaunt his worth With a free soul. ANNICCA. Say on. MARIA. A gentleman, Favored of earth and heaven, true and loving, Hath cast his heart at my imperial feet; And if to-morrow find me as to-day, I will e'en stoop and raise it to mine own. ANNICCA. Signor Vitruvio? MARIA. Not he, indeed! Did not I say favored of earth and heaven? That should mean other gifts than bags of gold, Or a straight-featured mask. Nor will it be Any you name, though you should name him right. Must it not lie--how many fathom deep-- The secret of a woman's foolish heart? ANNICCA. Kiss me, Maria. You are still a child. You cannot vex me, wilful as you be. Your choice, I fear not, doubtless 't will prove wise, Despite your wild wit, for your heart is pure, And you will pause with sure deliberate judgment Before you leave our father. MARIA. Does love steal So gently o'er our soul? What if he come A cloud, a fire, a whirlwind, to o'erbear The feeble barriers wherewith we oppose him, And blind our eyes and wrest from us our reason? Fear not, Annicca, for in no such guise He visits my calm breast; but yet you speak Somewhat too sagely. Did such cautious wisdom Guide your own fancy? ANNICCA. Jest no more, Maria. Since I became a wife, is much made clear, Which a brief year ago was dark and vague. Tommaso loves me--we are happier Then I had dreamed; yet matching now with then, I see his love is not that large, rich passion Our father bore us. MARIA. You regret your home? ANNICCA. No, no! I have no wish and no regret. I speak for you. His is a sovereign soul, And all his passions loom in huger shape Than lesser men's. He brooks no rivalry With his own offspring, and toward me his love Hath ebbed, I mark, to a more even flow, While deeper, stronger, sets the powerful current Toward you alone. Consider this, Maria, Nor wantonly discrown that sacred head Of your young love to wreathe some curled boy's brow. MARIA. Think you his wish were that I should not wed? ANNICCA. Nay, that I say not, for his pride aspires To see you nobly mated. MARIA (after a pause). Him will I wed Whose name is ancient, fair, and honorable, As the Ribera's is illustrious-- Him who no less than I will venerate That white, divine old head. In art his pupil, In love his son; tender as I to watch, And to delay the slow extinguishing Of that great light. ANNICCA. There spake his darling child! MARIA. What is't o'clock? If he should sleep too late-- He bade me rouse him-- ANNICCA. Haste to seek him, then. 'T is hard on sunset, and he looks for thee With his first waking motion. Till to-night. [Exeunt severally.] SCENE II. A hall in RIBERA'S house. Enter LUCA and FIAMETTA. FIAMETTA. But did you see her? LUCA. Nay, I saw her sister, Donna Annicca. FIAMETTA. Tush, man! never name her beside my lady Maria-Rosa. You have lost the richest feast in the world for hungry eyes. Her gown of cloth o' silver clad her, as it were, with light; there twinkled about her waist a girdle stiff with stones--you would have said they breathed. Mine own hands wreathed the dropping pearls in her hair, and pearls again were clasped around her throat. But no, I might tell thee every ornament--her jeweled fan, her comb of pearls, her floating veil of gauze, and still the best of all would escape us. LUCA. Thou speakest more like her page than her handmaiden. FIAMETTA. Thou knowest not woman truly, for all thy wit. I speak most like a woman when I weigh the worth of beauty and rich apparel. Heigh-ho! I have felt the need of this. Thou, good Luca, who might have been my father, canst understand me? HE was poor as thou. Why shouldst thou be his lackey, his slave? My hand were as dainty as hers, if it could but be spared its daily labor. LUCA. Yes, poor child, I understand thee, and yet thou art wrong. He is more slave to pride than I am to him. I know him well, Fiametta, after so many years of service, and to-day I pity him more than I fear him. Why, girl, my task is sport beside his toil! If my limbs be weary, I sleep; but I have seen him sit before his canvas with straining eyes and the big beads standing on his brow. When at last he gave o'er, and I have smoothed his pillow, and served and soothed him, what sleep could he snatch? His brain is haunted with evil visions, whereof some be merely of his own imaginings, and others the phantoms of folk who are living or have lived, and who rouse his jealousy or mayhap his remorse, God only knows! If that be genius--to be alive to pain at every pore, to be possessed of a devil that robs you of your sleep and grants no space between the hours of grinding toil--I thank the saints I am a simple man! FIAMETTA. I grant thee thou mayst be right concerning him; he hath indeed a strange, sour mien. I shudder when he turns suddenly, as his wont is, and bends his evil eyes on me. The holy father tells me such warnings come from God. No matter how slight the service he asks of me, my flesh creeps and my limbs refuse to move, till I have whispered an Ave. But what of Lady Maria-Rosa? Both heaven and earth smile upon her. To-night she wears a poor girl's dowry, a separate fortune, on her head, her neck, her hands, yes, on her little jeweled feet. One tiny shoe of hers would make me free to wed my lad. LUCA. If he have but eyes, I warrant thee he finds jewels enough in thy bright face. Tell me his name. FIAMETTA. Nay, that is my secret. LUCA. He must be a poor-souled lad if he will wait till thou hast earned a dowry. FIAMETTA. A poor-souled lad! my good Vicenzo--ah! but no matter; thou knowest him, Luca, my Lord Lorenzo's page. There!--is he poor, or mean, or plain, or dull? He claims no dowry, he--but I have my pride, as well as the great ones. LUCA. May the saints preserve thee from such as theirs! I am heartily glad of thy good fortune. I am not sure whether thou or Lady Marie-Rosa be the most favored. Well, the end proves all. [Exeunt.] Enter on one side ANNICCA and DON TOMMASO, attired for the ball; on the other side, RIBERA. RIBERA. What do ye here, my children? Haste away! Maria waits you for the ball; folk say 'T will be the bravest show e'er seen in Naples. I warrant you the Spagnoletto brings The richest jewels--what say'st thou, my son? DON TOMMASO. I who have robbed you of one gem, need scarce Re-word, sir, how I prize it. RIBERA. Why, 't is true. Robbed me, thou sayst? So hast thou. She was mine-- The balanced beauty of her flesh and spirit, That was my garland, and I was her all, Till thou, a stranger, stole her heart's allegiance, Suborned--Forgive me, I am old, a father, Whose doting passions blind. I am not jealous, Believe me, sir. When we Riberas give, We give without retraction or reserve, Were it our life-blood. I rejoice with thee That she is thine; nor am I quite bereft, I have some treasure still. I do repent So heartily of my discourteous speech, That I will crave your leave before I kiss Your wife's soft palm. ANNICCA (kissing him repeatedly). Why, father, what is this? Can Don Tommaso's wife so soon forget She is the Spagnoletto's child? RIBERA. Enough. I can bear praise, thou knowest, from all save thee And my Maria. My grave son, I fear, Will mock these transports. Pray go in with me. No one of us but has this night a triumph. Let us make ready. [Exeunt.] ACT II. SCENE I. Ball in the Palace of DON JOHN. Dance. DON JOHN and MARIA together. DON TOMMASO, ANNICCA. LORDS and LADIES, dancing or promenading. 1st LORD. Were it not better to withdraw awhile, After our dance, unto the torch-lit gardens? The air is fresh and sweet without. 1st LADY. Nay, signor. I like this heavy air, rich with warm odors, The broad, clear light, the many-colored throng. I might have breathed on mine own balcony The evening breeze. 1st LORD. Still at cross purposes. When will you cease to flout me? 1st LADY. When I prize A lover's sigh more dear than mine own pleasure. See, the Signora Julia passed again. She is far too pale for so much white, I find. Donna Aurora--ah, how beautiful! That spreading ruff, sprinkled with seeds of gold, Becomes her well. Would you believe it, sir, Folk say her face is twin to mine--what think you? 1st LORD. For me, the huge earth holds but one such face. You know it well. 1St LADY. The hall is overfilled; Go we without. [They pass on.] 2d LADY. Thrice he hath danced with her. She is not one of us--her face is strange; Colored and carven to meet most men's desire-- Is't not, my lord? Certes, it loses naught For lack of ornament. Pray, ask her name, If but for my sake. 2d LORD. I have already asked. She is the daughter to the Spagnoletto, Maria-Rosa. 2d LADY. Ah, I might have guessed. The form and face are matched with the apparel, As in a picture. 'T was the master's hand, I warrant you, arranged with such quaint art, Such seeming-careless care, the dead, white pearls Within her odd, bright hair. [They pass on.] DON JOHN. Now hope, now fear Reigned lord of my wild dreams. One name still sang Like the repeated strain of some caged bird, Its sweet, persistent music through my brain. One vanishing face upon the empty air Shone forth and faded night and day. And you, Did you not find me hasty, over-bold? Nay, tell me all your thought. MARIA. You know, my lord, I am no courtier, and belike my thought Might prove too rustic for a royal ear. DON JOHN. Speak on, speak on! Though you should rail, your voice would still outsing Rebeck and mandoline. MARIA. Is it not strange? I knew you not, albeit I might have guessed, If only from the simple garb of black, And golden collar, 'midst the motley hues Of our gay nobles. I know not what besides, But this first won me. Be not angered, sir; But, as I looked, I never ranked you higher Than simple gentleman. I asked your name; Then, when you Highness stooped to pick my flower, My lord, that moment was my thought a traitor, For it had fain discrowned you. DON JOHN. May God's angels Reward such treason. Say me those words again. Let the rich blush born of that dear confession Again dye cheek and brow, and fade and melt Forever, even as then. MARIA. We are watched, my lord. This is no place, no hour, for words like these. DON JOHN. When, where then, may we meet? [They pass on.] SCENE II. The Palace Gardens. Interrupted sounds of music and revelry come though the open windows of the ball-room, seen in the background. RIBERA, pacing the stage, occasionally pausing to look in upon the dancers. RIBERA. This is revenge. Is she not beautiful, Ye gods? The beggar's child matched with a prince! Throb not so high, my heart, 'neath envious eyes Fixed on thy triumph! Now am I well repaid For my slow, martyred years. Was I not wrung by keener tortures than my savage brush, Though dipped in my heart's blood, might reproduce! No twisted muscle, no contorted limb, No agony of flesh, have I yet drawn, That owed not its suggestion to some pang Of my pride crucified, my spirit racked, My entrails gnawed by the blind worm of hate, Engendered of oppression. That is past, But not forgotten; though to-night I please To yield to gentler influence, to own The strength of beauty and the power of joy, And welcome gracious phantasies that throng And hover over me in airy shapes. The spirits of earth and heaven contend to-night For mastery within me; ne'er before Have I been more the Spagnoletto, fired With noble wrath, with the consuming fever And fierce delight of vengeance. From this point I see her clearly--the auroral face A-light with smiles, the imperial head upraised; Her languid hand sways the broad, silken fan, Whose wing-like movement stirs above her brow The fine, bright curls, as though warm airs of heaven Around her breathed. He leads her 'midst the throng. So, they have gone; but I will follow them, And watch them from afar. [Exit.] Enter from the opposite side DON JOHN and MARIA. DON JOHN. I dread to ask What quivers on my lips. My heart is free, But thine? MARIA. My heart is free, my lord. DON JOHN. Thank God! MARIA. It never beat less calmly at the sound Of any voice till now. I laugh to think This very morn I fancied it had met Its master. DON JOHN. Ah! MARIA. Fear naught--a simple boy, A pupil of my father's. DON JOHN. I was mad To dream it could be otherwise. Forgive me; I, a mere stranger in they life, am jealous Of all thy present and thy past. MARIA. Listen, my lord; You shall hear all. What hour, think you, he chose To urge his cause? The same wherein I learned Your Highness had commanded for to-night Our presence. My winged thoughts were flying back To Count Lodovico's; again I saw you, My white rose at your lips, your grave eyes fixed Most frankly, yet most reverently, on mine. Again my heart sank as I heard the name, The Prince of Austria; and while I mused, He spake of love. Oh, I am much to blame! My mood was soft;--although I promised naught, I listened, yea, I listened. Good, my lord, Do you not pity him? DON JOHN. Thanks, and thanks again, For thy confession! Now no spot remains On the unblemished mirror of my faith. Since that dear night, I with one only thought Have gained the sum of knowledge and opinions Touching thine honored father, with such scraps As the gross public voice could dole to me Concerning thine own far-removed, white life. Thou art, I learn, immured in close seclusion; Thy father, be it with all reverence said, Hedges with jealous barriers his treasure; Whilst thou, most duteous, tenderest of daughters, Breath'st but for him. MARIA. Dear father! Were it so, 'T were simple justice. Ah, if you knew him-- A proud, large, tameless heart. This is the cloister Where he immures me--Naples' gayest revels; The only bar wherewith he hedges me Is his unbounded trust, that leaves me free. Let us go in; the late night air is chill. DON JOHN. Yet one more dance? MARIA. You may command, my lord. [Exeunt.] Enter RIBERA. RIBERA. I lost them in the press. Ah, there they dance Again together. I would lay my hands In blessing on that darling, haughty head. Like the Ribera's child, she bears her honors As lightly as a flower. Yet there glows Unwonted lustre in her starry eyes, And richer beauty blushes on her cheek. Enough. Now must I strive to fix that form That haunts my brain--the blind, old Count Camillo, The Prince's oracle. 'Midst the thick throng My fancy singled him; white beard, white hair, Sealed eyes, and brow lit by an inward light. So will I paint mine Isaac blessing Esau, While Jacob kneels before him--blind, betrayed By his own flesh! As RIBERA stands aside, lost in thought, enter DON JOHN and MARIA. MARIA. See the impatient day Wakes in the east. DON JOHN. One moment here, signora, Breathe we the charm of this enchanted night. Look where behind yon vines the slow moon sets, Hidden from us, while every leaf hangs black, Each tender stalk distinct, each curling edge Against the silver sky. MARIA (perceiving RIBERA). What, father! here? RIBERA. Maria!--Ah, my Prince, I crave your pardon. When thus I muse, 't is but my mind that lives; Each outward sense is dead. I saw you not, I heard nor voice nor footstep. Yonder lines That streak the brightening sky east warn us away. For all your grace to us, the Spagnoletto Proffers his thanks to John of Austria. My daughter, art thou ready? DON JOHN. I am bound, Illustrious signor, rather unto you And the signora, past all hope of payment. When may I come to tender my poor homage To the Sicilian master? RIBERA. My lord will jest. Our house is too much honored when he deigns O'erstep the threshold. Let your royal pleasure Alone decide the hour. DON JOHN. To-morrow, then. Or I should say to-day, for dawn is nigh. RIBERA. And still we trespass. Be it as you will; We are your servants. MARIA. So, my lord, good-night. [Exeunt MARIA and RIBERA.] DON JOHN (alone). Gods, what a haughty devil rules that man! As though two equal princes interchanged Imperial courtesies! The Spagnoletto Thanks John of Austria! Louis of France Might so salute may father. By heaven, I know not What patience or what reverence withheld My enchafed spirit in bounds of courtesy. Nay, it was she, mine angel, whose mere aspect Is balm and blessing. How her love-lit eyes Burned through my soul! How her soft hand's slight pressure Tingled along my veins! Oh, she is worthy A heart' religion! How shall I wear the hours Ere I may seek her? Lo, I stand and dream, While my late guests await me. Patience, patience! [Exeunt.] SCENE III. Morning twilight in RIBERA'S Garden. During this scene the day gradually breaks, and at the close the full light of morning illuminates the stage. LORENZO. AUBADE. LORENZO (sings). From thy poppied sleep awake; From they golden dreams arise; Earth and seas new colors take, Love-light dawns in rosy skies, Weird night's fantastic shadows are outworn; Why tarriest thou, oh, sister to the morn? Hearken, love! the matin choir Of birds salutes thee, and with these Blends the voice of my desire. Unto no richer promises Of deeper, dearer, holier love than mine, Canst thou awaken from they dreams divine. Lo, thine eastern windows flame, Brightening with the brightened sky; Rise, and with thy beauty shame Morning's regal pageantry, To thrill and bless as the reviving sun, For my heart gropes in doubt, though night be gone. (He speaks.) Why should I fear? Her soul is pledged to mine, Albeit she still withheld the binding word. How long hath been the night! but morn breathes hope. "I fain were true to you and to myself"-- Did she say thus? or is my fevered brain The fool of its desires? The world swam; The blood rang beating in mine ears and roared Like rushing waters; yet, as through a dream, I saw her dimly. Surely on her lids Shone the clear tears. As there's a God in heaven, She spake those words! My lips retain the touch Of those soft, snow-cold hands, neither refused Nor proffered. Such things ARE, nor can they be Forgotten or foreknown. Yes, she is mine. But soft! Her casement opes. Oh, joy, 't is she! Pale, in a cloud of white she stands and drinks The morning sunlight. MARIA (above at the window). Ah, how sweet this air Kisses my sleepless lids and burning temples. I am not weary, though I found no rest. My spirit leaps within me; a new glory Blesses the dear, familiar scene--ripe orchard, The same--yet oh, how different! Even I thought Soft music trembled on the listening air, As though a harp were touched, blent with low song. Sure, that was phantasy. I will descend, Visit my flowers, and see whereon the dew Hangs heaviest, and what fairest bud hath bloomed Since yester-eve. Why should I court repose And dull forgetfulness, while the large earth Wakes no lesser joy than mine? [Exit from above.] LORENZO. Oh, heart! How may my breast contain thee, with thy burden Of too much happiness? Enter MARIA below; LORENZO springs forward to greet her; she shrinks back in a sort of terror. LORENZO. Good-day, sweet mistress. May the blithe spirit of this auspicious morn Become the genius of thy days to come, Whereof be none less beautiful than this. Why art thou silent? Does not love inspire Joyous expression, be it but a sigh, A song, a smile, a broken word, a cry? Thou hast not granted me the promised pledge For which I hunger still. I would confirm With dear avowals, frequent seals of love, That which, though sure, I yet can scarce believe. MARIA. Somewhat too sure, I think, my lord Lorenzo. I scarce deemed possible that one so shy But yester-morn should hold so high a mien, Claiming what ne'er was given. LORENZO. Maria! MARIA. Sir, You are a trifle bold to speak my name Familiarly as no man, save my father Or my own brother, dares. LORENZO. Ah, now I see Your jest. You will not seem so lightly won Without a wooing? You will feign disdain, Only to make more sweet your rich concession? Too late--I heard it all. "A new light shines On the familiar scene." What may that be, Save the strange splendor of the dawn of love? Nay, darling, cease to jest, lest my poor heart, Hanging 'twixt hell and heaven, in earnest break. MARIA. Here is no jest, sir, but a fatal error, Crying for swift correction. You surprise me With rude impatience, ere I have found time To con a gentle answer. Pardon me If any phrase or word or glance of mine Hath bred or nourished in your heart a hope That you might win my love. It cannot be. LORENZO. A word, a glance! Why, the whole frozen statue Warmed into life. Surely it was not you. You must have bribed some angel with false prayers To wear your semblance--nay, no angel served, But devilish witchcraft-- MARIA. Sir, enough, enough! I hoped to find here peace and solitude. These lacking, I retire. Farewell. [Going toward the house.] LORENZO. Signora, I will not rob you of your own. Farewell to you. [Exit.] MARIA. Where have you flown, bright dreams? Has that rude hand Sufficed to dash to naught your frail creations? Sad thoughts and humors black now fill my soul. So his rough foot hath bruised the dewy grass, And left it sere. Why should his harsh words touch me? The truth of yesterday is false to-day. How could I know, dear God! How might I guess The bitter sweetness, the delicious pain! A new heart fills my breast, as soft and weak And melting as a tear, unto its lord; But kindled with quick courage to endure, If I need front for him, a world of foes. If this be love, ah, what a hell is theirs Who suffer without hope! Even I, who hold So many dear assurances, who hear Still ringing in mine ears such sacred vows, Am haunted with an unaccustomed doubt, Not wonted to go hand-in-hand with joy. A gloomy omen greets me with the morn; I, who recoil from pain, must strike and wound. What may this mean? Help me, ye saints of heaven And holy mother, for my strength is naught! She falls on her knees and bursts into tears. Reenter LORENZO. LORENZO (aside). Thank heaven, I came. How have I wrung her soul! A noble love, forsooth! A blind, brute passion, That being denied, is swift transformed to hate No whit more cruel. (To Maria.) Lady! MARIA (rising hastily). Signor Lorenzo! Again what would you with me? LORENZO. No such suit As late I proffered, but your gracious pardon. MARIA. Rise, sir, forgiven. I, too, have been to blame, Although less deeply than you deemed. Forbear To bind your life. I feel myself unworthy Of that high station where your thoughts enthrone me. Yet I dare call myself your friend. [Offering him her hand, which LORENZO presses to his lips.] LORENZO. Thanks, thanks! Be blessed, and farewell. [Exit.] Enter RIBERA, calling. RIBERA. Daughter! Maria! MARIA. Why, father, I am here (kissing him). Good-day. What will you? RIBERA. Darling, no more than what I always will. Before I enter mine own world removed, I fain would greet the dearest work of God. I missed you when I rose. I sought you first In your own chamber, where the lattice, oped, Let in the morning splendor and smells Of the moist garden, with the sound of voices. I looked, I found you here--but not alone. What man was that went from you? MARIA. Your disciple, My lord Lorenzo. You remember, father, How yester-morn I pleaded for his work; Thus he, through gratitude and--love, hath watched All night within our garden, while I danced; And when I came to nurse my flowers--he spake. RIBERA. And you? MARIA. Am I not still beside you, father? I will not leave you. RIBERA. Ah, mine angel-child! I cannot choose but dread it, though I wait Expectant of the hour when you fulfil Your woman's destiny. You have full freedom; Yet I rejoice at this reprieve, and thank thee For thy brave truthfulness. Be ever thus, Withholding naught from him whose heart reflects Only thine image. Thou art still my pride, Even as last night when all eyes gazed thy way, Thy bearing equal in disdainful grace To his who courted thee--thy sovereign's son. MARIA. Yea, so? And yet it was not pride I felt, Nor consciousness of self, nor vain delight In the world's envy;--something more than these, Far deeper, sweeter--What have I said? My brain Is dull with sleep. 'T is only now I feel The weariness of so much pleasure. RIBERA (rising). Well, Go we within. Yes, I am late to work; We squander precious moments. Thou, go rest, And waken with fresh roses in they cheeks, To greet our royal guest. [Exeunt.] ACT III. SCENE I. The studio of the Spagnoletto. RIBERA before his canvas. LUCA in attendance. RIBERA (laying aside his brush). So! I am weary. Luca, what 's o'clock? LUCA. My lord, an hour past noon. RIBERA. So late already! Well, one more morning of such delicate toil Will make it ready for Madrid, and worthy Not merely Philip's eyes, but theirs whose glance Outvalues a king's gaze, my noble friend Velasquez, and the monkish Zurbaran. Luca! LUCA. My lord. RIBERA. Hath the signora risen? LUCA. Fiametta passed a brief while since, and left My lady sleeping. RIBERA. Good! she hath found rest; Poor child, she sadly lacked it. She had known 'Twixt dawn and dawn no respite from emotion; Her chill hand fluttered like a bird in mine; Her soft brow burned my lips. Could that boy read The tokens of an overwearied spirit, Strained past endurance, he had spared her still, At any cost of silence. What is such love To mine, that would outrival Roman heroes-- Watch mine arm crisp and shrivel in quick flame, Or set a lynx to gnaw my heart away, To save her from a needle-prick of pain, Ay, or to please her? At their worth she rates Her wooers--light as all-embracing air Or universal sunshine. Luca, go And tell Fiametta--rather, bid the lass Hither herself. [Exit Luca.] He comes to pay me homage, As would his royal father, if he pleased To visit Naples; yet she too shall see him. She is part of all I think, of all I am; She is myself, no less than yon bright dream Fixed in immortal beauty on the canvas. Enter FIAMETTA. FIAMETTA. My lord, you called me? RIBERA. When thy mistress wakes, Array her richly, that she be prepared To come before the Prince. FIAMETTA. Sir, she hath risen, And only waits me with your lordship's leave, To cross the street unto St. Francis' church. RIBERA (musingly). With such slight escort? Nay, this troubles me. Only the Strada's width? The saints forbid That I should thwart her holy exercise! Myself will go. I cannot. Bid her muffle, Like our Valencian ladies, her silk mantle About her face and head. [At a sign from RIBERA, exit FIAMETTA.] Yes, God will bless her. What should I fear? I will make sure her beauty Is duly masked. [He goes toward the casement.] Ay, there she goes--the mantle, Draped round the stately head, discloses naught Save the live jewel of the eye. Unless one guessed From the majestic grace and proud proportions, She might so pass through the high thoroughfares. Ah, one thick curl escapes from its black prison. Alone in Naples, wreathed with rays of gold, Her crown of light betrays her. So, she's safe! Enter LUCA. LUCA. A noble gentleman of Spain awaits The master's leave to enter. RIBERA. Show him in. [Exit LUCA. RIBERA draws the curtain before his picture of "Jacob's Dream."] RIBERA. A gentleman of Spain! Perchance the Prince Sends couriers to herald his approach, Or craves a longer grace. Enter LUCA, ushering in DON JOHN unattended, completely enveloped in a Spanish mantle, which he throws off, his face almost hidden by a cavalier's hat. He uncovers his head on entering. RIBERA, repressing a movement of surprise, hastens to greet him and kisses his hand. RIBERA. Welcome, my lord! I am shamed to think my sovereign's son should wait, Through a churl's ignorance, without my doors. DON JOHN. Dear master, blame him not. I came attended By one page only. Here I blush to claim Such honor as depends on outward pomp. No royalty is here, save the crowned monarch Of our Sicilian artists. Be it mine To press with reverent lips my master's hand. RIBERA. Your Highness is too gracious; if you glance Round mine ill-furnished studio, my works Shall best proclaim me and my poor deserts. Luca, uplift you hangings. DON JOHN (seating himself). Sir, you may sit. RIBERA (aside, seating himself slowly). Curse his swollen arrogance! Doth he imagine I waited leave of him? (Luca uncovers the picture). DON JOHN. Oh, wonderful! You have bettered here your best. Why, sir, he breathes! Will not those locked lids ope?--that nerveless hand Regain the iron strength of sinew mated With such heroic frame? You have conspired With Nature to produce a man. Behold, I chatter foolish speech; for such a marvel The fittest praise is silence. [He rises and stands before the picture.] RIBERA (after a pause). I am glad Your highness deigns approve. Lose no more time, Lest the poor details should repay you not. Unto your royal home 't will follow you, Companion, though unworthy, to the treasures Of the Queen's gallery. DON JOHN. 'T is another jewel Set in my father's crown, and, in his name, I thank you for it. [RIBERA bows silently. DON JOHN glances around the studio.] DON JOHN. There hangs a quaint, strong head, Though merely sketched. What a marked, cunning leer Grins on the wide mouth! what a bestial glance! RIBERA. 'T is but a slight hint for my larger work, "Bacchus made drunk by Satyrs." DON JOHN. Where is that? I ne'er have seen the painting. RIBERA. 'T is not in oils, But etched in aqua-fortis. Luca, fetch down Yonder portfolio. I can show your Highness The graven copy. [LUCA brings forward a large portfolio. RIBERA looks hastily over the engravings and draws one out which he shows to DON JOHN.] DON JOHN. Ah, most admirable! I know not who is best portrayed--the god, Plump, reeling, wreathed with vine, in whom abides Something Olympian still, or the coarse Satyrs, Thoroughly brutish. Here I scarcely miss, So masterly the grouping, so distinct The bacchanalian spirit, your rich brush, So vigorous in color. Do you find The pleasure in this treatment equals that Of the oil painting? RIBERA. All is in my mood; We have so many petty talents, clever To mimic Nature's surface. I name not The servile copyists of the greater masters, Or of th' archangels, Raphael and Michael; But such as paint our cheap and daily marvels. Sometimes I fear lest they degrade our art To a nice craft for plodding artisans-- Mere realism, which they mistake for truth. My soul rejects such limits. The true artist Gives Nature's best effects with far less means. Plain black and white suffice him to express A finer grace, a stronger energy Than she attains with all the aid of color. I argue thus and work with simple tools, Like the Greek fathers of our art--the sculptors, Who wrought in white alone their matchless types. Then dazzled by the living bloom of earth, Glowing with color, I return to that, My earliest worship, and compose such work As you see there. [Pointing to the picture.] DON JOHN. Would it be overmuch, In my brief stay in Naples, to beg of you A portrait of myself in aqua-fortis? 'T would rob you, sir, of fewer golden hours Than the full-colored canvas, and enrich With a new treasure our royal gallery. RIBERA. You may command my hours and all that's mine. DON JOHN (rising). Thanks, generous master. When may I return For the first sitting? RIBERA. I am ready now-- To-day, to-morrow--when your Highness please. DON JOHN. 'T would be abuse of goodness to accept The present moment. I will come to-morrow, At the same hour, in some more fitting garb. Your hand, sir, and farewell. Salute for me, I pray you, the signora. May I not hope To see and thank her for her grace to me, In so adorning my poor feast? RIBERA. The debt is ours. She may be here to-morrow--she is free, She only, while I work, to come and go. Pray, sir, allow her--she is never crossed. I stoop to beg for her--she is the last Who bides with me--I crave you pardon, sir; What should this be to you? DON JOHN. 'T is much to me, Whose privilege has been in this rare hour, Beneath the master to discern the man, And thus add friendship unto admiration. [He presses RIBERA'S hand and is about to pick up his mantle and hat. LUCA springs forward, and, while he is throwing the cloak around the Princes's shoulders, enter hastily MARIA, enveloped in her mantilla, as she went to church.] MARIA. Well, father, an I veiled and swathed to suit you, To cross the Strada? [She throws off her mantilla and appears all in white. She goes to embrace her father, when she suddenly perceives the Prince, and stands speechless and blushing.] RIBERA. Child, his Royal Highness Prince John of Austria. DON JOHN. Good-day, signora. Already twice my gracious stars have smiled. I saw you in the street. You wore your mantle, As the noon sun might wear a veil of cloud, Covering, but not concealing. MARIA. I, sir, twice Have unaware stood in your royal presence. You are welcome to my father's home and mine. I scarce need crave your pardon for my entrance; Yourself must see how well assured I felt My father was alone. DON JOHN. And so you hoped To find him--shall I read your answer thus? RIBERA. Nay, press her not. Your Highness does her wrong, So harshly to construe her simpleness. My daughter and myself are one, and both Will own an equal pleasure if you bide. DON JOHN (seating himself). You chain me with kind words. MARIA. My father, sir, Hath surely told you our delight and marvel At the enchantments of your feast. For me The night was brief, rich, beautiful, and strange As a bright dream. DON JOHN. I will gainsay you not. A beauteous soul can shed her proper glory On mean surroundings. I have likewise dreamed, Nor am I yet awake. This morn hath been A feast for mind and eye. Yon shepherd-prince, Whom angels visit in his sleep, shall crown Your father's brow with a still fresher laurel, And link in equal fame the Spanish artist With the Lord's chosen prophet. RIBERA. That may be, For in the form of that wayfarer I drew myself. So have I slept beneath The naked heavens, pillowed by a stone, With no more shelter than the wind-stirred branches, While the thick dews of our Valencian nights Drenched my rude weeds, and chilled through blood and bone. Yet to me also were the heavens revealed, And angels visited my dreams. DON JOHN. How strange That you, dear masters, standing on the crown Of a long life's continuous ascent, Should backward glance unto such dark beginnings. RIBERA. Obscure are all beginnings. Yet I muse With pleasing pain on those fierce years of struggle. They were to me my birthright; all the vigor, The burning passion, the unflinching truth, My later pencil gained, I gleaned from them. I prized them. I reclaimed their ragged freedom, Rather than hold my seat, a liveried slave, At the rich board of my Lord Cardinal. A palace was a prison till I reared Mine own. But now my child's heart I would pierce Sooner than see it bear the least of ills, Such as I then endured. DON JOHN. Donna Maria May smile, sir, at your threat; she is in a pleasance, Where no rude breezes blow, no shadow falls Darker than that of cool and fragrant leaves. Yea, were it otherwise--had you not reaped The fruit of your own works, she had not suffered. Your children are Spain's children. RIBERA. Sir, that word Is the most grateful you have spoken yet. Why are thou silent, daughter? MARIA (absently). What should I say? The Prince is kind. I scarcely heard your words. I listened to your voices, and I mused. DON JOHN (rising). I overstep your patience. MARIA. You will be gone? What have I said? RIBERA. You are a child, Maria. To-morrow I will wait your Highness. DON JOHN. Thanks. To-morrow noon. Farewell, signora. [Exit DON JOHN.] RIBERA. What ails you, daughter? You forget yourself. Your tongue cleaves to your mouth. You sit and muse, A statue of white silence. Twice to-day You have deeply vexed me. Go not thus again Across the street with that light child, Fiametta. Faith, you were closely muffled. What was this-- This tell-tale auburn curl that rippled down Over the black mantilla? Were I harsh, Suspicious, jealous, fearful, prone to wrath, Or anything of all that I am not, I should have deemed it no mere negligence, But a bold token. MARIA. Father you make me quail. Why do you threat me with such evil eyes? Would they could read my heart! RIBERA. Elude me not. Whom have you met beside the Prince this morn? Who saw you pass? Whom have you spoken with? MARIA. For God's sake, father, what strange thoughts are these? With none, with none! Beside the Prince, you say? Why even him I saw not, as you know. I hastened with veiled eyes cast on the ground, Swathed in my mantle still, I told my beads, And in like manner hasted home to you. RIBERA. Well, it may pass; but henceforth say thy matins In thine own room. I know what vague cloud Obscures my sight and weighs upon my brain. I am very weary. Luca, follow me. [Exeunt RIBERA and LUCA.] MARIA. Poor father! Dimly he perceives some trouble Within the threatening air. Thank heaven, I calmed him, Yet I spake truth. What could have roused so soon His quick suspicion? Did Fiametta see The wary page slip in my hand the missive, As we came forth again? Nay, even so, My father hath not spoken with her since. Sure he knows naught; 't is but my foolish fear Makes monsters out of shadows. I may read The priceless lines and grave them on my heart. [She draws from her bosom a letter, reads it, and presses it to her lips.] He loves me, yes, he loves me! Oh, my God, This awful joy in mine own breast is love! To-night he will await me in our garden. Oh, for a word, a pressure of the hand! I fly, my prince, at thy most dear behest! [Exit.] SCENE II. A room in DON TOMMASO'S HOUSE. DON TOMMASO and ANNICCA. DON TOMMASO. Truly, you wrong your sister; she is young, Heedless, and wilful, that is all; a touch Of the Ribera's spirit fired the lass. Don John was but her weapon of revenge Against the malice of our haughty matrons, Who hurled this icy shafts of scorn from heights Of dignity upon the artist's daughter. ANNICCA. I cannot think with you. In her demeanor, Her kindled cheek, her melting eye, was more Than sly revenge or cautious policy. If that was art, it overreached itself. Ere the night ended, I had blushed to see Slighting regards cast on my father's child, And hear her name and his tossed lightly round. DON TOMMASO. Could you not read in such disparagement The envy of small natures? ANNICCA. I had as lief Maria were to dance the tarantella Upon the quay at noonday, as to see her Gazed at again with such insulting homage. DON TOMMASO. You are too strict; your baseless apprehensions Wrong her far more than strangers' jests. ANNICCA. Not so; My timely fears prevent a greater ill And work no harm, since they shall be imparted Only to him who hath the power to quell them, Dissolving them to air--my father. DON TOMMASO. How! You surely will not rouse his fatal wrath? Annicca, listen: if your doubts were true, He whose fierce love guards her with sleepless eyes, More like the passion of some wild, dumb creature, With prowling jealousy and deadly spring, Forth leaping at the first approach of ill, Than the calm tenderness of human fathers; He surely had been keen to scent the danger. I saw him at the ball--as is his wont, He mingled not among the revellers, But like her shadow played the spy on her. ANNICCA. A word would stir less deeply than you dread. DON TOMMASO. Ah, there you err; he knows no middle term. At once he would accept as fact the worst Of your imaginings; his rage would smite All near him, and rebound upon himself; For, as I learn, Don John brings royal orders For the Queen's gallery; he would dismiss The Prince as roughly as a begging artist. Make no such breach just now betwixt the court And our own kindred. ANNICCA. Be it so, Tommaso. I will do naught in haste. DON TOMMASO. Watch thou and wait. A slight reproof might now suffice the child, Tame as a bird unto a gentle voice. ANNICCA. My mind misgives me; yet will I find patience. SCENE III. Night in RIBERA'S Garden. DON JOHN alone. DON JOHN. In any less than she, so swift a passion, So unreserved, so reckless, had repelled. In her 't is godlike. Our mutual love Was born full-grown, as we gazed each on each. Nay, 't was not born, but like a thing eternal, It WAS ere we had consciousness thereof; No growth of slow development, but perfect From the beginning, neither doomed to end. Her garden breathes her own warm, southern beauty, Glowing with dewy and voluptuous bloom. Here I am happy--happy to dream and wait In rich security of bliss. I know How brief an interval divides us now. She hastes to meet me with no less impatience Than mine to clasp her in my arms, to press Heart unto heart, and see the love within The unfathomable depths of her great eyes. She comes. Maria! Enter MARIA, half timid, half joyous. MARIA. My lord! you have been waiting? DON JOHN. Darling, not long; 't was but my restless love That drove me here before the promised hour. So were I well content to wait through ages Upon the threshold of a joy like this, Knowing the gates of heaven might ope to me At any moment. MARIA. Your love is less than mine, For I have counted every tedious minute Since our last meeting. DON JOHN. I had rather speak Less than the truth to have you chide me thus; Yet if you enter in the lists with me, Faith match with faith, and loyal heart with heart, I warrant you, the jealous god of love, Who spies us from yon pomegranate bush, Would crown me victor. MARIA. Why should we compete? Who could decide betwixt two equal truths, Two perfect faiths? DON JOHN. The worship of my life Will be slight payment for your boundless trust. Look we nor forth nor back, are we not happy? Heaven smiles above our heads with all her stars. The envious day forced us apart, the wing Of obscure night protects and shelters us. Now like a pure, night-blooming flower, puts forth The perfect blossom of our love. Oh, lean Thy royal head upon my breast; assure me That this unheard-of bliss is no fond dream. Cling to me, darling, till thy love's dear burden Take root about my heart-strings. MARIA (after a pause). Did you not hear A sound, a cry? Oh, God! was it my father? DON JOHN. Naught save the beating of our hearts I heard. Be calm, my love; the very air is hushed. Listen, the tinkle of the fountain yonder, The sleepy stir of leaves, the querulous pipe Of some far bird--no more. MARIA. I heard, I heard! A rude voice called me. Wherefore did it come To snatch me from that dream of restful love? Oh, Juan, you will save me, you will help,-- Tell me you will--I have lost all for you! DON JOHN. To-morrow you will laugh at fears like these. You have lost naught--you have but won my love. Lose not your faith in that--your shield and weapon. MARIA. I tremble still in every limb. Good-night, I must be gone. To-morrow when you come, Be wary with my father; he is fierce In love and hatred. Listen and look, my lord. If one dared say to me but yester-morn That I would meet at night a stranger youth In mine own garden, talk with him of love, And hint a thought against the Spagnoletto, I had smitten with this bauble such a one. [Pointing to a jewelled poniard in her belt.] Kiss me, my Juan, once again. Good-night. [Exit MARIA.] SCENE IV. The studio. RIBERA and ANNICCA. ANNICCA. Has he come often? RIBERA. Nay, I caught the trick Of his fair face in some half-dozen sittings. His is a bold and shapely head--it pleased me. I like the lad; the work upon his portrait Was pastime--'t is already nigh complete. ANNICCA. And has Maria sat here while you worked? RIBERA (sharply). Why not? What would'st thou say? Speak, fret me not With ticklish fears. Is she not by my side, For work or rest? ANNICCA. Surely, I meant no harm. Father, how quick you are! I had but asked If she, being here, had seen the work progress, And found it his true counterpart. RIBERA. Annicca, There is something in your thought you hold from me. Have the lewd, prying eyes, the slanderous mind Of public envy, spied herein some mischief? What hast thou heard? By heaven, if one foul word Have darkened the fair fame of my white dove, Naples shall rue it. Let them not forget The chapel of Saint Januarius! ANNICCA (aside). Tommaso judged aright. I dare not tell him. Dear father, listen. Pray, be calm. Sit down; Your own hot rage engenders in my mind Thoughts, fears, suspicions. RIBERA (seating himself). I am foolish, hasty; but it makes me mad. Listen to me. Here sits the Prince before me; We talk, we laugh. We have discussed all themes, From the great Angelo's divinity, Down to the pest of flies that fret us here At the day's hottest. Sometimes he will pace The studio--such young blood is seldom still. He brought me once his mandoline, and drew Eloquent music thence. I study thus The changeful play of soul. I catch the spirit Behind the veil, and burn it on the plate. Maria comes and goes--will sit awhile Over her broidery, then will haste away And serve us with a dish of golden fruit. That is for me; she knows the sweet, cool juice, After long hours of work, refreshes me More than strong wine. She meets his Royal Highness As the Ribera's child should meet a Prince-- Nor over bold, nor timid; one would think Their rank was equal, and that neither sprang From less than royal lineage. ANNICCA. Why, I know it. Here is no need to excuse or justify. Speak rather of your work--is the plate finished? RIBERA. So nigh, that were Don John to leave to-morrow, It might go with him. ANNICCA. What! he leaves Naples? RIBERA. Yea, but I know not when; he seems to wait Momently, orders from his Majesty To travel onward. ANNICCA (aside). Would he were well away! RIBERA. What do you mutter? I grow deaf this side. ANNICCA. I spake not, father. I regret with you The Prince should leave us; you have more enjoyed His young companionship than any strangers These many years. RIBERA. Well, well, enough of him. He hath a winning air--so far, so good. I know not that I place more trust in him Than in another. 'T is a lying world; I am too old now to be duped or dazzled By fair externals. Enter MARIA, carrying a kirtle full of flowers. MARIA. Father, see! my roses Have blossomed over night; I bring you some To prank your study. Sister, Don Tommaso Seeks you below. ANNICCA (rising). I will go to meet him. Father, Until to-morrow. [Embraces MARIA and exits. MARIA sits by her father's side and displays her flowers.] RIBERA. Truly, a gorgeous show! Pink, yellow, crimson, white--which is the fairest? Those with the deepest blush should best become you-- Nay, they accord not with your hair's red gold; The white ones suit you best--pale, innocent, So flowers too can lie! Is not that strange? [MARIA looks at him in mingled wonder and affright. He roughly brushes aside all the flowers upon the floors, than picks one up and carefully plucks it to pieces.] I think not highly of your flowers, girl; I have plucked this leaf; it has no heart. See there! [He laughs contemptuously.] MARIA. What have I done? Alas! what mean you? Have you then lost your reason? RIBERA. Nay, but found it. I, who was dull of wit, am keen at last. "Don John is comely," and "Don John is kind;" "A wonderful musician is Don John," "A princely artist"--and then, meek of mien, You enter in his presence, modest, simple. And who beneath that kitten grace had spied The claws of mischief? Who! Why, all the world, Save the fond, wrinkled, hoary fool, thy father. Out, girl, for shame! He will be here anon; Hence to your room--he shall not find you here. Thank God, thank God! no evil hath been wrought That may not be repaired. I have sat by At all your meetings. You shall have no more; Myself will look to that. Away, away! [Exit Maria.] RIBERA (looks after her). As one who has received a deadly hurt, She walks. What if my doubts be false? The terror Of an unlooked-for blow, a treacherous thrust When least expected--that is all she showed. On a false charge, myself had acted thus. She had been moved far otherwise if guilty; She had wept, protested, begged--she had not left With such a proud and speechless show of grief. I was too harsh, too quick on slight suspicion. What did Annicca say? Why, she said naught. 'T was her grave air, her sudden reticence, Her ill-assumed indifference. They play on me; They know me not. They dread my violent passions, Not guessing what a firm and constant bridle I hold them with. On just cause to be angered, Is merely human. Yet they sound my temper; They try to lead me like some half-tamed beast, That must be coaxed. Well, I may laugh thereat. But I am not myself to-day; strange pains Shoot through my head and limbs and vex my spirit. Oh, I have wronged my child! Return, Maria! [Exit, calling.] ACT IV. SCENE I. Night. RIBERA'S bedroom. RIBERA discovered in his dressing-gown, seated reading beside a table, with a light upon it. Enter from an open door at the back of the stage, MARIA. She stands irresolute for a moment on the threshold behind her father, watching him, passes her hand rapidly over her brow and eyes, and then knocks. MARIA. May I come in, dear father? RIBERA (putting down his book and looking at her affectionately). Child, you ask? MARIA (advancing). You study late. I came to bid good-night. RIBERA. Poor child, thou must be weary. Thou art pale Still from thy swoon. MARIA (with a forced laugh). I had forgotten it. Nay, I am well again. RIBERA. But I forget it not, Neither forgive myself. Well, it is past, Enough! When the Prince left I sent for thee; Thou wast still sleeping? MARIA (with confusion). Yes, I was outworn. What didst thou wish of me? RIBERA. Merely to tell thee Don John leaves Naples. He expressed regret Most courteously that thou wast suffering. He had fain ordered us his parting thanks For our kind welcome--so he deigned to say. To-morrow he may steal a moment's grace To see us both once more; but this is doubtful, So he entrusted his farewells to me. MARIA. May peace go with him. RIBERA. We are alone-- Are we not, darling? Thanks for the calm content Wherewith thou biddest him farewell, to nestle Once more in mine embrace. Not long, I feel, May these old horny eyes be blest with sight Of thy full-flowering grace, these wrinkled lips Be pressed against thy brow. I am no more What I have been; at times both hand and brain Refuse their task. Myself will follow soon-- The better part of me already dead. So the worm claims us by slow torture, child. Thou'lt bear with me, if as to-day I wrong Thy gentle spirit? MARIA. Father, no more, no more! You break my heart. RIBERA. Mine angel-child, weep not So bitterly. I thought not thus to move thee. Still thou art overwrought. I would have asked At last a promise of thee. I am selfish, But I would sleep less startingly o'nights, And bear a calmer soul by day, were I secure That thou wilt bide with me until the end. [A pause.] To-night I will not press thee. Thou art weary; Thy nerves have scarce regained their tension yet; But from thy deep emotion I can see 'T will cost thee less than I have feared. To-morrow We will talk of this again. MARIA. To-morrow! RIBERA. Now, Good-night. 'T is time thou shouldst be sleeping. MARIA. Father, I cannot leave thee! Every word of thine Gnaws like a burning coal my sore, soft heart. What! thou shalt suffer, and thine own Maria Will leave thee daughterless, uncomforted? What! thou shalt weep, and other eyes than mine Shall see the Spagnoletto's spirit broken? RIBERA. There, there, poor child! Look up, cling not so wildly About my neck. Thou art too finely touched, If thus the faint foreshadow of a grief Can overcome thee. Listen? What was that? MARIA (starts up, shudders violently, and, all at once, masters her emotion). Why, I heard nothing, father. RIBERA. Yes, a sound Of footsteps, and a stifled call. [He goes toward the casement. MARIA tries to detain him.] MARIA. Dear father, Surely 't was naught. Your ears deceive you. The wind is rising, and you heard the leaves Rustling together. RIBERA. Nay, I will look forth. [He opens the casement and looks out in silence. MARIA stands behind him, with her hands clasped in an agony of fear.] RIBERA (calling). Hist, answer! Who goes there? (a pause.) No sound. Thou'rt right, Maria; I see naught; our garden lies Vacant and still, save for the swaying branches Of bush and tree. 'T is a wild, threatening night. A sultry breeze is blowing, and the sky Hangs black above Vesuvius. Yonder cloud Hath lightnings in it. Ah, a blinding bolt Dims the volcano's pillared fire. Enough. [He closes the casement and returns to MARIA.] Hark, how the thunder rolls! My child, you tremble Like the blown leaves without. MARIA. I am oppressed By the same stormy influence. Thou knowest I dread the thunder. RIBERA. Thou, who art safely housed, Why shouldst thou dread it? Try to sleep, my darling; Forget the terror of the tempest; morn Will break again in sunshine. MARIA. Father, say You love me and you trust me once again, Before I bid good-night. RIBERA. If it will calm thee, I love thee and I trust thee. Thou art to me My genius--thou, the breathing image still Of thy saint-mother, whom the angels guard. Even as thou standest now, vested in white, With glowing eyes and pale, unsmiling face, I see her as she stood the day her heart Went forth from home and kin to bless the stranger Who craved her father's alms. MARIA. Thanks, thanks. Good-night. God bless us through these wild, dark hours. RIBERA. Good-night. SCENE II. RIBERA'S garden. Half the sky illuminated by an over-clouded moon, the rest obscured by an approaching storm. Occasional thunder and lightning. On on side of the stage a summer-house open to the audience, on the other side the exterior of the dwelling. DON JOHN discovered waiting near the house. The door opens, and enter MARIA. DON JOHN (springing forward and embracing her). At last! at last! MARIA. Juan, beware! My father's fears, I cannot guess by whom or what, are roused. [She extends her arms gropingly to embrace him.] Oh, let me feel thee near me--I see naught. Follow me; here our voices may be heard. [She hastens towards the summer-house, leaning upon his arm, and sinks upon a seat.] Have not slow ages passed with crowding woes Since we last met! What have I not endured! Oh, Juan, save me! DON JOHN. Dearest child, be calm. Thou art strangely overwrought. Speak not. Await Till this wild fear be past. MARIA. How great you are! Your simple presence stills and comforts me. While you are here, the one thing real to me In all the universe is love. DON JOHN. And yet My love is here, if I be far or nigh. Is this the spirit of a soldier's wife? Nay, fiery courage, iron fortitude, That soul must own that dares to say, "I love." MARIA. And I dare say it. I can bear the worst That envious fate may heap upon my head, If thou art with me, or for hope of thee. DON JOHN. Art sure of that? Thou couldst not part from me, Even for thy father's sake? MARIA. Talk you of parting? For God's sake, what is this? You love no more? DON JOHN. Rather I love so truly that I shrink From asking thee to share a soldier's fate. I tremble to uproot so fine a flower From its dear native earth. I-- MARIA (putting her hand on his lips). Hush, no more! I need no preparation more than this, Your mere request. DON JOHN. There spake my heroine. The King, my father, bids me to repair Unto Palermo. MARIA. Shall we sail to-night? DON JOHN. My Princess! Thou recoilest not from all Thou must endure, ere I can openly Claim thee my wife! MARIA. The pangs of purgatory Were lightly borne with such a heaven in view. I were content with one brief hour a day, Snatched from the toils of war and thy high duties, To gaze on thy dear face--to feel thy hand, Even as now a stay and a caress. DON JOHN. Angel, I have no thanks. May God forget me When I forget this hour! So, thou art firm-- Ready this night to leave thy home, thy kin, Thy father? MARIA (solemnly). I am ready and resolved. Yet judge me not so lightly as to deem I say this with no pang. My love were naught, Could I withdraw it painlessly at once From him round whose colossal strength the tendrils Of mine own baby heart were taught to twine. I speak not now as one who swerves or shrinks, But merely, dear, to show thee what sharp tortures I, nowise blind, but with deliberate soul, Embrace for thee. DON JOHN. How can I doubt the anguish So rude a snapping of all ties must smite Thy tender heart withal? Yet, dwell we not On the brief pain, but on the enduring joys. If Ribera's love be all thou deemest, He will forgive thy secret flight, thy-- MARIA. Secret! May I not bid farewell? May I not tell him Where we are bound? How soon he may have hope To hear from me--to welcome me, thy Princess? I dare not leave him without hope. DON JOHN. My child, Thou art mad! We must be secret as the grave, Else are we both undone. I have given out That I depart in princely state to-morrow. Far from the quay a bark awaiteth us. I know my man. Shrouded by careful night, We will set secret sail for Sicily. Once in Palermo, thou mayst write thy father-- Sue for his pardon--tell him that, ere long, When I have won by cautious policy King Philip's favor, thou shalt be proclaimed Princess of Austria. MARIA (who has hung upon his words with trembling excitement, covers her face with her hands, and bursts into tears). I cannot! no! I cannot! DON JOHN (scornfully). I feared as much. Well, it is better thus. I asked thee not to front the "worst of ills That envious fate could heap upon thy head"-- Only a little patience. 'T was too much; I cannot blame thee. 'T is a loving father. I, a mere stranger, had naught else to hope, Matching my claim with his. MARIA (looks at him and throws herself at his feet). Oh, pardon, pardon! My Lord, my Prince, my husband! I am thine! Lead wheresoe'er thou wilt, I follow thee. Tell me a life's devotion may efface The weakness of a moment! DON JOHN (raising her tenderly and embracing her). Ah, mine own! SCENE III. Morning. The studio. Enter RIBERA. RIBERA. How laughingly the clear sun shines to-day On storm-drenched green, and cool, far-glittering seas! When she comes in to greet me, she will blush For last night's terrors. How she crouched and shuddered At the mere thought of the wild war without! Poor, clinging women's souls, what need is theirs Of our protecting love! Yet even on me The shadow of the storm-cloud seemed to breed. Through my vexed sleep I heard the thunder roll; My dreams were ugly--Well, all that is past; To-day my spirit is renewed. 'T is long Since I have felt so fresh. [He seats himself before his easel and takes up his brush and palette, but holds them idly in his hand.] Strange, she still sleeps! The hour is past when she is wont to come To bless me with the kiss of virgin love. Mayhap 't was fever in her eyes last night Gave them so wild a glance, so bright a lustre. God! if she should be ill! [He rises and calls.] Luca! Enter LUCA. LUCA. My lord? RIBERA. Go ask Fiametta if the mistress sleeps-- If she be ailing--why she has not come This morn to greet me. [Exit LUCA.] RIBERA (begins pacing the stage). What fond fears are these Mastering my spirit? Since her mother died I tremble at the name of pain or ill. How can my rude love tend, my hard hand soothe, The dear child's fragile-- [A confused cry without.] What is that? My God! How hast thou stricken me! [He staggers and falls into a chair. Enter hastily FIAMETTA, weeping, and LUCA with gestures of terror and distress.] FIAMETTA. Master! LUCA. Dear master! [RIBERA rises with a great effort and confronts them.] RIBERA. What is it? Speak! LUCA. Dear master, she is gone. RIBERA. How? Murdered--dead? Oh, cruel God! Away! Follow me not! [Exit RIBERA.] FIAMETTA. Help, all ye saints of heaven. Have pity on him! Oh, what a day is this! LUCA. Quiet, Fiametta. When the master finds The empty, untouched bed, the silent room, His wits will leave him. Hark! was that his cry? Reenter RIBERA calling. Maria! Daughter! Where have they taken thee, My only one, my darling? Oh, the brigands! Naples shall bleed for this. What do ye here, Slaves, fools, who stare upon me? Know ye not I have been robbed? Hence! Ransack every house From cave to roof in Naples. Search all streets. Arrest whomso ye meet. Let no sail stir From out the harbor. Ring the alarum! Quick! This is a general woe. [Exeunt LUCA and FIAMETTA.] The Duke's my friend; He'll further me. The Prince--oh, hideous fear!-- No, no, I will not dream it. Mine enemies Have done this thing; the avengers of that beggar-- Domenichino--they have struck home at last. How was it that I heard no sound, no cry, Throughout the night? The heavens themselves conspired Against me--the hoarse thunder drowned her shrieks! Oh, agony! [He buries his face in his hands. Enter ANNICCA; she throws herself speechless and weeping upon his neck.] Thou knowest it, Annicca! The thief has entered in the night--she's gone. I stand and weep; I stir not hand or foot. Is not the household roused? Do they not seek her? I am helpless, weak; an old man overnight. The brigands' work was easy. I heard naught. But surely, surely, had they murdered her, I had heard that--that would have wakened me From out my grave. ANNICCA. Father, she is not dead. RIBERA (wildly). Where have they found her? What dost thou know? Speak, speak, Ere my heart break! ANNICCA. Alas! they have not found her; But that were easy. Nerve thyself--remember Thou art the Spagnoletto still. Last night Don John fled secretly from Naples. RIBERA. Ah! Give me a draft of water. [He sinks down on his chair.] ANNICCA (calling). Help, Tommaso! Luca! Fiametta! Father, lookup, look up! Gaze not so hollowly. Enter DON TOMMASO and SERVANTS. Quick! water, water! Do ye not see he swoons? [She kneels before her father, chafing and kissing his hands. Exit LUCA, who returns immediately with a silver flagon of water. ANNICCA seizes it and raises it to RIVERA'S lips. He takes it from her hand and drinks.] RIBERA. How your hand trembles! See, mine is firm. You had spilt it o'er my beard Had I not saved it. Thanks. I am strong again. I am very old for such a steady grasp. Why, girl, most men as hoary as thy father Are long since palsied. But my firm touch comes From handling of the brush. I am a painter, The Spagnoletto-- [As he speaks his name he suddenly throws off his apathy, rises to his full height, and casts the flagon to the ground.] Ah, the Spagnoletto, Disgraced, abandoned! My exalted name The laughing-stock of churls; my hearthstone stamped With everlasting shame; my pride, my fame, Mine honor--where are they? With yon spilt water, Fouled in the dust, sucked by the thirsty air. Now, by Christ's blood, my vengeance shall be huge As mine affront. I will demand full justice From Philip. We will treat as King with King. HE shall be stripped of rank and name and wealth, Degraded, lopped from off the fellowship Of Christians like a rotten limb, proclaimed The bastard that he is. She shall go with him, Linked in a common infamy, haled round, A female Judas, who betrayed her father, Her God, her conscience, with a kiss. Her shadow Shall be my curse. Cursed be her sleep by night, Accursed her light by day--her meat and drink! Accursed the fruit of her own womb--the grave Where she will lie! Cursed--Oh, my child, my child! [He throws himself on the floor and buries his head among the cushions of the couch. DON TOMMASO advances and lays his hand on RIBERA'S shoulder.] DON TOMMASO. Mine honored sir-- RIBERA (looks up without rising). Surely you mock me, signor. Honored! Yes, honored with a rifled home, A desecrated heart, a strumpet child. For honors such as these, I have not stinted Sweat, blood, or spirit through long years of toil. I have passed through peril scathless; I was spared When Naples was plague-stricken; I have 'scaped Mine enemies' stiletto--fire and flood; I have survived my love, my youth, my self, My thrice-blest Leonora, whom I pitied, Fool that I was! in her void, silent tomb. The God of mercy hath reserved me truly For a wise purpose. ANNICCA. Father, rise; take courage; We know not yet the end. RIBERA. Why should I rise To front the level eyes of men's contempt? Oh, I am shamed! Cover my head, Annicca; Darken mine eyes, and veil my face. Oh, God, Would that I were a nameless, obscure man, So could I bury with me my disgrace, That now must be immortal. Where thou standest, Annicca, there she stood last night. She kissed me; Round mine old neck she wreathed her soft, young arms. My wrinkled cheeks were wet with her warm tears. She shuddered, and I thought it was the thunder Struck terror through her soul. White-bearded fool! FIAMETTA. I found this scrip upon the chamber-floor, Mayhap it brings some comfort. RIBERA (starts up and snatches the paper she offers him, reads it rapidly, then to ANNICCA wildly). Look, look there-- 'T is writ in blood: "My duty to my lord Forbids my telling you our present port." I would track her down with sleuth-hounds, did I not Abhor to see her face. Ah, press thy hands Against my head--my brain is like to burst-- My throat is choked. Help! help! [He swoons.] SCENE IV. A street. Enter LORENZO and a GENTLEMAN, meeting. They salute, and LORENZO is about to pass on. LORENZO. Good-morning, sir. GENTLEMAN. Hail and farewell so soon, Friend dreamer? I will lay a goodly sum The news that flies like fire from tongue to tongue Hath not yet warmed thine ear. LORENZO. What's that? I lay A sum as fair thy news is some dry tale Of courtly gossip, touching me as nigh As the dissensions of the antipodes. GENTLEMAN. Done for a hundred florins! In the night, 'Midst the wild storm whose roar must have invaded Even thy leaden sleep, Prince John left Naples. We should have had a pageant here to-day, A royal exit, floral arches thrown From house to house in all the streets he passed, Music and guard of honor, homage fitting The son of Philip--but the bird has flown. LORENZO. So! I regret our busy citizens, Who sun themselves day-long upon the quays, Should be deprived of such a festival. Your wager's lost--how am I moved by this? GENTLEMAN. Hark to the end. 'T would move all men whose veins Flow not clear water. He hath carried off The Rose of Naples. LORENZO. What wouldst thou say? Speak out! In God's name, who hath followed him? GENTLEMAN. Ah, thou'rt roused. Thy master hath been robbed--the Spagnoletto-- Maria of the Golden Locks--his daughter. LORENZO. How is this known? 'T is a foul slander forged By desperate malice. What! in the night, you say?-- She whose bright name was clean as gold, whose heart Shone a fixed star of loyal love and duty Beside her father's glory! This coarse lie Denies itself. I will go seek the master, And if this very noon she walk not forth, Led by the Spagnoletto, through the streets, To blind the dazed eyes of her slanderers,-- I am your debtor for a hundred florins. GENTLEMAN. Your faith in womanhood becomes you, sir. (Aside.) A beggar's child the mistress of a Prince; Humph! there be some might think the weight of scandal Lay on the other side. (To Lorenzo.) You need not forth To seek her father. See, he comes, alone. I will not meddle in the broil. Farewell! [Exit Gentleman.] Enter RIBERA, without hat or mantle, slowly, with folded arms and bent head. LORENZO. Oh heart, break not for pity! Shall he thus Unto all Naples blazon his disgrace? This must not be (advancing). Father! RIBERA (starts and looks up sharply). Who calls me father? LORENZO. Why, master, I--you know me not? Lorenzo. RIBERA. Nor do I care to know thee. Thou must be An arrant coward, thus to league with foes Against so poor a wretch as I--to call me By the most curst, despised, unhallowed name God's creatures can own. Away! and let me pass; I injure no man. LORENZO. Look at me, dear master. Your head is bare, your face is ashy pale, The sun is fierce. I am your friend, your pupil; Let me but guide my reverend master home, In token of the grateful memory Wherein I hold his guidance of my mind Up the steep paths of art. [While LORENZO speaks, RIBERA slowly gains consciousness of his situation, raises his hand to his head and shudders violently. LORENZO'S last words seem to awaken him thoroughly.] RIBERA. I crave your pardon If I have answered roughly, Sir Lorenzo. My thoughts were far away--I failed to know you-- I have had trouble, sir. You do remind me, I had forgot my hat; that is a trifle, Yet now I feel the loss. What slaves are we To circumstance! One who is wont to cover For fashion or for warmth his pate, goes forth Bareheaded, and the sun will seem to smite The shrinking spot, the breeze will make him shiver, And yet our hatless beggars heed them not. We are the fools of habit. Enter two gentlemen together as promenading; they cross the stage, looking hard at RIBERA and LORENZO, and exeunt. LORENZO. Pray you, sir Let me conduct you home. Here is no place To hold discourse. In God's name, come with me. RIBERA. What coupled staring fools were they that passed? They seemed to scare thee. Why, boy, face them out. I am the shadow of the Spagnoletto, Else had I brooked no gaze so insolent. Well, I will go with thee. But, hark thee, lad; A word first in thine ear. 'T is a grim secret; Whisper it not in Naples; I but tell thee, Lest thou should fancy I had lost my wits. My daughter hath deserted me--hath fled From Naples with a bastard. Thou hast seen her, Maria-Rosa--thou must remember her; She, whom I painted as Madonna once. She had fair hair and Spanish eyes. When was it? I came forth thinking I might meet with her And find all this a dream--a foolish thought! I am very weary. (Yawning.) I have walked and walked For hours. How far, sir, stand we from the Strada Nardo? I live there, nigh Saint Francis' church. LORENZO. Why, 't is hard by; a stone's throw from this square. So, lean on me--you are not well. This way. Pluck up good heart, sir; we shall soon be there. [Exeunt.] SCENE V. Night. A Room in RIBERA'S House. ANNICCA seated alone, in an attitude of extreme weariness and despondency. ANNICCA. His heavy sleep still lasts. Despite the words Of the physician, I can cast not off That ghastly fear. Albeit he owned no drugs, This deathlike slumber, this deep breathing slow, His livid pallor makes me dread each moment His weary pulse will cease. This is the end, And from the first I knew it. The worst evil My warning tongue had wrought were joy to this. No heavier curse could I invoke on her Than that she see him in her dreams, her thoughts, As he is now. I could no longer bear it; I have fled hither from his couch to breathe-- To quicken my spent courage for the end. I cannot pray--my heart is full of curses. He sleeps; he rests. What better could I wish For his rent heart, his stunned, unbalanced brain, Than sleep to be eternally prolonged? Enter FIAMETTA. ANNICCA looks up anxiously, half rising. ANNICCA. How now? What news? FIAMETTA. The master is awake And calls for you, signora. ANNICCA. Heaven be praised! [Exit hastily.] FIAMETTA. Would I had followed my young mistress! Here I creep about like a scared, guilty thing, And fancy at each moment they will guess 'T was I who led her to the hut. I will confess, If any sin there be, to Father Clement, And buy indulgence with her golden chain. 'T would burn my throat, the master's rolling eyes Would haunt me ever, if I went to wear it. So, all will yet be well. [Exit.] SCENE VI. RIBERA'S Room. RIBERA discovered sitting on the couch. He looks old and haggard, but has regained his natural bearing and expression. Enter ANNICCA. She hastens towards him, and kneels beside the couch, kissing him affectionately. ANNICCA. Father, you called me? RIBERA. Aye, to bid good-night. Why do you kiss me? To betray to-morrow? ANNICCA. Dear father, you are better; you have slept. Are you not rested? RIBERA. Child, I was not weary. There was some cloud pressed here (pointing to his forehead) but that is past, I have no pain nor any sense of ill. Now, while my brain is clear, I have a word To speak. I think not I have been to thee, Nor to that other one, an unkind father. I do not now remember any act, Or any word of mine, could cause thee grief. But I am old--perchance my memory Deceives in this? Speak! Am I right, Annicca? ANNICCA (weeping). Oh, father, father, why will you torture me? You were too good, too good. RIBERA. Why, so I thought. Since it appears the guerdon of such goodness Is treachery, abandonment, disgrace, I here renounce my fatherhood. No child Will I acknowledge mine. Thou art a wife; Thy duty is thy husband's. When Antonio Returns from Seville, tell him that his father Is long since dead. Henceforward I will own No kin, no home, no tie. I will away, To-morrow morn, and live an anchorite. One thing ye cannot rob me of--my work. My name shall still outsoar these low, mirk vapors-- Not the Ribera, stained with sin and shame, As she hath left it, but the Spagnoletto. My glory is mine own. I have done with it, But I bequeath it to my country. Now I will make friends with beasts--they'll prove less savage Than she that was my daughter. I have spoken For the last time that word. Thee I curse not; Thou hast not set thy heel upon my heart; But yet I will not bless thee. Go. Good-night. ANNICCA (embracing him). What! will you spurn me thus? Nay, I will bide, And be to thee all that she should have been, Soothe thy declining years, and heal the wound Of this sharp sorrow. Thou shalt bless me still, Father-- [RIBERA has yielded for a moment to her embrace; but, suddenly rising, he pushes her roughly from him.] RIBERA. Away! I know thee. Thou art one With her who duped me with like words last night. Then I believed; but now my sense is closed, My heart is dead as stone. I cast thee forth. By heaven, I own thee not! Thou dost forget I am the Spagnoletto. Away, I say, Or ere I strike thee. [He threatens her.] ANNICCA. Woe is me! Help, help! [Exit.] RIBERA. So, the last link is snapt. Had I not steeled My heart, I fain had kissed her farewell. 'T is better so. I leave my work unfinished. Could I arise each day to face this spectre, Or sleep with it at night?--to yearn for her Even while I curse her? No! The dead remain Sacred and sweet in our remembrance still; They seem not to have left us; they abide And linger nigh us in the viewless air. The fallen, the guilty, must be rooted out From heart and thought and memory. With them No hope of blest reunion; they must be As though they had not been; their spoken name Cuts like a knife. When I essay to think Of what hath passed to-day, my sick brain reels. The letter I remember, but all since Floats in a mist of horror, and I grasp No actual form. Did I not wander forth? A mob surrounded me. All Naples knew My downfall, and the street was paved with eyes That stared into my soul. Then friendly hands Guided me hither. When I woke, I felt As though a stone had rolled from off my brain. But still this nightmare bides the truth. I know They watch me, they suspect me. I will wait Till the whole household sleep, and then steal forth, Nor unavenged return. ACT V. SCENE I. A Room in DON TOMMASO'S House. ANNICCA discovered, attired in mourning. Enter DON TOMMASO. DON TOMMASO. If he still live, now shall we hear of him. The news I learn will lure him from his covert, Where'er it lie, to pardon or avenge. ANNICCA (eagerly). What news? What cheer, Tommaso? DON TOMMASO. Meagre cheer, But tidings that break through our slow suspense, Like the first thunder-clap in sultry air. Don John sets sail from Sicily, to wed A Princess chosen by the King. Maria-- ANNICCA. Talk not of her--I know her not; her name Will sear thy tongue. Think'st thou, in truth this news Will draw my father from his hiding-place? No--teach me not to hope. Within my heart A sure voice tells me he is dead. Not his The spirit to drag out a shameful life, To shrink from honest eyes, to sink his brow Unto the dust, here where he wore his crown. Thou knowest him. Have I not cause to mourn Uncomforted, that he, the first of fathers, Self-murdered--nay, child-murdered--Oh, Tommaso, I would fare barefoot to the ends of the earth To look again upon his living face, See in his eyes the light of love restored-- Not blasting me with lightnings as before-- To kneel to him, to solace him, to win For mine own head, yoked in my sister's curse The blessing he refused me. DON TOMMASO. Well, take comfort; This grace may yet be thine. SCENE II. Palermo. A Nunnery. Enter ABBESS, followed by a Lay-Sister. ABBESS. Is the poor creature roused? LAY-SISTER. Nay, she still sleeps. 'T would break your pious heart to see her, mother. She begged our meanest cell, though 't is past doubt She has been bred to delicate luxury. I deemed her spent, had not the soft breast heaved As gently as a babe's and even in dreams Two crystal drops oozed from her swollen lids, And trickled down her cheeks. Her grief sleeps not, Although the fragile body craves its rest. ABBESS. Poor child! I fear she hath sore need of prayer. Hath she yet spoken? LAY-SISTER. Only such scant words Of thanks or answer as our proffered service Or questionings demand. When we are silent, Even if she wake, she seemeth unaware Of any presence. She will sit and wail, Rocking upon the ground, with dull, wide eyes, Wherefrom the streaming tears unceasing course; The only sound that then escapes her lips Is, "Father, Father!" in such piteous strain As though her rent heart bled to utter it. ABBESS. Still she abides then by her first request To take the black veil and its vows to-morrow? LAY-SISTER. Yea, to that purpose desperately she clings. This evening, if she rouse, she makes confession. Even now a holy friar waits without, Fra Bruno, of the order of Carthusians, Beyond Palermo. ABBESS. I will speak with him, Ere he confess her, since we know him not. Follow me, child, and see if she have waked. [Exeunt.] SCENE III. A Cell in the Nunnery. MARIA discovered asleep on a straw pallet. She starts suddenly from her sleep with a little cry, half rises and remains seated on her pallet. MARIA. Oh, that wild dream! My weary bones still ache With the fierce pain; they wrenched me limb from limb. Thou hadst full cause, my father. But thou, Juan, What was my sin to thee, save too much love? Oh, would to God my back were crooked with age, My smooth cheek seamed with wrinkles, my bright hair Hoary with years, and my quick blood impeded By sluggish torpor, so were I near the end Of woes that seem eternal! I am strong-- Death will not rescue me. Within my veins I feel the vigorous pulses of young life, Refusing my release. My heart at times Rebels against the habit of despair, And, ere I am aware, has wandered back, Among forbidden paths. What prayer, what penance, Will shrive me clean before the sight of heaven? My hands are black with parricide. Why else Should his dead face arise three nights before me, Bleached, ghastly, dripping as of one that's drowned, To freeze my heart with horror? Christ, have mercy! [She covers her face with her hands in an agony of despair.] Enter a MONK. THE MONK. May peace be in this place! [MARIA shudders violently at the sound of his voice; looks up and sees the MONK with bent head, and hands partially extended, as one who invokes a blessing. She rises, falls at his feet, and takes the hem of his skirt between her hands, pressing it to he lips.] MARIA. Welcome, thrice welcome! Bid me not rise, nor bless me with pure hands. Ask not to see my face. Here let me lie, Kissing the dust--a cast-away, a trait'ress, A murderess, a parricide! MONK. Accursed With all Hell's curses is the crime thou nam'st! What devil moved thee? Who and whence art thou, That wear'st the form of woman, though thou lack'st The heart of the she-wolf? Who was thy parent, What fiend of torture, that thine impious hands Should quench the living source of thine own life? MARIA. Spare me! oh, spare me! Nay, my hands are clean. He was the first, best, noblest among men. I was his light, his soul, his breath of life. These I withdrew from him, and made his days A darkness. Yet, perchance he is not dead, And blood and tears may wash away my guilt. Oh, tell me there is hope, though it gleam far-- One solitary ray, one steadfast spark, Beyond a million years of purgatory! My burning soul thirsts for the dewy balm Of comfortable grace. One word, one word, Or ere I perish of despair! MONK. What word? The one wherewith thou bad'st thy father hope? What though he be not dead? Is breathing life? Hast thou not murdered him in spirit? dealt The death-blow to his heart? Cheat not thy soul With empty dreams--thy God hath judged ye guilty! MARIA. Have pity, father! Let me tell thee all. Thou, cloistered, holy and austere, know'st not My glittering temptations. My betrayer Was of an angel's aspect. His were all gifts, All grace, all seeming virtue. I was plunged, Deaf, dumb, and blind, and hand-bound in the deep. If a poor drowning creature craved thine aid, Thou wouldst not spurn it. Such a one am I, And all the waves roll over me. Wrest me from my doom! Say not that I am lost! MONK. I can but say What the just Spirit prompts. Myself am naught To pardon or condemn. The sin is sinned; The fruit forbid is tasted, yea, and pressed Of its last honeyed juices. Wilt thou now Escape the after-bitterness with prayers, Scourgings, and wringings of the hands? Shall these Undo what has been done?--make whole the heart Thy crime hath snapt in twain?--restore the wits Thy sin hath scattered? No! Thy punishment Is huge as thine offence. Death shall not help, Neither shall pious life wash out the stain. Living thou'rt doomed, and dead, thou shalt be lost, Beyond salvation. MARIA (springing to her feet). Impious priest, thou liest! God will have mercy--as my father would, Could he but see me in mine agony! [The MONK throws back his cowl and discovers himself as the SPAGNOLETTO. MARIA utters a piercing cry and throws herself speechless at his feet.] RIBERA. Thou know'st me not. I am not what I was. My outward shape remains unchanged; these eyes, Now gloating on thine anguish, are the same That wept to see a shadow cross thy brow; These ears, that drink the music of thy groans, Shrank from thy lightest sigh of melancholy. Thou think'st to find the father in me still? Thy parricidal hands have murdered him-- Thou shalt not find a man. I am the spirit Of blind revenge--a brute, unswerving force. What deemest thou hath bound me unto life? Ambition, pleasure, or the sense of fear? What, but the sure hope of this fierce, glad hour, That I might track thee down to this--might see Thy tortured body writhe beneath my feet, And blast thy stricken spirit with my curse? MARIA (in a crushed voice). Have mercy! mercy! RIBERA. Yes, I will have mercy-- The mercy of the tiger or the wolf, Athirst for blood. MARIA (terror-struck, rises upon her knees in an attitude of supplication. RIBERA averts his face). Oh, father, kill me not! Turn not away--I am not changed for thee! In God's name, look at me--thy child, thine own! Spare me, oh, spare me, till I win of Heaven Some sign of promise! I am lost forever If I die now. RIBERA (looks at her in silence, then pushing her from him laughs bitterly). Nay, have no fear of me. I would not do thee that much grace to ease thee Of the gross burden of the flesh. Behold, Thou shalt be cursed with weary length of days; And when thou seek'st to purge thy guilty heart, Thou shalt find there a sin no prayer may shrive-- The murder of thy father. To all dreams That haunt thee of past anguish, shall be added The vision of this horror! [He draws from his girdle a dagger and stabs himself to the heart; he falls and dies, and MARIA flings herself, swooning upon his body.] 
33112	----	(This file was produced from images generously made available by The Kentuckiana Digital Library) [Illustration: MADISON CAWEIN] Under the Stars and Stripes. High on the world did our fathers of old, Under the stars and stripes, Blazon the name that we now must uphold, Under the stars and stripes. Vast in the past they have builded an arch Over which Freedom has lighted her torch. Follow it! Follow it! Come, let us march Under the stars and stripes! We in whose bodies the blood of them runs, Under the stars and stripes, We will acquit us as sons of their sons, Under the stars and stripes. Ever for justice, our heel upon wrong, We in the light of our vengeance thrice strong! Rally together! Come tramping along Under the stars and stripes! Out of our strength and a nation's great need, Under the stars and stripes, Heroes again as of old we shall breed, Under the stars and stripes. Broad to the winds be our banner unfurled! Straight in Spain's face let defiance be hurled! God on our side, we will battle the world Under the stars and stripes! MADISON CAWEIN. From "_Poems of American Patriotism_," selected by _R. L. Paget_. * * * * * SHAPES and SHADOWS POEMS by _Madison Cawein_ NEW YORK: _R. H. Russell_ MDCCCXCVIII _Copyright, 1898, by R. H. Russell_ * * * * * To HARRISON S. MORRIS * * * * * A Table of Contents _The Evanescent Beautiful_ 1 _August_ 2 _The Higher Brotherhood_ 4 _Gramarye_ 5 _Dreams_ 7 _The Old House_ 8 _The Rock_ 10 _Rain_ 12 _Standing-Stone Creek_ 13 _The Moonmen_ 15 _The Old Man Dreams_ 19 _Since Then_ 20 _Comrades_ 21 _Waiting_ 23 _Contrasts_ 24 _In June_ 25 _After long Grief and Pain_ 26 _Can I forget?_ 27 _The House of Fear_ 28 _At Dawn_ 29 _Storm_ 30 _Memories_ 31 _Which_ 32 _Sunset in Autumn_ 34 _The Legend of the Stone_ 36 _Time and Death and Love_ 40 _Passion_ 41 _When the Wine-Cup at the Lip_ 42 _Art_ 43 _A Song for Old Age_ 45 _Tristram and Isolt_ 46 _The Better Lot_ 47 _Dusk in the Woods_ 48 _At the Ferry_ 50 _Her Violin_ 52 _Her Vesper Song_ 54 _At Parting_ 55 _Carissima Mea_ 56 _Margery_ 59 _Constance_ 61 _Gertrude_ 63 _Lydia_ 64 _A Southern Girl_ 65 _A Daughter of the States_ 66 _An Autumn Night_ 67 _Lines_ 68 _The Blind God_ 69 _A Valentine_ 70 _A Catch_ 71 _The New Year_ 73 _Then and Now_ 75 _Epilogue_ 76 * * * * * The Dedication _Ah, not for us the Heavens that hold_ GOD'S _message of Promethean fire! The Flame that fell on bards of old To hallow and inspire._ _Yet let the Soul dream on and dare No less_ SONG'S _height that these possess: We can but fail; and may prepare The way to some success._ * * * * * Shapes & Shadows _By Madison Cawein_ THE EVANESCENT BEAUTIFUL. Day after Day, young with eternal beauty, Pays flowery duty to the month and clime; Night after night erects a vasty portal Of stars immortal for the march of Time. But where are now the Glory and the Rapture, That once did capture me in cloud and stream? Where now the Joy that was both speech and silence? Where the beguilance that was fact and dream? I know that Earth and Heaven are as golden As they of olden made me feel and see; Not in themselves is lacking aught of power Through star and flower--something's lost in me. _Return! Return!_ I cry, _O Visions vanished, O Voices banished, to my Soul again!_-- The near Earth blossoms and the far Skies glisten, I look and listen, but, alas! in vain. _August._ I Clad on with glowing beauty and the peace, Benign, of calm maturity, she stands Among her meadows and her orchard-lands, And on her mellowing gardens and her trees, Out of the ripe abundance of her hands, Bestows increase And fruitfulness, as, wrapped in sunny ease, Blue-eyed and blonde she goes, Upon her bosom _Summer's_ richest rose. II And he who follows where her footsteps lead, By hill and rock, by forest-side and stream, Shall glimpse the glory of her visible dream, In flower and fruit, in rounded nut and seed: She in whose path the very shadows gleam; Whose humblest weed Seems lovelier than _June's_ loveliest flower, indeed, And sweeter to the smell Than _April's_ self within a rainy dell. III Hers is a sumptuous simplicity Within the fair Republic of her flowers, Where you may see her standing hours on hours, Breast-deep in gold, soft-holding up a bee To her hushed ear; or sitting under bowers Of greenery, A butterfly a-tilt upon her knee; Or, lounging on her hip, Dancing a cricket on her finger-tip. IV Aye, let me breathe hot scents that tell of you: The hoary catnip and the meadow-mint, On which the honour of your touch doth print Itself as odour. Let me drink the hue Of ironweed and mist-flow'r here that hint, With purple and blue, The rapture that your presence doth imbue Their inmost essence with, Immortal though as transient as a myth. V Yea, let me feed on sounds that still assure Me where you hide: the brooks', whose happy din Tells where, the deep retired woods within, Disrobed, you bathe; the birds', whose drowsy lure Tells where you slumber, your warm-nestling chin Soft on the pure Pink cushion of your palm ... What better cure For care and memory's ache Than to behold you so and watch you wake! THE HIGHER BROTHERHOOD. To come in touch with mysteries Of beauty idealizing Earth, Go seek the hills, grown old with trees, The old hills wise with death and birth. There you may hear the heart that beats In streams, where music has its source; And in wild rocks of green retreats Behold the silent soul of force. Above the love that emanates From human passion, and reflects The flesh, must be the love that waits On Nature, whose high call elects None to her secrets save the few Who hold that facts are far less real Than dreams, with which all facts indue Themselves approaching the Ideal. GRAMARYE. There are some things that entertain me more Than men or books; and to my knowledge seem A key of Poetry, made of magic lore Of childhood, opening many a fabled door Of superstition, mystery, and dream Enchantment locked of yore. For, when through dusking woods my pathway lies, Often I feel old spells, as o'er me flits The bat, like some black thought that, troubled, flies Round some dark purpose; or before me cries The owl that, like an evil conscience, sits A shadowy voice and eyes. Then, when down blue canals of cloudy snow The white moon oars her boat, and woods vibrate With crickets, lo, I hear the hautboys blow Of Elf-land; and when green the fireflies glow, See where the goblins hold a Fairy Fête With lanthorn row on row. Strange growths, that ooze from long-dead logs and spread A creamy fungus, where the snail, uncoiled, And fat slug feed at morn, are Pixy bread Made of the yeasted dew; the lichens red, Besides these grown, are meat the Brownies broiled Above a glow-worm bed. The smears of silver on the webs that line The tree's crook'd roots, or stretch, white-wove, within The hollow stump, are stains of Faëry wine Spilled on the cloth where Elf-land sat to dine, When night beheld them drinking, chin to chin, O' the moon's fermented shine. What but their chairs the mushrooms on the lawn, Or toadstools hidden under flower and fern, Tagged with the dotting dew!--With knees updrawn Far as his eyes, have I not come upon PUCK seated there? but scarcely 'round could turn Ere, presto! he was gone. And so though Science from the woods hath tracked The Elfin; and with prosy lights of day Unhallowed all his haunts; and, dulling, blacked Our eyesight, still hath Beauty never lacked For seers yet; who, in some wizard way, Prove Fancy real as Fact. DREAMS. My thoughts have borne me far away To Beauties of an older day, Where, crowned with roses, stands the DAWN, Striking her seven-stringed barbiton Of flame, whose chords give being to The seven colours, hue for hue; The music of the colour-dream She builds the day from, beam by beam. My thoughts have borne me far away To Myths of a diviner day, Where, sitting on the mountain, NOON Sings to the pines a sun-soaked tune Of rest and shade and clouds and skies, Wherein her calm dreams idealize Light as a presence, heavenly fair, Sleeping with all her beauty bare. My thoughts have borne me far away To Visions of a wiser day, Where, stealing through the wilderness, NIGHT walks, a sad-eyed votaress, And prays with mystic words she hears Behind the thunder of the spheres, The starry utterance that's hers, With which she fills the Universe. THE OLD HOUSE. Quaint and forgotten, by an unused road, An old house stands: around its doors the dense Blue iron-weeds grow high; The chipmunks make a highway of its fence; And on its sunken flagstones slug and toad Silent as lichens lie. The timid snake upon its hearth's cool sand Sleeps undisturbed; the squirrel haunts its roof; And in the clapboard sides Of closets, dim with many a spider woof, Like the uncertain tapping of a hand, The beetle-borer hides. Above its lintel, under mossy eaves, The mud-wasps build their cells; and in the floor Of its neglected porch The black bees nest. Through each deserted door, Vague as a phantom's footsteps, steal the leaves, And dropped cones of the larch. But come with me when sunset's magic old Transforms the ruin of that ancient house; When windows, one by one,-- Like age's eyes, that youth's love-dreams arouse,-- Grow lairs of fire; and glad mouths of gold Its wide doors, in the sun. Or let us wait until each rain-stained room Is carpeted with moonlight, pattened oft With the deep boughs o'erhead; And through the house the wind goes rustling soft, As might the ghost--a whisper of perfume-- Of some sweet girl long dead. THE ROCK. Here, at its base, in dingled deeps Of spice-bush, where the ivy creeps, The cold spring scoops its hollow; And there three mossy stepping-stones Make ripple murmurs; undertones Of foam that blend and follow With voices of the wood that drones. The quail pipes here when noons are hot; And here, in coolness sunlight-shot Beneath a roof of briers, The red-fox skulks at close of day; And here at night, the shadows gray Stand like FRANCISCAN friars, With moonbeam beads whereon they pray. Here yawns the ground-hog's dark-dug hole; And there the tunnel of the mole Heaves under weed and flower; A sandy pit-fall here and there The ant-lion digs and lies a-lair; And here, for sun and shower, The spider weaves a silvery snare. The poison-oak's rank tendrils twine The rock's south side; the trumpet-vine, With crimson bugles sprinkled, Makes green its eastern side; the west Is rough with lichens; and, gray-pressed Into an angle wrinkled, The hornets hang an oblong nest. The north is hid from sun and star, And here,--like an Inquisitor Of Faëry Inquisition, That roots out Elf-land heresy,-- Deep in the rock, with mystery Cowled for his grave commission, The Owl sits magisterially. RAIN. Around, the stillness deepened; then the grain Went wild with wind; and every briery lane Was swept with dust; and then, tempestuous black, Hillward the tempest heaved a monster back, That on the thunder leaned as on a cane; And on huge shoulders bore a cloudy pack, That gullied gold from many a lightning-crack: One great drop splashed and wrinkled down the pane, And then field, hill, and wood were lost in rain. At last, through clouds,--as from a cavern hewn Into night's heart,--the sun burst, angry roon; And every cedar, with its weight of wet, Against the sunset's fiery splendour set, Frightened to beauty, seemed with rubies strewn; Then in drenched gardens, like sweet phantoms met, Dim odours rose of pink and mignonette; And in the East a confidence, that soon Grew to the calm assurance of the Moon. STANDING-STONE CREEK. A weed-grown slope, whereon the rain Has washed the brown rocks bare, Leads tangled from a lonely lane Down to a creek's broad stair Of stone, that, through the solitude, Winds onward to a quiet wood. An intermittent roof of shade The beech above it throws; Along its steps a balustrade Of beauty builds the rose; In which, a stately lamp of green At intervals the cedar's seen. The water, carpeting each ledge Of rock that runs across, Glints 'twixt a flow'r-embroidered edge Of ferns and grass and moss; And in its deeps the wood and sky Seem patterns of the softest dye. Long corridors of pleasant dusk Within the house of leaves It reaches; where, on looms of musk, The ceaseless locust weaves A web of summer; and perfume Trails a sweet gown from room to room. Green windows of the boughs, that swing, It passes, where the notes Of birds are glad thoughts entering, And butterflies are motes; And now a vista where the day Opens a door of wind and ray. It is a stairway for all sounds That haunt the woodland sides; On which, boy-like, the southwind bounds, Girl-like, the sunbeam glides; And, like fond parents, following these, The oldtime dreams of rest and peace. THE MOONMEN. I stood in the forest on HURON HILL When the night was old and the world was still. The Wind was a wizard who muttering strode In a raven cloak on a haunted road. The Sound of Water, a witch who crooned Her spells to the rocks the rain had runed. And the Gleam of the Dew on the fern's green tip Was a sylvan passing with robe a-drip. The Light of the Stars was a glimmering maid Who stole, an elfin, from glade to glade. The Scent of the Woods in the delicate air, A wildflower shape with chilly hair. And Silence, a spirit who sat alone With a lifted finger and eyes of stone. And it seemed to me these six were met To greet a greater who came not yet. And the speech they spoke, that I listened to, Was the archetype of the speech I knew. For the Wind clasped hands with the Water's rush, And I heard them whisper, _Hush, oh, hush!_ The Light of the Stars and the Dew's cool gleam Touched lips and murmured, _Dream, oh dream!_ The Scent of the Woods and the Silence deep Sighed, bosom to bosom, _Sleep, oh, sleep!_ And so for a moment the six were dumb, Then exulted together, _They come, they come!_ And I stood expectant and seemed to hear A visible music drawing near. And the first who came was the Captain Moon Bearing a shield in GOD'S House hewn. Then an Army of glamour, a glittering Host, Beleaguered the night from coast to coast. And the world was filled with spheric fire From the palpitant chords of many a lyre, As out of the East the MOONMEN came Smiting their harps of silver and flame. More beauty and grace did their forms express Than the QUEEN OF LOVE'S white nakedness. More chastity too their faces held Than the snowy breasts of DIANA swelled. Translucent-limbed, I saw the beat In their hearts of pearl of the golden heat. And the hair they tossed was a crystal light, And the eyes beneath it were burning white. Their hands that lifted, their feet that fell, Made the darkness blossom to asphodel. And the heavens, the hills, and the streams they trod Shone pale with th' communicated God. A placid frenzy, a waking trance, A soft oracular radiance, Wrapped forms that moved as melodies move, Laurelled with god-head and halo'd with love. So there in the forest on HURON HILL The MOONMEN camped when the world was still.... What wonder that they who have looked on these Are lost to the earth's realities! That they sit aside with a far-off look Dreaming the dreams that are writ in no book! That they walk alone till the day they die, Even as I, yea, even as I! THE OLD MAN DREAMS. The blackened walnut in its spicy hull Rots where it fell; And, in the orchard, where the trees stand full, The pear's ripe bell Drops; and the log-house in the bramble lane, From whose low door Stretch yellowing acres of the corn and cane, He sees once more. The cat-bird sings upon its porch of pine; And o'er its gate, All slender-podded, twists the trumpet-vine, A leafy weight; And in the woodland, by the spring, mayhap, With eyes of joy Again he bends to set a rabbit-trap, A brown-faced boy. Then, whistling, through the underbrush he goes, Out of the wood, Where, with young cheeks, red as an _Autumn_ rose, Beneath her hood, His sweetheart waits, her school-books on her arm; And now it seems Beside his chair he sees his wife's fair form-- The old man dreams. SINCE THEN. I found myself among the trees What time the reapers ceased to reap; And in the berry blooms the bees Huddled wee heads and went to sleep, Rocked by the silence and the breeze. I saw the red fox leave his lair, A shaggy shadow, on the knoll; And, tunnelling his thoroughfare Beneath the loam, I watched the mole-- Stealth's own self could not take more care. I heard the death-moth tick and stir, Slow-honeycombing through the bark; I heard the crickets' drowsy chirr, And one lone beetle burr the dark-- The sleeping woodland seemed to purr. And then the moon rose; and a white Low bough of blossoms--grown almost Where, ere you died, 'twas our delight To tryst,--dear heart!--I thought your ghost.... The wood is haunted since that night. COMRADES. Down through the woods, along the way That fords the stream; by rock and tree, Where in the bramble-bell the bee Swings; and through twilights green and gray The red-bird flashes suddenly, My thoughts went wandering to-day. I found the fields where, row on row, The blackberries hang black with fruit; Where, nesting at the elder's root, The partridge whistles soft and low; The fields, that billow to the foot Of those old hills we used to know. There lay the pond, still willow-bound, On whose bright surface, when the hot Noon burnt above, we chased the knot Of water-spiders; while around Our heads, like bits of rainbow, shot The dragonflies without a sound. The pond, above which evening bent To gaze upon her rosy face; Wherein the twinkling night would place A vague, inverted firmament, In which the green frogs tuned their bass, And firefly sparkles came and went. The oldtime woods we often ranged, When we were playmates, you and I; The oldtime fields, with boyhood's sky Still blue above them!--Naught was changed! Nothing!--Alas, then tell me why Should we be? whom long years estranged. WAITING. Come to the hills, the woods are green-- _The heart is high when_ LOVE _is sweet_-- There is a brook that flows between Two mossy trees where we can meet, Where we can meet and speak unseen. I hear you laughing in the lane-- _The heart is high when_ LOVE _is sweet_-- The clover smells of sun and rain And spreads a carpet for our feet, Where we can sit and dream again. Come to the woods, the dusk is here-- _The heart is high when_ LOVE _is sweet_-- A bird upon the branches near Sets music to our hearts' glad beat, Our hearts that beat with something dear. I hear your step; the lane is passed;-- _The heart is high when_ LOVE _is sweet_-- The little stars come bright and fast, Like happy eyes to see us greet, To see us greet and kiss at last. CONTRASTS. No eve of summer ever can attain The gladness of that eve of late _July_, When 'mid the roses, filled with musk and rain, Against the wondrous topaz of the sky, I met you, leaning on the pasture bars,-- While heaven and earth grew conscious of the stars. No night of blackest winter can repeat The bitterness of that _December_ night, When at your gate, gray-glittering with sleet, Within the glimmering square of window-light, We parted,--long you clung unto my arm,-- While heaven and earth surrendered to the storm. IN _June_. Deep in the West a berry-coloured bar Of sunset gleams; against which one tall fir Is outlined dark; above which--courier Of dew and dreams--burns dusk's appointed star. And flash on flash, as when the elves wage war In Goblinland, the fireflies bombard The stillness; and, like spirits, o'er the sward The glimmering winds bring fragrance from afar. And now withdrawn into the hill-wood belts A whippoorwill; while, with attendant states Of purple and silver, slow the great moon melts Into the night--to show me where _she_ waits,-- Like some slim moonbeam,--by the old beech-tree, Who keeps her lips, fresh as a flower, for me. AFTER LONG GRIEF AND PAIN. There is a place hung o'er with summer boughs And drowsy skies wherein the gray hawk sleeps; Where waters flow, within whose lazy deeps, Like silvery prisms that the winds arouse, The minnows twinkle; where the bells of cows Tinkle the stillness, and the bob-white keeps Calling from meadows where the reaper reaps, And children's laughter haunts an old-time house; A place where life wears ever an honest smell Of hay and honey, sun and elder-bloom-- Like some dear, modest girl--within her hair: Where, with our love for comrade, we may dwell Far from the city's strife whose cares consume-- Oh, take my hand and let me lead you there. _Can I Forget?_ Can I forget how LOVE once led the ways Of our two lives together, joining them; How every hour was his anadem, And every day a tablet in his praise! Can I forget how, in his garden place, Among the purple roses, stem to stem, We heard the rumour of his robe's bright hem, And saw the aureate radiance of his face!-- Though I behold my soul's high dreams down-hurled, And FALSEHOOD sit where Truth once towered white, And in LOVE'S place, usurping lust and shame.... Though flowers be dead within the winter world, Are flowers not there? and starless though the night, Are stars not there, eternal and the same? THE HOUSE OF FEAR. Vast are its halls, as vast the halls and lone Where DEATH stalks listening to the wind and rain; And dark that house, where I shall meet again My long-dead Sin in some dread way unknown; For I have dreamed of stairs of haunted stone, And spectre footsteps I have fled in vain; And windows glaring with a blood-red stain, And horrible eyes, that burn me to the bone, Within a face that looks as that black night It looked when deep I dug for it a grave,-- The dagger wound above the brow, the thin Blood trickling down slantwise the ghastly white;-- And I have dreamed not even GOD can save Me and my soul from that risen Sin. AT DAWN. Far off I heard dark waters rush; The sky was cold; the dawn broke green; And wrapped in twilight and strange hush The gray wind moaned between. A voice rang through the House of Sleep, And through its halls there went a tread; Mysterious raiment seemed to sweep Around the pallid dead. And then I knew that I had died, I, who had suffered so and sinned-- And 't was myself I stood beside In the wild dawn and wind. STORM. I looked into the night and saw GOD writing with tumultuous flame Upon the thunder's front of awe,-- As on sonorous brass,--the Law, Terrific, of HIS judgement name. Weary of all life's best and worst, With hands of hate, I--who had pled, I, who had prayed for death at first And had not died--now stood and cursed GOD, yet he would not strike me dead. MEMORIES. Here where LOVE lies perishèd, Look not in upon the dead; Lest the shadowy curtains, shaken In my Heart's dark chamber, waken Ghosts, beneath whose garb of sorrow Whilom gladness bows his head: When you come at morn to-morrow, Look not in upon the dead, Here where LOVE lies perishèd. Here where LOVE lies cold interred, Let no syllable be heard; Lest the hollow echoes, housing In my Soul's deep tomb, arousing Wake a voice of woe, once laughter Claimed and clothed in joy's own word: When you come at dusk or after, Let no syllable be heard, Here where LOVE lies cold interred. WHICH? The wind was on the forest, And silence on the wold; And darkness on the waters, And heaven was starry cold; When Sleep, with mystic magic, Bade me this thing behold: This side, an iron woodland; That side, an iron waste; And heaven, a tower of iron, Wherein the wan moon paced, Still as a phantom woman, Ice-eyed and icy-faced. And through the haunted tower Of silence and of night, My Soul and I went only, My Soul, whose face was white, Whose one hand signed me listen, One bore a taper-light. For, lo! a voice behind me Kept sighing in my ear The dreams my flesh accepted, My mind refused to hear-- Of one I loved and loved not, Whose spirit now spake near. And, lo! a voice before me Kept calling constantly The hopes my mind accepted, My flesh refused to see-- Of one I loved and loved not, Whose spirit spake to me. This way the one would bid me; This way the other saith:-- Sweet is the voice behind me Of LIFE that followeth; And sweet the voice before me Of LIFE whose name is DEATH. SUNSET IN _Autumn_. Blood-coloured oaks, that stand against a sky of gold and brass; Gaunt slopes, on which the bleak leaves glow of brier and sassafras, And broom-sedge strips of smoky pink and pearl-gray clumps of grass, In which, beneath the ragged sky, the rain-pools gleam like glass. From West to East, from wood to wood, along the forest-side, The winds,--the sowers of the LORD,--with thunderous footsteps stride; Their stormy hands rain acorns down; and mad leaves, wildly dyed, Like tatters of their rushing cloaks, stream round them far and wide. The frail leaf-cricket in the weeds rings a faint fairy bell; And like a torch of phantom ray the milkweed's windy shell Glimmers; while wrapped in withered dreams, the wet autumnal smell Of loam and leaf, like some sad ghost, steals over field and dell. The oaks against a copper sky--o'er which, like some black lake Of DIS, dark clouds, like surges fringed with sullen fire, break-- Loom sombre as Doom's citadel above the vales, that make A pathway to a land of mist the moon's pale feet shall take. Now, dyed with burning carbuncle, a Limbo-litten pane, Within its wall of storm, the West opens to hill and plain, On which the wild geese ink themselves, a far triangled train; And then the shuttering clouds close down--and night is here again. THE LEGEND OF THE STONE. The year was dying, and the day Was almost dead; The West, beneath a sombre gray, Was sombre red. The gravestones in the ghostly light, 'Mid trees half bare, Seemed phantoms, clothed in glimmering white, That haunted there. I stood beside the grave of one, Who, here in life, Had wronged my home; who had undone My child and wife. I stood beside his grave until The moon came up-- As if the dark, unhallowed hill Lifted a cup. No stone was there to mark his grave, No flower to grace-- 'T was meet that weeds alone should wave In such a place. I stood beside his grave until The stars swam high, And all the night was iron still From sky to sky. What cared I if strange eyes seemed bright Within the gloom! If, evil blue, a wandering light Burnt by each tomb! Or that each crookèd thorn-tree seemed A witch-hag cloaked! Or that the owl above me screamed, The raven croaked! For I had cursed him when the day Was sullen red; Had cursed him when the West was gray, And day was dead; And now when night made dark the pole, Both soon and late I cursed his body, yea, and soul, With the hate of hate. Once in my soul I seemed to hear A low voice say,-- _'T were better to forgive,--and fear Thy God,--and pray._ I laughed; and from pale lips of stone On sculptured tombs A mocking laugh replied alone Deep in the glooms. And then I felt, I felt--as if Some force should seize The body; and its limbs stretch stiff, And, fastening, freeze Down, downward deeper than the knees Into the earth-- While still among the twisted trees That voice made mirth. And in my Soul was fear, despair,-- Like lost ones feel, When knotted in their pitch-stiff hair, They feel the steel Of devils' forks lift up, through sleet Of hell's slant fire, Then plunge,--as white from head to feet I grew entire. A voice without me, yet within, As still as frost, Intoned: _Thy sin is thrice a sin, Thrice art thou lost. Behold, how God would punish thee! For this thy crime-- Thy crime of hate and blasphemy-- Through endless time!_ _O'er him, whom thou wouldst not forgive, Record what good He did on earth! and let him live Loved, understood! Be memory thine of all the worst He did thine own!_ There at the head of him I cursed I stood--a stone. TIME AND DEATH AND LOVE. Last night I watched for Death-- So sick of life was I!-- When in the street beneath I heard his watchman cry The hour, while passing by. I called. And in the night I heard him stop below, His owlish lanthorn's light Blurring the windy snow-- How long the time and slow! I said, _Why dost thou cower There at my door and knock? Come in! It is the hour! Cease fumbling at the lock! Naught's well! 'Tis no o'clock!_ Black through the door with him Swept in the _Winter's_ breath; His cloak was great and grim-- But he, who smiled beneath, Had the face of Love not Death. PASSION. The wine-loud laughter of indulged Desire Upon his lips, and, in his eyes, the fire Of uncontrol, he takes in reckless hands,-- And interrupts with discords,--the sad lyre Of LOVE'S deep soul, and never understands. _When the Wine-Cup at the Lip._ When the wine-cup at the lip Slants its sparkling fire, O'er its level, while you sip, Have you marked the finger-tip Of the god DESIRE slip, Of the god DESIRE? Saying--_Lo, the hours run! Live your day before 't is done!_ When the empty goblet lies At the ended revel, In the glass, the wine-stain dyes, Have you marked the hollow eyes Of a mocking Devil rise, Of a mocking Devil? Saying--_Lo, the day is through! Look on joy it gave to you!_ ART. [_A Phantasy._] I know not how I found you With your wild hair a-blow, Nor why the world around you Would never let me know: Perhaps 't was Heaven relented, Perhaps 't was Hell resented My dream, and grimly vented Its hate upon me so. In Shadowland I met you Where all dim shadows meet; Within my heart I set you, A phantom bitter-sweet: No hope for me to win you, Though I with soul and sinew Strive on and on, when in you There is no heart or heat! Yet ever, aye, and ever, Although I knew you lied, I followed on, but never Would your white form abide: With loving arms stretched meward, As Sirens beckon seaward To some fair vessel leeward, Before me you would glide. But like an evil fairy, That mocks one with a light, Now near, you led your airy, Now far, your fitful flight: With red-gold tresses blowing, And eyes of sapphire glowing, With limbs like marble showing, You lured me through the night. To some unearthly revel Of mimes, a motley crew, 'Twixt Angel-land and Devil, You lured me on, I knew, And lure me still! soft whiling The way with hopes beguiling, While dark Despair sits smiling Behind the eyes of you! A SONG FOR OLD AGE. Now nights grow cold and colder, And North the wild vane swings, And round each tree and boulder The driving snow-storm sings-- Come, make my old heart older, O memory of lost things! Of Hope, when promise sung her Brave songs and I was young, That banquets now on hunger Since all youth's songs are sung; Of Love, who walks with younger Sweethearts the flowers among. Ah, well! while Life holds levee, Death's ceaseless dance goes on. So let the curtains, heavy About my couch, be drawn-- The curtains, sad and heavy, Where all shall sleep anon. _Tristram And Isolt._ Night and vast caverns of rock and of iron; Voices like water, and voices like wind; Horror and tempests of hail that environ Shapes and the shadows of two who have sinned. Wan on the whirlwind, in loathing uplifting Faces that loved once, forever they go, TRISTAM and ISOLT, the lovers, go drifting, The sullen laughter of Hell below. THE BETTER LOT. Her life was bound to crutches: pale and bent, But smiling ever, she would go and come: For of her soul GOD made an instrument Of strength and comfort to an humble home. Better a life of toil and slow disease That LOVE companions through the patient years, Than one whose heritage is loveless ease, That never knows the blessedness of tears. DUSK IN THE WOODS. Three miles of hill it is; and I Came through the woods that waited, dumb, For the cool _Summer_ dusk to come; And lingered there to watch the sky Up which the gradual sunset clomb. A tree-toad quavered in a tree; And then a sudden whip-poor-will Called overhead, so wildly shrill, The startled woodland seemed to see How very lone it was and still. Then through dark boughs its stealthy flight An owl took; and, at sleepy strife, The cricket turned its fairy fife; And through the dead leaves, in the night, Soft rustlings stirred of unseen life. And in the punk-wood everywhere The inserts ticked, or bored below The rotted bark; and, glow on glow, The gleaming fireflies here and there Lit up their Jack-o'-lantern show. I heard a vesper-sparrow sing, Withdrawn, it seemed, into the far Slow sunset's tranquil cinnabar; The sunset, softly smouldering Behind gaunt trunks, with its one star. A dog barked; and down ways, that gleamed, Through dew and clover faint the noise Of cow-bells moved. And then a voice, That sang a-milking, so it seemed, Made glad my heart as some glad boy's. And then the lane; and full in view A farmhouse with a rose-grown gate, And honeysuckle paths, await For night's white moon and love and you-- These are the things that made me late. AT THE FERRY. Oh, dim and wan came in the dawn, And gloomy closed the day; The killdee whistled among the weeds, The heron flapped in the river reeds, And the snipe piped far away. At dawn she stood--her dark gray hood Flung back--in the ferry-boat; Sad were the eyes that watched him ride, Her raider love, from the riverside, His kiss on her mouth and throat. Like some wild spell the twilight fell, And black the tempest came; The heavens seemed filled with the warring dead, Whose batteries opened overhead With thunder and with flame. At night again in the wind and rain, She toiled at the ferry oar; For she heard a voice in the night and storm, And it seemed that her lover's shadowy form Beckoned her to the shore. And swift to save she braved the wave, And reached the shore and found His riderless horse, with head hung low, A blur of blood on the saddle-bow, And the empty night around. HER VIOLIN. I Her violin!--Again begin The dream-notes of her violin; And dim and fair, with gold-brown hair, I seem to see her standing there, Soft-eyed and sweetly slender: The room again, with strain on strain, Vibrates to LOVE's melodious pain, As, sloping slow, is poised her bow, While round her form the golden glow Of sunset spills its splendour. II Her violin!--now deep, now thin, Again I hear her violin; And, dream by dream, again I seem To see the love-light's tender gleam Beneath her eyes' long lashes: While to my heart she seems a part Of her pure song's inspirèd art; And, as she plays, the rosy grays Of twilight halo hair and face, While sunset burns to ashes. III O violin!--Cease, cease within My soul, O haunting violin! In vain, in vain, you bring again Back from the past the blissful pain Of all the love then spoken; When on my breast, at happy rest, A sunny while her head was pressed-- Peace, peace to these wild memories! For, like my heart naught remedies, Her violin lies broken. HER VESPER SONG. The _Summer_ lightning comes and goes In one pale cloud above the hill, As if within its soft repose A burning heart were never still-- As in my bosom pulses beat Before the coming of his feet. All drugged with odorous sleep, the rose Breathes dewy balm about the place, As if the dreams the garden knows Took immaterial form and face-- As in my heart sweet thoughts arise Beneath the ardour of his eyes. The moon above the darkness shows An orb of silvery snow and fire, As if the night would now disclose To heav'n her one divine desire-- As in the rapture of his kiss All of my soul is drawn to his. The cloud, it knows not that it glows; The rose knows nothing of its scent; Nor knows the moon that it bestows Light on our earth and firmament-- So is the soul unconscious of The beauties it reveals through LOVE. AT PARTING. What is there left for us to say, Now it has come to say good-by? And all our dreams of yesterday Have vanished in the sunset sky-- What is there left for us to say, Now different ways before us lie? A word of hope, a word of cheer, A word of love, that still shall last, When we are far to bring us near Through memories of the happy past; A word of hope, a word of cheer, To keep our sad hearts true and fast. What is there left for us to do, Now it has come to say farewell? And care, that bade us once adieu, Returns again with us to dwell-- What is there left for us to do, Now different ways our fates compel? Clasp hands and sigh, touch lips and smile, And look the love that shall remain-- When severed so by many a mile-- The sweetest balm for bitterest pain; Clasp hands and sigh, touch lips and smile, And trust in GOD to meet again. CARISSIMA MEA. I look upon my lady's face, And, in the world about me, see No face like hers in any place: _Therefore it is I sing her praise._ It is not made, as others sing Of their dear loves, like ivory, But like a wild rose in the spring: _Therefore it is I sing her praise._ Her brow is low and very fair, And o'er it, smooth and shadowy, Lies deep the darkness of her hair: _Therefore it is I sing her praise._ Beneath her brows her eyes are gray, And gaze out glad and fearlessly, Their wonder haunts me night and day: _Therefore it is I sing her praise._ Her eyebrows, arched and delicate, Twin curves of pencilled ebony, Within their spans contain my fate: _Therefore it is I sing her praise._ Her mouth, that was for kisses curved, So small and sweet, it well may be That it for me is yet reserved: _Therefore it is I sing her praise._ Between her hair and rounded chin, Calm with her soul's calm purity, There lies no shadow of a sin: _Therefore it is I sing her praise._ Of perfect form, she is not tall, Just higher than the heart of me, Where'er I place her, all in all: _Therefore it is I sing her praise._ She is not shaped, as some have sung Of their dear loves, like some slim tree, But like the moon when it is young: _Therefore it is I sing her praise._ Her hands, that smell of violet, So white and fashioned gracefully, Have woven round my heart a net: _Therefore it is I sing her praise._ Yea, I have loved her many a day; And though for me she may not be, Still at her feet my love I lay: _Therefore it is I sing her praise._ Albeit she be not for me, GOD send her grace and grant that she Know nought of sorrow all her days: _Therefore it is I sing her praise._ _Margery._ I When _Spring_ is here and MARGERY Goes walking in the woods with me, She is so white, she is so shy, The little leaves clap hands and cry-- _Perdie! So white is she, so sky is she, Ah me! The maiden May hath just passed by!_ II When _Summer's_ here and MARGERY Goes walking in the fields with me, She is so pure, she is so fair, The wildflowers eye her and declare-- _Perdie! So pure is she, so fair is she, Just see, Where our sweet cousin takes the air!_ III Why is it that my MARGERY Hears nothing that these say to me? She is so good, she is so true, My heart it maketh such ado; _Perdie! So good is she, so true is she, You see, She can not hear the other two._ _Constance._ Beyond the orchard, in the lane, The crested red-bird sings again-- O bird, whose song says, _Have no care._ Should I not care when CONSTANCE there,-- My CONSTANCE, with the bashful gaze, Pink-gowned like some sweet hollyhock,-- If I declare my love, just says Some careless thing as if in mock? Like--_Past the orchard, in the lane, How sweet the red-bird sings again_! There, while the red-bird sings his best, His listening mate sits on the nest-- O bird, whose patience says, _All's well_, How can it be with me, now tell? When CONSTANCE, with averted eyes,-- Soft-bonneted as some sweet-pea,-- If I speak marriage, just replies With some such quaint irrelevancy, As, _While the red-bird sings his best, His loving mate sits on the nest_. What shall I say? what can I do? Would such replies mean aught to you, O birds, whose gladness says, _Be glad_? Have I not reason to be sad When CONSTANCE, with demurest glance, Her face a-poppy with distress, If I reproach her, pouts, perchance, And answers so in waywardness?-- _What shall I say? what can I do? My meaning should be plain to you!_ _Gertrude._ When first I gazed on GERTRUDE'S face, Beheld her loveliness and grace; Her brave gray eyes, her raven hair, Her ways, more winsome than the kiss _Spring_ gives the flowers; her smile, that is Brighter than all the summer air Made sweet with birds:--I did declare,-- And still declare!--there is no one, No girl beneath the moon or sun, So beautiful to look upon! And to my thoughts, that on her dwell, Nothing seems more desirable-- Not OPHIR gold nor ORIENT pearls-- Than seems this jewel-girl of girls. _Lydia._ When Autumn's here and days are short, Let LYDIA laugh and, hey! Straightway 't is _May-day_ in my heart, And blossoms strew the way. When _Summer's_ here and days are long, Let LYDIA sigh and, ho! _December's_ fields I walk among, And shiver in the snow. No matter what the Seasons are, My LYDIA is so dear, My soul admits no Calendar Of earth when she is near. A SOUTHERN GIRL. Serious but smiling, stately and serene, And dreamier than a flower; A girl in whom all sympathies convene As perfumes in a bower; Through whom one feels what soul and heart may mean, And their resistless power. Eyes, that commune with the frank skies of truth, Where thought like starlight curls; Lips of immortal rose, where love and youth Nestle like two sweet pearls; Hair, that suggests the Bible braids of RUTH, Deeper than any girl's. When first I saw you, 't was as if within My soul took shape some song-- Played by a master of the violin-- A music pure and strong, That rapt my soul above all earthly sin To heights that know no wrong. A DAUGHTER OF THE STATES. She has the eyes of some barbarian Queen Leading her wild tribes into battle; eyes, Wherein th' unconquerable soul defies, And Love sits throned, imperious and serene. And I have thought that Liberty, alone Among the mountain stars, might look like her, Kneeling to GOD, her only emperor, Kindling her torch on FREEDOM'S altar-stone. For in her self, regal with riches of Beauty and youth, again those Queens seem born-- BOADICEA, meeting scorn with scorn, And ERMENGARDE, returning love for love. AN _Autumn_ NIGHT. Some things are good on _Autumn_ nights, When with the storm the forest fights, And in the room the heaped hearth lights Old-fashioned press and rafter: Plump chestnuts hissing in the heat, A mug of cider, sharp and sweet, And at your side a face petite, With lips of laughter. Upon the roof the rolling rain, And tapping at the window-pane, The wind that seems a witch's cane That summons spells together: A hand within your own awhile; A mouth reflecting back your smile; And eyes, two stars, whose beams exile All thoughts of weather. And, while the wind lulls, still to sit And watch her fire-lit needles flit A-knitting, and to feel her knit Your very heartstrings in it: Then, when the old clock ticks _'tis late_, To rise, and at the door to wait, Two words, or at the garden gate, A kissing minute. LINES. If GOD should say to me, _Behold!-- Yea, who shall doubt?-- They who love others more than me, Shall I not turn, as oft of old, My face from them and cast them out? So let it be with thee, behold!_-- I should not care, for in your face Is all GOD'S grace. If GOD should say to me, _Behold!-- Is it not well?-- They who have other gods than me, Shall I not bid them, as of old, Depart into the outer_ HELL? _So let it be with thee, behold!_-- I should not care, for in your eyes Is PARADISE. THE BLIND GOD. I know not if she be unkind, If she have faults I do not care; Search through the world--where will you find A face like hers, a form, a mind? _I love her to despair._ If she be cruel, cruelty Is a great virtue, I will swear; If she be proud--then pride must be Akin to Heaven's divinest three-- _I love her to despair._ Why speak to me of that and this? All you may say weighs not a hair! In her,--whose lips I may not kiss,-- To me naught but perfection is!-- _I love her to despair._ A VALENTINE. My life is grown a witchcraft place Through gazing on thy form and face. Now 't is thy Smile's soft sorcery That makes my soul a melody. Now 't is thy Frown, that comes and goes, That makes my heart a page of prose. Some day, perhaps, a word of thine Will change me to thy VALENTINE. A CATCH. When roads are mired with ice and snow, And the air of morn is crisp with rime; When the holly hangs by the mistletoe, And bells ring in the CHRISTMAS time:-- It's--Saddle, my Heart, and ride away, To the sweet-faced girl with the eyes of gray! Who waits with a smile for the gifts you bring-- A man's strong love and a wedding-ring-- It's--Saddle, my Heart, and ride! When vanes veer North and storm-winds blow, And the sun of noon is a blur o'erhead; When the holly hangs by the mistletoe, And the CHRISTMAS service is sung and said:-- It's--Come, O my Heart, and wait awhile, Where the organ peals, in the altar aisle, For the gifts that the church now gives to you-- A woman's hand and a heart that's true. It's--Come, O my Heart, and wait! When rooms gleam warm with the fire's glow, And the sleet raps sharp on the window-pane; When the holly hangs by the mistletoe, And CHRISTMAS revels begin again:-- It's--Home, O my Heart, and love, at last! And her happy breast to your own held fast; A song to sing and a tale to tell, A good-night kiss, and all is well. It's--Home, O my Heart, and love! THE NEW YEAR. Lift up thy torch, O Year, and let us see What Destiny Hath made thee heir to at nativity! Doubt, some call Faith; and ancient Wrong and Might, Whom some name Right; And Darkness, that the purblind world calls Light. Despair, with Hope's brave form; and Hate, who goes In Friendship's clothes; And Happiness, the mask of many woes. Neglect, whom Merit serves; Lust, to whom, see, Love bends the knee; And Selfishness, who preacheth charity. Vice, in whose dungeon Virtue lies in chains; And Cares and Pains, That on the throne of Pleasure hold their reigns. Corruption, known as Honesty; and Fame That's but a name; And Innocence, the outward guise of Shame. And Folly, men call Wisdom here, forsooth; And, like a youth, Fair Falsehood, whom some worship for the Truth. Abundance, who hath Famine's house in lease; And, high 'mid these, War, blood-black, on the spotless shrine of Peace. Lift up thy torch, O Year! assist our sight! Deep lies the night Around us, and GOD grants us little light! THEN AND NOW. When my old heart was young, my dear, The Earth and Heaven were so near That in my dreams I oft could hear The steps of unseen races; In woodlands, where bright waters ran, On hills, GOD'S rainbows used to span, I followed voices not of man, And smiled in spirit faces. Now my old heart is old, my sweet, No longer Earth and Heaven meet; All Life is grown to one long street Where fact with fancy clashes; The voices now that speak to me Are prose instead of poetry: And in the faces now I see Is less of flame than ashes. EPILOGUE. Beyond the moon, within a land of mist, Lies the dim Garden of all Dead Desires, Walled round with morning's clouded amethyst, And haunted of the sunset's shadowy fires; There all lost things we loved hold ghostly tryst-- Dead dreams, dead hopes, dead loves, and dead desires. Sad are the stars that day and night exist Above the Garden of all Dead Desires; And sad the roses that within it twist Deep bow'rs; and sad the wind that through it quires; But sadder far are they who there hold tryst-- Dead dreams, dead hopes, dead loves, and dead desires. There, like a dove, upon the twilight's wrist, Soft in the Garden of all Dead Desires, Sleep broods; and there, where never a serpent hissed, On the wan willows music hangs her lyres, ÆOLIAN dials by which phantoms tryst-- Dead dreams, dead hopes, dead loves, and dead desires. There you shall hear low voices; kisses kissed, Faint in the Garden of all Dead Desires, By lips the anguish of vain song makes whist; And meet with shapes that art's despair attires; And gaze in eyes where all sweet sorrows tryst-- Dead dreams, dead hopes, dead loves, and dead desires. Thither we go, dreamer and realist, Bound for the Garden of all Dead Desires, Where we shall find, perhaps, all Life hath missed, All Life hath longed for when the soul aspires, All Earth's elusive loveliness at tryst-- Dead dreams, dead hopes, dead loves, and dead desires. * * * * * 
33674	----	_SONNETS FROM THE PATAGONIAN_ BOOKS _by_ DONALD EVANS Published by #Nicholas L. Brown#: #Discords# #Two Deaths in the Bronx# #Nine Poems from a Valetudinarium# #Sonnets from the Patagonian# Special Edition of the last title on Etruria (Italian hand-made) paper limited to 28 numbered copies, signed by author and publisher. Insert--one full sonnet written in the author's hand. $15.00. _This edition is limited to 750 copies._ _Sonnets from the Patagonian_ (_Donald Evans_) _Philadelphia Nicholas L. Brown 1918_ #Copyright, 1918 by Nicholas L. Brown# _ADVERTISEMENT_ _My dear Cornwall Hollis_: _With the Allied cause crumbling away it is high time we thought of aesthetics. As a triste jest I said that to you the other day, and your reply was a plea to let you write a preface for a new edition of my forgotten Sonnets from the Patagonian. I am at last persuaded, and who but you should do the preface?_ _With Mitteleuropa a fact it should be apparent to any honest, thinking man that we are losing the War. Perhaps, in a larger sense, we have already lost the War and the dusk of the Anglo-Saxon is come. Then we are at last joined with the Héllenes and Latins in the descending scale, and it is the Teuton now approaching the perihelion, with the Slav, yet to conquer, in the far distance. But that is an eye-survey for eternity, and we have merely to do with the finite present. So we may still think of resistance, and not yet abandon hope of postponing defeat._ _It is now the hour for the supreme test of America, and she too must fail, as our Allies have failed, before the Huns unless somewhere she can find the beauty and the strength of the human soul with which to give battle. For the first time in history it is souls, not guns, that will win the War, and remember, my dear friend, that Beauty is more necessary than food that the soul may live._ _We are all but engulfed in error. We say that we do not hate the German people; it is the Kaiser we are fighting. A pitiful self-delusion! It must be the German people we hate as an overshadowing race, if our fight is to have even the excuse of the inflamed passion of the survival of the fittest. We must acknowledge the Kaiser as the symbol of the best organized form of government, unless we are frankly anarchists; the most efficient, the most powerful, the most nearly approaching a practical socialism. Let us, therefore, start afresh. We hate the German people, for they have threatened our complacent supremacy as lords of the world. Now we are at least truthful._ _Thus far, the Allies have failed signally as a military force. The Europeans have forgotten how to fight, and we in America have never learned. We have put too much faith in materialism, and betrayed the Soul and Beauty. There is more to life than living, and more to an army than arms. The moment is here that demands we scrap the military leaders, as such, and seek stronger. Why not then turn to the Poets to direct the War, for, lo! it was the Poets who in seven days won the Irish Revolution. None knows better than you how I begrudge giving the ever-turbulent West Britons any praise, any glory, but there is the simple truth. They vanquished the foe because they first had conquered fear, and then nought could stand against them._ _If we could purge ourselves of our fear of Germany we should capture Berlin. Could I enlist a Battalion of Irreproachables, whose uniforms should be walking suit, top hat and pumps, and their only weapon an ebony stick, and sail tomorrow, we should march down Unter den Linden in a month, provided wrapped in our kerchiefs we carried the Gospel of Beauty, and a nonchalance in the knot of our cravats._ _Verily, verily, men are killed solely because they fear death, and turn their backs on Beauty, for only ugliness and error can destroy, and ugliness in the end destroys itself._ _There is really no horror in the War. Even in the ridiculous way we are now fighting it is all a shabby, stupid sham. That chap Griffith gave us a more realistic spectacle in "The Birth of a Nation." Far too few men are actually killed and wounded, and the job is much too large for the materialists. They do not know how to employ effectively the huge forces they have raised into being._ _If somehow we can grope our way back to the springs of Beauty all may yet be saved, but it will require the sacrifice of everything we have. For myriads it will mean the offering of their lives, for that is all they possess, and it must be done freely, gladly, with their souls purified, if it is to avail anything. Pride, ambition, selfishness, self-will must go, or we perish blind miserables._ _For myself, you know I am willingly in service as a common soldier, although some years beyond conscription age. Ungrudgingly I gave up alcohol--almost a lifelong necessity--and for months I, the Epicurean, have been dispassionately measuring the supposed hardships of war that I might truly understand what a soldier has to undergo. With Beauty in the bloodbeat privation is nothing. What can touch me now except the amusing joy of giving up for the common good? Yet who actually loves humankind less than I? But the subordination idea intrigues me, possesses me, satisfies me. How better can I prove my patent of snobbery and my innate right cordially to dislike my fellowmen?_ _The social degradation involved in functioning as an enlisted man was and, of course, is the worst of the annoyances. I am neither young enough nor sufficiently democratic to enjoy day after day a below-stairs status. It is a trial, I confess, but I venture to persuade myself that I do all that is required of me with admirable abasement and detachment. Occasionally, indeed, it is capital fun to play the anonymous cipher. I am often urged to obtain a commission. But I cannot quite do that, for would not that be a confession that I hadn't the pluck to stick it out? I must remain as I am. Many of my contemporaries are finding the khaki an easy means of increasing their literary reputations. Wise brothers, ye have chosen your rôles. I prefer mine._ _Before you have seen my book through the press I may be dead. With all my heart I hope I shall not come back, for then impersonally I shall have fallen for a cause in which I have no faith. What more distinguished end for an incurable poseur? Have I not been called that? Plant, I beg you, mignonette to encircle my arrowroot fields._ _What has all this to do with the Sonnets from the Patagonian? If you will read my words aright they will give the key to my poems, should you, my beloved Hollis, still lack a key. The volume when it first appeared was not liked by divers nice people--it was thought nasty--but none put it down till he had finished it; a terror was on him lest he miss a word. And the terror was the Sword of Beauty which slayeth all. Intrepidity...._ _But you shall interpret the poems yourself._ _DONALD EVANS._ _I have broken my engagement to write a preface, but have given you, gentle Reader, the Poet's letter instead._ _CORNWALL HOLLIS._ INDICES #Love in Patagonia# Love in Patagonia: p. 15 #Portraits of Igor Vyvyan# In the Vices: p. 19 En Monocle: p. 20 #Portrait of the Fan Fan# Loving Kindness: p. 23 #Portrait of Mme. Hyssain# Theâtre du Nord: p. 27 #Portrait: in Memoriam# Failure at Forty: p. 31 #Portrait of a Gentleman and a Lady# Aspens at Cresheim: p. 35 #Portrait of Michael Peter# Birthday Piece No. 2: p. 39 #Portraits of Mabel Dodge# Her Smile: p. 43 The Last Dance at Dawn: p. 41 #Portrait of Carl Van Vechten# In the Gentlemanly Interest: p. 47 #Portraits of Louise Norton# Buveuse d'Absinthe: p. 51 Extreme Unction: p. 52 The Jade Vase: p. 53 #Portraits of the Author# Epicede: p. 57 In the Falklands: p. 58 The Noon of Night: p. 59 Fifth Avenue: p. 60 LOVE IN PATAGONIA _To Carl Van Vechten_ LOVE IN PATAGONIA Forgetting her mauve vows the Fania fled, Taking away her moonlight scarves with her-- There was no joy left in the calendar, And life was but an orchid that was dead. Even our pious peacocks went unfed-- I had deserved no treachery like this, For I had bitten sharp kiss after kiss Devoutly, till her sleek young body bled. Then Carlo came; he shone like a new sin-- Straightway I knew pearl-powder still was sweet, And that my bleeding heart would not be scarred. I sought a shop where shoes were sold within, And for three hundred francs made brave my feet, And then I danced along the boulevard! PORTRAITS OF IGOR VYVYAN _To Pitts Sanborn_ IN THE VICES Gay and audacious crime glints in his eyes, And his mad talk, raping the commonplace, Gleefully runs a devil-praising race, And none can ever follow where he flies. He streaks himself with vices tenderly; He cradles sin, and with a figleaf fan Taps his green cat, watching a bored sun span The wasted minutes to eternity. Once I took up his trail along the dark, Wishful to track him to the witches' flame, To see the bubbling of the sneer and snare. The way led through a fragrant starlit park, And soon upon a harlot's house I came-- Within I found him playing at solitaire! EN MONOCLE Born with a monocle he stares at life, And sends his soul on pensive promenades; He pays a high price for discarded gods, And then regilds them to renew their strife. His calm moustache points to the ironies, And a fawn-coloured laugh sucks in the night, Full of the riant mists that turn to white In brief lost battles with banalities. Masters are makeshifts and a path to tread For blue pumps that are ardent for the air; Features are fixtures when the face is fled, And we are left the husks of tarnished hair; But he is one who lusts uncomforted To kiss the naked phrase quite unaware. PORTRAIT OF THE FAN FAN Imitated from "Discords" _To Donovan Blades_ LOVING KINDNESS _Moscow_ Her flesh was lyrical and sweet to flog, For the whip blanched her blood, though every vein Flooded with hate shot a hot flow of pain, And her screams were muffled by a brackish fog. He loved her, yet his passion could but fret Unless he lashed her to an awkward rage-- But when his hand wrote terror on her page He knew exultant joy of feigned regret. Theirs was a bond that poured the wine of fear, And he drained her stiffened limbs with cruel art. He taught her that all tenderness had fled Till she would beg the hurt to taste the tear, And when she bent to kiss her quivering heart It lit a Chinese candle in his head. PORTRAIT OF MME. HYSSAIN _To John Darby_ THEÂTRE DU NORD _Tashkend_ She was tired to tears, and yet there were no tears, Only the dead seas of indifference Meeting the languors of a nerveless sense, For she had played the rôles for twenty years. The queen called for her satins, while the drab Demanded love, and the wild hunger tore; The woman raged to touch the flame once more, But the worn-out emotions could not stab. There were the thousand parts she had essayed, And the three thousand gowns that she had worn. Into the ragbag each frock found its flight, Crumpled and ravished of a film-proud shade, And every script is wandering forlorn, Gnawed by the mirage of an opening night. PORTRAIT: IN MEMORIAM _To Hugh Campbell_ FAILURE AT FORTY He saw there was no choice to left or right-- Time that had marked him for the least of sages Pointed the hour, and several blotted pages Stood witness to the struggle in the night. Behind him lay a happiness that might Have made him shine a figure through the ages; Before him loomed a toiling at mean wages, Alternative to sinking out of sight. This much was sure--he never need retrace; The leagues that he had travelled were an ending. There wound no footpath to a sunlit place, Where he might nurse his dreams, with peace attending. No promised joy would quicken the day's pace, Nor write the past a blunder still worth mending. PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN AND A LADY _To Enid Welsh_ ASPENS AT CRESHEIM She had become a stranger suddenly, Just as all men were strangers; then he knew Why she must be an alien--even she! Since there was nought her human love could do To give him the last access to her soul. Returning came his years as wholly vain-- Repeated payment of inutile toll To reach a shrine he would not seek again. It scarcely left him sad to find how wrong Had been his vision of won womanhood-- This yearning ache that he had held so long For a full mingling of their separate blood. Freed, solitary now, with unscared eyes He gazed anew at life safe from surprise! PORTRAIT OF MICHAEL PETER _To Fania Marinoff_ BIRTHDAY PIECE NO. 2 There is what is and what there is is fair, But most is yet to come to what is here; Here is the most to come from out a year, For from the year there comes all there is there. Song for the minnow and a crystal pool, And all is said of all there was to say, Yet all must say the all, since every day A nuptial kiss the wise man gives a fool. An ear of corn from the blind red sunburnt earth Blandly lies in the sun divinely green, Disowning what the earth and sun have done. Kisses and corn and a pool to crown the birth, With once to come what never before has been, And here is there what there is here begun. PORTRAITS OF MABEL DODGE _To Louis Sherwin_ HER SMILE _Laggan_ Her hidden smile was full of little breasts, And with her too white hands she stroked her fears, The while the serpent peered at her arched ears, And night's grim hours stalked in, unbidden guests. A noise was in her eyes that sang of scorn, And round her voice there gleamed a nameless dread, As though her lips were hungry for the dead, Yet knew the food of dawn would be forlorn. The cold hours ebbed, and still she held her throne; Across the sky the lightning made mad play, And then the scarlet screams stood forth revealed. She turned her back, and grasped a monotone; It answered all; she lived again that day She triumphed in the tragic turnip field. THE LAST DANCE AT DAWN _Firenze_ And she was sad since she could not be sad, And every star fled amorous from the sky. Her pampered knees fell under her keen eye And it came to her she would not go mad. The gaucheries were turning the last screw, But there was still the island in the sea, The harridan chorus of eternity, That let her smile because he saw she knew. She even dared be impudent again, And bit his ear; the deaths were far away. A Black Mass sounded from the treasure vaults-- She tried to rouge her heart, yet quite in vain. The crucifix danced in, beribboned, gay, And lisped to her a wish for the next waltz. PORTRAIT OF CARL VAN VECHTEN _To Gertrude Stein_ IN THE GENTLEMANLY INTEREST _Piccadilly_ He polished snubs till they were regnant art, Curling their shameless toilets round the hour. Each lay upon his lips an exquisite flower Subtly malign and poisoned for its part. The path of victims was no wanton plan-- He had bowed his head in sorrow at his birth, For he had said long ere he came to earth That it was no place for a gentleman. But always a heart-scald lurked behind the screen, And somehow he missed the ultimate degrees. He saw a beggar at the daylight's fall And then he rose and robbed him for the scene; And when they called him cad he found release-- He felt he had used the finest snub of all. PORTRAITS OF LOUISE NORTON _To Donald Evans_ BUVEUSE D'ABSINTHE _Rue d'Aphrodite_ Her voice was fleet-limbed and immaculate, And like peach blossoms blown across the wind Her white words made the hour seem cool and kind, Hung with soft dawns that danced a shadow fete. A silken silence crept up from the South, The flutes were hushed that mimed the orange moon, And down the willow stream my sighs were strewn, While I knelt to the corners of her mouth. Lead me afar from clamorous dissonance, For I am sick of empty trumpetings, Choking the highways with a dusty noise. Here I have found her sweet sheer utterance, And now I seek the garden of the wings Where I may bathe in sounds that life destroys. EXTREME UNCTION Across the rotting pads in the lily lake Her gesture floated toward the iris bed, Wrapped in a whispered perfume of the dead, And her gaze followed slowly in its wake. Now was the summons come she must obey, For Beauty pleaded from the charnel house, For violet nights and violent carouse To free her from the cerements of decay. Crapulous hands reach out to strangle thee, And every moment is a winding-sheet, With bats to chant corruption's litany. Be thou a torch to flash fanfaronade, And as the earth crumbles beneath thy feet Flaunt thou the glitter of a new brocade! THE JADE VASE _Pittsburgh_ He had hunted for it to the alley's end, Yet when he found the jade vase he was sad, Low-pulsed with ennui for the praise he had Poured into bowls that merely did not offend. A wall of glass held back his worshipping, And his eyes that drank this miracle of stone Acknowledged the discovery not his own-- Still the vase was there, and that was everything. He thought back over all the songs he had sung, And all the hours his heart like waving grain Had swayed to music. And the joys now dead Seemed haunting coins to meagre beauty flung. Poignantly he longed to call them back. In vain! But they were the last words that the poet said. PORTRAITS OF THE AUTHOR _To Cornwall Hollis_ EPICEDE Wistfully shimmering, shamelessly wise and weak, He lives in pawn, pledging a battered name; He loves his failures as one might love fame, And listens for the ghost years as they speak. A fragrance bright and broken clasps his head, And wildwood airs sing a frayed interlude, While cloaked he comes in a new attitude To play gravedigger if the word be said. He swore he would be glad and only glad, And turned to Broadway for the peace of God. He found it at the bottom of the glass, For where the dregs lay it was less than sad, And mid the murmur when the dance was trod He heard the echo of a genius pass. IN THE FALKLANDS For his soul when homeless then is at home, And in a paradise where shadows wane He draws droll figures on the windowpane To lure his vagrom fellow souls to Rome. There is a potent rancour in the moon, Hunting for those who love him still, three Gleam back. But with detached anxiety He vows that he will alienate them soon. He said that love had but two words, the last And first, and joy in flying laces lay. He watched each kiss to kill it at stark ease-- His strangler's hands carve prayers for the past-- And chastely he spends an hour every day Erecting tombstones to carnalities. THE NOON OF NIGHT The fictive tear he holds in reverence, And studies heady griefs that wash the cheek; It is a dim dominion he must seek, To gain some raiment for his impotence. Sorrows are numbered, the sighs have their strings, And barren smiles are trained for tragedy; He ties up parcels of mock gaiety, And labels them with many worshippings. Grapes in the grass, and every day a waste At scattered sources of lost loveliness, With drunkenness to drain the ruined seats. He knows his gems are turned to glassy paste-- But he thanks God aloof from all distress, For he knows sewers run beneath the city streets. FIFTH AVENUE And when discovery marred the best disguise He winced a sigh, bowed to a spoiled deceit, And donned the damask draperies of defeat To woo dishonour as an enterprise. His self-betrayal had its tenderness And reared an outland refuge for his pride, For all were baffled telling how he lied, Since more than any guessed he would confess. He died a hero in Fifth Avenue One yellowed day saving a tattered man. But in the litter of his passing breath A prayer lay lest one should misconstrue. It was an accident--and he began A last profound apology to death. TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: # Symbols surrounding text indicate that the text is in small capitals. 
33686	----	file was produced from images generously made available by The Kentuckiana Digital Library) ACCOLON OF GAUL WITH OTHER POEMS. BY MADISON J. CAWEIN. [Illustration] LOUISVILLE. JOHN P. MORTON & COMPANY. 1889 COPYRIGHTED BY MADISON J. CAWEIN. 1889 With all my Heart to LILIAN AND ROSE. [Illustration] CONTENTS. Accolon of Gaul, 1 Der Freischutz, 65 To Revery, 82 Late October, 85 An Anemone, 88 The Rain-Crow, 90 Loveliness, 92 The Last Scion of the House of Clare, 95 On the Jellico-Spur, 105 Señorita, 111 Leander to Hero, 113 Musagetes, 116 The Quarrel, 118 The Mood o' the Earth, 119 A Gray Day, 122 Carmen, 125 Disenchantment of Death, 128 The Three Urgandas, 131 The Brush Sparrow, 135 CHORDS I. Sleep while I sing to thee, 138 II. Floats a wild chant of morning, 139 III. When love delays, 141 IV. Thou hast not loved her, 143 V. O Life, 144 VI. If thou wouldst know the Beautiful, 148 VII. Then up the Orient heights, 150 VIII. Vanishing Visions, 152 IX. As to a Nymph, 154 X. Ah! now the orchard's leaves are sear, 157 Dead and Gone, 158 A Mabinogi, 159 Genius Loci, 162 ACCOLON OF GAUL. _With triumphs gay of old romance._--KEATS. PRELUDE. Why, dreams from dreams in dreams remembered! naught Save this, alas! that once it seemed I thought I wandered dim with someone, but I knew Not who; most beautiful and good and true, Yet sad through suffering; with curl-crowned brow, Soft eyes and voice; so white she haunts me now:-- And when, and where?--At night in dreamland. She Led me athwart a flower-showered lea Where trammeled puckered pansy and the pea; Spread stains of pale-rod poppies rinced of rain, So gorged with sun their hurt hearts ached with pain; Heaped honeysuckles; roses lavishing beams, Wherein I knew were huddled little dreams Which laughed coy, hidden merriment and there Blew quick gay kisses fragrancing the air. And where a river bubbled through the sward A mist lay sleepily; and it was hard To see whence sprung it, to what seas it led, How broadly spread and what it was it fled So ceasless in its sighs, and bickering on Into romance or some bewildering dawn Of wisest legend from the storied wells Of lost Baranton, where old Merlin dwells, Nodding a white poll and a grand, gray beard As if some Lake Ladyé he, listening, heard, Who spake like water, danced like careful showers With blown gold curls thro' drifts of wild-thorn flowers; Loose, lazy arms in graceful movement tossed, Float flower-like down a woodland vista, lost In some peculiar note that wrings a tear Slow down his withered cheek. And then steals near Her sweet, lascivious brow's white wonderment, And gray rude eyes, and hair which hath the scent Of the wildwood Brécéliand's perfumes In Brittany; and in it one red bloom's Blood-drop thrust deep, and so "Sweet Viviane!" All the glad leaves lisp like a young, soft rain From top to top, until a running surge The dark, witch-haunted solitude will urge, That shakes and sounds and stammers as from sleep Some giant were aroused; and with a leap A samite-gauzy creature, glossy white, Showers mocking kisses fast and, like a light Beat by a gust to flutter and then done, From Brécéliande and Merlin she is gone. But still he sits there drowsing with his dreams; A wondrous cohort hath he; many as gleams That stab the moted mazes of a beech; And each grave dream hath its own magic speech To sting to tears his old eyes heavy--two Hang, tangled brilliants, in his beard like dew: And still faint murmurs of courts brave and fair, And forms of Arthur and proud Guenevere, Grave Tristram and rare Isoud and stout Mark, Bold Launcelot, chaste Galahad the dark Of his weak mind, once strong, glares up with, then, --The instant's fostered blossoms--die again. A roar of tournament, a rippling stir Of silken lists that ramble into her, That white witch-mothered beauty, Viviane, The vast Brécéliande and dreams again. Then Dagonet, King Arthur's fool, trips there, A waggish cunning; glittering on his hair A tinsel crown; and then will slightly sway Thick leaves and part, and there Morgane the Fay With haughty wicked eyes and lovely face Studies him steady for a little space. I. "Thou askest with thy studious eyes again, Here where the restless forest hears the main Toss in a troubled sleep and moan. Ah, sweet, With joy and passion the kind hour's replete; And what wild beauty here! where roughly run Huge forest shadows from the westering sun, The wood's a subdued power gentle as Yon tame wild-things, that in the moss and grass Gaze with their human eyes. Here grow the lines Of pale-starred green; and where yon fountain shines Urned in its tremulous ferns, rest we upon This oak-trunk of God's thunder overthrown Years, years agone; not where 'tis rotted brown But where the thick bark's firm and overgrown Of clambering ivy blackly berried; where Wild musk of wood decay just tincts the air, As if some strange shrub on some whispering way, In some dewed dell, while dreaming of one May, In longing languor weakly tried to wake One sometime blossom and could only make Ghosts of such dead aromas as it knew, And shape a specter, budding thin as dew, To haunt these sounding miles of solitude. Troubled thou askest, Morgane, and the mood, Unfathomed in thine eyes, glows rash and deep As that in some wild-woman's found on sleep By some lost knight upon a precipice, Whom he hath wakened with a laughing kiss. As that of some frail, elfin lady white As if of watery moonbeams, filmy dight, Who waves diaphanous beauty on some cliff That drowsing purrs with moon-drenched pines; but if The lone knight follow, foul fiends rise and drag Him crashing down, while she, tall on the crag, Triumphant mocks him with glad sorcery Till all the wildwood echoes shout with glee. As that bewildering mystery of a tarn, Some mountain water, which the mornings scorn To anadem with fire and leave gray; To which some champion cometh when the Day Hath tired of breding on his proud, young head Flame-furry blooms and, golden chapletéd, Sits rosy, trembling with full love for Night, Who cometh sandaled; dark in crape; the light Of her good eyes a marvel; her vast hair Tortuous with stars,--as in some shadowy lair The eyes of hunted wild things burn with rage,-- And on large bosoms doth his love assuage. "He, coming thither in that haunted place, Stoops low to quaff cool waters, when his face Meets gurgling fairy faces in a ring That jostle upward babbling; beckoning Him deep to wonders secret built of old By some dim witch: 'A city walled with gold, With beryl battlements and paved with pearls, Slim, lambent towers wrought of foamy swirls Of alabaster, and that witch to love, More beautiful to love than queens above.'-- He pauses troubled, but a wizard power, In all his bronzen harness that mad hour Plunges him--whither? what if he should miss Those cloudy beauties and that creature's kiss? Ah, Morgane, that same power Accolon Saw potent in thine eyes and it hath drawn Him deep to plunge--and to what breathless fate?-- Bliss?--which, too true, he hath well quaffed of late! But, there!--may come what stealthy-footed Death With bony claws to clutch away his breath! And make him loveless to those eyes, alas!-- Fain must I speak that vision; thus it was: "In sleep one plucked me some warm fleurs-de-lis, Larger than those of earth; and I might see Their woolly gold, loose, webby woven thro',-- Like fluffy flames spun,--gauzy with fine dew. And 'asphodels!' I murmured; then, 'these sure The Eden amaranths, so angel pure That these alone may pluck them; aye and aye! But with that giving, lo, she passed away Beyond me on some misty, yearning brook With some sweet song, which all the wild air took With torn farewells and pensive melody Touching to tears, strange, hopeless utterly. So merciless sweet that I yearned high to tear Those ingot-cored and gold-crowned lilies fair; Yet over me a horror which restrained With melancholy presence of two pained And awful, mighty eyes that cowed and held Me weeping while that sad dirge died or swelled Far, far on endless waters borne away: A wild bird's musick smitten when the ray Of dawn it burned for graced its drooping head, And the pale glory strengthened round it dead; Daggered of thorns it plunged on, blind in night, The slow blood ruby on its plumage white. "Then, then I knew these blooms which she had given Were strays of parting grief and waifs of Heaven For tears and memories; too delicate For eyes of earth such souls immaculate! But then--my God! my God! thus these were left! I knew then still! but of that song bereft-- That rapturous wonder grasping after grief-- Beyond all thought--weak thought that would be thief." And bowed and wept into his hands and she Sorrowful beheld; and resting at her knee Raised slow her oblong lute and smote its chords; But ere the impulse saddened into words Said: "And didst love me as thy lips have spake No visions wrought of sleep might such love shake. Fast is all Love in fastness of his power, With flame reverberant moated stands his tower; Not so built as to chink from fact a beam Of doubt and much less of a doubt from dream; _Such_, the alchemic fires of Love's desires, Which hug this like a snake, melt to gold wires To chord the old lyre new whereon he lyres." So ceased and then, sad softness in her eye Sang to his dream a questioning reply: "Will love grow less when dead the roguish Spring, Who from gay eyes sowed violets whispering; Peach petals in wild cheeks, wan-wasted thro' Of withering grief, laid lovely 'neath the dew, Will love grow less? "Will love grow less when comes queen Summer tall, Her throat a lily long and spiritual; Rich as the poppied swaths--droned haunts of bees-- Her cheeks, a brown maid's gleaning on the leas, Will love grow less? "Will love grow less when Autumn sighing there Broods with long frost streaks in her dark, dark hair; Tears in grave eyes as in grave heavens above, Deep lost in memories' melancholy, love, Will love grow less? "Will love grow less when Winter at the door Begs on her scant locks icicles as hoar; While Death's eyes hollow o'er her shoulder dart A look to wring to tears then freeze the heart, Will love grow less?" And in her hair wept softly and her breast Rose and was wet with tears; like as, distressed, Night steals on Day rain sobbing thro' her curls. "Tho' tears become thee even as priceless pearls, Weep not for love's sake! mine no gloom of doubt, But woe for sweet love's death such dreams brought out. Nay, nay; crowned, throned and flame-anointed he Kings our twin-kingdomed hearts eternally. Love, high in Heaven beginning and to cease No majesty when hearts are laid at peace; But reign supreme, if souls have wrought as well, A god in Heaven or a god in Hell. Yea, Morgane, for the favor of his face All our rich world of love I will retrace: "Hurt in that battle where thy brother strove With those five kings thou wot'st of, dearest love, Wherein the five were worsted, I was brought To some king's castle on my shield, methought,-- Out of the grind of spears and roar of swords, From the loud shields of battle-bloody lords, Culled from the mountained slain where Havoc sprawled Gorged to her eyes with carnage, growling crawled;-- By some tall damsels tiremaids of some queen Stately and dark, who moved as if a sheen Of starlight spread her presence; and she came With healing herbs and searched my wounds. A dame So marvelous in raiment silvery I feared lest some attendant chaste were she To that high Holy Grael, which Arthur hath Sought ever widely by hoar wood and path;-- Thus not for me, a worldly one, to love, Who loved her even to wonder; skied above His worship as our moon above the Main, That passions upward yearning in great pain, And suffers wearily from year to year, She peaceful pitiless with virgin cheer.-- Ah, ideal love, as merciless as fate! And, oh, that savage aching which must wait For its fulfillment, tortured love in tears, Until that beauty dreamed of many years Bends over one from luminous skies, so grand One's weakness fears to touch its mastering hand, And hesitates and stammers nothings weak, And loves and loves with love that can not speak! Ah, there's the tyranny that breeds despair; Breaks hearts whose strong youth by one golden hair Coiled 'round the throat is sooner strangled dumb Than by a glancing dagger thrust from gloom Of an old arras at the very hour One thought one safest in one's guarded tower.-- Thus, Morgane, worshiping that lady I Was speechless; longing now to live, now die, As her fine face suggested secrets of Some passion kin to mine, or scorn of love That dragged heroic humbleness to her feet, For one long look that spake and made such sweet. Ah, never dreamed I of what was to be,-- Nay! nay! how could I? while that agony Of doubtful love denied my heart too much, Too much to dream of that perfection such As was to grant me boisterous hours of life And sever all the past as with a knife! "One night a tempest scourged and beat and lashed The writhing forest and vast thunders crashed Clamorous with clubs of leven, and anon, Between the thunder pauses, seas would groan Like some enormous curse a knight hath lured From where it soared to maim it with his sword. I, with eyes partly lidded, seemed to see That cloudy, wide-wrenched night's eternity Yawn hells of golden ghastliness; and sweep Distending foams tempestuous up each steep Of furious iron, where pale mermaids sit With tangled hair black-blown, who, bit by bit, Chant glimmering; beckoning on to strangling arms Some hurt bark hurrying in the ravenous storm's Resistless exultation; till there came One breaker mounting inward, all aflame With glow-worm green, to boom against the cliff Its thunderous bulk--and there, sucked pale and stiff, Tumbled in eddies up the howling rocks My dead, drawn face; eyes lidless; matted locks Oozed close with brine; tossed upward merrily By streaming mermaids.--Madly seemed to see The vampire echoes of the hoarse wood, who, Collected, sought me; down the casement drew Wet, shuddering fingers sharply; thronging fast Up hooting turrets, fell thick screaming, cast Down bastioned battlements trooped whistling off; From the wild woodland growled a backward scoff.-- Then far away, hoofs of a thousand gales, As wave rams wave up windy bluffs of Wales, Loosed from the groaning hills, the cohorts loud, Spirits of thunder, charioteered of cloud, Roared down the rocking night cored with the glare Of fiery eyeballs swimming; their drenched hair Blown black as rain unkempt back from black brows, Wide mouths of storm that voiced a hell carouse And bulged tight cheeks with wind, rolled riotous by Ruining to ruinous cliffs to headlong die. "Once when the lightning made the casement glare Squares touched to gold, between it rose her hair, As if a raven's wing had cut the storm Death-driven seaward; and a vague alarm Stung me with terrors of surmise where hope As yet pruned weak wings crippled by their scope. And, lo, she kneeled low, radiant, wonderful, Lawn-raimented and white; kneeled low,--'to lull These thoughts of night such storms might shape in thee, All such to peace and sleep,'--Ah, God! to see Her like a benediction fleshed! with her Hearing her voice! her cool hand wandering bare Wistful on feverish brow thro' long deep curls! To see her rich throat's carcaneted pearls Rise as her pulses! eyes' large influence Poured toward me straight as stars, whose sole defense Against all storm is their bold beauty! then To feel her breathe and hear her speak again! 'Love, mark,' I said or dreamed I moaned in dreams, 'How wails the tumult and the thunder gleams! As if of Arthur's knights had charged two fields Bright as sun-winds of dawn; swords, spears and shields Flashed lordly shocked; had,--to a man gone down In burst of battle hurled,--lain silent sown. Love, one eternal tempest thus with thee Were calm, dead calm! but, no!--for thee in me Such calm proves tempest. Speak; I feel thy voice Throb soft, caressing silence, healing noise.' "Is radiance loved of radiance? day of day? Lithe beam of beam and laughing ray of ray? Hope loved of hope and happiness of joy, Or love of love, who hath the world for toy? And thou--thou lov'st my voice? fond Accolon! Why not--yea, why not?--nay!--I prithee!--groan Not for that thou hast had long since thine all.' She smiled; and dashed down storm's black-crumbled wall, Baptizing moonlight bathed her, foot and face Deluging, as my soul brake toward her grace With worship from despair and secret grief, That felt hot tears of heartsease sweet and brief. And one immortal night to me she said Words, lay I white in death had raised me red. 'Rest now,' they were, 'I love thee with _such_ love!-- 'Some speak of secret love, but God above Hath knowledge and divinement.'... Passionate low, 'To lie by thee to-night my mind is':--So She laughed;--'Sleep well!--for me? why, thy fast word Of knighthood, look thou, and this naked sword Laid in betwixt us.... Let it be a wall Strong between love and lust and lov'st me all in all.' Undid the goodly gold from her clasped waist; Unbound deep locks; and, like a blossom faced, Stood sweet an unswayed stem that ran to bud In breasts and face a graceful womanhood. And fragrance was to her as natural As odor to the rose; and she a tall, White ardor and white fervor in the room Moved, some pale presence that with light doth bloom. Then all mine eyes and lips and limbs were fire; My tongue delirious throbbed a lawless lyre, That harped loud words of laud for loveliness, Inspired of such, but these I can not guess. Then she, as pure as snows of peaks that keep Sun-cloven crowns of virgin, vanquishing steep, Frowned on me, and the thoughts, that in my brain Had risen a glare of gems, set dull like rain, And fair I spake her and with civil pain: "'Thine, sweet, a devil's kindness which is given For earthly pleasure but bars out from Heaven. Temptation harbored, like a bloody rust On a bright blade, leaves ugly stains; and lust Is love's undoing when love's limbs are cast A commonness to desire that makes unchaste; And this warm nearness of what should be hid Makes love a lawless love. But, thou hast bid;-- Rest thou; I love thee, how,--I only know: But all that love shall shout "out!" at love's foe.' And turning sighed into my hair; and she Stretched the broad blade's division suddenly. And so we lay its fire between us twain; Unsleeping I, for, oh, that devil pain Of passion in me that strove up and stood A rebel wrangling with the brain and blood! An hour stole by: she slept or seemed to sleep. The winds of night came vigorous from the deep With storm gusts of fresh-watered field and wold That breathed of ocean meadows bluely rolled. I drowsed and time passed; stealing as for one Whose drowsy life dreams in Avilion. Vast bulks of black, wind-shattered rack went down High casement squares of heaven, a crystal crown Of bubbled moonlight on each monstrous head, Like as great ghosts of giant kings long dead. And then, meseemed, she lightly laughed and sighed, So soft a taper had not bent aside, And leaned a soft face seen thro' loosened hair Above me, whisp'ring as if sweet in prayer, 'Behold, the sword! I take the sword away!' It curved and clashed where the strewn rushes lay; Shone glassy, glittering like a watery beam Of moonlight in the moonlight. I did deem She moved in sleep and dreamed perverse, nor wist That which she did until two fierce lips kissed My wondering eyes to wakement of her thought. Then spake I, 'Love, my word! is it then naught? Nay, nay, my word albeit the sword be gone!-- And wouldst thou try me? rest thou safe till dawn! I will not thus forswear! my word stands fast!' But now I felt hot, desperate kisses cast On hair, eyes, throat and lips and over and over, Low laughter of 'Sweet wretch! and thou--a lover? What is that word if she thou gavest it Unbind thee of it? lo, and she sees fit!' Ah, Morgane, Morgane, then I knew 'twas thou, Thou! thou! who only could such joy allow." "And, oh, unburied passion of that night; The sleepy birds too early piped of light; Too soon came Light girt with a rosy breeze, Strong from his bath, to wrestle with the trees, A thewy hero; and, alas! too soon Our scutcheoned oriel stained was overstrewn Of Dawn's air-jewels; then I sang a strain Of sleep that in my memory strives again: "Ethereal limbed the lovely Sleep should sit, Her starbeam locks with some vague splendor lit, Like that the glow-worm's emerald radiance sheds Thro' twilight dew-drops globed on lily-beds. Her face as fair as if of graven stone, Yet dim and airy us a cloud alone In the bare blue of Heaven, smiling sweet, For languorous thoughts of love that flit and fleet Short-rainbow-winged about her crumpled hair; Yet on her brow a pensiveness more fair, Ungraspable and sad and lost, I wist, Than thoughts of maiden whom her love hath kissed, Who knows, thro' deepening eyes and drowsy breath, Him weeping bent whiles she drifts on to death. Full sweet and sorrowful and blithe withal Should be her brow; not wholly spiritual, But tinged with mortal for the mortal mind, And smote with flushings from some Eden wind; Hinting at heart's ease and a god's desire Of pleasure hastening in a garb of fire From some dim country over storied seas Glassed of content and foamed of mysteries. Her ears two sea-pearls' morning-tender pink, And strung to harkening as if on a brink Night with profundity of death and doubt, Yet touched with awfulness of light poured out. Ears strung to palpitations of heart throbs As sea-shells waver with dim ocean sobs. One hand, curved like a mist on dusking skies, Hollowing smooth brows to shade dark velvet eyes,-- Dark-lashed and dewed of tear-drops beautiful,-- To sound the cowering conscience of the dull, Sleep-sodden features in their human rest, Ere she dare trust her pureness to that breast. Large limbs diaphanous and fleeced with veil Of wimpled heat, wove of the pulsing pale Of rosy midnight, and stained thro' with stars In golden cores; clusters of quivering bars Of nebulous gold, twined round her fleecily. A lucid shape vague in vague mystery. Untrammeled bosoms swelling free and white And prodigal of balm; cupped lilies bright, That to the famished mind yield their pure, best, Voluptuous sleep like honey sucked in rest." Thus they communed. And there her castle stood With slender towers ivied o'er the wood; An ancient chapel creeper-buried near; A forest vista, where faint herds of deer Stalked like soft shadows; where the hares did run, Mavis and throstle caroled in the sun. For it was Morgane's realm, embowered Gore; That rooky pile her palace whence she bore With Urience sway; but he at Camelot Knew naught of intrigues here at Chariot. II. Noon; and the wistful Autumn sat among The lurid woodlands; chiefs who now were wrung By crafty ministers, sun, wind and frost, To don imperial pomp at any cost. On each wild hill they stood as if for war Flaunting barbaric raiment wide and far; And burnt-out lusts in aged faces raged; Their tottering state by flattering zephyrs paged, Who in a little fretful while, how soon! Would work rebellion under some wan moon; Pluck their old beards deriding; shriek and tear Rich royalty; sow tattered through the air Their purple majesty; and from each head Dash down its golden crown, and in its stead Set there a pale-death mockery of snow, Leave them bemoaning beggars bowed with woe. Blow, wood-wind, blow! now that all's fresh and fine As earth and wood can make it; fresh as brine And rare with sodden scents of underbrush. Ring, and one hears a cavalcade a-rush; Bold blare of horns; shrill music of steel bows;-- A horn! a horn! the hunt is up and goes Beneath the acorn-dropping oaks in green,-- Dark woodland green, a boar-spear held between His selle and hunter's head, and at his thigh A good, broad hanger, and one fist on high To wind the rapid echoes from his horn, That start the field birds from the sheavéd corn, Uphurled in vollies of audacious wings, That cease again when it no longer sings. Away, away, they flash a belted band From Camelot thro' that haze-ghostly land; Hounds leashed and leamers and a flash of steel, A tramp of horse and the long-baying peal Of stag hounds whimp'ring and--behold! the hart, A lordly height, doth from the covert dart; And the big blood-hounds strain unto the chase. A-hunt! a-hunt! the _pryce_ seems but a pace On ere 'tis wound; but now, where interlace The dense-briered underwoods, the hounds have lost The slot, there where a forest brook hath crossed With intercepting waters full of leaves. Beyond, the hart a tangled labyrinth weaves Thro' dimmer boscage, and the wizard sun Shapes many shadowy stags that seem to run Wild herds before the baffled foresters. And treed aloft a reckless laugh one hears, As if some helping goblin from the trees Mocked them the unbayed hart and made a breeze His pursuivant of mocking. Hastening thence Pursued King Arthur and King Urience With one small brachet, till scarce hear could they Their fellowship far-furthered course away On fresher trace of hind or rugged boar With haggard, hairy flanks, curled tusks and hoar With fierce foam-fury; and of these bereft The kings continued in the slot they'd left. And there the hart plunged gallant thro' the brake Leaving a torn path shaking in his wake, Down which they followed on thro' many a copse Above whose brush, close on before, the tops Of the large antlers swelled anon, and so Were gone where beat the brambles to and fro. And still they drave him hard; and ever near Seemed that great hart unwearied; and such cheer Still stung them to the chase. When Arthur's horse Gasped mightily and lunging in his course Lay dead, a lordly bay; and Urience Left his gray hunter dying near; and thence They held the hunt afoot; when suddenly Were they aware of a wide, roughened sea, And near the wood the hart upon the sward Bayed, panting unto death and winded hard. Right so the king dispatched him and the _pryce_ Wound on his hunting bugle clearly thrice. As if each echo, which that wild horn's blast Waked from its sleep,--the quietude had cast Tender as mercy on it,--in a band Rose moving sounds of gladness hand in hand, Came twelve fair damsels, sunny in sovereign white, From that red woodland gliding. These each knight Graced with obeisance and "Our lord," said one, "Tenders ye courtesy until the dawn; The Earl Sir Damas; well in his wide keep, Seen thither with due worship, ye shall sleep." And then they came o'erwearied to a hall, An owlet-haunted pile, whose weedy wall Towered based on crags rough, windy turrets high; An old, gaunt giant-castle 'gainst a sky Wherein the moon hung foam-faced, large and full. Down on dank sea-foundations broke the dull, Weird monotone of ocean, and wide rolled The watery wilderness that was as old As loud, defying headlands stretching out Beneath still stars with a voluminous shout Of wreck and wrath forever. Here the two Were feasted fairly and with worship due All errant knights, and then a damsel led Each knight with flaring lamp unto his bed Down separate corridores of that great keep; And soon they rested in a heavy sleep. And then King Arthur woke, and woke mid groans Of dolorous knights; and 'round him lay the bones Of many woful champions mouldering; And he could hear the open ocean ring Wild wasted waves above. And so he thought "It is some nightmare weighing me, distraught By that long hunt;" and then he sought to shake The horror off and to himself awake; But still he heard sad groans and whispering sighs, And deep in iron-ribbéd cells the eyes Of pale, cadaverous knights shone fixed on him Unhappy; and he felt his senses swim With foulness of that cell, and, "What are ye? Ghosts of chained champions or a company Of phantoms, bodiless fiends? If speak ye can, Speak, in God's name! for I am here--a man!" Then groaned the shaggy throat of one who lay A dusky nightmare dying day by day, Yet once of comely mien and strong withal And greatly gracious; but, now hunger-tall, With scrawny beard and faded hands and cheeks: "Sir knight," said he, "know that the wretch who speaks Is but an one of twenty knights here shamed Of him who lords this castle, Damas named, Who mews us here for slow starvation keen; Around you fade the bones of some eighteen Tried knights of Britain; and God grant that soon My hunger-lengthened ghost will see the moon, Beyond the vileness of this prisonment!" With that he sighed and round the dungeon went A rustling sigh, like saddened sin, and so Another dim, thin voice complained their woe:-- "He doth enchain us with this common end, That he find one who will his prowess bend To the attainment of his livelihood. A younger brother, Ontzlake, hath he; good And courteous, withal most noble, whom This Damas hates--yea, ever seeks his doom; Denying him to their estate all right Save that he holds by main of arms and might. And thro' puissance hath he some fat fields And one rich manor sumptuous, where he yields Belated knights host's hospitality. Then bold is Ontzlake, Damas cowardly. For Ontzlake would decide by sword and lance Body for body this inheritance; But Damas dotes on life so courageless; Thus on all knights perforce lays coward's stress To fight for him or starve. For ye must know That in his country he is hated so That no helm here is who will take the fight; Thus fortunes it our plight is such a plight." Quoth he and ceased. And wondering at the tale The King was thoughtful, and each faded, pale, Poor countenance still conned him when he spake: "And what reward if one this battle take?" "Deliverance for all if of us one Consent to be his party's champion. But treachery and he are so close kin We loathe the part as some misshapen sin, And here would rather dally on to death Than serving falseness save and slave our breath." "May God deliver you for mercy, sirs!" And right anon an iron noise he hears Of chains clanked loose and bars jarred rusty back, The heavy gate croak open; and the black Of that rank cell astonished was with light, That danced fantastic with the frantic night. One high torch sidewise worried by the gust Sunned that lorn den of hunger, death and rust, And one tall damsel vaguely vestured, fair With shadowy hair, poised on the rocky stair. And laughing on the King, "What cheer?" said she; "God's life! the keep stinks vilely! and to see So noble knights endungeoned hollowing here Doth pain me sore with pity--but, what cheer?" "Thou mockest us; for me the sorriest Since I was suckled; and of any quest To me the most imperiling and strange.-- But what wouldst thou?" said Arthur. She, "A change I offer thee, through thee to these with thee, And thou but grant me in love's courtesy To fight for Damas and his livelihood. And if thou wilt not--look! thou seest this brood Of lean and dwindled bellies specter-eyed, Keen knights erst who refused me?--so decide." Then thought the King of the sweet sky, the breeze That blew delirious over waves and trees; Thick fields of grasses and the sunny earth Whose beating heat filled the red heart with mirth, And made the world one sovereign pleasure house Where king and serf might revel and carouse; Then of the hunt on autumn-plaintive hills; Lone forest chapels by their radiant rills: His palace rich at Caerlleon upon Usk, And Camelot's loud halls that thro' the dusk Blazed far and bloomed a rose of revelry; Or in the misty morning shadowy Loomed grave for audience. And then he thought Of his Round Table and that Grael wide sought In haunted holds on demon-sinful shore; Then marveled of what wars would rise and roar With dragon heads unconquered and devour This realm of Britain and pluck up that flower Of chivalry whence ripened his renown: And then the reign of some besotted crown, A bandit king of lust, idolatry-- And with that thought for tears he could not see: Then of his greatest champions, King Ban's son, And Galahad and Tristram, Accolon: And then, ah God! of his dear Guenevere, And with that thought--to starve and moulder here?-- For, being unfriend to Arthur and his court, Well wist he this grim Earl would bless that sport Of fortune which had fortuned him so well To have to starve his sovereign in a cell.-- In the entombing rock where ground the deep; And all the life shut in his limbs did leap Thro' eager veins and sinews fierce and red, Stung on to action, and he rose and said: "That which thou askest is right hard, but, lo! To rot here harder; I will fight his foe. But, mark, I have no weapons and no mail, No steed against that other to avail." "Fear not for that; and thou shalt lack none, sire." And so she led the path: her torch's fire Scaring wild spidery shadows at each stride From cob-webbed coignes of scowling passes wide, That labyrinthed the rock foundation strong Of that ungainly fortress bleak of wrong. At length they came to a nail-studded door, Which she unlocked with one harsh key she bore Mid many keys bunched at her girdle; thence They issued on a terraced eminence. Beneath the sea broke sounding; and the King Breathed open air that had the smell and sting Of brine morn-vigored and blue-billowed foam; For in the East the second dawning's gloam, Since that unlucky chase, was freaked with streaks Red as the ripe stripes of an apple's cheeks. And so within that larger light of dawn It seemed to Arthur now that he had known This maiden at his court, and so he asked. But she, well-tutored, her real person masked, And answered falsely; "Nay, deceive thee not; Thou saw'st me ne'er at Arthur's court, I wot. For here it likes me best to sing and spin And work the hangings my sire's halls within: No courts or tournaments or gallants brave To flatter me and love! for me--the wave, The forest, field and sky; the calm, the storm; My garth wherein I walk to think; the charm Of uplands redolent at bounteous noon And full of sunlight; night's free stars and moon; White ships that pass some several every year; These lonesome towers and those wild mews to hear." "An owlet maid!" the King laughed. But, untrue Was she, and of false Morgane's treasonous crew, Who worked vile wiles ev'n to the slaying of The King, half-brother, whom she did not love. And presently she brought him where in state This swarthy Damas with mailed cowards sate.... King Urience that dawning woke and found Himself safe couched at Camelot and wound In Morgane's arms; nor weened he how it was That this thing secretly had come to pass. But Accolon at Chariot sojourned still Content with his own dreams; for 'twas the will Of Morgane thus to keep him hidden here For her desire's excess, where everywhere In Gore by wood and river pleasure houses, Pavilions, rose of rock for love carouses; And there in one, where 'twas her dearest wont To list a tinkling, falling water fount,-- Which thro' sweet talks of idle paramours At sensuous ease on tumbled beds of flowers, Had caught a laughing language light thereof, And rambled ever gently whispering, "love!"-- On cool white walls her hands had deftly draped A dark rich hanging, where were worked and shaped Her fullest hours of pleasure flesh and mind, Imperishable passions, which could wind The past and present quickly; and could mate Dead loves to kisses, and intoxicate With moon-soft words of past delight and song The heavy heart that wronged forgot the wrong. And there beside it pooled the urnéd well, And slipping thence thro' dripping shadows fell From rippling rock to rock. Here Accolon, With Morgane's hollow lute, one studious dawn Came solely; with not ev'n her brindled hound To leap beside him o'er the gleaming ground; No handmaid lovely of his loveliest fair, Or paging dwarf in purple with him there; But this her lute, about which her perfume Clung odorous of memories, that made bloom Her flowing features rosy to his eyes, That saw the words, his sense could but surmise, Shaped on dim, breathing lips; the laugh that drunk Her deep soul-fire from eyes wherein it sunk And slowly waned away to smouldering dreams, Fathomless with thought, far in their dove-gray gleams. And so for those most serious eyes and lips, Faint, filmy features, all the music slips Of buoyant being bubbling to his voice To chant her praises; and with nervous poise His fleet, trained fingers call from her long lute Such riotous notes as must make madly mute The nightingale that listens quivering. And well he knows that winging hence it'll sing These aching notes, whose beauties burn and pain Its anguished heart now sobless, not in vain Wild 'neath her casement in that garden old Dingled with heavy roses; in the gold Of Camelot's stars and pearl-encrusted moon; And if it dies, the heartache of the tune Shall clamor stormy passion at her ear, Of death more dear than life if love be there; Melt her quick eyes to tears, her throat to sobs Tumultuous heaved, while separation throbs Hard at her heart, and longing rears to Death Two prayerful eyes of pleading "for one breath-- An ardor of fierce life--crushed in his arms Close, close! and, oh, for such, all these smooth charms, Full, sentient charms voluptuous evermore!" And sweet to know these sensitive vows shall soar Ev'n to the dull ear of her drowsy lord Beside her; heart-defying with each word Harped in the bird's voice rhythmically clear. And thus he sang to her who was not there: "She comes! her presence, like a moving song Breathed soft of loveliest lips and lute-like tongue, Sways all the gurgling forests from their rest: I fancy where her rustling foot is pressed, So faltering, love seems timid, but how strong That darling love that flutters in her breast! "She comes! and the green vistas are stormed thro'-- As if wild wings, wet-varnished with dripped dew, Had dashed a sudden sunbeam tempest past, --With her eyes' inspiration clearly chaste; A rhythmic lavishment of bright gray blue, Long arrows of her eyes perfection cast. "Ah, God! she comes! and, Love, I feel thy breath, Like the soft South who idly wandereth Thro' musical leaves of laughing laziness, Page on before her, how sweet--none can guess! To say my soul 'Here's harmony dear as death To sigh wild vows, or utterless, to bless.' "She comes! ah, God! and all my brain is brave To war for words to laud her and to lave Her queenly beauty in such vows whereof May hush melodious cooings of a dove: For her light feet the favored path to pave With oaths, like roses, raving mad with love. "She comes! in me a passion--as the moon Works madness in strong men--my blood doth swoon Towards her glory; and I feel her soul Cling lip to lip with mine; and now the whole Mix with me, aching like a tender tune Exhausted; lavished in a god's control. "She comes! ah, Christ! ye eager stars that grace The fragmentary skies, that dimple space, Clink, and I hear her harp-sweet footfalls come: Ah, wood-indulging, violet-vague perfume, Art of her presence, of her wild-flower face, That like some gracious blossom stains the gloom? "Oh, living exultation of the blood! That now--as sunbursts, the almighty mood Of some moved god, scatter the storm that roars, And hush--her love like some spent splendor pours Into it all immaculate maidenhood, And all the heart that hesitates--adores. "Vanquished! so vanquished!--ah, triumphant sweet! The height of heaven--supine at thy feet! Where love feasts crowned, and basks in such a glare As hearts of suns burn, in thine eyes and hair, Unutterable with raveled fires that cheat The ardent clay of me and make me air. "And so, rare witch, thy blood, like some lewd wine, Shall subtly make me, like thee, half divine; And,--sweet rebellion!--clasp thee till thou urge To combat close of savage kisses: surge A war that rubies all thy proud cheeks' shine,-- Slain, struggling blushes,--till white truce emerge. "My life for thine, thus bartered lip to lip! A striving being pulsant, that shall slip Like song and flame in sense from thee to me; Nor held, but quick rebartered thence to thee: So our two loves be as a singleship, Ten thousand loves as one eternally." Babbled the woodland like a rocky brook; And as the ecstacy of foliage shook, Hot pieces of bright, sunny heavens glanced Like polished silver thro' pale leaves that danced. As one hath seen some green-gowned huntress fair, Morn in her cheeks and midnight in her hair, Eyes clear as hollow dews; clean limbs as lithe As limbs swift morning moves; a voice as blithe As high hawk's ringing thro' the falling dews; Pant thro' the bramble-matted avenues,-- Where brier and thorn have gashed her gown's pinched green, About bright breasts and arms, the milky sheen Of white skin healthy pouting out; her face, Ardent and flushed, fixed on the lordly chase. III. The eve now came; and shadows cowled the way Like somber palmers, who have kneeled to pray Beside a wayside shrine, and rosy rolled Up the capacious West a grainy gold, Luxuriant fluid, burned thro' strong, keen skies, Which seemed as towering gates of Paradise Surged dim, far glories on the hungry gaze. And from that sunset down the roseate ways, To Accolon, who with his idle lute, Reclined in revery against a root Of a great oak, a fragment of that West, A dwarf, in crimson satin tightly dressed, Skipped like a leaf the rather frosts have burned And cozened to a fever red, that turned And withered all its sap. And this one came From Camelot; from his beloved dame, Morgane the Fay. He on his shoulder bore A burning blade wrought strange with wizard lore, Runed mystically; and a scabbard which Glared venomous, with angry jewels rich. He, louting to the knight, "Sir knight," said he, "Your lady with all sweetest courtesy Assures you--ah, unworthy messenger I of such brightness!--of that love of her." Then doffing that great baldric, with the sword To him he gave: "And this from him, my lord King Arthur; even his Excalibur, The sovereign blade, which Merlin gat of her, The Ladye of the Lake, who Launcelot Fostered from infanthood, as well you wot, In some wierd mere in Briogn's tangled lands Of charms and mist; where filmy fairy bands By lazy moons of Autumn spin their fill Of giddy morrice on the frosty hill. By goodness of her favor this is sent; Who craved King Arthur boon with this intent: That soon for her a desperate combat one With one of mightier prowess were begun; And with the sword Excalibur right sure Were she against that champion to endure. The blade flame-trenchant, but more prize the sheath Which stauncheth blood and guardeth from all death." He said: and Accolon looked on the sword, A mystic falchion, and, "It shall wend hard With him thro' thee, unconquerable blade, Whoe'er he be, who on my Queen hath laid Stress of unworship: and the hours as slow As palsied hours in Purgatory go For those unmassed, till I have slain this foe! My purse, sweet page; and now--to her who gave, Dispatch! and this:--to all commands--her slave, To death obedient. In love or war Her love to make me all the warrior. Plead her grace mercy for so long delay From love that dies an hourly death each day Till her white hands kissed he shall kiss her face, By which his life breathes in continual grace." Thus he commanded; and incontinent The dwarf departed like a red ray sent From rich down-flowering clouds of suffused light Winged o'er long, purple glooms; and with the night, Whose votaress cypress stoled the dying strife Softly of day, and for whose perished life Gave heaven her golden stars, in dreamy thought Wends Accolon to hazy Chariot. And it befell him; wandering one dawn, As was his wont, across a dew-drenched lawn, Glad with night freshness and elastic health In sky and earth that lavished worlds of wealth From heady breeze and racy smells, a knight And lofty lady met he; gay bedight, With following of six esquires; and they Held on straight wrists the jess'd gerfalcon gray, And rode a-hawking o'er the leas of Gore From Ontzlake's manor, where he languished; sore Hurt in the lists, a spear thrust in his thigh: Who had besought--for much he feared to die-- This knight and his fair lady, as they rode To hawk near Chariot, the Queen's abode, That they would pray her in all charity Fare post to him,--for in chirurgery Of all that land she was the greatest leach,-- And her to his recovery beseech. So, Accolon saluted, they drew rein, And spake their message,--for right over fain Were they toward their sport,--that he might bare Petition to that lady. But, not there Was Arthur's sister, as they well must wot; But now a se'nnight lay at Camelot, Of Guenevere the guest; and there with her Four other queens of farther Britain were: Isoud of Ireland, she of Cornwall Queen, King Mark's wife; who right rarely then was seen At court for jealousy of Mark, who knew Her to that lance of Lyonesse how true Since mutual quaffing of a philter; while How guilty Guenevere on such could smile: She of Northgales and she of Eastland: and She of the Out Isles Queen. A fairer band For sovereignty and love and loveliness Was not in any realm to grace and bless. Then quoth the knight, "Ay? see how fortune turns And varies like an April day, that burns Now welkins blue with calm, now scowls them down, Revengeful, with a black storm's wrinkled frown. For, look, this Damas, who so long hath lain A hiding vermin, fearful of all pain, Dark in his bandit towers by the deep, Wakes from a five years' torpor and a sleep; So sends dispatch a courier to my lord With, 'Lo! behold! to-morrow with the sword Earl Damas by his knight at point of lance Decides the issue of inheritance, Body to body, or by champion.' Right hard to find such ere to-morrow dawn. Though sore bestead lies Ontzlake, and he could, Right fain were he to save his livelihood. Then mused Sir Accolon: "The adventure goes Ev'n as my Lady fashioneth; who knows But what her arts develop this and make?" And thus to those: "His battle I will take,-- And he be so conditioned, harried of Estate and life,--in knighthood and for love. Conduct me thither." And, gramercied, then Mounted a void horse of that wondering train, And thence departed with two squires. And they Came to a lone, dismantled priory Hard by a castle gray on whose square towers, Machicolated, o'er the forest's bowers, The immemorial morning bloomed and blushed. A woodland manor olden, dark embushed In wild and woody hills. And then one wound An echoy horn, and with the boundless sound The drawbridge rumbled moatward clanking, and Into a paved court passed that little band.... When all the world was morning, gleam and glare Of far deluging glory, and the air Sang with the wood-bird, like a humming lyre Swept bold of minstrel fingers wire on wire; Ere that fixed hour of prime came Arthur armed For battle royally. A black steed warmed A fierce impatience 'neath him cased in mail, Huge, foreign; and accoutered head to tail In costly sendal; rearward wine-dark red, Amber as sunlight to his fretful head. Firm, heavy armor blue had Arthur on Beneath a robe of honor, like the dawn, Satin and diapered and purflewed deep With lordly golden purple; whence did sweep Two hanging acorn tuftings of fine gold, And at his thigh a falchion, long and bold, Heavy and triple-edged; its scabbard, red Cordovan leather; thence a baldric led Of new cut deer-skin; this laborious wrought, And curiously with slides of gold was fraught, And buckled with a buckle white that shone, Bone of the sea-horse, tongued with jet-black bone. And, sapphire-set, a burgonet of gold Barbaric, wyvern-crested whose throat rolled A flame-sharp tongue of agate, and whose eyes Glowed venomous great rubies fierce of prize. And in his hand, a wiry lance of ash, Lattened with finest silver, like a flash Of sunlight in the morning shone a-gash. Clad was his squire most richly; he whose head Curled with close locks of yellow tinged to red: Of noble bearing; fair face; hawk eyes keen, And youthful, bearded chin. Right well beseen, Scarfed with blue satin; on his shoulder strong One broad gold brooch chased strangely, thick and long. His legs in hose of rarest Totness clad, And parti-colored leathern shoes he had Gold-latched; and in his hand a bannered spear Speckled and bronzen sharpened in the air. So with his following, while lay like scars The blue mist thin along the woodland bars, Thro' dew and fog, thro' shadow and thro' ray Joustward Earl Damas led the forest way. Then to King Arthur when arrived were these To where the lists shone silken thro' the trees, Bannered and draped, a wimpled damsel came, Secret, upon a palfrey all aflame With sweat and heat of hurry, and, "From her, Your sister Morgane, your Excalibur, With tender greeting: For ye well have need In this adventure of him. So, God speed!" And so departed suddenly: nor knew The king but this his weapon tried and true. But brittle this and fashioned like thereof, And false of baser metal, in unlove And treason to his life, of her of kin Half sister, Morgane--an unnatural sin. Then heralded into the lists he rode. Opposed flashed Accolon, who light bestrode, Exultant, proud in talisman of that sword, A dun horse lofty as a haughty lord, Pure white about each hollow, pasterned hoof. Equipped shone knight and steed in arms of proof, Dappled with yellow variegated plate Of Spanish laton. And of sovereign state His surcoat robe of honor white and black Of satin, red-silk needled front and back Then blackly bordered. And above his robe That two-edged sword,--a throbbing golden globe Of vicious jewels,--thrust its burning hilt, Its broad belt, tawny and with gold-work gilt, Clasped with the eyelid of a black sea-horse Whose tongue was rosy gold. And stern as Force His visored helmet burned like fire, of rich And bronzen laton hammered; and on which An hundred crystals glittered, thick as on A silver web bright-studding dews of dawn. The casque's tail crest a taloned griffin ramped, In whose horned brow one virtuous jewel stamped. An ashen spear round-shafted, overlaid With fine blue silver, whereon colors played, Firm in his iron gauntlet lithely swayed. Intense on either side an instant stood Glittering as serpents which, with Spring renewed, In glassy scales meet on some greening way, Angry advance, quick tongues at poisonous play. Then clanged a herald's clarion and sharp heels, Harsh-spurred, each champion's springing courser feels Touch to red onset; the aventured spears Hurled like two sun-bursts of a storm when clears Laborious thunders; and in middle course Shrieked shrill the unpierced shields; mailed horse from horse Lashed madly pawing--and a hoarse roar rang From buckram lists, till the wild echoes sang Of leagues on leagues of forest and of cliff. Rigid the proof-shelled warriors passed and stiff Whither their squires fresher spears upheld; Nor stayed to breathe; but scarcely firmly selled Launched deadly forward. Shield to savage shield Opposing; crest to crest, whose fronts did wield A towering war's unmercifulest scath; Rocking undaunted, glared wan withering wrath From balls of jeweled eyes, and raging stood Slim, slippery bodies, in the sun like blood. The lance of Accolon, as on a rock Long storm-launched foam breaks baffled, with the shock, On Arthur's sounding shield burst splintered force; But him resistless Arthur's,--high from horse Sell-lifted,--ruinous bare crashing on A long sword's length; unsaddled Accolon For one stunned moment lay. Then rising, drew The great sword at his hip, that shone like dew Fresh flashed in morn. "Descend;" he stiffly said, "To proof of better weapons head for head! Enough of spears, to swords!" and so the knight Addressed him to the King. Dismounting light, Arthur his moon-bright brand unsheathed, and high Each covering shield gleamed slanting to the sky, Relentless, strong, and stubborn; underneath Their wary shelters foined the glittering death Of stolid steel thrust livid arm to arm: As cloud to cloud growls up a soaring storm Above the bleak wood and lithe lightnings work Brave blades wild warring, in the black that lurk, Thus fenced and thrust--one tortoise shield descends, Leaps a fierce sword shrill,--like a flame which sends A long fang heavenward,--for a crushing stroke; Swings hard and trenchant, and, resounding heard, Sings surly helmward full; defiance reared Soars to a brother blow to shriek again Blade on brave blade. And o'er the battered plain, Forward and backward, blade on baleful blade, Teeth clenched as visors where the fierce eyes made A cavernous, smouldering fury, shield at shield, Unflinchingly remained and scorned to yield. So Arthur drew aside to rest upon His falchion for a pause; but Accolon As yet, thro' virtue of that magic sheath Fresh and almighty, being no nearer death Thro' loss of blood than when the trial begun, Chafed with delay. But Arthur with the sun, Its thirsty heat, the loss from wounds of blood, Leaned fainting weary and so resting stood. Cried Accolon, "Here is no time for rest! Defend thee!" and straight on the monarch pressed; "Defend or yield thee as one recreant!" Full on his helm a hewing blow did plant, Which beat a flying fire from the steel; Smote, like one drunk with wine, the King did reel, Breath, brain bewildered. Then, infuriate, Nerve-stung with vigor by that blow, in hate Gnarled all his strength into one stroke of might, And in both fists the huge blade knotted tight, Swung red, terrific to a sundering stroke.-- As some bright wind that hurls th' uprooted oak,-- Boomed full the beaten burgonet he wore: Hacked thro' and thro' the crest, and cleanly shore The golden boasting of its griffin fierce With hollow clamor down astounded ears: No further thence--but, shattered to the grass, That brittle blade, crushed as if made of glass, Into hot pieces like a broken ray Burst sunward and in feverish fragments lay. Then groaned the King unarmed; and so he knew This no Excalibur; that tried and true Most perfect tempered, runed and mystical. Sobbed, "_Oh, hell-false! betray me?_"-- Then withal Him seemed this foe, who fought with so much stress, So long untiring, and with no distress Of wounds or heat, through treachery bare his brand; And then he knew it by its hilt that hand Clutched to an avenging stroke. For Accolon In madness urged the belted battle on His King defenseless; who, the hilted cross Of that false weapon grasped, beneath the boss Of his deep-dented shield crouched; and around Crawled the unequal conflict o'er the ground, Sharded with shattered spears and off-hewn bits Of shivered steel and gold that burnt in fits. So hunted, yet defiant, cowering Beneath his bossy shield's defense, the King Persisted stoutly. And, devising still How to secure his sword and by what skill, Him so it fortuned when most desperate: In that hot chase they came where shattered late Lay tossed the truncheon of a bursten lance, Which deftly seized, to Accolon's advance He wielded valorous. Against the fist Smote where the gauntlet husked the nervous wrist, Which strained the weapon to a wrathful blow; Palsied, the tightened sinews of his foe Loosened from effort, and, the falchion seized, Easy was yielded. Then the wroth King squeezed, --Hurling the moon-disk of his shield afar,-- Him in both knotted arms of wiry war, Rocked sidewise twice or thrice,--as one hath seen Some stern storm take an ash tree, roaring green, Nodding its sappy bulk of trunk and boughs To dizziness, from tough, coiled roots carouse Its long height thundering;--so King Arthur shook Sir Accolon and headlong flung; then took, Tearing away, that scabbard from his side, Tossed thro' the breathless lists, that far and wide Gulped in the battle voiceless. Then right wroth Secured Excalibur, and grasped of both Wild hands swung glittering and brought bitter down On rising Accolon; steel, bone and brawn Hewed thro' that blow; unsettled every sense: Bathed in a world of blood his limbs grew tense And writhen then ungathered limp with death. Bent to him Arthur, from the brow beneath, Unlaced the helm and doffed it and so asked, When the fair forehead's hair curled dark uncasqued, "Say! ere I slay thee, whence and what thou art? What King, what court be thine? and from what part, Speak! or thou diest!--Yet, that brow, methinks I have beheld it--where? say, ere death drinks The soul-light from life's cups, thine eyes! thou art-- What art thou, speak!" He answered slow and short With tortured breathing: "I?--one, Accolon Of Gaul, a knight of Arthur's court--at dawn-- God wot what now I am for love so slain!" Then seemed the victor spasmed with keen pain, Covered with mailéd hands his visored face; "Thou Accolon? art Accolon?" a space Exclaimed and conned him: then asked softly, "Say, Whence gatest thou this sword, or in what way Thou hadst it, speak?" But wandering that knight Heard dully, senses clodded thick with night; Then rallying earthward: "Woe, woe worth the sword! --From love of love who lives, for love yet lord!-- Morgane!--thy love for love in love hadst made Me strong o'er kings an hundred! to have swayed Britain! had this not risen like a fate, Spawned up, a Hell's miscarriage sired of Hate!-- A king? thou curse! a gold and blood crowned king, With Arthur's sister queen?--'Twas she who schemed. And there at Chariot we loved and dreamed Gone some twelve months. There so we had devolved How Arthur's death were compassed and resolved Each liberal morning, like an almoner, Prodigal of silver to the begging air; Each turbulent eve that in heaven's turquoise rolled Convulsive fiery glories deep in gold; Each night--hilarious heavens vast of night!-- Boisterous with quivering stars buoyed bubble-light In flexuous labyrinths o' the intricate sphere. We dreamed and spake Ambition at our ear-- Nay! a crowned curse and crimeful clad she came, To me, that woman, brighter than a flame; And laughed on me with pouting lips up-pursed For kisses which I gave for love: How cursed Was I thereafter! For, lie fleshed in truth, She shrivels to a hag! Behind that youth Ugly, misshapen; Lust not Love, wherein Germs pregnant seed of Hell for hate and sin.-- _I_ seek for such the proudest height of seat, King Arthur's kingdom, and bold fame complete?-- Harlot!--sweet spouse of Urience King of Gore!-- Sweet harlot!--here's that death determined o'er! And now thou hast thy dream, and dreaming grieve That death so ruins it?--Thy mouth to shrieve!-- Nay, nay, I love thee! witness bare this field! I love thee!--heart, dost love her and yet yield?-- Enow! enow! so hale me hence to die!" Then anger in the good King's gloomy eye Burnt, instant-embered, as one oft may see A star leak out of heaven and cease to be. Slow from his visage he his visor raised, And on the dying one mute moment gazed, Then low bespake him grimly: "Accolon, I am that King." He with an awful groan, Blade-battered as he was, beheld and knew; Strained to his tottering knees and haggard drew Up full his armored tallness, hoarsely cried, "The King!" and at his mailed feet clashed and died. Then rose a world of anxious faces pressed About King Arthur, who, though wound-distressed, Bespake that multitude: "Whiles breath and power Remain, judge we these brethren: This harsh hour Hath yielded Damas all this rich estate;-- So it is his--allotted his of Fate Thro' might of arms; so let it be to him. For, stood our oath on knighthood not so slim But that it hath this strong conclusion: This much by us as errant knight is done: Now our decree as King of Britain, hear: We do adjudge this Damas banned fore'er, Outlawed and exiled from all shores and isles Of farthest Britain in its many miles. One month be his--no more! then will we come Even with an iron host to seal his doom; If he be not departed over seas, Hang naked from his battlements to please Of carrion ravens and wild hawks the craws. Thus much for Damas. But our pleasure draws Toward sir Ontzlake, whom it likes the King To take into his knightly following Of that Round Table royal.--Stand our word!-- But I am overweary; take my sword;-- Unharness me; for, battle worn, I tire With bruises' achings and wounds mad with fire; And monasteryward would I right fain, Even Glastonbury and with me the slain." So bare they then the wounded King away, The dead behind. So, closed the Autumn day. * * * * * But when within that abbey he waxed strong, The King remembering him of all the wrong That Damas had inflicted on the land, Commanded Lionell with a staunch band This weed's out-stamping if still rooted there. He riding thither to that robber lair, Led Arthur's hopefulest helms, when thorn on thorn Reddened an hundred spears one winter morn; Built up, a bulk of bastioned rock on rock, Vast battlements, that loomed above the shock Of freshening foam that climbed with haling hands, Lone cloudy-clustered turrets in loud lands Set desolate,--mournful o'er wide, frozen flats,-- Found hollow towers the haunt of owls and bats. IV. Hate, born of Wrath and mother red of Crime, In Hell was whelped ere the hot hands of time, Artificer of God, had coined one world From formless forms of void and 'round it furled Its lordly raiment of the day and night, And germed its womb for seasons throed with might: And Hell sent Hate to man to hate or use, To serve itself by serving and amuse.... For her half brother Morgane had conceived A morbid hatred; in that much she grieved, Envious and jealous, for that high renown And majesty the King for his fast crown Thro' worship had acquired. And once he said, "The closest kin to state are those to dread: No honor such to crush: envenoming All those kind tongues of blood that try to sing Petition to the soul, while conscience quakes Huddled, but stern to hearts whose cold pride takes." And well she knew that Arthur: mightier Than Accolon, without Excalibur Were as a stingless hornet in the joust With all his foreign weapons. So her trust Smiled certain of conclusion; eloquent Gave lofty heart bold hope that at large eyes Piled up imperial dreams of power and prize. And in her carven chamber, oaken dark, Traceried and arrased, o'er the barren park That dripped with Autumn,--for November lay Swathed frostily in fog on every spray,-- Thought at her tri-arched casement lone, one night, Ere yet came knowledge of that test of might. Her lord in slumber and the castle dull With silence or with sad wind-music full. "And he removed?--fond fool! _he is removed!_ Death-dull from feet to hair and graveward shoved From royalty to that degraded state But purpler pomp! But, see! regenerate Another monarch rises--Accolon!-- Love! Love! with state more ermined; balmy son Of gods not men, and nobler hence to rule. Sweet Love almighty, terrible to school Harsh hearts to gentleness!--Then all this realm's Iron-huskéd flower of war, which overwhelms With rust and havoc, shall explode and bloom An asphodel of peace with joy's perfume. And then, sweet Launcelots and sweet Tristrams proud, Sweet Gueneveres, sweet Isouds, now allowed No pleasures but what wary, stolen hours In golden places have their flaming flowers, Shall have curled feasts of passion evermore. Poor out-thrust Love, now shivering at the door, No longer, sweet neglected, thou thrust off, Insulted and derided: nor the scoff Of bully Power, whose heart of insult flings Off for the roar of arms the appeal that clings And lifts a tearful, prayerful pitiful face Up from his brutal feet: this shrine where grace Lays woman's life for every sacrifice-- To him so little, yet of what pure price, Her all, being all her all for love!--her soul Life, honor, earth and firmamental whole Of God's glad universe; stars, moon and sun; Creation, death; life ended, life begun. And if by fleshly love all Heaven's debarred, Its sinuous revolving spheres instarred, Then Hell were Heaven with love to those who knew Love which God's Heaven encouraged--love that drew Hips, head and hair in fiends' devouring claws Down, down its pit's hurled sucking, as down draws,-- Yet lip to narrow lip with whom we love,-- A whirlwind some weak, crippled, fallen dove. "Then this lank Urience? He who is lord.-- Where is thy worry? for, hath he no sword? No dangerous dagger I, hid softly here Sharp as an adder's fang? or for that ear No instant poison which insinuates, Tightens quick pulses, while one breathing waits, With ice and death? For often men who sleep On eider-down wake not, but closely keep Such secrets in their graves to rot and rot To dust and maggots;--of these--which his lot?" Thus she conspired with her that rainy night Lone in her chamber; when no haggard, white, Wan, watery moon dreamed on the streaming pane, But on the leads beat an incessant rain, And sighed and moaned a weary wind along The turrets and torn poplars stirred to song. So grew her face severe as skies that take Dark forces of full storm, sound-shod, that shake With murmurous feet black hills, and stab with fire A pine some moaning forest mourns as sire. So touched her countenance that dark intent; And to still eyes stern thoughts a passion sent, As midnight waters luminous glass deep Suggestive worlds of austere stars in sleep, Vague ghostly gray locked in their hollow gloom. Then as if some vast wind had swept the room, Silent, intense, had raised her from her seat, Of dim, great arms had made her a retreat, Secret as love to move in, like some ghost, Noiseless as death and subtle as sharp frost, Poised like a light and borne as carefully, Trod she the gusty hall where shadowy The stirring hangings rolled a Pagan war. And there the mail of Urience shone. A star, Glimmering above, a dying cresset dropped From the stone vault and flared. And here she stopped And took the sword bright, burnished by his page, And ruddy as a flame with restless rage. Grasping this death unto the chamber where Slept innocent her spouse she moved--an air Twined in soft, glossy sendal; or a fit Of faery song a wicked charm in it, A spell that sings seductive on to death. Then paused she at one chamber; for a breath Listened: and here her son Sir Ewain slept, He who of ravens a black army kept, In war than fiercest men more terrible, That tore forth eyes of kings who blinded fell. Sure that he slept, to Urience stole and stood Dim by his couch. About her heart hot blood Caught strangling, then throbbed thudding fever up To her broad eyes, like wine whirled in a cup. Then came rare Recollection, with a mouth Sweet as the honeyed sunbeams of the South Trickling thro' perplexed ripples of low leaves; To whose faint form a veil of starshine cleaves Intricate gauze from memoried eyes to feet;-- Feet sandaled with crushed, sifted snows and fleet To come and go and airy anxiously. She, trembling to her, like a flower a bee Nests in and makes an audible mouth of musk Dripping a downy language in the dusk, Laid lips to ears and luted memories of Now hateful Urience:--Her maiden love, That willing went from Caerlleon to Gore One dazzling day of Autumn. How a boar, Wild as the wonder of the blazing wood, Raged at her from a cavernous solitude, Which, crimson-creepered, yawned the bristling curse Murderous upon her; how her steed waxed worse And, snorting terror, fled unmanageable, Pursued with fear, and flung her from the selle, Soft slipping on a bank of springy moss That couched her swooning. In an utter loss Of mind and limbs she only knew twas thus-- As one who pants beneath an incubus:-- The boar thrust toward her a tusked snout and fanged Of hideous bristles, and the whole wood clanged And buzzed and boomed a thousand sounds and lights Lawless about her brain, like leaves fierce nights Of hurricane harvest shouting: then she knew A fury thunder twixt it--and fleet flew Rich-rooted moss and sandy loam that held Dark-buried shadows of the wild, and swelled Continual echoes with the thud of strife, And breath of man and brute that warred for life; And all the air, made mad with foam and forms, Spun froth and wrestled twixt her hair and arms, While trampled caked the stricken leaves or shred Hummed whirling, and snapped brittle branches dead. And when she rose and leaned her throbbing head, Which burst its uncoifed rays of raven hair Down swelling shoulders pure and faultless fair, On one milk, marvelous arm of fluid grace, Beheld the brute thing throttled and the face Of angry Urience over, browed like Might, One red, swoln arm, that pinned the hairy fright, Strong as a god's, iron at the gullet's brawn; Dug in his midriff, the close knees updrawn Wedged deep the glutton sides that quaked and strove A shaggy bulk, whose sharp hoofs horny drove. Thus man and brute burned bent; when Urience slipped One arm, the horror's tearing tusks had ripped And ribboned redly, to the dagger's hilt, Which at his hip hung long a haft gold-gilt; Its rapid splinter drew; beamed twice and thrice High in the sun its ghastliness of ice Plunged--and the great boar, stretched in sullen death, Weakened thro' wild veins, groaned laborious breath. And how he brought her water from a well That rustled freshness near them, as it fell From its full-mantled urn, in his deep casque, And prayed her quaff; then bathed her brow, a task That had accompaning tears of joy and vows Of love, sweet intercourse of eyes and brows, And many clinging kisses eloquent. And how, when dressed his arm, behind him bent She clasped him on the same steed and they went On thro' the gold wood toward the golden West, Till on one low hill's forest-covered crest Up in the gold his castle's battlements pressed. And then she felt she'd loved him till had come Fame of the love of Isoud, whom from home Brought knightly Tristram o'er the Irish foam, And Guenevere's for Launcelot of the Lake. And then how passion from these seemed to wake Longing for some great gallant who would slake-- And such found Accolon. And then she thought How far she'd fallen and how darkly fraught With consequence was this. Then what distress Were hers and his--her lover's; and success How doubly difficult if Arthur slain, King Urience lived to assert his right to reign. So paused she pondering on the blade; her lips Breathless and close as close cold finger tips Hugged the huge weapon's hilt. And so she sighed, "Nay! long, too long hast lived who shouldst have died Even in the womb abortive! who these years Hast leashed sweet life to care with stinging tears, A knot thus harshly severed!--As thou art Into the elements naked!" O'er his heart The long sword hesitated, lean as crime, Descended redly once. And like a rhyme Of nice words fairly fitted forming on,-- A sudden ceasing and the harmony gone, So ran to death the life of Urience, A strong song incomplete of broken sense. There glowered the crimeful Queen. The glistening sword Unfleshed, flung by her wronged and murdered lord; And the dark blood spread broader thro' the sheet To drip a horror at impassive feet And blur the polished oak. But lofty she Stood proud, relentless; in her ecstacy A lovely devil; a crowned lust that cried On Accolon; that harlot which defied Heaven with a voice of pulses clamorous as Steep storm that down a cavernous mountain pass Blasphemes an hundred echoes; with like power The inner harlot called its paramour: Him whom King Arthur had commanded, when Borne from the lists, be granted her again As his blithe gift and welcome from that joust, For treacherous love and her adulterous lust. And while she stood revolving how her deed's Concealment were secured,--a grind of steeds, Arms, jingling stirrups, voices loud that cursed Fierce in the northern court. To her athirst For him her lover, war and power it spoke, Him victor and so King; and then awoke A yearning to behold, to quit the dead. So a wild specter down wide stairs she fled, Burst on a glare of links and glittering mail, That shrunk her eyes and made her senses quail. To her a bulk of iron, bearded fierce, Down from a steaming steed into her ears, "This from the King, a boon!" laughed harsh and hoarse; Two henchmen beckoned, who pitched sheer with force, Loud clanging at her feet, hacked, hewn and red, Crusted with blood a knight in armor--dead; Even Accolon, tossed with the mocking scoff "This from the King!"--phantoms in fog rode off. And what remains? From Camelot to Gore That right she weeping fled; then to the shore,-- As that romancer tells,--Avilion, Where she hath Majesty gold-crowned yet wan; In darkest cypress a frail pitious face Queenly and lovely; 'round sad eyes the trace Of immemorial tears as for some crime: They future fixed, expectant of the time When the forgiving Arthur cometh and Shall have to rule all that lost golden land That drifts vague amber in forgotten seas Of surgeless turquoise dim with mysteries. And so was seen Morgana nevermore, Save once when from the Cornwall coast she bore The wounded Arthur from that last fought fight Of Camlan in a black barge into night. But oft some see her with a palfried band Of serge-stoled maidens thro' the drowsy land Of Autumn glimmer; when are sharply strewn The red leaves, while broad in the east a moon Swings full of frost a lustrous globe of gleams, Faint on the mooning hills as shapes in dreams. DER FREISCHUTZ. _Es gibt im Menschenleben Augenblicke, Wo er dem Weltgeist näher ist als sonst._--SCHILLER. He? why, a tall Franconian strong and young, Brown as a walnut the first frost hath hulled; A soul of full endeavor powerful Bound in lithe limbs, knit into grace and strength Of bronze-like muscles elegant, that poised A head like Hope's; and then the manly lines Of face developed by action and mobile To each suggestive impulse of the mind, Of smiles of buoyancy or scowls of gloom.-- And what deep eyes were his!--Aye; I can see Their wild and restless disks of luminous night Instinct with haughtiness that sneered at Fate, Glared cold conclusion to all circumstance, As with loud law, to his advantage swift: With scorn derisive that shot out a barb, Stabbed Superstition to its dagger hilt; That smiled a thrust-like smile which curled the lip, A vicious heresy with incredible lore, When God's or holy Mary's name came forth Exclaimed in reverence or astonishment; And then would say, "What is this God you mouth, Employ whose name to sanctify and damn?-- A benedictive curse?--'T hath past my skill Of grave interpretation. And your faith-- Distinguishment unseen, design unlawed. For earth, air, fire or water or keen cold, Hints no existence of such, worships not, Such as men's minds profess. Rather, meseems, Throned have they one such as their hopes have wrought In hope there may prove such an one in death For Paradise or punishment. I hold He juster were and would be kinglier kind In sovereign mercy and a prodigal-- Not to few favored heads who, crowned with state, Rule sceptered Infamies--of indulgence free To all that burn luxuriant incense on Shrines while they prayer him love's obedience. Are all not children of the same weak mold? Clay of His Adam-modeled clay made quick? Endowed with the like hopes, loves, fears and hates, Our mother's weaknesses? And these, forsooth, These little crowns that lord it o'er His world, Tricked up with imitative majesty, God-countenanced arrogances, throned may still Cry, 'crawl and worship, for we are as gods Through God! great gods incarnate of his kind!' --Omnipotent Wrong-representatives! With might that blasts the world with wars and wrings Groans from pale Nations with hell's tyranny. So to my mind real monarch only he-- Your Satan cramped in Hell!--aye, by the fiend! To pygmy Earth's frail tinsel majesties, That ape a God in a sonorous Heaven. Grant me the Devil in all mercy then, For I will none of such! a fiend for friend While Earth is of the earth; and afterward-- Nay! ransack not To-morrow till To-day, If all that's joy engulf you when it is." And laughed an oily laugh of easy jest To bow out God and hand the Devil in.-- I met him here at Ammendorf one Spring, Toward the close of April when the Harz, Veined to their ruin-crested summits, pulsed A fluid life of green and budded gold Beneath pure breathing skies of boundless blue: Where low-yoked oxen, yellow to the knees, Along the fluted meadow, freshly ploughed, Plodded and snuffed the fragrance of the soil, The free bird sang exultant in the sun. Triumphant Spring with hinted hopes of May And jaunty June, her mouth a puckered rose. Here at this very hostelery o' The Owl; Mine host there sleek served cannikins of wine Beneath that elm now touseled by that shrew, Lean Winter. Well!--a lordly vintage that! With tang of fires which had sucked out their soul From feverish sun-vats, cooled it from the moon's; From wine-skin bellies of the bursting grape Trodden, in darkness of old cellars aged Even to the tingling smack of olden earth. Rich! I remember!--wine that spurred the blood-- Thou hast none such, I swear, nor wilt again!-- That brought the heart loud to the generous mouth, And made the eyes unlatticed casements whence The good man's soul laughed interested out. Stoups of rare royal Rhenish, such they say As Necromance hides guarded in vast casks Of antique make far in the Kyffhäuser, The Cellar of the Knights near Sittendorf. So, mellowed by that wine to friendship frank, He spake me his intent in coming here; But not one word of what his parentage; But this his name was, Rudolf, and his home, Franconia; but nor why he left nor when: His mind to live a forester and be Enfellowed in the Duke of Brunswick's train Of buff and green; and so to his estate Even now was bound, a youth of twenty-three. And when he ceased the fire in his eyes Worked restless as a troubled animal's, Which hate-enraged can burn a steady flame, Brute merciless. And thus I mused with me, When he had ceased to fulminate at state, "Another Count von Hackelnburg the fiend Hath tricked unto the chase!--for hounds from Hell?" But answered nothing, save light words of cheer As best become fleet friends warm wine doth make. Then as it chanced, old Kurt had come that morn With some six of his jerkined foresters From the Thuringian forest; damp with dew; Red-cheeked as morn with early travel; bound For Brunswick, Dummburg and the Hakel passed. Chief huntsman he then to the goodly Duke, And father of the sunniest maiden here In Ammendorf, the blameless Ilsabe; Who, motherless, the white-haired father prized A jewel priceless. As huge barons' ghosts Guard big, accumulated hoards of wealth, Fast-sealed in caverned cellars, robber wells, Beneath the dungeoned Dummburg, so he watched Her, all his world in her who was his wealth. A second Lora of Thuringia she. Faultless for love, instilled all souls with love, Who, in the favor of her maiden smile, Felt friendship grow up like a golden thought; A life of love from words; and light that fell And wrought calm influence from her pure blue eyes. Hair sedate and austerely dressed o'er brows White as a Harz dove's wing; hair with the hue Of twilight mists the sun hath soaked with gold. A Tyrolean melody that brought Dim dreams of Alpine heights, of shepherds brown, Goat-skinned, with healthy cheeks and wrinkled lips That fill wild oaten pipes on wand'ring ways, Embowered deep, with mountain melodies,-- Simple with love and plaintive even to tears,-- Her presence, her sweet presence like a song. And when she left, it was as when one hath Beheld a moonlit Undine, ere the mind Adjusts one thought, cleave thro' the glassy Rhine A glittering beauty wet, and gone again A flash--the soul drifts wondering on in dreams. Some thirty years agone is that; and I, Commissioner of the Duke--no sinecure I can assure you--had scarce reached the age Of thirty (then some three years of that House). Thro' me the bold Franconian, whom at first, By bitter principles and scorn of state-- Developed into argument thro' wine-- The foresthood like was to be denied, Was then enfellowed. "Yes," I said, "he's young; True, rashly young! yet, see: a wiry frame, A chamois' footing, and a face for right; An eye which likes me not, but quick with pride, And aimed at thought, a butt it may not miss: A soul with virgin virtues which crude flesh Makes seem but vices, these but God may see-- Develop these. But, if there's aught of worth, Body or mind, in him, Kurt, thou wilt know, And to the surface wear, as divers win From hideous ooze and life rich jewels lost Of polished pureness, worthless left to night, Thou or thy daughter, and inspire for good." A year thereafter was it that I heard Of Rudolf's passion for Kurt's Ilsabe, Then their betrothal. And it was from this,-- For, ah, that Ilsabe! that Ilsabe!-- Good Mary Mother! how she haunts me yet! She, that true touchstone which philosophers feign Contacts and golds all base; a woman who Could touch all evil into good in man.-- Surmised I of the excellency which Refinement of her gentle company, Warm presence of chaste beauty, had resolved His fiery nature to, conditioning slave. And so I came from Brunswick--as you know-- Is custom of the Duke or, by his seal Commissioned proxy, his commissioner,-- To test the marksmanship of Rudolf who Succeeded Kurt with marriage of his child, An heir of Kuno.--He?--Great grandfather Of Kurt, and one this forestkeepership Was first possesor of; established thus-- Or such the tale they told me 'round the hearths. Kuno, once in the Knight of Wippach's train, Rode on a grand hunt with the Duke, who came With vast magnificence of knights and hounds, And satin-tuniced nobles curled and plumed To hunt Thuringian deer. Then Morn too slow On her blithe feet was; quick with laughing eyes To morrow mortal eyes and lazy limbs; Rather on tip-toed hills recumbent yawned, Aroused an hour too soon; ashamed, disrobed, Rubbed the stiff sleep from eyes that still would close, While brayed the hollow horns and bayed lean hounds, And cheered gallants until the dingles dinned, Where searched the climbing mists or, compact light, Fled breathless white, clung scared a moted gray, Low unsunned cloudlands of the castled hills. And then near mid-noon from a swarthy brake The ban-dogs roused a red gigantic stag, Lashed to whose back with grinding knotted cords, Borne with whom like a nightmare's incubus, A man shrieked; burry-bearded and his hair Kinked with dry, tangled burrs, and he himself Emaciated and half naked. From The wear of wildest passage thro' the wild, Rent red by briars, torn and bruised by rocks. --For, such the law then, when the peasant chased Or slew the dun deer of his tyrant lords, As punishment the torturing withes and spine Of some big stag, a gift of game and wild Enough till death--death in the antlered herd Or crawling famine in bleak, haggard haunts. Then was the dark Duke glad, and forthwith cried To all his dewy train a rich reward For him who slew the stag and saved the man, But death to him who slew the man and stag, The careless error of a loose attempt. So crashed the hunt along wild, glimmering ways Thro' creepers and vast brush beneath gnarled trees, Up a scorched torrent's bed. Yet still refused Each that sure shot; the risk too desperate The poor life and the golden gift beside. So this young Kuno with two eyes wherein Hunt with excitement kindled reckless fire Clamored, "And are ye cowards?--Good your grace, You shall not chafe!--The fiend direct my ball!" And fired into a covert deeply packed, An intertangled wall of matted night, Wherein the eye might vainly strive and strive To pierce one foot or earn one point beyond. But, ha! the huge stag staggered from the brake Heart-hit and perished. That wan wretch unhurt Soon bondless lay condoled. But the great Duke, Charmed with the eagle shot, admired the youth, There to him and his heirs forever gave The forest keepership. But envious tongues Were soon at wag; and whispered went the tale Of how the shot was free, and that the balls Used by young Kuno were free bullets, which Molded were cast in influence of the fiend By magic and directed by the fiend. Of some effect these tales were and some force Had with the Duke, who lent an ear so far As to ordain Kuno's descendants all To proof of skill ere their succession to The father's office. Kurt himself hath shot The silver ring from out the popinjay's beak-- A good shot he, you see, who would succeed. The Devil guards his mysteries close as God. For who can say what elementaries Demoniac lurk in desolate dells and woods Shadowy? malicious vassals of that power Who signs himself, thro' these, a slave to those, Those mortals who act open with his Hell, Those only who seek secretly and woo. Of these free, fatal bullets let me speak: There may be such; our Earth hath things as strange; Then only in coarse fancies may exist; For fancy is among our peasantry A limber juggler with the weird and dark; For Superstition hides not her grim face, A skeleton grin on leprous ghastliness, From Ignorance's mossy thatches low. A cross-way, as I heard, among gaunt hills, A solitude convulsed of rocks and trees Blasted; and on the stony cross-road drawn A bloody circle with a bloody sword; Herein rude characters; a skull and thighs Fantastic fixed before a fitful fire Of spiteful coals. Eleven of the clock Cast, the first bullet leaves the mold,--the lead Mixed with three bullets that have hit their mark, Burnt blood,--the wounded Sacramental Host, Unswallowed and unhallowed, oozed when shot Fixed to a riven pine.--Ere twelve o'clock, When dwindling specters in their rotting shrouds Quit musty tombs to mumble hollow woes In Midnight's horrored ear, with never a cry, Word or weak whisper, till that hour sound, Must the free balls be cast; and these shall be In number three and sixty; three of which Semial--he the Devil's minister-- Claims for his master and stamps as his own To hit awry their mark, askew for harm. _Those other sixty shall not miss their mark._ No cry, no word, no whisper, tho' there gibe Most monstrous shapes that flicker in thick mist Lewd human countenances or leer out Swoln animal faces with fair forms of men, While wide-winged owls fan the drear, dying coals, That lick thin, slender tongues of purple fire From viperous red, and croaks the night-hawk near. No cry, no word, no whisper should there come Weeping a wandering form with weary, white And pleading countenance of her you love, Faded with tears of waiting; beckoning With gray, large arms or censuring; her shame In dull and desolate eyes; who, if you speak Or stagger from that circle--hideous change!-- Shrinks, faced a hag of million wrinkles, which Ridge scaly sharpness of protruding bones, To rip you limb from limb with taloned claws. Nor be deceived if some far midnight bell Boom that anticipated hour, nor leave By one short inch the bloody orbit, for The minion varlets of Hell's majesty Expectant cirque its dim circumference. But when the hour of midnight smites, be sure You have your bullets, neither more nor less; For, if thro' fear one more or less you have, Your soul is forfeit to those agencies, Right rathe who are to rend it from the flesh. And while that hour of midnight sounds a din Of hurrying hoofs and shouting outriders-- Six snorting steeds postilioned roll a stage Black and with groaning wheels of spinning fire, "Room there!--ho! ho!--who bars the mountain-way! On over him!"--but fear not nor fare forth,-- 'Tis but the last trick of your bounden slave: And ere the red moon strives from dingy clouds And dives again, high the huge leaders leap Iron fore-hoofs flashing and big eyes like gledes, And, spun a spiral spark into the night, Whistling the phantom flies and fades away. Some say there comes no stage, but Hackelnburg, Wild Huntsman of the Harz, rides hoarse in storm, Dashing the dead leaves with dark dogs of hell Direful thro' whirling thickets, and his horn Croaks doleful as an owl's hoot while he hurls Straight 'neath rain-streaming skies of echoes, sheer Plunging the magic circle horse and hounds. And then will come, plutonian clad and slim, Upon a stallion vast intensely black, Semial, Satan's lurid minister, To hail you and inform you and assure.-- Enough! these wives-tales heard to what I've seen; To Ammendorf I came; and Rudolf there With Kurt and all his picturesque foresters Met me. And then the rounding year was ripe; Throbbing the red heart of full Autumn: When Each morning gleams crisp frost on shriveled fields; Each noon sits veiled in mysteries of mist; Each night unrolls a miracle woof of stars, Where moon--bare-bosomed goddess of the hunt-- Wades calm, crushed clouds or treads the vaster blue. Then I proposed the season's hunt; till eve The test of Rudolf's skill postponed, with which Annoyed he seemed. And so it was I heard How he an execrable marksman was, And whispered tales of near, incredible shots That wryed their mark, while in his flint-lock's pan Flashed often harmless powder, while wild game Stared fearless on him and indulgent stood, An open butt to such wide marksmanship. Howbeit, he that day acquitted him Of these maligners' cavils; in the hunt Missing no shot however rash he made Or distant thro' thick intercepting trees; And the piled, curious game brought down of all Good marksmen of that train had not sufficed, Doubled, nay, trebled, to have matched his heap. And wonderstruck the _jägers_ saw, nor knew How to excuse them. My indulgence giv'n, Still swore that only yesterday old Kurt Had touched his daughter's tears and Rudolf's wrath By vowing end to their betrothéd love, Unless that love developed better aim Against the morrow's test; his ancestor's High fame should not be damaged. So he stormed, But bowed his gray head and wept silently; Then looking up forgave when big he saw Tears in his daughter's eyes and Rudolf gone Forth in the night that wailed with coming storm. Before this inn, The Owl, assembled came The nice-primped villagers to view the trial: Fair _fräuleins_ and blonde, comely, healthy _fraus_; Stout burgers. And among them I did mark Kurt and his daughter. He, a florid face Of pride and joy for Rudolf's strange success; She, radiant and flounced in flowing garb Of bridal white deep-draped and crowned with flowers; For Kurt insisted this their marriage eve Should Rudolf come successful from the chase. So pleased was I with what I'd seen him do, The test of skill superfluous seemed and so Was on the bare brink of announcement, when, Out of the evening heaven's hardening red, Like a white warning loosed for augury, A word of God some fallen angel prized As his last all of heaven, penitent, Hell-freed, sent minister to save a soul, A wild dove clove the luminous winds and there, A wafted waif, pruned settled on a bough: Then I, "Thy weapon, Rudolph, pierce its head!" Cried pointing, "And chief-forester art thou!" Pale as a mist and wavering he turned; "I had a dream--" then faltered as he aimed, "A woman's whim!" But starting from the press Screamed Ilsabe, "My dove!" to plead its life Came--cracked the rifle and untouched the dove Rose beating lustrous wings, but Ilsabe-- "God's wrath! the sight!"--fell smitten, and the blood Sprang red from shattered brow and silent hair-- That bullet strangely thro' her brow and brain.... And what of Rudolf? ah! of him you ask? That proud Franconian who would scoff at Fate And scorn all state; who cried black Satan friend Sooner than our white Christ;--why, he went mad O' the moment, and into the haunted Harz Fled, an unholy thing, and perished there The prey of demons of the Dummburg. But I one of few less superstitious who Say, as the finale of a madman's deed, He in the Bodé, from that ragged rock, The Devil's Dancing Place, did leap and die. TO REVERY. What ogive gates from gold of Ophir wrought, What walls of bastioned Parian, lucid rose, What marts of crystal, for the eyes of Thought Hast builded on what Islands of Repose! Vague onyx columns ranked Corinthian, Or piled Ionic, colonnading heights That loom above long burst of mythic seas: Vast gynaeceums of carnelian; Micaceous temples, far marmorean flights, Where winds the arabesque and plastique frieze. Where bulbous domes of coruscating ore Cloud--like convulsive sunsets--lands that dream, Myrrh-fragrant, over siren seas and hoar, Dashed with stiff, breezy foam of ocean's stream. Tempestuous architecture-revelries; Built melodies of marble or clear glass; Effulgent sculptures chiseled out of thought In misty attitudes, whose majesties Feed full the pleasure as those beauties pass To pale extinctions which are beauty fraught. On rebeck and on rose in plinths of spars, On glimmering solitudes of flower and stone, A twilight-glow swoons settled, burned with stars, Deep violet dusk developing nor done. Where float fair nacreous shapes like deities,-- Existences of glory musical,-- 'Round whose warm hair twist fillets' coiling gold, Their limbs Olympian lovely, and their eyes Dark oblique fervors; and most languorous tall In woven white with girdling gold threefold. There darkling the consummate vintage sleeps,-- Lethe-nepenthes for Earth-agony,-- In sealéd amphorae some Sybil keeps, World-old, forever cellared secretly. A wine of Xeres or of Syracuse? A fierce Falernian?--Ah! no vile Sabine!-- A stol'n ambrosia of what olden god? Whose bubbled rubies maiden feet did bruise From crusted vats of vintage rich, I ween, Vivacious purple of some Samian sod. Oh, for the cold conclusion of one draught! Elysian ecstacy of classic earth!-- Where heroes warred with gods and where gods laughed In eyes of mortal brown, a lusty mirth Of deity delirious with desire: Where danced the sacrifice to hornéd shrines, And splashed the full libation blue as blood.-- Oh, to be drunk with dreaming! to inspire The very soul of beauty whence it shines Too lost for utterance yet understood! In cogitation of what verdurous shades, Dull-droning quietudes where wild-bees lolled Suck, lulled in pulpy lilies of the glades, Barbaric-smothered with the kerneled gold: Teased by some torso of the golden age, Nude breasts of Cytherea, famous fair, Uncestus'd, yet suggestive of what loves Immortal! yearn enamoured; or to rage With sun-burnt Poesy whose throat breathes bare O'er leopard skins and flute among her groves. LATE OCTOBER. Ah, haughty hills, sardonic solitudes, What wizard touch hath, crowning you with gold, Cast Tyrian purple o'er broad-shouldered woods, And to your pride anointed empire sold For wan traditioned death, whose misty moods Shake each huge throne of quarried shadows cold? Now where the agate-foliaged forests sleep, Bleak briars are ruby-berried, and the brush Flames--when the winds armsful of motion heap In wincing gusts upon it--amber blush; The beech an inner beryle breaks from deep Encrusting topaz of a sullen flush. Dead gold, dead bronze, dull amethystine rose, Rose cameo, in day's gray, somber spar Of smoky quartz--intaglioed beauty--glows Luxuriance of color. Trunks that are Vast organs antheming the winds' wild woes A faded sun and pale night's paler star. Bulged from its cup the dark-brown acorn falls, And by its gnarly saucer in the streams Swells plumped; and here the spikey spruce-gum balls Rust maces of an ouphen host that dreams; Beneath the chestnut the split burry hulls Disgorge fat purses of sleek satin gleams. Burst silver white, nods an exploded husk Of snowy, woolly smoke the milk-weed's puff Along the orchard's fence, where in the dusk And ashen weeds,--as some grim Satyr's rough Red, breezy cheeks burn thro' his beard,--the brusque Crab apples laugh, wind-tumbled from above. Runs thro' the wasted leaves the crickets' click, Which saddest coignes of Melancholy cheers; One bird unto the sumach flits to pick Red, sour seeds; and thro' the woods one hears The drop of gummy walnuts; the railed rick Looms tawny in the field where low the steers. Some slim bud-bound Leimoniad hath flocked, The birds to Echo's shores, where flossy foams Boom low long cream-white cliffs.--Where once buzzed Unmillioned bees within unmillioned blooms, One hairy hummer cramps one bloom, frost mocked,--rocked A miser whose rich hives squeeze oozing combs. Twist some lithe maple and right suddenly A leafy storm of stars about you breaks-- Some Hamadryad's tears: Unto her knee Wading the Naiad clears her brook that streaks Thro' wadded waifs: Hark! Pan for Helike Flutes melancholy by the minty creeks. AN ANEMONE. "Teach me the wisdom of thy beauty, pray, That, being thus wise, I may aspire to see What beauty is, whence, why, and in what way Immortal, yet how mortal utterly: For, shrinking loveliness, thy brow of day Pleads plaintive as a prayer, anemone. "Teach me wood-wisdom, I am petulant: Thou hast the wildness of a Dryad's eyes, The shyness of an Oread's, wild plant:-- Behold the bashful goddess where she lies Distinctly delicate!--inhabitant Ambrosial-earthed, star-cousin of the skies. "Teach me thy wisdom, for, thro' knowing, yet, When I have drunk dull Lethe till each vein Thuds full oblivion, I shall not forget;-- For beauty known is beauty; to sustain Glad memories with life, while mad regret And sorrow perish, being Lethe slain." "Teach thee my beauty being beautiful And beauty wise?--My slight perfections, whole As world, as man, in their creation full As old a Power's cogitation roll. Teach thee?--Presumption! thought is young and dull-- Question thy God what God is, soul what soul." THE RAIN-CROW. Thee freckled August, dozing hot and blonde Oft 'neath a wheat-stack in the white-topped mead-- In her full hair brown ox-eyed daisies wound-- O water-gurgler, lends a sleepy heed: Half-lidded eyes a purple iron-weed Blows slimly o'er; beyond, a path-found pond Basks flint-bright, hedged with pink-plumed pepper-grasses, A coigne for vainest dragonflies, which glasses Their blue in diamond. Oft from some dusty locust, that thick weaves With crescent pulse-pods its thin foliage gray, Thou,--o'er the shambling lane, which past the sheaves Of sun-tanned oats winds, red with rutty clay, One league of rude rail-fence,--some panting day, When each parched meadow quivering vapor grieves, Nature's Astrologist, dost promise rain, In seeping language of the thirsty plain, Cool from the burning leaves. And, in good faith, aye! best of faith, art true; And welcome that rune-chuckled forecasting, When up the faded fierceness of scorched blue Strong water-carrier winds big buckets bring, Black with stored freshness: how their dippers ring And flash and rattle! lavishing large dew On tall, good-humored corn that, streaming wet, Laughs long; while woods and leas, shut in a net Of mist, dream vague in view. And thou, safe-houséd in some pawpaw bower Of close, broad, gold-green leaves, contented art In thy prediction, fall'n within the hour; While fuss the brown bees hiveward from the heart Of honey-filtering bloom; beneath the cart Droop pompous barnyard cocks damped by the shower: And deep-eyed August, bonnetless, a beech Hugs in disheveled beauty, safe from reach On starry moss and flower. LOVELINESS. I. When I fare forth to kiss the eyes of Spring, On ways, which arch gold sunbeams and pearl buds Embraced, two whispers we search--wandering By goblin forests and by girlish floods Deep in the hermit-holy solitudes-- For stalwart Dryads romping in a ring; Firm limbs an oak-bark-brown, and hair--wild woods Have perfumed--loops of radiance; and they, Most coyly pleasant, as we linger by, Pout dimpled cheeks, more rose than rosiest sky, Honeyed; and us good-hearted laughter fling Like far-out reefs that flute melodious spray. II. Then we surprise each Naiad ere she slips-- Nude at her toilette--in her fountain's glass, With damp locks dewy, and large godlike hips Cool-glittering; but discovered, when--alas! From green, indented moss and plushy grass,-- Her great eyes' pansy-black reproaching,--dips She white the cloven waters ere we pass: And a broad, orbing ripple makes to hide From our desirous gaze provoked what path She gleaming took; what haunt she bashful hath In minnowy freshness, where her murmurous lips Bubbling make merry 'neath the rocky tide. III. Oft do we meet the Oread whose eyes Are dew-drops where twin heavens shine confessed; She, all the maiden modesty's surprise Blushing her temples,--to deep loins and breast Tempestuous, brown bewildering tresses pressed,-- Stands one scared moment's moiety, in wise Of some delicious dream, then shrinks distressed, Like some weak wind that, haply heard, is gone, In rapport with shy Silence to make sound; So, like storm sunlight, bares clean limbs to bound A thistle's flashing to a woody rise, A graceful glimmer up the ferny lawn. IV. Hear Satyrs and Sylvanus in sad shades Of dozy dells pipe: Pan and Fauns hark dance With rattling hoofs dim in low, mottled glades: Hidden in spice-bush-bowered banks, perchance, Mark Slyness waiting with an animal glance The advent of some Innocence, who wades Thro' thigh-deep flowers, naked as Romance, In braided shadows, when two hairy arms Hug her unconscious beauty panting white; Till tearful terror, struggling into might, Beats the brute brow resisting; yields and fades, Exhausted, to the grim Lust her rich charms. THE LAST SCION OF THE HOUSE OF CLARE. _Year 13--._ Barbican, bartizan, battlement, With the Abergavenny mountains blent, Look, from the Raglan tower of Gwent, My lord Hugh Clifford's ancient home Shows, clear morns of the Spring or Summer, Thrust out like thin flakes o' a silver foam From a climbing cloud, for the hills gloom glummer, Being shaggy with heath, yon.--I was his page; A favorite then; and he of that age When a man will love and be loved again, Or die in the wars or a monastery: Or toil till he stifle his heart's hard pain, Or drink, drug his hopes and his lost love bury. I was his page; and often we fared Thro' the Clare desmene in Autumn hawking-- If the baron had known how he would have glared From their bushy brows eyes dark with mocking! --That of the Strongbows, Richard, I mean-- Had growled to his yeomen, "A score! mount, Keene! Forth and spit me this Clifford, or hang With his crop-eared page to the closest oak!" For he and the Cliffords had ever a fang In the other's side,... but I see him choke And strangle with wrath when his hawker told-- If he told!--how we met on that flowery wold His daughter, sweet Hortense of Clare, the day Her hooded tiercel its brails did burst To trail with its galling jesses away; An untrained haggard the falconer cursed, Vain whistled to lure; when the eyas sped Slant, low and heavily overhead By us; and Sir Hugh,--who had just then cast His peregrine fierce at a heron-quarry,-- In his stirrups rising, thus--as it passed, By the jesses caught and to her did carry, Lingering slender and tall by a rose Whence she pulled the berries--But no two foes Her eyes and Sir Hugh's!--And I swear each felt A song in their hearts!--For I heard him quaver Somewhat and then--by Mary!--he knelt!-- And the Lady herself in her words did waver And wonder with smiles. Then daintily took The hawk on her fist where it pruned and shook Its callowness ragged, as Hugh did seize Softly the other hand long and white,-- Reached forth to him craving him rise from his knees,-- And mouthed with moist kisses an hundred quite. Tho' she blushed up burning, no frowned "Beware!" But seemed so happy! when crushing thro'-- Her sturdy retainer with swarthy stare-- The underwoods burst; and her maiden crew Drew near them naming her name, and came With leaves and dim Autumn blossoms aflame.-- "Their words?" I know not! for how should I?-- I paged my master but was no spy. Nothings, I think, as all lovers', you know; Yet how should I hear such whispered low, Quick by the wasted woodland yellow? When up thro' the brush thrashed that burly fellow With his ale-coarse face, and so made a pause In the pulse of their words, there my lord Sir Hugh Stood with the soil on his knee: No cause Had he--but his hanger he halfway drew-- Then paused, thrust it _clap_ in its sheath again And bowed to the Lady and strode away; Up, vault, on his steed--and we rode amain Gay to his towers that merry day. He loved and was loved,--why, I knew!--for look, All other sports for the chase he forsook; To ride in the Raglan marches and hawk And to hunt and to wander. And found a lair, In the Strongbow forest, of bush and of rock, Of moss and thick ferns; where Hortense of Clare, How often I wis not, met him by chance-- Perhaps!--Sweet sorceress out of romance, Those tomes of Geoffrey--for she was fair! Her large, warm eyes and hair,... ah, hair, How may one picture or liken it! With the golden gloss of its full brown, fit For the Viviane face of lovable white Beneath;--like a star that a cloud of night Stops over to threaten but never will drench Its tremulous beauty with mists that quench.-- Heigho!--but they ceased, those meetings. I wot Watched of the baron, his menial crew; For she loved too well to have once forgot The place and the time of their trysting true. But she came not--ah! and again came not: "_Why and when?_" would question Sir Hugh In his labored scrawls a crevice of rock-- The lovers' post--in its coigne would lock. Until near Yule Love gat them again A twilight tryst--by frowardness sure.-- They met. And that day was gray with rain-- Or snow, and the wind did ever endure A long, bleak moaning thorough the wood, Smarted the cheek and chapped i' the blood; And a burne in the forest cried "sob and sob," And whimpered forever a chopping throb Thro' the rope-taunt boughs like a thing pursued. --And there it was that he learned how she (My faith! how it makes me burn and quiver To think what a miserable despot he-- Lord Richard Strongbow, aye and ever To his daughter was!) forsooth! must wed With an Eastern Earl--some Lovell: one whom (That God in His mercy had smote him dead!) Hortense of Clare--but in baby bloom-- Never had mirrored with maiden eyes. Sealed over a baby to strengthen some ties-- Of power or wealth--had been bartered then And sold and purchased, and now ... but when To her lover, the Clifford, she told this--there He had faced with his love the talons of Death-- Only for her, who did stay with a stare Of reproach all his heat and say in a breath, "Is love, that thou sware to me aye and so often, To live too feeble or--how?--doth it soften And weaken away and--to die?--why die?-- Live and be strong! and this is why."-- Her words are glued here so!... I remember All as well as that sullen December, That blustered and bullied about them and Spat stiff its spiteful and cold-cutting snow Where they talked there dreamily hand in hand, While the rubbing boughs clashed rattling low. Her last words these, "By curfew sure On Christmas eve at the postern door." And we were there, and a void horse too: Armed: for a journey I hardly knew Whither, but why you well can guess. I could have uttered a certain name-- Our comrade's sure--of what loveliness! Waited with love, impatience aflame. While Raglan bulged its baronial girth To roar to its battlements Yule and song; Retainers loud rollicked in wassail and mirth Where the mistletoe 'round the vast hearths hung, And holly beberried the elden wall Of curious oak in the banqueting hall. And the spits, I trow, by the scullions turned O'er the snoring logs, rich steamed and burned With flesh; where the whole wild-boar was roasted And the dun-deer flanks and the roebuck haunches; Fat tuns of ale, that the cellars boasted, Old casks of wine were broached for paunches Of the vassals that reveled in bower and stall; Pale pages who diced and bluff henchmen who quarr'led Or swore in their cups, while lean mastiffs all, O'er bones of the feast in their kennels snarled; For Hortense--drink! drink!--by the Virgin's leave, Were wed to this Lovell this Christmas Eve. "Was she long--Did she come?"... By that postern we Like shadows lurked. Said my lord Sir Hugh: "Yon tower, remember!--that casement, see!-- When a stealthy light in its slit burns blue And signals thrice slowly, thus--'tis she." And about his person his gaberdine drew, For the wind it hugged and the snow beat thro'. Did she come?--We had watched for an hour or twain Ere that light burned there in the central pane And was flourished thrice and departed so. Then closer we packed to the postern portal Horses and all in the stinging snow. Stiff with the cold was I.--Immortal Minutes we waited breath-bated and listened Shuddering there in the gusty gale. Whizzing o'er parapets sifted and glistened Wild drift, thro' battlements hissed in a veil. Quoth my lord Sir Hugh, for his love was a-heat, "She feels for the spring in the hidden panel 'Neath the tapestry ... ah! thou hast pressed it, sweet! --How black gulps open the secret channel! Now cautiously step, and thy bridal garb Swirled warm with a mantle o' fur ... she plants One foot--then a pause--on the stair--So, Barb, So!--If the tempest that barks and pants Would throttle itself with its yelps! then I Might hear but one footstep echo and sing Down the ugly ... there! 'tis her fingers try The massy bolts which the rust makes cling." But ever some whim of the wind that shook The clanging ring of a creaking hook In the buttress or wall; and we waited so Till the East grew gray. Did she come?--ah, no! I must tell you why, and enough: 'Tis said On the eve of the marriage she fled the side Of the baron, the bridegroom too she fled, With a mischievous laugh, "_I'll hide! I'll hide!_ Seek! and be sure to seek well!" and led A wild chase after her, but defied All search for--a score and ten more years, And the laughter of Yule was changed to tears. But they searched and the snow was bleared with the glare Of torches that hurried thro' chamber and stair; And tower and court re-echoed her name, But she laughed no answer and never came. So over the channel to France with his King And the Black Prince, sailed to the wars--to deaden The ache of the mystery--Hugh that Spring, And fell at Poitiers: for his loss lay leaden On hope, and his life was a weary sadness, So he flung it away with a very gladness. And the baron died--and the bridegroom, well,-- Unlucky that bridegroom, sooth!--to tell Of him there is nothing. The baron died; The last of the Strongbows he, gramercy! And the Clare estate with its wealth and its pride Devolved to the Bloets, Walter or Percy. Ten years and a score thereafter. And they Ransacked the old castle and mark!--one day In a lonesome tower uprummaged a chest From Flanders, of sinister ebon, carved Sardonic with masks 'round an olden crest, Gargoyle faces distorted and starved: Fast fixed with a spring which they forced and lo! When they opened it--ha, Hortense!--or, no!-- Fantastic a skeleton jeweled and wreathed With flowers of dust, and a minever About it hugged, which quaint richness sheathed Of a bridal raiment and lace with fur. --I'd have given such years of my life--yes, well!-- As were left me then so her lover, Hugh, For such time breathed as it took one to tell How she forever, deemed false, was true! He'd have known how it was, "For, you see, in groping For the puny spring of that panel--hoping And fearing as nearer and nearer grew The boisterous scramble--why, out she blew Her windy taper and quick--in this chest Wary would lie for--a minute, mayhap, Till the hurry all passed; but the death-lock pressed --Ere her heart was aware--with a hungry snap." ON THE JELLICO-SPUR. TO MY FRIEND, JOHN FOX, JR. You remember, the deep mist,-- Climbing to the Devil's Den-- Blue beneath us in the glen And above us amethyst, Throbbed and circled and away Thro' the wild-woods opposite, Torn and shattered, morning-lit, Scurried up a dewy gray. Vague as in Romance we saw From the fog one riven trunk, Its huge horny talons shrunk, Thrust a hungry dragon's claw. And we climbed two hours thro' The dawn-dripping Jellicoes, To that wooded rock that shows Undulating peaks of blue: The vast Cumberlands that sleep, Weighed with soaring forests, far To the concave welkin's bar, Leagues on leagues of purple sweep. Range exalted over range Billowed their enormous spines, And we heard the priestly pines Hum the wisdom of their change. We were sons of Nature then; She had taken us to her, Closer drawn by brier and burr, There on lonely Devil's Den. We were pupils of her moods: Taught the beauties of her loins In those bloom-anointed coignes,-- Love in her eternal woods: How she bore or flower or bud; Pithed the wiry sapling-oak; In the long vine zeal awoke Aye to climb a leafy flood. Her waste fantasies of birth: Sponge-like exudations fair-- Dainty fungi everywhere Bulging from the loamy earth. Coral-vegetable things; Crystals clamily exhaled; Bulbous, marble-ribbed and scaled, Vip'rous colored; then close rings Of the Indian Pipe that cleft Pink and white the woodland lax,-- Blossoms of a natural wax The brown mountain-fairies left. We on that parched precipice, Stretched beneath the chestnuts' burrs, Breathed the balsam of the firs, Felt the blue sky like a kiss. Soft that heaven; stainless as The grand woodlands lunging on, Wound majestic in the sun, Or as our devotion was! Freedom sat there cragged we saw, Freedom whom hoarse forests sang; Heaven-browed her eyes, whence sprang Audience august with law. Wildernesses, from her hips Sprung the giant forests there, Tossed the cataracts from her hair, Thunders lightened from her lips. Oft some scavenger, with vane Motionless, above we knew Wheeled thro' altitudes of blue By his rapid shadow's stain. Or some cloud of sunny white,-- Puffed a lazy drift of pearl,-- Balmy breezes o'er would whirl Shot with coruscating light. So we dreamed an hour upon Those warm rocks, dry, lichen-scabbed. Lounged beneath long leaves that dabbed At us coins of shade and sun. Then arose and down some gorge Made a bowldered torrent broad The hurled pathway of our road Tumbled down the mountain large. At that farm-house, which you know, Where old-fashioned flowers spun Gay rag-carpets in the sun, By green apple-boughs built low, Rested from our hot descent; One deep draught of cider cool, Unctuous, our fierce veins to dull At old Hix's eloquent.... On Wolf Mountain died the light; A colossal blossom, rayed With rent petaled clouds that played 'Round a calyxed fury bright. Down the moist mint-scented vale To the mining camp we turned, Thro' the twilight faint discerned With its crowded cabins pale. Ah! those nights!--We wandered forth On some shadow-haunted path When the moon was late and rathe The large stars; sowed south and north, Clustered bursting heavens down: And the milky zodiac, Rolled athwart the belted black, Myriad-million-moted shone. And in dreams we sauntered till In the valley pale beneath, From a dew-drop's vapored breath To faint ghosts, there gathered still, Grave creations weird of mist: Then we knew the moonrise near, As with necromance the air Pulsed to pearl and amethyst. Shrilled the insects of the dusk, Grated, buzzed and strident sung Till each leaf seemed tuned and strung For high Pixy music brusque. Stealing steps and stealthy sighs As of near unhallowed things, Rustled hair or fluttered wings, Seemed about us; then the eyes Of plumed phantom warriors Burned mesmeric from some bush Mournful in the goblin hush, Then materialized to stars. Mantled mists like ambushed braves, Chiefed by some swart Blackfoot tall, Stole along each forest wall-- Phosphorescent moony waves. Then the moon rose; from some cup Each hill's bowl,--magnetic shine, Mist and silence poured like wine,-- Brimmed a monster goblet up. Ingot from lost orient mines, Delved by humpbacked gnomes of Night, Full her orb loomed, nacreous white, O'er Pine Mountain's druid pines. As thro' fragmentary fleece Her circumference polished broke, Orey-seamed, about us woke Myths of Italy and Greece. Then--a chanson serenade-- You, rich-voiced, to your guitar To our goddess in that star Sang "_Ne Tempo_" from the glade. SEÑORITA. An agate black thy roguish eyes Claim no proud lineage of skies, No velvet blue, but of sweet Earth, Rude, reckless witchery and mirth. Looped in thy raven hair's repose, A hot aroma, one tame rose Dies envious of that beauty where,-- By being near which,--it is fair. Thy ears,--two dainty bits of song Of unpretending charm, which wrong Would jewels rich, whose restless fire Courts coarse attention,--such inspire. Slim hands, that crumple listless lace About thy white breasts' swelling grace, And falter at thy samite throat, To such harmonious efforts float. Seven stars stop o'er thy balcony Cored in taunt heaven's canopy; No moon flows up the satin night In pearl-pierced raiment spun of light. From orange orchards dark in dew Vague, odorous lips the West wind blew, Or thou, a new Angelica From Ariosto, breath'd'st Cathay. Oh, stoop to me and speaking reach My soul like song, that learned low speech From some sad instrument, who knows? Or bloom,--a dulcimer or rose. LEANDER TO HERO. I. Brows wan thro' blue-black tresses Wet with sharp rain and kisses; Locks loose the sea-wind scatters, Like torn wings fierce for flight; Cold brows, whose sadness flatters, One kiss and then--good-night. II. Can this thy love undo me When in the heavy waves? Nay; it must make unto me Their groaning backs but slaves! For its magic doth indue me With strength o'er all their graves. III. Weep not as heavy-hearted Before I go! For thou Wilt follow as we parted-- A something hollow-hearted, Dark eyes whence cold tears started, Gray, ghostly arms out-darted To take me, even as now, To drag me, their weak lover, To caves where sirens hover, Deep caves the dark waves cover, Down! throat and hair and brow. IV. But in thy sleep shalt follow-- Thy bosom fierce to mine, Long arms wound warm and hollow,-- In sleep, in sleep shalt follow,-- To save me from the brine; Dim eyes on mine divine; Deep breath at mine like wine; Sweet thou, with dream-soft kisses To dream me onward home, White in white foam that hisses, Love's creature safe in foam. V. What, Hero, else for weeping Than long, lost hours of sleeping And vestal-vestured Dreams, Where thy Leander stooping Sighs; no dead eyelids drooping; No harsh, hard looks accusing; No curls with ocean oozing; But then as now he seems, Sweet-favored as can make him Thy smile, which is a might, A hope, a god to take him Thro' all this hell of night. VI. Then where thy breasts are hollow One kiss! one kiss! I go! Sweet soul! a kiss to follow Up whence thy breasts bud hollow, Cheeks than wood-blossoms whiter, Eyes than dark waters brighter Wherein the far stars glow. Look lovely when I leave thee!-- I go, my love, I go! Look lovely, love, nor grieve thee, That I must leave thee so. MUSAGETES. For the mountains' hoarse greetings came hollow From stormy wind-chasms and caves, And I heard their wild cataracts wallow Huge bulks in long spasms of waves, And that Demon said, "Lo! you must follow! And our path is o'er myriads of graves." Then I felt that the black earth was porous And rotten with worms and with bones; And I knew that the ground that now bore us Was cadaverous with Death's skeletons; And I saw horrid eyes, heard sonorous And dolorous gnashings and groans. But the night of the tempest and thunder, The might of the terrible skies, And the fire of Hell that,--coiled under The hollow Earth,--smoulders and sighs, And the laughter of stars and their wonder Mingled and mixed in its eyes. And we clomb--and the moon old and sterile Clomb with us o'er torrent and scar! And I yearned towards her oceans of beryl, Wan mountains and cities of spar-- "'Tis not well," that one said, "you're in peril Of falling and failing your star." And we clomb--through a murmur of pinions, Thin rattle of talons and plumes; And a sense as of Boreal dominions Clove down to the abysms and tombs; And the Night's naked, Ethiope minions Swarmed on us in legions of glooms. And we clomb--till we stood at the portal Of the uttermost point of the peak, And it led with a step more than mortal Far upward some presence to seek; And I felt that this love was immortal, This love which had made me so weak. We had clomb till the limbo of spirits Of darkness and crime deep below Swung nebular; nor could we hear its Lost wailings and moanings of woe,-- For we stood in a realm that inherits A vanquishing virgin of snow. THE QUARREL. Could I divine how her gray eyes Gat such cold haughtiness of skies; How, some wood-flower's shadow brown, Dimmed her fair forehead's wrath a frown; How, rippled sunshine blown thro' air, Tossed scorn her eloquence of hair; How to a folded bud again She drew her blossomed lips' disdain; Naught deigning save eyes' utterance, Star-words, which quicker reach the sense; Then, afterwards, how melted there The austere woman to one tear; Then were I wise to know how grew This star-stained miracle of blue, How God makes wild flowers out of dew. THE MOOD O' THE EARTH. My heart is high, is high, my dear, And the warm wind sunnily blows; My heart is high with a mood that's cheer, And burns like a sun-blown rose. My heart is high, is high, my dear, And the Heaven's deep skies are blue; My heart is high as the passionate year, And smiles like a bud in dew. My heart, my heart is high, my sweet, For wild is the smell o' the wood, That gusts in the breeze with a pulse o' heat, Mad heat that beats like a blood. My heart, my heart is high, my sweet, And the sense of summer is full; A sense of summer,--full fields of wheat, Full forests and waters cool. My heart is high, is high, my heart, As the bee's that groans and swinks In the dabbled flowers that dart and part To his woolly bulk when he drinks. My heart is high, is high, my heart,-- Oh, sing again, O good, gray bird, That I may get that lilt by heart, And fit each note with a word. God's saints! I tread the air, my dear! Flow one with the running wind; And the stars that stare I swear, my dear, Right soon in my hair I'll find. To live high up a life of mist With the white things in white skies, With their limbs of pearl and of amethyst, Who laugh blue humorous eyes! Or to creep and to suck like an elfin thing To the aching heart of a rose; In the harebell's ear to cling and swing And whisper what no one knows! To live on wild honey as fresh as thin As the rain that's left in a flower, And roll forth golden from feet to chin In the god-flower's Danaë shower! Or free, full-throated curve back the throat With a vigorous look at the blue, And sing right staunch with a lusty note Like the hawk hurled where he flew! God's life! the blood of the Earth is mine! And the mood of the Earth I'll take, And brim my soul with her wonderful wine, And sing till my heart doth break! A GRAY DAY. I. Long vollies of wind and of rain And the rain on the drizzled pane, And the eve falls chill and murk; But on yesterday's eve I know How a horned moon's thorn-like bow Stabbed rosy thro' gold and thro' glow, Like a rich barbaric dirk. II. Now thick throats of the snapdragons,-- Who hold in their hues cool dawns, Which a healthy yellow paints,-- Are filled with a sweet rain fine Of a jaunty, jubilant shine, A faery vat of rare wine, Which the honey thinly taints. III. Now dabble the poppies shrink, And the coxcomb and the pink; While the candytuft's damp crown Droops dribbled, low bowed i' the wet; And long spikes o' the mignonette Little musk-sacks open set, Which the dripping o' dew drags down. IV. Stretched taunt on the blades of grass, Like a gossamer-fibered glass, Which the garden-spider spun, The web, where the round rain clings In its middle sagging, swings;-- A hammock for Elfin things When the stars succeed the sun. V. And mark, where the pale gourd grows Up high as the clambering rose, How that tiger-moth is pressed To the wide leaf's underside.-- And I know where the red wasps hide, And the wild bees,--who defied The first strong gusts,--distressed. VI. Yet I feel that the gray will blow Aside for an afterglow; And a breeze on a sudden toss Drenched boughs to a pattering show'r Athwart the red dusk in a glow'r, Big drops heard hard on each flow'r On the grass and the flowering moss. VII. And then for a minute, may be,-- A pearl--hollow worn--of the sea,-- A glimmer of moon will smile; Cool stars rinsed clean on the dusk, A freshness of gathering musk O'er the showery lawns, as brusk As spice from an Indian isle. CARMEN. La _Gitanilla!_ tall dragoons In Andalusian afternoons, With ogling eye and compliment Smiled on you, as along you went Some sleepy street of old Seville; Twirled with a military skill Moustaches; buttoned uniforms Of Spanish yellow bowed your charms. Proud, wicked head and hair blue-black! Whence your mantilla, half thrown back, Discovered shoulders and bold breast Bohemian brown: and you were dressed-- In some short skirt of gipsy red Of smuggled stuff; thence stockings dead White silk exposed with many a hole Thro' which your plump legs roguish stole A fleshly look; and tiny toes In red morocco shoes with bows Of scarlet ribbons. Daintily You walked by me and I did see Your oblique eyes, your sensuous lip, That gnawed the rose you once did flip At bashful Jose's nose while loud Laughed the guant guards among the crowd. And, in your brazen chemise thrust, Heaved with the swelling of your bust, That bunch of white acacia blooms Whiffed past my nostrils hot perfumes. As in a cool _neveria_ I ate an ice with Mérimée, Dark Carmencita, you passed gay, All holiday bedizenéd, A new mantilla on your head; A crimson dress bespangled fierce; And crescent gold, hung in your ears, Shone wrought Morisco; and each shoe Cordovan leather, spangled blue, Glanced merriment; and from large arms To well-turned ancles all your charms Blew flutterings and glitterings Of satin bands and beaded strings; And 'round each arm's fair thigh one fold, And graceful wrists, a twisted gold Coiled serpents, tails fixed in the head, Convulsive-jeweled glossy red. In flowers and trimmings to the jar Of mandolin and low guitar You in the grated _patio_ Danced; the curled coxcombs' flirting row Rang pleased applause. I saw you dance, With wily motion and glad glance Voluptuous, the wild _romalis_, Where every movement was a kiss Of elegance delicious, wound In your Basque tambourine's dull sound. Or as the ebon castanets Clucked out dry time in unctuous jets, Saw angry Jose thro' the grate Glare on us a pale face of hate, When some indecent colonel there Presumed too lewdly for his ear. Some still night in Seville; the street, _Candilejo_; two shadows meet-- Flash sabres; crossed within the moon,-- Clash rapidly--a dead dragoon. DISENCHANTMENT OF DEATH. Hush! She is dead! Tread gently as the light Foots dim the weary room. Thou shalt behold. Look:--In death's ermine pomp of awful white, Pale passion of pulseless slumber virgin cold: Bold, beautiful youth proud as heroic Might-- Death! and how death hath made it vastly old. Old earth she is now: energy of birth Glad wings hath fledged and tried them suddenly; The eyes that held have freed their narrow mirth; Their sparks of spirit, which made this to be, Shine fixed in rarer jewels not of earth, Far Fairylands beyond some silent sea. A sod is this whence what were once those eyes Will grow blue wild-flowers in what happy air; Some weed with flossy blossoms will surprise, Haply, what summer with her affluent hair; Blush roses bask those cheeks; and the wise skies Will know her dryad to what young oak fair. The chastity of death hath touched her so, No dreams of life can reach her in such rest;-- No dreams the mind exhausted here below, Sleep built within the romance of her breast. How she will sleep! like musick quickening slow Dark the dead germs, to golden life caressed. Low musick, thin as winds that lyre the grass, Smiting thro' red roots harpings; and the sound Of elfin revels when the wild dews glass Globes of concentric beauty on the ground; For showery clouds o'er tepid nights that pass The prayer in harebells and faint foxgloves crowned. So, if she's dead, thou know'st she is not dead. Disturb her not; she lies so lost in sleep: The too-contracted soul its shell hath fled: Her presence drifts about us and the deep Is yet unvoyaged and she smiles o'erhead:-- Weep not nor sigh--thou wouldst not have _her_ weep? To principles of passion and of pride, To trophied circumstance and specious law, Stale saws of life, with scorn now flung aside, From Mercy's throne and Justice would'st thou draw Her, Hope in Hope, and Chastity's pale bride, In holiest love of holy, without flaw? The anguish of the living merciless,-- Mad, bitter cruelty unto the grave,-- Wrings the dear dead with tenfold heart's distress, Earth chaining love, bound by the lips that rave. If thou hast sorrow let thy sorrow bless That power of death, of death our selfless slave. "Unjust?"--He is not! for hast thou not all, All that thou ever hadst when this dull clay So heartless, blasted now, flushed spiritual, A restless vassal of Earth's night and day? This hath been thine and is; the cosmic call Hath disenchanted that which might not stay. _Thou_ unjust!--bar not from its high estate,-- Won with what toil thro' devastating cares: What bootless battling with the violent Fate; What mailed endeavor with resistless years;-- That soul:--whole-hearted granted once thy mate, Heaven only loaned, return it not with tears! THE THREE URGANDAS. Cast on sleep there came to me Three Urgandas; and the sea In lost lands of Briogne Sounded moaning, moaning: Cloudy clad in awful white; And each face a lucid light Rayed and blossomed out of night,-- And a wind was groaning. In my sleep I saw them rest, Each a long hand at her breast, A soft flame that lulls the West;-- And the sea was moaning, moaning;-- Hair like hoarded ingots rolled Down white shoulders glossy gold, Streaks of molten moonlight cold,-- And a wind was groaning. Rosy 'round each high brow bent Four-fold starry gold that sent Barbs of fire redolent;-- And the sea was moaning, moaning;-- 'Neath their burning crowns their eyes Burned like southern stars the skies Rock in shattered storm that flies,-- And a wind was groaning. Wisdom's eyes of lurid dark; And each red mouth like a spark Flashed and laughed off care and cark,-- And the sea was moaning, moaning;-- Mouths for song and lips to kiss; Lips for hate and mouths to hiss; Lips that fashioned hell or bliss,-- And the wind was groaning. Tall as stately virgins dead, Tapers lit at feet and head, 'Round whom Latin prayers are said,-- And the sea was moaning, moaning;-- Or as vampire women, who, Buried beauties, rise and woo Youths whose blood they suck like dew,-- And a wind was groaning. Then the west one said to me: "Thou hast slept thus holily While seven sands ran secretly."-- And the sea was moaning, moaning;-- "Earth hath served thee like a slave, Serving us who found thee brave, Fearless of or life or grave."-- And a wind was groaning. "Know!"--she smote my brow; a pain, Riddling arrows, rent my brain, Ceased and earth fell, some vast strain;-- And the sea was moaning, moaning;-- Then I understood all thought; What was life the spirit fraught; Love and hate; how worlds were wrought:-- And a wind was groaning. Then the east one said to me: "Thou hast wandered wearily By what mist-enveloped sea!"-- And the sea was moaning, moaning;-- "Know the things thou hast not seen; Life and law, and love and teen; Things that be and have not been."-- And the wind was groaning. "See!" her voice sung like a lyre Throbs of thunderous desire; Then the iron sight like fire-- And the sea was moaning, moaning;-- Burst; the inner eyelids, which Husked clairvoyance, with a twitch Rose--and I with light was rich;-- And a wind was groaning. Then I saw the eyes of Sleep; Nerves of Life and veins that leap; Laws of entity; the deep:-- And the sea was moaning, moaning;-- Orbs and eons; springs of Power; Circumstance--blown like a flower;-- Time--the second of an hour:-- And the wind was groaning. To the central third one's full Balanced being beautiful Heart, to hearken, made a lull,-- And the sea was moaning, moaning;-- As she sternly stooped to me: "Thou dost know and thou canst see; What thou art arise and be!"-- And the wind was groaning. To my mouth hot lips she pressed; And my famished soul, thrice blessed, Quaffed her radiance and caressed:-- And vague seas were moaning, moaning:-- Mounted; star-vibrating fled; Soared to love, with her who said: "Thou dost live and thou art dead."-- Far off winds were groaning. THE BRUSH SPARROW. I. Ere wild haws, looming in the glooms, Build bolted drifts of breezy blooms; And in the whistling hollow there The red-bud bends as brown and bare As buxom Roxy's up-stripped arm; From some slick hickory or larch, Sighed o'er the sodden meads of March, The sad heart thrills and reddens warm To hear thee braving the rough storm, Frail courier of green-gathering powers,-- Rebelling sap in trunks and flowers; Love's minister come heralding; O sweet saint-voice among bleak bowers!-- Thou brown-red pursuivant of Spring! II. "_Moan_" sob the woodland cascades still Down bloomless ledges of the hill; And gray, gaunt clouds like harpies hang In harpy heavens, and swoop and clang Sharp beaks and talons of the wind: Black scowl the forests, and unkind The far fields as the near; while song Seems murdered and all passion, wrong. One wild frog only in the thaw Of spawny pools wakes cold and raw, Expires a melancholy bass And stops as if bewildered; then Along the frowning wood again, Flung in the thin wind's fangy face, Thou, in red, woolly tassels proud Of bannered maples, flutest loud: "_Her Grace! her Grace! her Grace!_" III. "Her Grace! her Grace! her Grace!" Climbs beautiful and sunny-browed Up, up the kindling hills and wakes Blue berries in the berry brakes; With fragrant flakes, that blow and bleach, Deep powders smothered quince and peach; Eyes dogwoods with a thousand eyes; Teaches each sod how to be wise With twenty wild-flowers for one weed; And kisses germs that they may seed. In purest purple and sweet white Treads up the happier hills of light; Bloom, cloudy-borne, song in her hair, Long dew-drops her pale fingers fair: Big wind-retainers, and the rains Her yeomen strong that flash the plains; While scarlet mists at dawn,--and gold At eve,--her panoply enfold.-- Her herald tabarded behold!-- Awake to greet! prepare to sing! She comes, the darling Duchess, Spring!" CHORDS. I. Sleep while I sing to thee, Dulcinea,-- How like a shower of moonlight-crusted beams Of textile form compact, whose veins run stars,-- Discovered goddess of what naked loves!-- Maiden of dreams and aromatic sleep, Thou liest. Thy long instrument against Thy god-voluptuous sensuousness of hip Pure iridescent pearl of ocean slopes: Tempestuous silent color-melodies Pulse glimmering from it beaten by the moon,-- Soft songs the white hands of white shadows touch.-- Magnetic star set slumberous over night, Watch with me this superior star of Earth Good Heaven was kind to grant me: Trembler, Like some soft bird, dream, while I sing to thee-- Dream, languid ardor, my Dulcinea, dream. II. Floats a wild chant of morning from the hills; Bursts a broad song of sunlight on the sea; High Heaven throbs strung with rays of chords and thrills, Life's resonant pæans to Earth's minstrelsy. Bind thou swift sandals on of youth, My love, and harp to me of truth In lands of joy or ruth. Now sheer o'er solitudes of noon the strife Of chariot fierce by chariot scintillant Flames, and the blade-bare charioteers for life, O'er-bent, close-curled, goad their hot yokes that pant. Haste not, my love, but from the beam Beside this olive-frosty stream Sing while I rest and dream. What swart Penthesilea, Amazon, Hath, smitten, hurled her shield, that crescent there; To wrench the barbéd arrow leaned,--voiced one Defiant shout, breathed her red life in air.-- Tho' life be close to sunset, lo, Into the sunset let us go Still lyring joy not woe. How swims the Night thro' the deep-oceaned sky! How at pale lips blown stars like bubbles break, Burn, streamed from showery locks she tosses high!-- A stronger swimmer, Death, glares in her wake.-- Cast, love, ah cast thy harp away! Aweary am I of thy lay-- Kneel down by me and pray. III. When love delays, when love delays and Joy Steals a strange shadow o'er the happy hills, And Hope smiles from To-morrow, nor fulfills One promise of To-day, thy sight would cloy This soul with loved despair By seeing thee so fair. When love delays, when love delays and song Aches at wild lips regretful, as the sound Of a whole sea strives in the shell-mouth bound, Tho' Hope smiles still to-morrowed, all this wrong Would, at one little word, Leap forth for thee a sword. When love delays, when love delays and sleep Nests in dark eyeballs, like a song of home Heard 'mid familiar flowers o'er the foam, Tho' Hope smiles still to-morrowed, thou wouldst steep This hurt heart overmuch In balm with one true touch. When love delays, when love delays and Sorrow Drinks her own tears that fever her soul's thirst, And song, and sleep, and memory seem accurst, For Hope smiles still to-morrowed, I would borrow One smile from thee to cheer The weary, weary year. When love delays, when love delays and Death Hath sealed dim lips and mocked young eyes with night, To love or hate locked calm, indifferent quite,-- Hope's star-eyed acolyte,--what kisses' breath, What joys can slay regret Or teach thee to forget! IV. Thou hast not loved her, hast not as thou shouldst, O narrow heart, that could not grasp so wide! And tho' thy oaths seemed oaths yet they have lied, And thy caresses, kisses were--denied-- Thou hast not loved her, hast not as thou couldst. Thou hast not loved her, hast not as thou shouldst; O shallow eyes, that could not image deep!-- Enough! what boots it tho' ye weep and weep? Her sleep is deep, too deep! so let her sleep-- Thou hast not loved her, hast not as thou couldst. Thou hast not loved her, hast not as thou shouldst; For hadst thou, that confluent night and day Had in oblivion currents borne away Not one alone--but coward! thou didst stay-- Thou hast not loved her, hast not as thou couldst! V. O Life, thou hast no power left to strive, Life, who, upon wild mountains of Surprise, Behold'st Love's citadelled, tall towers rise,-- Shafts of clear, Paphian waters poured that live. O Hope, who sought'st fulfillment of deep dreams Beyond those Caucasus of Faith and Truth,-- Twixt silver realms of eld and golden youth Rolled,--cloudward clustered; whose sonorous streams, Urned in the palms of Death, gush to his feet: Unlovely beauty of sad, stirless sight Mixed in them with eternity of night;-- O Hope, how sad the journey once so sweet! Dreams crowned with thorns have passed thee on the way; And Beauties with bare limbs red-bruised and torn; Tall, holy Hours their eyes dull, wan and worn, Slaves manacled whom lashed the brutal Day. And Sorrow sat beside a sea so wide, That shoreless Heaven unto one little star Upon the brink of night seems not so far, And on her feet the frail foams tossing sighed. She, her rent hair, dressed like a siren's, full Of weedy waifs and strays of moaning shells, Streaked with the glimmering sands and foamy bells, Loomed a pale utterance most beautiful. "And thou shall love me, Sorrow!" I; but she Turned her vast eyes upon me and no more; Their melancholy language clove the core Of my fast heart; and in mine ears the sea Along gaunt crags yearned iron-husky grief; Groaned the hard headlands with the wings of Storm, Huge thunder shook the foot-hills and Alarm Gnashed her thin fangs from hissing reef to reef. So to the hills aweary I did turn.-- Beyond, a reach of sunlight and slim flowers; Where Hope, an amaranth, and tearless Hours, Long lilies, lived, whose hearts stiff gold did burn. And there curled Joy clinked their chaste chalices; Distilled at dusk, poured bubbling dewy wine, Divine elixir! off his lips divine Tossed the fleet rapture to the golden lees, And so lolled dazed with pleasure. And I said, "Yield me the lily thou hast drained that I This hollow thirst may kill and so not die?" To me he laughed, "I yield it!"--but 'twas dead. And each blown reach and eminence of blooms Flushed long, low, gurgling murmurs like a sea, And laughed bright lips that flashed white teeth of glee In pearly flower on flower; pure perfumes Gasped the rolled fields; and o'er the eminence I journeyed joyless thro' a blossom-fire That, budding kisses curled with blown desire, Clasped me and claimed me tho' I spurned it hence. Then came unto a land of thorns and weeds, And dust and thirst o'er which a songless sky, Hoarse with lean vultures, scowled a scoffing lie, Where cold snakes hissed among dead, rattling reeds. And there I saw the bony brow of Hate; Vile, vicious sneers, the eyes of shriveled Scorn Among the writhing briers; each a thorn Of cavernous hunger barbed with burning fate. They, thro' her face-drawn locks of raveled dark, Stung a stark horror; and I felt my heart Freeze, wedged with ice, to dullness part by part, And knew Hate coiled toward me yet stood stark-- Fell; seeing on the happy, happy hills, Above that den of dust and thorny thirst, The bastioned walls of Love in glory burst, Built by sweet glades of Poesy and rills. O Life, I had not life enough to strive! O Hope, I had not hope enough to dream! Death drew me to him and to sigh did seem, "Love? Love?--thou canst not reach her and yet live! "For sorrow, joy, and hate, and scorn are bound About thee, girdling so, thy lips are dumb; And Fame, ah Fame! her towers are but a tomb-- Star-set on dwindling heights of starry ground. "And thou art done and being done must die, Endeavor being dead and energy Slain, a wild bird that beat bars to be free, Despairing perished, finding life a lie." VI. If thou wouldst know the Beautiful that breathes Consanguined with young Earth, go seek!--but seek No sighing Shadows with dead hemlock-wreaths, No sleepy Sorrows whose wan eyes are weak With vanished vigils, Melancholy made, Forlorn, in lands of sin and saddening shade; No tearful Angers torn of truthless Love, Who stab their own hearts to dull daggers' hilts For vengeance sweet; no miser Moods that fade In owlet towers. Such it springs above, And buds on morning meads no flower that wilts. If thou dost seek the Beautiful, beware! Lest thou discover her, nor know 'tis she; And she enslave thee evermore, and there Reward thee with but kingliest beggary: Make thine the robust red her cheek that stings; The kiss-sweet odor, thine, her wild breath brings; Make thine the broad bloom of her crownéd brow; The hearts of light that ardor her proud eyes; That melody,--which is herself,--that sings The poem of her presence and the vow, That stars exalts and mortals deifies. Lone art thou then, lone as the lone first star Kindling pale beauty o'er the mournful wave; Lost to all happiness save searching far Thro' lands of Life where Death hath delved no grave: Lost,--even as I,--a devotee to her, Poor in world-blessedness her bliss to share, But rich in passion.--For her hermitage Hope no Hydaspes' splendor, for it lies Mossy by woody waters hidden, where She, priestess pure, wise o'er all Wisdom sage, Shrines artists' hearts for godliest sacrifice. VII. 1 Then up the orient heights to the zenith that balanced a crescent,-- Up and far up and over,--a warm erubescence liquescent Rioted roses and rubies; eruptions of opaline gems, Flung and wide sown, blushed crushed, and crumbled from diadems Wealth of the kings of the Sylphs; whence, old alchemist, Earth-- Dewed down--by chemistry occult fashions petrified waters of worth.-- Then out of the stain and rash furor, the passionate pulver of stone, The trembling suffusion that dazzled and awfully shone, Chamelion-convulsion of color, hilarious ranges of glare-- Like a god who for vengeance ires, nodding battle from every hair, Fares forth with majesty girdled and clangs with hot heroes for life, Till the brazen gates boom bursten hells and the walls roar bristling strife,-- Athwart with a stab of glittering fire, in-plunged like a knife, Cut billowing gold, in bullion rolled, and an army driven, Routed, the stars fled shriveled; and the white moon riven, Puffed,--like a foam-feather forth of a Triton's conch when sounded,-- Clung, vague as a web, on heaven; then weak as a face that is wounded Died on the withering clouds and sorrowed with them and mingled. While up and up with a steadiness and triumph of sparkle that tingled, Wrestled the tempest of Dawn, that hurricaned heaven with spangle, And halcyon bloom like mercy,--a shatter, a scatter, a tangle Of labyrinthed glory.--O God! with manifold mirth The hallelujah of Heaven, hosanna of Earth. 2. And I in my vision imprisoned was restless and wan With a yearning for vigor to gird and be gone Out of false dreams to the true--realities noble of dawn. VIII. 1 Vanishing visions, whose lineaments steal into slumbers, Loosened the lids of the sight the night that encumbers; Secretly, sweetly with fingers of fog that were slow, Slow as a song that mysterious Passions the soul, till delirious, Wrapped in mad melody mastering the uttermost woe, Deep to the innermost deep it is shaken Ruffled and rippled and tossed, Tantalized, terrorized, cursed with a thirst that, unslaken, Debauches with eyes that burn stolid, yet only shall waken With infinite scorn of the cost If no note of the rhapsody's lost. 2. Oh, for the music of moonbeams that master and sweep Chords of the resonant deep! Smiting loud lyres of Night, sonorous as fire, Leap fluttering fingers of vanquishing flash and of flake Fain at each firmament-universe-instrument star-strung. Vibrating-vestured in garments of woven desire, Stoop to me, breathe on me, smile on me, waver, "_Awake! From waking to sleeping, to silence from manifold clamor, To revelous regions of multiform glamour!_" Murmur and whisper "_Awake!_" Oh, necromance banquets by fountains of fairy, the spar-sprung! Oh, sorcerous beauties and wonders of wizards! oh take The millions of morning-spun gleams, All glitters of galloping streams, The glimmer the gasp the clutch and the grasp, That colorless crystals and virtuous jewels As spasmodic fuels Cuddle and huddle and clasp: The wrinkle and crinkle of scintillant heat in white metals; The quiver of terrible gold and the pearly Lithe brilliance of soft, holy petals, Of slender, sad blossoms, tumultuous tossed crispy and curly In shadowy reaches of violet dark; The burn of the stars and the spark Fragile of foams that are fluted, to make One cordial of dreams To drink and to sink Deep, deep into dreams nor awake. IX 1 As to a Nymph in the ripple-ribbed body of ocean, Down, down thro' vast stories of water, a hiss and devour Electrify altitudes orbed,--pulses violent motion Of Thunder, who treads the brute neck of the seas in his power, Till their spine writhes lumped into waves,--the Nymph in her bower, Rubbing moist sleep from her eyes, arises,-- Loosens the loops of her locks, Loosens, and suddenly darts on the storm and surprises The boisterous bands of the rocks, That hoot to the riddling arrows of rain and of seas, Mountainous these;-- Swirling and whirling, She of the huge exultation beheld, with long tresses, Dotted with bells of the hollow, hard foam, flung streaming, Dives, bounds to the whirlwind embracing; then mockingly presses Hair to wild face and wild throat, drifts desolate dreaming; With scorn then laughing and screaming, Discovers full beauty of nakedness leaping and gleaming; And showering the rain from her hair, Pouts blown, curdled foam from her lips, And eddying slips, From the ravenous eyes of the Thunder that glare, Away, away, To the arms of her lover the Spray. So I,-- At swift thoughts that were spoken, that came As if winds had fashioned a speech--was a flame That dwindled, was kindled, then mounted and, Marvelling why,-- Stemming all thought, a gleam out of gleams Was born into dreams. 2. Beautiful-bosomed, O Night! with thy moon, Move in majesty slowly to majesty lightly! Silent as sleep, who is lulled by a delicate tune, O'er-stroke thou the air with a languor of moonlight brightly! Thin ice, in sockets of turquoise fastened, the stars Gash golden the bosom of heaven with fiery scars. Swoon down, O shadowy hosts, O multitude ghosts, Of the moonlight and starlight begotten!--Then swept Whispers that sighed to me, sorrows that stealthily hovered, Laughters with lips that were mist. And murmurings crept On toward me feet that were glow; and faces uncovered, Radiant and crystalline clear, In tortuous, sinuous swirl of vapory pearl, Waned near and more near. Flashed faster a spiral of shapes and of shadows still faster, On in a whirl of unutterable beauties by music expired, That lived and desired,-- Born births of the brain of a rhapsody-reveling master; And mine eyes, with their beauties infired, Smiled scorn on dark Death and Disaster. X. "Ah! now the orchard's leaves are sear, Drip not with starlight-litten dew; Green-drowned no moon-bright fruit hangs here; Dead, dead your long, white lilies too-- And you, Allita, where are you!" Then comes her dim touch, faintly warm; Cool hair sense on my feverish cheek; Dim eyes at mine deep with some charm,-- So gray! so gray! and I am weak Weak with wild tears and can not speak. I am as one who walks with dreams: Sees as in youth his father's home; Hears from his native mountain-streams Far music of continual foam. DEAD AND GONE. I I wot well o' his going To think in flowers fair;-- His a right kind heart, my dear, To give the grass such hair. II. I wot well o' his lying Such nights out in the cold,-- To list the cricket's crick, my sweet, To see the glow-worm's gold. III. An mine eyes be laughterful, Well may they laugh, I trow,-- Since two dead eyes a yesternight Gazed in them sad enow. IV. An my heart make moan and ache, Well may it dree, I'm sure;-- He is dead and gone, my love, And it is beggar poor. A MABINOGI. In samite sark yclad was she; And that fair glimmerish band of gold Which crowned long, savage locks of hair In the moon brent cold. She with big eyeballs gloomed and glowered, And lightly hummed some Elfin's song, And one could naught save on her stare And fare along. Yea; sad and lute-like was that song And softly said its mystery; Which quaintly sang in elden verse "Thy love I'll be." And oft it said: "I love thee true, Sir Ewain, champion of the fair." And never wist he what a witch Was that one there. And never wist he that a witch Had bound him with her wily hair, Eke with dark art had ta'en his heart To slay him there. And all his soul did wax amort To stars, to hills, to slades, to streams, And it but held that sorceress fair As one of dreams. And now he kens some castle gray Wild turrets ivied, in the moon, Old, where through woodlands foaming on A torrent shone.... In its high hall full twenty knights With visors barred all sternly stand; The following of some gracious brave, Lord of the land. And lo! when that dim damosel Moved down the hall, they louted low; And she was queen of all that band, That dame of snow. Now on that knight she stared eftsoons, And cried on high unto her crew, "Behold! Sir Knights, the dastard brave Your king that slew." And all those heathen knights wox wild Attonce; and all against him drave; Long battle blades and daggers bright Aloft did wave. The press on him puissant bare And smote him to the rush-strown earth;-- Tall, tall o'er all that Fairy rose Aloud with mirth. GENIUS LOCI. I. What deity for dozing laziness Devised the lounging coziness of this Enchanted nook?--and how!--did I distress His musing ease that fled but now, or his Laughed frolic with some forest-sister, fair As those wild hill-carnations are and rare? Too true, alas!--Feel! the wild moss is warm And moist with late reclining, as the palm Of what hot Hamadryad, who, a-nap, Props her hale cheek upon it, while her arm Weak wind-flowers bury; in her hair the balm Of a whole Spring of blossoms and of sap? II. See, how the dented moss, that pads the hump Of these distorted roots, elastic springs From that god's late departure; lump by lump, Pale tufts impressed twitch loose in nervous rings, As crowding stars qualm thro' gray evening skies. Indulgence grant thou my profane surprise, Pray!--then to dream where thou didst dream before, Benevolent! ... here where the veiny leaves Bask broad the fuzzy bosoms of their hands O'er wistful waters: 'neath this sycamore, Smooth, giraffe-brindled, where each ripple weaves A twinkling quiver as of marching bands III. Of Elfin chivalry, that, helmed with gold, Split spilled the scaley sunbeams wrinkled off. What brought thee here?--This wind that steals the old Weird legends from the forests, with a scoff To laugh them thro' their beards? Or, in those weeds, The hermit brook so busy with his beads?-- How many _Aves_, _Paters_ doth he say In one droned minute on his rosary Of bubbles--wot'st thou?--Pucker-eyed didst mark Yon lank hag-tapers, yellow by yon way, A haggard company of seven?--See How dry swim by such curled brown bits of bark? IV. Didst mark the ghostly gold of this grave, still, Conceited minnow thro' these twisted roots, Thrust o'er the smoky topaz of this rill, Dull-slumbering here? Or did those insect flutes-- Sleepy with sunshine--buzz thee that forlorn Tale of Tithonus and the bashful Morn? Until two tears gleamed in the stealing stream Trembling its polish o'er the winking grail?-- Nay! didst perplex thee with some poet plan To drug this air with beauty to make dream,-- Ah, discreet Cunning, watching in yon vale!-- Me, wildwood-wandered from the marts of Man! * * * * * Transcriber's Note: There are some strange words, which have been retained, as the author may have been using 'poetic licence': e.g. 'aventured spears', which may have been quartz-tipped (aventurine); 'beryle', possibly referring to the color of beryl (light green, etc.); 'bowldered', alternative spelling for 'bouldered'; 'guant', which may be 'gaunt misspelled, or it may refer to a bird (guan)... "Laughed the guant guards among the crowd"; etc. And 'accompaning' still needs to elide the second 'a' to fit the metre. Some words are obviously ancient, or dialectic, and some are akin to some of the words in the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. The transcriber prefers not to change anything the author wrote, as a slightly different spelling may also imply a slightly different inflexion. There are, however, two probable printer's errors, which have been amended: Page 129: 'passsion' corrected to 'passion': "To principles of passion and of pride," Page 154: Removed extraneous 'the': "That hoot to the (the) riddling arrows of rain and of seas," 
33770	----	[Illustration: There's one you must get next to _Page 57._] Impertinent Poems By Edmund Vance Cooke Author of "Chronicles of the Little Tot" "Told to the Little Tot" "Rimes to Be Read" Etc. With Illustrations by Gordon Ross _Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce, And whether he's slow, or spry, It isn't the fact that you're dead that counts But only--how did you die?_ New York Dodge Publishing Company 220 East 23rd Street Copyright, 1903, by Edmund Vance Cooke Copyright, 1907, by Dodge Publishing Company A PRE-IMPERTINENCE. Anticipating the intelligent critic of "Impertinent Poems," it may well be remarked that the chief impertinence is in calling them poems. Be that as it may, the editors and publishers of "The Saturday Evening Post," "Success" and "Ainslee's," and, in a lesser degree, "Metropolitan," "Independent," "Booklovers'" and "New York Herald" share with the author the reproach of first promoting their publicity. That they are now willing to further reduce their share of the burden by dividing it with the present publishers entitles them to the thanks of the author and the gratitude of the book-buying public. E. V. C. [Illustration] INDEX. PAGE Are You You? 59 Better 83 Between Two Thieves 71 Blood is Red 33 Bubble-Flies, The 61 Choice, The 68 Conscience Pianissimo 47 Conservative, The 40 Critics, The 89 Dead Men's Dust 11 Desire 99 Diagnosis 35 Dilettant, The 38 Distance and Disenchantment 77 Don't Take Your Troubles to Bed 22 Don't You? 16 Eternal Everyday, The 21 Failure 23 Familiarity Breeds Contempt 95 Family Resemblance 79 First Person Singular, The 66 Forget What the Other Man Hath 85 Get Next 57 Good 24 Grill, The 30 How Did You Die? 103 Humbler Heroes 45 Hush 41 In Nineteen Hundred and Now 14 Island, The 43 Let's Be Glad We're Living 26 Move 55 Need 81 Pass 51 Plug 92 Price, The 60 Publicity 53 Qualified 63 Saving Clause, The 70 Song of Rest, A 97 Spectator, The 73 Spread Out 37 Squealer, The 75 Success 28 There Is, Oh, So Much 101 Vision, The 32 What Are You Doing? 65 What Sort Are You? 87 Whet, The 86 World Runs On, The 49 You Too 18 IMPERTINENT POEMS [Illustration] DEAD MEN'S DUST. You don't buy poetry. (Neither do I.) Why? You cannot afford it? Bosh! you spend _Editions de luxe_ on a thirsty friend. You can buy any one of the poetry bunch For the price you pay for a business lunch. Don't you suppose that a hungry head, Like an empty stomach, ought to be fed? Looking into myself, I find this true, So I hardly can figure it false in you. And you don't _read_ poetry very much. (Such Is my own case also.) "But," you cry, "I haven't the time." Beloved, you lie. When a scandal happens in Buffalo, You ponder the details, con and pro; If poets were pugilists, couldn't you tell Which of the poets licked John L.? If poets were counts, could your wife be fooled As to which of the poets married a Gould? And even _my_ books might have some hope If poetry books were books of dope. "You're a little bit swift," you say to me, "See!" You open your library. There you show Your "favorite poets," row on row, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Poe, A Homer unread, an uncut Horace, A wholly forgotten William Morris. My friend, my friend, can it be you thought That these were poets whom you had bought? These are dead men's bones. You bought their mummies To display your style, like clothing dummies. But when do they talk to you? Some one said That these were poets which should be read, So here they stand. But tell me, pray, How many poets who live to-day Have you, of your own volition, sought, Discovered and tested, proved and _bought_, With a grateful glow that the dollar you spent Netted the poet his ten per cent.? "But hold on," you say, "I am reading _you_." True, And pitying, too, the sorry end Of the dog I tried this on. My friend, I _can_ write poetry--good enough So you wouldn't look at the worthy stuff. But knowing what you prefer to read I'm setting the pace at about your speed, Being rather convinced these truths will hold you A little bit better than if I'd told you A genuine poem and forgotten to scold you. Besides, when I open my little room And see _my_ poets, each in his tomb, With his mouth dust-stopped, I turn from the shelf And I must scold you, or scold myself. IN NINETEEN HUNDRED AND NOW. Thomas Moore, at the present date, Is chiefly known as "a ten-cent straight." Walter, the Scot, is forgiven his rimes Because of his tales of stirring times. William Morris's fame will wear As a practical man who made a chair. And even Shakespere's memory's green Less because he's read than because he's seen. Then why should a poet make his bow In the year of nineteen hundred and now? Homer himself, if he could but speak, Would admit that most of his stuff is Greek. Chaucer would no doubt own his tongue Was the broken speech of the land when young. Shelley's a sealed-up book, and Byron Is chiefly recalled as a masculine siren. Poe has a perch on the chamber door, But the populace read him "Nevermore." Spenser fitted his day, as all allow, But this is nineteen hundred and now. Tennyson's chiefly given away To callow girls on commencement day. Alfred Austin, entirely solemn, Is quoted most in the funny column. Riley's Hoosiers have made their pile And moved to the city to live in style. Kipling's compared to "The Man Who Was," And the rest of us write with little cause, Till publishers shy at talk of per cents., But offer to print "at author's expense." O, once the "celestial fire" burned bright, But the world now calls for electric light! And Pegasus, too, is run by meter, Being trolleyized to make him fleeter. So I throw the stylus away and set Myself at the typewriter alphabet To spell some message I find within Which shall also scratch your rawhide skin, For you must read it, if I learn how To write for nineteen hundred and now. [Illustration] DON'T YOU? When the plan which I have, to grow suddenly rich Grows weary of leg and drops into the ditch, And scheme follows scheme Like the web of a dream To glamor and glimmer and shimmer and seem,... Only seem; And then, when the world looks unfadably blue, If my rival sails by With his head in the sky, And sings "How is business?" why, what do I do? Well, I claim that I aim to be honest and true, But I sometimes lie. Don't you? When something at home is decidedly wrong, When somebody sings a false note in the song, Too low or too high, And, you hardly know why, But it wrangles and jangles and runs all awry,... Aye, awry! And then, at the moment when things are askew, Some cousin sails in With a face all a-grin, And a "Do I intrude? Oh, I see that I do!" Well, then, though I aim to be honest and true, Still I sometimes lie. Don't you? When a man whom I need has some foible or fad, Not very commendable, not very bad; Perhaps it's his daughter, And some one has taught her To daub up an "oil" or to streak up a "water"; What a "water"! And her grass is green green and her sky is blue blue, But her father, with pride, In a stagey aside Asks my "candid opinion." Then what do I do? Well, I claim that I aim to be honest and true, But I sometimes lie. Don't you? YOU TOO. Did you ever make some small success And brag your little brag, As if your breathing would impress The world and fix your tag Upon it, so that all might see The label loudly reading, "ME!" And when you thought you'd gained the height And, sunning in your own delight, You preened your plumes and crowed "All right!" Did something wipe you out of sight? Unless you did this many a time You needn't stop to read this rime. When I was mamma's little joy And not the least bit tough, I'd sometimes whop some other boy (If he were small enough), And for a week I'd wear a chip, And at the uplift of a lip I'd lord it like a pigmy pope, Until, when I had run my rope, Some bullet-headed little Swope Would clean me out as slick as soap. No doubt you were as bad, or worse, Or else you had not read this verse. [Illustration: "Me!" _Page 18._] All women were like pica print When I was young and wise; I'd read their very souls by dint Of looking in their eyes. And in those limpid souls I'd see A very fierce regard for me. And then--my, my, it makes me faint!-- Peroxide and a pinkish paint Gave me the hard, hard heart complaint, I saw the sham, I felt the taint, Yet if she'd pat me once or twice, I'd follow like a little fyce. I never played a little game And won a five or ten, But, presto! I was not the same As common makes of men. Not Solomon and all his kind Held half the wisdom of my mind. And so I'd swell to twice my size, And throw my hat across my eyes, And chew a quill, and wear red ties, And tip you off the stock to rise-- Until, at last, I'd have to steal The baby's bank to buy a meal. I speak as if these things remained All in the perfect tense, And yet I don't suppose I've gained A single ounce of sense. I scoff these tales of yesterday In quite a supercilious way, But by to-morrow I may bump Into some newer game and jump! You'll think I am the only trump In all the deck until--kerslump! Unless you'll do the same some time, Of course you haven't read this rime. [Illustration: The Eternal Everyday _Page 21._] THE ETERNAL EVERYDAY. O, one might be like Socrates And lift the hemlock up, Pledge death with philosophic ease, And drain the untrembling cup;-- But to be barefoot and be great, Most in desert and least in state, Servant of truth and lord of fate! I own I falter at the peak Trod daily by the steadfast Greek. O, one might nerve himself to climb His cross and cruelly die, Forgiving his betrayer's crime, With pity in his eye;-- But day by day and week by week To feel his power and yet be meek, Endure the curse and turn the cheek, I scarce dare trust even you to be As was the Jew of Galilee. O, one might reach heroic heights By one strong burst of power. He might endure the whitest lights Of heaven for an hour;-- But harder is the daily drag, To smile at trials which fret and fag, And not to murmur--nor to lag. The test of greatness is the way One meets the eternal Everyday. DON'T TAKE YOUR TROUBLES TO BED. You may labor your fill, friend of mine, if you will; You may worry a bit, if you must; You may treat your affairs as a series of cares, You may live on a scrap and a crust; But when the day's done, put it out of your head; Don't take your troubles to bed. You may batter your way through the thick of the fray, You may sweat, you may swear, you may grunt; You may be a jack-fool if you must, but this rule Should ever be kept at the front:-- Don't fight with your pillow, but lay down your head And kick every worriment out of the bed. That friend or that foe (which he is, I don't know), Whose name we have spoken as Death, Hovers close to your side, while you run or you ride, And he envies the warmth of your breath; But he turns him away, with a shake of his head, When he finds that you don't take your troubles to bed. FAILURE. What is a failure? It's only a spur To a man who receives it right, And it makes the spirit within him stir To go in once more and fight. If you never have failed, it's an even guess You never have won a high success. What is a miss? It's a practice shot Which a man must make to enter The list of those who can hit the spot Of the bull's-eye in the centre. If you never have sent your bullet wide, You never have put a mark inside. What is a knock-down? A count of ten Which a man may take for a rest. It will give him a chance to come up again And do his particular best. If you never have more than met your match, I guess you never have toed the scratch. [Illustration] GOOD. You look at yourself in the glass and say: "Really, I'm rather _distingué_. To be sure my eyes Are assorted in size, And my mouth is a crack Running too far back, And I hardly suppose An unclassified nose Is a mark of beauty, as beauty goes; But still there's something about the whole Suggesting a beauty of--well, say soul." And this is the reason that photograph-galleries Are able to pay employees' salaries. Now, this little mark of our brotherhood, By which each thinks that his looks are good, Is laudable quite in you and me, Provided we not only look, but be. I look at my poem and you hear me say: "Really, it's clever in its way. The theme is old And the style is cold. These words run rude; That line is crude; And here is a rhyme Which fails to chime, And the metre dances out of time. [Illustration: Look at Yourself _Page 24._] Oh, it isn't so bright it'll blind the sun, But it's better than that by Such-a-one." And this is the reason I and my creditors Curse the "unreasoning whims" of editors, And yet, if one writes for a livelihood, He ought to believe that his work is good, Provided the form that his vanity takes Not only believes, but also makes. And there is our neighbor. We've heard him say: "Really, I'm not the commonest clay. Brown got his dust By betraying a trust; And Jones's wife Leads a terrible life; While I _have_ heard That Robinson's word Isn't quite so good as Gas preferred. And Smith has a soul with seamy cracks, For he talks of people behind their backs!" And these are the reasons the penitentiary Holds open house for another century. True, we want no man in our neighborhood Who doesn't consider his character good, But then it ought to be also true He not only knows to consider, but do. LET'S BE GLAD WE'RE LIVING. I. Oh, let's be glad that we're living yet; you bet! The sun runs round and the rain is wet And the bird flip-flops its wing; Tennis and toil bring an equal sweat; It's so much trouble to frown and fret, So easy to laugh and sing, Ting ling! So easy to laugh and sing! (And yet, sometimes, when I sing my song, I'm almost afraid my method is wrong.) II. Many have money which I have not, God wot! But victual and keep are all they've got, And the stars still dot the sky. Heaven be praised that they shine so bright, Heaven be praised for an appetite, So who is richer than I? Hi yi! Say, who is richer than I? (And yet I'm hoping to sell this screed For several dollars I hardly need.) III. Ducats and dividends, stocks and shares, who cares? Worry and property travel in pairs, While the green grows on the tree. A banquet's nothing more than a meal; A trolley's much like an automobile, With a transfer sometimes free, Tra lee! With a transfer sometimes free! (And yet you're unwilling, I plainly see, To leave the automobile to me.) IV. A note you give and a note you get; don't fret, For they both may go to protest yet, And the roses blow perfume. Fortune is only a Dun report; The Homestead Law and the Bankrupt Court Have fostered many a boom, Boom, boom! Have fostered many a boom. (But I see you smile in a rapturous way On the man who is rated double A.) V. Life is a show for you and me; it's free! And what you look for is what you see; A hill is a humped-up hollow. Riches are yours with a dollar bill; A million's the same little digit still, With nothing but naughts to follow, So hollo! There's nothing but naughts to follow. (But you and I, as I've said before, Could get along with a trifle more.) SUCCESS. It's little the difference where you arrive; The serious question is how you strive. Are you up to your eyes in a wild romance? Does your lady lead you a dallying dance? Do you question if love be fate, or chance? Oh, the world will ask: "Did he get the girl?" Though gentleman, coxcomb, clown or churl, Master or menial of passion's whirl. But it _isn't_ that. The world will run Though you never bequeath it daughter or son, But what, O lover, will come to you If you be not chivalrous, honest, true? As far ahead as a man may think, You can see your little soul shrivel and shrink. It's not, "Do you win?" It is, "What have you been?" Are you stripped for the world-old, world-wide race For the metal which shines like the sun's own face Till it dazzles us blind to the mean and base? Do you say to yourself, "When I have my hoard, I will give of the plenty which I have stored, If the Lord bless me, I will bless the Lord"? And do you forget, as you pile your pelf, What is the gift you are giving yourself? Though your mountain of gold may dazzle the day, Can you climb its height with your feet of clay? Oh, it isn't the stamp on the metal you win; It's the stamp on the metal you coin within. It's not what you give; It is "What do you live?" Are you going to sail the polar seas To the point of ninety-and-north degrees, Where the very words in your larynx freeze? Well, the mob may ask "Did he reach the pole? Though fair, or foul, did he touch the goal?" But if that be the spirit which stirs your soul, Off, off from the land below the zeroes; For you are not of the stuff of heroes. Ho! many a man can lead men forth To the fearsome end of the Farthest North, But can you be faithful for woe or weal In a land where nothing but self is leal? Oh, it isn't "How far?" It is what you are. And it isn't your lookout where you arrive, But it's up to you as to how you strive. THE GRILL. Why do you? What's it to you? I know you do, for I've seen the gruesome feeling simmer through you. I've seen it rise behind your eyes And take your features by surprise. I've seen it in your half-hid grin And the tilting-upness of your chin. Good-natured though you are and fair, as you have often boasted, Still you like to hear the other man artistically roasted. Whenever the star secures the stage with the spotlight in the centre, Why should the anvil chorus think it has the cue to enter? Whenever the prima donna trills the E above the clef, Why should the brasses orchestrate the bass in double f? It's funny, But it's even money, You like to spy the buzzing fly in the other fellow's honey. Though you have said that honest bread Demands no honey on it spread, [Illustration: Why do You? _Page 30._] And if we eat the crusty wheat With appetite, it needs no sweet, Still I have noticed you were not at all inclined to cry Because the man the bees had blest was bothered with the fly. Whenever the chef concocts a dish which sets the world to tasting, Why does the cooking-school get out its recipes for basting? Whenever a sprinter beats the bunch from the pistol-shot, why is it The heavy hammer throwers get together for a visit? Excuse me! Did you accuse me Of turning the spit a little bit myself? Why, you amuse me! Didn't I scratch the sulphurous match And blow the flame to make it catch? Didn't you trot to get the pot To heat the water good and hot? Then, seizing on our victim, if we found no greater sin, Didn't we call him "a lobster," and cheerfully chuck him in? THE VISION. At the door of Success, I've been tempted to knock Both the door and the man who went through it, But I find that the fellow was greasing the lock All the time that he strove to undo it, So I either stay out, or must look for the key Which slipped back the bolt which impeded, And I'm certain to find it, as soon as I see The reason my rival succeeded. Yes, I own when the man is a rank also-ran That I feel quite pish-tushy and pooh-y, And exclaim if he ever knew saw-dust from bran, Well--I come from just west of St. Louis! But then, in the winning he's made, there's a hope That I may do even as he did, So I swallow my sneer and I study his dope To discover just why he succeeded. I've been up in the air, I've been down in the hole, (But always, let's hope, on the level,) And I've been on my uppers--so meagre my sole 'Twould scarcely have tempted the devil! But it's nothing to you what I am, or I was, And no whit of your sympathy's needed, For I'm certain to win in the long run, because I shall see how my rival succeeded. BLOOD IS RED. Some of us don't drink, some of us do; Some of us use a word or two. Most of us, maybe, are half-way ripe For deeds that would't look well in type. All of us have done things, no doubt, We don't very often brag about. We are timidly good, we are badly bold, But there's hope for the worst of us, I hold, If there be a few things we didn't do, For the reason that we so wanted to. Some of us sin on a smaller scale. (We don't mind minnows, we shy at a whale.) We speak of a woman with half a sneer, We sit on our hands when we ought to cheer. The salad we mix in the bowl of the heart We sometimes make a little too tart For home consumption. We growl, we nag, But we're not quite lost if we sometimes drag The hot words back and make them mild At the moment they fret to be running wild. Don't pin your faith on the man or woman Who never is tempted. We're mostly human. And whoever he be who never has felt The red blood sing in the veins and melt The ice of convention, caste and creed, To the very last barrier, has no need To raise his brows at the rest of us. It bides its time in the best of us, And well for him if he do not do That which the strength of him wants him to. DIAGNOSIS. You have a grudge against the man Who did the thing you couldn't do. You hatched the scheme, you laid the plan, And yet you couldn't push it through. You strained your soul and couldn't win; He gave a breath and it was easy. You smile and swallow your chagrin, But, oh, the swallow makes you queasy. I know your illness, for, you see, The diet never pleases me. Your dearest friend has made a strike, Has placed his mark above the crowd, Has won the thing which _you_ would like And you are glad for him, and proud. Your tongue is swift, your cheek is red, If some one speak to his detraction, And yet, the fact the thing is said Affords you half a satisfaction. I see the workings of your mind Because my own is so inclined. You tell me fame is hollow squeak, You say that wealth is carking care; And to live care-free a single week Is more than years of work and wear. Alexander weeps his highest place, Diogenes is happy sunning! What matters it who wins the race So you have had the joy of running? And yet, you covet prize and pelf. I know it, for I do, myself. SPREAD OUT. In politics I'm a--never mind, And you are a--I don't care, But, anyway, I am rather inclined To suspect we are both unfair; For I have called you a coward and slave And you have dubbed me a fool and knave. (Yet, perhaps I was right, for you surely abused The right of free speech in the names you used!) In business you figure--a profit, I guess, And I charge you--as much as I dare, And I grumble that you ought to do it for less, And you ask if my price is fair. But if _I_ sold your goods and _you_ sold mine, I doubt if the prices would much decline. (Though I must insist that I think I see Where you'd still have a little advantage of me!) In religion you are a--who cares what? And I am a--what's the odds? So why have I sneered at your holiest thought, And why have you jeered at my gods? For, thinking it over, I'm sure we two Were doing the best that we honestly knew. (Though, of course, I cannot escape a touch Of suspicion that _you_ never knew too much!) THE DILETTANT. To lie outright in the light of day I'm not sufficiently skilful, But I practice a bit, in an amateur way, The lie which is hardly wilful; The society lie and the business lie And the lie I have had to double, And the lie that I lie when I don't know why And the truth is too much trouble. For this I am willing to take your blame Unless you have sometimes done the same. To be a fool of an A1 brand I'm not sufficiently clever, But I often have tried my 'prentice hand In a callow and crude endeavor; A fool with the money for which I've toiled, A fool with the word I've spoken, And the foolish fool who is fooled and foiled On a maiden's finger broken. If you never yourself have made a slip, I'm willing to watch you curl your lip. And yet my blood and my bone resist If you dub me fool and liar. I set my teeth and double my fist And my brow is flushed with fire. You I deny and you I defy And I vow I will make you rue it; And I lie when I say that I never lie, Which proves me a fool to do it! You may jerk your thumb at me and grin If liar and fool you never have been. THE CONSERVATIVE. At twenty, as you proudly stood And read your thesis, "Brotherhood," If I remember right, you saw The fatuous faults of social law. At twenty-five you braved the storm And dug the trenches of Reform, Stung by some gadfly in your breast Which would not let your spirit rest. At thirty-five you made a pause To sum the columns of The Cause; You noted, with unwilling eye, The heedless world had passed you by. At forty you had always known Man owes a duty to His Own. Man's life is as man's life is made; The game is fair, if fairly played. At fifty, after years of stress You bore the banner of Success. All men have virtues, all have sins, And God is with the man who wins. At sixty, from your captured heights You fly the flag of Vested Rights, Bounded by bonds collectable, And hopelessly respectable! HUSH. What's the best thing that you ever have done? The whitest day, The cleverest play That ever you set in the shine of the sun? The time that you felt just a wee bit proud Of defying the cry of the cowardly crowd And stood back to back with God? Aye, I notice you nod, But silence yourself, lest you bring me shame That I have no answering deed to name. What's the worst thing that ever you did? The darkest spot, The blackest blot On the page you have pasted together and hid? Ah, sometimes you think you've forgotten it quite, Till it crawls in your bed in the dead of the night And brands you its own with a blush. What was it? Nay, hush! Don't tell it to me, for fear it be known That I have an answering blush of my own. But whenever you notice a clean hit made, Sing high and clear The sounding cheer You would gladly have heard for the play you played, And when a man walks in the way forbidden, Think you of the thing you have happily hidden And spare him the sting of your tongue. Do I do that which I've sung? Well, it may be I don't and it may be I do, But I'm telling the thing which is good for _you_! THE ISLAND. You, my friend, in your long-tailed coat, With your white cravat at your withered throat, Praying by proxy of him you hire, Worshiping God with a quartet choir, Bumping your head on the pew in front, Assenting "Amen!" with an unctuous grunt, Are you sure it is you In the pew? Look! You're away on a lonely isle, Where the scant breech-clout is the only style, Where the day of the week forgets its name, Where god and devil are all the same. Look at yourself in your careless clout, And tell me, then, would you be devout? One on the island, one in the pew-- How do you know which is you? You, dear maiden, with eyes askance At the little soubrette and her daring dance, Thanking God that His ways are wide To allow you to pass on the other side, You, as you ask, "Will the world approve?" At the hint of a wabble out of the groove, Look! On that isle of the lonely sea Are you, the saucy soubrette and _he_. And the little grooves that you circle in Are forever as though they never had been. Now you are naked of soul and limb: Will you say what you will not dare--for him? Which of the women is real? The one you appear, or the one you feel? You, good sir, with your neck a-stretch, As the van goes by with the prison wretch, Asking naught of his ills or hurts, Judging "he's getting his just deserts," Pluming yourself that the moral laws Are centred in you as effect and cause. Look! At the island, and there you are With the long, strong arm which reaches far, And there are the natives who kneel and bow, And where are your _meum et tuum_ now? Are you sure that the balance swings quite true? Or does it a little incline to you? Answer or not as you will, but oh, I have an island, too, and so I know, I know. HUMBLER HEROES. It might not be so difficult to lead the light brigade, While the army cheered behind you, and the fifes and bugles played; It might be rather easy, with the war-shriek in your ears, To forget the bite of bullets and the taste of blood and tears. But to be a scrubwoman, with four Babies, or more, Every day, every day setting your back On the rack, And all your reward forever not quite A full bite Of bread for your babies. Say! In the heat of the day You might be a hero to head a brigade, But a hero like her? I'm afraid! I'm afraid! It might be very feasible to force a great reform, To saddle public passion and to ride upon the storm; It might be somewhat simple to ignore the roar of wrath, Because a second shout broke out to cheer you on your path. But he who, alone and unknown, is true To his view, Unswerved by the crush of the mutton-browed, Blatting crowd, Unwon by the flabby-brained, blinking ease Which he sees Throned and anointed. Say! At the height of the fray, You might be the chosen to captain the throng: But to stand all alone? How long? How long? CONSCIENCE PIANISSIMO. You are honest as daylight. You're often assured That your word is as good as your note--unsecured. We could trust you with millions unaudited, but---- (Tut, tut! There is always a "but," So don't get excited,) I'm pained to perceive It is seldom I notice you grumble or grieve When the custom-house officer pockets your tip And passes the contraband goods in your grip. You would scorn to be shy on your ante, I'm certain, But skinning your Uncle you're rather expert in. Well, I'm proud that no taint of the sort touches me. (For I've never been over the water, you see.) Your yardstick's a yard and your goods are all wool; Your bushel's four pecks and you measure it full. You are proud of your business integrity, yet-- (Don't fret! There is always a "yet,") I never have noticed a sign of distress, or Disturbance in you, when the upright assessor Has listed your property somewhere about Half what you would take were you selling it out. You're as true to the world as the world to its axis, But you chuckle to swear off your personal taxes. As for me, I would scorn to do any such thing, (Though I may have considered the question last spring.) You have notions of right. You would count it a sin To cheat a blind billionaire out of a pin. You have a contempt for a pettiness, still-- (Don't chill! There is always a "still,") I never have noticed you storm with neglect Because the conductor had failed to collect, Or growl that the game wasn't run on the square When your boy in the high school paid only half fare. The voice of your conscience is lusty and audible, But a railroad--good heavens! why, that's only laudable. Of course, _I_ am quite in a different class; For me, it is painful to ride on a pass! THE WORLD RUNS ON. So many good people find fault with God, Tho' admitting He's doing the best He can, But still they consider it somewhat odd That He doesn't consult them concerning his plan, But the sun sinks down and the sun climbs back, And the world runs round and round its track. Or they say God doesn't precisely steer This world in the way they think is best, And if He would listen to them, He'd veer A hair to the sou', sou'west by west. But the world sails on and it never turns back And the Mariner never makes a tack. Or the same folk pray "O, if Thou please, Dear God, be a little more circumspect; Thou knowest Thy worm who is on his knees Would not willingly charge thee with neglect, But O, if indeed Thou knowest all things, Why fittest Thou not Thy worm with wings?" So many good people are quite inclined To favor God with their best advices, And consider they're something more than kind In helping Him out of critical crises. But the world runs on, as it ran before, And eternally shall run evermore. So many good people, like you and me, Are deeply concerned for the sins of others And conceive it their duty that God should be Apprised of the lack in erring brothers. And the myriad sun-stars seed the skies And look at us out of their calm, clear eyes. PASS. Did somebody give you a pat on the back? Pass it on! Let somebody else have a taste of the snack, Pass it on! If it heightens your courage, or lightens your pack, If it kisses your soul, with a song in the smack, Maybe somebody else has been dressing in black; Pass it on! God gives you a smile, not to make it a yawn; Pass it on! Did somebody show you a slanderous mess? Pass it by! When a brook's flowing by, will you drink at the cess? Pass it by! Dame Gossip's a wanton, whatever her dress; Her sire was a lie and her dam was a guess, And a poison is in her polluting caress; Pass it by! Unless you're a porker, keep out of the sty. Pass it by! Did somebody give you an insolent word? Pass it up! 'T is the creak of a cricket, the pwit of a bird; Pass it up! Shake your fist at the sea! Is its majesty blurred? Blow your breath at the sky! Is its purity slurred? But the shallowest puddle, how easily stirred! Pass it up! Does the puddle invite you to dip in your cup? Pass it up! PUBLICITY. There's nothing like publicity To further that lubricity Which minted cartwheels need To maximize their speed In your direction. True, some hydropathist of stocks, Or one whose trade is picking locks, May make objection: Yet even those gentry always lurk Where booming first has done its work. Observe how oft some foreigner, About the size of coroner, Can sell L O R D (Four letters, as you see,) For seven numbers, Because his trade-mark, thus devised, Is advertised and advertised Till it encumbers The mental view, as though 't were some Bald-headed brand of chewing-gum. Study your own psychology! See how some mere tautology Of picture, or of print, Has realized the glint Of your good money. How often have persistent views Of one bare head sold you your shoes! Which does seem funny; And yet 'twas head-work, after all, Which helped the shoe-man make his haul. There's some obscure locality In every man's mentality Which, I am free to state, I'd like to penetrate For my felicity. For now who gives a second look When he perceives a POEM by Cooke? But come publicity! And then a poem by COOKE were seen The first thing in the magazine! [Illustration: _Page 55._] MOVE! We are on the main line of a crowded track; We've got to go forward; we can't go back And run the risk of colliding: We must make schedule, not now and again, But always, forever and ever, amen! Or else switch off on a siding. If ever we loaf, like a car in the yard, Doesn't somebody bump us, and bump us hard, I wonder? You've succeeded in building a pretty fair trade, But can you sit down in the grateful shade And kill time cutting up capers? Or must you hustle and scheme and sweat, Though the shine be fine or the weather be wet, And keep your page in the papers? If ever you fail to be pulling the strings, Aren't some of your rivals around doing things, I wonder? You're a first-class salesman. You know your line; Your house is good and your goods are fine, So you fill your book with orders, But can you get quit of the ball and chain, Or are you in jail on a railroad train, With blue-coated men for warders? If you sent your samples and cut out the trip, Wouldn't somebody else soon be lugging your grip, I wonder? You are starred on the bills and are chummy with fame; The man on the corner could tell you your name At three o'clock in the morning, But can you depend on the mind of the mob? Can you tell your press-agent to look for a job, Or give your manager warning? Should you lie down to sleep, with your laurels beneath, Wouldn't somebody else soon be wearing your wreath, I wonder? Oh, I'm willing to work, but I wish I could lag, Not feeling as if I were "it" for tag, Or last in follow-my-leader; There is only one spot where, I haven't a doubt, Nobody will try to be crowding me out, And that is under the cedar. And even in that place, will Gabriel's trump Come nagging along and be making me jump? I wonder. GET NEXT. Chap. I., verse 1, is where you'll find The text of what is in my mind If, haply, you are so inclined. Chap. I., verse 1--the primal rule For saint or sinner, sage or fool, No matter what his church or school. Though you may call it slangy solely, Though you may term it flippant wholly, Truth still is truth and is not vexed; I write this rhyme to prove the text-- Get Next. Suppose I sought some lonely height And dipped a stylus in the light Of welding worlds and sought to write Upon the highest, deepest blue My message to Sam Smith and you. The chances are it would not do. You would not risk your neck to read My much too altitudinous screed, And I, chagrined and half-perplexed, Had missed you when I missed my text-- Get Next. Suppose you have a breakfast food Which you conceive I should include Within my lat-and-longitude. 'T is not enough to have the stuff, But you must post, and praise, and puff, Until I memo. on my cuff, Among my most important notes-- Be sure to bring home Oatless Oats. And then you know that I'm annexed, Because you followed out the text-- Get Next. Get next! get next! and hold it true There's one you must get nextest to, And that important one is you. Be not of those who, uncommuned With their own skins, have all but swooned From some imaginary wound, But strip the rags from off your soul And find you are not maimed, but whole! 'T is but a flea-bite which has vexed As soon as you've applied the text-- Get Next. [Illustration: "Post, and praise, and puff" _Page 58._] [Illustration: Are You You? _Page 59._] ARE YOU YOU? Are you a trailer, or are you a trolley? Are you tagged to a leader through wisdom and folly? Are you Somebody Else, or You? Do you vote by the symbol and swallow it "straight"? Do you pray by the book, do you pay by the rate? Do you tie your cravat by the calendar's date? Do you follow a cue? Are you a writer, or that which is worded? Are you a shepherd, or one of the herded? Which are you--a What or a Who? It sounds well to call yourself "one of the flock," But a sheep is a sheep after all. At the block You're nothing but mutton, or possibly stock. Would you flavor a stew? Are you a being and boss of your soul? Or are you a mummy to carry a scroll? Are you Somebody Else, or You? When you finally pass to the heavenly wicket Where Peter the Scrutinous stands on his picket, Are you going to give him _a blank_ for a ticket? Do you think it will do? THE PRICE. In, or under, or over the earth, What will fill you, and what suffice? No matter how mean, or much its worth, It is yours if you pay the price. Never a thing may a man attain, But gain pays loss, or loss pays gain. Lady of riches, riot and rout, Fair of flesh and sated of sense, Nothing in life you need do without Except the trifle of innocence. Counterfeit kisses you paid, and got Just what you paid for--which is what? Man of adroitness, place and power, Trampled above and torn below; Set in the light of your noonday hour, Playing a part in the public show; Fooling the mob that the mob be ruled: You know which is the greater fooled. Artist of pencil, or paint, or pen, Reed, or string, or the vocal note, Making the soul to suffer again And the wild heart clutch the throat; Ever your fancy has paid in fact; You rack my soul, as yours was racked. [Illustration: "The Trifle of Innocence" _Page 60._] THE BUBBLE-FLIES. Let me read a homily Concerning an anomaly I view In you. Whatever you are striving for, Whatever you are driving for, 'T is not alone because you crave To be successful that you slave To swim upon the topmost wave. You care less what your station is, But more what your relation is. To be a bit above the rest! To be upon, or of, the crest! Ah! that is where the trouble lies Which stirs you little bubble-flies. (I sneer these sneers, but just the same I keep my fingers in the game.) See! you have eat-and-drinkables And portables and thinkables And yet You fret. For what? Let's reach the heart of you And see the funny part of you. For what? I find the soul and seed Of it is not your lack or need, Or even merely vulgar greed. Gold? You may have a store of it, But someone else has more of it. Fame? Pretty things are said of you, But--some one is ahead of you. Place? You disprize your easy one For some one's high and breezy one. (I smile these smiles to soothe my soul, But squint one eye upon the goal.) Tell me! what's your capacity Compared to your voracity? _I_ guess 'T is less. And so I strike these attitudes And tender you these platitudes;-- Not wishing wealth, or spurning it, Not hoarding it, or burning it Is equal to the earning it. Life's race is in the riding it, Not in the word deciding it. And after all is said and uttered The keenest taste is bread-and-buttered. (And yet--and yet--my palate aches For pallid pie and pasty cakes!) [Illustration: The Bubble-Flies _Page 61._] QUALIFIED. I love to see my friend succeed; I love to praise him; yes, indeed! And so, no doubt, do you. But will you tell me why it is The praise we parcel out as his So often goes askew, And ends by running in the rut Of "if," "except" or "but"? "Boggs is a clever chap. His trade Is doubling yearly, and he's made A fortune all right, but----" "Sharp is elected. Well, I say! He'll hit a high mark yet, some day, If----" (here one eye is shut). "Such acting! Why, I laughed and wept! Fobb's art is great--except." "Miss Hautton has such queenly grace. And then her figure and her face! She'd be a beauty if----" "And Mrs. Follol entertains With so much taste and so much pains; But----" (here a little sniff). "And Mrs. Caste has ever kept The narrow path--except." I wish some man were great and good That I might praise him all I could And never add a "but." I would that some would value me And never hint what I would be "If"--but why cavil? Tut! Eternal justice still is kept And Heaven is good--except! [Illustration: Yesterday's laurels are dry and dead _Page 65._] WHAT ARE YOU DOING? Do you lazily nurse your knee and muse? Do you contemplate your conquering thews With a critical satisfaction? But yesterday's laurels are dry and dead And to-morrow's triumph is still ahead; To-day is the day for action. Yesterday's sun: is it shining still? To-morrow's dawn: will its coming fill To-day, if to-day's light fail us? Not so. The past is forever past; To-day's is the hand which holds us fast, And to-morrow may never hail us. The present and only the present endures, So it's hey for to-day! for to-day is yours For the goal you are still pursuing. What you have done is a little amount; What you will do is of lesser account, But the test is, what are you doing? THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR. McUmphrey's a fellow who's lengthy on lungs. Backed up by the smoothest of ball-bearing tongues, And his topic--himself--is worth talking about, But he works it so much he has frazzled it out. He never will give me my half of a chance To chip in my own little, clever romance In the first person singular. Yes, and they say, He offended you, too, in a similar way. Cousin Maud tells her illnesses, ancient and recent, In a most minute way which is almost indecent! Vivisecting herself, with some medical chatter, She serves us her portions--as if on a platter, Never noting how I am but waiting to stir My dregs of diseases to offer to her. And I hear (such a joke!) that your chronic gastritis Stands silent forever before her nephritis. Mrs. Henderson's Annie goes out every night, And Bertha, before her, was simply a fright, While Agnes broke more than the worth of her head, And Maggie--well, some things are better unsaid. Such manners to talk of her help--when she knows My wife's simply aching to tell of _our_ woes! And I hear that she never lets you get a start On your story of Rosy we all know by heart. You'd hardly believe that I've heard Bunson tell The Flea-Powder Frenchman and Razors to Sell, The One-Legged Goose and that old What You Please-- And even, I swear it, The Crow and the Cheese. And he sprang that old yarn of He Said 't was His Leg, When you wanted to tell him Columbus's Egg, While I wanted to tell my own whimsical tale (Which I recently wrote) of The Man in the Whale! THE CHOICE. The little it takes to make life bright, If we open our eyes to get it! And the trifle which makes it black as night, If we close our lids and let it! Behold, as the world goes whirling by, It is gloomy, or glad, as it fits your eye. As it fits your eye, and I mean by that You find what you look for mostly; You can feed your happiness full and fat, You can make your miseries ghostly, Or you can forget every joy you own By coveting something beyond your zone. In the storms of life we can fret the eye Where the guttering mud is drifted, Or we can look to the world-wide sky Where the Artist's scenes are shifted. Puddles are oceans in miniatures, Or merely puddles; the choice is yours. We can strip our niggardly souls so bare That we haggle a penny between us; Or we can be rich in a common share Of the Pleiades and Venus. You can lift your soul to its outermost look, Or can keep it packed in a pocketbook. We may follow a phantom the arid miles To a mountain of cankered treasure, Or we can find, in a baby's smiles, The pulse of a living pleasure. We may drink of the sea until we burst, While the trickling spring would have quenched our thirst. THE SAVING CLAUSE. Kerr wrote a book, and a good book, too; At least I[A] managed to read it through Without finding very much room for blame, And a good many other folks did the same. But when any one asked me[A]: "Have you read?" Or: "How do you like?" I[A] only said: "Very good, very good! and I'm glad enough; For his other writings are horrible stuff." Banks wrote a play, and it had a run. (That's a good deal more than ever I've[A] done.) The interest held with hardly a lag From the overture to the final tag. But when any one asked me[A]: "Have you seen?" Or: "What do you think?" I[A] looked serene And remarked: "Oh, a pretty good thing of its kind, But I guess Mr. Shakespeare needn't mind!" Phelps made a machine; 't was smooth as grease. (I[A] couldn't invent its smallest piece In a thousand years.) It was tried and tried, Until everybody was satisfied. But when any one asked me[A]: "Will it pay?"-- "Is it really good?"--I[A] could only say: "It's a marvelous thing! Why, it almost thinks! And Phelps is a wonder--too bad he drinks!" [Footnote A: (Errata: On scanning the verses through I find these pronouns should all read "You.")] [Illustration: Mr. Shakespeare needn't mind _Page 70._] BETWEEN TWO THIEVES. Sure! I am one who disbelieves In thieves; At which you interrupt to cry "Aye, aye, and I." Hmf! you're so sudden to agree. Suppose we see. I know a thief. No matter whether I ought to know a thief, or not. Perhaps "we went to school together;" That old excuse is worked a lot. One day he "copped a rummy's leather," Which means--I hate to tell you what. It's such a vulgar thing to steal A drunkard's purse to buy a meal. "Hey, pal," said he, "come help me dine; I've hit a pit and got the swag; To-day, Delmonico's is mine; To-morrow once again a vag. Come on and tell me all the stunts Of all the boys who knew me--once." "Did I go with him?" I did not. Would you have gone? Could you be bought By dinners--when the trail was hot And any hour he might be caught? I know a thief, whose operations Are colored by a kindly law. Your income and a beggar's rations Contribute to his cunning claw; Cities and counties, courts and nations Pay portion to his monstrous maw. He gave a dinner not long since In honor of some played-out Prince. The decorations, ah, how chaste! And how delicious was the wine! For Mrs. Thief has perfect taste And Mr. Thief knows how to dine. And so the world has long agreed Quite to forgive, forget--and feed. But really I was shocked to see How many decent folks could be Induced to come and bow the knee; I think you were my _vis-a-vis_. Yes, yes, I quite despise him, too, Like you; And (though it's not a thing to brag) I somehow like the vag. But, oh, the difference one perceives Between two thieves! THE SPECTATOR. Look at the man with the crown Weighing him down. Plumed and petted, Galled and fretted! Why do you eye him askance With a quiver of hate in your glance? Why not conceive him as human, Nursed at the breast of a woman, Growing, mayhap, as he could, Not as he would? How are you sure you would be Better and wiser than he? Look at the woman whose eye Follows you by. Silked and satined, Scented, fattened! Why does the half smile slip Into a sneer on your lip? You pity her? Ah, but the fashion Of your complacent compassion. Pity her! yet you have said, "Better the creature were dead. What is there left here for her But to err?" Thus would you make the world right, Hiding its ills from your sight. Look at the man with the pack Breaking his back. Ragged, squalid, Wretched, stolid. And you are sorry, you say, (Much as you are at a play.) But do you say to him, "Brother, Twin-born son of our mother What were the word, or the deed Fitting your need?" Or, as he slouches by, Do you breathe "God be praised, I am I?" [Illustration: "God be praised, I am I!" _Page 74._] THE SQUEALER. Of course some people are born so bright That no matter what one may say, or write, The theme is old and the lesson is trite, Which is what you may say, as these lines unreel And I mildly suggest it is better to feel Than to squeal. Everybody knows that? Yes, it's certain they do, Everybody, that is, with exception of two, Of whom I am one and the other is you. But for us the lesson is still remote, Although we commit it and cite it and quote It by rote. But still when you thrill with the thudding thump From the fist of the fellow you tried to bump And the world looks hard at the swelling lump, There's a strong temptation to open your door And invite the public to hear you roar That you're sore. And again, tho' 'tis plain as the printed page:-- "Keep your hand on the lever and watch the gauge When the fire-pot's full and the boilers rage," How often the steam-pressure grows and grows And before the engineer cares or knows, Up she goes. So why should you fret if I send you to school Again to consider the sapient rule That Wisdom is Silence and Speech is a Fool. Close up! and a year from to-day you will kneel And thank the good Lord that you knew how to feel And not squeal. DISTANCE AND DISENCHANTMENT. He was playing New York, and on Broadway at that; I was playing in stock, in Chicago. I heard that his Hamlet fell fearfully flat; He heard I was fierce, as Iago. Each looked to the other exceedingly small; We were too far apart, that is all. You, too, if your vision is ever reflective, Have noticed your rival is small in perspective. I heard him in Memphis (a chance matinée); He heard me (one Sunday) in Dallas. His critics, I swore, never witnessed the play; He vowed mine were prompted by malice. A pleasanter fellow I cannot recall. We were closer together; that's all. And your rival, too, if you once see him clearly, Is clever, or how could he rival you, nearly? In Seattle they said he was greater than Booth, (Or in Portland, perhaps; I've forgotten); I said 'twas ungracious to speak the plain truth, But his work in the first act was rotten. I had only intended to speak of the thrall Of his wonderful fifth act; that's all. But when a man's praised far ahead of his talents, I guess you say something to even the balance. In Atlanta I heard a remark that he made And again in Mobile, Alabama;-- That he hardly thought Shakespeare was meant to be played Like a ten-twenty-thirt' melodrama. Oh, well, there was one honey-drop in the gall; The fellow was jealous; that's all. And you, too, have found, when a friendship is broken, That his words are worse than the ones you have spoken. [Illustration: To even the balance _Page 77._] FAMILY RESEMBLANCE. I used to boost the P. and P., Designed to run from sea to sea, From Portland, Ore., to Portland, Me., But which, as all the maps agree, Begins somewhere in Minnesota And peters out in North Dakota. You gibed because I used to mock Its streaks of rust and rolling-stock, Its schedule and its G. P. A. (Who took your Annual away,) But lately you seem much inclined To own a sudden change of mind. Ah, me, You're much like other folks, I see. I much admired the book reviews Of Quillip of the Daily News. I laughed to see him put the screws On some sprig of the late Who's-Whos, Tear off his verbiage and skin him To show the little there was in him. You said the book he wrote himself Lay stranded on the dealer's shelf And wasn't worthy a critique; (Just what he said of mine last week). Perhaps your reasoning was strong And you were right and I was wrong. Heigho! I'm very much like you, I know. O'Brien's zeal ran almost daft In its antipathy to graft. He raked the practice fore and aft; Lord! how his sulphurous breath would waft "Eternal and infernal tarmint To ivery grasping, grafting, varmint." The worst of these upon the planet, He said, were those who wanted granite In public buildings,--"yis, begorry!" (O'Brien owns a sandstone quarry.) Of course I'd hate to see it tested, But would he be less interested In civic virtue--uninvested? Oh, dear! O'Brien's much like us, I fear. NEED. Don't you remember how you and I Held a property nobody wanted to buy In San José, Until one day A man came along from Franklin, Pa.? And didn't we jump till we happened to find The chap wasn't going it wholly blind, But all the rest of the block was bought And he simply had to have our lot. Well, didn't our land go up in price Till double the figures would scarce suffice? And don't we sometimes figure and fret How he got the best of us, even yet? Don't you remember the perfect plan You had, which needed another man To make it win, To jump right in And everlasting make things spin? And you said I had the requisite dash And also the trifle of hoarded cash. Was I glad to get in? Well, yes, indeed! Until I saw the compelling need Which had brought you to me, and then, "Ho! ho! None of that for me, nay, not for Joe." And I'm always provoked when I think you made The plan get along without my aid. Don't you remember the time we met At Des Moines, or was it at Winterset? But anyway, you Were feeling blue And tickled to see me through and through. And "Come, let's open a bottle of--ink," Said you, "and see if it's good to drink." But weren't you sorry because you spoke When I had to tell you I was "broke"? Oh, you lent me the saw-buck, I know, but still I fancied your ardor had taken a chill. And you've never been able to quite forget That once I was "broke," and in your debt. BETTER. There's only one motto you need To succeed: "Better." To other man's winning? Then you Must do Better. From the baking of bread To the breaking a head, From rhyming a ballad To sliming a salad, From mending of ditches To spending of riches, Follow the rule to the uttermost letter: "Better!" Of course you may say but a few Can do Better; And you're going to strive So that all may thrive Better. And it's right you are To follow the star, Set in the heavens, afar, afar; But still with your eyes On the skies It is wise To be riding a mule, Or guiding a school, Thatching a hovel Or hatching a novel, Foretelling weather, Or selling shoe-leather; And remember you must Be doing it just A wee dust Better. And 'tis quite As right For you to cite That the author might, Or ought, to write A heavenly sight Better! For which sharp word I am much your debtor, Knowing none other could file my fetter Better. [Illustration: "Saving repairs and wrath" _Page 85._] FORGET WHAT THE OTHER MAN HATH. What do I care for your four-track line? I have a country path; And this is the message I've taken for mine:-- "Forget what the other man hath." What do I care for your giant trees? I'd rather whittle a lath, And my motto helps me to take my ease;-- "Forget what the other man hath." What do I care for your Newport beach? A tub's as good for a bath. And I keep my solace in constant reach:-- "Forget what the other man hath." What do I care for your automobile? I'm saving repairs and wrath, My proverb goes well with an old style wheel;-- "Forget what the other man hath." What do I care if you scorn my rime? For this is its aftermath;-- It sounds so well I shall try, (sometime,) To "forget what the other man hath!" THE WHET. The day that I loaf when I ought to employ it Has, somehow, the flavor which makes me enjoy it. So the man with no work He may joyously shirk I envy no more than I do the Grand Turk. He most is in need of a holiday, who, In this workaday world, has no duty to do. The dollar you waste when you ought not to spend it Buys something no plutocrat's millions could lend it, For if once you exhaust All your care of the cost, Full half of the pleasure of purchase is lost, So I trust you are one who is wise in discerning The value of spending is most in the earning. My little success which was nearest complete Was that which I tore from the teeth of defeat, And the man who can hit With his wisdom and wit Without any effort, I envy no whit. The genius whose laurels grow always the greenest Finds pleasure in plenty, but misses the keenest. WHAT SORT ARE YOU? "How much do you want for your A. Street lot?" Said a real estate man to me. I looked as if I were lost in thought And then I replied: "Let's see;-- Black's sold last year at fifty the foot And without using algebra that should put My figure at sixty now, I guess, Or a trifle more, or a trifle less." I was anxious to sell at fifty straight, Or I might have been glad of forty-eight. Oh, yes, I'm a bit of a bluff, it's true; What sort of a bluff are you? "And what do you think of these railroad rates?" The man with a bald brow said, "For you have travelled through all the states And have heard a good deal and read." "The railroad lines," I wisely replied "Are the lines with which our trade is tied, And the wretches who take their rebates set New knots in the bonds under which we fret." But, now I remember, I once rode free And forgot that the road rebated me! Oh, yes, I'm a bit of a bluff, its true; How much of a bluff are you? "You've been to hear 'Siegfried' and found it fine?" Cried a classical friend one day. "I'm sure your impressions accord with mine, But I want your own words and way. And, oh, "the tone-color beats belief," And, oh, "dynamics," and oh, "motif," And "chiar-oscura, how finely abstruse," And oh, la-la-la, and oh, well, what's the use? For the only thing I understood in the play Was that dippy, old dragon of _papier-maché_. Oh, yes, I'm a bit of a bluff, it's true; What style of a bluff are you? "And the senator should, you believe, be returned?" Said a newspaper-man to me. "He's as rotten a rascal as ever burned," I said. "May I quote?" asked he. "Oh, no," I replied, "if you're going to quote, Just remark that his friends are regretting to note That the exigencies of the party case Indicate that he shouldn't re-enter the race." For the senator sometime may possibly be Interviewed by a newspaper-man about me. No, none of these cases may quite fit you, But what sort of a bluff _are_ you? [Illustration: "And, oh, the tone color beats belief" _Page 88._] THE CRITICS. As a matter of fact, I am sure I can act, And so, When I go, To the show, Not the art of an Irving Seems wholly deserving, And though Booth were the star He'd have many a jar, If he heard the critique Which I frequently speak, As you Do, Too. Written deep in my heart Is a knowledge of art, For why? I've an eye Like a die. And where Raphael's paint Has bedizened some saint, I note his perspective Is sadly defective, And you? O, I know When you've looked on Corot The same Blame Came. And the world would have gained If my voice had been trained, For my ear Is severe, As I hear De Reszke and Patti. (I've heard 'em sing "ratty!") And the crowd has yelled "Bis!" When a call for police Should have shortened the score. Was there ever a more Absurd Word Heard? And I feel, now and then, I could handle a pen, For indeed, As I heed What I read, I observe many faults; Homer nods, Shakespere halts, Dante's sad, Pope is trite, Poe's mechanic, Holmes light, Yet so easy to do Is the thing, even you Might Write Quite Bright! PLUG. As you haven't asked me for advice, I'll give it to you now: Plug! No matter who or what you are, or where you are, the how Is plug. You may take your dictionary, unabridged, and con it through, You may swallow the Britannica and all its retinue, But here I lay it f. o. b.--the only word for you Is plug. Are you in the big procession, but away behind the band? Plug! On the cobble, or asphaltum, in the mud or in the sand, Plug! Oh, you'll hear the story frequently of how some clever man Cut clean across the country, so that now he's in the van; You may think that you will do it, but I don't believe you can, So plug! [Illustration: Do you want to reach the heights? _Page 92._] Are you singing in the chorus? Do you want to be a star? Plug! You may think that you're a genius, but I don't believe you are, So plug! Oh, you'll hear of this or that one who was born without a name, Who slept eleven hours a day and dreamed the way to fame, Who simply couldn't push it off, so rapidly it came! But plug. Are you living in the valley? Do you want to reach the height? Plug! Where the hottest sun of day is and the coldest stars of night? Plug! Oh, it may be you're a fool, but if a fool you want to be, If you want to climb above the crowd so every one can see Just how a fool may look when he is at his apogee, Why, plug! Can you make a mile a minute? Do you want to make it two? Plug! Are you good and up against it? Well, the only thing to do Is plug. Oh, you'll find some marshy places, where the crust is pretty thin, And when you think you're gliding out, you're only sliding in, But the only thing for you to do is think of this and grin, And plug. There's many a word that's prettier that hasn't half the cheer Of plug. It may not save you in a day, but try it for a year. Plug! And to show you I am competent to tell you what is what, I assure you that I never yet have made a centre shot, Which surely is an ample demonstration that I ought To plug. FAMILIARITY BREEDS CONTENT. I. You sometimes think you'd like to be John D.? And not a man you know would dare To josh you on your handsome hair, Or say, "Hey, John, it's rather rude To boost refined and jump on crude, To help Chicago University, Or bull the doctrine of--immersity." II. You wouldn't care to be the Pope, I hope? With not a chum to call your own, To hale you up by telephone, With, "Say, old man, I hope you're free To-night. Bring Mrs. Pope to tea. Let some one else lock up the pearly Gateway to-night and get here early!" III. Perhaps you sometimes deem the Czar A star? With not a palm in all the land To strike his fairly, hand to hand, With not a man in all the pack To fetch a hand against his back And cry, "Well met, Old Nick, come out And let us trot the kids about. Tut, man! you needn't look so pale, A red flag means an auction sale." IV. I'll bet even Shakespeare's name was "Will," Until He was so dead that he was great, For fame can only isolate. And better than "The Immortal Bard" Were "Hello, Bill," and "Howdy, pard!" Would he have swapped his comrades' laughter For all the praise of ages after? A SONG OF REST. I have sung the song of striving, Of the struggling, of arriving, Of making of one's self a horse and mounting him and driving! But now, let's cease; Let's look for peace. Let's forget the mark of money, Let's forget the love of fame. Life is ours and skies are sunny; What is worry but a name? Let's sit down and whiff and whittle, Let us loaf and laugh a little. (Here the youngest spoiled the rime By running to me for a dime.) I have sung the joy of doing, Of the pleasure of pursuing, And how life is like a woman and our role and rule is wooing, But now, O let Us cease to fret! Let us cease our vain desiring; Water's better than Cliquot; What is honor but perspiring? Wealth's another name for woe. Let us spread out in the clover, Just too lazy to turn over,-- (Here my wife brought in the news: All the children need new shoes.) I have sung the song of action, Of the sweet of satisfaction Of pounding, pounding, pounding opposition to a fraction, But now, let's quit; Let's rest a bit. Money only makes us greedy, Life's success is but a taunt. He alone is never needy Who has learned to laugh at want. Let us loaf and laugh and wallow; Too much work to even swallow-- (Here's the mail and bills are curses; I must try to sell these verses.) DESIRE. Oh, the ripe, red apple which handily hung And flaunted and taunted and swayed and swung, Till it itched your fingers and tickled your tongue, For it was juicy and you were young! But you held your hands and you turned your head, And you thought of the switch which hung in the shed, And you didn't take it (or so you said), But tell me--didn't you want to? Oh, the rounded maiden who passed you by, Whose cheek was dimpled, whose glance was shy, But who looked at you out of the tail of her eye, And flirted her skirt just a trifle high! Oh, you were human and not sedate, But you thought of the narrow way and straight, And you didn't follow (or so you state), But tell me--didn't you want to? Oh, the golden chink and the sibilant sign Which sang of honey and love and wine, Of pleasure and power when the sun's a-shine And plenty and peace in the day's decline! Oh, the dream was schemed and the play was planned; You had nothing to do but to reach your hand, But you didn't (or so I understand), But tell me--didn't you want to? Oh, you wanted to, yes; and hence you crow That the Want To within you found its foe Which wanted you not to want to, and so You were able to answer always "No." So you tell yourself you are pretty fine clay To have tricked temptation and turned it away; But wait, my friend, for a different day! Wait till you want to want to! [Illustration: "Desire" _Page 99._] THERE IS, OH, SO MUCH. There is oh, so much for a man to be In nineteen hundred and now. He may cover the world like the searching sea In nineteen hundred and now. He may be of the rush of the city's roar And his song may sing where the condors soar, Or may dip to the dark of Labrador, In nineteen hundred and now. There is oh, so much for a man to do In nineteen hundred and now. He may sort the suns of Andromeda through In nineteen hundred and now. Or he may strive, as a good man must, For the wretch at his feet who licks the dust, And never learn how to be even just In nineteen hundred and now. There is oh, so much for a man to learn In nineteen hundred and now: The least and the most he should trouble to earn In nineteen hundred and now, The message burned bright on the heavenly scroll, The little he needs that his stomach be whole, The vastness of vision to sate his soul, In nineteen hundred and now. There is oh, so much for a man to get In nineteen hundred and now. He may drench the earth in vicarious sweat In nineteen hundred and now. And his wealth may be but a lifelong itch, While the lowliest digger within his ditch May have gained the little to make him rich In nineteen hundred and now. There is oh, so much for a man to try In nineteen hundred and now. The sea is so deep and the hill so high In nineteen hundred and now. But sometimes we look at our little ball Where the smallest is great and the greatest small And wonder the why and the what of it all In nineteen hundred and now. There is oh, so much, so we work as we may In nineteen hundred and now, And loiter a little along the way In nineteen hundred and now. O, the honeybee works, but the honeybee clings To the flowers of life and the honeybee sings! Let us eat the sweet and forget the stings In nineteen hundred and now! HOW DID YOU DIE? Did you tackle that trouble that came your way With a resolute heart and cheerful? Or hide your face from the light of day With a craven soul and fearful? Oh, a trouble's a ton, or a trouble's an ounce, Or a trouble is what you make it, And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts, But only how did you take it? You are beaten to earth? Well, well, what's that? Come up with a smiling face. It's nothing against you to fall down flat, But to lie there--that's disgrace. The harder you're thrown, why the higher you bounce; Be proud of your blackened eye! It isn't the fact that you're licked that counts, It's how did you fight--and why? And though you be done to the death, what then? If you battled the best you could, If you played your part in the world of men, Why, the Critic will call it good. Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce, And whether he's slow or spry, It isn't the fact that you're dead that counts, But only how did you die? [Illustration] 
33940	----	file was produced from images generously made available by The Kentuckiana Digital Library) A Voice on the Wind AND OTHER POEMS by Madison Cawein [Illustration] Louisville John P. Morton & Company, Publishers 1902 COPYRIGHTED 1902, BY MADISON CAWEIN For permission to reprint several of the poems included in this volume thanks are due to the _Atlantic Monthly_, _Harper's Magazine_, _The Century Magazine_, _Smart Set_, _Saturday Evening Post_, and _Lippincott's Magazine_. INSCRIBED TO EDMUND GOSSE AS A SLIGHT TOKEN OF APPRECIATION AND ESTEEM PROEM. OH, FOR A SOUL THAT FULFILLS MUSIC LIKE THAT OF A BIRD! THRILLING WITH RAPTURE THE HILLS, HEEDLESS IF ANY ONE HEARD. OR, LIKE THE FLOWER THAT BLOOMS LONE IN THE MIDST OF THE TREES, FILLING THE WOODS WITH PERFUMES, CARELESS IF ANY ONE SEES. OR, LIKE THE WANDERING WIND, OVER THE MEADOWS THAT SWINGS, BRINGING WILD SWEETS TO MANKIND, KNOWING NOT THAT WHICH IT BRINGS. OH, FOR A WAY TO IMPART BEAUTY, NO MATTER HOW HARD! LIKE UNTO NATURE, WHOSE ART NEVER ONCE DREAMS OF REWARD. A Voice on the Wind A VOICE ON THE WIND She walks with the wind on the windy height When the rocks are loud and the waves are white, And all night long she calls through the night, "O, my children, come home!" Her bleak gown, torn as a tattered cloud, Tosses around her like a shroud, While over the deep her voice rings loud,-- "O, my children, come home, come home! O, my children, come home!" Who is she who wanders alone, When the wind drives sheer and the rain is blown? Who walks all night and makes her moan, "O, my children, come home!" Whose face is raised to the blinding gale; Whose hair blows black and whose eyes are pale, While over the world is heard her wail,-- "O, my children, come home, come home! O, my children, come home!" She walks with the wind in the windy wood; The sad rain drips from her hair and hood, And her cry sobs by, like a ghost pursued, "O, my children, come home!" Where the trees are gaunt and the rocks are drear, The owl and the fox crouch down in fear, While wild through the wood her voice they hear,-- "O, my children, come home, come home! O, my children, come home!" Who is she who shudders by When the boughs blow bare and the dead leaves fly? Who walks all night with her wailing cry, "O, my children, come home!" Who, strange of look, and wild of tongue, With pale feet wounded and hands wan-wrung, Sweeps on and on with her cry, far-flung,-- "O, my children, come home, come home! O, my children, come home!" 'Tis the Spirit of Autumn, no man sees, The mother of Death and Mysteries, Who cries on the wind all night to these, "O, my children, come home!" The Spirit of Autumn, pierced with pain, Calling her children home again, Death and Dreams, through ruin and rain, "O, my children, come home, come home! O, my children, come home!" THE LAND OF HEARTS MADE WHOLE Do you know the way that goes Over fields of rue and rose,-- Warm of scent and hot of hue, Roofed with heaven's bluest blue,-- To the Vale of Dreams Come True? Do you know the path that twines, Banked with elder-bosks and vines, Under boughs that shade a stream, Hurrying, crystal as a gleam, To the Hills of Love a-Dream? Tell me, tell me, have you gone Through the fields and woods of dawn, Meadowlands and trees that roll, Great of grass and huge of bole, To the Land of Hearts Made Whole? On the way, among the fields, Poppies lift vermilion shields, In whose hearts the golden Noon, Murmuring her drowsy tune, Rocks the sleepy bees that croon. On the way, amid the woods, Mandrakes muster multitudes, 'Mid whose blossoms, white as tusk, Glides the glimmering Forest-Dusk, With her fluttering moths of musk. Here you hear the stealthy stir Of shy lives of hoof and fur; Harmless things that hide and peer, Hearts that sucked the milk of fear-- Fox and rabbit, squirrel and deer. Here you see the mossy flight Of faint forms that love the night-- Whippoorwill- and owlet-things, Whose far call before you brings Wonder-worlds of happenings. Now in sunlight, now in shade, Water, like a brandished blade, Foaming forward, wild of flight, Startles then arrests the sight, Whirling steely loops of light. Thro' the tree-tops, down the vale, Breezes pass and leave a trail Of cool music that the birds, Following in happy herds, Gather up in twittering words. Blossoms, frail and manifold, Strew the way with pearl and gold; Blurs, that seem the darling print Of the Springtime's feet, or glint Of her twinkling gown's torn tint. There the myths of old endure: Dreams that are the world-soul's cure; Things that have no place or play In the facts of Everyday 'Round your presence smile and sway. Suddenly your eyes may see, Stepping softly from her tree, Slim of form and wet with dew, The brown dryad; lips the hue Of a berry bit into. You may mark the naiad rise From her pool's reflected skies; In her gaze the heaven that dreams, Starred, in twilight-haunted streams, Mixed with water's grayer gleams. You may see the laurel's girth, Big of bloom, give fragrant birth To the oread whose hair, Musk and darkness, light and air, Fills the hush with wonder there. You may mark the rocks divide, And the faun before you glide, Piping on a magic reed, Sowing many a music seed, From which bloom and mushroom bead. Of the rain and sunlight born, Young of beard and young of horn, You may see the satyr lie, With a very knowing eye, Teaching youngling birds to fly. These shall cheer and follow you Through the Vale of Dreams Come True; Wind-like voices, leaf-like feet; Forms of mist and hazy heat, In whose pulses sunbeams beat. Lo! you tread enchanted ground! From the hollows all around Elf and spirit, gnome and fay, Guide your feet along the way Till the dewy close of day. Then beside you, jet on jet, Emerald-hued or violet, Flickering swings a firefly light, Aye to guide your steps a-right From the valley to the height. Steep the way is; when at last Vale and wood and stream are passed, From the heights you shall behold Panther heavens of spotted gold Tiger-tawny deeps unfold. You shall see on stocks and stones Sunset's bell-deep color tones Fallen; and the valleys filled With dusk's purple music, spilled On the silence rapture-thrilled. Then, as answering bell greets bell, Night ring in her miracle Of the doméd dark, o'er-rolled, Note on note, with starlight cold, 'Twixt the moon's broad peal of gold. On the hill-top Love-a-Dream Shows you then her window-gleam; Brings you home and folds your soul In the peace of vale and knoll, In the Land of Hearts Made Whole. THE WIND OF WINTER The Winter Wind, the wind of death, Who knocked upon my door, Now through the key-hole entereth, Invisible and hoar; He breathes around his icy breath And treads the flickering floor. I heard him, wandering in the night, Tap at my window pane, With ghostly fingers, snowy white, I heard him tug in vain, Until the shuddering candle-light With fear did cringe and strain. The fire, awakened by his voice, Leapt up with frantic arms, Like some wild babe that greets with noise Its father home who storms, With rosy gestures that rejoice And crimson kiss that warms. Now in the hearth he sits and, drowned Among the ashes, blows; Or through the room goes stealing 'round On cautious-stepping toes, Deep mantled in the drowsy sound Of night that sleets and snows. And oft, like some thin fairy-thing, The stormy hush amid, I hear his captive trebles ring Beneath the kettle's lid; Or now a harp of elfland string In some dark cranny hid. Again I hear him, imp-like, whine Cramped in the gusty flue; Or knotted in the resinous pine Raise goblin cry and hue, While through the smoke his eyeballs shine, A sooty red and blue. At last I hear him, nearing dawn, Take up his roaring broom, And sweep wild leaves from wood and lawn, And from the heavens the gloom, To show the gaunt world lying wan, And morn's cold rose a-bloom. THE WIND OF SUMMER From the hills and far away All the long, warm summer day Comes the wind and seems to say: "Come, oh, come! and let us go Where the meadows bend and blow, Waving with the white-tops' snow. "'Neath the hyssop-colored sky 'Mid the meadows we will lie Watching the white clouds roll by; "While your hair my hands shall press With a cooling tenderness Till your grief grows less and less. "Come, oh, come! and let us roam Where the rock-cut waters comb Flowing crystal into foam. "Under trees whose trunks are brown, On the banks that violets crown, We will watch the fish flash down; "While your ear my voice shall soothe With a whisper soft and smooth Till your care shall wax uncouth. "Come! where forests, line on line, Armies of the oak and pine, Scale the hills and shout and shine. "We will wander, hand in hand, Ways where tall the toadstools stand, Mile-stones white of Fairyland. "While your eyes my lips shall kiss, Dewy as a wild rose is, Till they gaze on naught but bliss. "On the meadows you will hear, Leaning low your spirit ear, Cautious footsteps drawing near. "You will deem it but a bee, Murmuring soft and sleepily, Till your inner sight shall see "'Tis a presence passing slow, All its shining hair ablow, Through the white-tops' tossing snow. "By the waters, if you will, And your inmost soul be still, Melody your ears shall fill. "You will deem it but the stream Rippling onward in a dream, Till upon your gaze shall gleam "Arm of spray and throat of foam-- 'Tis a spirit there aroam Where the radiant waters comb. "In the forest, if you heed, You shall hear a magic reed Sow sweet notes like silver seed. "You will deem your ears have heard Stir of tree or song of bird, Till your startled eyes are blurred "By a vision, instant seen, Naked gold and beryl green, Glimmering bright the boughs between. "Follow me! and you shall see Wonder-worlds of mystery That are only known to me!" Thus outside my city door Speaks the Wind its wildwood lore, Speaks and lo! I go once more. THE SPIRIT OF THE FOREST SPRING Over the rocks she trails her locks, Her mossy locks that drip, drip, drip; Her sparkling eyes smile at the skies In friendship-wise and fellowship; While the gleam and glance of her countenance Lull into trance the woodland places, As over the rocks she trails her locks, Her dripping locks that the long fern graces. She pours clear ooze from her heart's cool cruse, Its crystal cruse that drips, drips, drips; And all the day its diamond spray Is heard to play from her finger-tips; And the slight soft sound makes haunted ground Of the woods around that the sunlight laces, As she pours clear ooze from her heart's cool cruse, Its dripping cruse that no man traces. She swims and swims with glimmering limbs, With lucid limbs that drip, drip, drip; Where beechen boughs build a leafy house For her form to drowse or her feet to trip; And the liquid beat of her rippling feet Makes three-times sweet the forest mazes, As she swims and swims with glimmering limbs, With dripping limbs through the twilight's hazes. Then wrapped in deeps of the wild she sleeps, She whispering sleeps and drips, drips, drips; Where moon and mist wreathe neck and wrist, While, starry-whist, through the night she slips; And the heavenly dream of her soul makes gleam The falls that stream and the foam that races, As wrapped in deeps of the wild she sleeps, She dripping sleeps or starward gazes. TO THE LEAF-CRICKET I Small twilight singer Of dew and mist: thou ghost-gray, gossamer winger Of dusk's dim glimmer, How cool thy note sounds; how thy wings of shimmer Vibrate, soft-sighing, Meseems, for Summer that is dead or dying. I stand and listen, And at thy song the garden-beds, that glisten With rose and lily, Seem touched with sadness; and the tuberose chilly, Breathing around its cold and colorless breath, Fills the pale evening with wan hints of death. II I see thee quaintly Beneath the leaf; thy shell-shaped winglets faintly-- As thin as spangle Of cobwebbed rain--held up at airy angle; I hear thy tinkle, Thy fairy notes, the silvery stillness sprinkle; Investing wholly The moonlight with divinest melancholy: Until, in seeming, I see the Spirit of the Summer dreaming Amid her ripened orchards, apple-strewn, Her great, grave eyes fixed on the harvest-moon. III As dew-drops beady, As mist minute, thy notes ring low and reedy: The vaguest vapor Of melody, now near; now, like some taper Of sound, far fading-- Thou will-o'-wisp of music aye evading. Among the bowers, The fog-washed stalks of Autumn's weeds and flowers, By hill and hollow, I hear thy murmur and in vain I follow-- Thou jack-o'-lantern voice, thou elfin cry, Thou dirge, that tellest Beauty she must die. IV And when the frantic Wild winds of Autumn with the dead leaves antic; And walnuts scatter The mire of lanes; and dropping acorns patter In grove and forest, Like some frail grief, with the rude blast thou warrest, Sending thy slender Far cry against the gale, that, rough, untender, Untouched of sorrow, Sweeps thee aside, where, haply, I to-morrow Shall find thee lying, tiny, cold and crushed, Thy weak wings folded and thy music hushed. THE OWLET I When dusk is drowned in drowsy dreams, And slow the hues of sunset die; When firefly and moth go by, And in still streams the new-moon gleams, A sickle in the sky; Then from the hills there comes a cry, The owlet's cry; A shivering voice that sobs and screams, That, frightened, screams: "Who is it, who is it, who? Who rides through the dusk and dew, With a pair o' horns, As thin as thorns, And face a bubble blue? Who, who, who! Who is it, who is it, who?" II When night has dulled the lily's white, And opened wide the primrose eyes; When pale mists rise and veil the skies, And 'round the height in whispering flight The night-wind sounds and sighs; Then in the woods again it cries, The owlet cries; A shivering voice that calls in fright, In maundering fright: "Who is it, who is it, who? Who walks with a shuffling shoe, 'Mid the gusty trees, With a face none sees, And a form as ghostly too? Who, who, who! Who is it, who is it, who?" III When midnight leans a listening ear And tinkles on her insect lutes; When 'mid the roots the cricket flutes, And marsh and mere, now far, now near, A jack-o'-lantern foots; Then o'er the pool again it hoots, The owlet hoots; A voice that shivers as with fear, That cries in fear: "Who is it, who is it, who? Who creeps with his glow-worm crew Above the mire With a corpse-light fire, As only dead men do? Who, who, who! Who is it, who is it, who?" VINE AND SYCAMORE I Here where a tree and its wild liana, Leaning over the streamlet, grow, Once a nymph, like the moon'd Diana, Sat in the ages long ago. Sat with a mortal with whom she had mated, Sat and laughed with a mortal youth, Ere he of the forest, the god who hated, Saw and changed to a form uncouth.... II Once in the woods she had heard a shepherd, Heard a reed in a golden glade; Followed, and clad in the skin of a leopard, Found him fluting within the shade. Found him sitting with bare brown shoulder, Lithe and strong as a sapling oak, And leaning over a mossy boulder, Love in her wildwood heart awoke. III White she was as a dogwood flower, Pinkly white as a wild-crab bloom, Sweetly white as a hawtree bower Full of dew and the May's perfume. He who saw her above him burning, Beautiful, naked, in light arrayed, Deemed her Diana, and from her turning, Leapt to his feet and fled afraid. IV Far she followed and called and pleaded, Ever he fled with never a look; Fled, till he came to this spot, deep-reeded, Came to the bank of this forest brook. Here for a moment he stopped and listened, Heard in her voice her heart's despair, Saw in her eyes the love that glistened, Sank on her bosom and rested there. V Close to her beauty she strained and pressed him, Held and bound him with kiss on kiss; Soft with her arms and her lips caressed him, Sweeter of touch than a blossom is. Spoke to his heart, and with sweet persuasion Mastered his soul till its fear was flown; Spoke to his soul till its mortal evasion Vanished, and body and soul were her own. VI Many a day had they met and mated, Many a day by this woodland brook, When he of the forest, the god who hated, Came on their love and changed with a look. There on the shore, while they joyed and jested, He in the shadows, unseen, espied Her, like the goddess Diana breasted, Him, like Endymion by her side. VII Lo! at a word, at a sign, their folded Limbs and bodies assumed new form, Hers to the shape of a tree were molded, His to a vine with surrounding arm.... So they stand with their limbs enlacing, Nymph and mortal, upon this shore, He forever a vine embracing Her a silvery sycamore. THE POET He stands above all worldly schism, And, gazing over life's abysm, Beholds within the starry range Of heaven laws of death and change, That, through his soul's prophetic prism, Are turned to rainbows wild and strange. Through nature is his hope made surer Of that ideal, his allurer, By whom his life is upward drawn To mount pale pinnacles of dawn, 'Mid which all that is fairer, purer Of love and lore it comes upon. An alkahest, that makes gold metal Of dross, his mind is--where one petal Of one wild-rose will all outweigh The piled-up facts of everyday-- Where commonplaces, there that settle, Are changed to things of heavenly ray. He climbs by steps of stars and flowers, Companioned of the dreaming hours, And sets his feet in pastures where No merely mortal feet may fare; And higher than the stars he towers Though lowlier than the flowers there. His comrades are his own high fancies And thoughts in which his soul romances; And every part of heaven or earth He visits, lo, assumes new worth; And touched with loftier traits and trances Re-shines as with a lovelier birth. He is the play, likewise the player; The word that's said, also the sayer; And in the books of heart and head There is no thing he has not read; Of time and tears he is the weigher, And mouthpiece 'twixt the quick and dead. He dies: but, mounting ever higher, Wings Phoenix-like from out his pyre Above our mortal day and night, Clothed on with sempiternal light; And raimented in thought's far fire Flames on in everlasting flight. Unseen, yet seen, on heights of visions, Above all praise and world derisions, His spirit and his deathless brood Of dreams fare on, a multitude, While on the pillar of great missions His name and place are granite-hewed. EVENING ON THE FARM From out the hills, where twilight stands, Above the shadowy pasture lands, With strained and strident cry, Beneath pale skies that sunset bands, The bull-bats fly. A cloud hangs over, strange of shape, And, colored like the half-ripe grape, Seems some uneven stain On heaven's azure, thin as crape, And blue as rain. By ways, that sunset's sardonyx O'erflares, and gates the farmboy clicks, Through which the cattle came, The mullein stalks seem giant wicks Of downy flame. From woods no glimmer enters in, Above the streams that wandering win From out the violet hills, Those haunters of the dusk begin, The whippoorwills. Adown the dark the firefly marks Its flight in golden-emerald sparks; And, loosened from his chain, The shaggy watchdog bounds and barks, And barks again. Each breeze brings scents of hill-heaped hay; And now an owlet, far away, Cries twice or thrice, "Twohoo;" And cool dim moths of mottled gray Flit through the dew. The silence sounds its frog-bassoon, Where on the woodland creek's lagoon, Pale as a ghostly girl Lost 'mid the trees, looks down the moon With face of pearl. Within the shed where logs, late hewed, Smell forest-sweet, and chips of wood Make blurs of white and brown, The brood-hen cuddles her warm brood Of teetering down. The clattering guineas in the tree Din for a time; and quietly The henhouse, near the fence, Sleeps, save for some brief rivalry Of cocks and hens. A cow-bell tinkles by the rails, Where, streaming white in foaming pails, Milk makes an uddery sound; While overhead the black bat trails Around and 'round. The night is still. The slow cows chew A drowsy cud. The bird that flew And sang is in its nest. It is the time of falling dew, Of dreams and rest. The brown bees sleep; and 'round the walk, The garden path, from stalk to stalk The bungling beetle booms, Where two soft shadows stand and talk Among the blooms. The stars are thick: the light is dead That dyed the West: and Drowsyhead, Tuning his cricket-pipe, Nods, and some apple, round and red, Drops over ripe. Now down the road, that shambles by, A window, shining like an eye Through climbing rose and gourd, Shows where Toil sups and these things lie, His heart and hoard. THE BROOK To it the forest tells The mystery that haunts its heart and folds Its form in cogitation deep, that holds The shadow of each myth that dwells In nature--be it Nymph or Fay or Faun-- And whispering of them to the dales and dells, It wanders on and on. To it the heaven shows The secret of its soul; true images Of dreams that form its aspect; and with these Reflected in its countenance it goes, With pictures of the skies, the dusk and dawn, Within its breast, as every blossom knows, For them to gaze upon. Through it the world-soul sends Its heart's creating pulse that beats and sings The music of maternity whence springs All life; and shaping earthly ends, From the deep sources of the heavens drawn, Planting its ways with beauty, on it wends, On and forever on. SUMMER NOONTIDE The slender snail clings to the leaf, Gray on its silvered underside: And slowly, slowlier than the snail, with brief Bright steps, whose ripening touch foretells the sheaf, Her warm hands berry-dyed, Comes down the tanned Noontide. The pungent fragrance of the mint And pennyroyal drench her gown, That leaves long shreds of trumpet-blossom tint Among the thorns, and everywhere the glint Of gold and white and brown Her flowery steps waft down. The leaves, like hands with emerald veined, Along her way try their wild best To reach the jewel--whose hot hue was drained From some rich rose that all the June contained-- The butterfly, soft pressed Upon her sunny breast. Her shawl, the lace-like elder bloom, She hangs upon the hillside brake, Smelling of warmth and of her breast's perfume, And, lying in the citron-colored gloom Beside the lilied lake, She stares the buds awake. Or, with a smile, through watery deeps She leads the oaring turtle's legs; Or guides the crimson fish, that swims and sleeps, From pad to pad, from which the young frog leaps; And to its nest's green eggs The bird that pleads and begs. Then 'mid the fields of unmown hay She shows the bees where sweets are found; And points the butterflies, at airy play, And dragonflies, along the water-way, Where honeyed flowers abound For them to flicker 'round. Or where ripe apples pelt with gold Some barn--around which, coned with snow, The wild-potato blooms--she mounts its old Mossed roof, and through warped sides, the knots have holed, Lets her long glances glow Into the loft below. To show the mud-wasp at its cell Slenderly busy; swallows, too, Packing against a beam their nest's clay shell; And crouching in the dark the owl as well With all her downy crew Of owlets gray of hue. These are her joys, and until dusk Lounging she walks where reapers reap, From sultry raiment shaking scents of musk, Rustling the corn within its silken husk, And driving down heav'n's deep White herds of clouds like sheep. HEAT I Now is it as if Spring had never been, And Winter but a memory and dream, Here where the Summer stands, her lap of green Heaped high with bloom and beam, Among her blackberry-lilies, low that lean To kiss her feet; or, freckle-browed, that stare Upon the dragonfly which, slimly seen, Like a blue jewel flickering in her hair, Sparkles above them there. II Knee-deep among the tepid pools the cows Chew a slow cud or switch a slower tail. Half-sunk in sleep beneath the beechen boughs, Where thin the wood-gnats ail. From bloom to bloom the languid butterflies drowse; The sleepy bees make hardly any sound; The only things the sunrays can arouse, It seems, are two black beetles rolling 'round Upon the dusty ground. III Within its channel glares the creek and shrinks, Beneath whose rocks the furtive crawfish hides In stagnant places, where the green frog blinks, And water-spider glides. Far hotter seems it for the bird that drinks, The startled kingfisher that screams and flies; Hotter and lonelier for the purple pinks Of weeds that bloom, whose sultry perfumes rise Stifling the swooning skies. IV From ragweed fallows, rye fields, heaped with sheaves, From blistering rocks, no moss or lichens crust, And from the road, where every hoof-stroke heaves A cloud of burning dust, The hotness quivers, making limp the leaves, That loll like tongues of panting hounds. The heat Is a wan wimple that the Summer weaves, A veil, in which she wraps, as in a sheet, The shriveling corn and wheat. V Furious, incessant in the weeds and briers The sawing weed-bugs sing; and, heat-begot, The grasshoppers, so many strident wires, Staccato fiercely hot: A lash of whirling sound that never tires, The locust flails the noon, where harnessed Thirst, Beside the road-spring, many a shod hoof mires, Into the trough thrusts his hot head, immersed, 'Round which cool bubbles burst. VI The sad, sweet voice of some wood-spirit who Laments while watching a loved oak tree die, From the deep forest comes the wood-dove's coo. A long, lost, lonely cry. Oh, for a breeze, a mighty wind to woo The woods to stormy laughter; sow like grain The world with freshness of invisible dew. And pile above far, fevered hill and plain. Vast bastions black with rain. JULY Now 'tis the time when, tall, The long blue torches of the bellflower gleam Among the trees; and, by the wooded stream. In many a fragrant ball. Blooms of the button-bush fall. Let us go forth and seek Woods where the wild plums redden and the beech Plumps its packed burs: and, swelling, just in reach. The pawpaw, emerald sleek. Ripens along the creek. Now 'tis the time when ways Of glimmering green flaunt white the misty plumes Of the black-cohosh; and through bramble glooms, A blur of orange rays, The butterfly-blossoms blaze. Let us go forth and hear The spiral music that the locusts beat, And that small spray of sound, so grassy sweet, Dear to a country ear, The cricket's summer cheer. Now golden celandine Is hairy hung with silvery sacks of seeds. And bugled o'er with freckled gold, like beads. Beneath the fox-grape vine, The jewel-weed's blossoms shine. Let us go forth and see The dragon- and the butterfly, like gems, Spangling the sunbeams; and the clover stems, Weighed down by many a bee, Nodding mellifluously. Now morns are full of song; The catbird and the redbird and the jay Upon the hilltops rouse the rosy day, Who, dewy, blithe, and strong, Lures their wild wings along. Now noons are full of dreams; The clouds of heaven and the wandering breeze Follow a vision; and the flowers and trees, The hills and fields and streams, Are lapped in mystic gleams. The nights are full of love; The stars and moon take up the golden tale Of the sunk sun, and passionate and pale, Mixing their fires above, Grow eloquent thereof. Such days are like a sigh That beauty heaves from a full heart of bliss: Such nights are like the sweetness of a kiss On lips that half deny, The warm lips of July. TO THE LOCUST Thou pulse of hotness, who, with reed-like breast, Makest meridian music, long and loud, Accentuating summer!--dost thy best To make the sunbeams fiercer, and to crowd With lonesomeness the long, close afternoon When Labor leans, swart-faced and beady browed, Upon his sultry scythe--thou tangible tune Of heat, whose waves incessantly arise Quivering and clear beneath the cloudless skies. Thou singest, and upon his haggard hills Drouth yawns and rubs his heavy eyes and wakes; Brushes the hot hair from his face; and fills The land with death as sullenly he takes Downward his dusty way: 'midst woods and fields At every pool his burning thirst he slakes: No grove so deep, no bank so high it shields A spring from him; no creek evades his eye; He needs but look and they are withered dry. Thou singest, and thy song is as a spell Of somnolence to charm the land with sleep; A thorn of sound that pierces dale and dell, Diffusing slumber over vale and steep. Sleepy the forest, nodding sleepy boughs; The pastures sleepy with their sleepy sheep; Sleepy the creek where sleepily the cows Stand knee-deep: and the very heaven seems Sleepy and lost in undetermined dreams. Art thou a rattle that Monotony, Summer's dull nurse, old sister of slow Time, Shakes for Day's peevish pleasure, who in glee Takes its discordant music for sweet rhyme? Or oboe that the Summer Noontide plays, Sitting with Ripeness 'neath the orchard-tree, Trying repeatedly the same shrill phrase, Until the musky peach with drowsiness Drops, and the hum of bees grows less and less? YOUNG SEPTEMBER I With a look and a laugh where the stream was flowing, September led me along the land; Where the golden-rod and lobelia, glowing, Seemed burning torches within her hand. And faint as the thistle's or milk-weed's feather I glimpsed her form through the sparkling weather. II Now 'twas her hand and now her hair That tossed me welcome everywhere; That lured me onward through the stately rooms Of forest, hung and carpeted with glooms, And windowed wide with azure, doored with green. Through which rich glimmers of her robe were seen-- Now, like some deep marsh-mallow, rosy gold; Now, like the great Joe-Pye-weed, fold on fold Of heavy mauve; and now, like the intense Massed iron-weed, a purple opulence. III Along the bank in a wild procession Of gold and sapphire the blossoms blew; And borne on the breeze came their soft confession In syllables musk of honey and dew; In words unheard that their lips kept saying, Sweet as the lips of children praying. IV And so, meseemed, I heard them tell How here her loving glance once fell Upon this bank, and from its azure grew The ageratum mist-flower's happy hue: How from her kiss, as crimson as the dawn, The cardinal-flow'r drew its vermilion; And from her hair's blond touch th' elecampane Evolved the glory of its golden rain; White from her starry footsteps, redolent, The aster pearled its flowery firmament. UNDER THE HUNTER'S MOON White from her chrysalis of cloud, The moth-like moon swings upward through the night; And all the bee-like stars that crowd The hollow hive of heav'n wane in her light. Along the distance, folds of mist Hang frost-pale, ridging all the dark with gray; Tinting the trees with amethyst, Touching with pearl and purple every spray. All night the stealthy frost and fog Conspire to slay the rich-robed weeds and flowers: To strip of wealth the woods, and clog With piled-up gold of leaves the creek that cowers. I seem to see their Spirits stand, Molded of moonlight, faint of form and face, Now reaching high a chilly hand To pluck some walnut from its spicy place: Now with fine fingers, phantom-cold, Splitting the wahoo's pods of rose, and thin The bittersweet's balls o' gold, To show the coal-red berries packed within: Now on dim threads of gossamer Stringing pale pearls of moisture; necklacing The flow'rs; and spreading cobweb fur, Crystaled with stardew, over everything: While 'neath the moon, with moon-white feet, They go and, chill, a moon-soft music draw From wan leaf-cricket flutes--the sweet, Sad dirge of Autumn dying in the shaw. RAIN IN THE WOODS When on the leaves the rain persists, And every gust brings showers down; When all the woodland smokes with mists, I take the old road out of town Into the hills through which it twists. I find the vale where catnip grows, Where boneset blooms, with moisture bowed; The vale through which the red creek flows, Turbid with hill-washed clay, and loud As some wild horn a hunter blows. Around the root the beetle glides, A living beryl; and the ant, Large, agate-red, a garnet, slides Beneath the rock; and every plant Is roof for some frail thing that hides. Like knots against the trunks of trees The lichen-colored moths are pressed; And, wedged in hollow blooms, the bees Seem clots of pollen; in its nest The wasp has crawled and lies at ease. The locust harsh, that sharply saws The silence of the summer noon; The katydid that thinly draws Its fine file o'er the bars of moon; And grasshopper that drills each pause: The mantis, long-clawed, furtive, lean-- Fierce feline of the insect hordes-- And dragonfly, gauze-winged and green, Beneath the wild-grape's leaves and gourd's, Have housed themselves and rest unseen. The butterfly and forest-bird Are huddled on the same gnarled bough, From which, like some rain-voweled word That dampness hoarsely utters now, The tree-toad's voice is vaguely heard. I crouch and listen; and again The woods are filled with phantom forms-- With shapes, grotesque in mystic train, That rise and reach to me cool arms Of mist; the wandering wraiths of rain. I see them come; fantastic, fair; Chill, mushroom-colored: sky and earth Grow ghostly with their floating hair And trailing limbs, that have their birth In wetness--fungi of the air. O wraiths of rain! O ghosts of mist! Still fold me, hold me, and pursue! Still let my lips by yours be kissed! Still draw me with your hands of dew Unto the tryst, the dripping tryst. IN THE LANE When the hornet hangs in the hollyhock, And the brown bee drones i' the rose, And the west is a red-streaked four-o'-clock, And summer is near its close-- It's--Oh, for the gate and the locust lane And dusk and dew and home again! When the katydid sings and the cricket cries, And ghosts of the mists ascend, And the evening-star is a lamp i' the skies, And summer is near its end-- It's--Oh, for the fence and the leafy lane, And the twilight peace and the tryst again! When the owlet hoots in the dogwood-tree, That leans to the rippling Run, And the wind is a wildwood melody, And summer is almost done-- It's--Oh, for the bridge and the bramble lane, And the fragrant hush and her hands again! When fields smell moist with the dewy hay, And woods are cool and wan, And a path for dreams is the Milky-way, And summer is nearly gone-- It's--Oh, for the rock and the woodland lane And the silence and stars and her lips again! When the weight of the apples breaks down the boughs, And musk-melons split with sweet, And the moon is a-bloom in the Heaven's house, And summer has spent its heat-- It's--Oh, for the lane, the trysting lane, And the deep-mooned night and her love again! A FOREST IDYL I Beneath an old beech-tree They sat together, Fair as a flower was she Of summer weather. They spoke of life and love, While, through the boughs above, The sunlight, like a dove, Dropped many a feather. II And there the violet, The bluet near it, Made blurs of azure wet-- As if some spirit, Or woodland dream, had gone Sprinkling the earth with dawn, When only Fay and Faun Could see or hear it. III She with her young, sweet face And eyes gray-beaming, Made of that forest place A spot for dreaming: A spot for Oreads To smooth their nut-brown braids, For Dryads of the glades To dance in, gleaming. IV So dim the place, so blest. One had not wondered Had Dian's moonéd breast The deep leaves sundered, And there on them awhile The goddess deigned to smile. While down some forest aisle The far hunt thundered. V I deem that hour perchance Was but a mirror To show them Earth's romance And draw them nearer: A mirror where, meseems. All that this Earth-life dreams, All loveliness that gleams, Their souls saw clearer. VI Beneath an old beech-tree They dreamed of blisses; Fair as a flower was she That summer kisses: They spoke of dreams and days, Of love that goes and stays, Of all for which life prays, Ah me! and misses. UNDER THE ROSE He told a story to her, A story old yet new-- And was it of the Faëry Folk That dance along the dew? The night was hung with silence As a room is hung with cloth, And soundless, through the rose-sweet hush, Swooned dim the down-white moth. Along the east a shimmer, A tenuous breath of flame, From which, as from a bath of light, Nymph-like, the girl-moon came. And pendent in the purple Of heaven, like fireflies, Bubbles of gold the great stars blew From windows of the skies. He told a story to her, A story full of dreams-- And was it of the Elfin things That haunt the thin moonbeams? Upon the hill a thorn-tree, Crooked and gnarled and gray, Against the moon seemed some crutch'd hag Dragging a child away. And in the vale a runnel, That dripped from shelf to shelf, Seemed, in the night, a woodland witch Who muttered to herself. Along the land a zephyr, Whose breath was wild perfume, That seemed a sorceress who wove Sweet spells of beam and bloom. He told a story to her, A story young yet old-- And was it of the mystic things Men's eyes shall ne'er behold? They heard the dew drip faintly From out the green-cupped leaf; They heard the petals of the rose Unfolding from their sheaf. They saw the wind light-footing The waters into sheen; They saw the starlight kiss to sleep The blossoms on the green. They heard and saw these wonders; These things they saw and heard; And other things within the heart For which there is no word. He told a story to her, The story men call Love, Whose echoes fill the ages past, And the world ne'er tires of. IN AUTUMN I Sunflowers wither and lilies die, Poppies are pods of seeds; The first red leaves on the pathway lie, Like blood of a heart that bleeds. Weary alway will it be to-day, Weary and wan and wet; Dawn and noon will the clouds hang gray, And the autumn wind will sigh and say, "_He comes not yet, not yet. Weary alway, alway!_" II Hollyhocks bend all tattered and torn, Marigolds all are gone; The last pale rose lies all forlorn, Like love that is trampled on. Weary, ah me! to-night will be, Weary and wild and hoar; Rain and mist will blow from the sea, And the wind will sob in the autumn tree, "_He comes no more, no more. Weary, ah me! ah me!_" EPIPHANY There is nothing that eases my heart so much As the wind that blows from the purple hills; 'Tis a hand of balsam whose healing touch Unburdens my bosom of ills. There is nothing that causes my soul to rejoice Like the sunset flaming without a flaw: 'Tis a burning bush whence God's own voice Addresses my spirit with awe. There is nothing that hallows my mind, meseems, Like the night with its moon and its stars above; 'Tis a mystical lily whose golden gleams Fulfill my being with love. There is nothing, no, nothing, we see and feel. That speaks to our souls some beautiful thought, That was not created to help us, and heal Our lives that are overwrought. LIFE I PESSIMIST There is never a thing we dream or do But was dreamed and done in the ages gone; Everything's old; there is nothing that's new, And so it will be while the world goes on. The thoughts we think have been thought before; The deeds we do have long been done; We pride ourselves on our love and lore And both are as old as the moon and sun. We strive and struggle and swink and sweat, And the end for each is one and the same; Time and the sun and the frost and wet Will wear from its pillar the greatest name. No answer comes for our prayer or curse, No word replies though we shriek in air; Ever the taciturn universe Stretches unchanged for our curse or prayer. With our mind's small light in the dark we crawl,-- Glow-worm glimmers that creep about,-- Tilt the Power that shaped us, over us all Poises His foot and treads us out. Unasked He fashions us out of clay, A little water, a little dust, And then in our holes He thrusts us away, With never a word, to rot and rust. 'Tis a sorry play with a sorry plot, This life of hate and of lust and pain, Where we play our parts and are soon forgot, And all that we do is done in vain. II OPTIMIST There is never a dream but it shall come true, And never a deed but was wrought by plan; And life is filled with the strange and new, And ever has been since the world began. As mind develops and soul matures These two shall parent Earth's mightier acts; Love is a fact, and 'tis love endures 'Though the world make wreck of all other facts. Through thought alone shall our Age obtain Above all Ages gone before; The tribes of sloth, of brawn, not brain, Are the tribes that perish, are known no more. Within ourselves is a voice of Awe, And a hand that points to Balanced Scales; The one is Love and the other Law, And their presence alone it is avails. For every shadow about our way There is a glory of moon and sun; But the hope within us hath more of ray Than the light of the sun and moon in one. Behind all being a purpose lies, Undeviating as God hath willed; And he alone it is who dies, Who leaves that purpose unfulfilled. Life is an epic the Master sings, Whose theme is Man, and whose music, Soul, Where each is a word in the Song of Things, That shall roll on while the ages roll. NEVER (Song) Love hath no place in her, Though in her bosom be Love-thoughts and dreams that stir Longings that know not me: Love hath no place in her, No place for me. Never within her eyes Do I the love-light see; Never her soul replies To the sad soul in me: Never with soul and eyes Speaks she to me. She is a star, a rose, I but a moth, a bee; High in her heaven she glows, Blooms far away from me: She is a star, a rose, Never for me. Why will I think of her To my heart's misery? Dreaming how sweet it were Had she a thought of me: Why will I think of her! Why, why, ah me! MEETING IN THE WOODS Through ferns and moss the path wound to A hollow where the touchmenots Swung horns of honey filled with dew; And where--like foot-prints--violets blue And bluets made sweet sapphire blots, 'Twas there that she had passed he knew. The grass, the very wilderness On either side, breathed rapture of Her passage: 'twas her hand or dress That touched some tree--a slight caress-- That made the wood-birds sing above; Her step that made the flowers up-press. He hurried, till across his way, Foam-footed, bounding through the wood, A brook, like some wild girl at play, Went laughing loud its roundelay; And there upon its bank she stood, A sunbeam clad in woodland gray. And when she saw him, all her face Grew to a wildrose by the stream; And to his breast a moment's space He gathered her; and all the place Seemed conscious of some happy dream Come true to add to Earth its grace. Some joy, on which Heav'n was intent-- For which God made the world--the bliss, The love, that raised her innocent Pure face to his that, smiling, bent And sealed confession with a kiss-- Life needs no other testament. A MAID WHO DIED OLD Frail, shrunken face, so pinched and worn, That life has carved with care and doubt! So weary waiting, night and morn, For that which never came about! Pale lamp, so utterly forlorn. In which God's light at last is out. Gray hair, that lies so thin and prim On either side the sunken brows! And soldered eyes, so deep and dim, No word of man could now arouse! And hollow hands, so virgin slim, Forever clasped in silent vows! Poor breasts! that God designed for love, For baby lips to kiss and press! That never felt, yet dreamed thereof, The human touch, the child caress-- That lie like shriveled blooms above The heart's long-perished happiness. O withered body, Nature gave For purposes of death and birth, That never knew, and could but crave Those things perhaps that make life worth-- Rest now, alas! within the grave, Sad shell that served no end of Earth. COMMUNICANTS Who knows the things they dream, alas! Or feel, who lie beneath the ground? Perhaps the flowers, the leaves, and grass That close them round. In spring the violets may spell The moods of them we know not of; Or lilies sweetly syllable Their thoughts of love Haply, in summer, dew and scent Of all they feel may be a part; Each red rose be the testament Of some rich heart. The winds of fall be utterance, Perhaps, of saddest things they say; Wild leaves may word some dead romance In some dim way. In winter all their sleep profound Through frost may speak to grass and stream; The snow may be the silent sound Of all they dream. THE DEAD DAY The West builds high a sepulchre Of cloudy granite and of gold. Where twilight's priestly hours inter The day like some great king of old, A censer, rimmed with silver fire, The new moon swings above his tomb; While, organ-stops of God's own choir, Star after star throbs in the gloom. And night draws near, the sadly sweet-- A nun whose face is calm and fair-- And kneeling at the dead day's feet Her soul goes up in silent prayer. In prayer, we feel through dewy gleam And flowery fragrance, and--above All Earth--the ecstasy and dream That haunt the mystic heart of love. KNIGHT-ERRANT Onward he gallops through enchanted gloom. The spectres of the forest, dark and dim, And shadows of vast death environ him-- Onward he spurs victorious over doom. Before his eyes that love's far fires illume-- Where courage sits, impregnable and grim-- The form and features of _her_ beauty swim, Beckoning him on with looks that fears consume. The thought of her distress, her lips to kiss, Mails him with triple might; and so at last To Lust's huge keep he comes; its giant wall, Wild-towering, frowning from the precipice; And through its gate, borne like a bugle blast, O'er night and hell he thunders to his all. THE END OF SUMMER Pods are the poppies, and slim spires of pods The hollyhocks; the balsam's pearly bredes Of rose-stained snow are little sacs of seeds Collapsing at a touch; the lote, that sods The pond with green, has changed its flowers to rods And discs of vesicles; and all the weeds, Around the sleepy water and its reeds. Are one white smoke of seeded silk that nods. Summer is dead, ay me! sweet Summer's dead! The sunset clouds have built her funeral pyre, Through which, e'en now, runs subterranean fire: While from the East, as from a garden bed, Mist-vined, the Dusk lifts her broad moon--like some Great golden melon--saying, "Fall has come." LIGHT AND WIND Where, through the leaves of myriad forest trees, The daylight falls, beryl and chrysoprase, The glamour and the glimmer of its rays Seem visible music, tangible melodies: Light that is music; music that one sees-- Wagnerian music--where forever sways The spirit of romance, and gods and fays Take form, clad on with dreams and mysteries. And now the wind's transmuting necromance Touches the light and makes it fall and rise, Vocal, a harp of multitudinous waves That speaks as ocean speaks--an utterance Of far-off whispers, mermaid-murmuring sighs-- Pelagian, vast, deep-down in coral caves. SUPERSTITION In the waste places, in the dreadful night, When the wood whispers like a wandering mind, And silence sits and listens to the wind, Or, 'mid the rocks, to some wild torrent's flight; Bat-browed thou wadest with thy wisp of light Among black pools the moon can never find; Or, owlet-eyed, thou hootest to the blind Deep darkness from some cave or haunted height. He who beholds but once thy fearsome face, Never again shall walk alone! but wan And terrible attendants shall be his-- Unutterable things that have no place In God or Beauty--that compel him on, Against all hope, where endless horror is. UNCALLED As one, who, journeying westward with the sun, Beholds at length from the up-towering hills, Far off, a land unspeakable beauty fills, Circean peaks and vales of Avalon: And, sinking weary, watches, one by one, The big seas beat between; and knows it skills No more to try; that now, as Heaven wills, This is the helpless end, that all is done: So 'tis with him, whom long a vision led In quest of Beauty, and who finds at last She lies beyond his effort. All the waves Of all the world between them: While the dead, The myriad dead, who people all the Past With failure, hail him from forgotten graves. LOVE DESPISED Can one resolve and hunt it from one's heart? This love, this god and fiend, that makes a hell Of many a life, in ways no tongue can tell, No mind divine, nor any word impart. Would not one think the slights that make hearts smart, The ice of love's disdain, the wint'ry well Of love's disfavor, love's own fire would quell? Or school its nature, too, to its own art. Why will men cringe and cry forever here For that which, once obtained, may prove a curse? Why not remember that, however fair, Decay is wed to Beauty? That each year Takes somewhat from the riches of her purse, Until at last her house of pride stands bare? THE DEATH OF LOVE So Love is dead, the Love we knew of old! And in the sorrow of our hearts' hushed halls A lute lies broken and a flower falls; Love's house is empty and his hearth is cold. Lone in dim places, where sweet vows were told. In walks grown desolate, by ruined walls, Beauty decays; and on their pedestals Dreams crumble, and th' immortal gods are mould. Music is slain or sleeps; one voice alone, One voice awakes, and like a wandering ghost Haunts all the echoing chambers of the Past-- The voice of Memory, that stills to stone The soul that hears; the mind that, utterly lost, Before its beautiful presence stands aghast. GERALDINE, GERALDINE Geraldine, Geraldine, Do you remember where The willows used to screen The water flowing fair? The mill-stream's banks of green Where first our love begun, When you were seventeen, And I was twenty-one? Geraldine, Geraldine, Do you remember how From th' old bridge we would lean-- The bridge that's broken now-- To watch the minnows sheen, And the ripples of the Run, When you were seventeen, And I was twenty-one? Geraldine, Geraldine, Do you remember too The old beech-tree, between Whose roots the wild flowers grew? Where oft we met at e'en, When stars were few or none, When you were seventeen, And I was twenty-one? Geraldine, Geraldine, The bark has grown around The names I cut therein, And the truelove-knot that bound; The love-knot, clear and clean, I carved when our love begun, When you were seventeen, And I was twenty-one? Geraldine, Geraldine, The roof of the farmhouse gray Is fallen and mossy green; Its rafters rot away: The old path scarce is seen Where oft our feet would run, When you were seventeen, And I was twenty-one. Geraldine, Geraldine, Through each old tree and bough The lone winds cry and keen-- The place is haunted now, With ghosts of what-has-been, With dreams of love-long-done, When you were seventeen, And I was twenty-one. Geraldine, Geraldine, There, in your world of wealth, There, where you move a queen, Broken in heart and health, Does there ever rise a scene Of days, your soul would shun, When you were seventeen, And I was twenty-one? Geraldine, Geraldine, Here, 'mid the rose and rue, Would God that your grave were green. And I were lying too! Here on the hill, I mean, Where oft we laughed i' the sun, When you were seventeen, And I was twenty-one. ALLUREMENT Across the world she sends me word, From gardens fair as Falerina's, Now by a blossom, now a bird, To come to her, who long has lured With magic sweeter than Alcina's. I know not what her word may mean, I know not what may mean the voices She sends as messengers serene, That through the silvery silence lean, To tell me where her heart rejoices. But I must go! I must away! Must take the path that is appointed! God grant I find her realm some day! Where, by her love, as by a ray, My soul shall be anointed. BLACK VESPER'S PAGEANTS. The day, all fierce with carmine, turns An Indian face towards Earth and dies; The west, like some gaunt vase, inurns Its ashes under smouldering skies, Athwart whose bowl one red cloud streams, Strange as a shape some Aztec dreams. Now shadows mass above the world, And night comes on with wind and rain; The mulberry-colored leaves are hurled Like frantic hands against the pane. And through the forests, bending low, Night stalks like some gigantic woe. In hollows where the thistle shakes A hoar bloom like a witch's-light, From weed and flower the rain-wind rakes Dead sweetness--as a wildman might, From out the leaves, the woods among, Dig some dead woman, fair and young. Now let me walk the woodland ways, Alone! except for thoughts, that are Akin to such wild nights and days; A portion of the storm that far Fills Heaven and Earth tumultuously, And my own soul with ecstasy. OTHER VOLUMES BY MADISON CAWEIN THE GARDEN OF DREAMS Printed on hand-made paper; bound in watered silk; only a few copies remaining; price, $1.25 (net) WEEDS BY THE WALL Tastefully bound in silk cloth; price, $1.25 Sent on receipt of price to any address by JOHN P. MORTON & COMPANY PUBLISHERS LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY. WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS, in the _North American Review_ for January, 1902. "One never praises an author for certain things without afterward doubting if they were the characteristic things, or whether just the reverse might not be said. Praise is, in fact, a delicate business, and I, who am rather fond of dealing in it, never feel quite safe. Not only is it questionable at the moment, but the later behavior of the author is sometimes such that one is sorry not to have made it blame. It is always with a shrinking, which I try to hide from the public, that I take up the fresh venture of a poet whom I have once bet on. But there is a joy when I find that I have not lost my wager, which is full compensation for the anxiety suffered. This joy has lately been mine in the latest little book of Mr. Madison Cawein, whose work I long ago confessed my pleasure in. I am not sure that he has transcended the limits which he then seemed to give himself as the lover, the prophet, of beauty in the woods and waters and skies of the southern Mid-West. I do not know that he need have done more than unlock the riches of emotion within these limits. What I am sure of is that in 'Weeds by the Wall' he has more deeply charmed me with an art perfected from that I felt in 'Blooms of the Berry' ten or fifteen years since. Many little books of his have come (I hope not also gone) between the first and last, and none of them has failed to make me glad of his work; and now, again, I am finding the same impassioned moods in the same impassive presences. To my knowledge, no such nature poems have been written within the time since Mr. Cawein began to write as his are, or from such an intimacy with the 'various language' which nature speaks. There are other good poems in the book, poems which would have made reputes in the eighteenth century, and which it would be a shame not to own good in the twentieth; but those which speak for 'The Cricket,' 'A Twilight Moth,' 'The Grasshopper,' 'The Tree-Toad,' 'The Screech Owl,' 'The Chipmunk,' 'Drouth,' 'Before the Rain,' and the like, are in a voice which interprets the very soul of what we call the inarticulate things, though they seem to have enunciated themselves so distinctly to this poet. It is cheap to note his increasing control of his affluent imagery and the growing mastery that makes him so fine an artist. These things were to be expected from his early poems, but what makes one think he will go far and long, and outlive both praise and blame, is the blending of a sense of the Kentucky civilization in such a poem as 'Feud.'... Civilization may not be quite the word for the condition of things suggested here, but there can be no doubt of the dramatic and the graphic power that suggests it, and that imparts a personal sense of the tragic squalor, the sultry drouth, the forlorn wickedness of it all. By such a way as this lies Mr. Cawein's hope of rise from nature up to man, if it is up; and also, as I perceive too late, lies confusion for the critic who said that the poet does not transcend the limits he once seemed to give himself." * * * * * TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Page 76 "wickednsse" changed to "wickedness" (the forlorn wickedness of it all.) 
34001	----	CHALLENGE By LOUIS UNTERMEYER NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1914 Copyright, 1914, by THE CENTURY CO. Published, April, 1914 CONTENTS I. SUMMONS SUMMONS PRAYER TO ARMS ON THE BIRTH OF A CHILD HOW MUCH OF GODHOOD THE GREAT CAROUSAL THANKS GOD'S YOUTH IN THE BERKSHIRE HILLS VOICES REVELATION AFFIRMATION DOWNHILL ON A BICYCLE MIDNIGHT--BY THE OPEN WINDOW THE WINE OF NIGHT II. INTERLUDES INVOCATION "FEUERZAUBER" SUNDAY NIGHT AT KENNEBUNKPORT IN A STRANGE CITY FOLK-SONG IN THE STREETS ENVY A BIRTHDAY LEAVING THE HARBOR THE SHELL TO THE PEARL THE YOUNG MYSTIC HEALED THE STIRRUP-CUP SPRING ON BROADWAY IN A CAB SUMMER NIGHT--BROADWAY HAUNTED ISADORA DUNCAN DANCING SONGS AND THE POET THE HERETIC I. BLASPHEMY II. IRONY III. MOCKERY IV. HUMILITY FIFTH AVENUE--SPRING AFTERNOON TRIBUTE III. SONGS OF PROTEST CHALLENGE CALIBAN IN THE COAL-MINES ANY CITY LANDSCAPES TWO FUNERALS SUNDAY STRIKERS IN THE SUBWAY BATTLE-CRIES A VOICE FROM THE SWEAT-SHOPS SOLDIERS PEACE THE DYING DECADENT FUNERAL HYMN PROTESTS For the privilege of reprinting many of the poems included in this volume, the author thanks the editors of _The Century, Harper's, The Forum, The Masses, The Smart Set, The Independent, The American, The Delineator, The New Age, The Poetry Journal_ and other magazines. SUMMONS _To Walter Lippmann_ SUMMONS The eager night and the impetuous winds, The hints and whispers of a thousand lures, And all the swift persuasion of the Spring Surged from the stars and stones, and swept me on... The smell of honeysuckles, keen and clear, Startled and shook me, with the sudden thrill Of some well-known but half-forgotten voice. A slender stream became a naked sprite, Flashed around curious bends, and winked at me Beyond the turns, alert and mischievous. A saffron moon, dangling among the trees, Seemed like a toy balloon caught in the boughs, Flung there in sport by some too-mirthful breeze... And as it hung there, vivid and unreal, The whole world's lethargy was brushed away; The night kept tugging at my torpid mood And tore it into shreds. A warm air blew My wintry slothfulness beyond the stars; And over all indifference there streamed A myriad urges in one rushing wave... Touched with the lavish miracles of earth, I felt the brave persistence of the grass; The far desire of rivulets; the keen, Unconquerable fervor of the thrush; The endless labors of the patient worm; The lichen's strength; the prowess of the ant; The constancy of flowers; the blind belief Of ivy climbing slowly toward the sun; The eternal struggles and eternal deaths-- And yet the groping faith of every root! Out of old graves arose the cry of life; Out of the dying came the deathless call. And, thrilling with a new sweet restlessness, The thing that was my boyhood woke in me-- Dear, foolish fragments made me strong again; Valiant adventures, dreams of those to come, And all the vague, heroic hopes of youth, With fresh abandon, like a fearless laugh, Leaped up to face the heaven's unconcern... And then--veil upon veil was torn aside-- Stars, like a host of merry girls and boys, Danced gaily 'round me, plucking at my hand; The night, scorning its ancient mystery, Leaned down and pressed new courage in my heart; The hermit thrush, throbbing with more than Song, Sang with a happy challenge to the skies; Love, and the faces of a world of children, Swept like a conquering army through my blood-- And Beauty, rising out of all its forms, Beauty, the passion of the universe, Flamed with its joy, a thing too great for tears. And, like a wine, poured itself out for me To drink of, to be warmed with, and to go Refreshed and strengthened to the ceaseless fight; To meet with confidence the cynic years; Battling in wars that never can be won, Seeking the lost cause and the brave defeat! PRAYER God, though this life is but a wraith, Although we know not what we use, Although we grope with little faith, Give me the heart to fight--and lose. Ever insurgent let me be, Make me more daring than devout; From sleek contentment keep me free. And fill me with a buoyant doubt. Open my eyes to visions girt With beauty, and with wonder lit-- But let me always see the dirt, And all that spawn and die in it. Open my ears to music; let Me thrill with Spring's first flutes and drums-- But never let me dare forget The bitter ballads of the slums. From compromise and things half-done, Keep me, with stern and stubborn pride; And when, at last, the fight is won God, keep me still unsatisfied. TO ARMS! Who can be dull or wrapped in unconcern Knowing a world so clamorous and keen; A world of ardent conflict, honest spleen, And healthy, hot desires too swift to turn; Vivid and vulgar--with no heart to learn... See how that drudge, a thing unkempt, unclean, Laughs with the royal laughter of a queen. Even in her the eager fires burn. Who can be listless in these stirring hours When, with athletic courage, we engage To storm, with fierce abandon, sterner powers And meet indifference with a joyful rage; Thrilled with a purpose and the dream that towers Out of this arrogant and blundering age. ON THE BIRTH OF A CHILD (Jerome Epstein--August 8, 1912) Lo--to the battle-ground of Life, Child, you have come, like a conquering shout, Out of a struggle--into strife; Out of a darkness--into doubt. Girt with the fragile armor of Youth, Child, you must ride into endless wars, With the sword of protest, the buckler of truth, And a banner of love to sweep the stars. About you the world's despair will surge; Into defeat you must plunge and grope-- Be to the faltering an urge; Be to the hopeless years a hope! Be to the darkened world a flame; Be to its unconcern a blow-- For out of its pain and tumult you came, And into its tumult and pain you go. HOW MUCH OF GODHOOD How much of Godhood did it take-- What purging epochs had to pass, Ere I was fit for leaf and lake And worthy of the patient grass? What mighty travails must have been, What ages must have moulded me, Ere I was raised and made akin To dawn, the daisy and the sea. In what great struggles was I felled, In what old lives I labored long, Ere I was given a world that held A meadow, butterflies and Song? But oh, what cleansings and what fears, What countless raisings from the dead, Ere I could see Her, touched with tears, Pillow the little weary head. THE GREAT CAROUSAL Oh, do not think me dead when I Beneath a bit of earth shall lie; Think not that aught can ever kill My arrogant and stubborn will. My buoyant strength, my eager soul, My stern desire shall keep me whole And lift me from the drowsy deep... I shall not even yield to Sleep, For Death can never take from me My warm, insatiate energy; He shall not dare to touch one part Of the gay challenge of my heart. And I shall laugh at him, and lie Happy beneath a laughing sky; For I have fought too joyously To let the conqueror conquer me-- I know that, after strengthening strife, Death cannot quench my love of life; Rob me of my dear self, my ears Of music or my eyes of tears ... No, Death shall come in friendlier guise; The cloths of darkness from my eyes He shall roll back, and lo, the sea Of Silence shall not cover me. He shall make soft my final bed, Stand, like a servant, at my head; And, thrilled with all that Death may give, I shall lie down to rest--and live... And I shall know within the earth A softer but a deeper mirth. The wind shall never troll a song But I shall hear it borne along, And echoed long before he passes By all the little unborn grasses. I shall be clasped by roots and rains, Feeding and fed by living grains; There shall not be a single flower Above my head but bears my power, And every butterfly or bee That tastes the flower shall drink of me. Ah, we shall share a lip to lip Carousal and companionship! The storm, like some great blustering lout, Shall play his games with me and shout His joy to all the country-side. Autumn, sun-tanned and April-eyed, Shall scamper by and send his hosts Of leaves, like brown and merry ghosts, To frolic over me; and stones Shall feel the dancing in their bones. And red-cheeked Winter too shall be A jovial bed-fellow for me, Setting the startled hours ringing With boisterous tales and lusty singing. And, like a mother that has smiled For years on every tired child, Summer shall hold me in her lap... And when the root stirs and the sap Climbs anxiously beyond the boughs, And all the friendly worms carouse, Then, oh, how proudly, we shall sing Bravuras for the feet of Spring! And I shall lie forever there Like some great king, and watch the fair Young Spring dance on for me, and know That love and rosy valleys glow Where'er her blithe feet touch the earth. And headlong joy and reckless mirth Seeing her footsteps shall pursue. Oh, I shall watch her smile and strew Laughter and life with either hand; And every quiver of the land, Shall pierce me, while a joyful wave Beats in upon my radiant grave. Aye, like a king in deathless state I shall be throned, and contemplate The dying of the years, the vast Vague panorama of the past, The march of centuries, the surge Of ages .... but the deathless urge Shall stir me always, and my will Shall laugh to keep me living still; Thrilling with every call and cry-- Too much in love with life to die. Content to touch the earth, to hear The whisper of each waiting year, To help the stars go proudly by, To speed the timid grass; and lie, Sharing, with every movement's breath, The rich eternity of Death. THANKS Thank God for this bright frailty of Life, The lyric briefness of its reckless Spring; Thank God for all the swift adventuring, The bold uncertainty, the rousing strife. Thank God the world is set to such a tune, That life is such a proud and crashing wave; That none, but lifeless things, shall be Time's slave, Like the long-dead but never tiring moon; That godlike passion strangely leaps and runs; That youth cannot grow old, nor beauty stale; That even Death is fragile and must fail Before the wind of joy that speeds the suns. GOD'S YOUTH I often wish that I had been alive Ere God grew old, before His eyes were tired Of the eternal circlings of the sun; Of the perpetual Springs; the weary years Forever marching on an unknown quest; The yawning seasons pacing to and fro, Like stolid sentinels to guard the earth. I wish that I had been alive when He Was still delighted with each casual thing His mind could fashion, when His soul first thrilled With childlike pleasure at the blooming sun; When the first dawn met His enraptured eyes, And the first prayers of men stirred in His heart. With what a glow of pride He heard the stars Rush by Him singing as they bravely leaped Into the unexplored and endless skies, Bearing His beauty, like a battle-cry. Or watched the light, obedient to His will, Spring out of nothingness to answer Him, Hurling strange suns and planets in its joy Of fiery freedom from the lifeless dark. But more than all the splendid heavens He made, The elements new-tamed, the harnessed worlds; In spite of these, it must have pleased Him most To feel Himself branch out, let go, dare all, Give utterance to His vaguely-formed desires, And loose a flood of fancies, wild and frank. Oh those were noble times; those gay attempts, Those vast and droll experiments that were made When God was young and blithe and whimsical. When, from the infinite humor of His heart, He made the elk with such extravagant horns, The grotesque monkey-folk, the angel-fish, That make the ocean's depths a visual heaven; The animals like plants, the plants like beasts; The loud, inane hyena, and the great Impossible giraffe, whose silly head Threatens the stars, his feet embracing earth. The paradox of the peacock, whose bright form Is like a brilliant trumpet, and his voice A strident squawk, a cackle and a joke. The ostrich, like a snake tied to a bird, All out of sense and drawing, wilder far Than all the mad, fantastic thoughts of men. The hump-backed camel, like a lump of clay, Thumbed at for hours, and then thrown aside. The elephant, with splendid, useless tooth, And nose and arm and fingers all in one. The hippopotamus, absurd and bland-- Oh, how God must have laughed when first He saw These great jests breathe and love and walk about; And how the heavens must have echoed him... For greater than His beauty or His wrath Was God's vast mirth before His back was bent With Time and all the troubling universe, Ere He grew dull and weary with creating... Oh, to have been alive and heard that laugh Thrilling the stars, convulsing all the earth, While meteors flashed from out His sparkling eyes, And even the eternal, placid Night Forgot to lift reproving fingers, smiled And joined, indulgent, in the merriment... And, how they sang, and how the hours flew When God was young and blithe and whimsical. IN THE BERKSHIRE HILLS How can the village dead remain so still... Surely they tingle with the winey air, When the skies riot and the sunsets flare And all the world becomes a flaming hill. Surely the driest dust must turn and thrill When these wild breezes sweep out all despair-- And lakes are bluest, pools are starriest where The streaming heavens overflow and spill. Oh, were it I that lay like any clod, Though buried under rock and gnarled tree, I would arise, and, through the clinging sod, Go struggling upward, passionate and proud; Laugh, with the winds and mountains watching me, And dance in triumph on my crumbling shroud. VOICES All day with anxious heart and wondering ear I listened to the city; heard the ground Echo with human thunder, and the sound Go reeling down the streets and disappear. The headlong hours, in their wild career, Shouted and sang until the world was drowned With babel-voices, each one more profound... All day it surged--but nothing could I hear. That night the country never seemed so still; The trees and grasses spoke without a word To stars that brushed them with their silver wings. Together with the moon I climbed the hill, And, in the very heart of Silence, heard The speech and music of immortal things. REVELATION September--and an afternoon Heavy with languid thoughts and long; The air breathes faintly, half in swoon, Like silence trembling after Song. The mighty calmness seems to draw My spirit through a painless birth-- And now, with eyes that never saw, I see the poetry of earth. That group of old maple-trees brooding in peace by the river, Happy with sunlight, and an oriole singing among them-- Lo, what a marvel (what rapture for Him who first sung them) That here, in less space than a carpenter's workshop, the Giver Has fashioned a casual wonder Greater than dawn or the thunder. Here in a dozen of feet He has blended Music and motion and color and form, Each in itself a creation so splendid That, were it the world's one beauty, 'twould warm And kindle all Life till it ended. Birds and old maple-trees-- Only to think of these, Only to dream of them here for an hour Is to know all the secrets of earth. For here is the world that God sang into flower And bloom at its birth-- Here is its magical uplift and power; Its music and mirth. Here the sun scarcely wakes; Like a monarch it takes Rest on the lordliest branches alone. Till a glad tremor shakes Every leaf that is blown-- While a zephyr advancing, Breathes gently and breaks The light into dancing Figures, with glancing Rhythms and rhymes of their own. Yes, here in this spot, in this edge of an acre All of the world is, the heart and the whole of it-- Here is a universe; daily the Maker Shows here the sweet and extravagant soul of it. For the arms of the maple have held in their cover The earth and the sky and the stars, every one-- Not the tenderest twig but has known, like a lover The silence, the night and the sun. Not the airiest bird but has sung, all unknowing, The joy of each minstrel that carols unheard. And Summer, green fields and a world of things growing, Are brought to this spot by the breath of a bird. And there's never a wind but brings road-sides and ranches, Forests and tales of the far-off and free-- And the rush of the breeze as it sings in the branches Echoes and answers the rush of the sea... A group of old maple-trees brooding in peace by the river-- That--and a bird, nothing else... But above and around it, The spell of the infinite beauty, half-hidden forever, Lies, like a secret of God's--and here I have found it. The hymn of the cosmic--the anthem that has for its choir Stars, rivers and flowers--still rises and sweeps me along; While the cry of the oriole melts in a sunset of fire And the heavens, a jubilant chorus, are flushed with the fires of Song! AFFIRMATION As long as vigorous discontent Goads us from torpid ease, or worse, I thank the power that sent Struggle, the savior of the universe. As long as things are torn and hurled In this implacable unrest, I shall embrace the world With joyful fierceness and undying zest. I shall grow strong with every hurt; The scorn, the anger will achieve Only a glad, alert Desire to question boldly--and believe. My eager faith shall keep me set Against despair or careless hate, Knowing this smoke and sweat Is forging something violent--and great! DOWN-HILL ON A BICYCLE The rolling earth stops As I climb to the summit, Then like a plummet It suddenly drops... Down, down I go-- Past rippling acres; Hillsides like breakers Over me flow. Wildly alive I hail the green shimmer, Fresh as a swimmer After the dive. Like banners unfurled The skies dip and flourish-- The keen breezes nourish, While the bright world Is a ribbon unrolled With a border of grasses; And tansies are masses And splotches of gold. Still I whirl on-- Startled, a sparrow Darts from the yarrow, Flash--and is gone... Faster the gleams Die as they dazzle-- And roadsides of basil Turn to pink streams. Sharp as a knife Is each perfume and color. To feel nothing duller-- God, that were Life! MIDNIGHT--BY THE OPEN WINDOW How rapt the sleeping stillness of the night-- Incomparably close and vast... One might Hear the tense silence in the little street Reaching to heaven, where it swells and breaks Into moon-music and star-song that makes My senses bend and sway, as waving wheat Trembles before the wind's majestic feet; Trembles with happy fear and numb delight. How sharp the silence... like a sword to smite Brittle security and iron aches; A soundless and imperative blast that wakes Undreamed of powers, terrible and sweet... While God comes down, roused to the jubilant fight; Roused from the sleepy comfort of His seat. THE WINE OF NIGHT Come, drink the mystic wine of Night, Brimming with silence and the stars, While earth, bathed in this holy light, Is seen without its scars. Drink in the daring and the dews, The calm winds and the restless gleam-- This is the draught that Beauty brews; Drink--it is the Dream. Drink, oh my soul, and do not yield-- These solitudes, this wild-rose air, Shall strengthen thee, shall be thy shield, Against a world's despair. Oh, quaff this stirrup-cup of stars, Trembling with hope and high desire-- Then back into the hopeless wars With faith and fire! INTERLUDES _To My Wife_ _INVOCATION_ _Listen, my lute, I would turn from your militant measures. Well have you answered the touch of intransigent fingers; Wildly your strings have vibrated--but have you forgotten How to make love-songs?_ _Lute, you are hot to the hand; you are tense and exultant. Cease crying out--let me rest from the din and the battle. Life is not only a summoning shout and a struggle, A blow and a silence._ _Is there not vigorous peace after vigorous onslaught? Beauty's a challenge as fierce and as stirring as conflict... Look--how she runs through the tremulous twilight to meet me-- Do you remember?_ _See--it is night and she turns to my arms of a sudden; Soft as a mother and wild with the fires of April-- Bashful and bold, with her passionate hair all about her; Lovely and lavish._ _Lute, it was she who awoke and impelled us to singing-- Ah, those first lyrics, impulsive and feeble and earnest-- She who aroused us and soothed us--our passion, our pillow-- Dare you forget her!_ _Only remember 'tis she keeps me rested and restless; Only remember my heart, like a fate in strong breezes. Leaps at the thought of her voice and her slow, searching kisses, Stabbing and healing._ "FEUERZAUBER" I never knew the earth had so much gold-- The fields run over with it, and this hill Hoary and old, Is young with buoyant blooms that flame and thrill. Such golden fires, such yellows--lo, how good This spendthrift world, and what a lavish God-- This fringe of wood, Blazing with buttercup and goldenrod. You too, beloved, are changed. Again I see Your face grow mystical, as on that night You turned to me, And all the trembling world--and you--were white. Aye, you are touched; your singing lips grow dumb; The fields absorb you, color you entire... And you become A goddess standing in a world of fire! SUNDAY NIGHT Tossing, throughout this tense and nervous night Sleepless I drowse. My soul, for lack of rest, Sinks like a bird, that after flight on flight Misses the shelter of its well-loved nest. So would I gain your side and seek, my love, The comfortable heaven of your breast. Once more to lie beside the window seat, And see, far off, the ribboned river-lights, The yellow gas-lamps in the dusky street-- And pressing close, from proud and alien heights, The noble skies and the inviolate stars Surround and bless us these autumnal nights. No words--the silence and your breathless name Are all that's in the world; and faint and fair The distant church-bells solemnly proclaim To all the meek and sabbath-scented air... I take you in my arms ... and I awake Groping, with restless anger, for a prayer. AT KENNEBUNKPORT We sat together at the ocean's edge, The night was mystical and warm. From every rambling roadside hedge Wild roses followed us with a swarm Of scents; the pines and every odorous tree Triumphed and rose above the languid sea. The stars were dim-- The world was hushed, as though before a shrine... We sat together at the ocean's rim, Your hand in mine. Then came the moon-- A calm, benignant moon, Like some indulgent mother that has smiled On every wayward child. The breathing stillness, like a wordless croon, Made the soft heart of heaven doubly mild; And the salt air mingled with the air of June... The vast and intimate Silence--and your lips... Faintly we saw the lanterns of three ships, Three swaying sparks of sudden red and green... We spoke no word; we heard unseen A night-bird wearily flapping. And nothing murmured in that world of wonder-- Only the hushing waters' gentle lapping. A distant trembling, as of ghostly thunder; Then, poignantly and plain, The lonely whistle of a weary train... And once again the Silence--and your lips. Oh let me never cease to thank you for that night; That night that eased and fortified my heart. When radiant peace, dearer than all delight, Bathed every old and feverish smart, Wiped out all memories of the uncleanly fight... Cradled in that great beauty, and your arms, The cries and mad alarms Were lulled and all the bitter banners furled. The tumult vanished, and the thought thereof... In you I knew the sweet contentment of the world, The balm of silence and the strength of love. IN A STRANGE CITY Dusk--and a hunger for your face That grows, with brooding twilight, deeper, While in this hushed and cheerless place, The world lies, like a careless sleeper. Oh for a brave, red wave of sound To send Life flowing somehow through me; Oh for the blatant, human round To end these hours lone and gloomy. At last--the friendly summer night, And children's voices calling after. Long avenues sing out with light; Murmurs arise and bursts of laughter. I hear the lisp of happy feet-- Life goes by like a rushing river-- A boy comes whistling up the street... And I am lonelier than ever. FOLK-SONG Back she came through the trembling dusk; And her mother spoke and said: "What is it makes you late to-day, And why do you smile and sing as gay As though you just were wed?" "_Oh mother, my hen that never had chicks Has hatched out six!_" Back she came through the flaming dusk; And her mother spoke and said: "What gives your eyes that dancing light, What makes your lips so strangely bright, And why are your cheeks so red?" "_Oh mother, the berries I ate in the lane Have left a stain._" Back she came through the faltering dusk; And her mother spoke and said: "You are weeping; your footstep is heavy with care-- What makes you totter and cling to the stair, And why do you hang your head?" "_Oh mother--oh mother--you never can know-- I loved him so!_" IN THE STREETS Boy, my boy, it is lonely in the city, Days that have no pity and the nights without a tear Follow all too slowly and I can no more dissemble; I am frightened and I tremble--and I would that you were here. Oh boy--God keep you. Boy, my boy, I had sworn to weep no longer. Time I thought was stronger than the evenings long gone by; The ardent looks, the eager hands, the whispers hot and hurried-- But they all come back unburied and not one of them will die. Oh boy--God save you. Boy, my boy, you were bold with youth and power; Your love was like a flower that you wore upon your sleeve. And wherever you may go there'll be a girl with eyes that glisten; A girl to watch and listen, and a girl for you to leave. Oh boy--God help her! ENVY The willow and the river Ripple with silver speech, And one refrain forever They murmur each to each: "Brook with the silver gravel, Would that your lot were mine; To wander free, to travel Where greener valleys shine-- Strange ventures, fresh revealings, And, at the end--the sea! Brook, with your turns and wheelings, How rich your life must be." "Tree with the golden rustling, Would that I were so blessed, To cease this stumbling, jostling, This feverish unrest. I join the ocean's riot; You stand song-filled--and free! Tree, with your peace and quiet, How rich your life must be." _The willow and the river Ripple with silver speech, And one refrain forever They murmur each to each._ A BIRTHDAY Again I come With my handful of Song-- With my trumpery gift tricked out and made showy with rhyme. It is Spring, and the time When your thoughts are long; When the blossoming world in its confident prime Whispers and wakens imperative dreams; When you color and start With the airiest schemes And the laughter of children is stirring your heart... With all of these voices that rise to restore you To gladness again, With your heart full of things that sing and adore you, I come with my strain-- I come with my tinkling that patters like rain On a rickety pane; With a jingle of words and old tunes which have long Done duty in song; Spreading my verse, like a showman, before you... And you turn to the world, as you turn to the bosom that bore you. In all this singing at your heart, In all this ringing through the day, In the bravado of the May I have no part.... For I am not one with the conquering year That wakes without fear The lyrical souls of the feathery throng, That flames in the heavens when evenings are long; That surges with power and urges with cheer The boldness of love, the laugh of the strong, And the confident song... I am no longer the masterful lover Storming my way to the shrine of your heart; Reckless with youth and the zest to discover All that the world sets apart. I am no longer Wiser and stronger; No longer I shout in the face of the world; No longer my challenge is sounded and hurled With such fury that even the heavens must hear it. No longer I mount on a passionate flood-- Something has changed my arrogant spirit, Something has left my braggart blood. Something has left me--something has entered in-- Something I knew not, something beyond my desire. Deeper and gentler I hold you; all that has been Seems like a spark that is lost in a forest of fire. Minor my song is, for still the old memories burn-- Only in you and your thought do I find my release... I have done with the blustering airs, and I turn From the clamorous strife to the greater heroics of peace. _Take me again Out of the cries and alarms All of the tumult is vain... Here in your arms._ Hold me again-- Oft have we wandered apart; Now it is all made plain... Here in your heart. Heal me again-- Cleanse me with tears that remove Pain and the ruins of pain... Here in your love. Minor my song was--abashed I must lower my voice; Something has touched me with nobler and holier fire; Something that thrills, as when trumpets and children rejoice; Something I knew not, something beyond my desire... Minor no longer--the sighing and droning depart; In a chorus of triumph the jubilant spirits increase-- Shelter and spur me forever in the merciful strength of your heart, You who have soothed me with passion and roused me with passionate peace. LEAVING THE HARBOR At last the great, red sun sank low, An evil, blood-shot eye, And cooling airs sprang up to blow The sea that challenged, glow for glow, The angry face of the sky. Still burned the streets we had left behind, Where, tortured and broken down, The millions scarcely hoped to find A moment's escape from the maddening grind In the terrible furnace of town. And, blotting out cities, the twilight fell With a single star at seven... The sea grew wider beneath the spell And the moon, like a broken silver shell, Lay on the shore of heaven. THE SHELL TO THE PEARL Grow not so fast, glow not so warm; Thy hidden fires burn too wild-- Too perfect is thy rounded form; Cling close, my child. Be yet my babe, rest quiet when The great sea-urges beat and call; Too soon wilt thou be ripe for men, The world and all. Thy shining skin, thy silken sheath, These will undo thee all too soon; And men will fight for thee beneath Some paler moon... Aye, thou my own, my undefiled, Shalt make the lewd world dream and start, When they have seized and torn thee, child, Out of my heart. With velvets shall thy bed be laid; A royal captive thou shalt be-- And oh, what prices will be paid To ransom thee. Thy path shall be a track of gold, Of lust, of death and countless crimes; Bought by a sensual world--and sold A thousand times... And each shall lose thee at the last, Hating, yet still desiring thee... While I lie, where I have been cast, Back in the sea. So wait--and, lest the world transform Thy soul and make thee wanton-wild, _Grow not so fast, glow not so warm, Cling close, my child._ THE YOUNG MYSTIC We sat together close and warm, My little tired boy and I-- Watching across the evening sky The coming of the storm. No rumblings rose, no thunders crashed, The west-wind scarcely sang aloud; But from a huge and solid cloud The summer lightnings flashed. And then he whispered "Father, watch; I think God's going to light His moon--" "And when, my boy" ... "Oh, very soon-- I saw Him strike a match!" HEALED The winds like a pack of hounds Snap at my dragging heels With sudden leapings and playful bounds They urge me out to the greener grounds Where the butterfly sinks and the swallow reels Giddy with Spring, with its smells and sounds-- And I go... For of late I have fretted and sulked, and clung to my books and the house; Lethargic with winter fancies and dulled with a torpid mood-- But now I am called by the grasses; the rumor of blossoming boughs; The hints of a thousand singers and the ancient thrill of the wood. For the streets run over with sunlight and spill A glory on bricks and the dustiest sill; And Life, like a great drum, pulses and pounds-- I follow the world and I follow my will, And I go to see what the park reveals When the winds, like a pack of buoyant hounds, Snap at my dragging heels... Once with the green again How I am changed-- Lo, I have seen again Friends long estranged. Once more the lyrical Rose-bush and river; Once more the miracle, Greater than ever! Where is there dulness now-- Rich with new urges Life in its fullness now Surges and purges All that is brash in me-- Sunlight and Song These things will fashion me Splendid and strong. Splendid and strong I shall grow once again; Joyful and clean as the mind of a child, As tears after pain, Or hearts reconciled, As woods washed with rain, As love in the wild, Or that bird to whom all things but singing is vain. "Bird, there were songs in your heart just as rapturous As these that you bring-- Why when we longed for your magic to capture us Did you not sing? Now with the world making music we heed you not. Coward, for all your fine challenge, we need you not-- We too are brave with the Spring!" So I sang--but a something was missing; the song and the sunlight were stale, Though a squirrel had sat on my shoulder and sparrows had fed from my hand; Though I heard the white laughter of ripples and the breezes' faint answering hail, And somewhere a bird's voice I knew not--yet hearing could half understand... And lo, at my doorstep I saw it; it shouted to me as I came-- It laughed in its simple revealment, a miracle common and wild; Plainly I heard and beheld it, bright as a forest of flame-- And its face was the face of a mother, and its voice was the voice of a child. THE STIRRUP-CUP Your eyes--and a thousand stars Leap from the night to aid me; I scale the impossible bars, I laugh at a world that dismayed me. Your voice--and the thundering skies Tremble and cease to appall me-- Coward no longer, I rise Spurred for what battles may call me. Your arms--and my purpose grows strong; Your lips--and high passions complete me... For your love, it is armor and Song-- And where is the thing to defeat me! SPRING ON BROADWAY Make way for Spring-- Spring that's a stranger in the city, Spring that's a truant in the town. Make way for Spring, for she has no pity And she will tear your barriers down-- Make way for Spring! See from her hidden valleys, With mirth that never palls, She comes with songs and sallies, With bells and magic calls, And dances down your alleys, And whispers through your walls. You who never once have missed her In your town of pomp and pride Now in vain you will resist her-- You will feel her at your side; Even in the smallest street, Even in the densest throng, She will follow at your feet, She will walk with you along. She will stop you as you start Here and there, and growing bolder, She will touch you on the shoulder, She will clutch you at the heart... Merchant, you who drink your mead From a golden cup, Shut your ears, and do not heed; Look not up. Beware--for she is light as air, And her charm will work confusion; Spring is but an old delusion And a snare.... Merchant, you who drink your mead While the thirsty die, Shut your eyes, and do not heed-- Pass her by. Maiden with the nun-like eyes Do not pause to greet her; Spring is far too wild and wise-- Do not meet her. Do not listen while she tells Her persuasive lures and spells; Do not learn her secrets, lest She should plant them in your breast; Whisper things to shame and shock you, Make your heart beat fast--and mock you; Send you dreams that rob your rest... Maiden with the nun-like eyes Spring is far too wild and wise. And you, my friend, with hasty stride Think you to escape her; Ah, like fire touching paper, She will burn into your side. She will rouse you once again; She will sway you, till you follow Like the smallest singing swallow In her train. Put irons on your feet, my friend, And chain your soul with golden weights, Lest she should move you in the end And lead you past the city gates; And make you frolic with the wind; And play a thousand godlike parts; And sing--until within you starts A pity for the senseless blind, The deaf, the dumb and all their kind Whose eager, aimless footsteps wind Forever to the frantic marts, Through every mad and breathless street.., My friend, put irons on your feet. So--and that is right, my friend; Do not yield. Send her on her way, and end All her follies; let her spend Her reckless days and nights concealed In wood and field...... The paths beyond the town are clear; These skies are wan-- Bid her begone. What is she doing here? What is she doing here--and why? The city is no place for Spring. What can she have; what can she bring That you would care to buy. Her songs? Alas, you do not sing. Her smiles? You have no time to try. Her wings? You do not care to fly-- Spring has not fashioned anything To tempt your jaded eye. The city is no place for her-- It is too violent and shrill; Too full of graver things--but still Beneath the throbbing surge and stir, Her spirit lives and moves, until Even the dullest feel the spur Of an awakened will. Make way then--Life, rejoicing, Calls, with a lyric rout, Till in this mighty voicing The very stones sing out; Till nowhere is a single Sleeping or silent thing, And worlds that meet and mingle Fairly tingle with the Spring. Make way for Her-- For the fervor of Life, For the passions that stir, For the courage of Strife; For the struggles that bring A more vivid day-- Make way for Spring; Make way! IN A CAB Rain--and the lights of the city, Blurred by the mist on the pane. A thing without passion or pity-- This is the rain. It beats on the roof with derision, It howls at the doors of the cab-- Phantoms go by in a vision, Distorted and drab. Torpor and dreariness greet me; All of the things I abhor Rise to confront and defeat me, As I ride to your door... At last you have come; you have banished The gloom of each rain-haunted street-- The tawdry surroundings have vanished; The evening is sweet. Now the whole city is dreamlike; The rain plays the lightest of tunes; The lamps through the mist make it seem like A city of moons. No longer my fancies run riot; I hold the most magic of charms-- You smile at me, warm and unquiet, Here in my arms. I do not wonder or witness Whether it rains or is fair; I only can think of your sweetness, And the scent of your hair. I am deaf to the clatter and drumming, And life is a thing to ignore... Alas, my beloved, we are coming Once more to your door!... You have gone; it is listless and lonely; The evening is empty again; The world is a blank--there is only The desolate rain. SUMMER NIGHT--BROADWAY Night is the city's disease. The streets and the people one sees Glow with a light that is strangely inhuman; A fever that never grows cold. Heaven completes the disgrace; For now, with her star-pitted face, Night has the leer of a dissolute woman, Cynical, moon-scarred and old. And I think of the country roads; Of the quiet, sleeping abodes, Where every tree is a silent brother And the hearth is a thing to cling to. And I sicken and long for it now-- To feel clean winds on my brow, Where Night bends low, like an all-wise mother Looking for children to sing to. HAUNTED Between the moss and stone The lonely lilies rise; Wasted and overgrown The tangled garden lies. Weeds climb about the stoop And clutch the crumbling walls; The drowsy grasses droop-- The night wind falls. The place is like a wood; No sign is there to tell Where rose and iris stood That once she loved so well. Where phlox and asters grew, A leafless thornbush stands, And shrubs that never knew Her tender hands... Over the broken fence The moonbeams trail their shrouds; Their tattered cerements Cling to the gauzy clouds, In ribbons frayed and thin-- And startled by the light, Silence shrinks deeper in The depths of night. Useless lie spades and rakes; Rust's on the garden-tools. Yet, where the moonlight makes Nebulous silver pools, A ghostly shape is cast-- Something unseen has stirred. Was it a breeze that passed? Was it a bird? Dead roses lift their heads Out of a grassy tomb; From ruined pansy-beds A thousand pansies bloom. The gate is opened wide-- The garden that has been, Now blossoms like a bride... _Who entered in?_ ISADORA DUNCAN DANCING "IPHIGENIA IN AULIS" 1 Fling the stones and let them all Lie; Take a breath, and toss the ball High-- And before it strikes the floor Of the hoar and aged shore, Sweep them up, though there should be Even more than two or three. Add a pebble, then once more Fling the stones and let them all Lie; Take a breath, and toss the ball High.... 2 Rises now the sound of ancient chants And the circling figure moves more slowly. Thus the stately gods themselves must dance While the world grows rapturous and holy. Thus the gods might weave a great Romance Singing to the sighs of flute and psalter; Till the last of all the many chants, And the priestess sinks before the altar. 3 Cease, oh cease the murmured singing; Hush the numbers brave or blithe, For she enters gravely swinging, Lowering and lithe-- Dark and vengeful as the ringing Scythe meets scythe. While the flame is fiercely sweeping All her virgin airs depart; She is, without smiles and weeping Or a maiden's art, Stern and savage as the leaping Heart meets heart! 4 Now the tune grows frantic, Now the torches flare-- Wild and corybantic Echoes fill the air. With a sudden sally All the voices shout; And the bacchic rally Turns into a rout. Here is life that surges Through each burning vein; Here is joy that purges Every creeping pain. Even sober Sadness Casts aside her pall, Till with buoyant madness She must swoon and fall... CHOPIN Faint preludings on a flute And she swims before us; Shadows follow in pursuit, Like a phantom chorus. Sense and sound are intertwined Through her necromancy, Till our dreaming souls are blind To all things but fancy. Haunted woods and perfumed nights, Swift and soft desires, Roses, violet-colored lights, And the sound of lyres, Vague chromatics on a flute-- All are subtly blended, Till the instrument grows mute And the dance is ended. SONGS AND THE POET (_For Sara Teasdale_) Sing of the rose or of the mire; sing strife Or rising moons; the silence or the throng... Poet, it matters not, if Life Is in the song. If Life rekindles it, and if the rhymes Bear Beauty as their eloquent refrain, Though it were sung a thousand times, Sing it again! Thrill us with song--let others preach or rage; Make us so thirst for Beauty that we cease These struggles, and this strident age Grows sweet with peace. THE HERETIC I. BLASPHEMY I do not envy God-- There is no thing in all the skies or under To startle and awaken Him to wonder; No marvel can appear To stir His placid soul with terrible thunder-- He was not born with awe nor blessed with fear. I do not envy God-- He is not burned with Spring and April madness; The rush of Life--its rash, impetuous gladness He cannot hope to know. He cannot feel the fever and the sadness The leaping fire, the insupportable glow. I do not envy God-- Forever He must watch the planets crawling To flaming goals where sun and star are falling; He cannot wander free. For He must face, through centuries appalling, A vast and infinite monotony. I do not envy God-- He cannot die, He dare not even slumber. Though He be God and free from care and cumber, I would not share His place; For He must live when years have lost their number And Time sinks crumbling into shattered Space. I do not envy God-- Nay more, I pity Him His lonely heaven; I pity Him each lonely morn and even, His splendid lonely throne: For He must sit and wait till all is riven Alone--through all eternity--alone. II. IRONY Why are the things that have no death The ones with neither sight nor breath. Eternity is thrust upon A bit of earth, a senseless stone. A grain of dust, a casual clod Receives the greatest gift of God. A pebble in the roadway lies-- It never dies. The grass our fathers cut away Is growing on their graves to-day; The tiniest brooks that scarcely flow Eternally will come and go. There is no kind of death to kill The sands that lie so meek and still... But Man is great and strong and wise-- And so he dies. III. MOCKERY God, I return to you on April days When along country-roads you walk with me; And my faith blossoms like the earliest tree That shames the bleak world with its yellow sprays. My faith revives when, through a rosy haze, The clover-sprinkled hills smile quietly; Young winds uplift a bird's clean ecstacy... For this, oh God, my joyousness and praise. But now--the crowded streets and choking airs, The huddled thousands bruised and tossed about-- These, or the over-brilliant thoroughfares, The too-loud laughter and the empty shout; The mirth-mad city, tragic with its cares... For this, oh God, my silence--and my doubt. IV. HUMILITY Oh God, if I have ever been So filled with ignorance and sin That I have dared to use Thy name In blasphemy, in jest, in shame; If ever I have dared to flout Thy works, and mock Thy deeds with doubt, Thou must forgive me as Thou art divine For, God, the fault was Thine as well as mine. Oh, I have used Thee, time on time, To fill a phrase, to round a rhyme; But was this wrong? Nay, in Thy heart Thou knowest the noble theme Thou art... Was it my fault that as I sung The daring speech was on my tongue? Nay; if my singing, God, gave Thee offense, Thou wouldst have robbed me of the lyric sense. But dignity hath made Thee dumb, And so Thou biddest me to come And be a sonant part of Thee; To sing Thy praise in blasphemy, To be the life within the clod That points the paradox of God. To chant, beneath a loud and lyric grief, A faith that flaunts its very disbelief. FIFTH AVENUE--SPRING AFTERNOON The world's running over with color, With whispers, strange fervors and April-- There's a smell in the air as if meadows Were under our feet. Spring smiles at the commonest waysides; But she pours out her heart to the city, As one woman might to another Who meet after years... Restless with color and perfume, The streets are a riot of blossoms. What garden could boast of such flowers-- Not Eden itself. Primroses, pinks and gardenias, Shame the gray town and its squalor-- Windows are flaming with jonquils; Fires of gold! Out of a florist's some pansies Peer at the crowd, like the faces Of solemnly mischievous children Going to bed... And women--Spring's favorite children-- Frail and phantastically fashioned, Pass like a race of immortals, Too radiant for earth. The pale and the drab are transfigured, They sing themselves into the sunshine-- Every girl is a lyric, An urge and a lure. And, like a challenge of trumpets, The Spring and its impulse goes through me-- Breezes and flowers and people Sing in my blood... Breezes and flowers and people-- And under it all, oh beloved, Out of the song and the sunshine, Rises your face! TRIBUTE Never will you let me Tire of leaping passion; Never can I grow weary Of undesired joys. The delicate strength of your bosom; Your hands' incredible softness; The fluent curve of your body; The fierceness of your lips; Ceaselessly do they call me-- You and your eloquent beauty Are challenge and invitation Too ravishing to resist. Always the burning summons, The sweet, imperative madness, Rides over me, like a conqueror, Careless and confident... Even so goes Love, Trampling and invincible; With rapt and pitiless beauty, Rough-shod over the world! SONGS OF PROTEST _To James Oppenheim_ CHALLENGE _The quiet and courageous night, The keen vibration of the stars, Call me, from morbid peace, to fight The world's forlorn and desperate wars._ _The air throbs like a rolling drum-- The brave hills and the singing sea, Unrest and people's faces come Like battle-trumpets, rousing me._ _And while Life's lusty banner flies, I shall assail, with raging mirth, The scornful and untroubled skies, The cold complacency of earth._ CALIBAN IN THE COAL MINES God, we don't like to complain We know that the mine is no lark-- But--there's the pools from the rain; But--there's the cold and the dark. God, You don't know what it is-- You, in Your well-lighted sky, Watching the meteors whizz; Warm, with the sun always by. God, if You had but the moon Stuck in Your cap for a lamp, Even You'd tire of it soon, Down in the dark and the damp. Nothing but blackness above, And nothing that moves but the cars-- God, if You wish for our love, Fling us a handful of stars! ANY CITY Into the staring street She goes on her nightly round, With weary and tireless feet Over the wretched ground. A thing that man never spurns, A thing that all men despise; Into her soul there burns The street with its pitiless eyes. She needs no charm or wile, She carries no beauty or power, But a tawdry and casual smile For a tawdry and casual hour. The street with its pitiless eyes Follows wherever she lurks, But she is hardened and wise-- She rattles her bracelets and smirks... She goes with her sordid array, Luring, without a lure; She is man's hunger and prey-- His lust and its hideous cure. All that she knows are the lies, The evil, the squalor, the scars; The street with its pitiless eyes, The night with its pitiless stars. LANDSCAPES (_For Clement R. Wood_) The rain was over, and the brilliant air Made every little blade of grass appear Vivid and startling--everything was there With sharpened outlines, eloquently clear, As though one saw it in a crystal sphere. The rusty sumac with its struggling spires; The golden-rod with all its million fires; (A million torches swinging in the wind) A single poplar, marvellously thinned, Half like a naked boy, half like a sword; Clouds, like the haughty banners of the Lord; A group of pansies with their shrewish faces, Little old ladies cackling over laces; The quaint, unhurried road that curved so well; The prim petunias with their rich, rank smell; The lettuce-birds, the creepers in the field-- How bountifully were they all revealed! How arrogantly each one seemed to thrive-- So frank and strong, so radiantly alive! And over all the morning-minded earth There seemed to spread a sharp and kindling mirth, Piercing the stubborn stones until I saw The toad face heaven without shame or awe, The ant confront the stars, and every weed Grow proud as though it bore a royal seed; While all the things that die and decompose Sent forth their bloom as richly as the rose... Oh, what a liberal power that made them thrive And keep the very dirt that died, alive. And now I saw the slender willow-tree No longer calm or drooping listlessly, Letting its languid branches sway and fall As though it danced in some sad ritual; But rather like a young, athletic girl, Fearless and gay, her hair all out of curl, And flying in the wind--her head thrown back, Her arms flung up, her garments flowing slack, And all her rushing spirits running over... What made a sober tree seem such a rover-- Or made the staid and stalwart apple-trees, That stood for years knee-deep in velvet peace, Turn all their fruit to little worlds of flame, And burn the trembling orchard there below. What lit the heart of every golden-glow-- Oh, why was nothing weary, dull or tame?... Beauty it was, and keen, compassionate mirth That drives the vast and energetic earth. And, with abrupt and visionary eyes, I saw the huddled tenements arise. Here where the merry clover danced and shone Sprang agonies of iron and of stone; There, where green Silence laughed or stood enthralled, Cheap music blared and evil alleys sprawled. The roaring avenues, the shrieking mills; Brothels and prisons on those kindly hills-- The menace of these things swept over me; A threatening, unconquerable sea... A stirring landscape and a generous earth! Freshening courage and benevolent mirth-- And then the city, like a hideous sore... _Good God, and what is all this beauty for?_ TWO FUNERALS I. Upon a field of shrieking red A mighty general stormed and fell. They raised him from the common dead And all the people mourned him well. "Swiftly," they cried, "let honors come, And Glory with her deathless bays; For him let every muffled drum And grieving bugle thrill with praise. Has he not made the whole world fear The very lifting of his sword-- Has he not slain his thousands here To glorify the Law and Lord! Then make his bed of sacred sod; To greater deeds no man can win"... _And each amused and ancient god Began to grin._ II. Facing a cold and sneering sky, Cold as the sneering hearts of men, A man began to prophesy, To speak of love and faith again. Boldly he spoke, and bravely dared The savage jest, the kindlier stone; The armies mocked at him; he fared To battle gaily--and alone. Alone he fought; alone, to move A world whose wars would never cease-- And all his blows were struck for love, And all his fighting was for peace... They tortured him with thorns and rods, They hanged him on a frowning hill-- _And all the old and heartless gods Are laughing still._ SUNDAY It was Sunday-- Eleven in the morning; people were at church-- Prayers were in the making; God was near at hand-- Down the cramped and narrow streets of quiet Lawrence Came the tramp of workers marching in their hundreds; Marching in the morning, marching to the grave-yard, Where, no longer fiery, underneath the grasses, Callous and uncaring, lay their friend and sister. In their hands they carried wreaths and drooping flowers, Overhead their banners dipped and soared like eagles-- Aye, but eagles bleeding, stained with their own heart's-blood-- Red, but not for glory--red, with wounds and travail, Red, the buoyant symbol of the blood of all the world... So they bore their banners, singing toward the grave-yard, So they marched and chanted, mingling tears and tributes, So, with flowers, the dying went to deck the dead. Within the churches people heard The sound, and much concern was theirs-- God might not hear the Sacred Word-- God might not hear their prayers! _Should such things be allowed these slaves-- To vex the Sabbath peace with Song, To come with chants, like marching waves, That proudly swept along..._ _Suppose God turned to these--and heard! Suppose He listened unawares-- God might forget the Sacred Word, God might forget their prayers!_ And so (oh, tragic irony) The blue-clad Guardians of the Peace Were sent to sweep them back--to see The ribald song should cease; To scatter those who came and vexed God with their troubled cries and cares. Quiet--so God might hear the text; The sleek and unctuous prayers! Up the rapt and singing streets of little Lawrence, Came the stolid soldiers; and, behind the blue-coats, Grinning and invisible, bearing unseen torches, Rode red hordes of anger, sweeping all before them. Lust and Evil joined them--Terror rode among them; Fury fired its pistols; Madness stabbed and yelled... Through the wild and bleeding streets of shuddering Lawrence, Raged the heedless panic, hour-long and bitter. Passion tore and trampled; men once mild and peaceful, Fought with savage hatred in the name of Law and Order. And, below the outcry, like the sea beneath the breakers, Mingling with the anguish, rolled the solemn organ... Eleven in the morning--people were at church-- Prayers were in the making--God was near at hand-- It was Sunday! STRIKERS In the mud and scum of things, Underneath the whole world's blot, Something, they tell us, always sings-- _Why do we hear it not?_ In the heart of things unclean, Somewhere, in the furious fight, The face of God is plainly seen-- _What has destroyed our sight?_ Yet have we heard enough to feel, Yet have we seen enough to know Who bound us to the awful wheel, Whose hands have brought us low. And we shall cry out till the wind Roars in their ears the thing to come-- _Yea, though they made us deaf and blind, Nothing shall keep us dumb!_ IN THE SUBWAY Chaos is tamed and ordered as we ride; The rock is rent, the darkness flung aside And all the horrors of the deep defied. A coil of wires, a throb, a sudden spark-- And on a screaming meteor we embark That hurls us past the cold and breathless dark. The centuries disclose their secret graves-- Riding in splendor through a world of waves The ancient elements become our slaves. Uncanny fancies whisper to and fro; Terror and Night surround us here below, And through the house of Death we come and go... And here, oh wildest glimpse of all, I see The score of men and women facing me Reading their papers calmly, leisurely. BATTLE-CRIES Yes, Jim hez gone--ye didn't know? He's fightin' at the front. It's him as bears 'his country's hopes'. An' me as bears the brunt. Wen war bruk out Jim 'lowed he'd go-- He allus loved a scrap-- Ye see, the home warn't jest the place Fer sech a lively chap. O' course, the work seems ruther hard; The kids is ruther small-- It ain't that I am sore at Jim, I envy him--that's all. He doesn't know what he's about An' cares still less, does Jim... With all his loose an' roarin' ways I wisht that I was him. It makes him glad an' drunken-like That music an' the smoke; An' w'en they shout, the whole thing seems A picnic an' a joke. Oh, yellin' puts a heart in ye, An' stren'th into yer blows-- I wisht that I could hears those cheers Washin' the neighbors clo'es... It's funny how some things work out-- Life is so strange, Lord love us-- Here am I, workin' night an' day To keep a roof above us; An' Jim is somewhere in the south, An' Jim ain't really bad, A-runnin' round an' raisin' Cain, An' stabbin' some kid's dad. But that's w'at men are made for--eh? W'at else is there for me But workin' on till Jim comes home, Sick of his bloody spree. A VOICE FROM THE SWEAT-SHOPS (_A HYMN WITH RESPONSES_) "_Praise God from Whom all blessings flow; Praise Him all creatures here below. Every morning mercies new Fall as fresh as morning dew._" Yet we are choked with sin With bestial lusts and guile; God (so it runs) made this world clean And Man has made it vile. Aye, here Man lives on man, And breaks him day by day-- But in the trampled jungle The tiger claws his prey. God's curse is on the thief; The murderer fares ill-- Who gave the beasts their taste for blood Who taught them how to kill? "_All praise to Him Who built the hills, All praise to Him Who each stream fills; All praise to Him Who lights each star That sparkles in the sky afar._" All praise to Him who made The earthquake and the flood; All praise to Him who made the pest That sucks away the blood. All praise to Him whose mind Had the desire to make The shark, the scorpion, the gnat And the envenomed snake. Beauty itself He turns To slay and to be slain-- A thousand evil poisons His peaceful woods contain. "_Lift up your heart! Lift up your voice! Rejoice! Again I say, rejoice! For His mercies, they are sure His compassion will endure!_" Rejoice because each man Has but a man's desire To sin the little human sins As a child that plays with fire. Rejoice because God's plans Are far too deep for talk... He lets the swallow feed on flies-- Then gives it to the hawk! Rejoice because He made A world in some wild mood; A world that feeds upon itself-- '_And God saw it was good..._' Yet who are we to rail-- Vainly we strive and storm-- God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform! 'Blind unbelief is sure to err,' They say, and yet again, 'God is His own interpreter'-- _When will He make it plain?_ SOLDIERS Gay flags flying down the street; Comes the drum's insistent beat Like a fierce, gigantic pulse, And the screaming fife exults. Soldier, soldier, spic and span, Aren't you the lucky man; Splendid in your gold and blue-- How the small boy envies you! Oh, there's glory for you here-- Girls to smile and men to cheer; Bands behind and bands before Thrilling with the lust of War. Soldier, soldier, proud as though Marching to a sanguine foe, Bravely would you face the brink Fired with music, and with drink... Stalwart warrior pass, and be Glad you are not such as we-- We, who, without flags or drums, March to battle in the slums. Regiments of workers--we Are a foolish soldiery, Combating, till we convert, Ignorance, disease and dirt... Soldier, soldier, look--and then Laugh at us poor fighting-men, Struggling on, though every street Is the scene of our defeat. Laugh at us, who, day by day Come back beaten from the fray; We, who find our work undone-- We, whose wars are never won. _Gay flags flying down the street; Comes the drum's insistent beat Like a fierce, gigantic pulse-- And the screaming fife exults!_ PEACE (_The Fisheries dispute having been amicably compromised, the world is at peace again._ .... News Despatch.) '_At peace_'? The world has never been at peace-- Its wars are never-ending; there is naught In all its battles like these overwrought And storming hours with their dark increase. The cities roar; in every street one sees Women and children, battle-wounded, caught.-- No slaves, no shattered hosts have ever fought So bitterly, so hopeless of release... Well, if it must be war, take up the sword, Facing the world with grim and savage glee; And, with the courage of a Faith restored, Strike till the darkness falters, and we see That liberty is no mere gaudy word, And peace no slothful, placid mockery. THE DYING DECADENT _And when the evening came he fell asleep, And dreamed a dream of pallid loveliness:_ He wandered in a forest dark and deep, Where phantoms passed him with a soft caress; Where shadows moved and ghostly spirits stood Sphinxes of silence, wraiths of mystery; A magic wood, a strange and scented wood Where roses sprang from every withered tree. A wood that woke his wonder and his fear, A wood of whispered spells and shameful lore, Beyond whose furthest rim he seemed to hear A lonely sea upon a lonelier shore. Visions swept by him with a chanted spell, Crouched at his feet and murmured at his side-- And like a dim refrain there rose and fell The restless minor of an ebbing tide... Then, amidst broken sighs and wafts of song, Borne on the breezes blowing from the west, He saw one figure dancing in the throng More wan and wonderful than all the rest. The singing grew and nearer still she came, A being made of rose and fire and mist; Her deep eyes burning like the purple flame Hid in the heart of every amethyst. And, with the crooning of the distant sea, She sang to charm his soul and still his fear: "Oh, come, my love that wanders wearily; Oh, come, for you have called, and I am here... Oh, I have waited long to bring you there, Beyond the border of the things that are, Where all is terrible and strange and fair, As were your dreams that reached my favorite star... For you shall live and set the suns to rhyme; You shall escape a mortal's petty fate; You shall behold the birth and death of Time... Oh come, my love, for you these wonders wait. "Moonlight and music and the sound of waves, Sea-spells incanted by a mermaid-muse, And women's voices breathing slumb'rous staves, These shall you have whenever you may choose. And you shall know the maidens of the moon, Lying on lilies shall you see them dance; And you shall fling red roses to the tune, Great roses while the magic scene enchants. Wantons and queens shall take your heart to play And lose it in a mesh of tangled hair; And you shall always give your heart away, And find a new one every hour there. Here are the notes of every nightingale Like rare pearls dropping in a golden pan; And you shall hear white music in each dale, Sweet silver sounds that are not heard by man. And I shall show you all the world's delight, The unknown passion of each flaming star; Your eyes shall be endowed with keener sight Beyond the border of the things that are. Oh come, they wait you on the further strand-- Your drab and mournful mood they will exchange For joy's resplendent purple in the land Where all is rhythmical and fair and strange... Oh come and learn the songs unborn, unsung, And I shall give you all your longing craves, That you may live in ecstasy among Moonlight and music and the sound of waves." Entranced he stood--so exquisite the art That charmed him he could scarcely whisper low: "And who are you that comes to stir my heart With fragments of the songs I used to know---- You speak of wild and yet familiar things, Exotic passions and uncanny bliss; A thousand dreams your voice recalls and brings; And who are you that shows me all of this?" "I am the soul and spirit of your songs; I am your ballad's grief, your lyric's fire. I am the light for which your yearning longs; Your curious rapture and your sick desire. I am the burden that your lays beseech; The one refrain that flows through all your themes. I am the eerie glamor of your speech, I am the mystic radiance of your dreams. Come then with me, where all men's dreams are born, Where winds shall lift your perfumed thoughts aloft; Where there is never night or noon or morn, Only a twilight, sensuous and soft. And you shall know the wonder of each year, The fiery secrets of a myriad Springs... Lying on lilies shall you see them here; And you shall live and touch immortal things." She paused and sighed. Slowly he shook his head As one who sees a guarded flame go out; "Never to die? Nay that alone," he said, "Were worse than all this wandering in doubt. Nor would I go if Death himself should come To crown Life's blessing with a greater gift; In such a perfect world I would be dumb-- What could I long for when my fancies drift?... And more than this, I do not choose to go; For I am sick of strange and subtle sounds, Of fevered phrases, tinted words that glow, And all the twisting art that but astounds. I do not long for tortured harmonies; No more my languid soul is racked and tossed With yearning for strange shores and stranger seas-- I seek the visions I have long since lost. I seek the ways of simple love and hate, Once more I long to join the virile race; For I was blind till now, and now too late I see the wonder of the commonplace. "I long to hear men's voices, coarse and wild, That never knew a poet's wan desire; I long to hear them, as a little child Listens to elders grouped about the fire... To hear them as they mingle grave and gay-- The prudent planning for the week, and then Amid the tritest gossip of the day, Quaint, petty talk of merchandise and men. I crave the usual and homely themes; The everyday of which no mermaid sings.... These are the fairest fragments of my dreams; These are the conquering and deathless things." He ceased; a sudden radiance round him shone, And all things melted like a phantom wrack. And as he swept his hands and stood alone He heard hoarse thunders and the dusk grew black. Vast tremors shook the world from side to side-- The earth and sky became a monstrous blot... _And then it seems he woke, and waking, died; Calling on things that he had long forgot._ FUNERAL HYMN When Life's gay courage fails at last, And I grow worse than old-- Though Death puts out my fiery heart, I never shall grow cold. For warm is earth's green covering, And warmly I shall lie, Wrapped in the winding-sheets of air And the great, blue folds of sky! PROTESTS (_After a Painting by Hugo Ballin_) Something impelled her from the hearth; Whispers and winds drew her along; But still, unconscious of the earth, She read her book of golden Song. Old legends stirred her as she read Of life victoriously unfurled, Of glories gone but never dead, And Beauty that redeemed the world. "Oh Songs," she sighed, "your world was fair; My own holds no such lovely things; No glow, no magic anywhere--" And then, a start--a flash of wings... And, with the rush of surging seas, Over her swept the world's replies: The lyric hills, the buoyant breeze And all the sudden singing skies! 
34015	----	THE COAST OF BOHEMIA BY THOMAS NELSON PAGE NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1906 Copyright, 1888, 1906, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS THE DE VINNE PRESS PREFACE One who after writing prose all his life suddenly essays to launch a volume of verse, must know something of the feeling with which an old-time sailor after coasting only his native shores found himself setting sail into an unknown sea. The author of this little volume knows quite as well as the most experienced mariner the temerity of sailing an untried main in so frail a bark. But he is willing, if the Fates so decree, to go down with the unnumbered sail of that great fleet which have throughout the ages faced the wide ocean of oblivion, merely for the thrill of being for a brief space on its vast waters. Since Horace, secure in the double endowment of genius and of an Emperor's favor, wrote scornfully how hated of gods and men was middling verse, no one has ever doubted the fact--perhaps, not even one of all the myriads who have dared to brave that bitter scorn. The explanation then for the production of so much of the despised matter must be that there is for the minor poet also a music that the outer world does not catch--an inner day which the outer world does not see. It is this music, this light which, for the most part, is for the lesser poet his only reward. That he has heard, however brokenly, and at however vast a distance, snatches of those strains which thrilled the souls of Marlowe and Milton and Keats and Shelley, even though he may never reproduce one of them, is moreover a sufficiently high reward. T. N. P. *** Most of the poems in the following pages, with the exception of those in dialect, are now published for the first time. CONTENTS POEMS DEDICATION THE COAST OF BOHEMIA THE VOICE OF THE SEA LONG ROLL AT NAPOLEON'S TOMB THE PRINCESS' PROGRESS YOUTH AMERICA: GREETING DAWN THE POET ON AGRADINA THE SHEPHERD OF THE SEAS SLEEP TO A LADY AT A SPRING UNFORGOTTEN THE OLD LION THE DRAGON OF THE SEAS THE BENT MONK THE MESSAGE THE NEEDLE'S EYE THE CLOSED DOOR CONVENTION THE MAGDALEN THE REQUIREMENT THE LISTENER CONTRADICTION THE QUESTION OUR DEAD MY MOTHER HER INFLUENCE MATTHEW ARNOLD THE STRANGER LOVE AN OLD REFRAIN TO CLAUDIA THE APPLE-TREES AT EVEN MY TRUE-LOVE'S WEALTH A VALENTINE A PORTRAIT FÉLICE LOVE SONG THE HARBOUR LIGHT FADED SPRAY OF MIGNONETTE LOST ROSES DE NAME OF OLE VIRGINIA THE DANCER THE APRIL-FACE COME BACK TO US, DAVIE THE WITCH HUMANITY ASPIRATION REALITY LITTLE DOLLY DIMPLE A VALENTINE DIALECT POEMS (FROM "BEFO' DE WAR") UNCLE GABE'S WHITE FOLKS LITTLE JACK ASHCAKE ZEKYL'S INFIDELITY MARSE PHIL ONE MOURNER THE COAST OF BOHEMIA .... "Few, few are they: Perchance, among a thousand, one Thou shouldest find, for whom the sun Of Poesy makes an inner day." --_The Medea of Euripides--Way's Translation._ DEDICATION TO F. L. P. As one who wanders in a lonely land, Through all the blackness of a stormy night, Now stumbling here, now falling there outright, And doubts if it be worse to stir or stand, Not knowing what abysses yawn at hand, What torrents roar beyond some beetling height; Yet scales the top to find the dawn in sight, And Earth kissed into radiance with its wand: So, wandering hopeless in the darkness, I, Scarce recking whither led my painful way, Or whether I should faint or strive to prove If 'yond the mountain-top some path might lie, Climbed boldly up the steep, and lo! the Day Broke into pearl and splendor in thy love. THE COAST OF BOHEMIA There is a land not charted on all charts; Though many mariners have touched its coast, Who far adventuring in those distant parts, Meet ship-wreck there and are forever lost; Or if they e'er return, are soon once more Borne far away by hunger for that magic shore. Its mystic mountains on the horizon piled, Some mariners have glimpsed when driven far Out of life's measured course by tempests wild, Or lured therefrom by the erratic star They chose as pilot, till their errant guide Drew them resistlessly within its witching tide. For oft, they tell, who know its sapphire strand The golden haze enfolding it hangs low, And those who careless steer may miss the land, Embosomed in the sunset's purple glow, Its lights mistaken for the evening stars, Its music for the surf-beat on its golden bars. Young Jason found it when he dauntless sought The golden fleece by Colchis' perilous stream, And in his track full many an argonaut Hath found the rare fleece of his golden dream, And at the last, Ulysses-like, surcease From Sorrow's dole and Labor's heavy prease. One voyager charted it for every age, From azure rim to starry mountain core. A nameless player on the World's great stage, He spread his sails, adventured to that shore And reared a pharos with his art sublime, Like Ilion's song-wrought towers, to beacon every clime. The great adventurers reached it when they brake Columbus-led into the unknown West, And those who followed in their shining wake, But left no trace of where their keels have pressed; Yet have through stress of storm and tempests' rage Won by his quenchless light a happy anchorage. There rest the heroes of lost causes lorn, On their calm brows more fadeless chaplets far Than all their conquerors' could e'er adorn, When shone effulgent Fame's ascendant star; There fallen patriots reap the glorious prize Of deathless memory of their precious sacrifice. There many a dream-faced maid and matron dwells, From Argive Helen on through gliding time; There drink the poets draughts from crystal wells, And choir high music to their harps sublime: And there the great philosophers discourse Divine Philosophy in due and tranquil course. There not alone the great and lofty sing; But silent poets too find there the song They only sang in dreams when wandering Amazed and lost amid the earthly throng; Their hearts unfettered all from worldly fears. Attuned to meet the spacious music of the spheres: Gray, wrinkled men, the sea-salt in their hair, Their eyes set deep with peering through the gloom, Their voices low with speaking ever, where The surges break beneath the mountains' loom; But deep within their yearning, burning eyes The light reflected ever from those radiant skies. There fadeless Youth, unknowing of annoy, Walks aye with changeless Love; and Sorrow there Is but a memory to hallow Joy, With chastened Happiness so deep and rare, Well-nigh the Heart aches with its rich content, And Hope with full fruition evermore is blent. Constant Penelope, her web complete, Rests there content at last and smiling down On worn Ulysses basking at her feet; Calm Beatrice wears joyously the crown Bestowed by exiled Dante in his grief, And Laura, kind, gives Petrarch's tuneful heart relief. 'Mid bloomy meadows laved by limpid streams, Repose the Muses and the Graces sweet; There kiss we lips we only kissed in dreams Meshed in the grosser world; and there we meet The fair and flower-like lost loves of our Youth, When unafraid we trod the ways with radiant Truth. Those who return have pressed alone the coast; But tell of some lost in that charmèd strond: Aspiring souls who loving Honor most, Have sought the crystal mountain-tops beyond, And striven upward, heedless of their scars, To where all paths lead ever to the shining stars. THE VOICE OF THE SEA Thus spake to Man the thousand-throated Sea; Words which the stealing winds caught from its lips: Thou thinkest thee and thine, God's topmost crown. But hearken unto me and humbly learn How infinite thine insignificance. Thou boastest of thine age--thy works--thyself: Thine oldest monuments of which thou prat'st Were built but yesterday when measured by Yon snow-domed mountains of eternal rock: The Earth, thy mother, from whose breast thou draw'st, The sweat-stained living which she wills to give, And in whose dust thine own must melt again, Was agèd cycles ere thine earliest dawn;-- But they to me are young: I gave them birth. Climb up those heaven-tipt peaks thy dizziest height, Thou there shalt read, graved deep, my name and age; Dig down thy deepest depth, shalt read them still. Before the mountains sprang, before the Earth, Thy cradle and thy tomb, was made, I was: God called them forth from me, as thee from Earth. Thou burrow'st through a mountain, here and there, Work'st all thine engines, cutting off a speck; I wash their rock-foundations under; tear Turret from turret, toppling thundering down, And crush their mightiest fragments into sand: Thou gravest with thy records slab and spar, And callest them memorials of thy Might;-- Lo! not a stone exists, from yon black cliff To that small pebble at thy foot, but bears My signature graved there when Earth was young, To teach the mighty wonders of the Deep. Thy deeds--thyself--are what? A morning mist! But I! I face the ages. Dost not know That as I gave the Earth to spread her fair And dew-washed body in the morning light, So, still, 't is I that keep her fair and fresh?-- That weave her robes and nightly diamond them? I fill her odorous bowers with perfumes rare; Strew field and forest with bee-haunted stars; I give the Morn pearl for her radiant roof, And Eve lend glory for her rosy dome; I build the purple towers that hold the West And guard the passage of Retiring Day. Thy frailest fabric far outlasts thyself: The pyramids rise from the desert sands, Their builders blown in dust about their feet. The winged bull looms mid an alien race, Grim, silent, lone. But whither went the King? I cool the lambent air upon my breast, And send the winds forth on mine embassies; I offer all my body to the Sun, And lade our caravans with merchandise, To carry wealth and plenty to all climes. Yon fleecy continents of floating snow, That dwarf the mountains over which they sail, Are but my bales borne by my messengers, To cheer and gladden every thirsty land. The Arab by his palm-girt desert pool, The Laplander above his frozen rill, The Woodsman crouched beside his forest brook, The shepherd mirrored in his upland spring, Drink of my cup in one great brotherhood. 'T is, nay, not man alone--thou art but one Of all the myriads of life-holding things,-- Brute, beast, bird, reptile, insect, thing unnamed, Whose souls find recreation in my breath: Nay, not a tree, flower, sprig of grass or weed, But lives through me and hymns my praise to God: I feed, sustain, refresh and keep them all: Mirror and type of God that giveth life. I sing as softly as a mother croons Her drowsy babe to sleep upon her breast. On quiet nights when all my winds are laid, I wile the stars down from their azure home To sink with golden footprints in my depths: I show the silvered pathway to the moon, All paved with gems the errant Pleiad lost, That night she strayed from her sisters wan; But I sing other times strains from that song Before whose awfulness my waters sank, And at whose harmony the mountains rose, I heard that morning when the breath of God Moved on my face, and said, Let there be light! I thrill and tremble since but at the thought Of that great wonder of that greatest dawn, When at God's word the brooding darkness rose, Which veiled my face from all the birth of things And rolled far frighted from its resting-place, To bide henceforth beyond Day's crystal walls, While all the morning stars together sang, And on the instant God stood full revealed! LONG ROLL AT NAPOLEON'S TOMB 'Twas the marble crypt where the Emperor lay, His mighty marshals on either side, Guarding his couch since the solemn day France brought him home in her chastened pride, To sleep on her heart, from the sea-girt cage Where the Eagle pined and died in his rage. I thought of the long, red carnival Death held in the track of his sword, amain, From Toulon's bloom to the crimsoned pall He spread upon Waterloo's ripened grain; I thought of the long black years of dread When the nations quaked at his armies' tread. A-sudden above as the twilight fell The deathly silence around was shocked By the roll of a drum. At the throbbing swell The vaulted dome of the Heavens rocked, Till it seemed that the mighty conqueror's soul Was shaking the earth in that drum's long roll. In the purple glooming the spell was wrought; And forth from their tomb the legions sprang: A Cadmus-brood of a Master's thought; The long-roll beat and the bugles sang; The tattered standards again unfurled, And Napoleon once more bestrid the world. I heard that instant the self-same drum Which beat at his call when France arose From her ashes and blood when he bade her come In Liberty's name to face her foes; I saw her invincible armies arise, The light of Liberty in their eyes. O'er Tyranny's pyre her standards flew; I felt the thrill of the new-born life: As cleansed from Terror, France the true, Sprang forth rejoicing amid the strife, As a woman rejoiceth travail-torn At the living voice of her own first-born. From the ruddy morning on Egypt's sands, When her eagles rose in their terrible flight To stretch their shadow across the lands Till it perished in Russia's frozen night, When th' insatiable conqueror's reckoning came And his Empire melted away in flame: When there at Moscow the Lord God spoke And said, "Thine end is at hand: prepare," As at Kadesh once, from amid the smoke, To the prophet who led His People there; "I set thee up, I will cast thee down, For that thou claimedst thyself the crown. "Thine eyes have seen; but thou shalt not stand On the promised shore of a world set free; The People shall pass alone to the Land Of Promise and Light and Liberty: Of Peace enthroned in a Nation's trust, When thou and thy throne alike are dust." THE PRINCESS' PROGRESS Across the dusky land The Gracious Goddess, Spring, In vernal robes arrayed, Last night her royal progress made, Scattering with lavish hand Her fragrant blossoming. Along the wold, In spendthrift glee, She strewed her gold And gilded all the lea. The dandelions' yellow coin Lie scattered in the tangled grass, And buttercup and crocus join To tell the way she chose to pass. In lavish wealth the gleaming daffodil Shines on the cloudy April hill, And many a yellow marigold Marks where her brazen chariot rolled; The slender-necked narcissus bends His dewy head, and leaning down, Looks deep to find within a dew-drop's lens A mirrowing pool where Love may drown. No cranny deep nor nook But felt her tender look; No secret leafy place But warmed before her face And blossomed with her grace. The woodland, sombre yesterday, Hath in her presence donned a brave array, And in a night grown gay. Her purple cloak, all careless flung, Upon the red-bud hung; And on the forest trees, Her richest laceries. While sprinkled deep with dust of gold The tender, flowery branches hold Her verdant robe blown fold on fold. Her queenly figure clad In broidered raiment glad, Complete and passing sweet, Hath set the sylvan zephyrs mad. About her breathed rare odors sweet, Of roses blowing neath her feet: About her breathed sweet odors rare, Of violets shaken from her hair, As though unseen of mortal eyes, She 'd jarred the gates of Paradise. Her crystal horn in passing by she wound, And at the witching sound, As by the enchanter's stroke, The fields in music broke, And every silent grove in melody awoke. Responsive to her charmèd lyre The dewy-throated choir Carol in every brake and brier, And flood with golden song The verdant reaches ranged along-- Where drinking deep from fountains clear Their inspiration, They hymn their jubilation That Spring again is here; And all together sing The Goddess of the Year, The Spring: the gracious Spring. YOUTH I once might hear the fairies sing Upon the feathery grass a-swing, Or in the orchard's blossoming: Their melody so fine and clear, One had to bend his ear to hear, Or else the music well might pass For zephyrs whispering in the grass. I once might see the fairies dance A-circle in their meadow-haunts, Soft-tapered by the new-moon's glance: Their airy feet in crystal shoon Made twinklings neath the silver moon. Such witchery, but that 't was seen, Might well have been the dew-drops' sheen. I've wandered far yond summer seas, Where Music dwells mid harmonies That well the Seraphim might please; But never more I catch, ah me! The fairies' silvery melody-- Their crystal twinkling on the moonlit lea. AMERICA: GREETING I have journeyed the spacious world over, And here to thy sapphire wide gate, America, I, thy True Lover Return now, exalted, elate, As an heir who returns to recover His forefathers' lofty estate. I 've seen visions of castle and palace Up-soaring to sun-flooded skies, Where men have drunk deep of Death's chalice, In infinite soul-agonies-- Where Tyranny glutted her malice And battened on Liberty's cries. Where splendor of palace and tower Cried up unto God with men's blood; Where th' emblems of Tyranny's Power Imperial and brazen have stood, With faggot and sword to devour, And the rack scowling hard by God's Rood. And now at thy fair, open portal, I stand as I stood in my Youth, Amazed at the vision immortal Of naked and unashamed Truth: The Truth that the Fathers have taught all Their children: their birth-right in sooth. I greet thee: thy purple, large reaches,-- From the snow-mantled, spire-pointed pine, To thy golden, long, low-lying beaches, Awash with thy tropical brine, And thine infinite bosom that teaches How God hath made Freedom divine. God dowered thee fair mid the Oceans: He bulwarked thee strong with the seas, That Man might preserve here the motions He gave Freedom's bold processes: That Man in his loftiest devotions Might serve Freedom's altars in Peace. How crude then and rude then soever Thy struggles to lift from the sod, Thy Freedom is strong to dissever The Shackles, the Yoke, and the Rod; Thy Freedom is Mighty forever, For men who kneel only to God. DAWN Who hath not heard in dusky summer dawns, Ere winds Aurora's horn, the dreamy spell Just rippled by some drowsy sentinel. Who from his leafy outpost on the lawns Chimes sleepily his call that all is well? A moment--pipes another silvery note: Aurora's crystal wheels flash up the sky; The sentries cry the Dawn and joyously Glad Welcome peals from every dewy throat, And every leafy bough chimes melody. So, in the gloom and silence of the night, My heart in slumber steeped, unheeding lay, Not recking how the hours might fleet away; When on my Heavens dawned a radiant light, And straight I wakened to a shining day. THE POET ON AGRADINA The spacious cities hummed with toil: The monarch reared his towers to the skies; Men delved the fruitful soil And studied to be wise; Along the highway's rocky coil The mailed legions rang; Smiling unheeded 'mid the moil, The Poet sang. The glittering cities long are heaps: The starry towers lie level with the plain; The desert serpent sleeps Where soared the marble fane; The stealthy, bead-eyed lizard creeps Where gleamed the tyrant's throne; The grandeur dark oblivion steeps: The song sings on. THE SHEPHERD OF THE SEAS From Raleigh's Devon hills the misty sea Climbs ever westward till it meets the sky, And silently the white-fleeced ships go by, And mount and mount up the long azure lea, Peaceful as sheep at night that placidly Climb the tall downs to quiet pastures high, Assured no foes dare lurk, no dangers lie Where still abides their shepherd's memory. Well did men name him "Shepherd of the Seas," Who knew so well his shepherd's watch to keep, Driving the Spanish wolves with noble rage: Forsaking Pomp and Power and Beds-of-ease To herd his mighty flock through every Deep And make of every sea their common pasturage. SLEEP IN MEMORIAM: A. B. P. Thou best of all: God's choicest blessing, Sleep; Better than Earth can offer--Wealth, Power, Fame: They change, decay; thou always art the same; Through all the years thy freshness thou dost keep; Over all lands thine even pinions sweep. The sick, the worn, the blind, the lone, the lame, Hearing thy tranquil footsteps, bless thy name; Anguish is soothed, Sorrow forgets to weep. Thou ope'st the captive's cell and bid'st him roam; Thou giv'st the hunted refuge, free'st the slave, Show'st the outcast pity, call'st the exile home; Beggar and king thine equal blessings reap. We for our loved ones Wealth, Joy, Honors crave; But God, He giveth his beloved--Sleep. TO A LADY AT A SPRING Long æons since, in leafy woodlands sweet, Diana, weary with the eager chase, Was wont to seek full oft some trysting-place Loved of her rosy train; some cool retreat Of crystal springs, deep-verdured from the heat Of sultry noon, wherein each subtle grace Of snowy form and radiant flower-face, Narcissus-like, goddess and nymph might greet. Diana long hath fleeted 'yond the main; The founts which erst she loved are all bereft; No more 'mid violet-banks her feet are set; Silent her silvern bugle, fled her train; One spot alone of all she loved is left: This poplar-shaded spring is Goddess-haunted yet. UNFORGOTTEN Oh! do not think that thee I can forget: Though all the Centuries should o'er me roll-- Though Space should spread more far than Pole from Pole, Or star from furthest star betwixt us; yet, I still would hold thee in my heart's core set: More rare than rarest Queens whom Kings extol When Death hath throned them high above regret. Through endless Time when Memory the stone Rolls back from silent years long sepulchred, To call the Past forth from the sullen tomb, Howe'er far 'yond her voice all else hath flown, Shalt thou appear--her living summons heard-- Fresh as Eternal Spring in all thy radiant bloom. THE OLD LION "THE WHELPS OF THE LION ANSWER HIM" The Old Lion stood in his lonely lair: The sound of the hunting had broken his rest: He scowled to the Eastward: Tiger and Bear Were harrying his Jungle. He turned to the west; And sent through the murk and mist of the night A thunder that rumbled and rolled down the trail; And Tiger and Bear, the Quarry in sight, Crouched low in the covert to cower and quail; For deep through the midnight like surf on a shore, Pealed Thunder in answer resounding with ire. The Hunters turn'd stricken: they knew the dread roar: The Whelp of the Lion was joining his Sire. THE DRAGON OF THE SEAS APRIL, 1898 They say the Spanish ships are out To seize the Spanish Main; Reach down the volume, Boy, and read The story o'er again: How when the Spaniard had the might, He drenched the Earth, like rain, With Saxon blood and made it Death To sail the Spanish Main. With torch and steel; with stake and rack He trampled out God's Truce Until Queen Bess her leashes slip't And let her sea-dogs loose. God! how they sprang and how they tore! The Gilberts, Hawkins, Drake! Remember, Boy, they were your sires: They made the Spaniard quake. Dick Grenville with a single ship Struck all the Spanish line: One Devon knight to the Spanish Dons: One ship to fifty and nine. When Spain in San Ulloa's Bay Her sacred treaty broke, Stout Hawkins fought his way through fire And gave her stroke for stroke. A bitter malt Spain brewed that day, She drained it to the lees: The thunder of her guns awoke The Dragon of The Seas. From coast to coast he ravaged far, A scourge with flaming breath: Where'er the Spaniard sailed his ships, Sailed Francis Drake and Death. No coast was safe against his ire; Secure no furthest shore; The fairest day oft sank in fire Before the Dragon's roar. He made th' Atlantic surges red Round every Spanish keel, Piled Spanish decks with Spanish dead, The noblest of Castile. From Del Fuego's beetling coast To sleety Hebrides He hounded down the Spanish host And swept the flaming seas. He fought till on Spain's inmost lakes 'Mid Orange bowers set, La Mancha's maidens feared to sail Lest they the Dragon met.* King Philip, of his ravin' reft, Called for "the Pirate's" head; The great Queen laughed his wrath to scorn And knighted Drake instead. And gave him ships and sent him forth To sweep the Spanish Main, For England and for England's brood, And sink the fleets of Spain. And well he wrought his mighty work, Till on that fatal day He met his only conqueror, In Nombre Dios Bay. There in his shotted hammock swung Amid the surges' sweep, He waits the look-out's signal cry Across the quiet deep, And dreams of dark Ulloa's bar, And Spanish treachery, And how he tracked Magellan far Across the unknown sea. But if Spain fire a single shot Upon the Spanish Main, She 'll come to deem the Dragon dead Has waked to life again. *Note. It is related that King Philip one day invited a lady to sail with him on a lake, and she replied that she was afraid they might meet "the Dragon." THE BENT MONK Ever along the way he goes, With eyes cast down as in despair, And shoulders stooped with weight of woes And lips from which unceasing flows An agonizèd prayer. His form is bent; his step is slow; His hands with fasting long are thin; And wheresoe'er his footsteps go, Men hear his muttered prayer and know He weeps for deadly sin. This monk was once the knightliest Of knights who ever sat in hall: With wondrous might and beauty blest; And whoso met him lance-in-rest Had need on Christ to call. Men say this monk with hair so hoar, And eye where grief hath quenched the flame, Once loved a maiden fair and pure, And for she would not wed him swore He 'd bring her down to Shame. They say he wooed her long and well; And splendid spoils both eve and morn Of song and tourney won, they tell, He gave her till at last she fell, Then drave her forth with scorn. The world was cold; her father's door Was barred--they thus the tale repeat-- Her name was heard in jousts no more; And so, one day the river bore And laid her at his feet. Her brow was calm, the sunny hair Lay tangled in the snowy breast, And from the face all trace of care And sin was cleansed away, and there Shone only utter rest. The old men say that when the wave That burden brought, then backward fled, He stooped, no sign nor groan he gave, As mourners by an open grave; But fell as one struck dead. He seemed, when from that swound he woke, A man already touched by Death, As when the stalwart forest oak, Blasted beneath the lightning's stroke Lives on, yet languisheth. And ever since he tells his beads, And sackcloth lieth next his skin, And nightly his frail body bleeds With knotted cord that intercedes With Christ for deadly sin. For his own soul he hath no care, By penance purged as if by flame: Men know that agonized prayer He prays is for the maiden fair Whom he brought down to Shame. And still along the way he goes, With eyes cast down as in despair, And shoulders stooped with weight of woes, And lips from which forever flows An agonizèd prayer. THE MESSAGE An ancient tome came to my hands: A tale of love in other lands: Writ by a Master so divine, The Love seems ever mine and thine. The volume opened at the place That sings of sweet Francesca's grace: How reading of Fair Guinevere And Launcelot that long gone year, Her eyes into her lover's fell And--there was nothing more to tell. That day they op'ed that book no more: Thenceforth they read a deeper lore. Beneath the passage so divine, Some woman's hand had traced a line, And reverently upon the spot Had laid a blue forget-me-not: A message sent across the years, Of Lovers' sighs and Lovers' tears: A messenger left there to tell They too had loved each other well. The centuries had glided by Since Love had heaved that tender sigh; The tiny spray that spoke her trust, Had like herself long turned to dust. I felt a sudden sorrow stir My heart across the years for her, Who, reading how Francesca loved, Had found her heart so deeply moved: Who, hearing poor Francesca's moan, Had felt her sorrow as her own. I hope where e 'er her grave may be, Forget-me-nots bloom constantly: That somewhere in yon distant skies He who is Love hath heard her sighs: And her hath granted of His Grace, Ever to see her Lover's face. THE NEEDLE'S EYE They bade me come to the House of Prayer, They said I should find my Saviour there: I was wicked enough, God wot, at best, And weary enough to covet rest. I paused at th' door with a timid knock: The People within were a silken flock-- By their scowls of pride it was plain to see Salvation was not for the likes of me. The Bishop was there in his lace and lawn, And the cassocked priest,--I saw him yawn,-- The rich and great and virtuous too, Stood smug and contented each in his pew. The music was grand,--the service fine, The sermon was eloquent,--nigh divine. The subject was, Pride and the Pharisee, And the Publican, who was just like me. I smote my breast in an empty pew, But an usher came and looked me through And bade me stand beside the door In the space reserved for the mean and poor. I left the church in my rags and shame: In the dark without, One called my name. "They have turned me out as well," quoth He, "Take thou my hand and come fare with me. "We may find the light by a narrow gate, The way is steep and rough and strait; But none will look if your clothes be poor, When you come at last to my Father's door." I struggled on where 'er He led: The blood ran down from His hand so red! The blood ran down from His forehead torn. "'Tis naught," quoth He, "but the prick of a thorn!" "You bleed," I cried, for my heart 'gan quail. "'Tis naught, 'tis naught but the print of a nail." "You limp in pain and your feet are sore." "Yea, yea," quoth He, "for the nails they were four." "You are weary and faint and bent," I cried. "'Twas a load I bore up a mountain side." "The way is steep, and I faint." But He: "It was steeper far upon Calvary." By this we had come to a narrow door, I had spied afar. It was locked before; But now in the presence of my Guide, The fast-closed postern opened wide. And forth there streamed a radiance More bright than is the noon-sun's glance; And harps and voices greeted Him-- The music of the Seraphim. I knew His face where the light did fall: I had spat in it, in Herod's Hall, I knew those nail-prints now, ah, me!-- I had helped to nail Him to a tree. I fainting fell before His face, Imploring pardon of His grace. He stooped and silencing my moan, He bore me near to His Father's throne. He wrapt me close and hid my shame, And touched my heart with a cleansing flame. "Rest here," said He, "while I go and try To widen a little a Needle's Eye." THE CLOSED DOOR Lord, is it Thou who knockest at my door? I made it fast and 't will not open more; Barred it so tight I scarce can hear Thy knock, And am too feeble now to turn the lock, Clogged with my folly and my grievous sin: Put forth Thy might, O Lord, and burst it in. CONVENTION At the Judgment-bar stood spirits three: A thief, a fool and a man of degree, To whom spake the Judge in his Majesty. To the shivering thief: "Thy sins are forgiven, For that to repent thou hast sometime striven; There be other penitent thieves in Heaven." To the fool: "Poor fool, thou art free from sin; To My light thou, too, mayest enter in, Where Life and Thought shall for thee begin." To the mirror of others, smug and neat, With the thoughts and sayings of others replete, This Judgment rolled from the Judgment-seat: "Remain thou thyself, a worm to crawl. Thou, doubly damned, canst not lower fall Than ne'er to have thought for thyself at all." THE MAGDALEN He flaunted recklessly along, With hollow laugh and mocking song; In tawdry garb and painted mirth, The sorrowfulest thing on earth. Time runs apace: the fleeting years Left but her misery and her tears. The very brothel-door was barred Against a wretch so crook'd and marred. She knocked at every gate in vain, The cast-out harlot black with stain-- At all save one,--when this she tried,-- 'T was His, the High Priest crucified. He heard her tears, flung wide His door And said, "Come in, and sin no more." THE REQUIREMENT To the Steward of his vineyard spake the Lord, When he handed him over His Keys and Sword: "See that you harken unto my word: "There be three chief things that I love," quoth He, "That bear a sweet savor up to me: They be Justice, Mercy and Purity." Justice was sold at a thief's behest; Purity went for a harlot's jest, And Mercy was slain with a sword in her breast. THE LISTENER A sparrow sang on a weed, Sprung from an upturned sod, And no one gave him heed Or heard the song, save God. CONTRADICTION A bishop preached Sunday on Dives forsaken: How he was cast out and Lazarus taken; The very next day he rejoiced he was able To dine that evening at Dives' table. While wretched Lazarus, sick and poor, Was called an impostor and turned from the door. THE QUESTION Why may I not step from this empty room, Where heavy round me hangs the curtained gloom, And passing through a little darkness there, Even as one climbs to bed an unlit stair, Find that I know is but one step above, And that I hunger for: my Life: my Love? 'T is but a curtain doth our souls divide, A veil my eager hand might tear aside-- One step to take, one thrill, one throb, one bound, And I have gained my Heaven, the Lost have found-- Have solved the riddle rare, the secret dread: The vast, unfathomable secret of the Dead. It seems but now that as I yearning stand, I might put forth my hand and touch her hand; That I might lift my longing eyes and trace But for the darkness there the gracious face; That could I hush the grosser sounds, my ear The charmèd music of her voice might hear. She may not come to me, Alas! I know, Else had she surely come, long, long ago. The Conqueror Death, who save One conquers all, Had never power to hold that soul in thrall; No narrowest prison-house; no piled up stone Had held her heart a captive from my own. No, 't is not these: Hell's might nor Heaven's charms, Had never power to hold her from my arms;-- 'T is that by some inscrutable, fixed Law, Vaster than mortal vision ever saw, Whose sweep is worlds; whose track Eternity, Somewhere her soul angelic waits for me:-- Waits patiently His Wisdom, whose decree Is Wisdom's self veiled in Infinity: Who gives us Life divine with mortal breath, Yet in its pathway, lo! hath planted Death; Who grants us Love our dull souls to uplift Nearer to Him; yet tears away His Gift; Crowns us with Reason in His image made, Yet blinds our eyes with never lifting shade. Who may the mystery solve? 'T is His decree! Can Mortal understand Infinity? Prostrate thyself before His feet, dull clod, Who saith, "Be still, and know that I am God." Ah! did we surely know the joys that wait Beyond the portal of the silent gate, Who would a moment longer here abide, The spectre, Sorrow, stalking at his side? Who would not daring take the leap and be Unbound, unfettered clean, a slave set free! OUR DEAD We bury our dead, We lay them to sleep With the earth for their bed, With stones at their head: We leave them and weep When we bury our dead. We bury our dead, We lay them to sleep,-- On our Mother's calm breast We leave them to rest-- To rest while we weep. We bury our dead, We lay them to sleep-- They reck not our tears, Though the sad years creep-- Through our tears, through the years They tranquilly sleep. We bury our dead, We lay them to sleep; We bury the bloom Of our life,--all our bloom In the coffin we fold: We enfold in the tomb: We reënter the room We left young,--we are old. We bury our dead, We lay them to sleep; The cold Time-tides flow With winter and spring, With birds on the wing, With roses and snow, With friends who beguile Our sorrow with pity-- With pity awhile. Then weary and smile, Then chide us, say, "Lo! How the sun shines,--'t is May." But we know 't is not so-- That the sun died that day When we laid them away, With the earth for a bed-- When we buried our dead. We bury our dead, We lay them to sleep; We turn back to the world; We are caught,--we are whirled In the rush of the current-- The rush and the sweep Of the tide, without rest. But they sleep--they the blest-- The Blessed dead sleep: They tranquilly rest On our Mother's calm breast. MY MOTHER I knew her in her prime, Before the seal of Time Was graven on her brow, As Age hath graved it now: When radiant Youth was just subdued To yield to gracious womanhood. And as an inland lake Lies tranquil mid the hills, Unruffled by the storms that break Beyond, and mirrors Heaven; So, to her spirit, freed from ills, A blessed calm was given. Encircled by War's strife Peace ruled her life. Christ's teachings were her constant guide, And naught beside, Christ's Death and Passion were her plea-- None needed she; For that amid earth's fiercest strife Her life was patterned on His life. Now when her eyes grow dim She lives so close to Him, The radiance of His smile Envelops her the while. As when the Prophet's figure shone With light reflected from the Throne, So, ever in her face Shines Heaven's divinest grace. Her soul is fresh and mild As is a little child. And as the fleshly tenement With age grows worn and bent, Her Spirit's unabated youth Is aye to me The mind-compelling truth Of Immortality. Her voice is, as it were, A silver dulcimer, Tuned like the seraph's lays Eternally to praise. The blessings of Christ's chosen friends Are doubly hers, whose mind, To charity inclined, No selfish ends Have ever for an instant moved: Who served like Martha And like Mary loved. HER INFLUENCE The tender Earth that smiles when kissed by Spring; The flowers; the budding woods; the birds that sing The Summer's song her spirit to me bring. The meadows cool that breathe their fragrant myrrh; Deep, placid pools that little breezes blur; Soft-tinkling springs speak to my heart of her. Heaven's purple towers upon the horizon's rim; The dove that mourns upon his lonely limb, Fill my soul's cup with memories to its brim. In evening's calm when in the quiet skies, The lustrous, silent, tender stars uprise, I feel the holy influence of her eyes. That deeper hour when Night with Dawn is blent, And Silence stirs, its languors well-nigh spent, I hear her gently sigh with sweet content. I hear young children laughing in the street: Catch rays of sunshine from them as we meet, And smile content to know what makes them sweet. Yea, everywhere, in every righteous strife, I find her spirit's fragrant influence rife, Like Mary's precious spikenard sweetening Life. MATTHEW ARNOLD He challenged all that came within his ken, And Error held with steadfast mind aloof. E'en Truth itself he put upon the proof: Holding that Light was God's first gift to men. THE STRANGER Straying one day amid the leafy bowers, A Presence passed, masked in a sunny ray, Tossing behind him carelessly the hours, As one shakes blossoms from a ravished spray,-- Strewing them far and wide. Nor glanced to either side. A-sudden as he strolled he chanced upon A flower which full within his pathway blew, White as a lily, modest as a nun, Sweeter than Lilith's rose in Eden grew-- Her beauty he espied, Approached and softly sighed. His breath the blossom stirred and all the air Grew fragrant with a subtle, rich perfume; The spicèd alleys glowed, the while a rare And crystal radiance did illume All the adjacent space As 't were an angel's face. Kneeling, he gently laid his glowing lips, Like softest music on her lips, when came A thrill that trembled to her petal-tips, And on the instant, with a sudden flame, Leaped forth the shining sun, And Earth and Heaven were one. "Who art thou?" queried she, "Tell me thy name, To whom Godlike this Godlike power is given, That thus for me, without or fear or shame, But by thy lips' soft touch Greatest Heaven?" Whilst to his heart she clove, He whispered, "I am Love." LOVE (AFTER ANACREON) Astray within a garden bright I found a tiny wingèd sprite: He scarce was bigger than a sparrow And bore a little bow and arrow. I lifted him up in my arm, Without a thought of guile or harm; But merely as it were in play, With threats to carry him away. The sport he took in such ill part, He stuck an arrow in my heart. And ever since, I have such pain,-- I cannot draw it out again. And yet, the strangest part is this: I love the pain as though 't were bliss. AN OLD REFRAIN It seems to me as I think of her, That my youth has come again: I hear the breath of summer stir The leaves in the old refrain: "Oh! my Lady-love! Oh! my Lady-love! Oh! where can my Lady be? I will seek my Love, with the wings of a dove, And pray her to love but me." The flower-kissed meadows all once more Are green with grass and plume; The apple-trees again are hoar With fragrant snow of bloom. Oh! my Lady-love! Oh! my Lady-love! Oh! where can my Lady be? etc. The meadow-brook slips tinkling by With silvery, rippling flow, And blue-birds sing on fences nigh, To dandelions below. Oh! my Lady-love, Oh, my Lady-love! Oh! where can my Lady be? etc. I hear again the drowsy croon Of honey-laden bees, And catch the poppy-mellowed rune They hum to locust trees. Oh! my Lady-love! Oh! my Lady-love! Oh! where can my Lady-love be? etc. Far off the home-returning cows Low that the Eve is late, And call their calves neath apple-boughs To meet them at the gate. Oh! my Lady-love! Oh! my Lady-love! Oh! where can my Lady be? etc. Once more the Knights and ladies pass In visions Fancy-wove: I lie full length in summer grass, To choose my own True-Love. Oh! my Lady-love! Oh! my Lady-love! Oh! where can my Lady be? etc. I know not how,--I know not where,-- I dream a fairy-spell: I know she is surpassing fair,-- I know I love her well. Oh! my Lady-love! Oh! my Lady-love! Oh! where can my Lady be? etc. I know she is as pure as snow:-- As true as God's own Truth:-- I know,--I know I love her so, She must love me, in sooth! Oh! my Lady-love! Oh! my Lady-love! Oh! where can my Lady be? etc. I know the stars dim to her eyes; The flowers blow in her face: I know the angels in the skies Have given her of their grace. Oh! my Lady-love! Oh! my Lady-love! Oh! where can my Lady be? etc. And none but I her heart can move, Though seraphs may have striven; And when I find my own True-love, I know I shall find Heaven. Oh! my Lady-love! Oh! my Lady-love! Oh! where can my Lady be! I will seek my Love with the wings of a dove And pray her to love but me. TO CLAUDIA It is not, Claudia, that thine eyes Are sweeter far to me, Than is the light of Summer skies To captives just set free. It is not that the setting sun Is tangled in thy hair, And recks not of the course to run, In such a silken snare. Nor for the music of thy words, Fair Claudia, love I thee, Though sweeter than the songs of birds That melody to me. It is not that rich roses rare Within thy garden grow, Nor that the fairest lilies are Less snowy than thy brow. Nay, Claudia, 't is that every grace In thy dear self I find; That Heaven itself is in thy face, And also in thy mind. THE APPLE-TREES AT EVEN Ah! long ago it seems to me, Those sweet old days of summer, When I was young and fair was she, And sorrow only rumor. And all the world was less than naught To me who had her favor; For Time and Care had not then taught How Life of Death hath savor. And all the day the roving bees Clung to the swinging clover, And robins in the apple-trees Answered the faint-voiced plover. And all the sounds were low and sweet; The zephyrs left off roaming In curving gambols o'er the wheat, To kiss her in the gloaming. The apple-blossoms kissed her hair, The daisies prayed her wreathe them; Ah, me! the blossoms still are there, But she lies deep beneath them. I now have turned my thoughts to God, Earth from my heart I sever; With fast and prayer I onward plod-- With prayer and fast forever. Yet, when the white-robed priest speaks low And bids me think of Heaven, I always hear the breezes blow The apple-trees at even. MY TRUE-LOVE'S WEALTH My True-love hath no wealth they say; But when they do, I tell them nay,-- For she hath wealth of golden hair, Shot through with shafts from Delos' bow, That shines about her shoulders rare, Like sunlight on new driven snow. My True-love hath no wealth they say; But when they do, I tell them nay,-- For she hath eyes so soft and bright, So deep the light that in them lies, That stars in heaven would lose their light Ashine beside my True-love's eyes. My True-love hath no wealth they say; But when they do, I tell them nay,-- For oh! she hath such dainty hands, So snowy white, so fine and small, That had I wealth of Ophir's lands, For one of them I 'd give it all. My True-love hath no wealth they say; But when they do, I tell them nay,-- For oh! she hath a face so fair, Such winsome light about it plays, For worldly wealth I nothing care, So I can look upon her face. My True-love hath no wealth they say; But when they do, I tell them nay,-- For endless wealth of mind hath she, Her heart so stored with precious lore-- Her riches they as countless be As shells upon the ocean's shore. My True-love hath no wealth they say; But when they do, I tell them nay,-- The wild-brier bough hath less of grace And on wild violets when she treads They turn to look into her face And scarcely bow their azure heads. My True-love hath no wealth they say; But when they do, I tell them nay,-- For oh! she hath herself, in fee, And this is more than worlds to me. A VALENTINE My patron saint, St. Valentine, Why dost thou leave me to repine, Still supplicating at her shrine? But bid her eyes to me incline, I 'll ask no other sun to shine, More rich than is Golconda's mine. Range all that Woman, Song, or Wine Can give; Wealth, Power, and Fame combine; For her I 'd gladly all resign. Take all the pearls are in the brine, Sift heaven for stars, earth's flowers entwine, But be her heart my Valentine. A PORTRAIT A mouth red-ripened like a warm, sweet rose, Wherein are gleaming pearls all pure and bright As dewdrops nestled where the zephyr blows With pinion soft across the humid night; A cheek not ruddy, but soft-tinged and fair, Where whiles the rich patrician blood is seen, As though it knew itself a thing too rare For common gaze, yet did its high demean; A brow serene and pure as her white soul, By which the sifted snow would blackened seem That sleeps untrodden where the Northern pole Rests calm, unscanned save by the Moon's chaste beam; Eyes gray as Summer twilight skies are gray, And deep with light as deep, still waters are,-- Tender as evening's smile when kissing day, Yet bright and true as is her lustrous star. These all unite and with accordant grace Make heaven mirrored ever in her face. FÉLICE You are very fair, Félice, wondrous fair, And the light deep in your eyes Is more soft than summer skies, And rare roses in your cheek Play with lilies hide-and-seek,-- Play as Pleasure plays with Care. And your throat is white, Félice, wondrous white, White as sifted snow, I wis, Ere the sun hath stol'n a kiss, High up starry mountain-heights, Or as in rich moonful nights Parian baths in Cynthia's light. And, Félice, your rippling waves of soft hair, In their mystic depths aye hold Shade and shimmer of red gold, Like a halo round your face, Lending you another grace From the sunbeams shining there. And your voice is sweet, Félice, wondrous sweet, As the murmur of the sea, After long captivity, To a sailor far inland,-- Or as summer flowers fanned By soft zephyrs blown o'er wheat. But so stony, fair Félice, is your heart, That I wonder oft, I own, If you 're not mere carven stone-- While my soul your charms enthrall-- Just some chiseled Goddess tall: Merely Beauty, Stone, and Art. LOVE SONG Love 's, for Youth, and not for Age, E'en though Age should wear a crown; For the Poet, not the Sage; Not the Monarch, but the Clown. Love 's for Peace, and not for War, E'en though War bring all renown; For the Violet, not the Star; For the Meadow, not the Town. Love 's for lads and Love 's for maids, Courts a smile and flees a frown; Love 's for Love, and saucy jades Love Love most when Love has flown. Love a cruel tyrant is: Slays his victims with a glance, Straight recovers with a kiss, But to slay again, perchance. Wouldst thou know where Love doth bide? Whence his sharpest arrows fly? In a dimple Love may hide, Or the ambush of an eye. Wert thou clad in triple mail, In some desert far apart, Not a whit would this avail: Love would find and pierce thy heart. THE HARBOUR-LIGHT Oh, the Harbour-light and the Harbour-light! And how shall we come to the Harbour-light? 'Tis black to-night and the foam is white, And would we might win to the Harbour-light! Oh, the Harbour-bar and the Harbour-bar! And how shall we pass o'er the Harbour-bar? The sea is tost and the ship is lost, And deep is the sleep 'neath the Harbour-bar. FADED SPRAY OF MIGNONETTE Faded spray of mignonette, Can you ever more forget How you lay that summer night, In the new moon's silvery light, Dreaming sweet in tranquil rest On my true-love's snowy breast? Since her rosy finger-tips Bore you to her fragrant lips, Blessed you with a shadowy kiss, Nestled you again in bliss, (Envied of the Gods above) All is faded save my love. LOST ROSES I stood beside the laughing, shining river, And shook the roses down upon its breast,-- I watched them whirl away with gleam and quiver, As 't were a merry jest. I stood beside the silent, sombre river, As creepingly the tide came from the sea, I watched for my fair roses, but ah! never Did they come back to me. DE NAME OF OLE VIRGINIA SONG De old place on de Ches'peake Bay Is in my heart to-night-- I hopes to git back d'yar some day, An' hongers for de sight. Dee come an' tole me I was free, An' all my work was done; I left dem whar was good to me, An' now I 'se all alone. De name of ole Virginia Is sweet as rain in drouf-- Oh! Master, say, has you been dy'ar? Hit 's way down in de Souf. De grass dat grows 'pon top de hill De ones I love does hide, I pray de Lord to spyah me still To sleep dyar by dee side. De ole plantation 's sole an' all, But sometime dee will come, An' I will hear Brer Gabrull call, To fetch de ole man home. De name ob ole Virginia Is sweet as rain in drouf-- Oh! Master, say, has you been dy'ar? Hit 's way down in de Souf. THE DANCER FROM ONE WHO KNOWS ONE OF THE MUSES You say the gods and muses all From earth now banished be? Will you believe that yester-eve I saw Terpsichore? Her robe of snow and gossamer Enclad a form most neat; Such sandals green were never seen As shod her twinkling feet. Her every step was melody, Her every motion grace, That one might prize a thousand eyes To note both form and face. The motes that dance in sunny beams Tripped never in such wise; This lovely sprite danced in the light That beamed from her own eyes. A man's head once was danced away-- You know how it befell? My dainty fay danced yesterday Men's hearts away as well. What 's that? 'Twas but a graceful girl That took the hearts for pelf? Nay, I was there, and 't was, I swear, Terpsichore herself. THE APRIL-FACE AN OLD IDYL OF A RICHMOND STREET-CAR All up the street at a stately pace The maiden passed with her April-face, And the roses I 'd paid for, on her breast Were white as the eggs in a partridge-nest, While behind her--driver upon his stool-- Tinkled the bell of the street-car mule. "Going to walk up the street?" I said; She graciously bowed her beautiful head. "Then I 'll walk, too; 't is a lovely day."-- Thus I opened the ball in my usual way. "Do you see the car anywhere?" inquired The April-face, "I 'm a trifle tired." I urged a walk; 'twas a useless suit! She wildly waved her parachute; The stub-tailed mule stopped quick enow; I handed her in with a stately bow; And the bell rang out with a jangled quirk, As the stub-tailed mule went off with a jerk. Three men as she entered solemnly rose, And quietly trampled their neighbors' toes; A dudish masher left his place, And edged near the girl with the April-face, Who sat on the side you 'd call "the lee," (With the same sweet smile she 'd sat on me). The day it was lovely; mild the air; The sky, like the maiden's face, was fair; The car was full, and a trifle stale (Attached to the mule with the stubbly tail); Yet the maiden preferred the seat she hired, To the stroll with me; for I made her tired. And now when the maiden walks the street With another's flowers, and smile so sweet, _I_ wave to the driver upon his stool, And stop the stub-tailed street-car mule, While I purchase a seat with half my pelf; For it makes me a trifle tired myself. COME BACK TO US, DAVIE So, Davie, you 're gaeing to tak yo' a wife To halve a' yo' sorrows, an' sweeten yo' life; An' Davie, my laddie, I wish you enow Of joy and content on your shiny auld pow. She 's feat and she 's brightsome, I ken, as the day When sinshine is whispering its luve to the May; Her cheeks are like blossoms, her mouth is a rose, And her teeth are the pearlies its petals enclose. Of her voice, her ain music, I dinna' say mair, Than that 'tis a strain might a bogle ensnare, And her een they are stars beaming forth a bright flame To cheer a puir wanderer and lead him safe hame. Yes, Davie, ye villain, ye 're sleekit and slee, Ye 've lift the door sneck and looped in afore me; Ye 've steek it ahint ye and lea'ed me alain, Like a dowie auld cat blinkin' by the hearth-stane. Yet Davie, belyve, should you mind in your joy The puir lonely carlies you lo'ed as a boy, The memories of canty auld days we have spent Will come like the harp-tones o'er still waters sent. Then come to me, Davie, auld days we 'll renew; We 'll heap the bit-ingle and bouse the auld brew; We 'll smoke the auld pipe, till we freshen your life, And send you back young as a boy to your wife. THE WITCH Celia, before her mirror bends, Inquiring how to please her friends. The mystery is solved apace: The mirror but reflects her grace. Her mirror Celia now defies, She sees herself in all men's eyes. Celia 's a witch, and hath such arts, Her image is in all men's hearts. HUMANITY A lover left his new-made bride And shot a dove with her mate at her side. ASPIRATION I have stood and watched the Eagle soar into the Sun, And envied him his swift light-cleaving pinion; And, though I may not soar, at least I may Lift up my feet above the encumbering clay. REALITY There be three things real in all the earth: Mother-love, Death, and a Little Child's mirth. LITTLE DOLLY DIMPLE Little Dolly Dimple, In her green wimple, Knows all the philosophers know: That fire is hot And ice is not, And that sun will melt the snow. She has heard that the moon is made of green cheese; But she 's not quite certain of this. She knows if you tickle your nose you will sneeze, And a hurt is made well by a kiss. I wish I were wise as Dolly is wise, For mysteries lie in her deep, clear eyes. A VALENTINE TO M. F. AND F. F. "_The Fourteenth Day of February fine: I choose you for my Valentine._" Thus ran the first of the sweet old rhymes On the Lovers'-Day in the old, sweet times: And so, I follow closely along To tell my love in the words of the song. "_Roses are red; violets are blue; Pinks are sweet, and so are you._" Roses are red in my sweetheart's cheeks, Deepening tints whenever one speaks; Violets are blue in the eyes of one; In the eyes of the other smileth the sun; But never were roses half so rare And never were pinks a tithing as fair And never have they in their garden-bed A hundredth part of the fragrance shed, As my two flowers in their sweet home-frame, Both flowers by nature and one by name. So as sure as the bloom grows on the vine I 'll choose them for my valentine: My sweet-heart one and my sweet-heart two, Both little sweet-hearts sweet and true-- To love and to cherish forever mine: To cherish and love as my valentine. DIALECT POEMS FROM "BEFO' DE WAR" UNCLE GABE'S WHITE FOLKS Sarvent, Marster! Yes, suh, dat 's me-- 'Ole Unc' Gabe' 's my name; I thankee, Marster; I 'm 'bout, yo' see. "An' de ole 'ooman?" She 's much de same: Po'ly an' c'plainin', thank de Lord! But de Marster's gwine ter come back from 'broad. "Fine ole place?" Yes, suh, 't is so; An' mighty fine people my white folks war-- But you ought ter 'a' seen it years ago, When de Marster an' de Mistis lived up dyah; When de niggers 'd stan' all roun' de do', Like grains o' corn on de cornhouse flo'. "Live' mons'ous high?" Yes, Marster, yes; D' cut 'n' onroyal 'n' gordly dash; Eat an' drink till you could n' res'. My folks war n' none o' yo' po'-white-trash; Nor, suh, dey was of high degree-- Dis heah nigger am quality! "Tell you 'bout 'em?" You mus' 'a' hearn 'Bout my ole white folks, sho'! I tell you, suh, dey was gre't an' stern; D' didn' have nuttin' at all to learn; D' knowed all dar was to know; Gol' over dey head an' onder dey feet; An' silber! dey sowed 't like folks sows wheat. "Use' ter be rich?" Dat warn' de wud! D' jes' wallowed an' roll' in wealf. Why, none o' my white folks ever stir'd Ter lif' a han' for d' self; De niggers use ter be stan'in' roun' Jes' d' same ez leaves when dey fus' fall down; De stable-stalls up heah at home Looked like teef in a fine-toof comb; De cattle was p'digious--I mus' tell de fac'! An' de hogs mecked de hill-sides look lite black; An' de flocks o' sheep was so gre't an' white Dey 'peared like clouds on a moonshine night. An' when my ole Mistis use' ter walk-- _Jes'_ ter her kerridge (dat was fur Ez ever she walked)--I tell you, sir, You could almos' heah her silk dress talk; Hit use' ter soun' like de mornin' breeze, When it wakes an' rustles de Gre't House trees. An' de Marster's face!--de Marster's face, Whenever de Marster got right pleased-- Well, I 'clar' ter Gord! 't would shine wid grace De same ez his countenance had been greased. Dat cellar, too, had de bes' o' wine, An' brandy, an' sperrits dat yo' could fine; An' ev'ything in dyah was stored, 'Skusin' de Glory of de Lord! "Warn' dyah a son?" Yes, suh, you knows _He_ 's de young Marster now; But we heah dat dey tooken he very clo'es Ter pay what ole Marster owe; He 's done been gone ten year, I s'pose. But he 's comin' back some day, of co'se; An my ole 'ooman is aluz 'pyard, An' meckin' de Blue-Room baid; An' ev'ry day dem sheets is ayard, An' will be tell she 's daid; An' dem styars she 'll scour, An' dat room she 'll ten', Ev'y blessed day dat de Lord do sen'! What say, Marster? Yo' say, you knows--? He 's young an' slender-like an' fyah; Better-lookin' 'n you, of co'se! Hi! you 's he? 'Fo' Gord! 't is him! 'T is de very voice an' eyes an' hyah, An' mouf an' smile, on'y yo' ain' so slim-- I wonder whah--whah is de ole 'ooman? Now let my soul Depart in peace For I behol' Dy glory, Lord!--I knowed you, chile-- I knowed you soon 's I see 'd your face! Whar has you been dis blessed while? Yo' 's "done come back an' buy de place? Oh, bless de Lord for all his grace! De ravins shell hunger, an' shell not lack De Marster, de young Marster is done come back! LITTLE JACK[1] [1] In memory of John Dalmey, of Richmond, Virginia: a man faithful to all trusts. Yes, suh. 'T was jes' 'bout sundown Dad went--two months ago; I always used ter run down Dat time, bec'us', you know, I wudden like ter had him die, An' no one nigh. You see, we cudden git him Ter come 'way off dat lan'-- 'E said New House did n' fit him, No mo' 'n new shoes did; an' Gord mout miss him at Jedgment day, Ef he moved 'way. "How ole?" Ef we all wondered How ole he was, he 'd frown An' say he was "a hundred an-- Ole Miss done sot it down, An' she could tell--'t was fo' or five-- Ef she was live." Well, when, as I was sayin', Dat night I come on down, I see he bench was layin' Flat-sided on de groun'; An' I kinder hurried to'ds de do'-- Quick-like, you know. Inside I see him layin' Back, quiet, on de bed; An' I heahed him kep on sayin': "Dat 's what ole Marster said; An' Marster warn' gwine tell me lie, He 'll come by-m'-by." I axed how he was gettin'. "Nigh ter de furrow's een'," He said; "dis ebenin', settin' Outside de do', I seen De thirteen curlews come in line, An' knowed de sign. "You know, ole Marster tole me He 'd come for me 'fo' long; 'Fo' you was born, he sole me-- But den he pined so strong He come right arter Little Jack, An' buyed him back. "I went back ter de kerrige An' tuk dem reins ag'in. I druv him ter his marriage; An', nigger, 't was a sin Ter see de high an' mighty way I looked dat day! "Dat coat had nary button 'Skusin' it was ob gole; My hat--but dat warn't nuttin'! 'T was noble ter behole De way dem hosses pawed de yar, Wid me up dyar. "Now all 's w'ared out befo' me!-- Marster, an' coat, an' all; Me only lef--you know me!-- Cheat wheat 's de lars' ter fall: De rank grain ben's wid its own weight, De light stan's straight. "But heah! Ole Marster 's waitin'-- So I mus' tell you: raise De jice dyar; 'neaf de platin'-- De sweat o' many days Is in dat stockin'--toil an' pain In sun an' rain. "I worked ter save dem figgers Ter buy you; but de Lord He sot free all de niggers, Same as white-folks, 'fo' Gord! Free as de crows! Free as de stars! Free as ole hyars! "Now, chile, you teck dat money, Git on young Marster's track, An' pay it ter him, honey; An' tell him Little Jack Worked forty year, dis Chris'mus come, Ter save dat sum; "An' dat 't was for ole Marster, To buy your time f'om him; But dat de war come farster, An' squandered stock an' lim'-- Say you kin work an' don't need none, An' he carn't, son. "He ain' been use ter diggin' His livin' out de dirt; He carn't drink out a piggin, Like you; an' it 'ud hurt Ole Marster's pride, an' make him sw'ar, In glory dyar!" Den all his strength seemed fallin'; He shet his eyes awhile, An' den said: "Heish! he 's callin'! Dyar he! Now watch him smile! Yes, suh-- You niggers jes' stan' back! Marster, here 's Jack!" ASHCAKE Well, yes, suh, dat am a comical name It are so, an' for a fac'-- But I knowed one, down in Ferginyer, Could 'a' toted dat on its back. "What was it?" I 'm gwine to tell you-- 'T was mons'us long ago: 'T was, "Ashcake," suh; an' all on us Use' ter call 'im jes', "Ashcake," so. You see, suh, my ole Marster, he Was a pow'ful wealfy man, Wid mo' plantations dan hyahs on you haid-- Gre't acres o' low-groun' lan': Jeems River bottoms, dat used ter stall A fo'-hoss plough, no time; An' he 'd knock' you down ef you jes' had dyared Ter study 'bout guano 'n' lime. De corn used ter stan' in de row dat thick You jes' could follow de balk; An' rank! well I 'clar' ter de king, Ise seed Five 'coons up a single stalk! He owned mo' niggers 'n arr' a man About dyar, black an' bright; He owned so many, b'fo' de Lord, He did n' know all by sight! Well, suh, one evelin', long to'ds dusk, I seen de Marster stan' An' watch a yaller boy pass de gate Wid a ashcake in his han'. He never had no mammy at all-- Leastways, she was dead by dat-- An' de cook an' de hands about on de place Used ter see dat de boy kep' fat. Well, he trotted along down de parf dat night, An' de Marster he seen him go, An' hollered, "Say, boy--say, what 's yer name?" "A--ashcake, suh," says Joe. It 'peared ter tickle de Marster much, An' he called him up to de do'. "Well, dat is a curisome name," says he; "But I guess it suits you, sho'." "Whose son are you?" de Marster axed. "Young Jane's," says Joe; "she 's daid." A sperrit cudden 'a' growed mo' pale, An', "By Gord!" I heerd him said. He tuk de child 'long in de house, Jes' 'count o' dat ar whim; An', dat-time-out, you nuver see Sich sto' as he sot by him. An' Ashcake swung his cradle, too, As clean as ever you see; An' stuck as close ter ole Marster's heel As de shader sticks to de tree. 'Twel one dark night, when de river was out, De Marster an' Ashcake Joe Was comin' home an' de skiff upsot, An' bofe wo'd 'a' drowned, sho', Excusin' dat Ashcake cotch'd ole Marst'r An' gin him holt o' de boat, An' saved him so; but 't was mo'n a week B'fo' his body comed afloat. An' de Marster buried dat nigger, suh, In de white-folks' graveyard, sho! An' he writ 'pon a white-folks' tombstone, "Ashcake"--jes' "Ashcake" so. An' de Marster he grieved so 'bouten dat thing, It warn' long, suh, befo' he died; An' he 's sleep, 'way down in Perginyer, Not fur from young Ashcake's side. ZEKYL'S INFIDELITY Mistis, I r'al'y wish you 'd hole A little conversation Wid my old Zekyl 'bout his soul. Dat nigger's sitiwation Is mons'us serious, 'deed 'n' 't is, 'Skusin' he change dat co'se o' his. Dat evil sinner 's sot he face Ginst ev'y wud I know; Br'er Gabrul say, he 's fell from grace, An' Hell is got him sho'! He don' believe in sperits, 'Skusin' 't is out a jug! Say 'tain' got no mo' merits Den a ole half-cured lug; 'N' dat white cat I see right late, One evelin' nigh de grave-yard gate, Warn't nuttin' sep some ole cat whar Wuz sot on suppin' off old hyah. He 'oont allow a rooster By crowin' in folks' do', Kin bring death dyah; and useter Say, he wish mine would crow. An' he even say, a hin mout try, Sep woman-folks would git so spry, An' want to stick deeselves up den, An' try to crow over de men. 'E say 't ain' no good in preachin'; Dat niggers is sich fools-- Don' know no mo' 'bout teachin' 'N white-folks does 'bout mules; An' when br'er Gabrul's hollered tell You mos' kin see right into Hell, An' rambled Scriptures fit to bus', Dat hard-mouf nigger 's wus an' wus. 'E say quality (dis is mainer 'N all Ise told you yit)-- Says 'tain' no better 'n 'arf-strainer; An' dat _his_ master 'll git Good place in Heaven--po'-white-folks, mark!-- As y' all whar come right out de ark; An' dat--now jes' heah dis!--dat he, A po'-white-folks' nigger 's good as me! He 's gwine straight to de deble! An' sarve him jes' right, too! He 's a outdacious rebel, Arter all Ise done do!-- Ise sweat an' arguified an' blowed Over dat black nigger mo' 'N would 'a' teck a c'nal-boat load Over to Canyan sho'! Ise tried _refection_--'t warn' no whar! Ise wrastled wid de Lord in pra'r; Ise quoiled tell I wuz mos daid; Ise th'owed de spider at his haid-- But he ole haid 't wuz so thick th'oo Hit bus' my skillit spang in two. You kin dye black hyah an' meek it light; You kin tu'n de Ethiope's spots to white; You mout grow two or three cubics bigger-- But you carn't onchange a po'-white-folks' nigger. When you 's dwellin' on golden harps an' chunes, A po-white-foiks' nigger's thinkin' bout coons; An' when you 's snifflin' de heaven'y blossoms, A po'-white-folks' nigger 's studyin' 'bout possums. MARSE PHIL Yes, yes, you is Marse Phil's son; you favor 'm might'ly, too. We wuz like brothers, we wuz, me an' him. You tried to fool d' ole nigger, but, Marster, 'twouldn' do; Not do yo' is done growed so tall an' slim. Hi! Lord! Ise knowed yo', honey, sence long befo' yo' born-- I mean, Ise knowed de _family_ dat long; An' dees been _white_ folks, Marster--dee han 's white ez young corn-- An', ef dee want to, couldn' do no wrong. You' gran'pa bought my mammy at Gen'l Nelson's sale, An' Deely she come out de same estate; An' blood is jes' like pra'r is--hit tain' gwine nuver fail; Hit 's sutney gwine to come out, soon or late. When I wuz born, yo' gran'pa gi' me to young Marse Phil, To be his body-servant--like, you know; An' we growed up together like two stalks in a hill-- Bofe tarslin' an' den shootin' in de row. Marse Phil wuz born in harves', an' I dat Christmas come; My mammy nussed bofe on we de same time; No matter what one got, suh, de oder gwine git some-- We wuz two fibe-cent pieces in one dime. We cotch ole hyahs together, an' possums, him an' me; We fished dat mill-pon' over, night an' day; Rid horses to de water; treed coons up de same tree; An' when you see one, turr warn' fur away. When Marse Phil went to College, 't wuz, "Sam--Sam 's got to go." Ole Marster said, "Dat boy 's a fool 'bout Sam." Ole Mistis jes' said, "Dear, Phil wants him, an', you know--" Dat "_Dear_"--hit used to soothe him like a lamb. So we all went to College---'way down to Williamsburg-- But 't warn' much l'arnin out o' books we got; Dem urrs warn' no mo' to him 'n a ole wormy lug; Yes, suh, we wuz de ve'y top-de-pot. An' ef he didn' study dem Latins an' sich things, He wuz de popularetis all de while De ladies use' to call him, "De angel widout wings"; An' when he come, I lay dee use' to smile. Yo' see, he wuz ole Marster's only chile; an' den, He had a body-servant--at he will; An' wid dat big plantation; dee 'd all like to be brides; Dat is ef dee could have de groom, Marse Phil. 'T wuz dyah he met young Mistis--she wuz yo' ma, of co'se! I disremembers now what mont' it wuz: One night, he comes, an' seys he, "Sam, I needs new clo'es"; An' seys I, "Marse Phil, yes, suh, so yo' does." Well, suh, he made de tailor meek ev'y thing bran' new; He would n' w'ar one stitch he had on han'-- Jes' throwed 'em in de chip box, an' seys, "Sam, dem 's fur you." Marse Phil, I tell yo', wuz a gentleman. So Marse Phil co'tes de Mistis, an' Sam he co'tes de maid-- We always sot our traps upon one parf; An' when we tole ole Marster we bofe wuz gwine, he seyd, "All right, we 'll have to kill de fatted calf." An' dat wuz what dee did, suh--de Prodigal wuz home; Dee put de ring an' robe upon yo' ma. Den you wuz born, young Marster, an' den de storm hit come; An' den de darkness settled from afar. De storm hit comed an' wrenchted de branches from de tree-- De war--you' pa--he 's sleep dyah on de hill; An' do I know, young Marster, de war hit sot us free? I seys, "Dat 's so; but tell me whar 's Marse Phil?" "A dollar!"--thankee, Marster, you sutney is his son; You is his spitt an' image, I declar'! What sey, young Marster? Yes, suh: you sey, "It 's _five_--not one--" Yo' favors, honey, bofe yo' pa an' ma! ONE MOURNER (FOR IRWIN RUSSELL, WHO DIED IN NEW ORLEANS IN GREAT DESTITUTION, ON CHRISTMAS EVE, 1879) Well, well, I declar'! I is sorry. He 's 'ceasted, yo' say, Marse Joe?-- Dat gent'man down in New Orleans, Whar writ 'bout'n niggers so, An' tole, in all dat poetry You read some time lars' year, 'Bout niggers, an' 'coons, an' 'possums, An' ole times, an' mules an' gear? Jes' name dat ag'in, seh, please, seh; _Destricution_ 's de word yo' said? Dat signifies he wuz mons'us po', Yo' say?--want meat and bread? Hit mout: I never knowed him Or hearn on him, 'sep' when you Read me dem valentines o' his'n; But I lay you, dis, seh 's, true-- Dat he wuz a rael gent'man, Bright fire dat burns, not smokes; An' ef he did die _destricute_, He war n't no po'-white-folks. Dat gent'man knowed 'bout niggers, Heah me! when niggers wuz Ez good ez white-folks mos', seh, I knows dat thing, I does. An' he could 'a' tetched his hat, seh, To me jes' de same ez you; An' folks gwine to see what a gent'man He wuz, an' I wuz, too. He could n' 'a' talked so natchal 'Bout niggers in sorrow an' joy, Widdouten he had a black mammy To sing to him 'long ez a boy. An' I think, when he tole 'bout black-folks An' ole-times, an' all so sweet, Some nigh him mout 'a' acted de ravins An' gin him a mouf-ful to eat, An' not let him starve at Christmas, When things ain't sca'ce nowhar-- Ef he hed been a dog, young Marster, I 'd 'a feeded him den, I 'clar'! But wait! Maybe Gord, when thinkin' How po' he 'd been himself, Cotch sight dat gent'man scufflin', An' 'lowed fur to see what wealf Hit mout be de bes' to gin him, Ez a Christmas-gif', yo' know; So he jes' took him up to heaven, Whar he earn' be po' no mo'. An' jes' call his name ag'in, seh. How?--IRWIN RUSSELL--so? I 'se gwine fur to tell it to Nancy, So ef I 'd furgit, she 'd know. An' I hopes dey 'll lay him to sleep, seh, Somewhar, whar de birds will sing About him de live-long day, seh, An' de flowers will bloom in Spring. An' I wish, young Marster, you 'd meek out To write down to whar you said, An' sey, dyar 's a nigger in Richmond Whar 's sorry Marse Irwin 's dead. 
34027	----	file was produced from images generously made available by The Kentuckiana Digital Library.) THE CUP OF COMUS by Madison Cawein THE CUP OF COMUS FACT AND FANCY BY MADISON CAWEIN MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS [Illustration] THE CAMEO PRESS NEW YORK 1915 Copyright, 1915, by ROSE DE VAUX-ROYER * * * * * _This edition is limited to Five Hundred copies of which this is Number_ * * * * * For permission to reprint most of the poems in this volume thanks are made to the various magazines and periodicals in which they first appeared. VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK TO MY GOOD FRIEND W. T. H. HOWE Friend, for the sake of loves we hold in common, The love of books, of paintings, rhyme and fiction; And for the sake of that divine affliction, The love of art, passing the love of woman;-- By which all life's made nobler, superhuman, Lifting the soul above, and, without friction Of Time, that puts failure in his prediction,-- Works to some end through hearts that dreams illumine: To you I pour this Cup of Dreams--a striver, And dreamer too in this sad world,--unwitting Of that you do, the help that still assureth,-- Lifts up the heart, struck down by that dark driver, Despair, who, on Life's pack-horse--effort--sitting, Rides down Ambition through whom Art endureth. THRENODY IN MAY (In memory of Madison Cawein.) Again the earth, miraculous with May, Unfolds its vernal arras. Yesteryear We strolled together 'neath the greening trees, And heard the robin tune its flute note clear, And watched above the white cloud squadrons veer. And saw their shifting shadows drift away Adown the Hudson, as ships seek the seas. The scene is still the same. The violet Unlids its virgin eye; its amber ore The dandelion shows, and yet, and yet, He comes no more, no more! He of the open and the generous heart, The soul that sensed all flowerful loveliness, The nature as the nature of a child; Who found some rapture in the wind's caress. Beauty in humble weed and mint and cress. And sang, with his incomparable art, The magic wonder of the wood and wild. The little people of the reeds and grass Murmur their blithe, companionable lore, The rills renew their minstrelsy. Alas, He comes no more, no more! And yet it seems as though he needs must come, Albeit he has cast off mortality, Such was his passion for the bourgeoning time, Such to his spirit was the ecstasy The hills and valleys chorus when set free, No music mute, no lyric instinct dumb, But keyed to utterance of immortal rhyme. Ah, haply in some other fairer spring He sees bright tides sweep over slope and shore, But here how vain is ell my visioning! He comes no more, no more! Poet and friend, wherever you may fare Enwrapt in dreams, I love to think of you Wandering amid the meads of asphodel, Holding high converse with the exalted few Who sought and found below the elusive clue To beauty, and in that diviner air Bowing in worship still to its sweet spell. Why sorrow, then, though fate unkindly lays Upon our questioning hearts this burden sore, And though through all our length of hastening days He comes no more, no more! CLINTON SCOLLARD. FOREWORD It is with a sense of sadness and regret that this book, written by one who universally has endeared himself to lovers of nature through his revelation of her mysteries, must be prefaced as containing the last songs of this exquisite singer of the South. When the final word is spoken it is fitting that it be by one of authority. William Dean Howells, in the pages of _The North American Review_, offers this tribute: "I had read his poetry and loved it from the beginning, and in each successive expression of it, I had delighted in its expanding and maturing beauty. Between the earliest and the latest thing there may have been a hundred different things in the swan-like life of a singer ... but we take the latest as if it summed him up in motive and range and tendency.... Not one of his lovely landscapes but thrilled with a human presence penetrating to it from his most sensitive and subtle spirit until it was all but painfully alive with memories, with regrets, with longings, with hopes, with all that from time to time mutably constitutes us men and women, and yet keeps us children. He has the gift, in a measure, that I do not think surpassed in any poet, of touching some commonest thing in nature, and making it live, from the manifold associations in which we have our being, and glow thereafter with an indistinguishable beauty.... No other poet can outword this poet when it comes to choosing some epithet fresh from the earth and air, and with the morning sun and light upon it, for an emotion or an experience in which the race renews its youth from generation to generation.... His touch leaves everything that was dull to the sense before glowing in the light of joyful recognition." With a tone of conviction Edwin Markham says: "No other poet of the later American choir offers so large a collection of verse as Mr. Cawein does, and no other American minstrel has so unvarying a devotion to nature. And none other, perhaps, has so keen an eye, so sure a word for nature's magic of mood, her trick of color, her change of form. He is not so wild and far-flying as Bliss Carmen, nor so large and elemental as Joaquin Miller; but he is often as delicate and eerie as Aldrich, and sometimes as warm and rich as Keats in the April affluence of 'Endymion.'" "Mr. Cawein's landscape is not the sea, nor the desert, nor the mountain, but the lovely inland levels of his Kentucky. His work is almost wholly objective. A dash more of human import mixed into the beauty and melody of his poetry would rank him with Lowell and the other great lyrists of our elder choir." Some of the new poems portray a high moral passion, potent with the belief of life beyond, where his delicacy of vision penetrates the shadow and seems to have sighted the shore that has given his soul greeting "somewhere yonder in a world uncharted." Clear, sure, and strong is the vocal loveliness and inevitable word with which this poet endears the little forms of life in the field of Faery. The "Song of Songs" (1913) could be characterized as prophecy, by one in whom seemed inherent the fatal instinct of the predestined. He sought for "Song to lead her way above the crags of wrong," and he gave "Such music as a bird Gives of its soul when dying Unconscious if it's heard!" And so he went, singing, to his "Islands of Infinity." ROSE DE VAUX-ROYER. * * * * * This edition is called the Friendship Edition, as it carries in its significance a testimonial of love and admiration for the author, extended by those who wish his last collected poems preserved for futurity. Acknowledgment is due W. D. Howells, _The North American Review_, The Macmillan Co., Clinton Scollard and Edwin Markham for their courtesy. BROKEN MUSIC (_IN MEMORIAM_) _There it lies broken, as a shard,-- What breathed sweet music yesterday; The source, all mute, has passed away With its masked meanings still unmarred._ _But melody will never cease! Above the vast cerulean sea Of heaven, created harmony Rings and re-echoes its release!_ _So, thin dumb instrument that lies All powerless,--[with spirit flown, Beyond the veil of the Unknown To chant its love-hymned litanies,--]_ _Though it may thrill us here no more With cadenced strain,--in other spheres Will rise above the vanquished years And breathe its music as before!_ [_Louisville Times_] _Written December 7th, 1914._ _Rose de Vaux-Royer._ _The spirit of Madison Cawein passed at midnight from this world of intimate beauty "To stand a handsbreadth nearer Heaven and what is God!_" MADISON CAWEIN (1865-1914) The wind makes moan, the water runneth chill; I hear the nymphs go crying through the brake; And roaming mournfully from hill to hill The maenads all are silent for his sake! He loved thy pipe, O wreathed and piping Pan! So play'st thou sadly, lone within thine hollow; He was thy blood, if ever mortal man, Therefore thou weepest--even thou, Apollo! But O, the grieving of the Little Things, Above the pipe and lyre, throughout the woods! The beating of a thousand airy wings, The cry of all the fragile multitudes! The moth flits desolate, the tree-toad calls, Telling the sorrow of the elf and fay; The cricket, little harper of the walls, Puts up his harp--hath quite forgot to play! And risen on these winter paths anew, The wilding blossoms make a tender sound; The purple weed, the morning-glory blue, And all the timid darlings of the ground! Here, here the pain is sharpest! For he walked As one of these--and they knew naught of fear, But told him daily happenings and talked Their lovely secrets in his list'ning ear! Yet we do bid them grieve, and tell their grief; Else were they thankless, else were all untrue; O wind and stream, O bee and bird and leaf, Mourn for your poet, with a long adieu! MARGARET STEELE ANDERSON. _Louisville Post_, December 12th, 1914. CONTENTS PAGE THE CUP OF COMUS 11 THE INTRUDER 13 A GHOST OF YESTERDAY 15 LORDS OF THE VISIONARY EYE 16 THE CREAKING DOOR 18 AT THE END OF THE ROAD 20 THE TROUBADOUR OF TREBIZEND 21 GHOSTS 23 THE LONELY LAND 24 THE WIND WITCH 27 OLD GHOSTS 28 THE NAME ON THE TREE 29 THE HAUNTED GARDEN 31 THE CLOSED DOOR 33 THE LONG ROOM 34 IN PEARL AND GOLD 35 MOON FAIRIES 37 HAEC OLIM MEMINISSE 40 THE MAGIC PURSE 41 THE CHILD AT THE GATE 42 THE LOST DREAM 44 WITCHCRAFT 45 TRANSPOSED SEASONS 46 THE OLD DREAMER 47 A LAST WORD 49 THE SHADOW 50 ON THE ROAD 52 RECONCILIATION 53 PORTENTS 55 THE IRON CRAGS 57 THE IRON CROSS 58 THE WANDERER 60 THE END OF SUMMER 62 THE LUST OF THE WORLD 63 CHANT BEFORE BATTLE 64 NEARING CHRISTMAS 65 A BELGIAN CHRISTMAS 67 THE FESTIVAL OF THE AISNE 69 THE CRY OF EARTH 70 CHILD AND FATHER 71 THE RISING OF THE MOON 72 WHERE THE BATTLE PASSED 73 THE IRON AGE 74 THE BATTLE 75 ON RE-READING CERTAIN GERMAN POETS 76 ON OPENING AN OLD SCHOOL VOLUME OF HORACE 77 LAUS DEO 78 THE NEW YORK SKYSCRAPER 79 ROBERT BROWNING 80 RILEY 81 DON QUIXOTE 82 THE WOMAN 83 THE SONG OF SONGS 84 OGLETHORPE 90 A POET'S EPITAPH 96 _THE CUP OF COMUS_ PROEM The Nights of song and story, With breath of frost and rain, Whose locks are wild and hoary, Whose fingers tap the pane With leaves, are come again. The Nights of old October, That hug the hearth and tell, To child and grandsire sober, Tales of what long befell Of witch and warlock spell. Nights, that, like gnome and faery, Go, lost in mist and moon. And speak in legendary Thoughts or a mystic rune, Much like the owlet's croon. Or whirling on like witches, Amid the brush and broom, Call from the Earth its riches, Of leaves and wild perfume, And strew them through the gloom. Till death, in all his starkness, Assumes a form of fear, And somewhere in the darkness Seems slowly drawing near In raiment torn and sere. And with him comes November, Who drips outside the door, And wails what men remember Of things believed no more, Of superstitious lore. Old tales of elf and dæmon, Of Kobold and of Troll, And of the goblin woman Who robs man of his soul To make her own soul whole. And all such tales, that glamoured The child-heart once with fright, That aged lips have stammered For many a child's delight, Shall speak again to-night. To-night, of moonlight minted, That is a cup divine, Whence Death, all opal-tinted,-- Wreathed red with leaf and vine,-- Shall drink a magic wine. A wonder-cup of Comus, That with enchantment streams, In which the heart of Momus,-- That, moon-like, glooms and gleams, Is drowned with all its dreams. _THE INTRUDER_ There is a smell of roses in the room Tea-roses, dead of bloom; An invalid, she sits there in the gloom, And contemplates her doom. The pattern of the paper, and the grain. Of carpet, with its stain, Have stamped themselves, like fever, on her brain, And grown a part of pain. It has been long, so long, since that one died, Or sat there by her side; She felt so lonely, lost, she would have cried,-- But all her tears were dried. A knock came on the door: she hardly heard; And then--a whispered word, And someone entered; at which, like a bird, Her caged heart cried and stirred. And then--she heard a voice; she was not wrong: _His_ voice, alive and strong: She listened, while the silence filled with song-- Oh, she had waited long! She dared not turn to see; she dared not look; But slowly closed her book, And waited for his kiss; could scarcely brook The weary time he took. There was no one remembered her--no one! But him, beneath the sun,-- _Who_ then had entered? entered but to shun Her whose long work was done. She raised her eyes, and--no one!--Yet she felt A presence near, that smelt Like faded roses; and that seemed to melt Into her soul that knelt. She could not see, but _knew_ that he was there, Smoothing her hands and hair; Filling with scents of roses all the air, Standing beside her chair. * * * * And so they found her, sitting quietly, Her book upon her knee, Staring before her, as if she could see-- What was it--Death? or he? _A GHOST OF YESTERDAY_ There is a house beside a way, Where dwells a ghost of Yesterday: The old face of a beauty, faded, Looks from its garden: and the shaded Long walks of locust-trees, that seem Forevermore to sigh and dream, Keep whispering low a word that's true, Of shapes that haunt its avenue, Clad as in days of belle and beau, Who come and go Around its ancient portico. At first, in stock and beaver-hat, With flitting of the moth and bat, An old man, leaning on a cane, Comes slowly down the locust lane; Looks at the house; then, groping, goes Into the garden where the rose Still keeps sweet tryst with moth and moon; And, humming to himself a tune, --"Lorena" or "Ben Bolt" we'll say,-- Waits, bent and gray, For some fair ghost of Yesterday. The Yesterday that holds his all-- More real to him than is the wall Of mossy stone near which he stands, Still reaching out for her his hands-- For her, the girl, who waits him there, A lace-gowned phantom, dark of hair, Whose loveliness still keeps those walks, And with whose Memory he talks; Upon his heart her happy head,-- So it is said,-- The girl, now half a century dead. _LORDS OF THE VISIONARY EYE_ I came upon a pool that shone, Clear, emerald-like, among the hills, That seemed old wizards round a stone Of magic that a vision thrills. And as I leaned and looked, it seemed Vague shadows gathered there and here-- A dream, perhaps the water dreamed Of some wild past, some long-dead year.... A temple of a race unblessed Rose huge within a hollow land, Where, on an altar, bare of breast, One lay, a man, bound foot and hand. A priest, who served some hideous god, Stood near him on the altar stair, Clothed on with gold; and at his nod A multitude seemed gathered there. I saw a sword descend; and then The priest before the altar turned; He was not formed like mortal man, But like a beast whose eyeballs burned. Amorphous, strangely old, he glared Above the victim he had slain, Who lay with bleeding bosom bared, From which dripped slow a crimson rain. Then turned to me a face of stone And mocked above the murdered dead, That fixed its cold eyes on his own And cursed him with a look of dread. And then, it seemed, I knew the place, And how this sacrifice befell: I knew the god, the priest's wild face, I knew the dead man--knew him well. And as I stooped again to look, I heard the dark hills sigh and laugh, And in the pool the water shook As if one stirred it with a staff. And all was still again and clear: The pool lay crystal as before, Temple and priest were gone; the mere Had closed again its magic door. A face was there; it seemed to shine As round it died the sunset's flame-- The victim's face?--or was it mine?-- They were to me the very same. And yet, and yet--could this thing be?-- And in my soul I seemed to know, At once, this was a memory Of some past life, lived long ago. Recorded by some secret sense, In forms that we as dreams retain; Some moment, as experience, Projects in pictures on the brain. _THE CREAKING DOOR_ Come in, old Ghost of all that used to be!-- You find me old, And love grown cold, And fortune fled to younger company: Departed, as the glory of the day, With friends!--And you, it seems, have come to stay.-- 'T is time to pray. Come; sit with me, here at Life's creaking door, All comfortless.-- Think, nay! then, guess, What was the one thing, eh? that made me poor?-- The love of beauty, that I could not bind? My dream of truth? or faith in humankind?-- But, never mind! All are departed now, with love and youth, Whose stay was brief; And left but grief And gray regret--two jades, who tell the truth;-- Whose children--memories of things to be, And things that failed,--within my heart, ah me! Cry constantly. None can turn time back, and no man delay Death when he knocks,-- What good are clocks, Or human hearts, to stay for us that day When at Life's creaking door we see his smile,-- Death's! at the door of this old House of Trial?-- Old Ghost, let's wait awhile. _AT THE END OF THE ROAD_ This is the truth as I see it, my dear, Out in the wind and the rain: They who have nothing have little to fear,-- Nothing to lose or to gain. Here by the road at the end o' the year, Let us sit down and drink o' our beer, Happy-Go-Lucky and her cavalier, Out in the wind and the rain. Now we are old, oh isn't it fine Out in the wind and the rain? Now we have nothing why snivel and whine?-- What would it bring us again?-- When I was young I took you like wine, Held you and kissed you and thought you divine-- Happy-Go-Lucky, the habit's still mine, Out in the wind and the rain. Oh, my old Heart, what a life we have led, Out in the wind and the rain! How we have drunken and how we have fed! Nothing to lose or to gain!-- Cover the fire now; get we to bed. Long was the journey and far has it led: Come, let us sleep, lass, sleep like the dead, Out in the wind and the rain. _THE TROUBADOUR OF TREBIZEND_ Night, they say, is no man's friend: And at night he met his end In the woods of Trebizend. Hate crouched near him as he strode Through the blackness of the road, Where my Lord seemed some huge toad. Eyes of murder glared and burned At each bend of road he turned, And where wild the torrent churned. And with Death _we_ stood and stared From the bush as by he fared,-- But he never looked or cared. He went singing; and a rose Lay upon his heart's repose-- With what thought of her--who knows? He had done no other wrong Save to sing a simple song, "_I have loved you--loved you long_." And my lady smiled and sighed; Gave a rose and looked moist eyed, And forgot she was a bride. My sweet lady, Jehan de Grace, With the pale Madonna face, He had brought to his embrace. And my Lord saw: gave commands: I was of his bandit bands.-- Love should perish at our hands. Young the Knight was. He should sing Nevermore of love or spring, Or of any gentle thing. When he stole at midnight's hour, To my Lady's forest bower, We were hidden near the tower. In the woods of Trebizend There he met an evil end.-- Night, you know, is no man's friend. He has fought in fort and field; Borne for years a stainless shield, And in strength to none would yield. But we seized him unaware, Bound and hung him; stripped him bare, Left him to the wild boars there. Never has my Lady known.-- But she often sits alone, Weeping when my Lord is gone.... Night, they say, is no man's friend.-- In the woods of Trebizend There he met an evil end. Now my old Lord sleeps in peace, While my Lady--each one sees-- Waits, and keeps her memories. _GHOSTS_ Low, weed-climbed cliffs, o'er which at noon The sea-mists swoon: Wind-twisted pines, through which the crow Goes winging slow: Dim fields, the sower never sows, Or reaps or mows: And near the sea a ghostly house of stone Where all is old and lone. A garden, falling in decay, Where statues gray Peer, broken, out of tangled weed And thorny seed: Satyr and Nymph, that once made love By walk and grove: And, near a fountain, shattered, green with mold, A sundial, lichen-old. Like some sad life bereft, To musing left, The house stands: love and youth Both gone, in sooth: But still it sits and dreams: And round it seems Some memory of the past, still young and fair, Haunting each crumbling stair. And suddenly one dimly sees, Come through the trees, A woman, like a wild moss-rose: A man, who goes Softly: and by the dial They kiss a while: Then drowsily the mists blow round them, wan, And they, like ghosts, are gone. _THE LONELY LAND_ A river binds the lonely land, A river like a silver band, To crags and shores of yellow sand. It is a place where kildees cry, And endless marches eastward lie, Whereon looks down a ghostly sky. A house stands gray and all alone Upon a hill, as dim of tone, And lonely, as a lonely stone. There are no signs of life about: No barnyard bustle, cry and shout Of children who run laughing out. No crow of cocks, no low of cows, No sheep-bell tinkling under boughs Of beech, or song in garth or house. Only the curlew's mournful call, Circling the sky at evenfall, And loon lamenting over all. A garden, where the sunflower dies And lily on the pathway lies, Looks blindly at the blinder skies. And round the place a lone wind blows, As when the Autumn grieving goes, Tattered and dripping, to its close. And on decaying shrubs and vines The moon's thin crescent, dwindling shines, Caught in the claws of sombre pines. And then a pale girl, like a flower, Enters the garden: for an hour She waits beside a wild-rose bower. There is no other one around; No sound, except the cricket's sound And far-off baying of a hound. There is no fire or candle-light To flash its message through the night Of welcome from some casement bright. Only the moon, that thinly throws A shadow on the girl and rose, As to its setting slow it goes. And when 'tis gone, from shore and stream There steals a mist, that turns to dream That place where all things merely seem. And through the mist there goes a cry, Not of the earth nor of the sky, But of the years that have passed by. And with the cry there comes the rain, Whispering of all that was in vain At every door and window-pane. And she, who waits beside the rose, Hears, with her heart, a hoof that goes, Galloping afar to where none knows. And then she bows her head and weeps.... And suddenly a shadow sweeps Around, and in its darkening deeps. The house, the girl, the cliffs and stream Are gone.--And they, and all things seem But phantoms, merely, in a dream. _THE WIND WITCH_ The wind that met her in the park, Came hurrying to my side-- It ran to me, it leapt to me, And nowhere would abide. It whispered in my ear a word, So sweet a word, I swear, It smelt of honey and the kiss It'd stolen from her hair. Then shouted me the flowery way Whereon she walked with dreams, And bade me wait and watch her pass Among the glooms and gleams. It ran to meet her as she came And clasped her to its breast; It kissed her throat, her chin, her mouth, And laughed its merriest. Then to my side it leapt again, And took me by surprise: The kiss it'd stolen from her lips It blew into my eyes. Since then, it seems, I have grown blind To every face but hers: It haunts me sleeping or awake, And is become my curse. The spell, that kiss has laid on me, Shall hold my eyes the same, Until I give it back again To lips from which it came. _OLD GHOSTS_ Clove-spicy pinks and phlox that fill the sense With drowsy indolence; And in the evening skies Interior splendor, pregnant with surprise, As if in some new wise The full moon soon would rise. Hung with the crimson aigrets of its seeds The purple monkshood bleeds; The dewy crickets chirr, And everywhere are lights of lavender; And scents of musk and myrrh To guide the foot of her. She passes like a misty glimmer on To where the rose blooms wan,-- A twilight moth in flight,-- As in the west its streak of chrysolite The dusk erases quite, And ushers in the night. And now another shadow passes slow, With firefly light a-glow: The scent of a cigar, And two who kiss beneath the evening-star, Where, in a moonbeam bar, A whippoorwill cries afar. Again the tale is told, that has been told So often here of old: Ghosts of dead lovers they? Or memories only of some perished day?-- Old ghosts, no time shall lay, That haunt the place alway. _THE NAME ON THE TREE_ I saw a name carved on a tree--"Julia"; A simpler name there could not be--Julia: But seeing it I seemed to see A Devon garden,--pleasantly About a parsonage,--the bee Made drowsy-sweet; where rosemary And pink and phlox and peony Bowed down to one Whom Herrick made to bloom in Poetry. A moment there I saw her stand,--Julia; A gillyflower in her hand,--Julia: And then, kind-faced and big and bland, As raised by some magician's wand, Herrick himself passed by, sun-tanned, And smiling; and the quiet land Seemed to take on and understand A dream long dreamed, And for the lives of two some gladness planned. And then I seemed to hear a sigh,--"Julia!" And someone softly walking nigh,--Julia: The leaves shook; and a butterfly Trailed past; and through the sleepy sky A bird flew, crying strange its cry-- Then suddenly before my eye Two lovers strolled--They knew not why I looked amazed,-- But I had seen old ghosts of long dead loves go by. _THE HAUNTED GARDEN_ There a tattered marigold And dead asters manifold, Showed him where the garden old Of time bloomed: Briar and thistle overgrew Corners where the rose once blew, Where the phlox of every hue Lay entombed. Here a coreopsis flower Pushed its disc above a bower, Where once poured a starry shower, Bronze and gold: And a twisted hollyhock, And the remnant of a stock, Struggled up, 'mid burr and dock, Through the mold. Flower-pots, with mossy cloak, Strewed a place beneath an oak, Where the garden-bench lay broke By the tree: And he thought of _her_, who here Sat with him but yesteryear; Her, whose presence now seemed near Stealthily. And the garden seemed to look For her coming. Petals shook On the spot where, with her book, Oft she sat.-- Suddenly there blew a wind: And across the garden blind, Like a black thought in a mind, Stole a cat. Lean as hunger; like the shade Of a dream; a ghost unlaid; Through the weeds its way it made, Gaunt and old: Once 't was _hers_. He looked to see If _she_ followed to the tree.-- Then recalled how long since she Had been mold. _THE CLOSED DOOR_ Shut it out of the heart--this grief, O Love, with the years grown old and hoary! And let in joy that life is brief, And give God thanks for the end of the story. The bond of the flesh is transitory, And beauty goes with the lapse of years-- The brow's white rose and the hair's dark glory-- God be thanked for the severing shears! Over the past, Heart, waste no tears! Over the past, and all its madness, Its wine and wormwood, hopes and fears, That never were worth a moment's sadness. Here she lies who was part o' its gladness, Wife and mistress, and shared its woe, The good of life as well as its badness,-- Look on her face and see if you know. Is this the face?--yea, ask it slow!-- The hair, the form, that we used to cherish?-- Where is the glory of long-ago? The beauty we said would never perish.-- Like a dream we dream, or a thought we nourish, Nothing of earth immortal is: This is the end however we flourish-- All that is fair must come to this. _THE LONG ROOM_ He found the long room as it was of old, Glimmering with sunset's gold; That made the tapestries seem full of eyes Strange with a wild surmise: Glaring upon a Psyche where she shone Carven of stainless stone, Holding a crystal heart where many a sun Seemed starrily bound in one: And near her, grim in rigid metal, stood An old knight in a wood, Groping his way: the bony wreck, that was His steed, at weary pause. And over these a canvas--one mad mesh Of Chrysoprase tints of flesh And breasts--Bohemian cups, whose glory gleamed For one who, brutish, seemed A hideous Troll, unto whose lustful arms She yielded glad her charms. Then he remembered all _her_ shame; and knew The thing that he must do: These were but records of _his_ life: the whole Portrayed to him his soul.-- So, drawing forth the slim Bithynian phial, He drained it with a smile. And 'twixt the Knight and Psyche fell and died; The arras, evil-eyed, Glared grimly at him where all night he lay, And where a stealthy ray Pointed her to _him_--her, that nymph above, Who gave the Troll her love. _IN PEARL AND GOLD_ When pearl and gold, o'er deeps of musk, The moon curves, silvering the dusk,-- As in a garden, dreaming, A lily slips its dewy husk A firefly in its gleaming,-- I of my garden am a guest; My garden, that, in beauty dressed Of simple shrubs and oldtime flowers, Chats with me of the perished hours, When _she_ companioned me in life, Living remote from care and strife. It says to me: "How sad and slow The hours of daylight come and go, Until the Night walks here again With moon and starlight in her train, And she and I with perfumed words Of winds and waters, dreaming birds, And flowers and crickets and the moon, For hour on hour, in soul commune.--" And you, and you, Sit here and listen in the dew For her, the love, you used to know, Who often walked here, long ago, Long ago; The young, sweet love you used to know Long ago Whom oft I watched with violet eye, Or eye of dew, as she passed by: As she passed by. And I reply, with half a sigh:-- "You knew her too as well as I, That young sweet love of long-ago! That young sweet love, who walked here slow.-- Oh, speak no more of the days gone by, Dear days gone by, Lest I lay me down on your heart and die!" _MOON FAIRIES_ The moon, a circle of gold, O'er the crowded housetops rolled, And peeped in an attic, where, 'Mid sordid things and bare, A sick child lay and gazed At a road to the far-away, A road he followed, mazed, That grew from a moonbeam-ray, A road of light that led From the foot of his garret-bed Out of that room of hate, Where Poverty slept by his mate, Sickness--out of the street, Into a wonderland, Where a voice called, far and sweet, "Come, follow our Fairy band!" A purple shadow, sprinkled With golden star-dust, twinkled Suddenly into the room Out of the winter gloom: And it wore a face to him Of a dream he'd dreamed: a form Of Joy, whose face was dim, Yet bright with a magic charm. And the shadow seemed to trail, Sounds that were green and frail: Dew-dripples; notes that fell Like drops in a ferny dell; A whispered lisp and stir, Like winds among the leaves, Blent with a cricket-chirr, And coo of a dove that grieves. And the Elfin bore on its back A little faery pack Of forest scents: of loam And mossy sounds of foam; And of its contents breathed As might a clod of ground Feeling a bud unsheathed There in its womb profound. And the shadow smiled and gazed At the child; then softly raised Its arms and seemed to grow To a tree in the attic low: And from its glimmering hands Shook emerald seeds of dreams, From which grew fairy bands, Like firefly motes and gleams. The child had seen them before In his dreams of Fairy lore: The Elves, each with a light To guide his feet a-right, Out of this world to a world Where Magic built him towers, And Fable old, unfurled, flags like wonderful flowers. And the child, who knew this, smiled, And rose, a different child: No more he knew of pain, Or fear of heart and brain.-- At Poverty there that slept He never even glanced, But into the moon-road stept, And out of the garret danced. Out of the earthly gloom, Out of the sordid room, Out, on a moonbeam ray!-- Now at last to play There with comrades found! Children of the moon, There on faery ground, Where none would find him soon! _HAEC OLIM MEMINISSE_ Febrile perfumes as of faded roses In the old house speak of love to-day, Love long past; and where the soft day closes, Down the west gleams, golden-red, a ray. Pointing where departed splendor perished, And the path that night shall walk, and hang, On blue boughs of heaven, gold, long cherished-- Fruit Hesperian,--that the ancients sang. And to him, who sits there dreaming, musing, At the window in the twilight wan, Like old scent of roses interfusing, Comes a vision of a day that's gone. And he sees Youth, walking brave but dimly 'Mid the roses, in the afterglow; And beside him, like a star seen slimly, Love, who used to meet him long-ago. And again he seems to hear the flowers Whispering faintly of what no one knows-- Of the dreams they dreamed there for long hours, Youth and Love, between their hearts a rose. Youth is dead; and Love, oh, where departed! Like the last streak of the dying day, Somewhere yonder, in a world uncharted, Calling him, with memories, away. _THE MAGIC PURSE_ What is the gold of mortal-kind To that men find Deep in the poet's mind!-- That magic purse Of Dreams from which God builds His universe! That makes life rich With many a vision; Taking the soul from out its prison Of facts with the precision A wildflower dons When Spring comes knocking at the door Of Earth across the windy lawns; Calling to Joy to rise and dance before Her happy feet: Or with the beat And bright exactness of a star, Hanging its punctual point afar, When Night comes tripping over Heaven's floor, Leaving a gate ajar. That leads the Heart from all its aching Far above where day is breaking; Out of the doubts, the agonies, The strife and sin, to join with these-- Hope and Beauty and Joy that build Their golden walls Of sunset where, with spirits filled, A Presence calls, And points a land Where Love walks, silent; hand in hand With the Spirit of God, and leads Man right Out of the darkness into the light. _THE CHILD AT THE GATE_ The sunset was a sleepy gold, And stars were in the skies When down a weedy lane he strolled In vague and thoughtless wise. And then he saw it, near a wood, An old house, gabled brown, Like some old woman, in a hood, Looking toward the town. A child stood at its broken gate, Singing a childish song, And weeping softly as if Fate Had done her child's heart wrong. He spoke to her:--"Now tell me, dear, Why do you sing and weep?"-- But she--she did not seem to hear, But stared as if asleep. Then suddenly she turned and fled As if with soul of fear. He followed; but the house looked dead, And empty many a year. The light was wan: the dying day Grew ghostly suddenly: And from the house he turned away, Wrapped in its mystery. * * * * They told him no one dwelt there now: It was a haunted place.-- And then it came to him, somehow, The memory of a face. That child's--like hers, whose name was Joy-- For whom his heart was fain: The face of her whom, when a boy, He played with in that lane. _THE LOST DREAM_ The black night showed its hungry teeth, And gnawed with sleet at roof and pane; Beneath the door I heard it breathe-- A beast that growled in vain. The hunter wind stalked up and down, And crashed his ice-spears through each tree; Before his rage, in tattered gown, I saw the maid moon flee. There stole a footstep to my door; A voice cried in my room and--there! A shadow cowled and gaunt and hoar, Death, leaned above my chair. He beckoned me; he bade me rise, And follow through the madman night; Into my heart's core pierced his eyes, And lifted me with might. I rose; I made no more delay; And followed where his eyes compelled; And through the darkness, far away, They lit me and enspelled. Until we reached an ancient wood, That flung its twisted arms around, As if in anguish that it stood On dark, unhallowed ground. And then I saw it--cold and blind-- The dream, that had my heart to share, That fell, before its feet could find Its home, and perished there. _WITCHCRAFT_ This world is made a witchcraft place With gazing on a woman's face. Now 'tis her smile, whose sorcery Turns all my thoughts to melody. Now 'tis her frown, that comes and goes, That makes my day a page of prose. And now her laugh, or but a word, That in my heart frees wild a bird. Some day, perhaps, a kiss of hers, Will lift from my dumb life the curse Of longing, inarticulate, That keeps me sad and celibate. _TRANSPOSED SEASONS_ The gentian and the bluebell so Can change my calendar, I know not how the year may go, Or what the seasons are: The months, in some mysterious wise, Take their expression from her eyes. The gentian speaks to memory Of autumns long since gone, When _her_ blue eyes smiled up at me, And heaven was flushed with dawn: 'T was autumn then and leaves were sere, But in my heart 't was spring o' the year. The bluebell says a message too Of springs long passed away, When in my eyes her eyes of blue Gazed and 't was close of day: Spring spread around her fragrant chart, But it was autumn in my heart. _THE OLD DREAMER_ Come, let's climb into our attic, In our house that's old and gray! Life, you're old and I'm rheumatic, And--it's close of day. Lay aside your rags and tatters, Shirt and shoes so soiled with clay! They're no use now. Nothing matters-- It is close of day. Let's to bed. It's cold. No fire. And no lamp to make a ray.-- Where's our servant, young Desire?-- Gone at close of day. Oft she served us with fine glances, Helped us out at work and play: She is gone now; better chances; And it's close of day. Where is Hope, who flaunted scarlet? Hope, who led us oft astray? Has she proved herself a harlot At the close of day? What's become of Dream and Vision? Friends we thought were here to stay? Has life clapped the two in prison At the close of day? They are gone; and how we miss them! They who made our garret gay. How we used to hug and kiss them!-- But--'tis close of day. Where's friend Love now?--Who supposes?-- Has he flung himself away? Left us for a wreath of roses At the close of day? And where's Song? the soul elected-- Has he quit us too for aye?-- Was it poverty he suspected Near the close of day? How our attic rang their laughter! How it echoed laugh and lay! None may take their place hereafter?-- It is close of day. We have done the best we could do. Let us kneel awhile and pray. Now, no matter what we would do, It is close of day. Let's to bed then! It's December. Long enough since it was May!-- Let's forget it, and remember Now 'tis close of day. _A LAST WORD_ Oh, for some cup of consummating might, Filled with life's kind conclusion, lost in night! A wine of darkness, that with death shall cure This sickness called existence!--Oh to find Surcease of sorrow! quiet for the mind, An end of thought in something dark and sure! Mandrake and hellebore, or poison pure!-- Some drug of death, wherein there are no dreams!-- No more, no more, with patience, to endure The wrongs of life, the hate of men, it seems; Or wealth's authority, tyranny of time, And lamentations and the boasts of man! To hear no more the wild complaints of toil, And struggling merit, that, unknown, must starve: To see no more life's disregard for Art! Oh God! to know no longer anything! Nor good, nor evil, or what either means! Nor hear the changing tides of customs roll On the dark shores of Time! No more to hear The stream of Life that furies on the shoals Of hard necessity! No more to see The unavailing battle waged of Need Against adversity!--Merely to lie, at last, Pulseless and still, at peace beneath the sod! To think and dream no more! no more to hope! At rest at last! at last at peace and rest, Clasped by some kind tree's gnarled arm of root Bearing me upward in its large embrace To gentler things and fairer--clouds and winds, And stars and sun and moon! To undergo The change the great trees know when Spring comes in With shoutings and rejoicings of the rain, To swiftly rise an atom in a host, The myriad army of the leaves; and stand A handsbreadth nearer Heaven and what is God! To pulse in sap that beats unfevered in The life we call inanimate--the heart Of some great tree. And so, unconsciously, As sleeps a child, clasped in its mother's arm, Be taken back, in amplitudes of grace, To Nature's heart, and so be lost in her. _THE SHADOW_ A shadow glided down the way Where sunset groped among the trees, And all the woodland bower, asway With trouble of the evening breeze. A shape, it moved with head held down; I knew it not, yet seemed to know Its form, its carriage of a clown, Its raiment of the long-ago. It never turned or spoke a word, But fixed its gaze on something far, As if within its heart it heard The summons of the evening star. I turned to it and tried to speak; To ask it of the thing it saw, Or heard, beyond Earth's outmost peak-- The dream, the splendor, and the awe. What beauty or what terror there Still bade its purpose to ascend Above the sunset's sombre glare, The twilight and the long day's end. It looked at me but said no word: Then suddenly I saw the truth:-- _This_ was the call that once I heard And failed to follow in my youth. Now well I saw that this was I-- My own dead self who walked with me, Who died in that dark hour gone by With all the dreams that used to be. _ON THE ROAD_ Let us bid the world good-by, Now while sun and cloud's above us, While we've nothing to deny, Nothing but our selves to love us: Let us fancy, I and you, All the dreams we dreamed came true. We have gone but half the road, Rugged road of root and bowlder; Made the best of Life's dark load, Cares, that helped us to grow older: We, my dear, have done our best-- Let us stop awhile and rest. Let us, by this halfway stile, Put away the world's desire, And sit down, a little while, With our hearts, and light a fire: Sing the songs that once we sung In the days when we were young. Haply they will bring again, From the Lands of Song and Story, To our sides the elfin train Of the dreams we dreamed of glory, That are one now with the crew Of the deeds we did not do. Here upon the road of Life Let us rest us; take our pleasure: Free from care and safe from strife, Count again our only treasure-- Love, that helped us on our way, Our companion night and day. _RECONCILIATION_ Listen, dearest! you must love me more, More than you did before!-- Hark, what a beating here of wings! Never at rest, Dear, in your breast!-- Is it your heart with its flutterings, Making a music, love, for us both? Or merely a moth, a velvet-winged moth, Which out of the garden's fragrance swings, Weaving a spell, That holds the rose and the moon in thrall?-- I love you more than I can tell; And no recall How long ago Our quarrel and all!-- You say, you know, A perfect pearl grows out of--well, A little friction; tiny grain Of sand or shell-- So love grew out of that moment's pain, The heart's disdain-- Since then I have thought of no one but you, And how your heart would beat on mine, Like light on dew. And I thought how foolish to fret and pine! Better to claim the fault all mine! To go to you and tell you that: And how stale and flat All life without you was, and vain! And when I came, you turned and smiled, Like a darling child, And I knew from your look that, in your heart, You had followed the self-same train Of thought that made me yours again.-- Dearest! no more!-- We shall never part!-- So. Turn your face as you did before.-- I smooth your brow And kiss you.--Now.... Tell me true-- Did you miss me, dear, as I missed you? _PORTENTS_ Above the world a glare Of sunset--guns and spears; An army, no one hears, Of mist and air: Long lines of bronze and gold, Huge helmets, each a cloud; And then a fortress old There in the night that phantoms seem to crowd. A face of flame; a hand Of crimson alchemy Is waved: and, solemnly, At its command, Opens a fiery well, A burning hole, From which a stream of hell, A river of blood, in frenzy, seems to roll. And there, upon a throne, Like some vast precipice, Above that River of Dis, Behold a King! alone! Around whom shapes of blood Take form: each one the peer Of those, who, in the wood Of Dante's Hell froze up the heart with fear. Then shapes, that breast to breast Gallop to face a foe: And through the crimson glow Th' imperial crest Of him whose banner flies Above a world that burns, A raven in the skies, And as it flies into a Death's-Head turns. The wild trees writhe and twist Their gaunt limbs, wrung with fear: And now into my ear A word seems hissed; A message, filled with dread, A dark, foreboding word,-- "Behold! we are the dead, Who here on Earth lived only by the sword!" _THE IRON CRAGS_ Upon the iron crags of War I heard his terrible daughters In battle speak while at their feet, In gulfs of human waters, A voice, intoning, "Where is God?" in ceaseless sorrow beat: And to my heart, in doubt, I said, "God?--God's above the storm! O heart, be brave, be comforted, And keep your hearth-stone warm For her who breasts the storm-- God's Peace, the fair of form." I heard the Battle Angels cry above the slain's red mountains, While from their wings the lightnings hurled Of Death's destroying fountains, And thunder of their revels rolled around the ruined world: Still to my heart, in fear, I cried, "God?--God is watching there! My heart,--oh, keep the doorway wide Here in your House of Care, For her who wanders there, God's Peace, with happy hair." The darkness and the battle passed: and rushing on wild pinions The hosts of Havoc shrieked their hate And fled to Hell's dominions,-- And, lo! I heard, out in the night, a knocking at the gate: And one who cried aloud to me:-- "The night and storm are gone! Oh, open wide the door and see Who waits here in the dawn!-- Peace, with God's splendor on Back to the sad world drawn!" _THE IRON CROSS_ They pass, with heavy eyes and hair, Before the Christ upon the Cross, The Nations, stricken with their loss, And lifting faces of despair. What is the prayer they pray to Him, Christ Jesus on the Iron Cross? The Christ, neglected, dark with moss, Whose hands are pierced, whose face is grim. Is it forgiveness for great sin They plead before the Iron Cross? Or for some gift of gold or dross? Or battle lost, that they would win? With eyes where hate and horror meet, They pass before the Iron Cross, The Cross, that ancient words emboss, Where hangs the Christ with nail-pierced feet. His hair is fallen on his face. His head hangs sidewise from the Cross-- The Crucified, who knows all loss, And had on Earth no resting place. "O world of men," he seems to say, "Behold me on your Iron Cross! To me why kneel and tell your loss? Why kneel to me and weep and pray? "Have I not taught you to forgive? And bade you from my Iron Cross Believe, and bear your grief and loss, That after death you too may live? "You have not followed at my call! You keep me on this Iron Cross, And pray me keep you from all loss, And save and comfort you withal.-- "You ask for love, and hate the more!-- You keep me on this Iron Cross!-- Restore to me my greater loss, The brotherhood of rich and poor." * * * * They pass, with weary eyes and hair, Before the Christ upon the Cross-- The Nations, wailing of their loss, And lifting faces of despair. _THE WANDERER_ Between the death of day and birth of night, By War's red light, I met with one in trailing sorrows clad, Whose features had The look of Him who died to set men right. Around him many horrors, like great worms, Terrific forms, Crawled, helmed like hippogriff and rosmarine,-- Gaunt and obscene, Urged on to battle with a thousand arms. Columns of steel, and iron belching flame, Before them came: And cities crumbled; and amid them trod Havoc, their god, With Desolation that no tongue may name. And out of Heaven came a burning breath, And on it Death, Riding: before him, huge and bellowing herds Of beasts, like birds, Bat-winged and demon, nothing conquereth. Hag-lights went by, and Fear that shrieks and dies; And mouths, with cries Of famine; and the madness of Despair; And everywhere Curses, like kings, with ever-burning eyes. And, lo! the shadow shook and cried a name, That grew a flame Above the world, and said, "Give heed! give heed! See how they bleed! My wounds! my wounds!--Was it for this I came? "Where is the love for which I shed my blood? And where the good I preached and died for?--Lo! ye have denied And crucified Me here again, who swore me brotherhood!" Then overhead the vault of night was rent: The firmament Winged thunder over of aerial craft; And Battle laughed Titanic laughter as its way it went. _THE END OF SUMMER_ The rose, that wrote its message on the noon's Bright manuscript, has turned her perfumed face Towards Fall, and waits, heart-heavy, for the moon's Pale flower to take her place. With eyes distraught, and dark disheveled hair, The Season dons a tattered cloak of storm And waits with Night that, darkly, seems to share Her trouble and alarm. It is the close of summer. In the sky The sunset lit a fire of drift and sat Watching the last Day, robed in empire, die Upon the burning ghat. The first leaf crimsons and the last rose falls, And Night goes stalking on, her cloak of rain Dripping, and followed through her haunted halls By ail Death's phantom train. The sorrow of the Earth and all that dies, And all that suffers, in her breast she bears; Outside the House of Life she stops and cries The burden of her cares. Then on the window knocks with crooked hands, Her tree-like arms to Heaven wildly-hurled: Love hears her crying, "Who then understands?-- Has God forgot the world?" _THE LUST OF THE WORLD_ Since Man first lifted up his eyes to hers And saw her vampire beauty, which is lust, All else is dust Within the compass of the universe. With heart of Jael and with face of Ruth She sits upon the tomb of Time and quaffs Heart's blood and laughs At all Life calls most noble and the truth. The fire of conquest and the wine of dreams Are in her veins; and in her eyes the lure Of things unsure, Urging the world forever to extremes. Without her, Life would stagnate in a while.-- Her touch it is puts pleasure even in pain.-- So Life attain Her end, she cares not if the means be vile. She knows no pity, mercy, or remorse.-- Hers is to build and then exterminate: To slay, create, And twixt the two maintain an equal course. _CHANT BEFORE BATTLE_ Ever since man was man a Fiend has stood Outside his House of Good,-- War, with his terrible toys, that win men's hearts To follow murderous arts. His spurs, death-won, are but of little use, Except as old refuse Of Life; to hang and testify with rust Of deeds, long one with dust. A rotting fungus on a log, a tree, A toiling worm, or bee, Serves God's high purpose here on Earth to build More than War's maimed and killed. The Hebetude of asses, following still Some Emperor's will to kill, Is that of men who give their lives--for what?-- The privilege to be shot! Grant men more vision, Lord! to read thy words, That are not guns and swords, But trees and flowers, lovely forms of Earth, And all fair things of worth. So he may rise above the brute and snake, And of his reason make A world befitting, as thou hast designed, His greater soul and mind! So he may rid himself of worm and beast, And sit with Love at feast, And make him worthy to be named thy son, As He, thy Holy One! Amen. _NEARING CHRISTMAS_ The season of the rose and peace is past: It could not last. There's heartbreak in the hills and stormy sighs Of sorrow in the rain-lashed plains and skies, While Earth regards, aghast, The last red leaf that flies. The world is cringing in the darkness where War left his lair, And everything takes on a lupine look, Baring gaunt teeth at every peaceful nook, And shaking torrent hair At every little brook. Cancers of ulcerous flame his eyes, and--hark! There in the dark The ponderous stir of metal, iron feet; And with it, heard around the world, the beat Of Battle; sounds that mark His heart's advance, retreat. With shrapnel pipes he goes his monstrous ways; And, screeching, plays The hell-born music Havoc dances to; And, following with his skeleton-headed crew Of ravening Nights and Days, Horror invades the blue. Against the Heaven he lifts a mailed fist And writes a list Of beautiful cities on the ghastly sky: And underneath them, with no reason why, In blood and tears and mist, The postscript, "These must die!" Change is the portion and chief heritage Of every Age. The spirit of God still waits its time.--And War May blur His message for a while, and mar The writing on His page, To this our sorrowful star. But there above the conflict, orbed in rays, Is drawn the face Of Peace; at last who comes into her own; Peace, from whose tomb the world shall roll the stone, And give her highest place In the human heart alone. _A BELGIAN CHRISTMAS_ _The "happy year" of 1914_ An hour from dawn: The snow sweeps on As it swept with sleet last night: The Earth around Breathes never a sound, Wrapped in its shroud of white. A waked cock crows Under the snows; Then silence.--After while The sky grows blue, And a star looks through With a kind o' bitter smile. A whining dog; An axe on a log, And a muffled voice that calls: A cow's long low; Then footsteps slow Stamping into the stalls. A bed of straw Where the wind blows raw Through cracks of the stable door: A child's small cry, A voice nearby, That says, "One mouth the more." A different note In a man's rough throat As he turns at an entering tread-- Satyrs! see! "My woman--she Was brought last night to bed!" A cry of "Halt!"-- "Ach! ich bin kalt!" "A spy!"--"No."--"That is clear! There's a good shake-down I' the jail in town-- For her!"--And then, "My orders here." A shot, sharp-rolled As the clouds unfold: A scream; and a cry forlorn.... Clothed red with fire, Like the Heart's Desire, Look down the Christmas Morn. The babe with light Is haloed bright, And it is Christmas Day: A cry of woe; Then footsteps slow, And the wild guns, far away. _THE FESTIVAL OF THE AISNE_ Imperial Madness, will of hand, Builds vast an altar here, and rears Before the world, on godly land, A Moloch form of blood and tears. And far as eye can see, behold, Priests plunge into its brazen arms Men, that its iron maw of mold Mangles, returning horrible forms. Its Priests are armies, moving slow, And crowned like kings, in human-guise: And theirs it is to make it flow-- The crimson stream of sacrifice. _THE CRY OF EARTH_ The Season speaks this year of life Confusing words of strife, Suggesting weeds instead of fruits and flowers In all Earth's bowers. With heart of Jael, face of Ruth, She goes her way uncouth Through hills and fields, where fog and sunset seem Wild smoke and steam. Around her, spotted as a leopard skin, She draws her cloak of whin, And through the dark hills sweeps dusk's last red glare Wild on her hair. Her hands drip leaves, like blood, and burn With frost; her moony urn She lifts, where Death, 'mid driving stress and storm, Rears his gaunt form. And all night long she seems to say "Come forth, my Winds, and slay!--" And everywhere is heard the wailing cry Of dreams that die. _CHILD AND FATHER_ A little child, one night, awoke and cried, "Oh, help me, father! there is something wild Before me! help me!" Hurrying to his side I answered, "I am here. You dreamed, my child." "A dream?--" he questioned. "Oh, I could not see! It was so dark!--Take me into your bed!"-- And I, who loved him, held him soothingly, And smiling on his terror, comforted. He nestled in my arms. I held him fast; And spoke to him and calmed his childish fears, Until he smiled again, asleep at last, Upon his lashes still a trace of tears.... How like a child the world! who, in this night Of strife, beholds strange monsters threatening And with black fear, having so little light, Cries to its Father, God, for comforting. And well for it, if, answering the call, The Father hear and soothe its dread asleep!-- How many though, whom thoughts and dreams appall, Must lie awake and in the darkness weep. _THE RISING OF THE MOON_ The Day brims high its ewer Of blue with starry light, And crowns as King that hewer Of clouds (which take their flight Across the sky) old Night. And Tempest there, who houses Within them, like a cave, Lies down and dreams and drowses Upon the Earth's huge grave, With wandering wind and wave. The storm moves on; and winging From out the east--a bird, The moon drifts, calmly bringing A message and a word Of peace, in Heaven it heard. Of peace and times called golden, Whose beauty makes it glow With love, like that of olden, Which mortals used to know There in the long-ago. _WHERE THE BATTLE PASSED_ One blossoming rose-tree, like a beautiful thought Nursed in a broken mind, that waits and schemes, Survives, though shattered, and about it caught, The strangling dodder streams. Gaunt weeds: and here a bayonet or pouch, Rusty and rotting where men fought and slew: Bald, trampled paths that seem with fear to crouch, Feeling a bloody dew. Here nothing that was beauty's once remains. War left the garden to its dead alone: And Life and Love, who toiled here, for their pains Have nothing once their own. Death leans upon the battered door, at gaze-- The house is silent where there once was stir Of husbandry, that led laborious days, With Love for comforter. Now in Love's place, Death, old and halt and blind, Gropes, searching everywhere for what may live.-- War left it empty as his vacant mind; It has no more to give. _THE IRON AGE_ And these are Christians!--God! the horror of it-- How long, O Lord! how long, O Lord! how long Wilt Thou endure this crime? and there, above it, Look down on Earth nor sweep away the wrong! Are these Thy teachings?--Where is then that pity, Which bade the weary, suffering come to Thee?-- War takes its toll of life in field and City, And Thou must see!--O Christianity! And then the children!--Oh, Thou art another! Not God! but Fiend, whom God has given release!-- Will prayer avail naught? tears of father, mother? To give at last the weary world surcease From butchery? that back again hath brought her Into that age barbarian that priced Hate above Love; and, shod with steel and slaughter, Stamped on the Cross and on the face of Christ. _THE BATTLE_ Black clouds hung low and heavy, Above the sunset glare; And in the garden dimly We wandered here and there. So full of strife, of trouble The night was dark, afraid, Like our own love, so merely For tears and sighings made. That when it came to parting, And I must mount and go, With all my soul I wished it-- That God would lay me low. _ON RE-READING CERTAIN GERMAN POETS_ They hold their own, they have no peers In gloom and glow, in hopes and fears, In love and terror, hovering round The lore of that enchanted ground!-- That mystic region, where one hears, By bandit towers, the hunt that nears Wild through the Hartz; the demon cheers Of Hackelnberg; his horn and hound-- They hold their own. Dark Wallenstein; and, down the years, The Lorelei; and, creased with sneers, Faust, Margaret;--the Sabboth sound, Witch-whirling, of the Brocken, drowned In storm, through which Mephisto leers,-- They hold their own. _ON OPENING AN OLD SCHOOL VOLUME OF HORACE_ I had forgot how, in my day The Sabine fields around me lay In amaranth and asphodel, With many a cold Bandusian well Bright-bubbling by the mountain-way. In forest dells of Faun and Fay How, lounging in the fountain's spray, I talked with Horace; felt his spell, I had forgot. With Pyrrha and with Lydia How oft I sat, while Lalaga Sang, and the fine Falerian fell, Sparkling, and heard the poet tell Of loves whose beauty lasts for aye, I had forgot. _LAUS DEO_ In her vast church of glimmering blue, Gray-stoled from feet to chin, Her dark locks beaded with the dew, The nun-like dawn comes in: At once the hills put on their spencers Of purple, swinging streaming censers Of mist before the God of Day Who goes with pomp his way. With sapphire draperies of light Is hung the sombre pines; Filling each valley, every height With sacerdotal lines-- Shrines, where, like priests with worship vestured, The forests bow and, heavenly gestured, Lift high the chalice of the sun, Intoning, "Night is done!" _THE NEW YORK SKYSCRAPER_ _The Woolworth Building_ Enormously it lifts Its tower against the splendor of the west; Like some wild dream that drifts Before the mind, and at the will's behest,-- Enchantment-based, gigantic steel and stone,-- Is given permanence; A concrete fact, Complete, alone, Glorious, immense, Such as no nation here on Earth has known: Epitomizing all That is American, that stands for youth, And strength and truth; That's individual, And beautiful and free,-- Resistless strength and tireless energy. Even as a cataract, Its superb fact Suggests vast forces Nature builds with--Joy, And Power and Thought, She to her aid has brought For eons past, will bring for eons yet to be, Shaping the world to her desire: the three Her counsellors constantly, Her architects, through whom her dreams come true,-- Her workmen, bringing forth, With toil that shall not cease, Mountains and plains and seas, That make the Earth The glory that it is: And, one with these, Such works of man as this, This building, towering into the blue, A beacon, round which like an ocean wide, Circles and flows the restless human tide. _ROBERT BROWNING_ Master of human harmonics, where gong And harp and violin and flute accord; Each instrument confessing you its lord, Within the deathless orchestra of Song. Albeit at times your music may sound wrong To our dulled senses, and its meaning barred To Earth's slow understanding, never marred Your message brave: clear, and of trumpet tongue. Poet-revealer, who, both soon and late, Within an age of doubt kept clean your faith, Crying your cry of "With the world all's well!" How shall we greet you from our low estate, Keys in the keyboard that is life and death, The organ whence we hear your music swell? _RILEY_ _His Birthday, October the 7th, 1912_ Riley, whose pen has made the world your debtor, Whose Art has kept you young through sixty years, Brimming our hearts with laughter and with tears, Holding her faith pure to the very letter: We come to you to-day, both man and woman, And happy little children, girl and boy,-- To laurel you with all our love and joy, And crown you for the dreams your pen made human: For Orphant Annie and for Old Aunt Mary, The Raggedty Man, who never will grow older, And all the kindly folks from Griggsby's Station, Immortal throngs, with Spirk and Wunk and Faery, Who swarm behind you, peering o'er your shoulder, Sharing with you the blessings of a Nation. _DON QUIXOTE_ _On receiving a bottle of Sherry Wine of the same name_ What "blushing Hippocrene" is here! what fire Of the "warm South" with magic of old Spain!-- Through which again I seem to view the train Of all Cervantes' dreams, his heart's desire: The melancholy Knight, in gaunt attire Of steel rides by upon the windmill-plain With Sancho Panza by his side again, While, heard afar, a swineherd from a byre Winds a hoarse horn. And all at once I see The glory of that soul who rode upon Impossible quests,--following a deathless dream Of righted wrongs, that never were to be,-- Like many another champion who has gone Questing a cause that perished like a dream. _THE WOMAN_ With her fair face she made my heaven, Beneath whose stars and moon and sun I worshiped, praying, having striven, For wealth through which she might be won. And yet she had no soul: A woman As fair and cruel as a god; Who played with hearts as nothing human, And tossed them by and on them trod. She killed a soul; she did it nightly; Luring it forth from peace and prayer, To strangle it, and laughing lightly, Cast it into the gutter there. And yet, not for a purer vision Would I exchange; or Paradise Possess instead of Hell, my prison, Where burns the passion of her eyes. _THE SONG OF SONGS_ _Read November 14th, 1913, before the American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters in joint session at Chicago, Ill._ I heard a Spirit singing as, beyond the morning winging, Its radiant form went swinging like a star: In its song prophetic voices mixed their sounds with trumpet-noises, As when, loud, the World rejoices after war. And it said: I Hear me! Above the roar of cities, The clamor and conflict of trade, The frenzy and fury of commercialism, Is heard my voice, chanting, intoning.-- Down the long corridors of time it comes, Bearing my message, bidding the soul of man arise To the realization of his dream. Now and then discords seem to intrude, And tones that are false and feeble-- Beginnings of the perfect chord From which is evolved the ideal, the unattainable. Hear me! Ever and ever, Above the tumult of the years, The blatant cacophonies of war, The wrangling of politics, Demons and spirits of unrest, My song persists, Addressing the soul With the urge of an astral something, Supernal, Elemental, Promethean, Instinct with an everlasting fire. II Hear me! I am the expression of the subconscious, The utterance of the intellect, The voice of mind, That stands for civilization. Out of my singing sprang, Minerva-like, Full-armed and fearless, Liberty, Subduer of tyrants, who feed on the strength of Nations. Out of my chanting arose, As Aphrodite arose from the foam of the ocean, The Dream of Spiritual Desire, Mother of Knowledge, Victor o'er Hate and Oppression,-- Ancient and elemental dæmons, Who, with Ignorance and Evil, their consorts, Have ruled for eons of years. III Hear me! Should my chanting cease, My music utterly fail you, Behold! Out of the hoary Past, most swiftly, surely, Would gather the Evils of Earth, The Hydras and Harpies, forgotten, And buried in darkness: Amorphous of form, Tyrannies and Superstitions Torturing body and soul: And with them, Gargoyls of dreams that groaned in the Middle Ages-- Aspects of darkness and death and hollow eidolons, Cruel, inhuman, Wearing the faces and forms of all the wrongs of the world. Barbarian hordes whose shapes make hideous The cycles of error and crime: Grendels of darkness, Devouring the manhood of Nations: Demogorgons of War and Misrule, Blackening the world with blood and the lust of destruction. Hear me!-- Out of my song have grown Beauty and joy, And with them The triumph of Reason; The confirmation of Hope, Of Faith and Endeavor: The Dream that's immortal, To whose creation Thought gives concrete form, And of which Vision makes permanent substance. IV Fragmentary, Out of the Past, Down the long aisles of the Centuries, Uncertain at first and uneasy, Hesitant, harsh of expression, My song was heard, Stammering, appealing, A murmur merely: Coherent then, Singing into form, Assertive, Ecstatic, Louder, lovelier, and more insistent, Sonorous, proclaiming; Clearer and surer and stronger. Attaining expression, evermore truer and clearer: Masterful, mighty at last, Committed to conquest, And with Beauty coeval; Part of the wonder of life, The triumph of light over darkness: Taking the form of Art-- Art, that is voice and vision of the soul of man.-- Hear me! Confident ever, One with the Loveliness song shall evolve, My voice is become as an army of banners, Marching irresistibly forward, With the roll of the drums of attainment, The blare of the bugles of fame: Tramping, tramping, evermore advancing, Till the last redoubt of prejudice is down, And the Eagles and Fasces of Learning Make glorious the van o' the world. V They who are deaf to my singing, Who disregard me.-- Let them beware lest the splendor escape them, The glory of light that is back o' the darkness of life, And with it-- The blindness of spirit o'erwhelm them.-- They who reject me, Reject the gleam That goes to the making of Beauty; And put away The loftier impulses of heart and of mind. They shall not possess the dream, the ideal, Of ultimate worlds, That is part of the soul that aspires; That sits with the Spirit of Thought, The radiant presence who weaves, Directed of Destiny, There in the Universe, At its infinite pattern of stars. They shall not know, Not they, The exaltations that make endurable here on the Earth The ponderable curtain of flesh. Not they! Not they! VI Hear me! I control, and direct; I wound and heal, Elevate and subdue The vaulting energies of Man. I am part of the cosmic strain o' the Universe: I captain the thoughts that grow to deeds, Material and spiritual facts, Pointing the world to greater and nobler things.-- Hear me! My dædal expression peoples the Past and Present With forms of ethereal thought That symbolize Beauty: The Beauty expressing itself now, As Poetry, As Philosophy: As Truth and Religion now, And now, As science and Law, Vaunt couriers of Civilization. _OGLETHORPE_ _An Ode to be read on the laying of the foundation stone of the new Oglethorpe University, January, 1915, at Atlanta, Georgia_ I As when with oldtime passion for this Land Here once she stood, and in her pride, sent forth Workmen on every hand, Sowing the seed of knowledge South and North, More gracious now than ever, let her rise, The splendor of a new dawn in her eyes; Grave, youngest sister of that company, That smiling wear Laurel and pine And wild magnolias in their flowing hair; The sisters Academe, With thoughts divine, Standing with eyes a-dream, Gazing beyond the world, into the sea, Where lie the Islands of Infinity. II Now in these stormy days of stress and strain, When Gospel seems in vain, And Christianity a dream we've lost, That once we made our boast; Now when all life is brought Face to grim face with naught, And a condition speaking, trumpet-lipped, Of works material, leaving Beauty out Of God's economy; while, horror-dipped, Lies our buried faith, full near to perish, 'Mid the high things we cherish, In these tempestuous days when, to and fro The serpent, Evil, goes and strews his way With dragon's teeth that play Their part as once they did in Jason's day; And War, with menace loud, And footsteps, metal-slow, And eyes a crimson hot, Is seen, against the Heaven a burning blot Of blood and tears and woe: Now when no mortal living seems to know Whither to turn for hope, we turn to thee, And such as thou art, asking "What's to be?" And that thou point the path Above Earth's hate and wrath, And Madness, stalking with his torch aglow Amid the ruins of the Nations slow Crumbling to ashes with Old Empire there In Europe's tiger lair. III A temple may'st thou be, A temple by the everlasting sea, For the high goddess, Ideality, Set like a star, Above the peaks of dark reality: Shining afar Above the deeds of War, Within the shrine of Love, whose face men mar With Militarism, That is the prism Through which they gaze with eyes obscured of Greed, At the white light of God's Eternity, The comfort of the world, the soul's great need, That beacons Earth indeed, Breaking its light intense With turmoil and suspense And failing human Sense. IV From thee a higher Creed Shall be evolved. The broken lights resolved Into one light again, of glorious light, Between us and the Everlasting, that is God.-- The all-confusing fragments, that are night, Lift up thy rod Of knowledge and from Truth's eyeballs strip The darkness, and in armor of the Right, Bear high the standard of imperishable light! Cry out, "Awake!--I slept awhile!--Awake! Again I take My burden up of Truth for Jesus' sake, And stand for what he stood for, Peace and Thought, And all that's Beauty-wrought Through doubt and dread and ache, By which the world to good at last is brought!" V No more with silence burdened, when the Land Was stricken by the hand Of war, she rises, and assumes her stand For the Enduring; setting firm her feet On what is blind and brute: Still holding fast With honor to the past, Speaking a trumpet word, Which shall be heard As an authority, no longer mute. VI Again, yea, she shall stand For what Truth means to Man For science and for Art and all that can Make life superior to the things that weight The soul down, things of hate Instead of love, for which the world was planned; May she demand Faith and inspire it; Song to lead her way Above the crags of Wrong Into the broader day; And may she stand For poets still; poets that now the Land Needs as it never needed; such an one As he, large Nature's Son Lanier, who with firm hand Held up her magic wand Directing deep in music such as none Has ever heard Such music as a bird Gives of its soul, when dying, And unconscious if it's heard. VII So let her rise, mother of greatness still, Above all temporal ill; Invested with all old nobility, Teaching the South decision, self control And strength of mind and soul; Achieving ends that shall embrace the whole Through deeds of heart and mind; And thereby bind Its effort to an end And reach its goal. VIII So shall she win A wrestler with sin, Supremely to a place above the years, And help men rise To what is wise And true beyond their mortal finite scan-- The purblind gaze of man; Aiding with introspective eyes His soul to see a higher plan Of life beyond this life; above the gyves Of circumstance that bind him in his place Of doubt and keep away his face From what alone survives; And what assures Immortal life to that within, that gives Of its own self, And through its giving, lives, And evermore endures. _A POET'S EPITAPH_ Life was unkind to him; All things went wrong: Fortune assigned to him Merely a song. Ever a mystery Here to his heart; In his life's history Love played no part. Carve on the granite, There at the end, Where all may scan it, _Death was his friend_. _Giving him all he missed Here upon Earth-- Love and the call he missed All that was worth._ 
34227	----	[Illustration: Cover] [Illustration: Endpapers] [Illustration: _I'm sitting alone by the fire, Dressed just as I came from the dance_] HER LETTER His Answer & Her Last Letter By BRET HARTE _Pictured by_ ARTHUR I KELLER [Illustration] Boston & New York. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY THE RIVERSIDE PRESS, CAMBRIDGE. 1905 COPYRIGHT 1870 BY FIELDS, OSGOOD & CO. COPYRIGHT 1871 BY JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO. COPYRIGHT 1898 AND 1899 BY BRET HARTE. COPYRIGHT 1905 BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED [Illustration] PUBLISHERS' NOTE _The first two of the poems here printed have long been popular favorites, but the third was not written till near the end of Mr. Harte's life. It rounds out the romance with such completeness and charm that it is peculiarly fitting that the poems should be grouped, and issued in a form worthy of their own excellence. The coöperation of Mr. Keller was secured for making the illustrations, not only on account of his recognized ability as an artist, but also because of his admiration for Mr. Harte's writings and his previous success in illustrating several of the stories._ _Boston, 4 Park St., October, 1905._ [Illustration: LIST OF DESIGNS] PAGE _I'm sitting alone by the fire Dressed just as I came from the dance. (In color) Frontispiece_ _Title. (In color)_ _Publishers' Note--Headpiece_ 5 _List of Designs--Headpiece_ 7 _HER LETTER--Half-title_ 11 _Is wasting an hour upon you_ 13 _That waits--on the stairs--for me yet_ 15 _With whom do I waltz, flirt, or talk?_ 17 _To look supernaturally grand_ 19 _And the hum of the smallest of talk_ 21 _With the man that shot Sandy McGee. (In color)_ 23 _The man that shot Sandy McGee_ 25 _Of that ride,--that to me was the rarest_ 27 _And swam the North Fork, and all that_ 29 _Mamma says my taste still is low_ 31 _That my heart's somewhere there in the ditches_ 33 _HIS ANSWER--Half-title_ 35 _I should write what he runs off his tongue. (In color)_ 37 _Being asked by an intimate party_ 39 _That with you, Miss, he "challenges Fate"_ 41 _Though the claim not, at date, paying wages_ 43 _And the rose that you gave him. (In color)_ 45 _Is frequent and painful and free_ 47 _Imparts but small ease to the style_ 49 _In this green laurel spray that he treasures_ 51 _But he lies there quite peaceful and pensive_ 53 _For I have a small favor to ask you_ 55 _Here's my pile; which it's six hundred dollars_ 57 _HER LAST LETTER--Half-title_ 59 _That you last wrote the 4th of December_ 61 _And you're not to be found in the ditches. (In color)_ 63 _From this spot, that you said was the fairest_ 65 _To London, when Pa wired, "Stop"_ 67 _And as to the stories you've heard_ 69 _Whose father sold clothes on the Bar_ 71 _With a look, Joe, that made her eyes drop. (In color)_ 73 _To find myself here, all alone_ 75 _Ah! gone is the old necromancy_ 77 _And you called the place Eden, you know. (In color)_ 79 _And the copse where you once tied my shoe-knot_ 81 _There's the rustle of silk on the sidewalk_ 83 _But there's still the "lap, lap" of the river. (In color)_ 85 _There's a lot that remains which one fancies_ 87 _He thinks he may find you_ 89 _And good-night to the cañon that answers_ 91 _I've just got your note. You deceiver!_ 93 _Now I know why they had me transferred here. (In color)_ 95 _How dared you get rich--you great stupid!_ 97 _The man who shot Sandy McGee You made mayor!_ 99 _Tailpiece_ 100 _All the headpieces and other decorations are from Mr. Keller's designs._ [Illustration] HER LETTER I'M sitting alone by the fire, Dressed just as I came from the dance, In a robe even _you_ would admire,-- It cost a cool thousand in France; I'm be-diamonded out of all reason, My hair is done up in a cue: In short, sir, "the belle of the season" Is wasting an hour upon you. [Illustration: _In short, sir, "the belle of the season" Is wasting an hour upon you_] A DOZEN engagements I've broken; I left in the midst of a set; Likewise a proposal, half spoken, That waits--on the stairs--for me yet. They say he'll be rich,--when he grows up,-- And then he adores me indeed; And you, sir, are turning your nose up, Three thousand miles off, as you read. [Illustration: _Likewise a proposal, half spoken, That waits--on the stairs--for me yet_] "AND how do I like my position?" "And what do I think of New York?" "And now, in my higher ambition, With whom do I waltz, flirt, or talk?" "And isn't it nice to have riches, And diamonds and silks, and all that?" "And aren't they a change to the ditches And tunnels of Poverty Flat?" [Illustration: _With whom do I waltz, flirt, or talk?_] WELL, yes,--if you saw us out driving Each day in the Park, four-in-hand, If you saw poor dear mamma contriving To look supernaturally grand,-- If you saw papa's picture, as taken By Brady, and tinted at that,-- You'd never suspect he sold bacon And flour at Poverty Flat. [Illustration: _If you saw poor dear Mamma contriving To look supernaturally grand_] AND yet, just this moment, when sitting In the glare of the grand chandelier,-- In the bustle and glitter befitting The "finest _soirée_ of the year,"-- In the mists of a _gaze de Chambéry_, And the hum of the smallest of talk,-- Somehow, Joe, I thought of the "Ferry," And the dance that we had on "The Fork;" [Illustration: _In the mists of a gaze de Chambéry, And the hum of the smallest of talk_] OF Harrison's barn, with its muster Of flags festooned over the wall; Of the candles that shed their soft lustre And tallow on head-dress and shawl; Of the steps that we took to one fiddle, Of the dress of my queer _vis-à-vis_; And how I once went down the middle With the man that shot Sandy McGee; [Illustration: _And how I once went down the middle With the man that shot Sandy McGee_] [Illustration: _The man that shot Sandy McGee_] OF the moon that was quietly sleeping On the hill, when the time came to go; Of the few baby peaks that were peeping From under their bedclothes of snow; Of that ride,--that to me was the rarest; Of--the something you said at the gate. Ah! Joe, then I wasn't an heiress To "the best-paying lead in the State." [Illustration: _Of that ride,--that to me was the rarest_] WELL, well, it's all past; yet it's funny To think, as I stood in the glare Of fashion and beauty and money, That I should be thinking, right there, Of some one who breasted high water, And swam the North Fork, and all that, Just to dance with old Folinsbee's daughter, The Lily of Poverty Flat. [Illustration: _And swam the North Fork, and all that, Just to dance with old Folinsbee's daughter_] BUT goodness! what nonsense I'm writing! (Mamma says my taste still is low), Instead of my triumphs reciting, I'm spooning on Joseph,--heigh-ho! And I'm to be "finished" by travel,-- Whatever's the meaning of that. Oh, why did papa strike pay gravel In drifting on Poverty Flat? [Illustration: _Mamma says my taste still is low_] GOOD-NIGHT!--here's the end of my paper; Good-night!--if the longitude please,-- For maybe, while wasting my taper, _Your_ sun's climbing over the trees. But know, if you haven't got riches, And are poor, dearest Joe, and all that, That my heart's somewhere there in the ditches, And you've struck it,--on Poverty Flat. [Illustration: _That my heart's somewhere there in the ditches, And you've struck it,--on Poverty Flat_] [Illustration] HIS ANSWER BEING asked by an intimate party,-- Which the same I would term as a friend,-- Though his health it were vain to call hearty, Since the mind to deceit it might lend; For his arm it was broken quite recent, And there's something gone wrong with his lung,-- Which is why it is proper and decent I should write what he runs off his tongue. [Illustration: _Which is why it is proper and decent I should write what he runs off his tongue_] [Illustration: _Being asked by an intimate party_] FIRST, he says, Miss, he's read through your letter To the end,--and "the end came too soon;" That a "slight illness kept him your debtor," (Which for weeks he was wild as a loon); That "his spirits are buoyant as yours is;" That with you, Miss, he "challenges Fate" (Which the language that invalid uses At times it were vain to relate). [Illustration: _That "his spirits are buoyant as yours is;" That with you, Miss, he "challenges Fate"_] AND he says "that the mountains are fairer For once being held in your thought;" That each rock "holds a wealth that is rarer Than ever by gold-seeker sought." (Which are words he would put in these pages, By a party not given to guile; Though the claim not, at date, paying wages, Might produce in the sinful a smile.) [Illustration: _Though the claim not, at date, paying wages, Might produce in the sinful a smile_] HE remembers the ball at the Ferry, And the ride, and the gate, and the vow, And the rose that you gave him,--that very Same rose he is "treasuring now." (Which his blanket he's kicked on his trunk, Miss, And insists on his legs being free; And his language to me from his bunk, Miss, Is frequent and painful and free.) [Illustration: _And the rose that you gave him_] [Illustration: _And his language to me from his bunk, Miss, Is frequent and painful and free_] HE hopes you are wearing no willows, But are happy and gay all the while; That he knows--(which this dodging of pillows Imparts but small ease to the style, And the same you will pardon)--he knows, Miss, That, though parted by many a mile, "Yet, were _he_ lying under the snows, Miss, They'd melt into tears at your smile." [Illustration: _Which this dodging of pillows Imparts but small ease to the style_] AND "you'll still think of him in your pleasures, In your brief twilight dreams of the past; In this green laurel spray that he treasures,-- It was plucked where your parting was last; In this specimen,--but a small trifle,-- It will do for a pin for your shawl." (Which, the truth not to wickedly stifle, Was his last week's "clean up,"--and _his all_.) [Illustration: _In this green laurel-spray that he treasures, It was plucked where your parting was last_] HE'S asleep, which the same might seem strange, Miss, Were it not that I scorn to deny That I raised his last dose, for a change, Miss, In view that his fever was high; But he lies there quite peaceful and pensive. And now, my respects, Miss, to you; Which my language, although comprehensive, Might seem to be freedom, is true. [Illustration: _But he lies there quite peaceful and pensive_] FOR I have a small favor to ask you, As concerns a bull-pup, and the same,-- If the duty would not overtask you,-- You would please to procure for me, _game_; And send per express to the Flat, Miss,-- For they say York is famed for the breed, Which, though words of deceit may be that, Miss, I'll trust to your taste, Miss, indeed. [Illustration: _For I have a small favor to ask you, As concerns a bull-pup_] _P.S._--Which this same interfering Into other folks' way I despise; Yet if it so be I was hearing That it's just empty pockets as lies Between you and Joseph, it follers That, having no family claims, Here's my pile, which it's six hundred dollars As is _yours_, with respects, TRUTHFUL JAMES. [Illustration: _Here's my pile; which it's six hundred dollars, As is yours, with respects_] [Illustration] HER LAST LETTER JUNE 4th! Do you know what that date means? June 4th! by this air and these pines! Well,--only you know how I hate scenes,-- These might be my very last lines! For perhaps, sir, you'll kindly remember-- If some _other_ things you've forgot-- That you last wrote the 4th of _December_,-- Just six months ago!--from this spot; [Illustration: _That you last wrote the 4th of December,-- Just six months ago!--from this spot_] FROM this spot, that you said was "the fairest For once being held in my thought." Now, really I call that the barest Of--well, I won't say what I ought! For here I am back from my "riches," My "triumphs," my "tours," and all that; And _you_'re not to be found in the ditches Or temples of Poverty Flat! [Illustration: _And you're not to be found in the ditches Or temples of Poverty Flat!_] [Illustration: _From this spot, that you said was "the fairest For once being held in my thought"_] FROM Paris we went for the season To London, when pa wired, "Stop." Mamma says "his _health_" was the reason. (I've heard that some things took a "drop.") But she said if my patience I'd summon I could go back with him to the Flat-- Perhaps I was thinking of some one Who of me--well--was not thinking _that_! [Illustration: _From Paris we went for the season To London, when Pa wired, "Stop"_] OF course you will _say_ that I "never Replied to the letter you wrote." That is just like a man! But, however, I read it--or how could I quote? And as to the stories you've heard (No, Don't tell me you haven't--I know!) You'll not believe one blessed word, Joe; But just whence they came, let them go! [Illustration: _And as to the stories you've heard (No, Don't tell me you haven't--I know!)_] AND they came from Sade Lotski of Yolo, Whose father sold clothes on the Bar-- You called him Job-lotski, you know, Joe, And the boys said _her_ value was _par_. Well, we met her in Paris--just flaring With diamonds, and lost in a hat! And she asked me "How Joseph was faring In his love-suit on Poverty Flat!" [Illustration: _Whose father sold clothes on the Bar-- You called him Job-lotski, you know, Joe_] SHE thought it would shame me! I met her With a look, Joe, that made her eyes drop; And I said that your "love-suit fared better Than any suit out of _their_ shop!" And I didn't blush _then_--as I'm doing To find myself here, all alone, And left, Joe, to do all the "suing" To a lover that's certainly flown. [Illustration: _I met her With a look, Joe, that made her eyes drop_] [Illustration: _And I didn't blush then--as I'm doing To find myself here, all alone_] IN this brand-new hotel, called "The Lily" (I wonder who gave it that name?), I really am feeling quite silly, To think I was once called the same; And I stare from its windows, and fancy I'm labeled to each passer-by. Ah! gone is the old necromancy, For nothing seems right to my eye. [Illustration: _Ah! gone is the old necromancy, For nothing seems right to my eye_] ON that hill there are stores that I knew not; There's a street--where I once lost my way; And the copse where you once tied my shoe-knot Is shamelessly open as day! And that bank by the spring--I once drank there, And you called the place Eden, you know; Now, I'm banished like Eve--though the bank there Is belonging to "Adams and Co." [Illustration: _And that bank by the spring--I once drank there, And you called the place Eden, you know_] [Illustration: _And the copse where you once tied my shoe-knot Is shamelessly open as day!_] THERE'S the rustle of silk on the sidewalk; Just now there passed by a tall hat; But there's gloom in this "boom" and this wild talk Of the "future" of Poverty Flat. There's a decorous chill in the air, Joe, Where once we were simple and free; And I hear they've been making a mayor, Joe, Of the man who shot Sandy McGee. [Illustration: _There's the rustle of silk on the sidewalk; Just now there passed by a tall hat_] BUT there's still the "lap, lap" of the river; There's the song of the pines, deep and low. (How my longing for them made me quiver In the park that they call Fontainebleau!) There's the snow-peak that looked on our dances, And blushed when the morning said, "Go!" There's a lot that remains which one fancies-- But somehow there's never a Joe! [Illustration: _But there is still the "lap, lap" of the river_] [Illustration: _There's a lot that remains which one fancies_] PERHAPS, on the whole, it is better, For you might have been changed like the rest; Though it's strange that I'm trusting this letter To papa, just to have it addressed. He thinks he may find you, and really Seems kinder now I'm all alone. You might have been here, Joe, if merely To _look_ what I'm willing to _own_. [Illustration: _He thinks he may find you_] WELL, well! that's all past; so good-night, Joe; Good-night to the river and Flat; Good-night to what's wrong and what's right, Joe; Good-night to the past, and all that-- To Harrison's barn, and its dancers; To the moon, and the white peak of snow; And good-night to the cañon that answers My "Joe!" with its echo of "No!" [Illustration: _And good-night to the cañon that answers My "Joe!" with its echo of "No!"_] _P.S._--I've just got your note. You deceiver! How dared you--how _could_ you? Oh, Joe! To think I've been kept a believer In things that were six months ago! And it's _you_'ve built this house, and the bank, too, And the mills, and the stores, and all that! And for everything changed I must thank _you_, Who have "struck it" on Poverty Flat! [Illustration: _I've just got your note. You deceiver!_] HOW dared you get rich--you great stupid!-- Like papa, and some men that I know, Instead of just trusting to Cupid And to me for your money? Ah, Joe! Just to think you sent never a word, dear, Till you wrote to papa for consent! Now I know why they had me transferred here, And "the health of papa"--what _that_ meant! [Illustration: _Now I know why they had me transferred here, And "the health of papa"--what that meant!_] [Illustration: _How dared you get rich--you great stupid!-- Like papa, and some men that I know_] NOW I know why they call this "The Lily;" Why the man who shot Sandy McGee You made mayor! 'Twas because--oh, you silly!-- He once "went down the middle" with me! I've been fooled to the top of my bent here, So come, and ask pardon--you know That you've still got to get _my_ consent, dear! And just think what that echo said--Joe! [Illustration: _The man who shot Sandy McGee You made mayor!_] [Illustration: END] [Illustration: Back Cover] 
34234	----	A LONELY FLUTE BY ODELL SHEPARD BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY _The Riverside Press Cambridge_ 1917 COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY ODELL SHEPARD ALL RIGHTS RESERVED _Published April 1917_ TO M. F. S. _And now 't was like all instruments, Now like a lonely flute; And now it is an angel's song That makes the Heavens be mute._ COLERIDGE. CONTENTS PROEM LAUS MARIÆ RECOLLECTION NIGHTFALL A BALLAD OF LOVE AND DEATH BIRDS OF PASSAGE WASTE THE WATCHER IN THE SKY HOUSEMATES POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE THE HIDDEN WEAVER VANITAS SPENSER'S "FAËRIE QUEENE" MORNING ROAD SONG EVENING ROAD SONG WINDY MORNING THE GRAVE OF THOREAU EARTH-BORN "WHENCE COMETH MY HELP" UNITY VISTAS A NUN LOVE AMONG THE CLOVER CERTAIN AMERICAN POETS THE SINGER'S QUEST DEAD MAGDALEN THE ADVENTURER THE GOLDFINCH ORIOLES BY A MOUNTAIN STREAM APRIL A CHAPEL BY THE SEA EPHEMEROS WANDERLUST THE IDEAL THE FIRST CHRISTIAN A LONELY FLUTE PROEM Beyond the pearly portal, Beyond the last dim star, Pale, perfect, and immortal, The eternal visions are, That never any rapture Of sorrow or of mirth Of any song shall capture To dwell with men on earth. Many a strange and tragic Old sorrow still is mute And melodies of magic Still slumber in the flute, Many a mighty vision Has caught my yearning eye And swept with calm derision In robes of splendor by. The rushing susurration Of some eternal wing Beats mighty variation Through all the song I sing; The vague, deep-mouthed commotion From its ancestral home Booms like the shout of ocean Across the crumbling foam; And these low lyric whispers Make answer wistfully As sea-shells ... dreaming lispers Beside the eternal sea. LAUS MARIÆ There is a name like some deep melody Hallowed by sundown, delicate as the plash Of lonely waves on solitary lakes And rounded as the sudden-bursting bloom Of bold, deep-throated notes in a midnight cloud When shadowy belfries far away roll out Across the dark their avalanche of sound. It is a wild voice lost in the wail of the wind; The silvery-twinkling plectrum of the rain Plays in the poplar tree no other tune And pines intone it softly as a prayer In leafy litanies. The name is raised Even to God's ear from ancient arches dim With caverned twilight and dull altar smoke Where tapers weave athwart the azure haze Innumerable pageantries of dusk. Low-voiced and soft-eyed women must they live Who bear that holy name. And now for one Time has no other honor than to be The meaning of an unremembered rhyme, The breath of a forgotten singer's song. (_October_, 1903) RECOLLECTION I must forget awhile the mellow flutes And all the lyric wizardry of strings; The fragile clarinet, Tremulous over meadows rich with dawn, Must knock against my vagrant heart And throb and cry no more. For I am shaken by the loveliness And lights and laughter and beguiling song Of all this siren world; The regal beauty of women, round on round, The swift, lithe slenderness of girls, And children's loyal eyes, Hill rivers and the lilac fringe of seas Lazily plunging, glow of city nights And faces in the glow-- These things have stolen my heart away, I lie Parcelled abroad in sound and hue, Dispersed through all I love. I must go far away to a still place And draw the shadows down across my eyes And wait and listen there For wings vibrating from beyond the stars, Wide-ranging, swiftly winnowing wings Bearing me back mine own. So soon, now, I shall lie deep hidden away From sound or sight, with hearing strangely dull And heavy-lidded eyes,-- 'T is time, O passionate soul, for me to go Some far, hill-folded road apart And learn the ways of peace. NIGHTFALL In a crumbling glory sets The unhastening sun; The fishers draw their shining nets; The day is done. Across the ruddy wine That brims the sea Black boats drag shoreward through the brine Dreamily, And dark against the glow Firing the west, By three and two the great gulls go Seaward to rest. Beneath the gradual host Of heaven, pale And glimmering, rides a dim sea-ghost, A large slow sail. Slowly she cometh on Day's last faint breath, Drifting across the water, wan And gray as death. From what far-lying land Swimmeth thy keel, Dim ship? And what mysterious hand Is at thy wheel? What far-borne news for me? What vast release? Quiet is in my heart, and on the sea Peace. (_Balboa, California_) A BALLAD OF LOVE AND DEATH She winded on the castle horn, She clamored long and bold, For she was way-spent and forlorn And she was sore a-cold. And she stood lonely in the snow. Vague quiet filled the air.... From heaven's roof looked down aloof The stars, with steady stare. She heard the droning drift of snow And the wolf-wind on the hill.... No other sound.... For leagues around The night was very still. She cried aloud in sudden fright, "Open! Warder ho! Here is a pilgrim guest to-night Who can no farther go." The steady beat of mailed feet In angry answer rang Along the floor. The castle door Gave in with iron clang And the warder strode into his tower And saw her standing there Weary, like a storm-tossed flower, And, like an angel, fair. "Here is no lodging for the night, No bread and wine for thee, No ingle bright, no warm firelight, No cheerful company. "Here is no inn nor any kin Of thine to harbor guest, Nor thee to house will any rouse Out of his ancient rest." Unearthly, dark, nocturnal things With faint and furtive stir Hovered on feather-muffled wings Round the fair face of her As she made answer wearily: "Ah! open now the gate. Though I was fleet with willing feet, I have come very late. "Yea, though I came through flood and flame, Through tempest, flood, and fire, And left the wind to trail behind The wings of my desire, "And though I prayed the stars for aid And seas for wind and tide, And though God gave me goodly pave And ran, Himself, beside... "Aye, though my feet have been thus fleet, Unto one heart, I know, Whose sleep is still beneath the hill, My coming has been slow." And he bent gently down above, A soft light in his eye... "Is not the holy name of Love The name men call thee by? "Ah, Love, I know thee, for thy face Is other-worldly fair; A great light of some heavenly place Is on thy shining hair. "But thou, Love, who canst tread the stars, Whose seat is by God's throne, Why wilt thou bend thee to the dust And walk the dark alone? "Thy ways are not our mortal ways. Hast thou nought else to do Than wander with thy dream-lit face Our glimmering darkness through?" But Love made answer, and her voice Was as God's voice to him; As tall and fair she towered there As heavenly seraphim... "Open the gate! for Love shall dwell Even among the dead And in the darkest deeps of hell! Open! For God hath said!" BIRDS OF PASSAGE Dropping round and clear across the still miles, Ringing down the midnight's marble stair, A bird's cry is falling through the darkness, Falling from the fields of upper air. Through the rainy fragrance of the April night Slow it falls, circling in the fall, And all the sheeted lake of sleeping silences Is troubled by the solitary call. Each human heart awake knows the loneliness Of that strange voice clear and far, That lost voice searching through the midnight, That lonely star calling to a star. Old memories are thronging through the darkness... Slow tears are blinding sleepless eyes... O lonely hearts remembering in the midnight! O dark and empty skies! WASTE Reluctant, groping fog crept gray and cold Up from the fields where now the guns were still; Far off the thundering surge of battle rolled And darkness brooded on the quiet hill; Clearly, across the listening night, the shrill And rhythmic cry of a lonely cricket fell On ears long deafened by the scream of shot and shell. And there were two who listened wistfully To that glad voice, that sad last voice of all, Who on the morrow after reveille Would make no answer to the muster call; Others would eat their mess, others would fall When the lines formed again into their places, And soon their marching comrades would forget their faces. One moaned a little and the other turned Painfully sidewise, peering up the bare Shell-furrowed slope. Then, while his deep wound burned, He crawled, slow inch by weary inch, to where The boy lay,--young, he thought, and strangely fair. "You see, I came," he said. "It was a wrench. I thought I'd die. Let's have a light here. What! You're French! "No matter ... we'll be going pretty soon... Dying 's a lonesome business at the best, And when there's nothing but a ghastly moon And fog for company, I lose my zest. There's a girl somewhere ... well... you know the rest. I'm glad I came. It's hand in hand now, brother. I think I laid you here. I wish 't had been another. "I never meant it, and you did n't mean For me this ugly gash along my side. Something has pushed us on. Our slate is clean. And long and long after we two have died Some learnedest of doctors will decide What thing it was. But we ... we'll never know. Our business now 's to help make next year's harvest grow. "You've been at school? College de France! You know Next year I should have heard your Bergson there,-- Greatest since Hegel. Think of Haeckel, though, At my own Jena! Mighty men they were. Not mighty enough for what they had to bear. They read and wrote and taught, but you and I, How have we profited at last? Well, here we lie. "If I had known you by the silver Rhine, That dreamy country where I had my birth, The land of golden corn and golden wine And surely, I think, the world's most lovely earth,-- I should have loved you, brother, and known your worth. But you were born beside the racing Rhone. Ah, yes, that made the difference. That thing alone. "We might have fronted this world's stormy weather Hand clasped in hand and seeing eye to eye. What was there we could not have done together? Who dares to say we should have feared to die, Shoulder to shoulder standing, you and I? But now you are slain by me, your unknown friend. I die by your unknowing hand. This ... this is the end! "And all the love that might have been is blown Far off like clouds that fade across the blue; The game is over and the night shuts down, Blotting the little dreams of me and you And all our hope of all we longed to do. But courage, comrade! It's not hard to die. It's not so lonely now. If only we know why!" The fog-damp folded closer round the hill And stillness deepened, but the cricket's song Tore at the heavy hem of silence still-- One small voice left of love in a world of wrong. A few dim stars looked down. The yelling throng Of guns had passed beyond the mountain's brow When once again he spoke, but slowly, faintlier now. "Something discovered that it didn't need us-- Me in the Fatherland and you in France. We were less worth than what it took to feed us, And so life gave us only a little glance. It's true to say we never had a chance. It's like this fog, around, above, below. Reach out your hand to me. Good-night. We'll never know." And then they lay so still they seemed asleep, For death was near and they had little pain. The midnight did not hear them moan or weep For life and love and gladness lost in vain And faces they would never see again,-- Old friends, old lovers. All seemed at a distance. The minutes crept and crept. They made no strong resistance. They only lay and looked up at the stars, Feeling they had not known how fair they were. I think their hearts were far from those loud wars As they lay listening to the cricket's chirr Until it faded to a drowsy blur, Dwindled, and died, lost in the distant roar Of waves that plunged and broke on some eternal shore. THE WATCHER IN THE SKY She has grown pale and spectral with our wounds And she is worn with memories of woe Older than Karnak. Multitudinous feet Of all the phantom armies of the world Resounding down the hollow halls of time, Have kept their far-off rumor in her ear. For she was old when Nineveh and Tyre And Baalbec of the waste went down in blood; Pompey and Tamburlaine and Genghis Khan Are dreams of only yesternight to her. And still she keeps, chained to a loathsome thing, Her straining, distant paces up and down The vaulted cell, but wistful of an end When all our swarm of shuddering life shall drop Like some dead cooling cinder down the void, Leaving her clean, in blessed barrenness. (_August_, 1914) HOUSEMATES This little flickering planet Is such a lonely spark Among the million mighty fires That blaze in the outer dark, The homeless waste about us Leaves such a narrow span To this dim lodging for a night, This bivouac of man, That all the heavens wonder In all their alien stars To see us wreck our fellowship In mad fraternal wars. POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE With a shout of trumpets and roll of drums, Down the road the music comes And all my heart leaps up to greet The steady tread of the marching feet. Blare of bugle and shriek of fife... This is the triumphing wine of life! My senses reel and my glad heart sings, My spirit soars on jubilant wings. Fluttering banners and gonfalons Cover with beauty the murderous guns; 'T is sweet to live, 't were great to die With this vast music marching by. For all my heart leaps up to greet The steady tread of the marching feet When down the road the music comes With a shout of trumpets and roll of drums. THE HIDDEN WEAVER There where he sits in the cold, in the gloom, Of his far-away place by his thundering loom, He weaves on the shuttles of day and of night The shades of our sorrow and shapes of delight. He has wrought him a glimmering garment to fling Over the sweet swift limbs of the Spring, He has woven a fabric of wonder to be For a blue and a billowy robe to the sea, He has fashioned in sombre funereal dyes A tissue of gold for the midnight skies. But sudden the woof turns all to red. Has he lost his craft? Has he snapped his thread? Sudden the web all sanguine runs. Does he hear the yell of the thirsting guns? While the scarlet crimes and the crimson sins Grow from the dizzying outs and ins Of the shuttle that spins, does he see it and feel? Or is he the slave of a tyrannous wheel? Inscrutable faces, mysterious eyes, Are watching him out of the drifting skies; Exiles of chaos crowd through the gloom Of the uttermost cold to that thundering room And whisper and peer through the dusk to mark What thing he is weaving there in the dark. Will he leave the loom that he won from them And rend his fabric from hem to hem? Is he weaving with daring and skill sublime A wonderful winding-sheet for time? Ah, but he sits in a darkling place, Hiding his hands, hiding his face, Hiding his art behind the shine Of the web that he weaves so long and fine. Loudly the great wheel hums and rings And we hear not even the song that he sings. Over the whirr of the shuttles and all The roar and the rush, does he hear when we call? Only the colors that grow and glow Swift as the hurrying shuttles go, Only the figures vivid or dim That flow from the hastening hands of him, Only the fugitive shapes are we, Wrought in the web of eternity. VANITAS Three queens of old in Yemen Beside forgotten streams, Three tall and stately women, Dreamt three great stately dreams Of love and power and pleasure and conquering quinqueremes. They dreamt of love that squandered All Egypt for a kiss, They dreamt of fame and pondered On proud Persepolis, But most they yearned for the wild delights of pale Semiramis. They had for lords and lovers Dark kings of Araby, Corsairs and wild sea-rovers From many an alien lea,-- Black-bearded men who loved and fought and won them cruelly. They reared a dreamlike palace Stately and white and tall As a lily's ivory chalice Where every echoing hall Was rumorous with rustling leaves and plashing water's fall. There to the tinkling zither And passionate guitars They footed hence and hither Beneath the breathless stars, From bare round breast and shoulder waved their glimmering cymars. Theirs was an empire's treasure Of gems and rich attire, Love had they beyond measure And wine that burnt like fire; Each stately queen in Yemen found verily her desire. But beauty waned and smouldered, Love languished into lust, The centuries have mouldered Their raven hair to rust, The desert sand is over them, their darkling eyes are dust. Their bosoms' pride is sunken Beneath the purple pall, Their smooth round limbs are shrunken, Through clasp and anklet crawl Lithe little snakes, upon their tombs lean lizards twitch and sprawl. SPENSER'S "FAËRIE QUEENE" Like some clear well of water in the waste, Some magic well beside the weary miles, This beauty is. I turn aside and taste The cool Lethean drink. Suddenly smiles A leafy world upon me,--peristyles Of flickering shade! The hush is only stirred Where silver runlets brighten down the aisles, From pool to pool rehearsing one low word Answered at drowsy intervals by a lonely bird. Along the rustling arches and through vast Dim caverns of green solitude are rolled The wintry leaves of all the withered past, One confraternity of common mould. From summers perished, autumn's tarnished gold Long blown to dust in many a fallen glade Is reared this rumorous temple million-boled, This shrine of peace, this whispering colonnade Trembling from court to court with restless sun and shade. And here a while may weary Fancy turn And loiter by the rote of guttural streams. Brushing the skirts of silence, the stirred fern Breathes softly "hush" and "hush"--a sound that seems Only the fluttering sigh of deepest dreams. Here comes no sound or sight of fevered things... No sight or sound. Green-gold the daylight beams, And deep in the heart of dusk a far bird sings Faint as the feathered beat of her own wavering wings. * * * * * Calm singer in the chambers of the dawn, Our hearts are weary singing in the heat When all thy dewy matin hopes are gone And all thy raptures, prophesyings sweet, And fair, false dreams are flying in defeat. O thou, the poet's poet, from thy sky Of ancient morning look thou down and greet Thy brothers of the noon with gentle eye. Lift them from out the dust. Forlorn and low they lie! Heart-easing poet, sing to us like bells Across wide waters paven by the stains Of sunset; like a vagrant breeze that swells And rises lingering, fails and grows and wanes Along a listening wood; like April rains In which the anemones of dream are born. And though you cannot save us from the pains Of life,--the heat, the insensate noise, the scorn,-- Here may we find our rose, forget a while the thorn. MORNING ROAD SONG Let me have my fill of the wide blue air And the emerald cup of the sea And a wandering road blown bright and bare And it is enough for me. The love of a man is a goodly thing And the love of a woman is true, But give me a rollicking song to sing And a love that is always new. For I am a rover and cannot stay And blithe at heart am I When free and afoot on a winding way Beneath the great blue sky. EVENING ROAD SONG It's a long road and a steep road And a weary road to climb. The air bites chill on the windy hill. At home it is firelight time. The sunset pales ... along the vales The cottage candles shine And twinkle through the early dew. Thank God that one is mine! And dark and late she'll watch and wait Beyond the last long mile For the weary beat of homing feet With her wise and patient smile. WINDY MORNING Dawn with a jubilant shout Leaps on the shivering sea And puffs the last pale planet out And scatters the flame-bright clouds about Like the leaves of a frost-bitten tree. Does a gold seed split the rosy husk? Nay, a sword ... a shield ... a spear! The kindler of all fires that burn Deep in the day's cerulean urn Rides up across the clear And tramples down the cowering dusk Like a strong-browed charioteer. Blow out and far away The dim, the dull, the dun; Prosper the crimson, blight the gray, And blow us clean of yesterday, Stern morning fair begun, Till the earth is an opal bathed in dew, Flashing with emerald, gold, and blue, Held where the skies wash through and through High up against the sun. (_Catalina Island_, 1913) THE GRAVE OF THOREAU Brown earth, blue sky, and solitude,-- Three things he loved, three things he wooed Lifelong; and now no rhyme can tell How ultimately all is well With his wild heart that worshipped God's Epiphany in crumbling sods And like an oak brought all its worth Back to the kindly mother earth. But something starry, something bold, Eludes the clutch of dark and mould,-- Something that will not wholly die Out of the old familiar sky. No spell in all the lore of graves Can still the plash of Walden waves Or wash away the azure stain Of Concord skies from heart and brain. Clear psalteries and faint citoles Only recall the orioles Fluting reveille to the morn Across the acres of the corn He wanders somewhere lonely still Along a solitary hill And sits by ever lonelier fires Remote from heaven's bright rampires, A hermit in the blue Beyond Beside some dim celestial pond With beans to hoe and wood to hew And halcyon days to loiter through And angel visitors, no doubt, Who shut the air and sunlight out. But he who scoffed at human ways And, finding us unworthy of praise, Sang misanthropic pæans to The muskrat and the feverfew, Will droop those archangelic wings With praise of how we manage things, Prefer his Walden tupelo To even the Tree of Life, and grow A little wistful looking down Across the fields of Concord town. EARTH-BORN No lapidary's heaven, no brazier's hell for me, For I am made of dust and dew and stream and plant and tree; I'm close akin to boulders, I am cousin to the mud, And all the winds of all the skies make music in my blood. I want a brook and pine trees, I want a storm to blow Loud-lunged across the looming hills with rain and sleet and snow; Don't put me off with diadems and thrones of chrysoprase,-- I want the winds of northern nights and wild March days. My blood runs red with sunset, my body is white with rain, And on my heart auroral skies have set their scarlet stain, My thoughts are green with spring time, among the meadow rue I think my very soul is growing green and gold and blue. What will be left, I wonder, when Death has washed me clean Of dust and dew and sundown and April's virgin green? If there's enough to make a ghost, I'll bring it back again To the little lovely earth that bore me, body, soul, and brain. "WHENCE COMETH MY HELP" Let me sleep among the shadows of the mountains when I die, In the murmur of the pines and sliding streams, Where the long day loiters by Like a cloud across the sky And the moon-drenched night is musical with dreams. Lay me down within a canyon of the mountains, far away, In a valley filled with dim and rosy light, Where the flashing rivers play Out across the golden day And a noise of many waters brims the night. Let me lie where glinting rivers ramble down the slanted glade Under bending alders garrulous and cool, Where they gather in the shade To the dazzling, sheer cascade, Where they plunge and sleep within the pebbled pool. All the wisdom, all the beauty, I have lived for unaware Came upon me by the rote of highland rills; I have seen God walking there In the solemn soundless air When the morning wakened wonder in the hills. I am what the mountains made me of their green and gold and gray, Of the dawnlight and the moonlight and the foam. Mighty mothers far away, Ye who washed my soul in spray, I am coming, mother mountains, coming home. When I draw my dreams about me, when I leave the darkling plain Where my soul forgets to soar and learns to plod, I shall go back home again To the kingdoms of the rain, To the blue purlieus of heaven, nearer God. Where the rose of dawn blooms earlier across the miles of mist, Between the tides of sundown and moonrise, I shall keep a lover's tryst With the gold and amethyst, With the stars for my companions in the skies. UNITY Where the long valley slopes away Five miles across the dreaming day A maple sends a scarlet prayer Into the still autumnal air, Three golden-smouldering hickories Are fanned to flame beneath the breeze And one great crimson oak tree fires The sky-line over the Concord spires. In worship mystically sweet The rimy asters at my feet And spiring gentian bells that burn Blue incense in an azure urn Breathe softly from the aspiring sod: "This is our utmost. Take it, God,-- This chant of green, this prayer of blue. This is the best thy clay can do." * * * * * O lonely heart and widowed brain Sick with philosophies that strain Body from spirit, flesh from soul,-- Worship with asters and be whole; Live simply as still water flows Till soul shall border brain so close No blade of wit can thrust between And hearts are pure as grass is green; Pray with the maple tree and trust The ancient ritual of the dust. VISTAS As I walked through the rumorous streets Of the wind-rustled, elm-shaded city Where all of the houses were friends And the trees were all lovers of her, The spell of its old enchantment Was woven again to subdue me With magic of flickering shadows, Blown branches and leafy stir. Street after street, as I passed, Lured me and beckoned me onward With memories frail as the odor Of lilac adrift on the air. At the end of each breeze-blurred vista She seemed to be watching and waiting, With leaf shadows over her gown And sunshine gilding her hair. For there was a dream that the kind God Withheld, while granting us many-- But surely, I think, we shall come Sometime, at the end, she and I, To the heaven He keeps for all tired souls, The quiet suburban gardens Where He Himself walks in the evening Beneath the rose-dropping sky And watches the balancing elm trees Sway in the early starshine When high in their murmurous arches The night breeze ruffles by. A NUN One glance and I had lost her in the riot Of tangled cries. She trod the clamor with a cloistral quiet Deep in her eyes As though she heard the muted music only That silence makes Among dim mountain summits and on lonely Deserted lakes. There is some broken song her heart remembers From long ago, Some love lies buried deep, some passion's embers Smothered in snow, Far voices of a joy that sought and missed her Fail now, and cease.... And this has given the deep eyes of God's sister Their dreadful peace. LOVE AMONG THE CLOVER "If you dare," she said, And oh, her breath was clover-sweet! Clover nodded over her, Her lips were clover red. Blackbirds fluted down the wind, The bobolinks were mad with joy, The wind was playing in her hair, And "If you dare," she said. Clover billowed down the wind Far across the happy fields, Clover on the breezy hills Leaned along the skies And all the nodding clover heads And little clouds with silver sails And all the heaven's dreamy blue Were mirrored in her eyes. Her laughing lips were clover-red When long ago I kissed her there And made for one swift moment all My heaven and earth complete. I've loved among the roses since And love among the lilies now, But love among the clover... Her breath was clover-sweet. O wise, wise-hearted boy and girl Who played among the clover bloom! I think I was far wiser then Than now I dare to be. For I have lost that Eden now, I cannot find my Eden now, And even should I find it now, I've thrown away the key. CERTAIN AMERICAN POETS They cowered inert before the study fire While mighty winds were ranging wide and free, Urging their torpid fancies to aspire With "Euhoe! Bacchus! Have a cup of tea." They tripped demure from church to lecture-hall, Shunning the snare of farthingales and curls. Woman they thought half angel and half doll, The Muses' temple a boarding-school for girls. Quaffing Pierian draughts from Boston pump, They toiled to prove their homiletic art Could match with nasal twang and pulpit thump In maxims glib of meeting-house and mart. Serenely their ovine admirers graze. Apollo wears frock-coats, the Muses stays. THE SINGER'S QUEST I've been wandering, listening for a song, Dreaming of a melody, all my life long ... The lilting tune that God sang to rock the tides asleep And crooned above the cradled stars before they learned to creep. O, there was laughter in it and many a merry chime Before He had turned moralist, grown old before His time, And He was happy, trolling out His great blithe-hearted tune, Before He slung the little earth beneath the sun and moon. But I know that somewhere that song is rolling on, Like flutes along the midnight, like trumpets in the dawn; It throbs across the sunset and stirs the poplar tree And rumbles in the long low thunder of the sea. * * * * * First-love sang me one note and heart-break taught me two, A child has told me three notes, and soon I'll know it through; And when I stand before the Throne I'll hum it low and sly, Watching for a great light of welcome in His eye... "Put a white raiment on him and a harp into his hand And golden sandals on his feet and tell the saints to stand A little farther off unless they wish to hear the truth, For this blessed lucky sinner is going to sing about my youth!" DEAD MAGDALEN Cover her over with pallid white roses, Her who had none but red roses to wear; All that her last grim lover bestows is Virginal white for her bosom and hair. Cover the folds of the glimmering sheet Clear from her eyelids weary and sweet Down to her nevermore wayward feet. Then They may find her fair. Lovingly, tenderly, let us array her Fair as a bride for the way she must go, Leaving no lingering stain to betray her, Letting them see we have sullied her so. Over the curve of the fair young breast Leave we this maidenly lily to rest White as the snow in its snow-soft nest. Now They will never know. THE ADVENTURER He came not in the red dawn Nor in the blaze of noon, And all the long bright highway Lay lonely to the moon, And nevermore, we know now, Will he come wandering down The breezy hollows of the hills That gird the quiet town. For he has heard a voice cry A starry-faint "Ahoy!" Far up the wind, and followed Unquestioning after joy. But we are long forgetting The quiet way he went, With looks of love and gentle scorn So sweetly, subtly blent. We cannot cease to wonder, We who have loved him, how He fares along the windy ways His feet must travel now. But we must draw the curtain And fasten bolts and bars And talk here in the firelight Of him beneath the stars. THE GOLDFINCH Down from the sky on a sudden he drops Into the mullein and juniper tops, Flushed from his bath in the midsummer shine Flooding the meadowland, drunk with the wine Spilled from the urns of the blue, like a bold Sky-buccaneer in his sable and gold. Lightly he sways on the pendulous stem, Vividly restless, a fluttering gem, Then with a flash of bewildering wings Dazzles away up and down, and he sings Clear as a bell at each dip as he flies Bounding along on the wave of the skies. Sunlight and laughter, a winged desire, Motion and melody married to fire, Lighter than thistle-tuft borne on the wind, Frailer than violets, how shall we find Words that will match him, discover a name Meet for this marvel, this lyrical flame? How shall we fashion a rhythm to wing with him, Find us a wonderful music to sing with him Fine as his rapture is, free as the rollicking Song that the harlequin drops in his frolicking Dance through the summer sky, singing so merrily High in the burning blue, winging so airily? (_ Mount Vernon, New Hampshire_) ORIOLES Wings in a blur of gold High in the elm trees, Looping like tawny flame Through the green shadows, Now at an airy height Pausing a heart beat Quite at the twig's tip, Pendulous, bending. Golden against the blue, Gold in an azure cup, Golden wine bubbling Out of blue goblets... Cool, smooth and reedy notes Fly low across the noon While through the drowsy heat Drums the cicada. Tropical wing and song Bound from Bolivia... All the blue Amazon Sings to New England.... Flute-noted orioles, Flame-coated orioles, Gold-throated orioles, Spirits of summer. BY A MOUNTAIN STREAM Where the rivulet swept by a sycamore root With a turbulent voice and a hurrying foot, I bent by the water and spoke in my dream To the wavering, restless, unlingering stream: "Oh, turbulent rivulet hastening past, For what wonderful goal do you hope at the last That never you pause in the shimmering green Of the undulant shade where the sycamores lean Or rest in the moss-curtained, cool dripping halls Hidden under the veils of your musical falls Or loiter at peace by the tremulous fern-- White wandering waters that never return?" And I dreamed by the rivulet's wavering side That a myriad ripple of voices replied: "Aloft on the mountain, afar on the steep, A voice that we knew cried aloud in our sleep, 'Come, hasten ye down to the vale and to me, Your begetter, destroyer, preserver, the Sea!' We must carry our feebleness down to the Strong, We must mingle us deep in the Whole, and ere long All the numberless host of the heaven shall ride With the pale Lady Moon on our slumbering tide." The voices swept out and away through the door Of the canyon, and on to the infinite shore. Oh, vast in thy destiny, slender of span, Wild rivulet, how thou art like to a man! (_Cold Brook, California_, 1912) APRIL (_To Bliss Carman_) There's a murmur in the patient forest alleys, There's an elfin echo whispering through the trees, Lonely pipes are lifted softly in the valleys... All the air is filled with waking melodies. From the crucibles of Erebus and Endor, Flame of emerald has fallen by the rills, And it flashes up the slope and sits in splendor In the glory of the beauty of the hills. Now my heart will yearn again to voice its wonder And my song must sing again between the words With a mutter of unutterable thunder And a twitter of inimitable birds. (_April_, 1903) A CHAPEL BY THE SEA (_To Paul Dowling_) There's a mouldering mountain chapel gazing out across the sea From beneath the lisping shelter of a eucalyptus tree That has drawn the ancient silence from the mountain's heart and fills And subdues a fevered spirit with the quiet of the hills. For silvery in the morning the chimes go dropping down Across the vales of purple mist that gird the island town And golden in the evening the vesper bells again Call back the weary fishing folk along the leafy lane. I'd like to be the father priest and call the folk to prayer Up through the winding dewy ways that climb the morning air, And send them down at even-song with all the silent sky Of early starshine teaching them far deeper truth than I. I'd like to lie at rest there beneath a mossy stone Above the crooning sea's low distant monotone, Lulled by the lisping whisper of the eucalyptus tree That shades my mountain chapel gazing out across the sea. (_Avalon, Christmas Day_, 1913) EPHEMEROS A firefly cried across the night: "O lofty star, O streaming light, Clear eye of heaven, immortal lamp Set high above the dew and damp, Thou great high-priest to heaven's King And chief of all the choirs that sing Their golden, endless antiphons Of praise before the eternal thrones-- Hear thou my prayer of worship! Thine The glory, all the dimness mine. I am a feeble glimmering spark Vagrant along the lower dark." The star called down from heaven's roof With a humble heart and mild reproof: "The Power that made, the Breath that blew My fire aglow has kindled you With equal love and equal pain And equal toil of heart and brain. For I am only a wandering light, Your elder comrade in the night. We are two sisters, you and I, And when we two burn out and die It will be hardly known from far Which was the firefly, which the star." WANDERLUST (_To Willard_) The birds were beating north again with faint and starry cries Along their ancient highway that spans the midnight skies, And out across the rush of wings my heart went crying too, Straight for the morning's windy walls and lakes of misted blue. They gave me place among them, for well they understood The magic wine of April working madness in my blood, And we were kin in thought and dream as league by league together We kept that pace of straining wings across the starry weather. The dim blue tides of Fundy, green slopes of Labrador Slid under us ... our course was set for earth's remotest shore; But tingling through the ether and searching star by star A lonely voice went crying that drew me down from far. Farewell, farewell, my brothers! I see you far away Go drifting down the sunset across the last green bay, But I have found the haven of this lonely heart and wild-- My falconer has called me--I am prisoned by a child. (_Easter Day_, 1916) THE IDEAL Serenely, from her mountain height sublime, She mocks my hopeless labor as I creep Each day a day's strength farther from the deep And nearer to her side for which I climb. So may she mock when for the sad last time I fall, my face still upward, upon sleep, With faithful hands still yearning up the steep In patient and pathetic pantomime. I am content, O ancient, young-eyed child Of love and longing. Pity not our wars Of frail-spun flesh, and keep thee undefiled By all our strife that only breaks and mars. But let us see from far thy footing, wild And wayward still against the eternal stars! THE FIRST CHRISTIAN A little wandering wind went up the hill. It had a lonely voice as though it knew What it should find before it came to where The broken body of him that had been Christ Hung in the ruddy glow. A bowshot down The bleak rock-shouldered hill the soldiery Had piled a fire, and when the searching wind Came stronger from the distant sea and dashed The shadows and the gleam together, songs Of battle and lust were blown along the slope Mingled with clash of swords on cuisse and shield. But of the women sitting by the cross Even she whose life had been as gravely sweet And sheltered as a lily's did not flinch. Her face was buried in her shrouding cloak. And she who knew too sorrowfully well The cruelty and bitterness of life Heard not. She sat erect, her shadowy hair Blown back along the darkness and her eyes That searched the distant spaces of the night Splendid and glowing with an inward joy. And at the darkest hour came three or four From round the fire and would have driven them thence; But one who knew them, gazing in their eyes, Said: "Nay. It is his mother and his love, The scarlet Magdalena. Let them be." So, in the gloom beside that glimmering cross, Beneath the broken body of him they loved, They wept and watched--the lily and the rose. At last the deep, low voice of Magdalen, Toned like a distant bell, broke on the hush: "We are so weak! What can poor women do? So pitifully frail! God pity us! How he did pity us! He understood... Out of his own great strength he understood How it might feel to be so very weak... To be a tender lily of the field, To be a lamb lost in the windy hills Far from the fold and from the shepherd's voice, To be a child with no strength, only love. And ah, he knew, if ever a man can know, What 't is to be a woman and to live, Strive how she may to out-soar and overcome, Tied to this too frail body of too fair earth! "Oh, had I been a man to shield him then In his great need with loving strong right arm! One of the twelve--ha!--of that noble twelve That ran away, and two made mock of him Or else betrayed him ere they ran? Ah no! And yet, a man's strength with a woman's love... That might have served him somewhat ere the end." Then with a weary voice the mother said: "What can we do but only watch and weep, Sit with weak hands and watch while strong men rend And break and ruin, bringing all to nought The beauty we have nearly died to make? "It is not true to say that he was strong. He did not claim the kingdom that was his, He did not even seek for wealth and power, He did not win a woman's love and get Strong children to live after him, and all That strong men strive for he passed heedless by. Because that he was weak I loved him so... For that and for his soft and gentle ways, The tender patient calling of his voice And that dear trick of smiling with his eyes. Ah no! I have had dreams--a mother's dreams-- But now I cannot dream them any more. "I sorrowed little as the happy days Sped by and by that still the fair-haired lad Who lay at first beside me in the stall, The cattle stall outside Jerusalem, Found no great throne to dazzle his mother's eye. He was so good a workman ... axe and saw Did surely suit him better than a sword. I was content if only he would wed Some village girl of little Nazareth And get me children with his own slow smile, Deep thoughtful eyes and golden kingly brow. "It seems but yesterday he played among The shavings strewn on Joseph's work-shop floor. The sunlight of the morning slanted through The window--'t was in springtime--and across The bench where Joseph sat, and then it lay In golden glory on the boy's bright hair And on the shavings that were golden too. I saw him through the open door. I thought, 'My little king has found his golden crown.' But unto Joseph I said nought at all. "But now, ah me! he won no woman's love, Nor loved one either as most men call love, And so he had no child and he is gone And I am left without him and alone." So by her son's pale broken body mourned The mother, dreaming on departed days. And as with one who looks into the west, Watching the embers of the outburned day Crumble and cool and slowly droop and fade, And will not take the darkling eastward path Where lies his way until the last faint glow Has left the sky and the early stars shine forth, So did her dream cling to the ruined past And all the joy they had in Nazareth Before the years of doubt and trouble came. Then, while loud laughter sounded up the hill Where yet that ribald crew sang o'er the wine, She bowed her head above her cradling arms And softly sang, as to herself, the songs Of Israel that once had served her well To soothe the wakeful child. But Magdalen Arose upon her feet and tossed her cloak Back from the midnight of her wind-blown hair And lifted up her eyes into the dark As though, beyond this circle of all our woe, To read a hidden meaning in the stars. "Aye, it is dark," she said. "The night comes on. He was the sunshine of our little day. The clouds unsettled softly and we saw Ladders of glory climbing into light Unspeakable, with dazzling interchange Of Majesties and Powers. But suddenly The tides of darkness whelm us round again And this drear dwindled earth becomes once more What it has ever been--a core of shade And steaming vapor spinning in the dark, A deeper clot of blackness in the void! "The night comes on. 'T is hard to pierce the dark. And if to me who loved him, whom he loved-- Though well thou sayest, 'Not as most men call love'-- Far harder will it be for those who hold In memory no gesture of his hand, No haunting echo of his patient voice, Nor that dear trick of smiling with his eyes. "O ceaseless tramp of armies down the years! O maddened cries of 'Christ' and 'Son of Mary!' While o'er the crying screams the hurtling death.... Thou gentle shepherd of the quiet fold, Mild man of sorrows, hast thou done this thing, Who camest not to bring peace but a sword? Ah no, not thou, but only our childishness, The pitifully childish heart of man That cannot learn and know beyond a little. "The priests and captains and the little kings Will tear each other at the throat and cry: 'Thus said he, lived he; swear it or thou diest!' But these shall pass and perish in the dark While the lorn strays and outcasts of the world, The souls whose pain has seared their pride to dust And burned a way for love to enter in-- These only know his meaning and shall live. "So is it as with one whose feet have trod The valley of the shadow, who has seen His dearest lowered into endless night. All music holds for him a deeper strain Of nobler meaning, and the flush of dawn, High wind at noonday, crumbling sunset gold, And the dear pathetic look of children's eyes-- All beauty pierces closer to his heart. "Yea, thou thyself, pale youth upon the cross-- The godlike strength of thee was rooted deep In human weakness. Even she who bore thee, Seeing the man too nearly, missed the God, Erring as fits the mother. Some will say In coming years, I feel it in my heart, That thou didst face thy death a conscious God, Knowing almighty hands were stretched to snatch And lift thee from the greedy clutching grave. Falsely! Forgetting dark Gethsemane,-- Not knowing, as I know, what doubt assailed Thy human heart until the latest breath. Ah, what a trumpery death, what mockery And mere theatric mimicry of pain, If thou didst surely know thou couldst not die! Thou didst not know. And whether even now Thy straying ghost, like some great moth of night Blown seaward through the shadow, flies and drifts Along dim coasts and headlands of the dark, A homeless wanderer up and down the void, Or whether indeed thou art enthroned above In light and life, I know not. This I know-- That in the moment of sheer certainty My soul will die. "No! On thy spirit lay All the dark weight and mystery of pain And all our human doubt and flickering hope, Deathless despairs and treasuries of tears, Gropings of spirit blindfold by the flesh And grapplings with the fiend. Else were thy death Less like a God's than even mine may be. "Thou broken mother who canst see in him Only the quiet man, the needful child, And most of all the Babe of Bethlehem, Let it suffice thee. Thy reward is great. Who loveth God that never hath loved man? Who knoweth man but cometh to know God? Thou sacred, sorrowing mother, canst thou learn-- Thou who hast gone so softly in God's sight-- Of me, the scarlet woman of old days? Come, let us talk together, thou and I. Apart, we see him darkly, through a glass; Together, we shall surely see aright. Bring thou thine innocence, thy stainless soul, And I will bring deep lore of suffering, My dear-bought wisdom of defeat and pain. For out of these may come, believe it thou, Sanctities not like thine, but fit to bear The bitter storms and whirlwinds of this world. Aye, out of evil often springeth good, And sweetest honey from the lion's mouth. And that he knew. That very thing he meant When he withdrew me from the pits of shame. 'T is I who see God shining through the man. I see the deity, the godlike strength In his supreme capacity for pain. Nor have I known the cruel love of men These many years to err when now I say This man loved not like men but like a God. Thou broken mother, weep not for the child, Mourn not the man. Acclaim the risen Christ!" She turned and touched the other lovingly, Then stooped and peered into her darkened face. The mother slept, forspent and overborne By weariness and woe too great to bear. She gently smiled. "So it is best," she said. Tall and elate she stood, her shadowy hair Blown back along the darkness and her eyes That searched the distant spaces of the night Splendid and glowing with an inward joy. And over that dark hill of tragedy And triumph, victory and dull despair, Over the sleeping Roman soldiery, Over the three stark crosses and the two Who loved Him most, the lily and the rose, Shone still and clear the great compassionate stars. THE END NOTE Some of these poems have been published before in _The Sunset Magazine, The Smart Set, Munsey's Magazine, The Bellman, The International, The Overland Monthly, The Youth's Companion, Poetry--A Magazine of Verse, The Harvard Graduates' Magazine, The Book News Monthly, Current Opinion, The Literary Digest, The Boston Transcript_, and the _Anthologies of Magazine Verse_ for 1915 and 1916. I wish to thank the editors of those publications in which they originally appeared for permission to reprint. The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A 
34269	----	[Illustration: Let's Go!!] ROOKIE RHYMES BY THE MEN OF THE 1st. and 2nd. PROVISIONAL TRAINING REGIMENTS PLATTSBURG, NEW YORK MAY 15--AUGUST 15 1917 [Illustration] HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON ROOKIE RHYMES Copyright, 1917, by Harper & Brothers Printed in the United States of America Published September, 1917 CONTENTS _Page_ PUBLICATION COMMITTEE 13 FOREWORD 15 Robert Tapley, Co. 5, 1st P. T. R. PART I--POEMS STANDING IN LINE 19 Morris Bishop, Co. 8, 1st P. T. R. THE FIRST TIME 21 ONWARD CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 22 D. E. Currier, 2d Battery, 1st P. T. R. THEY BELIEVE IN US BACK HOME 24 Anch Kline, Co. 1, 1st P. T. R. ODE TO A LADY IN WHITE STOCKINGS 29 Robert Cutler, Co. 2, 1st P. T. R. "AVOIRDUPOIS" 31 D. E. Currier, 2d Battery, 1st P.T.R. GO! 35 J. S. O'Neale, Jr., Co. 4, 2d P. T. R. THE PLATTSBURG CODE 36 R. L. Hill, Co. 5, 2d P. T. R. A CONFERENCE 38 Donald E. Currier, 2d Battery, 1st P. T. R. SUNDAY IN BARRACKS 41 Anch Kline, Co. 1, 1st P. T. R. THE BALLAD OF MONTMORENCY GRAY 43 Pendleton King, Co. 6, 2d P. T. R. GIRLS 51 Robert M. Benjamin, Co. 3, 1st P. T. R. A LAMENT 52 H. Chapin, Co. 2, 1st P. T. R. THE MANUAL 53 George S. Clarkson, Co. 4, 1st P. T. R. THOSE "PATRIOTIC" SONGS 55 Frank J. Felbel, Co. 2, 2d P. T. R. SATURDAY P.M. 58 Harold Amory, Co. 5, 1st P. T. R. HOW THINGS HAVE CHANGED 62 C. K. Stodder, Co. 9, 1st P. T. R. ARMA FEMINAMQUE 63 W. R. Witherell, Co. 7, 2d P. T. R. OUT O' LUCK 65 W. K. Rainsford, Co. 7, 2d P. T. R. SHERMAN WAS RIGHT 69 Joe F. Trounstine, Co. 4, 2d P. T. R. TROOPSHIP CHANTY 70 Harold Speakman, Co. 4, 2d P. T. R. THOSE RUMORS 71 F. L. Bird, 2d Battery, 1st P. T. R. WAR'S HORRORS 72 Kenneth McIntosh, 2d Lieut. O. R. C., Co. 4, 1st P. T. R. THE CALL 73 Allen Bean MacMurphy, Co. 2, 1st P. T. R. BEANS 74 Charles H. Ramsey, Co. 8, 1st P. T. R. FORWARD "?" 77 John W. Wilber, Co. 5, 1st P. T. R. CHANT OF A DERELICT 78 Ed. Burrows, Co. 3, 1st P. T. R. PREOCCUPATION 80 Charles H. Ramsey, Co. 8, 1st P. T. R. INOCULATION DAY 83 Morris Bishop, Co. 8, 1st P. T. R. DON'T WEAKEN 85 R. T. Fry, Co. 5, 1st P. T. R. THE THREE 87 Harold Speakman, Co. 4, 2d P. T. R. TO THE LITTLE BLACK DOG 89 A. N. Phillips, Jr., 3d Battery, 1st P. T. R. WHEN EAST IS WEST 90 W. R. Witherell, Co. 7, 2d P. T. R. TO MY SWEETHEART 92 Every Rookie in Co. 2, 1st P. T. R. PLAY THE GAME 93 E. F. D., Co. 2, 1st P. T. R. THE STADIUM, PLATTSBURG 95 Harold Speakman, Co. 4, 1st P. T. R. RUBAIYAT OF A PLATTSBURG CANDIDATE 96 W. Kerr Rainsford, Co. 7, 1st P. T. R. DREAMS 99 L. Irving, Co. 2, 1st P. T. R. A 2D REGIMENT "WHO'S WHO" 101 J. Elmer Cates, Co. 2, 2d P. T. R. EUREKA 105 E. F. D., Co. 2, 1st P. T. R. FOURTH COMPANY, N. E. SONG 106 George S. Clarkson, Co. 4, 1st P. T. R. PART II--SONGS AND PARODIES LONG, LONG TRAIL 109 G. Gilmore Davis, Co. 10, 1st P. T. R. WILLIE'S PA 110 J. Felbel and L. H. Davidow, Co. 2, 2d P. T. R. COMPANY 2, NEW ENGLAND 112 Paul J. Field, Co. 2, 1st P. T. R. TO THE RESERVE CAVALRY 113 F. E. Horpel, Co. 9, 1st P. T. R. WE'RE ON OUR WAY TO DEUTSCHLAND 114 Lieut. Fletcher Clark, O. R. C., Co. 10, 1st P. T. R. I WANT TO BE A COLONEL 115 F. E. Horpel, Co. 9, 1st P. T. R. I WANT TO BE A DOUGHBOY 116 Kenneth Bonner, Co. 10, 1st P. T. R. OUR BATTLE HYMN 117 James C. McMullin, Co. 5, 1st P. T. R. NEW ENGLAND WILL BE LEADING 119 Lieut. Cyril C. Reynolds, O. R. C., Co. 10, 1st P. T. R. ON THE BANKS OF THE RIVER RHINE 120 J. J. Riodan, Co. 3, 2d P. T. R. "THE SIMULATING OF THE GREEN" 121 Lieut. Joseph Gazzam, Jr., O. R. C., Co. 2, 1st P. T. R. DON'T SEND ME HOME 123 E. M. Anderson, Co. 2, 1st P. T. R. COMPANY NINE 124 O. W. Hauserman, Co. 9, 1st P. T. R. WE'RE ON OUR WAY TO EUROPE 126 T. L. Wood, Co. 9, 1st P. T. R. COMPANY 5 SONG 127 James C. McMullin, Co. 5, 1st P. T. R. DOUBLE TIME 128 W. J. Littlefield, 3d Battery, 1st P. T. R. THE 8TH NEW ENGLAND 130 Anonymous, Co. 8, 1st P. T. R. MARCHING ON THE RHINE 132 Lieut. Cyril C. Reynolds, O. R. C., Co. 10, 1st P. T. R. EGGS--AGERATED 133 Robert B. House, Co. 8, 1st P. T. R. WITH APOLOGIES TO KIPLING'S "THE VAMPIRE" 134 R. E. Hall, 1st Troop, 1st P. T. R. FINIS 136 ILLUSTRATIONS COVER ILLUSTRATION, C. L. Yates, Co. 1, 1st P. T. R. LET'S GO!! _Frontispiece_ Lieut. P. L. Crosby, O. R. C., Co. 2, 2d P. T. R. THE FIRST TIME _Page_ 21 R. K. Leavitt, Co. 2, 1st P. T. R. RIGHT DRESS--MARCH! " 24 C. L. Yates, Co. 1, 1st P. T. R. A TEST OF DISCIPLINE " 27 C. L. Yates, Co. 1, 1st P. T. R. WHAT'S YOUR NAME? " 33 R. K. Leavitt, Co. 2, 1st P. T. R. A CONFERENCE " 38 R. K. Leavitt, Co. 2, 1st P. T. R. ALWAYS WITH ANOTHER FELLOW " 49 Mr. Sleeper, Co. 9, 1st P. T. R. THERE'S A HUNGRY SURGEON WAITING " 58 R. K. Leavitt, Co. 2, 1st P. T. R. A SHADOW-POINTIN' BOCHE " 63 R. K. Leavitt, Co. 2, 1st P. T. R. S. O. S. " 67 Mr. Baskerville, Co. 4, 2d P. T. R. A MISS AT 5 O'CLOCK " 75 C. L. Yates, Co. 1, 1st P. T. R. MESS? YES!! " 81 R. K. Leavitt, Co. 2, 1st P. T. R. Title by Anch Kline, Co. 1, 1st P. T. R. WHEN EAST IS WEST " 90 R. K. Leavitt, Co. 2, 1st P. T. R. WITH THE ROOKIE TO THE END " 139 Mrs. Gertrude Crosby, Wife of Lieut. P. L. Crosby, Co. 2, 2d P. T. R. THE END OF A PERFECT DAY _End Papers_ Lieut. P. L. Crosby, O. R. C., Co. 2, 2d P. T. R. PUBLICATION COMMITTEE Edward F. Dalton, Chairman Co. 2, 1st P. T. R. 1st P. T. R. W. Dyar, Co. 1 P. J. Field, Co. 2 G. B. Blaine, Co. 3 A. F. Woodies, Co. 4 J. C. McMullin, Co. 5 R. T. Frye, Co. 5 M. B. Phipps, Co. 6 D. Loring, Jr., Co. 7 C. H. Ramsey, Co. 8 W. W. Webber, Co. 9 S. S. Gordon, Tr. 1 R. B. Leake, Btry. 1 D. E. Currier, Btry. 2 2nd P. T. R. W. J. Littlefield, Btry. 3 T. C. Jessup, Co. 1 E. E. Henderson, Co. 1 F. J. Felbel, Co. 2 Lieut. Kenneth McIntosh, Co. 4 Capt. Richardson, Co. 5 Pendleton King, Co. 6 H. MacKay, Co. 7 Herbert Clock, Co. 9 E. S. Murphy, Btry. 1 C. G. Shaw, Btry. 2 M. N. Kernochan, Btry. 3 FOREWORD _River that rolls to the restless deep From sylvan-born placidity, Stained issue of the undefiled By your own wayward will exiled From the crystal lap of a land-locked sea,_ _Read me the meaning of your mood. The waters murmur as they flow, "Strife is the law by which we live; Stagnation, our alternative: This is the only truth we know."_ _The tides of mortal toilers meet To merge their rhythms in bloody fray, And, wave to wave, their armies call-- Nay, summon us that we shall all Assume the role we choose to play._ _So, at the cry, in loyal breasts, As smaller self-concern recedes, Still burns the old Achillean fire, Still eager questing souls desire Not life but living, not days but deeds._ PART I POEMS STANDING IN LINE When I applied for Plattsburg I stood for hours in line To get a piece of paper which they said I had to sign; When I had signed I stood in line (and my, that line was slow!) And asked them what to do with it; they said they didn't know. And when I came to Plattsburg I had to stand in line, To get a Requisition, from five o'clock till nine; I stood in line till night for the Captain to endorse it; But the Q. M. had one leggin' left; I used it for a corset. We stand in line for hours to get an issue for the squad; We stand in line for hours and hours to use the cleaning-rod; And hours and hours and hours and hours to sign the roll for pay; And walk for miles in double files on Inoculation day. Oh, Heaven is a happy place, its streets are passing fair, And when they start to call the roll up yonder I'll be there; But when they start to call that roll I certainly will resign If some Reserve Archangel tries to make me stand in line. [Illustration] THE FIRST TIME My legs are moving to and fro I feel like a balloon; How my head swims, first time I go To boss the damn platoon. My throat and mouth are full of paste There's nothing in my hat; My belt is winding round my waist But where's my stomach at? ONWARD CHRISTIAN SCIENCE Our Christian Science Battery Without a gun or horse, Is just a simple oversight, That will be changed, of course. But while we're waiting patiently, And longing for the day, They have a funny little game They make us fellows play. Bill Hallstead _simulates_ the gun He's sort of short and fat And doesn't look much like a gun, But he's pretty good at that. And they've elected me a horse, Off-horse of the wheel pair; I tie a white cloth on my arm So they can see I'm there. Then when the battery is formed With each man in his place, They line the "pieces" in a row Just like a chariot race. Bill Barnum's "Greatest Show on Earth" Has not a thing on us; We tear around the old parade And kick up _clouds_ of dust. For it's gallop all the morning long, They never let us walk. Why, it gets so realistic That I whinney when I talk. I wouldn't be a bit surprised If I should hear some day That instead of mess they'd issue us That 14 lbs. of hay. And so I'm looking for the man The one who said to me: "You don't want to be a 'doughboy,' Go and join the battery." [Illustration: Right Dress--MARCH] THEY BELIEVE IN US BACK HOME "Lots of love to our lieutenant," Writes my mother; And the letters from my brother Contain facetious remarks about "majors" ... He calls me "The Colonel" and laughs.... But they mean it seriously, Those back home. They can't seem to realize How shaky is our berth up here ... How every "Retreat" means a brief respite; Each "Reveille" the dread Of some more foolish blunder ... Some new bone-play. And yet sometimes our timid vanity Blossoms under the warmth of their regard; Our hopes take strength from their confidence in us. There came a blue envelope in the mail today. A square envelope delicately scented with myrrh.... And she ended with "_Adieu, cher Capitaine_." That very morning I started even our sphinx-faced commander By bawling out: "Right dress--MARCH!" "_Adieu, cher Capitaine_," She had written, And I can see the flecks of soft star dust in her eyes As she thought it. Bitterly I swore at my luck ... Then Sent her that photograph taken of me On July Fourth.... Of me astride the horse of an officer. I scrawled a jest under it. But what else could I do? [Illustration: A TEST OF DISCIPLINE] ODE TO A LADY IN WHITE STOCKINGS Lady, in your stockings white, As you flutter by the road, You inspire me to write An ode. Though upon my manly back There reposes half a ton, Why repine against a pack Or gun? Though the fire-tressed orb Makes mirage upon the street; Though the baking soil absorb My feet; Though the Sergeants stamp and rave; Though the Captain's eye is flame; Pray, how should my heart behave-- The same? I become a thing of steel, Buoyant none the less as cork; Radiant from hat to heel I walk. Lady, in your stockings white, Don't you note my altered step? Don't you feel, enchanting sprite, My pep? "AVOIRDUPOIS" I sing the song of a Fat Man Out on the skirmish line, With a pack chock full of lead and bricks A'hanging on behind. Maybe you think it's funny When you're out there on the run, Beside all that equipment To be pullin' half a ton. The Captain has a heart of stone It makes no odds to him; He's there to teach you to skirmish, And you'll skirmish fat or thin. D'you suppose he gives a tinker's damn If when you're lying prone, The pack comes up behind your ears And whacks you on the dome? He just hollers "fire faster," Though he knows you couldn't hit The broad side of a barn door, If you were fifty feet from it. He doesn't care a little bit, If you're gasping hard for breath, He's there to teach you to skirmish, If you skirmish yourself to death. Oh, well, it's true about fat men Being always full of fun, Good Lord, they've got to be, 'Cause they can neither fight nor run. [Illustration: WHAT'S YOUR NAME?] GO! Your lips say "Go!" Eyes plead "Stay!" Your voice so low Faints away To nothing, dear-- God keep me here! God end the war, And let us two Travel far On Love's road, you And I in peace, Never to cease. Your lips say "Go!" Eyes plead "Stay"-- Ah, how I know What price you pay. THE PLATTSBURG CODE 1 By Lake Champlain, where Bourbon tossed The dice of fortune and romance, Where red-coats won and red-coats lost, We soldiers train to fight in France. Though with no pomp and elegance Of gold-laced beaux, we have their same Old code of pluck and nonchalance-- "God give us guts to play the game." 2 May winds that sing like troubadours Of musket, sword and daring deed, And ideals won in early wars, Inspire each warrior to succeed; To fight that nations may be freed, And through all hardships make his aim The punch of old-time heroes' creed-- God give us guts to play the game. 3 And if to-morrow--who can tell?-- We hike along a hot white French Highway, exposed to shrapnel shell, Or occupy a first-line trench, 'Midst poisoned gas and dead men's stench, And hand grenades that burst and maim; May not all hell our spirit quench-- God give us guts to play the game. 4 If through entangled wires and mud, Charging the Boche, we madly run, With comrades dropping, dyed with blood, And sickening sights and sounds that stun, And in death's duel meet the Hun 'Midst shell holes, smoke, and battle flame, Steel clashing steel and gun to gun-- God give us guts to play the game. [Illustration] A CONFERENCE I was sleeping in the barracks, A week or so ago. And in the midst of pleasant dreams I heard the whistle blow. Lord, how I hate those whistles! Well, it was time to "rouse," So we marched down 'mongst the thistles Beside the old ice house. I looked around in misery, At last I took a seat, With nothing to lean up against And no place for my feet. As I sat there in the drizzle Of a good old Plattsburg rain, I wondered if I'd fizzle The lesson once again. The captain, who, like Nero Observing Rome in flames, Was seated on a packing-box Perusing all the names. "Mr. Whitney, won't you tell us Of patrols both front and rear? Speak up, Mr. Whitney, So the men in back can hear." "And please now, Mr. Warnock, Just tell us if you will What you'd do with this problem If you were Sergeant Hill?" "No! I'll ask you if I want you; Never mind the hands. Warnock, _you_ are Sergeant Hill, Just call out your commands." "Whitney! Warnock! Gee, what luck!" I chortled in my glee. My name is Brown, t'was very plain He'd never get to me. So I listened to the questions And the answers one by one, And wondered if that 3rd degree Was ever to be done. I thought of cups with handles on, Of napkins and clean hands; I thought of all the pretty girls That live in _Christian_ lands. I thought of cakes, and pies, and things, I thought of home in pain, And wondered if I'd ever sleep Till 9 o'clock again. I wished I had some lager beer Or a nice silver fizz; When, "Mr. Brown, you tell us What a special order is." I rose, saluted, brushed my pants Then mutely gazed around. I stood transfixed; the Captain said "_Sit down, Mr. Brown!_" SUNDAY IN BARRACKS Little silences Sit in the corners Munching their finger tips. I lie stretched flat upon my bunk.... I count the cracks in the pine-boards above me. I am alone. These others who fill the air with talk About right and wrong ... life and death ... With heavy-nailed footsteps And sometimes heavier profanity ... What becomes of them on Sunday? Dinners ... the beauty of women ... Pretty talk. Camaraderie beside the lake ... fellow for fellow, What does it matter? My little silences slide along the floor ... Clamber up my bunk To grin at me in my loneliness. Then I think of the millions Who have none for whom to be lonely, French, English, German, Russ.... What does it matter the language? We are all one, Levelled in solitude. And I laugh at the silences, And laugh to see them scurrying back to their corners, Gibbering. THE BALLAD OF MONTMORENCY GRAY I Since we came to Plattsburg Training Camp Upon the 12th of May, A lot of clever candidates Have fallen by the way; But the strangest fall among them all Was Montmorency Gray. II Monty was a clever lad, As bright as bright could be; He came up days ahead of time-- Ahead of you and me-- And got in strong right from the start. O a clever lad was he! III For Monty was an Officer Of Uncle Sam's Reserve; His uniform was spic and span In every line and curve; And what he lacked in other things, He made up for in nerve. IV He learned the I.D.R. by heart Before the 1st of June; He used to study late at night, And in the morning soon; No wonder that the Captain let him Lead the 1st Platoon. V He asked the cutest questions In the study hall at night; He knew the difference between A Cut and Fill at sight. And when it said: "What do you do?" He always did just right. VI He memorized the map from Chestnut Hill to Steven's Run; He didn't have to draw a scale, As we have always done; He _knew_ that you could see Five-Six-- Ty-Six from Six-O-One. VII And then this tragic episode Of which I write occurred. It happened sometime in the night Of June the 23rd That Montmorency stole away, And left no sign or word. VIII We found at dawn that he had gone And left us in the lurch. The Colonel sent detachments out For miles around to search; A strong patrol to every knoll, To every house, and church. IX They found no trace in any place; It caused a lot of talk; They wired down to every town From Plattsburg to New York. As it was plain he took no train He must have had to walk. X 'Twas well into the Fall before The mystery was cleared. (They'd never heard a single word Since Monty disappeared), When the Colonel had a caller, An old farmer, with a beard. XI He said his name was Topper, And he lived in Table Rock, And what he told the Colonel Gave the Old Man quite a shock; They were closeted together Until after ten o'clock. XII From Gettysburg to Plattsburg Mr. Topper came to say How he'd found a man in uniform Down near his home one day, Who, judging from his clothing, must Have walked a long, long way. XIII He told the sad and tragic tale Of how he came to find, While on his way to Hershey's Mill With a load of corn to grind, The young man wandering on a hill, And wandering in his mind. XIV He took him to his farmhouse, where For seven weeks he lay And talked and muttered to himself In a most peculiar way. He gave his name before he died As Montmorency Gray. XV He seemed more sick than lunatic, Mr. Topper had to grant; As meek and mild as a little child, He did not rave or rant, He only cried, until he died: "You ought to, _but you can't_!" [Illustration: ALWAYS WITH ANOTHER FELLOW] GIRLS They wander everywhere about The dears in pink, the dreams in yellow, With fetching smile, with pretty pout, And always with another fellow. They spend their mornings baking cakes, Their afternoons in making cookies; And, oh! the soul within me aches-- Their sweets are all for other rookies. Often, when 'neath their eyes we pass, I hear some maiden sigh divinely, And murmur to another lass, "Dear, isn't _Jackie_ marching finely?" Ah, girls, a sorry lot is his-- Dull are his days, his nights are dreary-- Who knows no maiden where he is, Who has no dame to call him "Dearie." A LAMENT (AFTER C. LAMB) All, all are gone, the old familiar glasses That used to range along the fragrant bar; Gone, all are gone, and in their places Milk, Pop and Dietade its beauty mar. The Big Four now has turned to Prohibition, Anhäuser Busch no longer sells at par, Bar-maids have joined the Army of Salvation, The voice of Bryan governs from afar; All, all are gone, the old familiar glasses, Where once they glistened on the fragrant bar. THE MANUAL Did you ever run into the butt of your gun, Or dig the front sight with your nose? Did your stomach turn over and stand up on end, When you dropped the damn thing on your toes? When coming to Port did the rifle fall short, And the swivel ram into your fist? When the rest did present did you so intent Find a count that the others had missed? And when at "Inspection" you clutched to perfection, Then shot up the piece with a thrust, Was there some dirty pup who pushed your cut-off up So your bolt dug a cave in the dust? Then when on the range your windage you'd change For the flag that the Anarchists wave, And the old cocking piece smeared your nose with red "grease," Did you learn what it meant to be brave? How your old back did ache when you got the bad breaks With the rifle that now has such charms, And I'll make a good bet that you'll never forget That exhausting old Manual of Arms. THOSE "PATRIOTIC" SONGS I To put the pay in patriot Is the order of the day. And some delight to sing of fight For royalties that pay. The louder that the eagle screams The more the dollars shout, And, if you please, atrocities Like this are handed out:-- (Chorus) I love you, dear America, I love the starry flag, We're proud to fight for you-oo-oo; We never boast or brag. We always will remember you, We always will be true; Maryland, my Maryland! hurrah, boys, hurrah! As we go marching on to victory. II That some are actuated By intentions of the best, Is surely clear, and so we fear To class them with the rest. And yet conceive some long-haired chap, Or sentimental miss, Who takes the time to fit a rhyme To music, say, like this:-- (Chorus) I love you, yes, I love you, And when I'm across the sea, I'll take your picture to the front, 'Twill always be with me. I shall not mind the bullets When I am far away, You'll be a soldier's sweetheart, My girl in U. S. A. III To make the war more horrible Some chap will surely try To set to rag the starry flag, And dance the battle cry. We only hope we may be spared; It did not fail to come, A dashing trot of shell and shot, Of bugle call and drum. (Chorus) That khaki glide! O! that army slide, It seems to say: "March away, march away!" I feel so queer each time I hear The music of that military band. It's just too grand! Fills me full of joy and pride, See them marching side by side, That's just the good old khaki glide! [Illustration] SATURDAY P.M. I When you've had a shave and a shower, And have picked up all the news; When you've donned your Sunday Stetson And your shiny pair of shoes; When your work for the week is over, You think that you are through. You're wrong, my son, you're wrong, my son There's something more for you. It's the needle, the needle, The prophylactic needle. There's a hungry surgeon waiting And he's waiting just for you. II Tho' you lasted through the horrors Of a test in skirmish drill, And proved yourself a captain When you bellowed "Fire at will!" You are very much mistaken If you think you've finished then; There is something after luncheon For all the Plattsburg men. It's the needle, the needle, etc. III Tho' you stood a strict inspection And your dirty gun got by; Tho' you'd grease spots on your breeches, And the Captain winked his eye; Tho' you ate your fill at dinner, And enjoyed a Lucky Strike; There is something at one-thirty That I know you will not like. It's the needle, the needle, etc. IV Tho' you proved yourself a hero After three hours in the line, And when the doctor jabbed you Just said, "Let's have a shine!" And smoked a large-sized stogie And thought that it was fun, My noble-hearted candidate, You'd only half begun. It's the needle, the needle, etc. V When you woke up at twelve-thirty In a state of some alarm, To feel a tortured muscle In the region of your arm; When you heard the groaning barracks, You wiped your brow and said: "Two million more next week-end, And I guess that I'll be dead." The needle, the needle, The prophylactic needle. You softly damn the surgeon, And his needle tinged with red. HOW THINGS HAVE CHANGED When first I landed in this camp I used to write most every day To all my friends I left behind, And ask them what they had to say About the old town and the girls, Or what they thought about the war; And in return the daily mail It brought me letters by the score. But now my friends write me and ask What keeps me from replying, And when I answer, "It's the work," Why, they just think I'm lying. So now the letters I receive Are few and very far between; They're mostly from my family And never any from a queen. [Illustration] ARMA FEMINAMQUE No man would doubt a woman's nerve, We know you're brave enough; You put a man to shame at times, You're tender--and you're tough. And yet I feel, with all your grit And talk of cave-men stuff, That you're sorter out of place When I'm twistin' up my face, A-thrustin' and a-jabbin' with my gun-knife. There's some things in this queer old world That's awkward things to see, They can't be tied with ribbon And they can't be served with tea. They're not the least bit sociable And women--as for me, I wish you'd stay away, While I'm training for the day That I'm goin' to get in action with a gun-knife. This ain't no country club affair Of smiles and clever skill; There ain't no silver cups around When doughboys train to kill. It's you or me--and do it quick, A simple murder drill. So I want no women 'round, When I'm tearin' up the ground, A shadow-pointin' Boches with my gun-knife. [Illustration] OUT O' LUCK If, in spite of hopes and promises, your pay day doesn't come, If the sergeant antedates the call, or Friday's fish is bum, Or the waiter empties soup on you--don't let 'em see you glum. You're out o' luck, that's all. You're out o' luck. If you must deploy your skirmish line with nothing in your dome, Or send supporting picket-lines to countermarch the Somme, The chances are you've guessed it wrong and "may as well go home." You're out o' luck, that's all. You're out o' luck. If you drop between the battle-lines and no one finds the place, Or jump into a pit and drive a bay'nit through your face, Or try to stop a ten-inch shell and leave an empty space. You're out o' luck, that's all. You're out o' luck. [Illustration: S.O.S.] SHERMAN WAS RIGHT You may talk about your marching And your stiff, close-order drill; You may cuss out recitations, And of skirmish have your fill; The difficult manoeuvers Which you do most every day May get your goat like everything, And spoil your Plattsburg stay. But for me it's far, far harder Makes me feel more like a prune, To march at strict attention Past the Hostess House at noon. TROOPSHIP CHANTY The sea is green as green-pea soup And half-way down the green-o, A U-boat's lying snug and tight All bellied out with dynamite, And twenty guns between-o! And twenty guns between-o! So scrape yer hatchways clear of brine, And bawl yer jolly song-o. For if she "blows," my lads, why, then We'll blow her back to Hell again, With compliments along-o! With compliments along-o! THOSE RUMORS He sauntered in With a knowing grin, The news he'd been to hear; We knew right well He'd come to tell The latest from the rear. "A hundred went," he said, "to-day, "Five hundred more must go they say; "Looks bad, Bill, guess you're on your way; "Darn few of us can hope to stay. "I got this straight from a friend of mine, "A friend of his in Company 9, "Heard from a friend in Company 10, "That Company 5 lost fifty men." With this you'd think Our hopes would sink, It ought to change our humor. We knew the source, So smiled of course, It was an L. T. rumor. WAR'S HORRORS I hate to talk of a Regular Without the proper respect; But given a chance to criticize, There's a bunch that I'd select. And they are those musical miscreants, Those malefactors of noise, Those rookie Second Cavalrymen, The amateur bugle boys. They blow retreat, And from head to feet Coagulate your spine; Or at company drill They send a chill A-shivering down the line. Just try to salute To their twittering toot, Their yodeling, rasping groan, Their blithering bleat, And you'll swear that they beat The Hindu quarter-tone, By Gad! The Hindu quarter-tone. THE CALL Spring to arms, ye sons of freedom, Lift your country's ensign high; Join her undefeated Army, Succor France, her old ally. Stand for freedom, truth and justice, Crush the Prussian tyrant's power; Emulate your worthy forebears In their Homeland's crucial hour. Britain, mother of your nation; France, her hope in ages past; Belgium, home of peaceful people, Seared by foul oppression's blast; Russia, newly born to freedom; Seeking honor, God and right, Call on you to aid in crushing, Prussianism's cursed blight. Are ye men? Then meet the challenge As your fathers did of old; Help the cause of all the races, With your muscle, brain, and gold. [Illustration: On the firing Line "A Miss At 5 O'clock"] BEANS Consider then the Army bean So various and quaint. Sometimes we find they're just plain beans, And then again they ain't. They're funny shades of yellow, Brown, green, and red, and white; While striped and spotted, polka dotted Beans our taste delight. But nix on beans Manchurian, And beans of age Silurian, Which same could stand a buryin', When they come on--Good Night! FORWARD "?" On the parade, Soft and low, Rookie hiccoughed, "Forward, Ho!" Another youngster Feeling smart, Tried to shout, "Forward, Hart!" One requested, "Forward, How!" From somewhere else, There came a "Yow!" * * * * * Perhaps a mile or so away We heard not "Harp!" nor "Harch!" But stalwart Major Koehler's voice Thunder, "Forward, March!" CHANT OF A DERELICT Sad is my song, mates, for I've got the axe, I've got to go, I've got to go; Farewell to Plattsburg and life in the shacks, Home I must go, I must go. Told not to let such a small matter grieve me, Sent to the parents who hate to receive me, Hearing my story, they'll never believe me, I've got to go, got to go. No more to sleep in a two-story bunk, Back I must go, I must go; No more to sag 'neath a pack full of junk, Home I must go, I must go. Leaving the books I could never have learned, Buying a straw hat--the old one was burned-- Even the wrist watch must now be interned, Back I must go, I must go. Here is the moral of this plaintive cough, Sung as I go, moaned as I go; Here is the reason for my sounding off, Now as I go, as I go: Comrades in arms, oh! be prompt at formations, Neat in your dress, and observe regulations, Else, you, like me, will rejoin your relations, Home you must go, you must go. [Illustration: MESS? YES!!] PREOCCUPATION The captain stops and yells to me, "Wake up there, rear rank number three!" And then, perchance, he makes some mention Of how I do not pay attention. But is it _my_ fault? No, it's you, With your persistent eyes of blue, That halt the flow of reason's stream And make me dream and dream and dream, Until the captain comes and--well, To put it plain--he gives me _Hell_. INOCULATION DAY My blood the surgeons fortify With antiseptic serum; The dread bacilli I defy, What cause have I to fear 'em? We form outside the pest-house door At one o'clock precisely, But if we get our dose at four We think we're doing nicely. And in our arm the surgeon stabs A hypodermic squirter, E'en as the hungry hobo jabs His fork in a frankfurter. I'm full of dope for smallpox germs, For typhus and such evils, For broken heart and army worms, For chestnut blight and weevils. I'm doped against the bayonet Wielded by German demons; But no one seems to think I'll get Dear old delirium tremens. DON'T WEAKEN When you feel on the bum and the outlook is glum, And you're wonderin' what's comin' next; When most every thing's drear and life loses its cheer, And the Skip and Reverses are vexed; If this Plattsburgish heat knocks you clean off your feet, Or your bunkies they ain't even speakin'; Keep your shirt on your back, don't knock over the stack, It's a great life, if you don't weaken. When they launder your sock till it ain't fit to hock, When they shrink up your shirt like a rag; If you blister your toes and then sunburn your nose And then can't even go on a jag; Why, you're sure out of luck, but just pass the old buck, Keep a stiff upper lip like a deacon; Though you shoot ten straight blanks do not kick with the cranks, Summon a grin and don't weaken. If you're late for retreat and must police the street, If at reveille you're still in your bed; If your girl sends you flags which some other cuss bags, Or they clip all the hair off your head; If the mess comes out burned, So your stomach gets turned, Or the "upper man" keeps you from sleepin'; Don't you growl, that won't help, For they'll dub you a whelp; Can the grouch--but don't weaken. THE THREE Three dead men rose on nimble toes Above the frozen clay; And as they sped, each of the Dead Told how he died that day. Said one, "I sent the Regiment To safety as I fell." The Second cried, "Before I died I hurled the foe to Hell." As for the Third, he spoke no word But hastened on his way, Until at last a whisper passed: "How did _you_ die today?" "There was a maid slept unafraid Within a hut," he said. "I searched the place and for a space I thought that all had fled. "But her breast glowed white in the morning light As the early dawn grew red; Tiptoe I came in lust and shame And stood beside her bed. "And there I fought an evil thought And won--and turned to go; Then as I went into my tent A bullet struck me low." The others heard and spoke no word (For dead men understand), But 'round they turned and their deep eyes burned As they gripped his leaden hand. TO THE LITTLE BLACK DOG We see you in the morning When Reveille implores; We meet you in the evening At end of daily chores. On march, fatigue, or drilling Our friend we find you still, With kindly, pleasant bearing And independent will. You're small, you're thin, you're homely, You're battered, scratched, and lame; But in our tasks before us Pray God we be as game! [Illustration] WHEN EAST IS WEST See that man in khaki clothes, Squirming in the dust; Toying with a sketching board, Uniform all mussed. Squinting 'long a little stick, Grunting fit to bust-- Turning out a road sketch For his Captain. First he drills a "starting point." Then he takes a "shot;" Someone's scare-crow gets a line, Closes Jones's lot. Paces stiffly down the road, Worried--tense--and hot-- Turning out a road sketch For his Captain. Now an "intersection point;" Watch the compass turn. Think to see him finger it Bloomin' thing would burn. Missed an inch by motor truck; Eyes it proud and stern-- Turning out a road sketch For his Captain. Plants an orchard in the road; Leaves a forest bare. Runs a railroad through a house; Fakes a village square. Twenty contours in a swamp, Thirteen in the air-- Calls the thing a road sketch For his Captain. TO MY SWEETHEART I love you when the bugle Calls, "Awake, the day's begun!" I love you as we work and Sweat and drill beneath the sun. I love you at retreat, and When the sun sinks out of view; Sweetheart of mine! quite all the time, I--love--you. PLAY THE GAME When everything goes wrong And it's hard to force a song, The proper stunt we claim, Is to grin, and play the game. If things break worse than fair, Say the Frenchmen, "_C'est la Guerre_." Which to them is just the same, As to grin, and play the game. If you find the mess is punk-- Kidney beans and other junk-- Try to eat it just the same; Stretch a grin, and play the game. When for nothing you've been bawled, Though you've done your best get called, And you know you're not to blame; Force a grin, and play the game. When we're hit by some big shell, And almost catch a glimpse of hell; When we think how close we came, We'll just grin, and play the game. While our work is being done We will show the mighty Hun, In the land from whence we came, How we grin, and play the game. When the last long line is passed, And the victory's ours at last, Greater far will be the fame, If we've grinned, and played the game. THE STADIUM, PLATTSBURG I hear the mighty song of singing men Crashing among the pine-trees through the night, And thund'ring, trumpet-wise, down every glen, A song to France, whose soul is bleeding white. But hark!--out rings a deeper, stronger cry. A Nation, which has newly learned to give, Is singing as its sons go forth to die, Because, God knows, they're going forth--to live! * * * * * O little Maid of France, who rests in Heaven, Crowned with the Lilies Three (and Lilies Seven), Send us the clear-eyed Faith that came to thee, Praying beneath the pines, in Domremy. RUBAIYAT OF A PLATTSBURG CANDIDATE Awake! 'tis morning, though it should not be-- Come, can the yawns, it's speed they want to see-- And stagger forth upon a hostile world, In flannel shirt and cotton pants O. D. Before the phantoms of the night were done, Methought I idled somewhere in the sun, Debating whether beauty to pursue, Or touch a bell, and cultivate a bun. And lovely maids in garments pale did seem To shimmer round me in continuous stream, Each with a glass of something in her hand, And then I turned--and lo! it was a dream! And ere the cock crew he that stood before The barracks, shouted "Half a minute more! Belts, bayonets, and pieces--on the jump-- And signal-flags and alidades," O Lor'! I sometimes think that never battles din Were so unwelcome as the words "Fall in!" Nor any victory could taste so sweet As French vermouth with ice and Gordon gin. Yesterday's problem 'twixt the Red and Blue Involved our journey down the Road Peru; The day before we took the Peru Road-- I'll bet a hat we're there to-morrow, too. Myself when fresh and full of zeal and spunk, Hung on the words whence wisdom should be drunk; But this was all the harvest that I reaped-- To say "as fast as possible" is punk. Platoon commanders, captains by the score, Each takes his turn--and then is seen no more; But no one ever thinks of him again One half so kindly as they thought before. To-day's commander, with commands profuse, To-morrow to the rear rank will reduce. Think, and you know not what he meant to say-- He knows not neither, so--ah, what's the use? Waste not your hour to criticize or blame, You would have done it worse, or just the same. Better to pack your troubles with your kit, To keep your shirt on, and to play the game. Some for the shriek of shot and shell, and some Sigh for the bottle of New England rum. Oh, face the facts, and let the fiction go-- I'll bet "_la vie des tranchèes_" will be bum. One moment's rest, then back into the mill With butt and point to lacerate and kill. I often wonder what the Germans teach One half so cultured as our "Bay'net Drill." For war is hell, and Plattsburg not a jest, And yet, by gravy, we will do our best, Till submarine and Kaiser are forgot, Or Angel Gabriel hollers out, "At rest!" DREAMS Says Captain Peek to Company Two, "Let's have an exam to-day; "So get your rifles and bayonet, boys, "And fall in right away. "Line up whenever you're ready to go; "At route step do squads right: "Light up your pipes, roll up your sleeves, "We'll try to make this light." With joyful faces they march to parade, Fall out and rest on the grass. "Will someone please perform right face? "We'll let slight errors pass." Then Captain Peek shuts up that book "I won't give one black mark. "Officers, beat it; get the hook! "I'll drill you right till dark. "You seem to know the drill all right; "Don't bother about those maps; "Put on your 'civies' as fast as you can, "And don't come back for taps." 'Twill be thus perhaps in a happier land, When they've run that American drive, Where we drill in white all armed with harps; But not while our Cap's alive. A 2nd REGIMENT "WHO'S WHO" Major Collins is careful of His regiment's health. Lemonade and other things, Taken on march, Have been known to cause Soldiers to die, and pie? Perish the suggestion! 'Tis Safe to bet the major Was not born in New England. If in a deep wood or desert vast One would never be lost With Captain Barnes. He knows How to orient the landscape By sun or star. Lieutenant Meyer is tall, He holds his hat on By a strap Under his chin. A cyclone couldn't blow it off. Captain Latrobe came on From Texas way, "Sif bofe" his saddle And himself. He might as well Have saved the freight on the saddle, For he has no horse to ride on. He leads his steedless troop On charger invisible. Arnold, Major now, fares better. His horse is real And has white feet. Do not talk to his Command while it is marching, Nor count for the men, or The winning smile will Turn into a volcano, And you will be reduced to A shapeless mass. Beware! Carr's horse is black, And a beauty, too, But neighs out loud; hence Never should be used to patrol. The enemy would listen, and Know you were near. The straightest man On horseback is, Doubtless, Wainwright; And he doesn't lean backward to do it, either. Matthews has a deep voice; No ear trumpet is needed to hear his commands. He believes in exercise. His men should be able to Throw Samson or Sandow, If they are not dead By August Eleventh. Waldron knows how to patrol-- At least he wrote a book For thirty cents. He next should write a book on how To spot a periscope when we cross the sea. If we don't know that, we'll never Spot anything else But bubbles on the ocean's face. Capt. Goodwyn just came up From Panama, and brought Chivalry with him. It's as hot here as there, But he is showing us how To make it hotter For certain people To the eastward. There is a fat Q.M., Whose name is Unknown, but not his form. Once seen Never forgotten; He must have The keys to the ice-box. EUREKA It may be from hot Tallahassee, It may be from cold northern Nome, But there's nothing that can be compared with That BIG little letter from home. FOURTH COMPANY, N.E. SONG 'Way up in Plattsburg, right near the northern border, They sent us off in May, There for three months to stay, So we could all become lieutenants. Then when they put us all in comp'nies We made New England Four. It's the finest little company That ever did Squads Right and ran into a tree. New England, you've got to hand it to us-- Good old Company Four! 'Way up in Plattsburg--that's where they make us soldiers-- They drill us every day. Damn little time for play, 'Cause when we do not drill we study. New England number four's our comp'ny, We're always full of pep. Now if you want some men for good, hard work You'll always find this company will never shirk. New England, you've got to hand it to us-- Good old Company Four! PART II SONGS AND PARODIES LONG, LONG TRAIL (_Air: There's a Long Trail_) There's a long, long trail before us, Into No-Man's land in France, Where the shrapnel shells are bursting, And we must advance. There'll be lots of drill and hiking, Before our dreams all come true, But some day we'll show the Germans, How the Yankees come through. WILLIE'S PA (_Air: Solomon Levi_) I O, Willie Jones's fond mamma brought him to Plattsburg town, To see his father at the Camp go marching up and down; And Willie grew excited as the band began to play, And when he saw his papa march, the people heard him say: (Chorus) "O, look at him, Ma-ma, ain't he simply grand? See the way he holds his gun and swings his other hand. The Captain's walking up in front, and now he's calling 'hep,' And everyone but my papa is marching out of step." II O, Willie Jones, he loved to see the soldiers marching by, He went down to the target range to see the bullets fly, And every time they made a shot, he cried "Ain't that a beaut!" And clapped his hands in glee to see his papa start to shoot. (Chorus) "O, look at him, Ma-ma, see him hold his gun, And every time he shoots it off it hits him on the bun. He puts his hand around the thing and gives an awful pull, The red flag there is waving, O! it must have been a bull." COMPANY 2 NEW ENGLAND (_Air: "Lord Geoffry Amherst"_) Oh, good old Uncle Sam declared a war on Kaiser Bill, When, his pledges "Bill" neglected to fulfill; And the War Department ordered that a training camp should be, So they sent us up to Plattsburg, don't you see? So they sent us up to Plattsburg, don't you see? And the men from all New England came along and gathered there, And the companies they chose with greatest care. But out of all the candidates selected but a few To organize New England Number 2. (Chorus) Oh, Captain Peek and Company Two They'll be names known to fame the whole world o'er. They will ever be glorious When the Hohenzollerns reign no more. TO THE RESERVE CAVALRY (_Air: The Infantry, the Infantry, with Dirt Behind Their Ears_) I The Cavalry, the Cavalry, they haven't any horse, They're taking riding lessons by a correspondence course, You'd think they were equestrians to hear the way they talk, But when it comes to riding, why! We always see them walk. II The Cavalry, the Cavalry, are marching down the street, The Cavalry, the Cavalry, with blisters on their feet, The Artillery is mounted now and ready for the course; But we never see the Cavalry with any kind of horse. WE'RE ON OUR WAY TO DEUTSCHLAND (_Air: Hit the Line for Harvard_) We're on our way to Deutschland, We're Yankees through and through, And we'll show the Huns of Germ'ny What the U. S. A. can do. With France and Old England, Victory or die; And we'll give a rousing cheer, boys, As the allied flags go by. I WANT TO BE A COLONEL (_Air: I Want to Be Back Home in Dixie_) I want to be, I want to be, I want to be at least a Colonel, Have the Majors handing me salutes, and a man to black my boots. I want to be, I want to be, at least a Colonel, C-O-L-O-N-E-L, Hold down a desk and give the captains Hell. I want to be, I want to be, I want to be a Colonel _now_! I WANT TO BE A DOUGHBOY (_Air: I Want to Be a Yale Boy_) I want to be a doughboy, Doughboy tried and true; I want to be a doughboy, With a hat cord of baby blue. I want to be a doughboy, Do as the doughboys do; So, papa, if I can When I get to be a man, I want to be a doughboy, too. OUR BATTLE HYMN (Air: "Battle Hymn of the Republic") I We have heard a lot about a place they call "Somewhere in France," And we're going "Over There" to put some pep in the advance; "There's a long, long trail before us," but you bet we'll take the chance, As Five goes marching on. (Chorus) Glory, glory, for we're going to beat the Hun, Old Hindenburg will execute a new strategic run, And Kaiser Bill will find he has no place beneath the sun, When Five goes marching on. II We are handy with the rifle and the bayonet and such; And though Fritz is used to running and is sort of hard to touch, We will show him when we get there that it doesn't matter much, When Five is marching on. (Chorus) III You may say that we're not modest, but our faults we will confess, We hate to rise at Reveille, we're not too fond of mess; And we never, never, never get a good line at Right Dress, But we do keep marching on. (Chorus) IV Now all you other fellows who are going overseas, Just remember that we guarantee the foeman to appease; So when you hear we're coming you may rest or stand at ease, When Five goes marching on. (Chorus) NEW ENGLAND WILL BE LEADING (_Air: John Brown's Body_) New England will be leading when we're marching up the Rhine, New York will be the rear guard and we'll leave them far behind, We'll conquer German cities and we'll capture Kaiser Bill, As we go marching on. Glory, glory to New England! Glory, glory to New England! Glory, glory to New England! As we go marching on. ON THE BANKS OF THE RIVER RHINE (_Air: "Through Those Wonderful Glasses of Mine"_) Germany, we're coming over, we are going straight to France; We are praying for a chance, Just to make your soldiers dance. Kaiser Bill, your doom is coming; take a tip, old top, RESIGN! For we'll drink beer in June, By the light of the moon, On the banks of the River Rhine. "THE SIMULATING OF THE GREEN" (_Air: "Wearing of the Green"_) Oh, Major dear, and did you hear the news that's going round? We Cavalry must simulate till horses can be found; We gallop and we single-foot as handsome as can be, But on our own two feet we ride--a horse you'll never see. 'Tis the most amazing spectacle that's ever graced the green; A hundred men a-riding where no horses can be seen. Oh, Colonel dear, ye'll grieve to hear Artillery's the same, Compared to simulating guns, a horse is rather tame; Last night I was the left rear wheel--it made me moighty sore, But dommed if I will be the swab and crawl inside the bore. 'Tis the most amazing spectacle that's ever graced the green, A-firing rounds and salvos where no cannons can be seen. DON'T SEND ME HOME (_Air: Don't Take Me Home_) Don't send me home, please don't send me home. Tell me, where did I make that break? Oh, oh, oh, oh, have a little pity. I'm a poor candidate, in search of war I roam. I'll do anything you want me to, but don't Send me home. COMPANY NINE (_Air: "Far Above Cayuga's Water"_) Hark, ye Rookies, to the chorus Of old Company Nine; Captains, Colonels, all adore us, When we fall in line. Tho' we're doughboys, we're not slow boys, Thanks to Sargeant Hill; And when we take our stand in Deutschland, Lord help Kaiser Bill! In the morning at the warning, "Clothes on Company Nine!" Feeling rocky, into khaki Jumps our valiant line. We shun strawberries in the valley Off the Peru road, But in mess shack none can beat us At the order "Load!" In Pabst-less Plattsburg, bone-dry rookies, Waiting for our kale, Our healths we drink in foamless bumpers, Full of Adam's ale. But when the "Sammies" take their Münchener On the river Rhine, The toast will be to old New England And to Company Nine. WE'RE ON OUR WAY TO EUROPE (_Air: "My Wife's Away in Europe"_) We're on our way to Europe, And we won't come back. And we won't come back. We're going to shoot an awful pill Into the hide of Kaiser Bill. Von Hindenburg can't stop us; We laugh at him, hee! hee! We've shot the pistol twice before, Can't hit the side of a barn door. We're on our way to Europe To lay Bill cross our knee. COMPANY 5 SONG (_Original Music by Mr. H. T. Morgan_) 1 On guard! We're always on our toes; Plattsburg has taught us pep. We're good at being Red or Blue, But oh, that step! Though we may lose a few patrols, Just watch the Allied drive. Right where they reach the Rhine, there You'll find New England Five. 2 Forward! We're on our way to France; We'll make it hot for Fritz. With bayonet or rifle, Watch us score all hits. Heads up! We're after Hindenburg, We'll show him we're alive; When we get through with him, he Will know New England Five. DOUBLE TIME (_Air: Tammany_) Double time, double time! We're the boys with running feet, And we never mind the heat. Double time, double time! Battr'y three, you always see at Double time. Double time, double time! On the run we always keep, We even do it in our sleep. Double time, double time! When we eat our food goes down at Double time. Double time, double time! Always jump and run like Hell, Faster than a British shell. Double time, double time! Boche can't hit us, for we move at Double time. Double time, double time! It's the surest road to fame, If you live and don't get lame. Double time, double time! Hammond's favorite outdoor sport is Double time. THE 8TH NEW ENGLAND (_Air: Michael Roy_) The Eighth New England Infantry is the one that shows them how; If Kaiser Bill could see us drill, the war would be over now. Out in front of the Hostess House, as we go marching by Where the ladies are sitting, they drop their knitting, and all begin to cry: "For oh! For oh! What a wonderful company! It must be either the General Staff or Company 8 N. E." If Elihu Root could see us shoot out on the rifle range He'd send us to Russia to help lick Prussia--oh, what a glorious change! If General Pershing could hear us cursing the whistle that blows too soon, There'd be a decree that reveille would come in the afternoon. "For oh! For oh! What a wonderful company! It must be either the General Staff or Company 8 N. E." MARCHING ON THE RHINE (_Air: Rocky Road to Dublin_) When marching on the Rhine, boys, We'll be singing this song As we're marching along. When marching on the Rhine, boys, On our hunt for Kaiser Bill, We'll shoot the Germans out of France, We'll keep them on the run; When we get there the world will know, New England has begun, To fight for Uncle Sammy. We'll do our best, And never will rest, Until Old Glory rises to the sun. Over the sea, boys, Over the sea to Victory, New England will fight on forever. EGGS--AGERATED Since I've come to Plattsburg I've eaten so many eggs, That feathers now adorn my skin, And spurs are on my legs. WITH APOLOGIES TO KIPLING'S "THE VAMPIRE" A fool there was, and he made his prayer, (Even as you and I) Tho't he would hold down a colonel's chair, So he came up here to do and dare, But the skipper decided he wasn't there, (Even as you and I). Oh, the days we waste, and the pay we waste, And the work of our hands and feet Belong to the days we did not know, (And now we know we never could know) Enough to stand still at retreat. Oh, the sleep we lost and the weight we lost, And the things we had to eat Can never come back to make us want, (We hope they can't and pray they sha'n't) If they did we'd admit we were beat. The fool was stripped to his foolish hide, (Even as you and I) And they wouldn't let him be rear guide, (So some of him lived, but the most of him died) And he stayed a "rookie" just outside (Even as you and I). _FINIS_ _There's a lot that's pretty funny in the life we lead up here, The problems and the hikin' and the mess; But sometimes when I'm all alone I get a little blue, And that's the way with everyone, I guess._ _I often sit and wonder what it's really all about, And what the end of all this will be; It seems almost impossible that we will be at war, And see the things a soldier has to see._ _It's something more than just parade and something more than drill, And something more than hiking in the rain. It means that lots of friends we've made are going over seas, And some of them will not come back again._ _There's not a single man of us who really wants to fight, And maybe die somewhere in France--but then, It's war, and since it must be done, we'll try to do it right. God willing, we'll acquit ourselves like men._ [Illustration: With the Rookie to the End.] * * * * * Transcriber's Note: Table of Contents: The page numbering in the Table of Contents is off by one beginning with THE CALL which the Table of Contents indicates should be on page 73. It actually begins on the next page. By the end of the book the page numbering is off by two. The final poem "Finis" is on page 138. These numbers have been retained as printed. Closing quotes were added to both stanzas of the poem "THE 8TH NEW ENGLAND" which begins on page 132. 
3473	----	THE POEMS of EMMA LAZARUS By Emma Lazarus in Two Volumes VOL. II. Jewish Poems: Translation TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: As a convenience to the reader I have included in this volume the biographical sketch of Emma Lazarus which originally appeared only in Vol. I. of these works. Further, the sketch contains references to passages contained in this volume.--D.L. CONTENTS. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF EMMA LAZARUS. THE NEW YEAR. THE CROWING OF THE RED COCK. IN EXILE. IN MEMORIAM--REV. J. J. LYONS. THE VALLEY OF THE BACA. THE BANNER OF THE JEW. THE GUARDIAN OF THE RED DISK. THE NEW EZEKIEL. THE CHOICE. THE WORLD'S JUSTICE. THE SUPREME SACRIFICE. THE FEAST OF LIGHT GIFTS. BAR KOCHBA. 1492. THE BIRTH OF MAN. RASCHI IN PRAGUE. THE DEATH OF RASCHI. AN EPISTLE. BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON: LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE. I. The Exodus. II. Treasures. III. The Sower. IV. The Test. V. Currents. VI. The Prophet. VII. Chrysalis. TO CARMEN SYLVA. THE DANCE TO DEATH. TRANSLATIONS. FROM SOLOMON BEN JUDAH GABIROL. Night-Piece. Night-Thoughts. Meditations. Hymn. To a Detractor. Fragment. Stanzas. Wine and Grief. Defiance. A Degenerate Age. FROM ABUL HASSAN JUDAH BEN HA-LEVI. A Letter to his Friend Isaac. Admonition. Love-Song. Separation. Longing for Jerusalem. On the Voyage to Jerusalem. To the West Wind. FROM MOSES BEN ESRA. Extracts from the Book of Tarshish, or "Necklace of Pearls." In the Night. Love Song of Alcharisi. NACHUM. Spring Songs. A TRANSLATION AND TWO IMITATIONS. I. Donna Clara. II. Don Pedrillo. III. Fra Pedro. TRANSLATIONS FROM PETRARCH. In Vita, LXVII. In Vita, LXXVI. In Vita, CV. In Vita, CIX. In Morte, II. On the Death of Cardinal Colonna and Laura. In Morte, XLIII. In Vita. Canzone XI. Fragment. Canzone XII. Fragment. Trionfo d'Amore. Fragment. Trionfo della Morte. TRANSLATIONS FROM ALFRED DE MUSSET. The May Night. The October Night. NOTES TO "EPISTLE" OF JOSHUA IBN VIVES OF ALLORQUI. Most of the poems in this volume were originally printed in "The American Hebrew." Publisher's note: Thanks are due to the Editors of "The Century," Lippincott's Magazine, and "The Critic," for their courtesy in allowing the poems published by them to be reprinted in these pages. EMMA LAZARUS. (Written for "The Century Magazine") Born July 22, 1849; Died November 19, 1887. One hesitates to lift the veil and throw the light upon a life so hidden and a personality so withdrawn as that of Emma Lazarus; but while her memory is fresh, and the echo of her songs still lingers in these pages, we feel it a duty to call up her presence once more, and to note the traits that made it remarkable and worthy to shine out clearly before the world. Of dramatic episode or climax in her life there is none; outwardly all was placid and serene, like an untroubled stream whose depths alone hold the strong, quick tide. The story of her life is the story of a mind, of a spirit, ever seeking, ever striving, and pressing onward and upward to new truth and light. Her works are the mirror of this progress. In reviewing them, the first point that strikes us is the precocity, or rather the spontaneity, of her poetic gift. She was a born singer; poetry was her natural language, and to write was less effort than to speak, for she was a shy, sensitive child, with strange reserves and reticences, not easily putting herself "en rapport" with those around her. Books were her world from her earliest years; in them she literally lost and found herself. She was eleven years old when the War of Succession broke out, which inspired her first lyric outbursts. Her poems and translations written between the ages of fourteen and seventeen were collected, and constituted her first published volume. Crude and immature as these productions naturally were, and utterly condemned by the writer's later judgment, they are, nevertheless, highly interesting and characteristic, giving, as they do, the keynote of much that afterwards unfolded itself in her life. One cannot fail to be rather painfully impressed by the profound melancholy pervading the book. The opening poem is "In Memoriam,"--on the death of a school friend and companion; and the two following poems also have death for theme. "On a Lock of my Mother's Hair" gives us reflections on growing old. These are the four poems written at the age of fourteen. There is not a wholly glad and joyous strain in the volume, and we might smile at the recurrence of broken vows, broken hearts, and broken lives in the experience of this maiden just entered upon her teens, were it not that the innocent child herself is in such deadly earnest. The two long narrative poems, "Bertha" and "Elfrida," are tragic in the extreme. Both are dashed off apparently at white heat: "Elfrida," over fifteen hundred lines of blank verse, in two weeks; "Bertha," in three and a half. We have said that Emma Lazarus was a born singer, but she did not sing, like a bird, for joy of being alive; and of being young, alas! there is no hint in these youthful effusions, except inasmuch as this unrelieved gloom, this ignorance of "values," so to speak, is a sign of youth, common especially among gifted persons of acute and premature sensibilities, whose imagination, not yet focused by reality, overreached the mark. With Emma Lazarus, however, this sombre streak has a deeper root; something of birth and temperament is in it--the stamp and heritage of a race born to suffer. But dominant and fundamental though it was, Hebraism was only latent thus far. It was classic and romantic art that first attracted and inspired her. She pictures Aphrodite the beautiful, arising from the waves, and the beautiful Apollo and his loves,--Daphne, pursued by the god, changing into the laurel, and the enamored Clytie into the faithful sunflower. Beauty, for its own sake, supreme and unconditional, charmed her primarily and to the end. Her restless spirit found repose in the pagan idea,--the absolute unity and identity of man with nature, as symbolized in the Greek myths, where every natural force becomes a person, and where, in turn, persons pass with equal readiness and freedom back into nature again. In this connection a name would suggest itself even if it did not appear,--Heine, the Greek, Heine the Jew, Heine the Romanticist, as Emma Lazarus herself has styled him; and already in this early volume of hers we have trace of the kinship and affinity that afterwards so plainly declared itself. Foremost among the translations are a number of his songs, rendered with a finesse and a literalness that are rarely combined. Four years later, at the age of twenty-one, she published her second volume, "Admetus and Other Poems," which at once took rank as literature both in America and England, and challenged comparison with the work of established writers. Of classic themes we have "Admetus" and "Orpheus," and of romantic the legend of Tannhauser and of the saintly Lohengrin. All are treated with an artistic finish that shows perfect mastery of her craft, without detracting from the freshness and flow of her inspiration. While sounding no absolutely new note in the world, she yet makes us aware of a talent of unusual distinction, and a highly endowed nature,--a sort of tact of sentiment and expression, an instinct of the true and beautiful, and that quick intuition which is like second-sight in its sensitiveness to apprehend and respond to external stimulus. But it is not the purely imaginative poems in this volume that most deeply interest us. We come upon experience of life in these pages; not in the ordinary sense, however, of outward activity and movement, but in the hidden undercurrent of being. "The epochs of our life are not in the visible facts, but in the silent thoughts by the wayside as we walk." This is the motto, drawn from Emerson, which she chooses for her poem of "Epochs," which marks a pivotal moment in her life. Difficult to analyze, difficult above all to convey, if we would not encroach upon the domain of private and personal experience, is the drift of this poem, or rather cycle of poems, that ring throughout with a deeper accent and a more direct appeal than has yet made itself felt. It is the drama of the human soul,--"the mystic winged and flickering butterfly," "flitting between earth and sky," in its passage from birth to death. A golden morning of June! "Sweet empty sky without a stain." Sunlight and mist and "ripple of rain-fed rills." "A murmur and a singing manifold." "What simple things be these the soul to raise To bounding joy, and make young pulses beat With nameless pleasure, finding life so sweet!" Such is youth, a June day, fair and fresh and tender with dreams and longing and vague desire. The morn lingers and passes, but the noon has not reached its height before the clouds begin to rise, the sunshine dies, the air grows thick and heavy, the lightnings flash, the thunder breaks among the hills, rolls and gathers and grows, until Behold, yon bolt struck home, And over ruined fields the storm hath come." Now we have the phases of the soul,--the shock and surprise of grief in the face of the world made desolate. Loneliness and despair for a space, and then, like stars in the night, the new births of the spirit, the wonderful outcoming from sorrow: the mild light of patience at first; hope and faith kindled afresh in the very jaws of evil; the new meaning and worth of life beyond sorrow, beyond joy; and finally duty, the holiest word of all, that leads at last to victory and peace. The poem rounds and completes itself with the close of "the long, rich day," and the release of "The mystic winged and flickering butterfly, A human soul, that drifts at liberty, Ah! who can tell to what strange paradise, To what undreamed-of fields and lofty skies!" We have dwelt at some length upon this poem, which seems to us, in a certain sense, subjective and biographical; but upon closer analysis there is still another conclusion to arrive at. In "Epochs" we have, doubtless, the impress of a calamity brought very near to the writer, and profoundly working upon her sensibilities; not however by direct, but reflex action, as it were, and through sympathetic emotion--the emotion of the deeply-stirred spectator, of the artist, the poet who lives in the lives of others, and makes their joys and their sorrows his own. Before dismissing this volume we may point out another clue as to the shaping of mind and character. The poem of "Admetus" is dedicated "to my friend Ralph Waldo Emerson." Emma Lazarus was between seventeen and eighteen years of age when the writings of Emerson fell into her hands, and it would be difficult to over-estimate the impression produced upon her. As she afterwards wrote: "To how many thousand youthful hearts has not his word been the beacon--nay, more, the guiding star--that led them safely through periods of mental storm and struggle!" Of no one is this more true than herself. Left, to a certain extent, without compass or guide, without any positive or effective religious training, this was the first great moral revelation of her life. We can easily realize the chaos and ferment of an over-stimulated brain, steeped in romantic literature, and given over to the wayward leadings of the imagination. Who can tell what is true, what is false, in a world where fantasy is as real as fact? Emerson's word fell like truth itself, "a shaft of light shot from the zenith," a golden rule of thought and action. His books were bread and wine to her, and she absorbed them into her very being. She felt herself invincibly drawn to the master, "that fount of wisdom and goodness," and it was her great privilege during these years to be brought into personal relations with him. From the first he showed her a marked interest and sympathy, which became for her one of the most valued possessions of her life. He criticised her work with the fine appreciation and discrimination that made him quick to discern the quality of her talent as well as of her personality, and he was no doubt attracted by her almost transparent sincerity and singleness of soul, as well as by the simplicity and modesty that would have been unusual even in a person not gifted. He constituted himself, in a way, her literary mentor, advised her as to the books she should read and the attitude of mind she should cultivate. For some years he corresponded with her very faithfully; his letters are full of noble and characteristic utterances, and give evidence of a warm regard that in itself was a stimulus and a high incentive. But encouragement even from so illustrious a source failed to elate the young poetess, or even to give her a due sense of the importance and value of her work, or the dignity of her vocation. We have already alluded to her modesty in her unwillingness to assert herself or claim any prerogative,--something even morbid and exaggerated, which we know not how to define, whether as over-sensitiveness or indifference. Once finished, the heat and glow of composition spent, her writings apparently ceased to interest her. She often resented any allusion to them on the part of intimate friends, and the public verdict as to their excellence could not reassure or satisfy her. The explanation is not far, perhaps, to seek. Was it not the "Ewig- Weibliche" that allows no prestige but its own? Emma Lazarus was a true woman, too distinctly feminine to wish to be exceptional, or to stand alone and apart, even by virtue of superiority. A word now as to her life and surroundings. She was one of a family of seven, and her parents were both living. Her winters were passed in New York, and her summers by the sea. In both places her life was essentially quiet and retired. The success of her book had been mainly in the world of letters. In no wise tricked out to catch the public eye, her writings had not yet made her a conspicuous figure, but were destined slowly to take their proper place and give her the rank that she afterwards held. For some years now almost everything that she wrote was published in "Lippincott's Magazine," then edited by John Foster Kirk, and we shall still find in her poems the method and movement of her life. Nature is still the fount and mirror, reflecting, and again reflected, in the soul. We have picture after picture, almost to satiety, until we grow conscious of a lack of substance and body and of vital play to the thought, as though the brain were spending itself in dreamings and reverie, the heart feeding upon itself, and the life choked by its own fullness without due outlet. Happily, however, the heavy cloud of sadness has lifted, and we feel the subsidence of waves after a storm. She sings "Matins:"-- "Does not the morn break thus, Swift, bright, victorious, With new skies cleared for us Over the soul storm-tost? Her night was long and deep, Strange visions vexed her sleep, Strange sorrows bade her weep, Her faith in dawn was lost. "No halt, no rest for her, The immortal wanderer From sphere to higher sphere Toward the pure source of day. The new light shames her fears, Her faithlessness and tears, As the new sun appears To light her god-like way." Nature is the perpetual resource and consolation. "'T is good to be alive!" she says, and why? Simply, "To see the light That plays upon the grass, to feel (and sigh With perfect pleasure) the mild breeze stir Among the garden roses, red and white, With whiffs of fragrancy." She gives us the breath of the pines and of the cool, salt seas, "illimitably sparkling." Her ears drink the ripple of the tide, and she stops "To gaze as one who is not satisfied With gazing at the large, bright, breathing sea." "Phantasies" (after Robert Schumann) is the most complete and perfect poem of this period. Like "Epochs," it is a cycle of poems, and the verse has caught the very trick of music,--alluring, baffling, and evasive. This time we have the landscape of the night, the glamour of moon and stars,--pictures half real and half unreal, mystic imaginings, fancies, dreams, and the enchantment of "faerie," and throughout the unanswered cry, the eternal "Wherefore" of destiny. Dawn ends the song with a fine clear note, the return of day, night's misty phantoms rolled away, and the world itself, again green, sparkling and breathing freshness. In 1874 she published "Alide," a romance in prose drawn from Goethe's autobiography. It may be of interest to quote the letter she received from Tourgeneff on this occasion:-- "Although, generally speaking, I do not think it advisable to take celebrated men, especially poets and artists, as a subject for a novel, still I am truly glad to say that I have read your book with the liveliest interest. It is very sincere and very poetical at the same time; the life and spirit of Germany have no secrets for you, and your characters are drawn with a pencil as delicate as it is strong. I feel very proud of the approbation you give to my works, and of the influence you kindly attribute to them on your own talent; an author who write as you do is not a pupil in art any more; he is not far from being himself a master." Charming and graceful words, of which the young writer was justly proud. About this time occurred the death of her mother, the first break in the home and family circle. In August of 1876 she made a visit to Concord, at the Emersons', memorable enough for her to keep a journal and note down every incident and detail. Very touching to read now, in its almost childlike simplicity, is this record of "persons that pass and shadows that remain." Mr. Emerson himself meets her at the station, and drives with her in his little one-horse wagon to his home, the gray square house, with dark green blinds, set amidst noble trees. A glimpse of the family,--"the stately, white-haired Mrs. Emerson, and the beautiful, faithful Ellen, whose figure seems always to stand by the side of her august father." Then the picture of Concord itself, lovely and smiling, with its quiet meadows, quiet slopes, and quietest of rivers. She meets the little set of Concord people: Mr. Alcott, for whom she does not share Mr. Emerson's enthusiasm; and William Ellery Channing, whose figure stands out like a gnarled and twisted scrub-oak,--a pathetic, impossible creature, whose cranks and oddities were submitted to on account of an innate nobility of character. "Generally crabbed and reticent with strangers, he took a liking to me," says Emma Lazarus. "The bond of our sympathy was my admiration for Thoreau, whose memory he actually worships, having been his constant companion in his best days, and his daily attendant in the last years of illness and heroic suffering. I do not know whether I was most touched by the thought of the unique, lofty character that had inspired this depth and fervor of friendship, or by the pathetic constancy and pure affection of the poor, desolate old man before me, who tried to conceal his tenderness and sense of irremediable loss by a show of gruffness and philosophy. He never speaks of Thoreau's death," she says, "but always 'Thoreau's loss,' or 'when I lost Mr. Thoreau,' or 'when Mr. Thoreau went away from Concord;' nor would he confess that he missed him, for there was not a day, an hour, a moment, when he did not feel that his friend was still with him and had never left him. And yet a day or two after," she goes on to say, "when I sat with him in the sunlit wood, looking at the gorgeous blue and silver summer sky, he turned to me and said: 'Just half of the world died for me when I lost Mr. Thoreau. None of it looks the same as when I looked at it with him.'... He took me through the woods and pointed out to me every spot visited and described by his friend. Where the hut stood is a little pile of stones, and a sign, 'Site of Thoreau's Hut,' and a few steps beyond is the pond with thickly-wooded shore,--everything exquisitely peaceful and beautiful in the afternoon light, and not a sound to be heard except the crickets or the 'z-ing' of the locusts which Thoreau has described. Farther on he pointed out to me, in the distant landscape, a low roof, the only one visible, which was the roof of Thoreau's birthplace. He had been over there many times, he said, since he lost Mr. Thoreau, but had never gone in,--he was afraid it might look lonely! But he had often sat on a rock in front of the house and looked at it." On parting from his young friend, Mr. Channing gave her a package, which proved to be a copy of his own book on Thoreau, and the pocket compass which Thoreau carried to the Maine woods and on all his excursions. Before leaving the Emersons she received the proof-sheets of her drama of "The Spagnoletto," which was being printed for private circulation. She showed them to Mr. Emerson, who had expressed a wish to see them, and, after reading them, he gave them back to her with the comment that they were "good." She playfully asked him if he would not give her a bigger word to take home to the family. He laughed, and said he did not know of any; but he went on to tell her that he had taken it up, not expecting to read it through, and had not been able to put it down. Every word and line told of richness in the poetry, he said, and as far as he could judge the play had great dramatic opportunities. Early in the autumn "The Spagnoletto" appeared,--a tragedy in five acts, the scene laid in Italy, 1655. Without a doubt, every one in these days will take up with misgiving, and like Mr. Emerson "not expecting to read it through," a five-act tragedy of the seventeenth century, so far removed apparently from the age and present actualities,--so opposed to the "Modernite," which has come to be the last word of art. Moreover, great names at once appear; great shades arise to rebuke the presumptuous new-comer in this highest realm of expression. "The Spagnoletto" has grave defects that would probably preclude its ever being represented on the stage. The denoument especially is unfortunate, and sins against our moral and aesthetic instinct. The wretched, tiger-like father stabs himself in the presence of his crushed and erring daughter, so that she may forever be haunted by the horror and the retribution of his death. We are left suspended, as it were, over an abyss, our moral judgment thwarted, our humanity outraged. But "The Spagnoletto" is, nevertheless, a remarkable production, and pitched in another key from anything the writer has yet given us. Heretofore we have only had quiet, reflective, passive emotion: now we have a storm and sweep of passion for which we were quite unprepared. Ribera's character is charged like a thunder-cloud with dramatic elements. Maria Rosa is the child of her father, fired at a flash, "deaf, dumb, and blind" at the touch of passion. "Does love steal gently o'er our soul?" she asks; "What if he come, A cloud, a fire, a whirlwind?" and then the cry: "O my God! This awful joy in mine own heart is love." Again: "While you are here the one thing real to me In all the universe is love." Exquisitely tender and refined are the love scenes--at the ball and in the garden--between the dashing prince-lover in search of his pleasure and the devoted girl with her heart in her eyes, on her lips, in her hand. Behind them, always like a tragic fate, the somber figure of the Spagnoletto, and over all the glow and color and soul of Italy. In 1881 appeared the translation of Heine's poems and ballads, which was generally accepted as the best version of that untranslatable poet. Very curious is the link between that bitter, mocking, cynic spirit and the refined, gentle spirit of Emma Lazarus. Charmed by the magic of his verse, the iridescent play of his fancy, and the sudden cry of the heart piercing through it all, she is as yet unaware or only vaguely conscious of the of the real bond between them: the sympathy in the blood, the deep, tragic, Judaic passion of eighteen hundred years that was smouldering in her own heart, soon to break out and change the whole current of thought and feeling. Already, in 1879, the storm was gathering. In a distant province of Russia at first, then on the banks of the Volga, and finally in Moscow itself, the old cry was raised, the hideous mediaeval charge revived, and the standard of persecution unfurled against the Jews. Province after province took it up. In Bulgaria, Servia, and, above all, Roumania, where, we were told, the sword of the Czar had been drawn to protect the oppressed, Christian atrocities took the place of Moslem atrocities, and history turned a page backward into the dark annals of violence and crime. And not alone in despotic Russia, but in Germany, the seat of modern philosophic thought and culture, the rage of Anti-Semitism broke out and spread with fatal ease and potency. In Berlin itself tumults and riots were threatened. We in America could scarcely comprehend the situation or credit the reports, and for a while we shut our eyes and ears to the facts; but we were soon rudely awakened from our insensibility, and forced to face the truth. It was in England that the voice was first raised in behalf of justice and humanity. In January, 1881, there appeared in the "London Times" a series of articles, carefully compiled on the testimony of eye-witnesses, and confirmed by official documents, records, etc., giving an account of events that had been taking place in southern and western Russia during a period of nine months, between April and December of 1880. We do not need to recall the sickening details. The headings will suffice: outrage, murder, arson, and pillage, and the result,--100,000 Jewish families made homeless and destitute, and nearly $100,000,000 worth of property destroyed. Nor need we recall the generous outburst of sympathy and indignation from America. "It is not that it is the oppression of Jews by Russia," said Mr. Evarts in the meeting at Chickering Hall Wednesday evening, February 4; "it is that it is the oppression of men and women, and we are men and women." So spoke civilized Christendom, and for Judaism,--who can describe that thrill of brotherhood, quickened anew, the immortal pledge of the race, made one again through sorrow? For Emma Lazarus it was a trumpet call that awoke slumbering and unguessed echoes. All this time she had been seeking heroic ideals in alien stock, soulless and far removed; in pagan mythology and mystic, mediaeval Christianity, ignoring her very birthright,--the majestic vista of the past, down which, "high above flood and fire," had been conveyed the precious scroll of the Moral Law. Hitherto Judaism had been a dead letter to her. Of Portuguese descent, her family had always been members of the oldest and most orthodox congregation of New York, where strict adherence to custom and ceremonial was the watchword of faith; but it was only during her childhood and earliest years that she attended the synagogue, and conformed to the prescribed rites and usages which she had now long since abandoned as obsolete and having no bearing on modern life. Nor had she any great enthusiasm for her own people. As late as April, 1882, she published in "The Century Magazine" an article written probably some months before, entitled "Was the Earl of Beaconsfield a Representative Jew?" in which she is disposed to accept as the type of the modern Jew the brilliant, successful, but not over-scrupulous chevalier d'industrie. In view of subsequent, or rather contemporaneous events, the closing paragraph of the article in question is worthy of being cited:-- "Thus far their religion [the Jewish], whose mere preservation under such adverse conditions seems little short of a miracle, has been deprived of the natural means of development and progress, and has remained a stationary force. The next hundred years will, in our opinion be the test of their vitality as a people; the phase of toleration upon which they are only now entering will prove whether or not they are capable of growth." By a curious, almost fateful juxtaposition, in the same number of the magazine appeared Madame Ragozin's defense of Russian barbarity, and in the following (May) number Emma Lazarus's impassioned appeal and reply, "Russian Christianity versus Modern Judaism." From this time dated the crusade that she undertook in behalf of her race, and the consequent expansion of all her faculties, the growth of spiritual power which always ensues when a great cause is espoused and a strong conviction enters the soul. Her verse rang out as it had never rung before,--a clarion note, calling a people to heroic action and unity, to the consciousness and fulfillment of a grand destiny. When has Judaism been so stirred as by "The Crowing of the Red Cock" and THE BANNER OF THE JEW. Wake, Israel, wake! Recall to-day The glorious Maccabean rage, The sire heroic, hoary-gray, His five-fold lion-lineage; The Wise, the Elect, the Help-of-God, The Burst-of-Spring, the Avenging Rod. From Mizpeh's mountain ridge they saw Jerusalem's empty streets; her shrine Laid waste where Greeks profaned the Law With idol and with pagan sign. Mourners in tattered black were there With ashes sprinkled on their hair. Then from the stony peak there rang A blast to ope the graves; down poured The Maccabean clan, who sang Their battle anthem to the Lord. Five heroes lead, and following, see Ten thousand rush to victory! Oh for Jerusalem's trumpet now, To blow a blast of shattering power, To wake the sleeper high and low, And rouse them to the urgent hour! No hand for vengeance, but to save, A million naked swords should wave. Oh, deem not dead that martial fire, Say not the mystic flame is spent! With Moses' law and David's lyre, Your ancient strength remains unbent. Let but an Ezra rise anew, To lift the BANNER OF THE JEW! A rag, a mock at first,--erelong When men have bled and women wept, To guard its precious folds from wrong, Even they who shrunk, even they who slept, Shall leap to bless it and to save. Strike! for the brave revere the brave! The dead forms burst their bonds and lived again. She sings "Rosh Hashanah" (the Jewish New Year) and "Hanuckah" (the Feast of Lights):-- "Kindle the taper like the steadfast star Ablaze on Evening's forehead o'er the earth, And add each night a lustre till afar An eight-fold splendor shine above thy hearth. Clash, Israel, the cymbals, touch the lyre, Blow the brass trumpet and the harsh-tongued horn; Chant psalms of victory till the heart take fire, The Maccabean spirit leap new-born." And "The New Ezekiel:"-- "What! can these dead bones live, whose sap is dried By twenty scorching centuries of wrong? Is this the House of Israel whose pride Is as a tale that's told, an ancient song? Are these ignoble relics all that live Of psalmist, priest, and prophet? Can the breath Of very heaven bid these bones revive, Open the graves, and clothe the ribs of death? Yea, Prophesy, the Lord hath said again: Say to the wind, come forth and breathe afresh, Even that they may live, upon these slain, And bone to bone shall leap, and flesh to flesh. The spirit is not dead, proclaim the word. Where lay dead bones a host of armed men stand! I ope your graves, my people, saith the Lord, And I shall place you living in your land." Her whole being renewed and refreshed itself at its very source. She threw herself into the study of her race, its language, literature, and history. Breaking the outward crust, she pierced to the heart of the faith and "the miracle" of its survival. What was it other than the ever-present, ever-vivifying spirit itself, which cannot die,--the religious and ethical zeal which fires the whole history of the people, and of which she herself felt the living glow within her own soul? She had come upon the secret and the genius of Judaism,--that absolute interpenetration and transfusion of spirit with body and substance which, taken literally, often reduces itself to a question of food and drink, a dietary regulation, and again, in proper splendor, incarnates itself and shines out before humanity in the prophets, teachers, and saviors of mankind. Those were busy, fruitful years for Emma Lazarus, who worked, not with the pen alone, but in the field of practical and beneficent activity. For there was an immense task to accomplish. The tide of immigration had set in, and ship after ship came laden with hunted human beings flying from their fellow-men, while all the time, like a tocsin, rang the terrible story of cruelty and persecution,--horrors that the pen refuses to dwell upon. By the hundreds and thousands they flocked upon our shores,--helpless, innocent victims of injustice and oppression, panic-stricken in the midst of strange and utterly new surroundings. Emma Lazarus came into personal contact with these people, and visited them in their refuge on Ward Island. While under the influence of all the emotions aroused by this great crisis in the history of her race, she wrote the "Dance of Death," a drama of persecution of the twelfth century, founded upon the authentic records,--unquestionably her finest work in grasp and scope, and, above all, in moral elevation and purport. The scene is laid in Nordhausen, a free city in Thuringia, where the Jews, living, as the deemed, in absolute security and peace, were caught up in the wave of persecution that swept over Europe at that time. Accused of poisoning the wells and causing the pestilence, or black death, as it was called, they were condemned to be burned. We do not here intend to enter upon a critical or literary analysis of the play, or to point out dramatic merits or defects, but we should like to make its readers feel with us the holy ardor and impulse of the writer and the spiritual import of the work. The action is without surprise, the doom fixed from the first; but so glowing is the canvas with local and historic color, so vital and intense the movement, so resistless, the "internal evidence," if we may call it thus, penetrating its very substance and form, that we are swept along as by a wave of human sympathy and grief. In contrast with "The Spagnoletto," how large is the theme and how all-embracing the catastrophe! In place of the personal we have the drama of the universal. Love is only a flash now,--a dream caught sight of and at once renounced at a higher claim. "Have you no smile to welcome love with, Liebhaid? Why should you tremble? Prince, I am afraid! Afraid of my own heart, my unfathomed joy, A blasphemy against my father's grief, My people's agony! "What good shall come, forswearing kith and God, To follow the allurements of the heart?" asks the distracted maiden, torn between her love for he princely wooer and her devotion to the people among whom her lot has been cast. "O God! How shall I pray for strength to love him less Than mine own soul! No more of that, I am all Israel's now. Till this cloud pass, I have no thought, no passion, no desire, Save for my people." Individuals perish, but great ideas survive,--fortitude and courage, and that exalted loyalty and devotion to principle which alone are worth living and dying for. The Jews pass by in procession--men, women, and children--on their way to the flames, to the sound of music, and in festal array, carrying the gold and silver vessels, the roll of the law, the perpetual lamp and the seven branched silver candle-stick of the synagogue. The crowd hoot and jeer at them. "The misers! they will take their gems and gold Down to the grave!" "Let us rejoice" sing the Jewish youths in chorus; and the maidens:-- "Our feet stand within thy gates, O Zion! Within thy portals, O Jerusalem!" The flames rise and dart among them; their garments wave, their jewels flash, as they dance and sing in the crimson blaze. The music ceases, a sound of crashing boards is heard and a great cry,--"Hallelujah!" What a glory and consecration of the martyrdom! Where shall we find a more triumphant vindication and supreme victory of spirit over matter? "I see, I see, How Israel's ever-crescent glory makes These flames that would eclipse it dark as blots Of candle-light against the blazing sun. We die a thousand deaths,--drown, bleed, and burn. Our ashes are dispersed unto the winds. Yet the wild winds cherish the sacred seed, The fire refuseth to consume. . . . . . . . . . Even as we die in honor, from our death Shall bloom a myriad heroic lives, Brave through our bright example, virtuous Lest our great memory fall in disrepute." The "Dance to Death" was published, along with other poems and translations from the Hebrew poets of mediaeval Spain, in a small column entitled "Songs of a Semite." The tragedy was dedicated, "In profound veneration and respect to the memory of George Eliot, the illustrious writer who did most among the artists of our day towards elevating and ennobling the spirit of Jewish nationality." For this was the idea that had caught the imagination of Emma Lazarus, --a restored and independent nationality and repatriation in Palestine. In her article in "The Century" of February, 1883, on the "Jewish Problem," she says:-- "I am fully persuaded that all suggested solutions other than this are but temporary palliatives.... The idea formulated by George Eliot has already sunk into the minds of many Jewish enthusiasts, and it germinates with miraculous rapidity. 'The idea that I am possessed with,' says Deronda, 'is that of restoring a political existence to my people; making them a nation again, giving them a national centre, such as the English have, though they, too, are scattered over the face of the globe. That task which presents itself to me as a duty.... I am resolved to devote my life to it. AT THE LEAST, I MAY AWAKEN A MOVEMENT IN OTHER MINDS SUCH HAS BEEN AWAKENED IN MY OWN.' Could the noble prophetess who wrote the above words have lived but till to- day to see the ever-increasing necessity of adopting her inspired counsel,...she would have been herself astonished at the flame enkindled by her seed of fire, and the practical shape which the movement projected by her poetic vision is beginning to assume." In November of 1882 appeared her first "Epistle to the Hebrews,"--one of a series of articles written for the "American Hebrew," published weekly through several months. Addressing herself now to a Jewish audience, she sets forth without reserve her views and hopes for Judaism, now passionately holding up the mirror for the shortcomings and peculiarities of her race. She says:-- "Every student of the Hebrew language is aware that we have in the conjugation of our verbs a mode known as the 'intensive voice,' which, by means of an almost imperceptible modification of vowel-points, intensifies the meaning of the primitive root. A similar significance seems to attach to the Jews themselves in connection with the people among whom they dwell. They are the 'intensive form' of any nationality whose language and customs they adopt.... Influenced by the same causes, they represent the same results; but the deeper lights and shadows of the Oriental temperament throw their failings, as well as their virtues, into more prominent relief." In drawing the epistles to a close, February 24, 1883, she thus summarizes the special objects she has had in view:-- "My chief aim has been to contribute my mite towards arousing that spirit of Jewish enthusiasm which might manifest itself: First, in a return to varied pursuits and broad system of physical and intellectual education adopted by our ancestors; Second, in a more fraternal and practical movement towards alleviating the sufferings of oppressed Jews in countries less favored than our own; Third, in a closer and wider study of Hebrew literature and history and finally, in a truer recognition of the large principals of religion, liberty, and law upon which Judaism is founded, and which should draw into harmonious unity Jews of every shade of opinion." Her interest in Jewish affairs was at its height when she planned a visit abroad, which had been a long-cherished dream, and May 15, 1883, she sailed for England, accompanied by a younger sister. We have difficulty in recognizing the tragic priestess we have been portraying in the enthusiastic child of travel who seems new-born into a new world. From the very outset she is in a maze of wonder and delight. At sea she writes:-- "Our last day on board ship was a vision of beauty from morning till night,--the sea like a mirror and the sky dazzling with light. In the afternoon we passed a ship in full sail, near enough to exchange salutes and cheers. After tossing about for six days without seeing a human being, except those on our vessel, even this was a sensation. Then an hour or two before sunset came the great sensation of--land! At first, nothing but a shadow on the far horizon, like the ghost of a ship; two or three widely scattered rocks which were the promontories of Ireland, and sooner than we expected we were steaming along low-lying purple hills." The journey to Chester gives her "the first glimpse of mellow England,"--a surprise which is yet no surprise, so well known and familiar does it appear. Then Chester, with its quaint, picturesque streets, "like the scene of a Walter Scott novel, the cathedral planted in greenness, and the clear, gray river where a boatful of scarlet dragoons goes gliding by." Everything is a picture for her special benefit. She "drinks in, at every sense, the sights, sounds, and smells, and the unimaginable beauty of it all." Then the bewilderment of London, and a whirl of people, sights, and impressions. She was received with great distinction by the Jews, and many of the leading men among them warmly advocated her views. But it was not alone from her own people that she met with exceptional consideration. She had the privilege of seeing many of the most eminent personages of the day, all of whom honored her with special and personal regard. There was, no doubt, something that strongly attracted people to her at this time,--the force of her intellect at once made itself felt, while at the same time the unaltered simplicity and modesty of her character, and her readiness and freshness of enthusiasm, kept her still almost like a child. She makes a flying visit to Paris, where she happens to be on the 14th of July, the anniversary of the storming of the Bastile, and of the beginning of the republic; she drives to Versailles, "that gorgeous shell of royalty, where the crowd who celebrate the birth of the republic wander freely through the halls and avenues, and into the most sacred rooms of the king.... There are ruins on every side in Paris," she says; "ruins of the Commune, or the Siege, or the Revolution; it is terrible--it seems as if the city were seared with fire and blood." Such was Paris to her then, and she hastens back to her beloved London, starting from there on the tour through England that has been mapped out for her. "A Day in Surrey with William Morris," published in "The Century Magazine," describes her visit to Merton Abbey, the old Norman monastery, converted into a model factory by the poet-humanitarian, who himself received her as his guest, conducted her all over the picturesque building and garden, and explained to her his views of art and his aims for the people. She drives through Kent, "where the fields, valleys, and slopes are garlanded with hops and ablaze with scarlet poppies." Then Canterbury, Windsor, and Oxford, Stratford, Warwick, the valley of the Wye, Wells, Exeter, and Salisbury,--cathedral after cathedral. Back to London, and then north through York, Durham, and Edinburgh, and on the 15th of September she sails for home. We have merely named the names, for it is impossible to convey an idea of the delight and importance of this trip, "a crescendo of enjoyment," as she herself calls it. Long after, in strange, dark hours of suffering, these pictures of travel arose before her, vivid and tragic even in their hold and spell upon her. The winter of 1883-84 was not especially productive. She wrote a few reminiscences of her journey and occasional poems on the Jewish themes, which appeared in the "American Hebrew;" but for the most part gave herself up to quiet retrospect and enjoyment with her friends of the life she had had a glimpse of, and the experience she had stored,--a restful, happy period. In August of the same year she was stricken with a severe and dangerous malady, from which she slowly recovered, only to go through a terrible ordeal and affliction. Her father's health, which had long been failing, now broke down completely, and the whole winter was one long strain of acute anxiety, which culminated in his death, in March, 1885. The blow was a crushing one for Emma. Truly, the silver cord was loosed, and the golden bowl broken. Life lost its meaning and charm. Her father's sympathy and pride in her work had been her chief incentive and ambition, and had spurred her on when her own confidence and spirit failed. Never afterwards did she find complete and spontaneous expression. She decided to go abroad as the best means of regaining composure and strength and sailed once more in May for England, where she was welcomed now by the friends she had made, almost as to another home. She spent the summer very quietly at Richmond, an ideally beautiful spot in Yorkshire, where she soon felt the beneficial influence of her peaceful surroundings. "The very air seems to rest one here," she writes; and inspired by the romantic loveliness of the place, she even composed the first few chapters of a novel, begun with a good deal of dash and vigor, but soon abandoned, for she was still struggling with depression and gloom. "I have neither ability, energy, nor purpose," she writes. "It is impossible to do anything, so I am forced to set it aside for the present; whether to take it up again or not in the future remains to be seen." In the autumn she goes on the Continent, visiting the Hague, which "completely fascinates" her, and where she feels "stronger and more cheerful" than she has "for many a day." Then Paris, which this time amazes her "with its splendor and magnificence. All the ghosts of the Revolution are somehow laid," she writes, and she spends six weeks here enjoying to the full the gorgeous autumn weather, the sights, the picture galleries, the bookshops, the whole brilliant panorama of the life; and early in December she starts for Italy. And now once more we come upon that keen zest of enjoyment, that pure desire and delight of the eyes, which are the prerogative of the poet,--Emma Lazarus was a poet. The beauty of the world,--what a rapture and intoxication it is, and how it bursts upon her in the very land of beauty, "where Dante and Petrarch trod!" A magic glow colours it all; no mere blues and greens anymore, but a splendor of purple and scarlet and emerald; "each tower, castle, and village shining like a jewel; the olive, the fig, and at your feet the roses, growing in mid-December." A day in Pisa seems like a week, so crowded is it with sensations and unforgettable pictures. Then a month in Florence, which is still more entrancing with its inexhaustible treasures of beauty and art; and finally Rome, the climax of it all,-- "wiping out all other places and impressions, and opening a whole new world of sensations. I am wild with the excitement of this tremendous place. I have been here a week, and have seen the Vatican and the Capitoline Museums, and the Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's, besides the ruins on the streets and on the hills, and the graves of Shelley and Keats. "It is all heart-breaking. I don't only mean those beautiful graves, overgrown with acanthus and violets, but the mutilated arches and columns and dumb appealing fragments looming up in the glowing sunshine under the Roman blue sky." True to her old attractions, it is pagan Rome that appeals to her most strongly,-- "and the far-away past, that seems so sad and strange and near. I am even out of humor with pictures; a bit of broken stone or a fragment of a bas-relief, or a Corinthian column standing out against this lapis-lazuli sky, or a tremendous arch, are the only things I can look at for the moment,-- except the Sistine Chapel, which is as gigantic as the rest, and forces itself upon you with equal might." Already, in February, spring is in the air; "the almond-trees are in bloom, violets cover the grass, and oh! the divine, the celestial, the unheard-of beauty of it all!" It is almost a pang for her, "with its strange mixture of longing and regret and delight," and in the midst of it she says, "I have to exert all my strength not to lose myself in morbidness and depression." Early in March she leaves Rome, consoled with the thought of returning the following winter. In June she was in England again, and spent the summer at Malvern. Disease was no doubt already beginning to prey upon her, for she was oppressed at times by a languor and heaviness amounting almost to lethargy. When she returned to London, however, in September, she felt quite well again, and started for another tour in Holland, which she enjoyed as much as before. She then settled in Paris, to await the time when she could return to Italy. But she was attacked at once with grave and alarming symptoms, that betokened a fatal end to her malady. Entirely ignorant, however, of the danger that threatened her, she kept up courage and hope, made plans for the journey, and looked forward to setting out at any moment. But the weeks passed and the months also; slowly and gradually the hope faded. The journey to Italy must be given up; she was not in condition to be brought home, and she reluctantly resigned herself to remain where she was and "convalesce," as she confidently believed, in the spring. Once again came the analogy, which she herself pointed out now, to Heine on his mattress-grave in Paris. She, too, the last time she went out, dragged herself to the Louvre, to the feet of the Venus, "the goddess without arms, who could not help." Only her indomitable will and intense desire to live seemed to keep her alive. She sunk to a very low ebb, but, as she herself expressed it, she "seemed to have always one little window looking out into life," and in the spring she rallied sufficiently to take a few drives and to sit on the balcony of her apartment. She came back to life with a feverish sort of thirst and avidity. "No such cure for pessimism," she says, "as a severe illness; the simplest pleasures are enough,--to breathe the air and see the sun." Many plans were made for leaving Paris, but it was finally decided to risk the ocean voyage and bring her home, and accordingly she sailed July 23rd, arriving in New York on the last day of that month. She did not rally after this; and now began her long agony, full of every kind of suffering, mental and physical. Only her intellect seemed kindled anew, and none but those who saw her during the last supreme ordeal can realize that wonderful flash and fire of the spirit before its extinction. Never did she appear so brilliant. Wasted to a shadow, and between acute attacks of pain, she talked about art, poetry, the scenes of travel, of which her brain was so full, and the phases of her own condition, with an eloquence for which even those who knew her best were quite unprepared. Every faculty seemed sharpened and every sense quickened as the "strong deliveress" approached, and the ardent soul was released from the frame that could no longer contain it. We cannot restrain a feeling of suddenness and incompleteness and a natural pang of wonder and regret for a life so richly and so vitally endowed thus cut off in its prime. But for us it is not fitting to question or repine, but rather to rejoice in the rare possession that we hold. What is any life, even the most rounded and complete, but a fragment and a hint? What Emma Lazarus might have accomplished, had she been spared, it is idle and even ungrateful to speculate. What she did accomplish has real and peculiar significance. It is the privilege of a favored few that every fact and circumstance of their individuality shall add lustre and value to what they achieve. To be born a Jewess was a distinction for Emma Lazarus, and she in turn conferred distinction upon her race. To be born a woman also lends a grace and a subtle magnetism to her influence. Nowhere is there contradiction or incongruity. Her works bear the imprint of her character, and her character of her works; the same directness and honesty, the same limpid purity of tone, and the same atmosphere of things refined and beautiful. The vulgar, the false, and the ignoble,--she scarcely comprehended them, while on every side she was open and ready to take in and respond to whatever can adorn and enrich life. Literature was no mere "profession" for her, which shut out other possibilities; it was only a free, wide horizon and background for culture. She was passionately devoted to music, which inspired some of her best poems; and during the last years of her life, in hours of intense physical suffering, she found relief and consolation in listening to the strains of Bach and Beethoven. When she went abroad, painting was revealed to her, and she threw herself with the same ardor and enthusiasm into the study of the great masters; her last work (left unfinished) was a critical analysis of the genius and personality of Rembrandt. And now, at the end, we ask, Has the grave really closed over all these gifts? Has that eager, passionate striving ceased, and "is the rest silence?" Who knows? But would we break, if we could, that repose, that silence and mystery and peace everlasting? THE NEW YEAR. ROSH-HASHANAH, 5643. Not while the snow-shroud round dead earth is rolled, And naked branches point to frozen skies,-- When orchards burn their lamps of fiery gold, The grape glows like a jewel, and the corn A sea of beauty and abundance lies, Then the new year is born. Look where the mother of the months uplifts In the green clearness of the unsunned West, Her ivory horn of plenty, dropping gifts, Cool, harvest-feeding dews, fine-winnowed light; Tired labor with fruition, joy and rest Profusely to requite. Blow, Israel, the sacred cornet! Call Back to thy courts whatever faint heart throb With thine ancestral blood, thy need craves all. The red, dark year is dead, the year just born Leads on from anguish wrought by priest and mob, To what undreamed-of morn? For never yet, since on the holy height, The Temple's marble walls of white and green Carved like the sea-waves, fell, and the world's light Went out in darkness,--never was the year Greater with portent and with promise seen, Than this eve now and here. Even as the Prophet promised, so your tent Hath been enlarged unto earth's farthest rim. To snow-capped Sierras from vast steppes ye went, Through fire and blood and tempest-tossing wave, For freedom to proclaim and worship Him, Mighty to slay and save. High above flood and fire ye held the scroll, Out of the depths ye published still the Word. No bodily pang had power to swerve your soul: Ye, in a cynic age of crumbling faiths, Lived to bear witness to the living Lord, Or died a thousand deaths. In two divided streams the exiles part, One rolling homeward to its ancient source, One rushing sunward with fresh will, new heart. By each the truth is spread, the law unfurled, Each separate soul contains the nation's force, And both embrace the world. Kindle the silver candle's seven rays, Offer the first fruits of the clustered bowers, The garnered spoil of bees. With prayer and praise Rejoice that once more tried, once more we prove How strength of supreme suffering still is ours For Truth and Law and Love. THE CROWING OF THE RED COCK. Across the Eastern sky has glowed The flicker of a blood-red dawn, Once more the clarion cock has crowed, Once more the sword of Christ is drawn. A million burning rooftrees light The world-wide path of Israel's flight. Where is the Hebrew's fatherland? The folk of Christ is sore bestead; The Son of Man is bruised and banned, Nor finds whereon to lay his head. His cup is gall, his meat is tears, His passion lasts a thousand years. Each crime that wakes in man the beast, Is visited upon his kind. The lust of mobs, the greed of priest, The tyranny of kings, combined To root his seed from earth again, His record is one cry of pain. When the long roll of Christian guilt Against his sires and kin is known, The flood of tears, the life-blood spilt The agony of ages shown, What oceans can the stain remove, From Christian law and Christian love? Nay, close the book; not now, not here, The hideous tale of sin narrate, Reechoing in the martyr's ear, Even he might nurse revengeful hate, Even he might turn in wrath sublime, With blood for blood and crime for crime. Coward? Not he, who faces death, Who singly against worlds has fought, For what? A name he may not breathe, For liberty of prayer and thought. The angry sword he will not whet, His nobler task is--to forget. IN EXILE. "Since that day till now our life is one unbroken paradise. We live a true brotherly life. Every evening after supper we take a seat under the mighty oak and sing our songs."--Extract from a letter of a Russian refugee in Texas. Twilight is here, soft breezes bow the grass, Day's sounds of various toil break slowly off, The yoke-freed oxen low, the patient ass Dips his dry nostril in the cool, deep trough. Up from the prairie the tanned herdsmen pass With frothy pails, guiding with voices rough Their udder-lightened kine. Fresh smells of earth, The rich, black furrows of the glebe send forth. After the Southern day of heavy toil, How good to lie, with limbs relaxed, brows bare To evening's fan, and watch the smoke-wreaths coil Up from one's pipe-stem through the rayless air. So deem these unused tillers of the soil, Who stretched beneath the shadowing oak tree, stare Peacefully on the star-unfolding skies, And name their life unbroken paradise. The hounded stag that has escaped the pack, And pants at ease within a thick-leaved dell; The unimprisoned bird that finds the track Through sun-bathed space, to where his fellows dwell; The martyr, granted respite from the rack, The death-doomed victim pardoned from his cell,-- Such only know the joy these exiles gain,-- Life's sharpest rapture is surcease of pain. Strange faces theirs, wherethrough the Orient sun Gleams from the eyes and glows athwart the skin. Grave lines of studious thought and purpose run From curl-crowned forehead to dark-bearded chin. And over all the seal is stamped thereon Of anguish branded by a world of sin, In fire and blood through ages on their name, Their seal of glory and the Gentiles' shame. Freedom to love the law that Moses brought, To sing the songs of David, and to think The thoughts Gabirol to Spinoza taught, Freedom to dig the common earth, to drink The universal air--for this they sought Refuge o'er wave and continent, to link Egypt with Texas in their mystic chain, And truth's perpetual lamp forbid to wane. Hark! through the quiet evening air, their song Floats forth with wild sweet rhythm and glad refrain. They sing the conquest of the spirit strong, The soul that wrests the victory from pain; The noble joys of manhood that belong To comrades and to brothers. In their strain Rustle of palms and Eastern streams one hears, And the broad prairie melts in mist of tears. IN MEMORIAM--REV. J. J. LYONS. ROSH-HASHANAH, 5638. The golden harvest-tide is here, the corn Bows its proud tops beneath the reaper's hand. Ripe orchards' plenteous yields enrich the land; Bring the first fruits and offer them this morn, With the stored sweetness of all summer hours, The amber honey sucked from myriad flowers, And sacrifice your best first fruits to-day, With fainting hearts and hands forespent with toil, Offer the mellow harvest's splendid spoil, To Him who gives and Him who takes away. Bring timbrels, bring the harp of sweet accord, And in a pleasant psalm your voice attune, And blow the cornet greeting the new moon. Sing, holy, holy, holy, is the Lord, Who killeth and who quickeneth again, Who woundeth and who healeth mortal pain, Whose hand afflicts us, and who sends us peace. Hail thou slim arc of promise in the West, Thou pledge of certain plenty, peace, and rest. With the spent year, may the year's sorrows cease. For there is mourning now in Israel, The crown, the garland of the branching tree Is plucked and withered. Ripe of years was he. The priest, the good old man who wrought so well Upon his chosen globe. For he was one Who at his seed-plot toiled through rain and sun. Morn found him not as one who slumbereth, Noon saw him faithful, and the restful night Stole o'er him at his labors to requite The just man's service with the just man's death. What shall be said when such as he do pass? Go to the hill-side, neath the cypress-trees, Fall midst that peopled silence on your knees, And weep that man must wither as the grass. But mourn him not, whose blameless life complete Rounded its perfect orb, whose sleep is sweet, Whom we must follow, but may not recall. Salute with solemn trumpets the New Year, And offer honeyed fruits as were he here, Though ye be sick with wormwood and with gall. THE VALLEY OF BACA. PSALM LXXXIV. A brackish lake is there with bitter pools Anigh its margin, brushed by heavy trees. A piping wind the narrow valley cools, Fretting the willows and the cypresses. Gray skies above, and in the gloomy space An awful presence hath its dwelling-place. I saw a youth pass down that vale of tears; His head was circled with a crown of thorn, His form was bowed as by the weight of years, His wayworn feet by stones were cut and torn. His eyes were such as have beheld the sword Of terror of the angel of the Lord. He passed, and clouds and shadows and thick haze Fell and encompassed him. I might not see What hand upheld him in those dismal ways, Wherethrough he staggered with his misery. The creeping mists that trooped and spread around, The smitten head and writhing form enwound. Then slow and gradual but sure they rose, Those clinging vapors blotting out the sky. The youth had fallen not, his viewless foes Discomfited, had left the victory Unto the heart that fainted not nor failed, But from the hill-tops its salvation hailed. I looked at him in dread lest I should see, The anguish of the struggle in his eyes; And lo, great peace was there! Triumphantly The sunshine crowned him from the sacred skies. "From strength to strength he goes," he leaves beneath The valley of the shadow and of death. "Thrice blest who passing through that vale of Tears, Makes it a well,"--and draws life-nourishment From those death-bitter drops. No grief, no fears Assail him further, he may scorn the event. For naught hath power to swerve the steadfast soul Within that valley broken and made whole. THE BANNER OF THE JEW. Wake, Israel, wake! Recall to-day The glorious Maccabean rage, The sire heroic, hoary-gray, His five-fold lion-lineage: The Wise, the Elect, the Help-of-God, The Burst-of-Spring, the Avenging Rod.* From Mizpeh's mountain-ridge they saw Jerusalem's empty streets, her shrine Laid waste where Greeks profaned the Law, With idol and with pagan sign. Mourners in tattered black were there, With ashes sprinkled on their hair. Then from the stony peak there rang A blast to ope the graves: down poured The Maccabean clan, who sang Their battle-anthem to the Lord. Five heroes lead, and following, see, Ten thousand rush to victory! Oh for Jerusalem's trumpet now, To blow a blast of shattering power, To wake the sleepers high and low, And rouse them to the urgent hour! No hand for vengeance--but to save, A million naked swords should wave. Oh deem not dead that martial fire, Say not the mystic flame is spent! With Moses' law and David's lyre, Your ancient strength remains unbent. Let but an Ezra rise anew, To lift the BANNER OF THE JEW! A rag, a mock at first--erelong, When men have bled and women wept, To guard its precious folds from wrong, Even they who shrunk, even they who slept, Shall leap to bless it, and to save. Strike! for the brave revere the brave! *The sons of Mattathias--Jonanthan, John, Eleazer, Simon (also called the Jewel), and Jonas, the Prince THE GUARDIAN OF THE RED DISK. Spoken by a Citizen of Malta--1300. A curious title held in high repute, One among many honors, thickly strewn On my lord Bishop's head, his grace of Malta. Nobly he bears them all,--with tact, skill, zeal, Fulfills each special office, vast or slight, Nor slurs the least minutia,--therewithal Wears such a stately aspect of command, Broad-checked, broad-chested, reverend, sanctified, Haloed with white about the tonsure's rim, With dropped lids o'er the piercing Spanish eyes (Lynx-keen, I warrant, to spy out heresy); Tall, massive form, o'ertowering all in presence, Or ere they kneel to kiss the large white hand. His looks sustain his deeds,--the perfect prelate, Whose void chair shall be taken, but not filled. You know not, who are foreign to the isle, Haply, what this Red Disk may be, he guards. 'T is the bright blotch, big as the Royal seal, Branded beneath the beard of every Jew. These vermin so infest the isle, so slide Into all byways, highways that may lead Direct or roundabout to wealth or power, Some plain, plump mark was needed, to protect From the degrading contact Christian folk. The evil had grown monstrous: certain Jews Wore such a haughty air, had so refined, With super-subtile arts, strict, monkish lives, And studious habit, the coarse Hebrew type, One might have elbowed in the public mart Iscariot,--nor suspected one's soul-peril. Christ's blood! it sets my flesh a-creep to think! We may breathe freely now, not fearing taint, Praise be our good Lord Bishop! He keeps count Of every Jew, and prints on cheek or chin The scarlet stamp of separateness, of shame. No beard, blue-black, grizzled or Judas-colored, May hide that damning little wafer-flame. When one appears therewith, the urchins know Good sport's at hand; they fling their stones and mud, Sure of their game. But most the wisdom shows Upon the unbelievers' selves; they learn Their proper rank; crouch, cringe, and hide,--lay by Their insolence of self-esteem; no more Flaunt forth in rich attire, but in dull weeds, Slovenly donned, would slink past unobserved; Bow servile necks and crook obsequious knees, Chin sunk in hollow chest, eyes fixed on earth Or blinking sidewise, but to apprehend Whether or not the hated spot be spied. I warrant my Lord Bishop has full hands, Guarding the Red Disk--lest one rogue escape! THE NEW EZEKIEL. What, can these dead bones live, whose sap is dried By twenty scorching centuries of wrong? Is this the House of Israel, whose pride Is as a tale that's told, an ancient song? Are these ignoble relics all that live Of psalmist, priest, and prophet? Can the breath Of very heaven bid these Bones revive, Open the graves and clothe the ribs of death? Yea, Prophesy, the Lord hath said. Again Say to the wind, Come forth and breathe afresh, Even that they may live upon these slain, And bone to bone shall leap, and flesh to flesh. The Spirit is not dead, proclaim the word, Where lay dead bones, a host of armed men stand! I ope your graves, my people, saith the Lord, And I shall place you living in your land. THE CHOICE. I saw in dream the spirits unbegot, Veiled, floating phantoms, lost in twilight space; For one the hour had struck, he paused; the place Rang with an awful Voice: "Soul, choose thy lot! Two paths are offered; that, in velvet-flower, Slopes easily to every earthly prize. Follow the multitude and bind thine eyes, Thou and thy sons' sons shall have peace with power. This narrow track skirts the abysmal verge, Here shalt thou stumble, totter, weep and bleed, All men shall hate and hound thee and thy seed, Thy portion be the wound, the stripe, the scourge. But in thy hand I place my lamp for light, Thy blood shall be the witness of my Law, Choose now for all the ages!" Then I saw The unveiled spirit, grown divinely bright, Choose the grim path. He turned, I knew full well The pale, great martyr-forehead shadowy-curled, The glowing eyes that had renounced the world, Disgraced, despised, immortal Israel. THE WORLD'S JUSTICE. If the sudden tidings came That on some far, foreign coast, Buried ages long from fame, Had been found a remnant lost Of that hoary race who dwelt By the golden Nile divine, Spake the Pharaoh's tongue and knelt At the moon-crowned Isis' shrine-- How at reverend Egypt's feet, Pilgrims from all lands would meet! If the sudden news were known, That anigh the desert-place Where once blossomed Babylon, Scions of a mighty race Still survived, of giant build, Huntsmen, warriors, priest and sage, Whose ancestral fame had filled, Trumpet-tongued, the earlier age, How at old Assyria's feet Pilgrims from all lands would meet! Yet when Egypt's self was young, And Assyria's bloom unworn, Ere the mythic Homer sung, Ere the gods of Greece were born, Lived the nation of one God, Priests of freedom, sons of Shem, Never quelled by yoke or rod, Founders of Jerusalem-- Is there one abides to-day, Seeker of dead cities, say! Answer, now as then, THEY ARE; Scattered broadcast o'er the lands, Knit in spirit nigh and far, With indissoluble bands. Half the world adores their God, They the living law proclaim, And their guerdon is--the rod, Stripes and scourgings, death and shame. Still on Israel's head forlorn, Every nation heaps its scorn. THE SUPREME SACRIFICE. Well-nigh two thousand years hath Israel Suffered the scorn of man for love of God; Endured the outlaw's ban, the yoke, the rod, With perfect patience. Empires rose and fell, Around him Nebo was adored and Bel; Edom was drunk with victory, and trod On his high places, while the sacred sod Was desecrated by the infidel. His faith proved steadfast, without breach or flaw, But now the last renouncement is required. His truth prevails, his God is God, his Law Is found the wisdom most to be desired. Not his the glory! He, maligned, misknown, Bows his meek head, and says, "Thy will be done!" THE FEAST OF LIGHTS. Kindle the taper like the steadfast star Ablaze on evening's forehead o'er the earth, And add each night a lustre till afar An eightfold splendor shine above thy hearth. Clash, Israel, the cymbals, touch the lyre, Blow the brass trumpet and the harsh-tongued horn; Chant psalms of victory till the heart takes fire, The Maccabean spirit leap new-born. Remember how from wintry dawn till night, Such songs were sung in Zion, when again On the high altar flamed the sacred light, And, purified from every Syrian stain, The foam-white walls with golden shields were hung, With crowns and silken spoils, and at the shrine, Stood, midst their conqueror-tribe, five chieftains sprung From one heroic stock, one seed divine. Five branches grown from Mattathias' stem, The Blessed John, the Keen-Eyed Jonathan, Simon the fair, the Burst-of Spring, the Gem, Eleazar, Help of-God; o'er all his clan Judas the Lion-Prince, the Avenging Rod, Towered in warrior-beauty, uncrowned king, Armed with the breastplate and the sword of God, Whose praise is: "He received the perishing." They who had camped within the mountain-pass, Couched on the rock, and tented neath the sky, Who saw from Mizpah's heights the tangled grass Choke the wide Temple-courts, the altar lie Disfigured and polluted--who had flung Their faces on the stones, and mourned aloud And rent their garments, wailing with one tongue, Crushed as a wind-swept bed of reeds is bowed, Even they by one voice fired, one heart of flame, Though broken reeds, had risen, and were men, They rushed upon the spoiler and o'ercame, Each arm for freedom had the strength of ten. Now is their mourning into dancing turned, Their sackcloth doffed for garments of delight, Week-long the festive torches shall be burned, Music and revelry wed day with night. Still ours the dance, the feast, the glorious Psalm, The mystic lights of emblem, and the Word. Where is our Judas? Where our five-branched palm? Where are the lion-warriors of the Lord? Clash, Israel, the cymbals, touch the lyre, Sound the brass trumpet and the harsh-tongued horn, Chant hymns of victory till the heart take fire, The Maccabean spirit leap new-born! GIFTS. "O World-God, give me Wealth!" the Egyptian cried. His prayer was granted. High as heaven, behold Palace and Pyramid; the brimming tide Of lavish Nile washed all his land with gold. Armies of slaves toiled ant-wise at his feet, World-circling traffic roared through mart and street, His priests were gods, his spice-balmed kings enshrined, Set death at naught in rock-ribbed charnels deep. Seek Pharaoh's race to-day and ye shall find Rust and the moth, silence and dusty sleep. "O World-God, give me beauty!" cried the Greek. His prayer was granted. All the earth became Plastic and vocal to his sense; each peak, Each grove, each stream, quick with Promethean flame, Peopled the world with imaged grace and light. The lyre was his, and his the breathing might Of the immortal marble, his the play Of diamond-pointed thought and golden tongue. Go seek the sun-shine race, ye find to-day A broken column and a lute unstrung. "O World-God, give me Power!" the Roman cried. His prayer was granted. The vast world was chained A captive to the chariot of his pride. The blood of myriad provinces was drained To feed that fierce, insatiable red heart. Invulnerably bulwarked every part With serried legions and with close-meshed Code, Within, the burrowing worm had gnawed its home, A roofless ruin stands where once abode The imperial race of everlasting Rome. "O Godhead, give me Truth!" the Hebrew cried. His prayer was granted; he became the slave Of the Idea, a pilgrim far and wide, Cursed, hated, spurned, and scourged with none to save. The Pharaohs knew him, and when Greece beheld, His wisdom wore the hoary crown of Eld. Beauty he hath forsworn, and wealth and power. Seek him to-day, and find in every land. No fire consumes him, neither floods devour; Immortal through the lamp within his hand. BAR KOCHBA. Weep, Israel! your tardy meed outpour Of grateful homage on his fallen head, That never coronal of triumph wore, Untombed, dishonored, and unchapleted. If Victory makes the hero, raw Success The stamp of virtue, unremembered Be then the desperate strife, the storm and stress Of the last Warrior Jew. But if the man Who dies for freedom, loving all things less, Against world-legions, mustering his poor clan; The weak, the wronged, the miserable, to send Their death-cry's protest through the ages' span-- If such an one be worthy, ye shall lend Eternal thanks to him, eternal praise. Nobler the conquered than the conqueror's end! 1492. Thou two-faced year, Mother of Change and Fate, Didst weep when Spain cast forth with flaming sword, The children of the prophets of the Lord, Prince, priest, and people, spurned by zealot hate. Hounded from sea to sea, from state to state, The West refused them, and the East abhorred. No anchorage the known world could afford, Close-locked was every port, barred every gate. Then smiling, thou unveil'dst, O two-faced year, A virgin world where doors of sunset part, Saying, "Ho, all who weary, enter here! There falls each ancient barrier that the art Of race or creed or rank devised, to rear Grim bulwarked hatred between heart and heart!" 1883. THE BIRTH OF MAN. A Legend of the Talmud. I. When angels visit earth, the messengers Of God's decree, they come as lightning, wind: Before the throne, they all are living fire. There stand four rows of angels--to the right The hosts of Michael, Gabriel's to the left, Before, the troop of Ariel, and behind, The ranks of Raphael; all, with one accord, Chanting the glory of the Everlasting. Upon the high and holy throne there rests, Invisible, the Majesty of God. About his brows the crown of mystery Whereon the sacred letters are engraved Of the unutterable Name. He grasps A sceptre of keen fire; the universe Is compassed in His glance; at His right hand Life stands, and at His left hand standeth Death. II. Lo, the divine idea of making man Had spread abroad among the heavenly hosts; And all at once before the immortal throne Pressed troops of angels and of seraphim, With minds opposed, and contradicting cries: "Fulfill, great Father, thine exalted thought! Create and give unto the earth her king!" "Cease, cease, Almighty God! create no more!" And suddenly upon the heavenly sphere Deep silence fell; before the immortal throne The angel Mercy knelt, and thus he spoke: "Fulfill, great Father, thine exalted thought! Create the likeness of thyself on earth. In this new creature I will breathe the spirit Of a divine compassion; he shall be Thy fairest image in the universe." But to his words the angel Peace replied, With heavy sobs: "My spirit was outspread, Oh God, on thy creation, and all things Were sweetly bound in gracious harmony. But man, this strange new being, everywhere Shall bring confusion, trouble, discord, war." "Avenger of injustice and of crime," Exclaimed the angel Justice, "he shall be Subject to me, and peace shall bloom again. Create, oh Lord, create!" "Father of truth," Implored with tears the angel Truth, "Thou bring'st Upon the earth the father of all lies!" And over the celestial faces gloomed A cloud of grief, and stillness deep prevailed. Then from the midst of that abyss of light Whence sprang the eternal throne, these words rang forth: "Be comforted, my daughter! Thee I send To be companion unto man on earth." And all the angels cried, lamenting loud: "Thou robbest heaven of her fairest gem. Truth! seal of all thy thoughts, Almighty God, The richest jewel that adorns thy crown." From the abyss of glory rang the voice: "From heaven to earth, from earth once more to heaven, Shall Truth, with constant interchange, alight And soar again, an everlasting link Between the world and sky." And man was born. RASCHI IN PRAGUE. Raschi of Troyes, the Moon of Israel, The authoritative Talmudist, returned From his wide wanderings under many skies, To all the synagogues of the Orient, Through Spain and Italy, the isles of Greece, Beautiful, dolorous, sacred Palestine, Dead, obelisked Egypt, floral, musk-breathed Persia, Laughing with bloom, across the Caucasus, The interminable sameness of bare steppes, Through dark luxuriance of Bohemian woods, And issuing on the broad, bright Moldau vale, Entered the gates of Prague. Here, too, his fame, Being winged, preceded him. His people swarmed Like bees to gather the rich honey-dew Of learning from his lips. Amazement filled All eyes beholding him. No hoary sage, He who had sat in Egypt at the feet Of Moses ben-Maimuni, called him friend; Raschi the scholiast, poet, and physician, Who bore the ponderous Bible's storied wisdom, The Mischna's tangled lore at tip of tongue, Light as a garland on a lance, appeared In the just-ripened glory of a man. From his clear eye youth flamed magnificent; Force, masked by grace, moved in his balanced frame; An intellectual, virile beauty reigned Dominant on domed brow, on fine, firm lips, An eagle profile cut in gilded bronze, Strong, delicate as a head upon a coin, While, as an aureole crowns a burning lamp, Above all beauty of the body and brain Shone beauty of a soul benign with love. Even as a tawny flock of huddled sheep, Grazing each other's heels, urged by one will, With bleat and baa following the wether's lead, Or the wise shepherd, so o'er the Moldau bridge Trotted the throng of yellow-caftaned Jews, Chattering, hustling, shuffling. At their head Marched Rabbi Jochanan ben-Eleazar, High priest in Prague, oldest and most revered, To greet the star of Israel. As a father Yearns toward his son, so toward the noble Raschi Leapt at first sight the patriarch's fresh old heart. "My home be thine in Prague! Be thou my son, Who have no offspring save one simple girl. See, glorious youth, who dost renew the days Of David and of Samuel, early graced With God's anointing oil, how Israel Delights to honor who hath honored him." Then Raschi, though he felt a ball of fire Globe itself in his throat, maintained his calm, His cheek's opaque, swart pallor while he kissed Silent the Rabbi's withered hand, and bowed Divinely humble, his exalted head Craving the benison. For each who asked He had the word of counsel, comfort, help; For all, rich eloquence of thanks. His voice, Even and grave, thrilled secret chords and set Plain speech to music. Certain folk were there Sick in the body, dragging painful limbs, To the physician. These he solaced first, With healing touch, with simples from his pouch, Warming and lulling, best with promises Of constant service till their ills were cured. And some, gray-bearded, bald, and curved with age, Blear-eyed from poring over lines obscure And knotty riddles of the Talmud, brought Their problems to this youth, who cleared and solved, Yielding prompt answer to a lifetime's search. Then, followed, pushed by his obsequious tribe, Who fain had pedestaled him on their backs, Hemming his steps, choking the airs of heaven With their oppressive honors, he advanced, Midst shouts, tumultuous welcomes, kisses showered Upon his road-stained garments, through Prague's streets, Gaped at by Gentiles, hissed at and reviled, But no whit altering his majestic mien For overwhelming plaudits or contempt. Glad tidings Raschi brought from West and East Of thriving synagogues, of famous men, And flourishing academies. In Rome The Papal treasurer was a pious Jew, Rabbi Jehiel, neath whose patronage Prospered a noble school. Two hundred Jews Dwelt free and paid no tributary mark. Three hundred lived in peace at Capua, Shepherded by the learned Rabbi David, A prince of Israel. In Babylon The Jews established their Academy. Another still in Bagdad, from whose chair Preached the great rabbi, Samuel Ha-levi, Versed in the written and the oral law, Who blindfold could repeat the whole vast text Of Mischna and Gemara. On the banks Of Eden-born Euphrates, one day's ride From Bagdad, Raschi found in the wilderness, Which once was Babylon, Ezekiel's tomb. Thrice ten perpetual lamps starred the dim shrine, Two hundred sentinels held the sleepless vigil, Receiving offerings. At the Feast of Booths Here crowded Jews by thousands, out of Persia, From all the neighboring lands, to celebrate The glorious memories of the golden days. Ten thousand Jews with their Academy Damascus boasted, while in Cairo shone The pearl, the crown of Israel, ben-Maimuni, Physician at the Court of Saladin, The second Moses, gathering at his feet Sages from all the world. As Raschi spake, Forgetting or ignoring the chief shrine, The Exile's Home, whereunto yearned all hearts, All ears were strained for tidings. Some one asked: "What of Jerusalem? Speak to us of Zion." The light died from his eyes. From depths profound Issued his grave, great voice: "Alas for Zion! Verily is she fallen! Where our race Dictated to the nations, not a handful, Nay, not a score, not ten, not two abide! One, only one, one solitary Jew, The Rabbi Abraham Haceba, flits Ghostlike amid the ruins; every year Beggars himself to pay the idolaters The costly tax for leave to hold a-gape His heart's live wound; to weep, a mendicant, Amidst the crumbled stones of palaces Where reigned his ancestors, upon the graves Where sleep the priests, the prophets, and the kings Who were his forefathers. Ask me no more!" Now, when the French Jew's advent was proclaimed, And his tumultuous greeting, envious growls And ominous eyebeams threatened storm in Prague. "Who may this miracle of learning be? The Anti-Christ! The century-long-awaited, The hourly-hoped Messiah, come at last! Else dared they never wax so arrogant, Flaunting their monstrous joy in Christian eyes, And strutting peacock-like, with hideous screams, Who are wont to crawl, mute reptiles underfoot." A stone or two flung at some servile form, Liveried in the yellow gaberdine (With secret happiness but half suppressed On features cast for misery), served at first For chance expression of the rabble's hate; But, swelling like a snow-ball rolled along By mischief-plotting boys, the rage increased, Grew to a mighty mass, until it reached The palace of Duke Vladislaw. He heard With righteous wrath his injured subjects' charge Against presumptuous aliens: how these blocked His avenues, his bridges; bared to the sun The canker-taint of Prague's obscurest coigne; Paraded past the churches of the Lord One who denied Him, one by them hailed Christ. Enough! This cloud, no bigger than one's hand, Gains overweening bulk. Prague harbored, first, Out of contemptuous ruth, a wretched band Of outcast paupers, gave them leave to ply Their money-lending trade, and leased them land On all too facile terms. Behold! to-day, Like leeches bloated with the people's blood, They batten on Bohemia's poverty; They breed and grow; like adders, spit back hate And venomed perfidy for Christian love. Thereat the Duke, urged by wise counsellors-- Narzerad the statesman (half whose wealth was pledged To the usurers), abetted by the priest, Bishop of Olmutz, who had visited The Holy Sepulchre, whose long, full life Was one clean record of pure piety-- The Duke, I say, by these persuasive tongues, Coaxed to his darling aim, forbade his guards To hinder the just anger of his town, And ordered to be led in chains to him The pilgrim and his host. At noontide meal Raschi sat, full of peace, with Jochanan, And the sole daughter of the house, Rebekah, Young, beautiful as her namesake when she brought Her firm, frail pitcher balanced on her neck Unto the well, and gave the stranger drink, And gave his camels drink. The servant set The sparkling jar's refreshment from his lips, And saw the virgin's face, bright as the moon, Beam from the curled luxuriance of black locks, And cast-back linen veil's soft-folded cloud, Then put the golden ear-ring by her cheek, The bracelets on her hands, his master's pledge, Isaac's betrothal gift, whom she should wed, And be the mother of millions--one whose seed Dwells in the gates of those which hate them. So Yearned Raschi to adorn the radiant girl Who sat at board before him, nor dared lift Shy, heavy lids from pupils black as grapes That dart the imprisoned sunshine from their core. But in her ears keen sense was born to catch, And in her heart strange power to hold, each tone O' the low-keyed, vibrant voice, each syllable O' the eloquent discourse, enriched with tales Of venturous travel, brilliant with fine points Of delicate humor, or illustrated With living portraits of world-famoused men, Jews, Saracens, Crusaders, Islamites, Whose hand he had grasped--the iron warrior, Godfrey of Bouillon, the wise infidel Who in all strength, wit, courtesy excelled The kings his foes--imperial Saladin. But even as Raschi spake an abrupt noise Of angry shouts, of battering staves that shook The oaken portal, stopped the enchanted voice, The uplifted wine spilled from the nerveless hand Of Rabbi Jochanan. "God pity us! Our enemies are upon us once again. Hie thee, Rebekah, to the inmost chamber, Far from their wanton eyes' polluting gaze, Their desecrating touch! Kiss me! Begone! Raschi, my guest, my son"--But no word more Uttered the reverend man. With one huge crash The strong doors split asunder, pouring in A stream of soldiers, ruffians, armed with pikes, Lances, and clubs--the unchained beast, the mob. "Behold the town's new guest!" jeered one who tossed The half-filled golden wine-cup's contents straight In the noble pure young face. "What, master Jew! Must your good friends of Prague break bolts and bars To gain a peep at this prodigious pearl You bury in your shell? Forth to the day! Our Duke himself claims share of your new wealth; Summons to court the Jew philosopher!" Then, while some stuffed their pokes with baubles snatched From board and shelf, or with malignant sword Slashed the rich Orient rugs, the pictured woof That clothed the wall; others had seized and bound, And gagged from speech, the helpless, aged man; Still others outraged, with coarse, violent hands, The marble-pale, rigid as stone, strange youth, Whose eye like struck flint flashed, whose nether lip Was threaded with a scarlet line of blood, Where the compressed teeth fixed it to forced calm. He struggled not while his free limbs were tied, His beard plucked, torn and spat upon his robe-- Seemed scarce to know these insults were for him; But never swerved his gaze from Jochanan. Then, in God's language, sealed from these dumb brutes, Swiftly and low he spake: "Be of good cheer, Reverend old man. I deign not treat with these. If one dare offer bodily hurt to thee, By the ineffable Name! I snap my chains Like gossamer, and in his blood, to the hilt, Bathe the prompt knife hid in my girdle's folds. The Duke shall hear me. Patience. Trust in me." Somewhat the authoritative voice abashed, Even hoarse and changed, the miscreants, who feared Some strong curse lurked in this mysterious tongue, Armed with this evil eye. But brief the spell. With gibe and scoff they dragged their victims forth, The abused old man, the proud, insulted youth, O'er the late path of his triumphal march, Befouled with mud, with raiment torn, wild hair And ragged beard, to Vladislaw. He sat Expectant in his cabinet. On one side His secular adviser, Narzerad, Quick-eyed, sharp-nosed, red-whiskered as a fox; On the other hand his spiritual guide, Bishop of Olmutz, unctuous, large, and bland. "So these twain are chief culprits!" sneered the Duke, Measuring with the noble's ignorant scorn His masters of a lesser caste. "Stand forth! Rash, stubborn, vain old man, whose impudence Hath choked the public highways with thy brood Of nasty vermin, by our sufferance hid In lanes obscure, who hailed this charlatan With sky-flung caps, bent knees, and echoing shouts, Due to ourselves alone in Prague; yea, worse, Who offered worship even ourselves disclaim, Our Lord Christ's meed, to this blaspheming Jew-- Thy crimes have murdered patience. Thou hast wrecked Thy people's fortune with thy own. But first (For even in anger we are just) recount With how great compensation from thy store Of hoarded gold and jewels thou wilt buy Remission of the penalty. Be wise. Hark how my subjects, storming through the streets, Vent on thy tribe accursed their well-based wrath." And, truly, through closed casements roared the noise Of mighty surging crowds, derisive cries, And victims' screams of anguish and affright. Then Raschi, royal in his rags, began: "Hear me, my liege!" At that commanding voice, The Bishop, who with dazed eyes had perused The grieved, wise, beautiful, pale face, sprang up, Quick recognition in his glance, warm joy Aflame on his broad cheeks. "No more! No more! Thou art the man! Give me the hand to kiss That raised me from the shadow of the grave In Jaffa's lazar-house! Listen, my liege! During my pilgrimage to Palestine I, sickened with the plague and nigh to death, Languished 'midst strangers, all my crumbling flesh One rotten mass of sores, a thing for dogs To shy from, shunned by Christian as by Turk, When lo! this clean-breathed, pure-souled, blessed youth, Whom I, not knowing for an infidel, Seeing featured like the Christ, believed a saint, Sat by my pillow, charmed the sting from pain, Quenched the fierce fever's heat, defeated Death; And when I was made whole, had disappeared, No man knew whither, leaving no more trace Than a re-risen angel. This is he!" Then Raschi, who had stood erect, nor quailed From glances of hot hate or crazy wrath, Now sank his eagle gaze, stooped his high head, Veiling his glowing brow, returned the kiss Of brother-love upon the Christian's hand, And dropping on his knees implored the three, "Grace for my tribe! They are what ye have made. If any be among them fawning, false, Insatiable, revengeful, ignorant, mean-- And there are many such--ask your own hearts What virtues ye would yield for planted hate, Ribald contempt, forced, menial servitude, Slow centuries of vengeance for a crime Ye never did commit? Mercy for these! Who bear on back and breast the scathing brand Of scarlet degradation, who are clothed In ignominious livery, whose bowed necks Are broken with the yoke. Change these to men! That were a noble witchcraft simply wrought, God's alchemy transforming clods to gold. If there be one among them strong and wise, Whose lips anoint breathe poetry and love, Whose brain and heart served ever Christian need-- And there are many such--for his dear sake, Lest ye chance murder one of God's high priests, Spare his thrice-wretched tribe! Believe me, sirs, Who have seen various lands, searched various hearts, I have yet to touch that undiscovered shore, Have yet to fathom that impossible soul, Where a true benefit's forgot; where one Slight deed of common kindness sown yields not As now, as here, abundant crop of love. Every good act of man, our Talmud says, Creates an angel, hovering by his side. Oh! what a shining host, great Duke, shall guard Thy consecrated throne, for all the lives Thy mercy spares, for all the tears thy ruth Stops at the source. Behold this poor old man, Last of a line of princes, stricken in years, As thy dead father would have been to-day. Was that white beard a rag for obscene hands To tear? a weed for lumpish clowns to pluck? Was that benignant, venerable face Fit target for their foul throats' voided rheum? That wrinkled flesh made to be pulled and pricked, Wounded by flinty pebbles and keen steel? Behold the prostrate, patriarchal form, Bruised, silent, chained. Duke, such is Israel!" "Unbind these men!" commanded Vladislaw. "Go forth and still the tumult of my town. Let no Jew suffer violence. Raschi, rise! Thou who hast served the Christ--with this priest's life, Who is my spirit's counselor--Christ serves thee. Return among thy people with my seal, The talisman of safety. Let them know The Duke's their friend. Go, publish the glad news!" Raschi the Saviour, Raschi the Messiah, Back to the Jewry carried peace and love. But Narzerad fed his venomed heart with gall, Vowing to give his fatal hatred vent, Despite a world of weak fantastic Dukes And heretic bishops. He fulfilled his vow. THE DEATH OF RASCHI. [Aaron Ben Mier "loquitur."] If I remember Raschi? An I live, Grandson, to bless thy grandchild, I'll forget Never that youth and what he did for Prague. Aye, aye, I know! he slurred a certain verse In such and such a prayer; omitted quite To stand erect there where the ritual Commands us rise and bow towards the East; Therefore, the ingrates brand him heterodox, Neglect his memory whose virtue saved Each knave of us alive. Not I forget, No more does God, who wrought a miracle For his dear sake. The Passover was here. Raschi, just wedded with the fair Rebekah, Bode but the lapsing of the holy week For homeward journey with his bride to France. The sacred meal was spread. All sat at board Within the house of Rabbi Jochanan: The kind old priest; his noble, new-found son, Whose name was wrung in every key of praise, By every voice in Prague, from Duke to serf (Save the vindictive bigot, Narzerad); The beautiful young wife, whose cup of joy Sparkled at brim; next her the vacant chair Awaited the Messiah, who, unannounced, In God's good time shall take his place with us. Now when the Rabbi reached the verse where one Shall rise from table, flinging wide the door, To give the Prophet entrance, if so be The glorious hour have sounded, Raschi rose, Pale, grave, yet glad with great expectancy, Crossed the hushed room, and, with a joyous smile To greet the Saviour, opened the door. A curse! A cry, "Revenged!" a thrust, a stifled moan, The sheathing of a poniard--that was all! In the dark vestibule a fleeing form, Masked, gowned in black; and in the room of prayer, Raschi, face downward on the stone-cold floor, Bleeding his life out. Oh! what a cry was that (Folk shuddered, hearing, roods off in the street) Wherewith Rebekah rushed to raise her lord, Kneeling beside him, striving in vain to quench With turban, veil, torn shreds of gown, stained hands, The black blood's sickening gush. He never spoke, Never rewarded with one glance of life The passion in her eyes. He met his end Even as beneath the sickle the full ear Bows to its death--so beautiful, silent, ripe. Well, we poor Jews must gulp our injuries, Howe'er they choke us. What redress in Prague For the inhuman murder? A strange Jew The victim; the suspected criminal The ducal counselor! Such odds forbade Revenge or justice. We forbore to seek. The priest, discrowned o' the glory of his age, The widow-bride, mourned as though smitten of God, Gave forth they would with solemn obsequies Bury their dead, and crave no help from man. Now of what chanced betwixt the night of murder And the appointed burial I can give Only the sum of gossip--servants' tales, Neighbors' reports, close confidences leaked From friends and kindred. Night and day, folk said, Rebekah wept, prayed, fasted by the corpse, Three mortal days. Upon the third, her eyes, Sunk in their pits, glimmered with wild, strange fire. She started from her place beside the dead, Kissed clay-cold brow, cheeks, lids, and lips once more, And with a maniac's wan, heart-breaking smile, Veiled, hooded, glided through the twilight streets, A sable shadow. From the willow-grove, Close by the Moldau's brink, beyond the bridge, Her trace was lost. 'T was evening and mild May, Air full of spring, skies perfect as a pearl; Yet one who saw her pass amidst the shades O' the blue-gray branches swears a sudden flame, As of miraculous lightning, thrilled through heaven. One hour thereafter she reentered Prague, Slid swiftly through the streets, as though borne on By ankle-wings or floating on soft cloud, Smiling no more, but with illumined eyes, Transfigured brow, grave lips, and faltering limbs, So came into the room where Raschi lay Stretched 'twixt tall tapers lit at head and foot. She held in both hands leafy, flowerless plants, Some she had fastened in her twisted hair, Stuck others in her girdle, and from all Issued a racy odor, pungent-sweet, The living soul of Spring. Death's chamber seemed As though clear sunshine and a singing bird Therein had entered. From the precious herb She poured into a golden bowl the sap, Sparkling like wine; then with a soundless prayer, White as the dead herself, she held the cup To Raschi's mouth. A quick, small flame sprang up From the enchanted balsam, died away, And lo! the color dawned in cheek and lips, The life returned, the sealed, blind lids were raised, And in the glorious eyes love reawoke, And, looking up, met love. So runs the tale, Mocked by the worldly-wise; but I believe, Knowing the miracles the Lord hath wrought In every age for Jacob's seed. Moreover, I, with the highest and meanest Jew in Prague, Was at the burial. No man saw the dead. Sealed was the coffin ere the rites began, And none could swear it went not empty down Into the hollow earth. Too shrewd our priest To publish such a wonder, and expose That consecrated life to second death. Scarce were the thirty days of mourning sped, When we awoke to find his home left bare, Rebekah and her father fled from Prague. God grant they had glad meeting otherwhere! AN EPISTLE. From Joshua Ibn Vives of Allorqui to his Former Master, Solomon Levi-Paul, de Santa-Maria, Bishop of Cartegna Chancellor of Castile, and Privy Councillor to King Henry III. of Spain. [In this poem I have done little more than elaborate and versify the account given in Graetz's History of the Jews (Vol. VIII., page 77), of an Epistle actually written in the beginning of the 15th century by Joshua ben Joseph Ibn Vives to Paulus de Santa Maria--E.L.] I. Master and Sage, greetings and health to thee, From thy most meek disciple! Deign once more Endure me at thy feet, enlighten me, As when upon my boyish head of yore, Midst the rapt circle gathered round thy knee Thy sacred vials of learning thou didst pour. By the large lustre of thy wisdom orbed Be my black doubts illumined and absorbed. II. Oft I recall that golden time when thou, Born for no second station, heldst with us The Rabbi's chair, who art priest and bishop now; And we, the youth of Israel, curious, Hung on thy counsels, lifted reverent brow Unto thy sanctity, would fain discuss With thee our Talmud problems good and evil, Till startled by the risen stars o'er Seville. III. For on the Synagogue's high-pillared porch Thou didst hold session, till the sudden sun Beyond day's purple limit dropped his torch. Then we, as dreamers, woke, to find outrun Time's rapid sands. The flame that may not scorch, Our hearts caught from thine eyes, thou Shining One. I scent not yet sweet lemon-groves in flower, But I re-breathe the peace of that deep hour. IV. We kissed the sacred borders of thy gown, Brow-aureoled with thy blessing, we went forth Through the hushed byways of the twilight town. Then in all life but one thing seemed of worth, To seek, find, love the Truth. She set her crown Upon thy head, our Master, at thy birth; She bade thy lips drop honey, fired thine eyes With the unclouded glow of sun-steeped skies. V. Forgive me, if I dwell on that which, viewed From thy new vantage-ground, must seem a mist Of error, by auroral youth endued With alien lustre. Still in me subsist Those reeking vapors; faith and gratitude Still lead me to the hand my boy-lips kissed For benison and guidance. Not in wrath, Master, but in wise patience, point my path. VI. For I, thy servant, gather in one sheaf The venomed shafts of slander, which thy word Shall shrivel to small dust. If haply grief, Or momentary pain, I deal, my Lord Blame not thy servant's zeal, nor be thou deaf Unto my soul's blind cry for light. Accord-- Pitying my love, if too superb to care For hate-soiled name--an answer to my prayer. VII. To me, who, vine to stone, clung close to thee, The very base of life appeared to quake When first I knew thee fallen from us, to be A tower of strength among our foes, to make 'Twixt Jew and Jew deep-cloven enmity. I have wept gall and blood for thy dear sake. But now with temperate soul I calmly search Motive and cause that bound thee to the Church. VIII. Four motives possible therefor I reach-- Ambition, doubt, fear, or mayhap--conviction. I hear in turn ascribed thee all and each By ignorant folk who part not truth from fiction. But I, whom even thyself didst stoop to teach, May poise the scales, weigh this with that confliction, Yea, sift the hid grain motive from the dense, Dusty, eye-blinding chaff of consequence. IX. Ambition first! I find no fleck thereof In all thy clean soul. What! could glory, gold, Or sated senses lure thy lofty love? No purple cloak to shield thee from the cold, No jeweled sign to flicker thereabove, And dazzle men to homage--joys untold Of spiritual treasure, grace divine, Alone (so saidst thou) coveting for thine! X. I saw thee mount with deprecating air, Step after step, unto our Jewish throne Of supreme dignity, the Rabbi's chair; Shrinking from public honors thrust upon Thy meek desert, regretting even there The placid habit of thy life foregone; Silence obscure, vast peace and austere days Passed in wise contemplation, prayer, and praise. XI. One less than thou had ne'er known such regret. How must thou suffer, who so lov'st the shade, In Fame's full glare, whom one stride more shall set Upon the Papal seat! I stand dismayed, Familiar with thy fearful soul, and yet Half glad, perceiving modest worth repaid Even by the Christians! Could thy soul deflect? No, no, thrice no! Ambition I reject! XII. Next doubt. Could doubt have swayed thee, then I ask, How enters doubt within the soul of man? Is it a door that opens, or a mask That falls? and Truth's resplendent face we scan. Nay, 't is a creeping, small, blind worm, whose task Is gnawing at Faith's base; the whole vast plan Rots, crumbles, eaten inch by inch within, And on its ruins falsehood springs and sin. XIII. But thee no doubt confused, no problems vexed. Thy father's faith for thee proved bright and sweet. Thou foundst no rite superfluous, no text Obscure; the path was straight before thy feet. Till thy baptismal day, thou, unperplexed By foreign dogma, didst our prayers repeat, Honor the God of Israel, fast and feast, Even as thy people's wont, from first to least. XIV. Yes, Doubt I likewise must discard. Not sleek, Full-faced, erect of head, men walk, when doubt Writhes at their entrails; pinched and lean of cheek, With brow pain-branded, thou hadst strayed about As midst live men a ghost condemned to seek That soul he may nor live nor die without. No doubts the font washed from thee, thou didst glide From creed to creed, complete, sane-souled, clear-eyed. XV. Thy pardon, Master, if I dare sustain The thesis thou couldst entertain a fear. I would but rout thine enemies, who feign Ignoble impulse prompted thy career. I will but weigh the chances and make plain To Envy's self the monstrous jest appear. Though time, place, circumstance confirmed in seeming, One word from thee should frustrate all their scheming. XVI. Was Israel glad in Seville on the day Thou didst renounce him? Then mightst thou indeed Snap finger at whate'er thy slanderers say. Lothly must I admit, just then the seed Of Jacob chanced upon a grievous way. Still from the wounds of that red year we bleed. The curse had fallen upon our heads--the sword Was whetted for the chosen of the Lord. XVII. There where we flourished like a fruitful palm, We were uprooted, spoiled, lopped limb from limb. A bolt undreamed of out of heavens calm, So cracked our doom. We were destroyed by him Whose hand since childhood we had clasped. With balm Our head had been anointed, at the brim Our cup ran over--now our day was done, Our blood flowed free as water in the sun. XVIII. Midst the four thousand of our tribe who held Glad homes in Seville, never a one was spared, Some slaughtered at their hearthstones, some expelled To Moorish slavery. Cunningly ensnared, Baited and trapped were we; their fierce monks yelled And thundered from our Synagogues, while flared The Cross above the Ark. Ah, happiest they Who fell unconquered martyrs on that day! XIX. For some (I write it with flushed cheek, bowed head), Given free choice 'twixt death and shame, chose shame, Denied the God who visibly had led Their fathers, pillared in a cloud of flame, Bathed in baptismal waters, ate the bread Which is their new Lord's body, took the name Marranos the Accursed, whom equally Jew, Moor, and Christian hate, despise, and flee. XX. Even one no less than an Abarbanel Prized miserable length of days, above Integrity of soul. Midst such who fell, Far be it, however, from my duteous love, Master, to reckon thee. Thine own lips tell How fear nor torture thy firm will could move. How thou midst panic nowise disconcerted, By Thomas of Aquinas wast converted! XXI. Truly I know no more convincing way To read so wise an author, than was thine. When burning Synagogues changed night to day, And red swords underscored each word and line. That was a light to read by! Who'd gainsay Authority so clearly stamped divine? On this side, death and torture, flame and slaughter, On that, a harmless wafer and clean water. XXII. Thou couldst not fear extinction for our race; Though Christian sword and fire from town to town Flash double bladed lightning to efface Israel's image--though we bleed, burn, drown Through Christendom--'t is but a scanty space. Still are the Asian hills and plains our own, Still are we lords in Syria, still are free, Nor doomed to be abolished utterly. XXIII. One sole conclusion hence at last I find, Thou whom ambition, doubt, nor fear could swerve, Perforce hast been persuaded through the mind, Proved, tested the new dogmas, found them serve Thy spirit's needs, left flesh and sense behind, Accepted without shrinking or reserve, The trans-substantial bread and wine, the Christ At whose shrine thine own kin were sacrificed. XXIV. Here then the moment comes when I crave light. All's dark to me. Master, if I be blind, Thou shalt unseal my lids and bless with sight, Or groping in the shadows, I shall find Whether within me or without, dwell night. Oh cast upon my doubt-bewildered mind One ray from thy clear heaven of sun-bright faith, Grieving, not wroth, at what thy servant saith. XXV. Where are the signs fulfilled whereby all men Should know the Christ? Where is the wide-winged peace Shielding the lamb within the lion's den? The freedom broadening with the wars that cease? Do foes clasp hands in brotherhood again? Where is the promised garden of increase, When like a rose the wilderness should bloom? Earth is a battlefield and Spain a tomb. XXVI. Our God of Sabaoth is an awful God Of lightnings and of vengeance,--Christians say. Earth trembled, nations perished at his nod; His Law has yielded to a milder sway. Theirs is the God of Love whose feet have trod Our common earth--draw near to him and pray, Meek-faced, dove-eyed, pure-browed, the Lord of life, Know him and kneel, else at your throat the knife! XXVII. This is the God of Love, whose altars reek With human blood, who teaches men to hate; Torture past words, or sins we may not speak Wrought by his priests behind the convent-grate. Are his priests false? or are his doctrines weak That none obeys him? State at war with state, Church against church--yea, Pope at feud with Pope In these tossed seas what anchorage for hope? XXVIII. Not only for the sheep without the fold Is the knife whetted, who refuse to share Blessings the shepherd wise doth not withhold Even from the least among his flock--but there Midmost the pale, dissensions manifold, Lamb flaying lamb, fierce sheep that rend and tear. Master, if thou to thy pride's goal should come, Where wouldst thou throne--at Avignon or Rome? XXIX. I handle burning questions, good my lord, Such as may kindle fagots, well I wis. Your Gospel not denies our older Word, But in a way completes and betters this. The Law of Love shall supersede the sword, So runs the promise, but the facts I miss. Already needs this wretched generation, A voice divine--a new, third revelation. XXX. Two Popes and their adherents fulminate Ban against ban, and to the nether hell Condemn each other, while the nations wait Their Christ to thunder forth from Heaven, and tell Who is his rightful Vicar, reinstate His throne, the hideous discord to dispel. Where shall I seek, master, while such things be, Celestial truth, revealed certainty! XXXI. Not miracles I doubt, for how dare man, Chief miracle of life's mystery, say HE KNOWS? How may he closely secret causes scan, Who learns not whence he comes nor where he goes? Like one who walks in sleep a doubtful span He gropes through all his days, till Death unclose His cheated eyes and in one blinding gleam, Wakes, to discern the substance from the dream. XXXII. I say not therefore I deny the birth, The Virgin's motherhood, the resurrection, Who know not how mine own soul came to earth, Nor what shall follow death. Man's imperfection May bound not even in thought the height and girth Of God's omnipotence; neath his direction We may approach his essence, but that He Should dwarf Himself to us--it cannot be! XXXIII. The God who balances the clouds, who spread The sky above us like a molten glass, The God who shut the sea with doors, who laid The corner-stone of earth, who caused the grass Spring forth upon the wilderness, and made The darkness scatter and the night to pass-- That He should clothe Himself with flesh, and move Midst worms a worm--this, sun, moon, stars disprove. XXXIV. Help me, O thou who wast my boyhood's guide, I bend my exile-weary feet to thee, Teach me the indivisible to divide, Show me how three are one and One is three! How Christ to save all men was crucified, Yet I and mine are damned eternally. Instruct me, Sage, why Virtue starves alone, While falsehood step by step ascends the throne. BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON. LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE. I. THE EXODUS. (August 3, 1492.) 1. The Spanish noon is a blaze of azure fire, and the dusty pilgrims crawl like an endless serpent along treeless plains and bleached highroads, through rock-split ravines and castellated, cathedral-shadowed towns. 2. The hoary patriarch, wrinkled as an almond shell, bows painfully upon his staff. The beautiful young mother, ivory-pale, well-nigh swoons beneath her burden; in her large enfolding arms nestles her sleeping babe, round her knees flock her little ones with bruised and bleeding feet. "Mother, shall we soon be there?" 3. The youth with Christ-like countenance speaks comfortably to father and brother, to maiden and wife. In his breast, his own heart is broken. 4. The halt, the blind, are amid the train. Sturdy pack-horses laboriously drag the tented wagons wherein lie the sick athirst with fever. 5. The panting mules are urged forward with spur and goad; stuffed are the heavy saddlebags with the wreckage of ruined homes. 6. Hark to the tinkling silver bells that adorn the tenderly-carried silken scrolls. 7. In the fierce noon-glare a lad bears a kindled lamp; behind its net-work of bronze the airs of heaven breathe not upon its faint purple star. 8. Noble and abject, learned and simple, illustrious and obscure, plod side by side, all brothers now, all merged in one routed army of misfortune. 9. Woe to the straggler who falls by the wayside! no friend shall close his eyes. 10. They leave behind, the grape, the olive, and the fig; the vines they planted, the corn they sowed, the garden-cities of Andalusia and Aragon, Estremadura and La Mancha, of Granada and Castile; the altar, the hearth, and the grave of their fathers. 11. The townsman spits at their garments, the shepherd quits his flock, the peasant his plow, to pelt with curses and stones; the villager sets on their trail his yelping cur. 12. Oh the weary march, oh the uptorn roots of home, oh the blankness of the receding goal! 13. Listen to their lamentation: They that ate dainty food are desolate in the streets; they that were reared in scarlet embrace dunghills. They flee away and wander about. Men say among the nations, they shall no more sojourn there; our end is near, our days are full, our doom is come. 14. Whither shall they turn? for the West hath cast them out, and the East refuseth to receive. 15. O bird of the air, whisper to the despairing exiles, that to-day, to-day, from the many-masted, gayly-bannered port of Palos, sails the world-unveiling Genoese, to unlock the golden gates of sunset and bequeath a Continent to Freedom! II. TREASURES. 1. Through cycles of darkness the diamond sleeps in its coal-black prison. 2. Purely incrusted in its scaly casket, the breath-tarnished pearl slumbers in mud and ooze. 3. Buried in the bowels of earth, rugged and obscure, lies the ingot of gold. 4. Long hast thou been buried, O Israel, in the bowels of earth; long hast thou slumbered beneath the overwhelming waves; long hast thou slept in the rayless house of darkness. 5. Rejoice and sing, for only thus couldst thou rightly guard the golden knowledge, Truth, the delicate pearl and the adamantine jewel of the Law. III. THE SOWER. 1. Over a boundless plain went a man, carrying seed. 2. His face was blackened by sun and rugged from tempest, scarred and distorted by pain. Naked to the loins, his back was ridged with furrows, his breast was plowed with stripes. 3. From his hand dropped the fecund seed. 4. And behold, instantly started from the prepared soil a blade, a sheaf, a springing trunk, a myriad-branching, cloud-aspiring tree. Its arms touched the ends of the horizon, the heavens were darkened with its shadow. 5. It bare blossoms of gold and blossoms of blood, fruitage of health and fruitage of poison; birds sang amid its foliage, and a serpent was coiled about its stem. 6. Under its branches a divinely beautiful man, crowned with thorns, was nailed to a cross. 7. And the tree put forth treacherous boughs to strangle the Sower; his flesh was bruised and torn, but cunningly he disentangled the murderous knot and passed to the eastward. 8. Again there dropped from his hand the fecund seed. 9. And behold, instantly started from the prepared soil a blade, a sheaf, a springing trunk, a myriad-branching, cloud-aspiring tree. Crescent shaped like little emerald moons were the leaves; it bare blossoms of silver and blossoms of blood, fruitage of health and fruitage of poison; birds sang amid its foliage and a serpent was coiled about its stem. 10. Under its branches a turbaned mighty-limbed Prophet brandished a drawn sword. 11. And behold, this tree likewise puts forth perfidious arms to strangle the Sower; but cunningly he disentangles the murderous knot and passes on. 12. Lo, his hands are not empty of grain, the strength of his arm is not spent. 13. What germ hast thou saved for the future, O miraculous Husbandman? Tell me, thou Planter of Christhood and Islam; tell me, thou seed-bearing Israel! IV. THE TEST. 1. Daylong I brooded upon the Passion of Israel. 2. I saw him bound to the wheel, nailed to the cross, cut off by the sword, burned at the stake, tossed into the seas. 3. And always the patient, resolute, martyr face arose in silent rebuke and defiance. 4. A Prophet with four eyes; wide gazed the orbs of the spirit above the sleeping eyelids of the senses. 5. A Poet, who plucked from his bosom the quivering heart and fashioned it into a lyre. 6. A placid-browed Sage, uplifted from earth in celestial meditation. 7. These I saw, with princes and people in their train; the monumental dead and the standard-bearers of the future. 8. And suddenly I heard a burst of mocking laughter, and turning, I beheld the shuffling gait, the ignominious features, the sordid mask of the son of the Ghetto. V. CURRENTS. 1. Vast oceanic movements, the flux and reflux of immeasurable tides, oversweep our continent. 2. From the far Caucasian steppes, from the squalid Ghettos of Europe, 3. From Odessa and Bucharest, from Kief, and Ekaterinoslav, 4. Hark to the cry of the exiles of Babylon, the voice of Rachel mourning for her children, of Israel lamenting for Zion. 5. And lo, like a turbid stream, the long-pent flood bursts the dykes of oppression and rushes hitherward. 6. Unto her ample breast, the generous mother of nations welcomes them. 7. The herdsman of Canaan and the seed of Jerusalem's royal shepherd renew their youth amid the pastoral plains of Texas and the golden valleys of the Sierras. VI. THE PROPHET. 1. Moses Ben Maimon lifting his perpetual lamp over the path of the perplexed; 2. Hallevi, the honey-tongued poet, wakening amid the silent ruins of Zion the sleeping lyre of David; 3. Moses, the wise son of Mendel, who made the Ghetto illustrious; 4. Abarbanel, the counselor of kings; Alcharisi, the exquisite singer; Ibn Ezra, the perfect old man; Gabirol, the tragic seer; 5. Heine, the enchanted magician, the heartbroken jester; 6. Yea, and the century-crowned patriarch whose bounty engirdles the globe;-- 7. These need no wreath and no trumpet; like perennial asphodel blossoms, their fame, their glory resounds like the brazen-throated cornet. 8. But thou--hast thou faith in the fortune of Israel? Wouldst thou lighten the anguish of Jacob? 9. Then shalt thou take the hand of yonder caftaned wretch with flowing curls and gold-pierced ears; 10. Who crawls blinking forth from the loathsome recesses of the Jewry; 11. Nerveless his fingers, puny his frame; haunted by the bat-like phantoms of superstition is his brain. 12. Thou shalt say to the bigot, "My Brother," and to the creature of darkness, "My Friend." 13. And thy heart shall spend itself in fountains of love upon the ignorant, the coarse, and the abject. 14. Then in the obscurity thou shalt hear a rush of wings, thine eyes shall be bitten with pungent smoke. 15. And close against thy quivering lips shall be pressed the live coal wherewith the Seraphim brand the Prophets. VII. CHRYSALIS. 1. Long, long has the Orient-Jew spun around his helplessness the cunningly enmeshed web of Talmud and Kabbala. 2. Imprisoned in dark corners of misery and oppression, closely he drew about him the dust-gray filaments, soft as silk and stubborn as steel, until he lay death-stiffened in mummied seclusion. 3. And the world has named him an ugly worm, shunning the blessed daylight. 4. But when the emancipating springtide breathes wholesome, quickening airs, when the Sun of Love shines out with cordial fires, lo, the Soul of Israel bursts her cobweb sheath, and flies forth attired in the winged beauty of immortality. TO CARMEN SYLVA. Oh, that the golden lyre divine Whence David smote flame-tones were mine! Oh, that the silent harp which hung Untuned, unstrung, Upon the willows by the river, Would throb beneath my touch and quiver With the old song-enchanted spell Of Israel! Oh, that the large prophetic Voice Would make my reed-piped throat its choice! All ears should prick, all hearts should spring, To hear me sing The burden of the isles, the word Assyria knew, Damascus heard, When, like the wind, while cedars shake, Isaiah spake. For I would frame a song to-day Winged like a bird to cleave its way O'er land and sea that spread between, To where a Queen Sits with a triple coronet. Genius and Sorrow both have set Their diadems above the gold-- A Queen three-fold! To her the forest lent its lyre, Hers are the sylvan dews, the fire Of Orient suns, the mist-wreathed gleams Of mountain streams. She, the imperial Rhine's own child, Takes to her heart the wood-nymph wild, The gypsy Pelech, and the wide, White Danube's tide. She who beside an infant's bier Long since resigned all hope to hear The sacred name of "Mother" bless Her childlessness, Now from a people's sole acclaim Receives the heart-vibrating name, And "Mother, Mother, Mother!" fills The echoing hills. Yet who is he who pines apart, Estranged from that maternal heart, Ungraced, unfriended, and forlorn, The butt of scorn? An alien in his land of birth, An outcast from his brethren's earth, Albeit with theirs his blood mixed well When Plevna fell? When all Roumania's chains were riven, When unto all his sons was given The hero's glorious reward, Reaped by the sword,-- Wherefore was this poor thrall, whose chains Hung heaviest, within whose veins The oldest blood of freedom streamed, Still unredeemed? O Mother, Poet, Queen in one! Pity and save--he is thy son. For poet David's sake, the king Of all who sing; For thine own people's sake who share His law, his truth, his praise, his prayer; For his sake who was sacrificed-- His brother--Christ! THE DANCE TO DEATH; A Historical Tragedy in Five Acts. This play is dedicated, in profound veneration and respect, to the memory of George Eliot, the illustrious writer, who did most among the artists of our day towards elevating and ennobling the spirit of Jewish nationality. THE PERSONS. FREDERICK THE GRAVE, Landgrave of Thuringia and Margrave of Meissen, Protector and Patron of the Free City of Nordhausen. PRINCE WILLIAM OF MEISSEN, his son. SUSSKIND VON ORB, a Jew. HENRY SCHNETZEN, Governor of Salza. HENRY NORDMANN OF NORDMANNSTEIN, Knight of Treffurt. REINHARD PEPPERCORN, Prior of Wartburg Monastery. RABBI JACOB. DIETRICH VON TETTENBORN, President of the Council. REUBEN VON ORB, a boy, Susskind's son. BARUCH and NAPHTALI,Jews. RABBI CRESSELIN. LAY-BROTHER. PAGE. PUBLIC SCRIVENER. PRINCESS MATHILDIS, wife to Frederick. LIEBHAID VON ORB. CLAIRE CRESSELIN. Jews, Jewesses, Burghers, Senators, Citizens, Citizen's Wife and Boy, Flagellants, Servants, Guardsmen. Scene--Partly in Nordhausen, partly in Eisenach. Time, May, 4th, 5th, 6th, 1349. ACT I.--In Nordhausen. SCENE I. A street in the Judengasse, outside the Synagogue. During this Scene Jews and Jewesses, singly and in groups, with prayer-books in their hands, pass across the stage, and go into the Synagogue. Among them, enter BARUCH and NAPHTALI. NAPHTALI. Hast seen him yet? BARUCH. Nay; Rabbi Jacob's door Swung to behind him, just as I puffed up O'erblown with haste. See how our years weigh, cousin. Who'd judge me with this paunch a temperate man, A man of modest means, a man withal Scarce overpast his prime? Well, God be praised, If age bring no worse burden! Who is this stranger? Simon the Leech tells me he claims to bear Some special message from the Lord--no doubt To-morrow, fresh from rest, he'll publish it Within the Synagogue. NAPHTALI. To-morrow, man? He will not hear of rest--he comes anon-- Shall we within? BARUCH. Rather let's wait, And scrutinize him as he mounts the street. Since you denote him so remarkable, You've whetted my desire. NAPHTALI. A blind, old man, Mayhap is all you'll find him--spent with travel, His raiment fouled with dust, his sandaled feet Road-bruised by stone and bramble. But his face!-- Majestic with long fall of cloud-white beard, And hoary wreath of hair--oh, it is one Already kissed by angels. BARUCH. Look, there limps Little Manasseh, bloated as his purse, And wrinkled as a frost-pinched fruit. I hear His last loan to the Syndic will result In quadrupling his wealth. Good Lord! what luck Blesses some folk, while good men stint and sweat And scrape, to merely fill the household larder. What said you of this pilgrim, Naphtali? These inequalities of fortune rub My sense of justice so against the grain, I lose my very name. Whence does he come? Is he alone? NAPHTALI. He comes from Chinon, France. Rabbi Cresselin he calls himself--alone Save for his daughter who has led him hither. A beautiful, pale girl with round black eyes. BARUCH. Bring they fresh tidings of the pestilence? NAPHTALI. I know not--but I learn from other source It has burst forth at Erfurt. BARUCH. God have mercy! Have many of our tribe been stricken? NAPHTALI. No. They cleanse their homes and keep their bodies sweet, Nor cease from prayer--and so does Jacob's God Protect His chosen, still. Yet even His favor Our enemies would twist into a curse. Beholding the destroying angel smite The foal idolater and leave unscathed The gates of Israel--the old cry they raise-- WE have begotten the Black Death--WE poison The well-springs of the towns. BARUCH. God pity us! But truly are we blessed in Nordhausen. Such terrors seem remote as Egypt's plagues. I warrant you our Landgrave dare not harry Such creditors as we. See, here comes one, The greatest and most liberal of them all-- Susskind von Orb. SUSSKIND VON ORB, LIEBHAID, and REUBEN enter, all pass across the stage, and disappear within the Synagogue. I'd barter my whole fortune, And yours to boot, that's thrice the bulk of mine, For half the bonds he holds in Frederick's name. The richest merchant in Thuringia, he-- The poise of his head would tell it, knew we not. How has his daughter leaped to womanhood! I mind when she came toddling by his hand, But yesterday--a flax-haired child--to-day Her brow is level with his pompous chin. NAPHTALI. How fair she is! Her hair has kept its gold Untarnished still. I trace not either parent In her face, clean cut as a gem. BARUCH. Her mother Was far-off kin to me, and I might pass, I'm told, unguessed in Christian garb. I know A pretty secret of that scornful face. It lures high game to Nordhausen. NAPHTALI. Baruch, I marvel at your prompt credulity. The Prince of Meissen and Liebhaid von Orb! A jest for gossips and--Look, look, he comes! BARUCH. Who's that, the Prince? NAPHTALI. Nay, dullard, the old man, The Rabbi of Chinon. Ah! his stout staff, And that brave creature's strong young hand suffice Scarcely to keep erect his tottering frame. Emaciate-lipped, with cavernous black eyes Whose inward visions do eclipse the day, Seems he not one re-risen from the grave To yield the secret? Enter RABBI JACOB, and RABBI CRESSELIN led by CLAIRE. They walk across the stage, and disappear in the Synagogue. BARUCH (exaltedly). Blessed art thou, O Lord, King of the Universe, who teachest wisdom To those who fear thee! NAPHTALI. Haste we in. The star Of Sabbath dawns. BARUCH. My flesh is still a-creep From the strange gaze of those wide-rolling orbs. Didst note, man, how they fixed me? His lean cheeks, As wan as wax, were bloodless; how his arms Stretched far beyond the flowing sleeve and showed Gaunt, palsied wrists, and hands blue-tipped with death! Well, I have seen a sage of Israel. [They enter the Synagogue. Scene closes.] SCENE II. The Synagogue crowded with worshippers. Among the women in the Gallery are discovered LIEBHAID VON ORB and CLAIRE CRESSELIN. Below, among the men, SUSSKIND VON ORB and REUBEN. At the Reader's Desk, RABBI JACOB. Fronting the audience under the Ark of the Covenant, stands a high desk, behind which is seen the white head of an old man bowed in prayer. BARUCH and NAPHTALI enter and take their seats. BARUCH. Think you he speaks before the service? NAPHTALI. Yea. Lo, phantom-like the towering patriarch! [RABBI CRESSELIN slowly rises beneath the Ark.] RABBI CRESSELIN. Woe unto Israel! woe unto all Abiding 'mid strange peoples! Ye shall be Cut off from that land where ye made your home. I, Cresselin of Chinon, have traveled far, Thence where my fathers dwelt, to warn my race, For whom the fire and stake have been prepared. Our brethren of Verdun, all over France, Are burned alive beneath the Goyim's torch. What terrors have I witnessed, ere my sight Was mercifully quenched! In Gascony, In Savoy, Piedmont, round the garden shores Of tranquil Leman, down the beautiful Rhine, At Lindau, Costnitz, Schaffhausen, St. Gallen, Everywhere torture, smoking Synagogues, Carnage, and burning flesh. The lights shine out Of Jewish virtue, Jewish truth, to star The sanguine field with an immortal blazon. The venerable Mar-Isaac in Cologne, Sat in his house at prayer, nor lifted lid From off the sacred text, while all around The fanatics ran riot; him they seized, Haled through the streets, with prod of stick and spike Fretted his wrinkled flesh, plucked his white beard. Dragged him with gibes into their Church, and held A Crucifix before him. "Know thy Lord!" He spat thereon; he was pulled limb from limb. I saw--God, that I might forget!--a man Leap in the Loire, with his fair, stalwart son, A-bloom with youth, and midst the stream unsheathe A poniard, sheathing it in his boy's heart, While he pronounced the blessing for the dead. "Amen!" the lad responded as he sank, And the white water darkened as with wine. I saw--but no! You are glutted, and my tongue, Blistered, refuseth to narrate more woe. I have known much sorrow. When it pleased the Lord To afflict us with the horde of Pastoureaux, The rabble of armed herdsmen, peasants, slaves, Men-beasts of burden--coarse as the earth they tilled, Who like an inundation deluged France To drown our race--my heart held firm, my faith Shook not upon her rock until I saw, Smit by God's beam, the big black cloud dissolve. Then followed with their scythes, spades, clubs, and banners Flaunting the Cross, the hosts of Armleder, From whose fierce wounds we scarce are healed to-day. Yet do I say the cup of bitterness That Israel has drained is but a draught Of cordial, to the cup that is prepared. The Black Death and the Brothers of the Cross, These are our foes--and these are everywhere. I who am blind see ruin in their wake; Ye who have eyes and limbs, arise and flee! To-morrow the Flagellants will be here. God's angel visited my sleep and spake: "Thy Jewish kin in the Thuringian town Of Nordhausen shall be swept off from earth, Their elders and their babes--consumed with fire. Go summon Israel to flight--take this As sign that I, who call thee, am the Lord, Thine eyes shalt be struck blind till thou hast spoken." Then darkness fell upon my mortal sense, But light broke o'er my soul, and all was clear, And I have journeyed hither with my child O'er mount and river, till I have announced The message of the Everlasting God. [Sensation in the Synagogue.] RABBI JACOB. Father, have mercy! when wilt thou have done With rod and scourge? Beneath thy children's feet Earth splits, fire springs. No rest, no rest! no rest, A VOICE. Look to the women! Marianne swoons! ANOTHER VOICE. Woe unto us who sinned! ANOTHER VOICE. We're all dead men. Fly, fly ere dawn as our forefathers fled From out the land of Egypt. BARUCH. Are ye mad? Shall we desert snug homes? forego the sum Scraped through laborious years to smooth life's slope, And die like dogs unkenneled and untombed, At bidding of a sorrow-crazed old man? A VOICE. He flouts the Lord's anointed! Cast him forth! SUSSKIND VON ORB. Peace, brethren, peace! If I have ever served Israel with purse, arm, brain, or heart--now hear me! May God instruct my speech! This wise old man, Whose brow flames with the majesty of truth, May be part-blinded through excess of light, As one who eyes too long the naked sun, Setting in rayless glory, turns and finds Outlines confused, familiar colors changed, All objects branded with one blood-bright spot. Nor chafe at Baruch's homely sense; truth floats Midway between the stars and the abyss. We, by God's grace, have found a special nest I' the dangerous rock, screened against wind and hawk; Free burghers of a free town, blessed moreover With the peculiar favor of the Prince, Frederick the Grave, our patron and protector. What shall we fear? Rather, where shall we seek Secure asylum, if here be not one? Fly? Our forefathers had the wilderness, The sea their gateway, and the fire-cored cloud Their divine guide. Us, hedged by ambushed foes, No frank, free, kindly desert shall receive. Death crouches on all sides, prepared to leap Tiger-like on our throats, when first we step From this safe covert. Everywhere the Plague! As nigh as Erfurt it has crawled--the towns Reek with miasma, the rank fields of spring, Rain-saturated, are one beautiful--lie, Smiling profuse life, and secreting death. Strange how, unbidden, a trivial memory Thrusts itself on my mind in this grave hour. I saw a large white bull urged through the town To slaughter by a stripling with a goad, Whom but one sure stamp of that solid heel, One toss of those mooned horns, one battering blow Of that square marble forehead, would have crushed, As we might crush a worm, yet on he trudged, Patient, in powerful health to death. At once, As though o' the sudden stung, he roared aloud, Beat with fierce hoofs the air, shook desperately His formidable head, and heifer-swift, Raced through scared, screaming streets. Well, and the end? He was the promptlier bound and killed and quartered. The world belongs to man; dreams the poor brute Some nook has been apportioned for brute life? Where shall a man escape men's cruelty? Where shall God's servant cower from his doom? Let us bide, brethren--we are in His hand. RABBI CRESSELIN (uttering a piercing shriek). Ah! Woe unto Israel! Lo, I see again, As the Ineffable foretold. I see A flood of fire that streams towards the town. Look, the destroying Angel with the sword, Wherefrom the drops of gall are raining down, Broad-winged, comes flying towards you. Now he draws His lightning-glittering blade! With the keen edge He smiteth Israel--ah! [He falls back dead. Confusion in the Synagogue.] CLAIRE (from the gallery). Father! My father! Let me go down to him! LIEBHAID. Sweet girl, be patient. This is the House of God, and He hath entered. Bow we and pray. [Meanwhile, some of the men surround and raise from the ground the body of RABBI CRESSELIN. Several voices speaking at once.] 1ST VOICE. He's doomed. 2D VOICE. Dead! Dead! 3D VOICE. A judgment! 4TH VOICE. Make way there! Air! Carry him forth! He's warm! 3D VOICE. Nay, his heart's stopped--his breath has ceased--quite dead. 5TH VOICE. Didst mark a diamond lance flash from the roof, And strike him 'twixt the eyes? 1ST VOICE. Our days are numbered. This is the token. RABBI JACOB. Lift the corpse and pray. Shall we neglect God's due observances, While He is manifest in miracle? I saw a blaze seven times more bright than fire, Crest, halo-wise, the patriarch's white head. The dazzle stung my burning lids--they closed, One instant--when they oped, the great blank cloud Had settled on his countenance forever.* Departed brother, mayest thou find the gates Of heaven open, see the city of peace, And meet the ministering angels, glad, Hastening towards thee! May the High Priest stand To greet and bless thee! Go thou to the end! Repose in peace and rise again to life. No more thy sun sets, neither wanes thy moon. The Lord shall be thy everlasting light, Thy days of mourning shall be at an end. For you, my flock, fear nothing; it is writ As one his mother comforteth, so I Will comfort you and in Jerusalem Ye shall be comforted. [Scene closes.] *From this point to the end of the scene is a literal translation of the Hebrew burial service. SCENE III. Evening. A crooked byway in the Judengasse. Enter PRINCE WILLIAM. PRINCE WILLIAM. Cursed be these twisted lanes! I have missed the clue Of the close labyrinth. Nowhere in sight, Just when I lack it, a stray gaberdine To pick me up my thread. Yet when I haste Through these blind streets, unwishful to be spied, Some dozen hawk-eyes peering o'er crook'd beaks Leer recognition, and obsequious caps Do kiss the stones to greet my princeship. Bah! Strange, 'midst such refuse sleeps so white a pearl. At last, here shuffles one. Enter a Jew. Give you good even! Sir, can you help me to the nighest way Unto the merchant's house, Susskind von Orb? JEW. Whence come you knowing not the high brick wall, Without, blank as my palm, o' the inner side, Muring a palace? But--do you wish him well? He is my friend--we must be wary, wary, We all have warning--Oh, the terror of it! I have not yet my wits! PRINCE WILLIAM. I am his friend. Is he in peril? What's the matter, man? JEW. Peril? His peril is no worse than mine, But the rich win compassion. God is just, And every man of us is doomed. Alack! HE said it--oh those wild, white eyes! PRINCE WILLIAM. I pray you, Tell me the way to Susskind's home. JEW. Sweet master, You look the perfect knight, what can you crave Of us starved, wretched Jews? Leave us in peace. The Judengasse gates will shut anon, Nor ope till morn again for Jew or Gentile. PRINCE WILLIAM. Here's gold. I am the Prince of Meissen--speak! JEW. Oh pardon! Let me kiss your mantle's edge. This way, great sir, I lead you there myself, If you deign follow one so poor, so humble. You must show mercy in the name of God, For verily are we afflicted. Come. Hard by is Susskind's dwelling--as we walk By your good leave I'll tell what I have seen. [Exeunt.] SCENE IV. A luxuriously-furnished apartment in SUSSKIND VON ORB'S house. Upon a richly-spread supper-table stands the seven-branched silver candlestick of the Sabbath eve. At the table are seated SUSSKIND VON ORB, LIEBHAID, and REUBEN. SUSSKIND. Drink, children, drink! and lift your hearts to Him Who gives us the vine's fruit. [They drink.] How clear it glows; Like gold within the golden bowl, like fire Along our veins, after the work-day week Rekindling Sabbath-fervor, Sabbath-strength. Verily God prepares for me a table In presence of mine enemies! He anoints My head with oil, my cup is overflowing. Praise we His name! Hast thou, my daughter, served The needs o' the poor, suddenly-orphaned child? Naught must she lack beneath my roof. LIEBHAID. Yea, father. She prays and weeps within: she had no heart For Sabbath meal, but charged me with her thanks-- SUSSKIND. Thou shalt be mother and sister in one to her. Speak to her comfortably. REUBEN. She has begged A grace of me I happily can grant. After our evening-prayer, to lead her back Unto the Synagogue, where sleeps her father, A light at head and foot, o'erwatched by strangers; She would hold vigil. SUSSKIND. 'T is a pious wish, Not to be crossed, befitting Israel's daughter. Go, Reuben; heavily the moments hang, While her heart yearns to break beside his corpse. Receive my blessing. [He places his hands upon his son's head in benediction. Exit Reuben.] Henceforth her home is here. In the event to-night, God's finger points Visibly out of heaven. A thick cloud Befogs the future. But just here is light. Enter a servant ushering in PRINCE WILLIAM. SERVANT. His highness Prince of Meissen. [Exit.] SUSSKIND. Welcome, Prince! God bless thy going forth and coming in! Sit at our table and accept the cup Of welcome which my daughter fills. [LIEBHAID offers him wine.] PRINCE WILLIAM (drinking). To thee! [All take their seats at the table.] I heard disquieting news as I came hither. The apparition in the Synagogue, The miracle of the message and the death. Susskind von Orb, what think'st thou of these things? SUSSKIND. I think, sir, we are in the hand of God, I trust the Prince--your father and my friend. PRINCE WILLIAM. Trust no man! flee! I have not come to-night To little purpose. Your arch enemy, The Governor of Salza, Henry Schnetzen, Has won my father's ear. Since yester eve He stops at Eisenach, begging of the Prince The Jews' destruction. SUSSKIND (calmly). Schnetzen is my foe, I know it, but I know a talisman, Which at a word transmutes his hate to love. Liebhaid, my child, look cheerly. What is this? Harm dare not touch thee; the oppressor's curse, Melts into blessing at thy sight. LIEBHAID. Not fear Plucks at my heart-strings, father, though the air Thickens with portents; 't is the thought of flight, But no--I follow thee. PRINCE WILLIAM. Thou shalt not miss The value of a hair from thy home treasures. All that thou lovest, Liebhaid, goes with thee. Knowest thou, Susskind, Schnetzen's cause of hate? SUSSKIND. 'T is rooted in an ancient error, born During his feud with Landgrave Fritz the Bitten, Your Highness' grandsire--ten years--twenty--back. Misled to think I had betrayed his castle, Who knew the secret tunnel to its courts, He has nursed a baseless grudge, whereat I smile, Sure to disarm him by the simple truth. God grant me strength to utter it. PRINCE WILLIAM. You fancy The rancor of a bad heart slow distilled Through venomed years, so at a breath, dissolves. O good old man, i' the world, not of the world! Belike, himself forgets the doubtful core Of this still-curdling, petrifying ooze. Truth? why truth glances from the callous mass, A spear against a rock. He hugs his hate, His bed-fellow, his daily, life-long comrade; Think you he has slept, ate, drank with it this while, Now to forego revenge on such slight cause As the revealed truth? SUSSKIND. You mistake my thought, Great-hearted Prince, and justly--for I speak In riddles, till God's time to make all clear. When His day dawns, the blind shall see. PRINCE WILLIAM. Forgive me, If I, in wit and virtue your disciple, Seem to instruct my master. Accident Lifts me where I survey a broader field Than wise men stationed lower. I spy peril, Fierce flame invisible from the lesser peaks. God's time is now. Delayed truth leaves a lie Triumphant. If you harbor any secret, Potent to force an ear that's locked to mercy, In God's name, now disbosom it. SUSSKIND. Kind Heaven! Would that my people's safety were assured So is my child's! Where shall we turn? Where flee? For all around us the Black Angel broods. We step into the open jaws of death If we go hence. PRINCE WILLIAM. Better to fall beneath The hand of God, than be cut off by man. SUSSKIND. We are trapped, the springe is set. Not ignorantly I offered counsel in the Synagogue, Quelled panic with authoritative calm, But knowing, having weighed the opposing risks. Our friends in Strasburg have been overmastered, The imperial voice is drowned, the papal arm Drops paralyzed--both, lifted for the truth; We can but front with brave eyes, brow erect, As is our wont, the fullness of our doom. PRINCE WILLIAM. Then Meissen's sword champions your desperate cause. I take my stand here where my heart is fixed. I love your daughter--if her love consent, I pray you, give me her to wife. LIEBHAID. Ah! SUSSKIND. Prince, Let not this Saxon skin, this hair's gold fleece, These Rhine-blue eyes mislead thee--she is alien. To the heart's core a Jewess--prop of my house, Soul of my soul--and I? a despised Jew. PRINCE WILLIAM. Thy propped house crumbles; let my arm sustain Its tottering base--thy light is on the wane, Let me relume it. Give thy star to me, Or ever pitch-black night engulf us all-- Lend me your voice, Liebhaid, entreat for me. Shall this prayer be your first that he denies? LIEBHAID. Father, my heart's desire is one with his. SUSSKIND. Is this the will of God? Amen! My children, Be patient with me, I am full of trouble. For you, heroic Prince, could aught enhance Your love's incomparable nobility, 'T were the foreboding horror of this hour, Wherein you dare flash forth its lightning-sword. You reckon not, in the hot, splendid moment Of great resolve, the cold insidious breath Wherewith the outer world shall blast and freeze-- But hark! I own a mystic amulet, Which you delivering to your gracious father, Shall calm his rage withal, and change his scorn Of the Jew's daughter into pure affection. I will go fetch it--though I drain my heart Of its red blood, to yield this sacrifice. [Exit SUSSKIND.] PRINCE WILLIAM. Have you no smile to welcome love with, Liebhaid? Why should you tremble? LIEBHAID. Prince, I am afraid! Afraid of my own heart, my unfathomed joy, A blasphemy against my father's grief, My people's agony. I dare be happy-- So happy! in the instant's lull betwixt The dazzle and the crash of doom. PRINCE WILLIAM. You read The omen falsely; rather is your joy The thrilling harbinger of general dawn. Did you not tell me scarce a month agone, When I chanced in on you at feast and prayer, The holy time's bright legend? of the queen, Strong, beautiful, resolute, who denied her race To save her race, who cast upon the die Of her divine and simple loveliness, Her life, her soul,--and so redeemed her tribe. You are my Esther--but I, no second tyrant, Worship whom you adore, love whom you love! LIEBHAID. If I must die with morn, I thank my God, And thee, my king, that I have lived this night. Enter SUSSKIND, carrying a jewelled casket. SUSSKIND. Here is the chest, sealed with my signet-ring, A mystery and a treasure lies within, Whose worth is faintly symboled by these gems, Starring the case. Deliver it unopened, Unto the Landgrave. Now, sweet Prince, good night. Else will the Judengasse gates be closed. PRINCE WILLIAM. Thanks, father, thanks. Liebhaid, my bride, good-night. [He kisses her brow. SUSSKIND places his hands on the heads of LIEBHAID and PRINCE WILLIAM.] SUSSKIND. Blessed, O Lord, art thou, who bringest joy To bride and bridegroom. Let us thank the Lord. [Curtain falls.] ACT II.--At Eisenach. SCENE I. A Room in the LANDGRAVE'S Palace. FREDERICK THE GRAVE and HENRY SCHNETZEN. LANDGRAVE. Who tells thee of my son's love for the Jewess? SCHNETZEN. Who tells me? Ask the Judengasse walls, The garrulous stones publish Prince William's visits To his fair mistress. LANDGRAVE. Mistress? Ah, such sins The Provost of St. George's will remit For half a pound of coppers. SCHNETZEN. Think it not! No light amour this, leaving shield unflecked; He wooes the Jewish damsel as a knight The lady of his heart. LANDGRAVE. Impossible! SCHNETZEN. Things more impossible have chanced. Remember Count Gleichen, doubly wived, who pined in Egypt, There wed the Pasha's daughter Malachsala, Nor blushed to bring his heathen paramour Home to his noble wife Angelica, Countess of Orlamund. Yea, and the Pope Sanctioned the filthy sin. LANDGRAVE. Himself shall say it. Ho, Gunther! (Enter a Lackey.) Bid the Prince of Meissen here. [Exit Lackey. The LANDGRAVE paces the stage in agitation.] Enter PRINCE WILLIAM. PRINCE WILLIAM. Father, you called me? LANDGRAVE. Ay, when were you last In Nordhausen? PRINCE WILLIAM. This morning I rode hence. LANDGRAVE. Were you at Susskind's house? PRINCE WILLIAM. I was, my liege. LANDGRAVE. I hear you entertain unseemly love For the Jew's daughter. PRINCE WILLIAM. Who has told thee this? SCHNETZEN. This I have told him. PRINCE WILLIAM. Father, believe him not. I swear by heaven 't is no unseemly love Leads me to Susskind's house. LANDGRAVE. With what high title Please you to qualify it? PRINCE WILLIAM. True, I love Liebhaid von Orb, but 't is the honest passion Wherewith a knight leads home his equal wife. LANDGRAVE. Great God! and thou wilt brag thy shame! Thou speakest Of wife and Jewess in one breath! Wilt make Thy princely name a stench in German nostrils? PRINCE WILLIAM. Hold, father, hold! You know her--yes, a Jewess In her domestic piety, her soul Large, simple, splendid like a star, her heart Suffused with Syrian sunshine--but no more-- The aspect of a Princess of Thuringia, Swan-necked, gold-haired, Madonna-eyed. I love her! If you will quench this passion, take my life! [He falls at his father's feet. FREDERICK, in a paroxysm of rage, seizes his sword.] SCHNETZEN. He is your son! LANDGRAVE. Oh that he ne'er were born! Hola! Halberdiers! Yeomen of the Guard! Enter Guardsmen. Bear off this prisoner! Let him sigh out His blasphemous folly in the castle tower, Until his hair be snow, his fingers claws. [They seize and bear away PRINCE WILLIAM.] Well, what's your counsel? SCHNETZEN. Briefly this, my lord. The Jews of Nordhausen have brewed the Prince A love-elixir--let them perish all! [Tumult without. Singing of Hymns and Ringing of Church-bells. The LANDGRAVE and SCHNETZEN go to the window.] SONG* (without). The cruel pestilence arrives, Cuts off a myriad human lives. See the Flagellants' naked skin! They scourge themselves for grievous sin. Trembles the earth beneath God's breath, The Jews shall all be burned to death. *A rhyme of the times. See Graetz's "History of the Jews," page 374, vol. vii. LANDGRAVE. Look, foreign pilgrims! What an endless file! Naked waist-upward. Blood is trickling down Their lacerated flesh. What do they carry? SCHNETZEN. Their scourges--iron-pointed, leathern thongs, Mark how they lash themselves--the strict Flagellants. The Brothers of the Cross--hark to their cries! VOICE FROM BELOW. Atone, ye mighty! God is wroth! Expel The enemies of heaven--raze their homes! [Confused cries from below, which gradually die away in the distance.] Woe to God's enemies! Death to the Jews! They poison all our wells--they bring the plague. Kill them who killed our Lord! Their homes shall be A wilderness--drown them in their own blood! [The LANDGRAVE and SCHNETZEN withdraw from the window.] SCHNETZEN. Do not the people ask the same as I? Is not the people's voice the voice of God? LANDGRAVE. I will consider. SCHNETZEN. Not too long, my liege. The moment favors. Later 't were hard to show Due cause to his Imperial Majesty, For slaughtering the vassals of the Crown. Two mighty friends are theirs. His holiness Clement the Sixth and Kaiser Karl. LANDGRAVE. 'T were rash Contending with such odds. SCHNETZEN. Courage, my lord. These battle singly against death and fate. Your allies are the sense and heart o' the world. Priests warring for their Christ, nobles for gold, And peoples for the very breath of life Spoiled by the poison-mixers. Kaiser Karl Lifts his lone voice unheard, athwart the roar Of such a flood; the papal bull is whirled An unconsidered rag amidst the eddies. LANDGRAVE. What credence lend you to the general rumor Of the river poison? SCHNETZEN. Such as mine eyes avouch. I have seen, yea touched the leathern wallet found On the body of one from whom the truth was wrenched By salutary torture. He confessed, Though but a famulus of the master-wizard, The horrible old Moses of Mayence, He had flung such pouches in the Rhine, the Elbe, The Oder, Danube--in a hundred brooks, Until the wholesome air reeked pestilence; 'T was an ell long, filled with a dry, fine dust Of rusty black and red, deftly compounded Of powdered flesh of basilisks, spiders, frogs, And lizards, baked with sacramental dough In Christian blood. LANDGRAVE. Such goblin-tales may curdle The veins of priest-rid women, fools, and children. They are not for the ears of sober men. SCHNETZEN. Pardon me, Sire. I am a simple soldier. My God, my conscience, and my suzerain, These are my guides--blindfold I follow them. If your keen royal wit pierce the gross web Of common superstition--be not wroth At your poor vassal's loyal ignorance. Remember, too, Susskind retains your bonds. The old fox will not press you; he would bleed Against the native instinct of the Jew, Rather his last gold doit and so possess Your ease of mind, nag, chafe, and toy with it; Abide his natural death, and other Jews Less devilish-cunning, franklier Hebrew-viced, Will claim redemption of your pledge. LANDGRAVE. How know you That Susskind holds my bonds? SCHNETZEN. You think the Jews Keep such things secret? Not a Jew but knows Your debt exact--the sum and date of interest, And that you visit Susskind, not for love, But for his shekels. LANDGRAVE. Well, the Jews shall die. This is the will of God. Whom shall I send To bear my message to the council? SCHNETZEN. I Am ever at your 'hest. To-morrow morn Sees me in Nordhausen. LANDGRAVE. Come two hours hence. I will deliver you the letter signed. Make ready for your ride. SCHNETZEN (kisses FREDERICK'S hand). Farewell, my master. (Aside.) Ah, vengeance cometh late, Susskind von Orb, But yet it comes! My wife was burned through thee, Thou and thy children are consumed by me! [Exit.] SCENE II. A Room in the Wartburg Monastery. PRINCESS MATHILDIS and PRIOR PEPPERCORN. PRIOR. Be comforted, my daughter. Your lord's wisdom Goes hand in hand with his known piety Thus dealing with your son. To love a Jewess Is flat contempt of Heaven--to ask in marriage, Sheer spiritual suicide. Let be; Justice must take its course. PRINCESS. Justice is murdered; Oh slander not her corpse. For my son's fault, A thousand innocents are doomed. Is that God's justice? PRIOR. Yea, our liege is but his servant. Did not He purge with fiery hail those twain Blotches of festering sin, Gomorrah, Sodom? The Jews are never innocent,--when Christ Agonized on the Cross, they cried--"His blood Be on our children's heads and ours!" I mark A dangerous growing evil of these days, Pity, misnamed--say, criminal indulgence Of reprobates brow-branded by the Lord. Shall we excel the Christ in charity? Because his law is love, we tutor him In mercy and reward his murderers? Justice is blind and virtue is austere. If the true passion brimmed our yearning hearts The vision of the agony would loom Fixed vividly between the day and us:-- Nailed on the gaunt black Cross the divine form, Wax-white and dripping blood from ankles, wrists, The sacred ichor that redeems the world, And crowded in strange shadow of eclipse, Reviling Jews, wagging their heads accursed, Sputtering blasphemy--who then would shrink From holy vengeance? who would offer less Heroic wrath and filial zeal to God Than to a murdered father? PRINCESS. But my son Will die with her he loves. PRIOR. Better to perish In time than in eternity. No question Pends here of individual life; our sight Must broaden to embrace the scope sublime Of this trans-earthly theme. The Jew survives Sword, plague, fire, cataclysm--and must, since Christ Cursed him to live till doomsday, still to be A scarecrow to the nations. None the less Are we beholden in Christ's name at whiles, When maggot-wise Jews breed, infest, infect Communities of Christians, to wash clean The Church's vesture, shaking off the filth That gathers round her skirts. A perilous germ! Know you not, all the wells, the very air The Jews have poisoned?--Through their arts alone The Black Death scourges Christendom. PRINCESS. I know All heinousness imputed by their foes. Father, mistake me not: I urge no plea To shield this hell-spawn, loathed by all who love The lamb and kiss the Cross. I had not guessed Such obscure creatures crawled upon my path, Had not my son--I know not how misled-- Deigned to ennoble with his great regard, A sparkle midst the dust motes. SHE is sacred. What is her tribe to me? Her kith and kin May rot or roast--the Jews of Nordhausen May hang, drown, perish like the Jews of France, But she shall live--Liebhaid von Orb, the Jewess, The Prince, my son, elects to love. PRIOR. Amen! Washed in baptismal waters she shall be Led like the clean-fleeced yeanling to the fold. Trust me, my daughter--for through me the Church Which is the truth, which is the life, doth speak. Yet first 't were best essay to cure the Prince Of this moon-fostered madness, bred, no doubt, By baneful potions which these cunning knaves Are skilled to mix. PRINCESS. Go visit him, dear father, Where in the high tower mewed, a wing-clipped eagle, His spirit breaks in cage. You are his master, He is wont from childhood to hear wisdom fall From your instructed lips. Tell him his mother Rises not from her knees, till he is freed. PRIOR. Madam, I go. Our holy Church has healed Far deadlier heart-wounds than a love-sick boy's. Be of good cheer, the Prince shall live to bless The father's rigor who kept pure of blot A 'scutcheon more unsullied than the sun. PRINCESS. Thanks and farewell. PRIOR. Farewell. God send thee peace! [Exeunt.] SCENE III. A mean apartment in one of the Towers of the Landgrave's Palace. PRINCE WILLIAM discovered seated at the window. PRINCE WILLIAM. The slow sun sets; with lingering, large embrace He folds the enchanted hill; then like a god Strides into heaven behind the purple peak. Oh beautiful! In the clear, rayless air, I see the chequered vale mapped far below, The sky-paved streams, the velvet pasture-slopes, The grim, gray cloister whose deep vesper bell Blends at this height with tinkling, homebound herds! I see--but oh, how far!--the blessed town Where Liebhaid dwells. Oh that I were yon star That pricks the West's unbroken foil of gold, Bright as an eye, only to gaze on her! How keen it sparkles o'er the Venusburg! When brown night falls and mists begin to live, Then will the phantom hunting-train emerge, Hounds straining, black fire-eyeballed, breathless steeds, Spurred by wild huntsmen, and unhallowed nymphs, And at their head the foam-begotten witch, Of soul-destroying beauty. Saints of heaven! Preserve mine eyes from such unholy sight! How all unlike the base desire which leads Misguided men to that infernal cave, Is the pure passion that exalts my soul Like a religion! Yet Christ pardon me If this be sin to thee! [He takes his lute, and begins to sing. Enter with a lamp Steward of the Castle, followed by PRIOR PEPPERCORN. Steward lays down the lamp and exit.] Good even, father! PRIOR. Benedicite! Our bird makes merry his dull bars with song, Yet would not penitential psalms accord More fitly with your sin than minstrels' lays? PRINCE WILLIAM. I know no blot upon my life's fair record. PRIOR. What is it to wanton with a Christ-cursed Jewess, Defy thy father and pollute thy name, And fling to the ordures thine immortal soul? PRINCE WILLIAM. Forbear! thy cowl's a helmet, thy serge frock Invulnerable as brass--yet I am human, Thou, priest, art still a man. PRIOR. Pity him, Heaven! To what a pass their draughts have brought the mildest, Noblest of princes! Softly, my son; be ruled By me, thy spiritual friend and father. Thou hast been drugged with sense-deranging potions, Thy blood set boiling and thy brain askew; When these thick fumes subside, thou shalt awake To bless the friend who gave thy madness bounds. PRINCE WILLIAM. Madness! Yea, as the sane world goes, I am mad. What else to help the helpless, to uplift The low, to adore the good, the beautiful, To live, battle, suffer, die for truth, for love! But that is wide of the question. Let me hear What you are charged to impart--my father's will. PRIOR. Heart-cleft by his dear offspring's shame, he prays Your reason be restored, your wayward sense Renew its due allegiance. For his son He, the good parent, weeps--hot drops of gall, Wrung from a spirit seldom eased by tears. But for his honor pricked, the Landgrave takes More just and general vengeance. PRINCE WILLIAM. In the name of God, What has he done to HER? PRIOR. Naught, naught,--as yet. Sweet Prince, be calm; you leap like flax to flame. You nest within your heart a cockatrice, Pluck it from out your bosom and breathe pure Of the filthy egg. The Landgrave brooks no more The abomination that infects his town. The Jews of Nordhausen are doomed. PRINCE WILLIAM. Alack! Who and how many of that harmless tribe, Those meek and pious men, have been elected To glut with innocent blood the oppressor's wrath? PRIOR. Who should go free where equal guilt is shared? Frederick is just--they perish all at once, Generous moreover--for in their mode of death He grants them choice. PRINCE WILLIAM. My father had not lost The human semblance when I saw him last. Nor can he be divorced in this short space From his shrewd wit. How shall he make provision For the vast widowed, orphaned host this deed Burdens the state withal? PRIOR. Oh excellent! This is the crown of folly, topping all! Forgive me, Prince, when I gain breath to point Your comic blunder, you will laugh with me. Patience--I'll draw my chin as long as yours. Well, 't was my fault--one should be accurate-- Jews, said I? when I meant Jews, Jewesses, And Jewlings! all betwixt the age Of twenty-four hours, and of five score years. Of either sex, of every known degree, All the contaminating vermin purged With one clean, searching blast of wholesome fire. PRINCE WILLIAM. O Christ, disgraced, insulted! Horrible man, Remembered be your laugh in lowest hell, Dragging you to the nether pit! Forgive me; You are my friend--take me from here--unbolt Those iron doors--I'll crawl upon my knees Unto my father--I have much to tell him. For but the freedom of one hour, sweet Prior, I'll brim the vessels of the Church with gold. PRIOR. Boy! your bribes touch not, nor your curses shake The minister of Christ. Yet I will bear Your message to the Landgrave. PRINCE WILLIAM. Whet your tongue Keen as the archangel's blade of truth--your voice Be as God's thunder, and your heart one blaze-- Then can you speak my cause. With me, it needs No plausive gift; the smitten head, stopped throat, Blind eyes and silent suppliance of sorrow Persuade beyond all eloquence. Great God! Here while I rage and beat against my bars, The infernal fagots may be stacked for her, The hell-spark kindled. Go to him, dear Prior, Speak to him gently, be not too much moved, 'Neath its rude case you had ever a soft heart, And he is stirred by mildness more than passion. Recall to him her round, clear, ardent eyes, The shower of sunshine that's her hair, the sheen Of the cream-white flesh--shall these things serve as fuel? Tell him that when she heard once he was wounded, And how he bled and anguished; at the tale She wept for pity. PRIOR. If her love be true She will adore her lover's God, embrace The faith that marries you in life and death. This promise with the Landgrave would prevail More than all sobs and pleadings. PRINCE WILLIAM. Save her, save her! If any promise, vow, or oath can serve. Oh trusting, tranquil Susskind, who estopped Your ears forewarned, bandaged your visioned eyes, To woo destruction! Stay! did he not speak Of amulet or talisman? These horrors Have crowded out my wits. Yea, the gold casket! What fixed serenity beamed from his brow, Laying the precious box within my hands! [He brings from the shelf the casket, and hands it to the Prior.] Deliver this unto the Prince my father, Nor lose one vital moment. What it holds, I guess not--but my light heart whispers me The jewel safety's locked beneath its lid. PRIOR. First I must foil such devil's tricks as lurk In its gem-crusted cabinet. PRINCE WILLIAM. Away! Deliverance posts on your return. I feel it. For your much comfort thanks. Good-night. PRIOR. Good-night. [Exit.] ACT III. A cell in the Wartburg Monastery. Enter PRIOR PEPPERCORN with the casket. PRIOR. So! Glittering shell where doubtless shines concealed An orient treasure fit to bribe a king, Ransom a prince and buy him for a son. I have baptized thee now before the altar, Effaced the Jew's contaminating touch, And I am free to claim the Church's tithe From thy receptacle. [He is about to unlock the casket, when enters Lay-Brother, and he hastily conceals it.] LAY-BROTHER. Peace be thine, father! PRIOR. Amen! and thine. What's new? LAY-BROTHER. A strange Flagellant Fresh come to Wartburg craves a word with thee. PRIOR. Bid him within. [Exit Lay-Brother. PRIOR places the casket in a Cabinet.] Patience! No hour of the day Brings freedom to the priest. Reenter Lay-Brother ushering in NORDMANN, and exit. Brother, all hail! Blessed be thou who comest in God's name! NORDMANN. May the Lord grant thee thine own prayer fourfold! PRIOR. What is thine errand? NORDMANN. Look at me, my father. Long since you called me friend. [The PRIOR looks at him attentively, while an expression of wonder and terror gradually overspreads his face.] PRIOR. Almighty God! The grave gives up her dead. Thou canst not be-- NORDMANN. Nordmann of Nordmannstein, the Knight of Treffurt. PRIOR. He was beheaded years agone. NORDMANN. His death Had been decreed, but in his stead a squire Clad in his garb and masked, paid bloody forfeit. A loyal wretch on whom the Prince wreaked vengeance, Rather than publish the true bird had flown. PRIOR. Does Frederick know thou art in Eisenach? NORDMANN. Who would divine the Knight of Nordmannstein In the Flagellants' weeds? From land to land, From town to town, we cry, "Death to the Jews! Hep! hep! "Hierosolyma est perdita!" They die like rats; in Gotha they are burned; Two of the devil brutes in Chatelard, Child-murderers, wizards, breeders of the Plague, Had the truth squeezed from them with screws and racks, All with explicit date, place, circumstance, And written as it fell from dying lips By scriveners of the law. On their confession The Jews of Savoy were destroyed. To-morrow noon The holy flames shall dance in Nordhausen. PRIOR. Your zeal bespeaks you fair. In your deep eyes A mystic fervor shines; yet your scarred flesh And shrunken limbs denote exhausted nature, Collapsing under discipline. NORDMANN. Speak not Of the degrading body and its pangs. I am all zeal, all energy, all spirit. Jesus was wroth at me, at all the world, For our indulgence of the flesh, our base Compounding with his enemies the Jews. But at Madonna Mary's intercession, He charged an angel with this gracious word, "Whoso will scourge himself for forty days, And labor towards the clean extermination Of earth's corrupting vermin, shall be saved." Oh, what vast peace this message brought my soul! I have learned to love the ecstasy of pain. When the sweat stands upon my flesh, the blood Throbs in my bursting veins, my twisted muscles Are cramped with agony, I seem to crawl Anigh his feet who suffered on the Cross. PRIOR. O all transforming Time! Can this be he, The iron warrior of a decade since, The gallant youth of earlier years, whose pranks And reckless buoyancy of temper flashed Clear sunshine through my gloom? NORDMANN. I am unchanged (Save that the spirit of grace has fallen on me). Urged by one motive through these banished years, Fed by one hope, awake to realize One living dream--my long delayed revenge. You saw the day when Henry Schnetzen's castle Was razed with fire? PRIOR. I saw it. NORDMANN. Schnetzen's wife, Three days a mother, perished. PRIOR. And his child? NORDMANN. His child was saved. PRIOR. By whom? NORDMANN. By the same Jew Who had betrayed the Castle. PRIOR. Susskind von Orb? NORDMANN. Susskind von Orb! and Schnetzen's daughter lives As the Jew's child within the Judengasse. PRIOR (eagerly). What proof hast thou of this? NORDMANN. Proof of these eyes! I visited von Orb to ask a loan. There saw I such a maiden as no Jew Was ever blessed withal since Jesus died. White as a dove, with hair like golden floss, Eyes like an Alpine lake. The haughty line Of brow imperial, high bridged nose, fine chin, Seemed like the shadow cast upon the wall, Where Lady Schnetzen stood. PRIOR. Why hast thou ne'er Discovered her to Schnetzen? NORDMANN. He was my friend. I shared with him thirst, hunger, sword, and fire. But he became a courtier. When the Margrave Sent me his second challenge to the field, His messenger was Schnetzen! 'Mongst his knights, The apple of his eye was Henry Schnetzen. He was the hound that hunted me to death. He stood by Frederick's side when I was led, Bound, to the presence. I denounced him coward, He smote me on the cheek. Christ! it stings yet. He hissed--"My liege, let Henry Nordmann hang! He is no knight, for he receives a blow, Nor dare avenge it!" My gyved wrists moved not, No nerve twitched in my face, although I felt Flame leap there from my heart, then flying back, Leave it cold-bathed with deathly ooze--my soul In silence took her supreme vow of hate. PRIOR. Praise be to God that thou hast come to-day. To-morrow were too late. Hast thou not heard Frederick sends Schnetzen unto Nordhausen, With fire and torture for the Jews? NORDMANN. So! Henry Schnetzen Shall be the Jews' destroyer? Ah! PRIOR. One moment. Mayhap this box which Susskind sends the Prince Reveals more wonders. [He brings forth the Casket from the Cabinet, opens it, and discovers a golden cross and a parchment which he hastily overlooks.] Hark! your word's confirmed Blessed be Christ, our Lord! (reads). "I Susskind von Orb of Nordhausen, swear by the unutterable Name, that on the day when the Castle of Salza was burned, I rescued the infant daughter of Henry Schnetzen from the flames. I purposed restoring her to her father, but when I returned to Nordhausen, I found my own child lying on her bier, and my wife in fevered frenzy calling for her babe. I sought the leech, who counselled me to show the Christian child to the bereaved mother as her own. The pious trick prevailed; the fever broke, the mother was restored. But never would she part with the child, even when she had learned to whom it belonged, and until she was gathered with the dead--may peace be with her soul!--she fostered in our Jewish home the offspring of the Gentile knight. Then again would I have yielded the girl to her parent, but Schnetzen was my foe, and I feared the haughty baron would disown the daughter who came from the hands of the Jew. Now however the maiden's temporal happiness demands that she be acknowledged by her rightful father. Let him see what I have written. As a token, behold this golden cross, bound by the Lady Schnetzen round the infant's neck. May the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob redeem and bless me as I have writ the truth." PRIOR. I thank the Saints that this has come betimes. Thou shalt renounce thy hate. Vengeance is mine, The Lord hath said. NORDMANN. O all-transforming Time! Is this meek, saintly-hypocrite, the firm, Ambitious, resolute Reinhard Peppercorn, Terror of Jews and beacon of the Church? Look, you, I have won the special grace of Christ, He knows through what fierce anguish! Now he leans Out of his heaven to whisper in mine ear, And reach me my revenge. He makes my cause His own--and I shall fail upon these heights, Sink from the level of a hate sublime, To puerile pity! PRIOR. Be advised. You hold Your enemy's living heart within your hands. This secret is far costlier than you dreamed, For Frederick's son wooes Schnetzen's daughter. See, A hundred delicate springs your wit may move, Your puppets are the Landgrave and the Prince, The Governor of Salza and the Jews. You may recover station, wealth, and honor, Selling your secret shrewdly; while rash greed Of clumsy vengeance may but drag you down In the wild whirl of universal ruin. NORDMANN. Christ teach me whom to trust! I would not spill One drop from out this brimming glorious cup For which my parched heart pants. I will consider. PRIOR. Pardon me now, if I break off our talk. Let all rest as it stands until the dawn. I have many orisons before the light. NORDMANN. Good-night, true friend. Devote a prayer to me. (Aside.) I will outwit you, serpent, though you glide Athwart the dark, noiseless and swift as fate. [Exit]. SCENE II. On the road to Nordhausen. Moonlit, rocky landscape. On the right between high, white cliffs a narrow stream spanned by a wooden bridge. Thick bushes and trees. Enter PRINCE WILLIAM and PAGE. PRINCE WILLIAM. Is this the place where we shall find fresh steeds? Would I had not dismounted! PAGE. Nay, sir; beyond The Werra bridge the horses wait for us. These rotten planks would never bear their weight. PRINCE WILLIAM. When I am Landgrave these things shall be cared for. This is an ugly spot for travellers To loiter in. How swift the water runs, Brawling above our voices. Human cries Would never reach Liborius' convent yonder, Perched on the sheer, chalk cliff. I think of peril, From my excess of joy. My spirit chafes, She that would breast broad-winged the air, must halt On stumbling mortal limbs. Look, thither, boy, How the black shadows of the tree-boles stripe The moon-blanched bridge and meadow. PAGE. Sir, what's that? Yon stir and glitter in the bush? PRINCE WILLIAM. The moon, Pricking the dewdrops, plays fantastic tricks With objects most familiar. Look again, And where thou sawst the steel-blue flicker glint, Thou findst a black, wet leaf. PAGE. No, no! O God! Your sword, sir! Treason! [Four armed masked men leap from out the bush, seize, bind, and overmaster, after a brief but violent resistance, the Prince and his servant.] PRINCE WILLIAM. Who are ye, villains? lying In murderous ambush for the Prince of Meissen? If you be knights, speak honorably your names, And I will combat you in knightly wise. If ye be robbers, name forthwith your ransom. Let me but speed upon my journey now. By Christ's blood! I beseech you, let me go! Ho! treason! murder! help! [He is dragged off struggling. Exeunt omnes.] SCENE III. Nordhausen. A room in SUSSKIND's house. LIEBHAID and CLAIRE. LIEBHAID. Say on, poor girl, if but to speak these horrors Revive not too intense a pang. CLAIRE. Not so. For all my woes seem here to merge their flood Into a sea of infinite repose. Through France our journey led, as I have told, From desolation unto desolation. Naught stayed my father's course--sword, storm, flame, plague, Exhaustion of the eighty year old frame, O'ertaxed beyond endurance. Once, once only, His divine force succumbed. 'T was at day's close, And all the air was one discouragement Of April snow-flakes. I was drenched, cold, sick, With weariness and hunger light of head, And on the open road, suddenly turned The whole world like the spinning flakes of snow. My numb hand slipped from his, and all was blank. His beard, his breath upon my brow, his tears Scalding my cheek hugged close against his breast, And in my ear deep groans awoke me. "God!" I heard him cry, "try me not past my strength. No prophet I, a blind, old dying man!" Gently I drew his face to mine, and kissed, Whispering courage--then his spirit broke Utterly; shattered were his wits, I feared. But past is past; he is at peace, and I Find shelter from the tempest. Tell me rather Of your serene life. LIEBHAID. Happiness is mute. What record speaks of placid, golden days, Matched each with each as twins? Till yester eve My life was simple as a song. At whiles Dark tales have reached us of our people's wrongs, Strange, far-off anguish, furrowing with fresh care My father's brow, draping our home with gloom. We were still blessed; the Landgrave is his friend-- The Prince--my Prince--dear Claire, ask me no more! My adored enemy, my angel-fiend, Splitting my heart against my heart! O God, How shall I pray for strength to love him less Than mine own soul? CLAIRE. What mean these contrary words? These passionate tears? LIEBHAID. Brave girl, who art inured To difficult privation and rude pain, What good shall come forswearing kith and God, To follow the allurements of the heart? CLAIRE. Duty wears one face, but a thousand masks. Thy feet she leads to glittering peaks, while mine She guides midst brambled roadways. Not the first Art thou of Israel's women, chosen of God, To rule o'er rulers. I remember me A verse my father often would repeat Out of our sacred Talmud: "Every time The sun, moon, stars begin again their course, They hesitate, trembling and filled with shame, Blush at the blasphemous worship offered them, And each time God's voice thunders, crying out, On with your duty!" Enter REUBEN. REUBEN. Sister, we are lost! The streets are thronged with panic-stricken folk. Wild rumors fill the air. Two of our tribe, Young Mordecai, as I hear, and old Baruch, Seized by the mob, were dragged towards Eisenach, Cruelly used, left to bleed out their lives, In the wayside ditch at night. This morn, betimes, The iron-hearted Governor of Salza Rides furious into Nordhausen; his horse, Spurred past endurance, drops before the gate. The Council has been called to hear him read The Landgrave's message,--all men say, 'tis death Unto our race. LIEBHAID. Where is our father, Reuben? REUBEN. With Rabbi Jacob. Through the streets they walk, Striving to quell the terror. Ah, too late! Had he but heeded the prophetic voice, This warning angel led to us in vain! LIEBHAID. Brother, be calm. Man your young heart to front Whatever ills the Lord afflicts us with. What does Prince William? Hastes he not to aid? REUBEN. None know his whereabouts. Some say he's held Imprisoned by the Landgrave. Others tell While he was posting with deliverance To Nordhausen, in bloody Schnetzen's wake, He was set upon by ruffians--kidnapped--killed. What do I know--hid till our ruin's wrought. [LIEBHAID swoons.] CLAIRE. Hush, foolish boy. See how your rude words hurt. Look up, sweet girl; take comfort. REUBEN. Pluck up heart: Dear sister, pardon me; he lives, he lives! LIEBHAID. God help me! Shall my heart crack for love's loss That meekly bears my people's martyrdom? He lives--I feel it--to live or die with me. I love him as my soul--no more of that. I am all Israel's now--till this cloud pass, I have no thought, no passion, no desire, Save for my people. Enter SUSSKIND. SUSSKIND. Blessed art thou, my child! This is the darkest hour before the dawn. Thou art the morning-star of Israel. How dear thou art to me--heart of my heart, Mine, mine, all mine to-day! the pious thought, The orient spirit mine, the Jewish soul. The glowing veins that sucked life-nourishment From Hebrew mother's milk. Look at me, Liebhaid, Tell me you love me. Pity me, my God! No fiercer pang than this did Jephthah know. LIEBHAID. Father, what wild and wandering words are these? Is all hope lost? SUSSKIND. Nay, God is good to us. I am so well assured the town is safe, That I can weep my private loss--of thee. An ugly dream I had, quits not my sense, That you, made Princess of Thuringia, Forsook your father, and forswore your race. Forgive me, Liebhaid, I am calm again, We must be brave--I who besought my tribe To bide their fate in Nordhausen, and you Whom God elects for a peculiar lot. With many have I talked; some crouched at home, Some wringing hands about the public ways. I gave all comfort. I am very weary. My children, we had best go in and pray, Solace and safety dwell but in the Lord. [Exeunt.] ACT IV. SCENE I. The City Hall at Nordhausen. Deputies and Burghers assembling. To the right, at a table near the President's chair, is seated the Public Scrivener. Enter DIETRICH VON TETTENBORN, and HENRY SCHNETZEN with an open letter in his hand. SCHNETZEN. Didst hear the fellow's words who handed it? I asked from whom it came, he spoke by rote, "The pepper bites, the corn is ripe for harvest, I come from Eisenach." 'T is some tedious jest. TETTENBORN. Doubtless your shrewd friend Prior Peppercorn Masks here some warning. Ask the scrivener To help us to its contents. SCHNETZEN (to the clerk). Read me these. SCRIVENER (reads). "Beware, Lord Henry Schnetzen, of Susskind's lying tongue! He will thrust a cuckoo's egg into your nest. [Signed] ONE WHO KNOWS." SCHNETZEN. A cuckoo's egg! that riddle puzzles me; But this I know. Schnetzen is no man's dupe, Much less a Jew's. [SCHNETZEN and VON TETTENBORN take their seats side by side.] TETTENBORN. Knights, counsellors and burghers! Sir Henry Schnetzen, Governor of Salza, Comes on grave mission from His Highness Frederick, Margrave of Meissen, Landgrave of Thuringia, Our town's imperial Patron and Protector. SCHNETZEN. Gentles, I greet you in the Landgrave's name, The honored bearer of his princely script, Sealed with his signet. Read, good Master Clerk. [He hands a parchment to the Scrivener, who reads aloud]: Lord President and Deputies of the town of Nordhausen! Know that we, Frederick Margrave of Meissen, and Landgrave of Thuringia, command to be burned all the Jews within our territories as far as our lands extend, on account of the great crime they have committed against Christendom in throwing poison into the wells, of the truth of which indictment we have absolute knowledge. Therefore we admonish you to have the Jews killed in honor of God, so that Christendom be not enfeebled by them. Whatever responsibility you incur, we will assume with our Lord the Emperor, and with all other lords. Know also that we send to you Henry Schnetzen, our Governor of Salza, who shall publicly accuse your Jews of the above-mentioned crime. Therefore we beseech you to help him to do justice upon them, and we will singularly reward your good will.* Given at Eisenach, the Thursday after St. Walpurgis, under our secret seal. *This is an authentic document. A COUNSELLOR (DIETHER VON WERTHER). Fit silence welcomes this unheard-of wrong! So! Ye are men--free, upright, honest men, Not hired assassins? I half doubted it, Seeing you lend these infamous words your ears. SCHNETZEN. Consider, gentlemen of Nordhausen, Ere ye give heed to the rash partisan. Ye cross the Landgrave--well? he crosses you. It may be I shall ride to Nordhausen, Not with a harmless script, but with a sword, And so denounce the town for perjured vow. What was the Strasburg citizens' reward Who championed these lost wretches, in the face Of King and Kaiser--three against the world, Conrad von Winterthur the Burgomaster, Deputy Gosse Sturm, and Peter Schwarber, Master Mechanic? These leagued fools essayed To stand between the people's sacred wrath, And its doomed object. Well, the Jews, no less, Were rooted from the city neck and crop, And their three friends degraded from their rank I' the city council, glad to save their skins. The Jews are foes to God. Our Holy Father Thunders his ban from Rome against all such As aid the poisoners. Your oath to God, And to the Prince enjoins--Death to the Jews. A BURGHER (REINHARD ROLAPP). Why all this vain debate? The Landgrave's brief Affirms the Jews fling poison in the wells. Shall we stand by and leave them unmolested, Till they have made our town a wilderness? I say, Death to the Jews! A BURGHER (HUGO SCHULTZ). My lord and brethren, I have scant gift of speech, ye are all my elders. Yet hear me for truth's sake, and liberty's. The Landgrave of Thuringia is our patron, True--and our town's imperial Governor, But are we not free burghers? Shall we not Debate and act in freedom? If Lord Schnetzen Will force our council with the sword--enough! We are not frightened schoolboys crouched beneath The master's rod, but men who bear the sword As brave as he. By this grim messenger, Send back this devilish missive. Say to Frederick Nordhausen never was enfeoffed to him. Prithee, Lord President, bid Henry Schnetzen Withdraw awhile, that we may all take counsel, According to the hour's necessity, As free men, whom nor fear nor favor swerves. TETTENBORN. Bold youth, you err. True, Nordhausen is free, And God be witness, we for fear or favor, Would never shed the blood of innocence. But here the Prince condemns the Jews to death For capital crime. Who sees a snake must kill, Ere it spit fatal venom. I, too, say Death to the Jews ALL. Death to the Jews! God wills it! TETTENBORN. Give me your voices in the urn. (The votes are taken.) One voice For mercy, all the rest for death. (To an Usher.) Go thou To the Jews' quarter; bid Susskind von Orb, And Rabbi Jacob hither to the Senate, To hear the Landgrave's and the town's decree. [Exit Usher.] (To Schnetzen.) What learn you of this evil through the State? SCHNETZEN. It swells to monstrous bulk. In many towns, Folk build high ramparts round the wells and springs. In some they shun the treacherous sparkling brooks, To drink dull rain-water, or melted snow, In mountain districts. Frederick has been patient, And too long clement, duped by fleece-cloaked wolves. But now his subjects' clamor rouses him To front the general peril. As I hear, A fiendish and far-reaching plot involves All Christian thrones and peoples. These vile vermin, Burrowing underneath society, Have leagued with Moors in Spain, with heretics Too plentiful--Christ knows! in every land, And planned a subterraneous, sinuous scheme, To overthrow all Christendom. But see, Where with audacious brows, and steadfast mien, They enter, bold as innocence. Now listen, For we shall hear brave falsehoods. Enter SUSSKIND VON ORB and RABBI JACOB. TETTENBORN. Rabbi Jacob, And thou, Susskind von Orb, bow down, and learn The Council's pleasure. You the least despised By true believers, and most reverenced By your own tribe, we grace with our free leave To enter, yea, to lift your voices here, Amid these wise and honorable men, If ye find aught to plead, that mitigates The just severity of your doom. Our prince, Frederick the Grave, Patron of Nordhausen, Ordains that all the Jews within his lands, For the foul crime of poisoning the wells, Bringing the Black Death upon Christendom, Shall be consumed with flame. RABBI JACOB (springing forward and clasping his hands). I' the name of God, Your God and ours, have mercy! SUSSKIND. Noble lords, Burghers, and artisans of Nordhausen, Wise, honorable, just, God-fearing men, Shall ye condemn or ever ye have heard? Sure, one at least owns here the close, kind name Of Brother--unto him I turn. At least Some sit among you who have wedded wives, Bear the dear title and the precious charge Of Husband--unto these I speak. Some here, Are crowned, it may be, with the sacred name Of Father--unto these I pray. All, all Are sons--all have been children, all have known The love of parents--unto these I cry: Have mercy on us, we are innocent, Who are brothers, husbands, fathers, sons as ye! Look you, we have dwelt among you many years, Led thrifty, peaceable, well-ordered lives. Who can attest, who prove we ever wrought Or ever did devise the smallest harm, Far less this fiendish crime against the State? Rather let those arise who owe the Jews Some debt of unpaid kindness, profuse alms, The Hebrew leech's serviceable skill, Who know our patience under injury, And ye would see, if all stood bravely forth, A motley host, led by the Landgrave's self, Recruited from all ranks, and in the rear, The humblest, veriest wretch in Nordhausen. We know the Black Death is a scourge of God. Is not our flesh as capable of pain, Our blood as quick envenomed as your own? Has the Destroying Angel passed the posts Of Jewish doors--to visit Christian homes? We all are slaves of one tremendous Hour. We drink the waters which our enemies say We spoil with poison,--we must breathe, as ye, The universal air,--we droop, faint, sicken, From the same causes to the selfsame end. Ye are not strangers to me, though ye wear Grim masks to-day--lords, knights and citizens, Few do I see whose hand has pressed not mine, In cordial greeting. Dietrich von Tettenborn, If at my death my wealth be confiscate Unto the State, bethink you, lest she prove A harsher creditor than I have been. Stout Meister Rolapp, may you never again Languish so nigh to death that Simon's art Be needed to restore your lusty limbs. Good Hugo Schultz--ah! be those blessed tears Remembered unto you in Paradise! Look there, my lords, one of your council weeps, If you be men, why, then an angel sits On yonder bench. You have good cause to weep, You who are Christian, and disgraced in that Whereof you made your boast. I have no tears. A fiery wrath has scorched their source, a voice Shrills through my brain--"Not upon us, on them Fall everlasting woe, if this thing be!" SCHNETZEN. My lords of Nordhausen, shall ye be stunned With sounding words? Behold the serpent's skin, Sleek-shining, clear as sunlight; yet his tooth Holds deadly poison. Even as the Jews Did nail the Lord of heaven on the Cross, So will they murder all his followers, When once they have the might. Beware, beware! SUSSKIND. So YOU are the accuser, my lord Schnetzen? Now I confess, before you I am guilty. You are in all this presence, the one man Whom any Jew hath wronged--and I that Jew. Oh, my offence is grievous; punish me With the utmost rigor of the law, for theft And violence, whom ye deemed an honest man, But leave my tribe unharmed! I yield my hands Unto your chains, my body to your fires; Let one life serve for all. SCHNETZEN. You hear, my lords, How the prevaricating villain shrinks From the absolute truth, yet dares not front his Maker With the full damnable lie hot on his lips. Not thou alone, my private foe, shalt die, But all thy race. Thee had my vengeance reached, Without appeal to Prince or citizen. Silence! my heart is cuirassed as my breast. RABBI JACOB. Bear with us, gracious lords! My friend is stunned. He is an honest man. Even I, as 't were, Am stupefied by this surprising news. Yet, let me think--it seems it is not new, This is an ancient, well-remembered pain. What, brother, came not one who prophesied This should betide exactly as it doth? That was a shrewd old man! Your pardon, lords, I think you know not just what you would do. You say the Jews shall burn--shall burn you say; Why, good my lords, the Jews are not a flock Of gallows-birds, they are a colony Of kindly, virtuous folk. Come home with me; I'll show you happy hearths, glad roofs, pure lives. Why, some of them are little quick-eyed boys, Some, pretty, ungrown maidens--children's children Of those who called me to the pastorate. And some are beautiful tall girls, some, youths Of marvellous promise, some are old and sick, Amongst them there be mothers, infants, brides, Just like your Christian people, for all the world. Know ye what burning is? Hath one of you Scorched ever his soft flesh, or singed his beard, His hair, his eyebrows--felt the keen, fierce nip Of the pungent flame--and raises not his voice To stop this holocaust? God! 't is too horrible! Wake me, my friends, from this terrific dream. SUSSKIND. Courage, my brother. On our firmness hangs The dignity of Israel. Sir Governor, I have a secret word to speak with you. SCHNETZEN. Ye shall enjoy with me the jest. These knaves Are apt to quick invention as in crime. Speak out--I have no secrets from my peers. SUSSKIND. My lord, what answer would you give your Christ If peradventure, in this general doom You sacrifice a Christian? Some strayed dove Lost from your cote, among our vultures caged? Beware, for midst our virgins there is one Owes kinship nor allegiance to our tribe. For her dear sake be pitiful, my lords, Have mercy on our women! Spare at least My daughter Liebhaid, she is none of mine! She is a Christian! SCHNETZEN. Just as I foretold! The wretches will forswear the sacred'st ties, Cringing for life. Serpents, ye all shall die. So wills the Landgrave; so the court affirms. Your daughter shall be first, whose wanton arts Have brought destruction on a princely house. SUSSKIND. My lord, be moved. You kill your flesh and blood. By Adonai I swear, your dying wife Entrusted to these arms her child. 'T was I Carried your infant from your burning home. Lord Schnetzen, will you murder your own child? SCHNETZEN. Ha, excellent! I was awaiting this. Thou wilt inoculate our knightly veins With thy corrupted Jewish blood. Thou 'lt foist This adder on my bosom. Henry Schnetzen Is no weak dupe, whom every lie may start. Make ready, Jew, for death--and warn thy tribe. SUSSKIND (kneeling). Is there a God in heaven? I who ne'er knelt Until this hour to any man on earth, Tyrant, before thee I abase myself. If one red drop of human blood still flow In thy congealed veins, if thou e'er have known Touch of affection, the blind natural instinct Of common kindred, even beasts partake, Thou man of frozen stone, thou hollow statue, Grant me one prayer, that thou wilt look on her. Then shall the eyes of thy dead wife gaze back From out the maiden's orbs, then shall a voice Within thine entrails, cry--This is my child. SCHNETZEN. Enough! I pray you, my lord President, End this unseemly scene. This wretched Jew Would thrust a cuckoo's egg within my nest. I have had timely warning. Send the twain Back to their people, that the court's decree Be published unto all. SUSSKIND. Lord Tettenborn! Citizens! will you see this nameless crime Brand the clean earth, blacken the crystal heaven? Why, no man stirs! God! with what thick strange fumes Hast thou, o' the sudden, brutalized their sense? Or am I mad? Is this already hell? Worshipful fiends, I have good store of gold, Packed in my coffers, or loaned out to--Christians; I give it you as free as night bestows Her copious dews--my life shall seal the bond, Have mercy on my race! TETTENBORN. No more, no more! Go, bid your tribe make ready for their death At sunset. RABBI JACOB. Oh! SUSSKIND. At set of sun to-day? Why, if you travelled to the nighest town, Summoned to stand before a mortal Prince You would need longer grace to put in order Household effects, to bid farewell to friends, And make yourself right worthy. But our way Is long, our journey difficult, our judge Of awful majesty. Must we set forth, Haste-flushed and unprepared? One brief day more, And all my wealth is yours! TETTENBORN. We have heard enough. Begone, and bear our message. SUSSKIND. Courage, brother, Our fate is sealed. These tigers are athirst. Return we to our people to proclaim The gracious sentence of the noble court. Let us go thank the Lord who made us those To suffer, not to do, this deed. Be strong. So! lean on me--we have little time to lose. [Exeunt.] ACT V. SCENE I. A Room in Susskind's House. LIEBHAID, CLAIRE, REUBEN. LIEBHAID. The air hangs sultry as in mid-July. Look forth, Claire; moves not some big thundercloud Athwart the sky? My heart is sick. CLAIRE. Nay, Liebhaid. The clear May sun is shining, and the air Blows fresh and cordial from the budding hills. LIEBHAID. Reuben, what is 't o'clock. Our father stays. The midday meal was cold an hour agone. REUBEN. 'T is two full hours past noon; he should be here. Ah see, he comes. Great God! what woe has chanced? He totters on his staff; he has grown old Since he went forth this morn. Enter SUSSKIND. LIEBHAID. Father, what news? SUSSKIND. The Lord have mercy! Vain is the help of man. Children, is all in order? We must start At set of sun on a long pilgrimage. So wills the Landgrave, so the court decrees. LIEBHAID. What is it, father? Exile? SUSSKIND. Yea, just that. We are banished from our vexed, uncertain homes, 'Midst foes and strangers, to a land of peace, Where joy abides, where only comfort is. Banished from care, fear, trouble, life--to death. REUBEN. Oh horror! horror! Father, I will not die. Come, let us flee--we yet have time for flight. I'll bribe the sentinel--he will ope the gates. Liebhaid, Claire, Father! let us flee! Away To some safe land where we may nurse revenge. SUSSKIND. Courage, my son, and peace. We may not flee. Didst thou not see the spies who dogged my steps? The gates are thronged with citizens and guards. We must not flee--God wills that we should die. LIEBHAID. Said you at sunset? SUSSKIND. So they have decreed. CLAIRE. Oh why not now? Why spare the time to warn? Why came they not with thee to massacre, Leaving no agony betwixt the sentence And instant execution? That were mercy! Oh, my prophetic father! SUSSKIND. They allow Full five hours' grace to shrive our souls with prayer. We shall assemble in the Synagogue, As on Atonement Day, confess our sins, Recite the Kaddish for the Dead, and chant Our Shibboleth, the Unity of God, Until the supreme hour when we shall stand Before the mercy-seat. LIEBHAID. In what dread shape Approaches death? SUSSKIND. Nerve your young hearts, my children. We shall go down as God's three servants went Into the fiery furnace. Not again Shall the flames spare the true-believers' flesh. The anguish shall be fierce and strong, yet brief. Our spirits shall not know the touch of pain, Pure as refined gold they shall issue safe From the hot crucible; a pleasing sight Unto the Lord. Oh, 't is a rosy bed Where we shall couch, compared with that whereon They lie who kindle this accursed blaze. Ye shrink? ye would avert your martyred brows From the immortal crowns the angels offer? What! are we Jews and are afraid of death? God's chosen people, shall we stand a-tremble Before our Father, as the Gentiles use? REUBEN. Shall the smoke choke us, father? or the flame Consume our flesh? SUSSKIND. I know not, boy. Be sure The Lord will temper the shrewd pain for those Who trust in Him. REUBEN. May I stand by thy side, And hold my hand in thine until the end? SUSSKIND (Aside). What solace hast thou, God, in all thy heavens For such an hour as this? Yea, hand in hand We walk, my son, through fire, to meet the Lord. Yet there is one among us shall not burn. A secret shaft long rankling in my heart, Now I withdraw, and die. Our general doom, Liebhaid, is not for thee. Thou art no Jewess. Thy father is the man who wills our death; Lord Henry Schnetzen. LIEBHAID. Look at me! your eyes Are sane, correcting your distracted words. This is Love's trick, to rescue me from death. My love is firm as thine, and dies with thee. CLAIRE. Oh, Liebhaid, live. Hast thou forgot the Prince? Think of the happy summer blooms for thee When we are in our graves. LIEBHAID. And I shall smile, Live and rejoice in love, when ye are dead? SUSSKIND. My child, my child! By the Ineffable Name, The Adonai, I swear, thou must believe, Albeit thy father scoffed, gave me the lie. Go kneel to him--for if he see thy face, Or hear thy voice, he shall not doubt, but save. LIEBHAID. Never! If I be offspring to that kite, I here deny my race, forsake my father,-- So does thy dream fall true. Let him save thee, Whose hand has guided mine, whose lips have blessed, Whose bread has nourished me. Thy God is mine, Thy people are my people. VOICES (without). Susskind von Orb! SUSSKIND. I come, my friends. Enter boisterously certain Jews. 1ST JEW. Come to the house of God! 2D JEW. Wilt thou desert us for whose sake we perish? 3D JEW. The awful hour draws nigh. Come forth with us Unto the Synagogue. SUSSKIND. Bear with me, neighbors. Here we may weep, here for the last time know The luxury of sorrow, the soft touch Of natural tenderness; here our hearts may break; Yonder no tears, no faltering! Eyes serene Lifted to heaven, and defiant brows To those who have usurped the name of men, Must prove our faith and valor limitless As is their cruelty. One more embrace, My daughter, thrice my daughter! Thine affection Outshines the hellish flames of hate; farewell, But for a while; beyond the river of fire I'll fold thee in mine arms, immortal angel! For thee, poor orphan, soon to greet again The blessed brows of parents, I dreamed not The grave was all the home I had to give. Go thou with Liebhaid, and array yourselves As for a bridal. Come, little son, with me. Friends, I am ready. O my God, my God, Forsake us not in our extremity! [Exeunt SUSSKIND and JEWS.] SCENE II. A Street in the Judengasse. Several Jews pass across the stage, running and with gestures of distress. JEWS. Woe, woe! the curse has fallen! [Exeunt.] Enter other Jews. 1ST JEW. We are doomed. The fury of the Lord has smitten us. Oh that mine head were waters and mine eyes Fountains of tears! God has forsaken us. [They knock at the doors of the houses.] 2D JEW. What, Benjamin! Open the door to death! We all shall die at sunset! Menachem! Come forth! Come forth! Manasseh! Daniel! Ezra! [Jews appear at the windows.] ONE CALLING FROM ABOVE. Neighbors, what wild alarm is this? 1ST JEW. Descend! Descend! Come with us to the house of prayer. Save himself whoso can! we all shall burn. [Men and women appear at the doors of the houses.] ONE OF THE MEN AT THE DOOR. Beseech you brethren, calmly. Tell us all! Mine aged father lies at point of death Gasping within. Ye'll thrust him in his grave With boisterous clamor. 1ST JEW. Blessed is the man Whom the Lord calls unto Himself in peace! Susskind von Orb and Rabbi Jacob come From the tribunal where the vote is--Death To all our race. SEVERAL VOICES. Woe! woe! God pity us! 1ST JEW. Hie ye within, and take a last farewell Of home, love, life--put on your festal robes. So wills the Rabbi, and come forth at once To pray till sunset in the Synagogue. AN OLD MAN. O God! Is this the portion of mine age? Were my white hairs, my old bones spared for this? Oh cruel, cruel! A YOUNG GIRL. I am too young to die. Save me, my father! To-morrow should have been The feast at Rachel's house. I longed for that, Counted the days, dreaded some trivial chance Might cross my pleasure--Lo, this horror comes! A BRIDE. Oh love! oh thou just-tasted cup of joy Snatched from my lips! Shall we twain lie with death, Dark, silent, cold--whose every sense was tuned To happiness! Life was too beautiful-- That was the dream--how soon we are awake! Ah, we have that within our hearts defies Their fiercest flames. No end, no end, no end! JEW. God with a mighty hand, a stretched-out arm, And poured-out fury, ruleth over us. The sword is furbished, sharp i' the slayer's hand. Cry out and howl, thou son of Israel! Thou shalt be fuel to the fire; thy blood Shall overflow the land, and thou no more Shalt be remembered--so the Lord hath spoken. [Exeunt omnes.] SCENE III. Within the Synagogue. Above in the gallery, women sumptuously attired; some with children by the hand or infants in their arms. Below the men and boys with silken scarfs about their shoulders. RABBI JACOB. The Lord is nigh unto the broken heart. Out of the depths we cry to thee, oh God! Show us the path of everlasting life; For in thy presence is the plenitude Of joy, and in thy right hand endless bliss. Enter SUSSKIND, REUBEN, etc. SEVERAL VOICES. Woe unto us who perish! A JEW. Susskind von Orb, Thou hast brought down this doom. Would we had heard The prophet's voice! SUSSKIND. Brethren, my cup is full! Oh let us die as warriors of the Lord. The Lord is great in Zion. Let our death Bring no reproach to Jacob, no rebuke To Israel. Hark ye! let us crave one boon At our assassins' hands; beseech them build Within God's acre where our fathers sleep, A dancing-floor to hide the fagots stacked. Then let the minstrels strike the harp and lute, And we will dance and sing above the pile, Fearless of death, until the flames engulf, Even as David danced before the Lord, As Miriam danced and sang beside the sea. Great is our Lord! His name is glorious In Judah, and extolled in Israel! In Salem is his tent, his dwelling place In Zion; let us chant the praise of God! A JEW. Susskind, thou speakest well! We will meet death With dance and song. Embrace him as a bride. So that the Lord receive us in His tent. SEVERAL VOICES. Amen! amen! amen! we dance to death! RABBI JACOB. Susskind, go forth and beg this grace of them. [Exit Susskind.] Punish us not in wrath, chastise us not In anger, oh our God! Our sins o'erwhelm Our smitten heads, they are a grievous load; We look on our iniquities, we tremble, Knowing our trespasses. Forsake us not. Be thou not far from us. Haste to our aid, Oh God, who art our Saviour and our Rock! Reenter SUSSKIND. SUSSKIND. Brethren, our prayer, being the last, is granted. The hour approaches. Let our thoughts ascend From mortal anguish to the ecstasy Of martyrdom, the blessed death of those Who perish in the Lord. I see, I see How Israel's ever-crescent glory makes These flames that would eclipse it, dark as blots Of candle-light against the blazing sun. We die a thousand deaths,--drown, bleed, and burn; Our ashes are dispersed unto the winds. Yet the wild winds cherish the sacred seed, The waters guard it in their crystal heart, The fire refuseth to consume. It springs, A tree immortal, shadowing many lands, Unvisited, unnamed, undreamed as yet. Rather a vine, full-flowered, golden-branched, Ambrosial-fruited, creeping on the earth, Trod by the passer's foot, yet chosen to deck Tables of princes. Israel now has fallen Into the depths, he shall be great in time.* Even as we die in honor, from our death Shall bloom a myriad heroic lives, Brave through our bright example, virtuous Lest our great memory fall in disrepute. Is one among us brothers, would exchange His doom against our tyrants,--lot for lot? Let him go forth and live--he is no Jew. Is one who would not die in Israel Rather than live in Christ,--their Christ who smiles On such a deed as this? Let him go forth-- He may die full of years upon his bed. Ye who nurse rancor haply in your hearts, Fear ye we perish unavenged? Not so! To-day, no! nor to-morrow! but in God's time, Our witnesses arise. Ours is the truth, Ours is the power, the gift of Heaven. We hold His Law, His lamp, His covenant, His pledge. Wherever in the ages shall arise Jew-priest, Jew-poet, Jew-singer, or Jew-saint-- And everywhere I see them star the gloom-- In each of these the martyrs are avenged! *The vine creeps on the earth, trodden by the passer's foot, but its fruit goes upon the table of princes. Israel now has fallen in the depths, but he shall be great in the fullness of time.--TALMUD RABBI JACOB. Bring from the Ark the bell-fringed, silken-bound Scrolls of the Law. Gather the silver vessels, Dismantle the rich curtains of the doors, Bring the Perpetual Lamp; all these shall burn, For Israel's light is darkened, Israel's Law Profaned by strangers. Thus the Lord hath said:* "The weapon formed against thee shall not prosper, The tongue that shall contend with thee in judgment, Thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage Of the Lord's servants and their righteousness. For thou shalt come to peoples yet unborn, Declaring that which He hath done. Amen!" *Conclusion of service for Day of Atonement. [The doors of the Synagogue are burst open with tumultuous noise. Citizens and officers rush in.] CITIZENS. Come forth! the sun sets. Come, the Council waits! What! will ye teach your betters patience? Out! The Governor is ready. Forth with you, Curs! serpents! Judases! The bonfire burns! [Exeunt.] SCENE IV. A Public Place. Crowds of Citizens assembled. On a platform are seated DIETRICH VON TETTENBORN and HENRY SCHNETZEN with other Members of the Council. 1ST CITIZEN. Here's such a throng! Neighbor, your elbow makes An ill prod for my ribs. 2D CITIZEN. I am pushed and squeezed. My limbs are not mine own. 3D CITIZEN. Look this way, wife. They will come hence,--a pack of just-whipped curs. I warrant you the stiff-necked brutes repent To-day if ne'er before. WIFE. I am all a-quiver. I have seen monstrous sights,--an uncaged wolf, The corpse of one sucked by a vampyre, The widow Kupfen's malformed child--but never Until this hour, a Jew. 3D CITIZEN. D' ye call me Jew? Where do you spy one now? WIFE. You'll have your jest Now or anon, what matters it? 4TH CITIZEN. Well, I Have seen a Jew, and seen one burn at that; Hard by in Wartburg; he had killed a child. Zounds! how the serpent wriggled! I smell now The roasting, stinking flesh! BOY. Father, be these The folk who murdered Jesus? 4TH CITIZEN. Ay, my boy. Remember that, and when you hear them come, I'll lift you on my shoulders. You can fling Your pebbles with the rest. [Trumpets sound.] CITIZENS. The Jews! the Jews! BOY. Quick, father! lift me! I see nothing here But hose and skirts. [Music of a march approaching.] CITIZENS. What mummery is this? The sorcerers brew new mischief. ANOTHER CITIZEN. Why, they come Pranked for a holiday; not veiled for death. ANOTHER CITIZEN. Insolent braggarts! They defy the Christ! Enter, in procession to music, the Jews. First, RABBI JACOB-- after him, sick people, carried on litters--then old men and women, followed promiscuously by men, women, and children of all ages. Some of the men carry gold and silver vessels, some the Rolls of the Law. One bears the Perpetual Lamp, another the Seven-branched silver Candlestick of the Synagogue. The mothers have their children by the hand or in their arms. All richly attired. CITIZENS. The misers! they will take their gems and gold Down to the grave! CITIZEN'S WIFE. So these be Jews! Christ save us! To think the devils look like human folk! CITIZENS. Cursed be the poison-mixers! Let them burn! CITIZENS. Burn! burn! Enter SUSSKIND VON ORB, LIEBHAID, REUBEN, and CLAIRE. SCHNETZEN. Good God! what maid is that? TETTENBORN. Liebhaid von Orb. SCHNETZEN. The devil's trick! He has bewitched mine eyes. SUSSKIND (as he passes the platform). Woe to the father Who murders his own child! SCHNETZEN. I am avenged, Susskind von Orb! Blood for blood, fire for fire, And death for death! [Exeunt SUSSKIND, LIEBHAID, etc.] Enter Jewish youths and maidens. YOUTHS (in chorus). Let us rejoice, for it is promised us That we shall enter in God's tabernacle! MAIDENS. Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Zion, Within thy portals, O Jerusalem! [Exeunt.] CITIZEN'S WIFE. I can see naught from here. Let's follow, Hans. CITIZEN. Be satisfied. There is no inch of space For foot to rest on yonder. Look! look there! How the flames rise! BOY. O father, I can see! They all are dancing in the crimson blaze. Look how their garments wave, their jewels shine, When the smoke parts a bit. The tall flames dart. Is not the fire real fire? They fear it not. VOICES WITHOUT. Arise, oh house of Jacob. Let us walk Within the light of the Almighty Lord! Enter in furious haste PRINCE WILLIAM and NORDMANN. PRINCE WILLIAM. Respite! You kill your daughter, Henry Schnetzen! NORDMANN. Liebhaid von Orb is your own flesh and blood. SCHNETZEN. Spectre! do dead men rise? NORDMANN. Yea, for revenge! I swear, Lord Schnetzen, by my knightly honor, She who is dancing yonder to her death, Is thy wife's child! [SCHNETZEN and PRINCE WILLIAM make a rush forward towards the flames. Music ceases; a sound of crashing boards is heard and a great cry--HALLELUJAH!] PRINCE WILLIAM and SCHNETZEN. Too late! too late! CITIZENS. All's done! PRINCE WILLIAM. The fire! the fire! Liebhaid, I come to thee. [He is about to spring forward, but is held back by guards.] SCHNETZEN. Oh cruel Christ! Is there no bolt in heaven For the child murderer? Kill me, my friends! my breast Is bare to all your swords. [He tears open his jerkin, and falls unconscious.] [Curtain falls.] THE END. Note: The plot and incidents of this Tragedy are taken from a little narrative entitled "Der Tanz zum Tode; ein Nachtstuck aus dem vierzehnten Jahrhundert," (The Dance to Death--a Night-piece of the fourteenth century). By Richard Reinhard. Compiled from authentic documents communicated by Professor Franz Delitzsch. The original narrative thus disposes, in conclusion, of the principal characters:-- "The Knight Henry Schnetzen ended his curse-stricken life in a cloister of the strictest order. "Herr Nordmann was placed in close confinement, and during the same year his head fell under the sword of the executioner. "Prince William returned, broken down with sorrow, to Eisenach. His princely father's heart found no comfort during the remainder of his days. He died soon after the murder of the Jews--his last words were, 'woe! the fire!' "William reached an advanced age, but his life was joyless. He never married, and at his death Meissen was inherited by his nephew. "The Jewish cemetery in Nordhausen, the scene of this martyrdom, lay for a long time waste. Nobody would build upon it. Now it is a bleaching meadow, and where once the flames sprang up, to-day rests peaceful sunshine." TRANSLATIONS. TRANSLATIONS FROM THE HEBREW POETS OF MEDAEVAL SPAIN. SOLOMON BEN JUDAH GABIROL (Died Between 1070-80.) "Am I sipping the honey of the lips? Am I drunk with the wine of a kiss? Have I culled the flowers of the cheek, Have I sucked the fresh fragrance of the breath? Nay, it is the Song of Gabirol that has revived me, The perfume of his youthful, spring-tide breeze." --MOSES BEN ESRA. "I will engrave my songs indelibly upon the heart of the world, so that no one can efface them." --GABIROL. NIGHT-PIECE. Night, and the heavens beam serene with peace, Like a pure heart benignly smiles the moon. Oh, guard thy blessed beauty from mischance, This I beseech thee in all tender love. See where the Storm his cloudy mantle spreads, An ashy curtain covereth the moon. As if the tempest thirsted for the rain, The clouds he presses, till they burst in streams. Heaven wears a dusky raiment, and the moon Appeareth dead--her tomb is yonder cloud, And weeping shades come after, like the people Who mourn with tearful grief a noble queen. But look! the thunder pierced night's close-linked mail, His keen-tipped lance of lightning brandishing; He hovers like a seraph-conqueror.-- Dazed by the flaming splendor of his wings, In rapid flight as in a whirling dance, The black cloud-ravens hurry scared away. So, though the powers of darkness chain my soul, My heart, a hero, chafes and breaks its bonds. NIGHT-THOUGHTS. Will night already spread her wings and weave Her dusky robe about the day's bright form, Boldly the sun's fair countenance displacing, And swathe it with her shadow in broad day? So a green wreath of mist enrings the moon, Till envious clouds do quite encompass her. No wind! and yet the slender stem is stirred, With faint, slight motion as from inward tremor. Mine eyes are full of grief--who sees me, asks, "Oh wherefore dost thou cling unto the ground?" My friends discourse with sweet and soothing words; They all are vain, they glide above my head. I fain would check my tears; would fain enlarge Unto infinity, my heart--in vain! Grief presses hard my breast, therefore my tears Have scarcely dried, ere they again spring forth. For these are streams no furnace heat may quench, Nebuchadnezzar's flames may dry them not. What is the pleasure of the day for me, If, in its crucible, I must renew Incessantly the pangs of purifying? Up, challenge, wrestle, and o'ercome! Be strong! The late grapes cover all the vine with fruit. I am not glad, though even the lion's pride Content itself upon the field's poor grass. My spirit sinks beneath the tide, soars not With fluttering seamews on the moist, soft strand. I follow Fortune not, where'er she lead. Lord o'er myself, I banish her, compel, And though her clouds should rain no blessed dew, Though she withhold the crown, the heart's desire, Though all deceive, though honey change to gall, Still am I lord, and will in freedom strive. MEDITATIONS. Forget thine anguish, Vexed heart, again. Why shouldst thou languish, With earthly pain? The husk shall slumber, Bedded in clay Silent and sombre, Oblivion's prey! But, Spirit immortal, Thou at Death's portal, Tremblest with fear. If he caress thee, Curse thee or bless thee, Thou must draw near, From him the worth of thy works to hear. Why full of terror, Compassed with error, Trouble thy heart, For thy mortal part? The soul flies home-- The corpse is dumb. Of all thou didst have, Follows naught to the grave. Thou fliest thy nest, Swift as a bird to thy place of rest. What avail grief and fasting, Where nothing is lasting? Pomp, domination, Become tribulation. In a health-giving draught, A death-dealing shaft. Wealth--an illusion, Power--a lie, Over all, dissolution Creeps silent and sly. Unto others remain The goods thou didst gain With infinite pain. Life is a vine-branch; A vintager, Death. He threatens and lowers More near with each breath. Then hasten, arise! Seek God, O my soul! For time quickly flies, Still far is the goal. Vain heart praying dumbly, Learn to prize humbly, The meanest of fare. Forget all thy sorrow, Behold, Death is there! Dove-like lamenting, Be full of repenting, Lift vision supernal To raptures eternal. On ev'ry occasion Seek lasting salvation. Pour thy heart out in weeping, While others are sleeping. Pray to Him when all's still, Performing his will. And so shall the angel of peace be thy warden, And guide thee at last to the heavenly garden. HYMN. Almighty! what is man? But flesh and blood. Like shadows flee his days, He marks not how they vanish from his gaze, Suddenly, he must die-- He droppeth, stunned, into nonentity. Almighty! what is man? A body frail and weak, Full of deceit and lies, Of vile hypocrisies. Now like a flower blowing, Now scorched by sunbeams glowing. And wilt thou of his trespasses inquire? How may he ever bear Thine anger just, thy vengeance dire? Punish him not, but spare, For he is void of power and strength! Almighty! what is man? By filthy lust possessed, Whirled in a round of lies, Fond frenzy swells his breast. The pure man sinks in mire and slime, The noble shrinketh not from crime, Wilt thou resent on him the charms of sin? Like fading grass, So shall he pass. Like chaff that blows Where the wind goes. Then spare him, be thou merciful, O King, Upon the dreaded day of reckoning! Almighty! what is man? The haughty son of time Drinks deep of sin, And feeds on crime Seething like waves that roll, Hot as a glowing coal. And wilt thou punish him for sins inborn? Lost and forlorn, Then like the weakling he must fall, Who some great hero strives withal. Oh, spare him, therefore! let him win Grace for his sin! Almighty! what is man? Spotted in guilty wise, A stranger unto faith, Whose tongue is stained with lies, And shalt thou count his sins--so is he lost, Uprooted by thy breath. Like to a stream by tempest tossed, His life falls from him like a cloak, He passes into nothingness, like smoke. Then spare him, punish not, be kind, I pray, To him who dwelleth in the dust, an image wrought in clay! Almighty! what is man? A withered bough! When he is awe-struck by approaching doom, Like a dried blade of grass, so weak, so low The pleasure of his life is changed to gloom. He crumbles like a garment spoiled with moth; According to his sins wilt thou be wroth? He melts like wax before the candle's breath, Yea, like thin water, so he vanisheth, Oh, spare him therefore, for thy gracious name, And be not too severe upon his shame! Almighty! what is man? A faded leaf! If thou dost weigh him in the balance--lo! He disappears--a breath that thou dost blow. His heart is ever filled With lust of lies unstilled. Wilt thou bear in mind his crime Unto all time? He fades away like clouds sun-kissed, Dissolves like mist. Then spare him! let him love and mercy win, According to thy grace, and not according to his sin! TO A DETRACTOR. The Autumn promised, and he keeps His word unto the meadow-rose. The pure, bright lightnings herald Spring, Serene and glad the fresh earth shows. The rain has quenched her children's thirst, Her cheeks, but now so cold and dry, Are soft and fair, a laughing face; With clouds of purple shines the sky, Though filled with light, yet veiled with haze. Hark! hark! the turtle's mocking note Outsings the valley-pigeon's lays. Her wings are gemmed, and from her throat, When the clear sun gleams back again, It seems to me as though she wore About her neck a jewelled chain. Say, wilt thou darken such a light, Wilt drag the clouds from heaven's height? Although thy heart with anger swell, Yet firm as marble mine doth dwell. Therein no fear thy wrath begets. It is not shaken by thy threats. Yea, hurl thy darts, thy weapons wield, The strength of youth is still my shield. My winged steed toward the heights doth bound, The dust whiffs upward from the ground; My song is scanty, dost thou deem Thine eloquence a mighty stream? Only the blameless offering. Not the profusion man may bring, Prevaileth with our Lord and King. The long days out of minutes grow, And out of months the years arise, Wilt thou be master of the wise, Then learn the hidden stream to know, That from the inmost heart doth flow. FRAGMENT. My friend spoke with insinuating tongue: "Drink wine, and thy flesh shall be made whole. Look how it hisses in the leathern bottle like a captured serpent." Oh fool! can the sun be forged into a cask stopped with earthly bungs. I know not that the power of wine has ever overmastered my sorrows; for these mighty giants I have found as yet no resting-place. STANZAS. "With tears thy grief thou dost bemoan, Tears that would melt the hardest stone, Oh, wherefore sing'st thou not the vine? Why chant'st thou not the praise of wine? It chases pain with cunning art, The craven slinks from out thy heart." But I: Poor fools the wine may cheat, Lull them with lying visions sweet. Upon the wings of storms may bear The heavy burden of their care. The father's heart may harden so, He feeleth not his own child's woe. No ocean is the cup, no sea, To drown my broad, deep misery. It grows so rank, you cut it all, The aftermath springs just as tall. My heart and flesh are worn away, Mine eyes are darkened from the day. The lovely morning-red behold Wave to the breeze her flag of gold. The hosts of stars above the world, Like banners vanishing are furled. The dew shines bright; I bide forlorn, And shudder with the chill of morn. WINE AND GRIEF. With heavy groans did I approach my friends, Heavy as though the mountains I would move. The flagon they were murdering; they poured Into the cup, wild-eyed, the grape's red blood. No, they killed not, they breathed new life therein. Then, too, in fiery rapture, burned my veins, But soon the fumes had fled. In vain, in vain! Ye cannot fill the breach of the rent heart. Ye crave a sensuous joy; ye strive in vain To cheat with flames of passion, my despair. So when the sinking sun draws near to night, The sky's bright cheeks fade 'neath those tresses black. Ye laugh--but silently the soul weeps on; Ye cannot stifle her sincere lament. DEFIANCE. "Conquer the gloomy night of thy sorrow, for the morning greets thee with laughter. Rise and clothe thyself with noble pride, Break loose from the tyranny of grief. Thou standest alone among men, Thy song is like a pearl in beauty." So spake my friend. 'T is well! The billows of the stormy sea which overwhelmed my soul,-- These I subdue; I quake not Before the bow and arrow of destiny. I endured with patience when he deceitfully lied to me With his treacherous smile. Yea, boldly I defy Fate, I cringe not to envious Fortune. I mock the towering floods. My brave heart does not shrink-- This heart of mine, that, albeit young in years, Is none the less rich in deep, keen-eyed experience. A DEGENERATE AGE. Where is the man who has been tried and found strong and sound? Where is the friend of reason and of knowledge? I see only sceptics and weaklings. I see only prisoners in the durance of the senses, And every fool and every spendthrift Thinks himself as great a master as Aristotle. Think'st thou that they have written poems? Call'st thou that a Song? I call it the cackling of ravens. The zeal of the prophet must free poesy From the embrace of wanton youths. My song I have inscribed on the forehead of Time, They know and hate it--for it is lofty. ABUL HASSAN JUDAH BEN HA-LEVI. (Born Between 1080-90.) A LETTER TO HIS FRIEND ISAAC. But yesterday the earth drank like a child With eager thirst the autumn rain. Or like a wistful bride who waits the hour Of love's mysterious bliss and pain. And now the Spring is here with yearning eyes; Midst shimmering golden flower-beds, On meadows carpeted with varied hues, In richest raiment clad, she treads. She weaves a tapestry of bloom o'er all, And myriad eyed young plants upspring, White, green, or red like lips that to the mouth Of the beloved one sweetly cling. Whence come these radiant tints, these blended beams? Here's such a dazzle, such a blaze, As though each stole the splendor of the stars, Fain to eclipse them with her rays. Come! go we to the garden with our wine, Which scatters sparks of hot desire, Within our hand 't is cold, but in our veins It flashes clear, it glows like fire. It bubbles sunnily in earthen jugs. We catch it in the crystal glass, Then wander through cool, shadowy lanes and breathe The spicy freshness of the grass. Whilst we with happy hearts our circuit keep, The gladness of the Earth is shown. She smileth, though the trickling raindrops weep Silently o'er her, one by one. She loves to feel the tears upon her cheek, Like a rich veil, with pearls inwove. Joyous she listens when the swallows chirp, And warbles to her mate, the dove. Blithe as a maiden midst the young green leaves, A wreath she'll wind, a fragrant treasure; All living things in graceful motion leap, As dancing to some merry measure. The morning breezes rustle cordially, Love's thirst is sated with the balm they send. Sweet breathes the myrtle in the frolic wind, As though remembering a distant friend. The myrtle branch now proudly lifted high, Now whispering to itself drops low again. The topmost palm-leaves rapturously stir, For all at once they hear the birds' soft strain. So stirs, so yearns all nature, gayly decked, To honor ISAAC with her best array. Hear'st thou the word? She cries--I beam with joy, Because with Isaac I am wed to-day. ADMONITION. Long in the lap of childhood didst thou sleep, Think how thy youth like chaff did disappear; Shall life's sweet Spring forever last? Look up, Old age approaches ominously near. Oh shake thou off the world, even as the bird Shakes off the midnight dew that clogged his wings. Soar upward, seek redemption from thy guilt And from the earthly dross that round thee clings. Draw near to God, His holy angels know, For whom His bounteous streams of mercy flow. LOVE-SONG. "See'st thou o'er my shoulders falling, Snake-like ringlets waving free? Have no fear, for they are twisted To allure thee unto me." Thus she spake, the gentle dove, Listen to thy plighted love:-- "Ah, how long I wait, until Sweetheart cometh back (she said) Laying his caressing hand Underneath my burning head." SEPARATION. And so we twain must part! Oh linger yet, Let me still feed my glance upon thine eyes. Forget not, love, the days of our delight, And I our nights of bliss shall ever prize. In dreams thy shadowy image I shall see, Oh even in my dream be kind to me! Though I were dead, I none the less would hear Thy step, thy garment rustling on the sand. And if thou waft me greetings from the grave, I shall drink deep the breath of that cold land. Take thou my days, command this life of mine, If it can lengthen out the space of thine. No voice I hear from lips death-pale and chill, Yet deep within my heart it echoes still. My frame remains--my soul to thee yearns forth. A shadow I must tarry still on earth. Back to the body dwelling here in pain, Return, my soul, make haste and come again! LONGING FOR JERUSALEM. O city of the world, with sacred splendor blest, My spirit yearns to thee from out the far-off West, A stream of love wells forth when I recall thy day, Now is thy temple waste, thy glory passed away. Had I an eagle's wings, straight would I fly to thee, Moisten thy holy dust with wet cheeks streaming free. Oh, how I long for thee! albeit thy King has gone, Albeit where balm once flowed, the serpent dwells alone. Could I but kiss thy dust, so would I fain expire, As sweet as honey then, my passion, my desire! ON THE VOYAGE TO JERUSALEM. I. My two-score years and ten are over, Never again shall youth be mine. The years are ready-winged for flying, What crav'st thou still of feast and wine? Wilt thou still court man's acclamation, Forgetting what the Lord hath said? And forfeiting thy weal eternal, By thine own guilty heart misled? Shalt thou have never done with folly, Still fresh and new must it arise? Oh heed it not, heed not the senses, But follow God, be meek and wise; Yea, profit by thy days remaining, They hurry swiftly to the goal. Be zealous in the Lord's high service, And banish falsehood from thy soul. Use all thy strength, use all thy fervor, Defy thine own desires, awaken! Be not afraid when seas are foaming, And earth to her foundations shaken. Benumbed the hand then of the sailor, The captain's skill and power are lamed. Gayly they sailed with colors flying, And now turn home again ashamed. The ocean is our only refuge, The sandbank is our only goal, The masts are swaying as with terror, And quivering does the vessel roll. The mad wind frolics with the billows, Now smooths them low, now lashes high. Now they are storming up like lions, And now like serpents sleek they lie; And wave on wave is ever pressing, They hiss, they whisper, soft of tone. Alack! was that the vessel splitting? Are sail and mast and rudder gone? Here, screams of fright, there, silent weeping, The bravest feels his courage fail. What stead our prudence or our wisdom? The soul itself can naught avail. And each one to his God is crying, Soar up, my soul, to Him aspire, Who wrought a miracle for Jordan, Extol Him, oh angelic choir! Remember Him who stays the tempest, The stormy billows doth control, Who quickeneth the lifeless body, And fills the empty frame with soul. Behold! once more appears a wonder, The angry waves erst raging wild, Like quiet flocks of sheep reposing, So soft, so still, so gently mild. The sun descends, and high in heaven, The golden-circled moon doth stand. Within the sea the stars are straying, Like wanderers in an unknown land. The lights celestial in the waters Are flaming clearly as above, As though the very heavens descended, To seal a covenant of love. Perchance both sea and sky, twin oceans, From the same source of grace are sprung. 'Twixt these my heart, a third sea, surges, With songs resounding, clearly sung. II. A watery waste the sinful world has grown, With no dry spot whereon the eye can rest, No man, no beast, no bird to gaze upon, Can all be dead, with silent sleep possessed? Oh, how I long the hills and vales to see, To find myself on barren steppes were bliss. I peer about, but nothing greeteth me, Naught save the ship, the clouds, the waves' abyss, The crocodile which rushes from the deeps; The flood foams gray; the whirling waters reel, Now like its prey whereon at last it sweeps, The ocean swallows up the vessel's keel. The billows rage--exult, oh soul of mine, Soon shalt thou enter the Lord's sacred shrine! III. TO THE WEST WIND. O West, how fragrant breathes thy gentle air, Spikenard and aloes on thy pinions glide. Thou blow'st from spicy chambers, not from there Where angry winds and tempests fierce abide. As on a bird's wings thou dost waft me home, Sweet as a bundle of rich myrrh to me. And after thee yearn all the throngs that roam And furrow with light keel the rolling sea. Desert her not--our ship--bide with her oft, When the day sinks and in the morning light. Smooth thou the deeps and make the billows soft, Nor rest save at our goal, the sacred height. Chide thou the East that chafes the raging flood, And swells the towering surges wild and rude. What can I do, the elements' poor slave? Now do they hold me fast, now leave me free; Cling to the Lord, my soul, for He will save, Who caused the mountains and the winds to be. MOSES BEN ESRA (About 1100). EXTRACTS FROM THE BOOK OF TARSHISH, OR "NECKLACE OF PEARLS." I. The shadow of the houses leave behind, In the cool boscage of the grove reclined, The wine of friendship from love's goblet drink, And entertain with cheerful speech the mind. Drink, friend! behold, the dreary winter's gone, The mantle of old age has time withdrawn. The sunbeam glitters in the morning dew, O'er hill and vale youth's bloom is surging on. Cup-bearer! quench with snow the goblet's fire, Even as the wise man cools and stills his ire. Look, when the jar is drained, upon the brim The light foam melteth with the heart's desire. Cup-bearer! bring anear the silver bowl, And with the glowing gold fulfil the whole, Unto the weak new vigor it imparts, And without lance subdues the hero's soul. My love sways, dancing, like the myrtle-tree, The masses of her curls disheveled, see! She kills me with her darts, intoxicates My burning blood, and will not set me free. Within the aromatic garden come, And slowly in its shadows let us roam, The foliage be the turban for our brows, And the green branches o'er our heads a dome. All pain thou with the goblet shalt assuage, The wine-cup heals the sharpest pangs that rage, Let others crave inheritance of wealth, Joy be our portion and our heritage. Drink in the garden, friend, anigh the rose, Richer than spice's breath the soft air blows. If it should cease a little traitor then, A zephyr light its secret would disclose. II. Thou who art clothed in silk, who drawest on Proudly thy raiment of fine linen spun, Bethink thee of the day when thou alone Shall dwell at last beneath the marble stone. Anigh the nests of adders thine abode, With the earth-crawling serpent and the toad. Trust in the Lord, He will sustain thee there, And without fear thy soul shall rest with God. If the world flatter thee with soft-voiced art, Know 't is a cunning witch who charms thy heart, Whose habit is to wed man's soul with grief, And those who are close-bound in love to part. He who bestows his wealth upon the poor, Has only lent it to the Lord, be sure-- Of what avail to clasp it with clenched hand? It goes not with us to the grave obscure. The voice of those who dwell within the tomb, Who in corruption's house have made their home; "O ye who wander o'er us still to-day, When will ye come to share with us the gloom?" How can'st thou ever of the world complain, And murmuring, burden it with all thy pain? Silence! thou art a traveller at an inn, A guest, who may but over night remain. Be thou not wroth against the proud, but show How he who yesterday great joy did know, To-day is begging for his very bread, And painfully upon a crutch must go. How foolish they whose faith is fixed upon The treasures of their worldly wealth alone, Far wiser were it to obey the Lord, And only say, "The will of God be done!" Has Fortune smiled on thee? Oh do not trust Her reckless joy, she still deceives and must. Perpetual snares she spreads about thy feet, Thou shalt not rest till thou art mixed with dust. Man is a weaver on the earth, 't is said, Who weaves and weaves--his own days are the thread, And when the length allotted he hath spun, All life is over, and all hope is dead. IN THE NIGHT. Unto the house of prayer my spirit yearns, Unto the sources of her being turns, To where the sacred light of heaven burns, She struggles thitherward by day and night. The splendor of God's glory blinds her eyes, Up without wings she soareth to the skies, With silent aspiration seeks to rise, In dusky evening and in darksome night. To her the wonders of God's works appear, She longs with fervor Him to draw anear, The tidings of His glory reach her ear, From morn to even, and from night to night. The banner of thy grace did o'er me rest, Yet was thy worship banished from my breast. Almighty, thou didst seek me out and test To try and to instruct me in the night. I dare not idly on my pillow lie, With winged feet to the shrine I fain would fly, When chained by leaden slumbers heavily, Men rest in imaged shadows, dreams of night. Infatuate I trifled youth away, In nothingness dreamed through my manhood's day. Therefore my streaming tears I may not stay, They are my meat and drink by day and night. In flesh imprisoned is the son of light, This life is but a bridge when seen aright. Rise in the silent hour and pray with might, Awake and call upon thy God by night! Hasten to cleanse thyself of sin, arise! Follow Truth's path that leads unto the skies, As swift as yesterday existence flies, Brief even as a watch within the night. Man enters life for trouble; all he has, And all that he beholds, is pain, alas! Like to a flower does he bloom and pass, He fadeth like a vision of the night. The surging floods of life around him roar, Death feeds upon him, pity is no more, To others all his riches he gives o'er, And dieth in the middle hour of night. Crushed by the burden of my sins I pray, Oh, wherefore shunned I not the evil way? Deep are my sighs, I weep the livelong day, And wet my couch with tears night after night. My spirit stirs, my streaming tears still run, Like to the wild birds' notes my sorrows' tone, In the hushed silence loud resounds my groan, My soul arises moaning in the night. Within her narrow cell oppressed with dread, Bare of adornment and with grief-bowed head Lamenting, many a tear her sad eyes shed, She weeps with anguish in the gloomy night. For tears my burden seem to lighten best, Could I but weep my heart's blood, I might rest. My spirit bows with mighty grief oppressed, I utter forth my prayer within the night. Youth's charm has like a fleeting shadow gone, With eagle wings the hours of life have flown. Alas! the time when pleasure I have known, I may not now recall by day or night. The haughty scorn pursues me of my foe, Evil his thought, yet soft his speech and low. Forget it not, but bear his purpose so Forever in thy mind by day and night. Observe a pious fast, be whole again, Hasten to purge thy heart of every stain. No more from prayer and penitence refrain, But turn unto thy God by day and night. HE SPEAKS: "My son, yea, I will send thee aid, Bend thou thy steps to me, be not afraid. No nearer friend than I am, hast thou made, Possess thy soul in patience one more night." FROM THE "DIVAN." My thoughts impelled me to the resting-place Where sleep my parents, many a friend and brother. I asked them (no one heard and none replied): "Do ye forsake me, too, oh father, mother?" Then from the grave, without a tongue, these cried, And showed my own place waiting by their side. LOVE SONG OF ALCHARISI. I. The long-closed door, oh open it again, send me back once more my fawn that had fled. On the day of our reunion, thou shalt rest by my side, there wilt thou shed over me the streams of thy delicious perfume. Oh beautiful bride, what is the form of thy friend, that thou say to me, Release him, send him away? He is the beautiful-eyed one of ruddy glorious aspect--that is my friend, him do thou detain. II. Hail to thee, Son of my friend, the ruddy, the bright-colored one! Hail to thee whose temples are like a pomegranate. Hasten to the refuge of thy sister, and protect the son of Isaiah against the troops of the Ammonites. What art thou, O Beauty, that thou shouldst inspire love? that thy voice should ring like the voices of the bells upon the priestly garments? The hour wherein thou desireth my love, I shall hasten to meet thee. Softly will I drop beside thee like the dew upon Hermon. NACHUM. SPRING SONGS. I. Now the dreary winter's over, Fled with him are grief and pain, When the trees their bloom recover, Then the soul is born again. Spikenard blossoms shaking, Perfume all the air, And in bud and flower breaking, Stands my garden fair. While with swelling gladness blest, Heaves my friend's rejoicing breast. Oh, come home, lost friend of mine, Scared from out my tent and land. Drink from me the spicy wine, Milk and must from out my hand. Cares which hovered round my brow, Vanish, while the garden now Girds itself with myrtle hedges, Bright-hued edges Round it lie. Suddenly All my sorrows die. See the breathing myrrh-trees blow, Aromatic airs enfold me. While the splendor and the glow Of the walnut-branches hold me. And a balsam-breath is flowing, Through the leafy shadows green, On the left the cassia's growing, On the right the aloe's seen. Lo, the clear cup crystalline, In itself a gem of art, Ruby-red foams up with wine, Sparkling rich with froth and bubble. I forget the want and trouble, Buried deep within my heart. Where is he who lingered here, But a little while agone? From my homestead he has flown, From the city sped alone, Dwelling in the forest drear. Oh come again, to those who wait thee long, And who will greet thee with a choral song! Beloved, kindle bright Once more thine everlasting light. Through thee, oh cherub with protecting wings, My glory out of darkness springs. II. Crocus and spikenard blossom on my lawn, The brier fades, the thistle is withdrawn. Behold, where glass-clear brooks are flowing, The splendor of the myrtle blowing! The garden-tree has doffed her widow's veil, And shines in festal garb, in verdure pale. The turtle-dove is cooing, hark! Is that the warble of the lark! Unto their perches they return again. Oh brothers, carol forth your joyous strain, Pour out full-throated ecstasy of mirth, Proclaiming the Lord's glory to the earth. One with a low, sweet song, One echoing loud and long, Chanting the music of a spirit strong. In varied tints the landscape glows. In rich array appears the rose. While the pomegranate's wreath of green, The gauzy red and snow-white blossoms screen. Who loves it, now rejoices for its sake, And those are glad who sleep, and those who wake. When cool-breathed evening visiteth the world, In flower and leaf the beaded dew is pearled, Reviving all that droops at length, And to the languid giving strength. Now in the east the shining light behold! The sun has oped a lustrous path of gold. Within my narrow garden's greenery, Shot forth a branch, sprang to a splendid tree, Then in mine ear the joyous words did ring, "From Jesse's root a verdant branch shall spring." My Friend has cast His eyes upon my grief, According to His mercy, sends relief. Hark! the redemption hour's resounding stroke, For him who bore with patient heart the yoke! A TRANSLATION AND TWO IMITATIONS. I. DONNA CLARA. (From the German of Heine) In the evening through her garden Wanders the Alcalde's daughter, Festal sounds of drum and trumpet Ring out hither from the Castle. "I am weary of the dances, Honeyed words of adulation From the knights who still compare me To the sun with dainty phrases. "Yes, of all things I am weary, Since I first beheld by moonlight Him, my cavalier, whose zither Nightly draws me to my casement. "As he stands so slim and daring, With his flaming eyes that sparkle, And with nobly pallid features, Truly, he St. George resembles." Thus went Donna Clara dreaming, On the ground her eyes were fastened. When she raised them, lo! before her Stood the handsome knightly stranger. Pressing hands and whispering passion, These twain wander in the moonlight, Gently doth the breeze caress them, The enchanted roses greet them. The enchanted roses greet them, And they glow like Love's own heralds. "Tell me, tell me, my beloved, Wherefore all at once thou blushest?" "Gnats were stinging me, my darling, And I hate these gnats in summer E'en as though they were a rabble Of vile Jews with long, hooked noses." "Heed not gnats nor Jews, beloved," Spake the knight with fond endearments. From the almond-trees dropped downward Myriad snowy flakes of blossoms. Myriad snowy flakes of blossoms Shed around them fragrant odors. "Tell me, tell me, my beloved, Looks thy heart on me with favor?" "Yes, I love thee, O my darling, And I swear it by our Saviour, Whom the accursed Jews did murder, Long ago with wicked malice." "Heed thou neither Jews nor Saviour," Spake the knight with fond endearments. Far off waved, as in a vision, Gleaming lilies bathed in moonlight. Gleaming lilies bathed in moonlight Seemed to watch the stars above them. "Tell me, tell me, my beloved, Didst thou not erewhile swear falsely?" "Naught is false in me, my darling, E'en as in my veins there floweth Not a drop of blood that's Moorish, Neither of foul Jewish current." "Heed not Moors nor Jews, beloved," Spake the knight with fond endearments. Then towards a grove of myrtles Leads he the Alcalde's daughter. And with Love's slight subtile meshes, He has trapped her and entangled. Brief their words, but long their kisses, For their hearts are overflowing. What a melting bridal carol Sings the nightingale, the pure one. How the fire-flies in the grasses Trip their sparkling torchlight dances! In the grove the silence deepens, Naught is heard save furtive rustling Of the swaying myrtle branches, And the breathing of the flowers. But the sound of drum and trumpet Burst forth sudden from the castle. Rudely they awaken Clara, Pillowed on her lover's bosom. "Hark! they summon me, my darling! But before we part, oh tell me, Tell me what thy precious name is, Which so closely thou hast hidden." Then the knight with gentle laughter, Kissed the fingers of his Donna, Kissed her lips and kissed her forehead, And at last these words he uttered: "I, Senora, your beloved, Am the son of the respected, Worthy, erudite Grand Rabbi, Israel of Saragossa." "The ensemble of the romance is a scene of my own life--only the Park of Berlin has become the Alcalde's garden, the Baroness a Senora, and myself a St. George, or even an Apollo. This was only to be the first part of a trilogy, the second of which shows the hero jeered at by his own child, who does not know him, whilst the third discovers this child, who has become a Dominican, and is torturing to the death his Jewish brethren. The refrain of these two pieces corresponds with that of the first. Indeed this little poem was not intended to excite laughter, still less to denote a mocking spirit. I merely wished, without any definite purpose, to render with epic impartiality in this poem an individual circumstance, and, at the same time, something general and universal--a moment in the world's history which was distinctly reflected in my experience, and I had conceived the whole idea in a spirit which was anything rather than smiling but serious and painful, so much so, that it was to form the first part of a tragic trilogy."-- Heine's Correspondence. Guided by these hints, I have endeavored to carry out in the two following original Ballads the Poet's first conception. Emma Lazarus. II. DON PEDRILLO. Not a lad in Saragossa Nobler-featured, haughtier-tempered, Than the Alcalde's youthful grandson, Donna Clara's boy Pedrillo. Handsome as the Prince of Evil, And devout as St. Ignatius. Deft at fence, unmatched with zither, Miniature of knightly virtues. Truly an unfailing blessing To his pious, widowed mother, To the beautiful, lone matron Who forswore the world to rear him. For her beauty hath but ripened In such wise as the pomegranate Putteth by her crown of blossoms, For her richer crown of fruitage. Still her hand is claimed and courted, Still she spurns her proudest suitors, Doting on a phantom passion, And upon her boy Pedrillo. Like a saint lives Donna Clara, First at matins, last at vespers, Half her fortune she expendeth Buying masses for the needy. Visiting the poor afflicted, Infinite is her compassion, Scorning not the Moorish beggar, Nor the wretched Jew despising. And--a scandal to the faithful, E'en she hath been known to welcome To her castle the young Rabbi, Offering to his tribe her bounty. Rarely hath he crossed the threshold, Yet the thought that he hath crossed it, Burns like poison in the marrow Of the zealous youth Pedrillo. By the blessed Saint Iago, He hath vowed immortal hatred To these circumcised intruders Who pollute the soil of Spaniards. Seated in his mother's garden, At high noon the boy Pedrillo Playeth with his favorite parrot, Golden-green with streaks of scarlet. "Pretty Dodo, speak thy lesson," Coaxed Pedrillo--"thief and traitor"-- "Thief and traitor"--croaked the parrot, "Is the yellow-skirted Rabbi." And the boy with peals of laughter, Stroked his favorite's head of emerald, Raised his eyes, and lo! before him Stood the yellow-skirted Rabbi. In his dark eyes gleamed no anger, No hot flush o'erspread his features. 'Neath his beard his pale lips quivered, And a shadow crossed his forehead. Very gentle was his aspect, And his voice was mild and friendly, "Evil words, my son, thou speakest, Teaching to the fowls of heaven. "In our Talmud it stands written, Thrice curst is the tongue of slander, Poisoning also with its victim, Him who speaks and him who listens." But no whit abashed, Pedrillo, "What care I for curse of Talmud? 'T is no slander to speak evil Of the murderers of our Saviour. "To your beard I will repeat it, That I only bide my manhood, To wreak all my lawful hatred, On thyself and on thy people." Very gently spoke the Rabbi, "Have a care, my son Pedrillo, Thou art orphaned, and who knoweth But thy father loved this people?" "Think you words like these will touch me? Such I laugh to scorn, sir Rabbi, From high heaven, my sainted father On my deeds will smile in blessing. "Loyal knight was he and noble, And my mother oft assures me, Ne'er she saw so pure a Christian, 'T is from him my zeal deriveth." "What if he were such another As myself who stand before thee?" "I should curse the hour that bore me, I should die of shame and horror." "Harsher is thy creed than ours; For had I a son as comely As Pedrillo, I would love him, Love him were he thrice a Christian. "In his youth my youth renewing Pamper, fondle, die to serve him, Only breathing through his spirit-- Couldst thou not love such a father?" Faltering spoke the deep-voiced Rabbi, With white lips and twitching fingers, Then in clear, young, steady treble, Answered him the boy Pedrillo: "At the thought my heart revolteth, All your tribe offend my senses, They're an eyesore to my vision, And a stench unto my nostrils. "When I meet these unbelievers, With thick lips and eagle noses, Thus I scorn them, thus revile them, Thus I spit upon their garment." And the haughty youth passed onward, Bearing on his wrist his parrot, And the yellow-skirted Rabbi With bowed head sought Donna Clara. III. FRA PEDRO. Golden lights and lengthening shadows, Flings the splendid sun declining, O'er the monastery garden Rich in flower, fruit and foliage. Through the avenue of nut trees, Pace two grave and ghostly friars, Snowy white their gowns and girdles, Black as night their cowls and mantles. Lithe and ferret-eyed the younger, Black his scapular denoting A lay brother; his companion Large, imperious, towers above him. 'T is the abbot, great Fra Pedro, Famous through all Saragossa For his quenchless zeal in crushing Heresy amidst his townfolk. Handsome still with hood and tonsure, E'en as when the boy Pedrillo, Insolent with youth and beauty, Who reviled the gentle Rabbi. Lo, the level sun strikes sparkles From his dark eyes brightly flashing. Stern his voice: "These too shall perish. I have vowed extermination. "Tell not me of skill or virtue, Filial love or woman's beauty-- Jews are Jews, as serpents serpents, In themselves abomination." Earnestly the other pleaded, "If my zeal, thrice reverend master, E'er afforded thee assistance, Serving thee as flesh serves spirit, "Hounding, scourging, flaying, burning, Casting into chains or exile, At thy bidding these vile wretches, Hear and heed me now, my master. "These be nowise like their brethren, Ben Jehudah is accounted Saragossa's first physician, Loved by colleague as by patient. "And his daughter Donna Zara Is our city's pearl of beauty, Like the clusters of the vineyard Droop the ringlets o'er her temples. "Like the moon in starry heavens Shines her face among her people, And her form hath all the languor, Grace and glamour of the palm-tree. "Well thou knowest, thrice reverend master, This is not their first affliction, Was it not our Holy Office Whose bribed menials fired their dwelling? "Ere dawn broke, the smoke ascended, Choked the stairways, filled the chambers, Waked the household to the terror Of the flaming death that threatened. "Then the poor bed-ridden mother Knew her hour had come; two daughters, Twinned in form, and mind, and spirit, And their father--who would save them? "Towards her door sprang Ben Jehudah, Donna Zara flew behind him Round his neck her white arms wreathing, Drew him from the burning chamber. "There within, her sister Zillah Stirred no limb to shun her torture, Held her mother's hand and kissed her, Saying, 'We will go together.' "This the outer throng could witness, As the flames enwound the dwelling, Like a glory they illumined Awfully the martyred daughter. "Closer, fiercer, round they gathered, Not a natural cry escaped her, Helpless clung to her her mother, Hand in hand they went together. "Since that 'Act of Faith' three winters Have rolled by, yet on the forehead Of Jehudah is imprinted Still the horror of that morning. "Saragossa hath respected His false creed; a man of sorrows, He hath walked secure among us, And his art repays our sufferance." Thus he spoke and ceased. The Abbot Lent him an impatient hearing, Then outbroke with angry accent, "We have borne three years, thou sayest? "'T is enough; my vow is sacred. These shall perish with their brethren. Hark ye! In my veins' pure current Were a single drop found Jewish, "I would shrink not from outpouring All my life blood, but to purge it. Shall I gentler prove to others? Mercy would be sacrilegious. "Ne'er again at thy soul's peril, Speak to me of Jewish beauty, Jewish skill, or Jewish virtue. I have said. Do thou remember." Down behind the purple hillside Dropped the sun; above the garden Rang the Angelus' clear cadence Summoning the monks to vespers. TRANSLATIONS FROM PETRARCH. IN VITA. LXVII. Since thou and I have proven many a time That all our hope betrays us and deceives, To that consummate good which never grieves Uplift thy heart, towards a happier clime. This life is like a field of flowering thyme, Amidst the herbs and grass the serpent lives; If aught unto the sight brief pleasure gives, 'T is but to snare the soul with treacherous lime. So, wouldst thou keep thy spirit free from cloud, A tranquil habit to thy latest day, Follow the few, and not the vulgar crowd. Yet mayest thou urge, "Brother, the very way Thou showest us, wherefrom thy footsteps proud (And never more than now) so oft did stray." IN VITA. LXXVI. Sennuccio, I would have thee know the shame That's dealt to me, and what a life is mine. Even as of yore, I struggle, burn and pine. Laura transports me, I am still the same. All meekness here, all pride she there became, Now harsh, now kind, now cruel, now benign; Here honor clothed her, there a grace divine; Now gentle, now disdainful of my flame. Here sweetly did she sing; there sat awhile; There she turned back, she lingered in this spot. Here with her splendid eyes my heart she clove. She uttered there a word, and here did smile. Here she changed color. Ah, in such fond thought, Holds me by day and night, our master Love. IN VITA. CV. I saw on earth angelic graces beam, Celestial beauty in our world below, Whose mere remembrance thrills with grief and woe; All I see now seems shadow, smoke and dream. I saw in those twin-lights the tear-drops gleam, Those lights that made the sun with envy glow, And from those lips such sighs and words did flow, As made revolve the hills, stand still the stream. Love, courage, wit, pity and pain in one, Wept in more dulcet and harmonious strain, Than any other that the world has known. So rapt was heaven in the dear refrain, That not a leaf upon the branch was blown, Such utter sweetness filled the aerial plain. IN VITA. CIX. The God of Love and I in wonder stared, (Ne'er having gazed on miracles ere now,) Upon my lady's smiling lips and brow, Who only with herself may be compared. Neath the calm beauty of her forehead bared, Those twin stars of my love did burn and flow, No lesser lamps again the path might show To the proud lover who by these had fared. Oh miracle, when on the grass at rest, Herself a flower, she would clasp and hold A leafy branch against her snow-white breast. What joy to see her, in the autumn cold, Wander alone, with maiden thoughts possess'd, Weaving a garland of dry, crispy gold! IN MORTE. II. ON THE DEATH OF CARDINAL COLONNA AND LAURA. The noble Column, the green Laurel-tree Are fall'n, that shaded once my weary mind. Now I have lost what I shall never find, From North to South, from Red to Indian Sea. My double treasure Death has filched from me, Which made me proud and happy midst my kind. Nor may all empires of the world combined, Nor Orient gems, nor gold restore the key. But if this be according to Fate's will, What may I do, but wander heavy-souled, With ever downcast head, eyes weeping still? O life of ours, so lovely to behold, In one brief morn how easily dost thou spill That which we toiled for years to gain and hold! IN MORTE. XLIII. Yon nightingale who mourns so plaintively Perchance his fledglings or his darling mate, Fills sky and earth with sweetness, warbling late, Prophetic notes of melting melody. All night, he, as it were, companions me, Reminding me of my so cruel fate, Mourning no other grief save mine own state, Who knew not Death reigned o'er divinity. How easy 't is to dupe the soul secure! Those two fair lamps, even than the sun more bright, Who ever dreamed to see turn clay obscure? But Fortune has ordained, I now am sure, That I, midst lifelong tears, should learn aright, Naught here can make us happy, or endure. IN VITA. CANZONE XI. O waters fresh and sweet and clear, Where bathed her lovely frame, Who seems the only lady unto me; O gentle branch and dear, (Sighing I speak thy name,) Thou column for her shapely thighs, her supple knee; O grass, O flowers, which she Swept with her gown that veiled The angelic breast unseen; O sacred air serene, Whence the divine-eyed Love my heart assailed, By all of ye be heard This my supreme lament, my dying word. Oh, if it be my fate (As Heaven shall so decree) That Love shall close for me my weeping eyes, Some courteous friend I supplicate Midst these to bury me, Whilst my enfranchised spirit homeward flies; Less dreadful death shall rise, If I may bear this hope To that mysterious goal. For ne'er did weary soul Find a more restful spot in all Earth's scope, Nor in a grave more tranquil could win free From outworn flesh and weary limbs to flee. Perchance the time shall be When to my place of rest, With milder grace my wild fawn shall return Here where she looked on me Upon that day thrice blest: Then she shall bend her radiant eyes that yearn In search of me, and (piteous sight!) shall learn That I, amidst the stones, am clay. May love inspire her in such wise, With gentlest breath of sighs, That I, a stony corpse, shall hear her pray, And force the very skies, That I may wipe the tears from her dear eyes. From the fair boughs descended (Thrice precious memory!) Upon her lap a shower of fragrant bloom Amidst that glory splendid, Humbly reposed she, Attired as with an aureole's golden gloom. Some blossoms edged her skirt, and some Fell on her yellow curls, Like burnished gold and pearls, Even so they looked to me upon that day. Some on the ground, some on the river lay, Some lightly fluttering above, Encircling her, seemed whispering: "Here reigns Love." How many times I cried, As holy fear o'ercame, "Surely this creature sprang from Paradise," Forgetting all beside Her goddess mien, her frame, Her face, her words, her lovely smile, her eyes. All these did so devise To win me from the truth, alas! That I did say and sigh, "How came I hither, when and why?" Deeming myself in heaven, not where I was. Henceforth this grassy spot I love so much, peace elsewhere find I not. My Song, wert thou adorned to thy desire, Thou couldst go boldly forth And wander from my lips o'er all the earth. FRAGMENT. CANZONE XII. 5. I never see, after nocturnal rain, The wandering stars move through the air serene, And flame forth 'twixt the dew-fall and the rime, But I behold her radiant eyes wherein My weary spirit findeth rest from pain; As dimmed by her rich veil, I saw her the first time; The very heaven beamed with the light sublime Of their celestial beauty; dewy-wet Still do they shine, and I am burning yet. Now if the rising sun I see, I feel the light that hath enamored me. Or if he sets, I follow him, when he Bears elsewhere his eternal light, Leaving behind the shadowy waves of night. FRAGMENT. TRIONFO D' AMORE. I know how well Love shoots, how swift his flight, How now by force and now by stealth he steals, How he will threaten now, anon will smite, And how unstable are his chariot wheels. How doubtful are his hopes, how sure his pain, And how his faithful promise he repeals. How in one's marrow, in one's vital vein, His smouldering fire quickens a hidden wound, Where death is manifest, destruction plain. In sum, how erring, fickle and unsound, How timid and how bold are lovers' days, Where with scant sweetness bitter draughts abound. I know their songs, their sighs, their usual ways, Their broken speech, their sudden silences. Their passing laughter and their grief that stays, I know how mixed with gall their honey is. FRAGMENT. TRIONFO DELLA MORTE. Now since nor grief nor fear was longer there, Each thought on her fair face was clear to see, Composed into the calmness of despair-- Not like a flame extinguished violently, But one consuming of its proper light. Even so, in peace, serene of soul, passed she. Even as a lamp, so lucid, softly-bright, Whose sustenance doth fail by slow degrees, Wearing unto the end, its wonted plight. Not pale, but whiter than the snow one sees Flaking a hillside through the windless air. Like one o'erwearied, she reposed in peace As 't were a sweet sleep filled each lovely eye, The soul already having fled from there. And this is what dull fools have named to die. Upon her fair face death itself seemed fair. TRANSLATIONS FROM ALFRED DE MUSSET. THE MAY NIGHT. MUSE. Give me a kiss, my poet, take thy lyre; The buds are bursting on the wild sweet-briar. To-night the Spring is born--the breeze takes fire. Expectant of the dawn behold the thrush, Perched on the fresh branch of the first green bush; Give me a kiss, my poet, take thy lyre. POET. How black it looks within the vale! I thought a muffled form did sail Above the tree-tops, through the air. It seemed from yonder field to pass, Its foot just grazed the tender grass; A vision strange and fair it was. It melts and is no longer there. MUSE. My poet, take thy lyre; upon the lawn Night rocks the zephyr on her veiled, soft breast. The rose, still virgin, holds herself withdrawn From the winged, irised wasp with love possessed. Hark, all is hushed. Now of thy sweetheart dream; To-day the sunset, with a lingering beam, Caressed the dusky-foliaged linden-grove. All things shall bloom to-night; great Nature thrills, Her couch with perfume, passion, sighs, she fills, Like to the nuptial bed of youthful love. POET. Why throbs my heart so fast, so low? What sets my seething blood aglow, And fills my sense with vague affright? Who raps upon my chamber-door? My lamp's spent ray upon the floor, Why does it dazzle me with light? Great God! my limbs sink under me! Who enters? who is calling? none! The clock strikes--I am all alone-- �����O solitude! O poverty! MUSE. My poet, take thy lyre. Youth's living wine Ferments to-night within the veins divine. My breast is troubled, stifling with desire, The panting breeze has set my lips afire; O listless child, behold me, I am fair! Our first embrace dost thou so soon forget? How pale thou wast, when my wing grazed thy hair. Into mine arms thou fell'st, with eyelids wet! Oh, in thy bitter grief, I solaced thee, Dying of love, thy youthful strength outworn. Now I shall die of hope--oh comfort me! I need thy prayers to live until the morn. POET. Is it thy voice my spirit knows, O darling Muse! And canst thou be My own immortal one? my rose, Sole pure and faithful heart where glows A lingering spark of love for me? Yes, it is thou, with tresses bright, 'T is thou, my sister and my bride. I feel amidst the shadowy night, From thy gold gown the rays of light Within my heart's recesses glide. MUSE. My poet, take thy lyre. 'T is I, undying, Who seeing thee to-night so sad and dumb, Like to the mother-bird whose brood is crying, From utmost heaven to weep with thee have come. My friend, thou sufferest; a secret woe Gnaws at thy life, thou sighest in the night. Love visits thee, such love as mortals know, Shadow of gladness, semblance of delight. Rise, sing to God the thoughts that fill thy brain, Thy buried pleasures and thy long-past pain. Come, with a kiss, where unknown regions gleam, Awake the mingling echoes of thy days, Sing of thy folly, glory, joy and praise, Be all an unpremeditated dream! Let us invent a realm where one forgets, Come, we are all alone, the world is ours. Green Scotland tawny Italy offsets; Lo, Greece my mother, with her honeyed flowers, Argos and Pteleon with its shrines and groves, Celestial Messa populous with doves; And Pelion with his shaggy, changing brow, Blue Titaresus, and the gulf of steel, Whose waves that glass the floating swan, reveal Snowy Camyre to Oloossone's snow. Tell me what golden dreams shall charm our sleep, Whence shall be drawn the tears that we shall weep? This morning when thy lids were touched with light, What pensive seraph, bending kindly near, Dropped lilacs from his airy robe of white, And whispered beams of love within thine ear? Say, shall we sing of sadness, joy or hope? Or bathe in blood the settled, steel-clad ranks? See lovers mount the ladder's silken rope? Or fleck the wind with coursers' foaming flanks? Or shall we tell whose hand the lamps above, In the celestial mansions, year by year, Kindles with sacred oil of life and love? With Tarquin shall we cry, "Come, night is here!" Or shall we dive for pearls beneath the seas, Or find the wild goats by the alpine trees? Bid melancholy gaze upon the skies? Follow the huntsman on the upland lawns? The roe uplifts her tearful, suppliant eyes, Her heath awaits her, and her suckling fawns; He stoops, he slaughters her, he flings her heart Still warm amidst his panting hounds apart. Or shall we paint a maid with vermeil cheek, Who, with her page behind, to vespers fares, Beside her mother, dreamy-eyed and meek, And on her half-oped lips forgets her prayers, Trembles midst echoing columns, hearkening To hear her bold knight's clanging spurs outring. Or shall we bid the heroes of old France Scale full equipped the battlemented wall, And so revive the simple-strained romance Their fame inspired our troubadours withal? Or shall we clothe soft elegies in white? Or bid the man of Waterloo recite His story, and the crop mown by his art, Or ere the herald of eternal night On his green mound with fatal wing did smite And cross his hands above his iron heart? Or shall we gibbet on some satire here The name thrice-bought of some pale pamphleteer, Who, hunger-goaded, from his haunts obscure, Dared, quivering with impotence and spite, Insult the hope on Genius' brow of light, And gnaw the wreath his breath had made impure? The lyre! the lyre! I can be still no more. Upon the breath of spring my pinions fly. The air supports me--from the earth I soar, Thou weepest--God has heard--the hour is nigh! POET. Dear sister, if thou ask but this, From friendly lips a gentle kiss, Or one soft tear from kindly eyes, These will I gladly give to thee. Our love remember tenderly, If thou remountest to the skies. No longer I of hope shall sing, Of fame or joy, of love or art, Alas, not even of suffering, My lips are locked--I lean and cling, To hear the whisper of my heart. MUSE. What! am I like the autumn breeze for you, Which feeds on tears even to the very grave, For whom all grief is but a drop of dew? O poet, but one kiss--'t was I who gave. The weed I fain would root from out this sod Is thine own sloth--thy grief belongs to God. Whatever sorrow thy young heart have found, Open it well, this ever-sacred wound Dealt by dark angels--give thy soul relief. Naught makes us nobler than a noble grief. Yet deem not, poet, though this pain have come, That therefore, here below, thou mayst be dumb. Best are the songs most desperate in their woe-- Immortal ones, which are pure sobs I know. When the wave-weary pelican once more, Midst evening-vapors, gains his nest of reeds, His famished brood run forward on the shore To see where high above the surge he speeds. As though even now their prey they could destroy, They hasten to their sire with screams of joy, On swollen necks wagging their beaks, they cry; He slowly wins at last a lofty rock, Shelters beneath his drooping wing his flock, And, a sad fisher, gazes on the sky. Adown his open breast the blood flows there; Vainly he searched the ocean's deepest part, The sea was empty and the shore was bare, And for all nourishment he brings his heart. Sad, silent, on the stone, he gives his brood His father-entrails and his father-blood, Lulls with his love sublime his cruel pain, And, watching on his breast the ruddy stain, Swoons at the fatal banquet from excess Of horror and voluptuous tenderness. Sudden amidst the sacrifice divine, Outworn with such protracted suffering, He fears his flock may let him live and pine; Then up he starts, expands his mighty wing, Beating his heart, and with a savage cry Bids a farewell of such funereal tone That the scared seabirds from their rock-nests fly, And the late traveller on the beach alone Commends his soul to God--for death floats by. Even such, O poet, is the poet's fate. His life sustains the creatures of a day. The banquets served upon his feasts of state Are like the pelican's--sublime as they. And when he tells the world of hopes betrayed, Forgetfulness and grief, of love and hate, His music does not make the heart dilate, His eloquence is as an unsheathed blade, Tracing a glittering circle in mid-air, While blood drips from the edges keen and bare. POET. O Muse, insatiate soul, demand No more than lies in human power. Man writes no word upon the sand Even at the furious whirlwind's hour. There was a time when joyous youth Forever fluttered at my mouth, A merry, singing bird, just freed. Strange martyrdom has since been mine, Should I revive its slightest sign, At the first note, my lyre and thine Would snap asunder like a reed. THE OCTOBER NIGHT. POET. My haunting grief has vanished like a dream, Its floating fading memory seems one With those frail mists born of the dawn's first beam, Dissolving as the dew melts in the sun. MUSE. What ailed thee then, O poet mine; What secret misery was thine, Which set a bar 'twixt thee and me? Alas, I suffer from it still; What was this grief, this unknown ill, Which I have wept so bitterly? POET. 'T was but a common grief, well known of men. But, look you, when our heavy heart is sore, Fond wretches that we are! we fancy then That sorrow never has been felt before. MUSE. There cannot be a common grief, Save that of common souls; my friend, Speak out, and give thy heart relief, Of this grim secret make an end. Confide in me, and have no fear. The God of silence, pale, austere, Is younger brother unto death. Even as we mourn we're comforted, And oft a single word is said Which from remorse delivereth. POET. If I were bound this day to tell my woe, I know not by what name to call my pain, Love, folly, pride, experience--neither know If one in all the world might thereby gain. Yet ne'ertheless I'll voice the tale to thee, Alone here by the hearth. But do thou take This lyre--come nearer--so; my memory Shall gently with the harmonies awake. MUSE. But first, or ere thy grief thou say, My poet, art thou healed thereof? Bethink thee, thou must speak to-day, As free from hatred as from love. For man has given the holy name Of consolation unto me. Make me no partner of thy shame, In passions that have ruined thee. POET. Of my old wounds I am so sound and whole, Almost I doubt they were, nor find their trace; And in the passes where I risked my soul, In mine own stead I see a stranger's face. Muse, have no fear, we both may yield awhile To this first inspiration of regret. Oh, it is good to weep, 't is good to smile, Remembering sorrows we might else forget. MUSE. As the watchful mother stoops O'er her infant's cradled rest, So my trembling spirit droops O'er this long-closed, silent breast. Speak! I touch the lyre's sweet strings, Feebly, plaintively it sings, With thy voice set free at last. While athwart a radiant beam, Like a light, enchanted dream, Float the shadows of the past. POET. My days of work! sole days whereon I lived! O thrice-beloved solitude! Now God be praised, once more I have arrived In this old study bare and rude. These oft-deserted walls, this shabby den, My faithful lamp, my dusty chair, My palace, my small world I greet again, My Muse, immortal, young and fair. Thank God! we twain may sing here side by side, I will reveal to thee my thought. Thou shalt know all, to thee I will confide The evil by a woman wrought. A woman, yes! (mayhap, poor friends, ye guess, Or ever I have said the word!) To such a one my soul was bound, no less Than is the vassal to his lord. Detested yoke! within me to destroy The vigor and the bloom of youth! Yet only through my love I caught, in sooth, A fleeting glimpse of joy. When by the brook, beneath the evening-star, On silver sands we twain would stray, The white wraith of the aspen tree afar Pointed for us the dusky way. Once more within the moonlight do I see That fair form sink upon my breast; No more of that! Alas, I never guessed Whither my fate was leading me. The angry gods some victim craved, I fear, At that ill-omened time, Since they have punished me as for a crime, For trying to be happy here! MUSE. A vision of remembered joy Reveals itself to thee once more; Why fearest thou to live it o'er, Retracing it without annoy? Wouldst thou confide the truth to me, And yet those golden days disprove? If fate has been unkind to thee, Do thou no less, my friend, than she, And smile upon thine early love. POET. Rather I dare to smile upon my woe. Muse, I have said it, I would fain review My crosses, visions, frenzy,--calmly show The hour, place, circumstance, in order due. 'T was an autumnal evening, I recall, Chill, gloomy; this one brings it back again. The murmuring wind's monotonous rise and fall Lulled sombre care within my weary brain. I waited at the casement for my love, And listening in the darkness black as death, Such melancholy did my spirit move That all at once I doubted of her faith. The street wherein I dwelt was lonely, poor, Lantern in hand, at times, a shade passed by, When the gale whistled through the half-oped door. One seemed to hear afar a human sigh. I know not to what omen, sooth to say, My superstitious spirit fell a prey. Vainly I summoned courage--coward-like I shuddered when the clock began to strike. She did not come! Alone, with downcast head, I stared at street and walls like one possessed. How may I tell the insensate passion bred By that inconstant woman in my breast! I loved but her in all the world. One day Apart from her seemed worse than death to me. Yet I remember how I did essay That cruel night to snap my chain, go free. I named her traitress, serpent, o'er and o'er, Recalled the anguish suffered for her sake, Alas! her fatal beauty rose once more, What grief, what torture in my heart to wake! At last morn broke; with waiting vain outworn, I fell asleep against the casement there. I oped my lids upon the day new born, My dazzled glance swam in the radiant air. Then on the outer staircase, suddenly, I heard soft steps ascend the narrow flight. Save me, Great God! I see her--it is she! Whence com'st thou? speak, where hast thou been this night? What dost thou seek? who brings thee here thus late? Where has this lovely form reclined till day, While I alone must watch and weep and wait? Where, and on whom hast thou been smiling, say! Out, insolent traitress! canst thou come accurst, And offer to my kiss thy lips' ripe charms? What cravest thou? By what unhallowed thirst Darest thou allure me to thy jaded arms? Avaunt, begone! ghost of my mistress dead, Back to thy grave! avoid the morning's beam! Be my lost youth no more remembered! And when I think of thee, I'll know it was a dream! MUSE. Be calm! I beg thee, I implore! I shudder, hearing of thy pain. O dearest friend, thy wound once more Is opening to bleed again. Is it so very deep, alas! How slowly do the traces pass Of this world's troubles! Thou, my son, Forget her! let thy memory shun Even to this woman's very name, My pitying lips refuse to frame. POET. Shame upon her, who first Treason and falsehood taught! With grief and wrath accurst, Who set my brain distraught. Shame, woman baleful-eyed, Whose fatal love entombed In shadows of thy pride My April ere it bloomed. It was thy voice, thy smile, Thy poisoned glances bright, Which taught me to revile The semblance of delight. Thy grace of girlish years Murdered my peace, my sleep. If I lose faith in tears, 'T is that I saw thee weep. I yielded to thy power A child's simplicity. As to the dawn the flower, So oped my heart to thee. Doubtless this helpless heart Was thine without defence. Were 't not the better part To spare its innocence? Shame! thou who didst beget My earliest, youngest woe. The tears are streaming yet Which first thou madest flow. Quenchless this source is found Which thou hast first unsealed. It issues from a wound That never may be healed. But in the bitter wave I shall be clean restored, And from my soul shall lave Thy memory abhorred! MUSE. Poet, enough! Though but one single day Lasted thy dream of her who faithless proved, That day insult not; whatsoe'er thou say, Respect thy love, if thou would be beloved. If human weakness find the task too great Of pardoning the wrongs by others done, At least the torture spare thyself of hate, In place of pardon seek oblivion. The dead lie peaceful in the earth asleep, So our extinguished passions too, should rest. Dust are those relics also; let us keep Our hands from violence to their ashes blest. Why, in this story of keen pain, my friend, Wilt thou refuse naught but a dream to see? Does Nature causeless act, to no wise end? Think'st thou a heedless God afflicted thee? Mayhap the blow thou weepest was to save. Child, it has oped thy heart to seek relief; Sorrow is lord to man, and man a slave, None knows himself till he has walked with grief,-- A cruel law, but none the less supreme, Old as the world, yea, old as destiny. Sorrow baptizes us, a fatal scheme; All things at this sad price we still must buy. The harvest needs the dew to make it ripe, And man to live, to feel, has need of tears. Joy chooses a bruised plant to be her type, That, drenched with rain, still many a blossom bears. Didst thou not say this folly long had slept? Art thou not happy, young, a welcome guest? And those light pleasures that give life its zest, How wouldst thou value if thou hadst not wept? When, lying in the sunlight on the grass, Freely thou drink'st with some old friend--confess, Wouldst thou so cordially uplift thy glass, Hadst thou not weighed the worth of cheerfulness? Would flowers be so dear unto thy heart, The verse of Petrarch, warblings of the bird, Shakespeare and Nature, Angelo and Art, But that thine ancient sobs therein thou heard? Couldst thou conceive the ineffable peace of heaven, Night's silence, murmurs of the wave that flows, If sleeplessness and fever had not driven Thy thought to yearn for infinite repose? By a fair woman's love art thou not blest? When thou dost hold and clasp her hand in thine, Does not the thought of woes that once possessed, Make all the sweeter now her smile divine? Wander ye not together, thou and she, Midst blooming woods, on sands like silver bright? Does not the white wraith of the aspen-tree In that green palace, mark the path at night? And seest thou not, within the moon's pale ray, Her lovely form sink on thy breast again? If thou shouldst meet with Fortune on thy way, Wouldst thou not follow singing, in her train? What hast thou to regret? Immortal Hope Is shaped anew in thee by Sorrow's hand. Why hate experience that enlarged thy scope? Why curse the pain that made thy soul expand? Oh pity her! so false, so fair to see, Who from thine eyes such bitter tears did press, She was a woman. God revealed to thee, Through her, the secret of all happiness. Her task was hard; she loved thee, it may be, Yet must she break thy heart, so fate decreed. She knew the world, she taught it unto thee, Another reaps the fruit of her misdeed. Pity her! dreamlike did her love disperse, She saw thy wound--nor could thy pain remove. All was not falsehood in those tears of hers-- Pity her, though it were,--for thou canst love! POET. True! Hate is blasphemy. With horror's thrill, I start, This sleeping snake to see, Uncoil within my heart. Oh Goddess, hear my cries, My vow to thee is given, By my beloved's blue eyes, And by the azure heaven, By yonder spark of flame, Yon trembling pearl, the star That beareth Venus' name, And glistens from afar, By Nature's glorious scheme, The infinite grace of God, The planet's tranquil beam That cheers the traveler's road, The grass, the water-course, Woods, fields with dew impearled, The quenchless vital force, The sap of all the world,-- I banish from my heart This reckless passion's ghost, Mysterious shade, depart! In the dark past be lost! And thou whom once I met As friend, while thou didst live, The hour when I forget, I likewise should forgive. Let me forgive! I break The long-uniting spell. With a last tear, oh take, Take thou, a last farewell. Now, gold-haired, pensive Muse, On to our pleasures! Sing-- Some joyous carol choose, As in the dear old Spring. Mark, how the dew-drenched lawn Scents the auroral hour. Waken my love with dawn, And pluck her garden's flower. Immortal nature, see! Casts slumber's veil away. New born with her are we In morning's earliest ray. NOTES TO "EPISTLE" OF JOSHUA IBN VIVES OF ALLORQUI. The life and character of Paulus de Santa Maria are thus described by Dr. Graetz:-- "Among the Jews baptized in 1391, no other wrought so much harm to his race as the Rabbi Solomon Levi of Burgos, known to Christians as Paulus Burgensis, or de Santa Maria (born about 1351-52, died 1435) who rose to very high ecclesiastical and political rank.... He had no philosophical culture; on the contrary, as a Jew, he had been extremely devout, observing scrupulously all the rites, and regarded as a pillar of Judaism in his own circle.... Possessed by ambition and vanity, the synagogue where he had passed a short time in giving and receiving instruction, appeared to him too narrow and restricted a sphere. He longed for a bustling activity, aimed at a position at court, in whatever capacity, began to live on a grand scale, maintained a sumptuous equipage, a spirited team, and a numerous retinue of servants. As his affairs brought him into daily contact with Christians and entangled him in religious discussions, he studied ecclesiastical literature in order to display his erudition. The bloody massacre of 1391 robbed him of all hope of reaching eminence as a Jew, in his fortieth year, and he abruptly resolved to be baptized. The lofty degree of dignity which he afterwards attained in Church and State, may even then have floated alluringly before his mind. In order to profit by his apostasy, the convert Paulus de Santa Maria gave out that he had voluntarily embraced Christianity, the theological writings of the Scholiast Thomas of Aquinas having taken hold of his inmost convictions. The Jews, however, mistrusted his credulity, and knowing him well, they ascribed this step to his ambition and his thirst for fame. His family, consisting of a wife and son, renounced him when he changed his faith.... He studied theology in the University of Paris, and then visited the papal court of Avignon, where Cardinal Pedro de Juna had been elected papal antagonist to Benedict XIII. of Rome. The church feud and the schism between the two Popes offered the most favorable opportunity for intrigues and claims. Paulus, by his cleverness, his zeal, and his eloquence, won the favor of the Pope, who discerned in him a useful tool. Thus he became successively Archdeacon of Trevinjo, Canon of Seville, Bishop of Cartagena, Chancellor of Castile, and Privy Councillor to King Henry III. of Spain. With tongue and pen he attacked Judaism, and Jewish literature provided him with the necessary weapons. Intelligent Jews rightly divined in this convert to Christianity their bitterest enemy, and entered into a contest with him.... "The campaign against the malignity of Paul de Santa Maria was opened by a young man who had formerly sat at his feet, Joshua ben Joseph Ibn Vives, from the town of Lorca or Allorqui, a physician and Arabic scholar. In an epistle written in a tone of humility as from a docile pupil to a revered master, he deals his apostate teacher heavy blows, and under the show of doubt he shatters the foundations of Christianity. He begins by saying that the apostasy of his beloved teacher to whom his loyal spirit had formerly clung, has amazed him beyond measure and aroused in him many serious reflections. He can only conceive four possible motives for such a surprising step. Either Paulus has been actuated by ambition, love of wealth, pomp, and the satisfaction of the senses, or else by doubt of the truth of Judaism upon philosophic grounds, and has renounced therefore the religion which afforded him so little freedom and security; or else he has foreseen through the latest cruel persecutions of the Jews in Spain, the total extinction of the race; or, finally, he may have become convinced of the truth of Christianity. The writer enters therefore into an examination based upon his acquaintance with the character of his former master, as to which of these four motives is most likely to have occasioned the act. He cannot believe that ambition and covetousness prompted it, "For I remember when you used to be surrounded by wealth and attendants, you sighed regretfully for your previous humble station, for your retired life and communion with wisdom, and regarded your actual brilliant position as an unsatisfactory sham happiness. Neither can Allorqui admit that Paulus had been disturbed by philosophic scepticism, for to the day of his baptism he had observed all the Jewish customs and had only accepted that little kernel of philosophy which accords with faith, always rejecting the pernicious outward shell. He must also discard the theory that the sanguinary persecution of the Jews could have made Paulus despair of the possible continuation of the Jewish race, for only a small portion of the Jews dwelt among Christians, while the majority lived in Asia and enjoyed a certain independence. There remains only the conclusion that Paulus has tested the new dogmas and found them sufficient.... Allorqui therefore begs him to communicate his convictions and vanquish his pupil's doubts concerning Christianity. Instead of the general spread of divine doctrine and everlasting peace which the prophets had associated with the advent of the Messiah, only dissension and war reigned on earth. Indeed, after Jesus' appearance, frightful wars had but increased.... And even if Allorqui conceded the Messiahship of Jesus, the Immaculate Conception, the Resurrection, and all incomprehensible miracles, he could not reconcile himself to the idea of God becoming a man. Every enlightened conception of the Deity was at variance with it." [Page 77 et seq. Volume 8, Second half, Graetz' History of the Jews.] Marrano..--See Verse xix., Line 7th of "Epistle." The enforced recipients of baptism who remained in Spain formed a peculiar class, outwardly Christians, inwardly Jews. They might have been called Jewish-Christians. They were looked upon with suspicion by the Christian population, and shunned with a still more intense hatred by the loyal Jews who gave them the name of Marranos, the accursed. [Page 73.] "Master, if thou to thy prides' goal should come, Where wouldst thou throne--at Avignon or Rome?" Verse xxviii. 7, 8. This sentence occurs in another Epistle to Paulus by Profiat Duran. Verses 29 and 30 are paraphrases from an epistle to Paulus by Chasdai Crescas. "These are burning questions, from which the fire of the stake may be kindled. Christianity gives itself out as a new revelation in a certain sense completing and improving Judaism. But the revelation has so little efficacy, that in the prolonged schism in the Church, a new divine message is already needed to scatter the dangerous errors. Two Popes and their partisans fulminate against each other bulls of excommunication and condemn each other to profoundest hell. Where is the truth and certainty of revelation?" [Graetz' History of the Jews.] 
34762	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustration. See 34762-h.htm or 34762-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/34762/34762-h/34762-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/34762/34762-h.zip) Transcriber's note: In many places, this work contains asterisks within words (as a form of censorship?) or to represent missing fragments of text. These asterisks, while they appear clumsy, are preserved in order to avoid changing the meaning of the text. Because of the prevalence of asterisks in the work, thought breaks are denoted by strings of dashes instead of the standard strings of asterisks. Text surrounded by underscores is italicized in the original work. The string [oe] is used to refer to the oe ligature, which is not available in this character set. FANNY WITH OTHER POEMS. [Illustration: WEEHAWKEN.] New-York Harper & Brothers FANNY, "A fairy vision Of some gay creatures of the element, That in the colours of the rainbow live, And play in the plighted clouds." MILTON. FROM THE EDITION OF 1821. F. G. Halleck. New-York: Harper & Brothers, 82 Cliff Street 1846. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1839, by Harper & Brothers, in the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New-York. CONTENTS. PAGE Fanny ...........................................5 The Recorder ...................................73 EPISTLES, ETC. To W*lt*r B*wne, Esq. ..........................95 To ***** ......................................101 A Fragment ....................................107 Song, by Miss *** .............................111 Song, for the Drama of the Spy ................115 Address at the Opening of a new Theatre .......117 The Rhyme of the Ancient Coaster ..............121 FANNY. I. Fanny was younger once than she is now, And prettier of course: I do not mean To say that there are wrinkles on her brow; Yet, to be candid, she is past eighteen-- Perhaps past twenty--but the girl is shy About her age, and Heaven forbid that I II. Should get myself in trouble by revealing A secret of this sort; I have too long Loved pretty women with a poet's feeling, And when a boy, in day dream and in song, Have knelt me down and worshipp'd them: alas! They never thank'd me for't--but let that pass. III. I've felt full many a heart-ache in my day, At the mere rustling of a muslin gown, And caught some dreadful colds, I blush to say, While shivering in the shade of beauty's frown. They say her smiles are sunbeams--it may be-- But never a sunbeam would she throw on me. IV. But Fanny's is an eye that you may gaze on For half an hour, without the slightest harm; E'en when she wore her smiling summer face on There was but little danger, and the charm That youth and wealth once gave, has bade farewell. Hers is a sad, sad tale--'tis mine its woes to tell. V. Her father kept, some fifteen years ago, A retail dry-good shop in Chatham-street, And nursed his little earnings, sure though slow, Till, having muster'd wherewithal to meet The gaze of the great world, he breathed the air Of Pearl-street--and "set up" in Hanover-square. VI. Money is power, 'tis said--I never tried; I'm but a poet--and bank-notes to me Are curiosities, as closely eyed, Whene'er I get them, as a stone would be, Toss'd from the moon on Doctor Mitchill's table, Or classic brickbat from the tower of Babel. VII. But he I sing of well has known and felt That money hath a power and a dominion; For when in Chatham-street the good man dwelt, No one would give a sous for his opinion. And though his neighbours were extremely civil, Yet, on the whole, they thought him--a poor devil, VIII. A decent kind of person; one whose head Was not of brains particularly full; It was not known that he had ever said Any thing worth repeating--'twas a dull, Good, honest man--what Paulding's muse would call A "cabbage head"--but he excelled them all IX. In that most noble of the sciences, The art of making money; and he found The zeal for quizzing him grew less and less, As he grew richer; till upon the ground Of Pearl-street, treading proudly in the might And majesty of wealth, a sudden light X. Flash'd like the midnight lightning on the eyes Of all who knew him; brilliant traits of mind, And genius, clear and countless as the dies Upon the peacock's plumage; taste refined, Wisdom and wit, were his--perhaps much more. 'Twas strange they had not found it out before. XI. In this quick transformation, it is true That cash had no small share; but there were still Some other causes, which then gave a new Impulse to head and heart, and join'd to fill His brain with knowledge; for there first he met The editor of the New-York Gazette, XII. The sapient Mr. L**G. The world of him Knows much, yet not one half so much as he Knows of the world. Up to its very brim The goblet of his mind is sparkling free With lore and learning. Had proud Sheba's queen, In all her bloom and beauty, but have seen XIII. This modern Solomon, the Israelite, Earth's monarch as he was, had never won her. He would have hang'd himself for very spite, And she, bless'd woman, might have had the honour Of some neat "paragraphs"--worth all the lays That Judah's minstrel warbled in her praise. XIV. Her star arose too soon; but that which sway'd Th' ascendant at our merchant's natal hour Was bright with better destiny--its aid Led him to pluck within the classic bower Of bulletins, the blossoms of true knowledge; And L**G supplied the loss of school and college. XV. For there he learn'd the news some minutes sooner Than others could; and to distinguish well The different signals, whether ship or schooner, Hoisted at Staten Island; and to tell The change of wind, and of his neighbour's fortunes, And, best of all--he there learn'd self-importance. XVI. Nor were these all the advantages derived From change of scene; for near his domicil, He of the pair of polish'd lamps then lived, And in my hero's promenades, at will, Could he behold them burning--and their flame Kindled within his breast the love of fame, XVII. And politics, and country; the pure glow Of patriot ardour, and the consciousness That talents such as his might well bestow A lustre on the city; she would bless His name; and that some service should be done her, He pledged "life, fortune, and his sacred honour." XVIII. And when the sounds of music and of mirth, Bursting from Fashion's groups assembled there, Were heard, as round their lone plebeian hearth Fanny and he were seated--he would dare To whisper fondly, that the time might come When he and his could give as brilliant routs at home. XIX. And oft would Fanny near that mansion linger, When the cold winter moon was high in heaven, And trace out, by the aid of Fancy's finger, Cards for some future party, to be given When she, in turn, should be a _belle_, and they Had lived their little hour, and pass'd away. XX. There are some happy moments in this lone And desolate world of ours, that well repay The toil of struggling through it, and atone For many a long, sad night and weary day. They come upon the mind like some wild air Of distant music, when we know not where, XXI. Or whence, the sounds are brought from, and their power, Though brief, is boundless. That far, future home, Oft dream'd of, beckons near--it's rose-wreathed bower, And cloudless skies before us: we become Changed on the instant--all gold leaf and gilding: This is, in vulgar phrase, call'd "castle building." XXII. But these, like sunset clouds, fade soon; 'tis vain To bid them linger longer, or to ask On what day they intend to call again; And, surely, 'twere a philosophic task, Worthy a Mitchill, in his hours of leisure, To find some means to summon them at pleasure. XXIII. There certainly are powers of doing this, In some degree at least--for instance, drinking. Champagne will bathe the heart a while in bliss, And keep the head a little time from thinking Of cares or creditors--the best wine in town You'll get from Lynch--the cash must be paid down. XXIV. But if you are a bachelor, like me, And spurn all chains, even though made of roses, I'd recommend segars--there is a free And happy spirit, that, unseen, reposes On the dim shadowy clouds that hover o'er you, When smoking quietly with a warm fire before you. XXV. Dear to the exile is his native land, In memory's twilight beauty seen afar: Dear to the broker is a note of hand, Collaterally secured--the polar star Is dear at midnight to the sailor's eyes, And dear are Bristed's volumes at "half price;" XXVI. But dearer far to me each fairy minute Spent in that fond forgetfulness of grief; There is an airy web of magic in it, As in Othello's pocket-handkerchief, Veiling the wrinkles on the brow of sorrow, The gathering gloom to-day, the thunder cloud to-morrow XXVII. And these are innocent thoughts--a man may sit Upon a bright throne of his own creation; Untortured by the ghastly sprites that flit Around the many, whose exalted station Has been attained by means 'twere pain to hint on, Just for the rhyme's sake--instance Mr. Cl*n*on. XXVIII. He struggled hard, but not in vain, and breathes The mountain air at last; but there are others Who strove, like him, to win the glittering wreaths Of power, his early partisans and brothers, That linger yet in dust from whence they sprung, Unhonour'd and unpaid, though, luckily, unhung. XXIX. 'Twas theirs to fill with gas the huge balloon Of party; and they hoped, when it arose, To soar like eagles in the blaze of noon, Above the gaping crowd of friends and foes. Alas! like Guillé's car, it soar'd without them, And left them with a mob to jeer and flout them. XXX. Though Fanny's moonlight dreams were sweet as those I've dwelt so long upon--they were more stable; Hers were not "castles in the air" that rose Based upon nothing; for her sire was able, As well she knew, to "buy out" the one half Of Fashion's glittering train, that nightly quaff XXXI. Wine, wit, and wisdom, at a midnight rout, From dandy coachmen, whose "exquisite" grin And "ruffian" lounge flash brilliantly without, Down to their brother dandies ranged within, Gay as the Brussels carpeting they tread on, And sapient as the oysters they are fed on. XXXII. And Rumour (she's a famous liar, yet 'Tis wonderful how easy we believe her) Had whisper'd he was rich, and all he met In Wall-street, nodded, smiled, and "tipp'd the beaver;" All, from Mr. Gelston, the collector, Down to the broker, and the bank director. XXXIII. A few brief years pass'd over, and his rank Among the worthies of that street was fix'd; He had become director of a bank, And six insurance offices, and mix'd Familiarly, as one among his peers, With grocers, dry-good merchants, auctioneers, XXXIV. Brokers of all grades--stock and pawn--and Jews Of all religions, who at noonday form, On 'Change, that brotherhood the moral muse Delights in, where the heart is pure and warm, And each exerts his intellectual force To cheat his neighbour--legally, of course. XXXV. And there he shone a planetary star, Circled around by lesser orbs, whose beams From his were borrow'd. The simile is not far From truth--for many bosom friends, it seems, Did borrow of him, and sometimes forget To pay--indeed, they have not paid him yet. XXXVI. But these he deem'd as trifles, when each mouth Was open in his praise, and plaudits rose Upon his willing ear, "like the sweet south Upon a bank of violets," from those Who knew his talents, virtues, and so forth; That is--knew how much money he was worth. XXXVII. Alas! poor human nature; had he been But satisfied with this, his golden days Their setting hour of darkness had not seen, And he might still (in the mercantile phrase) Be living "in good order and condition;" But he was ruined by that jade Ambition, XXXVIII. "That last infirmity of noble minds," Whose spell, like whiskey, your true patriot liquor, To politics the lofty hearts inclines Of all, from Clinton down to the bill-sticker Of a ward-meeting. She came slyly creeping To his bedside, where he lay snug and sleeping. XXXIX. Her brow was turban'd with a bucktail wreath, A broach of terrapin her bosom wore, Tompkins' letter was just seen beneath Her arm, and in her hand on high she bore A National Advocate--Pell's polite Review Lay at her feet--'twas pommell'd black and blue. XL. She was in fashion's elegant undress, Muffled from throat to ankle; and her hair Was all "_en papillotes_," each auburn tress Prettily pinn'd apart. You well might swear She was no beauty; yet, when "made up," ready For visiters, 'twas quite another lady. XLI. Since that wise pedant, Johnson, was in fashion, Manners have changed as well as moons; and he Would fret himself once more into a passion, Should he return (which heaven forbid!), and see, How strangely from his standard dictionary, The meaning of some words is made to vary. XLII. For instance, an _undress_ at present means The wearing a pelisse, a shawl, or so; Or any thing you please, in short, that screens The face, and hides the form from top to toe; Of power to brave a quizzing-glass, or storm-- 'Tis worn in summer, when the weather's warm. XLIII. But a full dress is for a winter's night. The most genteel is made of "woven air;" That kind of classic cobweb, soft and light, Which Lady Morgan's Ida used to wear. And ladies, this aërial manner dress'd in, Look Eve-like, angel-like, and interesting. XLIV. But Miss Ambition was, as I was saying, "_Dèshabillée_"--his bedside tripping near, And, gently on his nose her fingers laying, She roar'd out Tammany! in his frighted ear. The potent word awoke him from his nap, And then she vanish'd, whisp'ring _verbum sap_. XLV. The last words were beyond his comprehension, For he had left off schooling, ere the Greek Or Latin classics claim'd his mind's attention: Besides, he often had been heard to speak Contemptuously of all that sort of knowledge, Taught so profoundly in Columbia College. XLVI. We owe the ancients something. You have read Their works, no doubt--at least in a translation; Yet there was argument in what he said, I scorn equivocation or evasion, And own it must, in candour, be confess'd, They were an ignorant set of men at best. XLVII. 'Twas their misfortune to be born too soon By centuries, and in the wrong place too; They never saw a steamboat, or balloon, Velocipede, or Quarterly Review; Or wore a pair of Baehr's black satin breeches, Or read an Almanac, or Clinton's Speeches. XLVIII. In short, in every thing we far outshine them,-- Art, science, taste, and talent; and a stroll Through this enlighten'd city would refine them More than ten years hard study of the whole Their genius has produced of rich and rare-- God bless the Corporation and the Mayor! XLIX. In sculpture, we've a grace the Grecian master, Blushing, had own'd his purest model lacks; We've Mr. Bogart in the best of plaster, The Witch of Endor in the best of wax, Besides the head of Franklin on the roof Of Mr. Lang, both jest and weather proof. L. And on our City Hall a Justice stands; A neater form was never made of board, Holding majestically in her hands A pair of steelyards and a wooden sword; And looking down with complaisant civility-- Emblem of dignity and durability. LI. In painting, we have Trumbull's proud _chef d'[oe]uvre_, Blending in one the funny and the fine: His "Independence" will endure for ever, And so will Mr. Allen's lottery sign; And all that grace the Academy of Arts, From Dr. Hosack's face to Bonaparte's. LII. In architecture, our unrivall'd skill Cullen's magnesian shop has loudly spoken To an admiring world; and better still Is Gautier's fairy palace at Hoboken. In music, we've the Euterpian Society, And amateurs, a wonderful variety. LIII. In physic, we have Francis and M'Neven, Famed for long heads, short lectures, and long bills; And Quackenboss and others, who from heaven Were rain'd upon us in a shower of pills; They'd beat the deathless Esculapius hollow, And make a starveling druggist of Apollo. LIV. And who, that ever slumber'd at the Forum, But owns the first of orators we claim; Cicero would have bow'd the knee before 'em-- And for law eloquence, we've Doctor Graham. Compared with him, their Justins and Quintillians Had dwindled into second-rate civilians. LV. For purity and chastity of style, There's Pell's preface, and puffs by Horne and Waite. For penetration deep, and learned toil, And all that stamps an author truly great, Have we not Bristed's ponderous tomes? a treasure For any man of patience and of leisure. LVI. Oxonian Bristed! many a foolscap page He, in his time, hath written, and moreover (What few will do in this degenerate age) Hath read his own works, as you may discover By counting his quotations from himself-- You'll find the books on any auction shelf. LVII. I beg Great Britain's pardon; 'tis not meant To claim this Oxford scholar as our own: That he was shipp'd off here to represent Her literature among us, is well known; And none could better fill the lofty station Of Learning's envoy from the British nation. LVIII. We fondly hope that he will be respected At home, and soon obtain a place or pension. We should regret to see him live neglected, Like Fearon, Ashe, and others we could mention; Who paid us friendly visits to abuse Our country, and find food for the reviews. LIX. But to return.--The Heliconian waters Are sparkling in their native fount no more, And after years of wandering, the nine daughters Of poetry have found upon our shore A happier home, and on their sacred shrines Glow in immortal ink, the polish'd lines LX. Of Woodworth, Doctor Farmer, Moses Scott-- Names hallow'd by their reader's sweetest smile; And who that reads at all has read them not? "That blind old man of Scio's rocky isle," Homer, was well enough; but would he ever Have written, think ye, the Backwoodsman? never. LXI. Alas! for Paulding--I regret to see In such a stanza one whose giant powers, Seen in their native element, will be Known to a future age, the pride of ours. There is none breathing who can better wield The battle-axe of satire. On its field LXII. The wreath he fought for he has bravely won, Long be its laurel green around his brow! It is too true, I'm somewhat fond of fun And jesting; but for once I'm serious now. Why is he sipping weak Castalian dews? The muse has damn'd him--let him damn the muse LXIII. But to return once more: the ancients fought Some tolerable battles. Marathon Is still a theme for high and holy thought, And many a poet's lay. We linger on The page that tells us of the brave and free, And reverence thy name, unmatch'd Thermopylæ. LXIV. And there were spirited troops in other days-- The Roman legion and the Spartan band, And Swartwout's gallant corps, the Iron Grays-- Soldiers who met their foemen hand to hand, Or swore, at least, to meet them undismay'd; Yet what were these to General Laight's brigade LXV. Of veterans? nursed in that Free School of glory, The New-York State Militia. From Bellevue, E'en to the Battery flagstaff, the proud story Of their man[oe]uvres at the last review Has rang; and Clinton's "order" told afar He never led a better corps to war. LXVI. What, Egypt, was thy magic, to the tricks Of Mr. Charles, Judge Spencer, or Van Buren? The first with cards, the last in politics, A conjuror's fame for years have been securing. And who would now the Athenian dramas read When he can get "Wall-street," by Mr. Mead. LXVII. I might say much about our letter'd men, Those "grave and reverend seigniors," who compose Our learn'd societies--but here my pen Stops short; for they themselves, the rumour goes, The exclusive privilege by patent claim, Of trumpeting (as the phrase is) their own fame. LXVIII. And, therefore, I am silent. It remains To bless the hour the Corporation took it Into their heads to give the rich in brains, The worn-out mansion of the poor in pocket, Once "the old almshouse," now a school of wisdom, Sacred to Scudder's shells and Dr. Griscom. LXIX. But whither am I wandering? The esteem I bear "this fair city of the heart," To me a dear enthusiastic theme, Has forced me, all unconsciously, to part Too long from him, the hero of my story. Where was he?--waking from his dream of glory. LXX. And she, the lady of his dream, had fled, And left him somewhat puzzled and confused. He understood, however, half she said; And that is quite as much as we are used To comprehend, or fancy worth repeating, In speeches heard at any public meeting. LXXI. And the next evening found him at the Hall; There he was welcomed by the cordial hand, And met the warm and friendly grasp of all Who take, like watchmen, there, their nightly stand, A ring, as in a boxing match, procuring, To bet on Clinton, Tompkins, or Van Buren. LXXII. 'Twas a propitious moment; for a while The waves of party were at rest. Upon Each complacent brow was gay good humour's smile; And there was much of wit, and jest, and pun, And high amid the circle, in great glee, Sat Croaker's old acquaintance, John Targee. LXXIII. His jokes excell'd the rest, and oft he sang Songs, patriotic, as in duty bound. He had a little of the "nasal twang Heard at conventicle;" but yet you found In him a dash of purity and brightness, That spoke the man of taste and of politeness. LXXIV. For he had been, it seems, the bosom friend Of England's prettiest bard, Anacreon Moore. They met when he, the bard, came here to lend His mirth and music to this favourite shore; For, as the proverb saith, "birds of a feather Instinctively will flock and fly together." LXXV. The winds that wave thy cedar boughs are breathing, "Lake of the Dismal Swamp!" that poet's name; And the spray-showers their noonday halos wreathing Around "Cohoes," are brighten'd by his fame. And bright its sunbeam o'er St. Lawrence smiles, Her million lilies, and her thousand isles. LXXVI. We hear his music in her oarsmen's lay, And where her church-bells "toll the evening chime;" Yet when to him the grateful heart would pay Its homage, now, and in all coming time, Up springs a doubtful question whether we Owe it to Tara's minstrel or Targee. LXXVII. Together oft they wander'd--many a spot Now consecrated, as the minstrel's theme, By words of beauty ne'er to be forgot, Their mutual feet have trod; and when the stream Of thought and feeling flow'd in mutual speech, 'Twere vain to tell how much each taught to each. LXXVIII. But, from the following song, it would appear That he of Erin from the sachem took The model of his "Bower of Bendemeer," One of the sweetest airs in Lalla Rookh; 'Tis to be hoped that in his next edition, This, the original, will find admission. SONG. There's a barrel of porter at Tammany Hall, And the bucktails are swigging it all the night long; In the time of my boyhood 'twas pleasant to call For a seat and segar, mid the jovial throng. That beer and those bucktails I never forget; But oft, when alone, and unnoticed by all, I think, is the porter cask foaming there yet? Are the bucktails still swigging at Tammany Hall? No! the porter was out long before it was stale, But some blossoms on many a nose brightly shone; And the speeches inspired by the fumes of the ale, Had the fragrance of porter when porter was gone. How much Cozzens will draw of such beer ere he dies, Is a question of moment to me and to all; For still dear to my soul, as 'twas then to my eyes, Is that barrel of porter at Tammany Hall. SONG. There's a bower of roses by Bendemeer's stream, And the nightingale sings round it all the night long, In the time of my childhood 'twas like a sweet dream To sit in the roses and hear the bird's song. That bower and its music I never forget; But oft, when alone, in the bloom of the year, I think, is the nightingale singing there yet? Are the roses still bright by the calm Bendemeer? No! the roses soon wither'd that hung o'er the wave, But some blossoms were gather'd while freshly they shone; And a dew was distill'd from their flowers, that gave All the fragrance of summer when summer was gone. Thus memory draws from delight ere it dies, An essence that breathes of it many a year; Thus bright to my soul, as 'twas then to my eyes, Is that bower on the banks of the calm Bendemeer. LXXIX. For many months my hero ne'er neglected To take his ramble there, and soon found out, In much less time than one could have expected, What 'twas they all were quarrelling about. He learn'd the party countersigns by rote, And when to clap his hands, and how to vote. LXXX. He learn'd that Clinton became Governor Somehow by chance, when we were all asleep; That he had neither sense, nor talent, nor Any good quality, and would not keep His place an hour after the next election-- So powerful was the voice of disaffection. LXXXI. That he was a mere puppet made to play A thousand tricks, while Spencer touch'd the springs-- Spencer, the mighty Warwick of his day, "That setter up, and puller down of kings," Aided by Miller, Pell, and Doctor Graham, And other men of equal worth and fame. LXXXII. And that he'd set the people at defiance, By placing knaves and fools in public stations; And that his works in literature and science Were but a schoolboy's web of misquotations; And that he'd quoted from the devil even-- "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." LXXXIII. To these authentic facts each bucktail swore; But Clinton's friends averr'd, in contradiction, They were but fables, told by Mr. Noah, Who had a privilege to deal in fiction, Because he'd written travels, and a melo- Drama; and was, withal, a pleasant fellow. LXXXIV. And they declared that Tompkins was no better Than he should be; that he had borrow'd money, And paid it--not in cash--but with a letter; And though some trifling service he had done, he Still wanted spirit, energy, and fire; And was disliked by--Mr. M'Intyre. LXXXV. In short, each one with whom in conversation He join'd, contrived to give him different views Of men and measures; and the information Which he obtain'd, but aided to confuse His brain. At best, 'twas never very clear; And now 'twas turn'd with politics and beer. LXXXVI. And he was puff'd, and flatter'd, and caress'd By all, till he sincerely thought that nature Had form'd him for an alderman at least-- Perhaps, a member of the legislature; And that he had the talents, ten times over, Of H*n*y M**gs, or P*t*r H. W*nd*ver. LXXXVII. The man was mad, 'tis plain, and merits pity, Or he had never dared, in such a tone, To speak of two great persons, whom the city, With pride and pleasure, points to as her own. Men, wise in council, brilliant in debate, "The expectancy and rose of the fair state." LXXXVIII. The one--for a pure style and classic manner, Is--Mr. Sachem Mooney far before. The other, in his speech about the banner, Spell-bound his audience until they swore That such a speech was never heard till then, And never would be--till he spoke again. LXXXIX. Though 'twas presumptuous in this friend of ours To think of rivalling these, I must allow That still the man had talents; and the powers Of his capacious intellect were now Improved by foreign travel, and by reading, And at the Hall he'd learn'd, of course, good breeding. XC. He had read the newspapers with great attention, Advertisements and all; and Riley's book Of travels--valued for its rich invention; And Day and Turner's Price Current; and took The Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews; And also Colonel Pell's; and, to amuse XCI. His leisure hours with classic tale and story, Longworth's Directory, and Mead's Wall-street, And Mr. Delaplaine's Repository; And Mitchill's scientific works complete, With other standard books of modern days, Lay on his table, cover'd with green baize. XCII. His travels had extended to Bath races; And Bloomingdale and Bergen he had seen, And Harlæm Heights; and many other places, By sea and land, had visited; and been, In a steamboat of the Vice President's, To Staten-Island once--for fifty cents. XCIII. And he had dined, by special invitation, On turtle, with "the party" at Hoboken; And thank'd them for his card in an oration, Declared to be the shortest ever spoken. And he had stroll'd one day o'er Weehawk hill: A day worth all the rest--he recollects it still. XCIV. Weehawken! In thy mountain scenery yet, All we adore of nature in her wild And frolic hour of infancy, is met; And never has a summer's morning smiled Upon a lovelier scene, than the full eye Of the enthusiast revels on--when high XCV. Amid thy forest solitudes, he climbs O'er crags, that proudly tower above the deep, And knows that sense of danger which sublimes The breathless moment--when his daring step Is on the verge of the cliff, and he can hear The low dash of the wave with startled ear, XCVI. Like the death-music of his coming doom, And clings to the green turf with desperate force, As the heart clings to life; and when resume The currents in his veins their wonted course, There lingers a deep feeling--like the moan Of wearied ocean, when the storm is gone. XCVII. In such an hour he turns, and on his view, Ocean, and earth, and heaven, burst before him; Clouds slumbering at his feet, and the clear blue Of summer's sky in beauty bending o'er him-- The city bright below; and far away, Sparkling in golden light, his own romantic bay. XCVIII. Tall spire, and glittering roof, and battlement, And banners floating in the sunny air; And white sails o'er the calm blue waters bent, Green isle, and circling shore, are blended there In wild reality. When life is old, And many a scene forgot, the heart will hold XCIX. Its memory of this; nor lives there one Whose infant breath was drawn, or boyhood's days Of happiness were pass'd beneath that sun, That in his manhood's prime can calmly gaze Upon that bay, or on that mountain stand, Nor feel the prouder of his native land. C. "This may be poetry, for aught I know," Said an old, worthy friend of mine, while leaning Over my shoulder as I wrote, "although I can't exactly comprehend its meaning. For my part, I have long been a petitioner To Mr. John M'Comb, the street-commissioner, CI. "That he would think of Weehawk, and would lay it Handsomely out in avenue and square; Then tax the land, and make its owners pay it (As is the usual plan pursued elsewhere); Blow up the rocks, and sell the wood for fuel-- 'Twould save us many a dollar, and a duel." CII. The devil take you and John M'Comb, said I; Lang, in its praise, has penn'd one paragraph, And promised me another. I defy, With such assistance, yours and the world's laugh; And half believe that Paulding, on this theme, Might be a poet--strange as it may seem. CIII. For even our traveller felt, when home returning From that day's tour, as on the deck he stood, The fire of poetry within him burning; "Albeit unused to the rhyming mood;" And with a pencil on his knee he wrote The following flaming lines TO THE HORSEBOAT. 1 Away--o'er the wave to the home we are seeking, Bark of my hope! ere the evening be gone; There's a wild, wild note in the curlew's shrieking; There's a whisper of death in the wind's low moan. 2 Though blue and bright are the heavens above me, And the stars are asleep on the quiet sea; And hearts I love, and hearts that love me, Are beating beside me merrily, 3 Yet, far in the west, where the day's faded roses, Touch'd by the moonbeam, are withering fast; Where the half-seen spirit of twilight reposes, Hymning the dirge of the hours that are past, 4 There, where the ocean-wave sparkles at meeting (As sunset dreams tell us) the kiss of the sky, On his dim, dark cloud is the infant storm sitting, And beneath the horizon his lightnings are nigh. 5 Another hour--and the death-word is given, Another hour--and his lightnings are here; Speed! speed thee, my bark; ere the breeze of even Is lost in the tempest, our home will be near. 6 Then away o'er the wave, while thy pennant is streaming In the shadowy light, like a shooting star; Be swift as the thought of the wanderer, dreaming, In a stranger land, of his fireside afar. 7 And while memory lingers I'll fondly believe thee A being with life and its best feelings warm; And freely the wild song of gratitude weave thee, Bless'd spirit! that bore me and mine from the storm. CIV. But where is Fanny? She has long been thrown Where cheeks and roses wither--in the shade. The age of chivalry, you know, is gone; And although, as I once before have said, I love a pretty face to adoration, Yet, still, I must preserve my reputation, CV. As a true dandy of the modern schools. One hates to be oldfashion'd; it would be A violation of the latest rules, To treat the sex with too much courtesy. 'Tis not to worship beauty, as she glows In all her diamond lustre, that the beaux CVI. Of these enlighten'd days at evening crowd, Where fashion welcomes in her rooms of light, That "dignified obedience; that proud Submission," which, in times of yore, the knight Gave to his "ladye-love," is now a scandal, And practised only by your Goth or Vandal. CVII. To lounge in graceful attitudes--be stared Upon, the while, by every fair one's eye, And stare one's self, in turn; to be prepared To dart upon the trays, as swiftly by The dexterous Simon bears them, and to take One's share, at least, of coffee, cream, and cake, CVIII. Is now to be "the ton." The pouting lip, And sad, upbraiding eye of the poor girl, Who hardly of joy's cup one drop can sip, Ere in the wild confusion, and the whirl, And tumult of the hour, its bubbles vanish, Must now be disregarded. One must banish CIX. Those antiquated feelings, that belong To feudal manners and a barbarous age. Time was--when woman "pour'd her soul" in song, That all was hush'd around. 'Tis now "the rage" To deem a song, like bugle-tones in battle, A signal note, that bids each tongue's artillery rattle. CX. And, therefore, I have made Miss Fanny wait My leisure. She had changed, as you will see, as Much as her worthy sire, and made as great Proficiency in taste and high ideas. The careless smile of other days was gone, And every gesture spoke "_q'en dira-t' on_?" CXI. She long had known that in her father's coffers, And also to his credit in the banks, There was some cash; and therefore all the offers Made her, by gentlemen of the middle ranks, Of heart and hand, had spurn'd, as far beneath One whose high destiny it was to breathe, CXII. Ere long, the air of Broadway or Park Place, And reign a fairy queen in fairy land; Display in the gay dance her form of grace, Or touch with rounded arm and gloveless hand, Harp or piano.--Madame Catilani Forgot a while, and every eye on Fanny. CXIII. And in anticipation of that hour, Her star of hope--her paradise of thought, She'd had as many masters as the power Of riches could bestow; and had been taught The thousand nameless graces that adorn The daughters of the wealthy and high born. CXIV. She had been noticed at some public places (The Battery, and the balls of Mr. Whale), For hers was one of those attractive faces, That when you gaze upon them, never fail To bid you look again; there was a beam, A lustre in her eye, that oft would seem CXV. A little like effrontery; and yet The lady meant no harm; her only aim Was but to be admired by all she met, And the free homage of the heart to claim; And if she show'd too plainly this intention, Others have done the same--'twas not of her invention. CXVI. She shone at every concert; where are bought Tickets, by all who wish them, for a dollar; She patronised the Theatre, and thought That Wallack look'd extremely well in Rolla; She fell in love, as all the ladies do, With Mr. Simpson--talked as loudly, too, CXVII. As any beauty of the highest grade, To the gay circle in the box beside her; And when the pit--half vex'd and half afraid, With looks of smother'd indignation eyed her, She calmly met their gaze, and stood before 'em, Smiling at vulgar taste and mock decorum. CXVIII. And though by no means a _bas bleu_, she had For literature a most becoming passion; Had skimm'd the latest novels, good and bad, And read the Croakers, when they were in fashion; And Doctor Chalmers' sermons, of a Sunday; And Woodworth's Cabinet, and the new Salmagundi. CXIX. She was among the first and warmest patrons Of Griscom's _conversaziónes_ where In rainbow groups, our bright-eyed maids and matrons, On science bent, assemble; to prepare Themselves for acting well, in life, their part As wives and mothers. There she learn'd by heart CXX. Words, to the witches in Macbeth unknown. _Hydraulics_, _hydrostatics_, and _pneumatics_, _Dioptrics_, _optics_, _katoptrics_, _carbon_, _Chlorine_, and _iodine_, and _aërostatics_; Also,--why frogs, for want of air, expire; And how to set the Tappan sea on fire! CXXI. In all the modern languages she was Exceedingly well versed; and had devoted, To their attainment, far more time than has, By the best teachers lately, been allotted; For she had taken lessons, twice a week, For a full month in each; and she could speak CXXII. French and Italian, equally as well As Chinese, Portuguese, or German; and, What is still more surprising, she could spell Most of our longest English words off hand; Was quite familiar in Low Dutch and Spanish, And thought of studying modern Greek and Danish. CXXIII. She sang divinely: and in "Love's young dream," And "Fanny dearest," and "The soldier's bride;" And every song, whose dear delightful theme, Is "Love, still love," had oft till midnight tried Her finest, loftiest "pigeon-wings" of sound, Waking the very watchmen far around. CXXIV. For her pure taste in dress, I can appeal to Madame Bouquet, and Monsieur Pardessus; She was, in short, a woman you might kneel to, If kneeling were in fashion; or if you Were wearied of your duns and single life, And wanted a few thousands and a wife. 1819. CXXV. * * * * * * * * * * CXXVI. "There was a sound of revelry by night;" Broadway was throng'd with coaches, and within A mansion of the best of brick, the bright And eloquent eyes of beauty bade begin The dance; and music's tones swell'd wild and high, And hearts and heels kept tune in tremulous ecstasy. CXXVII. For many a week, the note of preparation Had sounded through all circles far and near; And some five hundred cards of invitation Bade beau and belle in full costume appear; There was a most magnificent variety, All quite select, and of the first society. CXXVIII. That is to say--the rich and the well-bred, The arbiters of fashion and gentility, In different grades of splendour, from the head Down to the very toe of our nobility: Ladies, remarkable for handsome eyes Or handsome fortunes--learned men, and wise: CXXIX. Statesmen, and officers of the militia-- In short, the "first society"--a phrase, Which you may understand as best may fit you Besides the blackest fiddlers of those days, Placed like their sire, Timotheus, on high, With horsehair fiddle-bows and teeth of ivory. CXXX. The carpets were roll'd up the day before, And, with a breath, two rooms became but one, Like man and wife--and, on the polish'd floor, Chalk in the artists' plastic hand had done All that chalk could do--in young Eden's bowers They seemed to tread, and their feet press'd on flowers. CXXXI. And when the thousand lights of spermaceti Stream'd like a shower of sunbeams--and free tresses Wild as the heads that waved them--and a pretty Collection of the latest Paris dresses Wander'd about the rooms like things divine, It was, as I was told, extremely fine. CXXXII. The love of fun, fine faces, and good eating, Brought many who were tired of self and home; And some were there in the high hope of meeting The lady of their bosom's love--and some To study that deep science, how to please, And manners in high life, and high-soul'd courtesies. CXXXIII. And he, the hero of the night, was there, In breeches of light drab, and coat of blue. Taste was conspicuous in his powder'd hair, And in his frequent _jeux de mots_, that drew Peals of applauses from the listeners round, Who were delighted--as in duty bound. CXXXIV. 'Twas Fanny's father--Fanny near him stood, Her power, resistless--and her wish, command; And Hope's young promises were all made good; "She reign'd a fairy queen in fairy land;" Her dream of infancy a dream no more, And then how beautiful the dress she wore! CXXXV. Ambition with the sire had kept her word. He had the rose, no matter for its thorn, And he seem'd happy as a summer bird, Careering on wet wing to meet the morn. Some said there was a cloud upon his brow; It might be--but we'll not discuss that now. CXXXVI. I left him making rhymes while crossing o'er The broad and perilous wave of the North River. He bade adieu, when safely on the shore, To poetry--and, as he thought, for ever. That night his dream (if after deeds make known Our plans in sleep) was an enchanting one. CXXXVII. He woke, in strength, like Samson from his slumber, And walk'd Broadway, enraptured the next day; Purchased a house there--I've forgot the number-- And sign'd a mortgage and a bond, for pay. Gave, in the slang phrase, Pearl-street the go-by, And cut, for several months, St. Tammany. CXXXVIII. Bond, mortgage, title-deeds, and all completed, He bought a coach and half a dozen horses (The bill's at Lawrence's--not yet receipted-- You'll find the amount upon his list of losses), Then fill'd his rooms with servants, and whatever Is necessary for a "genteel liver." CXXXIX. This last removal fix'd him: every stain Was blotted from his "household coat," and he Now "show'd the world he was a gentleman," And, what is better, could afford to be; His step was loftier than it was of old, His laugh less frequent, and his manner told CXL. What lovers call "unutterable things"-- That sort of dignity was in his mien Which awes the gazer into ice, and brings To recollection some great man we've seen, The Governor, perchance, whose eye and frown, 'Twas shrewdly guess'd, would knock Judge Skinner down. CXLI. And for "Resources," both of purse and head, He was a subject worthy Bristed's pen; Believed devoutly all his flatterers said, And deem'd himself a Cr[oe]sus among men; Spread to the liberal air his silken sails, And lavish'd guineas like a Prince of Wales. CXLII. He mingled now with those within whose veins The blood ran pure--the magnates of the land-- Hail'd them as his companions and his friends, And lent them money and his note of hand. In every institution, whose proud aim Is public good alone, he soon became CXLIII. A man of consequence and notoriety; His name, with the addition of esquire, Stood high upon the list of each society, Whose zeal and watchfulness the sacred fire Of science, agriculture, art, and learning, Keep on our country's altars bright and burning. CXLIV. At Eastburn's Rooms he met, at two each day, With men of taste and judgment like his own, And play'd "first fiddle" in that orchestra Of literary worthies--and the tone Of his mind's music, by the listeners caught, Is traced among them still in language and in thought. CXLV. He once made the Lyceum a choice present Of muscle shells pick'd up at Rockaway; And Mitchill gave a classical and pleasant Discourse about them in the streets that day, Naming the shells, and hard to put in verse 'twas, "Testaceous coverings of bivalve moluscas." CXLVI. He was a trustee of a Savings Bank, And lectured soundly every evil doer, Gave dinners daily to wealth, power, and rank, And sixpence every Sunday to the poor; He was a wit, in the pun-making line-- Past fifty years of age, and five feet nine. CXLVII. But as he trod to grandeur's pinnacle, With eagle eye and step that never falter'd, The busy tongue of scandal dared to tell That cash was scarce with him, and credit alter'd; And while he stood the envy of beholders, The Bank Directors grinn'd, and shrugg'd their shoulders. CXLVIII. And when these, the Lord Burleighs of the minute, Shake their sage heads, and look demure and holy, Depend upon it there is something in it; For whether born of wisdom or of folly, Suspicion is a being whose fell power Blights every thing it touches, fruit and flower. CXLIX. Some friends (they were his creditors) once hinted About retrenchment and a day of doom; He thank'd them, as no doubt they kindly meant it, And made this speech, when they had left the room: "Of all the curses upon mortals sent, One's creditors are the most impudent; CL. "Now I am one who knows what he is doing, And suits exactly to his means his ends; How can a man be in the path to ruin, When all the brokers are his bosom friends? Yet, on my hopes, and those of my dear daughter, These rascals throw a bucket of cold water! CLI. "They'd wrinkle with deep cares the prettiest face, Pour gall and wormwood in the sweetest cup, Poison the very wells of life--and place Whitechapel needles, with their sharp points up, Even in the softest feather bed that e'er Was manufactured by upholsterer." CLII. This said--he journey'd "at his own sweet will," Like one of Wordsworth's rivers, calmly on; But yet, at times, Reflection, "in her still Small voice," would whisper, something must be done; He ask'd advice of Fanny, and the maid Promptly and duteously lent her aid. CLIII. She told him, with that readiness of mind And quickness of perception which belong Exclusively to gentle womankind, That to submit to slanderers was wrong, And the best plan to silence and admonish them, Would be to give "a party"--and astonish them. CLIV. The hint was taken--and the party given; And Fanny, as I said some pages since, Was there in power and loveliness that even, And he, her sire, demean'd him like a prince, And all was joy--it look'd a festival, Where pain might smooth his brow, and grief her smiles recall. CLV. But Fortune, like some others of her sex, Delights in tantalizing and tormenting; One day we feed upon their smiles--the next Is spent in swearing, sorrowing, and repenting. (If in the last four lines the author lies, He's always ready to apologize.) CLVI. Eve never walk'd in Paradise more pure Than on that morn when Satan play'd the devil With her and all her race. A love-sick wooer Ne'er ask'd a kinder maiden, or more civil, Than Cleopatra was to Antony The day she left him on the Ionian sea. CLVII. The serpent--loveliest in his coiled ring, With eye that charms, and beauty that outvies The tints of the rainbow--bears upon his sting The deadliest venom. Ere the dolphin dies Its hues are brightest. Like an infant's breath Are tropic winds, before the voice of death CLVIII. Is heard upon the waters, summoning The midnight earthquake from its sleep of years To do its task of wo. The clouds that fling The lightning, brighten ere the bolt appears; The pantings of the warrior's heart are proud Upon that battle morn whose night-dews wet his shroud; CLIX. The sun is loveliest as he sinks to rest; The leaves of autumn smile when fading fast; The swan's last song is sweetest--and the best Of Meigs's speeches, doubtless, was his last. And thus the happiest scene, in these my rhymes, Closed with a crash, and usher'd in--hard times. CLX. St. Paul's toll'd one--and fifteen minutes after Down came, by accident, a chandelier; The mansion totter'd from the floor to rafter! Up rose the cry of agony and fear! And there was shrieking, screaming, bustling, fluttering, Beyond the power of writing or of uttering. CLXI. The company departed, and neglected To say good-by--the father storm'd and swore-- The fiddlers grinn'd--the daughter look'd dejected-- The flowers had vanish'd from the polish'd floor, And both betook them to their sleepless beds, With hearts and prospects broken, but no heads. CLXII. The desolate relief of free complaining Came with the morn, and with it came bad weather; The wind was east-northeast, and it was raining Throughout that day, which, take it altogether, Was one whose memory clings to us through life, Just like a suit in Chancery, or a wife. CLXIII. That evening, with a most important face And dreadful knock, and tidings still more dreadful, A notary came--sad things had taken place; My hero had forgot to "do the needful;" A note (amount not stated), with his name on't, Was left unpaid--in short, he had "stopp'd payment." CLXIV. I hate your tragedies, both long and short ones (Except Tom Thumb, and Juan's Pantomime); And stories woven of sorrows and misfortunes Are bad enough in prose, and worse in rhyme; Mine, therefore, must be brief. Under protest His notes remain--the wise can guess the rest. CLXV. * * * * * * * * * * CLXVI. For two whole days they were the common talk; The party, and the failure, and all that, The theme of loungers in their morning walk, Porter-house reasoning, and tea-table chat. The third, some newer wonder came to blot them, And on the fourth, the "meddling world" forgot them. CLXVII. Anxious, however, something to discover, I pass'd their house--the shutters were all closed; The song of knocker and of bell was over; Upon the steps two chimney sweeps reposed; And on the door my dazzled eyebeam met These cabalistic words--"this house to let." CLXVIII. They live now, like chameleons, upon air And hope, and such cold, unsubstantial dishes; That they removed, is clear, but when or where None knew. The curious reader, if he wishes, May ask them, but in vain. Where grandeur dwells, The marble dome--the popular rumour tells; CLXIX. But of the dwelling of the proud and poor From their own lips the world will never know When better days are gone--it is secure Beyond all other mysteries here below, Except, perhaps, a maiden lady's age, When past the noonday of life's pilgrimage. CLXX. Fanny! 'twas with her name my song began; 'Tis proper and polite her name should end it; If in my story of her woes, or plan Or moral can be traced, 'twas not intended; And if I've wrong'd her, I can only tell her I'm sorry for it--so is my bookseller. CLXXI. I met her yesterday--her eyes were wet-- She faintly smiled, and said she had been reading The Treasurer's Report in the Gazette, M'Intyre's speech, and Campbell's "Love lies bleeding;" She had a shawl on, 'twas not a Cashmere one, And if it cost five dollars, 'twas a dear one. CLXXII. Her father sent to Albany a prayer For office, told how fortune had abused him, And modestly requested to be Mayor-- The Council very civilly refused him; Because, however much they might desire it, The "public good," it seems, did not require it. CLXXIII. Some evenings since, he took a lonely stroll Along Broadway, scene of past joys and evils; He felt that withering bitterness of soul, Quaintly denominated the "blue devils;" And thought of Bonaparte and Belisarius, Pompey, and Colonel Burr, and Caius Marius, CLXXIV. And envying the loud playfulness and mirth Of those who pass'd him, gay in youth and hope, He took at Jupiter a shilling's worth Of gazing, through the showman's telescope; Sounds as of far-off bells came on his ears, He fancied 'twas the music of the spheres. CLXXV. He was mistaken, it was no such thing, 'Twas Yankee Doodle play'd by Scudder's band; He mutter'd, as he linger'd listening, Something of freedom and our happy land; Then sketch'd, as to his home he hurried fast, This sentimental song--his saddest, and his last. I. Young thoughts have music in them, love And happiness their theme; And music wanders in the wind That lulls a morning dream. And there are angel voices heard, In childhood's frolic hours, When life is but an April day Of sunshine and of showers. II. There's music in the forest leaves When summer winds are there, And in the laugh of forest girls That braid their sunny hair. The first wild bird that drinks the dew, From violets of the spring, Has music in his song, and in The fluttering of his wing. III. There's music in the dash of waves When the swift bark cleaves their foam; There's music heard upon her deck, The mariner's song of home, When moon and star beams smiling meet At midnight on the sea-- And there is music--once a week In Scudder's balcony. IV. But the music of young thoughts too soon Is faint, and dies away, And from our morning dreams we wake To curse the coming day. And childhood's frolic hours are brief, And oft in after years Their memory comes to chill the heart, And dim the eye with tears. V. To-day, the forest leaves are green, They'll wither on the morrow, And the maiden's laugh be changed ere long To the widow's wail of sorrow. Come with the winter snows, and ask Where are the forest birds? The answer is a silent one, More eloquent than words. VI. The moonlight music of the waves In storms is heard no more, When the living lightning mocks the wreck At midnight on the shore, And the mariner's song of home has ceased, His corse is on the sea-- And music ceases when it rains In Scudder's balcony. THE RECORDER. THE RECORDER. A PETITION. BY THOMAS CASTALY. Dec. 20, 1828. "On they move In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood Of flutes and soft RECORDERS." _Milton._ "Live in Settles numbers one day more!" _Pope._ My dear RECORDER, you and I Have floated down life's stream together, And kept unharm'd our friendship's tie Through every change of Fortune's sky, Her pleasant and her rainy weather. Full sixty times since first we met, Our birthday suns have risen and set, And time has worn the baldness now Of Julius Cæsar on your brow; Your brow, like his, a field of thought, With broad deep furrows, spirit-wrought, Whose laurel harvests long have shown As green and glorious as his own; And proudly would the CÆSAR claim Companionship with R*K*R'S name, His peer in forehead and in fame. Both eloquent and learn'd and brave, Born to command and skill'd to rule, One made the citizen a slave, The other makes him more--a fool. The Cæsar an imperial crown, His slaves' mad gift, refused to wear, The R*k*r put his fool's cap on, And found it fitted to a hair; The Cæsar, though by birth and breeding, Travel, the ladies, and light reading, A gentleman in mien and mind, And fond of Romans and their mothers, Was heartless as the Arab's wind, And slew some millions of mankind, Including enemies and others. The R*k*r, like Bob Acres, stood Edgeways upon a field of blood, The where and wherefore Swartwout knows, Pull'd trigger, as a brave man should, And shot, God bless them--his own toes. The Cæsar pass'd the Rubicon With helm, and shield, and breastplate on, Dashing his war-horse through the waters; The R*k*r would have built a barge Or steamboat at the city's charge, And pass'd it with his wife and daughters. But let that pass. As I have said, There's naught, save laurels, on your head, And time has changed my clustering hair, And shower'd the snow-flakes thickly there; And though our lives have ever been, As different as their different scene; Mine more renown'd for rhymes than riches Yours less for scholarship than speeches; Mine pass'd in low-roof'd leafy bower, Yours in high halls of pomp and power, Yet are we, be the moral told, Alike in one thing--growing old, Ripen'd like summer's cradled sheaf, Faded like autumn's falling leaf-- And nearing, sail and signal spread, The quiet anchorage of the dead. For such is human life, wherever The voyage of its bark may be, On home's green-bank'd and gentle river Or the world's shoreless, sleepless sea. Yes, you have floated down the tide Of time, a swan in grace and pride And majesty and beauty, till The law, the Ariel of your will, Power's best beloved, the law of libel (A bright link in the legal chain) Expounded, settled, and made plain, By your own charge, the jurors' Bible, Has clipp'd the venom'd tongue of slander, That dared to call you "Party's gander, The leader of the geese who make Our cities' parks and ponds their home, And keep her liberties awake By cackling, as their sires saved Rome. Grander of Party's pond, wherein Lizard, and toad, and terrapin, Your alehouse patriots, are seen, In Faction's feverish sunshine basking;" And now, to rend this veil of lies, Word-woven by your enemies, And keep your sainted memory free From tarnish with posterity, I take the liberty of asking Permission, sir, to write your life, With all its scenes of calm and strife, And all its turnings and its windings, A poem, in a quarto volume-- Verse, like the subject, blank and solemn, With elegant appropriate bindings, Of rat and mole skin the one half, The other a part fox, part calf. Your portrait, graven line for line, From that immortal bust in plaster, The master piece of Art's great master, Mr. Praxiteles Browere, Whose trowel is a thing divine, Shall smile and bow, and promise there, And twenty-nine fine forms and faces (The Corporation and the Mayor), Linked hand in hand, like loves and graces, Shall hover o'er it, group'd in air, With wild pictorial dance and song; The song of happy bees in bowers, The dance of Guido's graceful hours, All scattering Flushing's garden flowers Round the dear head they've loved so long. I know that you are modest, know That when you hear your merit's praise, Your cheeks quick blushes come and go, Lily and rose-leaf, sun and snow, Like maidens' on their bridal days. I know that you would fain decline To aid me and the sacred nine, In giving to the asking earth The story of your wit and worth; For if there be a fault to cloud The brightness of your clear good sense, It is, and be the fact allow'd, Your only failing--Diffidence! An amiable weakness--given To justify the sad reflection, That in this vale of tears not even A R*k*r is complete perfection, A most romantic detestation Of power and place, of pay and ration; A strange unwillingness to carry The weight of honour on your shoulders, For which you have been named, the very Sensitive Plant of office-holders, A shrinking bashfulness, whose grace Gives beauty to your manly face. Thus shades the green and growing vine The rough bark of the mountain pine, Thus round her freedom's waking steel Harmodius wreathed his country's myrtle; And thus the golden lemon's peel Gives fragrance to a bowl of turtle. True, "many a flower," the poet sings, "Is born to blush unseen;" But you, although you blush, are not The flower the poets mean. In vain you wooed a lowlier lot: In vain you clipp'd your eagle-wings-- Talents like yours are not forgot And buried with earth's common things. No! my dear R*k*r, I would give My laurels, living and to live, Or as much cash as you could raise on Their value, by hypothecation, To be, for one enchanted hour, In beauty, majesty, and power, What you for forty years have been, The Oberon of life's fairy scene. An anxious city sought and found you In a blessed day of joy and pride, Scepter'd your jewell'd hand, and crown'd you Her chief, her guardian, and her guide. Honours which weaker minds had wrought In vain for years, and knelt and pray'd for, Are all your own, unpriced, unbought, Or (which is the same thing) unpaid for. Painfully great! against your will Her hundred offices to hold, Each chair with dignity to fill, And your own pockets with her gold. A sort of double duty, making Your task a serious undertaking. With what delight the eyes of all Gaze on you, seated in your Hall, Like Sancho in his island, reigning, Loved leader of its motley hosts Of lawyers and their bills of costs, And all things thereto appertaining, Such as crimes, constables, and juries, Male pilferers and female furies, The police and the _polissons_, Illegal right and legal wrong. Bribes, perjuries, law-craft, and cunning, Judicial drollery and punning; And all the _et ceteras_ that grace That genteel, gentlemanly place! Or in the Council Chamber standing With eloquence of eye and brow, Your voice the music of commanding, And fascination in your bow, Arranging for the civic shows Your "men in buckram," as per list, Your John Does and your Richard Roes, Those Dummys of your games of whist. The Council Chamber--where authority Consists in two words--a majority. For whose contractors' jobs we pay Our last dear sixpences for taxes, As freely as in Sylla's day, Rome bled beneath his lictors' axes. Where--on each magisterial nose In colours of the rainbow linger, Like sunset hues on Alpine snows, The printmarks of your thumb and finger. Where he, the wisest of wild fowl, Bird of Jove's blue-eyed maid--the owl, That feather'd alderman, is heard Nightly, by poet's ear alone, To other eyes and ears unknown, Cheering your every look and word, And making, room and gallery through, The loud, applauding echoes peal, Of his "_où peut on etre mieux Qu'au sein de sa famille_?"[A] Oh for a herald's skill to rank Your titles in their due degrees! At Singsing--at the Tradesmen's Bank, In Courts, Committees, Caucuses: At Albany, where those who knew The last year's secrets of the great, Call you the golden handle to The earthen Pitcher of the State. (Poor Pitcher! that Van Buren ceases To want its service gives me pain, 'Twill break into as many pieces As Kitty's of Coleraine.) At Bellevue, on her banquet night, Where Burgundy and business meet, On others, at the heart's delight, The Pewter Mug in Frankfort-street; From Harlæm bridge to Whitehall dock, From Bloomingdale to Blackwell's Isles, Forming, including road and rock, A city of some twelve square miles, O'er street and alley, square and block, Towers, temples, telegraphs, and tiles, O'er wharves whose stone and timbers mock The ocean's and its navies' shock, O'er all the fleets that float before her O'er all their banners waving o'er her, Her sky and waters, earth and air-- You are lord, for who is her lord mayor? Where is he? Echo answers, where And voices, like the sound of seas, Breathe in sad chorus, on the breeze, The Highland mourner's melody-- Oh HONE a rie! Oh HONE a rie! The hymn o'er happy days departed, The hope that such again may be, When power was large and liberal-hearted, And wealth was hospitality. One more request, and I am lost, If you its earnest prayer deny; It is, that you preserve the most Inviolable secrecy As to my plan. Our fourteen wards Contain some thirty-seven bards, Who, if my glorious theme were known, Would make it, thought and word, their own, My hopes and happiness destroy, And trample with a rival's joy Upon the grave of my renown. My younger brothers in the art, Whose study is the human heart-- Minstrels, before whose spells have bow'd The learn'd, the lovely, and the proud, Ere their life's morning hours are gone-- Light hearts be theirs, the muse's boon, And may their suns blaze bright at noon, And set without a cloud. HILLHOUSE, whose music, like his themes, Lifts earth to heaven--whose poet dreams Are pure and holy as the hymn Echoed from harps of seraphim, By bards that drank at Zion's fountains When glory, peace, and hope were hers, And beautiful upon her mountains The feet of angel messengers. BRYANT, whose songs are thoughts that bless The heart, its teachers, and its joy, As mothers blend with their caress Lessons of truth and gentleness And virtue for the listening boy. Spring's lovelier flowers for many a day Have blossom'd on his wandering way, Beings of beauty and decay, They slumber in their autumn tomb; But those that graced his own Green River, And wreathed the lattice of his home, Charm'd by his song from mortal doom, Bloom on, and will bloom on for ever. And HALLECK--who has made thy roof, St. Tammany! oblivion-proof-- Thy beer illustrious, and thee A belted knight of chivalry; And changed thy dome of painted bricks And porter casks and politics, Into a green Arcadian vale, With St*ph*n All*n for its lark, B*n B*il*y's voice its watch-dog's bark, And J*hn T*rg*e its nightingale. These, and the other THIRTY-FOUR, Will live a thousand years or more-- If the world lasts so long. For me, I rhyme not for posterity, Though pleasant to my heirs might be The incense of its praise, When I, their ancestor, have gone, And paid the debt, the only one A poet ever pays. But many are my years, and few Are left me ere night's holy dew, And sorrow's holier tears, will keep The grass green where in death I sleep And when that grass is green above me, And those who bless me now and love me Are sleeping by my side, Will it avail me aught that men Tell to the world with lip and pen That once I lived and died? No: if a garland for my brow Is growing, let me have it now, While I'm alive to wear it; And if, in whispering my name, There's music in the voice of fame Like Garcia's, let me hear it! The Christmas holydays are nigh, Therefore, till Newyear's Eve, good-by, Then _revenons a nos moutons_, Yourself and aldermen--meanwhile, Look o'er this letter with a smile; And keep the secret of its song As faithfully, but not as long, As you have guarded from the eyes Of editorial Paul Prys, And other meddling, murmuring claimants, Those Eleusinian mysteries, The city's cash receipts and payments. Yours ever, T. C. [A] A favourite French air. In English, "where can one be more happy than in the bosom of one's family?" EPISTLES, ETC. TO W*LT*R B*WNE, ESQ., MEMBER OF THE COUNCIL OF APPOINTMENT OF THE STATE OF NEW-YORK, AT ALBANY, 1821. "Stand not upon the order of your going. But go at once." "I cannot but remember such things were, And were most precious to me." _Macbeth._ We do not blame you, W*lt*r B*wne, For a variety of reasons; You're now the talk of half the town, A man of talent and renown, And will be for perhaps two seasons. That face of yours has magic in it; Its smile transports us in a minute To wealth and pleasure's sunny bowers; And there is terror in its frown, Which, like a mower's scythe, cuts down Our city's loveliest flowers. We therefore do not blame you, sir, Whate'er our cause of grief may be; And cause enough we have to "stir The very stones to mutiny." You've driven from the cash and cares Of office, heedless of our prayers, Men who have been for many a year To us and to our purses dear, And will be to our heirs for ever, Our tears, thanks to the snow and rain, Have swell'd the brook in Maiden-lane Into a mountain river; And when you visit us again, Leaning at Tammany on your cane, Like warrior on his battle blade, You'll mourn the havoc you have made. There is a silence and a sadness Within the marble mansion now; Some have wild eyes that threaten madness, Some think of "kicking up a row." Judge M*ll*r will not yet believe That you have ventured to bereave The city and its hall of him: He has in his own fine way stated, "The fact must be substantiated," Before he'll move a single limb. He deems it cursèd hard to yield The laurel won in every field Through sixteen years of party war, And to be seen at noon no more, Enjoying at his office door The luxury of a tenth segar. Judge Warner says that, when he's gone, You'll miss the true Dogberry breed; And Christian swears that you have done A most UN-Christian deed. How could you have the heart to strike From place the peerless Pierre Van Wyck? And the twin colonels, Haines and Pell, Squire Fessenden, and Sheriff Bell; M*rr*ll, a justice and a wise one, And Ned M'Laughlin the exciseman; The two health officers, believers In Clinton and contagious fevers; The keeper of the city's treasures, The sealer of her weights and measures, The harbour-master, her best bower Cable in party's stormy hour; Ten auctioneers, three bank directors, And Mott and Duffy, the inspectors Of whiskey and of flour? It was but yesterday they stood All (ex-officio) great and good. But by the tomahawk struck down Of party and of W*lt*r B*wne, Where are they now? With shapes of air, The caravan of things that were, Journeying to their nameless home, Like Mecca's pilgrims from her tomb; With the lost Pleiad; with the wars Of Agamemnon's ancestors; With their own years of joy and grief, Spring's bud, and autumn's faded leaf; With birds that round their cradles flew; With winds that in their boyhood blew; With last night's dream and last night's dew. Yes, they are gone; alas! each one of them; Departed--every mother's son of them. Yet often, at the close of day, When thoughts are wing'd and wandering, they Come with the memory of the past, Like sunset clouds along the mind, Reflecting, as they're flitting fast In their wild hues of shade and light, All that was beautiful and bright In golden moments left behind. TO * * * * *. Dear ***, I am writing, not _to_ you, but _at_ you, For the feet of you tourists have no resting-place; But wherever with this the mail-pigeon may catch you, May she find you with gayety's smile on your face; Whether chasing a snipe at the Falls of Cohoes, Or chased by the snakes upon Anthony's Nose; Whether wandering, at Catskill, from Hotel to Clove, Making sketches, or speeches, puns, poems, or love; Or in old Saratoga's unknown fountain-land, Threading groves of enchantment, half bushes, half sand; Whether dancing on Sundays, at Lebanon Springs, With those Madame Hutins of religion, the Shakers; Or, on Tuesdays, with maidens who seek wedding rings At Ballston, as taught by mammas and match-makers; Whether sailing St. Lawrence, with unbroken neck, From her thousand green isles to her castled Quebec; Or sketching Niagara, pencil on knee (The giant of waters, our country's pet lion), Or dipp'd at Long Branch, in the real salt sea, With a cork for a dolphin, a Cockney Arion; Whether roaming earth, ocean, or even the air, Like Dan O'Rourke's eagle--good luck to you there. For myself, as you'll see by the date of my letter, I'm in town, but of that fact the least said the better; For 'tis vain to deny (though the city o'erflows With well-dressed men and women, whom nobody knows) That one rarely sees persons whose nod is an honour, A lady with fashion's own impress upon her; Or a gentleman bless'd with the courage to say, Like Morris (the Prince Regent's friend, in his day), "Let others in sweet shady solitudes dwell, Oh! give me the sweet shady side of Pall Mall." Apropos--our friend A. chanced this morning to meet The accomplish'd Miss B. as he pass'd Contoit's Garden, Both in town in July!--he cross'd over the street, And she enter'd the rouge-shop of Mrs. St. Martin. Resolved not to look at another known face, Through Leonard and Church streets she walked to Park Place, And he turn'd from Broadway into Catharine-lane, And coursed, to avoid her, through alley and by-street, Till they met, as the devil would have it, again, Face to face, near the pump at the corner of Dey-st. Yet, as most of "The Fashion" are journeying now, With the brown hues of summer on cheek and on brow, The few "_gens comme il faut_" who are lingering here, Are, like fruits out of season, more welcome and dear. Like "the last rose of summer, left blooming alone," Or the last snows of winter, pure ice of _haut ton_, Unmelted, undimm'd by the sun's brightest ray, And, like diamonds, making night's darkness seem day. One meets them in groups, that Canova might fancy, At our new lounge at evening, the _Opera Français_, In nines like the Muses, in threes like the Graces, Green spots in a desert of commonplace faces. The Queen, Mrs. Adams, goes there sweetly dress'd In a beautiful bonnet, all golden and flowery: While the King, Mr. Bonaparte, smiles on Celeste, Heloise, and Hutin, from his box at the Bowery. For news, Parry still the North Sea is exploring, And the Grand Turk has taken, they say, the Acropolis, And we, in Swamp Place, have discover'd, in boring, A mineral spring to refine the metropolis. The day we discover'd it was, by-the-way, In the life of the Cockneys, a glorious day. For we all had been taught, by tradition and reading, That to gain what admits us to levees of kings, The gentleness, courtesy, grace of high breeding, The only sure way was to "visit the Springs." So the whole city visited Swamp Spring _en masse_, From attorney to sweep, from physician to paviour, To drink of cold water at sixpence a glass, And learn true politeness and genteel behaviour. Though the crowd was immense till the hour of departure, No gentleman's feelings were hurt in the rush, Save a grocer's, who lost his proof-glass and bung-starter, And a chimney sweep's, robb'd of his scraper and brush. They linger'd till sunset and twilight had come, Then, wearied in limb, but much polish'd in manners, The sovereign people moved gracefully home, In the beauty and pride of "an army with banners." As to politics--Adams and Clinton yet live, And reign, we presume, as we never have miss'd 'em, And woollens and Webster continue to thrive Under something they call the American System. If you're anxious to know what the country is doing, Whether ruin'd already or going to ruin, And who her next president will be, please heaven, Read the letters of Jackson, the speeches of Clay, All the party newspapers, three columns a day, And Blunt's Annual Register, year 'twenty-seven. A FRAGMENT. * * * * * His shop is a grocer's--a snug, genteel place, Near the corner of Oak-street and Pearl; He can dress, dance, and bow to the ladies with grace And ties his cravat with a curl. He's ask'd to all parties--north, south, east, and west, That take place between Chatham and Cherry, And when he's been absent full oft has the "best Society" ceased to be merry. And nothing has darken'd a sky so serene, Nor disorder'd his beauship's Elysium, Till this season among our _élitè_ there has been What is call'd by the clergy "a schism." 'Tis all about eating and drinking--one set Gives sponge-cake, a few "kisses" or so, And is cool'd after dancing with classic sherbet, "Sublimed" (see Lord Byron) "with snow." Another insists upon punch and _perdrix_, Lobster-salad, Champagne, and, by way Of a novelty only, those pearls of our sea, Stew'd oysters from Lynn-Haven bay. Miss Flounce, the young milliner, blue-eyed and bright, In the front parlour over her shop, "Entertains," as the phrase is, a party to-night, Upon peanuts and ginger-pop. And Miss Fleece, who's a hosier, and not quite as young, But is wealthier far than Miss Flounce, She "entertains" also to-night with cold tongue, Smoked herring, and cherry-bounce. In praise of cold water the Theban bard spoke, He of Teos sang sweetly of wine; Miss Flounce is a Pindar in cashmere and cloak, Miss Fleece an Anacreon divine. The Montagues carry the day in Swamp Place; In Pike-street the Capulets reign; A _limonadière_ is the badge of one race, Of the other a flask of Champagne. Now as each the same evening her soireè announces, What better, he asks, can be done, Than drink water from eight until ten with the Flounces, And then wine with the Fleeces till one! * * * * * SONG. BY MISS * * * *. _Air_, "To ladies eyes a round, boy." MOORE. The winds of March are humming Their parting song, their parting song, And summer's skies are coming, And days grow long, and days grow long. I watch, but not in gladness, Our garden tree, our garden tree; It buds, in sober sadness, Too soon for me, too soon for me. My second winter's over, Alas! and I, alas! and I Have no accepted lover: Don't ask me why, don't ask me why. 'Tis not asleep or idle That love has been, that love has been; For many a happy bridal The year has seen, the year has seen; I've done a bridemaid's duty, At three or four, at three or four; My best bouquet had beauty, Its donor more, its donor more. My second winter's over, Alas! and I, alas! and I Have no accepted lover: Don't ask me why, don't ask me why. His flowers my bosom shaded One sunny day, one sunny day; The next, they fled and faded, Beau and bouquet, beau and bouquet. In vain, at ball and parties, I've thrown my net, I've thrown my net; This waltzing, watching heart is Unchosen yet, unchosen yet. My second winter's over, Alas! and I, alas! and I Have no accepted lover: Don't ask me why, don't ask me why. They tell me there's no hurry For Hymen's ring, for Hymen's ring; And I'm too young to marry: 'Tis no such thing, 'tis no such thing. The next spring tides will dash on My eighteenth year, my eighteenth year; It puts me in a passion, Oh dear, oh dear! oh dear, oh dear! My second winter's over, Alas! and I, alas! and I Have no accepted lover: Don't ask me why, don't ask me why. SONG. FOR THE DRAMA OF "THE SPY." The harp of love, when first I heard Its song beneath the moonlight tree, Was echoed by his plighted word, And ah, how dear its song to me; But wail'd the hour will ever be When to the air the bugle gave, To hush love's gentle minstrelsy, The wild war music of the brave. For he hath heard its song, and now Its voice is sweeter than mine own; And he hath broke the plighted vow He breathed to me and love alone. That harp hath lost its wonted tone, No more its strings his fingers move, Oh would that he had only known The music of the harp of love. 1822. ADDRESS, AT THE OPENING OF A NEW THEATRE. November, 1831. Where dwells the Drama's spirit? not alone Beneath the palace roof, beside the throne, In learning's cloisters, friendship's festal bowers, Art's pictured halls, or triumph's laurel'd towers, Where'er man's pulses beat or passions play, She joys to smile or sigh his thoughts away: Crowd times and scenes within her ring of power, And teach a life's experience in an hour. To-night she greets, for the first time, our dome, Her latest, may it prove her lasting home; And we her messengers delighted stand, The summon'd Ariels of her mystic wand, To ask your welcome. Be it yours to give Bliss to her coming hours, and bid her live Within these walls new hallow'd in her cause, Long in the nurturing warmth of your applause. 'Tis in the public smiles, the public loves, His dearest home, the actor breathes and moves, Your plaudits are to us and to our art As is the life-blood to the human heart: And every power that bids the leaf be green, In nature acts on this her mimic scene. Our sunbeams are the sparklings of glad eyes, Our winds the whisper of applause, that flies From lip to lip, the heart-born laugh of glee, And sounds of cordial hands that ring out merrily, And heaven's own dew falls on us in the tear That woman weeps o'er sorrows pictured here, When crowded feelings have no words to tell The might, the magic of the actor's spell. These have been ours; and do we hope in vain Here, oft and deep, to feel them ours again? No! while the weary heart can find repose From its own pains in fiction's joys or woes; While there are open lips and dimpled cheeks, When music breathes, or wit or humour speaks; While Shakspeare's master spirit can call up Noblest and worthiest thoughts, and brim the cup Of life with bubbles bright as happiness, Cheating the willing bosom into bliss; So long will those who, in their spring of youth, Have listen'd to the Drama's voice of truth, Mark'd in her scenes the manners of their age, And gather'd knowledge for a wider stage, Come here to speed with smiles life's summer years, And melt its winter snow with pleasant tears; And younger hearts, when ours are hushed and cold, Be happy here as we have been of old. Friends of the stage, who hail it as the shrine Where music, painting, poetry entwine Their kindred garlands, whence their blended power Refines, exalts, ennobles hour by hour The spirit of the land, and, like the wind, Unseen but felt, bears on the bark of mind; To you the hour that consecrates this dome, Will call up dreams of prouder hours to come, When some creating poet, born your own, May waken here the drama's loftiest tone, Through after years to echo loud and long, A Shakspeare of the West, a star of song, Bright'ning your own blue skies with living fire, All times to gladden and all tongues inspire, Far as beneath the heaven by sea-winds fann'd, Floats the free banner of your native land. THE RHYME OF THE ANCIENT COASTER. _Written while sailing in an open boat on the Hudson River, between Stony Point and the Highlands, on seeing the wreck of an old sloop, June, 1821._ "And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in every thing." SHAKSPEARE. Her side is in the water, Her keel is in the sand, And her bowsprit rests on the low gray rock That bounds the sea and land. Her deck is without a mast, And sand and shells are there, And the teeth of decay are gnawing her planks, In the sun and the sultry air. No more on the river's bosom, When sky and wave are calm, And the clouds are in summer quietness, And the cool night-breath is balm, Will she glide in the swan-like stillness Of the moon in the blue above, A messenger from other lands, A beacon to hope and love. No more, in the midnight tempest, Will she mock the mounting sea, Strong in her oaken timbers, And her white sail's bravery. She hath borne, in days departed, Warm hearts upon her deck; Those hearts, like her, are mouldering now, The victims, and the wreck Of time, whose touch erases Each vestige of all we love; The wanderers, home returning, Who gazed that deck above, And they who stood to welcome Their loved ones on that shore, Are gone, and the place that knew them Shall know them never more. * * * * * * * * * * It was a night of terror, In the autumn equinox, When that gallant vessel found a grave Upon the Peekskill rocks. Captain, mate, cook, and seamen (They were in all but three), Were saved by swimming fast and well, And their gallows-destiny. But two, a youth and maiden, Were left to brave the storm, With unpronounceable Dutch names, And hearts with true love warm. And they, for love has watchers In air, on earth, and sea, Were saved by clinging to the wreck, And their marriage-destiny. From sunset to night's noon She had lean'd upon his arm, Nor heard the far-off thunder toll The tocsin of alarm. Not so the youth--he listen'd To the cloud-wing flapping by; And low he whisper'd in Low Dutch, "It tells our doom is nigh. "Death is the lot of mortals, But we are young and strong, And hoped, not boldly, for a life Of happy years and long. "Yet 'tis a thought consoling, That, till our latest breath, We loved in life, and shall not be Divided in our death. "Alas, for those that wait us On their couch of dreams at home, The morn will hear the funeral cry Around their daughter's tomb. "They hoped" ('twas a strange moment In Dutch to quote Shakspeare) "Thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid, And not have strew'd thy bier." But, sweetly-voiced and smiling, The trusting maiden said, "Breathed not thy lips the vow to-day, To-morrow we will wed? "And I, who have known thy truth Through years of joy and sorrow, Can I believe the fickle winds? No! we shall wed to-morrow!" The tempest heard and paused-- The wild sea gentler moved-- They felt the power of woman's faith In the word of him she loved. All night to rope and spar They clung with strength untired, Till the dark clouds fled before the sun, And the fierce storm expired. At noon the song of bridal bells O'er hill and valley ran; At eve he call'd the maiden his, "Before the holy man." They dwelt beside the waters That bathe yon fallen pine, And round them grew their sons and daughters, Like wild grapes on the vine. And years and years flew o'er them, Like birds with beauty on their wings, And theirs were happy sleigh-ride winters, And long and lovely springs, Such joys as thrill'd the lips that kiss'd The wave, rock-cool'd, from Horeb's fountains, And sorrows, fleeting as the mist Of morning, spread upon the mountains, Till, in a good old age, Their life-breath pass'd away; Their name is on the churchyard page-- Their story in my lay. * * * * * * * * * * And let them rest together, The maid, the boat, the boy, Why sing of matrimony now, In this brief hour of joy? Our time may come, and let it-- 'Tis enough for us now to know That our bark will reach West Point ere long, If the breeze keep on to blow. We have Hudibras and Milton, Wines, flutes, and a bugle-horn, And a dozen segars are lingering yet Of the thousand of yestermorn. They have gone, like life's first pleasures, And faded in smoke away, And the few that are left are like bosom friends In the evening of our day. We are far from the mount of battle,[B] Where the wreck first met mine eye, And now where twin-forts[C] in the olden time rose, Thro' the Race, like a swift steed, our little bark goes, And our bugle's notes echo through Anthony's Nose, So wrecks and rhymes--good-by. [B] Stony Point. [C] Forts Clinton and Montgomery. FINIS. 
35098	----	SONNETS AND SONGS BY HELEN HAY WHITNEY NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS MCMV Copyright, 1905, by HARPER & BROTHERS. _All rights reserved._ Published August, 1905. TO P. W. _Contents_ SONNETS PAGE Ave atque Vale 3 "Chaque baiser vaut un roman" 4 As a Pale Child 5 Flower of the Clove 6 Too Late 7 The Supreme Sacrifice 8 Malua 9 Love's Legacy 10 How we would Live! 11 In Extremis 12 The Forgiveness 13 With Music 14 Alpha and Omega 15 Flowers of Ice 16 Love and Death 17 The Message 18 Tempest and Calm 19 After Rain 20 Not through this Door 21 Pot-Pourri 22 Eadem Semper 23 To a Woman 24 Aspiration--I 25 Aspiration--II 26 The Gypsy Blood 27 Not Dead but Sleeping 28 The Last Gift 29 Amor Mysticus 30 The Pattern of the Earth 31 Disguised 32 SONGS On the White Road 35 The Wanderer 36 False 37 A Song of the Oregon Trail 38 The Apple-Tree 39 Silver and Rose 40 To-Morrow 41 The Greater Joy 42 The Rose-Colored Camelia-Tree 43 Good-Bye Sorrow 44 In Harbor 45 Rosa Mundi 46 The Ribbon 47 The Aster 48 Heart and Hand 49 The Golden Fruit 50 To a Moth 52 Winter Song 53 Youth 54 Persephone 55 Étoiles d'Enfer 57 Enough of Singing 58 Truth 59 The Philosopher 60 Prayers 61 A South-Sea Lover Scorned 62 In May 64 For Your Sake 65 Lyric Love 67 Be Still 68 Butterfly Words 69 Music 70 The Ghost 72 Fight! 74 In Tonga 75 This was the Song 76 To E. D. 78 The Dance 79 Vanquished 80 Tranquillity 81 SONNETS I _Ave atque Vale_ As a blown leaf across the face of Time Your name falls emptily upon my heart. In this new symmetry you have no part, No lot in my fair life. The stars still chime Autumn and Spring in ceaseless pantomime. I play with Beauty, which is kin to Art, Forgetting Nature. Nor do pulses start To hear your soul remembered in a rhyme. You may not vex me any more. The stark Terror of life has passed, and all the stress. Winds had their will of me, and now caress, Blown from bland groves I know. Time dreams, and I, As on a mirror, see the days go by In nonchalant procession to the dark. II "_Chaque baiser vaut un roman._" I, living love and laughter, have forgot The way the heart has uttered melody. As sobbing, plaintive cadence of the sea A poet's soul should rest, remembering not The inland paths of green, the flowers, the spot Where fairies ring. In hermit ecstasy Music is born, and gay or wofully Lovers of Poesy share her lonely lot. For you and me, Beloved, crowned with Spring, Catching Love's flowers from off the lap of Time, What are the songs my voice has scorned to sing? Ghostly they hover round my heart-wise lips; Into a kiss I fold my rose of Rhyme, Laid like a martyr on your finger-tips. III _As a Pale Child_ As a pale child, hemmed in by windy rain, Patiently turns to touch his well-known toys, Playing as children play who make no noise, Yet happy in a way; then sighs again, To watch the world across the storm-dim pane, And sees with wistful eyes glad girls and boys Who romp beneath the rain's unlicensed joys, And feels wild longings sweep his gentle brain. So I, contented with my flowers for stars, Stroll in my fair, walled garden happily, Knowing no gladder game till, shrill and sweet, I hear life's cry ring down the silent street, And press my face against the sunlit bars To watch the joyous spirits who are free. IV _Flower of the Clove_ Ah, Love, have pity!--I am but a child; I ask but light and laughter, and the tears Darken the sunlight of my fairest years. By love made desolate, by love beguiled, I waste the Spring. Love's harvest wains are piled With poppies and gold grain--I glean but fears Of empty hands, grim hunger, and the jeers Of happy wives whose loves are reconciled. But mine! Ah, mine is like a tattered leaf Upon a turbid stream. I have no pride, No life, but love, which is a bitter grief. As a lost star I wander down your sky. Give me your heart. Open it wide--so wide! I must have love and laughter, or I die. V _Too Late_ Upon your stone the wine of my desire Is spilled. Your poppy lips have grown too pale From fasting. Your white hands will not avail The cold eyes of your heart to light the fire. I did not think my prayers could ever tire. Now, like doomed ships, they flutter without sail. Lost in a calm which held no rock, no gale-- Now, when your chilly smile bids me aspire! So, without history, my soul is slain-- Woman of barren love; the wine was red-- Beautiful for your spending. Not again Will the bud blossom where the frost has sped. Timid, you dared not hark when angels sang. All, all is lost, without one saving pang. VI _The Supreme Sacrifice_ Better than life, better than sea and morn, And all the sun-stained fragments of the day-- Ah! more than breeze, than purple clouds that stray Across dim twilights--I, the tempest-torn, Fighting the stars for glory, who must scorn Heart-drops bespread along love's cruel way Like scattered petals on the breast of May-- Better than life I love you, I forlorn. Better than death--the sleeping and the peace When warm within the breast of brooding Earth My weary heart should give its woes release, The pitiful dark remembering not my loss, The calm, wise years restoring joy for dearth-- Better than death, my love, my burning cross. VII _Malua_ Out of the purple treasuries of night Came the dark wind of evening silver-starred-- Stirred on his cheek. The forest keeping ward Breathed with a tremulous silence, and the bright, Bare moon crowned his adoring brow with light. The exquisite dream of beauty held him hard In a great love, a forest love, unmarred-- Still unprofaned--by human nature's sight. Guarding the temple gates of peace he stood, Statue of bronze with pagan heart of stone. Sudden, a dazzling glory lit the wood-- Moon in his soul that dimmed the moon above. Life was revealed, a Spring-sweet maid, alone-- Beauty was woman, and the woman--Love. VIII _Love's Legacy_ As one who looks too long upon the sun When he must turn to earth from flame-shot skies Sees all else dark through his bereaved eyes, And yet may watch the rainbow ribbons run Athwart the gravity of gray and dun, He holds the darkness dearer for the prize Wherein his only pledge of radiance lies When he the vast magnificence must shun. So we who play with rainbows, having seen The sun's own face. We may not hold the west, Which burns against the bosom of the night, But in the after-glow, with eyes serene, We still may find, dear heart, the sun's bequest, An echoed glory of our passionate light. IX _How we would Live!_ How we would live! We'd drink the years like wine, With all to-morrows hid behind the veil, Which is your hair; between two lilies pale-- Your slender hands--my heart should lie and shine, A crimson rose. We'd catch the wind and twine The evening stars--a chaplet musical-- To crown our folly, lure the nightingale To sing the bliss your lips should teach to mine. And if the sage, declaring life is vain, Should frown upon the flower of all our days And chide the sun that knows no tears of rain, He should not tease our heart with cynic eye-- The soul's vast altar stands beyond his gaze When two have lived--then shall they fear to die? X _In Extremis_ Nay, touch me not, nor even with your eyes Hold mine, for I would speak you, thus afar, Aloof and chill and lonely as a star. The hands that urge, the hungry heart that cries, Have wrapped my love with love's elusive lies; The lips that burn have laid a ruddy scar Against the truth that stands without the bar, And blinded faith with passion's mysteries. Night holds a single moon, day one desire-- Her golden sun; and life a love supreme, Wherein one moment poises, crowned with fire, White with the naked truth. Beyond control, 'Tis here, my Sun, in love's last hour extreme, I hold aloft my bare, adoring soul. XI _The Forgiveness_ If I might see you dead, Beloved--dead-- Your false eyes closed forever to the light, Your false smile stilled upon my aching sight; If I might know that nevermore your head, Cruelly fair, could lie upon the bed Of my torn heart; if I beheld the night Free from your living thought--ah! if I might, Then could my desolate soul be comforted. For this is worst of all the woes you gave-- My heart may not forgive. The tired years go And leave the great love weeping for a grave, Scorned and unburied, 'neath the open sky. I could not love you less, to see you so. Loving you more, I might forgive--and die. XII _With Music_ Dear, did we meet in some dim yesterday? I half remember how the birds were mute Among green leaves and tulip-tinted fruit, And on the grass, beside a stream, we lay In early twilight; faintly, far away, Came lovely sounds adrift from silver lute, With answered echoes of an airy flute, While Twilight waited tiptoe, fain to stay. Her violet eyes were sweet with mystery. You looked in mine, the music rose and fell Like little, lisping laughter of the sea; Our souls were barks, wind-wafted from the shore-- Gold cup, a rose, a ruby, who can tell? Soft--music ceases--I recall no more. XIII _Alpha and Omega_ I died to-day, and yet upon my eyes A glamour of the gorgeous summer green Still wavers, and my brain has kept a keen, Sweet bird-song. Glad with light, the summer skies Are sapphire, and a purple shadow lies Across the hills--no change is on the scene Since happy yesterday. Ah! can it mean The body lives when stricken spirit dies? The blow has fallen, yet I can recall The first of days when this dead heart drew breath-- A wondrous moon-flower waking of a heart. Strange--then as now the moment seemed to part Body from soul, so like are birth and death; So did I gain, and so I lost my all. XIV _Flowers of Ice_ The lights within the ice-floes are our flowers, Lily and daffodil and violet. Beneath these monstrous suns that never set Tremble soft rainbows, young as Earth's first hours, Ancient as Time. No balm of gentle showers Make for their growth; for them, gigantic, met The immemorial ice and sun, to get Such blossoms--pledge of Beauty's bravest powers. Violet and pale grass-green, the Spring-time dies In the soft South. To us, in this grim world, Daring with frozen heart and tearless eyes The North's white sanctity, Fate idly throws These alms--a deathless Spring of ice enfurled, And over all, far flung, the sunset rose. XV _Love and Death_ I can believe that my Beloved dies, That all her virtue, all her youth shall fail, And life, her rosy life, grow cold and pale, To bloom again in braver Paradise. I must believe that death shall close her eyes, And hold her heart beyond a heavy veil, Where silences surround her spirit frail And waste the form where all my loving lies. Ah, God! but no. And is my love so weak? Her heart may pause, may falter and grow still, But not her laugh, the color in her cheek-- That may not fade; the catch that lifts her breath, Sobbing against my heart. Essay your will-- These are too dear to fill _your_ grave, O Death! XVI _The Message_ When one has heard the message of the Rose, For what faint other calling shall he care? Dark broodings turn to find their lonely lair; The vain world keeps her posturing and pose. He, with his crimson secret, which bestows Heaven on his heart, to Heaven lifts his prayer, And knows all glory trembling through the air As on triumphal journeying he goes. So through green woodlands in the twilight dim, Led by the faint, pale argent of a star, What though to others it is weary night, Nature holds out her wide, sweet heart to him; And, leaning o'er the world's mysterious bar, His soul is great with everlasting light. XVII _Tempest and Calm_ First came the tempest, and the world was torn Upon its mighty passion--all the deep Trembled before it. From the haggard steep To the sweet valley with its brooding corn, Its foaming lips in expletives of scorn Lashed into life the world's eternal sleep; Then, caught with madness, in gigantic leap Expired upon the heights where it was born. And then a hush--the dripping, tender rain Falls in warm tears. The thunder could not wake The grief that silence in her soul has furled. Soft sighs the wind, the sea is gray with pain-- The fulness of a heart too tense to break-- And deep, unuttered sadness in the world. XVIII _After Rain_ The country road at lonely close of day Rests for a while from the long stress of rain; Dripping and bowed, the green walls of the lane Reflect no glistening light, no colors gay Has dying Summer left. The sky is gray, As though the weeping had not eased the pain. The Autumn is not yet, and all in vain Seems Summer's life--a blossom cast away. The air is hushed, save in the emerald shade The rain still drips and stirs each fretting leaf To soft insistence of its little grief. The hopeless calm all thought of life denies-- But hark! out through the silence, unafraid, A robin ripples to the chilly skies. XIX _Not through this Door_ Not through this door of elemental calm, Patient, wet woodland, resting after rain, Brooding brown fields that wait the sleeping grain-- Not through this door may the wrecked spirit's balm-- Come in and take possession. There's a psalm Nature has crooned to weariness and pain, Easing the tumult of the world-worn brain, Sweet, wholesome mother of the open palm. But the disastrous heart cries out for men, Strife where the fight is reddest. Verily Peace comes with fighting with the strength of ten, Here where the world is young, with naught to see. But day blow out across the long, low sky-- Peace means an emptiness, which rests to die. XX _Pot-Pourri_ All my dead roses! Now I lay them here, Shrined in a beryl cup. The mysteries Of their sweet hauntings and their witcheries Are not more subtle than this jewel clear, Are not more cold and dead. The winter's spear Has fallen on their heart, a heart so wise With lore of love. Dead roses. Beauty lies Hid in a perfume still supremely dear. Roses of love, time killed you one by one, Laughed at my pains as sad I gathered up All the fair petals banished from the sun. Witness my triumph--how the dead loves bless Life--from my heart, which is their beryl cup, Crowning the winter of my loneliness. XXI _Eadem Semper_ How shall I hold you? By a scimitar Of flashing wit suspended o'er your head, Oh, my Beloved? Or with lips rose-red Lure you to Lethe? Shall I stand afar, Pale and remote and distant as a star, Challenging love? Or by a scarlet thread Jealousy's wiles, beguile by scorn and dread? Wounding the heart I love with hateful scar. Nay, I can take no action, play no play; All my wit falters when I hear you speak, All my wise guile with which your wooing strove Vanishes as the sun of yesterday. I can but lay my cheek against your cheek-- Love me or leave me, I can only love. XXII _To a Woman_ Take all of me, pour out my life as wine, To dye your soul's sweet shallows. Violent sin Blazed me a path, and I have walked therein, Strong, unashamed. Your timorous hands need mine, As the white stars their sky, your lips' pale line Shall blush to roses where my lips have been. I ask no more. I do not hope to win-- Only to add myself to your design. Take all of me. I know your little lies, Your light dishonor, gentle treacheries. I know, I lie in torment at your feet, Shadow to all your sun. Take me and go, Use my adoring to your honor, sweet, Strength for your weakness--it is better so. XXIII _Aspiration_ I The pale and misty particles of Time Hover about us; scarce our eyes can see Youth's far-off dream of what we were to be. Life's truth, which once we would redeem with rhyme, Has proved instead a world-worn pantomime. The running river of expediency Has drowned the hopes that Fortune held in fee-- Why fall upon the track so many climb? Why strive to speak what all the earth has heard? Why labor at a work the ages plan?-- Life has been lived so oft--an outworn thing! Then hark! the time-sweet carol of a bird, New as a flower; and see--ah, shame to man! The endless aspiration of the Spring. XXIV _Aspiration_ II The full throat of the world is charged with song, Morning and twilight melt with ecstasy In the high heat of noon. Simply to be, Palpitant where the green spring forces throng, Eager for life, life unashamed and strong-- This is desire fulfilled. Exalted, free, The spirit gains her ether, scornfully Denies existence that is dark or wrong. This is enough, to see the song begun Which shall be finished in some field afar. Laugh that the night may still contain a star, Nor idly moan your impotence of grace. Life is a song, lift up your care-free face Gladly and gratefully toward the sun. XXV _The Gypsy Blood_ He gives me happiness, as flowers depend On loyal sun and shower. I look to love To give me life. Why is it not enough? Divine contentment, stretching without end O'er happy meadows. He's my love, my friend, And peace is in the word. You--heart's despair-- Sweep like a tempest through my sunsweet air, Wail like a lost soul through my blossomed grove. Tempest and calm, with him my heart might rest, Lulled by eternal spring. The dream is blest, Yet the wild grapes you crush make life divine. Out in the pathless dark, all yours, I go, Brave with the purple promise of the wine. You, you I love, because you bring me woe. XXVI _Not Dead but Sleeping_ And if I came, ah, if I came again, And laid my hand on your forgetful heart, Where once it lay so warm, could the pulse start, Remembering Spring? Now, at the sound of rain, I do but turn a little in disdain To see the flowers renew their lovely part, Blooming afresh. For memory holds no smart, Love aches no more to know how it was slain. Yet if I came to you who heed no more My name upon the wind? Love's ghost, lean near, I have a word that only you may hear. If you should come to me with dear desire, My soul's dry staff should tremble to its core And flame against your touch in buds of fire. XXVII _The Last Gift_ What shall I give to her who will not care If I give soul or roses, will not know How that, for sweets she'll spend, light smiles she'll sow, I will reap bitter tears? If she could wear Those tears as stars to sparkle in her hair! What shall I give? I have not fall'n so low I may not lay one gift before I go Upon the altar of my heart's despair. She will not know; yet, in my love a king, I must be worthy of my crown and throne, And so can sacrifice no little thing. My life, my soul are worthless since her scorn. Slay we then love on love's red altar-stone-- Beggared of all, I face the world forlorn. XXVIII _Amor Mysticus_ Not you, nor all the gauds that Fate bestows, Can make me swerve so little from my dream. Across my veil of mystery you seem Perhaps a little dearer than the rose, Perhaps more fair than the long light that flows Between the lids of twilight. But the gleam Of iris on the breast of wisdom's stream Is of a radiance that no rival knows. My heart is not my heart, or it might chance To sorrow for the sorrow in your tears; My soul is locked against all circumstance Of life or love or death or heaven or hell; I have no place for laughter in my years, No room where little, little love might dwell. XXIX _The Pattern of the Earth_ The pattern of the earth, so wonderful, Is, more than myrtle, very dear to me. Across the avenue of limes I see A little mist by ghosts made magical, Tossing across the hills, more beautiful Than the deep eyes of amber women, free Of shame and of disdain, on some far sea Swept by trade-winds the sun makes lyrical. There is no air the mind may not recall, Blown from the violet-beds of Greece; and all The moons who drop their shattered petals here Live from the days which hid Semiramis. Breezes upon my lips are subtly dear, Because they bear the burden of her kiss. XXX _Disguised_ The beggar thoughts pass down the lanes of day, And on the thorns that are the hours I find Their tatters and their rags. Infirm and blind, They faded in the void, and all the way Mouthed senseless jeers at me. I dared not pray For wisdom from these fools who throng the mind And leave no gifts but bitterness behind. Chin upon hand, I watched, nor bade them stay. Then wearily and indolently glanced Where the thorns fluttered with their flags, and, lo, Fragments of cloth of silver gleamed and danced In the late sun, and linen white as snow Among the beggar thoughts, with lowered eyes, Princes and kings had wandered in disguise. SONGS I _On the White Road_ There's a white, white road lies under the swinging moon, Stretched from the black of the deep to the black of the deep, And midway the graveyard lies, with its leaves a-croon, The only sound of the world, like a dream in sleep. There's a white, white grave lies under the graveyard trees, Hung on the road as a single pearl on a thread, And silence waits, beast crouched, on the rim of the breeze, That moans where the only man in the world lies dead. II _The Wanderer_ Have I finished my life, am I done? Is my heart-blood thin and cold, That I gnaw the bones of the town? Am I empty and old? My flags are the chimneys' grime, Tossed on a languid breeze. Have I dreamed of the roaring rhyme, A storm through the trees? The snow in the streets is black, Profaned with the city's sin; I know of a star-lit track Where God's hand has been. Have I finished with snow and sun, With the wind on the open plain, That I starve in the barren town-- Is my life in vain? III _False_ The black sky stretches to the pallid sea, As a false love and a dismantled heart. Empty of faith and eager to depart. He takes her yet once more, submissively, Against his lips, then, laughing, drifts away Swiftly within the dawning of the day. Blindly she tosses up her foam-white hands, Crying for mercy, and the wind--her hair-- Lashes the wide-sailed ships and leaves them bare. Blindly she hurls her rage against the sands. There, in the cold sky where her love had lain Scornful, aloof, the sun reviews her pain. IV _A Song of the Oregon Trail_ How long the trail! How far the goal! Last year the moons might come and go Like dancing shadows on the snow. My heart was light, my heart was strong; I cared not though the way be long; But now--the end is you--my soul!-- I fear the dark, I fear the dread White frost that hovers round my heart, The cold, high sun, and, wide apart, The frozen, pitiless stars above. So far, so far from my true love, And, oh! I fear, I fear the dead! I fear their fingers, grasping and pale. I did not fear the dead last year-- But now, the kisses of my dear! The breast of her, so kind and warm, Ah, heart! I must not come to harm-- How far the goal! How long the trail! V _The Apple-Tree_ The apple-tree is white with snow, My heart is empty as the day; The white hours indolently go Graveward, because my love's away. Months lag, then spring and love's return-- Yet once again I seem to see, Flushed with delight, as kisses burn, White snow upon the apple-tree. VI _Silver and Rose_ Pale as a petulant star, She held up her face to his love; Her spirit from his dwelt afar As the sky from the sea is above. Yet he gazed till her whiteness was rose, Dawn bright with the morning above-- As the sea from the sky wakes and glows, So his image was mirrored in love. VII _To-Morrow_ To-morrow and to-morrow--shall there be Perchance a morrow when I may not see Your face beside me any more? Ah, no! My love, my love, I cannot let you go. Like sun in Egypt, ever kind and fair, My heart must wake at dawn and know you there-- No dread of day which holds a weeping rain, No dread of chilly love and bitter pain, But ever present, ever wise and true, To-morrow and to-morrow holding you. VIII _The Greater Joy_ Not that young Joy who looked with laughing eyes, That jocund sprite with open, idle fingers Stretched to the dawn, the dawn whose gold light lingers Across the far blue hills of Paradise. Not that young Joy, but one courageous, calm, Who--passed beyond the quiet morning meadows Beyond the dawn of life's delicious shadows-- Holds the great sun and moon in either palm. In her wise heart she takes that little Joy, Kisses to sleep tired eyes with laughter over, Pointing to greater joys in heights above her-- This shall be ours whom fate would fain destroy. IX _The Rose-Colored Camelia-Tree_ Stained by the ardent silver of the stars, Glitter the leaves, a challenge to the day-- The bright, fierce flame of naked scimitars Holds still the argent night, folded away. Challenging day, yet, lovelier than light, Blushing with dawn the flick'ring leaves between, Burn the rose blossoms, traitors to the night-- Color of joy upon the tranquil green. Brave to the amorous sun, who, fearing, grieves, At last the tree's whole heart with love is crowned-- The rose-red flowers warm against the leaves, The rose-red petals sweet against the ground. X _Good-Bye Sorrow_ Day that began with a tear, Will you end with a sigh? Stay! See the blossoming year, Laugh up to the sky. Nay, here's a hope for your fear, Sweet sorrow--good-bye! XI _In Harbor_ My little boat is in a bay, It swings with gentle motion, And there I lie and watch all day The far-off, noisy ocean. The ships go up, the ships go down, And never see me spying. They are the pride and fear of town-- Sails wide and colors flying. They are so strong, they are so tall, They fear no storm, no sorrow; With brave eyes to the sun, they all Set sail for some to-morrow. Sometimes I long to range and roam, My harbor life bewailing, But little boats must bide at home, To gayly speed the sailing. XII _Rosa Mundi_ O life that flowered at the very top of the tree, Redder than all the roses out of the South, This was the blossom colored and wrought for me, Sweeter than scarlet bloom of a maiden's mouth. Fain would I climb, and fain would I reach the flower. Ah, but the tree was tall as the flower was fair! Weary I grew and slept through the noonday hour; Winds caught my fate and strewed it over the air. XIII _The Ribbon_ Ah, dearest, dearest, not alone I face the day's white monotone. The fair, bright ribbon of the hours-- A mountain brook bestead through flowers-- Runs, a dear line, from you to you. There is no smallest deed I do Through which the ribbon does not run, A silver string to pearls of sun. So glad I watch the moments fly Across the high-hung summer sky, Till in a radiant flame they burn, To mark the hour of your return. XIV _The Aster_ The little vagrant gypsy flower Has blossomed forth again-- Your face against the autumn sky, Your face against the rain. The fevered youth of summer days Has passed away in tears. The aged winter totters down The pathway of the years. Yet, nodding, luring, laughing o'er The tired world's pain and scars, Joyous I find between my hands Your face--in aster stars. XV _Heart and Hand_ Singing, he smote his heart-- The woman smiled, And Love leaped, flaming, Into being--wild. Singing, he smote his hands-- The woman sighed, And Love grew weary, Turned his face, and died. XVI _The Golden Fruit_ I lacked not Love, I lacked not lovely Love, But, ah, the apples of Hesperides! The golden apples and the emerald trees, The flower-sweet maidens, dancing in the breeze-- Holds Love a blossom with such fruits as these? I gave up Love, I gave up lovely Love, And sought the island of enchanted skies, With little rainbow rifts of seraphs' eyes, Round which the flaming sword forever plies Against the darkened world of rue and sighs. Alas for Love! alas for lovely Love! In dreams I heard the beating of his wing; His soft voice, beautiful as sea in spring, Mourned through the empty songs the seraphs sing; Life seemed in sleep more dear than everything. Take me back, Love; take me back, lovely Love. Dark winds may drive me o'er thy tyrannous seas-- Life is a world that breaks the thing it frees. I would be bound in all thy masteries-- Yet, ah, the apples of Hesperides! XVII _To a Moth_ Spirit of evil, heavily flying, turning, Dropping to earth, Caught to the light, with brown wings torn and burning, Whence was your birth? Was there a cause that, ceaselessly turning, flying, Drew you from night? All that we know is this--the aimless dying, Killed by the light. Evil the star that led you, spirit of evil, Out of your dark, Breeding desire that conquers us, man and devil-- Passion's red spark. XVIII _Winter Song_ Oh, it's winter, winter, when you're here, And summer when you're gone. What need of birds when hearts sing clear, From dusk of day to dawn? The noble wind, the silver snow, High stars, and, best of all, The red-rose hearth--a golden glow When twilight curtains fall. Who'd cry the heat of summer skies, The bare, despairing sun, The languid flowers, with closing eyes, The earth's fair wooing done? The possibilities of spring, The reticence of bliss, Love with the winter's argent wing, We'll scorn the sun for this. XIX _Youth_ Youth and its pensive agonies! How soon The restless heart forgets to crave the moon! Age is too weary for the butterflies-- Spring's rainbow radiance fluttering through sweet skies, Hope merrily deferred. We see the morn, We who are old, in shattered fragments. Scorn For laughter and for singing clouds our breast. Youth, take your fill of pleasure, for the rest Of Age is endless. Sing, nor grudge the song-- Youth is so short, and Age, quiet Age, so long! XX _Persephone_ Persephone, Persephone--her sweet face wanders up to me, Through this bewildering maze of spring. At length she daunts the tyrannous year, Her little laugh usurps the tear, Her little song she dares to fling Against the black stars, merrily. Persephone, Persephone--her hands lean through the spring to me. Sweet, could I show you in what wise Your song has blossomed--how the air Is mad with gold because your hair, Tossed golden 'neath your sea-blue eyes, And earth goes laughing with your glee? Persephone, Persephone, this hour sends out your heart to me. Child of the Dark, with soul sun-bright, Ah, give me largesse, give me May, So shall I charm the saddest day, And life--one amber dawn's delight-- Shall bear your song eternally. XXI _Étoiles d'Enfer_ The four wide winds of evening have their stars, Fashioned in fire, in purity of snow, Tossed to their height by endless avatars-- These all the righteous know. What of the stars of Hades? On the gloom The outcast see them shine like angels' eyes, And in the living night that is their tomb They dream of Paradise. They know the stars of Hades. They are deeds, Wickedly born, which came to good at last-- Fair blossoms spring from villany of weeds, Rest--and redeem the past. XXII _Enough of Singing_ Enough of singing; since your heart is tired, We'll leave the lute, so long, so long desired, And in the silence speak one quiet word, Simple as earth, forgetting song and bird. No more of singing; mating-time has sped, In the broad fields the poppy-lips are red. Crush them, Beloved, drink the lethe deep; Song being dead, what else is left but sleep? XXIII _Truth_ Up from the soul, as a blade of grass from the sod, Springs the intent of the prayer as a cry to God. Blossoms may veil it or visions with ways uncouth, He sees the ultimate grass-blade, the heart of Truth. XXIV _The Philosopher_ The grim immensities are mine, The sunlight on the brook is theirs; I drink the lees of bitter wine, Fate grants a gift to all their prayers. I stammer, all afire to tell The thoughts that urge for life like pain; For them words brim the shallow well Like easy drops of summer rain. And which, ah, Heaven, which is best-- The little lute for every mood, Or, shrinking coldly from life's test, The heights and depths of solitude? XXV _Prayers_ Prayers that were birds winging wide, Daring the flame of the sun, How have you faltered and died, Now the day's done! Prayers must be brave for the dark, Strong for the chill of the star, Fearing no fate to embark Over the bar. Prayers of the sun and the moon, Prayers for the sky and the nest, All must reach haven so soon-- Which shall reach rest? XXVI _A South-Sea Lover Scorned_ When the red coral of your lip is pale As the bleached sea-sand, ah, wearily, wearily, Will you behold your face, your fingers frail, Gnarled like a wind-blown tree; your star-bright eyes Blind as a cloudy midnight without moon. No more fair necklaces nor scarlet dyes Can make you cruel to men, for soon, so soon, Your heart will bear the years--ah, wearily, wearily. Then I, your scorn, shall still be man and chief; Turning to free your hands so carelessly, carelessly, You will be dead to love past all belief. Still round the slender columns of the palm The moon shall lie in shivering, silver pools, Still shall the trades lash through the summer calm While twilight with her smile the island cools And Time forgets your presence, carelessly, carelessly. XXVII _In May_ Blithe Nature leaned to kiss her favorite child, Her sunshine hair about her bosom swirled; Gay Baby Spring held out his hands, he smiled, And Apple-Blossoms dimpled on the world. XXVIII _For Your Sake_ Bid me for your sake, Not for self or right-- You alone can wake Power to gain the fight. In your name I'd dare Aught in earth's great bounds; Forth my sins should fare, Leashed like cringing hounds. When you touch my hand, Through your holy eyes I can see the land Where is Paradise. Yet I may not go, Leaving cold and night, Till your soul of snow Sees that mine is white. Let my heart not break Till I kill my sin; Bid me for your sake Fight the world--and win! XXIX _Lyric Love_ The world deserves its wisdom. You and I, Serene within the shadow, crowned with hours, Cinctured with solitude, the bended sky Folds us in hues of tulip twilight flowers. Knowledge is chill; your hair is warm with gold, A lock lies heavily across your cheek. I somewhere heard of darkness, pain, and cold-- Keep your own, world. Ah, Love, stir not nor speak. XXX _Be Still_ Be still, be still, vex not the night with sound, The moon has laid her finger on the lake, And in the shadows of the wood profound There lies a peace we would profane to break. Upon the lonely avenue of trees, As pearls upon an airy silver string, Are caught the threaded echoes of the breeze That sets the ruffled leaves a-murmuring. Be still, dear heart, as though 'twere death to speak. Love waits you, lily-like, with leaves unfurled, While on the breast of day night lays her cheek, The silence speaks the secret of the world. XXXI _Butterfly Words_ Butterfly words from the sun in my brain, Flitting and darting and flitting again, Gleaming of golden and violet and rose, What is the rainbow you spring from, and where? Butterflies daintily poise and disclose, Whence is this secret of color you bear? Sun that is ruddy and fragrant with flowers, Garnered and hid from these desolate hours, Misty with beauty, the silver of spring-- Ah, for the ways that are lost to my feet! Only the dip of the butterfly wing, Poised for a moment, revives me the sweet. XXXII _Music_ Music has opened her hands, Through fingers her jewels are falling, Fingers so delicate slender, Pale as the ghost of a flower. Jewels of crimson, the life Ebbing from hearts that are broken, Roses and wine and red sunsets, Flames of undying desire. Jewels of azure, the sea Dreaming of stars, and the morning Dancing with life, then the silence Blue of mysterious caves. Jewels of green, and the grass Lifts up its hands to the summer, Hiding insidious serpents, Fair as the sweets that are sin. Jewels more bright than the sun Music lets fall from her fingers. We who have stood in the shadow-- How may we die for her sake? XXXIII _The Ghost_ You came and you went, and I swept you aside, not a trace Does my wisdom endure of your words and your beautiful face And the curls of your hair; Yet your presence, a song, murmurs ever in hopeless refrain, And I wake in the night with my empty hands yearning in vain For the touch of your hair. You went, and I triumphed--I crushed out my heart with a kiss On the lips that are ashen, forgetting spring's wonderful bliss And your tremulous lips; Yet the kisses were ghostly with jasmine, dear jasmine of May-- The new has the soul of the old, is aflame with the way And the touch of your lips. You came and you went, and the world wearies on with its game. My heart never falters or fears at the sound of your name Or the sight of your face; Yet the ghost of our passion stands white in the midst of my heart, With your hands and your hair, and I know it will never depart Passion's ghost with your face! XXXIV _Fight!_ Fight, though the bulwarks of your faith may fall, Life become gray and full of weariness, Love prove a lie and wisdom bitterness-- Fight, for the strife alone avails for all. Fight and fight on, exulting in the light, Standing alert and upright gleefully, Seizing life's joys and woes courageously, Man to the end, and master--laugh and fight. XXXV _In Tonga_ The windy rain beats, beats about my door-- Alas for love when love goes wandering! The dawn mist rises on the forest floor-- Alas for life when love goes wandering! With wet, green leaves the palm-trees lash the night, The pitiless trades drive wild gods in their flight. And, ah, my lover! Moons have come and gone, The fighting ended, still he lingers on. Sleepless I hear the demon wind above-- Alas for love when love goes wandering! And I must wed with one I do not love-- Alas for life when love goes wandering! XXXVI _This was the Song_ We have forgotten. This the rowers knew, Straining within the galleys' reeling night. Life bent to breaking, while their great souls grew Strong in the ancient purposes of Time. This was the song whereby they made their fight, Laughed as they swung. Gods! how the cord bit through! This was the song the pagan lovers heard, Wakened by flowers in a rose-red dawn. Through the bright dew they fled, like ocean stirred With morning. Bare and beautiful they ran, Holding each other's hand. Through leaves they're gone, Cleaving the silver pool with flash of bird. Carven in stone, Abydos holds it fast-- The little Eastern dancer with her lute, Wild Erin's faeries crying for the past. They keep the deathless secret of the word Hid behind Nature's lips, who, grave, remote, Guard this from profanation till the last. Not unto us who bide the ebb and flow, The senseless order of the tide of law. We have forgotten to be free; we know Only the iteration of the day. The priceless moon, white pearl without a flaw, Drowns in the muddy stream of worldly woe. We take the petty part and leave the whole. Lost to our ken the song of Nature's youth-- The great barbaric winds that sweep the soul And leave it emptied of all else but truth. XXXVII _To E. D._ She wrought her songs in secret ways, Yet cared not where they fell; Her soul distilled itself like dews In rue and asphodel. They fell in countless happy hearts, Made wise by sun and showers, Like pollen blown about the earth, Conceiving royal flowers. XXXVIII _The Dance_ Like little, eager children The tiptoe tulips stand, Row upon row of dancing heads In joyous saraband. With lithe, long emerald petticoats, And happy hands tossed up, The sunshine is the laughter That brims their golden cup. XXXIX _Vanquished_ Heart, here are roses burning with the South-- ("Fairer was her false mouth")-- Close your tired eyes, the twilight gives you rest-- ("Cool was her snowy breast"). Take of the sunshine, nor remember rain-- ("Love is a cruel pain")-- Hush! you shall sleep forgetting love's alarms-- ("Sleep died in her false arms"). XL _Tranquillity_ Do you respect the heavy-lidded flowers That nod so drowsily upon their bed? Can you endure the slow-stepped, dreamy hours That fall, indifferent, to gold and red? Have you the key that opens to green arches Where trees repeat their prayers in monotone? Then take my hand down life's mysterious marches, And let us walk in silence and alone. TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: No changes have been made from the original book; this e-text is a faithful transcription of the author's words and intent. 
35188	----	THE FIRE BIRD BOOKS BY GENE STRATTON-PORTER _Nature Books_ THE SONG OF THE CARDINAL FRIENDS IN FEATHERS BIRDS OF THE BIBLE MUSIC OF THE WILD MOTHS OF THE LIMBERLOST MORNING FACE HOMING WITH THE BIRDS _Nature Stories_ FRECKLES A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW THE HARVESTER LADDIE MICHAEL O'HALLORAN A DAUGHTER OF THE LAND HER FATHER'S DAUGHTER THE FIRE BIRD [Illustration: "_Medicine Man, O Medicine Man, Make for me a new, a sure medicine That will ease my scorched heart Of the fire of a flaming red bird And take from my tortured hands Their burden of moon white lilies._" ] THE FIRE BIRD GENE STRATTON-PORTER, ILLUSTRATIONS BY GORDON GRANT DECORATIONS BY LEE THAYER GARDEN CITY, N. Y., AND TORONTO DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1922 COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY GENE STRATTON-PORTER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. _First Edition_ TO EDWARD SHERIFF CURTIS BLOOD BROTHER TO THE INDIANS BY CEREMONIAL SPIRIT BROTHER TO HIS FELLOW MEN BY BIRTH CONTENTS PART I PAGE THE LOVE DANCE OF PRINCESS YIADA 1 PART II COÜY-OÜY AND MOUNTAIN LION 22 PART III YIADA'S FLIGHT TO THE MANDANAS 49 ILLUSTRATIONS Princess Yiada and the Medicine Man _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE Coüy-oüy and Mountain Lion 22 Star Face and Dove Eye 49 THE FIRE BIRD PART I THE LOVE DANCE OF YIADA Medicine Man, O Medicine Man, Make for me High Magic. I, Yiada, daughter of White Wolf, Mighty Chief of the Canawacs, Mate of Star Face, Brave of the Mandanas, I of your blood, I have said it! From the roots of the white toluache lilies Make me a strong medicine That will drown my scorching spirit-fire And empty my hands of their fulness. Beat your sacred turtle drums Loud and threateningly. Drive back to the fear peopled forest Of the far and dread Shadow Land The flaming ghost of the fire bird And the white flower of the still water. Heal me of the dread head-sickness Like the midsummer madness Of foaming-mouthed quiota. I, Yiada, proud daughter of the fierce Canawacs, I, mate of the Brave, Star Face, Chief of a forest of wigwams, With ponies like the sands of the sea, have said it. Hear me, for the healing of my sickened spirit! Where the triumphant blue sea water, Sky-gold all day in the slanting sunlight, Silver-white in the uncertain moonlight, Teases the pale sands of the craggy beaches, Lay the lodge of my Father, White Wolf, The savage hunter of beast and enemy, First at the kill, Chief of great wealth, Next in power to the high Sachem, Chief of all Chiefs. Many were the strong sons Who sprang from White Wolf's loins-- I, Yiada, his one daughter, pride of Falcon Eye, His daring chieftainess, from the far Mandanas. Tall our wigwams of deer and bear and elk skins, Stout our warm lodges of cedar and pine tree, Many our robes of beaver and buffalo and marten, Heavy our necklaces with cunningly carved beads, Polished elk teeth and eagle talons, Shining black obsidian and precious blue shell; Our war ponies flocking like birds fleeing winter. Always for me, the one daughter, The warm spot by the storm fire, The floating sweet fat from the cooking kettles, The first crusty brown cake From the smoking red baking stones, The clear flowing gold sweet From the tall nests of the wood bees; The soft sun coloured robe of down fine doeskin Embroidered with broad bands of white beads, Luring beads of green, and blue, and yellow, The red stained singing quills of the porcupine, And downy snow white under feathers From the breast of the white swan. I, first in the picking of the juicy berries The fruits of earth and bush, Most skilful in the weaving Of the bright story baskets, Swiftest at embroidering robes of doeskin For chieftain or little fatling; Leader in the ceremonial dances Of the young women of our tribe, In the great Assembly Lodge of our people. I, of slim body, willow smooth, oak strong, With thick long hair of crow-back blackness, And keen far eyes like the high eagle Of the top crag of the cloud country Spying in the gold hunting grounds of the sun. Many the gaily dressed young Braves Who nightly crept close our lodges And made soft eyes and sang wooing songs, When the moon of full womanhood shone on me. But always, when she braided ornaments In my hair, for dancing, And oiled me for high ceremonials, In my ear Falcon Eye, my Mother, whispered: "Keep your body for Mountain Lion, Son of the High Sachem, Chief of Chiefs when his Father makes his journey To the far country of the Great Spirit." Mountain Lion was the tallest, The strongest of our young men, The fastest rider, the most skilful dancer, The surest hunter among us, The spy who never failed, The warrior who always returned in triumph. Like the young trees of the sea shore He was slim and straight. Like the water rolling up the white sands He was ever tireless. Like the shining of the spirit sun He lighted all the day with gold magic; Like the kindly silver moon He peopled all the night with friendly shadows. The heart of every maiden was wingéd In the wild breast of her, If he but looked where her footsteps led her. Medicine Man, O Medicine Man, Make for me a new, a sure medicine That will ease my scorched heart Of the fire of a flaming red bird And take from my tortured hands Their burden of moon white lilies. In the cool night of the fat, bloody moon of harvest When the tribal storehouses were full heaped With dried fish and bear, buffalo and deer meat, With little mountains of maize for winter; When the cakes and candles of yellow tallow Were moulded past numbering, When the wide-mouthed seed baskets Were high heaped with richness, And many deep nut baskets were overflowing, When the dried berries from far thickets Made little sun painted hills-- Then all of the tribe of our hunting grounds Bathed their hard worked bodies, Oiled their smooth skins, painted their happy faces And put on the wealth of their richest robes For the Great Dance of Thanksgiving. When the robins made love chase that season, In the secret ceremonial of the wise old women My Maiden's Hour had been celebrated. Always had my proud, savage Mother Taken me alone to the forest, And there, beating hands and chanting, She had carefully taught me The Wonder Dance of the Maidens' Hour Of the Mandanas, her people. It was a dance of moonlight and moon madness, Of sign love talk, of eyes asking great gifts, Of swift feet stamping like the roebuck And singing bead and shell trinket music, So that all the night was softly lighted With strange visions flower sweet. On the day of the Thanksgiving Ceremonial When my Mother oiled me to leaf fine smoothness, And hung me heavy with bracelets of bone beads And a necklace of precious carved blue shell, As her skilled hands of love flew, In my ear she made Canawac talk: "To-night, before the Great Sachem On his high throne of prideful authority, With the son who follows him in Council, Sitting beside his knee, When thou leadest the Thanksgiving Dance At the head of the young women Thou shalt wave all of them back to their places, And alone, before the assembled Chieftains, Thou shalt dance the Mating Dance Of the rich and powerful Mandanas, Ever keeping thine eye of glad submission, Fast on the eye of Mountain Lion. "If the soft light in his eye strike fire for thee, Then shalt thou forget all others And dance out thy heart for him alone And bow low as the young cedar before him, And as the serpent charm him. If he arise and stand facing thee And dance love manifest before thee, Then is the hour come for thy union with him. "Then shall I fly to set up thy wigwam Of down-fine doeskin, bleached with love, That many suns I have worked on in hiding for thee, And gladly in the sand before it Thou shalt set thy lighted candle, Thy tall proud candle of gold bear tallow; And if he come to thee with soft words With words of wooing magic, Then shalt thou bury thy candle flame In the yielding sands before him. "Then art thou our Chieftainess in seasons to come, And high shall thy sure heart beat With pride of love and power, And swift shall thy red blood run in leaping streams With the flood-high tide of mighty Chieftains. "Braves shall thy many straight sons be, Great Chiefs who shall rule other far nations; And sweet shall thy tall strong women be As the red honey-flower that grows in the forest, And swift shall their hearts be As the heart of the frightened fawn That leaps with feathered feet before the hunter." Medicine Man, make me a sure medicine, A strong medicine, new to our people, That shall ease my weary eyes Of a red bird and a white lily. When the Harvest Ceremonial Dance Was cried through all the village, When night crept, silent as the bat's wing, From the blanketed heart of the forest, When the great Assembly Lodge Was lighted and filled with happy faces, When the old chiefs and the wise men Had spoken thanksgivings for fat harvest, And the time was come for all the tribe to rejoice, First came the dance of the little stumbling children; The little fat bellied round faced serious children, With shining black hair and wonder eyes, And flower red cheeks and mouths, And stout breath like short gusts of North Wind. When, worn out with swift dances, They rolled in their soft blankets, Came the shy youths' dance, And the uncertain growing maidens' All bravely tinkling little necklaces Of squirrel and rabbit teeth, and bright rare shells. Then danced the carefully trained young women, Grown and ripe for the Harvest of love. In their lead I did as my Mother had told me. Straight I stood before the Great Sachem And the son of the pride of his heart. High I lifted my head like a proud pine tree, And softly I shook my bracelets of beads And rattled my necklace of blue shell, And rustled the porcupine fringes Of my fine robe of yellow, In music like the little secret whispering Among the dry grass under passing feet. I spoke as I had always been taught by my Mother: "Great Chief, grant that I dance before thee The Woman's Love Dance of the brave Mandanas, A dance that I have learned From the swift feet of my Mother." Searchingly, the Great Sachem looked at his son And his son looked at me with understanding And made a swift sign to his Father; So raising his hands of authority, The Great Sachem cried aloud: "Yiada, daughter of Chief White Wolf, Will dance the Woman's Dance of the Mandanas, Let all others be seated. I have said it!" Alone, with the blood of heart red on lip and cheek And with the pride of my asking heart Beating like wings on my light feet, With my Mother keeping time for me, As she did in the secret forest, Slowly I stepped into the great dance Of the Mandanas, of the peace lands; The strongest love medicine Ever measured by the feet of wild women. As I danced, even as my Mother had long told me I kept my eyes ever spying Deep into the eyes of Mountain Lion. When the dance grew to its swiftest wildest note, When my proud head of certainty And my willing arms were high lifted, And the beads and obsidian and blue shell Tinkled soft singing, like falling rain, Mountain Lion sprang to his feet And came down in the firelight before me. With no knowledge of the dance of the Mandanas, And no teaching of step or of posture, He fell into the strange measures That my Mother had taught me; With eyes upon eyes and heart near to heart, Facing in the wide fire flaming circle Where envious faces kept watch upon us, We danced the wonder dance Of the hour of full womanhood. Medicine Man, O Medicine Man, Healer of the hearts of the Mandanas, There, facing the chiefs and maidens Of a thousand lodges of our tribe, With the Great Sachem keenly watching On his high throne of great power, Darest say that was not my hour My rightful moon of exultation? When I looked, near the close of the dance, Toward my Mother for guidance She gave me the swift happy sign of birds flying; So I caught that joyful sign And I gave it to the waiting maidens. Like homing swallows they swept around me; The young Braves came stamping, Like roebucks before the does of Spring, Then all of us changed the dance To the love measures of the Canawacs. When the chattering maidens Went back to their waiting mothers, I stood there tall and straight and proud Fresh as the wing of the eagle, From the highest peak of dawn Eye to eye, face to face with Mountain Lion. His eyes burned deep into my eyes With a look of quivering power. Medicine Man, darest thou say That was not the great understanding? So when all of the others Went on with the Dance of Thanksgiving, Soft as the veiling mists From the dim breast of evening meadows I slipped from the Council House And I flew to our lodge. With hands of high satisfaction My Mother set my wigwam beside her lodge. I lighted my tall happy candle of bear fat; I opened my doorway wide to the friendly moon; Deep in the sands I set my love light to burning. And there I waited--long and long I waited, In burning eagerness of heart Tremblingly listening with each breath For the sure step of Mountain Lion. Then, Medicine Man, With black angered sign talk And fierce eyes of leaping fire, Came my storm driven Mother. As she came toward me, Like a killing wind uprooting the cedars, Arose high clamour from the Council Lodge. She caught up my hopeful waiting candle, My living love token to Mountain Lion, my man, She buried its flame deep in the white sands, In rage she thrust it from her, She snatched shut the welcoming doors Before the eyes of anguish of my Mother Of my willing doeskin wigwam, And in the harsh low voiced Canawac tongue She cried to me in choking anger: "Woe is upon us! Strangers have reached us. Comes a great Chief from tribes of the far North, From the camps of the powerful Killimacs, From the home fires of the Ice God; And with him on a snow white pony Rides his beautiful raven haired daughter, A tall proud Princess of a great warlike nation. "This night Mountain Lion will not come to thee: His father has sent him to serve the rich strangers. Get thee back to thy place in the Council Lodge Before the venom tipped finger pointers miss thee, For there will be great feasting and much talk, The rejoicing will last for many suns and moons. It was the wrong time for thy dance of allurement Thy maiden proffer of prideful loving, But I, thy Mother, taught thee thy undoing, I, thy Mother, gave to thee the sign." Then, Medicine Man, As fierce a storm as ever tore the forest, As ever pitched the sea high in wild fury, Broke in my heart, leaping to flee its lodging place. I lifted my head high, and proudly and silently I stepped into the moon tide, But I trembled and shook with all-over sickness, My blood ran hot angry gushes, And I, who had never known pain In any part of my strong body, Now felt its rending arrows Tearing my heart in sick torture, As I crept through the restless whispering forest Where the wise old yellow leaves Talked over my shame with each other And every mocking finger of night Pointed in derision at my wounded side. I crept back to the Council Lodge Still as a panther fending for her cubs, I slipped in unseen by any, And took up my place among the young women. On the high throne of power Beside our Great Sachem, Storm Wind, Sat a tall Chief trailing rich robes Of white fox, sealskin, and white bear. A proud Chief of savage face, Weighted with a heavy necklace of eagles' claws, Many elk teeth, and lion talons, Hanging across his broad shoulders. Standing still and straight before them, First, I saw the stranger woman. I heard the deep voice of her father, Toned to soft talk, as among peace councils, When he told the Great Sachem and Chieftains And all the watching Canawacs: "This is my daughter, a Princess of seven tribes, She who can run with the foot of the hare, Who can dance as the gold birch leaves, When spring comes stealing from the Southland; Who can guide the swift canoes surely And ride the wild ponies on the chase, Whose fingers are skilful in basket weaving, In beading, and braiding, and polishing ornaments. She comes with me to make the friendship Of a people of her mother's blood; And her name is a name held sacred Among all the tribes at peace with us. Like music there fell from his smooth tongue A name well known to council wise Canawacs, 'Coüy-oüy'--a breath of sweetness-- He spoke it like the easy tongue of a lazy brook Softly singing among the small stones of its bed. Then every Canawac remembered the dark days When the Great Spirit became justly angered, And in the height of his deep wrath Against the treachery of all tribes Drew up the waters of destruction Until they covered the earth's face, Leaving upon the tallest tree Only one Chief and his mate, And one pair of every bird and climbing beast, On the top of the highest mountain Of all the earth known to man. When the water had come up to the top branches Until only their heads were above it, And had stood still for three weary suns, Then slowly it drew back, and left the earth barren, So there was no fire to cook food For the hungry Sachem and his mate, Nor to warm the water soaked camping grounds. Then the Sachem sent a beaver messenger Far down to the underworld To borrow only one coal From the campfires of the dark spirits; But the beaver was not able to bring it For burning his mouth cruelly. Then he sent the fierce mountain lion, Searching all over the earth for campfires, But there was no fire to be found, For the water had been everywhere. Then he sent a little gray bird to the spirit world To bring from the campfires of the unseen country One living coal with which to make a fire For the cooking kettles and light-signals, And to warm the lodges of all the tribes That would follow him in suns to come. So the dauntless little gray bird Slowly winged across the far spaces. Three suns arose and set, and at the red evening When the third sun plunged its face in the sea, With all of its plumage burned a flame-tongue red, With a beak of red like hot coals And its face blackened with fire, Came the brave panting bird With a living coal held fast in its mouth, A coal snatched from the high altars Of the far country of the spirits. And so the fire gift was brought back to earth To warm the hearts and the wigwams Of every nation, for all seasons to come. The bird was sent from a stranger tribe Far to the south of our hunting grounds, Where the hot suns shine and the grass withers; But travellers journeying northward to see us, Had told our grandfathers about it, Had shown us the bird of bloody red beak And face still blackened with fire, Singing gaily in our summer forests, Singing even in the ice of winter. Often when we chanted songs of thanksgiving To the Great Spirit, for rich gifts, When we thanked him for the buffalo and beaver, For the deer meat and fish and corn for winter, Then our tribes made a ceremonial of glad rejoicing For the bird that brought back The great wonder gift of fire. Its sacred name fell on our ears Like the peace of the Great Spirit, Fell soft as flying snowflakes When first squaw winter comes, Soft as the hunting wing of the thieving owl, Sweet as the breath of flowers in the nesting moon, From the lips of the Great Chief: "Coüy-oüy." Before him, her shining head bowed, Our people watched her in silent wonder. She was tall, taller than any of our women, Tall and slender like the singing wind reeds That grow around the magic pool Of the white spirit lily of the still water, Far back in the valley pastures. She moved like the night hawk Slowly sweeping across the moon sky. From the proud lift of her head And the eagle look of her dark eye From the red flower flame of her soft lips And the sureness of her being, I could see that the heart of her Was like a wiry little war pony Swiftly racing up the steep trail of her breast With the hunt blood of the soft chase Fevering its questing nostrils. No woman among our people, Had seen the beauty of her robe, For she stood in flower white, flower fine doeskin, Bleached and tanned like winter snowdrift, Like the shining water flower face of far lakes, Like the wide wing of a homing white swan, Like the silver rays of the big cold hunting moon. All around her feet fell soft knotted fringes Cut deep as the height of the first upstanding Of papooses ready to walk. And her belt and her neck were deeply embroidered With a thousand green stained quills From the backs of many porcupines, While her long heavy necklace Was got from traders crossing far seas, For it lay soft dull jade like the green wave meadow In the deepest bay of the leaf tinted big sea water. Medicine Man, O Medicine Man, When one looked upon her searchingly, As I looked long upon her, That night of fat harvest thanksgiving, Slowly one saw creeping from her bare arms, From her firm high breasts, Over the dark gleaming bowed head And sure slender shoulders of her, A faint waving cloud like fine blue mist That could have been none other Than the secret power of the Great Spirit, Stealing from her breast to wrap around her So that any evil spirit magic Might not be strong to work against her. I could see that she was softer Than our hard working women, Though she had learned from the bee To be busy and useful, Though she had learned from the hunted fawn To travel far journeys in daring wingéd leaps. PART II COÜY-OÜY AND MOUNTAIN LION Medicine Man, it were not enough, Ha! it were not enough That the stranger bore the song name Of the fire bird our tribe worshipped; For on her breast, sheltered with one slim hand, With flaming wings outspread, And panting saw-edged beak like fire, Lay a brother of the spirit bird, Flame red, blood red, feathers like wounds-- Dead coal black of face; A wild thing, sheltered and unafraid. In her language and with wave smooth sign talk She told the Great Sachem and our Chiefs That she had found it in the forest Wounded from the missed kill of the night bird Or bare escaped from the eager claws Of the hunger driven wildcat. [Illustration: "_Before the approving eyes of the watching Canawacs Never had there been a sight so fair to see, As when, clinging trustingly to her firm finger, The broken bird fed from her hand of pity._" ] Even as she told how she had found it, She folded its wings against its full breast And set it upright on her steady finger. Medicine Man, it moved not, it fluttered not, Though one bleeding wing hung broken. Where it had lain between her round breasts Its red sign stained the front of her white robe, The mark of her soft heart of pity. Medicine Man, the face of the Great Sachem Changed slowly as he watched our visitor; He looked with understanding upon her, He marvelled at the quiet bird. The heart of my Father, the White Wolf, Grew tender as he studied her. My own heart lay strange in my tormented breast Until swiftly she turned her face from the women Ever the grinders of the meal in our jars, Ever the curers of the deer meat, and salmon, The fillers and the guardians of the storehouses; And stretching her hand toward Mountain Lion, By strange words and by pretty sign talk She asked of him like coaxing birds: "Coarse meal and water. Coüy-oüy is hungry." As a sudden wind bends a tall birch low, Willing my man sprang to obey her bidding. Before the approving eyes of the watching Canawacs Never had there been a sight so fair to see, As when, clinging trustingly to her firm finger, The broken bird fed from her hand of pity. I could see the deep look, the inner trouble, The battle in the heart of Mountain Lion, When she held the bird toward him That it should drink, as do the wounded, From the polished mussel shell he had brought. He looked, not at the broken bird, as we did, But far into the eyes of Coüy-oüy, The Princess of the Killimacs. Medicine Man, was it not a Brave's hour, Was it not a Warrior's hour, That hour in which I stood unflinching And saw her take him from me? I, whose heart had possessed him Since we shot the play arrows of childhood, And together chased the painted wings Through the flower fields of the Canawacs. Then came Prairie Flower, Mate of the Great Sachem, To lead away the mighty strangers. For many suns and as many moons We feasted and danced gaily. Was I not brave to wear fine robes, Nightly to chant boastful songs? My breast was torn and bleeding As the broken wing of the fire bird, Yet many searing times At the command of the Great Sachem Was I made to smile in the Council Lodge, And to dance the Love Dance of the Mandanas; That dance that I had learned in secret From the flying feet of my Mother, Learned only for Mountain Lion, For the great ceremonial of love giving. Medicine Man, Hear me! Not again did the eyes of Mountain Lion Travel across the Council Lodge To seek my eyes in understanding. Coüy-oüy had taken his eyes; On her face she proudly kept them, For he saw nought but the blue mist around her, The gleam of her hair, the red bow of her lips. He heard nought but the luring music Of her echo sweet voice, And the happy song of her quilled robe As she hourly passed among our people; While always clinging to her breast or shoulder Proud and fearless as in freedom, Rode the sacred wounded bird of blood redness. Her father homed in wigwams Near the lodge of the Great Sachem, Rode his hunting pony on the far chase beside him, Sat on high in the councils of our Chieftains. When the dancing and feasting were over It was known through the voices of the criers That for many moons our visitors Would home beside our campfires, Learning of our wisdom from us, Teaching, where their customs differed. The Great Sachem was swift to order, The rarest fish from sea or river, The juiciest of the small birds From the snares of the children, The tenderest fawn flesh From the arrows of the hunters, To be brought for the cooking kettles Of the strangers who trusted us. Every day I watched the slow sun, And at night I danced with the maidens, But no sleep came to my eyes, No hunger came to my body. My Mother tempted me with bits as sweet As the Sachem had commanded for Coüy-oüy, But my parched throat refused them in scorn, My dry tongue found no savour in juicy fatness, My hot hands could not place the beads evenly. Then it was that my Mother came to my wigwam, And closing the doorway she stood before me, And long and long she looked far into my heart. Deep in her eyes there gathered the black fury, And a storm like the wildest storm That ever twisted the cedars in wrath, Raged in her rocking breasts And her lightning flashing eyes. Fiercely in the silent Canawac motion tongue, Her look burning into my living spirit, She made the sign of the quick kill; And turning she slipped like a vision From my wigwam of torture. As she crept into the mouth of darkness, O Medicine Man, I knew that she had but made the outward sign For the savage inward purpose Long hardening in my deepest heart. The next sun, when our mothers sent the maidens With their baskets to the Fall nut gathering, I kept ever close beside Coüy-oüy, my enemy, And in my breast there flamed fierce anger, That she had robbed my heart. Always at the door of her wigwam, Rocking in the sunshine of each dawning, Hung a yellow osier basket woven like a ball, With its ribs placed wide enough apart To give the gifts of light and air, Close enough to prison a flame red bird. And there, healed of his wounds, But forever broken for flight, On a twig shaped and placed by Mountain Lion, Coüy-oüy, the flame feathered voyager of air, Sang a song filled with tears and wailing, The cry of a broken bird heart Pleading for wings and a mate. The Great Spirit heard his notes of sorrow, But I hardened my heart against the sacred bird; For his golden cage had been cunningly wrought By hands of such great strength that naked They had slain the mountain lion And taken its yellow skin for a ceremonial robe, Its fierce name for the sign of a great deed. Now I saw in dazed wonder That Mountain Lion had grown papoose hearted. He was not leading the hunters in the forest; He was not at the head of the fishermen Spearing and netting as of old. He had proved his manhood in deadly combat; He had won his name by the fiercest fight Ever known among any of our warriors; But now he chose to lie in his wigwam and dream, And I knew what he dreamed, O Medicine Man! So with soft words and pretty sign talk I led his evil spirit to the bright late flower; I showed her the little flitting creatures. And when I helped her fill her basket With sweet nuts that were greatly desired, My ear, quick for every sound of menace, Marked the thing the softer one did not hear. By a slender beckoning blue flower, I measured the distance, And skilfully I led the other nut pickers Far away from the spot of danger. Then I dared her to race in turn with me To leap the long leap across the nut bushes, To land at the mark of the sky flower, A fair thing to shelter death. I set down my heaped basket of furry nuts, I gathered my robe to my knees and raced swiftly, I made the leap to which I challenged her, Before her and all of the wondering maidens. She followed my footsteps like a rift of white light. She rose high in the air over the sweet nut bushes, But she had not my strength, not my purpose. My leap carried me far over the danger; But as I turned quickly to watch her I saw her touch earth in smiling confidence, At the mark of the waving sky flower. When she tore away, her eyes wide in danger, Dragging her robe from the clinging thicket, With greedy eyed, death hungry heart I watched her proud face. The Great Spirit had not pitied me, If the curved death serpent had struck at her, His awful fangs had missed her soft body. O Medicine Man, make me magic for the fire bird, Ease my spirit of the snaring water flower. Many suns I waited in hunger and spirit searching; Far and alone I wandered over the meadows, Beside the white sand shore of the sea water. One day I lost from my necklace A carved piece of rare blue shell, A beautiful heaven tinted shell, a treasure, Got from traders from the Islands of the seas Far to the south of us--across vast waters; A big shell so precious among us that only one Cost us the weaving of fifty blankets; The greatest wealth known to our people. Slipping unseen from all the others, I went alone through a trail of deep forest To the back of a far secret cavern I knew, Where lay hidden my precious blue shell, And I cut one small piece from it, For the mending of my necklace. When I came back to the sun, O Medicine Man, And through the forest followed my trail, I heard the rushing thunder footsteps And the death growl of Black Bear. I looked, and I saw at the welcoming cavern mouth, Hurrying in from the forest, the bloody killer, Mother black bear, gaunt and hard chased, With far hanging tongue and foam dripping jaws; And behind her, panting and whimpering, Her pair of travel worn hungry little children. Some far tribe had driven her from her home, And with her crying small ones following She was seeking shelter in my treasure lodge. I watched her turn and forbid her children to enter; Alone, bravely to the inner recesses she went. Her nose must have told her of my recent body, But she could lead her sleepy cubs no farther, For the death weariness was upon all of them. So she came back to the cave's homing mouth, Drove her panting cubs to the farthest wall, And making fierce boastful war talk, There she claimed the homing rights of the wild. I went back to where our women were working And I began the Brave's task of drilling my shell. Coüy-oüy came and lay beside me, watching. Her tribes had no knowledge Of such rare precious ornaments. She greatly desired to possess one For her most precious bracelet. When we were alone, as I worked I told her how to find my cavern And where the shell was hidden on a high ledge. Her heart knew no fear; Her eyes shone with gladness When I told her my great secret of blue treasure And that, if she would go alone, She might take for herself one piece. The one I was drilling so carefully I must use For the mending of my rarest necklace. When I thought of the dripping jaws Of the killer, ravenous, tormented to frenzy, And looked at the smoothness of her body, I relented; I knew mercy. It was in my softened heart To say that the hunters must go with her; But before my lips of compassion Could speak the words my heart said, With the joy light shining on her face, She told me in happy confidence: "I will take but one small piece To ornament my richest bracelet, And I will polish it smooth even as you do, And Mountain Lion shall carve it for me." O Medicine Man, look in mercy upon me! Darest say she drove not her own stake, Lighted her torture fire with fearless hands? Darest say she knew not that Mountain Lion Would now make her our Chieftainess? Darest say the buzzing of a swarm of maidens Had not told her many suns past That Mountain Lion was my man, That he had danced the Mating Dance Of the Mandanas with me, Before the assembly in the Council House On the night of her coming among us? All that night my eyes surrounded her wigwam. With first dawn ray she came slipping forth And darted down the veiled trail That led through the deep forest. Well had I marked the path That ran to the cave's mouth. When she had gone I closed the slender opening Through which I had unceasingly watched The moon's long journey for her, And for the first time in many pitiless suns I fell into the deep visionless sleep Of the body tired past endurance. It was near evening when my Mother wakened me. She told me, her eyes burning deep into mine, How hunters in the forest had found Coüy-oüy Fleeing like a doe before the furious black killer. When she fell, her utmost strength exhausted, Over her raged the foaming black death. Her beautiful breast and arms Were forever shorn of their smoothness, But she lived, and her hateful face of allurement Her trouble-maker face, was untouched. I knew what my Mother knew When she turned from my doorway. Medicine Man, the killer had not struck To the depth where life tented. She had not sent my enemy to the Great Spirit. She had only moved to compassion The heart in the breast of Mountain Lion, So that alone in his canoe he speared the rare fish, Alone on the mountains he sought the tender bird, Even the bright flower, the red leaf, To lay at her doorway--love's offering. Well I knew that when she was healed He would stand tall and straight before her, And in his fierce pleading eyes She would find the great understanding. Then, Medicine Man, despair settled in my heart; I shrivelled like the ungathered wild plum, I burned with a fierce, hot inward fire. The day came when Coüy-oüy stood forth Whitely robed in shining wonder, Untouched in her courage and her beauty Save that she hid her arms with deep fringes. In bitterness of spirit I turned from her, I followed the long lonely trail Through the fringed blue flower meadows. I lay beside the small still waters of the flat lands, And I talked to my sister, the tall blue Heron While she hunted food among the water flowers; And I told the wise old Heron For the easement of my torture, I told her, O Medicine Man, This same tale I tell you. And then, Medicine Man, The Heron gave me a sure sign. She stalked to where a great white flower Was resting in serene beauty, Like a sheaf of fallen moons upon the water, And from beneath the safety of its shelter She picked out my little frog brother so easily. She tossed him clear and high in the air, And head first he shot down her long red gullet. Then she looked at me questioningly And awaited my understanding. So I slipped from my robe of doeskin, And fighting my way through the black muck, And the snares of the entangling round leaves, I gathered the white flower riding like a spirit canoe That had sheltered fatness for my sister Heron. Clean and white as storm foam I washed it, Carefully on the home trail I carried it, Like a living thing to my wigwam I took it, And I put it in a cooking kettle Overflowing cold water from mountain torrent, Then I waited for the spirit to make me a sure sign. That night, when Coüy-oüy's shadow touched me, Like a star fallen from on high was her beauty. Her eyes rested for the first time On the white flower of the still waters. On her knees she made a little medicine over it; In her throat she chanted a hushed song Of exultation and worship, Over the wonder beauty of the white flower That she had never known In the far, cold land of the Killimacs. On her face there was a veiling breath mist Like the softest ray from the lovers' moon; All around her wrapped the blue light blanket That seemed to steal from her body Creeping through her white robe. Then, Medicine Man, I told her this fair tale: That I loved a young Brave Son of the mighty Eagle Feather, The Chief of a high mountain tribe far north of us, And that when he saw me in the deep forest Holding up high the fair water flower The lure of its white magic Would make in his cold heart That strong medicine I needed, To bring him face to face with me In that great understanding Which is followed by union, among our tribes. O Medicine Man, I told her by word And by convincing sign talk That if her heart ran soft as gold sweetness At the coming of any of our young Braves, And her roving eyes flew to them Searching for loving understanding, Until she feared they would betray her, And the tongue of her heart pled for them, And her willing hands thought sweet sign talk-- If she would hold aloft the white flower, That she had gathered from the water, Deep in the thickness of the forest Where none but her Brave could see it, It would surely make for her the great magic That would draw him straight to the flame Of the candle she set before her wigwam. Long and long and long again She watched the white flower. All her heart melted at its gold heart sweetness; And then she looked deep into my eyes, To spirit depths she searched me carefully, But pride would not let me quail before her. She knew she had barely missed The peril of the death snake: She had sent hunters to bring its rattles for her. She knew she had faced the red death By the black killer of the treasure cave; Yet was my spirit so strong over her doubting That once again in the chill of early morning She set her proud feet confidently On the forest trail I pictured for her. She knew not how the white flower Of the still water lifted to the sun, She knew not the wind reeds and flute rushes. I told her the path her feet must follow alone, That when she saw a white flower Like a rocking canoe cradled by soft wind, Riding on the breast of the blue water, She should leave her robe in the deep forest, She should run like the chased antelope, And leap from the sand shore To the resting place of the flower. She should snatch it in her hand, hold it high, And swim back to the red beach of dawning. But Medicine Man, O Medicine Man, I sent her not on the meadow path Where the war ponies fattened. I sent her not to the still black water Of the singing reeds and rushes, Where the charmed spirit flowers With sun hearts and snow faces Spread in flocks like feeding gulls Over the breast of the dark waters. Medicine Man, I sent her straight to that one spot On the sands of the great sea water in the deep bay, In the sheltered cove of the soundless depths Where every Canawac knew there crouched waiting The hungry Monster of the lazy sucking sands. Again I watched all the moon time And in the gold red morning She slipped from her wigwam And entered the ancient forest. Soft as flame ascending, swift as night bird flying, I circled past her among my familiar tree brothers. Long before her coming to the bay of torture, I dropped the snaring white flower, Fresh and lovely, a convincing decoy, Far into the heart of the pitiless death pool Where the eager mouths of the swallowing sands Embrace and draw, quietly, but so surely That no strength of arm can lift, No power of spirit can save their victim. Behind the rocks I hid and waited; In anguish I prayed to the Great Spirit That the luring white flower of wonder Might rest on the gently heaving water Until the time of the coming of my enemy. As I waited with my eyes ever watching, watching The wave cradled flower white as swan feathers, Through the air shot the slim scarred form Of Coüy-oüy, my hated enemy. Her slender feet touched the water And went down softly as a diving bird, Her reaching hand caught the white flower surely. She lifted her face to the face of the morning; The beauty that shone upon her Was like the beauty of the Great Spirit When he had first the vision of the flower world And the wonder of flower magic was sent to him. Coüy-oüy held the water flower in high triumph; She gazed at it, she laughed to it, she kissed it, She laid it against her glad face like a papoose, And chanted to it throaty words of lullaby. Then with the other hand and with her quick feet She began swimming to reach the certain shore. When her light feet would not lift to the surface And her strong stroke would not move her body, Slowly the dawn light faded from her face And a look like the look of a little hurt papoose Came over her in slow wonder-- A look of surprise, of doubt That her strength could be unavailing. Then she struggled like an arrow stricken sea bird, For the sure sands grip their captive cruelly. Then gray terrors came sweeping upon her, And her face was white, white as the white flower That she held at arm's length above her. Her black oiled braids floated out on the water, While a cry, a shrill cry, a high screaming cry, The voice of a wounded mountain lion, Rang from her lips in quivering terror. I knew who had carefully taught her To use that cry in time of trouble: I knew that for my Brave she was calling. And I knew, too, how the wood and the water Carried sound far distances to wild ears. I wondered if Mountain Lion were on the water Or if he were hunting the wide forest Or if he were drilling ornaments of blue shell Or weaving the sacred, singing fire bird A new wigwam of gold osiers. Only once she screamed that awful wild cry, Then her struggles were the final battle. Already her face of anguish was even With the treacherous water hiding death, Already her slender body was forever encased. One arm slowly beat the fair bay helplessly; But even as the gray terror closed in upon her, The stealthy catlike death of the waves And the little famished mouths of sand, The slow mealy strangling sands, She bravely held aloft the white flower. And then, Medicine Man, I cared not if he came, The Mountain Lion, my faithless man! The utmost reach of his strength could not save her, He might go down to bottomless depths with her; He might strive and bear me down to her. Come was my just and rightful hour of triumph! I arose and went forth on the white shore I smiled like a mother upon her, Then I pointed my finger, I laughed in scorn, I made bad sign talk at her, I danced the Braves' triumph dance, with song, I cried to her in the exultation of victory: "He will not come again to you, The faithless Mountain Lion, my man, He who danced the sacred Mating Dance Of the Mandanas with me in the Council Lodge, He who read into my eyes the great understanding Even upon the night of your coming among us. Go thou back to the evil spirits who sent thee!" Until the last wave overran her eyes, The slim thing of bone hardness, Of arrow straightness, and sureness, Of bird swiftness, would not look once upon me, Would not plead with me for mercy Nor sign for help at my hands. When she saw me she suddenly ceased to struggle, And with her eyes fixed upon the white flower, The fallen moon that rides the still black water, She went to bottomless depths silently; Slowly, slowly, Medicine Man, she sank, Until the flower again rested On the breast of the unconscious water. Then I went into the forest on her trail, I hunted her precious robe of snow white doeskin, I rolled a heavy stone in its rich bead work: I carried it back swiftly, And upon the face of the white flower Slowly sinking beneath the water I threw it. Then I knelt in cunning like the fox, And swiftly working my way backward, With my steady, careful fingers I sifted the sands over our footsteps, Until I came to the feather grass And the dry leaves of the deep forest. Like the hunted I ran to the safety of my wigwam, I buried myself in my soft robes of satisfaction, My heart laughed in victory, The sleep I had lost for many mocking moons While my brain thought snares, Now settled heavy, like sickness upon me. Even as I slept in deep stupor, There came dreams and yet again dreams, But they were not familiar dreams Of the low humming rattler Nor the foaming mouth of the knife footed killer. I dreamed that over my heart flamed and scorched And burned Coüy-oüy, the little sacred red bird; While my hands could not braid And put the gay ornaments in my hair, Could not put on my robe, Could not tie my moccasins, Could not lift food to my hungry mouth, Because they were full of the white flowers From the land of the still water. When the alarum cries sounded And the ponies' feet thundered, When the hunting dogs raged And shrill clamour arose in the camp, My Mother shook me, And long she looked deep into my eyes And I looked into her eyes; And then in the silent talk of our tribe I made the swift going down sign Of the Monster sands of the far bay. There was no triumph on her face When she slowly turned from me, And fear was born in my heart Because I clearly saw its awful image When it sprang into life in the deeps of her eyes. When the scouts and hunters were gathering, When the visiting Chief was threatening, And all of our Chiefs were in secret council, While the women were wailing the death cry, There came to my lodge in that hour, The footsteps I had always awaited. So I passed through my doorway And in the revealing sunlight I stood before Mountain Lion, Terrible to face in his deep rage. With dazed hand I drew sleep from my eyes; I met his gaze stupidly with smiling face; When he saw this he was forced to doubt The thing he had come expecting to see. When he tried to look far into my eyes for a sign He saw only stupid Old Man Sleep sitting there Mocking the tortured heart in his breast. Then he caught me fiercely by the shoulders, He drew me close to him, He forced my eyes to meet his, And low and hoarse he cried to me in torture: "She jumped to the mark of the sky flower, And the snake with death in its mouth was there; The mark was the mark you set for her, Yiada. "She went to the far, lonely cave Of the chased and hungry black death, And the rare shell that she sought Was a part of your treasure, Yiada. "Again she is missing, evil spirits know how long, What torture death have you sent her seeking now-- Coüy-oüy, my brave fire bird, my woman?" O Medicine Man, if he had not said soft words, I might have told him as he held me before him. I might have braved the storm of his wrath And made my journey to the Great Spirit In that menacing breath. When I saw that she lived in my place In the secret tent of his heart I laughed at him and I cried tauntingly: "She is chasing painted wings In the pasture meadows of the valley. She is at the still pool hunting the water flower: She would use its white magic To snare your wild heart, Even as she used the red magic of the fire bird. Go and seek her, O mighty hunter! Go and seek--until you find her!" PART III YIADA'S FLIGHT TO THE MANDANAS When the hunters had raced from our village Toward the land of ice, Toward the land of hot suns, Toward the land of dawn, And where the sun dives in the sea, In the conflicting cross winds Between the paths of their going, On their stoutest ponies Rode the young women and the squaws Who could be spared with safety From the watch of the campfires And the care of the little happy children. [Illustration: "_Like the wings of a snow white sea swallow Writing mating signs on the blue sky of Heaven Flashed his quick hands of entreaty, In the little love sign talk he taught her._" ] Foremost among these I rode on my fastest pony, But to my Mother I made a secret sign To remain in waiting by her campfire And yet the swifter sign of the quick return. Because I was first in the fish drying The berry picking of earth and mountain, The gathering of seeds of all kinds And the work of the women, The other maidens went where I sent them. Then swiftly I made a wide circle And slipped back to the lodge of my Mother, And leaving my pony in the tented forest I crept to the door of my Father, Unseen by any of the watchers. There I lay in hiding While my Mother worked silently. She rolled a bundle of my finest robes, My moccasins, my best bow and full quiver, Big strips of smoked venison, Dried fish and bear and deer meat, Nuts and tallow cake and dried berries, And the last little sweet meal cake That her hands would ever make me. When Old Man Moon made soft talk In his canoe among the clouds, From the back of the lodge of my Father I crept After I had stood long and again long Before my Mother, racked in fierce anguish, And made her many signs of the great crossing, For we knew that never again should I see her. We made long straight talk between us That when the others returned from the search I should be missing, as was Coüy-oüy, So that a new search would be made for my body. Then should she cry the death wail Through the length of all our village for me; And make high prayer to the Great Spirit For my safe crossing to the Happy Lands. Thus her lodge and wigwams And my Father and brothers Would be saved from all suspicion of treachery, And to the mourning of the Great Chief Who visited our campfires in confidence, Would be added the wailing of our tribe for Yiada. I rode my Father's swiftest remaining pony, I turned my face between the sun's rising And the hot suns of the South. I slipped through the forest and on, and on, Each moon on, and again on, Fast and far as the pony could run, I journeyed In the direction where my Mother had told me Lay the encampment of her people, the Mandanas. When the tired pony could travel no farther I let him feed and rest and drink; And then again I rode, moon after moon, Until he grew lean as deep snow gray wolf. When I had eaten the last crumb of meal cake, And there was nothing left in my bundle, But tough strings of deer meat, I came one sun-rising to signs of the Mandanas. Then, O Medicine Man, I slipped from the pony and bathed carefully, I oiled my body, braided my hair with ornaments And I put on a snow white robe Whose bleaching had been taught my Mother By Coüy-oüy as a secret art. I stripped the beads and the obsidian From my heaviest necklace for ceremonials And wore only the sky water blue Of the precious blue shell. When I looked into the shining water Above the white sands of the lake bed, I saw in my face great beauty like high magic, Wrought by the fear painter, the hunger moon, The far stealthy journey, the anxious heart-- Beauty even greater than the beauty of Coüy-oüy. And so, O Medicine Man, At fire lighting I rode into the village. The spies and the couriers raced before me, Crying the wonder of my coming, The fierce, snarling dogs yapped after me, The frightened children ran from me, Angered squaws with harsh voices Cried threatening, forbidding words at me. When I came to the door of the Council House At the head of the long village of fatness, I slipped from my pony, and leading him after me I walked to the feet of the Great Chief Sitting in solemn state on his throne; I gave him the deeps of my troubled spirit. My eyes slowly unfolded to his eyes The tale of the robbed heart, Of the tortured sleep, of the lone moon trail, Of a fugitive from the arrows of an enemy. With Mandan speech and by the sign language I told him that I was of his blood, Of his tribe through my Mother; Seeking refuge with her people, And I told him, O Medicine Man, These things of woe, I now tell you. Beside him came the Great Chiefs and wise men, Around him the warriors, the spies and hunters; While back of the chiefs, dim in the firelight, Again and again I felt the eye of a mighty hunter, A young Brave, with the broad shoulders The round face of compassion, And the softer eye of the Mandanas Of the lands where peace homed securely. Little of my story had I told the Chieftain, As straight and fearless I faced him, Before I knew in my heart that over his head I was speaking to the stirred heart of his son. I was asking of him rest and meat, and tribe rights, Even as Coüy-oüy had asked meal and water Of Mountain Lion, instead of our women, For the broken fire bird that rested on her breast. As I asked I knew the answer in his heart; For I was tall and I was seasoned, And I was tortured beyond bearing, And I was beautiful with a living spirit beauty Far above that of the Mandan women around me. When they learned that my Mother Was of their tribe in her youth, That I had fled as the hunted for cave rights, They held counsel, and they set me a tall wigwam; They gave me the rich food of a welcome guest, And they led me to my wrinkled, gray grandfather. The great council of Chiefs and Medicine Men, The wise men and all of the young Braves Made Mandan sign talk to hold me securely, As if born of their tribe and village, Even if Mountain Lion suspected treachery And rode in war paint against them for vengeance. Then was my body lazy with rich comfort But my spirit was gray ashes Burned out by the flames of the fire bird Nesting in the heart of my breast. I was all over sick for my Mother, For my brothers and my Father, who loved me, For the clear sky, the heavy clouds, And the taunting water of the restless sea, For the fat grass, the flower valleys And the tall mountains, with head-bands of snow, For the night fires of village and Council Lodge, And the little honey cakes of my Mother; While I dared not even remember The face of Mountain Lion's agony, As I tortured him in derision, And he turned from me in hot anger. As the sign was in the deep eyes of Star Face, Son of the Great Chief, the night of my coming, So it was in the suns that followed. Well I knew that in the day When he saw candle lighting in my eyes His willing feet would dance before me The hated Love Dance of the Mandanas. He was a broad Brave, a fierce Brave, a warrior. He would sit at the council in the seat of his father When he had made his last journey To the far Spirit Lands of final peace. His earth-lodge would be warm With the skins of beaver, mink and otter; While the white dress of a great Princess From the bleached and softened doeskin, Beaded with the sign of the Chief's mate, Would cover my sick heart with the robe of pride. So hard I worked, O Medicine Man, From the lifting to the setting of every sun, So long I danced at night in the Assembly Lodge, That when I walked to my wigwam Sleep came swift and deep upon me. Sometimes I lay visionless, My body worn to stone heaviness; Sometimes the flaming bird burned my breast To gray ashes, like dead campfires, And the white lilies overflowed my unwilling hands Until I fought to keep from choking among them, Even as Coüy-oüy was smothered By the little yielding wave hidden sands. When I had worked that season Until the troubling mating moon Sailed like a polished pearl canoe in the Spring sky, When the hurrying blood of the trees Ran fast in the red and yellow osiers, When the birches, givers of large gifts, Put out their little talking leaves of gold, When strange birds made love chase in the forest And the fish leaped high from the shallow water As the yellow spawn they planted and quickened, There came a night of quivering moon magic When, after all the others had assembled, Star Face entered the Council Lodge, His head lifted to face the star country, And the great wealth of his riches Rode flauntingly from head-band to moccasins. He had scoured his skin to fatling softness, He had oiled his body to birch bark smoothness, His braided hair was filled with eagle feathers, With quill feathers of white swan And wing pinions of wild turkey. He was robed in the soft gray skins of the otter; On his feet were beaded moccasins of deerskin; In his hand was a broad fan of the wing feathers Of the proud and contented white swan, Round his neck lay heavy shining ornaments Made from the teeth and the cutting claws Of many black and brown bear, Of fierce mountain lion and wildcat, And the big teeth of the elk and moose, Carved copper and cunningly pierced bone beads, From obsidian and little singing shells. The dance of the maidens was beginning When he entered in high pride. He came through the long Lodge And stood with compelling eye before me, And before his Father on the throne, And his Mother, his brothers and sisters, The whole council of Chiefs and wise men And all the assembled people of his tribe. Slowly he began the Mating Dance Of the Mandana who would prevail, While his eyes like coals from the campfire Seared my body to action-- The eyes of black bear when he is facing the hunter, The fierce eyes of the starving panther When the hunger moon is shining, The scouting eyes of the eagle of high spaces, Seeking a mate in the far country of the stars. When he had danced the dance of allurement To the last stamped out measure, Straightway I walked to the feet Of his powerful Father, on his throne, And in the speech of the Mandanas I said to him: "Great Chief, thou hast seen the dance Of thy mighty son, Star Face. If I dance the ancient Mating Dance Of the unconquered Mandanas This night before thee, for Star Face, Even as he has danced before thee, for me, Great and powerful Chief, am I of thy people?" The Great Chief looked into my eyes and said: "Thou art of mine, even as Star Face is my son; With our last arrow, with our last battle axe, With the stoutest blood of our hearts Will our Braves defend thee forever." The next sun, the young women Set me a tall prideful wigwam apart. They bathed and oiled my heart sick body; They beaded and feathered fine robes For the mating ceremonials of a rich Brave. In another tent all of the young men Were busy preparing Star Face for our union. Down the long wide trail Of the swarming, bee like village The painted criers on swift horses Were announcing the marriage of Yiada, Daughter of the far and friendly Canawacs, And Star Face, the son of the Head Chief Of the boastful Mandanas--the proud ones! So, with the full Mandan ceremonial, I gave my tortured body to Star Face. There was no heart left in me, O Medicine Man, And that Star Face might not miss it, When he looked in my eyes in tenderness, I gave to him such willing and sure service As no other Chief of the Mandanas had ever known. Soft were the skins that bedded his wigwams, Warm his earth-lodge against the sting of winter, Sweet was the crisp squaw bread That bubbled in his fat kettles, Gold was the mountain of tallow Stacked in his storehouse for winter, High heaped were the nuts of tree and bush Gathered and husked against the Ice Chief, Rich were the berries dried with sunshine, Boiled back to tenderness, honey sweetened. And, Medicine Man, No other Brave served his mate as Star Face. High and boastful was his pride When I gave him a straight little chieftain, And great to pain was my joy When I oiled the little fatling: For the fire ever burning in my heart Had not scorched his small body, The fulness of my hands had set no mark upon him. He was a young chieftain of spirit magic Who in suns before his coming to my lodge, Had ridden on the backs of milk white fawns Over the floating thistle seed trail That we saw nightly in the country of the stars, Who had played with baby beavers In their village at the creek's mouth, Who had hunted canyon ways, Stout heart with bear and panther, Who had sailed over tall mountains with the eagle, Who had hung in the eye of the sun With the silver winged falcon, Who had fished angry waters with the crafty mink, Who had raced among the white birches With the soft eyed does of Spring, And slept deep with his tall blue heron brothers In their rough nests among the wailing cedars. Every sun I watched him, Every moon my fear-filled hand was on him. Ever his gay cradle was light in my eye Its tinkling shells sweet music in my ears. When he could walk with strength I led him to the meadows, to the forest, And I taught him--thou knowest, O Medicine Man, thou knowest well, How carefully I taught him Our every custom and tradition; And how Star Face trained him with the bow, To fish the rough waters, to ride the wild ponies, And how he taught him all the laws and customs For young Braves who would be warriors. Thou knowest how all of the tribe shouted When first he sat his pony alone, And rode it through the village at its racing speed. And then, O Medicine Man, thou knowest the day When first he strayed far from me With the little curious feet of childhood, And now, now, I hear the wild shrieks of terror When the snake that has death in its mouth Struck its pitiless fangs into his tender flesh. When his little blanket wrapped body, Looking so long and straight, and lonely, Was carried to the far, haunted death village All the forest echoed wild cries of mourning From a thousand wigwams of desolation And earth-lodges that loved him. My stiff lips made no sound, My robbed hands lay death's captive, For my eyes saw again the nut thicket, And the thing the sky flower sheltered, My ears again heard the soft buzzing menace. Well I knew that Coüy-oüy Had escaped the watchful Great Spirit, That she had come back to earth To strike me through the death snake, That hers were the fangs of poison Buried deep in my little fatling. Thou knowest, Medicine Man, How another little chief came to me, And how again, with all the wild magic All the wisdom of our tribe, All the strength in our power And the cunning of our hearts of love, The great Star Face, and I, his strong mate, Strove over the life of our son. Thou knowest how he shouted When to us there came a little sister. And then the black day, that dread day Thou knowest well as any, When tall and straight he entered the forest alone To strive for the first vision from the Great Spirit. Without food and without sleep I knelt silent in my lonely wigwam; With one hand ever easing my burning breast With the other I fought back The slowly rising tide of the white flowers, The luring spirit flowers of destruction That home on the still lake waters. I needed not the chilling death cry That came to my ears three suns later: I knew surely that my little chieftain Would not come back to me from the forest. He still breathed when the hunters Brought before me his stout body Ripped deep by the cruel knives of the killer. The black death, man's height and buffalo heavy, Lay dead in the far uptorn pitying forest Where they had battled for their lives. It had been the greatest fight That youth had ever waged in our tribe. All night the anxious Medicine Men Made their strongest Medicine for him; But the green sickness was eating his slender body. In the morning, O Medicine Man, Coüy-oüy again danced her triumph dance, Again scored victory over me, When our unavailing death wail Beat against the copper face of heaven For my little chieftain, my brave little warrior. Because of her pointing finger no cry would I utter. Silently in my tortured wigwam I writhed in the flame of the fire bird And choked with the rising sick sweetness Of the hated water flower of the pasture lands. But ever I held in a tight grasp The clutching hand of little fat face, And my ears ached with her shrill wail For the long journey of her brother; For she had ridden his racing pony Before him on the saddle on far trails, And gathered gay flowers in the valleys On the coloured faces of high hills, And brought me the little juicy birds From the snares of cunning set in the valleys, And chased the war painted wings Where the hunting ponies pastured. Medicine Man, O Medicine Man, Darest say I had not killing torture? When the burning of the fire bird was past bearing, When the stifling cloud of the white flowers Sickened my body to leanness, I arose and began skin dressing and fish drying And seed grinding and weaving blankets. All of the squaws and the young women Pointed taunting mischievous fingers When, silent, I passed among them. They said: "She is possessed of a devil; Evil spirits drive her with secret arrows, It is with strength stolen from the Spirits That she works every sun at the fish drying, The meat curing, the seed gathering And the making of tents not needed. But ever, when far grown I carried little Dove Eye, Little cooing bird, on my aching shoulders, Ever I pressed her against my burning heart: I would not trust her to the stoutest cradle. Tightly I held her that from my fear strong hands She might not be pushed out by the white flowers. When her stumbling little feet of uncertainty Carried her to the willing knees of Star Face, Like the first dawn of Spring long awaited Came the light to his hungry eyes, Like the soft talking brook water Came the sweet words in his throat; Like the wings of a snow white sea swallow Writing mating signs on the blue sky of heaven Flashed his quick hands of entreaty, In the little love sign talk he taught her. Many suns he sat grinding small beads of bone Every little rare white shell he found, And polishing squirrel and otter teeth For the necklace she wore so proudly. Never did I leave my hands free of her Unless the hands of Star Face were upon her. When he made signs of soft pale-faces I made signs of the passing of spirits, So he saw that my hands ever upon her Were only that I might hold her back From the land of the great Unseen; For only these three, Medicine Man, Only these three little people, The Great Spirit sent to my lodge, From the far land of cradle filling. Always when we came near still or running water I held her with the hug of black bear. Before she might chase the little fishes, Even in the shallow inshore water of the bays, Or hunt the clinging mussel for food, Or bathe with the small people, I went before her every step And always my feet were feeling, searching, For any sign of the sands of treachery. In my heart I said: "They shall not have her, The ravenous Monster mouths, They shall not have her, the pitiless death sands!" Thou knowest, Medicine Man, The season of the great pow-wow When I was needed at the fires roasting deer meat, When I was needed to set the forest of wigwams For seven tribes, seeking our welcome, When I was needed to make swift preparation, To use all the store of my knowledge, For the coming of a cloud of peoples From far countries to our village, To teach us of their experience And to learn of our wisdom from us, Thou knowest that day, Medicine Man-- The greatest day of the life of our nation. I held little Dove Eye tight Then set her on the pony of Star Face before him That she might ride to meet the friendly people. Thou knowest how she danced to him, And beat her little hands in triumph, How she snatched at the sunbeams And fluttered her fingers to me, Like the flying painted wings Honey gathering over the valley pastures; How she made me the sign of birds far flying, When she rode away at the head of our Braves, On the proud pony of Star Face. Thou knowest how again and again, harshly, I made the sign of full cradling arms, Of tight holding, of unsleeping spying, To Star Face as he left me. All day the fire bird burned my heart All day I heard his prison song; I stopped work at the smoking baking stones, To push back the hated water flowers Like fulling wool from the wild sheep's back. Ever I pleadingly prayed the Great Spirit To have her in his safe keeping. And thou knowest how the mighty Chiefs Rode with bowed, sorrowing heads before me. Thou knowest how Star Face, my man, Stood stricken and mourning at our doorway, His empty hands turned down in sign of torture. Thou knowest the tale the old wise man made Of how her glad voice chanted with the birds And her little hands clamoured and begged, When they passed the white flowered still pool, The magic ornament of the valley breast, Where first she saw the flowers of dawn growing. Thou knowest how she whimpered, How she reached pleading hungry hands, How she fought to be put down to pick them. On his pony, Star-Face left her with the Braves, While he made the welcome sign talk to the visitors, While he spoke the brothers' friendly greeting, While he smoked the contented peace pipe That warmed the hearts of our visitors. Thou knowest how she turned his war pony And flew back over the trail, wind driven. Thou knowest how the frightened hunters Rode at racing speed to catch her, And how they saw only one little hand Not yet swallowed by the sand mouths The living sign of coming mourning, Tightly clutching the white flower of destruction With its lying heart of the gold of happiness. And thou knowest how three of our young Braves Went down in the fierce sand mouths, Fighting with full man strength to save her, Until the mighty Chief, her grandfather, cried: "It is enough. The Great Spirit has spoken. He has taken her back to the land of short shadows. We cannot have her. I have said it!" Medicine Man, O Medicine Man, Is there no magic in the toluache lily? Is there no medicine in thy heaped storehouse, Fat with all the harvest of field and forest, That will quench the flaming fire bird, That will ease its coal hot scorching? Medicine Man, O Medicine Man, Is there no magic granted by the Great Spirit That will take from my tortured hands This curse of snowy sweetness? Call Coüy-oüy and ask if she has finished. Tell her she has taken my all, my last little fatling, Ask her, O Medicine Man, ask her in mercy To send you High Magic from the Spirits, That will empty my hands of the white flower, That will ease from my sickened heart The gnawing flame of the Fire Bird. The names of the tribes used in "The Fire Bird" are fictitious. The country described begins in the land of the Salish tribes of Alaska, runs south to the lowest extent of British Columbia, and east to the vicinity north of North Dakota. All tribes and country described are Alaskan or Canadian. THE END TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES The following changes have been made in the text: Page 2: comma added Pages 16, 66: closing quote missing - no alteration Page 26: printer typo - name spelling corrected Page 34: printer typo - kille changed to killer 
3525	----	MUSIC AND OTHER POEMS By Henry van Dyke To my son Tertius this book is dedicated Transcribed from the book published October, 1904 by Charles Scribner's Sons. CONTENTS ODES Music Peace Victor Hugo God of the Open Air SONNETS Work Life Love The Child in the Garden Love's Reason Portrait and Reality The Wind of Sorrow Patria LEGENDS A Legend of Service The Vain King LYRICS A Mile with Me Spring in the South Love's Nearness Two Schools A Prayer for a Mother's Birthday Indian Summer One World Hide and Seek Dulcis Memoria Autumn in the Garden The Message Light Between the Trees Reliance GREETINGS AND INSCRIPTIONS Katrina's Sun-dial To James Whitcomb Riley A Health to Mark Twain A Rondeau of College Rhymes The Mocking-bird The Empty Quatrain Inscriptions for a Friend's House The Statue of Sherman by St. Gaudens The Sun-dial at Wells College ODES MUSIC I. PRELUDE Daughter of Psyche, pledge of that last night When, pierced with pain and bitter-sweet delight, She knew her Love and saw her Lord depart, Then breathed her wonder and her woe forlorn Into a single cry, and thou wast born? Thou flower of rapture and thou fruit of grief; Invisible enchantress of the heart; Mistress of charms that bring relief To sorrow, and to joy impart A heavenly tone that keeps it undefiled,-- Thou art the child Of Amor, and by right divine A throne of love is thine, Thou flower-folded, golden-girdled, star-crowned Queen, Whose bridal beauty mortal eyes have never seen! II Thou art the Angel of the pool that sleeps, While peace and joy lie hidden in its deeps, Waiting thy touch to make the waters roll In healing murmurs round the weary soul. Ah, when wilt thou draw near, Thou messenger of mercy robed in song? My lonely heart has listened for thee long; And now I seem to hear Across the crowded market-place of life, Thy measured foot-fall, ringing light and clear Above the unmeaning noises and the unruly strife; In quiet cadence, sweet and slow, Serenely pacing to and fro, Thy far-off steps are magical and dear. Ah, turn this way, come close and speak to me! From this dull bed of languor set my spirit free, And bid me rise, and let me walk awhile with thee III Where wilt thou lead me first? In what still region Of thy domain, Whose provinces are legion, Wilt thou restore me to myself again, And quench my heart's long thirst? I pray thee lay thy golden girdle down, And put away thy starry crown: For one dear restful hour Assume a state more mild. Clad only in thy blossom-broidered gown That breathes familiar scent of many a flower, Take the low path that leads thro' pastures green; And though thou art a Queen, Be Rosamund awhile, and in thy bower, By tranquil love and simple joy beguiled, Sing to my soul, as mother to her child. IV O lead me by the hand, And let my heart have rest, And bring me back to childhood land, To find again the long-lost band Of playmates blithe and blest. Some quaint, old-fashioned air, That all the children knew, Shall run before us everywhere, Like a little maid with flying hair, To guide the merry crew. Along the garden ways We chase the light-foot tune, And in and out the flowery maze, With eager haste and fond delays, In pleasant paths of June. For us the fields are new, For us the woods are rife With fairy secrets, deep and true, And heaven is but a tent of blue Above the game of life. The world is far away: The fever and the fret, And all that makes the heart grow gray, Is out of sight and far away, Dear Music, while I hear thee play That olden, golden roundelay, "Remember and forget!" V. SLEEP SONG Forget, forget! The tide of life is turning; The waves of light ebb slowly down the west: Along the edge of dark some stars are burning To guide thy spirit safely to an isle of rest. A little rocking on the tranquil deep Of song, to soothe thy yearning, A little slumber and a little sleep, And so, forget, forget! Forget, forget,-- The day was long in pleasure; Its echoes die away across the hill; Now let thy heart beat time to their slow measure That swells, and sinks, and faints, and falls, till all is still. Then, like a weary child that loves to keep Locked in its arms some treasure, Thy soul in calm content shall fall asleep, And so forget, forget. Forget, forget,-- And if thou hast been weeping, Let go the thoughts that bind thee to thy grief: Lie still, and watch the singing angels, reaping The golden harvest of thy sorrow, sheaf by sheaf; Or count thy joys like flocks of snow-white sheep That one by one come creeping Into the quiet fold, until thou sleep, And so forget, forget! Forget, forget,-- Thou art a child and knowest So little of thy life! But music tells One secret of the world thro' which thou goest To work with morning song, to rest with evening bells: Life is in tune with harmony so deep That when the notes are lowest Thou still canst lay thee down in peace and sleep, For God will not forget. VI. HUNTING SONG Out of the garden of playtime, out of the bower of rest, Fain would I follow at daytime, music that calls to a quest. Hark, how the galloping measure Quickens the pulses of pleasure; Gaily saluting the morn With the long clear note of the hunting-horn Echoing up from the valley, Over the mountain side,-- Rally, you hunters, rally, Rally, and ride! Drink of the magical potion music has mixed with her wine, Full of the madness of motion, joyful, exultant, divine! Leave all your troubles behind you, Ride where they never can find you, Into the gladness of morn, With the long, clear note of the hunting-horn, Swiftly o'er hillock and hollow, Sweeping along with the wind,-- Follow, you hunters, follow, Follow and find! What will you reach with your riding? What is the charm of the chase? Just the delight and the striding swing of the jubilant pace. Danger is sweet when you front her,-- In at the death, every hunter! Now on the breeze the mort is borne In the long, clear note of the hunting-horn, Winding merrily, over and over,-- Come, come, come! Home again, Ranger! home again, Rover! Turn again, home! VII. DANCE-MUSIC Now let the sleep-tune blend with the play-tune, Weaving the mystical spell of the dance; Lighten the deep tune, soften the gay tune, Mingle a tempo that turns in a trance. Half of it sighing, half of it smiling, Smoothly it swings, with a triplicate beat; Calling, replying, yearning, beguiling, Wooing the heart and bewitching the feet. Every drop of blood Rises with the flood, Rocking on the waves of the strain; Youth and beauty glide Turning with the tide-- Music making one out of twain, Bearing them away, and away, and away, Like a tone and its terce-- Till the chord dissolves, and the dancers stay, And reverse. Violins leading, take up the measure, Turn with the tune again,--clarinets clear Answer their pleading,--harps full of pleasure Sprinkle their silver like light on the mere. Semiquaver notes, Merry little motes, Tangled in the haze Of the lamp's golden rays, Quiver everywhere In the air, Like a spray,-- Till the fuller stream of the might of the tune, Gliding like a dream in the light of the moon, Bears them all away, and away, and away, Floating in the trance of the dance. Then begins a measure stately, Languid, slow, serene; All the dancers move sedately, Stepping leisurely and straitly, With a courtly mien; Crossing hands and changing places, Bowing low between, While the minuet inlaces Waving arms and woven paces,-- Glittering damaskeen. Where is she whose form is folden In its royal sheen? From our longing eyes withholden By her mystic girdle golden, Beauty sought but never seen, Music walks the maze, a queen. VIII. THE SYMPHONY Music, they do thee wrong who say thine art Is only to enchant the sense. For every timid motion of the heart, And every passion too intense To bear the chain of the imperfect word, And every tremulous longing, stirred By spirit winds that come we know not whence And go we know not where, And every inarticulate prayer Beating about the depths of pain or bliss, Like some bewildered bird That seeks its nest but knows not where it is, And every dream that haunts, with dim delight, The drowsy hour between the day and night, The wakeful hour between the night and day,-- Imprisoned, waits for thee, Impatient, yearns for thee, The queen who comes to set the captive free Thou lendest wings to grief to fly away, And wings to joy to reach a heavenly height; And every dumb desire that Storms within the breast Thou leadest forth to sob or sing itself to rest. All these are thine, and therefore love is thine. For love is joy and grief, And trembling doubt, and certain-sure belief, And fear, and hope, and longing unexpressed, In pain most human, and in rapture brief Almost divine. Love would possess, yet deepens when denied; And love would give, yet hungers to receive; Love like a prince his triumph would achieve; And like a miser in the dark his joys would hide. Love is most bold: He leads his dreams like armed men in line; Yet when the siege is set, and he must speak, Calling the fortress to resign Its treasure, valiant love grows weak, And hardly dares his purpose to unfold. Less with his faltering lips than with his eyes He claims the longed-for prize: Love fain would tell it all, yet leaves the best untold. But thou shalt speak for love. Yea, thou shalt teach The mystery of measured tone, The Pentecostal speech That every listener heareth as his own. For on thy head the cloven tongues of fire,-- Diminished chords that quiver with desire, And major chords that glow with perfect peace,-- Have fallen from above; And thou canst give release In music to the burdened heart of love. Sound with the 'cellos' pleading, passionate strain The yearning theme, and let the flute reply In placid melody, while violins complain, And sob, and sigh, With muted string; Then let the oboe half-reluctant sing Of bliss that trembles on the verge of pain, While 'cellos plead and plead again, With throbbing notes delayed, that would impart To every urgent tone the beating of the heart. So runs the andante, making plain The hopes and fears of love without a word. Then comes the adagio, with a yielding theme Through which the violas flow soft as in a dream, While horns and mild bassoons are heard In tender tune, that seems to float Like an enchanted boat Upon the downward-gliding stream, Toward the allegro's wide, bright sea Of dancing, glittering, blending tone, Where every instrument is sounding free, And harps like wedding-chimes are rung, and trumpets blown Around the barque of love That sweeps, with smiling skies above, A royal galley, many-oared, Into the happy harbour of the perfect chord. IX. IRIS Light to the eye and Music to the ear,-- These are the builders of the bridge that springs From earths's dim shore of half-remembered things To reach the spirit's home, the heavenly sphere Where nothing silent is and nothing dark. So when I see the rainbow's arc Spanning the showery sky, far-off I hear Music, and every colour sings: And while the symphony builds up its round Full sweep of architectural harmony Above the tide of Time, far, far away I see A bow of colour in the bow of sound. Red as the dawn the trumpet rings, Imperial purple from the trombone flows, The mellow horn melts into evening rose. Blue as the sky, the choir of strings Darkens in double-bass to ocean's hue, Rises in violins to noon-tide's blue, With threads of quivering light shot through and through. Green as the mantle that the summer flings Around the world, the pastoral reeds in time Embroider melodies of May and June. Yellow as gold, Yea, thrice-refined gold, And purer than the treasures of the mine, Floods of the human voice divine Along the arch in choral song are rolled. So bends the bow complete: And radiant rapture flows Across the bridge, so full, so strong, so sweet, That the uplifted spirit hardly knows Whether the Music-Light that glows Within the arch of tones and colours seven Is sunset-peace of earth, or sunrise-joy of Heaven. X. SEA AND SHORE Music, I yield to thee; As swimmer to the sea I give my Spirit to the flood of song: Bear me upon thy breast In rapture and at rest, Bathe me in pure delight and make me strong; From strife and struggle bring release, And draw the waves of passion into tides of peace. Remember'd songs, most dear, In living songs I hear, While blending voices gently swing and sway In melodies of love, Whose mighty currents move, With singing near and singing far away; Sweet in the glow of morning light, And sweeter still across the starlit gulf of night. Music, in thee we float, And lose the lonely note Of self in thy celestial-ordered strain, Until at last we find The life to love resigned In harmony of joy restored again; And songs that cheered our mortal days Break on the coast of light in endless hymns of praise. December, 1901 - May, 1903. PEACE I. IN EXCELSIS Two dwellings, Peace, are thine. One is the mountain-height, Uplifted in the loneliness of light Beyond the realm of shadows,--fine, And far, and clear,--where advent of the night Means only glorious nearness of the stars, And dawn, unhindered, breaks above the bars That long the lower world in twilight keep. Thou sleepest not, and hast no need of sleep, For all thy cares and fears have dropped away; The night's fatigue, the fever-fret of day, Are far below thee; and earth's weary wars, In vain expense of passion, pass Before thy sight like visions in a glass, Or like the wrinkles of the storm that creep Across the sea and leave no trace Of trouble on that immemorial face,-- So brief appear the conflicts, and so slight The wounds men give, the things for which they fight. Here hangs a fortress on the distant steep,-- A lichen clinging to the rock: There sails a fleet upon the deep,-- A wandering flock Of snow-winged gulls: and yonder, in the plain, A marble palace shines,--a grain Of mica glittering in the rain. Beneath thy feet the clouds are rolled By voiceless winds: and far between The rolling clouds new shores and peaks are seen, In shimmering robes of green and gold, And faint aerial hue That silent fades into the silent blue. Thou, from thy mountain-hold, All day, in tranquil wisdom, looking down On distant scenes of human toil and strife, All night, with eyes aware of loftier life, Uplooking to the sky, where stars are sown, Dost watch the everlasting fields grow white Unto the harvest of the sons of light, And welcome to thy dwelling-place sublime The few strong souls that dare to climb The slippery crags and find thee on the height. II. DE PROFUNDIS But in the depth thou hast another home, For hearts less daring, or more frail. Thou dwellest also in the shadowy vale; And pilgrim-souls that roam With weary feet o'er hill and dale, Bearing the burden and the heat Of toilful days, Turn from the dusty ways To find thee in thy green and still retreat. Here is no vision wide outspread Before the lonely and exalted seat Of all-embracing knowledge. Here, instead, A little garden, and a sheltered nook, With outlooks brief and sweet Across the meadows, and along the brook,-- A little stream that little knows Of the great sea towards which it gladly flows,-- A little field that bears a little wheat To make a portion of earth's daily bread. The vast cloud-armies overhead Are marshalled, and the wild wind blows Its trumpet, but thou canst not tell Whence the storm comes nor where it goes. Nor dost thou greatly care, since all is well; Thy daily task is done, And though a lowly one, Thou gavest it of thy best, And art content to rest In patience till its slow reward is won. Not far thou lookest, but thy sight is clear; Not much thou knowest, but thy faith is dear; For life is love, and love is always near. Here friendship lights the fire, and every heart, Sure of itself and sure of all the rest, Dares to be true, and gladly takes its part In open converse, bringing forth its best: Here is Sweet music, melting every chain Of lassitude and pain: And here, at last, is sleep, the gift of gifts, The tender nurse, who lifts The soul grown weary of the waking world, And lays it, with its thoughts all furled, Its fears forgotten, and its passions still, On the deep bosom of the Eternal Will. August, 1901. VICTOR HUGO 1802-1902 Heart of France for a hundred years, Passionate, sensitive, proud, and strong, Quick to throb with her hopes and fears, Fierce to flame with her sense of wrong! You, who hailed with a morning song Dream-light gilding a throne of old: You, who turned when the dream grew cold, Singing still, to the light that shone Pure from Liberty's ancient throne, Over the human throng! You, who dared in the dark eclipse,-- When the pygmy heir of a giant name Dimmed the face of the land with shame,-- Speak the truth with indignant lips, Call him little whom men called great, Scoff at him, scorn him, deny him, Point to the blood on his robe of state, Fling back his bribes and defy him! You, who fronted the waves of fate As you faced the sea from your island home, Exiled, yet with a soul elate, Sending songs o'er the rolling foam, Bidding the heart of man to wait For the day when all should see Floods of wrath from the frowning skies Fall on an Empire founded in lies, And France again be free! You, who came in the Terrible Year Swiftly back to your broken land, Now to your heart a thousand times more dear,-- Prayed for her, sung to her, fought for her, Patiently, fervently wrought for her, Till once again, After the storm of fear and pain, High in the heavens the star of France stood clear! You, who knew that a man must take Good and ill with a steadfast soul, Holding fast, while the billows roll Over his head, to the things that make Life worth living for great and small,-- Honour and pity and truth, The heart and the hope of youth, And the good God over all! You, to whom work was rest, Dauntless Toiler of the Sea, Following ever the joyful quest Of beauty on the shores of old Romance, Bard of the poor of France, And warrior-priest of world-wide charity! You who loved little children best Of all the poets that ever sung, Great heart, golden heart, Old, and yet ever young, Minstrel of liberty, Lover of all free, winged things, Now at last you are free,-- Your soul has its wings! Heart of France for a hundred years, Floating far in the light that never fails you, Over the turmoil of mortal hopes and fears Victor, forever victor, the whole world hails you! March, 1902. GOD OF THE OPEN AIR I Thou who hast made thy dwelling fair With flowers beneath, above with starry lights, And set thine altars everywhere,-- On mountain heights, In woodlands dim with many a dream, In valleys bright with springs, And on the curving capes of every stream: Thou who hast taken to thyself the wings Of morning, to abide Upon the secret places of the sea, And on far islands, where the tide Visits the beauty of untrodden shores, Waiting for worshippers to come to thee In thy great out-of-doors! To thee I turn, to thee I make my prayer, God of the open air. II Seeking for thee, the heart of man Lonely and longing ran, In that first, solitary hour, When the mysterious power To know and love the wonder of the morn Was breathed within him, and his soul was born; And thou didst meet thy child, Not in some hidden shrine, But in the freedom of the garden wild, And take his hand in thine,-- There all day long in Paradise he walked, And in the cool of evening with thee talked. III Lost, long ago, that garden bright and pure, Lost, that calm day too perfect to endure, And lost the childlike love that worshipped and was sure! For men have dulled their eyes with sin, And dimmed the light of heaven with doubt, And built their temple walls to shut thee in, And framed their iron creeds to shut thee out. But not for thee the closing of the door, O Spirit unconfined! Thy ways are free As is the wandering wind, And thou hast wooed thy children, to restore Their fellowship with thee, In peace of soul and simpleness of mind. IV Joyful the heart that, when the flood rolled by, Leaped up to see the rainbow in the sky; And glad the pilgrim, in the lonely night, For whom the hills of Haran, tier on tier, Built up a secret stairway to the height Where stars like angel eyes were shining clear. From mountain-peaks, in many a land and age, Disciples of the Persian seer Have hailed the rising sun and worshipped thee; And wayworn followers of the Indian sage Have found the peace of God beneath a spreading tree. But One, but One,--ah, child most dear, And perfect image of the Love Unseen,-- Walked every day in pastures green, And all his life the quiet waters by, Reading their beauty with a tranquil eye. To him the desert was a place prepared For weary hearts to rest; The hillside was a temple blest; The grassy vale a banquet-room Where he could feed and comfort many a guest. With him the lily shared The vital joy that breathes itself in bloom; And every bird that sang beside the nest Told of the love that broods o'er every living thing. He watched the shepherd bring His flock at sundown to the welcome fold, The fisherman at daybreak fling His net across the waters gray and cold, And all day long the patient reaper swing His curving sickle through the harvest-gold. So through the world the foot-path way he trod, Drawing the air of heaven in every breath; And in the evening sacrifice of death Beneath the open sky he gave his soul to God. Him will I trust, and for my Master take; Him will I follow; and for his dear sake, God of the open air, To thee I make my prayer. V From the prison of anxious thought that greed has builded, From the fetters that envy has wrought and pride has gilded, From the noise of the crowded ways and the fierce confusion, From the folly that wastes its days in a world of illusion, (Ah, but the life is lost that frets and languishes there!) I would escape and be free in the joy of the open air. By the breadth of the blue that shines in silence o'er me, By the length of the mountain-lines that stretch before me, By the height of the cloud that sails, with rest in motion, Over the plains and the vales to the measureless ocean, (Oh, how the sight of the things that are great enlarges the eyes!) Lead me out of the narrow life, to the peace of the hills and the skies. While the tremulous leafy haze on the woodland is spreading, And the bloom on the meadow betrays where May has been treading; While the birds on the branches above, and the brooks flowing under, Are singing together of love in a world full of wonder, (Lo, in the marvel of Springtime, dreams are changed into truth!) Quicken my heart, and restore the beautiful hopes of youth. By the faith that the flowers show when they bloom unbidden, By the calm of the river's flow to a goal that is hidden, By the trust of the tree that clings to its deep foundation, By the courage of wild birds' wings on the long migration, (Wonderful secret of peace that abides in Nature's breast!) Teach me how to confide, and live my life, and rest. For the comforting warmth of the sun that my body embraces, For the cool of the waters that run through the shadowy places, For the balm of the breezes that brush my face with their fingers, For the vesper-hymn of the thrush when the twilight lingers, For the long breath, the deep breath, the breath of a heart without care,-- I will give thanks and adore thee, God of the open air! VI These are the gifts I ask Of thee, Spirit serene: Strength for the daily task, Courage to face the road, Good cheer to help me bear the traveller's load, And, for the hours of rest that come between, An inward joy in all things heard and seen. These are the sins I fain Would have thee take away: Malice, and cold disdain, Hot anger, sullen hate, Scorn of the lowly, envy of the great, And discontent that casts a shadow gray On all the brightness of the common day. These are the things I prize And hold of dearest worth: Light of the sapphire skies, Peace of the silent hills, Shelter of forests, comfort of the grass, Music of birds, murmur of little rills, Shadow of clouds that swiftly pass, And, after showers, The smell of flowers And of the good brown earth,-- And best of all, along the way, friendship and mirth. So let me keep These treasures of the humble heart In true possession, owning them by love; And when at last I can no longer move Among them freely, but must part From the green fields and from the waters clear, Let me not creep Into some darkened room and hide From all that makes the world so bright and dear; But throw the windows wide To welcome in the light; And while I clasp a well-beloved hand, Let me once more have sight Of the deep sky and the far-smiling land,-- Then gently fall on sleep, And breathe my body back to Nature's care, My spirit out to thee, God of the open air. SONNETS WORK Let me but do my work from day to day, In field or forest, at the desk or loom, In roaring market-place or tranquil room; Let me but find it in my heart to say, When vagrant wishes beckon me astray, "This is my work; my blessing, not my doom; "Of all who live, I am the one by whom "This work can best be done in the right way." Then shall I see it not too great, nor small, To suit my spirit and to prove my powers; Then shall I cheerful greet the labouring hours, And cheerful turn, when the long shadows fall At eventide, to play and love and rest, Because I know for me my work is best. April, 1902. LIFE Let me but live my life from year to year, With forward face and unreluctant soul; Not hurrying to, nor turning from, the goal; Not mourning for the things that disappear In the dim past, nor holding back in fear From what the future veils; but with a whole And happy heart, that pays its toll To Youth and Age, and travels on with cheer. So let the way wind up the hill or down, O'er rough or smooth, the journey will be joy: Still seeking what I sought when but a boy, New friendship, high adventure, and a crown, My heart will keep the courage of the quest, And hope the road's last turn will be the best. May, 1902. LOVE Let me but love my love without disguise, Nor wear a mask of fashion old or new, Nor wait to speak till I can hear a clue, Nor play a part to shine in others' eyes, Nor bow my knees to what my heart denies; But what I am, to that let me be true, And let me worship where my love is due, And so through love and worship let me rise. For love is but the heart's immortal thirst To be completely known and all forgiven, Even as sinful souls that enter Heaven: So take me, dear, and understand my worst, And freely pardon it, because confessed, And let me find in loving thee, my best. May, 1902. THE CHILD IN THE GARDEN When to the garden of untroubled thought I came of late, and saw the open door, And wished again to enter, and explore The sweet, wild ways with stainless bloom inwrought, And bowers of innocence with beauty fraught, It seemed some purer voice must speak before I dared to tread that garden loved of yore, That Eden lost unknown and found unsought. Then just within the gate I saw a child,-- A stranger-child, yet to my heart most dear; He held his hands to me, and softly smiled With eyes that knew no shade of sin or fear: "Come in," he said, "and play awhile with me; "I am the little child you used to be." January, 1903. LOVE'S REASON For that thy face is fair I love thee not; Nor yet because the light of thy brown eyes Hath gleams of wonder and of glad surprise, Like woodland streams that cross a sunlit spot: Nor for thy beauty, born without a blot, Most perfect when it shines through no disguise Pure as the star of Eve in Paradise,-- For all these outward things I love thee not: But for a something in thy form and face, Thy looks and ways, of primal harmony; A certain soothing charm, a vital grace That breathes of the eternal womanly, And makes me feel the warmth of Nature's breast, When in her arms, and thine, I sink to rest. February, 1904. PORTRAIT AND REALITY If on the closed curtain of my sight My fancy paints thy portrait far away, I see thee still the same, by night or day; Crossing the crowded street, or moving bright 'Mid festal throngs, or reading by the light Of shaded lamp some friendly poet's lay, Or shepherding the children at their play,-- The same sweet self, and my unchanged delight. But when I see thee near, I recognize In every dear familiar way some strange Perfection, and behold in April guise The magic of thy beauty that doth range Through many moods with infinite surprise,-- Never the same, and sweeter with each change. May, 1904. THE WIND OF SORROW The fire of love was burning, yet so low That in the dark we scarce could see its rays, And in the light of perfect-placid days Nothing but smouldering embers dull and slow. Vainly, for love's delight, we sought to throw New pleasures on the pyre to make it blaze: In life's calm air and tranquil-prosperous ways We missed the radiant heat of long ago. Then in the night, a night of sad alarms, Bitter with pain and black with fog of fears, That drove us trembling to each other's arms-- Across the gulf of darkness and salt tears, Into life's calm the wind of sorrow came, And fanned the fire of love to clearest flame. March, 1903. PATRIA I would not even ask my heart to say If I could love some other land as well As thee, my country, had I felt the spell Of Italy at birth, or learned to obey The charm of France, or England's mighty sway. I would not be so much an infidel As once to dream, or fashion words to tell, What land could hold my love from thee away. For like a law of nature in my blood I feel thy sweet and secret sovereignty, And woven through my soul thy vital sign. My life is but a wave, and thou the flood; I am a leaf and thou the mother-tree; Nor should I be at all, were I not thine. June, 1904. LEGENDS A LEGEND OF SERVICE It pleased the Lord of Angels (praise His name!) To hear, one day, report from those who came With pitying sorrow, or exultant joy, To tell of earthly tasks in His employ: For some were sorry when they saw how slow The stream of heavenly love on earth must flow; And some were glad because their eyes had seen, Along its banks, fresh flowers and living green. So, at a certain hour, before the throne The youngest angel, Asmiel, stood alone; Nor glad, nor sad, but full of earnest thought, And thus his tidings to the Master brought: "Lord, in the city Lupon I have found "Three servants of thy holy name, renowned "Above their fellows. One is very wise, "With thoughts that ever range above the skies; "And one is gifted with the golden speech "That makes men glad to hear when he will teach; "And one, with no rare gift or grace endued, "Has won the people's love by doing good. "With three such saints Lupon is trebly blest; "But, Lord, I fain would know, which loves Thee best?" Then spake the Lord of Angels, to whose look The hearts of all are like an open book: "In every soul the secret thought I read, "And well I know who loves me best indeed. "But every life has pages vacant still, "Whereon a man may write the thing he will; "Therefore I read in silence, day by day, "And wait for hearts untaught to learn my way. "But thou shalt go to Lupon, to the three "Who serve me there, and take this word from me: "Tell each of them his Master bids him go "Alone to Spiran's huts, across the snow; "There he shall find a certain task for me: "But what, I do not tell to them nor thee. "Give thou the message, make my word the test, "And crown for me the one who answers best." Silent the angel stood, with folded hands, To take the imprint of his Lord's commands; Then drew one breath, obedient and elate, And passed, the self-same hour, through Lupon's gate. First to the Temple door he made his way; And there, because it was an holy-day, He saw the folk by thousands thronging, stirred By ardent thirst to hear the preacher's word. Then, while the echoes murmured Bernol's name, Through aisles that hushed behind him, Bernol came; Strung to the keenest pitch of conscious might, With lips prepared and firm, and eyes alight. One moment at the pulpit steps he knelt In silent prayer, and on his shoulder felt The angel's hand:--"The Master bids thee go "Alone to Spiran's huts, across the snow, "To serve Him there." Then Bernol's hidden face Went white as death, and for about the space Of ten slow heart-beats there was no reply; Till Bernol looked around and whispered, "WHY?" But answer to his question came there none; The angel sighed, and with a sigh was gone. Within the humble house where Malvin spent His studious years, on holy things intent, Sweet stillness reigned; and there the angel found The saintly sage immersed in thought profound, Weaving with patient toil and willing care A web of wisdom, wonderful and fair: A seamless robe for Truth's great bridal meet, And needing but one thread to be complete. Then Asmiel touched his hand, and broke the thread Of fine-spun thought, and very gently said, "The One of whom thou thinkest bids thee go "Alone to Spiran's huts, across the snow, "To serve Him there." With sorrow and surprise Malvin looked up, reluctance in his eyes. The broken thought, the strangeness of the call, The perilous passage of the mountain-wall, The solitary journey, and the length Of ways unknown, too great for his frail strength, Appalled him. With a doubtful brow He scanned the doubtful task, and muttered "HOW?" But Asmiel answered, as he turned to go, With cold, disheartened voice, "I do not know." Now as he went, with fading hope, to seek The third and last to whom God bade him speak, Scarce twenty steps away whom should he meet But Fermor, hurrying cheerful down the street, With ready heart that faced his work like play, And joyed to find it greater every day! The angel stopped him with uplifted hand, And gave without delay his Lord's command: "He whom thou servest here would have thee go "Alone to Spiran's huts, across the snow, "To serve Him there." Ere Asmiel breathed again The eager answer leaped to meet him, "WHEN?" The angel's face with inward joy grew bright, And all his figure glowed with heavenly light; He took the golden circlet from his brow And gave the crown to Fermor, answering, "Now! "For thou hast met the Master's bidden test, "And I have found the man who loves Him best. "Not thine, nor mine, to question or reply "When He commands us, asking 'how?' or 'why?' "He knows the cause; His ways are wise and just; "Who serves the King must serve with perfect trust." February, 1902. THE VAIN KING In robes of Tyrian blue the King was drest, A jewelled collar shone upon his breast, A giant ruby glittered in his crown-- Lord of rich lands and many a splendid town. In him the glories of an ancient line Of sober kings, who ruled by right divine, Were centred; and to him with loyal awe The people looked for leadership and law. Ten thousand knights, the safeguard of the land, Lay like a single sword within his hand; A hundred courts, with power of life and death, Proclaimed decrees of justice by his breath; And all the sacred growths that men had known Of order and of rule upheld his throne. Proud was the King: yet not with such a heart As fits a man to play a royal part. Not his the pride that honours as a trust The right to rule, the duty to be just: Not his the dignity that bends to bear The monarch's yoke, the master's load of care, And labours like the peasant at his gate, To serve the people and protect the State. Another pride was his, and other joys: To him the crown and sceptre were but toys, With which he played at glory's idle game, To please himself and win the wreaths of fame. The throne his fathers held from age to age, To his ambition, seemed a fitting stage Built for King Martin to display at will, His mighty strength and universal skill. No conscious child, that, spoiled with praising, tries At every step to win admiring eyes,-- No favourite mountebank, whose acting draws From gaping crowds loud thunder of applause, Was vainer than the King: his only thirst Was to be hailed, in every race, the first. When tournament was held, in knightly guise The King would ride the lists and win the prize; When music charmed the court, with golden lyre The King would take the stage and lead the choir; In hunting, his the lance to slay the boar; In hawking, see his falcon highest soar; In painting, he would wield the master's brush; In high debate,--"the King is speaking! Hush!" Thus, with a restless heart, in every field He sought renown, and found his subjects yield As if he were a demi-god revealed. But while he played the petty games of life His kingdom fell a prey to inward strife; Corruption through the court unheeded crept, And on the seat of honour justice slept. The strong trod down the weak; the helpless poor Groaned under burdens grievous to endure. The nation's wealth was spent in vain display, And weakness wore the nation's heart away. Yet think not Earth is blind to human woes-- Man has more friends and helpers than he knows; And when a patient people are oppressed, The land that bore them feels it in her breast. Spirits of field and flood, of heath and hill, Are grieved and angry at the spreading ill; The trees complain together in the night, Voices of wrath are heard along the height, And secret vows are sworn, by stream and strand, To bring the tyrant low and liberate the land. But little recked the pampered King of these; He heard no voice but such as praise and please. Flattered and fooled, victor in every sport, One day he wandered idly with his court Beside the river, seeking to devise New ways to show his skill to wondering eyes. There in the stream a patient fisher stood, And cast his line across the rippling flood. His silver spoil lay near him on the green: "Such fish," the courtiers cried, "were never seen! "Three salmon longer than a cloth-yard shaft-- "This man must be the master of his craft!" "An easy art!" the jealous King replied: "Myself could learn it better, if I tried, "And catch a hundred larger fish a week-- "Wilt thou accept the challenge, fellow? Speak!" The fisher turned, came near, and bent his knee: "'T is not for kings to strive with such as me; "Yet if the King commands it, I obey. "But one condition of the strife I pray: "The fisherman who brings the least to land "Shall do whate'er the other may command." Loud laughed the King: "A foolish fisher thou! "For I shall win and rule thee then as now." So to Prince John, a sober soul, sedate And slow, King Martin left the helm of state, While to the novel game with eager zest He all his time and all his powers addrest. Sure such a sight was never seen before! For robed and crowned the monarch trod the shore; His golden hooks were decked with feathers fine, His jewelled reel ran out a silken line. With kingly strokes he flogged the crystal stream, Far-off the salmon saw his tackle gleam; Careless of kings, they eyed with calm disdain The gaudy lure, and Martin fished in vain. On Friday, when the week was almost spent, He scanned his empty creel with discontent, Called for a net, and cast it far and wide, And drew--a thousand minnows from the tide! Then came the fisher to conclude the match, And at the monarch's feet spread out his catch-- A hundred salmon, greater than before-- "I win!" he cried: "the King must pay the score." Then Martin, angry, threw his tackle down: "Rather than lose this game I'd lose my crown!" Nay, thou hast lost them both," the fisher said; And as he spoke a wondrous light was shed Around his form; he dropped his garments mean, And in his place the River-god was seen. "Thy vanity hast brought thee in my power, "And thou shalt pay the forfeit at this hour: "For thou hast shown thyself a royal fool, "Too proud to angle, and too vain to rule. "Eager to win in every trivial strife,-- "Go! Thou shalt fish for minnows all thy life!" Wrathful, the King the scornful sentence heard; He strove to answer, but he only CHIRR-R-ED: His Tyrian robe was changed to wings of blue, His crown became a crest,--away he flew! And still, along the reaches of the stream, The vain King-fisher flits, an azure gleam,-- You see his ruby crest, you hear his jealous scream. April, 1904. LYRICS A MILE WITH ME O who will walk a mile with me Along life's merry way? A comrade blithe and full of glee, Who dares to laugh out loud and free, And let his frolic fancy play, Like a happy child, through the flowers gay That fill the field and fringe the way Where he walks a mile with me. And who will walk a mile with me Along life's weary way? A friend whose heart has eyes to see The stars shine out o'er the darkening lea, And the quiet rest at the end o' the day,-- A friend who knows, and dares to say, The brave, sweet words that cheer the way Where he walks a mile with me. With such a comrade, such a friend, I fain would walk till journeys end, Through summer sunshine, winter rain, And then?--Farewell, we shall meet again! December, 1902. SPRING IN THE SOUTH Now in the oak the sap of life is welling, Tho' to the bough the rusty leafage clings; Now on the elm the misty buds are swelling, See how the pine-wood grows alive with wings; Blue-jays fluttering, yodeling and crying, Meadow-larks sailing low above the faded grass, Red-birds whistling clear, silent robins flying,-- Who has waked the birds up? What has come to pass? Last year's cotton-plants, desolately bowing, Tremble in the March-wind, ragged and forlorn; Red are the hill-sides of the early ploughing, Gray are the lowlands, waiting for the corn. Earth seems asleep still, but she's only feigning; Deep in her bosom thrills a sweet unrest. Look where the jasmine lavishly is raining Jove's golden shower into Danae's breast! Now on the plum the snowy bloom is sifted, Now on the peach the glory of the rose, Over the hills a tender haze is drifted, Full to the brim the yellow river flows. Dark cypress boughs with vivid jewels glisten, Greener than emeralds shining in the sun. Who has wrought the magic? Listen, sweetheart, listen! The mocking-bird is singing Spring has begun. Hark, in his song no tremor of misgiving! All of his heart he pours into his lay,-- "Love, love, love, and pure delight of living: Winter is forgotten: here's a happy day!" Fair in your face I read the flowery presage, Snowy on your brow and rosy on your mouth: Sweet in your voice I hear the season's message,-- Love, love, love, and Spring in the South! March, 1904. LOVE'S NEARNESS I think of thee, when golden sunbeams shimmer Across the sea; And when the waves reflect the moon's pale glimmer, I think of thee. I see thy form, when down the distant highway The dust-clouds rise; In deepest night, above the mountain by-way, I see thine eyes. I hear thee when the ocean-tides returning Loudly rejoice; And on the lonely moor, in stillness yearning, I hear thy voice. I dwell with thee: though thou art far removed, Yet art thou near. The sun goes down, the stars shine out,-- Beloved, Ah, wert thou here! From Goethe: "Nahe des Geliebten." TWO SCHOOLS I put my heart to school In the world, where men grow wise, "Go out," I said, "and learn the rule; "Come back when you win a prize." My heart came back again: "Now where is the prize?" I cried.-- "The rule was false, and the prize was pain, "And the teacher's name was Pride." I put my heart to school In the woods, where veeries sing, And brooks run cool and clear; In the fields, where wild flowers spring, And the blue of heaven bends near. "Go out," I said: "you are half a fool, "But perhaps they can teach you here." "And why do you stay so long, "My heart, and where do you roam?" The answer came with a laugh and a song,-- "I find this school is home." April, 1901. A PRAYER FOR A MOTHER'S BIRTHDAY Lord Jesus, Thou hast known A mother's love and tender care: And Thou wilt hear, while for my own Mother most dear I make this birthday prayer. Protect her life, I pray, Who gave the gift of life to me; And may she know, from day to day, The deepening glow of Life that comes from Thee. As once upon her breast Fearless and well content I lay, So let her heart, on Thee at rest, Feel fears depart and troubles fade away. Her every wish fulfill; And even if Thou must refuse In anything, let Thy wise will A comfort bring such as kind mothers use. Ah, hold her by the hand, As once her hand held mine; And though she may not understand Life's winding way, lead her in peace divine. I cannot pay my debt For all the love that she has given; But Thou, love's Lord, wilt not forget Her due reward,--bless her in earth and heaven. July, 1903. INDIAN SUMMER A soft veil dims the tender skies, And half conceals from pensive eyes The bronzing tokens of the fall; A calmness broods upon the hills, And summer's parting dream distills A charm of silence over all. The stacks of corn, in brown array, Stand waiting through the placid day, Like tattered wigwams on the plain; The tribes that find a shelter there Are phantom peoples, forms of air, And ghosts of vanished joy and pain. At evening when the crimson crest Of sunset passes down the West, I hear the whispering host returning; On far-off fields, by elm and oak, I see the lights, I smell the smoke,-- The Camp-fires of the Past are burning. Tertius and Henry Van Dyke. November, 1903. ONE WORLD "The worlds in which we live are two The world 'I am' and the world 'I do.'" The worlds in which we live at heart are one, The world "I am," the fruit of "I have done"; And underneath these worlds of flower and fruit, The world "I love,"--the only living root. HIDE AND SEEK I All the trees are sleeping, all the winds are still, All the flocks of fleecy clouds have wandered past the hill; Through the noonday silence, down the woods of June, Hark, a little hunter's voice comes running with a tune. "Hide and seek! "When I speak, "You must answer me: "Call again, "Merry men, "Coo-ee, coo-ee, coo-ee!" Now I hear his footsteps, rustling through the grass: Hidden in my leafy nook, shall I let him pass? Just a low, soft whistle,--quick the hunter turns, Leaps upon me laughing, rolls me in the ferns. "Hold him fast, "Caught at last! "Now you're it, you see. "Hide your eye, "Till I cry, "Coo-ee, coo-ee, coo-ee!" II Long ago he left me, long and long ago: Now I wander through the world and seek him high and low; Hidden safe and happy, in some pleasant place,-- Ah, if I could hear his voice, I soon should find his face. Far away, Many a day, Where can Barney be? Answer, dear, Don't you hear? Coo-ee, coo-ee, coo-ee! Birds that in the spring-time thrilled his heart with joy, Flowers he loved to pick for me, mind me of my boy. Surely he is waiting till my steps come nigh; Love may hide itself awhile, but love can never die. Heart, be glad, The little lad Will call some day to thee: "Father dear, "Heaven is here, "Coo-ee, coo-ee, coo-ee!" January, 1900. DULCIS MEMORIA Long, long ago I heard a little song, (Ah, was it long ago, or yesterday?) So lowly, slowly wound the tune along, That far into my heart it found the way: A melody consoling and endearing; And still, in silent hours, I'm often hearing The small, sweet song that does not die away. Long, long ago I saw a little flower,-- (Ah, was it long ago, or yesterday?) So fair of face and fragrant for an hour, That something dear to me it seemed to say: A thought of joy that blossomed into being Without a word; and now I'm often seeing The friendly flower that does not fade away. Long, long ago we had a little child,-- (Ah, was it long ago, or yesterday?) Into his mother's eyes and mine he smiled Unconscious love; warm in our arms he lay. An angel called! Dear heart, we could not hold him; Yet secretly your arms and mine infold him-- Our little child who does not go away. Long, long ago? Ah, memory, make it clear-- (It was not long ago, but yesterday,) So little and so helpless and so dear Let not the song be lost, the flower decay! His voice, his waking eyes, his gentle sleeping: The smallest things are safest in thy keeping. Sweet memory, keep our child with us alway. April, 1903. AUTUMN IN THE GARDEN When the frosty kiss of Autumn in the dark Makes its mark On the flowers, and the misty morning grieves Over fallen leaves; Then my olden garden, where the golden soil Through the toil Of a hundred years is mellow, rich, and deep, Whispers in its sleep. 'Mid the crumpled beds of marigold and phlox, Where the box Borders with its glossy green the ancient walks, There's a voice that talks Of the human hopes that bloomed and withered here Year by year,-- Dreams of joy, that brightened all the labouring hours, Fading as the flowers. Yet the whispered story does not deepen grief; But relief For the loneliness of sorrow seems to flow From the Long-Ago, When I think of other lives that learned, like mine, To resign, And remember that the sadness of the fall Comes alike to all. What regrets, what longings for the lost were theirs! And what prayers For the silent strength that nerves us to endure Things we cannot cure! Pacing up and down the garden where they paced, I have traced All their well-worn paths of patience, till I find Comfort in my mind. Faint and far away their ancient griefs appear: Yet how near Is the tender voice, the careworn, kindly face, Of the human race! Let us walk together in the garden, dearest heart, Not apart! They who know the sorrows other lives have known Never walk alone. October, 1903. THE MESSAGE Waking from tender sleep, My neighbour's little child Put out his baby hand to me, Looked in my face, and smiled. It seemed as if he came Home from a happy land, To tell me something that my heart Would surely understand. Somewhere, among bright dreams, A child that once was mine Had whispered wordless love to him, And given him a sign. Comfort of kindly speech, And counsel of the wise, Have helped me less than what I read In those deep-smiling eyes. Sleep sweetly, little friend, And dream again of heaven: With double love I kiss your hand,-- Your message has been given. November, 1903. LIGHT BETWEEN THE TREES Long, long, long the trail Through the brooding forest-gloom, Down the shadowy, lonely vale Into silence, like a room Where the light of life has fled, And the jealous curtains close Round the passionless repose Of the silent dead. Plod, plod, plod away, Step by step in mouldering moss; Thick branches bar the day Over languid streams that cross Softly, slowly, with a sound In their aimless creeping Like a smothered weeping, Through the enchanted ground. "Yield, yield, yield thy quest," Whispers through the woodland deep; "Come to me and be at rest; "I am slumber, I am sleep." Then the weary feet would fail, But the never-daunted will Urges "Forward, forward still! "Press along the trail!" Breast, breast, breast the slope! See, the path is growing steep. Hark! a little song of hope When the stream begins to leap. Though the forest, far and wide, Still shuts out the bending blue, We shall finally win through, Cross the long divide. On, on, onward tramp! Will the journey never end? Over yonder lies the camp; Welcome waits us there, my friend. Can we reach it ere the night? Upward, upward, never fear! Look, the summit must be near; See the line of light! Red, red, red the shine Of the splendour in the west, Glowing through the ranks of pine, Clear along the mountain-crest! Long, long, long the trail Out of sorrow's lonely vale; But at last the traveller sees Light between the trees! March, 1904. RELIANCE Not to the swift, the race: Not to the strong, the fight: Not to the righteous, perfect grace: Not to the wise, the light. But often faltering feet Come surest to the goal; And they who walk in darkness meet The sunrise of the soul. A thousand times by night The Syrian hosts have died; A thousand times the vanquished right Hath risen, glorified. The truth the wise men sought Was spoken by a child; The alabaster box was brought In trembling hands defiled. Not from my torch, the gleam, But from the stars above: Not from my heart, life's crystal stream, But from the depths of Love. October, 1903. GREETINGS AND INSCRIPTIONS KATRINA'S SUN-DIAL Hours fly, Flowers die: New days, New ways: Pass by! Love stays. ** Time is Too Slow for those who Wait, Too Swift for those who Fear, Too Long for those who Grieve, Too Short for those who Rejoice; But for those who Love, Time is not. TO JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY On his "Book of Joyous Children" Yours is a garden of old-fashioned flowers; Joyous children delight to play there; Weary men find rest in its bowers, Watching the lingering light of day there. Old-time tunes and young love's laughter Ripple and run among the roses; Memory's echoes, murmuring after, Fill the dusk when the long day closes. Simple songs with a cadence olden-- These you learned in the Forest of Arden: Friendly flowers with hearts all golden-- These you borrowed from Eden's garden. This is the reason why all men love you; Truth to life is the charm of art: Other poets may soar above you-- You keep close to the human heart. December, 1903. A HEALTH TO MARK TWAIN At his Birthday Feast With memories old and wishes new We crown our cups again, And here's to you, and here's to you With love that ne'er shall wane! And may you keep, at sixty-seven, The joy of earth, the hope of heaven, And fame well-earned, and friendship true, And peace that comforts every pain, And faith that fights the battle through, And all your heart's unbounded wealth, And all your wit, and all your health,-- Yes, here's a hearty health to you, And here's to you, and here's to you, Long life to you, Mark Twain. A RONDEAU OF COLLEGE RHYMES Our college rhymes,--how light they seem, Like little ghosts of love's young dream That led our boyish hearts away From lectures and from books, to stray By flowery mead and flowing stream! There's nothing here, in form or theme, Of thought sublime or art supreme: We would not have the critic weigh Our college rhymes. Yet if, perchance, a slender beam Of feeling's glow or fancy's gleam Still lingers in the lines we lay At Alma Mater's feet today, The touch of Nature may redeem Our college rhymes. May, 1904. THE MOCKING-BIRD In mirth he mocks the other birds at noon, Catching the lilt of every easy tune; But when the day departs he sings of love,-- His own wild song beneath the listening moon. March, 1904. THE EMPTY QUATRAIN A flawless cup: how delicate and fine The flowing curve of every jewelled line! Look, turn it up or down, 't is perfect still,-- But holds no drop of life's heart-warming wine. April, 1904. INSCRIPTIONS FOR A FRIEND'S HOUSE THE HOUSE The cornerstone in Truth is laid, The guardian walls of Honour made, The roof of Faith is built above, The fire upon the hearth is Love: Though rains descend and loud winds call, This happy house shall never fall. THE DOORSTEAD The lintel low enough to keep out pomp and pride: The threshold high enough to turn deceit aside: The doorband strong enough from robbers to defend: This door will open at a touch to welcome every friend. THE HEARTHSTONE When the logs are burning free, Then the fire is full of glee: When each heart gives out its best, Then the talk is full of zest: Light your fire and never fear, Life was made for love and cheer. THE SUN-DIAL Time can never take What Time did not give; When my shadows have all passed, You shall live. THE STATUE OF SHERMAN BY ST. GAUDENS This is the soldier brave enough to tell The glory-dazzled world that 'war is hell': Lover of peace, he looks beyond the strife, And rides through hell to save his country's life. April, 1904. THE SUN-DIAL AT WELLS COLLEGE The shadow by my finger cast Divides the future from the past: Before it, sleeps the unborn hour In darkness, and beyond thy power: Behind its unreturning line, The vanished hour, no longer thine: One hour alone is in thy hands,-- The NOW on which the shadow stands. March, 1904. 
35479	----	generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) SONGS AND BALLADS OF THE SOUTHERN PEOPLE. 1861-1865. _COLLECTED AND EDITED_ BY FRANK MOORE. NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 1, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET. 1886. COPYRIGHT, 1886, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. _All rights reserved._ NOTE TO READERS. This collection has been made with the view of preserving in permanent form the opinions and sentiments of the Southern people, as embodied in their Songs and Ballads of 1861-1865; which, better than any other medium, exhibit the temper of the times and popular feeling. The historical value of the productions is admitted. Age will not impair it. The editor has endeavored to give the best of the inspirations. A desire to announce the authorship of the pieces has been gratified in most instances. Where requests have been made not to give names and places and circumstances, by whom, and where they have been written, they have been regarded, the spirit, meaning and intent not being affected, nor in the least abated by such a course. To those who have assisted in collecting, the editor returns his thanks. After this volume reaches those who are interested, should any of them desire to correct mistakes that may have crept into it, he will be glad to make the changes required. Should any one, into whose hands the volume may fall, know of copies of songs or ballads, or of letters and incidents upon which such are founded--songs and ballads, letters or incidents not already collected in book form--the editor will be glad to be advised, that means may be taken for their permanent preservation, which he is using every endeavor to secure. A postal card, giving name and residence, addressed to him, in the care of his publishers, D. Appleton and Company, New York City, will receive immediate attention. The essence of history exists in its songs. Those that are carried in the memory are earliest forgotten. It is a praiseworthy plan that saves all. Will those who "know them by heart," and have "sung them in camp and in battle," help to rescue them from oblivion? FRANK MOORE. NEW YORK, _January, 1886_. SONGS OF THE SOUTHERN PEOPLE. A POEM FOR THE TIMES. BY JOHN R. THOMPSON. Who talks of Coercion? Who dares to deny A resolute people their right to be free? Let him blot out forever one star from the sky, Or curb with his fetter one wave of the sea. Who prates of Coercion? Can love be restored To bosoms where only resentment may dwell; Can peace upon earth be proclaimed by the sword, Or good-will among men be established by shell? Shame! shame that the statesman and trickster, forsooth, Should have for a crisis no other recourse, Beneath the fair day-spring of Light and of Truth, Than the old _brutum fulmen_ of Tyranny,--Force. From the holes where Fraud, Falsehood, and Hate slink away; From the crypt in which Error lies buried in chains; This foul apparition stalks forth to the day, And would ravage the land which his presence profanes. Could you conquer us, Men of the North, could you bring Desolation and death on our homes as a flood; Can you hope the pure lily, Affection, will spring From ashes all reeking and sodden with blood? Could you brand us as villeins and serfs, know ye not What fierce, sullen hatred lurks under the scar? How loyal to Hapsburg is Venice, I wot; How dearly the Pole loves his Father, the Czar! But 'twere well to remember this land of the sun Is a _nutrix leonum_, and suckles a race Strong-armed, lion-hearted, and banded as one, Who brook not oppression and know not disgrace. And well may the schemers in office beware The swift retribution that waits upon crime, When the lion, RESISTANCE, shall leap from his lair, With a fury that renders his vengeance sublime. Once, men of the North, we were brothers, and still, Though brothers no more, we would gladly be friends; Nor join in a conflict accurst, that must fill With ruin the country on which it descends. But if smitten with blindness, and mad with the rage The gods give to all whom they wished to destroy, You would act a new Iliad to darken the age, With horrors beyond what is told us of Troy: If, deaf as the adder itself to the cries, When Wisdom, Humanity, Justice implore, You would have our proud eagle to feed on the eyes Of those who have taught him so grandly to soar: If there be to your malice no limit imposed, And your reckless design is to rule with the rod The men upon whom you have already closed Our goodly domain and the temples of God: To the breeze then your banner dishonored unfold, And at once let the tocsin be sounded afar; We greet you, as greeted the Swiss Charles the Bold, With a farewell to peace and a welcome to war! For the courage that clings to our soil, ever bright, Shall catch inspiration from turf and from tide; Our sons unappalled shall go forth to the fight, With the smile of the fair, the pure kiss of the bride; And the bugle its echoes shall send through the past, In the trenches of Yorktown to waken the slain; While the sods of King's Mountain shall heave at the blast, And give up its heroes to glory again. _Charleston Mercury._ ETHNOGENESIS. BY HENRY TIMROD.[1] I. Hath not the morning dawned with added light? And will not evening call another star Out of the infinite regions of the night, To mark this day in heaven? At last we are A nation among nations; and the world Shall soon behold in many a distant part Another flag unfurled! Now, come what may, whose favor need we court? And, under God, whose thunder need we fear? Thank him who placed us here Beneath so kind a sky--the very sun Takes part with us; and on our errands run All breezes of the ocean; dew and rain Do noiseless battle for us; and the year And all the gentle daughters in her train March in our ranks, and in our service wield Long spears of golden grain! A yellow blossom as her fairy shield June flings our azure banner to the wind, While in the order of their birth Her sisters pass, and many an ample field Grows white beneath their steps, till now behold Its endless sheets unfold THE SNOW OF SOUTHERN SUMMERS! Let the earth Rejoice! beneath those fleeces soft and warm Our happy land shall sleep In a repose as deep As if we lay intrenched behind Whole leagues of Russian ice and Arctic storm! II. And what, if mad with wrongs themselves have wrought, In their own treachery caught, By their own fears made bold, And leagued with him of old, Who long since in the limits of the North Set up his evil throne, and warred with God-- What if, both mad and blinded in their rage, Our foes should fling us down their mortal gage, And with a hostile step profane our sod! We shall not shrink, my brothers, but go forth To meet them, marshaled by the Lord of Hosts, And overshadowed by the mighty ghosts Of Moultrie and of Eutaw--who shall foil Auxiliars such as these? Nor these alone, But every stock and stone Shall help us; but the very soil, And all the generous wealth it gives to toil, And all for which we love our noble land, Shall fight beside, and through us, sea and strand, The heart of woman, and her hand, Tree, fruit, and flower, and every influence Gentle or grave or grand. The winds in our defense Shall seem to blow; to us the hills shall lend Their firmness and their calm; And in our stiffened sinews we shall blend The strength of pine and palm! III. Look where we will, we can not find a ground For any mournful song: Call up the clashing elements around, And test the right and wrong! On one side, pledges broken, creeds that lie, Religion sunk in vague philosophy, Empty professions, pharisaic leaven, Souls that would sell their birthright in the sky, Philanthropists who pass the beggar by, And laws which controvert the laws of Heaven. And, on the other--first, a righteous cause! Then, honor without flaws, Truth, Bible reverence, charitable wealth, And for the poor and humble, laws which give, Not the mean right to buy the right to live, But life, and home, and health. To doubt the issue were distrust in God! If in his Providence he hath decreed That to the peace for which we pray, Through the Red Sea of War must lie our way, Doubt not, O brothers, we shall find at need A Moses with his rod! IV. But let our fears--if fears we have--be still, And turn us to the future! Could we climb Some Alp in thought, and view the coming time, We should indeed behold a sight to fill Our eyes with happy tears! Not for the glories which a hundred years Shall bring us; not for lands from sea to sea, And wealth, and power, and peace, though these shall be; But for the distant peoples we shall bless, And the hushed murmurs of a world's distress: For, to give food and clothing to the poor, The whole sad planet o'er, And save from crime its humblest human door, Our mission is! The hour is not yet ripe When all shall see it, but behold the type Of what we are and shall be to the world, In our own grand and genial Gulf stream furled, Which through the vast and colder ocean pours Its waters, so that far-off Arctic shores May sometimes catch upon the softened breeze Strange tropic warmth and hints of summer seas. THE SOUTHERN CROSS. BY ST. GEORGE TUCKER. AIR--_The Star Spangled Banner_. Oh, say, can you see, through the gloom and the storm, More bright for the darkness, that pure constellation? Like the symbol of love and redemption its form, As it points to the haven of hope for the nation. How radiant, each star, as the beacon afar, Giving promise of peace, or assurance in war; 'Tis the Cross of the South, which shall ever remain, To light us to Freedom and Glory again! How peaceful and blest was America's soil, Till betrayed by the guile of the Puritan demon, Which lurks under virtue, and springs from its coil To fasten its fangs in the life-blood of freemen. Then loudly appeal, to each heart that can feel, And crush the foul viper 'neath Liberty's heel! And the Cross of the South shall forever remain, To light us to Freedom and Glory again! 'Tis the emblem of peace, 'tis the day-star of hope, Like the sacred Labarum, which guided the Roman; From the shores of the Gulf to the Delaware's slope, 'Tis the trust of the free, and the terror of foemen. Fling its folds to the air, while we boldly declare The rights we demand, or the deeds that we dare; And the Cross of the South shall forever remain, To light us to Freedom and Glory again! But if peace should be hopeless, and justice denied, And war's bloody vulture should flap his black pinions, Then gladly to arms! while we hurl in our pride, Defiance to tyrants, and death to their minions, With our front to the field, swearing never to yield, Or return, like the Spartan, in death on our shield; And the Cross of the South shall triumphantly wave As the flag of the Free, or the pall of the brave. _Southern Literary Messenger._ HARP OF THE SOUTH, AWAKE! BY J. M. KILGOUR. Harp of the South, awake! From every golden wire, Let the voice of thy power go forth, Like the rush of a prairie fire; With the rush and the rhythm of a power That dares a freeman's grave, Rather than live to wear The chains of a truckling slave. Harp of the South, awake! Thy sons are aroused at last, And their legions are gathering now, To the sound of the trumpet blast; To the scream of the piercing fife, And the beat of the rolling drum, From mountain, and hill, and plain, And field, and town, they come. Harp of the South, awake! Their banners are on the breeze; Tell the world how vain the thought To subdue such men as these, With hero hearts that beat, To the throbs of the spirit-flame, Which will kindle their battle-fires In freedom's holy name. Harp of the South, awake! But not to sing of love, In shady forest-bower, Or fragrant orange grove; Oh, no, but thy song must be The wrath of the battle crash, Inscribed on the cloud of war, With the pen of its lightning flash. Harp of the South, awake! And strike the strains once more, Which nerved thy heroes' hearts In the glorious days of yore; Which gave a giant's strength To the arm of MARION, Of SUMTER, MORGAN, LEE, And your own great WASHINGTON. Harp of the South, awake! Your freedom's angel calls, In the laugh of the rippling rills, And the roar of the waterfalls. See how she bends to hear, As she walks the valleys through, And along the mountain tops, In robes of gold and blue. Harp of the South, awake! The proud, the full-soul'd South-- With the dusk of her flashing eyes, And the lure of her rosy mouth-- With love, or pride, or wrath, Thrilling her noble form, As she smiles like a summer sky, Or frowns like a summer storm! Harp of the South, awake! Though the soldier's beaming tear May fall on thy trembling strings, As he breathes his farewell prayer; Yet, tell him how to die On the bloody battle-field, Rather than to her foes The gallant South should yield.[2] ARISE. BY C. G. POYNAS. Carolinians! who inherit Blood which flowed in patriot veins! Rouse ye from lethargic slumber, Rouse and fling away your chains! From the mountain to the seaboard, Let the cry be--Up! Arise! Throw our pure Palmetto banner Proudly upward to the skies. Fling it out! its lone star beaming Brightly to the nation's gaze; Lo! another star arises! Quickly, proudly _it_ emblaze! Yet another! Bid it welcome With a hearty "three times three"; Send it forth, on boom of cannon, Southern men will _dare be free_. Faster than the cross of battle Summoned rude Clan Alpine's host, Flash the news from sea to mountain-- Back from mountain to the coast! On the lightning's wing it fleeth, Scares the eagle in his flight, As his keen eye sees arising Glory, yet shall daze his sight! Cease the triumph--days of darkness Loom upon us from afar: Can a woman's voice for battle Ring the fatal note of war? Yes--when we have borne aggression Till submission is disgrace-- Southern women call for _action_; Ready would the danger face! Yes, in many a matron's bosom Burns the Spartan spirit now; From the maiden's eye it flashes, Glows upon her snowy brow; E'en our infants in their prattle Urge us on to _risk our all_-- "Would we leave them, as a blessing. The oppressor's hateful thrall?" No!--then up, true-hearted Southrons, Like bold "giants nerved by wine"; Never fear! The cause is holy-- It is sacred--yea, divine! For the Lord of Hosts is with us, It is _He_ has cast our lot; Blest our homes--from lordly mansion To the humblest negro cot. God of battles! hear our cry-- Give us nerve to _do_ or _die_! THE STAR OF THE WEST. I wish I was in de land o' cotton, Old times dair ain't not forgotten-- Look away, etc. In Dixie land whar I was born in, Early on one frosty mornin'-- Look away, etc. _Chorus_--Den I wish I was in Dixie. In Dixie land dat frosty mornin', Jis 'bout de time de day was dawnin', Look away, etc. De signal fire from de east bin roarin', Rouse up, Dixie, no more snorin'-- Look away, etc.-- Den I wish I was in Dixie. Dat rocket high a blazing in de sky, 'Tis de sign dat de snobbies am comin' up nigh-- Look away, etc. Dey bin braggin' long, if we dare to shoot a shot, Dey comin' up strong and dey'll send us all to pot. Fire away, fire away, lads in gray. Den I wish I was in Dixie. _Charleston Mercury._ FAREWELL TO BROTHER JONATHAN. BY "CAROLINE." Farewell! we must part; we have turned from the land Of our cold-hearted brother, with tyrannous hand, Who assumed all our rights as a favor to grant, And whose smile ever covered the sting of a taunt; Who breathed on the fame he was bound to defend-- Still the craftiest foe, 'neath the guise of a friend; Who believed that our bosoms would bleed at a touch, Yet could never believe he could goad them too much; Whose conscience affects to be seared with our sin, Yet is plastic to take all its benefits in; The mote in our eye so enormous has grown, That he never perceives there's a beam in his own. O Jonathan, Jonathan! vassal of pelf, Self-righteous, self-glorious, yes, every inch self, Your loyalty now is all bluster and boast, But was dumb when the foemen invaded our coast. In vain did your country appeal to you then, You coldly refused her your money and men; Your trade interrupted, you slunk from her wars, And preferred British gold to the Stripes and the Stars! Then our generous blood was as water poured forth, And the sons of the South were the shields of the North; Nor our patriot ardor one moment gave o'er, Till the foe you had fed we had driven from the shore! Long years we have suffered opprobrium and wrong, But we clung to your side with affection so strong, That at last, in mere wanton aggression, you broke All the ties of our hearts with one murderous stroke. We are tired of contest for what is our own, We are sick of a strife that could never be done; Thus our love has died out, and its altars are dark, Not Prometheus's self could rekindle the spark. O Jonathan, Jonathan! deadly the sin Of your tigerish thirst for the blood of your kin; And shameful the spirit that gloats over wives And maidens despoiled of their honor and lives! Your palaces rise from the fruits of our toil, Your millions are fed from the wealth of our soil; The balm of our air brings the health to your cheek, And our hearts are aglow with the welcome we speak. O brother! beware how you seek us again, Lest you brand on your forehead the signet of Cain; That blood and that crime on your conscience must sit; We may fall--we may perish--but never submit! The pathway that leads to the Pharisee's door We remember, indeed, but we tread it no more; Preferring to turn, with the Publican's faith, To the path through the valley and shadow of death! THE UNIFORM OF GRAY. BY EVAN ELBERT. The Briton boasts his coat of red, With lace and spangles decked; In garb of green the French are seen, With gaudy colors flecked; The Yankees strut in dingy blue, And epaulets display; Our Southern girls more proudly view The uniform of gray. That dress is worn by gallant hearts Who every foe defy, Who stalwart stand, with battle-brand, To conquer or to die! They fight for freedom, hope and home, And honor's voice obey, And proudly wear where'er they roam The uniform of gray. What though 'tis stained with crimson hues, And dim with dust and smoke, By bullets torn, and rent and shorn By many a hostile stroke; The march, the camp, the bivouac, The onset and the fray But only serve more dear to make The uniform of gray. When wild war's tiger-strife is past, And liberty restored; When independence reigns at last, By valor's arm secured; The South will stand, erect and grand, And loftiest honors pay To those who bore her flag, and wore The uniform of gray. And woman's love, man's best reward, Shall cluster round their path, And soothe and cheer the volunteer Who dared the foeman's wrath. Bright wreaths she'll bring, and roses fling Around his triumph-way, And long in song thy fame prolong Old uniform of gray. "WE CONQUER OR DIE." BY JAMES PIERPONT. The war drum is beating, prepare for the fight, The stern bigot Northman exults in his might, Gird on your bright weapons, your foemen are nigh; Let this be our watchword, "We conquer or die!" The trumpet is sounding from mountain to shore, Your swords and your lances must slumber no more, Fling forth to the sunlight your banner on high, Inscribed with the watchword, "We conquer or die!" March to the battlefield, there do or dare, With shoulder to shoulder, all danger to share, And let your proud watchword ring up to the sky, Till the blue arch re-echoes "We conquer or die!" Press forward undaunted, nor think of retreat, The enemy's host on the threshold to meet; Strike firm till the foeman before you shall fly, Appalled by the watchword, "We conquer or die!" Go forth in the pathway our forefathers trod; We, too, fight for freedom--our Captain is God; Their blood in our veins, with their honor we vie, Theirs, too, was the watchword, "We conquer or die!" We strike for the South--mountain, valley and plain-- For the South we will conquer again and again; Her day of salvation and triumph is nigh, Ours, then, be the watchword, "We conquer or die!" SONS OF FREEDOM. BY NANNY GRAY. Sons of freedom, on to glory Go, where brave men _do_ or _die_, Let your names in future story Gladden every patriot's eye; 'Tis your country calls you, hasten! Backward hurl the invading foe; Freemen never think of danger,-- To the glorious battle go! Oh! remember gallant Jackson, _Single-handed_ in the fight, Death-blows dealt the fierce marauder, For his liberty and right; Tho' he fell beneath their _thousands_, Who that covets not his fame? Grand and glorious, brave and noble, Henceforth shall be Jackson's name. Sons of freedom, can you linger When you hear the battle's roar, Fondly dallying with your pleasures When the foe is at your door? Never! no! we fear no idlers, "Death or freedom"'s now the cry, 'Till the _stars_ and _bars_, triumphant, Spread their folds to every eye. _Richmond Whig._ "CALL ALL! CALL ALL!" BY "GEORGIA." Whoop! the Doodles have broken loose, Roaring round like the very deuce! Lice of Egypt, a hungry pack,-- After 'em, boys, and drive 'em back. Bull-dog, terrier, cur, and fice, Back to the beggarly land of ice; Worry 'em, bite 'em, scratch and tear Everybody and everywhere. Old Kentucky is caved from under, Tennessee is split asunder, Alabama awaits attack, And Georgia bristles up her back. Old John Brown is dead and gone! Still his spirit is marching on,-- Lantern-jawed, and legs, my boys, Long as an ape's from Illinois! Want a weapon? Gather a brick, Club or cudgel, or stone or stick; Anything with a blade or butt, Anything that can cleave or cut. Anything heavy, or hard, or keen! Any sort of slaying machine! Anything with a willing mind, And the steady arm of a man behind. Want a weapon? Why, capture one! Every Doodle has got a gun, Belt, and bayonet, bright and new; Kill a Doodle, and capture _two_! Shoulder to shoulder, son and sire! All, call all! to the feast of fire! Mother and maiden, and child and slave, A common triumph or a single grave. _Rockingham, Va., Register._ THE ORDERED AWAY. _Dedicated to the Oglethorpe and Walker Light Infantries._ BY MRS. J. J. JACOBUS. At the end of each street, a banner we meet, The people all march in a mass, But quickly aside, they step back with pride, To let the brave companies pass. The streets are dense filled, but the laughter is still'd-- The crowd is all going one way; Their cheeks are blanched white, but they smile as they light Lift their hats to the--Ordered away. They smile while the dart deeply pierces their heart, But each eye flashes back the war-glance, As they watch the brave file march up with a smile, 'Neath their flag--with their muskets and lance; The cannon's loud roar vibrates on the shore, _But the people are quiet to-day_, As, startled, they see how fearless and free March the companies--Ordered away. Not a quiver or gleam of fear can be seen, Though they go to meet death in disguise; For the hot air is filled with poison distilled 'Neath the rays of fair Florida's skies. Hark! the drum and fife awake to new life The soldiers who--"Can't get away;" Who _wish_, as they wave their hats to the brave, That _they_ were the--Ordered away. As _our_ parting grows near, let us quell back the tear, Let our smiles shine as bright as of yore; Let us stand with the mass, salute as they pass, And weep when we see them no more. Let no tear-drop or sigh dim the light of our eye, Or move from our lips, as they say-- While waving our hand to a brave little band-- Good-by to the--Ordered away. Let them go, in God's name, in defense of their _fame_, Brave death at the cannon's wide mouth; Let them honor and save the land of the brave, Plant Freedom's bright flag in the _South_. Let them go! While we weep, and lone vigils keep, We will bless them, and fervently pray To the God whom we trust, for our cause firm but just, And our loved ones--the Ordered away. When fierce battles storm, we will rise up each morn, Teach our young sons the saber to wield: Should their brave fathers die, we will arm _them_ to fly And fill up the gap in the field. Then, fathers and brothers, fond husbands and lovers, March! march bravely on! _We_ will stay, Alone in our sorrow, to pray on each morrow For our loved ones--the Ordered away. AUGUSTA, GA., _April 2, 1861_. THE MARTYR OF ALEXANDRIA. BY JAMES W. SIMMONS. Revealed, as in a lightning flash, A Hero stood! The invading foe, the trumpet's crash, Set up his blood! High o'er the sacred pile that bends Those forms above, Thy Star, O Freedom! brightly blends Its rays with Love. The banner of a mighty race Serenely there Unfurls--the genius of the place, And haunted air! A vow is registered in heaven-- Patriot! 'twas thine To guard those matchless colors, given By hand divine. Jackson! thy spirit may not hear The wail ascend! A nation bends above thy bier, And mourns its friend. Thy example is thy monument; In organ tones Thy name resounds, with glory blent, Prouder than thrones! And they whose loss has been our gain-- A People's care Shall win their hearts from pain, And wipe the tear. When time shall set the captive free, Now scathed by wrath, Heirs of his immortality, Bright be their path. INDIANOLA, TEXAS. DIXIE. _Southrons, hear your Country call you!_ BY ALBERT PIKE. Southrons, hear your Country call you! Up! lest worse than death befall you! To arms! To arms! To arms! in Dixie! Lo! all the beacon-fires are lighted, Let all hearts be now united! To arms! To arms! To arms! in Dixie! Advance the flag of Dixie! Hurrah! hurrah! For Dixie's land we take our stand, And live or die for Dixie! To arms! To arms! And conquer peace for Dixie! To arms! To arms! And conquer peace for Dixie! Hear the Northern thunders mutter! Northern flags in South wind flutter; To arms, etc., Advance the flag of Dixie! etc. Fear no danger! Shun no labor! Lift up rifle, pike, and saber! To arms, etc. Shoulder pressing close to shoulder, Let the odds make each heart bolder! To arms, etc. Advance the flag of Dixie! etc. How the South's great heart rejoices, At your cannons' ringing voices; To arms! etc. For faith betrayed and pledges broken, Wrongs inflicted, insults spoken; To arms! etc. Advance the flag of Dixie! etc. Strong as lions, swift as eagles, Back to their kennels hunt these beagles; To arms! etc. Cut the unequal words asunder! Let them then each other plunder! To arms! etc. Advance the flag of Dixie! etc. Swear upon your country's altar, Never to submit or falter! To arms! etc. Till the spoilers are defeated, Till the Lord's work is completed. To arms! etc. Advance the flag of Dixie! etc. Halt not till our Federation Secures among Earth's Powers its station! To arms! etc. Then at peace, and crowned with glory, Hear your children tell the story! To arms! etc. Advance the flag of Dixie! etc. If the loved ones weep in sadness, Victory soon shall bring them gladness: To arms! etc. Exultant pride soon banish sorrow; Smiles chase tears away to-morrow. To arms! etc. Advance the flag of Dixie! etc. THE RIGHT ABOVE THE WRONG. BY JOHN W OVERALL. In other days our fathers' love was loyal, full, and free, For those they left behind them in the Island of the Sea; They fought the battles of King George, and toasted him in song, For them the Right kept proudly down the tyranny of Wrong. But when the King's weak, willing slaves laid tax upon the tea, The Western men rose up and braved the Island of the Sea; And swore a fearful oath to God, those men of iron might, That in the end the Wrong should die, and up should go the Right. The King sent over hireling hosts--Briton, Hessian, Scot-- And swore in turn those Western men, when captured, should be shot; While Chatham spoke with earnest tongue against the hireling throng, And mournfully saw the Right go down, and place give to the Wrong. But God was on the righteous side, and Gideon's sword was out, With clash of steel, and rattling drum, and freeman's thunder-shout; And crimson torrents drenched the land through that long, stormy fight, But in the end, hurrah! the Wrong was beaten by the Right! And when again the foemen came from out the Northern Sea, To desolate our smiling land and subjugate the free, Our fathers rushed to drive them back, with rifles keen and long, And swore a mighty oath, the Right should subjugate the Wrong. And while the world was looking on, the strife uncertain grew, But soon aloft rose up our stars amid a field of blue; For Jackson fought on red Chalmette, and won the glorious fight, And then the Wrong went down, hurrah! and triumph crowned the Right! The day has come again, when men who love the beauteous South, To speak, if needs be, for the Right, though by the cannon's mouth; For foes accursed of God and man, with lying speech and song, Would bind, imprison, hang the Right, and deify the Wrong. But canting knave of pen and sword, nor sanctimonious fool, Shall ever win this Southern land, to cripple, bind, and rule; We'll muster on each bloody plain, thick as the stars of night, And, through the help of God, the Wrong shall perish by the Right. _New Orleans True Delta._ TO MY SOLDIER BROTHER. BY SALLIE E. BALLARD. When softly gathering shades of ev'n Creep o'er the prairies broad and green, And countless stars bespangle heav'n, And fringe the clouds with silv'ry sheen, My fondest sigh to thee is giv'n, My lonely wand'ring soldier-boy; And thoughts of thee Steal over me Like ev'ning shades, my soldier boy. My brother, though thou'rt far away, And dangers hurtle round thy path, And battle lightnings o'er thee play, And thunders peal in awful wrath, Think, whilst thou'rt in the hot affray, Thy sister prays for thee, my boy. If fondest prayer Can shield thee there, Sweet angels guard my soldier boy. Thy proud young heart is beating high To clash of arms and cannons' roar; That firm set lip and flashing eye Tell how thy heart is brimming o'er. Be free and live, be free or die! Be that thy motto now, my boy; And though thy name's Unknown to fame's 'Tis graven on my heart, my boy. THE SOUTH IN ARMS. BY REV. J. H. MARTIN. Oh! see ye not the sight sublime, Unequaled in all previous time, Presented in this Southern clime, The home of chivalry? A warlike race of freemen stand, With martial front and sword in hand, Defenders of their native land,-- The sons of Liberty. Unawed by numbers, they defy The tyrant North, nor will they fly, Resolved to conquer or to die, And win a glorious name. Sprung from renowned heroic sires, Inflamed with patriotic fires, Their bosoms burn with fierce desires, They thirst for victory. 'Tis not the love of bloody strife, The horrid sacrifice of life, But thoughts of mother, sister, wife, That stir their manly hearts. A sense of honor bids them go, To meet a hireling, ruthless foe, And deal in wrath the deadly blow Which vengeance loud demands. In freedom's sacred cause they fight, For Independence, Justice, Right, And to resist a desperate might. And by Manassas' glorious name, And by Missouri's fields of fame, We hear them swear, with one acclaim, We'll triumph or we'll die! MELT THE BELLS. BY F. Y. ROCKETT. Melt the bells, melt the bells, Still the tinkling on the plain, And transmute the evening chimes Into war's resounding rhymes, That the invaders may be slain By the bells. Melt the bells, melt the bells, That for years have called to prayer, And, instead, the cannon's roar Shall resound the valleys o'er, That the foe may catch despair From the bells. Melt the bells, melt the bells, Though it cost a tear to part With the music they have made, Where the friends we love are laid, With pale cheek and silent heart, 'Neath the bells. Melt the bells, melt the bells, Into cannon, vast and grim, And the foe shall feel the ire From the heaving lungs of fire, And we'll put our trust in Him, And the bells. Melt the bells, melt the bells, And when foes no more attack, And the lightning cloud of war Shall roll thunderless and far, We will melt the cannon back Into bells. Melt the bells, melt the bells, And they'll peal a sweeter chime, And remind of all the brave Who have sunk to glory's grave, And will sleep through coming time 'Neath the bells.[3] TO THE TORIES OF VIRGINIA. "I speak this unto your shame." In the ages gone by, when Virginia arose Her honor and truth to maintain, Her sons round her banner would rally with pride, Determined to save it from stain. No heart in those days was so false or so cold, That it did not exquisitely thrill With a love and devotion that none would withhold, Until death the proud bosom should chill. Was Virginia in danger? Fast, fast at her call, From the mountains e'en unto the sea, Came up her brave children their mother to shield, And to die that she still might be free. And a coward was he, who, when danger's dark cloud Overshadowed Virginia's fair sky, Turned a deaf, careless ear, when her summons was heard, Or refused for her honor to die. Oh! proud are the mem'ries of days that are past, And richly the heart thrills whene'er We think of the brave who, their mother to save, Have died, as they lived, without fear. But _now_, can it be that Virginia's name Fails to waken the homage and love Of e'en one of her sons? Oh! cold, cold must be The heart that her name will not move. When she rallies for freedom, for justice, and right, Will her sons, with a withering sneer, Revile her, and taunt her with treason and shame, Or say she is moved by foul fear? Will they tell her her glories have fled or grown pale? That she bends to a tyrant in shame? Will they trample her glorious flag in the dust, Or load with reproaches her name? Will they fly from her shores, or desert her in need? Will _Virginians_ their backs ever turn On their mother, and fly when the danger is nigh, And her claim to their fealty spurn? False, false is the heart that refuses to yield The love that Virginia doth claim; And base is the tongue that could utter the lie, That charges his mother with shame. A blot on her 'scutcheon! a stain on her name! Our heart's blood should wipe it away; We should die for her honor, and count it a boon Her mandates to heed and obey. But never, oh, never, let human tongue say She is false to her honor or fame! She is true to her past--to her future she's true-- And Virginia has never known shame. Then shame on the dastard, the recreant fool, That _would strike_, _in the dark_, at her now; That would coldly refuse her fair fame to uphold, That would basely prove false to his vow. But no! it can not--it can never be true, That Virginia claims one single child, That would ever prove false to his home or his God, Or be with foul treason defiled. And the man that could succor her enemies _now_, Even though on her soil he were born, Is so base, so inhuman, so false and so vile, That Virginia disowns him with scorn! _Richmond Examiner._ WAR SONG. BY A. B. MEEK, OF MOBILE. Wouldst thou have me love thee, dearest, With a woman's proudest heart, Which shall ever hold thee nearest, Shrined in its inmost heart? Listen, then! My country's calling On her sons to meet the foe! Leave these groves of rose and myrtle, Drop the dreamy hand of love! Like young Körner, scorn the turtle When the eagle screams above! Dost thou pause? Let dotards dally-- Do thou for thy country fight! 'Neath her noble emblem rally-- "God! our country, and her right!" Listen! now her trumpet's calling On her sons to meet the foe! Woman's heart is soft and tender, But 'tis proud and faithful, too; Shall she be her land's defender? Lover! soldier? up and do! Seize thy father's ancient falchion, Which once flashed as freedom's star! Till sweet peace--the bow and halcyon, Still'd the stormy strife of war! Listen! now thy country's calling On her sons to meet the foe! Sweet is love in moonlight bowers! Sweet the altar and the flame! Sweet is spring-time with her flowers! Sweeter far the patriot's name! Should the God who rules above thee Doom thee to a soldier's grave, Hearts will break, but fame will love thee Canonized among the brave! Listen, then, thy country's calling On her sons to meet the foe! Rather would I view thee lying On the last red field of life, 'Mid thy country's heroes dying, Than to be a dastard's wife. SUMTER; A BALLAD OF 1861. BY E. O. MURDEN. 'Twas on the twelfth of April, Before the break of day, We heard the guns of Moultrie Give signal for the fray. Anon across the waters There boomed the answering gun, From North and South came flash on flash-- The battle had begun. The mortars belched their deadly food, And spiteful whizzed the balls, A fearful storm of iron hailed On Sumter's doomèd walls. We watched the meteor flight of shell, And saw the lightning flash; Saw where each fiery missile fell, And heard the sullen crash. The morn was dark and cloudy, Yet, till the sun arose, No answer to our gallant boys Came booming from our foes. Then through the dark and murky clouds The morning sunlight came, And forth from Sumter's frowning walls Burst sudden sheets of flame. The shot and shell flew thick and fast, The war-dogs howling spoke, And thundering came their angry roar, Through wreathing clouds of smoke. Again to fight for liberty, Our gallant sons had come, They smiled when came the bugle call, And laughed when tapped the drum. From cotton- and from corn-field, From desk and forum too, From work-bench and from anvil, came Our gallant boys and true. A hireling band had come to awe, Our chains to rivet fast; Yon lofty pile scowls on our homes, Seaward the hostile mast. But gallant freemen man our guns-- No mercenary host, Who barter for their honor's price, And of their baseness boast. Now came our stately matrons, And maidens too by scores; Oh! Carolina's beauty shone Like love-lights on her shores. See yonder, anxious gazing, Alone a matron stands, The tear-drop glistening on each lid, And tightly clasped her hands. For there, exposed to deadly fire, Her husband and her son-- "Father," she spake, and heavenward looked, "Father, thy will be done." See yonder group of maidens, No joyous laughter now, For cares lie heavy on each heart And cloud each anxious brow: For brothers dear, and lovers fond, Are there amid the strife; Tearful the sister's anxious gaze-- Pallid the promised wife. Yet breathed no heart one thought of fear, Prompt at their country's call, They yielded forth their dearest hopes, And gave to honor all! Now comes a message from below-- Oh quick the tidings tell-- "At Moultrie and Fort Johnson, too, And Morris, all are well!" Then mark the joyous brightening; See how each bosom swells; That friends and loved ones all are safe, Each to the other tells. All day the shot flew thick and fast, All night the cannon roared, While wreathed in smoke stern Sumter stood, And vengeful answer poured. Again the sun rose, bright and clear, 'Twas on the thirteenth day, While, lo! at prudent distance moored Five hostile vessels lay. With choicest abolition crews-- The bravest of _their_ brave-- They'd come to pull our Crescent down And dig Secession's grave. See, see, how Sumter's banner trails, They're signaling for aid, See you no boats of armed men? Is yet no movement made? Now densest smoke and lurid flames Burst out o'er Sumter's walls; "The fort's on fire," 's the cry; Again for aid he calls. See you no boats or vessels yet? Dare they not risk _one_ shot, To make report grandiloquent Of aid they rendered not? Nor boat nor vessel leaves the fleet-- "Let the old Major burn"-- We'll boast of that we would have done, If but--on our return. Go back, go back ye cravens, Go back the way ye came; Ye gallant, _would be_, men-of-war, Go! to your country's shame. 'Mid fiery storm of shot and shell, 'Mid smoke and roaring flame, See how Kentucky's gallant son Does honor to her name! See how he answers gun for gun-- Hurrah! his flag is down! The white! the white! Oh see it wave! Is echoed all around. Now ring the bells a joyous peal, And rend with shouts the air, We've torn the hated banner down, And placed the Crescent there. All honor to our gallant boys, Bring forth the roll of fame, And there in glowing lines inscribe Each patriot hero's name. Spread, spread the tidings far and wide, Ye winds take up the cry: "Our soil's redeemed from hateful yoke, We'll keep it pure or die." REBELS. Rebels! 'tis a holy name! The name our fathers bore, When battling in the cause of Right, Against the tyrant in his might, In the dark days of yore. Rebels! 'tis our family name! Our father, Washington, Was the arch-rebel in the fight, And gave the name to us--a right Of father unto son. Rebels! 'tis our given name! Our mother, Liberty, Received the title with her fame, In days of grief, of fear, and shame, When at her breast were we. Rebels! 'tis our sealèd name! A baptism of blood! The war--aye, and the din of strife-- The fearful contest, life for life-- The mingled crimson flood. Rebels! 'tis a patriot's name! In struggles it was given; We bore it then when tyrants raved, And through their curses 'twas engraved On the doomsday-book of heaven. Rebels! 'tis our fighting name! For peace rules o'er the land, Until they speak of craven woe-- Until our rights receive a blow, From foe's or brother's hand. Rebels! 'tis our dying name! For, although life is dear, Yet, freemen born and freemen bred, We'd rather live as freemen dead, Than live in slavish fear. Then call us rebels, if you will-- We glory in the name; For bending under unjust laws, And swearing faith to an unjust cause, We count a greater shame. _Atlanta Confederacy._ THE HEART OF LOUISIANA. BY HARRIET STANTON. Oh! let me weep, while o'er our land Vile discord strides, with sullen brow, And drags to earth, with ruthless hand, The flag no tyrant's power could bow! Trailed in the dust, inglorious laid, While one by one her stars retire, And pride and power pursue the raid, That bids our liberty expire. Aye, let me weep! for surely Heaven In anger views the unholy strife; And angels weep that thus is riven The tie that gave to Freedom life. I can not shout--I will not sing Loud pæans o'er a severed tie; And, draped in woe, in tears I fling Our State's new flag to greet the sky. I can but choose, while senseless zeal And lawless hate are clothed with power, The bitter cup; but still I feel The sadness of this parting hour! I know that thousand hearts will bleed While loud huzzas the welkin rend; The thoughtless crowd will shout, Secede! But ah! will this the conflict end? Oh! let me weep and prostrate lie Low at the footstool of my God; I can not breathe one note of joy, While yet I feel His chastening rod. Sure, we have as a nation sinned-- Let every heart its folly own, And sackcloth, as a girdle, bind, And mourn our glorious Union gone! Sisters, farewell! You know not half The pain your pride, injustice, give; You spurn our cause, and lightly laugh, And hope no more the wrong shall live. _New Orleans Delta._ SOUTHERN SONG OF FREEDOM. AIR--"_The Minstrel's Return_." A nation has sprung into life Beneath the bright Cross of the South; And now a loud call to the strife Rings out from the shrill bugle's mouth. They gather from morass and mountain, They gather from prairie and mart, To drink, at young Liberty's fountain, The nectar that kindles the heart. Then, hail to the land of the pine! The home of the noble and free; A palmetto wreath we'll entwine Round the altar of young Liberty! Our flag, with its cluster of stars, Firm fixed in a field of pure blue, All shining through red and white bars, Now gallantly flutters in view. The stalwart and brave round it rally, They press to their lips every fold, While the hymn swells from hill and from valley, "Be, God, with our Volunteers bold." Then, hail to the land of the pine! etc. The invaders rush down from the North, Our borders are black with their hordes; Like wolves for their victims they flock, While whetting their knives and their swords. Their watchword is "Booty and Beauty," Their aim is to steal as they go; But Southrons act up to your duty, And lay the foul miscreants low. Then, hail to the land of the pine! etc. The God of our fathers looks down And blesses the cause of the just; His smile will the patriot crown Who tramples his chains in the dust. March, march Southrons! shoulder to shoulder, One heart-throb, one shout for the cause; Remember--the world's a beholder, And your bayonets are fixed at your doors! Then, hail to the land of the pine! The home of the noble and free; A palmetto wreath we'll entwine Round the altar of young Liberty. J. H. H. THERE'S NOTHING GOING WRONG. _Dedicated to "Old Abe."_ There's a general alarm, The South's begun to arm, And every hill and glen Pours forth its warrior men; Yet, "There's nothing going wrong," Is the burden of my song. Six States already out, Beckon others on the route; And the cry is "Still they come!" From the Southern sunny home; Yet, "There's nothing going wrong," Is the burden of my song. There's a wail in the land, From a want-stricken band; And "Food! Food!" is the cry: "Give us work or we die!" Yet, "There's nothing going wrong," Is the burden of my song. The sturdy farmer doth complain Of low prices for his grain; And the miller, with his flour, Murmurs the dullness of the hour. Yet, "There's nothing going wrong," Is the burden of my song. The burly butcher in the mart, He, too, also takes his part; And the merchant in his store Hears no creaking of his door. But, "There's nothing going wrong," Is the burden of my song. Stagnation is everywhere; On the water, in the air, In the shop, in the forge, On the mount, in the gorge; With the anvil, with the loom, In the store and counting-room; In the city, in the town, With Mr. Smith, with Mr. Brown! And "yet there's nothing wrong," Is the burden of my song. A. M. W. NEW ORLEANS, _March 4, 1861_. MARYLAND. BY JAMES R. RANDALL. The despot's heel is on thy shore, Maryland! His torch is at thy temple door, Maryland! Avenge the patriotic gore That flecked the streets of Baltimore, And be the battle-queen of yore, Maryland! My Maryland! Hark to thy wand'ring son's appeal, Maryland! My mother State! to thee I kneel, Maryland! For life and death, for woe and weal, Thy peerless chivalry reveal, And gird thy beauteous limbs with steel, Maryland! My Maryland! Thou wilt not cower in the dust, Maryland! Thy beaming sword shall never rust, Maryland! Remember Carroll's sacred trust; Remember Howard's warlike thrust,-- And all thy slumberers with the just, Maryland! My Maryland! Come! 'tis the red dawn of the day, Maryland! Come! with thy panoplied array, Maryland! With Ringgold's spirit for the fray, With Watson's blood, at Monterey, With fearless Lowe, and dashing May, Maryland! My Maryland! Come! for thy shield is bright and strong, Maryland! Come! for thy dalliance does thee wrong, Maryland! Come! to thine own heroic throng, That stalks with Liberty along, And give a new _Key_ to thy song, Maryland! My Maryland! Dear Mother! burst the tyrant's chain, Maryland! Virginia should not call in vain, Maryland! She meets her sisters on the plain: "_Sic semper_," 'tis the proud refrain, That baffles minions back amain, Maryland! Arise, in majesty again, Maryland! My Maryland! I see the blush upon thy cheek, Maryland! But thou wast ever bravely meek, Maryland! But lo! there surges forth a shriek From hill to hill, from creek to creek-- Potomac calls to Chesapeake, Maryland! My Maryland! Thou wilt not yield the Vandal toll, Maryland! Thou wilt not crook to his control, Maryland! Better the fire upon thee roll, Better the blade, the shot, the bowl, Than crucifixion of the soul, Maryland! My Maryland! I hear the distant thunder hum, Maryland! The Old Line's bugle, fife and drum, Maryland! She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb: Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum! She breathes--she burns! she'll come! she'll come! Maryland! My Maryland! POINTE COUPEE, _April 26, 1861_. A CRY TO ARMS. BY HENRY TIMROD. Ho! woodsmen of the mountain side! Ho! dwellers in the vales! Ho! ye who by the chafing tide Have roughened in the gales! Leave barn and byre, leave kin and cot, Lay by the bloodless spade; Let desk, and case, and counter rot, And burn your books of trade! The despot roves your fairest lands; And, till he flies or fears, Your fields must grow but armèd hands, Your sheaves be sheaves of spears! Give up to mildew and to rust The useless tools of gain, And feed your country's sacred dust With floods of crimson rain! Come, with the weapons at your call-- With musket, pike, or knife: He wields the deadliest blade of all Who lightest holds his life. The arm that drives its unbought blows, With all a patriot's scorn, Might brain a tyrant with a rose, Or stab him with a thorn! Does any falter? Let him turn To some brave maiden's eyes, And catch the holy fires that burn In those sublunar skies. Oh! could you like your women feel, And in their spirit march, A day might see your lines of steel Beneath the victor's arch. What hope, O God! would not grow warm, When thoughts like these give cheer? The Lily calmly braves the storm, And shall the Palm-tree fear? No! rather let its branches court The rack that sweeps the plain, And from the Lily's regal port Learn how to breast the strain! Ho! woodsmen of the mountain side! Ho! dwellers in the vales! Ho! ye who by the roaring tide Have roughened in the gales! Come! flocking gayly to the fight, From forest, hill, and lake; We battle for our Country's right, And for the Lily's sake! NEW ORLEANS, _March 9, 1862_. WAR SONG.[4] AIR--"_March, march, Ettrick and Teviotdale_." March, march on, brave "PALMETTO" boys, "SUMTER" and "LAFAYETTES" forward in order; March, march, "CALHOUN" and "RIFLE" boys, All the base Yankees are crossing the _border_. Banners are round ye spread, Floating above your head, Soon shall the _Lone Star_ be famous in story, On, on, my gallant men, Vict'ry be thine again; Fight for your _rights_, till the green sod is gory. March, march, etc. Young wives and sisters have buckled your armor on; Maidens ye love bid ye _go_ to the battle-field; Strong arms and stout hearts have many a vict'ry won, _Courage_ shall strengthen the weapons ye wield. Wild passions are storming, Dark schemes are forming, _Deep snares_ are laid, but they _shall not_ enthrall ye; Justice your cause shall greet, Laurels lay at your feet, If each brave band be watchful and wary. March, march, etc. Let fear and unmanliness vanish before ye; Trust in the Rock who will shelter the righteous; Plant _firmly_ each step on the soil of the _free_-- A heritage left by the sires who bled for us. May each heart be bounding, When trumpets are sounding, And the dark traitors shall strive to surround ye; The great God of Battle Can _still_ the war-rattle, And brighten the land with a sunset of glory. March, march, etc. VIRGINIA--LATE BUT SURE! BY W. H. HOLCOMBE. The foe has hemmed us round: we stand at bay, Here we will perish, or be free to-day! To drum and bugle sternly sounding, The Southern soldier's heart is bounding; But stay--oh stay! Virginia is not here! Hush your strains of martial cheer; O bugle, peace! O war-drum, cease! Virginia is not here! Suspend, O chief, your word of fight! She will be soon in sight! Her children never called in vain! She comes not--comes not: the disgrace Were bitterer than the tyrant's chain! Oh, death! we dare thee face to face! A gun! the foe's defiant shot--be still! Hurrah! an answering gun behind the hill; And o'er its summit wildly streaming The squadrons of Virginia gleaming![5] Hurrah! hurrah! the Old Dominion comes! Blow your bugles! beat your drums! O doubt accurst! The last is first-- The Old Dominion comes! She grasps her thunderbolts of war; Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah! Now loose, O chief! your battle storm! We hang impatient on your breath; Here in the flashing front we form! Virginia!--victory or death! SOUTHERN SENTIMENT. BY REV. A. M. BOX. The North may think that the South will yield, And seek for a place in the Union again; But never will Southrons abandon the field And place themselves under _tyrannical reign_. Sooner by far would we yield to the grave, Than form an alliance with so hated a foe; To join the "old Union" would be to enslave Ourselves, our children, in want and in woe! What! sons of the South! submit to be ruled By the minions of Abraham Lincoln, the fool? Our fair ones insulted--our wealth all controlled By Yankees, free negroes, and every such tool! Heaven forbid it! and arm us with might, To drive back our foes, and grind them to dust! In every conflict may we put them to flight, Aided by thee, thou God of the just! Our bosoms we'll bare to the glorious strife, And our oath is recorded on high, To prevail in the cause is dearer than life, Or crushed in its ruins to die! The battle is not to the strong we know, But to the just, the true, and the brave-- With faith in our GOD, right onward we'll go, Our country, our loved ones, to save. THE SOUTHRON'S WAR-SONG. BY J. A. WAGENER. Arise! arise! with main and might, Sons of the sunny clime! Gird on the sword; the sacred fight The holy hour doth chime. Arise! the craven host draws nigh, In thundering array; Arise, ye brave! let cowards fly-- The hero bides the fray. Strike hard, strike hard, thou noble band; Strike hard, with arm of fire! Strike hard, for God and fatherland, For mother, wife, and sire! Let thunders roar, the lightning flash; Bold Southron, never fear! The bayonet's point, the saber's clash, True Southrons do and dare! Bright flow'rs spring from the hero's grave; The craven knows no rest! Thrice curs'd the traitor and the knave! The hero thrice is bless'd. Then let each noble Southron stand, With bold and manly eye: We'll do for God and fatherland; We'll do, we'll do, or die! _Charleston Courier._ JUSTICE IS OUR PANOPLY. BY DE G. We're free from Yankee despots, We've left the foul mud-sills, Declared for e'er our freedom-- We'll keep it spite of ills. Bring forth your scum and rowdies, Thieves, vagabonds, and all; March down your Seventh Regiment, Battalions great and small. We'll meet you in Virginia, A Southern battle-field, Where Southern men will never To Yankee foemen yield. Equip your Lincoln cavalry, Your NEGRO _light_-brigade, Your hodmen, bootblacks, tinkers, And scum of every grade. Pretended love for negroes Incites you to the strife; Well, come each Yankee white man, And take a negro wife. You'd make fit black companions, Black heart joined to black skin; Such _unions_ would be glorious-- They'd make the Devil grin. Our freedom is our panoply-- Come on, you base _black_-guards, We'll snuff you like wax-candles, Led by our Beauregards. P. G. T. B. is not alone, Men like him with him fight; God's providence is o'er us, _He_ will protect the right. THE BLUE COCKADE. BY MARY WALSINGHAM CREAN. God be with the laddie, who wears the blue cockade! He's gone to fight the battles of our darling Southern land; He was true to old Columbia, till more sacred ties forbade-- Till 'twere treason to obey her, when he took his sword in hand; And God be with the laddie, who was true in heart and hand, To the voice of old Columbia, till she wronged his native land! He buckled on his knapsack--his musket on his breast-- And donned the plumèd bonnet--sword and pistol by his side; Then his weeping mother kissed him, and his aged father bless'd, And he pinned the floating ribbon to his gallant plume of pride. And God be with the ribbon, and the floating plume of pride! They have gone where duty called them, and may glory them betide! He would not soil his honor, and he would not strike a blow, For he loved the aged Union, and he breath'd no taunting word; He would dare Columbia, till she swore herself his foe-- Forged the chains for freemen--when he buckled on his sword. And God be with the freeman, when he buckled on his sword! He lives or dies for duty, and he yields no inch of sward. The foes they come with thunder, and with blood and fire arrayed, And they swear that we shall own them--they the masters, we the slaves; But there's many a gallant laddie, who wears a blue cockade, Will show them what it is to dare the blood of Southern braves! And God be with the banner of those gallant Southern braves! They may nobly die as freemen--they can never live as slaves! THE LEGION OF HONOR. BY H. L. FLASH. Why are we forever speaking Of the warriors of old? Men are fighting all around us, Full as noble, full as bold. Ever working, ever striving, Mind and muscle, heart and soul, With the reins of judgment keeping Passions under full control. Noble hearts are beating boldly As they ever did on earth; Swordless heroes are around us, Striving ever from their birth. Tearing down the old abuses, Building up the purer laws, Scattering the dust of ages, Searching out the hidden flaws. Acknowledging no "right divine" In kings and princes from the rest; In their creed he is the noblest Who has worked and striven best. Decorations do not tempt them-- Diamond stars they laugh to scorn-- Each will wear a "Cross of Honor" On the Resurrection morn. Warriors they in fields of wisdom-- Like the noble Hebrew youth, Striking down Goliath's error With the God-blessed stone of truth. Marshaled 'neath the Right's broad banner, Forward rush these volunteers, Beating olden wrong away From the fast advancing years. Contemporaries do not see them, But the _coming_ times will say (Speaking of the slandered present), "There _were_ heroes in that day." Why are we then idly lying On the roses of our life, While the noble-hearted struggle In the world redeeming strife. Let us rise and join the legion, Ever foremost in the fray-- Battling in the name of Progress For the nobler, purer day. "WHAT THE VILLAGE BELL SAID." BY JOHN M'LEMORE, OF S. C. Full many a year in the village church, Above the world have I made my home; And happier there, than if I had hung High up in air in a golden dome; For I have tolled When the slow hearse rolled Its burden sad to my door; And each echo that woke, With the solemn stroke, Was a sigh from the heart of the poor. I know the great bell of the city spire Is a far prouder one than such as I; And its deafening stroke, compared with mine, Is thunder compared with a sigh; But the shattering note Of his brazen throat, As it swells on the Sabbath air, Far oftener rings For other things Than a call to the house of prayer. Brave boy, I tolled when your father died, And you wept when my tones pealed loud; And more gently I rung when the lily-white dame Your mother dear lay in her shroud: And I rang in sweet tone The angels might own, When your sister you gave to your friend; Oh! I rang with delight, On that sweet summer night, When they vowed they would love to the end! But a base foe comes from the regions of crime, With a heart all hot with the flames of hell; And the tones of the bell you have loved so long No more on the air shall swell: For the people's chief, With his proud belief That his country's cause is God's own, Would change the song, The hills have rung To the thunder's harsher tone. Then take me down from the village church, Where in peace so long I have hung; But I charge you, by all the loved and lost, _Remember the songs I have sung_. Remember the mound Of holy ground Where your father and mother lie And swear by the love For the dead above To beat your foul foe, or die. Then take me; but when (I charge you this) You have come to the bloody field, That the bell of God, to a cannon grown, You will ne'er to the foeman yield. By the love of the past, Be that hour your last, When the foe has reached this trust; And make him a bed Of patriot dead, And let him sleep in this holy dust.[6] "WE COME! WE COME!" BY MILLIE MAYFIELD.[7] We come! we come for Death or Life, For the Grave or Victory! We come to the broad Red Sea of strife, Where the black flag waveth free! We come as Men, to do or die, Nor feel that the lot is hard, When _our_ Hero calls--and our battle-cry Is "On, to Beauregard!" Up, craven, up! 'tis no time for ease, When the crimson war-tide rolls To our very doors--up, up, for these Are times to try men's souls! The purple gore calls from the sod Of our martyred brothers' graves, And raises a red right hand to God To guard our avenging braves. And unto the last bright drop that thrills The depths of the Southern heart, We must battle for our sunny hills, For the freedom of our Mart-- For all that Honor claims, or Right-- For Country, Love, and Home! Shout to the trampling steeds of Might Our cry--"We come! we come!" And let our path through their serried ranks Be the fierce tornado's track, That bursts from the torrid's fervid banks And scatters destruction black! For the hot life leaping in the veins Of our young Confederacy, Must break for aye the galling chains Of dark-browed Treachery. On! on! 'tis our gallant chieftain calls (He must not call in vain), For aid to guard his homestead walls-- Our Hero of the Plain! We come! we come, to do or die, Nor feel that the lot is hard: "God and our Rights!" be our battle cry, And, "On, to Beauregard!" MANASSAS. BY A REBEL. Upon our country's border lay, Holding the ruthless foe at bay, Through chilly night and burning day, Our army at Manassas. To them our eager eyes were turned, While many a restless spirit burned, And many a fond heart wildly yearned, O'er loved ones at Manassas. For fast the Vandals gathered, strong In wealth and numbers, all along Our highways pressed a countless throng, To battle at Manassas. With martial pomp and proud array, With burnished arms and banners gay, Panting for the inhuman fray, They rolled upon Manassas. The opening cannons' thunders rent The air, and ere their charge was spent, Muskets and rifles quickly sent Death to us at Manassas. But, like a wall of granite, stood The true, the great, the brave, the good, Who, firmly holding field and wood, Guarded us at Manassas. They promptly answered fire with fire; Danger could not with fear inspire Their hearts, whose courage rose the higher, When death ruled at Manassas. At dawn the murderous work begun; The battle fiercely raged at noon; Evening drew on--'twas not done-- The carnage at Manassas. Oh, trembling Freedom! didst thou stay Throughout that agonizing day, To watch where victory would lay Her laurels at Manassas? Yea! and thy potent trumpet tone Ordered our gallant warriors on, To the bold charge which for thee won The triumph at Manassas. Well might the dastard foemen yield, When Right and Vengeance joined to wield The well-aimed ball and glittering steel, Which hurled them from Manassas. They broke, and fear lent wings to feet Flying before our chargers fleet, Which followed up their wild retreat-- Their mad rout at Manassas. Strike! Southrons, strike! for ne'er a foe So worthy of your every blow Can your good swords and carbines know, As those who sought Manassas. For that our homes are still secure, Our wives and sisters still left pure, Our altars drip not with our gore; Thanks, victors of Manassas! Thy charmèd trumpet sound, O Fame! Let music catch the loud refrain, While in a glad, triumphant strain, We celebrate Manassas. And every soldier's breast shall fire With emulation, and desire To equal--fame can point no higher-- The heroes of Manassas. Alas! that many writhe in pain, Whose precious blood was spilt to gain Glory and freedom on thy plain-- Thy bloody plain, Manassas. If sympathy can aught avail, If fervent prayers with Heaven prevail, In your behalf they shall not fail, Poor wounded of Manassas. Alas! that blended with the tone Of triumph, breathes the stifled moan For many brave, whose dear lives won The victory of Manassas. A grateful nation long shall keep Their memory, and flock to weep Above the turf where softly sleep The martyrs of Manassas. HANOVER CO., VA., _July 30_. CHIVALROUS C. S. A. BY "B." AIR--"_Vive la Compagnie!_" I'll sing you a song of the South's sunny clime, Chivalrous C. S. A.! Which went to house-keeping once on a time; Bully for C. S. A.! Like heroes and princes they lived for awhile, Chivalrous C. S. A.! And routed the Hessians in most gallant style; Bully for C. S. A.! _Chorus_--Chivalrous, chivalrous people are they! Chivalrous, chivalrous people are they! In C. S. A.! In C. S. A.! Aye, in chivalrous C. S. A.! They have a bold leader--Jeff. Davis his name-- Chivalrous C. S. A.! Good generals and soldiers, all anxious for fame; Bully for C. S. A.! At Manassas they met the North in its pride, Chivalrous C. S. A.! But they easily put McDowell aside; Bully for C. S. A.! _Chorus_--Chivalrous, chivalrous people, etc. Ministers to England and France, it appears, Have gone from the C. S. A.! Who've given the North many fleas in its ears; Bully for C. S. A.! Reminders are being to Washington sent, By the chivalrous C. S. A.! That'll force Uncle Abe full soon to repent; Bully for C. S. A.! _Chorus_--Chivalrous, chivalrous people, etc. Oh, they have the finest of musical ears, Chivalrous C. S. A.! Yankee Doodle's too vulgar for them, it appears; Bully for C. S. A.! The North may sing it and whistle it still, Miserable U. S. A.! Three cheers for the South!--now, boys, with a will! And groans for the U. S. A.! _Chorus_--Chivalrous, chivalrous people, etc. THE BATTLE-FIELD OF MANASSAS. BY M. F. BIGNEY. Fill, fill the trump of fame With the name-- MANASSAS--the battle-field of pride; Where Freedom's heroes fought with their spirits all aflame, Where the Gospel of Liberty was sounded with acclaim, Where heroes for Liberty have died! Come, Fancy, once again Fill the plain with armèd men; Let us see the struggling hosts of Wrong and Right; Let the tide of battle pour, Fight and conquer o'er and o'er, Till we glow with inspiration at the sight. There's glory in the air: Everywhere Glory rises from the ground, All around. A hundred thousand men, Gather in from hill and glen, And for battle fierce and bloody they are bound. See, see the cohorts come, To the sound of fife and drum; They're the foemen of the North Coming forth, In the pride of conscious might; They would trample down the Right, As forth they come, those foemen of the North. The flag which they bear Is a snare: Its Stripes writhe as snakes upon the air; And its Stars, no longer bright, Tell of chaos and of night, And of how they yet Will set In despair. On comes the lengthening line, As if eager for the wine Which from the press of battle freely flows; And from the Southern heart Such wine will freely start, As the pledge to each hecatomb of foes. On comes the lengthened line, And a "higher law" _divine_; The snakes on their banners seem to hiss; "Destruction to the South," Bursts in hate from every mouth, And the demon-words are held akin to bliss. A brave, heroic band, Hand to hand, To meet the shock of battle are prepared; For wife and child they stand-- For home and native land; Oh, pray that every hero may be spared! The drum and fife may sound, But their stirring notes are drowned In the roar and the thunder of the guns; The death-charged bullets fly, And the shells ascend the sky-- They are offerings to God's and Freedom's sons. Where Freedom nerves the arm, There's a charm; Where Freedom stirs the heart, Fears depart. Oh, sacred is the strife, And the sacrifice of life, Where Freedom's chosen heroes point the dart. God! how the freemen press! There's distress In each lead and iron shower that they send; Their countless columns pour, Like the waves in wild uproar, Beating on a rocky shore They would rend. But firm as rocks our band Grandly stand-- For home and native land Hand to hand. How the proud invaders reel, As with shot and shell and steel, Destruction wide we deal, Sternly grand! Again, and yet again, These wild, fanatic men-- Those foemen that invade our Southern homes-- Still rally to the cry: "We must conquer here, or die! The laurel, or the fate of hellish gnomes!" Again, and yet again, Southern men Force the fierce insulting foe to retire. Again the Northmen fall, And to Heaven vainly call, While they yell, "There is hell In Southern fire!" Speed, Beauregard the brave, onward speed! Speed, Davis unto Johnson, in his need! Hurrah! the foemen fly! Send the victor shout on high, For Heaven still rewards the daring deed. How fearfully they bleed-- Man and steed! Oh, how their dying prayer Rends the air! All this for Northern greed, All that strange, fanatic creed, Which so wickedly they heed. _Do not spare!_ "The Southron is accurst"-- So they say; "He's baser than the worst Beast of prey;" And the African is white, In those Northern foemen's sight, As the lily, when it greets the god of day. Then drive them to their lair; Do not spare! Let shot and shell reply To their cry. Though their bodies taint the air, And become the vulture's fare, It is just that such invading hordes should die. McDowell, in the van, Sees his beaten columns fly! He calls on God and man For the aid that both deny; The army he would rally, as it runs. Thus, thus, McDowell raves: "Know ye not, ye unworthy knaves, That you fight the fight for slaves-- Sable ones; Come, and purchase redder graves With your guns." But the guns are thrown away, The invaders will not stay; To them a fearful lesson has been read: For miles strewn all around, Encrimsoning the rich ground, Lie their fallen friends--the wounded and the dead. The sun slopes down the west, But the foe in wild unrest Rushes on, though destruction follows fast. The Southern cavalcade Dyes with red each trusty blade, And the carnage is terrible and vast! Oh, where is Scott, the chief? Why brings he not relief? And Patterson, the tardy, where is he? And where is Abe, the Great, With his cap and cloak of state? He should see How his warriors can flee. Fear lendeth speed to flight, And the foe invokes the night To let its starless curtain quickly fall; But it falleth all too slow, For the terrors of the foe, And it seems to them the shadow of a pall. A Nemesis concealed In the shades of wold and field, Breathes of vengeance to the foemen as they run; They are rushing in despair, But there's carnage everywhere, And they know not what to welcome or to shun. Ten thousand of their slain Strew the plain; The shrieks from ten thousand more arise; And the ghosts From their hosts Wail despairingly and vain, In their pain, For a welcome to the skies. At morning, in their pride, Side by side, They went forth in their might To the fight; And now they flee in fear, Trembling like the stricken deer, At the saber and the spear-- It is night. They came forth to destroy, With a fierce, fanatic joy, And boasted of the Rebels they would slay; But, ere the set of sun, There are hundreds chased by one, And they pray their legs to bear them safe away. For miles strewn all around O'er the ground, The records of their flight Meet the sight: Bodies 'neath the horses' tread; Bodies living; bodies dead; And the swords and guns most beautifully bright! But let us leave the foe In their woe. To the God of Peace and Battle let us go. Let us praise the King of Kings, 'Neath whose wide-expanded wings There is shelter for his children here below. His arm, unseen, uprears Freedom's spears; If Freedom's voice be weak, His will speak In the cannon's thunder tones, Though the answer be in groans, And though a thousand tyrant hearts may break. THE SOLDIER'S HEART. BY F. P. BEAUFORT. The trumpet calls, and I must go To meet the vile, invading foe; But listen, dearest, ere we part-- Thou hast, thou hast the soldier's heart! It could not be so true to thee Were it not true to liberty; Far rather fill a soldier's grave Than live a dastard and a slave! Thine eyes shall light dark danger's path, The gloomy camp, the foeman's wrath; Above the battle's fiery storm, I shall behold thy beauteous form! With thoughts of thee, for thy dear sake, Redoubled efforts I will make; And strike with an avenging hand For lady-love and native land! Then fare thee well, the trumpet's sound Commands me to the battle ground; But listen, dearest, ere we part-- Thou hast, thou hast the soldier's heart. CONFEDERATE SONG. AIR-"_Bruce's Address_." Written for and dedicated to the Kirk's Ferry Rangers, by their Captain, E. Lloyd Wailes. Sung by the Glee Club on the 4th of July, 1861, at the Kirk's Ferry barbecue (Catahoula, La.), after the presentation of a flag, by the ladies, to the Kirk's Ferry Rangers. Rally round our country's flag! Rally, boys, haste! do not lag; Come from every vale and crag, Sons of liberty! Northern Vandals tread our soil, Forth they come for blood and spoil, To the homes we've gained with toil, Shouting, "Slavery!" Traitorous Lincoln's bloody band Now invades the freeman's land, Armed with sword and firebrand, 'Gainst the brave and free. Arm ye then for fray and fight, March ye forth both day and night, Stop not till the foe's in sight, Sons of chivalry. In your veins the blood still flows Of brave men who once arose-- Burst the shackles of their foes; Honest men and free. Rise, then, in your power and might, Seek the spoiler, brave the fight; Strike for God, for Truth, for Right: Strike for Liberty! SOUTHERN SONG. BY M. C. FREER. TUNE--"_Wait for the Wagon_." Come, all ye sons of freedom, And join our Southern band, We are going to fight the Yankees, And drive them from our land. Justice is our motto, And Providence our guide, So jump into the wagon, And we'll all take a ride. _Chorus_--So wait for the wagon, the dissolution wagon; The South is the wagon, and we'll all take a ride. Secession is our watchword; Our rights we all demand; To defend our homes and firesides We pledge our hearts and hands. Jeff. Davis is our President, With Stephens by his side; Great Beauregard our General; He joins us in our ride. _Chorus_--So wait for the wagon, etc. Our wagon is the very best; The running gear is good; Stuffed round the sides with cotton, And made of Southern wood. Carolina is the driver, With Georgia by her side; Virginia holds the flag up, While we all take a ride. _Chorus_--So wait for the wagon, etc. The invading tribe, called Yankees, With Lincoln for their guide, Tried to keep Kentucky From joining in the ride; But she heeded not their entreaties-- She has come into the ring; She wouldn't fight for a government Where cotton wasn't king. _Chorus_--So wait for the wagon, etc. Old Lincoln and his Congressmen, With Seward by his side, Put old Scott in the wagon, Just for to take a ride. McDowell was the driver, To cross Bull Run he tried, But there he left the wagon For Beauregard to ride. _Chorus_--So wait for the wagon, etc. Manassas was the battle-ground; The field was fair and wide; The Yankees thought they'd whip us out, And on to Richmond ride; But when they met our "Dixie" boys, Their danger they espied; They wheeled about for Washington, And didn't wait to ride. _Chorus_--So wait for the wagon, etc. Brave Beauregard, God bless him! Led legions in his stead, While Johnson seized the colors And waved them o'er his head. To rising generations, With pleasure we will tell How bravely our Fisher And gallant Johnson fell. _Chorus_--So wait for the wagon, etc.[8] MY WIFE AND CHILD. BY GEN. HENRY R. JACKSON, OF GEORGIA. The tattoo beats, the lights are gone, The camp around in slumber lies; The night with solemn pace moves on, And sad, uneasy thoughts arise. I think of thee, oh, dearest one! Whose love my early life has blest; Of thee and him, our baby son, Who slumbers on thy gentle breast. God of the tender, hover near To her whose watchful eye is wet; The mother, wife--the doubly dear-- And cheer her drooping spirits yet. Now, while she kneels before thy throne, Oh, teach her, Ruler of the Skies! No tear is wept to thee unknown, No hair is lost, no sparrow dies. That thou canst stay the ruthless hand Of dark disease, and soothe its pain; That only by thy stern command The battle's lost, the soldier's slain. By day, by night--in joy or woe-- By fear oppressed, or hopes beguiled, From every danger, every foe, Oh, God! protect my wife and child! THE SOUTH IS UP. BY P. E. C. The South is up in stern array-- Chasseurs and Zouaves and Gallic Guard-- Types of their veteran fathers gray, Of war-marked visage, saber-scarred-- The children of Marengo's plains, Of Austerlitz and Waterloo, When tyrants dare to speak of chains We'll do as their brave sires would do. The sturdy German, hardy Pole, Who knows how Kosciusko fell-- The Tyrolean, who feels his soul Fired with that spark which gave them Tell. The South is up! Italia's sons-- A Garibaldi in each form-- Their hands are grasping freemen's guns, Their bosoms feel his valor warm; Their crimson shirts, in bloody fields, Like walls of flame shall front the foeman; In that dread hour whoever yields, 'Tis not the offspring of the Roman; No renegade, to scorn his brother While guarding their adopted mother-- One feeling, _nationale_ and grand, Still binds them to their native land. The South is up! those brawny hands That bless in peace or crush in war, Who fought on India's burning sands, At Egypt's Nile, and Trafalgar; That reckless mirth, that fiery joy, On field, or fort, or slippery deck, From Clontarf's plains to Fontenoy, At Quatre Bras or old Quebec; Magenta, Malakoff, Redan, Has heard their Celtic "Clear the way!" The slandered, exiled Irishman Stands for his Southern home to-day; And when, perchance, in Death's eclipse He grasps her flag with 'legiance due, The last breath lingering on his lips Might proudly say, I'm Irish, too! The South is up! her native sons, Whose spirit prompts them to be free, Spring forth to man their trophied guns, So bravely won at Monterey-- Surpassing Buena Vista's deeds, Or Palo Alto's feats again, Though wives be wreathed in widow's weeds And children weep for fathers slain. What! think to bind the South? 'Tis vain! Freedom's inheritors at birth, Not all the leagued infernal train, If they were mustered here on earth, Those flashing eyes, like gleaming steel, Those hero boys and veterans gray! Oh, yes! the throbbing heart can feel-- The South is up in stern array. Yet sad 'twill grieve the Southern heart To meet their brethren foot to foot, But cancers on a vital part Must now be severed branch and root; They share with us a blood-bought fame From foreign foe and savage grim; The memory of our George's name, Revered by us, is dear to them; Our ships in every clime have shown, Where jealous monarchies might see, What stars upon our flag have grown From old _thirteen_ to _thirty-three_; Soldier to lead, or sage to teach, Deep-scienced minds, of knowledge vast, The great one's fame, as in a niche, Lives in the history of the past. Now, pausing o'er our doubtful fate We _have been_, or we _shall be_, great. THE OLD RIFLEMAN. BY FRANK TICKNOR, M. D. Now, bring me out my buckskin suit! My pouch and powder, too! We'll see if seventy-six can shoot As sixteen used to do. Old Bess! we've kept our barrels bright! Our triggers quick and true! As far, if not as _fine_ a sight, As long ago, we drew! And pick me out a trusty flint! A real white and blue; Perhaps 'twill win the _other_ tint, Before the hunt is through! Give boys your brass percussion-caps! Old "shut-pan" suits as well! There's something in the _sparks_; perhaps There's something in the smell! We've seen the red-coat Briton bleed! The red-skin Indian, too! We never thought to draw a bead On Yankee-doodle-doo! But, Bessie! bless your dear old heart! Those days are mostly done; And now we must revive the art Of shooting on the run! If Doodle must be meddling, why, There's only this to do: Select the black spot in his eye And let the daylight through! And if he doesn't like the way That Bess presents the view, He'll, maybe, change his mind and stay Where the good Doodles do! Where Lincoln lives. The man, you know, Who kissed the Testament; To keep the Constitution? No! _To keep the Government!_ We'll hunt for Lincoln, Bess! old tool, And take him half and half; We'll aim to _hit_ him, if a fool, And _miss_ him if a calf! We'll teach these shot-gun boys the tricks By which a war is won; Especially how seventy-six Took Tories on the run. ONLY ONE KILLED. BY JULIA L. KEYES. Only one killed in Company B, 'Twas a trifling loss--one man! A charge of the bold and dashing Lee, While merry enough it was, to see The enemy, as he ran. Only one killed upon our side-- Once more to the field they turn. Quietly now the horsemen ride, And pause by the form of the one who died, So bravely, as now we learn. Their grief for the comrade loved and true For a time was unconcealed; They saw the bullet had pierced him through; That his pain was brief--ah! very few Die thus on the battle-field. The news has gone to his home, afar-- Of the short and gallant fight; Of the noble deeds of the young La Var, Whose life went out as a falling star In the skirmish of the night. "Only one killed! It was my son," The widowed mother cried; She turned but to clasp the sinking one, Who heard not the words of the victory won, But of him who had bravely died. Ah! death to her were a sweet relief, The bride of a single year. Oh! would she might, with her weight of grief, Lie down in the dust, with the autumn leaf, Now trodden and brown and sere! But no, she must bear through coming life Her burden of silent woe, The aged mother and youthful wife Must live through a nation's bloody strife, Sighing and waiting to go. Where the loved are meeting beyond the stars, Are meeting no more to part, They can smile once more through the crystal bars-- Where never more will the woe of wars O'ershadow the loving heart. THE WAR CHRISTIAN'S THANKSGIVING. _Respectfully dedicated to the War Clergy of the United States._ BY GEORGE H. MILES, OF BALTIMORE. Oh, God of battles! once again, With banner, trump and drum, And garments in thy wine-press dyed, To give Thee thanks we come. No goats or bullocks garlanded, Unto Thine altars go; With brother's blood, by brothers shed, Our glad libations flow. From pest-house and from dungeon foul, Where, maimed and torn, they die, From gory trench and charnel-house, Where, heap on heap, they lie. In every groan that yields a soul, Each shriek a heart that rends, With every breath of tainted air, Our homage, Lord, ascends. We thank Thee for the saber's gash, The cannon's havoc wild; We bless Thee for the widow's tears, The want that starves her child! We give Thee praise that Thou hast lit The torch and fanned the flame; That lust and rapine hunt their prey, Kind Father, in Thy name! That for the songs of idle joy False angels sang of yore, Thou sendest war on earth--ill-will To men for evermore! We know that wisdom, truth and right To us and ours are given; That Thou hast clothed us with the wrath, To do the work of heaven. We know that plains and cities waste Are pleasant in Thine eyes-- Thou lov'st a hearthstone desolate, Thou lov'st a mourner's cries. Let not our weakness fall below The measure of Thy will, And while the press hath wine to bleed, Oh, tread it with us still! Teach us to hate--as Jesus taught Fond fools, of yore, to love; Give us Thy vengeance as our own-- Thy pity, hide above! Teach us to turn, with reeking hands, The pages of Thy word, And learn the blessed curses there, On them that sheathe the sword. Where'er we tread may deserts spring, Till none are left to slay; And when the last red-drop is shed, We'll kneel again--and pray! UP! UP! LET THE STARS OF OUR BANNER. BY M. F. BIGNEY. _Respectfully dedicated to the Soldiers of the South._ Up! up! Let the stars of our banner Flash out like the brilliants above! Beneath them we'll shield from dishonor The homes and the dear ones we love. With "God and our Right!" Our cry in the fight, We'll drive the invader afar, And we'll carve out a name In the temple of Fame With the weapons of glorious war. Arise with an earnest endeavor-- A nation shall hallow the deed; The foe must be silenced forever, Though millions in battle may bleed. With "God and our Right!" etc. Strong arms and a conquerless spirit We bring as our glory and guard: If courage a triumph can merit, Then Freedom shall be our reward. With "God and our Right!" etc. Beneath the high sanction of Heaven, We'll fight as our forefathers fought; Then pray that to us may be given Such guerdon as fell to their lot. With "God and our Right!" etc. THE SOLDIER BOY. BY H. M. L. I give my soldier boy a blade, In fair Damascus fashioned well; Who first the glittering falchion swayed, Who first beneath its fury fell, I know not: but I hope to know That for no mean or hireling trade, To guard no feeling, base or low, I give my soldier boy a blade. Cool, calm, and clear, the lucid flood, In which its tempering work was done; As calm, as clear, as clear of mood Be thou whene'er it sees the sun; For country's claim, at honor's call, For outraged friend, insulted maid, At mercy's voice to bid it fall, I give my soldier boy a blade. The eye which marked its peerless edge, The hand that weighed its balanced poise, Anvil and pincers, forge and wedge, Are gone with all their flame and noise; And still the gleaming sword remains. So when in dust I low am laid, Remember by these heartfelt strains, I give my soldier boy a blade. LYNCHBURG, VA., _May 18, 1861_. A SOUTHERN GATHERING SONG. BY L. VIRGINIA FRENCH. AIR--"_Hail Columbia_."[9] Sons of the South, beware the foe! Hark to the murmur deep and low, Rolling up like the coming storm, Swelling up like sounding storm, Hoarse as the hurricanes that brood In space's far infinitude! Minute guns of omen boom Through the future's folded gloom; Sounds prophetic fill the air, Heed the warning--and prepare! Watch! be wary--every hour Mark the foeman's gathering power-- Keep watch and ward upon his track And crush the rash invader back! Sons of the brave!--a barrier stanch Breasting the alien avalanche-- Manning the battlements of RIGHT; Up, for your _Country_, "_God, and right!_" Form your battalions steadily, And strike for death or victory! Surging onward sweeps the wave, Serried columns of the brave, Banded 'neath the benison Of Freedom's godlike Washington! Stand! but should the invading foe Aspire to lay your altars low, Charge on the tyrant ere he gain Your iron arteried domain! Sons of the brave! when tumult trod The tide of revolution--God Looked from His throne on "the things of time," And two new stars in the reign of time He bade to burn in the azure dome-- The freeman's LOVE and the freeman's HOME! Holy of Holies! guard them well, Baffle the despot's secret spell, And let the chords of life be riven Ere you yield those gifts of Heaven! _Io pæan!_ trumpet notes Shake the air where our banner floats; _Io triumphe!_ still we see _The land of the South is the home of the free!_ BATTLE-CALL. Nec temere, nec timide. _Dedicated to her Countrymen, the Cavaliers of the South._ BY ANNIE CHAMBERS KETCHUM. Gentlemen of the South! Gird on your flashing swords! Darkly along your borders fair Gather the ruffian hordes! Ruthless and fierce they come; Even at the cannon's mouth To blast the glory of your land, Gentlemen of the South! Ride forth in your stately pride, Each bearing on his shield Ensigns your fathers won of yore On many a well-fought field. Let this be your battle-cry, Even to the cannon's mouth, _Cor unum via una!_ Onward! Gentlemen of the South! Brave knights of a knightly race, Gordon and Chambers and Gray, Show to the minions of the North How valor dares the fray! Let them read on each spotless crest, Even at the cannon's mouth, _Decori decus addit avito_, Gentlemen of the South! Morrison, Douglas, Stuart, Erskine and Bradford and West, Your gauntlets on many a hill and plain Have stood the battle's test. _Animo non astutia!_ March to the cannon's mouth, Heirs of the brave dead centuries, Gentlemen of the South! Call out your stalwart men, Workers in brass and steel, Bid the swart artisans come forth At sound of the trumpet's peal; Give them your war-cry, Erskine, _Fight_ to the cannon's mouth-- Bid the men _forward_, Douglas, forward! Yeomanry of the South! Brave hunters, ye have met The fierce black bear in the fray, Ye have trailed the panther night by night, Ye have chased the fox by day; Your prancing chargers pant To dash at the gray wolf's mouth, Your arms are sure of their quarry--forward! Gentlemen of the South! Fight! that the lowly serf And the high-born lady, still May bide in their proud dependency, Free subjects of your will; Teach the base North how ill-- At the belching cannon's mouth-- He fares who touches your household gods, Gentlemen of the South! From mother, and wife, and child, From faithful and happy slave, Prayers for your sake ascend to Him Whose arm is strong to save. We check the gathering tears, Though ye go to the cannon's mouth; _Dominus providebit!_ Onward! Gentlemen of the South! DUNROBIN COTTAGE. THE BONNIE BLUE FLAG. BY HARRY MACARTHY. We are a band of brothers, and natives to the soil, Fighting for the property we gained by honest toil, And when our rights were threatened, the cry rose near and far: Hurrah for the bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star! _Chorus_--Hurrah! hurrah! for the bonnie Blue Flag That bears a single star. As long as the Union was faithful to her trust, Like friends and like brothers, kind were we and just; But now when Northern treachery attempts our rights to mar, We hoist on high the bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star. First, gallant South Carolina nobly made the stand; Then came Alabama, who took her by the hand; Next, quickly, Mississippi, Georgia, and Florida-- All raised the flag, the bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star. Ye men of valor, gather round the banner of the right; Texas and fair Louisiana join us in the fight. Davis, our loved President, and Stephens, statesmen are; Now rally round the bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star. And here's to brave Virginia! the Old Dominion State With the young Confederacy at length has linked her fate. Impelled by her example, now other States prepare To hoist on high the bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star. Then here's to our Confederacy; strong we are and brave, Like patriots of old we'll fight, our heritage to save; And rather than submit to shame, to die we would prefer; So cheer for the bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star. Then cheer, boys, cheer, raise the joyous shout, For Arkansas and North Carolina now have both gone out; And let another rousing cheer for Tennessee be given, The single star of the bonnie Blue Flag has grown to be eleven! THE BATTLE AT BULL RUN. BY RUTH. Forward, my brave columns, forward! No other word was spoken; But in the quick and mighty rustling of their feet, And in the flashing of their eyes, 'twas proved _This was enough_. Men, whose _every_ bosom had a _noble_ heart, And who had left their homes, their sacred _rights_ To gain: To _these_ this was no trying hour, No time to waver, and to doubt. But one, For which they'd hoped and prayed-- One (as they felt) they'd brought not on Themselves, but which they knew _must come_-- And _nobly_, _O most nobly_, did their Bravery, their _sense_ of _right_, sustain them. And Lincoln's hordes-- _They_ knew _not_ with what natures they contended, Seemed not to feel their _motives_ differed, as Does heaven from earth. _They_, the poor, miserable, _hired_ outcasts, whose Principles were bought, And men, whose courage, bravery, and noble aims, Had come to be, throughout the land, A proverb. And _what_ the end? What _could_, what _should it be_, than what it _was_? A _brilliant, glorious_ VICTORY. The South weeps o'er her slain: And well she may; for they were jewels From her diadem. She weeps; sheds tears of grief, of sorrow, And of PRIDE. LOUISVILLE, KY., _July 24, 1861_. THE SOUTHRON MOTHER'S CHARGE. BY THOMAS B. HOOD. You go, my son, to the battle-field, To repel the invading foe; Mid its fiercest conflicts _never_ yield Till death shall lay you low. Our God, who smiles upon the Right And frowns upon the Wrong, Will nerve you for our holy fight, And make your courage strong. Our cause is just, for it we pray At morning, noon, and night, Upon our banners we inscribe, God, Liberty, and Right. I love you as I love my life, You are my only son; Your country calls, go forth and fight Till Freedom's cause is won. It may be that you fall in death, Contending for your home, Yet your aged mother will not be Forsaken though alone. A thousand generous hearts there are Throughout this sunny land, Whose ample fortunes will be spent With an unsparing hand. Now go, my son, a mother's prayers Will ever follow thee; And in the thickest of the fight Strike home for liberty! On every hill, in every glen, We'll fight till we are free; We'll fight till every limpid brook Runs crimson to the sea. No truce we know, till every foe Shall leave our hallowed sod, And we regain that heaven-born boon, "Freedom to worship God." NEW ORLEANS, LA. OUR BOYS ARE GONE. BY COL. HAMILTON WASHINGTON. Our boys are gone 'till the war is o'er, In the ranks of death you'll find them; With duty's path of blood before, And with all they love behind them: They bear our hearts to the tented field-- Each danger makes them dearer-- Their faithful hearts our only shield From the foe still drawing nearer. With pride we hear of the perils braved And the wreaths they win of glory; With joy we hear of lov'd ones saved From each field of battle gory; And joy is mix'd with fleeting pain As we look to Heaven o'er us, And think that there we'll meet again, With the brave who've gone before us. THE SOUTHERN PLEIADES. BY LAURA LORRIMER. When first our Southern flag arose, Beside the heaving sea, It bore upon its silken folds A green Palmetto tree. All honor to that banner brave, It roused the blood of yore, And nerved the arm of Southern men For valiant deeds once more. When storm clouds darkened o'er our sky, That star, the first of seven, Shone out amid the mist and gloom, To light our country's heaven. The glorious seven! long may their flag Wave proudly on the breeze; Long may they burn on fame's broad sky-- The Southern Pleiades! _Nashville Patriot._ THE STARS AND BARS. BY A. J. REQUIER. Fling wide the dauntless banner To every Southern breeze, Baptized in flame, with Sumter's name-- A patriot and a hero's fame-- From Moultrie to the seas! That it may cleave the morning sun And, streaming, sweep the night, The emblem of a battle won With Yankee ships in sight. Come, hucksters, from your markets, Come, bigots, from your caves, Come, venal spies, with brazen lies Bewildering your deluded eyes, That we may dig your graves; Come, creatures of a sordid clown And driveling traitor's breath, A single blast shall blow you down Upon the fields of Death. The very flag you carry Caught its reflected grace, In fierce alarms, from Southern arms, When foemen threatened all your farms, And never saw your face; Ho! braggarts of New England's shore, Back to your hills and delve The soil whose craven sons foreswore The flag in eighteen-twelve! We wreathed around the roses It wears before the world, And made it bright with storied light, In every scene of bloody fight Where it has been unfurled; And think ye, now, the dastard hands That never yet could hold Its staff, shall wave it o'er our lands, To glut the greed of gold? No! by the truth of Heaven And its eternal Sun, By every sire whose altar fire Burns on to beckon and inspire, It never shall be done; Before that day the kites shall wheel Hail-thick on Northern heights, And there our bared, aggressive steel Shall countersign our rights! Then spread the flaming banner O'er mountain, lake, and plain, Before its bars, degraded Mars Has kissed the dust with all his stars, And will be struck again; For could its triumph now be stayed By Hell's prevailing gates, A sceptred Union would be made The grave of sovereign States. THE MARCH. BY JOHN W. OVERALL. Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp! Go the Southern braves to battle, How they shine, each gleaming line! Flashing sabers! how they rattle! Every lip is now compressed, Every heart now yearns for glory, Every eye with patriot fire Burns for battle fierce and gory! Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp! Death is in each hidden saber, Reaper of the fields of Time, Look ye for a giant's labor! How sublime! when patriots feel All the strength of self-reliance, Marching on to meet the foe, With a stern and grim defiance! See how proudly floats our flag! White! our cause is pure and grand, man! Red! a living flood shall flow From every foe now in the land, man! Blue! aye, heaven's stars are there! Sparkling in their azure beauty! Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp! Go the messengers of duty! SOUTHERN WAR SONG. BY N. P. W. To horse! to horse! our standard flies, The bugles sound the call; An alien navy stems our seas-- The voice of battle's on the breeze, Arouse ye, one and all! From beauteous Southern homes we come, A band of brothers true-- Resolved to fight for liberty, And live or perish with our flag-- The noble Red and Blue. Though tamely crouch to Northern frown Kentucky's tardy train; Though invaded soil Maryland mourns, Though brave Missouri vainly spurns, And foaming gnaws the chain; Oh! had they marked the avenging call Their brethren's insults gave, Disunion ne'er their ranks had mown, Nor patriot valor, desperate grown, Sought freedom in the grave; Shall we, too, bend the stubborn head, In Freedom's temple born-- Dress our pale cheek in timid smiles, To hail a master in our house, Or brook a victor's scorn? No! though destruction o'er the land Come pouring as a flood, The sun that sees our falling day, Shall mark our saber's deadly sway, And set that night in blood! For gold let Northern legions fight, Or plunder's bloody gain; Unbribed, unbought, our swords we draw, To guard our homes, to fence our law, Nor shall their edge be vain. And now that breath of Northern gale Has fanned the Stars and Bars, And footstep of invader rude, With rapine foul, and red with blood, Us rights and liberty debars. Then farewell home, and farewell friends, Adieu each tender tie, Resolved we mingle in the tide, Where charging squadrons furious ride, To conquer or to die. To horse, to horse! the sabers gleam, High sounds our bugle-call, Combined by honor's sacred tie, Our word is, Rights and Liberty! March forward, one and all! _Louisville Courier._ WE'LL BE FREE IN MARYLAND. BY ROBERT E. HOLTZ. AIR--"_Gideon's Band_." The boys down South in Dixie's land, The boys down South in Dixie's land, The boys down South in Dixie's land, Will come and rescue Maryland. _Chorus_--If you will join the Dixie band, Here's my heart and here's my hand, If you will join the Dixie band; We're fighting for a home. The Northern foes have trod us down, The Northern foes have trod us down, The Northern foes have trod us down, But we will rise with true renown. If you will join the Dixie band, etc. The tyrants they must leave our door, The tyrants they must leave our door, The tyrants they must leave our door, Then we'll be free in Baltimore. If you will join the Dixie band, etc. These hirelings they'll never stand, These hirelings they'll never stand, These hirelings they'll never stand, Whenever they see the Southern band. If you will join the Dixie band, etc. Old Abe has got into a trap, Old Abe has got into a trap, Old Abe has got into a trap, And he can't get out with his Scotch cap. If you will join the Dixie band, etc. Nobody's hurt is easy spun, Nobody's hurt is easy spun, Nobody's hurt is easy spun, But the Yankees caught it at Bull Run. If you will join the Dixie band, etc. We rally to Jeff. Davis true, Beauregard and Johnston, too, Magruder, Price, and General Bragg, And give three cheers for the Southern flag. If you will join the Dixie band, etc. We'll drink this toast to one and all, Keep cocked and primed for the Southern call; The day will come, we'll make the stand, Then we'll be free in Maryland. If you will join the Dixie band, etc. _January 30, 1862._ WAR SONG. BY J. H. WOODCOCK. TUNE--"_Bonnie Blue Flag_." Huzza! huzza! let's raise the battle-cry, And whip the Yankees from our land, Or with them fall and die. Rush on our Southron columns, And make the brigands feel That all the booty they will get, Will be our Southron steel. Huzza! huzza! let's raise (the) our banner high, And nobly drive the Yankees out, Or with them fall and die. Rush on the columns--let every Southron brave Nobly charge the accursèd foe, Or find a soldier's grave. With bowie and with pike, We'll rally to the field, And bravely to the last we'll strike, Resolved we'll never yield. Huzza! huzza! etc. We are fighting for our mothers, our sisters, and our wives; For these, and our country's rights, We'll sacrifice our lives. Then, trusting still to Heaven, We'll charge the invading host, Till liberty and independence Shall be the nation's boast. Huzza! huzza! etc. Then on with our columns--slay the vandal foe-- Beat them from our sunny soil, And lay their colors low. To the great God of nations Our sacred cause confide, For we are fighting for our liberty, And He is on our side. Huzza! huzza! etc. A NEW RED, WHITE, AND BLUE. WRITTEN FOR A LADY, BY JEFF. THOMPSON. Missouri is the pride of the nation, The hope of the brave and the free; The Confederacy will furnish the rations, But the fighting is trusted to thee; For, brave boys, your soil has been noted, And your flag has been trusted to you; For freedom you have not yet voted, But you fight for the Red, White, and Blue. _Chorus_--Three cheers, etc. The Stars shall shine bright in the heaven, But the Stripes should be trailed in the dust, For they are no longer the sign of the haven Of the brave, of the free, or the just; The Bars now in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the faithful and true; O'er the home of the Southern brave Shall float the new Red, White, and Blue. _Chorus_--Three cheers, etc. O JOHNNY BULL, MY JO JOHN. AIR--"_John Anderson, my Jo_." It was stated in the Richmond "Dispatch" during the last days of December, 1861, that a gentleman, just from the West Indies, had said that there were eighty-seven British ships-of-war lying in those waters. This statement gave rise to the following imitation of an old song: O Johnny Bull, my Jo John! I wonder what you mean, By sending all these frigates out, commissioned by the Queen; You'll frighten off the Yankees, John, and why should you do so? Best catch and sink, or burn them all, O Johnny Bull, my Jo! O Johnny Bull, my Jo John! when Yankee hands profane, Were laid in wanton insult upon the lion's mane, He roared so loud and long, John, they quickly let him go, And sank upon their trembling knees, O Johnny Bull, my Jo! O Johnny Bull, my Jo John! when Lincoln first began To try his hand at war, John, you were a peaceful man; But now your blood is up, John, and well the Yankees know, You play the ---- when you start, O Johnny Bull, my Jo! O Johnny Bull, my Jo John, let's take the field together, And hunt the Yankee Doodles home, in spite of wind and weather, And ere a twelvemonth roll around, to Boston we will go, And eat our Christmas dinner there, O Johnny Bull, my Jo! "SOUTHRONS." BY CATHERINE M. WARFIELD. You can never win them back-- Never! never! Though they perish on the track Of your endeavor; Though their corses strew the earth, That SMILED upon their birth, And blood pollutes each hearth- Stone forever! They have risen to a man, Stern and fearless; Of your curses and your ban They are careless. Every hand is on its knife, Every gun is primed for strife, Every PALM contains a life, High and peerless! _You have no such blood as theirs_ For the shedding: In the veins of cavaliers Was its heading: _You_ have no such stately men In your "abolition den," To march through foe and fen, Nothing dreading! They may fall before the fire Of your legions, Paid with gold for murderous hire-- _Bought allegiance_; But for every drop you shed, You shall have a mound of dead, So that vultures may be fed In our regions! But the battle to the strong Is not given, When the Judge of Right and Wrong Sits in heaven; And the God of David still Guides the pebble with _His will_; There are giants yet to kill-- Wrongs unshriven! "NIL DESPERANDUM." _Inscribed to our Soldier-boys_, BY ADA ROSE. The Yankee hosts are coming, With their glittering rows of steel, And sharp, from many a skirmish, Comes the rifle's ringing peal, Warning you how very near The Northern "Hessians" are, With their overwhelming forces; But ne'er must you despair. For though they come on, surging Like a mighty rolling sea, They're _hired_ by their master, "Abe"-- _You_ fight for _Liberty_. So bravely you must meet them, And face the cannon's blare; Your watchword, "Victory or Death," And never you despair. True, the cloud is dark and lowering, But behind a cheerful ray, And the night is always darkest Just before the break of day. Have faith; the cloud will soon disperse, For the light is surely there; The day will soon be dawning, So never you despair. Go, emulate brave Washington, Who led a little band, To drive the proud oppressors From off their happy land. The enemy outnumbered, By far, the "rebels" there; But bravely they encountered them, Nor yielded to despair. 'Tis said that "rebel" chieftain, Ere they sought the battle's fray, Would ask our Heavenly Father To be their shield and stay; And then they'd march with confidence, Well knowing He'd be there; And that must be the reason why They never did despair. Likewise, if you will ask Him, He'll meet you on the field, To be a guard about you, And your support and shield; The foe shall fly before you, As you shout your victory there; Then don't forget to plead with Him, And never to despair. PINE BLUFF, ARK. ADDRESS OF THE WOMEN TO THE SOUTHERN TROOPS. BY MRS. J. T. H. CROSS. AIR--"_Bruce's Address_." Southern men, unsheathe the sword, Inland and along the board; Backward drive the Northern horde-- Rush to Victory! Let your banners kiss the sky, Be "The Right" your battle cry! Be the God of Battles nigh-- Crown you in the fight! Pressing back the tears that start, We behold your hosts depart, Saying, with heroic heart, Clothe your arms with might! Lower the proud oppressor's crest! Or, if he should prove the best, Dead, not dishonored, rest On the field of blood! We--may God so give us grace!-- Sons will rear, to take your place; Strong the foemen's steel to face-- Strong in heart and hand! Death your serried ranks may sweep, Proud shall be the tears we weep-- Sacredly our hearts shall keep Memory of your deeds! Though our land be left forlorn, Spirit of the Southron-born Northern rage shall laugh to scorn-- Northern hosts defy. He that last is doomed to die Shall, with his expiring sigh, Send aloft the battle-cry, "God defend the Right!" THE CAVALIERS OF DIXIE. BY BENJAMIN F. PORTER. Ye Cavaliers of Dixie! Who guard the Southern shores, Whose standards brave the battle storm Which o'er our border roars; Your glorious sabers draw once more, And charge the Northern foe; And reap their columns deep, Where the raging tempests blow, And the iron hail in floods descends, And the bloody torrents flow. Ye Cavaliers of Dixie! Though dark the tempest lower, What arms will wear the tyrants chains, What dastard heart will cower? Bright o'er the night a sign shall rise To lead to victory! And your swords reap their hordes, Where the battle tempests blow; Where the iron hail in floods descends, And the bloody torrents flow. The South! she needs no ramparts, No lofty towers to shield; Your bosoms are her bulwarks strong, Breastworks that never yield! The thunders of your battle blades Shall sweep the servile foe; While their gore stains the shore, Where the battle tempests blow; Where the iron hail in floods descends And the bloody torrents flow. The battle-flag of Dixie! With crimson field shall flame, Her azure cross and silver stars Shall light her sons to fame! When peace with olive-branch returns, That flag's white folds shall glow Still bright on every height, When storm has ceased to blow, And the battle tempests roar no more; Nor the bloody torrents flow. Oh! battle-flag of Dixie! Long, long, triumphant wave! Where'er the storms of battle roar, Or victory crowns the brave! The Cavaliers of Dixie! In woman's song shall glow The fame of your name, When the storm has ceased to blow, When the battle tempests rage no more Nor the bloody torrents flow.[10] LAND OF KING COTTON. BY JO. AUGUSTINE SIGNAIGO. AIR--"_Red, White, and Blue_." Oh! Dixie, the land of King Cotton, The home of the brave and the free; A nation by Freedom begotten, The terror of despots to be; Wherever thy banner is streaming, Base tyranny quails at thy feet, And Liberty's sunlight is beaming, In splendor of majesty sweet. _Chorus_--Three cheers for our army so true, Three cheers for Price, Johnston, and Lee, Beauregard, and our Davis, forever; The pride of the brave and the free! When Liberty sounds her war-rattle, Demanding her right and her due, The first land who rallies to battle Is Dixie, the shrine of the true; Thick as leaves of the forest in summer, Her brave sons will rise on each plain; And strike, until each vandal comer Lies dead on the soil he would stain. Three cheers for our army, etc. May the names of the dead, that we cherish, Fill memory's cup to the brim; May the laurels they've won never perish, Nor "star of their glory grow dim;" May the States of the South never sever, But champions of freedom e'er be; May they flourish, Confed'rate forever, The boast of the brave and the free. Three cheers for our army, etc.[11] THE GUERILLAS. BY S. TEACKLE WALLIS. Awake and to horse, my brothers! For the dawn is glimmering gray, And hark! in the crackling brushwood There are feet that tread this way. "Who cometh?" "A friend." "What tidings?" "O God! I sicken to tell; For the earth seems earth no longer, And its sights are sights of hell! "From the far-off conquered cities Comes a voice of stifled wail, And the shrieks and moans of the houseless Ring out, like a dirge on the gale. "I've seen from the smoking village Our mothers and daughters fly; I've seen where the little children Sank down in the furrows to die. "On the banks of the battle-stained river I stood as the moonlight shone, And it glared on the face of my brother, As the sad wave swept him on. "Where my home was glad, are ashes, And horrors and shame had been there, For I found on the fallen lintel This tress of my wife's torn hair! "They are turning the slaves upon us, And with more than the fiend's worst art, Have uncovered the fire of the savage, That slept in his untaught heart! "The ties to our hearths that bound him, They have rent with curses away, And maddened him, with their madness, To be almost as brutal as they. "With halter, and torch, and Bible, And hymns to the sound of the drum, They preach the gospel of murder, And pray for lust's kingdom to come. "To saddle! to saddle! my brothers! Look up to the rising sun, And ask of the God who shines there, Whether deeds like these shall be done! "Wherever the vandal cometh, Press home to his heart with your steel, And when at his bosom you can not, Like the serpent, go strike at his heel. "Through thicket and wood, go hunt him, Creep up to his camp-fire side, And let ten of his corpses blacken Where one of our brothers hath died. "In his fainting, foot-sore marches, In his flight from the stricken fray, In the snare of the lonely ambush, The debts we owe him, pay. "In God's hand alone is vengeance, But he strikes with the hands of men, And his blight would wither our manhood, If we smite not the smiter again. "By the graves where our fathers slumber, By the shrines where our mothers prayed, By our homes, and hopes, and freedom, Let every man swear on his blade, "That he will not sheathe nor stay it, Till from point to hilt it glow With the flush of Almighty vengeance, In the blood of the felon foe." They swore--and the answering sunlight Leaped red from their lifted swords, And the hate in their hearts made echo To the wrath in their burning words. There's weeping in all New England, And by Schuylkill's banks a knell, And the widows there and the orphans, How the oath was kept, can tell.[12] SOUTHERN MARSEILLAISE. Ye men of Southern hearts and feeling, Arm, Arm! your struggling country calls-- Hear ye the guns now loudly pealing, From Sumter's high embattled walls! Shall a fanatic horde in power Send forth a base and hireling band, To desolate our happy land, And make our Southern freemen cower. To arms, to arms! each one, The sword unsheathe, raise the gun, Then on, rush on, ye brave and free, To death or victory. Now clouds of war begin to gather, And black and murky is our sky-- Shall we submit--no, never, never! Let death or freedom be our cry-- In Heaven's justice firm relying, We'll nobly struggle to be free, And bravely gain our liberty, Or die, our Northern foes defying. To arms, to arms! each one, etc. The peaceful homes of Texas burning, And Harper's Ferry's blood-stained soil, Proclaim how strong their hearts are yearning For murder, pillage, crime, and spoil. Shall we our feelings longer smother, And bear with patience yet our wrongs, Their jeers, their crimes, their taunts and thongs, And greet them still as friend and brother? To arms, to arms! each one, etc. Their tyranny we'll bear no longer, But burst asunder every tie, Although in numbers they are stronger, We will be free, or we will die! Too long the South has wept, bewailing That falsehood's dagger Yankees wield, But freedom is our sword and shield, And all their arts are unavailing. To arms, to arms, each one, etc. _Beauregard Songster._ RICHMOND ON THE JAMES. BY G. T. BURGESS. A soldier of our army lay gasping on the field, When battle's shock was over, and the foe was forced to yield. He fell a youthful hero, before the foemen's aims, On a blood-red field near Richmond, near Richmond on the James. But one still stood beside him, his comrade in the fray, They had been friends together through boyhood's happy day, And side by side had struggled on field of blood and flames, To part that eve near Richmond, near Richmond on the James. He said, "I charge thee, comrade, the friend in days of yore, Of the far, far distant dear ones that I shall see no more, Though scarce my lips can whisper their dear and well-known names, To bear to them my blessing from Richmond on the James. "Bear my good sword to my brother, and the badge upon my breast, To the young and gentle sister that I used to love the best; But one lock from my forehead give my mother who still dreams Of her soldier boy near Richmond--near Richmond on the James. "Oh, I wish that mother's arms were folded round me now, That her gentle hand could linger one moment on my brow, But I know that she is praying where our blessed hearth-light gleams, For her soldier's safe return from Richmond on the James. "And on my heart, dear comrade, close lay those nut-brown braids, Of one who was the fairest of all our village maids; We were to have been wedded, but death the bridegroom claims, And she is far, that loves me, from Richmond on the James. "Oh, does the pale face haunt her, dear friend, that looks on thee? Or is she laughing, singing in careless girlish glee? It may be she is joyous, and loves but joyous themes, Nor dreams her love lies bleeding near Richmond on the James. "And though I know, dear comrade, thou'lt miss me for a while, When their faces--all that loved thee--again on thee shall smile; Again thou'lt be the foremost in all their youthful games, But I shall lie near Richmond--near Richmond on the James." And far from all that loved him, that youthful soldier sleeps, Unknown among the thousands of those his country weeps; But no higher heart nor braver, than his, at sunset's beams, Was laid that eve near Richmond--near Richmond on the James. The land is filled with mourning, from hall and cot left lone, We miss the well-known faces that used to greet our own; And long poor wives and mothers shall weep, and titled dames, To hear the name of Richmond--of Richmond on the James. FROM THE SOUTH TO THE NORTH. BY C. L. S. There is no union when the hearts That once were bound together Have felt the stroke that coldly parts All kindly ties forever. Then oh! your cruel hands draw back, And let us be divided In peace, since it is proved we lack The grace to live united. We can not bear your scorn and pride, Your malice and your taunting, That have for years our patience tried-- Your hypocritic canting. We WILL not bow our necks beneath The yoke that you decree us, We WILL be free, though only death Should have the power to free us! Oh, Southern sons are bold to dare, And Southern hearts courageous. Nor meekly will they longer bear Oppression so outrageous. And you shall feel our honest wrath, If hearts so cold _can_ feel; Shall meet us in your Southern path And prove our Southern steel. We ask no favor at your hand, No gifts and no affection; But only peace upon our land, And none of your protection. We ask you now, henceforth, to know We are a separate nation; And be assured we'll fully show We scorn your "proclamation." We were not first to break the peace, That blessed our happy land; We loved the quiet, calm, and ease, Too well to raise a hand, Till fierce oppression stronger grew, And bitter were your sneers-- Then to our land we must be true, Or show a coward's fears! We loved our banner while it waved An emblem of our Union, The fiercest danger we had braved To guard that sweet communion. But when it proved that "stripes" alone Were for our sunny South, And all the "stars" in triumph shone Above the chilly North-- Then, not till then, our voices rose In one tumultuous wave-- We WILL the tyranny oppose, Or find a bloody grave! Another flag shall lead our hosts To battle on the plain, The "rebels" will defy your boasts, And prove your sneering vain! There is no danger we could fear-- No hardship or privation-- To free the land we hold so dear, From tyrannous dictation. Blockade her ports--her seas shall swell Beneath your ships of war, And every breeze in anger tell Your tyranny afar. Her wealth may fail--her commerce droop With every foreign nation; But mark you, if her pride shall stoop, Or her determination! The products of her fields will be For food and raiment too-- From mountain cliff to rolling sea Her children will be true. Her banner may not always wave On victory's fickle breath, The young, chivalrous, and the brave, May feel the hand of death. But, when her gallant sons have died, Her daughters will remain-- Nor crushed will be the Southern pride, Till they too, all are slain. A BALLAD OF THE WAR. BY GEORGE HERBERT SASS, OF S. C. Watchman, what of the night? Through the city's darkening street, Silent and slow, the guardsmen go On their long and lonely beat. Darkly, drearily down, Falleth the wintry rain; And the cold gray mist hath the roof-tops kissed, As it glides o'er town and plain. Beating against the windows, The sleet falls heavy and chill, And the children draw nigher 'round hearth and fire, As the blast shrieks loud and shrill. Silent is all without Save the sentry's challenge grim, And a hush sinks down o'er the weary town And the sleeper's eyes are dim. Watchman, what of the night? Hark! from the old church tower Rings loud and clear, on the wintry air, The chime of the midnight hour. But another sound breaks in, A summons deep and rude, The roll of the drum, and the rush and hum Of a gathering multitude. And the dim and flickering torch Sheds a red and lurid glare, O'er the long dark line, where bayonets shine Faintly, yet sternly there. A low, deep voice is heard: "Rest on your arms, my men." Then the muskets clank through each serried rank, And all is still again. Pale faces and tearful eyes Gaze down on that grim array, For a rumor hath spread that that column dread Marcheth ere break of day. Marcheth against "the rebels," Whose camp lies heavy and still, Where the driving sleet and the cold rain beat On the brow of a distant hill. And the mother's heart grows faint, As she thinks of her darling one, Who perchance may lie 'neath that wintry sky, Ere the long, dark night be done. Pallid and haggard, too, Is the cheek of the fair young wife; And her eye grows dim as she thinks of him She loveth more than life. For fathers, husbands, sons, Are the "rebels" the foe would smite, And earnest the prayer for those lives so dear, And a bleeding country's right. And where their treasure is, There is each loving heart; And sadly they gaze by the torch's blaze, And the tears unbidden start. Is there none to warn the camp, None from that anxious throng? Ah, the rain beats down o'er plain and town-- The way is dark and long. No _man_ is left behind, None that is brave and true, And the bayonets bright, in the lurid light, With menace stern shine through. Guarded is every street, Brutal the hireling foe; Is there one heart here will boldly dare So brave a deed to do? Look! in her still, dark room, Alone a woman kneels, With Care's deep trace on her pale, worn face And Sorrow's ruthless seals. Wrinkling her placid brow, A matron, she, and fair, Though wan her cheek, and the silver streak Gemming her glossy hair. A moment in silent prayer Her pale lips move, and then, Through the dreary night, like an angel bright, On her mission of love to men. She glideth upon her way, Through the lonely, misty street, Shrinking with dread as she hears the tread Of the watchman on his beat. Onward, ay, onward still, Far past the weary town, Till languor doth seize on her feeble knees, And the heavy hands hang down. But bravely she struggles on, Breasting the cold, dank rain, And, heavy and chill, the mist from the hill Sweeps down upon the plain. Hark! far behind she hears A dull and muffled tramp; But before her the gleam of the watch-fire's beam Shines out from the Southern camp. She hears the sentry's challenge, Her work of love is done; She has fought a good fight, and on Fame's proud height Hath a crown of glory won. Oh, they tell of a Tyrol maiden, Who saved from a ruthless foe Her own fair town, 'mid its mountains brown, Three hundred years ago. And I've read in tales heroic How a noble Scottish maid Her own life gave, her king to save From foul assassin's blade. But if these, on the rolls of honor, Shall live in lasting fame, Oh, close beside, in grateful pride, We'll write this matron's name. And when our fair-haired children Shall cluster round our knee, With wondering gaze, as we tell of the days When we swore that we would be free, We'll tell them the thrilling story, And we'll say to each childish heart, "By this gallant deed, at thy country's need, Be ready to do thy part." _Southern Field and Fireside._ LAND OF THE SOUTH. BY A. F. LEONARD. AIR--"_Friend of my Soul_." Land of the South! the fairest land Beneath Columbia's sky! Proudly her hills of freedom stand, Her plains in beauty lie. Her dotted fields, her traversed streams Their annual wealth renew. Land of the South! in brightest dreams No dearer spot we view. Men of the South! a free-born race, They vouch a patriot line; Ready the foemen's van to face, And guard their country's shrine. By sire and son a haloing light Through time is borne along-- They "nothing ask but what is right, And yield to nothing wrong." Fair of the South! rare beauty's crown Ye wear with matchless grace; No classic fair of old renown Deserve a higher place. Your vestal robes alike become The palace and the cot; Wives, mothers, daughters! every home Ye make a cherished spot. Flag of the South! aye, fling its folds Upon the kindred breeze; Emblem of dread to tyrant holds-- Of freedom on the seas. Forever may its stars and stripes In cloudless glory wave; Red, white, and blue--eternal types Of nations free and brave! States of the South! the patriot's boast! Here equal laws have sway; Nor tyrant lord, nor despot host, Upon the weak may prey. Then let them rule from sea to sea, And crown the queenly isle-- Union of love and liberty, 'Neath Heaven's approving smile! God of the South! protect this land From false and open foes! Guided by Thine all-ruling hand, In vain will hate oppose. So mote the ship of State move on Upon the unfathomed sea; Gallantly o'er its surges borne, The bulwark of the free. THERE'S LIFE IN THE OLD LAND YET! BY JAS. R. RANDALL. By blue Patapsco's billowy dash, The tyrant's war-shout comes, Along with the cymbal's fitful clash, And the growl of his sullen drums. We hear it! we heed it, with vengeful thrills, And we shall not forgive or forget; There's faith in the streams, there's hope in the hills, There's life in the old land yet! Minions! we sleep, but we are not dead; We are crushed, we are scourged, we are scarred; We crouch--'tis to welcome the triumph tread Of the peerless BEAUREGARD. Then woe to your vile, polluting horde, When the Southern braves are met; There's faith in the victor's stainless sword, There's life in the old land yet! Bigots! ye quell not the valiant mind, With the clank of an iron chain, The spirit of freedom sings in the wind, O'er _Merryman_, _Thomas_, and _Kane_; And we, though we smite not, are not thralls, Are piling a gory debt; While down by McHenry's dungeon-walls _There's life in the old land yet_! Our women have hung their harps away, And they scowl on your brutal bands, While the nimble poignard dares the day, In their dear defiant hands. They will strip their tresses to string our bows, Ere the Northern sun is set; There's faith in their unrelenting woes, There's life in the old land yet! There's life, though it throbbeth in silent veins, 'Tis vocal without noise, It gushed o'er Manassas's solemn plains, From the blood of the MARYLAND BOYS! That blood shall cry aloud, and rise With an everlasting threat; By the death of the brave, by the God in the skies. _There's life in the old land yet!_ THE MEN. BY MAURICE BELL. In the dusk of the forest shade A sallow and dusty group reclined; Gallops a horseman up the glade-- "Where will I your leader find? Tidings I bring from the morning's scout-- I've borne them o'er mound, and moor, and fen." "Well, sir, stay not hereabout, Here are only a few of 'the men.' "Here no collar has bar or star, No rich lacing adorns a sleeve; Further on our officers are, Let them your news receive. Higher up, on the hill up there, Overlooking this shady glen, There are their quarters--don't stop here, We are only some of 'the men.' "Yet stay, courier, if you bear Tidings that the fight is near, Tell them we're ready, and that where They wish us to be we'll soon appear; Tell them only to let us know Where to form our ranks, and when; And we'll teach the vaunting foe That they've met a few of 'the men.' "We're _the men_, though our clothes are worn-- We're _the men_, though we wear no lace-- We're _the men_, who the foe have torn, And scattered their ranks in dire disgrace; We're the men who have triumphed before-- We're the men who will triumph again; For the dust, and the smoke, and the cannon's roar, And the clashing bayonets--'_we're the men_.' "Ye who sneer at the battle-scars, Of garments faded, and soiled and bare, Yet who have for the 'stars and bars' Praise, and homage, and dainty fare; Mock the wearers and pass them on, Refuse them kindly word, and then Know, if your freedom is ever won By human agents--_these are the men_!" THE CONFEDERATE FLAG. BY J. R. BARRICK. Flag of the South! Flag of the free! Thy stars shall cheer each eye, Thy folds a sacred banner be, To all beneath our sky; From where the blue Ohio flows, Far to the sea-gulf's stream, Borne by each gentle breath that blows, Thy hues shall flush and gleam. Flag of the South! Flag of the free! Type of a new estate, Thy folds shall wave o'er land and sea, And heart and home elate; At thy approach shall tyrants quail And despots, trembling, flee; Nor wrong thy sway of right assail-- Nought mar thy liberty. Flag of the South! Flag of the free! Bright symbol of a land Wrung from the grasp of tyranny, Ere fettered heart and hand; Freedom fixed in thy firm embrace, A home for age shall find, Linking the high hopes of our race With the grand march of mind. Flag of the South! Flag of the free! The one to which we clung In years agone, hath ceased to be The pride on which we hung; Long trampled in the dust, that flag Hath lost the charm it bore; No longer vale, and glen, and crag, Swell with its praise of yore. Flag of the South! Flag of the free! Type of the Land of Flowers; Thy stars shall light our victory O'er all contending powers; Where law and order still shall reign, Thou shalt a signal be To man, that he may still attain The boon of Liberty! GLASGOW, KY. "STONEWALL JACKSON'S WAY." Come, stack arms, men! Pile on the rails, Stir up the camp-fire bright; No matter if the canteen fails, We'll make a roaring night. Here Shenandoah brawls along, There burly Blue Ridge echoes strong, To swell the brigade's rousing song Of "Stonewall Jackson's Way." We see him now--the old slouched hat Cocked o'er his eye askew, The shrewd, dry smile, the speech so pat, So calm, so blunt, so true. The "Blue-Light Elder" knows 'em well; Says he, "That's Banks--he's fond of shell; Lord save his soul! we'll give him ----" well, That's "Stonewall Jackson's way." Silence! ground arms! kneel all! caps off! Old Blue-Light's going to pray. Strangle the fool that dares to scoff! Attention! it's his way. Appealing from his native sod, _In forma pauperis_ to God-- "Lay bare thine arm, stretch forth thy rod! Amen!" That's "Stonewall's way." He's in the saddle now. Fall in! Steady! the whole brigade! Hill's at the ford, cut off--we'll win His way out, ball and blade! What matter if our shoes are worn? What matter if our feet are torn? "Quick-step! we're with him before dawn!" That's "Stonewall Jackson's way." The sun's bright lances rout the mists Of morning, and by George! Here's Longstreet struggling in the lists, Hemmed in an ugly gorge. Pope and his Yankees, whipped before; "Bay'nets and grape!" hear Stonewall roar; "Charge, Stuart! Pay off Ashby's score!" Is "Stonewall Jackson's way." Ah, maiden! wait, and watch, and yearn For news of Stonewall's band! Ah! widow, read with eyes that burn, That ring upon thy hand. Ah! wife, sew on, pray on, hope on! Thy life shall not be all forlorn. The foe had better ne'er been born That gets in "Stonewall's way." GONE TO THE BATTLE-FIELD. BY JOHN ANTROBUR. The reaper has left the field, The mower has left the plain; And the reaper's hook, and the mower's scythe, Are changed to the sword again; For the voice of a hundred years ago, When Freedom struck her mightiest blow, Thrills every heart and brain. The way-side mill is still, And the wheel drips all alone, For the miller's brother, and son, and sire, And the miller's self have gone; And their wives and daughters, tarrying still, With smiles and tears about the mill, Wave, wave their heroes on. The grain is full and ripe, And the harvest-moon is nigh, But the farmer's son is among the slain, And the father heard the cry; And his ancient eyes flashed fires of old, His hoary head rose strong and bold, As, wild, he hurried by. The corn is yet a-field, But many a stalk is red; Yet not with the autumn-tassel stained, But the blood of heroes shed; And their blood cries out from heaps of slain: Oh, brothers, leave the sheaves of grain; On, to the fields of the dead! By every quiet farm, Whence father and son had gone, The fairest daughters of the land, Brave-hearted, cheer us on, With the tender smiles that shelter tears, And words to thrill a soldier's ears, When bloody fields are won. Scarcely the form of man Was seen on the long highway; But patriot age, whose withered hands Stretched feebly up to pray, And children whose voices haunt us still, Gathered on every knoll and hill, Cheering us on our way. Yonder, with feeble limbs, A matron, with silver hair, Knelt, trembling, down on the soldier's path, And breathed to heaven a prayer, With quivering lips, with streaming eyes: "O God! preserve these gallant boys; In battle, be Thou there!" O, soldiers! such as these Like household memories come; For a thousand prayers ascend to-day From those we left at home; For the red, red field to-night may be Our couch, our grave--while Victory Shall shout above our tomb. In battle's bloody hour These pictures shall arise, Of mothers, sisters, wives, and homes, And red and streaming eyes; And every arm shall stronger be, For home, for God, for liberty, And strike, while mercy dies. HEADQUARTERS, _9th Regt. Virginia Vols._ RE-ENLISTMENT. BY MRS. MARGARITA J. CANEDO. What! shall we now throw down the blade, And doff the helmet from our brows? _Now_ see our holy cause betrayed, And recreant prove to all our vows? When first we drew these patriot swords, "A nation's freedom!" was the cry; Our faith was pledged in these proud words, And heaven has sealed the oath on high. Since then on dear-bought battle-plains We've seen our martyr brethren die, While on the soil that drank those stains, Their native earth where now they lie, The foe now treads--th' exulting foe, And desecrates the hero-graves. Say, can we peace or honor know While there the accursèd banner waves? Dear are our homes, that smile afar; Oft in the weary soldier's dreams, While resting from the toils of war, He sees the light that round them beams. Dear are the loved and lovely maids Shrined in the patriot soldier's heart; Yet, while the foe our land invades, In vain the longing tear may start. _No!_ let the despot's hireling band, Who feel not honor--know not faith, Who war not for their native land, Fly trembling from a dreaded death. Our lives are to our country pledged, Until her last red field is won; For "liberty or death" is waged The war where fights her faithful son. Then plant that flag-staff in the earth, And round it rally, every son Who loves the State that gave him birth, Till her proud sovereignty be won. What though our limbs be weak with toil, What though we bear full many a scar; Huzza! here's to our native soil, _We re-enlist, and for the war_! SOUTHLAND. THE PRIZE SONG.[13] They sing of the East, With its flowery feast, And clime of the North, with its mountains of snow; But give me the land Where the breezes blow bland, O'er realms of magnolia and myrtle below. The land of the South, The fair sunny South, The flower-crowned South, In its _grandeur_ for me. Her sons are aye brave, And no chains can enslave, Though countless the hordes of their foemen may be; Ah! see, even now, As with battle-stained brow, They vanquish the Northmen on land and on sea! The land of the South, The young gallant South, The invincible South, In its _valor_ for me. Her daughters are fair As the pure lilies there, And cheer her brave soldiers for freedom to die; Their smiles are the light Of the war-clouded night, Their tears are sweet dew-drops distilled from the sky. The land of the South, The sweet rosy South, The starry-gemmed South, In its _beauty_ for me! In green blossomed dales, And in violet vales, And fields white with cotton, its dwellings once stood; The spoilers now seek Their vile vengeance to wreak, And darken this Eden with ashes and blood! The land of the South, The opulent South, The long-plundered South, In its _richness_ for me! Oh, who would not stand With his life in his hand, To shield such a land from the feet of the foe? God made it thus free, And oh, perish must we, Before it can be in bondage laid low! The land of the South, The proud sovereign South, The God-shielded South, In its _freedom_ for me! BEYOND THE POTOMAC. BY PAUL H. HAYNE.[14] They slept on the fields which their valor had won! But arose with the first early blush of the sun, For they knew that a great deed remained to be done, When they passed o'er the River. They rose with the sun, and caught life from his light-- Those giants of courage, those Anaks in fight-- And they laughed out aloud in the joy of their might, Marching swift for the River. On! on! like the rushing of storms through the hills-- On! on! with a tramp that is firm as their wills-- And the one heart of thousands grows buoyant and thrills, At the thought of the River. On! the sheen of their swords! the fierce gleam of their eyes, It seemed as on earth a new sunlight would rise, And, king-like, flash up to the sun in the skies, O'er the path to the River. But their banners, shot-scarred, and all darkened with gore, On a strong wind of morning streamed wildly before, Like the wings of Death-angels swept fast to the shore, The green shore of the River. As they march--from the hill-side, the hamlet, the stream-- Gaunt throngs, whom the Foeman had manacled, teem, Like men just roused from some terrible dream, To pass o'er the River. They behold the broad banners, blood-darkened, yet fair, And a moment dissolves the last spell of despair, While a peal as of victory swells on the air, Rolling out to the River. And that cry, with a thousand strange echoings spread, Till the ashes of heroes seemed stirred in their bed, And the deep voice of passion surged up from the dead-- Ay! press on to the River. On! on! like the rushing of storms through the hills, On! on! with a tramp that is firm as their wills, And the one heart of thousands grows buoyant, and thrills, As they pause by the River. Then the wan face of Maryland, haggard and worn, At that sight, lost the touch of its aspect forlorn, And she turned on the Foeman full statured in scorn, Pointing stern to the River. And Potomac flowed calm, scarcely heaving her breast, With her low-lying billows all bright in the west, For the hand of the Lord lulled the waters to rest Of the fair rolling River. Passed! passed! the glad thousands march safe through the tide. (Hark, Despot! and hear the wild knell of your pride, Ringing weird-like and wild, pealing up from the side Of the calm flowing River.) 'Neath a blow swift and mighty the Tyrant shall fall, Vain! vain! to his God swells a desolate call, For his grave has been hollowed, and woven his pall, Since they passed o'er the River. TRUE TO THE GRAY. BY PEARL RIVERS. I can not listen to your words, the land is long and wide; Go seek some happy Northern girl to be your loving bride; My brothers they were soldiers--the youngest of the three Was slain while fighting by the side of gallant FITZHUGH LEE! They left his body on the field (your side the day had won), A soldier spurn'd him with his foot--_you_ might have been the one; My lover was a soldier--he belonged to GORDON'S band; A saber pierced his gallant heart--_yours_ might have been the hand. He reel'd and fell, but was not dead, a horseman spurred his steed, And trampled on the dying brain--_you_ may have done the deed: I hold no hatred in my heart, no cold, unrighteous pride, For many a gallant soldier fought upon the other side: But still I can not kiss the hand that smote my country sore, Nor love the foes who trampled down the colors that she bore; Between my heart and yours there rolls a deep and crimson tide-- My brother's and my lover's blood forbid me be your bride. The girls who loved the boys in gray--the girls to country true-- May ne'er in wedlock give their hands to those who wore the blue. TELL THE BOYS THE WAR IS ENDED. BY EMILY J. MOORE. While in the first ward of the Quintard Hospital, Rome, Georgia, a young soldier, from the Eighth Arkansas Regiment, who had been wounded at Murfreesboro', called me to his bedside. As I approached I saw that he was dying, and when I bent over him he was just able to whisper, "Tell the boys the war is ended." "Tell the boys the war is ended," These were all the words he said; "Tell the boys the war is ended," In an instant more was dead. Strangely bright, serene, and cheerful Was the smile upon his face, While the pain, of late so fearful, Had not left the slightest trace. "Tell the boys the war is ended," And with heavenly visions bright Thoughts of comrades loved were blended, As his spirit took its flight. "Tell the boys the war is ended," "Grant, O God, it may be so," Was the prayer which then ascended, In a whisper deep, though low. "Tell the boys the war is ended," And his warfare then was o'er, As by angel bands attended, He departed from earth's shore. Bursting shells and cannons roaring Could not rouse him by their din; He to better worlds was soaring, Far from war, and pain, and sin. BURN THE COTTON. BY ESTELLE. Burn the cotton! burn the cotton! Let the solemn triumph rise; Fanned by Freedom's breath, its white wing Spreads her banner to the skies. "Melt the bells" is but re-echoed O'er our valley's gathered pride, Lay the cotton on the altar Where our loved have nobly died. Burn the cotton! burn the cotton! Does this sacrifice compare With the battle-field red flowing With the brave hearts offered there? They no more shall strike for Freedom, Never worship at her shrine-- To hurl back the fell invader, To avenge them--it is thine. Burn the cotton! burn the cotton! Down the Mississippi's tide Let it thunder, till its valleys Catch the echo, far and wide-- Frowning in its wrath, it rises, Spreads its dark wing o'er the land, Vetoes, in its swelling fury, Gain, to lure the robber band. Burn the cotton! burn the cotton! Pile the white fleece high and higher, Till the heavens reflect the glory Kindled by the patriot's fire. This shall teach the haughty foeman, Startle him too late, to find Chains were never made for freemen, Chains the Southern heart to bind. Burn the cotton! burn the cotton! Flaming sparks, instead of seed, Shall be sown in death and terror To the mongrel Yankee breed; And the _crowns_ who nod attendance On the treacherous Federal's lure, Feel too late the want and ruin, Unjust favor can not cure. Burn the cotton! burn the cotton! Let the record boldly stand; Not a bale for "filthy lucre"-- _All_ for Freedom to our land. Burn the cotton! burn the cotton! From its ashes there shall spring Heralds of a new-born nation, Claiming still that "Cotton's King!" MEMPHIS, TENN., _May 16, 1862_. THE PRINTERS OF VIRGINIA TO "OLD ABE." BY HARRY C. TREAKLE. Though we're exempt, we're not the _metal_ To keep in when duty calls; But onward we will _press_, to settle This knotty _case_, with leaden _balls_; For our dear old mother State, the _fount_ From which we each our life did _take_, Is _locked up_ by a Vandal horde, And the honor of the _craft_'s at stake. For _lean-faced_ Lincoln's after us-- His slim _shanks_ moving like a scout; But long before his _job_ is done, He'll find that all his _quads_ are _out_. For with Lee our _headline_--worthy _guide_-- We, _galley_-slaves will never be, But still _press_ onward by his side, For that _fat take_, sweet liberty! Soon Abe will find what he's about Will cost him such a pile of rocks, Before his cherished _work_ is _out_, He'll have no _sorts_ in any _box_! For his _bank_ is now so very low, He scarce can _chase_ up _quoins_ to pay The hired scum, the foreign foe, Who comes to steal our rights away. And his _chums_ now see, by his _foul matter_, To set _clean proof_ he ne'er was _cast_, And fears are felt that the gaunt old _ratter_ Will go _broadside_ to _hell_ at last, Where his friend, the _devil_, will welcome him, With _accents_ sweet--to his bosom fly, _Revise_ his _foul proof-sheets_ once more, And _knock_ his naked _form_ in _pi_. And so to rush the base old _monk_ along, And bring the quiet soon about, We'll swell our _lines_ to _columns_ strong, And give no quarters till he's _out_; For Southern _jours._ now take a _stand_, Their _foremen_ marshaled at their _head_, And each with _shooting-stick_ in hand, Resolved they will his _matter lead_. And while a foe is in the field, Our _hands_ still steady, our _leaders_ cool, Death we'll _em-brace_ before we'll yield; But, by God's help, we'll _stick_ and _rule_, And when, in after years to come, Our history's read by youth and sage, They'll make a _side-note_ of "well done," On this our _volume's_ brightest _page_. NORFOLK, VA., _April 4, 1862_. THE MARSEILLES HYMN. _Translated and adapted as an ode_, BY B. F. PORTER, OF ALABAMA. Sons of the South, arise! awake! be free! Behold! the day of Southern glory comes. See where the blood-stained flag of tyranny Pollutes the air that breathes around your homes. Rise! Southern men, from villages and farms, Cry vengeance! Oh! shall worse than pirate slaves Strangle your children in their mothers' arms, And spit on dust that fills your fathers' graves? To arms! sons of the South! Come like a mountain-flood; March on! let every vale o'erflow with the invaders' blood. What would these men, whose lives black treachery stains-- Conspirators, to plunder long endeared? For whom these vile, these ignominious chains-- These fetters, for our brother's hands prepared? Sons of the South, for us! Oh! bitter thought! What transports should our burning souls inspire! Shall Southern men, by mercenaries bought, Be sold to vassalage, from son to sire? To arms! sons of the South! Come like a mountain-flood; March on! let every vale o'erflow with the invaders' blood. What! shall this groveling race, who cringe for gold, Make laws for Southern men, on Southern soil? Shall these degenerate hordes, to avarice sold, Crush freedom's sons, and Freedom's altars spoil? Great God! oh! by these iron-shackled hands, Ne'er shall our necks beneath their yokes be led. Of despots such as these, shall Southern bands Ne'er own the mastery, till every heart is dead. To arms! sons of the South! Come like a mountain-flood; March on! let every vale o'erflow with the invaders' blood. Tremble, O tyrants! and you, perfidious tools, Of every race and party long the scorn! Tremble, ye base, ye parricidal fools, The doom of treachery is already born. All Southern men are heroes in the fray; If fall they must, o'erpowered in the field, Long as the race endures, each child for aye Shall from his cradle strike the sounding shield. To arms! sons of the South! Come like a mountain-flood; March on! let every vale o'erflow with the invaders' blood. Sons of the South! magnanimous in war, Strike or withhold, as honor bids, your blows. Spare, if you will, those victims from afar, Who, ignorant of liberty, become your foes. But for these bastards of a free-born bed, These parasites, in Freedom's arms caressed, These beasts, by sin and spoil and rapine bred, Who dig for blood, deep in their mother's breast, To arms! sons of the South! Come like a mountain-flood; March on! let every vale o'erflow with the invaders' blood. O sacred love of country! For the South, Come, brave avengers, rush to every field. Let cries of "Liberty" from every mouth Sound the alarm, till the base traitors yield. Under our glorious flag, let Victory Respond to Freedom's call. Wipe off the stain Of the invaders' feet. Dying, they will see Thy triumph, and the land redeemed again. To arms! sons of the South! Come like a mountain-flood; March on! let every vale o'erflow with the invaders' blood. _Nashville Gazette._ MONODY ON THE DEATH OF GENERAL STONEWALL JACKSON. BY THE EXILE. Aye, toll! toll! toll! Toll the funeral bell! And let its mournful echoes roll From sphere to sphere, from pole to pole, O'er the flight of the greatest, kingliest soul That ever in battle fell. Yes, weep! weep! weep! Weep for the hero fled! For death, the greatest of soldiers, at last Has over our leader his black pall cast, And from us his noble form hath passed To the home of the mighty dead. Then toll! and weep! and mourn! Mourn the fall of the brave! For Jackson, whose deeds made the nation proud, At whose very name the enemy cowed, With the "crimson cross" for his martial shroud, Now sleeps his long sleep in the grave. His form has passed away; His voice is silent and still; No more at the head of "the old brigade," The daring men who were never dismayed, Will he lead them to glory that never can fade-- Stonewall of the Iron Will! He fell as a hero should fall; 'Mid the thunder of war he died. While the rifle cracked and the cannon roared, And the blood of the friend and foeman poured, He dropped from his nerveless grasp the sword That erst was the nation's pride. Virginia, his mother, is bowed; Her tread is heavy and slow. From all the South comes a wailing moan, And mountains and valleys re-echo the groan, For the gallant chief of her clans has flown, And a nation is filled with woe. Rest, warrior! rest! Rest in thy laureled tomb! Thy mem'ry shall live through all of earth's years, And thy name still excite the despot's fears, While o'er thee shall fall a nation's tears; Thy deeds shall not perish in gloom. THE CONFEDERATE FLAG. BY MRS. C. D. ELDER. Bright banner of freedom, with pride I unfold thee; Fair flag of my country, with love I behold thee, Gleaming above us, in freshness and youth, Emblem of liberty--symbol of truth; For this flag of my country in triumph shall wave O'er the Southerner's home and the Southerner's grave. All bright are the stars that are beaming upon us, And bold are the bars that are gleaming above us; The one shall increase in their number and light, The other grow bolder in power and might; For this flag of my country in triumph shall wave O'er the Southerner's home or the Southerner's grave. Those bars of bright red show our firm resolution To die, if need be, shielding thee from pollution; For man in this hour must give all he holds dear, And woman her prayers and her words of high cheer, If they wish this fair banner in triumph to wave O'er the Southerner's home and the Southerner's grave. To the great God of battles we look with reliance; On our fierce Northern foe with contempt and defiance; For the South shall smile on in her fragrance and bloom When the North is fast sinking in silence and gloom; For the flag of our country in triumph must wave O'er the Southerner's home or the Southerner's grave. NEW ORLEANS, LA. THE SOUTH. BY CHARLIE WILDWOOD. The bright rose of beauty, unnurtured by art, And purity's lily doth thrive in thy heart, While honor hath crowned thee with glory's bright ray, And Flora hath decked thee with flowers of May. Oh, beautiful South! cherished home of my birth, Thou fairest, thou loveliest land of the earth! My heart, like the ivy, still clings unto thee, Oh, beautiful, beautiful land of the free! _Chorus_--The South! the South! my own beautiful South! Land of chivalry! home of liberty! Fondly I love thee, dear land of the South! Dear land of the South! dear land of the South! Dear liberty, virtue, and truth, most sublime, The flowers that bloom in that sun-smiling clime, And these the base tyrant would crush to the earth, And mangle and bruise on the soil of their birth. All crimson thy land, with the life-glowing flood, And dabble his hands in thy heart's reeking blood! But oh! by the God of the righteous and free, Bright region! it never! no, never! shall be. Like swarms of foul demons, his minions come down, And their war-rusted weapons insultingly frown, To fright thy fair fields with their bloody alarms, And rob thee, dear land, of all of thy charms. But thy free spirit still rides on the swift gale, Like the eagle that sweeps o'er the mountain and dale; And thy sons, they rush forth with the courage of men, To fight, and to bleed, and to conquer again. The tyrant, with shackles, would manacle thee-- Would strangle thy spirit, dear land of the free, Would trample the banner of right in the dust, And yoke thee with iron, proud queen of the just! But the hearts of thy sons, unappalled by a fear, As their swords leap up fiercely and flame in the air, Now swear that it never! no! never! shall be, Bright queen of the lovely! sweet home of the free! _Chorus_--The South! the South, etc. THE GIRLS OF THE MONUMENTAL CITY. WRITTEN BY A CONFEDERATE PRISONER. Daughters of the sunny South, Where Freedom loves to dwell, How rare your charms, how sweet your smiles, No mortal lips can tell; Your native hills, the rippling rills, The echo wild and free, Declare you born to hate and scorn All Northern tyranny. Girls whose smiles are all reserved, The Southern youth to bless; Whose hearts are kept for those who fight For Freedom's happiness; Your spirits bold, so now unfold What willingly you would do, Where Yankee spirit--the tyrants might Not wield against you. For you your loving brothers rush To overthrow the invader's might-- On martial field the sword they wield, And Yankee cowards smite. May heaven bless, with bright success, Each glorious Southern son; Be this your prayer, O maidens fair! And our freedom will be won. Southern girls, on this we've sworn, The South _must_--_shall be free_-- No Northern shackles will be worn; To them we'll bend no knee. From hill to hill, exultant, shrill, Our battle-cry rings forth: Freedom or death on every breath, And hatred to the North. Cease not to smile, brave Southern girls, On our efforts to be free-- Whilst life remains, we'll struggle on, Till all the world shall see That those who fight for home and right Can never be enslaved; Their blood may stain the battle-plain; Our country must be saved. BALTIMORE, MD., _March, 1862_. WAR SONG OF THE PARTISAN RANGERS. BY BENJAMIN F. PORTER. AIR--_McGregor's Gathering_. The forests are green by the homes of the South, But the hearth-stones are red with the blood of her youth; Unfurl the black banner o'er mountain and vale, Let the war-cry of vengeance swell loud on the gale. Then gather, gather, gather, gather, gather; While there's leaf in the forest, and foam on the river, The cry of the South shall be Vengeance Forever! Each drop of the blood of our children they've shed, Our foes shall atone for, in heaps of their dead; The signal for fight which our forefathers knew, Shall be heard in their midst in our vengeful halloo. Then gather, gather, etc. Thro' their cities our horsemen, with sword and with flame, Shall carry the dread of the Southerner's name! At the sound of our bugles their strong men shall quail, And the cheeks of their wives and their mothers turn pale. Then gather, gather, etc. They have blasted our fields, they have slaughtered our youth, And dishonored the names of the maids of the South; But the rivers shall dry, and the mountains be riven, Ere vengeance be quenched or our wrongs be forgiven. Then gather, gather, etc. Then rally from forest and rally from ford, Give their homes to the flames, and their sons to the sword; While a child shall be born in the South, let its cry Be, "Death to the Northmen, and vengeance for aye!" _Greenville, Ala., Observer._ THE BAND IN THE PINES. BY JOHN ESTEN COOKE.[15] Oh, band in the pine-wood, cease! Cease with your splendid call; The living are brave and noble, But the dead were bravest of all! They throng to the martial summons, To the loud, triumphant strain; And the dear bright eyes of long-dead friends Come to the heart again! They come with the ringing bugle, And the deep drum's mellow roar; Till the soul is faint with longing For the hands we clasp no more! Oh, band in the pine-woods, cease! Or the heart will melt in tears, For the gallant eyes and the smiling lips, And the voices of old years. SONG OF OUR GLORIOUS SOUTHLAND. BY MRS. MARY WARE. I. Oh, sing of our glorious Southland, The pride of the golden sun! 'Tis the fairest land of flowers The eye e'er looked upon. Sing of her orange and myrtle, That glitter like gems above; Sing of her dark-eyed maidens As fair as a dream of love. Sing of her flowing rivers-- How musical their sound! Sing of her dark-green forests, The Indian hunting-ground. Sing of the noble nation, Fierce struggling to be free; Sing of the brave who barter Their lives for liberty! II. Weep for the maid and matron Who mourn their loved ones slain; Sigh for the light departed, Never to shine again. 'Tis the voice of Rachel weeping, That never will comfort know; 'Tis the wail of desolation, The breaking of hearts in woe! III. Ah! the blood of Abel crieth For vengeance from the sod! 'Tis a brother's hand that's lifted In the face of an angry God! Oh! brother of the Northland, We plead from our father's grave; We strike for our homes and altars, He fought to build and save! A smoldering fire is burning, The Southern heart is steeled-- Perhaps 'twill break in dying, But never will it yield. OLD BETSY. BY JOHN KILLUM. Come, with the rifle so long in your keeping, Clean the old gun up and hurry it forth; Better to die while "Old Betsy" is speaking Than live with arms folded the slave of the North. Hear ye the yelp of the North-wolf resounding, Scenting the blood of the warm-hearted South; Quick! or his villainous feet will be bounding Where the gore of our maidens may drip from his mouth. Oft in the wildwood "Old Bess" has relieved you, When the fierce bear was cut down in his track-- If at that moment she never deceived you, Trust her to-day with this ravenous pack. Then come, with the rifle so long in your keeping, Clean the old girl up and hurry her forth; Better to die while "Old Betsy" is speaking Than live with arms folded the slave of the North. NO SURRENDER. Ever constant, ever true, Let the word be, No Surrender. Boldly dare and greatly do! They shall bring us safely through, No Surrender; No Surrender. And though Fortune's smiles be few, Hope is always springing new, Still inspiring me and you, With a magic No Surrender. Nail the colors to the mast, Shouting gladly, No Surrender; Troubles near are all but past, Serve them as you did the last. No Surrender, No Surrender; Though the skies be overcast, And upon the sleety blast Disappointment gathers fast, Beat them off with No Surrender! Constant and courageous still, Mind, the word is, No Surrender; Battle, though it be up hill, Stagger not at seeming ill, No Surrender, No Surrender. Hope, and thus your hope fulfill; There's a way where there's a will, And the way all cares to kill Is to give them No Surrender. N. P. W. ARM FOR THE SOUTHERN LAND. BY GEN. MIRABEAU B. LAMAR. Arm for the Southern Land, All fear of death disdaining; Low lay the tyrant band, Our sacred rights profaning! Each hero draws in Freedom's cause, And meets the foe with bravery; The servile race, and Tory base, May safety seek in slavery. Chains for the dastard knave-- Recreant limbs should wear them; But blessings on the brave Whose valor will not bear them! Stand by your injured State, And let no feuds divide you; On tyrants pour your hate, And common vengeance guide you. Our foes should feel proud freemen's steel, For freemen's rights contending; Where'er they die, there let them lie, To dust in scorn descending. Thus may each traitor fall Who dare as foe invade us; Eternal fame to all Who shall in battle aid us! Proud land! shall she invoke Another's hand to right her? No! her own avenging stroke Shall backward roll the smiter. Ye tyrant band, with ropes of sand Go bind the rushing river; More weak and vain your cursèd chain, While God is freedom's giver. Then welcome to the day We meet the proud oppressor, For God will be our stay, Our right hand and redresser. THINKING OF THE SOLDIERS. We were sitting around the table, Just a night or two ago, In the little cozy parlor, With the lamp-light burning low, And the window-blinds half opened, For the summer air to come, And the painted curtains moving Like a busy pendulum. Oh! the cushions on the sofa, And the pictures on the wall, And the gathering of comforts, In the old familiar hall; And the wagging of the pointer, Lounging idly by the door, And the flitting of the shadows From the ceiling to the floor. Oh! they wakened in my spirit, Like the beautiful in art, Such a busy, busy thinking-- Such a dreaminess of heart, That I sat among the shadows, With my spirit all astray; Thinking only--thinking only Of the soldiers far away; Of the tents beneath the moonlight, Of the stirring tattoo's sound, Of the soldier in his blanket, In his blanket on the ground; Of the icy winter coming, Of the cold bleak winds that blow, And the soldier in his blanket, In his blanket on the snow. Of the blight upon the heather, And the frost upon the hill, And the whistling, whistling ever, And the never, never still; Of the little leaflets falling, With the sweetest, saddest sound-- And the soldier--oh! the soldier, In his blanket on the ground. Thus I lingered in my dreaming, In my dreaming far away, Till the spirit's picture-painting Seemed as vivid as the day; And the moonlight faded softly From the window opened wide, And the faithful, faithful pointer Nestled closer by my side. And I knew that 'neath the starlight, Though the chilly frosts may fall, That the soldier will be dreaming, Dreaming often of us all. So I gave my spirit's painting Just the breathing of a sound, For the dreaming, dreaming soldier, In his slumber on the ground. _November 24, 1861._ THE DYING SOLDIER. BY JAMES A. MECKLIN. Gather round him where he's lying, Hush your footsteps, whisper low, For a soldier here is dying, In the sunset's radiant glow. Beating, beating, slowly beating, Runs the life-blood through his frame; Swift the soldier's breath is fleeting, And he calls his mother's name: "Mother, mother, come and kiss me, Ere my spirit fades away, For I know you oft will miss me, When you watch the sinking day. "Brother, sister, nearer, nearer! Place, oh, place your hands in mine, You whose love than life was dearer, Let your arms around me twine. "Father, see the sun is fading From the hill-tops of the west, And the valley night is shading-- Farewell, loved ones, I'm at rest." Dying, dying! yes, he's dying! Close the eyelids, let him rest; No more sorrow, no more sighing, E'er again shall heave his breast. Sleeping, sleeping, calmly sleeping, In the church-yard cold and drear, And the wintry winds are heaping O'er him leaflets brown and sear. And he's resting, where forever Clang of trumpet, roll of drum, Roar of cannon, never, never, Never more to him shall come. PENSACOLA: TO MY SON. BY M. S. Beautiful the land may be, Its groves of palm, its laurel-trees, And o'er the smiling, murm'ring sea, Soft may blow the Southern breeze-- And land, and sea, and balmy air, May make a home of beauty there. And bright beneath Floridian sky, The world to thy young fancy seems: I see the light that fills thine eye, I know what spirit rules thy dreams; But flower-gemmed shore and rippling sea Are darker than the grave to me; For storms are lowering in that sky, And sad may be that fair land's doom; Full soon, perhaps, the battle-cry May wake the cannon's fearful boom, And shot and shell from o'er the waves May plow the rose's bed for graves. And we, whose dear ones cluster there, We, mothers, who have let them go-- Our all, perhaps--how shall we bear That which another week may show? The love which made our lives, all gone, Our hearts left desolate and lone! Country! what to _me_ that name, Should I in vain demand my son? Glory! what a nation's fame? Home! home, without thee, I have none; Ah! stay--this Southern land not _mine_? The land that e'en in death is thine! A country's laurel-wreath for thee, A _hero's grave_--my own! my own! And neither land nor home for _me_, Because a _mother's_ hope is gone? Traitor I am! God's laws command That, NEXT TO HEAVEN, OUR NATIVE LAND! And I will not retract--ah! no-- What, in my pride of home, I said, That, "_I would give my son to go Where'er our_ HERO RULER _led_!" The mother's heart may burst--but still, Make it, O God, to know Thy will. NEW ORLEANS, LA. THE VOLUNTEERS TO THE "MELISH." BY WM. C. ESTRES. Come forth, ye gallant heroes, Rub up each rusty gun, And face these hireling Yankees, Who live by tap of drum. We Volunteers are wearied, By a twelve months' "sojourn"; We want to rest a little, And then we'll fight "again." We've won some five pitched battles, But will yield you our "posish"; And if you want some glory, Why pitch in now, "Melish." Don't refuse to leave your spouses; Our own are just as dear, And each lonely little woman Longs for her Volunteer. Don't mind your sobbing sweethearts; For though 'tis hard to part, We'll volunteer to cheer 'em, And console each troubled heart. For the sake of old Virginia, Come and fight! _that's if you can_, And let your prattling babies Know their daddy was a man. For you _we've_ fought and struggled; Had "no furloughs"--nary one-- We want a little resting, And so we're coming home. Then _forward_, bold Militia! "If you're coming, come along," Or, by the gods! we'll force you out To your duty--right or wrong. THE TURTLE. Cæsar, afloat with his fortunes! And all the world agog, Straining its eyes At a thing that lies In the water, like a log! It's a weasel! a whale! I see its tail! It's a porpoise! a polywog! Tarnation! it's a _turtle_! And blast my bones and skin, My hearties, sink her, Or else you'll think her A regular terror--pin! The frigate poured a broadside! The bombs they whistled well, But--hit old Nick With a sugar stick! It didn't phase her shell! _Piff_, from the creature's larboard-- And dipping along the water A bullet hissed From a wreath of mist Into a Doodle's quarter! _Raff_, from the creature's starboard-- _Rip_, from his ugly snorter, And the Congress and The Cumberland Sunk, and nothing--shorter. Now, here's to you, Virginia, And you are bound to win! By your rate of bobbing round And your way of pitchin' in-- For you are a cross Of the old sea-horse And a regular terror--pin. JACKSON. BY HENRY L. FLASH. Not 'midst the lightning of the stormy fight, Not in the rush upon the vandal foe, Did kingly Death, with his resistless might, Lay the Great Leader low. _His warrior soul its earthly shackles broke, In the full sunshine of a peaceful town_; When all the storm was hushed, the trusty oak That propped our cause, went down. Though his alone the blood that flecks the ground, Recording all his grand, heroic deeds, Freedom herself is writhing with the wound, And all the country bleeds. He entered not the Nation's Promised Land At the red belching of the cannon's mouth; But broke the House of Bondage with his hand-- The Moses of the South! O gracious God! not gainless is the loss: A glorious sunbeam gilds thy sternest frown; _And while his country staggers with the cross, He rises with the crown!_ SONG OF THE PRIVATEER. BY ALEX H. CUMMINS. Fearlessly the seas we roam, Tossed by each briny wave; Its boundless surface is our home, Its bosom deep our grave. No foreign mandate fills with awe Our gallant-hearted band; We know no home, we know no law, But that of Dixie's land. The bright star is our compass true, Our chart the ocean wide; Our only hope the noble few That's standing side by side. We do not fear the stormy gale That sweeps old ocean's strand; We scorn our enemy's clumsy sail, And all for Dixie's land. We love to hoist to the topmost peak _Our Southern Stars and Stripes_; And woe to him who dares to seek To trample on their rights! It is the ægis of the free, And by it we will stand, And watch it waving o'er the sea, And over Dixie's land. We love to roam the deep, deep sea, And hear the cannon's boom, And give the war-cry wild and free Amid the battle's gloom. We do not fight alone for gain, So far from native strand; But our country's freedom and its fame, And the fair of Dixie's land. NO UNION MEN. BY MILLIE MAYFIELD. "On the 21st, five of the enemy's steamers approached Washington, N. C., and landed a hundred Yankees, who marched through the town, playing 'Yankee Doodle,' hoisted their flag on the court-house, and destroyed gun-carriages and an unfinished gun-boat in the ship-yard. The people preserved a sullen and unresisting silence. The Yankees then left, saying they were disappointed in not finding Union men."--_Telegram from Charleston, March 29, 1862._ "Union men!" O thrice-fooled fools! As well might ye hope to bind The desert sands with a silken thread, When tossed by the whistling wind, Or to blend the shattered waves that lash The feet of the cleaving rock, When the tempest walks the face of the deep, And the water-spirits mock, As the severed chain to reunite In a peaceful link again; On our burning homesteads ye may write, "We found no Union men." Aye, hoist your old dishonored flag, And pipe your worn-out tune; The hills of the South have caught the strain, And will answer it full soon; Not with the sycophantic tone, And the cringing knee bent low-- The deep-mouthed cannon shall bear the tale, Where the sword deals blow for blow; Our braying trumpets in your ears, Shall defiant shout again, "Back, wolves and foxes, to your lairs, Here are no Union men!" _Union_, with tastes dissimilar? Such Union is the worst And direst form of bondage that Nations or men have cursed! _Union with traitors?_ Hear ye not That cry for vengeance, deep, Where hand to hand, and foot to foot, Our glittering columns sweep? Our iron-tongued artillery Shouts through the bristling glen, To the war-drum echoing reveillé, "Here are no Union men!" Oh, deep have sunken the burning seeds That the wingèd winds have borne, That for all your future years must yield The thistle and prison-thorn; Our soil was genial--ye might have sown A harvest rich. 'Tis too late! To our children's children we leave for you But a heritage of Hate! Ye have opened the wild flood-gates of war, And we may not the torrent pen; But ye seek in vain on our storm-beat shore For the myth called "Union Men." HARP OF THE SOUTH. A SONNET. BY "CORA." Harp of the South, awake! A loftier strain Than ever yet thy tuneful strings has stirred, Awaits thee now. The Eastern world has heard The thunder of the battle 'cross the main-- Has seen the young South burst the tyrant's chain, And rise to being at a single word-- The watchword, Liberty--so long transferred To the oppressor's mouth. Moons wax and wane, And still the nations stand with listening ear, And still o'er ocean floats the battle-cry. Harp of the South, awake, and bid them hear The name of Jackson; loud, and clear, and high, Strike notes exultant, o'er the hero's bier, Who, though he sleeps in dust, can never die. WHAT THE SPIRITS OF THE FATHERS OF THE FIRST REVOLUTION SAY TO THEIR SONS NOW ENGAGED IN THE SECOND. BY HENRY LOMAS. We are watching that land where Liberty woke-- Like beams of the morning through darkness it broke-- Then up from the mountain the bold eagle sprung, And wide to the breeze his broad pinions flung. Rise! rise! ye sons of the South and be free! The mighty have fallen, yet death can not chill, Those noble emotions the soul ever thrill; The grave hath no confines the spirit to hold, While back to its kindred it flies to unfold Truth! Truth! safeguard of the South and the free. Shall Washington rest, while a wail of discord Reminds him the North is forgetting the Lord? Will hero and statesman--the country's bright light-- Look down without pity from yonder far height, On this Land of Hope, for the brave and the free? That same noble spirit now watches above, With thousands of others, to guide and guard you with love; For here, true, earnest, and brave men are found, With hearts uncorrupted, to their native land bound. Awake! awake! O ye sons of the South, and be free! Down with the hireling that seeks now to rend The homes which your ancestors fought to defend; Rekindle the beacon ere the last spark is fled, And light up the camp-fires round Liberty's bed! Ye sons of the sunny South, strike to be free! Fear not the Northern despot, or his feeble frown, Who seeks, through his minions, the South to put down; Look to your God, from whence comes all power, And seek His aid and protection in each darkened hour. Strike again and again, O ye sons of the free! Carolina's sons to this platform have come-- Protection to Liberty, to fireside, and home-- Their watch-word to-day, as their Fathers' of old, Truth, Justice, and Freedom, before Northern gold. Ye are the sons of the Fathers who bled to be free! Then loud ring the anvil, the hammer, and bell; The South her new anthem, say what does it tell? Cotton, Grain, and Sugar, have proved threefold cord-- Columbia, the envied, the blest of the Lord! Sun of the sunny land, shine still o'er the free! On heaven's fair arches, see graven the names Of patriot and soldier, who drained life's pure veins; Then down with the Northern despot, let him hide his head, Who by heartless oppression would sever one thread Of this Southern Confederacy, the hope of the free! Once again at the altar, brothers, gather and kneel; Our pledge, the South--one family, in woe or in weal; One God and one Country--in peace or in war; The South, Free, United, and Truth the pole-star Of this sunny land, which for ye must be free! HEART-VICTORIES. BY A SOLDIER'S WIFE. There's not a stately hall, There's not a cottage fair, That proudly stands on Southern soil, Or softly nestles there, But in its peaceful walls, With wealth or comfort blest, A stormy battle fierce hath raged In gentle woman's breast. There Love, the true, the brave, The beautiful, the strong, Wrestles with Duty, gaunt and stern, Wrestles and struggles long; He falls--no more again His giant foe to meet; Bleeding at every opening vein, Love falls at Duty's feet. Oh! daughter of the South! No victor's crown be thine; Not thine, upon the tented field, In martial pomp to shine; But, with unfaltering trust In Him who rules on high, To deck thy loved ones for the fray, And send them forth to die. With wildly throbbing heart-- With faint and trembling breath-- The maiden speeds her lover on, To victory or death; Forth from caressing arms, The mother sends her son, And bids him nobly battle on, Till the last field is won. While she, the tried, the true, The loving wife of years, Chokes down the rising agony, Drives back the starting tears: "I yield thee up," she cries, "In the country's cause to fight; Strike for our own, our children's home, And God defend the right." Oh! daughter of the South, When our fair land is free, When peace her lovely mantle throws Softly o'er land and sea, History shall tell, how thou Hast nobly borne thy part, And won the proudest triumphs yet-- The victories of the heart. SEVENTY-SIX AND SIXTY-ONE. BY JOHN W. OVERALL. Ye spirits of the glorious dead! Ye watchers in the sky! Who sought the patriot's crimson bed, With holy trust and high-- Come, lend your inspiration now, Come, fire each Southern son, Who nobly fights for freemen's rights, And shouts for sixty-one. Come, teach them how on hill, on glade, Quick leaping from your side, The lightning flash of sabers made A red and flowing tide; How well ye fought, how bravely fell, Beneath our burning sun, And let the lyre, in strains of fire, So speak of sixty-one. There's many a grave in all the land, And many a crucifix, Which tells how that heroic band Stood firm in seventy-six-- Ye heroes of the deathless past, Your glorious race is run, But from your dust springs freemen's trust, And blows for sixty-one. We build our altars where you lie, On many a verdant sod, With sabers pointing to the sky, And sanctified of God; The smoke shall rise from every pile, Till Freedom's cause is won, And every mouth throughout the South Shall shout for sixty-one! KENTUCKY. BY ESTELLE. "Just send for us Kentucky boys, And we'll protect you, ladies."--_Old Song._ Then, leave us not, Kentucky boys, Though thick upon thy border, The vulture flaps his restless wing, And scowls the dark marauder. Kentucky blood is just as proud, Kentucky powder ready, Kentucky hearts are just as brave, Kentucky nerve as steady, As when the flag we once revered, Unfolded o'er her proudly, And for the South, Kentucky's voice, Undaunted, echoed loudly. The lion-hearted hero then, Who led that gallant number, Must surely feel a sad unrest Disturb his death-cold slumber. And one whose sire, on history's page, Is blent in proudest story, Fell on a Southern field, and bathed His dying brow in glory. Fell, overcome by savage foes, Yet still their rage defying; "_These_, give my father," cried the son, "And tell him how I'm dying." But now that flag is vilely stained, Its sacred rights invaded-- Wrong and dishonor wield the staff; Its glory's sadly shaded. And when we would its dying spark Snatch from the blackening ashes, And worship once again its light, As through the world it flashes, Kentucky leans upon her arms, And coldly looks about her, Till hirelings, at her very door, Dare threaten, and to flout her. Desert us now, Kentucky boys, And on the future dawning, Thy faded glory scarce will streak The first gray light of morning. Heed not the starveling crew, who hang Upon the blue Ohio, A craven heart each traitor bears, And dare not venture nigher. And should they--know ye not the blood Within our full hearts beaming?-- At once ten thousand scabbards fly, Ten thousand blades are gleaming! Then, waken from thy nerveless sleep, Gird on thy well-tried armor, And soon the braggart North will feel That Right has strength to harm her. Kentucky boys and girls have we-- From us ye may not take them; Sad-hearted will ye give them up, And for the foe forsake them? Oh, Tennessee, twin-sister, grieves, To take thy hand at parting, And feel that from its farewell grasp A brother's blood is starting. It must not be! Kentucky, come! Virginia loudly calls thee; And Maryland defenseless stands, To share what fate befalls thee. Come ere the tyrant's chain is forged, From out the war-cloud looming; Come ere thy palsied knee is bent, To hopeless ruin dooming. A POEM WHICH NEEDS NO DEDICATION. BY JAMES BARRON HOPE. What! you hold yourselves as freemen? Tyrants love just such as ye! Go! abate your lofty manner! Write upon the State's old banner, "A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!" Sink before the Federal altars, Each one, low on bended knee; Pray, with lips that sob and falter, This prayer from a coward's Psalter: "A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!" But you hold that quick repentance In the Northern mind will be; This repentance comes no sooner Than the robber's did at Luna.[16] "A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!" He repented him; the Bishop Gave him absolution free-- Poured upon him sacred chrism In the pomp of his baptism "A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!" He repented; then, he sickened-- Was he pining for the sea? In extremis he was shriven, The Viaticum was given; "A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!" Then the old cathedral's choir Took the plaintive minor key, With the Host upraised before him, Down the marble aisle they bore him, "A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!" And the Bishop, and the Abbot, And the monks of high degree, Chanting praise to the Madonna, Came to do him Christian honor. "A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!" Now, the Miserere's cadence Takes the voices of the sea;-- As the music-billows quiver See the dead freebooter shiver! "A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!" Is it that those intonations Thrill him thus from head to knee? So! his cerements burst asunder! 'Tis a sight of fear and wonder! "A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!" Fierce he stands before the Bishop-- Dark as shape of Destinie! Hark! a shriek ascends, appalling! Down the prelate goes, dead--falling; "A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!" HASTING lives! He was but feigning! What! Repentant? Never he! Down he smites the priests and friars, And the city lights with fires. "A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!" Ah! the children and the maidens, 'Tis in vain they strive to flee! Where the white-haired priests lie bleeding Is no place for tearful pleading. "A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine?" Louder swells the frightful tumult; Pallid Death holds reverie; Dies the organ's mighty clamor, By the Norseman's iron hammer. "A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!" And they thought that he repented! Had they nailed him to a tree, He had not deserved their pity, And--they had not lost their city. "A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!" There's a moral in this story, Which is plain as truth can be: If we trust the North's relenting, We will shriek, too late, repenting, "A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!" GOD SAVE THE SOUTH. BY REUBEN NASON. God bless our Southern land! Guard our beloved land! God save the South! Make us victorious, Happy and glorious; Spread Thy shield over us; God save the South! God of our sires, arise! Scatter our enemies, Who mock Thy truth; Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish tricks: In Thee our faith we fix; God save the South! In the fierce battle-hour, With Thine almighty power, Assist our youth; May they, with victory crowned, Joining our choral round, With heart and voice resound, "God save the South!" ON! SOUTHRON, ON! BY GEN. M. B. LAMAR. On! Southron, on! Your flag's unfurled 'Mid clashing steel, and death-shot hurled, And war's dark storm-cloud, swiftly whirled, Your country calls. On! Southron, on! Strike! Southron, strike! The foeman's trail Is marked with blood and flame alike; And woman's shriek, and infant's wail, Show that he wars upon the frail A war of hate. Strike! Southron, strike! Can manhood fly, And, recreant, brave The silent scorn, the averted eye-- Decked in its chains--a cringing slave? No! rather seek a soldier's grave, And show the tyrant how to die. Then, Southron, on! By all that's dear, By feeble age, and childhood's dawn, By mother's love, and maiden's prayer, The brother's blood, the sister's tear-- One glance to Heaven, then, Southron, on! CIVILE BELLUM. "In this fearful struggle between North and South there are hundreds of cases in which fathers are arrayed against sons, brothers against brothers."--_American paper._ "Rifleman, shoot me a fancy shot, Straight at the heart of yon prowling vidette; Ring me a ball on the glittering spot, That shines on his breast like an amulet!" "Ah! Captain, here goes for a fine-drawn bead; There's music around, when my barrel's in tune." Crack! went the rifle; the messenger sped, And dead from his horse fell the ringing dragoon. "Now, rifleman, steal through the bushes and snatch From your victim some trinket to handsel first blood; A button, a loop, or that luminous patch, That gleams in the moon like a diamond stud." "O Captain! I staggered and sunk in my track, When I gazed on the face of the fallen vidette, For he looked so like you as he lay on his back, That my heart rose upon me and masters me yet. "But I snatched off the trinket--this locket of gold-- An inch from the center my lead broke its way, Scarce grazing the picture, so fair to behold, Of a beautiful lady in bridal array." "Ha! rifleman, fling me the locket--'tis she: My brother's young bride--and the fallen dragoon Was her husband--hush! soldier, 'twas heaven's decree; We must bury him there by the light of the moon! "But hark! the far bugles their warning unite; War is a virtue--weakness a sin; There's a lurking and loping around us to-night; Load again, rifleman, keep your hand in!" FROM THE ONCE UNITED STATES. _London Once a Week._ "FOLLOW, BOYS! FOLLOW!" BY MILLIE MAYFIELD. Follow, brave boys, follow! 'Tis the roll-call of the drum, And the bright steel's ringing music, With its spirit-stirring hum-- 'Tis the tramp of armèd columns, Brazen fronted, drawing near, And the rattle of the sabers In the scabbards, that ye hear; Follow, follow, 'tis the van, boys, So bravely leading on; Follow, follow, to a man, boys, There's glory to be won! Follow, follow, saith the mother-- Follow, follow, saith the wife-- Though ye're dear as our hearts' blood, More precious, far than life; But we would not have ye linger While the hated foeman stands Beside our sacred hearth-stones, And desecrates our lands! We'll forgive the starting tear, boys, 'Tis the jewel of the heart, That ye may not blush to wear, boys, When from loved ones thus ye part. There's not a Southern matron But in her bosom wears The iron Key of Firmness That locketh up her fears; While ye buckle on your armor, She will bid ye safe "God-speed," And bear her cross all bravely For her precious country's need! When our women have such souls, boys, Ye must never flinch or quail-- While the storm of battle rolls, boys, Ne'er strike the straining sail! Our lives are dearly purchased, When bondage is the price; And what is home, where freedom Withers 'neath the tyrant's vice? Better the earthy pillow, Better the gory bier, Where the true-hearted ever Will drop the burning tear; For think, if ye should fall, boys, Ye have not lived in vain-- On the brave soldier's pall, boys, None ever put a stain! Fling out our glorious banner Upon the golden air-- Swear by its stars, Dishonor Shall leave no footprint there! That ye'll plant its broad bars firmly, As a barrier to the foe, From the blue Gulf to the Border, From the Sea to Mexico! The Southern sky's a-flame, boys, Where our stately cities burn, But, as monuments of fame, boys, Their ashes we'll in-urn! Oh! inch by inch, repel him, The foul invading foe! Let the sharp saber tell him How despots are laid low! And history's burning pencil Will, on her golden page, Your hero name enamel An honor to the age! One blow, and we are free, boys, Strike firmly, and 'tis done! On, on, to Tennessee, boys, Oh! follow bravely on! THE SWORD OF ROBERT LEE. BY FATHER A. J. RYAN. Forth from its scabbard, pure and bright, Flashed the sword of Lee! Far in the front of the deadly fight, High o'er the brave in the cause of Right, Its stainless sheen, like a beacon light, Led us to victory. Out of its scabbard, where, full long, It slumbered peacefully, Roused from its rest by the battle's song, Shielding the feeble, smiting the strong, Guarding the right, avenging the wrong, Gleamed the sword of Lee. Forth from its scabbard, high in air, Beneath Virginia's sky-- And they who saw it gleaming there, And knew who bore it, knelt to swear That where that sword led they would dare To follow--and to die! Out of its scabbard! Never hand Waved sword from stain as free, Nor purer sword led braver band, Nor braver bled for a brighter land, Nor brighter land had a cause so grand, Nor cause a chief like Lee! Forth from its scabbard! How we prayed That sword might victor be; And when our triumph was delayed, And many a heart grew sore afraid, We still hoped on while gleamed the blade Of noble Robert Lee. Forth from its scabbard all in vain Bright flashed the sword of Lee; 'Tis shrouded now in its sheath again, It sleeps the sleep of our noble slain, Defeated, yet without a stain, Proudly and peacefully. BOMBARDMENT OF VICKSBURG. BY PAUL H. HAYNE. _Dedicated with respect and admiration to Major-General Earl Van Dorn._ For sixty days and upwards A storm of shell and shot Rained round as in a flaming shower, But still we faltered not! "If the noble city perish," Our grand young leader said, "Let the only walls the foe shall scale Be ramparts of the dead!" For sixty days and upwards The eye of heaven waxed dim, And even throughout God's holy morn, O'er Christian's prayer and hymn, Arose a hissing tumult, As if the fiends of air Strove to engulf the voice of faith In the shrieks of their despair. There was wailing in the houses, There was trembling on the marts, While the tempest raged and thundered, 'Mid the silent thrill of hearts; But the Lord, our shield, was with us, And ere a month had sped, Our very women walked the streets, With scarce one throb of dread. And the little children gamboled-- Their faces purely raised, Just for a wondering moment, As the huge bombs whirled and blazed! Then turning with silvery laughter To the sports which children love, Thrice mailed in the sweet, instinctive thought, That the good God watched above.[17] Yet the hailing bolts fell faster From scores of flame-clad ships, And above us denser, darker, Grew the conflict's wild eclipse, Till a solid cloud closed o'er us, Like a type of doom and ire, Whence shot a thousand quivering tongues Of forked and vengeful fire. But the unseen hands of angels These death-shafts warned aside, And the dove of heavenly mercy Ruled o'er the battle tide; In the houses ceased the wailing, And through the war-scarred marts The people strode with the step of hope To the music in their hearts. COLUMBIA, S. C., _August 6, 1862_. "THE YANKEE DEVIL." BY W. P. RIVERS. The "Nondescript," or "Yankee Devil," for clearing the harbor, was washed ashore on yesterday at Morris Island, and is now in our possession. It is described as an old scow-like vessel, painted red, with a long protruding beak, and jutting iron prongs and claws, intended for the removal of torpedoes. It was attached to the Passaic, and managed by her during the engagement.--_Charleston Courier._ The enemy are waiting for a new machine ("Devil") to remove the torpedoes in the harbor, and to have everything in readiness before the attack.--_Same paper._ Hurrah! hurrah! good news and true, Our woes will soon be past; To Charleston, boys, all praise be due, The devil's caught at last. He's caught, he's dead, and met his fate On Morris Island's sands; His carcass lies in solemn state, The spoil of Rebel hands. Hurrah! hurrah! let Dixie cheer! What may not Charleston do! The devil's caught at last, we hear; A Yankee devil, too! The blackest, bluest from below, The prince of all is he, Who leads the Yankees where they go, On land, or on the sea. The news is true, all doubt dispel, All grief and fears be o'er! The chiefest from perdition's well Lies on a Southern shore. On South Carolina's beach he lies-- His majesty ashore! Ah! well we know that devil dies Who enters at that door. His name and hue, and shape and size, Identify the beast; 'Tis he--the father of all lies, Of devils not the least. Scow-like across the deep he came, Blood-red his iron sides; With beak, and claws, and fins of flame To plow the vernal tides. Like serpents which Minerva sent To crush the Trojan sire, So Northern devils come to vent On Charleston blood and fire. But Neptune ne'er decreed the fate Of Laocoön's dear sons, To gratify the Yankees' hate On Charleston's dearer ones. They'll never bear one fatal hour The Northern serpent's coil, Nor feel the Yankee devil's power Who come to crush and spoil. The "Nondescript," name chosen well; The "Northern Devil," aye! A fiend, a ghoul, a spirit fell! Who may describe it--say? Foul, artful, bloody, false, insane, This Northern ghote[18] of sin; The heathen hells could ne'er contain A darker power within. But now, hurrah, the devil's dead! High, dry upon the shore! Rebellion still may rear its head, The war will soon be o'er. Hold, not so fast, abate your cheer, The battle is not won; Another devil comes, we hear, Before the work is done. Alas! when will this warfare end? Not till all Yankee foes are dead; For nondescript is each--or fiend-- His soul with murder red. CAVE SPRINGS, GA., _April 11, 1863_. THE BOY-SOLDIER. BY A LADY OF SAVANNAH. He is acting o'er the battle, With his cap and feather gay, Singing out his soldier prattle, In a mockish, manly way-- With the boldest, bravest footstep, Treading firmly up and down, And his banner waving softly O'er his boyish locks of brown. And I sit beside him sewing, With a busy heart and hand, For the gallant soldiers going To the far-off battle-land; And I gaze upon my jewel, In his baby-spirit bold, My little blue-eyed soldier, Just a second summer old. Still a deep, deep well of feeling, In my mother's heart is stirred, And the tears come softly stealing At each imitative word. There's a struggle in my bosom, For I love my darling boy-- He's the gladness of my spirit, He's the sunlight of my joy! Yet I think upon my country, And my spirit groweth bold, Oh! I wish my blue-eyed soldier Were but twenty summers old! I would speed him to the battle, I would arm him for the fight, I would give him to his country, For his country's wrong and right! I would nerve his hand with blessing, From the "God of Battles" won; With _His_ helmet and _His_ armor, I would cover o'er my son. Oh! I _know_ there'd be a struggle, For I love my darling boy; He's the gladness of my spirit, He's the sunlight of my joy! Yet in thinking of my country, Oh! my spirit groweth bold; And I wish my blue-eyed soldier Were but twenty summers old. THE VIRGINIANS OF THE VALLEY. BY FRANK TICKNOR, M. D. _Sic Jurat._ The knightliest of the knightly race, Who, since the days of old, Have kept the lamp of chivalry Alight in hearts of gold; The kindliest of the kindly band Who rarely hated ease, Who rode with Smith around the land And Raleigh round the seas! Who climbed the blue Virginia hills, Amid embattled foes, And planted there, in valleys fair, The lily and the rose; Whose fragrance lives in many lands, Whose beauty stars the earth, And lights the hearths of many homes With loveliness and worth! We thought they slept! the sons who kept The names of noble sires, And slumbered while the darkness crept Around their vigil fires! But still the Golden Horseshoe knights, Their Old Dominion keep, Whose foes have found enchanted ground, But not a knight asleep. TORCH HALL, GA. C. S. A. BY FATHER ABRAM J. RYAN. Do we weep for the heroes who died for us, Who, living, were true and tried for us, And, dying, sleep side by side for us; The martyr band That hallowed our land With the blood they shed in a tide for us? Ah! fearless on many a day for us, They stood in the front of the fray for us, And held the foeman at bay for us; And tears should fall Fore'er o'er all Who fell while wearing the gray for us. How many a glorious name for us, How many a story of fame for us They left: Would it not be a blame for us If their memories part From our land and heart, And a wrong to them, and a shame for us? No, no, no! they were brave for us, And bright were the lives they gave for us; The land they struggled to save for us Will not forget Its warriors yet Who sleep in so many a grave for us. On many and many a plain for us Their blood poured down all in vain for us, Red, rich, and pure, like a rain for us; They bleed--we weep, We live--they sleep, "All lost," the only refrain for us. But their memories e'er shall remain for us, And their names, bright names, without stain for us; The glory they won shall not wane for us, In legend and lay Our heroes in gray Shall forever live over again for us. THE SWEET SOUTH. BY WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS. O the sweet South! the sunny, sunny South! Land of true feeling, land forever mine! I drink the kisses of her rosy mouth, And my heart swells as with a draught of wine; She brings me blessings of maternal love; I have her smile which hallows all my toil; Her voice persuades, her generous smiles approve, She sings me from the sky and from the soil! O, by her lonely pines that wave and sigh! O, by her myriad flowers, that bloom and fade, By all the thousand beauties of her sky, And the sweet solace of her forest shade, She's mine--she's ever mine-- Nor will I aught resign Of what she gives me, mortal or divine; Will sooner part With life, hope, heart-- Will die--before I fly! O, love is hers--such love as ever glows In souls where leap affection's living tide; She is all fondness to her friends; to foes She glows a thing of passion, strength, and pride; She feels no tremors when the danger's nigh, But the fight over and the victory won, How, with strange fondness, turns her loving eye In tearful welcome on each gallant son! O! by her virtues of the cherished past-- By all her hopes of what the future brings-- I glory that my lot with her is cast, And my soul flushes and exulting sings; She's mine--she's ever mine-- For her will I resign All precious things--all placed upon her shrine; Will freely part With life, hope, heart-- Will die--do aught but fly! THE SOUTHERN CROSS.[19] BY MRS. ELLEN KEY BLUNT. In the name of God! Amen! Stand for our Southern rights! Arm, ye Southern men, The God of Battle fights! Fling the invaders far, Hurl back their work of woe, The voice is the voice of a brother, But the hands are the hands of a foe. They come with a trampling army, Invading our native sod-- Stand, Southrons! fight and conquer! In the name of the Mighty God! They're singing _our_ song of triumph[20] Which was made to make us free, While they're breaking away the heartstrings Of our nation's harmony. Sadly it floateth from us, Sighing o'er land and wave, Till mute on the lips of the poet, It sleeps in his Southern grave. Spirit and song departed! Minstrel and minstrelsy! We mourn thee, heavy-hearted, But we will, we shall be free! They are waving _our_ flag above us, With a despot's tyrant will; With our blood they have stained its colors, And call it holy still. With tearful eyes, but steady hand, We'll tear its stripes apart, And fling them like broken fetters, That may not bind the heart; But we'll save our stars of glory, In the might of the sacred sign Of Him who has fixed forever Our Southern Cross to shine. Stand, Southrons! stand and conquer! Solemn and strong and sure! The strife shall not be longer Than God shall bid endure. By the life which only yesterday Came with the infant's breath, By the feet which ere the morn may Tread to the soldier's death! By the blood which cries to Heaven! Crimson upon our sod! Stand, Southrons! stand and conquer! In the name of the Mighty God! PARIS, 1862. PATRIOTISM. The holy fire that nerved the Greek To make his stand at Marathon, Until the last red foeman's shriek Proclaimed that Freedom's fight was won, Still lives unquenched--unquenchable! Through every age its fires will burn-- Lives in the hermit's lonely cell, And springs from every storied urn! The hearthstone embers hold the spark Where fell Oppression's foot hath trod; Through Superstition's shadow dark It flashes to the living God! From Moscow's ashes spring the Russ; In Warsaw Poland lives again; Schamyl, on frosty Caucasus, Strikes Liberty's electric chain! Tell's freedom-beacon lights the Swiss; Vainly the invader ever strives; He finds "Sic Semper Tyrannis" In San Jacinto's bowie-knives! Than these--than all--a holier fire Now burns thy soul, Virginia's son! Strike then for wife, babe, gray-haired sire; Strike for the grave of Washington! The Northern rabble aims for greed; The hireling parson goads the train-- In that foul crop from bigot seed, Old "Praise God Barebones" howls again! We welcome them to "Southern lands"-- We welcome them to "Southern slaves"-- We welcome them "with bloody hands To hospitable Southern graves!" SONG FOR THE MARYLAND LINE. BY J. D. M'CABE, JR. By old Potomac's rushing tide Our bayonets are gleaming; And o'er the bounding waters wide We gaze while tears are streaming. The distant hills of Maryland Rise sadly up before us, And tyrant bands have chained our land-- Our mother, proud, that bore us. Our proud old mother's queenly head Is bowed in subjugation; With her children's blood her soil is red, And fiends in exultation Taunt her with shame as they bind her chains, While her heart is torn with anguish; Old mother, on famed Manassas's plains Our vengeance did not languish! We thought of your wrongs as on we rushed, 'Mid shot and shell appalling; We heard your voice as it upward gushed From the Maryland life-blood falling. No pity we knew! Did they mercy show When they bound the mother that bore us? But we scattered death 'mid the dastard foe, Till they, shrieking, fled before us! We mourn for our brothers brave, that fell On that field, so stern and gory; But their spirits rose with our triumph-yell To the heavenly realms of glory. And their bodies rest on the hard-won field-- By their love so true and tender; We'll keep the prize they would not yield, We'll die, but we'll not surrender. And, mother, we wait but the signal-blast, To rush to redeem thy glory; We may fall, but our conquering dust shall rest On thy soil, so famed in story. The tyrant's flag shall no longer shine, Thy liberty to smother, When the word is passed to the Maryland Line, To strike for their loved old mother. CONFEDERATE LAND. BY H. H. STRAWBRIDGE. States of the South! Confederate land! Our foe has come--the hour is nigh; His bale-fires rise on every hand-- Rise as one man, to do or die! From mountain, vale, and prairie wide, From forest vast, and field, and glen, And crowded city, pour thy tide, Oh! fervid South! of patriot men. Up! old and young; the weak, be strong! Rise for the right--hurl back the wrong, And foot to foot, and hand to hand, Strike for our own Confederate land! Make every house, and rock, and tree, And hill, your forts; and fen and flood Yield not! our soil shall rather be One waste of flame, one sea of blood! Fear not their steel, but fear their gold-- Not Yankee force, but Yankee fraud; Trust not the race--as false as cold-- Whose very prayers are lies to God. Up! old and young, etc. Armed, or unarmed, stand fearless forth, Sons of the South! stand, wife and maid! Against the foul insidious North, Our _babes_ shall wield the battle-blade! On! though perennial be the strife, For honor dear, for hearth-stone fire; Give blow for blow! take life for life! "Strike! till the last armed foe expire!" Up! old and young, etc. THE BANNER SONG. BY JAMES B. MARSHALL. Up, up with the banner, the foe is before us, His bayonets bristle, his sword is unsheathed, Charge, charge on his line with harmonious chorus, For the prayers go with us that beauty has breathed. He fights for the power of despot and plunder, While we are defending our altars and homes; He has riven the firmly-knit Union asunder, And to bind it with Tyranny's fetters he comes. Like the prophet Mokanna, whose veil so resplendent, His monstrous deformity closely concealed, Duplicity marks Lincoln's course, and dependent On falsehood is every fair promise revealed. When that veil shall be raised, Freedom's last feast be taken, A banquet to which all his followers will crowd; Oh, horror of horrors! who can view it unshaken? Without sense they will sit all in suppliance bowed! We do not forget that they once were our brothers, That we sat in our boyhood around the same board, That our heart's best idolatry blest the same mothers, And to the same fathers libations we poured. We rallied around the same star-spangled standard, When called to the field by the tocsin of war: But they from our side have unfeeling wandered, And we strip from our flag every recusant star. They have forced us to stand by our own Constitution, To defend our lov'd homesteads, our altars and fires, While they tamely submit to a tyrant's pollution, Beneath whose foul tread their own freedom expires. Then up with the banner, its broad stripes wide flowing-- 'Tis the emblem of Liberty--flag of the free; Let it wave us to triumph, and every heart glowing, Nerve each arm's bravest blow for its lov'd Tennessee. THE SOUTHERN HOMES IN RUINS. BY R. B. VANCE. Many a gray-haired sire has died, As falls the oak, to rise no more, Because his son, his prop, his pride, Breathed out his last all red with gore. No more on earth, at morn, at eve, Shall age and youth, entwined as one-- Nor father, son, for either grieve-- Life's work, alas, for both is done! Many a mother's heart has bled While gazing on her darling child, As in its tiny eyes she read The father's image, kind and mild; For ne'er again his voice will cheer The widowed heart, which mourns him dead; Nor kisses dry the scalding tear, Fast falling on the orphan's head! Many a little form will stray Adown the glen and o'er the hill, And watch with wistful looks the way For him whose step is missing still; And when the twilight steals apace O'er mead, and brook, and lonely home, And shadows cloud the dear, sweet face-- The cry will be, "Oh, papa, come!" And many a home's in ashes now, Where joy was once a constant guest, And mournful groups there are, I trow, With neither house nor place of rest; And blood is on the broken _sill_,[21] Where happy feet went to and fro, And everywhere, by field and hill, Are sickening sights and sounds of woe; There is a God who rules on high, The widow's and the orphan's friend, Who sees each tear and hears each sigh That these lone hearts to Him may send! And when in wrath He tears away The reasons vain which men indite, The record-book will plainest say Who's in the wrong, and who is right. 'TIS MIDNIGHT IN THE SOUTHERN SKY. BY MRS. M. J. YOUNG. 'Tis midnight in the Southern sky-- See the starry cross decline! The watching flowers, all bath'd in tears, Creep o'er the mournful sign! But that decline but serves to mark A bright and glorious hour, Whose gleaming splendors shall then crown With stars the simplest flower! A day that in its turn shall tell Of the starry cross uprighted! Then weep not--ev'ry change is well-- All wrongs shall be requited! "STACK ARMS." BY JOSEPH BLYTHE ALSTON.[22] "Stack arms!" I've gladly heard the cry, When, weary with the dusty tread Of marching troops, as night grew nigh, And sank upon my soldier bed, And calmly slept; the starry dome Of heaven's blue arch my canopy, And mingled with my dreams of home, The thoughts of Peace and Liberty. "Stack arms!" I've heard it, when the shout, Exulting, rang along our line, Of foes hurled back in bloody rout, Captured, dispersed; its tones divine Then came to mine enraptured ear, Guerdon of duty nobly done, And glistened on my cheek the tear Of grateful joy for victory won. "Stack arms!" In faltering accents, slow And sad, it creeps from tongue to tongue, A broken, murmuring wail of woe, From manly hearts by anguish wrung. Like victims of a midnight dream, We move, we know not how nor why, For life and hope but phantoms seem, And it would be relief--to die. THE INVOCATION. BY B. W. W. God bless the land of flowers, And turn its winter hours To bright summer time! Be the brave soldier's friend, And from dangers defend, When Northern balls descend On the Southern line! Father, we implore Thee, Let Thy people go free From their foes once more! And they will bend the knee, And Thine the praise shall be, On sunny land and sea, As in days of yore! Lord, bid the carnage cease, Let the banner of peace Again be unfurled! Two nations make from one, And when the work is done, Over both reign alone-- Saviour of the world! DOFFING THE GRAY. BY LIEUTENANT FALLIGANT. Off with your gray suits, boys, Off with your rebel gear! They smack too much of the cannon's peal, The lightning flash of your deadly steel, The terror of your spear. Their color is like the smoke That curled o'er your battle-line; They call to mind the yell that woke When the dastard columns before you broke, And their dead were your fatal sign. Off with the starry wreath, Ye who have led our van; To you 'twas the pledge of glorious death, When we followed you over the gory heath, Where we whipped them man to man. Down with the cross of stars-- Too long hath it waved on high; 'Tis covered all over with battle-scars, But its gleam the Northern banner mars-- 'Tis time to lay it by. Down with the vows we've made, Down with each memory-- Down with the thoughts of our noble dead-- Down, down to the dust, where their forms are laid, And down with Liberty. THE CONFEDERATE FLAG. BY FATHER A. J. RYAN. Take that banner down, 'tis weary, Round its staff 'tis drooping dreary, Furl it, hide it, let it rest; For there's not a man to wave it-- For there's not a soul to lave it In the blood that heroes gave it. Furl it, hide it, let it rest. Take that banner down, 'tis tattered; Broken is its staff, and shattered; And the valiant hearts are scattered Over whom it floated high. Oh! 'tis hard for us to fold it-- Hard to think there's none to hold it-- Hard that those who once unrolled it Now must furl it with a sigh. Furl that banner, furl it sadly; Once six millions hailed it gladly, And three hundred thousand madly, Swore it should forever wave-- Swore that foeman's sword should never Hearts like theirs entwined dissever-- That their flag should float forever O'er their freedom or their grave! Furl it, for the hands that grasped it, And the hearts that fondly clasped it, Cold and dead are lying low; And that banner--it is trailing, While around it sounds the wailing Of its people in their woe; For though conquered, they adore it, Love the cold, dead hands that bore it, Weep for those who fell before it-- Oh! how wildly they deplore it, Now to furl and fold it so! Furl that banner; true 'tis gory, But 'tis wreathed around with glory, And 'twill live in song and story, Though its folds are in the dust; For its fame, on brightest pages-- Sung by poets, penned by sages-- Shall go sounding down to ages-- Furl its folds though now we must. Furl that banner--softly, slowly; Furl it gently, it is holy, For it droops above the dead. Touch it not, unfurl it never, Let it droop there, furled forever, For its people's hopes are fled. FOLD IT UP CAREFULLY. Gallant nation, foiled by numbers, Say not that your hopes are fled; Keep that glorious flag which slumbers, One day to avenge your dead. Keep it till your children take it, Once again to hail and make it All their sires have bled and fought for, All their noble hearts have sought for, Bled and fought for all alone. All alone! aye, shame the story, Millions here deplore the stain, Shame, alas! for England's glory, Freedom called, and called in vain. Furl that banner, sadly, slowly, Treat it gently, for 'tis holy: 'Till that day--yes, furl it sadly, Then once more unfurl it gladly-- Conquered Banner--keep it still![23] WHY CAN NOT WE BE BROTHERS? BY CLARENCE PRENTICE. Why can not we be brothers? the battle now is o'er; We've laid our bruis'd arms on the field, to take them up no more; We who have fought you hard and long, now overpower'd stand As poor defenseless prisoners in our own native land. _Chorus_--We know that we are Rebels, And we don't deny the name, We speak of that which we have done With grief, but not with shame. But we have rights most sacred, by solemn compact bound, Seal'd by the blood that freely gush'd from many a ghastly wound; When Lee gave up his trusty sword, and his men laid down their arms, It was that they should live at home, secure from war's dire harms. And surely, since we've now disarm'd, we are not to be dreaded; Our old chiefs, who on many fields our trusty columns headed, Are fast within an iron grasp, and manacled with chains, Perchance, 'twixt dreary walls to stay as long as life remains! Oh! shame upon the coward band, who in the conflict dire, Went not to battle for their cause, 'mid the ranks of steel and fire, Yet now, since all the fighting's done, are hourly heard to cry: "Down with the traitors! hang them all, each Rebel dog shall die!" We know that we were Rebels, we don't deny the name, We speak of that which we have done with grief, but not with shame! And we never will acknowledge that the blood the South has spilt, Was shed defending what we deem'd a cause of wrong and guilt. REUNITED. BY FATHER ABRAM J. RYAN.[24] Purer than thy own white snow, Nobler than thy mountain's height, Deeper than the ocean's flow, Stronger than thy own proud might; Oh! Northland, to thy sister land Was late thy mercy's generous deed and grand. Nigh twice ten years the sword was sheathed; Its mist of green o'er battle plain For nigh two decades spring had breathed; And yet the crimson life-blood stain From passive swards had never paled, Nor fields, where all were brave and some had failed. Between the Northland, bride of snow, And Southland, brightest sun's fair bride, Swept, deepening ever in its flow, The stormy wake, in war's dark tide: No hand might clasp across the tears, And blood, and anguish of four deathless years. When summer, like a rose in bloom, Had blossomed from the bud of spring, Oh! who could deem the dews of doom Upon the blushing lips could cling? And who could believe its fragrant light Would e'er be freighted with the breath of blight? Yet o'er the Southland crept the spell, That e'en from out its brightness spread; And prostrate, powerless, she fell, Rachel-like, amid her dead. Her bravest, fairest, purest, best, The waiting grave would welcome, as its guest. The Northland, strong in love, and great, Forgot the stormy days of strife; Forgot that souls with dreams of hate, Or unforgiveness, e'er were rife. Forgotten was each thought and hushed, Save--she was generous and her foe was crushed. No hand might clasp, from land to land; Yea! there was one to bridge the tide; For at the touch of Mercy's hand The North and South stood side by side: The Bride of Snow, the Bride of Sun, In Charity's espousals are made one. "Thou givest back my sons again," The Southland to the Northland cries; "For all my dead, on battle plain, Thou biddest my dying now uprise: I still my sobs, I cease my tears, And thou hast recompensed my anguished years. "Blessings on thine every wave, Blessings on thine every shore, Blessings that from sorrows save, Blessings giving more and more, For all thou gavest thy sister land, Oh! Northland, in thy generous deed and grand." INDEX. A Ballad of the War. George Herbert Sass, 179. A Cry to Arms. Henry Timrod, 72. "A. M. W.," 68. Address of the Women to the Southern Troops. Mrs. Jane T. H. Cross, 160. Alexandria, The Martyr of, 36. Alston, Joseph Blythe, of South Carolina, 305. A New Red, White, and Blue. Jeff Thompson, 153. Antrobur, John, 196. A Poem for the Times. John R. Thompson, 5. A Poem which Needs no Dedication. James Barron Hope, 264. "A Rebel," 92. Arise. C. G. Poynas, 20. Arm for the Southern Land. Mirabeau B. Lamar, 235. "A Soldier's Wife," 256. "Atlanta Confederacy," 62. Ballard, Sallie E., of Texas, 44. Band in the Pines, The. John Esten Cooke, 230. Banner Song, The. James B. Marshall, 299. Barrick, J. R., of Kentucky, 192. Battle-field of Manassas, The. M. F. Bigney, 98. Battle at Bull Run, The. "Ruth," 137. Battle-Call. Annie Chambers Ketchum, 131. Beaufort, F. P., 108. Beauregard Songster, The, 171. Bell, Maurice, 190. Beyond the Potomac. Paul H. Hayne, 204. Bigney, M. F., 98, 126. Blue Cockade, The. Mary Walsingham Crean, 83. Blunt, Mrs. Ellen Key, 292. Bombardment of Vicksburg. Paul H. Hayne, 278. Bonnie Blue Flag, The. Harry Macarthy, 135. Box, Rev. A. M., 78. Boy-Soldier, The. A Lady of Savannah, 284. Burgess, G. T., 172. Burn the Cotton. "Estelle," 211. "B. W. W.," 306. Call All! Call All! "Georgia," 31. Canedo, Mrs. Margarita J., 199. "Caroline," 23. Cavaliers of Dixie, The. Benj. F. Porter, 162. "Charleston Mercury," 23. Chivalrous C. S. A. "B.," 96. Civile Bellum. "The Once United States," 271. "C. L. S.," 175. Confederate Flag, The. J. R. Barrick, 192. Confederate Flag, The. Mrs. C. D. Elder, 222. Confederate Flag, The. Father A. J. Ryan, 309. Confederate Land. By H. H. Strawbridge, 298. "Confederate Prisoner," 226. Confederate Song. Capt. E. Lloyd Wailes, 109. Cooke, John Esten, 230. "Cora," 252. Crean, Mary Walsingham, 83. Cross, Mrs. J. T. H., 160. C. S. A. Father Ryan, 288. Cummins, Alex. H., 248. Dixie. Albert Pike, 38. "De G.," 81. Doffing the Gray. Lieutenant Falligant, 307. Dying Soldier, The. James A. Mecklin, 239. Elbert, Evan, 27. Elder, Mrs. C. D., 222. Estelle, 211, 260. Estres, William C., 243. Ethnogenesis. Henry Timrod, 9. Falligant, Lieutenant, of Savannah, Georgia, 307. Farewell to Brother Jonathan. "Caroline," 23. Flash, Henry L., of Texas, 85, 246. "Follow, Boys, Follow!" Millie Mayfield, 273. Fold it up Carefully. Sir Henry Houghton, 311. Freer, M. C., 111. French, L. Virginia, 129. From the South to the North. C. L. S., 175. "Georgia," 31. Girls of the Monumental City. "Confederate Prisoner," 226. God Save the South. Reuben Nason, 268. Gone to the Battle-field. John Antrobur, 196. Gray, Nanny, 30. Guerillas, The. S. Teackle Wallis, 166. Harp of the South. "Cora," 252. Harp of the South, Awake. J. M. Kilgour, 17. Hayne, Paul H., 204, 278. Heart of Louisiana, The. Harriet Stanton, 63. Heart Victories. "A Soldier's Wife," 256. "H. M. L.," 128. Holcombe, Wm. H., of Louisiana, 77. Holtz, Robert E., 149. Hood, Thomas B., 139. Hope, James Barron, 264. Houghton, Sir Henry, Bart., 312. Invocation, The. B. W. W., 306. Jackson. Henry L. Flash, 246. Jackson, Gen. H. R., of Louisiana, 114. Jacobus, Mrs. J. J., 33. "J. H. H.," 66. Johnson, Bradley T., 19. Justice is our Panoply. De G., 81. Kentucky. "Estelle," 260. Ketchum, Anna Chambers, 131. Keyes, Julia L., of Ala., 121. Kilgour, J. M., 17. Killum, John, 233. Lamar, Gen. M. B., 235, 269. Land of King Cotton. Jo. Augustine Signiago, 164. Land of the South. A. F. Leonard, 185. Legion of Honor, The. H. L. Flash, 85. Leonard, A. F., 185. Lomas, Henry, 253. Lorrimer, Laura, 142. Macarthy, Harry, 135. Manassas. "A Rebel," 92. Marseilles Hymn, The. B. F. Porter, of Alabama, 216. Marshall, James B., 299. Martin, Rev. J. H., 45. Martyr of Alexandria, The. James W. Simmons, 36. Mayfield, Millie, 90, 249, 273. Maryland. James R. Randall, 69. McCabe, J. D., Jr., 296. McLemore, John C., of South Carolina, 87. Mecklin, James A., 239. Meek, A. B., of Mobile, Alabama, 52. Melt the Bells. F. Y. Rockett. 47. Miles, George H., of Balt., 123. Monody on the Death of Gen. Stonewall Jackson. "The Exile," 220. Moore, Emily J., 210. "M. S.," 241. Murden, E. O., 54. My Wife and Child. Gen. H. R. Jackson, of Louisiana, 114. Nason, Reuben, 268. New Orleans "True Delta," 43. "Nil Desperandum." Ada Rose, 158. No Surrender. "N. P. W.," 234. No Union Men. Millie Mayfield, 249. "N. P. W.," 146, 234. O Johnny Bull, my Jo John, 154. Old Betsy. John Killum, 233. Old Rifleman, The. Frank Ticknor, M. D., 119. Only One Killed. Julia L. Keyes, 121. On! Southron, on! M. B. Lamar, 269. Ordered Away, The. Mrs. J. J. Jacobus, 33. Our Boys are Gone. Col. Hamilton Washington, 141. Overall, John W., of La., 41, 145, 259. Patriotism, 294. "P. E. C.," 116. Pensacola, To my Son. M. S., 241. Pierpont, James, 29. Pike, Albert, of Arkansas, 38. Porter, Benjamin F., of Alabama, 162, 216, 228. Poynas, C. G., of South Carolina, 20. Prentice, Clarence, 312. Printers of Virginia to Old Abe, The. Harry C. Treakle, 214. Prize Song, The, 201. Randall, James R., of Maryland, 69, 188. Rebels! 'tis a Holy Name! "Atlanta Confederacy," 61. Re-enlistment. Mrs. Margarita J. Canedo, 199. Requier, A. J., of Alabama, 143. Reunited. Father Ryan, 315. "Richmond Examiner," 52. Richmond on the James. G. T. Burgess, 172. Right Above the Wrong, The. John W. Overall, 41. Rivers, Pearl, 208. Rivers, W. P., 281. Rockett, F. Y., 47. Rose, Ada, 158. "Ruth," 137. Ryan, Father A. J., 276, 288, 309, 315. Sass, George Herbert, of South Carolina, 179. Savannah, A Lady of, 284. Seventy-Six and Sixty-One. John W. Overall, 259. Signiago, Jo. Augustine, 164. Simmons, Jas. W., of Texas, 36. Simms, Wm. Gilmore, 290. Soldier Boy, The. H. M. L., 128. Soldier's Heart, The. F. P. Beaufort, 108. Song for the Maryland Line. J. D. McCabe, Jr., 296. Song of the Glorious Southland, Mrs. Mary Ware, 231. Song of the Privateer. Alex. H. Cummins, 248. Sons of Freedom. Nanny Gray, 30. South in Arms, The. Rev. J. H. Martin, 45. South is Up, The. P. E. C., 116. Southern Cross, The. St. George Tucker, 14. Southern Cross, The. Ellen Key Blunt, 292. Southern Gathering Song. L. Virginia French, 129. Southern Homes in Ruins, The. R. B. Vance, 302. Southern Marseillaise. "Beauregard Songster," 170. Southern Pleiades, The. Laura Lorrimer, 142. Southern Sentiment. Rev. A. M. Box, 78. Southern Song. M. C. Freer, 111. Southern Song of Freedom. J. H. H., 65. Southern War Song. N. P. W., 146. Southland. "The Prize Song," 201. Southern Mother's Charge, The. Thomas B. Hood, 139. "Southrons." Catharine M. Warfield, 156. Southron's War Song, The. J. A. Wagener, 80. "Stack Arms!" J. Blythe Alston, of South Carolina, 305. Stanton, Harriet, 63. Stars and Bars, The. A. J. Requier, 143. Stonewall Jackson's Way, 194. Strawbridge, H. H., 298. Sweet South, The. Wm. Gilmore Simms, 290. Sumter, A Ballad of 1861. E. O. Murden, 54. Tell the Boys the War is Ended. Emily J. Moore, 210. "The Exile," 220. The March. John W. Overall, 145. The Men. Maurice Bell, 150. There's Life in the Old Land Yet. J. R. Randall, 188. There's Nothing going Wrong. A. M. W., 67. "The South." Charlie Wildwood, 223. "The Star of the West." "Charleston Mercury," 22. The Sword of Robert Lee. Father Ryan, 276. Thinking of the Soldiers, 237. Thompson, Jeff., 153. Thompson, John R., of Virginia, 5. Ticknor, Frank, M. D., of Georgia, 119, 286. Timrod, Henry, of South Carolina, 9, 72. 'Tis Midnight in the Southern Sky. Mrs. M. J. Young, 304. To My Soldier Brother. Sallie E. Ballard, 44. To the Tories of Virginia. "Richmond Examiner," 49. Treakle, Harry C., 214. True to the Gray. Pearl Rivers, 208. Tucker, St. George, of Virginia, 14. Turtle, The, 245. Uniform of Gray, The. Evan Elbert, 27. United States, The Once, 273. Up! Up! let the Stars of our Banner. M. F. Bigney, 126. Vance, R. B., of North Carolina, 302. Virginia: Late but Sure! William H. Holcombe, 77. Virginians of the Valley. Frank Ticknor, M. D., 286. Volunteers to the Melish. W. C. Estres, 243. Wagener, J. A., of South Carolina, 80. Wailes, Capt. E. Lloyd, 109. Wallis, S. Teackle, of Maryland, 166. War Christian's Thanksgiving, The. George H. Miles, of Maryland, 123. Ware, Mrs. Mary, 231. Warfield, Catharine M., of Mississippi, 156. War Song. A. B. Meek, of Mobile, 52. War Song. By a Lady, 75. War Song. J. H. Woodcock, 151. War Song of the Partisan Rangers. B. F. Porter, 228. Washington, Col. Hamilton, of Texas, 141. "We Come! We Come!" Millie Mayfield, 90. We Conquer or Die. James Pierpont, 29. We'll be Free in Maryland. Robert E. Holtz, 149. What the Spirits of the Fathers say. Henry Lomas, 253. "What the Village Bell said." John McLemore, 87. Whoop! the Doodles, 31. Why can not We be Brothers? Clarence Prentice, 312. Wildwood, Charlie, 223. Woodcock, J. H., 151. Yankee Devil, The. W. P. Rivers, 281. Young, Mrs. M. J., 304. THE END Footnotes: [1] Written on the occasion of the meeting of the Confederate Congress, at Montgomery, February 4, 1861, and published in the "Charleston Courier." [2] These lines were published, and respectfully dedicated to Captain Bradley T. Johnson, of the Frederick (Md.) Volunteers, now (1861) in service in Virginia, by his friend J. M. Kilgour, their author. [3] These lines were written when General Beauregard appealed to the people of the South to contribute their bells, that they might be melted into cannon. [4] The writer has a husband, three sons, two nephews, other relatives and friends, in the companies mentioned, to whom these lines are most respectfully inscribed.--_Charleston Mercury._ [5] Virginia adopted her act of Secession on April 17, 1861. [6] The author of this song was mortally wounded at the battle of Seven Pines. [7] Dedicated to the Crescent Regiment, of New Orleans, Col. M. J. Smith. [8] These verses were published, early in 1862, in the Raleigh (N. C.) "Register." From the camp of the Massachusetts Twenty-Second Regiment, they were sent as a part of a letter to the "Boston Traveller," on May 31st, of the same year, and printed in that paper on the 6th of June. [9] A good clergyman, on being censured for introducing a "song tune" into his choir at church, replied that he "did not think it fair that the devil should have all the good music." In like manner, we will _never_ give up "Hail Columbia" to the Abolitionists. It is _ours_; and we mean to hold, as one of our dearest rights, this, the grandest march ever composed by mortal man. [10] This song was very popular with the Southern troops, and was sung with great effect to the measure of "Ye Mariners of England." [11] This song was published in the Memphis "Appeal," in December, 1861, was a great favorite with Tennessee troops, and was sung even after the peace was declared. [12] It may add something to the interest with which these stirring lines will be read, to know that they were composed within the walls of a Yankee Bastile. They reach us in manuscript, through the courtesy of a returned prisoner.--_Richmond Examiner._ [13] The publisher of "The Southern Soldier's Prize Songster," Mr. W. F. Wisely, of Mobile, Alabama, determined to use his efforts to produce a collection of original songs, solely by Southern writers, "offered a premium of fifty dollars" for the best song suited to the present time. A committee of three gentlemen (Rev. Dr. Pierce, Hon. Percy Walker, and G. Y. Overall, Esq.) were appointed to make the award. Near thirty pieces were submitted in competition, most of them possessing high literary merit. After much deliberation, the committee selected the piece entitled "Southland," as the most meritorious. The author's name was not given, he only requesting in his note that the money, if awarded him, should be paid over for the benefit of our necessitous soldiers. This modesty will add to the attractiveness of his piece, which is the first in the present volume.--_Preface to "The Southern Soldier's Prize Songster, containing Martial and Patriotic Pieces (chiefly original) applicable to the present war. Mobile, Ala.: W. F. Wisely, No. 38 St. Michael St., 1864."_ [14] This piece was originally published in the "Richmond Whig" at the time of "Stonewall" Jackson's last descent upon Maryland. [15] Heard after Pelham died. [16] The incident with which I have illustrated my opinion of the policy of those who would have us wait for a "reaction at the North," may be found in "Milman's Latin Christianity," vol. iii, p. 133. [17] It has been stated, by one professing to have witnessed the fact, that, some weeks after the beginning of this terrific bombardment, not only were ladies seen coolly walking the streets, but that in some parts of the town children were observed at play, only interrupting their sports to gaze and listen at the bursting shells. [18] Ghote--an imaginary evil being among Eastern nations. [19] These lines were dedicated "to His Excellency President Davis, from his fellow-citizens, Ellen Key Blunt, J. T. Mayson Blunt, of Maryland and Virginia." [20] "The Star-Spangled Banner," written by Francis Scott Key, a progenitor of Mrs. Blunt. [21] These lines were suggested by the following, published in "Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper": "We know a great deal about war now; but, dear readers, the Southern women know more. Blood has not dripped on our _door-sills_ yet; shells have not burst above our _homesteads_. Let us pray they never may." [22] Written in the prison of Fort Delaware, Del., on hearing of General Lee's surrender. [23] reply to "The Conquered Banner," by Sir Henry Houghton, Bart., of Great Britain. [24] Written after the yellow-fever epidemic of 1878. Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. Punctuation has been corrected without note. One occurrence of "Dominie" has been standardized to "Domine" (page 267). 
35667	----	produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive.) 'SOUR GRAPES' _A Book of Poems_ BOSTON THE FOUR SEAS COMPANY 1921 _Copyright, 1921, by_ THE FOUR SEAS COMPANY The Four Seas Press Boston, Mass., U. S. A. To ALFRED KREYMBORG Certain of the poems in this book have appeared in the magazines: _Poetry_, _a Magazine of Verse_, _The Egoist_, _The Little Review_, _The Dial_, _Others_, and _Contact_. CONTENTS Page THE LATE SINGER 11 MARCH 12 BERKET AND THE STARS 17 A CELEBRATION 18 APRIL 21 A GOODNIGHT 22 OVERTURE TO A DANCE OF LOCOMOTIVES 24 ROMANCE MODERNE 26 THE DESOLATE FIELD 30 WILLOW POEM 31 APPROACH OF WINTER 32 JANUARY 33 BLIZZARD 34 TO WAKEN AN OLD LADY 35 WINTER TREES 36 COMPLAINT 37 THE COLD NIGHT 38 SPRING STORM 39 THE DELICACIES 40 THURSDAY 43 THE DARK DAY 44 TIME, THE HANGMAN 45 TO A FRIEND 46 THE GENTLE MAN 47 THE SOUGHING WIND 48 SPRING 49 PLAY 50 LINES 51 THE POOR 52 COMPLETE DESTRUCTION 53 MEMORY OF APRIL 54 EPITAPH 55 DAISY 56 PRIMROSE 57 QUEEN-ANN'S-LACE 58 GREAT MULLEN 59 WAITING 60 THE HUNTER 61 ARRIVAL 62 TO A FRIEND CONCERNING SEVERAL LADIES 63 YOUTH AND BEAUTY 65 THE THINKER 66 THE DISPUTANTS 67 THE TULIP BED 68 THE BIRDS 69 THE NIGHTINGALES 70 SPOUTS 71 BLUEFLAGS 72 THE WIDOW'S LAMENT IN SPRINGTIME 73 LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM 74 PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR 75 THE LONELY STREET 77 THE GREAT FIGURE 78 SOUR GRAPES THE LATE SINGER Here it is spring again and I still a young man! I am late at my singing. The sparrow with the black rain on his breast has been at his cadenzas for two weeks past: What is it that is dragging at my heart? The grass by the back door is stiff with sap. The old maples are opening their branches of brown and yellow moth-flowers. A moon hangs in the blue in the early afternoons over the marshes. I am late at my singing. MARCH I Winter is long in this climate and spring--a matter of a few days only,--a flower or two picked from mud or from among wet leaves or at best against treacherous bitterness of wind, and sky shining teasingly, then closing in black and sudden, with fierce jaws. II March, you remind me of the pyramids, our pyramids-- stript of the polished stone that used to guard them! March, you are like Fra Angelico at Fiesole, painting on plaster! March, you are like a band of young poets that have not learned the blessedness of warmth (or have forgotten it). At any rate-- I am moved to write poetry for the warmth there is in it and for the loneliness-- a poem that shall have you in it March. III See! Ashur-ban-i-pal, the archer king, on horse-back, in blue and yellow enamel! with drawn bow--facing lions standing on their hind legs, fangs bared! his shafts bristling in their necks! Sacred bulls--dragons in embossed brickwork marching--in four tiers-- along the sacred way to Nebuchadnezzar's throne hall! They shine in the sun, they that have been marching-- marching under the dust of ten thousand dirt years. Now-- they are coming into bloom again! See them! marching still, bared by the storms from my calendar --winds that blow back the sand! winds that enfilade dirt! winds that by strange craft have whipt up a black army that by pick and shovel bare a procession to the god, Marduk! Natives cursing and digging for pay unearth dragons with upright tails and sacred bulls alternately-- in four tiers-- lining the way to an old altar! Natives digging at old walls-- digging me warmth--digging me sweet loneliness-- high enamelled walls. IV My second spring-- passed in a monastery with plaster walls--in Fiesole on the hill above Florence. My second spring--painted a virgin--in a blue aureole sitting on a three-legged stool, arms crossed-- she is intently serious, and still watching an angel with coloured wings half kneeling before her-- and smiling--the angel's eyes holding the eyes of Mary as a snake's holds a bird's. On the ground there are flowers, trees are in leaf. V But! now for the battle! Now for murder--now for the real thing! My third springtime is approaching! Winds! lean, serious as a virgin, seeking, seeking the flowers of March. Seeking flowers nowhere to be found, they twine among the bare branches in insatiable eagerness-- they whirl up the snow seeking under it-- they--the winds--snakelike roar among yellow reeds seeking flowers--flowers. I spring among them seeking one flower in which to warm myself! I deride with all the ridicule of misery-- my own starved misery. Counter-cutting winds strike against me refreshing their fury! Come, good, cold fellows! Have we no flowers? Defy then with even more desperation than ever--being lean and frozen! But though you are lean and frozen-- think of the blue bulls of Babylon. Fling yourselves upon their empty roses-- cut savagely! But-- think of the painted monastery at Fiesole. BERKET AND THE STARS A day on the boulevards chosen out of ten years of student poverty! One best day out of ten good ones. Berket in high spirits--"Ha, oranges! Let's have one!" And he made to snatch an orange from the vender's cart. Now so clever was the deception, so nicely timed to the full sweep of certain wave summits, that the rumor of the thing has come down through three generations--which is relatively forever! A CELEBRATION A middle-northern March, now as always-- gusts from the south broken against cold winds-- but from under, as if a slow hand lifted a tide, it moves--not into April--into a second March, the old skin of wind-clear scales dropping upon the mould: this is the shadow projects the tree upward causing the sun to shine in his sphere. So we will put on our pink felt hat--new last year! --newer this by virtue of brown eyes turning back the seasons--and let us walk to the orchid-house, see the flowers will take the prize to-morrow at the Palace. Stop here, these are our oleanders. When they are in bloom-- You would waste words It is clearer to me than if the pink were on the branch. It would be a searching in a coloured cloud to reveal that which now, huskless, shows the very reason for their being. And these the orange-trees, in blossom--no need to tell with this weight of perfume in the air. If it were not so dark in this shed one could better see the white. It is that very perfume has drawn the darkness down among the leaves. Do I speak clearly enough? It is this darkness reveals that which darkness alone loosens and sets spinning on waxen wings-- not the touch of a finger-tip, not the motion of a sigh. A too heavy sweetness proves its own caretaker. And here are the orchids! Never having seen such gaiety I will read these flowers for you: This is an odd January, died--in Villon's time. Snow, this is and this the stain of a violet grew in that place the spring that foresaw its own doom. And this, a certain July from Iceland: a young woman of that place breathed it toward the south. It took root there. The colour ran true but the plant is small. This falling spray of snowflakes is a handful of dead Februarys prayed into flower by Rafael Arevalo Martinez of Guatemala. Here's that old friend who went by my side so many years: this full, fragile head of veined lavender. Oh that April that we first went with our stiff lusts leaving the city behind, out to the green hill-- May, they said she was. A hand for all of us: this branch of blue butterflies tied to this stem. June is a yellow cup I'll not name; August the over-heavy one. And here are-- russet and shiny, all but March. And March? Ah, March-- Flowers are a tiresome pastime. One has a wish to shake them from their pots root and stern, for the sun to gnaw. Walk out again into the cold and saunter home to the fire. This day has blossomed long enough. I have wiped out the red night and lit a blaze instead which will at least warm our hands and stir up the talk. I think we have kept fair time. Time is a green orchid. APRIL If you had come away with me into another state we had been quiet together. But there the sun coming up out of the nothing beyond the lake was too low in the sky, there was too great a pushing against him, too much of sumac buds, pink in the head with the clear gum upon them, too many opening hearts of lilac leaves, too many, too many swollen limp poplar tassels on the bare branches! It was too strong in the air. I had no rest against that springtime! The pounding of the hoofs on the raw sods stayed with me half through the night. I awoke smiling but tired. A GOODNIGHT Go to sleep--though of course you will not-- to tideless waves thundering slantwise against strong embankments, rattle and swish of spray dashed thirty feet high, caught by the lake wind, scattered and strewn broadcast in over the steady car rails! Sleep, sleep! Gulls' cries in a wind-gust broken by the wind; calculating wings set above the field of waves breaking. Go to sleep to the lunge between foam-crests, refuse churned in the recoil. Food! Food! Offal! Offal! that holds them in the air, wave-white for the one purpose, feather upon feather, the wild chill in their eyes, the hoarseness in their voices-- sleep, sleep.... Gentlefooted crowds are treading out your lullaby. Their arms nudge, they brush shoulders, hitch this way then that, mass and surge at the crossings-- lullaby, lullaby! The wild-fowl police whistles, the enraged roar of the traffic, machine shrieks: it is all to put you to sleep, to soften your limbs in relaxed postures, and that your head slip sidewise, and your hair loosen and fall over your eyes and over your mouth, brushing your lips wistfully that you may dream, sleep and dream-- A black fungus springs out about lonely church doors-- sleep, sleep. The Night, coming down upon the wet boulevard, would start you awake with his message, to have in at your window. Pay no heed to him. He storms at your sill with cooings, with gesticulations, curses! You will not let him in. He would keep you from sleeping. He would have you sit under your desk lamp brooding, pondering; he would have you slide out the drawer, take up the ornamented dagger and handle it. It is late, it is nineteen-nineteen-- go to sleep, his cries are a lullaby; his jabbering is a sleep-well-my-baby; he is a crackbrained messenger. The maid waking you in the morning when you are up and dressing, the rustle of your clothes as you raise them-- it is the same tune. At table the cold, greenish, split grapefruit, its juice on the tongue, the clink of the spoon in your coffee, the toast odors say it over and over. The open street-door lets in the breath of the morning wind from over the lake. The bus coming to a halt grinds from its sullen brakes-- lullaby, lullaby. The crackle of a newspaper, the movement of the troubled coat beside you-- sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep.... It is the sting of snow, the burning liquor of the moonlight, the rush of rain in the gutters packed with dead leaves: go to sleep, go to sleep. And the night passes--and never passes-- OVERTURE TO A DANCE OF LOCOMOTIVES I Men with picked voices chant the names of cities in a huge gallery: promises that pull through descending stairways to a deep rumbling. The rubbing feet of those coming to be carried quicken a grey pavement into soft light that rocks to and fro, under the domed ceiling, across and across from pale earthcoloured walls of bare limestone. Covertly the hands of a great clock go round and round! Were they to move quickly and at once the whole secret would be out and the shuffling of all ants be done forever. A leaning pyramid of sunlight, narrowing out at a high window, moves by the clock: disaccordant hands straining out from a center: inevitable postures infinitely repeated-- II Two--twofour--twoeight! Porters in red hats run on narrow platforms. This way ma'm! --important not to take the wrong train! Lights from the concrete ceiling hang crooked but-- Poised horizontal on glittering parallels the dingy cylinders packed with a warm glow--inviting entry-- pull against the hour. But brakes can hold a fixed posture till-- The whistle! Not twoeight. Not twofour. Two! Gliding windows. Colored cooks sweating in a small kitchen. Taillights-- In time: twofour! In time: twoeight! --rivers are tunneled: trestles cross oozy swampland: wheels repeating the same gesture remain relatively stationary: rails forever parallel return on themselves infinitely. The dance is sure. ROMANCE MODERNE Tracks of rain and light linger in the spongy greens of a nature whose flickering mountain--bulging nearer, ebbing back into the sun hollowing itself away to hold a lake,-- or brown stream rising and falling at the roadside, turning about, churning itself white, drawing green in over it,--plunging glassy funnels fall-- And--the other world-- the windshield a blunt barrier: Talk to me. Sh! they would hear us. --the backs of their heads facing us-- The stream continues its motion of a hound running over rough ground. Trees vanish--reappear--vanish: detached dance of gnomes--as a talk dodging remarks, glows and fades. --The unseen power of words-- And now that a few of the moves are clear the first desire is to fling oneself out at the side into the other dance, to other music. Peer Gynt. Rip Van Winkle. Diana. If I were young I would try a new alignment-- alight nimbly from the car, Good-bye!-- Childhood companions linked two and two criss-cross: four, three, two, one. Back into self, tentacles withdrawn. Feel about in warm self-flesh. Since childhood, since childhood! Childhood is a toad in the garden, a happy toad. All toads are happy and belong in gardens. A toad to Diana! Lean forward. Punch the steersman behind the ear. Twirl the wheel! Over the edge! Screams! Crash! The end. I sit above my head-- a little removed--or a thin wash of rain on the roadway --I am never afraid when he is driving,-- interposes new direction, rides us sidewise, unforseen into the ditch! All threads cut! Death! Black. The end. The very end-- I would sit separate weighing a small red handful: the dirt of these parts, sliding mists sheeting the alders against the touch of fingers creeping to mine. All stuff of the blind emotions. But--stirred, the eye seizes for the first time--The eye awake!-- anything, a dirt bank with green stars of scrawny weed flattened upon it under a weight of air--For the first time!-- or a yawning depth: Big! Swim around in it, through it-- all directions and find vitreous seawater stuff-- God how I love you!--or, as I say, a plunge into the ditch. The end. I sit examining my red handful. Balancing --this--in and out--agh. Love you? It's a fire in the blood, willy-nilly! It's the sun coming up in the morning. Ha, but it's the grey moon too, already up in the morning. You are slow. Men are not friends where it concerns a woman? Fighters. Playfellows. White round thighs! Youth! Sighs--! It's the fillip of novelty. It's-- Mountains. Elephants humping along against the sky--indifferent to light withdrawing its tattered shreds, worn out with embraces. It's the fillip of novelty. It's a fire in the blood. Oh get a flannel shirt, white flannel or pongee. You'd look so well! I married you because I liked your nose. I wanted you! I wanted you in spite of all they'd say-- Rain and light, mountain and rain, rain and river. Will you love me always? --A car overturned and two crushed bodies under it.--Always! Always! And the white moon already up. White. Clean. All the colors. A good head, backed by the eye--awake! backed by the emotions--blind-- River and mountain, light and rain--or rain, rock, light, trees--divided: rain-light counter rocks-trees or trees counter rain-light-rocks or-- Myriads of counter processions crossing and recrossing, regaining the advantage, buying here, selling there --You are sold cheap everywhere in town!-- lingering, touching fingers, withdrawing gathering forces into blares, hummocks, peaks and rivers--river meeting rock --I wish that you were lying there dead and I sitting here beside you.-- It's the grey moon--over and over. It's the clay of these parts. THE DESOLATE FIELD Vast and grey, the sky is a simulacrum to all but him whose days are vast and grey, and-- In the tall, dried grasses a goat stirs with nozzle searching the ground. --my head is in the air but who am I...? And amazed my heart leaps at the thought of love vast and grey yearning silently over me. WILLOW POEM It is a willow when summer is over, a willow by the river from which no leaf has fallen nor bitten by the sun turned orange or crimson. The leaves cling and grow paler, swing and grow paler over the swirling waters of the river as if loath to let go, they are so cool, so drunk with the swirl of the wind and of the river-- oblivious to winter, the last to let go and fall into the water and on the ground. APPROACH OF WINTER The half stripped trees struck by a wind together, bending all, the leaves flutter drily and refuse to let go or driven like hail stream bitterly out to one side and fall where the salvias, hard carmine,-- like no leaf that ever was-- edge the bare garden. JANUARY Again I reply to the triple winds running chromatic fifths of derision outside my window: Play louder. You will not succeed. I am bound more to my sentences the more you batter at me to follow you. And the wind, as before, fingers perfectly its derisive music. BLIZZARD Snow: years of anger following hours that float idly down-- the blizzard drifts its weight deeper and deeper for three days or sixty years, eh? Then the sun! a clutter of yellow and blue flakes-- Hairy looking trees stand out in long alleys over a wild solitude. The man turns and there-- his solitary track stretched out upon the world. TO WAKEN AN OLD LADY Old age is a flight of small cheeping birds skimming bare trees above a snow glaze. Gaining and failing they are buffetted by a dark wind-- But what? On harsh weedstalks the flock has rested, the snow is covered with broken seedhusks and the wind tempered by a shrill piping of plenty. WINTER TREES All the complicated details of the attiring and the disattiring are completed! A liquid moon moves gently among the long branches. Thus having prepared their buds against a sure winter the wise trees stand sleeping in the cold. COMPLAINT They call me and I go It is a frozen road past midnight, a dust of snow caught in the rigid wheeltracks. The door opens. I smile, enter and shake off the cold. Here is a great woman on her side in the bed. She is sick, perhaps vomiting, perhaps laboring to give birth to a tenth child. Joy! Joy! Night is a room darkened for lovers, through the jalousies the sun has sent one gold needle! I pick the hair from her eyes and watch her misery with compassion. THE COLD NIGHT It is cold. The white moon is up among her scattered stars-- like the bare thighs of the Police Seargent's wife--among her five children.... No answer. Pale shadows lie upon the frosted grass. One answer: It is midnight, it is still and it is cold...! White thighs of the sky! a new answer out of the depths of my male belly: In April.... In April I shall see again--In April! the round and perfect thighs of the Police Sergent's wife perfect still after many babies. Oya! SPRING STORM The sky has given over its bitterness. Out of the dark change all day long rain falls and falls as if it would never end. Still the snow keeps its hold on the ground. But water, water from a thousand runnels! It collects swiftly, dappled with black cuts a way for itself through green ice in the gutters. Drop after drop it falls from the withered grass-stems of the overhanging embankment. THE DELICACIES The hostess, in pink satin and blond hair--dressed high--shone beautifully in her white slippers against the great silent bald head of her little-eyed husband! Raising a glass of yellow Rhine wine in the narrow space just beyond the light-varnished woodwork and the decorative column between dining-room and hall, she smiled the smile of water tumbling from one ledge to another. We began with a herring salad: delicately flavoured saltiness in scallops of lettuce-leaves. The little owl-eyed and thick-set lady with masses of grey hair has smooth pink cheeks without a wrinkle. She cannot be the daughter of the little red-faced fellow dancing about inviting lion-headed Wolff the druggist to play the piano! But she is. Wolff is a terrific smoker: if the telephone goes off at night--so his curled-haired wife whispers--he rises from bed but cannot answer till he has lighted a cigarette. Sherry wine in little conical glasses, dull brownish yellow, and tomatoes stuffed with finely cut chicken and mayonnaise! The tall Irishman in a Prince Albert and the usual striped trousers is going to sing for us. (The piano is in a little alcove with dark curtains.) The hostess's sister--ten years younger than she--in black net and velvet, has hair like some filmy haystack, cloudy about the eyes. She will play for her husband. My wife is young, yes she is young and pretty when she cares to be--when she is interested in a discussion: it is the little dancing mayor's wife telling her of the Day nursery in East Rutherford, 'cross the track, divided from us by the railroad--and disputes as to precedence. It is in this town the saloon flourishes, the saloon of my friend on the right whose wife has twice offended with chance words. Her English is atrocious! It is in this town that the saloon is situated, close to the railroad track, close as may be, this side being dry, dry, dry: two people listening on opposite sides of a wall!--The Day Nursery had sixty-five babies the week before last, so my wife's eyes shine and her cheeks are pink and I cannot see a blemish. Ice-cream in the shape of flowers and domestic objects: a pipe for me since I do not smoke, a doll for you. The figure of some great bulk of a woman disappearing into the kitchen with a quick look over the shoulder. My friend on the left who has spent the whole day in a car the like of which some old fellow would give to an actress: flower-holders, mirrors, curtains, plush seats--my friend on the left who is chairman of the Streets committee of the town council--and who has spent the whole day studying automobile fire-engines in neighbouring towns in view of purchase,--my friend, at the Elks last week at the breaking-up hymn, signalled for them to let Bill--a familiar friend of the saloon-keeper--sing out all alone to the organ--and he did sing! Salz-rolls, exquisite! and Rhine wine _ad libitum_. A masterly caviare sandwich. The children flitting about above stairs. The councilman has just bought a National eight--some car! For heaven's sake I mustn't forget the halves of green peppers stuffed with cream cheese and whole walnuts! THURSDAY I have had my dream--like others-- and it has come to nothing, so that I remain now carelessly with feet planted on the ground and look up at the sky-- feeling my clothes about me, the weight of my body in my shoes, the rim of my hat, air passing in and out at my nose--and decide to dream no more. THE DARK DAY A three-day-long rain from the east-- an interminable talking, talking of no consequence--patter, patter, patter. Hand in hand little winds blow the thin streams aslant. Warm. Distance cut off. Seclusion. A few passers-by, drawn in upon themselves, hurry from one place to another. Winds of the white poppy! there is no escape!-- An interminable talking, talking, talking ... it has happened before. Backward, backward, backward. TIME THE HANGMAN Poor old Abner, old white-haired nigger! I remember when you were so strong you hung yourself by a rope round the neck in Doc Hollister's barn to prove you could beat the faker in the circus--and it didn't kill you. Now your face is in your hands, and your elbows are on your knees, and you are silent and broken. TO A FRIEND Well, Lizzie Anderson! seventeen men--and the baby hard to find a father for! What will the good Father in Heaven say to the local judge if he do not solve this problem? A little two pointed smile and--pouff!-- the law is changed into a mouthful of phrases. THE GENTLE MAN I feel the caress of my own fingers on my own neck as I place my collar and think pityingly of the kind women I have known. THE SOUGHING WIND Some leaves hang late, some fall before the first frost--so goes the tale of winter branches and old bones. SPRING O my grey hairs! You are truly white as plum blossoms. PLAY Subtle, clever brain, wiser than I am, by what devious means do you contrive to remain idle? Teach me, O master. LINES Leaves are greygreen, the glass broken, bright green. THE POOR By constantly tormenting them with reminders of the lice in their children's hair, the School Physician first brought their hatred down on him, But by this familiarity they grew used to him, and so, at last, took him for their friend and adviser. COMPLETE DESTRUCTION It was an icy day. We buried the cat, then took her box and set fire to it in the back yard. Those fleas that escaped earth and fire died by the cold. MEMORY OF APRIL You say love is this, love is that: Poplar tassels, willow tendrils the wind and the rain comb, tinkle and drip, tinkle and drip-- branches drifting apart. Hagh! Love has not even visited this country. EPITAPH An old willow with hollow branches slowly swayed his few high bright tendrils and sang: Love is a young green willow shimmering at the bare wood's edge. DAISY The dayseye hugging the earth in August, ha! Spring is gone down in purple, weeds stand high in the corn, the rainbeaten furrow is clotted with sorrel and crabgrass, the branch is black under the heavy mass of the leaves-- The sun is upon a slender green stem ribbed lengthwise. He lies on his back-- it is a woman also-- he regards his former majesty and round the yellow center, split and creviced and done into minute flowerheads, he sends out his twenty rays--a little and the wind is among them to grow cool there! One turns the thing over in his hand and looks at it from the rear: brownedged, green and pointed scales armor his yellow. But turn and turn, the crisp petals remain brief, translucent, greenfastened, barely touching at the edges: blades of limpid seashell. PRIMROSE Yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow! It is not a color. It is summer! It is the wind on a willow, the lap of waves, the shadow under a bush, a bird, a bluebird, three herons, a dead hawk rotting on a pole-- Clear yellow! It is a piece of blue paper in the grass or a threecluster of green walnuts swaying, children playing croquet or one boy fishing, a man swinging his pink fists as he walks-- It is ladysthumb, forgetmenots in the ditch, moss under the flange of the carrail, the wavy lines in split rock, a great oaktree-- It is a disinclination to be five red petals or a rose, it is a cluster of birdsbreast flowers on a red stem six feet high, four open yellow petals above sepals curled backward into reverse spikes-- Tufts of purple grass spot the green meadow and clouds the sky. QUEEN-ANN'S-LACE Her body is not so white as anemony petals nor so smooth--nor so remote a thing. It is a field of the wild carrot taking the field by force; the grass does not raise above it. Here is no question of whiteness, white as can be, with a purple mole at the center of each flower. Each flower is a hand's span of her whiteness. Wherever his hand has lain there is a tiny purple blemish. Each part is a blossom under his touch to which the fibres of her being stem one by one, each to its end, until the whole field is a white desire, empty, a single stem, a cluster, flower by flower, a pious wish to whiteness gone over-- or nothing. GREAT MULLEN One leaves his leaves at home being a mullen and sends up a lighthouse to peer from: I will have my way, yellow--A mast with a lantern, ten fifty, a hundred, smaller and smaller as they grow more--Liar, liar, liar! You come from her! I can smell djer-kiss on your clothes. Ha, ha! you come to me, you--I am a point of dew on a grass-stem. Why are you sending heat down on me from your lantern--You are cowdung, a dead stick with the bark off. She is squirting on us both. She has had her hand on you!--Well?--She has defiled ME.--Your leaves are dull, thick and hairy.--Every hair on my body will hold you off from me. You are a dungcake, birdlime on a fencerail.-- I love you, straight, yellow finger of God pointing to--her! Liar, broken weed, duncake, you have-- I am a cricket waving his antenae and you are high, grey and straight. Ha! WAITING When I am alone I am happy. The air is cool. The sky is flecked and splashed and wound with color. The crimson phalloi of the sassafrass leaves hang crowded before me in shoals on the heavy branches. When I reach my doorstep I am greeted by the happy shrieks of my children and my heart sinks. I am crushed. Are not my children as dear to me as falling leaves or must one become stupid to grow older? It seems much as if Sorrow had tripped up my heels. Let us see, let us see! What did I plan to say to her when it should happen to me as it has happened now? THE HUNTER In the flashes and black shadows of July the days, locked in each other's arms, seem still so that squirrels and colored birds go about at ease over the branches and through the air. Where will a shoulder split or a forehead open and victory be? Nowhere. Both sides grow older. And you may be sure not one leaf will lift itself from the ground and become fast to a twig again. ARRIVAL And yet one arrives somehow, finds himself loosening the hooks of her dress in a strange bedroom-- feels the autumn dropping its silk and linen leaves about her ankles. The tawdry veined body emerges twisted upon itself like a winter wind...! TO A FRIEND CONCERNING SEVERAL LADIES You know there is not much that I desire, a few crysanthemums half lying on the grass, yellow and brown and white, the talk of a few people, the trees, an expanse of dried leaves perhaps with ditches among them. But there comes between me and these things a letter or even a look--well placed, you understand, so that I am confused, twisted four ways and--left flat, unable to lift the food to my own mouth: Here is what they say: Come! and come! and come! And if I do not go I remain stale to myself and if I go-- I have watched the city from a distance at night and wondered why I wrote no poem. Come! yes, the city is ablaze for you and you stand and look at it. And they are right. There is no good in the world except out of a woman and certain women alone for certain things. But what if I arrive like a turtle with my house on my back or a fish ogling from under water? It will not do. I must be steaming with love, colored like a flamingo. For what? To have legs and a silly head and to smell, pah! like a flamingo that soils its own feathers behind. Must I go home filled with a bad poem? And they say: Who can answer these things till he has tried? Your eyes are half closed, you are a child, oh, a sweet one, ready to play but I will make a man of you and with love on his shoulder--! And in the marshes the crickets run on the sunny dike's top and make burrows there, the water reflects the reeds and the reeds move on their stalks and rattle drily. YOUTH AND BEAUTY I bought a dishmop-- having no daughter-- for they had twisted fine ribbons of shining copper about white twine and made a towsled head of it, fastened it upon a turned ash stick slender at the neck straight, tall-- when tied upright on the brass wallbracket to be a light for me-- and naked, as a girl should seem to her father. THE THINKER My wife's new pink slippers have gay pom-poms. There is not a spot or a stain on their satin toes or their sides. All night they lie together under her bed's edge. Shivering I catch sight of them and smile, in the morning. Later I watch them descending the stair, hurrying through the doors and round the table, moving stiffly with a shake of their gay pom-poms! And I talk to them in my secret mind out of pure happiness. THE DISPUTANTS Upon the table in their bowl in violent disarray of yellow sprays, green spikes of leaves, red pointed petals and curled heads of blue and white among the litter of the forks and crumbs and plates the flowers remain composed. Cooly their colloquy continues above the coffee and loud talk grown frail as vaudeville. TULIP BED The May sun--whom all things imitate-- that glues small leaves to the wooden trees shone from the sky through bluegauze clouds upon the ground. Under the leafy trees where the suburban streets lay crossed, with houses on each corner, tangled shadows had begun to join the roadway and the lawns. With excellent precision the tulip bed inside the iron fence upreared its gaudy yellow, white and red, rimmed round with grass, reposedly. THE BIRDS The world begins again! Not wholly insufflated the blackbirds in the rain upon the dead topbranches of the living tree, stuck fast to the low clouds, notate the dawn. Their shrill cries sound announcing appetite and drop among the bending roses and the dripping grass. THE NIGHTINGALES My shoes as I lean unlacing them stand out upon flat worsted flowers under my feet. Nimbly the shadows of my fingers play unlacing over shoes and flowers. SPOUTS In this world of as fine a pair of breasts as ever I saw the fountain in Madison Square spouts up of water a white tree that dies and lives as the rocking water in the basin turns from the stonerim back upon the jet and rising there reflectively drops down again. BLUEFLAGS I stopped the car to let the children down where the streets end in the sun at the marsh edge and the reeds begin and there are small houses facing the reeds and the blue mist in the distance with grapevine trellises with grape clusters small as strawberries on the vines and ditches running springwater that continue the gutters with willows over them. The reeds begin like water at a shore their pointed petals waving dark green and light. But blueflags are blossoming in the reeds which the children pluck chattering in the reeds high over their heads which they part with bare arms to appear with fists of flowers till in the air there comes the smell of calamus from wet, gummy stalks. THE WIDOW'S LAMENT IN SPRINGTIME Sorrow is my own yard where the new grass flames as it has flamed often before but not with the cold fire that closes round me this year. Thirtyfive years I lived with my husband. The plumtree is white today with masses of flowers. Masses of flowers load the cherry branches and color some bushes yellow and some red but the grief in my heart is stronger than they for though they were my joy formerly, today I notice them and turn away forgetting. Today my son told me that in the meadows, at the edge of the heavy woods in the distance, he saw trees of white flowers. I feel that I would like to go there and fall into those flowers and sink into the marsh near them. LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM Light hearted William twirled his November moustaches and, half dressed, looked from the bedroom window upon the spring weather. Heigh-ya! sighed he gaily leaning out to see up and down the street where a heavy sunlight lay beyond some blue shadows. Into the room he drew his head again and laughed to himself quietly twirling his green moustaches. PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR The birches are mad with green points the wood's edge is burning with their green, burning, seething--No, no, no. The birches are opening their leaves one by one. Their delicate leaves unfold cold and separate, one by one. Slender tassels hang swaying from the delicate branch tips-- Oh, I cannot say it. There is no word. Black is split at once into flowers. In every bog and ditch, flares of small fire, white flowers!--Agh, the birches are mad, mad with their green. The world is gone, torn into shreds with this blessing. What have I left undone that I should have undertaken O my brother, you redfaced, living man ignorant, stupid whose feet are upon this same dirt that I touch--and eat. We are alone in this terror, alone, face to face on this road, you and I, wrapped by this flame! Let the polished plows stay idle, their gloss already on the black soil. But that face of yours--! Answer me. I will clutch you. I will hug you, grip you. I will poke my face into your face and force you to see me. Take me in your arms, tell me the commonest thing that is in your mind to say, say anything. I will understand you--! It is the madness of the birch leaves opening cold, one by one. My rooms will receive me. But my rooms are no longer sweet spaces where comfort is ready to wait on me with its crumbs. A darkness has brushed them. The mass of yellow tulips in the bowl is shrunken. Every familiar object is changed and dwarfed. I am shaken, broken against a might that splits comfort, blows apart my careful partitions, crushes my house and leaves me--with shrinking heart and startled, empty eyes--peering out into a cold world. In the spring I would drink! In the spring I would be drunk and lie forgetting all things. Your face! Give me your face, Yang Kue Fei! your hands, your lips to drink! Give me your wrists to drink-- I drag you, I am drowned in you, you overwhelm me! Drink! Save me! The shad bush is in the edge of the clearing. The yards in a fury of lilac blossoms are driving me mad with terror. Drink and lie forgetting the world. And coldly the birch leaves are opening one by one. Coldly I observe them and wait for the end. And it ends. THE LONELY STREET School is over. It is too hot to walk at ease. At ease in light frocks they walk the streets to while the time away. They have grown tall. They hold pink flames in their right hands. In white from head to foot, with sidelong, idle look-- in yellow, floating stuff, black sash and stockings-- touching their avid mouths with pink sugar on a stick-- like a carnation each holds in her hand-- they mount the lonely street. THE GREAT FIGURE Among the rain and lights I saw the figure 5 in gold on a red firetruck moving with weight and urgency tense unheeded to gong clangs siren howls and wheels rumbling through the dark city. 
35714	----	HOW SHE FELT IN HER FIRST CORSET AND OTHER POEMS. BY MATT. W. ALDERSON. Let all thy actions have a motive true; Inwardly feel and love whate'er you do; Naught but wrong acts e'er cause the blush of shame, And, right yourself, then scorn another's blame. BUTTE, MONTANA: PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR. 1887. COPYRIGHT, 1887. BY MATT. W. ALDERSON. BUTTE, MONTANA: PRESS OF THE MINER PUBLISHING CO. SECOND THOUSAND. HOW SHE FELT IN HER FIRST CORSET. It occurred at Belgrade, where the genial Tom Quaw, Gave a party, the first that the town ever saw; The youth and the beauty, the tillers of soil, Attended that night, seeking surcease from toil. There were farmers whose hair had a tinge of the gray; There were maidens than whom none were ever more gay; There were youths who could ride anything that wears hair, And matrons whose faces showed lines of dull care. Of the ladies who on this occasion took part, Some were dressed in the nobbiest style of the art; And the others, unmindful of fashion's decrees, Were attired to have much more comfort and ease. There was one blushing damsel, just budding sixteen, Whose waist by a corset ne'er encircled had been, But whose mother insisted that on such a night One should find a place there, and the lacing be tight. So the girl was rigged out as the mother desired, But of dancing 'twas noticed the damsel soon tired. "What's the matter?" was asked by some one at her side. "I feel just like bucking," the maiden replied. A LOVER'S VALENTINE. Sweetheart of mine, A valentine, In duty bound, I send thee, And wish that joy, Free from alloy, May evermore attend thee. Near, or apart, Still may thy heart To mine in friendship nestle; For strong and free, In love for thee, 'Gainst countless foes I'd wrestle. Since I am thine, Pray do be mine, My heart prompts me to ask thee; Thy charming face, And matchless grace, I own have quite possessed me. TO THOSE WHO HOLD THE GUIDING REINS. I have observed a steed, proud-spirited, Lashed by a cruel driver till the sweat Stood out in beaded drops upon his side; And, oftimes, tears have welled up in my eyes As in my mind I've pictured human hearts Lashed thus by cruel words and goaded on. Then when, at other times, the same proud steed Has passed along the street with arched neck, With every motion breathing force and vim, I've noticed kindness held the guiding reins And kept in check the zealous prancer's power. My mind has pictured then, with kindlier glow, A heart ambitious, far too keen to go, Kept by sweet loving words in proper bounds; And deepest gratitude, at such a time, Wells up for those who hold the guiding reins. HIS FACE IS HIS FORTUNE. "His face is his fortune;" Yes, seldom we see One for "tick" importune, As boldly as he. Like one who has riches Acquired by gift, He laughs at the stitches Of gainer by thrift, For face is his treasure, And why keep in bank? One cannot find pleasure With pocket-book lank. So credit he uses Where'er it will pass, And always abuses The laboring class. But "cheek" is like iron That's coated with tin, It has a nice face on, But one rather thin. A LOVE LETTER AND ITS ANSWER. A MONTANIAN TO HIS SWEETHEART. Darling, I love thee! Other words might tell A trifle of how dear thou art to me, But these tell all. Of thee I might have said, And said in truth, at that, that all thy ways, Thine every motion, look and glance, as well, Did charm the inmost recess of my soul: In words of praise, and those in justice due, I might the beauties of thy mind portray; For they outrival charms that in thy face I see, as elsewhere I have failed to find: Thy modesty, thy grace, thy love of all That tends to elevate, to purify, And make a fellow mortal happier, I might have dwelt on to a length that thou, And thou alone, deserves from one whose pen Is feeble in thy praise as is mine own. Still, had I done so, and withheld the words, "I love thee!" I had never told thee half. I love thee, darling! Ah! indeed, I do! Beyond the shadow of a doubt, I love, And such a one as any prince or king Might gladly love and proudly call his own. But, come to think, this love is all I have: No titled rank is mine--no Astor's wealth; And one you know, can't live on love alone; Ah, no! But better starve for lack of bread Than want of love; for when we starve for bread, And hunger knaws with all its well-known force, A day and all desire for food grows weak, And in its stead one craves but rest and sleep: These come, and few the days ere dreamless sleep Supplies the place of all desires and pains. But, starve for love, and when doth come relief? The weary soul still lives, or drags along-- As pris'ner doomed for life goes to his work; Ambitionless it moves, its purpose dead, Yet ling'ring like 'twere powerless to go; Struggling 'twixt hope and fear, as thro' the bars A gleam of sunshine flitters now and then, Glad'ning the while it shines, to leave more dark The gloomy dungeon of an unloved life; Moving, as moves the lifeless rock or ore When those with life exert o'er it their power; Living! Ah, yes! But devil never cursed His vilest victim with a death so dread; Standing, as stands an engine on the track, Perfectly built in all its mighty parts, Its boiler and its furnace amply fed, Yet powerless. But, let the flame of love Touch but one splinter of the waiting pyre, And all is changed. In gladsome bounds the blaze Leaps on and on, till burning with one flame, The fire warms the slumb'ring soul to life; Warms till, as love directs, its living proves-- When under wisdom's hands--man's highest bliss. Yes, when love fills the heart, behold how strong, How powerful one stands! His muscles ache With pure strength, and long for that on which Their latent power to show; and not alone In idle longings doth a lover stand, But works alike with both his head and hands To gain desired ends. Doth one lack means? Then love supplies a purpose and desire, And rests not still till they are at command. Doth one feel weak? Then love doth make him strong. Is one a slave to appetite or care? Then love doth free him from the galling chains. Doth one lack knowledge or attainments rare? Then love spurs on till all of these are gained. Yes love, and that alone, is all I have; But, darling, having that, I offer thee More than all else another man can give, Who hath abundance, and is rich in all Save love, and that for thee, and thee alone. This is my plea. I stand and wait my fate. If thou dost love me, darling, tell me so; If not--but that can never be, I know. THE ANSWER SHE GAVE HIM. Your note to me, of recent date, Where you are so importunate, Has been received, and I have read, With greatest care, what you have said. I am quite pleased that you can see So much to praise in one like me, And only wish that I could say Nice things in such a pretty way. But, tell me! do you really think That love is better than "the chink?" Why, money rules the world to-day, With strong and unresistless sway! 'Tis little schoolboys talk of love. But as they older grow, improve; While girls, though they be very young, Know better but may hold their tongue. If you have money, then you can Go where you will, and be a man; But if you're poor--a genius, too-- Your family can be but blue, While oft you'll wish for food to eat, And for firm friends your heart to greet. You own you're poor, yet ask of me To share a poor man's misery! Why men would be real scarce indeed, Ere I should think to feel the need Of one who nothing has but love! Poor men abound where'er we rove, And I can get one any day: (When rich, pray call around this way). Suppose we loved, and married were, And fortune gave to us an heir, Pray who would nurse and care for it? Who train its mind? who mould its wit? Who'd wash the dishes, cook the food, Do out-door chores, and cut the wood? What buggy rides would I receive? How many friends would to me cleave? And then there's concerts to attend, And other places, that transcend The theaters and balls that now We with unstinted praise endow. Oh, no! don't ask of me to wed A loving fellow, though his head Be better filled with brains than those Who dress themselves in finer clothes: I want a man who's rich in stocks-- (D'ye think I'd ever darn old socks?) You talk of love and lovers bold, As though I'd care if icy cold Were heart of him to whom with pride My loving heart I'd fondly tied. I would be rich and nothing care, For I'd have lover's everywhere; And when of one I tired grew, I'd take my pick and love anew. Now don't be angry with me, pray, For what I've written you to-day; You were to me so frank and true I could not well be less to you; So I have said what all must feel, Though some, I know, the facts conceal. Then do not seek just now to wed, But wait until you're rich, instead. THE BABY'S CLOTHES. Let poets praise, as in days gone by, The wealth of a loving maiden's sigh; The bliss ecstatic of every bride, And honeymoon pleasures that ne'er subside; I sing of a happier time than those, The time when making the baby's clothes. A girlish heart may o'erflow with joy When with the one she would call "her boy," And a doting wife may fail to cloy A heart kept free from every alloy; But joys surpassing the sweetest of those Come when preparing the baby's clothes. A SISTER'S LOVE. They say that the angels look down from above And watch us wherever we stray; That they are the beings that guide us in love And bring us the joys of the day. I am glad it is so, and thank them to-night For the wealth of a sister's love, For of all the pleasures they bring to as here That's nearest the joys above. I've felt so real often as in my arms I've clasped her form and kissed her; But the girl that I kissed was not my own, She was another fellow's sister. A SCHOOL-MA'AM'S STORY. I was a teacher then, as now, And made a little spending money. By training big and little sprouts, In a mining town called Pony. One night the biggest boy I had, For having cracked a rigid rule, Was bade to stay and con his books Some fifteen minutes after school. I for a moment turned my back-- On other duties then intent-- The fellow slyly raised a sash And through the opening quickly went. Next eve, as extra punishment, I gave him minutes forty-five; And, lest he play the prank again, I kept my every sense alive. The task performed, he left the room;-- The sun was shining then, no more,-- And when, soon afterwards, I left, I found him waiting at the door. "'Tis getting late," the youth remarked, "For ladies to be out alone, And, may I have the pleasure, Miss, Of seeing that you're safely home?" I smiled and took the gallant's arm, What else could anybody do? I've liked the fellow ever since And have no doubt he likes me too. TRUE LOVE. Ask of the winds, that all around In saddest requiem blow, Wherein, and where alone, is found True happiness below; And when "in love" their answer is, Would you love's secret know? Consider both have equal rights, And treat each other so. Thus sang a poet months ago, As o'er the world he roamed And saw the home of dearest friends, To desolation doomed; A home where, years before, the bride With heart of joy and glee, Had welcomed to her heart's embrace A bud of misery. "A bud of misery," you say? Yes, thinking it a rose, And little dreaming that its folds No fragrance did enclose: But so the after years have shown, And blighted hearts are found Where once affection reigned supreme, And spread its joys around. He loved her, but he never thought That love should be expressed, And slights that caused her keenest pain, He never once redressed; To me he often wished he'd been To her a better man; But urged to tell his wife as much, He would not brook the plan. Oh, ye! on whom some heart depends, For all its store of bliss, Withhold not from that tender soul The loving word and kiss; But, give expression to your love, And make its bliss complete, By giving those within your home Unfettered love to greet. WE'VE GROWN APART IN ALL THESE YEARS. We were firm friends in years gone by, Were classmates at the school, And kept each other company, Against the master's rule. For he was righteous and he taught: "No boys with girls shall play!" I wonder if he really thought They'd lead us all astray. "No messages shall pass between The scholars in this school! And, woe to him who first is seen To violate this rule!" By fear and awe were all oppressed And knew not what to do: But I, more bold than all the rest, Sent Kate my billets-doux. She answered them, and sweeter notes A lover never read; I've often wondered since that time They never turned my head. And when our daily tasks were o'er, Away from school we ran To meet within some leafy dell And both our futures plan. But now she meets me with reserve, No welcome, as of yore; No parting with a warm embrace, No kisses at the door. Another fellow charms her now; She's children pert and tripper And, many a time, upon her knee, She spanks them with her slipper. POLITICAL ECONOMY. CHAPTER I--PRODUCTION. A youth, not handsome from an outward view, Whose features stern belied the mellowness That dwelt behind his earnest, steadfast look, Delved in his heart upon a summer day And found therein a narrow vein of love. The prospect pleased, and on development He found the mine was rich. For years he worked And piled in heaps the ore upon the dump. Deep 'neath the mountain ridges of his heart He branched out levels on the silvered streak, And found almost exhaustless hidden wealth. He sought association, and he found A friend who brought the skill to treat the ore. He wasted not the wealth by labor won, But, when refined, he stored the bricks away, Until within himself there was no space, And he was but a treasure house of love. CHAPTER II--EXCHANGE. The youth is lost. Behold, on manhood's verge, Our hero now. A market for his ware He seeks at home in vain. There smallest coins Supply the daily needs, and he must seek A distant shore, and one to coin his wealth. Undauntedly, despite unbroken paths, Unheeding storms and floods, he presses on To reach her side. An aged man stands guard, And yet he marches up the walks unchecked. His very boldness awes. A maiden there Is pleased with what he brings, and from her heart She gladly pays him golden coin therefor. She mints her boughten wealth, and later on They meet again. They ride the garden gate. Proximity, free trade promote exchange. She pays him back his own, each coin a kiss. The market steady rules, demand is strong. Supply exhaustless. 'Tis called a fair exchange, And yet they both are richer made thereby. CHAPTER III--CONSUMPTION. Beneath her father's roof we see them next, And at the altar plight their faith--each heart By love firm bound, and yet by love left free. The years roll by and for the staff of life They live on love. They need conveniences, And love provides them all. Their luxuries Are daily feasts of love. There are some days When, overcome by care and household toils, Her heart is faint, but when she seeks his side She meets love's sweet caress and cheering kiss, And wonders that her spirits ever drooped. He never leaves her side but with a kiss, And, when they meet again, he clasps her form And plants love's token on her waiting lips. Would'st thou the secret know, of happy homes? 'Tis gallantries like these that make them so. At times when prostrate on her bed she lays, She makes sad inroads on his stock of wealth; Still, freely, lavishly he gives it her, And wooes her back to health again, thro' love. About the hearth a troop of children comes, And as he soothes and cheers their restless hearts, His garnered wealth, like snow, fast melts away. The mine can be depended on no more; Old age creeps on apace, and in his heart He feels the strained timbers giving 'way. He feeds now on the wealth in other days Invested where 'twould bring a safe return. With tottering steps yet proud he walks the streets, And still has smiles for everyone he meets. CHAPTER IV--DISTRIBUTION. Upon his bed with withered, palsied frame, Behold an aged man! A life well spent Is drawing to a close. About him stand The loved ones of his home. They prop him up As with a halting voice, yet clear, he speaks: "My treasured store of love will soon be yours. Waste not the capital I leave behind In shedding bitter tears above my grave; I shall not feel thy love, and if I should, 'Twould make me sad to see you weeping there; As thou dost love me, seek and cheer the hearts That find life's road a sad and lonesome way; My dying wish, yes children, my command, Is that you love--yes, love--each oth--er here." He breathes no more. The last sad rites performed, The hearts bereaved return with saddened step And enters once again upon life's tasks. The father's dying wish rings in their ears; They check the flow of tears and rise above The grief that bends them low. Love flows again, And on the gates the youths and maidens fair Are gaily swinging back and forth once more, Fresh coinage from the mint is passing now, And, as we walk the streets, upon the air There rings a sound that proves the metal true. 
36051	----	COLORS OF LIFE NEW POETRY: FALL 1918 _By Robert Graves_ FAIRIES AND FUSILIERS _By Gilbert Frankau_ THE OTHER SIDE _By Max Eastman_ COLORS OF LIFE _By Kahlil Gibran_ THE MADMAN COLORS OF LIFE POEMS AND SONGS AND SONNETS BY MAX EASTMAN NEW YORK ALFRED A. KNOPF MCMXVIII COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA A PREFACE ABOUT AMERICAN POETRY It is impossible for me, feeling and watching the eternal tidal currents of liberty and individual life against tyranny and the type, which are clashing and rearing up their highest crimsoned waves at this hour, to publish without some word of deprecation a book of poems so personal for the most part, and reflecting my own too easy taste of freedom rather than my share in the world's struggle towards an age and universe of it. That struggle has always occupied my thoughts, and often my energies, and yet I have never identified myself with it or found my undivided being there. I have found that rather in individual experience and in those moments of energetic idleness when the life of universal nature seemed to come to its bloom of realization in my consciousness. Life is older than liberty. It is greater than revolution. It burns in both camps. And life is what I love. And though I love life for all men and women, and so inevitably stand in the ranks of revolution against the cruel system of these times, I loved it first for myself. Its essence--the essence of life--is variety and specific depth, and it can not be found in monotonous consecration to a general principle. Therefore I have feared and avoided this consecration, which earnest friends for some reason always expect me to exemplify, and my poetry has never entered, even so deeply as it might, into those tempests of social change that are coloring our thoughts today. Poetry that has life for its subject, and untempered reality, is rather expected to manifest that irregular flow and exuberance of material over structure with which Walt Whitman challenged the world. In America at least the freedom and poignant candor of strong art is associated with the tradition that he founded, and little is granted to that other tradition which finds its original in Edgar Allan Poe. There existed in Europe, however, a succession of poets whose eyes turned back in admiration to Poe, and they were the poets of reality and those who touched the mood of social revolt. And for my part I think there is a modern validity in the attitudes of both these poets, and a certain adjudication between them which a perfectly impersonal science might propose. Every one who reads this book will be familiar, I suppose, with Walt Whitman's ideal of an American poetry so free and strong and untrammelled of ornamentation that it should go out of the books it was published in and stand up with the hills and forests on the earth. "The Poetry of the future," he said. CONTENTS AMERICAN IDEALS OF POETRY--A PREFACE 13 POEMS COMING TO PORT 43 THE LONELY BATHER 45 IN MY ROOM 46 HOURS 47 FIRE AND WATER 48 YOU MAKE NO ANSWER 49 OUT OF A DARK NIGHT 50 A MORNING 51 ANNIVERSARY 52 AUTUMN LIGHT 53 A MODERN MESSIAH 54 IN A RED CROSS HOSPITAL 55 A VISIT 56 TO LOVE 58 CAR-WINDOW 59 LITTLE FISHES 60 INVOCATION 61 SOMETIMES 62 TO MARIE SUKLOFF--AN ASSASSIN 63 TO AN ACTRESS 65 EYES 66 X RAYS 67 SONNETS A PREFACE ABOUT SONNETS 71 A PRAISEFUL COMPLAINT 74 THOSE YOU DINED WITH 75 THE PASSIONS OF A CHILD 76 AS THE CRAG EAGLE 77 TO MY FATHER 78 TO EDWARD S. MARTIN 79 EUROPE--1914 80 ISADORA DUNCAN 81 THE SUN 82 THE NET 83 A DUNE SONNET 84 SONGS SEA-SHORE 87 RAINY SONG 88 A HYMN TO GOD 90 COMING SPRING 91 DAISIES 92 BOBOLINK 93 DIOGENES 94 EARLIER POEMS A PREFACE ABOUT THEIR PHILOSOPHY 97 AT THE AQUARIUM 102 EARTH'S NIGHT 103 THE THOUGHT OF PROTAGORAS 104 TO THE ASCENDING MOON 107 LEIF ERICSON 110 MIDNIGHT 116 IN MARCH 117 THE FLOWERS AT CHURCH 118 TO THE LITTLE BED AT NIGHT 120 IN A DUNGEON OF RUSSIA 121 TO A TAWNY THRUSH 125 THE SAINT GAUDENS STATUES 127 SUMMER SUNDAY 129 AMERICAN IDEALS OF POETRY A PREFACE It is impossible for me, feeling and watching the eternal tidal currents of liberty and individual life against tyranny and the type, which are clashing and rearing up their highest crimsoned waves at this hour, to publish without some word of deprecation a book of poems so personal for the most part, and reflecting my own too easy taste of freedom rather than my sense of the world's struggle towards an age and universe of it. That struggle has always occupied my thoughts, and often my energies, and yet I have never identified myself with it or found my undivided being there. I have found that rather in individual experience, and in those moments of energetic idleness when the life of universal nature seemed to come to its bloom of realization in my consciousness. Life is older than liberty. It is greater than revolution. It burns in both camps. And life is what I love. And though I love life for all men and women, and so inevitably stand in the ranks of revolution against the cruel system of these times, I love it also for myself. And its essence--the essence of life--is variety and specific depth. It can not be found in monotonous consecration to a general principle. Therefore I have feared and avoided this consecration, which earnest friends for some reason always expect me to exemplify, and my poetry has never entered even so deeply as it might into those tempests of social change that are coloring our thoughts today. Poetry that has life for its subject, and democratic reality, is rather expected to manifest that irregular flow and exuberance of material over structure with which Walt Whitman challenged the world. In America at least the freedom and poignant candor of strong art is associated with the tradition that he founded, and little is granted to that other tradition which finds its original in Edgar Allan Poe. There existed in Europe, however, a succession of poets whose eyes turned back in admiration to Poe, and they were poets of reality, and those who touched the mood of democratic revolt. And for my part I think there is a modern validity in the attitudes of both these poets, a certain adjudication between them which a perfectly impersonal science might propose; and that is what I should like to discuss with those who may enter sympathetically into this little volume. They will all be familiar, I suppose, with Walt Whitman's ideal of an American poetry so free and strong and untrammelled of ornamentation, that it should go out of the books it was published in and stand up with the hills and forests on the earth. "The poetry of the future," he said, "aims at the free expression of emotion, (which means far, far more than appears at first,) and to arouse and initiate, more than to define or finish.... "In my opinion the time has arrived to essentially break down the barriers of form between prose and poetry. I say the latter is henceforth to win and maintain its character regardless of rhyme, and the measurement-rules of iambic, spondee, dactyl, &c., and that even if rhyme and those measurements continue to furnish the medium for inferior writers and themes, (especially for persiflage and the comic, as there seems henceforward, to the perfect taste, something inevitably comic in rhyme, merely in itself, and anyhow,) the truest and greatest _Poetry_, (while subtly and necessarily always rhythmic, and distinguishable easily enough,) can never again, in the English language, be express'd in arbitrary and rhyming metre, any more than the greatest eloquence, or the truest power and passion. While admitting that the venerable and heavenly forms of chiming versification have in their time play'd great and fitting parts--that the pensive complaint, the ballads, wars, amours, legends of Europe, &c., have, many of them, been inimitably render'd in rhyming verse--that there have been very illustrious poets whose shapes the mantle of such verse has beautifully and appropriately envelopt--and though the mantle has fallen, with perhaps added beauty, on some of our own age--it is, notwithstanding, certain to me, that the day of such conventional rhyme is ended. In America, at any rate, and as a medium of highest aesthetic practical or spiritual expression, present or future, it palpably fails, and must fail, to serve. The Muse of the Prairies, of California, Canada, Texas, and of the peaks of Colorado, dismissing the literary, as well as social etiquette of over-sea feudalism and caste, joyfully enlarging, adapting itself to comprehend the size of the whole people, with the free play, emotions, pride, passions, experiences, that belong to them, body and soul--to the general globe, and all its relations in astronomy, as the savans portray them to us--to the modern, the busy Nineteenth century, (as grandly poetic as any, only different,) with steamships, railroads, factories, electric telegraphs, cylinder presses--to the thought of the solidarity of nations, the brotherhood and sisterhood of the entire earth--to the dignity and heroism of the practical labor of farms, factories, foundries, workshops, mines, or on ship-board, or on lakes and rivers--resumes that other medium of expression, more flexible, more eligible--soars to the freer, vast, diviner heaven of prose." It may surprise some people to see this monumental challenge to the poets of the future confronted with the pathetic memory of Edgar Allan Poe. And yet it is natural to place these two poets in contrast, and the weight neither of genius nor of influence is altogether upon one side. They are the two American poets of unique distinction, and they are the fountains of the two strongest influences in all modern poetry of the occident. And it is worth observing that if Walt Whitman had written as few pages of poetry as Poe did, his name would hardly be remembered, whereas Poe would have established a literary tradition if he had written but five sorrowful lyrics. His individuality was so poignant. His art was so exquisite. And not only was his art exquisite, but his philosophy of his art was as unique, assertive, and prodigious in contempt for his predecessors, as that of Walt Whitman. I have never read anything about any art more sheer and startling in its kind, than Poe's essay on "The Philosophy of Composition"; and nothing more energetically opposite to Walt Whitman could possibly be devised. To convey the flavor of the contrast, I quote these sentences--inadequate for any other purpose--from Poe's essay: "Most writers--poets in especial--prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy--an ecstatic intuition; and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought, at the true purposes seized only at the last moment, at the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view, at the fully matured fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable, at the cautious selections and rejections, at the painful erasures and interpolations--in a word, at the wheels and pinions, the tackle for scene-shifting, the step-ladders and demon-traps, the cock's feathers, the red paint and the black patches.... "For my own part, I have neither sympathy with the repugnance alluded to, nor at any time the least difficulty in recalling to mind the progressive steps of any of my compositions; and, since the interest of an analysis, or reconstruction, such as I have considered a _desideratum_, is quite independent of any real or fancied interest in the thing analyzed, it will not be regarded as a breach of decorum on my part to show the _modus operandi_ by which some one of my own works was put together. I select 'The Raven' as most generally known.... "Let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem _per se_, the circumstance--or say the necessity--which in the first place gave rise to the intention of composing _a_ poem that should suit at once the popular and critical taste. "We commence, then, with this intention. "The initial consideration was that of extent. If any literary work is too long to be read at one sitting, we must be content to dispense with the immensely important effect derivable from unity of impression; for, if two sittings be required, the affairs of the world interfere, and everything like totality is at once destroyed.... "My next thought concerned the choice of an impression, or effect, to be conveyed: and here I may as well observe that, throughout the construction, I kept steadily in view the design of rendering the work _universally_ appreciable. I should be carried too far out of my immediate topic were I to demonstrate a point upon which I have repeatedly insisted, and which with the poetical stands not in the slightest need of demonstration--the point, I mean, that Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.... "But in subjects so handled, however skilfully, or with however vivid an array of incident, there is always a certain hardness or nakedness, which repels the artistical eye. Two things are invariably required: first, some amount of complexity, or more properly, adaptation; and, second, some amount of suggestiveness, some under-current, however indefinite, of meaning. It is this latter, in especial, which imparts to a work of art so much of that _richness_ (to borrow from colloquy a forcible term) which we are too fond of confounding with _the ideal_." The opposition of these two characters and attitudes is complete. Upon the one side a vast preoccupation with human meaning and morals, with health and the common reality and love and democracy, a grand contempt for beauty, and for the effort to attract or gratify a reader with "verbal melody," a contempt for everything that savors of deliberate technique in art. Upon the other side also contempt--contempt like a piece of cold analytical steel for every pretense that the technique of art is not deliberate, that poets are not seeking to attract and gratify, that truth or moral or meaning instead of beauty is the portent of a poem--a disposition to seek beauty in unique and even unhealthy places, a lonely aristocratic heart of pain, and a preoccupation with "verbal melody" never before or since equalled in poetry. The details of this difference are fascinating, but the generalization of it is what will illumine the modern problems about poetry. To Edgar Allan Poe a poem was an objective thing, to Walt Whitman poetry was an act of subjective expression. Poe would take sounds and melodies of words almost actually into his hands, and carve and model them until he had formed a beautiful vessel, and he would take emotions and imaginations out of his heart and weave and inlay them in that vessel, and even the crimson out of his blood, and finally for "enrichment" he would seek out in his mind the hue of some meaning or moral to pour over it until it was perfect. And these beautiful vessels he would set forth for view and purchase, standing aside from them like a creative trader, proud, but no more identified with them than as though he had made them out of the colors of shells. To Walt Whitman a poem was not a thing. His poetry was himself. His meanings, emotions, experiences, love and wonder of life, filled him and he overflowed in language--without "art," without purpose but to communicate his being. So he maintained. His poem was never an object to him, even after it had flowed full and he sought to perfect its contours. His emendations were not often objective improvements; they were private remodellings to make the language a more direct and fluent identity with what he considered himself. This was the task upon which he labored as the poet of democracy and social love. Now, it is not merely an accident, or a reflection upon America or upon human nature, that Walt Whitman, with all his yearnings over the average American and his offering of priesthood and poetry to the people, should remain the poet of a rather esoteric few, whereas Poe--even with the handful of poems he wrote--may be said to be acceptable to the generality of men. The Raven, or Helen, or Annabelle Lee, or some sad musical echo of the death of beauty, might be found in illuminated covers on the most "average" of American parlor tables, but never anything there of Walt Whitman--unless it be "Captain, My Captain!" the one rather weak metrical poem he deigned to write. And there is something deeply and really pathetic in this fact, and something which only an adequate science of verse can explain. For the emotions and the meanings of Walt Whitman's poetry are actually the ones that interest simple and thoughtful people who have leisure to feel. His realizations of life would be acceptable and be honored, as much at least as great art is ever honored, by the "divine average," if they had been conveyed, as Poe's were, in vessels of light, which would make them objective, and from which they might brim over with excess of subjective meaning and emotion. I do not mean to express a wish that Walt Whitman had conveyed them so, or the opinion that he could have been a more stupendous poetic and moral hero of nature by writing otherwise than he did. His propulsive determination to put forth in this facile nineteenth century culture, sweet with the decay and light with the remnant fineries of feudal grandeur, the original, vast, unfinished substance of man, was a phenomenon like the rising of a volcanic continent amid ships on the sea. No word but the words in his book can portray the magnitude of his achievement; no critic but Envy could judge it except as itself and by its own standard. But as a prophetic example of the poems of the future, and especially the poems of democracy and social love, it suffers a weakness--the weakness that Walt Whitman's character suffered. It is egocentric and a little inconsiderate of the importance of other people. Walt Whitman composed wonderful passages about universal social love, but he could not be the universal poet exactly because he was not social enough. He was not humble enough to be social. The rebel egoism of democracy was in him the lordly and compelling thing, and though his love for the world was prodigious, it was not the kind of love that gives attention instinctively to the egoism of others. There may be no grand passion for the idea, but there is a natural companionship with the fact of "democracy," in Poe's statement that he "kept steadily in view the design of rendering the work universally appreciable," and that statement more characteristically distinguishes his attitude from Walt Whitman's than the different ways they had of talking about beauty. All poets who mould their poems objectively, even though they may conceive themselves to be utterly alone with beauty, are really in social communion with humanity. For that is what the word _objective_ means. An object, or as we say, a "thing," differs from other elements of our experience only in that it can be experienced in the same form at different times and by different persons. And for an object to be beautiful is for it to hold value in itself, so that various perceivers may come from all sides and find it there. Therefore one who moulds an object towards external perfection, however sad his solitude, enters directly into the "universal friendship" toward which Walt Whitman directed so much of the longing of his words. One who pours out phrases direct from his emotion may experience a relief and glory that implies listeners, and he may win listeners, but they will each rebuild out of his phrases their own different poem, and they will comprise in their number only those endowed with the special power to build poems out of phrases poured out. And whatever we may wish were true of the world, it is not true that the majority are so endowed. Therefore the poetry that is highly subjective is almost inevitably the poetry of a few; and the "direct expression of emotion" achieves a less clear and general social communion than the embodiment of emotion in an object of art. It could be established, I believe, with mechanical precision, that the rhythmic values most cherished by the social rebels who now write so much "free verse," are values practically incommunicable to others, and absolutely incommunicable by the method usually adopted, that of printing words on a page. A little of that icy matter-of-fact realism with which Poe used to scatter the sweet foggy thoughts of the literarious, while it might not affect the art of these poets, would surely reduce the volume of what they have to say about it. For instance, here is the answer of one of them to an assertion that the line division in free-verse is "arbitrary," and that if we copied one of these long poems in solid prose, the poet himself could hardly ever divide it again as it was: "Free verse that is free verse is _not_ arbitrary. Much of it is, of course--so are many canvases mere splashy imitations of Matisse. But there is free verse that resolves itself into just those lines--a little more subtly than sonnets or triolets--by virtue of pauses, of heart-beats, of the quickness or slowness of your breath, and maybe of your pulse itself.... It tries to give the rhythm value of those hesitations, those quickenings and slowings of the flow of ideas, the flutterings--it is _closer to the breath_, as modern music and modern dance are, or as primitive music and primitive dance were." It is impossible not to respond to such assertions, for we know in ourselves what these exquisite differential experiences are. Any one who has ever written love-letters--which are a kind of aboriginal free-verse--knows what they are. And yet I believe it is obvious, if not demonstrable, that most of them are too individual to be communicated even to a lover. Human nature is too various for it to be true that the same hesitations, the same quickenings and slowings of the flow of ideas, flutterings of the breath or pulse, will reproduce themselves in another upon the perception of the same visible symbols. And while this fact may make the art of composition seem a little monotonous, it is better that art should be monotonous than that the world should. And it would be a monotonous world in which different people were so much alike, or we ourselves so much alike at different moments, that these minute filigrees of feeling should be altogether durable and capable of being served round in paper and ink. There are values of verbal rhythm in a flow of thought and feeling which exist for one individual alone, and for him once only. There are other values less delicate which he can reproduce in himself at will, but can not altogether communicate to other minds whose thoughts and feelings are too much their own. There are other values, still less delicate, which he might communicate by vocal utterance and rhythmic gesture, taking possession as it were of the very pulse and respiration of others. But poetry which is composed for publication ought to occupy itself with those rhythmic values which may be communicated to other rhythmic minds through the printing of words on a page. It ought to do this, at least, if it pretends to an attitude that is even in the most minute degree social. A mature science of rhythm might be imagined to stride into the room where these poets are discussing the musical values of their verse, seize two or three of the most "free" and subtle among them, lock them into separate sound-proof chambers, and allow them to read one of their favorite passages into the ear of an instrument designed to record in spatial outline the pulsations of vocal accent. It is safe to assert that there would be less identity in the actual pulsations recorded than if the same two were reading a passage of highly wrought English prose.[1] And the reason for this is that free verse imports into English prose a form of punctuation that is exceedingly gross and yet absolutely inconsequential. Its line division has neither a metrical nor a logical significance that exists objectively. It can mean at any time anything that is desirable to the whims, or needful to the difficulties, of the reader or the writer. It is a very sign and instrument of subjectivity. To incorporate in a passage of printed symbols an indeterminate element so marked and so frequent as that, is to say to the reader--"Take the passage and organize it into whatever rhythmical pattern may please yourself." And that is what the reader of free verse usually does, knowing that if he comes into any great difficulty, he can make a full stop at the end of some line, and shift the gears of his rhythm altogether. And since it is possible for one who is rhythmically gifted to organize _any indeterminate series of impressions whatever_ into an acceptable rhythm, he frequently produces a very enjoyable piece of music, which he attributes to the author and, having made it himself, is not unable to admire. Thus a good many poets who could hardly beat a going march on a base drum, are enabled by the gullibility and talent of their readers to come forward in this kind of writing as musicians of special and elaborate skill. The "freedom" that it gives them is not a freedom to build rhythms that are impossible in prose, but a freedom from the necessity to build actual and continuous rhythms. Free verse avails itself of the rhythmic appearance of poetry, and it avoids the extreme rhythmic difficulties of prose, and so it will certainly live as a supremely convenient way to write, among those not too strongly appealed to by the greater convenience of not writing. But as an object of the effort of ambitious artists I can not believe it will widely survive the knowledge that it is merely a convenience, a form of mumble and indetermination in their art. Walt Whitman, however he may have been deceived about the social and democratic character of his form, was not deceived, as the modern eulogists of free verse are, about its subtlety. He thought that he had gained in volume and directness of communion, but he knew that he was discarding subtlety, discarding in advance all those beautiful and decadent wonders of microscopic and morbid audacity that developed in France among the admirers of Poe. The modern disciples of his form, however, are materially of Poe's persuasion, and like to believe that they have in free verse an instrument expressly fitted for the communication of those wonders, and of the most delicate modulations of that "verbal melody" that Whitman scorned. In this, from the true standpoint of criticism, Whitman has a commanding advantage over them, and what can be said of free-verse in general can not be said of his poems. He did achieve the predominant thing that he aimed to achieve--he made his poetry rough and artless in spite of his fineness and art. He made it like the universe and like the presence of a man. In that triumph it will stand. In that character it will mould and influence the literature of democracy, because it will mould and influence all literature in all lands. "Who touches this book touches a man." There is, however, another ideal of poetry that Walt Whitman confused with this one, and that he no more exemplified in his form than he exemplified democratic and social communion. And this ideal is predominant too in the minds of his modern followers. It is the ideal of being natural, of being primitive, dismissing "refinements" and the tricks of literary sophistication. He wanted his poetry to sound with nature and the untutored heart of humanity. It was in the radiance of this desire that he spoke of rhythmical prose as a "vast diviner heaven," toward which poetry would move in its future development in America. Prose seemed diviner to him because it seemed more simple, more large with candor and directness. But here again a cool and clear science will show that his nature led him in a contrary direction from its ideal. The music of prose is only dissimilar to that of poetry in its complexity, its subtle and refined _dissimulation_ of the fundamental monotonous meter that exists, either expressed or implied, in the heart of all rhythmical experience. Persons who can read the rhythm of prose can do so because they have in their own breast, or intellect, a subdued or tacit perpetual standard pulse-beat, around which by various instinctive-mathematical tricks of substitution and syncopation they so arrange the accents of the uttered syllables that they fall in with its measure, and become one with it, increasing its momentum and its effect of entrancement upon the nerves and body. There is no rhythm without this metrical basis, no value in rhythm comparable to the trance that its thrilling monotony engenders. Its undulations are akin to the intrinsic character of neural motion, and that is why, almost as though it were a chemical thing--a stimulant and narcotic--it takes possession of our state-of-being and controls it. Poetry only naïvely acknowledges this ecstatic monotony that lives in the heart of all rhythm, brings it out into the light, and there openly weaves upon it the patterns of melodic sound. Poetry is thus the more natural, and both historically and psychologically, the more primitive of the two arts. It is the more simple. Meter, and even rhyme, which is but a colored, light drum-beat, accentuating the meter, are not "ornaments" or "refinements" of something else which may be called "rhythmical speech." They are the heart of rhythmical speech expressed and exposed with a perfectly childlike and candid grandeur. Prose is the refinement. Prose is the sophisticated and studio accomplishment--a thing that vast numbers of people have not the fineness of endowment or cultivation either to write or read. Prose is a civilized sublimation of poetry, in which the original healthy intoxicant note of the tom-tom is so laid over with fine traceries of related sound, that it can no longer be identified at all except by the analytical eye of science. Walt Whitman was not really playful and childlike enough to go back to nature. His poetry was less primitive and savage, than it was superhuman and sublime. His emotions were as though they came to him through a celestial telescope. There is something more properly savage--something at least truly barbarous--in a poem like Poe's "Bells." And in Poe's insistence upon "beauty" as the sole legitimate province of the poem--beauty, which he defines as a special and dispassionate "excitement of the soul"--he is nearer to the mood of the snake dance. Poetry was to him a deliberate perpetration of ecstasy. And one can see in reading his verses how he was attuned to sway and quiver to the mere syllabic singing of a kettledrum, until his naked visions grew more intense and lovely than the passions and real meanings of his life. It is actually primitive, as well as childlike, to play with poetry in this intense and yet unsanctimonious way that Poe did, and Baudelaire too, and Swinburne. Play is nearer to the heart of nature than aspiration. It is healthier perhaps too, and more to the taste of the future, than priesthood. I think the essence of what we call classical in an artist's attitude is his quite frank acknowledgment that--whatever great things may come of it--he is at play. The art of the Athenians was objective and overt about being what it is, because the Athenians were educated, as all free men should be, for play. They were making things, and the eagerness of their hearts flowed freely out like a child's through their eyes upon the things that they made. That pearl of adult degeneration, the self, was very little cultivated in Athens; the "artistic temperament" was unborn; and sin, and the perpetual yearning beyond of Christians, had not been thought of. A little group of isolated and exclusive miracles had not reduced all the true and current glories of life to a status of ignobility, so that every great thing must contain in itself intimations of otherness. The Athenians were radiantly willing, without any cosmical preparation or blare of moral resolve, to let the constellations stay where they are. It was their custom to "loaf and invite their souls," to be "satisfied--see, dance, laugh, sing." They were so maturely naïve that they would hardly understand what Walt Whitman, with his declarations of animal independence, was trying to recover from. And so it is by way of their happy and sun-loved city that we can most surely go back to nature. And when we have arrived at a mood that is really and childly natural--a mood that will play, even with aspiration, and will spontaneously make out of interesting materials "things" to play with, and when in that mood we give our interest to the materials of reality in our own time, then perhaps we shall find that we have arrived also at a poetry that belongs to the people. For people are, in the depths of them and on the average as they are born, still natural, still savage. And there is no doubt that nature never fashioned them to work harder, or be more serious, or filled with self-conscious purports, than was necessary. She meant them to live and flow out upon the world with the bright colors of their interest. And it will seem rather a fever in the light of universal history, this hot subjective meaningfulness of everything we modern occidentals value. The poets and the poet-painters of ancient China knew that all life and nature was so sacred with the miracle of being that only the lucid line and color was needed to command an immortal reverence. They loved perfection devoutly, as it will rarely be loved, but they too, with their gift of delicate freedom in kinship with nature, were at play. And in Japan even today--surviving from that time--there is a form of poetry that is objective and childlike, a making of toys, or of exquisite metrical gems of imaginative realization, and this is the only poetry in the world that is truly popular, and is loved and cultivated by a whole nation. If with this pagan and oriental love for the created thing--the same love that kept a light in Poe's sombre heart--we enter somewhat irreverently into Walt Whitman's volume, seeking our own treasure and not hesitating to remove it from its bed of immortal slag, we do find poems in new forms of exquisite and wonderful definition. Sometimes for the length of one or two or three lines, and occasionally for a stanza, and once for the whole poem--"When I heard at the close of the day"--Walt Whitman seems to love and achieve the carved concentration of image and emotion, the definite and thrilling chime of syllables along a chain that begins and ends and has a native way of uttering itself to all minds that are in tune. He seems, without losing that large grace of freedom from the pose and elegance of words in a book, which was his most original gift to the world, to possess himself of the mood that is truly primitive, and social, and intelligible to the hearts of simple people--the mood that loves with a curious wonder the poised and perfect existence of a thing. HUSH'D BE THE CAMPS Hush'd be the camps today; And, soldiers, let us drape our war-worn weapons; And each with musing soul retire, to celebrate, Our dear commander's death. No more for him life's stormy conflicts; Nor victory, nor defeat--no more time's dark events, Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky. RECONCILIATION Word over all, beautiful as the sky! Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost; That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil'd world.... These sculptural sentences, with their rhythmic and still clarity of form, if they had been the end and essence of his art, and not only a by-accident of inevitable genius, might have led the way, not perhaps to a great national poetry for America, but beyond that into something international and belonging to the universe of man. The step forward from them would not have been towards a greater sprawling and subjectifying of rhythmic and poetic character, but towards an increasing objective perfection which should still cling to the new and breathless thing, the presence of one who lives and speaks his heart naturally. I chose them, not only because they are among the most musical and imaginative lines that Walt Whitman wrote, but also because in bringing a mood that is calm and a lulling of wind in the world's agonies of hate, they show themselves to be deep. And so it will not be thought that when I say the poet of democracy will be a child who is at play with the making of things, I desire to narrow the range and poignancy of the things he will make. He will be free, and he will move with a knowing and profound mind among all the experiences and the dreams of men. But to whatever heights of rhapsody, or moral aspiration, or now unimaginable truth, he may come, he will come as a child, whose clear eyes and deliberate creative purposes are always appropriate and never to be apologized for, because they are the purposes of nature. FOOTNOTE: [1] This statement is borne out by Mr. William Morrison Patterson's account of the records of Amy Lowell's reading of her poems in his laboratory. It constitutes the preface of the second edition of his book, "The Rhythm of Prose"--a book which, upon the true basis of experimentation, analyzes and defines convincingly for the first time the nature of rhythmical experience, and the manner in which it is derived by the reader both from prose and metrical poetry. Until it is amplified or improved by further investigation, this book will surely be the basis of every scientific discussion of the questions involved here. POEMS COMING TO PORT Our motion on the soft still misty river Is like rest; and like the hours of doom That rise and follow one another ever, Ghosts of sleeping battle-cruisers loom And languish quickly in the liquid gloom. From watching them your eyes in tears are gleaming, And your heart is still; and like a sound In silence is your stillness in the streaming Of light-whispered laughter all around, Where happy passengers are homeward bound. Their sunny journey is in safety ending, But for you no journey has an end. The tears that to your eyes their light are lending Shine in softness to no waiting friend; Beyond the search of any eye they tend. There is no nest for the unresting fever Of your passion, yearning, hungry-veined; There is no rest nor blessedness forever That can clasp you, quivering and pained, Whose eyes burn ever to the Unattained. Like time, and like the river's fateful flowing, Flowing though the ship has come to rest, Your love is passing through the mist and going, Going infinitely from your breast, Surpassing time on its immortal quest. The ship draws softly to the place of waiting, All flush forward with a joyful aim, And while their hands with happy hands are mating, Lips are laughing out a happy name-- You pause, and pass among them like a flame. THE LONELY BATHER Loose-veined and languid as the yellow mist That swoons along the river in the sun, Your flesh of passion pale and amber-kissed With years of heat that through your veins have run, You lie with aching memories of love Alone and naked by the weeping tree, And indolent with inward longing move Your slim and sallow limbs despondently. If love came warm and burning to your dream, And filled you all your avid veins require, You would lie sadly still beside the stream, Sobbing in torture of that vivid fire; The same low sky would weave its fading blue, The river still exhale its misty rain, The willow trail its waving over you, Your longing only quickened into pain. Bed your desire among the pressing grasses; Lonely lie, and let your thirsting breasts Lie on you, lonely, till the fever passes, Till the undulation of your longing rests. IN MY ROOM In this high room, my room of quiet space, Sun-yellow softened for my happiness, I learn of you, Wang Wei, and of your loves; Your rhythmic fisher sweet with solitude Beneath a willow by the river stream; Your agéd plum tree bearing lonely bloom Beside the torrent's thunder; misty buds Among your saplings; delicate-leaved bamboo. My room is sweet because of you, Wang Wei, Your tranquil and creative-fingered love So many mounds of mournful years ago In that cool valley where the colors lived. My ceiling slopes a little like far mountains. Your delicate-leaved bamboo can flourish here. * * * * * Wang Wei was a great Chinese painter and poet, of the 8th century. HOURS Hours when I love you, are like tranquil pools, The liquid jewels of the forest, where The hunted runner dips his hand, and cools His fevered ankles, and the ferny air Comes blowing softly on his heaving breast, Hinting the sacred mystery of rest. FIRE AND WATER Flame-Heart, take back your love. Swift, sure And poignant as the dagger to the mark, Your will is burning ever; it is pure. Mine is vague water welling through the dark, Holding all substances--except the spark. Picture the pleasure of the meadow stream When some clear striding naked-footed girl Cuts swift and straightly as a gleam Across its bosom ambling and aswirl With mooning eddies and soft lips acurl; Such was our meeting--fatefully so brief. I have no purpose and no power to clutch. Gleam onward, maiden, to your goal of grief; And I more sadly flow, remembering much, Yet doomed to take the form of all I touch. YOU MAKE NO ANSWER You make no answer. You have stolen away Deliberately in that twilight sorrow Where the dark flame that is your being shines So well. Mysterious and deeply tender In your motion you have softly left me, And the little path along the house is still. And I, a child forsaken of its mother, I, a pilgrim leaning for a friend, Grow faint, and tell myself in terror that My love reborn and burning shall yet bring you-- More than friend and slender-bodied mother-- O sweet-passioned spirit, shining home! OUT OF A DARK NIGHT Death is more tranquil than the life of love, More calm, more sure, and more unanguished. O the path among the trees is far more tranquil to the dead Than to these anxious hearts, uptroubled from their beds, Who pace in pallid darkness on the leaves, For no good reason--for no reason But because their limbs will not lie still upon the sheet. Their limbs will not lie still. O how I pity them. Sad hearts--their marrow is a-quiver, And they can not lie them down in tranquil sadness like the dead. A MORNING Again this morning the bold autumn, Spreading through the woods her sacred fire, Brings the rich color of your presence Warmly luminous to my desire-- Brings to my heart the dear wild worship, High and wayward as the windy air, And to my pulse the hot sweet passion Burning crimson like a poison there. ANNIVERSARY The flowers we planted in the tender spring, And through the summer watched their blossoming, Died with our love in autumn's thoughtful weather, Died and dropped downward altogether. Today in April in the vivid grass They flash again their laughter, pink and yellow, They wake before the frosty sunbeams pass, Gay bold to leave their chilly pillow. But love sleeps longer in his wintry bed, He sleeps as though the lifting light were dead, And spring poured not her colors on the meadow, He sleeps in his cold sober shadow. AUTUMN LIGHT So bright and soft is the sweet air of morning, And so tenderly the light descends, And blesses with its gentle-falling fingers All the leaves unto the valley's ends-- It brings them all to being when it touches With its paleness every glowing vein; The wild and flaming hollows of the forest Kindle all their crimson in its rain; And every curve receives its share of morning, Every little shadow softly grows, And motion finds a melody more tender That like a phantom through the branches goes-- So bright and soft and tranquil-rendering, And quiet in its giving, as though love, The morning dream of life, were born of longing, And really poured its being from above. A MODERN MESSIAH Scarred with sensuality and pain And weary labor in a mind not hard Enough to think, a heart too always tender, Sits the Christ of failure with his lovers. They are wiser than his parables, But he more potent, for he has the gift Of hopelessness, and want of faith, and love. IN A RED CROSS HOSPITAL Today I saw a face--it was a beak, That peered, with pale round yellow vapid eyes, Above the bloody muck that had been lips And teeth and chin. A plodding doctor poured Some water through a rubber down a hole He made in that black bag of horny blood. The beak revived, it smiled--as chickens smile. The doctor hopes he'll find the man a tongue To tell with, what he used to be. A VISIT You came with your small tapering flame of passion Thinly burning like a nun's desire, Your eyes in slim and half-expectant fashion Faintly painting what your veins require With little pallid pyramids of fire. So very small and unfulfilled you sat, Building a little talk to keep you there, Your face and body pointed like a cat, Your legs not reaching down from any chair, Your thoughts not really reaching anywhere; So dumb and tiny--yet Love guessed your mood, And pressed his phial in its fervent bed, And poured his thrilling philtre in my blood, And all his lustre on your body shed, And hot enamel on the words you said; Your littleness became a monstrous thing, A rank retort, a hot and waiting vat, Your eyes green-copper like a snake in spring, And lusty-bold your laying off your hat, And fell your purpose like a hungry cat; The dark fell on us through our narrowed eyes, The heat lashed up around us from the floor, Encrimsoning the lips of our surprise To sway like music, and like burning pour Across the truth that parted us before. TO LOVE Love, often your delicate fingers beckon, And always I follow. Oh, if I could stay, and possess your beauty Beckoning always! CAR-WINDOW A light is laughing thro' the scattered rain, A color quickens in the meadow; Drops are still, upon the window-pane-- They cast a silver shadow. LITTLE FISHES A myriad curious fishes, Tiny and pink and pale, All swimming north together With rhythmical fin and tail-- A mountain surges among them, They dart and startle and float, Mere wiggling minutes of terror, Into that mountain's throat. INVOCATION Truth, be more precious to me than the eyes Of happy love; burn hotter in my throat Than passion; and possess me like my pride; More sweet than freedom; more desired than joy; More sacred than the pleasing of a friend. SOMETIMES Sometimes a child's voice crying on the street Comes winging like an arrow through the wind To pierce my breast with you, my baby, and My pen is weak, and all my thinking dreams Are mist of yearning for the touch of you. TO MARIE SUKLOFF--AN ASSASSIN In your lips moving fervently, Your eyes hot with fire, Life seems immortally young with desire, Life seems impetuous, Hungrily free, Having no faith but its burning to be. You could dance laughingly, Draw where you move, Hearts, hands and voices pouring you love. Youth be a carnival, Life be the queen, You could go dancing and singing and seen! Whence came that tenderness Cruel and wild, Arming with murder the hand of a child? Whence came that breaking fire, Nursed and caressed With passion's white fingers for tyranny's breast? In your soul sacredly, Deeper than fear, Burns there a miracle dreadful to hear? Virgin of murder, Was it God's breath, Begetting a savior, that filled you with Death? TO AN ACTRESS You walk as vivid as a sunny storm Across the drinking meadows, through the eyes Of stricken men, with light and fury mingled, Making passionate and making young. You drive the mists, and lift the drooping heads, And in the sultry place of custom raise The naked colors of abounding life, And sound the crimson windy call of liberty. EYES My heart is sick because of all the eyes That look upon you drinkingly. They almost touch you with their fever look! O keep your beauty like a mystic gem, Clear-surfaced--give no fibre grain of hold To those prehensile amorous bold eyes! My heart is sick! O love, let not my heart Corrupt the flower of your liberty-- Go spend your beauty like the summer sky That makes a radius of every glance, And with your morning color light them all! X RAYS Your eyes were gem-like in that dim deep chamber Hushed and sombre with imprisoned fire, With yellow ghostly globes of intense æther Potent as the rays of pure desire. Your voice was startled into vivid wonder, When the winged wild whining mystic wheel Took flight and shot the dark with frosty crashings Like an ice-berg splitting to the keel. Your flesh was never warmer to my passion Than when, moving in that lumor green, We saw with eyes our fragile bones enamoured Clasping sadly on the pallid screen. You seemed so virginal and so undreaming Of the burning hunger in my eyes, To peer more fever-deeply in your being Than the very death of passion lies. The subtle-tuned shy motions of your spirit, Fashioned through the ages for the sun, Were dumb in that green lustre-haunted cavern Where you walked a naked skeleton; Slim-hipped and fluent and of lovely motion, Living to the tip of every bone, And ah, too exquisitely vivid-moving Ever to lie wanly down alone-- To lie forever down so still and slender, Tracing on the ancient screen of night That naked and pale writing of the wonder Of your beauty breathing in the light. SONNETS A PREFACE ABOUT SONNETS Although so complex and difficult to construct, the sonnet has always seemed to me a natural and almost inevitable form. Whether the reason lies in its intrinsic nature, or in the tradition that surrounds it, is not easy to tell. A sonnet is almost exactly square, and yet it has a division sufficiently off the centre to make its squareness admirable instead of tiresome; and perhaps this simple trait, together with its closely woven structure of rhyme, is what gives it the quiet assurance it has--the tranquil rightness of a thing of nature or natural convenience. I feel towards an excellent sonnet as I imagine an eager horse may feel towards a good measure tightly filled up with golden grain. This feeling is due partly to a kind of honesty of which the squareness of a sonnet is symbolic. It is a form in which poets can express themselves when they are not rhapsodically excited. And very often they are not so excited, and at such times if they write rapid lyrics they have to whip themselves up with an emotion that they get out of the writing rather than out of the facts. And this makes much lyric poetry seem a little histrionic, whereas in order to create a sonnet at all, a concentration and sustainment of feeling is required that is inevitably equal to its more temperate pretensions. The quality of being inevitably and honestly square may become a dreadful thing, however. And it makes this form inappropriate for persons who have not at least a certain degree of lyrical taste. In the hands of such persons a sonnet is not a poem, but an enterprise. They get inside that square with a whole lot of materials, colors and sounds and old clothes of ideas, and they push them round, and if they can not make them fill in properly and come up to the edges, they climb out and get some more. And the result is so palpably spreadout an object, always with lumps of imagery here and there, that it can not even be received in the linear sequence that is natural to the eye and ear. This fault can be avoided by having strongly in mind while composing a sonnet, the virtues not specifically its own--the clarity, the running and pouring in single stream, that are the qualities of song. And to these qualities the strict convention of its rhymes and the traditional relation of the sonnet's parts, ought to give way when there is a conflict between them, for if a poem has not rhapsody, it is the more important that it should have grace. At least that is my opinion, and I offer this preface, in expiatory rather than boastful vein, to those high priests of perfection who guard the sonnet as a kind of lonely reliquary of their god. A PRAISEFUL COMPLAINT You love me not as I love, or when I Grow listless of the crimson of your lips, And turn not to your burning finger-tips, You would show fierce and feverish your eye, And hotly my numb wilfulness decry, Holding your virtues over me like whips, And stinging with the visible eclipse Of that sweet poise of life I crucify! How can you pass so proudly from my face, With all the tendrils of your passion furled, So adequate and animal in grace, As one whose mate is only all the world! I never taste the sweet exceeding thought That you might love me, though I loved you not! THOSE YOU DINED WITH They would have made you like a pageant, bold And nightly festive, lustre-lit for them, And round your beauty, like a dusky gem, Have poured the glamour of the pride of gold; And you would lie in life as in her bed The mistress of a pale king, indolent, Though hot her limbs and strong her languishment, And her deep spirit is unvisited. But I would see you like a gypsy, free As windy morning in the sunny air, Your wild warm self, your vivid self, to be, A miracle of nature's liberty, Giving your gift of being kind and fair, High, gay and careless-handed everywhere! THE PASSIONS OF A CHILD The passions of a child attend his dreams. He lives, loves, hopes, remembers, is forlorn For legendary creatures, whom he deems Not too unreal--until one golden morn The gracious, all-awaking sun shines in Upon his tranquil pillow, and his eyes Are touched, and opened greatly, and begin To drink reality with rich surprise. I loved the impetuous souls of ancient story-- Heroic characters, kings, queens, whose wills Like empires rose, achieved, and fell, in glory. I was a child, until the radiant dawn, Thy beauty, woke me--O thy spirit fills The stature of those heroes, they are gone! AS THE CRAG EAGLE As the crag eagle to the zenith's height Wings his pursuit in his exalted hour Of her the tempest-reared, whose airy power Of plume and passion challenges his flight To that wild altitude, where they unite, In mutual tumultuous victory And the swift sting of nature's ecstasy, Their shuddering pinions and their skyward might-- As they, the strong, to the full height of heaven Bear up that joy which to the strong is given, Thus, thus do we, whose stormy spirits quiver In the bold air of utter liberty, Clash equal at our highest, I and thee, Unconquered and unconquering forever! TO MY FATHER The eastern hill hath scarce unveiled his head, And the deliberate sky hath but begun To meditate upon a future sun, When thou dost rise from thy impatient bed. Thy morning prayer unto the stars is said. And not unlike a child, the penance done Of sleep, thou goest to thy serious fun, Exuberant--yet with a whisper tread. And when that lord doth to the world appear, The jovial sun, he leans on his old hill, And levels forth to thee a golden smile-- Thee in his garden, where each warming year Thou toilest in all joy with him, to fill And flood the soil with Summer for a while. TO EDWARD S. MARTIN FROM A PROFESSIONAL HOBO How old, my friend, is that fine-pointed pen Wherewith in smiling quietude you trace The maiden maxims of your writing-place, And on this gripped and mortal-sweating den And battle-pit of hunger now and then Dip out, with nice and intellectual grace, The faultless wisdoms of a nurtured race Of pale-eyed, pink, and perfect gentlemen! How long have art and wit and poetry, With all their power, been content, like you, To gild the smiling fineness of the few, To filmy-curtain what they dare not see, In multitudinous reality, The rough and bloody soul of what is true! * * * * * (In an editorial in _Life_, Mr. Martin had described as "professional hoboes" a number of revolutionary agitators whom he did not like--Pancho Villa, William D. Haywood, Wild Joe O'Carroll--and he did me the honor to include me among them.) EUROPE--1914 Since Athens died, the life that is a light Has never shone in Europe. Alien moods, The oriental morbid sanctitudes, Have darkened on her like the fear of night. In happy augury we dared to guess That her pure spirit shot one sunny glance Of paganry across the fields of France, Clear startling this dim fog of soulfulness. But now, with arms and carnage and the cries Of Holy Murder, rolling to the clouds Her bloody-shadowed smoke of sacrifice, The Superstition conquers, and the shrouds Of sick black wonder lay their murky blight Where shone of old the immortal-seeming light. ISADORA DUNCAN You bring the fire and terror of the wars Of infidels in thunder-running hordes, With spears like sun-rays, shields, and wheeling swords Flame shape, death shape and shaped like scimitars, With crimson eagles and blue pennantry, And teeth and armor flashing, and white eyes Of battle horses, and the silver cries Of trumpets unto storm and victory! Who is this naked-footed lovely girl Of summer meadows dancing on the grass? So young and tenderly her footsteps pass, So dreamy-limbed and lightly wild and warm-- The bugles murmur and the banners furl, And they are lost and vanished like a storm! THE SUN Now autumn, and that sadness as of love Heroic in immortal solitude; Those veins of flaming passion through the wood; But in the blue and infinite above A shining circle like the light of truth, Self-poising; deathless his desire sublime, Whose motion is the measurement of time, Whose step is morning, and his smile is youth. No passion burns upon the livid earth Whose stain can tint that circle, or whose cry Can rout the tranquilly receiving sky. All passion, all its crimson stream, from birth To murder, bloom and pestilential blight, All flows beneath the sanction of his light. THE NET The net brings up, how long and languidly, A million vivid quiverings of life, Keen-finned and gleaming like a steely knife, All colors, green and silver of the sea, All forms of skill and eagerness to be-- They die and wither of the very breath That sounds your pity of their lavish death While they are leaping, star-like, to be free. They die and wither, but the agéd sea, Insane old salty womb of mystery, Is pregnant with a million million more, Whom she will suckle in her oozy floor, Whom she will vomit on a heedless shore, While onward her immortal currents pour. A DUNE SONNET I was so lonely on the dunes to-day; The shadow of a bird passed o'er the sand, And I, a driftwood relic in my hand.... Sea winds are not more lonely when they stray A little fitful and bewildered way In this wan acre, whose dry billows stand So pitilessly still of curve, so bland, And wide, and waiting, infinitely grey. In hollows I could almost hear them say, The misty breezes--Run, we will not stay In this unreal and spiritual land! Our soul of life is calling from the strand, Whose blue and breathing bosom leapt or lay Or laughed to us in shots of silver spray! SONGS SEA-SHORE The wind blows in along the sea-- Its salty wet caresses Impart to all the ships that be A thrill before it passes. The tide is never at a stand, A mountain in its motion, Forever homing to the land, And ever to the ocean. And on its fickle, mighty breast The waters still are moving, With love in every running crest And laughter in the loving-- Light love to touch the prows of ships That slip along so slenderly. I would as lightly touch your lips, And your heart as tenderly, If you would move with all that move, The flowing and caressing, Who have no firmness in their love, No sorrow in its passing. RAINY SONG Down the dripping pathway dancing through the rain, Brown eyes of beauty, laugh to me again! Eyes full of starlight, moist over fire, Full of young wonder, touch my desire! O like a brown bird, like a bird's flight, Run through the rain drops lithely and light. Body like a gypsy, like a wild queen, Slim brown dress to slip through the green-- The little leaves hold you as soft as a child, The little path loves you, the path that runs wild. Who would not love you, seeing you move, Warm-eyed and beautiful through the green grove? Let the rain kiss you, trickle through your hair, Laugh if my fingers mingle with it there, Laugh if my cheek too is misty and drips-- Wetness is tender--laugh on my lips The happy sweet laughter of love without pain, Young love, the strong love, burning in the rain. A HYMN TO GOD IN TIME OF STRESS Lift, O dark and glorious Wonder, Once again thy gleaming sword, Cleave this killing doubt asunder With one sheer and sacred word! For my heart is weak and broken, And the struggle runs too high, And there is no burning token In the new immortal sky. Oh, not curb or courage only Does my hour demand of me, It is thought supreme and lonely And responsible and free! And I quail before the danger As a bark before the blast, When the beacon star's a stranger In the mountains piling fast, And there is no light but reason And the compass of the ship. God, a word of thine in season! God, a motion of thy lip! COMING SPRING Ice is marching down the river, Gaily out to sea! Sunbeams o'er the snow-hills quiver, Setting torrents free! Yellow are the water-willows, Yellow clouds are they, Rising where the laden billows Swell along their way! Arrows of the sun are flying! Winter flees the light, And his chilly horn is sighing All the moisty night! Lovers of the balmy weather, Lovers of the sun! Drifts and duty melt together-- Get your labors done! Ice is marching down the river, Gaily out to sea! Sing the healthy-hearted ever, Spring is liberty! DAISIES Daisies, daisies, all surprise! Open wide your sunny eyes! See the linnet on the wing; See the crimson feather! See the life in every thing, Sun, and wind, and weather! Shadow of the passer-by, Bare-foot skipping over, Meadow where the heifers lie, Butter-cup, and clover! All is vivid, all is real, All is high surprising! Ye are pure to see and feel; Ye the gift are prizing Men and gods would perish for-- Gods with all their thunder!-- Could they have the thing ye are, Everlasting wonder! BOBOLINK Bright little bird with a downward wing, How many birds within you sing? Two or three at the least it seems, Overflowing golden streams. If I could warble on a wing so strong, Filling five acres full of song, I'd never sit on the grey rail fence, I'd never utter a word of sense, I'd float forever in a light blue sky, Uttering joy to the passers-by! DIOGENES A hut, and a tree, And a hill for me, And a piece of a weedy meadow. I'll ask no thing, Of God or King, But to clear away His shadow. EARLIER POEMS EARLIER POEMS A PREFACE ABOUT THEIR PHILOSOPHY Most of the friends who read the volume from which these poems are selected, wanted to ask me what I meant by one of the titles, "The Thought of Protagoras." And I meant so much--I meant to convey in that phrase the hue of the philosophic background upon which the colors of my life are drawn--that since I failed, I venture to enlarge its meaning here with a word of confession. An attitude that might be called affirmative scepticism is native to my mind, and underlies every impulse that I have to portray the universal character of life and truth. We seek among all our experiences for some absolute and steadfast value by which, or toward which, we may guide ourselves, but there is no absolute value except life itself, the having of experiences. And among all our opinions we seek for an objective and eternal truth, but nothing is eternally true except the variety of opinions. Intermittently throughout the whole history of western, and I suppose of eastern thought, this mood has arisen. It was the mood of Protagoras, and of that Protagorean vein in Plato which is the height of ancient wisdom. It arose again, after a period of bright-minded investigation and formulation of "isms," in Sextus Empiricus and the little group of Alexandrian scientists--the last light to go out in the darkness of the reign of saints and theologies. Again, after those ages of sombre and oppressive faith under the roof of the cathedral, it appeared in the great Montaigne. The writings of Montaigne arrive in history with a bold and tranquil flavor of delight in free meditation, as though the too Sunday-serious world had at last made up its mind to escape from church and go fishing. It is a reverent Sabbath holiday in human thought. Almost immediately, however, the insane passion of belief recurs. Descartes' attempt at a surgery of doubt is only the pathetic opening of space for new and enormous growths of the old substance. Spinoza follows him, the God-intoxicated man, and Leibnitz and other monumental believers. And then David Hume quietly prepares, and once more offers to mankind, in his clear, humble and noble enquiry about Human Understanding, the sceptic wisdom, the moral equilibrium, that would save its health and reason. But Kant and Hegel and those mountainous Germans, the giants of soul-vapor, overwhelming again with their rationalizations of primitive egotism, send all the world to the mad-house of metaphysical conviction. And from this we are now again issuing awakened--for the fifth time. And today the awakener is no individual. The awakener is science--empirical science turning its brave eyes upon man, its maker, to reveal the origin and destroy the excessive pretensions of his thoughts. And so once again the sanity of the world has been saved--or so at least it seems to one whose intellectual home is in these ages of sacred doubt. Thoughts that are abstract logically, are, psychologically, concrete things. General ideas are specific occurrences. They are occurrences in an individual mind, reflecting perhaps a material disturbance in a brain. And these things and occurrences can, in the conception of science, be explained as the result of antecedent causes. They, which are the sovereign instruments of explanation, can themselves become the subject of explanation, and therein lose their impersonality and their universality which was their truth. Such, I think, is the modern counterpart of the thought of Protagoras, summarized for the ancients in his famous saying that "man is the measure of all things." This thought used to come to my mind strongly in a seminar at Columbia University, where in a shadowy corner of the great library at sunset we gathered to read and study the writing of Spinoza. Our teacher was a scholar of philosophy with the rarest gift of sinking himself emotionally, as well as with intellect, into the metaphysical system of the philosopher he studied. He is not the one I have portrayed in my poem--that is a product of my imagination. But he seemed always so ingenuous to me, in his acceptance of the existence of realities corresponding to the vast abstractions of that philosopher of eternity, that I could not but see continually in my fancy demons of time and the concrete conspiring against him among the alleys of the book-shelves; and there came the thought of death walking straight into that chamber to annihilate the event of the individual idea--the only actual thing denoted for me by his words of portentous and childish-universal import. In my poem I tried to make such a death portray and prove to the imagination the thought of Protagoras. In another poem, Leif Ericson, I made the same reflection a theme of joy and a kind of pagan sermon of life. The voyage of that wonderful sailor out over the challenging blue, without knowledge and without sanction of ends, is a symbol of the adventure of individual being. It is an example to our hearts, so fond of faith and prudence, so little filled by nature with moral courage and abandon. AT THE AQUARIUM Serene the silver fishes glide, Stern-lipped, and pale, and wonder-eyed; As through the agéd deeps of ocean, They glide with wan and wavy motion. They have no pathway where they go, They flow like water to and fro. They watch with never winking eyes, They watch with staring, cold surprise, The level people in the air, The people peering, peering there, Who wander also to and fro, And know not why or where they go, Yet have a wonder in their eyes, Sometimes a pale and cold surprise. EARTH'S NIGHT Sombre, Sombre is the night, the stars' light is dimmed With smoky exhalations of the earth, Whose ancient voice is lifted on the wind In ceaseless elegies and songs of tears. O earth, I hear thee mourning for thy dead! Thou art waving the long grass over thy graves; Murmuring over all thy resting children, That have run and wandered and gone down Upon thy bosom. Thou wilt mourn for him Who looketh now a moment on these stars, And in the moving boughs of this dark night Heareth the murmurous sorrow of thy heart. THE THOUGHT OF PROTAGORAS My memory holds a tragic hour to prove, Or paint with bleeding stroke, the ancient thought That will to sorrow move all minds forever-- All that love to know. It was the hour When lamps wink yellow in the winter twilight, And the hurriers go home to rest; And we whose task was meditation rose And wound a murmuring way among the books And effigies, the fading fragrance, of A vaulted library--a place to me Most like a dim vast cavernous brain, that holds All the world hath of musty memory In sombre convolutions that are dying. There at our faithful table every day, In the great shadow of this dissolution, We would speak of things eternal, things Divine, that change not. And we spoke with one Who was a leader of the way to them; A man born regal to the realms of thought. High, pale, and sculptural his brow, And high his concourse with the kings of old, Plato, and Aristotle, and the Jew-- The bold, mild Jew who in his pensive chamber Fell in love with God. It was of him, And that unhungering love of his, he told us; And with soft and stately melody, The scholar's eloquence, he lifted us Sublime above the very motions of Our mortal being, and we walked with him The heights of meditation like the gods. I have no memory surpassing this. And yet--strange pity of our natures or Of his--there ran a rumor poisonous. Scandal breeds her brood in the house of prayer. And we, to whom these were like hours of prayer, We whispered things not all philosophy When he was gone. We knew but little where He went, or whence he came, but this we knew, That there was other love in him than what He taught us--love that makes more quickly pale! Ay, even he was tortured with the lure Of mortal motion in the eyes--and lips And limbs that were not warm to him alone Were warm to him. He drank mortality. Dim care, the ghost of retribution, sat In pallor on his brow, and made us whisper In the shadow of our meditations. Faintly, faintly did we feel the hour Advancing--livid painting of a thought! He spoke of Substance,--strangely--on that day-- Eternal, self-existent, infinite-- He seemed, I thought, to rest upon the name. And as he spoke there came on me that trance Of inattention, when the words would seem To drop their magic of containing things, And, by a shift, become but things themselves-- Mere partial motions of the flesh of lips. I watched these motions, watched them blandly, till I knew I watched them, and that roused me, and I heard him saying, "Things, and moving things, Are merely modes of but one attribute, Of what is infinite in attributes, And may be called----" He spoke to there, and then-- His pencil, the thin pencil, dropped--A crack Behind us--A quick step among the books-- His hand, his head, his body all collapsed And fell, or settled utterly, before The fact came on us--he was shot and killed. But little I remember after that. What matters it? The deed, the quick red deed Was done, and all his speculations vanished Like a sound. TO THE ASCENDING MOON Rise, rise, aerial creature, fill the sky With supreme wonder, and the bleak earth wash With mystery! Pale, pale enchantress, steer Thy flight high up into the purple blue, Where faint the stars beholding--rain from there Thy lucent influence upon this sphere! I fear thee, sacred mother of the mad! With thy deliberate magic thou of old Didst soothe the perplexed brains of idiots whipped, And scared, and lacerated for their cure-- Ay, thou didst spread the balm of sleep on them, Give to their minds a curvéd emptiness Of silence like the heaven thou dwellest in; Yet didst thou also, with thy rayless light, Make mad the surest, draw from their smooth beds The very sons of Prudence, maniacs To wander forth among the bushes, howl Abroad like eager wolves, and snatch the air! Oft didst thou watch them prowl among the tombs Inviolate of the patient dead, toiling In deeds obscure with stealthy ecstasy, And thou didst palely peer among them, and Expressly shine into their unhinged eyes! I fear thee, languid mother of the mad! For thou hast still thy alien influence; Thou dost sow forth thro' all the fields and hills, And in all chambers of the natural earth, A difference most strange and luminous. This tree, that was the river sycamore, Is in thy pensive effluence become But the mind's mystic essence of a tree, Upright luxuriance thought upon--the stream Is liquid timeless motion undefined-- The world's a gesture dim. Like rapturous thought, Which can the rigorous concrete obscure Unto annihilation, and create Upon the dark a universal vision, Thou--even on this bold and local earth, The site of the obtruding actual-- Thou dost erect in awful purity The filmy architecture of all dreams. And they are perfect. Thou dost shed like light Perfection, and a vision give to man Of things superior to the tough act, Existence, and almost co-equals of His own unnamed, and free, and infinite wish! Phantoms, phantoms of the transfixed mind! Pour down, O moon, upon the listening earth-- The earth unthinking, thy still eloquence! Shine in the children's eyes. They drink thy light, And laugh in innocence of sorcery, And love thy silver. I laugh not, nor gaze With half-closed lids upon the awakened night. Nay, oft when thou art hailed above the hill, I lean not forth, I hide myself in tasks, Even to the blunt comfort of routine I cling, to drowse my soul against thy charm, Yearning for thee, ethereal miracle! LEIF ERICSON Through the murk of the ocean of history northward and far, I descry thee, O Sailor! Thy deed like the dive of a star Doth startle the ages of darkness through which it is hurled, Doth flash, and flare out, and is gone from the eyes of the world! What watchers beheld thee, and heralding followed thy lead, Or bugled the nations into the track of thy deed? What continent soundeth thy name, what people thy praise? Who sendeth the signal of gratitude back to the days When thou in thy boat didst put forth from the world, and defy Infinity, ignorance, tempest, and ocean, and sky? No, history brags not of God, nor doth history brag Of thee, sailor, who carried thy sail and thy sea-colored flag Clear over His seas, drove into His mystery old The prow of thy sixty-foot skerry, whose quivering hold Could dip but a cupful out of His watery wrath, That stormed thee, and snatched at thy bowsprit, and licked up thy path! When mythical rumor sky-carried ran over the earth, With the whisper of lands that were dreamed of beyond the red birth Of the west-wind, the blood of thy body took running fire To launch and be swift o'er the sea as a man's desire! O rare is the northern morning that shineth for thee! A million silvering crests on the cold blue sea-- And the wind drives in from the jubilant sea to the land, And, catching thy laughter, it tosses the cloak in thy hand, As taunting thee forth to thy sails in the frosty air, Where thousands surround thee with awe and a wondering prayer. And they that stand with thee--tumultuous-hearted they stand! They bend at thy word--I hear the boat sing on the sand-- And they slip to their oars as the boat leaps aloft on a wave, With thee at the windy helm, joyful and joyfully brave! * * * * * The depth of the billows is awful, the depth of the sky Is silent as God. Silent the dark on high. Naught sings to thy heart save thy heart and the wind, the wild giant Of ocean, agrin in the darkness, who rattles defiant A laugh through thy rigging, and howls from the clouds at thee, And moans in a mimic of pain and a murmurous glee. Still stern I behold thee, thy stature dim through the dark, Unmoved, unreleasing the helm of thy storm-driven bark. "O God of our fathers, give signs to our sea-worn eyes! Give sight to Thy sailors! Give but the sun to arise In the morn on an island pale in the haze of the west! O beam of the star in the north, is thy only behest To gesture me onward eternally unto no shore Of these high and wild waters, famed for their hunger of yore? Then give to thy sailor for life the courage of death, To encounter the taunt of this wind with a rougher breath Of gigantic contempt in the soul for where and when, So it be onward impetuous, living, onward again! He saileth safe who carrieth death on board, He flieth a laughing sail in the wrath of the Lord!" So sang thy heart to thy heart, and so to the swinging sea In a lull of the wind, the song of a spirit free! Serene adventurer, lover of distance divine, Pursuing thy love forever though never thine, O sun-tanned king with thy blue eyes over the sea, Who dares to sing, and live, the praise of thee? Not they that safe in a haven of certainty, steer From mooring to mooring with faith and with fear, And pray for a map of the universe, pointer, and plan, When all the blue waves of the ocean the courage of man Challenge to venture, not they are the praisers of thee! Nor they who sail for the cargo, and dream that the sea, In its wanton wild infinite wonder of motion and sound, Is bound by a purpose, as their little breathing is bound. The profit of thy great sailing to thee was small, And unto the world it was nothing--a man, that was all, And his deed like a star, to flame in the dull old sky! Of the story of apathy, age after decorous age going by! Grapes were thy import, winey and luscious to eat, Grapes, and a story--"The dew in the west was sweet!" Wine of the distance ever the reddest seems, And sweet is the world to the dreamer and doer of dreams! Weigh them, O pale-headed merchant--little ye know! Compute, O desk-dwellers, ye will not measure him so, For ye know only knowledge, ye know not the drive of the will That brought it with passion to birth--it driveth still Through the hearts of the kindred of earth, the forward fleeing, The kin of the stormy soul at the helm of all-being! Sailors, unreefed, and high-masted, and wet, and free, Who sail in the love of the billows, whose port is the sea-- They sing thee, O Leif the Lucky, they sing thee sublime, And launch with thee, glad as with God, on the ocean of time! * * * * * Leif Ericson, the Norse adventurer, sailed to America 500 years before Columbus. MIDNIGHT Midnight is come, And thinly in the deepness of the gloom Truth rises startle-eyed out of a tomb, And we are dumb. A death-bell tolls, And we still shudder round the too smooth bed, For Truth makes pallid watch above the dead, Freezing our souls. But day returns, Light and the garish life, and we are brave, For Truth sinks wanly down into her grave. Yet the heart yearns. IN MARCH On a soaked fence-post a little blue-backed bird, Opening her sweet throat, has stirred A million music-ripples in the air That curl and circle everywhere. They break not shallow at my ear, But quiver far within. Warm days are near! TO THE FLOWERS AT CHURCH Soft little daughters of the mead, The random bush, the wanton weed, That lived to love, and loved to breed, Who hither bound you? You're innocent of all the screed That blows around you. Sweet daffodils so laughing yellow, Beneath a bending pussy-willow, You need not try to gulp and swallow The Apostles' Creed, Or shudder at the fates that follow Adam's deed. Big bloody hymns the choir sings, And blows it to the King of Kings, The while you dream of humble things That wander there Where first you spread your golden wings On summer air; Like Jesus, simple and divine, In beauty, not in raiment fine, Who asked no high or holier shrine In which to pray, Than garden groves of Palestine 'Neath olives gray. His name, I think, would still be bright Though churches were unbuilded quite, And they whose hearts are toward the height Should simple be, And lift their heads into the light As straight as ye. TO THE LITTLE BED AT NIGHT Good-night, little bed, with your patient white pillow, Your light little spread, and your blanket of yellow! I wonder what leaves you so pensive to-night-- The breezes are tender, the stars are so bright, I should think you would wrinkle a little and smile, And be happy to think we can sleep for a while. Are you waiting for something? Or are you just seeming To listen so breathlessly, hushed, as though dreaming A form that is fresher than breezes so light, A coming more precious than stars to the night, Who shall mould you as soft as the breast of a billow, And crown with all beauty your patient white pillow? Good-night, little bed--are you lonely so late? We will lie down together, together we'll wait. IN A DUNGEON OF RUSSIA _Scene_: A cell leading to the gallows. _Characters_: A noble lady, who is an assassin. A common murderer. The chilling gray, a ghost of mortal dawn, Has touched them, and they know the hour. The guard Shifts guiltily his shoes upon the stone. They raise their eyes in languid terror; but The moment passes, and 'tis still again-- Save, in some piteous way she moves her throat. There is a wandering of her burning eyes, Until they fix, and strangely stare upon The face of her companion. They would plead Against the heavy horror of his look; For not an idiot's corpse could strike the soul More sick with wonder. "O look up and speak To me!"--Her voice is startling to the walls-- "Speak any word against this gloom!" He moves A blood-deserted eye, but answers not. "Tell if 'twas cold and filthy where you lay!" "Ay, filthy cold! 'Twas cold enough to keep The carrion from rotting on these bones! They never kill us--never 'til we hang!" He spoke a brutal tongue against the gloom. And there was heard far off a step, a voice. The guard stood up; a quiver moved her limbs. "Give me some simple word. Give me your hand In comradeship. We die together--and The while we breathe--we are each other's world." "No--not your world, my lady! Though we die, I have no grace to give a hand to you. My hand is thick and dirty--yours is pale!" "You say 'my lady' in the very tomb! Will even death not laugh this weakness off Your tongue? To think nobility abides This hour! _My lady!_ O, it is a curse That whips me at the grave! I was not born-- Can I not even die, a human soul?" "Yes, you can die! And better--you can kill! 'Tis not your ladyship--the gallows' rope Snaps that to nothing! Death? Not death alone Can laugh at your nobility--I laugh. No--not your piteous ladyship--that dies. It is your crime that daunts me--That shall live! To plant, with this fine delicate little hand, Small heavy death into the very heart Of time-defended tyranny--that lives! The future is all life for you. For me-- A glassy look, a yell into the air, And I am gone! No life springs up from me! I am the dirt that drank the drippings of A guilty murder--that is why I sit Like sickness here, and goad you with my shame! I'll take your hand. I'll tell you I was starved, Wrecked, shattered to the bones with drunken hunger, And I killed for gold. I'll tell you this-- Your crime shall live to blot the memory Of mine, and me, and all the insane tribe Of us, who having strength in poverty Will not lie down and starve--blot off the world Our having been--the crime of our killed hopes, And gradual infamy!" The fever gleam Was in his eyes--the future! There it burned A moment, while he stood to see the door Swing darkly open, and the guard salute. She stood beside him. And together in High union of their fainting hearts, they faced The hour that brought them to their level graves. * * * * * March, 1912. TO A TAWNY THRUSH Pine spirit! Breath and voice of a wild glade! In the wild forest near it, In the cool hemlock or the leafy limb, Whereunder Thou didst run and wander Thro' the sun and shade, An elvish echo and a shadow dim, There in the twilight thou dost lift thy song, And give the stilly woods a silver tongue. Out of what liquid is thy laughing made? A sister of the water thou dost seem, The quivering cataract thou singest near, Whose glistening stream, Unto the listening ear, Thou dost outrun with thy cascade Of music beautiful and swift and clear-- A joy unto the mournful forest given! As when afar A travelling star Across our midnight races, A moving gleam that quickly ceases, Lost in the blue black abyss of heaven, So doth thy light and silver singing Start and thrill The silence round thy piney hill, Unto the sober hour a jewel bringing-- A mystery--a strain of rhythm fleeing-- A vagrant echo winging Back to the unuttered theme of being! THE SAINT GAUDENS STATUES Poet, thy dreams are grateful to the air And the light loves them. Tho' they murmur not, Their carven stillness is a music rare, And like the song of one whose tongue hath caught The clear ethereal essence of his thought. I hear the talkers come, the changing throngs That with the fashions of a day surround Thy visions, and I hear them quell their tongues, And hush their querulous shoes upon the ground; Thy dreams are with the crown of silence crowned-- Though they feel not the glowing diadem, Who sleep for aye in their cool shapes of stone. Nor ever will the sunlight waken them, Nor ever will they turn their eyes and moan, To think that their brief Poet's life is gone. The tender and the lofty soul is gone, Who eyed them forth from darkness, and confessed His spirit's motion in unmoving stone. His praise upon no mortal tongue doth rest; By these unwhispering lips it is expressed. Soon will the ample arms of night withdraw Her shuffling children from the twilit hall-- From that heroic presence, in dim awe Of whom the dark withholds a while her pall, And leaves him luminous above them all. Then are ye lost in darkness and alone, Ye ghostly spirits! And the moment rare Doth quicken that too sad and nameless stone, To move her robe, and spill her sable hair, And be in silence mingled with the air; For she is one with the dim glimmering hour, And the white spirits beautiful and still, And the veiled memory of the vanished power That moulded them, the high and infinite will That earth begets and earth does not fulfil. * * * * * These statues were exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum after the sculptor's death. The figures alluded to are the famous statue of Abraham Lincoln, and the monument in memory of Mrs. Henry Adams, the original of which is in the Rock Creek Cemetery at Washington. SUMMER SUNDAY Borne on the low lake wind there floats to me, Out of the distant hill, a sigh of bells, Mystic, worshipful, almost unheard, As though the past should answer me, and I In pagan solitude bow down my head. Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. Punctuation has been corrected without note. Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original. It is not always possible to determine if a new stanza begins at the top of a printed page, but every effort has been made by the transcriber to retain stanza breaks where appropriate. 
34237	----	McCLURE'S LIBRARY OF CHILDREN'S CLASSICS EDITED BY KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN AND NORA ARCHIBALD SMITH GOLDEN NUMBERS A BOOK OF VERSE FOR YOUTH THE POSY RING A BOOK OF VERSE FOR CHILDREN PINAFORE PALACE A BOOK OF RHYMES FOR THE NURSERY _Library of Fairy Literature_ THE FAIRY RING MAGIC CASEMENTS A SECOND FAIRY BOOK OTHER VOLUMES TO FOLLOW _Send to the publishers for Complete Descriptive Catalogue_ GOLDEN NUMBERS A BOOK OF VERSE FOR YOUTH CHOSEN AND CLASSIFIED BY _Kate Douglas Wiggin_ AND _Nora Archibald Smith_ WITH INTRODUCTION AND INTERLEAVES BY KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN [Illustration] "_To add to golden numbers, golden numbers._" THOMAS DEKKER. NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1909 _Copyright, 1902, by_ McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. Published, October, 1902, N GOLDEN NUMBERS _Then read from the treasured volume the poem of thy choice._ HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. _Hark! the numbers soft and clear_ _Gently steal upon the ear;_ _Now louder, and yet louder rise,_ _And fill with spreading sounds the skies;_ _Exulting in triumph now swell the bold notes,_ _In broken air, trembling, the wild music floats._ ALEXANDER POPE. A NOTE We are indebted to the following firms for permission to use poems mentioned: Frederick Warne & Co., for poems of George Herbert and Reginald Heber; Small, Maynard & Co., for two poems by Walt Whitman, and "The Tax-Gatherer," by John B. Tabb; George Routledge & Son, for "Sir Lark and King Sun," George Macdonald; Longmans, Green & Co., for Andrew Lang's "Scythe Song"; Lee & Shepard, for "A Christmas Hymn," "Alfred Dommett," and "Minstrels and Maids," William Morris; J. B. Lippincott Co., for three poems by Thomas Buchanan Read; John Lane, for "The Forsaken Merman," Matthew Arnold, and "Song to April," William Watson; "The Skylark," Frederick Tennyson; E. P. Dutton & Co., for "O Little Town of Bethlehem," Phillips Brooks; Dana, Estes & Co., for "July," by Susan Hartley Swett; Little, Brown & Co., for poems of Christina G. Rossetti, and for the three poems, "The Grass," "The Bee," and "Chartless" by Emily Dickinson; D. Appleton & Co., publishers of Bryant's Complete Poetical Works, for "March," "Planting of the Apple Tree," "To the Fringed Gentian," "Death of Flowers," "To a Waterfowl," and "The Twenty-second of December"; Charles Scribner's Sons, for "The Wind" and "A Visit from the Sea," both taken from "A Child's Garden of Verses"; "The Angler's Reveille," from "The Toiling of Felix"; "Dear Land of All My Love," from "Poems of Sidney Lanier," and "The Three Kings," from "With Trumpet and Drum," by Eugene Field; The Churchman, for "Tacking Ship Off Shore," by Walter Mitchell; The Whitaker-Ray Co., for "Columbus" and "Crossing the Plains," from The Complete Poetical Works of Joaquin Miller; The Macmillan Co., for "At Gibraltar," from "North Shore Watch and Other Poems," by George Edward Woodberry. The following poems are used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton, Mifflin Co., the authorized publishers: T. B. Aldrich, "A Turkish Legend," "Before the Rain," "Maple Leaves," and "Tiger Lilies"; Christopher P. Cranch, "The Bobolinks"; Alice Cary, "The Gray Swan"; Margaret Deland, "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night"; Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Forbearance," "The Humble-Bee," "Duty," "The Rhodora," "Concord Hymn," "The Snow Storm," and Ode Sung in the Town Hall, Concord; James T. Fields, "Song of the Turtle and the Flamingo"; Oliver Wendell Holmes, "Old Ironsides" and "The Chambered Nautilus"; John Hay, "The Enchanted Shirt"; Julia Ward Howe, "Battle Hymn of the Republic"; Bret Harte, "The Reveille" and "A Greyport Legend"; T. W. Higginson, "The Snowing of the Pines"; H. W. Longfellow, "The Wreck of the Hesperus," "The Psalm of Life," "Home Song," "The Three Kings," and "The Harvest Moon"; James Russell Lowell, "Washington," extracts from "The Vision of Sir Launfal," "The Fatherland," "To the Dandelion," "The Singing Leaves," and "Stanzas on Freedom"; Lucy Larcom, "Hannah Binding Shoes"; Edna Dean Proctor, "Columbia's Emblem"; T. W. Parsons, "Dirge for One Who Fell in Battle"; E. C. Stedman, "The Flight of the Birds" and "Going A-Nutting"; E. R. Sill, "Opportunity"; W. W. Story, "The English Language"; Celia Thaxter, "The Sandpiper" and "Nikolina"; J. T. Trowbridge, "Evening at the Farm" and "Midwinter"; Bayard Taylor, "A Night With a Wolf" and "The Song of the Camp"; J. G. Whittier, "The Corn Song," "The Barefoot Boy," "Barbara Frietchie," extracts from "Snow-Bound," "Song of the Negro Boatman," and "The Pipes at Lucknow"; W. D. Howells, "In August"; J. G. Saxe, "Solomon and the Bees." CONTENTS A CHANTED CALENDAR Page Daybreak. By _Percy Bysshe Shelley_ 1 Morning. By _John Keats_ 1 A Morning Song. By _William Shakespeare_ 2 Evening in Paradise. By _John Milton_ 2 Evening Song. By _John Fletcher_ 3 Night. By _Robert Southey_ 4 A Fine Day. By _Michael Drayton_ 5 The Seasons. By _Edmund Spenser_ 5 The Eternal Spring. By _John Milton_ 5 March. By _William Cullen Bryant_ 6 Spring. By _Thomas Carew_ 7 Song to April. By _William Watson_ 7 April in England. By _Robert Browning_ 8 April and May. By _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ 9 May. By _Edmund Spenser_ 9 Song on May Morning. By _John Milton_ 10 Summer. By _Edmund Spenser_ 10 June Weather. By _James Russell Lowell_ 11 July. By _Susan Hartley Swett_ 13 August. By _Edmund Spenser_ 14 In August. By _William Dean Howells_ 14 Autumn. By _Edmund Spenser_ 15 Sweet September. By _George Arnold_ 15 Autumn's Processional. By _Dinah M. Mulock_ 16 October's Bright Blue Weather. By _H. H._ 16 Maple Leaves. By _Thomas Bailey Aldrich_ 17 Down to Sleep. By _H. H._ 18 Winter. By _Edmund Spenser_ 19 When Icicles Hang by the Wall. By _William Shakespeare_ 19 A Winter Morning. By _James Russell Lowell_ 20 The Snow Storm. By _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ 21 Old Winter. By _Thomas Noel_ 22 Midwinter. By _John Townsend Trowbridge_ 23 Dirge for the Year. By _Percy Bysshe Shelley_ 25 THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL The World Beautiful. By _John Milton_ 27 The Harvest Moon. By _Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_ 27 The Cloud. By _Percy Bysshe Shelley_ 28 Before the Rain. By _Thomas Bailey Aldrich_ 31 Rain in Summer. By _Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_ 32 Invocation to Rain in Summer. By _William C. Bennett_ 34 The Latter Rain. By _Jones Very_ 35 The Wind. By _Robert Louis Stevenson_ 35 Ode to the Northeast Wind. By _Charles Kingsley_ 36 The Windy Night. By _Thomas Buchanan Read_ 39 The Brook. By _Alfred, Lord Tennyson_ 40 The Brook in Winter. By _James Russell Lowell_ 42 Clear and Cool. By _Charles Kingsley_ 44 Minnows. By _John Keats_ 45 Snow-Bound (Extracts). By _John G. Whittier_ 46 Highland Cattle. By _Dinah M. Mulock_ 50 A Scene in Paradise. By _John Milton_ 52 The Tiger. By _William Blake_ 53 The Spacious Firmament on High. By _Joseph Addison_ 54 GREEN THINGS GROWING Green Things Growing. By _Dinah M. Mulock_ 57 The Sigh of Silence. By _John Keats_ 58 Under the Greenwood Tree. By _William Shakespeare_ 59 The Planting of the Apple Tree. By _William Cullen Bryant_ 59 The Apple Orchard in the Spring. By _William Martin_ 63 Mine Host of "The Golden Apple." By _Thomas Westwood_ 64 The Tree. By _Jones Very_ 65 A Young Fir-Wood. By _Dante G. Rossetti_ 65 The Snowing of the Pines. By _Thomas W. Higginson_ 66 The Procession of the Flowers. By _Sydney Dobell_ 67 Sweet Peas. By _John Keats_ 68 A Snowdrop. By _Harriet Prescott Spofford_ 69 Almond Blossom. By _Sir Edwin Arnold_ 69 Wild Rose. By _William Allingham_ 70 Tiger-Lilies. By _Thomas Bailey Aldrich_ 71 To the Fringed Gentian. By _William Cullen Bryant_ 72 To a Mountain Daisy. By _Robert Burns_ 73 Bind-Weed. By _Susan Coolidge_ 74 The Rhodora. By _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ 76 A Song of Clover. By "_Saxe Holm_" 76 To the Dandelion (Extract). By _James Russell Lowell_ 77 To Daffodils. By _Robert Herrick_ 78 The Daffodils. By _William Wordsworth_ 79 The White Anemone. By _Owen Meredith_ 80 The Grass. By _Emily Dickinson_ 81 The Corn-Song. By _John G. Whittier_ 82 Columbia's Emblem. By _Edna Dean Proctor_ 84 Scythe Song. By _Andrew Lang_ 86 Time to Go. By _Susan Coolidge_ 86 The Death of the Flowers. By _William Cullen Bryant_ 88 Autumn's Mirth. By _Samuel Minturn Peck_ 90 ON THE WING Sing On, Blithe Bird. By _William Motherwell_ 93 To a Skylark. By _Percy Bysshe Shelley_ 94 Sir Lark and King Sun: A Parable. By _George Macdonald_ 99 The Skylark. By _Frederick Tennyson_ 101 The Skylark. By _James Hogg_ 102 The Bobolinks. By _Christopher P. Cranch_ 103 To a Waterfowl. By _William Cullen Bryant_ 105 Goldfinches. By _John Keats_ 107 The Sandpiper. By _Celia Thaxter_ 107 The Eagle. By _Alfred, Lord Tennyson_ 109 Child's Talk in April. By _Christina G. Rossetti_ 109 The Flight of the Birds. By _Edmund Clarence Stedman_ 111 The Shepherd's Home. By _William Shenstone_ 112 To a Cricket. By _William C. Bennett_ 113 On the Grasshopper and Cricket. By _John Keats_ 114 The Tax-Gatherer. By _John B. Tabb_ 114 To the Grasshopper and the Cricket. By _Leigh Hunt_ 115 The Bee. By _Emily Dickinson_ 116 The Humble-Bee. By _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ 116 All Things Wait Upon Thee. By _Christina G. Rossetti_ 119 Providence. By _Reginald Heber_ 119 THE INGLENOOK A New Household. By _Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_ 121 Two Heavens. By _Leigh Hunt_ 121 A Song of Love. By "_Lewis Carroll_" 122 Mother's Song. _Unknown_ 123 The Bonniest Bairn in a' the Warl'. By _Robert Ford_ 125 Cuddle Doon. By _Alexander Anderson_ 126 I am Lonely. By _George Eliot_ 128 Brother and Sister. By _George Eliot_ 129 Home. By _William Ernest Henley_ 131 Love Will Find Out the Way. _Unknown_ 133 The Sailor's Wife. By _William J. Mickle_ 134 Evening at the Farm. By _John Townsend Trowbridge_ 136 Home Song. By _Henry W. Longfellow_ 138 Étude Réaliste. By _Algernon C. Swinburne_ 139 We Are Seven. By _William Wordsworth_ 141 FAIRY SONGS AND SONGS OF FANCY Puck and the Fairy. By _William Shakespeare_ 145 Lullaby for Titania. By _William Shakespeare_ 146 Oberon and Titania to the Fairy Train. By _William Shakespeare_ 147 Ariel's Songs. By _William Shakespeare_ 147 Orpheus with His Lute. By _William Shakespeare_ 149 The Arming of Pigwiggen. By _Michael Drayton_ 149 Hesperus' Song. By _Ben Jonson_ 151 L'Allegro (Extracts). By _John Milton_ 152 Sabrina Fair. By _John Milton_ 157 Alexander's Feast. By _John Dryden_ 158 Kubla Khan. By _Samuel Taylor Coleridge_ 160 The Magic Car Moved On. By _Percy Bysshe Shelley_ 162 Arethusa. By _Percy Bysshe Shelley_ 165 The Culprit Fay (Extracts). By _Joseph Rodman Drake_ 168 A Myth. By _Charles Kingsley_ 173 The Fairy Folk. By _William Allingham_ 174 The Merman. By _Alfred, Lord Tennyson_ 177 The Mermaid. By _Alfred, Lord Tennyson_ 178 Bugle Song. By _Alfred, Lord Tennyson_ 181 The Raven. By _Edgar Allan Poe_ 182 The Bells. By _Edgar Allan Poe_ 189 SPORTS AND PASTIMES Blowing Bubbles. By _William Allingham_ 195 Bicycling Song. By _Henry C. Beeching_ 196 Going A Maying. By _Robert Herrick_ 197 Jog On, Jog On. By _William Shakespeare_ 200 A Vagabond Song. By _Bliss Carman_ 201 Swimming. By _Algernon C. Swinburne_ 201 Swimming. By _Lord Byron_ 202 The Angler's Reveille. By _Henry van Dyke_ 203 The Angler's Invitation. By _Thomas Tod Stoddart_ 207 Skating. By _William Wordsworth_ 207 Reading. By _Elizabeth Barrett Browning_ 209 On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer. By _John Keats_ 210 Music's Silver Sound. By _William Shakespeare_ 210 The Power of Music. By _William Shakespeare_ 211 Descend, Ye Nine! By _Alexander Pope_ 212 Old Song. By _Edward Fitzgerald_ 213 The Barefoot Boy. By _John G. Whittier_ 214 Leolin and Edith. By _Alfred, Lord Tennyson_ 218 Going A-Nutting. By _Edmund Clarence Stedman_ 219 Whittling. By _John Pierpont_ 220 Hunting Song. By _Sir Walter Scott_ 222 The Hunter's Song. By _Barry Cornwall_ 223 The Blood Horse. By _Barry Cornwall_ 225 The Northern Seas. By _William Howitt_ 226 The Needle. By _Samuel Woodwork_ 228 A GARDEN OF GIRLS A Portrait. By _Elizabeth Barrett Browning_ 231 Little Bell. By _Thomas Westwood_ 234 A Child of Twelve. By _Percy Bysshe Shelley_ 237 Chloe. By _Robert Burns_ 238 O, Mally's Meek, Mally's Sweet. By _Robert Burns_ 239 Who Is Silvia? By _William Shakespeare_ 240 To Mistress Margaret Hussey. By _John Skelton_ 240 Ruth. By _Thomas Hood_ 242 My Peggy. By _Allan Ramsay_ 243 Annie Laurie. By _William Douglas_ 243 Lucy. By _William Wordsworth_ 245 Jessie. By _Bret Harte_ 246 Olivia. By _Alfred, Lord Tennyson_ 247 Nikolina. By _Celia Thaxter_ 248 The Solitary Reaper. By _William Wordsworth_ 249 Helena and Hermia. By _William Shakespeare_ 250 Phyllis. By _William Drummond_ 251 So Sweet is She. By _Ben Jonson_ 251 I Love My Jean. By _Robert Burns_ 252 My Nannie's Awa'. By _Robert Burns_ 253 THE WORLD OF WATERS To the Ocean. By _Lord Byron_ 255 A Life on the Ocean Wave. By _Epes Sargent_ 257 The Sea. By _Barry Cornwall_ 258 A Sea-Song. By _Allan Cunningham_ 259 A Visit from the Sea. By _Robert Louis Stevenson_ 261 Drifting. By _Thomas Buchanan Read_ 262 Tacking Ship Off Shore. By _Walter Mitchell_ 265 Windlass Song. By _William Allingham_ 268 The Coral Grove. By _James Gates Percival_ 269 The Shell. By _Alfred, Lord Tennyson_ 270 Bermudas. By _Andrew Marvell_ 272 Where Lies the Land? By _Arthur Hugh Clough_ 273 FOR HOME AND COUNTRY The First, Best Country. By _Oliver Goldsmith_ 275 My Native Land. By _Sir Walter Scott_ 276 Loyalty. By _Allan Cunningham_ 276 My Heart's in the Highlands. By _Robert Burns_ 277 The Minstrel Boy. By _Thomas Moore_ 278 The Harp that Once Through Tara's Halls. By _Thomas Moore_ 279 Fife and Drum. By _John Dryden_ 280 The Cavalier's Song. By _William Motherwell_ 280 The Old Scottish Cavalier. By _Wm. Edmondstoune Aytoun_ 281 The Song of the Camp. By _Bayard Taylor_ 284 Border Ballad. By _Sir Walter Scott_ 286 Gathering Song of Donuil Dhu. By _Sir Walter Scott_ 287 The Reveille. By _Bret Harte_ 288 Ye Mariners of England. By _Thomas Campbell_ 290 The Knight's Tomb. By _Samuel Taylor Coleridge_ 292 How Sleep the Brave! By _William Collins_ 292 Dirge. By _Thomas William Parsons_ 293 The Burial of Sir John Moore. By _Charles Wolfe_ 295 Soldier, Rest! By _Sir Walter Scott_ 296 Recessional. By _Rudyard Kipling_ 297 The Fatherland. By _James Russell Lowell_ 298 NEW WORLD AND OLD GLORY Dear Land of All My Love. By _Sidney Lanier_ 301 Columbus. By _Joaquin Miller_ 301 Pocahontas. By _William Makepeace Thackeray_ 303 Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers. By _Felicia Hemans_ 305 The Twenty-second of December. By _William Cullen Bryant_ 306 Washington. By _James Russell Lowell_ 307 Warren's Address. By _John Pierpont_ 308 Carmen Bellicosum. By _Guy Humphreys McMaster_ 309 The American Flag. By _Joseph Rodman Drake_ 311 Old Ironsides. By _Oliver Wendell Holmes_ 312 Indians. By _Charles Sprague_ 313 Crossing the Plains. By _Joaquin Miller_ 314 Concord Hymn. By _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ 315 Ode. By _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ 316 Stanzas on Freedom. By _James Russell Lowell_ 317 Abraham Lincoln. By _Richard Henry Stoddard_ 318 Lincoln, the Great Commoner. By _Edwin Markham_ 319 Abraham Lincoln. By _Henry Howard Brownell_ 321 O Captain! My Captain! By _Walt Whitman_ 323 The Flag Goes By. By _Henry Holcomb Bennett_ 324 The Black Regiment. By _George Henry Boker_ 326 Night Quarters. By _Henry Howard Brownell_ 329 Battle-Hymn of the Republic. By _Julia Ward Howe_ 331 Sheridan's Ride. By _Thomas Buchanan Read_ 332 Song of the Negro Boatman. By _John G. Whittier_ 335 Barbara Frietchie. By _John G. Whittier_ 337 Two Veterans. By _Walt Whitman_ 340 Stand by the Flag! By _John Nichols Wilder_ 342 At Gibraltar. By _George Edward Woodberry_ 343 Faith and Freedom. By _William Wordsworth_ 345 Our Mother Tongue. By _Lord Houghton_ 345 The English Language (Extracts). By _William Wetmore Story_ 346 To America. By _Alfred Austin_ 347 The Name of Old Glory. By _James Whitcomb Riley_ 349 IN MERRY MOOD On a Favorite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes. By _Thomas Gray_ 353 The Priest and the Mulberry Tree. By _Thomas Love Peacock_ 355 The Council of Horses. By _John Gay_ 356 The Diverting History of John Gilpin. By _William Cowper_ 359 To a Child of Quality. By _Matthew Prior_ 369 Charade. By _Winthrop M. Praed_ 370 A Riddle. By _Hannah More_ 371 A Riddle. By _Jonathan Swift_ 372 A Riddle. By _Catherine M. Fanshawe_ 373 Feigned Courage. By _Charles and Mary Lamb_ 374 Baucis and Philemon. By _Jonathan Swift_ 375 The Lion and the Cub. By _John Gay_ 378 Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog. By _Oliver Goldsmith_ 379 The Walrus and the Carpenter. By "_Lewis Carroll_" 381 Song of the Turtle and Flamingo. By _James T. Fields_ 385 Captain Reece. By _William S. Gilbert_ 387 The Cataract of Lodore. By _Robert Southey_ 391 The Enchanted Shirt. By _John Hay_ 395 Made in the Hot Weather. By _William Ernest Henley_ 398 The Housekeeper. By _Charles Lamb_ 400 The Monkey. By _Mary Howitt_ 401 November. By _Thomas Hood_ 402 Captain Sword. By _Leigh Hunt_ 403 STORY POEMS: ROMANCE AND REALITY The Singing Leaves. By _James Russell Lowell_ 407 Seven Times Two. By _Jean Ingelow_ 411 The Long White Seam. By _Jean Ingelow_ 413 Hannah Binding Shoes. By _Lucy Larcom_ 414 Lord Ullin's Daughter. By _Thomas Campbell_ 416 The King of Denmark's Ride. By _Caroline E. Norton_ 418 The Shepherd to His Love. By _Christopher Marlowe_ 420 Ballad. By _Charles Kingsley_ 422 Romance of the Swan's Nest. By _Elizabeth Barrett Browning_ 423 Lochinvar. By _Sir Walter Scott_ 427 Jock of Hazeldean. By _Sir Walter Scott_ 430 The Lady of Shalott. By _Alfred, Lord Tennyson_ 431 The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire. By _Jean Ingelow_ 438 The Forsaken Merman. By _Matthew Arnold_ 444 The Sands of Dee. By _Charles Kingsley_ 450 The "Gray Swan." By _Alice Gary_ 452 The Wreck of the Hesperus. By _Henry W. Longfellow_ 454 A Greyport Legend. By _Bret Harte_ 458 The Glove and the Lions. By _Leigh Hunt_ 460 How's My Boy? By _Sydney Dobell_ 462 The Child-Musician. By _Austin Dobson_ 463 How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix. By _Robert Browning_ 464 The Inchcape Rock. By _Robert Southey_ 468 A Night with a Wolf. By _Bayard Taylor_ 471 The Dove of Dacca. By _Rudyard Kipling_ 472 The Abbot of Inisfalen. By _William Allingham_ 474 The Cavalier's Escape. By _George Walter Thornbury_ 479 The Pied Piper of Hamelin. By _Robert Browning_ 480 Hervé Riel. By _Robert Browning_ 493 Vision of Belshazzar. By _Lord Byron_ 500 Solomon and the Bees. By _John G. Saxe_ 502 The Burial of Moses. By _Cecil Frances Alexander_ 504 WHEN BANNERS ARE WAVING When Banners Are Waving. _Unknown_ 509 Battle of the Baltic. By _Thomas Campbell_ 511 The Pipes at Lucknow. By _John Greenleaf Whittier_ 514 The Battle of Agincourt. By _Michael Drayton_ 517 The Battle of Blenheim. By _Robert Southey_ 522 The Armada. By _Lord Macaulay_ 524 Ivry. By _Lord Macaulay_ 530 On the Loss of the Royal George. By _William Cowper_ 535 The Charge of the Light Brigade. By _Alfred, Lord Tennyson_ 537 Bannockburn. By _Robert Burns_ 539 The Night Before Waterloo. By _Lord Byron_ 540 Hohenlinden. By _Thomas Campbell_ 542 Incident of the French Camp. By _Robert Browning_ 544 Marco Bozzaris. By _Fitz-Greene Halleck_ 545 The Destruction of Sennacherib. By _Lord Byron_ 548 TALES OF THE OLDEN TIME Sir Patrick Spens. _Old Ballad_ 551 The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington. _Old Ballad_ 555 King John and the Abbot of Canterbury. _Old Ballad_ 558 Lord Beichan and Susie Pye. _Old Ballad_ 563 The Gay Gos-hawk. _Old Ballad_ 569 Earl Mar's Daughter. _Old Ballad_ 576 Chevy-Chace. _Old Ballad_ 582 Hynde Horn. _Old Ballad_ 593 Glenlogie. _Old Ballad_ 597 LIFE LESSONS Life. By _Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_ 601 In a Child's Album. By _William Wordsworth_ 602 To-Day. By _Thomas Carlyle_ 602 The Noble Nature. By _Ben Jonson_ 603 Forbearance. By _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ 603 The Chambered Nautilus. By _Oliver Wendell Holmes_ 604 Duty. By _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ 605 On His Blindness. By _John Milton_ 606 Sir Launfal and the Leper. By _James Russell Lowell_ 606 Opportunity. By _Edward Rowland Sill_ 608 Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel. By _Leigh Hunt_ 609 Be True. By _Horatio Bonar_ 610 The Shepherd Boy Sings in the Valley of Humiliation. By _John Bunyan_ 610 A Turkish Legend. By _Thomas Bailey Aldrich_ 611 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. By _Thomas Gray_ 612 Polonius to Laertes. By _William Shakespeare_ 618 The Olive-Tree. By _S. Baring-Gould_ 619 Coronation. By _H. H._ 620 December. By _John Keats_ 622 The End of the Play. By _William Makepeace Thackeray_ 623 A Farewell. By _Charles Kingsley_ 625 A Boy's Prayer. By _Henry C. Beeching_ 626 Chartless. By _Emily Dickinson_ 626 Peace. By _Henry Vaughan_ 627 Consider. By _Christina G. Rossetti_ 628 The Elixir. By _George Herbert_ 629 One by One. By _Adelaide A. Procter_ 629 The Commonwealth of the Bees. By _William Shakespeare_ 631 The Pilgrim. By _John Bunyan_ 632 Be Useful. By _George Herbert_ 633 THE GLAD EVANGEL A Christmas Carol. By _Josiah Gilbert Holland_ 635 The Angels. By _William Drummond_ 636 While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night. By _Margaret Deland_ 637 The Star Song. By _Robert Herrick_ 638 Hymn for Christmas. By _Felicia Hemans_ 639 New Prince, New Pomp. By _Robert Southwell_ 640 The Three Kings. By _Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_ 641 The Three Kings. By _Eugene Field_ 644 A Christmas Hymn. By _Alfred Dommett_ 646 O Little Town of Bethlehem. By _Phillips Brooks_ 648 While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night. By _Nahum Tate_ 649 Christmas Carol. _Old English_ 650 Old Christmas. By _Mary Howitt_ 652 God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen. By _Dinah Maria Mulock_ 653 Minstrels and Maids. By _William Morris_ 654 An Ode on the Birth of Our Saviour. By _Robert Herrick_ 656 Old Christmas Returned. _Old English_ 657 Ceremonies for Christmas. By _Robert Herrick_ 658 Christmas in England. By _Sir Walter Scott_ 659 The Gracious Time. By _William Shakespeare_ 661 Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning. By _Reginald Heber_ 661 INTRODUCTION _On the Reading of Poetry_ There is no doubt, I fear, that certain people are born without, as certain other people are born with, a love of poetry. Any natural gift is a great advantage, of course, be it physical, mental, or spiritual. The dear old tales which suggest the presence of fairies at the cradle of the new-born child, dealing out, not very impartially, talents, charms, graces, are not so far from the real truth. You may have been given a straight nose, a rosy cheek, a courteous manner, a lively wit, a generous disposition; but perhaps the Fairy Fine-Ear, who hears the grass grow, and the leaf-buds throb, had a pressing engagement at somebody else's cradle-side when you most needed her benefactions. There is another elf too, a Dame o' Dreams; she is clad all in color-of-rose, and when she touches your eyelids you see visions forever after; beautiful haunting things hidden from duller eyes, visions made of stars and dew and magic. Never any great poet lived but these two fairies were present at his birth, and it may be that they stole a moment to visit you. If such was the case you love, need, crave poetry, to understand yourself, your neighbor, the world, God; and you will find that nothing else will satisfy you so completely as the years go on. If, on the other hand, these highly mythical but interesting personages were absent when the question of your natural endowment was being settled, do not take it too much to heart, but try to make good the deficiencies. You must have liked the rhymes and jingles of your nursery-days: Ride a Cock-horse To Banbury Cross! or Mistress Mary quite contrary How does your garden grow? I am certain you remember what pleasure it gave you to make "contrary" rhyme with "Mary" instead of pronouncing it in the proper and prosy way. "But" you answer, "I did indeed like that sort of verse, and am still fond of it when it dances and prances, or trips and patters and tinkles; it is what is termed "sublime" poetry that is dull and difficult to understand; the verb is always a long distance from its subject; the punctuation comes in the middle of the lines, so that it reads like prose in spite of one, and it is generally sprinkled with allusions to Calypso, Oedipus, Eurydice, Hesperus, Corydon, Arethusa, and the Acroceraunian Mountains; or at any rate with people and places which one has to look up in the atlas and dictionary." Of course, all poems are not equally simple in sound and sense. It does not require much intelligence to read or chant Poe's Raven, and if one does not quite understand it, one is so taken captive by the weird, haunting music of the lines, the recurrence of phrases and repetition of words, that one does not think about its meaning: "While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. ''Tis some visitor, I muttered, 'tapping at my chamber door-- Only this, and nothing more.'" The moment, however, that your eye falls upon the following lines from "Paradise Lost" you confess privately that if you were obliged to parse and analyze them the task would cause you a weary half-hour with Lindley Murray or Quackenbos. "Adam the goodliest man of men since born His sons; the fairest of her daughters Eve. Under a tuft of shade that on a green Stood whispering soft, by a fresh fountain-side, They sat them down;" Very well then, do not try to parse them; Paradise Lost was not written exclusively for the grammarians; content yourself with enjoying the picture; the frisking of the beasts of the earth, while Adam and Eve watched them from a fountain-side in Paradise. No one need be ashamed of liking a good deal of rhyme and rhythm, swing and movement and melody in poetry; absolute perfection of form, though all too rarely attained, is one of the chief delights of the verse-lover. "_The procession of beautiful sounds that is a poem,_" says Walter Raleigh. It is quite natural to love the music of verse before you catch the deeper thought, and you feel, in some of the greatest poetry, as if only the angels could have put the melodious words together. There is more in this music than meets the eye or ear; it is what differentiates prose from poetry, which, to quote Wordsworth, is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge. Prose it is said can never be too truthful or too wise, but song is more than mere Truth and Wisdom, it is the "rose upon Truth's lips, the light in Wisdom's eyes." That is why the thought in it finds its way to the very heart of one and makes one glow and tremble, fills one with desire to do some splendid action, right some wrong, be something other than one is, more noble, more true, more patient, more courageous. We who have selected the poems in this book have had to keep in mind the various kinds of young people who are to read it. The boys may wish that there were more story and battle poems, and verses ringing with spirited and war-like adventures; the girls may think that there are too many already; while both, perhaps, may miss certain old favorites like Horatius or The Ancient Mariner, omitted because of their great length. Some of you will yawn if the book flies open at Milton; some will be bored whenever they chance upon Pope; others will never read Wordsworth except on compulsion. Romantic little maids will turn away from "Tacking Ship off Shore," while their brothers will disdain "The Swan's Nest Among the Reeds"; but it was necessary to make the book for all sorts and conditions of readers, and such a volume must contain a taste of the best things, whether your special palate is ready for them or not. When you are twenty-one you may say, loftily, "I do not care for Pope and Dryden, I prefer Spenser and Tennyson, or Ben Jonson and Herrick," or whatever you really do prefer,--but now, although, of course, you have your personal likes and dislikes, you cannot be sure that they are based on anything real or that they will stand the test of time and experience. So you will find between these covers we hope, a little of everything good, for we have searched the pages of the great English-speaking poets to find verses that you would either love at first sight, or that you would grow to care for as you learn what is worthy to be loved. Where we found one beautiful verse, quite simple and wholly beautiful, we have given you that, if it held a complete thought or painted a picture perfect in itself, even although we omitted the very next one, which perhaps would have puzzled and wearied the younger ones with its involved construction or difficult phraseology. Will you think, I wonder, that this very simple talk is too informal to be quite proper when one remembers that it is to serve as introduction to the greatest poets that ever lived? Informality is very charming in its place, no doubt (for so the thought might cross your mind), but one does not use it with kings and queens; still the least things, you know, may sometimes explain or interpret the greatest. The brook might say, "I am nothing in myself, I know, but I am showing you the way to the ocean; follow on if you wish to see something really vast and magnificent." There are besides gracious courtesies to be observed on certain occasions. If a famous poet or author should chance to come to your village or city and appear before the people, someone would have to introduce the stranger and commend him to your attention; and if he did it modestly it would only be an act of kindliness; a wish to serve you and at the same time bespeak for him a gentle and a friendly hearing. Once introduced--Presto, change! If he is a great poet he is a great wizard; the words he uses, the method and manner in which he uses them, the cadence of his verse, the thoughts he calls to your mind, the way he brings the quick color to your cheek and the tear to your eye, all these savor of magic, nothing else. Who could be less than modest in his presence? Who could but wish to bring the whole world under his spell? You will readily be modest, too, when you confront these splendid poems, even although some of you may not wholly comprehend as yet their grandeur and their majesty; may not fully understand their claim to immortality. Where is there a girl who would not make a low curtsey to Shakespeare's Silvia, Milton's Sabrina, Wordsworth's Lucy, or Mrs. Browning's Elizabeth? And if there is a boy who could stand with his head covered before Horatius, Hervé Riel, Sir Launfal, or Motherwell's Cavalier he is not one of those we had in mind when we made this book. Neither is it altogether the personality of hero or heroine that fills us with reverence; it is the beauty and perfection of the poem itself that almost brings us to our knees in worship. A little later on you will have the same feeling of admiration and awe for Shelley's Skylark, Emerson's Snow Storm, Wordsworth's Daffodils, Keats's Daybreak, and for many another poem not included in this book, to which you must hope to grow. For it is a matter of growth after all, and growth, in mind and spirit, as in body, is largely a matter of will. It is all ours, the beauty in the world: your task is merely to enter into possession. Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare are yours as much as another's. The great treasury of inspiring thoughts that has been heaped together as the ages went by, that "rich deposit of the centuries," is your heritage; if you wish to assert your heirship no one can say you nay; if you will to be a Croesus in the things of the mind and spirit, no one can ever keep you poor. We have brought you only English verse, so you must wait for the years to give you Homer, Virgil, Dante, Goethe, Schiller, Victor Hugo, and many another; and of English verse we have only given a hint of the treasures in store for you later on. We have quoted you poems from the grand old masters, those "bards sublime," "Whose distant footsteps echo Through the corridors of Time," and many a verse:-- --"from some humbler poet Whose songs gushed from his heart As showers from the clouds of summer, Or tears from the eyelids start; Who through long days of labor, And nights devoid of ease, Still heard in his soul the music Of wonderful melodies." Since you will not like everything in the book equally well, may we advise you how to use it? First find something you know and love, and read it over again. (Penitent, indeed, shall we be if it has been omitted!) The meeting will be like one with a dear playfellow and friend in a new and strange house, and the house will seem less strange after you have met and welcomed the friend. Then search the pages until you see a verse that speaks to you instantly, catches your eye, begs you to read it, willy-nilly. There are dozens of such poems in this collection, as simple as if they had been written for six-year-olds instead of for the grown-up English-speaking world: little masterpieces like Tennyson's Brook, Kingsley's Clear and Cool, Shakespeare's Fairy Songs, Burns's Mountain Daisy, Emerson's Rhodora, Motherwell's Blithe Bird, Hogg's Skylark, Wordsworth's Pet Lamb, Scott's Ballads, and scores of others. This so far is pure pleasure, but why not, as another step, find something difficult, something you instinctively draw back from? It will probably be Milton, Pope, Dryden, Browning, or Shelley. You cannot find any "story" in it; its rhymes do not run trippingly off the tongue; there are a few strange and unpronounceable words, the punctuation and phrasing puzzle you, and worse than all you are obliged to read it two or three times before you really understand its meaning. Very well, that is nothing to be ashamed of, and you surely do not want to be vanquished by a difficulty. You will realize some time or other that all learning, like all life, is a sort of obstacle race in which the strongest wins. I once said to a dear old minister who was preaching to a very ignorant and unlearned congregation, "It must be very difficult, sir, for you to preach down to them"; for he was a man of rare scholarship and true wisdom;--"I try to be very simple a part of the time," he answered, "but not always; about once a month I fling the fodder so high in the rack that no man can catch at a single straw without stretching his neck!" Now pray do not laugh at that illustration; smile if you will, but it serves the purpose. Just as we develop our muscles by exercising our bodies, so do we grow strong mentally and spiritually by this "stretching" process. You are not obliged to love an impersonal, remote, or complex poem intimately and passionately, but read it faithfully if you do not wish to be wholly blind and deaf to beauties of sense or sound that happier people see and hear. Joubert says most truly: "You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some with you," but there are some splendid things in verse as in prose that you stand in too great awe of to love in any real, childlike way. It is never scenes from Paradise Lost that run through your mind when you are going to sleep. It is something with a lilt, like: "Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren't go a-hunting For fear of little men;" or a poem with a gallant action in it like Marco Bozzaris, or with a charming story like The Singing Leaves, or a mysterious and musical one, like Kubla Khan or The Bells, or something that when first you read it made you a little older and a little sadder, in an odd, unaccustomed way quite unlike that of real grief: "A feeling of sadness and longing That is not akin to pain And resembles sorrow only As the mist resembles rain." When you read that verse of Longfellow's afterwards you see that he has expressed your mood exactly. That is what it means to be a poet, and that is what poetry is always doing for us; revealing, translating thoughts we are capable of feeling, but not expressing. Perhaps you will not for a long time see the beauty of certain famous reflective poems like Gray's Elegy, but we must include a few of such things whether they appeal to you very strongly or not, merely because it is necessary that you should have an acquaintance, if not a friendship, with lines that the world by common consent has agreed to call immortal. They show you, without your being conscious of it, show you by their lines "all gold and seven times refined,"--how beautiful the English language can be when it is used by a master of style. Young people do not think or talk very much about style, but they come under its spell unconsciously and respond to its influence quickly enough. To give a sort of definition: style is a way of saying or writing a thing so that people are _compelled to listen._ When you grow sensitive to beauty of language you become, in some small degree at least, capable of using it yourself. You could not, for instance, read daily these "honey-tongued" poets without gathering a little sweetness for your own unruly member. There are certain spiritual lessons to be gained from many of these immortal poems, lessons which the oldest as well as the youngest might well learn. Turn to Milton's Ode on his Blindness. It is not easy reading, but you will begin to care for it when experience brings you the meaning of the line, "They also serve who only stand and wait." It is one of a class of poems that have been living forces from age to age; that have quickened aspiration, aroused energy, deepened conviction; that have infused a nobler ardor and loftier purpose into life wherever and whenever they were read. Prefacing each of the divisions of this volume you will find a page or "interleaf" of comment on, and appreciation of, the poems that follow. These pages you may read or not as you are minded; they are only friendly or informal letters from an old traveller to a pilgrim who has just taken his staff in hand. By and by you will add poem after poem to your list of favorites, and so, gradually, you will make your own volume of Golden Numbers, which will be far better than any book we can fashion for you. Perhaps you will copy single verses and whole poems in it and, later, learn them by heart. Such treasures of memory "will henceforth no longer be forgettable, detachable parts of your mind's furniture, but well-springs of instinct forever." KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN. GOLDEN NUMBERS INTERLEAVES _A Chanted Calendar_ Here is the Year's Processional in verse; the story of her hours, her days, her seasons, told as only poets can, because they see and hear things not revealed to you and me, and are able by their magic to make us sharers in the revelation. Read the first six poems and ask yourself whether you have ever realized the glories of the common day; from the moment when morning from her orient chambers comes, and the lark at heaven's gate sings, to the hour when the moon, unveiling her peerless light, throws her silver mantle o'er the dark, and the firmament glows with living sapphires. It is the task of poetry not only to say noble things, but to say them nobly; having beautiful fancies, to clothe them in beautiful phrases, and if you search these poems you will find some of the most wonderful word-pictures in the English language. How charming Drayton's description of the summer breeze: "_The wind had no more strength than this, That leisurely it blew, To make one leaf the next to kiss That closely by it grew._" If the day is dreary you need only read Lowell's "June Weather," and like the bird sitting at his door in the sun, atilt like a blossom among the leaves, your "illumined being" will overrun with the "deluge of summer it receives." Then turn the page; the picture fades as you read Trowbridge's "Midwinter." The speckled sky is dim; the light flakes falter and fall slow; the chickadee sings cheerily; lo, the magic touch again and the house mates sit, as Emerson saw them, "_Around the radiant fireplace enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm._" I A CHANTED CALENDAR _Daybreak_ Day had awakened all things that be, The lark, and the thrush, and the swallow free, And the milkmaid's song, and the mower's scythe, And the matin bell and the mountain bee: Fireflies were quenched on the dewy corn, Glowworms went out, on the river's brim, Like lamps which a student forgets to trim: The beetle forgot to wind his horn, The crickets were still in the meadow and hill: Like a flock of rooks at a farmer's gun, Night's dreams and terrors, every one, Fled from the brains which are its prey, From the lamp's death to the morning ray. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. _Morning_ Now morning from her orient chambers came, And her first footsteps touch'd a verdant hill: Crowning its lawny crest with amber flame, Silvering the untainted gushes of its rill, Which, pure from mossy beds of simple flowers By many streams a little lake did fill, Which round its marge reflected woven bowers, And, in its middle space, a sky that never lowers. JOHN KEATS. _A Morning Song_ Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings. And Phoebus 'gins arise, His steeds to water at those springs On chaliced flowers that lies; And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes: With every thing that pretty bin, My lady sweet, arise: Arise, arise! WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. _From "Cymbeline."_ _Evening in Paradise_ Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray Had in her sober livery all things clad; Silence accompanied; for beast and bird-- They to their grassy couch, these to their nests, Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale; She all night long her amorous descant sung; Silence was pleased: now glowed the firmament With living sapphires: Hesperus, that led The starry host, rode brightest, till the Moon, Rising in clouded majesty, at length Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light, And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw. JOHN MILTON. _From "Paradise Lost."_ _Evening Song_ Shepherds all, and maidens fair, Fold your flocks up, for the air 'Gins to thicken, and the sun Already his great course hath run. See the dew-drops how they kiss Every little flower that is, Hanging on their velvet heads, Like a rope of crystal beads: See the heavy clouds low falling, And bright Hesperus down calling The dead Night from under ground; At whose rising, mists unsound, Damps and vapors fly apace, Hovering o'er the wanton face Of these pastures, where they come, Striking dead both bud and bloom: Therefore, from such danger lock Every one his lovèd flock; And let your dogs lie loose without, Lest the wolf come as a scout From the mountain, and, ere day, Bear a lamb or kid away; Or the crafty thievish fox Break upon your simple flocks. To secure yourselves from these, Be not too secure in ease; Let one eye his watches keep, Whilst the other eye doth sleep; So you shall good shepherds prove, And for ever hold the love Of our great god. Sweetest slumbers, And soft silence, fall in numbers On your eyelids! So, farewell! Thus I end my evening's knell. JOHN FLETCHER. _Night_ How beautiful is night! A dewy freshness fills the silent air; No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain, Breaks the serene of heaven: In full-orb'd glory yonder Moon divine Rolls through the dark-blue depths. Beneath her steady ray The desert-circle spreads, Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky. How beautiful is night! ROBERT SOUTHEY. _A Fine Day_ Clear had the day been from the dawn, All chequer'd was the sky, Thin clouds like scarfs of cobweb lawn Veil'd heaven's most glorious eye. The wind had no more strength than this, That leisurely it blew, To make one leaf the next to kiss That closely by it grew. MICHAEL DRAYTON. _The Seasons_ So forth issued the seasons of the year; First, lusty Spring, all dight in leaves of flowers That freshly budded, and new blooms did bear, In which a thousand birds had built their bowers. EDMUND SPENSER. _From "The Faerie Queene."_ _The Eternal Spring_ The birds their quire apply; airs, vernal airs, Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune The trembling leaves, while universal Pan, Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance, Led on the eternal Spring. JOHN MILTON. _March_[1] The stormy March is come at last, With wind, and cloud, and changing skies; I hear the rushing of the blast That through the snowy valley flies. Ah, passing few are they who speak, Wild, stormy month, in praise of thee; Yet though thy winds are loud and bleak, Thou art a welcome month to me. For thou, to northern lands, again The glad and glorious sun dost bring; And thou hast joined the gentle train And wear'st the gentle name of Spring. Then sing aloud the gushing rills In joy that they again are free, And, brightly leaping down the hills, Renew their journey to the sea. Thou bring'st the hope of those calm skies, And that soft time of sunny showers, When the wide bloom, on earth that lies, Seems of a brighter world than ours. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. [Footnote 1: _By courtesy of D. Appleton & Co., publishers of Bryant's Complete Poetical Works._] _Spring_ Now that the winter's gone, the earth hath lost Her snow-white robes; and now no more the frost Candies the grass or casts an icy cream Upon the silver lake or crystal stream: But the warm sun thaws the benumbèd earth, And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth To the dead swallow; wakes in hollow tree The drowsy cuckoo and the bumble-bee. Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring In triumph to the world the youthful spring! The valleys, hills, and woods, in rich array, Welcome the coming of the longed-for May. THOMAS CAREW. _Song to April_[2] April, April, Laugh thy girlish laughter; Then, the moment after, Weep thy girlish tears! April, that mine ears Like a lover greetest, If I tell thee, sweetest, All my hopes and fears, April, April, Laugh thy golden laughter, But the moment after, Weep thy golden tears! WILLIAM WATSON. [Footnote 2: _By courtesy of John Lane._] _April in England_ Oh, to be in England Now that April's there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf Round the elm-tree hole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England--now! And after April, when May follows, And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows! Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge Leans to the field, and scatters on the clover Blossoms and dewdrops,--at the bent spray's edge-- That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture! And though the fields look rough with hoary dew, All will be gay when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children's dower, --Far brighter than this gaudy melon flower. ROBERT BROWNING. _April and May_ April cold with dropping rain Willows and lilacs brings again, The whistle of returning birds, And trumpet-lowing of the herds; The scarlet maple-keys betray What potent blood hath modest May; What fiery force the earth renews, The wealth of forms, the flush of hues; What Joy in rosy waves outpoured, Flows from the heart of Love, the Lord. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. _From "May-Day."_ _May_ Then came fair May, the fairest maid on ground, Deck'd all with dainties of her season's pride, And throwing flowers out of her lap around: Upon two brethren's shoulders she did ride; The twins of Leda, which on either side Supported her like to their sovereign queen. Lord! how all creatures laught when her they spied, And leapt and danced as they had ravish'd been. And Cupid's self about her fluttered all in green. EDMUND SPENSER. _Song on May Morning_ Now the bright morning star, Day's harbinger, Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose. Hail, bounteous May, that doth inspire Mirth, and youth, and warm desire; Woods and groves are of thy dressing, Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing. Thus we salute thee with our early song, And welcome thee, and wish thee long. JOHN MILTON. _Summer_ Then came jolly Summer, being dight In a thin silken cassock, colored green, That was unlined, all to be more light, And on his head a garland well beseene. EDMUND SPENSER. _From "The Faerie Queene."_ _June Weather_ For a cap and bells our lives we pay, Bubbles we earn with a whole soul's tasking; 'T is heaven alone that is given away, 'T is only God may be had for the asking; No price is set on the lavish summer; June may be had by the poorest comer. And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays: Whether we look, or whether we listen, We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; Every clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers, And, groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; The flush of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in meadows green, The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean To be some happy creature's palace; The little bird sits at his door in the sun, Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, And lets his illumined being o'errun With the deluge of summer it receives; His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings; He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,-- In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best? Now is the high tide of the year, And whatever of life hath ebbed away Comes flooding back, with a ripply cheer, Into every bare inlet and creek and bay; Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, We are happy now because God wills it; No matter how barren the past may have been, 'T is enough for us now that the leaves are green; We sit in the warm shade and feel right well How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell; We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing That skies are clear and grass is growing; The breeze comes whispering in our ear, That dandelions are blossoming near, That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, That the river is bluer than the sky, That the robin is plastering his house hard by; And if the breeze kept the good news back, For other couriers we should not lack, We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing,-- And hark! how clear bold chanticleer, Warmed with the new wine of the year, Tells all in his lusty crowing! JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. _From "The Vision of Sir Launfal."_ _July_[3] When the scarlet cardinal tells Her dream to the dragon fly, And the lazy breeze makes a nest in the trees, And murmurs a lullaby, It is July. When the tangled cobweb pulls The cornflower's cap awry, And the lilies tall lean over the wall To bow to the butterfly, It is July. When the heat like a mist-veil floats, And poppies flame in the rye, And the silver note in the streamlet's throat Has softened almost to a sigh, It is July. When the hours are so still that time Forgets them, and lets them lie 'Neath petals pink till the night stars wink At the sunset in the sky, It is July. SUSAN HARTLEY SWETT. [Footnote 3: _By courtesy of Dana Estes & Co._] _August_ The sixth was August, being rich arrayed In garment all of gold down to the ground; Yet rode he not, but led a lovely maid Forth by the lily hand, the which was crowned With ears of corn, and full her hand was found: That was the righteous Virgin, which of old Lived here on earth, and plenty made abound. EDMUND SPENSER. _In August_ All the long August afternoon, The little drowsy stream Whispers a melancholy tune, As if it dreamed of June, And whispered in its dream. The thistles show beyond the brook Dust on their down and bloom, And out of many a weed-grown nook The aster flowers look With eyes of tender gloom. The silent orchard aisles are sweet With smell of ripening fruit. Through the sere grass, in shy retreat Flutter, at coming feet, The robins strange and mute. There is no wind to stir the leaves, The harsh leaves overhead; Only the querulous cricket grieves, And shrilling locust weaves A song of summer dead. WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS. _Autumn_ Then came the Autumn all in yellow clad, As though he joyèd in his plenteous store, Laden with fruits that made him laugh, full glad That he had banished hunger, which to-fore Had by the belly oft him pinchèd sore: Upon his head a wreath, that was enroll'd With ears of corn of every sort, he bore; And in his hand a sickle he did hold, To reap the ripen'd fruits the which the earth had yold. EDMUND SPENSER. _From "The Faerie Queene."_ _Sweet September_ O sweet September! thy first breezes bring The dry leafs rustle and the squirrel's laughter, The cool, fresh air, whence health and vigor spring, And promise of exceeding joy hereafter. GEORGE ARNOLD. _Autumn's Processional_ Then step by step walks Autumn, With steady eyes that show Nor grief nor fear, to the death of the year, While the equinoctials blow. DINAH MARIA MULOCK. _October's Bright Blue Weather_ O suns and skies and clouds of June, And flowers of June together, Ye cannot rival for one hour October's bright blue weather; When loud the bumblebee makes haste, Belated, thriftless vagrant, And goldenrod is dying fast, And lanes with grapes are fragrant; When gentians roll their fringes tight To save them for the morning, And chestnuts fall from satin burrs Without a sound of warning; When on the ground red apples lie In piles like jewels shining, And redder still on old stone walls Are leaves of woodbine twining; When all the lovely wayside things Their white-winged seeds are sowing, And in the fields, still green and fair, Late aftermaths are growing; When springs run low, and on the brooks, In idle golden freighting, Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush Of woods, for winter waiting; When comrades seek sweet country haunts, By twos and twos together, And count like misers, hour by hour, October's bright blue weather. O sun and skies and flowers of June, Count all your boasts together, Love loveth best of all the year October's bright blue weather. H. H. _Maple Leaves_ October turned my maple's leaves to gold; The most are gone now; here and there one lingers: Soon these will slip from out the twigs' weak hold, Like coins between a dying miser's fingers. THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. _"Down to Sleep"_ November woods are bare and still, November days are clear and bright, Each noon burns up the morning's chill, The morning's snow is gone by night, Each day my steps grow slow, grow light, As through the woods I reverent creep, Watching all things "lie down to sleep." I never knew before what beds, Fragrant to smell and soft to touch, The forest sifts and shapes and spreads. I never knew before, how much Of human sound there is, in such Low tones as through the forest sweep, When all wild things "lie down to sleep." Each day I find new coverlids Tucked in, and more sweet eyes shut tight. Sometimes the viewless mother bids Her ferns kneel down full in my sight, I hear their chorus of "good night," And half I smile and half I weep, Listening while they "lie down to sleep." November woods are bare and still, November days are bright and good, Life's noon burns up life's morning chill, Life's night rests feet that long have stood, Some warm, soft bed in field or wood The mother will not fail to keep Where we can "lay us down to sleep." H. H. _Winter_ Lastly came Winter cloathèd all in frize, Chattering his teeth for cold that did him chill; Whilst on his hoary beard his breath did freeze, And the dull drops that from his purple bill As from a limbeck did adown distill; In his right hand a tippèd staff he held With which his feeble steps he stayèd still, For he was faint with cold and weak with eld, That scarce his loosèd limbs he able was to weld. EDMUND SPENSER. _When Icicles Hang by the Wall_ When icicles hang by the wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail, When blood is nipped, and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl, To-whit! To-who!--a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. When all aloud the wind doth blow, And coughing drowns the parson's saw, And birds sit brooding in the snow, And Marian's nose looks red and raw, When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, Then nightly sings the staring owl, To-whit! To-who!--a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. _From "Love's Labor's Lost."_ _A Winter Morning_ There was never a leaf on bush or tree, The bare boughs rattled shudderingly; The river was dumb and could not speak, For the weaver Winter its shroud had spun; A single crow on the tree-top bleak From his shining feathers shed off the cold sun; Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold, As if her veins were sapless and old, And she rose up decrepitly For a last dim look at earth and sea. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. _From "The Vision of Sir Launfal."_ _The Snow Storm_ Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight; the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end. The sled and traveler stopped, the courier's feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, inclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm. Come see the north-wind's masonry. Out of an unseen quarry evermore Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer Curves his white bastions with projected roof Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work So fanciful, so savage, naught cares he For number or proportion. Mockingly, On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths; A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn; Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, Maugre the farmer's sighs; and, at the gate, A tapering turret overtops the work: And when his hours are numbered, and the world Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work, The frolic architecture of the snow. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. _Old Winter_ Old Winter sad, in snow yclad, Is making a doleful din; But let him howl till he crack his jowl, We will not let him in. Ay, let him lift from the billowy drift His hoary, hagged form, And scowling stand, with his wrinkled hand Outstretching to the storm. And let his weird and sleety beard Stream loose upon the blast, And, rustling, chime to the tinkling rime From his bald head falling fast. Let his baleful breath shed blight and death On herb and flower and tree; And brooks and ponds in crystal bonds Bind fast, but what care we? Let him push at the door,--in the chimney roar, And rattle the window pane; Let him in at us spy with his icicle eye, But he shall not entrance gain. Let him gnaw, forsooth, with his freezing tooth, On our roof-tiles, till he tire; But we care not a whit, as we jovial sit Before our blazing fire. Come, lads, let's sing, till the rafters ring; Come, push the can about;-- From our snug fire-side this Christmas-tide We'll keep old Winter out. THOMAS NOEL. _Midwinter_ The speckled sky is dim with snow, The light flakes falter and fall slow; Athwart the hill-top, rapt and pale, Silently drops a silvery veil; And all the valley is shut in By flickering curtains gray and thin. But cheerily the chickadee Singeth to me on fence and tree; The snow sails round him as he sings, White as the down of angels' wings. I watch the slow flakes as they fall On bank and brier and broken wall; Over the orchard, waste and brown, All noiselessly they settle down, Tipping the apple-boughs, and each Light quivering twig of plum and peach. On turf and curb and bower-roof The snow-storm spreads its ivory woof; It paves with pearl the garden-walk; And lovingly round tattered stalk And shivering stem its magic weaves A mantle fair as lily-leaves. The hooded beehive small and low, Stands like a maiden in the snow; And the old door-slab is half hid Under an alabaster lid. All day it snows: the sheeted post Gleams in the dimness like a ghost; All day the blasted oak has stood A muffled wizard of the wood; Garland and airy cap adorn The sumach and the wayside thorn, And clustering spangles lodge and shine In the dark tresses of the pine. The ragged bramble, dwarfed and old, Shrinks like a beggar in the cold; In surplice white the cedar stands, And blesses him with priestly hands. Still cheerily the chickadee Singeth to me on fence and tree: But in my inmost ear is heard The music of a holier bird; And heavenly thoughts as soft and white As snow-flakes on my soul alight, Clothing with love my lonely heart, Healing with peace each bruised part, Till all my being seems to be Transfigured by their purity. JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE. _Dirge for the Year_ "Orphan Hours, the Year is dead! Come and sigh, come and weep!" "Merry Hours, smile instead, For the Year is but asleep; See, it smiles as it is sleeping, Mocking your untimely weeping." PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. INTERLEAVES _The World Beautiful_ "Study Nature, not books," said that inspired teacher, Louis Agassiz. The poets do not bring you the fruit of conscious study, perhaps, for they do not analyze or dissect Dame Nature's methods; with them genius begets a higher instinct, and it is by a sort of divination that they interpret for us the power and grandeur, romance and witchery, beauty and mystery of "God's great out-of-doors." The born poet, like the born naturalist, seems to have additional senses. Emerson says of his friend Thoreau that he saw as with microscope and heard as with ear-trumpet, while his memory was a photographic register of all he saw and heard; and Thoreau the naturalist might have said the same of Emerson the poet. Glance at the succession of beautiful images in Shelley's "Cloud" or Aldrich's "Before the Rain", lend your ear to the tinkle of Tennyson's "Brook." Contrast them with the bracing lines of the "Northeast Wind," the rough metre of "Highland Cattle," the chill calm of "Snow Bound," the grand style of Milton's "Morning," the noble simplicity of Addison's "Hymn," and note how the great poet bends his language to the mood of Nature, grim or sunny, stormy or kind, strong or tender. There is a stanza in Pope's "Essay on Criticism" which conveys the idea perfectly: "_Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows; But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar. When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labors, and the words move slow: Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main._" II THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL _The World Beautiful_ Sweet is the breath of Morn, her rising sweet With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the Sun When first on this delightful land he spreads His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower, Glistening with dew; fragrant the fertile Earth After soft showers; and sweet the coming on Of grateful Evening mild; then silent Night With this her solemn bird, and this fair Moon, And these the gems of Heaven, her starry train. JOHN MILTON. _From "Paradise Lost."_ _The Harvest Moon_ It is the harvest moon! On gilded vanes And roofs of villages, on woodland crests And their aerial neighborhoods of nests Deserted, oh the curtained window-panes Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests! Gone are the birds that were our summer guests; With the last sheaves return the laboring wains! HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. _The Cloud_ I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, As she dances about the sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under; And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder. I sift the snow on the mountains below, And their great pines groan aghast; And all the night 'tis my pillow white, While I sleep in the arms of the blast. Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers, Lightning my pilot sits; In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, It struggles and howls at fits; Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion, This pilot is guiding me, Lured by the love of the genii that move In the depths of the purple sea; Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, Over the lakes and the plains, Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, The Spirit he loves remains; And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, Whilst he is dissolving in rains. The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes, And his burning plumes outspread, Leaps on the back of my sailing rack When the morning-star shines dead, As on the jag of a mountain crag, Which an earthquake rocks and swings, An eagle alit one moment may sit In the light of its golden wings. And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath Its ardors of rest and of love, And the crimson pall of eve may fall From the depth of heaven above, With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest, As still as a brooding dove. That orbèd maiden with white fire laden, Whom mortals call the moon, Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor, By the midnight breezes strewn; And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, Which only the angels hear, May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, The stars peep behind her and peer; And I laugh to see them whirl and flee, Like a swarm of golden bees, When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, Are each paved with the moon and these. I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone, And the moon's with a girdle of pearl; The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim, When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, Over a torrent sea, Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof, The mountains its columns be. The triumphal arch through which I march With hurricane, fire, and snow, When the powers of the air are chained to my chair, Is the million-colored bow; The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove, While the moist earth was laughing below. I am the daughter of earth and water, And the nursling of the sky: I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die. For after the rain when with never a stain, The pavilion of heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams, Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. _Before the Rain_ We knew it would rain, for all the morn, A spirit on slender ropes of mist Was lowering its golden buckets down Into the vapory amethyst Of marshes and swamps and dismal fens-- Scooping the dew that lay in the flowers, Dipping the jewels out of the sea, To sprinkle them over the land in showers. We knew it would rain, for the poplars showed The white of their leaves, the amber grain Shrunk in the wind--and the lightning now Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain! THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. _Rain in Summer_ How beautiful is the rain! After the dust and heat, In the broad and fiery street, In the narrow lane, How beautiful is the rain! How it clatters along the roofs Like the tramp of hoofs! How it gushes and struggles out From the throat of the overflowing spout! Across the window-pane It pours and pours; And swift and wide, With a muddy tide, Like a river down the gutter roars The rain, the welcome rain! The sick man from his chamber looks At the twisted brooks; He can feel the cool Breath of each little pool; His fevered brain Grows calm again, And he breathes a blessing on the rain. From the neighboring school Come the boys, With more than their wonted noise And commotion; And down the wet streets Sail their mimic fleets, Till the treacherous pool Engulfs them in its whirling And turbulent ocean. In the country on every side, Where, far and wide, Like a leopard's tawny and spotted hide, Stretches the plain, To the dry grass and the drier grain How welcome is the rain! In the furrowed land The toilsome and patient oxen stand, Lifting the yoke-encumbered head, With their dilated nostrils spread, They silently inhale The clover-scented gale, And the vapors that arise From the well-watered and smoking soil. For this rest in the furrow after toil, Their large and lustrous eyes Seem to thank the Lord, More than man's spoken word. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. _Invocation to Rain in Summer_ O gentle, gentle summer rain, Let not the silver lily pine, The drooping lily pine in vain To feel that dewy touch of thine-- To drink thy freshness once again, O gentle, gentle summer rain! In heat the landscape quivering lies; The cattle pant beneath the tree; Through parching air and purple skies The earth looks up, in vain, for thee; For thee--for thee, it looks in vain, O gentle, gentle summer rain! Come, thou, and brim the meadow streams, And soften all the hills with mist, O falling dew! from burning dreams By thee shall herb and flower be kissed; And Earth shall bless thee yet again, O gentle, gentle summer rain! WILLIAM C. BENNETT. _The Latter Rain_ The latter rain,--it falls in anxious haste Upon the sun-dried fields and branches bare, Loosening with searching drops the rigid waste As if it would each root's lost strength repair; But not a blade grows green as in the spring; No swelling twig puts forth its thickening leaves; The robins only 'mid the harvests sing, Pecking the grain that scatters from the sheaves; The rain falls still,--the fruit all ripened drops, It pierces chestnut-bur and walnut-shell; The furrowed fields disclose the yellow crops; Each bursting pod of talents used can tell; And all that once received the early rain Declare to man it was not sent in vain. JONES VERY. _The Wind_[4] I saw you toss the kites on high And blow the birds about the sky; And all around I heard you pass, Like ladies' skirts across the grass-- O wind, a-blowing all day long, O wind, that sings so loud a song! I saw the different things you did, But always you yourself you hid, I felt you push, I heard you call, I could not see yourself at all-- O wind, a-blowing all day long, O wind, that sings so loud a song! O you that are so strong and cold, O blower, are you young or old? Are you a beast of field and tree Or just a stronger child than me? O wind, a-blowing all day long, O wind, that sings so loud a song! ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. [Footnote 4: _From "A Child's Garden of Verses." By courtesy of Charles Scribner's Sons._] _Ode to the Northeast Wind_ Welcome, wild Northeaster! Shame it is to see Odes to every zephyr; Ne'er a verse to thee. Welcome, black Northeaster! O'er the German foam; O'er the Danish moorlands, From thy frozen home. Tired we are of summer, Tired of gaudy glare, Showers soft and steaming, Hot and breathless air. Tired of listless dreaming, Through the lazy day; Jovial wind of winter Turn us out to play! Sweep the golden reed-beds; Crisp the lazy dyke; Hunger into madness Every plunging pike. Fill the lake with wild-fowl; Fill the marsh with snipe; While on dreary moorlands Lonely curlew pipe. Through the black fir forest Thunder harsh and dry, Shattering down the snowflakes Off the curdled sky. Hark! the brave Northeaster! Breast-high lies the scent, On by holt and headland, Over heath and bent. Chime, ye dappled darlings, Through the sleet and snow, Who can override you? Let the horses go! Chime, ye dappled darlings, Down the roaring blast; You shall see a fox die Ere an hour be past. Go! and rest to-morrow, Hunting in your dreams, While our skates are ringing O'er the frozen streams. Let the luscious South-wind Breathe in lovers' sighs, While the lazy gallants Bask in ladies' eyes. What does he but soften Heart alike and pen? 'Tis the hard gray weather Breeds hard English men. What's the soft Southwester? 'Tis the ladies' breeze, Bringing home their true loves Out of all the seas; But the black Northeaster, Through the snowstorm hurled, Drives our English hearts of oak, Seaward round the world! Come! as came our fathers, Heralded by thee, Conquering from the eastward, Lords by land and sea. Come! and strong within us Stir the Vikings' blood; Bracing brain and sinew; Blow, thou wind of God! CHARLES KINGSLEY. _The Windy Night_[5] Alow and aloof, Over the roof, How the midnight tempests howl! With a dreary voice, like the dismal tune Of wolves that bay at the desert moon;-- Or whistle and shriek Through limbs that creak, "Tu-who! tu-whit!" They cry and flit, "Tu-whit! tu-who!" like the solemn owl! Alow and aloof, Over the roof, Sweep the moaning winds amain, And wildly dash The elm and ash, Clattering on the window-sash, With a clatter and patter, Like hail and rain That well nigh shatter The dusky pane! Alow and aloof, Over the roof, How the tempests swell and roar! Though no foot is astir, Though the cat and the cur Lie dozing along the kitchen floor, There are feet of air On every stair! Through every hall-- Through each gusty door, There's a jostle and bustle, With a silken rustle, Like the meeting of guests at a festival! Alow and aloof, Over the roof, How the stormy tempests swell! And make the vane On the spire complain-- They heave at the steeple with might and main And burst and sweep Into the belfry, on the bell! They smite it so hard, and they smite it so well, That the sexton tosses his arms in sleep, And dreams he is ringing a funeral knell! THOMAS BUCHANAN READ. [Footnote 5: _By courtesy of J. B. Lippincott & Co._] _The Brook_ I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally, And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down a valley. By thirty hills I hurry down, Or slip between the ridges; By twenty thorps, a little town, And half a hundred bridges. * * * * I chatter over stony ways, In little sharps and trebles, I bubble into eddying bays, I babble on the pebbles. With many a curve my banks I fret, By many a field and fallow, And many a fairy foreland set With willow-weed and mallow. I chatter, chatter, as I flow To join the brimming river; For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever. I wind about, and in and out, With here a blossom sailing, And here and there a lusty trout, And here and there a grayling, And here and there a foamy flake Upon me, as I travel, With many a silvery waterbreak Above the golden gravel. * * * * I steal by lawns and grassy plots, I slide by hazel covers; I move the sweet forget-me-nots That grow for happy lovers. I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance, Among my skimming swallows; I make the netted sunbeams dance Against my sandy shallows. I murmur under moon and stars In brambly wildernesses; I linger by my shingly bars; I loiter round my cresses. And out again I curve and flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever. ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON. _The Brook in Winter_ Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak, From the snow five thousand summers old; On open wold and hill-top bleak It had gathered all the cold, And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek; It carried a shiver everywhere From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare; The little brook heard it and built a roof 'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof; All night by the white stars' frosty gleams He groined his arches and matched his beams; Slender and clear were his crystal spars As the lashes of light that trim the stars; He sculptured every summer delight In his halls and chambers out of sight; Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt Down through a frost-leaved forest crypt, Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees Bending to counterfeit a breeze; Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew; But silvery mosses that downward grew; Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf; Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and here He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops And hung them thickly with diamond drops, That crystalled the beams of moon and sun, And made a star of every one: No mortal builder's most rare device Could match this winter-palace of ice; 'Twas as if every image that mirrored lay In his depths serene through the summer day, Each flitting shadow of earth and sky, Lest the happy model should be lost, Had been mimicked in fairy masonry By the elfin builders of the frost. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. _From "The Vision of Sir Launfal."_ _Clear and Cool_ Clear and cool, clear and cool, By laughing shallow, and dreaming pool; Cool and clear, cool and clear, By shining shingle, and foaming wear; Under the crag where the ouzel sings, And the ivied wall where the church-bell rings, Undefiled, for the undefiled; Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child. Dank and foul, dank and foul, By the smoky town in its murky cowl; Foul and dank, foul and dank, By wharf and sewer and slimy bank; Darker and darker the farther I go, Baser and baser the richer I grow; Who dare sport with the sin-defiled? Shrink from me, turn from me, mother and child. Strong and free, strong and free, The floodgates are open, away to the sea, Free and strong, free and strong, Cleansing my streams as I hurry along, To the golden sands, and the leaping bar, And the taintless tide that awaits me afar. As I lose myself in the infinite main, Like a soul that has sinned and is pardoned again. Undefiled, for the undefiled; Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child. CHARLES KINGSLEY. _From "The Water-Babies."_ _Minnows_ How silent comes the water round that bend; Not the minutest whisper does it send To the overhanging sallows; blades of grass Slowly across the chequer'd shadows pass,-- Why, you might read two sonnets, ere they reach To where the hurrying freshnesses aye preach A natural sermon o'er their pebbly beds; Where swarms of minnows show their little heads, Staying their wavy bodies 'gainst the streams, To taste the luxury of sunny beams Tempered with coolness. How they ever wrestle With their own sweet delight, and ever nestle Their silver bellies on the pebbly sand. If you but scantily hold out the hand, That very instant not one will remain; But turn your eye, and they are there again. The ripples seem right glad to reach those cresses, And cool themselves among the em'rald tresses; The while they cool themselves, they freshness give, And moisture, that the bowery green may live. JOHN KEATS. _Snow-Bound_ (Extracts) The sun that brief December day Rose cheerless over hills of gray, And, darkly circled, gave at noon A sadder light than waning moon. Slow tracing down the thickening sky Its mute and ominous prophecy, A portent seeming less than threat, It sank from sight before it set. A chill no coat, however stout, Of homespun stuff could quite shut out, A hard dull bitterness of cold, That checked, mid-vein, the circling race Of life-blood in the sharpened face, The coming of the snow-storm told. The wind blew east: we heard the roar Of ocean on his wintry shore, And felt the strong pulse throbbing there Beat with low rhythm our inland air. * * * * Unwarmed by any sunset light The gray day darkened into night, A night made hoary with the swarm And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, As zig-zag wavering to and fro Crossed and recrossed the wingéd snow: And ere the early bedtime came The white drift piled the window-frame, And through the glass the clothes-line posts Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. * * * * The old familiar sights of ours Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood, Or garden wall, or belt of wood; A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed, A fenceless drift what once was road; The bridle-post an old man sat With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat; The well-curb had a Chinese roof; And even the long sweep, high aloof, In its slant splendor, seemed to tell Of Pisa's leaning miracle. * * * * All day the gusty north wind bore The loosening drift its breath before; Low circling round its southern zone, The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone. No church-bell lent its Christian tone To the savage air, no social smoke Curled over woods of snow-hung oak. A solitude made more intense By dreary-voicéd elements, The shrieking of the mindless wind, The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind, And on the glass the unmeaning beat Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet. Beyond the circle of our hearth No welcome sound of toil or mirth Unbound the spell, and testified Of human life and thought outside. We minded that the sharpest ear The buried brooklet could not hear, The music of whose liquid lip Had been to us companionship, And in our lonely life, had grown To have an almost human tone. As night drew on, and, from the crest Of wooded knolls that ridged the west, The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank From sight beneath the smothering bank, We piled with care, our nightly stack Of wood against the chimney-back,-- The oaken log, green, huge and thick, And on its top the stout back-stick; The knotty fore-stick laid apart, And filled between with curious art The ragged brush; then hovering near, We watched the first red blaze appear, Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, Until the old rude-fashioned room Burst flower-like into rosy bloom; While radiant with a mimic flame Outside the sparkling drift became, And through the bare-boughed lilac tree Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free. The crane and pendent trammels showed, The Turks' heads on the andirons glowed; While childish fancy, prompt to tell The meaning of the miracle, Whispered the old rhyme: "_Under the tree,_ _When fire outdoors burns merrily,_ _There the witches are making tea_." * * * * Shut in from all the world without, We sat the clean-winged hearth about, Content to let the north wind roar In baffled rage at pane and door, While the red logs before us beat The frost-line back with tropic heat; And ever, when a louder blast Shook beam and rafter as it passed, The merrier up its roaring draught The great throat of the chimney laughed, The house-dog on his paws outspread Laid to the fire his drowsy head, The cat's dark silhouette on the wall A couchant tiger's seemed to fall; And, for the winter fireside meet, Between the andirons' straddling feet, The mug of cider simmered slow, The apples sputtered in a row, And close at hand the basket stood With nuts from brown October's wood. * * * * JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. _Highland Cattle_ Down the wintry mountain Like a cloud they come, Not like a cloud in its silent shroud When the sky is leaden and the earth all dumb, But tramp, tramp, tramp, With a roar and a shock, And stamp, stamp, stamp, Down the hard granite rock, With the snow-flakes falling fair Like an army in the air Of white-winged angels leaving Their heavenly homes, half grieving, And half glad to drop down kindly upon earth so bare: With a snort and a bellow Tossing manes dun and yellow, Red and roan, black and gray, In their fierce merry play, Though the sky is all leaden and the earth all dumb-- Down the noisy cattle come! Throned on the mountain Winter sits at ease: Hidden under mist are those peaks of amethyst That rose like hills of heaven above the amber seas. While crash, crash, crash, Through the frozen heather brown, And dash, dash, dash, Where the ptarmigan drops down And the curlew stops her cry And the deer sinks, like to die-- And the waterfall's loud noise Is the only living voice-- With a plunge and a roar Like mad waves upon the shore, Or the wind through the pass Howling o'er the reedy grass-- In a wild battalion pouring from the heights unto the plain, Down the cattle come again! * * * * DINAH MARIA MULOCK. _A Scene in Paradise_ Adam the goodliest man of men since born His sons; the fairest of her daughters Eve. Under a tuft of shade that on a green Stood whispering soft, by a fresh fountain-side, They sat them down;... ... About them frisking played All beasts of the earth, since wild, and of all chase In wood or wilderness, forest or den. Sporting the lion ramped, and in his paw Dandled the kid; bears, tigers, ounces, pards, Gamboled before them; the unwieldy elephant, To make them mirth, used all his might, and wreathed His lithe proboscis; close the serpent sly, Insinuating, wove with Gordian twine His braided train, and of his fatal guile Gave proof unheeded. Others on the grass Couched, and, now filled with pasture, gazing sat, Or bedward ruminating; for the sun, Declined, was hastening now with prone career To the Ocean Isles, and in the ascending scale Of Heaven the stars that usher evening rose. JOHN MILTON. _From "Paradise Lost."_ _The Tiger_ Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night! What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the ardor of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire-- What the hand dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, and what art Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand form'd thy dread feet? What the hammer, what the chain, In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? What dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp? When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the lamb make thee? Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? WILLIAM BLAKE. _The Spacious Firmament on High_ The spacious firmament on high, With all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens, a shining frame. Their great Original proclaim. The unwearied sun from day to day Does his Creator's power display, And publishes to every land The work of an Almighty hand. Soon as the evening shades prevail, The moon takes up the wondrous tale, And nightly to the listening earth Repeats the story of her birth; Whilst all the stars that round her burn, And all the planets in their turn, Confirm the tidings as they roll, And spread the truth from pole to pole. What though in solemn silence, all Move round this dark, terrestrial ball? What though nor real voice nor sound Amidst their radiant orbs be found? In Reason's ear they all rejoice, And utter forth a glorious voice, Forever singing as they shine: "The hand that made us is divine!" JOSEPH ADDISON. INTERLEAVES _Green Things Growing_ "Oh, the fluttering and the pattering of those green things growing! How they talk each to each, when none of us are knowing;" "Every clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers, And groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;" "... Lean against a streamlet's rushy banks, And watch intently Nature's gentle doings; They will be found softer than ringdoves' cooings." "Dear, tell them, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then beauty is its own excuse for being." "They know the time to go! The fairy clocks strike their inaudible hour In field and woodland, and each punctual flower Bows at the signal an obedient head And hastes to bed." "If so the sweetness of the wheat Into my soul might pass, And the clear courage of the grass." "Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies; Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower--but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is." III GREEN THINGS GROWING _Green Things Growing_ Oh, the green things growing, the green things growing, The faint sweet smell of the green things growing! I should like to live, whether I smile or grieve, Just to watch the happy life of my green things growing. Oh, the fluttering and the pattering of those green things growing! How they talk each to each, when none of us are knowing; In the wonderful white of the weird moonlight Or the dim dreamy dawn when the cocks are crowing. I love, I love them so,--my green things growing! And I think that they love me, without false showing; For by many a tender touch, they comfort me so much, With the soft mute comfort of green things growing. DINAH MARIA MULOCK. _The Sigh of Silence_ I stood tiptoe upon a little hill; The air was cooling and so very still, That the sweet buds which with a modest pride Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside, Their scanty-leaved, and finely-tapering stems, Had not yet lost their starry diadems Caught from the early sobbing of the morn. The clouds were pure and white as flocks new-shorn, And fresh from the clear brook; sweetly they slept On the blue fields of heaven, and then there crept A little noiseless noise among the leaves, Born of the very sigh that silence heaves; For not the faintest motion could be seen Of all the shades that slanted o'er the green. JOHN KEATS. _Under the Greenwood Tree_ Under the greenwood tree, Who loves to lie with me, And tune his merry note Unto the sweet bird's throat, Come hither, come hither, come hither! Here shall he see No enemy But winter and rough weather. Who doth ambition shun, And loves to live i' the sun, Seeking the food he eats, And pleased with what he gets, Come hither, come hither, come hither! Here shall he see No enemy But winter and rough weather. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. _From "As You Like It."_ _The Planting of the Apple Tree_[6] Come, let us plant the apple tree. Cleave the tough greensward with the spade; Wide let its hollow bed be made; There gently lay the roots, and there Sift the dark mold with kindly care, And press it o'er them tenderly, As, round the sleeping infant's feet We softly fold the cradle sheet; So plant we the apple tree. What plant we in this apple tree? Buds, which the breath of summer days Shall lengthen into leafy sprays; Boughs where the thrush, with crimson breast, Shall haunt and sing and hide her nest; We plant, upon the sunny lea, A shadow for the noontide hour, A shelter from the summer shower, When we plant the apple tree. What plant we in this apple tree? Sweets for a hundred flowery springs To load the May wind's restless wings, When, from the orchard row, he pours Its fragrance through our open doors; A world of blossoms for the bee, Flowers for the sick girl's silent room, For the glad infant sprigs of bloom, We plant with the apple tree. What plant we in this apple tree? Fruits that shall swell in sunny June, And redden in the August noon, And drop, when gentle airs come by, That fan the blue September sky, While children come, with cries of glee, And seek them where the fragrant grass Betrays their bed to those who pass, At the foot of the apple tree. And when, above this apple tree, The winter stars are quivering bright, And winds go howling through the night, Girls, whose young eyes o'erflow with mirth, Shall peel its fruit by cottage hearth, And guests in prouder homes shall see, Heaped with the grape of Cintra's vine And golden orange of the line, The fruit of the apple tree. The fruitage of this apple tree Winds, and our flag of stripe and star, Shall bear to coasts that lie afar, Where men shall wonder at the view, And ask in what fair groves they grew; And sojourners beyond the sea Shall think of childhood's careless day And long, long hours of summer play, In the shade of the apple tree. Each year shall give this apple tree A broader flush of roseate bloom, A deeper maze of verdurous gloom, And loosen, when the frost clouds lower, The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower. The years shall come and pass, but we Shall hear no longer, where we lie, The summer's songs, the autumn's sigh, In the boughs of the apple tree. And time shall waste this apple tree. Oh, when its aged branches throw Thin shadows on the ground below, Shall fraud and force and iron will Oppress the weak and helpless still? What shall the tasks of mercy be, Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears, Of those who live when length of years Is wasting this apple tree? "Who planted this old apple tree?" The children of that distant day Thus to some aged man shall say; And, gazing on its mossy stem, The gray-haired man shall answer them: "A poet of the land was he, Born in the rude but good old times; 'Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes On planting the apple tree." WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. [Footnote 6: _By courtesy of D. Appleton & Co., publishers of Bryant's Complete Poetical Works._] _An Apple Orchard in the Spring_ Have you seen an apple orchard in the spring? In the spring? An English apple orchard in the spring? When the spreading trees are hoary With their wealth of promised glory, And the mavis sings its story, In the spring. Have you plucked the apple blossoms in the spring? In the spring? And caught their subtle odors in the spring? Pink buds pouting at the light, Crumpled petals baby white, Just to touch them a delight-- In the spring. Have you walked beneath the blossoms in the spring? In the spring? Beneath the apple blossoms in the spring? When the pink cascades are falling, And the silver brooklets brawling, And the cuckoo bird soft calling, In the spring. If you have not, then you know not, in the spring, In the spring, Half the color, beauty, wonder of the spring, No sweet sight can I remember Half so precious, half so tender, As the apple blossoms render In the spring. WILLIAM MARTIN. _Mine Host of "The Golden Apple"_ A goodly host one day was mine, A Golden Apple his only sign, That hung from a long branch, ripe and fine. My host was the bountiful apple-tree; He gave me shelter and nourished me With the best of fare, all fresh and free. And light-winged guests came not a few, To his leafy inn, and sipped the dew, And sang their best songs ere they flew. I slept at night on a downy bed Of moss, and my Host benignly spread His own cool shadow over my head. When I asked what reckoning there might be, He shook his broad boughs cheerily:-- A blessing be thine, green Apple-tree! THOMAS WESTWOOD. _The Tree_ I love thee when thy swelling buds appear, And one by one their tender leaves unfold, As if they knew that warmer suns were near, Nor longer sought to hide from winter's cold; And when with darker growth thy leaves are seen To veil from view the early robin's nest, I love to lie beneath thy waving screen, With limbs by summer's heat and toil oppressed; And when the autumn winds have stripped thee bare, And round thee lies the smooth, untrodden snow, When naught is thine that made thee once so fair, I love to watch thy shadowy form below, And through thy leafless arms to look above On stars that brighter beam when most we need their love. JONES VERY. _A Young Fir-Wood_ These little firs to-day are things To clasp into a giant's cap, Or fans to suit his lady's lap. From many winters, many springs Shall cherish them in strength and sap, Till they be marked upon the map, A wood for the wind's wanderings. All seed is in the sower's hands: And what at first was trained to spread Its shelter for some single head,-- Yea, even such fellowship of wands,-- May hide the sunset, and the shade Of its great multitude be laid Upon the earth and elder sands. DANTE G. ROSSETTI. _The Snowing of the Pines_ Softer than silence, stiller than still air Float down from high pine-boughs the slender leaves. The forest floor its annual boon receives That comes like snowfall, tireless, tranquil, fair. Gently they glide, gently they clothe the bare Old rocks with grace. Their fall a mantle weaves Of paler yellow than autumnal sheaves Or those strange blossoms the witch-hazels wear. Athwart long aisles the sunbeams pierce their way; High up, the crows are gathering for the night; The delicate needles fill the air; the jay Takes through their golden mist his radiant flight; They fall and fall, till at November's close The snow-flakes drop as lightly--snows on snows. THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. _The Procession of the Flowers_ First came the primrose, On the bank high. Like a maiden looking forth From the window of a tower When the battle rolls below, So look'd she, And saw the storms go by. Then came the wind-flower In the valley left behind, As a wounded maiden, pale With purple streaks of woe, When the battle has roll'd by Wanders to and fro, So totter'd she, Dishevell'd in the wind. Then came the daisies, On the first of May, Like a banner'd show's advance While the crowd runs by the way, With ten thousand flowers about them they came trooping through the fields. As a happy people come, So came they, As a happy people come When the war has roll'd away, With dance and tabor, pipe and drum, And all make holiday. Then came the cowslip, Like a dancer in the fair, She spread her little mat of green, And on it danced she. With a fillet bound about her brow, A fillet round her happy brow, A golden fillet round her brow, And rubies in her hair. SYDNEY DOBELL. _Sweet Peas_ Here are sweet peas, on tiptoe for a flight: With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white, And taper fingers catching at all things, To bind them all about with tiny rings. Linger awhile upon some bending planks That lean against a streamlet's rushy banks, And watch intently Nature's gentle doings: They will be found softer than ringdove's cooings. How silent comes the water round that bend! Not the minutest whisper does it send To the o'erhanging sallows: blades of grass Slowly across the chequer'd shadows pass. JOHN KEATS. _A Snowdrop_ Only a tender little thing, So velvet soft and white it is; But march himself is not so strong, With all the great gales that are his. In vain his whistling storms he calls, In vain the cohorts of his power Ride down the sky on mighty blasts-- He cannot crush the little flower. Its white spear parts the sod, the snows Than that white spear less snowy are, The rains roll off its crest like spray, It lifts again its spotless star. HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD. _Almond Blossom_ Blossom of the almond trees, April's gift to April's bees, Birthday ornament of spring, Flora's fairest daughterling; Coming when no flowerets dare Trust the cruel outer air; When the royal kingcup bold Dares not don his coat of gold; And the sturdy black-thorn spray Keeps his silver for the May;-- Coming when no flowerets would, Save thy lowly sisterhood, Early violets, blue and white, Dying for their love of light. Almond blossom, sent to teach us That the spring-days soon will reach us, Lest, with longing over-tried, We die, as the violets died-- Blossom, clouding all the tree With thy crimson broidery, Long before a leaf of green O'er the bravest bough is seen; Ah! when winter winds are swinging All thy red bells into ringing, With a bee in every bell, Almond blossom, we greet thee well. EDWIN ARNOLD. _Wild Rose_ Some innocent girlish Kisses by a charm Changed to a flight of small pink Butterflies, To waver under June's delicious skies Across gold-sprinkled meads--the merry swarm A smiling powerful word did next transform To little Roses mesh'd in green, allies Of earth and air, and everything we prize For mirthful, gentle, delicate, and warm. WILLIAM ALLINGHAM. _Tiger-Lilies_ I like not lady-slippers, Nor yet the sweet-pea blossoms, Nor yet the flaky roses, Red, or white as snow; I like the chaliced lilies, The heavy Eastern lilies, The gorgeous tiger-lilies, That in our garden grow! For they are tall and slender; Their mouths are dashed with carmine, And when the wind sweeps by them, On their emerald stalks They bend so proud and graceful,-- They are Circassian women, The favorites of the Sultan, Adown our garden walks! And when the rain is falling, I sit beside the window And watch them glow and glisten,-- How they burn and glow! O for the burning lilies, The tender Eastern lilies, The gorgeous tiger-lilies, That in our garden grow! THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. _To the Fringed Gentian_[7] Thou blossom bright with autumn dew, And colored with the heaven's own blue, That openest, when the quiet light Succeeds the keen and frosty night; Thou comest not when violets lean O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen, Or columbines in purple dressed, Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest. Thou waitest late, and com'st alone, When woods are bare, and birds are flown, And frosts and shortening days portend The aged Year is near his end. Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye Look through its fringes to the sky, Blue--blue--as if that sky let fall A flower from its cerulean wall. I would that thus, when I shall see The hour of death draw near to me, Hope, blossoming within my heart, May look to heaven as I depart. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. [Footnote 7: _By courtesy of D. Appleton & Co., publishers of Bryant's Complete Poetical Works._] _To a Mountain Daisy_ _On Turning One Down With the Plough in April._ Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow'r, Thou's met me in an evil hour; For I maun crush amang the stoure Thy slender stem; To spare thee now is past my pow'r, Thou bonnie gem! Alas! it's no thy neebor sweet, The bonnie lark, companion meet! Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet, Wi' spreckl'd breast, When upward-springing, blithe, to greet The purpling east. Cauld blew the bitter-biting north Upon thy early, humble birth; Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth Amid the storm, Scarce rear'd above the parent earth Thy tender form. The flaunting flow'rs our gardens yield, High shelt'ring woods and wa's maun shield; But thou, beneath the random bield O' clod or stane, Adorns the histie stibble-field, Unseen, alane. There, in thy scanty mantle clad, Thy snawie bosom sun-ward spread, Thou lifts thy unassuming head In humble guise; But now the share uptears thy bed, And low thou lies. ROBERT BURNS. _Bind-Weed_ In the deep shadow of the porch A slender bind-weed springs, And climbs, like airy acrobat, The trellises, and swings And dances in the golden sun In fairy loops and rings. Its cup-shaped blossoms, brimmed with dew, Like pearly chalices, Hold cooling fountains, to refresh The butterflies and bees; And humming-birds on vibrant wings Hover, to drink at ease. And up and down the garden-beds, Mid box and thyme and yew, And spikes of purple lavender, And spikes of larkspur blue, The bind-weed tendrils win their way, And find a passage through. With touches coaxing, delicate, And arts that never tire, They tie the rose-trees each to each, The lilac to the brier, Making for graceless things a grace, With steady, sweet desire. Till near and far the garden growths, The sweet, the frail, the rude, Draw close, as if with one consent, And find each other good, Held by the bind-weed's pliant loops, In a dear brotherhood. Like one fair sister, slender, arch, A flower in bloom and poise, Gentle and merry and beloved, Making no stir or noise, But swaying, linking, blessing all A family of boys. SUSAN COOLIDGE. _The Rhodora_ In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook: The purple petals, fallen in the pool Made the black waters with their beauty gay; Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, And court the flower that cheapens his array. Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Dear, tell them, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then beauty is its own excuse for being. Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose! I never thought to ask; I never knew, But in my simple ignorance suppose The selfsame Power that brought me there, brought you. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. _A Song of Clover_ I wonder what the Clover thinks,-- Intimate friend of Bob-o'-links, Lover of Daisies slim and white, Waltzer with Buttercups at night; Keeper of Inn for traveling Bees, Serving to them wine-dregs and lees, Left by the Royal Humming Birds, Who sip and pay with fine-spun words; Fellow with all the lowliest, Peer of the gayest and the best; Comrade of winds, beloved of sun, Kissed by the Dew-drops, one by one; Prophet of Good-Luck mystery By sign of four which few may see; Symbol of Nature's magic zone, One out of three, and three in one; Emblem of comfort in the speech Which poor men's babies early reach; Sweet by the roadsides, sweet by rills, Sweet in the meadows, sweet on hills, Sweet in its white, sweet in its red,-- Oh, half its sweetness cannot be said;-- Sweet in its every living breath, Sweetest, perhaps, at last, in death! Oh! who knows what the Clover thinks? No one! unless the Bob-o'-links! "SAXE HOLM." _To the Dandelion_ (Extract) Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, First pledge of blithesome May, Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold, High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they An Eldorado in the grass have found, Which not the rich earth's ample round May match in wealth, thou art more dear to me Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. _To Daffodils_ Fair Daffodils, we weep to see You haste away so soon; As yet the early-rising sun Has not attained his noon. Stay, stay, Until the hastening day Has run But to the even-song; And, having prayed together, we Will go with you along. We have short time to stay, as you, We have as short a spring; As quick a growth to meet decay, As you, or anything. We die As your hours do, and dry Away, Like to the summer's rain; Or as the pearls of morning's dew, Ne'er to be found again. ROBERT HERRICK. _The Daffodils_ I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd,-- A host, of golden daffodils, Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced, but they Outdid the sparkling waves in glee; A poet could not but be gay In such a jocund company. I gazed, and gazed, but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. _The White Anemone_ 'Tis the white anemone, fashioned so Like to the stars of the winter snow, First thinks, "If I come too soon, no doubt I shall seem but the snow that stayed too long, So 'tis I that will be Spring's unguessed scout," And wide she wanders the woods among. Then, from out of the mossiest hiding-places, Smile meek moonlight-colored faces Of pale primroses puritan, In maiden sisterhood demure; Each virgin floweret faint and wan With the bliss of her own sweet breath so pure. * * * * OWEN MEREDITH. (Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton.) _The Grass_ The grass so little has to do,-- A sphere of simple green, With only butterflies to brood, And bees to entertain, And stir all day to pretty tunes The breezes fetch along, And hold the sunshine in its lap And bow to everything; And thread the dews all night, like pearls, And make itself so fine,-- A duchess were too common For such a noticing. And even when it dies, to pass In odors so divine, As lowly spices gone to sleep, Or amulets of pine. And then to dwell in sovereign barns, And dream the days away,-- The grass so little has to do, I wish I were the hay! EMILY DICKINSON. _The Corn-Song_ Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard! Heap high the golden corn! No richer gift has Autumn poured From out her lavish horn! Let other lands, exulting, glean The apple from the pine, The orange from its glossy green, The cluster from the vine; We better love the hardy gift Our rugged vales bestow, To cheer us when the storm shall drift Our harvest-fields with snow. Through vales of grass and meads of flowers, Our ploughs their furrows made, While on the hills the sun and showers Of changeful April played. We dropped the seed o'er hill and plain, Beneath the sun of May, And frightened from our sprouting grain The robber crows away. All through the long, bright days of June Its leaves grew green and fair, And waved in hot midsummer's noon Its soft and yellow hair. And now with autumn's moonlit eves, Its harvest-time has come, We pluck away the frosted leaves, And bear the treasure home. There richer than the fabled gift Apollo showered of old, Fair hands the broken grain shall sift, And knead its meal of gold. Let vapid idlers loll in silk Around their costly board; Give us the bowl of samp and milk, By homespun beauty poured! Where'er the wide old kitchen hearth Sends up its smoky curls, Who will not thank the kindly earth, And bless our farmer girls! Then shame on all the proud and vain, Whose folly laughs to scorn The blessing of our hardy grain, Our wealth of golden corn! Let earth withhold her goodly root, Let mildew blight the rye, Give to the worm the orchard's fruit, The wheat field to the fly: But let the good old crop adorn The hills our fathers trod; Still let us for his golden corn, Send up our thanks to God! JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. _Columbia's Emblem_ Blazon Columbia's emblem The bounteous, golden Corn! Eons ago, of the great sun's glow And the joy of the earth, 'twas born. From Superior's shore to Chili, From the ocean of dawn to the west, With its banners of green and silken sheen It sprang at the sun's behest; And by dew and shower, from its natal hour, With honey and wine 'twas fed, Till on slope and plain the gods were fain To share the feast outspread: For the rarest boon to the land they loved Was the Corn so rich and fair, Nor star nor breeze o'er the farthest seas Could find its like elsewhere. In their holiest temples the Incas Offered the heaven-sent Maize-- Grains wrought of gold, in a silver fold, For the sun's enraptured gaze; And its harvest came to the wandering tribes As the gods' own gift and seal, And Montezuma's festal bread Was made of its sacred meal. Narrow their cherished fields; but ours Are broad as the continent's breast. And, lavish as leaves, the rustling sheaves Bring plenty and joy and rest; For they strew the plains and crowd the wains When the reapers meet at morn, Till blithe cheers ring and west winds sing A song for the garnered Corn. The rose may bloom for England, The lily for France unfold; Ireland may honor the shamrock, Scotland her thistle bold; But the shield of the great Republic, The glory of the West, Shall bear a stalk of the tasseled Corn-- The sun's supreme bequest! The arbutus and the golden rod The heart of the North may cheer, And the mountain laurel for Maryland Its royal clusters rear, And jasmine and magnolia The crest of the South adorn; But the wide Republic's emblem Is the bounteous, golden Corn! EDNA DEAN PROCTOR. _Scythe Song_[8] Mowers, weary and brown, and blithe, What is the word methinks ye know, Endless over-word that the Scythe Sings to the blades of the grass below? Scythes that swing in the grass and clover, Something, still, they say as they pass; What is the word that, over and over, Sings the Scythe to the flowers and grass? _Hush, ah hush_, the Scythes are saying, _Hush, and heed not, and fall asleep;_ _Hush_, they say to the grasses swaying, _Hush_, they sing to the clover deep! _Hush_--'tis the lullaby Time is singing-- _Hush, and heed not, for all things pass,_ _Hush, ah hush!_ and the Scythes are swinging Over the clover, over the grass! ANDREW LANG. [Footnote 8: _By courtesy of Longmans, Green & Co._] _Time to Go_ They know the time to go! The fairy clocks strike their inaudible hour In field and woodland, and each punctual flower Bows at the signal an obedient head And hastes to bed. The pale Anemone Glides on her way with scarcely a good-night; The Violets tie their purple nightcaps tight; Hand clasped in hand, the dancing Columbines, In blithesome lines, Drop their last courtesies, Flit from the scene, and couch them for their rest; The Meadow Lily folds her scarlet vest And hides it 'neath the Grasses' lengthening green; Fair and serene, Her sister Lily floats On the blue pond, and raises golden eyes To court the golden splendor of the skies,-- The sudden signal comes, and down she goes To find repose In the cool depths below. A little later, and the Asters blue Depart in crowds, a brave and cheery crew; While Golden-rod, still wide awake and gay, Turns him away, Furls his bright parasol, And, like a little hero, meets his fate. The Gentians, very proud to sit up late, Next follow. Every Fern is tucked and set 'Neath coverlet, Downy and soft and warm. No little seedling voice is heard to grieve Or make complaints the folding woods beneath; No lingerer dares to stay, for well they know The time to go. Teach us your patience, brave, Dear flowers, till we shall dare to part like you, Willing God's will, sure that his clock strikes true, That his sweet day augurs a sweeter morrow, With smiles, not sorrow. SUSAN COOLIDGE. _The Death of the Flowers_[9] The melancholy days have come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere. Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the withered leaves lie dead; They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread. The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay, And from the wood-top calls the crow, through all the gloomy day. Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood? Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours. The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold, November rain, Calls not, from out the gloomy earth, the lovely ones again. The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier-rose and the orchids died amid the summer glow; But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen. And now, when comes the calm, mild day, as still such days will come, To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home; When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still, And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill, The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore, And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. [Footnote 9: _By courtesy of D. Appleton & Co., publishers of Bryant's Complete Poetical Works._] _Autumn's Mirth_ 'Tis all a myth that Autumn grieves, For, watch the rain among the leaves; With silver fingers dimly seen It makes each leaf a tambourine, And swings and leaps with elfin mirth To kiss the brow of mother earth; Or, laughing 'mid the trembling grass, It nods a greeting as you pass. Oh! hear the rain amid the leaves, 'Tis all a myth that Autumn grieves! 'Tis all a myth that Autumn grieves, For, list the wind among the sheaves; Far sweeter than the breath of May, Or storied scents of old Cathay, It blends the perfumes rare and good Of spicy pine and hickory wood And with a voice in gayest chime, It prates of rifled mint and thyme. Oh! scent the wind among the sheaves, 'Tis all a myth that Autumn grieves! 'Tis all a myth that Autumn grieves, Behold the wondrous web she weaves! By viewless hands her thread is spun Of evening vapors shyly won. Across the grass from side to side A myriad unseen shuttles glide Throughout the night, till on the height Aurora leads the laggard light. Behold the wondrous web she weaves, 'Tis all a myth that Autumn grieves! SAMUEL MINTURN PECK. INTERLEAVES _On the Wing_ Our "little brothers of the air," have you named them all without a gun, as Emerson asks in "Forbearance"? Shy, glancing eyes peer from nests half-hidden in leaves; the forest is vocal with melody, the air is tremulous with the whirr of tiny wings. Poet-singers have written undying lines about their brother minstrels of the wood, and the "blithe lark," especially, has a proud place in poetry, apostrophized as he is by Shakespeare, Shelley, Frederick Tennyson, Wordsworth, and The Ettrick Shepherd. As the skylark's note dies away we hear the saucy chatter of Cranch's Bobolink, the twitter of Keats's Goldfinches, the mournful cry of Celia Thaxter's Sandpiper, and the revolving wheel of Emily Dickinson's Humming-bird, with its resonance of emerald, its rush of cochineal. The feathered warblers, Robin, Bluebird, Swallow, speed their southern flight, but there are other songs of summer, voices of sweet and tiny cousins, heard at the lazy noontide; chirpings, rustlings of the green little vaulters in the sunny grass. And if the wee grasshoppers and those warm little housekeepers the crickets, have served as themes for Keats and Leigh Hunt, so has the humble bee provoked his tribute from the poets: "_His feet are shod with gauze, His helmet is of gold; His breast a single onyx With chrysophrase inlaid._" Come within earshot of his drowsy hum, his breezy bass,--Father Tabb's publican bee, "_Collecting the tax On honey and wax,_" or Emerson's yellow-breeched philosopher, "_Seeing only what is fair, Sipping only what is sweet._" IV ON THE WING _Sing On, Blithe Bird!_ I've plucked the berry from the bush, the brown nut from the tree, But heart of happy little bird ne'er broken was by me. I saw them in their curious nests, close couching, slyly peer With their wild eyes, like glittering beads, to note if harm were near; I passed them by, and blessed them all; I felt that it was good To leave unmoved the creatures small whose home was in the wood. And here, even now, above my head, a lusty rogue doth sing; He pecks his swelling breast and neck, and trims his little wing. He will not fly; he knows full well, while chirping on that spray, I would not harm him for a world, or interrupt his lay. Sing on, sing on, blithe bird! and fill my heart with summer gladness; It has been aching many a day with measures full of sadness! WILLIAM MOTHERWELL. _To a Skylark_ Hail to thee, blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert-- That from heaven or near it Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. In the golden light'ning Of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are bright'ning, Thou dost float and run, Like an embodied joy whose race is just begun. The pale purple even Melts around thy flight; Like a star of heaven In the broad daylight, Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight-- Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear, Until we hardly see, we feel, that it is there. All the earth and air With thy voice is loud, As, when night is bare, From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflow'd. What thou art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see As from thy presence showers a rain of melody:-- Like a poet hidden In the light of thought, Singing hymns unbidden, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: Like a high-born maiden In a palace tower, Soothing her love-laden Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love which overflows her bower: Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aërial hue Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view: Like a rose embow'red By its own green leaves, By warm winds deflow'red, Till the scent it gives Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-wingèd thieves. Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain-awak'ned flowers,-- All that ever was, Joyous and clear and fresh,--thy music doth surpass. Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. Chorus hymeneal Or triumphal chant, Matched with thine, would be all But an empty vaunt-- A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains? What shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? With thy clear keen joyance Languor cannot be: Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee: Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. Waking or asleep, Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. Yet, if we could scorn Hate and pride and fear, If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know; Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow The world should listen then as I am listening now. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. _Sir Lark and King Sun: A Parable_ "Good morrow, my lord!" in the sky alone, Sang the lark as the sun ascended his throne. "Shine on me, my lord; I only am come, Of all your servants, to welcome you home. I have flown right up, a whole hour, I swear, To catch the first shine of your golden hair." "Must I thank you then," said the king, "Sir Lark, For flying so high and hating the dark? You ask a full cup for half a thirst: Half was love of me, and half love to be first. There's many a bird makes no such haste, But waits till I come: that's as much to my taste." And King Sun hid his head in a turban of cloud, And Sir Lark stopped singing, quite vexed and cowed; But he flew up higher, and thought, "Anon The wrath of the king will be over and gone; And his crown, shining out of its cloudy fold, Will change my brown feathers to a glory of gold." So he flew--with the strength of a lark he flew; But, as he rose, the cloud rose too; And not one gleam of the golden hair Came through the depths of the misty air; Till, weary with flying, with sighing sore, The strong sun-seeker could do no more. His wings had had no chrism of gold; And his feathers felt withered and worn and old; He faltered, and sank, and dropped like a stone. And there on his nest, where he left her, alone Sat his little wife on her little eggs, Keeping them warm with wings and legs. Did I say alone? Ah, no such thing! Full in her face was shining the king. "Welcome, Sir Lark! You look tired," said he; "_Up_ is not always the best way to me. While you have been singing so high and away, I've been shining to your little wife all day." He had set his crown all about the nest, And out of the midst shone her little brown breast; And so glorious was she in russet gold, That for wonder and awe Sir Lark grew cold. He popped his head under her wing, and lay As still as a stone, till King Sun was away. GEORGE MACDONALD. _The Skylark_[10] How the blithe Lark runs up the golden stair That leans thro' cloudy gates from Heaven to Earth, And all alone in the empyreal air Fills it with jubilant sweet songs of mirth; How far he seems, how far With the light upon his wings, Is it a bird or star That shines and sings? * * * * And now he dives into a rainbow's rivers; In streams of gold and purple he is drown'd; Shrilly the arrows of his song he shivers, As tho' the stormy drops were turned to sound: And now he issues thro', He scales a cloudy tower; Faintly, like falling dew, His fast notes shower. * * * * FREDERICK TENNYSON. [Footnote 10: _By courtesy of John Lane._] _The Skylark_ Bird of the wilderness, Blithesome and cumberless, Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea! Emblem of happiness, Blest is thy dwelling-place,-- Oh, to abide in the desert with thee! Wild is thy lay and loud Far in the downy cloud, Love gives it energy, love gave it birth! Where, on thy dewy wing, Where art thou journeying? Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth. O'er fell and fountain sheen, O'er moor and mountain green, O'er the red streamer that heralds the day, Over the cloudlet dim, Over the rainbow's rim, Musical cherub, soar, singing, away! Then, when the gloaming comes, Low in the heather blooms Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be! Emblem of happiness, Blest is thy dwelling-place-- Oh, to abide in the desert with thee! JAMES HOGG. (The Ettrick Shepherd.) _The Bobolinks_ When Nature had made all her birds, With no more cares to think on, She gave a rippling laugh, and out There flew a Bobolinkon. She laughed again; out flew a mate; A breeze of Eden bore them Across the fields of Paradise, The sunrise reddening o'er them. Incarnate sport and holiday, They flew and sang forever; Their souls through June were all in tune, Their wings were weary never. Their tribe, still drunk with air and light, And perfume of the meadow, Go reeling up and down the sky, In sunshine and in shadow. One springs from out the dew-wet grass; Another follows after; The morn is thrilling with their songs And peals of fairy laughter. From out the marshes and the brook, They set the tall reeds swinging, And meet and frolic in the air, Half prattling and half singing. When morning winds sweep meadow-lands In green and russet billows. And toss the lonely elm-tree's boughs. And silver all the willows, I see you buffeting the breeze, Or with its motion swaying, Your notes half drowned against the wind, Or down the current playing. When far away o'er grassy flats, Where the thick wood commences, The white-sleeved mowers look like specks, Beyond the zigzag fences, And noon is hot, and barn-roofs gleam White in the pale blue distance, I hear the saucy minstrels still In chattering persistence. When eve her domes of opal fire Piles round the blue horizon, Or thunder rolls from hill to hill A Kyrie Eleison, Still merriest of the merry birds, Your sparkle is unfading,-- Pied harlequins of June,--no end Of song and masquerading. * * * * Hope springs with you: I dread no more Despondency and dulness; For Good Supreme can never fail That gives such perfect fulness. The life that floods the happy fields With song and light and color Will shape our lives to richer states, And heap our measures fuller. CHRISTOPHER PEARSE CRANCH. _To a Waterfowl_[11] Whither 'midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way? Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along. Seek'st thou the plashy brink Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, Or where the rocky billows rise and sink On the chafed ocean-side? There is a Power whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,-- The desert and illimitable air,-- Lone wandering, but not lost. All day thy wings have fanned, At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, Though the dark night is near. And soon that toil shall end; Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, And shall not soon depart. He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. [Footnote 11: _By courtesy of D. Appleton & Co., publishers of Bryant's Complete Poetical Works._] _Goldfinches_ Sometimes goldfinches one by one will drop From low-hung branches; little space they stop, But sip, and twitter, and their feathers sleek, Then off at once, as in a wanton freak; Or perhaps, to show their black and golden wings, Pausing upon their yellow flutterings. Were I in such a place, I sure should pray That naught less sweet might call my thoughts away Than the soft rustle of a maiden's gown Fanning away the dandelion's down. JOHN KEATS. _The Sandpiper_ Across the narrow beach we flit, One little sandpiper and I; And fast I gather, bit by bit, The scattered driftwood, bleached and dry. The wild waves reach their hands for it, The wild wind raves, the tide runs high, As up and down the beach we flit,-- One little sandpiper and I. Above our heads the sullen clouds Scud black and swift across the sky; Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds Stand out the white lighthouses high. Almost as far as eye can reach I see the close-reefed vessels fly, As fast we flit along the beach,-- One little sandpiper and I. I watch him as he skims along, Uttering his sweet and mournful cry; He starts not at my fitful song, Or flash of fluttering drapery. He has no thought of any wrong; He scans me with a fearless eye; Stanch friends are we, well tried and strong, The little sandpiper and I. Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night When the loosed storm breaks furiously? My driftwood fire will burn so bright! To what warm shelter canst thou fly? I do not fear for thee, though wroth The tempest rushes through the sky; For are we not God's children both, Thou, little sandpiper, and I? CELIA THAXTER. _The Eagle_ (Fragment) He clasps the crag with hookèd hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ring'd with the azure world, he stands. The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls; And like a thunderbolt he falls. ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON. _Child's Talk in April_ I wish you were a pleasant wren, And I your small accepted mate; How we'd look down on toilsome men! We'd rise and go to bed at eight Or it may be not quite so late. Then you should see the nest I'd build, The wondrous nest for you and me; The outside rough perhaps, but filled With wool and down; ah, you should see The cosy nest that it would be. We'd have our change of hope and fear, Some quarrels, reconcilements sweet: I'd perch by you to chirp and cheer, Or hop about on active feet, And fetch you dainty bits to eat. We'd be so happy by the day. So safe and happy through the night, We both should feel, and I should say, It's all one season of delight, And we'll make merry whilst we may. Perhaps some day there'd be an egg When spring had blossomed from the snow: I'd stand triumphant on one leg; Like chanticleer I'd almost crow To let our little neighbours know. Next you should sit and I would sing Through lengthening days of sunny spring; Till, if you wearied of the task, I'd sit; and you should spread your wing From bough to bough; I'd sit and bask. Fancy the breaking of the shell, The chirp, the chickens wet and bare, The untried proud paternal swell; And you with housewife-matron air Enacting choicer bills of fare. Fancy the embryo coats of down, The gradual feathers soft and sleek; Till clothed and strong from tail to crown, With virgin warblings in their beak, They too go forth to soar and seek. So would it last an April through And early summer fresh with dew, Then should we part and live as twain: Love-time would bring me back to you And build our happy nest again. CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI. _The Flight of the Birds_ Whither away, Robin, Whither away? Is it through envy of the maple-leaf, Whose blushes mock the crimson of thy breast, Thou wilt not stay? The summer days were long, yet all too brief The happy season thou hast been our guest: Whither away? Whither away, Bluebird, Whither away? The blast is chill, yet in the upper sky Thou still canst find the color of thy wing, The hue of May. Warbler, why speed thy southern flight? ah, why, Thou too, whose song first told us of the Spring? Whither away? Whither away, Swallow, Whither away? Canst thou no longer tarry in the North, Here, where our roof so well hath screened thy nest? Not one short day? Wilt thou--as if thou human wert--go forth And wanton far from them who love thee best? Whither away? EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. _The Shepherd's Home_ My banks they are furnished with bees, Whose murmur invites one to sleep; My grottoes are shaded with trees, And my hills are white over with sheep. I seldom have met with a loss, Such health do my fountains bestow; My fountains all bordered with moss, Where the harebells and violets blow. Not a pine in the grove is there seen, But with tendrils of woodbine is bound; Not a beech's more beautiful green, But a sweetbrier entwines it around. Not my fields in the prime of the year, More charms than my cattle unfold; Not a brook that is limpid and clear, But it glitters with fishes of gold. I have found out a gift for my fair, I have found where the wood pigeons breed, But let me such plunder forbear, She will say 'twas a barbarous deed; For he ne'er could be true, she averred, Who would rob a poor bird of its young; And I loved her the more when I heard Such tenderness fall from her tongue. WILLIAM SHENSTONE. _To a Cricket_ Voice of Summer, keen and shrill, Chirping round my winter fire, Of thy song I never tire, Weary others as they will; For thy song with Summer's filled-- Filled with sunshine, filled with June; Firelight echo of that noon Heard in fields when all is stilled In the golden light of May, Bringing scents of new-mown hay, Bees, and birds, and flowers away: Prithee, haunt my fireside still, Voice of Summer, keen and shrill! WILLIAM C. BENNETT. _On the Grasshopper and Cricket_ The poetry of earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead; That is the Grasshopper's--he takes the lead In summer luxury,--he has never done With his delights; for when tired out with fun, He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. The poetry of earth is ceasing never: On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one, in drowsiness half lost, The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills. JOHN KEATS. _The Tax-Gatherer_ "And pray, who are you?" Said the violet blue To the Bee, with surprise At his wonderful size, In her eye-glass of dew. "I, madam," quoth he, "Am a publican Bee, Collecting the tax Of honey and wax. Have you nothing for me?" JOHN B. TABB. _To the Grasshopper and the Cricket_ Green little vaulter in the sunny grass, Catching your heart up at the feel of June,-- Sole voice that's heard amidst the lazy noon, When even the bees lag at the summoning brass; And you, warm little housekeeper, who class With those who think the candles come too soon, Loving the fire, and with your tricksome tune Nick the glad silent moments as they pass! O sweet and tiny cousins, that belong, One to the fields, the other to the hearth, Both have your sunshine; both, though small, are strong At your clear hearts; and both seem given to earth To sing in thoughtful ears their natural song,-- In doors and out, summer and winter, Mirth. LEIGH HUNT. _The Bee_ Like trains of cars on tracks of plush I hear the level bee: A jar across the flowers goes, Their velvet masonry Withstands until the sweet assault Their chivalry consumes, While he, victorious, tilts away To vanquish other blooms. His feet are shod with gauze, His helmet is of gold; His breast, a single onyx With chrysoprase, inlaid. His labor is a chant, His idleness a tune; Oh, for a bee's experience Of clovers and of noon! EMILY DICKINSON. _The Humble-Bee_ Burly, dozing humble-bee, Where thou art is clime for me. Let them sail for Porto Rique, Far-off heats through seas to seek; I will follow thee alone, Thou animated torrid zone! Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer, Let me chase thy waving lines; Keep me nearer, me thy hearer, Singing over shrubs and vines. Insect lover of the sun, Joy of thy dominion! Sailor of the atmosphere; Swimmer through the waves of air; Voyager of light and noon; Epicurean of June,-- Wait, I prithee, till I come Within earshot of thy hum,-- All without is martyrdom. When the south wind, in May days, With a net of shining haze Silvers the horizon wall, And with softness touching all, Tints the human countenance With a color of romance, And, infusing subtle heats, Turns the sod to violets, Thou, in sunny solitudes, Rover of the underwoods, The green silence dost displace With thy mellow, breezy bass. Hot midsummer's petted crone, Sweet to me thy drowsy tone Tells of countless sunny hours, Long days, and solid banks of flowers; Of gulfs of sweetness without bound In Indian wildernesses found; Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure, Firmest cheer, and bird-like pleasure. Aught unsavory or unclean Hath my insect never seen; But violets and bilberry bells, Maple-sap and daffodels, Grass with green flag half-mast high, Succory to match the sky, Columbine with horn of honey, Scented fern, and agrimony, Clover, catchfly, adder's-tongue And brier-roses, dwelt among; All beside was unknown waste, All was picture as he passed. Wiser far than human seer, Yellow-breeched philosopher! Seeing only what is fair, Sipping only what is sweet, Thou dost mock at fate and care, Leave the chaff and take the wheat; When the fierce northwestern blast Cools sea and land so far and fast, Thou already slumberest deep; Woe and want thou canst outsleep: Want and woe, which torture us, Thy sleep makes ridiculous. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. _All Things Wait Upon Thee_ Innocent eyes not ours And made to look on flowers, Eyes of small birds, and insects small; Morn after summer morn The sweet rose on her thorn Opens her bosom to them all. The last and least of things, That soar on quivering wings, Or crawl among the grass blades out of sight, Have just as clear a right To their appointed portion of delight As queens or kings. CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI. _Providence_ Lo, the lilies of the field, How their leaves instruction yield! Hark to Nature's lesson given By the blessed birds of heaven! Every bush and tufted tree Warbles sweet philosophy: Mortal, fly from doubt and sorrow, God provideth for the morrow. Say, with richer crimson glows The kingly mantle than the rose? Say, have kings more wholesome fare Than we citizens of air? Barns nor hoarded grain have we, Yet we carol merrily. Mortal, fly from doubt and sorrow, God provideth for the morrow. One there lives, whose guardian eye Guides our humble destiny; One there lives, who, Lord of all, Keeps our feathers lest they fall. Pass we blithely then the time, Fearless of the snare and lime, Free from doubt and faithless sorrow: God provideth for the morrow. REGINALD HEBER. INTERLEAVES _The Inglenook_ "_With his flute of reeds a stranger Wanders piping through the village, Beckons to the fairest maiden, And she follows where he leads her, Leaving all things for the stranger._" The ancient arrowmaker is left standing lonely at the door of his wigwam, but Laughing Water and Hiawatha have gone to make a new household among the myriad homes of earth. It matters not whether the inglenook be in wigwam or cabin, cottage or palace, if _Love Dwells Within_ be graven upon the threshold, for "where a true wife comes, there home is always around her." She is the Domina or House Lady, and under the benediction of her gaze arise sweet order, peace, and restful charm. The "gudeman," too; "his very foot has music in't when he comes up the stair," and like the fire on the hearth he diffuses warmth and comfort and good cheer. By and by a cradle swings to and fro in the sheltered corner of the fireside; baby feet have come to stray on life's untrodden brink; baby eyes whose speech make dumb the wise smile up into the mother's as she sings her lullaby: "_The Queen has sceptre, crown, and ball, You are my sceptre, crown, and all. And it's O! sweet, sweet, and a lullaby._" The dog and the cat snooze peacefully on the hearth, the kettle hums, the kitchen clock ticks drowsily. The circle of love widens to take in all who are helping to make home beautiful--the farm boy, the milkmaid, and even the whinnying mare and friendly cow. The poetry of the inglenook is simple, unpretentious, humble, but it has a tender charm of its own because it sings of a heaven far on this side of the stars: "By men called home." V THE INGLENOOK _A New Household_ O Fortunate, O happy day, When a new household finds its place Among the myriad homes of earth, Like a new star just sprung to birth, And rolled on its harmonious way Into the boundless realms of space! * * * * HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. _From "The Hanging of the Crane."_ _Two Heavens_ For there are two heavens, sweet, Both made of love,--one, inconceivable Ev'n by the other, so divine it is; The other, far on this side of the stars, By men called home. LEIGH HUNT. _A Song of Love_ Say, what is the spell, when her fledglings are cheeping, That lures the bird home to her nest? Or wakes the tired mother, whose infant is weeping, To cuddle and croon it to rest? What the magic that charms the glad babe in her arms, Till it cooes with the voice of the dove? 'Tis a secret, and so let us whisper it low-- And the name of the secret is Love! For I think it is Love, For I feel it is Love, For I'm sure it is nothing but Love! Say, whence is the voice that when anger is burning, Bids the whirl of the tempest to cease? That stirs the vexed soul with an aching--a yearning For the brotherly hand-grip of peace? Whence the music that fills all our being--that thrills Around us, beneath, and above? 'Tis a secret: none knows how it comes, or it goes-- But the name of the secret is Love! For I think it is Love, For I feel it is Love, For I'm sure it is nothing but Love! Say, whose is the skill that paints valley and hill, Like a picture so fair to the sight? That flecks the green meadow with sunshine and shadow, Till the little lambs leap with delight? 'Tis a secret untold to hearts cruel and cold, Though 'tis sung, by the angels above, In notes that ring clear for the ears that can hear-- And the name of the secret is Love! For I think it is Love, For I feel it is Love, For I'm sure it is nothing but Love! LEWIS CARROLL. _Mother's Song_ My heart is like a fountain true That flows and flows with love to you. As chirps the lark unto the tree So chirps my pretty babe to me. And it's O! sweet, sweet! and a lullaby. There's not a rose where'er I seek, As comely as my baby's cheek. There's not a comb of honey-bee, So full of sweets as babe to me. And it's O! sweet, sweet! and a lullaby. There's not a star that shines on high, Is brighter than my baby's eye. There's not a boat upon the sea, Can dance as baby does to me. And it's O! sweet, sweet! and a lullaby. No silk was ever spun so fine As is the hair of baby mine-- My baby smells more sweet to me Than smells in spring the elder tree. And it's O! sweet, sweet! and a lullaby. A little fish swims in the well, So in my heart does baby dwell. A little flower blows on the tree, My baby is the flower to me. And it's O! sweet, sweet! and a lullaby. The Queen has sceptre, crown and ball, You are my sceptre, crown and all. For all her robes of royal silk, More fair your skin, as white as milk. And it's O! sweet, sweet! and a lullaby. Ten thousand parks where deer run, Ten thousand roses in the sun, Ten thousand pearls beneath the sea, My baby more precious is to me. And it's O! sweet, sweet! and a lullaby. WEST OF ENGLAND LULLABY. _The Bonniest Bairn in a' the Warl'_ The bonniest bairn in a' the warl' Has skin like the drifted snaw, An' rosy wee cheeks sae saft an' sleek-- There never was ither sic twa; Its een are just bonnie wee wander'd stars, Its leggies are plump like a farl, An' ilk ane maun see't, an' a' maun declare't The cleverest bairn, The daintiest bairn, The rosiest, cosiest, cantiest bairn, The dearest, queerest, Rarest, fairest, Bonniest bairn in a' the warl'. The bonniest bairn in a' the warl' Ye ken whaur the ferlie lives? It's doon in yon howe, it's owre yon knowe-- In the laps o' a thousand wives; It's up an' ayont in yon castle brent, The heir o' the belted earl; It's sookin' its thoomb in yon gipsy tent-- The cleverest bairn, The daintiest bairn, The rosiest, cosiest, cantiest bairn, The dearest, queerest, Rarest, fairest, Bonniest bairn in a' the warl'. * * * * ROBERT FORD. _Cuddle Doon_ The bairnies cuddle doon at nicht, Wi' muckle faucht an' din; Oh, try an' sleep, ye waukrife rogues, Your father's comin' in. They never heed a word I speak; I try to gi'e a froon, But aye I hap them up, an' cry, "O, bairnies, cuddle doon." Wee Jamie wi' the curly heid-- He aye sleeps neist the wa', Bangs up an' cries, "I want a piece"; The rascal starts them a'. I rin an' fetch them pieces, drinks, They stop awee the soun'; Then draw the blankets up and cry, "Noo, weanies, cuddle doon." But ere five minutes gang, wee Rab Cries oot frae 'neath the claes, "Mither, mak' Tam gie ower at ance-- He's kittlin' wi' his taes." The mischief's in that Tam for tricks, He'd bother half the toon: But aye I hap them up an' cry, "O, bairnies, cuddle doon." At length they hear their father's fit, An', as he steeks the door, They turn their faces to the wa', While Tam pretends to snore. "Hae a' the weans been gude?" he asks, As he pits aff his shoon; "The bairnies, John, are in their beds, An' lang since cuddled doon." An' just afore we bed oorsel's, We look at oor wee lambs; Tam has his airm roun' wee Rab's neck, An' Rab his airm roun' Tam's. I lift wee Jamie up the bed, An', as I straik each croon, I whisper, till my heart fills up, "O, bairnies, cuddle doon." The bairnies cuddle doon at nicht, Wi' mirth that's dear to me; But sune the big warl's cark an' care Will quaten doon their glee. Yet come what will to ilka ane, May He who sits aboon Aye whisper, though their pows be bauld, "O, bairnies, cuddle doon." ALEXANDER ANDERSON. _I Am Lonely_ The world is great: the birds all fly from me, The stars are golden fruit upon a tree All out of reach: my little sister went, And I am lonely. The world is great: I tried to mount the hill Above the pines, where the light lies so still, But it rose higher: little Lisa went And I am lonely. The world is great: the wind comes rushing by, I wonder where it comes from; sea birds cry And hurt my heart: my little sister went, And I am lonely. The world is great: the people laugh and talk, And make loud holiday: how fast they walk! I'm lame, they push me: little Lisa went, And I am lonely. GEORGE ELIOT. _From "The Spanish Gypsy."_ _Brother and Sister_ But were another childhood-world my share, I would be born a little sister there. I I cannot choose but think upon the time When our two lives grew like two buds that kiss At lightest thrill from the bee's swinging chime, Because the one so near the other is. He was the elder and a little man Of forty inches, bound to show no dread, And I the girl that puppy-like now ran, Now lagged behind my brother's larger tread. I held him wise, and when he talked to me Of snakes and birds, and which God loved the best, I thought his knowledge marked the boundary Where men grew blind, though angels knew the rest. If he said "Hush!" I tried to hold my breath; Wherever he said "Come!" I stepped in faith. II Long years have left their writing on my brow, But yet the freshness and the dew-fed beam Of those young mornings are about me now, When we two wandered toward the far-off stream With rod and line. Our basket held a store Baked for us only, and I thought with joy That I should have my share, though he had more, Because he was the elder and a boy. The firmaments of daisies since to me Have had those mornings in their opening eyes, The bunchéd cowslip's pale transparency Carries that sunshine of sweet memories, And wild-rose branches take their finest scent From those blest hours of infantine content. III Our mother bade us keep the trodden ways, Stroked down my tippet, set my brother's frill, Then with the benediction of her gaze Clung to us lessening, and pursued us still Across the homestead to the rookery elms, Whose tall old trunks had each a grassy mound, So rich for us, we counted them as realms With varied products: here were earth-nuts found, And here the Lady-fingers in deep shade; Here sloping toward the Moat the rushes grew, The large to split for pith, the small to braid; While over all the dark rooks cawing flew, And made a happy strange solemnity, A deep-toned chant from life unknown to me. * * * * IX We had the selfsame world enlarged for each By loving difference of girl and boy: The fruit that hung on high beyond my reach He plucked for me, and oft he must employ A measuring glance to guide my tiny shoe Where lay firm stepping-stones, or call to mind "This thing I like my sister may not do, For she is little, and I must be kind." Thus boyish Will the nobler mastery learned Where inward vision over impulse reigns, Widening its life with separate life discerned, A Like unlike, a Self that self restrains. His years with others must the sweeter be For those brief days he spent in loving me. * * * * GEORGE ELIOT. _Home_ O Falmouth is a fine town with ships in the bay, And I wish from my heart it's there I was to-day; I wish from my heart I was far away from here, Sitting in my parlour and talking to my dear. For it's home, dearie, home--it's home I want to be. Our topsails are hoisted, and we'll away to sea. O the oak and the ash and the bonnie birken tree They're all growing green in the old countree. In Baltimore a-walking a lady I did meet With her babe on her arm as she came down the street; And I thought how I sailed, and the cradle standing ready For the pretty little babe that has never seen its daddie. And it's home, dearie, home,-- O, if it be a lass, she shall wear a golden ring; And if it be a lad, he shall fight for his king; With his dirk and his hat and his little jacket blue He shall walk the quarter-deck as his daddie used to do. And it's home, dearie, home,-- O, there's a wind a-blowing, a-blowing from the west, And that of all the winds is the one I like the best, For it blows at our backs, and it shakes our pennon free, And it soon will blow us home to the old countree. For it's home, dearie, home--it's home I want to be. Our topsails are hoisted, and we'll away to sea. O the oak and the ash and the bonnie birken tree They're all growing green in the old countree. WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY. _Love Will Find Out the Way_ Over the mountains And over the waves, Under the fountains And under the graves; Under floods that are deepest, Which Neptune obey, Over rocks that are steepest, Love will find out the way. Where there is no place For the glow-worm to lie, Where there is no space For receipt of a fly; Where the midge dares not venture Lest herself fast she lay, If Love come, he will enter And will find out the way. * * * * OLD ENGLISH. _The Sailor's Wife_ And are ye sure the news is true? And are ye sure he's weel? Is this a time to think o' wark? Ye jades, lay by your wheel; Is this the time to spin a thread. When Colin's at the door? Reach down my cloak, I'll to the quay, And see him come ashore. For there's nae luck about the house, There's nae luck at a'; There's little pleasure in the house When our gudeman's awa. And gie to me my bigonet, My bishop's satin gown; For I maun tell the baillie's wife That Colin's in the town. My Turkey slippers maun gae on, My stockins pearly blue; It's a' to pleasure our gudeman, For he's baith leal and true. Rise, lass, and mak a clean fireside, Put on the muckle pot; Gie little Kate her button gown And Jock his Sunday coat; And mak their shoon as black as slaes, Their hose as white as snaw; It's a' to please my ain gudeman, For he's been long awa. There's twa fat hens upo' the coop Been fed this month and mair; Mak haste and thraw their necks about, That Colin weel may fare; And spread the table neat and clean, Gar ilka thing look braw, For wha can tell how Colin fared When he was far awa? Sae true his heart, sae smooth his speech, His breath like caller air; His very foot has music in't As he comes up the stair. And will I see his face again? And will I hear him speak? I'm downright dizzy wi' the thought, In troth I'm like to greet! If Colin's weel, and weel content, I hae nae mair to crave; And gin I live to keep him sae, I'm blest aboon the lave: And will I see his face again? And will I hear him speak? I'm downright dizzy wi' the thought, In troth I'm like to greet. For there's nae luck about the house, There's nae luck at a'; There's little pleasure in the house When our gudeman's awa. WILLIAM J. MICKLE. _Evening at the Farm_ Over the hill the farm-boy goes. His shadow lengthens along the land, A giant staff in a giant hand; In the poplar-tree, above the spring, The katydid begins to sing; The early dews are falling;-- Into the stone-heap darts the mink; The swallows skim the river's brink; And home to the woodland fly the crows, When over the hill the farm-boy goes, Cheerily calling, "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'! co'!" Farther, farther, over the hill, Faintly calling, calling still, "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'!" Into the yard the farmer goes, With grateful heart, at the close of day: Harness and chain are hung away; In the wagon-shed stand yoke and plough, The straw's in the stack, the hay in the mow, The cooling dews are falling;-- The friendly sheep his welcome bleat, The pigs come grunting to his feet, And the whinnying mare her master knows, When into the yard the farmer goes, His cattle calling,-- "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'! co'!" While still the cow-boy, far away, Goes seeking those that have gone astray,-- "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'!" Now to her task the milkmaid goes. The cattle come crowding through the gate, Lowing, pushing, little and great; About the trough, by the farm-yard pump, The frolicsome yearlings frisk and jump, While the pleasant dews are falling;-- The new milch heifer is quick and shy, But the old cow waits with tranquil eye, And the white stream into the bright pail flows, When to her task the milkmaid goes, Soothingly calling, "So, boss! so, boss! so! so! so!" The cheerful milkmaid takes her stool, And sits and milks in the twilight cool. Saying "So! so, boss! so! so!" To supper at last the farmer goes. The apples are pared, the paper read, The stories are told, then all to bed. Without, the crickets' ceaseless song Makes shrill the silence all night long; The heavy dews are falling. The housewife's hand has turned the lock; Drowsily ticks the kitchen clock; The household sinks to deep repose, But still in sleep the farm-boy goes Singing, calling,-- "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'! co'!" And oft the milkmaid, in her dreams, Drums in the pail with the flashing streams, Murmuring "So, boss! so!" JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE. _Home Song_ Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest; Home-keeping hearts are happiest, For those that wander they know not where Are full of trouble and full of care, To stay at home is best. Weary and homesick and distressed, They wander east, they wander west, And are baffled, and beaten and blown about By the winds of the wilderness of doubt; To stay at home is best. Then stay at home, my heart, and rest; The bird is safest in its nest: O'er all that flutter their wings and fly A hawk is hovering in the sky; To stay at home is best. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. _Etude Rêaliste_ I A baby's feet, like seashells pink, Might tempt, should heaven see meet, An angel's lips to kiss, we think,-- A baby's feet. Like rose-hued sea-flowers toward the heat They stretch and spread and wink Their ten soft buds that part and meet. No flower-bells that expand and shrink Gleam half so heavenly sweet, As shine on life's untrodden brink,-- A baby's feet. II A baby's hands, like rosebuds furled, Where yet no leaf expands, Ope if you touch, though close upcurled,-- A baby's hands. Then, even as warriors grip their brands When battle's bolt is hurled, They close, clenched hard like tightening bands. No rose-buds yet by dawn impearled Match, even in loveliest lands, The sweetest flowers in all the world,-- A baby's hands. III A baby's eyes, ere speech begin, Ere lips learn words or sighs, Bless all things bright enough to win A baby's eyes. Love while the sweet thing laughs and lies, And sleep flows out and in, Sees perfect in them Paradise! Their glance might cast out pain and sin, Their speech make dumb the wise, By mute glad godhead felt within A baby's eyes. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. _We Are Seven_ ------A simple child, That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death? I met a little cottage girl: She was eight years old, she said; Her hair was thick with many a curl That clustered round her head. She had a rustic, woodland air, And she was wildly clad: Her eyes were fair, and very fair;-- Her beauty made me glad. "Sisters and brothers, little Maid, How many may you be?" "How many? Seven in all," she said, And wondering looked at me. "And where are they? I pray you tell." She answered, "Seven are we; And two of us at Conway dwell, And two are gone to sea. "Two of us in the churchyard lie, My sister and my brother; And, in the churchyard cottage, I Dwell near them with my mother." "You say that two at Conway dwell, And two are gone to sea, Yet ye are seven! I pray you tell, Sweet Maid, how this may be." Then did the little maid reply, "Seven boys and girls are we; Two of us in the churchyard lie, Beneath the churchyard tree." "You run about, my little Maid, Your limbs they are alive; If two are in the churchyard laid Then ye are only five." "Their graves are green, they may be seen," The little Maid replied, "Twelve steps or more from my mother's door, And they are side by side. "My stockings there I often knit, My kerchief there I hem; And there upon the ground I sit And sing a song to them. "And often after sunset, Sir, When it is light and fair, I take my little porringer And eat my supper there. "The first that died was sister Jane; In bed she moaning lay, Till God released her of her pain; And then she went away. "So in the churchyard she was laid; And, when the grass was dry, Together round her grave we played, My brother John and I. "And when the ground was white with snow And I could run and slide, My brother John was forced to go, And he lies by her side." "How many are you, then," said I, "If they two are in heaven?" Quick was the little Maid's reply, "O Master! we are seven." "But they are dead; those two are dead! Their spirits are in heaven!" 'Twas throwing words away: for still The little Maid would have her will, And said, "Nay, we are seven!" WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. INTERLEAVES _Fairy Songs and Songs of Fancy_ Most of these songs come to you from the masters of English poetry. Nations, like individuals, have their "play-spells," and Shakespeare, Drayton, and "rare Ben Jonson" belong to that wonderful age of Elizabeth when more than ten score of poets were making England a veritable nest of singing-birds. Dowden says of the exquisite songs scattered through Shakespeare's plays, that if they do not make their own way, like the notes in the wildwood, no words will open the dull ear to take them in. Of Drayton we give you here "The Arming of Pigwiggen," from "Nymphidia," and later on "The Battle of Agincourt," called, respectively, the best fantastic poem and the best war poem in the language. Then comes Milton the sublime; Milton set apart among poets; so that the adjective Miltonic has come to be a synonym for gravity, loftiness, and majesty. After Milton, Dryden, often called the greatest poet of a little age; but if he lacked the true sublimity he reverenced in the great Puritan, he was still the first, and perhaps the greatest, master of satirical poetry. Then, more than half a century afterward, comes Coleridge with his dreamy grace and his touch of the supernatural; his marvellous poetic gift, of sudden blossoming and sad and premature decay. Contemporary with Coleridge was Shelley, the master singer of his time, pouring out, like his own skylark, "his full heart in profuse strains of unpremeditated art." When these two voices were hushed the Victorian era was dawning and the laurel worn by Wordsworth was placed on the brow of a poet who, by his perfect grace of manner, melody of rhythm, finished skill, clear insight, and nobility of thought, gave his name to the Tennysonian age. VI FAIRY SONGS AND SONGS OF FANCY FAIRY LAND I _Puck and the Fairy_ _Puck._ How now, spirit! whither wander you? _Fairy._ Over hill, over dale, Thorough bush, thorough brier, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire, I do wander everywhere, Swifter than the moonè's sphere; And I serve the fairy queen, To dew her orbs upon the green; The cowslips tall her pensioners be; In their gold coats, spots you see; Those be rubies, fairy favors, In those freckles live their savors; I must go seek some dewdrops here, And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. Farewell, thou lob of spirits; I'll be gone: Our queen and all her elves come here anon. _From "Midsummer-Night's Dream."_ II _Lullaby for Titania_ You spotted snakes with double tongue, Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen; Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong; Come not near our fairy queen. Philomel, with melody, Sing in our sweet lullaby; Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby! Never harm, Nor spell nor charm, Come our lovely lady nigh; So, good-night, with lullaby. Weaving spiders, come not here; Hence, you long-legg'd spinners, hence! Beetles black, approach not near; Worm nor snail, do no offence. Philomel, with melody, Sing in our sweet lullaby; Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby! Never harm, Nor spell nor charm, Come our lovely lady nigh; So, good-night, with lullaby. _From "Midsummer-Night's Dream."_ III _Oberon and Titania to the Fairy Train_ _Oberon._ Through the house give glimmering light, By the dead and drowsy fire; Every elf and fairy sprite, Hop as light as bird from brier; And this ditty after me Sing, and dance it trippingly. _Titania._ First, rehearse your song by rote, To each word a warbling note: Hand in hand with fairy grace Will we sing and bless this place. _From "Midsummer-Night's Dream."_ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. IV _Ariel's Songs_ I Come unto these yellow sands, And then take hands: Court'sied when you have and kiss'd, (The wild waves whist) Foot it featly here and there; And sweet Sprites, the burthen bear. Hark, hark! Bow, wow, The watch-dog's bark: Bow, wow, Hark, hark! I hear The strain of strutting chanticleer Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow! II Where the bee sucks, there suck I: In a cowslip's bell I lie; There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat's back I do fly, After summer merrily. Merrily, merrily, shall I live now, Under the blossom that hangs on the bough! III Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong. Hark! now I hear them-- Ding-dong, bell! WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. _From "The Tempest."_ _Orpheus With His Lute_ Orpheus with his lute made trees, And the mountain tops that freeze, Bow themselves when he did sing: To his music, plants and flowers Ever sprung; as sun and showers There had made a lasting spring. Every thing that heard him play, Even the billows of the sea, Hung their heads, and then lay by. In sweet music is such art, Killing care and grief of heart Fall asleep or hearing, die. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. _From "King Henry VIII."_ _The Arming of Pigwiggen_ (He) quickly arms him for the field, A little cockle-shell his shield, Which he could very bravely wield, Yet could it not be piersed: His spear a bent both stiff and strong, And well near of two inches long; The pile was of a horsefly's tongue, Whose sharpness naught reversed. And put him on a coat of mail, Which was of a fish's scale, That when his foe should him assail, No point should be prevailing. His rapier was a hornet's sting, It was a very dangerous thing; For if he chanc'd to hurt the king, It would be long in healing. His helmet was a beetle's head, Most horrible and full of dread, That able was to strike one dead, Yet it did well become him: And for a plume a horse's hair, Which being tosséd by the air, Had force to strike his foe with fear, And turn his weapon from him. Himself he on an earwig set, Yet scarce he on his back could get, So oft and high he did curvet Ere he himself could settle: He made him turn, and stop, and bound, To gallop, and to trot the round, He scarce could stand on any ground, He was so full of mettle. MICHAEL DRAYTON. _From "Nymphidia."_ _Hesperus' Song_ Queen and huntress, chaste and fair, Now the sun is laid to sleep, Seated in thy silver chair, State in wonted manner keep. Hesperus entreats thy light, Goddess, excellently bright. Earth, let not thy envious shade Dare itself to interpose; Cynthia's shining orb was made Heaven to clear, when day did close; Bless us then with wishèd sight, Goddess, excellently bright. Lay thy bow of pearl apart, And thy crystal-shining quiver; Give unto the flying hart Space to breathe, how short soever: Thou that mak'st a day of night, Goddess, excellently bright. BEN JONSON. _From "Cynthia's Revels."_ _L'Allegro_ (Extracts) * * * * Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee Jest and youthful Jollity, Quips, and Cranks, and wanton Wiles, Nods, and Becks, and Wreathèd Smiles. Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, And love to live in dimple sleek; Sport that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter holding both his sides. Come, and trip it as you go On the light fantastic toe, And in thy right hand lead with thee The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty; And if I give thee honor due, Mirth, admit me of thy crew, To live with her, and live with thee, In unreprovèd pleasures free; To hear the Lark begin his flight, And singing startle the dull night, From his watch-tower in the skies, Till the dappled dawn doth rise; Then to come in spite of sorrow, And at my window bid good-morrow, Through the Sweet-Briar, or the Vine, Or the twisted Eglantine: While the Cock with lively din Scatters the rear of darkness thin, And to the stack, or the Barn-door, Stoutly struts his Dames before: Oft listening how the Hounds and horn Cheerly rouse the slumb'ring morn, From the side of some hoar hill, Through the high wood echoing shrill: Some time walking not unseen By Hedgerow Elms, on Hillocks green, Right against the Eastern gate, Where the great Sun begins his state, Robed in flames and Amber light, The clouds in thousand liveries dight. While the Plowman near at hand Whistles o'er the furrowed land, And the Milkmaid singeth blithe, And the Mower whets his scythe, And every Shepherd tells his tale Under the Hawthorn in the dale. Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures Whilst the landskip round it measures, Russet Lawns, and Fallows gray, Where the nibbling flock do stray, Mountains on whose barren breast The laboring clouds do often rest, Meadows trim with Daisies pied, Shallow Brooks, and Rivers wide. Towers and Battlements it sees Bosomed high in tufted Trees, Where perhaps some beauty lies, The Cynosure of neighboring eyes. Hard by, a Cottage chimney smokes, From betwixt two aged Oaks, Where Corydon and Thyrsis met, Are at their savory dinner set Of Herbs, and other Country Messes, Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses; And then in haste her Bower she leaves With Thestylis to bind the Sheaves; Or, if the earlier season lead, To the tanned Haycock in the Mead. Sometimes with secure delight The upland Hamlets will invite, When the merry Bells ring round, And the jocund rebecks sound To many a youth, and many a maid, Dancing in the Checkered shade; And young and old come forth to play On a Sunshine Holy-day Till the livelong daylight fail; Then to the Spicy Nut-brown Ale, With stories told of many a feat, How Fairy Mab the junkets eat, She was pinched, and pulled, she said, And he by Friars' Lanthorn led, Tells how the drudging Goblin sweat, To earn his Cream-bowl duly set, When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy Flail hath threshed the Corn, That ten day-laborers could not end; Then lies him down the Lubbar Fiend, And stretched out all the Chimney's length, Basks at the fire his hairy strength, And Crop-full out of doors he flings, Ere the first Cock his Matin rings. Thus done the Tales, to bed they creep By whispering Winds soon lulled asleep. Towered Cities please us then, And the busy hum of men, Where throngs of Knights and Barons bold In weeds of Peace high triumphs hold, With store of Ladies, whose bright eyes Rain influence, and judge the prize Of Wit, or Arms, while both contend To win her Grace, whom all commend. There let Hymen oft appear In Saffron robe, with Taper clear, And pomp, and feast, and revelry, With mask, and antique Pageantry; Such sights as youthful Poets dream On summer eves by haunted stream. Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson's learnèd sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, fancy's child. Warble his native Wood-notes wild. And ever against eating Cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse, Such as the meeting soul may pierce In notes, with many a winding bout Of linkèd sweetness long drawn out, With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes running, Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony; That Orpheus' self may heave his head From golden slumber on a bed Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear Such strains as would have won the ear Of Pluto, to have quite set free His half-regained Eurydice. These delights, if thou canst give, Mirth, with thee I mean to live. JOHN MILTON. _Sabrina Fair_ _The Spirit sings:_ Sabrina fair, Listen where thou art sitting Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, In twisted braids of lilies knitting The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair; Listen for dear honor's sake, Goddess of the silver lake, Listen, and save! Listen, and appear to us, In name of great Oceanus; * * * * By all the Nymphs that Nightly dance Upon thy streams with wily glance, Rise, rise, and heave thy rosy head From thy coral-paven bed, And bridle in thy headlong wave, Till thou our summons answered have. Listen, and save. [SABRINA rises, attended by water-nymphs, and sings.] By the rushy-fringèd bank, Where grows the Willow and the Osier dank, My sliding Chariot stays, Thick set with agate, and the azure sheen Of turkis blue, and emerald green, That in the channel strays; Whilst from off the waters fleet Thus I set my printless feet O'er the Cowslip's Velvet head, That bends not as I tread; Gentle swain, at thy request I am here. JOHN MILTON. _From "Comus."_ _Alexander's Feast_ 'Twas at the royal feast, for Persia won By Philip's warlike son: Aloft in awful state The godlike hero sate On his imperial throne: His valiant peers were placed around; Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound: (So should desert in arms be crowned.) The lovely Thais, by his side, Sate like a blooming Eastern bride In flower of youth and beauty's pride. Happy, happy, happy pair! None but the brave, None but the brave, None but the brave deserves the fair. _Chorus._ _Happy, happy, happy pair!_ _None but the brave,_ _None but the brave,_ _None but the brave deserves the fair._ Timotheus, placed on high Amid the tuneful quire, With flying fingers touched the lyre: The trembling notes ascend the sky, And heavenly joys inspire. The song began from Jove, Who left his blissful seats above, (Such is the power of mighty love.) A dragon's fiery form belied the god: Sublime on radiant spires he rode. The listening crowd admire the lofty sound, A present deity, they shout around; A present deity, the vaulted roofs rebound: With ravish'd ears The monarch hears, Assumes the god, Affects to nod, And seems to shake the spheres. _Chorus._ _With ravish'd ears_ _The monarch hears,_ _Assumes the god,_ _Affects to nod,_ _And seems to shake the spheres._ JOHN DRYDEN. _From "Ode on St. Cecilia's Day."_ _Kubla Khan_ In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man, Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round: And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. But O! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: Amid whose swift, half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail: And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale, the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean: And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war! The shadow of the dome of pleasure Floated midway on the waves; Where was heard the mingled measure From the fountain and the caves. It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me Her sympathy and song, To such a deep delight 'twould win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! Those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. _The Magic Car Moved On_ The Fairy and the Soul proceeded; The silver clouds disparted; And, as the car of magic they ascended, Again the speechless music swelled, Again the coursers of the air Unfurled their azure pennons, and the Queen, Shaking the beamy reins, Bade them pursue their way. The magic car moved on. The night was fair, and countless stars Studded heaven's dark-blue vault,-- The eastern wave grew pale With the first smile of morn. The magic car moved on. From the celestial hoofs The atmosphere in flaming sparkles flew; And, where the burning wheels Eddied above the mountain's loftiest peak, Was traced a line of lightning. Now far above a rock, the utmost verge Of the wide earth, it flew-- The rival of the Andes, whose dark brow Loured o'er the silver sea. Far far below the chariot's path, Calm as a slumbering babe, Tremendous Ocean lay. The mirror of its stillness showed The pale and waning stars, The chariot's fiery track, And the grey light of morn Tingeing those fleecy clouds That cradled in their folds the infant dawn. The chariot seemed to fly Through the abyss of an immense concave, Radiant with million constellations, tinged With shades of infinite colour, And semicircled with a belt Flashing incessant meteors. The magic car moved on. As they approached their goal, The coursers seemed to gather speed. The sea no longer was distinguished; earth Appeared a vast and shadowy sphere; The sun's unclouded orb Rolled through the black concave; Its rays of rapid light Parted around the chariot's swifter course, And fell like ocean's feathery spray Dashed from the boiling surge Before a vessel's prow. The magic car moved on. Earth's distant orb appeared The smallest light that twinkles in the heavens Whilst round the chariot's way Innumerable systems rolled, And countless spheres diffused An ever-varying glory. It was a sight of wonder: some Were hornèd like the crescent moon; Some shed a mild and silver beam Like Hesperus o'er the western sea; Some dashed athwart with trains of flame, Like worlds to death and ruin driven; Some shone like stars, and, as the chariot passed, Bedimmed all other light. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. _From "Queen Mab."_ _Arethusa_ Arethusa arose From her couch of snows In the Acroceraunian mountains,-- From cloud and from crag, With many a jag, Shepherding her bright fountains. She leapt down the rocks With her rainbow locks Streaming among the streams; Her steps paved with green The downward ravine Which slopes to the western gleams: And gliding and springing, She went, ever singing, In murmurs as soft as sleep; The Earth seemed to love her, And Heaven smiled above her, As she lingered towards the deep. Then Alpheus bold, On his glacier cold, With his trident the mountains strook And opened a chasm In the rocks;--with the spasm All Erymanthus shook. And the black south wind It concealed behind The urns of the silent snow, And earthquake and thunder Did rend in sunder The bars of the springs below. The beard and the hair Of the River-god were Seen through the torrent's sweep, As he followed the light Of the fleet nymph's flight To the brink of the Dorian deep. "Oh! save me! Oh! guide me! And bid the deep hide me! For he grasps me now by the hair!" The loud Ocean heard, To its blue depth stirred, And divided at her prayer; And under the water The Earth's white daughter Fled like a sunny beam, Behind her descended, Her billows unblended With the brackish Dorian stream. Like a gloomy stain On the emerald main, Alpheus rushed behind,-- As an eagle pursuing A dove to its ruin Down the streams of the cloudy wind. Under the bowers Where the Ocean Powers Sit on their pearlèd thrones; Through the coral woods Of the weltering floods; Over heaps of unvalued stones; Through the dim beams Which amid the streams Weave a network of colored light; And under the caves Where the shadowy waves Are as green as the forest's night; Outspeeding the shark, And the swordfish dark,-- Under the ocean foam, And up through the rifts Of the mountain clifts,-- They passed to their Dorian home. And now from their fountains In Enna's mountains, Down one vale where the morning basks, Like friends once parted Grown single-hearted, They ply their watery tasks. At sunrise they leap From their cradles steep In the cave of the shelving hill; At noontide they flow Through the woods below And the meadows of asphodel; And at night they sleep In the rocking deep Beneath the Ortygian shore;-- Like the spirits that lie In the azure sky, When they love but live no more. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. _The Culprit Fay_ (Extracts) III _Fairy Dawn_ * * * * 'Tis the hour of fairy ban and spell: The wood-tick has kept the minutes well; He has counted them all with click and stroke, Deep in the heart of the mountain oak, And he has awakened the sentry elve Who sleeps with him in the haunted tree, To bid him ring the hour of twelve, And call the fays to their revelry; Twelve small strokes on his tinkling bell-- ('Twas made of the white snail's pearly shell)-- "Midnight comes, and all is well! Hither, hither, wing your way! 'Tis the dawn of the fairy-day." IV _The Assembling of the Fays_ They come from beds of lichen green, They creep from the mullein's velvet screen; Some on the backs of beetles fly From the silver tops of moon-touched trees, Where they swung in their cobweb hammocks high, And rocked about in the evening breeze; Some from the humbird's downy nest-- They had driven him out by elfin power, And, pillowed on plumes of his rainbow breast, Had slumbered there till the charmèd hour; Some had lain in the scoop of the rock, With glittering ising-stars inlaid; And some had opened the four-o'clock, And stole within its purple shade. And now they throng the moonlight glade, Above--below--on every side, Their little minim forms arrayed, In the tricksy pomp of fairy pride. VI _The Throne of the Lily-King_ The throne was reared upon the grass, Of spice-wood and of sassafras; On pillars of mottled tortoise-shell Hung the burnished canopy-- And over it gorgeous curtains fell Of the tulip's crimson drapery. The monarch sat on his judgment-seat, On his brow the crown imperial shone, The prisoner Fay was at his feet, And his peers were ranged around the throne, He waved his sceptre in the air, He looked around and calmly spoke; His brow was grave and his eye severe, But his voice in a softened accent broke: VII _The Fay's Crime_ Fairy! Fairy! list and mark: Thou hast broke thine elfin chain; Thy flame-wood lamp is quenched and dark, And thy wings are dyed with a deadly stain-- Thou hast sullied thine elfin purity In the glance of a mortal maiden's eye, Thou hast scorned our dread decree, And thou shouldst pay the forfeit high, But well I know her sinless mind Is pure as the angel forms above, Gentle and meek, and chaste and kind, Such as a spirit well might love; Fairy! had she spot or taint, Bitter had been thy punishment. VIII _The Fay's Sentence_ "Thou shalt seek the beach of sand Where the water bounds the elfin land; Thou shalt watch the oozy brine Till the sturgeon leaps in the bright moonshine, Then dart the glistening arch below, And catch a drop from his silver bow. The water-sprites will wield their arms And dash around, with roar and rave, And vain are the woodland spirits' charms, They are the imps that rule the wave. Yet trust thee in thy single might: If thy heart be pure and thy spirit right, Thou shalt win the warlock fight. IX "If the spray-bead gem be won, The stain of thy wing is washed away: But another errand must be done Ere thy crime be lost for aye; Thy flame-wood lamp is quenched and dark, Thou must reillume its spark. Mount thy steed and spur him high To the heaven's blue canopy; And when thou seest a shooting star, Follow it fast, and follow it far-- The last faint spark of its burning train Shall light the elfin lamp again. Thou hast heard our sentence, Fay; Hence! to the water-side, away!" X _The Fay's Departure_ The goblin marked his monarch well; He spake not, but he bowed him low, Then plucked a crimson colen-bell, And turned him round in act to go. The way is long, he cannot fly, His soiléd wing has lost its power, And he winds adown the mountain high, For many a sore and weary hour. Through dreary beds of tangled fern, Through groves of nightshade dark and dern, Over the grass and through the brake, Where toils the ant and sleeps the snake; Now over the violet's azure flush He skips along in lightsome mood; And now he thrids the bramble-bush, Till its points are dyed in fairy blood. He has leaped the bog, he has pierced the brier, He has swum the brook, and waded the mire, Till his spirits sank, and his limbs grew weak, And the red waxed fainter in his cheek. He had fallen to the ground outright, For rugged and dim was his onward track, But there came a spotted toad in sight, And he laughed as he jumped upon her back: He bridled her mouth with a silkweed twist, He lashed her sides with an osier thong; And now, through evening's dewy mist, With leap and spring they bound along, Till the mountain's magic verge is past, And the beach of sand is reached at last. JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE. _A Myth_ A floating, a floating Across the sleeping sea, All night I heard a singing bird Upon the topmast tree. "Oh, came you from the isles of Greece Or from the banks of Seine? Or off some tree in forests free That fringe the western main?" "I came not off the old world, Nor yet from off the new; But I am one of the birds of God Which sing the whole night through." "Oh, sing and wake the dawning! Oh, whistle for the wind! The night is long, the current strong, My boat it lags behind." "The current sweeps the old world, The current sweeps the new; The wind will blow, the dawn will glow, Ere thou hast sailed them through." CHARLES KINGSLEY. _The Fairy Folk_ Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen We daren't go a-hunting, For fear of little men; Wee folk, good folk, Trooping all together; Green jacket, red cap, And white owl's feather. Down along the rocky shore Some make their home, They live on crispy pancakes Of yellow tide-foam; Some in the reeds Of the black mountain-lake, With frogs for their watch-dogs, All night awake. High on the hill-top The old King sits; He is now so old and gray He's nigh lost his wits. With a bridge of white mist Columbkill he crosses, On his stately journeys From Slieveleague to Rosses; Or going up with music, On cold starry nights, To sup with the Queen Of the gay Northern Lights. They stole little Bridget For seven years long; When she came down again Her friends were all gone. They took her lightly back, Between the night and morrow; They thought that she was fast asleep, But she was dead with sorrow. They have kept her ever since Deep within the lakes, On a bed of flag leaves, Watching till she wakes. By the craggy hillside, Through the mosses bare, They have planted thorn-trees For pleasure here and there. Is any man so daring As dig one up in spite? He shall find the thornies set In his bed at night. Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren't go a-hunting For fear of little men; Wee folk, good folk, Trooping all together; Green jacket, red cap, And white owl's feather. WILLIAM ALLINGHAM. _The Merman_ I Who would be A merman bold, Sitting alone, Singing alone Under the sea, With a crown of gold, On a throne? II I would be a merman bold, I would sit and sing the whole of the day; I would fill the sea-halls with a voice of power; But at night I would roam abroad and play With the mermaids in and out of the rocks, Dressing their hair with the white sea-flower; And holding them back by their flowing locks I would kiss them often under the sea, And kiss them again till they kiss'd me Laughingly, laughingly; And then we would wander away, away, To the pale-green sea-groves straight and high, Chasing each other merrily. III There would be neither moon nor star; But the wave would make music above us afar-- Low thunder and light in the magic night-- Neither moon nor star. We would call aloud in the dreamy dells, Call to each other and whoop and cry All night, merrily, merrily. They would pelt me with starry spangles and shells, Laughing and clapping their hands between, All night, merrily, merrily, But I would throw to them back in mine Turkis and agate and almondine; Then leaping out upon them unseen I would kiss them often under the sea, And kiss them again till they kiss'd me Laughingly, laughingly. O, what a happy life were mine Under the hollow-hung ocean green! Soft are the moss-beds under the sea; We would live merrily, merrily. ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON. _The Mermaid_ I Who would be A mermaid fair, Singing alone, Combing her hair Under the sea, In a golden curl With a comb of pearl, On a throne? II I would be a mermaid fair; I would sing to myself the whole of the day; With a comb of pearl I would comb my hair; And still as I combed I would sing and say, "Who is it loves me? who loves not me?" I would comb my hair till my ringlets would fall Low adown, low adown, From under my starry sea-bud crown Low adown and around, And I should look like a fountain of gold Springing alone With a shrill inner sound, Over the throne In the midst of the hall; Till that great sea-snake under the sea From his coiled sleeps in the central deeps Would slowly trail himself sevenfold Round the hall where I sate, and look in at the gate With his large calm eyes for the love of me. And all the mermen under the sea Would feel their immortality Die in their hearts for the love of me. III But at night I would wander away, away, I would fling on each side my low-flowing locks, And lightly vault from the throne and play With the mermen in and out of the rocks; We would run to and fro, and hide and seek, On the broad sea-wolds in the crimson shells, Whose silvery spikes are nearest the sea. But if any came near I would call and shriek, And adown the steep like a wave I would leap From the diamond ledges that jut from the dells; For I would not be kiss'd by all who would list, Of the bold merry mermen under the sea; They would sue me, and woo me, and flatter me, In the purple twilights under the sea; But the king of them all would carry me, Woo me, win me, and marry me, In the branching jaspers under the sea; Then all the dry pied things that be In the hueless mosses under the sea Would curl round my silver feet silently, All looking up for the love of me. And if I should carol aloud from aloft All things that are forked and horned and soft Would lean out from the hollow sphere of the sea, All looking down for the love of me. ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON. _Bugle Song_ The splendor falls on castle walls, And snowy summits old in story; The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying: Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. Oh hark! oh hear! how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, farther going! Oh sweet and far from cliff and scar The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying: Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. O Love, they die in yon rich sky, They faint on hill, or field, or river: Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow forever and forever: Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying. ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON. _From "The Princess."_ _The Raven_ Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door-- Only this, and nothing more." Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow;--vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for the lost Lenore-- For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore-- Nameless here for evermore. And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating "'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door-- Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;-- This it is, and nothing more." Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, "Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you"--here I opened wide the door;---- Darkness there, and nothing more. Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore!" This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" Merely this, and nothing more. Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before. "Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice; Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore-- Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;-- 'Tis the wind, and nothing more!" Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore. Not the least obeisance made he; not an instant stopped or stayed he; But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door-- Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door-- Perched, and sat, and nothing more. Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore-- Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!" Quoth the raven, "Nevermore." Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning--little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door-- Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, With such name as "Nevermore." But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour. Nothing further then he uttered--not a feather then he fluttered-- Till I scarcely more than muttered "Other friends have flown before-- On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before." Then the bird said "Nevermore." Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, "Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store, Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore-- Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore Of 'Never--nevermore.'" But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling, Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door; Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore-- What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore Meant in croaking "Nevermore." This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core; This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er, But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er, She shall press, ah, nevermore! Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer Swung by angels whose faint foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor. "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee--by these angels he hath sent thee Respite--respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore! Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!" Quoth the raven, "Nevermore." "Prophet," said I, "thing of evil!--prophet still, if bird or devil!-- Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore, Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted-- On this home by Horror haunted--tell me truly, I implore-- Is there--is there balm in Gilead?--tell me--tell me, I implore! Quoth the raven, "Nevermore." "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil--prophet still, if bird or devil! By that Heaven that bends above us--by that God we both adore-- Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore-- Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore?" Quoth the raven, "Nevermore." "Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting-- "Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken! quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!" Quoth the raven, "Nevermore." And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted--nevermore! EDGAR ALLAN POE. _The Bells_ I Hear the sledges with the bells-- Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night! While the stars, that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells-- From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. II Hear the mellow wedding bells, Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight! From the molten-golden notes, And all in tune, What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats On the moon! Oh, from out the sounding cells, What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! How it swells! How it dwells On the Future! how it tells Of the rapture that impels To the swinging and the ringing Of the bells, bells, bells, Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells-- To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells! III Hear the loud alarum bells-- Brazen bells! What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! In the startled ear of night How they scream out their affright! Too much horrified to speak, They can only shriek, shriek, Out of tune, In the clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire, Leaping higher, higher, higher, With a desperate desire, And a resolute endeavor Now--now to sit or never, By the side of the pale-faced moon. Oh, the bells, bells, bells! What a tale their terror tells Of despair! How they clang, and clash, and roar! What a horror they outpour On the bosom of the palpitating air! Yet the ear it fully knows, By the twanging, And the clanging, How the danger ebbs and flows; Yet the ear distinctly tells, In the jangling And the wrangling, How the danger sinks and swells, By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells-- Of the bells-- Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells,-- In the clamor and the clangor of the bells. IV Hear the tolling of the bells-- Iron bells! What a world of solemn thought their monody compels! In the silence of the night, How we shiver with affright At the melancholy menace of their tone! For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats Is a groan. And the people--ah, the people-- They that dwell up in the steeple, All alone, And who tolling, tolling, tolling, In that muffled monotone, Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone-- They are neither man nor woman-- They are neither brute or human-- They are Ghouls: And their king it is who tolls; And he rolls, rolls, rolls, Rolls A pæan from the bells! And his merry bosom swells With the pæan of the bells! And he dances and he yells; Keeping time, time, time In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the pæan of the bells-- Of the bells: Keeping time, time, time In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the throbbing of the bells, Of the bells, bells, bells,-- To the sobbing of the bells; Keeping time, time, time, As he knells, knells, knells, In a happy Runic rhyme, To the rolling of the bells,-- Of the bells, bells, bells,-- To the tolling of the bells, Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells,-- To the moaning and the groaning of the bells. EDGAR ALLAN POE. INTERLEAVES _Sports and Pastimes_ In ancient tapestries, centuries old, you sometimes see, wrought in delicate needlework that is faded with the lapse of years, pictures of the sports of the period. There will be quaint scenes showing otter and bear hunting, swans' nesting, hawking, chasing the deer, and the like; in-door scenes, too, depicting pretty pages strumming musical instruments, and lovely ladies at their tambour or 'broidery frames. The poetry of each passing age preserves pictures of its plays and diversions still more perfectly than worn and tattered tapestry, and the verses we have chosen cover a bewildering variety of pastimes and recreations. The poets have sounded the praises of almost every kind of sport: angling, swimming, skating, bubble-blowing, going a-Maying, walking, riding, whittling, nutting, the country pleasures of "the barefoot boy," the joys of reading, the delights of music, and the exhilarations of cruising and travelling. One poem of the immediate present, Beeching's "Bicycling Song," shows us that the sport of the moment need not of necessity be too commonplace to be wrought into verse. At first thought the amusements of these latter days are so swift and breathless, so complicated with steam, electricity, and other great forces of the new era, that they seem less poetic than the picturesque frolics of milkmaids and shepherds, the games of the old Greeks or the gay sports of the days of chivalry. But after all, as Lowell said, "there is as much poetry in the iron horses that eat fire as in those of Diomed that fed on men. If you cut an apple across, you may trace in it the lines of the blossom that the bee hummed around in May; and so the soul of poetry survives in things prosaic." VII SPORTS AND PASTIMES _Blowing Bubbles_ SEE, the pretty Planet! Floating sphere! Faintest breeze will fan it Far or near; World as light as feather; Moonshine rays, Rainbow tints together, As it plays; Drooping, sinking, failing, Nigh to earth, Mounting, whirling, sailing, Full of mirth; Life there, welling, flowing, Waving round; Pictures coming, going, Without sound. Quick now, be this airy Globe repell'd! Never can the fairy Star be held. Touch'd--it in a twinkle Disappears! Leaving but a sprinkle, As of tears. WILLIAM ALLINGHAM. _Bicycling Song_ With lifted feet, hands still, I am poised, and down the hill Dart, with heedful mind; The air goes by in a wind. Swifter and yet more swift, Till the heart with a mighty lift Makes the lungs laugh, the throat cry:-- "O bird, see; see, bird, I fly. "Is this, is this your joy? O bird, then I, though a boy, For a golden moment share Your feathery life in air!" Say, heart, is there aught like this In a world that is full of bliss? 'Tis more than skating, bound Steel-shod to the level ground. Speed slackens now, I float Awhile in my airy boat; Till, when the wheels scarce crawl, My feet to the treadles fall. Alas, that the longest hill Must end in a vale; but still, Who climbs with toil, wheresoe'er, Shall find wings waiting there. HENRY CHARLES BEECHING. _Going A Maying_ Get up, get up for shame! The blooming morn Upon her wings presents the god unshorn: See how Aurora throws her fair Fresh-quilted colours through the air: Get up, sweet-slug-a-bed, and see The dew-bespangled herb and tree! Each flower has wept and bowed toward the east, Above an hour since, yet you not drest, Nay, not so much as out of bed? When all the birds have matins said, And sung their thankful hymns, 'tis sin, Nay, profanation, to keep in, Whenas a thousand virgins on this day, Spring, sooner than the lark, to fetch in May. Rise, and put on your foliage, and be seen To come forth, like the Spring-time fresh and green, And sweet as Flora. Take no care For jewels for your gown or hair: Fear not; the leaves will strew Gems in abundance upon you: Besides, the childhood of the day has kept, Against you come, some orient pearls unwept. Come, and receive them while the light Hangs on the dew-locks of the night. And Titan on the eastern hill Retires himself, or else stands still Till you come forth! Wash, dress, be brief in praying: Few beads are best, when once we go a Maying. Come, my Corinna, come; and coming, mark How each field turns a street, each street a park, Made green, and trimmed with trees! see how Devotion gives each house a bough Or branch! each porch, each door, ere this, An ark, a tabernacle is, Made up of white-thorn neatly interwove, As if here were those cooler shades of love. Can such delights be in the street, And open fields, and we not see't? Come, we'll abroad: and let's obey The proclamation made for May. And sin no more, as we have done, by staying, But, my Corinna, come, let's go a Maying. There's not a budding boy or girl, this day, But is got up, and gone to bring in May. A deal of youth, ere this is come Back and with white-thorn laden home. Some have despatched their cakes and cream, Before that we have left to dream: And some have wept, and woo'd, and plighted troth, And chose their priest, ere we can cast off sloth: Many a green-gown has been given, Many a kiss, both odd and even: Many a glance, too, has been sent From out the eye, love's firmament: Many a jest told of the keys betraying This night, and locks picked: yet we're not a Maying. Come, let us go, while we are in our prime, And take the harmless folly of the time! We shall grow old apace, and die Before we know our liberty. Our life is short, and our days run As fast away as does the sun. And as a vapour, or a drop of rain, Once lost, can ne'er be found again, So when or you or I are made A fable, song, or fleeting shade, All love, all liking, all delight, Lies drowned with us in endless night. Then, while time serves, and we are but decaying, Come, my Corinna, come, let's go a Maying. ROBERT HERRICK. _Jog On, Jog On_[12] Jog on, jog on the foot path-way, And merrily hent the stile-a, Your merry heart goes all the day, Your sad tires in a mile-a. Your paltry money-bags of gold-- What need have we to stare for, When little or nothing soon is told, And we have the less to care for. Then cast away care, let sorrow cease, A fig for melancholy; Let's laugh and sing, or, if you please, We'll frolic with sweet Dolly. _From The Winter's Tale._ [Footnote 12: _First stanza by William Shakespeare. Last two stanzas by unknown author in "Antidote Against Melancholy," 1661._] _A Vagabond Song_ There is something in the Autumn that is native to my blood-- Touch of manner, hint of mood; And my heart is like a rhyme, With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time. The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry Of bugles going by. And my lonely spirit thrills To see the frosty asters like smoke upon the hills. There is something in October sets the gipsy blood astir; We must rise and follow her, When from every hill of flame She calls and calls each vagabond by name. BLISS CARMAN. _Swimming_ And mightier grew the joy to meet full-faced Each wave, and mount with upward plunge, and taste The rapture of its rolling strength, and cross Its flickering crown of snows that flash and toss Like plumes in battle's blithest charge, and thence To match the next with yet more strenuous sense; Till on his eyes the light beat hard and bade His face turn west and shoreward through the glad Swift revel of the waters golden-clad, And back with light reluctant heart he bore Across the broad-backed rollers in to shore. ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE. _From "Tristram of Lyonesse."_ _Swimming_ How many a time have I Cloven, with arm still lustier, breast more daring, The wave all roughened; with a swimmer's stroke Flinging the billows back from my drenched hair, And laughing from my lip the audacious brine, Which kissed it like a wine-cup, rising o'er The waves as they arose, and prouder still The loftier they uplifted me; and oft, In wantonness of spirit, plunging down Into their green and glassy gulfs, and making My way to shells and seaweed, all unseen By those above, till they waxed fearful; then Returning with my grasp full of such tokens As showed that I had searched the deep; exulting, With a far-dashing stroke, and drawing deep The long suspended breath, again I spurned The foam which broke around me, and pursued My track like a sea-bird.--I was a boy then. GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON. _From "The Two Foscari."_ _The Angler's Reveille_[13] What time the rose of dawn is laid across the lips of night, And all the drowsy little stars have fallen asleep in light; 'Tis then a wandering wind awakes, and runs from tree to tree, And borrows words from all the birds to sound the reveille. This is the carol the Robin throws Over the edge of the valley; Listen how boldly it flows, Sally on sally: Tirra-lirra, Down the river, Laughing water All a-quiver. Day is near, Clear, clear. Fish are breaking, Time for waking. Tup, tup, tup! Do you hear? All clear-- Wake up! The phantom flood of dreams has ebbed and vanished with the dark, And like a dove the heart forsakes the prison of the ark; Now forth she fares through friendly woods and diamond-fields of dew, While every voice cries out "Rejoice!" as if the world were new. This is the ballad the Bluebird sings, Unto his mate replying, Shaking the tune from his wings While he is flying: Surely, surely, surely, Life is dear Even here. Blue above, You to love, Purely, purely, purely. There's wild azalea on the hill, and roses down the dell, And just one spray of lilac still abloom beside the well; The columbine adorns the rocks, the laurel buds grow pink, Along the stream white arums gleam, and violets bend to drink. This is the song of the Yellowthroat, Fluttering gaily beside you; Hear how each voluble note Offers to guide you: Which way, sir? I say, sir, Let me teach you, I beseech you! Are you wishing Jolly fishing? This way, sir! I'll teach you. Then come, my friend, forget your foes, and leave your fears behind, And wander forth to try your luck, with cheerful, quiet mind; For be your fortune great or small, you'll take what God may give, And all the day your heart shall say, "'Tis luck enough to live." This is the song the Brown Thrush flings, Out of his thicket of roses; Hark how it warbles and rings, Mark how it closes: Luck, luck, What luck? Good enough for me! I'm alive, you see. Sun shining, No repining; Never borrow Idle sorrow; Drop it! Cover it up! Hold your cup! Joy will fill it, Don't spill it, Steady, be ready, Good luck! HENRY VAN DYKE. [Footnote 13: _From "The Toiling of Felix." By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons._] _The Angler's Invitation_ Come when the leaf comes, angle with me, Come when the bee hums over the lea, Come with the wild flowers-- Come with the wild showers-- Come when the singing bird calleth for thee! Then to the stream side, gladly we'll hie, Where the grey trout glide silently by, Or in some still place Over the hill face Hurrying onward, drop the light fly. Then, when the dew falls, homeward we'll speed To our own loved walls down on the mead, There, by the bright hearth, Holding our night mirth, We'll drink to sweet friendship in need and in deed. THOMAS TOD STODDART. _Skating_ And in the frosty season, when the sun Was set, and, visible, for many a mile, The cottage-windows through the twilight blazed, I heeded not the summons. Happy time It was indeed for all of us: for me It was a time of rapture! Clear and loud The village clock tolled six. I wheeled about, Proud and exulting, like an untired horse That cares not for its home. All shod with steel, We hissed along the polished ice, in games Confederate, imitative of the chase And woodland pleasures,--the resounding horn, The pack loud bellowing, and the hunted hare. So through the darkness and the cold we flew, And not a voice was idle. With the din Meanwhile the precipices rang aloud. The leafless trees and every icy crag Tinkled like iron; while the distant hills Into the tumult sent an alien sound Of melancholy, not unnoticed; while the stars Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the west The orange sky of evening died away. Not seldom from the uproar I retired Into a silent bay; or sportively Glanced sideways, leaving the tumultuous throng, To cut across the reflex of a star,-- Image, that, flying still before me, gleamed Upon the glassy plain. And oftentimes, When we had given our bodies to the wind, And all the shadowy banks on either side Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still The rapid line of motion, then at once Have I, reclining back upon my heels, Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs Wheeled by me, even as if the earth had rolled With visible motion her diurnal round. Behind me did they stretch in solemn train, Feebler and feebler; and I stood and watched Till all was tranquil as a summer sea. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. _From "The Prelude._" _Reading_ ... We get no good By being ungenerous, even to a book, And calculating profits ... so much help By so much reading. It is rather when We gloriously forget ourselves and plunge Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound, Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth-- 'Tis then we get the right good from a book. ELIZABETH B. BROWNING. _From "Aurora Leigh."_ _On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer_ Much have I travelled in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne: Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold; Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific--and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise-- Silent, upon a peak in Darien. JOHN KEATS. _Music's Silver Sound_ When griping grief the heart doth wound, And doleful dump the mind oppress, Then music, with her silver sound, With speedy help doth lend redress. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. _From "Romeo and Juliet."_ _The Power of Music_ For do but note a wild and wanton herd, Or race of youthful and unhandled colts, Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud, Which is the hot condition of their blood; If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound, Or any air of music touch their ears, You shall perceive them make a mutual stand, Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze, By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods; Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage, But music for the time doth change his nature. The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus: Let no such man be trusted. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. _From "The Merchant of Venice."_ _Descend, Ye Nine_ Descend, ye Nine! descend and sing; The breathing instruments inspire, Wake into voice each silent string, And sweep the sounding lyre! In a sadly pleasing strain, Let the warbling lute complain: Let the loud trumpet sound, Till the roofs all around The shrill echoes rebound; While in more lengthen'd notes and slow, The deep, majestic, solemn organs blow. Hark! the numbers soft and clear Gently steal upon the ear; Now louder, and yet louder rise, And fill with spreading sounds the skies; Exulting in triumph now swell the bold notes, In broken air, trembling, the wild music floats; Till, by degrees, remote and small, The strains decay, And melt away, In a dying, dying fall. By music, minds an equal temper know, Nor swell too high, nor sink too low. If in the breast tumultuous joys arise, Music her soft, assuasive voice applies; Or, when the soul is press'd with cares, Exalts her in enlivening airs. Warriors she fires with animated sounds; Pours balm into the bleeding lover's wounds: Melancholy lifts her head, Morpheus rouses from his bed, Sloth unfolds her arms and wakes, Listening Envy drops her snakes; Intestine war no more our passions wage, And giddy factions bear away their rage. ALEXANDER POPE. _From "Ode on St. Cecilia's Day."_ _Old Song_ 'Tis a dull sight To see the year dying, When winter winds Set the yellow wood sighing: Sighing, O sighing! When such a time cometh I do retire Into an old room Beside a bright fire: O, pile a bright fire! And there I sit Reading old things, Of knights and lorn damsels, While the wind sings-- O, drearily sings! I never look out Nor attend to the blast; For all to be seen Is the leaves falling fast: Falling, falling! But close at the hearth, Like a cricket, sit I Reading of summer And chivalry-- Gallant chivalry! * * * * Then the clouds part, Swallows soaring between; The spring is alive, And the meadows are green! I jump up like mad, Break the old pipe in twain, And away to the meadows, The meadows again! EDWARD FITZGERALD. _The Barefoot Boy_ Blessings on thee, little man, Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan! With thy upturned pantaloons, And thy merry whistled tunes; With thy red lip, redder still Kissed by strawberries on the hill; With the sunshine on thy face, Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace; From my heart I give thee joy,-- I was once a barefoot boy! Prince thou art,--the grown-up man Only is republican. Let the million-dollared ride! Barefoot, trudging at his side, Thou hast more than he can buy In the reach of ear and eye,-- Outward sunshine, inward joy: Blessings on thee, barefoot boy! O for boyhood's painless play, Sleep that wakes in laughing day, Health that mocks the doctor's rules, Knowledge never learned of schools, Of the wild bee's morning chase, Of the wild-flower's time and place, Flight of fowl and habitude Of the tenants of the wood; How the tortoise bears his shell, How the woodchuck digs his cell, And the ground-mole sinks his well; How the robin feeds her young, How the oriole's nest is hung; Where the whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries grow, Where the groundnut trails its vine, Where the wood-grape's clusters shine: Of the black wasp's cunning way, Mason of his walls of clay, And the architectural plans Of gray hornet artisans!-- For, eschewing books and tasks, Nature answers all he asks; Hand in hand with her he walks, Face to face with her he talks, Part and parcel of her joy,-- Blessings on the barefoot boy! O for boyhood's time of June, Crowding years in one brief moon, When all things I heard or saw, Me, their master, waited for. I was rich in flowers and trees, Humming-birds and honey-bees; For my sport the squirrel played, Plied the snouted mole his spade; For my taste the blackberry cone Purpled over hedge and stone; Laughed the brook for my delight Through the day and through the night, Whispering at the garden wall, Talked with me from fall to fall; Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond, Mine the walnut slopes beyond, Mine, on bending orchard trees, Apples of Hesperides! Still as my horizon grew, Larger grew my riches too; All the world I saw or knew Seemed a complex Chinese toy, Fashioned for a barefoot boy! O for festal dainties spread, Like my bowl of milk and bread,-- Pewter spoon and bowl of wood, On the door-stone, gray and rude! O'er me like a regal tent, Cloudy ribbed, the sunset bent, Purple-curtained, fringed with gold, Looped in many a wind-swung fold; While for music came the play Of the pied frogs' orchestra; And to light the noisy choir, Lit the fly his lamp of fire. I was monarch: pomp and joy Waited on the barefoot boy! Cheerily, then, my little man, Live and laugh as boyhood can! Though the flinty slopes be hard, Stubble-speared the new-mown sward, Every morn shall lead thee through Fresh baptisms of the dew; Every evening from thy feet Shall the cool wind kiss the heat: All too soon these feet must hide In the prison cells of pride, Lose the freedom of the sod, Like a colt's for work be shod, Made to tread the mills of toil, Up and down in ceaseless moil: Happy if their track be found Never on forbidden ground; Happy if they sink not in Quick and treacherous sands of sin. Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy, Ere it passes, barefoot boy! JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. _Leolin and Edith_ These had been together from the first, Leolin's first nurse was, five years after, hers; So much the boy foreran: but when his date Doubled her own, for want of playmates he * * * * Had tost his ball and flown his kite, and roll'd His hoop to pleasure Edith, with her dipt Against the rush of the air in the prone swing, Made blossom-ball or daisy-chain, arranged Her garden, sow'd her name and kept it green In living letters, told her fairy-tales, Show'd her the fairy footings on the grass, The little dells of cowslip, fairy palms, The petty marestail forest, fairy pines, Or from the tiny pitted target blew What looked a flight of fairy arrows aim'd All at one mark, all hitting: make-believes For Edith and himself. ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON. _From "Aylmer's Field."_ _Going A-Nutting_ No clouds are in the morning sky, The vapors hug the stream,-- Who says that life and love can die In all this northern gleam? At every turn the maples burn, The quail is whistling free, The partridge whirs, and the frosted burs Are dropping for you and me. Ho! hilly ho! heigh O! Hilly ho! In the clear October morning. Along our path the woods are bold, And glow with ripe desire; The yellow chestnut showers its gold, The sumachs spread their fire; The breezes feel as crisp as steel, The buckwheat tops are red: Then down the lane, love, scurry again, And over the stubble tread! Ho! hilly ho! heigh O! Hilly ho! In the clear October morning. EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. _Whittling_ The Yankee boy, before he's sent to school, Well knows the mysteries of that magic tool, The pocket-knife. To that his wistful eye Turns, while he hears his mother's lullaby; His hoarded cents he gladly gives to get it, Then leaves no stone unturned till he can whet it; And in the education of the lad No little part that implement hath had. His pocket-knife to the young whittler brings A growing knowledge of material things. Projectiles, music, and the sculptor's art, His chestnut whistle and his shingle cart, His elder pop-gun, with its hickory rod, Its sharp explosion and rebounding wad, His corn-stalk fiddle, and the deeper tone That murmurs from his pumpkin-stalk trombone, Conspire to teach the boy. To these succeed His bow, his arrow of a feathered reed, His windmill, raised the passing breeze to win, His water-wheel, that turns upon a pin, Or, if his father lives upon the shore, You'll see his ship, "beam ends upon the floor," Full rigged, with raking masts, and timbers staunch, And waiting, near the wash-tub, for a launch. Thus, by his genius and his jack-knife driven Ere long he'll solve you any problem given; Make any gimcrack, musical or mute, A plough, a couch, an organ, or a flute; Make you a locomotive or a clock, Cut a canal, or build a floating-dock, Or lead forth beauty from a marble block;-- Make anything, in short, for sea or shore, From a child's rattle to a seventy-four;-- Make it, said I?--Ay, when he undertakes it, He'll make the thing and the machine that makes it. And when the thing is made,--whether it be To move on earth, in air, or on the sea; Whether on water, o'er the waves to glide, Or, upon land to roll, revolve, or slide; Whether to whirl or jar, to strike or ring, Whether it be a piston or a spring, Wheel, pulley, tube sonorous, wood or brass, The thing designed shall surely come to pass; For, when his hand's upon it, you may know That there's go in it, and he'll make it go. JOHN PIERPONT. _Hunting Song_ Waken, lords and ladies gay, On the mountain dawns the day; All the jolly chase is here With hawk and horse and hunting-spear! Hounds are in their couples yelling, Hawks are whistling, horns are knelling. Merrily, merrily mingle they, "Waken, lords and ladies gay." Waken, lords and ladies gay, The mist has left the mountain gray, Springlets in the dawn are steaming, Diamonds on the brake are gleaming, And foresters have busy been To track the buck in thicket green; Now we come to chant our lay "Waken, lords and ladies gay." Waken, lords and ladies gay, To the greenwood haste away; We can show you where he lies, Fleet of foot and tall of size; We can show the marks he made When 'gainst the oak his antlers fray'd; You shall see him brought to bay; "Waken, lords and ladies gay." Louder, louder chant the lay Waken, lords and ladies gay! Tell them youth and mirth and glee Run a course as well as we; Time, stern huntsman! who can balk, Stanch as hound and fleet as hawk; Think of this, and rise with day, Gentle lords and ladies gay! SIR WALTER SCOTT. _The Hunter's Song_ Rise! Sleep no more! 'Tis a noble morn! The dews hang thick on the fringéd thorn, And the frost shrinks back like a beaten hound, Under the steaming, steaming ground. Behold where the billowy clouds flow by, And leave us alone in the clear gray sky! Our horses are ready and steady,--So, ho! I'm gone like a dart from the Tartar's bow. _Hark, hark!--who calleth the maiden Morn_ _From her sleep in the woods and the stubble corn?_ _The horn--the horn!_ _The merry sweet ring of the hunter's horn!_ Now through the copse where the fox is found And over the stream at a mighty bound, And over the high lands and over the low, O'er furrows, o'er meadows the hunters go! Away! as the hawk flies full at his prey So flieth the hunter,--away, away! From the burst at the corn till set of sun, When the red fox dies, and the day is done! _Hark, hark!--What sound on the wind is borne?_ _'Tis the conquering voice of the hunter's horn._ _The horn,--the horn!_ _The merry bold voice of the hunter's horn!_ Sound, sound the horn! To the hunter good What's the gully deep, or the roaring flood? Right over he bounds, as the wild stag bounds, At the heels of his swift, sure, silent hounds. O what delight can a mortal lack When he once is firm on his horse's back, With his stirrups short and his snaffle strong, And the blast of the horn for his morning song! _Hark, hark! Now home! and dream till morn_ _Of the bold sweet sound of the hunter's horn!_ _The horn, the horn!_ _Oh, the sound of all sounds is the hunter's horn!_ BARRY CORNWALL. (Bryan Waller Procter.) _The Blood Horse_ Gamarra is a dainty steed, Strong, black, and of a noble breed, Full of fire, and full of bone, With all his line of fathers known; Fine his nose, his nostrils thin, But blown abroad by the pride within! His mane is like a river flowing, And his eyes like embers glowing In the darkness of the night, And his pace as swift as light. Look--how 'round his straining throat Grace and shifting beauty float; Sinewy strength is in his reins, And the red blood gallops through his veins; Richer, redder, never ran Through the boasting heart of man. He can trace his lineage higher Than the Bourbon dare aspire,-- Douglas, Guzman, or the Guelph, Or O'Brien's blood itself! He, who hath no peer, was born, Here, upon a red March morn; But his famous fathers dead Were Arabs all, and Arab bred, And the last of that great line Trod like one of a race divine! And yet,--he was but friend to one, Who fed him at the set of sun, By some lone fountain fringed with green: With him, a roving Bedouin, He lived (none else would he obey Through all the hot Arabian day),-- And died untamed upon the sands Where Balkh amidst the desert stands! BARRY CORNWALL. (Bryan Waller Procter.) _The Northern Seas_ Up! up! let us a voyage take; Why sit we here at ease? Find us a vessel tight and snug, Bound for the Northern Seas. I long to see the Northern Lights, With their rushing splendors, fly, Like living things, with flaming wings, Wide o'er the wondrous sky. I long to see those icebergs vast, With heads all crowned with snow; Whose green roots sleep in the awful deep, Two hundred fathoms low. I long to hear the thundering crash Of their terrific fall; And the echoes from a thousand cliffs, Like lonely voices call. There shall we see the fierce white bear, The sleepy seals aground, And the spouting whales that to and fro Sail with a dreary sound. There may we tread on depths of ice, That the hairy mammoth hide; Perfect as when, in times of old, The mighty creature died. And while the unsetting sun shines on Through the still heaven's deep blue, We'll traverse the azure waves, the herds Of the dread sea-horse to view. We'll pass the shores of solemn pine, Where wolves and black bears prowl, And away to the rocky isles of mist To rouse the northern fowl. Up there shall start ten thousand wings, With a rushing, whistling din; Up shall the auk and fulmar start,-- All but the fat penguin. And there, in the wastes of the silent sky, With the silent earth below, We shall see far off to his lonely rock The lonely eagle go. Then softly, softly will we tread By island streams, to see Where the pelican of the silent North Sits there all silently. WILLIAM HOWITT. _The Needle_ The gay belles of fashion may boast of excelling In waltz or cotillion, at whist or quadrille; And seek admiration by vauntingly telling Of drawing, and painting, and musical skill; But give me the fair one, in country or city, Whose home and its duties are dear to her heart, Who cheerfully warbles some rustical ditty, While plying the needle with exquisite art: The bright little needle--the swift-flying needle, The needle directed by beauty and art. If Love have a potent, a magical token, A talisman, ever resistless and true-- A charm that is never evaded or broken, A witchery certain the heart to subdue-- 'T is this--and his armory never has furnished So keen and unerring, or polished a dart; Let Beauty direct it, so pointed and burnished, And, oh! it is certain of touching the heart: The bright little needle--the swift-flying needle, The needle directed by beauty and art. Be wise, then, ye maidens, nor seek admiration By dressing for conquest, and flirting with all; You never, whate'er be your fortune or station, Appear half so lovely at rout or at ball, As gayly convened at a work-covered table, Each cheerfully active and playing her part, Beguiling the task with a song or a fable, And plying the needle with exquisite art: The bright little needle--the swift-flying needle, The needle directed by beauty and art. SAMUEL WOODWORTH. INTERLEAVES _A Garden of Girls_ Enter a procession of charming girls; wee ones like Nikolina and Jessie, others, like Peggy, just entering their teens. Some are so saintly we can almost see the halos above their lovely heads--like Mrs. Browning's human angel in the first poem, or like Shakespeare's Silvia, who excels each mortal thing; others are just happy children, like Little Bell. The poets, as you will see, have delighted to paint the beauties of this rosebud garden. There is sweet Phyllis, the little dairymaid, whose hand seemed milk, in milk it was so white; Annie Laurie, with her brow like the snowdrift and her voice like wind in summer sighing; merry Margaret, like midsummer flower; but you will note that in all of them sunny hair and dewy eyes are not where the beauty lies. "Love deep and kind" leaves good gifts behind, with Bell and with Mally, too, who is rare and fair and every way complete, and who is also modest and discreet. On the other hand, Burns does not describe Nannie by so much as a single word, but it is easy to conjure up her picture, so eloquently he paints the dreariness of the world "when Nannie's awa'." Will you not add to this garden of girls others whom you would like to see blooming beside them? Remember, it is a rosebud garden, and the new-comers must be not only beautiful, but sweet and fragrant with pretty, womanly virtues. _"She walks--the lady of my delight A shepherdess of sheep. Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white; She guards them from the steep. She feeds them on the fragrant height, And folds them in for sleep."_ VIII A GARDEN OF GIRLS _A Portrait_ "One Name is Elizabeth."--JONSON. I will paint her as I see her: Ten times have the lilies blown, Since she looked upon the sun. And her face is lily-clear-- Lily-shaped, and drooped in duty To the law of its own beauty. Oval cheeks encolored faintly, Which a trail of golden hair Keeps from fading off to air: And a forehead fair and saintly, Which two blue eyes undershine, Like meek prayers before a shrine. Face and figure of a child,-- Though too calm, you think, and tender, For the childhood you would lend her. Yet child-simple, undefiled, Frank, obedient,--waiting still On the turnings of your will. Moving light, as all young things-- As young birds, or early wheat When the wind blows over it. Only free from flutterings Of loud mirth that scorneth measure-- Taking love for her chief pleasure: Choosing pleasures (for the rest) Which come softly--just as she, When she nestles at your knee. Quiet talk she liketh best, In a bower of gentle looks,-- Watering flowers, or reading books. And her voice, it murmurs lowly, As a silver stream may run, Which yet feels, you feel, the sun. And her smile, it seems half holy, As if drawn from thoughts more fair Than our common jestings are. And if any poet knew her, He would sing of her with falls Used in lovely madrigals. And if any painter drew her, He would paint her unaware With a halo round her hair. And if reader read the poem, He would whisper--"You have done a Consecrated little Una!" And a dreamer (did you show him That same picture) would exclaim, "'Tis my angel, with a name!" And a stranger,--when he sees her In the street even--smileth stilly, Just as you would at a lily. And all voices that address her, Soften, sleeken every word, As if speaking to a bird. And all fancies yearn to cover The hard earth whereon she passes. With the thymy scented grasses. And all hearts do pray, "God love her!" Ay, and always, in good sooth, We may all be sure he doth. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. _Little Bell_ Piped the blackbird on the beechwood spray: "Pretty maid, slow wandering this way, What's your name?" quoth he-- "What's your name? Oh, stop and straight unfold, Pretty maid with showery curls of gold,"-- "Little Bell," said she. Little Bell sat down beneath the rocks-- Tossed aside her gleaming golden locks-- "Bonny bird," quoth she, "Sing me your best song before I go." "Here's the very finest song I know, Little Bell," said he. And the blackbird piped; you never heard Half so gay a song from any bird;-- Full of quips and wiles, Now so round and rich, now soft and slow, All for love of that sweet face below, Dimpled o'er with smiles. And the while the bonny bird did pour His full heart out freely o'er and o'er, 'Neath the morning skies, In the little childish heart below, All the sweetness seemed to grow and grow, And shine forth in happy overflow From the blue, bright eyes. Down the dell she tripped; and through the glade Peeped the squirrel from the hazel shade, And from out the tree Swung and leaped and frolicked, void of fear, While bold blackbird piped, that all might hear, "Little Bell!" piped he. Little Bell sat down amid the fern: "Squirrel, squirrel, to your task return; Bring me nuts!" quoth she. Up, away, the frisky squirrel hies, Golden wood lights glancing in his eyes; And adown the tree, Great ripe nuts, kissed brown by July sun, In the little lap drop, one by one: Hark, how blackbird pipes to see the fun! "Happy Bell!" pipes he. Little Bell looked up and down the glade: "Squirrel, squirrel, if you're not afraid, Come and share with me!" Down came squirrel, eager for his fare, Down came bonny blackbird, I declare. Little Bell gave each his honest share, Ah the merry three! And the while these frolic playmates twain Piped and frisked from bough to bough again, 'Neath the morning skies, In the little childish heart below, All the sweetness seemed to grow and grow, And shine out in happy overflow, From her blue, bright eyes. By her snow-white cot at close of day, Knelt sweet Bell, with folded palms to pray: Very calm and clear Rose the praying voice to where, unseen, In blue heaven, an angel shape serene Paused awhile to hear. "What good child is this," the angel said, "That, with happy heart, beside her bed Prays so lovingly?" Low and soft, oh! very low and soft, Crooned the blackbird in the orchard croft, "Bell, _dear_ Bell!" crooned he. "Whom God's creatures love," the angel fair Murmured, "God doth bless with angels' care; Child, thy bed shall be Folded safe from harm. Love, deep and kind, Shall watch around, and leave good gifts behind, Little Bell, for thee." THOMAS WESTWOOD. _A Child of Twelve_ A child most infantine Yet wandering far beyond that innocent age In all but its sweet looks and mien divine. * * * * She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness, A power, that from its objects scarcely drew One impulse of her being--in her lightness Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew, Which wanders through the waste air's pathless blue, To nourish some far desert; she did seem Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew, Like the bright shade of some immortal dream Which walks, when tempest sleeps, the wave of life's dark stream. As mine own shadow was this child to me. * * * * This playmate sweet, This child of twelve years old. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY _From "The Revolt of Islam."_ _Chloe_ It was the charming month of May, When all the flowers were fresh and gay, One morning by the break of day, The youthful charming Chloe From peaceful slumbers she arose, Girt on her mantle and her hose, And o'er the flowery mead she goes, The youthful charming Chloe. Lovely was she by the dawn, Youthful Chloe, charming Chloe, Tripping o'er the pearly lawn, The youthful charming Chloe. The feather'd people you might see, Perch'd all around on every tree, In notes of sweetest melody They hail the charming Chloe; Till painting gay the eastern skies, The glorious sun began to rise, Out-rivall'd by the radiant eyes Of youthful, charming Chloe. Lovely was she by the dawn, Youthful Chloe, charming Chloe, Tripping o'er the pearly lawn, The youthful, charming Chloe. ROBERT BURNS. _O Mally's Meek, Mally's Sweet_ As I was walking up the street, A barefit maid I chanced to meet; But O the road was very hard For that fair maiden's tender feet. O Mally's meek, Mally's sweet, Mally's modest and discreet, Mally's rare, Mally's fair, Mally's every way complete. It were more meet that those fine feet Were weel laced up in silken shoon, And 'twere more fit that she should sit Within yon chariot gilt aboon. Her yellow hair, beyond compare, Comes trinkling down her swan-white neck, And her two eyes, like stars in skies, Would keep a sinking ship frae wreck. O Mally's meek, Mally's sweet, Mally's modest and discreet, Mally's rare, Mally's fair, Mally's every way complete. ROBERT BURNS. _Who Is Silvia?_ Who is Silvia? What is she, That all our swains commend her? Holy, fair, and wise is she; The heaven such grace did lend her, That she might admirèd be. Is she kind as she is fair? For beauty lives with kindness: Love doth to her eyes repair, To help him of his blindness; And, being helped, inhabits there. Then to Silvia let us sing, That Silvia is excelling; She excels each mortal thing Upon the dull earth dwelling; To her let us garlands bring. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. _From "The Two Gentlemen of Verona."_ _To Mistress Margaret Hussey_ Merry Margaret As midsummer flower-- Gentle as falcon, Or hawk of the tower; With solace and gladness, Much mirth and no madness, All good and no badness; So joyously, So maidenly, So womanly Her demeaning,-- In everything Far, far passing That I can indite Or suffice to write, Of merry Margaret, As midsummer flower, Gentle as falcon Or hawk of the tower; As patient and as still, And as full of good-will, As fair Isiphil, Coliander, Sweet Pomander, Good Cassander; Steadfast of thought, Well made, well wrought; Far may be sought Ere you can find So courteous, so kind, As merry Margaret, This midsummer flower-- Gentle as falcon Or hawk of the tower. JOHN SKELTON. _Ruth_ She stood breast-high amid the corn, Clasp'd by the golden light of morn, Like the sweetheart of the sun, Who many a glowing kiss had won. On her cheek an autumn flush. Deeply ripened;--such a blush In the midst of brown was born, Like red poppies grown with corn. Round her eyes her tresses fell, Which were blackest none could tell, But long lashes veil'd a light That had else been all too bright. And her hat, with shady brim, Made her tressy forehead dim;-- Thus she stood amid the stooks, Praising God with sweetest looks. "Sure," I said, "Heav'n did not mean Where I reap thou shouldst but glean; Lay thy sheaf adown and come, Share my harvest and my home." THOMAS HOOD. _My Peggy_ My Peggy is a young thing, Just entered in her teens, Fair as the day, and sweet as May, Fair as the day, and always gay, My Peggy is a young thing, And I'm not very auld, Yet well I like to meet her at The wauking of the fauld. * * * * My Peggy sings sae saftly, When on my pipe I play; By a' the rest it is confest, By a' the rest, that she sings best. My Peggy sings sae saftly, And in her sangs are tauld, With innocence, the wale of sense, At wauking of the fauld. ALLAN RAMSAY. _From "The Gentle Shepherd."_ _Annie Laurie_ Maxwelton braes are bonnie Where early fa's the dew, And it's there that Annie Laurie Gie'd me her promise true,-- Gie'd me her promise true, Which ne'er forgot will be; And for bonnie Annie Laurie I'd lay me doune and dee. Her brow is like the snawdrift, Her throat is like the swan, Her face it is the fairest That e'er the sun shone on,-- That e'er the sun shone on; And dark blue is her e'e; And for bonnie Annie Laurie I'd lay me doune and dee. Like dew on the gowan lying Is the fa' o' her fairy feet; Like the winds in summer sighing, Her voice is low and sweet,-- Her voice is low and sweet; And she's a' the world to me; And for bonnie Annie Laurie I'd lay me doune and dee. WILLIAM DOUGLAS OF FINGLAND. _Lucy_ Three years she grew in sun and shower; Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower On earth was never sown: This child I to myself will take; She shall be mine, and I will make A lady of my own. "Myself will to my darling be Both law and impulse: and with me The girl, in rock and plain, In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, Shall feel an overseeing power To kindle or restrain. "She shall be sportive as the fawn That, wild with glee, across the lawn, Or up the mountain springs; And hers shall be the breathing balm, And hers the silence and the calm Of mute, insensate things. "The floating clouds their state shall lend To her; for her the willow bend; Nor shall she fail to see E'en in the motions of the storm Grace that shall mold the maiden's form By silent sympathy. "The stars of midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face. "And vital feelings of delight Shall rear her form to stately height, Her virgin bosom swell; Such thoughts to Lucy I will give While she and I together live Here in this happy dell." Thus Nature spake--the work was done-- How soon my Lucy's race was run! She died, and left to me This heath, this calm and quiet scene; The memory of what has been, And nevermore will be. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. _Jessie_ Jessie is both young and fair, Dewy eyes and sunny hair; Sunny hair and dewy eyes Are not where her beauty lies. Jessie is both kind and true, Heart of gold and will of yew; Will of yew and heart of gold-- Still her charms are scarcely told. If she yet remain unsung, Pretty, constant, docile, young. What remains not here compiled? Jessie is a little child! BRET HARTE. _Olivia_ She gamboll'd on the greens A baby-germ, to when The maiden blossoms of her teens Could number five from ten. I swear, by leaf, and wind, and rain-- And hear me with thine ears-- That tho' I circle in the grain Five hundred rings of years, Yet, since I first could cast a shade, Did never creature pass So slightly, musically made, So light upon the grass. * * * * Then ran she, gamesome as the colt, And livelier than a lark She sent her voice thro' all the holt Before her, and the park. A light wind chased her on the wing, And in the chase grew wild, As close as might be would he cling About the darling child. But light as any wind that blows, So fleetly did she stir, The flower she touch'd on, dipt and rose, And turned to look at her. ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON. _From "The Talking Oak."_ _Nikolina_ O tell me, little children, have you seen her-- The tiny maid from Norway, Nikolina? O, her eyes are blue as cornflow'rs mid the corn, And her cheeks are rosy red as skies of morn! Nikolina! swift she turns if any call her, As she stands among the poppies, hardly taller, Breaking off their scarlet cups for you, With spikes of slender larkspur, burning blue. In her little garden many a flower is growing-- Red, gold, and purple in the soft wind blowing But the child that stands amid the blossoms gay Is sweeter, quainter, brighter e'en than they. CELIA THAXTER. _The Solitary Reaper_ Behold her, single in the field, Yon solitary Highland Lass! Reaping and singing by herself; Stop here, or gently pass! Alone she cuts and binds the grain, And sings a melancholy strain; O listen! for the vale profound Is overflowing with the sound. No nightingale did ever chaunt More welcome notes to weary bands Of travelers in some shady haunt, Among Arabian sands; A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard, In springtime from the cuckoo bird, Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides. Will no one tell me what she sings?-- Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago: Or is it some more humble lay, Familiar matter of to-day? Some natural sorrow, loss or pain, That has been, and may be again? Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang As if her song could have no ending; I saw her singing at her work, And o'er the sickle bending;-- I listened, motionless and still; And, as I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. _Helena and Hermia_ We, Hermia,... Have with our needles created both one flower, Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion, Both warbling of one song, both in one key; As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds Had been incorporate. So we grew together, Like to a double cherry, seeming parted, But yet a union in partition, Two lovely berries moulded on one stem; So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart, Two of the first, like coats in heraldry Due but to one, and crownéd with one crest. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. _From "A Midsummer Night's Dream."_ _Phyllis_ In petticoat of green, Her hair about her eyne, Phyllis beneath an oak Sat milking her fair flock; 'Mongst that sweet-strained moisture, rare delight, Her hand seemed milk, in milk it was so white. WILLIAM DRUMMOND. _So Sweet Is She_ Have you seen but a bright lily grow, Before rude hands have touched it? Have you marked but the fall of the snow, Before the soil hath smutched it? Have you felt the wool of the beaver? Or swan's down ever? Or have smelt o' the bud of the brier? Or the nard i' the fire? Or have tasted the bag of the bee? Oh, so white! oh, so soft! oh, so sweet, is she! BEN JONSON. _From "The Triumph of Charis."_ _I Love My Jean_ Of a' the airts the wind can blaw, I dearly like the west, For there the bonnie lassie lives, The lassie I lo'e best; There wild woods grow, and rivers row, And monie a hill between; But day and night my fancy's flight Is ever wi' my Jean. I see her in the dewy flowers, I see her sweet and fair; I hear her in the tunefu' birds, I hear her charm the air: There's not a bonnie flower that springs By fountain, shaw, or green; There's not a bonnie bird that sings, But minds me o' my Jean. ROBERT BURNS. _My Nannie's Awa'_ Now in her green mantle blythe nature arrays, An' listens the lambkins that bleat o'er the braes, While birds warble welcome in ilka green shaw; But to me it's delightless--my Nannie's awa'. The snaw-drap an' primrose our woodlands adorn, An' violets bathe in the weet o' the morn; They pain my sad bosom, sae sweetly they blaw, They mind me o' Nannie--an' Nannie's awa'. Thou lav'rock that springs frae the dews of the lawn, The shepherd to warn o' the gray-breaking dawn, An' thou mellow mavis that hails the night-fa', Give over for pity--my Nannie's awa'. Come, autumn, sae pensive, in yellow an' gray, An' soothe me wi' tidings o' nature's decay; The dark, dreary winter, an' wild-driving snaw, Alane can delight me--now Nannie's awa'. ROBERT BURNS. INTERLEAVES _The World of Waters_ "The sea has the sun for a harper." She has also among her myriad worshippers Swinburne, the poet-harpist, who sweeps all the strings of his noble instrument in her praise. There can be no worthier introduction to a group of sea-poems than lines "all gold seven times refined," selected almost at random from a great poet whom you will be glad to read later on. _"Green earth has her sons and her daughters, And these have their guerdons; but we Are the wind's and the sun's and the water's, Elect of the sea."_ _"She is pure as the wind and the sun, And her sweetness endureth forever."_ _"For the wind, with his wings half open, at pause in the sky, neither fettered nor free, Leans waveward and flutters the ripple to laughter!"_ _"But for hours upon hours As a thrall she remains Spell-bound as with flowers And content in their chains, And her loud steeds fret not, and lift not a lock of their deep white manes."_ _"And all the rippling green grew royal gold Between him and the far sun's rising rim."_ _"Where the horn of the headland is sharper And her green floor glitters with fire, The sea has the sun for a harper, The sun has the sea for a lyre."_ _"The waves are a pavement of amber, By the feet of the sea-winds trod, To receive in a god's presence-chamber Our father, the God."_ IX THE WORLD OF WATERS _To the Ocean_ Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean--roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; Man marks the earth with ruin--his control Stops with the shore;--upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, When for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd and unknown. His steps are not upon thy paths--thy fields Are not a spoil for him--thou dost arise And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray, And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies His petty hope in some near port or bay, And dashest him again to earth--there let him lay. The armaments which thunderstrike the walls Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake, And monarchs tremble in their capitals, The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make Their clay creator the vain title take Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war; These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar. Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee-- Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters wasted them while they were free, And many a tyrant since: their shores obey The stranger, slave or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts--not so thou. Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play-- Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow-- Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Glasses itself in tempests: in all time, Calm or convulsed--in breeze, or gale, or storm, Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime Dark-heaving;--boundless, endless, and sublime-- The image of Eternity--the throne Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone. GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON. _From "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage."_ _A Life on the Ocean Wave_[14] A life on the ocean wave, A home on the rolling deep, Where the scattered waters rave, And the winds their revels keep! Like an eagle caged I pine On this dull unchanging shore: Oh! give me the flashing brine, The spray and the tempest's roar! Once more on the deck I stand Of my own swift-gliding craft: Set sail! farewell to the land! The gale follows fair abaft. We shoot through the sparkling foam Like an ocean-bird set free;-- Like the ocean-bird, our home We'll find far out on the sea. The land is no longer in view, The clouds have begun to frown; But with a stout vessel and crew, We'll say let the storm come down! And the song of our hearts shall be, While the winds and the waters rave, A home on the rolling sea! A life on the ocean wave. EPES SARGENT. [Footnote 14: _Harper's "Cyclopædia of British and American Poetry."_] _The Sea_ The sea! the sea! the open sea! The blue, the fresh, the ever free! Without a mark, without a bound, It runneth the earth's wide regions round; It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies; Or like a cradled creature lies. I'm on the sea! I'm on the sea! I am where I would ever be; With the blue above, and the blue below, And silence wheresoe'er I go; If a storm should come and awake the deep, What matter? I shall ride and sleep. I love, oh, how I love to ride On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide, When every mad wave drowns the moon, Or whistles aloft his tempest tune, And tells how goeth the world below, And why the sou'west blasts do blow. I never was on the dull, tame shore, But I loved the great sea more and more, And backward flew to her billowy breast, Like a bird that seeketh its mother's nest; And a mother she was, and is, to me; For I was born on the open sea! The waves were white, and red the morn, In the noisy hour when I was born; And the whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled, And the dolphins bared their backs of gold; And never was heard such an outcry wild As welcomed to life the ocean-child! I've lived since then, in calm and strife, Full fifty summers, a sailor's life, With wealth to spend, and power to range, But never have sought nor sighed for change; And Death, whenever he comes to me, Shall come on the wild, unbounded sea! BARRY CORNWALL. (Bryan Waller Procter.) _A Sea-Song_ A wet sheet and a flowing sea, A wind that follows fast, And fills the white and rustling sail And bends the gallant mast; And bends the gallant mast, my boys, While, like the eagle free, Away the good ship flies, and leaves Old England on the lee. O for a soft and gentle wind! I heard a fair one cry; But give to me the snoring breeze And white waves heaving high; And white waves heaving high, my lads, The good ship tight and free-- The world of waters is our home, And merry men are we. There's tempest in yon hornèd moon, And lightning in yon cloud; But hark the music, mariners! The wind is piping loud; The wind is piping loud, my boys, The lightning flashes free-- While the hollow oak our palace is, Our heritage the sea. ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. _A Visit From the Sea_[15] Far from the loud sea-beaches, Where he goes fishing and crying, Here in the inland garden, Why is the sea-gull flying? Here are no fish to dive for: Here is the corn and lea; Here are the green trees rustling. Hie away home to sea! Fresh is the river water, And quiet among the rushes; This is no home for the sea-gull, But for the rooks and thrushes. Pity the bird that has wandered! Pity the sailor ashore! Hurry him home to the ocean, Let him come here no more! High on the sea-cliff ledges The white gulls are trooping and crying; Here among rooks and roses, Why is the sea-gull flying? ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. [Footnote 15: _From "A Child's Garden of Verses." By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons._] _Drifting_[16] My soul to-day Is far away, Sailing the Vesuvian Bay; My wingèd boat, A bird afloat, Swings round the purple peaks remote:-- Round purple peaks It sails, and seeks Blue inlets and their crystal creeks, Where high rocks throw, Through deeps below, A duplicated golden glow. Far, vague, and dim, The mountains swim; While on Vesuvius' misty brim, With outstretched hands, The gray smoke stands O'erlooking the volcanic lands. Here Ischia smiles O'er liquid miles; And yonder, bluest of the isles, Calm Capri waits, Her sapphire gates Beguiling to her bright estates. I heed not, if My rippling skiff Float swift or slow from cliff to cliff; With dreamful eyes My spirit lies Under the walls of Paradise. Under the walls Where swells and falls The Bay's deep breast at intervals At peace I lie, Blown softly by, A cloud upon this liquid sky. The day, so mild, Is Heaven's own child, With Earth and Ocean reconciled; The airs I feel Around me steal Are murmuring to the murmuring keel. Over the rail My hand I trail Within the shadow of the sail, A joy intense, The cooling sense Glides down my drowsy indolence. With dreamful eyes My spirit lies Where Summer sings and never dies,-- O'erveiled with vines She glows and shines Among her future oil and wines. Her children, hid The cliffs amid, Are gambolling with the gambolling kid, Or down the walls, With tipsy calls, Laugh on the rocks like waterfalls. The fisher's child, With tresses wild, Unto the smooth, bright sand beguiled, With glowing lips Sings as she skips, Or gazes at the far-off ships. Yon deep bark goes Where traffic blows, From lands of sun to lands of snows; This happier one,-- Its course is run From lands of snow to lands of sun. O happy ship, To rise and dip, With the blue crystal at your lip! O happy crew, My heart with you Sails, and sails, and sings anew! No more, no more The worldly shore Upbraids me with its loud uproar: With dreamful eyes My spirit lies Under the walls of Paradise! THOMAS BUCHANAN READ. [Footnote 16: _By courtesy of J. B. Lippincott & Co._] _Tacking Ship Off Shore_[17] The weather-leech of the topsail shivers, The bowlines strain, and the lee-shrouds slacken, The braces are taut, the lithe boom quivers, And the waves with the coming squall-cloud blacken. Open one point on the weather-bow, Is the light-house tall on Fire Island Head. There's a shade of doubt on the captain's brow, And the pilot watches the heaving lead. I stand at the wheel, and with eager eye To sea and to sky and to shore I gaze, Till the muttered order of "Full and by!" Is suddenly changed for "Full for stays!" The ship bends lower before the breeze, As her broadside fair to the blast she lays; And she swifter springs to the rising seas, As the pilot calls, "Stand by for stays!" It is silence all, as each in his place, With the gathered coil in his hardened hands, By tack and bowline, by sheet and brace, Waiting the watchword impatient stands. And the light on Fire Island Head draws near, As, trumpet-winged, the pilot's shout From his post on the bowsprit's heel I hear, With the welcome call of "Ready! About!" No time to spare! It is touch and go; And the captain growls, "Down helm! hard down!" As my weight on the whirling spokes I throw, While heaven grows black with the storm-cloud's frown. High o'er the knight-heads flies the spray, As we meet the shock of the plunging sea; And my shoulder stiff to the wheel I lay, As I answer, "Ay, ay, sir! Ha-a-rd a-lee!" With the swerving leap of a startled steed The ship flies fast in the eye of the wind, The dangerous shoals on the lee recede, And the headland white we have left behind. The topsails flutter, the jibs collapse, And belly and tug at the groaning cleats; And spanker slats, and the mainsail flaps; And thunders the order, "Tacks and sheets!" 'Mid the rattle of blocks and the tramp of the crew, Hisses the rain of the rushing squall: The sails are aback from clew to clew. And now is the moment for "Mainsail, haul!" And the heavy yards, like a baby's toy, By fifty strong arms are swiftly swung: She holds her way, and I look with joy For the first white spray o'er the bulwarks flung. "Let go, and haul!" 'Tis the last command, And the head-sails fill to the blast once more: Astern and to leeward lies the land, With its breakers white on the shingly shore. What matters the reef, or the rain, or the squall? I steady the helm for the open sea; The first mate clamors, "Belay, there, all!" And the captain's breath once more comes free. And so off shore let the good ship fly; Little care I how the gusts may blow, In my fo'castle bunk, in a jacket dry. Eight bells have struck, and my watch is below. WALTER MITCHELL. [Footnote 17: _By courtesy of The Churchman._] _Windlass Song_ Heave at the windlass!--Heave O, cheerly, men! Heave all at once, with a will! The tide quickly making, Our cordage a-creaking, The water has put on a frill, Heave O! Fare you well, sweethearts!--Heave O, cheerly, men! Fare you well, frolic and sport! The good ship all ready, Each dog-vane is steady, The wind blowing dead out of port, Heave O! Once in blue water--Heave O, cheerly, men! Blow it from north or from south; She'll stand to it tightly, And curtsey politely, And carry a bone in her mouth, Heave O! Short cruise or long cruise--Heave O, cheerly, men! Jolly Jack Tar thinks it one. No latitude dreads he Of White, Black, or Red Sea, Great icebergs, or tropical sun, Heave O! One other turn, and Heave O, cheerly, men! Heave, and good-bye to the shore! Our money, how went it? We shared it and spent it; Next year we'll come back with some more, Heave O! WILLIAM ALLINGHAM. _The Coral Grove_ Deep in the wave is a coral grove, Where the purple mullet and gold-fish rove; Where the sea-flower spreads its leaves of blue That never are wet with falling dew, But in bright and changeful beauty shine, Far down in the green and glassy brine. The floor is of sand, like the mountain drift; And the pearl-shell spangle the flinty snow; From coral rocks the sea-plants lift Their boughs where the tides and billows flow. The water is calm and still below, For the winds and waves are absent there; And the sands are bright as the stars that glow In the motionless fields of upper air. There, with its waving blade of green, The sea-flag streams through the silent water; And the crimson leaf of the dulse is seen To blush like a banner bathed in slaughter. There, with a light and easy motion, The fan-coral sweeps through the clear deep sea; And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean Are bending like corn on the upland lea; And life, in rare and beautiful forms, Is sporting amid those bowers of stone, And is safe when the wrathful Spirit of storms Has made the top of the wave his own. And when the ship from his fury flies, Where the myriad voices of Ocean roar; When the wind-god frowns in the murky skies, And demons are waiting the wreck on shore,-- Then, far below, in the peaceful sea, The purple mullet and gold-fish rove, While the waters murmur tranquilly Through the bending twigs of the coral grove. JAMES GATES PERCIVAL. _The Shell_ See what a lovely shell, Small and pure as a pearl, Lying close to my foot, Frail, but a work divine, Made so fairily well With delicate spire and whorl, How exquisitely minute, A miracle of design! What is it? a learned man Could give it a clumsy name. Let him name it who can, The beauty would be the same. The tiny cell is forlorn, Void of the little living will That made it stir on the shore. Did he stand at the diamond door Of his house in a rainbow frill? Did he push, when he was uncurled, A golden foot or a fairy horn Through his dim water-world? Slight, to be crush'd with a tap Of my finger-nail on the sand! Small, but a work divine! Frail, but of force to withstand, Year upon year, the shock Of cataract seas that snap The three-decker's oaken spine Athwart the ledges of rock, Here on the Breton strand! ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON. _Bermudas_ Where the remote Bermudas ride, In the ocean's bosom unespied, From a small boat, that rowed along, The listening winds received this song: "What should we do but sing His praise, That led us through the watery maze, Unto an isle so long unknown, And yet far kinder than our own? Where He the huge sea-monsters wracks, That lift the deep upon their backs; He lands us on a grassy stage, Safe from the storms, and prelate's rage. He gave us this eternal spring, Which here enamels every thing, And sends the fowls to us in care, On daily visits through the air; He hangs in shades the orange bright, Like golden lamps in a green night, And does in the pomegranates close Jewels more rich than Ormus shows; He makes the figs our mouths to meet, And throws the melons at our feet; But apples plants of such a price, No tree could ever bear them twice; With cedars chosen by His hand, From Lebanon, He stores the land, And makes the hollow seas, that roar, Proclaim the ambergris on shore; He cast (of which we rather boast) The Gospel's pearl upon our coast, And in these rocks for us did frame A temple where to sound His name. Oh! let our voice His praise exalt, Till it arrive at Heaven's vault, Which, thence (perhaps) rebounding, may Echo beyond the Mexique Bay." Thus sung they, in the English boat, An holy and a cheerful note; And all the way, to guide their chime, With falling oars they kept the time. ANDREW MARVELL. _Where Lies the Land?_ Where lies the land to which the ship would go? Far, far ahead is all her seamen know. And where the land she travels from? Away, Far, far behind, is all that they can say. On sunny noons upon the deck's smooth face; Linked arm in arm, how pleasant here to pace; Or, o'er the stern reclining, watch below The foaming wake far widening as we go. On stormy nights when wild north-westers rave, How proud a thing to fight with wind and wave! The dripping sailor on the reeling mast Exults to bear, and scorns to wish it past. Where lies the land to which the ship would go? Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know. And where the land she travels from? Away, Far, far behind, is all that they can say. ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. INTERLEAVES _For Home and Country_ _"Such is the patriot's boast, where'er we roam? His first, best country ever is at home."_ This is the proud claim of Goldsmith's "Traveller," and the same passionate loyalty to the soil inspires all these poems of Fatherland. The Scotsman's heart is in the Highlands, the birthplace of valor, the country of worth; the English warrior boasts of his country: _"And o'er one-sixth of all the earth, and over all the main, Like some good Fairy, Freedom marks and blesses her domain;"_ the Irish Minstrel-boy tears the chords of his faithful harp asunder lest they sound in the service of the foe, while the quick, alarming Yankee drum in Bret Harte's "Reveille" calls upon each freeman to defend the land of the pilgrim's pride, land where his fathers died. Religion, war, and glory were the three souls of a perfect Christian knight, says Lamartine, and if Death's couriers, Fame and Honor, summon us to the field, _"Our business is like men to fight And hero-like to die."_ In Kipling's "Recessional" and Lowell's "Fatherland" we hear a note as valiant, but more spiritual. The one makes us remember that _"The tumult and the shouting dies-- The captains and the kings depart-- Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart."_ The other leads us to still higher levels of thought, reminding us that wherever a single soul doth pine, or one man may help another, that spot of earth is thine and mine--that is the world-wide fatherland. X FOR HOME AND COUNTRY _The First, Best Country_ But where to find the happiest spot below, Who can direct, when all pretend to know? The shuddering tenant of the frigid zone Boldly proclaims that happiest spot his own; Extols the treasures of his stormy seas, And his long nights of revelry and ease; The naked negro, panting at the line, Boasts of his golden sands and palmy wine, Basks in the glare, or stems the tepid wave, And thanks his gods for all the goods they gave. Such is the patriot's boast, where'er we roam, His first, best country ever is at home. And yet perhaps, if countries we compare, And estimate the blessings which they share, Though patriots flatter, still shall wisdom find An equal portion dealt to all mankind; As different good, by art or nature given, To different nations makes their blessings even. OLIVER GOLDSMITH. _From "The Traveller."_ _My Native Land_ Breathes there the man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, "This is my own--my native land!" Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned, As home his footsteps he hath turned, From wandering on a foreign strand? If such there breathe, go, mark him well! For him no minstrel's raptures swell. High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,-- Despite those titles, power, and pelf, The wretch, concentred all in self, Living shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust from whence he sprung, Unwept, unhonored, and unsung. SIR WALTER SCOTT. _From "The Lay of the Last Minstrel."_ _Loyalty_ Hame, hame, hame! oh hame I fain wad be, O hame, hame, hame, to my ain countrie! When the flower is i' the bud and the leaf is on the tree, The lark shall sing me hame in my ain countrie; _Hame, hame, hame! oh hame I fain wad be,_ _O hame, hame, hame, to my ain countrie!_ The green leaf o' loyaltie's begun for to fa', The bonnie white rose it is withering an' a'; But I'll water 't wi' the blude of usurping tyrannie, An' green it will grow in my ain countrie. _Hame, hame, hame! oh hame I fain wad be,_ _O hame, hame, hame, to my ain countrie!_ The great now are gane, wha attempted to save; The new grass is springing on the tap o' their grave: But the sun thro' the mirk blinks blythe in my e'e, "I'll shine on ye yet in yere ain countrie." _Hame, hame, hame! oh hame I fain wad be,_ _Hame, hame, hame, to my ain countrie!_ ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. _My Heart's in the Highlands_ My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here; My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer; Chasing the wild deer, and following the roe, My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go. Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North, The birthplace of valor, the country of worth; Wherever I wander, wherever I rove, The hills of the Highlands forever I love. Farewell to the mountains high covered with snow; Farewell to the straths and green valleys below; Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods; Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods. My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here, My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer; Chasing the wild deer, and following the roe, My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go. ROBERT BURNS. _The Minstrel-Boy_ The Minstrel-boy to the war is gone, In the ranks of death you'll find him; His father's sword he has girded on, And his wild harp slung behind him.-- "Land of song!" said the warrior-bard, "Though all the world betrays thee, One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard, One faithful harp shall praise thee!" The Minstrel fell!--but the foeman's chain Could not bring his proud soul under; The harp he loved ne'er spoke again, For he tore its chords asunder; And said, "No chains shall sully thee, Thou soul of love and bravery! Thy songs were made for the pure and free, They shall never sound in slavery!" THOMAS MOORE. _The Harp That Once Through Tara's Halls_ The harp that once through Tara's halls The soul of music shed, Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls As if that soul were fled. So sleeps the pride of former days, So glory's thrill is o'er, And hearts, that once beat high for praise, Now feel that pulse no more. No more to chiefs and ladies bright The harp of Tara swells: The chord alone, that breaks at night; Its tale of ruin tells. Thus Freedom now so seldom wakes, The only throb she gives Is when some heart indignant breaks, To show that still she lives. THOMAS MOORE. _Fife and Drum_ The trumpet's loud clangor Excites us to arms, With shrill notes of anger And mortal alarms. The double, double, double beat Of the thundering drum, Cries, "Hark! the foes come; Charge, charge! 'tis too late to retreat." JOHN DRYDEN. _From "The Ode on St. Cecilia's Day."_ _The Cavalier's Song_ A steed! a steed of matchlesse speed, A sword of metal keene! All else to noble heartes is drosse, All else on earth is meane. The neighyinge of the war-horse prowde, The rowlinge of the drum, The clangor of the trumpet lowde, Be soundes from heaven that come; And oh! the thundering presse of knightes, Whenas their war cryes swell, May tole from heaven an angel bright. And rouse a fiend from hell. Then mounte! then mounte, brave gallants all, And don your helmes amaine: Deathe's couriers, fame and honor, call Us to the field againe. No shrewish teares shall fill our eye When the sword-hilt's in our hand-- Heart-whole we'll part, and no whit sighe For the fayrest of the land; Let piping swaine, and craven wight, Thus weepe and puling crye; Our business is like men to fight, And hero-like to die! WILLIAM MOTHERWELL. _The Old Scottish Cavalier_ Come listen to another song, Should make your heart beat high, Bring crimson to your forehead, And the luster to your eye;-- It is a song of olden time, Of days long since gone by, And of a baron stout and bold As e'er wore sword on thigh! Like a brave old Scottish cavalier, All of the olden time! He kept his castle in the north. Hard by the thundering Spey; And a thousand vassals dwelt around, All of his kindred they. And not a man of all that clan Had ever ceased to pray For the Royal race they laved so well, Though exiled far away From the steadfast Scottish cavaliers All of the olden time! His father drew the righteous sword For Scotland and her claims, Among the loyal gentlemen And chiefs of ancient names, Who swore to fight or fall beneath The standard of King James, And died at Killiecrankie Pass With the glory of the Græmes; Like a true old Scottish cavalier All of the olden time! He never owned the foreign rule, No master he obeyed, But kept his clan in peace at home, From foray and from raid; And when they asked him for his oath, He touched his glittering blade, And pointed to his bonnet blue, That bore the white cockade: Like a leal old Scottish cavalier, All of the olden time! At length the news ran through the land-- THE PRINCE had come again! That night the fiery cross was sped O'er mountain and through glen; And our old baron rose in might, Like a lion from his den, And rode away across the hills To Charlie and his men, With the valiant Scottish cavaliers. All of the olden time! He was the first that bent the knee When the STANDARD waved abroad, He was the first that charged the foe On Preston's bloody sod; And ever, in the van of fight, The foremost still he trod, Until on bleak Culloden's heath, He gave his soul to God, Like a good old Scottish cavalier, All of the olden time! Oh never shall we know again A heart so stout and true-- The olden times have passed away, And weary are the new: The fair white rose has faded From the garden where it grew, And no fond tears save those of heaven, The glorious bed bedew Of the last old Scottish cavalier All of the olden time! WILLIAM EDMONDSTOUNE AYTOUN. _The Song of the Camp_ "Give us a song!" the soldiers cried, The outer trenches guarding, When the heated guns of the camps allied Grew weary of bombarding. The dark Redan, in silent scoff, Lay, grim and threatening, under; And the tawny mound of the Malakoff No longer belched its thunder. There was a pause. A guardsman said: "We storm the forts to-morrow; Sing while we may, another day Will bring enough of sorrow." They lay along the battery's side, Below the smoking cannon,-- Brave hearts, from Severn and from Clyde, And from the banks of Shannon. They sang of love, and not of fame; Forgot was Britain's glory; Each heart recalled a different name, But all sang "Annie Laurie." Voice after voice caught up the song, Until its tender passion Rose like an anthem rich and strong,-- Their battle eve confession. Dear girl! her name he dared not speak; But as the song grew louder, Something upon the soldier's cheek Washed off the stains of powder. Beyond the darkening ocean burned The bloody sunset's embers, While the Crimean valleys learned How English love remembers. And once again a fire of hell Rained on the Russian quarters, With scream of shot and burst of shell, And bellowing of the mortars! And Irish Nora's eyes are dim For a singer dumb and gory; And English Mary mourns for him Who sang of "Annie Laurie." Sleep, soldiers! still in honored rest Your truth and valor wearing; The bravest are the tenderest,-- The loving are the daring. BAYARD TAYLOR. _Border Ballad_ March, march, Ettrick and Teviotdale; Why the de'il dinna ye march forward in order? March, march, Eskdale and Liddesdale! All the Blue Bonnets are over the Border! Many a banner spread Flutters above your head, Many a crest that is famous in story. Mount and make ready, then, Sons of the mountain glen, Fight for the Queen and our old Scottish glory. Come from the hills where your hirsels are grazing; Come from the glen of the buck and the roe; Come to the crag where the beacon is blazing; Come with the buckler, the lance and the bow. Trumpets are sounding; War-steeds are bounding; Stand to your arms and march in good order. England shall many a day Tell of the bloody fray When the Blue Bonnets came over the Border. SIR WALTER SCOTT. _From "The Monastery."_ _Gathering Song of Donuil Dhu_ Pibroch of Donuil Dhu, Pibroch of Donuil, Wake thy wild voice anew, Summon Clan Conuil. Come away, come away, Hark to the summons! Come in your war-array, Gentles and commons. Come from deep glen, and From mountain so rocky; The war-pipe and pennon Are at Inverlochy. Come every hill-plaid, and True heart that wears one, Come every steel blade, and Strong hand that bears one. Leave untended the herd, The flock without shelter; Leave the corpse uninterr'd, The bride at the altar; Leave the deer, leave the steer, Leave nets and barges: Come with your fighting gear, Broadswords and targes. Come as the winds come, when Forests are rended, Come as the waves come, when Navies are stranded: Faster come, faster come, Faster and faster, Chief, vassal, page and groom, Tenant and master. Fast they come, fast they come; See how they gather! Wide waves the eagle plume Blended with heather. Cast your plaids, draw your blades, Forward each man set! Pibroch of Donuil Dhu Knell for the onset! SIR WALTER SCOTT. _The Reveille_ Hark! I hear the tramp of thousands, And of armèd men the hum; Lo! a nation's hosts have gathered Round the quick alarming drum,-- Saying, "Come, Freemen, come! Ere your heritage be wasted," said the quick Alarming drum. "Let me of my heart take counsel: War is not of life the sum; Who shall stay and reap the harvest When the autumn days shall come?" But the drum Echoed, "Come! Death shall reap the braver harvest," said the Solemn-sounding drum. "But when won the coming battle, What of profit springs therefrom? What if conquest, subjugation, Even greater ills become?" But the drum Answered, "Come! You must do the sum to prove it," said the Yankee-answering drum. "What if, 'mid the cannons' thunder, Whistling shot and bursting bomb, When my brothers fall around me, Should my heart grow cold and numb?" But the drum Answered, "Come! Better there in death united, than in life a recreant, --Come!" Thus they answered,--hoping, fearing, Some in faith, and doubting some, Till a trumpet-voice proclaiming, Said, "My chosen people, come!" Then the drum, Lo! was dumb, For the great heart of the nation, throbbing, answered, "Lord, we come!" BRET HARTE. _Ye Mariners of England_ Ye Mariners of England, That guard our native seas, Whose flag has braved, a thousand years, The battle and the breeze, Your glorious standard launch again, To match another foe! And sweep through the deep While the stormy winds do blow-- While the battle rages loud and long, And the stormy winds do blow. The spirit of your fathers Shall start from every wave! For the deck it was their field of fame, And Ocean was their grave. Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell Your manly hearts shall glow, As ye sweep through the deep While the stormy winds do blow-- While the battle rages loud and long, And the stormy winds do blow. Britannia needs no bulwarks, No towers along the steep; Her march is o'er the mountain-wave, Her home is on the deep. With thunders from her native oak She quells the floods below, As they roar on the shore When the stormy winds do blow-- When the battle rages loud and long, And the stormy winds do blow. The meteor flag of England Shall yet terrific burn, Till danger's troubled night depart, And the star of peace return. Then, then, ye ocean-warriors! Our song and feast shall flow To the fame of your name, When the storm has ceased to blow,-- When the fiery fight is heard no more, And the storm has ceased to blow. THOMAS CAMPBELL. _The Knight's Tomb_ Where is the grave of Sir Arthur O'Kellyn? Where may the grave of that good man be?-- By the side of a spring, on the breast of Helvellyn, Under the twigs of a young birch tree! The oak that in summer was sweet to hear, And rustled its leaves in the fall of the year, And whistled and roared in the winter alone, Is gone,--and the birch in its stead is grown.-- The knight's bones are dust, And his good sword rust;-- His soul is with the saints, I trust. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. _How Sleep the Brave!_ How sleep the Brave who sink to rest By all their country's wishes blest! When Spring, with dewy fingers cold, Returns to deck their hallowed mould, She there shall dress a sweeter sod Than Fancy's feet have ever trod. By fairy hands their knell is rung; By forms unseen their dirge is sung; There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay; And Freedom shall awhile repair, To dwell a weeping hermit there! WILLIAM COLLINS. _Dirge_ _For One Who Fell in Battle._ Room for a soldier! lay him in the clover; He loved the fields, and they shall be his cover; Make his mound with hers who called him once her lover: Where the rain may rain upon it, Where the sun may shine upon it, Where the lamb hath lain upon it, And the bee will dine upon it. Bear him to no dismal tomb under city churches; Take him to the fragrant fields, by the silver birches, Where the whip-poor-will shall mourn, where the oriole perches: Make his mound with sunshine on it, Where the bee will dine upon it, Where the lamb hath lain upon it, And the rain will rain upon it. Busy as the bee was he, and his rest should be the clover; Gentle as the lamb was he, and the fern should be his cover; Fern and rosemary shall grow my soldier's pillow over: Where the rain may rain upon it, Where the sun may shine upon it, Where the lamb hath lain upon it, And the bee will dine upon it. Sunshine in his heart, the rain would come full often Out of those tender eyes which evermore did soften: He never could look cold till we saw him in his coffin. Make his mound with sunshine on it. Plant the lordly pine upon it, Where the moon may stream upon it, And memory shall dream upon it. "Captain or Colonel,"--whatever invocation Suit our hymn the best, no matter for thy station,-- On thy grave the rain shall fall from the eyes of a mighty nation! Long as the sun doth shine upon it, Shall glow the goodly pine upon it, Long as the stars do gleam upon it, Shall memory come to dream upon it. THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS. _The Burial of Sir John Moore_ Not a drum was heard, not a funeral-note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O'er the grave where our hero we buried. We buried him darkly at dead of night, The sods with our bayonets turning, By the struggling moonbeam's misty light, And the lantern dimly burning. No useless coffin enclosed his breast, Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him; But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him. Few and short were the prayers we said, And we spoke not a word of sorrow; But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead, And we bitterly thought of the morrow. We thought as we hollow'd his narrow bed, And smooth'd down his lonely pillow, That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head, And we far away on the billow! Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone, And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him-- But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on In the grave where a Briton has laid him. But half of our heavy task was done, When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the distant and random gun That the foe was sullenly firing. Slowly and sadly we laid him down, From the field of his fame fresh and gory; We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone-- But we left him alone in his glory. CHARLES WOLFE. _Soldier, Rest!_ Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er, Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking: Dream of battle-fields no more, Days of danger, nights of waking. In our isle's enchanted hall, Hands unseen thy couch are strewing; Fairy strains of music fall, Every sense in slumber dewing. Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er, Dream of fighting fields no more: Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking, Morn of toil, nor night of waking. No rude sound shall reach thine ear, Armor's clang, or war-steed's champing; Trump nor pibroch summon here, Mustering clan, or squadron tramping. Yet the lark's shrill fife may come, At the day-break, from the fallow, And the bittern sound his drum, Booming from the sedgy shallow. Ruder sounds shall none be near, Guards nor warders challenge here, Here's no war-steed's neigh and champing, Shouting clans, or squadrons stamping. SIR WALTER SCOTT. _From "The Lady of the Lake."_ _Recessional_ God of our fathers, known of old-- Lord of our far-flung battle-line-- Beneath Whose awful Hand we hold Dominion over palm and pine-- Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget--lest we forget! The tumult and the shouting dies-- The captains and the kings depart-- Still stands Thine ancient Sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart. Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget--lest we forget! Far-called our navies melt away-- On dune and headland sinks the fire-- Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, Lest we forget--lest we forget! If, drunk with sight of power, we loose Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe-- Such boasting as the Gentiles use Or lesser breeds without the Law-- Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget--lest we forget! For heathen heart that puts her trust In reeking tube and iron shard-- All valiant dust that builds on dust, And guarding calls not Thee to guard-- For frantic boast and foolish word, Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord! Amen. RUDYARD KIPLING. _The Fatherland_ Where is the true man's fatherland? Is it where he by chance is born? Doth not the yearning spirit scorn In such scant borders to be spanned? Oh yes! his fatherland must be As the blue heaven wide and free! Is it alone where freedom is, Where God is God and man is man? Doth he not claim a broader span For the soul's love of home than this? Oh yes! his fatherland must be As the blue heaven wide and free! Where'er a human heart doth wear Joy's myrtle-wreath or sorrow's gyves, Where'er a human spirit strives After a life more true and fair, There is the true man's birthplace grand, His is a world-wide fatherland! Where'er a single slave doth pine, Where'er one man may help another,-- Thank God for such a birthright, brother,-- That spot of earth is thine and mine! There is the true man's birthplace grand, His is a world-wide fatherland! JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. INTERLEAVES _New World and Old Glory_ The verse in this division gives a poetic picture of America, dear land of all our love, from the very beginning of her world-life. It sings her story from the time when Columbus, _"Before him not the ghost of shores, Before him only shoreless seas,"_ sailed toward the mysterious continent that lay hidden in the West; sings it from the thrilling moment when the weary sailors sighted the new land, up to the twentieth century, when Old Glory waves _"Wherever the sails of peace are seen And wherever the war-wind blows."_ Heroic figures, familiar to us from childhood, appear in these metrical versions of episodes in our national history. Here is the red man whose hour, alas! was struck when first the pale-face looked upon his happy hunting-grounds; here are Pocahontas and her Captain; the Pilgrim Fathers; Washington, the soldier-statesman; the embattled farmers who fired at Concord the shot heard round the world; the Continentals in their ragged regimentals, and Old Ironsides with its memories of 1812. Then, when "westward the Star of Empire takes its way," come the Argonauts of '49, crossing the plains in their white-sailed prairie schooners in search, like Jason, of the Golden Fleece. The years move on, and Abraham Lincoln, the Great Commoner, dear benefactor of the race, appears, and, kneeling at his feet, the dusky slave whose bonds he loosened. Gallant Phil Sheridan and Barbara Frietchie are here too; indeed, you will find that the number of poems inspired by the Civil War is very great; but the patriot host, above, below, knows now no North nor South; and Lincoln's "dear majestic ghost" looks down upon, as Old Glory floats over, a united commonwealth. XI NEW WORLD AND OLD GLORY _Dear Land of All My Love_[18] Long as thine art shall love true love, Long as thy science truth shall know, Long as thine eagle harms no dove, Long as thy law by law shall grow, Long as thy God is God above, Thy brother every man below, So long, dear land of all my love, Thy name shall shine, thy fame shall glow. SIDNEY LANIER. _From "The Centennial Ode"_ (1876). [Footnote 18: _From "Poems of Sidney Lanier," copyright 1891, and published by Charles Scribner's Sons._] _Columbus_[19] Behind him lay the gray Azores, Behind the gates of Hercules; Before him not the ghost of shores, Before him only shoreless seas. The good mate said: "Now must we pray, For, lo! the very stars are gone. Brave Adm'r'l, speak; what shall I say?" "Why, say: 'Sail on, sail on! and on!'" "My men grow mutinous day by day; My men grow ghastly wan and weak." The stout mate thought of home; a spray Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek. "What shall I say, brave Adm'r'l, say, If we sight not but seas at dawn?" "Why, you shall say, at break of day: 'Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!'" They sailed and sailed as winds might blow, Until at last the blanched mate said: "Why, now not even God would know Should I and all my men fall dead. These very winds forget the way, For God from these dread seas is gone. Now speak, brave Adm'r'l, speak and say--" He said: "Sail on! sail on! and on!" They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate: "This mad sea shows his teeth to-night; He curls his lip, he lies in wait, With lifted teeth, as if to bite: Brave Adm'r'l, say but one good word; What shall we do when hope is gone?" The words leapt as a leaping sword: "Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!" Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck And peered through darkness. Ah, that night Of all dark nights! And then a speck-- A light! a light! a light! a light! It grew, a starlit flag unfurled! It grew to be Time's burst of dawn. He gained a world; he gave that world Its greatest lesson: "On! sail on!" JOAQUIN MILLER. [Footnote 19: _From "The Complete Poetical Works of Joaquin Miller" (copyrighted). By permission of the publishers, The Whitaker-Ray Company, San Francisco._] _Pocahontas_ Wearied arm and broken sword Wage in vain the desperate fight; Round him press a countless horde, He is but a single knight. Hark! a cry of triumph shrill Through the wilderness resounds, As, with twenty bleeding wounds, Sinks the warrior, fighting still. Now they heap the funeral pyre, And the torch of death they light; Ah! 'tis hard to die by fire! Who will shield the captive knight? Round the stake with fiendish cry Wheel and dance the savage crowd, Cold the victim's mien and proud, And his breast is bared to die. Who will shield the fearless heart? Who avert the murderous blade? From the throng with sudden start See, there springs an Indian maid. Quick she stands before the knight: "Loose the chain, unbind the ring! I am daughter of the king. And I claim the Indian right!" Dauntlessly aside she flings Lifted axe and thirsty knife, Fondly to his heart she clings, And her bosom guards his life! In the woods of Powhattan, Still 'tis told by Indian fires How a daughter of their sires Saved a captive Englishman. WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. _Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers_ The breaking waves dashed high On a stern and rock-bound coast, And the woods against a stormy sky Their giant branches tossed; And the heavy night hung dark The hills and waters o'er, When a band of exiles moored their bark On the wild New England shore. Not as the conqueror comes, They, the true-hearted, came; Not with the roll of the stirring drums, And the trumpet that sings of fame: Not as the flying come, In silence and in fear: They shook the depths of the desert's gloom With their hymns of lofty cheer. Amidst the storm they sang; And the stars heard, and the sea; And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang To the Anthem of the Free. The ocean eagle soared From his nest by the white wave's foam; And the rocking pines of the forest roared,-- This was their welcome home! There were men with hoary hair Amidst that pilgrim band: Why had they come to wither there, Away from their childhood's land? There was woman's fearless eye, Lit by her deep love's truth; There was manhood's brow, serenely high, And the fiery heart of youth. What sought they thus afar? Bright jewels of the mine? The wealth of seas, the spoils of war?-- They sought a faith's pure shrine! Ay, call it holy ground, The soil where first they trod;-- They have left unstained what there they found-- Freedom to worship God. FELICIA HEMANS. _The Twenty-second of December_[20] Wild was the day; the wintry sea Moaned sadly on New England's strand, When first the thoughtful and the free, Our fathers, trod the desert land. They little thought how pure a light, With years, should gather round that day; How love should keep their memories bright, How wide a realm their sons should sway. Green are their bays; but greener still Shall round their spreading fame be wreathed, And regions, now untrod, shall thrill With reverence when their names are breathed, Till where the sun, with softer fires, Looks on the vast Pacific's sleep, The children of the Pilgrim sires This hallowed day like us shall keep. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. [Footnote 20: _By courtesy of D. Appleton & Co., publishers of Bryant's Complete Poetical Works._] _Washington_ Soldier and statesman, rarest unison; High-poised example of great duties done Simply as breathing, a world's honors worn As life's indifferent gifts to all men born; Dumb for himself, unless it were to God, But for his barefoot soldiers eloquent, Tramping the snow to coral where they trod, Held by his awe in hollow-eyed content; Modest, yet firm as Nature's self; unblamed Save by the men his nobler temper shamed; Never seduced through show of present good By other than unsetting lights to steer New-trimmed in Heaven, nor than his steadfast mood More steadfast, far from rashness as from fear; Rigid, but with himself first, grasping still In swerveless poise the wave-beat helm of will; Not honored then or now because he wooed The popular voice, but that he still withstood; Broad-minded, higher-souled, there is but one Who was all this and ours, and all men's,--WASHINGTON. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. _From "Under the Old Elm."_ _Warren's Address_ Stand! the ground's your own, my braves! Will ye give it up to slaves? Will ye look for greener graves? Hope ye mercy still? What's the mercy despots feel? Hear it in that battle peal! Read it on yon bristling steel! Ask it,--ye who will! Fear ye foes who kill for hire? Will ye to your homes retire? Look behind you! they're afire, And, before you, see Who have done it!--From the vale On they come!--and will ye quail?-- Leaden rain and leaden hail Let their welcome be! In the God of battles trust! Die we may,--and die we must; But oh, where can dust to dust Be consigned so well, As where Heaven its dews shall shed On the martyred patriot's bed, And the rocks shall raise their head Of his deeds to tell! JOHN PIERPONT. _Carmen Bellicosum_ In their ragged regimentals Stood the old Continentals, Yielding not, When the grenadiers were lunging, And like hail fell the plunging Cannon shot; When the files Of the isles, From their smoky night encampment, bore the banner of the rampant Unicorn, And grummer, grummer, grummer, roll'd the roll of the drummer, Through the morn! Then with eyes to the front all, And guns horizontal, Stood our sires; And the balls whistled deadly, And in streams flashing redly Blazed the fires; As the roar On the shore, Swept the strong battle-breakers o'er the green sodded acres Of the plain; And louder, louder, louder, cracked the black gunpowder, Cracking amain! Now like smiths at their forges Worked the red Saint George's Cannoniers, And the "villainous saltpetre" Rung a fierce, discordant metre 'Round their ears; As the swift Storm-drift, With hot, sweeping anger, came the Horse Guards' clangor On our flanks; And higher, higher, higher, burned the old-fashioned fire Through the ranks! Then the old-fashioned Colonel Galloped through the white infernal Powder cloud; His broad-sword was swinging, And his brazen throat was ringing Trumpet loud; Then the blue Bullets flew, And the trooper-jackets redden at the touch of the leaden Rifle-breath; And rounder, rounder, rounder, roared our iron six-pounder, Hurling death! GUY HUMPHREYS MCMASTER. _The American Flag_ (Extract) When Freedom from her mountain height Unfurled her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of night, And set the stars of glory there. She mingled with its gorgeous dyes The milky baldric of the skies, And striped its pure, celestial white, With streakings of the morning light; Then from his mansion in the sun She called her eagle bearer down, And gave into his mighty hand The symbol of her chosen land. * * * * Flag of the free heart's hope and home! By angel hands to valor given; Thy stars have lit the welkin dome, And all thy hues were born in heaven. Forever float that standard sheet! Where breathes the foe but falls before us, With Freedom's soil beneath our feet, And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us! JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE. _Old Ironsides_ (U. S. S. "Constitution.") Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky; Beneath it rung the battle shout, And burst the cannon's roar;-- The meteor of the ocean air Shall sweep the clouds no more. Her deck, once red with heroes' blood, Where knelt the vanquished foe, When winds were hurrying o'er the flood, And waves were white below, No more shall feel the victor's tread, Or know the conquered knee; The harpies of the shore shall pluck The eagle of the sea! Oh, better that her shattered hulk Should sink beneath the wave; Her thunders shook the mighty deep, And there should be her grave: Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storms, The lightning and the gale! OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. _Indians_ Alas! for them, their day is o'er, Their fires are out on hill and shore; No more for them the wild deer bounds, The plough is on their hunting grounds; The pale man's axe rings through their woods, The pale man's sail skims o'er their floods; Their pleasant springs are dry; Their children,--look, by power opprest, Beyond the mountains of the west, Their children go to die. CHARLES SPRAGUE. _Crossing the Plains_[21] What great yoked brutes with briskets low; With wrinkled necks like buffalo, With round, brown, liquid, pleading eyes, That turned so slow and sad to you, That shone like love's eyes soft with tears, That seemed to plead, and make replies, The while they bowed their necks and drew The creaking load; and looked at you. Their sable briskets swept the ground, Their cloven feet kept solemn sound. Two sullen bullocks led the line, Their great eyes shining bright like wine; Two sullen captive kings were they, That had in time held herds at bay, And even now they crushed the sod With stolid sense of majesty, And stately stepped and stately trod, As if 't were something still to be Kings even in captivity. JOAQUIN MILLER. [Footnote 21: _From "The Complete Poetical Works of Joaquin Miller" (copyrighted). By permission of the publishers. The Whitaker-Ray Company, San Francisco._] _Concord Hymn_ Sung at the completion of the Battle Monument, April 19, 1836. By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world. The foe long since in silence slept; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; And Time the ruined bridge has swept Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. On the green bank, by this soft stream, We set to-day a votive stone; That memory may her dead redeem, When, like our sires, our sons are gone. Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die, and leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. _Ode_ Sung in the Town Hall, Concord, July 4, 1857. O tenderly the haughty day Fills his blue urn with fire; One morn is in the mighty heaven, And one in our desire. The cannon booms from town to town, Our pulses beat not less, The joy-bells chime their tidings down, Which children's voices bless. For He that flung the broad blue fold O'er-mantling land and sea, One third part of the sky unrolled For the banner of the free. The men are ripe of Saxon kind To build an equal state,-- To take the statute from the mind And make of duty fate. United States! the ages plead,-- Present and Past in under-song,-- Go put your creed into your deed, Nor speak with double tongue. For sea and land don't understand, Nor skies without a frown See rights for which the one hand fights By the other cloven down. Be just at home; then write your scroll Of honor o'er the sea, And bid the broad Atlantic roll, A ferry of the free. And henceforth there shall be no chain, Save underneath the sea The wires shall murmur through the main Sweet songs of liberty. The conscious stars accord above, The waters wild below, And under, through the cable wove, Her fiery errands go. For He that worketh high and wise, Nor pauses in His plan, Will take the sun out of the skies, Ere freedom out of man. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. _Stanzas on Freedom_ Is true Freedom but to break Fetters for our own dear sake, And, with leathern hearts, forget That we owe mankind a debt? No! true freedom is to share All the chains our brothers wear, And, with heart and hand, to be Earnest to make others free! They are slaves who fear to speak For the fallen and the weak; They are slaves who will not choose Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, Rather than in silence shrink From the truth they needs must think; They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. _Abraham Lincoln_ This man whose homely face you look upon, Was one of nature's masterful, great men; Born with strong arms, that unfought battles won; Direct of speech, and cunning with the pen. Chosen for large designs, he had the art Of winning with his humor, and he went Straight to his mark, which was the human heart; Wise, too, for what he could not break he bent. Upon his back a more than Atlas-load, The burden of the Commonwealth, was laid; He stooped, and rose up to it, though the road Shot suddenly downwards, not a whit dismayed. Hold, warriors, councillors, kings! All now give place To this dear benefactor of the race. RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. _Lincoln the Great Commoner_ When the Norn-Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour, Greatening and darkening as it hurried on, She bent the strenuous Heavens and came down, To make a man to meet the mortal need. She took the tried clay of the common road-- Clay warm yet with the genial heat of earth, Dashed through it all a strain of prophecy; Then mixed a laughter with the serious stuff. It was a stuff to wear for centuries, A man that matched the mountains and compelled The stars to look our way and honor us. The color of the ground was in him, the red Earth, The tang and odor of the primal things, The rectitude and patience of the rocks; The gladness of the wind that shakes the corn; The courage of the bird that dares the sea; The justice of the rain that loves all leaves; The pity of the snow that hides all scars; The loving kindness of the wayside well; The tolerance and equity of light That gives as freely to the shrinking weed As to the great oak flaring to the wind-- To the grave's low hill as to the Matterhorn That shoulders out the sky. And so he came, From prairie cabin to the Capitol, One fair ideal led our chieftain on, Forevermore he burned to do his deed With the fine stroke and gesture of a King. He built the rail pile as he built the State, Pouring his splendid strength through every blow, The conscience of him testing every stroke, To make his deed the measure of a man. So came the Captain with the mighty heart; And when the step of earthquake shook the house, Wrenching the rafters from their ancient hold, He held the ridgepole up and spiked again The rafters of the Home. He held his place-- Held the long purpose like a growing tree-- Held on through blame and faltered not at praise, And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down As when a kingly cedar green with boughs Goes down with a great shout upon the hills. EDWIN MARKHAM. _Abraham Lincoln_ (Summer, 1865.) Dead is the roll of the drums, And the distant thunders die, They fade in the far-off sky; And a lovely summer comes, Like the smile of Him on high. * * * * How the tall white daisies grow, Where the grim artillery rolled! (Was it only a moon ago? It seems a century old,)-- And the bee hums in the clover, As the pleasant June comes on; Aye, the wars are all over,-- But our good Father is gone. There was tumbling of traitor fort, Flaming of traitor fleet-- Lighting of city and port, Clasping in square and street. There was thunder of mine and gun, Cheering by mast and tent,-- When--his dread work all done,-- And his high fame full won-- Died the Good President. * * * * And our boys had fondly thought, To-day, in marching by, From the ground so dearly bought, And the fields so bravely fought, To have met their Father's eye. But they may not see him in place Nor their ranks be seen of him; We look for the well-known face, And the splendor is strangely dim. Perished?--who was it said Our Leader had passed away? Dead? Our President dead? He has not died for a day! We mourn for a little breath Such as, late or soon, dust yields; But the Dark Flower of Death Blooms in the fadeless fields. We looked on a cold, still brow, But Lincoln could yet survive; He never was more alive, Never nearer than now. For the pleasant season found him, Guarded by faithful hands, In the fairest of Summer Lands; With his own brave Staff around him, There our President stands. There they are all at his side, The noble hearts and true, That did all men might do-- Then slept, with their swords, and died. * * * * HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL. _O Captain! My Captain!_ O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills, For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; Here, Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck, You've fallen cold and dead. My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; Exult, O shores! and ring, O bells! But I with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. WALT WHITMAN. _The Flag Goes By_ Hats off! Along the street there comes A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums, A flash of color beneath the sky: Hats off! The flag is passing by! Blue and crimson and white it shines, Over the steel-tipped, ordered lines. Hats off! The colors before us fly; But more than the flag is passing by. Sea-fights and land-fights, grim and great, Fought to make and to save the State: Weary marches and sinking ships; Cheers of victory on dying lips; Days of plenty and years of peace; March of a strong land's swift increase; Equal justice, right and law, Stately honor and reverend awe; Sign of a nation, great and strong To ward her people from foreign wrong: Pride and glory and honor,--all Live in the colors to stand or fall. Hats off! Along the street there comes A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums; And loyal hearts are beating high: Hats off! The flag is passing by! HENRY HOLCOMB BENNETT. _The Black Regiment_ Dark as the clouds of even, Ranked in the western heaven, Waiting the breath that lifts All the dead mass, and drifts Tempest and falling brand Over a ruined land,-- So still and orderly, Arm to arm, knee to knee, Waiting the great event, Stands the black regiment. Down the long dusky line Teeth gleam, and eyeballs shine; And the bright bayonet, Bristling and firmly set, Flashed with a purpose grand, Long ere the sharp command Of the fierce rolling drum Told them their time had come, Told them what work was sent For the black regiment. "Now!" the flag-sergeant cried, "Though death and hell betide, Let the whole nation see If we are fit to be Free in this land; or bound Down, like the whining hound,-- Bound with red stripes of pain In our cold chains again!" Oh, what a shout there went From the black regiment! "Charge!" trump and drum awoke; Onward the bondsmen broke; Bayonet and sabre-stroke Vainly opposed their rush. Through the wild battle's crush, With but one thought aflush, Driving their lords like chaff, In the gun's mouth they laugh; Or at the slippery brands, Leaping with open hands, Down they tear man and horse, Down in their awful course; Trampling with bloody heel Over the crushing steel,-- All their eyes forward bent, Rushed the black regiment. "Freedom!" their battle-cry,-- "Freedom! or leave to die!" Ah, and they meant the word! Not as with us 'tis heard,-- Not a mere party shout; They gave their spirits out, Trusting the end to God, And on the gory sod Rolled in triumphant blood. Glad to strike one free blow, Whether for weal or woe; Glad to breathe one free breath, Though on the lips of death; Praying--alas, in vain!-- That they might fall again, So they could once more see That burst to liberty! This was what "freedom" lent To the black regiment. Hundreds on hundreds fell; But they are resting well; Scourges, and shackles strong, Never shall do them wrong. Oh, to the living few, Soldiers, be just and true! Hail them as comrades tried; Fight with them side by side; Never, in field or tent, Scorn the black regiment! GEORGE HENRY BOKER. _Night Quarters_ Tang! tang! went the gong's wild roar Through the hundred cells of our great Sea-Hive! Five seconds--it couldn't be more-- And the whole Swarm was humming and alive-- (We were on an enemy's shore.) With savage haste, in the dark, (Our steerage hadn't a spark,) Into boot and hose they blundered-- From for'ard came a strange, low roar, The dull and smothered racket Of lower rig and jacket Hurried on, by the hundred, How the berth deck buzzed and swore! The third of minutes ten, And half a thousand men, From the dream-gulf, dead and deep, Of the seamen's measured sleep, In the taking of a lunar, In the serving of a ration, Every man at his station!-- Three and a quarter, or sooner! Never a skulk to be seen-- From the look-out aloft to the gunner Lurking in his black magazine. There they stand, still as death, And, (a trifle out of breath, It may be,) we of the Staff, All on the poop, to a minute, Wonder if there's anything in it-- Doubting if to growl or laugh. But, somehow, every hand Feels for hilt and brand, Tries if buckle and frog be tight,-- So, in the chilly breeze, we stand, Peering through the dimness of the night-- The men by twos and ones, Grim and silent at the guns, Ready, if a Foe heave in sight! But, as we look aloft, There, all white and soft, Floated on the fleecy clouds, (Stray flocks in heaven's blue croft)-- How they shone, the eternal stars, 'Mid the black masts and spars And the great maze of lifts and shrouds! HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL. _(Flag Ship "Hartford," May, 1864.)_ _Battle-Hymn of the Republic_ Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored, He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword; His truth is marching on. I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps, I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps; His day is marching on. I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel; "As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal: Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel, Since God is marching on." He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat: Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him,--be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on. In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me: As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on. JULIA WARD HOWE. _Sheridan's Ride_[22] October 19, 1864. Up from the South at break of day, Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay, The affrighted air with a shudder bore, Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain's door, The terrible grumble, and rumble, and roar, Telling the battle was on once more, And Sheridan twenty miles away. And wider still those billows of war Thundered along the horizon's bar; And louder yet into Winchester rolled The roar of that red sea uncontrolled, Making the blood of the listener cold, As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray, And Sheridan twenty miles away. But there is a road from Winchester town, A good broad highway leading down; And there, through the flash of the morning light, A steed as black as the steeds of night Was seen to pass as with eagle flight; As if he knew the terrible need, He stretched away with the utmost speed; Hills rose and fell--but his heart was gay, With Sheridan fifteen miles away. Still sprung from those swift hoofs, thundering South, The dust, like smoke from the cannon's mouth; On the tail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster, Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster. The heart of the steed and the heart of the master Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls, Impatient to be where the battlefield calls; Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play, With Sheridan only ten miles away. Under his spurning feet the road Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed, And the landscape flowed away behind, Like an ocean flying before the wind; And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace ire, Swept on with his wild eyes full of fire; But lo! he is nearing his heart's desire, He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray, With Sheridan only five miles away. The first that the General saw were the groups Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops. What was done? what to do? A glance told him both. Then, striking his spurs, with a terrible oath, He dashed down the line, 'mid a storm of huzzas, And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because The sight of the master compelled it to pause. With foam and with dust the black charger was gray; By the flash of his eye, and the red nostril's play, He seemed to the whole great army to say, "I have brought you Sheridan all the way From Winchester down to save the day!" Hurrah! hurrah for Sheridan! Hurrah! hurrah for horse and man! And when their statues are placed on high, Under the dome of the Union sky, The American soldier's Temple of Fame,-- There with the glorious General's name, Be it said, in letters both bold and bright, "Here is the steed that saved the day By carrying Sheridan into the fight, From Winchester, twenty miles away!" THOMAS BUCHANAN READ. [Footnote 22: _By courtesy of J. B. Lippincott & Co._] _Song of the Negro Boatman_ O, praise an' tanks! De Lord he come To set de people free; An' massa tink it day ob doom, An' we ob jubilee. De Lord dat heap de Red Sea waves He jus' as 'trong as den; He say de word: we las' night slaves; To-day, de Lord's freemen. De yam will grow, de cotton blow, We'll hab de rice an' corn; O nebber you fear, if nebber you hear De driver blow his horn! Ole massa on he trabbels gone; He leaf de land behind: De Lord's breff blow him furder on, Like corn-shuck in de wind. We own de hoe, we own de plough, We own de hands dat hold; We sell de pig, we sell de cow, But nebber chile be sold. De yam will grow, de cotton blow, We'll hab de rice an' corn; O nebber you fear, if nebber you hear De driver blow his horn! We pray de Lord: he gib us signs Dat some day we be free; De norf-wind tell it to de pines, De wild-duck to de sea; We tink it when de church-bell ring, We dream it in de dream; De rice-bird mean it when he sing, De eagle when he scream. De yam will grow, de cotton blow, We'll hab de rice an' corn; O nebber you fear, if nebber you hear De driver blow his horn! We know de promise nebber fail, An' nebber lie de word; So like de 'postles in de jail, We waited for de Lord: An' now he open ebery door, An' trow away de key; He tink we lub him so before, We lub him better free. De yam will grow, de cotton blow, He'll gib de rice an' corn; O nebber you fear, if nebber you hear De driver blow his horn! JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. _From "At Port Royal."_ _Barbara Frietchie_ Up from the meadows rich with corn, Clear in the cool September morn, The clustered spires of Frederick stand Green-walled by the hills of Maryland. Round about them orchards sweep, Apple and peach tree fruited deep, Fair as a garden of the Lord, To the eyes of the famished rebel horde, On that pleasant morn of the early fall When Lee marched over the mountain wall,-- Over the mountains, winding down, Horse and foot into Frederick town. Forty flags with their silver stars, Forty flags with their crimson bars, Flapped in the morning wind; the sun Of noon looked down, and saw not one. Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then, Bowed with her fourscore years and ten; Bravest of all in Frederick town, She took up the flag the men hauled down; In her attic-window the staff she set, To show that one heart was loyal yet. Up the street came the rebel tread, Stonewall Jackson riding ahead. Under his slouch hat left and right He glanced: the old flag met his sight. "Halt!"--the dust-brown ranks stood fast; "Fire!"--out blazed the rifle-blast. It shivered the window, pane and sash; It rent the banner with seam and gash. Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf; She leaned far out on the window-sill, And shook it forth with a royal will. "Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, But spare your country's flag," she said. A shade of sadness, a blush of shame, Over the face of the leader came; The nobler nature within him stirred To life at that woman's deed and word: "Who touches a hair of yon gray head Dies like a dog! March on!" he said. All day long through Frederick street Sounded the tread of marching feet; All day long that free flag tost Over the heads of the rebel host. Ever its torn folds rose and fell On the loyal winds that loved it well; And through the hill-gaps sunset light Shone over it with a warm good-night. Barbara Frietchie's work is o'er, And the rebel rides on his raids no more. Honor to her! and let a tear Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier. Over Barbara Frietchie's grave, Flag of freedom and union wave! Peace and order and beauty draw Round thy symbol of light and law; And ever the stars above look down On thy stars below in Frederick town. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. _Two Veterans_ The last sunbeam Lightly falls from the finished Sabbath, On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking Down a new-made double grave. Lo! the moon ascending, Up from the east the silvery round moon, Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon, Immense and silent moon. I see a sad procession, And I hear the sound of coming full-keyed bugles, All the channels of the city streets they're flooding, As with voices and with tears. I hear the great drums pounding, And the small drums steady whirring, And every blow of the great convulsive drums Strikes me through and through. For the son is brought with the father, (In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell, Two veterans, son and father, dropt together, And the double grave awaits them). Now nearer blow the bugles, And the drums strike more convulsive, And the daylight o'er the pavement quite has faded, And the strong dead-march enwraps me. In the eastern sky up-buoying, The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumined, ('Tis some mother's large transparent face In heaven brighter growing). O strong dead-march you please me! O moon immense with your silvery face you soothe me! O my soldiers twain! O my veterans passing to burial! What I have I also give you. The moon gives you light, And the bugles and the drums give you music, And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans, My heart gives you love. WALT WHITMAN. _Stand by the Flag!_ Stand by the Flag! Its stars, like meteors gleaming, Have lighted Arctic icebergs, southern seas, And shone responsive to the stormy beaming Of old Arcturus and the Pleiades. Stand by the Flag! Its stripes have streamed in glory, To foes a fear, to friends a festal robe, And spread in rhythmic lines the sacred story Of Freedom's triumphs over all the globe. Stand by the Flag! On land and ocean billow By it your fathers stood unmoved and true, Living, defended; dying, from their pillow, With their last blessing, passed it on to you. Stand by the Flag! Immortal heroes bore it Through sulphurous smoke, deep moat and armed defence; And their imperial Shades still hover o'er it, A guard celestial from Omnipotence. JOHN NICHOLS WILDER. _At Gibraltar_[23] I England, I stand on thy imperial ground, Not all a stranger; as thy bugles blow, I feel within my blood old battles flow-- The blood whose ancient founts in thee are found, Still surging dark against the Christian bound Wide Islam presses; well its people know Thy heights that watch them wandering below; I think how Lucknow heard their gathering sound. I turn, and meet the cruel, turbaned face. England, 'tis sweet to be so much thy son! I feel the conqueror in my blood and race; Last night Trafalgar awed me, and to-day Gibraltar wakened; hark, thy evening gun Startles the desert over Africa! GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY. [Footnote 23: _Taken from "North Shore Watch and Other Poems" (copyrighted 1890). By courtesy of The Macmillan Company._] _At Gibraltar_ II Thou art the rock of empire, set mid-seas Between the East and West, that God has built; Advance thy Roman borders where thou wilt, While run thy armies true with his decrees; Law, justice, liberty--great gifts are these; Watch that they spread where English blood is spilt, Lest, mixed and sullied with his country's guilt, The soldier's life-stream flow, and Heaven displease! Two swords there are: one naked, apt to smite, Thy blade of war; and, battle-storied, one Rejoices in the sheath, and hides from light. American I am; would wars were done! Now westward, look, my country bids good-night-- Peace to the world from ports without a gun! GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY. _Faith and Freedom_ We must be free or die, who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold Which Milton held.... WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. _Our Mother Tongue_ Beyond the vague Atlantic deep, Far as the farthest prairies sweep, Where forest-glooms the nerve appal, Where burns the radiant western fall, One duty lies on old and young,-- With filial piety to guard, As on its greenest native sward, The glory of the English tongue. That ample speech! That subtle speech! Apt for the need of all and each: Strong to endure, yet prompt to bend Wherever human feelings tend. Preserve its force--expand its powers; And through the maze of civic life, In Letters, Commerce, even in Strife, Forget not it is yours and ours. LORD HOUGHTON. (Richard Monckton Milnes.) _The English Language_ Give me of every language, first my vigorous English Stored with imported wealth, rich in its natural mines-- Grand in its rhythmical cadence, simple for household employment-- Worthy the poet's song, fit for the speech of a man. * * * * Fitted for every use like a great majestical river, Blending thy various streams, stately thou flowest along, Bearing the white-winged ship of Poesy over thy bosom, Laden with spices that come out of the tropical isles, Fancy's pleasuring yacht with its bright and fluttering pennons, Logic's frigates of war and the toil-worn barges of trade. How art thou freely obedient unto the poet or speaker When, in a happy hour, thought into speech he translates; Caught on the word's sharp angles flash the bright hues of his fancy-- Grandly the thought rides the words, as a good horseman his steed. * * * * WILLIAM WETMORE STORY. _To America_ On a Proposed Alliance Between Two Great Nations. What is the voice I hear On the winds of the western sea? Sentinel, listen from out Cape Clear And say what the voice may be. 'Tis a proud free people calling loud to a people proud and free. And it says to them: "Kinsmen, hail; We severed have been too long. Now let us have done with a worn-out tale-- The tale of ancient wrong-- And our friendship last long as our love doth and be stronger than death is strong." Answer them, sons of the self-same race, And blood of the self-same clan; Let us speak with each other face to face And answer as man to man, And loyally love and trust each other as none but free men can. Now fling them out the breeze, Shamrock, Thistle, and Rose, And the Star-Spangled Banner unfurl with these-- A message to friends and foes Wherever the sails of peace are seen and wherever the war wind blows-- A message to bond and thrall to wake, For wherever we come, we twain, The throne of the tyrant shall rock and quake, And his menace be void and vain, For you are lords of a strong land and we are lords of the main. Yes, this is the voice of the bluff March gale; We severed have been too long, But now we have done with a worn-out tale-- The tale of an ancient wrong-- And our friendship last long as love doth last and stronger than death is strong. ALFRED AUSTIN. _The Name of Old Glory_ 1898 Old Glory! say, who By the ships and the crew, And the long, blended ranks of the Gray and the Blue-- Who gave you Old Glory, the name that you bear With such pride everywhere, As you cast yourself free to the rapturous air, And leap out full length, as we're wanting you to?-- Who gave you that name, with the ring of the same, And the honor and fame so becoming to you? Your stripes stroked in ripples of white and of red, With your stars at their glittering best overhead-- By day or by night Their delightfulest light Laughing down from their little square heaven of blue! Who gave you the name of Old Glory--say, who-- Who gave you the name of Old Glory? _The old banner lifted and faltering then In vague lisps and whispers fell silent again._ Old Glory: the story we're wanting to hear Is what the plain facts of your christening were,-- For your name--just to hear it, Repeat it, and cheer it, 's a tang to the spirit As salt as a tear;-- And seeing you fly, and the boys marching by, There's a shout in the throat and a blur in the eye, And an aching to live for you always--or die, If, dying, we still keep you waving on high. And so, by our love For you, floating above, And the scars of all wars and the sorrow thereof, Who gave you the name of Old Glory, and why Are we thrilled at the name of Old Glory? _Then the old banner leaped like a sail in the blast_ _And fluttered an audible answer at last._ And it spake with a shake of the voice, and it said: By the driven snow-white and the living blood-red Of my bars and their heaven of stars overhead-- By the symbol conjoined of them all, skyward cast, As I float from the steeple or flap at the mast, Or droop o'er the sod where the long grasses nod,-- My name is as old as the glory of God. ... So I came by the name of Old Glory. JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY. _From "Home Folks."_ INTERLEAVES _In Merry Mood_ _"Then cast away care, let sorrow cease, A fig for melancholy."_ All rules are suspended, grave affairs of state are laid aside, and the Court Jester demands a hearing. Is it my fancy, or do young eyes brighten, rosy cheeks dimple, lips part a little when he approaches? Clad all in gay motley, swinging his bauble, his cap and bells making merry music, he bounds upon the stage and bids us listen to his quips and jokes. He is by turns Puck and Ariel, Harlequin, Punchinello, and Court Fool. "Touchstone" we well may call him, this man of mirth, for when he tests the world's metal the pure gold of laughter shines out from the alloy. Seeing us smile even before he opens his lips he assumes a solemn attitude and cries: _"Good people all, of every sort, Give ear unto my song; And if you find it wondrous short It will not hold you long."_ Then hark how the "light-heeled numbers laughing go!" He tells us tales that smooth out the wrinkles of dull Care and provoke Laughter to hold both his sides, as well as others less jolly but full of wit and good cheer. A quaint, breezy moral, too, creeps in here and there, for the Court Fool, if you study him well, is sometimes a preacher; but whether frolicking or preaching or philosophizing, he brings with him, like Milton's nymph: _"Jest and youthful jollity, Quips and cranks, and wanton Wiles, Nods and Becks and Wreathéd Smiles, Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, And love to live in dimple sleek."_ XII IN MERRY MOOD _On a Favorite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes_ 'T was on a lofty vase's side Where China's gayest art had dyed, The azure flowers that blow, Demurest of the tabby kind, The pensive Selima, reclined, Gazed on the lake below. Her conscious tail her joy declared: The fair, round face, the snowy beard, The velvet of her paws, Her coat that with the tortoise vies, Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes,-- She saw, and purred applause. Still had she gazed, but 'midst the tide Two angel forms were seen to glide, The Genii of the stream: Their scaly armor's Tyrian hue, Through richest purple, to the view Betrayed a golden gleam. The hapless Nymph with wonder saw: A whisker first, and then a claw, With many an ardent wish, She stretched, in vain, to reach the prize,-- What female heart can gold despise? What cat's averse to fish? Presumptuous maid! with looks intent, Again she stretched, again she bent, Nor knew the gulf between,-- Malignant Fate sat by and smiled,-- The slippery verge her feet beguiled; She tumbled headlong in! Eight times emerging from the flood, She mewed to every watery god Some speedy aid to send: No Dolphin came, no Nereid stirred, Nor cruel Tom nor Susan heard,-- A favorite has no friend! From hence, ye Beauties! undeceived, Know one false step is ne'er retrieved, And be with caution bold: Not all that tempts your wandering eyes And heedless hearts is lawful prize, Nor all that glitters gold! THOMAS GRAY. _The Priest and the Mulberry Tree_ Did you hear of the curate who mounted his mare, And merrily trotted along to the fair? Of creature more tractable none ever heard; In the height of her speed she would stop at a word; But again with a word, when the curate said, "Hey," She put forth her mettle and gallop'd away. As near to the gates of the city he rode, While the sun of September all brilliantly glow'd, The good priest discover'd, with eyes of desire, A mulberry tree in a hedge of wild brier; On boughs long and lofty, in many a green shoot, Hung, large, black and glossy, the beautiful fruit. The curate was hungry and thirsty to boot; He shrunk from the thorns, though he long'd for the fruit; With a word he arrested his courser's keen speed, And he stood up erect on the back of his steed; On the saddle he stood while the creature stood still, And he gather'd the fruit till he took his good fill. "Sure never," he thought, "was a creature so rare, So docile, so true, as my excellent mare; Lo, here now I stand," and he gazed all around, "As safe and as steady as if on the ground; Yet how had it been, if some traveller this way, Had, dreaming no mischief, but chanced to cry, 'Hey'?" He stood with his head in the mulberry tree, And he spoke out aloud in his fond revery; At the sound of the word the good mare made a push, And down went the priest in the wild-brier bush. He remember'd too late, on his thorny green bed, Much that well may be thought cannot wisely be said. THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK. _The Council of Horses_ Upon a time a neighing steed, Who graz'd among a numerous breed, With mutiny had fired the train, And spread dissension through the plain On matters that concern'd the state. The council met in grand debate. A colt whose eyeballs flamed with ire, Elate with strength and youthful fire, In haste stept forth before the rest, And thus the listening throng address'd. "Goodness, how abject is our race, Condemn'd to slavery and disgrace! Shall we our servitude retain, Because our sires have borne the chain? Consider, friends! your strength and might; 'Tis conquest to assert your right. How cumbrous is the gilded coach! The pride of man is our reproach. Were we design'd for daily toil, To drag the ploughshare through the soil, To sweat in harness through the road, To groan beneath the carrier's load? How feeble are the two-legg'd kind! What force is in our nerves combin'd! Shall then our nobler jaws submit To foam and champ the galling bit? Shall haughty man my back bestride? Shall the sharp spur provoke my side? Forbid it, heavens! reject the rein; Your shame, your infamy, disdain. Let him the lion first control, And still the tiger's famish'd growl. Let us, like them, our freedom claim, And make him tremble at our name." A general nod approv'd the cause, And all the circle neigh'd applause. When lo! with grave and solemn pace, A steed advanc'd before the race, With age and long experience wise; Around he cast his thoughtful eyes, And, to the murmurs of the train, Thus spoke the Nestor of the plain. "When I had health and strength like you The toils of servitude I knew; Now grateful man rewards my pains, And gives me all these wide domains. At will I crop the year's increase; My latter life is rest and peace. I grant, to man we lend our pains, And aid him to correct the plains; But doth not he divide the care, Through all the labours of the year? How many thousand structures rise, To fence us from inclement skies! For us he bears the sultry day, And stores up all our winter's hay. He sows, he reaps the harvest's gain; We share the toil and share the grain. Since every creature was decreed To aid each other's mutual need, Appease your discontented mind, And act the part by heaven assign'd." The tumult ceas'd, the colt submitted, And, like his ancestors, was bitted. JOHN GAY. _The Diverting History of John Gilpin_ Showing How He Went Farther Than He Intended, and Came Safe Home Again. John Gilpin was a citizen Of credit and renown, A train-band Captain eke was he Of famous London town. John Gilpin's spouse said to her dear, "Though wedded we have been These twice ten tedious years, yet we No holiday have seen. To-morrow is our wedding day, And we will then repair Unto the Bell at Edmonton, All in a chaise and pair. My sister and my sister's child, Myself and children three, Will fill the chaise, so you must ride On horseback after we." He soon replied,--"I do admire Of womankind but one, And you are she, my dearest dear, Therefore it shall be done. I am a linen-draper bold, As all the world doth know, And my good friend the Calender Will lend his horse to go." Quoth Mrs. Gilpin,--"That's well said, And for that wine is dear, We will be furnish'd with our own, Which is both bright and clear." John Gilpin kiss'd his loving wife; O'erjoyed was he to find That though on pleasure she was bent, She had a frugal mind. The morning came, the chaise was brought, But yet was not allow'd To drive up to the door, lest all Should say that she was proud. So three doors off the chaise was stay'd, Where they did all get in; Six precious souls, and all agog To dash through thick and thin. Smack went the whip, round went the wheels, Were never folk so glad, The stones did rattle underneath As if Cheapside were mad. John Gilpin at his horse's side, Seized fast the flowing mane, And up he got, in haste to ride, But soon came down again; For saddle-tree scarce reach'd had he, His journey to begin, When, turning round his head, he saw Three customers come in. So down he came; for loss of time, Although it grieved him sore, Yet loss of pence, full well he knew, Would trouble him much more. 'T was long before the customers Were suited to their mind, When Betty screaming, came downstairs, "The wine is left behind!" "Good lack!" quoth he, "yet bring it me, My leathern belt likewise, In which I bear my trusty sword When I do exercise." Now mistress Gilpin, careful soul! Had two stone bottles found, To hold the liquor that she loved, And keep it safe and sound. Each bottle had a curling ear, Through which the belt he drew, And hung a bottle on each side, To make his balance true. Then over all, that he might be Equipp'd from top to toe, His long red cloak, well brush'd and neat, He manfully did throw. Now see him mounted once again Upon his nimble steed, Full slowly pacing o'er the stones With caution and good heed. But, finding soon a smoother road Beneath his well-shod feet, The snorting beast began to trot, Which gall'd him in his seat, So "Fair and softly," John he cried, But John he cried in vain; That trot became a gallop soon, In spite of curb and rein. So stooping down, as needs he must Who cannot sit upright, He grasp'd the mane with both his hands, And eke with all his might. His horse, who never in that sort Had handled been before, What thing upon his back had got Did wonder more and more. Away went Gilpin, neck or nought, Away went hat and wig! He little dreamt when he set out Of running such a rig! The wind did blow, the cloak did fly, Like streamer long and gay, Till, loop and button failing both, At last it flew away. Then might all people well discern The bottles he had slung; A bottle swinging at each side, As hath been said or sung. The dogs did bark, the children scream'd, Up flew the windows all, And ev'ry soul cried out, "Well done!" As loud as he could bawl. Away went Gilpin--who but he? His fame soon spread around-- "He carries weight!" "He rides a race!" "'T is for a thousand pound!" And still, as fast as he drew near, 'T was wonderful to view, How in a trice the turnpike-men Their gates wide open threw. And now, as he went bowing down His reeking head full low, The bottles twain behind his back Were shattered at a blow. Down ran the wine into the road, Most piteous to be seen, Which made his horse's flanks to smoke As they had basted been. But still he seem'd to carry weight, With leathern girdle braced, For all might see the bottle-necks Still dangling at his waist. Thus all through merry Islington These gambols he did play, Until he came unto the Wash Of Edmonton so gay. And there he threw the Wash about On both sides of the way, Just like unto a trundling mop, Or a wild-goose at play. At Edmonton his loving wife From the balcony spied Her tender husband, wond'ring much To see how he did ride. "Stop, stop, John Gilpin!--Here's the house!" They all at once did cry; "The dinner waits and we are tired:" Said Gilpin--"So am I!" But yet his horse was not a whit Inclined to tarry there; For why?--his owner had a house Full ten miles off, at Ware, So like an arrow swift he flew, Shot by an archer strong; So did he fly--which brings me to The middle of my song. Away went Gilpin, out of breath. And sore against his will, Till at his friend the Calender's His horse at last stood still. The Calender, amazed to see His neighbour in such trim, Laid down his pipe, flew to the gate, And thus accosted him:-- "What news? what news? your tidings tell, Tell me you must and shall-- Say why bare-headed you are come, Or why you come at all?" Now Gilpin had a pleasant wit, And loved a timely joke, And thus unto the Calender In merry guise he spoke:-- "I came because your horse would come; And if I well forebode, My hat and wig will soon be here, They are upon the road." The Calender, right glad to find His friend in merry pin, Returned him not a single word, But to the house went in; Whence straight he came with hat and wig, A wig that flow'd behind, A hat not much the worse for wear, Each comely in its kind. He held them up, and in his turn Thus show'd his ready wit:-- "My head is twice as big as yours, They therefore needs must fit. But let me scrape the dirt away That hangs upon your face; And stop and eat, for well you may Be in a hungry case." Said John--"It is my wedding-day, And all the world would stare, If wife should dine at Edmonton, And I should dine at Ware." So, turning to his horse, he said-- "I am in haste to dine; 'T was for your pleasure you came here, You shall go back for mine." Ah, luckless speech and bootless boast! For which he paid full dear; For, while he spake, a braying ass Did sing most loud and clear; Whereat his horse did snort, as he Had heard a lion roar, And gallop'd off with all his might, As he had done before. Away went Gilpin, and away Went Gilpin's hat and wig! He lost them sooner than at first, For why?--they were too big! Now Mistress Gilpin, when she saw Her husband posting down Into the country far away, She pull'd out half-a-crown; And thus unto the youth she said That drove them to the Bell-- "This shall be yours when you bring back My husband safe and well." The youth did ride, and soon did meet John coming back amain; Whom in a trice he tried to stop, By catching at his rein; But not performing what he meant, And gladly would have done, The frighted steed he frighted more, And made him faster run. Away went Gilpin, and away Went post-boy at his heels!-- The post-boy's horse right glad to miss The lumb'ring of the wheels. Six gentlemen upon the road, Thus seeing Gilpin fly. With post-boy scamp'ring in the rear, They raised the hue and cry:-- "Stop thief! stop thief--a highwayman!" Not one of them was mute; And all and each that pass'd that way Did join in the pursuit. And now the turnpike gates again Flew open in short space; The toll-men thinking, as before, That Gilpin rode a race. And so he did, and won it too, For he got first to town; Nor stopp'd till where he had got up He did again get down. Now let us sing, Long live the king, And Gilpin, long live he; And when he next doth ride abroad, May I be there to see! WILLIAM COWPER. _To a Child of Quality_ Five Years Old, 1704, the Author Then Forty. Lords, knights, and squires, the numerous band That wear the fair Miss Mary's fetters, Were summoned by her high command To show their passion by their letters. My pen amongst the rest I took, Lest those bright eyes, that cannot read, Should dart their kindling fires, and look The power they have to be obey'd. Nor quality, nor reputation, Forbid me yet my flame to tell; Dear Five-years-old befriends my passion, And I may write till she can spell. For, while she makes her silkworms beds With all the tender things I swear; Whilst all the house my passion reads, In papers round her baby's hair; She may receive and own my flame; For, though the strictest prudes should know it, She'll pass for a most virtuous dame, And I for an unhappy poet. Then too, alas! when she shall tear The rhymes some younger rival sends, She'll give me leave to write, I fear, And we shall still continue friends. For, as our different ages move, 'Tis so ordained (would Fate but mend it!), That I shall be past making love When she begins to comprehend it. Matthew Prior. _Charade_ (Campbell.) (Thomas Campbell, the Poet.) Come from my First, ay, come! For the battle hour is nigh: And the screaming trump and thundering drum Are calling thee to die! Fight, as thy father fought! Fall, as thy father fell! Thy task is taught, thy shroud is wrought;-- So--onward--and farewell. Toll ye my Second, toll! Fling wide the flambeau's light, And sing the hymn for a parted soul Beneath the silent night. With the wreath upon his head, And the cross upon his breast, Let the prayer be said, and the tear be shed;-- So--take him to his rest Call ye my Whole,--ay, call The lord of lute and lay! And let him greet the sable pall With a noble song to-day! Ay, call him by his name! Nor fitter hand may crave To light the flame of a soldier's fame On the turf of a soldier's grave. WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED. _A Riddle_ (A Book.) I'm a strange contradiction; I'm new, and I'm old, I'm often in tatters, and oft decked with gold. Though I never could read, yet lettered I'm found; Though blind, I enlighten; though loose, I am bound, I'm always in black, and I'm always in white; I'm grave and I'm gay, I am heavy and light-- In form too I differ,--I'm thick and I'm thin, I've no flesh and no bones, yet I'm covered with skin; I've more points than the compass, more stops than the flute; I sing without voice, without speaking confute. I'm English, I'm German, I'm French, and I'm Dutch; Some love me too fondly, some slight me too much; I often die soon, though I sometimes lives ages, And no monarch alive has so many pages. HANNAH MORE. _A Riddle_ (The Vowels.) We are little airy creatures, All of different voice and features; One of us in glass is set, One of us you'll find in jet. T'other you may see in tin, And the fourth a box within. If the fifth you should pursue, It can never fly from you. JONATHAN SWIFT. _A Riddle_ (The Letter H.) 'Twas whispered in Heaven, 'twas muttered in hell, And echo caught faintly the sound as it fell; On the confines of earth 'twas permitted to rest, And the depths of the ocean its presence confess'd; 'Twill be found in the sphere when 'tis riven asunder, Be seen in the lightning and heard in the thunder; 'Twas allotted to man with his earliest breath, Attends him at birth and awaits him in death, Presides o'er his happiness, honor and health, Is the prop of his house, and the end of his wealth. In the heaps of the miser 'tis hoarded with care, But is sure to be lost on his prodigal heir; It begins every hope, every wish it must bound, With the husbandman toils, and with monarchs is crowned; Without it the soldier and seaman may roam, But woe to the wretch who expels it from home! In the whispers of conscience its voice will be found, Nor e'er in the whirlwind of passion be drowned; 'Twill soften the heart; but though deaf be the ear, It will make it acutely and instantly hear. Set in shade, let it rest like a delicate flower; Ah! breathe on it softly, it dies in an hour. CATHERINE M. FANSHAWE. _Feigned Courage_ Horatio, of ideal courage vain, Was flourishing in air his father's cane, And, as the fumes of valour swell'd his pate, Now thought himself _this_ hero, and now _that_: "And now," he cried, "I will Achilles be; My sword I brandish; see, the Trojans flee! Now I'll be Hector, when his angry blade A lane through heaps of slaughter'd Grecians made! And now my deeds, still braver I'll evince, I am no less than Edward the Black Prince. Give way, ye coward French!" As thus he spoke, And aim'd in fancy a sufficient stroke To fix the fate of Crecy or Poiotiers (The Muse relates the Hero's fate with tears), He struck his milk-white hand against a nail, Sees his own blood, and feels his courage fail. Ah! where is now that boasted valour flown, That in the tented field so late was shown? Achilles weeps, great Hector hangs his head, And the Black Prince goes whimpering to bed. CHARLES AND MARY LAMB. _Baucis and Philemon_ In ancient times, as story tells, The saints would often leave their cells, And stroll about, but hide their quality, To try good people's hospitality. It happened on a winter night, As authors of the legend write, Two brother hermits, saints by trade, Taking their tour in masquerade, Disguised in tattered garments went To a small village down in Kent; Where, in the stroller's canting strain, They begged from door to door in vain, Tried every tone might pity win; But not a soul would take them in. Our wandering saints, in woeful state, Treated at this ungodly rate, Having through all the village passed, To a small cottage came at last Where dwelt a good old honest yeoman, Call'd in the neighborhood Philemon; Who kindly did these saints invite In his poor hut to pass the night; And then the hospitable sire Bid goody Baucis mend the fire; While he from out the chimney took A flitch of bacon off the hook, And freely from the fattest side Cut out large slices to be fried; Then stepped aside to fetch them drink, Filled a large jug up to the brink, And saw it fairly twice go round; Yet (what is wonderful!) they found 'Twas still replenished to the top, As if they ne'er had touched a drop. The good old couple were amazed, And often on each other gazed; For both were frightened to the heart, And just began to cry, "What art!" Then softly turned aside to view Whether the lights were burning blue. "Good folks, you need not be afraid, We are but saints," the hermits said; "No hurt shall come to you or yours: But for that pack of churlish boors, Not fit to live on Christian ground, They and their houses shall be drowned; Whilst you shall see your cottage rise, And grow a church before your eyes." They scarce had spoke, when fair and soft, The roof began to mount aloft, Aloft rose every beam and rafter, The heavy wall climbed slowly after; The chimney widened and grew higher, Became a steeple with a spire. The kettle to the top was hoist, And there stood fastened to a joist; Doomed ever in suspense to dwell, 'Tis now no kettle, but a bell. A wooden jack which had almost Lost by disuse the art to roast, A sudden alteration feels, Increased by new intestine wheels; The jack and chimney, near allied, Had never left each other's side: The chimney to a steeple grown, The jack would not be left alone; But up against the steeple reared, Became a clock, and still adhered. The groaning chair began to crawl, Like a huge snail along the wall; There stuck aloft in public view, And with small change a pulpit grew. The cottage, by such feats as these, Grown to a church by just degrees, The hermits then desired the host To ask for what he fancied most. Philemon, having paused awhile, Returned them thanks in homely style: "I'm old, and fain would live at ease; Make me the parson, if you please." Thus happy in their change of life Were several years this man and wife. When on a day which proved their last, Discoursing on old stories past, They went by chance, amidst their talk, To the churchyard to take a walk; When Baucis hastily cried out, "My dear, I see your forehead sprout!" "But yes! Methinks I feel it true; And really yours is budding too. Nay,--now I cannot stir my foot; It feels as if 'twere taking root!" Description would but tire my muse; In short they both were turned to yews. JONATHAN SWIFT. _The Lion and the Cub_ A lion cub, of sordid mind, Avoided all the lion kind; Fond of applause, he sought the feasts Of vulgar and ignoble beasts; With asses all his time he spent, Their club's perpetual president. He caught their manners, looks, and airs; An ass in everything but ears! If e'er his Highness meant a joke, They grinn'd applause before he spoke; But at each word what shouts of praise; "Goodness! how natural he brays!" Elate with flattery and conceit, He seeks his royal sire's retreat; Forward and fond to show his parts, His Highness brays; the lion starts. "Puppy! that curs'd vociferation: Betrays thy life and conversation: Coxcombs, an ever-noisy race, Are trumpets of their own disgrace." "Why so severe?" the cub replies; "Our senate always held me wise!" "How weak is pride," returns the sire: "All fools are vain when fools admire! But know, what stupid asses prize, Lions and noble beasts despise." JOHN GAY. _Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog_ Good people all, of every sort, Give ear unto my song; And if you find it wondrous short-- It cannot hold you long. In Islington there was a Man, Of whom the world might say, That still a godly race he ran-- Whene'er he went to pray. A kind and gentle heart he had, To comfort friends and foes: The naked every day he clad,-- When he put on his clothes. And in that town a Dog was found, As many dogs there be, Both mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound, And curs of low degree. This Dog and Man at first were friends; But when a pique began, The Dog, to gain some private ends, Went mad, and bit the Man. Around from all the neighbouring streets The wondering neighbours ran, And swore the Dog had lost his wits, To bite so good a Man! The wound it seem'd both sore and sad To every Christian eye: And while they swore the Dog was mad, They swore the Man would die. But soon a wonder came to light, That show'd the rogues they lied:-- The Man recovered of the bite, The Dog it was that died! OLIVER GOLDSMITH. _The Walrus and the Carpenter_ The sun was shining on the sea, Shining with all his might: He did his very best to make The billows smooth and bright-- And this was odd, because it was The middle of the night. The moon was shining sulkily, Because she thought the sun Had got no business to be there After the day was done-- "It's very rude of him," she said, "To come and spoil the fun!" The sea was wet as wet could be, The sands were dry as dry. You could not see a cloud, because No cloud was in the sky: No birds were flying overhead-- There were no birds to fly. The Walrus and the Carpenter Were walking close at hand: They wept like anything to see Such quantities of sand: "If this were only cleared away, They said, "it _would_ be grand!" "If seven maids with seven mops Swept it for half a year, Do you suppose," the Walrus said, "That they could get it clear?" "I doubt it," said the Carpenter, And shed a bitter tear. "O Oysters, come and walk with us!" The Walrus did beseech. "A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk, Along the briny beach: We cannot do with more than four, To give a hand to each." The eldest Oyster looked at him, But never a word he said: The eldest Oyster winked his eye, And shook his heavy head-- Meaning to say he did not choose To leave the oyster-bed. But four young Oysters hurried up, All eager for the treat: Their coats were brushed, their faces washed, Their shoes were clean and neat-- And this was odd, because, you know, They hadn't any feet. Four other Oysters followed them, And yet another four; And thick and fast they came at last, And more, and more, and more-- All hopping through the frothy waves, And scrambling to the shore. The Walrus and the Carpenter Walked on a mile or so, And then they rested on a rock Conveniently low: And all the little Oysters stood And waited in a row. "The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax-- Of cabbages--and kings-- And why the sea is boiling hot-- And whether pigs have wings." "But wait a bit," the Oysters cried, "Before we have our chat; For some of us are out of breath, And all of us are fat!" "No hurry!" said the Carpenter. They thanked him much for that. "A loaf of bread," the Walrus said, "Is what we chiefly need: Pepper and vinegar besides Are very good indeed-- Now, if you're ready, Oysters dear, We can begin to feed." "But not on us!" the Oysters cried, Turning a little blue. "After such kindness, that would be A dismal thing to do!" "The night is fine," the Walrus said. "Do you admire the view? "It was so kind of you to come! And you are very nice!" The Carpenter said nothing but "Cut us another slice. I wish you were not quite so deaf-- I've had to ask you twice!" "It seems a shame," the Walrus said, "To play them such a trick. After we've brought them out so far, And made them trot so quick!" The Carpenter said nothing but "The butter's spread too thick!" "I weep for you," the Walrus said: "I deeply sympathize." With sobs and tears he sorted out Those of the largest size, Holding his pocket-handkerchief Before his streaming eyes. "O Oysters," said the Carpenter, "You've had a pleasant run! Shall we be trotting home again?" But answer came there none-- And this was scarcely odd, because They'd eaten every one. LEWIS CARROLL. _Song of the Turtle and Flamingo_ A lively young turtle lived down by the banks Of a dark rolling stream called the Jingo, And one summer day, as he went out to play, Fell in love with a charming flamingo-- An enormously genteel flamingo! An expansively crimson flamingo! A beautiful, bouncing flamingo! Spake the turtle in tones like a delicate wheeze: "To the water I've oft seen you in go, And your form has impressed itself deep on my shell, You perfectly modeled flamingo! You tremendously 'A1' flamingo! You inex-pres-_si_-ble flamingo! To be sure I'm a turtle, and you are a belle, And _my_ language is not your fine lingo; But smile on me, tall one, and be my bright flame, You miraculous, wondrous flamingo! You blazingly beauteous flamingo! You turtle-absorbing flamingo! You inflammably gorgeous flamingo!" Then the proud bird blushed redder than ever before, And that was quite un-nec-ces-sa-ry, And she stood on one leg and looked out of one eye, The position of things for to vary,-- This aquatical, musing flamingo! This dreamy, uncertain flamingo! This embarrassing, harassing flamingo! Then she cried to the quadruped, greatly amazed: "Why your passion toward _me_ do you hurtle? I'm an ornithological wonder of grace, And you're an illogical turtle,-- A waddling, impossible turtle! A low-minded, grass-eating turtle! A highly improbable turtle!" Then the turtle sneaked off with his nose to the ground, And never more looked at the lasses; And falling asleep, while indulging his grief, Was gobbled up whole by Agassiz,-- The peripatetic Agassiz! The turtle-dissecting Agassiz! The illustrious, industrious Agassiz! Go with me to Cambridge some cool, pleasant day, And the skeleton lover I'll show you: He's in a hard case, but he'll look in your face, Pretending (the rogue!) he don't know you! Oh, the deeply deceptive young turtle! The double-faced, glassy-cased turtle! The _green_, but a very _mock_-turtle! JAMES T. FIELDS. _Captain Reece_ Of all the ships upon the blue, No ship contained a better crew Than that of worthy Captain Reece, Commanding of _The Mantelpiece_. He was adored by all his men, For worthy Captain Reece, R. N., Did all that lay within him to Promote the comfort of his crew. If ever they were dull or sad, Their captain danced to them like mad, Or told, to make the time pass by, Droll legends of his infancy. A feather-bed had every man, Warm slippers and hot-water can, Brown Windsor from the captain's store, A valet, too, to every four. Did they with thirst in summer burn, Lo, seltzogenes at every turn, And on all very sultry days Cream ices handed round on trays. Then currant wine and ginger-pops Stood handily on all the "tops;" And also, with amusement rife, A "Zoetrope, or Wheel of Life." New volumes came across the sea From Mister Mudie's libraree; The _Times_ and _Saturday Review_ Beguiled the leisure of the crew. Kind-hearted Captain Reece, R. N., Was quite devoted to his men; In point of fact, good Captain Reece Beatified _The Mantelpiece_. One summer eve, at half-past ten, He said (addressing all his men): "Come, tell me, please, what I can do To please and gratify my crew. "By any reasonable plan I'll make you happy if I can; My own convenience count as _nil_: It is my duty, and I will." Then up and answered William Lee (The kindly captain's coxswain he, A nervous, shy, low-spoken man), He cleared his throat and thus began: "You have a daughter, Captain Reece, Ten female cousins and a niece, A ma, if what I'm told is true, Six sisters, and an aunt or two. "Now, somehow, sir, it seems to me, More friendly like we all should be, If you united of 'em to Unmarried members of the crew. "If you'd ameliorate our life, Let each select from them a wife; And as for nervous me, old pal, Give me your own enchanting gal!" Good Captain Reece, that worthy man, Debated on his coxswain's plan: "I quite agree," he said, "O Bill; It is my duty, and I will. "My daughter, that enchanting gurl, Has just been promised to an Earl, And all my other familee To peers of various degree. "But what are dukes and viscounts to The happiness of all my crew? The word I gave you I'll fulfil; It is my duty, and I will. "As you desire it shall befall, I'll settle thousands on you all, And I shall be, despite my hoard, The only bachelor on board." The boatswain of _The Mantelpiece_, He blushed and spoke to Captain Reece: "I beg your honour's leave," he said; "If you would wish to go and wed, "I have a widowed mother who Would be the very thing for you-- She long has loved you from afar; She washes for you, Captain R." The Captain saw the dame that day-- Addressed her in his playful way-- "And did it want a wedding ring? It was a tempting ickle sing! "Well, well, the chaplain I will seek, We'll all be married this day week At yonder church upon the hill; It is my duty, and I will!" The sisters, cousins, aunts, and niece, And widowed ma of Captain Reece, Attended there as they were bid; It was their duty, and they did. WILLIAM SCHWENCK GILBERT. _The Cataract of Lodore_ "How does the Water Come down at Lodore?" My little boy ask'd me Thus, once on a time; And moreover he task'd me To tell him in rhyme. Anon at the word, There first came one daughter, And then came another, To second and third The request of their brother, And to hear how the Water Comes down at Lodore, With its rush and its roar, As many a time They had seen it before. So I told them in rhyme, For of rhymes I had store; And 'twas in my vocation For their recreation That so I should sing; Because I was Laureate To them and the King. From its sources which well In the Tarn on the fell; From its fountains In the mountains, Its rills and its gills; Through moss and through brake, It runs and it creeps For awhile, till it sleeps In its own little Lake. And thence at departing, Awakening and starting, It runs through the reeds, And away it proceeds, Through meadow and glade, In sun and in shade, And through the wood-shelter, Among crags in its flurry, Helter-skelter, Hurry-scurry. Here it comes sparkling, And there it lies darkling; Now smoking and frothing Its tumult and wrath in, Till in this rapid race On which it is bent, It reaches the place Of its steep descent. The Cataract strong Then plunges along, Striking and raging As if a war waging Its caverns and rocks among; Rising and leaping, Sinking and creeping, Swelling and sweeping, Showering and springing, Flying and flinging, Writhing and ringing, Eddying and whisking, Spouting and frisking, Turning and twisting, Around and around With endless rebound: Smiting and fighting, A sight to delight in; Confounding, astounding, Dizzying and deafening the ear with its sound. Collecting, projecting, Receding and speeding, And shocking and rocking, And darting and parting, And threading and spreading, And whizzing and hissing, And dripping and skipping, And hitting and splitting, And shining and twining, And rattling and battling, And shaking and quaking, And pouring and roaring, And waving and raving, And tossing and crossing, And flowing and going, And running and stunning, And foaming and roaming, And dinning and spinning, And dropping and hopping, And working and jerking, And guggling and struggling, And heaving and cleaving, And moaning and groaning; And glittering and frittering, And gathering and feathering, And whitening and brightening, And quivering and shivering, And hurrying and skurrying, And thundering and floundering; Dividing and gliding and sliding, And falling and brawling and sprawling, And driving and riving and striving, And sprinkling and twinkling and wrinkling, And sounding and bounding and rounding, And bubbling and troubling and doubling, And grumbling and rumbling and tumbling, And clattering and battering and shattering; Retreating and beating and meeting and sheeting, Delaying and straying and playing and spraying, Advancing and prancing and glancing and dancing, Recoiling, turmoiling and toiling and boiling, And gleaming and streaming and steaming and beaming, And rushing and flushing and brushing and gushing, And flapping and rapping and clapping and slapping, And curling and whirling and purling and twirling, And thumping and plumping and bumping and jumping, And dashing and flashing and splashing and clashing; And so never ending, but always descending, Sounds and motions forever and ever are blending, All at once and all o'er, with a mighty uproar, And this way the Water comes down at Lodore. ROBERT SOUTHEY. _The Enchanted Shirt_ The king was sick. His cheek was red, And his eye was clear and bright; He ate and drank with kingly zest, And peacefully snored at night. But he said he was sick, and a king should know, And the doctors came by the score. They did not cure him. He cut off their heads, And sent to the schools for more. At last two famous doctors came, And one was as poor as a rat,-- He had passed his life in studious toil, And never found time to grow fat. The other had never looked in a book; His patients gave him no trouble: If they recovered, they paid him well; If they died, their heirs paid double. Together they looked at the royal tongue, As the king on his couch reclined; In succession they thumped his august chest, But no trace of disease could find. The old Sage said, "You're as sound as a nut." "Hang him up," roared the king in a gale-- In a ten-knot gale of royal rage; The other leech grew a shade pale; But he pensively rubbed his sagacious nose, And thus his prescription ran-- _The king will be well, if he sleeps one night In the shirt of a Happy Man._ * * * * Wide o'er the realm the couriers rode, And fast their horses ran, And many they saw, and to many they spoke, But they found no Happy Man. They found poor men who would fain be rich, And rich who thought they were poor; And men who twisted their waists in stays, And women who short hose wore. At last they came to a village gate, A beggar lay whistling there; He whistled, and sang, and laughed, and rolled On the grass, in the soft June air. The weary couriers paused and looked At the scamp so blithe and gay; And one of them said, "Heaven save you, friend! You seem to be happy to-day." "O yes, fair Sirs," the rascal laughed, And his voice rang free and glad; "An idle man has so much to do That he never has time to be sad." "This is our man," the courier said; "Our luck has led us aright. I will give you a hundred ducats, friend, For the loan of your shirt to-night." The merry blackguard lay back on the grass, And laughed till his face was black; "I would do it, God wot," and he roared with the fun, "But I haven't a shirt to my back." * * * * Each day to the king the reports came in Of his unsuccessful spies, And the sad panorama of human woes Passed daily under his eyes. And he grew ashamed of his useless life, And his maladies hatched in gloom; He opened his windows and let the air Of the free heaven into his room. And out he went in the world, and toiled In his own appointed way; And the people blessed him, the land was glad, And the king was well and gay. JOHN HAY. _Made in the Hot Weather_ Fountains that frisk and sprinkle The moss they overspill; Pools that the breezes crinkle; The wheel beside the mill, With its wet, weedy frill; Wind-shadows in the wheat; A water-cart in the street; The fringe of foam that girds An islet's ferneries; A green sky's minor thirds-- To live, I think of these! Of ice and glass the tinkle, Pellucid, silver-shrill, Peaches without a wrinkle; Cherries and snow at will From china bowls that fill The senses with a sweet Incuriousness of heat; A melon's dripping sherds; Cream-clotted strawberries; Dusk dairies set with curds-- To live, I think of these! Vale-lily and periwinkle; Wet stone-crop on the sill; The look of leaves a-twinkle With windlets clear and still; The feel of a forest rill That wimples fresh and fleet About one's naked feet; The muzzles of drinking herds; Lush flags and bulrushes; The chirp of rain-bound birds-- To live, I think of these! ENVOY Dark aisles, new packs of cards, Mermaidens' tails, cool swards, Dawn dews and starlit seas, White marbles, whiter words-- To live, I think of these! WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY. _The Housekeeper_ The frugal snail, with forecast of repose, Carries his house with him where'er he goes; Peeps out,--and if there comes a shower of rain, Retreats to his small domicile again. Touch but a tip of him, a horn--'tis well,-- He curls up in his sanctuary shell. He's his own landlord, his own tenant; stay Long as he will, he dreads no Quarter Day. Himself he boards and lodges; both invites And feasts himself; sleeps with himself o' nights. He spares the upholsterer trouble to procure Chattels; himself is his own furniture, And his sole riches. Wheresoe'er he roam,-- Knock when you will,--he's sure to be at home. CHARLES LAMB. _The Monkey_ Monkey, little merry fellow, Thou art Nature's Punchinello; Full of fun as Puck could be-- Harlequin might learn of thee! * * * * In the very ark, no doubt, You went frolicking about; Never keeping in your mind Drowned monkeys left behind! Have you no traditions--none, Of the court of Solomon? No memorial how you went With Prince Hiram's armament? Look now at him! slyly peep; He pretends he is asleep! Fast asleep upon his bed, With his arm beneath his head. Now that posture is not right, And he is not settled quite; There! that's better than before-- And the knave pretends to snore! Ha! he is not half asleep: See, he slyly takes a peep. Monkey, though your eyes were shut, You could see this little nut. You shall have it, pigmy brother! What, another! and another! Nay, your cheeks are like a sack-- Sit down, and begin to crack. There the little ancient man Cracks as fast as crack he can! Now good-bye, you merry fellow, Nature's primest Punchinello. MARY HOWITT. _November_ No sun--no moon! No morn--no noon-- No dawn--no dusk--no proper time of day-- No sky--no earthly view-- No distance looking blue-- No road--no street--no "t'other side the way"-- No end to any Row-- No indications where the crescents go-- No top to any steeple-- No recognitions of familiar people-- No courtesies for showing 'em-- No knowing 'em! No traveling at all--no locomotion-- No inkling of the way--no notion-- "No go"--by land or ocean-- No mail--no post-- No news from any foreign coast-- No park--no ring--no afternoon gentility-- No company--no nobility-- No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease, No comfortable feel in any member-- No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees, No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds-- November! THOMAS HOOD. _Captain Sword_ Captain Sword got up one day, Over the hills to march away, Over the hills and through the towns, They heard him coming across the downs, Stepping in music and thunder sweet, Which his drums sent before him into the street, And lo! 'twas a beautiful sight in the sun; For first came his foot, all marching like one, With tranquil faces, and bristling steel, And the flag full of honour as though it could feel, And the officers gentle, the sword that hold 'Gainst the shoulder, heavy with trembling gold, And the massy tread, that in passing is heard, Though the drums and the music say never a word. And then came his horse, a clustering sound, Of shapely potency forward bound. Glossy black steeds, and riders tall Rank after rank, each looking like all; 'Midst moving repose and a threatening calm, With mortal sharpness at each right arm, And hues that painters and ladies love, And ever the small flag blushed above. And ever and anon the kettledrums beat, Hasty power 'midst order meet; And ever and anon the drums and fifes Came like motion's voice, and life's; Or into the golden grandeurs fell Of deeper instruments mingling well, Burdens of beauty for winds to bear; And the cymbals kissed in the shining air, And the trumpets their visible voices rear'd, Each looking forth with its tapestried beard, Bidding the heavens and earth make way For Captain Sword and his battle array. He, nevertheless, rode, indifferent-eyed, As if pomp were a toy to his manly pride, Whilst the ladies loved him the more for his scorn, And thought him the noblest man ever was born, And tears came into the bravest eyes, And hearts swell'd after him double their size, And all that was weak, and all that was strong, Seem'd to think wrong's self in him could not be wrong, Such love, though with bosom about to be gored, Did sympathy get for brave Captain Sword. So half that night, as he stopped in the town, 'Twas all one dance going merrily down, With lights in windows and love in eyes And a constant feeling of sweet surprise; But all the next morning 'twas tears and sighs, For the sound of his drums grew less and less, Walking like carelessness off from distress; And Captain Sword went whistling gay, "Over the hills and far away." LEIGH HUNT. INTERLEAVES _Story Poems: Romance and Reality_ When the King in Lowell's poem asked his three daughters what fairings he should bring them on his home-coming, the two elder ones demanded jewels and rings, silks that would stand alone, and golden combs for the hair. But the youngest Princess, she that was whiter than thistledown--somehow it is always the youngest princess who is beloved of the poets and romancers--asked as her fairing the Singing Leaves. The King could not buy them in Vanity Fair, but in the deep heart of the greenwood he found Walter, the little foot-page, who drew a thin packet from his bosom and said, _"Now give you this to the Princess Anne, The Singing Leaves are therein."_ She took them when the King met her at the castle gate, the lovely little Princess with the golden crown shining dim in the blithesome gold of her hair; took them with a smile that _"Lighted her tears as the summer sun Transfigures the summer rain."_ The poems we give you here, young princes and princesses of the twentieth century, are all Singing Leaves of one sort or another. There are leaves that sing tragedies, like those in "Earl Haldan's Daughter," "The High Tide," or "The Sands o' Dee"; there are leaves that sing fantasies, like "The Forsaken Merman," "The Pied Piper," or the enchanting "Lady of Shalott," weaving her magic web of colors gay. There are Singing Leaves that grew on the Tree of Reality; leaves that tell stories like Bret Harte's "Greyport Legend" or Browning's "Hervé Riel"; while in "Seven Times Two," the "Swan's Nest," "Lord Ullin," "Young Lochinvar," and "Jock o' Hazledean" you have pure romances, sweet and youthful, gay and daring. XIII STORY POEMS: ROMANCE AND REALITY _The Singing Leaves_ I "What fairings will ye that I bring?" Said the King to his daughters three; "For I to Vanity Fair am boun', Now say what shall they be?" Then up and spake the eldest daughter, That lady tall and grand: "Oh, bring me pearls and diamonds great, And gold rings for my hand." Thereafter spake the second daughter, That was both white and red: "For me bring silks that will stand alone, And a gold comb for my head." Then came the turn of the least daughter, That was whiter than thistle-down, And among the gold of her blithesome hair Dim shone the golden crown. "There came a bird this morning, And sang 'neath my bower eaves, Till I dreamed, as his music made me, 'Ask thou for the Singing Leaves.'" Then the brow of the King swelled crimson With a flush of angry scorn: "Well have ye spoken, my two eldest, And chosen as ye were born; "But she, like a thing of peasant race, That is happy binding the sheaves;" Then he saw her dead mother in her face, And said, "Thou shalt have thy leaves." II He mounted and rode three days and nights Till he came to Vanity Fair, And 't was easy to buy the gems and the silk, But no Singing Leaves were there. Then deep in the greenwood rode he, And asked of every tree, "Oh, if you have ever a Singing Leaf, I pray you give it me!" But the trees all kept their counsel, And never a word said they, Only there sighed from the pine-tops A music of seas far away. Only the pattering aspen Made a sound of growing rain, That fell ever faster and faster, Then faltered to silence again. "Oh, where shall I find a little foot-page That would win both hose and shoon, And will bring to me the Singing Leaves If they grow under the moon?" Then lightly turned him Walter the page, By the stirrup as he ran: "Now pledge you me the truesome word Of a king and gentleman, "That you will give me the first, first thing You meet at your castle-gate, And the Princess shall get the Singing Leaves, Or mine be a traitor's fate." The King's head dropt upon his breast A moment, as it might be; 'T will be my dog, he thought, and said, "My faith I plight to thee." Then Walter took from next his heart A packet small and thin, "Now give you this to the Princess Anne, The Singing Leaves are therein." III As the King rode in at his castle-gate, A maiden to meet him ran, And "Welcome, father!" she laughed and cried Together, the Princess Anne. "Lo, here the Singing Leaves," quoth he, "And woe, but they cost me dear!" She took the packet, and the smile Deepened down beneath the tear. It deepened down till it reached her heart, And then gushed up again, And lighted her tears as the sudden sun Transfigures the summer rain. And the first Leaf, when it was opened, Sang: "I am Walter the page, And the songs I sing 'neath thy window Are my only heritage." And the second Leaf sang: "But in the land That is neither on earth nor sea, My lute and I are lords of more Than thrice this kingdom's fee." And the third Leaf sang, "Be mine! Be mine!" And ever it sang, "Be mine!" Then sweeter it sang and ever sweeter, And said, "I am thine, thine, thine!" At the first Leaf she grew pale enough, At the second she turned aside, At the third, 't was as if a lily flushed With a rose's red heart's tide. "Good counsel gave the bird," said she, "I have my hope thrice o'er, For they sing to my very heart," she said, "And it sings to them evermore." She brought to him her beauty and truth, But and broad earldoms three, And he made her queen of the broader lands He held of his lute in fee. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. _Seven Times Two_ You bells in the steeple, ring, ring out your changes, How many soever they be, And let the brown meadow-lark's note as he ranges Come over, come over to me! Yet birds' clearest carol by fall or by swelling No magical sense conveys; And bells have forgotten their old art of telling The fortune of future days. "Turn again, turn again!" once they rang cheerily, While a boy listened alone; Made his heart yearn again, musing so wearily All by himself on a stone. Poor bells! I forgive you; your good days are over, And mine, they are yet to be; No listening, no longing, shall aught, aught discover; You leave the story to me. The foxglove shoots out of the green matted heather, And hangeth her hoods of snow; She was idle, and slept till the sunshiny weather: Oh, children take long to grow! I wish and I wish that the spring would go faster, Nor long summer bide so late; And I could grow on like the foxglove and aster, For some things are ill to wait. I wait for the day when dear hearts shall discover, While dear hands are laid on my head, "The child is a woman--the book may close over, For all the lessons are said." I wait for my story: the birds cannot sing it, Not one, as he sits on the tree; The bells cannot ring it, but long years, oh bring it! Such as I wish it to be. JEAN INGELOW. _The Long White Seam_ As I came round the harbor buoy, The lights began to gleam, No wave the land-locked harbor stirred, The crags were white as cream; And I marked my love by candlelight Sewing her long white seam. It's aye sewing ashore, my dear, Watch and steer at sea, It's reef and furl, and haul the line, Set sail and think of thee. I climbed to reach her cottage door; Oh sweetly my love sings! Like a shaft of light her voice breaks forth, My soul to meet it springs, As the shining water leaped of old When stirred by angel wings. Aye longing to list anew, Awake and in my dream, But never a song she sang like this, Sewing her long white seam. Fair fall the lights, the harbor lights, That brought me in to thee, And peace drop down on that low roof, For the sight that I did see, And the voice, my dear, that rang so clear, All for the love of me. For O, for O, with brows bent low, By the flickering candle's gleam, Her wedding gown it was she wrought, Sewing the long white seam. JEAN INGELOW. _Hannah Binding Shoes_ Poor lone Hannah, Sitting at the window, binding shoes! Faded, wrinkled, Sitting, stitching, in a mournful muse. Bright-eyed beauty once was she, When the bloom was on the tree;-- Spring and winter, Hannah's at the window, binding shoes. Not a neighbor Passing, nod or answer will refuse To her whisper, "Is there from the fishers any news?" Oh, her heart's adrift with one On an endless voyage gone;-- Night and morning, Hannah's at the window, binding shoes. Fair young Hannah, Ben, the sunburnt fisher, gaily wooes; Hale and clever, For a willing heart and hand he sues. May-day skies are all aglow, And the waves are laughing so! For her wedding Hannah leaves her window and her shoes. May is passing; 'Mid the apple-boughs a pigeon cooes; Hannah shudders, For the mild south-wester mischief brews. Round the rocks of Marblehead, Outward bound a schooner sped; Silent, lonesome, Hannah's at the window, binding shoes. 'Tis November: Now no tear her wasted cheek bedews, From Newfoundland Not a sail returning will she lose, Whispering hoarsely: "Fishermen, Have you, have you heard of Ben?" Old with watching, Hannah's at the window, binding shoes. Twenty winters Bleak and drear the ragged shore she views, Twenty seasons! Never one has brought her any news, Still her dim eyes silently Chase the white sails o'er the sea;-- Hopeless, faithful, Hannah's at the window, binding shoes. LUCY LARCOM. _Lord Ullin's Daughter_ A Chieftain to the Highlands bound Cries "Boatman, do not tarry! And I'll give thee a silver pound To row us o'er the ferry!" "Now who be ye, would cross Lochgyle This dark and stormy water?" "O I'm the chief of Ulva's isle, And this, Lord Ullin's daughter. "And fast before her father's men Three days we've fled together, For should he find us in the glen, My blood would stain the heather. "His horsemen hard behind us ride-- Should they our steps discover, Then who will cheer my bonny bride When they have slain her lover!" Out spoke the hardy Highland wight "I'll go, my chief, I'm ready; It is not for your silver bright, But for your winsome lady:-- "And by my word! the bonny bird In danger shall not tarry; So though the waves are raging white I'll row you o'er the ferry." By this the storm grew loud apace, The water-wraith was shrieking; And in the scowl of heaven each face Grew dark as they were speaking. But still as wilder blew the wind And as the night grew drearer, Adown the glen rode arméd men, Their trampling sounded nearer. "O haste thee, haste!" the lady cries, "Though tempests round us gather; I'll meet the raging of the skies, But not an angry father." The boat has left a stormy land, A stormy sea before her,-- When, O! too strong for human hand The tempest gather'd o'er her. And still they row'd amidst the roar Of waters fast prevailing: Lord Ullin reach'd that fatal shore,-- His wrath was changed to wailing. For, sore dismay'd, through storm and shade His child he did discover:-- One lovely hand she stretch'd for aid, And one was round her lover. "Come back! come back!" he cried in grief "Across this stormy water: And I'll forgive your Highland chief, My daughter!--O my daughter!" 'Twas vain: the loud waves lash'd the shore, Return or aid preventing: The waters wild went o'er his child, And he was left lamenting. THOMAS CAMPBELL. _The King of Denmark's Ride_ Word was brought to the Danish king, (Hurry!) That the love of his heart lay suffering, And pined for the comfort his voice would bring (Oh! ride as if you were flying!) Better he loves each golden curl On the brow of that Scandinavian girl Than his rich crown-jewels of ruby and pearl; And his Rose of the Isles is dying! Thirty nobles saddled with speed; (Hurry!) Each one mounted a gallant steed Which he kept for battle and days of need; (Oh! ride as though you were flying!) Spurs were stuck in the foaming flank, Worn-out chargers staggered and sank; Bridles were slackened and girths were burst; But, ride as they would, the king rode first, For his Rose of the Isles lay dying. His nobles are beaten, one by one; (Hurry!) They have fainted, and faltered, and homeward gone; His little fair page now follows alone, For strength and for courage trying. The king looked back at that faithful child, Wan was the face that answering smiled. They passed the drawbridge with clattering din, Then he dropped, and only the king rode in Where his Rose of the Isles lay dying. The king blew a blast on his bugle-horn, (Silence!) No answer came, but faint and forlorn An echo returned on the cold gray morn, Like the breath of a spirit sighing; The castle portal stood grimly wide; None welcomed the king from that weary ride! For, dead in the light of the dawning day, The pale sweet form of the welcomer lay, Who had yearned for his voice while dying. The panting steed with a drooping crest Stood weary; The king returned from the chamber of rest, The thick sobs choking in his breast, And that dumb companion eying, The tears gushed forth, which he strove to check; He bowed his head on his charger's neck,-- "O steed that every nerve didst strain, Dear steed! our ride hath been in vain To the halls where my love lay dying." CAROLINE ELIZABETH NORTON. _The Shepherd to His Love_ Come live with me, and be my Love, And we will all the pleasures prove, That hills and valleys, dale and field, And all the craggy mountains yield. There will we sit upon the rocks, And see the shepherds feed their flocks By shallow rivers, to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals. There will I make thee beds of roses, And a thousand fragrant posies, A cap of flowers, and a kirtle, Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle; A gown made of the finest wool, Which from our pretty lambs we pull; Fair-linèd slippers for the cold, With buckles of the purest gold; A belt of straw and ivy-buds, With coral clasps and amber studs: And if these pleasures may thee move, Come live with me, and be my Love. Thy silver dishes for thy meat, As precious as the gods do eat, Shall, on an ivory table, be Prepared each day for thee and me. The shepherd swains shall dance and sing For thy delight each May-morning: If these delights thy mind may move, Then live with me, and be my Love. CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE. _Ballad_ A.D. 1400 It was Earl Haldan's daughter, She looked across the sea; She looked across the water, And long and loud laughed she: "The locks of six princesses Must be my marriage fee: So, hey, bonny boat, and ho, bonny boat, Who comes a-wooing me!" It was Earl Haldan's daughter, She walked along the sand, When she was aware of a knight so fair, Came sailing to the land. His sails were all of velvet, His mast of beaten gold, And "Hey, bonny boat, and ho, bonny boat. Who saileth here so bold?" "The locks of five princesses I won beyond the sea; I shore their golden tresses To fringe a cloak for thee. One handful yet is wanting, But one of all the tale; So, hey, bonny boat, and ho, bonny boat, Furl up thy velvet sail!" He leapt into the water, That rover young and bold; He gript Earl Haldan's daughter, He shore her locks of gold: "Go weep, go weep, proud maiden, The tale is full to-day. Now, hey, bonny boat, and ho, bonny boat, Sail Westward ho, and away!" CHARLES KINGSLEY. _Romance of the Swan's Nest_ Little Ellie sits alone 'Mid the beeches of a meadow, By a stream-side on the grass; And the trees are showering down Doubles of their leaves in shadow On her shining hair and face. She has thrown her bonnet by; And her feet she has been dipping In the shallow water's flow-- Now she holds them nakedly In her hands, all sleek and dripping While she rocketh to and fro. Little Ellie sits alone, And the smile she softly uses, Fills the silence like a speech; While she thinks what shall be done,-- And the sweetest pleasure chooses, For her future within reach. Little Ellie in her smile Chooseth ... "I will have a lover, Riding on a steed of steeds! He shall love me without guile; And to _him_ I will discover That swan's nest among the reeds. "And the steed shall be red-roan And the lover shall be noble. With an eye that takes the breath, And the lute he plays upon, Shall strike ladies into trouble, As his sword strikes men to death. "And the steed it shall be shod All in silver, housed in azure, And the mane shall swim the wind: And the hoofs along the sod Shall flash onward and keep measure, Till the shepherds look behind. "But my lover will not prize All the glory that he rides in, When he gazes in my face. He will say, 'O Love, thine eyes Build the shrine my soul abides in; And I kneel here for thy grace.' "Then, ay, then--he shall kneel low With the red-roan steed anear him Which shall seem to understand-- Till I answer, 'Rise and go! For the world must love and fear him Whom I gift with heart and hand.' "Then he will arise so pale, I shall feel my own lips tremble With a _yes_ I must not say-- Nathless maiden-brave, 'Farewell,' I will utter and dissemble-- 'Light to-morrow with to-day.' "Then he'll ride among the hills To the wide world past the river, There to put away all wrong: To make straight distorted wills, And to empty the broad quiver Which the wicked bear along. "Three times shall a young foot-page Swim the stream and climb the mountain And kneel down beside my feet-- 'Lo! my master sends this gage, Lady, for thy pity's counting! What wilt thou exchange for it?' "And the first time, I will send A white rosebud for a guerdon,-- And the second time a glove: But the third time--I may bend From my pride, and answer--'Pardon-- If he comes to take my love.' "Then the young foot-page will run-- Then my lover will ride faster, Till he kneeleth at my knee: 'I am a duke's eldest son! Thousand serfs do call me master,-- But, O Love, I love but _thee_!' "He will kiss me on the mouth Then; and lead me as a lover, Through the crowds that praise his deeds: And, when soul-tied by one troth, Unto him I will discover That swan's nest among the reeds." Little Ellie, with her smile Not yet ended, rose up gayly, Tied the bonnet, donned the shoe-- And went homeward, round a mile, Just to see, as she did daily, What more eggs were with the _two_. Pushing through the elm-tree copse Winding by the stream, light-hearted, Where the osier pathway leads-- Past the boughs she stoops--and stops! Lo! the wild swan had deserted-- And a rat had gnawed the reeds. Ellie went home sad and slow: If she found the lover ever, With his red-roan steed of steeds, Sooth I know not! but I know She could never show him--never, That swan's nest among the reeds! ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. _Lochinvar_ Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the west; Through all the wide Border his steed was the best; And save his good broad-sword he weapons had none; He rode all unarmed, and he rode all alone. So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war, There never was knight like the young Lochinvar. He stayed not for brake, and he stopped not for stone; He swam the Eske river where ford there was none; But, ere he alighted at Netherby gate, The bride had consented, the gallant came late: For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war, Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar. So boldly he entered the Netherby hall, 'Mong bridesmen and kinsmen, and brothers and all: Then spoke the bride's father, his hand on his sword (For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word), "Oh, come ye in peace here, or come ye in war, Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?" "I long wooed your daughter, my suit you denied-- Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide; And now I am come, with this lost love of mine To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine. There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar." The bride kissed the goblet; the knight took it up: He quaffed off the wine, and he threw down the cup. She looked down to blush, and she looked up to sigh, With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye. He took her soft hand ere her mother could bar,-- "Now tread we a measure!" said young Lochinvar. So stately his form, and so lovely her face, That never a hall such a galliard did grace; While her mother did fret, and her father did fume, And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume; And the bride-maidens whispered, "'Twere better by far To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar." One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear, When they reached the hall door and the charger stood near; So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung, So light to the saddle before her he sprung! "She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur! They'll have fleet steeds that follow!" quoth young Lochinvar. There was mounting 'mong Græmes of the Netherby clan; Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran; There was racing and chasing on Cannobie Lee; But the lost bride of Netherby ne'er did they see. So daring in love, and so dauntless in war, Have ye e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar? SIR WALTER SCOTT. _From "Marmion."_ _Jock of Hazeldean_ "Why weep ye by the tide, ladie? Why weep ye by the tide? I'll wed ye to my youngest son, And ye sall be his bride; And ye sall be his bride, ladie, Sae comely to be seen"-- But aye she loot the tears down fa' For Jock of Hazeldean. "Now let this wilfu' grief be done, And dry that cheek so pale; Young Frank is chief of Errington, And lord of Langley-dale; His step is first in peaceful ha', His sword in battle keen"-- But aye she loot the tears down fa' For Jock of Hazeldean. "A chain of gold ye sall not lack, Nor braid to bind your hair; Nor mettled hound, nor managed hawk, Nor palfrey fresh and fair; And you, the foremost o' them a', Shall ride our forest queen"-- But aye she loot the tears down fa' For Jock of Hazeldean. The kirk was decked at morning-tide, The tapers glimmered fair; The priest and bridegroom wait the bride, And dame and knight are there. They sought her baith by bower and ha', The ladie was not seen! She's o'er the Border, and awa' Wi' Jock of Hazeldean. SIR WALTER SCOTT. _The Lady of Shalott_ Part I On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the wold and meet the sky; And through the fields the road runs by To many-towered Camelot; And up and down the people go, Gazing where the lilies blow Round an island there below, The island of Shalott. Willows whiten, aspens quiver, Little breezes dusk and shiver Through the wave that runs forever By the island in the river Flowing down to Camelot; Four gray walls, and four gray towers, Overlook a space of flowers, And the silent isle imbowers The Lady of Shalott. By the margin, willow-veiled, Slide the heavy barges trailed By slow horses; and unhailed The shallop flitteth silken-sailed, Skimming down to Camelot: But who hath seen her wave her hand? Or at the casement seen her stand? Or is she known in all the land, The Lady of Shalott. Only reapers, reaping early In among the bearded barley, Hear a song that echoes cheerly, From the river winding clearly, Down to towered Camelot: And by the moon the reaper weary, Piling sheaves in uplands airy, Listening, whispers "'Tis the fairy Lady of Shalott." Part II There she weaves by night and day A magic web with colors gay. She has heard a whisper say, A curse is on her if she stay To look down to Camelot. She knows not what the curse may be And so she weaveth steadily, And little other care hath she, The Lady of Shalott. And moving thro' a mirror clear That hangs before her all the year, Shadows of the world appear. There she sees the highway near Winding down to Camelot; There the river eddy whirls, And there the surly village churls, And the red cloaks of market-girls, Pass onward from Shalott. Sometimes a troop of damsels glad, An abbot on an ambling pad, Sometimes a curly shepherd lad, Or long-haired page in crimson clad, Goes by to towered Camelot; And sometimes thro' the mirror blue The knights come riding two and two: She hath no loyal knight and true, The Lady of Shalott. But in her web she still delights To weave the mirror's magic sights, For often thro' the silent nights A funeral, with plumes and lights. And music, went to Camelot: Or when the moon was overhead, Came two young lovers lately wed; "I am half sick of shadows," said The Lady of Shalott. Part III A bow-shot from her bower-eaves, He rode between the barley-sheaves, The sun came dazzling through the leaves, And flamed upon the brazen greaves Of bold Sir Lancelot. A red-cross knight forever kneeled To a lady in his shield, That sparkled on the yellow field, Beside remote Shalott. The gemmy bridle glittered free, Like to some branch of stars we see Hung in the golden Galaxy. The bridle-bells rang merrily. As he rode down to Camelot: And from his blazoned baldric slung A mighty silver bugle hung, And as he rode his armor rung, Beside remote Shalott. All in the blue unclouded weather Thick-jewelled shone the saddle-leather, The helmet and the helmet-feather Burned like one burning flame together, As he rode down to Camelot. As often through the purple night, Below the starry clusters bright, Some bearded meteor, trailing light, Moves over still Shalott. His broad clear brow in sunlight glowed; On burnished hooves his war-horse trode; From underneath his helmet flowed His coal-black curls as on he rode, As he rode down to Camelot. From the bank and from the river He flashed into the crystal mirror, "Tirra lirra," by the river Sang Sir Lancelot. She left the web, she left the loom, She made three paces thro' the room, She saw the water lily bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She looked down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror cracked from side to side; "The curse is come upon me," cried The Lady of Shalott. Part IV In the stormy east-wind straining, The pale yellow woods were waning, The broad stream in his banks complaining, Heavily the low sky raining Over towered Camelot; Down she came and found a boat Beneath a willow left afloat, And round about the prow she wrote, _The Lady of Shalott._ And down the river's dim expanse-- Like some bold seër in a trance, Seeing all his own mischance-- With a glassy countenance Did she look to Camelot. And at the closing of the day She loosed the chain, and down she lay; The broad stream bore her far away, The Lady of Shalott. Lying, robed in snowy white That loosely flew to left and right-- The leaves upon her falling light-- Thro' the noises of the night She floated down to Camelot: And as the boat-head wound along The willowy hills and fields among, They heard her singing her last song, The Lady of Shalott. Heard a carol, mournful, holy, Chanted loudly, chanted lowly, Till her blood was frozen slowly, And her eyes were darkened wholly, Turned to towered Camelot; For ere she reached upon the tide The first house by the water-side, Singing in her song she died, The Lady of Shalott. Under tower and balcony, By garden wall and gallery, A gleaming shape she floated by, Dead-pale between the houses high, Silent into Camelot. Out upon the wharfs they came, Knight and burgher, lord and dame, And round the prow they read her name, _The Lady of Shalott._ Who is this? and what is here, And in the lighted palace near Died the sound of royal cheer; And they crossed themselves for fear, All the knights at Camelot: But Lancelot mused a little space; He said, "She has a lovely face; God in his mercy lend her grace, The Lady of Shalott." ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON. _The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire_ The old mayor climbed the belfry tower, The ringers ran by two, by three; "Pull, if ye never pulled before; Good ringers, pull your best," quoth he. "Play uppe, play uppe, O Boston bells! Play all your changes, all your swells, Play uppe 'The Brides of Enderby.'" Men say it was a stolen tyde-- The Lord that sent it, He knows all; But in myne ears doth still abide The message that the bells let fall: And there was nought of strange, beside The flights of mews and peewits pied By millions crouched on the old sea wall. I sat and spun within the doore, My thread brake off, I raised myne eyes; The level sun, like ruddy ore, Lay sinking in the barren skies; And dark against day's golden death She moved where Lindis wandereth, My sonne's faire wife, Elizabeth. "Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!" calling, Ere the early dews were falling, Farre away I heard her song. "Cusha! Cusha!" all along; Where the reedy Lindis floweth, Floweth, floweth, From the meads where melick groweth Faintly came her milking song.-- "Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!" calling, "For the dews will soone be falling; Leave your meadow grasses mellow, Mellow, mellow; Quit your cowslips, cowslips yellow; Come uppe Whitefoot, come uppe Lightfoot, Quit the stalks of parsley hollow, Hollow, hollow; Come uppe Jetty, rise and follow, From the clovers lift your head; Come uppe Whitefoot, come uppe Lightfoot, Come uppe Jetty, rise and follow, Jetty, to the milking shed." If it be long, aye, long ago, When I beginne to think howe long, Againe I hear the Lindis flow, Swift as an arrowe, sharpe and strong; And all the aire it seemeth mee Bin full of floating bells (sayth shee), That ring the tune of Enderby. Alle fresh the level pasture lay, And not a shadowe mote be seene, Save where full fyve good miles away The steeple towered from out the greene; And lo! the great bell farre and wide Was heard in all the country side That Saturday at eventide. The swannerds where their sedges are Moved on in sunset's golden breath, The shepherde lads I heard afarre, And my sonne's wife, Elizabeth; Till floating o'er the grassy sea Came downe that kyndly message free, The "Brides of Mavis Enderby." Then some looked uppe into the sky, And all along where Lindis flows To where the goodly vessels lie, And where the lordly steeple shows. They sayde, "And why should this thing be, What danger lowers by land or sea? They ring the tune of Enderby! "For evil news from Mablethorpe, Of pyrate galleys warping down; For shippes ashore beyond the scorpe, They have not spared to wake the towne: But while the west bin red to see, And storms be none, and pyrates flee, Why ring 'The Brides of Enderby'?" I looked without, and lo! my sonne Came riding downe with might and main: He raised a shout as he drew on, Till all the welkin rang again, "Elizabeth! Elizabeth!" (A sweeter woman ne'er drew breath Than my sonne's wife, Elizabeth.) "The olde sea wall (he cried) is downe, The rising tide comes on apace, And boats adrift in yonder towne Go sailing uppe the market-place." He shook as one that looks on death: "God save you, mother!" straight he saith; "Where is my wife, Elizabeth?" "Good sonne, where Lindis winds away With her two bairns I marked her long; And ere yon bells beganne to play Afar I heard her milking song." He looked across the grassy sea, To right, to left, "Ho Enderby!" They rang "The Brides of Enderby!" With that he cried and beat his breast; For lo! along the river's bed A mighty eygre reared his crest, And uppe the Lindis raging sped. It swept with thunderous noises loud; Shaped like a curling snow-white cloud, Or like a demon in a shroud. And rearing Lindis backward pressed, Shook all her trembling bankes amaine; Then madly at the eygre's breast Flung uppe her weltering walls again. Then bankes came downe with ruin and rout-- Then beaten foam flew round about-- Then all the mighty floods were out. So farre, so fast the eygre drave, The heart had hardly time to beat, Before a shallow seething wave Sobbed in the grasses at oure feet: The feet had hardly time to flee Before it brake against the knee, And all the world was in the sea. Upon the roofe we sate that night, The noise of bells went sweeping by: I marked the lofty beacon light Stream from the church tower, red and high-- A lurid mark and dread to see; And awsome bells they were to mee, That in the dark rang "Enderby." They rang the sailor lads to guide From roofe to roofe who fearless rowed; And I--my sonne was at my side. And yet the ruddy beacon glowed; And yet he moaned beneath his breath, "O come in life, or come in death! O lost! my love, Elizabeth." And didst thou visit him no more? Thou didst, thou didst my daughter deare; The waters laid thee at his doore, Ere yet the early dawn was clear. Thy pretty bairns in fast embrace, The lifted sun shone on thy face, Downe drifted to thy dwelling-place. That flow strewed wrecks about the grass, That ebbe swept out the flocks to sea; A fatal ebbe and flow, alas! To manye more than myne and me: But each will mourn his own (she saith) And sweeter woman ne'er drew breath Than my sonne's wife, Elizabeth. I shall never hear her more By the reedy Lindis shore, "Cusha, Cusha, Cusha!" calling, Ere the early dews be falling; I shall never hear her song, "Cusha, Cusha!" all along, Where the sunny Lindis floweth, Goeth, floweth; From the meads where melick groweth. When the water winding down, Onward floweth to the town. I shall never see her more Where the reeds and rushes quiver. Shiver, quiver; Stand beside the sobbing river, Sobbing, throbbing, in its falling, To the sandy lonesome shore; I shall never hear her calling, "Leave your meadow grasses mellow, Mellow, mellow; Quit your cowslips, cowslips yellow; Come uppe Whitefoot, come uppe Lightfoot; Quit your pipes of parsley hollow, Hollow, hollow; Come uppe Lightfoot, rise and follow; Lightfoot, Whitefoot, From your clovers lift the head; Come uppe Jetty, follow, follow, Jetty, to the milking shed." JEAN INGELOW. _The Forsaken Merman_ Come, dear children, let us away; Down and away below. Now my brothers call from the bay; Now the great winds shoreward blow; Now the salt tides seaward flow; Now the wild white horses play, Champ and chafe and toss in the spray. Children dear, let us away, This way, this way! Call her once before you go. Call once yet, In a voice that she will know: "Margaret! Margaret!" Children's voices should be dear (Call once more) to a mother's ear: Children's voices wild with pain. Surely she will come again. Call her once, and come away. This way, this way! "Mother dear, we cannot stay." The wild white horses foam and fret, Margaret! Margaret! Come, dear children, come away down. Call no more. One last look at the white-walled town, And the little gray church on the windy shore, Then come down. She will not come though you call all day. Come away, come away. Children dear, was it yesterday We heard the sweet bells over the bay? In the caverns where we lay, Through the surf and through the swell, The far-off sound of a silver bell? Sand-strewn caverns cool and deep, Where the winds are all asleep; Where the spent lights quiver and gleam; Where the salt weed sways in the stream; Where the sea-beasts rang'd all round Feed in the ooze of their pasture ground; Where the sea-snakes coil and twine, Dry their mail and bask in the brine; Where great whales come sailing by, Sail and sail, with unshut eye, Round the world forever and aye? When did music come this way? Children dear, was it yesterday? Children dear, was it yesterday (Call yet once) that she went away? Once she sat with you and me, On a red-gold throne in the heart of the sea. And the youngest sat on her knee. She comb'd its bright hair, and she tended it well, When down swung the sound of the far-off bell, She sigh'd, she look'd up through the clear green sea, She said, "I must go, for my kinsfolk pray In the little gray church on the shore to-day. 'Twill be Easter-time in the world--ah me! And I lose my poor soul, Merman, here with thee." I said, "Go up, dear heart, through the waves: Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves." She smiled, she went up through the surf in the bay. Children dear, was it yesterday? Children dear, were we long alone? The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan; "Long prayers," I said, "in the world they say." "Come," I said, and we rose through the surf in the bay. We went up the beach in the sandy down Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the white-wall'd town, Through the narrow paved streets, where all was still, To the little gray church on the windy hill. From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers, But we stood without in the cold blowing airs. We climb'd on the graves, on the stones worn with rains, And we gazed up the aisle through the small leaded panes. She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear; "Margaret, hist! come quick, we are here. Dear heart," I said, "we are here alone. The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan." But, ah, she gave me never a look, For her eyes were seal'd to the holy book. Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door. Come away, children, call no more, Come away, come down, call no more. Down, down, down, Down to the depths of the sea, She sits at her wheel in the humming town, Singing most joyfully. Hark what she sings: "O joy, O joy, For the humming street, and the child with its toy, For the priest and the bell, and the holy well, For the wheel where I spun, And the blessèd light of the sun." And so she sings her fill, Singing most joyfully, Till the shuttle falls from her hand, And the whizzing wheel stands still. She steals to the window and looks at the sand; And over the sand at the sea; And her eyes are set in a stare; And anon there breaks a sigh, And anon there drops a tear, From a sorrow clouded eye, And a heart sorrow laden, A long, long sigh, For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden, And the gleam of her golden hair. Come away, away, children, Come children, come down. The hoarse wind blows colder; Lights shine in the town. She will start from her slumber When gusts shake the door; She will hear the winds howling, Will hear the waves roar. We shall see, while above us The waves roar and whirl, A ceiling of amber, A pavement of pearl. Singing, "Here came a mortal, But faithless was she, And alone dwell forever The kings of the sea." But, children, at midnight, When soft the winds blow, When clear falls the moonlight, When spring-tides are low; When sweet airs come seaward From heaths starr'd with broom; And high rocks throw mildly On the blanch'd sands a gloom: Up the still, glistening beaches, Up the creeks we will hie; Over banks of bright seaweed The ebb-tide leaves dry. We will gaze from the sand-hills At the white sleeping town; At the church on the hillside-- And then come back, down. Singing, "There dwells a loved one, But cruel is she: She left lonely forever The kings of the sea." MATTHEW ARNOLD. _The Sands of Dee_ I "O Mary, go and call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, And call the cattle home Across the sands of Dee;" The western wind was wild and dank wi' foam, And all alone went she. II The western tide crept up along the sand, And o'er and o'er the sand, And round and round the sand, As far as eye could see. The rolling mist came down and hid the land-- And never home came she. III "Oh! is it weed, or fish, or floating hair-- A tress o' golden hair, A drownèd maiden's hair Above the nets at sea? Was never salmon yet that shone so fair Among the stakes on Dee." IV They rowed her in across the rolling foam, The cruel crawling foam, The cruel hungry foam, To her grave beside the sea: But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home Across the sands of Dee! CHARLES KINGSLEY. _The "Gray Swan"_ "Oh, tell me, sailor, tell me true, Is my little lad, my Elihu, A-sailing with your ship?" The sailor's eyes were dim with dew. "Your little lad, your Elihu?" He said with trembling lip,-- "What little lad? what ship?" "What little lad? as if there could be Another such a one as he! What little lad, do you say? Why Elihu, that took to the sea The moment I put him off my knee! It was just the other day The 'Gray Swan' sailed away." "The other day?" The sailor's eyes Stood open with a great surprise: "The other day? the 'Swan'?" His heart began in his throat to rise. "Ay, ay, sir, here in the cupboard lies The jacket he had on." "And so your lad is gone?" "Gone with the 'Swan'?"--"And did she stand With her anchor clutching hold of the sand For a month, and never stir?" "Why, to be sure! I've seen from the land, Like a lover kissing his lady's hand, The wild sea kissing her,-- A sight to remember, sir!" "But, my good mother, do you know All this was twenty years ago? I stood on the 'Gray Swan's' deck, And to that lad I saw you throw, Taking it off as it might be,--so!-- The kerchief from your neck." "Ay, and he'll bring it back!" "And did the little lawless lad, That has made you sick and made you sad, Sail with the 'Gray Swan's' crew?" "Lawless! The man is going mad! The best boy ever mother had!-- Be sure he sailed with the crew! What would you have him do?" "And has he never written line, Nor sent you word, nor made you sign, To say he was alive?" "Hold! If 'twas wrong, the wrong is mine; Besides, he may lie in the brine; And could he write from the grave? Tut, man! what would you have?" "Gone twenty years,--a long, long cruise! 'Twas wicked thus your love to abuse! But if the lad still live, And come back home, think you you can Forgive him?" "Miserable man! You're mad as the sea, you rave! What have I to forgive?" The sailor twitched his shirt so blue, And from within his bosom drew The kerchief. She was wild. "O God, my Father! is it true? My little lad, my Elihu! My blessed boy, my child! My dead, my living child!" ALICE CARY. _The Wreck of the Hesperus_ It was the schooner Hesperus That sailed the wintry sea; And the skipper had taken his little daughtèr To bear him company. Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax, Her cheeks like the dawn of day, And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds, That ope in the month of May. The skipper he stood beside the helm, His pipe was in his mouth, And he watched how the veering flaw did blow The smoke now West, now South. Then up and spake an old Sailòr Had sailed to the Spanish main, "I pray thee put into yonder port, For I fear a hurricane. "Last night the moon had a golden ring, And to-night no moon we see!" The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe, And a scornful laugh laughed he. Colder and colder blew the wind, A gale from the Northeast; The snow fell hissing in the brine, And the billows frothed like yeast. Down came the storm, and smote amain The vessel in its strength; She shuddered and paused like a frighted steed, Then leaped her cable's length. "Come hither! come hither! my little daughtèr, And do not tremble so; For I can weather the roughest gale That ever wind did blow." He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound her to the mast. "O father! I hear the church-bells ring; O say, what may it be?" "'Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!" And he steered for the open sea. "O father! I hear the sound of guns; O say, what may it be?" "Some ship in distress, that cannot live In such an angry sea!" "O father I see a gleaming light; O say, what may it be?" But the father answered never a word, A frozen corpse was he. Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark, With his face turned to the skies, The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow On his fixed and glassy eyes. Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed That savèd she might be; And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave On the Lake of Galilee. And fast through the midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost the vessel swept Towards the reef of Norman's Woe. And ever the fitful gusts between A sound came from the land; It was the sound of the trampling surf On the rocks and the hard sea-sand. The breakers were right beneath her bows, She drifted a dreary wreck, And a whooping billow swept the crew Like icicles from her deck. She struck where the white and fleecy waves Looked soft as carded wool, But the cruel rocks they gored her side Like the horns of an angry bull. Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice, With the masts went by the board: Like a vessel of glass she stove and sank,-- Ho! ho! the breakers roared! At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach A fisherman stood aghast To see the form of a maiden fair Lashed close to a drifting mast. The salt sea was frozen on her breast, The salt tears in her eyes; And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed, On the billows fall and rise. Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, In the midnight and the snow! Christ save us all from a death like this On the reef of Norman's Woe! HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. _A Greyport Legend_ They ran through the streets of the seaport town; They peered from the decks of the ships that lay: The cold sea-fog that comes whitening down Was never as cold or white as they. "Ho, Starbuck, and Pinckney, and Tenterden, Run for your shallops, gather your men, Scatter your boats on the lower bay!" Good cause for fear! In the thick midday The hulk that lay by the rotting pier, Filled with the children in happy play, Parted its moorings and drifted clear; Drifted clear beyond reach or call,-- Thirteen children they were in all,-- All adrift in the lower bay! Said a hard-faced skipper, "God help us all! She will not float till the turning tide!" Said his wife, "My darling will hear _my_ call, Whether in sea or heaven she bide!" And she lifted a quavering voice and high, Wild and strange as a sea-bird's cry, Till they shuddered and wondered at her side. The fog drove down on each laboring crew, Veiled each from each and the sky and shore; There was not a sound but the breath they drew, And the lap of water and creak of oar. And they felt the breath of the downs fresh blown O'er leagues of clover and cold gray stone, But not from the lips that had gone before. They came no more. But they tell the tale That, when fogs are thick on the harbor reef, The mackerel-fishers shorten sail; For the signal they know will bring relief, For the voices of children, still at play In a phantom-hulk that drifts alway Through channels whose waters never fail. It is but a foolish shipman's tale, A theme for a poet's idle page; But still, when the mists of doubt prevail, And we lie becalmed by the shores of age, We hear from the misty troubled shore The voice of the children gone before, Drawing the soul to its anchorage! BRET HARTE. _The Glove and the Lions_ King Francis was a hearty king, and loved a royal sport, And one day as his lions fought, sat looking on the court; The nobles filled the benches, with the ladies in their pride, And 'mongst them sat the Count de Lorge, with one for whom he sighed: And truly 'twas a gallant thing to see that crowning show, Valour and love, and a king above, and the royal beasts below. Ramp'd and roar'd the lions, with horrid laughing jaws; They bit, they glared, gave blows like beams, a wind went with their paws; With wallowing might and stifled roar they rolled on one another, Till all the pit with sand and mane was in a thunderous smother; The bloody foam above the bars came whisking through the air; Said Francis then, "Faith, gentlemen, we're better here than there." De Lorge's love o'erheard the king,--a beauteous lively dame With smiling lips and sharp bright eyes, which always seem'd the same: She thought, "The Count, my lover, is brave as brave can be; He surely would do wondrous things to show his love of me; King, ladies, lovers, all look on; the occasion is divine; I'll drop my glove, to prove his love; great glory will be mine." She dropp'd her glove, to prove his love, then look'd at him and smiled; He bowed, and in a moment leapt among the lions wild: His leap was quick, return was quick, he has regain'd his place, Then threw the glove, but not with love, right in the lady's face. "Well done!" cried Francis, "bravely done!" and he rose from where he sat: "No love," quoth he, "but vanity, sets love a task like that." LEIGH HUNT. _How's My Boy?_ Ho, sailor of the sea! How's my boy--my boy? "What's your boy's name, good wife, And in what good ship sailed he?" My boy John-- He that went to sea-- What care I for the ship, sailor? My boy's my boy to me. You come back from sea And not know my John? I might as well have asked some landsman Yonder down in the town. There's not an ass in all the parish But he knows my John. How's my boy--my boy? And unless you let me know I'll swear you are no sailor, Blue jacket or no, Brass button or no, sailor, Anchor and crown or no! Sure his ship was the _Jolly Briton_-- "Speak low, woman, speak low!" And why should I speak low, sailor, About my own boy John? If I was loud as I am proud I'd sing him over the town! Why should I speak low, sailor? "That good ship went down." How's my boy--my boy? What care I for the ship, sailor, I never was aboard her. Be she afloat, or be she aground, Sinking or swimming, I'll be bound Her owners can afford her! I say, how's my John? "Every man on board went down, Every man aboard her." How's my boy--my boy? What care I for the men, sailor? I'm not their mother-- How's my boy--my boy? Tell me of him and no other! How's my boy--my boy? SYDNEY DOBELL. _The Child-Musician_ He had played for his lordship's levee, He had played for her ladyship's whim, Till the poor little head was heavy, And the poor little brain would swim. And the face grew peaked and eerie, And the large eyes strange and bright; And they said--too late--"He is weary! He shall rest, for at least to-night!" But at dawn, when the birds were waking, As they watched in the silent room, With the sound of a strained cord breaking, A something snapped in the gloom. 'Twas the string of his violoncello, And they heard him stir in his bed:-- "Make room for a tired little fellow, "Kind God!" was the last he said. AUSTIN DOBSON. _How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix_ I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris and he: I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three; "Good speed!" cried the watch as the gate-bolts undrew, "Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through, Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest, And into the midnight we galloped abreast. Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace-- Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place; I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight, Then shortened each stirrup and set the pique right, Rebuckled the check-strap, chained slacker the bit, Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit. 'Twas a moonset at starting; but while we drew near Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear; At Boom a great yellow star came out to see; At Düffeld 'twas morning as plain as could be; And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half chime-- So Joris broke silence with "Yet there is time!" At Aerschot up leaped of a sudden the sun, And against him the cattle stood black every one, To stare through the mist at us galloping past; And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last, With resolute shoulders, each butting away The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray; And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track; And one eye's black intelligence,--ever that glance O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance; And the thick heavy spume-flakes, which aye and anon His fierce lips shook upward in galloping on. By Hasselt Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, "Stay spur! Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her; We'll remember at Aix"--for one heard the quick wheeze Of her chest, saw the stretched neck, and staggering knees, And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank, As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank. So we were left galloping, Joris and I, Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky; The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh; 'Neath our feet broke the brittle, bright stubble like chaff; Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white, And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix is in sight!" "How they'll greet us!"--and all in a moment his roan Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone; And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate, With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim, And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim. Then I cast loose my buff-coat, each holster let fall, Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all, Stood up in the stirrups, leaned, patted his ear, Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer-- Clapped my hands, laughed and sung, any noise, bad or good, Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood. And all I remember is friends flocking round, As I sate with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground; And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine, As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine, Which (the burgesses voted by common consent) Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent. ROBERT BROWNING. _The Inchcape Rock_ No stir in the air, no stir in the sea, The ship was still as she could be; Her sails from heaven received no motion; Her keel was steady in the ocean. Without either sign or sound of their shock, The waves flow'd over the Inchcape Rock; So little they rose, so little they fell, They did not move the Inchcape Bell. The Abbot of Aberbrothok Had placed that Bell on the Inchcape Rock; On a buoy in the storm it floated and swung, And over the waves its warning rung. When the Rock was hid by the surge's swell, The mariners heard the warning Bell; And then they knew the perilous Rock, And blest the Abbot of Aberbrothok. The Sun in heaven was shining gay; All things were joyful on that day; The sea-birds scream'd as they wheel'd round. And there was joyance in their sound. The buoy of the Inchcape Bell was seen A darker speck on the ocean green; Sir Ralph the Rover walk'd his deck, And he fix'd his eye on the darker speck. He felt the cheering power of spring; It made him whistle, it made him sing; His heart was mirthful to excess, But the Rover's mirth was wickedness. His eye was on the Inchcape float; Quoth he, "My men, put out the boat, And row me to the Inchcape Rock, And I'll plague the Abbot of Aberbrothok." The boat is lower'd, the boatmen row, And to the Inchcape Rock they go; Sir Ralph bent over from the boat, And he cut the Bell from the Inchcape float. Down sunk the Bell with a gurgling sound; The bubbles rose and burst around; Quoth Sir Ralph, "The next who comes to the Rock Won't bless the Abbot of Aberbrothok." Sir Ralph the Rover sail'd away; He scour'd the seas for many a day; And now, grown rich with plunder'd store, He steers his course for Scotland's shore. So thick a haze o'erspreads the sky, They cannot see the Sun on high; The wind hath blown a gale all day; At evening it hath died away. On the deck the Rover takes his stand; So dark it is they see no land. Quoth Sir Ralph, "It will be lighter soon, For there is the dawn of the rising Moon." "Canst hear," said one, "the breakers roar? For methinks we should be near the shore." "Now where we are I cannot tell, But I wish I could hear the Inchcape Bell." They hear no sound; the swell is strong; Though the wind hath fallen, they drift along, Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock,-- "Oh God! it is the Inchcape Rock!" Sir Ralph the Rover tore his hair; He curs'd himself in his despair; The waves rush in on every side; The ship is sinking beneath the tide. But, even in his dying fear, One dreadful sound could the Rover hear-- A sound as if, with the Inchcape Bell, The fiends below were ringing his knell. ROBERT SOUTHEY. _A Night With a Wolf_ Little one, come to my knee! Hark, how the rain is pouring Over the roof, in the pitch-black night, And the wind in the woods a-roaring! Hush, my darling, and listen, Then pay for the story with kisses; Father was lost in the pitch-black night, In just such a storm as this is! High up on the lonely mountains, Where the wild men watched and waited; Wolves in the forest, and bears in the bush, And I on my path belated. The rain and the night together Came down, and the wind came after, Bending the props of the pine-tree roof, And snapping many a rafter. I crept along in the darkness, Stunned, and bruised, and blinded,-- Crept to a fir with thick-set boughs, And a sheltering rock behind it. There, from the blowing and raining, Crouching, I sought to hide me: Something rustled, two green eyes shone, And a wolf lay down beside me. Little one, be not frightened; I and the wolf together, Side by side, through the long, long night Hid from the awful weather. His wet fur pressed against me; Each of us warmed the other; Each of us felt, in the stormy dark, That beast and man was brother. And when the falling forest No longer crashed in warning, Each of us went from our hiding-place Forth in the wild, wet morning. Darling, kiss me in payment! Hark, how the wind is roaring; Father's house is a better place When the stormy rain is pouring! BAYARD TAYLOR. _The Dove of Dacca_ The freed dove flew to the Rajah's tower-- Fled from the slaughter of Moslem kings-- And the thorns have covered the city of Gaur. Dove--dove--oh, homing dove! Little white traitor, with woe on thy wings! The Rajah of Dacca rode under the wall; He set in his bosom a dove of flight-- "If she return, be sure that I fall." Dove--dove--oh, homing dove! Pressed to his heart in the thick of the fight. "Fire the palace, the fort, and the keep-- Leave to the foeman no spoil at all. In the flame of the palace lie down and sleep If the dove, if the dove--if the homing dove Come and alone to the palace wall." The Kings of the North they were scattered abroad-- The Rajah of Dacca he slew them all. Hot from slaughter he stooped at the ford,-- And the dove--the dove--oh, the homing dove! She thought of her cote on the palace wall. She opened her wings and she flew away-- Fluttered away beyond recall; She came to the palace at break of day. Dove--dove--oh, homing dove! Flying so fast for a kingdom's fall. The Queens of Dacca they slept in flame-- Slept in the flame of the palace old-- To save their honour from Moslem shame. And the dove--the dove--oh, the homing dove! She cooed to her young where the smoke-cloud rolled. The Rajah of Dacca rode far and fleet, Followed as fast as a horse could fly, He came and the palace was black at his feet; And the dove--the dove--oh, the homing dove! Circled alone in the stainless sky. So the dove flew to the Rajah's tower-- Fled from the slaughter of Moslem kings; So the thorns covered the city of Gaur, And Dacca was lost for a white dove's wings. Dove--dove--oh, homing dove! Dacca is lost from the roll of the kings! RUDYARD KIPLING. _The Abbot of Inisfalen_ I The Abbot of Inisfalen Awoke ere dawn of day; Under the dewy green leaves Went he forth to pray. The lake around his island Lay smooth and dark and deep, And, wrapt in a misty stillness, The mountains were all asleep. Low kneel'd the Abbot Cormac, When the dawn was dim and gray; The prayers of his holy office He faithfully 'gan say. Low kneel'd the Abbot Cormac, When the dawn was waxing red, And for his sins' forgiveness A solemn prayer he said. Low kneel'd that holy Abbot When the dawn was waxing clear; And he pray'd with loving-kindness For his convent brethren dear. Low kneel'd that blessed Abbot, When the dawn was waxing bright; He pray'd a great prayer for Ireland, He pray'd with all his might. Low kneel'd that good old father, While the sun began to dart; He pray'd a prayer for all mankind, He pray'd it from his heart. II The Abbot of Inisfalen Arose upon his feet; He heard a small bird singing, And, oh, but it sung sweet! He heard a white bird singing well Within a holly-tree; A song so sweet and happy Never before heard he. It sung upon a hazel, It sung upon a thorn; He had never heard such music Since the hour that he was born. It sung upon a sycamore, It sung upon a briar; To follow the song and hearken This Abbot could never tire. Till at last he well bethought him He might no longer stay; So he bless'd the little white singing-bird, And gladly went his way. III But when he came to his Abbey walls, He found a wondrous change; He saw no friendly faces there, For every face was strange. The strangers spoke unto him; And he heard from all and each The foreign tone of the Sassenach, Not wholesome Irish speech. Then the oldest monk came forward, In Irish tongue spake he: "Thou wearest the holy Augustine's dress, And who hath given it to thee?" "I wear the holy Augustine's dress, And Cormac is my name, The Abbot of this good Abbey By grace of God I am. "I went forth to pray, at the dawn of day; And when my prayers were said, I hearkened awhile to a little bird That sung above my head." The monks to him made answer, "Two hundred years have gone o'er, Since our Abbot Cormac went through the gate, And never was heard of more. "Matthias now is our Abbot, And twenty have passed away. The stranger is lord of Ireland; We live in an evil day." IV "Now give me absolution; For my time is come," said he. And they gave him absolution As speedily as might be. Then, close outside the window, The sweetest song they heard That ever yet since the world began Was uttered by any bird. The monks looked out and saw the bird, Its feathers all white and clean; And there in a moment, beside it, Another white bird was seen. Those two they sung together, Waved their white wings, and fled; Flew aloft, and vanished; But the good old man was dead. They buried his blessed body Where lake and greensward meet; A carven cross above his head, A holly-bush at his feet; Where spreads the beautiful water To gay or cloudy skies, And the purple peaks of Killarney From ancient woods arise. WILLIAM ALLINGHAM. _The Cavalier's Escape_ Trample! trample! went the roan, Trap! trap! went the gray; But pad! _pad!_ PAD! like a thing that was mad, My chestnut broke away. It was just five miles from Salisbury town, And but one hour to day. Thud! THUD! came on the heavy roan, Rap! RAP! the mettled gray; But my chestnut mare was of blood so rare, That she showed them all the way. Spur on! spur on!--I doffed my hat, And wished them all good-day. They splashed through miry rut and pool,-- Splintered through fence and rail; But chestnut Kate switched over the gate,-- I saw them droop and tail. To Salisbury town--but a mile of down, Once over this brook and rail. Trap! trap! I heard their echoing hoofs Past the walls of mossy stone; The roan flew on at a staggering pace, But blood is better than bone. I patted old Kate, and gave her the spur, For I knew it was all my own. But trample! trample! came their steeds, And I saw their wolf's eyes burn; I felt like a royal hart at bay, And made me ready to turn. I looked where highest grew the May, And deepest arched the fern. I flew at the first knave's sallow throat; One blow, and he was down. The second rogue fired twice, and missed; I sliced the villain's crown,-- Clove through the rest, and flogged brave Kate, _Fast, fast to Salisbury town!_ Pad! pad! they came on the level sward, Thud! thud! upon the sand,-- With a gleam of swords and a burning match, And a shaking of flag and hand; But one long bound, and I passed the gate, Safe from the canting band. WALTER THORNBURY. _The Pied Piper of Hamelin_ I Hamelin town's in Brunswick, By famous Hanover city; The River Weser, deep and wide, Washes its walls on the southern side; A pleasanter spot you never spied; But, when begins my ditty, Almost five hundred years ago, To see the townsfolk suffer so From vermin, was a pity. II Rats! They fought the dogs and killed the cats, And bit the babies in the cradles, And ate the cheeses out of the vats, And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles, Split open the kegs of salted sprats, Made nests inside men's Sunday hats, And even spoiled the women's chats, By drowning their speaking With shrieking and squeaking In fifty different sharps and flats. III At last the people in a body To the Town Hall came flocking: "'Tis clear," cried they, "our Mayor's a noddy, "And as for our Corporation--shocking "To think we buy gowns lined with ermine "For dolts that can't or won't determine "What's best to rid us of our vermin! "You hope, because you're old and obese, "To find in the furry civic robe ease? "Rouse up, Sirs! Give your brains a racking "To find the remedy we're lacking, "Or, sure as fate, we'll send you packing!" At this the Mayor and Corporation Quaked with a mighty consternation. IV An hour they sate in Council; At length the Mayor broke silence: "For a guilder I'd my ermine gown sell; "I wish I were a mile hence! "It's easy to bid one rack one's brain-- "I'm sure my poor head aches again, "I've scratched it so, and all in vain. "Oh, for a trap, a trap, a trap!" Just as he said this, what should hap At the chamber door, but a gentle tap? "Bless us!" cried the Mayor, "what's that?" (With the Corporation as he sat, Looking little though wondrous fat; Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister Than a too-long-opened oyster, Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous For a plate of turtle green and glutinous.) "Only a scraping of shoes on the mat! "Anything like the sound of a rat "Makes my heart go pit-a-pat!" V "Come in!" the Mayor cried, looking bigger, And in did come the strangest figure! His queer long coat, from heel to head Was half of yellow and half of red; And he himself was tall and thin, With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin, No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin, But lips where smiles went out and in; There was no guessing his kith and kin; And nobody could enough admire The tall man and his quaint attire. Quoth one: "It's as if my great-grandsire, "Starting up at the trump of Doom's tone, "Had walked this way from his painted tombstone!" VI He advanced to the council table: And, "Please your honours," said he, "I'm able, "By means of a secret charm, to draw "All creatures living beneath the sun, "That creep, or swim, or fly, or run, "After me so as you never saw! "And I chiefly use my charm "On creatures that do people harm,-- "The mole, the toad, the newt, the viper: "And people call me the Pied Piper." (And here they noticed round his neck A scarf of red and yellow stripe To match his coat of the self-same cheque; And at the scarf's end hung a pipe; And his fingers, they noticed, were ever straying As if impatient to be playing Upon his pipe, as low it dangled Over his vesture so old-fangled.) "Yet," said he, "poor piper as I am, "In Tartary I freed the Cham, "Last June, from his huge swarm of gnats; "I eased in Asia the Nizam "Of a monstrous brood of vampyre bats: "And as for what your brain bewilders, "If I can rid your town of rats "Will you give me a thousand guilders?" "One! fifty thousand!" was the exclamation Of the astonished Mayor and Corporation. VII Into the street the Piper stept, Smiling first a little smile, As if he knew what magic slept In his quiet pipe the while; Then, like a musical adept, To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled, And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled, Like a candle-flame where salt is sprinkled; And ere three shrill notes the pipe had uttered, You heard as if an army muttered; And the muttering grew to a grumbling; And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling; And out of the houses the rats came tumbling. Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats, Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats, Grave old plodders, gay young friskers, Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, Cocking tails, and pricking whiskers, Families by tens and dozens, Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives-- Followed the Piper for their lives. From street to street he piped, advancing, And step for step they followed dancing, Until they came to the River Weser, Wherein all plunged and perished! --Save one, who, stout as Julius Cæsar, Swam across and lived to carry (As he, the manuscript he cherished) To Rat-land home his commentary: Which was, "At the first shrill note of the pipe "I heard a sound as of scraping tripe, "And putting apples, wondrous ripe, "Into a cider-press's gripe: "And a moving away of pickle-tub boards, "And a leaving ajar of conserve-cupboards, "And a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks, "And a breaking the hoops of butter-casks: "And it seemed as if a voice "(Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery "Is breathed) called out, 'Oh, rats, rejoice! "The world is grown to one vast drysaltery! "So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon, "Breakfast, dinner, supper, luncheon!' "And just as a bulky sugar-puncheon, "All ready staved, like a great sun shone "Glorious, scarce an inch before me, "Just as methought it said, 'Come, bore me!' "--I found the Weser rolling o'er me." VIII You should have heard the Hamelin people Ringing the bells till they rocked the steeple. "Go," cried the Mayor, "and get long poles, "Poke out the nests, and block up the holes! "Consult with carpenters and builders, "And leave in our town not even a trace "Of the rats!" When suddenly, up the face Of the Piper perked in the market-place, With a, "First, if you please, my thousand guilders!" IX A thousand guilders! The Mayor looked blue; So did the Corporation, too. For council dinners made rare havoc With Claret, Moselle, Vin-de-Grave, Hock; And half the money would replenish Their cellar's biggest butt with Rhenish. To pay this sum to a wandering fellow, With a gypsy coat of red and yellow! "Beside," quoth the Mayor, with a knowing wink, "Our business was done at the river's brink; "We saw with our eyes the vermin sink, "And what's dead can't come to life, I think. "So friend, we're not the folks to shrink "From the duty of giving you something to drink, "And a matter of money to put in your poke; "But, as for the guilders, what we spoke "Of them, as you very well know, was in joke. "Beside, our losses have made us thrifty. "A thousand guilders! come, take fifty!" X The Piper's face fell, and he cried, "No trifling! I can't wait, beside! "I've promised to visit by dinner-time "Bagdad, and accept the prime "Of the Head-Cook's pottage, all he's rich in, "For having left, in the Caliph's kitchen, "Of a nest of scorpions no survivor. "With him I proved no bargain-driver; "With you, don't think I'll bate a stiver! "And folks who put me in a passion "May find me pipe after another fashion." XI "How!" cried the Mayor, "d'ye think I'll brook "Being worse treated than a Cook? "Insulted by a lazy ribald "With idle pipe and vesture piebald! "You threaten us, fellow! Do your worst; "Blow your pipe there till you burst!" XII Once more he stept into the street, And to his lips again Laid his long pipe of smooth, straight cane; And ere he blew three notes (such sweet Soft notes as yet musician's cunning Never gave the enraptured air) There was a rustling that seemed like a bustling Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling, Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering, Little hands clapping and little tongues chattering, And, like fowls in a farmyard when barley is scattering, Out came the children running. And all the little boys and girls, With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls, And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls, Tripping and skipping ran merrily after The wonderful music with shouting and laughter. XIII The Mayor was dumb, and the Council stood As if they were changed into blocks of wood, Unable to move a step, or cry To the children merrily skipping by, --Could only follow with the eye That joyous crowd at the Piper's back. And now the Mayor was on the rack, And the wretched Council's bosoms beat, As the piper turned from the High Street To where the Weser rolled its waters Right in the way of their sons and daughters! However he turned from South to West, And to Koppelberg Hill his steps addressed, And after him the children pressed; Great was the joy in every breast. "He never can cross that mighty top! "He's forced to let the piping drop, "And we shall see our children stop!" When, lo, as they reached the mountain side, A wondrous portal opened wide, As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed; And the Piper advanced, and the children followed, And when all were in to the very last, The door in the mountain-side shut fast. Did I say all? No! One was lame, And could not dance the whole of the way; And in after years, if you would blame His sadness, he was used to say,-- "It's dull in our town since my playmates left! "I can't forget that I'm bereft "Of all the pleasant sights they see, "Which the Piper also promised me: "For he led us, he said, to a joyous land, "Joining the town and just at hand, "Where waters gushed and fruit trees grew, "And flowers put forth a fairer hue, "And everything was strange and new; "The sparrows were brighter than peacocks here, "And their dogs outran our fallow-deer, "And honey-bees had lost their stings, "And horses were born with eagles' wings: "And just as I became assured "My lame foot would be speedily cured, "The music stopped, and I stood still, "And found myself outside the hill, "Left alone against my will, "To go now limping as before, "And never hear of that country more!" XIV Alas, alas for Hamelin! There came into many a burgher's pate A text which says that Heaven's gate Opes to the rich at as easy rate As the needle's eye takes a camel in! The Mayor sent East, West, North, and South, To offer the Piper, by word of mouth, Wherever it was man's lot to find him, Silver and gold to his heart's content, If he'd only return the way he went, And bring the children behind him. But when they saw 'twas a lost endeavour, And Piper and dancers were gone for ever, They made a decree that lawyers never Should think their records dated duly If, after the day of the month and the year, These words did not as well appear, "And so long after what happened here "On the Twenty-second of July, "Thirteen hundred and seventy-six": And the better in memory to fix The place of the children's last retreat, They called it, the Pied Piper's Street-- Where any one playing on pipe or tabor Was sure for the future to lose his labour. Nor suffered they hostelry or tavern To shock with mirth a street so solemn; But opposite the place of the cavern They wrote the story on a column, And on the great church-window painted The same, to make the world acquainted How their children were stolen away, And there it stands to this very day. And I must not omit to say That in Transylvania there's a tribe Of alien people that ascribe The outlandish ways and dress On which their neighbours lay such stress, To their fathers and mothers having risen Out of some subterraneous prison Into which they were trepanned Long ago in a mighty band Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land, But how or why, they don't understand. XV So, Willy, let you and me be wipers Of scores out with all men,--especially pipers! And, whether they pipe us free from rats or from mice, If we've promised them aught, let us keep our promise! ROBERT BROWNING. _Hervé Riel_ On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two, Did the English fight the French,--woe to France! And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter thro' the blue, Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue, Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the Rance, With the English fleet in view. 'Twas the squadron that escaped, with the victor in full chase; First and foremost of the drove, in his great ship, Damfreville; Close on him fled, great and small, Twenty-two good ships in all; And they signalled to the place "Help the winners of a race! Get us guidance, give us harbour, take us quick--or, quicker still, Here's the English can and will!" Then the pilots of the place put out brisk and leapt on board; "Why, what hope or chance have ships like these to pass?" laughed they: "Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the passage scarred and scored, Shall the _Formidable_ here with her twelve and eighty guns Think to make the river-mouth by the single narrow way, Trust to enter where 'tis ticklish for a craft of twenty tons, And with flow at full beside? Now, 'tis slackest ebb of tide. Reach the mooring? Rather say, While rock stands or water runs, Not a ship will leave the bay!" Then was called a council straight. Brief and bitter the debate: "Here's the English at our heels; would you have them take in tow All that's left us of the fleet, linked together stern and bow, For a prize to Plymouth Sound? Better run the ships aground!" (Ended Damfreville his speech.) Not a minute more to wait! "Let the Captains all and each Shove ashore, then blow up, burn the vessels on the beach! France must undergo her fate. "Give the word!" But no such word Was ever spoke or heard; For up stood, for out stepped, for in struck amid all these --A Captain? A Lieutenant? A Mate--first, second, third? No such man of mark, and meet With his betters to compete! But a simple Breton sailor pressed by Tourville for the fleet, A poor coasting-pilot he, Hervé Riel the Croisickese. And, "What mockery or malice have we here?" cries Hervé Riel: "Are you mad, you Malouins? Are you cowards, fools, or rogues? Talk to me of rocks and shoals, me who took the soundings, tell On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every swell 'Twixt the offing here and Grève where the river disembogues? Are you bought by English gold? Is it love the lying's for? Morn and eve, night and day, Have I piloted your bay, Entered free and anchored fast at foot of Solidor. "Burn the fleet and ruin France? That were worse than fitty Hogues! Sirs, they know I speak the truth! Sirs, believe me there's a way! Only let me lead the line, Have the biggest ship to steer, Get this _Formidable_ clear, Make the others follow mine, And I lead them, most and least, by a passage I know well, Right to Solidor past Grève, And there lay them safe and sound; And if one ship misbehave, --Keel so much as grate the ground, Why, I've nothing but my life,--here's my head!" cries Hervé Riel. Not a minute more to wait. "Steer us in, then, small and great! Take the helm, lead the line, save the squadron!" cried his chief. "Captains, give the sailor place! He is Admiral, in brief." Still the north-wind, by God's grace! See the noble fellow's face, As the big ship with a bound, Clears the entry like a hound, Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide seas profound! See, safe thro' shoal and rock, How they follow in a flock, Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the ground, Not a spar that comes to grief! The peril, see, is past, All are harboured to the last, And just as Hervé Riel hollas "Anchor!"--sure as fate Up the English come, too late! So, the storm subsides to calm: They see the green trees wave On the heights o'erlooking Grève. Hearts that bled are stanched with balm. "Just our rapture to enhance, Let the English rake the bay, Gnash their teeth and glare askance, As they cannonade away! 'Neath rampired Solidor pleasant riding on the Rance!" How hope succeeds despair on each Captain's countenance! Out burst all with one accord, "This is Paradise for Hell! Let France, let France's King Thank the man that did the thing!" What a shout, and all one word, "Hervé Riel!" As he stepped in front once more, Not a symptom of surprise In the frank blue Breton eyes, Just the same man as before. Then said Damfreville, "My friend, I must speak out at the end, Though I find the speaking hard. Praise is deeper than the lips: You have saved the King his ships, You must name your own reward. 'Faith our sun was near eclipse! Demand whate'er you will, France remains your debtor still. Ask to heart's content and have! or my name's not Damfreville." Then a beam of fun outbroke On the bearded mouth that spoke, As the honest heart laughed through Those frank eyes of Breton blue: "Since I needs must say my say, Since on board the duty's done, And from Malo Roads to Croisic Point, what is it but a run?-- Since 'tis ask and have, I may-- Since the others go ashore-- Come! A good whole holiday! Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the Belle Aurore!" That he asked and that he got,--nothing more. Name and deed alike are lost: Not a pillar nor a post In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell; Not a head in white and black On a single fishing smack, In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack All that France saved from the fight whence England bore the bell. Go to Paris: rank on rank Search the heroes flung pell-mell On the Louvre, face and flank! You shall look long enough ere you come to Hervé Riel. So, for better and for worse, Hervé Riel, accept my verse! In my verse, Hervé Riel, do thou once more Save the squadron, honour France, love thy wife, the Belle Aurore! ROBERT BROWNING. _Vision of Belshazzar._ The King was on his throne, The Satraps throng'd the hall: A thousand bright lamps shone O'er that high festival. A thousand cups of gold, In Judah deem'd divine-- Jehovah's vessels hold The godless Heathen's wine. In that same hour and hall, The fingers of a hand Came forth against the wall, And wrote as if on sand: The fingers of a man-- A solitary hand Along the letters ran, And traced them like a wand. The monarch saw, and shook, And bade no more rejoice; All bloodless wax'd his look, And tremulous his voice. "Let the men of lore appear, The wisest of the earth, And expound the words of fear, Which mar our royal mirth." Chaldea's seers are good, But here they have no skill; And the unknown letters stood Untold and awful still. And Babel's men of age Are wise and deep in lore; But now they were not sage, They saw--but knew no more. A captive in the land, A stranger and a youth, He heard the king's command, He saw that writing's truth. The lamps around were bright, The prophecy in view; He read it on that night-- The morrow proved it true. "Belshazzar's grave is made, His kingdom pass'd away, He, in the balance weigh'd, Is light and worthless clay; The shroud his robe of state, His canopy the stone; The Mede is at his gate! The Persian on his throne!" GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON. _Solomon and the Bees_ When Solomon was reigning in his glory, Unto his throne the Queen of Sheba came-- (So in the Talmud you may read the story)-- Drawn by the magic of the monarch's fame, To see the splendors of his court, and bring Some fitting tribute to the mighty King. Nor this alone: much had her highness heard What flowers of learning graced the royal speech; What gems of wisdom dropped with every word; What wholesome lessons he was wont to teach In pleasing proverbs; and she wished, in sooth, To know if Rumor spoke the simple truth. Besides, the Queen had heard (which piqued her most) How through the deepest riddles he could spy; How all the curious arts that women boast Were quite transparent to his piercing eye; And so the Queen had come--a royal guest-- To put the sage's cunning to the test. And straight she held before the monarch's view, In either hand, a radiant wreath of flowers; The one bedecked with every charming hue, Was newly culled from Nature's choicest bowers; The other, no less fair in every part, Was the rare product of divinest Art. "Which is the true, and which the false?" she said. Great Solomon was silent. All amazed, Each wondering courtier shook his puzzled head; While at the garlands long the monarch gazed, As one who sees a miracle, and fain For very rapture, ne'er would speak again. "Which is the true?" once more the woman asked, Pleased at the fond amazement of the King; "So wise a head should not be hardly tasked, Most learned Liege, with such a trivial thing!" But still the sage was silent; it was plain A deepening doubt perplexed the royal brain. While thus he pondered, presently he sees, Hard by the casement--so the story goes-- A little band of busy bustling bees, Hunting for honey in a withered rose. The monarch smiled, and raised his royal head; "Open the window!"--that was all he said. The window opened at the King's command; Within the rooms the eager insects flew, And sought the flowers in Sheba's dexter hand! And so the King and all the courtiers knew That wreath was Nature's; and the baffled Queen Returned to tell the wonders she had seen. My story teaches (every tale should bear A fitting moral) that the wise may find In trifles light as atoms of the air Some useful lesson to enrich the mind-- Some truth designed to profit or to please-- As Israel's King learned wisdom from the bees. JOHN G. SAXE. _The Burial of Moses_ "And He buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor: but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day."--Deut. xxxiv. 6. By Nebo's lonely mountain, On this side Jordan's wave, In a vale in the land of Moab There lies a lonely grave. And no man knows that sepulchre, And no man saw it e'er, For the angels of God upturn'd the sod, And laid the dead man there. That was the grandest funeral That ever passed on earth; But no man heard the trampling, Or saw the train go forth-- Noiselessly as the daylight Comes back when night is done, And the crimson streak on ocean's cheek Grows into the great sun; Noiselessly as the spring-time Her crown of verdure weaves, And all the trees on all the hills, Open their thousand leaves; So without sound of music, Or voice of them that wept, Silently down from the mountain's crown, The great procession swept. Perchance the bald old eagle, On grey Beth-peor's height, Out of his lonely eyrie Look'd on the wondrous sight; Perchance the lion stalking, Still shuns that hallow'd spot, For beast and bird have seen and heard That which man knoweth not. But when the warrior dieth, His comrades in the war, With arms reversed and muffled drum, Follow his funeral car; They show the banners taken, They tell his battles won, And after him lead his masterless steed While peals the minute gun. Amid the noblest of the land We lay the sage to rest, And give the bard an honour'd place With costly marble drest, In the great minster transept Where lights like glories fall (And the organ rings, and the sweet choir sings) Along the emblazon'd wall. This was the truest warrior That ever buckled sword; This the most gifted poet That ever breathed a word. And never earth's philosopher Traced with his golden pen On the deathless page truths half so sage As he wrote down for men. And had he not high honour, The hill-side for a pall, To lie in state, while angels wait With stars for tapers tall, And the dark rock-pines, like tossing plumes, Over his bier to wave, And God's own hand in that lonely land To lay him in the grave. In that strange grave without a name, Whence his uncoffin'd clay Shall break again, O wondrous thought! Before the Judgment Day, And stand with glory wrapt around On the hills he never trod, And speak of the strife, that won our life, With the Incarnate Son of God. O lonely grave in Moab's land! O dark Beth-peor's hill! Speak to these curious hearts of ours, And teach them to be still. God hath his mysteries of grace, Ways that we cannot tell, He hides them deep, like the hidden sleep Of him he loved so well. CECIL FRANCES ALEXANDER. INTERLEAVES _When Banners Are Waving_ Here are poems of Valor, Fortitude, Fearlessness, Courage. Give yourself up to the martial swing of the verse, with its clang of armor, its champing of war-steed, its sound of pibroch, its blare of trumpet, fife, and drum, its dancing of plumes and glitter of helmets. Pray Heaven that the fighting be all in a good cause and that the tramp, tramp of soldierly feet be that of the armies of Right, for there is no resisting this spirit of daring and bearing when it is voiced so nobly. _"When cannon are roaring, And hot bullets flying, He that would honor win Must not fear dying."_ Here are hymns in praise of famous battles that have changed the fate of nations; here, records of gallant deeds that make the blood leap in the veins. Into the Valley of Death rode the immortal Six Hundred, and into that same Valley plunged "furious Frank and fiery Hun," Scot, Turk, Greek, and the brave Huguenot charging at Ivry for the Golden Lilies of France. Here are the songs of triumph, the loud hurrahs when the red field is won; here tales of glorious defeats and no less splendid failures; here, too, the dirge for the storied Brave, who lie at rest by all their Country's wishes blest. The banners that once beckoned on the arméd hosts are hanging to-day in dim cathedrals, tattered, faded, and torn; high-hung banners that with every "opened door seem the old wave of battle to remember." And as for the heroes who carried them, can we not say, as of Marco Bozzaris, _"For ye are Freedom's now, and Fame's, Among the few, th' immortal names That were not born to die."_ XIV WHEN BANNERS ARE WAVING _When Banners Are Waving_ When banners are waving, And lances a-pushing; When captains are shouting, And war-horses rushing; When cannon are roaring, And hot bullets flying, He that would honour win, Must not fear dying. Though shafts fly so thick That it seems to be snowing; Though streamlets with blood More than water are flowing; Though with sabre and bullet Our bravest are dying, We speak of revenge, but We ne'er speak of flying. Come, stand to it, heroes! The heathen are coming; Horsemen are round the walls, Riding and running; Maidens and matrons all Arm! arm! are crying, From petards the wildfire's Flashing and flying. The trumpets from turrets high Loudly are braying; The steeds for the onset Are snorting and neighing; As waves in the ocean, The dark plumes are dancing; As stars in the blue sky, The helmets are glancing. Their ladders are planting, Their sabres are sweeping; Now swords from our sheaths By the thousand are leaping; Like the flash of the levin Ere men hearken thunder, Swords gleam, and the steel caps Are cloven asunder. The shouting has ceased, And the flashing of cannon! I looked from the turret For crescent and pennon: As flax touched by fire, As hail in the river, They were smote, they were fallen, And had melted for ever. UNKNOWN. _Battle of the Baltic_ Of Nelson and the north Sing the glorious day's renown, When to battle fierce came forth All the might of Denmark's crown, And her arms along the deep proudly shone; By each gun the lighted brand In a bold, determined hand, And the prince of all the land Led them on. Like leviathans afloat Lay their bulwarks on the brine; While the sign of battle flew On the lofty British line-- It was ten of April morn by the chime. As they drifted on their path There was silence deep as death; And the boldest held his breath For a time. But the might of England flushed To anticipate the scene; And her van the fleeter rushed O'er the deadly space between. "Hearts of oak!" our captain cried; when each gun From its adamantine lips Spread a death-shade round the ships, Like the hurricane eclipse Of the sun. Again! again! again! And the havoc did not slack, Till a feeble cheer the Dane To our cheering sent us back; Their shots along the deep slowly boom-- Then ceased--and all is wail, As they strike the shattered sail, Or in conflagration pale, Light the gloom. Out spoke the victor then, As he hailed them o'er the wave: "Ye are brothers! ye are men! And we conquer but to save; So peace instead of death let us bring; But yield, proud foe, thy fleet, With the crews, at England's feet, And make submission meet To our king." Then Denmark blessed our chief, That he gave her wounds repose; And the sounds of joy and grief From her people wildly rose, As death withdrew his shades from the day. While the sun looked smiling bright O'er a wide and woeful sight, Where the fires of funeral light Died away. Now joy, old England, raise! For the tidings of thy might, By the festal cities' blaze, Whilst the wine-cup shines in light; And yet, amidst that joy and uproar, Let us think of them that sleep Full many a fathom deep, By thy wild and stormy steep, Elsinore! Brave hearts! to Britain's pride Once so faithful and so true, On the deck of fame that died, With the gallant, good Riou-- Soft sigh the winds of heaven o'er their grave! While the billow mournful rolls, And the mermaid's song condoles, Singing glory to the souls Of the brave! THOMAS CAMPBELL. _The Pipes at Lucknow_ Pipes of the misty moorlands, Voice of the glens and hills; The droning of the torrents, The treble of the rills! Not the braes of broom and heather, Nor the mountains dark with rain, Nor maiden bower, nor border tower, Have heard your sweetest strain! Dear to the Lowland reaper, And plaided mountaineer,-- To the cottage and the castle The Scottish pipes are dear;-- Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch O'er mountain, loch, and glade; But the sweetest of all music The pipes at Lucknow played. Day by day the Indian tiger Louder yelled, and nearer crept; Round and round, the jungle-serpent Near and nearer circles swept. "Pray for rescue, wives and mothers,-- Pray to-day!" the soldier said, "To-morrow, death's between us And the wrong and shame we dread." Oh, they listened, looked, and waited, Till their hope became despair; And the sobs of low bewailing Filled the pauses of their prayer. Then up spake a Scottish maiden, With her ear unto the ground: "Dinna ye hear it?--dinna ye hear it? The pipes o' Havelock sound!" Hushed the wounded man his groaning; Hushed the wife her little ones; Alone they heard the drum-roll And the roar of Sepoy guns. But to sounds of home and childhood The Highland ear was true;-- As her mother's cradle crooning The mountain pipes she knew. Like the march of soundless music Through the vision of the seer, More of feeling than of hearing, Of the heart than of the ear, She knew the droning pibroch, She knew the Campbell's call: "Hark! hear ye no' MacGregor's, The grandest o' them all!" O, they listened, dumb and breathless, And they caught the sound at last; Faint and far beyond the Goomtee Rose and fell the piper's blast! Then a burst of wild thanksgiving Mingled woman's voice and man's; "God be praised!--the march of Havelock! The piping of the clans!" Louder, nearer, fierce as vengeance, Sharp and shrill as swords at strife, Came the wild MacGregor's clan-call, Stinging all the air to life. But when the far-off dust cloud To plaided legions grew, Full tenderly and blithesomely The pipes of rescue blew! Round the silver domes of Lucknow, Moslem mosque and Pagan shrine, Breathed the air to Britons dearest, The air of Auld Lang Syne. O'er the cruel roll of war drums Rose that sweet and homelike strain; And the tartan clove the turban As the Goomtee cleaves the plain. Dear to the corn-land reaper And plaided mountaineer,-- To the cottage and the castle The piper's song is dear. Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibroch O'er mountain, glen, and glade; But the sweetest of all music The pipes at Lucknow played! JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. _The Battle of Agincourt_ Fair stood the wind for France, When we our sails advance, Nor now to prove our chance Longer will tarry; But putting to the main, At Caux, the mouth of Seine, With all his martial train, Landed King Harry. And taking many a fort, Furnished in warlike sort, Marched towards Agincourt In happy hour-- Skirmishing day by day With those that stopped his way, Where the French general lay With all his power. Which in his height of pride, King Henry to deride, His ransom to provide To the king sending. Which he neglects the while, As from a nation vile, Yet with an angry smile Their fall portending. And turning to his men, Quoth our brave Henry then, "Though they be one to ten, Be not amazèd; Yet have we well begun, Battles so bravely won Have ever to the sun By fame been raisèd. "And for myself," quoth he, "This my full rest shall be, England ne'er mourn for me, Nor more esteem me. Victor I will remain, Or on this earth lie slain, Never shall she sustain Loss to redeem me." Poitiers and Cressy tell, When most their pride did swell, Under our swords they fell; No less our skill is Than when our grandsire great, Claiming the regal seat, By many a warlike feat Lopped the French lilies. The Duke of York so dread The eager vaward led; With the main Henry sped, Amongst his henchmen. Excester had the rear-- A braver man not there: O Lord! how hot they were On the false Frenchmen! They now to fight are gone; Armor on armor shone; Drum now to drum did groan-- To hear was wonder; That with the cries they make The very earth did shake; Trumpet to trumpet spake, Thunder to thunder. Well it thine age became, O noble Erpingham! Which did the signal aim To our hid forces; When, from a meadow by, Like a storm suddenly, The English archery Struck the French horses, With Spanish yew so strong, Arrows a cloth-yard long, That like to serpents stung, Piercing the weather; None from his fellow starts, But playing manly parts, And like true English hearts, Stuck close together. When down their bows they threw, And forth their bilboes drew, And on the French they flew, Not one was tardy; Arms were from shoulders sent, Scalps to the teeth were rent, Down the French peasants went, Our men were hardy. This while our noble King, His broad sword brandishing, Down the French host did ding, As to o'erwhelm it; And many a deep wound lent, His arms with blood besprent, And many a cruel dent Bruisèd his helmet. Gloucester, that duke so good, Next of the royal blood, For famous England stood, With his brave brother, Clarence, in steel so bright, Though but a maiden knight, Yet in that furious fight Scarce such another. Warwick in blood did wade; Oxford the foe invade, And cruel slaughter made, Still as they ran up. Suffolk his axe did ply; Beaumont and Willoughby Bare them right doughtily, Ferrers and Fanhope. Upon Saint Crispin's Day Fought was this noble fray, Which fame did not delay To England to carry; Oh, when shall Englishmen With such acts fill a pen, Or England breed again Such a King Harry? MICHAEL DRAYTON. _The Battle of Blenheim_ It was a summer's evening, Old Kaspar's work was done, And he before his cottage door Was sitting in the sun; And by him sported on the green His little grandchild Wilhelmine. She saw her brother Peterkin Roll something large and round, Which he, beside the rivulet, In playing there, had found. He came to ask what he had found, That was so large, and smooth, and round. Old Kaspar took it from the boy, Who stood expectant by; And then the old man shook his head, And, with a natural sigh, "'Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he, "Who fell in the great victory!" "I find them in the garden, For there's many here about; And often when I go to plough, The ploughshare turns them out; For many thousand men," said he, "Were slain in that great victory!" "Now tell us what 'twas all about," Young Peterkin he cries; And little Wilhelmine looks up With wonder-waiting eyes; "Now tell us all about the war, And what they kill each other for." "It was the English," Kaspar cried, "Who put the French to rout; But what they killed each other for I could not well make out. But everybody said," quoth he, "That 'twas a famous victory! "My father lived at Blenheim then, Yon little stream hard by: They burned his dwelling to the ground, And he was forced to fly; So with his wife and child he fled, Nor had he where to rest his head. "With fire and sword the country round Was wasted far and wide; And many a childing mother then And new-born baby died. But things like that, you know, must be At every famous victory. "They say it was a shocking sight After the field was won; For many thousand bodies here Lay rotting in the sun. But things like that, you know, must be After a famous victory. "Great praise the Duke of Marlborough won, And our good Prince Eugene." "Why, 'twas a very wicked thing!" Said little Wilhelmine. "Nay, nay, my little girl," quoth he, "It was a famous victory! "And everybody praised the Duke Who this great fight did win." "But what good came of it at last?" Quoth little Peterkin. "Why that I cannot tell," said he, "But 'twas a famous victory." ROBERT SOUTHEY. _The Armada: A Fragment_ Attend, all ye who list to hear our noble England's praise; I sing of the thrice famous deeds she wrought in ancient days, When that great fleet invincible against her bore, in vain The richest spoils of Mexico, the stoutest hearts in Spain. It was about the lovely close of a warm summer's day, There came a gallant merchant-ship full sail to Plymouth Bay; The crew had seen Castile's black fleet, beyond Aurigny's isle, At earliest twilight, on the waves lie heaving many a mile. At sunrise she escaped their van, by God's especial grace; And the tall Pinta, till the noon, had held her close in chase. Forthwith a guard at every gun was placed along the wall; The beacon blazed upon the roof of Edgecumbe's lofty hall; Many a light fishing-bark put out to pry along the coast; And with loose rein and bloody spur rode inland many a post. With his white hair unbonneted, the stout old sheriff comes; Behind him march the halberdiers; before him sound the drums: The yeoman round the market cross make clear an ample space; For there behooves him to set up the standard of Her Grace: And haughtily the trumpets peal, and gaily dance the bells, As slow upon the laboring wind the royal blazon swells. Look how the Lion of the sea lifts up his ancient crown, And underneath his deadly paw treads the gay lilies down. So stalked he when he turned to flight, on that famed Picard field, Bohemia's plume, and Genoa's bow, and Cæsar's eagle shield. So glared he when at Agincourt in wrath he turned to bay, And crushed and torn beneath his claws the princely hunters lay. Ho! strike the flagstaff deep, Sir Knight: ho! scatter flowers, fair maids: Ho! gunners, fire a loud salute: ho! gallants, draw your blades: Thou sun, shine on her joyously; ye breezes, waft her wide; Our glorious _Semper Eadem_, the banner of our pride. The freshening breeze of eve unfurled that banner's massy fold; The parting gleam of sunshine kissed that haughty scroll of gold; Night sank upon the dusky beach, and on the purple sea, Such night in England ne'er had been, nor e'er again shall be. From Eddystone to Berwick bounds, from Lynn to Milford Bay, That time of slumber was as bright and busy as the day; For swift to east and swift to west the ghastly war-flame spread, High on St. Michael's Mount it shone: it shone on Beachy Head. Far o'er the deep the Spaniard saw, along each southern shire, Cape beyond cape, in endless range those twinkling points of fire. The fisher left his skiff to rock on Tamar's glittering waves: The rugged miners poured to war from Mendip's sunless caves: O'er Longleat's towers, o'er Cranbourne's oaks, the fiery herald flew: He roused the shepherds of Stonehenge, the rangers of Beaulieu. Right sharp and quick the bells all night rang out from Bristol town, And ere the day three hundred horse had met on Clifton Down; The sentinel on Whitehall gate looked forth into the night, And saw o'erhanging Richmond Hill, that streak of blood-red light: Then bugle's note and cannon's roar the death-like silence broke, And with one start, and with one cry, the royal city woke. At once on all her stately gates arose the answering fires; At once the wild alarum clashed from all her reeling spires; From all the batteries of the Tower pealed loud the voice of fear; And all the thousand masts of Thames sent back a louder cheer: And from the furthest wards was heard the rush of hurrying feet, And the broad streams of pikes and flags rushed down each roaring street; And broader still became the blaze, and louder still the din, As fast from every village round the horse came spurring in; And eastward straight from wild Blackheath the warlike errand went, And roused in many an ancient hall the gallant squires of Kent: Southward from Surrey's pleasant hills flew those bright couriers forth; High on bleak Hampstead's swarthy moor they started for the north; And on, and on, without a pause, untired they bounded still; All night from tower to tower they sprang; they sprang from hill to hill; Till the proud Peak unfurled the flag o'er Darwin's rocky dales; Till like volcanoes flared to heaven the stormy hills of Wales; Till twelve fair counties saw the blaze on Malvern's lonely height; Till streamed in crimson on the wind the Wrekin's crest of light; Till broad and fierce the star came forth, on Ely's stately fane, And tower and hamlet rose in arms o'er all the boundless plain; Till Belvoir's lordly terraces the sign to Lincoln sent, And Lincoln sped the message on o'er the wide vale of Trent: Till Skiddaw saw the fire that burned on Gaunt's embattled pile, And the red glare on Skiddaw roused the burghers of Carlisle. THOMAS BABINGTON, LORD MACAULEY. _Ivry_ A Song of the Huguenots. Now glory to the Lord of hosts, from whom all glories are! And glory to our Sovereign Liege, King Henry of Navarre! Now let there be the merry sound of music and of dance, Through thy corn-fields green, and sunny vines, oh pleasant land of France! And thou, Rochelle, our own Rochelle, proud city of the waters, Again let rapture light the eyes of all thy mourning daughters. As thou wert constant in our ills, be joyous in our joy, For cold, and stiff, and still are they who wrought thy walls annoy. Hurrah! Hurrah! a single field hath turned the chance of war, Hurrah! Hurrah! for Ivry, and Henry of Navarre. Oh! how our hearts were beating, when at the dawn of day We saw the army of the League drawn out in long array; With all its priest-led citizens, and all its rebel peers, And Appenzel's stout infantry, and Egmont's Flemish spears. There rode the brood of false Lorraine, the curses of our land; And dark Mayenne was in the midst, a truncheon in his hand: And, as we looked on them, we thought of Seine's empurpled flood, And good Coligni's hoary hair all dabbled with his blood; And we cried unto the living God, who rules the fate of war, To fight for His own holy name, and Henry of Navarre. The King is come to marshal us, in all his armor drest; And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant crest. He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye; He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern and high. Right graciously he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing, Down all our line, a deafening shout, "God save our Lord the King!" "And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may-- For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray-- Press where ye see my white plume shine, amidst the ranks of war, And be your oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre." Hurrah! the foes are moving. Hark to the mingled din Of fife, and steed, and trump, and drum, and roaring culverin. The fiery Duke is pricking fast across Saint André's plain, With all the hireling chivalry of Guelders and Almayne. Now by the lips of those ye love, fair gentlemen of France, Charge for the Golden Lilies--upon them with the lance! A thousand spurs are striking deep, a thousand spears in rest, A thousand knights are pressing close behind the snow-white crest; And in they burst, and on they rushed, while, like a guiding star, Amidst the thickest carnage blazed the helmet of Navarre. Now, God be praised, the day is ours! Mayenne hath turned his rein; D'Aumale hath cried for quarter; the Flemish Count is slain; Their ranks are breaking like thin clouds before a Biscay gale; The field is heaped with bleeding steeds, and flags, and cloven mail. And then, we thought on vengeance, and, all along our van, "Remember St. Bartholomew!" was passed from man to man; But out spake gentle Henry--"No Frenchman is my foe: Down, down with every foreigner, but let your brethren go." Oh! was there ever such a knight, in friendship or in war, As our Sovereign Lord King Henry, the soldier of Navarre! Right well fought all the Frenchmen who fought for France to-day; And many a lordly banner God gave them for a prey. But we of the religion have borne us best in fight; And the good lord of Rosny hath ta'en the cornet white-- Our own true Maximilian the cornet white hath ta'en, The cornet white with crosses black, the flag of false Lorraine. Up with it high; unfurl it wide--that all the host may know How God hath humbled the proud house which wrought His Church such woe. Then on the ground, while trumpets sound their loudest point of war, Fling the red shreds, a footcloth meet for Henry of Navarre. Ho! maidens of Vienna; ho! matrons of Lucerne, Weep, weep, and rend your hair for those who never shall return. Ho! Philip, send, for charity, thy Mexican pistoles, That Antwerp monks may sing a mass for thy poor spearmen's souls. Ho! gallant nobles of the League, look that your arms be bright; Ho! burghers of Saint Genevieve, keep watch and ward to-night; For our God hath crushed the tyrant, our God hath raised the slave, And mocked the counsel of the wise, and the valor of the brave. Then glory to His holy name, from whom all glories are; And glory to our Sovereign Lord, King Henry of Navarre! THOMAS BABINGTON, LORD MACAULAY. _On the Loss of the Royal George_ Written when the News Arrived, September, 1782. Toll for the brave! The brave that are no more! All sunk beneath the wave, Fast by their native shore! Eight hundred of the brave, Whose courage well was tried, Had made the vessel heel, And laid her on her side. A land breeze shook the shrouds, And she was overset; Down went the Royal George, With all her crew complete. Toll for the brave! Brave Kempenfelt is gone; His last sea-fight is fought; His work of glory done. It was not in the battle; No tempest gave the shock; She sprang no fatal leak; She ran upon no rock. His sword was in its sheath; His fingers held the pen, When Kempenfelt went down, With twice four hundred men. Weigh the vessel up, Once dreaded by our foes! And mingle with our cup The tear that England owes. Her timbers yet are sound, And she may float again, Full charged with England's thunder, And plough the distant main. But Kempenfelt is gone, His victories are o'er, And he and his eight hundred Must plough the waves no more. WILLIAM COWPER. _The Charge of the Light Brigade_ Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death, Rode the six hundred. "Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!" he said: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. "Forward, the Light Brigade!" Was there a man dismayed? Not though the soldier knew Some one had blundered; Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die;-- Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them Volleyed and thundered; Stormed at with shot and shell, Boldly they rode and well; Into the jaws of Death, Into the mouth of Hell Rode the six hundred. Flashed all their sabres bare, Flashed as they turned in air, Sabring the gunners there, Charging an army, while All the world wondered: Plunged in the battery smoke, Right through the line they broke; Cossack and Russian Reeled from the sabre-stroke Shattered and sundered. Then they rode back, but not-- Not the six hundred. Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon behind them Volleyed and thundered. Stormed at with shot and shell, While horse and hero fell, Those that had fought so well Came through the jaws of Death, Back from the mouth of Hell, All that was left of them, Left of six hundred. When can their glory fade? Oh, the wild charge they made! All the world wondered. Honor the charge they made! Honor the Light Brigade! Noble six hundred! ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON. _Bannockburn_ Robert Bruce's Address to his Army. Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled, Scots, wham Bruce has aften led, Welcome to your gory bed Or to victorie! Now's the day, and now's the hour; See the front o' battle lower; See approach proud Edward's power-- Chains and slaverie! Wha will be a traitor knave? Wha can fill a coward's grave? Wha sae base as be a slave? Let him turn and flee! Wha for Scotland's king and law Freedom's sword will strongly draw, Freeman stand, or freeman fa', Let him follow me! By oppression's woes and pains! By your sons in servile chains! We will drain our dearest veins, But they shall be free! Lay the proud usurpers low! Tyrants fall in every foe! Liberty's in every blow!-- Let us do or die! ROBERT BURNS. _The Night Before Waterloo_ There was a sound of revelry by night. And Belgium's capital had gather'd then Her Beauty and her Chivalry, and bright The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men; A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a marriage bell; But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell! Did ye not hear it?--No; 'twas but the wind, Or the car rattling o'er the stony street; On with the dance! let joy be unconfined; No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet. But hark! that heavy sound breaks in once more, As if the clouds its echo would repeat; And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before! Arm! arm! it is--it is--the cannon's opening roar! * * * * Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro, And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress, And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago Blush'd at the praise of their own loveliness; And there were sudden partings, such as press The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs Which ne'er might be repeated: who could guess If ever more should meet those mutual eyes, Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise! And there was mounting in hot haste: the steed, The mustering squadron, and the clattering car, Went pouring forward with impetuous speed, And swiftly forming in the ranks of war; And the deep thunder peal on peal afar; And near, the beat of the alarming drum Roused up the soldier ere the morning star; While throng'd the citizens with terror dumb, Or whispering with white lips--"The foe! They come! they come!" Last noon beheld them full of lusty life, Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay, The midnight brought the signal-sound of strife, The morn the marshalling in arms--the day Battle's magnificently stern array! The thunder-clouds close o'er it, which when rent The earth is cover'd thick with other clay, Which her own clay shall cover, heap'd and pent, Rider and horse--friend, foe,--in one red burial blent! GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON. _From "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage."_ _Hohenlinden_ On Linden when the sun was low, All bloodless lay the untrodden snow, And dark as winter was the flow Of Iser, rolling rapidly. But Linden saw another sight When the drum beat, at dead of night, Commanding fires of death to light The darkness of her scenery. By torch and trumpet fast array'd Each horseman drew his battle-blade, And furious every charger neigh'd, To join the dreadful revelry. Then shook the hills with thunder riven, Then rush'd the steed to battle driven, And louder than the bolts of heaven Far flash'd the red artillery. But redder yet that light shall glow On Linden's hills of stainéd snow, And darker yet shall be the flow Of Iser, rolling rapidly. 'Tis morn, but scarce yon lurid sun Can pierce the war-clouds, rolling dun, Where furious Frank and fiery Hun Shout in their sulphurous canopy. The combat deepens. On, ye Brave, Who rush to glory, or the grave! Wave, Munich, all thy banners wave! And charge with all thy chivalry! Few, few, shall part where many meet! The snow shall be their winding-sheet, And every turf beneath their feet Shall be a soldier's sepulchre. THOMAS CAMPBELL. _Incident of the French Camp_ You know we French stormed Ratisbon: A mile or so away, On a little mound, Napoleon Stood on our storming day; With neck out-thrust, you fancy how, Legs wide, arms locked behind, As if to balance the prone brow Oppressive with its mind. Just as perhaps he mused, "My plans That soar, to earth may fall Let once my army-leader Lannes Waver at yonder wall,"-- Out 'twixt the battery-smokes there flew A rider, bound on bound Full-galloping; nor bridle drew Until he reached the mound. Then off there flung in smiling joy, And held himself erect By just his horse's mane, a boy: You hardly could suspect-- (So tight he kept his lips compressed, Scarce any blood came through,) You looked twice e'er you saw his breast, Was all but shot in two. "Well," cried he, "Emperor, by God's grace We've got you Ratisbon! The marshal's in the market-place, And you'll be there anon To see your flag-bird flap his vans Where I, to heart's desire, Perched him." The chief's eye flashed; his plans Soared up again like fire. The chief's eye flashed; but presently Softened itself, as sheathes A film the mother eagle's eye When her bruised eaglet breathes: "You're wounded!" "Nay," his soldier's pride Touched to the quick, he said; "I'm killed, sire!" And, his chief beside, Smiling, the boy fell dead. ROBERT BROWNING. _Marco Bozzaris_ At midnight, in his guarded tent, The Turk was dreaming of the hour When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent, Should tremble at his power; In dreams, through camp and court he bore The trophies of a conqueror; In dreams, his song of triumph heard; Then wore his monarch's signet-ring; Then press'd that monarch's throne--a king: As wild his thoughts, as gay of wing, As Eden's garden bird. At midnight in the forest shades, Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band, True as the steel of their tried blades, Heroes in heart and hand. There had the Persian's thousands stood, There had the glad earth drunk their blood, On old Platæa's day; And now there breathed that haunted air The sons of sires who conquer'd there, With arm to strike, and soul to dare, As quick, as far, as they. An hour pass'd on: the Turk awoke: That bright dream was his last. He woke to hear his sentries shriek, "To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!" He woke, to die 'midst flame and smoke, And shout, and groan, and sabre-stroke, And death-shots falling thick and fast As lightnings from the mountain cloud, And heard, with voice as trumpet loud, Bozzaris cheer his band: "Strike!--till the last arm'd foe expires; Strike!--for your altars and your fires; Strike!--for the green graves of your sires; God, and your native land!" They fought like brave men, long and well; They piled that ground with Moslem slain; They conquer'd;--but Bozzaris fell, Bleeding at every vein. His few surviving comrades saw His smile when rang their loud hurrah, And the red field was won; Then saw in death his eyelids close, Calmly as to a night's repose,-- Like flowers at set of sun. * * * * Bozzaris! with the storied brave Greece nurtured in her glory's time, Rest thee: there is no prouder grave, Even in her own proud clime. She wore no funeral weeds for thee, Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume, Like torn branch from death's leafless tree, In sorrow's pomp and pageantry, The heartless luxury of the tomb; But she remembers thee as one Long loved, and for a season gone; For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed; Her marble wrought, her music breathed; For thee she rings the birthday bells; Of thee her babes' first lisping tells; For thee her evening prayer is said At palace-couch and cottage-bed; Her soldier, closing with the foe, Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow; His plighted maiden, when she fears For him, the joy of her young years, Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears; And she, the mother of thy boys, Though in her eye and faded cheek Is read the grief she will not speak, The memory of her buried joys,-- And even she who gave thee birth Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth, Talk of thy doom without a sigh; For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's, One of the few, th' immortal names That were not born to die. FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. _The Destruction of Sennacherib_ The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green, That host with their banners at sunset were seen: Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown, That host on the morrow lay wither'd and strown. For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass'd; And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still! And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide, But through it there roll'd not the breath of his pride; And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf, And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf. And there lay the rider distorted and pale, With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail; And the tents were all silent, the banners alone, The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown. And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail, And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal! And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord! GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON. INTERLEAVES _Tales of the Olden Time_ These ancient ballads have come down to us from the long ago, having been told, like the old nursery tales, from generation to generation, altered, abbreviated, patched, and added to, as they passed from mouth to mouth of poet, high harper, gleeman, wandering minstrel, ballad-monger, and camp-follower. Some of them were repeated by the humble stroller who paid for a corner in the chimney-nook by the practice of his rude art; others were sung by minstrels of the court; most of them were chanted to a tune which served for a score of similar songs, while the verses were frequently interrupted by refrains of one sort or another, as, for instance, in "Hynde Horn," which is sometimes printed as follows: "Near the King's Court was a young child born _With a hey lillalu and a how lo lan;_ And his name it was called Young Hynde Horn _And the birk and the broom blooms bonnie."_ Many of the ballads are gloomy and tragic stories, but told simply and with right feeling; others are gay tales of true love ending happily. Some, like "Sir Patrick Spens" and "Chevy Chace," are built upon historical foundations, and others, while not following history, have a real personage for hero or heroine. Lord Beichan, for instance, is supposed to be Gilbert Becket, father of the famous Saint Thomas of Canterbury, while Glenlogie is Sir George, one of the "gay Gordons," but whoever they are, wise abbots, jolly friars, or noble outlaws, they are always bold fellows, true lovers, and merry men. Inconsequent, fascinating, high-handed, impossible, picturesque, these old ballads have come to us from the childhood of the world, and still speak to the child-heart in us all. XV TALES OF THE OLDEN TIME _Sir Patrick Spens_ The king sits in Dunfermline town, Drinking the blude-red wine; "O whare will I get a skeely skipper, To sail this new ship o' mine!" O up and spake an eldern knight, Sat at the king's right knee,-- "Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor, That ever sail'd the sea." The king has written a braid letter, And seal'd it with his hand, And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens, Was walking on the strand. "To Noroway, to Noroway, To Noroway o'er the faem; The king's daughter of Noroway, 'Tis thou maun bring her hame." The first word that Sir Patrick read, Sae loud, loud laughèd he; The neist word that Sir Patrick read, The tear blinded his e'e. "O wha is this has done this deed, And tauld the king o' me, To send us out, at this time of the year, To sail upon the sea? Be it wind, be it weet, be it hail, be it sleet, Our ship must sail the faem; The king's daughter of Noroway, 'Tis we must fetch her hame." They hoysed their sails on Monenday morn, Wi' a' the speed they may; They hae landed in Noroway, Upon a Wodensday. They hadna been a week, a week, In Noroway, but twae, When that the lords o' Noroway Began aloud to say,-- "Ye Scottishmen spend a' our king's goud, And a' our queenis fee." "Ye lee, ye lee, ye liars loud! Fu' loud I hear ye lee. "For I brought as much white monie, As gane my men and me, And I brought a half-fou o' gude red goud, Out o'er the sea wi' me. "Mak' ready, mak' ready, my merry men a'! Our gude ship sails the morn." "Now, ever alake, my master dear, I fear a deadly storm! "I saw the new moon, late yestreen, Wi' the auld moon in her arm; And, if we gang to sea, master, I fear we'll come to harm." They had not sailed a league, a league, A league but barely three, When the lift grew dark, and the wind blew loud, And gurly grew the sea. The ankers brak, and the topmasts lap, It was sic a deadly storm; And the waves cam o'er the broken ship, Till a' her sides were torn. "O where will I get a gude sailor, To tak' my helm in hand, Till I get up to the tall top-mast, To see if I can spy land?" "O here am I, a sailor gude, To take the helm in hand, Till you go up to the tall top-mast; But I fear you'll ne'er spy land." He hadna gane a step, a step, A step but barely ane, When a bout flew out o' our goodly ship, And the salt sea it came in. "Gae, fetch a web o' the silken claith, Anither o' the twine, And wap them into our ship's side, And letna the sea come in." They fetched a web o' the silken claith, Anither of the twine, And wapped them round that gude ship's side, But still the sea cam' in. O laith, laith were our gude Scots lords To weet their cork-heel'd shoon! But lang or a' the play was play'd, They wat their hats aboon. And mony was the feather-bed, That floated o'er the faem; And mony was the gude lord's son, That never mair came hame. The ladyes wrang their fingers white, The maidens tore their hair, A' for the sake of their true loves; For them they'll see na mair. O lang, lang, may the ladyes sit, Wi' their fans into their hand, Before they see Sir Patrick Spens Come sailing to the strand! And lang, lang, may the maidens sit, Wi' their goud kaims in their hair, A' waiting for their ain dear loves! For them they'll see na mair. Half ower, half ower to Aberdour, It's fifty fathoms deep, And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens, Wi' the Scots lords at his feet. OLD BALLAD. _The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington_ There was a youthe, and a well-beloved youthe, And he was a squire's son; He loved the bayliffe's daughter deare, That lived in Islington. Yet she was coye, and would not believe That he did love her soe, Noe nor at any time would she Any countenance to him showe. But when his friendes did understand His fond and foolish minde, They sent him up to faire London, An apprentice for to binde. And when he had been seven long yeares, And never his love could see,-- "Many a teare have I shed for her sake, When she little thought of mee." Then all the maids of Islington Went forth to sport and playe, All but the bayliffe's daughter deare; She secretly stole awaye. She pulled off her gowne of greene, And put on ragged attire, And to faire London she would go Her true love to enquire. And as she went along the high road, The weather being hot and drye, She sat her downe upon a green bank, And her true love came riding bye. She started up, with a colour soe redd, Catching hold of his bridle-reine; "One penny, one penny, kind sir," she sayd, "Will ease me of much paine." "Before I give you one penny, sweet-heart, Praye tell me where you were borne." "At Islington, kind sir," sayd shee, "Where I have had many a scorne." "I prythee, sweet-heart, then tell to mee, O tell me, whether you knowe The bayliffe's daughter of Islington." "She is dead, sir, long agoe." "If she be dead, then take my horse, My saddle and bridle also; For I will into some farr countrye, Where noe man shall me knowe." "O staye, O staye, thou goodlye youthe, She standeth by thy side; She is here alive, she is not dead, And readye to be thy bride." "O farewell griefe, and welcome joye, Ten thousand times therefore; For nowe I have founde mine owne true love, Whom I thought I should never see more." OLD BALLAD. _King John and the Abbot of Canterbury_ An ancient story I'll tell you anon Of a notable prince, that was called King John; And he ruled England with main and with might, For he did great wrong and maintained little right. And I'll tell you a story, a story so merry, Concerning the Abbot of Canterbury; How for his housekeeping and high renown, They rode post for him to fair London town. An hundred men, the King did hear say, The Abbot kept in his house every day; And fifty gold chains, without any doubt, In velvet coats waited the Abbot about. "How now, Father Abbot, I hear it of thee, Thou keepest a far better house than me; And for thy housekeeping and high renown, I fear thou work'st treason against my crown." "My liege," quo' the Abbot, "I would it were knowne, I never spend nothing but what is my owne; And I trust your Grace will not put me in fear, For spending of my owne true-gotten gear." "Yes, yes, Father Abbot, thy fault is highe, And now for the same thou needst must dye; For except thou canst answer me questions three, Thy head shall be smitten from thy bodìe. "And first," quo' the King, "when I'm in this stead, With my crowne of golde so faire on my head, Among all my liege-men, so noble of birthe, Thou must tell to one penny what I am worthe. "Secondlye, tell me, without any doubt, How soone I may ride the whole world about, And at the third question thou must not shrink, But tell me here truly what I do think." "Oh, these are hard questions for my shallow witt, Nor I cannot answer your Grace as yet; But if you will give me but three weekes space, Ile do my endeavour to answer your Grace." "Now three weeks' space to thee will I give, And that is the longest time thou hast to live; For if thou dost not answer my questions three, Thy land and thy livings are forfeit to me." Away rode the Abbot all sad at that word, And he rode to Cambridge and Oxenford; But never a doctor there was so wise, That could with his learning an answer devise. Then home rode the Abbot of comfort so cold, And he met his Shepherd a-going to fold: "How now, my Lord Abbot, you are welcome home; What news do you bring us from good King John?" "Sad news, sad news, Shepherd, I must give, That I have but three days more to live; I must answer the King his questions three, Or my head will be smitten from my bodie. "The first is to tell him, there in that stead, With his crown of gold so fair on his head, Among all his liegemen so noble of birth, To within one penny of what he is worth. "The seconde, to tell him, without any doubt, How soone he may ride this whole world about: And at the third question I must not shrinke, But tell him there truly what he does thinke." "Now cheare up, Sire Abbot, did you never hear yet, That a fool he may learne a wise man witt? Lend me horse, and serving-men, and your apparel, And I'll ride to London to answere your quarrel. "Nay frowne not, if it hath bin told unto mee, I am like your Lordship, as ever may bee: And if you will but lend me your gowne, There is none shall knowe us in fair London towne." "Now horses and serving-men thou shalt have, With sumptuous array most gallant and brave; With crozier, and mitre, and rochet, and cope, Fit to appear 'fore our Father the Pope." "Now welcome, Sire Abbot," the king he did say, "'Tis well thou'rt come back to keepe thy day; For and if thou canst answer my questions three, Thy life and thy living both saved shall bee. "And first, when thou seest me, here in this stead, With my crown of golde so fair on my head, Among all my liege-men so noble of birthe, Tell me to one penny what I am worth." "For thirty pence our Saviour was sold Among the false Jewes, as I have bin told: And twenty-nine is the worth of thee, For I thinke, thou art one penny worse than he." The King he laughed, and swore by St. Bittel, "I did not think I had been worth so little! Now secondly tell me, without any doubt, How soon I may ride this whole world about." "You must rise with the sun, and ride with the same, Until the next morning he riseth again; And then your Grace need not make any doubt But in twenty-four hours you'll ride it about." The King he laughed, and swore by St. Jone, "I did not think it could be gone so soon. Now from the third question thou must not shrink, But tell me here truly what do I think." "Yea, that I shall do and make your Grace merry; You think I'm the Abbot of Canterbury; But I'm his poor shepherd, as plain you may see, That am come to beg pardon for him and for me." The King he laughed, and swore by the mass, "I'll make thee Lord Abbot this day in his place!" "Nay, nay, my Liege, be not in such speed, For alack, I can neither write nor read." "Four nobles a week, then, I will give thee, For this merry jest thou hast shown unto me; And tell the old Abbot, when thou gettest home, Thou hast brought him a pardon from good King John." OLD BALLAD. _Lord Beichan and Susie Pye_ Lord Beichan was a noble lord, A noble lord of high degree; But he was ta'en by a savage Moor, Who treated him right cruellie. In ilka shoulder was put a bore, In ilka bore was put a tree; And heavy loads they made him draw, Till he was sick, and like to dee. Then he was cast in a dungeon deep, Where he cou'd neither hear nor see; And seven long years they kept him there, Both cold and hunger sore to dree. The Moor he had an only daughter, The damsel's name was Susie Pye; And ilka day as she took the air, Lord Beichan's prison she pass'd by. Young Susie Pye had a tender heart, Tho' she was come of a cruel kin; And sore she sigh'd, she knew not why, For him who lay that dungeon in. "Oh, were I but the prison keeper, As I'm a lady of high degree, I soon wou'd set this youth at large, And send him to his own countrie." She gave the keeper a piece of gold, And many pieces of white monie, To unlock to her the prison doors, That she Lord Beichan might go see. Lord Beichan he did marvel sore, The Moor's fair daughter there to see; But took her for some captive maid, Brought from some land in Christendie. For when she saw his wretched plight, Her tears fell fast and bitterlie; And thus the Moor's fair daughter spake Unto Lord Beichan tenderlie: "Oh, have ye any lands," she said, "Or castles in your own countrie, That ye cou'd give to a lady fair, From prison strong to set you free?" "Oh, I have lands both fair and braid, And I have castles fair to see; But I wou'd give them all," he said, "From prison strong to be set free." "Plight me the truth of your right hand, The truth of it here plight to me, That till seven years are past and gone, No lady ye will wed but me." "For seven long years I do make a vow, And seven long years I'll keep it true, If you wed with no other man, No other lady I'll wed but you." Then she has bribed the prison-keeper, With store of gold and white monie, To loose the chain that bound him so, And set Lord Beichan once more free. A ring she from her finger broke, And half of it to him gave she,-- "Keep it, to mind you of the maid Who out of prison set you free." She had him put on good shipboard, That he might safely cross the main; Then said, "Adieu! my Christian lord, I fear we ne'er may meet again." Lord Beichan turn'd him round about, And lowly, lowly bent his knee; "Ere seven years are come and gone, I'll take you to my own countrie." But Susie Pye cou'd get no rest, Nor day nor night cou'd happy be; For something whisper'd in her breast, "Lord Beichan will prove false to thee." So she set foot on good shipboard, Well mann'd and fitted gallantlie; She bade adieu to her father's towers, And left behind her own countrie. Then she sailed west, and she sailed north, She sailed far o'er the salt sea faem; And after many weary days, Unto fair England's shore she came. Then she went to Lord Beichan's gate, And she tirl'd gently at the pin, And ask'd--"Is this Lord Beichan's hall, And is that noble lord within?" The porter ready answer made,-- "Oh yes, this is Lord Beichan's hall; And he is also here within, With bride and guests assembled all." "And has he betroth'd another love, And has he quite forgotten me, To whom he plighted his love and troth, When from prison I did him free? "Bear to your lord, ye proud porter, This parted ring, the plighted token Of mutual love, and mutual vows, By him, alas! now falsely broken. "And bid him send one bit of bread, And bid him send one cup of wine, Unto the maid he hath betray'd, Tho' she freed him from cruel pine." The porter hasten'd to his lord, And fell down on his bended knee: "My lord, a lady stands at your gate, The fairest lady I e'er did see. "On every finger she has a ring, And on her middle finger three; With as much gold above her brow As wou'd buy an earldom to me." It's out then spake the bride's mother, Both loud and angry out spake she,-- "Ye might have excepted our bonnie bride, If not more of this companie." "My dame, your daughter's fair enough, Her beauty's not denied by me; But were she ten times fairer still, With this lady ne'er compare cou'd she. "My lord, she asks one bit of bread, And bids you send one cup of wine; And to remember the lady's love, Who freed you out of cruel pine." Lord Beichan hied him down the stair,-- Of fifteen steps he made but three, Until he came to Susie Pye, Whom he did kiss most tenderlie. He's ta'en her by the lily hand, And led her to his noble hall, Where stood his sore-bewilder'd bride, And wedding guests assembled all. Fair Susie blushing look'd around, Upon the lords and ladies gay; Then with the tear-drops in her eyes, Unto Lord Beichan she did say: "Oh, have ye ta'en another bride, And broke your plighted vows to me? Then fare thee well, my Christian lord, I'll try to think no more on thee. "But sadly I will wend my way, And sadly I will cross the sea, And sadly will with grief and shame Return unto my own countrie." "Oh, never, never, Susie Pye, Oh, never more shall you leave me; This night you'll be my wedded wife, And lady of my lands so free." Syne up then spake the bride's mother, She ne'er before did speak so free,-- "You'll not forsake my dear daughter, For sake of her from Pagandie." "Take home, take home your daughter dear, She's not a pin the worse of me; She came to me on horseback riding, But shall go back in a coach and three." Lord Beichan got ready another wedding, And sang, with heart brimful of glee,-- "Oh, I'll range no more in foreign lands, Since Susie Pye has cross'd the sea." OLD BALLAD. _The Gay Gos-hawk_ "O well is me, my gay gos-hawk, That you can speak and flee; For you can carry a love-letter To my true love frae me." "O how can I carry a letter to her, Or how should I her know? I bear a tongue ne'er wi' her spak', And eyes that ne'er her saw." "The white o' my love's skin is white As down o' dove or maw; The red o' my love's cheek is red As blood that's spilt on snaw. "When ye come to the castle, Light on the tree of ash, And sit you there and sing our loves As she comes frae the mass. "Four and twenty fair ladies Will to the mass repair; And weel may ye my lady ken, The fairest lady there." When the gos-hawk flew to that castle, He lighted on the ash; And there he sat and sang their loves As she came frae the mass. "Stay where ye be, my maidens a', And sip red wine anon, Till I go to my west window And hear a birdie's moan." She's gane unto her west window, The bolt she fainly drew; And unto that lady's white, white neck The bird a letter threw. "Ye're bidden to send your love a send, For he has sent you twa; And tell him where he may see you soon, Or he cannot live ava." "I send him the ring from my finger, The garland off my hair, I send him the heart that's in my breast; What would my love have mair? And at the fourth kirk in fair Scotland, Ye'll bid him wait for me there." She hied her to her father dear As fast as gang could she: "I'm sick at the heart, my father dear; An asking grant you me!" "Ask me na for that Scottish lord, For him ye'll never see!" "An asking, an asking, dear father!" she says, "An asking grant you me; That if I die in fair England, In Scotland ye'll bury me. "At the first kirk o' fair Scotland, You cause the bells be rung; At the second kirk o' fair Scotland, You cause the mass be sung; "At the third kirk o' fair Scotland, You deal gold for my sake; At the fourth kirk o' fair Scotland, O there you'll bury me at! "This is all my asking, father, I pray you grant it me!" "Your asking is but small," he said; "Weel granted it shall be. But why do ye talk o' suchlike things? For ye arena going to dee." The lady's gane to her chamber, And a moanfu' woman was she, As gin she had ta'en a sudden brash, And were about to dee. The lady's gane to her chamber As fast as she could fare; And she has drunk a sleepy draught, She mix'd it wi' mickle care. She's fallen into a heavy trance, And pale and cold was she; She seemed to be as surely dead As ony corpse could be. Out and spak' an auld witch-wife, At the fireside sat she: "Gin she has killed herself for love, I wot it weel may be: "But drap the het lead on her cheek, And drap in on her chin, And rap it on her bosom white, And she'll maybe speak again. 'Tis much that a young lady will do To her true love to win." They drapped the het lead on her cheek, They drapped it on her chin, They drapped it on her bosom white, But she spake none again. Her brothers they went to a room, To make to her a bier; The boards were a' o' the cedar wood, The edges o' silver clear. Her sisters they went to a room, To make to her a sark; The cloth was a' o' the satin fine, And the stitching silken-wark. "Now well is me, my gay gos-hawk, That ye can speak and flee! Come show me any love-tokens That you have brought to me." "She sends you the ring frae her white finger, The garland frae her hair; She sends you the heart within her breast; And what would you have mair? And at the fourth kirk o' fair Scotland, She bids you wait for her there." "Come hither, all my merry young men! And drink the good red wine; For we must on towards fair England To free my love frae pine." The funeral came into fair Scotland, And they gart the bells be rung; And when it came to the second kirk, They gart the mass be sung. And when it came to the third kirk, They dealt gold for her sake; And when it came to the fourth kirk, Her love was waiting thereat. At the fourth kirk in fair Scotland Stood spearmen in a row; And up and started her ain true love, The chieftain over them a'. "Set down, set down the bier," he says, "Till I look upon the dead; The last time that I saw her face, Its color was warm and red." He stripped the sheet from aff her face A little below the chin; The lady then she open'd her eyes, And lookèd full on him. "O give me a shive o' your bread, love, O give me a cup o' your wine! Long have I fasted for your sake, And now I fain would dine. "Gae hame, gae hame, my seven brothers, Gae hame and blaw the horn! And ye may say that ye sought my skaith, And that I hae gi'en you the scorn. "I cam' na here to bonny Scotland To lie down in the clay; But I cam' here to bonny Scotland To wear the silks sae gay! "I cam' na here to bonny Scotland Amang the dead to rest; But I cam' here to bonny Scotland To the man that I lo'e best!" OLD BALLAD. _Earl Mar's Daughter_ It was intill a pleasant time, Upon a simmer's day, The noble Earl of Mar's daughter Went forth to sport and play. And as she played and sported Below a green aik tree, There she saw a sprightly doo Set on a branch sae hie. "O Coo-my-doo, my love sae true, If ye'll come doun to me, Ye'se hae a cage o' gude red goud Instead o' simple tree. "I'll tak' ye hame and pet ye weel, Within my bower and ha'; I'll gar ye shine as fair a bird As ony o' them a'!" And she had nae these words weel spoke, Nor yet these words weel said, Till Coo-my-doo flew frae the branch, And lighted on her head. Then she has brought this pretty bird Hame to her bower and ha', And made him shine as fair a bird As ony o' them a'. When day was gane, and night was come, About the evening-tide, This lady spied a bonny youth Stand straight up by her side. "Now whence come ye, young man," she said, "To put me into fear? My door was bolted right secure, And what way cam' ye here?" "O haud your tongue, my lady fair, Lat a' your folly be; Mind ye not o' your turtle-doo Ye coax'd from aff the tree?" "O wha are ye, young man?" she said, "What country come ye frae?" "I flew across the sea," he said, "'Twas but this verra day. "My mither is a queen," he says, Likewise of magic skill; 'Twas she that turned me in a doo, To fly where'er I will. "And it was but this verra day That I cam' ower the sea: I loved you at a single look; With you I'll live and dee." "O Coo-my-doo, my love sae true, Nae mair frae me ye'se gae." "That's never my intent, my love; As ye said, it shall be sae." There he has lived in bower wi' her, For six lang years and ane; Till sax young sons to him she bare, And the seventh she's brought hame. But aye, as soon's a child was born, He carried them away, And brought them to his mither's care, As fast as he could fly. Thus he has stay'd in bower wi' her For seven lang years and mair; Till there cam' a lord o' hie renown To court that lady fair. But still his proffer she refused, And a' his presents too; Says, "I'm content to live alane Wi' my bird Coo-my-doo!" Her father sware an angry oath, He sware it wi' ill-will: "To-morrow, ere I eat or drink, That bird I'll surely kill." The bird was sitting in his cage, And heard what he did say; He jumped upon the window-sill: "'Tis time I was away." Then Coo-my-doo took flight and flew Beyond the raging sea, And lighted at his mither's castle, Upon a tower sae hie. The Queen his mither was walking out, To see what she could see, And there she saw her darling son Set on the tower sae hie. "Get dancers here to dance," she said, "And minstrels for to play; For here's my dear son Florentine Come back wi' me to stay." "Get nae dancers to dance, mither, Nor minstrels for to play; For the mither o' my seven sons, The morn's her wedding day." "Now tell me, dear son Florentine, O tell, and tell me true; Tell me this day, without delay, What sall I do for you?" "Instead of dancers to dance, mither, Or minstrels for to play, Turn four-and-twenty well-wight men, Like storks, in feathers gray; "My seven sons in seven swans, Aboon their heads to flee; And I myself a gay gos-hawk, A bird o' high degree." Then, sighing, said the Queen to hersell, "That thing's too high for me!" But she applied to an auld woman, Who had mair skill than she. Instead o' dancers to dance a dance, Or minstrels for to play, Were four-and-twenty well-wight men Turn'd birds o' feathers gray; Her seven sons in seven swans, Aboon their heads to flee; And he himsell a gay gos-hawk, A bird o' high degree. This flook o' birds took flight and flew Beyond the raging sea; They landed near the Earl Mar's castle, Took shelter in every tree. They were a flock o' pretty birds, Right wondrous to be seen; The weddin'eers they looked at them Whilst walking on the green. These birds flew up frae bush and tree, And, lighted on the ha'; And, when the wedding-train cam' forth, Flew down amang them a'. The storks they seized the boldest men, That they could not fight or flee; The swans they bound the bridegroom fast Unto a green aik tree. They flew around the bride-maidens, Around the bride's own head; And, wi' the twinkling o' an ee, The bride and they were fled. There's ancient men at weddings been For eighty years or more; But siccan a curious wedding-day They never saw before. For naething could the company do, Nor naething could they say; But they saw a flock o' pretty birds That took their bride away. OLD BALLAD. _Chevy-Chace_ God prosper long our noble king, Our lives and safeties all; A woful hunting once there did In Chevy-Chace befall. To drive the deer with hound and horn Earl Percy took his way; The child may rue that is unborn The hunting of that day. The stout Earl of Northumberland A vow to God did make, His pleasure in the Scottish woods Three summer days to take,-- The chiefest harts in Chevy-Chace To kill and bear away. These tidings to Earl Douglas came, In Scotland where he lay; Who sent Earl Percy present word He would prevent his sport. The English earl, not fearing that, Did to the woods resort With fifteen hundred bowmen bold, All chosen men of might, Who knew full well in time of need To aim their shafts aright. The gallant greyhounds swiftly ran To chase the fallow deer; On Monday they began to hunt Ere daylight did appear; And long before high noon they had A hundred fat bucks slain; Then having dined, the drovers went To rouse the deer again. The bowmen mustered on the hills, Well able to endure; And all their rear, with special care, That day was guarded sure. The hounds ran swiftly through the woods, The nimble deer to take, That with their cries the hills and dales An echo shrill did make. Lord Percy to the quarry went, To view the slaughtered deer; Quoth he, "Earl Douglas promisèd This day to meet me here; "But if I thought he would not come, No longer would I stay;" With that a brave young gentleman Thus to the Earl did say: "Lo, yonder doth Earl Douglas come, His men in armor bright; Full twenty hundred Scottish spears All marching in our sight; "All men of pleasant Teviotdale, Fast by the river Tweed;" "Then cease your sports," Earl Percy said, "And take your bows with speed; "And now with me, my countrymen, Your courage forth advance; For never was there champion yet, In Scotland or in France, "That ever did on horseback come, But if my hap it were, I durst encounter man for man, With him to break a spear." Earl Douglas on his milk-white steed, Most like a baron bold, Rode foremost of his company, Whose armor shone like gold. "Show me," said he, "whose men you be, That hunt so boldly here, That, without my consent, do chase And kill my fallow-deer." The first man that did answer make, Was noble Percy he-- Who said, "We list not to declare, Nor show whose men we be: "Yet will we spend our dearest blood Thy chiefest harts to slay." Then Douglas swore a solemn oath, And thus in rage did say: "Ere thus I will out-bravèd be, One of us two shall die; I know thee well, an earl thou art-- Lord Percy, so am I. "But trust me, Percy, pity it were, And great offence, to kill Any of these our guiltless men, For they have done no ill. "Let thou and I the battle try, And set our men aside." "Accursed be he," Earl Percy said, "By whom this is denied." Then stepped a gallant squire forth, Witherington was his name, Who said, "I would not have it told To Henry, our king, for shame, "That e'er my captain fought on foot, And I stood looking on. You two be earls," said Witherington, "And I a squire alone; "I'll do the best that do I may, While I have power to stand; While I have power to wield my sword, I'll fight with heart and hand." Our English archers bent their bows-- Their hearts were good and true; At the first flight of arrows sent, Full fourscore Scots they slew. Yet stays Earl Douglas on the bent, As Chieftain stout and good; As valiant Captain, all unmoved, The shock he firmly stood. His host he parted had in three, As leader ware and tried; And soon his spearmen on their foes Bore down on every side. Throughout the English archery They dealt full many a wound; But still our valiant Englishmen All firmly kept their ground. And throwing straight their bows away, They grasped their swords so bright; And now sharp blows, a heavy shower, On shields and helmets light. They closed full fast on every side-- No slackness there was found; And many a gallant gentleman Lay gasping on the ground. In truth, it was a grief to see How each one chose his spear, And how the blood out of their breasts Did gush like water clear. At last these two stout earls did meet; Like captains of great might, Like lions wode, they laid on lode, And made a cruel fight. They fought until they both did sweat, With swords of tempered steel, Until the blood, like drops of rain, They trickling down did feel. "Yield thee, Lord Percy," Douglas said; "In faith I will thee bring Where thou shalt high advancèd be By James, our Scottish king. "Thy ransom I will freely give, And this report of thee, Thou art the most courageous knight That ever I did see." "No, Douglas," saith Earl Percy then, "Thy proffer I do scorn; I will not yield to any Scot That ever yet was born." With that there came an arrow keen Out of an English bow, Which struck Earl Douglas to the heart, A deep and deadly blow; Who never spake more words than these: "Fight on, my merry men all; For why, my life is at an end; Lord Percy sees my fall." Then leaving life, Earl Percy took The dead man by the hand; And said, "Earl Douglas, for thy life Would I had lost my land! "In truth, my very heart doth bleed With sorrow for thy sake; For sure a more redoubted knight Mischance did never take." A knight amongst the Scots there was Who saw Earl Douglas die, Who straight in wrath did vow revenge Upon the Earl Percy. Sir Hugh Montgomery was he called, Who, with a spear full bright, Well mounted on a gallant steed, Ran fiercely through the fight; And past the English archers all, Without a dread or fear; And through Earl Percy's body then He thrust his hateful spear; With such vehement force and might He did his body gore, The staff ran through the other side A large cloth-yard and more. So thus did both these nobles die, Whose courage none could stain. An English archer then perceived The noble Earl was slain. He had a bow bent in his hand, Made of a trusty tree; An arrow of a cloth-yard long To the hard head haled he. Against Sir Hugh Montgomery So right the shaft he set, The gray goose wing that was thereon In his heart's blood was wet. This fight did last from break of day Till setting of the sun: For when they rung the evening-bell, The battle scarce was done. With stout Earl Percy there was slain Sir John of Egerton, Sir Robert Ratcliff, and Sir John, Sir James, that bold baròn. And with Sir George and stout Sir James, Both knights of good account, Good Sir Ralph Raby there was slain, Whose prowess did surmount. For Witherington needs must I wail As one in doleful dumps; For when his legs were smitten off, He fought upon his stumps. And with Earl Douglas there was slain Sir Hugh Montgomery, Sir Charles Murray, that from the field, One foot would never flee. Sir Charles Murray of Ratcliff, too-- His sister's son was he; Sir David Lamb, so well esteemed, But saved he could not be. And the Lord Maxwell in like case Did with Earl Douglas die: Of twenty hundred Scottish spears, Scarce fifty-five did fly. Of fifteen hundred Englishmen, Went home but fifty-three; The rest on Chevy-Chace were slain, Under the greenwood tree. Next day did many widows come, Their husbands to bewail; They washed their wounds in brinish tears, But all would not prevail. Their bodies, bathed in purple blood, They bore with them away; They kissed them dead a thousand times, Ere they were clad in clay. The news was brought to Edinburgh, Where Scotland's king did reign, That brave Earl Douglas suddenly Was with an arrow slain: "Oh heavy news," King James did say; "Scotland can witness be I have not any captain more Of such account as he." Like tidings to King Henry came Within as short a space, That Percy of Northumberland Was slain in Chevy-Chace: "Now God be with him," said our king, "Since 'twill no better be; I trust I have within my realm Five hundred as good as he: "Yet shall not Scots or Scotland say But I will vengeance take: I'll be revenged on them all, For brave Earl Percy's sake." This vow full well the king performed After at Humbledown; In one day fifty knights were slain, With lords of high renown; And of the rest, of small account, Did many hundreds die: Thus endeth the hunting of Chevy-Chace, Made by the Earl Percy. God save the king, and bless this land, With plenty, joy and peace; And grant, henceforth, that foul debate 'Twixt noblemen may cease! OLD BALLAD. _Hynde Horn_ "Oh, it's Hynde Horn fair, and it's Hynde Horn free; Oh, where were you born, and in what countrie?" "In a far distant countrie I was born; But of home and friends I am quite forlorn." Oh, it's seven long years he served the king, But wages from him he ne'er got a thing: Oh, it's seven long years he served, I ween, And all for love of the king's daughter Jean. Oh, he gave to his love a silver wand, Her sceptre of rule over fair Scotland; With three singing laverocks set thereon, For to mind her of him when he was gone. And his love gave to him a gay gold ring, With three shining diamonds set therein; Oh, his love gave to him this gay gold ring, Of virtue and value above all thing; Saying--"While the diamonds do keep their hue, You will know that my love holds fast and true; But when the diamonds grow pale and wan, I'll be dead, or wed to another man." Then the sails were spread, and away sail'd he; Oh, he sail'd away to a far countrie; And when he had been seven years to sea, Hynde Horn look'd to see how his ring might be. But when Hynde Horn look'd the diamonds upon, Oh, he saw that they were both pale and wan; And at once he knew, from their alter'd hue, That his love was dead or had proved untrue. Oh, the sails were spread, and away sail'd he Back over the sea to his own countrie; Then he left the ship when it came to land, And he met an auld beggar upon the strand. "What news, thou auld beggar man?" said he; "For full seven years I've been over the sea." Then the auld man said--"The strangest of all Is the curious wedding in our king's hall. "For there's a king's daughter, came frae the wast, Has been married to him these nine days past; But unto him a wife the bride winna be, For love of Hynde Horn, far over the sea." "Now, auld man, give to me your begging weed, And I will give to thee my riding steed; And, auld man, give to me your staff of tree, And my scarlet cloak I will give to thee. "And you must teach me the auld beggar's role, As he goes his rounds, and receives his dole." The auld man he did as young Hynde Horn said, And taught him the way to beg for his bread. Then Hynde Horn bent him to his staff of tree, And to the king's palace away hobbled he; And when he arrived at the king's palace gate, To the porter he thus his petition did state: "Good porter, I pray, for Saints Peter and Paul, And for sake of the Saviour who died for us all, For one cup of wine, and one bit of bread, To an auld man with travel and hunger bestead. "And ask the fair bride, for the sake of Hynde Horn, To hand them to one so sadly forlorn." Then the porter for pity the message convey'd, And told the fair bride all the beggar man said. And when she did hear it, she tripp'd down the stair, And in her fair hands did lovingly bear A cup of red wine, and a farle of cake, To give the old man, for loved Hynde Horn's sake. And when she came to where Hynde Horn did stand, With joy he did take the cup from her hand; Then pledged the fair bride, the cup out did drain, Dropp'd in it the ring, and return'd it again. "Oh, found you that ring by sea or on land, Or got you that ring off a dead man's hand?" "Oh, I found not that ring by sea or on land, But I got that ring from a fair lady's hand. "As a pledge of true love she gave it to me, Full seven years ago, as I sail'd o'er the sea; But now that the diamonds are chang'd in their hue, I know that my love has to me proved untrue." "Oh, I will cast off my gay costly gown, And follow thee on from town unto town, And I will take the gold combs from my hair, And follow my true love for ever mair." "You need not cast off your gay costly gown, To follow me on from town unto town; You need not take the gold combs from your hair, For Hynde Horn has gold enough, and to spare." He stood up erect, let his beggar weed fall, And shone there the foremost and noblest of all; Then the bridegrooms were chang'd, and the lady re-wed, To Hynde Horn thus come back, like one from the dead. OLD BALLAD. _Glenlogie_ There was monie a braw noble Came to our Queen's ha'; But the bonnie Glenlogie Was the flower of them a'. And the young Ladye Jeanie, Sae gude and sae fair, She fancied Glenlogie Aboon a' that were there. She speired at his footman, That ran by his side, His name, and his sirname, And where he did bide. "He bides at Glenlogie, When he is at hame; He's of the gay Gordons, And George is his name." She wrote to Glenlogie, To tell him her mind: "My love is laid on you, Oh, will you prove kind?" He turn'd about lightly, As the Gordons do a': "I thank you, fair Ladye, But I'm promis'd awa." She call'd on her maidens Her jewels to take, And to lay her in bed, For her heart it did break. "Glenlogie! Glenlogie! "Glenlogie!" said she; "If I getna Glenlogie, I'm sure I will dee." "Oh, hold your tongue, daughter, And weep na sae sair; For you'll get Drumfindlay, His father's young heir." "Oh, hold your tongue, father, And let me alane; If I getna Glenlogie, I'll never wed ane." Then her father's old chaplain-- A man of great skill-- He wrote to Glenlogie, The cause of this ill; And her father, he sent off This letter with speed, By a trusty retainer, Who rode his best steed. The first line that he read, A light laugh gave he; The next line that he read, The tear fill'd each e'e: "Oh, what a man am I, That a leal heart should break? Or that sic a fair maid Should die for my sake? "Go, saddle my horse, Go, saddle him soon, Go, saddle the swiftest E'er rode frae the toun." But ere it was saddled, And brought to the door, Glenlogie was on the road Three miles or more. When he came to her father's, Great grief there was there; There was weepin' and wailin', And sabbin' full sair. Oh, pale and wan was she When Glenlogie gaed in; But she grew red and rosy When Glenlogie gaed ben. Then out spake her father, With tears in each e'e: "You're welcome, Glenlogie, You're welcome to me." And out spake her mother: "You're welcome," said she; "You're welcome, Glenlogie, Your Jeanie to see." "Oh, turn, Ladye Jeanie, Turn round to this side, And I'll be the bridegroom, And you'll be the bride." Oh, it was a blythe wedding, As ever was seen; And bonnie Jeanie Melville Was scarcely sixteen. OLD BALLAD. INTERLEAVES _Life Lessons_ _"They also serve who only stand and wait."_ MILTON. _"Small service is true service while it lasts."_ WORDSWORTH. _"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll!"_ HOLMES. _"When Duty whispers low 'Thou must,' The youth replies, 'I can.'"_ EMERSON. _"Thou must be true thyself, If thou the truth wouldst teach."_ BONAR. _"I am content with what I have, Little be it, or much."_ BUNYAN. _"As one lamp lights another, nor grows less, So nobleness enkindleth nobleness."_ LOWELL. _"Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws Makes that and th' action fine."_ HERBERT. "_This above all--to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man._" SHAKESPEARE. XVI LIFE LESSONS _Life_ * * * * Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time;-- Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again. Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. _From the "Psalm of Life."_ _In a Child's Album_ Small service is true service while it lasts; Of humblest friends, bright creature! scorn not one; The Daisy, by the shadow that it casts, Protects the lingering dew-drop from the sun. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. _To-Day_ So here hath been dawning Another blue day: Think, wilt thou let it Slip useless away. Out of Eternity This new day was born; Into Eternity, At night, will return. Behold it aforetime No eye ever did; So soon it for ever From all eyes is hid. Here hath been dawning Another blue day: Think, wilt thou let it Slip useless away. THOMAS CARLYLE. _The Noble Nature_ It is not growing like a tree In bulk doth make Man better be; Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere: A lily of a day Is fairer far in May, Although it fall and die that night,-- It was the plant and flower of Light: In small proportions we just beauties see, And in short measures life may perfect be. BEN JONSON. _Forbearance_ Hast thou named all the birds without a gun? Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk? At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse? Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust? And loved so well a high behavior, In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained, Nobility more nobly to repay? O, be my friend, and teach me to be thine! RALPH WALDO EMERSON. _The Chambered Nautilus_ This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main,-- The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; Wrecked is the ship of pearl! And every chambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed,-- Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed! Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap, forlorn! From thy dead lips a clearer note is born Than ever Triton blew from wreathèd horn! While on mine ear it rings, Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:-- Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. _Duty_ So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man; When Duty whispers low "Thou must," The youth replies, "I can." RALPH WALDO EMERSON. _On His Blindness_ When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one Talent which is death to hide, Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest he returning chide,-- Doth God exact day-labor, light denied, I fondly ask:--But Patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need Either man's work or his own gifts; who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve Him best: His State Is Kingly; thousands at his bidding speed, And post o'er Land and Ocean without rest:-- They also serve who only stand and wait." JOHN MILTON. _Sir Launfal and the Leper_ As Sir Launfal made morn through the darksome gate, He was ware of a leper, crouched by the same, Who begged with his hand and moaned as he sate; And a loathing over Sir Launfal came; The sunshine went out of his soul with a thrill, The flesh 'neath his armor did shrink and crawl, And midway its leap his heart stood still Like a frozen waterfall; For this man, so foul and bent of stature, Rasped harshly against his dainty nature, And seemed the one blot on the summer morn,-- So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn. The leper raised not the gold from the dust: "Better to me the poor man's crust, Better the blessing of the poor, Though I turn me empty from his door; That is no true alms which the hand can hold; He gives nothing but worthless gold Who gives from a sense of duty; But he who gives a slender mite, And gives to that which is out of sight, That thread of the all-sustaining Beauty Which runs through all and doth all unite,-- The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms, The heart outstretches its eager palms, For a god goes with it and makes it store To the soul that was starving in darkness before." JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. _From "The Vision of Sir Launfal."_ _Opportunity_ This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream:-- There spread a cloud of dust along a plain; And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince's banner Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes. A craven hung along the battle's edge, And thought, "Had I a sword of keener steel-- That blue blade that the king's son bears,--but this Blunt thing!" he snapt and flung it from his hand, And lowering crept away and left the field. Then came the king's son, wounded, sore bestead, And weaponless, and saw the broken sword, Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand, And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shout Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down, And saved a great cause that heroic day. EDWARD ROWLAND SILL. _Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel_ Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!) Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, And saw, within the moonlight in his room, Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom, An Angel writing in a book of gold:-- Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold, And to the Presence in the room he said, "What writest thou?"--The Vision raised its head, And with a look made of all sweet accord Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord." "And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so," Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low, But cheerily still, and said, "I pray thee, then, Write me as one that loves his fellow men." The Angel wrote and vanished. The next night It came again with a great wakening light, And showed the names whom love of God had blessed, And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest. LEIGH HUNT. _Be True_ Thou must be true thyself, If thou the truth wouldst teach; Thy soul must overflow, if thou Another's soul wouldst reach! It needs the overflow of heart To give the lips full speech. Think truly, and thy thoughts Shall the world's famine feed; Speak truly, and each word of thine Shall be a fruitful seed; Live truly, and thy life shall be A great and noble creed. HORATIO BONAR. _The Shepherd Boy Sings in the Valley of Humiliation_ He that is down needs fear no fall, He that is low, no pride; He that is humble ever shall Have God to be his guide. I am content with what I have, Little be it or much: And, Lord, contentment still I crave, Because Thou savest such. Fullness to such a burden is That go on pilgrimage: Here little, and hereafter bliss, Is best from age to age. JOHN BUNYAN. _A Turkish Legend_ A certain pasha, dead five thousand years, Once from his harem fled in sudden tears, And had this sentence on the city's gate Deeply engraven, "Only God is great." So these four words above the city's noise Hung like the accents of an angel's voice. And evermore from the high barbican, Saluted each returning caravan. Lost is that city's glory. Every gust Lifts, with crisp leaves, the unknown pasha's dust, And all is ruin, save one wrinkled gate Whereon is written, "Only God is great." THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. _Elegy written in a Country Churchyard_ The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds: Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r, The moping owl does to the moon complain Of such as, wand'ring near her secret bow'r, Molest her ancient solitary reign. Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap, Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care: No children run to lisp their sire's return, Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share. Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke: How jocund did they drive their team afield! How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke! Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the poor. The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike th' inevitable hour-- The paths of glory lead but to the grave. Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, If Mem'ry o'er their tomb no trophies raise, Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault, The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. Can storied urn or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust, Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of death? Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd, Or wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre. But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page, Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll; Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage, And froze the genial current of the soul. Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear: Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air. Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood, Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood. Th' applause of list'ning senates to command, The threats of pain and ruin to despise, To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, And read their hist'ry in a nation's eyes-- Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined; Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne, And shut the gates of mercy on mankind; The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride With incense kindled at the Muse's flame. Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray; Along the cool sequester'd vale of life They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. Yet ev'n these bones from insult to protect Some frail memorial still erected nigh, With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd, Implores the passing tribute of a sigh. Their name, their years, spelt by th' unletter'd Muse, The place of fame and elegy supply: And many a holy text around she strews, That teach the rustic moralist to die. For who, to dumb Forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing, ling'ring look behind? On some fond breast the parting soul relies, Some pious drops the closing eye requires; E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries, E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires. For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonour'd dead, Dost in these lines their artless tale relate; If chance, by lonely contemplation led, Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate, Haply some hoary-headed swain may say, "Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn Brushing with hasty steps the dews away, To meet the sun upon the upland lawn. "There at the foot of yonder nodding beech, That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high, His listless length at noontide would he stretch, And pore upon the brook that babbles by. "Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, Mutt'ring his wayward fancies he would rove: Now drooping, woful-wan, like one forlorn, Or craz'd with care, or cross'd in hopeless love. "One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill, Along the heath, and near his fav'rite tree; Another came; nor yet beside the rill, Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he: "The next, with dirges due in sad array, Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne.-- Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay Grav'd on the stone beneath yon agèd thorn." THE EPITAPH _Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth A Youth, to Fortune and to Fame unknown; Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth, And Melancholy mark'd him for her own._ _Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere, Heav'n did a recompense as largely send: He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear, He gain'd from Heav'n ('t was all he wish'd) a friend._ _No farther seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose,) The bosom of his Father and his God._ THOMAS GRAY. _Polonius to Laertes_ And these few precepts in thy memory Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue Nor any unproportion'd thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, Bear't, that th' opposer may beware of thee. Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice; Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy: For the apparel oft proclaims the man; And they in France, of the best rank and station, Are of a most select and generous choice in that. Neither a borrower, nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all,--to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. _From "Hamlet."_ _The Olive Tree_ Said an ancient hermit, bending Half in prayer upon his knee, "Oil I need for midnight watching, I desire an olive tree." Then he took a tender sapling, Planted it before his cave, Spread his trembling hands above it, As his benison he gave. But he thought, the rain it needeth, That the root may drink and swell; "God! I pray Thee send Thy showers!" So a gentle shower fell. "Lord, I ask for beams of summer, Cherishing this little child." Then the dripping clouds divided, And the sun looked down and smiled. "Send it frost to brace its tissues, O my God!" the hermit cried. Then the plant was bright and hoary, But at evensong it died. Went the hermit to a brother Sitting in his rocky cell: "Thou an olive tree possessest; How is this, my brother, tell? "I have planted one, and prayed, Now for sunshine, now for rain; God hath granted each petition, Yet my olive tree hath slain!" Said the other, "I entrusted To its God my little tree; He who made knew what it needed, Better than a man like me. "Laid I on him no condition, Fixed no ways and means; so I Wonder not my olive thriveth, Whilst thy olive tree did die." SABINE BARING-GOULD. _Coronation_ At the king's gate the subtle noon Wove filmy yellow nets of sun; Into the drowsy snare too soon The guards fell one by one. Through the king's gate, unquestioned then, A beggar went, and laughed, "This brings Me chance, at last, to see if men Fare better, being kings." The king sat bowed beneath his crown, Propping his face with listless hand; Watching the hour-glass sifting down Too slow its shining sand. "Poor man, what wouldst thou have of me?" The beggar turned, and pitying, Replied, like one in dream, "Of thee, Nothing. I want the king." Uprose the king, and from his head Shook off the crown, and threw it by. "O man! thou must have known," he said, "A greater king than I." Through all the gates, unquestioned then, Went king and beggar hand in hand. Whispered the king, "Shall I know when Before _his_ throne I stand?" The beggar laughed. Free winds in haste Were wiping from the king's hot brow The crimson lines the crown had traced. "This is his presence now." At the king's gate, the crafty noon Unwove its yellow nets of sun; Out of their sleep in terror soon The guards waked one by one. "Ho there! Ho there! Has no man seen The king?" The cry ran to and fro; Beggar and king, they laughed, I ween, The laugh that free men know. On the king's gate the moss grew gray; The king came not. They called him dead; And made his eldest son one day Slave in his father's stead. H. H. _December_ In a drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy tree, Thy branches ne'er remember Their green felicity: The north cannot undo them, With a sleety whistle through them; Nor frozen thawings glue them From budding at the prime. In a drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy brook, Thy bubblings ne'er remember Apollo's summer look; But with a sweet forgetting, They stay their crystal fretting, Never, never petting About the frozen time. Ah! would 'twere so with many A gentle girl and boy! But were there ever any Writhed not at passed joy? To know the change and feel it, When there is none to heal it, Nor numbed sense to steal it, Was never said in rhyme. JOHN KEATS. _The End of the Play_ The play is done; the curtain drops, Slow falling to the prompter's bell: A moment yet the actor stops, And looks around, to say farewell. It is an irksome word and task; And, when he's laughed and said his say, He shows, as he removes the mask, A face that's anything but gay. One word, ere yet the evening ends, Let's close it with a parting rhyme, And pledge a hand to all young friends, As fits the merry Christmas time. On life's wide scenes you, too, have parts, That Fate ere long shall bid you play; Good-night! with honest gentle hearts A kindly greeting go alway! * * * * Come wealth or want, come good or ill, Let young and old accept their part, And bow before the Awful Will, And bear it with ah honest heart. Who misses, or who wins the prize? Go, lose or conquer as you can: But if you fail, or if you rise, Be each, pray God, a gentleman. A gentleman, or old or young! (Bear kindly with my humble lays;) The sacred chorus first was sung Upon the first of Christmas days: The shepherds heard it overhead-- The joyful angels raised it then: Glory to Heaven on high, it said, And peace on earth to gentle men. My song, save this, is little worth; I lay the weary pen aside, And wish you health, and love, and mirth, As fits the solemn Christmas-tide. As fits the holy Christmas birth, Be this, good friends, our carol still-- Be peace on earth, be peace on earth, To men of gentle will. WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. _From "Dr. Birch and his Young Friends."_ _A Farewell_ My fairest child, I have no song to give you; No lark could pipe to skies so dull and gray; Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you For every day. * * * * Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever; Do noble things, not dream them, all day long: And so make life, death, and that vast forever One grand, sweet song. CHARLES KINGSLEY. _A Boy's Prayer_ God who created me Nimble and light of limb, In three elements free, To run, to ride, to swim: Not when the sense is dim, But now from the heart of joy, I would remember Him: Take the thanks of a boy. * * * * HENRY CHARLES BEECHING. _Chartless_ I never saw a moor, I never saw the sea; Yet know I how the heather looks, And what a wave must be. I never spoke with God, Nor visited in heaven; Yet certain am I of the spot As if the chart were given. EMILY DICKINSON. _Peace_ My soul, there is a country, Afar beyond the stars, Where stands a wingèd sentry, All skilful in the wars. There, above noise and danger, Sweet Peace sits crowned with smiles, And One born in a manger Commands the beauteous files. He is thy gracious friend, And (O my soul, awake!) Did in pure love descend, To die here for thy sake. If thou canst get but thither, There grows the flower of peace, The rose that cannot wither, Thy fortress, and thy ease. Leave then thy foolish ranges; For none can thee secure, But One who never changes, Thy God, thy Life, thy Cure. HENRY VAUGHAN. _Consider_ Consider The lilies of the field, whose bloom is brief-- We are as they; Like them we fade away, As doth a leaf. Consider The sparrows of the air, of small account: Our God doth view Whether they fall or mount-- He guards us too. Consider The lilies, that do neither spin nor toil, Yet are most fair-- What profits all this care, And all this coil? Consider The birds, that have no barn nor harvest-weeks; God gives them food-- Much more our Father seeks To do us good. CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI. _The Elixir_ Teach me, my God and King, In all things Thee to see, And what I do in anything, To do it as for Thee. * * * * All may of Thee partake: Nothing can be so mean Which with this tincture (for Thy sake) Will not grow bright and clean. A servant with this clause Makes drudgery divine: Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws, Makes that and th' action fine. This is the famous stone That turneth all to gold; For that which God doth touch and own Cannot for less be told. GEORGE HERBERT. _One by One_ One by one the sands are flowing, One by one the moments fall; Some are coming, some are going; Do not strive to grasp them all. One by one thy duties wait thee-- Let thy whole strength go to each, Let no future dreams elate thee, Learn thou first what these can teach. One by one (bright gifts from heaven) Joys are sent thee here below; Take them readily when given-- Ready, too, to let them go. One by one thy griefs shall meet thee; Do not fear an armèd band; One will fade as others greet thee-- Shadows passing through the land. Do not look at life's long sorrow; See how small each moment's pain; God will help thee for to-morrow, So each day begin again. Every hour that fleets so slowly Has its task to do or bear; Luminous the crown, and holy, When each gem is set with care. Do not linger with regretting, Or for passing hours despond; Nor, thy daily toil forgetting, Look too eagerly beyond. Hours are golden links, God's token, Reaching heaven; but, one by one, Take them, lest the chain be broken Ere the pilgrimage be done. ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER. _The Commonwealth of the Bees_ (Type of a Well-ordered State.) For government, though high, and low, and lower, Put into parts, doth keep in one consent, Congreeing in a full and natural close, Like music. Therefore doth heaven divide The state of man in divers functions, Setting endeavor in continual motion; To which is fixed, as an aim or butt, Obedience; for so work the honey-bees, Creatures that, by a rule in nature, teach The art of order to a peopled kingdom: They have a king and officers of state, Where some, like magistrates, correct at home, Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad, Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings, Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds; Which pillage they with merry march bring home To the tent-royal of their emperor; Who, busied in his majesty, surveys The singing masons building roofs of gold, The civil citizens kneading up the honey, The poor mechanic porters crowding in Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate; The sad-eyed Justice, with his surly hum, Delivering o'er to executors pale The lazy, yawning drone. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. _From "King Henry V."_ _The Pilgrim_ Who would true valor see Let him come hither! One here will constant be, Come wind, come weather: There's no discouragement Shall make him once relent His first-avow'd intent To be a Pilgrim. Whoso beset him round With dismal stories, Do but themselves confound; His strength the more is. No lion can him fright; He'll with a giant fight; But he will have a right To be a Pilgrim. Nor enemy, nor fiend, Can daunt his spirit; He knows he at the end Shall Life inherit:-- Then, fancies, fly away; He'll not fear what men say; He'll labor, night and day, To be a Pilgrim. JOHN BUNYAN. _Be Useful_ Be useful where thou livest, that they may Both want and wish thy pleasing presence still. ----Find out men's wants and will, And meet them there. All worldly joys go less To the one joy of doing kindnesses. GEORGE HERBERT. INTERLEAVES _The Glad Evangel_ When the Child of Nazareth was born, the sun, according to the Bosnian legend, "leaped in the heavens, and the stars around it danced. A peace came over mountain and forest. Even the rotten stump stood straight and healthy on the green hill-side. The grass was beflowered with open blossoms, incense sweet as myrrh pervaded upland and forest, birds sang on the mountain top, and all gave thanks to the great God." It is naught but an old folk-tale, but it has truth hidden at its heart, for a strange, subtle force, a spirit of genial good-will, a new-born kindness, seem to animate child and man alike when the world pays its tribute to the "heaven-sent youngling," as the poet Drummond calls the infant Christ. When the Three Wise Men rode from the East into the West on that "first, best Christmas night," they bore on their saddle-bows three caskets filled with gold and frankincense and myrrh, to be laid at the feet of the manger-cradled babe of Bethlehem. Beginning with this old, old journey, the spirit of giving crept into the world's heart. As the Magi came bearing gifts, so do we also; gifts that relieve want, gifts that are sweet and fragrant with friendship, gifts that breathe love, gifts that mean service, gifts inspired still by the star that shone over the City of David nearly two thousand years ago. Then hang the green coronet of the Christmas-tree with glittering baubles and jewels of flame; heap offerings on its emerald branches; bring the Yule log to the firing; deck the house with holly and mistletoe, _"And all the bells on earth shall ring On Christmas day in the morning."_ XVII THE GLAD EVANGEL _A Christmas Carol_[24] There's a song in the air! There's a star in the sky! There's a mother's deep prayer And a baby's low cry! And the star rains its fire while the Beautiful sing, For the manger of Bethlehem cradles a king. There's a tumult of joy O'er the wonderful birth, For the virgin's sweet boy Is the Lord of the earth, Ay! the star rains its fire and the Beautiful sing, For the manger of Bethlehem cradles a king! In the light of that star Lie the ages impearled; And that song from afar Has swept over the world. Every hearth is aflame, and the Beautiful sing In the homes of the nations that Jesus is king. We rejoice in the light, And we echo the song That comes down through the night From the heavenly throng. Ay! we shout to the lovely evangel they bring, And we greet in his cradle our Saviour and King! JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND. [Footnote 24: _From "The Poetical Works of J. G. Holland." Copyright, 1881, by Charles Scribner's Sons._] _The Angels_ Run, shepherds, run where Bethlehem blest appears. We bring the best of news; be not dismayed: A Saviour there is born more old than years, Amidst heaven's rolling height this earth who stayed. In a poor cottage inned, a virgin maid, A weakling did him bear, who all upbears; There is he poorly swaddled, in manger laid, To whom too narrow swaddlings are our spheres: Run, shepherds, run, and solemnize his birth. This is that night--no, day, grown great with bliss, In which the power of Satan broken is: In heaven be glory, peace unto the earth! Thus singing, through the air the angels swam, And cope of stars re-echoèd the same. WILLIAM DRUMMOND. "_While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night"_ Like small curled feathers, white and soft, The little clouds went by, Across the moon, and past the stars, And down the western sky: In upland pastures, where the grass With frosted dew was white, Like snowy clouds the young sheep lay, That first, best Christmas night. The shepherds slept; and, glimmering faint, With twist of thin, blue smoke, Only their fire's crackling flames The tender silence broke-- Save when a young lamb raised his head, Or, when the night wind blew, A nesting bird would softly stir, Where dusky olives grew-- With finger on her solemn lip, Night hushed the shadowy earth, And only stars and angels saw The little Saviour's birth; Then came such flash of silver light Across the bending skies, The wondering shepherds woke, and hid Their frightened, dazzled eyes! And all their gentle sleepy flock Looked up, then slept again, Nor knew the light that dimmed the stars Brought endless Peace to men-- Nor even heard the gracious words That down the ages ring-- "The Christ is born! the Lord has come, Good-will on earth to bring!" Then o'er the moonlit, misty fields, Dumb with the world's great joy, The shepherds sought the white-walled town, Where lay the baby boy-- And oh, the gladness of the world, The glory of the skies, Because the longed-for Christ looked up In Mary's happy eyes! MARGARET DELAND. _The Star Song_ Tell us, thou clear and heavenly tongue, Where is the Babe but lately sprung? Lies he the lily-banks among? Or say, if this new Birth of ours Sleeps, laid within some ark of flowers, Spangled with dew-light; thou canst clear All doubts, and manifest the where. Declare to us, bright star, if we shall seek Him in the morning's blushing cheek, Or search the beds of spices through, To find him out? _Star._--No, this ye need not do; But only come and see Him rest, A princely babe, in's mother's breast. ROBERT HERRICK. _Hymn for Christmas_ Oh! lovely voices of the sky Which hymned the Saviour's birth, Are ye not singing still on high, Ye that sang, "Peace on earth"? To us yet speak the strains Wherewith, in time gone by, Ye blessed the Syrian swains, Oh! voices of the sky! Oh! clear and shining light, whose beams That hour Heaven's glory shed, Around the palms, and o'er the streams, And on the shepherd's head. Be near, through life and death, As in that holiest night Of hope, and joy, and faith-- Oh! clear and shining light! * * * * FELICIA HEMANS. _New Prince, New Pomp_ Behold a simple, tender Babe, In freezing winter night, In homely manger trembling lies; Alas! a piteous sight. The inns are full; no man will yield This little Pilgrim bed; But forced he is with silly beasts In crib to shroud his head. Despise him not for lying there; First what he is inquire: An Orient pearl is often found In depth of dirty mire. Weigh not his crib, his wooden dish, Nor beasts that by him feed; Weigh not his mother's poor attire, Nor Joseph's simple weed. This stable is a Prince's court, The crib his chair of state; The beasts are parcel of his pomp, The wooden dish his plate. The persons in that poor attire His royal liveries wear; The Prince himself is come from heaven: This pomp is praisèd there. With joy approach, O Christian wight! Do homage to thy King; And highly praise this humble pomp, Which he from heaven doth bring. ROBERT SOUTHWELL. _The Three Kings_ Three Kings came riding from far away, Melchior and Gaspar and Baltasar; Three Wise Men out of the East were they, And they travelled by night and they slept by day, For their guide was a beautiful, wonderful star. The star was so beautiful, large and clear, That all the other stars of the sky Became a white mist in the atmosphere; And by this they knew that the coming was near Of the Prince foretold in the prophecy. Three caskets they bore on their saddle-bows, Three caskets of gold with golden keys; Their robes were of crimson silk, with rows Of bells and pomegranates and furbelows, Their turbans like blossoming almond-trees. And so the Three Kings rode into the West, Through the dusk of night over hills and dells, And sometimes they nodded with beard on breast, And sometimes talked, as they paused to rest, With the people they met at the wayside wells. "Of the child that is born," said Baltasar, "Good people, I pray you, tell us the news; For we in the East have seen his star, And have ridden fast, and have ridden far, To find and worship the King of the Jews." And the people answered, "You ask in vain; We know of no king but Herod the Great!" They thought the Wise Men were men insane, As they spurred their horses across the plain Like riders in haste who cannot wait. And when they came to Jerusalem, Herod the Great, who had heard this thing, Sent for the Wise Men and questioned them; And said, "Go down unto Bethlehem, And bring me tidings of this new king." So they rode away, and the star stood still, The only one in the gray of morn; Yes, it stopped, it stood still of its own free will, Right over Bethlehem on the hill, The city of David where Christ was born. And the Three Kings rode through the gate and the guard, Through the silent street, till their horses turned And neighed as they entered the great inn-yard; But the windows were closed, and the doors were barred, And only a light in the stable burned. And cradled there in the scented hay, In the air made sweet by the breath of kine, The little child in the manger lay, The Child that would be King one day Of a kingdom not human, but divine. His mother, Mary of Nazareth, Sat watching beside his place of rest, Watching the even flow of his breath, For the joy of life and the terror of death Were mingled together in her breast. They laid their offerings at his feet: The gold was their tribute to a King; The frankincense, with its odor sweet, Was for the Priest, the Paraclete; The myrrh for the body's burying. And the mother wondered and bowed her head, And sat as still as a statue of stone; Her heart was troubled yet comforted, Remembering what the angel had said Of an endless reign and of David's throne. Then the Kings rode out of the city gate, With a clatter of hoofs in proud array; But they went not back to Herod the Great, For they knew his malice and feared his hate, And returned to their homes by another way. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. _The Three Kings_[25] From out Cologne there came three kings To worship Jesus Christ, their King; To him they sought fine herbs they brought And many a beauteous golden thing; They brought their gifts to Bethlehem town And in that manger set them down. Then spake the first king, and he said: "O Child most heavenly, bright and fair, I bring this crown to Bethlehem town For Thee, and only Thee, to wear; So give a heavenly crown to me When I shall come at last to Thee." The second then: "I bring thee here This royal robe, O Child!" he cried; "Of silk 'tis spun and such an one There is not in the world beside! So in the day of doom requite Me with a heavenly robe of white!" The third king gave his gift, and quoth: "Spikenard and myrrh to Thee I bring, And with these twain would I most fain Anoint the body of my King. So may their incense some time rise To plead for me in yonder skies." Thus spake the three kings of Cologne That gave their gifts and went their way; And now kneel I in prayer hard-by The cradle of the Child to-day; Nor crown, nor robe, nor spice I bring As offering unto Christ my King. Yet have I brought a gift the Child May not despise, however small; For here I lay my heart to-day, And it is fun of love to all! Take Thou the poor, but loyal thing, My only tribute, Christ, my King. EUGENE FIELD. [Footnote 25: _From "With Trumpet and Drum" by Eugene Field Copyright, 1892, by Charles Scribner's Sons._] _A Christmas Hymn_ It was the calm and silent night! Seven hundred years and fifty-three Had Rome been growing up to might, And now was queen of land and sea. No sound was heard of clashing wars-- Peace brooded o'er the hushed domain: Apollo, Pallas, Jove and Mars Held undisturbed their ancient reign, In the solemn midnight, Centuries ago. 'Twas in the calm and silent night! The senator of haughty Rome, Impatient, urged his chariot's flight, From lordly revel rolling home; Triumphal arches, gleaming, swell His breast with thoughts of boundless sway; What recked the Roman what befell A paltry province far away, In the solemn midnight, Centuries ago? Within that province far away Went plodding home a weary boor; A streak of light before him lay, Falling through a half-shut stable-door Across his path. He passed--for naught Told what was going on within; How keen the stars, his only thought-- The air how calm, and cold, and thin, In the solemn midnight, Centuries ago! Oh, strange indifference! low and high Drowsed over common joys and cares; The earth was still--but knew not why, The world was listening, unawares. How calm a moment may precede One that shall thrill the world for ever! To that still moment, none would heed, Man's doom was linked no more to sever-- In the solemn midnight, Centuries ago! It is the calm and solemn night! A thousand bells ring out, and throw Their joyous peals abroad, and smite The darkness--charmed and holy now! The night that erst no name had worn, To it a happy name is given; For in that stable lay, new-born, The peaceful prince of earth and heaven, In the solemn midnight, Centuries ago! ALFRED DOMMETT. _O Little Town of Bethlehem_ O little town of Bethlehem, How still we see thee lie! Above thy deep and dreamless sleep The silent stars go by; Yet in thy dark streets shineth The everlasting Light; The hopes and fears of all the years Are met in thee to-night. For Christ is born of Mary, And, gathered all above, While mortals sleep, the angels keep Their watch of wondering love. O morning stars, together Proclaim the holy birth! And praises sing to God the King, And peace to men on earth. How silently, how silently, The wondrous gift is given! So God imparts to human hearts The blessings of His heaven. No ear may hear His coming, But in this world of sin, Where meek souls will receive Him still, The dear Christ enters in. O holy Child of Bethlehem! Descend to us, we pray; Cast out our sin, and enter in, Be born in us to-day. We hear the Christmas angels The great glad tidings tell; Oh, come to us, abide with us, Our Lord Emmanuel! PHILLIPS BROOKS. _While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night_ While shepherds watched their flocks by night, All seated on the ground, The angel of the Lord came down, And glory shone around. "Fear not," said he, for mighty dread Had seized their troubled mind; "Glad tidings of great joy I bring To you and all mankind. "To you, in David's town, this day Is born, of David's line, The Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, And this shall be the sign: "The heavenly babe you there shall find To human view displayed, All meanly wrapped in swaddling bands, And in a manger laid." Thus spake the seraph; and forthwith Appeared a shining throng Of angels, praising God, who thus Addressed their joyful song: "All glory be to God on high, And to the earth be peace; Good will henceforth from Heaven to men Begin and never cease." NAHUM TATE. _Christmas Carol_ As Joseph was a-walking, He heard an angel sing, "This night shall be the birthnight Of Christ our heavenly King. "His birth-bed shall be neither In housen nor in hall, Nor in the place of paradise, But in the oxen's stall. "He neither shall be rockèd In silver nor in gold, But in the wooden manger That lieth in the mould. "He neither shall be washen With white wine nor with red, But with the fair spring water That on you shall be shed. "He neither shall be clothèd In purple nor in pall, But in the fair, white linen That usen babies all." As Joseph was a-walking, Thus did the angel sing, And Mary's son at midnight Was born to be our King. Then be you glad, good people, At this time of the year; And light you up your candles, For His star it shineth clear. OLD ENGLISH. _Old Christmas_ Now he who knows old Christmas, He knows a carle of worth; For he is as good a fellow As any upon earth. He comes warm cloaked and coated, And buttoned up to the chin, And soon as he comes a-nigh the door We open and let him in. We know that he will not fail us, So we sweep the hearth up clean; We set him in the old arm-chair, And a cushion whereon to lean. And with sprigs of holly and ivy We make the house look gay, Just out of an old regard to him, For it was his ancient way. * * * * He must be a rich old fellow: What money he gives away! There is not a lord in England Could equal him any day. Good luck unto old Christmas, And long life, let us sing, For he doth more good unto the poor Than many a crownèd king! MARY HOWITT. _God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen_ God rest ye, merry gentlemen; let nothing you dismay, For Jesus Christ, our Saviour, was born on Christmas-day. The dawn rose red o'er Bethlehem, the stars shone through the gray, When Jesus Christ, our Saviour, was born on Christmas-day. God rest ye, little children; let nothing you affright, For Jesus Christ, your Saviour, was born this happy night; Along the hills of Galilee the white flocks sleeping lay, When Christ, the child of Nazareth, was born on Christmas-day. God rest ye, all good Christians; upon this blessed morn The Lord of all good Christians was of a woman born: Now all your sorrows He doth heal, your sins He takes away; For Jesus Christ, our Saviour, was born on Christmas-day. DINAH MARIA MULOCK. _Minstrels and Maids_ Outlanders, whence come ye last? _The snow in the street and the wind on the door._ Through what green seas and great have ye past? _Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor._ From far away, O masters mine, _The snow in the street and the wind on the door._ We come to bear you goodly wine, _Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor._ From far away we come to you, _The snow in the street and the wind on the door._ To tell of great tidings strange and true, _Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor._ News, news of the Trinity, _The snow in the street and the wind on the door._ And Mary and Joseph from over the sea! _Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor._ For as we wandered far and wide, _The snow in the street and the wind on the door._ What hap do you deem there should us betide! _Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor._ Under a bent when the night was deep, _The snow in the street and the wind on the door._ There lay three shepherds tending their sheep. _Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor._ "O ye shepherds, what have ye seen, _The snow in the street and the wind on the door._ To slay your sorrow, and heal your teen?" _Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor._ "In an ox-stall this night we saw, _The snow in the street and the wind on the door._ A babe and a maid without a flaw. _Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor._ "There was an old man there beside, _The snow in the street and the wind on the door._ His hair was white and his hood was wide. _Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor._ "And as we gazed this thing upon, _The snow in the street and the wind on the door._ Those twain knelt down to the Little One, _Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor._ "And a marvellous song we straight did hear, _The snow in the street and the wind on the door._ That slew our sorrow and healed our care." _Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor._ News of a fair and marvellous thing, _The snow in the street and the wind on the door._ Nowell, nowell, nowell, we sing! _Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor._ WILLIAM MORRIS. _An Ode on the Birth of Our Saviour_ In numbers, and but these few, I sing thy birth, O Jesu! Thou pretty baby, born here With sup'rabundant scorn here: Who for thy princely port here, Hadst for thy place Of birth, a base Out-stable for thy court here. Instead of neat enclosures Of interwoven osiers, Instead of fragrant posies Of daffodils and roses, Thy cradle, kingly stranger, As gospel tells, Was nothing else But here a homely manger. But we with silks, not crewels, With sundry precious jewels, And lily work will dress thee; And, as we dispossess thee Of clouts, we'll make a chamber, Sweet babe, for thee Of ivory, And plaster'd round with amber. * * * * ROBERT HERRICK. _Old Christmas Returned_ All you that to feasting and mirth are inclined, Come here is good news for to pleasure your mind, Old Christmas is come for to keep open house, He scorns to be guilty of starving a mouse: Then come, boys, and welcome for diet the chief, Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced pies, and roast beef. The holly and ivy about the walls wind And show that we ought to our neighbors be kind, Inviting each other for pastime and sport, And where we best fare, there we most do resort; We fail not of victuals, and that of the chief, Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced pies, and roast beef. All travellers, as they do pass on their way, At gentlemen's halls are invited to stay, Themselves to refresh, and their horses to rest, Since that he must be Old Christmas's guest; Nay, the poor shall not want, but have for relief, Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced pies, and roast beef. OLD CAROL. _Ceremonies for Christmas_ Come, bring with a noise, My merry, merry boys, The Christmas log to the firing, While my good dame, she Bids ye all be free, And drink to your heart's desiring. With the last year's brand Light the new block, and For good success in his spending, On your psalteries play, That sweet luck may Come while the log is a-teending. Drink now the strong beer, Cut the white loaf here, The while the meat is a-shredding; For the rare mince-pie, And the plums stand by, To fill the paste that's a-kneading. ROBERT HERRICK. _Christmas in England._ Heap on more wood!--the wind is chill; But let it whistle as it will, We'll keep our Christmas merry still; Each age has deem'd the new-born year The fittest time for festal cheer; Even, heathen yet, the savage Dane At Iol more deep the mead did drain; High on the beach his galleys drew, And feasted all his pirate crew. * * * * On Christmas Eve the bells were rung; On Christmas Eve the mass was sung: That only night in all the year Saw the stoled priest the chalice rear. The damsel donned her kirtle sheen; The hall was dressed with holly green; Forth to the wood did merry-men go, To gather in the mistletoe; Then open'd wide the baron's hall To vassal, tenant, serf, and all. Power laid his rod of rule aside, And Ceremony doffed his pride. The heir, with roses in his shoes, That night might village partner choose; The Lord, underogating, share The vulgar game of "Post and pair." All hail'd with uncontroll'd delight And general voice the happy night, That to the cottage, as the crown, Brought tidings of salvation down. * * * * "England was merry England when Old Christmas brought his sports again. 'Twas Christmas broach'd the mightiest ale; 'Twas Christmas told the merriest tale; A Christmas gambol oft could cheer The poor man's heart through half the year." SIR WALTER SCOTT. _From "Marmion."_ _The Gracious Time_ Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long: And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallow'd and so gracious is the time. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. _From "Hamlet."_ _Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning_ Brightest and best of the Sons of the morning! Dawn on our darkness and lend us thine aid! Star of the East, the horizon adorning, Guide where our Infant Redeemer is laid! Cold on His cradle the dewdrops are shining, Low lies His head with the beasts of the stall; Angels adore Him in slumber reclining, Maker and Monarch and Saviour of all! Say, shall we yield Him, in costly devotion, Odors of Edom and offerings divine? Gems of the mountain and pearls of the ocean, Myrrh from the forest, or gold from the mine? Vainly we offer each ample oblation; Vainly with gifts would His favor secure: Richer by far is the heart's adoration; Dearer to God are the prayers of the poor. Brightest and best of the Sons of the morning! Dawn on our darkness and lend us thine aid! Star of the East, the horizon adorning, Guide where our Infant Redeemer is laid! REGINALD HEBER. THE END INDEX BY AUTHORS ADDISON, JOSEPH [1672-1719]: _The Spacious Firmament on High_, 54. ALDRICH, THOMAS BAILEY [1836--]: _Maple Leaves_, 17; _Before the Rain_, 31; _Tiger-Lilies_, 71; _A Turkish Legend_, 611. ALEXANDER, CECIL FRANCES [1830-1895]: _The Burial of Moses_, 504. ALLINGHAM, WILLIAM [1824-1889]: _Wild Rose_, 70; _The Fairy Folk_, 174; _Blowing Bubbles_, 195; _Windlass Song_, 268; _The Abbot of Inisfalen_, 474. ANDERSON, ALEXANDER [1845--]: _Cuddle Doon_, 126. ARNOLD, EDWIN [1831--]: _Almond Blossom_, 69. ARNOLD, GEORGE [1834-1865]: _Sweet September_, 15. ARNOLD, MATTHEW [1822-1888]: _The Forsaken Merman_, 444. AUSTIN, ALFRED [1835--]: _To America_, 347. AYTOUN, WILLIAM EDMONDSTOUNE [1813-1865]: _The Old Scottish Cavalier_, 281. BALLADS, OLD: _Sir Patrick Spens_, 551; _The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington_, 555; _King John and the Abbot of Canterbury_, 558; _Lord Beichan and Susie Pye_, 563; _The Gay Gos-hawk_, 569; _Earl Mar's Daughter_, 576; _Chevy-Chace,_ 582; _Hynde Horn,_ 593; _Glenlogie,_ 597. BARING-GOULD, SABINE [1834--]: _The Olive Tree_, 619. BEECHING, HENRY CHARLES [1859--]: _Bicycling Song_, 196; _A Boy's Prayer_, 626. BENNETT, HENRY HOLCOMB [1863--]: _The Flag Goes By_, 324. BENNETT, WILLIAM COX [1820-1895]: _Invocation to Rain in Summer_, 34; _To a Cricket_, 113. BLAKE, WILLIAM [1757-1828]: _The Tiger_, 53. BOKER, GEORGE HENRY [1823-1890]: _The Black Regiment_, 326. BONAR, HORATIO [1808-1890]: _Be True_, 610. BROOKS, PHILLIPS [1835-1893]: _O Little Town of Bethlehem,_ 648. BROWNELL, HENRY HOWARD [1820-1872]: _Abraham Lincoln_, 321; _Night Quarters_, 329. BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT [1809-1861]: _Reading_ (from "Aurora Leigh"), 209; _A Portrait_, 231; _Romance of the Swan's Nest_, 423. BROWNING, ROBERT [1812-1889]: _April in England_, 8; _How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix_, 464; _The Pied Piper of Hamelin_, 480; _Hervé Riel_, 493; _Incident of the French Camp_, 544. BRYANT, WILLIAM CULLEN [1794-1878]: _March_, 6; _The Planting of the Apple Tree_, 59; _To the Fringed Gentian_, 72; _The Death of the Flowers_, 88; _To a Waterfowl_, 105; _The Twenty-second of December_, 306. BUNYAN, JOHN [1628-1688]: _The Shepherd Boy Sings in the Valley of Humiliation_, 610; _The Pilgrim_, 632. BURNS, ROBERT [1759-1796]: _To a Mountain Daisy_, 73; _Chloe_, 238; _O Mally's Meek, Mally's Sweet_, 239; _I Love My Jean_, 252; _My Nannie's Awa'_, 253; _My Heart's in the Highlands_, 277; _Bannockburn_, 539. BYRON, GEORGE GORDON, LORD [1788-1824]: _Swimming_ (from "The Two Foscari"), 202; _To the Ocean_ (from "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"), 225; _Vision of Belshazzar_, 500; _The Night before Waterloo_ (from "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"), 540; _The Destruction of Sennacherib_, 548. CAMPBELL, THOMAS [1777-1844]: _Ye Mariners of England_, 290; _Lord Ullin's Daughter_, 416; _Battle of the Baltic_, 511; _Hohenlinden_, 542. CAREW, THOMAS [1589-1639]: _Spring_, 7. CARLYLE, THOMAS [1795-1881]: _To-Day_, 602. CARMAN, BLISS [1861--]: _A Vagabond Song_, 201. CARROLL, LEWIS (REV. CHARLES LUTWIDGE DODGSON)[1832-1890]: _A Song of Love_, 122; _The Walrus and the Carpenter_, 381. CARY, ALICE [1820-1871]: The "_Gray Swan_," 452. CLOUGH, ARTHUR HUGH [1819-1861]: _Where Lies the Land?_ 273. COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR [1772-1834]: _Kubla Khan_, 160; _The Knight's Tomb_, 292. COLLINS, WILLIAM [1720-1756]: _How Sleep the Brave!_ 292. COOLIDGE, SUSAN (SARAH C. WOOLSEY) [1845-1905]: _Bind-Weed_, 74; _Time to Go_, 86. CORNWALL, BARRY (BRYAN WALLER PROCTER) [1790-1874]: _The Hunter's Song_, 223; _The Blood Horse_, 225; _The Sea_, 258. COWPER, WILLIAM [1731-1800]: _The Diverting History of John Gilpin_, 359; _On the Loss of the Royal George_, 535. CRANCH, CHRISTOPHER PEARSE [1813-1892]: _The Bobolinks_, 103. CUNNINGHAM, ALLAN [1784-1842]: _A Sea-Song_, 259; _Loyalty_, 276. DELAND, MARGARET [1857--]: _While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night_, 637. DICKINSON, EMILY [1830-1886]: _The Grass_, 81; _The Bee_, 116; _Chartless_, 626. DOBELL, SYDNEY [1824-1874]: _The Procession of the Flowers_, 67; _How's My Boy?_ 462. DOBSON, AUSTIN [1840--]: _The Child-Musician_, 463. DOMMETT, ALFRED [1811-1887]: _A Christmas Hymn_, 646. DOUGLAS OF FINGLAND, WILLIAM: _Annie Laurie_, 243. DRAKE, JOSEPH RODMAN [1795-1820]: _The Culprit Fay_ (Extracts), 168; _The American Flag_ (Extract), 311. DRAYTON, MICHAEL [1563-1631]: _A Fine Day_, 5; _The Arming of Pigwiggen_ (from "Nymphidia"), 149; _The Battle of Agincourt_, 517. DRUMMOND, WILLIAM [1585-1649]: _Phyllis_, 251; _The Angels_, 636. DRYDEN, JOHN [1631-1700]: _Alexander's Feast_ (from "The Ode on St. Cecilia's Day"), 158; _Fife and Drum_ (from "The Ode on St. Cecilia's Day"), 280. ELIOT, GEORGE [1820-1880]: _I Am Lonely_ (from "The Spanish Gypsy"), 128; _Brother and Sister_, 129. EMERSON, RALPH WALDO [1803-1882]: _April and May_ (from "May-Day"), 9; _The Snow Storm_, 21; _The Rhodora_, 76; _The Humble-Bee_, 116; _Concord Hymn_, 315; _Ode Sung in the Town Hall, Concord, July 4, 1857_, 316; _Forbearance_, 603; _Duty_, 605. FANSHAWE, CATHERINE M. [1765-1834]: _A Riddle_, 373. FLETCHER, JOHN [1576-1625]: _Evening Song_, 3. FORD, ROBERT [1846--]: _The Bonniest Bairn in a' the Warl'_, 125. FIELD, EUGENE [1850-1895]: _The Three Kings_, 644. FIELDS, JAMES T. [1816-1881]: _Song of the Turtle and Flamingo_, 385. FITZGERALD, EDWARD [1809-1883]: _Old Song_, 213. GAY, JOHN [1688-1732]: _The Council of Horses_, 356; _The Lion and the Cub_, 378. GILBERT, WILLIAM SCHWENCK [1836--]: _Captain Reece_, 387. GOLDSMITH, OLIVER [1728-1774]: _The First, Best Country_ (from "The Traveller"), 275; _Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog_, 379. GRAY, THOMAS [1746-1771]: _On a Favorite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes_, 353; _Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard_, 612. HALLECK, FITZ-GREENE [1790-1867]: _Marco Bozzaris_, 545. HARTE, BRET [1839-1902]: _Jessie_, 246; _The Reveille_, 288; _A Greyport Legend_, 458. HAY, JOHN [1838--]: _The Enchanted Shirt_, 395. HEBER, REGINALD [1783-1826]: _Providence_, 119; _Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning_, 661. H. H. (HELEN HUNT JACKSON) [1831-1885]: _October's Bright Blue Weather_, 16; _Down to Sleep_, 18; _Coronation_, 620. HEMANS, FELICIA [1749-1835]: _Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers_, 305; _Hymn for Christmas_, 639. HENLEY, WILLIAM ERNEST [1849-1903]: _Home_, 131; _Made in the Hot Weather_, 398. HERBERT, GEORGE [1593-1632]: _The Elixir_, 629; _Be Useful_, 633. HERRICK, ROBERT [1591-1674]: _To Daffodils_, 78; _Going A-Maying_, 197; _The Star Song_, 638; _An Ode on the Birth of Our Saviour_, 656; _Ceremonies for Christmas_, 658. HIGGINSON, THOMAS WENTWORTH [1823--]: _The Snowing of the Pines_, 66. HOGG, JAMES (THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD) [1772-1835]: _The Skylark_, 102. HOLLAND, JOSIAH GILBERT [1819-1881]: _A Christmas Carol_, 635. "HOLM, SAXE": _A Song of Clover_, 76. HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL [1809-1894]: _Old Ironsides_ (U. S. S. "Constitution"), 312; _The Chambered Nautilus_, 604. HOOD, THOMAS [1798-1845]: _Ruth_, 242; _November_, 402. HOUGHTON, LORD (RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES) [1809-1885]: _Our Mother Tongue_, 345. HOWE, JULIA WARD [1819--]: _Battle-Hymn of the Republic_, 331. HOWELLS, WILLIAM DEAN [1837--]: _In August_, 14. HOWITT, MARY [1804-1888]: _The Monkey_, 401; _Old Christmas_, 652. HOWITT, WILLIAM [1792-1879]: _The Northern Seas_, 226. HUNT, JAMES HENRY LEIGH [1784-1859]: _To the Grasshopper and the Cricket_, 115; _Two Heavens_, 121; _Captain Sword_, 403; _The Glove and the Lions_, 460; _Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel_, 609. INGELOW, JEAN [1830-1897]: _Seven Times Two_, 411; _The Long White Seam_, 413; _The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire_, 438. JONSON, BEN [1574-1637]: _Hesperus' Song_ (from "Cynthia's Revels"), 151; _So Sweet Is She_ (from "The Triumph of Charis"), 251; _The Noble Nature_, 603. KEATS, JOHN [1796-1820]: _Morning_, 1; _Minnows_, 45; _The Sigh of Silence_, 58; _Sweet Peas_, 68; _Goldfinches_, 107; _On the Grasshopper and Cricket_, 114; _On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer_, 210; _December_, 622. KINGSLEY, CHARLES [1819-1875]: _Ode to the Northeast Wind_, 36; _Clear and Cool_ (from "The Water-Babies"), 44; _A Myth_, 173; _Ballad_, 422; _The Sands of Dee_, 450; _A Farewell_, 625. KIPLING, RUDYARD [1865--]: _Recessional_, 297; _The Dove of Dacca_, 472. LARCOM, LUCY [1826-1893]: _Hannah Binding Shoes_, 414. LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH [1807-1882]: _The Harvest Moon_, 27; _Rain in Summer_, 32; _A New Household_, 121; _Home Song_, 138; _The Wreck of the Hesperus_, 454; _Life_ (from the "Psalm of Life"), 601; _The Three Kings_, 641. LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL [1819-1891]: _June Weather_ (from "The Vision of Sir Launfal"), 11; _A Winter Morning_ (from "The Vision of Sir Launfal"), 20; _The Brook in Winter_ (from "The Vision of Sir Launfal"), 42; _To the Dandelion_ (Extract), 77; _The Fatherland_, 298; _Washington_ (from "Under the Old Elm"), 307; _Stanzas on Freedom_, 317; _The Singing Leaves_, 407; _Sir Launfal and the Leper_ (from "The Vision of Sir Launfal"), 606. LAMB, CHARLES [1775-1834] AND MARY [1765-1847]: _Feigned Courage_, 374. LAMB, CHARLES: _The Housekeeper_, 400. LANG, ANDREW [1844--]: _Scythe Song_, 86. LANIER, SIDNEY [1842-1881]: _Dear Land of All My Love_ (from "The Centennial Ode," 1876), 301. MACAULAY, LORD (THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY) [1800-1859]: _The Armada: A Fragment_, 524; _Ivry_, 530. MACDONALD, GEORGE [1824--]: _Sir Lark and King Sun: A Parable_, 99 MARKHAM, EDWIN [1852--]: _Lincoln the Great Commoner_, 319. MARLOWE, CHRISTOPHER [1564-1593]: _The Shepherd to His Love_, 420. MARTIN, WILLIAM [1834-1896]: _An Apple Orchard in the Spring_, 63. MARVELL, ANDREW [1621-1678]: _Bermudas_, 272. McMASTER, GUY HUMPHREYS [1829-1887]: _Carmen Bellicosum_, 309. MEREDITH, OWEN (EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON) [1831-1892]: _The White Anemone_, 80. MICKLE, WILLIAM J. [1734-1788]: _The Sailor's Wife_, 134. MILLER, JOAQUIN [1841--]: _Columbus_, 301; _Crossing the Plains_, 314. MILNES, RICHARD MONCKTON. See Houghton, Lord. MILTON, JOHN [1608-1674]: _Evening in Paradise_ (from "Paradise Lost"), 2; _The Eternal Spring_, 5; _Song on May Morning_, 10; _The World Beautiful_ (from "Paradise Lost"), 27; _A Scene in Paradise_ (from "Paradise Lost"), 52; _L'Allegro_ (Extracts), 152; _Sabrina Fair_ (from "Comus"), 157; _On His Blindness_, 606. MITCHELL, WALTER [1826--]: _Tacking Ship Off Shore_, 265. MORE, HANNAH [1745-1853]: _A Riddle_, 371. MOORE, THOMAS [1779-1852]: _The Minstrel-Boy_, 278; _The Harp That Once Through Tara's Halls_, 279. MORRIS, WILLIAM [1834-1899]: _Minstrels and Maids_, 654. MOTHERWELL, WILLIAM [1797-1835]: _Sing On, Blithe Bird!_ 93; _The Cavalier's Song_, 280. MULOCK, DINAH MARIA (MRS. CRAIK) [1826-1887]: _Autumn's Processional_, 16; _Highland Cattle_, 50; _Green Things Growing_, 57; _God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen_, 653. NOEL, THOMAS [1799-1861]: _Old Winter_, 22. NORTON, CAROLINE ELIZABETH (LADY STIRLING-MAXWELL) [1808-1876]: _The King of Denmark's Ride_, 418. PARSONS, THOMAS WILLIAM [1819-1892]: _Dirge for One Who Fell in Battle_, 293. PEACOCK, THOMAS LOVE [1785-1866]: _The Priest and the Mulberry Tree_, 355. PECK, SAMUEL MINTURN [1854--]: _Autumn's Mirth_, 90. PERCIVAL, JAMES GATES [1795-1856]: _The Coral Grove_, 269. PIERPONT, JOHN [1785-1866]: _Whittling_, 220; _Warren's Address_, 308. POE, EDGAR ALLAN [1809-1849]: _The Raven_, 182; _The Bells_, 189. POPE, ALEXANDER [1688-1744]: _Descend, Ye Nine_ (from "Ode on St. Cecilia's Day"), 212. PRAED, WINTHROP MACKWORTH [1802-1839]: _Charade_, 370. PRIOR, MATTHEW [1664-1721]: _To a Child of Quality_, 369. PROCTER, ADELAIDE ANNE [1826-1864]: _One by One_, 629. PROCTER, BRYAN WALLER. See Cornwall, Barry. PROCTOR, EDNA DEAN [1838--]: _Columbia's Emblem_, 84. RAMSAY, ALLAN [1713-1784]: _My Peggy_ (from "The Gentle Shepherd"), 243. READ, THOMAS BUCHANAN [1822-1872]: _The Windy Night_, 39; _Drifting_, 262; _Sheridan's Ride_, 332. RILEY, JAMES WHITCOMB [1853--]: _The Name of Old Glory_ (from "Home Folks"), 349. ROSSETTI, CHRISTINA G. [1830-1894]: _Child's Talk in April_, 109; _All Things Wait Upon Thee_, 119; _Consider_, 628. ROSSETTI, DANTE GABRIEL [1828-1882]: _A Young Fir-Wood_, 65. SARGENT, EPES [1813-1880]: _A Life on the Ocean Wave_, 257. SAXE, JOHN G. [1816-1887]: _Solomon and the Bees_, 502. SCOTT, SIR WALTER [1771-1832]: _Hunting Song_, 222; _My Native Land_ (from "The Lay of the Last Minstrel"), 276; _Border Ballad_ (from "The Monastery"), 286; _Gathering Song of Donuil Dhu_, 287; _Soldier, Rest!_ (from "The Lady of the Lake"), 296; _Lochinvar_ (from "Marmion"), 427; _Jock of Hazeldean_, 430; _Christmas in England_ (from "Marmion"), 659. SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM [1564-1616]: _A Morning Song_ (from "Cymbeline"), 2; _When Icicles Hang by the Wall_ (from "Love's Labor's Lost"), 19; _Under the Greenwood Tree_ (from "As You Like It"), 59; _Fairyland_ (from "Midsummer-Night's Dream"), 145; _Puck and the Fairy_ (from "Midsummer-Night's Dream"), 145; _Lullaby for Titania_ (from "Midsummer-Night's Dream"), 146; _Oberon and Titania to the Fairy Train_ (from "Midsummer-Night's Dream"), 147; _Ariel's Songs_ (from "The Tempest"), 147; _Orpheus with His Lute_ (from "King Henry VIII."), 149; _Jog On, Jog On_ (from "A Winter's Tale"), 200; _Music's Silver Sound_ (from "Romeo and Juliet"), 210; _The Power of Music_ (from "The Merchant of Venice"), 211; _Who Is Silvia?_ (from "The Two Gentlemen of Verona"), 240; _Helena and Hermia_ (from "A Midsummer-Night's Dream"), 250; _Polonius to Laertes_ (from "Hamlet"), 618; _The Commonwealth of the Bees_ (from "King Henry V."), 631; _The Gracious Time_ (from "Hamlet"), 661. SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE [1792-1822]: _Daybreak_, 1; _Dirge for the Year_, 25; _The Cloud_, 28; _To a Skylark_, 94; _The Magic Car Moved On_ (from "Queen Mab"), 162; _Arethusa_, 165; _A Child of Twelve_ (from "The Revolt of Islam"), 237. SHENSTONE, WILLIAM [1714-1763]: _The Shepherd's Home_, 112. SILL, EDWARD ROWLAND [1841-1887]: _Opportunity_, 608. SKELTON, JOHN [1460-1529]: _To Mistress Margaret Hussey_, 240. SOUTHEY, ROBERT [1774-1843]: _Night_, 4; _The Cataract of Lodore_, 391; _The Inchcape Rock_, 468; _The Battle of Blenheim_, 522. SOUTHWELL, ROBERT [1556-1595]: _New Prince, New Pomp_, 640. SPENSER, EDMUND [1552-1599]: _The Seasons_ (from "The Faerie Queene"), 5; _May_, 9; _Summer_ (from "The Faerie Queene"), 10; _August_, 14; _Autumn_ (from "The Faerie Queene"), 15; _Winter_, 19. SPOFFORD, HARRIET PRESCOTT [1835--]: _A Snowdrop_, 69. SPRAGUE, CHARLES [1791-1875]: _Indians_, 313. STEDMAN, EDMUND CLARENCE [1833--]: _The Flight of the Birds_, 111; _Going A-Nutting_, 219. STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS [1850-1894]: _The Wind_, 35; _A Visit from the Sea_, 261. STODDARD, RICHARD HENRY [1825-1909]: _Abraham Lincoln_, 318. STODDART, THOMAS TOD [1810-1880]: _The Angler's Invitation_, 207. STORY, WILLIAM WETMORE [1819-1895]: _The English Language_ (Extracts), 346. SWETT, SUSAN HARTLEY: _July_, 13. SWIFT, JONATHAN [1667-1745]: _A Riddle_, 372; _Baucis and Philemon_, 375. SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES [1837-1909]: _Étude Réaliste_, 139; _Swimming_ (from "Tristram of Lyonesse"), 201. TABB, JOHN B. [1845--]: _The Tax-Gatherer_, 114. TATE, NAHUM [1652-1715]: _While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night_, 649. TAYLOR, BAYARD [1825-1878]: _The Song of the Camp_, 284; _A Night With a Wolf_, 471. TENNYSON, ALFRED, LORD [1809-1892]: _The Brook_, 40; _The Eagle_ (Fragment), 109; _The Merman_, 177; _The Mermaid_, 178; _Bugle Song_ (from "The Princess"), 181; _Leolin and Edith_ (from "Aylmer's Field"), 218; _Olivia_ (from "The Talking Oak"), 247; _The Shell_, 270; _The Lady of Shalott_, 431; _The Charge of the Light Brigade_, 537. TENNYSON, FREDERICK [1807-1898]: _The Skylark_, 101. THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE [1811-1863]: _Pocahontas_, 303; _The End of the Play_ (from "Dr. Birch and His Young Friends"), 623. THAXTER, CELIA [1836-1894]: _The Sandpiper_, 107; _Nikolina_, 248. THORNBURY, GEORGE WALTER [1828-1876]: _The Cavalier's Escape_, 479. TROWBRIDGE, JOHN TOWNSEND [1827--]: _Midwinter_, 23; _Evening at the Farm_, 136. UNKNOWN: _Mother's Song_ (West of England Lullaby), 123; _Love Will Find Out the Way_ (Old English), 133; _When Banners Are Waving_, 509; _Christmas Carol_ (Old English), 650; _Old Christmas Returned_ (Old Carol), 657. VAN DYKE, HENRY [1852--]: _The Angler's Reveille_, 203. VAUGHAN, HENRY [1621-1695]: _Peace_, 627. VERY, JONES [1813-1880]: _The Latter Rain_, 35; _The Tree_, 65. WATSON, WILLIAM [1858--]: _Song to April_, 7. WESTWOOD, THOMAS [1850-1888]: _Mine Host of "The Golden Apple,"_ 64; _Little Bell_, 234. WHITMAN, WALT [1819-1892]: _O Captain! My Captain!_ 323; _Two Veterans_, 340. WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF [1807-1892]: _Snow-Bound_ (Extracts), 46; _The Corn-Song_, 82; _The Barefoot Boy_, 214; _Song of the Negro Boatman_, 335; _Barbara Frietchie_, 337; _The Pipes at Lucknow_, 514. WILDER, JOHN NICHOLS [1814-1858]: _Stand by the Flag_, 342. WOLFE, CHARLES [1791-1823]: _The Burial of Sir John Moore_, 295. WOODBERRY, GEORGE EDWARD [1855--]: _At Gibraltar_, 343, 344. WOODWORTH, SAMUEL: _The Needle_, 228. WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM [1770-1850]: _The Daffodils_, 79; _We Are Seven_, 141; _Skating_ (from "The Prelude"), 207; _Lucy_, 245; _The Solitary Reaper_, 249; _Faith and Freedom_, 345; _In a Child's Album_, 602. INDEX BY TITLES Abbot of Inisfalen, The, 474 Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel, 609 Abraham Lincoln (Brownell), 321 Abraham Lincoln (Stoddard), 318 Alexander's Feast, 158 Allegro, L', 152 All Things Wait Upon Thee, 119 Almond Blossoms, 69 American Flag, The, 311 Angels, The, 636 Angler's Invitation, The, 207 Angler's Reveille, The, 203 Annie Laurie, 243 Apple Orchard in the Spring, An, 63 April and May, 9 April in England, 8 Arethusa, 165 Ariel's Songs, 147 Armada, The, 524 Arming of Pigwiggen, The, 149 At Gibraltar, 343, 344 August, 14 Autumn, 15 Autumn's Mirth, 90 Autumn's Processional, 16 Bailiff's Daughter of Islington, The, 555 Ballad, 422 Bannockburn, 539 Barbara Frietchie, 337 Barefoot Boy, The, 214 Battle of Agincourt, The, 517 Battle of Blenheim, The, 522 Battle of the Baltic, 511 Battle-Hymn of the Republic, 331 Baucis and Philemon, 375 Bee, The, 116 Bees, Commonwealth of the, 631 Before the Rain, 31 Bells, The, 189 Belshazzar, Vision of, 500 Bermudas, 272 Be True, 610 Be Useful, 633 Bicycling Song, 196 Bind-Weed, 74 Black Regiment, The, 326 Blood Horse, The, 225 Blowing Bubbles, 195 Bobolinks, The, 103 Bonniest Bairn in a' the Warl', The, 125 Border Ballad, 286 Boy's Prayer, A, 626 Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning, 661 Brook, The, 40 Brook in Winter, The, 42 Brother and Sister, 129 Bugle Song, 181 Burial of Moses, The, 504 Burial of Sir John Moore, The, 295 Captain Reece, 387 Captain Sword, 403 Carmen Bellicosum, 309 Cataract of Lodore, The, 391 Cavalier's Escape, The, 479 Cavalier's Song, The, 280 Ceremonies for Christmas, 658 Chambered Nautilus, The, 604 Chanted Calendar, A, 1 Charade, 370 Charge of the Light Brigade, The, 537 Chartless, 626 Chevy-Chace, 582 Child-Musician, The, 463 Child of Twelve, A, 237 Child's Talk in April, 109 Chloe, 238 Christmas Carol, 650 Christmas Carol, A, 635 Christmas Hymn, A, 646 Christmas in England, 659 Clear and Cool, 44 Cloud, The, 28 Columbia's Emblem, 84 Columbus, 301 Commonwealth of the Bees, The, 631 Concord Hymn, 315 Consider, 628 Coral Grove, The, 269 Corn-Song, The, 82 Coronation, 620 Council of Horses, The, 356 Cricket, To a, 113 Crossing the Plains, 314 Cuddle Doon, 126 Culprit Fay, The (Extracts), 168 Daffodils, The, 79 Daffodils, To, 78 Daybreak, 1 Dear Land of All My Love, 301 Death of the Flowers, The, 88 December, 622 Descend, Ye Nine, 212 Destruction of Sennacherib, The, 548 Dirge, for One Who Fell in Battle, 293 Dirge for the Year, 25 Diverting History of John Gilpin, The, 359 Dove of Dacca, The, 472 "Down to Sleep," 18 Drifting, 262 Duty, 605 Eagle, The, 109 Earl Mar's Daughter, 576 Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog, 379 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, 612 Elixir, The, 629 Enchanted Shirt, The, 395 End of the Play, The, 623 English Language, The (Extracts), 346 Eternal Spring, The, 5 Étude Réaliste, 139 Evening at the Farm, 136 Evening in Paradise, 2 Evening Song, 3 Extracts from "L'Allegro," 152 Fairy Folk, The, 174 Fairy Land, 145 Fairy Songs and Songs of Fancy, 145 Faith and Freedom, 345 Farewell, A, 625 Fatherland, The, 298 Feigned Courage, 374 Fife and Drum, 280 Fine Day, A, 5 First, Best Country, The, 275 Flag Goes By, The, 324 Flight of the Birds, The, 111 For Home and Country, 275 Forbearance, 603 Forsaken, Merman, The, 444 Garden of Girls, A, 231 Gathering Song of Donuil Dhu, 287 Glad Evangel, The, 635 Glenlogie, 597 Glove and the Lions, The, 460 God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen, 653 Going A-Maying, 197 Going A-Nutting, 219 Goldfinches, 107 Gos-hawk, The Gay, 569 Gracious Time, The, 661 Grass, The, 81 Grasshopper and Cricket, On the, 114 Grasshopper and the Cricket, To the, 115 "Gray Swan," The, 452 Green Things Growing, 57 Greyport Legend, A, 458 Hannah Binding Shoes, 414 Harp that Once Through Tara's Halls, The, 279 Harvest Moon, The, 27 Helena and Hermia, 250 Hervé Riel, 493 Hesperus' Song, 151 High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire, The, 438 Highland Cattle, 50 Hohenlinden, 542 Home, 131 Home Song, 138 Housekeeper, The, 400 How Sleep the Brave! 292 How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, 464 How's My Boy? 462 Humble-Bee, The, 116 Hunter's Song, The, 223 Hunting Song, 222 Hymn for Christmas, 639 Hynde Horn, 593 I Am Lonely, 128 I Love My Jean, 252 In a Child's Album, 602 In August, 14 In Merry Mood, 353 Inchcape Rock, The, 468 Incident of the French Camp, 544 Indians, 313 Inglenook, The, 121 Invocation to Rain in Summer, 34 Ivry, 530 Jessie, 246 Jock of Hazeldean, 430 Jog On, Jog On, 200 July, 13 June Weather, 11 King John and the Abbot of Canterbury, 558 King of Denmark's Ride, The, 418 Knight's Tomb, The, 292 Kubla Khan, 160 Lady of Shalott, The, 431 Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, 305 Latter Rain, The, 35 Leolin and Edith, 218 Life, 601 Life Lessons, 601 Life on the Ocean Wave, A, 257 Lincoln, the Great Commoner, 319 Lion and the Cub, The, 378 Little Bell, 234 Lochinvar, 427 Long White Seam, The, 413 Lord Beichan and Susie Pye, 563 Lord Ullin's Daughter, 416 Love Will Find Out the Way, 133 Loyalty, 276 Lucy, 245 Lullaby for Titania, 146 Made in the Hot Weather, 398 Magic Car Moved On, The, 162 Maple Leaves, 17 March, 6 Marco Bozzaris, 545 May, 9 Mermaid, The, 178 Merman, The, 177 Midwinter, 23 Mine Host of "The Golden Apple," 64 Minnows, 45 Minstrel-Boy, The, 278 Minstrels and Maids, 654 Monkey, The, 401 Morning, 1 Morning Song, A, 2 Mother's Song, 123 Music's Silver Sound, 210 My Heart's in the Highlands, 277 My Nannie's Awa', 253 My Native Land, 276 My Peggy, 243 Myth, A, 173 Name of Old Glory, The, 349 Needle, The, 228 New Household, A, 121 New Prince, New Pomp, 640 New World and Old Glory, 301 Night, 4 Night Before Waterloo, The, 540 Night Quarters, 329 Night With a Wolf, A, 471 Nikolina, 248 Noble Nature, The, 603 Northern Seas, The, 226 November, 402 Oberon and Titania to the Fairy Train, 147 O Captain! My Captain! 323 O Little Town of Bethlehem, 648 October's Bright Blue Weather, 16 Ode on the Birth of Our Saviour, An, 656 Ode Sung in the Town Hall, Concord, 316 Ode to the Northeast Wind, 36 Old Christmas, 652 Old Christmas Returned, 657 Old Ironsides, 312 Old Scottish Cavalier, The, 281 Old Song, 213 Old Winter, 22 Olive Tree, The, 619 Olivia, 247 O Mally's Meek, Mally's Sweet, 239 On a Favorite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes, 353 On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer, 210 On His Blindness, 606 On the Grasshopper and Cricket, 114 On the Loss of the Royal George, 535 On the Wing, 93 One by One, 629 Opportunity, 608 Orpheus with His Lute, 149 Our Mother Tongue, 345 Peace, 627 Phyllis, 251 Pied Piper of Hamelin, The, 480 Pigwiggen, The Arming of, 149 Pilgrim, The, 632 Pipes at Lucknow, The, 514 Planting of the Apple Tree, The, 59 Pocahontas, 303 Polonius to Laertes, 618 Portrait, A, 231 Power of Music, The, 211 Priest and the Mulberry Tree, The, 355 Procession of the Flowers, The, 67 Providence, 119 Puck and the Fairy, 145 Rain in Summer, 32 Raven, The, 182 Reading, 209 Recessional, 297 Reveille, The, 288 Rhodora, The, 76 Riddle, A (A Book), 371 Riddle, A (The Letter H), 373 Riddle, A (The Vowels), 372 Romance and Reality, 407 Romance of the Swan's Nest, 423 Ruth, 242 Sabrina Fair, 157 Sailor's Wife, The, 134 Sandpiper, The, 107 Sands of Dee, The, 450 Scene in Paradise, A, 52 Scythe Song, 86 Sea, The, 258 Sea-Song, A, 259 Seasons, The, 5 Seven Times Two, 411 Shell, The, 270 Shepherd Boy Sings in the Valley of Humiliation, The, 610 Shepherd to His Love, The, 420 Shepherd's Home, The, 112 Sheridan's Ride, 332 Sigh of Silence, The, 58 Sing on, Blithe Bird! 93 Singing Leaves, The, 407 Sir Lark and King Sun: A Parable, 99 Sir Launfal and the Leper, 606 Sir Patrick Spens, 551 Skating, 207 Skylark, The (Hogg), 102 Skylark, The (Tennyson), 101 Snow-Bound (Extracts), 46 Snowdrop, A, 69 Snowing of the Pines, The, 66 Snow Storm, The, 21 Soldier, Rest! 296 Solitary Reaper, The, 249 Solomon and the Bees, 502 Song of Clover, A, 76 Song of Love, A, 122 Song of the Camp, The, 284 Song of the Negro Boatman, 335 Song of the Turtle and Flamingo, 385 Song on May Morning, 10 Song to April, 7 So Sweet is She, 251 Spacious Firmament on High, The, 54 Sports and Pastimes, 195 Spring, 7 Stand by the Flag! 342 Stanzas on Freedom, 317 Star Song, The, 638 Summer, 10 Sweet Peas, 68 Sweet September, 15 Swimming (Byron), 202 Swimming (Swinburne), 201 Tacking Ship Off Shore, 265 Tales of the Olden Time, 551 Tax-Gatherer, The, 114 Three Kings, The (Field), 644 Three Kings, The (Longfellow), 641 Tiger, The, 53 Tiger-Lilies, 71 Time to Go, 86 To a Child of Quality, 369 To a Cricket, 113 To a Mountain Daisy, 73 To a Skylark, 94 To a Waterfowl, 105 To America, 347 To Daffodils, 78 To-day, 602 To Mistress Margaret Hussey, 240 To the Dandelion, 77 To the Fringed Gentian, 72 To the Grasshopper and the Cricket, 115 To the Ocean, 255 Tree, The, 65 Turkish Legend, A, 611 Twenty-second of December, The, 306 Two Heavens, 121 Two Veterans, 340 Under the Greenwood Tree, 59 Vagabond Song, A, 201 Vision of Belshazzar, The, 500 Visit from the Sea, A, 261 Walrus and the Carpenter, The, 381 Warren's Address, 308 Washington, 307 Waterfowl, To a, 105 Waterloo, The Night Before, 540 We are Seven, 141 When Banners are Waving, 509 When Icicles Hang by the Wall, 19 Where Lies the Land? 273 While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night (Deland), 637 While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night (Tate), 649 White Anemone, The, 80 Whittling, 220 Who is Silvia? 240 Wild Rose, 70 Wind, The, 35 Windlass Song, 268 Windy Night, The, 39 Winter, 19 Winter Morning, A, 20 World Beautiful, The, 27 World of Waters, The, 255 Wreck of the Hesperus, The, 454 Ye Mariners of England, 290 Young Fir-wood, A, 65 
36094	----	generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) Alan L. Strang Born August 18th, 1908 Died January 29th, 1919 [Illustration: Alan L. Strang] Our Boys and Other Poems [Illustration] by ALAN L. STRANG California's BOY POET Copyrighted, 1919 BY J. L. STRANG Introduction Alan L. Strang was born in Spokane, Washington, August 18, 1908. Living there until he was four years old, he came to California in 1913 with his parents, making their home in Redwood City. He had a gentle, loving disposition, was always frail and delicate and possessed a mental development far in advance of his years. He was taken to the Great Beyond January 29, 1919. The poems contained in this book were written prior to his tenth birthday. Considering the age of the author we feel that the work contains real merit, while the sentiment expressed betokens that patriotic spirit which never fails or hesitates when our country calls for men. J. L. S. To the Reader of this Book This little book's a letter, I send direct to you; I hope that you will like it, And read it thru and thru. And after you have read it, Just send a thot to me; Your thots will help to make me The "Poet" I would be. Yours very truly, ALAN L. STRANG, Redwood City, California. Our Boys Written after the United States entered the war, fighting on the side of the Entente Allies. Halt! Attention! Salute the flag, The boys are marching by; They're going forth to win the war For us to do or die. Our country needed fighting men, Her liberty to save; These boys responded to the call, And all they had they gave. All loyal hearts are beating fast, And hope our bosoms fill; For liberty shall reign supreme O'er ocean, dale and hill. With no regrets for parted hopes Or futures cast aside, Our soldier boys are marching by; They are our country's pride. Our Soldier Boy Written as a tribute to my brother, W. M. Strang, with the Engineers. He said, "I'm Daddy's soldier boy," When he was five years old; And then went out and built snow forts, Although the day was cold. The snowballs were his hand grenades, A stick his bayonette; And with a home-made wooden gun The foe he bravely met. In five more years he joined the "scouts" And hiked across the hills; He learned to wear a khaki suit, And do military drills. And so the years passed swiftly on, And now he is a man; He's in the trenches over there, Fighting for Uncle Sam. I know he'll make the Huns regret They started this big fight, For he knows the cause he's fighting for Is liberty and right. A Small Boy's Desire Written for the first thrift stamp drive. I want to be a soldier And march away to France; I want to find a wicked "Hun," And shoot him in the pants. I want to be a soldier, And wear a khaki suit; I want to have a sword and gun And all the "Boches" shoot. I want to be a soldier, And have an aeroplane To drop bombs on the German towns, And fly back home again. I want to be a soldier And do my little bit; My country needs brave fighting men, While here at home I sit. Some day I'll be a big, big man; I'll go to war and fight The wicked Hun, or any one Who does not do what's right. But now the only way for me To help my country win, Is save my coin and buy thrift stamps, So, boys, let's save our tin. The Storm The rough old Mr. Storm Is whirling, swirling past He makes the treetops bow their heads And trembles at his blast. He never stops to think Of the damage he may do, He's always rushing in and out And hitting, batting you. He pushes big, black clouds Against the mountain tops; The rain and hail comes rushing down In large, round crystal drops. The storm will soon be over; See the rainbow in the sky. The birds will sing on airy wing, And the bright sun shine on high. Do Not Worry Do not worry over trifles, though to you they may seem great, All your fretting will not help you, or your troubles dissipate. If your sky is dark and gloomy, and the sun is hid from view, Bravely smile and keep on smiling, And your friends will smile with you. Happiness is so contagious, and a smile is never lost; Then why worry over trifles, tho your heart seems tempest tossed. Therefore go on life's journey with an optimistic smile, See the world is good to live in, and that living is worth while. How can we Fool the Rooster? Written when the clock was set ahead one hour on April 1, 1918. Our Rooster wakes at half-past five And crows with all his might, He tries to wake the people up Before the day is light. When Daddy hears the rooster crow He knows he should awake And light the kitchen fire, so Ma Can cook the Johnny cake. Now, maybe we can fool my Dad That it's half-past five when it's half-past four, And maybe the system's the best we have had To fool some thousands of people or more; But, how can we fool that rooster? I have always thought our rooster had A clock inside of his head, And I don't know how we can fix it so We can set the clock ahead. I asked my Dad, and he said to me, "Why, son, you surely know A rooster's instinct wakens him And tells him when to crow." Now the hands of the clock we can turn ahead, We can fool the people and feel content; But the thing that worries me night and day, And on which my entire thought is bent Is, how can we fool that rooster? A Wreath Of Flowers Written for Decoration Day, May 30, 1918. I wove me a wreath of flowers To place in memories hall, In honor of the brave and fearless men Who had answered our country's call. The men who had answered, and fought, and died For the cause of freedom, our country's pride! I wove me a wreath of flowers With many a sigh and tear, As a tribute to all the good and true Who were given few honors here. The man of humble piety Who lived and died in obscurity. A wreath of flowers, a little thing For flowers wither and fade; But the fragrance they shed is not soon forgot By me, who the wreath has made. So the virtues of those who have gone before, Will always be treasured in memory's store. EPITAPH Our loved ones lay them down to sleep And leave us here to grieve and mourn, While we, our silent watches keep, O'er their low graves whence they are bourne. Some heroes are in battle slain, Their names are honored far and near, While others die on beds of pain And no sad mourner sheds a tear. This day we honor each and all Whose soul has left its temporal case; And be he great, or be he small, We'll reverence his resting place. Part Second The poems and story of Masata in part second of this book were written during the last month of the young Author's life. He was taken to the Spirit Land, January 29, 1919. The Lily of the Valley I've a lily of the Valley That I'm keeping here for you; I care for and protect it, And water it with dew. It is a living emblem Of the wonderful domain, Where all is pure and love-like, And where we feel no pain. Yes, the Lily of the Valley Is a tie twixt you and me; For every time you see one Think how happy I must be. I'm an atom of the infinite, How wonderful it seems; Yet from your sphere the finite But a thin veil intervenes. The Roses I have roses in my garden, And their fragrance fills the air. How I love to watch them blooming; For they all are very fair. Some have deep red velvet petals, Some again are snowy white; And the little baby pink ones, Surely give you such delight. Pretty birds come to my garden, And sing there the live-long day; Yes the birds and pretty flowers Help and cheer us on our way. The Seasons SPRING Spring time is here with its sunshine and showers, All nature is waking from its long winter sleep. The gardens are blooming with beautiful flowers, The song-birds are carolling melodies sweet. SUMMER The summer comes with glaring heat, And we will have vacation; We pack our grips for the seashore trips, Or other recreation. AUTUMN The harvest moon is shining bright, The leaves are falling everywhere; How glorious is the autumn night, How cool and bracing is the air. WINTER Jack frost is stalking through the land, The ground is covered white, with snow. We like to sit beside the fire And tell the tales of long ago. Wishes A BIRTHDAY WISH. I'm wishing a happy birthday, To you my dear sweet friend; And may every day be a happy day Is the wish I will always send. A CHRISTMAS WISH. A Merry Christmas Wish to you, And may your heart be gay; May Santa bring you many things, This Merry Christmas day. A NEW YEAR WISH A happy happy, New Year, We all are wishing you; We hope no sorrow you shall know This whole year through. Dreams Away o'er the hills in the valley green Away from the noise of the busy town; I dream sweet dreams of the olden days Of you in your beautiful wedding gown. I dream that you come and sit by me And you hold my hand and ruff my hair; Your eyes shine with a sweet delight That I used to see so often there. Then my heart is filled with a hallowed love And I know t'is but a little way To the spirit land, and I know that I Shall meet you there some glad sweet day. Then our wedding day in the spirit land Will be filled with love and joy serene; And the infinite hand will guide us where The waters are still and the valleys green. Masata Masata was an Indian boy, he lived on the banks of the Ohio River in Kentucky. During the Revolutionary War in 1771, the Americans were taking over the land very fast, and when Masata was ten years old his parents moved to the wild regions of the Dakotas, taking Masata with them. Here he enjoyed life although it was much colder than in his native Kentucky, and in the Winter months he wore coats of fur made from bear skin. The days soon became filled with interesting things for Masata. One day when he was roaming through the wilds, he heard a wild buffalo approaching. He seemed almost helpless, as he had nothing but a small bow and a few arrows, and the buffalo was only a short distance from him. He began to run in what he thought was the direction of his home, but instead he was going in the opposite way. In a few minutes he saw the smoke of a camp fire and ran toward it. By this time the beast was very close to him and he was almost in despair, when the buffalo lurched forward, then rolled over dead. Three Indians hunting near by had hit him in a vital spot with an arrow. The Indians belonged to a tribe which was his father's most bitter enemy, and they took him before their chief. The chief ordered that he be let live for two moons, and he was given a bed of dry twigs to sleep on as the night was drawing near. Time passed quietly for Masata until the approach of the morning of the second moon. He had been planning how he would escape from his father's enemies. Finally one morning he slipped into a bear skin and hopped bravely off toward the woods. The Indians thinking he was a bear, shot arrows at him and wounded him in the right arm, but Masata kept bravely on and was soon out of range of the arrows. Then he bandaged his wounded arm the best he could and set out for his father's wigwam. He arrived safely the same evening, and his parents were overjoyed to see him and know he was safe once more, and the tribe made a great feast, or as they call it, Pow Wow, as a welcome to his home coming. While Masata was still a young "brave" their chief died and after a great ceremony, Masata was made Chief of the tribes, and was known as great and good ruler. 
36149	----	SONGS AND SATIRES THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO SONGS AND SATIRES _By_ EDGAR LEE MASTERS AUTHOR OF "SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY" New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1916 _All rights reserved_ COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1916. Reprinted March, June, 1916. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A For permission to print in book form certain of these poems I wish to acknowledge an indebtedness to _Poetry_, _The Smart Set_, _The Little Review_, _The Cosmopolitan Magazine_, and William Marion Reedy, Editor of _Reedy's Mirror_. CONTENTS PAGE SILENCE 1 ST. FRANCIS AND LADY CLARE 4 THE COCKED HAT 10 THE VISION 18 SO WE GREW TOGETHER 21 RAIN IN MY HEART 31 THE LOOP 32 WHEN UNDER THE ICY EAVES 40 IN THE CAR 41 SIMON SURNAMED PETER 43 ALL LIFE IN A LIFE 47 WHAT YOU WILL 56 THE CITY 57 THE IDIOT 65 HELEN OF TROY 68 O GLORIOUS FRANCE 71 FOR A DANCE 74 WHEN LIFE IS REAL 76 THE QUESTION 78 THE ANSWER 79 THE SIGN 80 WILLIAM MARION REEDY 82 A STUDY 85 PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN 88 IN THE CAGE 91 SAVING A WOMAN: ONE PHASE 95 LOVE IS A MADNESS 97 ON A BUST 98 ARABEL 101 JIM AND ARABEL'S SISTER 108 THE SORROW OF DEAD FACES 116 THE CRY 119 THE HELPING HAND 120 THE DOOR 121 SUPPLICATION 122 THE CONVERSATION 125 TERMINUS 130 MADELINE 132 MARCIA 134 THE ALTAR 135 SOUL'S DESIRE 137 BALLAD OF LAUNCELOT AND ELAINE 140 THE DEATH OF LAUNCELOT 149 IN MICHIGAN 156 THE STAR 166 SONGS AND SATIRES SILENCE I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea, And the silence of the city when it pauses, And the silence of a man and a maid, And the silence for which music alone finds the word, And the silence of the woods before the winds of spring begin, And the silence of the sick When their eyes roam about the room. And I ask: For the depths Of what use is language? A beast of the field moans a few times When death takes its young: And we are voiceless in the presence of realities-- We cannot speak. A curious boy asks an old soldier Sitting in front of the grocery store, "How did you lose your leg?" And the old soldier is struck with silence, Or his mind flies away, Because he cannot concentrate it on Gettysburg. It comes back jocosely And he says, "A bear bit it off." And the boy wonders, while the old soldier Dumbly, feebly lives over The flashes of guns, the thunder of cannon, The shrieks of the slain, And himself lying on the ground, And the hospital surgeons, the knives, And the long days in bed. But if he could describe it all He would be an artist. But if he were an artist there would be deeper wounds Which he could not describe. There is the silence of a great hatred, And the silence of a great love, And the silence of a deep peace of mind, And the silence of an embittered friendship. There is the silence of a spiritual crisis, Through which your soul, exquisitely tortured, Comes with visions not to be uttered Into a realm of higher life. And the silence of the gods who understand each other without speech. There is the silence of defeat. There is the silence of those unjustly punished; And the silence of the dying whose hand Suddenly grips yours. There is the silence between father and son, When the father cannot explain his life, Even though he be misunderstood for it. There is the silence that comes between husband and wife. There is the silence of those who have failed; And the vast silence that covers Broken nations and vanquished leaders. There is the silence of Lincoln, Thinking of the poverty of his youth. And the silence of Napoleon After Waterloo. And the silence of Jeanne d'Arc Saying amid the flames, "Blessed Jesus"-- Revealing in two words all sorrow, all hope. And there is the silence of age, Too full of wisdom for the tongue to utter it In words intelligible to those who have not lived The great range of life. And there is the silence of the dead. If we who are in life cannot speak Of profound experiences, Why do you marvel that the dead Do not tell you of death? Their silence shall be interpreted As we approach them. ST. FRANCIS AND LADY CLARE Antonio loved the Lady Clare. He caught her to him on the stair And pressed her breasts and kissed her hair, And drew her lips in his, and drew Her soul out like a torch's flare. Her breath came quick, her blood swirled round; Her senses in a vortex swound. She tore him loose and turned around, And reached her chamber in a bound Her cheeks turned to a poppy's hue. She closed the door and turned the lock, Her breasts and flesh were turned to rock. She reeled as drunken from the shock. Before her eyes the devils skipped, She thought she heard the devils mock. For had her soul not been as pure As sifted snow, could she endure Antonio's passion and be sure Against his passion's strength and lure? Lean fears along her wonder slipped. Outside she heard a drunkard call, She heard a beggar against the wall Shaking his cup, a harlot's squall Struck through the riot like a sword, And gashed the midnight's festival. She watched the city through the pane, The old Silenus half insane, The idiot crowd that drags its chain-- And then she heard the bells again, And heard the voices with the word: Ecco il santo! Up the street There was the sound of running feet From closing door and window seat, And all the crowd turned on its way The Saint of Poverty to greet. He passed. And then a circling thrill, As water troubled which was still, Went through her body like a chill, Who of Antonio thought until She heard the Saint begin to pray. And then she turned into the room Her soul was cloven through with doom, Treading the softness and the gloom Of Asia's silk and Persia's wool, And China's magical perfume. She sickened from the vases hued In corals, yellows, greens, the lewd Twined dragon shapes and figures nude, And tapestries that showed a brood Of leopards by a pool! Candles of wax she lit before A pier glass standing from the floor; Up to the ceiling, off she tore With eager hands her jewels, then The silken vesture which she wore. Her little breasts so round to see Were budded like the peony. Her arms were white as ivory, And all her sunny hair lay free As marigold or celandine. Her blue eyes sparkled like a vase Of crackled turquoise, in her face Was memory of the mad embrace Antonio gave her on the stair, And on her cheeks a salt tear's trace. Like pigeon blood her lips were red. She clasped her bands above her head. Under her arms the waxlight shed Delicate halos where was spread The downy growth of hair. Such sudden sin the virgin knew She quenched the tapers as she blew Puff! puff! upon them, then she threw Herself in tears upon her knees, And round her couch the curtain drew. She called upon St. Francis' name, Feeling Antonio's passion maim Her body with his passion's flame To save her, save her from the shame Of fancies such as these! "Go by mad life and old pursuits, The wine cup and the golden fruits, The gilded mirrors, rosewood flutes, I would praise God forevermore With harps of gold and silver lutes." She stripped the velvet from her couch Her broken spirit to avouch. She saw the devils slink and slouch, And passion like a leopard crouch Half mirrored on the polished floor. Next day she found the saint and said: I would be God's bride, I would wed Poverty and I would eat the bread That you for anchorites prepare, For my soul's sake I am in dread. Go then, said Francis, nothing loth, Put off this gown of green snake cloth, Put on one somber as a moth, Then come to me and make your troth And I will clip your golden hair. She went and came. But still there lay, A gem she did not put away, A locket twixt her breasts, all gay In shimmering pearls and tints of blue, And inlay work of fruit and spray. St. Francis felt it as he slipped His hand across her breast and whipped Her golden tresses ere he clipped-- He closed his eyes then as he gripped The shears, plunged the shears through. The waterfall of living gold. The locks fell to the floor and rolled, And curled like serpents which unfold. And there sat Lady Clare despoiled. Of worldly glory manifold. She thrilled to feel him take and hide The locket from her breast, a tide Of passion caught them side by side. He was the bridegroom, she the bride-- Their flesh but not their spirits foiled. Thus was the Lady Clare debased To sack cloth and around her waist A rope the jeweled belt replaced. Her feet made free of silken hose Naked in wooden sandals cased Went bruised to Bastia's chapel, then They housed her in St. Damian And here she prayed for poor women And here St. Francis sought her when His faith sank under earthly woes. Antonio cursed St. Clare in rhyme And took to wine and got the lime Of hatred on his soul, in time Grew healed though left a little lame, And laughed about it in his prime; When he could see with crystal eyes That love is a winged thing which flies; Some break the wings, some let them rise From earth like God's dove to the skies Diffused in heavenly flame. THE COCKED HAT Would that someone would knock Mr. Bryan into a cocked hat.--WOODROW WILSON. It ain't really a hat at all, Ed: You know that, don't you? When you bowl over six out of the nine pins, And the three that are standing Are the triangular three in front, You've knocked the nine into a cocked hat. If it was really a hat, he would be knocked in, too. Which he hardly is. For a man with money, And a man who can draw a crowd to listen To what he says, ain't all-in yet.... Oh yes, defeated And killed off a dozen times, but still He's one of the three nine pins that's standing ... Eh? Why, the other is Teddy, the other Wilson, we'll say. We'll see, perhaps. But six are down to make the cocked hat-- That's me and thousands of others like me, And the first-rate men who were cuffed about After the Civil War, And most of the more than six million men Who followed this fellow into the ditch, While he walked down the ditch and stepped to the level-- Following an ideal! * * * * * Do you remember how slim he was, And trim he was, With black hair and pale brow, And the hawk-like nose and flashing eyes, Not turning slowly like an owl But with a sudden eagle motion?... One time, in '96, he came here And we had just a dollar and sixty cents In the treasury of the organization. So I stuck his lithograph on a pole And started out for the station. By the time we got back here to Clark street Four thousand men were marching in line, And a band that was playing for an opening Of a restaurant on Franklin street Had left the job and was following his carriage. Why, it took all the money Mark Hanna could raise To beat me, with nothing but a pole And a lithograph. And it wasn't because he was one of the prophets Come back to earth again. It shows how human hearts are hungry How wonderfully true they are-- And how they will rise and follow a man Who seems to see the truth! Well, these fellows who marched are the cocked hat, And I am the cocked hat and the six millions, And more are the cocked hat, Who got themselves despised or suspected Of ignorance or something for being with him. But still, he's one of the pins that's standing. He got the money that he went after, And he has a place in history, perhaps-- Because we took the blow and fell down When the ripping ball went wild on the alley. * * * * * For we were radicals, And he wasn't a radical. Eh? Why, a radical stands for freedom, And for truth--which he never finds But always looks for. A radical is not a moralist. A radical doesn't say: "This is true and you must believe it; This is good and you must accept it, And if you don't believe it and accept it We'll get a law and make you, And if you don't obey the law, we'll kill you--" Oh no! A radical stands for freedom. * * * * * Do you remember that banquet at the Tremont In '97 on Jackson's day? Bryan and Altgeld walked together Out to the banquet room. That's the time he said the bolters must Bring fruits meet for repentance--ha! ha! Oh, Gawd!-- They never did it and they didn't have to, For they had made friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, Even as he did, a little later, in his own way. Well, Darrow was there that night. I thought it was terribly raw in him, But he said to Bryan, there, in a group: "You'd better go back to Lincoln and study Science, history, philosophy, And read Flaubert's Madam something-or-other, And quit this village religious stuff. You're head of the party before you are ready And a leader should lead with thought." And Bryan turned to the others and said: "Darrow's the only man in the world Who looks down on me for believing in God." "Your kind of a God," snapped Darrow. Honest, Ed, I didn't see this religious business In Bryan in '96 or 1900. Oh well, I knew he went to Church, And talked as statesmen do of God-- But McKinley did it, and I used to laugh: "We've got a man to match McKinley, And it's good for us, in a squeeze like this, We didn't nominate some fellow Ethical culture or Unitarian." You see, the newspapers and preachers then Were raising such a hullabaloo About irreligion and dishonesty, And calling old Altgeld an anarchist, And comparing us to Robespierre And the guillotine boys in France. And a little of this religion came in handy. The same as if you saw a Mason button on me, You'd know, you see--but Gee! He was 24-carat religious, A cover-to-cover man.... He was a trained collie, And he looked like a lion, There in the convention of '96--What do you know about that? * * * * * But right here, I tell you he ain't a hypocrite, This ain't a pose. But I'll tell you: In '96 when they knocked him out, I know what he said to himself as well As if I heard him say it ... I'll tell you in a minute. But suppose you were giving a lecture on the constitution, And you got mixed on your dates, And the audience rotten-egged you, And some one in the confusion Stole the door receipts, And there you were, disgraced and broke! But suppose you could just change your clothes, And lecture to the same audience On the religious nature of Washington, And be applauded and make money-- You'd do it, wouldn't you? Well, this is what Bill said to himself: "I'm naturally regular and religious. I'm a moral man and I can prove it By any one in Marion County, Or Jacksonville or Lincoln, Nebraska. I'm a radical, but a radical Alone can be religious. I belong to the church, if not to the bank, Of the people who defeated me. And I'll prove to religious people That I'm a man to be trusted-- And just what a radical is. And I'll make some money while winning the votes Of the churches over the country."... That's it--it ain't hypocrisy, It's using what you are for ends, When you find yourself in trouble. And this accounts for "The Prince of Peace"-- Except no one but him could write it-- And "The Value of an Ideal"-- (Which is money in bank and several farms) ... His place in history? One time my grandfather, who was nearly blind, Went out to sow some grass seed. They had two sacks in the barn, One with grass seed, one with fertilizer, And he got the sack with fertilizer, And scattered it over the ground, Thinking he was sowing grass. And as he was finishing up, a grandchild, Dorothy, eight years old, Followed him, dropping flower seeds. Well, after a time That was the greatest patch of weeds You ever saw! And the old man sat, Half blind, on the porch, and said: "Good land, that grass is growing!" And there was nothing but weeds except A few nasturtiums here and there That Dorothy had sown.... Well, I forgot. There was a sunflower in one corner That looked like a man with a golden beard And a mass of tangled, curly hair-- And a pumpkin growing near it.... * * * * * Say, Ed! lend me eighty dollars To pay my life insurance. THE VISION Of that dear vale where you and I have lain Scanning the mysteries of life and death I dreamed, though how impassable the space Of time between the present and the past! This was the vision that possessed my mind; I thought the weird and gusty days of March Had eased themselves in melody and peace. Pale lights, swift shadows, lucent stalks, clear streams, Cool, rosy eves behind the penciled mesh Of hazel thickets, and the huge feathered boughs Of walnut trees stretched singing to the blast; And the first pleasantries of sheep and kine; The cautioned twitterings of hidden birds; The flight of geese among the scattered clouds; Night's weeping stars and all the pageantries Of awakened life had blossomed into May, Whilst she with trailing violets in her hair Blew music from the stops of watery stems, And swept the grasses with her viewless robes, Which dreaming men thought voices, dreaming still. Now as I lay in vision by the stream That flows amidst our well beloved vale, I looked throughout the vista stretched between Two ranging hills; one meadowed rich in grass; The other wooded, thick and quite obscure With overgrowth, rank in the luxury Of all wild places, but ever growing sparse Of trees or saplings on the sudden slope That met the grassy level of the vale;-- But still within the shadow of those woods, Which sprinkled all beneath with fragrant dew, There grew all flowers, which tempted little paths Between them, up and on into the wood. Here, as the sun had left his midday peak The incommunicable blue of heaven blent With his fierce splendor, filling all the air With softened glory, while the pasturage Trembled with color of the poppy blooms Shook by the steps of the swift-sandaled wind. Nor any sound beside disturbed the dream Of Silence slumbering on the drowsy flowers. Then as I looked upon the widest space Of open meadow where the sunlight fell In veils of tempered radiance, I saw The form of one who had escaped the care And equal dullness of our common day. For like a bright mist rising from the earth He made appearance, growing more distinct Until I saw the stole, likewise the lyre Grasped by the fingers of the modeled hand. Yea, I did see the glory of his hair Against the deep green bay-leaves filleting The ungathered locks. And so throughout the vale His figure stood distinct and his own shade Was the sole shadow. Deeming this approach Augur of good, as if in hidden ways Of loveliness the gods do still appear The counselors of men, and even where Wonder and meditation wooed us oft, I cried, "Apollo"--and his form dissolved, As if the nymphs of echo, who took up The voice and bore it to the hollow wood, By that same flight had startled the great god To vanishment. And thereupon I woke And disarrayed the figment of my thought. For of the very air, magic with hues, Blent with the distant objects, I had formed The splendid apparition, and so knew It was, alas! a dream within a dream! "SO WE GREW TOGETHER" Reading over your letters I find you wrote me "My dear boy," or at times "dear boy," and the envelope Said "master"--all as I had been your very son, And not the orphan whom you adopted. Well, you were father to me! And I can recall The things you did for me or gave me: One time we rode in a box car to Springfield To see the greatest show on earth; And one time you gave me redtop boots, And one time a watch, and one time a gun. Well, I grew to gawkiness with a voice Like a rooster trying to crow in August Hatched in April, we'll say. And you went about wrapped up in silence With eyes aflame, and I heard little rumors Of what they were doing to you, and how They wronged you--and we were poor--so poor! And I could not understand why you failed, And why if you did good things for the people The people did not sustain you. And why you loved another woman than Aunt Susan, So it was whispered at school, and what could be baser, Or so little to be forgiven?... They crowded you hard in those days. But you fought like a wounded lion For yourself I know, but for us, for me. At last you fell ill, and for months you tottered Around the streets as thin as death, Trying to earn our bread, your great eyes glowing And the silence around you like a shawl! But something in you kept you up. You grew well again and rosy with cheeks Like an Indian peach almost, and eyes Full of moonlight and sunlight, and a voice That sang, and a humor that warded The arrows off. But still between us There was reticence; you kept me away With a glittering hardness; perhaps you thought I kept you away--for I was moving In spheres you knew not, living through Beliefs you believed in no more, and ideals That were just mirrors of unrealities. As a boy can be I was critical of you. And reasons for your failures began to arise In my mind--I saw specific facts here and there With no philosophy at hand to weld them And synthesize them into one truth-- And a rush of the strength of youth Deluded me into thinking the world Was something so easily understood and managed While I knew it not at all in truth. And an adolescent egotism Made me feel you did not know me Or comprehend the all that I was. All this you divined.... So it went. And when I left you and passed To the world, the city--still I see you With eyes averted, and feel your hand Limp with sorrow--you could not speak. You thought of what I might be, and where Life would take me, and how it would end-- There was longer silence. A year or two Brought me closer to you. I saw the play now And the game somewhat and understood your fights And enmities, and hardnesses and silences, And wild humor that had kept you whole-- For your soul had made it as an antitoxin To the world's infections. And you swung to me Closer than before--and a chumship began Between us.... What vital power was yours! You never tired, or needed sleep, or had a pain, Or refused a delight. I loved the things now You had always loved, a winning horse, A roulette wheel, a contest of skill In games or sports ... long talks on the corner With men who have lived and tell you Things with a rich flavor of old wisdom or humor; A woman, a glass of whisky at a table Where the fatigue of life falls, and our reserves That wait for happiness come up in smiles, Laughter, gentle confidences. Here you were A man with youth, and I a youth was a man, Exulting in your braveries and delight in life. How you knocked that scamp over at Harry Varnell's When he tried to take your chips! And how I, Who had thought the devil in cards as a boy, Loved to play with you now and watch you play; And watch the subtle mathematics of your mind Prophecy, divine the plays. Who was it In your ancestry that you harked back to And reproduced with such various gifts Of flesh and spirit, Anglo-Saxon, Celt?-- You with such rapid wit and powerful skill For catching illogic and whipping Error's Fangéd head from the body?... I was really ahead of you At this stage, with more self-consciousness Of what man is, and what life is at last, And how the spirit works, and by what laws, With what inevitable force. But still I was Behind you in that strength which in our youth, If ever we have it, squeezes all the nectar From the grapes. It seemed you'd never lose This power and sense of joy, but yet at times I saw another phase of you.... There was the day We rode together north of the old town, Past the old farm houses that I knew-- Past maple groves, and fields of corn in the shock, And fields of wheat with the fall green. It was October, but the clouds were summer's, Lazily floating in a sky of June; And a few crows flying here and there, And a quail's call, and around us a great silence That held at its core old memories Of pioneers, and dead days, forgotten things! I'll never forget how you looked that day. Your hair Was turning silver now, but still your eyes Burned as of old, and the rich olive glow In your cheeks shone, with not a line or wrinkle!-- You seemed to me perfection--a youth, a man! And now you talked of the world with the old wit, And now of the soul--how such a man went down Through folly or wrong done by him, and how Man's death cannot end all, There must be life hereafter!... As you were that day, as you looked and spoke, As the earth was, I hear as the soul of it all Godard's _Dawn_, Dvorák's _Humoresque_, The Morris Dances, Mendelssohn's _Barcarole_, And old Scotch songs, _When the Kye Come Hame_, And _The Moon Had Climbed the Highest Hill_, The Musseta Waltz and Rudolph's Narrative; Your great brow seemed Beethoven's And the lust of life in your face Cellini's, And your riotous fancy like Dumas. I was nearer you now than ever before, And finding each other thus I see to-day How the human soul seeks the human soul And finds the one it seeks at last. For you know you can open a window That looks upon embowered darkness, When the flowers sleep and the trees are still At Midnight, and no light burns in the room; And you can hide your butterfly Somewhere in the room, but soon you will see A host of butterfly mates Fluttering through the window to join Your butterfly hid in the room. It is somehow thus with souls.... This day then I understood it all: Your vital democracy and love of men And tolerance of life; and how the excess of these Had wrought your sorrows in the days When we were so poor, and the small of mind Spoke of your sins and your connivance With sinful men. You had lived it down, Had triumphed over them, and you had grown. Prosperous in the world and had passed Into an easy mastery of life and beyond the thought Of further conquests for things. As the Brahmins say, no more you worshiped matter, Or scarcely ghosts, or even the gods With singleness of heart. This day you worshiped Eternal Peace Or Eternal Flame, with scarce a laugh or jest To hide your worship; and I understood, Seeing so many facets to you, why it was Blind Condon always smiled to hear your voice, And why it was in a greenroom years ago Booth turned to you, marking your face From all the rest, and said, "There is a man Who might play Hamlet--better still Othello"; And why it was the women loved you; and the priest Could feed his body and soul together drinking A glass of beer and visiting with you.... Then something happened: Your face grew smaller, your brow more narrow, Dull fires burned in your eyes, Your body shriveled, you walked with a cynical shuffle, Your hands mixed the keys of life, You had become a discord. A monstrous hatred consumed you-- You had suffered the greatest wrong of all, I knew and granted the wrong. You had mounted up to sixty years, now breathing hard, And just at the time that honor belonged to you You were dishonored at the hands of a friend. I wept for you, and still I wondered If all I had grown to see in you and find in you And love in you was just a fond illusion-- If after all I had not seen you aright as a boy: Barbaric, hard, suspicious, cruel, redeemed Alone by bubbling animal spirits-- Even these gone now, all of you smoke Laden with stinging gas and lethal vapor.... Then you came forth again like the sun after storm-- The deadly uric acid driven out at last Which had poisoned you and dwarfed your soul-- So much for soul! The last time I saw you Your face was full of golden light, Something between flame and the richness of flesh. You were yourself again, wholly yourself. And oh, to find you again and resume Our understanding we had worked so long to reach-- You calm and luminant and rich in thought! This time it seemed we said but "yes" or "no"-- That was enough; we smoked together And drank a glass of wine and watched The leaves fall sitting on the porch.... Then life whirled me away like a leaf, And I went about the crowded ways of New York. And one night Alberta and I took dinner At a place near Fourteenth Street where the music Was like the sun on a breeze-swept lake When every wave is a patine of fire, And I thought of you not at all Looking at Alberta and watching her white teeth Bite off bits of Italian bread, And watching her smile and the wide pupils Of her eyes, electrified by wine And music and the touch of our hands Now and then across the table. We went to her house at last. And through a languorous evening. Where no light was but a single candle, We circled about and about a pending theme Till at last we solved it suddenly in rapture Almost by chance; and when I left She followed me to the hall and leaned above The railing about the stair for the farewell kiss-- And I went into the open air ecstatically, With the stars in the spaces of sky between The towering buildings, and the rush Of wheels and clang of bells, Still with the fragrance of her lips and cheeks And glinting hair about me, delicate And keen in spite of the open air. And just as I entered the brilliant car Something said to me you are dead-- I had not thought of you, was not thinking of you. But I knew it was true, as it was, For the telegram waited me at my room.... I didn't come back. I could not bear to see the breathless breath Over your brow--nor look at your face-- However you fared or where To what victories soever-- Vanquished or seemingly vanquished! RAIN IN MY HEART There is a quiet in my heart Like one who rests from days of pain. Outside, the sparrows on the roof Are chirping in the dripping rain. Rain in my heart; rain on the roof; And memory sleeps beneath the gray And windless sky and brings no dreams Of any well remembered day. I would not have the heavens fair, Nor golden clouds, nor breezes mild, But days like this, until my heart To loss of you is reconciled. I would not see you. Every hope To know you as you were has ranged. I, who am altered, would not find The face I loved so greatly changed. THE LOOP From State street bridge a snow-white glimpse of sea Beyond the river walled in by red buildings, O'ertopped by masts that take the sunset's gildings, Roped to the wharf till spring shall set them free. Great floes make known how swift the river's current. Out of the north sky blows a cutting wind. Smoke from the stacks and engines in a torrent Whirls downward, by the eddying breezes thinned. Enskyed are sign boards advertising soap, Tobacco, coal, transcontinental trains. A tug is whistling, straining at a rope, Fixed to a dredge with derricks, scoops and cranes. Down in the loop the blue-gray air enshrouds, As with a cyclops' cape, the man-made hills And towers of granite where the city crowds. Above the din a copper's whistle shrills. There is a smell of coffee and of spices. We near the market place of trade's devices. Blue smoke from out a roasting room is pouring. A rooster crows, geese cackle, men are bawling. Whips crack, trucks creak, it is the place of storing, And drawing out and loading up and hauling Fruit, vegetables and fowls and steaks and hams, Oysters and lobsters, fish and crabs and clams. And near at hand are restaurants and bars, Hotels with rooms at fifty cents a day, Beer tunnels, pool rooms, places where cigars And cigarettes their window signs display; Mixed in with letterings of printed tags, Twine, boxes, cartels, sacks and leather bags, Wigs, telescopes, eyeglasses, ladies' tresses, Or those who manicure or fashion dresses, Or sell us putters, tennis balls or brassies, Make shoes, pull teeth, or fit the eye with glasses. And now the rows of windows showing laces, Silks, draperies and furs and costly vases, Watches and mirrors, silver cups and mugs, Emeralds, diamonds, Indian, Persian rugs, Hats, velvets, silver buckles, ostrich-plumes, Drugs, violet water, powder and perfumes. Here is a monstrous winking eye--beneath A showcase by an entrance full of teeth. Here rubber coats, umbrellas, mackintoshes, Hoods, rubber boots and arctics and galoshes. Here is half a block of overcoats, In this bleak time of snow and slender throats. Then windows of fine linen, snakewood canes, Scarfs, opera hats, in use where fashion reigns. As when the hive swarms, so the crowded street Roars to the shuffling of innumerable feet. Skyscrapers soar above them; they go by As bees crawl, little scales upon the skin Of a great dragon winding out and in. Above them hangs a tangled tree of signs, Suspended or uplifted like dædalian Hieroglyphics when the saturnalian Night commences, and their racing lines Run fire of blue and yellow in a puzzle, Bewildering to the eyes of those who guzzle, And gourmandize and stroll and seek the bubble Of happiness to put away their trouble. Around the loop the elevated crawls, And giant shadows sink against the walls Where ten to twenty stories strive to hold The pale refraction of the sunset's gold. Slop underfoot, we pass beneath the loop. The crowd is uglier, poorer; there are smells As from the depths of unsuspected hells, And from a groggery where beer and soup Are sold for five cents to the thieves and bums. Here now are huge cartoons in red and blue Of obese women and of skeleton men, Egyptian dancers, twined with monstrous snakes, Before the door a turbaned lithe Hindoo, A bagpipe shrilling, underneath a den Of opium, whence a man with hand that shakes, Rolling a cigarette, so palely comes. The clang of car bells and the beat of drums. Draft horses clamping with their steel-shod hoofs. The buildings have grown small and black and worn; The sky is more beholden; o'er the roofs A flock of pigeons soars; with dresses torn And yellow faces, labor women pass Some Chinese gabbling; and there, buying fruit, Stands a fair girl who is a late recruit To those poor women slain each year by lust. 'Tis evening now and trade will soon begin. The family entrance beckons for a glass Of hopeful mockery, the piano's din Into the street with sounds of rasping wires Filters, and near a pawner's window shows Pistols, accordions; and, luring buyers, A Jew stands mumbling to the passer-by Of jewelry and watches and old clothes. A limousine gleams quickly--with a cry A legless man fastened upon a board With casters 'neath it by a sudden shove Darts out of danger. And upon the corner A lassie tells a man that God is love, Holding a tambourine with its copper hoard To be augmented by the drunken scorner. A woman with no eyeballs in her sockets Plays "Rock of Ages" on a wheezy organ. A newsboy with cold hands thrust in his pockets Cries, "All about the will of Pierpont Morgan!" The roofline of the street now sinks and dwindles. The windows are begrimed with dust and beer. A child half clothed, with legs as thin as spindles, Carries a basket with some bits of coal. Between lace curtains eyes of yellow leer, The cheeks splotched with white places like the skin Inside an eggshell--destitute of soul. One sees a brass lamp oozing kerosene Upon a stand whereon her elbows lean; Lighted, it soon will welcome negroes in. The railroad tracks are near. We almost choke From filth whirled from the street and stinging vapors. Great engines vomit gas and heavy smoke Upon a north wind driving tattered papers, Dry dung and dust and refuse down the street. A circumambient roar as of a wheel Whirring far off--a monster's heart whose beat Is full of murmurs, comes as we retreat Towards Twenty-second. And a man with jaw Set like a tiger's, with a dirty beard, Skulks toward the loop, with heavy wrists red-raw Glowing above his pockets where his hands Pushed tensely round his hips the coat tails draw, And show what seems a slender piece of metal In his hip pocket. On these barren strands He waits for midnight for old scores to settle Against his ancient foe society, Who keeps the soup house and who builds the jails. Switchmen and firemen with their dinner pails Go by him homeward, and he wonders if These fellows know a hundred thousand workers Walk up and down the city's highways, stiff From cold and hunger, doomed to poverty, As wretched as the thieves and crooks and shirkers. He scurries to the lake front, loiters past The windows of wax lights with scarlet shades, Where smiling diners back of ambuscades Of silk and velvet hear not winter's blast Blowing across the lake. He has a thought Of Michigan, where once at picking berries He spent a summer--then his eye is caught At Randolph street by written light which tarries, Then like a film runs into sentences. He sees it all as from a black abyss. Taxis with skid chains rattle, limousines Draw up to awnings; for a space he catches A scent of musk or violets, sees the patches On powdered cheeks of furred and jeweled queens. The color round his cruel mouth grows whiter, He thrusts his coarse hands in his pockets tighter: He is a thief, he knows he is a thief, He is a thief found out, and, as he knows, The whole loop is a kingdom held in fief By men who work with laws instead of blows From sling shots, so he curses under breath The money and the invisible hand that owns From year to year, in spite of change and death, The wires for the lights and telephones, The railways on the streets, and overhead The railways, and beneath the winding tunnel Which crooks stole from the city for a runnel To drain her nickels; and the pipes of lead Which carry gas, wrapped round us like a snake, And round the courts, whose grip no court can break. He curses bitterly all those who rise, And rule by just the spirit which he plies Coarsely against the world's great store of wealth; Bankers and usurers and cliques whose stealth Works witchcraft through the market and the press, And hires editors, or owns the stock Controlling papers, playing with finesse The city's thinking, that they may unlock Treasures and powers like burglars in the dark. And thinking thus and cursing, through a flurry Of sudden snow he hastens on to Clark. In a cheap room there is an eye to mark His coming and be glad. His footsteps hurry. She will have money, earned this afternoon Through men who took her from a near saloon Wherein she sits at table to dragoon Roughnecks or simpletons upon a lark. Within a little hall a fierce-eyed youth Rants of the burdens on the people's backs-- He would cure all things with the single tax. A clergyman demands more gospel truth, Speaking to Christians at a weekly dinner. A parlor Marxian, for a beginner Would take the railways. And amid applause Where lawyers dine, a judge says all will be Well if we hand down to posterity Respect for courts and judges and the laws. An anarchist would fight. Upon the whole, Another thinks, to cultivate one's soul Is most important--let the passing show Go where it wills, and where it wills to go. Outside the stars look down. Stars are content To be so quiet and indifferent. WHEN UNDER THE ICY EAVES When under the icy eaves The swallow heralds the sun, And the dove for its lost mate grieves And the young lambs play and run; When the sea is a plane of glass, And the blustering winds are still, And the strength of the thin snows pass In mists o'er the tawny hill-- The spirit of life awakes In the fresh flags by the lakes. When the sick man seeks the air, And the graves of the dead grow green, Where the children play unaware Of the faces no longer seen; When all we have felt or can feel, And all we are or have been, And all the heart can hide or reveal, Knocks gently, and enters in:-- The spirit of life awakes, In the fresh flags by the lakes. IN THE CAR We paused to say good-by, As we thought for a little while, Alone in the car, in the corner Around the turn of the aisle. A quiver came in your voice, Your eyes were sorrowful too; 'Twas over--I strode to the doorway, Then turned to wave an adieu. But you had not come from the corner, And though I had gone so far, I retraced, and faced you coming Into the aisle of the car. You stopped as one who was caught In an evil mood by surprise.-- I want to forget, I am trying To forget the look in your eyes. Your face was blank and cold, Like Lot's wife turned to salt. I suddenly trapped and discovered Your soul in a hidden fault. Your eyes were tearless and wide, And your wide eyes looked on me Like a Mænad musing murder, Or the mask of Melpomene. And there in a flash of lightning I learned what I never could prove: That your heart contained no sorrow, And your heart contained no love. And my heart is light and heavy, And this is the reason why: I am glad we parted forever, And sad for the last good-by. SIMON SURNAMED PETER Time that has lifted you over them all-- O'er John and o'er Paul; Writ you in capitals, made you the chief Word on the leaf-- How did you, Peter, when ne'er on His breast You leaned and were blest-- And none except Judas and you broke the faith To the day of His death,-- You, Peter, the fisherman, worthy of blame, Arise to this fame? 'Twas you in the garden who fell into sleep And the watch failed to keep, When Jesus was praying and pressed with the weight Of the oncoming fate. 'Twas you in the court of the palace who warmed Your hands as you stormed At the damsel, denying Him thrice, when she cried: "He walked at his side!" You, Peter, a wave, a star among clouds, a reed in the wind, A guide of the blind, Both smiter and flyer, but human alway, I protest, Beyond all the rest. When at night by the boat on the sea He appeared Did you wait till he neared? You leaped in the water, not dreading the worst In your joy to be first To greet Him and tell Him of all that had passed Since you saw Him the last. You had slept while He watched, but fierce were you, fierce and awake When they sought Him to take, And cursing, no doubt, as you smote off, as one of the least, The ear of the priest. Then Andrew and all of them fled, but you followed Him, hoping for strength To save him at length Till you lied to the damsel, oh penitent Peter, and crept, Into hiding and wept. Oh well! But he asked all the twelve, "Who am I?" And who made reply? As you leaped in the sea, so you spoke as you smote with the sword; "Thou art Christ, even Lord!" John leaned on His breast, but he asked you, your strength to foresee, "Nay, lovest thou me?" Thrice over, as thrice you denied Him, and chose you to lead His sheep and to feed; And gave you, He said, the keys of the den and the fold To have and to hold. You were a poor jailer, oh Peter, the dreamer, who saw The death of the law In the dream of the vessel that held all the four-footed beasts, Unclean for the priests; And heard in the vision a trumpet that all men are worth The peace of the earth And rapture of heaven hereafter,--oh Peter, what power Was yours in that hour: You warder and jailer and sealer of fates and decrees, To use the big keys With which to reveal and fling wide all the soul and the scheme Of the Galilee dream, When you flashed in a trice, as later you smote with the sword: "Thou art Christ, even Lord!" We men, Simon Peter, we men also give you the crown O'er Paul and o'er John. We write you in capitals, make you the chief Word on the leaf. We know you as one of our flesh, and 'tis well You are warder of hell, And heaven's gatekeeper forever to bind and to loose-- Keep the keys if you choose. Not rock of you, fire of you make you sublime In the annals of time. You were called by Him, Peter, a rock, but we give you the name Of Peter the Flame. For you struck a spark, as the spark from the shock Of steel upon rock. The rock has his use but the flame gives the light In the way in the night:-- Oh Peter, the dreamer, impetuous, human, divine, Gnarled branch of the vine! ALL LIFE IN A LIFE His father had a large family Of girls and boys and he was born and bred In a barn or kind of cattle shed. But he was a hardy youngster and grew to be A boy with eyes that sparkled like a rod Of white hot iron in the blacksmith shop. His face was ruddy like a rising moon, And his hair was black as sheep's wool that is black. And he had rugged arms and legs and a strong back. And he had a voice half flute and half bassoon. And from his toes up to his head's top He was a man, simple but intricate. And most men differ who try to delineate His life and fate. He never seemed ashamed Of poverty or of his origin. He was a wayward child, Nevertheless though wise and mild, And thoughtful but when angered then he flamed As fire does in a forge. When he was ten years old he ran away To be alone and watch the sea, and the stars At midnight from a mountain gorge. When he returned his parents scolded him And threatened him with bolts and bars. Then they grew soft for his return and gay And with their love would have enfolded him. But even at ten years old he had a way Of gazing at you with a look austere Which gave his kinfolk fear. He had no childlike love for father or mother, Sister or brother, They were the same to him as any other. He was a little cold, a little queer. His father was a laborer and now They made the boy work for his daily bread. They say he read A book or two during these years of work. But if there was a secret prone to lurk Between the pages under the light of his brow It came forth. And if he had a woman In love or out of love, or a companion or a chum, History is dumb. So far as we know he dreamed and worked with hands And learned to know his genius' commands Or what is called one's dæmon. And this became at last the city's call. He had now reached the age of thirty years, And found a Dream of Life and a solution For slavery of soul and even all Miseries that flow from things material. To free the world was his soul's resolution. But his family had great fears For him, knowing the evil Which might befall him, seeing that the light Of his own dream had blinded his mind's eyes. They could not tell but what he had a devil. But still in their tears despite, And warnings he departed with replies That when a man's genius calls him He must obey no matter what befalls him. What he had in his mind was growth Of soul by watching, And the creation of eyes Over your mind's eyes to supervise A clear activity and to ward off sloth. What he had in his mind was scotching And killing the snake of Hatred and stripping the glove From the hand of Hypocrisy and quenching the fire Of Falsehood and Unbrotherly Desire.-- What he had in his mind was simply Love. And it was strange he preached the sword and force To establish Love, but it was not strange, Since he did this, his life took on a change. And what he taught seems muddled at its source With moralizing and with moral strife. For morals are merely the Truth diluted And sweetened up and suited To the business and bread of Life. And now this City was just what you'd find A city anywhere, A turmoil and a Vanity Fair, A sort of heaven and a sort of Tophet. There were so many leaders of his kind The city didn't care For one additional prophet. He said some extravagant things And planted a few stings Under the rich man's hide. And one of the sensational newspapers Gave him a line or two for cutting capers In front of the Palace of Justice and the Church. But all of the first grade people took the other side Of the street when they saw him coming With a rag tag crowd singing and humming, And curious boys and men up in a perch Of a tree or window taking the spectacle in, And the Corybantic din Of a Salvation Army as it were. And whatever he dreamed when he lived in a little town The intelligent people ignored him, and this is the stir And the only stir he made in the city. But there was a certain sinister Fellow who came to him hearing of his renown And said "You can be Mayor of this city, We need a man like you for Mayor." And others said "You'd make a lawyer or a politician, Look how the people follow you; Why don't you hire out as a special writer, You could become a business man, a rhetorician, You could become a player, You can grow rich. There's nothing for a fighter, Fighting as you are, but to end in ruin." But he turned from them on his way pursuing The dream he had in view. He had a rich man or two Who took up with him against the powerful frown Which looked him down. For you'll always find a rich man or two To take up with anything. There are those who can't get into society or bring Their riches to a social recognition; Or ill-formed souls who lack the real patrician Spirit for life. But as for him he didn't care, he passed Where the richness of living was rife. And like wise Goethe talking to the last With cabmen rather than with lords He sat about the markets and the fountains, He walked about the country and the mountains, Took trips upon the lakes and waded fords Barefooted, laughing as a young animal Disports itself amid the festival Of warm winds, sunshine, summer's carnival-- With laborers, carpenters, seamen And some loose women. And certain notable sinners Gave him dinners. And he went to weddings and to places where youth slakes Its thirst for happiness, and they served him cakes And wine wherever he went. And he ate and drank and spent His time in feasting and in telling stories, And singing poems of lilies and of trees, With crowds of people crowded around his knees That searched with lightning secrets hidden Of life and of life's glories, Of death and of the soul's way after death. Time makes amends usually for scandal's breath, Which touched him to his earthly ruination. But this city had a Civic Federation, And a certain social order which intrigues Through churches, courts, with an endless ramification Of money and morals to save itself. And this city had a Bar Association, Also its Public Efficiency Leagues For laying honest men upon the shelf While making private pelf Secure and free to increase. And this city had illustrious Pharisees And this city had a legion Of men who make a business of religion, With eyes one inch apart, Dark and narrow of heart, Who give themselves and give the city no peace, And who are everywhere the best police For Life as business. And when they saw this youth Was telling the truth, And that his followers were multiplying, And were going about rejoicing and defying The social order and were stirring up The dregs of discontent in the cup With the hand of their own happiness, They saw dynamic mysteries In the poems of lilies and trees, Therefore they held him for a felony. If you will take a kernel of wheat And first make free The outer flake and then pare off the meat Of edible starch you'll find at the kernel's core The life germ. And this young man's words were dim With blasphemy, sedition at the rim, Which fired the heads of dreamers like new wine. But this was just the outward force of him. For this young man's philosophy was more Than such external ferment, being divine With secrets so profound no plummet line Can altogether sound it. It means growth Of soul by watching, And the creation of eyes Over your mind's eyes to supervise A clear activity and to ward off sloth. What he had in mind was scotching And killing the snake of Hatred and stripping the glove From the hand of Hypocrisy and quenching the fire Of falsehood and unbrotherly Desire. What he had in mind was simply Love. But he was prosecuted As a rebel and as a rebel executed Right in a public place where all could see. And his mother watched him hang for the felony. He hated to die being but thirty-three, And fearing that his poems might be lost. And certain members of the Bar Association, And of the Civic Federation, And of the League of Public Efficiency, And a legion Of men devoted to religion, With policemen, soldiers, roughs, Loose women, thieves and toughs, Came out to see him die, And hooted at him giving up the ghost In great despair and with a fearful cry! And after him there was a man named Paul Who almost spoiled it all. And protozoan things like hypocrites, And parasitic things who make a food Of the mysteries of God for earthly power Must wonder how before this young man's hour They lived without his blood, Shed on that day, and which In red cells is so rich. WHAT YOU WILL April rain, delicious weeping, Washes white bones from the grave, Long enough have they been sleeping. They are cleansed, and now they crave Once more on the earth to gather Pleasure from the springtime weather. The pine trees and the long dark grass Feed on what is placed below. Think you not that there doth pass In them something we did know? This spell--well, friends, I greet ye once again With joy--but with a most unuttered pain. THE CITY The Sun hung like a red balloon As if he would not rise; For listless Helios drowsed and yawned. He cared not whether the morning dawned, The brother of Eos and the Moon Stretched him and rubbed his eyes. He would have dreamed the dream again That found him under sea: He saw Zeus sit by Hera's side, He saw Hæphestos with his bride; He traced from Enna's flowery plain The child Persephone. There was a time when heaven's vault Cracked like a temple's roof. A new hierarchy burst its shell, And as the sapphire ceiling fell, From stern Jehovah's mad assault, Vast spaces stretched aloof: Great blue black depths of frozen air Engulfed the soul of Zeus. And then Jehovah reigned instead. For Judah was living and Greece was dead. And Hope was born to nurse Despair, And the Devil was let loose. * * * * * Far off in the waste empyrean The world was a golden mote. And the Sun hung like a red balloon, Or a bomb afire o'er a barracoon. And the sea was drab, and the sea was green Like a many colored coat. The sea was pink like cyclamen, And red as a blushing rose. It shook anon like the sensitive plant, Under the golden light aslant. The little waves patted the shore again Where the restless river flows. And thus it has been for ages gone-- For a hundred thousand years; Ere Buddha lived or Jesus came, Or ever the city had place or name, The sea thrilled through at the kiss of dawn Like a soul of smiles and tears. When the city's seat was a waste of sand, And the hydra lived alone, The sound of the sea was here to be heard, And the moon rose up like a great white bird, Sailing aloft from the yellow strand To her silent midnight throne. Now Helios eyes the universe, And he knows the world is small. Of old he walked through pagan Tyre, Babylon, Sodom destroyed by fire, And sought to unriddle the primal curse That holds the race in thrall. So he stepped from the Sun in robes of flame As the city woke from sleep. He walked the markets, walked the squares, He walked the places of sweets and snares, Where men buy honor and barter shame, And the weak are killed as sheep. He saw the city is one great mart Where life is bought and sold. Men rise to get them meat and bread To barter for drugs or coffin the dead. And dawn is but a plucked-up heart For the dreary game of gold. "Ho! ho!" said Helios, "father Zeus Would never botch it so. If he had stolen Joseph's bride, And let his son be crucified The son's blood had been put to use To ease the people's woe." "He of the pest and the burning bush, Of locusts, lice, and frogs, Who made me stand, veiling my light, While Joshua slaughtered the Amorite, Who blacked the skin of the sons of Cush, And builded the synagogues." "And Jehovah the great is omnipotent, While Zeus was bound by Fate. But Athens fell when Peter took Rome, And Chicago is made His hecatomb. And since from the hour His son was sent The hypocrite holds the state." Helios traversed the city streets And this is what he saw: Some sold their honor, some their skill, The soldier hired himself to kill, The judges bartered the judgment seats And trafficked in the law. The starving artist sold his youth, The writer sold his pen; The lawyer sharpened up his wits Like a burglar filing auger bits, And Jesus' vicar sold the truth To the famished sons of men. In every heart flamed cruelty Like a little emerald snake. And each one knew if he should stand In another's way the dagger-hand Would make the stronger the feofee Of the coveted wapentake. There's not a thing men will not do For honor, gold, or power. We smile and call the city fair, We call life lovely and debonair, But Proserpina never grew So deadly a passion flower. Go live for an hour in a tropic land Hid near a sinking pool: The lion and tiger come to drink, The boa crawls to the water's brink, The elephant bull kneels down in the sand And drinks till his throat is cool. Jehovah will keep you awhile unseen As you lie behind the rocks. But go, if you dare, to slake your thirst, Though Jesus died for our life accursed Your bones by the tiger will be licked clean As he licks the bones of an ox. And the sky may be blue as fleur de lis, And the earth be tulip red; And God in heaven, and life all good While you lie hid in the underwood: And the city may leave you sorrow free If you ask it not for bread. One day Achilles lost a horse While the pest at Troy was rife, And a million maggots fought and ate Like soldiers storming a city's gate, And Thersites said, as he looked at the corse, "Achilles, that is life." * * * * * Day fades and from a million cells The office people pour. Like bees that crawl on the honeycomb The workers scurry to what is home, And trains and traffic and clanging bells Make the cañon highways roar. Helios walked the city's ways Till the lights began to shine. Then the janitor women start to scrub And the Pharisees up and enter the club, And the harlot wakes, and the music plays And the glasses glow with wine. Now we're good fellows one and all, And the buffet storms with talk. "The market's closed and trade's at end We had our battle, now I'm your friend." And thanks to the spirit of alcohol Men go for a ride or walk. Oh but traffic is not all done Nor everything yet sold. There's woman to win, and plots to weave, There's a heart to hurt, or one to deceive, And bargains to bind ere rise of Sun To garner the morrow's gold. The market at night is as full of fraud As the market kept by day. The courtesan buys a soul with a look, A dinner tempers the truth in a book, And love is sold till love is a bawd, And falsehood froths in the play. And men and women sell their smiles For friendship's lifeless dregs. For fear of the morrow we bend and bow To moneybags with the slanting brow. For the heart that knows life's little wiles Seldom or never begs. "Poor men," sighed Helios, "how they long For the ultimate fire of love. They yearn, through life, like the peacock moth, And die worn out in search of the troth. For love in the soul is the siren song That wrecks the peace thereof." * * * * * Helios turned from the world and fled As the convent bell tolled six. For he caught a glimpse of an agéd crone Who knelt beside a coffin alone; She had sold her cloak to shrive the dead And buy a crucifix! THE IDIOT Two children in a garden Shouting for joy Were playing dolls and houses, A girl and boy. I smiled at a neighbor window, And watched them play Under a budding oak tree On a wintry day. And then a board half broken In the high fence Fell over and there entered, I know not whence, A jailbird face of yellow With a vacant sulk, His body was a sickly Thing of bulk. His open mouth was slavering, And a green light Turned disc-like in his eyeballs, Like a dog's at night. His teeth were like a giant's, And far apart; I saw him reel on the children With a stopping heart. He trampled their dolls and ruined The house they made; He struck to earth the children With a dirty spade. As a tiger growls with an antelope After the hunt, Over the little faces I heard him grunt. I stood at the window frozen, And short of breath, And then I saw the idiot Was Master Death! A bird in the lilac bushes Began to sing. The garden colored before me To the kiss of spring. And the yellow face in a moment Was a mystic white; The matted hair was softened To starry light. The ragged coat flowed downward Into a robe; He carried a sword and a balance And stood on a globe. I watched him from the window Under a spell; The idiot was the angel Azrael! HELEN OF TROY On an ancient vase representing in bas-relief the flight of Helen. This is the vase of Love Whose feet would ever rove O'er land and sea; Whose hopes forever seek Bright eyes, the vermeiled cheek, And ways made free. Do we not understand Why thou didst leave thy land, Thy spouse, thy hearth? Helen of Troy, Greek art Hath made our heart thy heart, Thy mirth our mirth. For Paris did appear,-- Curled hair and rosy ear And tapering hands. He spoke--the blood ran fast, He touched, and killed the past, And clove its bands. And this, I deem, is why The restless ages sigh, Helen, for thee. Whate'er we do or dream, Whate'er we say or seem, We would be free. We would forsake old love, And all the pain thereof, And all the care; We would find out new seas, And lands more strange than these, And flowers more fair. We would behold fresh skies Where summer never dies And amaranths spring; Lands where the halcyon hours Nest over scented bowers On folded wing. We would be crowned with bays, And spend the long bright days On sea or shore; Or sit by haunted woods, And watch the deep sea's moods, And hear its roar. Beneath that ancient sky Who is not fain to fly As men have fled? Ah! we would know relief From marts of wine and beef, And oil and bread. Helen of Troy, Greek art Hath made our heart thy heart, Thy love our love. For poesy, like thee, Must fly and wander free As the wild dove. O GLORIOUS FRANCE You have become a forge of snow white fire, A crucible of molten steel, O France! Your sons are stars who cluster to a dawn And fade in light for you, O glorious France! They pass through meteor changes with a song Which to all islands and all continents Says life is neither comfort, wealth, nor fame, Nor quiet hearthstones, friendship, wife nor child Nor love, nor youth's delight, nor manhood's power, Nor many days spent in a chosen work, Nor honored merit, nor the patterned theme Of daily labor, nor the crowns nor wreaths Or seventy years. These are not all of life, O France, whose sons amid the rolling thunder Of cannon stand in trenches where the dead Clog the ensanguinéd ice. But life to these Prophetic and enraptured souls is vision, And the keen ecstasy of fated strife, And divination of the loss as gain, And reading mysteries with brightened eyes In fiery shock and dazzling pain before The orient splendor of the face of Death, As a great light beside a shadowy sea; And in a high will's strenuous exercise, Where the warmed spirit finds its fullest strength And is no more afraid. And in the stroke Of azure lightning when the hidden essence And shifting meaning of man's spiritual worth And mystical significance in time Are instantly distilled to one clear drop Which mirrors earth and heaven. This is life Flaming to heaven in a minute's span When the breath of battle blows the smoldering spark. And across these seas We who cry Peace and treasure life and cling To cities, happiness, or daily toil For daily bread, or trail the long routine Of seventy years, taste not the terrible wine Whereof you drink, who drain and toss the cup Empty and ringing by the finished feast; Or have it shaken from your hand by sight Of God against the olive woods. As Joan of Arc amid the apple trees With sacred joy first heard the voices, then Obeying plunged at Orleans in a field Of spears and lived her dream and died in fire, Thou, France, hast heard the voices and hast lived The dream and known the meaning of the dream, And read its riddle: How the soul of man May to one greatest purpose make itself A lens of clearness, how it loves the cup Of deepest truth, and how its bitterest gall Turns sweet to soul's surrender. And you say: Take days for repetition, stretch your hands For mocked renewal of familiar things: The beaten path, the chair beside the window, The crowded street, the task, the accustomed sleep, And waking to the task, or many springs Of lifted cloud, blue water, flowering fields-- The prison house grows close no less, the feast A place of memory sick for senses dulled Down to the dusty end where pitiful Time Grown weary cries Enough! FOR A DANCE There is in the dance The joy of children on a May day lawn. The fragments of old dreams and dead romance Come to us from the dancers who are gone. What strains of ancient blood Move quicker to the music's passionate beat? I see the gulls fly over a shadowy flood And Munster fields of barley and of wheat. And I see sunny France, And the vine's tendrils quivering to the light, And faces, faces, yearning for the dance With wistful eyes that look on our delight. They live through us again And we through them, who wish for lips and eyes Wherewith to feel, not fancy, the old pain Passed with reluctance through the centuries To us, who in the maze Of dancing and hushed music woven afresh Amid the shifting mirrors of hours and days Know not our spirit, neither know our flesh; Nor what ourselves have been, Through the long way that brought us to the dance: I see a little green by Camolin And odorous orchards blooming in Provence. Two listen to the roar Of waves moon-smitten, where no steps intrude. Who knows what lips were kissed at Laracor? Or who it was that walked through Burnham wood? WHEN LIFE IS REAL We rode, we rode against the wind. The countless lights along the town Made the town blacker for their fire, And you were always looking down. To 'scape the blustering breath of March, Or was it for your mind's disguise? Still I could shut my eyes and see The turquoise color of your eyes. Surely your ermine furs were warm, And warm your flowing cloak of red; Was it the wild wind kept you thus Pensive and with averted head? I scarcely spoke, my words were swept Like winged things in the wind's despite. We rode, and with what shadow speed Across the darkness of the night! Without a word, without a look. What was the charm and what the spell That made one hour of life become A memory ever memorable? * * * * * All craft, all labor, all desire, All toil of age, all hope of youth Are shadows from the fount of fire And mummers of the truth. How bloodless books, how pulseless art, Vain kingly and imperial zeal, Vain all memorials of the heart! When Life itself is real! We traced the golden clouds of spring, We roved the beach, we walked the land. What was the world? A Phantom thing That vanished in your hand. You were as quiet as the sky. Your eyes were liquid as the sea. And in that hour that passed us by We lived eternally. THE QUESTION I The sea moans and the stars are bright, The leaves lisp 'neath a rolling moon. I shut my eyes against the night And make believe the time is June-- The June that left us over-soon. This is the path and this the place We sat and watched the moving sea, And I the moonlight on your face. We were not happy--woe is me, Happiness is but memory! It seemeth, now that you are gone, My heart a measured pain doth keep:-- Are you now, as I am, alone? Do you make merry, do you weep? In whose arms are you now asleep? THE ANSWER II I made my bed beneath the pines Where the sea washed the sandy bars; I heard the music of the winds, And blest the aureate face of Mars. All night a lilac splendor throve Above the heaven's shadowy verge; And in my heart the voice of love Kept music with the dreaming surge. A little maid was at my side-- She slept--I scarcely slept at all; Until toward the morning-tide A dream possessed me with its thrall. She sweetly breathed; around my breast I felt her warmth like drowsy bliss, Then came the vision of unrest-- I saw your face and felt your kiss. I woke and knew with what dismay She read my secret and surprise; She only said, "Again 'tis day! How red your cheeks, how bright your eyes!" THE SIGN There's not a soul on the square, And the snow blows up like a sail, Or dizzily drifts like a drunken man Falling, before the gale. And when the wind eddies it rifts The snow that lies in drifts; And it skims along the walk and sifts In stairways, doorways all about The steps of the church in an angry rout. And one would think that a hungry hound Was out in the cold for the sound. But I do not seem to mind The snow that makes one blind, Nor the crying voice of the wind-- I hate to hear the creak of the sign Of Harmon Whitney, attorney at law: With its rhythmic monotone of awe. And neither a moan nor yet a whine, Nor a cry of pain--one can't define The sound of a creaking sign. Especially if the sky be bleak, And no one stirs however you seek, And every time you hear it creak You wonder why they leave it stay When a man is buried and hidden away Many a day! WILLIAM MARION REEDY He sits before you silent as Buddha, And then you say This man is Rabelais. And while you wonder what his stock is, English or Irish, you behold his eyes As big and brown as those desirable crockies With which as boys we used to play. And then you see the spherical light that lies Just under the iris coloring, Before which everything, Becomes as plain as day. If you have noticed the rolling jowls And the face that speaks its chief Delight in beer and roast beef Before you have seen his eyes, you see A man of fleshly jollity, Like the friars of old in gowns and cowls To make a show of scowls. And when he speaks from an orotund depth that growls In a humorous way like Fielding or Smollett That turns in a trice to Robert La Follette Or retraces to Thales of Crete, And touches upon Descartes coming back Through the intellectual Zodiac That's something of a feat. And you see that the eyes are really the man, For the thought of him proliferates This way over to Hindostan, And that way descanting on Yeats. With a word on Plato's symposium, And a little glimpse of Theocritus, Or something of Bruno's martyrdom, Or what St. Thomas Aquinas meant By a certain line obscure to us. And then he'll take up Horace's odes Or the Roman civilization; Or a few of the Iliad's episodes, Or the Greek deterioration. Or skip to a word on the plasmic jelly, Which Benjamin Moore and others think Is the origin of life. Then Shelley Comes in a for a look of understanding. Or he'll tell you about the orientation Of the ancient dream of Zion. Or what's the matter with Bryan. And while the porter is bringing a drink Something into his fancy skips And he talks about the Apocalypse, Or a painter or writer now unknown In France or Germany who will soon Have fame of him through the whole earth blown. It's not so hard a thing to be wise In the lore of books. It's a different thing to be all eyes, Like a lighthouse which revolves and looks Over the land and out to sea: And a lighthouse is what he seems to me! Sitting like Buddha spiritually cool, Young as the light of the sun is young, And taking the even with the odd As a matter of course, and the path he's trod As a path that was good enough. With a sort of transcendental sense Whose hatred is less than indifference, And a gift of wisdom in love. And who can say as he classifies Men and ages with his eyes With cool detachment: this is dung, And that poor fellow is just a fool. And say what you will death is a rod. But I see a light that shines and shines And I rather think it's God. A STUDY If your thoughts were as clear as your eyes, And the whole of your heart were true, You were fitter by far for winning-- But then that would not be you. If your pulse beat time to love As fast as you think and plan, You could kindle a lasting passion In the breast of the strongest man. If you felt as much as you thought, And dreamed what you seem to dream, A world of elysian beauty Your ruined heart would redeem. If you thought in the light of the sun, Or the blood in your veins flowed free, If you gave your kisses but gladly, We two could better agree. If you were strong where I counted, And weak where yourself were at stake, You would have my strength for your giving, You would gain and not lose for my sake. If your heart overruled your head, Or your head were lord of your heart, Or the two were lovingly balanced, I think we never should part. If you came to me spite of yourself, And staid not away through design, These days of loving and living Were sweet as Olympian wine. If you could weep with another, And tears for yourself controlled, You could waken and hold to a pity You waken, but do not hold. If your lips were as fain to speak As your face is fashioned to hide-- You would know that to lay up treasure A woman's heart must confide. If your bosom were something richer, Or your hands more fragile and thin, You would call what the world calls evil, Or sin and be glad of the sin. If your soul were aflame with love, Or your head were devoted to truth, You never would toss on your pillow Bewildered 'twixt rapture and ruth. If you were the you of my dreams, And the you of my dreams were mine, These days, half sweet and half bitter, Would taste like Olympian wine. Oh, subtle and mystic Egyptians! Who chiseled the Sphinx in the East, With head and the breasts of a woman, And body and claws of a beast. And gave her a marvellous riddle That the eyeless should read as he ran: What crawls and runs and is baffled By woman, the sphinx--but a man? Many look in her face and are conquered, Where one all her heart has explored; A thousand have made her their sovereign, But one is her sovereign and lord. For him she leaps from her standard And fawns at his feet in the sand, Who sees that himself is her riddle, And she but the work of his hand. PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN The pathos in your face is like a peace, It is like resignation or a grace Which smiles at the surcease Of hope. But there is in your face The shadow of pain, and there is a trace Of memory of pain. I look at you again and again, And hide my looks lest your quick eye perceives My search for your despair. I look at your pale hands--I look at your hair; And I watch you use your hands, I watch the flare Of thought in your eyes like light that interweaves A flutter of color running under leaves-- Such anguished dreams in your eyes! And I listen to you speak Words like crystals breaking with a tinkle, Or a star's twinkle. Sometimes as we talk you rise And leave the room, and then I rub a streak Of a tear from my cheek. You tell me such magical things Of pictures, books, romance And of your life in France In the varied music of exquisite words, And in a voice that sings. All things are memory now with you, For poverty girds Your hopes, and only your dreams remain. And sometimes here and there I see as you turn your head a whitened hair, Even when you are smiling most. And a light comes in your eyes like a passing ghost, And a color runs through your cheeks as fresh As burns in a girl's flesh. Then I can shut my eyes and feel the pain That has become a part of you, though I feign Laughter myself. One sees another's bruise And shakes his thought out of it shuddering. So I turn and clamp my will lest I bring Your sorrow into my flesh, who cannot choose But hear your words and laughter, And watch your hands and eyes. Then as I think you over after I have gone from you, and your face Comes to me with its grace Of memory of unfound love: You seem to me the image of all women Who dream and keep under smiles the grief thereof, Or sew, or sit by windows, or read books To hide their Secret's looks. And after a time go out of life and leave No uttered words but in their silence grieve For Life and for the things no tongue can tell: Why Life hurts so, and why Love haunts and hurts Poor men and women in this demi-hell. Perhaps your pathos means that it is well Death in his time the aspiring torch inverts, And all tired flesh and haunted eyes and hands Moving in painéd whiteness are put under The soothing earth to brighten April's wonder. IN THE CAGE The sounds of mid-night trickle into the roar Of morning over the water growing blue. At ten o'clock the August sunbeams pour A blinding flood on Michigan Avenue. But yet the half-drawn shades of bottle green Leave the recesses of the room With misty auras drawn around their gloom Where things lie undistinguished, scarcely seen. You, standing between the window and the bed Are edged with rainbow colors. And I lie Drowsy with quizzical half-open eye Musing upon the contour of your head, Watching you comb your hair, Clothed in a corset waist and skirt of silk, Tied with white braid above your slender hips Which reaches to your knees and makes your bare And delicate legs by contrast white as milk. And as you toss your head to comb its tresses They flash upon me like long strips of sand Between a moonlit sea, pale as your hand, And a red sun that on a high dune stresses Its sanguine heat. And then at times your lips, Protruding half unconscious half in scorn Engage my eyes while looking through the morn At the clear oval of your brow brought full Over the sovereign largeness of your eyes; Or at your breasts that shake not as you pull The comb through stubborn tangles, only rise Scarcely perceptible with breath or signs, Firm unmaternal like a young Bacchante's, Or at your nose profoundly dipped like Dante's Over your chin that softly melts away. Now you seem fully under my heart's sway. I have slipped through the magic of your mesh Freed once again and strengthened by your flesh, You seem a weak thing for a strong man's play. Yet I know now that we shall scarce have parted When I shall think of you half heavy hearted. I know our partings. You will faintly smile And look at me with eyes that have no guile, Or have too much, and pass into the sphere Where you keep independent life meanwhile. How do you live without me, is the fear? You do not lean upon me, ask my love, or wonder Of other loves I may have hidden under These casual renewals of our love. And if I loved you I should lie in flame, Ari, go about re-murmuring your name, And these are things a man should be above. And as I lie here on the imminent brink Of soul's surrender into your soul's power, And in the white light of the morning hour I see what life would be if we should link Our lives together in a marriage pact: For we would walk along a boundless tract Of perfect hell; but your disloyalty Would be of spirit, for I have not won Mastered and bound your spirit unto me. And if you had a lover in the way I have you it would not by half betray My love as does your vague and chainless thought, Which wanders, soars or vanishes, returns, Changes, astonishes, or chills or burns, Is unresisting, plastic, freely wrought Under my hands yet to no unison Of my life and of yours. Upon this brink I watch you now and think Of all that has been preached or sung or spoken Of woman's tragedy in woman's fall; And all the pictures of a woman broken By man's superior strength. And there you stand Your heart and life as firmly in command Of your resolve as mine is, knowing all Of man, the master, and his power to harm, His rulership of spheres material, Bread, customs, rules of fair repute-- What are they all against your slender arm? Which long since plucked the fruit Of good and evil, and of life at last And now of Life. For dancing you have cast Veil after veil of ideals or pretense With which men clothe the being feminine To satisfy their lordship or their sense Of ownership and hide the things of sin-- You have thrown them aside veil after veil; And there you stand unarmored, weirdly frail, Yet strong as nature, making comical The poems and the tales of woman's fall.... You nod your head, you smile, I feel the air Made by the closing door. I lie and stare At the closed door. One, two, your tuftèd steps Die on the velvet of the outer hall. You have escaped. And I would not pursue. Though we are but caged creatures, I and you-- A male and female tiger in a zoo. For I shall wait you. Life himself will track Your wanderings and bring you back, And shut you up again with me and cage Our love and hatred and our silent rage. SAVING A WOMAN: ONE PHASE To a lustful thirst she came at first And gave him her maiden's pride; And the first man scattered the flower of her love, Then turned to his chosen bride. She waned with grief as a fading star, And waxed as a shining flame; And the second man had her woman's love, But the second was playing the game. With passion she stirred the man who was third; Woe's me! what delicate skill She plied to the heart that knew her art And fled from her wanton will. Now calm and demure, oh fair, oh pure, Oh subtle, patient and wise, She trod the weary round of life, With a sorrow deep in her eyes. Now a hero who knew how false, how true Was the speech that fell from her lips, With a Norseman's strength took sail with her, And landed and burnt his ships. He gave her pity, he gave her mirth, And the hurt in her heart he nursed; But under the silence of her brows Was a dream of the man who was first. And all the deceit and lust of men Had sharpened her own deceit; And down to the gates of hell she led Her friend with her flying feet. For a bitten bud will never bloom, And a woman lost is lost! And the first and the third may go unscathed, But some man pays the cost. And the books of life are full of the rune, And this is the truth of the song: No man can save a woman's soul, Nor right a woman's wrong. LOVE IS A MADNESS Love is a madness, love is a fevered dream, A white soul lost in a field of scarlet flowers-- Love is a search for the lost, the ever vanishing gleam Of wings, desires and sorrows and haunted hours. Will the look return to your eyes, the warmth to your hand? Love is a doubt, an ache, love is a writhing fear. Love is a potion drunk when the ship puts out from land, Rudderless, sails at full, and with none to steer. The end is a shattered lamp, a drunken seraph asleep, The upturned face of the drowned on a barren beach. The glare of noon is o'er us, we are ashamed to weep-- The beginning and end of love are devoid of speech. ON A BUST Your speeches seemed to answer for the nonce-- They do not justify your head in bronze! Your essays! talent's failures were to you Your philosophic gamut, but things true, Or beautiful, oh never! What's the pons For you to cross to fame?--Your head in bronze? What has the artist caught? The sensual chin That melts away in weakness from the skin, Sagging from your indifference of mind; The sullen mouth that sneers at human kind For lack of genius to create or rule; The superficial scorn that says "you fool!" The deep-set eyes that have the mud-cat look Which might belong to Tolstoi or a crook. The nose half-thickly fleshed and half in point, And lightly turned awry as out of joint; The eyebrows pointing upward satyr-wise, Scarce like Mephisto, for you scarcely rise To cosmic irony in what you dream-- More like a tomcat sniffing yellow cream. The brow! 'Tis worth the bronze it's molded in Save for the flat-top head and narrow thin Backhead which shows your spirit has not soared. You are a Packard engine in a Ford, Which wrecks itself and turtles with its load, Too light and powerful to keep the road. The master strength for twisting words is caught In the swift turning wheels of iron thought. With butcher knives your hands can vivisect Our butterflies, but you can not erect Temples of beauty, wisdom. You can crawl Hungry and subtle over Eden's wall, And shame half grown up truth, or make a lie Full grown as good. You cannot glorify Our dreams, or aspirations, or deep thirst. To you the world's a fig tree which is curst. You have preached every faith but to betray; The artist shows us you have had your day. A giant as we hoped, in truth a dwarf; A barrel of slop that shines on Lethe's wharf, Which seemed at first a vessel with sweet wine For thirsty lips. So down the swift decline You went through sloven spirit, craven heart And cynic indolence. And here the art Of molding clay has caught you for the nonce And made your shame our shame--your head in bronze! Some day this bust will lie amid old metals Old copper boilers, wires, faucets, kettles. Some day it will be melted up and molded In door knobs, inkwells, paper knives, or folded In leaves and wreaths around the capitals Of marble columns, or for arsenals Fashioned in something, or in course of time Successively made each of these, from grime Rescued successively, or made a bell For fire or worship, who on earth can tell? One thing is sure, you will not long be dust When this bronze will be broken as a bust And given to the junkman to re-sell. You know this and the thought of it is hell! ARABEL Twists of smoke rise from the limpness of jewelled fingers, The softness of Persian rugs hushes the room. Under a dragon lamp with a shade the color of coral Sit the readers of poems one by one. And all the room is in shadow except for the blur Of mahogany surface, and tapers against the wall. And a youth reads a poem of love: forever and ever Is his soul the soul of the loved one; a woman sings Of the nine months which go to the birth of a soul. And after a time under the lamp a man Begins to read a letter having no poem to read. And the words of the letter flash and die like a fuse Dampened by rain--it's a dying mind that writes What Byron did for the Greeks against the Turks. And a sickness enters our hearts. The jewelled hands Clutch at the arms of the chairs--about the room One hears the parting of lips, and a nervous shifting Of feet and arms. And I look up and over The reader's shoulder and see the name of the writer. What is it I see? The name of a man I knew! You are an ironical trickster, Time, to bring After so many years and into a place like this This face before me: hair slicked down and parted In the middle and cheeks stuck out with fatness, Plump from camembert and clicquot, eyelids Thin as skins of onions, cut like dough 'round the eyes. Such was your look in a photograph I saw In a silver frame on a woman's dresser--and such Your look in life, you thing of flesh alone! And then As a soul looks down on the body it leaves-- A body by fever slain--I look on myself As I was a decade ago, while the letter is read: I enter a box Of a theater with Jim, my friend of fifty, I being twenty-two. Two women are in the box One of an age for Jim and one of an age for me. And mine is dressed in a dainty gown of dimity, And she fans herself with a fan of silver spangles Till a subtle odor of delicate powder or of herself Enters my blood and I stare at her snowy neck, And the glossy brownness of her hair until She feels my stare, and turns half-view and I see How like a Greek's is her nose, with just a little Aquiline touch; and I catch the flash of an eye, And the glint of a smile on the richness of her lips. The company now discourses upon the letter But my dream goes on: I re-live a rapture Which may be madness, and no man understands Until he feels it no more. The youth that was I From the theater under the city's lights follows the girl Desperate lest in the city's curious chances He never sees her again. And boldly he speaks. And she and the older woman, her sister Smile and speak in turn, and Jim who stands While I break the ice comes up--and so Arm in arm we go to the restaurant, I in heaven walking with Arabel, And Jim with her older sister. We drive them home under a summer moon, And while I explain to Arabel my boldness, And crave her pardon for it, Jim, the devil, Laughs apart with her sister while I wonder What Jim, the devil, is laughing at. No matter To-morrow I walk in the park with Arabel. Just now the reader of the letter Tells of the writer's swift descent From wealth to want. We are in the park next afternoon by the water. I look at her white throat full as it were of song. And her rounded virginal bosom, beautiful! And I study her eyes, I search to the depths her eyes In the light of the sun. They are full of little rays Like the edge of a fleur de lys, and she smiles At first when I fling my soul at her feet. But when I repeat I love her, love her only, A cloud of wonder passes over her face, She veils her eyes. The color comes to her cheeks. And when she picks some clover blossoms and tears them Her hand is trembling. And when I tell her again I love her, love her only, she blots her eyes With a handkerchief to hide a tear that starts. And she says to me: "You do not know me at all, How can you love me? You never saw me before Last night." "Well, tell me about yourself." And after a time she tells me the story: About her father who ran away from her mother; And how she hated her father, and how she grieved When her mother died; and how a good grandmother Helped her and helps her now. And how her sister Divorced her husband. And then she paused a moment: "I am not strong, you'd have to guard me gently, And that takes money, dear, as well as love. Two years ago I was very ill, and since then I am not strong." "Well I can work," I said. "And what would you think of a little cottage Not too far out with a yard and hosts of roses, And a vine on the porch, and a little garden, And a dining room where the sun comes in, When a morning breeze blows over your brow, And you sit across the table and serve me And neither of us can speak for happiness Without our voices breaking, or lips trembling." She is looking down with little frowns on her brow. "But if ever I had to work, I could not do it, I am not really well." "But I can work," I said. I rise and lift her up, holding her hand. She slips her arm through mine and presses it. "What a good man you are," she said. "Just like a brother-- I almost love you, I believe I love you." The reader of the letter, being a doctor, Is talking learnedly of the writer's case Which has the classical marks of paresis. Next day I look up Jim and rhapsodize About a cottage with roses and a garden, And a dining room where the sun comes in, And Arabel across the table. Jim is smoking And flicking the ashes, but never says a word Till I have finished. Then in a quiet voice: "Arabel's sister says that Arabel's straight, But she isn't, my boy--she's just like Arabel's sister. She knew you had the madness for Arabel. That's why we laughed and stood apart as we talked. And I'll tell you now I didn't go home that night, I shook you at the corner and went back, And staid that night. Now be a man, my boy, Go have your fling with Arabel, but drop The cottage and the roses." They are still discussing the madman's letter. And memory permeates me like a subtle drug: The memory of my love for Arabel, The torture, the doubt, the fear, the restless longing, The sleepless nights, the pity for all her sorrows, The speculation about her and her sister, And what her illness was; And whether the man I saw one time was leaving Her door or the next door to it, and if her door Whether he saw my Arabel or her sister.... The reader of the letter is telling how the writer Left his wife chasing the lure of women. And it all comes back to me as clear as a vision: The night I sat with Arabel strong but conquered. Whatever I did, I loved her, whatever she was. Madness or love the terrible struggle must end. She took my hand and said, "You must see my room." We stood in the doorway together and on her dresser Was a silver frame with the photograph of a man-- I had seen him in life: hair slicked down and parted In the middle and cheeks stuck out with fatness Plump from camembert and clicquot, eyelids Thin as skins of onions, cut like dough 'round the eyes. "There is his picture," she said, "ask me whatever you will. Take me as mistress or wife, it is yours to decide. But take me as mistress and grow like the picture before you, Take me as wife and be the good man you can be. Choose me as mistress--how can I do less for dearest? Or make me your wife--fate makes me your mistress or wife." "I can leave you," I said. "You can leave me," she echoed, "But how about hate in your heart." "You are right," I replied. The company is now discussing the subject of love-- They seem to know little about it. But my wife, who is sitting beside me, exclaims: "Well, what is this jangle of madness and weakness, What has it to do with poetry, tell me?" "Well, it's life," Arabel. "There's the story of Hamlet, for instance," I added. Then fell into silence. JIM AND ARABEL'S SISTER Last night a friend of mine and I sat talking, When all at once I found 'twas one o'clock. So we came out and he went home to wife And children, and I started for the club Which I call home; and then just like a flash You came into my mind. I bought a slug And stood, in the booth, with doubtful heart and heard The buzzer buzz. Well, it was sweet to me To hear your voice at last--it was so drowsy, Like a child's voice. And I could see your eyes Heavy with sleep, and I could see you standing In nightgown with head leaned against the wall.... Julia! the welcome of your drowsy voice Went through me like the warmth of priceless wine-- It showed your understanding, that you know How it is with a man, and how it is with me Who work by day and sometimes drift by night About this hellish city. Though you know That I am fifty-one, can you imagine My feeling with no children growing up? My feeling as of one who sees a play And afterwards sits somewhere at a table And talks with friends about the different parts Over a sandwich and a glass of beer? My feeling with this money which I've made And cannot use? Sometimes the stress of working The money dulls the fancy which could use it In splendid dreams or in the art of life. Well, here was I ringing your bell at last At half-past one, and there you stood before me With a sleepy voice and a sleepy smile, with hands So warm, and cheeks so red from sleep, not vexed, But like a child, awakened, who smiles at you With half-shut eyes and kisses you, so you Gave me a kiss. The world seems better, Julia, For that kiss which you gave me at the door.... Breakfast? Why, toast and coffee, not too strong, My heart acts queer of late.... I want to say Lest I forget it, if you ever hear From Arabel or Francis what I said To Francis when he told me he intended To marry Arabel, why just remember Our talk this morning and forget I said it-- I'm sorry that I said it. But, you see, That night we met, I being fifty-one And old at what men call the game, looked on With steady eye and quiet nerve, I saw you Just as I'd see a woman anywhere; And I found you as I'd found others before you, But with this difference so it seemed to me: What had been false with them was real with you, What had been shame with them with you was life, What had been craft with them with you was nature, What had been sin with them to you was good, What had been vice with them to you the honest And uncorrupted innocence of a human Heart so human looking on our souls. What had been coarse to them to you was clean As rain is, or fresh flowers, all things that grow And move and sing along creation's way. You came to me like friendship, what you gave Was friendship's gift, when friends think least of self And least of motive. And it is through you That I have risen out of the pit where sneers And laughter, looks and words obscene, Blaspheme our nature. It is through you, Julia, As one amid great beach trees where soft mosses Pillow our heads and where we see the clouds Upon their infinite sailings and the lake Washes beneath us, and we lie and think How this has been forever and will be When we are dust a thousand, thousand years, Yet how life is eternal--just as one Who there falls into prayer for ecstasy Of wonder, prophecy could not blaspheme The Eternal Power (as he might well blaspheme The gospel hymns and ritual) that I Cannot blaspheme you, Julia. For what is our communion, yours and mine, If it be not a way of laying hold On that mysterious essence which makes one Of heaven and earth, makes kindred human hands.... Tears are not like you, Julia; laugh, that's right! Pour me a little coffee, if you please. I'll take from my herbarium certain species To make my points: Now here there is the woman Of life promiscuous, or nearly so. She fixes her design upon a man, Who's married and the riotous game begins. They go along a year or two perhaps. Then psychic chemistry performs its part: They are in love, or he's in love with her. What shall be done with love? Now watch the woman: That which she gave without love at the first She now withdraws in spite of love unless He breaks his life up, cuts all former ties And weds her. Do you wonder sometimes men Kill women with a knife or strangle them? Well, here's another: She has been to Ogontz, You meet her at a dinner-dance, we'll say. She has green eyes and hair as light as jonquils; She wears black velvet and a salmon sash. And when you dance with her she has a way Of giving you her flesh beneath thin silk, Which almost lisps as she caresses you With legs that scarcely touch you; and she says Things with a double meaning, and she smiles To carry out her meaning. Well, you think The girl is yours, and after weeks of chasing She lands you up at the appointed place With mamma, who looks at you with big eyes, That have a nervous way of opening And closing slowly like a big wax doll's, From which great clouds of wrath and wonder come; Which meeting is a way of saying to you: The girl is yours if you will marry her, And let her have your money. Julia, be still; I can't go on while you are laughing so. I know that men are easy, but to see Women as women see them is a gift That comes to men who reach my age in life.... Well, here's another, here's the type of woman Whose power of motherhood conceals the art By which she thrives, through which she reaches also An apotheosis in society. Her dream is children conscious or unconscious. And her strength is the race's, and she draws The urgings of posterity and leans Upon the hopes and ideals of the day. To her a man must sacrifice his life. But women, Julia, of whatever type, Are still but waiting ovules seeking man, And man's life to develop, even to live. And like the praying mantis who's devoured In the embrace, man is devoured by women In some way, by some sort. Love is a flame In man's life where he warms him but to suck The invisible heat and perish. Life is cramped, Bound down with many ropes, shut in by gates-- Love is not free which should be wholly free For Life's sake. On Michigan Avenue At lunch time, or at five o'clock, you'll see In rain or shine a certain tailor walk In modish coat and trousers, with a cane. That fellow is the pitifulest man I know. He has no woman, cannot find a woman, Because all women, seeing him, divine What surges through him, and within their hearts Laugh slyly and deny him for the fun Of seeing how denial keeps him walking All up and down the boulevard. He's found No hand of human friendship like yours, Julia. I use him for my point. If we could make Some fine erotometer one could sit And watch its trembling springs and nervous hands Record the waves of longing in the city, And the urge of life that writhes beneath the blows Of custom and of fear. Love is not free, Which should be wholly free for Life's sake. Julia. So much for all these things, and now for you To whom they lead. You'll find among the marshes The sundew and the pitcher plant; in shallows, Where the green scum floats languidly you'll find The water lily with white petals and A sickly perfume. But the sundew catches The midges flitting by with rainbow wings, Impales them on its tiny spines, in time Devours them. And the pitcher plant holds out Its cup of green for larger bugs, which fall Into the water, treasured there like tears Of women, and so drowned are soon absorbed Into the verdant vesture of its leaves. The pitcher plant and sundew, water lily Well typify the nature of most women Who must have blood or soul of man to live-- Except you, Julia. For my friend at Hinsdale Who raises flowers laid out a primrose bed. He read somewhere that primroses will change Under your eyes sometimes to something else, Become another flower and not a primrose, Another species even. So he watched And saw it, saw this miracle! The seed Has somewhere in its vital self the power Of this mutation. What is the origin Of spiritual species? For you're a primrose, Julia, Who has mutated: You are not a mother; Nor are you yet the woman seeking marriage; Nor yet the woman thriving by her sex; Nor yet the woman spoken of by Solomon Who waits and watches and whose steps lead down To death and hell. Nor yet Delilah who Rejoices in the secret of man's strength And in subduing it. You are a flower Designed to comfort such poor men as I, And show the world how love can be a thing That asks no more than what it freely gives, And gives all--all some women call the prize For life or honor, riches, power or place. You are a blossom in the primrose bed So raised to subtler color, sweeter scent. You have mutated, Julia, that is it, This flower of you is what I call _The Lover_! THE SORROW OF DEAD FACES I have seen many faces changed by the Sculptor Death-- But never a face like Harold's who passed in a throe of pain. There were maidens and youths in the bud, and men in the lust of life; And women whom child-birth racked till the crying soul slipped through; Patriarchs withered with age and nuns ascetical white; And one who wasted her virgin wealth in a riot of joy. Brothers and sisters at last in a quiet and purple pall, Fellow voyagers bound to a port on an ash-blue sea, Locked in an utterless grief, in a mystery fearful to dream. All of these I have seen--but the face of Harold the bold Looked with a penitent pallor and stared with a sad surprise. For now at last he was still who never knew rest in life. And the ardent heat of his blood was cold as the sweat of a stone. Life came in an evil hour and stabbed with a poisoned word The heart of a girl who faintly smiled through her tears. And her little life was tossed as the eddies that whirl in the hollows From the great world-currents that wreck the battle ships at sea. And the face of dead Lillian seemed like a rain-ruined flower. Or what is writ on the brow of the babe as the mother wails for the day When it leaped in the light of the sun and babbled its pure delight? But the face of William the Great was fashioned by life and thought; And death made it massive as bronze, and deepened the lines thereof: Some for the will and some for patience, and some for hope-- Hope for the weal of the world wherein he mightily strove-- Yet what did it all bespeak--what but submission and awe, And a trace of pain as one with a sword in his side? I have seen many faces changed by the Sculptor Death But the sorrow thereof is dumb like the cloth that lies on the brow. So what should be said of the faun surprised in the woodland dances, Of Harold the light of heart who fought with fear to the last? THE CRY There's a voice in my heart that cries and cries for tears. It is not a voice, but a pain of many fears. It is not a pain, but the rune of far-off spheres. It may be a dæmon of pent and high emprise, That looks on my soul till my soul hides and cries, Loath to rebuke my soul and bid it arise. It may be myself as I was in another life, Fashioned to lead where strife gives way to strife, Pinioned here in failure by knife thrown after knife. The child turns o'er in the womb; and perhaps the soul Nurtures a dream too strong for the soul's control, When the dream hath eyes, and senses its destined goal. Deep in darkness the bulb under mould and clod Feels the sun in the sky and pushes above the sod; Perhaps this cry in my heart is nothing but God! THE HELPING HAND Mother, my head is bloody, my breast is red with scars. Well, foolish son, I told you so, why went you to the wars? Mother, my soul is crucified, my thirst is past belief. How are you crucified, my son, betwixt a thief and thief? Mother, I feel the terror and the loveliness of life. Tell me of the children, son, and tell me of the wife. Mother, your face is but a face among a million more. You're standing on the deck, my son, and looking at the shore. I lean against the wall, mother, and struggle hard for breath. You must have heard the step, my son, of the patrolman Death. Mother, my soul is weary, where is the way to God? Well, kiss the crucifix, my son, and pass beneath the rod. THE DOOR This is the room that thou wast ushered in. Wouldst thou, perchance, a larger freedom win? Wouldst thou escape for deeper or no breath? There is no door but death. Do shadows crouch within the mocking light? Stand thou! but if thy terrored heart takes flight Facing maimed Hope and wide-eyed Nevermore, There is no less one door. Dost thou bewail love's end and friendship's doom, The dying fire, drained cup, and gathering gloom? Explore the walls, if thy soul ventureth-- There is no door but death. There is no window. Heaven hangs aloof Above the rents within the stairless roof. Hence, soul, be brave across the ruined floor-- Who knocks? Unbolt the door! SUPPLICATION _For He knoweth our frame, He remembereth that we are dust._--PSALM CIII. 14. Oh Lord, when all our bones are thrust Beyond the gaze of all but Thine; And these blaspheming tongues are dust Which babbled of Thy name divine, How helpless then to carp or rail Against the canons of Thy word; Wilt Thou, when thus our spirits fail, Have mercy, Lord? Here from this ebon speck that floats As but a mote within Thine eye, Vain sneers and curses from our throats Rise to the vault of Thy fair sky: Yet when this world of ours is still Of this all-wondering, tortured horde, And none is left for Thee to kill-- Have mercy, Lord! Thou knowest that our flesh is grass; Ah! let our withered souls remain Like stricken reeds of some morass, Bleached, in Thy will, by ceaseless rain. Have we not had enough of fire, Enough of torment and the sword?-- If these accrue from Thy desire-- Have mercy, Lord! Dost Thou not see about our feet The tangles of our erring thought? Thou knowest that we run to greet High hopes that vanish into naught. We bleed, we fall, we rise again; How can we be of Thee abhorred? We are Thy breed, we little men-- Have mercy, Lord! Wilt Thou then slay for that we slay, Wilt Thou deny when we deny? A thousand years are but a day, A little day within Thine eye: We thirst for love, we yearn for life; We lust, wilt Thou the lust record? We, beaten, fall upon the knife-- Have mercy, Lord! Thou givest us youth that turns to age; And strength that leaves us while we seek. Thou pourest the fire of sacred rage In costly vessels all too weak. Great works we planned in hopes that Thou Fit wisdom therefor wouldst accord; Thou wrotest failure on our brow-- Have mercy, Lord! Could we but know, as Thou dost know-- Hold the whole scheme at once in mind! Yet, dost Thou watch our anxious woe Who piece with palsied hands and blind The fragments of our little plan, To thrive and earn Thy blest reward, And make and keep the world of man-- Have mercy, Lord! Thou settest the sun within his place To light the world, the world is Thine, Put in our hands and through Thy grace To be subdued and made divine. Whether we serve Thee ill or well, Thou knowest our frame, nor canst afford To leave Thy own for long in hell-- Have mercy, Lord! THE CONVERSATION _The Human Voice_ You knew then, starting let us say with ether, You would become electrons, out of whirling Would rise to atoms; then as an atom resting Till through Yourself in other atoms moving And by the fine affinity of power Atom with atom massed, You would go on Over the crest of visible forms transformed, Would be a molecule, a little system Wherein the atoms move like suns and planets With satellites, electrons. So as worlds build From star-dust, as electron to electron, The same attraction drawing, molecules Would wed and pass over the crest again Of visible forms, lying content as crystals, Or colloids--ready now to use the gleam Of life. As 'twere I see You with a match, As one in darkness lights a candle, and one Sees not his friend's form in the shadowed room Until the candle's lighted? Even his form Is darkened by the new-made light, he stands So near it! Well, I add to all I've asked Whether You knew the cell born to the glint Of that same lighted candle would not rest Even as electrons rest not--but would surge Over the crest of visible forms, become Beneath our feet things hidden from the eye However aided,--as above our heads Beyond the Milky Way great systems whirl Beyond the telescope,--become bacilli, Amoeba, starfish, swimming things, on land The serpent, and then birds, and beasts of prey The tiger (You in the tiger) on and on Surging above the crest of visible forms until The ape came--oh what ages they are to us-- But still creation flies on wings of light-- Then to the man who roamed the frozen fields Neither man nor ape,--we found his jaw, You know, At Heidelberg, in a sand-pit. On and on Till Babylon was builded, and arose Jerusalem and Memphis, Athens, Rome, Venice and Florence, Paris, London, Berlin, New York, Chicago--did You know, I ask, All this would come of You in ether moving? _A Voice_ I knew. _The Human Voice_ You knew that man was born to be destroyed, That as an atom perfect, whole, at ease, Drawn to some other atom, is broken, changed And rises o'er the crest of visible things To something else--that man must pass as well Through equal transformation. And You knew The unutterable things of man's life: From the first You saw his wracked Deucalion-soul that looks Backward on life that rises, where he rose Out of the stones. You saw him looking forward Over the purple mists that hide the gulf. Ere the green cell rose, even in the green cell You saw the sequences of thought--You saw That one would say, "All's matter" and another, "All's mind," and man's mind which reflects the image, Could not envision it. That even worship Of what you are would be confused by cries From India or Palestine. That love Which sees itself beginning in the seeds, Which fly and seek each other, maims The soul at the last in loss of child or friend Father or mother. And You knew that sex, Ranging from plants through beasts and up to us Had ties of filth--And out of them would rise Diverse philosophies to tear the world. You knew, when the green cell arose, that even The You which formed it moving on would bring Races and breeds, madmen, tyrants, slaves, The idiot child, the murderer, the insane-- All springing from the action of one law. You knew the enmity that lies between The lives of micro-beings and our own. You knew How man would rise to vision of himself: Immortal only in the race's life. And past the atom and the first glint of life, Saw him with soul enraptured, yet o'ershadowed Amid self-consciousness! _A Voice_ I knew. But this your fault: You see me as apart, Over, removed, at enmity with You. You are in Me, and of Me, even at one With Me. But there's your soul--your soul may be The germinal cell of vaster evolution. Why try to tell you? If I gave a cell Voice to inquire, and it should ask you this: "After me what, a stalk, a flower, life That swims or crawls?" And if I gave to you Wisdom to say: "You shall become a reed By the water's edge"--how could the cell foresee What the reed is, bending beneath the wind When the lake ripples and the skies are blue As larkspur? Therefore I, who moved in darkness Becoming light in suns and light in souls And mind with thought--for what is thought but light Sprung from the clash of ether?--I am with you. And if beyond this stable state that stands For your life here (as cells are whole and balanced Till the inner urge bring union, then a breaking And building up to higher life), there is No memory of this world nor of your thought, Nor sense of life on this world lived and borne; Or whether you remember, know yourself As one who lived here, suffered here, aspired-- What does it matter?--you cannot be lost, As I am lost not. Therefore be at peace. And from the laws whose orbits cross and run To seeming tangles, find the law through which Your soul shall be perfected till it draw,-- As the green cell the sunlight draws and turns Its chemical effulgence into life-- My inner splendor. All the rest is mine In infinite time. For if I should unroll The parchment of the future, it were vain-- You could not read it. TERMINUS Terminus shows the ways and says, "All things must have an end." Oh, bitter thought we hid away When first you were my friend. We hid it in the darkest place Our hearts had place to hide, And took the sweet as from a spring Whose waters would abide. For neither life nor the wide world Has greater store than this:-- The thought that runs through hands and eyes And fills the silences. There is a void the agéd world Throws over the spent heart; When Life has given all she has, And Terminus says depart. When we must sit with folded hands, And see with inward eye A void rise like an arctic breath To hollow the morrow's sky. To-morrow is, and trembling leaves, And 'wildered winds from Thrace Look for you where your face has bloomed, And where may bloom your face. Beyond the city, over the hill, Under the anguished moon, The winds and my dreams seek after you By meadow, water and dune. All things must have an end, we know; But oh, the dreaded end; Whether in life, whether in death, To lose the cherished friend. To lose in life the cherished friend, While the myrtle tree is green; To live and have the cherished friend With only the world between. With only the wide, wide world between, Where memory has mortmain. Life pours more wine in the heart of man Than the heart of man can contain. Oh, heart of man and heart of woman, Thirsting for blood of the vine, Life waits till the heart has lived too much And then pours in new wine! MADELINE I almost heard your little heart Begin to beat, and since that hour Your life has grown apace and blossomed, Fed by the same miraculous power, That moved the rivulet of your life, And made your heart begin to beat. Now all day your steps are a-patter. Oh, what swift and musical feet! You sleep. I wait to see you wake, With wonder-eyes and hands that reach. I laugh to hear your thoughts that gather Too fast on your budding lips for speech. Your sunny hair is cut as if 'Twere trimmed around a yellow crock. How gay the ribbon, and oh, how cunning The flaring skirt of the little frock! You build and play and search and pry, And hunt for dolls and forgotten toys. Why do you never tire of playing, Or cease from mischief, or cease from noise? You will not sleep? You are tired of the house? You are just as naughty as you can be. Madeline, Madeline, come to the garden, And play with Marcia under the tree! MARCIA Madeline's hair is straight and yours Is just as curly as tendril vines; And she is fair, but a deeper color Your cheeks of olive incarnadines. A serious wisdom burns and glows Steadily in your dark-eyed look. Already a wit and a little stoic-- Perhaps you are going to write a book, Or paint a picture, or sing or act The part of Katherine or Juliet. I believe you were born with the gift of knowing When to remember and when to forget. And when to stifle and kill a grief, And clutch your heart when it beats in vain. The heart that has most strength for feeling Must have the strength to conquer the pain. You understand? It seems that you do-- Though you cannot utter a word to me. Marcia, Marcia, look at Madeline Building a doll-house under the tree! THE ALTAR My heart is an altar whereon Many sacrificial fires have been kindled In praise of spring and Aphrodite. My heart is an altar of chalcedony, Crowned with a tablet of bronze, Blacked with smoke, scarred with fire, And scented with the aromatic bitterness Of dead incense. Albeit let us murmur a little Doric prayer Over the ashes which lie scattered around the altar; For the April rain has wept over them, And from them the crocus smelts its Roman gold. What though there are remnants here Of faded coronals, And bits of silver string Torn from forgotten harps? Perfect amid the ashes sleeps a cup of amethyst. Let us take it and pour the sea from it, And while the savor of dead lips is washed away, Let us lift our hands to this sky of hyacinth. Let us light the altar newly, for lo! it is spring. Bring from the re-kindled woodland Flames of columbine, jewel-weed and trumpet-creeper, There where the woodman burns the fallen tree, And scented smoke arises On azure wings between the branches, Budding with adolescent life. With these let us light the altar, That a scarlet flame may lean Against the silver sea. For thou art fire also, And air, and water, and the resurgent earth, For thou art woman, thou art love. Thou art April of the Arcadian moon, Thou art the swift sun racing through snowy clouds, Thou art the creative silence of flowering valleys. Thy face is the apple tree in bloom; Thine eyes the glimpses of green water When the tree's blossoms shake As soft winds fan them. Thy hair is flame blown against the sea's mist-- Thou art spring. The fire on the altar burns brightly, And the sea sparkles in the sun. Let us murmur a Doric prayer For the gift of love, For the gift of life, Oh Life! Oh Love! We lift our hands to thee! SOUL'S DESIRE Her soul is like a wolf that stands Where sunlight falls between the trees Of a sparse forest's leafless edge, When Spring's first magic moveth these. Her soul is like a little brook, Thin edged with ice against the leaves, Where the wolf drinks and is alone, And where the woodbine interweaves. A bank late covered by the snow, But lighted by the frozen North; Her soul is like a little plot That one white blossom bringeth forth. Her soul is slim, like silver slips, And straight, like flags beside a stream. Her soul is like a shape that moves And changes in a wonder dream. Who would pursue her clasps a cloud, And taketh sorrow for his zeal. Memory shall sing him many songs While bound upon the torture wheel. Her soul is like a wolf that glides By moonlight o'er a phantom ridge; Her face is like a light that runs Beneath the shadow of a bridge. Her voice is like a woodland cry Heard in a summer's desolate hour. Her eyes are dim; her lips are faint, And tinctured like the cuckoo flower. Her little breasts are like the buds Of tulips in a place forlorn. Her soul is like a mandrake bloom Standing against the crimson moon. Her dream is like the fenny snake's, That warms him in the noonday's fire. She hath no thought, nor any hope, Save of herself and her desire. She is not life; she is not death; She is not fear, or joy or grief. Her soul is like a quiet sea Beneath a ruin-haunted reef. She is the shape the sailor sees, That slips the rock without a sound. She is the soul that comes and goes And leaves no mark, yet makes a wound. She is the soul that hunts and flies; She is a world-wide mist of care. She is the restlessness of life, Its rapture and despair. BALLAD OF LAUNCELOT AND ELAINE It was a hermit on Whitsunday That came to the Table Round. "King Arthur, wit ye by what Knight May the Holy Grail be found?" "By never a Knight that liveth now; By none that feasteth here." King Arthur marvelled when he said, "He shall be got this year." Then uprose brave Sir Launcelot And there did mount his steed, And hastened to a pleasant town That stood in knightly need. Where many people him acclaimed, He passed the Corbin pounte, And there he saw a fairer tower Than ever was his wont. And in that tower for many years A dolorous lady lay, Whom Queen Northgalis had bewitched, And also Queen le Fay. And Launcelot loosed her from those pains, And there a dragon slew. Then came King Pelles out and said, "Your name, brave Knight and true?" "My name is Pelles, wit ye well, And King of the far country; And I, Sir Knight, am cousin nigh To Joseph of Armathie." "I am Sir Launcelot du Lake." And then they clung them fast; And yede into the castle hall To take the king's repast. Anon there cometh in a dove By the window's open fold, And in her mouth was a rich censer, That shone like Ophir gold. And therewithal was such savor As bloweth over sea From a land of many colored flowers And trees of spicery. And therewithal was meat and drink, And a damsel passing fair, Betwixt her hands of tulip-white, A golden cup did bear. "O, Jesu," said Sir Launcelot, "What may this marvel mean?" "That is," said Pelles, "richest thing That any man hath seen." "O, Jesu," said Sir Launcelot, "What may this sight avail?" "Now wit ye well," said King Pelles, "That was the Holy Grail." Then by this sign King Pelles knew Elaine his fair daughter Should lie with Launcelot that night, And Launcelot with her. And that this twain should get a child Before the night should fail, Who would be named Sir Galahad, And find the Holy Grail. Then cometh one hight Dame Brisen With Pelles to confer, "Now, wit ye well, Sir Launcelot Loveth but Guinevere." "But if ye keep him well in hand, The while I work my charms, The maid Elaine, ere spring of morn, Shall lie within his arms." Dame Brisen was the subtlest witch That was that time in life; She was as if Beelzebub Had taken her to wife. Then did she cause one known of face To Launcelot to bring, As if it came from Guinevere, Her wonted signet ring. "By Holy Rood, thou comest true, For well I know thy face. Where is my lady?" asked the Knight, "There in the Castle Case?" "'Tis five leagues scarcely from this hall," Up spoke that man of guile. "I go this hour," said Launcelot, "Though it were fifty mile." Then sped Dame Brisen to the king And whispered, "An we thrive, Elaine must reach the Castle Case Ere Launcelot arrive." Elaine stole forth with twenty knights And a goodly company. Sir Launcelot rode fast behind, Queen Guinevere to see. Anon he reached the castle door. Oh! fond and well deceived. And there it seemed the queen's own train Sir Launcelot received. "Where is the queen?" quoth Launcelot, "For I am sore bestead," "Have not such haste," said Dame Brisen, "The queen is now in bed." "Then lead me thither," saith he, "And cease this jape of thine." "Now sit thee down," said Dame Brisen, "And have a cup of wine." "For wit ye not that many eyes Upon you here have stared; Now have a cup of wine until All things may be prepared." Elaine lay in a fair chamber, 'Twixt linen sweet and clene. Dame Brisen all the windows stopped, That no day might be seen. Dame Brisen fetched a cup of wine And Launcelot drank thereof. "No more of flagons," saith he, "For I am mad for love." Dame Brisen took Sir Launcelot Where lay the maid Elaine. Sir Launcelot entered the bed chamber The queen's love for to gain. Sir Launcelot kissed the maid Elaine, And her cheeks and brows did burn; And then they lay in other's arms Until the morn's underne. Anon Sir Launcelot arose And toward the window groped, And then he saw the maid Elaine When he the window oped. "Ah, traitoress," saith Launcelot, And then he gat his sword, "That I should live so long and now Become a knight abhorred." "False traitoress," saith Launcelot, And then he shook the steel. Elaine skipped naked from the bed And 'fore the knight did kneel. "I am King Pelles own daughter And thou art Launcelot, The greatest knight of all the world. This hour we have begot." "Oh, traitoress Brisen," cried the knight, "Oh, charmed cup of wine; That I this treasonous thing should do For treasures such as thine." "Have mercy," saith maid Elaine, "Thy child is in my womb." Thereat the morning's silvern light Flooded the bridal room. That light it was a benison; It seemed a holy boon, As when behind a wrack of cloud Shineth the summer moon. And in the eyes of maid Elaine Looked forth so sweet a faith, Sir Launcelot took his glittering sword, And thrust it in the sheath. "So God me help, I spare thy life, But I am wretch and thrall, If any let my sword to make Dame Brisen's head to fall." "So have thy will of her," she said, "But do to me but good; For thou hast had my fairest flower, Which is my maidenhood." "And we have done the will of God, And the will of God is best." Sir Launcelot lifted the maid Elaine And hid her on his breast. Anon there cometh in a dove, By the window's open fold, And in her mouth was a rich censer That shone like beaten gold. And therewithal was such savor, As bloweth over sea, From a land of many colored flowers, And trees of spicery. And therewithal was meat and drink, And a damsel passing fair, Betwixt her hands of silver white A golden cup did bear. "O Jesu," said Sir Launcelot, "What may this marvel mean?" "That is," she said, "the richest thing That any man hath seen." "O Jesu," said Sir Launcelot, "What may this sight avail?" "Now wit ye well," said maid Elaine, "This is the Holy Grail." And then a nimbus light hung o'er Her brow so fair and meek; And turned to orient pearls the tears That glistered down her cheek. And a sound of music passing sweet Went in and out again. Sir Launcelot made the sign of the cross, And knelt to maid Elaine. "Name him whatever name thou wilt, But be his sword and mail Thrice tempered 'gainst a wayward world, That lost the Holy Grail." Sir Launcelot sadly took his leave And rode against the morn. And when the time was fully come Sir Galahad was born. Also he was from Jesu Christ, Our Lord, the eighth degree; Likewise the greatest knight this world May ever hope to see. THE DEATH OF SIR LAUNCELOT Sir Launcelot had fled to France For the peace of Guinevere, And many a noble knight was slain, And Arthur lay on his bier. Sir Launcelot took ship from France And sailed across the sea. He rode seven days through fair England Till he came to Almesbury. Then spake Sir Bors to Launcelot: The old time is at end; You have no more in England's realm In east nor west a friend. You have no friend in all England Sith Mordred's war hath been, And Queen Guinevere became a nun To heal her soul of sin. Sir Launcelot answered never a word But rode to the west countree Until through the forest he saw a light That shone from a nunnery. Sir Launcelot entered the cloister, And the queen fell down in a swoon. Oh blessed Jesu, saith the queen, For thy mother's love, a boon. Go hence, Sir Launcelot, saith the queen, And let me win God's grace. My heavy heart serves me no more To look upon thy face. Through you was wrought King Arthur's death, Through you great war and wrake. Leave me alone, let me bleed, Pass by for Jesu's sake. Then fare you well, saith Launcelot, Sweet Madam, fare you well. And sythen you have left the world No more in the world I dwell. Then up rose sad Sir Launcelot And rode by wold and mere Until he came to a hermitage Where bode Sir Bedivere. And there he put a habit on And there did pray and fast. And when Sir Bedivere told him all His heart for sorrow brast. How that Sir Mordred, traitorous knight Betrayed his King and sire; And how King Arthur wounded, died Broken in heart's desire. And so Sir Launcelot penance made, And worked at servile toil; And prayed the Bishop of Canterbury His sins for to assoil. His shield went clattering on the wall To a dolorous wail of wind; His casque was rust, his mantle dust With spider webs entwined. His listless horses left alone Went cropping where they would, To see the noblest knight of the world Upon his sorrow brood. Anon a Vision came in his sleep, And thrice the Vision saith: Go thou to Almesbury for thy sin, Where lieth the queen in death. Sir Launcelot cometh to Almesbury And knelt by the dead queen's bier; Oh none may know, moaned Launcelot, What sorrow lieth here. What love, what honor, what defeat What hope of the Holy Grail. The moon looked through the latticed glass On the queen's face cold and pale. Sir Launcelot kissed the ceréd cloth, And none could stay his woe, Her hair lay back from the oval brow, And her nose was clear as snow. They wrapped her body in cloth of Raines, They put her in webs of lead. They coffined her in white marble, And sang a mass for the dead. Sir Launcelot and seven knights Bore torches around the bier. They scattered myrrh and frankincense On the corpse of Guinevere. They put her in earth by King Arthur To the chant of a doleful tune. They heaped the earth on Guinevere And Launcelot fell in a swoon. Sir Launcelot went to the hermitage Some Grace of God to find; But never he ate, and never he drank And there he sickened and dwined. Sir Launcelot lay in a painful bed, And spake with a dreary steven; Sir Bishop, I pray you shrive my soul And make it clean for heaven. The Bishop houseled Sir Launcelot, The Bishop kept watch and ward. Bury me, saith Sir Launcelot, In the earth of Joyous Guard. Three candles burned the whole night through Till the red dawn looked in the room. And the white, white soul of Launcelot Strove with a black, black doom. I see the old witch Dame Brisen, And Elaine so straight and tall-- Nay, saith the Bishop of Canterbury, The shadows dance on the wall. I see long hands of dead women, They clutch for my soul eftsoon; Nay, saith the Bishop of Canterbury, 'Tis the drifting light of the moon. I see three angels, saith he, Before a silver urn. Nay, saith the Bishop of Canterbury, The candles do but burn. I see a cloth of red samite O'er the holy vessels spread. Nay, saith the Bishop of Canterbury, The great dawn groweth red. I see all the torches of the world Shine in the room so clear. Nay, saith the Bishop of Canterbury, The white dawn draweth near. Sweet lady, I behold the face Of thy dear son, our Lord, Nay, saith the Bishop of Canterbury, The sun shines on your sword. Sir Galahad outstretcheth hands And taketh me ere I fail-- Sir Launcelot's body lay in death As his soul found the Holy Grail. They laid his body in the quire Upon a purple pall. He was the meekest, gentlest knight That ever ate in hall. He was the kingliest, goodliest knight That ever England roved, The truest lover of sinful man That ever woman loved. I pray you all, fair gentlemen, Pray for his soul and mine. He lived to lose the heart he loved And drink but bitter wine. He wrought a woe he knew not of, He failed his fondest quest, Now sing a psalter, read a prayer May all souls find their rest. Amen. IN MICHIGAN You wrote: "Come over to Saugatuck And be with me on the warm sand, And under cool beeches and aromatic cedars." And just then no one could do a thing in the city For the lure of far places, and something that tugged At one's heart because of a June sky, And stretches of blue water, And a warm wind blowing from the south. What could I do but take a boat And go to meet you? And when to-day is not enough, But you must live to-morrow also; And when the present stands in the way Of something to come, And there is but one you would see, All the interval of waiting is a wall. And so it was I walked the landward deck With flapping coat and hat pulled down; And I sat on the leeward deck and looked At the streaming smoke of the funnels, And the far waste of rhythmical water, And at the gulls flying by our side. There was music on board and dancing, But I could not take part. For above all there was the bluest sky, And around us the urge of magical distances. And just because you were in the violins, And in everything, and were wholly the world Of sense and sight, It was too much. One could not live it And make it all his own-- It was too much. And I wondered where the rest could be going, Or what they thought of water and sky Without knowing you. But at four o'clock there was a rim, A circled edge of rainbow color Which suspired, widened and narrowed under your gaze: It was the phantasy of straining eyes, Or land--and it was land. It was distant trees. And then it was dunes, bluffs of yellow sand. We began to wonder how far it was-- Five miles, or ten miles-- Surely only five miles!-- But at last whatever it was we swung to the end. We rounded the lighthouse pier, Almost before we knew. We slowed our speed in a dizzy river of black, We drifted softly to dock. I took the ferry, I crossed the river, I ran almost through the little batch Of fishermen's shacks. I climbed the winding road of the hill, And dove in a shadowy quiet Of paths of moss and dancing leaves, And straight stretched limbs of giant pines On patches of sky. I ran to the top of the bluff Where the lodge-house stood. And there the sunlit lake burst on me And wine-like air. And below me was the beach Where the serried lines of hurrying water Came up like rank on rank of men And fell with a shout on the rocks! I plunged, I stumbled, I ran Down the hill, For I thought I saw you, And it was you, you were there! And I shall never forget your cry, Nor how you raised your arms and cried, And laughed when you saw me. And there we were with the lake And the sun with his ruddy search-light blaze Stretching back to lost Chicago. The sun, the lake, the beach, and ourselves Were all that was left of Time, All else was lost. You were making a camp. You had bent from the bank a cedar bough And tied it down. And over it flung a quilt of many colors, And under it spread on the voluptuous silt Gray blankets and canvas pillows. I saw it all in a glance. And there in dread of eyes we stood Scanning the bluff and the beach, Lest in the briefest touch of lips We might be seen. For there were eyes, or we thought There were eyes, on the porch of the lodge, And eyes along the forest's rim on the hill, And eyes on the shore. But a minute past there was no sun, Only a star that shone like a match which lights To a blue intenseness amid the glow of a hearth. And we sat on the sand as dusk came down In a communion of silence and low words. Till you said at last: "We'll sup at the lodge, Then say good night to me and leave As if to stay overnight in the village. But instead make a long detour through the wood And come to the shore through that ravine, Be here at the tent at midnight." And so I did. I stole through echoless ways, Where no twigs broke and where I heard My heart beat like a watch under a pillow. And the whippoorwills were singing. And the sound of the surf below me Was the sound of silver-poplar leaves In a wind that makes no pause.... I hurried down the steep ravine, And a bat flew up at my feet from the brush And crossed the moon. To my left was the lighthouse, And black and deep purples far away, And all was still. Till I stood breathless by the tent And heard your whispered welcome, And felt your kiss. Lovers lay at mid-night On roofs of Memphis and Athens And looked at tropical stars As large as golden beetles. Nothing is new, save this, And this is always new. And there in your tent With the balm of the mid-night breeze Sweeping over us, We looked at one great star Through a flap of your many-colored tent, And the eternal quality of rapture And mystery and vision flowed through us. Next day we went to Grand Haven, For my desire was your desire, Whatever wish one had the other had. And up the Grand River we rowed, With rushes and lily pads about us, And the sand hills back of us, Till we came to a quiet land, A lotus place of farms and meadows. And we tied our boat to Schmitty's dock, Where we had a dinner of fish. And where, after resting, to follow your will We drifted back to Spring Lake-- And under a larger moon, Now almost full, Walked three miles to The Beeches, By a winding country road, Where we had supper. And afterwards a long sleep, Waking to the song of robins. And that day I said: There are wild places, blue water, pine forests, There are apple orchards, and wonderful roads Around Elk Lake--shall we go? And we went, for your desire was mine. And there we climbed hills, And ate apples along the shaded ways, And rolled great boulders down the steeps To watch them splash in the water. And we stood and wondered what was beyond The farther shore two miles away. And we came to a place on the shore Where four great pine trees stood, And underneath them wild flowers to the edge Of sand so soft for naked feet. And here, for not a soul was near, We stripped and swam far out, laughing, rejoicing, Rolling and diving in those great depths Of bracing water under a glittering sun. There were farm houses enough For food and shelter. But something urged us on. One knows the end and dreads the end Yet seeks the end. And you asked, "Is there a town near? Let's see a town." So we walked to Traverse City Through cut-over land and blasted Trunks and stumps of pine, And by the side of desolate hills. But when we got to Traverse City You were not content, nor was I. Something urged us on. Then you thought of Northport And of its Norse and German fishermen, And its quaint piers where they smoke fish. So we drove for thirty miles In a speeding automobile Over hills, around sudden curves, into warm coverts, Or hollows, sometimes at the edge of the Bay, Again on the hill, From where we could see Old Mission Amid blues and blacks, across a score of miles of the Bay, Waving like watered silk under the moon! And by meadows of clover newly cut, And by peach orchards and vineyards. But when we came to the little town Already asleep, though it was but eight o'clock, And only a few drowsy lamps With misty eyelids shone from a store or two, I said, "Do you see those twinkling lights? That's Northport Point, that's the Cedar Cabin-- Let's go to the Cedar Cabin." And so we crossed the Bay Amid great waves in a plunging launch, And a roaring breeze and a great moon, For now the moon was full. So here was the Cedar Cabin On a strip of land as wide as a house and lawn, And on one side Lake Michigan, And on one side the Bay. There were distances of color all around, And stars and darknesses of land and trees, And at the point the lighthouse. And over us the moon, And over the balcony of our room All of these, where we lay till I slept, Listening to the water of the lake, And the water of the Bay. And we saw the moon sink like a red bomb, And we saw the stars change As the sky wheeled.... Now this was the end of the earth, For this strip of land Ran out to a point no larger than one of the stumps We saw on the desolate hills. And moreover it seemed to dive under, Or waste away in a sudden depth of water. And around it was a swirl, To the north the bounding waves of the Lake, And to the south the Bay which seemed the Lake. But could we speak of it, even though I saw your eyes when you thought of it? A sigh of wind blew through the rustic temple When we saw this symbol together, And neither spoke. But that night, somewhere in the beginning of drowsiness, You said: "There is no further place to go, We must retrace." And I awoke in a torrent of light in the room, Hearing voices and steps on the walk: I looked for you, But you had arisen. Then I dressed and searched for you, But you were gone. Then I stood for long minutes Looking at a sail far out at sea And departed too. THE STAR I am a certain god Who slipped down from a remote height To a place of pools and stars. And I sat invisible Amid a clump of trees To watch the madmen. There were cries and groans about me, And shouts of laughter and curses. Figures passed by with self-absorbed contempt, Wrinkling in bitter smiles about their lips. Others hurried on with set eyes Pursuing something. Then I said this is the place for mad Frederick-- Mad Frederick will be here. But everywhere I could see Figures sitting or standing By little pools. Some seemed grown into the soil And were helpless. And of these some were asleep. Others laughed the laughter That comes from dying men Trying to face Death. And others said "I should be content," And others said "I will fly." Whereupon sepulchral voices muttered, As of creatures sitting or hanging head down From limbs of the trees, "We will not let you." And others looked in their pools And clasped hands and said "Gone, all gone." By other pools there were dead bodies: Some of youth, some of age. They had given up the fight, They had drunk poisoned water, They had searched Until they fell-- All had gone mad! Then I, a certain god, Curious to know What it is in pools and stars That drives men and women Over the earth in this quest Waited for mad Frederick. And then I heard his step. I knew that long ago He sat by one of these pools Enraptured of a star's image. And that hands, for his own good, As they said, Dumped clay into the pool And blotted his star. And I knew that after that He had said, "They will never spy again Upon my ecstasy. They will never see me watching one star. I will fly by rivers, And by little brooks, And by the edge of lakes, And by little bends of water, Where no wind blows, And glance at stars as I pass. They will never spy again Upon my ecstasy." And I knew that mad Frederick In this flight Through years of restless and madness Was caught by the image of a star In a mere beyond a meadow Down from a hill, under a forest, And had said, "No one sees; Here I can find life, Through vision of eternal things." But they had followed him. They stood on the brow of the hill, And when they saw him gazing in the water They rolled a great stone down the hill, And shattered the star's image. Then mad Frederick fled with laughter. It echoed through the wood. And he said, "I will look for moons, I will punish them who disturb me, By worshiping moons." But when he sought moons They left him alone, And he did not want the moons. And he was alone, and sick from the moons, And covered as with a white blankness, Which was the worst madness of all. And I, a certain god, Waiting for mad Frederick To enter this place of pools and stars, Saw him at last. With a sigh he looked about upon his fellows Sitting or standing by their pools. And some of the pools were covered with scum, And some were glazed as of filth, And some were grown with weeds, And some were congealed as of the north wind, And a few were yet pure, And held the star's image. And by these some sat and were glad, Others had lost the vision. The star was there, but its meaning vanished. And mad Frederick, going here and there, With no purpose, Only curious and interested As I was, a certain god, Came by a certain pool And saw a star. He shivered, He clasped his hands, He sank to his knees, He touched his lips to the water. Then voices from the limbs of the trees muttered: "There he is again." "He must be driven away." "The pool is not his." "He does not belong here." So as when bats fly in a cave They swooped from their hidings in the trees And dashed themselves in the pool. Then I saw what these flying things were-- But no matter. They were illusions, evil and envious And dull, But with power to destroy. And mad Frederick turned away from the pool And covered his eyes with his arms. Then a certain god, Of less power than mine, Came and sat beside me and said: "Why do you allow this to be? They are all seeking, Why do you not let them find their heart's delight? Why do you allow this to be?" But I did not answer. The lesser god did not know That I have no power, That only the God has the power. And that this must be In spite of all lesser gods. And I saw mad Frederick Arise and ascend to the top of a high hill, And I saw him find the star Whose image he had seen in the pool. Then he knelt and prayed: "Give me to understand, O Star, Your inner self, your eternal spirit, That I may have you and not images of you, So that I may know what has driven me through the world, And may cure my soul. For I know you are Eternal Love, And I can never escape you. And if I cannot escape you, Then I must serve you. And if I must serve you, It must be to good and not ill-- You have brought me from the forest of pools And the images of stars, Here to the hill's top. Where now do I go? And what shall I do?" THE END Printed in the United States of America. The following pages contain advertisements of books by the same author or on kindred subjects _EDGAR LEE MASTERS' REMARKABLE BOOK_ Spoon River Anthology _Mr. Masters' book is considered by many to be the most striking and important contribution to American letters in recent years_:-- "An American 'Comedie Humaine' brings more characters into its pages than any American novel.... Takes its place among the masterpieces which are not of a time or a locality."--_Boston Transcript._ "A work splendid in observation, marvelous in the artistry of exclusion, yet of democratic inclusiveness, piercingly analytic of character, of plastic facility of handling, sympathetic underneath irony, humorous, pathetic, tragic, comic, particular yet universal--a Comedie Humaine--a creation of a whole community of personalities."--_William Marion Reedy._ "We find a strange impressiveness, akin to greatness, in the 'Spoon River Anthology' of Edgar Lee Masters.... It is a book which, whether one likes it or not, one must respect."--_The New Republic._ "Mr. Masters speaks with a new and authentic voice. It is an illuminating piece of work, and an unforgettable one."--_Chicago Evening Post._ "The natural child of Wait Whitman ... the only poet with true Americanism in his bones."--_New York Times._ _Cloth, $1.25; leather, $1.50_ THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York * * * * * Good Friday and Other Poems BY JOHN MASEFIELD Author of "The Everlasting Mercy" and "The Widow in the Bye Street," etc. _Cloth, 12mo, $1.25_ The title piece in this volume is a dramatic poem of sixty pages, the action of which takes place in the time of Christ. The characters introduced include Pontius Pilate, Joseph of Ramah and Herod. The play, for it is really such, is written in rhyme and is one of Mr. Masefield's most interesting and important contributions to literature. In addition to this there are in the book many sonnets and short poems. "Reveals an interesting development in poetic thought and expression ... a new Masefield ... who has never written with more dignity, nor with more artistry. Those who go in quest of Beauty will find her here.... Here is beauty of impression, beauty of expression, beauty of thought, and beauty of phrase."--_The New York Times._ THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York * * * * * The Man Against the Sky BY EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON Author of "The Porcupine," "Captain Craig and Other Poems," etc. _Cloth, 12mo, $1.00_ It has been some years since Mr. Robinson has given us a new collection of poems. Those who remember "Captain Craig and Other Poems," a volume which brought to its author the heartiest of congratulations, placing him at once in the rank of those American writers whose contributions to literature are of permanent value, will welcome this new work and will find that their anticipation of it and hopes for it are to be pleasantly realized. It is a book which well carries out that early promise and which helps to maintain Mr. Robinson's position in letters to-day. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York * * * * * Battle and Other Poems BY WILFRID WILSON GIBSON Author of "Daily Bread," "Fires," etc. _Cloth, 12mo_ Here with that intensely human note exhibited in his poems of the working classes, Mr. Gibson sings of the life of the soldier. There are many moods in the book, for the author has well caught the flow of spirits from gaiety to despair which makes up the soldier's days. The chief characteristic of the little pen pictures is their vividness, the way in which they bring before the reader the thoughts and feelings of those whose lives may be offered up for their country any moment. In addition to these poems of battle there are others in the collection on varying themes. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York * * * * * Six French Poets BY AMY LOWELL Author of "Sword Blades and Poppy Seed," "A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass," etc. _Cloth, 8vo, $2.50_ A brilliant series of biographical and critical essays dealing with Émile Verhaeren, Albert Samain, Remy de Gourmont, Henri de Régnier, Francis Jammes, and Paul Fort, by one of the foremost living American poets. The translations make up an important part of the book, and together with the French originals constitute a representative anthology of the poetry of the period. Professor Barrett Wendell, of Harvard University, says: "Seems to me as unusual--in the happiest sense of the word, ... I find the book a model, in total effect, of what a work with such purpose ought to be." William Lyon Phelps, Professor of English Literature, Yale University, says: "This is, I think, the most valuable work on contemporary French literature that I have seen for a long time. It is written by one who has a thorough knowledge of the subject and who is herself an American poet of distinction. She has the knowledge, the sympathy, the penetration, and the insight--all necessary to make a notable book of criticism. It is a work that should be widely read in America." OTHER BOOKS BY AMY LOWELL Sword Blades and Poppy Seed _Boards, 12mo, $1.25_ "From the standard of pure poetry, Miss Lowell's poem, 'The Book of the Hours of Sister Clotilde' is one of the loveliest in our poetry, worthy of companionship to the great romantic lyrics of Coleridge."--_Boston Transcript._ A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass _Boards, 12mo, $1.25_ "Such verse as this is delightful, has a sort of personal flavor, a loyalty to the fundamentals of life and nationality.... The child poems are particularly graceful."--_Boston Transcript._ THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. Punctuation has been corrected without note. Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original. It is not always possible to determine if a new stanza begins at the top of a printed page, but every effort has been made by the transcriber to retain stanza breaks where appropriate. 
36168	----	Rosemary and Rue By Amber Chicago and New York: Rand McNally & Company, Publishers Copyright, 1896, by Rand, McNally & Co. PREFACE. "Amber" was not to be classed with any society or any creed. In all respects she was an individual. In good-humored contempt she held all form, and with deep sincerity she revered all simple things. She smiled upon error and frowned upon pretense. Her life was largely made up of impulse and sacrifice. She was the constant "victim" of her own generosity, needing the money and the time which sympathy impelled her to give away. She was so devoted a lover of the moods of nature, noting so closely the changing of the leaf or a new note sounded by the whimsical wind, that her spirit itself must once have been an October day. Year after year she toiled, and her reward was not money, but a letter from the bedside of the invalid, telling of a heart that had been lightened, of a care that had been driven from the door. None of the newspaper writers of Chicago was more popular. Another column told the news of the day; her column held the news of the heart. Her best thoughts and warmest fancies are scattered throughout her prose. Her verses are pleasant, and many of them are striking, but meter often chained her fancy. But some of her unchained fancies, poetic conceits in the guise of prose, will live long after the clasp, holding the pretentious verses of a society laureate, shall have been eaten loose by the constant nibble of time. When a church was crowded with friends, come to bid "Amber" good-bye, a great thinker, a writer who knows the meaning of toil, said that she had succeeded by the force and the industry of her genius. And so she had. For others, influence searched out easy places, but "Amber" found her own hard place and maintained it, struggling alone. Her words were for the poor and the sorrowful, and they could but give a blessing. But in the end, a blessing from the poor may be brighter than the silver of the rich. Opie Read. Rosemary and Rue. I WONDER. I wonder, if I died to-night, And you should hear to-morrow, You'd mourn to think this one dear friend Had bid good-bye to sorrow. I wonder, if you saw a bird, The hunter's dart outflying, You'd lure it back with loving word To danger, pain, and dying. I wonder, if you saw a rose, Plucked quick in June's surrender, You'd wish it back upon the bough, To wither in November. I wonder, if you watched the moon, The tempest's rack outstripping, You'd grieve to see its silver prow In cloudless ether dipping. I wonder, if you heard a thrush Laugh out amid the clover, You'd weep because its cage door oped-- Its captive days were over. I wonder, if, some happy day, When you have found your haven, You'll mourn to find this one dear friend Had been so long in heaven. * * * * * When I die bury me by the sea. Let my first hundred years in the spirit be spent on a sunny sand-bank watching the sapphire tides break over a bluff of lifted rocks. What is any earthly trouble but a dissolving dream, when one may bury the face in golden moss and sniff the salt spume of the sea! Over the blue verge of the horizon lies Spain, and I build its castles hourly here in my heart. A distant echo rings in my ears of trucks driven over stony streets, of the crack of the cabman's whip and the shout of profane teamsters, but the only semblance to cruel driver and jaded beast of burden seen in the seaside paradise of which I write is a fat huckster and a still fatter donkey who draws the large man where he (the donkey) listeth. Here on this lifted moorland, if one wishes to go anywhere he rises up and goes forth on a carpet of crimson moss and yellow grass and is driven by a chariot of untired winds. Behind us are miles of purple moss swept by ragged shreds of September fog, and musical, here and there, with bells of grazing herds; while before us, behind us, and all around us stretches the boundless, unfathomable and mysterious sea. * * * * * Did you ever hear of the island of Avilion? That enchanted place where "falls not hail, or rain, nor ever wind blows loudly," whose orchard lands and bowery hollows lie lapsed in summer seas? I found it one day when I was sailing on Casco bay in a boat hardly bigger than a peanut shell. Tennyson found it long ago in a dream, and to it he sent the good King Arthur that he might "heal him of his grievous wound" within the balm of its heavenly peace. But I found it in reality, and to it I took a care-worn lady and a work-weary brain, that I might perchance renew under its sunny spell a strength that was well-nigh spent. I found my island under another name, to be sure, but I rechristened it within the first hour of my landing. It is not the place, my dear, for featherheads and butterflies, this island of Avilion. It is not the place for the descendants of Flora McFlimsy to go with their new gowns and their French heels. All such would vote my little island a bore, and run up a flag for the first inland-bound steamer to put into port and carry them away. It has no ball-room, no promenade-hall under cover, no brass band, no merry-go-round, but instead it has meadow-lands that are brimful of bird songs; it has wild strawberries that bring their ruby wine to the very lips of the laughing sea; it has such sunsets as visit the dreams of poets and the skies of Italy; it has great rocks that are woven all over with webs of wild convolvulus vine, whose airy goblets of pink and blue hold nectar for the booming bee to sip; and it has marguerite daisies by the tens of thousands, and wild roses that carry the tint of your baby's palm and the honey of sugar-sweet dew within the inclosure of their small curled cup. It is hardly bigger than a Cunarder, this little Chebeague island, whose name I changed to Avilion, and from wave-washed keel to flowery bowsprit the eye never lights upon a defilement or a stain. It is the only place in all my wanderings where I never found a peanut shell nor a tin can thrown out to defile nature's beauty. There was not a single bad odor on my island during the whole ten days of my tarrying, and I am told by those who are old inhabitants that such a thing never was known to it. A soft wind is always blowing, but the only merchandise it carries is wild thyme perfume and the fragrant airs that waft from meadow-lands and old-fashioned gardens full of spice pinks and cinnamon roses. Now and then a hunter's fog slips the leash of its viewless hounds and with noiseless "halloo" scours the island for the prey it tracks but seems never to corral. Now and then a sudden tumult seizes the tides that climb and fall on the shiny rocks and the air is full of the throb of soft drums and the music of flutes that are beat and blown a moment, then die away as quickly as they came, like a strolling band that marches through a village street, then over the hills and far away. Now and then a troop of crows rise silently from out the shadow of the pines and go sailing between the lazy eyes that follow and the sun, until, settling down upon some meadow stacked with new-cut hay, they break into clamorous laughter that taunts you with its shrill derision. Always, from dawn to dewfall, the world about little Chebeague is full of swallows that dart and soar and flit like shadows. They seldom sing, and yet the few notes they thread upon the air sparkle like diamonds where they fall. Some strange bird, with a low, sleepy song like the crooning of a child that is half asleep, or like a shepherd boy's pipe idly blown beneath the noonday willows, is always haunting the groves of Avilion with an undiscovered presence. I have spent hours looking for him, yet never found him. Sometimes I have been led to half believe the fellow exists only in the fancy of a spellbound idler like you and me. Just at sunset a little feathered violinist of the island whips out his fiddle and draws the bow so delicately across its vibrant strings, while the golden sun slips tranquilly beneath the tinted waters of Casco bay, that the soul of the listener is fairly attenuated like a high C diminuendo with the spell of so much beauty. I don't know the name of the bird either, but he is going to sing for us all in heaven later on. Such performers do not end all here any more than Beethoven did. It was my custom during the time I spent at Little Chebeague to devote the entire day to strolling or lying at length upon the rocks-- Nothing but me 'twixt earth and sky; An emerald and an amethyst stone, Hung and hollowed for me alone. I grew to love the solitude with all my heart, and the thought of returning to the mainland with its jargon and its bustle was like the thought of tophet to the poor little peri for whom the gate of paradise had swung. Sometimes I would board the small boat that two or three times a day threads in and out of the blue water-way and visit adjacent islands hardly less beautiful than my chosen home. There is Long Island, far more beautiful by reason of its East End, where as yet the tide of a full-fledged summer resort has not come. There is an old-fashioned country roadhouse, such as we knew before the landscape gardener and the boulevard fiend were turned loose upon our rural towns. To follow their windings is heaven enough for me. A fringe of buttercups to fence the way, thickets of underbrush to darken the near distance, constant little ups and downs where the road slips into hollow to follow the call of a romping brook or climb a hill to watch for the sea. Wintergreen berries and russet patches everywhere, and the snow of blackberry bushes in bloom far as the eye can travel. "There is an old-time rail fence!" cried a visitor from the booming west one day; "my God, let me get out and touch it! I haven't seen anything but barbed wire since I left New England!" And he did get out of the buckboard in which he was driving and chipped away a big brown fence sliver as a memento. These roads I am talking about lead nowhere in particular. They, as often as not, end in a fisherman's back dooryard, but they are sweet as a young girl's caprice while they last. One day we strolled across one of the islands and found a battlement of rocks on the seaside that it would have taken a solid month to explore. Oh, there was enough on the bar at ebb tide at Avilion to while away an age of idle time. Sometimes we took it into our heads to ride. Then the choice lay between Charlie the Christian--so named for his good behavior and gentle ways--and the one roadster the island produced, a nag in the rough, who held his head high and cavorted with the stride of a jamboreeing boy. The choice made, the hour must be watched to catch the low tide over to Big Chebeague, for there are no wagon roads in Avilion. Six hours of safety, as to the low water mark, is the limit of one day's riding, and much can be done in the way of riding in a half-dozen hours' time. A spin across the bar, the climbing of a rocky road, a sweep of seaward-facing pike, with dips into ferny hollows and ascents to pine-crowned bluffs, make the trip worth recording, and if to the exhilaration of the ride you add a dismount now and then to gather wintergreen and pick roses, with a loiter through a church-yard where many Hamiltons, both pre-Adamite and ante-historic, are sleeping the sleep of the just, you have the whole meaning of an afternoon outing on Big Chebeague. Every evening after supper there was a pilgrimage to the west side of the island, not to be dispensed with by descendants of those remnant tribes that once worshiped the sun. Ranging from north to south as far as the eye can sweep, from westward, fronting little Chebeague, lies Casco bay, the loveliest bit of water in all the world. I say unhesitatingly the loveliest, because I do not believe that Naples, nor Sorrento, nor any far-famed Italian watering-place can match the coast of Maine for beauty. Into this bay, like petals from a wind-shaken blossom tree, are dropped hundreds of islands. Far to the west the White mountains melt upon the horizon in airy outline of blue, and over all each day is repeated the ancient miracle of the sun's decline. Sometimes a single cloud, like a tomb, receives the bright embodiment of day and hides it from our sight behind such draperies as orient never wrought nor monarch dreamed. Sometimes this fair god lies at length upon a bier of purple porphyry, while flakes of crushed gems strew his couch with rainbow dust, and all the air is full of rose-red censers, edged with gold. Sometimes he drops below the verge, holding to the last a wine cup brimmed with sparkling vintage that spills and trickles down the hills. Sometimes he returns in an afterglow, as the dead come back to us in dreams, the tenderer and the sweeter for their second coming. However the sun may set in Avilion, each setting is the most beautiful and best to be desired. * * * * * I heard someone bewailing the death of a friend the other day. The staff on which he had leaned, the bread which had ministered to his needs, the very light that had filled his eyes seemed caught away, and he mourned as one for whom there was no comfort possible. I saw a mother leaning above an empty crib, whose dainty pillow no nestling head should ever press again. I marked the terrible yet voiceless grief that ate at a bereaved father's self-control, until no wind-blown reed was ever so shorn of self-reliant strength. I saw a wife whose love had sunk within the grave where her young husband was laid, as the sun sets within a cloud of stormy night. I saw an old man bow his snowy head because the faithful one whose hand had lain in his for more than fifty years had vanished from his sight forever. I heard a little child lamenting at bed-time the lullaby song which its dead mother's tender lips should never sing again. But sadder than all these things, more tragical than any death which merely picks the blossom of life and bears it onward to heaven, as the gardener plucks the choicest rose to grace some festival of joy, is the scene when a trusted friendship dies; when faith which has endured the test of years gives up the breath of loyal life and sinks to hopeless unawakened death. Never think that you have shed your bitterest tears until you have stood at such a death-bed. Think not the measurement of any mortal grief has been found until you have sunk the plummet-line of such a sorrow. That grave shall never burst its sheath to let the soul of friendship's betrayal free, like a lily on the Easter air. That door shall never swing like the bars of a cage to let a murdered faith flash forth like the plume of a singing bird to seek the stars. Over the grave of a dead and buried trust no resurrection-note can ever sound like a bugle-call across the dewy hills to rouse the sleeper from his couch. God pity all who linger by the heaped-up mound where love's forgotten dreams lie buried, and grant oblivion as the only surcease for their bitter sorrow. * * * * * The days and nights swing equally upon the golden balance of time. The year is whitening with its crop of frost-blossoms from which no harvest-home has ever yet been called. Like an unwritten page, the new year lies before us in untrodden fields of shining snow. God grant the footsteps of Death be not the first to track the unbroken path that lies before us. May joy and peace and love, like the roots of the violets under the snow, quicken and blossom for all of us as the year advances, and may our progress be, like January's, right steadily onward unto June! * * * * * As I write there is a sudden break in the hush of night, and faint and clear and sweet upon the listening ear falls the sound of "taps" from the camp in Fort Sheridan woods. I drop my pencil and listen to it, as I always do, with almost a spirit of reverent awe. The hard day's work is done, the time for rest has come, and over all the busy camp silence falls like the shadow of a brooding wing. The new moon, half hidden by drifting clouds sends a rippling play of silver through the woodbine leaves, and from the top of the maple tree, a thrush dreams forth a bar of liquid music in its sleep. All the world is going to sleep, and God grant, say I, that when the time for the final good-night has come for you and for me the call for "taps," blown from some celestial bugle the other side the mystic gate may fall as sweetly upon our ears and find us as ready to sink to slumber. * * * * * Did you ever hunt for eggs in a haymow? If you did you can remember just how, with bated breath, you crept through the fragrant glooms of the old barn and searched the dusty place for nests. You can recall, perhaps, the shaft of sunlight that broke through the crevice of the door and showed you old speckle-top in her corner. You can hear again her furious cackle when you dislodged her from her nest and gathered the warm eggs she had hovered under her wings. You remember the excitement of the search and the perfection of content which settled within your soul as you gathered the basketful of milk-white eggs upon your arm and picked your way down the steep ladder which led to the main floor and "all out doors." Scarcely any excitement or exhilaration of later years can compare with the joy of hen's-nest hunting when you were young. Did you ever go berrying? With a tin pail swinging from your wrist and your oldest gown upon your back, have you climbed the hill, jumped the fences and sought the side-hill pasture where the blackberries grew purple in the shade? Can you recall much, in all the years that thread between that happy time and this, which can transcend the pleasure of those wildwood tramps? Even now I seem to fix my eyes upon a clump of bushes by the old rail fence. They are domed high with verdure and show dusky hollows underneath, where, my skilled eye tells me, lurk spoils fit for Bacchus and all his nymphs. I part the leaves, a snowy moth flutters out of the green dusk and wavers like a snowflake in the warm, sweet air. I carefully reach my hand away inside the fairy bower of crumpled leaf and twisted vine and draw it forth purple with the juice of overripe berries that dissolve at a touch. With these I fill my pail, and all too often, I blush to own it, my mouth also, until twilight sends me home saturated with sunshine, late clover blooms and berry juice. Ah, my dear, all this was fun while it lasted, but there is a more exciting quest than hunting eggs or finding berries, in which we all of us engage as the years of our mortal pilgrimage go hurrying by. It is the search for happiness--a search we never give up nor grow too old to maintain. Forgetting the disappointments and the satieties of the dead years, we look forward to the new as the hidden nestfull of unchipped shells of fresh experience and untried delights. God bless us all, and prosper us to find the eggs and the berries before we die. Perhaps the service of love we do others shall prove the bush that bears the sweetest and the ripest clusters, and the nestfull that shall develop the whitest store of all life's opportunities. * * * * * A genuine mother could no more raise a bad boy into a bad man than a robin could raise a hawk. When I say "genuine mother" I mean something more than a mother who prays with her boy, and teaches him Bible texts, and sends him to Sunday-school. All those things are good and indispensable as far as they go, but there is a lot more to do to train a boy besides praying with him, just as there are things necessary to the cultivation of a garden besides reading a manual. To succeed with roses and corn one must prune, weed and hoe a great deal. To make a boy into a pure man, a mother must do more than pray. She must live with him in the sense of comrade and closest friend. She must stand by him in time of temptation as the pilot sticks to the wheel when rapids are ahead. She must never desert him to go off to superintend outside duties any more than the engineer deserts his post and goes into the baggage car to read up on engineering, when his train is pounding across the country at forty miles an hour. * * * * * A LITTLE GOLDENHEAD. Gay little Goldenhead lived within a town Full of busy bobolinks, flitting up and down, Pretty neighbor buttercups, cosy auntie clovers, And shy groups of daisies, all whispering like lovers. A town that was builded on the borders of a stream, By the loving hands of nature when she woke from winter's dream; Sunbeams for the workingmen taking turns with showers, Rearing fairy houses of fairy grass and flowers. Crowds of talking bumblebees, rushing up and down, Wily little brokers of this busy little town, Bearing bags of gold dust, always in a hurry, Fussy bits of gentlemen, full of fret and flurry. Gay little Goldenhead fair and fairer grew, Fed on flecks of sunshine, and sips of balmy dew, Swinging on her slender foot all the happy day, Chattering with bobolinks, gossips of the May. Underneath her lattice on starry summer eves, By and by a lover came, with his harp of leaves; Wooed and won the maiden, tender, sweet and shy, For a little cloud home he was building in the sky. And one breezy morning, on a steed of might, He bore his little Goldenhead out of mortal sight; But still her gentle spirit, a puff of airy down, Wanders through the mazes of that busy little town. * * * * * Where shall we go to find the fit symbol of Easter? To the encyclopedia that we may post ourselves as to word derivations and root meanings? As well send a child to a botanist to find the meaning of a rose! To fitly understand the true significance of Easter time, find some slope in early April that the sun has found a few short days before you. Lay your ear close to the ground that you may hear the fine, soft stir within the bosom of the warm earth. Note how the mold is filling with its new birth of flowers. There is not a covert in all the awakening woods that has not a little nestling head hidden behind the dead leaves. The breath of a sleeping child is not more peaceful than the sway of the wind flower upon its downy stem. The flush on a baby's cheek is not more delicate than the tint of each gossamer petal. To what shall we liken the grass blades already springing up along the loosened water ways? To fairy bowmen, led by Robin Hood's ghost through winding ways from forest on to the sparkling sea. To what shall we liken the violet buds spread thick beneath the country children's feet? To constant thoughts of God that bloom even in the grave's dark dust. To what shall we liken the twinkling leaves that shine in the dim depths of the woods? To lights at sea, that tell some fleet is sailing into port. To what shall we liken the shy unfolding of the lilac buds? To the poise of a slender maiden who leans from out her lattice to hearken to a lover's song. To what shall we liken the cowslip's valiant gold? To the shining of a contented spirit with a humble home. To what shall we liken the brooding sky and the warmth of the all-loving sun? To the potency of a gentle nature intent on doing good, and the yearning of a tender heart to bless and save. Is there a nook so dark and forbidding that the beautiful Easter sunshine cannot enter and woo forth a flower? Is there a rock so impervious that the April wind may not find lodgment for a seed in some crevice, and there uplift a bannered blossom? Is there a cold, resentful bank wherein the late snow lingers that shall not finally cast off its disdainful ice and flash into verdure in response to the patient shining of the sun? Is there a grave in all the land so new and desolate that Easter time cannot find a violet among its clods and paint a rainbow within the tears that rain above it? To nature's lovers, then, as to the truly Christian heart, the significance of Easter is found in the reviving garden and in the awakening woods. It means resurrection after death, blossom time after the bareness of woe, the cuckoo's cry after the silence of songless days, and the smile of a pitying All-Father after the orphan time of the soul's bereavement and seeming desertion. Another blessed thought to be gained in the contemplation of nature's sure awakening from the long lethargy of her winter's sleep is that, however fearful we may be that death's reign shall be eternal, as constant as day dawn after midnight, or shining after storm, shall be the Easter of the soul. We do not need to pray for April; it comes. Nor do we need to pray for release from the first dark dominion of fear and dread when our beloved are snatched from our arms. Such experience is only the transient reign of winter in the heart, while yet the soft wing of April stirs upon the horizon's misty verge and the promise of violets is in the lingering darkness of the air. Remember this: The same power that sends us November is planning an April to follow, and out of the snowfall evolves the whiteness of the annunciation lily. It has always seemed to me that, beautiful as Christ's birthday ought to be and full of tender significance as we may make the hallowed Christmas time, a deeper tenderness attaches to these Easter days. The Sinless One had lived out the span of his mortal years; he had suffered and been betrayed; had struggled through Gethsemane, up to the thorn-crowned heights of Calvary, and yet, through all, carried the whiteness of a saintly soul, to cast its dying petals, like a white rose, wind-shaken yet yielding perfume even in death, in the utterance of that prayer for universal forgiveness, the most wonderful that ever ascended from earth to heaven--"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" The song that ushered in the birthtime of those sanctified years was an invocation of peace and good will, beneath which the morning stars were shaken like banners before the oncoming of a glorious prince, but the prayer that ascended from Calvary was the plea of a betrayed and anguished soul for universal charity and forgiveness from God to man. Let us rejoice, then, when Christmas days bring gladness to our hearts and homes, but let us forgive and bless when Easter lays its stainless lily at our feet. There is constant need for charity and forgiveness in a world so full of self-blinded and ignorant evil-doers. They do not always know what they do, these rude and riotous betrayers of Christ; and all the more need, then, for compassion, and that divine pity that, even from the cross, could invoke heaven's pardoning love. If you have a friend who has wronged you, forgive him to-day, for Christ's sweet sake. If you have a boy who has gone astray, reach out your arm and win him back, while yet the Easter violets glow upon the chancel rail. If you have a daughter who has been undutiful, take her in your arms and ask God to forgive you both--you for your lack of sympathy, as well as her for her waywardness. So shall you understand the meaning of Easter, the resurrection time of love, the fulfillment of its promise from out the icy negation of the grave. A few thoughts about death before we turn to other symbolizations of the season. It is all a mistake, it seems to me, to make death a menace and a dread in the minds of the young. Does the farmer go forth with tears to plant the seed for the coming harvest? Does the scientist mourn above the chrysalis that lets a rare butterfly go free? Does the navigator rebel when a bark that has been tempest-tossed and storm-driven enters port? Teach the children that death is all that makes life endurable; that it is the sheaf of ripened wheat, or the budding flower, plucked from the earth's dark mold; that it is the flight of the bird, the home stretch of the yacht. We love each other, but what is it that makes human love any nobler than the chirruping of birds if not its duration? And it is only death that makes our loves immortal. Time enthrals them with fear and environs them with alarms; death lifts them into the region of eternal joy. Take away the reality of our faith in the life to come and Easter would mean no more to us than it means to the browsing cattle that munch the violet buds and trample the bright promises of the year under foot. The comforting view of it all is, that here we are only learning to love. We are like birds that sit upon the edge of the nest, and flutter, and chirp, and dread to fly away. What shall the bough whereon our nest was rocked with many a storm be when we have learned to spread these tiresome wings and rejoice in the blue space of the boundless air? The heroism of love, the faithfulness of love, the grandeur, patience and magnificence of love shall only be revealed when the soul has left the shadows and spread its wing in the empyrean of heaven's blue. * * * * * There is a small boy who lives at our house with whom I wage an unending warfare on the subject of clean hands. The sun never goes down nor yet arises upon a harmonious adjustment of the mooted question. There are more tears shed, more dire threats made, more promises broken, more anguish endured on that one account than upon any other under the sun. The boy dwells under a ban as somber as the seven-fold curse of Rome. His sisters nag him, his grandmother prays for him, his mother pleads with him, his girl friends flout him, but in spite of all he continues to wear his hands in half tints. But the other evening he made an announcement that caused even the young person to remark: "Well, I'd rather see you with your soiled hands than see you such a dude as that!" "Gee!" said the boy, "but some of the kids that go to our school are queer ducks!" "Don't use so much slang," cried his mother; "why can't you call a boy a boy as well as a 'kid' and a 'duck'; and whatever do you mean by 'Gee'?" "They bring little cushions to school," continued the boy with only a swift hug in answer to his mother's question, "and they put 'em under their hands when they play marbles, so's they won't get their hands dirty. Gee whiz, but I'm glad I ain't such a fool!" And in spite of her desire to see him a bit more solicitous as to personal elegance his mother could but echo the boy's self-congratulatory remark. What on earth is going to become of us if this awful wave of effeminacy which has struck the race does not soon subside? Earmuffs and galoshes, heated street cars in April and double windows up to rose time have done their best to make molly coddles out of men, but when we are starting a generation of boys to play marbles with cushions to rest their hands on the sex had better abolish hats and trousers and take to hoods and shoulder shawls. Give me a boy and not a pocket edition of an old woman. He need not be a tough nor a bully, nor need he be cruel nor untender because he is a boy, but I want him jolly and brave and up to every harmless prank that's going. I want him to use slang and wear muddy shoes, slam doors and make all sorts of futile feints at keeping his hands clean, provided, always, he appreciates the opportunity offered to show the gentleman that's in him by never appearing at table looking like a tramp. Even that is better, though, than being a "sissy." Give him time and the untidiest boy in the world will develop into a gentleman, but eternity itself could not evolve a man out of a boy who plays marbles with a cushion! * * * * * As I was walking down Dearborn street the other day, close upon the gloaming, I chanced to meet two pretty girls, not the only two in this big city, perhaps, but two of the fairest. One had hair like the tassel of ripe corn when the sunshine finds it; the other's head was crowned with dusky braids, and the eyes of the two were brimful of laughter as a goblet new-filled with wine. Surely such pretty girls should carry queenly hearts, thought I, and with my old trick of catching topics in the air, I loitered a little on my way to hear what such fair lips might be saying. Said one: "I really don't care to marry him; he is such a darned fool! but he will give me everything I want, and I suppose I shall." I stayed to hear no more. If I had caught a yellow-bird swearing, or seen the first robin appear in Joliet stripes, the revulsion from pleasure to disgust could not have been more sudden. Is this all the lesson the world has taught you, my pretty maiden? To soil your lips with slang and sell yourself for fine clothes and the chance of unlimited display! Forecasting the life of such a girl is like forecasting an April day that dawns in tints of purple and gold, and ends in tempest and the blackness of night. Beauty is a glorious heritage, indeed, but to see it worn by such types as you, my pretty dears, is like seeing a queen's crown on the head of a parrot, or a royal scepter in the grasp of a monkey. * * * * * Niagara Falls! What heart is so stolid, what appreciative spirit so calloused over with the hard crust of stoicism not to rise and shout before the wonder of its magnificence? When a man or woman gets so blasé as to thrill no more over Niagara Falls, let them be salted down with last year's hams and hung on a hook in the quiet seclusion of a smokehouse. First we took our way over the bridge that leads to the beautifully kept Goat Island and, alighting from the carriage, stood for a time with the full splendor of the American fall in our faces. A fascination that could not be shaken off held the eyes upon that never-stayed torrent of sun-illumined jewels. Diamonds they were, and great uncut emeralds, with here and there a rain of fiery rubies, that tumbled from off the lifted ledge of imperishable rock. And where the volume widened, until it became an avalanche of snowy foam, shot through and through with needles of light, it seemed to us that the law of gravitation had been forever abandoned, and falling tons of water, losing kinship drop with drop, were floated skyward again to find a home in heaven. Down-shooting rockets of silver foam unfallen, yet always in the air! Canopies of cloud, dissolving into fine dust-like roadside pollen! Draperies of spray unrolled in noiseless splendor from the blue background of an endless day! Explosions in mid air of thunderous torrents that turned to carded wool on the way from heaven to earth! While I stood and watched it all somebody profaned the air with a vulgar word, and I looked for a flaming sword from the omnipotent hand to smite him where he stood. To swear, or even to think an unholy thought in such a holy of holies, deserves the penalty of death as much as did the desecration of the temple in ancient times. Shifting our place from point to point, we found ourselves at last standing on the very verge of the Horseshoe falls, where, crowned with living green, it slips over the crumbling ledge and loses itself in a dazzling whirl of spray. Although I have stood in that same spot many times I am proud to remark that I have never stood there yet without saying my prayers. The sight is too much for the puny ego that animates this little capricious whiff of dust we call our mortal body, and now, if never before, the soul that retains one particle of the divine within it turns to God as the sunflower follows the sun. While we stood entranced by the sublime beauty of the scene a mighty wind arose suddenly and great clouds were called across the sky to the sending of a swift alarm. Before the breath of the wind the mists were tumbled far and wide like feathers, and a rainbow that arched the whole was demolished into nothingness only to be kindled again as a flame in the whimsical breath of the riotous air. One moment the atmosphere was a fairy flower garden, full of violets, roses, green feathery ferns and passion-tinted tulips brimming over with gold. The next some giant hand reached forth and plucked and bore each flower away. A suffusion of color followed every flood of sunshine, as a pomegranate runs with juice at the touch of a knife, only to be succeeded by pale wafts of colorless, interminable spray, where a cloud caught the too eager sun within its soft eclipse. * * * * * If the Lord left any snakes in Paradise after the settlement of the primal fuss they took the shape of the man who is a confirmed cynic and pessimist. The man who has no faith, no enthusiasm, no candor, no sentiment. The man who laughs at the mention of good in the world, or virtue in women, or honor among men. The man who calls his wife a fool because she teaches his little children to say their prayers, and curls his lip at any belief in the world beyond the grave. The man who never saw anything worth admiring in the sky when the dawn touches it, or the stars illumine it, or the clouds sweep it, or the rain folds it in gray mists of silence. The man who lives in this sparkling, shining world as a frog lives in a pond or a toad in a cellar, only to croak and spit venom. The man who never saw anything in a rose aglint in the sunlight or in a lily asleep in the moonlight, but a species of useless vegetable, the inferior of the cabbage and the onion. The world is overfull of such men, and if I had the right sort of broom I'd sweep them away as the new girl sweeps spiders. * * * * * Once I was sailing in a yacht close to the rock-bound coast of Maine. It was presumably a pleasure cruise, but if ever a poor wretch in purgatory had a harder time of it I am sorry for him. The fog was thick, the ground swell was enough to unsettle the seven hills of Rome, and something was wrong with the boat's machinery, so that for hours we lay in the trough of the sea, making no headway and fearful that each moment would be our last. Added to all this there came at short intervals a demoniac blast from a fog horn which rent the air with the clamor of a thousand tongues. "Look out!" it seemed to shriek over and over again. "Look out, poor fragile wisps of gossamer! The hour strikes for your destruction. Another wave, a little higher than the last, shall suck you down like a shred of foam into the blackness of the sea's dark vortex. Brace up and meet your doom. Look out! Look out! Look out!" I listened to that fog horn for hours, until the soul within me lay like a spent bird weary with futile beating of useless wings, and I came within a hair's breadth of madness. In fact, I think I had commenced to rave a bit when a brisk wind sprang up that blew the fog away, the crew succeeded in righting the craft and onward we flew out of sound of the terrible fog horn forever. There are many things in life that remind me of fog horns; there are many occasions that beat upon the soul with just such vociferous clamor. There are those old-fashioned Bible texts, shouting "hell fire" and "eternal damnation." What are they but fog horns warning us from off a mist-enveloped shore? We cannot shut our ears to them while we lie a furlong off the rocks and listen to their woeful reiteration. Perhaps some chance wind may blow us out to sea, there to escape for the present the unwelcome climax; but we know that underneath the shrouded stars and through the hush of midnight forever and forevermore sounds the crash of that brazen alarm. We may not heed it, but the fog horn is there, forget and disown it though we may. Then there are our birthdays after we grow old enough to understand their significance; what are they but fog horns that sound at intervals to denote that we are drawing near to the final doom of all mankind? "Sport on," they seem to say, "a little longer; weave your garlands and blow your pretty bubbles while you may, for to-morrow you shall surely die!" Each year the fog horn blows a louder blast, until finally the softened haze of creeping years, like a white fog in the sea air, muffles the sound, and we sink to rest at last, some of us with the wild clamor hushed to the measure of a good-night song. Then the holidays. Thanksgivings and Christmases with independence days, like wine-red roses dropped between, what are they but fog horns on the invisible shores of memory? How they mock us with the recollection of vanished joys, and warn us of barren years yet to be. Gone forever are the dear ones who made gala times and festival happenings bright, and still we linger like boats in the trough of a sullen sea, our motive power wrecked, our sails rent, and listen, listen, listen to the warning that sounds from far off the hazy shore. "Gone, forever gone," the fog horn cries; "gone down into the sea, the boats that kept you company when the bright-winged fleet put out from port! Lost forever, in storms it seems scarce worth the while to have weathered, since here you toss, alone at last, like driftwood on the chilly tide, and listen forever to the mournful warning of my voice from off the sandbars, warning you that not even love can withstand the beat of time's relentless years." Our desks are full of miniature fog horns in the shape of unanswered letters. Our closets hang full of fog horns of varying fabrics. They warn us of the folly of trusting to bargain sales of shoddy goods; they warn us against extravagant tastes when times are hard; they warn us against the lazy mood that neglects the stitch in time that saveth nine. Every time we are ill the occasion is a fog horn. Either we have disregarded some law of health and are in the trough of the sea in consequence, or we are flying on to the breakers with ears dulled to the fog horn's din. We speak with cruel harshness to the old mother who loves us, or to the little child who trusts us. We are sorry for it afterward, and that sorrow is the fog horn that warns us to keep off the reef of temper. "To-day may be the last day for the mother you have pained or the child you have wronged," it seems to say; "the bed they lie down upon to-night may be the bed of death. See to it, then, that you make each day of life, if possible, the last day of love's opportunity." Did you ever stop to think of what would become the instant concern of all this vast human race if a sudden edict should go forth that only twenty-four hours were left for each man to live? What if an angel should appear to-day at sunset and proclaim in a voice that should reach from world's center to world's rim, "To-morrow at set of sun this globe and all its race of sentient life shall be folded up like a scroll and effaced from heaven's chart!" What would we all begin to do then, I wonder? I think that everything would be forgotten but love. Envy and hatred, covetousness, jealousy, ambition, selfishness and cruelty would find no place in the hearts of men. We would improve love's latest opportunity to be kind one to another, tender-hearted and merciful. The husband would not be harsh with his wife, nor the wife show waspish temper to her husband, if the last day had come for both. The father would not strike his boy in uncontrolled temper, nor the mother rebuke her careless child, if the knowledge that the end of love's opportunity lay between the uplifted hand and the culprit. We should all be loving and fond and sweet if we only knew. My dear, this very thought, carried out, is but another fog horn. Perhaps death is already near, and the brazen clamor in our hearts which takes shape of an uneasy conscience or of a nameless dread is but the warning in the fog that we are close upon the fatal reef. Ah, the air is full of them! They sound in every waking moment, they mingle with our dreams, they greet our opening eyes, they accompany us when the tired lids fall in slumber. The shore is lined with them and their warning is as ceaseless as the beat of time's receding waves. But of what use is a fog horn to a vessel that gives no heed? Why uplift them on dangerous reefs if the ship's crew sleeps through their warning and the unconscious captain ignores their hoarse note of alarm? An unheeded fog horn might as well be silenced, and so, I sometimes think, if we allow our hearts to grow callous to the call that conscience makes, why not be thankful when the warning ceases and silence follows the useless repetition of an unavailing appeal? If I am to be shipwrecked at last I think I would rather run upon the reefs without warning than to drift to destruction to the mocking cadence of an alarm I would not heed. To go down with the sound in my ears of an admonition that might have saved me had I but listened would be the hardest sort of dying. * * * * * HER CRADLE. There are tears on the gentian's eyelids, As they lift them, fringed and fair. Do they mourn for the vanished brightness Of my baby's golden hair? There's a cloud a-droop in the heavens That shadows their sunny hue. Does it dream of the lovelight tender In my baby's eyes so blue? The golden rod pines in the forest, The aster pales by the brook. Do they miss her fairy footfall In each dim and flow'ry nook? Now, all through this beautiful weather, Wherever I walk, I weep; For I think of the desolate cradle Where my baby lies asleep. * * * * * The other night, as I was listening to "taps" in a neighboring military camp, a longing came over me for a silver bugle of my own, that I might blow a message to the drowsy world. We all listen to that fellow up at Fort Sheridan, when he gives the command for "lights out!" just because he blows it through a bugle. He might come out and say what he had to say in tones anywhere between a cornet and a clap of thunder, and the effect would be nothing to what it is when the notes filter through a silver mouthpiece. And how exquisitely the last strains of that nightly call linger on the ear! They melt into the starry glooms, and throb through the dim spaces of the woods like golden bubbles or the wavering flight of butterflies. Whenever we hear them we think of Grant, asleep in his grave by the mighty river, of his work well done, and the rest that dropped upon his pain-racked life at last like a soft and rainy shadow on a thirsty land. We think of hosts of brave men who fill soldiers' graves all over this blood-bought heritage of ours. We think of hearts that once beat high, for long years silent as stones to all our cries and tears. We think of a host of things, solemn and hushed, and sacred, and drop to sleep at last with an indistinct purpose in our hearts to so conduct ourselves that when the Death Angel blows "taps" for us, we shall leave a record behind us to be read through fond, regretful tears, and enshrined in golden characters upon the tablets of memory. Now, if I had a bugle instead of a pen, to work with, and if I could stand out under the stars on a hushed summer night and deliver my message through its silver throat, perhaps the world that reads me might be thrilled into earnest purpose more readily than it is when exhorted from a pencil point or a quill. The first message I should ring through that bugle of mine would be the command, "Don't fret!" However comfortless and forlorn you may be, don't add to your own and the world's misery by fretting. There never yet was a sorrow that could not be lived down; there never yet was one that could be cured by worry. When the cows get into the corn and the chickens into the flower-beds, the sensible man chases 'em out first, repairs the damage next, and, lastly, fastens up the break in the garden wall by which the marauders got in. What would you think of a farmer who went into his bedroom to pray before he chased out the cows, or of a woman who threw her apron over her head and wept long and loud because the hens were scratching up her pink roots, instead of "shooing" them a half-mile away with a broom? Most troubles come upon us as the cattle and the hens get into the corn and the garden patch, through a broken fence or a carelessly unguarded gate. It is our own fault half the time that we are tormented, and the sooner we repair the damage and mend the fence, the better. Time spent in useless bewailing, in worry and disquietude, is lost time, and while we wait the mischief thickens. Take life's trials one by one, as the handful of heroes met the host at Thermopylae, and you will slay them all; but allow them to marshal themselves on a broad field while you are crying over their coming or praying for deliverance, instead of arming yourselves to meet them, and they will make captives of you and keep you forever in the dungeon of tears. Is your husband too poor to buy you all the fine clothes you want, or to keep a carriage, or to surround you with pleasant society and congenial friends? Very well, that is certainly too bad, but what's the use of being forever in the dumps about it? Get up and help him keep the cows out of the corn, and perhaps you'll have a golden harvest yet. A sullen, discontented wife is a millstone around any man's neck, and he may be thankful when the good Lord delivers him from her. Whatsoever is worth having in this world's gifts is worth working for, and wedlock is like an ox-team at the plow. If the off-ox won't pull with the nigh one, it has no claim with him upon the possible future of a comfortable stall and a full bin. Out upon you, then, Madam Gruntle, if you sulk, and pout and fret your days away because your husband is a poor man and spends most of his time chasing the cattle, calamity and failure out of his wheat patch. He may possibly be one of fortune's numerous ne'er-do-wells, but in that case all the more reason you should not fail him. Bent reeds need careful handling, and smoking flax gentle tending, else they will perish on your hands and disappoint both you and heaven. All the more reason that you should be cheery and strong and ready to do your part, if the man you married, because you dearly loved him (remember!) is unable to do all that he promised. That is, always provided he is weak and unfortunate, rather than desperately wicked. A woman has no call to stand by any man if he is a wretch and shows no desire to be anything else. The Lord himself never helped a sinner until he showed some desire to be saved. Less repining, then, a little more forbearance with one another's shortcomings, and a little more loyalty to the promise "for better or for worse," will ease up much of the burden of dissatisfied and disappointed wedlock. Another message that I should blow through that bugle, if I had it at my lips to-night, would be: "Be true!" And I should ring it out so long and loud, I think, that the moon would stop to listen, and the sleepy heads in every home in the land would rise from their pillows like night-capped crocuses out of the snow. For heaven's sake, if you have a principle or a friend, be true to them. Make up your mind, whether or no your principle is solid and has God and justice on its side, and then be true to it right down to death, or, what is harder, through misunderstanding and obloquy. And if you have a friend, such as God sometimes gives a woman or a man, faithful through all betiding, staunch in your defense and tender in your blame, stand true to that friend until the grave's green canopy is spread between you. He may be unpopular and unfortunate, and all the feather-headed crew of society may ignore him, but if you have ever tested his worth as a friend, stand up for him, and stand by him forever. The sun may go down upon his fortunes, and calumny may cloud his name, and you may know in your heart that more than half the world says about him is true, but stand by the man who has once been your true friend. Ingratitude is the blackest crime that preys upon the human soul. The forgetfulness of a favor, or the effacement of a bond sealed with an obligation, is capable only to weak and cowardly natures. If you have a conviction, and are conscientious in the belief that you are right, be true to your professions. If you are a rebel, be a rebel out and out, and don't be a goat to leap nimbly back and forth over the fence. Never apologize for either your faith or your profession, unless you have reason to be ashamed of it; and, if you are ashamed of it, renounce it and get one that will need no apology. There are lots of other messages I would like to stand on a hill and blow through a bugle, but the weather is too warm to admit of further effort just now; so we'll postpone the topic for another hearing. * * * * * I sat in a fashionable church the other day and listened to a sermon on "The Prodigal Son." How often I have heard the same old story told in the same old way. How familiar I have become with the kind father, the bad son, refreshingly human heir, the veal and the ring! But the last time I heard the story I felt an almost uncontrollable impulse to rise up in meeting and ask the question, "How does the treatment accorded to the prodigal son match the treatment we mete out to the prodigal daughter?" How far out of our way do we go to accompany his sister on her homeward faring after a season spent among the swine and the husks? Do we put an 18-karat ring on her poor little soiled finger and place her at the head of our table, even if by good chance she gains an entrance to the home? Do we not more often meet her at the back door when nobody is looking, rush her through the hallway and consign her to the little third story rear room, taking her meals to her ourselves, on the sly, that the neighbors may not find out the dreadful fact that she is at home again? "Keep yourself very close," we say to her, "and by no manner of means be seen at any of the windows, and you may stay here. You can wear some of your virtuous sister's cast-off clothing, and sleep on the lounge in the nursery, where the servants never think of going since the little folks have grown up, but you must be very penitent, and very humble, and very thankful to God for the mercy you so little deserve." I think somebody had better write a new parable and call it "The Prodigal Daughter." Perhaps a sermon might be preached from it to touch the unmoved heart. After all there are two sorts of prodigals--the prodigal who comes home because the cash gives out, and the prodigal who comes because his heart turns back to the old home with such longing as the thirsty feel for water. Neither boy nor girl who comes back for the first-named reason should find a maudlin love awaiting, nor partake of any banquet that the old folks have had to pay for, but the prodigal who returns because there is something left in his or her heart like the music in a shell, which nothing can destroy or hush away to silence, be that prodigal sinful man or erring woman, should find not only the home doors swung wide in welcome, but every doorway in the land wreathed with flowers to bid him enter. * * * * * How few people know when to stop. If the preacher knew when to stop preaching, how much more satisfactory the result of his sermon might be. If the genial fellow knew just when to stop telling his good stories, how much keener their relish would be. If the moralizer knew just when to stop moralizing, how much longer the flavor of his philosophy would endure. If the friend knew when to keep still, how grateful his silence would be. If the candid creature who so glibly tells of our foibles knew when to hold his tongue, how much less strong our impulse to slap him would be. If the high-liver knew when to stop eating, how much less sure dyspepsia would be. If the popular guest knew when to withdraw, how much more regretfully we should see him go. If the politician knew when to retire into private life, how much whiter his record would be. If we all knew just when to die, and could opportunely bring the event about, how much truer our epitaphs would be. The court fool who prayed, "Oh God, be merciful to me, a fool!" prayed deeper than he knew, and the man who prays, "Oh God, teach me to know when I have said enough," prays deeper still. * * * * * You may talk about California all you will, but match, if you can, the beauty of spring as it comes to us in these northerly latitudes. There is the coy advance and retreat of a woman hard to win; there is the crescendo and diminuendo of heavenly harmonies; there is the dissolving view that glimmers and glows like an opal, or like the mirage of a misty sea. I was in California a year ago, in April time. I found the month that poets love in full splendor, like a queen who never doffs her crown. Violets, roses, lilacs and carnations came all together in a riotous rush. One did not have to woo the season; it was already won. Like a matron crowned with the mid-splendor of her years, the earth received the homage that is due achievement. Nobody caught the sound of the first robin on a rainy morning and heralded it with a shout; the first robin, like the first principle in creation, never existed, for the reason that he was always there. There were no foretellings of green along the watercourses; no prophetic thrills of violets in the air; no uplifting of the hypatica's downy head above the lattice of fuzzy leaves; everything was right where you discovered it, and had been all the year round. Without beginning and without end, spring exists forever, like a picture bound within a book, in the lovely land of the Gringos. But walk out some April morning in the suburbs that surround Chicago. Catch the tonic of the air, like wine ever so delicately chilled with ice. View the lake, like a gentian flower fringed with a horizon fine as silk. Scrape away the leaves and hail the valiant Robin Hood in his suit of green, leading his legion upward to the sun. Without the sound of a footfall or the gleam of a lance, they come to take possession of the earth. Woo the violet to turn her dewy eye upon you, and listen to the minstrel in the tower, where the winds are harping to the new buds. Mark the maple twigs, like silhouettes cut in coral, and the sheath of the wood lily, like a ribbon half unrolled. Rejoice in the flash of the blue bird's wing as it startles the still air, and then say to me, if you dare, that you prefer any other climate to this one that belts the zone of these northern lakes. * * * * * Thank the Lord, all ye who can call yourselves healthy. The day has gone by for physically delicate women. This age demands Hebes and young Venuses with ample waists and veritable muscles. Specked fruit and specked people go in the same category in the popular taste. To the question, "How are you to-day?" I for one, always feel like replying in the words of an old Irish servant we once had (God rest her faithful soul wherever it be this windy day!), "First-rate, glory be to God!" It is such a grand thing to be well and strong, to feel that your soul is riding on its way to glory in a chariot, and not in a broken-down old mud-cart. Talk about happiness! Why, a well beggar has a better time of it than a sick king, any day. If, then, like a bird, your strong wing uplifts you above the countless shafts of pain which that grim old sportsman, Death, is ever aiming at poor humanity, count yourself an ingrate if the song of thanksgiving is not always welling from your heart like the constant song of a bobolink singing for very joy above the clover. * * * * * What would be thought of a ship that was launched from its docks with flourish of music and flowing wine, built to sail the roughest and deepest sea, yet manned for an unending cruise along shore? Never leaving harbor for dread of storm. Never swinging out of the land-girt bay because over the bar, the waters were deep and rough. You would say of such a ship that its captain was a coward and the company that built it were fools. And yet these souls of ours were fashioned for bottomless soundings. There is no created thing that draws as deep as the soul of man; our life lies straight across the ocean and not along shore, but we are afraid to venture; we hang upon the coast and explore shallow lagoons or swing at anchor in idle bays. Some of us strike the keel into riches and cruise about therein, like men-of-war in a narrow river. Some of us are contented all our days to ride at anchor in the becalmed waters of selfish ease. There are guns at every port-hole of the ship we sail, but we use them for pegs to hang clothes upon, or pigeon-holes to stack full of idle hours. We shall never smell powder, although the magazine is stocked with holy wrath wherewith to fight the devil and his deeds. When I see a man strolling along at his ease, while under his very nose some brute is maltreating a horse, or some coward venting his ignoble wrath upon a creature more helpless than he, whether it be a child or a dog, I involuntarily think of a double-decked whaler content to fish for minnows. Their uselessness in the world is more apparent than the uselessness of a Cunarder in a park pond. What did God give you muscle and girth and brain for, if not to launch you on the high seas? Up and away with you then into the deep soundings where you belong, oh, belittled soul! Find the work to do for which you were fitted and do it, or else run yourself on the first convenient snag and founder. Some great writer has said that we ought to begin life as at the source of a river, growing deeper every league to the sea, whereas, in fact, thousands enter the river at its mouth, and sail inland, finding less and less water every day, until in old age they lie shrunk and gasping upon dry ground. But there are more who do not sail at all than there are of those who make the mistake of sailing up stream. There are the women who devote their lives to the petty business of pleasing worthless men. What progress do they make even inland? With sails set and brassy stanchions polished to the similitude of gold, they hover a lifetime chained to a dock and decay of their own uselessness at last, like keels that are mud-slugged. It is not the most profitable thing in the world to please. Suppose it shall please the inmates of a bedlam-house to see you set fire to your clothing and burn to death, or break your bones one by one upon a rack, or otherwise destroy your bodily parts that the poor lunatics might be entertained. Would it pay to be pleasing to such an audience at such a sacrifice? But the destruction of the loveliest body in the world is nothing compared to the demoralization of soul that takes place when women subvert everything lofty and noble within their nature to win the transient regard of a few worthless men of the world. They learn to smoke cigarettes because such men profess to like to see a pretty woman affect the toughness of a rowdy. They drink in public places and barter their honor all too often for handsome clothes in which to make a vain parade, all to please some heathen man, who in reality counts them a great way inferior to the value of a good horse. The right sort of a sweetheart, my dear, never desires to bring a woman down to his own level. He prefers to put her on a pedestal and say his prayers to her. Never think that you are winning an admiration that counts for much if you have to abate one whit of your womanhood to win it. Every time I see a woman drinking in a public resort, making herself conspicuous by loud talk and louder laughter, I think of some fair ship that should be making for the eternal city, with all its snow-white canvas set, rotting at its docks, or cruising, arm's length from a barren land. We were put into this world with a clean way bill for another port than this. Across the ocean of life our way lies, straight to the harbor of the city of gold. We are freighted with a consignment from quarter-deck to keel which is bound to be delivered sooner or later at the great master's wharf. Let us be alert, then, to recognize the seriousness of our own destinies and content ourselves no longer with shallow soundings. Spread the sails, weigh the anchor and point the prow for the country that lies the other side a deep and restless sea. Sooner or later the voyage must be made; let us make it, then, while the timber is stanch and the rudder true. With a resolute will at the wheel, and the great God himself to furnish the chart, our ship shall weather the wildest gale and find entrance at last to the harbor of peace. * * * * * When you look at a picture and find it good or bad, as the case may be, whom do you praise or blame--the owner of the picture or the artist who painted it? When you hear a strain of music and are either lifted to heaven or cast into the other place by its harmonies or its discord, whom do you thank or curse for the benefaction or the infliction, whichever it may have proved to be--the man who wrote the score or the music dealer who sold it? You go to a restaurant and order spring chicken which turns out to be the primeval fowl. Who is to blame--the waiter who serves it or the business man of the concern who does the marketing? And so when you encounter the bad boy, whom do you hold responsible for his badness--the boy himself or the mother who trained him? I declare, as I look about me from day to day and see the men and women who play so poor a part in life, it is not the poverty of their performance that astonishes me so much as the fact that it is as good as it is. * * * * * I did think I would keep out of the controversy on the low-neck dress question. But there is just one thing I want to say. Did you ever know a sweet young girl yet, one who was rightly trained and modestly brought up, who took to decollete dresses naturally? Is not the first wearing of one a trial, and a special ordeal? It is after the bloom is off the peach that a young woman is willing to show her pretty shoulders and neck to the crowd; and who cares much for a rubbed plum or a brushed peach? I cannot imagine a sweet, wholesome-hearted woman, be she young or old, divesting herself of half her clothes and thrusting herself upon the notice of ribald men. I can sooner imagine a rose tree bearing frog. The conjunction is not possible. The cheek that will blush at the story of repentant shame, that will flame with indignant protest when the skirts of a Magdalene brush too near, yet deepens not its rose at thought of uncovering neck and bust in a crowded theater or public reception is not the cheek of modest and natural womanhood. It is not necessary to be a prude or a skinny old harridan either, to inveigh against the custom. I know full well how contemptible the affectations and hypocrisies of life are. Half that is yielded to evil was meant for good. The high chancellor of Hades has put his seal on much that was originally invoiced for the Lord's own people. But there are some things so palpably shameless that to argue about them is like trying to prove by demonstration that a crow is white. It needs no argument. * * * * * THE VETERANS. Scarce had the bugle note sounded For the call of their last defeat; And still on the lowland meadow Lie the prints of their quick retreat. Above us the bright skies sparkle, And around us the same winds blow That rippled their golden banners In that battle so long ago, When the southwind challenged winter, And the rose-ranks routed the snow, And the hosts of tiny gold coats Sprang up from their campfires below, To charge on the insolent frost king, And shatter his lance of ice, While back to the desolate northland They wheeled him about in a trice. The battle is hardly ended, The victory only begun, Yet I saw the gray-bearded vet'rans, To-day, sitting out in the sun. They nod by wind-rippled rivers, They shake in the shade of the oak, And all the day long they murmur And whisper, and gossip, and croak. And often in wondering rapture, They recount the charge they made, When down from the windy hillsides, And up through the dewy glade, The sheen of their golden bonnets Shone out from the green of the leaves, Like the flight of a glancing swallow, Or the flash of a wave on the seas. They muse in sleepy contentment, Or flutter in endless dispute. For this was a brave cadet, sir, And that one a crippled recruit. Fight over again your battles, O veterans, withered and gray; For a band of northwind chasseurs To-morrow shall blow you away. * * * * * Once upon a time it came to pass that a woman, being weary with much running to and fro, fell asleep and dreamed a dream. And in her dream she beheld a mighty host, more than man could number. And of that host, all were women, and spake with varying tongues. And they bent the body, and sitting on hard benches wailed mightily, so that the air was full of the sound of lamentation, like a garden that wooeth many bees. And the woman who dreamed, being tender of heart and disposed kindly toward the suffering ones, lifted up her voice saying: "Why bendest thou the body, oh, daughters of despair, and why art thine eyelids red with tears? "Yea, why rockest thou like boats that find no anchor, and like poplars which the north wind smiteth?" And one from among the host greater than man could number made answer, saying: "Wouldst know who we are, and why we spend our days like a weaver's shuttle that flitteth to and fro in a web of tears? "Behold we are the faithless and unregenerate handmaids who have served thee, and women like unto thee, bringing desolation unto thy larders, and gray hairs among the braids with which nature hath crowned thee. "Yea, verily, by reason of our misdemeanors lift we the voice of lamentation in a land that knoweth not comfort." Now, the woman who dreamed, being full of amazement, replied anon, and these were the words that fell from her lips: "Sayest thou so? And dwellest thou and thy sisters in Hades by reason of the evil thou hast wrought?" "Nay, not forever," replied she who had spoken. "We remain but for a season, that our remorse may cleanse our record before we go hence to sit with the blessed ones in glory. "Not from everlasting unto everlasting is the duration of the penalty we pay for what we have done unto thee, else were there no peace between the stars by reason of our torment and our tears." And the woman who dreamed beheld many whose fame yet lingered within the shadows of her home. There was Ann, the fumble-witted, who piled the backyard high with broken china, yet stayed not her hand when rebuked therefor. There was Sarah, the high-headed, who refused to clean the paint because she had dwelt long in the tents of such as hired the housecleaning done by other hands, that the labors of the handmaid might be few; Yea, verily, with such as believed that Sarah and her ilk might have time wherein to be merry rather than toil. There was Karen, the Swede, who wrapped the bread in her petticoat and refused to be convinced of the error of her ways. There was Jane, the Erinite, who broke the pump, and Caroline, the Teuton, who combed her locks with the comb of the woman who dreamed. There was Adaline, the hoosier, who failed to answer the summons of the stranger who knocked at the gates unless she were in full dress and carried a perfumed handkerchief. There was Louise, who smote the youngest born of the household because he prattled of her dealings with the frequent cousin who called often and sought to deplete the larder. There was the girl who desired her evenings out and never came home before cock crow. There was the girl who threw up her place in the family of the woman who dreamed because she was asked to hurry her ways. There was the girl who wore the hose of her mistress, and took it as an affront when asked to desist. There was the girl who swore when the chariot of the sometime guest drew nigh, and likewise the girl who refused to remain over night in a dwelling where she was summoned to serve by means of a call bell. There was the girl who found it too lonesome in the country and left the garments in the washtub that she might hie her to the great city, the social center of which she was the joy and the pride. There was the girl who was made mad by means of the request that she wash her hands before breakfast. There was the girl who entertained her callers in the drawing-room while the family was afar off, sojourning in the hills or by the waves of the sea; Yea, who thought it no evil to bring forth the flesh-pot and the brandied comfit, that the heart of the district policeman might leap thereat, as the young buck leapeth at sight of the water courses. There was also the girl who wasted, and the girl who stole; the girl who never tried, and the girl who never cared. And seeing the multitude the spirit of the woman who dreamed arose within her and she asked of a certain veiled one who seemed to be in charge: "Tell me, O shrouded one, is there never to be any diminution in the throng that cometh to take their abode in these halls of penitential regret?" And the spirit in charge made answer, saying: "No, nor never shall be while fools live and folly thrives. "It is by reason of the babbling of busy-bodies that havoc has overtaken the land of thy forefathers. "There is honor in faithful service, and an uncorruptible crown awaiteth the forehead of her who serveth well. "It is no disgrace to the comely daughters of men who toil and are put to that they bring in the wherewithal to fill the mouths of the children who call them father-- "It is no disgrace, I say unto you, if such maidens take unto themselves the position of servants in the family of him who prospereth, "Remembering that one who lived long since and has slept these many years in the tomb of his fathers, spake truly when he uttered these words, albeit framed in rhyme: "Honor and shame from no condition rise; Act well your part, there all the honor lies." And it came to pass that the woman who dreamed took comfort to herself by reason of her dream. And she arose from slumber like a strong man who desireth to run a race. And buckling on more tightly the armor wherein she moved, yea, even with a free hand buttoning the boot and drawing the string, she cogitated unto herself, and these were the words of her cogitation: "Behold, I will learn a new wisdom that I may be unto my handmaids a friend rather than a taskmistress, that in so doing I may win unto my household the damsel who hath intelligence. And my treatment of her shall be such that many wise ones who call that damsel friend shall decide to do even as she hath done and choose domestic service with a woman who is kind even to the showing of interest in her handmaid's affairs, rather than linger in bondage with the shop girl and her who rattles the tinkling keys of the typewriter machine. "So doing, my days shall increase mightily in the land, as also the days of her who cometh after me." * * * * * Women are either the noblest creation of God or the meanest. A good woman is little less than an angel; a bad woman is considerably more than a devil. And by bad women I do not mean women who drink, or steal, or frequent brothels. The chief weapon of a bad woman is her tongue. With a lie she can do more deadly work than the fellow in the bible did with the jawbone of an ass. Untruth is the fundamental strata of all evil in a bad woman's nature, and with it she is more to be dreaded than many men with revolvers. There is absolutely no protection from a lie. The courts cannot protect from its venom, and to kill a defamer and a falsifier is not yet adjudged as legalized slaughter. * * * * * There is one awfully homely woman in Chicago. I met her the other day over in Blank's art gallery. Our acquaintance was brief but sensational. I looked at her, tucked her into my handbag and wept. She didn't seem to mind it, and when, a few hours later, in the seclusion of my chamber, I took her out of the bag and looked at her again, she was more hideous than before. "You horrible creature!" said I. "If you look like me, better that the uttermost depths of the sea had me." "But I do look like you," said she, and her voice was weak and low by reason of prolonged exposure to the sun and air, "and Mr. Blank says I will finish up very nicely." "Do you mean to tell me," I asked, "that my nose is as big as yours?" "Of course it is," said she; "pictures cannot lie. But comfort yourself with the assurance that a large nose is always an indication of intelligence." "Intelligence be blessed!" said I, for I was getting excited; "intelligence without beauty is like bread without butter, or a peacock without a tail! If I possess such a nose as yours, madam, I shall take to tract-distributing, galoshes and a cotton umbrella, and forget that I was ever human." "You talk wildly, as all the rest of them do," said my thin companion. "Listen, for my time on earth is short, I am rapidly fading away, and what I say must be said briefly. If you look about you you will see that there exists, more or less hidden in every breast, the belief of one's own beauty. The mirror, although a faithful friend, can never quite disabuse the mind of that belief, and when the honest camera holds up the actual presentation of one's self as an incontrovertible fact, the disappointment is keen and hard to bear." "All that may be true," said I, "but not all your assertions can ever make me believe that that dusky mass of hair, brushed back so wildly from those beetling brows, is like my own. You know that mine is soft and brown, and yours looks like the bristles of an enraged stove brush." "That's the way they all talk," responded the dissolving view, "but you do not stop to consider that under the artist's pencil the shadows will all be toned and softened. And let me say right here, that that 'beetling brow' is a sign of rare intelligence, much more to be desired than the lower and more----" "Stop, right there!" I interrupted. "It is not necessary to have a brow like a plate-glass show-window, or like an overhanging cliff, or like a granite paving-stone, to denote intelligence! No, my friend, do not try to lift this shadow from my soul. That mouth that looks like a dark biscuit, that nose that looks like a promontory overhanging an unseen sea, that hair that looks like the ruff of an excited chicken, that brow that looks like a skating-rink, all make me sad. I shall never have my picture taken again. If I look like that it is time I died. In the round of an eventful life I may forget that I even saw you, but until I do I am a tired woman. My mirror may assuage my sorrow, for that either lies or catches me from a different point of view. Vanish then, oh, yellow shade of an unhappy reality. Back to oblivion with you, and heaven grant I never look upon your like again!" So saying, I calmly held the poor but hideous creature in the flame of a gas-jet and smilingly cremated her. * * * * * A fairer day than last Sunday was never cradled to rest behind the curtains of night. It began with a flute obligato of sunrise, orbed itself into a full orchestra wherein color took the part of first and second violins, and declined at last into the hush of sunset like the mellow notes of a cello under old Paul Schessling's master touch. Such days visit the earth rarely. They are advance sheets of a story that is going to be told in heaven; preludes to a song that we shall hear in its perfection only when we have got through with the clattering discords of time. Thank God for all such days. They do us more good than we know. The sight of the woods, adorned as only queens are adorned for the court of the king, the sound of falling leaves and lonely bird songs, of hidden lutes, of unseen brooks, tremulous and sweet and low under the russet shadows, uplift our souls and help us to forget, for the time being at least, how tired we are, how worn with the fret of sordid toil and how tormented and misjudged and calumniated we are by those who fain would do us harm. I think if I had time to do some of the things I want to do the first consummation of that happy time would be to build me a little cabin in the woods, where, in utter loneliness, I could forget how full the world is growing to be of folks and how prone they are to do each other harm and hinder rather than help each other on the stony way to heaven. * * * * * The other evening, while sitting in the gallery of the Auditorium and looking over the balcony edge at the crowd waiting for the curtain to rise, a strange thought came to my mind. How could hell be more quickly created than by the unmasking of such a crowd as this? Suddenly remove from humanity all power of self-control and conventional dissimulation; force men and women to be natural, and act out every evil impulse latent in their souls, and could Dante himself portray a blacker Inferno? The man whose heart is full of murderous hatred--tear off the mask that hides his perturbed soul, and what a demon would look forth! The woman behind whose amiable seeming lurks malicious envy and snarling temper and crafty deceit--what a pandemonium would ensue when such passion broke forth like straining dogs from the leash! The old man with the saintly face and the crown of hoary hair--could an open cage of foul birds send forth a blacker brood than should fly out from his soul when some omnipotent hand unlatched the bars of its prison and let the unclean thoughts go free? The young man with the perfumed breath and the suave and courtly manner--does any storied hell hold captive blacker demons than the cruel selfishness, the impurities and the secret vices that walk to and fro in his soul like tigers behind their bars? The young girl with face like a rose and the form of a Juno--could anything that hades holds strike greater dismay to the hearts of men than the unmasking of her hidden thoughts? Ah, when the hour strikes for unmasking time in life's parade ball, when death steps forth and with cool, relentless touch unties the knot that holds the silken thing in place that has hidden our true selves from our beautiful seeming, we shall find no more fiery hell awaiting us than that we have carried so long in our hearts. I would not like to be regarded as a pessimist from the writing of such a paragraph as the above. Sometimes I seek to turn my thoughts upon the crowd and unmask the angel as well as the demon. But I find that the angels, as a general thing, wear no face concealers. They go disguised in poor clothes and scant bravery of attire, but the angel within them is like a singing bird rather than like a silent and chained beast. It reveals itself in songs, like a caged lark. It looks from out the window of the eyes in loving glances and tender smiles; it manifests itself in sweet and cheerful service, like the sunshine that can neither be hidden nor concealed. * * * * * Of all the pleasant things to look upon in this fair earth, I sometimes query which is the best, a little child, a fruit orchard in early June, or a young girl. I think the latter carries the day. Did you ever watch a flock of birds sitting for a moment on the mossy gable of a sloping roof? How they flutter and fuss and chirp; how they preen their delicate feathers and get all mixed up with the sunshine and the shadow, until which is bird and which is sunbeam one can scarcely tell. There is a flock of girls with whom I ride every morning, and they make me think of birds and sunbeams. They are so bewitching with their changeful moods and graces that I sit and watch them as one listens to the twitter of swallows. They sweeten up life, these girls, as sugar sweetens dough; they fill it with music as sleigh bells fill a winter night. God bless the girls, the bonnie, sweet and winsome girls, and may womanhood be for them but as the "swell of some sweet time," morning gliding into noon, May merging into June. * * * * * There are so many things in this world to be tired of! The poor little persecuted boy in pinafores, sent to school to get him out of the way, doomed to dangle his plump legs all day long from a hard bench, rubbing his grimy knuckles into his sleepy blue eyes and wondering if eternity can last any longer than a public school session, grows no more tired of watching the flies on the ceiling and the shadows on the wall than some folks get of life. Let me mention a few of the things I, for one, am horribly tired of, and see if before my bead is half strung you do not look up from the strand and cry, "Amber, I am with you!" My dear, I am tired to-day of civilization and all modern improvements. I am tired of the speaking tube within my chamber where the new girl and myself wage daily our battle of the new Babel. She speaks Volapuk, and I do not, consequently she takes my demand for coal as an insult or an encouraging remark, just as the mood may be upon her, and pays no more attention to my request for drinking water than the unweaned child pays to the sighing wind. I am tired of sewer gas and what the scientists call "bacteria" and "germs." I am tired of going about with frescoed tonsils, the result of the three. I am tired of gargling my own throat and the throats of my helpless babes, and the throat of the casual visitor within my gates, with diluted phenic acid to ward off deadly disease. I am tired of nosing drains and buying copperas and hounding the latent plumber that he adjust the water-pipes. I am tired of boiling the cistern water and waiting for it to cool. I am tired of skipping from Dan to Beersheba daily for men to remove the tin-cans, the ashes and the unsightly rubbish that have emerged from long retirement underneath the snow. I am tired of imploring the small boy to keep his mother's chickens off my porch. I am tired of digging graves upon the common wherein to bury useless potato-parings, the unsightly cheese-rind, and the shattered egg-shell. I am tired of being told that my neighbor's calf and my neighbor's pet cat, and my neighbor's blooded stock of poultry are dying because of the copperas I scatter broadcast about the mouth of drains. I am tired of being a martyr to hygiene and a monomaniac on the subject of sanitary science. I am tired of sharpening lead pencils. I am tired of speaking pleasantly when I want to be cross. I am tired of the ceaseless grind of life, which like the upper and nether mill-stones, wears the heart to powder and the spirit to dust. I am tired of being told that the mark on my left ear is a spot of soil, and of being implored in thrilling whispers to wipe it away. I am tired of last year's seed-pods in spring gardens and of all two-legged donkeys. I am tired of awaiting a change in the methods of doing business around at the postoffice, and for the dawn of that blessed day when I shall be permitted to dance upon the grave of the aged being who peddles stamps at the retail window. I am tired of hosts of things besides, but have no time to enumerate them all to-day. * * * * * I have tested the rainy weather dress reform. It was pouring when I started from my humble home in the morning, and in spite of the prayers of the Young Person and the sobs of the "Martyr," I arrayed myself in my new, highly sensible and demoniacally ugly suit and weathered the elements. Within two hours it stopped raining; the sun came out and the streets filled with festively attired men and women, and where was I? Stranded on a clear day in garments befitting a castaway! My flannel dress, short skirts and top-boots wasted on fair weather. "In the name of heaven," exclaimed a friend, as I bore down upon him beneath a cloudless sky, "what have you got on?" "Go home! for the love of humanity, go home!" said another. And what was I to do? Await another storm like a crab in its shell, or venture forth and become the byword of an overwrought populace, the scorn of old men and matrons? Next time I start out in a reform dress I will take along the robes of civilization in a grip-sack. * * * * * There is something that is getting to be awfully scarce in this world. Shall I tell you what it is? It is girls. That is what is missing out of the sentient, breathing, living world just now. We have lots of young ladies and lots of society misses, but the sweet, old-fashioned girls of ever so long ago are vanished with the poke bonnets and the cinnamon cookies. Let me enumerate a few of the kinds of girls that are wanted. In the first place we want home girls--girls who are mothers' right hand; girls who can cuddle the little ones next best to mamma, and smooth out the tangles in the domestic skein when things get twisted; girls whom father takes comfort in for something better than beauty, and the big brothers are proud of for something that outranks the ability to dance or shine in society. Next, we want girls of sense--girls who have a standard of their own regardless of conventionalities, and are independent enough to live up to it; girls who simply won't wear a trailing dress on the street to gather up microbes and all sorts of defilement; girls who won't wear a high hat to the theater, or lacerate their feet and endanger their health with high heels and corsets; girls who will wear what is pretty and becoming and snap their fingers at the dictates of fashion when fashion is horrid and silly. And we want good girls--girls who are sweet, right straight out from the heart to the lips; innocent and pure and simple girls with less knowledge of sin and duplicity and evil-doing at twenty than the pert little school girl at ten has all too often; girls who say their prayers and read their Bibles and love God and keep his commandments. (We want these girls "awful bad!") And we want careful girls and prudent girls, who think enough of the generous father who toils to maintain them in comfort, and of the gentle mother who denies herself much that they may have so many pretty things, to count the cost and draw the line between the essentials and the non-essentials; girls who strive to save and not to spend; girls who are unselfish and eager to be a joy and a comfort in the home rather than an expensive and a useless burden. We want girls with hearts--girls who are full of tenderness and sympathy, with tears that flow for other people's ills, and smiles that light outward their own beautiful thoughts. We have lots of clever girls, and brilliant girls, and witty girls. Give us a consignment of jolly girls, warm-hearted and impulsive girls; kind and entertaining to their own folks, and with little desire to shine in the garish world. With a few such girls scattered around life would freshen up for all of us, as the weather does under the spell of summer showers. Speed the day when this sort of girls fill the world once more, overrunning the spaces where God puts them as climbing roses do when they break through the trellis to glimmer and glint above the common highway, a blessing and a boon to all who pass them by. * * * * * Is there any flower that grows that can compare with the pansy for color and richness? Others appeal more closely to the heart with fragrance that like a sweet and pure soul more than compensates for lack of exterior beauty, but in all the gorgeous category none rank this velvet flower that lies just now upon my window-sill. There is the purple of Queen Sheba mantled in its soft and shiny texture; the gold of Ophir was not more sumptuous; the light that breaks at dawn across a reef of dove-gray clouds was never more delicate than the violet heart of this lovely blossom. When I want to think of the ideal court of kings, of a royal meeting-place for blameless scions and unsullied princes of the blood, I do not think of old-world palaces and coronation halls--I think rather of a pansy bed in June in full and perfect bloom, a soft wind just bending bright heads crowned with crowns that never yet were pressed on aching brows, and fluttering mantles of more than royal splendor that never yet were wrapped above a corrupt and breaking heart. * * * * * MY ROSE AND MY CHILD. I held in my bosom a beautiful rose, All gay with the splendor of June; Its dew-laden petals like sheen of soft snows, Its blush like the sunshine at noon. But e'en as I held it, I knew it must fade; Its bloom was as brief as the hour. The dews of the evening like soft tears were laid On the grave of my beauteous flower. I held in my bosom a beautiful child, The splendor of love in her eyes; No snow on high hills was more undefiled Than her soul in its innocent guise. But I knew that my angel in heaven was missed; I knew, like my rose, she must go; So with heartbreak and anguish her sweet lips I kissed-- She sleeps with my rose in the snow. * * * * * It was not so very long ago that I chanced to overhear a lively young woman make this remark about her mother: "Oh, mamma is nearly always taken for my sister. She never seems like anything more than one of my girl friends." Poor child, thought I, your state is only another phase of orphanhood, for the young life that has no counsel of motherhood is bereft indeed. No girlish comradeship, however juvenile and delightful it may be, can possibly take the place of protecting, counseling, mother-love. Not but what the sweetest relationship possible exists where the mother keeps her heart young and in sympathy with her daughter, but there is something else requisite to mother-love. The best mothers are those who have roomy laps where the big girls love to sit while they whisper the confidences they never could reveal to sister-mothers. They have all-enfolding arms, these right kind of mothers, wherein they gather the tired girl, yes, and the tired boys, too, and rock them to rest and peace, long after their "feet touch the floor." They used to tell me I must never sit on anybody's lap after my feet reached the carpet, but, thank God, that rule never applied to my mother. You are never afraid of disturbing mother's "beauty sleep" when you come in late at night if she is of the good reliable sort, as far removed from frisky girl companionship as the moon is from its reflection. No matter how tardy your home-faring may be she is always up with a lunch and a warm fire in winter or a glass of something cool and fresh in summer to soothe your overexcited nerves, a thing she cannot do if she is forever dancing about with you in your youthful larks. She has a way of calming your tempers with a joke and a caress, of which the sister-mother never dreams. She has also a way of smoothing your hair, which your girl comrade never caught the trick of, for the reason that she is kept too busy curling her own love-locks. When your head aches, the right sort of mother knows just how to pet you to sleep and leave you in a darkened room with a rose on your pillow to greet your waking eyes; if you have a bad cold she knows the cuddly way to coax you to take bitter medicine. She bathes your feet and dries them on nice warm towels. She keeps the younger children from guying you, because your nose is red; in short, she does a thousand nice things of which the sister-mother has no knack whatever. When great trouble falls to your share, when sharp betrayal pierces your heart, and trusted affection turns to ashes in your hold of what good is the juvenile mother with her girlish tremors and tears? You want somebody next in tenderness to God, to hold you fast and tight. You want somebody who has suffered and grown strong, to soothe your breaking heart. Somebody who can be silent and brave and steady until your fever is passed. The shipwrecked sailor wants a rope rather than a feint of throwing one; the shipwrecked soul wants a heart like rock, rather than a handclasp and a promise. The sister-mother may be all right to go to parties with, but you want something stronger and more steadfast to lean upon in time of perplexity. You want a mother in all the holy significance of the name. However sweet the tie of sisterhood, it cannot be so blessed as the bond of patient, long-suffering, sanctified motherhood. Seek to keep yourself in sympathy with your girls, then, mothers, but be content to occupy a generation removed from the path they tread. Don't make up in emulation of their beauty; don't seek to win away their beaus and outdress them. Don't go decollete to parties where your girls should be the reigning belles; don't aim to vie with them in fascination or in charm. Be guider and ready counselor, but don't try to be rival. If God has given you a girl child, and that child has grown to womanhood, accept the condition of things and give over being a society belle yourself, abdicating your place for the infinitely sweeter one of mother. You cannot be the right sort of mother and ignore your duty to your child. That duty lies in giving her her rightful place in the line of march from which you are crowded out. Let her carry the banner while you fall back a little. Watch over her, make things easy for her, smooth the little difficulties out of her way, be on hand when she comes home tired and excited to soothe her to rest and calm; counsel her how to pick her way through the snares that are laid for youth and beauty, be a refuge where she can run when the rainy weather sets in, which is sure to fall in the summer time of youth, somewhere and somehow. In short, be just as sympathetic and chummy and sociable as possible, but at the same time make your daughter feel that you are older and stronger and wiser than she, by reason of your motherhood, and that next to God you stand ready to shield her, to guide her, to receive her in time of trouble, to forgive her if she needs forgiveness, and to shrive her if she needs confessing. Teach her that your love can never fail, that your heart is a rock and a fortress and a shield for her to seek in all life's bewilderment, far surer and more steadfast than any other love beneath the stars can ever yield. When I think of all it means to be a mother I tremble to think how far short of the standard the best of us fall. I would rather have it said of me when I die, "She was a good mother," than that men should get together and exploit my deeds as poet, reformer, artist or story-teller. I would rather feel the dewfall of a child's loving tear upon my face than wear a laureate's crown. Don't be critical, or censorious, or reserved with your daughters; don't hold them far off and cultivate respect and fear rather than love; don't be self-assertive and cause them to feel their dependence upon you in an unpleasant way; don't be too eager to keep them in the background in little things relating to the home, such as giving them no voice in the arrangement of the room and the domestic regulations. Indeed, I have known more attrition caused in the home circle from this last mentioned point of difference between mother and daughters than almost any other. I know a family, presided over by a good, unselfish woman, who, as a mother, is the most complete failure I ever ran across. Her daughter is of mature age and pronounced opinions, but she is kept in the background and her life rendered most unhappy by the dominant will of the mother whose old-fashioned views as to running the house are directly opposed to more modern customs. The two wrangle continually over the establishment of a dinner hour, the disposal of a light, the drapery of a window, the adjustment of furniture, until there is less harmony under the roof than there is music in a hurdy-gurdy. How much better it would be if that mother would yield a little to the wishes of her daughter; give the latter a chance to display her own taste and carry out her inclination. I don't believe in the mothers and fathers of grown-up daughters always insisting upon the occupancy of the front seats and the leadership of the orchestra. The mother who can preserve the respect of her children without chilling their love; who can be one with them, and yet apart, in the sense of guiding, aiding and consoling, who can hold their confidence while she maintains the superiority of her wisdom, is the happy and successful mother. The title is a sacred one, made by the chrism of pain and suffering, sanctified by the humanity of Christ and set apart as one of the three of earth's tenderest utterances: "Mother, home and heaven." * * * * * Now that the days draw nigh for the return of the birds to our northern woods and dales it is borne in upon me to hold a little "love feast" with the boys. You know what a love feast is, if there was ever a Methodist in your family. It is a good, cozy talk among the brethren and sisters in regard to the best way of putting down the devil, and giving the good angels a chance. And if there was ever need of downing the devil it is in the particular instance of a boy's inhumanity to birds and beasts. I have expressed myself as to horses, and to-day I shall talk about birds. On these spring mornings, when the world is enveloped in a golden halo, from out of which, like angel voices from the quiet depths of heaven, the birds are singing their impromptu of praise, imagine a lot of half-grown men and brutal boys going forth with guns and sling-shots to break up the concert and murder the choristers. I would as soon turn a lot of sharp-shooters into a cathedral at early mass to bring down the surpliced boys and the chanting novices. I tell you, O race of good-for-nothing fathers and mothers, whom God holds directly responsible for the bad boys who desecrate this beautiful world, you are no more fit for the training of immortal souls than a hawk is fitted to teach music to a thrush. You ought to have had a bear-skin and been the trainer of cubs. That your boys develop into brutes and go to state's prison, and perhaps die at the end of a rope eventually, is nobody's fault but your own. If you chance to own a horse or a dog you show some care in its training, but God gives you a boy and you let him run wild. There is no more reason why a boy should be cruel than that a properly-broken colt should kick. The tendency may have been born with him, but good training eliminates it to a great extent, if not entirely. When I was a woman and lived at home, in the happy days before I entered the arena to fight for bread and butter, to say nothing of shoe leather and fuel, I used to gather the village boys about me every spring and try to sow the good seeds of tenderness with one hand, while carefully eliminating the tares with the other. I offered prizes for the best record at the end of the summer. I formed classes, the membership of which pledged themselves, to a boy, to abstain from sling-shots, to cultivate the birds' nests and to withhold their hands from the commission of a single deed of cruelty. Many is the gallon of ice-cream I have paid for to keep those youngsters in the narrow path of rectitude, and many is the time that I have patrolled the woods with my boy comrades, keeping watch over the family of a blue-bird or a robin, when the alarm went forth that some unregenerate boy was on the rampage. All the boys whom I could get to join the club I was sure of, for I know the way to a boy's heart, if I can only get the chance at him. For what other purpose did nature turn me out a born cook? And why did she make me a master hand at doughnuts and turnover pies? I have a large and undying faith in the boys, if you will only start them right. The first thing a boy needs is a good mother. He can get along without a father--and I was going to say without a God--for the first few years of his life, but he needs a mother. Not a mere nurse maid to look after his clothes and see that he has plenty to eat at the right intervals, but a good, sweet, companionable mother, with a good, soft breast for him to cry on and two arms to hug him with. He needs a mother who can talk with him and answer his questions, who is not stern and severe, but responsive and get-at-able. With such a mother our boys will be gentle and our birds will be safe. Try to think, boys, what a world this would be without any robins, or larks, or thrushes; without any songs in the apple trees getting all tangled up with the sunshine and the blossoms; without any canaries to sing in the window, or any meadow larks to whip out their flutes among the clover heads. If you should wake up some morning and experience the ghastly silence of a songless world you would want to hire somebody to thrash you that you ever used a sling-shot. Do you remember the minister down New York way whom they fined for shooting robins? I never wanted to get up on a mountain top so much in all my life and shout glory as I did over that verdict. I have heard of immorality among ministers, and I have heard of hypocrisy and lying and all sorts of offenses against good taste and morals, but I never heard of anything so contemptibly and causelessly mean as for one of God's especial teachers to get up in the morning, put on top boots, cross the river in the sunshine and dew of early morning, lift his gun, take deliberate aim and bring down a robin. If I was the Lord I would never forgive it. Men are not to blame sometimes when their blood gets too warm and they do impetuous things, but to deliberately descend to the ignominy of shooting a robin and calling it sport is to sink too low for justification. Whatever else you be, boys, be brave. If you must sail in and fight, if your superfluous zeal is too much for you, go out in the field and square off at a bull. There is some glory in whipping anything bigger and stronger than yourself, but to show fight to a bird is a little too much like sneaking out and tripping up a cripple in the dark. I am going to write down a verse for you to write in your copy books this very day, and then good-night to you: "The bravest are the tenderest; The loving are the daring." * * * * * Isn't it heavenly to see the primrose around again? And the daffodils? And the hyacinths? Last night I went home with a rose in my button which cost me just five cents. At that rate, by careful abstaining from anything more expensive than a ten-cent lunch, one can go on wearing roses until next November. The robins have come back, too, and this morning a couple of them awoke me with their "Cheer-up" song. The indications are that they are prospecting for spring housekeeping. If the cat kills them I shall kill the cat. I shall close my eyes and do the deed in the name of mercy, for I detest cats, both two-legged and four-legged, and I love robins both feathered and human. * * * * * I wonder why it is that the average woman can walk and talk, breathe and laugh, suffer and cry, and finally die and be buried, and all the way through make such a botch of her life! Why is it that we fall in love, so many of us, just on the verge of a life that opens like a summer's day, and change that life thereby, as a June morning is changed when great clouds rush into the sky and obscure the sun? Why are girls so proud to parade an engagement ring upon their finger, when the diamond is too often the danger-light thrown out above the breakers? Now and then, about as rarely as one picks up a ruby on the highway, or finds an enchanted swan circling over the duck pond, there is a happy marriage--at least such is the popular inference--as to the absolute certainty of the statement, ask the skeleton closet. I have lived a varied sort of life. I have wandered to and fro over the earth to some extent; I have known a great many people, and have found happiness in many ways, but looking back over all the path to-night and turning my little bull's-eye lantern of experience up to the present moment, I can neither remember nor record a dozen truly happy marriages. What constitutes happiness? Peace. What brings peace? Content. Who is contented? Not you and not I. What man or woman of all whom we know can we bring out into the full light of day and say of them, "Behold the contented one! The restful one! The happy pair!" You, my dear, have attained the ambition of your youthful dreams. You have married a man who dresses you splendidly, who gives you diamonds and never murmurs when the bills come in. But are you happy? Do you never walk to and fro with the restless countess in the sad old ballad, dreaming of "Alan Percy?" Do you never, when all is still, go down into that cemetery where life's "might have beens" lie buried in graves kept green forever with your tears, and walk and dream alone? And you, my friend, have married the man of your choice. Is there nothing in the handsome exterior that palls a bit now and then when you find how sordid and meager the soul is behind the smile you used to think so charming? Do you never find scorn creeping into your heart in place of adoration when you mark the unpaid bills and the shiftless endeavor that strew his idle way? And you, sir, have a merry and a pretty wife and the world calls you a lucky fellow. How many know of the sharp tongue that underlies her laughter and the feather-filled head that never yet has donated an earnest thought to the domestic economy? And you, my good sir, have married a blue stocking in the old acceptance of the term. She can swing off a leader or make a speech on a rostrum at short notice, but how would you like to rise right up here, poor dear, and tell just what comfort lies in being mated to a superior being who busies herself with work which shall be remembered perhaps when the dust on the center table, the holes in your stockings, the discomfort of the larder, and the untidiness of the household are forgotten? And you, my good fellow, have married a woman of "good form." She never does an indiscreet thing. She is "icily faultless" and splendidly stupid. She has the neck of a swan, the arms of a goddess, the foot of a patrician, and the soul of a mouse! The scent of a wayside lilac, perhaps, is sadder than tears to you, old comrade, when you look back across the years and see again the sweet dead face of one you trifled with, or whom you deserted for this woman with heart and body of snow, a purse filled with gold and a brain filled with feathers. * * * * * There is entire hopelessness to many women in the blank monotony of life after youth is past. An emotional nature, mercurial and restless, full of aspirations and longings, as the trees this perfect month are full of blossoms, and, like the trees, bearing a thousand blooms to one fruition, finds the destiny prepared for it almost unendurable, and often longs for death that shall end all. Because poverty grinds and hosts of menial duties accumulate, because the walls of an unquiet home, made unlovely perhaps by skeletons that no skill can quite conceal, close like a dungeon upon hope and all the sweet promises of youth, bright natures grow morose and bitter, warm hearts chill into apathy and gloom, and sunny brows darken under the cloud of almost perpetual irritability and discontent. It is useless to preach sermons to such cases--as useless as to read a book of etiquette in a prison ward or comfort the victims of a railroad disaster with a treatise upon reform in the management of roads. The worn, the wasted, the erring, and the cruelly maimed lie thick about us. Our business is to encourage, to love, to bind up, and cheer. God, in His own time, shall lift the discontented head above the power of conspiring cares to vex. It is for us to lend a helping hand down here where the "slough of despond" is deepest. When tides forget to obey the moon, or leaves to answer the will of the wind, then, and not sooner, shall these restless hearts of ours learn to be still, whatsoever destinies confront, or limitations thwart. In looking upon the lives of some women, the mother of six children, for instance, who takes boarders and keeps no help; the widow supporting her little brood by endless drudgeries; the big-hearted woman in whom the frolicsomeness and wit of girlhood die hard amid the sordid miseries of a poverty-stricken life; the sensitive, poetic soul, doomed to uncongenial companionships and the criticisms and ridicule of the unfriendly--I am reminded of the score of eagles I saw lately, chained in a dusty inclosure of Central Park. With clipped wings, and grand, homesick eyes, they sat disconsolate upon their perches, and moped the hours away. Would any sane being have reviled those sorry beings for a lack of spirit? Would not the gentle-hearted spectator have proffered a handful of fresh leaves rather, and turned away in pity that sympathy could do no more? For these unhappy sisters of mine, the discontented, yearning "Marthas," troubled with many cares, wherever my letter may find them between the great seas, I have a word of comfort in my heart to-day. In the first place, do not think, because you so often fall into irritability and impatient speech, that God despises you as a sinner. He understands, if friend, husband, or neighbor do not. Strive not to yield to fretfulness then, but, when overcome by it, remember always God understands it all. You may be able to see no light in all the shrouded way, no lifting of the shadow, no promise of the dawn; but rest assured, however long the probation, the infinite content of Heaven awaits us very soon, if we strive as much as lies within us to overcome the infirmities of our temper, and keep our faces set towards the shining of His love. I know, dear heart, indeed I do, that to-morrow and to-morrow are just alike to hopeless fancy--full of dish-washing, and drudging, and back-bending toil--that the sparkle and song of life were long ago merged in the humdrum beat of treadmill years; but through just this test is your character building--through just its hard process is shaping the conqueror's crown flashing with splendid light. As the root tarries in the dark mold to burst by-and-by into radiant bloom above it, so your poor life is hidden now to bloom to-morrow. You are not wicked because you sometimes murmur, but try and think so much of what is going to be that you shall forget what is. The Tender Heart above absolves your beaten spirit from willful sin, though you are sometimes swept away on currents of doubt and unfaith; but try and keep your eye fixed upon the headlight of His love, whatever currents drift you away. Remember how human parents deal with their children, and learn a lesson of God's dealings. If my little girl has the ear-ache, or any other tormenting ailment of childhood, do I stand over her and exact songs and smiles? And do you think that when God, for some good reason of his own, lays heavy burdens upon a life, He is going to demand unswerving sweetness of speech or ethereal mildness of temper? When I see one scrubbing who was fitted to adorn the drawing-room, washing dishes who was created an artist or a genius, darning small boys' linsey pants and homespun stockings who was intended by nature to reign the crowned priestess of some high vocation; when I mark the furrows and zigzag footprints that an army of besieging cares have left on the cheek that in girlhood outblushed the wayside rose, or note how the hands that once drew divinest music from obedient keys have twisted and warped in the performance of homely duties, I feel impelled to kiss the faded cheek with a love surpassing a lover's, to fold the poor hands in a reverent grasp, for I tell you, however often she may faint and falter by the way, however "fretty," and worn, and peevish she may become, the woman who perseveres in the performance of uncongenial duties, who struggles through the flatness of monotonous drudgeries, conquering adverse circumstances, poverty, and destiny, by patience, love, and Christian faith, is a heroine fit to rank with martyrs and saints. Remember, I am not talking to women who find the burdens hard to bear and do not bear them; to mere whimperers, who, because the road is full of stones, sit down and refuse to travel; but to the brave, true hearts who "press onward" although no rose blossoms and no bird sings, content to faithfully perform the task of life, hoping that the fullness of time shall read the riddle of incongruous destiny. I have seen the time when household work seemed newly cursed--the very dew of the primal malediction upon it; when to charge upon the dinner dishes, attack the lamps, or descend into the vortex of family patching, seemed to call for greater courage than average human nature possessed. And when I imagine that shrinking carried on through dry years of monotonous experience, the same formulas to be observed, the same distaste to be overcome throughout a lifetime of toil, yet no duty shirked, no obligation set aside, I wonder if Heaven holds a crown too bright for such faithful lives. * * * * * The time of the year for violets and also for tramps is drawing near. Did you ever stop and think just what it means to be a tramp? It means no work, no money, no home, no shelter, no friends. Nobody in all the world to care whether you live or die like a dog by the roadside. It means no heaven for such rags to crawl into, no grave to hide them out of sight and no hand stretched out in all the world to give the greeting and the good-by of love. It means nobody in all the world to feel any interest in you and no spot in all the world to call your own, not even the mud wherein your vagrant footprint falls, no prospect ahead, and no link unbroken to bind you to the past. I tell you, when we sit down and figure out just what the term means, it will not be quite so easy next time the wretched tramp calls at our door to set the dog upon him or turn him empty-handed away. Let them work, you say. Look here, my good friend, do you know how absolutely impossible a thing it is getting to be in this overcrowded country for even a willing man to find work? It used to be that "every dog had his day," but the dogs far outnumber the days in free America. I know well educated, competent men who have been out of employment for months and years. I know brave and earnest women, with little children to support, who have worn beaten paths from place to place seeking, not charity, but honest employment, and failed to find it. What chance is there for a ragged tramp when such as these fail? Remember, once in a while, if you can, that the most grizzled and wretched tramp that ever plodded his way to a pauper's grave was once a child and cradled in arms perhaps as fond as those that enfolded you and me. Remember that your mother and his were made sisters by the pangs of maternal pain, and perhaps in the heaven from which the saintly eyes of your mother are watching for you his mother is looking out for him. Perhaps--who knows?--the footfall of the ragged and despised tramp shall gain upon yours and find the gate of deliverance first, in spite of your money and your pride. * * * * * THE BROOK. Lifting its chalice of sun-kissed foam Far up the heights where the wild winds roam, Weaving a web of shadow and sheen In lowland meadows of dewy green. Murmuring over the mossy stones, In cool green dells where the gold bee drones, Sudden and swift the showery fall, Startling the wood bird's madrigal. Orbing itself in a crystal lake Set round with thickets of tangled brake, In waveless calm, an emerald stone, In the lap of the dusky forest thrown. Silver flakes of tremulous light Showering down from the fields of night, Where the great white stars like lilies glow-- Tossed on its tide as feathery snow. Hastening onward through troubled ways, Forgotten for aye its woodland days, Sullen and silent its banks beside The free brook wanders, a mighty tide. Beyond where the forest's purple rim Belts the horizon, hazy and dim, Thundering down from the frowning steeps, Into the arms of the sea it leaps. * * * * * Did it ever strike you, I wonder, this marvel of our individuality? Alone we are born, alone we live, alone we die, alone we pay the penalty or reap the reward of our evil or well doing. In the troubles that assail us we stand singly, however many councillors may flock to the door of our tent. Not one in all the world, the nearest, the dearest or the best, can bear one pang of life's experience for us, love us as they may. We often hear a mother say: "My child is so headstrong; she will not take my advice; she will go her own way." Of course she will, and she will not, simply because individual tact is the law of all experience. It is not being headstrong, it is merely fulfilling destiny. In the fight we wage we do not fight by platoons or squads, under a common leader, a thousand at a charge. We enter the lists one by one and fight single handed. We choose our own colors and there is little of pageantry or show. When we fall we fall as travelers disappear who walk across a coast that is honeycombed with quicksand. We vanish, not in crowds like men who are jostled out of life by earthquakes or flooded like rats by tidal waves, but we slowly succumb to the inevitable in solitudes where only the stars watch us and the spaces of a dim, unsounded sea catch the fret of our mortal moan. I have always thought that I should love to have the world come to an end, with a grand final bang, while I was yet living and sentient on the surface. I would like to be flashed out of being in the conglomerate of a mighty swarm, like the covey of birds a huntsman's rifle brings down or the multitude a Pompeiian doom overtakes. Such dying would be like riding out of an electric-lighted station, by the car full, rather than sneaking a place on the back platform like a tramp. But after all, death would not lose its awful individuality even then. Marshal the whole world, and aim a single bullet at a hundred million souls, with power to still each pulse beat in the same rifle flash of time, yet each man would die alone. There is one final lesson to be gained through the doleful contemplation of the world's flood-tide of sorrow, and that is the lesson of how to bear our troubles so as to react as little as possible upon those with whom life throws us in daily contact. Because the goblin bee has stung our own souls, shall we seek to share the pain of its stateless sting with all we meet? No more than we should endeavor to carry contagion in our garments or put poison in our neighbor's well. I knew a man once, a gallant, light-hearted soldier, who honored the blue and brass of his country's uniform by wearing it. An awful sorrow suddenly smote his life, like an Indian sortie from an ambush. Wife and children were swept from his arms by a swift disaster and he was left alone. His friends said: "He is a wrecked man! He will never lift his head again!" How did he fulfill this prophecy of woe? He entered the chamber of his darkened home and denied himself to everyone. He neither ate nor slept. He fought by himself a greater battle than call of bugle ever summoned to any field. He mastered his own soul, and emerged from that chamber after a certain number of days a conqueror over his own sorrow. His smile was as ready, his heart as tender, his genial speech as welcome at home and abroad as it had ever been, and only when the goblin bee of memory stung him in the silence of the companionless night did he live over again the experience of his sorrow. None knew when that sting came, or how it tarried; he bore it silently like a soldier and a man. The trifling world called him light of love and easily consoled, but I think he was a grand, unselfish hero, a benefactor rather than a destroyer of mankind. When we get so that we can hide our sorrow in a smile we attain that attitude that brings us closest to the divine. The man or the woman who goes up and down the ways of the world with a groan on his lips and a weed on his arm is an infliction worse than an out of tune hand organ. If the bee stings, hold still and bear the hurt by yourself as best you may, but don't talk it over with everyone you meet, like an old woman petitioning a recipe for a bad cough and flaunting her physical ailments forever in your face. When you have bright things to talk about and comforting things to say, talk; otherwise hold your peace. The reason, I think, why animals are never wrinkled and drawn of feature and gray like mankind is because they cannot talk. If they had the power of speech they would go around as humans do and disseminate unpleasant topics, as idle winds start thistle pollen. Silence is golden when you can find nothing better to do than to clamor your own troubles; speech only is blessed when, like a bird, it evolves a song or wings a feathered hope. It seems hardly the thing to do, perhaps, to single out the unhappy folks in a present world so full of jollity and talk with them awhile to-day. This bright autumn weather is so crowded with sights and sounds to dazzle and enchant that to obtrude the leaf of rue within the garland or breathe a minor tone into the music seems almost out of place. And yet, for some reason or other, as I sit here at my desk to-day, the thought of the hearts that are heavy in the midst of all the world's fair pageant, and the eyes that cannot see the banners by reason of their tears, come to me with a strong and resistless force. Alas, for the goblin bee that stings, yet all too often may not "state its sting"! We walk with a crowd, and yet are conscious that our way is not theirs. It lies apart, we know not why, and evermore dips into shadow and threads the dark defiles of gloom. There are so many more reasons for being sorry than for being glad, we think. Try to count the causes for laughter, and then, over against them, set the reasons for sorrow and see which way the balance falls. I take my seat on a bench out at the big show and watch the crowd for an hour. Do I see many faces that do not bear the scar of the "goblin bee"? From the little four-year-old who is bitterly crying because somebody has jostled its toy from its hand, to the woman whose eyes are sunken with sorrow because death has jostled the one whom she loved into his grave, everybody who passes, with but few exceptions, shows the scar of that stateless sting. * * * * * Look at my window-garden, yonder! The sunshine, stealing in from the south, has wooed a dozen pansies into bloom--"Johnny-jump-ups," they used to call them when I was a girl. How bright and cheery and chatty they look. We have those sort of faces (some of us) every day about our breakfast tables. The little folks, God bless 'em! with their shining hair, their bright eyes, and the soft velvet of their cheeks, are the blessed heartsease of our home. And there is a fuchsia, turbaned like a Turk, behind the pansies. Just such sumptuous, graceful women we see every day. Like the fuchsia, they are beautiful and that is all. They yield no fragrance. They attract the eye but fail to reach the heart. Who wouldn't rather have mignonette growing in the window? There is a yellow blossom in the window that reminds one of the patient shining of certain homely souls I know, making sunshine in humble homes; cheerful old maid aunts, sweet-hearted elder sisters, yielding the honey of their hearts to others. A cluster of fading violets sets me thinking of frail invalids and the host of "shut-in" ones, whose delicate and dying beauty fills our eyes with unstayed tears and our hearts with the shadow of coming sorrow. * * * * * There are gates that swing within your life and mine from day to day, letting in rare opportunities that tarry but a moment and are gone, like travelers bound for points remote. There is the opportunity to resist the temptation to do a mean thing; improve it, for it is in a hurry, like a man whose ticket is bought and whose time is up. It won't be back this way, either, for opportunities for good are not like tourists who travel on return tickets. There is the opportunity to say a pleasant word to your wife, sir, or you, madam, to your husband, instead of venting your temper and your "nerves" upon each other. Love's opportunity travels by lightning express and has no time to dawdle around the waiting-room. If you improve it at all it must be while the gate swings to let it through. * * * * * My dear, let me implore you, whatever else you let go, hold on to your enthusiasm. Grow old if you must; grow white-headed and bent and care-furrowed, if such must needs be the process of years, but don't grow to be a stick. If you must pass on from the green time of your freshness, change into sweet hay and keep your fragrance. If the cage must grow rusty and lose its brightness, there is a bird within, that it were a pity to strangle to keep it from singing to the end. I don't care how successful, or rich, or learned a man becomes, if he maintains a grim repression of all romance and enthusiasm, and what some hard old "Gradgrinds" call the "nonsense" within him, he is nothing more than a fine cage with a dead bird in it. When I hear a person say of another, "Oh, he is a substantial fellow; no nonsense about him!" I picture a gold-fish in a glass globe. A glittering cuticle that covers anything so bloodless as the anatomy of a fish is not worth much. There are a good many types of men to be detected, but the bloodless, emotionless, heart-paralytic, is the worst. Polish up a golden ball all you like. It may ornament your mantel, or serve as a useless bit of glitter in some corner, but when you begin to feel hungry and faint, and in need of solace and cheer, you will turn from the golden ball and pick up the veriest old rusty coat apple from an orchard's windfall, that has mellowed under summer noon, and sweetened in summer rains and dews, praising God for its flavor and its juices, even if you can buy forty bushels of its counterpart, for the price of one of your polished golden balls. Cultivate the "nonsense" in you, then, if it tends to enthusiasm of the right sort. It is the sympathy we get from people, the heartsomeness and cheer that keep our souls nourished, rather than the mere dazzle of intellectual attainment, or the greatness of any worldly achievement. Heart rather than head; nature rather than art; genuineness rather than pretense; romance rather than absolute realism; enthusiasm rather than petrifaction, will make a man rather than a gold fish, a juicy apple rather than a ball of metallic and glittering nothingness. * * * * * We were gathered at the Norfolk Station awaiting the train that was to carry us over the marshes to Virginia Beach and the sea. The crowd that surrounded us was very different from a Chicago crowd. There was no pushing, no bold assertiveness, no elbows. There were lots of pretty women, and as for me everybody knows I simply adore the open sky, a tree in blossom and a pretty woman. There were young girls with velvety brown eyes within whose dusky shadows one might look fathom deep as into a well of limpid water; girls with blue eyes like fringed gentians; women with grand free curves of figure that would have made Hebe look commonplace; women with shapely shoulders and long, aristocratic hands, tinted at the finger-tips as though fresh from picking ripe strawberries; girls all in white (for the day was warm), like June lilies; women with snowy teeth and adorable smiles to disclose them; little tots of girls with braided hair and soft, questioning eyes; queenly girls, like tulips in bloom, all chatting together in subdued but merry tones and laughing as delicately and airily as thrushes sing. Oh, I lost my heart to you, my pretty southern maidens, and count the time well spent I devoted to the contemplation of your many graces away down in that little station by the torrid bay. * * * * * If I was a liar and wanted to reform I shouldn't quit lying all at once. I would start out with a covenant to occasionally tell the truth. By and by this spasmodic truth-telling, like the grain blown by the wind among stones, would, perhaps, yield sufficient harvest to send me not quite empty-handed up to St. Peter's gate. If I drank whisky I would commence to reform by swearing off on one glass out of three, and perhaps the manhood within me, having so much more chance to grow, would elbow its way into heaven. If I was a gossip I would try to hold my tongue from speaking evil half the time, and in that blissful interval perhaps my dwarfed soul would get a start skyward. It is not by sudden achievement that we consummate a long journey. It is step by step and mile by mile over a stony road that brings us to the goal, and it is not by mere resolving that we renounce the old and attain unto the new. He who travels but a few steps and keeps his face heavenward is on the way, and every small decision for the right, faithfully adhered to, is a notable step toward a consummated journey. * * * * * I am often struck with the selfishness displayed by people who are fortunate enough to be provided with umbrellas in time of sudden showers. They calmly behold hosts of unhappy beings battling their way through the storm, drenched to the bone, and with ruined garments, yet never think of saying, "Accept a share of my umbrella," or "Walk with me as far as our ways lie together." If I should hear such a speech I might drop senseless with surprise, but all the same I should hail it as the bugle note that heralded a new era of courteous kindness. We are not put into the world to be suspicious of one another. We were put here to make the world pleasanter for our tarrying, and to cultivate a fellowship with souls. If the guests at a mountain inn, sojourning together for a stormy night, spend the time in reviling one another, or in calling attention to each other's blemishes, we write them down as snobs; but what shall we call the tenants of transitory time who spend the span of mortal life in doing all they can to make one another uncomfortable? We have only a watch in the night to tarry together; let us try to make that hour a profitable one and a pleasant memory for others when we have journeyed on. I have often wondered how Christian people got round the gospel command, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." It doesn't say love him (or her) after a proper introduction, or if agreeable, or congenial, or of good family and established reputation--it simply gives the command on general principles. I don't pretend to be good enough to obey the mandate myself, for I honestly think it is a species of hypocrisy to say you love everybody. One might as well say one were fond of all fruit alike, whether specked, wormy or rotten. But let my good orthodox professor put this in his pipe and smoke it. Let him remember it next time he sees his neighbor plunged into an extremity, or handicapped by an annoyance of any kind. If we love our neighbor we are bound to help him, and neighbor in this sense means anyone who chances to be near us, whether black or white, raggedly disreputable or sanctimoniously frilled. There is more selfishness perpetrated in the world under guise of family ties than in almost any other way. The man who does good and unselfish deeds only for his own children and for the immediate circle housed beneath his roof, forgetful of the claims of the great, tormented, harassed and struggling world, is a selfish man and accountable to heaven for a great deal of meanness. I don't care how much he puts on his children's backs, or how many luxuries he surrounds them with, the Lord will not hold him guiltless if he does nothing for the stranger who tugs by him in the stress of life's uncertain weather, or for the neighbor who sits disconsolate outside his gates. I wish that vagabond and his dog who were brought before a west side justice yesterday for vagrancy would travel up my way. I like that sort of thing that leads a man to be faithful to his dog. It goes without saying that the dog is faithful to the man, but it is not often that the master shows the same spirit to the fond and steadfast brute. If the two should journey my way I think they would have one white day in the calendar. Good heavens, my dear, do you ever stop long enough in the midst of your golf-playing and your tennis tournaments, your yachtings and your outings to think what it is to be a tramp? To be unable to find a stroke of work; to be sick and starved and homeless! Like "poor Joe," to be told to "move on" every time you stop to rest; to eat the grudgingly given crust of charity, and have no friend under the sun, moon or stars but a flea-bitten dog? Did you ever stop to think, my Christian friend, that that tramp is a neighbor whom you are to love? And if you are going to love him I will love his dog! No doubt the latter is the better man of the two. * * * * * Did you ever read of a battle siege in olden times? There were the full-armored warriors, resplendent in shining metal and plumed crests; there were the mighty battering rams, and the flash of battle axes, the thunder of advancing feet and the trumpet call before the gates. But more potent than all else in the doomed city's destruction was the secret work of the sappers and miners--the patient forces which wrought their work out of sight and hearing. And I have been thinking to-night, as I sit here, where the firelight weaves its delicate tapestry within the beautiful walls of home, that it is not going to be the pompous ones who shall march triumphant at last into the "City of Gold," but they who have worked patiently and humbly out of sight and with no need of praise. The man who has held to the dictates of his own conscience, not conforming to the company he marched with; the man who has dared to be himself in a world where men are labeled in lots; the man who has held it high honor to suffer for a principle or to be loyal to an unpopular friend or cause; the man who has erected a standard made up between his own heart and heaven, and, independent of the world's verdict of praise or blame, followed it to the end, is going to wear a crown by and by, when the epauletted general and the pompous staff are forgotten. Prayer is not always a genuflexion and an address. It is oftener hard work. The farmer praying at his weeds, the pilot praying from every spoke of his wheel, the mother whose daily life of unselfish toil and far-reaching influence is a prayer, do more to stir the divine heart, to keep the world's prow headed for heaven than half the solicitations or apologetic addresses made in our churches under the name of prayer. * * * * * When you and I get rich, my dear, as some day we surely shall, what are we going to do with all our money? We will hunt up some of the improvident ones, those who could never make the two ends meet, those who through good heartedness, or lack of forethought or unselfish desire to make other folks happy, have never laid by a cent, and we will give those silly people such a good time they will carry its impress all through their after lives, as a pat of butter carries the print. We will slyly pay the bills for improvident ones who have grown gray in the effort to make a decent funeral for dead horses. They shall forget how to spell "care" and their new and happy dialect shall know no such words as "monthly payments," "righteous dues" or "can't afford it." I am convinced that as a rule it is not the sweet-hearted people who take on this world's gain. There is many a poor beggar with not a change of linen to his back who would make a more royal host, had the smiling face of fortune turned his way, than the rightful owner of the vast estates at whose gate he stands and begs. The big hearts too often go with the empty purse, and the little, wizened, skin-flint souls, that it would take a thousand of to crowd the passage through the eye of a needle, gain all the golden favors of the god of plenty. * * * * * After dinner I said to the little folks, "Behold, I will buy me a pair of stockings and hire a bathing suit, and the afternoon shall be devoted to frolic and thee." So we went to the small booth, where an exceedingly meek young man sold ginger pop and fancy shells, and paralyzed him with a demand for ladies' hose. He didn't know what we meant until I came out boldly and unblushingly and asked for women's stockings. He said he didn't keep 'em. "Have you a mother?" said I. "No." "Have you a sister? Or is there a nearer one yet and a dearer, from whom I could buy or borrow a pair of stockings that I may go in bathing?" He didn't understand that either, but finally, with the aid of lucre, I made the matter clear so that he got me a pair of canary-striped woolen hose, evidently laid by for some farmer's winter use, and I bought them for a sum that made his eyes grow dim with rapture. We went down to the beach, and after a season of prayer with the young person to induce her to put on some horrid tights, we all went in and enjoyed such a dip as only salt water yields. In the midst of it we had to go on shore several times to stand the boy on his head and pump the ocean out of him, as he was constantly getting drowned in the surf, and one of my expensive and expansive stockings was captured out at sea and brought back by a son of Belial, who seemed greatly affected by its size, but in spite of such small drawbacks we had a glorious time. * * * * * "What is the matter, my darling?" asked John, the newly married, to the wife of his bosom. "Nothing whatever," replied Mrs. John. "But you look like a funeral," exclaimed he. "I am not aware that I look more than usually unamiable; I certainly never felt better," replied his wife, placidly folding down meanwhile the hem to a distracting little apron she is making. John seizes his hat, pushes it down over his eyes and rushes forth distracted with the conjecture as to what terrible thing he has been guilty of to make his wife look so like an injured martyr. For the time being love is dead, joy wiped from the face of the earth, hope crucified and peace assassinated, all because of bottled thunder. A word would have explained all, a look has ruined everything. "Don't put on your fresh muslin this afternoon," suggests the prudent mother. "But why not?" replied the sprightly Jane; "it is the only endurable dress this warm weather." "Oh, very well, do as you like, of course," meekly replied the parent in a tone that suggests a serpent's fang, a hoary head and a broken heart all in one. Now, in my opinion it is not conducive to domestic harmony to have too much of this sort of repression. It is like living in an exhaust chamber. One would be certain to choke up and burst very soon. Self-control does not consist in forever keeping one's mouth shut, alone. A look, a sneer, a drooping mouth, a tilted nose, will do as much mischief as a loosened tongue. Why I should go about like a disagreeable old martyr or like a sneering Saul of Tarsus, and call myself pleasant to live with, simply because I don't talk, is something not easily understood. I would far rather be a target for flying saucepans every time I popped my head into the kitchen than have a cook there who never says a word, but is sullen and ugly enough to carve me up like cold meat. I would rather be a constant attendant at funerals, a nurse in a fever-ward, a girl in a circus, or a street car horse, than live with proper folks who never make blunders, or commit indiscretions either of speech or manner, but look at you every time you sneeze as though your featherheadedness was the only thing that made life unbearable. Out with it then if you have cause for offense. Don't let the clouds hang a single hour, but turn on the weather faucet and let it rain. If your neighbor has insulted you, either ask her why or ignore it. Ten to one the fancied insult is only a wind cloud, and sunshine will break it away. If you feel mad sail right in for a tempest and have done with it. Thunder and lighten, blow and hail if you want to, but don't be a non-committal dog-day. Bottled thunder is a bad thing to keep on the family shelves. It is likely to turn sour on your hands, and before you get through with it, you will wish you had died young. * * * * * Yonder goes a small and worthless yellow dog. He is young; you can tell that from the abnormal size of his paws, and a certain remnant of wistful trust in human kind, which displays itself in the furtive wag of his tail and the cock of his limp and discouraged ear. He is as absolutely friendless as anything to which God has granted life can be. Of his existence there is no thought in the mind of any man or woman beneath the stars. The boys grow mindful of him now and then, though, and their manifested interest has made of his life one terrible specter of cringing fear. He hears the hurrah of their cruel chase in every tone of sudden speech; he sees the menace of a blow in every shadow. Do you know, my dear, that I never spoke a truer word in all my life than when I say that underneath the hide of that forlorn and friendless little yellow dog there is something more valuable than beats under the broadcloth vests and silken waists of many of the men and women who pass him by! A grateful heart mindful of the smallest kindnesses, a faithful instinct which keeps dogs loyal even to cruel masters. I sometimes think I would rather take my chances with honest dogs than with half the men who own them. They may not be able to pass up the stamped ticket which transfers the human passenger from the earthly to the celestial railroad and carries him through on the passport of an immortal soul; but no ticket at all is quite as good as a forged or fraudulent one, as some of us will find out, I am thinking, when we hand up our worthless checks! * * * * * Which would you rather be in the orchestra of human life, a flute or a trombone? To be sure, the latter is heard the farthest, but the quality of the flute tone reaches deeper down into the soul and awakens there dreams without which a man's life is like bread without leaven, or a laid fire without tinder. I don't like noisy people, do you? People who talk and bluster and swagger. People who remind us of bladders filled to the point of explosion with wind. We like sensitive people, quiet-voiced, deep-hearted, earnest people, with the quality of the flute rather than that of the fog-horn in their make-up. And yet how much greater demand there is for bluster than there is for force. Sometimes I am inclined to think that life is a farce played with an earthly setting for the delectation of the angels, as we serve minstrel shows and burlesques. It isn't the shy and the timid who get the applause; the clown in tinsel and the end man in cork divide easy honors. And yet, thank God for flutes! Thank God the orchestra isn't entirely composed of trombones and bass drums. * * * * * WHAT I MISS. I can get used to my darling's dress That hangs on the closet door; And the little silent half-worn shoes That patter no more on the floor. I can get used to the hopeless blank That greets my waking eyes, As they meet the sight of the empty crib Where no little nestling lies. I can get used to the dreary hush, In the home which my darling blest With her prattling speech and her rippling laugh, Ere we laid her away to rest. But, ah! the touch of those little hands That wandered o'er my face, Like the wavering fall of rose-leaves soft, In some sunlit garden place. Those dimpled caressing baby hands! I feel them again at night, And in dreams I gather them back again From their harp in the City of Light. My hungry heart will claim them still; I cannot let them depart. So I gather them back again in dreams To my desolate, breaking heart. * * * * * The other day my strolling took me into a second-hand furniture shop. I wanted to find an ice chest. "Have you any second-hand chests?" I asked of the hoary-headed son of Erin who tended the place and raked in the shekels. He didn't answer a word, but silently arose and beckoned me to follow. Through ranks of withered tables and blighted chairs I picked my way until my guide dived down a gruesome stairway and then I stopped. Presently his head emerged like a grimy Jack-in-the-box. "Is it an ice chist yez want?" asked he. There was mold on his faded cheeks and a cobweb on his brow as he awaited my answer. "Must I go down there to find it?" I inquired. He replied in the affirmative. "Old man, I will go no further," said I, "but come back here and tell me the price of this lovely desk." So saying, I designated a delightful old claw-handled, brass-mounted, spider-legged piece of furniture, which might have been used by Adam to cast up his accounts on. There was a suggestion of secret drawers about it that was quite ravishing. The doors were oddly shaped little panes of mirror glass, within which I gazed pensively at a soot blemish on my nose. "Is it the price of that yez'd be afther knowing?" said the old man, in the tone of one who dealt with a harmless lunatic. "I thought it was ice chists yez was afther." "Yes," said I, drawing out two long slabs as I spoke, such as were used to support the shelf of the desk I remembered in my grandmother's house. "That bit of furnichoor," said the old-man, gazing sadly meanwhile at the grime of ages which I could not rub from off my nose, "is more than two hundred years old." He stopped for a moment to see if I would believe him, then went on: "Yis, ma'am, that same is nearer three hundred years old, all told." Here I gave him a look which stopped him at the threshold of the fourth century. "Yez may have it for $25," says he. "I'll give you five," says I. He turned away as one who found his mother tongue inadequate to express the deep-seated scorn of his soul. I followed. "Did yez say twenty?" he asked stopping abruptly and facing me with the blurred photograph of what was once an engaging smile. "I said five," I answered. "Well, take it thin," said he, "but it would be dirt chape at fifty. It's not a day less than four hun--" "Stop," said I, "if you add another century I'll only pay you two and a half for it." And so to-night it comes to pass that I am writing at my new old desk. I am half conscious, as my pencil glides along the paper, of a laughing face, half-hidden by showers of falling hair, that flickers like a shadow in and out of the soft gloom that enfolds me. Fingers, light as air, seem to follow the motion of my own, and the ghost of the mistress who thought and wrote at this same desk, one, two, three, four hundred years ago, seems whispering in my ear. I wonder what will be the effect if I read to that sweet, gentle woman of "ye olden time" a few bits from the morning paper. Madam, are you aware that a man kicked his wife to death yesterday because she failed to have his supper ready for him? Are you not to be congratulated that you are out of reach of this latter day development of the human brute? Do you know that the Blank concerts began this last week, and that the melodies that throng the beautiful hall yonder on the avenue are like bands of singing angels charming a world's sorrows to rest? Do not the gentle caprices of the flutes and the swing of the fiddles make even you, flake of airy nothingness that you are! dance like a thistle-down in a summer breeze? Madam, do you know, and how does it affect you to know, that there are bargain sales in town where you can buy a gown for a song, and a pair of all-wool blankets for the worth of a dream? In your long time disembodied state have you yet reached a point, I wonder, when such news as this can no longer thrill a woman's heart? If so, madam, you are truly and undeniably dead, and your room is better than your company. I bid you a gentle good evening. * * * * * Among the many things I shall be glad to find out some day will be why, in spite of heroic effort to keep it straight, my hat always gets crooked and my hair becomes disordered on the march. I thoroughly detest the sight of a typical "blue-stocking," or a literary woman who affects a sublime superiority to appearances, and yet Mrs. Jellyby was nowhere as to general demoralization of raiment compared to my unfortunate self. Taking my seat in a down-town restaurant the other day, I found myself surrounded by half a dozen girls as bright and pretty and jolly as girls go. No sooner was I seated than the whisper went round that a newspaper woman had invaded the party. "Looks like one," murmured the plumpest one of the lot, and I could have cried. "Girls," I wanted to say, "judge not by appearances. The best christians sometimes have red noses, just as the jolliest literary folks have frowsy hair and abandoned hats. They can't help it, my dears, any more than a black cat can help being somber. It is never safe to condemn anybody, not even a poor, miserable scribbler for the press, on circumstantial evidence. You see a crooked hat, electric hair, and that is all. Put on Titbottom spectacles and look deeper. Perhaps you will then see an anguish-stricken woman rising at 5 a. m. to make herself smart for the day. You will note how carefully she adjusts the feeble adjuncts to her toilet, how she places her hat on straight and secures it with a cast-iron cable! How she combs out her curls and sticks a feathery kerchief within her belt. Two hours later the cable hat-pin has been struck by a tidal-wave and swept from its anchorage; the curls have degenerated into wisps of wind-tossed hay; and the kerchief? Gone as a feather is gone when the summer tempest gets behind it! We mean well, girls. We want to look trim and slick and span. All of us poor literary people do, but we can't bring it about. Life is so everlastingly full, anyway, that it seems preposterous to spend more than half one's time in getting fixed up. Sometimes I am foolish enough to believe that good St. Peter, when we come toiling up to his gate, won't look so much to the condition of our hats and our hair as he will to the way we wear our souls. If they are tip-tilted and frowsy it may go a little bit hard with us. Of course, it is a good thing to be able to wear a hat straight, and be remarked for your pretty hair and generally pleasing appearance, but I declare to you if it comes to a question of mental array and soul-correction as opposed to style and good form, I am willing to choose the former and be laughed at now and then by saucy girls." * * * * * That's right. Stand on shore and beat him back when he attempts to make a landing. If necessary, club him under water and congratulate yourself that you are so self-righteous and everlastingly holy that nobody can get a chance to swing a club at you. What is this half-dead thing that is trying to force its way onto dry land from the whelming waters of temptation and misery? A rat? Oh, no; only a human creature like yourself. Sin overtaken and subdued by evil. He is young, perhaps, and never had a mother's care or a father's training. He has drifted with easy currents into dangerous waters, and the devil, who lurks beneath the flood, is trying to snatch him down to hell! Raise your club and give him a clip! The audacity of such a boy trying to be anything with such a record behind him! Oh, I am sick of you all, you omniverous feeders on reputation, you unveilers of past records of shame! I hope in my heart that if ever you get your own foot on the threshold of some haven of relief, after a tight tussle with danger and death, an angel will stand over against the doorway with a flaming sword and demand to see your credentials. No hope of that, though. Angels are not up to that sort of work; it is left to men, and sometimes--God pity us all!--to women. * * * * * If you expect to escape criticism, girls, in this world, you will put yourselves very much in the plight of flower-roots that expect to grow without the discipline of the hoe. Before we can amount to anything either in blossom or as fruit, we must undergo much honest criticism, and of such we need never be afraid. A candid and above-board enemy is of far more benefit, often, than a timid friend, who, seeing our faults, is afraid to tell us of them. The fact that boys stone certain trees and pass others by, is explained when we find that the stones are always thrown at the fruit-bearing trees. And so with character; the fact that we are criticized proves that we are something better than scrub-oak saplings. But all criticism that does not make us grow, and put forth fairer and richer blossoms, is like a hoe made of wood, or a cultivator without power applied to cause it to destroy the weeds. If the unanimous verdict of the community in which we live asserts that we are proud, or ill-natured, or lazy, we may be pretty sure that there is some cause for the application of that particular stroke of the hoe, and the sooner we set about seeking to remedy the evil, the better for our next world's crop of blossoms. Nobody (save One) was ever yet maligned without some little cause. Those who come in contact with you at home may not see little blemishes upon your conduct or character which those who meet you in business may detect. For instance, to the folks at home you never put on that indifferent and languid air to which you treat the customer who drops in to buy ribbon, or the woman who asks you a question at your office desk. The customer and the questioner go away with an estimate of your behavior very unlike the one held at home, where you are frank and cheerful, and willing to please. And, on the other hand, the party with whom you associate casually in business, or with whom you ride daily to and from your office and your home, has no conception how snappy and snarly you can be when none but familiar ears are open to your surly complaints. The statement from your little brother or sister that you are a "cross old thing" would hardly be believed by those who meet you away from home. And yet the hoe in the little hands strikes at a weed that threatens to make havoc in the garden. Better look to it, dearie, before the ugly thing quite overtops the mignonette and the pinks! Whenever you hear of an adverse criticism set to find the weed somewhere in your character. I believe firmly that every one of us was born into the world with capabilities for almost every evil under the sun if environment favors the development. Like a garden patch, the roots of the weeds lie already deep, the flower seeds must be sown. And no gardener ever struggled with "pusley" and burdock as we must struggle with the evil crop, heredity-sown. Thanks be to the quick eye, then, be it of friend or foe, who discerns the weed before we do, and whips out the hoe to attack it. We are not exactly pleased when it is borne in upon us through the criticism of some acquaintance or neighbor, that we are selfish in little things. Our folks don't say so, and we try to believe the charge is a libel. Next time you throw your banana skin heedlessly on the pavement, or crowd into a seat without a "by your leave," or refuse to move up in a crowded car, or open your window without asking if it be agreeable to the person behind you, or eat peanuts and throw the shucks on the floor instead of out of the window, or see a lady going by with a disarranged dress and don't tell her of it, or return an indifferent answer to a civil question, or refuse the sweet service of a smile and a gentle look to the humblest wayfarer that jostles you on the road, just remember the criticism, and see if there is not occasion for it. Set about correcting the little faults, and the great ones leave to God. He will keep you, no doubt, from theft, and murder, and perjury, but you don't ask or seem to stand in need of His help in getting rid of temptations to be mean and selfish, and discourteous and lazy. What would you think of a gardener who went about with a spade seeking to exterminate nothing but Canada thistles, and let all the rest of the weeds go? It is not often that so big and determinate a thing as a Canada thistle gets in among the roses, and when it does it is quickly disposed of. But oh, the wee growths! The tiny shoots that come up faster than flies swarm in dog-days, and need to be forever stood over against with a steady hand and a hoe. If my neighbor comes out and charges me with stealing a barrel of flour from her storehouse, or attacking her first-born with a meat-axe, I can quickly disprove that sort of a charge; but when she says that I am unprincipled because I steal in and coax her girl away from her with the offer of higher wages--how is that? Or that I am selfish because she sees me let my old mother wait on me to what I am able to get myself; or cross, because I am untender to the children; or untruthful, because I instruct the servant to say I am "not at home" when I am, how am I going to dispose of those charges? Sure as you live, there are weeds in front of such hoe strokes, and with heaven's help we'll get rid of 'em. Cultivate your critics, then, provided they be honest and fair-dealing. Avoid only such as strike in the dark. The man who goes out to hoe weeds in the night time is not to be trusted, and the enemy who resorts to the underhand methods of backbiting and scandal to do his work, is not worth talking about, much less heeding. Take criticism that is fair and open, as you occasionally take quinine, to tone up the system and dissipate the malaria of sloth and inertia. Only they shall come into the festival by and by, bearing garlands of roses, and wreaths of hearts' delight and balm, who have welcomed the strong stroke of the hoe at the root of every blossom to bear down the weeds and loosen the tough and sun-baked soil. As Charles Kingsley says: "My fairest child, I have no song to give you; No lark could pipe 'neath skies so dull and gray; Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you For every day: "Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever; Do noble things, not dream them, all day long, And so make life, death and that vast forever One grand, sweet song." * * * * * See that half-grown man? He never will know as much again as he does now at the ripe age of twenty. When he gets to be fifty, when his hair is grizzled and his hopes are like the dead leaves that cling to November trees, he will look back upon these years of rare wisdom and colossal effrontery and blush a little, perhaps, at the recollection. Now he has no reverence for a woman or for God. He sneers at good in a world whose threshold he has barely crossed, as a year-old child might stand in the doorway of his nursery and denounce what was going on in the drawing-room. Most of the scathing things that are said about domestic felicity, and the sneers that are bestowed on love, and the gibes that are flung at purity, and the scoffs that are launched at established religions; all the jokes at the expense of noble womanhood and the witticisms that are lavished upon the old-fashioned virtues, spring from the gigantic brain of the youth of the period. * * * * * Often as I pass along the streets of this town I notice certain places which I do not burn down, nor tear down, nor otherwise demolish, merely because of inherent cowardice and inadequate strength. If I had a wide-awake, growing boy I would no more turn him loose in your town, Mr. Alderman, than I would cut his throat with my own hand. Not, certainly, if there was a spark of human nature within him, and a boy without such a spark is hardly worth raising. And more than that, I will say this, that what with your saloons and your wide-open gambling resorts, and your doorways of hell, wherein sit spiders luring flies, it has come to pass that every mother whose boy encounters harm thereby should be entitled to damages at least as great as juries award a careless pedestrian who gets his legs cut off at a railway crossing. You say that laws are inadequate to cope with evils of this kind; if that is so, then an outraged citizenhood should rise superior to law, and enter upon a crusade to destroy the infamous dens that decoy our boys. On a certain downtown street there is a newly opened resort, the windows of which are closely draped, and before the door of which a placard is suspended which invites only men to enter within. Now and then a hideously ugly man, with a yellow beard, comes to the ticket window and looks out like a tarantula from its hole, but in the main the place seems absolutely unfrequented. Take your stand and watch for awhile, though, and you will see young men and small boys, old men and slouching reprobates of all conditions and colors going in and coming out by dozens. Why doesn't some good citizen enter a complaint of that place and break it up? We would pounce upon a smallpox case soon enough wherever it might lurk, but we are strangely indifferent where the menace is only to the soul. How can we expect to keep our boys pure and raise them to lives of usefulness when such iniquitous places are run wide open on public streets at noonday, granting admission to all masculinity between the ages of 7 and 70? A well-guarded youth is supposed to be at home in the night time and not to be frequenting shy neighborhoods at any hour. So that we might feel comparatively safe about the boy we send out into the world at an early age to begin his career as errand boy or messenger if these pernicious decoys were maintained only at night and in low vicinities. When the trap is set, however, right in the business center of the town by daylight, what safety have we? Whenever I look into the face of an eager, bright, curious, thoroughly alive boy I feel like shaking every other duty of life and going forth to do battle with the devil for that lad's soul. Why should evil have so much greater chance than good? For one reason I don't believe we make the good attractive enough. The devil has stolen the trademark of light for half his wares. Why not have more fun and frolic in the home? Why not add a gymnasium and dancing hall to the Sunday school and filter some of the world's innocent sunshine inside its gloomy walls? Why may not the eager, active heart of youth find its good cheer and jollity somewhere else than in forbidden places and among smooth and unscrupulous knaves? If we made our churches less austere and their gatherings more alluring to the young, these low and vicious resorts might close for lack of patronage. God bless the boys. I love them next best to girls, and sometimes even a little better, when they are especially frank and brave and true. I am not going to see them harmed without a protest, either, and I would be one of a crowd this very day to march upon the resorts of evil that lie in wait, all over town, to destroy the bonnie fellows. If I had my way, every man or woman who makes money by pandering to the curiosity of a boy's nature, inciting to unworthy passion by means of lewd pictures and the like, should be consigned to instant perdition. The earth is too hallowed to receive their vile dust! * * * * * Dear girls, if you would be beautiful with the beauty that strikes root in heaven, first of all be natural. Be true to something within you higher than any conventional code or worldly wise mandate. If it is your natural impulse to be courteous, and sympathetic, and sweet (and blessed be the fact, it is the natural impulse of most girls so to be!), don't let miserable conformity and its tricksters exchange your genuine blossom for a mere shred of painted muslin, fashioned though it be after even so perfect a similitude of a rose. The birds of the air nor the angels in heaven will ever be fooled by any artificial rose, let me tell you, however much dudes and society feather-heads may pretend to desire it. Grow for something better than this world; wear your sweetness in your heart rather than on your pocket handkerchief. * * * * * The great drawback to domestic felicity often lies in the fact that we get too familiar with one another. There should be a certain reserve in the most intimate relationships. Sisters and brothers have no right to burst into one another's private rooms without knocking. Wives have no more right to search their husband's pockets than they have to do the same little service for a distant acquaintance. I have no right to read the Young Person's letters without permission, although I have a right to win her confidence so that she shows them freely. The Captain has no more right to visit the Boy's bank for pennies because he is her brother, than she has to abstract money from the grocery-man's till. You have no more right to obtrude your conversation upon your wife, nor she upon her husband, when either is in the middle of a thrilling story, than you or she would have to interrupt the Queen of England at her devotions. An "excuse me," if a mother is obliged to interrupt her youngest child's babble, is quite as good a way to teach the baby manners as a course of lectures later on etiquette. The man who gets up and slams shut the ventilator in a crowded car to suit his own convenience, or the woman who throws open a car-window regardless of the occupants of the seat behind her, is no ruder than Bess is when she ignores brother Tom's comfort at home, or Tom is when he pounces for the biggest orange on the plate when only Bess and he are at table. When either makes rude remarks to the other, they sin against the true code of etiquette more than when they are discourteous at a party or boisterously unkind with a comrade, just as he is more criminally careless who pounds a piano to pieces with a hammer than he who batters the pine case it was brought in. The greater the value of the article, the choicer we are supposed to be of it, and in the same line of argument, the dearer and closer the tie that binds us, the more considerate we should be in the handling of it. I may hurt the feelings of a society acquaintance, and there is restitution and forgiveness, but when I stab the dear old mother's heart with an unkind word, or wound my child's feelings with an injustice or a cruelty, or ridicule the sensitive feelings of a brother or a sister, not eternity itself shall be long enough to extract the sting from my memory when my dear ones are dead and love's opportunity is vanished forever. Study politeness, then, which is the bodyguard of love, and build up for yourself the structure of a happy home. * * * * * Has it been borne in upon you what radiant mornings and September nights the last two weeks have brought in? Have you stopped, Mr. Busyman, to note the wonder of the skies, never so glorious as of late? Did you see the sunset the other evening when a gigantic cloud stood almost zenith high against the flaming west, and took on for a time the panoply of a king? Did you notice the purple center and the dazzling edge, with the rose blush that fringed its borders? Did you see it pale to gray and vanish like a ghost into the starry night? Do you ever stop, Mrs. Featherhead, to mark the beauty of our wayside clover or the sparkle of a buttercup in the dew? Have you found the nooks where, like shy children, the violets cluster? Did you mark a certain day, a week or so ago, when the heavens were full of cloud battalions, taking new shapes every minute, and often dissolving in long lines of purple rain, shot through with stitches of golden light? Have you seen the lake lately, as blue as a heather bell, as wild as a wood-bird, as peaceful as a brooding dove? Where were you the other night when out of the sullen storm cloud the "light that never was on land or sea" enfolded us, and the world hung like an emerald in a topaz sky? * * * * * No law of morals should be less arbitrary for men than it is for women. An impure heart, a riotous appetite, a profane tongue, are no more excusable in a man than they are in a woman. If a man is supposed to shrink from selecting his wife among the unclean in thought and immoral of practice, why should not a young girl be allowed an undefiled selection? When girls grow so queenly natured that they demand that their lover should be of the royal stock and never demean themselves to stoop to mate with impurity and profligacy just because it carries a handsome face and a well-filled pocketbook, there will be some chance for happiness in the married estate. It is this placing white flowers in smutty buttonholes, or, in other words, the wedding of pure women to blasé and wicked men, that sows the seed of the tare in what was meant by the primal law to be a harvest of golden grain. Do you pick slug-eaten roses and wind-fall blossoms? When you go forth to buy material for a new gown do you choose cotton warp fabrics and colors that will fade in the first washing? Your answers to all these question are prompt enough, but when I ask you what choice you make of gentlemen friends, you are not quite so ready with a reply. Do you choose the young man who has a clean record, who neither drinks nor wastes his money in riotous practices? How about the tobacco chewers and the swearers? How about the lewd jesters and the low-minded? Provided he wears fine clothes, can dance well and make a good appearance in society, and above all can give you a handsome diamond for an engagement ring, are you not willing to accept a lover in spite of his known reputation as a fast young man about town? Girls, you had much better choose a specked peach for canning than such a man for a husband. Do you imagine that by and by at the upper court, whither we are all hastening as quickly as the old patrol wagon of time can carry us, there will be any distinction made between men and women? Think you a man is going to get off easier than a sorrowful and sinful woman merely because the world falsely taught him that the exigencies of his nature demanded greater latitude than hers? * * * * * You may retouch a faded picture, you may patch up an old piano, you may mend a shattered vase, but you cannot make a plucked rose grow again; it will wither and die in spite of every effort to restore it to the stem from which it fell. And so with the heart from which a low desire in the guise of an alluring temptation has snatched the flower of innocence. That heart will fade into hopeless loss unless a greater love than yours or mine intervenes to save. An impure soul never started out impure from the first any more than a peach was decayed in the blossom. It is the small beginnings, dear girls, that lead up to the bitter endings. The impure book read on the sly, the questionable jest laughed at in secret, the talk indulged in with a schoolmate or a friend which you would be unwilling for "mother" to hear, the horrible card circulated under the desk or behind the teacher's back, those are the beginnings of an ending sadder than the blight of any desolation that storm or drought or frost can bring upon the blossoms. If I only could, how gladly I would dip my pen to-night in a light that should outshine the electric splendor of our streets and write a message against the dark background of the sky, to startle young girls into the realization of the danger that lurks in the first indulgence of thoughts and companionships that are not pure. Avoid all such as you would avoid the contagion of small-pox, and a thousand times more. Small-pox, at its worst, can only mar the body, but the friend who lends you bad books or tells you "smutty" stories proffers a contagion to your soul which all the fountains of all your tears can never cleanse away. * * * * * THIS BABY OF OURS. There's not a blossom of beautiful May, Silver of daisy, or daffodil gay, Nor the rosy bloom of apple tree flowers, Fair as the face of this baby of ours. You could never find, on a bright June day, A bit of fair sky so cheery and gay; Nor the haze on the hills in noonday hours, Blue as the eyes of this baby of ours. There's not a murmur of wakening bird-- The clearest, sweetest, that ever was heard In the tender hush of the dawn's still hours-- Soft as the laugh of this baby of ours. There's no gossamer silk of tasseled corn, Nor the flimsiest thread of the shy wood fern-- Not even the cobwebs spread over the flowers-- Fine as the hair of this baby of ours. There's no fairy shell by the sounding sea, No wild rose that nods on the windy lea, No blush of the sun through April's showers, Pink as the palm of this baby of ours. * * * * * Don't you get awfully tired of people who are always croaking? A frog in a big, damp, malarial pond is expected to make all the fuss he can in protest of his surroundings. But a man! Destined for a crown, and born that he may be educated for the court of a king! Placed in an emerald world with a hither side of opaline shadow, and a fine dust of diamonds to set it sparkling when winter days are flying; with ten million singing birds to make it musical, and twice ten million flowers to make it sweet; with countless stars to light it up with fiery splendor, and white, new moons to wrap it round with mystery; with other souls within it to love and make happy, and the hand of God to uphold it on its rushing way among the countless worlds that crowd its path: what right has a man to find fault with such a world? When the woodtick shall gain a hearing, as he complains that the grand old century oak is unfit to shelter him, or the bluebird be hearkened to when he murmurs that the horizon is off color, and does not match his wings, then, I think, it will be time for man to find fault with the appointments of the magnificent sphere he inhabits. "It is a fine day!" remarks Miss Cherrylips. "Too cold," says the croaker; "beastly wind, not fit for a dog to breathe." Oh, yes, my dear, I heard him say it this very morning, and while I sat and listened to him I could but think to myself, "What would become of the croaker without the weather topic to fall back upon?" When all else failed him, he is sure to have something to find fault with within the range of this universal and inexhaustible topic. It is too warm or too cold; there is too much rain, or there is a drought; the winters are changing and microbes are on the increase; the peach buds are blighted by a cold snap in spring, and the potatoes have failed or are about to fail, owing to a wet June. That is the way the croaker holds forth whenever he can get anybody to listen to him. I sometimes wonder what he would do if he really had great things to fret about; if one of his beautiful children were to die, or the faithful wife he loves so well in his heart, perhaps, but never takes the trouble to acquaint with the fact, were to weary of his endless faultfinding and steal away from it all into the quietude of the grave. I wonder if he would not then look back upon these days of "croaking" with amazement that he was ever so blind and stupid a fool. I knew a woman once who was very, very charming. She could sing "Allan Percy" in a way that would melt the heart within you. She could paint on china and decorate the panels of doors, and on the whole she was calculated to enjoy life and make it enjoyable for others. But her home, on the contrary, was utterly devoid of peace and comfort. Her husband took no pleasure there, although he was lavish in the expenditure of money to render the place attractive. Her children were glad to get away from their home and find otherwhere the freedom and gaiety denied them there. Why was all this, when the mother was so eminently fitted by grace and accomplishments to create a beautiful and happy home? Simply because she was always fretting and fussing about trifles. She was a croaker and always finding fault. She fought flies until life was a burden to everybody who watched her. She said that they would spoil the paint, poison the food and ruin the curtains. She was after them at early dawn nor gave over the chase until late at night. She would leave the dinner table to chase a fly and kill it with a folded paper. She would stop the lullaby song she was singing to her pretty baby, to get up and call somebody to come in and hunt a stray blue-bottle that was bunting its stupid head against the window screen. She said that her life wasn't worth a farthing to her if the flies got into her home, and she would sooner jump in the river than submit to the pestilential infliction. Then she was forever prophesying some dreadful fate for herself by reason of the muddy footprints that occasionally found their way onto the carpets. "I declare," she would say, "if you boys don't stop tracking dirt into the house I'll die before my time. If there is anything I hate it is a careless boy!" And the boys took her at her word and stopped tracking mud. But they were gradually lured to stay away from home, and the soil they took into their hearts was perhaps harder to efface than the footmarks they left upon the floor of mother's neatly kept hallways. She was always anticipating trouble that never came. She knew the girl was going to leave. She was simply too great a treasure to keep. She was absolutely certain that the milkman was watering his milk, and the baby would get sick. She had no doubt whatever but what her husband was going to ruin himself on 'Change, and then what would become of them all? So she worried and fretted and fumed, until patience, like a hunted bird, spread its wings and flew away, and what might have been a happy home became a stranded wreck upon the rocks of contention. Oh, I tell you right now, girls, if you can only cultivate one accomplishment out of the many that wait to crown a perfect womanhood, cultivate a pleasant temper and cheerful disposition. The ability to speak many languages, to paint, to dance, to sing, or even to wield a graceful pen is nothing compared to the ability to make a lovely home. Nobody ever yet succeeded in that noblest endeavor without abjuring needless faultfinding, croaking and fretting. * * * * * As a general thing I don't believe in sermons served as restaurants serve beef--in slices. I believe in teaching truths, rather, as one whips cream, dropping in the moral as an almost imperceptible flavoring. But I tell you there are times when I feel like mounting a pulpit and thundering with old Calvin, until the air emits sulphur. Especially when I see the inhumanities and outrages practiced upon children by witless parents, do I feel stirred to my soul's depths. If we treated our flower beds as we do our children there wouldn't be a blossom left in the world. If we served our meals as we do our children, there would be rampant indigestion and black-browed death at the heels of every one of us. Now and then you see a wise mother and sensible father, but the biggest half of humanity receive their children as youngsters receive their Christmas toys, to be played with when in a good humor, and bundled anywhere out of sight when out of sorts or engrossed with more important matters. We forget, half of us, that a little child's sense of injustice and sorrow and wrong is compatible with its own growth and experience rather than with our own. What to us is a paltry trial is the cause of keenest, unalleviated woe to the child of five. The possession of uncounted gold at forty will not be more precious than the possession at three of the apple or the book we so rudely snatch from the little hands without a word of apology. Take the time to explain to the little fellow why you deprive him of some cherished possession and you will save the tender bit of a heart a vast amount of unnecessary aching. * * * * * I have many things to be thankful for this stormy winter night. One is that the coal bin is full and the lock on the outer door secure. Another is that the rooftree bends above an unbroken band, and that disease with its fell touch lingers the other side of the threshold of the little home. Another is that, as a family, we all have straight backs and moderately developed intellects; that we are neither dime museum freaks, lunatics, nor half-wits. Another is that none of us chew gum, carry around dogs, nor make expectoration the chief business of a day's outing. Another is that I am getting so used to the alarm clock that I sleep through its wild clamor and escape the duties that fall to the lot of that other member of the home circle whose ear and conscience are not so sadly seared as mine. Another is that I know enough to detect butter from oleomargarine, and am not roped in by Blank street vendors with their dollar and a half tubs. Another is that I am not the sort of fellow to be always hitting another fellow when he has been down and is trying to stand steady again. Another is that I am modest enough to question whether I could run a grip any better than he does? Another is that I got one answer to the "ad." wherewith I sought to capture a gold watch. It would have been an embarrassing thing to have received not one solitary little nibble. Another is that the elevator boy who occasionally carries me to the top floor and intermediate stations around at Blank's is kind and does not treat me with the haughty scorn he bestows on others. Another is that I have the serene equipoise of nerve which renders me calm and even cheerful under the knowledge that there is nothing in the house to eat, and two invited guests gently sleeping the happy hours away in the chamber above, dreaming perchance of toothsome viands not to be. Another is that in spite of weather I take no colds, and am as impervious to catarrhal or pneumonic affections as an eagle is impervious to the attack of tom-tits. Another is that I live in a town where people sell no beer; they may steal and backbite, and raise the old lad generally, but thank goodness the baleful glitter of a glass beer bottle has never yet eclipsed the moral splendor of the scene. Another is that I have been enabled to preserve a few staunch and trusty friends through the evolution of that rainy-weather costume which a few of my sex have joined me in essaying. I cannot speak for future tests, but so far my henchmen have stood firm. And right here let me say that any friend, man, woman or babe, who can remain loyal to you after you have been seen in public in a dress-reform garment is worth cultivating, and should be made the theme of special psalms of praise. Another is that the picture I had taken the other day looks worse than I do, and when I send it off to unsuspecting admirers I am not torn with the thought that when they see the original they will drop scalding hot tears of disappointment. This idea of raising false hopes in the minds of confiding strangers savors too much of Ananias and Sapphira. Another is that so far in life I have preserved a stern and unshaken resolution not to wear a false front. A woman in a store bang is next worse to a chromo in an art gallery, or a muslin rose among American beauties fresh from the rose gardens. Artificiality, my dear, pretense and assumption, are harder to put up with than anything else in the world, unless it is corns. But far ahead of all the above enumerated causes for gratitude is one which thrills me most profoundly, and which can be summed up in half a dozen words, the echo of which, perhaps, will find a lodgment in some other hearts. I am thankful, very, very thankful, that I am not the mother, nor the aunt, nor the half-sister, nor the first cousin, nor even the next-door neighbor, of the boy who kills sparrows for two cents bounty on the little heads. If I had such a boy within range of my voice to-night I should say to him, "Be poor, my man; be unsuccessful in business, and not up to bargains all your life, but don't be shrewd and sordid and cruel in seeking your gains. Better go by the name of 'mollycoddle' and 'baby' among the other boys than get to be a little ruffian with your arrow and your sling-shot, and the name of a keen-killer tacked on to yourself. Let the sparrows alone, or if you really feel that they are the nuisance they are made out to be, kill them if you like, but do it in a gentlemanly way (if such a paradox is possible), and don't take money for the job." The boy or the man who will take a life for sordid ends, or, in other words, who will seek to enrich himself on "blood money," is pretty low down in the human scale. * * * * * Laughter is a positive sweetness of life, but, like good coffee, it should be well cleared of deleterious substance before use. Ill-will and malice and the desire to wound are worse than chicory. Between a laugh and a giggle there is the width of the horizons. I could sit all day and listen to the hearty and heartsome ha! ha! of a lot of bright and jolly people, but would rather be shot by a Winchester rifle at short range than be forced to stay within earshot of a couple of silly gossips. Cultivate that part of your nature that is quick to see the mirthful side of things, so shall you be enabled to shed many of life's troubles, as the plumage of the bird sheds rain. But discourage all tendencies to seek your amusement at the expense of another's feelings or in aught that is impure. It was Goethe who said: "Tell me what a man laughs at and I will read you his character." * * * * * I'll take my chances any day to find heaven on earth, if I can have the run of the woods up along our northern lake shore in early springtime. I want no companions either, unless, perhaps, it be a child or a dog, for artificial women and dudish men, let loose in the woods, are harder to endure than gad-flies. It was scarcely more than sunrise, the other morning, when I left the house and took my way toward the forest shrine undesecrated as yet by surveyors or wood-choppers, the advent of either of whom in a country town means good-bye to heaven on that particular spot of earth! We found the air so full of sweetness, the instant we struck the depths of the woods, that one could almost fancy the wise men of the East had been there before us to greet the new-born Spring with spices as they greeted another Heaven-born child a score of centuries ago in Bethlehem. Every shrub held a softly-tinted leafbud half unfolded, like a listless hand. The maple leaves were pink and glossy, like rose petals wet with rain. The hickory trees were unfolding great creamy buds that looked like magnolias. The hawthorns were all afloat with silver blossoms, like loosened sails. The earth seemed singing to the heavens, "God is here!" and from the blue depths of quietude, where a few clouds spread their soft wings like brooding birds, came back the answer, "He is here!" The lake claimed Him, and a thousand azure waves murmured His presence on the deep. Wherever we looked, at our feet where the June lilies whitened the ground like perfumed snow, and the moss was bubbling like a wayside spring with sunshine in place of water; at the misty foliage overhead, like shadowy spirit wings; at the circle of blue that bounded the earth, or into the very heart of heaven above us, it seemed as though God, visible and manifest, was there to give us greeting. Finally, we found a point of high land, touched here and there with shadows flung down from budding birches, and starred with dandelions in flocks, like golden butterflies. Here, leaving the material part of me leaning up against a tree-trunk to rest, as one thrusts a cumbersome garment on a nail, my soul went wandering off into Paradise, and forgot awhile its environment and its earth-born responsibilities. Next time the world has failed to use you well and you are smarting from the sense of injury undeserved, or the frets of domestic life have worn you down to the minimum, like a blade that is eternally upon the grindstone, start for the woods. Take a big basket with you and fill it full of lilies, and, ten to one, before you get home again the lilies will have taken root in your heart and your basket will be full of contentment. * * * * * Educate the children to the expectation of sorrow, not as a monster who is to devour them, but as an angel who is to meet them on the way and lead them gently home to heaven. Teach them to hold themselves in readiness for whatever life has in store, as soldiers are trained for a battle whose end is certain peace. Teach them to endure all things, only striving to sweeten and soften rather than to harden under the discipline of sorrow. Unselfishness is the most rare and at the same time the most Christian virtue possible for human nature to attain to, but did anybody ever yet grow unselfish through a life of indolent self-indulgence and ease? Did fruit ever amount to anything that was left unacquainted with the sharp discipline of the gardener's shears? I tell you, all the way up from an apple to a man it takes lots of pruning and lopping off of superfluous branches to bring out the flavors and sweeten the fiber of the fruit. * * * * * I can imagine a lot of way-worn pilgrims drawing up to heaven's gate. "What will you have?" asks old St. Peter, standing idle and calm in the perpetual sunshine that lies beyond the swinging portal. "I will have my crown," says one. "I have earned it." "And I will have my harp," says another; "my fingers are eager to pick out the heavenly tunes." "And I will hie me at once to my heavenly mansion," says a third. "Long time I have plodded, foot-sore and weary, to gain the habitation of its enduring rest." But if you can imagine "Amber" piping forth her small request, I think you might hear her say: "Conduct me, oh, aged friend, to the nearest sand-bank, where I may lie face downward in the sunshine for fifty years to come, and hear the surf break on 'Sconsett's reef." That is what I have been doing for the past fortnight, and both soul and body have waxed strong in the process. What a tired passenger we carry around with us, sometimes, in this marvelous Pullman coach of ours, wherein the soul takes passage for its overland trip from the cradle to the grave. How restless it gets, and how troublesome. How it turns from companionship, even that of books, and finds no panacea for its torment, until some kind fate side-tracks it and lets the noisy world rumble on with the clatter and clash of conflicting cares beating the hours to dust beneath their flying wheels. When I went away for my yearly outing I was so cross that there was no living within six miles of my own shadow. I hated everything on earth, and everything on earth hated me. But I have come back as sweetly as the breath of a rose steals through a lattice. That is the effect of a jaunt, my dear; and let me say right now that if you are holding on to your money in the hope of getting rich sometime, or if you are traveling in a rut because you think you are too poor to avoid it, or if you are grinding your soul into fine dust in the process of laying up against a rainy day, just stop right where you are and listen to me. Any money that is gained at the expense of health, either physical or mental; any duty held to in the face of nervous breakdown; any gain secured at the expense of peace of mind and growth of soul, is not worth the holding. You cannot be of any use in the world if you are worn out or sick. You may persist in holding on, but your grip is weak, and your effect on affairs and people is simply that of an irritant. You owe it to yourself, as well as to others, to go away and get rested. If it costs money to do so, consider money well spent that gains so fair an equivalent as rest and change, and renewed vigor. I tell you there are few better uses to which you may put your dollars than in a yearly outing. Your pockets may be lighter when you get back, but so will your heart be, and the few sacrifices necessary in the way of less expensive clothes and cigars, or less frequent gloves and bonnets, will be well worth the making for the result gained. * * * * * I wish Columbus had never discovered us. I wish that he had never steered his old bark westward and found the "land of the free and the home of the brave." For with discovery came civilization, and I believe we would have been better off without it. If we only could have been left to ourselves and gone on sitting under lotus trees unaffected by dressmaker and tailor bills, I believe the sum total of happiness would have been far greater in the world than it is to-day. I would love to return to my allegiance to nature and forever desert the haunts of civilization and the marts of trade. I want to gather together a picked band of kindred souls and go out and pitch tent by the Gunnison River. Ever been there? Imagine a stream of gold flowing through hills colored like an apple orchard in May, with a sky bending down above them like the wing of an oriole. I want to forget the insolence of a class who may be as good as I am in the eye of the law, but whom it would take a ton of soap and God's grace to make my equal in point of cleanliness and decency. I want to forget forever the clang of the cable car and the rumble of its wheels. I want to return to the heathendom that worships gods instead of dollars and loves mankind simply because it knows nothing of faithlessness and fraud. * * * * * "Plaze, sor," said a servant to the head of a certain suburban household the other morning, "the gintleman who sthole the chickens left his hat in the hincoop." Just so, Bridget. And the lady who attends to the affairs of the kitchen has her foot upon the neck of the miserable woman who is nominally at the head of the house. Oh, no! I am not going to enter into a disquisition upon the merits of the servant question. Years ago, when I cantered lightly in my ride against windmills, I might have undertaken it, but the question has grown too large to be settled by talking. The state of things in this free country is growing just a trifle too free. There are no longer any servants in this proud land. It is not ladylike to serve. The person who superintends the domestic affairs of our home merely condescends for a consideration. We no longer have any rights as employers. The wind has tacked to another quarter. Should we wish to discharge our lady cook or dispense with the services of a gentleman artisan it stands in place for us to approach them in a respectful manner, put the case before them clearly and ask them humbly, without offense to their delicate sensibilities, if they will kindly allow us to forego their so-called services. Question yourself seriously, my dear; are you sufficiently considerate? Think how these defenseless ladies and thin-skinned gentlemen who fill positions of trust in your establishment must suffer sometimes from your boorish impetuosity. Are you always cordial in your greeting when the worn face of the cook appears at the delayed breakfast hour and she places before you the hurried pancake and the underdone steak? Do you stop to think how the poor creature has danced all night at a ball and has crept home after your stiff-necked and rebellious husband has bounded away to catch the early train, breakfastless and profane? And when the low-voiced and timid second girl tells you that, as a lady who knows her place, she really cannot demean herself to wipe off the paint or sweep the front steps, do you take her by the hand and acknowledge the indiscretion of your coarser nature in expecting her to do such menial service? How many of us, clods that we are, have raged when the mild-mannered laundry maid has appropriated our underclothing, or remonstrated when the number seven foot of the blue-blooded cook has condescended to stretch our silken hose? It behooves us to join the ranks of the "philanthropic fiends" and look to it that we improve our methods of treating the delicate gentry who tarry with us so briefly. * * * * * By the way, I think I occasionally hear a feeble pipe from a man to the effect that the girls are responsible for all the tomfoolery in the world. Don't you know that you are the very ones who tend to make them so--you men? You follow after and woo and wed just that sort of girls. You won't look at a sensible little woman who can make "lovely" bread, abjures bangs, can't dance and has no "style." You laugh at and make sly jokes at the expense of our big hats and our pronounced fashions, but when you choose your company, and often your wives, I notice you pass right by the home-keeping birds and take the peacocks. Of course, no one lives in this age who doubts for a moment that woman's chief aim in life and purpose of creation, as well as her hope of a blessed hereafter, is to please the men and get a husband. If you won't have her modest and simply gowned she is willing to make a feather-headed doll and a travesty of herself to get you and win heaven! You know perfectly well, you men, that you don't care half so much for brains as you do for general "get-up," and the woman you honor with your choice is selected for a pretty face and form, and a becoming costume rather than for a clever head and an honest heart. I am not talking to old fogies who cling to old-fashioned notions, but to young men who ridicule the customs of their grandmothers, who shake their heads at salaries of two and three thousand a year as inadequate to support wives; who rail against woman's extravagance, yet do their best to maintain her in it. When you, my fine and dapper gentleman, begin to seek out the modestly appareled and the sedate girls, then shall folly and vain show fly over seas for want of encouragement and the grand transformation of sawdust dolls into women and pleasure-seekers into home-keepers take place. * * * * * TWO DAYS. I said to myself one golden day When the world was bright and the world was gay, "Though I live more lives than time has years Either in this or the infinite spheres, I will fear no blight and I'll bear no cross, Against my gains I will write no loss, But I and my soul, twin lilies together, Shall whiten in endless summer weather!" I said to myself one weary day When the world was old and the world was gray, "Has God forgotten His wandering earth? Are its tears His scorning, its groans His mirth? There's no blue above where the torn clouds fly, There's no bloom below where the dead leaves lie; Would I and my soul were at rest together Wrapped from the chill of this wintry weather." * * * * * There are some people who live in this world as a cucumber grows in a garden. They cling to their own vine and serve no higher end than rotundity and relish. There are others who live in the world as a summer breeze lives in a meadow; they find out all the hidden flowers and set the perfumes flying. There are others who live as the sea lives in a shell; their existence is nothing but a sigh. There are others who live as the fire lives in a diamond; they are all sparkle. And there are others, and they outnumber all the rest, who live as a blind mole lives in the soil; they see nothing, feel nothing, suffer and enjoy a little now and then, perhaps, but know nothing to all eternity. Such people walk through life as the mole walks through the glory of a summer day, or burrows beneath the dazzle of a winter storm. They are as irresponsive to the voices all about them as the mole is to the singing of April robins. They are as untouched by the myriad influences of life as the mole is by the light of a star or the flash of a comet. Their only interest is in the question, "Wherewith shall we be clothed, and what shall we have to eat?" They gather the ripened hours from the tree of life as a child gathers fruit, merely for the gratification of an instant appetite, not as the careful housewife does, who garners in a store for wintry weather. Life to them is merely a fattening process. They remind one of prize beef at a county fair; to-morrow brings the shambles and the butcher's axe, but in the serene content of a well-filled stall and a full stomach, they take no thought of the future. We meet such people every day and everywhere. On the streets they may see a brute tyrannizing over a helpless beast of burden, or a mother (?) yanking a sobbing child along by the arm, as full of ugliness herself as a thunder-cloud is of electricity, or a man following an innocent young girl with the devil in his heart, or a big boy tyrannizing over a smaller one; and they pass it all by as indifferently as the mole would sneak across a battlefield the morning after a battle. They have too much to do themselves to waste time in remedying other people's grievances. They think too much of personal reputation to involve themselves in an altercation with defilers of the innocent, and tramplers of the weak. They are too respectable to get mixed up in brawls, even if the disturbance is brought about by the devil's own drummers looking up recruits among the championless and defenseless working-girls, or the parentless and homeless children of a great city. We meet them traveling through the mountains or loitering by the sea. Their only use for mountains is that they may carve their precious initials on the highest peaks, pick winter-greens and blue-berries and display their fashionable suits and striped stockings. They look upon the sea as a big bathing-tank, and the sky, with all its splendor of cloud and its glory of sunrise and sunset, as a barometer to forecast the weather. We meet them in business relations, and they never believe that courtesy and business can go together. A merchant in his office or a lady in her parlor will bluntly refuse to buy of a worn-out, discouraged, heart-sick book-agent, ignoring the fact that a smile accompanying even a refusal acts like a spoonful of sugar in bitter tea, and costs less. Even a "lady" clerk, behind a counter, will be haughty and unaccommodating and insolent to the woman who comes to buy, forgetful that a customer will go a long distance out of her way to deal with a polite and well-mannered clerk, and that, like honesty, politeness is ever the best policy. And, on the other hand, a woman shopper will be whimsical and captious and trying, forgetting that the girl who serves her has human blood in her veins, and often carries a troubled heart behind her smile or her frown. * * * * * They have come! Without the sound of a bugle, the bright hosts have marched down and taken possession of the land. The southern slopes are all alive with their wind-shaken tents, and when the sun comes out warm and glowing from the cloudy pavilions of the April sky, he finds a million blossoms on the hills that yesterday were white with snow. Some of them are tinted like the flush that lingers in the evening sky before the stars find it; some of them are stainless as unfallen snow; some of them are purple as a nautillus sail adrift upon a twilight sea; and all of them are joyfully welcome to hearts that are weary of Winter's long reign. And after the hypatica shall come the violet, and after the violet the trillium, and after the trillium the wild-rose, and after the wild-rose the cardinal-flower and the wood-lily, and after them the gentian and the golden rod, to mark the wane of the year. Oh, who would not live in a world whose dial-plate is made of flowers and whose circling seasons are told over with blossoming trees and gentian-buds? * * * * * I saw a great many things on the way this morning as I was coming to town. Suppose, as the weather is too warm for preaching, I enumerate them and let you strike the balance at the close, to see which way the world is jogging. I saw a father, drunk, beside his little blue-eyed daughter. His head was laid in maudlin sleep upon her shoulder, and with blushes that came and went across her face like cloud shadows on the slope of a hill, she sat and bore the burden of her childish shame like a little angel. I saw a hard-faced, labor-grimed man step out of his way to pick a wild rose that grew by the side of the road. I saw a young man lash his horse because his own bungling driving came near colliding his vehicle with a cable car. I saw a policeman spring to the rescue of an old beggar woman who stumbled on a street crossing, and saw him fall and trampled upon in the discharge of duty. I saw a pretty girl reach out her white fingers and feed a discouraged street-car horse the banana she was eating as she passed by. I saw a beaten dog turn and fawn beneath his master's brutal kick, and I thought to myself, where is a more faithful friendship than that? I saw a little golden-headed boy at the window of a house as I rode by, and when I waved my hand he kissed his in return. I saw a tired mother stoop to hug the child who fidgeted at her knee in the tedious depot waiting-room, and I saw another slap her baby because its sticky fingers sought to fondle her cheek. I saw a little girl get up, without suggestion from her mother, and yield her seat to an older person. I saw a lamed and dying bird just brought down by a boy's sling-shot. (I saw that same boy in Sabbath-school last Sunday!) I saw one woman in fifty thousand wearing the dress-reform. I saw eleven girls out of nineteen with tightly-laced waists! I saw a hurt kitten tenderly attended to by a soldier in blue, as I passed Fort Sheridan Camp, and involuntarily I said to myself: "The bravest are the tenderest; the loving are the daring." I saw a small boy beating his mother with both fists because she carried him over the crowded and dangerous way, and so, I thought, we treat the tender God who sometimes lifts us, against our will, from evil ways. I saw a little coffin in an undertaker's window, and thought, what child in this busy, bustling city is doomed to fill that casket? What love-watched home shelters the head that shall one day sleep upon that satin pillow? I saw a teacher in one of our public schools and overheard a gross bit of slang as she passed by. I see myself sending a child of mine to such a teacher if I knew it! I saw a father wheeling his baby in a perambulator, with the sun blazing straight into its blinking eyes. I saw one man out of every ten dodge into a liquor saloon when he thought nobody was looking. I saw a homely girl transformed into a beauty by a service of love accorded a stranger. I saw a woman lean out of a Marshall Field 'bus to laugh at another who wore shabby clothes and walked with a drooping head. I saw lots of things besides, but how does the balance strike? * * * * * If we have been living on bad terms with a neighbor; if we have been maintaining a chilling silence and a forbidding reserve with anybody thrown often in our way, let us have done with such nonsense and live in the world as God meant we should. * * * * * Out of the exuberance of a merry heart the housekeeper has loosened the tacks in the parlor carpet, and the epoch of housecleaning begins. The head of the family, pro tem. dweller in the land of desolation and sojourner in the valley of wrath, hies him to town and wishes vainly for the return of the days when he had no wife save in Spain and no family outside of Elia's land of dreams. The calciminer comes and drops leprous splashes all over the hallways and the bannisters. One paperhanger taketh unto himself another, and the two scatter ringlets of snipped paper all over the bed chambers, and cumber up the floors with sticky paste-pots and brushes. The scrub woman breathes hard and devastates the approaches of the front steps, while the hired girl skips playfully here and there with damp cloths and bars of silvery soap. There is no breakfast, no lunch, no dinner. We take what provender the gods deliver to us in out of the way places, like stalled oxen or uncomplaining army mules! We sleep by night in beds loosely put together and smelling of soap. We awake betimes to the rattle of the scrubbing brush and the sharp overthrow of stovepipes. We see the young person, like McStinger, on the rampage from morn till night. We watch her hand to hand encounters with the pictures that have been wont to hang upon the walls. How she swoops upon them, bears them down, buffets them with dusters and heaps them high like stumbling blocks in the path of the righteous! How she sneers at our feeble, yet apt, suggestion, and pharisaically "thanks goodness that she is good for something besides standing around and giving unsolicited advice!" How she charges upon our cherished books and whacks them together vindictively to loosen the dust and the bindings! How she tosses the piano like a feather in her strength and probes its sensitive heart-strings with a knitting needle in search of dirt and pins! How she rebukes the Captain for idling away her time at doll-playing while there is so much work to do, and drives that gallant young field officer forth to do battle with the unresisting tomato can in the backyard! What a pandemonium reigns over all the domain of yesterday's content! Carlo, the dog, whose flippant youth is getting its first severe taste of life's discipline, retires to an adjacent covert and howls a fitful protest. The cat blinks sleepily in the sunshine and dreams of a future unmarred by suds and a slippery foothold. When she has occasion to walk across the kitchen floor she shakes her hind foot gingerly, like a pilgrim delicately removing the dust of the enemy's land from his members. The goblin brood of chickens chuckle with amazement while the hired man beats the rugs like a snare drum and charges upon the carpet that hangs like a vanquished foe across the clothesline. But, like everything else, my dear, we take the trials of spring housecleaning as the tourist takes the storms in the Alps or the sailor meets the tempest on the sea. It has not come to stay; the sun-lighted peaks of deliverance lie just ahead of us, and there is fine sailing for another year when the squall is weathered. * * * * * I am tired of the endless dress parade of the great alike--aren't you? I am tired of walking in file, as convicts walk together in stripes--aren't you? I glory in cranks who have enough individuality to refuse to be sewed up in the universal patchwork, like the calico blocks we used to overcast with our poor little pricked fingers ever so long ago when we were children--don't you? The onward sweep of progress in this age has prepared the way for non-conformists, and, glory be to God! they are swinging into line like beacon lights up the Maine coast. I confess I have no heart-pining for emancipation that shall place me alongside of Dr. Mary Walker or others of her ilk. I would like to retain my womanliness, but I would like also to make a distinct mark upon my times, be it ever so small and insignificant, as an individual and an intelligence quite as distinct from the conventional masses as a blackbird is when it leaves the flock and silhouettes itself in solitary state against the deep blue sky from the top of a windy elm tree--wouldn't you? * * * * * I want one good square fling on earth before I die. I want the chance to know what it is to have enough money to be able to buy silk elastic occasionally instead of cotton, and to have my teeth filled with gold instead of concrete without feeling as though I had been robbing hen-roosts for a month after. I want to go to the theater in a swell carriage, and sit in the best box, with a pale pink ostrich boa draped about my shoulders and the opera-glasses of the entire house leveled at me for a stunning beauty. I want the sensation, for once, of knowing that I am as handsome as I am bright, and as well-dressed as I am virtuous. I want to have ice cream seven times a week and "Pommery Sec" by the dozen in the cellar. I want to own a silk umbrella with a golden crook, and wear a diamond ring on every finger. I want to buy candy whenever I feel like it without having to register it in the family account book under the head of "sundries" and "cough drops." I want to see the time when I can call the average shop-girl out into the alley and have it out with her with none to interfere. I want to settle with her for the indignities I have long suffered with the pusillanimity of a meek nature. I want to ask her between clips why she has always sold me just what I didn't want, and sneered at me because I didn't buy more of it. I want also to engage in hand to hand conflict with the female gum-chewer. I want to convince her that I have endured all I will of her facial contortions, and that the time has come for the extinction of her type from the face of the blooming earth. I want the power to consign every man who even mentions "nose bag" to a horse, to the guillotine, and to imprison for life every brute who carries a snake-whip or uses a check-rein. I want to solder the man or woman who objects to fresh air inside a tin can and label them "sardines." I want to shoot on sight the first human being who mentions the word "draught" in my hearing, and set my dog on the fiend who blots the face of nature with his ear-muffs. I want to live for a while in a country where there are neither thunderstorms nor cyclones, but where I can sleep nights right through, from March until November, without getting up to look for funnels or shooing the whole family down cellar as a hen gathers her chickens from the swooping hawk. I want to live in a community made up of people who mind their own business. I want to be able now and then to receive a letter from out of town (it is generally a bill!) without having the village postmaster regard me as a burning fagot. I want to find a recipe for making buckwheat cakes that do not taste like sand. I want to be able to detect a hypocrite and a traitor on sight, without waiting for a broken heart to evidence the fact that I am sold again. I want to rise out of the range of small annoyances, and fly above the aim of inferior people to disturb. I want to grow to be more like an eagle that wings its way out of the habitat of gadflies, and less like a trembling hare pursued by hounds. I want to take the lesson to my heart that the soul that is constant to itself and aspires towards heaven shall never be left a prey to care and unrest. I want to strike a dress reform which shall make women look less like guys, and to encounter a rainy day in which I shall not bite the dust, I and my umbrella, and my flippety-floppety skirts, and my nineteen bundles. I want to cut down the ballot privilege and make it impossible for an immigrant to vote before he is a twenty-one-year resident of America. I want to convince the woman suffragist that the greatest curse she can precipitate upon her sex is the ballot. I want to teach my sisters that if they will pay more attention to their homes and less to outside issues American institutions will be more of a success. If the career of a politician will spoil a man what would it do for a woman? On the principle that a strawberry will decay sooner than a pumpkin, or that a violet is more fragile than a sunflower, it would take about one election day to change a woman into a harridan. I never knew but one out and out politician who preserved intact the amenities of a gentleman, and he died early of heart trouble. The thing killed him physically before it destroyed him morally. If any politician reads this and wants to challenge the point I want to meet him and either convince him or be slain. * * * * * If you are not glad to be alive such weather as this it is because you are a clod and not a sentient being. Why, I never open my door these radiant mornings and walk out into a world that is more golden than any topaz and more radiant than any diamond that I do not hug myself for very joy that I am alive! The grave has not got me yet! And, though I be poor and quite alone and go hungry for the fleshpots that make my neighbors great about the girth, I am happy as a queen and quite content to cast my lot with clovers and birds and wayside weeds that feel the vigor of summer weather in every fiber of prodigal life. To-night the sky was like the flame of King Solomon's opal--did you see it? And just as the glory was growing and deepening into an intensity of beauty that made you want to shut your eyes and say Oh--h--h! as the little boys do at the circus when the elephants go round, a thrush whipped out his mellow flute and gave us a vesper song that made one think of heaven and bands of singing angels! And yet we are discontented and feel ourselves misused because we happen to be a little poverty-stricken now and then, and it is hard work to find the plums in our pudding! * * * * * The other morning, before the town clock struck 7, I was riding over country in a hack, driven by a courtly mannered colored boy and drawn by a couple of discouraged mules. I was going over to Hampton and Chesapeake City to see the sights. A robin was quarreling with a sparrow for possession of a nest in a treetop hung with blossoms thick as Monday's washing, and a small pickaninny stood in a doorway and held his breath with terror as our driver slashed the air with his long whip. The morning was superb. The sea lay like an opal with a dark setting of hills shadowed like oxidized silver, the birds were out like blossoms of the upper air with song in place of perfume, and the world seemed altogether too jolly and bright a spot to link with thoughts of sorrow and pain and death. We drove over to the soldiers' home, where from four to five thousand veteran warriors have found shelter from the bombarding storm of mundane care. Under the shadow of great willows in half-leaf and still golden with April sap, in sunny corners of broad piazzas, on benches by the slope of sluggish streams, or walking about the well-kept paths, these old and battle-scarred warriors pass the time away. "What a hero I might have been," says each one to himself, "if only----!" or, "What a narrow miss I made of glory when that premature shell took off my legs and stranded me here!" Peacefully they behold life's sun decline, and peacefully in turn they take possession of the narrow beds awaiting them in the near cemetery, where so many soldiers are sleeping the unheeded years away. Without motive or purpose their life is scarcely more eventless than their death shall finally be. Some way the grounds where these patient old graybeards sit day after day with nothing to do but muse upon the past remind me of the human heart with its pensioned hopes, its stranded intentions and its crippled endeavors! What heroisms, what subtle intents for good, what pretentious desires were frustrated and made worthless by the destiny which changed life's battlefield into a "soldiers' home" and the scene of action for the shaded seat under the willows of a long regret! * * * * * I wonder if Eve, looking over the battlements of heaven now and then, and seeing how tired we get down here and how discouraged and broken-hearted we often are, is ever sorry for the heritage she left us, all for the sake of an apple! Does she not curse the memory of the earth fruit whose flavor has so embittered humanity! Think of it, oh far-removed and perverse ancestress, if it were not for you we might have lived in a world where dinners walked into the pot and boiled themselves over fires that called for no replenishing; where rent stockings lifted themselves on viewless hands and were deftly darned by sunshine needles in the air; where last year's garments glided into this year's styles without the snip of scissors or the whirr of sewing machine wheels; where brooms swept and dust-cloths dusted unassisted by human hands; where windows cleaned themselves as fogs lift from the lake, and washing and ironing were spontaneous, like the growth of flowers. I for one am heartily tired of having to suffer for Eve's heartless stupidity. Hard work has too much of the blight of the primal curse about it to suit me, and no matter what philosophy we call to our aid the fact remains that labor of a certain sort is the heritage of sin, and sin was, is and ever shall be accursed. But there is something a great deal worse than hard work, and that is laziness. The man who toils until the great muscles of his arm stand out like cords and his broad shoulders are bent like the branches of a pine under the force of a strong wind from the north is a king among his kind compared to the shiftless do-nothings of life, between whose feet are spun the cobwebs of sloth and within whose lily-white fingers nothing more burdensome than a cigar finds its way. Give me a blacksmith any day rather than a dude. Work is hard and sometimes thankless, but, like tough venison served with jelly sauce, it is spiced with self-respect and smacks of honest independence. * * * * * THE STORY OF A ROSE. A white rose grew in a garden place, On a slender stem, with a royal grace; The nursling of June and her gentle showers, Fairest and sweetest of all her flowers. The south wind was out one day for a sail, In a cloudy boat, so fleecy and frail, And he chanced to spy, where musing she stood, My dear little rose in her snowy hood. Oh, softly he whispered and tenderly sighed, "Starry Eyes, Starry Eyes, I wait for my bride." But she laughed in his face, and told him to go; She didn't see why he bothered her so. A dewdrop fell in the starry hush, Lured from heaven by her dreamy blush; But the tender kiss of his balmy lip She gave to a bee, next morning, to sip. A bobolink left the bloom of a tree To tell her tale of whimsical glee; The moon dropped a pearl to wear in her breast; Dawn wove her a cloak of silvery mist. But her hard little heart was colder than ice, She sent every suitor away in a trice; Till the wind drew nigh, with a terrible roar, And said: "Pretty Rose, your playtime is o'er." He shook her with might, and he drenched her with rain, Till the poor little rose swooned away with her pain; And her shiny crown, with its moonbeam glow, He tossed far and wide, like the feathery snow. And all that is left of that splendid bloom, The diadem gay, and the spicy perfume, Is a handful of dust, that once was a rose-- The sport of the wind, as it fitfully blows. * * * * * Once upon a time there lived a woman. She was not very young, nor was she very old. She was neither handsome, homely, a genius, nor a fool. She was just a commonplace, good-intentioned, fair type of the average woman. This woman prided herself but little upon the various accomplishments that contribute to the modern woman's popularity. She could not dance a step, save in front of a northeast gale, or in a game of romps with her little folks. She could not decorate a tea cup to save her life, nor hand-paint a clam shell, nor embellish a canvas with fleshy cupids and no less corpulent rosebuds. She could sing a few insignificant ballads, such as "Annie Laurie," "Twilight Dews," and "Nearer, My God, to Thee." These with a number like them, she was always ready to furnish in a manner to bring down the house, but I doubt if she would have been a success either in a comic opera or a church choir. She could make bread and pieplant pie after a fashion that would make a man wish that he had been born earlier to enjoy more of them. She could tidy up a room quicker than a cat could wink its eyes, and in the matter of housecleaning she was a regular four-in-hand coach and a tiger. If you had asked her to lead a class in ethical culture or make a speech on suffrage or score a point for reform, this woman would have ignobly turned her back and run away, and yet perhaps she wielded an influence in the world quite as strong as many a woman whose name is recorded on the roll call of noisy fame. But there was one thing this woman abhorred with all the might and strength of her soul, and that was slang. She had been brought up to consider the use of anything more pronounced than the "yea" and "nay" of the Quaker vernacular an outrage to refinement, and although drifting far from her childhood's faith in many ways still preserved an innate shrinking from the exuberance of vain speech. She allowed no little boys to slide the cellar door with her own precious yellow-heads who could be positively convicted of using naughty language. Her husband left his worldly ways in town and only carried home to this nice little woman the aroma of propriety and coriander seeds. But who ever yet was assured of a firm foothold upon the pinnacle of self-righteousness that the old boy did not whip out an arrow and bring them low? It becomes my painful duty to chronicle the temptation and downfall of the upright woman. It was a tempestuous day of early autumn. It not only rained, it poured! It not only blew, but it tore, howled, twisted, cavorted! The woman had to go to town. At the eleventh hour the family umbrella was kidnaped by a demon. (When the prince of evil has nothing else to do he sends out his imps to hide umbrellas, handkerchiefs, thimbles, scissors, and other domestic essentials.) The woman had no time to track the umbrella to its lair, so she pinned a newspaper over her bonnet and leaped for the train. Arrived in town she bought a 50 cent umbrella from a man who was peddling them on the street corner, and from that moment we date her downfall. The umbrella proved to be fashioned of gum arabic and cobweb. It leaked, it exuded, it faded away like a frost-flake in her hands, so that ere half an hour had passed she gave it to a newsboy, and laughed to see him kick it into an alley. Then she took off her plumed hat and pinned it underneath her cloak, wrapped a lace scarf about her head and proceeded on her way. Remarking the pleased expression on the faces of all she met, she wondered at it, with an Indian outbreak so imminent. Small boys danced by her in the rain to the sound of their own bright laughter; strong men seemed overcome as she drew near, and even the stern policemen at the street crossings turned aside to hide a 9�14 smile. The woman lunched at a popular restaurant in the midst of a mysterious carnival of glee, and finally took the train for home and, leaving the city limits, skirted the northern shores of the lake to the sound of muffled mirth. Reaching home and looking into the mirror she was confronted by a countenance that bore all the seeming "of a demon that is dreaming." The sea-green warp of cotton in the gum-arabic umbrella had melted and run in long lines over brow and nose and chin. For one moment the woman gazed at her frescoed charm, and as to what follows we will drop the curtain. Suffice it to say, she fell, and the shocked echoes of that little home put cotton in their ears and fainted into lonely space at being called upon to repeat the strong language that rent the air. Who shall blame the woman if she said "darn" with an emphasis that might have made a pirate wan with envy? Who shall cast the first stone at her until the day dawns that releases my sex from the thralldom of its bondage to those demons who walk abroad and plot her downfall in rainy weather? * * * * * Wear this bead upon your heart, girls; have nothing whatever to do with so-called "fascinating" or "magnetic" men. Put no faith in mystery when it comes to a question of the man you think you love. Rapt glances and tender sighs that lead to nothing in the way of an honest declaration are as despoiling to your womanhood as the breath of a furnace is to a flower. There is no mystery in genuine love, and there is no counterfeiting it, either. It is open-faced, ready-tongued and clear-eyed. It is a virtue for heroes, not a platitude in the mouth of fools. It is undefiled and set apart, like the snow on high hills. Allow no man to make you a party to anything clandestine. A man who is afraid to meet you at your own home, and appoints a tryst in the park, or a down-town restaurant, is as much of a menace to your happiness as a pestilence would be to your health. Remember, in all your experience with so-called love, that the fewer adventures a young woman has, the fewer flirtations and the fewer "affairs," the more glad she will be, by and by, when she is a good man's wife and a brave boy's or sweet girl's mother. A gown oft handled, you know, is seldom white, and each romance you weave with idle fellows who roll their eyes and talk love, but never show you the respect to offer you their hand in honest marriage--these fascinating "Rochesters" and wicked "St. Elmos," already married, or steeped to the lips in evil-doing--deprive you of your whiteness and your bloom. * * * * * Do you ever get discouraged and feel like saying: "Oh, it's no use! I want to amount to something! I have it in me to do great and grand things, but the circumstances of poverty are against me. I can be nothing but a drudge and the sooner I get over dreaming of anything higher, the better!" Of course you have just such times of thinking and talking, but did you ever comfort yourself with the thought that though all these things you can not be, you are, really, in the sight of God? A diamond is no less a diamond because it has been mislaid, and passed off through ignorance as common glass. A tulip seed is no less the sheath of a flower because through mistake somebody has labeled it as common timothy. A silk fabric is no less the product of the mulberry-feeding worm because somebody has wrapped it in a brown paper parcel and valued it as domestic jeans. What you are, you are, and there is no power on earth can gainsay it. Other folks may ignore it in you; half the world, nay all the world, may fail to see it, but if nobility, and strength, and sweetness are there you are worth just that much to God! Blessed thought, isn't it, you poor, overworked clerk, with your brain always in a muddle with the dry details of a business you hate! Blessed thought, isn't it, you dear, tired woman with more burdens to carry than a maple tree has leaves! No matter how impossible it may be for you to live out what is in you, that something true and grand and beautiful is deathless and shall have its chance of development by and by. I shall never again meet the pretty maid with the larkspur eyes and the corn silk hair who traveled with us a part of the way, but wherever she goes, joy go with her! She was so modest and unspoiled and sweet, I declare the sight of such a girl in this day of dancers and high-steppers is like the sound of "Annie Laurie" between the carousals of a break-down jig, or the taste of a wild strawberry after pepper tea. God bless the old-fashioned girl with her helpful ways, her arch face and her blithe and hearty laugh. May her type never vanish from the face of the earth, and may the mold after which her soul was fashioned never get mislaid and lost in the heavenly work-shop. * * * * * I think I shall be a little sorry when the commanding officer sends out the word to break camp and leave this dear old earth forever. For I love this world. I never walk out in the morning when all its radiant colors are newly washed with dew, or at splendid noon, when, like an untired racer the sun has flashed around his mid-day course, or at evening, when a fringe of shadow, like the lash of a weary eye, droops over mountain and valley and sea, or in the majestic pomp of night when stars swarm together like bees and the moon clears its way through the golden fields as a sickle through the ripened wheat, that I do not hug myself for very joy that I am yet alive. The cruel grave has not got me! Those jaws of darkness have not swallowed me up from the sweet light of mortal day! What matter if I am poor and unsheltered and costumeless? Thank God, I am yet alive! People who tire of this world before they are seventy and pretend that they are ready to leave it are either crazy or stuck full of bodily ailments as a cushion is of pins. The happy, the warm-blooded, the sunny-natured and the loving cling to life as petals cling to the calyx of a budding rose. By and by when the rose is over-ripe, or when the frosts come and the November winds are trumpeting through all the leafless spaces of the woods, will be the time to die. It is no time now, while there is a dark space left on earth that love can brighten, while there is a human lot to be alleviated by a smile, or a burden to be lifted with a sympathizing tear. It will be time to die when you are too old or too sick to be a comfort in the world, but if God has given you a warm heart and a ready hand, look about you and be glad He lets you live. Yesterday I was passing through the street and I saw a woman stoop down and pick up a faded lilac from the middle of a crossing and transfer it to a corner where it would not be trampled under foot. The world wants such people alive in it, not buried under its green sods. The heart that is not unmindful of a crushed flower will be a royal hand in the ministrations of life. May the day tarry long on its way that lays in the grave such helpful, tender hands that seek to do good. * * * * * The good book says, "Love thy neighbor as thyself," but it don't say, Tell thy neighbor all thy secrets. We can love one another without establishing an unsafe intimacy. In an age when so little remains set apart and sacred, keep the treasury of your inmost heart intact. It is a hard thing to believe that in every present friend is hidden a possible future enemy, but it is safer to shape the conduct of our life upon that belief than to live to see our inmost thoughts and the sanctities of one's heart of hearts hawked about like green peas in a street vender's basket by a spiteful and treacherous enemy. The safest course to pursue in a world so full of unfaith and desertions is to be friendly and sweet and helpful to all, but communicative and confiding to none. * * * * * Once when I was a child, with two long yellow braids down my back, and a very great capacity for happiness in my heart, I lived in a remote country with an aunt who didn't believe in any one having too good a time here on earth. She thought they would appreciate the new Jerusalem all the more, perhaps, for having a dismal experience here (there are lots like her, too, in the world to-day). Well, once afterward when I came home from school (and, ah! as I write how I can see the old road where I walked, winding its way under silver birches by the side of a trout-brook), somebody came out of the house and beckoned wildly, madly for me to hurry up. It was my little cousin, and she looked as though she had just skipped out of heaven! Her cheeks were all aglow and her eyes were shining like stars. "Oh, come! Come quick!" she shouted. "There's something in the parlor." I made haste to enter, and there before me sat a doll, the biggest and most splendid it had ever entered my young heart to imagine. It was dressed in pink tarletan, and had a pair of jeweled earrings in its exceedingly life-like ears. At once I became embarrassed. Self-consciousness sprang into full being. I was painfully aware that my own dress and general appearance suffered by contrast with the doll. Nor have I ever since experienced a keener sensation of embarrassment than overcame me as I faced that gaudy image in wax. My aunt's sarcastic remark, "No wonder that child's mother can't lay up a cent for a rainy day when she throws away her dollars on a doll like that!" gave me the sad impression that my darling mother was a spendthrift, something after the pattern of the prodigal son. From the first moment the doll was a source of disappointment and sorrow to me. I never could play with it with any comfort because I was afraid of soiling its splendid clothes, losing its earrings, or feeling myself and my calico and homespun abashed by its superior attire. That doll did me no good, and just what it did for me its costly and extravagantly dressed sisterhood is doing for hundreds of little girls to-day. Too fine to be played with, rigged out in all its paraphernalia of empty headed flesh and blood women, with powder, puff and bustles, real jewelry and costly lingerie, the modern doll is a demoralizer, a torment. * * * * * Protracted broiling is, I think, on the whole, more wearing to the sensibilities than sudden conflagration. A lightning stroke is soon over, but who shall deliver us from the torments of dog-days? A bull of Bashan encountered in a ten-acre lot may be outrun, but who shall escape from a cloud of mosquitoes on a windless night? Give me any day a life to live with a tempestuous, gusty sort of person, and I can endure it, but deliver me from existence with one who bottles up his thunder and looks like a storm that never breaks. A hearty shower, beating down the flowers to call them up again in fresher beauty, brightening the hills and swelling the brooks, treading with musical footfall the dusty streets, and lashing the violet-tinted lake into a foam-flecked sea, veining the hot air with sudden fire, and calling out a thousand echoes to answer the thunder's call, is it not far better than lowering skies that look rain and won't yield it, dragging, sultry days of neither sunshine nor storm? * * * * * LINES TO MY LOVE. When the salt has left the ocean, And the moon forgets the sea, When with gay and festive motion Ox shall waltz with bee, When we wash our face in cinders, And bake our meat on ice, When tender mercy hinders The cat from eating the mice, When gray heads grace young shoulders And icicles form in June, When Quakers all turn soldiers, And bull frogs sing in tune, Then, and not till then, my treasure, My darling, tender and true, My heart shall claim the leisure To think no more of you. * * * * * The other morning, lured by the splendor of a golden day, I started to walk to town, a distance of twenty-four miles. But after the tenth mile the truth was so forcibly and increasingly borne in upon me that "all flesh is grass," and that the strength of a man (or woman either) "lieth not in his heels," that I postponed the finish until another day. But who shall take from me the glory of the start? Shall anybody forget that a sunrise was fair and full of promise because the noon was clouded and the evening declined into rain? Although my twenty-five-mile walk ended at the tenth in a rocking-chair, yet those ten miles were beautiful and full of glory. "It will certainly kill you!" wailed the martyr as I bade her good-bye. "Oh, will it kill her?" echoed the poor little Captain, and lifted up her voice in lamentation as I vanished from her sight and struck for the bluff road. The morning was so beautiful that I could imagine the world nothing but a big bunch of tulips standing within a crystal vase in the sun. The maples glistened like gold, and were flecked with ruby drops that burned and glowed like spilled wine. The oaks were russet brown and dusky purple, cleft here and there with vivid green, like glimpses of a windy sea through shadowed hills. The leaves that had fallen to the earth were musical underneath the foot, and gave forth a faint fragrance that made the air as sweet as any bakeshop. The odor of fallen leaves and wood shrubs sinking into decay is not like any other fragrance so much as the scent of well-baked bread, browned and finished in summer's ruddy heat. The lake--but what can I say to fitly describe that translucent sapphire, over which a mist hung like a gossamer web above a blue-bell, or the haze of slumber upon a drowsy eye? As I stood upon the bluff, before the road struck landward through the woods, I could but extend my arm to the glorious expanse of waters and bless the Lord with all my soul for so lovely a place to tarry in between times. If this world is only a stopping-place, a country through which we march to heaven, as Sherman marched overland to the sea, then thank God for so glorious a prelude to eternity; and what shall the after harmonies be when the broken sounds of idly-touched flutes and harps are so divine? After leaving Ravinia I proceeded to get lost in the woods. A very small boy and a very large dog were standing by a fence. "Does that dog bite?" I asked. "Yes'm," promptly replied the sweet and candid child. So I climbed a fence and struck for the timber. I soon found that all knowledge of the points of the compass had failed me. "If I am going east," I mused, "I shall soon strike the lake; if west, the track; south will eventually bring me to the Chicago River; but a northerly direction will restore me to the sleuth-hound. I will say my prayers and endeavor to keep to the south." The way grew denser. My hat gave me some trouble, as it insisted upon hanging itself to every tree in the wilderness. The twigs twitched the hair-pins from my hair and poked themselves into my eyes. A few corpulent bugs toyed with my ankles and a large caterpillar passed the blockade of my collar-button and basked in the warmth of my neck. I nearly stepped on a snake and was confronted by a toad that froze me with a glance of its basilisk eye. So I changed my course and suddenly entered a little woodland graveyard--a handful of neglected mounds of earth and silence. No tombstones marked the graves. A rudely-constructed cross of wood, gray with lichens, alone told of consecrated ground. There, away off from the road in the silence of the woods, a few tired hearts were taking their rest. Silently I stood a moment, then stole away and left the place to its hush of lonely peace. What right had I, with my frets and feathers, my twig-punctured eye-balls and my toad-perturbed nerves, to bring an unquiet presence within this abode of silence and of rest? I sat down on a fence-rail a moment while, like Miss Riderhood, I deftly twisted up my back hair and mused briefly. When the time comes, oh, intensely alive and happy Amber, for your feet to halt in the march, ask to be buried in the woods, where your grave will be forgotten and the constant years with falling leaves and driving snows may have a good chance to obliterate the earthly record of your misspent years. "Sooner or later the shadows shall creep Over my rest in the woods so deep; Sooner or later--" But enough of this, my dear. I did not intend to incorporate a whole cemetery, an obituary discourse, and "lines to the departed" in my "Glints." After leaving the little graveyard I allowed my instincts to carry me in a new direction, and soon a rustling among the dead leaves, and the sound of hushed breathing, convinced me that I was approaching a living presence. I felt for my revolver. It was there, but unloaded. (I would sooner walk arm in arm with death than carry loaded firearms.) I advanced bravely and became speedily aware of a score or so of large and startled eyes, all fixed upon me. A half-score of woolly heads were lifted, and a flock of sheep stood ready to take instant flight if I showed sign of battle. "My dear young friends," said I, "it is a relief to meet you, and I give you good morrow. I fully expected to encounter a band of cutthroat tramps who should toss pennies for my heart's blood. The blessings of a rescued woman rest upon your crinkly coats, my beauties." A half-hour's walk through the woods brought me to a clearing where a flock of bluebirds were holding council together among the falling leaves. They seemed inclined to start southward, but tarried for one last frolic. How beautiful they were as they flitted in and out among the golden underbrush no eye but mine shall ever know. Bluebirds have always been associated with thoughts of spring and apple-blossoms heretofore. I could hardly believe my senses to find them here amid the late and falling leaves. For a while I loitered in their midst and wished for a fairy to change me into one of their winged company, that I might forget care and find no need of revolvers; but time, as sternly announced by my exquisite Waterbury, admitted of no delay, so I hied me onward. At this point in my walk I approached a broken gate and a stretch of shockingly muddy road. The vanity of confidence in any strength that emanates alone from the "heels of a man" was by this time beginning to make itself felt. I longed to sit down in the miry way and go to sleep. A child could have played with me despite my revolver, and a day-old lamb have gained the victory in a personal encounter. At this moment, while I lingered, picking my way daintily from tuft to tuft of the swamp, I was confronted by a tall, gaunt woman. Of course you don't believe this; it reads too much like a dime novel. You think I am painting my picture in lurid tints for public exhibition, but in spite of your incredulity I repeat that I was confronted by a tall, gaunt woman, who appeared as suddenly as though invoked by an evil spell from the mud. The woman was shabbily dressed and wore an old-fashioned scoop bonnet. She had a bundle on her arm, and was dragging by the hair of the head, as it were, an indescribable umbrella. My voice sank out of sight, like a stone in the sea, and my feet grew too heavy to lift. I stared in silence. "Is your name Maria Hopkins?" asked the woman. "Indeed it is," I replied, prepared to get down on my knees and swear to the truth of what I said, if need be. "I thought so," said my companion; "let us pray." But I didn't stop for prayers. Convinced that my time had come, and that I was in the presence of a lunatic, I fell over the fence and ran. When I was out of breath I looked over my shoulder, but the woman was nowhere in sight. To pursue my walk seemed unnecessary, especially as I was nearing the house of a friend, so summoning what strength was left me I toddled onward, completing my tenth mile in five hours from the starting. After my sympathizing friend had emptied her camphor bottle upon me I asked her if she knew a party of the name of Hopkins anywhere in town, and if there was any resemblance between such a person and myself. I saw she thought I was delirious, and no explanation has ever dispelled that belief. Some day I shall complete the walk and write up the finish. * * * * * Said some one to me the other day: "Amber, you have lots of good friends among the girls." "Good," said I; "then I am all right." Anybody who gains the friendly approval of the right sort of girls has a passport right through to glory! I mean it. There is nothing on earth I love better than a good, sweet girl. I would rather watch a crowd of them any day than all the pictures Fra Angelica ever painted of saints in paradise. But there are girls and girls. There is as much difference between them as there is between griddle cakes made with yeast and griddle cakes in which the careless cook forgot to put the leaven. Shall I tell you the kind of girl I especially adore? Well, first of all, let us take the working girl. She is not a "lady" in the acceptance of the term by this latter day's hybrid democracy. She is just a blithe, cheery, sweet-tempered young woman. She may have a father rich enough to support her at home, but for all that she is a working girl. She is never idle. She is studying or sewing or helping about the home part of the day. She is romping or playing or swinging out of doors the other part. She is never frowsy nor untidy nor lazy. She is never rude nor slangy nor bold. And yet she is always full of fun and ready for frolic. She does not depend upon a servant to do what she can do for herself. She is considerate to all who serve her. She is reverent to the old and thoughtful of the feeble. She never criticises when criticism can wound, and she is ready with a helpful, loving word for every one. Sometimes she has no father, or her parents are too poor to support her. Then she goes out and earns her living by whatever her hands find to do. She clerks in a store, or she counts out change at a cashier's desk, or she teaches school, or she clicks a typewriter, or rather a telegrapher's key, but always and everywhere she is modest and willing and sweet, provided she doesn't get that meddlesome little "bee" of "lady"-hood in her bonnet. If she tries to be a lady at the expense of all that is honest and frank in her nature, she is like a black baby crying for a black kitten in the dark--you can't tell what she is exactly, but you know she is mighty disagreeable. She has too much dignity to be imposed upon, or put to open affront, but she has humility also, and purity that differs from prudishness as a dove in the air differs from a stuffed bird in a showcase. She is quick to apologize when she knows she is in the wrong, yet no young queen ever carried a higher head than she can upon justifiable occasions. She is not always imagining herself looked down upon because she is poor. She knows full well that out of her own heart and mouth proceed the only witnesses that can absolve or condemn her. If she eats peanuts in public places, and talks loud, and flirts with strange boys, and chews gum or displays a toothpick she is common, even though she wore a four-foot placard emblazoned with the misnomer, "lady." If she is quick to be courteous, unselfish, gentle and retiring in speech and manner in public places, she is true gold, even though her dress be faded and her bonnet be old. You cannot mistake any girl any more than you can mistake the sunshine that follows the rain or the lark that springs from the hawthorn hedge. All things that are blooming and sweet attend her! The earth is better for her passing through it and heaven will be fairer for her habitation therein. God bless her! * * * * * Some day I am going gunning. In a reform dress suit, with the right to vote in my pocket, and a shotgun delicately poised upon my enfranchised shoulder, I shall start forth on my "safety" and proceed to lay low for a few victims. The first to perforate with my murderous bullet shall be the fiend in human guise who toys with my "copy" from time to time and makes me spell whether without an "h," or so distorts the sense of what I write that my best friends wouldn't know me from Martin Tupper. I shall show no mercy to him. I shall continue to shoot until he is perforated like a yard of mosquito netting, and I shall leave a little note pinned to the lapel of his coat saying that I have more bullets left for his "successor in trust." If there is one thing that has survived the buffetings of a harsh and somewhat disconcerting bout with fate it is the knowledge that I know how to spell. But even of this the fiend in question would deprive me. He has brought his fate upon himself and will excuse me if I remark that I thirst for his gore. * * * * * Dominated by that superfluous energy which has, so far, rendered my earthly career cyclonic, I called together a confiding band during the height of the recent snow carnival for the purpose of a sleigh ride. The opening up of that sleigh ride was propitious. The caravan moved due north, bound for a destination that shall be nameless. We tried to look upon the attention we attracted as a public ovation, but it was far more suggestive of the way they used to accompany outlaws beyond the limits of a mining town, or of the children of Israel chased by Pharaoh's mocking hosts. It was cold. Our noses, in the light of a wan old moon, looked like doorknobs. Our ears cracked to the lightest touch, like harp strings in the wind. Patient, long-suffering "doctor!" Shall I ever forget how, turning to him when the carnival of sport was at its height, I murmured: "Are you enjoying yourself, dear?" And he replied, with ghastly sarcasm: "Tumultuously, my love!" So might an arctic frigate, ice-bound, have hailed a polar bear. Suddenly, when all seemed progressing serenely, we came to a standstill, something like what might be expected from a runaway horse checked by the newly patented electric button. What was the matter? Bare ground. Now, under ordinary circumstances, the term "bare ground" is not synonymous of disaster. But if ever in the dispensation of providence it falls to your lot to be one of a band of sleigh-riding imbeciles then shall those two words be to you what snags in the channel are to seaward-hastening keels. The driver shouted and became distinctly profane. "Would you please get out and walk over this bad place?" said he. With such speed as our petrified members would allow we all got out, and the women sat on a wayside fence, while the men "heaved to" and dragged the chariot over about a mile and a quarter of bare ground. "Shall we make for the nearest line of street cars?" asked one of the party, whose well-known position as Sunday-school superintendent kept him in a state of abnormal calm. "What will become of the sleigh and the poor, tired horses?" asked that one of the party directly responsible for this mad jubilee. "Oh, you women can lead the horses while we men carry the old band wagon on our shoulders back to shelter." "It is no time for jokes," cried one, "I am going home," and we all followed suit, to vow later, in the shelter of our happy homes, that our future attempts at sleigh riding should be confined to wheels and the time of roses. * * * * * I think I would rather lose this serviceable old right hand of mine than have it write a word that could be construed into defense or encouragement of loud and blatant women. The over-dressed and slangy sisterhood who parade in public places and storm the land these latter days will meet with nothing from Amber and her pen but wholesale denunciation while the lamp of an insignificant life holds out to burn. I hate them as a Quaker hates gunpowder, and I am more than half inclined to believe that the total extermination of the stock would be one of the supremest blessings that could be vouchsafed to man. The tendencies toward boldness and effrontery which characterize the present day, the unabashed speech and action and the manifest lack of old-fashioned courtesy and the reserve that springs from gentle breeding are evils that grow rather than diminish. A gentlewoman, a pure, correct and lovely gentlewoman, occupies a loftier place than any throne, and wields an influence more potent than the swing of a jeweled scepter. Yet it is never by vulgar assumption that she enters into her kingdom. The parrot is not a bird we prize, although its plumage is resplendent with green and purple and gold. In the proud breast of the homely and unpretentious thrush is hidden the heavenly song. Wherever gentle forbearance is found, wherever patience and tenderness and love idealize and sweeten life, there you will find woman as heaven meant she should be--the crowned queen of hearth and home. And in saying all this I do not wish to be understood as advancing the idea that a woman has no wider scope than home, or that she must be all sugar, without any spice. Next to the loud and bold-mannered woman as a specimen to be detested I would put the meek Griselda, with less spirit than a boneless herring and less sparkle than tepid tea. There is no charm left to femininity when you add idiocy to a pretty woman's make-up. A fool may be very docile, but a fool is not good company. Of the two, perhaps, if a man were forced to choose a comrade to share a life that was to be cast on a South Sea island, he would do better to take the "loud" type. Either would drive him to the "cups," if such relief were to be found upon an island of the sea. But who would not rather go to wreck in a storm than founder in becalmed waters? Or, to bring it nearer home, who would not rather be drowned away out in the middle of Lake Michigan in a howling gale than in a gentle 7�9 cistern? If circumstances call a woman out into the thickest of the old bread-and-butter fight that has been waging ever since Eve ran afoul of the apple, it is to her credit if she rolls up her sleeves and goes into the thickest of the scrimmage and holds her own with the pluckiest of them all. It is no disgrace to her to be quick to seize an opportunity and shrewd to find a point of vantage. Let her rank with the men, and make ever so fine a name for herself in whatever business vocation she chooses to make her own, it will not detract one whit from her womanliness, provided she keep herself unsullied of soul and tender of heart. The moment she lends herself to practices that lead men to forget to touch their hats when she passes by she becomes unsexed, and a sexless woman is worse than a pestilence, a cyclone and a strike condensed into one vast calamity. No sensible man will think any less of a woman if she has spirit enough to get downright mad at injustice, insult or iniquity. I don't know, though, why we women should always get together and compare notes as to what course of conduct will best please the men. They don't lie awake nights to conform their behavior to ways and manners that shall please us; but, even putting our argument on the basis of what shall win approval from men, I repeat that I don't believe that there are many of them who would object to a woman knowing how to use a pistol or to her carrying one in case of an unprotected walk, or a night spent in an unguarded home. There would be fewer tales to tell of assaults and woful disappearances of young women if all our girls were versed in the ethics of the revolver. Ah, my dear, you can never get a more adorable portrait of a woman to hang upon the walls of glorified fancy than the pen-portrait drawn by the master hand of Robert Browning when he wrote of beautiful Evelyn Hope: "God made her of spirit, fire and dew." There is the swiftest and most splendid stroke of the artist's brush ever given to literature. And yet half the world would substitute "putty" for "spirit," "feathers" for "fire" and "dough" for "dew." * * * * * The only way to rid the world of bubble-marriages--marriages that turn out emptiness with one drop of water as the residuum, and that drop a tear--is to educate our girls and boys to something higher than playing with pipes and soapy water. Give them something more earnest to do, and see that they do it. Compel men and women to choose their life companions with at least a tithe of the solemnity they bring to the selection of a carriage horse or a ribbon. Legislate laws against early marriages. "I can't tolerate children," said a little idiot to me the other day, "but I adore dogs!" And yet that girl had an engagement ring on her finger. There should be a special seclusion for such girls until they develop some instinct of womanliness, and they should no more be allowed to marry than a Choctaw chief should be allowed to take charge of a kindergarten. You nor I can hope to turn a bubble into substance after it is once blown. * * * * * Last week I moved. At least I tried to, but I haven't fully accomplished the feat yet. If it costs one woman a desk and an umbrella, the pangs of a seven-horse torment to move one block, what must it cost a family of fourteen to move seven wagonloads a mile? There is a problem that will keep you awake nights. When they said to me: "Oh, it will be nothing for you to move!" When they pointed with derision at my few belongings I said to myself: "All right; perhaps it will be easier than my fears." So I packed up my penknife, my mucilage pot, my paper cutter, my eleven dozen pencils and my assortment of stub pens, my violet ink, my clock, pictures, calendars, Japanese fans, scraps of poetry, magazines, books, lemons, buttercups, blotting pads, and sundry trifles it were waste of time to enumerate, and sallied forth to find a son of wrath to transport them to new quarters. "How much will you charge to move two articles of furniture one block?" I asked a guileless Scandinavian teamster. "Three dollars," replied he with touching promptitude. I passed him by, and after two days' search found a down-trodden African who said he would undertake the job for $1.50. I wish you could have seen the look in the darky's face when he tried to lift the desk. "Gor-a-mighty, Missus, what's in that ar desk?" cried he. I had to unpack every blessed article but the penknife and a postage stamp before he would move the thing, and all the long day I trotted back and forth with market baskets full of the original contents of that desk. When at last I had them moved I couldn't find anything. I wanted my pencils, but haven't seen 'em yet. The paperweight had smashed the ink bottle, and the mucilage had formed a glassy pool in which my buttercups were anchored like islands. The frizzes and hairpins and other little what-nots that I kept in the right hand drawer had dabbled themselves in the ink and mucilage and fused themselves into one indistinguishable horror. I haven't been able to find one thing that I wanted since I moved but a toothpick, and that don't look exactly natural. The overshoes, and gossamer, and jersey waists, soap and chamois skins that I secreted in the left hand drawer haven't been seen since they left in the market basket under convoy of the Ethiopian. He has probably opened a costumer's shop on Halsted street with them. When I move again I shall carry my pencils behind my ear and my penknife between my teeth. I'll never be found a second time stringing my beads with a toothpick and relying for time upon a clock with the hour hand missing. When next I move may it be straight through to glory, where the lease is long and the landlord never sublets. * * * * * Let anybody in this world really undertake to thoroughly do his duty; to do it in the face of opposition, prejudice and the meddling interference of fools, and he becomes a target set upon a hill for the convenient aim of popular scorn. It is harder for a man to be true to a principle than it is to face a gun. If an employe in the daily discharge of duty aims to be prompt, faithful and fearless he is boycotted by his associates in almost as conspicuous a way as was poor little David Copperfield with the pasteboard motto on his back. We all of us have known in early life the "pet scholar" of the school, the dear little virtuous prig who never did anything out of the way, who never played a prank or accomplished anything but a pattern pose. Small wonder that we hated him! Good behavior, which has for its aim merely the disconcerting of others and the aggrandizement of one's self, is snobbery and should be loathed as such. But there is a courage of over-conviction which leads a man to hold himself honest among thieves, pure among libertines and faithful among time-servers and strikers. It was such a spirit as this that made dear little "Tom," at "Rugby," loyal to his mother's teachings, and led him to kneel amid a crowd of jeering boys to say the prayers she taught him. It is such a spirit as this that holds a man or woman true to the sense of justice in an unjust world, and keeps them undaunted in the midst of enemies, who hate them for doing their duty and caring as much for the work as they do for the wages that work commands. The man who can hold himself beyond the reach of bribery, uncorrupted in corruptible times, and sure to keep his colors flying, with never a chance to trail them in the dust for politic purposes, is a greater hero than many a blue-coat who marches to battle. Give us a few more such heroes, oh, good and merciful dispenser of destinies, and sweep off the track a hundred thousand or so of the eye-servants, time-servers and money-graspers who keep the profitable places of the world's giving away from honest men and faithful women. * * * * * A BOBOLINK'S SONG. The earth was awake, and like a gay rover, His knapsack of sunshine loose strapped on his back, Through mists, and through dews, and through fine purple clover Was faring his way down the summer's green track. I sat all alone 'neath the shade of a willow, And saw the old earth blithely jogging along, While over the fields, like the foam on a billow, The morning was breaking in blossom and song. O, list! and, O, hear! like the wing of a swallow, Updarting from fields that are golden with corn; With the ring and the swing of a huntsman's "view hallo," Some fairy is winding his sweet elfin horn. Now up like a flame, and now down like a shower; Now here and now there in its sparkle and gloom; It rings and it swings like a bell in a tower, Wide casting its notes as a wind-flower its bloom. 'Tis a bobolink singing among the sweet clover; A bobolink whimsical, happy and free, And its voice like new wine makes earth, the old rover, Half tipsy with jollity, clean daft with his glee. * * * * * It fell to my lot the other day to witness a scene that I shall not soon forget. Death has myriad ways of coming to the sons and daughters of men, and it chanced that death had drawn near to a certain dear woman in a way that well might blanch the cheek of the bravest hero. As surely condemned to die as is the murderer when he hears the judge's sentence, with absolute hopelessness of any cure, and with the certainty of no more than a brief span of weeks wherein to live, this brave woman faced her doom with all the condemned man's certainty, and yet without his shame. Grown old in a life of peculiar usefulness, with not a single abated enthusiasm and with a heart as keenly attuned to nature's as is the flute to the master's touch, this dear old heroine calmly renounced the world she had so loved and turned her face direct to "headquarters," with no friend to interfere between herself and God. For one bitter hour, perhaps, she wept and watched alone in her Gethsemane, then turned about to await the chariot wheels of her deliverance with a heart as glad and a faith as warm and bright as a little child's who waits in the shadow the coming of a loving father to lead her home. Taken to the hospital to die, knowing that those doors swung for her last entrance within any earthly home, fully realizing that from beneath that roof her soul should ascend to its home beyond the stars, bidding good-bye forever to the sunset skies and the rural walks that she had so loved, to all the bright company of wild flowers she had known by name, to the pomp of seasons and the communion of happy homes, she took up her abode in the ward of the incurables. Every day she sits in the sunshine and reads her books or indites letters to her friends. Every day she struggles with devastating pain, and every day she grows a little thinner and a little weaker in the body, while her soul springs heavenward like a white flower from the dust, which no earthly blight can reach. As I sat by her side the other morning and held her wasted hand in mine it seemed the most natural thing in the world to send a message by this sweet soul to the unseen land, and we almost forgot the pain of parting in the bright anticipation of the many who would throng to meet the gray-headed voyager when at last her sail should beat across the blue waters into the heavenly harbor. And as we talked there came a message that a very old friend had called to see the sufferer; one who had been the closest comrade of her brilliant youth and the companion of her maturer years. Slowly the guest entered the shrine wherein a soul awaited the sacrament of death, silently she stretched out her arms and gathered that wasted frame within their close embrace. As a mother comforts the baby at her breast, so they comforted one another with tender words. The years of their life fell away from them as petals from a rose which the wind lightly rocks, and they were girls again. "Oh, my dear child, how sweet, how brave, how grand you are!" said the guest. "My precious girl, my poor, dear one, how can I bear to see you here!" she cried again and yet again, while her tears fell like rain, and the turmoil of her sobs rent her very inmost heart. I shall live long before I see so touching a sight again. In the presence of a love so perfect and so true I felt to be almost an interloper and an alien, so I quietly stole away and left these two old women, bowed with the weight of many years, sustaining and sustained by the trust that the portals of the tomb, within whose shadows they stood, were but the gates that usher the soul into the full affluence of life and love. * * * * * It is almost impossible to get the average young person past the florist's window nowadays. She has a way of clasping her hands and pursing her lips over the roses that would make the average young man shed his last dollar, as the almond tree shakes its blossoms. I am always sorry for a poor young man in love with a pretty girl. He longs to buy the world for her and she longs quite as ardently to receive it as a gift, and so he is hurrying along his bankrupt career until matrimony or estrangement checks him. Have you not a pitying remembrance in your own heart of a certain youth of the long ago who deluged your house with roses, confectionery and novels until his salary was wildly wasted in the unequal contests? Girls, be a little less receptive, as it were; be just a bit more thoughtful and delicate in your orders at the restaurant and your selection from the florist's window, and I think your matrimonial chances will be the better for it. How often have I seen a young woman order a costly dinner when some young man whom she well knew to be the recipient of a small salary was to foot the bill, yet when ordering for herself I am told she never goes higher than beans and bread and butter. Now, girls, don't think Amber is an everlasting old grandmother! Not a bit of it, but she has tossed about the world so much and heard so many "little birds" telling their secrets that she has taken unto herself quite a pack of knowledge of the ways and manners of mankind. I positively adore a young girl, and always have, and, what is more, expect I always shall. But admiring and loving them as I do, from the tip of their bangs to the click of their boot heels, I cannot bear to see them do unlovely things. I want to see them helpful, lovable, sweet. I want to see them slow to wound another's feelings, and quick as sunshine after rain with tender smiles and womanly ways. I want to see them brave, yet gentle; gay, yet kind; fun-loving, yet never loud and rude. I want to hear the young men in speaking of them speak of something besides their extravagance and their greed. I want the very air to be the sweeter for their passing, as when one carries roses through a room their fragrance lingers. And what shall make you sweet, dear girls? Not fashionable gowns and dainty clothing; not beauty nor grace nor wealth so much as womanliness and unselfish thought for others. * * * * * The woman who can wear an arctic overshoe over a No. 5 shoe and make no moan ought to have been born a Joan of Arc or a Charlotte Corday. She is made of the "dust" that heroines have a corner on. At one time in my life I owned a dog--a guileless pup--whose darling aim on earth was to drag my colossal arctics before admiring gentlemen callers and lay them by the fireside, where they overshadowed the big base-burner with their bulk. I was rid of the dog long before I was rid of the feeling that it was a disgrace for a woman to wear the feet God gave her. The most colossal overshoe is neither so big nor so objectionable as an early grave, and that is just what lies before some of you girls if you don't quit wearing French heels and going about in damp and chilly weather without protection for your feet. Burn up the high-heeled slippers, then, with their atrocious shape; cultivate health and common-sense rather than the empty flattery of a world that cares nothing for you. So shall you be as beautiful as houris, as healthy as Hebes, as long lived as Sarahs and as light-footed as the shadow that dances to a wind-blown Columbine. * * * * * A graveyard never saddens me. It seems nothing more than one of the flies behind the scenes when the actors have gone on in front. What matters the room where we doff our toggery when we are once out of it? So, not long since, when in rambling about one of the Apostle Islands, away up in Lake Superior country, I ran across a sunshiny little graveyard, and I was glad to loiter about for an hour and read the inscriptions on the age-worn stones. It was a blue day--blue in the sky above and blue in the haze on the hills, blue in the sparkling waters of the lake and bluer yet in the far distance that marked a score of miles from shore. Before the gateway of the graveyard a clump of golden rod stood, like an angel barring the way with a sword of light. A tangle of luxuriant vines had curtained most of the graves from sight A few, more carefully tended than the rest, stood bravely out from behind fences of ornamental woodwork, but most of them were sheltered and peaceful within their neglected bowers of green. When my time comes to lie down in my narrow home, I pray you, kind gentlefolks, grant me the seclusion of an unremembered grave rather than the accentuated desolation of a painted fence and a padlocked gate. There is rest in neglect, and nature, if left alone, will never allow a grave to grow unsightly. She folds it away in added coverings of mossy green from year to year as a mother when the nights are long will tuck her sleeping children under soft, warm blankets. She appoints her choristers from the leafy belfry of the woods to keep the chimes ringing when the days are long and slow and sweet, and lights her tapers nightly in the wavering shimmer of the stars. In a secluded corner we found a handbreadth space where a baby was laid to rest many a year ago. No chronicle of the little life remains, and yet a stranger stands beside its grave and drops a tear. I don't know why, I'm sure, for why should we cry when a baby dies? So roses are picked before the frost finds them! Another stone was erected to a young bride who died at twenty. Looking about at the stoop-shouldered, care-lined and prematurely old women who toiled in those island homes, we could not feel very sorry for the young bride who died, perhaps, while life still held an illusion. With lingering step at last we left the graveyard, repassed the golden sentry at the gate and sought the little boat that awaited us on the beautiful bay. Long after other details of that pleasant outing are forgotten the memory of that blue day among the quiet graves on the island of the great lake shall linger like a song within our hearts. * * * * * "If I had two loaves of bread," said Mahomet, "I would sell one of them and buy white hyacinths, for they would feed my soul." I came across that delightful saying the other day, and I thought to myself: There is another one to be hunted up when I get over yonder! I shall have to make the acquaintance of a man, prophet or not, who gave utterance to such a sentiment as that. How many of us, poor earthworms that we are, would rather spend our dollar for white hyacinths than for a big supper? How many of us ever stop to think that there is something under the sleek rotundity of our girth that demands food quite as eagerly as our stomach does, and fails and faints and dies quite as surely without it? Take less of the food that goes to fatten the perishable part of you, and give more sustenance to that inner guest who, like a captive, sits and starves with long and cruel neglect. Buy fewer glasses of beer and more "white hyacinths." Smoke less tobacco and invest in a few sunsets and dawns. Let cheap shows alone and go hear music of the right sort. So shall your soul lift up its drooping head and grow less and less to resemble one of Pharaoh's lean kine. I adore a man or a woman who has enough sentiment to appreciate what dead and gone Mahomet said, and hereafter will make it a point to buy less bread and more hyacinths. * * * * * I wonder if, when we get to the other world, we shall not occasionally stroll into some sort of a celestial museum, where the relics of our foregone existence, its wasted days and misspent years, may stare back at us from glass cases where the angels have ticketed them and put them all neatly on exhibition! There will be necklaces of ill-spent moments, like the faded brilliants exhumed from old Pompeii, with lots of broken hopes and thwarted destinies. There will be odd little freaks and unreasoning caprices, like the "What is it?" and foolish deeds of daring to turn our pulses faint with the old-time terror. There will be those tendencies which kept us heavy-footed like the fat woman, and others that made us blind, although the world was full of light. There will be the disloyal deeds that made us a constant source of care and wonderment to the angels who watched us, and the cowardice that kept us in leading strings to conformity. There will be shelves full of the little white lies we have told, all labeled and dated, like pebbles from the Mediterranean or bits of shell from the sea. There will be fragments of blighted lives ruined by wagging tongues and shafts of tea table gossip. There will be the old-time masks wherein we masqueraded, and the flimsy veils of deceit behind which we hid our individuality. There will be the memories of little children we might have kept had we been wiser, and snatches of lullaby songs. There will be jars full of love glances and pots of preserved and honeyed kisses. There will be whole bales of mistakes, a Gobelin tapestry to drape the world, and stacks of dead and withered "might-have-beens." There will be peacock feathers of pride tied together with faded ribbons of regret, and whole cabinets full of closet skeletons and family contentions. There will be pedestals whereon shall stand the "white days" we can never forget, and panorama chambers wherein shall be unrolled the pictured scroll of our journey heavenward. In cunningly devised music boxes we shall hear again the melody of our youthful laughter and the patter of life's uncounted tears. I think the shelves of that celestial museum would yield some odd surprises to the most of us, like the finding of a bauble we counted worthless and threw away glittering in the diadem of a crown, or the prize we bartered honor for turned to worthless glitter and tinsel paste! * * * * * There is no use sitting here by this window any longer and trying to believe that life is worth living. If I looked for five minutes more at this November landscape I should shave my head and hie me to a Carmelite convent. Dame Nature has forgotten her housewifely duties and gone off to gossip with the good ladies who have charge of the other planets. Where but yesterday the late asters bloomed in long rows of splendor, and the chrysanthemums fringed the sunny borders with feathers of white and gold, the unsightly stalks grovel in the clayey mold, and the frost-nipped vines drop their dismantled tendrils in the chilly wind. Fragments of old china lurk in the discovered spaces underneath the denuded lilac bushes, and out by the oleander tub a cruel cat is worrying a large and discouraged rat. That oleander tub reminds me of an ordeal that is ushered in with every change of season. Twice a year we are compelled to carry that large vegetable in and out of its winter lair. About the last week of September we begin to wrap it in bed-quilts every night, and from that time on until late autumn no delicate babe was ever more tenderly guarded. Then, as there is no man in the country who for love or lucre will condescend to the job, we begin to worry the Doctor. We tell him the oleander will be blighted by the frost, and he pays no heed. Then we ask him if he would just as lief bring in the oleander after supper. He sneaks off and is gone until the 11 p. m. train. Next we take to tears, and declare that we love that oleander as one of the family, and it breaks our heart to see it perish for want of care. We grow pale and wan and gray-headed as the days go by, and finally with flashing eyes and muttered oaths the Doctor yanks the tub and its colossal growth into the cellar, and we rest on our arms until the advent of another spring. * * * * * Well, the summer has gathered up her corn-silk draperies, put on her rose-trimmed hat, and tripped over the border land at last. From the bend in the road that shall hide her from our view forever she lingers a moment to throw back a sunny glance at September, as he comes whistling down the lane, with plume of golden-rod in his hat. A glad good-bye to you, long-to-be-remembered summer of 1890! We are so glad to see you go that we are willing to forego your blossoms and your bird songs to be well rid of you. For three long months we have endured heat without precedent, drought and discomfort, flies and mosquitos, threatened thunder gusts and devastating cyclones, and we are so tired that we feel like shaking a stick at you now, to see you lingering to coquet with September. Hasten on, oh bright autumn weather, with your comfortable nights for sleep, and your royal days of sunshine and frost. We are longing for the time to come when the lamps shall be lighted early in the parlor, and the fire-glow shall once more shed its glory upon grandma's lovely hair and upon the gold of the children's restless heads; when the cat shall have leave to lie on the best cushion, and the voice of the tea-kettle, droning its supper monologue, shall alternate with the efforts of the older sister at the piano. By the way, do you know there is lots of solace to be found in an old music book of twenty years ago? Don't tell me that the music of to-day is as sweet all through as the melodies of long ago. Who sings such soul-ravishing duets to-day as "She Bloomed with the Roses," "Twilight Dews," or "Gently Sighs the Breeze"? I declare to you, my dear, that although I shall be considerably older some day than I am now, and although I have not fallen so far into the "sere and yellow" as to count myself among the old-fashioned and the queer, yet any one of those songs just mentioned will start the tears from my eyes as showers start from summer clouds. * * * * * Two little motherless children! Do you know the thought of a baby without a mother to cuddle it always brings the tears to my eyes? Traveling to distant New England with a father who, although kind, seemed some way unfitted to his duties, as a straight-legged chair might if used for a lullaby rocker, were two bits of folks, a boy and a girl, one four, the other two years old. The careful father brushed their hair very nicely and washed their mites of faces with great regularity. When he told them to sit still they sat still, and nobody was annoyed by their antics, but, oh, how it made my heart ache to watch the motherless chicks! If mamma had been there they would have climbed all over her, and bothered her a good deal, perhaps, with their clinging arms and kisses (it's a way babies have with their mammas!), but in the presence of their dark-eyed and quiet papa they behaved like little weasels in the presence of a fox. "Papa says we mustn't talk about mamma any more," lisped the boy. "'Cause she's gone to heaven." In the name of love, whose apostle I humbly claim to be, I longed to gather those little ones in my arms and have a dear, sweet talk about the mamma who had left them for a little while, and I wanted to say to the proper and punctilious papa: "Good sir, if you attempt to bring up these motherless mites without the demonstration of love you will meet with the same success your gardener would should he set out roses in a pine forest. Children need love as flowers need the southerly exposure and sunshine. When that boy of yours bumped his head, sir, it was your place to comfort him in something the way his dead mother might have done, rather than to have bade him 'sit up and be a man.'" * * * * * SLEEP'S SERENADE. In cadence far, From star to star, Sleep's mellow horns are faintly calling; Through dreamland halls Sweet madrigals, In liquid numbers drowsy falling. Noiseless and still, O'er star-watched hill, Beneath the white moon's tender glances, A host of dreams, By wind-blown streams, March on with gleam of silver lances. A captive thou; Then, yield thee, now, While mellow horns are nearer calling; And ringing bells, And poppy spells, Thy senses all in sleep enthralling. O, hark; O, hear, My lady, dear, O'er woods and hills and streamlets flying, The winding note Of horns remote, In softest echo dying--dying. * * * * * I had a dream the other night which was like, and yet unlike, the vision of fair women of which a poet once wrote. I dreamed that I sat within a court-room. Before me passed the meanest men and women God ever permitted to live, and upon them I was to pass the verdict as to which should carry off the palm. The scandal-monger came first, he or she who sits like a fly-catcher on a tree, snapping up morsels of news. He or she who is swelled full of conjecture whenever anybody commits an innocent indiscretion, as an owl blinks and ruffles up its feathers when the bobolink sings. He or she who goes about the world like a lean cat after a mouse. He or she who is always looking for clouds in a bright June sky, and slugs in roses and flies in honey. He or she whose heart is made of brass, and whose soul is so small it will take eleven cycles of eternity to develop it to the dimension of a hayseed. I was about to hand this specimen the banner without looking further when a being glided by me with a noiseless tread. She wore felt shoes and a mask. She spoke with the voice of a canary, yet had the talons of a vulture. She wore a stomacher made from the fleece of a lamb, and between her bright red lips were the tusks of a wolf. I recognized her as the hypocrite, the false friend; she who hands over your living bones for your enemies to pick, while you believe she is your champion and your defender. Following her came the man who keeps his horse standing all day with its nose in a nosebag. There was a groan like the sighing of wind in the poplars as he went by. Then came the merciless man who oppresses and torments the helpless and grinds the faces of the poor; and following him I beheld yet another monster--the worst of all in male attire. He came sneaking around a corner, with a smile on his lips and a devil in his eye, seeking to entrap innocent girlhood and unsuspecting womanhood. Then came the woman who gives her children to the care of servants while she goes downtown with a dog in her arms. Then came a lean-faced, weasel-eyed creature with the general expression of a sneak thief. I discovered her to be the representative of that type of women who coaxes her neighbor's hired girl away with promises of better wages. Then came the envious person whose evil passions are kindled like the fires of sheol at the prosperity of others, and who, because his own cup of life holds vinegar, is determined no other shall contain wine. I suddenly awoke without having bestowed the palm on any. Perhaps some of my readers may find it easy to do that for themselves. * * * * * Do you know which, of all the sights that confronted me yesterday in my rambles through the rainy weather, I pigeon-holed as the saddest? Not the little white casket, gleaming like the petal of a fallen flower, through the undertaker's rain-streaked window; not the woman with the lack-luster eye and the flippety-floppety petticoats who went by me in the rain silently cursing her bundles and the fact that she was not three-handed; not the poor old cab horse with his nose in a wet bag, and his stomach so tightly buckled in that he couldn't breathe below the fifth rib; not the man out of a job, with his gloveless hands in his pockets, trying to solve the problem of supper; not the little child under convoy of a stern and relentless dragon who yanked it over the crossings by the arm socket; not the starved and absolutely hopeless yellow dog, who sat in a doorway and wondered to himself if there was indeed a canine life that included occasional bones and no kicks; no, not any of these impressed me as the most gruesome of a great city's many sights. As I passed the corner of Washington and Dearborn streets I came face to face with a red-cheeked, wholesome boy of barely twenty years of age. He was leaning upon the arm of an elderly man, and at first I thought him ill, but it took but a second glance to see that he was drunk. Now, I consider that the very saddest sight a great city has to offer. When the old men are wicked there is some comfort in the thought that their day is nearly spent, and their worthless places may be soon filled with a nobler and a better stock, but a drunken and dissolute boy means just what it means for the fruit harvest when the blight gets into the blossom. The gathered apple that rots in the bin is bad enough, but the worm that destroys the fruit in the germ makes greater loss. Be thankful that the grave has taken to its protecting shelter the boy you loved so dearly, and of whom you were so proud, rather than that he should have grown to be a drunkard before his twentieth birthday. * * * * * We are each of us missing constant chances to bestow a kindness upon some needy soul for the reason that we dread being imposed upon by a case of causeless complaining. Is it worth while to keep our hearts stolid merely because we may be cheated in the bestowal of a nickel's worth of alms? I think not. You looked up from your work a few minutes ago and saw a little boy not much bigger than your thumb looking through the open doorway. He began at once a sing-song tale of woe about a sick mother and a father out of work--or in his grave, it doesn't much matter. At the same time he held out a paper of cheap pins to tempt a nickel from your store. "I have no time to bother with such as you," you said, and turned your eyes back to your ledger. But still the boy droned on. You looked at him again and noticed that the small hand that held the pins was well kept and very, very thin. Then your eyes followed the diminutive form down to the feet; they, too, showed signs of somebody's care, although the shoes were shabby and the stockings thin. "He is not an ordinary little beggar," you said to yourself. And then your gaze traveled upward again until it met his long-lashed Irish eyes, so full of trouble and of entreaty that they looked like twin Killarney lakes getting ready for rain. "Poor little chap," you said, "of course I'll buy a paper of pins," and in so doing you stooped over and patted his head, perhaps, or called him "dear," so that he went away with the twin Killarney lakes all ready for a sunburst to follow the rain. That was an opportunity you nearly missed, but it brought a blessing sweeter than a Crawford peach. You didn't want the pins, but the little desolate heart wanted the kind word bestowed along with your nickel, and perhaps its bestowal shall be an impulse toward the light to a soul that cross words and constant refusals had already given a downward trend. * * * * * There stands a very young girl at the door of a drug store. She hesitates a moment and enters. "May I sit here and wait for a friend?" she inquires of the dapper clerk. "Certainly," he answers, and places a chair for her near the window. That girl's father told her last night to have nothing more to do with young Solomon Levi. "He is a worthless fellow," said he, "and I have forbidden him the house." "Very well," said she, and this morning she has made the excuse to go to the grocery for yeast, and is waiting here for the graceless Solomon. By and by he will come, and she will listen to him and form plans for clandestine meetings. My dear, there is a stairway whose top lies in the sunshine, but whose lower steps lead down to endless shadow. Your pretty foot is poising on the upper stair--beware! And yet I think the father has been to blame also. These stern, non-explanatory parents are responsible for much of the ruin wrought in young people's lives. If the old rat would go with the young one now and then to investigate the smell of cheese, his restraining presence would do more good than all the warnings and threats beforehand. Temptations are bound to besiege the girls and bewilder the boys. Don't let us make a pit-fire out of moonshine and forbid every bit of innocent fun and frolic because there is a gayety that takes hold on death. Give the young folks a little more license, mingle with them in many amusements which you have been wont to frown upon, do not be so frightened if their light feet go dancing off the path now and then, and ten to one the end of the journey will be Beulah Land and peace. A good deal less faultfinding and a good deal more sympathy would be better all around. * * * * * There is no lot on earth so hard to bear as the lot of wedlock where love has failed. The slave's life is not comparable to it, for the manacles that only bind the hands may be laid aside, but those that fetter the heart not death itself holds the key to loosen. It fairly makes me tremble when I see the thoughtless rush young people make to enter what is by far the most solemn and responsible relation of life. They are like mariners who put to sea in flimsy boats, or like explorers who fit themselves with Prince Albert suits and buttonhole bouquets. Before you get through the voyage, my dears, you will encounter tempests as well as bonnie blue weather, and God pity you when your pleasure craft strikes the first billow, if it was made of caprice and put together with mucilage instead of rivets! As for the explorer and his dress suit, where will he be when the tigers begin to scent him and the air is full of great sorrows and little frets like flying buzzards and cawing crows? Be an old maid in its most despised significance then; be a grubber and a toiler all the days of your life rather than rush into marriage as a hunted fox flies into a trap. There is some chance for the fox that flies to the hills, and for the bird that soars above the huntsman's aim, but what better off is the fox in the trap or the lark in a cage? There is a love so pure and ennobling that eternity shall not be long enough to cast its blossom, nor death sharp enough to loosen the foundation of its hold. Such love is born in the spirit rather than forced in the hot-house of the senses. It is an impulse toward the stars, a striving toward things that are pure and perfect and true. It grows in the heart as a rose grows in the garden, first a slip, then a leaf and finally the perfect blossom. No rose ever put forth a flower first, and then bethought itself of rooting and budding. Pray, dear girls, that this love may come to you rather than its poor prototype, so current in a world of shams and pretenses, whose luster corrodes with daily usage and turns to pewter in your grasp. * * * * * Once there was an old woman who died and went to glory. Now a great many old women have died and gone the same way, but this one was very tired and very glad to go. She had worked hard ever since she could handle a broom or flirt a duster. She had probably washed about 91,956,045 dishes in her life, had baked something less than a million of pies, and turned out anywhere between a quarter to half a million loaves of bread, to say nothing of biscuits. These figures are steep, but I am writing under the invigorating impulse of the grip! She had darned socks and hemmed towels and patched old pantaloon-seats between times, until her fingers were callous as agate. She had borne and reared lots of children and tended to their myriad wants. For forty-seven years she had done a big washing every week, and laundried more collars than a Canada thistle has seed-pods. At last she died. The tired old body burst its withered husk and let the flower free. The rusty old cage flew open and out went the bird. And when they buried her I suppose they were foolish enough to shed tears and put on mourning! As well expect all the birds to wear crape when dawn sets out its primrose-pot on the ledge of the eastern sky! But one friend of quicker perception than the rest, I am told, placed the following inscription on the tired old woman's gravestone: Here lies a poor woman who always was tired, For she lived in a world where much was required. "Weep not for me, friends," she said, "for I'm going Where there'll be neither washing, nor baking, nor sewing; Then weep not for me; if death must us sever, Rejoice that I'm going to do nothing forever." * * * * * There is just one thing in the latter part of the nineteenth century that never fails to bring success, and that is assurance. If you are going to make yourself known it is no longer the thing to quietly pass out a visiting card--you must advance with a trumpet and blow a brazen blast to shake the stars. The time has gone by when self-advancement can be gained by modest and unassuming methods. To stand with a lifted hat and solicit a hearing savors of mendicancy and an humble spirit. The easily abashed and the diffident may starve in a garret, or go die on the highways--there is no chance for them in the jostling rush of life. The gilded circus chariot, with a full brass band and a plump goddess distributing circulars, is what takes the popular heart by storm. Your silent entry into town, depending upon the merits of your wares to gain an audience or work up a custom, is chimerical and obsolete. We no longer sit in the shadow and play flutes; we mount a pine platform and blow on a trombone, and in that way we draw a crowd, and that is what we live for. Who are the women who succeed in business ventures of any sort? Mostly the mannish, bold, aggressive amazons who are unmindful of rebuffs and impervious to contempt. Who are the men who wear diamonds and live easy lives? Largely the politicians who have made their reputation in bar-room rostrums and among sharpers. Oh, for a wind to blow us forward a hundred years out of this age of sordid self-seeking and impudent assertiveness into something larger and sweeter and finer. Give us less yeast in our bread and more substance; fill our cups with wine rather than froth, and for sweet pity's sake hang up the great American trumpet and let "silence, like a poultice, come to heal the blows of sound." * * * * * Every day, for months, as I have taken my morning ride to town I have noticed a dog who bounds forth from a dooryard that overlooks the busy highway of the steed of steam and barks himself weak at the rushing trains. He really accomplishes nothing, but do you suppose you could convince his canine brain that he was not at once a reproach and a terror to the numerous trains that disturb his rest? He reminds me of certain people we meet all the way through life. They bark at trains continually while the Lord prolongs their breath, and the faster the train and the more it carries the louder they bark. They fondly imagine that the voice of their ranting protest accomplishes a purpose in the world. They are always barking at capital and at rich men and at corporations. They bark at people of courteous manners, and all the ways and customs of polite and gentle society, with fierce and futile yelpings. They bark at the swift advancement of the world from ignorance to enlightenment, from superstition to liberalism. They bark at the churches because they are on a train that has sidetracked Calvin. They bark at polite young men who wear clean linen, and call them dudes; they bark at women who have one or two ideas outside of fashionable folly and inane conventionalism, and call them cranks; they bark at everything on wheels, where wheels typify strength and achievement. They will go on barking, too, while the world finds room and maintains patience for them and their barking. * * * * * I think I have said before that I loathe meek people. But even if I have I am going to say it again. Your half-wits who sit and turn first one cheek and then the other to be slapped are not the sort for me. The man or woman, boy or girl, child or otherwise, that will endure direct insult day after day without resenting it ought to sell themselves at so much a pint for illuminating oil--that is all they are good for. I love a fighter, provided he foils gracefully and does not snatch out his sword in every brawling and unworthy cause. In the defense of woman, in the cause of honor, purity and truth; in battle against sordidness, and greed, and a lying tongue, let your blade flash like summer rain and your white plume outdistance the plume of Navarre! For God and mother, justice and honor, self-respect and the approval of our own conscience, let us go forward then with a chip, if need be, on each shoulder and a standard copy of the celestial army tactics in our side pocket! The Lord loves a good many things, cheerful givers and self-sacrificing widows with their mites, merciful men and sweet and noble women, but most of all, I think, he loves a valiant fighter in the cause of right. * * * * * Now it came to pass that there dwelt in a certain city of the land of the great lakes a woman called Lydia, sister to Simon, the shipwright. And Lydia, being comely and fair to look upon, was sought in marriage by one John, a dealer in spices and fine teas. And the years of their wedlock having outnumbered the fingers upon a man's two hands, it came to pass that they dwelt together in exceeding prosperity in a town near by the blue waters of a mighty lake. And Heaven sent unto them children to the number of three, so that their hearts were exceeding glad, and the cords of their habitation were stretched from year to year. And it came to pass that the home in which they lived was spacious and full of salubrious air. Their beds, also, were of curled hair, and all their bed-springs of beaten steel. And bath-rooms made glad the heart of the dust-laden when summer dwelt in the land. Also there were cunningly devised screens of fine wire in all the windows, so that the marauding fly and the pestilential mosquito might not enter. And the flesh increased from year to year upon the bones of Lydia and the children that heaven sent her, while they remained in the home that John, the tea merchant, had given them. But it came to pass that the neighbors of the woman Lydia closed up the shutters of their dwellings, and one by one stole from town when the heat descended upon the land. Then spake Lydia unto John, the vender of spices and fine teas, saying: "Arise, let us go hence and dwell within a farm-house, where the children may leap together in the sweet-smelling hay, and I may comfort myself with flagons of cream." But John, being a man among men, and accounted somewhat wise withal, would have restrained Lydia, saying: "Not so; for verily I say unto you, comfort abideth not in the dwelling of the farmer, neither does joy linger in the shadow of his doorway." Now Lydia, being president of a Woman's Club and reputed of knowledge beyond the generality of womankind, would not listen, but beat her hands together, crying: "I prithee hold thy peace, for behold, I and the children heaven sent me will depart hence by to-morrow's chariot of steam, and will make our home with the gentle farmer and his sweet-breathed kine." So John, being loth to war with the tongue, albeit he was heavy-hearted and walked with a bent head, purchased tickets for Lydia and the children heaven had given her. And it came to pass that they left town by the train which men call "the limited." Now the way of that train through the land is like unto the way of a ship at sea, or of a strong eagle that never wearieth. And the sufferings of Lydia were such that she sought relief in peppermint and found it not. And the babes by reason of the swiftness with which they traversed a crooked land, were made ill and languished like sea-sick rangers of the deep. Yet, after many hours, their torment abated not, so that, reaching their destination, the bodies of Lydia and her children were removed in a hack and hurried to an inn that was built near by. And in the inn where they were fain to tarry until strength should be given them for further journeying, it chanced that a young babe lay sorely stricken with the whooping-cough. Now, when Lydia knew this, her heart fainted with fear, and she prophesied evil. For well she knew that her own babes had not had the disease, and that the time of their prostration was at hand. So Lydia, being president of a Woman's Club, and accounted without a peer in the gift of words, sent for the keeper of the inn, that she might rebuke him. And she opened her mouth impulsively and questioned him saying: "Why broughtest thou me and the children heaven gave me into thine inn knowing that contagious disease lurked within its gates?" And the keeper of the inn shot out the lip at her and was undismayed. And he cried, "Go to! And what wouldst thou of a public house? Thou talkest like one with little sense!" And it came to pass that Lydia and her children departed thence by stage and sought the farm-house. And, arriving there, they would have laid themselves down to rest, being sorely bruised by reason of protracted stage-riding. But the beds were made of straw and corded underneath with ropes. So that lying upon them caused the children to roar loudly, and they found rest from their lamentations, four in a bed, on the bosom of Lydia. And, supper being served, it consisted of tinted warm water and gooseberries sweetened with brown sugar. Now Lydia, by reason of her connection with the club, was enabled to speak boldly, and she called for cream. But the wife of the farmer made answer, saying, "We have none." And Lydia spoke yet again, saying, "Why, O woman of many wiles, hast thou no cream?" And the woman made way with an insect that swam gaily in a pitcher of azure milk, and said gently, "Because we sell it to a neighboring dairy." And Lydia said nothing, but remembering the words of John, the tea-merchant, wept silently. And it came to pass that next morning the children went forth to leap in the hay. And the farmer led them firmly away from the hay-mow by the tip of the ear, saying, "I allow no children to spoil my fodder." And the morning of the second day, the woman Lydia, being starved for nutritious food, wended her way with her babes across a stretch of pasture land in search of wild blackberries. And a beast, whose voice was baritone and whose approach was like the approach of a Kansas cyclone, bore down upon her and the children heaven had given her, while yet they were midway in the meadow. Now only by leaping could they save themselves. And it came to pass that they leaped mightily and flung themselves over a five-barred fence. And a snake made free with the draperies of Lydia, so that her hair whitened with fear, and between the beast with the baritone voice and the serpent she knew not which way to turn. And the morning of the third day she wrote to John, the tea-merchant, saying only: "My darling--Meet the first train that returns from this place to the dear city by the lake, for behold! I and the children heaven sent me are on our homeward way!" * * * * * IMPATIENCE. A sweet little crocus came up through the mold, And hugged round her shoulders her mantle of gold, While tears of distress fringed her delicate eye, Like rain drops that start from a showery sky. "Where, pray, are those laggards, the violets blue? The roses and lilies and daffodils too? I really think it's a shame and a sin This waiting so long for the spring to begin. "The first day of April and only one bird Since I lifted my head has uttered a word! And search as I may all over the meadow Not even a cowslip has shown its bright head, O-- "Misery me! Sure there's no use in waiting, For something, no doubt, is the summer belating; So I'll go back to bed, put on my lace night cap, And snatch, for a fortnight, a nice little cat-nap!" Down went little Gold-head, back to her pillow; When, all in a twinkling, up over the hill, O, The wind-flower host, with rose-tinted banners, Marched into the world; Queen Summer's forerunners. Her rose maids of honor, in filmiest laces, Loitered and lingered in shy woodland places; And white-vested lilies were ever at prayer; Their vespers, the perfume that sweetened the air. The apple trees blushed into delicate splendor; The blue birds hung over in ecstasy tender, While the gold powdered bee with helmet all dusty Kept watch over the flowers, a sentinel trusty. The robin sang love to his shy little sweetheart; The orioles lashed their nests in the tree top; The willows drooped low over swift water courses, And murmuring brooks started fresh from their sources. But down in the gloom, on her dream-haunted pillow, As pale and as cold as the moon on the billow, Forgot and unmissed by bird and by blossom, The crocus slept sound in the earth's faithful bosom. When at last she awoke, the spring had been banished, Her forerunner flowers from the hillside had vanished. And all of the bees had turned into stock brokers. And even the birds had changed into croakers. 'Tis only by waiting we find our fruition; To learn how to wait is a needed tuition. The faint-hearted people who go to sleep fretting, Will wake up at last too late for the getting. * * * * * If there is anything more utterly desolate than a poorly-conducted farm, preserve me from it. There is an ideal farm familiar to the writers of pretty tales, where everything is kept in apple-pie order throughout the year, and where one can walk broadcast, so to speak, in a spick and span white gown without attracting so much as the shadow of a shade of minutest defilement. We have seen pictures of such farms wherein sleek cattle stood around knee-deep in dewy clover, or lay serenely on polished hillsides, or meandered dreamily by crystal streams; wherein pale pink farm-houses with green gables and yellow piazzas, fairly scintillated from behind decorous foliage, and peacocks, with tails nearly as long as the Mississippi River, posed on the gate-posts; wherein neat little boys in variegated trousers rode prancing chargers down blooming lanes, and correct little girls in ruffled underclothing fed well-mannered chickens from morning till night. But the actual farm of the remote rural districts is about as much like its ideal picture as Esau was like a modern dude. Not long ago somebody suggested that I go and board for a fortnight at a farm-house. "You will have perfect rest," said my friend, "and that is what you need." So I went, and rather than again undergo the torments of the five days spent in that restful (?) spot I think I would cheerfully hire out with a Siberian chain-gang. In the first place there was no such a thing as rest possible after the first glimmer of each day's dawn. Every rooster on the farm, and there were millions of them, was up "for keeps" long before sunrise. Their united chorus smote the skies. One might as well have tried to sleep through Gettysburg's battle. A score or so of bereaved cows lamented all night for their murdered babies, and a couple of donkeys, kept purely for ornamental purposes, made sounds every half hour or so that turned my hair snow white with terror. After breakfast each day I used to walk down the hill and fish for pickerel in a river that had no current, and looked discouraged. "Walked," did I say? Nay, there was nothing so decorous as a walk possible down the slippery, stony descent which led to the haunts of the pickerel. When I didn't hurl myself down that hill, I slid down, and between the two methods I wrecked both muscle and shoe leather. The latter part of the way led through a pasture devoted to several cows and a bull. As I am more afraid of the latter than of death and all his cohorts, my morning walks ended in heart failures and had to be abandoned. Occasionally I would take a book and go out and sit in my hammock. Then the large roosters, each one of them at least seven feet tall and highly ruffled about the legs, would come around and look at me, so that I would have to go into the house to hide my embarrassment. I know of nothing harder to endure than the stare of a Brahma fowl, especially if one is a bit nervous and overworked. Nervous prostration has sprung from lighter causes. Nothing happened while I was at the farm but meal time, and the intervals were so long between those episodes that I used to wonder daily at my own mission subsequent to the farm-life as one gropes for prehistoric clues. There was a man about the premises who walked to and from the village twice a day with a large brown jug. When I asked at different times what he fetched in the jug, not because I wanted to know, but merely to find a topic of conversation, I was successively told that it was "kerosene," "maple molasses," "buttermilk," and "vinegar." I wish I knew if I was told the truth every time, or if somebody tried to impose upon me merely because I was town-bred. Occasionally we took rides over stony trails where boulders and ruts marked the way, and only the creaking of our bones broke the primeval silence. These rides were supposed to be part of the generous plan of contemplated rest, but a few more of them would have resulted in the rest from which there is no awaking. No, my dear, I am an ardent lover of the country, and I love it as the epicure loves a good dinner, or the musician loves music, but I will take it, please, without the accessories of a poorly-kept hoosier farm. I do not yearn for the defilements of a barn-yard that is never cleansed, nor for the frolicsomeness of pigs that wander at their own sweet will, nor for the clamor of aggressively alert poultry, nor for piscatorial delights. I love the country as God made it before greed and gain and all the abominations of man entered into and spoiled it. I love it clean and wholesome and sweet, as it was turned out of the workshop; its streams untainted, and their banks unbereft of beautiful trees; its hills still covered with verdure, and its winds uncontaminated with the scent of defiling drains and waterways. * * * * * I have seen him! Actually seen him! Shall I say the coming man? No, rather let us call him the vanished type, the stalwart, full-blooded, glorious "might have been" of nature. Not an exotic, but the indigenous growth of a soil fed by breeze and sun. No earmuffs about him; no cringing withdrawal into mufflers before the advance of winter blasts. No cowardly retreat into furry overcoats, mittens and gum shoes. "Amber," said a fellow traveler the other day, "yonder is a man after your own heart. He has not worn an overcoat or heavyweight flannels for six years. He never buttons up his coat save when it rains. What do you think of him?" "Think of him!" said I; "were it not for a lingering regard for the conventionalities, I should walk right over to that man and say: 'Sir, I thank you for the sight of a man--not a human lily bud! You have struck the right way of living, and you will be a hale and handsome man when the enfeebled race that surrounds you have toddled into the consumptive's grave or are sneezing upon their catarrhal pilgrimage to the tomb.'" The man was worth looking at, hale and hearty, his chest like the convex curve of a barrel, his eye like a falcon's. "But," said my friend, "were I to throw aside my overcoat and go forth unprotected this freezing weather, the exposure would surely kill me!" "No doubt it would," was my cheerful reply. "There are always a host to die before any reform is achieved or victory accomplished. You have coddled yourself so long between blankets and absorbed red-hot furnace heat until you haven't the stamina of an aspen leaf. Take a hot-house flower out of doors and it soon wilts. But mark the beautiful Edelweiss of the Alps--it thrives in the pure breath of eternal snow." But what is the use of talking? Although my tongue became a golden bell and my pen a gleaming flame, I could never convince you, my dear old, shivery, shaky public, of the advantage of fresh air and plenty of it, and the advisability of a generous cultivation of nature and her free gifts. As well expect to be nourished by looking at your food through an opera glass as hope to be strong and stalwart upon a homeopathic allowance of pure air and sunshine, or in spite of the devices you plan to shut yourself away and hermetically seal your body, as it were, from the sweet, health-giving influence of sun and wind and frost. Just stop a moment before you turn away from this subject, my dear, and hear a little story. I know the subject is a bore and that I am a crank, but listen. Once there was a grand beneficent power--call it God if you will--who planned a spot wherein to place some atom which he had shaped out of dust and vivified with a spark of his own life. He looked about a little, we will imagine, and finally settled upon a garden wherein to place these precious pensioners on his care. A roofless, wall-less spot full of draughts and dew, breezes and blossoms. He filled it with birds and carpeted it with grass, set rivulets running through it for "water works" and sunbeams and starbeams for "electric light" plants, etc. That is all I have to say. Like the Mother Morey legend my story is done before it is scarcely begun. But ask yourself the question, Why didn't God put his well-beloved models of the forthcoming race into a more sheltered place if there was so much danger in fresh air, draughts and chilly weather? Why didn't he seal them up behind double windows in an airless, sunless, hot and unhealthful home where the dear things could keep warm? Because he was God and knew everything, and not man and knew nothing. * * * * * Well, the old ship Time has put into port again to take on a new cargo of good resolutions, earnest resolves and patented schemes, before setting sail for the shores of a distant future. Ten to one she goes to pieces on the breakers before ever sighting land again, and a hundred to ninety-nine her cargo is thrown overboard before she reaches mid-sea. The channel is narrow and the rocks lie thick as peas in a marrowfat pod, and many more bales of choice merchandise find the bottom of the sea each year than are ever delivered to the good angel consignee. "I am going to be the best girl in all the world," says the poor little Captain on New Year's eve. Behold! the hours have not swung around the diurnal circle before there is a wild onslaught from shadowland, and the brave captain is left wounded on the field. Only a tender hand and tireless patience can set her on her feet again. "I will eschew debt as I would poison, and starve before I will commit an indiscretion," cries the Doctor as he sets sail for the untried sea. Within the first watch he hauls down his colors from the mast head, captured by a pirate extravagance. "I will be gentle of speech and courteous and sweet to all!" says the Young Person, and gayly steers for the open channel. Midway she encounters a rock of annoyance and the air is stormy with irritable words that fly and beat like stinging rain. Ah, well, my dear, thank the good Lord there are life-saving stations all along the shore, and no wreck was ever yet so hopeless but Infinite Love could set it afloat again. * * * * * "There is just one person born who has a right to this thoroughfare, and that is I!" muses the woman with the umbrella as she walks the crowded streets on a rainy day. "I am in possession of that part of the universe immediately contiguous to the spot on which I stand, and I shall make myself just as much of a nuisance as I choose. I shall jab out your eyes, and knock off your hat, and clip your ears, and stab your back with my umbrella tip just as often and as violently as I choose. I shall run into you from behind, and bump into you, and knock you down if I so desire, and none shall say me nay. I am not very tall, but all the better for my plans if I am not. If I were of the same height as you I should not be able to take you under the hat-brim as I do, and jab you in the nostril as I pass. If I choose to cut criss-cross through a crowd, who shall forbid me, being a woman? I can be just as rude and just as mean as I want to be, and who is going to hinder, so long as I wear a gown and call myself a lady? If I were a man and manifested the reckless thirst for universal carnage that I do you would call the patrol and bear me away to the lock-up; but being a poor little, innocent woman I have it all my own way." * * * * * I know a wife who is waiting, safe and sound in her father's home, for her young husband to earn the money single-handed to make a home worthy of her acceptance. She makes me think of the first mate of a ship who should stay on shore until the captain tested the ability of his vessel to weather the storm. Back to your ship, you cowardly one! If the boat goes down, go down with it, but do not count yourself worthy of any fair weather you did not help to gain! A woman who will do all she can to win a man's love merely for the profit his purse is going to be to her, and will desert him when the cash runs low, is a bad woman and carries a bad heart in her bosom. Why, you are never really wedded until you have had dark days together. What earthly purpose would a cable serve that never was tested by a weight? Of what use is the tie that binds wedded hearts together if like a filament of floss it parts when the strain is brought to bear upon it? It is not when you are young, my dear, when the skies are blue and every wayside weed flaunts a summer blossom, that the story of your life is recorded. It is when "Darby and Joan" are faded and wasted and old, when poverty has nipped the roses, when trouble and want and care have flown like uncanny birds over their heads (but never yet nested in their hearts, thank God!), that the completed chronicle of their lives furnishes the record over which approving heaven smiles and weeps. * * * * * There is one thing I learn day by day in my strollings about town, and that is that nobody is going to give me dollar values for half-dollar equivalents. In these days when the best of folks go mad on bargains we seem to think it is an easy thing to get something for nothing, but I have yet to see the day when we can. There are cheap restaurants where they serve you roast turkey for a quarter, but don't fool yourself! It is not the same kind of bird they serve in a high-class place for a dollar. You look at your check when you come out from an economical kitchen with a feeling of glee that you have got so much for so little. But how about the flavor that lingers in your mouth? How about the display of pine toothpicks and spotted linen? How about the finger-marked drinking glasses and damp napkins? No, no; poor as I am I would rather pay my dollar and get a dollar's worth of cleanliness and daintiness and flavor than save seventy-five cents and do without them. Sure as you live and sure as the world is operated on a self-accommodative basis, you never will get a first-water diamond without you pay first-water diamond equivalents. * * * * * The other day there was a little girl, scarce 16 years of age, who started away for the first time from home and mother. She was brave and gay in a new suit, new boots and a new hat with a feather the color of a linnet's wing. She carried a bunch of the loveliest sweet peas at her dainty waist and on her face there played a sunburst of smiles. She had not been five hours in the place appointed her to visit when her mother received the following letter: "My Precious Mamma: I am writing this in my room before I am called to breakfast. None but God can know what I suffer! Not until I am in your arms once more will you know what I am going through! If you love me let me come home. Don't tell anyone, but let me come if you love me! Don't send the shoes--I shall not need them--but let me come home! Think what I must suffer so far away from you. I shall sell my ring and buy a ticket if you do not telegraph that I may come!" And as I read the pathetic letter between my smiles and tears I thought to myself, is there anything on earth so hard to bear as homesickness--first homesickness, when the heart is new to sorrow? I would rather have any disease the laboratory of evil keeps in stock than one pang of what that little girl was suffering when she penciled that letter. * * * * * Around in a picture store on one of the avenues I chanced upon a painting that attracted not only myself, but a crowd of people from the street. It represented a lion's cage barred with heavy barriers of iron. On the floor of the den is the figure of a beautiful girl stretched in a deathlike swoon. There are orange blossoms in her hair, and the flush on her cheek has had no time to fade. Crouched by her side, one great paw on her breast and another at her waist, is a wrathful lion whose evident intention is to tear his victim into bonbon fragments. I wish somebody would explain that picture to me. I am tired conjecturing how the bride strayed into the lion's quarters, and where her husband was that he shouldn't be taking better care of her, and why there was nobody on hand to help at this critical moment portrayed on the canvas. Young married women are not supposed to be visiting zoological gardens when they ought to be changing their white satin favors for their traveling gowns. The picture seems a puzzler to all who watch it, and as the crowd is great the confusion of wits is catching. * * * * * THE TRYST. Where a woodland path, like a silver line, Winds by a woodland river, And half in shadow, and half in shine, The alders lean and shiver, Where a forest bird has built him a nest Low in the springing grasses, And all the day long, with her wings at rest, His mate the slow time passes; Where a flood of gold through the forest dim Tells when the noon is strongest, And a purple fringe on the forest's rim Proclaims when the shades are longest; Where the dawn is only known from the night By the birds that sing their sweetest, And the twilight hush from the morning light By the peace that is then completest; Where only the flood of silvery haze Shall tell that the moon is risen, When down from the sky, like a meteor blaze, Shall flutter her snow-white ribbon,-- I will meet you there, my lady love sweet, When the weary world is sleeping, And the frets of the day, that tireless beat, Are hushed in the night's close keeping; Not missing the world--by the world unmissed-- We two shall wander together, And whether we chided, or whether we kissed, There'll be none to forget or remember; And when at the last asleep you shall fall, By the shore of the musical river, Of the crimson leaves I will weave you a pall, And kiss you good-by, love, forever. But the stars up above, and the waters below, Shall sing of us, over and over; Of the tryst that we kept in the years long ago, In the woods by the beautiful river. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected as follows: Page 35: "blase" changed to "blasé" Page 53: "neighors" changed to "neighbors" Page 98: "patroled" changed to "patrolled" Page 129: "meed" changed to "need" Punctuation has been corrected without note. 
3628	----	Transcribed from the 1909 Gay and Hancock edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org THE KINGDOM OF LOVE _AND OTHER POEMS_ BY ELLA WHEELER WILCOX GAY AND HANCOCK, LTD. 12 & 13, HENRIETTA STREET, STRAND LONDON 1909 [_All rights reserved_] Contents: The Kingdom Of Love Meg's Curse Solitude The Gossips Platonic Grandpa's Christmas After The Engagement A Holiday False Two Sinners The Phantom Ball Words And Thoughts Wanted--A Little Girl The Suicide "Now I Lay Me" The Messenger A Servian Legend Peek-A-Boo The Falling Of Thrones Her Last Letter The Princess's Finger-Nail A Baby In The House The Foolish Elm Robin's Mistake New Year Resolve What We Want Breaking The Day In Two The Rape Of The Mist The Two Glasses The Maniac What Is Flirtation? Husband And Wife How Does Love Speak? Reincarnation As You Go Through Life How Salvator Won The Watcher How Will It Be? Memory's River Love's Way A Man's Last Love The Lady And The Dame Confession A Married Coquette Forbidden Speech The Summer Girl The Ghost The Signboard A Man's Repentance Aristarchus Dell And I About May Vanity Fair The Giddy Girl A Girl's Autumn Reverie His Youth Under The Sheet A Pin The Coming Man THE KINGDOM OF LOVE In the dawn of the day when the sea and the earth Reflected the sunrise above, I set forth with a heart full of courage and mirth To seek for the Kingdom of Love. I asked of a Poet I met on the way Which cross-road would lead me aright; And he said "Follow me, and ere long you shall see Its glittering turrets of light." And soon in the distance a city shone fair. "Look yonder," he said; "How it gleams!" But alas! for the hopes that were doomed to despair, It was only the "Kingdom of Dreams." Then the next man I asked was a gay Cavalier, And he said: "Follow me, follow me"; And with laughter and song we went speeding along By the shores of Life's beautiful sea. Then we came to a valley more tropical far Than the wonderful vale of Cashmere, And I saw from a bower a face like a flower Smile out on the gay Cavalier; And he said: "We have come to humanity's goal: Here love and delight are intense." But alas and alas! for the hopes of my soul-- It was only the "Kingdom of Sense." As I journeyed more slowly I met on the road A coach with retainers behind; And they said: "Follow me, for our Lady's abode Belongs in that realm, you will find." 'Twas a grand dame of fashion, a newly-made bride, I followed, encouraged and bold; But my hopes died away like the last gleams of day, For we came to the "Kingdom of Gold." At the door of a cottage I asked a fair maid. "I have heard of that realm," she replied; "But my feet never roam from the 'Kingdom of Home,' So I know not the way," and she sighed. I looked on the cottage; how restful it seemed! And the maid was as fair as a dove. Great light glorified my soul as I cried: "Why, _Home_ is the 'Kingdom of Love'!" MEG'S CURSE The sun rode high in a cloudless sky Of a perfect summer morn. She stood and gazed out into the street, And wondered why she was born. On the topmost branch of a maple-tree That close by the window grew, A robin called to his mate enthralled: "I love but you, but you, but you." A soft look came in her hardened face-- She had not wept for years; But the robin's trill, as some sounds will, Jarred open the door of tears. She thought of the old home far away; She heard the whr-r-r of the mill; She heard the turtle's wild, sweet call, And the wail of the whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will. She saw again that dusty road Whence he came riding down; She smelled once more the flower she wore In the breast of her simple gown. Out on the new-mown meadow she heard Two blue-jays quarrel and fret, And the warning cry of a Phoebe bird "More wet, more wet, more wet." With a blithe "Hello" to the men below Who were spreading the new-mown hay, The rider drew rein at her window-pane-- How it all came back to-day! How young she was, and how fair she was; What innocence crowned her brow! The future seemed fair, for Love was there-- And now--and now--and now. In a dingy glass on the wall near by She gazed on her faded face. "Well, Meg, I declare, what a beauty you are! She sneered, "What an angel of grace! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! What a thing of beauty and grace!" She reached out her arms with a moaning sob: "Oh, if I could go back!" Then, swift and strange, came a sudden change; Her brow grew hard and black. "A curse on the day and a curse on that man, And on all who are his," she cried; "May he starve and be cold, may he live to be old When all who loved him have died." Her wild voice frightened the robin away From the branch by the window-sill; And little he knew as away he flew, Of the memories stirred by his trill. He called to his mate on the grass below, "Follow me," as he soared on high; And as mates have done since the world begun She followed, and asked not why. The dingy room seemed curtained with gloom; Meg shivered with nameless dread. The ghost of her youth and her murdered truth Seemed risen up from the dead. She hurried out into the noisy street, For the silence made her afraid; To flee from thought was all she sought, She cared not whither she strayed. Still on she pressed in her wild unrest Up avenues skirting the park, Where fashion's throng moved gayly along In Vanity Fair--when hark! A clatter of hoofs down the stony street, The snort of a frightened horse That was running wild, and a laughing child At play in its very course. With one swift glance Meg saw it all. "_His_ child--my God! _his_ child!" She cried aloud, as she rushed through the crowd Like one grown suddenly wild. There, almost under the iron feet, Hemmed in by a passing cart, Stood the baby boy--the pride and joy Of the man who had broken her heart. Past swooning women and shouting men She fled like a flash of light; With her slender arm she gathered from harm The form of the laughing sprite. The death-shod feet of the mad horse beat Her down on the pavings grey; But the baby laughed out with a merry shout, And thought it splendid play. He pulled her gown and called to her: "Say, Dit up and do dat some more, Das jus' ze way my papa play Wiz me on ze nursery floor." When the frightened father reached the scene, His boy looked up and smiled From the stiffening fold of the arm, death-cold, Of Meg, who had died for his child. Oh! idle words are a woman's curse Who loves as woman can; For put to the test, she will bare her breast And die for the sake of the man. SOLITUDE Laugh, and the world laughs with you: Weep, and you weep alone; For the sad old earth Must borrow its mirth, It has trouble enough of its own. Sing, and the hills will answer; Sigh, it is lost on the air; The echoes bound To a joyful sound, But shrink from voicing care. Rejoice, and men will seek you; Grieve, and they turn and go; They want full measure Of all your pleasure, But they do not want your woe. Be glad, and your friends are many; Be sad, and you lose them all; There are none to decline Your nectared wine, But alone you must drink life's gall. Feast, and your halls are crowded; Fast, and the world goes by; Succeed and give, And it helps you live, But it cannot help you die. There is room in the halls of pleasure For a long and lordly train; But one by one We must all file on Through the narrow aisles of pain. THE GOSSIPS A rose in my garden, the sweetest and fairest, Was hanging her head through the long golden hours; And early one morning I saw her tears falling, And heard a low gossiping talk in the bowers. The yellow Nasturtium, a spinster all faded, Was telling a Lily what ailed the poor Rose: "That wild roving Bee who was hanging about her, Has jilted her squarely, as every one knows. "I knew when he came, with his singing and sighing, His airs and his speeches so fine and so sweet, Just how it would end; but no one would believe me, For all were quite ready to fall at his feet." "Indeed, you are wrong," said the Lily-belle proudly, "I cared nothing for him; he called on me once, And would have come often, no doubt, if I'd asked him, But though he was handsome, I thought him a dunce." "Now, now, that's not true," cried the tall Oleander. "He has travelled and seen every flower that grows; And one who has supped in the garden of princes, We all might have known would not we with the Rose." "But wasn't she proud when he showed her attention? And she let him caress her," said sly Mignonette; "And I used to see it and blush for her folly. The silly thing thinks he will come to her yet." "I thought he was splendid," said pretty pert Larkspur, "So dark, and so grand with that gay cloak of gold; But he tried once to kiss me, the impudent fellow! And I got offended; I thought him too bold." "Oh, fie!" laughed the Almond, "that does for a story. Though I hang down my head, yet I see all that goes; And I saw you reach out trying hard to detain him, But he just tapped your cheek and flew by to the Rose. "He cared nothing for her; he only was flirting To while away time, as I very well knew; So I turned a cold shoulder on all his advances, Because I was certain his heart was untrue." "The Rose is served right for her folly in trusting An oily-tongued stranger," quoth proud Columbine. "I knew what he was, and thought once I would warn her, But of course the affair was no business of mine." "Oh, well," cried the Peony, shrugging her shoulders, "I saw all along that the Bee was a flirt; But the Rose has been always so praised and so petted, I thought a good lesson would do her no hurt." Just then came the sound of a love-song sung sweetly, I saw my proud Rose lifting up her bowed head; And the talk of the gossips was hushed in a moment, And the flowers all listened to hear what was said. And the dark, handsome Bee, with his cloak o'er his shoulder, Came swift through the sunlight and kissed the sad Rose, And whispered: "My darling, I've roved the world over, And you are the loveliest flower that grows." PLATONIC I knew it the first of the summer, I knew it the same at the end, That you and your love were plighted, But couldn't you be my friend? Couldn't we sit in the twilight, Couldn't we walk on the shore With only a pleasant friendship To bind us, and nothing more? There was not a word of folly Spoken between us two, Though we lingered oft in the garden Till the roses were wet with dew. We touched on a thousand subjects-- The moon and the worlds above,-- And our talk was tinctured with science, And everything else, save love. A wholly Platonic friendship You said I had proven to you Could bind a man and a woman The whole long season through, With never a thought of flirting, Though both were in their youth What would you have said, my lady, If you had known the truth! What would you have done, I wonder, Had I gone on my knees to you And told you my passionate story, There in the dusk and the dew? My burning, burdensome story, Hidden and hushed so long-- My story of hopeless loving-- Say, would you have thought it wrong? But I fought with my heart and conquered, I hid my wound from sight; You were going away in the morning, And I said a calm good-night. But now when I sit in the twilight, Or when I walk by the sea That friendship, quite Platonic, Comes surging over me. And a passionate longing fills me For the roses, the dusk, the dew; For the beautiful summer vanished, For the moonlight walks--and _you_. GRANDPA'S CHRISTMAS In his great cushioned chair by the fender An old man sits dreaming to-night, His withered hands, licked by the tender Warm rays of the red anthracite, Are folded before him, all listless; His dim eyes are fixed on the blaze, While over him sweeps the resistless Flood-tide of old days. He hears not the mirth in the hallway, He hears not the sounds of good cheer, That through the old homestead ring alway In the glad Christmas-time of the year. He heeds not the chime of sweet voices As the last gifts are hung on the tree. In a long-vanished day he rejoices-- In his lost Used-to-be. He has gone back across dead Decembers To his childhood's fair land of delight; And his mother's sweet smile he remembers, As he hangs up his stocking at night. He remembers the dream-haunted slumber All broken and restless because Of the visions that came without number Of dear Santa Claus. Again, in his manhood's beginning, He sees himself thrown on the world, And into the vortex of sinning By Pleasure's strong arms he is hurled. He hears the sweet Christmas bells ringing, "Repent ye, repent ye, and pray"; But he joins with his comrades in singing A bacchanal lay. Again he stands under the holly With a blushing face lifted to his For love has been stronger than folly, And has turned him from vice unto bliss; And the whole world is lit with new glory As the sweet vows are uttered again, While the Christmas bells tell the old story Of peace unto men. Again, with his little brood 'round him, He sits by the fair mother-wife; He knows that the angels have crowned him With the truest, best riches of life; And the hearts of the children, untroubled, Are filled with the gay Christmas-tide; And the gifts for sweet Maudie are doubled, Tis her birthday, beside. Again,--ah, dear Jesus, have pity-- He finds in the chill, waning day, That one has come home from the city-- Frail Maudie, whom love led astray. She lies with her babe on her bosom-- Half-hid by the snow's fleecy spread; A bud and a poor trampled blossom-- And both are quite dead. So fair and so fragile! just twenty-- How mocking the bells sound to-night! She starved in this great land of plenty, When she tried to grope back to the light. Christ. are Thy disciples inhuman, Or only for _men_ hast Thou died? No mercy is shown to a woman Who once steps aside. Again he leans over the shrouded Still form of the mother and wife; Very lonely the way seems, and clouded, As he looks down the vista of life. With the sweet Christmas chimes there is blended The knell for a life that is done, And he knows that his joys are all ended And his waiting begun. So long have the years been, so lonely, As he counts them by Christmases gone. "I am homesick," he murmurs; "if only The Angel would lead the way on. I am cold, in this chill winter weather; Why, Maudie, dear, where have you been? And you, too, sweet wife--and together-- O Christ, let me in" The children ran in from the hallway, "Were you calling us, grandpa?" they said. Then shrank, with that fear that comes alway When young eyes look their first on the dead. The freedom so longed for is given. The children speak low and draw near: "Dear grandpa keeps Christmas in Heaven With grandma, this year." AFTER THE ENGAGEMENT Well, Mabel, 'tis over and ended-- The ball I wrote was to be; And oh! it was perfectly splendid-- If you _could_ have been here to see. I've a thousand things to write you That I know you are wanting to hear, And one, that is sure to delight you-- I am wearing Joe's diamond, my dear! Yes, mamma is quite ecstatic That I am engaged to Joe; She thinks I am rather erratic, And feared that I might say "No." But, Mabel, I'm twenty-seven (Though nobody _dreams_ it, dear), And a fortune like Joe's isn't given To lay at one's feet each year. You know my old fancy for Harry-- Or, at least, I am certain you guessed That it took all my sense not to marry And go with that fellow out west. But that was my very first season-- And Harry was poor as could be, And mamma's good practical reason Took all the romance out of me. She whisked me off over the ocean, And had me presented at court, And got me all out of the notion That ranch life out west was my forte. Of course I have never repented-- I'm not such a goose of a thing; But after I had consented To Joe--and he gave me the ring-- I felt such a queer sensation. I seemed to go into a trance, Away from the music's pulsation, Away from the lights and the dance. And the wind o'er the wild prairie Seemed blowing strong and free, And it seemed not Joe, but Harry Who was standing there close to me. And the funniest feverish feeling Went up from my feet to my head, With little chills after it stealing-- And my hands got as numb as the dead. A moment, and then it was over: The diamond blazed up in my eyes, And I saw in the face of my lover A questioning, strange surprise. Maybe 'twas the scent of the flowers, That heavy with fragrance bloomed near, But I didn't feel natural for hours; It was odd now, wasn't it, dear? Write soon to your fortunate Clara, Who has carried the prize away, And say you'll come on when I marry,-- I think it will happen in May. A HOLIDAY THE WIFE The house is like a garden, The children are the flowers, The gardener should come methinks And walk among his bowers, Oh! lock the door on worry And shut your cares away, Not time of year, but love and cheer, Will make a holiday. THE HUSBAND Impossible! You women do not know The toil it takes to make a business grow. I cannot join you until very late, So hurry home, nor let the dinner wait. THE WIFE The feast will be like _Hamlet_ Without a Hamlet part: The home is but a house, dear, Till you supply the heart. The Xmas gift I long for You need not toil to buy; Oh! give me back one thing I lack-- The love-light in your eye. THE HUSBAND Of course I love you, and the children too Be sensible, my dear, it is for you I work so hard to make my business pay. There, now, run home, enjoy your holiday. THE WIFE (_turning_) He does not mean to wound me, I know his heart is kind. Alas! that man can love us And be so blind, so blind. A little time for pleasure, A little time for play; A word to prove the life of love And frighten Care away! Tho' poor my lot in some small cot _That_ were a holiday. THE HUSBAND (_musing_) She has not meant to wound me, nor to vex-- Zounds! but 'tis difficult to please the sex. I've housed and gowned her like a very queen Yet there she goes, with discontented mien. I gave her diamonds only yesterday: Some women are like that, do what you may. FALSE False! Good God, I am dreaming! No, no, it never can be-- You who are so true in seeming, You, false to your vows and me? My wife and my fair boy's mother The star of my life--my queen-- To yield herself to another Like some light Magdalene! Proofs! what are proofs--I defy them! They never can shake my trust; If you look in my face and deny them I will trample them into the dust. For whenever I read of the glory Of the realms of Paradise, I sought for the truth of the story And found it in your sweet eyes. Why, you are the shy young creature I wooed in her maiden grace; There was purity in each feature, And my heaven I found in your face. And, "not only married but mated," I would say in my pride and joy; And our hopes were all consummated When the angels gave us our boy. Now you could not blot that beginning So beautiful, pure and true, With a record of wicked sinning As a common woman might do. Look up in your old frank fashion, With your smile so free from art; And say that no guilty passion Has ever crept into your heart. How pallid you are, and you tremble! You are hiding your face from view! "Tho' a sinner, you cannot dissemble"-- My God! then the tale is true? True, and the sun above us Shines on in the summer skies? And men say the angels love us, And that God is good and wise. Yet he lets a wanton thing like you Ruin my home and my name! Get out of my sight or I strike you Dead in your shameless shame! No, no, I was wild, I was brutal; I would not take your life, For the efforts of death would be futile To wipe out the sin of a wife. Wife--why, that word has seemed sainted I uttered it like a prayer; And now to think it is tainted-- Christ! how much we can bear! "Slay you!" my boy's stained mother-- Nay, that would not punish, or save; A soul that has outraged another Finds no sudden peace in the grave. I will leave you here to _remember_ The Eden that was your own, While on toward my life's December I walk in the dark alone. TWO SINNERS There was a man, it was said one time, Who went astray in his youthful prime. Can the brain keep cool and the heart keep quiet When the blood is a river that's running riot? And boys will be boys, the old folks say, And a man is the better who's had his day The sinner reformed; and the preacher told Of the prodigal son who came back to the fold. And Christian people threw open the door, With a warmer welcome than ever before. Wealth and honour were his to command, And a spotless woman gave him her hand. And the world strewed their pathway with blossoms abloom, Crying, "God bless ladye, and God bless groom!" There was a maiden who went astray, In the golden dawn of her life's young day. She had more passion and heart than head, And she followed blindly where fond Love led. And Love unchecked is a dangerous guide To wander at will by a fair girl's side. The woman repented and turned from sin, But no door opened to let her in. The preacher prayed that she might be forgiven, But told her to look for mercy--in heaven. For this is the law of the earth, we know: That the woman is stoned, while the man may go. A brave man wedded her after all, But the world said, frowning, "We shall not call." THE PHANTOM BALL You remember the hall on the corner? To-night as I walked down street I heard the sound of music, And the rhythmic beat and beat, In time to the pulsing measure Of lightly tripping feet. And I turned and entered the doorway-- It was years since I had been there-- Years, and life seemed altered: Pleasure had changed to care. But again I was hearing the music And watching the dancers fair. And then, as I stood and listened, The music lost its glee; And instead of the merry waltzers There were ghosts of the Used-to-be-- Ghosts of the pleasure-seekers Who once had danced with me. Oh, 'twas a ghastly picture! Oh, 'twas a gruesome crowd! Each bearing a skull on his shoulder, Each trailing a long white shroud, As they whirled in the dance together, And the music shrieked aloud. As they danced, their dry bones rattled Like shutters in a blast; And they stared from eyeless sockets On me as they circled past; And the music that kept them whirling Was a funeral dirge played fast. Some of them wore their face-cloths, Others were rotted away. Some had mould on their garments, And some seemed dead but a day. Corpses all, but I knew them As friends, once blithe and gay. Beauty and strength and manhood-- And this was the end of it all: Nothing but phantoms whirling In a ghastly skeleton ball. But the music ceased--and they vanished, And I came away from the hall. WORDS AND THOUGHTS He said as he sat in her theatre box Between the acts, "What beastly weather! How like a parrot the lover talks-- And the lady is tame, and the villain stalks-- I hope they finally die together." He thought--"_You are fair as the dawn's first ray_; _I know the angels keep guard above you_. _And so I chatter of weather_, _and play_, _While all the time I am mad to say_, _I love you_, _love you_, _love you_." He said--"The season is almost run; How glad we are, when the whirl is over! For the toil of pleasure is more than its fun, And what is it all, when all is done, But the stick of a rocket that has descended?" He thought--"_Oh God_! _to be off somewhere_ _Afar with you_, _from this scene of fashion_; _To know you were mine_, _and to have you care_, _And to lose myself in the crimson snare_ _Of your lips_, _in a kiss of passion_." He said--"You are going abroad, no doubt, This land of Liberty coldly scorning. I too shall journey a bit about, From Wall Street up by the L. Road out To Harlem, and down each morning." He thought--"_It must follow on land or sea_, _This pent-up_, _passionate_, _dumb devotion_, _Till the cry of a rapture that may not be_ _Shall reach your heart from the heart of me_ _And stir you with strange emotion_." WANTED--A LITTLE GIRL Where have they gone to--the little girls With natural manners and natural curls; Who love their dollies and like their toys, And talk of something besides the boys? Little old women in plenty I find, Mature in manners and old of mind; Little old flirts who talk of their "beaux," And vie with each other in stylish clothes. Little old belles who, at nine and ten, Are sick of pleasure and tired of men; Weary of travel, of balls, of fun, And find no new thing under the sun. Once, in the beautiful long ago, Some dear little children I used to know; Girls who were merry as lambs at play, And laughed and rollicked the livelong day. They thought not at all of the "style" of their clothes, They never imagined that boys were "beaux"-- "Other girls' brothers" and "mates" were they, Splendid fellows to help them play. Where have they gone to? If you see One of them anywhere send her to me. I would give a medal of purest gold To one of those dear little girls of old, With an innocent heart and an open smile, Who knows not the meaning of "flirt" or "style." THE SUICIDE Vast was the wealth I carried in life's pack-- Youth, health, ambition, hope and trust; but Time And Fate, those robbers fit for any crime, Stole all, and left me but the empty sack. Before me lay a long and lonely track Of darkling hills and barren steeps to climb; Behind me lay in shadows the sublime Lost lands of Love's delight. Alack! Alack! Unwearied, and with springing steps elate, I had conveyed my wealth along the road. The empty sack proved now a heavier load: I was borne down beneath its worthless weight. I stumbled on, and knocked at Death's dark gate. There was no answer. Stung by sorrow's goad I _forced_ my way into that grim abode, And laughed, and flung Life's empty sack to Fate. Unknown and uninvited I passed in To that strange land that hangs between two goals, Round which a dark and solemn river rolls-- More dread its silence than the loud earth's din. And now, where was the peace I hoped to win? Black-masted ships slid past me in great shoals, Their bloody decks thronged with mistaken souls. (God punishes mistakes sometimes like sin.) Not rest and not oblivion I found. My suffering self dwelt with me just the same; But here no sleep was, and no sweet dreams came To give me respite. Tyrant Death, uncrowned By my own hand, still King of Terrors, frowned Upon my shuddering soul, that shrank in shame Before those eyes where sorrow blent with blame, And those accusing lips that made no sound. What gruesome shapes dawned on my startled sight What awful sighs broke on my listening ear! The anguish of the earth, augmented here A thousand-fold, made one continuous night. The sack I flung away in impious spite Hung yet upon me, filled, I saw in fear. With tears that rained from earth's adjacent sphere, And turned to stones in falling from that height. And close about me pressed a grieving throng, Each with his heavy sack, which bowed him so His face was hidden. One of these mourned: "Know Who enters here but finds the way more long To those fair realms where sounds the angels' song. There is no man-made exit out of woe; Ye cannot dash the locked door down and go To claim thy rightful joy through paths of wrong." He passed into the shadows dim and grey, And left me to pursue my path alone. With terror greater than I yet had known. Hard on my soul the awful knowledge lay, Death had not ended life nor found God's way; But, with my same sad sorrows still my own, Where by-roads led to by-roads, thistle-sown, I had but wandered off and gone astray. With earth still near enough to hear its sighs, With heaven afar and hell but just below, Still on and on my lonely soul must go Until I earn the right to Paradise. We cannot force our way into God's skies, Nor rush into the rest we long to know; But patiently, with bleeding steps and slow Toil on to where selfhood in Godhood dies. "NOW I LAY ME" When I pass from earth away, Palsied though I be and grey, May my spirit keep so young That my failing, faltering tongue Frames that prayer so dear to me, Taught me at my mother's knee: "_Now I lay me down to sleep_," (Passing to Eternal rest On the loving parent breast) "_I pray the Lord my soul to keep_;" (From all danger safe and calm In the hollow of His palm;) "_If I should die before I wake_," (Drifting with a bated breath Out of slumber into death,) "_I pray the Lord my soul to take_." (From the body's claim set free Sheltered in the Great to be.) Simple prayer of trust and truth. Taught me in my early youth-- Let my soul its beauty keep When I lay me down to sleep. THE MESSENGER She rose up in the early dawn, And white and silently she moved About the house. Four men had gone To battle for the land they loved, And she, the mother and the wife, Waited for tidings from the strife. How still the house seemed! and her tread Was like the footsteps of the dead. The long day passed, the dark night came; She had not seen a human face. Some voice spoke suddenly her name. How loud it echoed in that place Where, day by day, no sound was heard But her own footsteps! "Bring you word," She cried to whom she could not see, "Word from the battle-plain to me?" A soldier entered at the door, And stood within the dim firelight: "I bring you tidings of the four," He said, "who left you for the fight." "God bless you, friend," she cried; "speak on! For I can bear it. One is gone?" "Ay, one is gone!" he said. "Which one?" "Dear lady, he, your eldest son." A deathly pallor shot across Her withered face; she did not weep. She said: "It is a grievous loss, But God gives His beloved sleep. What of the living--of the three? And when can they come back to me?" The soldier turned away his head: "Lady, your husband, too, is dead." She put her hand upon her brow; A wild, sharp pain was in her eyes. "My husband! Oh, God, help me now!" The soldier heard her shuddering sighs. The task was harder than he thought. "Your youngest son, dear madam, fought Close at his father's side; both fell Dead, by the bursting of a shell." She moved her lips and seemed to moan. Her face had paled to ashen grey: "Then one is left me--one alone," She said, "of four who marched away. Oh, overruling, All-wise God, How can I pass beneath Thy rod!" The soldier walked across the floor, Paused at the window, at the door, Wiped the cold dew-drops from his cheek And sought the mourner's side again. "Once more, dear lady, I must speak: Your last remaining son was slain Just at the closing of the fight; Twas he who sent me here to-night." "God knows," the man said afterward, "The fight itself was not so hard." A SERVIAN LEGEND Long, long ago, ere yet our race began, When earth was empty, waiting still for man, Before the breath of life to him was given The angels fell into a strife in heaven. At length one furious demon grasped the sun And sped away as fast as he could run, And with a ringing laugh of fiendish mirth, He leaped the battlements and fell to earth. Dark was it then in heaven, but light below; For there the demon wandered to and fro, Tilting aloft upon a slender pole The orb of day--the pilfering old soul. The angels wept and wailed; but through the dark The Great Creator's voice cried sternly: "Hark! Who will restore to me the orb of Light, Him will I honour in all heaven's sight." Then over the battlements there dropped another. (A shrewder angel well there could not be.) Quoth he: "Behold my love for thee, my brother, For I have left all heaven to stay with thee. "Thy loneliness and wanderings I will share, Thy heavy burden I will help thee bear." "Well said," the demon answered, "and well done, But I'll not tax you with this heavy sun. "Your company will cheer me, it is true, And I could never think of burdening you." Idly they wandered onward, side by side, Till, by and by, they neared a silvery tide. "Let's bathe," the angel suddenly suggested. "Agreed," the demon answered. "I'll go last, Because I needs must leave quite unmolested This tiresome sun, which I will now make fast. He set the pole well in the sandy turf, And called a jackdaw near to watch the place. Meanwhile the angel paddled in the surf, And playfully dared his brother to a race. They swam around together for a while, The demon always keeping near his prize, Till presently the angel, with a smile, Proposed a healthful diving exercise. The demon hesitated. "But," thought he, "The jackdaw will inform me with a cry If this good brother tries deceiving me; I will not be outdone by him--not I!" Down, down they went. The angel in a trice Rose up again, and swift to shore he sped. The jackdaw shrieked, but lo! a mile of ice The demon found had frozen o'er his head. He swore an oath, and gathered all his force, And broke the ice, to see the sun, of course, Held firmly in the radiant angel's hand, Who sailed away toward the heavenly land. He gave pursuit. Wrath lent speed to his chase; All heaven leaned down to watch the exciting race. On, on they came, and still the Evil One Gained on the angel burdened with the sun. With bated breath and faces white as ghosts, Over the walls leaned heaven's affrighted hosts. Up, up, still up, the angel almost spent, Threw one foot forward o'er the battlement. The demon seized the other with a shout; So fierce his clutch he pulled the bottom out, As the good angel, fainting, laid the sun Down by the throne of God, who cried: "Well done! Thy great misfortune shall be made divine: _Man_ will I create with a foot like thine!" PEEK-A-BOO The cunningest thing that a baby can do Is the very first time it plays peek-a-boo; When it hides its pink little face in its hands, And crows, and shows that it understands What nurse, and mamma and papa, too, Mean when they hide and cry, "Peek a-boo, peek-a-boo." Oh, what a wonderful thing it is, When they find that baby can play like this! And every one listens, and thinks it true That baby's gurgle means "Peek-a-boo, peek-a-boo"; And over and over the changes are rung On the marvellous infant who talks so young. I wonder if any one ever knew A baby that never played peek-a-boo, peek-a-boo. 'Tis old as the hills are. I believe Cain was taught it by Mother Eve; For Cain was an innocent baby, too, And I am sure he played peek-a-boo, peek-a-boo. And the whole world full of the children of men, Have all of them played that game since then. Kings and princes and beggars, too, Every one has played peek-a-boo, peek-a-boo. Thief and robber and ruffian bold, The crazy tramp and the drunkard old, All have been babies who laughed and knew How to hide, and play peek-a-boo, peek-a-boo. THE FALLING OF THRONES Above the din of commerce, above the clamour and rattle Of labour disputing with riches, of Anarchists' threats and groans, Above the hurry and hustle and roar of that bloodless battle, Where men are fighting for riches, I hear the falling of thrones. I see no savage host, I hear no martial drumming, But down in the dust at our feet lie the useless crowns of kings; And the mighty spirit of Progress is steadily coming, coming, And the flag of one republic abroad to the world he flings. The Universal Republic, where worth, not birth, is royal; Where the lowliest born may climb on a self-made ladder to fame; Where the highest and proudest born, if he be not true and loyal, Shall find no masking title to cover and gild his shame. Not with the bellow of guns and not with sabres whetting, But with growing minds of men is waged this swordless fray; While over the dim horizon the sun of royalty, setting, Lights, with a dying splendour, the humblest toiler's way. HER LAST LETTER Sitting alone by the window, Watching the moonlit street, Bending my head to listen To the well-known sound of your feet, I have been wondering, darling, How I can bear the pain, When I watch, with sighs and tear-wet eyes, And wait for your coming in vain. For I know that a day approaches When your heart will tire of me; When by door and gate I may watch and wait For a form I shall not see; When the love that is now my heaven, The kisses that make my life, You will bestow on another, And that other will be--your wife. You will grow weary of sinning (Though you do not call it so), You will long for a love that is purer Than the love that we two know. God knows I have loved you dearly, With a passion strong as true; But you will grow tired and leave me, Though I gave up all for you. I was as pure as the morning When I first looked on your face; I knew I never could reach you In your high, exalted place. But I looked and loved and worshipped As a flower might worship a star, And your eyes shone down upon me, And you seemed so far--so far. And then? Well, then, you loved me, Loved me with all your heart; But we could not stand at the altar-- We were so far apart. If a star should wed with a flower The star must drop from the sky, Or the flower in trying to reach it Would droop on its stalk and die. But you said that you loved me, darling, And swore by the heavens above That the Lord and all of His angels Would sanction and bless our love. And I? I was weak, not wicked. My love was as pure as true, And sin itself seemed a virtue If only shared by you. We have been happy together, Though under the cloud of sin, But I know that the day approaches When my chastening must begin. You have been faithful and tender, But you will not always be, But I think I had better leave you While your thoughts are kind of me. I know my beauty is fading-- Sin furrows the fairest brow-- And I know that your heart will weary Of the face you smile on now. You will take a bride to your bosom After you turn from me; You will sit with your wife in the moonlight, And bold her babe on your knee. O God! I never could bear it; It would madden my brain, I know; And so while you love me dearly I think I had better go. It is sweeter to feel, my darling-- To know as I fall asleep-- That some one will mourn me and miss me, That some one is left to weep, Than to die as I should in the future, To drop in the street some day, Unknown, unwept, and forgotten After you cast me away. Perhaps the blood of the Saviour Can wash my garments clean; Perchance I may drink of the waters That flow through pastures green. Perchance we may meet in heaven, And walk in the streets above, With nothing to grieve us or part us Since our sinning was all through love God says, "Love one another," And down to the depths of hell Will He send the soul of a woman Because she loved--and fell? * * * * * And so in the moonlight he found her, Or found her beautiful clay, Lifeless and pallid as marble, For the spirit had flown away. The farewell words she had written She held to her cold, white breast, And the buried blade of a dagger Told how she had gone to rest. THE PRINCESS'S FINGER-NAIL: A TALE OF NONSENSE LAND All through the Castle of High-bred Ease, Where the chief employment was do-as-you-please, Spread consternation and wild despair. The queen was wringing her hands and hair; The maids of honour were sad and solemn; The pages looked blank as they stood in column; The court-jester blubbered, "Boo-hoo, boo-hoo" The cook in the kitchen dropped tears in the stew And all through the castle went sob and wail, For the princess had broken her finger-nail: The beautiful Princess Red-as-a-Rose, Bride-elect of the Lord High-Nose, Broken her finger-nail down to the quick-- No wonder the queen and her court were sick. Never sorrow so dread before Had dared to enter that castle door. Oh! what would my Lord His-High-Nose say When she took off her glove on her wedding-day? The fairest princess in Nonsense Land, With a broken finger-nail on her hand! 'Twas a terrible, terrible accident, And they called a meeting of parliament; And never before that royal Court Had come such question of grave import As "How could you hurry a nail to grow?" And the skill of the kingdom was called to show. They sent for Monsieur File-'em-off; He smoothed down the corners so ragged and rough. They sent for Madame la Diamond-Dust, Who lived on the fingers of upper-crust; They sent for Professor de Chamois-Skin, Who took her powder and rubbed it in; They sent for the pudgy nurse Fat-on-the-Bone To bathe her finger in eau-de-Cologne; And they called the court surgeon, Monsieur Red-Tape, To hear what he thought of the new nail's shape, Over the kingdom the telegrams flew Which told how the finger-nail thrived and grew; And all through the realm of Nonsense Land They offered up prayers for the princess's hand. At length the glad tidings were heard with a shout What the princess's finger-nail had grown out: Pointed and polished and pink and clean, Befitting the hand of a some-day queen. Salutes were fired all over the land By the home-guard battery pop-gun band; And great was the joy of my Lord High-Nose, Who straightway ordered his wedding clothes, And paid his tailor, Don Wait-for-aye, Who died of amazement the self-same day. My lord by a jury was judged insane; For they said--and the truth of the saying was plain-- That a lord of such very high pedigree Would never be paying his bills, you see, Unless he was out of his head; and so They locked him up without more ado. And the beautiful Princess Red-as-a-Rose Pined for her lover, my Lord High-Nose, Till she entered a convent and took the veil-- And this is the end of my nonsense tale. A BABY IN THE HOUSE I knew that a baby was hid in the house; Though I saw no cradle and heard no cry, But the husband went tiptoeing round like a mouse, And the good wife was humming a soft lullaby; And there was a look on the face of that mother That I knew could mean only _one_ thing, and no other. "The _mother_," I said to myself; for I knew That the woman before me was certainly that, For there lay in the corner a tiny cloth shoe, And I saw on the stand such a wee little hat; And the beard of the husband said plain as could be, "Two fat, chubby hands have been tugging at me." And he took from his pocket a gay picture-book, And a dog that would bark if you pulled on a string; And the wife laid them up with such a pleased look; And I said to myself, "There is no other thing But a babe that could bring about all this, and so That one is in hiding here somewhere, I know." I stayed but a moment, and saw nothing more, And heard not a sound, yet I knew I was right; What else could the shoe mean that lay on the floor, The book and the toy, and the faces so bright? And what made the husband as still as a mouse? I am sure, _very_ sure, there's a babe in that house. THE FOOLISH ELM The bold young Autumn came riding along One day where an elm-tree grew. "You are fair," he said, as she bent down her head, "Too fair for your robe's dull hue. You are far too young for a garb so old; Your beauty needs colour and sheen. Oh, I would clothe you in scarlet and gold Befitting the grace of a queen. "For one little kiss on your lips, sweet elm, For one little kiss, no more, I would give you, I swear, a robe more fair Than ever a princess wore. One little kiss on those lips, my pet, And lo! you shall stand, I say, Queen of the forest, and, better yet, Queen of my heart alway." She tossed her head, but he took the kiss-- 'Tis the way of lovers bold-- And a gorgeous dress for that sweet caress He gave ere the morning was old. For a week and a day she ruled a queen In beauty and splendid attire; For a week and a day she was loved, I ween, With the love that is born of desire. Then bold-eyed Autumn went on his way In search of a tree more fair; And mob-winds tattered her garments and scattered Her finery here and there. Poor and faded and ragged and cold She rocked in her wild distress, And longed for the dull green gown she had sold For her fickle lover's caress. And the days went by and Winter came, And his tyrannous tempests beat On the shivering tree, whose robes of flame He had trampled under his feet. I saw her reach up to the mocking skies Her poor arms, bare and thin; Ah, well-a-day! it is ever the way With a woman who trades with sin. ROBIN'S MISTAKE What do you think Red Robin Found by a mow of hay? Why, a flask brimful of liquor, That the mowers brought that day To slake their thirst in the hayfield. And Robin he shook his head: "Now I wonder what they call it, And how it tastes?" he said. "I have seen the mowers drink it-- Why isn't it good for me? So I'll just draw out the stopper And get at the stuff, and see!" But alas! for the curious Robin, One draught, and he burned his throat From his bill to his poor crop's lining, And he could not utter a note. And his head grew light and dizzy, And he staggered left and right, Tipped over the flask of brandy, And spilled it, every mite. But after awhile he sobered, And quietly flew away, And he never has tasted liquor, Or touched it, since that day. But I heard him say to his kindred, In the course of a friendly chat, "These men think they are above us, Yet they drink such stuff as that! Oh, the poor degraded creatures! I am glad I am only a bird!" Then he flew up over the meadow, And that was all I heard. NEW YEAR RESOLVE As the dead year is clasped by a dead December, So let your dead sins with your dead days lie. A new life is yours and a new hope. Remember We build our own ladders to climb to the sky. Stand out in the sunlight of promise, forgetting Whatever the past held of sorrow and wrong. We waste half our strength in a useless regretting; We sit by old tombs in the dark too long. Have you missed in your aim? Well, the mark is still shining. Did you faint in the race? Well, take breath for the next. Did the clouds drive you back? But see yonder their lining. Were you tempted and fell? Let it serve for a text. As each year hurries by, let it join that procession Of skeleton shapes that march down to the past, While you take your place in the line of progression, With your eyes to the heavens, your face to the blast. I tell you the future can hold no terrors For any sad soul while the stars revolve, If he will stand firm on the grave of his errors, And instead of regretting--resolve, resolve! It is never too late to begin rebuilding, Though all into ruins your life seems hurled; For see! how the light of the New Year is gilding The wan, worn face of the bruised old world. WHAT WE WANT All hail the dawn of a new day breaking, When a strong-armed nation shall take away The weary burdens from backs that are aching With maximum labour and minimum pay; When no man is honoured who hoards his millions; When no man feasts on another's toil; And God's poor suffering, striving billions Shall share His riches of sun and soil. There is gold for all in the earth's broad bosom, There is food for all in the land's great store; Enough is provided if rightly divided; Let each man take what he needs--no more. Shame on the miser with unused riches, Who robs the toiler to swell his hoard, Who beats down the wage of the digger of ditches, And steals the bread from the poor man's board. Shame on the owner of mines whose cruel And selfish measures have brought him wealth, While the ragged wretches who dig his fuel Are robbed of comfort and hope and health. Shame on the ruler who rides in his carriage Bought with the labour of half-paid men-- Men who are shut out of home and marriage And are herded like sheep in a hovel-pen. Let the clarion voice of the nation wake him To broader vision and fairer play; Or let the hand of a just law shake him Till his ill-gained dollars shall roll away. Let no man dwell under a mountain of plunder, Let no man suffer with want and cold; We want right living, not mere alms-giving; We want just dividing of labour and gold. BREAKING THE DAY IN TWO When from dawn till noon seems one long day, And from noon till night another, Oh, then should a little boy come from play, And creep into the arms of his mother. Snugly creep and fall asleep, Oh, come, my baby, do; Creep into my lap, and with a nap We'll break the day in two. When the shadows slant for afternoon, When the midday meal is over, When the winds have sung themselves into a swoon, And the bees drone in the clover, Then hie to me, hie, for a lullaby-- Come, my baby, do; Creep into my lap, and with a nap We'll break the day in two. We'll break it in two with a crooning song, With a soft and soothing number; For the day has no right to be so long And keep my baby from slumber. Then rock-a-by, rock, may white dreams flock Like angels over you; Baby's gone, and the deed is done, We've broken the day in two. THE RAPE OF THE MIST High o'er the clouds a Sunbeam shone, And far down under him, With a subtle grace that was all her own, The Mist gleamed, fair and dim. He looked at her with his burning eyes And longed to fall at her feet; Of all sweet things there under the skies, He thought her the thing most sweet. He had wooed oft, as a Sunbeam may, Wave, and blossom, and flower; But never before had he felt the sway Of a great love's mighty power. Tall cloud-mountains and vast space-seas, Wind, and tempest, and fire-- What are obstacles such as these To a heart that is filled with desire? Boldly he trod over cloud and star, Boldly he swam through space, She caught the glow of his eyes afar And veiled her delicate face. He was so strong and he was so bright, And his breath was a breath of flame; The Mist grew pale with a vague, strange fright, As fond, yet fierce, he came. Close to his heart she was clasped and kissed; She swooned in love's alarms, And dead lay the beautiful pale-faced Mist In the Sunbeam's passionate arms. THE TWO GLASSES There sat two glasses, filled to the brim, On a rich man's table, rim to rim. One was ruddy and red as blood, And one was as clear as the crystal flood. Said the glass of wine to his paler brother: "Let us tell tales of the past to each other. I can tell of banquet, and revel, and mirth, Where I was king, for I ruled in might; And the proudest and grandest souls on earth Fell under my touch, as though struck with blight. From the heads of kings I have torn the crown; From the heights of fame I have hurled men down; I have blasted many an honoured name; I have taken virtue and given shame; I have tempted the youth, with a sip, a taste, That has made his future a barren waste. Far greater than any king am I, Or than any army under the sky. I have made the arm of the driver fail, And sent the train from its iron rail. I have made good ships go down at sea, And the shrieks of the lost were sweet to me. Fame, strength, wealth, genius, before me fall, And my might and power are over all. Ho! ho! pale brother," laughed the wine, "Can you boast of deeds as great as mine?" Said the glass of water: "I cannot boast Of a king dethroned or a murdered host; But I can tell of hearts that were sad, By my crystal drops made light and glad; Of thirsts I have quenched, and brows I have laved; Of hands I have cooled and souls I have saved. I have leaped through the valley and dashed down the mountain; Slept in the sunshine and dripped from the fountain. I have burst my cloud-fetters and dropped from the sky, And everywhere gladdened the landscape and eye. I have eased the hot forehead of fever and pain; I have made the parched meadows grow fertile with grain; I can tell of the powerful wheel o' the mill, That ground out the flour and turned at my will; I can tell of manhood, debased by you, That I have uplifted and crowned anew. I cheer, I help, I strengthen and aid, I gladden the heart of man and maid; I set the chained wine-captive free, And all are better for knowing me." These are the tales they told each other, The glass of wine and its paler brother, As they sat together, filled to the brim, On the rich man's table, rim to rim. THE MANIAC I saw them sitting in the shade; The long green vines hung over, But could not hide the gold-haired maid And Earl, my dark-eyed lover. His arm was clasped so close, so close, Her eyes were softly lifted, While his eyes drank the cheek of rose And breasts like snowflakes drifted. A strange noise sounded in my brain; I was a guest unbidden. I stole away, but came again With two knives snugly hidden. I stood behind them. Close they kissed, While eye to eye was speaking; I aimed my steels, and neither missed The heart I sent it seeking. There were two death-shrieks mingled so It seemed like one voice crying, I laughed--it was such bliss, you know, To hear and see them dying. I laughed and shouted while I stood Above the lovers, gazing Upon the trickling rills of blood And frightened eyes fast glazing. It was such joy to see the rose Fade from her cheek for ever; To know the lips he kissed so close Could answer never, never. To see his arm grow stark and cold, And know it could not hold her; To know that while the world grew old His eyes could not behold her. A crowd of people thronged about, Brought thither by my laughter; I gave one last triumphant shout-- Then darkness followed after. That was a thousand years ago; Each hour I live it over, For there, just out of reach, you know, _She_ lies, with Earl, my lover. They lie there, staring, staring so With great, glazed eyes to taunt me. Will no one bury them down low, Where they shall cease to haunt me? He kissed her lips, not mine; the flowers And vines hung all about them. Sometimes I sit and laugh for hours To think just how I found them. And then I sometimes stand and shriek In agony of terror: I see the red warm in her cheek, Then laugh loud at my error. My cheek was all too pale, he thought; He deemed hers far the brightest. Ha! but my dagger touched a spot That made _her_ face the whitest! But oh! the days seem very long, Without my Earl, my lover; And something in my head seems wrong The more I think it over. Ah! look--she is not dead--look there! She's standing close beside me! Her eyes are open--how they stare! Oh, hide me! hide me! hide me! WHAT IS FLIRTATION? What is flirtation? Really, How can I tell you that? But when she smiles I see its wiles, And when he lifts his hat. 'Tis walking in the moonlight, 'Tis buttoning on a glove, 'Tis lips that speak of plays next week, While eyes are talking love. 'Tis meeting in the ball-room, 'Tis whirling in the dance; 'Tis something hid beneath the lid More than a simple glance. 'Tis lingering in the hallway, 'Tis sitting on the stair, 'Tis bearded lips on finger-tips, If mamma isn't there. 'Tis tucking in the carriage, 'Tis asking for a call; 'Tis long good-nights in tender lights, And that is--no, not all! 'Tis parting when it's over, And one goes home to sleep; Best joys must end, tra la, my friend, But one goes home to weep! HUSBAND AND WIFE Reach out your arms, and hold me close and fast, Tell me you have no memories of your past That mar this love of ours, so great, so vast. Some truths are cheapened when too oft averred-- Does not the deed speak louder than the word? (_Dear Christ_! _that old dream woke again and stirred_.) As you love me, you never loved before? Though oft you say it--say it yet once more; My heart is jealous of those days of yore. Sweet wife, dear comrade, mother of my child, My life is yours, by memory undefiled. (_It stirs again_, _that passion brief and wild_.) You never knew such happy hours as this, We two alone, our hearts surcharged with bliss, Nor other kisses sweet as my own kiss? I was the thirsty field, long parched with drouth, You were the warm rain blowing from the South. (_But oh_! _the crimson madness of her mouth_.) You would not, if you could, go down life's track For just one little moment, and bring back Some vanished raptures that you miss or lack? I am content. You are my life, my all. (_One burning hour_, _but one_, _could I recall_. _God_! _how men lie_, _when driven to the wall_!) HOW DOES LOVE SPEAK? How does Love speak? In the faint flush upon the tell-tale cheek, And in the pallor that succeeds it; by The quivering lid of an averted eye-- The smile that proves the parent of a sigh: Thus doth Love speak. How does Love speak? By the uneven heart-throbs, and the freak Of bounding pulses that stand still and ache While new emotions, like strange barges, make Along vein-channels their disturbing course, Still as the dawn, and with the dawn's swift force: Thus doth Love speak. How does Love speak? In the avoidance of that which we seek The sudden silence and reserve when near; The eye that glistens with an unshed tear; The joy that seems the counterpart of fear, As the alarmed heart leads in the breast, And knows, and names, and greets its godlike guest: Thus doth Love speak. How does Love speak? In the proud spirit suddenly grown meek, The haughty heart grown humble; in the tender And unnamed light that floods the world with splendour; In the resemblance which the fond eyes trace In all fair things to one beloved face; In the shy touch of hands that thrill and tremble; In looks and lips that can no more dissemble: Thus doth Love speak. How does Love speak? In wild words that uttered seem so weak They shrink ashamed to silence; in the fire Glance strikes with glance, swift flashing high and higher, Like lightnings that precede the mighty storm In the deep, soulful stillness; in the warm, Impassioned tide that sweeps thro' throbbing veins, Between the shores of keen delights and pains; In the embrace where madness melts in bliss, And in the convulsive rapture of a kiss: Thus doth Love speak. REINCARNATION He slept as weary toilers do, She gazed up at the moon. He stirred and said, "Wife, come to bed"; She answered, "Soon, full soon." (Oh! that strange mystery of the dead moon's face.) Her cheek was wan, her wistful mouth Was lifted like a cup, The moonful night dripped liquid light: She seemed to quaff it up. (Oh! that unburied corpse that lies in space.) Her life had held but drudgery-- She spelled her Bible thro'; Of books and lore she knew no more Than little children do. (Oh! the weird wonder of that pallid sphere.) Her youth had been a loveless waste, Starred by no holiday. And she had wed for roof, and bread; She gave her work in pay. (Oh! the moon-memories, vague and strange and dear.) She drank the night's insidious wine, And saw another scene: A stately room--rare flowers in bloom, Herself in silken sheen. (Oh! vast the chambers of the moon, and wide.) A step drew near, a curtain stirred; She shook with sweet alarms. Oh! splendid face; oh! manly grace; Oh! strong impassioned arms. (Oh! silent moon, what secrets do you hide!) The warm red lips of thirsting love On cheek and brow were pressed; As the bees know where honeys grow, They sought her mouth, her breast. (Oh! the dead moon holds many a dead delight.) The speaker stirred and gruffly spake, "Come, wife, where have you been?" She whispered low, "Dear God, I go-- But 'tis the seventh sin." (Oh! the sad secrets of that orb of white.) AS YOU GO THROUGH LIFE Don't look for the flaws as you go through life; And even when you find them, It is wise and kind to be somewhat blind And look for the virtue behind them. For the cloudiest night has a hint of light Somewhere in its shadows hiding; It is better by far to hunt for a star, Than the spots on the sun abiding. The current of life runs ever away To the bosom of God's great ocean. Don't set your force 'gainst the river's course And think to alter its motion. Don't waste a curse on the universe-- Remember it lived before you. Don't butt at the storm with your puny form, But bend and let it go o'er you. The world will never adjust itself To suit your whims to the letter. Some things must go wrong your whole life long, And the sooner you know it the better. It is folly to fight with the Infinite, And go under at last in the wrestle; The wiser man shapes into God's plan As water shapes into a vessel. HOW SALVATOR WON The gate was thrown open, I rode out alone, More proud than a monarch who sits on a throne. I am but a jockey, yet shout upon shout Went up from the people who watched me ride out; And the cheers that rang forth from that warm-hearted crowd, Were as earnest as those to which monarch e'er bowed. My heart thrilled with pleasure so keen it was pain As I patted my Salvator's soft silken mane; And a sweet shiver shot from his hide to my hand As we passed by the multitude down to the stand. The great waves of cheering came billowing back, As the hoofs of brave Tenny rang swift down the track; And he stood there beside us, all bone and all muscle, Our noble opponent, well trained for the tussle That waited us there on the smooth, shining course. My Salvator, fair to the lovers of horse, As a beautiful woman is fair to man's sight-- Pure type of the thoroughbred, clean-limbed and bright,-- Stood taking the plaudits as only his due, And nothing at all unexpected or new. And then, there before us the bright flag is spread, There's a roar from the grand stand, and Tenny's ahead; At the sound of the voices that shouted "a go!" He sprang like an arrow shot straight from the bow. I tighten the reins on Prince Charlie's great son-- He is off like a rocket, the race is begun. Half-way down the furlong, their heads are together, Scarce room 'twixt their noses to wedge in a feather; Past grand stand, and judges, in neck-to-neck strife, Ah, Salvator, boy! 'tis the race of your life. I press my knees closer, I coax him, I urge, I feel him go out with a leap and a surge; I see him creep on, inch by inch, stride by stride, While backward, still backward, falls Tenny beside. We are nearing the turn, the first quarter is past-- 'Twixt leader and chaser the daylight is cast. The distance elongates, still Tenny sweeps on, As graceful and free-limbed and swift as a fawn; His awkwardness vanished, his muscles all strained-- A noble opponent, well born and well trained. I glanced o'er my shoulder, ha! Tenny, the cost Of that one's second flagging, will be--the race lost. One second's weak yielding of courage and strength, And the daylight between us has doubled its length. The first mile is covered, the race is mine--no! For the blue blood of Tenny responds to a blow. He shoots through the air like a ball from a gun, And the two lengths between us are shortened to one, My heart is contracted, my throat feels a lump, For Tenny's long neck is at Salvator's rump; And now with new courage grown bolder and bolder, I see him, once more running shoulder to shoulder. With knees, hands, and body I press my grand steed I urge him, I coax him, I pray him to heed! Oh, Salvator! Salvator! list to my calls, For the blow of my whip will hurt both if it falls. There's a roar from the crowd like the ocean in storm As close to my saddle leaps Tenny's great form: One more mighty plunge, and with knee, limb, and hand, I lift my horse first by a nose past the stand. We are under the string now--the great race is done, And Salvator, Salvator, Salvator won! Cheer, hoar-headed patriarchs; cheer loud, I say. 'Tis the race of a century witnessed to-day! Though ye live twice the space that's allotted to men, Ye never will see such a grand race again. Let the shouts of the populace roar like the surf For Salvator, Salvator, king of the turf! He has broken the record of thirteen long years; He has won the first place in a vast line of peers. 'Twas a neck-to-neck contest, a grand, honest race, And even his enemies grant him his place. Down into the dust let old records be hurled, And hang out 2.05 in the gaze of the world. THE WATCHER "I think I hear the sound of horses feet Beating upon the gravelled avenue. Go to the window that looks on the street, He would not let me die alone, I knew." Back to the couch the patient watcher passed, And said: "It is the wailing of the blast." She turned upon her couch and, seeming, slept, The long, dark lashes shadowing her cheek; And on and on the weary moments crept, When suddenly the watcher heard her speak: "I think I hear the sound of horses' hoofs--" And answered, "'Tis the rain upon the roofs." Unbroken silence, quiet, deep, profound. The restless sleeper turns: "How dark, how late! What is it that I hear--a trampling sound? I think there is a horseman at the gate." The watcher turns away her eyes tear-blind: "It is the shutter beating in the wind." The dread hours passed; the patient clock ticked on; The weary watcher moved not from her place. The grey dim shadows of the early dawn Caught sudden glory from the sleeper's face. "He comes! my love! I knew he would!" she cried; And, smiling sweetly in her slumbers, died. HOW WILL IT BE? How will it be when one of us alone Goes on that strange last journey of the soul? That certain search for an uncertain goal, That voyage on which no comradeship is known? Will our dear sea sing with the old sweet tone, Though one sits stricken where its billows roll? Will space be dumb, or from the mystic pole Will spirit-messages be backward blown? When our united lives are wrenched apart, And day no more means fond companionship, When fervent night, and lovely languorous dawn, Are only memories to one sad heart, And but in dreams love-kisses burn the lip,-- Dear God, how can this same fair world move on? MEMORY'S RIVER In Nature's bright blossoms not always reposes That strange subtle essence more rare than their bloom, Which lies in the hearts of carnations and roses, That unexplained something by men called perfume. Though modest the flower, yet great is its power And pregnant with meaning each pistil and leaf, If only it hides there, if only abides there, The fragrance suggestive of love, joy, and grief. Not always the air that a master composes Can stir human heart-strings with pleasure or pain. But strange, subtle chords, like the scent of the roses, Breathe out of some measures, though simple the strain. And lo! when you hear them, you love them and fear them, You tremble with anguish, you thrill with delight, For back of them slumber old dreams without number, And faces long vanished peer out into sight. Those dear foolish days when the earth seemed all beauty, Before you had knowledge enough to be sad; When youth held no higher ideal of duty Than just to lilt on through the world and be glad. On harmony's river they seemed to afloat hither With all the sweet fancies that hung round that time-- Life's burdens and troubles turn into air-bubbles And break on the music's swift current of rhyme. Fair Folly comes back with her spell while you listen And points to the paths where she led you of old. You gaze on past sunsets, you see dead stars glisten, You bathe in life's glory, you swoon in death's cold. All pains and all pleasures surge up through those measures, Your heart is wrenched open with earthquakes of sound; From ashes and embers rise Junes and Decembers, Lost islands in fathoms of feeling refound. Some airs are like outlets of memory's oceans, They rise in the past and flow into the heart; And down them float shipwrecks of mighty emotions, All sea-soaked and storm-tossed and drifting apart: Their fair timbers battered, their lordly sails tattered, Their skeleton crew of dead days on their decks; Then a crash of chords blending, a crisis, an ending-- The music is over, and vanished the wrecks. LOVE'S WAY Love gives us copious potions of delight, Of pain and ecstasy, and peace and care; Love leads us upward, to the mountain height, And, like an angel, stands beside us there; Then thrusts us, demon-like, in some abyss: Where, in the darkness of despair, we grope, Till, suddenly, Love greets us with a kiss And guides us back to flowery fields of hope. Love makes all wisdom seem but poorest folly, And yet the simplest mind with Love grows wise, The gayest heart he teaches melancholy, Yet glorifies the erstwhile brooding eyes. Love lives on change, and yet at change Love mocks, For Love's whole life is one great paradox. A MAN'S LAST LOVE Like the tenth wave, that offers to the shore Accumulated opulence and force, So does my heart, which thought it loved of yore, Carry increasing passion down the course Of time to proffer thee. Oh! not the faint First ripple of the sea should be its pride, But the great climax of its unrestraint, Which culminates in one commanding tide. The lesser billows of each crude emotion Break on life's strand, recede, and then unite With love's large sea; and to some late devotion Unrecognised, they bring their lost delight. So all the vanished fancies of my past Live yet in this one passion, grand and vast. THE LADY AND THE DAME So thou hast the art, good dame, thou swearest, To keep Time's perishing touch at bay From the roseate splendour of the cheek so tender, And the silver threads from the gold away; And the tell-tale years that have hurried by us Shall tiptoe back, and, with kind good-will, They shall take their traces from off our faces, If we will trust to thy magic skill. Thou speakest fairly; but if I listen And buy thy secret and prove its truth, Hast thou the potion and magic lotion To give me also the _heart_ of youth? With the cheek of rose and the eye of beauty, And the lustrous locks of life's lost prime, Wilt thou bring thronging each hope and longing That made the glory of that dead Time? When the sap in the trees sets young buds bursting, And the song of the birds fills the air like spray, Will rivers of feeling come once more stealing From the beautiful hills of the far-away? Wilt thou demolish the tower of reason And fling for ever down into the dust The caution Time brought me, the lessons life taught me, And put in their places my old sweet trust? If Time's footprint from my brow is driven, Canst thou, too, take with thy subtle powers The burden of thinking, and let me go drinking The careless pleasures of youth's bright hours? If silver threads from my tresses vanish, If a glow once more in my pale cheek gleams, Wilt thou slay duty and give back the beauty Of days untroubled by aught but dreams? When the soft, fair arms of the siren Summer Encircle the earth in their languorous fold. Will vast, deep oceans of sweet emotions Surge through my veins as they surged of old? Canst thou bring back from a day long vanished The leaping pulse and the boundless aim? I will pay thee double for all thy trouble, If thou wilt restore all these, good dame. CONFESSION I How shall a maid make answer to a man Who summons her, by love's supreme decree, To open her whole heart, that he may see The intricate strange ways that love began. So many streams from that great fountain ran To feed the river that now rushes free, So deep the heart, so full of mystery; How shall a maid make answer to a man? If I turn back each leaflet of my heart, And let your eyes scan all the records there, Of dreams of love that came before I KNEW, Though in those dreams you had no place or part, Yet, know that each emotion was a stair Which led my ripening womanhood to YOU. II Nay, I was not insensate till you came; I know man likes to think a woman clay, Devoid of feeling till the warming ray Sent from his heart lights her with sudden flame. You asked for truth; I answer without shame; My human heart pulsed blood by night and day, And I believed that Love had come my way Before he conquered with your face and name. I do not know when first I felt this fire That lends such lustre to my hopes and fears, And burns a pathway to you with each thought. I think in that great hour when God's desire For worlds to love flung forth a million spheres, This miracle of love in me was wrought. An open door, a moonlit sky, A child-like maid with musing eye, A manly footstep passing by. Light as a dewdrop falls from space Upon a rosebud's folded grace, A kiss fell on her girlish face. "Good-night, good-bye," and he was gone. And so was childhood; it was dawn In that young heart the moon shone on. His name? his face? dim memories; I only know in that first kiss Was prophesied this later bliss. The dreams within my bosom grew; Nay, grieve not that my tale is true, Since all those dreams led straight to you. One time when Autumn donned her robes of splendour And rustled down the year's receding track, As I passed dreaming by, a voice all tender Haled me with youth's soft call to linger back. I turned and listened to a golden story! A wondrous tale, half human, half divine-- A page from bright September's book of glory, To memorise and make forever mine. Strange argosies from passion's unknown oceans Cruised down my veins, a vague elusive fleet, With foreign cargoes of unnamed emotions, While wafts of song blew shoreward, dim and sweet, And sleeping still (because unwaked by you) I dreamed and dreamed, and thought my visions true. I woke when all the crimson colour faded And wanton Autumn's lips and cheeks were pale; And when the sorrowing year had slowly waded, With failing footsteps, through the snow-filled vale. I woke and knew the glamour of a season Had lent illusive lustre to a dream, And looking in the clear calm eyes of Reason, I smiled and said, "Farewell to things that seem." 'Twas but a red leaf from a lush September The wind of dreams across my pathway blew, But oh! my love! the whole round year remember, With all its seasons I bestow on you. The red leaf perished in the first cold blast The full year's harvests at your feet I cast. L'ENVOI Absolve me, prince; confession is all over. But listen and take warning, oh! my lover. You put to rout all dreams that may have been; You won the day, but 'tis not all to win; GUARD WELL THE FORT, LEST NEW DREAMS ENTER IN. A MARRIED COQUETTE Sit still, I say, and dispense with heroics! I hurt your wrists? Well, you have hurt me. It is time you found out that all men are not stoics, Nor toys to be used as your mood may be. _I will not_ let go of your hands, nor leave you Until I have spoken. No man, you say, Dared ever so treat you before? I believe you, For you have dealt only with _boys_ till to-day. You women lay stress on your fine perception, Your intuitions are prated about; You claim an occult sort of conception Of matters which men must reason out. So then, of course, when you ask me kindly "To call again soon," you read my heart. I cannot believe you were acting blindly; You saw my passion for you from the start. You are one of those women who charm without trying; The clay you are made of is magnet ore, And I am the steel; yet, there's no denying You led me to loving you more and more. You are fanning a flame that may burn too brightly, Oft easily kindled, but hard to put out; I am not a man to be played with lightly, To come at a gesture and go at a pout. A brute you call me, a creature inhuman; You say I insult you, and bid me go. And you? Oh, you are a saintly woman, With thoughts as pure as the drifted snow. Pah! you are but one of a thousand beauties Who think they are living exemplary lives: They break no commandments, and do all their duties As Christian women and spotless wives. But with drooping of lids, and lifting of faces, And baring of shoulders, and well-timed sighs, And the devil knows what other subtle graces, You are mental wantons, who sin with the eyes. You lure love to wake, yet bid it keep under, You tempt us to fall, but bid reason control; And then you are full of an outraged wonder When we get to wanting you, body and soul. Why, look at yourself! You were no stranger To the fact that my heart was already on fire. When you asked me to call you knew my danger, Yet here you are, dressed in the gown I admire; For half of the evil on earth is invented By vain, pretty women with nothing to do But to keep themselves manicured, powdered, and scented, And seek for sensations amusing and new. But when I play at love at a lady's commanding, I always am certain to win one game; So there--there--there! I will leave my branding On the lips that are free now to cry "Shame, shame!" You hate me? Quite likely! It does not surprise me, Brute force? I confess it; _but still you were kissed_; And one thing is certain--you cannot despise me For having been played with, controlled, and dismissed. And the next time you see that a man is attracted By the beauty and graces that are not for him, Don't lead him on to be half distracted; Keep out of deep waters although you can swim. For when he is caught in the whirlpool of passion, Where many bold swimmers are seen to drown, A man will reach out and, in desperate fashion, Will drag whoever is nearest him down. Though the strings of his heart may be wrenched and riven By a maiden coquette who has led him along, She can be pardoned, excused, and forgiven, For innocence blindfolded walks into wrong. But she who has willingly taken the fetter That Cupid forges at Hymen's command-- Well, she is the woman who ought to know better; She needs no mercy at any man's hand. In the game of hearts, though a woman be winner, The odds are ever against her, you know; The world is ready to call her a sinner, And man is ready to make her so. Shame is likely, and sorrow is certain, And the man has the best of it, end as it may. So now, my lady, we'll drop the curtain, And put out the lights. We are through with our play. FORBIDDEN SPEECH The passion you forbade my lips to utter Will not be silenced. You must hear it in The sullen thunders when they roll and mutter: And when the tempest nears, with wail and din, I know your calm forgetfulness is broken, And to your heart you whisper, "He has spoken." All nature understands and sympathises With human passion. When the restless sea Turns in its futile search for peace, and rises To plead and to pursue, it pleads for me. And with each desperate billow's anguished fretting. Your heart must tell you, "He is not forgetting." When unseen hands in lightning strokes are writing Mysterious words upon a cloudy scroll, Know that my pent-up passion is inditing A cypher message for your woman's soul; And when the lawless winds rush by you shrieking, Let your heart say, "Now his despair is speaking." Love comes, nor goes, at beck or call of reason, Nor is love silent--though it says no word; By day or night, in any clime or season, A dominating passion must be heard. So shall you hear, through Junes and through Decembers, The voice of Nature saying, "He remembers." THE SUMMER GIRL She's the jauntiest of creatures, she's the daintiest of misses, With her pretty patent leathers or her alligator ties, With her eyes inviting glances and her lips inviting kisses, As she wanders by the ocean or strolls under country skies. She's a captivating dresser, and her parasols are stunning; Her fads will take your breath away, her hats are dreams of style; She is not so very bookish, but with repartee and punning She can set the savants laughing and make even dudelets smile. She has no attacks of talent, she is not a stage-struck maiden; She is wholly free from hobbies, and she dreams of no "career"; She is mostly gay and happy, never sad or care-beladen, Though she sometimes sighs a little if a gentleman is near. She's a sturdy little walker and she braves all kinds of weather, And when the rain or fog or mist drive rival crimps a-wreck, Her fluffy hair goes curling like a kinked-up ostrich feather Around her ears and forehead and the white nape of her neck. She is like a fish in water; she can handle reins and racket; From head to toe and finger-tips she's thoroughly alive; When she goes promenading in a most distracting jacket, The rustle round her feet suggests how laundresses may thrive. She can dare the wind and sunshine in the most bravado manner, And after hours of sailing she has merely cheeks of rose; Old Sol himself seems smitten, and at most will only tan her, Though to everybody else he gives a danger-signal nose. She's a trifle sentimental, and she's fond of admiration, And she sometimes flirts a little in the season's giddy whirl; But win her if you can, sir, she may prove your life's salvation, For an angel masquerading oft is she, the Summer Girl. THE GHOST Through the open door of dreamland Came a ghost of long ago, long ago. When I wakened, all unheeding Was the phantom to my pleading; For he would not turn and go, But beside me all the day, In my work and in my play, Trod this ghost of long ago, long ago. Not a vague and pallid phantom Was this ghost that came to me, followed me: Though he rose from regions haunted, Though he came unbid, unwanted, He was very fair to see. Like the radiant sun in space Was the halo round the face Of that ghost that came to me, followed me. And he wore no shroud or cere-cloth As he wandered at my side, close beside: He was clothed in royal splendour And his eyes were deep and tender, While he walked in stately pride; And he seemed like some great king, Not afraid of anything, As he wandered at my side, close beside. Then I turned to him commanding That he go the way he came, whence he came. But he answered me in sorrow, "May the Past not seek to borrow From the Present without blame-- Just one memory from its store, Ere it goes to come no more, Back the pathway that it came, whence it came?" Then ashamed of my full coffers, I gave forth from Memory's hold (wondrous hold!) All I owed of tax and duty For remembered hours of beauty, Which I paid in thoughts of gold; Yet my present seemed to be Richer still for all the fee I gave forth from Memory's hold (wondrous hold!). THE SIGNBOARD I will paint you a sign, rumseller, And hang it above your door; A truer and better signboard Than ever you had before. I will paint with the skill of a master, And many shall pause to see This wonderful piece of painting, So like the reality. I will paint yourself, rumseller, As you wait for that fair young boy, Just in the morning of manhood, A mother's pride and joy. He has no thought of stopping, But you greet him with a smile, And you seem so blithe and friendly, That he pauses to chat awhile. I will paint you again, rumseller, I will paint you as you stand, With a foaming glass of liquor Extended in your hand. He wavers, but you urge him-- Drink, pledge me just this one! And he takes the glass and drains it, And the hellish work is done. And next I will paint a drunkard-- Only a year has flown, But into that loathsome creature The fair young boy has grown. The work was sure and rapid. I will paint him as he lies In a torpid, drunken slumber, Under the wintry skies. I will paint the form of the mother As she kneels at her darling's side, Her beautiful boy that was dearer Than all the world beside. I will paint the shape of a coffin, Labelled with one word--"Lost" I will paint all this, rumseller, And will paint it free of cost. The sin and the shame and the sorrow, The crime and the want and the woe That are born there in your workshop, No hand can paint, you know. But I'll paint you a sign, rumseller, And many shall pause to view This wonderful swinging signboard, So terribly, fearfully true. A MAN'S REPENTANCE (Intended for recitation at club dinners.) To-night when I came from the club at eleven, Under the gaslight I saw a face-- A woman's face! and I swear to heaven It looked like the ghastly ghost of--Grace! And Grace? why, Grace was fair; and I tarried, And loved her a season as we men do. And then--but pshaw! why, of course, she is married, Has a husband, and doubtless a babe or two. She was perfectly calm on the day we parted; She spared me a scene, to my great surprise. "She wasn't the kind to be broken-hearted," I remember she said, with a spark in her eyes. I was tempted, I know, by her proud defiance, To make good my promise there and then. But the world would have called it a mesalliance! I dreaded the comments and sneers of men. So I left her to grieve for a faithless lover, And to hide her heart from the cold world's sight As women do hide them, the wide earth over; My God! _was_ it Grace that I saw to-night? I thought of her married, and often with pity, A poor man's wife in some dull place. And now to know she is here in the city, Under the gaslight, and with _that_ face! Yet I knew it at once, in spite of the daubing Of paint and powder, and she knew me; She drew a quick breath that was almost sobbing And shrank in the shade so I should not see. There was hell in her eyes! She was worn and jaded Her soul is at war with the life she has led. As I looked on that face so strangely faded I wonder God did not strike me dead. While I have been happy and gay and jolly, Received by the very best people in town, That girl whom I led in the way to folly, Has gone on recklessly down and down. * * * * * Two o'clock, and no sleep has found me; That face I saw in the street-lamp's light Peers everywhere out from the shadows around me-- I know how a murderer feels to-night. ARISTARCHUS (THE NAME OF THE MOUNTAIN IN THE MOON) It was long and long ago our love began; It is something all unmeasured by time's span: In an era and a spot, by the Modern World forgot, We were lovers, ere God named us, Maid and Man. Like the memory of music made by streams, All the beauty of that other love life seems; But I always thought it so, and at last I know, I know, We were lovers in the Land of Silver Dreams. When the moon was at the full, I found the place; Out and out, across the seas of shining space, On a quest that could not fail, I unfurled my memory's sail And cast anchor in the Bay of Love's First Grace. At the foot of Aristarchus lies this bay, (Oh! the wonder of that mountain far away!) And the Land of Silver Dreams all about it shines and gleams, Where we loved before God fashioned night or day. We were souls, in eerie bodies made of light; We were winged, and we could speed from height to height; And we built a nest called Hope, on the sheer Moon Mountain Slope, Where we sat, and watched new worlds wheel into sight. And we saw this little planet known as Earth, When the mighty Mother Chaos gave it birth; But in love's conceit we thought all those worlds from space were brought, For no greater aim or purpose than our mirth. And we laughed in love's abandon, and we sang, Till the echoing peals of Aristarchus rang, As hot hissing comets came, and white suns burst into flame, And a myriad worlds from out the darkness sprang. I can show you, when the Moon is at its best, Aristarchus, and the spot we made our nest, Oh! I always wondered why, when the Moon was in the sky, I was stirred with such strange longing, and unrest. And I knew the subtle beauty and the force Of our love was never bounded by Earth's course. So with Memory's sail unfurled, I went cruising past this world, And I followed till I traced it to its source. DELL AND I In a mansion grand, just over the way Lives bonny, beautiful Dell; You may have heard of this lady gay, For she is a famous belle. I live in a low cot opposite-- You never have heard of me; For when the lady moon shines bright, Who would a pale star see? But ah, well! ah, well! I am happier far than Dell, As strange as that may be. Dell has robes of the richest kind-- Pinks and purples and blues; And she worries her maid and frets her mind To know which one to choose. Which shall it be now, silk or lace? In which will I be most fair? She stands by the mirror with anxious face, And her maid looks on in despair. Ah, well! ah, well! I am not worried, you see, like Dell, For I have but one to wear. Dell has lovers of every grade, Of every age and style; Suitors flutter about the maid, And bask in her word and smile. She keeps them all, with a coquette's art, As suits her mood or mirth, And vainly wonders if in _one_ heart Of all true love has birth. Ah, well! ah, well! I never question myself like Dell, For I _know_ a true heart's worth. Pleasure to Dell seems stale and old, Often she sits and sighs; Life to me is a tale untold, Each day is a glad surprise. Dell will marry, of course, some day, After her belleship is run; She will cavil the matter in worldly way And wed Dame Fortune's son But, ah, well! sweet to tell, I shall not dally and choose like Dell, For I love and am loved by--_one_. ABOUT MAY One night Nurse Sleep held out her hand To tired little May. "Come, go with me to Wonderland," She said, "I know the way. Just rock-a-by--hum-m-m, And lo! we come To the place where the dream-girls play." But naughty May, she wriggled away From Sleep's soft arms, and said: "I must stay awake till I eat my cake, And then I will go to bed; With a by-lo, away I will go." But the good nurse shook her head. She shook her head and away she sped, While May sat munching her crumb. But after the cake there came an ache, Though May cried: "Come, Sleep, come, And it's oh! my! let us by-lo-by"-- All save the echoes were dumb. She ran after Sleep toward Wonderland, Ran till the morning light; And just as she caught her and grasped her hand, A nightmare gave her a fright. And it's by-lo, I hope she'll know Better another night. VANITY FAIR In Vanity Fair, as we bow and smile, As we talk of the opera after the weather, As we chat of fashion and fad and style, We know we are playing a part together. You know that the mirth she wears, she borrows; She knows you laugh but to hide your sorrows; We know that under the silks and laces, And back of beautiful, beaming faces, Lie secret trouble and grim despair, In Vanity Fair. In Vanity Fair, on dress parade, Our colours look bright and our swords are gleaming; But many a uniform's worn and frayed, And most of the weapons, despite their seeming, Are dull and blunted and badly battered, And close inspection will show how tattered And stained are the banners that float above us. Our comrades hate, while they swear to love us; And robed like Pleasure walks gaunt-eyed Care, In Vanity Fair. In Vanity Fair, as we strive for place, As we rush and jostle and crowd and hurry, We know the goal is not worth the race-- We know the prize is not worth the worry; That all our gain means loss for another; That in fighting for self we wound each other; That the crown of success weighs hard and presses The brow of the victor with thorns--not caresses; That honours are empty and worthless to wear, In Vanity Fair. But in Vanity Fair, as we pass along, We meet strong hearts that are worth the knowing 'Mong poor paste jewels that deck the throng, We see a solitaire sometimes glowing. We find grand souls under robes of fashion, 'Neath light demeanours hide strength and passion; And fair fine honour and godlike resistance In halls of pleasure may have existence; And we find pure altars and shrines of prayer In Vanity Fair. THE GIDDY GIRL [This recitation is intended to be given with an accompaniment of waltz music, introducing dance-steps at the refrain "With one, two, three," etc.] A giddy young maiden with nimble feet, Heigh-ho! alack and alas! Declared she would far rather dance than eat, And the truth of it came to pass. For she danced all day and she danced all night; She danced till the green earth faded white; She danced ten partners out of breath; She danced the eleventh one quite to death; And still she redowaed up and down-- The giddiest girl in town. With one, two, three; one, two, three; one, two, three--kick; Chassee back, chassee back, whirl around quick. The name of this damsel ended with E-- Heigh-ho; alack and a-day! And she was as fair as a maiden need be, Till she danced her beauty away. She danced her big toes out of joint; She danced her other toes all to a point; She danced out slipper and boot and shoe; She danced till the bones of her feet came through. And still she redowaed, waltzed, and whirled-- The giddiest girl in the world. With one, two, three; one, two, three; one, two, three--kick; Chassee back, chassee back, whirl around quick. Now the end of my story is sad to relate-- Heigh-ho! and away we go! For this beautiful maiden's final fate Is shrouded in gloom and woe. She danced herself into a patent top; She whirled and whirled till she could not stop; She danced and bounded and sprang so far, That she stuck at last on a pointed star; And there she must dance till the Judgment Day, And after it, too, for she danced away Her soul, you see, so she has no place anywhere out of space, With her one, two, three; one, two, three; one, two, three--kick; Chassee back, chassee back, whirl about quick. A GIRL'S AUTUMN REVERIE We plucked a red rose, you and I, All in the summer weather; Sweet its perfume and rare its bloom, Enjoyed by us together. The rose is dead, the summer fled, And bleak winds are complaining; We dwell apart, but in each heart We find the thorn remaining. We sipped a sweet wine, you and I, All in the summer weather. The beaded draught we lightly quaffed, And filled the glass together. Together we watched its rosy glow, And saw its bubbles glitter; Apart, alone we only know The lees are very bitter. We walked in sunshine, you and I, All in the summer weather: The very night seemed noonday bright, When we two were together. I wonder why with our good-bye O'er hill and vale and meadow There fell such shade, our paths seemed laid For evermore in shadow. We dreamed a sweet dream, you and I, All in the summer weather, Where rose and wine and warm sunshine Were mingled in together. We dreamed that June was with us yet, We woke to find December. We dreamed that we two could forget, We woke but to remember. HIS YOUTH "Dying? I am not dying? Are you mad? You think I need to ask for heavenly grace? _I_ think _you_ are a fiend, who would be glad To see me struggle in death's cold embrace. "But, man, you lie! for I am strong--in truth Stronger than I have been in years; and soon I shall feel young again as in my youth, My glorious youth--life's one great priceless boon. "O youth, youth, youth! O God! that golden time, When proud and glad I laughed the hours away. Why, there's no sacrifice (perhaps no crime) I'd pause at, could it make me young to-day. "But I'm not _old_! I grew--just ill, somehow; Grew stiff of limb, and weak, and dim of sight. It was but sickness. I am better now, Oh, vastly better, ever since last night. "And I could weep warm floods of happy tears To think my strength is coming back at last, For I have dreamed of such an hour for years, As I lay thinking of my glorious past. "You shake your head? Why, man, if you were sane I'd strike you to my feet, I would, in truth. How dare you tell me that my hopes are vain? How dare you say I have outlived my youth? "'In heaven I may regain it'? Oh, be still! I want no heaven but what my glad youth gave. Its long, bright hours, its rapture and its thrill-- O youth, youth, youth! it is my _youth_ I crave. "There is no heaven! There's nothing but a deep And yawning grave from which I shrink in fear. I am not sure of even rest or sleep; Perhaps we lie and _think_ as I have here. "Think, think, think, think, as we lie there and rot, And hear the young above us laugh in glee. How dare you say I'm dying! _I am not_. I would curse God if such a thing could be. "Why, see me stand! why, hear this strong, full breath-- Dare you repeat that silly, base untruth?" A cry--a fall--the silence known as death Hushed his wild words. Well, has he found his youth? UNDER THE SHEET What a terrible night! Does the Night, I wonder-- The Night, with her black veil down to her feet Like an ordained nun, know what lies under That awful, motionless, snow-white sheet? The winds seem crazed, and, wildly howling, Over the sad earth blindly go. Do they and the dark clouds over them scowling, Do they dream or know? Why, here in the room, not a week or over-- Tho' it must be a week, not more than one-- (I cannot recken of late or discover When one day is ended or one begun), But here in this room we were laughing lightly, And glad was the measure our two hearts beat; And the royal face that was smiling so brightly Lies under that sheet. I know not why--it is strange and fearful, But I am afraid of her, lying there; She who was always so gay and cheerful, Lying so still with that stony stare: She who was so like some grand sultana, Fond of colour and glow and heat, To lie there clothed in that awful manner In a stark white sheet. She who was made out of summer blisses, Tropical, beautiful, gracious, fair, To lie and stare at my fondest kisses-- God! no wonder it whitens my hair Shriek, O wind! for the world is lonely; Trail cloud-veil to the nun Night's feet! For all that I prize in life is only A shape and a sheet. A PIN Oh! I know a certain woman who is reckoned with the good, But she fills me with more terror than a raging lion could. The little chills run up and down my spine whene'er we meet, Though she seems a gentle creature and she's very trim and neat. And she has a thousand virtues and not one acknowledged sin, But she is the sort of person you could liken to a pin. And she pricks you, and she sticks you, in a way that can't be said-- When you seek for what has hurt you, why, you cannot find the head. But she fills you with discomfort and exasperating pain-- If anybody asks you why, you really can't explain. A pin is such a tiny thing--of that there is no doubt-- Yet when it's sticking in your flesh, you're wretched till it's out! She is wonderfully observing. When she meets a pretty girl She is always sure to tell her if her "bang" is out of curl. And she is so sympathetic; to her friend who's much admired, She is often heard remarking: "Dear, you look so _worn_ and tired!" And she is a careful critic; for on yesterday she eyed The new dress I was airing with a woman's natural pride, And she said: "Oh, how becoming!" and then softly added, "It Is really a misfortune that the basque is such a fit." Then she said: "If you had heard me yestereve, I'm sure, my friend, You would say I am a champion who knows how to defend." And she left me with a feeling--most unpleasant, I aver-- That the whole world would despise me if it hadn't been for her. Whenever I encounter her, in such a nameless way She gives me the impression I am at my worst that day; And the hat that was imported (and that cost me half a sonnet) With just one glance from her round eyes becomes a Bowery bonnet. She is always bright and smiling, sharp and shining for a thrust; Use does not seem to blunt her point, nor does she gather rust. Oh! I wish some hapless specimen of mankind would begin To tidy up the world for me, by picking up this pin. THE COMING MAN Oh! not for the great departed, Who formed our country's laws, And not for the bravest-hearted, Who died in freedom's cause, And not for some living hero To whom all bend the knee, My muse would raise her song of praise-- But for the man _to be_. For out of the strife which woman Is passing through to-day, A man that is more than human Shall yet be born, I say. A man in whose pure spirit No dross of self will lurk; A man who is strong to cope with wrong, A man who is proud to work. A man with hope undaunted, A man with godlike power, Shall come when he most is wanted, Shall come at the needed hour. He shall silence the din and clamour Of clan disputing with clan, And toil's long fight with purse-proud might Shall triumph through this man. I know he is coming, coming, To help, to guide, to save. Though I hear no martial drumming, And see no flags that wave. But the great soul travail of woman, And the bold free thought unfurled, Are heralds that say he is on the way-- The coming man of the world. Mourn not for vanished ages, With their great heroic men, Who dwell in history's pages And live in the poet's pen. For the grandest times are before us, And the world is yet to see The noblest worth of this old earth In the men that are to be. 
36305	----	[Illustration] [Illustration: THE OPEN ROAD. Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose. (_Song of the Open Road_).] A · DAY · WITH WALT WHITMAN BY MAURICE CLARE [Illustration] LONDON HODDER & STOUGHTON _In the same Series._ _Tennyson._ _Wordsworth._ _Browning._ _Burns._ _Byron._ _Keats._ _E. B. Browning._ _Whittier_. _Rossetti._ _Shelley._ _Longfellow._ _Scott._ _Coleridge._ _Morris._ A DAY WITH WALT WHITMAN. About six o'clock on a midsummer morning in 1877, a tall old man awoke, and was out of bed next moment,--but he moved with a certain slow leisureliness, as one who will not be hurried. The reason of this deliberate movement was obvious,--he had to drag a paralysed leg, which was only gradually recovering its ability and would always be slightly lame. Seen more closely, he was not by any means so old as at first sight one might imagine. His snow-white hair and almost-white grey beard indicated some eighty years: but he was vigorous, erect and rosy: his clear grey-blue eyes were bright with a "wild-hawk look,"--his face was firm and without a line. An air of splendid vital force, despite his infirmity, was diffused from his whole person, and defied the fact of his actual age, which was two years short of sixty. Dressing with the same large, leisurely gestures as characterized him in everything, Walt Whitman was presently attired in his invariable suit of grey: and by the time the clock touched half-past seven, he was seated in the verandah, comfortably inhaling the sweet, fresh morning air, and quite ready for his simple breakfast. In this old farmhouse, in the New Jersey hamlet of White Horse, Walt Whitman had been long an inmate. He was recovering by almost imperceptible degrees from the breakdown induced by over-strain, mental and physical, which had culminated in intermittent paralytic seizures for the last eight years, and had left his robust physique a mere wreck of its former magnificence. Here, in the absolute peace and seclusion of the little wooden house, with its few fields and fruit-trees, he lived in lovable companionship with the farmer-folk, man, wife and sons: and here, the level, faintly undulated country, "neither attractive nor unattractive," supplied all the needs of his strenuous nature and healed him with its calm, curative influences. He steeped himself, month by month, season after season, in "primitive solitudes, winding stream, recluse and woody banks, sweet-feeding springs and all the charms that birds, grass, wild-flowers, rabbits and squirrels, old oaks, walnut-trees, etc., can bring." Simple fare, these charms might seem to a townsman: to the "good grey poet" they were not only sufficient but inexhaustible. Dearly as he loved the "swarming and tumultuous" life of cities, the tops of Broadway omnibuses, the Brooklyn ferry-boats, the eternal panorama of the multitude, his true delight was in the vast expanses, the illimitable spaces, the very earth from which, Antæus-like, he drew his vital strength. Out here, in the country solitudes, alone could he observe how--in a way undreamed of by the street-dweller,-- Ever upon this stage Is acted God's calm annual drama, Gorgeous processions, songs of birds, Sunrise that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul, The heaving sea, the waves upon the shore, the musical, strong waves, The woods, the stalwart trees, the slender, tapering trees, The lilliput countless armies of the grass. (_The Return of the Heroes._) It may be doubted whether any other poet who has been inspired by outdoor Nature, has approximated so closely as Whitman to the "shows of all variety," which nature presents,--from the infinite gradations of microscopic detail, to the enormous range and sweep of dim vastitudes. His poetry has a huge elemental quality, akin to that of winds and clouds and seas. "To speak with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside,"--this was the standard he had set himself: and, in pursuance of this ideal, he had given his first and most typically unconventional volume the title "_Leaves of Grass_." No name could better convey and sum up his meaning in art,--a commixture of the minute and the universal, the simple and the inexplicable, the particular and the all-pervading,--the commonplace which is also the miracle: for to Whitman leaves of grass were this and more. "To me," he declared, "as I lean and loaf at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass," Every hour of the light and dark is a miracle-- Every cubic inch of space is a miracle, the grass-blades no less so than the "gentle soft-born measureless light." And, avowedly, from these external expressions of nature he derived all power of song-- I hear you whispering there, O stars of heaven-- O suns--O grass of graves--O perpetual transfers and promotions,-- If you do not say anything, how can I say anything? Thus he had arrived at declaring, with august arrogance: "Let others finish specimens--I never finish specimens: I shower them by exhaustless laws as Nature does, fresh and modern continually." Nor are you to suppose that this was a late development of nature-worship in a man suddenly confronted with teeming glories and wonderments. All through his life he had been soaking himself in the mysterious loveliness of the world around. "Even as a boy," he wrote, "I had the fancy, the wish, to write a poem about the seashore--that suggesting dividing line, contact, junction, the solid marrying the liquid--that curious, lurking something (as doubtless every objective form finally becomes to the subjective spirit) which means far more than its mere first sight, grand as that is.... I felt that I must one day write a book expressing this liquid, mystic theme. Afterward ... it came to me that instead of any special lyrical or epical or literary attempt, the seashore should be an invisible _influence_, a pervading gauge and tally for me in my composition." Even as a child, upon the desolate beaches of Long Island, he had, "leaving his bed, wandered alone, bare-headed, barefoot," over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, and explored the secret sources of tragedy that are hidden at the roots of love. Once Paumanok, When the snows had melted--when the lilac-scent was in the air and Fifth-month grass was growing, Up this seashore, in some briers, Two guests from Alabama--two together, And their nest, and four light-green eggs, spotted with brown, And every day the he-bird to and fro near at hand, And every day the she-bird crouch'd on her nest, silent, with bright eyes, And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing them, Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating. * * * * * Till of a sudden, May-be kill'd, unknown to her mate, One forenoon the she-bird crouch'd not on the nest, Nor return'd that afternoon, nor the next, Nor ever appear'd again. And thenceforward all summer in the sound of the sea, And at night under the full of the moon in calmer weather.... Yes, when the stars glisten'd, All night long on the prong of a moss-scallop'd stake, Down, almost amid the slapping waves, Sat the lone singer wonderful causing tears * * * * * I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair, Listen'd long and long.... (_Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking_). But now the Stafford family were assembled at breakfast and Walt limped in to join them. Courteously and simply he greeted the various members of the household,--the dark, silent, diligent Methodist father,--the spiritually-minded yet busy-handed mother,--the two young fellows, the married daughter and her little ones. He was the most domesticated, least troublesome of inmates, and his "large sweet presence" imparted something to the homely breakfast-table, something of benignity and tranquillity, which it had lacked before his entrance. "The best man I ever knew," Mrs. Stafford called him. Her sons adored him; and her grandchildren were almost like his own, in the love and confidence with which they curled themselves upon his great grey knee when the meal was over. For his affection for children, his sense of fatherhood, was a predominant trait of Whitman's character. Lonely, since his mother's death, he had lived as regards the closer human relationships: lonely, in this sense, he was doomed to remain. A veil of secrecy hung over his past life, which none had ever ventured to lift. Rumours of a lost mate, as in the song of the Alabama bird upon the shore,--of children whom he never could claim,--hints of harsh fates and imperious destinies, occasionally penetrated that close-woven curtain of silence which covered his most intimate self. But only in his poems had he voiced his loneliness, and that with the tenderest poignancy of yearning for "better, loftier love's ideals, the divine wife, the sweet, eternal, perfect comrade".... That woman who passionately clung to me. Again we wander, we love, we separate again, Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go, I see her close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous. * * * * * (Be not impatient--a little space--Know you, I salute the air, the ocean and the land, Every day, at sundown, for your dear sake, my love.) And this was the man who had been blamed for his utter lack of "the romantic attitude towards women!" But Whitman was no light singer of casual empty love-lyrics; he was of sterner stuff than that. No dainty dolce affettuoso I, Bearded, sun-burnt, gray-neck'd, forbidding, I have arrived. * * * * * As breakfast passed, he spoke but little to his companions. His ordinary mood of "quiet yet cheerful serenity," lay gently on him, and he was content to sit almost silent, emanating that radiant power, that "effluence and inclusiveness as of the sun," which none could fail to note in him. When addressed, he only replied with the brief monosyllable "Ay? Ay?" (which he pronounced _Oy? Oy?_), and which, slightly inflected to answer various purposes, served him for all response. [Illustration: I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair, Listen'd long and long.... (_Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking_).] The meal was not yet over, for most of the family, when Whitman, rising abruptly with that startling _brusquerie_ which occasionally offended his friends, observed "Ta-ta!" to everybody in general and departed--"as if he didn't care if he never saw us again!" remarked one of the young men. He left the house and strolled down the green lane, to a wide wooded hollow, where the stream called Timber Creek went winding among its lily-leaves beneath the trees. Here Whitman had found, a year before, "a particularly secluded little dell off one side by my creek ... filled with bushes, trees, grass, a group of willows, a straggling bank and a spring of delicious water running right through the middle of it, with two or three little cascades. Here (he) retreated every hot day" (_Specimen Days_),--and here, while the summer sun drew sweet aromatic odours from the tangled water-mints and cresses, he proceeded slowly now, carrying a portable chair, and with his pockets filled with note-books; for, as he truly avowed, "Wherever I go, winter or summer, city or country, alone at home or travelling, I _must_ take notes." He was about to make sure of a morning's unmitigated delight,--in the spot where he sought, "every day, seclusion--every day at least two or three hours of freedom, bathing, no talk, no bonds, no dress, no books, no manners." And each step of the way was a pure joy to him. "What a day!" he murmured, "what an hour just passing! the luxury of riant grass and blowing breeze, with all the shows of sun and sky and perfect temperature, never before so filling me body and soul!" So rhapsodizing inwardly and drinking in the beauty of sight and sound, he proceeded, "still sauntering on, to the spring under the willows--musical as soft clinking glasses--pouring a sizeable stream, pure and clear, out from its vent where the bank arches over like a great brown shaggy eyebrow or mouth-roof--gurgling, gurgling ceaselessly; meaning, saying something, of course (if one could only translate it.)" (_Specimen Days._) Here he sat down awhile and revelled in sheer joy of summer opulence. He enumerated to himself,--laying a store of lovely recollections for future reference in darker days,--"The fervent heat, but so much more endurable in this pure air--the white and pink pond-blossoms, with great heart-shaped leaves, the glassy waters of the creek, the banks, with dense bushery and the picturesque beeches and shade and turf; the tremulous, reedy call of some bird from recesses, breaking the warm, indolent, half-voluptuous silence: the prevailing delicate, yet palpable, spicy, grassy, clovery perfume to my nostrils,--and over all, encircling all, to my sight and soul, the free space of the sky, transparent and blue," (_Specimen Days_,) and, "from old habit, pencilled down from time to time, almost automatically, moods, sights, hours, tints and outlines, on the spot." Minutes like these were the seed time of his art, if that can be called art which was almost one with Nature. For Walt Whitman had, from the very outset, striven to obtain that fusion of identity with _Natura Benigna_, which, even if only momentary, bequeathes a lasting impression on the mind. He had always felt, with regard to his productions, that "There is a humiliating lesson one learns, in serene hours, of a fine day or night. Nature seems to look on all fixed-up poetry and art as something almost impertinent.... If I could indirectly show that we have met and fused, even if but only once, but enough--that we have really absorbed each other and understood each other,"--it sufficed him. Nothing less did: for he recognised that "after you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love and so on--have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear--what remains? Nature remains: to bring out from their torpid recesses, the affinities of a man or woman with the open air, the trees, fields, changes of seasons--the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night." And, while confessing, "I cannot divest my appetite of literature, yet I find myself eventually trying it all by Nature--_first premises_ many call it, but really the crowning results of all, laws, tallies and proofs.... I have fancied the ocean and the daylight, the mountain and the forest, putting their spirit in a judgment on our books. I have fancied some disembodied soul giving its verdict." (_Specimen Days._) He was "so afraid," as he phrased it, "of dropping what smack of outdoors or sun or starlight might cling to the lines--I dared not try to meddle with or smooth them." To be "made one with Nature," in a deeper sense than ever any man yet had known, was, in short, his ideal,--and, one may say, his achievement. For the verdict of the average person, vacant of _his_ glorious gains, he did not care. Regardless of ridicule, calumny, contumely, he had pursued his own way to his own goal: till he was able at last to realize his dream of-- Me imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature, Master of all, or mistress of all--aplomb in the midst of irrational things. And now he was an old man, to look upon,--yet a man surcharged with electric vigour and daily renewing his physical strength from the fountains of eternal youth. He was just as full of _élan_, of enterprise, of the glorious hunger for adventure, as when first he had proclaimed,-- Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose. Allons! to that which is endless, as it was beginningless, To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights, To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights they tend to, Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys; To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it, To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you--however long, but it stretches and waits for you; To see no being, not God's or any, but you also go thither. (_Song of the Open Road._) The big grey man expanded almost visibly in the sun-steeped air, as he absorbed the exquisite minutiæ of the green dell into his mind, and assimilated the music of the wind and stream. Sound of any sort had a powerfully emotional effect upon him. It was not mere fancy on Whitman's part that "he and Wagner made one music." With music on the most colossal scale his poems are fraught from end to end: and while their technical form may be less finished, less perfected, than those of other authors,--while they have less melody, they have the multitudinous harmony, the superb architectonics, the choral and symphonic movement of the noblest masters. "Such poems as _The Mystic Trumpeter_, _Out of the Cradle_, _Passage to India_, have the genesis and exodus of great musical compositions." And to many auditors, the "vast elemental sympathy" of this unique personality can only be compared to that of Beethoven, whom he said he had "discovered as a new meaning in music:" Beethoven, by whom he allowed he "had been carried out of himself, seeing, hearing wonders:" Beethoven, who, like himself, sought inspiration continuously in the magic and mystery of Nature. [Illustration: THE LUMBERMEN'S CAMP. Lumbermen in their winter camp, day-break in the woods, stripes of snow on the limbs of trees, the occasional snapping, The glad clear sound of one's own voice, the merry song, the natural life of the woods, the strong day's work, The blazing fire at night, the sweet taste of supper, the talk, the bed of hemlock boughs, and the bear-skin. (_Song of the Broad-Axe_).] And thus, all Whitman's finest poems have a processional air, like the evolution of some great symphony--a pageantry of sound, so to speak, which whirls one forward like a leaf upon a resistless stream. Sometimes he is superbly triumphant, as in his inaugural _Song of Myself_: With music strong I come--with my cornets and my drums, I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play great marches for conquer'd and slain persons. Sometimes he translates the sonorities of the air into immortal effluences of meaning: Hark, some wild trumpeter--some strange musician, Hovering unseen in air, vibrates capricious tunes to-night.... Blow, trumpeter, free and clear--I follow thee, While at thy liquid prelude, glad, serene, The fretting world, the streets, the noisy hours of day, withdraw; or he blends all sorts and conditions of beautiful resonance into, surely, the strangest yet loveliest love-song ever yet set down: I heard you, solemn-sweet pipes of the organ, as last Sunday morn I pass'd the church, Winds of autumn, as I walked the woods at dusk, I heard your long-stretch'd sighs up above so mournful, I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the opera, I heard the soprano in the midst of the quartet singing; Heart of my love! you too I heard murmuring low through one of the wrists around my head, Heard the pulse of you, when all was still, ringing little bells last night under my ear. But now the precious hour had arrived, which to Whitman spelt revivification and rejuvenescence above all others: the time when, stripped of all externals, he became the very child of Mother Earth. In his own description of the process: "A light south-west wind was blowing through the tree-tops. It was just the place and time for my Adamic air-bath.... So, hanging clothes on a rail near by, keeping old broadbrim straw on head and easy shoes on feet ... then partially bathing in the clear waters of the running brook--taking everything very leisurely, with many rests and pauses ... slow negligent promenades on the turf up and down in the sun ... somehow I seemed to get identity with each and everything around me, in its condition. Perhaps the inner, never-lost rapport we hold with earth, light, air, trees, etc., is not to be realized through eyes and mind only, but through the whole corporeal body." (_Specimen Days._) Power and joy and exhilaration infused his whole frame. "Here," he murmured, "I realize the meaning of that old fellow who said he was seldom less alone than when alone. Never before did I get so close to Nature: never before did she come so close to me." And a miracle of transient transformation had been wrought upon him. His youth was "renewed like the eagle's," his lameness hardly perceptible, as he reluctantly emerged from the sweet water, and, having dried himself in the sun-glow, still more reluctantly dressed again. This was no longer the "battered, wrecked old man," the veteran of life-long battles with the world: but one who could realize with keenest perception every sensation of stalwart strength. He might have been, at this moment, one of his own "lumbermen in their winter camp," enjoying Day-break in the woods, stripes of snow on the limbs of trees, the occasional snapping, The glad clear sound of one's own voice, the merry song, the natural life of the woods, the strong day's work, The blazing fire at night, the sweet taste of supper, the talk, the bed of hemlock boughs, and the bear-skin. (_Song of the Broad-Axe._) or a scion of the "youthful sinewy races," whom he had chanted in _Pioneers_: Come, my tan-faced children, Follow well in order, get your weapons ready; Have you your pistols? have you your sharpedged axes? Pioneers! O pioneers!... All the past we leave behind! We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world; Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labour and the march, Pioneers! O pioneers! Here at last was the true Walt Whitman, superabundant in splendid vitality and conscious of mental and physical power through every fibre of his being. [Illustration: THE PIONEERS. All the past we leave behind! We debouch upon a newer, mightier world,.... Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep.... Pioneers! O Pioneers! (_Pioneers._)] One last longing, loving look he cast upon the creek before returning homewards. The magnificent mid-noon lay full-tide over all, brimming the uttermost shores of beauty: it was the very apotheosis of summer, the tangible realization of Whitman's prophetic vision. All, all for immortality, Love like the light silently wrapping all, Nature's amelioration blessing all, The blossoms, fruits of ages, orchards divine and certain, Forms, objects, growths, humanities, to spiritual images ripening. Give me, O God, to sing that thought, Give me, give him or her I love this quenchless faith, In Thy ensemble, whatever else withheld withhold not from us Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space, Health, peace, salvation universal. Is it a dream? Nay but the lack of it the dream, And failing it life's lore and wealth a dream, And all the world a dream. * * * * * Now he passed back up the lane to the little farmstead, and, entering in, found the midday meal was served. Mr. Stafford was already seated and about to say grace. Whitman stopped as he passed behind the farmer's chair, and clasping Stafford's head in his large, well-formed hands, became an actual part, as it were, in the benediction. Then he took his seat in silence. But that irrepressible joyousness which sometimes, after working on a manuscript, seemed to shine from his face and pervade his whole body,--that "singular brightness and delight, as though he had partaken of some divine elixir"--was visible now upon his noble features. He talked a little, in simple homely phrases,--giving little idea of the voluminous reserve force within him: telling little incidents of the War of Secession and anecdotes of his hospital experiences. He had been a volunteer nurse of exquisite patience and admirable efficiency throughout those terrible years 1862-64. His passionate tenderness and sympathy then found vent: and he gave his best and uttermost: believing that (in his own words) "these libations, extatic life-pourings, as it were, of precious wine or rose-water on vast desert-sands or great polluted rivers, taking chances of _no return_,--what are they but the theory and practice ... of Christ or of all divine personality?" For in the human, however defaced, he still could discern the divine and immortal. The worth of every individual soul was the pivot of all his arts and beliefs: "Because, having looked at the objects of the Universe, I find there is no one, nor any particle of one, but has reference to the soul." Usually, to his sensitive mind, able as it was to realise with the keenest sympathy every phase of human suffering, the memories of carnage were repulsive. By day he could shut them off: but by night, he said, In clouds descending, in midnight sleep, of many a face in battle, Of the look at first of the mortally wounded, of that indescribable look, Of the dead on their backs, with arms extended wide-- I dream, I dream, I dream. (_Old War Dreams._) But he had faith in the future of his country, vast hopes in the purification wrought out by those sorrowful years: and his poem _To the Man-of-War Bird_ was but one of many allegories in which he saw his beloved America rising transfigured from the ashes of the past. Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm, Waking renew'd on thy prodigious pinions, (Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascended'st, And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee,).... Thou born to match the gale, (thou art all wings,) To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane, Thou ship of air that never furl'st thy sails, Days, even weeks untired and onward, through spaces, realms gyrating, At dusk that look'st on Senegal, at morn America, That sport'st amid the lightning-flash and thunder-cloud, In them, in thy experiences, had'st thou my soul, What joys! what joys were thine! and out of the smoke and din of conflict, he believed, should spring "the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon," knit in sublime unity of brotherhood. Dinner over, Whitman retired awhile to his own apartment: that fearful chaos of pell-mell untidiness which was the delight of its occupant and the despair of Mrs. Stafford. An indescribable confusion it was of letters, newspapers and books,--an inkbottle on one chair, a glass of lemonade on another, a pile of MSS. on a third, a hat on the floor.... Imperturbably composed, the poet surveyed his best-loved books,--Scott, Carlyle, Tennyson, Emerson,--translations of Homer, Dante, Hafiz, Saadi: renderings of Virgil, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius,--versions of Spanish and German poets: most well-worn of all, Shakespeare and the Bible. Finally, out of the heterogeneous collection he selected George Sand's _Consuelo_ and seated himself at the window with it. On another afternoon he would have returned to the creek, but to-day he was expecting a friend. And friends, with him, did not mean mere acquaintances: still less those visitors who were brought by vulgar curiosity. Although the best of comrades and one who found companionship most exhilarating, he had a bed-rock of deep reserve, and "to such as he did not like, he became as a precipice." But to those with whom he was truly _en rapport_,--whether by letter or in the flesh,--he was spendthrift of his personality. His English literary friends,--Tennyson, Rossetti, Buchanan, Browning and others, had supplied the financial aid which enabled him to recuperate at Timber Creek: compatriots such as Emerson, John Burroughs, and a host of old-time friends were welcome visitors. But nothing in his life or in his literary fortunes, he declared, had brought him more comfort and support--nothing had more spiritually soothed him--than the "warm appreciation and friendship of that true full-grown woman," Anne Gilchrist, the sweet English widow who was now staying with her children in Philadelphia, to be within easy reach of Whitman. "Among the perfect women I have known (and it has been very unspeakable good fortune to have had the very best for mother, sisters and friends), I have known none more perfect," wrote the poet, "than my dear, dear friend, Anne Gilchrist." It was this warm-hearted, courageous Englishwoman, "alive with humour and vivacity," whose musical voice was shortly heard outside, enquiring for Walt. He hastened down to receive her. [Illustration: THE MAN-OF-WAR BIRD. Thou born to match the gale, (thou art all wings,) To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane, Thou ship of air that never furl'st thy sails, Days, even weeks untired and onward, through spaces, realms gyrating, At dusk that look'st on Senegal, at morn America, That sport'st amid the lightning-flash and thunder-cloud, In them, in thy experiences, had'st thou my soul, What joys! what joys were thine! (_To the Man-of-War Bird._)] Anne Gilchrist's opinion of Whitman was even more enthusiastic than his appreciation of her. She admired and revered the courage with which he expounded his theories of life, no less than the expression of them in words which, as she put it, ceased to be words and became electric streams. "What more can you ask of the words of a man's mouth," she exclaimed, "than that they should absorb into you as food and air, to reappear again in your strength, gait, face--that they should be fibre and filter to your blood, joy and gladness to your whole nature?" She alone, of all women, and almost alone among men, had stood forth to defend him for the "fearless and comprehensive dealing with reality" which had alienated the conventional and offended the prudish--and she alone was the recipient, now, of his most intimate thoughts and aspirations. They sat together on the shady piazza, and he unfolded to her, while her children played around, the hopes and wishes of his heart not only for America but for all humanity. He said, "My original idea was that if I could bring men together by putting before them the heart of man with all its joys and sorrows and experiences and surroundings, it would be a great thing.... I have endeavoured from the first to get free as much as possible from all literary attitudinism--to strip off integuments, coverings, bridges--and to speak straight from and to the heart; ... to discard all conventional poetic phrases, and every touch of or reference to ancient or mediæval images, metaphors, subjects, styles, etc., and to write _de novo_ with words and phrases appropriate to our own days." He took her hand as he spoke, as was his wont with a sympathetic listener, and gazed with eagerness into her serious yet easily-lighted face. His "terrible blaze of personality" was subdued for the nonce into that child-like simplicity, that woman-like tenderness, which constituted some of his chief charms. They discussed the work of contemporary poets, English and American. Whitman, however much he differed from these in theory and method, gave generous homage to their varied genius. He loved to declaim the _Ulysses_ and kindred majestically-rolling passages of Tennyson, in a clear, strong, rugged tone, devoid of all elocutionary tricks or affectation. He never spoke a line of his own verse, but to recite from Shakespeare was a great pleasure to him: and he compared the Shakespearean plays to large, rich, splendid tapestry, like Raffaelle's historical cartoons, where everything is broad and colossal. For Scott, whose work, he said, breathed more of the open air than the workshop, he had unfeigned admiration. Dramatic work and music in all its forms he discussed with knowledge and fervour. As for the poets of America, he poured encomium upon them ungrudgingly. "I can't imagine any better luck befalling these States for a poetical beginning and initiation than has come from Emerson, Longfellow, Bryant and Whittier." (_Specimen Days._) The afternoon shadows stretched themselves out, and at sunset Mrs. Gilchrist and her children departed. It had been for her a memorable afternoon: and Whitman had been thoroughly in his element as comrade of so congenial a soul. Now, as the twilight deepened, he devoted himself to the consideration of the deepest notes in the whole diapason of human existence. Never was a man of more exuberant a joy in life: never one who gazed more courageously into the dim-veiled face of Death,--the sower of all enigmas, the comforter of all pain. Whispers of heavenly death, murmur'd I hear; Labial gossip of night--sibilant chorals; Footsteps gently ascending--mystical breezes, wafted soft and low.... (Did you think Life was so well provided for--and Death, the purport of all Life, is not well provided for?)... I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen, any where, at any time, is provided for, in the inherences of things; I do not think Life provides for all, and for Time and Space--but I believe Heavenly Death provides for all. (_Whispers of Heavenly Death._) And his heart once more, as in the matchless threnody for Lincoln, _When Lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed_, uttered its song of summons and of welcome. Come, lovely and soothing Death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later, delicate Death.... Dark Mother, always gliding near, with soft feet, Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome? Then I chant it for thee--I glorify thee above all. The skies deepened into purple, and the march of the stars began: it was the sacredest hour of the day to Whitman, a period consecrated and set apart above all. "I am convinced," thought he, "that there are hours of Nature, especially of the atmosphere, mornings and evenings, addressed to the soul. Night transcends, for that purpose, what the proudest day can do." (_Specimen Days._) And a new buoyancy quickened in his soul; the indomitable spirit of enterprise revived within him. Now, at eleven at night, he was more exhilarated in mind than his body had been in the blue July morning: and, casting one comprehensive glance upon the burning arcana of the heavens, that he might carry into his sleep a memory of that glory, he "desired a better country," with longing and deep solicitude. Bathe me, O God, in Thee, mounting to Thee, I and my soul to range in range of Thee! * * * * * Passage to more than India! O secret of the earth and sky! Of you, O waters of the sea! O winding creeks and rivers! Of you, O woods and fields! Of you, strong mountains of my land! Of you, O prairies! Of you, gray rocks! O morning red! O clouds! O rain and snows! O day and night, passage to you! O sun and moon, and all you stars! Sirius and Jupiter! Passage to you!... O my brave soul! O farther, farther sail! O daring joy, but safe! Are they not all the seas of God? O farther, farther, farther sail! (_Passage to India_.) _Printed by Percy Lund, Humphries & Co. Ltd.,_ _Bradford and London._ 
36508	----	EIGHT HARVARD POETS E. ESTLIN CUMMINGS S. FOSTER DAMON J. R. DOS PASSOS ROBERT HILLYER R. S. MITCHELL WILLIAM A. NORRIS DUDLEY POORE CUTHBERT WRIGHT [Illustration] NEW YORK LAURENCE J. GOMME 1917 Copyright, 1917, by LAURENCE J. GOMME VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK CONTENTS PAGE E. ESTLIN CUMMINGS Thou in Whose Sword-Great Story Shine the Deeds 3 A Chorus Girl 4 This is the Garden 5 It May not Always be so 6 Crepuscule 7 Finis 8 The Lover Speaks 9 Epitaph 10 S. FOSTER DAMON Incessu Patuit Deus 13 You Thought I had Forgotten 15 Venice 16 The New Macaber 18 To War 20 Calm Day, with Rollers 21 Phonograph--Tango 22 Decoration 24 Threnody 25 J. R. DOS PASSOS The Bridge 29 Salvation Army 30 Incarnation 32 Memory 34 Saturnalia 37 "Whan that Aprille" 39 Night Piece 40 ROBERT HILLYER Four Sonnets from a Sonnet-Sequence 45 A Sea Gull 49 Domesday 50 To a Passepied by Scarlatti 52 Elegy for Antinous 53 Song 54 "My Peace I Leave with You" 55 The Recompense 56 R. S. MITCHELL Poppy Song 59 Love Dream 62 The Island of Death 64 From the Arabian Nights 66 Threnody 68 Helen 70 Largo 72 Lazarus 73 A Crucifix 74 Neith 75 A Farewell 77 WILLIAM A. NORRIS Of Too Much Song 81 Wherever My Dreams Go 82 Out of the Littleness 83 Nahant 84 Qui Sub Luna Errant 85 Across the Taut Strings 86 Escape 87 On a Street Corner 88 Sea-burial 89 DUDLEY POORE A Renaissance Picture 93 The Philosopher's Garden 95 The Tree of Stars 96 After Rain 97 Cor Cordium 99 The Withered Leaf, the Faded Flower be Mine 105 CUTHBERT WRIGHT The End of It 109 The New Platonist 110 The Room Over the River 112 The Fiddler 114 Falstaff's Page 116 A Dull Sunday 117 * * * * * E. ESTLIN CUMMINGS [THOU IN WHOSE SWORD-GREAT STORY SHINE THE DEEDS] Thou in whose sword-great story shine the deeds Of history her heroes, sounds the tread Of those vast armies of the marching dead, With standards and the neighing of great steeds Moving to war across the smiling meads; Thou by whose page we break the precious bread Of dear communion with the past, and wed To valor, battle with heroic breeds; Thou, Froissart, for that thou didst love the pen While others wrote in steel, accept all praise Of after ages, and of hungering days For whom the old glories move, the old trumpets cry; Who gav'st as one of those immortal men His life that his fair city might not die. A CHORUS GIRL When thou hast taken thy last applause, and when The final curtain strikes the world away, Leaving to shadowy silence and dismay That stage which shall not know thy smile again, Lingering a little while I see thee then Ponder the tinsel part they let thee play; I see the red mouth tarnished, the face grey, And smileless silent eyes of Magdalen. The lights have laughed their last; without, the street Darkling, awaiteth her whose feet have trod The silly souls of men to golden dust. She pauses, on the lintel of defeat, Her heart breaks in a smile--and she is Lust ... Mine also, little painted poem of God. This is the garden: colors come and go, Frail azures fluttering from night's outer wing, Strong silent greens serenely lingering, Absolute lights like baths of golden snow. This is the garden: pursed lips do blow Upon cool flutes within wide glooms, and sing, Of harps celestial to the quivering string, Invisible faces hauntingly and slow. This is the garden. Time shall surely reap, And on Death's blade lie many a flower curled, In other lands where other songs be sung; Yet stand They here enraptured, as among The slow deep trees perpetual of sleep Some silver-fingered fountain steals the world. It may not always be so; and I say That if your lips, which I have loved, should touch Another's, and your dear strong fingers clutch His heart, as mine in time not far away; If on another's face your sweet hair lay In such a silence as I know, or such Great writhing words as, uttering overmuch, Stand helplessly before the spirit at bay; If this should be, I say if this should be-- You of my heart, send me a little word; That I may go unto him, and take his hands, Saying, Accept all happiness from me. Then shall I turn my face, and hear one bird Sing terribly afar in the lost lands. CREPUSCULE I will wade out till my thighs are steeped in burn- ing flowers I will take the sun in my mouth and leap into the ripe air Alive with closed eyes to dash against darkness in the sleeping curves of my body Shall enter fingers of smooth mastery with chasteness of sea-girls Will I complete the mystery of my flesh I will rise After a thousand years lipping flowers And set my teeth in the silver of the moon FINIS Over silent waters day descending night ascending floods the gentle glory of the sunset In a golden greeting splendidly to westward as pale twilight trem- bles into Darkness comes the last light's gracious exhortation Lifting up to peace so when life shall falter standing on the shores of the eternal god May I behold my sunset Flooding over silent waters THE LOVER SPEAKS Your little voice Over the wires came leaping and I felt suddenly dizzy With the jostling and shouting of merry flowers wee skipping high-heeled flames courtesied before my eyes or twinkling over to my side Looked up with impertinently exquisite faces floating hands were laid upon me I was whirled and tossed into delicious dancing up Up with the pale important stars and the Humorous moon dear girl How I was crazy how I cried when I heard over time and tide and death leaping Sweetly your voice EPITAPH Tumbling-hair picker of buttercups violets dandelions And the big bullying daisies through the field wonderful with eyes a little sorry Another comes also picking flowers * * * * * S. FOSTER DAMON INCESSU PATUIT DEUS The little clattering stones along the street Dance with each other round my swimming feet; The street itself, as in some crazy dream, Streaks past, a half-perceived material stream. Brighter than early dawn's most brilliant dye Are blown clear bands of color through the sky, That swirl and sweep and meet, to break and foam Like rainbow veils upon a bubble's dome. Yours are the songs that burst about my ears, Or blow away as many-colored spheres. You are the star that made the skies all bright, Yet tore itself away in flaming flight; You are the tree that suddenly awoke; You are the rose that came to life and spoke.... Guided by you, how we might stroll towards death, Our only music one another's breath, Through gardens intimate with hollyhocks, Where silent poppies burn between the rocks, By pools where birches bend to confidants Above green waters scummed with lily-plants. There we might wander, you and I alone, Through gardens filled with marble seats moss-grown, And fountains--water-threads that winds disperse-- While in the spray the birds sit and converse. And when the fireflies mix their circling glow Through the dark plants, then gently might I know Your lips, light as the wings of the dragon-flies.... --Merely dreams, fluttering in my eyes.... [YOU THOUGHT I HAD FORGOTTEN] You thought I had forgotten. Well, I had! (Although I never guessed I could forget Those few great moments when we both went mad.) The other day at someone's tea we met, Smiling gayly, bowed, and went our several ways, Complacent with successful coldness.--Yet Suddenly I was back in the old days Before you felt we ought to drift apart. It was some trick--the way your eyebrows raise, Your hands--some vivid trifle. With a start Then I remembered how I lived alone, Writing bad poems and eating out my heart All for your beauty.--How the time has flown! VENICE In a sunset glowing of crimson and gold, She lies, the glory of the world, A beached king's galley, whose sails are furled, Who is hung with tapestries rich and old. Beautiful as a woman is she, A woman whose autumn of life is here, Proud and calm at the end of the year With the grace that now is majesty. The sleeping waters bathe her sides, The warm, blue streams of the Adrian Sea; She dreams and drowses languorously, Swayed in the swaying of the tides. She is a goddess left for us, Veiled with the softening veils of time; Her blue-veined breasts are now sublime, Her moulded torso glorious. The pity that we must come and go--! While the old gold and the marble stays, Forever gleaming its soft strong blaze, Calm in the early evening glow. And still the sensitive silhouettes Of the gondolas pass and leave no track, Light on the tides as lilies, and black In the rippling waters of long sunsets. THE NEW MACABER The pleasant graveyard of my soul With sentimental cypress trees And flowers is filled, that I may stroll In meditation, at my ease. The little marble stones are lost In flowers surging from the dead; Nor is there any mournful ghost To wail until the night is sped. And while night rustles through the trees, Dragging the stars along, I know The moon is rising on the breeze, Quivering as in a river's flow. And ah! that moon of silver sheen! It is my heart hung in the sky; And no clouds ever float between The grave-flowers and my heart on high. I do not read upon each stone The name that once was carven there; I merely note new blossoms blown And breathe the perfume of the air. Thus walk I through my wonderland While all the evening is atune, Beneath the cypress trees that stand Like candles to the barren moon. TO WAR The music beats, up the chasmed street, Then flares from around the curve; The cheers break out from the waving crowd: --Our soldiers march, superb! Over the track-lined city street The young men, the grinning men, pass. Last night they danced to that very tune; Today they march away; Tomorrow, perhaps no band at all, Or the band beside the grave. Above, in the long blue strip of sky, The whirling pigeons, the thoughtless pigeons, pass. Another band beats down the street; Contending rhythms clash; New melodies win place, then fade, And the flashing legs move past. Down the cheering, grey-paved street The fringed flags, the erect flags, pass. CALM DAY, WITH ROLLERS Always the ships that move in mystery, on the dim horizon, Shadow-filled sails of dreams, sliding over the blue-grey ocean, Far from the rock-edged shore where willow-green waves are rushing, And white foam-people leap, to stand erect for the moment. Ho! ye sails that seem to wander in dream-filled meadows, Say, is the shore where I stand the only field of struggle, Or are ye hit and battered out there by waves and wind-gusts As ye tack over a clashing sea of watery echoes? PHONOGRAPH--TANGO Old dances are simplified of their yearning, bleached by Time. Yet from one black disc we tasted again the bite of crude Spanish passion. ... He had got into her courtyard. She was alone that night. Through the black night-rain, he sang to her window bars: _Love me, love--ah, love me!_ _If you will not, I can follow_ _Into the highest of mountains;_ _And there, in the wooden cabin,_ _I will strangle you for your lover._ --That was but rustling of dripping plants in the dark. More tightly under his cloak, he clasped his guitar. _Love, ah-h! love me, love me!_ _If you will do this, I can buy_ _A fringed silk scarf of yellow,_ _A high comb carved of tortoise;_ _Then we will dance in the Plaza._ She was alone that night. He had broken into her courtyard. Above the gurgling gutters he heard-- surely-- a door unchained? The passage was black; but he risked it-- death in the darkness-- or her hot arms--(_love--love me ah-h-h!_) "A good old tune," she murmured --and I found we were dancing. DECORATION A little pagan child-god plays Beyond the far horizon haze, And underneath the twilight trees He blows a bubble to the breeze, Which is borne upward in the night And makes the heavens shine with light. But soon it sinks to earth again, And, hitting hills, it bursts! And then With foam the skies are splashed and sprayed; And that's how all the stars are made. THRENODY She is lain with high things and with low. She lies With shut eyes, Rocked in the eternal flow Of silence evermore. Desperately immortal, she; She stands With wide hands Dim through the veil of eternity, Behind the supreme door. * * * * * J. R. DOS PASSOS THE BRIDGE The lonely bridge cuts dark across the marsh Whose long pools glow with the light Of a flaring summer sunset. At this end limp bushes overhang, Palely reflected in the amber-colored water; Among them a constant banjo-twanging of frogs, And shrilling of toads and of insects Rises and falls in chorus rhythmic and stirring. Dark, with crumbling railing and planks, The bridge leads into the sunset. Across it many lonely figures, Their eyes a-flare with the sunset, Their faces glowing with its colors, Tramp past me through the evening. I am tired of sitting quiet Among the bushes of the shore, While the dark bridge stretches onward, And the long pools gleam with light; I am tired of the shrilling of insects And the croaking of frogs in the rushes, For the wild rice in the marsh-pools Waves its beckoning streamers in the wind, And the red sky-glory fades. SALVATION ARMY A drum pounds out the hymn, Loud with gaudy angels, tinsel cherubim, To drown the fanfare of the street, And with exultant lilting beat, To mingle the endless rumble of carts, The scrape of feet, the noise of marts And dinning market stalls, where women shout Their wares, and meat hangs out-- Grotesque, distorted by the gas flare's light-- Into one sacred rhythm for the Devil's spite. A woman's thin, raucous voice Carries the tune, bids men rejoice, Bathe in God's mercy, Draw near and learn salvation, see With their own eyes the mystery. Cymbals, at the hands of a tired girl, Slim wisp amid the swirl Of crowded streets, take up the tune, Monotonously importune. Faces are wan in the arc-light's livid glare; A wind gust carries the band's flare Of song, in noisy eddies echoing, Round lonely black street-corners, Till, with distance dimming, It fades away, Among the silent, dark array Of city houses where no soul stirs. The crowd thins, the players are alone; In their faith's raucous monotone, Loud with gaudy angels, tinsel cherubim, A drum pounds out the hymn. INCARNATION Incessantly the long rain falls, Slanting on black walls, Which glisten gold where a street lamp shines. In a shop-window, spangled in long lines, By rain-drops all a-glow, An Italian woman's face Flames into my soul as I go Hastily by in the turbulent darkness;-- An oval olive face, With the sweetly sullen grace Of the Virgin when first she sees, Amid her garden's silver lilies, The white-robed angel gleam, And softly, as by a sultry dream, Feels all her soul subdued unto the fire And radiance of her ecstasy. So in some picture, on which as on a lyre, An old Italian painter laboriously has played His soul away, his love, all his desire For fragrant things afar from earth, Shines the Madonna, as with a veil overlaid By incense-smoke and dust age-old, At whose feet, in time of dearth Or need, a myriad men have laid Their sorrows and arisen bold. Incessantly the long rain falls, Slanting on black walls. But through the dark interminable streets, Along pavements where rain beats Its sharp tattoo, and gas-lamps shine, Greenish gold in the solitude, The vision flames through my mood Of that Italian woman's face, Through the dripping window-pane. MEMORY Between rounded hills, White with patches of buckwheat, whose fragrance fills The little breeze that makes the birch-leaves quiver, Beside a rollicking swift river, Light green in the deeps,-- Like your eyes in sunshine,-- Winds the canal, Lazy and brown as a water-snake, Full of dazzle and sheen where the breeze sweeps The water with gossamer garments, that shake The reeds standing sentinel, And the marginal line Of birches and willows. Our little steamer pulls its way With jingle of bells and panting throb Of old engines. In stiff array The water-reeds wave, And solemnly sway To the wash and swell of our passing. Among the reeds the ripples sob, And die away, 'Till the canal is still again, save For a kingfisher's flashing Across the noon shimmer. I stood beside you in the bow, Watched the sunlight lose itself among your hair, That the breeze tugged at. Bright as the shattered sun-rays, where the prow Cut the still water, The warm light caught and tangled there, Red gold amid your hair. You were very slim in your blue serge dress.... We talked of meaningless things, education, Agreed that unless, Something were changed disaster would come to the nation. You smiled when I pointed where A group of birches shivered in the green wood-shadow, Up to their knees in water, white and fair As dryads bathing. A row Of flat white houses and a wharf Glided in sight. The hoarse whistle shrieked for a landing; Bells jangled.... You were standing A slim blue figure amid the wharf's crowd; The little steamer creaked against the side, loud Screamed the whistle again.... Monotonously the solemn reeds Waved to our passing; Ahead the canal shimmered, blotched green by the water-weeds. With a grinding swing And see-saw of sound, The steamer slunk down the canal. I never even knew your name.... That night from a dingy hotel room, I saw the moon, like a golden gong, Redly loom Across the lake; like a golden gong In a temple, which a priest ere long Will strike into throbbing song, To wake some silent twinkling city to prayer. The lake waves were flakes of red gold, Burnished to copper, Gold, red as the tangled gleam Of sunlight in your hair. SATURNALIA In earth's womb the old gods stir, Fierce chthonian dieties of old time. With cymbals and rattle of castanets, And shriek of slug-horns, the North Wind Bows the oak and the moaning fir, On russet hills and by roadsides stiff with rime. In nature, dead, the life gods stir, From Rhadamanthus and the Isles, Where Saturn rules the Age of Gold, Come old, old ghosts of bygone gods; While dim mists earth's outlines blur, And drip all night from lichen-greened roof-tiles. In men's hearts the mad gods rise And fill the streets with revelling, With torchlight that glances on frozen pools, With tapers starring the thick-fogged night, A-dance, like strayed fireflies, 'Mid dim mad throngs who Saturn's orisons sing. In driven clouds the old gods come, When fogs the face of Apollo have veiled; A fear of things, unhallowed, strange, And a fierce free joy flares in the land. Men mutter runes in language dead, By night, with rumbling drum, In quaking groves where the woodland spirits are hailed. To earth's brood of souls of old, With covered heads and aspen wands, Mist-shrouded priests do ancient rites; The black ram's fleece is stained with blood, That steams, dull red on the frozen ground; And pale votaries shiver with the cold, That numbs the earth, and etches patterned mirrors on the ponds. "WHAN THAT APRILLE ..." Is it the song of a meadow lark Off the brown, sere salt marshes, Or the eager patches in dooryards Of yellow and pale lilac crocuses; Or else the suburban street golden with sunlight, And the bare branches of elm trees Twined in the delicate sky? Or is it the merry piping Of a distant hurdy-gurdy?-- That makes me so weary and faint with desire For strange lands and new scents; For the rough-rhythmed clank Of train couplings at night, And the stormy, gay-tinted sunrises That shade with purple the contours Of far-off, unfamiliar hills. NIGHT PIECE A silver web has the moon spun, A silver web upon all the sky, Where the frail stars quiver, every one Like tangled gnats that hum and die. The moon has tangled the dull night In her silver skein and set alight Each dew-damp branch with milky flame. And huge the moon broods on the night. My soul is caught in the web of the moon, Like a shrilling gnat in a spider's web. Importunate memories shrill in my ears Like the gnats that die in the spider web. Lovely as death, in the moon's shroud, Were town streets, grey houses, dim, Full of strange peace in the silent night. As we walked our footsteps clattered loud. We felt the night as a troubled song ... Oh, the triumphing sense of life a-throb. Behind those walls, in those dark streets, Like the sound of a river, swift, unseen, Flowing in darkness. Oh, the hoarse Half-heard murmur swirling beneath The snowy beauty of moonlight.... And that other night, When the river rippled with faint spears Of street lights vaguely reflected. Grey The evening, like an opal; low, A grey moon shrouded in sea fog: Air pregnant with spring; rasp of my steps Beside the lapping water; within The dark. Down the worn out years a sob Of broken loves; old pain Of dead farewells; and one face Fading into grey.... A silver web has the moon spun, A silver web over all the sky. In her flooding glory, one by one, Like gnats in a web the stars die. * * * * * ROBERT HILLYER FOUR SONNETS FROM A SONNET-SEQUENCE I Quickly and pleasantly the seasons blow Over the meadows of eternity, As wave on wave the pulsings of the sea Merge and are lost, each in the other's flow. Time is no lover; it is only he That is the one unconquerable foe, He is the sudden tempest none can know, Winged with swift winds the none may hope to flee. Fair child of loveliness, these endless fears Are nought to us; let us be gods of stone, And set our images beyond the years On some high mount where we can be alone. And thou shalt ever be as now thou art, And I shall watch thee with untroubled heart. II Then judge me as thou wilt, I cannot flee, I cannot turn away from thee forever, For there are bonds that wisdom cannot sever And slaves with souls far freer than the free. Such strong desires the universal Giver With unknown plan has buried deep in me That the exquisite joy of watching thee Has dominated all my life's endeavor. Thou weariest of having me so near, I feel the scorn thou hast within thy heart, And yet thy face has never seemed so dear As now, when I am minded to depart. Though thou shouldst drive me hence, I love thee so That I would watch thee when thou dost not know. III Fly, joyous wind, through all the wakened earth Now when the portals of the dawn outpour A myriad wonders from the radiant store Of spring's deep passion and loud-ringing mirth. Cry to the world that I despair no more, Heart greets my heart and hope has proved its worth; Fly where the legions of the sun have birth, Chant everywhere and everywhere adore. Circle the basking hills in fragrant flight, Shout Rapture! Rapture! if sweet sorrow passes, And whisper low in intimate delight My love-song to the undulating grasses. Grief is no more, love rises with the spring, O fly, free wind, and Rapture! Rapture! sing. IV Long after both of us are scattered dust And some strange souls perchance shall read of thee, Finding the yearnings that have crushed from me These poor confessions of my love and trust, I know how misinterpreted will be These lines, for men will laugh, or more unjust, Thinking not once of love, but only lust, Will stain the vesture of our memory. And yet a few there may be who will feel My deep devotion and my true desires, And know that these unhappy words reveal Only new images in changeless fires; And they perchance will linger with a sigh To think that beauty such as thine must die. A SEA GULL Grey wings, O grey wings against a cloud, Over the rough waves flashing, Whose was the scream, startling and loud, Keen through the skies,--was it thine, Over the moaning wind and the whine Of the wide seas dashing? Whose was the scream that I heard In the midst of the hurrying air? Was it thine, lost bird, Or the voice of an old despair Chanting from years long dead, Inexorable spirit flying On tempest wings that passed and fled Through the storm crying? DOMESDAY The garlands and the songs of May Shall welcome in the Judgment Day; About the basking country-side Blossom the souls of them that died. O Dead awake! Arise in bloom Upon the joyous dawn of doom. They rise up from the bleeding earth In gracious legions of re-birth, Each as a flower or a tree Of verdant immortality. And hosts of glad-voiced angels sing In the rippling groves of spring. From the grave of youth there grows A passionately-petaled rose, Where the virgin whitely lies A lily fair as Paradise. And in that old oak's leafy glee Some gouty sire makes sport of me. O Dead of yore and yesterday All hail the resurrecting May! Beside you in the flowering grass The feet of youth and love shall pass, And we that greet you with a smile Shall join you in a little while. TO A PASSEPIED BY SCARLATTI Strange little tune so thin and rare Like scents of roses of long ago, Quavering lightly upon the strings Of a violin, and dying there With a dancing flutter of delicate wings; Thy courtly joy and thy gentle woe, Thy gracious gladness and plaintive fears Are lost in the clamorous age we know, And pale like a moon in the lurid day; A phantom of music, strangely fled From the princely halls of the quiet dead, Down the long lanes of the vanished years Echoing frailly and far away. ELEGY FOR ANTINOUS Come, let us hasten hence and weep no more, The sinking sea flows on its tranquil ways, Night looms serenely at the eastern door And trails the last cloud into lifeless haze. Antinous is dead, we kneel before The portals of our past in vain, nor raise The laughing phantoms of our yesterdays Upon this desolate and empty shore. Now deepening pools of shadow overflow Into the sea of dark; a far-off bell Sobs with a sweet vibration long and slow A last farewell, forevermore, farewell; And will He wake and hear? We cannot tell; And will He answer? Ah, we do not know. SONG O crimson rose, O crimson rose, Crushed lightly in two little hands; A child's soft kiss was in your heart, A child's warm breath was in your soul. The child is gone, O crimson rose, And stained and hardened are the hands, And who shall find your golden heart And who shall kiss your withered soul? Happy are you, O crimson rose, But I have stains upon my hands; You died with kisses in your heart, I live with sorrow in my soul. "MY PEACE I LEAVE WITH YOU" He pondered long, and watched the darkening space Close the red portals whence the hours had run, As like young wistful angels, one by one, The stars cast timid flowers about His face. "Yea, now another scarlet day is done!" He cried in anguish, and with sudden grace Stretched forth His arms, as though He would erase The few, dim embers of the scattered sun. "The scarlet day is done, and soon the light Will wake again my desecrated skies. Oh, that another dawn might never rise!-- My foolish children!" Through the vast of night The young stars shivered in a silver horde Before the Infinite Sorrow of their Lord. THE RECOMPENSE When the last song is sung, and the last spark Of light dies out forever, and the dark, The voiceless dark eternal shrouds the earth; When the last cries of pain and shouts of mirth Sink in the desolate silences of space; Where then shall flower the beauty of your face, O Love the laughing, Youth the rose-in-hand, In what unknown and undiscovered land Shall flower then the beauty of your face? I know not but I know that all returns At last unchanged, and to the heart that yearns Shall be repaid all loneliness and loss. Sometime with shadowy sails shall fly across The shoreless ocean of infinity A ship from out the past, and the great sea Of life shall bear you from the strange worlds over The waves, and back again to the old lover. Yes, in some future far beyond surmise You will dream here with half-remembering eyes, And I shall write these words, content awhile In the slow round of time to see you smile. * * * * * R. S. MITCHELL POPPY SONG I Footsteps soft as fall the rose's Petals on a dewy lawn, Shaken when the wind uncloses Golden gateways for the dawn; Laughter light as is the swallows' Chatter in the evening sky, Wafted upward from the hollows Where the limpid waters lie; Weeping faint as is the willow's By the margin of the lake, Trembling into tiny billows That the silent teardrops make; Phantoms fitful and uncertain As the pearly autumn rain, Sweeping on in cloudy curtain Down the wide way of the plain. II Oh, unhappy now to waken When the dream had scarce begun! Out of gentle twilight taken Into realms of burning sun: Oh, unhappy now to find me Lost 'neath heavens hot with noon; All that fairy land behind me; Poppy fields and rising moon! Drawbridge and portcullis screeching, Bugles braying soon and late; Who are they that come beseeching, Calling at my castle gate? Drive them hence, for they encumber Days and nights with waking pain; Tell them that I lie and slumber Under poppies, wet with rain. Who art thou that bendest praying Over me with clasped palms; Dim through surging darkness, saying Words of prayer and murmured psalms? Who art thou that kneelest weeping By the border of my bed? Cease thou, for I was but sleeping-- Dreaming, only, and not dead! III Phantoms flitting and uncertain Sweeping round the endless plain; Autumn twilight's dusky curtain, Drowsy poppies, drenched with rain. LOVE DREAM Strange that on warp and woof of dreams Fancy should weave the web of truth, And yet this fairy figment seems Part of a half-forgotten youth Stolen from days I thought were sped Out of the world beyond the dead. Smiled she not when at the edge Of evening we walked alone Plucking spring's blossoms from the hedge That she might wear them as her own, Or do I hold a hopeless tryst Here with a shadow, made of mist? Now as will crumpled rose leaves, pent By fingers we can never know, Rouse with the richness of their scent, Thoughts of a summer long ago, All the expanse of land and sea Speaks with a thousand tongues to me. 'Twas from coast we watched slow form, Out of the frosty ocean's breath, The blue-gray ramparts of the storm Flashing with signal fires of death, Whilst with a murmur, far and wide, Swept in the low wind with the tide. Then, at last, when lips were dumb With fear of parting, did we wend Along the meadow lanes that come From nowhere, and in nothing end, And, smiling, kiss, though ill at ease, Under the rustling orchard trees. But will the promise given keep? Can the heart love still when 'tis dead? What if the spirit, waked from sleep, Never recall the words it said? Dwell in a dreamland, or else be Lost in life's eternity? THE ISLAND OF DEATH There is an island in a silent sea That rises--four, rough, rugged walls--on high Above the ocean in calm majesty. A mountain of despair against the sky! About its summit soaring seagulls fly, Or rest them in its lofty cypress trees, And greet the black barge bearing those who die Upon our earth to everlasting ease And pleasant lives that know not man's eternities. White halls and palaces their dwellings stand; These shadowy souls are all unknown to graves And live, faint phantoms in a fairy land Of dreams and idleness. They hear the waves Sing, and the winds come calling from the caves Of night beyond the ocean, and the cry Of screaming gulls; stare at each ship that braves This wilderness of waters, and glides by In awe-struck silence, ever fearing to draw nigh. The sun, descending, sows the sea with gold, And showers splendour through the fading skies, Whilst from the murky waters they behold The moon, a shape of silver, slow arise. And every evening, as the daylight dies, There comes that bark of death, whose white sail seems An angel in the dark. A while it lies Below them in the harbour, then there gleams A new shape on the stairs up to that land of dreams. FROM THE ARABIAN NIGHTS Then, as the whispering evening crossed the sea, Sweeping the waters with her veil of grey, Wave-worn and weary of the ocean, we Beheld the enchanted island far away-- Half hidden in the twilight low it lay On the horizon like a lazy cloud, Its coasts encompassed with long lines of spray. We spread the sails and swiftly the ship plowed The purple path ahead until the surf sang loud. Between the cliffs, by the faint stars, we found A gloomy gate, and boldly sailing in, Watched the dark mountains slowly closing round, And heard faint echoes of the ocean's din Melting like spirits' voices, fleet and thin; When of a sudden, as we faltered nigh, Out of the hills where only night had been A mist of minarets and towers high, Rose like the yellow light of morning in the sky. Gazing we drifted toward that golden bloom Of palaces whose light glowed on our sail; There we floated wrapped in wild perfume; Then music burst upon us in a gale; Grave, deep-toned trumpets and the lyre's long wail, And farther, the faint sound of singing men. We grasped our oars--but slowly, as will pale The morning star, the vision faded, then The empty dark swept in and all was night again! THRENODY Have you forgotten me, O my beloved? Have you deserted me Now in the autumn? See where the swallows fly South o'er the ocean: Soon will the winter wind Sweep the �gean. Up from the vineyard comes Music of laughter; Far through the valleys they Gather the harvest. Westward the evening star Sinks in the mountains; Pale 'neath the rising moon Lies Mytilene. Here where the headland looks Wide o'er the water, I have brought laurel leaves, Decking your barrow. Why do I linger now Vainly lamenting? O it is lonely, love,-- Lonely in Lesbos! HELEN Again the voices of the hunting horns And the new moon, low lying on the hills, Tell that the summer night is on its way.-- O languid heart, shalt thou much longer watch This pale procession of the silent hours Melt into shadows of unending years? Much longer feed on yearning and despair And all the anguish of departed time? Tomorrow is as yesterday; today No nearer than the morning when there stood In Leda's palace, asking for my hand, Tall Menelaus with his yellow hair; No nearer now than the first time these hands Dared linger in caress upon the curls Of him whose dark eyes laughed their love to mine. 'Tis only as if one short, restless sleep Lay over the wide chasm of the years Beyond which loom lost faith and ruined Troy. The night wind brings, as twenty summers since, The silver-breasted swallows from the Nile To quiet Sparta, nestled in her hills, Locked inland from the voices of the sea; And far across the porticos I hear The ivory shuttle singing in the loom 'Midst maidens' chatter, as in olden days; And men still murmur as they pass me by: "Lo, look on her, the wonder of the world, Beauteous Helen, Lacedæmon's Queen!" I watch them gaze intently on my face As they would keep it in their memory Forever, and the very while they gaze I see the flame of Troy gleam in their eyes. I think sometimes I have already passed Into the kingdom of untroubled death, And wandering lonely amongst them I knew In Hellas or that land beyond the seas, Behold each shadow as it passes by Shrink half involuntarily, and turn, And veil its face and vanish in the gloom. Whilst out of that dim distance whence my steps Are moving and to which they shall return After an interval of endless years, There comes a voice that calls me from afar: "Art thou not Helen, dowered of the gods With all that man can covet? Wert thou not Created the most beautiful of earth, And is not beauty wisdom, wisdom power? What hast thou done with their almighty gift?" And then, ere I would answer, silence falls Around me, and the dark divides, and I See the blue twilight on the Spartan hills. LARGO Thou only from this sorrow wert relief, Inviolate death, grave deity of rest, Wherein all things past somehow seem the best That ever could have come to be. Proud grief Her lustrous torch hath lighted in this brief Dim time before the dark, when the wide west Fades where illimitable skies suggest Days vanished in the beauty of belief. As one unto a battle come, that stands Aloof awhile, beholding friend and foe Clashing in conflict, till his soul commands He, too, prest on whither the bugles blow, Lifting his eyes sees over wasted lands Life's dust and shadow drifting to and fro. LAZARUS At morn we passed a hall where song And dance had been and wine flowed free, And where, 'mid wrecks of revelry, Had lain the feasters all night long. They saw us through the mist of dawn, And, turning, called us to their feast-- The sound of lutes and cymbals ceased-- But one He fixed His gaze upon. In whose wide eyes there seemed to be-- Behind the laughing, wine-flushed face And tilted ivy-crown's gay grace-- Faint glimpses of Eternity. Then sad, the Master bowed His head, And, through the rosy twilight, dim, Walked up and softly spake to him: "Art thou not he that late was dead?" The drinker raised his cup on high, And murmured: "Priest of Nazareth, I am he thou didst raise from death-- Lo, thus I wait again to die!" A CRUCIFIX This was the cross of God on which men's eyes Dwelt with the love of dead divinity, As they who by the desolate orient sea In battle made their sainted sacrifice, Dreaming their boundless striving should devise A symbol whereby men might know that he Who wins his way on earth to victory, Thus in his consummated sorrow dies. All things are sacred to that tender sight: Time's ancient altars whence strange incense curled Innocent to the unknown gods; the light Of love is thine; faith's banner is unfurled, Even where the farthest watchmen, through the night, Call on the cloud-wrapped ramparts of the world. NEITH Somehow the spirit of that day-- Rain-clouded streets and brooding air-- Determined me to live and dare, Living, to laugh the world away. As in a crystal dreamers see Out of unwinding mists arise The splendors of some paradise Woven of gold and ivory; Deep in the globe of thought I saw Dawn from tempestuous dust that form Toward which the endless ages storm Uproarious--to break with awe. Of all things ignorant, yet wise, Sitting enthroned at life's last goal, Dividing body from the soul, Looking at each with flameless eyes. Immutable, unknown, unsung, Through triumph and delight unearned, Through sorrow undeserved, I learned Salvation from thy wordless tongue. Then flying the embracing gloom Of burnt-out days and parched desire, I built my soul an altar fire Of laughter in the face of doom. A FAREWELL Nay: by this desolate sea our troubled ways Shall separate forever; swift hath sped The hour of youth, and yet to hang the head, Lamenting lost things of departed days, Were only from that shadowland to raise A wraith, that whispering of the quiet dead, Would mimic the strange life of love; instead, Let us relent and hail the past with praise. Go, then; and should inevitable fate Lead us at last beyond the world of men Where laurel and applause content no more, Whither the soul takes silence for its mate, There might we meet, and, smiling, once again Clasp hands and part upon some windy shore. * * * * * WILLIAM A. NORRIS OF TOO MUCH SONG Sedges, have you sung too much, Sedges gray along the shore? Can this autumn tempest touch Answering chords in you no more? Is the summer all forgot?-- Now the ice is dark and strong That has bound you to the spot-- Did you die of too much song? Something in me is a harp Played by every wanton breeze. Moaning soft and piping sharp Are its wondrous melodies. Is the playing over-fast Though the answer now is strong? Like the sedges at the last Will it die of too much song? [WHEREVER MY DREAMS GO] Wherever my dreams go, you are always there, And you and I have gone to many a land, Seeing high hills at dawn and desert sand, Temples and mosques and people bowed in prayer. We too have prayed in many places where Beauty has come as I have clasped your hand, And through long silence learned to understand The dumb sweet language of your eyes and hair. We have been lovers in all fair romances Beyond the rising or the sunken sun. There have been foes to meet, and I have done Great deeds beneath the splendor of your glances.... And yet I dreamed alone; you could not guess What joy you brought into my loneliness. [OUT OF THE LITTLENESS] Out of the littleness that wraps my days, The oppressive mist of gray and common things, Sometimes my dream on its audacious wings, Dripping with golden fire, above the haze, Flashes and veers against the sudden blaze Of sunlight. There no other wings may gleam But only yours, companioning my dream In its strange flight up new and radiant ways. And once, I thought, in a far solitude, The black waves moaned and broke unutterably On a stern cliff where hand in hand we stood. There were none near us when the dark had gone,-- Only the clean wind of a sailless sea, And you and I alone in the great dawn. NAHANT Last night the sea was an enchanted moan And a pale pathway that the moonlight made. All night it sorrowed in the dark alone, Groping with ghostly fingers, half afraid, Up the great rocks and sobbing back again, Weary of search, yet still unsatisfied. It seemed to have the voice of all dead men And all fair women who had ever died. But now the sun has risen, and the spray Leaps into sudden light along the shore. Each little wave has caught a golden ray-- As if the dawn had never come before. Beyond the cliffs brown fishing boats go by Under the reach of the wide laughing sky. QUI SUB LUNA ERRANT In a strange land they dwell, too far away From sunlight and the common mirth of men Ever to come within our casual ken. We see them not, but if by chance we stray Down cypress aisles when the wan summer day Draws to a thin and sickly close, we hear Murmur of mad speech by some watery weir Or languid laughter and faint sound of play. They never see the dawn; like the pale moths That haunt lugubrious shadows of dim trees They celebrate their lunar mysteries At woodland shrines, where with green thyrsus rods And weak limbs wrapped in silken sensuous cloths They chant the names of their dead pagan gods. [ACROSS THE TAUT STRINGS] Across the taut strings of my yearning soul Pass fingers of all fleet and beautiful things: Comings of dawn and moonlight glimmerings, Mid-summer hush and Sabbath bells that toll Over broad fields, a sound of thrushes' wings Near sunset hour, a girl with lips apart, Wonder and laughter,--these have touched my heart And left their music lingering on its strings. At twilight of some gray, eventual year, A few late friends will turn, with trembling breath, From the raw mound of earth that hides my face.... Yet I shall still find beauty, even in death, And some lone traveller of the night will hear An echo of music in that quiet place. ESCAPE They danced beneath the stars, a crazy rout With antic steps that had some little grace; And one leapt high with song and frenzied shout, And one ran silent with a gleaming face. They danced until the shy moon looking down Deemed herself lost above some Grecian glade; A mile away the trim New England town Echoed the Bacchanalian din they made. And still they danced, until the moon sank low, Blushing a little, and night's diadem Of stars grew pale before the eastern glow.... And with the dawn their keepers came for them. ON A STREET CORNER But all the time you spoke I did not hear The words you said. I only heard a far Faint sound of summer waters and a clear Calling of music from some lonely star. I thought I heard the lisp of falling dew In a dark meadow where no breezes stirred.... Then all at once the noisy street, and you Smiling at me because I had not heard! SEA-BURIAL Over the sands the swollen tide came creeping, Over the sands beneath the gleaming moon; At first it seemed a child's uncertain croon, And then a sound of many mourners weeping. Then all at once a crested wave was sweeping Around the still form in the moonlight there, Twining its silver fingers in her hair.... And yet it could not rouse her from her sleeping. With dawn the tide went seaward, bearing her In its strong arms that clung so tenderly, And laid her in a strange place far away Where the tall seaweeds rise and never stir.... And there she sleeps, while pass alternately The brooding night and the green luminous day. * * * * * DUDLEY POORE A RENAISSANCE PICTURE Calm little figure, ivy-crowned, How long beneath the barren tree Where this pale, martyred god has found Surcease from his long agony, You watch with an untroubled gaze Life move on its accustomed ways! Within your childish heart there dwells No sorrow that uprising dims Your eye, whence not a teardrop wells For pity of those writhen limbs, Or for the travail of a race Consummate in one lifeless face. Though tinkling caravans go by Forever over twilight sands, With myrrh and cassia laden high For other shrines in other lands, No weight of grief thereat you know, But softly on your pan-pipes blow. From what dim mountain have you strayed, Where, ringed by the Hellenic seas, You dwelt in an untrodden glade Sacred to woodland deities, Along whose faint paths went at dawn Endymion or a dancing faun? From groves where sacrificing throngs Called you by some fair Grecian name, With ritual meet and choric songs, Strange, that to this dark hill you came To seek, unmindful of their loss, A refuge underneath the cross. There is some deeper secret lies Hidden out of human sight In keeping of those tranquil eyes That shine with such immortal light, And in their shadows gleam and glow While still upon your pipes you blow. All but inscrutable, your gaze Declares your place is even here, Sharing this martyr's cup of praise, And year by sadly westering year, Till the last altar lights grow dim, Dividing sovereignty with him. THE PHILOSOPHER'S GARDEN Some strange and exquisite desire Has thrilled this flowering almond tree Whose branches shake so wistfully, Else wherefore does it bloom in fire? Why scatter pollen on the air, Marry its pale buds each to each, The year's unkindly tempests bear, Or to the calm clear sunlight reach? Yet I can give that hope no name, Nor that divine emotion share, For, though I see it flowering there, Because our speech is not the same The passionate secret must lie hid Burdened with unexpressed delight, Where none of all man's race can bid It forth, or voice its beauty right. There's nought in earth or heaven knows That hope for which our being longs, The stars are busied with their songs, The universal springtime flows From sun to sun in scorn of man, Careless if he be quick or dead, Or if this earth, as it began, Be voiceless and untenanted. THE TREE OF STARS There stands a tree where no man knows, And like an earthly tree it grows, Save that upon its branches wide The earth and all the stars beside, The chilly moon and the great sun, The little planets, one by one, Are hung like fruit to redden there And ripen in the heavenly air. And when the seeds are round and full The watchful gods will come and pull The ripened fruit from off the tree; And then that heavenly company Will bear the shining planets in And garner them in a deep bin And sort them out, and save the seed To plant new trees in time of need. AFTER RAIN All day the heavy skies have lowered, Long beaten by autumnal rain; The lilac's withered leaves lie showered Where little rain-pools star the plain; All things that for a season flowered Sink back to earth again. Strange, then, that with the year's decrease And out of gathering dusk you rise Seeking love's ultimate surcease, Phantom, whose memory-haunted eyes Know that there never can be peace Hoped-for, till memory dies. In vain where these dead leaves lie strown Where all things, bending earthward, fail, Like a young spirit newly flown, Flower-fragile, blossom-like and pale, You search; and must fly back, a blown Rose leaf on the cold gale. You might have rested but for this: That love's intense flame burning through The shuddering body with a kiss Woke in the prisoned spirit, too, So keen an ecstasy of bliss As could, for all they made amiss, Nor life nor death undo. _COR CORDIUM_ Deep in a heart, beneath o'er-hanging boughs, Love built himself a house, And whoso entered in, Love bade him stay, Nor ever from that feast to come away Dissatisfied or weary of the fare Love set him there. Forever through the groves and glades Kind thoughts went softly to and fro, And memories like white-footed maids With gentle tread would come and go Among the ever-garrulous trees. And through the branches overhead I know not what sweet spirits strayed, Or what commandant spirit led Their mazy dances, but one played So deftly on a psaltery That they for joy must needs keep singing; All the chambers of Love's house With that sweet minstrelsy were ringing. Faces to the windows came, Tears to happy eyelids started, Feeling, as by sudden flame, Their cares and their sad hearts disparted, Each old clinging sorrow dead. All who ever guested there To each other, murmuring, said: "In this heart breathes purer air, The thoughts that move across this sky Have had a more mysterious birth, Are lovelier, float more statelily Than clouds across the sky of earth." All guests within that heart's deep wood, All friends together in that house, High converse held with an ærial brood, With spirit-folk kept delicate carouse; None ever turned ungreeted from that door. (Sorrow himself was guest a weary while,) But yesterday when I passed by once more, Met me no welcoming smile, Nor any breath the unwavering branch to stir, Silent each glad ærial chorister; Three drowsy poppies brooded by the wall, Lonely and tall. Then, as I leaned above their crimson bloom, The flower of day grew old and witheréd, Night with a sigh sat down beside her loom Winding her shuttle with a silver thread. Suddenly from the starlit plains of air Ethereal tumult, airy tempest blew, Immortal music showering everywhere, Flashed to the earth in an harmonious dew, Leaped jubilant from cloud to craggy cloud, Binding the moon in a melodious chain, Storming the troubled stars, a luminous crowd, Dropping in fiery streaks to earth again. From out the windows of God's house Faint as a far-echoing wave, The angels, bending their calm brows, Song for song in answer gave; And faster than a falcon flies, Thronging spirits in a cluster Passed before my dazzled eyes, Shedding an ærial lustre, Burning with translucent fire, Shaking from their dewy wings Wild, ineffable desire Of starry and immortal things, Torturing with delicious pain Past telling sweet, the bewildered heart, Piercing the poor mortal brain With beauty, a keen fiery dart. Ah! Even as an oracle Whose soul a god has breathed upon, The beauteousness unbearable Possessed me so all strength was gone. Smitten by a barbéd joy, My sense with rapturous pain grew dim, Joy pierced me as it would destroy. Still higher rose the celestial hymn. And then of all that starry throng That streamed toward the upper sky, One spirit darted down again, And stood upon a bough near by. "Even I unsealed thy sight," he said. Alas, that shape I did not know, For he was so transfigured, So circled by the unearthly glow Of his pulsating aureole; I who so well the flesh had known I did not know the soul. With troubled eyes he bended down, And all about me where I stood Every blossom, every tree, All the branches of that wood Were trembling in their ecstasy. They knew ere I had half divined. But at his voice old dreams awoke In dusty chambers of the mind, And when again he softly spoke With sudden tears mine eyes were wet. And lowlier still he bent his head: "Dost thou, dear friend, not know me yet?" "Yes, for I know thy voice," I said. "Dear Phantom, this immortal guise, This disembodied self of thine, Hath dazed mine unacquainted eyes. Thou dweller on the steps divine, Thou image of a god's desire, Thou spark of the celestial flame Art fashioned out of wind and fire And elements without a name; What sacred fingers mingled them And trembled with a god's delight? Thy body is a burning gem, Thy limbs are chrysolite. A glory hangs about thy head For thou in thine immortal lot In heaven's own light art garmented. I know thee, yet I know thee not." Then he, with shining eyes half shut, Radiantly standing there: "I did but change my leafy hut For a mansion in the air, The eerie wood, the enchanted ground, The dim, bird-haunted glades we trod, Grew all untuneful when I found A dwelling in the heart of God. I latched the gate at dawn of day, I planted poppies by the door, To His retreats I came away And I shall wander thence no more. The windy heights are all my love, The spheral lights, the spheral chimes, The trailing fires, the hosts that move In concourse through sidereal climes; I troop with the celestial choirs; We have not any wish to be Sad pilgrims, torn by sad desires, Wayfarers of mortality. The husk of flesh we have put by; The dark seeds planted in the earth Have blossomed in the upper sky, In airy gardens have new birth." There did he make an end, for O Those spirits, singing, darted by again, And at the showering sound he trembled so I saw his earthly dalliance gave him pain, And cried in sorrow, "O my friend, farewell! Now from the luminous, paradisal bands, Gabriel, Israfel, Ithuriel, Beckon to you with their exulting hands." THE WITHERED LEAF, THE FADED FLOWER BE MINE The withered leaf, the faded flower be mine, The broken shrine, All things that knowing beauty for a day Have passed away To dwell in the illimitable wood Of quietude, Undying, radiant, young, Passed years among. No blighting wind upon their beauty blows, The altar glows With flames unquenchable and bright By day, by night; Secure from envious time's deflowering breath They know no death, But silently, imperishably fair, Grow lovelier there. He who adores too much the impending hour, The budding flower, Who knows not with what dyes an hour that's dead Is garmented, Who walks with glimmering shapes companionless, He cannot guess With how great love and thankfulness I praise The yesterdays. * * * * * CUTHBERT WRIGHT THE END OF IT We met, and on the decorous drive touched hands, "Good-bye; a pleasant trip to you," I said. The sunlight slept upon the still uplands, Your figure fading in the dusty red I watched awhile, then turned with casual face To where a torrent glimmered down a glade, No human voice troubled the lovely place, Only the fall a cruel music made. A time I lay and marked with curious stare The keen sun-lances quiver on the lawn, And thought on shrines all voiceless now and bare, The holy genius of their boughs withdrawn, Till with hoarse cry the train that you were on Stabbed the indifference of the empty air ... Then I awoke and knew that you were gone. THE NEW PLATONIST _Circa 1640_ Our loves as flowers fall to dust; The noblest singing hath an end; No man to his own soul may trust, Nor to the kind arms of his friend; Yet have I glimpsed by lonely tree, Bright baths of immortality. My faultless teachers bid me fare The cypress path of blood and tears, Treading the thorny wold to where The painful Cross of Christ appears; 'Twas on another, sunnier hill I met you first, my miracle. The painted windows burn and flame Up through the music-haunted air; These were my gods--and then you came With flowers crowned and sun-kissed hair, Making this northern river seem Some laughter-girdled Grecian stream. When the fierce foeman of our race Marshals his lords of lust and pride, You spring within a moment's space, Full-armed and smiling to my side; O golden heart! The love you gave me Alone has saved and yet will save me. Perchance we have no perfect city Beyond the wrack of these our wars, Till Death alone in sacred pity Wash with long sleep our wounds and scars; So much the more I praise in measure The generous gods for you, my treasure. THE ROOM OVER THE RIVER Good-night, my love, good-night; The wan moon holds her lantern high, And softly threads with nodding light The violet posterns of the sky, Below, the tides run swift and bright Into the sea. Odours and sounds come in to us, Faint with the passion of this night, One little dream hangs luminous Above you in the scented light; Roses and mist, stars and bright dew Draw down to you. How often in the dewy brake, I've heard above the sighing weirs, The night-bird singing for your sake His lonely song of love and tears; He too, sad heart, hath turned to rest, And sleep is best. Flower of my soul! Let us be true To youth and love and all delight, Clean and refreshed and one with you I would be ever as to-night, And heed not what the day will bring, Nor anything. And now the moon is safe away, Far off her carriage lampions flare, Lost in the sunken roads of day, They vanish in the icy air. Good-night, my love, good-night, Good-night. THE FIDDLER Once more I thought I heard him plain, That unseen fiddler in the lane, Under the timid twilight moon, Playing his visionary strain. No other soul was in the place As up the hill I came apace; Though once I heard him every day, I never once have seen his face. It was my immemorial year, When rhymes came fast and blood beat clear; He too, perchance, was then alive, Now separate ghosts, we wander here. Sometimes his ghostly rondelay Broke on my dream at dawn of day, And through my open window stole The perfumed marvel of the May. Sometimes in midnight lanes I heard The twitter of a darkling bird, As hidden from the ashen moon, The pathos of his music stirred. O happy time! How goodly seemed The dauntless timeless dream I dreamed, Those dear imaginary sins, The joys that in one torrent streamed. When moon and stars go out for aye, And I am dead and castaway, This autumn city I have loved Will know me not, but he will stay. In faded suburbs he will play. Some other boy's brief morn away, Till sapphire windows palely burn Amid the undefeated gray. And yet--sometimes I seem to know I shall not 'scape his phantom bow; More paramount than death or pain, This ghost will follow where I go. In some well-kept untroubled hell Where frustrate souls like mine may dwell, I shall look up and hear his note Coming across the asphodel. No shades will gather at his tune To dance their ghostly rigadoon, Only that lonely voice will cleave The everlasting afternoon. FALSTAFF'S PAGE _To Reginald Sheffield_ In blaze of curls and cowslip-colored coat He pranks a way before the wheezing Knight. Tall Windsor shows no blossom like this wight By park or sedgy pool or bearded moat; A skylark burbles in that milk-white throat, And I have heard him down a singing stream, Ere the brute morn shattered my happy dream Upon the sill, and weeping I awoke. We had a music once; a poesie Sweet as a maiden, lissome as this lad, Full of rich merriment and gentle joy; That other England lives and laughs in thee, A peal of morris-music, blithe and glad, Thou spray of bloom! Thou flower of a boy! A DULL SUNDAY (_After Debussy_) It has been a long day, A long, long day; And now in floods of twilight, In long green waves of sunset softly flowing, Evening. It is evening over the great towns, It is evening in our hearts. And though the last frail tendrils And flowers of incense Have long ago uncurled themselves around The cynical Cathedral, I hear the thin white voices of children, Little girls and little boys, Calling the name of Jesus And His most Sacred Heart, Singing about a kind of parish heaven, A little walled city, all golden and lilac, Like the one seen by François Villon's mother In an old, bituminous, smoke-bitten painting Of the Middle Ages. And in this faith she wished to live and die. * * * * * [Transcriber's Note: Untitled poems whose titles are omitted in the body of the text as originally published have had their conventional "first line" titles (as seen in the table of contents) added to the body of this transcription. They are enclosed in square brackets as an indication to the reader.] 
36831	----	[Illustration: a tree with a bird in it (front cover)] A TREE WITH A BIRD IN IT: A SYMPOSIUM OF CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POETS ON BEING SHOWN A PEAR-TREE ON WHICH SAT A GRACKLE BY MARGARET WIDDEMER AUTHOR OF "FACTORIES," "THE OLD ROAD TO PARADISE," "CROSS CURRENTS," ETC. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY WILLIAM SAPHIER [Illustration] NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY RAHWAY, N. J. THIS IS DEDICATED WITH MY FORGIVENESS IN ADVANCE TO THE POETS PARODIED IN THIS BOOK AND THE POETS NOT PARODIED IN THIS BOOK FOREWORD By the Collator A little while since, I had the fortune to live in a house, outside of whose windows there grew a pear-tree. On the branches of this tree lived a green bird of indeterminate nature. I do not know what his real name was, but the name, to quote our great exemplar Lewis Carroll, by which his name was _called_ was the Grackle. He seemed perfectly willing to be addressed thus, and accordingly was. Aside from watching the Pear-Tree and the Grackle, my other principal occupation that winter was watching the Poetry Society of America now and then at its monthly meetings. It occurred to me finally to invite such members of it as cared to come, following many good examples, to an outdoor symposium under the tree. The result follows. Margaret Widdemer. P.S.--The tree died. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Foreword: By the Collator v Jessie B. Rittenhouse _Resignation_ 3 Edwin Markham _The Bird with the Woe_ 4 Witter Bynner _The Unity of Oneness_ 7 Amy Lowell _Oiseaurie_ 8 Edgar Lee Masters _Imri Swazey_ 9 Edwin Arlington Robinson _Rambuncto_ 10 Robert Frost _The Bird Misunderstood_ 12 Carl Sandburg _Chicago Memories_ 13 Edith M. Thomas _Frost and Sandburg Tonight_ 17 Charles Hanson Towne _The Unquiet Singer_ 18 Sara Teasdale _At Autumn_ 20 Ezra Pound _Rainuv_ 21 Margaret Widdemer _The Sighing Tree_ 24 Richard Le Gallienne _Ballade of Spring Chickens_ 27 Angela Morgan _Oh! Bird!_ 29 Conrad Aiken _The Charnel Bird_ 30 Mary Carolyn Davies _A Young Girl to a Young Bird_ 34 Marguerite Wilkinson _The Rune of the Nude_ 35 Aline Kilmer _Admiration_ 37 William Rose and Stephen Vincent Benet _The Grackle of Grog_ 38 Lola Ridge _Preenings_ 42 Edna St. Vincent Millay _Tea o' Herbs_ 46 John V. A. Weaver _The Weaver Bird_ 50 David Morton _Sonnet: Trees Are Not Ships_ 52 Elinor Wylie _The Grackle Is the Loon_ 53 Leonora Speyer _A Landscape Gets Personal_ 54 Corinne Roosevelt Robinson _The Symposium Leading Nowhere_ 57 Ridgely Torrence _The Fowl of a Thousand Flights_ 59 Henry van Dyke _The Roiling of Henry_ 61 Cale Young Rice _Pantings_ 63 Bliss Carman _The Wild_ 65 Grace Hazard and Hilda Conkling _They See the Birdie_ 67 Theodosia Garrison _A Ballad of the Bird Dance of Pierrette_ 69 William Griffith _Pierrette Remembers an Engagement_ 71 Edgar Guest _Ain't Nature Wonderful!_ 72 Don Marquis _The Meeting of the Columns_ 75 Christopher Morley _The Mocking-Hoarse-Bird_ 80 Franklin Pierce Adams _To a Grackle_ 83 Thomas Augustin Daly _Carlo the Gardener_ 84 Vachel Lindsay _The Hoboken Grackle and the Hobo_ 85 Percy Mackaye } Josephine Preston Peabody } _Dies Illa: A Bird of a Masque_ 89 Isabel Fiske Conant } Arthur Guiterman _A Tree with a Bird in It: Rhymed Review_ 101 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Edwin Markham 5 Witter Bynner 6 Carl Sandburg 15 Margaret Widdemer 25 Conrad Aiken 31 The Benets 39 Lola Ridge 43 Edna St. Vincent Millay 47 Leonora Speyer 55 Edgar Guest 73 Don Marquis and Christopher Morley 77 Vachel Lindsay 87 A TREE WITH A BIRD IN IT _Jessie B. Rittenhouse_ (She steps brightly forward with an air of soprano introduction.) RESIGNATION I look from out my window, Beloved, and I see A bird upon a pear bough, But what is that to me? Because the thought comes icy; That bird you never knew-- It's not your bird or pear tree, And what is it to you? _Edwin Markham_ (who, though he had to lay a cornerstone, unveil a bust of somebody, give two lectures and write encouraging introductions to the works of five young poets before catching the three-ten for Staten Island, offered his reaction in a benevolent and unhurried manner.) THE BIRD WITH THE WOE Poets to men a curious sight afford; Still they will sing, though all around are bored; But this wise grackle does a kinder thing; Silent he's bored, while all around him sing! [Illustration] [Illustration] _Witter Bynner_ (Prefaced by a short baritone talk on Chinese architecture.) THE UNITY OF ONENESS Celia, have you been to China? There upon a mystic tree Sits a bird who murmurs Chinese Of the Me in Thee. 'Neath that tree of willow-pattern Twice seven thousand scornful go Paraphrasers and translators Of the long-deceased Li-Po: Chinese feelings swift discerning Without all this time and fuss Let us eat that bird, thus learning Of the Him in Us! _Amy Lowell_ (Fixing her glasses firmly on the rest of the Poetry Society in a way which makes them with difficulty refrain from writhing.) OISEAURIE Glunk! I toss my heels up to my head ... That was a bird I heard say glunk As I walked statelily through my extensive, expensive English country estate In a pink brocade with silver buttons, a purple passementerie cut with panniers, a train, and faced with watered silk: But it Is dead now! (The bird) Probably putrescent And green.... I scrabble my toes ... Glunk! _Edgar Lee Masters_ (Making a statement which you may take or leave, but convincing you entirely.) IMRI SWAZEY I was a shock-headed boy bringing in the laundry; Why did I try for that damn bird, anyway? I suppose I had been in the habit of aiming for the pears. But I chucked a stone, anyhow, And it ricocheted and hit my head, And as it hadn't any brains inside the stone busted it And there I was, dead. And dead with me were all the improper things I'd got out of the servants about their employers Bringing in the laundry; But the grackle sings on. Sing forever, O grackle! I died, knowing lots of things _you_ don't know! _Edwin Arlington Robinson_ (He mutters wearily in an undertone.) RAMBUNCTO Well, they're quite dead, Rambuncto; thoroughly dead. It was a natural thing enough; my eyes Stared baffled down the forest-aisles, brown and green, Not learning what the marks were. Still, who learns? Not I, who stooped and picked the things that day, Scarlet and gold and smooth, friend ... smooth enough! And she's in a vault now, old Jane Fotheringham, My mother-in-law; and my wife's seven aunts, And that cursed bird that used to sit and croak Upon their pear-tree--they threw scraps to him-- My wife, too. Lord, that was a curious thing! Because--"I don't like mushrooms much," I said, And they ate all I picked. And then they died. But ... Well, who knows it isn't better that way? It's quieter, at least.... Rambuncto--friend-- Why, you're not going?... Well--it's a stupid year, And the world's very useless.... Sorry.... Still The dusk intransience that I much prefer Leaves place for little hope and less regret. I don't suppose he'd care, to stay to dine Under the circumstances.... What's life for? _Robert Frost_ (Rather nervously, retreating with haste in the wake of Mr. Robinson as soon as he had finished.) THE BIRD MISUNDERSTOOD There was a grackle sat on our old pear tree-- Don't ask me why--I never did really know; But he made my wife and me feel, for really the very first time We were out in the actual country, hindering things to grow; It gave us rather a queer feeling to hear the grackle grackle, But when it got to be winter time he got up and went thence And now we shall never know, though we watch the tree till April, Whether his curious crying ever made song or sense. _Carl Sandburg_ (Striking from time to time a few notes on a mouth-organ, with a wonderful effect of human brotherhood which does not quite include the East.) CHICAGO MEMORIES Grackles, trees-- I been thinkin' 'bout 'em all: I been thinkin' they're all right: Nothin' much--Gosh, nothin' much against God, even. _God made little apples_, a hobo sang in Kankakee, Shattered apples, I picked you up under a tree, red wormy apples, I ate you.... That lets God out. There were three green birds on the tree, there were three wailing cats against a green dawn.... 'Gene Field sang, "The world is full of a number of things," 'Gene Field said, "When they caught me I was living in a tree...." 'Gene Field said everything in Chicago of the eighties. Now he's dead, I say things, say 'em well, too.... 'Gene Field ... back in the lost days, back in the eighties, Singing, colyumning ... 'Gene Field ... forgotten ... Back in Arkansaw there was a green bird, too, I can remember how he sang, back in the lost days, back in the eighties. Uncle Yon Swenson under the tree chewing slowly, slowly.... Memories, memories! There are only trees now, no 'Gene, no eighties Gray cats, I can feel your fur in my heart ... Green grackle, I remember now, Back in the lost days, back in the eighties The cat ate you. [Illustration] _Edith M. Thomas_ (She tells a friend in confidence, after she is safely out of it all.) FROST AND SANDBURG TONIGHT Apple green bird on a wooden bough, And the brazen sound of a long, loud row, And "Child, take the train, but mind what you do-- Frost, tonight, and Sandburg too!" Then I sally forth, half wild, half cowed, Till I come to the surging, impervious crowd, The wine-filled, the temperance, the sober, the pied, The Poets that cover the countryside! The Poets I never would meet till tonight! A gleam of their eyes in the fading light, And I took them all in--the enormous throng-- And with one great bound I bolted along. * * * * * If the garden had merely held birds and flowers! But I hear a voice--they have talked for hours-- "Frost tonight--" if 'twere merely he! Half wild, half cowed, I flee, I flee! _Charles Hanson Towne_ (Who rather begrudged the time he used up in going out to the suburbs.) THE UNQUIET SINGER He had been singing, but I had not heard his voice; He had been bothering the rest with song; But I, most comfortably far Within the city's stimulating jar Feeling for bus-conductors and for flats, And shop-girls buying too expensive hats, And silver-serviced dinners, And various kinds of pleasant urban sinners, And riding on the subway and the L, Had much beside his song to hear and tell. But one day (it was Spring, when poets ride Afield to wild poetic festivals) I, innocently making calls Was snatched by a swift motor toward his tree (Alas, but lady poets will do this to thee If thou art decorative, witty or a Man) And heard him sing, and on the grass did bide. But my whole day was sadder for his words, And I was thinner Because, in spite of my most careful plan I missed a very pleasant little dinner.... In short, unless well-cooked, I don't like Birds. _Sara Teasdale_ (Who got Miss Rittenhouse to read it for her.) AT AUTUMN I bend and watch the grackles billing, And fight with tears as I float by; O be a fowl for my heart's filling! O be a bird, yet never fly! _Ezra Pound_ (Mailed disdainfully by him from anywhere but America, and read prayerfully by a committee from Chicago.) RAINUV: A ROMANTIC BALLAD FROM THE EARLY BASQUE ... so then naturally This Count Rainuv I speak of (Certainly I did not expect you would ever have heard of him; You are American poets, aren't you? That's rather awful ... I am the only American poet I could ever tolerate ... well, sniff and pass....) Therefore ... well, I knew Rainuv. (My P. G. course at Penn, you'll remember; A little Anglo-Saxon and Basuto, But Provencal, mostly. Most don't go in for that.... You haven't, of course ... What, no Provencal? Well, of course, I know Rather more than you do. That's my specialty. But then--_Omnis Gallia est divisa_--but no matter. Not fit, perhaps you'd say, that, to be quoted Before ladies.... That's your rather amusing prudishness....) Well, this Rainuv, then, A person with a squint like a flash Of square fishes ... being rather worse than most Of the usual _literati_ Said, being carried off by desire of boasting That he knew all the mid-Victorians _Et ab lor bos amics:_ (He thought it was something to boast of.) We'll say he said he smoked with Tennyson, And--deeper pit--_pax vobiscum_--went to vespers With Adelaide Anne Procter; helped Bob Browning elope With Elizabeth and her lapdog (said it bit him) Said he was the first man Blake told All about the angels in a pear-tree at Peckham Rye Blake drew them for him, he said; they were grackles, not angels-- (Blake's not a mid-Victorian, but you don't know better) So ... we come, being slightly irritated, to facing him down. "... And George Eliot?" we ask lightly. "_Roomed with him_," nodded Rainuv confidently, "_At college!_"... Ah, _bos amic! bos amic!_ Rainuv is a king to you.... Three centuries from now (you dead and messy) men whispering insolently (Eeni meeni mini mo...) will boast that their great-grand-uncles Were kicked by me in passing.... _Margaret Widdemer_ (Clutching a non-existent portière with one hand.) THE SIGHING TREE The folk of the wood called me-- "There sits a golden bird Upon your mother's pear-tree--" But I never said a word. The Sleepy People whispered-- "The bird is singing now." But I felt not then like leaving bed Nor listening beneath the bough. But the wronged world beat my portals-- "Come out or be sore oppressed!" So I threw a stone at the grackle And my throbbing heart had rest. [Illustration] _Richard Le Gallienne_ (Advancing with a dreamy air of there still being a Yellow Book.) BALLADE OF SPRING CHICKENS Spring comes--yet where the dream that glows? There only waves upon the lea A lonely pear-bough where doth doze A bird of green, and merely he: Why weave of him our poetry? Why of a Grackle need we sing? Ah, far another fowl for me-- I seek Spring Chickens in the Spring. Though May returns, and frisking shows Her ankles through this white clad tree, Alas, old Spring's gone with the rose, Gone is all old romance and glee-- Yet still a joy remains to me-- Softly our lyric lutes unstring, Far from this Grackle we shall flee And seek Spring Chickens in the Spring! Too soon Youth's _mss_ must close, (_Omar_) its rose be pot-pourri; What of this bird and all his woes! Catulla, I would fly to thee-- Bright bird of luring lingerie, Of bushy bob, of knees aswing, This golden task be mine in fee, To seek Spring Chickens in the Spring! _Envoi_ Prince, let us leave this grove, pardie, A flapper is a fairer thing: Let us fare fast where such there be, And seek Spring Chickens in the Spring! _Angela Morgan_ (Carefully lifting her Greek robe off the wet grass, and patting her fillet with one white glove, recites passionately.) OH! BIRD! I heard a flaming noise that screamed-- "Man, panting, crushed, must be redeemed! Man! All the crowd of him! Quiet or loud of him! Men! Raging souls of them! Heaps of them, shoals of them! Hurtling impassioned through fiery-tongued rapture! Leaping for glories all avid to capture Bounteous æons of star-beating bliss!" I heard a voice cry, and I'm sure it said this: Though the cook said the noise was a tree and a bird ... _But I heard! Gods, I heard!_ _Conrad Aiken_ (Creeping mysteriously out of the twilight, draped in a complex.) THE CHARNEL BIRD Forslin murmurs a melodious impropriety Musing on birds and women dead æons ago.... Was he not, once, this fowl, a gay bird in society? Can any one tell? ... After an evening out, who can know? Perhaps Cleopatra, lush in her inadequate wrappings, Lifted him once to her tatbebs.... Perhaps Helen of Troy Found him more live than her Paris ... a bird among dead ones.... Perhaps Semiramis ... once ... in a pink unnamable joy * * * [Illustration] I tie my shoes politely, a salute to this bird in his pear-tree; ... What is a pear-tree, after all.... What is a bird? What is a shoe, or a Forslin, or even a Senlin? What is ... a what? ... Is there any one who has heard? ... What is it crawls from the kiss-thickened, Freudian darkness, Amorous, catlike ... Ah, can it be a cat? I would so much rather it had been a scarlet harlot, There is so much more genuine poetry in that.... (Note by the Collator: It was, in fact, Fluffums, the Angora cat belonging to the Jenkinses on the corner; and the disappointment was too much for Mr. Aiken, who fainted away, and had to be taken back to Boston before completing his poem, which he had intended to fill an entire book.) _Mary Carolyn Davies_ (Impetuously, with a floppy hat.) A YOUNG GIRL TO A YOUNG BIRD When one is young, you know, then one can sing Of anything: One is so young--so pleasurably so-- How can one know If God made little apples, or yet pears, Or ... if God cares? You are young, maybe, Grackle; that is why I want to cry Seeing you watch the poems that I say To-night, to-day ... This little boy-bird seems to nod to me With sympathy: He is so young: it must be that is why ... _As young as I!_ _Marguerite Wilkinson_ (Advancing with sedate courtesy in a long-sleeved, high-necked lecture costume.) THE RUNE OF THE NUDE I will set my slim strong soul on this tree with no leaves upon it, I will lift up my undressed dreams to the nude and ethical sky: This bird has his feathers upon him: he shall not have even a sonnet: Until he is stripped of his last pin-plume I will sing of my mate and I! My ancestors rise from their graves to be shocked at my soul's wild climbing (They were strong, they were righteous, my ancestors, but they always kept on their clothes) My mate is the best of all mates alive: his voice is a raptured rhyming: He chants "Come Down!" but it cannot come, either for him or those! My ancestors pound from their ouija-board: my mate leaps in swift indignation: I must tell the world of their wonders, but I must be strong and free-- Though all sires and all mates cry out in a runic incantation, My soul shall be stripped and buttonless--it shall dwell in a naked tree! _Aline Kilmer_ (With a certain aloofness.) ADMIRATION Kenton's arrogant eyes watch the Widdemer pear-tree, His thistle-down-footed sister puts out her tongue at him.... Kenton, what do you see? That yonder is only a bare tree; Come, carry Deborah home; she is gossamer-light and slim. "Aw, mother, but I don't want to!" Kenton replies with devotion, "I've gathered you stones for the bird; come on, don't you want to throw 'em?" Ah, Kenton, Kenton, my child, who but you would have such an emotion? But in spite of it I admire you, as you'll see when you read this poem. _The Benet Brothers_ (They sing arm in arm, Stephen Vincent having rather more to do with the verse and William Rose with the chorus. Their sister Laura is too busy looking for a fairy under the tree to add to the family contribution.) THE GRACKLE OF GROG It was old Yale College Made me what I am-- You oughto heard my mother When I first said damn! I put a pin in sister's chair, She jumped sky-high ... I don't know what'll happen When I come to die! _But oh, the stars burst wild in a glorious crimson whangle,_ _There was foam on the beer mile-deep, mile-high, and the pickles were piled like seas,_ _Noeara's hair was a flapper's bob that turned to a ten-mile tangle,_ _And the forests were crowded with unicorns, and gold elephants charged up trees!_ [Illustration] Forceps in the dentist's chair, Razors in the lather ... Lord, the black experience I've had time to gather ... But I've thought of one thing That may pull me through-- I'm a reg'lar devil But the Devil was, too! _There were thousands of trees with knotholed knees that kicked in a league-long rapture,_ _Birds green as a seasick emerald in a million-mile shrieking row--_ _It was sixty dollars or sixty days when the cop had made his capture...._ _But God! the bun was a gorgeous one, and the Faculty did not know!_ _Lola Ridge_ (Who apparently did not care for the suburbs.) PREENINGS I preen myself.... I ... Always do ... My ego expanding encompasses ... Everything, naturally.... This bird preens himself ... It is our only likeness.... Ah, God, I want a Ghetto And a Freud and an alley and some Immigrants calling names ... God, you know How awful it is.... Here are trees and birds and clouds And picturesquely neat children across the way on the grass Not doing anything Improper ... (Poor little fools, I mustn't blame them for that Perhaps they never Knew How....) [Illustration] But oh, God, take me to the nearest trolley line! This is a country landscape-- I can't stand it! God, take me away-- There is no Sex here And no Smell! _Edna St. Vincent Millay_ (Recites in a flippant voice which occasionally chokes up with irrepressible emotion, and clenching her hands tensely as she notices that the Grackle has hopped twice.) TEA O' HERBS O I have brought in now Bergamot, A packet o' brown senna And an iron pot; In my scarlet gown I make all hot. And other men and girls Write like me Setting herbs a-plenty In their poetry (_Bergamot for hair-oil,_ _Bergamot for tea!_) And they may do ill now Or they may do well, (Little should I care now What they have to sell--) But what bergamot and rue are None of them can tell. [Illustration] All above my bitter tea I have set a lid (As my bitter heart By its red gown hid) They write of bergamot Because I did.... (From its padded hangers They've snatched my red gown, Men as well as girls And gone down town, Flaunting my vocabulary, Every verb and noun!) And the grackle moans High above the pot, He is sick with herbs ... _And am I not,_ _Who have brought in_ _Bergamot?_ _John V. A. Weaver_ (With a strong note of infant brutality.) THE WEAVER BIRD Gosh, kid! that bird a-cheepin' in the tree All green an' cocky--why, it might be me Singin' to you.... Wisht I was just a bird Bringin' you worms--aw, you know, things I've heard 'Bout me--an' flowers, maybe.... Like as not Somebody'd get me with an old slingshot An' I'd be dead.... Gee, it'd break you up! Nothin' would be the same to you, I bet, Knowin' my grave was out there in the wet And we two couldn't pet no more.... Say, kid, It makes me weep, same as it always did, To think how bad you'd feel.... I got a thought, An awful funny one I sorta caught-- Nobody never thought that way, I guess-- When I get blue, an' things is in a mess I map out all my funeral, the hearses An' nineteen carriages, an' folks with verses Sayin' how great I was, an' all like that, An' wreaths, an' girls with crapes around their hat Tellin' the world how bad their hearts was broke, An' you, just smashed to think I had to croak.... I can't stand that bird, somehow--makes me cry.... _The world'll be darn sorry when I die!_ _David Morton_ (Who, being very polite, only thought it.) SONNET: TREES ARE NOT SHIPS There is no magic in a living tree, And, if they be not sea-gulls, none in birds: My soul is seasick, and its only words Murmur desire for things more like a sea. In this dry landscape here there seems to be No water, merely persons in large herds, Who, by their long remarks, their arid girds, Come from the Poetry Society. What could be drier, where all things are dry? What boots this bird, this pear-tree spreading wide? Oh, make this bird they all discuss to pie, Hew down this tree and shape its planks to ships, Send them to sea with these folk nailed inside, That I may have great sonnets on my lips! _Elinor Wylie_ (With an air of admitting the tragic and all-important fact.) THE GRACKLE IS THE LOON Never believe this bird connotes Jade whorls of carven commonness: Nor as from ordinary throats Slides his sharp song in ice-strung stress. He is the cold and scornful Loon, Who, hoping that the sun shall fail, Steeps in the silver of the moon His burnished claws, his chiseled tail. _Leonora Speyer_ (Speaking, notwithstanding, with unshaken poise.) A LANDSCAPE GETS PERSONAL Beloved.... I cannot bear that Bird He is green With envy of My Songs: "_Cheep! Cheep!_" This Tree Has a furtive look And the Brook Says, "Oh ... Splash...." And the Grass ... the terrible Grass ... It waves at me.... It is too flirtatious! Beloved, Let us leave swiftly ... _I fear this Landscape!_ _It would vamp me!_ [Illustration] _Corinne Roosevelt Robinson_ (Who, having engagements to speak at ten unveilings, and nine public schools and twelve other symposiums, stayed away, but sent this handsome tribute by wire.) THE SYMPOSIUM LEADING NOWHERE I sing of the joy of the Small Paths The paths that lead nowhere at all, (Though I never have gone on them nevertheless They are admirable, and so small!) I go out at midnight in motors But, being a Roosevelt, I drive Straight ahead on the neatly paved highway, For I wish with much speed to arrive. Oh, the joy and effulgence of Small Paths Surrounded with Birds and with Trees I would love to go down on a Small Path And sit in communion with these! Oh, Grackle, I yearn to be with you, For poetic communion I yearn But I have ten engagements to speak in the suburbs And alas, I've no time to return. _Oh alas, the undone moments,_ _Oh, the myriad hours bereft_ _Trying to be twenty people_ _And to do things right and left._ _I would sit down by a Small Path_ _And would make me a Large Rhyme_ _I should love to find my soul there_ _But I haven't got the time!_ _Ridgely Torrence_ (Who felt that the Bird did not sufficiently uphold Art.) THE FOWL OF A THOUSAND FLIGHTS Grackle, Grackle on your tree, There's something wrong to-day, In the moonlight, in the quiet evening, You will rise and croak and fly away; Oh, you have sat and listened till you're wild for flight (And that's all right) But you have never criticised a single song (And that's all wrong) Lo, would you add despair unto despair? Do you not care That all these lesser children of the Muse Shall sing to you exactly as they choose? You are ungrateful, Fowl. I wrote a poem, Once, in the middle of August, intending to show 'em That you should not Be shot: What saw I then, what heard? Multitudes--multitudes, under the tree they stirred, And with too many a broken note and wheeze They sang what each did please.... And Thou, O bird of emeraldine beak and brow, Thou sawest it all, and did not even cackle, Grackle! _Henry van Dyke_ (Who, although for different reasons, did not care for the Grackle either.) THE ROILING OF HENRY (A Song of the Grating Outdoors) Bird, thou art not a Veery, Nor yet a Yellowthroat, Ne'erless, I knew thy gentle song, Long, long e'er I could vote; Thou art not a Blue Flower, Nor e'en a real Blue Bird; Yet there's a moral high and pure In all thy likings heard: "_Grack-grack-grack-grack-grack-grack--_ _Go on and ne'er look back!_" The noble tow'rs of Princeton Hear high thy pensive trill, And eke my ear has heard thee The while I fished the rill; Thy note rings out at daybreak Before I rise to toil; Thou counselest Persistence; Thy song no stone can spoil; "_Grack-grack-grack-grack-grack-grack--_ _Go on and ne'er look back!_" Yet, Bird, there is a limit To all I've undergone; From five o'clock till five o'clock Thou'st chanted o'er my lawn; I cannot get my work done ... I give thee, Bird, advice; If thou wouldst save thy skin alive, Let me not warn thee twice, "_Grack-grack-grack-grack-grack-grack--_ _Go on and ne'er look back!_" _Cale Young Rice_ (Who came out rather tired from trying to choose a new suit, and could not get it off his mind.) PANTINGS Pantings, Pantings, Pantings! Gents' immanent furnishings! On a mystic tide I ride, I ride, Of the clothes of a million springs! I take the train for the suburbs Or I sweep from Pole to Pole, But where is the window that holds them not, Gents' furnishings of my soul! Pantings, Pantings, Pantings! Shirtings and coatings too! How can I think of mere birds, nor blink In the Cosmic Hullaballoo? The hot world throbs with Immenseness, The Voidness plunks in the Void, And all of it doubtless has something to do With Employer and Unemployed! Pantings! Pantings! Pantings! Trousers through all the town! And the tailors' dummies with iron for tummies Smirk in their blue and brown; I float in a slithering simoon Of fevered and surging tints, And my ears are dulled with the mighty throb Of the Male Best Dressers' Hints: _Pantings! Pantings! Pantings!_ _My wardrobe, they send it fleet...._ _Ah, the Is and the Was and the Never Does...._ _And the Cosmos at last complete!_ _Bliss Carman_ (Who, incidentally, happened to be correct.) THE WILD Ho, Spring calls clear a message.... The Grackle is not green.... The Mighty Mother Nature She knows just what I mean. The lilac and the willow The grass and violet They are my wild companions Where I was raised a pet. The secrets of great nature From childhood I have heard; Oh, I can tell a wild flower Swiftly from a wild bird; And Gwendolen and Marna And Myrtle (dead all three ... Among my wildwood sweethearts Was much mortality). If they my loves returning Might gather 'neath these boughs (Oh, they would sniff at pear-trees Who loved the Northern Sloughs). Their wild eternal whisper Would back me up, I ween: "This bird is not a Grackle: A Grackle is not green." _Grace Hazard and Hilda Conkling_ THEY SEE THE BIRDIE (Mrs. Conkling points maternally.) Oh, Hilda! see the little Bird! If you will watch, upon my word He will come out; a Veery[1] he As like an Oboe as can be: He shall be wingèd, with a tail, Mayhap a Beak him shall not fail! And I will tell him, "Birdie, oh, This is my Hilda, you must know-- And oh, what joy, if you but knew-- She shall make poetry on you!" (The Birdie obliges, whereupon Hilda recites obediently, while her mother, concealing herself completely behind the bird, takes dictation.) Oh, my lovely Mother, That is a Bird: Sitting on a Tree. I am a Little Girl Standing on the Ground. I see the Bird, The Bird sees me. _Bird!_ _Color of Grass!_ _I love my Mother_ _More than I do You!_ [Footnote 1: Note by the Collator: I do not pretend to explain the veery-complex of American poets. They all seemed possessed to rub it into the poor bird that he wasn't one.] _Theodosia Garrison_ (Who began cheerfully, but reduced her audience to tears, which she surveyed with complacence, by the third line.) A BALLAD OF THE BIRD DANCE OF PIERRETTE _Pierrette's mother speaks:_ "Sure is it Pierrette yez are, Pierrette and no other? (Och, Pierrette, me heart is broke that ye shud be that same--) Pertendin' to be Frinch, an' me yer poor ould Irish mother That named ye Bridget fer yer aunt, a dacent Dublin name! Ye that was a pious girrl, decked out in ruffled collars, With yer hair that docked an' frizzed--if Father Pat shud see! Dancin' on a piece o' grass all puddle-holes an' hollers, Amusin' these quare folk that's called a Pote-Society!" _But it was Bridget Sullivan,_ _Her locks flour-sprent,_ _That danced beneath the flowering tree_ _Leaping as she went._ "If there's folk to stare at ye ye'll dance for all creation (Since ye went to settlements 'tis little else I've heard), Letting yer good wages go to chat of 'inspiration,' Flappin' up an' down an' makin' out yez are a burrd! Sure if ye got cash fer it 'tis little I'd be sayin' (Och, Pierrette, stenographin' 'tis better wage ye'll get,) Sorra wan these long-haired folk has spoke till ye o' payin', Talkin' of yer art, an' ye a leppin' in the wet!" _But it was Bridget Sullivan,_ _Her head down-bent,_ _Went back on the three-thirteen,_ _Coughing as she went._ _William Griffith_ (Who felt for her.) PIERRETTE REMEMBERS AN ENGAGEMENT Pierrette has gone--but it was not Exactly that she lied; She said she had to catch a train; "I have a date," she cried. To keep a sudden rendezvous It came into her mind As quite the quickest way to flee From parties of this kind; She went most softly and most soon, But still she made a stir, For, going, she took all the men To town along with her. _Edgar Guest_ (Who has an air of absolute belief in the True, the Optimistic, and the Checkbook. He seems yet a little ill at ease among the others, and to be looking about restlessly for Ella Wheeler Wilcox.) AIN'T NATURE WONDERFUL! How dear to me are home and wife, The dear old Tree I used to Love, The Pear it shed on starting life And God's Outdoors so bright above! For Virtue gets a high reward, Noble is all good Scenery, So I will root for Virtue hard, For God, for Nature, and for Me! [Illustration] _Don Marquis_ (Who, it appears, refers to departments which he and certain of his friends run in New York papers. He swings a theoretical barrel of hootch above his head, and chants:) THE MEETING OF THE COLUMNS Chris and Frank and I Each had a column; Chris and I were plump and gay, But not so F.P.A.: F.P.A. was solemn-- Not so his Column; That was full of wit, As good as My Column Nearly every bit! We sat on each an office chair And all snapped our scissors; Their things were pretty fair But all of mine were Whizzers! Frank wrote of Cyril, An ungrammatic sinner, But I wrote of Drink And Chris wrote of Dinner; And Frank kept getting thinner And we kept getting plump-- Frank sat like a Bump Translating from the Latin, Chris wrote of Happy Homes I wrote of Alcoholic Foams, And we still seemed to fatten; Frank wrote of Swell Parties where he had been, I wrote of Whisky-sours, and Chris wrote of Gin! But we both got fatter, So the parties didn't matter, Though F.P.A. he published each as soon as he'd been at her.... F.P.A. went calling And sang about it sorely ... "_Pass around the shandygaff," says brave old Morley!_ F.P.A. played tennis And told the World he did.... _I bought a stein of beer and tipped up the lid!_ Frank wrote up all his evenings out till we began to cry, _But we drowned our envy in a long cool Rye!_ And then we got an invitation, Frank and Chris and me, To come and say a poem on a Grackle in a Tree: [Illustration] But Chris and I'd had twenty ryes, and we began to cackle-- "Oh, see the ninety pretty birds, and every one a Grackle! A Grackle with a Hackle, A ticklish one to tackle A tacklish one to tickle ... To ticker ... To licker...." And we both began to giggle And woggle, and wiggle, And we giggled and we gurgled And we gargled and were gay ... _For we'd had an invitation, just the same as F.P.A.!_ _Christopher Morley_ (Acting, in spite of himself, as if the Bird were his long-lost brother, and locating the Grackle, for poetic purposes, in his own home.) THE MOCKING-HOARSE BIRD Good fowl, though I would speak to thee With wonted geniality, And Oxford charm in my address, It's not quite easy, I confess: _Suaviter in modo's_ hard When poets trample one's front yard, And this is such an enormous crew That you've got trailing after you! I'd washed my youngest child but four, Put the milk-bottles out the door, Paid my wife's hat-bill with no sigh (Ah, happy wife! Ah, happy I!) Tossed down (see essays) then my pen To be a private citizen, Written about that in the Post, When lo, upon the lawn a host Of Poets, sprung upon my sight Each eager for a Poem to write! To a less placid bard you'd be A flat domestic tragedy,-- Bird--grackle--nay, I'd scarcely call You bird--a mere egg you, that's all-- Only a bad egg has the nerve To poach (a pun!) on my preserve! To P.Q.S. and X.Y.D. (Both columnists whom you should see) And L.M.N (a man who never Columns a word that isn't clever,) And B.C.D. (who scintillates Much more than most who get his rates) A thing like this would be a trial.... It is to me, there's no denial. Why, Bird, if they would sing of you, Or Sin, or Broken Hearts, or Rue, Or what Young Devils they all are, Or Scarlet Dames, or the First Star, Or South-Sea-Jazz-Hounds sorrowing, It would be quite another thing: But, Bird, here they come mousing round On my suburban, sacred ground, And see my happiness--it's flat, You wretched Bird, they'll sing of that! They'll hymn my Happy Hearth, and later The joys of my Refrigerator, Burst into song about the points Of Babies, Married Peace, Hot Joints, The Jimmy-Pipe I often carol, My Commutation, my Rain-Barrel, And each Uncontroverted Fact With which my poetry is packed ... In short, base Bird, they'll sing like me, _And then, where will my living be?_ _Franklin P. Adams_ (Coldly ignoring the roistering of his friends, addresses the Grackle with bitterness:) TO A GRACKLE (Horace, Ode XVIXXV, p. 23) Bird, if you think I do not care To gaze upon your feathered form Rather than converse with some fair Or make my brow with tennis warm; If you should think I'd liefer far Hear your sweet song than fast be driving Within my costly motor car And in my handsome home arriving, If you should think I would be gone Far sooner than you might expect From off this uncolumnar lawn; Bird, you'd be utterly correct! _Tom Daly_ (Showing the Italian's love of the Beautiful, which he makes his own more than the Anglo-Saxon dreams of doing.) CARLO THE GARDENER De poets dey tinka dey gotta da tree, Dey gotta da arta, da birda--but me, I lova da arta, I lova da flower, (Ah, _bella fioretta_!) I waita da hour: I mowa da grass, I rake uppa da leaf-- I brava young Carlo--Maria! fine t'ief! I waita Till later. Da poets go homa, go finda da sup', I creep by dis tree and I digga her up, (Da Grackla, da blossom, da tree-a I love, _Per Dio!_ and da art!) So I giva da shove, I catcha da birda, I getta da tree, I taka to Rosa my wife, and den she-- She gotta In potta! _Vachel Lindsay_ (Bounding on toward the end of the proceedings with a bundle over his shoulder, and making the rest join in at the high spots.) THE HOBOKEN GRACKLE AND THE HOBO (An Explanation) As I went marching, torn-socked, free, [_Steadily_] With my red heart marching all agog in front of me And my throbbing heels And my throbbing feet Making an impression on the Hoboken street [_With energy_] Then I saw a pear-tree, a fowl, a bird, And the worst sort of noise an Illinoiser ever heard! [_With surprise_] Banks--of--poets--round--that--tree-- _All_ of the Poetry Society but _me_! All a-cackle, addressed it as a grackle [_Chatteringly Showed me its hackle (that proved it was a fly) like parrots_] Tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, [_Cooingly, yet Gosh, what a packed street! with impatience_] The Secretary, _President_ and TREASURER went by! "That's not a grackle," said I to all of him, Seething with their poetry, iron-tongued, grim, "_That's an English sparrow on that limb!_" And they all went home No more to roam. And I watched their unmade poetry raise up like foam [_Intemperately_] And I took my bandanna again on my stick [_With calm majesty_] And I walked to the grocery and took my pick And I bought crackers, canned shrimps, corn, [_With domesticity Codfish like flakes of snow at morn, for the moment_] Buns for breakfast and a fountain-pen Laid down change and marched out again And I walked through Hoboken, torn-socked, free, _With my red heart galumphing all agog in front of me!_ [Illustration] DIES ILLA: A BIRD OF A MASQUE Being a Collaboration by Percy Mackaye, Isabel Fiske Conant and Josephine Preston Peabody. DRAMATIS PERSONÆ THE GRACKLE (who does not appear at all) THE SPIRIT OF THE REJECTION SLIP THE SPIRIT OF MODERN POETRY CHORUS OF ELDERLY LADIES WHO APPRECIATE POETRY CHORUS OF CORRESPONDENCE, KINDERGARTEN, GRAMMAR, HIGH-SCHOOL AND COLLEGE CLASSES IN VERSE-WRITING CHORUS OF YOUNG MEN RUNNING POETRY MAGAZINES CHORUS OF POETRY CRITICS CHORUS OF ASSORTED CULTURE-HOUNDS THE PERSON RESPONSIBLE FOR THE POETIC RENAISSANCE IN AMERICA THE NON-POETRY WRITING PUBLIC (COMPOSED OF TWO CITIZENS WHO HAVE NEVER LEARNED TO READ OR WRITE) SEMI-CHORUSES OF MAGAZINE EDITORS AND BOOK-PUBLISHERS ATÉ, GODDESS OF DISCORD THE MUSE TIME: _Next year._ PLACE: _Everywhere._ SCENE: _A level stretch of monotony._ THE SPIRIT OF THE REJECTION SLIP (_Entering despairingly_) Alas--in vain! Yet I have barred the way As best I might, that this great horror fall Not on the world. _Returned with many thanks_ _And not because of lack of merit,_ I Have said to twenty million poets ... nay ... Profane it not, that word ... to twenty million Persons who wasted stamps and typewriting And midnight oil, to add unto the world More Bunk.... In vain--in vain! (_She sinks down sobbing._) (_From right and left of stage enter Semi-Choruses Magazine Editors and Book Publishers, tearing their hair rhythmically._) SEMI-CHORUS OF EDITORS We have mailed their poems back To every man and woman-jack Who weigh the postman down From country and from town; But all in vain, in vain, They mail them in again! SEMI-CHORUS OF PUBLISHERS Though we've sent them flying, We are nearly dying, From the books of poetry Sent by people unto we; In vain we keep them off our shelves, They go and publish them themselves! SPIRIT OF THE REJECTION SLIPS All, bravely have ye toiled, my masters, aye, And I've toiled with you.... All in vain, in vain-- (_Enter, with a proud consciousness of duty well done, the Chorus of Correspondence, Kindergarten, Grammar, High-School and College Classes for Writing Verse. They sing Joyously_) The Day has come that we adore, The Day we've all been working for, Now babies in their bassinets And military school cadets, And chambermaids in each hotel And folks in slums who cannot spell, Professors, butchers, clergymen, And every one, have grabbed a pen: The Day has come--tra la, tra lee-- _Everybody_ writes poetry! (_They do a Symbolic Dance with Typewriters, during which enters the Chorus of Young Men who Run Poetry Magazines. These put on horn-rimmed spectacles and chant earnestly as follows_) CHORUS OF YOUNG MEN WHO RUN POETRY MAGAZINES We're very careful what we put in; This magazine is of highest grade; If it doesn't appeal to our personal taste There's no use sending it, we're afraid; We don't like Shelley, we don't like Keats, We don't like poets who're tactlessly dead; If you write like us there will be no fuss-- That's the best of verse, when the last word's said.... (_Bursting irrepressibly into youthful enthusiasm, and dashing their horn spectacles to the ground_) Yale! Yale! Yale! Our Poetry! Fine Poetry! Nobody Else's Poetry! Raw! Raw! Raw! Raw! (_Enter, modestly, the Person Responsible for the Poetic Renaissance in America. There are four of him--or her, as the case may be--Miss Monroe, Miss Rittenhouse, Mrs. Stork, Mr. Braithwaite. The Person stands in a row and recites in unison:_) I've made Poetry What it is today; Or ... at least ... That's what people say: Earnest-minded effort Never can be hid; The Others think They did it-- But--I--Did! SPIRIT OF THE REJECTION SLIP, EDITORS AND PUBLISHERS, (_faintly:_) You _did_? (_They rush out._) PERSON RESPONSIBLE (_still modestly_) Well, so they say-- But I have to go away. I'm due at a lecture I give at three today. (_The Person goes out in single file, looking at its watch. As it does so, there enters a pale and dishevelled girl in Greek robes. It is the Muse._) MUSE In Mount Olympus we have heard a noise and crying As swine that in deep agony are dying, A voice of tom-cats wailing, A never failing Thud as of rolling logs: A chattering like frogs, And all this noise, unceasing, thunderous, Making a horrible fuss, Cries out upon my name. Oh, what am I, the Muse and giver of Fame, So to be mocked and humbled by this use? I--I, the Muse! (_Enter Spirit of Modern Poetry, a lady with bobbed hair, clad lightly in horn glasses and a sex-complex._) SPIRIT OF MODERN POETRY You're behind the times; quite narrow, Don't you want Culture for the masses? MUSE No; I am Greek; we never did. Besides, it _isn't_ culture. CHORUS OF ELDERLY LADIES WHO APPRECIATE POETRY, (_trotting by two by two on their way to a lecture, pause._) Oh, how narrow! Oh, how shocking! She's no Muse! She must be mocking! MUSE (_sternly, having lost her temper by this time_) I am a goddess. Trifle not with me. ELDERLY LADIES (_with resolute tolerance_) She _looks_ like a pupil of Isadora Duncan, But she says she's a goddess; what folly we'd be sunk in To believe a word she says; she needs broad'ning, we conjecture-- My dear, come with us to Miss Rittenhouse's lecture! MUSE (_lifting her arms angrily_) Até, my sister! ATÉ, (_behind the scenes_) I come! (_Enter from one side, Band of Poets--very large--with lyres and wreaths put on over their regular clothes. From the other side, a chorus of Poetry Critics. At their end steals Até, Goddess of Discord, disguised as a Critic by means of horn glasses and a Cane. The Poets do not see her--or anything but themselves, indeed. They sing obliviously_) My maiden aunt in Keokuk She writes free verse like anything; My great-grandmother is in luck, She's sold her three-piece work on Spring; My mother does Poetic Plays, My dad does rhymes while signing checks, And my flapper sister--we wouldn't have missed her-- She's writing an epic on Sin and Sex-- The world's as perfect as it can be, Everybody writes Poetry! CHORUS OF CRITICS, (_chanting yet more loudly:_) The world's not _quite_ as perfect as it yet might be, Excepting for our brother-critics' poetry! (_The Spirit of Discord now creeps softly out from among the Critics._) SPIRIT OF DISCORD Rash poets, think what you would do-- There's nobody left you can read it to! POETS (_aghast_) We never thought of that! An audience, 'tis flat, Is our most pressing need, To listen to our screed; (_Each turns to his neighbor_) Base scribbler, get thee hence Or be my audience! Semi-chorus: We want to write ourselves! We'll not! Semi-chorus: But what _you_ write is merely rot! Hush up and let _me_ read My great, eternal screed! ATÉ (_stealthily_) Ha, ha! (_Each Poet now draws a Fountain Pen with a bayonet attached, and kills the Poet next him, dying himself immediately from the wound of the Poet on the other side. They fall in neat windrows. There are no Poets left. Meanwhile the Non-Poetry-Writing Public, two in number, who have been shooting crap in a corner, rise up at the sound of the fall, take three paces to the front, and speak:_) What's the use o' poetry, anyhow? _I_ always say, 'if you wanta say anything you can say it a lot easier in prose.' _I_ never wrote no poetry, and I get along fine in the hardware business. CHORUS OF CRITICS AND CULTURE-HOUNDS, (_thrilled:_) Ah, a new Gospel! Let us write Reviews About it! THE SPIRIT OF THE REJECTION SLIP (_entering, and addressing the Editors and Publishers who follow her._) Now I shall pass from you. My task comes to a close. I wing my hallowed way To the Fool-Killer's Paradise, and there for aye Repose. EDITORS AND PUBLISHERS Nay, our great helper, nay! Leave us not yet, our only comforter! We'll need thee still; Folks who write poetry There's naught on earth can kill! (_During this the_ CULTURE-HOUNDS, CRITICS, _etc., have clustered round the_ NON-POETRY-WRITING PUBLIC, _whispering, urging, and pushing. It rises and scratches its head in a flattered way, and finally says:_) B'gosh, I do believe, Now that you speak of it, I could do just as good As any of those there fool dead fellers could! (_The late Non-Poetry-Writing Public are both immediately invested with lyres, and wreaths which they put on over their derby hats._) SEMI-CHORUS OF EDITORS (to Spirit of Rejection Slip) You see? Too late! SEMI-CHORUS OF PUBLISHERS Who shall escape o'ermastering tragic fate? (_They go off and sob in two rows in the corners, while the rest of the Masque, except_ ATÉ, _who looks at them as if she weren't through yet, and the_ MUSE, _form up to do a dance symbolic of One Being Born Every Minute. They sing:_) The Day has come that we adore, The Day we've all been working for; The Day has come, tra la, tra lee! _Everybody_ writes Poetry! THE MUSE (_unnoticed in the background_) Farewell. _Arthur Guiterman_ (He recites with appropriate gestures.) A TREE WITH A BIRD IN IT: A RHYMED REVIEW It seems that Margaret Widdemer Possessed a Tree with a Bird in it, And being human, prone to err, Thought 'twould be pleasant to begin it, Or christen it, as one might say, By asking poets closely herded To come around and spend the day And sing of what the Tree and Bird did. (Poor girl! When next she takes her pen Some bromide critic's sure to say, "Don't dare do serious work again-- This stuff is your true métier!") No sooner said than done; the bards Rush out in quantities surprising, And, overflowing four front yards They carol till the moon is rising; With ardor, or, as some say, "pash," In song kind or satirical, Asking, apparently, no cash, They make their offerings lyrical. I'd be the first a spear to break For Poesy; but this to tackle ... It seems a lot of fuss to make About one Tree and one small Grackle. 
37371	----	generously made available by Kentuckiana Digital Library (http://kdl.kyvl.org) Note: Images of the original pages are available through Kentuckiana Digital Library. See http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=kyetexts;cc=kyetexts;view=toc;idno=b92-184-30604827 THE TRIUMPH OF MUSIC And Other Lyrics. by MADISON J. CAWEIN. "THE OAT IS HEARD ABOVE THE LYRE."--_Swinburne._ [LIMITED.] John P. Morton and Company. 1888 INSCRIBED TO WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS WITH FRIENDSHIP AND ESTEEM. COPYRIGHT 1888 BY M. J. CAWEIN. CONTENTS. PAGE. The Triumph of Music, 1 What You Will, 10 In the South, 12 Pan, 15 Pax Vobiscum, 18 Mirabile Dictu, 20 Questionings, 22 Waiting, 23 In Late Fall, 26 Midwinter, 27 Longing, 28 In Middle Spring, 29 Tyranny, 31 Visions, 32 The Old Byway, 34 Diurnal, 36 The Wood Path, 38 Deficiency, 40 He Who Loves, 42 The Monastery Croft, 43 The Dryad, 44 "The Sweet o' the Year," 46 With the Seasons, 48 Unattainable, 51 Beyond, 53 Shadows, 56 Check and Counter-Check, 58 Semper Idem, 60 Two Lives, 62 Forevermore, 64 A Blown Rose, 68 To-morrow, 69 Mnemosyne, 69 The Sirens, 70 The Vintager, 71 A Stormy Sunset, 72 On a Dial, 73 Unutterable, 74 Midsummer, 75 A Fairy Cavalier, 78 The Farmstead, 80 Five Fancies: _I. The Gladiolas_, 87 _II. The Morning-Glories_, 88 _III. The Tiger-Lily_, 89 _IV. Vengeance_, 90 _V. A Dead Lily_, 92 My Suit, 94 The Family Burying-Ground, 96 The Water-Maid, 98 The Sea-King, 100 Where and What? 103 The Spring, 107 Lillita, 109 Artemis, 112 In November, 116 A Character, 117 A Mood, 120 A Thought, 122 Song, 123 Face to Face, 125 The Changeling, 130 St. John's Eve, 133 Lalage, 137 Miriam, 144 The Wind, 146 Music, 149 To ----, 153 Yule, 155 The Troubadour, 160 Why? 165 From Unbelief to Belief, 166 The King, 169 THE TRIUMPH OF MUSIC. I There lay in a vale 'twixt lone mountains A garden entangled with flowers, Where the whisper of echoing fountains Stirred softly the musk-breathing bowers. Where torrents cast down from rock-masses, From caverns of red-granite steeps, With thunders sonorous clove passes And maddened dark gulfs with rash leaps, With the dolorous foam of their leaps. II And, oh, when the sunrays came heaping The foam of those musical chasms, With a scintillant dust as of diamonds, It seemed that white spirits were sweeping Down, down thro' those voluble chasms, Wild weeping in resonant spasms. And the wave from the red-hearted granite In veins rolled tumbling around; Meandered thro' shade-haunted forests Where many rock barriers did span it To dash it in froth and in sound: Where the nights with their great moons could wan it, Or star its dusk stillness profound. III And here in the night would I wander On woodways where fragrances kissed, By shadows where murmurings kissed; And here would I tarry to ponder When the moon in blue vales made a mist; Dim in forests of rank, rocking cedars, Whose wildness made glad with their scent, Whose boughs in the tempests were bent Like the pennons and plumes of fierce leaders, In the battle all ragged and rent. IV And so when the moonshine was floating Far up on the mountain's bleak head, On the uttermost foam of the torrent, Would I string a wild harp while was gloating The moon on my blossomy bed. Or I lay where a fountain of blossoms Rained rustling from arches aloft, From the thick-scented arbors aloft, And I sang as the blossoms' white bosoms Pressed silk-smooth to mine and lay soft: I sang as their redolence stung me, And laughed on my blossomy couch, Till the fragrance and music had flung me Into shadows of sleep with their touch, The magic of exquisite touch.... V One night as I wondered and wandered In this my rare Aidenn of flowers, I saw where I lingered and pondered A youth cast asleep mid the bowers: A youth on a mantle of satin, A poppy-red robe in the flowers. VI So I kissed his thin eyelids full tender, I kissed his high forehead and pale, I sighed as I kissed his black splendor Of curls that were kissed of the gale, That were moved of the balm-breathing gale. And he woke and cried out as if haunted:-- "Oh God! for one note of that song! For a sob of that languishing song! Whose tumult of sorrow enchanted, And swept my weak spirit along!" VII Than I sate me upon the red satin And plunged a long look in his eyes; I bowed on the weft of red satin And kindled his love with my sighs. With fingers of lightness set sobbing The chords of my harp in a song, Till I found that my heart was a-throbbing And sobbing to sing like a tongue, Was sobbing to mix with the song. VIII Then he cried, and his dark eyes keen glistened, "Lost! lost! for that perilous music! Oh God! for that tyrannous strain! To which in my dreams I have listened, Ah, wretch! I have listened with pain!" And he tost on the garment of satin His deep raven darkness of hair, And the song at my lips was ungathered, And I sate there to marvel and stare. IX Then I wrenched from my soul a wild glory Of music delirious with words, Of music that wailed a soul's story, And trembled with god-uttered words, Or fell like the battling of swords. And in with it mixed all the beauty Of farewells and ravenous sighs, The heart that was broken for booty, Tears, rapture to know that one dies, Hell, heaven and laughter and cries. X In music the heart-ache of passion, The terror of souls that are lost, Cold, dizzying anguish of dying, All torments that beauty could fashion, Hot manacles of love and their cost. The bliss and the fury of dashing A soul into riotous love, While the smiting of harp-chords and crashing Of song like the winds were enwove With the stars that fall sounding above. XI Ah! why did the poppy-crowned slumber Seal up the rare light of his eyes With its silver of vapory pinions, The creature that sung in each number, To nest in his tired-out eyes, Like a bird that is sick of the skies. Yet he murmured so sad and so thrilling, "Oh God! for a lifetime of song! Oh life! for a world of such song! For a heaven or hell and the killing, Mad angel or devil of song! Oh, the rapture engendered in throwing On bubbles of music and song A soul to the anguish of loving, Until like a flower, full blowing, It is lost in a whirlwind most strong, It dies in a thunder of song!" XII I had flung in my song the emotion Triumphant of heart and of soul, And I recked not the passionate ocean That rolled to abysses of dole, To infinite torture and dole. XIII So I sang and I harped till all weary I sunk on the red of that robe, Crouched down at his feet on the satin, While he slumbered with eyelashes teary Fringed dark o'er each eye-ball's dark globe. Then I wondered and said, "It is dreary To see him so still on this robe." And I sobbed and I sobbed, "Is he living, Or have I but slain with my song!" And it seemed that a demon was striving To strangle my heart with a thong, With terror and sorrow of wrong. XIV And I rent the wild harp in my madness, From his ashen brows furrowed the hair; Soft wafted dark curls from pale temples-- They rustled with death--and the sadness Of his face so hopelessly fair! How I wailed to the stars of the heaven How they scoffed at and answered my grief In letters of flame, "Unforgiven! Thou deathless, whose voice is a thief, Forever and ever grief!" XV So I wept on the instrument broken, The instrument sweet of his death, The dagger that stabbed not to kill him, The dagger of song which had spoken, And ravished away his life's breath. So I wept, and my curls thick and golden Stormed entangled and showered 'mid his; My arms around him were enfolden, My lips clave to his with a kiss, With the life and the love of a kiss. WHAT YOU WILL. I When the season was dry and the sun was hot And the hornet sucked gaunt on the apricot, And the ripe peach dropped to its seed a-rot, With a lean red wasp that stung and clung; When the hollyhocks, ranked in the garden-plot, More seed-pods had than blossoms, I wot, A weariness weighed on the tongue, That the drought of the season begot. II When the black grape bulged with the juice that burst Through its thick blue skin that was cracked with thirst, And the round gold pippins, the summer had nursed, In the yellowing leaves o' the orchards hung; When the reapers, their lips with whistling pursed, To their sun-tanned brows in the corn were immersed, A lightness came over the tongue, And one sung as much as one durst. III When the skies of December gray dripped and dripped, And icicles eaves of the big barn tipped, And loud hens flew over the snow or slipped, And the north wind hooted and bit and stung, And the ears of the milkmaid, Miriam, nipped, And the chappy cheeks of the farm boy whipped, A goddess unloosened the tongue, And one's mouth with wild honey was lipped. IN THE SOUTH. [SERENADE.] The dim verbena drugs the dusk With heavy lemon odors rare; Wan heliotropes Arabian musk Exhale into the dreamy air; A sad wind with long wooing husk Swoons in the roses there. The jasmine at thy casement flings Star-censers oozing rich perfumes; The clematis, long petaled, swings Deep clusters of dark purple blooms; With flowers like moons or sylphide wings Magnolias light the glooms. Awake, awake from sleep! Thy balmy hair, Unbounden deep on deep, Than blossoms fair, Who sweetest fragrance weep, Will fill the night with prayer. Awake, awake from sleep! And dreaming here it seems to me Some dryad's bosoms grow confessed Nude in the dark magnolia tree, That rustles with the murmurous West,-- Or is it but a dream of thee That thy white beauty guessed? In southern heavens above are rolled A million feverish gems, which burst From night's deep ebon caskets old, With inner fires that seem to thirst; Tall oleanders to their gold Drift buds where dews are nursed. Unseal, unseal thine eyes, Where long her rod Queen Mab sways o'er their skies In realms of Nod! Confessed, such majesties Will fill the night with God. Unseal, unseal thine eyes! PAN. 1 Haunter of green intricacies, Where the sunlight's amber laces Deeps of darkest violet; Where the ugly Satyr chases Shining Dryads, fair as Graces, Whose lithe limbs with dew are wet; Piper in hid mountain places, Where the blue-eyed Oread braces Winds which in her sweet cheeks set Of Aurora rosy traces, Whiles the Faun from myrtle mazes Watcheth with an eye of jet: What art thou and these dim races, Thou, O Pan! of many faces, Who art ruler yet? 2 Tell me, piper, have I ever Heard thy hollow syrinx quiver Trickling music in the trees? Where dark hazel copses shiver, Have I heard its dronings sever The warm silence, or the bees? Ripple murmurings, that never Could be born of fall or river, Whisperings and subtleties, Melodies so very clever, None can doubt that thou, the giver, Master Nature's keys. 3 What glad awes of storm are given Thy mad power, which has striven,-- Where the craggy forests glare,-- In wild mockery, when Heaven Splits with thunder wedges driven Red through night and rainy air! What art thou, whose presence, even While its fear the heart hath riven, Heals it with a prayer? PAX VOBISCUM. 1 Her violets in thine eyes The Springtide stained I know, Two bits of mystic skies On which the green turf lies, Whereon the violets blow. 2 I know the Summer wrought From thy sweet heart that rose, With that faint fragrance fraught, Its sad poetic thought Of peace and deep repose. 3 That Autumn, like some god, From thy delicious hair-- Lost sunlight 'neath the sod Shot up this golden-rod To toss it everywhere. 4 That Winter from thy breast The snowdrop's whiteness stole-- Much kinder than the rest-- Thy innocence confessed, The pureness of thy soul. MIRABILE DICTU. There lives a goddess in the West, An island in death-lonesome seas; No towered towns are hers confessed, No castled forts and palaces. Hers, simple worshipers at best, The buds, the birds, the bees. And she hath wonder-worlds of song So heavenly beautiful, and shed So sweetly from her honeyed tongue, The savage creatures, it is said, Hark marble-still their wilds among, And nightingales fall dead. I know her not, nor have I known; I only feel that she is there; For when my heart is most alone There broods communion on the air, Concedes an influence not its own, Miraculously fair. Then fain is it to sing and sing, And then again to fly and fly Beyond the flight of cloud or wing, Far under azure arcs of sky. Its love at her chaste feet to fling, Behold her face and die. QUESTIONINGS. Now when wan winter sunsets be Canary-colored down the sky; When nights are starless utterly, And sleeted winds cut moaning by, One's memory keeps one company, And conscience puts his "when" and "why." Such inquisition, when alone, Wakes superstition in the head, A Gorgon face of hueless stone With staring eyes to terror wed, Stamped on her brow God's words, "Unknown! Behind the dead, behind the dead." And, oh! that weariness of soul That leans upon our dead, the clod And air have taken as a whole Through some mysterious period:-- Life! with thy questions of control: Death! with thy unguessed laws of God. WAITING. Were we in May now, while Our souls are yearning, Sad hearts would bound and smile With red blood burning; Around the tedious dial No slow hands turning. Were we in May now, say, What joy to know Her heart's streams pulse away In winds that blow, See graceful limbs of May Revealed to glow. Were we in May now, think What wealth she has; The dog-tooth violets pink, Wind-flowers like glass, About the wood brook's brink Dark sassafras. Nights, which the large stars strew Heav'n on heav'n rolled, Nights, whose feet flash with dew, Whose long locks hold Aromas cool and new, A moon's curved gold. This makes me sad in March; I long and long To see the red-bud's torch Flame far and strong, Hear on my vine-climbed porch The blue-bird's song. What else then but to sleep And cease from such; Dream of her and to leap At her white touch? Ah me! then wake and weep, Weep overmuch. This is why day by day Time lamely crawls, Feet clogged with winter clay That never falls, While the dim month of May Me far off calls. IN LATE FALL. Such days as break the wild bird's heart; Such days as kill it and its songs; A death which knows a sweeter part Of days to which such death belongs. And now old eyes are filled with tears, As with the rain the frozen flowers; Time moves so slowly one but fears The burthen on his wasted powers. And so he stopped;--and thou art dead! And that is found which once was feared:-- A farewell to thy gray, gray head, A goodnight to thy goodly beard! MIDWINTER. The dew-drop from the rose that slips Hath not the sparkle of her lips, My lady's lips. Than her long braids of yellow hold The dandelion hath not more gold, Her braids like gold. The blue-bell hints not more of skies Than do the flowers in her eyes, My lady's eyes. The sweet-pea blossom doth not wear More dainty pinkness than her ear, My lady's ear. So, heigho! then, tho' skies be gray, My heart's a garden that is gay This sorry day. LONGING. When rathe wind-flowers many peer All rain filled at blue April skies, As on one smiles one's lady dear With the big tear-drops in her eyes; When budded May-apples, I wis, Be hidden by lone greenwood creeks, Be bashful as her cheeks we kiss, Be waxen as her dimpled cheeks; Then do I pine for happier skies, Shy wild-flowers fair by hill and burn; As one for one's sweet lady's eyes, And her white cheeks might pine and yearn. IN MIDDLE SPRING. When the fields are rolled into naked gold, And a ripple of fire and pearl is blent With the emerald surges of wood and wold Like a flower-foam bursting violent; When the dingles and deeps of the woodlands old Are glad with a sibilant life new sent, Too rare to be told are the manifold Sweet fancies that quicken redolent In the heart that no longer is cold. How it knows of the wings of the hawk that swings From the drippled dew scintillant seen; Why the red-bird hides where it sings and sings In melodious quiverings of green; How the wind to the red-bud and dogwood brings Big pearls of worth and corals of sheen, Whiles he lisps to the strings of a lute that rings Of love in the South who is queen, Where the fountain of poesy springs. Go seek in the ray for a sworded fay The chestnut's buds into blooms that rips; And look in the brook that runs laughing gay For the nymph with the laughing lips; In the brake for the dryad whose eyes are gray, From whose bosom the perfume drips; The faun hid away where the grasses sway Thick ivy low down on his hips, Pursed lips on a syrinx at play. So ho, for the rose, the Romeo rose, And the lyric he hides in his heart; And ho, for the epic the oak tree knows, Sonorous and mighty in art. The lily with woes that her white face shows Hath a satire she yearns to impart, But none of those, her hates and her foes, For a heart that sings but for sport, And shifts where the song-wind blows. TYRANNY. There is not aught more merciless Than such fast lips that will not speak, That stir not if I curse or bless A God that made them weak. More madd'ning to one there is naught, Than such white eyelids sealed on eyes, Eyes vacant of the thing named thought, An exile in the skies. Ah, silent tongue! ah, ear so dull! How angel utterances low Have wooed you! they more beautiful Than mortal harsh with woe! VISIONS. When the snow was deep on the flower-beds, And the sleet was caked on the brier; When the frost was down in the brown bulbs' heads, And the ways were clogged with mire; When the wind to syringa and bare rose-tree Brought the phantoms of vanished flowers, And the days were sorry as sorry could be, And Time limped cursing his fardle of hours: Heigho! had I not a book and the logs? And I swear that I wasn't mistaken, But I heard the frogs croaking in far-off bogs, And the brush-sparrow's song in the braken. And I strolled by paths which the Springtide knew, In her mossy dells, by her ferny passes, Where the ground was holy with flowers and dew, And the insect life in the grasses. And I knew the Spring as a lover who knows His sweetheart, to whom he has given A kiss on the cheek that warmed its white rose, In her eyes brought the laughter of heaven. For a poem I'd read, a simple thing, A little lyric that had the power To make the brush-sparrow come and sing, And the winter woodlands flower. THE OLD BYWAY Its rotting fence one scarcely sees Through sumach and wild blackberries, Thick elder and the white wild-rose, Big ox-eyed daisies where the bees Hang droning in repose. The limber lizards glide away Gray on its moss and lichens gray; Warm butterflies float in the sun, Gay Ariels of the lonesome day; And there the ground squirrels run. The red-bird stays one note to lift; High overhead dark swallows drift; 'Neath sun-soaked clouds of beaten cream, Through which hot bits of azure sift, The gray hawks soar and scream. Among the pungent weeds they fill Dry grasshoppers pipe with a will; And in the grass-grown ruts, where stirs The basking snake, mole-crickets shrill; O'er head the locust whirrs. At evening, when the sad West turns To dusky Night a cheek that burns, The tree-toads in the wild-plum sing, And ghosts of long-dead flowers and ferns The wind wakes whispering. DIURNAL. I A molten ruby clear as wine Along the east the dawning swims; The morning-glories swing and shine, The night dews bead their satin rims; The bees rob sweets from shrub and vine, The gold hangs on their limbs. Sweet morn, the South, A royal lover, From his fragrant mouth, Sweet morn, the South Breathes on and over Keen scents of wild honey and rosy clover. II Beside the wall the roses blow Long summer noons the winds forsake; Beside the wall the poppies glow So full of fire their hearts do ache; The dipping butterflies come slow, Half dreaming, half awake. Sweet noontide, rest, A slave-girl weary With her babe at her breast; Sweet noontide, rest, The day grows dreary As soft limbs that are tired and eyes that are teary. III Along lone paths the cricket cries Sad summer nights that know the dew; One mad star thwart the heavens flies Curved glittering on the glassy blue; Now grows the big moon on the skies. The stars are faint and few. Sweet night, breathe thou With a passion taken From a Romeo's vow; Sweet night, breathe thou Like a beauty shaken Of amorous dreams that have made her waken. THE WOOD-PATH. Here doth white Spring white violets show, Broadcast doth white, frail wind-flowers sow Through starry mosses amber-fair, As delicate as ferns that grow, Hart's-tongue and maiden-hair. Here fungus life is beautiful, White mushroom and the thick toad-stool As various colored as wild blooms; Existences that love the cool, Distinct in rank perfumes. Here stray the wandering cows to rest, The calling cat-bird builds her nest In spice-wood bushes dark and deep; Here raps the woodpecker his best, And here young rabbits leap. Tall butternuts and hickories, The pawpaw and persimmon trees, The beech, the chestnut, and the oak, Wall shadows huge, like ghosts of bees Through which gold sun-bits soak. Here to pale melancholy moons. In haunted nights of dreamy Junes, Wails wildly the weird whippoorwill, Whose mournful and demonic tunes Wild woods with phantoms fill. DEFICIENCY. Ah, God! were I away, away, By woodland-belted hills! There might be more in Thy bright day Than my poor spirit thrills. The elder coppice, banks of blooms, The spice-wood brush, the field Of tumbled clover, and perfumes Hot, weedy pastures yield. The old rail-fence whose angles hold Bright briar and sassafras, Sweet priceless wild flowers blue and gold Starred through the moss and grass. The ragged path that winds unto Lone cow-behaunted nooks, Through brambles to the shade and dew Of rocks and woody brooks. To see the minnows turn and gleam White sparkling bellies, all Shoot in gray schools adown the stream Let but a dead leaf fall. The buoyant pleasure and delight Of floating feathered seeds. Capricious wanderers soft and white Born of silk-bearing weeds. Ah, God! were I away, away, Among wild woods and birds! There were more soul within Thy day Than one might bless with words. HE WHO LOVES. For him God's birds each merry morn Make of wild throats melodious flutes To trill such love from brush and thorn As might brim eyes of brutes: Who would believe of such a thing, That 'tis her heart which makes them sing? For him the faultless skies of noon Grow farther in eternal blue, As heavens that buoy the balanced moon, And sow the stars and dew: Who would believe that such deep skies Are miracles only through her eyes? For him mad sylphs adown domed nights Stud golden globules radiant, Or glass-green transient trails of lights Spin from their orbs and slant: Who would believe a soul were hers To make for him a universe? THE MONASTERY CROFT. 1 Big-stomached, like friars Who ogle a nun, Quaff deep to their bellies' desires From the old abbey's tun, Grapes fatten with fires Warm-filtered from moon and from sun. 2 As a novice who muses,-- Lips a rosary tell, While her thoughts are--a love she refuses? --Nay! mourns as not well: The ripe apple looses Its holding to rot where it fell. THE DRYAD. I have seen her limpid eyes Large with gradual laughter rise Through wild-roses' nettles, Like twin blossoms grow and stare, Then a hating, envious air Whisked them into petals. I have seen her hardy cheek Like a molten coral leak Through the leafage shaded Of thick Chickasaws, and then, When I made more sure, again To a red plum faded. I have found her racy lips, And her graceful finger-tips, But a haw and berry; Glimmers of her there and here, Just, forsooth, enough to cheer And to make me merry. Often on the ferny rocks Dazzling rimples of loose locks At me she hath shaken, And I've followed--'twas in vain-- They had trickled into rain Sun-lit on the braken. Once her full limbs flashed on me, Naked where some royal tree Powdered all the spaces With wan sunlight and quaint shade, Such a haunt romance hath made For haunched satyr-races. There, I wot, hid amorous Pan, For a sudden pleading ran Through the maze of myrtle, Whiles a rapid violence tossed All its flowerage,--'twas the lost Cooings of a turtle. "THE SWEET O' THE YEAR." I How can I help from laughing while The daffodilies at me smile; The tickled dew winks tipsily In clusters of the lilac-tree; The crocuses and hyacinths Storm through the grassy labyrinths A mirth of gold and violet; And roses, bud by bud, Flash from each dainty-lacing net Red lips of maidenhood? II How can I help from singing when The swallow and the hawk again Are noisy in the hyaline Of happy heavens clear as wine; The robin lustily and shrill Pipes on the timber-bosomed hill; And o'er the fallow skim the bold, Mad orioles that glow Like shining shafts of ingot gold Shot from the morning's bow? III How can I help from loving, dear, Since love is of the sweetened year? The very vermin feel her power, And chip and chirrup hour by hour: It is the grasshopper at noon, The cricket's at it in the moon, Whiles lizzards glitter in the dew, And bats be on the wing; Such days of joy are short and few. Grant me thy love this spring. WITH THE SEASONS. I You will not love me, sweet. When this fair year is past; Or love now at my feet At others' feet be cast. You will not love me, sweet, When this fair year is past. II Now 'tis the Springtide, dear, The crocus cups hold flame Brimmed to the pregnant year. Who crimsons as with shame. Now 'tis the Springtide, dear, The crocus cups hold flame. III Ah, heart, the Summer's queen, At her brown throat one rose; The poppies now are seen With seed-pods thrust in rows. Dear heart, the Summer's queen, At her brown throat one rose. IV Now Autumn reigns, a prince Fierce, gipsy-dark; live gold Weighs down the fruited quince, The last chilled violet's told. The Autumn reigns, a prince, A despot crowned with gold. V Alas! rude Winter's king, Snow-driven from chin to head; No wild birds pipe and sing, The wild winds sing instead. Ah me! rude Winter's king, Snow-driven from chin to head. VI Weep now, you once who smiled, Sweet hope that had few fears! And this the end, my child!-- Thyself, my shame and tears! Weep now, you once who smiled, Sweet hope, that had few fears! UNATTAINABLE. I What though the soul be tired For that to which 'twas fired, The far, dear, still desired, Beyond the heaven's scope; Beyond us and above us, The thing we would have love us, That will know nothing of us, But only bids us hope. II It still behooves us ever From loving ne'er to sever, To love it though it never Reciprocate our care; For love, when freely given, Lets in soft hints of heaven In memories that leaven Black humors of despair. III For in this life diurnal All earthly, gross, infernal, Conflicts with that eternal To make its love as lust; To rot the fairest flower Of thought which is a power, All happiness to sour, And burn our eyes with dust. IV Believe, some power higher Breathes in us this desire With purpose strange as fire, And soft though seeming hard; Who to such starved endeavor And wasted love, that never Seems recompensed, forever Gives in His way reward. BEYOND. 1 Hangs stormed with stars the night, Deep over deep, A majesty, a might, To feel and keep. 2 Ah! what is such and such, Love, canst thou tell? That shrinks--though 'tis not much-- To weep farewell. 3 That hates the dawn and lark; Would have the wail,-- Sobbed through the ceaseless dark,-- O' the nightingale. 4 Yes, earth, thy life were worth Not much to me, Were there not after earth Eternity. 5 God gave thee life to keep-- And what hath life?-- Love, faith, and care, and sleep Where dreams are rife. 6 Death's sleep, whose shadows start The tears in eyes Of love, that fill the heart That breaks and dies. 7 And faith is never given Without some care, That leadeth us to heaven By ways of prayer. 8 The nightingale and dark Are thine then here; Beyond, the light and lark Eternal there. SHADOWS. 1 Ha! help!--'twas palpable! A ghost that thronged Up from the mind or hell Of one I wronged! 2 'Tis past and--silence!--naught!-- A vision born Of the scared mind o'erwrought With dreams forlorn: 3 The bastard brood of Death And Sleep that wakes Grim fancies with its breath, And reason shakes. 4 Would that the grave _could_ rot Like flesh the soul, Gnaw through with worms and not Leave it thus whole, 5 More than it was in earth Beyond the grave, Much more in death than birth To conscience slave! CHECK AND COUNTER-CHECK. 1 Vent all your coward's wrath Upon me so!-- Yes, I have crossed your path And will not go! 2 Storm at me hate, and name Me all that's vile, "Lust," "filth," "disease," and "shame," I only smile. 3 Me brute rage can not hurt, It only flings In your own eyes blind dirt That bites and stings. 4 Rave at your like such whine, Your fellow-men, This wrath!--great God! and mine!-- What is it then? 5 No words! no oaths! such hate As devils smile When raw success cries "wait!" And "afterwhile!" 6 A woman I and ill, A courtesan You wearied of, would kill, And you--a man! 7 You, you--unnamable! A thing there's not, Too base to burn in Hell, Too vile to rot. SEMPER IDEM. 1 Hold up thy head and crush Thy heart's despair; From thy wan temples brush The tear-wet hair. 2 Look on me thus as I Gaze upon thee; Nor question how nor why Such things can be. 3 Thou thought'st it love!--poor fool! That which was lust! Which made thee, beautiful, Vile as the dust! 4 Thy flesh I craved, thy face!-- Love shrinks at this-- Now on thy lips to place One farewell kiss!-- 5 Weep not, but die!--'tis given-- And so--farewell!-- Die!--that which makes death heaven, Makes life a hell. TWO LIVES. 1 "There is no God," one said, And love is lust; When I am dead I'm _dead_, And all is dust. "Be merry while you can Before you're gray; With some wild courtesan Drink care away." 2 One said, "A God there is, And God is love; Death is not _death_, but bliss, And life above. "Above all flesh is mind; And faith and truth God's gifts to poor mankind That make life youth." 3 One from a harlot's side Arose at morn; One cursing God had died That night forlorn. FOREVERMORE. I O heart that vainly follows The flight of summer swallows, Far over holts and hollows, O'er frozen buds and flowers; To violet seas and levels, Where Love Time's locks dishevels With merry mimes and revels Of aphrodisiac Hours. II O Love who, dreaming, borrows Dead love from sad to-morrows, The broken heart that sorrows, The blighted hopes that weep; Pale faces pale with sleeping; Red eyelids red with weeping; Dead lips dead secrets keeping, That shake the deeps of sleep! III O Memory that showers About the withered hours White, ruined, sodden flowers, Dead dust and bitter rain; Dead loves with faces teary; Dead passions wan and dreary; The weary, weary, weary, Dead heart-ache and the pain! IV O give us back the blisses, Lost madness of moist kisses, The youth, the joy, the tresses, The fragrant limbs of white; The high heart like a jewel Alive with subtle fuel, Lips beautiful and cruel, Eyes' incarnated light! V Instead of tears, wild laughter The old hot passions after, The houri sweets that dafter Made flesh and soul a slave! Enough of tearful sorrows; Enough of rank to-morrows; The life that whines and borrows But memories of the grave! VI The grave that breaks no netting Of care or spint's fretting, No long, long sweet forgetting For those who would forget; And those who stammer by it Hope of an endless quiet, Within them voiceless riot When they and it have met. VII And God we pray beseeching,-- But Life with finger reaching, Stone-stern, remaineth teaching Our hearts to turn to stone; Then fain are we to follow The last, lorn, soaring swallow Past bourns of holt and hollow Forevermore alone. A BLOWN ROSE. Lay but a finger on That pallid petal sweet, It trembles gray and wan Beneath the passing feet. But soft! blown rose, we know A merriment of bloom, A life of sturdy glow,-- But no such dear perfume. As some good bard, whose page Of life with beauty's fraught, Grays on to ripe old age Sweet-mellowed through with thought. So when his hoary head Is wept into the tomb, The mind, which is not dead, Sheds round it rare perfume. TO-MORROW. A Lorelei full fair she sits Throned on the stream that dimly rolls; Still, hope-thrilled, with her wild harp knits To her from year to year men's souls. They hear her harp, they hear her song, Led by the wizard beauty high, Like blind brutes maddened rush along, Sink at her cold feet, gasp and die. MNEMOSYNE. In classic beauty, cold, immaculate, A voiceful sculpture, stern and still she stands, Upon her brow deep chiseled love and hate, That sorrow o'er dead roses in her hands. THE SIRENS. Wail! wail! and smite your lyres' sonorous gold, And beckon naked beauty from the sea In arms and breasts and hips of godly mold, Dark, strangling hair carousing to the knee. In vain! in vain! and dull in unclosed ears To one loved voice sweet calling o'er the foam, Which in my heart like some strong hand appears To gently, firmly draw my vessel home. THE VINTAGER. Among the fragrant grapes she bows; Long, violet clusters heap her hands; About her satyr throats and brows Flush at her smiled commands. And from her sun-burnt throat at times, As bubbles burst on new-made wine, A happy fit of merry rhymes Rings down the hills of vine. From out one heart, remorseless sweet, She plucked the big-grape passion there; Trod in the wine-press of her feet, It grew into despair: Until she drained its honeyed must, Which, tingling inward part by part, Fierce mounted thro' her glowing bust And centered in her heart. A STORMY SUNSET. 1 Soul of my body! what a death For such a day of envious gloom, Unbroken passion of the sky! As if the pure, kind-hearted breath Of some soft power, ever nigh, Had, cleaving in the bitter sheath, Burst from its grave a gorgeous bloom. 2 The majesty of clouds that swarm. Expanding in a furious length Of molten-metal petals, flows Unutterable, and where the warm, Full fire is centered, swims and glows The evening star fresh-faced with strength, A shimmering rain-drop of the storm. ON A DIAL. 1 To-morrow and to-morrow Is but to-day: The world wags but to borrow Time that grows gray:-- Grammercy! time's but sorrow And--well away! 2 Since time hales but to sadness And to decay, Men needs wax fools for madness, Laugh, curse, and pray; Death grapples with their badness-- The Devil's to pay. UNUTTERABLE. There is a sorrow in the wind to-night That haunteth me; she, like a penitent, Heaps on rent hairs the snow's thin ashes white And moans and moans, her swaying body bent. And Superstition gliding softly shakes With wasted hands, that vainly grope and seek, The rustling curtains; of each cranny makes Cold, ghostly lips that wailing fain would speak. MIDSUMMER. The red blood clings in her cheeks and stings Through their tan with a fever that lightens, And the clearness of heaven-born mountain springs In her dark eyes dusks and brightens. And her limbs are the limbs of an Atalanta who swings With the youths in the sinewy games, When the hot air sings thro' the hair it flings, And the circus roars hoarse with their names, As they fly to the goal that flames. A voice as deep as wan waters that sweep Thro' the musical reeds of a river; A song of red reapers that bind and reap, With the ring of curved scythes that quiver. The note-like lisp of the pippins that leap, Ripe-mellowed to gold, to the ground; The murmurous sleep that the cool leaves keep On close lips that trickle with sound. And sweet is the beat of her glowing feet, And her smiles as wide heavens are gracious; And the creating might of her hands of heat As a god's or a goddess's spacious. The elastic veins thro' her heart that beat Are rich with a perishless fire, And her bosoms most sweet are the ardent seat Of a mother that never will tire. Wherever she fares her soft voice bears High powers of being that thicken In fruits, as the winds made Thessalian mares Of old mysteriously quicken; The apricots' juice and the juice of the pears, The wine great grape-clusters hold, These, these are her cares, and her wealth she declares In her corn's vast billows of gold. All hail to her lips, and her fruitful hips, And her motherly thickness of tresses; All hail to the sweetness that slips and drips From her breasts which the light caresses. A toiler, whose fair arm heaps and whips Great chariots that heavily creak; A worker, who sweats on the groaning ships. And never grows weary or weak. A FAIRY CAVALIER. By a mushroom in the moon, White as bud from budded berry, Silver buckles on my shoon,-- Ho! the moon shines merry. Here I sit and drink my grog,-- Stocks and tunic ouphen yellow, Skinned from belly of a frog,-- Quite a fine, fierce fellow. My good cloak a bat's wing gave, And a beetle's wings my bonnet, And a moth's head grew the brave, Gallant feather on it. Faith! I have rich jewels rare, Rings and carcanets all studded Thick with spiders' eyes, that glare Like great rubies blooded. And I swear, sirs, by my blade, "Sirrah, a good stabbing hanger!"-- From a hornet's stinger made,-- When I am in anger. Fill the lichen pottles up! Honey pressed from hearts of roses; Cheek by jowl, up with each cup Till we hide our noses. Good, sirs!--marry!--'tis the cock! Hey, away! the moon's lost fire! Ho! the cock our dial and clock-- Hide we 'neath this brier. THE FARMSTEAD. Yes, a lovely homestead; there In the Spring your lilacs blew Plenteous perfume everywhere; There your gladiolas grew, Parallels of scarlet glare. And the moon-hued primrose cool, Satin-soft and redolent; Honey-suckles beautiful, Balming all the air with scent; Roses red or white as wool. Roses glorious and lush, Rich in tender-tinted dyes, Like a gay, tempestuous rush Of unnumbered butterflies Lighting on each bending bush. Here the fire-bush and the box, And the wayward violets; Clumps of star-enameled phlox, And the myriad flowery jets Of the twilight four-o'clocks. Ah, the beauty of the place When the June made one great rose Full of musk and mellow grace, In the garden's humming close, Of her comely mother face! Bubble-like the hollyhocks Budded, burst and flaunted wide Gypsy beauty from their stocks. Morning-glories, bubble-dyed, Swung in honey-hearted flocks. Tawny tiger-lilies flung Doublets slashed with crimson on; Graceful slave-girls fair and young, Like Circassians, in the sun Alabaster lilies swung. Ah, the droning of the bee In his dusty pantaloons Tumbling in the fleurs-de-lis; In the drowsy afternoons Dreaming in the pink sweet-pea. Ah, the moaning wild-wood dove With its throat of amethyst Ruffled like a shining cove, Which a wind to pearl hath kissed, Moaning, moaning of its love. And the insects' gossip thin, From the summer hotness hid, In the leafy shadows green, Then at eve the katydid With its hard, unvaried din. Often from the whispering hills Lorn within the golden dusk,-- Gold with gold of daffodils,-- Thrilled into the garden's musk The wild wail of whippoorwills. From the purple tangled trees, Like the white, full heart of night, Solemn with majestic peace, Swam the big moon veined with light, Like some gorgeous golden fleece. You were there with me, and you, In the magic of the hour, Almost swore that you could view Beading on each blade and flower Moony blisters of the dew. And each Fairy of our home-- Fire-fly--its torch then lit In the honey-scented gloam, Dashing down the dusk with it, Like an instant flaming foam. And we heard the calling, calling, Of the wild owl in the brake Where the trumpet-vine hung crawling; Down the ledge into the lake Heard the sighing streamlet falling. Then we wandered to the creek, Where the water-lilies growing, Like fair maidens white and weak,-- Naked in the brooklet's flowing,-- Stooped to bathe a bashful cheek. And the moonbeams rippling golden Fell in saint-sweet aureoles On chaste bosoms half beholden, Till, meseemed, the dainty souls Of pale moon-fays, there enfolden In such beauty, dimly fainted Baby-cribbed within each bud, Till a night wind piney-tainted, Swooning over field and flood, Rocked them to a slumber sainted. Then a low, melodious bell Of some sleeping heifer tinkled In some berry-briered dell, As her satin dewlap wrinkled With the cud that made it swell. And returning home we heard In a beech tree at the gate Some brown, dream-behaunted bird Singing of its absent mate, Of the mate that never heard. And you see, now I am gray, Why within the old, old place, With such memories I stay, Fancy out your absent face Long since passed away. You were mine--yes, still are mine: And this frosty memory Reels about you as with wine Warmed into wild eyes which see All of you that is divine. Yes, I love it, and have grown Melancholy in that love And that memory alone Of perfection such, whereof You could sanctify a stone. And where'er your poppies swing-- There we walk,--as if a bee Fanned them with his puny wing,-- Down your garden shadowy In the hush the evenings bring. FIVE FANCIES. I THE GLADIOLAS. As tall as the lily, as tall as the rose, And almost as tall as the hollyhocks, Ranked breast to breast in sentinel rows Stand the gladiola stocks. And some are red as the humming-bird's blood And some are pied as the butterfly race, And each is shaped like a velvet hood Gold-lined with delicate lace. For you know the goblins that come like musk To tumble and romp in the flowers' laps, When you see big fire-fly eyes in the dusk, Hang there their goblin caps. II THE MORNING-GLORIES. They bloom up the fresh, green trellis In airy, vigorous ease, And their fragrant, sensuous honey Is best beloved of the bees. Oh! the rose knows the dainty secret How the morning-glory blows, For the rose told me the secret, And the jessamine told the rose. And the jessamine said at midnight, Ere the red cock woke and crew, That the fays of queen Titania Came there to bathe in the dew. And the merry moonlight glistened On wet, long, yellow hair, And their feet on the flowers drowsy Trod softer than any air. And their petticoats, gay as bubbles, They hung up every one On the morning-glories' tendrils Till their moonlight bath were done. But the red cock crew too early, And the fays left hurriedly, And this is why in the morning Their petticoats there you see. III THE TIGER-LILY. A sultan proud and tawny At elegant ease he stands, With his bare throat brown and scrawny, And his indolent, leaf-like hands. And the eunuch tulips that listen In their gaudy turbans so, With their scimetar leaves that glisten, Are guards of his seraglio; Where sultana roses musky, Voluptuous in houri charms, With their bold breasts deep and dusky, Impatiently wait his arms. Tall, beautiful, sad, and slender, His Greek-girl dancing slaves, For the white-limbed lilies tender His royal hand he waves. While he watches them, softly smiling, His favorite rose that hour With a butterfly gallant is wiling In her attar-scented bower. IV VENGEANCE. I Let it sink, let it sink On the pungent-petaled pink By those poppy puffs; Fairy-fashioned downiness, Light, weak moth in furry dress Of white fluffy stuffs. II Where the thin light slipping sweet Dimples prints of Fairy feet On the white-rose blooms, One dim blossom delicate Droops a face all pale with hate, Dead with sick perfumes. III And I read the riddle wove In this rose's course of love For the fickle pink:-- Thou the rose's phantom art Stealing to the pink's false heart Vampire-like to drink. V A DEAD LILY. I The South had saluted her mouth Till her mouth was sweet with the South. II And the North with his breathings low Made the blood in her veins like his snow. III And the West with his smiles and his art Poured his honey of life in her heart. IV And the East had in whisperings told His secrets more precious than gold. V So she grew to a beautiful thought Which a godhead of love had wrought. VI As strange how the power begot it As why--but to kill it and rot it. MY SUIT. Faith! the Dandelion is To my mind too lowly; Then the winsome Violet Is, forsooth, too holy. There's the Touch-me-not--go to! What! a face that's speckled Like a buxom milking-maid's Which the sun hath freckled! And the Tiger-lily's wild, Flirts, is fierce and haughty; And the Sweet-Brier Rose, I swear, Pricks you and is naughty. Columbine a fool's cap hath, Then she is too merry; Gossip, I would sooner woo Some plebeian Berry. There's the shy Anemone,-- Well--her face shows sorrow; Pale, goodsooth! alive to-day, Dead and gone to-morrow. And that big-eyed, fair-cheeked wench, The untoward Daisy, She's been wooed, aye! overmuch-- Then she is too lazy. Pleasant persons are they all, And their virtues many; Faith, I know but good of all, And naught ill of any. Marry! 'tis a May-apple, Fair-skinned as a Saxon, Whom I woo, a fragrant thing Delicate and waxen. THE FAMILY BURYING-GROUND. A wall of crumbling stones doth keep Watch o'er long barrows where they sleep, Old chronicled grave-stones of its dead, On which oblivious mosses creep And lichens gray as lead. Warm days the lost cows as they pass Rest here and browse the juicy grass That springs about its sun-scorched stones; Afar one hears their bells' deep brass Waft melancholy tones. Here the wild morning-glory goes A-rambling as the myrtle grows, Wild morning-glories pale as pain, With holy urns, that hint at woes, The night hath filled with rain. Here are blackberries largest seen, Rich, winey dark, whereon the lean Black hornet sucks, noons sick with heat, That bend not to the shadowed green The heavy bearded wheat. At dark, for its forgotten dead, A requiem, of no known wind said, Through ghostly cedars moans and throbs, While to thin starlight overhead The shivering screech-owl sobs. THE WATER-MAID. There she rose as white as death, Stars above and stars beneath; Where the ripples brake in splendor To a million, million starlets Twinkling on lake-lilies tender, Rocking to the ripple barlets. She, brow-belted with white lilies, Rose and oared a shining shoulder To a downward-purpling boulder: With slim fingers soft and milky, Haled her from the spray-sprent lilies To a ledge, and sitting silky Sang unto the list'ning lilies, Sang and sang beneath the heaven, Belted, wreathed with lilies seven; Falsely sang a wild, wild ditty To a wool-white moon; Till a child both frail and pretty Found her singing on the boulder,-- Dark locks on a milky shoulder,-- 'Neath the wool-white moon. And the creature singing there Strangled him in her long hair. THE SEA-KING. 1 In green sea-caverns dim, Deep down, A monarch pale and slim, Whose soul's a frown, He ruleth cold and grim In foamy crown: In green sea-caverns dim, Deep down. 2 He hears the Mermaid sing So sad! Far off like some curs'd thing, That ne'er is glad, A vague, wild murmuring, That drives men mad: He hears the Mermaid sing So sad! 3 Strange monster bulks are there, That yawn Or roll huge eyes that glare And then are gone; Weird foliage passing fair Where clings the spawn: Strange monster bulks are there, That yawn. 4 What cares he for wrecked hulls These years! Red gold the water dulls! Grim, dead-men jeers On jaws of a thousand skulls Of mariners! What cares he for wrecked hulls These years! 5 Man's tears are loved of him, Deep down; Set in the foamy rim Of his frail crown To pearls the tear-drops dim Freeze at his frown: Man's tears are loved of him, Deep down. 6 Here be the halls of Sleep Full mute, Chill, shadowy, and deep, Where hangs no lute To make the still heart leap Of man or brute: Here be the halls of Sleep Full mute. WHERE AND WHAT? Her ivied towers tall Old forests belt and bar, And oh! the West's dim mountain crests That line the blue afar. Her gardens face dark cliffs, That seeth against a sea As blue and deep as the eyes of Sleep With saddening mystery. Red sands roll leagues on leagues Ribbed of the wind and wave; The near warm sky bends from on high The pale brow of a slave. And when the morning's beams Lie crushed on crag and bay, A wail of flutes and soft-strung lutes O'er the lone land swoons away. The woods are 'roused from rest, A scent of earth and brine, By brake and lake the wild things wake, And torrents leap and shine. But she in one gray tower White-faced knows how he died, And a murderous scorn on her lips is born To curse his heart that lied. She smiles and sorrows not: "Ah, death! to know," she moans, "The gluttonous grave of the bitter wave Laughs loud above his bones!" She laughs and hating yearns Out toward the surf's far reach, Like one in sleep, who, wild to weep, Hath only moans for speech. And when the sun had set, And crocus heavens had fed Their wan fire soon to a thorn-thin moon, The flocking stars that led, A breeze set in from sea Most odorous with spice, And streamed among big stars that hung Thin mists as white as ice. And then her eyes waxed large With one last hideous hope, And her throat she bent toward the firmament, Star-scattered scope on scope. The haunted night, that felt The rapture so accursed, Shook, loosening one green star that spun Wild down the dusk and burst. Fair was her face as Sin's; "Ah, wretch!" she wailed, "to know A wormy seat at Death's lean feet May not undo such woe! "The devil-wrangling pit Much dearer than God's deeps Of serious skies, where thought ne'er dies And memory never sleeps! "And dearer far than both, Than Heaven or Hell, the jest, The godless lot to rot and rot, And not be cursed or blessed!" THE SPRING. "_O Fons Bandusiæ!_" Push back the brambles, berry-blue, The hollowed spring is full in view; Deep tangled with luxuriant fern Its rock-imbedded crystal urn. Not for the loneliness that keeps The coigne wherein its silence sleeps; Not for wild butterflies that sway Their pansy pinions all the day Above its mirror; nor the bee, Nor dragon-fly which passing see Themselves reflected in its spar; Not for the one white, liquid star That twinkles in its firmament, Nor moon-shot clouds so slowly sent Athwart it when the kindly night Beads all its grasses with the light, Small jewels of the dimpled dew; Not for the day's reflected blue, Nor the quaint, dainty colored stones That dance within it where it moans; Not for all these I love to sit In silence and to gaze in it. But, know, a nymph with merry eyes Meets mine within its laughing skies; A graceful, naked nymph who plays All the long fragrant summer days With instant sight of bees and birds, And speaks with them in water-words. One for whose nakedness the air Weaves moony mists, and on whose hair, Unfilleted, the night will set That lone star as a coronet. LILLITA. Can I forget how, when you stood 'Mid orchards whence spring bloom had fled, Stars made the orchards seem a-bud, And weighed the sighing boughs o'erhead With shining ghosts of blossoms dead! Or when you bowed, a lily tall, Above your August lilies slim, Transparent pale, that by the wall Like softest moonlight seemed to swim, Brimmed with faint fragrance to the brim. And in the cloud that lingered low-- A silent pallor in the West-- There stirred and beat a golden glow Of some great heart that could not rest, A heart of gold within its breast. Your heart, your life was in the wild, Your joy to hear the whip-poor-will Lament its love, when wafted mild The harvest drifted from the hill: The deep, deep wildwood where had trod The red deer o'er the fallen hush Of Fall's torn leaves, when the low tod Was frosty 'neath each berried bush. At dusk the whip-will still complains Above your lolling lilies, where Their faces white the moonlight stains, The dreamy stream flows far and fair Whisp'ring of rest an easeful air ... O music of the falling rain, At night unto her painless rest Sound sweet and sad, then is she fain To see the wild flowers on her breast Lift moist, pure faces up again To breathe to God their fragrance blest. Thick-pleated beeches long have crossed Old, mighty arms above her tomb Where oft I watch at night her ghost Bow to the wild-flower's full-blown bloom A mist of curls, where Summer lost Her tangled sunbeams and perfume. ARTEMIS. Oft of the hiding Oread wast thou seen At earliest morn, a tall imperial shape, High-buskined, dew-dripped, and on close, chaste curls, Long blackness of thick hair, the tipsy drops Caught from the dipping sprays of under bosks, Kissed of thy cheek and of thy shoulder brushed, Thy rosy cheek as haughty Hera's fair, Thy snow-soft shoulder luminous as light. Oft did the shaggy hills and solitudes Of Arethusa shout and ring and reel, Reverberate and echo merrily With the mad chiding of thy merry hounds, Big mouthed and musical, that on the stag, Or bristling wild-boar furious grew in quest, And thou, as keen, fleet-footed and clean-limbed, Thou, thou, O goddess, with thy quivered crew, Most loveliest maids and fit to wed with gods, Rushed, swinging on the wind free limbs and lithe, Long as thy radiant locks flung free to blow And lighten in the wine-sharp air of morn. Ai me! their throats, their lusty, dimpled throats, That made the hills sing and the wood-ways dance As if to Orphic strains, and gave them life! Ai me! their bosoms' deepness and the soft, Sweet, happy beauty of their delicate limbs, That stormed the forest vacancies with light, Swift daylight of their splendor and made blow, Within the glad sonorous solitudes, Old germs of flowerets a century cold. The woodland Naiad whispered by her rock; The Hamadryad, limpid-eyed and wild, Expectant rustled by her usual oak, And laughed in wonder; and mad Pan himself Reeled piping fiercely down the dingled deeps With rollicking eye that rolled a brutish lust. And did the unwed maiden, musing where Her father's well, beyond the god-graced hills Bubbled and babbled, hear the full, high cry Of the chaste huntress, while her dripping jar Unheeded brimmed, vowed with her chastity, And shorn gold hair to veil her virgin feet. But, ah! not when the saucy daylight swims, Filling the forests with a glamorous green, Let me behold thee, goddess! but, when dim The slow night settles on the haunted wild, And walks in sober sark, and heatful stars Shine out intensely and the echoy waste Far off, far off, in shudders palpitates Unto the Limnad's song unmerciful, Unmerciful and mad and bitter sweet! Then come in all thy godhead, beautiful! Thou beautiful and gentle, as thou cam'st To lorn Endymion, who, in Lemnos once, Lone in the wizard magic of the wild, Wandered a gentle boy, unfriended, sad. It grew far off adown the stirring trees, Thy silent beauty blossoming flowerlike, Between the tree trunks and the lacing limbs, Bright in the leaves that kissed for very joy And drunkenness of glory thus revealed. He saw it all, the naked brow and limbs, The polished silver of thy glossy breast, Alone, uncompanied of handmaidens; Like some full, splendid fruit Hesperian Not e'en for deities; thy sweet far voice Came tinkling on his wistful ear and lisped Like leaves that cling and slip to cling again. And on such perilous beauty that must kill, The poisonous favor of thy godliness, Feasting his every sense through eyes and ears, His soul exalted waxed and amorous,-- Like the high gods who quaff deep golden bowls Of rosy nectar,--with immortal love,-- And what remained, ah, what remained but death! IN NOVEMBER. No windy white of wind-blown clouds is thine, No windy white but low and sodden gray, That holds the melancholy skies and kills The wild song and the wild bird; yet, ai me! Thy melancholy skies and mournful woods, Brown, sighing forests dying that I love! Thy long thick leaves deep, deep about my feet, Slow, weary feet that halt or falter on; Thy long, sweet, reddened leaves that burn and die With silent fever of the sickened wold. I love to hear in all thy windy coigns, Rain-wet and choked with bleached and rotting weeds, The baby-babble of the many leaves, That, fallen on barren ways, like fallen hopes Once held so high on all the Summer's heart Of strong majestic trees, now come to such, Would fainly gossip in hushed undertones,-- Sad weak yet sweet as natures that have known True tears and hot in bleak remorseless days,-- Of all their whilom glory vanished so. A CHARACTER. He lived beyond us and we stood As pygmies to his every mood, Mere pupils at his beck and nod, That spoke the influence of a god. And oft we wondered, when his thought Made our humanity seem naught, If he, like Uther's mystic son, Were not a birth for Avalon. When wand'ring 'neath the sighing trees, His soul waxed genial with the breeze, That, voiceful, from the piney glades Companioned seemed of Oreads; A Dryad life lived in each oak, And with its many leaf-tongues spoke, Glorying the deity whose power Gave it its life in sun and shower. By every violet-hallowed brook, Where every bramble-matted nook Rippled and laughed with water-sounds, He walked as one on sainted grounds, Fearing intrusion on the spell That kept some fountain-spirit's well, Or woodland genius sitting where Brown racy berries kissed his hair. And when the wind far o'er the hill Had fall'n and left the wildwood still As moonlight jets on quiet moss,-- Beneath the pied boughs arched across Long limpid vistas, brimmed with ripe Green-swimming sunbeams, heard the pipe Of some hid follower of Pan And worshiper, half brute half man; Who, hairy-haunched, a savage rhyme Puffed in his reed to rudest time; With swollen jowl and rolling eye Danced boisterous where the silver sky Smiled in the forest's broken roof; The strident branch beneath his hoof Snapped on the sod which, interfused Between black roots, was crushed and bruised. And often when he wandered through Old forests at the fall of dew,-- A lone Endymion who sought A higher beauty yet uncaught,-- Some night, we thought, most surely he Were favored of her deity, And in the holy solitude Her sudden presence, long pursued, Unto his eyes would be confessed; The awful moonlight of her breast Come high with majesty and hold His heart's blood till his heart were cold, Unpulsed, unsinewed, all undone, And snatch his soul to Avalon. A MOOD. Bowed hearts that hold the saddest memories Are the most beautiful; and such make sweet Light happy moods of alien natures which Their sadness contacts, and so sanctifies. And such to me is an old, gabled house, Deserted and neglected and unknown Within the dreamy hollow of its hills, Dark, cedared hills and fruitless orchards sear; With but its host of shrouded memories Haunting its low and desolate rooms and halls, Its roomy hearths and cob-webbed crevices. Here in dim rainy noons I love to sit, And hear the running rain along the roof, The creak and crack of noises that are born Of unseen and mysterious agencies; The dripping footfalls of the wind adown Lone winding stairways massy-banistered; A clapping door and then a sudden hush That brings a pleasant terror stiffening through The tingling veins and staring from the eyes. Then comes the running rain along the roof's Rain-rotten gables and on rain-stained walls Invokes vague images and memories Of all its sometime lords and mistresses, Until the stale material will assume All that's clairvoyant, and the fine-strung ear In quaint far rooms or dusty corridors Hear wrinkled ladies all beruffled trail Long haughty silks "miraculously stiff." A THOUGHT. And I have thought of youth which strains Nearer its God to rise,-- What were ambition and its pains Were life a cowardice! The grander souls that rose above Thought's noblest heights to tread, Found their endeavor in their love, And truth behind the dead. A secret glory in the tomb, A night that dawns in light, An intense presence veiled with gloom, And not an endless night.... Nepenthe of this struggling world, Thou who dost stay mad Care When her fury's scourge above is curled And we see her writhing hair! SONG. I Far over the summer sea, Ere the white-eyed stars wax pale, From the groves where a nightingale Wails a mystical melody, I turn my ghostly sail Away, away, To follow a face I see Far over the summer sea. II Far over the summer sea, Ere the cliff which highest soars From the foam re-echoing shores Reddens all rosily, Where the witch-white water roars, Far on, far on, Thro' the night I follow thee Far over the summer sea. III Far over the summer sea, When the great gold moon low lies In the purple-deepened skies I drift on tearfully Till a spirit form doth rise Low down, low down, 'Twixt the orbèd moon and me Far over the summer sea. IV Far over the summer sea With thy foam-cold limbs wound sweet 'Round hair and throat and feet To slay me utterly; At each mad, hot heart beat A kiss, a kiss, To drain the soul with thee, Deep, deep in the summer sea. FACE TO FACE. Dead! and all the haughty fate Fair on throat and face of wax, White, calm hands crossed still and lax, Cold, impassionate! Dead! and no word whispered low At the dull ear now could wake One responsive chord or make One wan temple glow. Dead! and no hot tear would stir All that woman sweet and fair, Woman soul from feet to hair Which was once of her. God! and thus to die! and I-- I must live though life be but One long, hard, monotonous rut, There to plod and--die! Creeds are well in such a case; But no sermon could have wrought More of faith than you have taught With your pale, dead face. And I see it as you see-- One mistake, so very small! Yet so great it mangled all, Left you this and me! Oft I pondered saying, "Sure She could never live such life!" And the truth stabbed like a knife When I found you pure. Pure, so pure! and me bemoiled, Loathly as loathed vermin, just As weak souls are left of lust-- Loveless, low, and soiled. Nay! I loved you then and love!-- Grand, great eyes, I see them yet, Set like luminous gems of jet In wax lids above. Lips--O poor, dumb, chideless lips! Once as red as life could make, Moist as wan wild roses wake When the wild dew drips. Hair--imperial, full, and warm As a Grace's, where one stone Precious lay ensnared and shone Like a star in storm. Eyes--at parting big with pain; God! I see them and the tear In them--big as eyes of deer Led by lights and slain! Life so true! I falsely cursed-- Lips that, curled with scorn and pride, Hurt me though I said _they lied_, While the true heart burst. Rest! my heart has suffered too: And this life had woe enough For the little dole of love Given to me and you. Can you hear me? can you know What I am and how it came, You, beyond me like a flame, You, before me like the snow! Dead! and all my heart a cup Hollowed for sad, bitter tears, Bitter in the bitter years Slowly brimming up. Sleep! 'tis well! but might have been Better!--yes, God knows it might! Better for me in His sight And my soul more clean. Sleep in very peace! but I With Earth's other fools will stay, Live 'mid laughter, day by day Mocking laugh and--die. You will know me now, I know, But in life had _never_ known How, indeed, I was alone-- But, 'tis better so. And I know you what you were, Faithful and--it were no use, Only to yourself abuse,-- I shall tell you there. There beyond the lightning and The long clouds and utter skies, Moons and suns and stars that rise, Where we'll understand. THE CHANGELING. I There were Faëries two or three, And a high moon white as wool, Or a bloom in Faëry, Where the star-thick blossoms be Star-like beautiful. II There were Faëries two or three, And a wind as fragrant as Spicy wafts from Arcady Rocked the sleeping honey bee In the clover grass. III There were Faëries two or three, Wee white caps and red wee shoon, Buckles at each dainty knee, "We are come to comfort thee, With the silver moon." IV There were Faëries two or three, Buttercups brimmed up with dew, Winning faces sweet to see, Then mine eyes closed heavily: "Faëries, what would you?" V There were Faëries two or three, And my babe was dreaming deep, White as whitest ivory, In its crib of ebony Rocked and crooned on sleep. VI There were Faëries two or three Standing in the mocking moon, And mine eyes closed drowsily, Drowsily and suddenly There my babe was gone. VII Now no Faëries two or three Loitered in the moon alone; Jesu, Marie, comfort me! What is this instead I see-- Ugly skin and bone. VIII There were Faëries two or three Stood with buckles on red shoon, But with evil sorcery My sweet babe to Faëry They did steal right soon. ST. JOHN'S EVE. I Dizzily round On the elf-hills white in the yellow moonlight To a sweet, unholy, ravishing sound Of wizard voices from underground, Their mazy dance the Elle-maids wound On St. John's Eve. II Beautiful white, Like a wreath of mist by the starbeams kissed; And frail, sweet faces bloomed out on the night From floating tresses of glow-worm light, That puffed like foam to the left and the right On St. John's Eve. III Warily there They flashed like a rill which the moonbeams fill, But I saw what a mockery all of them were With their hollow bodies, when the moonlit air Rayed out through their eyes with a sudden glare On St. John's Eve. IV Solemnly sweet, By the river's banks in the rushes' ranks, The Necks their sorrowful songs repeat: A music of winds over dipping wheat, Of moss-dulled cascades seemed to meet On St. John's Eve. V Drowsily swam The fire-flies fleet in eddies of heat; Through the willows a glimmer of gold harps came, And I saw their hair like a misty flame Bunched over white brows, too white to name, On St. John's Eve. VI Beggarly torn, A wizen chap in a red-peaked cap, All gray with the chaff and dust of the corn, And strong with the pungent scent of the barn, The Nis scowled under the flowering thorn On St. John's Eve. VII Merrily call The singing crickets in the twinkling thickets, And the Troll hill rose on pillars tall, Crimson pillars that ranked a hall Where the beak-nosed Trolls were holding a ball On St. John's Eve. VIII Reveling flew From beakers of gold the wassail old; And she reached me a goblet brimmed bright with dew-- But her wily witcheries well I knew, And the philtre over my shoulder threw On St. John's Eve. LALAGE. What were sweet life without her Who maketh all things sweet With smiles that dream about her, With dreams that come and fleet! Soft moods that end in languor; Soft words that end in sighs; Curved frownings as of anger; Cold silence of her eyes. Sweet eyes born but for slaying, Deep violet-dark and lost In dreams of whilom Maying In climes unstung of frost. Wild eyes shot through with fire God's light in godless years, Brimmed wine-dark with desire, A birth for dreams and tears. Dear tears as sweet as laughter, Low laughter sweet as love Unwound in ripples after Sad tears we knew not of. What if the day be lawless, What if the heart be dead, Such tears would make it flawless, Such laughter make it red. Lips that were curled for kisses, For loves and hates and scorns, Brows under gold of tresses, Brows beauteous as the Morn's. Imperial locks and tangled Down to the graceful hips; Hair where one might be strangled Carousing on thy lips. Rose-lovely lips that hover About the honeyed words, That slip wild bees from clover Whose sweets their sweet affords. Though days be robbed of sunlight, White teeth make light thereof; Though nights unknown of onelight, Thine eyes were stars enough. Ah, lily-lovely features, Round temples, throat, and chin, Sweet gods of godless natures, Sweet love of loveless men! Still moods and slumberous fanned on To dreams that rock to sleep, Unmerciful abandon, That haunts or makes one weep. She walks as if with sorrows And all unknown of joy; Eyes fixed on dim to-morrows That all sad feet decoy. Yet she, a peer of pleasures, Tears from Time's taloned hand The hour-glass he treasures, And wastes its sullen sand. Makes of all hours a beaker Brimmed full of lordly wine, Cold gold of Life's mad liquor, And quaffs to me and mine. The love on lips grows fairer, Keen lights in eyes make wars, And throat and breast grow rarer Than the white-throated stars. Fleet smiles come fleet and faster And web the willing soul; Warm breasts of alabaster Have snared it as a whole. What then were hell or heaven, The fear of heaven or hell! Lost in the life thus given We well might bid farewell. To leap against thy bosoms! Live at thy ardent throat! Kiss clinging to its blossoms, Die kissing and not know't! Wound in tumultuous tresses Pulse like a naked hair, Held in long hands for kisses, And killed and never care. Clasped limb and marble member, Long raven hair with gold, To dream, forget, remember, Grow slowly still and cold. Feel earth and hell forever Remote from thee and me, Nor strong enough to sever Through all eternity. Feel godlike power for evil High throned within the heart, Should God and hell's arch devil Cast dice our souls to part: Part eyes hot as a jewel, Part covering deeps of curl, Sweet lips as sweet as cruel, And limbs of living pearl. What if in the hereafter Our love must weep farewell 'Mid the hoarse, strident laughter Of devils deep in hell; We'll know that all infernal, All cactus-growth of time, Slays not that hour eternal That sinned with love to crime. Love, we could live all tearless, Remember and have breath, Of hell and heaven fearless In love more strong than death. When hope shall be forgotten And death be one with both, Flesh, soul, and spirit rotten And wrapped with clay in sloth. Take comfort, love, remember Love chastened with his rod, And member torn from member Would leave him still a god. Though soul from soul be riven, God knows we shall regret! In hell or highest heaven We never can forget! MIRIAM. White clouds and buds and birds and bees, Low wind-notes piped from southern seas, Brought thee a rose-white offering, A flower-like baby with the Spring. She, as her April, gave to thee A soul of winsome vagary; Large, heavenly eyes, and tender, whence Shone the sweet mind's soft influence; Where all the winning woman, that Welled up in tears, high sparkling sat. She, with the dower of her May, Gave thee a nature that could sway Wild men with kindness, and a pride Which all their littleness denied. Limbs wrought of lilies and a face Bright as a rose flower's, and a grace, God-taught, that clings like happiness In each chaste billow of thy dress. She, as her heavy June, brought down Night deeps of hair thy brow to crown; A voice so mild and musical It is as water-notes that fall O'er bars of pearl, and in thy heart Stamped like a jewel, that should start From thy pure face in smiles, and break Like radiance when it laughed or spake, Affection that is born of truth And goodness which make very youth. THE WIND. The ways of the wind are eerie And I love them all, The blithe, the mad, and the dreary, Spring, Winter, and Fall. When it tells to the waiting crocus Its beak to show, And hangs on the wayside locust Bloom-bunches of snow. When it comes like a balmy blessing From the musky wood, The half-grown roses caressing Till their cheeks show blood. When it roars in the Autumn season, And whines with rain Or sleet like a mind without reason, Or a soul in pain. When the wood-ways once so spicy With bud and bloom Are desolate, sear, and icy As the icy tomb. When the wild owl crouched and frowsy In the rotten tree Wails dolorous, cold, and drowsy, His shuddering melody. Then I love to sit in December Where the big hearth sings, And dreaming forget and remember A host of things. And the wind--I hear how it strangles And gasps and sighs On the roof's sharp, shivering angles That front the skies. How it groans and romps and tumbles In attics o'erhead, In the great-throated chimney rumbles, Then all at once falls dead; Till it comes like footsteps slipping Of a child on the stair, Or a quaint old gentleman tripping With heavily powdered hair. And my soul grows anxious hearted For those once dear-- The long-lost loves departed In the wind draw near. And I seem to see their faces, Not one estranged, In their old accustomed places 'Round the wide hearth ranged. And the wind that waits and poises Where the shadows sway Makes their visionary voices Seem calling me far away. And I wake in tears to listen Again to the sobbing wind, Far out on the lands that glisten, Like the voice of one who sinned. MUSIC. [A NOCTURNE.] The soul of love is harmony; as such All melodies, that with wide pinions beat Elastic bars, which mew it in the flesh, Till 'twould away to kiss their throats and cling, Are kindred to the soul, and while they sway, Lords of its action molding all at will. Ah! neither was I I, nor knew the clay, For all my soul lay on full waves of song Reverberating 'twixt the earth and moon. O soft complaints, that haunted all the heart With dreams of love long cherished, love dreams found On sunset mountains gorgeous toward the West: Kisses--soft kisses bartered 'mid pale buds Of bursting Springs; and vows of fondest faith Kept evermore; and eyes whose witchery Might lure old saints down to the lowest hell For one swift glance,--sweet, melancholy eyes Yet full of hope and dimming o'er with tears, Stooping and gloating in a silver mist At Care's thin brow, and growing at his eyes. Voices of expectation rolling on To diapason of a mighty choir, 'Mid ever-swooning throbbings beating low, Wove in hoarse fabric thunders--and O soul! Wafted to caverns lost by hideous seas, One with the tumult 'neath o'ercircling tiers White with strange diamond spars and feathery gems. O holy music, wailing down long aisles To lose thyself 'neath arched welkins dashed With moons of crystal;--dying, dying down To passionate sobs, and then a silence vast, Vast as thy caves, or as the human soul, Oppressing all this being bulked in flesh Until it strained to burst its bounds and soar. Harp-tones! that shaped before the poisèd mind The home of Sleep far on a moonlit isle. White Sleep, who from heaped myriad poppies weighed With baby slumbers, and from violet beds, Culled whiter dreams to fold against her heart In dewy clusters sparkling wet with tears; And on her shadowy pinions soaring high Winged 'neath the vault into oblivion, With all the echoes panting at pale feet To kiss the dreams, and o'er deep, wine-dark waves, Far, far away, lost--and a sound of stars Streaming from burning sockets into night About my soul, about my soul like fire. Oh, then what agony and bitter woe, Regret and noise of desolation vast As when all that one loves is torn away Forever with "farewell forevermore!" Oh, strife and panic and the rush of winds, Moist ashen brows with raven tresses torn That plunged against the bursting bolts of God, That ploughed the tempest curst with deepest night; Ruin and heartache, moans and demon eyes, Fierce, bestial eyes that cursed at very God; Then blinding tears that wept for such and prayed, Tears blistering all the soul in haunting eyes, Eyes such as Death would fear to ponder on! Then dolorous bell-beats, battle as for light, Folds of oblivion, gaspings, silence, death. TO ----. _"Lydia, dic, per omnes Te deos oro!"_ I What are the subtleties Which woo me in her eyes To oaths she deems but lies, I can not tell, I can not tell, Nor will she. They are beyond my thought. For when I gaze I'm nought, My senses all unwrought, It is not well, it is not well, Now Lily! II What is the magic sweet Which makes hot pulses beat, A wayward tongue repeat A name for weeks, a name for weeks Will, nill he? Ai me! the pleasant pain Falls sweetly on the brain Like some slow sunny rain, Whene'er she speaks, whene'er she speaks This Lily. III What is the witchery rare Which snares me in her hair So deeply that I dare, I dare not move, I dare not move,-- Lie stilly? In looks and winning ways The bloom of love she lays Like fire on all my days, And makes me love, and makes me love This Lily. YULE. Behold! it was night; and the wind and the rushing of snow on the wind, And the boom of the sea and the moaning of desolate pines that were thinned. And the halls of fierce Erick of Sogn with the clamor of wassail were filled, With the clash of great beakers of gold and the reek of the ale that was spilled. For the Yule was upon them, the Yule, and they quaffed as from skulls of the slain, And sware out round oaths in hoarse wit, and long quaffing sware laughing again. Unharnessed from each shaggy throat that was hot with mad lust and with drink, The burly wild skins and barbaric tossed rent from their broad golden link. For the Yule was upon them, the Yule, and the "_waes-heils_" were shouted and roared By the Berserks, the eaters of fire, and the Jarls round the ponderous board. And huge on the hearth, that writhed hissing and bellied a bullion of gold, The yule-log, the half of an oak from the mountains, was royally rolled. And its warmth was a glory that glared and smote red through the width of the hall, To burnish wild-boar skins and swords and great war-axes hung on the wall. Till the maidens, who hurried big goblets that bubbled excessive with barm, Blushed rose to the gold of thick curls when the shining steel mirrored each charm. And Erick's one hundred gray skalds, at the nod and the beck of the king, With the stormy rolled music of an hundred wild harps made the castle re-echoing ring. For the Yule, for the Yule was upon them, and battle and rapine were o'er, And Harold, the viking, the red, and his brother lay dead on the shore. For the harrier, Harold the red, and his merciless brother, black Ulf, With their men on the shore of the wintery sea were carrion cold for the wolf. Behold! for the battle was finished, the battle that boomed in the day With the rumble of shields that were shocked and the shatter of spears that did slay; With the hewing of swords that fierce lightened hot smoking with riotous blood, And the crush of the mace that was crashed through the helm and the brain that withstood; And the cursing and shrieking of men at their gods--at their gods whom they cursed, Till the caves of the ocean re-bellowed and storm on their struggling burst. And they fought in the flying and drifting and silence of covering snow, Till the wounded that lay with the dead, with the dead were stiff frozen in woe. And they fought; and the mystical flakes that were clutched of the maniac wind Drave sharp on the eyes of the kings, made the sight of their warriors blind. And they fought; and with leonine wrath were they met till the battle god, Thor, From his thunder-wheeled chariot rolled, making end of destruction and war. And they fell--like twin rocks of the mountain the ruinous whirlwinds have hurled From their world-rooted crags to the ocean below with the strength of the world. And, lo! not in vain their loud vows! on the stern iron altars of War Their flesh, their own flesh, yea, the victim, their blood the libation to Thor.... But a glitter and splendor of arms out of snow and the foam of the seas, And the terrible ghosts of the vikings and the gauntleted Valkyries.... Yea, the halls of fierce Erick of Sogn with the turmoil of wassail are filled, With the steam of the flesh of the boar and the reek of the ale that is spilled. For the Yule and the vict'ry are theirs, and the "_waes-heils_" are shouted and roared By the Berserks, the eaters of fire, and the Jarls 'round the ponderous board. THE TROUBADOUR. He stood where all the rare voluptuous West, Like some mad Maenad wine-stained to the breast, Shot from delirious lips of ruby must Long, fierce, triumphant smiles wherein hot lust Swam like a feverish wine exultant tost High from a golden goblet and so lost. And all the West, and all the rosy West, Bathed his frail beauty, hair and throat and breast; And there he bloomed, a thing of rose and snows, A passion flower of men of snows and rose Beneath the casement of her old red tower Whereat the lady sat, as white a flower As ever blew in Provence, and the lace, Mist-like about her hair, half hid her face And all its moods which his sweet singing raised, Sad moods that censured it, sweet moods that praised. And where the white rose climbing over and over Up to her wide-flung lattice like a lover, And gladiolas and deep fleurs-de-lis Held honey-cups up for the violent bee, Within her garden by the ivied wall, Where many a fountain falling musical Flamed fire-fierce in the eve against it flung, Like some mad nightingale the minstrel sung:-- "The passion, O! of plunging through and through Lascivious curls star-litten as light dew, And jeweled thick, as is the bosomed dusk Dense scintillant with stars! Oh frenzy rare Of twisting curling fingers in thy hair! No touch of balm-beat winds from torrid seas Were half so satin-soft in sorceries! No god-like life so sweet as lost to lie Wrapped strand on strand deep in such hair and die, Ah love, sweet love! "The mounting madness and the rapturous pain With fingers wound in thick, cool curls to strain All the wild sight deep in thy perilous eyes So agate polished, where the thoughts that rise Warm in the heart, like on a witch's glass Must forth in pictures beautiful and pass; No Siren sweetness wailed to lyres of gold, No naked beauty that the Greeks of old God-bosomed thro' the bursting foam did see Were potent, love, to tear mine eyes from thee, Ah love, sweet love! "Far o'er the sea of old time once a witch, The fair �æan, Circe, dwelt, so rich In marvelous magic, cruel as a god, She made or unmade lovers at a nod; Ah, bitter love that made all loves but brute!-- Ah, bitterer thou who mak'st my heart a lute To lie and languish for thee sad and mute, Strung high for utterance of the sweetest lay, Such magic music as Acrasia And all her lovers swooned to utter bliss,-- And then not wake it with a single kiss, Ah! cruel, cruel love!" Knee-deep within the dew-damp grasses there, Against the stars, that now were everywhere Flung thro' the perfumed heav'ns of angel hands, And, linked in tangled labyrinths of bands Of soft rose-hearted flame and glimmer, rolled One vast immensity of mazy gold, He sang, like some hurt creature desolate, Heart-aching for the loss of some wild mate Hounded and speared to death of heartless men In old romantic Arden waste; and then Turned to the one white star,--which like a stone Of precious worth low on the heaven shone,-- A white, sweet, lovely face and passed away From the warm flowers and the fountains' spray. And that fair lady in pale drapery, High in the quaint, red tower, did she sigh To see him, dimming down the purple night, Lone with his instrument die out of sight Far in the rose-pleached, musk-drunk avenues, Far in, far in amid the gleaming dews, And, left alone but with the sighing rush Of the wan fountains and the deep night hush, Weep to the melancholy stars above Half the lorn night for the desired love? Or down the rush-strewn halls, where arras old Billowed with passage of her fold on fold, Even to the ponderous iron-studded gate, That shrieked with rust, steal from her lord and wait Deep in the dingled hyacinth and rose For him who sang so sweetly erst?--who knows? WHY? Why smile high stars the happier after rain? Why is strong love the stronger after pain? Ai me! ai me! thou wotest not nor I! Why sings the wild swan heavenliest when it dies? Why spake the dumb lips sweetest that we prize For maddening memories? O why! O why! Why are dead kisses dearer when they're dead? Why are dead faces lovelier vanished? And why this heart-ache? None can answer why! FROM UNBELIEF TO BELIEF. Why come ye here to sigh that I, Who with crossed wrists so peaceless lie Before ye, am at rest, at rest! For that the pistons of my blood No more in this machinery thud? And on these eyes, that once were blest With magnetism of fire, are prest Thin, damp, pale eyelids for a sheath, Whereon the bony claw of Death Hath set his coins of unseen lead, Stamped with the image of his head? Why come ye here to weep for one, Who is forgotten when he's gone From ye and burthened with this rest Your God hath given him! unsought Of any prayers, whiles yet he wrought,-- And with what sacrifices bought! Low, sweet communion mouth to mouth Of thoughts that dewed eternal drought Of Life's bald barrenness,--a jest, An irony hath grown confessed When he's at rest! when he's at rest! Why come ye, fools!--ye lie! ye lie! Rashly! the grave, for such as I, Hath naught that lies as near this rest As your high Heaven lies near your Hell! I see why now that it is well That men but know the husk-like shell, Which like a fruit the being kept, That swinked and sported, woke and slept; From which that stern essential stept, That ichor-veined inhabitant Who makes me all myself, in all My moods the "_I_" original, That holds one orbit like a star, Distinct, to which a similar There never was, and be there can't. And as it is, it is the best That Death hath my poor body dressed In such fair semblance of a rest, Which soothes the hearts of those distressed; But, God! unto the _dead_ the jest Of this his rest, of this his rest! THE KING. A blown white bubble buoyed zenith-ward, Up from the tremulous East the round moon swung Mist-murky, and the unsocial stars that thronged, Hot with the drought, thick down the empty West, Winked thirstily; no wind to rouse the leaves, That o'er the glaring road lolled palpitant, Withered and whitened of the weary dust From iron hoofs of that gay fellowship Of knights which gat at morn the king disguised; Whose mind was, "in the lists to joust and be An equal mid unequals, man with man:" Who from the towers of Edric passed, wherein Some nights he'd sojourned, till one morn a horn Sang at dim portals, musical with dew, Wild echoes of wild woodlands and the hunt, Clear herald of the staunchest of his knights; And they to the great jousts at Camelot Rode pounding off, a noise of steel and steeds. Thick in the stagnant moat the lilies lay Ghastly and rotting; hoarse with rusty chains The drawbridge hung before the barbed grate; And far above along lone battlements, His armor moon-drenched, one great sentinel Clanked drowsily, and it was late in June, She at her lattice, lawny night-robed, leaned Dreaming of somewhat dear, and happy smiled From glorious eyes; a face like gracious nights, One silent brilliancy of steadfast stars Innumerable and delicate through the dusk: Long, loosened loops and coils of sensuous hair Rolled turbulence down naked neck and throat, That shamed the moonshine with a rival sheen. One stooped above her till his nostrils drank Rich, faint perfumes that blossomed in her hair, And 'round her waist hooped one strong arm and drew Her mightily to him; soft burying deep In crushed fresh linen warm with flesh his arm, Searched all her eyes until his own were drugged Mad with their fire, quick one hungry kiss, Like anger bruised fierce on her breathless lips, Whispered, "And lov'st but one? and he?" "Sweet, sweet my lord, thou wotest well!" and then From love's stern beauty writhen into hate's Gnarled hideousness, he haled her sweet, white face Back, back by its large braids of plenteous hair Till her full bosom's clamorous speechlessness Stiff on the moon burst white, low mocked and laughed, "The King, I wot, adulteress!" and a blade Glanced thin as ice plunged hard, hard in her heart. 
3757	----	The White Bees by Henry van Dyke CONTENTS THE WHITE BEES NEW YEAR'S EVE SONGS FOR AMERICA Sea-Gulls of Manhattan Urbs Coronata America Doors of Daring A Home Song A Noon Song An American in Europe The Ancestral Dwellings Francis Makemie National Monuments IN PRAISE OF POETS Mother Earth Milton: Three Sonnets Wordsworth Keats Shelley Robert Browning Longfellow Thomas Bailey Aldrich Edmund Clarence Stedman LYRICS, DRAMATIC AND PERSONAL Late Spring Nepenthe Hesper Arrival Departure The Black Birds Without Disguise Gratitude Master of Music Stars and the Soul To Julia Marlowe Pan Learns Music "Undine" Love in a Look My April Lady A Lover's Envy The Hermit Thrush Fire-Fly City The Gentle Traveller Sicily, December, 1908 The Window Twilight in the Alps Jeanne D'Arc Hudson's Last Voyage THE WHITE BEES AND OTHER POEMS THE WHITE BEES I LEGEND Long ago Apollo called to Aristaeus, youngest of the shepherds, Saying, "I will make you keeper of my bees." Golden were the hives, and golden was the honey; golden, too, the music, Where the honey-makers hummed among the trees. Happy Aristaeus loitered in the garden, wandered in the orchard, Careless and contented, indolent and free; Lightly took his labour, lightly took his pleasure, till the fated moment When across his pathway came Eurydice. Then her eyes enkindled burning love within him; drove him wild with longing, For the perfect sweetness of her flower-like face; Eagerly he followed, while she fled before him, over mead and mountain, On through field and forest, in a breathless race. But the nymph, in flying, trod upon a serpent; like a dream she vanished; Pluto's chariot bore her down among the dead; Lonely Aristaeus, sadly home returning, found his garden empty, All the hives deserted, all the music fled. Mournfully bewailing,--"ah, my honey-makers, where have you departed?"-- Far and wide he sought them, over sea and shore; Foolish is the tale that says he ever found them, brought them home in triumph,-- Joys that once escape us fly for evermore. Yet I dream that somewhere, clad in downy whiteness, dwell the honey-makers, In aerial gardens that no mortal sees: And at times returning, lo, they flutter round us, gathering mystic harvest,-- So I weave the legend of the long-lost bees. II THE SWARMING OF THE BEES I Who can tell the hiding of the white bees' nest? Who can trace the guiding of their swift home flight? Far would be his riding on a life-long quest: Surely ere it ended would his beard grow white. Never in the coming of the rose-red Spring, Never in the passing of the wine-red Fall, May you hear the humming of the white bee's wing Murmur o'er the meadow, ere the night bells call. Wait till winter hardens in the cold grey sky, Wait till leaves are fallen and the brooks all freeze, Then above the gardens where the dead flowers lie, Swarm the merry millions of the wild white bees. II Out of the high-built airy hive, Deep in the clouds that veil the sun, Look how the first of the swarm arrive; Timidly venturing, one by one, Down through the tranquil air, Wavering here and there, Large, and lazy in flight,-- Caught by a lift of the breeze, Tangled among the naked trees,-- Dropping then, without a sound, Feather-white, feather-light, To their rest on the ground. III Thus the swarming is begun. Count the leaders, every one Perfect as a perfect star Till the slow descent is done. Look beyond them, see how far Down the vistas dim and grey, Multitudes are on the way. Now a sudden brightness Dawns within the sombre day, Over fields of whiteness; And the sky is swiftly alive With the flutter and the flight Of the shimmering bees, that pour From the hidden door of the hive Till you can count no more. IV Now on the branches of hemlock and pine Thickly they settle and cluster and swing, Bending them low; and the trellised vine And the dark elm-boughs are traced with a line Of beauty wherever the white bees cling. Now they are hiding the wrecks of the flowers, Softly, softly, covering all, Over the grave of the summer hours Spreading a silver pall. Now they are building the broad roof ledge, Into a cornice smooth and fair, Moulding the terrace, from edge to edge, Into the sweep of a marble stair. Wonderful workers, swift and dumb, Numberless myriads, still they come, Thronging ever faster, faster, faster! Where is their queen? Who is their master? The gardens are faded, the fields are frore,-- How will they fare in a world so bleak? Where is the hidden honey they seek? What is the sweetness they toil to store In the desolate day, where no blossoms gleam? Forgetfulness and a dream! V But now the fretful wind awakes; I hear him girding at the trees; He strikes the bending boughs, and shakes The quiet clusters of the bees To powdery drift; He tosses them away, He drives them like spray; He makes them veer and shift Around his blustering path. In clouds blindly whirling, In rings madly swirling, Full of crazy wrath, So furious and fast they fly They blur the earth and blot the sky In wild, white mirk. They fill the air with frozen wings And tiny, angry, icy stings; They blind the eyes, and choke the breath, They dance a maddening dance of death Around their work, Sweeping the cover from the hill, Heaping the hollows deeper still, Effacing every line and mark, And swarming, storming in the dark Through the long night; Until, at dawn, the wind lies down, Weary of fight. The last torn cloud, with trailing gown, Passes the open gates of light; And the white bees are lost in flight. VI Look how the landscape glitters wide and still, Bright with a pure surprise! The day begins with joy, and all past ill, Buried in white oblivion, lies Beneath the snowdrifts under crystal skies. New hope, new love, new life, new cheer, Flow in the sunrise beam,-- The gladness of Apollo when he sees, Upon the bosom of the wintry year, The honey-harvest of his wild white bees, Forgetfulness and a dream! III LEGEND Listen, my beloved, while the silver morning, like a tranquil vision, Fills the world around us and our hearts with peace; Quiet is the close of Aristaeus' legend, happy is the ending-- Listen while I tell you how he found release. Many months he wandered far away in sadness, desolately thinking Only of the vanished joys he could not find; Till the great Apollo, pitying his shepherd, loosed him from the burden Of a dark, reluctant, backward-looking mind. Then he saw around him all the changeful beauty of the changing seasons, In the world-wide regions where his journey lay; Birds that sang to cheer him, flowers that bloomed beside him, stars that shone to guide him,-- Traveller's joy was plenty all along the way! Everywhere he journeyed strangers made him welcome, listened while he taught them Secret lore of field and forest he had learned: How to train the vines and make the olives fruit- ful; how to guard the sheepfolds; How to stay the fever when the dog-star burned. Friendliness and blessing followed in his foot- steps; richer were the harvests, Happier the dwellings, wheresoe'er he came; Little children loved him, and he left behind him, in the hour of parting, Memories of kindness and a god-like name. So he travelled onward, desolate no longer, patient in his seeking, Reaping all the wayside comfort of his quest; Till at last in Thracia, high upon Mount Haemus, far from human dwelling, Weary Aristaeus laid him down to rest. Then the honey-makers, clad in downy whiteness, fluttered soft around him, Wrapt him in a dreamful slumber pure and deep. This is life, beloved: first a sheltered garden, then a troubled journey, Joy and pain of seeking,--and at last we sleep! NEW YEAR'S EVE I The other night I had a dream, most clear And comforting, complete In every line, a crystal sphere, And full of intimate and secret cheer. Therefore I will repeat That vision, dearest heart, to you, As of a thing not feigned, but very true, Yes, true as ever in my life befell; And you, perhaps, can tell Whether my dream was really sad or sweet. II The shadows flecked the elm-embowered street I knew so well, long, long ago; And on the pillared porch where Marguerite Had sat with me, the moonlight lay like snow. But she, my comrade and my friend of youth, Most gaily wise, Most innocently loved,-- She of the blue-grey eyes That ever smiled and ever spoke the truth,-- From that familiar dwelling, where she moved Like mirth incarnate in the years before, Had gone into the hidden house of Death. I thought the garden wore White mourning for her blessed innocence, And the syringa's breath Came from the corner by the fence, Where she had made her rustic seat, With fragrance passionate, intense, As if it breathed a sigh for Marguerite. My heart was heavy with a sense Of something good forever gone. I sought Vainly for some consoling thought, Some comfortable word that I could say To the sad father, whom I visited again For the first time since she had gone away. The bell rang shrill and lonely,--then The door was opened, and I sent my name To him,--but ah! 't was Marguerite who came! There in the dear old dusky room she stood Beneath the lamp, just as she used to stand, In tender mocking mood. "You did not ask for me," she said, "And so I will not let you take my hand; "But I must hear what secret talk you planned "With father. Come, my friend, be good, "And tell me your affairs of state: "Why you have stayed away and made me wait "So long. Sit down beside me here,-- "And, do you know, it seemed a year "Since we have talked together,--why so late?" Amazed, incredulous, confused with joy I hardly dared to show, And stammering like a boy, I took the place she showed me at her side; And then the talk flowed on with brimming tide Through the still night, While she with influence light Controlled it, as the moon the flood. She knew where I had been, what I had done, What work was planned, and what begun; My troubles, failures, fears she understood, And touched them with a heart so kind, That every care was melted from my mind, And every hope grew bright, And life seemed moving on to happy ends. (Ah, what self-beggared fool was he That said a woman cannot be The very best of friends?) Then there were memories of old times, Recalled with many a gentle jest; And at the last she brought the book of rhymes We made together, trying to translate The Songs of Heine (hers were always best). "Now come," she said, "To-night we will collaborate "Again; I'll put you to the test. "Here's one I never found the way to do,-- "The simplest are the hardest ones, you know,-- "I give this song to you." And then she read: Mein kind, wir waren Kinder, Zwei Kinder, jung und froh. But all the while a silent question stirred Within me, though I dared not speak the word: "Is it herself, and is she truly here, "And was I dreaming when I heard "That she was dead last year? "Or was it true, and is she but a shade "Who brings a fleeting joy to eye and ear, "Cold though so kind, and will she gently fade "When her sweet ghostly part is played "And the light-curtain falls at dawn of day?" But while my heart was troubled by this fear So deeply that I could not speak it out, Lest all my happiness should disappear, I thought me of a cunning way To hide the question and dissolve the doubt. "Will you not give me now your hand, "Dear Marguerite," I asked, "to touch and hold, "That by this token I may understand "You are the same true friend you were of old?" She answered with a smile so bright and calm It seemed as if I saw new stars arise In the deep heaven of her eyes; And smiling so, she laid her palm In mine. Dear God, it was not cold But warm with vital heat! "You live!" I cried, "you live, dear Marguerite!" Then I awoke; but strangely comforted, Although I knew again that she was dead. III Yes, there's the dream! And was it sweet or sad? Dear mistress of my waking and my sleep, Present reward of all my heart's desire, Watching with me beside the winter fire, Interpret now this vision that I had. But while you read the meaning, let me keep The touch of you: for the Old Year with storm Is passing through the midnight, and doth shake The corners of the house,--and oh! my heart would break Unless both dreaming and awake My hand could feel your hand was warm, warm, warm! SONGS FOR AMERICA SEA-GULLS OF Manhattan Children of the elemental mother, Born upon some lonely island shore Where the wrinkled ripples run and whisper, Where the crested billows plunge and roar; Long-winged, tireless roamers and adventurers, Fearless breasters of the wind and sea, In the far-off solitary places I have seen you floating wild and free! Here the high-built cities rise around you; Here the cliffs that tower east and west, Honeycombed with human habitations, Have no hiding for the sea-bird's nest: Here the river flows begrimed and troubled; Here the hurrying, panting vessels fume, Restless, up and down the watery highway, While a thousand chimneys vomit gloom. Toil and tumult, conflict and confusion, Clank and clamor of the vast machine Human hands have built for human bondage-- Yet amid it all you float serene; Circling, soaring, sailing, swooping lightly Down to glean your harvest from the wave; In your heritage of air and water, You have kept the freedom Nature gave. Even so the wild-woods of Manhattan Saw your wheeling flocks of white and grey; Even so you fluttered, followed, floated, Round the Half-Moon creeping up the bay; Even so your voices creaked and chattered, Laughing shrilly o'er the tidal rips, While your black and beady eyes were glistening Round the sullen British prison-ships. Children of the elemental mother, Fearless floaters 'mid the double blue, From the crowded boats that cross the ferries Many a longing heart goes out to you. Though the cities climb and close around us, Something tells us that our souls are free, While the sea-gulls fly above the harbor, While the river flows to meet the sea! URBS CORONATA (Song for the City College of New York) O youngest of the giant brood Of cities far-renowned; In wealth and power thou hast passed Thy rivals at a bound; And now thou art a queen, New York; And how wilt thou be crowned? "Weave me no palace-wreath of pride," The royal city said; "Nor forge an iron fortress-wall To frown upon my head; But let me wear a diadem Of Wisdom's towers instead." And so upon her island height She worked her will forsooth, She set upon her rocky brow A citadel of Truth, A house of Light, a home of Thought, A shrine of noble Youth. Stand here, ye City College towers, And look both up and down; Remember all who wrought for you Within the toiling town; Remember all they thought for you, And all the hopes they brought for you, And be the City's Crown. AMERICA I Love thine inland seas, Thy groves of giant trees, Thy rolling plains; Thy rivers' mighty sweep, Thy mystic canyons deep, Thy mountains wild and steep, All thy domains; Thy silver Eastern strands, Thy Golden Gate that stands Wide to the West; Thy flowery Southland fair, Thy sweet and crystal air,-- O land beyond compare, Thee I love best! Additional verses for the National Hymn, March, 1906. DOORS OF DARING The mountains that enfold the vale With walls of granite, steep and high, Invite the fearless foot to scale Their stairway toward the sky. The restless, deep, dividing sea That flows and foams from shore to shore, Calls to its sunburned chivalry, "Push out, set sail, explore!" And all the bars at which we fret, That seem to prison and control, Are but the doors of daring, set Ajar before the soul. Say not, "Too poor," but freely give; Sigh not, "Too weak," but boldly try. You never can begin to live Until you dare to die. A HOME SONG I Read within a poet's book A word that starred the page: "Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage!" Yes, that is true; and something more You'll find, where'er you roam, That marble floors and gilded walls Can never make a home. But every house where Love abides, And Friendship is a guest, Is surely home, and home-sweet-home: For there the heart can rest. A NOON SONG There are songs for the morning and songs for the night, For sunrise and sunset, the stars and the moon; But who will give praise to the fulness of light, And sing us a song of the glory of noon? Oh, the high noon, and the clear noon, The noon with golden crest; When the sky burns, and the sun turns With his face to the way of the west! How swiftly he rose in the dawn of his strength; How slowly he crept as the morning wore by; Ah, steep was the climbing that led him at length To the height of his throne in the blue summer sky. Oh, the long toil, and the slow toil, The toil that may not rest, Till the sun looks down from his journey's crown, To the wonderful way of the west! AN AMERICAN IN EUROPE 'Tis fine to see the Old World, and travel up and down Among the famous palaces and cities of renown, To admire the crumbly castles and the statues of the kings,-- But now I think I've had enough of antiquated things. So it's home again, and home again, America for me I My heart is turning home again, and there I long to be, In the land of youth and freedom beyond the ocean bars, Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars. Oh, London is a man's town, there's power in the air; And Paris is a woman's town, with flowers in her hair; And it's sweet to dream in Venice, and it's great to study Rome; But when it comes to living there is no place like home. I like the German fir-woods, in green battalions drilled; I like the gardens of Versailles with flashing fountains filled; But, oh, to take your hand, my dear, and ramble for a day In the friendly western woodland where Nature has her way! I know that Europe's wonderful, yet something seems to lack: The Past is too much with her, and the people looking back. But the glory of the Present is to make the Future free,-- We love our land for what she is and what she is to be. Oh, it's home again, and home again, America for me I I want a ship that's westward bound to plough the rotting sea. To the blessed Land of Room Enough beyond the ocean bars, Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars. THE ANCESTRAL DWELLINGS Dear to my heart are the ancestral dwellings of America, Dearer than if they were haunted by ghosts of royal splendour; These are the homes that were built by the brave beginners of a nation, They are simple enough to be great, and full of a friendly dignity. I love the old white farmhouses nestled in New England valleys, Ample and long and low, with elm-trees feather- ing over them: Borders of box in the yard, and lilacs, and old- fashioned flowers, A fan-light above the door, and little square panes in the windows, The wood-shed piled with maple and birch and hickory ready for winter, The gambrel-roof with its garret crowded with household relics,-- All the tokens of prudent thrift and the spirit of self-reliance. I love the look of the shingled houses that front the ocean; Their backs are bowed, and their lichened sides are weather-beaten; Soft in their colour as grey pearls, they are full of patience and courage. They seem to grow out of the rocks, there is something indomitable about them: Pacing the briny wind in a lonely land they stand undaunted, While the thin blue line of smoke from the square-built chimney rises, Telling of shelter for man, with room for a hearth and a cradle. I love the stately southern mansions with their tall white columns, They look through avenues of trees, over fields where the cotton is growing; I can see the flutter of white frocks along their shady porches, Music and laughter float from the windows, the yards are full of hounds and horses. They have all ridden away, yet the houses have not forgotten, They are proud of their name and place, and their doors are always open, For the thing they remember best is the pride of their ancient hospitality. In the towns I love the discreet and tranquil Quaker dwellings, With their demure brick faces and immaculate white-stone doorsteps; And the gabled houses of the Dutch, with their high stoops and iron railings, (I can see their little brass knobs shining in the morning sunlight); And the solid houses of the descendants of the Puritans, Fronting the street with their narrow doors and dormer-windows; And the triple-galleried, many-pillared mansions of Charleston, Standing sideways in their gardens full of roses and magnolias. Yes, they are all dear to my heart, and in my eyes they are beautiful; For under their roofs were nourished the thoughts that have made the nation; The glory and strength of America came from her ancestral dwellings. FRANCIS MAKEMIE (Presbyter of Christ in America, 1683-1708) To thee, plain hero of a rugged race, We bring the meed of praise too long delayed! Thy fearless word and faithful work have made For God's Republic firmer path and place In this New World: thou hast proclaimed the grace And power of Christ in many a forest glade, Teaching the truth that leaves men unafraid Of frowning tyranny or death's dark face. Oh, who can tell how much we owe to thee, Makemie, and to labour such as thine, For all that makes America the shrine Of faith untrammeled and of conscience free? Stand here, grey stone, and consecrate the sod Where rests this brave Scotch-Irish man of God! NATIONAL MONUMENTS Count not the cost of honour to the dead! The tribute that a mighty nation pays To those who loved her well in former days Means more than gratitude for glories fled; For every noble man that she hath bred, Lives in the bronze and marble that we raise, Immortalized by art's immortal praise, To lead our sons as he our fathers led. These monuments of manhood strong and high Do more than forts or battle-ships to keep Our dear-bought liberty. They fortify The heart of youth with valour wise and deep; They build eternal bulwarks, and command Eternal strength to guard our native land. IN PRAISE OF POETS MOTHER EARTH Mother of all the high-strung poets and singers departed, Mother of all the grass that weaves over their graves the glory of the field, Mother of all the manifold forms of life, deep- bosomed, patient, impassive, Silent brooder and nurse of lyrical joys and sor- rows! Out of thee, yea, surely out of the fertile depth below thy breast, Issued in some Strange way, thou lying motion- less, voiceless, All these songs of nature, rhythmical, passionate, yearning, Coming in music from earth, but not unto earth returning. Dust are the blood-red hearts that beat in time to these measures, Thou hast taken them back to thyself, secretly, irresistibly Drawing the crimson currents of life down, down, down Deep into thy bosom again, as a river is lost in the sand. But the souls of the singers have entered into the songs that revealed them,-- Passionate songs, immortal songs of joy and grief and love and longing: Floating from heart to heart of thy children, they echo above thee: Do they not utter thy heart, the voices of those that love thee? Long hadst thou lain like a queen transformed by some old enchantment Into an alien shape, mysterious, beautiful, speech- less, Knowing not who thou wert, till the touch of thy Lord and Lover Working within thee awakened the man-child to breathe thy secret. All of thy flowers and birds and forests and flow- ing waters Are but enchanted forms to embody the life of the spirit; Thou thyself, earth-mother, in mountain and meadow and ocean, Holdest the poem of God, eternal thought and emotion. MILTON I Lover of beauty, walking on the height Of pure philosophy and tranquil song; Born to behold the visions that belong To those who dwell in melody and light; Milton, thou spirit delicate and bright! What drew thee down to join the Roundhead throng Of iron-sided warriors, rude and strong, Fighting for freedom in a world half night? Lover of Liberty at heart wast thou, Above all beauty bright, all music clear: To thee she bared her bosom and her brow, Breathing her virgin promise in thine ear, And bound thee to her with a double vow,-- Exquisite Puritan, grave Cavalier! II The cause, the cause for which thy soul resigned Her singing robes to battle on the plain, Was won, O poet, and was lost again; And lost the labour of thy lonely mind On weary tasks of prose. What wilt thou find To comfort thee for all the toil and pain? What solace, now thy sacrifice is vain And thou art left forsaken, poor, and blind? Like organ-music comes the deep reply: "The cause of truth looks lost, but shall be won. For God hath given to mine inward eye Vision of England soaring to the sun. And granted me great peace before I die, In thoughts of lowly duty bravely done." III O bend again above thine organ-board, Thou blind old poet longing for repose! Thy Master claims thy service not with those Who only stand and wait for his reward. He pours the heavenly gift of song restored Into thy breast, and bids thee nobly close A noble life, with poetry that flows In mighty music of the major chord. Where hast thou learned this deep, majestic strain, Surpassing all thy youthful lyric grace, To sing of Paradise? Ah, not in vain The griefs that won at Dante's side thy place, And made thee, Milton, by thy years of pain, The loftiest poet of the Saxon race! WORDSWORTH Wordsworth, thy music like a river rolls Among the mountains, and thy song is fed By living springs far up the watershed; No whirling flood nor parching drought controls The crystal current; even on the shoals It murmurs clear and sweet; and when its bed Darkens below mysterious cliffs of dread, Thy voice of peace grows deeper in our souls. But thou in youth hast known the breaking stress Of passion, and hast trod despair's dry ground Beneath black thoughts that wither and de- stroy. Ah, wanderer, led by human tenderness Home to the heart of Nature, thou hast found The hidden Fountain of Recovered Joy. KEATS The melancholy gift Aurora gained From Jove, that her sad lover should not see The face of death, no goddess asked for thee, My Keats! But when the crimson blood-drop stained Thy pillow, thou didst read the fate ordained,-- Brief life, wild love, a flight of poesy! And then,--a shadow fell on Italy: Thy star went down before its brightness waned. Yet thou hast won the gift Tithonus missed: Never to feel the pain of growing old, Nor lose the blissful sight of beauty's truth, But with the ardent lips that music kissed To breathe thy song, and, ere thy heart grew cold, Become the Poet of Immortal Youth. SHELLEY Knight-errant of the Never-ending Quest, And Minstrel of the Unfulfilled Desire; For ever tuning thy frail earthly lyre To some unearthly music, and possessed With painful passionate longing to invest The golden dream of Love's immortal fire In mortal robes of beautiful attire, And fold perfection to thy throbbing breast! What wonder, Shelley, if the restless wave Should claim thee and the leaping flame con- sume Thy drifted form on Viareggio's beach? Fate to thy body gave a fitting grave, And bade thy soul ride on with fiery plume, Thy wild song ring in ocean's yearning speech! ROBERT BROWNING How blind the toil that burrows like the mole, In winding graveyard pathways under- ground, For Browning's lineage! What if men have found Poor footmen or rich merchants on the roll Of his forbears? Did they beget his soul? Nay, for he came of ancestry renowned Through all the world,--the poets laurel- crowned With wreaths from which the autumn takes no toll. The blazons on his coat-of-arms are these: The flaming sign of Shelley's heart on fire, The golden globe of Shakespeare's human stage, The staff and scrip of Chaucer's pilgrimage, The rose of Dante's deep, divine desire, The tragic mask of wise Euripides. LONGFELLOW In a great land, a new land, a land full of labour and riches and confusion, Where there were many running to and fro, and shouting, and striving together, In the midst of the hurry and the troubled noise, I heard the voice of one singing. "What are you doing there, O man, singing quietly amid all this tumult? This is the time for new inventions, mighty shoutings, and blowings of the trumpet." But he answered, "I am only shepherding my sheep with music." So he went along his chosen way, keeping his little flock around him; And he paused to listen, now and then, beside the antique fountains, Where the faces of forgotten gods were refreshed with musically falling waters; Or he sat for a while at the blacksmith's door, and heard the cling-clang of the anvils; Or he rested beneath old steeples full of bells, that showered their chimes upon him; Or he walked along the border of the sea, drink- ing in the long roar of the billows; Or he sunned himself in the pine-scented ship- yard, amid the tattoo of the mallets; Or he leaned on the rail of the bridge, letting his thoughts flow with the whispering river; He hearkened also to ancient tales, and made them young again with his singing. Then a flaming arrow of death fell on his flock, and pierced the heart of his dearest! Silent the music now, as the shepherd entered the mystical temple of sorrow: Long he tarried in darkness there: but when he came out he was singing. And I saw the faces of men and women and children silently turning toward him; The youth setting out on the journey of life, and the old man waiting beside the last mile-stone; The toiler sweating beneath his load; and the happy mother rocking her cradle; The lonely sailor on far-off seas; and the grey- minded scholar in his book-room; The mill-hand bound to a clacking machine; and the hunter in the forest; And the solitary soul hiding friendless in the wilderness of the city; Many human faces, full of care and longing, were drawn irresistibly toward him, By the charm of something known to every heart, yet very strange and lovely, And at the sound of that singing wonderfully all their faces were lightened. "Why do you listen, O you people, to this old and world-worn music? This is not for you, in the splendour of a new age, in the democratic triumph! Listen to the clashing cymbals, the big drums, the brazen trumpets of your poets." But the people made no answer, following in their hearts the simpler music: For it seemed to them, noise-weary, nothing could be better worth the hearing Than the melodies which brought sweet order into life's confusion. So the shepherd sang his way along, until he came unto a mountain: And I know not surely whether it was called Parnassus, But he climbed it out of sight, and still I heard the voice of one singing. THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH I BIRTHDAY VERSES Dear Aldrich, now November's mellow days Have brought another Festa round to you, You can't refuse a loving-cup of praise From friends the fleeting years have bound to you. Here come your Marjorie Daw, your dear Bad Boy, Prudence, and Judith the Bethulian, And many more, to wish you birthday joy, And sunny hours, and sky caerulean! Your children all, they hurry to your den, With wreaths of honour they have won for you, To merry-make your threescore years and ten You, old? Why, life has just begun for you! There's many a reader whom your silver songs And crystal stories cheer in loneliness. What though the newer writers come in throngs? You're sure to keep your charm of only-ness. You do your work with careful, loving touch,-- An artist to the very core of you,-- you know the magic spell of "not-too-much": We read,--and wish that there was more of you. And more there is: for while we love your books Because their subtle skill is part of you; We love you better, for our friendship looks Behind them to the human heart of you. November 24,1906. II MEMORIAL SONNET This is the house where little Aldrich read The early pages of Life's wonder-book: With boyish pleasure, in this ingle-nook He watched the drift-wood fire of Fancy spread Bright colours on the pictures, blue and red: Boy-like he skipped the longer words, and took His happy way, with searching, dreamful look Among the deeper things more simply said. Then, came his turn to write: and still the flame Of Fancy played through all the tales he told, And still he won the laurelled poet's fame With simple words wrought into rhymes of gold. Look, here's the face to which this house is frame,-- A man too wise to let his heart grow old! (Dedication of the Aldrich Memorial at Portsmouth, June 11, 1908.) EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN Oh, quick to feel the lightest touch Of beauty or of truth, Rich in the thoughtfulness of age, The hopefulness of youth, The courage of the gentle heart, The wisdom of the pure, The strength of finely tempered souls To labour and endure! The blue of springtime in your eyes Was never quenched by pain; And winter brought your head the crown Of snow without a stain. The poet's mind, the prince's heart, You kept until the end, Nor ever faltered in your work, Nor ever failed a friend. You followed, through the quest of life, The light that shines above The tumult and the toil of men, And shows us what to love. Right loyal to the best you knew, Reality or dream, You ran the race, you fought the fight, A follower of the Gleam. We lay upon your well-earned grave The wreath of asphodel, We speak above your peaceful face The tender word Farewell! For well you fare, in God's good care, Somewhere within the blue, And know, to-day, your dearest dreams Are true,--and true,--and true! (Read at the funeral of Mr. Stedman, January 21, 1908.) LYRICS DRAMATIC AND PERSONAL LATE SPRING I Ah, who will tell me, in these leaden days, Why the sweet Spring delays, And where she hides,--the dear desire Of every heart that longs For bloom, and fragrance, and the ruby fire Of maple-buds along the misty hills, And that immortal call which fills The waiting wood with songs? The snow-drops came so long ago, It seemed that Spring was near! But then returned the snow With biting winds, and all the earth grew sere, And sullen clouds drooped low To veil the sadness of a hope deferred: Then rain, rain, rain, incessant rain Beat on the window-pane, Through which I watched the solitary bird That braved the tempest, buffeted and tossed, With rumpled feathers, down the wind again. Oh, were the seeds all lost When winter laid the wild flowers in their tomb? I searched their haunts in vain For blue hepaticas, and trilliums white, And trailing arbutus, the Spring's delight, Starring the withered leaves with rosy bloom. The woods were bare: and every night the frost To all my longings spoke a silent nay, And told me Spring was far and far away. Even the robins were too cold to sing, Except a broken and discouraged note,-- Only the tuneful sparrow, on whose throat Music has put her triple finger-print, Lifted his head and sang my heart a hint,-- "Wait, wait, wait! oh, wait a while for Spring!" II But now, Carina, what divine amends For all delay! What sweetness treasured up, What wine of joy that blends A hundred flavours in a single cup, Is poured into this perfect day! For look, sweet heart, here are the early flowers, That lingered on their way, Thronging in haste to kiss the feet of May, And mingled with the bloom of later hours,-- Anemonies and cinque-foils, violets blue And white, and iris richly gleaming through The grasses of the meadow, and a blaze Of butter-cups and daisies in the field, Filling the air with praise, As if a silver chime of bells had pealed! The frozen songs within the breast Of silent birds that hid in leafless woods, Melt into rippling floods Of gladness unrepressed. Now oriole and blue-bird, thrush and lark, Warbler and wren and vireo, Confuse their music; for the living spark Of Love has touched the fuel of desire, And every heart leaps up in singing fire. It seems as if the land Were breathing deep beneath the sun's caress, Trembling with tenderness, While all the woods expand, In shimmering clouds of rose and gold and green, To veil the joys too sacred to be seen. III Come, put your hand in mine, True love, long sought and found at last, And lead me deep into the Spring divine That makes amends for all the wintry past. For all the flowers and songs I feared to miss Arrive with you; And in the lingering pressure of your kiss My dreams come true; And in the promise of your generous eyes I read the mystic sign Of joy more perfect made Because so long delayed, And bliss enhanced by rapture of surprise. Ah, think not early love alone is strong; He loveth best whose heart has learned to wait Dear messenger of Spring that tarried long, You're doubly dear because you come so late. NEPENTHE Yes it was like you to forget, And cancel in the welcome of your smile My deep arrears of debt, And with the putting forth of both your hands To sweep away the bars my folly set Between us--bitter thoughts, and harsh de- mands, And reckless deeds that seemed untrue To love, when all the while My heart was aching through and through For you, sweet heart, and only you. Yet, as I turned to come to you again, I thought there must be many a mile Of sorrowful reproach to cross, And many an hour of mutual pain To bear, until I could make plain That all my pride was but the fear of loss, And all my doubt the shadow of despair To win a heart so innocent and fair; And even that which looked most ill Was but the fever-fret and effort vain To dull the thirst which you alone could still. But as I turned the desert miles were crossed, And when I came the weary hours were sped! For there you stood beside the open door, Glad, gracious, smiling as before, And with bright eyes and tender hands outspread Restored me to the Eden I had lost. Never a word of cold reproof, No sharp reproach, no glances that accuse The culprit whom they hold aloof,-- Ah, 't is not thus that other women use The power they have won! For there is none like you, beloved,--none Secure enough to do what you have done. Where did you learn this heavenly art,-- You sweetest and most wise of all that live,-- With silent welcome to impart Assurance of the royal heart That never questions where it would forgive? None but a queen could pardon me like this! My sovereign lady, let me lay Within each rosy palm a loyal kiss Of penitence, then close the fingers up, Thus--thus! Now give the cup Of full nepenthe in your crimson mouth, And come--the garden blooms with bliss, The wind is in the south, The rose of love with dew is wet-- Dear, it was like you to forget! HESPER Her eyes are like the evening air, Her voice is like a rose, Her lips are like a lovely song, That ripples as it flows, And she herself is sweeter than The sweetest thing she knows. A slender, haunting, twilight form Of wonder and surprise, She seemed a fairy or a child, Till, deep within her eyes, I saw the homeward-leading star Of womanhood arise. ARRIVAL Across a thousand miles of sea, a hundred leagues of land, Along a path I had not traced and could not understand, I travelled fast and far for this,--to take thee by the hand. A pilgrim knowing not the shrine where he would bend his knee, A mariner without a dream of what his port would be, So fared I with a seeking heart until I came to thee. O cooler than a grove of palm in some heat-weary place, O fairer than an isle of calm after the wild sea race, The quiet room adorned with flowers where first I saw thy face! Then furl the sail, let fall the oar, forget the paths of foam! The Power that made me wander far at last has brought me home To thee, dear haven of my heart, and I no more will roam. DEPARTURE Oh, why are you shining so bright, big Sun, And why is the garden so gay? Do you know that my days of delight are done, Do you know I am going away? If you covered your face with a cloud, I'd dream You were sorry for me in my pain, And the heads of the flowers all bowed would seem To be weeping with me in the rain. But why is your head so low, sweet heart, And why are your eyes overcast? Are they clouded because you know we must part, Do you think this embrace is our last? Then kiss me again, and again, and again, Look up as you bid me good-bye! For your face is too dear for the stain of a tear, And your smile is the sun in my sky. THE BLACK BIRDS I Once, only once, I saw it clear,-- That Eden every human heart has dreamed A hundred times, but always far away! Ah, well do I remember how it seemed, Through the still atmosphere Of that enchanted day, To lie wide open to my weary feet: A little land of love and joy and rest, With meadows of soft green, Rosy with cyclamen, and sweet With delicate breath of violets unseen,-- And, tranquil 'mid the bloom As if it waited for a coming guest, A little house of peace and joy and love Was nested like a snow-white dove From the rough mountain where I stood, Homesick for happiness, Only a narrow valley and a darkling wood To cross, and then the long distress Of solitude would be forever past,-- I should be home at last. But not too soon! oh, let me linger here And feed my eyes, hungry with sorrow, On all this loveliness, so near, And mine to-morrow! Then, from the wood, across the silvery blue, A dark bird flew, Silent, with sable wings. Close in his wake another came,-- Fragments of midnight floating through The sunset flame,-- Another and another, weaving rings Of blackness on the primrose sky,-- Another, and another, look, a score, A hundred, yes, a thousand rising heavily From that accursed, dumb, and ancient wood,-- They boiled into the lucid air Like smoke from some deep caldron of despair! And more, and more, and ever more, The numberless, ill-omened brood, Flapping their ragged plumes, Possessed the landscape and the evening light With menaces and glooms. Oh, dark, dark, dark they hovered o'er the place Where once I saw the little house so white Amid the flowers, covering every trace Of beauty from my troubled sight,-- And suddenly it was night! II At break of day I crossed the wooded vale; And while the morning made A trembling light among the tree-tops pale, I saw the sable birds on every limb, Clinging together closely in the shade, And croaking placidly their surly hymn. But, oh, the little land of peace and love That those night-loving wings had poised above,-- Where was it gone? Lost, lost forevermore! Only a cottage, dull and gray, In the cold light of dawn, With iron bars across the door: Only a garden where the withering heads Of flowers, presaging decay, Hung over barren beds: Only a desolate field that lay Untilled beneath the desolate day,-- Where Eden seemed to bloom I found but these! So, wondering, I passed along my way, With anger in my heart, too deep for words, Against that grove of evil-sheltering trees, And the black magic of the croaking birds. WITHOUT DISGUISE If I have erred in showing all my heart, And lost your favour by a lack of pride; If standing like a beggar at your side With naked feet, I have forgot the art Of those who bargain well in passion's mart, And win the thing they want by what they hide; Be mine the fault as mine the hope denied, Be mine the lover's and the loser's part. The sin, if sin it was, I do repent, And take the penance on myself alone; Yet after I have borne the punishment, I shall not fear to stand before the throne Of Love with open heart, and make this plea: "At least I have not lied to her nor Thee!" GRATITUDE Do you give thanks for this?--or that?" No, God be thanked I am not grateful In that cold, calculating way, with blessing ranked As one, two, three, and four,--that would be hateful. I only know that every day brings good above My poor deserving; I only feel that, in the road of Life, true Love Is leading me along and never swerving. Whatever gifts and mercies in my lot may fall, I would not measure As worth a certain price in praise, or great or small; But take and use them all with simple pleasure. For when we gladly eat our daily bread, we bless The Hand that feeds us; And when we tread the road of Life in cheer- fulness, Our very heart-beats praise the Love that leads us. MASTER OF MUSIC (In memory of Theodore Thomas, 1905) Glory of architect, glory of painter, and sculp- tor, and bard, Living forever in temple and picture and statue and song,-- Look how the world with the lights that they lit is illumined and starred, Brief was the flame of their life, but the lamps of their art burn long! Where is the Master of Music, and how has he vanished away? Where is the work that he wrought with his wonderful art in the air? Gone,--it is gone like the glow on the cloud at the close of the day! The Master has finished his work, and the glory of music is--where? Once, at the wave of his wand, all the billows of musical sound Followed his will, as the sea was ruled by the prophet of old: Now that his hand is relaxed, and his rod has dropped to the ground, Silent and dark are the shores where the mar- vellous harmonies rolled! Nay, but not silent the hearts that were filled by that life-giving sea; Deeper and purer forever the tides of their being will roll, Grateful and joyful, O Master, because they have listened to thee,-- The glory of music endures in the depths of the human soul. STARS AND THE SOUL (To Charles A. Young, Astronomer) "Two things," the wise man said, "fill me with awe: The starry heavens and the moral law." Nay, add another wonder to thy roll,-- The living marvel of the human soul! Born in the dust and cradled in the dark, It feels the fire of an immortal spark, And learns to read, with patient, searching eyes, The splendid secret of the unconscious skies. For God thought Light before He spoke the word; The darkness understood not, though it heard: But man looks up to where the planets swim, And thinks God's thoughts of glory after Him. What knows the star that guides the sailor's way, Or lights the lover's bower with liquid ray, Of toil and passion, danger and distress, Brave hope, true love, and utter faithfulness? But human hearts that suffer good and ill, And hold to virtue with a loyal will, Adorn the law that rules our mortal strife With star-surpassing victories of life. So take our thanks, dear reader of the skies, Devout astronomer, most humbly wise, For lessons brighter than the stars can give, And inward light that helps us all to live. The world has brought the laurel-leaves to crown The star-discoverer's name with high, renown; Accept the flower of love we lay with these For influence sweeter than the Pleiades! TO JULIA MARLOWE (Reading Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn) Long had I loved this "Attic shape," the brede Of marble maidens round this urn divine: But when your golden voice began to read, The empty urn was filled with Chian wine. PAN LEARNS MUSIC Limber-limbed, lazy god, stretched on the rock, Where is sweet Echo, and where is your flock? What are you making here? "Listen," said Pan,-- "Out of a river-reed music for man!" "UNDINE" 'Twas far away and long ago, When I was but a dreaming boy, This fairy tale of love and woe Entranced my heart with tearful joy; And while with white Undine I wept, Your spirit,--ah, how strange it seems, Was cradled in some star, and slept, Unconscious of her coming dreams. LOVE IN A LOOK Let me but feel thy look's embrace, Transparent, pure, and warm, And I'll not ask to touch thy face, Or fold thee with mine arm. For in thine eyes a girl doth rise, Arrayed in candid bliss, And draws me to her with a charm More close than any kiss. A loving-cup of golden wine, Songs of a silver brook, And fragrant breaths of eglantine, Are mingled in thy look. More fair they are than any star, Thy topaz eyes divine-- And deep within their trysting-nook Thy spirit blends with mine. MY APRIL LADY When down the stair at morning The sunbeams round her float, Sweet rivulets of laughter Are bubbling in her throat; The gladness of her greeting Is gold without alloy; And in the morning sunlight I think her name is Joy. When in the evening twilight The quiet book-room lies, We read the sad old ballads, While from her hidden eyes The tears are falling, falling, That give her heart relief; And in the evening twilight, I think her name is Grief. My little April lady, Of sunshine and of showers, She weaves the old spring magic, And breaks my heart in flowers! But when her moods are ended, She nestles like a dove; Then, by the pain and rapture, I know her name is Love. A LOVER'S ENVY I envy every flower that blows Along the meadow where she goes, And every bird that sings to her, And every breeze that brings to her The fragrance of the rose. I envy every poet's rhyme That moves her heart at eventime, And every tree that wears for her Its brightest bloom, and bears for her The fruitage of its prime. I envy every Southern night That paves her path with moonbeams white, And silvers all the leaves for her, And in their shadow weaves for her A dream of dear delight. I envy none whose love requires Of her a gift, a task that tires: I only long to live to her, I only ask to give to her All that her heart desires. THE HERMIT THRUSH O wonderful! How liquid clear The molten gold of that ethereal tone, Floating and falling through the wood alone, A hermit-hymn poured out for God to hear! O holy, holy, holy! Hyaline, Long light, low light, glory of eventide! Love far away, far up,--up,--love divine! Little love, too, for ever, ever near, Warm love, earth love, tender love of mine, In the leafy dark where you hide, You are mine,--mine,--mine! Ah, my beloved, do you feel with me The hidden virtue of that melody, The rapture and the purity of love, The heavenly joy that can not find the word? Then, while we wait again to hear the bird, Come very near to me, and do not move,-- Now, hermit of the woodland, fill anew The cool, green cup of air with harmony, And we will drink the wine of love with you. FIRE-FLY CITY Like a long arrow through the dark the train is darting, Bearing me far away, after a perfect day of love's delight: Wakeful with all the sad-sweet memories of parting, I lift the narrow window-shade and look out on the night. Lonely the land unknown, and like a river flow- ing, Forest and field and hill are gliding backward still athwart my dream; Till in that country strange, and ever stranger growing, A magic city full of lights begins to glow and gleam. Wide through the landscape dim the lamps are lit in millions; Long avenues unfold clear-shining lines of gold across the green; Clusters and rings of light, and luminous pa- vilions,-- Oh, who will tell the city's name, and what these wonders mean? Why do they beckon me, and what have they to show me? Crowds in the blazing street, mirth where the feasters meet, kisses and wine: Many to laugh with me, but never one to know me: A cityful of stranger-hearts and none to beat with mine! Look how the glittering lines are wavering and lifting,-- Softly the breeze of night, scatters the vision bright: and, passing fair, Over the meadow-grass and through the forest drifting, The Fire-Fly City of the Dark is lost in empty air! Girl of the golden eyes, to you my heart is turning: Sleep in your quiet room, while through the midnight gloom my train is whirled. Clear in your dreams of me the light of love is burning,-- The only never failing light in all the phantom world. THE GENTLE TRAVELLER "Through many a land your journey ran, And showed the best the world can boast Now tell me, traveller, if you can, The place that pleased you most." She laid her hands upon my breast, And murmured gently in my ear, "The place I loved and liked the best Was in your arms, my dear!" SICILY, DECEMBER, 1908 O garden isle, beloved by Sun and Sea,-- Whose bluest billows kiss thy curving bays, Whose amorous light enfolds thee in warm rays That fill with fruit each dark-leaved orange- tree,-- What hidden hatred hath the Earth for thee? Behold, again, in these dark, dreadful days, She trembles with her wrath, and swiftly lays Thy beauty waste in wreck and agony! Is Nature, then, a strife of jealous powers, And man the plaything of unconscious fate? Not so, my troubled heart! God reigns above And man is greatest in his darkest hours: Walking amid the cities desolate, The Son of God appears in human love. Tertius and Henry van Dyke, January, 1909. THE WINDOW All night long, by a distant bell, The passing hours were notched On the dark, while her breathing rose and fell, And the spark of life I watched In her face was glowing or fading,--who could tell?-- And the open window of the room, With a flare of yellow light, Was peering out into the gloom, Like an eye that searched the night. Oh, what do you see in the dark, little window, and why do you fear? "I see that the garden is crowded wtth creeping forms of fear: Little white ghosts in the locust-tree, that wave in the night-wind's breath, And low in the leafy laurels the lurking shadow of death." Sweet, clear notes of a waking bird Told of the passing away Of the dark,--and my darling may have heard; For she smiled in her sleep, while the ray Of the rising dawn spoke joy without a word, Till the splendor born in the east outburned The yellow lamplight, pale and thin, And the open window slowly turned To the eye of the morning, looking in. Oh, what do you see in the room, little window, that makes you so bright? "I see that a child is asleep on her pillow, soft and white. With the rose of life on her lips, and the breath of life in her breast, And the arms of God around her as she quietly takes her rest." Neuilly, June, 1909. TWILIGHT IN THE ALPS I love the hour that comes, with dusky hair And dewy feet, along the Alpine dells To lead the cattle forth. A thousand bells Go chiming after her across the fair And flowery uplands, while the rosy flare Of sunset on the snowy mountain dwells, And valleys darken, and the drowsy spells Of peace are woven through the purple air. Dear is the magic of this hour: she seems To walk before the dark by falling rills, And lend a sweeter song to hidden streams; She opens all the doors of night, and fills With moving bells the music of my dreams, That wander far among the sleeping hills. Gstaad, August, 1909. JEANNE D'ARC The land was broken in despair, The princes quarrelled in the dark, When clear and tranquil, through the troubled air Of selfish minds and wills that did not dare, Your star arose, Jeanne d'Arc. O virgin breast with lilies white, O sun-burned hand that bore the lance, You taught the prayer that helps men to unite, You brought the courage equal to the fight, You gave a heart to France! Your king was crowned, your country free, At Rheims you had your soul's desire: And then, at Rouen, maid of Domremy, The black-robed judges gave your victory The martyr's crown of fire. And now again the times are ill, And doubtful leaders miss the mark; The people lack the single faith and will To make them one,--your country needs you still,-- Come back again, Jeanne d'Arc! O woman-star, arise once more And shine to bid your land advance: The old heroic trust in God restore, Renew the brave, unselfish hopes of yore, And give a heart to France! Paris, July, 1909. HUDSON'S LAST VOYAGE June 22,1611 THE SHALLOP ON HUDSON BAY One sail in sight upon the lonely sea And only one, God knows! For never ship But mine broke through the icy gates that guard These waters, greater grown than any since We left the shores of England. We were first, My men, to battle in between the bergs And floes to these wide waves. This gulf is mine; I name it! and that flying sail is mine! And there, hull-down below that flying sail, The ship that staggers home is mine, mine, mine! My ship Discoverie! The sullen dogs Of mutineers, the bitches' whelps that snatched Their food and bit the hand that nourished them, Have stolen her. You ingrate Henry Greene, I picked you from the gutter of Houndsditch, And paid your debts, and kept you in my house, And brought you here to make a man of you! You Robert Juet, ancient, crafty man, Toothless and tremulous, how many times Have I employed you as a master's mate To give you bread? And you Abacuck Prickett, You sailor-clerk, you salted puritan, You knew the plot and silently agreed, Salving your conscience with a pious lie! Yes, all of you--hounds, rebels, thieves! Bring back My ship! Too late,--I rave,--they cannot hear My voice: and if they heard, a drunken laugh Would be their answer; for their minds have caught The fatal firmness of the fool's resolve, That looks like courage but is only fear. They'll blunder on, and lose my ship, and drown,-- Or blunder home to England and be hanged. Their skeletons will rattle in the chains Of some tall gibbet on the Channel cliffs, While passing mariners look up and say: "Those are the rotten bones of Hudson's men "Who left their captain in the frozen North!" O God of justice, why hast Thou ordained Plans of the wise and actions of the brave Dependent on the aid of fools and cowards? Look,--there she goes,--her topsails in the sun Gleam from the ragged ocean edge, and drop Clean out of sight! So let the traitors go Clean out of mind! We'll think of braver things! Come closer in the boat, my friends. John King, You take the tiller, keep her head nor'west. You Philip Staffe, the only one who chose Freely to share our little shallop's fate, Rather than travel in the hell-bound ship,-- Too good an English seaman to desert These crippled comrades,--try to make them rest More easy on the thwarts. And John, my son, My little shipmate, come and lean your head Against your father's knee. Do you recall That April morn in Ethelburga's church, Five years ago, when side by side we kneeled To take the sacrament with all our men, Before the Hopewell left St. Catherine's docks On our first voyage? It was then I vowed My sailor-soul and years to search the sea Until we found the water-path that leads From Europe into Asia. I believe That God has poured the ocean round His world, Not to divide, but to unite the lands. And all the English captains that have dared In little ships to plough uncharted waves,-- Davis and Drake, Hawkins and Frobisher, Raleigh and Gilbert,--all the other names,-- Are written in the chivalry of God As men who served His purpose. I would claim A place among that knighthood of the sea; And I have earned it, though my quest should fail! For, mark me well, the honour of our life Derives from this: to have a certain aim Before us always, which our will must seek Amid the peril of uncertain ways. Then, though we miss the goal, our search is crowned With courage, and we find along our path A rich reward of unexpected things. Press towards the aim: take fortune as it fares! I know not why, but something in my heart Has always whispered, "Westward seek your goal!" Three times they sent me east, but still I turned The bowsprit west, and felt among the floes Of ruttling ice along the Groneland coast, And down the rugged shore of Newfoundland, And past the rocky capes and wooded bays Where Gosnold sailed,--like one who feels his way With outstretched hand across a darkened room,-- I groped among the inlets and the isles, To find the passage to the Land of Spice. I have not found it yet,--but I have found Things worth the finding! Son, have you forgot Those mellow autumn days, two years ago, When first we sent our little ship Half-Moon,-- The flag of Holland floating at her peak,-- Across a sandy bar, and sounded in Among the channels, to a goodly bay Where all the navies of the world could ride? A fertile island that the redmen called Manhattan, lay above the bay: the land Around was bountiful and friendly fair. But never land was fair enough to hold The seaman from the calling of the sea. And so we bore to westward of the isle, Along a mighty inlet, where the tide Was troubled by a downward-flowing flood That seemed to come from far away,--perhaps From some mysterious gulf of Tartary? Inland we held our course; by palisades Of naked rock where giants might have built Their fortress; and by rolling hills adorned With forests rich in timber for great ships; Through narrows where the mountains shut us in With frowning cliffs that seemed to bar the stream; And then through open reaches where the banks Sloped to the water gently, with their fields Of corn and lentils smiling in the sun. Ten days we voyaged through that placid land, Until we came to shoals, and sent a boat Upstream to find,--what I already knew,-- We travelled on a river, not a strait. But what a river! God has never poured A stream more royal through a land more rich. Even now I see it flowing in my dream, While coming ages people it with men Of manhood equal to the river's pride. I see the wigwams of the redmen changed To ample houses, and the tiny plots Of maize and green tobacco broadened out To prosperous farms, that spread o'er hill and dale The many-coloured mantle of their crops; I see the terraced vineyard on the slope Where now the fox-grape loops its tangled vine; And cattle feeding where the red deer roam; And wild-bees gathered into busy hives, To store the silver comb with golden sweet; And all the promised land begins to flow With milk and honey. Stately manors rise Along the banks, and castles top the hills, And little villages grow populous with trade, Until the river runs as proudly as the Rhine,-- The thread that links a hundred towns and towers! And looking deeper in my dream, I see A mighty city covering the isle They call Manhattan, equal in her state To all the older capitals of earth,-- The gateway city of a golden world,-- A city girt with masts, and crowned with spires, And swarming with a host of busy men, While to her open door across the bay The ships of all the nations flock like doves. My name will be remembered there, for men Will say, "This river and this isle were found By Henry Hudson, on his way to seek The Northwest Passage into Farthest Inde." Yes! yes! I sought it then, I seek it still,-- My great adventure and my guiding star! For look ye, friends, our voyage is not done; We hold by hope as long as life endures! Somewhere among these floating fields of ice, Somewhere along this westward widening bay, Somewhere beneath this luminous northern night, The channel opens to the Orient,-- I know it,--and some day a little ship Will push her bowsprit in, and battle through! And why not ours,--to-morrow,--who can tell? The lucky chance awaits the fearless heart! These are the longest days of all the year; The world is round and God is everywhere, And while our shallop floats we still can steer. So point her up, John King, nor'west by north. We'll keep the honour of a certain aim Amid the peril of uncertain ways, And sail ahead, and leave the rest to God. Oberhofen, July, 1909. THE END 
37852	----	Transcribers Notes: Bold faced text shown as: =abcde= Italics text shown as: _abcde_ Unusual fonts shown as: _abcde_ [Illustrations:] have been moved to end of poem in all cases. There are two instances of Greek in the text - � has been used. * * * * * [Illustration: Cover Page] _Chimneysmoke_ [Illustration: Chimneysmoke] _By Christopher Morley_ CHIMNEYSMOKE HIDE AND SEEK THE ROCKING HORSE SONGS FOR A LITTLE HOUSE MINCE PIE _New York: George H. Doran Company_ [Illustration: _This hearth was built for thy delight,_ _For thee the logs were sawn,_ _For thee the largest chair, at night,_ _Is to the chimney drawn._ _For thee, dear lass, the match was lit,_ _To yield the ruddy blaze--_ _May Jack Frost give us joy of it_ _For many, many days._] =_Chimneysmoke_= _by_ _Christopher Morley_ [Illustration: Fireside Chair] _Illustrated by_ _Thomas Fogarty_ _Garden City New York_ _Doubleday, Page & Co._ _1927_ COPYRIGHT, 1917, 1919, 1920, 1921 BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y. _"How can I turn from any fire_ _On any man's hearthstone?_ _I know the wonder and desire_ _That went to build my own."_ --RUDYARD KIPLING, "_The Fires_" _Author's Note_ There are a number of poems in this collection that have not previously appeared in book form. But, as a few readers may discern, many of the verses are reprinted from _Songs for a Little House_(1917), _The Rocking Horse_ (1919) and _Hide and Seek_ (1920). There is also one piece revived from the judicious obscurity of an early escapade, _The Eighth Sin_, published in Oxford in 1912. It is on Mr. Thomas Fogarty's delightful and sympathetic drawings that this book rests its real claim to be considered a new venture. To Mr. Fogarty, and to Mr. George H. Doran, whose constant kindness and generosity contradict all the traditions about publishers and minor poets, the author expresses his permanent gratitude. _Roslyn, Long Island._ [Illustration: Boat on Lake] _Contents_ PAGE TO THE LITTLE HOUSE 19 A GRACE BEFORE WRITING 20 DEDICATION FOR A FIREPLACE 21 TAKING TITLE 22 THE SECRET 25 ONLY A MATTER OF TIME 26 AT THE MERMAID CAFETERIA 28 OUR HOUSE 29 ON NAMING A HOUSE 31 A HALLOWE'EN MEMORY 32 REFUSING YOU IMMORTALITY 35 BAYBERRY CANDLES 36 SECRET LAUGHTER 37 SIX WEEKS OLD 38 A CHARM 41 MY PIPE 42 THE 5:42 44 PETER PAN 48 IN HONOR OF TAFFY TOPAZ 49 THE CEDAR CHEST 50 READING ALOUD 51 ANIMAL CRACKERS 52 THE MILKMAN 55 LIGHT VERSE 56 THE FURNACE 57 WASHING THE DISHES 58 THE CHURCH OF UNBENT KNEES 61 ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY COAL-BIN 62 THE OLD SWIMMER 66 THE MOON-SHEEP 70 SMELLS 71 SMELLS (JUNIOR) 72 MAR QUONG, CHINESE LAUNDRYMAN 75 THE FAT LITTLE PURSE 76 THE REFLECTION 80 THE BALLOON PEDDLER 82 LINES FOR AN ECCENTRIC'S BOOK PLATE 86 TO A POST-OFFICE INKWELL 89 THE CRIB 90 THE POET 94 TO A DISCARDED MIRROR 97 TO A CHILD 98 TO A VERY YOUNG GENTLEMAN 100 TO AN OLD-FASHIONED POET 104 BURNING LEAVES IN SPRING 105 BURNING LEAVES, NOVEMBER 106 A VALENTINE GAME 107 FOR A BIRTHDAY 108 KEATS 111 TO H. F. M., A SONNET IN SUNLIGHT 113 QUICKENING 114 AT A WINDOW SILL 115 THE RIVER OF LIGHT 116 OF HER GLORIOUS MADNESS 118 IN AN AUCTION ROOM 119 EPITAPH FOR A POET WHO WROTE NO POETRY 120 SONNET BY A GEOMETER 121 TO A VAUDEVILLE TERRIER 122 TO AN OLD FRIEND 125 TO A BURLESQUE SOUBRETTE 126 THOUGHTS WHILE PACKING A TRUNK 129 STREETS 130 TO THE ONLY BEGETTER 131 PEDOMETER 133 HOSTAGES 134 ARS DURA 137 O. HENRY--APOTHECARY 138 FOR THE CENTENARY OF KEATS'S SONNET 139 TWO O'CLOCK 140 THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER 141 THE WEDDED LOVER 142 TO YOU, REMEMBERING THE PAST 143 CHARLES AND MARY 144 TO A GRANDMOTHER 145 DIARISTS 146 THE LAST SONNET 147 THE SAVAGE 148 ST. PAUL'S AND WOOLWORTH 149 ADVICE TO A CITY 150 THE TELEPHONE DIRECTORY 151 GREEN ESCAPE 153 VESPER SONG FOR COMMUTERS 157 THE ICE WAGON 158 AT A MOVIE THEATRE 161 SONNETS IN A LODGING HOUSE 163 THE MAN WITH THE HOE (PRESS) 167 DO YOU EVER FEEL LIKE GOD? 168 RAPID TRANSIT 170 CAUGHT IN THE UNDERTOW 171 TO HIS BROWN-EYED MISTRESS 172 PEACE 173 SONG, IN DEPRECATION OF PULCHRITUDE 175 MOUNTED POLICE 176 TO HIS MISTRESS, DEPLORING THAT HE IS NOT AN ELIZABETHAN GALAXY 179 THE INTRUDER 181 TIT FOR TAT 182 SONG FOR A LITTLE HOUSE 185 THE PLUMPUPPETS 186 DANDY DANDELION 190 THE HIGH CHAIR 192 LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT 193 AUTUMN COLORS 197 THE LAST CRICKET 198 TO LOUISE 199 CHRISTMAS EVE 203 EPITAPH ON THE PROOFREADER OF THE ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA 204 THE MUSIC BOX 205 TO LUATH 209 THOUGHTS ON REACHING LAND 212 A SYMPOSIUM 214 TO A TELEPHONE OPERATOR WHO HAS A BAD COLD 218 NURSERY RHYMES FOR THE TENDER-HEARTED 219 THE TWINS 227 A PRINTER'S MADRIGAL 228 THE POET ON THE HEARTH 230 O PRAISE ME NOT THE COUNTRY 231 A STONE IN ST. PAUL'S GRAVEYARD 235 THE MADONNA OF THE CURB 236 THE ISLAND 240 SUNDAY NIGHT 242 ENGLAND, JULY, 1913 246 CASUALTY 250 A GRUB STREET RECESSIONAL 251 PRELIMINARY INSTRUCTIONS FOR A FUNERAL SERVICE 253 [Illustration: Girl on Stool] _Illustrations_ PAGE _This hearth was built for thy delight_-- _Frontispiece_ _And by a friend's bright gift of wine,_ _I dedicate this house of mine_ 23 _And of all man's felicities_-- 33 _A little world he feels and sees:_ _His mother's arms, his mother's knees_-- 39 _The 5:42_ 45 _And Daddy once said he would like to be me_ _Having cocoa and animals once more for tea!_ 53 _But heavy feeding complicates_ _The task by soiling many plates_ 59 _How ill avail, on such a frosty night_ 63 _The old swimmer_ 67 _But Katie, the cook, is more splendid than all_-- 73 _Perhaps it's a ragged child crying_ 77 _The Balloon Peddler_ 83 _If you appreciate it more_ _Than I--why don't return it!_ 87 _And then one night_-- 91 _The human cadence and the subtle chime_ _Of little laughters_-- 95 _What years of youthful ills and pangs and bumps_-- 101 _A Birthday_ 109 _You must be rigid servant of your art!_ 123 _You came, and impudent and deuce-may-care_ _Danced where the gutter flamed with footlight fire_ 127 _Hostages_ 135 _My eyes still pine for the comely line_ _Of an outbound vessel's hull_ 155 _A man ain't so secretive, never cares_ _What kind of private papers he leaves lay_-- 165 _Mounted Police_ 177 _Courtesy_ 183 _The Plumpuppets_ 187 ... _It's hard to have to tell_ _How unresponsive I have found her_ 195 ... _When you see, this Great First Time,_ _Lit candles on a Christmas Tree!_ 201 _The music box_ 207 _Solugubrious_ 215 _In the midnight, like yourself,_ _I explore the pantry shelf!_ 221 _The Twins_ 227 _O praise me not the country_ 233 _The wail of sickly children_-- 237 _Ah, does the butcher--heartless clown--_ _Beget that shadow on her brow?_ 243 _Chimneysmoke_ [Illustration: Girl by Gate] _=Chimneysmoke=_ TO THE LITTLE HOUSE Dear little house, dear shabby street, Dear books and beds and food to eat! How feeble words are to express The facets of your tenderness. How white the sun comes through the pane! In tinkling music drips the rain! How burning bright the furnace glows! What paths to shovel when it snows! O dearly loved Long Island trains! O well remembered joys and pains.... How near the housetops Beauty leans Along that little street in Queens! Let these poor rhymes abide for proof Joy dwells beneath a humble roof; Heaven is not built of country seats But little queer suburban streets! March, 1917. A GRACE BEFORE WRITING This is a sacrament, I think! Holding the bottle toward the light, As blue as lupin gleams the ink; May Truth be with me as I write! That small dark cistern may afford Reunion with some vanished friend,-- And with this ink I have just poured May none but honest words be penned! DEDICATION FOR A FIREPLACE This hearth was built for thy delight, For thee the logs were sawn, For thee the largest chair, at night, Is to the chimney drawn. For thee, dear lass, the match was lit To yield the ruddy blaze-- May Jack Frost give us joy of it For many, many days. TAKING TITLE To make this house my very own Could not be done by law alone. Though covenant and deed convey Absolute fee, as lawyers say, There are domestic rites beside By which this house is sanctified. By kindled fire upon the hearth, By planted pansies in the garth, By food, and by the quiet rest Of those brown eyes that I love best, And by a friend's bright gift of wine, I dedicate this house of mine. When all but I are soft abed I trail about my quiet stead A wreath of blue tobacco smoke (A charm that evil never broke) And bring my ritual to an end By giving shelter to a friend. These done, O dwelling, you become Not just a house, but truly Home! [Illustration: _And by a friend's bright gift of wine,_ _I dedicate this house of mine_] THE SECRET It was the House of Quietness To which I came at dusk; The garth was lit with roses And heavy with their musk. The tremulous tall poplar trees Stood whispering around, The gentle flicker of their plumes More quiet than no sound. And as I wondered at the door What magic might be there, The Lady of Sweet Silences Came softly down the stair. ONLY A MATTER OF TIME Down-slipping Time, sweet, swift, and shallow stream, Here, like a boulder, lies this afternoon Across your eager flow. So you shall stay, Deepened and dammed, to let me breathe and be. Your troubled fluency, your running gleam Shall pause, and circle idly, still and clear: The while I lie and search your glassy pool Where, gently coiling in their lazy round, Unseparable minutes drift and swim, Eddy and rise and brim. And I will see How many crystal bubbles of slack Time The mind can hold and cherish in one _Now_! Now, for one conscious vacancy of sense, The stream is gathered in a deepening pond, Not a mere moving mirror. Through the sharp Correct reflection of the standing scene The mind can dip, and cleanse itself with rest, And see, slow spinning in the lucid gold, Your liquid motes, imperishable Time. It cannot be. The runnel slips away: The clear smooth downward sluice begins again, More brightly slanting for that trembling pause, Leaving the sense its conscious vague unease As when a sonnet flashes on the mind, Trembles and burns an instant, and is gone. AT THE MERMAID CAFETERIA Truth is enough for prose: Calmly it goes To tell just what it knows. For verse, skill will suffice-- Delicate, nice Casting of verbal dice. Poetry, men attain By subtler pain More flagrant in the brain-- An honesty unfeigned, A heart unchained, A madness well restrained. OUR HOUSE It should be yours, if I could build The quaint old dwelling I desire, With books and pictures bravely filled And chairs beside an open fire, White-panelled rooms with candles lit-- I lie awake to think of it! A dial for the sunny hours, A garden of old-fashioned flowers-- Say marigolds and lavender And mignonette and fever-few, And Judas-tree and maidenhair And candytuft and thyme and rue-- All these for you to wander in. A Chinese carp (called _Mandarin_) Waving a sluggish silver fin Deep in the moat: so tame he comes To lip your fingers offering crumbs. Tall chimneys, like long listening ears, White shutters, ivy green and thick, And walls of ruddy Tudor brick Grown mellow with the passing years. And windows with small leaded panes, Broad window-seats for when it rains; A big blue bowl of pot pourri And--yes, a Spanish chestnut tree To coin the autumn's minted gold. A summer house for drinking tea-- All these (just think!) for you and me. A staircase of the old black wood Cut in the days of Robin Hood, And banisters worn smooth as glass Down which your hand will lightly pass; A piano with pale yellow keys For wistful twilight melodies, And dusty bottles in a bin-- All these for you to revel in! But when? Ah well, until that time We'll habit in this house of rhyme. 1912 ON NAMING A HOUSE When I a householder became I had to give my house a name. I thought I'd call it "Poplar Trees," Or "Widdershins" or "Velvet Bees," Or "Just Beneath a Star." I thought of "House Where Plumbings Freeze," Or "As You Like it," "If You Please," Or "Nicotine" or "Bread and Cheese," "Full Moon" or "Doors Ajar." But still I sought some subtle charm, Some rune to guard my roof from harm And keep the devil far; I thought of this, and I was saved! I had my letter-heads engraved _The House Where Brown Eyes Are._ A HALLOWE'EN MEMORY Do you remember, Heart's Desire, The night when Hallowe'en first came? The newly dedicated fire, The hearth unsanctified by flame? How anxiously we swept the bricks (How tragic, were the draught not right!) And then the blaze enwrapped the sticks And filled the room with dancing light. We could not speak, but only gaze, Nor half believe what we had seen-- _Our_ home, _our_ hearth, _our_ golden blaze, _Our_ cider mugs, _our_ Hallowe'en! And then a thought occurred to me-- We ran outside with sudden shout And looked up at the roof, to see Our own dear smoke come drifting out. And of all man's felicities The very subtlest one, say I, Is when, for the first time, he sees His hearthfire smoke against the sky. [Illustration: _And of all man's felicities_ _The very subtlest one, say I,_ _Is when, for the first time, he sees_ _His hearthfire smoke against the sky._] REFUSING YOU IMMORTALITY If I should tell, unstinted, Your beauty and your grace, All future lads would whisper Traditions of your face; If I made public tumult Your mirth, your queenly state, Posterity would grumble That it was born too late. I will not frame your beauty In bright undying phrase, Nor blaze it as a legend For unborn men to praise-- For why should future lovers Be saddened and depressed? Deluded, let them fancy Their own girls loveliest! BAYBERRY CANDLES Dear sweet, when dusk comes up the hill, The fire leaps high with golden prongs; I place along the chimneysill The tiny candles of my songs. And though unsteadily they burn, As evening shades from gray to blue Like candles they will surely learn To shine more clear, for love of you. SECRET LAUGHTER "I had a secret laughter." --Walter de la Mare. There is a secret laughter That often comes to me, And though I go about my work As humble as can be, There is no prince or prelate I envy--no, not one. No evil can befall me-- By God, I have a son! SIX WEEKS OLD He is so small, he does not know The summer sun, the winter snow; The spring that ebbs and comes again, All this is far beyond his ken. A little world he feels and sees: His mother's arms, his mother's knees; He hides his face against her breast, And does not care to learn the rest. [Illustration: _A little world he feels and sees:_ _His mother's arms, his mother's knees_--] A CHARM For Our New Fireplace, To Stop Its Smoking O wood, burn bright; O flame, be quick; O smoke, draw cleanly up the flue-- My lady chose your every brick And sets her dearest hopes on you! Logs cannot burn, nor tea be sweet, Nor white bread turn to crispy toast, Until the charm be made complete By love, to lay the sooty ghost. And then, dear books, dear waiting chairs, Dear china and mahogany, Draw close, for on the happy stairs My brown-eyed girl comes down for tea! MY PIPE My pipe is old And caked with soot; My wife remarks: "How can you put That horrid relic, So unclean, Inside your mouth? The nicotine Is strong enough To stupefy A Swedish plumber." I reply: "This is the kind Of pipe I like: I fill it full Of Happy Strike, Or Barking Cat Or Cabman's Puff, Or Brooklyn Bridge (That potent stuff) Or Chaste Embraces, Knacker's Twist, Old Honeycomb Or Niggerfist. I clamp my teeth Upon its stem-- It is my bliss, My diadem. Whatever Fate May do to me, This is my favorite B B B. For this dear pipe You feign to scorn I smoked the night The boy was born." THE 5:42 Lilac, violet, and rose Ardently the city glows; Sunset glory, purely sweet, Gilds the dreaming byway-street, And, above the Avenue, Winter dusk is deepening blue. (Then, across Long Island meadows, Darker, darker, grow the shadows: Patience, little waiting lass! Laggard minutes slowly pass; Patience, laughs the yellow fire: Homeward bound is heart's desire!) Hark, adown the canyon street Flows the merry tide of feet; High the golden buildings loom Blazing in the purple gloom; All the town is set with stars, _Homeward_ chant the Broadway cars! All down Thirty-second Street _Homeward, Homeward_, say the feet! Tramping men, uncouth to view, Footsore, weary, thrill anew; Gone the ringing telephones, Blessed nightfall now atones, Casting brightness on the snow Golden the train windows go. Then (how long it seems) at last All the way is overpast. Heart that beats your muffled drum, Lo, your venturer is come! Wide the door! Leap high, O fire! Home at length is heart's desire! Gone is weariness and fret, At the sill warm lips are met. Once again may be renewed The conjoined beatitude. [Illustration: _The 5:42_] PETER PAN "The boy for whom Barrie wrote Peter Pan--the original of Peter Pan--has died in battle." --New York Times. And Peter Pan is dead? Not so! When mothers turn the lights down low And tuck their little sons in bed, They know that Peter is not dead.... That little rounded blanket-hill; Those prayer-time eyes, so deep and still-- However wise and great a man He grows, he still is Peter Pan. And mothers' ways are often queer: They pause in doorways, just to hear A tiny breathing; think a prayer; And then go tiptoe down the stair. IN HONOR OF TAFFY TOPAZ Taffy, the topaz-colored cat, Thinks now of this and now of that, But chiefly of his meals. Asparagus, and cream, and fish, Are objects of his Freudian wish; What you don't give, he steals. His gallant heart is strongly stirred By clink of plate or flight of bird, He has a plumy tail; At night he treads on stealthy pad As merry as Sir Galahad A-seeking of the Grail. His amiable amber eyes Are very friendly, very wise; Like Buddha, grave and fat, He sits, regardless of applause, And thinking, as he kneads his paws, What fun to be a cat! THE CEDAR CHEST Her mind is like her cedar chest Wherein in quietness do rest The wistful dreamings of her heart In fragrant folds all laid apart. There, put away in sprigs of rhyme Until her life's full blossom-time, Flutter (like tremulous little birds) Her small and sweet maternal words. READING ALOUD Once we read Tennyson aloud In our great fireside chair; Between the lines, my lips could touch Her April-scented hair. How very fond I was, to think The printed poems fair, When close within my arms I held A living lyric there! ANIMAL CRACKERS Animal crackers, and cocoa to drink, That is the finest of suppers, I think; When I'm grown up and can have what I please I think I shall always insist upon these. What do _you_ choose when you're offered a treat? When Mother says, "What would you like best to eat?" Is it waffles and syrup, or cinnamon toast? It's cocoa and animals that _I_ love most! The kitchen's the cosiest place that I know: The kettle is singing, the stove is aglow, And there in the twilight, how jolly to see The cocoa and animals waiting for me. Daddy and Mother dine later in state, With Mary to cook for them, Susan to wait; But they don't have nearly as much fun as I Who eat in the kitchen with Nurse standing by; And Daddy once said, he would like to be me Having cocoa and animals once more for tea! [Illustration: _And Daddy once said he would like to be me_ _Having cocoa and animals once more for tea!_] THE MILKMAN Early in the morning, when the dawn is on the roofs, You hear his wheels come rolling, you hear his horse's hoofs; You hear the bottles clinking, and then he drives away: You yawn in bed, turn over, and begin another day! The old-time dairy maids are dear to every poet's heart-- I'd rather be the dairy _man_ and drive a little cart, And bustle round the village in the early morning blue, And hang my reins upon a hook, as I've seen Casey do. LIGHT VERSE At night the gas lamps light our street, Electric bulbs our homes; The gas is billed in cubic feet, Electric light in ohms. But one illumination still Is brighter far, and sweeter; It is not figured in a bill, Nor measured by a meter. More bright than lights that money buys, More pleasing to discerners, The shining lamps of Helen's eyes, Those lovely double burners! THE FURNACE At night I opened The furnace door: The warm glow brightened The cellar floor. The fire that sparkled Blue and red, Kept small toes cosy In their bed. As up the stair So late I stole, I said my prayer: _Thank God for coal!_ WASHING THE DISHES When we on simple rations sup How easy is the washing up! But heavy feeding complicates The task by soiling many plates. And though I grant that I have prayed That we might find a serving-maid, I'd scullion all my days, I think, To see Her smile across the sink! I wash, She wipes. In water hot I souse each dish and pan and pot; While Taffy mutters, purrs, and begs, And rubs himself against my legs. The man who never in his life Has washed the dishes with his wife Or polished up the silver plate-- He still is largely celibate. One warning: there is certain ware That must be handled with all care: The Lord Himself will give you up If you should drop a willow cup! [Illustration: _But heavy feeding complicates_ _The task by soiling many plates._] THE CHURCH OF UNBENT KNEES As I went by the church to-day I heard the organ cry; And goodly folk were on their knees, But I went striding by. My minster hath a roof more vast: My aisles are oak trees high; My altar-cloth is on the hills, My organ is the sky. I see my rood upon the clouds, The winds, my chanted choir; My crystal windows, heaven-glazed, Are stained with sunset fire. The stars, the thunder, and the rain, White sands and purple seas-- These are His pulpit and His pew, My God of Unbent Knees! ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY COAL-BIN The furnace tolls the knell of falling steam, The coal supply is virtually done, And at this price, indeed it does not seem As though we could afford another ton. Now fades the glossy, cherished anthracite; The radiators lose their temperature: How ill avail, on such a frosty night, The "short and simple flannels of the poor." Though in the icebox, fresh and newly laid, The rude forefathers of the omelet sleep, No eggs for breakfast till the bill is paid: We cannot cook again till coal is cheap. Can Morris-chair or papier-mâché bust Revivify the failing pressure-gauge? Chop up the grand piano if you must, And burn the East Aurora parrot-cage! Full many a can of purest kerosene The dark unfathomed tanks of Standard Oil Shall furnish me, and with their aid I mean To bring my morning coffee to a boil. [Illustration: _How ill avail, on such a frosty night_....] THE OLD SWIMMER I often wander on the beach Where once, so brown of limb, The biting air, the roaring surf Summoned me to swim. I see my old abundant youth Where combers lean and spill, And though I taste the foam no more Other swimmers will. Oh, good exultant strength to meet The arching wall of green, To break the crystal, swirl, emerge Dripping, taut, and clean. To climb the moving hilly blue, To dive in ecstasy And feel the salty chill embrace Arm and rib and knee. What brave and vanished laughter then And tingling thighs to run, What warm and comfortable sands Dreaming in the sun. The crumbling water spreads in snow, The surf is hissing still, And though I kiss the salt no more Other swimmers will. [Illustration: The Old Swimmer] THE MOON-SHEEP The moon seems like a docile sheep, She pastures while all people sleep; But sometimes, when she goes astray, She wanders all alone by day. Up in the clear blue morning air We are surprised to see her there, Grazing in her woolly white, Waiting the return of night. When dusk lets down the meadow bars She greets again her lambs, the stars! SMELLS Why is it that the poets tell So little of the sense of smell? These are the odors I love well: The smell of coffee freshly ground; Or rich plum pudding, holly crowned; Or onions fried and deeply browned. The fragrance of a fumy pipe; The smell of apples, newly ripe; And printers' ink on leaden type. Woods by moonlight in September Breathe most sweet; and I remember Many a smoky camp-fire ember. Camphor, turpentine, and tea, The balsam of a Christmas tree, These are whiffs of gramarye ... _A ship smells best of all to me!_ SMELLS (JUNIOR) My Daddy smells like tobacco and books, Mother, like lavender and listerine; Uncle John carries a whiff of cigars, Nannie smells starchy and soapy and clean. Shandy, my dog, has a smell of his own (When he's been out in the rain he smells most); But Katie, the cook, is more splendid than all-- She smells exactly like hot buttered toast! [Illustration: _But Katie, the cook, is more splendid than all_--] MAR QUONG, CHINESE LAUNDRYMAN I like the Chinese laundryman: He smokes a pipe that bubbles, And seems, as far as I can tell, A man with but few troubles. He has much to do, no doubt, But also much to think about. Most men (for instance I myself) Are spending, at all times, All our hard-earned quarters, Our nickels and our dimes: With Mar Quong it's the other way-- He takes in small change every day. Next time you call for collars In his steamy little shop, Observe how tight his pigtail Is coiled and piled on top. But late at night he lets it hang And thinks of the Yang-tse-kiang. THE FAT LITTLE PURSE On Saturdays, after the baby Is bathed, fed, and sleeping serene, His mother, as quickly as may be, Arranges the household routine. She rapidly makes herself pretty And leaves the young limb with his nurse, Then gaily she starts for the city, And with her the fat little purse. She trips through the crowd at the station, To the rendezvous spot where we meet, And keeping her eyes from temptation, She avoids the most windowy street! She is off for the Weekly Adventure; To her comrade for better and worse She says, "Never mind, when you've spent your Last bit, here's the fat little purse." Apart, in her thrifty exchequer, She has hidden what must not be spent: Enough for the butcher and baker, Katie's wages, and milkman, and rent; But the rest of her brave little treasure She is gleeful and prompt to disburse-- What a richness of innocent pleasure Can come from her fat little purse! But either by giving or buying, The little purse does not stay fat-- Perhaps it's a ragged child crying, Perhaps it's a "pert little hat." And the bonny brown eyes that were brightened By pleasures so quaint and diverse, Look up at me, wistful and frightened, To see such a thin little purse. The wisest of all financiering Is that which is done by our wives: By some little known profiteering They add twos and twos and make fives; And, husband, if you would be learning The secret of thrift, it is terse: Invest the great part of your earning In her little, fat little purse. [Illustration: _Perhaps it's a ragged child crying_] THE REFLECTION (To N. B. D.) I have not heard her voice, nor seen her face, Nor touched her hand; And yet some echo of her woman's grace I understand. I have no picture of her lovelihood, Her smile, her tint; But that she is both beautiful and good I have true hint. In all that my friend thinks and says, I see Her mirror true; His thought of her is gentle; she must be All gentle too. In all his grief or laughter, work or play, Each mood and whim, How brave and tender, day by common day, She speaks through him! Therefore I say I know her, be her face Or dark or fair-- For when he shows his heart's most secret place I see her there! THE BALLOON PEDDLER Who is the man on Chestnut street With colored toy balloons? I see him with his airy freight On sunny afternoons-- A peddler of such lovely goods! The heart leaps to behold His mass of bubbles, red and green And blue and pink and gold. For sure that noble peddler man Hath antic merchandise: His toys that float and swim in air Attract my eager eyes. Perhaps he is a changeling prince Bewitched through magic moons To tempt us solemn busy folk With meaningless balloons. Beware, oh, valiant merchantman, Tread cautious on the pave! Lest some day come some realist, Some haggard soul and grave, A puritan efficientist Who deems thy toys a sin-- He'll stalk thee madly from behind And prick them with a pin! [Illustration: _The Balloon Peddler_] LINES FOR AN ECCENTRIC'S BOOK PLATE To use my books all friends are bid: My shelves are open for 'em; And in each one, as Grolier did, I write _Et Amicorum_. All lovely things in truth belong To him who best employs them; The house, the picture and the song Are his who most enjoys them. Perhaps this book holds precious lore, And you may best discern it. If you appreciate it more Than I--why don't return it! [Illustration: _If you appreciate it more_ _Than I--why don't return it!_] TO A POST-OFFICE INKWELL How many humble hearts have dipped In you, and scrawled their manuscript! Have shared their secrets, told their cares, Their curious and quaint affairs! Your pool of ink, your scratchy pen, Have moved the lives of unborn men, And watched young people, breathing hard, Put Heaven on a postal card. THE CRIB I sought immortality Here and there-- I sent my rockets Into the air: I gave my name A hostage to ink; I dined a critic And bought him drink. I spurned the weariness Of the flesh; Denied fatigue And began afresh-- If men knew all, How they would laugh! I even planned My epitaph.... And then one night When the dusk was thin I heard the nursery Rites begin: I heard the tender Soothings said Over a crib, and A small sweet head. Then in a flash It came to me That there was my Immortality! [Illustration: _And then one night_ _When the dusk was thin_ _I heard the nursery_ _Rites begin--_] THE POET The barren music of a word or phrase, The futile arts of syllable and stress, He sought. The poetry of common days He did not guess. The simplest, sweetest rhythms life affords-- Unselfish love, true effort truly done, The tender themes that underlie all words-- He knew not one. The human cadence and the subtle chime Of little laughters, home and child and wife, He knew not. Artist merely in his rhyme, Not in his life. [Illustration: _The human cadence and the subtle chime_ _Of little laughters_--] TO A DISCARDED MIRROR [Transcriber's Note: The text below was in mirrored image in the original text]. Dear glass, before your silver pane My lady used to tend her hair; And yet I search your disc in vain To find some shadow of her there. I thought your magic, deep and bright, Might still some dear reflection hold: Some glint of eyes or shoulders white, Some flash of gowns she wore of old. Your polished round must still recall The laughing face, the neck like snow-- Remember, on your lonely wall, That Helen used you long ago! TO A CHILD The greatest poem ever known Is one all poets have outgrown: The poetry, innate, untold, Of being only four years old. Still young enough to be a part Of Nature's great impulsive heart, Born comrade of bird, beast and tree And unselfconscious as the bee-- And yet with lovely reason skilled Each day new paradise to build; Elate explorer of each sense, Without dismay, without pretence! In your unstained transparent eyes There is no conscience, no surprise: Life's queer conundrums you accept, Your strange divinity still kept. Being, that now absorbs you, all Harmonious, unit, integral, Will shred into perplexing bits,-- Oh, contradictions of the wits! And Life, that sets all things in rhyme, May make you poet, too, in time-- But there were days, O tender elf, When you were Poetry itself! TO A VERY YOUNG GENTLEMAN My child, what painful vistas are before you! What years of youthful ills and pangs and bumps-- Indignities from aunts who "just adore" you, And chicken-pox and measles, croup and mumps! I don't wish to dismay you,--it's not fair to, Promoted now from bassinet to crib,-- But, O my babe, what troubles flesh is heir to Since God first made so free with Adam's rib! Laboriously you will proceed with teething; When teeth are here, you'll meet the dentist's chair; They'll teach you ways of walking, eating, breathing, That stoves are hot, and how to brush your hair; And so, my poor, undaunted little stripling, By bruises, tears, and trousers you will grow, And, borrowing a leaf from Mr. Kipling, I'll wish you luck, and moralize you so: If you can think up seven thousand methods Of giving cooks and parents heart disease; Can rifle pantry-shelves, and then give death odds By water, fire, and falling out of trees; If you can fill your every boyish minute With sixty seconds' worth of mischief done, Yours is the house and everything that's in it, And, which is more, you'll be your father's son! [Illustration: _What years of youthful ills and pangs and bumps_--] TO AN OLD-FASHIONED POET (Lizette Woodworth Reese) Most tender poet, when the gods confer They save your gracile songs a nook apart, And bless with Time's untainted lavender The ageless April of your singing heart. You, in an age unbridled, ne'er declined The appointed patience that the Muse decrees, Until, deep in the flower of the mind The hovering words alight, like bridegroom bees. By casual praise or casual blame unstirred The placid gods grant gifts where they belong: To you, who understand, the perfect word, The recompensed necessities of song. BURNING LEAVES IN SPRING When withered leaves are lost in flame Their eddying ghosts, a thin blue haze, Blow through the thickets whence they came On amberlucent autumn days. The cool green woodland heart receives Their dim, dissolving, phantom breath; In young hereditary leaves They see their happy life-in-death. My minutes perish as they glow-- Time burns my crazy bonfire through; But ghosts of blackened hours still blow, Eternal Beauty, back to you! BURNING LEAVES, NOVEMBER These are folios of April, All the library of spring, Missals gilt and rubricated With the frost's illumining. Ruthless, we destroy these treasures, Set the torch with hand profane-- Gone, like Alexandrian vellums, Like the books of burnt Louvain! Yet these classics are immortal: O collectors, have no fear, For the publisher will issue New editions every year. A VALENTINE GAME (_For Two Players_) They have a game, thus played: He says unto his maid _What are those shining things_ _So brown, so golden brown?_ And she, in doubt, replies _How now, what shining things_ _So brown?_ But then, she coming near, To see more clear, He looks again, and cries (All startled with surprise) _Sweet wretch, they are your eyes,_ _So brown, so brown!_ The climax and the end consist In kissing, and in being kissed. FOR A BIRTHDAY At two years old the world he sees Must seem expressly made to please! Such new-found words and games to try, Such sudden mirth, he knows not why, So many curiosities! As life about him, by degrees Discloses all its pageantries He watches with approval shy At two years old. With wonders tired he takes his ease At dusk, upon his mother's knees: A little laugh, a little cry, Put toys to bed, then "seepy-bye"-- The world is made of such as these At two years old. [Illustration: _A Birthday_] KEATS (1821-1921) When sometimes, on a moony night, I've passed A street-lamp, seen my doubled shadow flee, I've noticed how much darker, clearer cast, The full moon poured her silhouette of me. Just so of spirits. Beauty's silver light Limns with a ray more pure, and tenderer too: Men's clumsy gestures, to unearthly sight, Surpass the shapes they show by human view. On this brave world, where few such meteors fell, Her youngest son, to save us, Beauty flung. He suffered and descended into hell-- And comforts yet the ardent and the young. Drunken of moonlight, dazed by draughts of sky, Dizzy with stars, his mortal fever ran: His utterance a moon-enchanted cry Not free from folly--for he too was man. And now and here, a hundred years away, Where topless towers shadow golden streets, The young men sit, nooked in a cheap café, Perfectly happy ... talking about Keats. TO H. F. M. A SONNET IN SUNLIGHT This is a day for sonnets: Oh how clear Our splendid cliffs and summits lift the gaze-- If all the perfect moments of the year Were poured and gathered in one sudden blaze, Then, then perhaps, in some endowered phrase My flat strewn words would rise and come more near To tell of you. Your beauty and your praise Would fall like sunlight on this paper here. Then I would build a sonnet that would stand Proud and perennial on this pale bright sky; So tall, so steep, that it might stay the hand Of Time, the dusty wrecker. He would sigh To tear my strong words down. And he would say: "That song he built for her, one summer day." QUICKENING Such little, puny things are words in rhyme: Poor feeble loops and strokes as frail as hairs; You see them printed here, and mark their chime, And turn to your more durable affairs. Yet on such petty tools the poet dares To run his race with mortar, bricks and lime, And draws his frail stick to the point, and stares To aim his arrow at the heart of Time. Intangible, yet pressing, hemming in, This measured emptiness engulfs us all, And yet he points his paper javelin And sees it eddy, waver, turn, and fall, And feels, between delight and trouble torn, The stirring of a sonnet still unborn. AT A WINDOW SILL _To write a sonnet needs a quiet mind...._ I paused and pondered, tried again. _To write...._ Raising the sash, I breathed the winter night: Papers and small hot room were left behind. Against the gusty purple, ribbed and spined With golden slots and vertebræ of light Men's cages loomed. Down sliding from a height An elevator winked as it declined. Coward! There is no quiet in the brain-- If pity burns it not, then beauty will: Tinder it is for every blowing spark. Uncertain whether this is bliss or pain The unresting mind will gaze across the sill From high apartment windows, in the dark. THE RIVER OF LIGHT I. Broadway, 103rd to 96th. Lights foam and bubble down the gentle grade: Bright shine chop sueys and rôtisseries; In pink translucence glowingly displayed See camisole and stocking and chemise. Delicatessen windows full of cheese-- Above, the chimes of church-bells toll and fade-- And then, from off some distant Palisade That gluey savor on the Jersey breeze! The burning bulbs, in green and white and red, Spell out a _Change of Program Sun., Wed., Fri._, A clicking taxi spins with ruby spark. There is a sense of poising near the head Of some great flume of brightness, flowing by To pour in gathering torrent through the dark. THE RIVER OF LIGHT II. Below 96th The current quickens, and in golden flow Hurries its flotsam downward through the night-- Here are the rapids where the undertow Whirls endless motors in a gleaming flight. From blazing tributaries, left and right, Influent streams of blue and amber grow. Columbus Circle eddies: all below Is pouring flame, a gorge of broken light. See how the burning river boils in spate, Channeled by cliffs of insane jewelry, Painting a rosy roof on cloudy air-- And just about ten minutes after eight, Tossing a surf of color to the sky It bursts in cataracts upon Times Square! OF HER GLORIOUS MADNESS The city's mad: through her prodigious veins What errant, strange, eccentric humors thrill: Day, when her cataracts of sunlight spill-- Night, golden-panelled with her window panes; The toss of wind-blown skirts; and who can drill Forever his fierce heart with checking reins? Cruel and mad, my statisticians say-- Ah, but she raves in such a gallant way! Brave madness, built for beauty and the sun-- In such a town who can be sane? Not I. Of clashing colors all her moods are spun-- A scarlet anger and a golden cry. This frantic town where madcap mischiefs run They ask to take the veil, and be a nun! IN AN AUCTION ROOM (_Letter of John Keats to Fanny Browne, Anderson Galleries,_ _March 15, 1920._) To Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach. _How about this lot?_ said the auctioneer; _One hundred, may I say, just for a start?_ Between the plum-red curtains, drawn apart, A written sheet was held.... And strange to hear (Dealer, would I were steadfast as thou art) The cold quick bids. (_Against you in the rear!_) The crimson salon, in a glow more clear Burned bloodlike purple as the poet's heart. Song that outgrew the singer! Bitter Love That broke the proud hot heart it held in thrall; Poor script, where still those tragic passions move-- _Eight hundred bid: fair warning: the last call:_ The soul of Adonais, like a star.... _Sold for eight hundred dollars--Doctor R.!_ EPITAPH FOR A POET WHO WROTE NO POETRY "It is said that a poet has died young in the breast of the most stolid."--Robert Louis Stevenson. What was the service of this poet? He Who blinked the blinding dazzle-rays that run Where life profiles its edges to the sun, And still suspected much he could not see. Clay-stopped, yet in his taciturnity There lay the vein of glory, known to none; And moods of secret smiling, only won When peace and passion, time and sense, agree. Fighting the world he loved for chance to brood, Ignorant when to embrace, when to avoid His loves that held him in their vital clutch-- This was his service, his beatitude; This was the inward trouble he enjoyed Who knew so little, and who felt so much. SONNET BY A GEOMETER THE CIRCLE Few things are perfect: we bear Eden's scar; Yet faulty man was godlike in design That day when first, with stick and length of twine, He drew me on the sand. Then what could mar His joy in that obedient mystic line; And then, computing with a zeal divine, He called � 3-point-14159 And knew my lovely circuit 2 � r! A circle is a happy thing to be-- Think how the joyful perpendicular Erected at the kiss of tangency Must meet my central point, my avatar! They talk of 14 points: yet only 3 Determine every circle: =Q. E. D.= TO A VAUDEVILLE TERRIER SEEN ON A LEASH, IN THE PARK Three times a day--at two, at seven, at nine-- O terrier, you play your little part: Absurd in coat and skirt you push a cart, With inner anguish walk a tight-rope line. Up there, before the hot and dazzling shine You must be rigid servant of your art, Nor watch those fluffy cats--your doggish heart Might leap and then betray you with a whine! But sometimes, when you've faithfully rehearsed, Your trainer takes you walking in the park, Straining to sniff the grass, to chase a frog. The leash is slipped, and then your joy will burst-- Adorable it is to run and bark, To be--alas, how seldom--just a dog! [Illustration: _You must be rigid servant of your art!_] TO AN OLD FRIEND (For Lloyd Williams.) I like to dream of some established spot Where you and I, old friend, an evening through Under tobacco's fog, streaked gray and blue, Might reconsider laughters unforgot. Beside a hearth-glow, golden-clear and hot, I'd hear you tell the oddities men do. The clock would tick, and we would sit, we two-- Life holds such meetings for us, does it not? Happy are men when they have learned to prize The sure unvarnished virtue of their friends, The unchanged kindness of a well-known face: On old fidelities our world depends, And runs a simple course in honest wise, Not a mere taxicab shot wild through space! TO A BURLESQUE SOUBRETTE Upstage the great high-shafted beefy choir Squawked in 2000 watts of orange glare-- You came, and impudent and deuce-may-care Danced where the gutter flamed with footlight fire. Flung from the roof, spots red and yellow burned And followed you. The blatant brassy clang Of instruments drowned out the words you sang, But goldenly you capered, twirled and turned. Boyish and slender, child-limbed, quick and proud, A sprite of irresistible disdain, Fair as a jonquil in an April rain, You seemed too sweet an imp for that dull crowd.... And then, behind the scenes, I heard you say, "_O Gawd, I got a hellish cold to-day!_" [Illustration: _You came, and impudent and deuce-may-care_ _Danced where the gutter flamed with footlight fire._] THOUGHTS WHILE PACKING A TRUNK The sonnet is a trunk, and you must pack With care, to ship frail baggage far away; The octet is the trunk; sestet, the tray; Tight, but not overloaded, is the knack. First, at the bottom, heavy thoughts you stack, And in the chinks your adjectives you lay-- Your phrases, folded neatly as you may, Stowing a syllable in every crack. Then, in the tray, your daintier stuff is hid: The tender quatrain where your moral sings-- Be careful, though, lest as you close the lid You crush and crumple all these fragile things. Your couplet snaps the hasps and turns the key-- Ship to The Editor, marked C. O. D. STREETS I have seen streets where strange enchantment broods: Old ruddy houses where the morning shone In seemly quiet on their tranquil moods, Across the sills white curtains outward blown. Their marble steps were scoured as white as bone Where scrubbing housemaids toiled on wounded knee-- And yet, among all streets that I have known These placid byways give least peace to me. In such a house, where green light shining through (From some back garden) framed her silhouette I saw a girl, heard music blithely sung. She stood there laughing, in a dress of blue, And as I went on, slowly, there I met An old, old woman, who had once been young. TO THE ONLY BEGETTER I I have no hope to make you live in rhyme Or with your beauty to enrich the years-- Enough for me this now, this present time; The greater claim for greater sonneteers. But O how covetous I am of NOW-- Dear human minutes, marred by human pains-- I want to know your lips, your cheek, your brow, And all the miracles your heart contains, I wish to study all your changing face, Your eyes, divinely hurt with tenderness; I hope to win your dear unstinted grace For these blunt rhymes and what they would express. Then may you say, when others better prove:-- "_Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love._" TO THE ONLY BEGETTER II When all my trivial rhymes are blotted out, Vanished our days, so precious and so few, If some should wonder what we were about And what the little happenings we knew: I wish that they might know how, night by night, My pencil, heavy in the sleepy hours, Sought vainly for some gracious way to write How much this love is ours, and only ours. How many evenings, as you drowsed to sleep, I read to you by tawny candle-glow, And watched you down the valley dim and deep Where poppies and the April flowers grow. Then knelt beside your pillow with a prayer, And loved the breath of pansies in your hair. PEDOMETER My thoughts beat out in sonnets while I walk, And every evening on the homeward street I find the rhythm of my marching feet Throbs into verses (though the rhyme may balk). I think the sonneteers were walking men: The form is dour and rigid, like a clamp, But with the swing of legs the tramp, tramp, tramp Of syllables begins to thud, and then-- Lo! while you seek a rhyme for _hook_ or _crook_ Vanished your shabby coat, and you are kith To all great walk-and-singers--Meredith, And Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Keats, and Rupert Brooke! Free verse is poor for walking, but a sonnet-- O marvellous to stride and brood upon it! HOSTAGES "He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune."--BACON. Aye, Fortune, thou hast hostage of my best! I, that was once so heedless of thy frown, Have armed thee cap-à-pie to strike me down, Have given thee blades to hold against my breast. My virtue, that was once all self-possessed, Is parceled out in little hands, and brown Bright eyes, and in a sleeping baby's gown: To threaten these will put me to the test. Sure, since there are these pitiful poor chinks Upon the makeshift armor of my heart, For thee no honor lies in such a fight! And thou wouldst shame to vanquish one, me-thinks, Who came awake with such a painful start To hear the coughing of a child at night. [Illustration: _Hostages._] ARS DURA How many evenings, walking soberly Along our street all dappled with rich sun, I please myself with words, and happily Time rhymes to footfalls, planning how they run; And yet, when midnight comes, and paper lies Clean, white, receptive, all that one can ask, Alas for drowsy spirit, weary eyes And traitor hand that fails the well loved task! Who ever learned the sonnet's bitter craft But he had put away his sleep, his ease, The wine he loved, the men with whom he laughed To brood upon such thankless tricks as these? And yet, such joy does in that craft abide He greets the paper as the groom the bride! O. HENRY--APOTHECARY ("O. Henry" once worked in a drug-store in Greensboro, N.C.) Where once he measured camphor, glycerine, Quinine and potash, peppermint in bars, And all the oils and essences so keen That druggists keep in rows of stoppered jars-- Now, blender of strange drugs more volatile, The master pharmacist of joy and pain Dispenses sadness tinctured with a smile And laughter that dissolves in tears again. O brave apothecary! You who knew What dark and acid doses life prefers And yet with friendly face resolved to brew These sparkling potions for your customers-- In each prescription your Physician writ You poured your rich compassion and your wit! FOR THE CENTENARY OF KEATS'S SONNET (1816) "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer." I knew a scientist, an engineer, Student of tensile strengths and calculus, A man who loved a cantilever truss And always wore a pencil on his ear. My friend believed that poets all were queer, And literary folk ridiculous; But one night, when it chanced that three of us Were reading Keats aloud, he stopped to hear. Lo, a new planet swam into his ken! His eager mind reached for it and took hold. Ten years are by: I see him now and then, And at alumni dinners, if cajoled, He mumbles gravely, to the cheering men:-- _Much have I travelled in the realms of gold._ TWO O'CLOCK Night after night goes by: and clocks still chime And stars are changing patterns in the dark, And watches tick, and over-puissant Time Benumbs the eager brain. The dogs that bark, The trains that roar and rattle in the night, The very cats that prowl, all quiet find And leave the darkness empty, silent quite: Sleep comes to chloroform the fretting mind. So all things end: and what is left at last? Some scribbled sonnets tossed upon the floor, A memory of easy days gone past, A run-down watch, a pipe, some clothes we wore-- And in the darkened room I lean to know How warm her dreamless breath does pause and flow. THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER Ah very sweet! If news should come to you Some afternoon, while waiting for our eve, That the great Manager had made me leave To travel on some territory new; And that, whatever homeward winds there blew, I could not touch your hand again, nor heave The logs upon our hearth and bid you weave Some wistful tale before the flames that grew.... Then, when the sudden tears had ceased to blind Your pansied eyes, I wonder if you could Remember rightly, and forget aright? Remember just your lad, uncouthly good, Forgetting when he failed in spleen or spite? Could you remember him as always kind? THE WEDDED LOVER I read in our old journals of the days When our first love was April-sweet and new, How fair it blossomed and deep-rooted grew Despite the adverse time; and our amaze At moon and stars and beauty beyond praise That burgeoned all about us: gold and blue The heaven arched us in, and all we knew Was gentleness. We walked on happy ways. They said by now the path would be more steep, The sunsets paler and less mild the air; Rightly we heeded not: it was not true. We will not tell the secret--let it keep. I know not how I thought those days so fair These being so much fairer, spent with you. TO YOU, REMEMBERING THE PAST When we were parted, sweet, and darkness came, I used to strike a match, and hold the flame Before your picture and would breathless mark The answering glimmer of the tiny spark That brought to life the magic of your eyes, Their wistful tenderness, their glad surprise. Holding that mimic torch before your shrine I used to light your eyes and make them mine; Watch them like stars set in a lonely sky, Whisper my heart out, yearning for reply; Summon your lips from far across the sea Bidding them live a twilight hour with me. Then, when the match was shrivelled into gloom, Lo--you were with me in the darkened room. CHARLES AND MARY (December 27, 1834.) Lamb died just before I left town, and Mr. Ryle of the E. India House, one of his extors., notified it to me.... He said Miss L. was resigned and composed at the event, but it was from her malady, then in mild type, so that when she saw her brother dead, she observed on his beauty when asleep and apprehended nothing further. --Letter of John Rickman, 24 January, 1835. I hear their voices still: the stammering one Struggling with some absurdity of jest; Her quiet words that puzzle and protest Against the latest outrage of his fun. So wise, so simple--has she never guessed That through his laughter, love and terror run? For when her trouble came, and darkness pressed, He smiled, and fought her madness with a pun. Through all those years it was his task to keep Her gentle heart serenely mystified. If Fate's an artist, this should be his pride-- When, in that Christmas season, he lay dead, She innocently looked. "I always said That Charles is really handsome when asleep." TO A GRANDMOTHER At six o'clock in the evening, The time for lullabies, My son lay on my mother's lap With sleepy, sleepy eyes! (_O drowsy little manny boy,_ _With sleepy, sleepy eyes!_) I heard her sing, and rock him, And the creak of the swaying chair, And the old dear cadence of the words Came softly down the stair. And all the years had vanished, All folly, greed, and stain-- The old, old song, the creaking chair, The dearest arms again! (_O lucky little manny boy,_ _To feel those arms again!_) DIARISTS They catalogue their minutes: Now, now, now, Is Actual, amid the fugitive; Take ink and pen (they say) for that is how We snare this flying life, and make it live. So to their little pictures, and they sieve Their happinesses: fields turned by the plough, The afterglow that summer sunsets give, The razor concave of a great ship's bow. O gallant instinct, folly for men's mirth! Type cannot burn and sparkle on the page. No glittering ink can make this written word Shine clear enough to speak the noble rage And instancy of life. All sonnets blurred The sudden mood of truth that gave them birth. THE LAST SONNET Suppose one knew that never more might one Put pen to sonnet, well loved task; that now These fourteen lines were all he could allow To say his message, be forever done; How he would scan the word, the line, the rhyme, Intent to sum in dearly chosen phrase The windy trees, the beauty of his days, Life's pride and pathos in one verse sublime. How bitter then would be regret and pang For former rhymes he dallied to refine, For every verse that was not crystalline.... And if belike this last one feebly rang, Honor and pride would cast it to the floor Facing the judge with what was done before. THE SAVAGE Civilization causes me Alternate fits: disgust and glee. Buried in piles of glass and stone My private spirit moves alone, Where every day from eight to six I keep alive by hasty tricks. But I am simple in my soul; My mind is sullen to control. At dusk I smell the scent of earth, And I am dumb--too glad for mirth. I know the savors night can give, And then, and then, I live, I live! No man is wholly pure and free, For that is not his destiny, But though I bend, I will not break: And still be savage, for Truth's sake. God damns the easily convinced (Like Pilate, when his hands he rinsed). ST. PAUL'S AND WOOLWORTH I stood on the pavement Where I could admire Behind the brown chapel The cream and gold spire. Above, gilded Lightning Swam high on his ball-- I saw the noon shadow The church of St. Paul. And was there a meaning? (My fancy would run), Saint Paul in the shadow, Saint Frank in the sun! ADVICE TO A CITY O city, cage your poets! Hem them in And roof them over from the April sky-- Clatter them round with babble, ceaseless din, And drown their voices with your thunder cry. Forbid their free feet on the windy hills, And harness them to daily ruts of stone-- (In florists' windows lock the daffodils) And never, never let them be alone! For they are curst, said poets, curst and lewd, And freedom gives their tongues uncanny wit, And granted silence, thought and solitude They (_absit omen!_) might make Song of it. So cage them in, and stand about them thick, And keep them busy with their daily bread; And should their eyes seem strange, ah, then be quick To interrupt them ere the word be said.... For, if their hearts burn with sufficient rage, With wasted sunsets and frustrated youth, Some day they'll cry, on some disturbing page, The savage, sweet, unpalatable truth! THE TELEPHONE DIRECTORY No Malory of old romance, No Crusoe tale, it seems to me, Can equal in rich circumstance This telephone directory. No ballad of fair ladies' eyes, No legend of proud knights and dames, Can fill me with such bright surmise As this great book of numbered names! How many hearts and lives unknown, Rare damsels pining for a squire, Are waiting for the telephone To ring, and call them to the wire. Some wait to hear a loved voice say The news they will rejoice to know At Rome 2637 J Or Marathon 1450! And some, perhaps, are stung with fear And answer with reluctant tread: The message they expect to hear Means life or death or daily bread. A million hearts here wait our call, All naked to our distant speech-- I wish that I could ring them all And have some welcome news for each! GREEN ESCAPE At three o'clock in the afternoon On a hot September day, I began to dream of a highland stream And a frostbit russet tree; Of the swashing dip of a clipper ship (White canvas wet with spray) And the swirling green and milk-foam clean Along her canted lee. I heard the quick staccato click Of the typist's pounding keys, And I had to brood of a wind more rude Than that by a motor fanned-- And I lay inert in a flannel shirt To watch the rhyming seas Deploy and fall in a silver sprawl On a beach of sun-blanched sand. There is no desk shall tame my lust For hills and windy skies; My secret hope of the sea's blue slope No clerkly task shall dull; And though I print no echoed hint Of adventures I devise, My eyes still pine for the comely line Of an outbound vessel's hull. When I elope with an autumn day And make my green escape, I'll leave my pen to tamer men Who have more docile souls; For forest aisles and office files Have a very different shape, And it's hard to woo the ocean blue In a row of pigeon holes! [Illustration: _My eyes still pine for the comely line_ _Of an outbound vessel's hull._] VESPER SONG FOR COMMUTERS (_Instead of "Marathon" the commuter may substitute_ _the name of his favorite suburb_) The stars are kind to Marathon, How low, how close, they lean! They jostle one another And do their best to please-- Indeed, they are so neighborly That in the twilight green One reaches out to pick them Behind the poplar trees. The stars are kind to Marathon, And one particular Bright planet (which is Vesper) Most lucid and serene, Is waiting by the railway bridge, The Good Commuter's Star, The Star of Wise Men coming home On time, at 6:15! THE ICE WAGON I'd like to split the sky that roofs us down, Break through the crystal lid of upper air, And tap the cool still reservoirs of heaven. I'd empty all those unseen lakes of freshness Down some vast funnel, through our stifled streets. I'd like to pump away the grit, the dust, Raw dazzle of the sun on garbage piles, The droning troops of flies, sharp bitter smells, And gush that bright sweet flood of unused air Down every alley where the children gasp. And then I'd take a fleet of ice wagons-- Big yellow creaking carts, drawn by wet horses,-- And drive them rumbling through the blazing slums. In every wagon would be blocks of coldness, Pale, gleaming cubes of ice, all green and silver, With inner veins and patterns, white and frosty; Great lumps of chill would drip and steam and shimmer, And spark like rainbows in their little fractures. And where my wagons stood there would be puddles, A wetness and a sparkle and a coolness. My friends and I would chop and splinter open The blocks of ice. Bare feet would soon come pattering, And some would wrap it up in Sunday papers, And some would stagger home with it in baskets, And some would be too gay for aught but sucking, Licking, crunching those fast melting pebbles, Gulping as they slipped down unexpected-- Laughing to perceive that secret numbness Amid their small hot persons! At every stop would be at least one urchin Would take a piece to cool the sweating horses And hold it up against their silky noses-- And they would start, and then decide they liked it. Down all the sun-cursed byways of the town Our wagons would be trailed by grimy tots, Their ragged shirts half off them with excitement! Dabbling toes and fingers in our leakage, A lucky few up sitting with the driver, All clambering and stretching grey-pink palms. And by the time the wagons were all empty Our arms and shoulders would be lame with chopping, Our backs and thighs pain-shot, our fingers frozen. But how we would recall those eager faces, Red thirsty tongues with ice-chips sliding on them, The pinched white cheeks, and their pathetic gladness. Then we would know that arms were made for aching-- I wish to God that I could go tomorrow! AT A MOVIE THEATRE How well he spoke who coined the phrase _The picture palace!_ Aye, in sooth A palace, where men's weary days Are crowned with kingliness of youth. Strange palace! Crowded, airless, dim, Where toes are trod and strained eyes smart, We watch a wand of brightness limn The old heroics of the heart. Romance again hath us in thrall And Love is sweet and always true, And in the darkness of the hall Hands clasp--as they were meant to do. Remote from peevish joys and ills Our souls, _pro tem_, are purged and free: We see the sun on western hills, The crumbling tumult of the sea. We are the blond that maidens crave, Well balanced at a dozen banks; By sleight of hand we haste to save A brown-eyed life, nor stay for thanks! Alas, perhaps our instinct feels Life is not all it might have been, So we applaud fantastic reels Of shadow, cast upon a screen! SONNETS IN A LODGING HOUSE I Each morn she crackles upward, tread by tread, All apprehensive of some hideous sight: Perhaps the Fourth Floor Back, who reads in bed, Forgot his gas and let it burn all night-- The Sweet Young Thing who has the middle room, She much suspects: for once some ink was spilled, And then the plumber, in an hour of gloom, Found all the bathroom pipes with tea-leaves filled. No League of Nations scheme can make her gay-- She knows the rank duplicity of man; Some folks expect clean towels every day, They'll get away with murder if they can! She tacks a card (alas, few roomers mind it) _Please leave the tub as you would wish to find it!_ II Men lodgers are the best, the Mrs. said: They don't use my gas jets to fry sardines, They don't leave red-hot irons on the spread, They're out all morning, when a body cleans. A man ain't so secretive, never cares What kind of private papers he leaves lay, So I can get a line on his affairs And dope out whether he is likely pay. But women! Say, they surely get my bug! They stop their keyholes up with chewing gum, Spill grease, and hide the damage with the rug, And fry marshmallows when their callers come. They always are behindhand with their rents-- Take my advice and let your rooms to gents! [Illustration: _A man ain't so secretive, never cares_ _What kind of private papers he leaves lay_--] THE MAN WITH THE HOE (PRESS) About these roaring cylinders Where leaping words and paper mate, A sudden glory moves and stirs-- An inky cataract in spate! What voice for falsehood or for truth, What hearts attentive to be stirred-- How dimly understood, in sooth, The power of the printed word! These flashing webs and cogs of steel Have shaken empires, routed kings, Yet never turn too fast to feel The tragedies of humble things. O words, be strict in honesty, Be just and simple and serene; O rhymes, sing true, or you will be Unworthy of this great machine! DO YOU EVER FEEL LIKE GOD? Across the court there rises the back wall Of the Magna Carta Apartments. The other evening the people in the apartment opposite Had forgotten to draw their curtains. I could see them dining: the well-blanched cloth, The silver and glass, the crystal water jug, The meat and vegetables; and their clean pink hands Outstretched in busy gesture. It was pleasant to watch them, they were so human; So gay, innocent, unconscious of scrutiny. They were four: an elderly couple, A young man, and a girl--with lovely shoulders Mellow in the glow of the lamp. They were sitting over coffee, and I could see their hands talking. At last the older two left the room. The boy and girl looked at each other.... Like a flash, they leaned and kissed. Good old human race that keeps on multiplying! A little later I went down the street to the movies, And there I saw all four, laughing and joking together. And as I watched them I felt like God-- Benevolent, all-knowing, and tender. RAPID TRANSIT (To Stephen Vincent Benét.) Climbing is easy and swift on Parnassus! Knocking my pipe out, I entered a bookshop; There found a book of verse by a young poet. Comrades at once, how I saw his mind glowing! Saw in his soul its magnificent rioting-- Then I ran with him on hills that were windy, Basked and laughed with him on sun-dazzled beaches, Glutted myself on his green and blue twilights, Watched him disposing his planets in patterns, Tumbling his colors and toys all before him. I questioned life with him, his pulses my pulses; Doubted his doubts, too, and grieved for his anguishes. Salted long kinship and knew him from boy-hood-- Pulled out my own sun and stars from my knapsack, Trying my trinkets with those of his finding-- _And as I left the bookshop_ _My pipe was still warm in my hand._ CAUGHT IN THE UNDERTOW Colin, worshipping some frail, By self-deprecation sways her: Calls himself unworthy male, Hardly even fit to praise her. But this tactic insincere In the upshot greatly grieves him When he finds the lovely dear Quite implicitly believes him. TO HIS BROWN-EYED MISTRESS _Who Rallied Him for Praising Blue Eyes in His Verses_ If sometimes, in a random phrase (For variation in my ditty), I chance blue eyes, or gray, to praise And seem to intimate them pretty-- It is because I do not dare With too unmixed reiteration To sing the browner eyes and hair That are my true intoxication. Know, then, that I consider brown For ladies' eyes, the only color; And deem all other orbs in town (Compared to yours), opaquer, duller. I pray, perpend, my dearest dear; While blue-eyed maids the praise were drinking, How insubstantial was their cheer-- It was of yours that I was thinking! PEACE What is this Peace That statesmen sign? How I have sought To make it mine. Where groaning cities Clang and glow I hunted, hunted, Peace to know. And still I saw Where I passed by Discarded hearts,-- Heard children cry. By willowed waters Brimmed with rain I thought to capture Peace again. I sat me down My Peace to hoard, But Beauty pricked me With a sword. For in the stillness Something stirred, And I was crippled For a word. There is no peace A man can find; The anguish sits His heart behind. The eyes he loves, The perfect breast, Too exquisite To give him rest. This is his curse Since brain began. His penalty For being man. May, 1919 SONG, IN DEPRECATION OF PULCHRITUDE Beauty (so the poets say), Thou art joy and solace great; Long ago, and far away Thou art safe to contemplate, Beauty. But when now and here, Visible and close to touch, All too perilously near, Thou tormentest us too much! In a picture, in a song, In a novel's conjured scenes, Beauty, that's where you belong, Where perspective intervenes. But, my dear, in rosy fact Your appeal I have to shirk-- You disturb me, and distract My attention from my work! MOUNTED POLICE Watchful, grave, he sits astride his horse, Draped with his rubber poncho, in the rain; He speaks the pungent lingo of "The Force," And those who try to bluff him, try in vain. Inured to every mood of fool and crank, Shrewdly and sternly all the crowd he cons: The rain drips down his horse's shining flank, A figure nobly fit for sculptor's bronze. O knight commander of our city stress, Little you know how picturesque you are! We hear you cry to drivers who transgress: "_Say, that's a helva place to park your car!_" [Illustration: _Mounted Police._] TO HIS MISTRESS, DEPLORING THAT HE IS NOT AN ELIZABETHAN GALAXY Why did not Fate to me bequeath an Utterance Elizabethan? It would have been delight to me If _natus ante_ 1603. My stuff would not be soon forgotten If I could write like Harry Wotton. I wish that I could wield the pen Like William Drummond of Hawthornden. I would not fear the ticking clock If I were Browne of Tavistock. For blithe conceits I would not worry If I were Raleigh, or the Earl of Surrey. I wish (I hope I am not silly?) That I could juggle words like Lyly. I envy many a lyric champion, I. e., viz., e. g., Thomas Campion. I creak my rhymes up like a derrick, I ne'er will be a Robin Herrick. My wits are dull as an old Barlow-- I wish that I were Christopher Marlowe. In short, I'd like to be Philip Sidney, Or some one else of that same kidney. For if I were, my lady's looks And all my lyric special pleading Would be in all the future books, And called, at college, _Required Reading_. THE INTRUDER As I sat, to sift my dreaming To the meet and needed word, Came a merry Interruption With insistence to be heard. Smiling stood a maid beside me, Half alluring and half shy; Soft the white hint of her bosom-- Escapade was in her eye. "I must not be so invaded," (In an anger then I cried)-- "Can't you see that I am busy? Tempting creature, stay outside! "Pearly rascal, I am writing: I am now composing verse-- Fie on antic invitation: Wanton, vanish--fly--disperse! "Baggage, in my godlike moment What have I to do with thee?" And she laughed as she departed-- "I am Poetry," said she. TIT FOR TAT I often pass a gracious tree Whose name I can't identify, But still I bow, in courtesy It waves a bough, in kind reply. I do not know your name, O tree (Are you a hemlock or a pine?) But why should that embarrass me? Quite probably you don't know mine. [Illustration: _Courtesy_] SONG FOR A LITTLE HOUSE I'm glad our house is a little house, Not too tall nor too wide: I'm glad the hovering butterflies Feel free to come inside. Our little house is a friendly house. It is not shy or vain; It gossips with the talking trees, And makes friends with the rain. And quick leaves cast a shimmer of green Against our whited walls, And in the phlox, the courteous bees Are paying duty calls. THE PLUMPUPPETS When little heads weary have gone to their bed, When all the good nights and the prayers have been said, Of all the good fairies that send bairns to rest The little Plumpuppets are those I love best. _If your pillow is lumpy, or hot, thin and flat,_ _The little Plumpuppets know just what they're at;_ _They plump up the pillow, all soft, cool and fat--_ _The little Plumpuppets plump-up it!_ The little Plumpuppets are fairies of beds: They have nothing to do but to watch sleepy heads; They turn down the sheets and they tuck you in tight, And they dance on your pillow to wish you good night! No matter what troubles have bothered the day, Though your doll broke her arm or the pup ran away; Though your handies are black with the ink that was spilt-- Plumpuppets are waiting in blanket and quilt. _If your pillow is lumpy, or hot, thin and flat, The little Plumpuppets know just what they're at; They plump up the pillow, all soft, cool and fat-- The little Plumpuppets plump-up it!_ [Illustration: _The Plumpuppets_] DANDY DANDELION When Dandy Dandelion wakes And combs his yellow hair, The ant his cup of dewdrop takes And sets his bed to air; The worm hides in a quilt of dirt To keep the thrush away, The beetle dons his pansy shirt-- They know that it is day! And caterpillars haste to milk The cowslips in the grass; The spider, in his web of silk, Looks out for flies that pass. These humble people leap from bed, They know the night is done: When Dandy spreads his golden head They think he is the sun! Dear Dandy truly does not smell As sweet as some bouquets; No florist gathers him to sell, He withers in a vase; Yet in the grass he's emperor, And lord of high renown; And grateful little folk adore His bright and shining crown. THE HIGH CHAIR Grimly the parent matches wit and will: Now, Weesy, three more spoons! See Tom the cat, _He'd_ drink it. You want to be big and fat Like Daddy, don't you? (Careful now, don't spill!) Yes, Daddy'll dance, and blow smoke through his nose, But you must finish first. Come, drink it up-- (_Splash_!) Oh, you _must_ keep both hands on the cup. All gone? Now for the prunes.... And so it goes. This is the battlefield that parents know, Where one small splinter of old Adam's rib Withstands an entire household offering spoons. No use to gnash your teeth. For she will go Radiant to bed, glossy from crown to bib With milk and cereal and a surf of prunes. LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT Not long ago I fell in love, But unreturned is my affection-- The girl that I'm enamored of Pays little heed in my direction. I thought I knew her fairly well: In fact, I'd had my arm around her; And so it's hard to have to tell How unresponsive I have found her. For, though she is not frankly rude, Her manners quite the wrong way rub me: It seems to me ingratitude To let me love her--and then snub me! Though I'm considerate and fond, She shows no gladness when she spies me-- She gazes off somewhere beyond And doesn't even recognize me. Her eyes, so candid, calm and blue, Seem asking if I can support her In the style appropriate to A lady like her father's daughter. Well, if I can't then no one can-- And let me add that I intend to: She'll never know another man So fit for her to be a friend to. Not love me, eh? She better had! By Jove, I'll make her love me one day; For, don't you see, I am her Dad, And she'll be three weeks old on Sunday! [Illustration: _ ... It's hard to have to tell_ _How unresponsive I have found her._] AUTUMN COLORS The chestnut trees turned yellow, The oak like sherry browned, The fir, the stubborn fellow, Stayed green the whole year round. But O the bonny maple How richly he does shine! He glows against the sunset Like ruddy old port wine. THE LAST CRICKET When the bulb of the moon with white fire fills And dead leaves crackle under the feet, When men roll kegs to the cider mills And chestnuts roast on every street; When the night sky glows like a hollow shell Of lustered emerald and pearl, The kilted cricket knows too well His doom. His tiny bagpipes skirl. Quavering under the polished stars In stubble, thicket, and frosty copse The cricket blows a few choked bars, And puts away his pipe--and stops. TO LOUISE (A Christmas Baby, Now One Year Old.) Undaunted by a world of grief You came upon perplexing days, And cynics doubt their disbelief To see the sky-stains in your gaze. Your sudden and inclusive smile And your emphatic tears, admit That you must find this life worth while, So eagerly you clutch at it! Your face of triumph says, brave mite, That life is full of love and luck-- Of blankets to kick off at night, And two soft rose-pink thumbs to suck. O loveliest of pioneers Upon this trail of long surprise, May all the stages of the years Show such enchantment in your eyes! By parents' patient buttonings, And endless safety pins, you'll grow To ribbons, garters, hooks and things, Up to the Ultimate Trousseau-- But never, in your dainty prime, Will you be more adored by me Than when you see, this Great First Time, Lit candles on a Christmas Tree! December, 1919. [Illustration: _... When you see, this Great First Time,_ _Lit candles on a Christmas Tree!_] CHRISTMAS EVE Our hearts to-night are open wide, The grudge, the grief, are laid aside: The path and porch are swept of snow, The doors unlatched; the hearthstones glow-- No visitor can be denied. All tender human homes must hide Some wistfulness beneath their pride: Compassionate and humble grow Our hearts to-night. Let empty chair and cup abide! Who knows? Some well-remembered stride May come as once so long ago-- Then welcome, be it friend or foe! There is no anger can divide Our hearts to-night. EPITAPH ON THE PROOFREADER OF THE ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA Majestic tomes, you are the tomb Of Aristides Edward Bloom, Who labored, from the world aloof, In reading every page of proof. From A to And, from Aus to Bis Enthusiasm still was his; From Cal to Cha, from Cha to Con His soft-lead pencil still went on. But reaching volume Fra to Gib, He knew at length that he was sib To Satan; and he sold his soul To reach the section Pay to Pol. Then Pol to Ree, and Shu to Sub He staggered on, and sought a pub. And just completing Vet to Zym, The motor hearse came round for him. He perished, obstinately brave: They laid the Index on his grave. THE MUSIC BOX At six--long ere the wintry dawn-- There sounded through the silent hall To where I lay, with blankets drawn Above my ears, a plaintive call. The Urchin, in the eagerness Of three years old, could not refrain; Awake, he straightway yearned to dress And frolic with his clockwork train. I heard him with a sullen shock. His sister, by her usual plan, Had piped us aft at 3 o'clock-- I vowed to quench the little man. I leaned above him, somewhat stern, And spoke, I fear, with emphasis-- Ah, how much better, parents learn, To seal one's censure with a kiss! Again the house was dark and still, Again I lay in slumber's snare, When down the hall I heard a trill, A tiny, tinkling, tuneful air-- His music-box! His best-loved toy, His crib companion every night; And now he turned to it for joy While waiting for the lagging light. How clear, and how absurdly sad Those tingling pricks of sound unrolled; They chirped and quavered, as the lad His lonely little heart consoled. _Columbia, the Ocean's Gem_-- (Its only tune) shrilled sweet and faint. He cranked the chimes, admiring them In vigil gay, without complaint. The treble music piped and stirred, The leaping air that was his bliss; And, as I most contritely heard, I thanked the all-unconscious Swiss! The needled jets of melody Rang slowlier and died away-- The Urchin slept; and it was I Who lay and waited for the day. [Illustration: _The Music Box_] TO LUATH (_Robert Burns's Dog_) _"Darling Jean" was Jean Armour, a "comely country lass" whom Burns met at a penny wedding at Mauchline. They chanced to be dancing in the same quadrille when the poet's dog sprang to his master and almost upset some of the dancers. Burns remarked that he wished he could get any of the lasses to like him as well as his dog did. Some days afterward, Jean, seeing him pass as she was bleaching clothes on the village green, called to him and asked him if he had yet got any of the lasses to like him as well as his dog did. That was the beginning of an acquaintance that coloured all of Burns's life._ --NATHAN HASKELL DOLE. Well, Luath, man, when you came prancing All glee to see your Robin dancing, His partner's muslin gown mischancing You leaped for joy! And little guessed what sweet romancing You caused, my boy! With happy bark, that moment jolly, You frisked and frolicked, faithful collie; His other dog, old melancholy, Was put to flight-- But what a tale of grief and folly You wagged that night! Ah, Luath, tyke, your bonny master Whose lyric pulse beat ever faster Each time he saw a lass and passed her His breast went bang! In many a woful heart's disaster He felt the pang! Poor Robin's heart, forever burning, Forever roving, ranting, yearning, From you that heart might have been learning To be less fickle! Might have been spared so many a turning And grievous prickle! Your collie heart held but one notion-- When Robbie jigged in sprightly motion You ran to show your own devotion And gambolled too, And so that tempest on love's ocean Was due to you! Well, it is ower late for preaching And hearts are aye too hot for teaching! When Robin with his eye beseeching By greenside came, Jeanie--poor lass--forgot her bleaching And yours the blame! THOUGHTS ON REACHING LAND I had a friend whose path was pain-- Oppressed by all the cares of earth Life gave him little chance to drain His secret cisterns of rich mirth. His work was hasty, harassed, vexed: His dreams were laid aside, perforce, Until--in this world, or the next.... (His trade? Newspaper man, of course!) What funded wealth of tenderness, What ingots of the heart and mind He must uneasily repress Beneath the rasping daily grind. But now and then, and with my aid, For fear his soul be wholly lost, His devoir to the grape he paid To call soul back, at any cost! Then, liberate from discipline, Undrugged by caution and control, Through all his veins came flooding in The virtued passion of his soul! His spirit bared, and felt no shame: With holy light his eyes would shine-- See Truth her acolyte reclaim After the second glass of wine! The self that life had trodden hard Aspired, was generous and free: The glowing heart that care had charred Grew flame, as it was meant to be. A pox upon the canting lot Who call the glass the Devil's shape-- A greater pox where'er some sot Defiles the honor of the grape. Then look with reverence on wine That kindles human brains uncouth-- There must be something part divine In aught that brings us nearer Truth! So--continently skull your fumes (Here let our little sermon end) And bless this X-ray that illumes The secret bosom of your friend! A SYMPOSIUM There was a Russian novelist Whose name was Solugubrious, The reading circles took him up, (They'd heard he was salubrious.) The women's club of Cripple Creek Soon held a kind of seminar To learn just what his message was-- You know what bookworms women are. The tea went round. After five cups (You should have seen them bury tea) Dear Mrs. Brown said what she liked Was the great man's _sincerity_. Sweet Mrs. Jones (how free she was From all besetting vanity) Declared that she loved even more His broad and deep _humanity_. Good Mrs. Smith, though she disclaimed All thought of being critical, Protested that she found his work A wee bit _analytical_. But Mrs. Black, the President, Of wisdom found the pinnacle: She said, "Dear me, I always think Those Russians are so _cynical_." Well, poor old Solugubrious, It's true that they had heard of him; But neither Brown, Jones, Smith, nor Black Had ever read a word of him! [Illustration: _Solugubrious_] TO A TELEPHONE OPERATOR WHO HAS A BAD COLD How hoarse and husky in my ear Your usually cheerful chirrup: You have an awful cold, my dear-- Try aspirin or bronchial syrup. When I put in a call to-day Compassion stirred my humane blood red To hear you faintly, sadly, say The number: _Burray Hill dide hudred!_ I felt (I say) quick sympathy To hear you croak in the receiver-- Will you be sorry too for me A month hence, when I have hay fever? NURSERY RHYMES FOR THE TENDER-HEARTED (Dedicated to Don Marquis.) I Scuttle, scuttle, little roach-- How you run when I approach: Up above the pantry shelf. Hastening to secrete yourself. Most adventurous of vermin, How I wish I could determine How you spend your hours of ease, Perhaps reclining on the cheese. Cook has gone, and all is dark-- Then the kitchen is your park: In the garbage heap that she leaves Do you browse among the tea leaves? How delightful to suspect All the places you have trekked: Does your long antenna whisk its Gentle tip across the biscuits? Do you linger, little soul, Drowsing in our sugar bowl? Or, abandonment most utter, Shake a shimmy on the butter? Do you chant your simple tunes Swimming in the baby's prunes? Then, when dawn comes, do you slink Homeward to the kitchen sink? Timid roach, why be so shy? We are brothers, thou and I. In the midnight, like yourself, I explore the pantry shelf! [Illustration: _In the midnight, like yourself,_ _I explore the pantry shelf!_] NURSERY RHYMES FOR THE TENDER-HEARTED II Rockabye, insect, lie low in thy den, Father's a cockroach, mother's a hen. And Betty, the maid, doesn't clean up the sink, So you shall have plenty to eat and to drink. Hushabye, insect, behind the mince pies: If the cook sees you her anger will rise; She'll scatter poison, as bitter as gall, Death to poor cockroach, hen, baby and all. NURSERY RHYMES FOR THE TENDER-HEARTED III There was a gay henroach, and what do you think, She lived in a cranny behind the old sink-- Eggshells and grease were the chief of her diet; She went for a stroll when the kitchen was quiet. She walked in the pantry and sampled the bread, But when she came back her old husband was dead: Long had he lived, for his legs they were fast, But the kitchen maid caught him and squashed him at last. NURSERY RHYMES FOR THE TENDER-HEARTED IV I knew a black beetle, who lived down a drain, And friendly he was though his manners were plain; When I took a bath he would come up the pipe, And together we'd wash and together we'd wipe. Though mother would sometimes protest with a sneer That my choice of a tub-mate was wanton and queer, A nicer companion I never have seen: He bathed every night, so he must have been clean. Whenever he heard the tap splash in the tub He'd dash up the drain-pipe and wait for a scrub, And often, so fond of ablution was he, I'd find him there floating and waiting for me. But nurse has done something that seems a great shame: She saw him there, waiting, prepared for a game: She turned on the hot and she scalded him sore And he'll never come bathing with me any more. THE TWINS Con was a thorn to brother Pro-- On Pro we often sicked him: Whatever Pro would claim to know Old Con would contradict him! [Illustration: _The Twins_] A PRINTER'S MADRIGAL (_Extremely technical_) I'd like to have you meet my wife! I simply cannot keep from hinting I've never seen, in all my life, So fine a specimen of printing. Her type is not some =bold-face= font, Set solid. Nay! And I will say out That no typographer could want To see a better balanced layout. A nice proportion of white space There is for brown eyes to look large in, And not a feature in her face Comes anywhere too near the margin. Locked up with all her sweet display Her form will never pi. She's like a Corrected proof marked _stet, O. K._-- And yet she loves me, fatface =Pica!= She has a fine one-column head, And like a comma curves each eyebrow-- Her forehead has an extra lead Which makes her seem a trifle highbrow. Her nose, _italicized brevier_, Too lovely to describe by penpoint; Her mouth is set in _pearl_: her ear And chin are comely Caslon ten-point. Her cheeks (a pink parenthesis) Make my pulse beat 14-em measure, And such typography as this Would make =De Vinne= scream with pleasure. And so, of all typefounder chaps Her father's best, in my opinion; She is my NONPAREIL (IN CAPS) And I (in lower case) her _minion_. I hope you will not stand aloof Because my metaphors are shoppy; Of her devotion I've a proof-- I tell the urchin, _Follow Copy_! THE POET ON THE HEARTH When fire is kindled on the dogs, But still the stubborn oak delays, Small embers laid above the logs Will draw them into sudden blaze. Just so the minor poet's part: (A greater he need not desire) The charcoals of his burning heart May light some Master into fire! O PRAISE ME NOT THE COUNTRY O praise me not the country-- The meadows green and cool, The solemn glow of sunsets, the hidden silver pool! The city for my craving, Her lordship and her slaving, The hot stones of her paving For me, a city fool! O praise me not the leisure Of gardened country seats, The fountains on the terrace against the summer heats-- The city for my yearning, My spending and my earning. Her winding ways for learning, Sing hey! the city streets! O praise me not the country, Her sycamores and bees, I had my youthful plenty of sour apple trees! The city for my wooing, My dreaming and my doing; Her beauty for pursuing, Her deathless mysteries. O praise me not the country, Her evenings full of stars, Her yachts upon the water with the wind among their spars-- The city for my wonder, Her glory and her blunder, And O the haunting thunder Of the Elevated cars! [Illustration: Seascape] A STONE IN ST. PAUL'S GRAVEYARD (New York) _Here Lyes the Body of_ _Iohn Jones the Son of_ _Iohn Jones Who Departed_ _This Life December the 13_ _1768 Aged 4 Years & 4 Months & 2 Days_ Here, where enormous shadows creep, He casts his childish shadow too: How small he seems, beneath the steep Great walls; his tender days, so few, Lovingly numbered, every one-- John Jones, John Jones's little son. O sunlight on the Lightning's wings! Yet though our buildings skyward climb Our heartbreaks are but little things In the equality of Time. The sum of life, for all men's stones: He was John Jones, son of John Jones. THE MADONNA OF THE CURB On the curb of a city pavement, By the ash and garbage cans, In the stench and rolling thunder Of motor trucks and vans, There sits my little lady, With brave but troubled eyes, And in her arms a baby That cries and cries and cries. She cannot be more than seven; But years go fast in the slums, And hard on the pains of winter The pitiless summer comes. The wail of sickly children She knows; she understands The pangs of puny bodies, The clutch of small hot hands. In the deadly blaze of August, That turns men faint and mad, She quiets the peevish urchins By telling a dream she had-- A heaven with marble counters, And ice, and a singing fan; And a God in white, so friendly, Just like the drug-store man. Her ragged dress is dearer Than the perfect robe of a queen! Poor little lass, who knows not The blessing of being clean. And when you are giving millions To Belgian, Pole and Serb, Remember my pitiful lady-- Madonna of the Curb! [Illustration: _The wail of sickly children_ _She knows; she understands_ _The pangs of puny bodies,_ _The clutch of small hot hands._] THE ISLAND _A song for England?_ _Nay, what is a song for England?_ Our hearts go by green-cliffed Kinsale Among the gulls' white wings, Or where, on Kentish forelands pale The lighthouse beacon swings: Our hearts go up the Mersey's tide, Come in on Suffolk foam-- The blood that will not be denied Moves fast, and calls us home! Our hearts now walk a secret round On many a Cotswold hill, For we are mixed of island ground, The island draws us still: Our hearts may pace a windy turn Where Sussex downs are high, Or watch the lights of London burn, A bonfire in the sky! What is the virtue of that soil That flings her strength so wide? Her ancient courage, patient toil, Her stubborn wordless pride? A little land, yet loved therein As any land may be, Rejoicing in her discipline, The salt stress of the sea. Our hearts shall walk a Sherwood track, Our lips taste English rain, We thrill to see the Union Jack Across some deep-sea lane; Though all the world be of rich cost And marvellous with worth, Yet if that island ground were lost How empty were the earth! _A song for England?_ _Lo, every word we speak's a song for England._ SUNDAY NIGHT Two grave brown eyes, severely bent Upon a memorandum book-- A sparkling face, on which are blent A hopeful and a pensive look; A pencil, purse, and book of checks With stubs for varying amounts-- Elaine, the shrewdest of her sex, Is busy balancing accounts. Sedately, in the big armchair, She, all engrossed, the audit scans-- Her pencil hovers here and there The while she calculates and plans; What's this? A faintly pensive frown Upon her forehead gathers now-- Ah, does the butcher--heartless clown-- Beget that shadow on her brow? A murrain on the tradesman churl Who caused this fair accountant's gloom! Just then--a baby's cry--my girl Arose and swiftly left the room. Then in her purse by stratagem I thrust some bills of small amounts-- She'll think she had forgotten them, And smile again at her accounts! [Illustration: _Ah, does the butcher--heartless clown--_ _Beget that shadow on her brow?_] ENGLAND, JULY 1913 To Rupert Brooke O England, England ... that July How placidly the days went by! Two years ago (how long it seems) In that dear England of my dreams I loved and smoked and laughed amain And rode to Cambridge in the rain. A careless godlike life was there! To spin the roads with _Shotover_, To dream while punting on the Cam, To lie, and never give a damn For anything but comradeship And books to read and ale to sip, And shandygaff at every inn When _The Gorilla_ rode to Lynn! O world of wheel and pipe and oar In those old days before the War. O poignant echoes of that time! I hear the Oxford towers chime, The throbbing of those mellow bells And all the sweet old English smells-- The Deben water, quick with salt, The Woodbridge brew-house and the malt; The Suffolk villages, serene With lads at cricket on the green, And Wytham strawberries, so ripe, And _Murray's Mixture_ in my pipe! In those dear days, in those dear days, All pleasant lay the country ways; The echoes of our stalwart mirth Went echoing wide around the earth And in an endless bliss of sun We lay and watched the river run. And you by Cam and I by Isis Were happy with our own devices. Ah, can we ever know again Such friends as were those chosen men, Such men to drink, to bike, to smoke with, To worship with, or lie and joke with? Never again, my lads, we'll see The life we led at twenty-three. Never again, perhaps, shall I Go flashing bravely down the High To see, in that transcendent hour, The sunset glow on Magdalen Tower. Dear Rupert Brooke, your words recall Those endless afternoons, and all Your Cambridge--which I loved as one Who was her grandson, not her son. O ripples where the river slacks In greening eddies round the "backs"; Where men have dreamed such gallant things Under the old stone bridge at _King's_. Or leaned to feed the silver swans By the tennis meads at _John's_. O Granta's water, cold and fresh, Kissing the warm and eager flesh Under the willow's breathing stir-- The bathing pool at _Grantchester_.... What words can tell, what words can praise The burly savor of those days! Dear singing lad, those days are dead And gone for aye your golden head; And many other well-loved men Will never dine in Hall again. I too have lived remembered hours In Cambridge; heard the summer showers Make music on old _Heffer's_ pane While I was reading Pepys or Taine. Through _Trumpington_ and _Grantchester_ I used to roll on _Shotover_; At _Hauxton Bridge_ my lamp would light And sleep in _Royston_ for the night. Or to _Five Miles from Anywhere_ I used to scull; and sit and swear While wasps attacked my bread and jam Those summer evenings on the Cam. (O crispy English cottage-loaves Baked in ovens, not in stoves! O white unsalted English butter O satisfaction none can utter!)... To think that while those joys I knew In Cambridge, I did not know you. July, 1915. CASUALTY A well-sharp'd pencil leads one on to write: When guns are cocked, the shot is guaranteed; The primed occasion puts the deed in sight: Who steals a book who knows not how to read? Seeing a pulpit, who can silence keep? A maid, who would not dream her ta'en to wife? Men looking down from some sheer dizzy steep Have (quite impromptu) leapt, and ended life. A GRUB STREET RECESSIONAL O noble gracious English tongue Whose fibers we so sadly twist, For caitiff measures he has sung Have pardon on the journalist. For mumbled meter, leaden pun, For slipshod rhyme, and lazy word, Have pity on this graceless one-- Thy mercy on Thy servant, Lord! The metaphors and tropes depart, Our little clippings fade and bleach: There is no virtue and no art Save in straightforward Saxon speech. Yet not in ignorance or spite, Nor with Thy noble past forgot We sinned: indeed we had to write To keep a fire beneath the pot. Then grant that in the coming time, With inky hand and polished sleeve, In lucid prose or honest rhyme Some worthy task we may achieve-- Some pinnacled and marbled phrase, Some lyric, breaking like the sea, That we may learn, not hoping praise, The gift of Thy simplicity. PRELIMINARY INSTRUCTIONS FOR A FUNERAL SERVICE: BEING A POEM IN FOUR STANZAS Say this poor fool misfeatured all his days, And could not mend his ways; And say he trod Most heavily upon the corns of God. But also say that in his clabbered brain There was the essential pain-- The idiot's vow To tell his troubled Truth, no matter how. Unhappy fool, you say, with pitiful air: Who was he, then, and where? Ah, you divine He lives in your heart, as he lives in mine. [Illustration: To bed] 
3650	----	SELECTIONS FROM AMERICAN POETRY By Various Authors With Special Reference to Poe, Longfellow, Lowell and Whittier Edited by Margaret Sprague Carhart CONTENTS: Introduction ANNE BRADSTREET Contemplation MICHAEL WIGGLESWORTH The Day of Doom PHILLIP FRENEAU The Wild Honeysuckle To a Honey Bee The Indian Burying Ground Eutaw Springs FRANCIS HOPKINSON The Battle of the Kegs JOSEPH HOPKINSON Hail Columbia ANONYMOUS The Ballad of Nathan Hale A Fable TIMOTHY DWIGHT Love to the Church SAMUEL WOODWORTH The Old Oaken Bucket WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT Thanatopsis The Yellow Violet To a Waterfowl Green River The West Wind "I Broke the Spell that Held Me Long" A Forest Hymn The Death of the Flowers The Gladness of Nature To the Fringed Gentian Song of Marion's Men The Crowded Street The Snow Shower Robert of Lincoln The Poet Abraham Lincoln FRANCIS SCOTT KEY The Star Spangled Banner JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE The American Flag The Culprit Fay FITZ-GREENE HALLECK Marco Bozzaris On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake JOHN HOWARD PAYNE Home Sweet Home EDGAR ALLAN POE To Helen Israfel Lenore The Coliseum The Haunted Palace To One in Paradise Eulalie A Song The Raven To Helen Annabel Lee The Bells Eldorado HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW Hymn to the Night A Psalm of Life The Skeleton in Armor The Wreck of the Hesperus The Village Blacksmith It is not Always May Excelsior The Rainy Day The Arrow and the Song The Day is Done Walter Von Vogelweide The Builders Santa Filomena The Discoverer of the North Cape Sandalphon Tales of a Wayside Inn The Landlord's Tale The Sicilian's Tale The Theologian's Tale JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER Proem The Frost Spirit Songs of Labor Dedication Songs of Labor The Lumberman Barclay of Ury All's Well Raphael Seed-Time and Harvest The Prophecy of Samuel Sewall Skipper Ireson's Ride The Double-headed Snake of Newbury Maud Muller Burns The Hero The Eternal Goodness The Pipes at Lucknow Cobbler Keezar's Vision The Mayflowers RALPH WALDO EMERSON Goodbye Each and All The Problem The Rhodora The Humble-Bee The Snow-Storm Fable Forbearance Concord Hymn Boston Hymn The Titmouse JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL Hakon's Lay Flowers Impartiality My Love The Fountain The Shepherd of King Admetus Ode recited at the Harvard Commemoration Prelude to the Vision of Sir Launfal Biglow Papers What Mr Robinson Thinks The Courtin' Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line An Indian Summer Reverie A Fable for Critics (selection) OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Old Ironsides The Last Leaf My Aunt The Chambered Nautilus Contentment The Deacon's Masterpiece THOMAS BUCHANAN READ Storm on the St. Bernard Drifting WALT WHITMAN O Captain! My Captain! Pioneers! O Pioneers! NOTES SELECTIONS OF AMERICAN POETRY INTRODUCTION If we define poetry as the heart of man expressed in beautiful language, we shall not say that we have no national poetry. True, America has produced no Shakespeare and no Milton, but we have an inheritance in all English literature; and many poets in America have followed in the footsteps of their literary British forefathers. Puritan life was severe. It was warfare, and manual labor of a most exhausting type, and loneliness, and devotion to a strict sense of duty. It was a life in which pleasure was given the least place and duty the greatest. Our Puritan ancestors thought music and poetry dangerous, if not actually sinful, because they made men think of this world rather than of heaven. When Anne Bradstreet wrote our first known American poems, she was expressing English thought; "The tenth muse" was not animated by the life around her, but was living in a dream of the land she had left behind; her poems are faint echoes of the poetry of England. After time had identified her with life in the new world, she wrote "Contemplations," in which her English nightingales are changed to crickets and her English gilli-flowers to American blackberry vines. The truly representative poetry of colonial times is Michael Wigglesworth's "Day of Doom". This is the real heart of the Puritan, his conscience, in imperfect rhyme. It fulfills the first part of our definition, but shows by its lack of beautiful style that both elements are necessary to produce real poetry. Philip Freneau was the first American who sought to express his life in poetry. The test of beauty of language again excludes from real poetry some of his expressions and leaves us a few beautiful lyrics, such as "The Wild Honeysuckle," in which the poet sings his love of American nature. With them American poetry may be said to begin. The fast historical event of national importance was the American Revolution. Amid the bitter years of want, of suffering, and of war; few men tried to write anything beautiful. Life was harsh and stirring and this note was echoed in all the literature. As a result we have narrative and political poetry, such as "The Battle of the Kegs" and "A Fable," dealing almost entirely with events and aiming to arouse military ardor. In "The Ballad of Nathan Hale," the musical expression of bravery, pride, and sympathy raises the poem so far above the rhymes of their period that it will long endure as the most memorable poetic expression of the Revolutionary period. Poetry was still a thing of the moment, an avocation, not dignified by receiving the best of a man. With William Cullen Bryant came a change. He told our nation that in the new world as well as in the old some men should live for the beautiful. Everything in nature spoke to him in terms of human life. Other poets saw the relation between their own lives and the life of the flowers and the birds, but Bryant constantly expressed this relationship. The concluding stanza of "To a Waterfowl" is the most perfect example of this characteristic, but it underlies also the whole thought of his youthful poem "Thanatopsis" (A View of Death). If we could all read the lives of our gentians and bobolinks as he did, there would be more true poetry in America. Modern thinkers urge us to step outside of ourselves into the lives of others and by our imagination to share their emotions; this is no new ambition in America; since Bryant in "The Crowded Street" analyzes the life in the faces he sees. Until the early part of the nineteenth century American poetry dealt mainly with the facts of history and the description of nature. A new element of fancy is prominent in Joseph Rodman Drake's "The Culprit Fay." It dances through a long narrative with the delicacy of the fay himself. Edgar Allan Poe brought into our poetry somber sentiment and musical expression. Puritan poetry was somber, but it was almost devoid of sentiment. Poe loved sad beauty and meditated on the sad things in life. Many of his poems lament the loss of some fair one. "To Helen," "Annabel Lee" "Lenore," and "To One In Paradise" have the theme, while in "The Raven" the poet is seeking solace for the loss of Lenore. "Eulalie--A Song" rises, on the other hand to intense happiness. With Poe the sound by which his idea was expressed was as important as the thought itself. He knew how to make the sound suit the thought, as in "The Raven" and "The Bells." One who understands no English can grasp the meaning of the different sections from the mere sound, so clearly distinguishable are the clashing of the brass and the tolling of the iron bells. If we return to our definition of poetry as an expression of the heart of a man, we shall find the explanation of these peculiarities: Poe was a man of moods and possessed the ability to express these moods in appropriate sounds. The contrast between the emotion of Poe and the calm spirit of the man who followed him is very great. In Henry Wadsworth Longfellow American poetry reached high-water mark. Lafcadio Hearn in his "Interpretations of Literature" says: "Really I believe that it is a very good test of any Englishman's ability to feel poetry, simply to ask him, 'Did you like Longfellow when you were a boy?' If he eats 'No,' then it is no use to talk to him on the subject of poetry at all, however much he might be able to tell you about quantities and metres." No American has in equal degree won the name of "household poet." If this term is correctly understood, it sums up his merits more succinctly than can any other title. Longfellow dealt largely with men and women and the emotions common to us all. Hiawatha conquering the deer and bison, and hunting in despair for food where only snow and ice abound; Evangeline faithful to her father and her lover, and relieving suffering in the rude hospitals of a new world; John Alden fighting the battle between love and duty; Robert of Sicily learning the lesson of humility; Sir Federigo offering his last possession to the woman he loved; Paul Revere serving his country in time of need; the monk proving that only a sense of duty done can bring happiness: all these and more express the emotions which we know are true in our own lives. In his longer narrative poems he makes the legends of Puritan life real to us; he takes English folk-lore and makes us see Othere talking to Arthur, and the Viking stealing his bride. His short poems are even better known than his longer narratives. In them he expressed his gentle, sincere love of the young, the suffering, and the sorrowful. In the Sonnets he showed; that deep appreciation of European literature which made noteworthy his teaching at Harvard and his translations. He believed that he was assigned a definite task in the world which he described as follows in his last poem: "As comes the smile to the lips, The foam to the surge; So come to the Poet his songs, All hitherward blown From the misty realm, that belongs To the vast unknown. His, and not his, are the lays He sings; and their fame Is his, and not his; and the praise And the pride of a name. For voices pursue him by day And haunt him by night, And he listens and needs must obey, When the Angel says: 'Write!' John Greenleaf Whittier seems to suffer by coming in such close proximity to Longfellow. Genuine he was, but his spirit was less buoyant than Longfellow's and he touches our hearts less. Most of his early poems were devoted to a current political issue. They aimed to win converts to the cause of anti-slavery. Such poems always suffer in time in comparison with the song of a man who sings because "the heart is so full that a drop overfills it." Whittier's later poems belong more to this class and some of them speak to-day to our emotions as well as to our intellects. "The Hero" moves us with a desire to serve mankind, and the stirring tone of "Barbara Frietchie" arouses our patriotism by its picture of the same type of bravery. In similar vein is "Barclay of Ury," which must have touched deeply the heart of the Quaker poet. "The Pipes of Lucknow" is dramatic in its intense grasp of a climactic hour and loses none of its force in the expression. We can actually hear the skirl of the bagpipes. Whittier knew the artiste of the world and talked to us about Raphael and Burns with clear-sighted, affectionate interest. His poems show varied characteristics; the love of the sterner aspects of nature, modified by the appreciation of the humble flower; the conscience of the Puritan, tinged with sympathy for the sorrowful; the steadfastness of the Quaker, stirred by the fire of the patriot. The poetry of Ralph Waldo Emerson is marked by serious contemplation rather than by warmth of emotional expression. In Longfellow the appeal is constantly to a heart which is not disassociated from a brain; in Emerson the appeal is often to the intellect alone. We recognize the force of the lesson in "The Titmouse," even if it leaves us less devoted citizens than does "The Hero" and less capable women than does "Evangeline." He reaches his highest excellence when he makes us feel as well as understand a lesson, as in "The Concord Hymn" and "Forbearance." If we could all write on the tablets of our hearts that single stanza, forbearance would be a real factor in life. And it is to this poet whom we call unemotional that we owe this inspiring quatrain: "So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can!" James Russell Lowell was animated by a well-defined purpose which he described in the following lines: "It may be glorious to write Thoughts that make glad the two or three High souls like those far stars that come in sight Once in a century. But better far it is to speak One simple word which, now and then Shall waken their free nature in the weak And friendless sons of men. To write some earnest verse or line Which, seeking not the praise of art, Shall make a clearer faith and manhood shine In the untutored heart." His very accomplishments made it difficult for him to reach this aim, since his poetry does not move "the untutored heart" so readily as does that of Longfellow or Whittier. It is, on the whole, too deeply burdened with learning and too individual in expression to fulfil his highest desire. Of his early poems the most generally known is probably "The Vision of Sir Launfal," in which a strong moral purpose is combined with lines of beautiful nature description: "And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days. Two works by which he will be permanently remembered show a deeper and more effective Lowell. "The Biglow Papers" are the most successful of all the American poems which attempt to improve conditions by means of humor. Although they refer in the main to the situation at the time of the Mexican War, they deal with such universal political traits that they may be applied to almost any age. They are written in a Yankee dialect which, it is asserted, was never spoken, but which enhances the humor, as in "What Mr. Robinson Thinks." Lowell's tribute to Lincoln occurs in the Ode which he wrote to commemorate the Harvard students who enlisted in the Civil War. After dwelling on the search for truth which should be the aim of every college student, he turns to the delineation of Lincoln's character in a eulogy of great beauty. Clear in analysis, far-sighted in judgment, and loving in sentiment, he expresses that opinion of Lincoln which has become a part of the web of American thought. His is no hurried judgment, but the calm statement of opinion which is to-day accepted by the world: "They all are gone, and, standing like a tower, Our children shall behold his fame, The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading, praise, not blame, Now birth of our new soil, the first American." With Oliver Wendell Holmes comes the last of this brief American list of honor. No other American has so combined delicacy with the New England humor. We should be poorer by many a smile without "My Aunt" and "The Deacon's Masterpiece." But this is not his entire gift. "The Chambered Nautilus" strikes the chord of noble sentiment sounded in the last stanza of "Thanatopsis" and it will continue to sing in our hearts "As the swift seasons roll." There is in his poems the smile and the sigh of the well-loved stanza, "And if I should live to be The last leaf upon the tree In the Spring. Let them smile; as I do now; As the old forsaken bough Where I cling." And is this all? Around these few names does all the fragrance of American poetry hover? In the hurry, prosperity, and luxury of modern life is the care if the flower of poetry lost? Surely not. The last half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth have brought many beautiful flowers of poetry and hints of more perfect blossoms. Lanier has sung of the life of the south he loved; Whitman and Miller have stirred us with enthusiasm for the progress of the nation; Field and Riley have made us laugh and cry in sympathy; Aldrich, Sill, Van Dyke, Burroughs, and Thoreau have shared with us their hoard of beauty. Among the present generation may there appear many men and women whose devotion to the delicate flower shall be repaid by the gratitude of posterity! ANNE BRADSTREET CONTEMPLATIONS Some time now past in the Autumnal Tide, When Phoebus wanted but one hour to bed, The trees all richly clad, yet void of pride Were gilded o'er by his rich golden head. Their leaves and fruits, seem'd painted, but was true Of green, of red, of yellow, mixed hue, Rapt were my senses at this delectable view. I wist not what to wish, yet sure, thought I, If so much excellence abide below, How excellent is He that dwells on high! Whose power and beauty by his works we know; Sure he is goodness, wisdom, glory, light, That hath this underworld so richly dight: More Heaven than Earth was here, no winter and no night. Then on a stately oak I cast mine eye, Whose ruffling top the clouds seem'd to aspire; How long since thou wast in thine infancy? Thy strength, and stature, more thy years admire; Hath hundred winters past since thou wast born, Or thousand since thou breakest thy shell of horn? If so, all these as naught Eternity doth scorn. I heard the merry grasshopper then sing, The black-clad cricket bear a second part, They kept one tune, and played on the same string, Seeming to glory in their little art. Shall creatures abject thus their voices raise? And in their kind resound their Master's praise: Whilst I, as mute, can warble forth no higher lays. When I behold the heavens as in their prime, And then the earth (though old) still clad in green, The stones and trees, insensible of time, Nor age nor wrinkle on their front are seen; If winter come, and greenness then do fade, A spring returns, and they more youthful made; But Man grows old, lies down, remains where once he's laid. MICHAEL WIGGLESWORTH THE DAY OF DOOM SOUNDING OF THE LAST TRUMP Still was the night, Serene & Bright, when all Men sleeping lay; Calm was the season, & carnal reason thought so 'twould last for ay. Soul, take thine ease, let sorrow cease, much good thou hast in store: This was their Song, their Cups among, the Evening before. Wallowing in all kind of sin, vile wretches lay secure: The best of men had scarcely then their Lamps kept in good ure. Virgins unwise, who through disguise amongst the best were number'd, Had closed their eyes; yea, and the wise through sloth and frailty slumber'd. For at midnight brake forth a Light, which turn'd the night to day, And speedily a hideous cry did all the world dismay. Sinners awake, their hearts do ake, trembling their loynes surprizeth; Amaz'd with fear, by what they hear, each one of them ariseth. They rush from Beds with giddy heads, and to their windows run, Viewing this light, which shines more bright than doth the Noon-day Sun. Straightway appears (they see 't with tears) the Son of God most dread; Who with his Train comes on amain to Judge both Quick and Dead. Before his face the Heav'ns gave place, and Skies are rent asunder, With mighty voice, and hideous noise, more terrible than Thunder. His brightness damps heav'ns glorious lamps and makes them hang their heads, As if afraid and quite dismay'd, they quit their wonted steads. No heart so bold, but now grows cold and almost dead with fear: No eye so dry, but now can cry, and pour out many a tear. Earth's Potentates and pow'rful States, Captains and Men of Might Are quite abasht, their courage dasht at this most dreadful sight. Mean men lament, great men do rent their Robes, and tear their hair: They do not spare their flesh to tear through horrible despair. All Kindreds wail: all hearts do fail: horror the world doth fill With weeping eyes, and loud out-cries, yet knows not how to kill. Some hide themselves in Caves and Delves, in places under ground: Some rashly leap into the Deep, to scape by being drown'd: Some to the Rocks (O senseless blocks!) and woody Mountains run, That there they might this fearful sight, and dreaded Presence shun. In vain do they to Mountains say, fall on us and us hide From Judges ire, more hot than fire, for who may it abide? No hiding place can from his Face sinners at all conceal, Whose flaming Eye hid things doth 'spy and darkest things reveal. The Judge draws nigh, exalted high, upon a lofty Throne, Amidst a throng of Angels strong, lo, Israel's Holy One! The excellence of whose presence and awful Majesty, Amazeth Nature, and every Creature, doth more than terrify. The Mountains smoak, the Hills are shook, the Earth is rent and torn, As if she should be clear dissolv'd, or from the Center born. The Sea doth roar, forsakes the shore, and shrinks away for fear; The wild beasts flee into the Sea, so soon as he draws near. Before his Throne a Trump is blown, Proclaiming the day of Doom: Forthwith he cries, Ye dead arise, and unto Judgment come. No sooner said, but 'tis obey'd; Sepulchres opened are: Dead bodies all rise at his call, and 's mighty power declare. His winged Hosts flie through all Coasts, together gathering Both good and bad, both quick and dead, and all to Judgment bring. Out of their holes those creeping Moles, that hid themselves for fear, By force they take, and quickly make before the Judge appear. Thus every one before the Throne of Christ the Judge is brought, Both righteous and impious that good or ill hath wrought. A separation, and diff'ring station by Christ appointed is (To sinners sad) 'twixt good and bad, 'twixt Heirs of woe and bliss. PHILIP FRENEAU THE WILD HONEYSUCKLE Fair flower, that dost so comely grow, Hid in this silent, dull retreat, Untouched thy homed blossoms blow, Unseen thy little branches greet: No roving foot shall crush thee here, No busy hand provoke a tear. By Nature's self in white arrayed, She bade thee shun the vulgar eye, And planted here the guardian shade, And sent soft waters murmuring by; Thus quietly thy summer goes, Thy days declining to repose. Smit with those charms, that must decay, I grieve to see your future doom; They died--nor were those flowers more gay, The flowers that did in Eden bloom; Unpitying frosts, and Autumn's power, Shall leave no vestige of this flower. From morning suns and evening dews At first thy little being came; If nothing once, you nothing lose, For when you die you are the same; The space between is but an hour, The frail duration of a flower. TO A HONEY BEE Thou, born to sip the lake or spring, Or quaff the waters of the stream, Why hither come on vagrant wing? Does Bacchus tempting seem,-- Did he for you this glass prepare? Will I admit you to a share? Did storms harass or foes perplex, Did wasps or king-birds bring dismay-- Did wars distress, or labors vex, Or did you miss your way? A better seat you could not take Than on the margin of this lake. Welcome!--I hail you to my glass All welcome, here, you find; Here, let the cloud of trouble pass, Here, be all care resigned. This fluid never fails to please, And drown the griefs of men or bees. What forced you here we cannot know, And you will scarcely tell, But cheery we would have you go And bid a glad farewell: On lighter wings we bid you fly, Your dart will now all foes defy. Yet take not, oh! too deep a drink, And in this ocean die; Here bigger bees than you might sink, Even bees full six feet high. Like Pharaoh, then, you would be said To perish in a sea of red. Do as you please, your will is mine; Enjoy it without fear, And your grave will be this glass of wine, Your epitaph--a tear-- Go, take your seat in Charon's boat; We'll tell the hive, you died afloat. THE INDIAN BURYING-GROUND In spite of all the learned have said, I still my old opinion keep; The posture that we give the dead Points out the soul's eternal sleep. Not so the ancients of these lands;-- The Indian, when from life released, Again is seated with his friends, And shares again the joyous feast. His imaged birds, and painted bowl, And venison, for a journey dressed, Bespeak the nature of the soul, Activity, that wants no rest. His bow for action ready bent, And arrows, with a head of stone, Can only mean that life is spent, And not the old ideas gone. Thou, stranger, that shalt come this way, No fraud upon the dead commit,-- Observe the swelling turf, and say, They do not die, but here they sit. Here still a lofty rock remains, On which the curious eye may trace (Now wasted half by wearing rains) The fancies of a ruder race. Here still an aged elm aspires, Beneath whose far projecting shade (And which the shepherd still admires) children of the forest played. There oft a restless Indian queen (Pale Shebah with her braided hair), And many a barbarous form is seen To chide the man that lingers there. By midnight moons, o'er moistening dews, In habit for the chase arrayed, The hunter still the deer pursues, The hunter and the deer--a shade! And long shall timorous Fancy see The painted chief, and pointed spear, And Reason's self shall bow the knee To shadows and delusions here. EUTAW SPRINGS At Eutaw Springs the valiant died; Their limbs with dust are covered o'er; Weep on, ye springs, your tearful tide; How many heroes are no more! If in this wreck of ruin, they Can yet be thought to claim a tear, O smite thy gentle breast, and say The friends of freedom slumber here! Thou, who shalt trace this bloody plain, If goodness rules thy generous breast, Sigh for the wasted rural reign; Sigh for the shepherds sunk to rest! Stranger, their humble groves adorn; You too may fall, and ask a tear: 'Tis not the beauty of the morn That proves the evening shall be clear. They saw their injured country's woe, The flaming town, the wasted field; Then rushed to meet the insulting foe; They took the spear--but left the shield. Led by thy conquering standards, Greene, The Britons they compelled to fly: None distant viewed the fatal plain, None grieved in such a cause to die-- But, like the Parthian, famed of old, Who, flying, still their arrows threw, These routed Britons, full as bold, Retreated, and retreating slew. Now rest in peace, our patriot band; Though far from nature's limits thrown, We trust they find a happier land, A bright Phoebus of their own. FRANCIS HOPKINSON THE BATTLE OF THE KEGS Gallants attend and hear a friend Trill forth harmonious ditty, Strange things I'll tell which late befell In Philadelphia city. 'Twas early day, as poets say, Just when the sun was rising, A soldier stood on a log of wood, And saw a thing surprising. As in amaze he stood to gaze, The truth can't be denied, sir, He spied a score of kegs or more Come floating down the tide, sir. A sailor too in jerkin blue, This strange appearance viewing, First damned his eyes, in great surprise, Then said, "Some mischief's brewing. "These kegs, I'm told, the rebels hold, Packed up like pickled herring; And they're come down to attack the town, In this new way of ferrying." The soldier flew, the sailor too, And scared almost to death, sir, Wore out their shoes, to spread the news, And ran till out of breath, sir. Now up and down throughout the town, Most frantic scenes were acted; And some ran here, and others there, Like men almost distracted. Some fire cried, which some denied, But said the earth had quaked; And girls and boys, with hideous noise, Ran through the streets half naked. Sir William he, snug as a flea, Lay all this time a snoring, Nor dreamed of harm as he lay warm, In bed with Mrs. Loring. Now in a fright, he starts upright, Awaked by such a clatter; He rubs both eyes, and boldly cries, "For God's sake, what's the matter?" At his bedside he then espied, Sir Erskine at command, sir, Upon one foot he had one boot, And th' other in his hand, sir. "Arise, arise," Sir Erskine cries, "The rebels--more's the pity, Without a boat are all afloat, And ranged before the city. "The motley crew, in vessels new, With Satan for their guide, sir, Packed up in bags, or wooden kegs, Come driving down the tide, sir. "Therefore prepare for bloody war; These kegs must all be routed, Or surely we despised shall be, And British courage doubted." The royal band now ready stand All ranged in dread array, sir, With stomach' stout to see it out, And make a bloody day, sir. The cannons roar from shore to shore. The small arms make a rattle; Since wars began I'm sure no man E'er saw so strange a battle. The rebel dales, the rebel vales, With rebel trees surrounded, The distant woods, the hills and floods, With rebel echoes sounded. The fish below swam to and fro, Attacked from every quarter; Why sure, thought they, the devil's to pay, 'Mongst folks above the water. The kegs, 'tis said, though strongly made, Of rebel staves and hoops, sir, Could not oppose their powerful foes, The conquering British troops, sir. From morn to night these men of might Displayed amazing courage; And when the sun was fairly down, Retired to sup their porridge. A hundred men with each a pen, Or more upon my word, sir, It is most true would be too few, Their valor to record, sir. Such feats did they perform that day, Against these wicked kegs, sir, That years to come: if they get home, They'll make their boasts and brags, sir. JOSEPH HOPKINSON HAIL COLUMBIA Hail, Columbia! happy land! Hail, ye heroes! heaven-born band! Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause, Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause, And when the storm of war was gone, Enjoyed the peace your valor won. Let independence be our boast, Ever mindful what it cost; Ever grateful for the prize, Let its altar reach the skies. Firm, united, let us be, Rallying round our Liberty; As a band of brothers joined, Peace and safety we shall find. Immortal patriots! rise once more: Defend your rights, defend your shore: Let no rude foe, with impious hand, Let no rude foe, with impious hand, Invade the shrine where sacred lies Of toil and blood the well-earned prize. While offering peace sincere and just, In Heaven we place a manly trust, That truth and justice will prevail, And every scheme of bondage fail. Firm, united, let us be, Rallying round our Liberty; As a band of brothers joined, Peace and safety we shall find. Sound, sound, the trump of Fame! Let WASHINGTON'S great name Ring through the world with loud applause, Ring through the world with loud applause; Let every clime to Freedom dear, Listen with a joyful ear. With equal skill, and godlike power, He governed in the fearful hour Of horrid war; or guides, with ease, The happier times of honest peace. Firm, united, let us be, Rallying round our Liberty; As a band of brothers joined, Peace and safety we shall find. Behold the chief who now commands, Once more to serve his country, stands-- The rock on which the storm will beat, The rock on which the storm will beat; But, armed in virtue firm and true, His hopes are fixed on Heaven and you. When hope was sinking in dismay, And glooms obscured Columbia's day, His steady mind, from changes free. Resolved on death or liberty. Firm, united, let us be, Rallying round our Liberty; As a band of brothers joined, Peace and safety we shall find. ANONYMOUS THE BALLAD OF NATHAN HALE The breezes went steadily through the tall pines, A-saying "oh! hu-ush!" a-saying "oh! hu-ush!" As stilly stole by a bold legion of horse, For Hale in the bush, for Hale in the bush. "Keep still!" said the thrush as she nestled her young, In a nest by the road; in a nest by the road. "For the tyrants are near, and with them appear What bodes us no good, what bodes us no good." The brave captain heard it, and thought of his home In a cot by the brook; in a cot by the brook. With mother and sister and memories dear, He so gayly forsook; he so gayly forsook. Cooling shades of the night were coming apace, The tattoo had beat; the tattoo had beat. The noble one sprang from his dark lurking-place, To make his retreat; to make his retreat. He warily trod on the dry rustling leaves. As he passed through the wood; as he passed through the wood; And silently gained his rude launch on the shore, As she played with the flood; as she played with the flood. The guards of the camp, on that dark, dreary night, Had a murderous will; had a murderous will. They took him and bore him afar from the shore, To a hut on the hill; to a hut on the hill. No mother was there, nor a friend who could cheer, In that little stone cell; in that little stone cell. But he trusted in love, from his Father above. In his heart, all was well; in his heart, all was well. An ominous owl, with his solemn bass voice, Sat moaning hard by; sat moaning hard by: "The tyrant's proud minions most gladly rejoice, For he must soon die; for he must soon die." The brave fellow told them, no thing he restrained,-- The cruel general! the cruel general!-- His errand from camp, of the ends to be gained, And said that was all; and said that was all. They took him and bound him and bore him away, Down the hill's grassy side; down the hill's grassy side. 'Twas there the base hirelings, in royal array, His cause did deride; his cause did deride. Five minutes were given, short moments, no more, For him to repent; for him to repent. He prayed for his mother, he asked not another, To Heaven he went; to Heaven he went. The faith of a martyr the tragedy showed, As he trod the last stage; as he trod the last stage. And Britons will shudder at gallant Hales blood, As his words do presage, as his words do presage. "Thou pale king of terrors, thou life's gloomy foe, Go frighten the slave; go frighten the slave; Tell tyrants, to you their allegiance they owe. No fears for the brave; no fears for the brave." A FABLE Rejoice, Americans, rejoice! Praise ye the Lord with heart and voice! The treaty's signed with faithful France, And now, like Frenchmen, sing and dance! But when your joy gives way to reason, And friendly hints are not deemed treason, Let me, as well as I am able, Present your Congress with a fable. Tired out with happiness, the frogs Sedition croaked through all their bogs; And thus to Jove the restless race, Made out their melancholy case. "Famed, as we are, for faith and prayer, We merit sure peculiar care; But can we think great good was meant us, When logs for Governors were sent us? "Which numbers crushed they fell upon, And caused great fear,--till one by one, As courage came, we boldly faced 'em, Then leaped upon 'em, and disgraced 'em! "Great Jove," they croaked, "no longer fool us, None but ourselves are fit to rule us; We are too large, too free a nation, To be encumbered with taxation! "We pray for peace, but wish confusion, Then right or wrong, a--revolution! Our hearts can never bend to obey; Therefore no king--and more we'll pray." Jove smiled, and to their fate resigned The restless, thankless, rebel kind; Left to themselves, they went to work, First signed a treaty with king Stork. He swore that they, with his alliance, To all the world might bid defiance; Of lawful rule there was an end on't, And frogs were henceforth--independent. At which the croakers, one and all! Proclaimed a feast, and festival! But joy to-day brings grief to-morrow; Their feasting o'er, now enter sorrow! The Stork grew hungry, longed for fish; The monarch could not have his wish; In rage he to the marshes flies, And makes a meal of his allies. Then grew so fond of well-fed frogs, He made a larder of the bogs! Say, Yankees, don't you feel compunction, At your unnatural rash conjunction? Can love for you in him take root, Who's Catholic, and absolute? I'll tell these croakers how he'll treat 'em; Frenchmen, like storks, love frogs--to eat 'em. TIMOTHY DWIGHT LOVE TO THE CHURCH I love thy kingdom, Lord, The house of thine abode, The church our blest Redeemer saved With his own precious blood. I love thy church, O God! Her walls before thee stand, Dear as the apple of thine eye, And graven on thy hand. If e'er to bless thy sons My voice or hands deny, These hands let useful skill forsake, This voice in silence die. For her my tears shall fall, For her my prayers ascend; To her my cares and toils be given Till toils and cares shall end. Beyond my highest joy I prize her heavenly ways, Her sweet communion, solemn vows, Her hymns of love and praise. Jesus, thou friend divine, Our Saviour and our King, Thy hand from every snare and foe Shall great deliverance bring. Sure as thy truth shall last, To Zion shall be given The brightest glories earth can yield, And brighter bliss of heaven. SAMUEL WOODWORTH THE OLD OAKEN BUCKET How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood, When fond recollection presents them to view! The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled wild-wood, And every loved spot which my infancy knew! The wide-spreading pond, and the mill that stood by it, The bridge, and the rock where the cataract fell, The cot of my father, the dairy-house nigh it, And e'en the rude bucket that hung in the well-- The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, The moss-covered bucket which hung in the well. That moss-covered vessel I hailed as a treasure, For often at noon, when returned from the field, I found it the source of an exquisite pleasure, The purest and sweetest that nature can yield. How ardent I seized it, with hands that were glowing, And quick to the white-pebbled bottom it fell; Then soon, with the emblem of truth overflowing, And dripping with coolness, it rose from the well The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, The moss-covered bucket arose from the well. How sweet from the green mossy brim to receive it, As poised on the curb it inclined to my lips! Not a full blushing goblet could tempt me to leave it, The brightest that beauty or revelry sips. And now, far removed from the loved habitation, The tear of regret will intrusively swell, As fancy reverts to my father's plantation, And sighs for the bucket that hangs in the well The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, The moss-covered bucket that hangs in the well! WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT THANATOPSIS To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language; for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts Of the last bitter hour come like a blight Over thy spirit, and sad images Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart;-- Go forth, under the open sky, and list To Nature's teachings, while from all around-- Earth and her waters, and the depths of air-- Comes a still voice:-- Yet a few days, and thee The all-beholding sun shall see no more In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground Where thy pale form was laid with many tears, Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, And, lost each human trace, surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go To mix forever with the elements, To be a brother to the insensible rock And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould. Yet not to thine eternal resting place Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings, The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good, Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,--the vales Stretching in pensive quietness between; The venerable woods--rivers that move In majesty, and the complaining brooks That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,-- Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, Are shining on the sad abodes of death Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread The globe are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in its bosom.--Take the wings Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness, Or lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound, Save his own dashing--yet the dead are there; And millions in those solitudes, since first The flight of years began, have laid them down In their last sleep--the dead reign there alone. So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw In silence from the living, and no friend Take note of thy departure? All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one as before will chase His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come And make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glides away, the sons of men-- The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron and maid, The speechless babe, and the grayheaded man-- Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, By those who in their turn shall follow them. So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, which moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. THE YELLOW VIOLET When beechen buds begin to swell, And woods the blue-bird's warble know, The yellow violet's modest bell Peeps from the last year's leaves below. Ere russet fields their green resume, Sweet flower, I love, in forest bare, To meet thee, when thy faint perfume Alone is in the virgin air. Of all her train, the hands of Spring First plant thee in the watery mould, And I have seen thee blossoming Beside the snow-bank's edges cold. Thy parent sun, who bade thee view Pale skies, and chilling moisture sip, Has bathed thee in his own bright hue, And streaked with jet thy glowing lip. Yet slight thy form, and low thy seat, And earthward bent thy gentle eye, Unapt the passing view to meet, When loftier flowers are flaunting nigh. Oft, in the sunless April day, Thy early smile has stayed my walk; But midst the gorgeous blooms of May, I passed thee on thy humble stalk. So they, who climb to wealth, forget The friends in darker fortunes tried. I copied them--but I regret That I should ape the ways of pride. And when again the genial hour Awakes the painted tribes of light, I'll not o'erlook the modest flower That made the woods of April bright. TO A WATERFOWL Whither, midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way? Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along. Seek'st thou the plashy brink Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, Or where the rocking billows rise and sink On the chafed ocean-side? There is a Power whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast-- The desert and illimitable air-- Lone wandering, but not lost. All day thy wings have fanned, At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, Though the dark night is near. And soon that toil shall end; Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, in my heart Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given, And shall not soon depart. He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright. GREEN RIVER When breezes are soft and skies are fair, I steal an hour from study and care, And hie me away to the woodland scene, Where wanders the stream with waters of green, As if the bright fringe of herbs on its brink Had given their stain to the waves they drink; And they, whose meadows it murmurs through, Have named the stream from its own fair hue. Yet pure its waters--its shallows are bright With colored pebbles and sparkles of light, And clear the depths where its eddies play, And dimples deepen and whirl away, And the plane-tree's speckled arms o'ershoot The swifter current that mines its root, Through whose shifting leaves, as you walk the hill, The quivering glimmer of sun and rill With a sudden flash on the eye is thrown, Like the ray that streams from the diamond-stone. Oh, loveliest there the spring days come, With blossoms, and birds, and wild-bees' hum; The flowers of summer are fairest there, And freshest the breath of the summer air; And sweetest the golden autumn day In silence and sunshine glides away. Yet, fair as thou art, thou shunnest to glide, Beautiful stream! by the village side; But windest away from haunts of men, To quiet valley and shaded glen; And forest, and meadow, and slope of hill, Around thee, are lonely, lovely, and still, Lonely--save when, by thy rippling tides, From thicket to thicket the angler glides; Or the simpler comes, with basket and book, For herbs of power on thy banks to look; Or haply, some idle dreamer, like me, To wander, and muse, and gaze on thee. Still--save the chirp of birds that feed On the river cherry and seedy reed, And thy own wild music gushing out With mellow murmur of fairy shout, From dawn to the blush of another day, Like traveller singing along his way. That fairy music I never hear, Nor gaze on those waters so green and clear, And mark them winding away from sight, Darkened with shade or flashing with light, While o'er them the vine to its thicket clings, And the zephyr stoops to freshen his wings, But I wish that fate had left me free To wander these quiet haunts with thee, Till the eating cares of earth should depart, And the peace of the scene pass into my heart; And I envy thy stream, as it glides along Through its beautiful banks in a trance of song. Though forced to drudge for the dregs of men, And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen, And mingle among the jostling crowd, Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud-- I often come to this quiet place, To breathe the airs that ruffle thy face, And gaze upon thee in silent dream, For in thy lonely and lovely stream An image of that calm life appears That won my heart in my greener years. THE WEST WIND Beneath the forest's skirt I rest, Whose branching pines rise dark and high, And hear the breezes of the West Among the thread-like foliage sigh. Sweet Zephyr! why that sound of woe? Is not thy home among the flowers? Do not the bright June roses blow, To meet thy kiss at morning hours? And lo! thy glorious realm outspread-- Yon stretching valleys, green and gay, And yon free hill-tops, o'er whose head The loose white clouds are borne away. And there the full broad river runs, And many a fount wells fresh and sweet, To cool thee when the mid-day suns Have made thee faint beneath their heat. Thou wind of joy, and youth, and love; Spirit of the new-wakened year! The sun in his blue realm above Smooths a bright path when thou art here. In lawns the murmuring bee is heard, The wooing ring-dove in the shade; On thy soft breath, the new-fledged bird Takes wing, half happy, half afraid. Ah! thou art like our wayward race;-- When not a shade of pain or ill Dims the bright smile of Nature's face, Thou lov'st to sigh and murmur still. "I BROKE THE SPELL THAT HELD ME LONG" I broke the spell that held me long, The dear, dear witchery of song. I said, the poet's idle lore Shall waste my prime of years no more, For Poetry, though heavenly born, Consorts with poverty and scorn. I broke the spell--nor deemed its power Could fetter me another hour. Ah, thoughtless! how could I forget Its causes were around me yet? For wheresoe'er I looked, the while, Was Nature's everlasting smile. Still came and lingered on my sight Of flowers and streams the bloom and light, And glory of the stars and sun;-- And these and poetry are one. They, ere the world had held me long, Recalled me to the love of song. A FOREST HYMN The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, And spread the roof above them--ere he framed The lofty vault, to gather and roll back The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood, Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down, And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks And supplication. For his simple heart Might not resist the sacred influences Which, from the stilly twilight of the place, And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound Of the invisible breath that swayed at once All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed His spirit with the thought of boundless power And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore Only among the crowd, and under roofs That our frail hands have raised? Let me, at least, Here, in the shadow of this aged wood, Offer one hymn--thrice happy, if it find Acceptance in His ear. Father, thy hand Hath reared these venerable columns, thou Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down Upon the naked earth, and, forthwith, rose All these fair ranks of trees. They, in thy sun, Budded, and shook their green leaves in thy breeze, And shot toward heaven. The century-living crow Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and died Among their branches, till, at last, they stood, As now they stand, massy, and tall, and dark, Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold Communion with his Maker. These dim vaults, These winding aisles, of human pomp or pride Report not. No fantastic carvings show The boast of our vain race to change the form Of thy fair works. But thou art here--thou fill'st The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds That run along the summit of these trees In music; thou art in the cooler breath That from the inmost darkness of the place Comes, scarcely felt; the barley trunks, the ground, The fresh moist ground, are all instinct with thee. Here is continual worship;--Nature, here, In the tranquillity that thou dost love, Enjoys thy presence. Noiselessly, around, From perch to perch, the solitary bird Passes; and yon clear spring, that, midst its herbs Wells softly forth and wandering steeps the roots Of half the mighty forest, tells no tale Of all the good it does. Thou halt not left Thyself without a witness, in the shades, Of thy perfections. Grandeur, strength, and grace Are here to speak of thee. This mighty oak By whose immovable stem I stand and seem Almost annihilated--not a prince, In all that proud old world beyond the deep, E'er wore his crown as loftily as he Wears the green coronal of leaves with which Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his root Is beauty, such as blooms not in the glare Of the broad sun. That delicate forest flower, With scented breath and look so like a smile, Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould, Au emanation of the indwelling Life, A visible token of the upholding Love, That are the soul of this great universe. My heart is awed within me when I think Of the great miracle that still goes on, In silence, round me--the perpetual work Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed Forever. Written on thy works I read The lesson of thy own eternity. Lo! all grow old and die--but see again, How on the faltering footsteps of decay Youth presses--ever gay and beautiful youth In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees Wave not less proudly that their ancestors Moulder beneath them. Oh, there is not lost One of earth's charms: upon her bosom yet, After the flight of untold centuries, The freshness of her far beginning lies And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate Of his arch-enemy Death--yea, seats himself Upon the tyrant's throne--the sepulchre, And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth From thine own bosom, and shall have no end. There have been holy men who hid themselves Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave Their lives to thought and prayer, till they outlived The generation born with them, nor seemed Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks Around them;--and there have been holy men Who deemed it were not well to pass life thus. But let me often to these solitudes Retire, and in thy presence reassure My feeble virtue. Here its enemies, The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink And tremble and are still. O God! when thou Dost scare the world with tempest, set on fire The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill, With all the waters of the firmament, The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods And drowns the villages; when, at thy call, Uprises the great deep and throws himself Upon the continent, and overwhelms Its cities--who forgets not, at the sight Of these tremendous tokens of thy power, His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by? Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath Of the mad unchained elements to teach Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate, In these calm shades, thy milder majesty, And to the beautiful order of thy works Learn to conform the order of our lives. THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere. Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead; They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread; The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay, And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day. Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood? Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours. The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again. The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow; But on the hills the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sun-flower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen. And now, when comes the calm mild day, as still such days will come, To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home: When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still, And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill, The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore, And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more. And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died, The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side. In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forests cast the leaf, And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief: Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young friend of ours, So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers. THE GLADNESS OF NATURE Is this a time to be cloudy and sad, When our mother Nature laughs around; When even the deep blue heavens look glad, And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground? There are notes of joy from the hang-bird and wren, And the gossip of swallows through all the sky; The ground-squirrel gayly chirps by his den, And the wilding bee hums merrily by. The clouds are at play in the azure space And their shadows at play on the bright-green vale, And here they stretch to the frolic chase, And there they roll on the easy gale. There's a dance of leaves in that aspen bower, There's a titter of winds in that beechen tree, There's a smile on the fruit, and a smile on the flower, And a laugh from the brook that runs to the sea. And look at the broad-faced sun, how he smiles On the dewy earth that smiles in his ray, On the leaping waters and gay young isles; Ay, look, and he'll smile thy gloom away. TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN Thou blossom bright with autumn dew, And colored with the heaven's own blue, That openest when the quiet light Succeeds the keen and frosty night. Thou comest not when violets lean O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen, Or columbines, in purple dressed, Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest. Thou waitest late and com'st alone, When woods are bare and birds are flown, And frosts and shortening days portend The aged year is near his end. Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye Look through its fringes to the sky, Blue--blue--as if that sky let fall A flower from its cerulean wall. I would that thus, when I shall see The hour of death draw near to me, Hope, blossoming within my heart, May look to heaven as I depart. SONG OF MARION'S MEN Our band is few but true and tried, Our leader frank and bold; The British soldier trembles When Marion's name is told. Our fortress is the good greenwood, Our tent the cypress-tree; We know the forest round us, As seamen know the sea. We know its walls of thorny vines, Its glades of reedy grass, Its safe and silent islands Within the dark morass. Woe to the English soldiery That little dread us near! On them shall light at midnight A strange and sudden fear: When, waking to their tents on fire, They grasp their arms in vain, And they who stand to face us Are beat to earth again; And they who fly in terror deem A mighty host behind, And hear the tramp of thousands Upon the hollow wind. Then sweet the hour that brings release From danger and from toil: We talk the battle over, And share the battle's spoil. The woodland rings with laugh and shout, As if a hunt were up, And woodland flowers are gathered To crown the soldier's cup. With merry songs we mock the wind That in the pine-top grieves, And slumber long and sweetly On beds of oaken leaves. Well knows the fair and friendly moon The band that Marion leads-- The glitter of their rifles, The scampering of their steeds. 'Tis life to guide the fiery barb Across the moonlight plain; 'Tis life to feel the night-wind That lifts the tossing mane. A moment in the British camp-- A moment--and away Back to the pathless forest, Before the peep of day. Grave men there are by broad Santee, Grave men with hoary hairs; Their hearts are all with Marion, For Marion are their prayers. And lovely ladies greet our band With kindliest welcoming, With smiles like those of summer, And tears like those of spring. For them we wear these trusty arms, And lay them down no more Till we have driven the Briton, Forever, from our shore. THE CROWDED STREET Let me move slowly through the street, Filled with an ever-shifting train, Amid the sound of steps that beat The murmuring walks like autumn rain. How fast the flitting figures come! The mild, the fierce, the stony face; Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some Where secret tears have left their trace. They pass--to toil, to strife, to rest; To halls in which the feast is spread; To chambers where the funeral guest In silence sits beside the dead. And some to happy homes repair, Where children, pressing cheek to cheek, These struggling tides of life that seem With mute caresses shall declare The tenderness they cannot speak. And some, who walk in calmness here, Shall shudder as they reach the door Where one who made their dwelling dear, Its flower, its light, is seen no more. Youth, with pale cheek and slender frame, And dreams of greatness in thine eye! Go'st thou to build an early name, Or early in the task to die? Keen son of trade, with eager brow! Who is now fluttering in thy snare! Thy golden fortunes, tower they now, Or melt the glittering spires in air? Who of this crowd to-night shall tread The dance till daylight gleam again? Who sorrow o'er the untimely dead? Who writhe in throes of mortal pain? Some, famine-struck, shall think how long The cold dark hours, how slow the light; And some, who flaunt amid the throng, Shall hide in dens of shame to-night. Each, where his tasks or pleasures call, They pass, and heed each other not. There is who heeds, who holds them all, In His large love and boundless thought. These struggling tides of life that seem In wayward, aimless course to tend, Are eddies of the mighty stream That rolls to its appointed end. THE SNOW-SHOWER Stand here by my side and turn, I pray, On the lake below thy gentle eyes; The clouds hang over it, heavy and gray, And dark and silent the water lies; And out of that frozen mist the snow In wavering flakes begins to flow; Flake after flake They sink in the dark and silent lake. See how in a living swarm they come From the chambers beyond that misty veil; Some hover awhile in air, and some Rush prone from the sky like summer hail. All, dropping swiftly or settling slow, West, and are still in the depths below; Flake after flake Dissolved in the dark and silent lake. Here delicate snow-stars, out of the cloud, Come floating downward in airy play, Like spangles dropped from the glistening crowd That whiten by night the milky way; There broader and burlier masses fall; The sullen water buries them all-- Flake after flake-- All drowned in the dark and silent lake. And some, as on tender wings they glide From their chilly birth-cloud, dim and gray, Are joined in their fall, and, side by side, Come clinging along their unsteady way; As friend with friend, or husband with wife, Makes hand in hand the passage of life; Each mated flake Soon sinks in the dark and silent lake. Lo! While we are gazing, in swifter haste Stream down the snows, till the air is white, As, myriads by myriads madly chased, They fling themselves from their shadowy height. The fair, frail creatures of middle sky, What speed they make, with their grave so nigh; Flake after flake To lie in the dark and silent lake! I see in thy gentle eyes a tear; They turn to me in sorrowful thought; Thou thinkest of friends, the good and dear, Who were for a time, and now are not; Like those fair children and cloud and frost, That glisten for a moment and then are lost, Flake after flake All lost in the dark and silent lake. Yet look again, for the clouds divide; A gleam of blue on the water lies; And far away, on the mountain-side, A sunbeam falls from the opening skies, But the hurrying host that flew between The cloud and the water, no more is seen; Flake after flake, At rest in the dark and silent lake. ROBERT OF LINCOLN Merrily swinging on brier and weed, Near to the nest of his little dame, Over the mountain-side or mead, Robert of Lincoln is telling his name: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; Snug and safe is that nest of ours, Hidden among the summer flowers, Chee, chee, chee. Robert of Lincoln is gayly drest, Wearing a bright black wedding-coat; White are his shoulders and white his crest Hear him call in his merry note: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; Look, what a nice coat is mine. Sure there was never a bird so fine. Chee, chee, chee. Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife, Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings, Passing at home a patient life, Broods in the grass while her husband sings Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; Brood, kind creature; you need not fear Thieves and robbers while I am here. Chee, chee, chee. Modest and shy is she; One weak chirp is her only note. Braggart and prince of braggarts is he, Pouring boasts from his little throat: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; Never was I afraid of man; Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you can! Chee, chee, chee. Six white eggs on a bed of hay, Flecked with purple, a pretty sight! There as the mother sits all day, Robert is singing with all his might: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; Nice good wife, that never goes out, Keeping house while I frolic about. Chee, chee, chee. Soon as the little ones chip the shell, Six wide mouths are open for food; Robert of Lincoln bestirs him well, Gathering seeds for the hungry brood. Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; This new life is likely to be Hard for a gay young fellow like me. Chee, chee, chee. Robert of Lincoln at length is made Sober with work, and silent with care; Off is his holiday garment laid, Half forgotten that merry air: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Nobody knows but my mate and I Where our nest and out nestlings lie. Chee, chee, chee. Summer wanes; the children are grown; Fun and frolic no more he knows; Robert of Lincoln's a humdrum crone; Off he flies, and we sing as he goes: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; When you can pipe that merry old strain, Robert of Lincoln, come back again. Chee, chee, chee. THE POET Thou, who wouldst wear the name Of poet mid thy brethren of mankind, And clothe in words of flame Thoughts that shall live within the general mind! Deem not the framing of a deathless lay The pastime of a drowsy summer day. But gather all thy powers, And wreak them on the verse that thou dust weave, And in thy lonely hours, At silent morning or at wakeful eve, While the warm current tingles through thy veins, Set forth the burning words in fluent strains. No smooth array of phrase, Artfully sought and ordered though it be, Which the cold rhymer lays Upon his page with languid industry, Can wake the listless pulse to livelier speed, Or fill with sudden tears the eyes that read. The secret wouldst thou know To touch the heart or fire the blood at will? Let thine own eyes o'erflow; Let thy lips quiver with the passionate thrill; Seize the great thought, ere yet its power be past, And bind, in words, the fleet emotion fast. Then, should thy verse appear Halting and harsh, and all unaptly wrought, Touch the crude line with fear, Save in the moment of impassioned thought; Then summon back the original glow, and mend The strain with rapture that with fire was penned. Yet let no empty gust Of passion find an utterance in thy lay, A blast that whirls the dust Along the howling street and dies away; But feelings of calm power and mighty sweep, Like currents journeying through the windless deep. Seek'st thou, in living lays, To limn the beauty of the earth and sky? Before thine inner gaze Let all that beauty in clear vision lie; Look on it with exceeding love, and write The words inspired by wonder and delight. Of tempests wouldst thou sing, Or tell of battles--make thyself a part Of the great tumult; cling To the tossed wreck with terror in thy heart; Scale, with the assaulting host, the rampart's height, And strike and struggle in the thickest fight. So shalt thou frame a lay That haply may endure from age to age, And they who read shall say "What witchery hangs upon this poet's page! What art is his the written spells to find That sway from mood to mood the willing mind!" ABRAHAM LINCOLN Oh, slow to smite and swift to spare, Gentle and merciful and just! Who, in the fear of God, didst bear The sword of power, a nation's trust! In sorrow by thy bier we stand, Amid the awe that hushes all, And speak the anguish of a land That shook with horror at thy fall. Thy task is done; the bond are free: We bear thee to an honored grave Whose proudest monument shall be The broken fetters of the slave. Pure was thy life; its bloody close Hath placed thee with the sons of light, Among the noble host of those Who perished in the cause of Right. FRANCIS SCOTT KEY THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming; And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there; O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave? On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foes haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, In full glory reflected now shines on the stream; 'Tis the star-spangled banner; O long may it wave O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave! And where is that band who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion A home and a country should leave us no more? Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave, From the terror of flight and the gloom of the grave; And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave! O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved homes and the war's desolation Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land, Praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation. Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just. And this be our motto--"In God is our trust"; And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave. JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE THE AMERICAN FLAG When Freedom from her mountain height Unfurled her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of night, And set the stars of glory there. And mingled with its gorgeous dyes The milky baldric of the skies, And striped its pure celestial white With streakings of the morning light; Then from his mansion in the sun She called her eagle bearer down, And gave into his mighty hand The symbol of her chosen land. Majestic monarch of the cloud, Who rear'st aloft thy regal form, To hear the tempest trumpings loud And see the lightning lances driven, When strive the warriors of the storm, And rolls the thunder-drum of heaven, Child of the sun! to thee 'tis given To guard the banner of the free, To hover in the sulphur smoke, To ward away the battle stroke, And bid its blendings shine afar, Like rainbows on the cloud of war, The harbingers of victory! Flag of the brave! thy folds shall fly, The sign of hope and triumph high, When speaks the signal trumpet tone, And the long line comes gleaming on. Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet, Has dimmed the glistening bayonet, Each soldier eye shall brightly turn To where thy sky-born glories burn, And, as his springing steps advance, Catch war and vengeance from the glance. And when the cannon-mouthings loud Heave in wild wreaths the battle shroud, And gory sabres rise and fall Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall, Then shall thy meteor glances glow, And cowering foes shall shrink beneath Each gallant arm that strikes below That lovely messenger of death. Flag of the seas! on ocean wave Thy stars shall glitter o'er the brave; When death, careering on the gale, Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail, And frighted waves rush wildly back Before the broadside's reeling rack, Each dying wanderer of the sea Shall look at once to heaven and thee, And smile to see thy splendors fly In triumph o'er his closing eye. Flag of the free heart's hope and home! By angel hands to valor given; Thy stars have lit the welkin dome, And all thy hues were born in heaven. Forever float that standard sheet! Where breathes the foe but falls before us, With Freedom's soil beneath our feet, And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us? THE CULPRIT FAY (Selection) 'Tis the hour of fairy ban and spell: The wood-tick has kept the minutes well; He has counted them all with click and stroke, Deep in the heart of the mountain oak, And he has awakened the sentry elve Who sleeps with him in the haunted tree, To bid him ring the hour of twelve, And call the fays to their revelry; Twelve small strokes on his tinkling bell ('Twas made of the white snail's pearly shell) "Midnight comes, and all is well! Hither, hither, wing your way! 'Tis the dawn of the fairy-day." They come from beds of lichen green, They creep from the mullen's velvet screen; Some on the backs of beetles fly From the silver tops of moon-touched trees, Where they swung in their cobweb hammocks high, And rocked about in the evening breeze; Some from the hum-bird's downy nest-- They had driven him out by elfin power, And, pillowed on plumes of his rainbow breast, Had slumbered there till the charmed hour; Some had lain in the scoop of the rock, With glittering ising-stars' inlaid; And some had opened the four-o'clock, And stole within its purple shade. And now they throng the moonlight glade, Above, below, on every side, Their little minim forms arrayed In the tricksy pomp of fairy pride. They come not now to print the lea, In freak and dance around the tree, Or at the mushroom board to sup And drink the dew from the buttercup. A scene of sorrow waits them now, For an Ouphe has broken his vestal vow He has loved an earthly maid, And left for her his woodland shade; He has lain upon her lip of dew, And sunned him in her eye of blue, Fanned her cheek with his wing of air, Played in the ringlets of her hair, And, nestling on her snowy breast, Forgot the lily-king's behest. For this the shadowy tribes of air To the elfin court must haste away; And now they stand expectant there, To hear the doom of the Culprit Fay. The throne was reared upon the grass, Of spice-wood and of sassafras; On pillars of mottled tortoise-shell Hung the burnished canopy,-- And over it gorgeous curtains fell Of the tulip's crimson drapery. The monarch sat on his judgment-seat, On his brow the crown imperial shone, The prisoner Fay was at his feet, And his peers were ranged around the throne. He waved his sceptre in the air, He looked around and calmly spoke; His brow was grave and his eye severe, But his voice in a softened accent broke: "Fairy! Fairy! list and mark! Thou halt broke thine elfin chain; Thy flame-wood lamp is quenched and dark, And thy wings are dyed with a deadly stain; Thou hast sullied thine elfin purity In the glance of a mortal maiden's eye: Thou bast scorned our dread decree, And thou shouldst pay the forfeit high, But well I know her sinless mind Is pure as the angel forms above, Gentle and meek and chaste and kind, Such as a spirit well might love. Fairy! had she spot or taint, Bitter had been thy punishment Tied to the hornet's shardy wings, Tossed on the pricks of nettles' stings, Or seven long ages doomed to dwell With the lazy worm in the walnut-shell; Or every night to writhe and bleed Beneath the tread of the centipede; Or bound in a cobweb dungeon dim, Your jailer a spider huge and grim, Amid the carrion bodies to lie Of the worm, and the bug and the murdered fly: These it had been your lot to bear, Had a stain been found on the earthly fair. Now list and mark our mild decree Fairy, this your doom must be: "Thou shaft seek the beach of sand Where the water bounds the elfin land; Thou shaft watch the oozy brine Till the sturgeon leaps in the bright moonshine; Then dart the glistening arch below, And catch a drop from his silver bow. The water-sprites will wield their arms, And dash around with roar and rave; And vain are the woodland spirits' charms-- They are the imps that rule the wave. Yet trust thee in thy single might: If thy heart be pure and thy spirit right, Thou shalt win the warlock fight." . . . The goblin marked his monarch well; He spake not, but he bowed him low; Then plucked a crimson colen-bell, And turned him round in act to go. The way is long, he cannot fly, His soiled wing has lost its power; And he winds adown the mountain high For many a sore and weary hour Through dreary beds of tangled fern, Through groves of nightshade dark and dern, Over the grass and through the brake, Where toils the ant and sleeps the snake; Now over the violet's azure flush He skips along in lightsome mood; And now he thrids the bramble-bush, Till its points are dyed in fairy blood; He has leaped the bog, he has pierced the brier, He has swum the brook, and waded the mire, Till his spirits sank and his limbs grew weak, And the red waxed fainter in his cheek. He had fallen to the ground outright, For rugged and dim was his onward track, But there came a spotted toad in sight, And he laughed as he jumped upon her back; He bridled her mouth with a silkweed twist, He lashed her sides with an osier thong; And now through evening's dewy mist With leap and spring they bound along, Till the mountain's magic verge is past, And the beach of sand is reached at last. Soft and pale is the moony beam, Moveless still the glassy stream; The wave is clear, the beach is bright With snowy shells and sparkling stones; The shore-surge comes in ripples light, In murmurings faint and distant moans; And ever afar in the silence deep Is heard the splash of the sturgeon's leap, And the bend of his graceful bow is seen-- A glittering arch of silver sheen, Spanning the wave of burnished blue, And dripping with gems of the river-dew. The elfin cast a glance around, As he lighted down from his courser toad, Then round his breast his wings he wound, And close to the river's brink he strode; He sprang on a rock, he breathed a prayer, Above his head his arms he threw, Then tossed a tiny curve in air, And headlong plunged in the waters blue. Up sprung the spirits of the waves, from the sea-silk beds in their coral caves; With snail-plate armor snatched in haste, They speed their way through the liquid waste. Some are rapidly borne along On the mailed shrimp or the prickly prong, Some on the blood-red leeches glide, Some on the stony star-fish ride, Some on the back of the lancing squab, Some on the sideling soldier-crab, And some on the jellied quarl that flings At once a thousand streamy stings. They cut the wave with the living oar, And hurry on to the moonlight shore, To guard their realms and chase away The footsteps of the invading Fay. Fearlessly he skims along; His hope is high and his limbs are strong; He spreads his arms like the swallow's wing, And throws his feet with a frog-like fling; His locks of gold on the waters shine, At his breast the tiny foam-beads rise, His back gleams bright above the brine, And the wake-line foam behind him lies. But the water-sprites are gathering near To check his course along the tide; Their warriors come in swift career And hem him round on every side: On his thigh the leech has fixed his hold, The quad's long arms are round him rolled, The prickly prong has pierced his skin, And the squab has thrown his javelin, The gritty star has rubbed him raw, And the crab has struck with his giant claw. He howls with rage, and he shrieks with pain; He strikes around, but his blows are vain; Hopeless is the unequal fight Fairy, naught is left but flight. He turned him round and fled amain, With hurry and dash, to the beach again; He twisted over from side to side, And laid his cheek to the cleaving tide; The strokes of his plunging arms are fleet, And with all his might he flings his feet. But the water-sprites are round him still, To cross his path and work him ill: They bade the wave before him rise; They flung the sea-fire in his eyes; And they stunned his ears with the scallop-stroke, With the porpoise heave and the drum-fish croak. Oh, but a weary wight was he When he reached the foot of the dog-wood tree. Gashed and wounded, and stiff and sore, He laid him down on the sandy shore; He blessed the force of the charmed line, And he banned the water-goblins spite, For he saw around in the sweet moonshine Their little wee faces above the brine, Giggling and laughing with all their might At the piteous hap of the Fairy wight. Soon he gathered the balsam dew From the sorrel-leaf and the henbane bud; Over each wound the balm he drew, And with cobweb lint he stanched the blood. The mild west wind was soft and low; It cooled the heat of his burning brow, And he felt new life in his sinews shoot As he drank the juice of the calamus root. And now he treads the fatal shore As fresh and vigorous as before. Wrapped in musing stands the sprite 'Tis the middle wane of night; His task is hard, his way is far, But he must do his errand right Ere dawning mounts her beamy car, And rolls her chariot wheels of light; And vain are the spells of fairy-land, He must work with a human hand. He cast a saddened look around; But he felt new joy his bosom swell, When glittering on the shadowed ground He saw a purple mussel-shell; Thither he ran, and he bent him low, He heaved at the stern and he heaved at the bow, And he pushed her over the yielding sand Till he came; to the verge of the haunted land. She was as lovely a pleasure-boat As ever fairy had paddled in, For she glowed with purple paint without, And shone with silvery pearl within A sculler's notch in the stern he made, An oar he shaped of the bootle-blade; Then sprung to his seat with a lightsome leap, And launched afar on the calm, blue deep. The imps of the river yell and rave They had no power above the wave, But they heaved the billow before the prow, And they dashed the surge against her side, And they struck her keel with jerk and blow, Till the gunwale bent to the rocking tide. She wimpled about to the pale moonbeam, Like a feather that floats on a wind-tossed stream; And momently athwart her track The quad upreared his island back, And the fluttering scallop behind would float, And patter the water about the boat; But he bailed her out with his colon-bell, And he kept her trimmed with a wary tread, While on every side like lightning fell The heavy strokes of his Bootle-blade. Onward still he held his way, Till he came where the column of moonshine lay, And saw beneath the surface dim The brown-backed sturgeon slowly swim. Around him were the goblin train; But he sculled with all his might and main, And followed wherever the sturgeon led, Till he saw him upward point his head; "Mien he dropped his paddle-blade, And held his colen-goblet up To catch the drop in its crimson cup. With sweeping tail and quivering fin Through the wave the sturgeon flew, And like the heaven-shot javelin He sprung above the waters blue. Instant as the star-fall light, He plunged him in the deep again, But left an arch of silver bright, The rainbow of the moony main. It was a strange and lovely sight To see the puny goblin there: He seemed an angel form of light, With azure wing and sunny hair, Throned on a cloud of purple fair, Circled with blue and edged with white, And sitting at the fall of even Beneath the bow of summer heaven. A moment, and its lustre fell; But ere it met the billow blue He caught within his crimson bell A droplet of its sparkling dew. Joy to thee, Fay! thy task is done; Thy wings are pure, for the gem is won. Cheerly ply thy dripping oar, And haste away to the elfin shore! He turns, and to on either side The ripples on his path divide; And the track o'er which his boat must pass Is smooth as a sheet of polished glass. Around, their limbs the sea-nymphs lave, With snowy arms half swelling out, While on the glossed and gleamy wave Their sea-green ringlets loosely float: They swim around with smile and song; They press the bark with pearly hand, And gently urge her course along, Toward the beach of speckled sand; And as he lightly leaped to land They bade adieu with nod and bow, Then gaily kissed each little hand, And dropped in the crystal deep below. A moment stayed the fairy there: He kissed the beach and breathed a prayer; Then spread his wings of gilded blue, And on to the elfin court he flew. As ever ye saw a bubble rise, And shine with a thousand changing dyes, Till, lessening far, through ether driven, It mingles with the hues of heaven; As, at the glimpse of morning pale, The lance-fly spreads his silken sail And gleams with bleedings soft and bright Till lost in the shades of fading night; So rose from earth the lovely Fay, So vanished far in heaven away! FITZ-GREENE HALLECK MARCO BOZZARIS At midnight, in his guarded tent, The Turk was dreaming of the hour When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent, Should tremble at his power; In dreams, through camp and court he bore. The trophies of a conqueror; In dreams his song of triumph heard; Then wore his monarch's signet ring; Then pressed that monarch's throne--a king: As wild his thoughts and gay of wing As Eden's garden bird. At midnight, in the forest shades, Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band, True as the steel of their tried blades, Heroes in heart and hand. There had the Persian's thousands stood, There had the glad earth drunk their blood On old Plataea's day; And now there breathed that haunted air The sons of sires who conquered there, With arm to strike, and soul to dare, As quick, as far as they. An hour passed on--the Turk awoke; That bright dream was his last; He woke--to hear his sentries shriek, "To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!" He woke--to die midst flame and smoke, And shout and groan and sabre-stroke, And death-shots falling thick and fast As lightnings from the mountain-cloud; And heard, with voice as trumpet loud, Bozzaris cheer his band: Strike--till the last armed foe expires! Strike--for your altars and your fires! Strike--for the green graves of your sires, God, and your native land!" They fought like brave men, long and well; They piled that ground with Moslem slain; They conquered--but Bozzaris fell, Bleeding at every vein. His few surviving comrades saw His smile when rang their proud hurrah, And the red field was won; Then saw in death his eyelids close Calmly, as to a night's repose, Like flowers at set of sun. Come to the bridal chamber, Death! Come to the mother's when she feels, For the first time, her first-horn's breath; Come when the blessed seals That close the pestilence are broke, And crowded cities wail its stroke; Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake shock, the ocean storm; Come when the heart beats high and warm With banquet-song and dance and wine; And thou art terrible--the tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, And all we know or dream or fear Of agony, are thine. But to the hero, when his sword Has won the battle for the free, Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word, And in its hollow tones are heard The thanks of millions yet to be. Come when his task of fame is wrought, Come with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought, Come in her crowning hour, and then Thy sunken eye's unearthly light To him is welcome as the sight Of sky and stars to prisoned men; Thy grasp is welcome as the hand Of brother in a foreign land; Thy summons welcome as the cry That told the Indian isles were nigh To the world-seeking Genoese, When the land-wind, from woods of palm And orange-groves and fields of balm, Blew oer the Haytian seas. Bozzaris, with the storied brave Greece nurtured in her glory's time, Rest thee--there is no prouder gave. Even in her own proud clime. She wore no funeral-weeds for thee, Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume, Like torn branch from death's leafless tree, In sorrow's pomp and pageantry, The heartless luxury of the tomb. But she remembers thee as one Long loved and for a season gone; For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed, Her marble wrought, her music breathed; For thee she rings the birthday bells; Of thee her babes' first lisping tells; For throe her evening prayer is said At palace-couch and cottage-bed; Her soldier, closing with the foe, Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow; His plighted maiden, when she fears For him, the joy of her young years, Thinks of thy fate and checks her tears; And she, the mother of thy boys, Though in her eye and faded cheek Is read the grief she will not speak, The memory of her buried joys, And even she who gave thee birth, Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth, Talk of thy doom without a sigh, For thou art Freedom's now and Fame's, One of the few, the immortal names, That were not born to die. ON THE DEATH OF JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE Green be the turf above thee, Friend of my better days! None knew thee but to love thee, Nor named thee but to praise. Tears fell, when thou went dying, From eyes unused to weep, And long where thou art lying, Will tears the cold turf steep. When hearts, whose truth was proven, Like throe, are laid in earth, There should a wreath be woven To tell the world their worth; And I, who woke each morrow To clasp thy hand in mine, Who shared thy joy and sorrow, Whose weal and woe were thine; It should be mine to braid it Around thy faded brow, But I've in vain essayed it, And I feel I cannot now. While memory bids me weep thee, Nor thoughts nor words are free, The grief is fixed too deeply That mourns a man like thee. JOHN HOWARD PAYNE HOME, SWEET HOME Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home; A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there, Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere. Home, Home, sweet, sweet Home! There's no place like Home! there's no place like Home! An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain; O, give me my lowly thatched cottage again! The birds singing gayly, that came at my call,-- Give me them,--and the peace of mind, dearer than all! Home, Home, sweet, sweet Home! There's no place like Home! there's no place like Home! How sweet 'tis to sit 'neath a fond father's smile, And the cares of a mother to soothe and beguile! Let others delight mid new pleasures to roam, But give me, oh, give me, the pleasures of home! Home, Home, sweet, sweet Home! There's no place like Home! there's no place like Home! To thee I'll return, overburdened with care; The heart's dearest solace will smile on me there; No more from that, cottage again will I roam; Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home. Home, Home, sweet, sweet Home! There's no place like Home! there's no place like Home! EDGAR ALLAN POE TO HELEN Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome. Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand! Ah, Psyche, from the regions which Are Holy-Land! ISRAFEL In Heaven a spirit doth dwell "Whose heart-strings are a lute;" None sing so wildly well As the angel Israel, And the giddy stars (so legends tell) Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell Of his voice, all mute. Tottering above In her highest noon, The enamoured moon Blushes with love, While, to listen, the red levin (With the rapid Pleiads, even, Which were seven,) Pauses in Heaven. And they say (the starry choir And the other listening things) That Israeli's fire Is owing to that lyre By which he sits and sings-- The trembling living wire Of those unusual strings. But the skies that angel trod, Where deep thoughts are a duty-- Where Love's a grown-up God-- Where the Houri glances are Imbued with all the beauty Which we worship in a star. Therefore, thou art not wrong, Israfeli, who despisest An unimpassioned song; To thee the laurels belong, Best bard, because the wisest! Merrily live, and long! The ecstasies above With thy burning measures suit-- Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love, With the fervour of thy lute-- Well may the stars be mute! Yes, Heaven is thin-e; but this Is a world of sweets and sours; Our flowers are merely--flowers, And the shadow of thy perfect bliss Is the sunshine of ours. If I could dwell Where Israfel Hath dwelt, and he where I, He might not sing so wildly well A mortal melody, While a bolder note than this might swell From my lyre within the sky. LENORE Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever! Let the bell toll!--a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river; And, Guy De Vere, halt thou no tear?--weep now or never more! See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore! Come! let the burial rite be read--the funeral song be sung!-- An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young-- A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young. "Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride, "And when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed her--that she died! "How shall the ritual, then, be read?--the requiem how be sung "By you--by yours, the evil eye,--by yours, the slanderous tongue "That did to death the innocence that died, and died so young?" Peccavimus; but rave not thus! and let a Sabbath song Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel no wrong! The sweet Lenore hath "gone before," with Hope, that flew beside, Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy bride For her, the fair and debonair, that now so lowly lies, The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes-- The life still there, upon her hair--the death upon her eyes. "Avaunt! avaunt! from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven-- "From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven-- "From grief and groan, to a golden throne, beside the King of Heaven." Let no bell toll then!--lest her soul, amid its hallowed mirth, Should catch the note as it doth float up from the damned Earth! And I!--to-night my heart is light! No dirge will I upraise, But waft the angel on her flight with a Paean of old days! THE COLISEUM Type of the antique Rome! Rich reliquary Of lofty contemplation left to Time By bunted centuries of pomp and power! At length--at length--after so many days Of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst, (Thirst for the springs of lore that in thee lie,) I kneel, an altered and an humble man, Amid thy shadows, and so drink within My very soul thy grandeur, gloom, and glory! Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld! Silence! and Desolation! and dim Night! I feel ye now--I feel ye in your strength-- O spells more sure than e'er Judaean king Taught in the gardens of Gethsemane! O charms more potent than the rapt Chaldee Ever drew down from out the quiet stars! Here, where a hero fell, a column falls! Here, where the mimic eagle glared in gold, A midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat! Here, where the dames of Rome their gilded hair Waved to the wind, now wave the reed and thistle! Here, where on golden throne the monarch lolled, Glides, spectre-like, unto his marble home, Lit by the wan light of the horned moon, The swift and silent lizard of the stones! But stay! these walls--these ivy-clad arcades-- These mouldering plinths--these sad and blackened shafts-- These vague entablatures--this crumbling frieze-- These shattered cornices--this wreck--this ruin-- These stones--alas! these gray stones--are they all-- All of the famed, and the colossal left By the corrosive Hours to Fate and me? "Not all"--the Echoes answer me--"not all! "Prophetic sounds and loud, arise forever "From us, and from all Ruin, unto the wise, "As melody from Memnon to the Sun. "We rule the hearts of mightiest men--we rule "With a despotic sway all giant minds. "We are not impotent--we pallid stones. "Not all our power is gone--not all our fame-- "Not all the magic of our high renown-- "Not all the wonder that encircles us-- "Not all the mysteries that in us lie-- "Not all the memories that hang upon "And cling around about us as a garment, "Clothing us in a robe of more than glory." THE HAUNTED PALACE In the greenest of our valleys By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace-- Radiant palace--reared its head. In the monarch Thought's dominion-- It stood there! Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair! Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow, (This--all this--was in the olden Time long ago,) And every gentle air that dallied; In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A winged odor went away. Wanderers in that happy valley, Through two luminous windows, saw Spirits moving musically, To a lute's well-tuned law, Round about a throne where, sitting, (Porphyrogene!) In state his glory well befitting, The ruler of the realm was seen. And all with pearl and ruby glowing Was the fair palace door, Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing And sparkling evermore, A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty Was but to sing, In voices of surpassing beauty, The wit and wisdom of their king. But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate. (Ah, let us mourn!--for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate!) And round about his home the glory That blushed and bloomed, Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed. And travellers, now, within that valley, Through the red-litten windows see Vast forms, that move fantastically To a discordant melody, While, like a ghastly rapid river, Through the pale door A hideous throng rush out forever And laugh--but smile no more. TO ONE IN PARADISE Thou wast all that to me, love, For which my soul did pine-- A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, And all the flowers were mine. Ah, dream too bright to last! Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise But to be overcast! A voice from out the Future cries, "On! on!"--but o'er the Past (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies Mute, motionless, aghast! For, alas! alas! with me The light of Life is o'er! "No more--no more--no more--" (Such language holds the solemn sea To the sands upon the shore) Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree, Or the stricken eagle soar! And all my days are trances, And all my nightly dreams Are where thy grey eye glances, And where thy footstep gleams-- In what ethereal dances, By what eternal streams. EULALIE.--A SONG I dwelt alone In a world of moan, And my soul was a stagnant tide, Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride-- Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride. Ah, less--less bright The stars of the night Than the eyes of the radiant girl! And never a flake That the vapor can make With the moon-tints of purple and pearl, Can vie with the modest Eulalie's most unregarded curl-- Can compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie's most humble and careless curl. Now Doubt--now Pain Come never again, For her soul gives me sigh for sigh, And all day long Shines, bright and strong, Astarte within the sky, While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye-- While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye. THE RAVEN Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door-- Only this and nothing more." Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor-- Eagerly I wished the morrow;--vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for the lost Lenore-- For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore-- Nameless here for evermore. And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating "'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door-- Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;-- This it is and nothing more." Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, "Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you"--here I opened wide the door;-- Darkness there and nothing more. Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore!" This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word "Lenore!" Merely this and nothing more. Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before. "Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice; Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore-- Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;-- 'Tis the wind and nothing more!" Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore. Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door-- Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door-- Perched, and sat, and nothing more. Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore-- Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning--little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door-- Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, With such name as "Nevermore." But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour. Nothing farther then he uttered--not a feather then he fluttered-- Till I scarcely more than muttered "Other friends have flown before-- On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before." Then the bird said "Nevermore." Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, "Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store, Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore-- Of 'Never--nevermore.'" But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling, Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door; Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore-- What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore Meant in croaking "Nevermore." Thus I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core; This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er, But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er, She shall press, ah, nevermore! Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor. "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee--by these angels he hath sent thee Respite--respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore; Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! prophet still, if bird or devil!- Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore, Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted On this home by Horror haunted--tell me truly, I implore-- Is there--is there balm in Gilead?--tell me--tell me, I implore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil--prophet still, if bird or devil! By that Heaven that bends above us--by that God we both adore-- Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore: Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore." Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." "Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting-- "Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken!--quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas dust above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted--nevermore! TO HELEN I saw thee once--once only--years ago I must not say how many--but not many. It was a July midnight; and from out A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring, Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven, There fell a silvery-silken veil of light, With quietude and sultriness and slumber, Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand Roses that grew in an enchanted garden, Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe-- Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses That gave out, in return for the love-light, Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death-- Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence. Clad all in white, upon a violet bank I saw thee half reclining; while the moon Fell on the upturn'd faces of the roses, And on throe own, upturn'd--alas, in sorrow! Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight-- Was it not Fate, (whose name is also Sorrow), That bade me pause before that garden-gate, To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses? No footstep stirred: the hated world all slept, Save only thee and me. (Oh, heaven!--oh, God! How my heart beats in coupling those two words!) Save only thee and me. I paused--I looked-- And in an instant all things disappeared. (Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!) The pearly lustre of the moon went out: The mossy banks and the meandering paths, The happy flowers and the repining trees, Were seen no more: the very roses' odors Died in the arms of the adoring airs. All--all expired save thee--save less than thou: Save only the divine light in throe eyes-- Save but the soul in throe uplifted eyes. I saw but them--they were the world to me. I saw but them--saw only them for hours-- Saw only there until the moon went down. What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwritten Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres! How dark a wo! yet how sublime a hope! How silently serene a sea of pride! How daring an ambition! yet how deep-- How fathomless a capacity for love! But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight, Into a western couch of thunder-cloud; And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained. They would not go--they never yet have gone. Lighting my lonely pathway home that night, They have not left me (as my hopes have) since. They follow me--they lead me through the years-- They are my ministers--yet I their slave. Their office is to illumine and enkindle-- My duty, to be saved by their bright light, And purified in their electric fire, And sanctified in their elysian fire. They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope), And are far up in Heaven--the stars I kneel to In the sad, silent watches of my night; While even in the meridian glare of day I see them still--two sweetly scintillant Venuses, unextinguished by the sun! ANNABEL LEE It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of ANNABEL LEE; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea, But we loved with a love that was more than love-- I and my ANNABEL LEE-- With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me. And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful ANNABEL LEE; So that her highborn kinsmen came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea. The angels, not half so happy in heaven, Went envying her and me-- Yes!--that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud by night, Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE. But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we-- Of many far wiser than we-- And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE: For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE; And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE: And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling--my darling--my life and my bride In the sepulchre there by the sea-- In her tomb by the sounding sea. THE BELLS Hear the sledges with the bells-- Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night! While the stars that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells-- From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. Hear the mellow wedding bells, Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony foretell: Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight! From the molten-golden notes, And all in tune, What a liquid ditty floats, To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats On the moon! Oh, from out the sounding cells, What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! How it swells! How it dwells On the Future!--how it tells Of the rapture that impels To the swinging and the ringing Of the bells, bells, bells-- Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells-- To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells! Hear the loud alarum bells-- Brazen bells! What a tale of terror, now their turbulency tells! In the startled ear of night How they scream out their affright! Too much horrified to speak, They can only shriek, shriek, Out of tune, In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire, Leaping higher, higher, higher, With a desperate desire, And a resolute endeavor Now--now to sit, or never, By the side of the pale-faced moon. Oh, the bells, bells, bells! What a tale their terror tells Of Despair! How they clang, and clash, and roar! What a horror they outpour On the bosom of the palpitating air! Yet, the ear, it fully knows, By the twanging, And the clanging, How the danger ebbs and flows; Yet the ear distinctly tells, In the jangling, And the wrangling, How the danger sinks and swells, By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells Of the bells-- Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, belts, bells-- In the clamor and the clangor of the bells! Hear the tolling of the bells-- Iron bells What a world of solemn thought their monody compels! In the silence of the night, How we shiver with affright At the melancholy menace of their tone: For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats Is a groan. And the people--ah, the people-- They that dwell up in the steeple, All alone, And who, tolling, tolling, tolling, In that muffled monotone, Feel a glory in so rolling, On the human heart a stone-- They are neither man or woman-- They are neither brute nor human-- They are Ghouls:-- And their king it is who tolls:-- And he rolls, rolls, rolls, Rolls A paean from the bells! And his merry bosom swells With the paean of the bells! And he dances, and he yells; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the paean of the bells:-- Of the bells Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the throbbing of the bells-- Of the bells, bells, bells-- To the sobbing of the bells:-- Keeping time, time, time, As he knells, knells, knells, In a happy Runic rhyme, To the rolling of the bells-- Of the bells, bells, bells:-- To the tolling of the bells-- Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells To the moaning and the groaning of the bells. ELDORADO Gaily bedight, A gallant knight, In sunshine and in shadow, Had journeyed long, Singing a song, In search of Eldorado. But he grew old-- This knight so bold-- And o'er his heart a shadow Fell as he found No spot of ground That looked like Eldorado. And, as his strength Failed him at length, He met a pilgrim shadow-- "Shadow," said he, "Where can it be-- This land of Eldorado?" "Over the Mountains Of the Moon, Down the Valley of the Shadow, Ride, boldly ride," The shade replied, "If you seek for Eldorado." HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW HYMN TO THE NIGHT I heard the trailing garments of the Night Sweep through her marble halls! I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light From the celestial walls! I felt her presence, by its spell of might, Stoop o'er me from above; The calm, majestic presence of the Night, As of the one I love. I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight, The manifold, soft chimes, That fill the haunted chambers of the Night, Like some old poet's rhymes. From the cool cisterns of the midnight air My spirit drank repose; The fountain of perpetual peace flows there-- From those deep cisterns flows. O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear What man has borne before! Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care, And they complain no more. Peace! Peace! Orestes-like I breathe this prayer! Descend with broad-winged flight, The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair, The best-beloved Night! A PSALM OF LIFE WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST Tell me not, in mournful numbers, "Life is but an empty dream!" For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; "Dust thou art, to dust returnest," Was not spoken of the soul. Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way; But to act, that each to-morrow Find us farther than to-day. Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave. In the world's broad field of battle, In the bivouac of Life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle; Be a hero in the strife! Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act,--act in the living Present! Heart within, and God o'erhead! Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time; Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again. Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait. THE SKELETON IN ARMOR "Speak! speak! thou fearful guest! Who, with thy hollow breast Still in rude armor drest, Comest to daunt me! Wrapt not in Eastern balms, But with thy fleshless palms Stretched, as if asking alms, Why dost thou haunt me?" Then, from those cavernous eyes Pale flashes seemed to rise, As when the Northern skies Gleam in December; And, like the water's flow Under December's snow, Came a dull voice of woe From the heart's chamber. "I was a Viking old! My deeds, though manifold, No Skald in song has told, No Saga taught thee! Take heed, that in thy verse Thou dost the tale rehearse, Else dread a dead man's curse; For this I sought thee. "Far in the Northern Land, By the wild Baltic's strand, I, with my childish hand, Tamed the ger-falcon; And, with my skates fast-bound, Skimmed the half-frozen Sound, That the poor whimpering hound Trembled to walk on. "Oft to his frozen lair Tracked I the grisly bear, While from my path the hare Fled like a shadow; Oft through the forest dark Followed the were-wolf's bark, Until the soaring lark Sang from the meadow. "But when I older grew, Joining a corsair's crew, O'er the dark sea I flew With the marauders. Wild was the life we led; Many the souls that sped, Many the hearts that bled, By our stern orders. "Many a wassail-bout Wore the long Winter out; Often our midnight shout Set the cocks crowing, As we the Berserk's tale Measured in cups of ale, Draining the oaken pail, Filled to o'erflowing. "Once as I told in glee Tales of the stormy sea, Soft eyes did gaze on me, Burning yet tender; And as the white stars shine On the dark Norway pine, On that dark heart of mine Fell their soft splendor. "I wooed the blue-eyed maid, Yielding, yet half afraid, And in the forest's shade Our vows were plighted. Under its loosened vest Fluttered her little breast, Like birds within their nest By the hawk frighted. "Bright in her father's hall Shields gleamed upon the wall, Loud sang the minstrels all, Chaunting his glory; When of old Hildebrand I asked his daughter's hand, Mute did the minstrels stand To hear my story. "While the brown ale he quaffed, Loud then the champion laughed, And as the wind-gusts waft The sea-foam brightly, So the loud laugh of scorn, Out of those lips unshorn, From the deep drinking-horn Blew the foam lightly. "She was a Prince's child, I but a Viking wild, And though she blushed and smiled, I was discarded! Should not the dove so white Follow the sea-mew's flight, Why did they leave that night Her nest unguarded? "Scarce had I put to sea, Bearing the maid with me,-- Fairest of all was she Among the Norsemen!-- When on the white sea-strand, Waving his armed hand, Saw we old Hildebrand, With twenty horsemen. "Then launched they to the blast, Bent like a reed each mast, Yet we were gaining fast, When the wind failed us; And with a sudden flaw Come round the gusty Skaw, So that our foe we saw Laugh as he hailed us. "And as to catch the gale Round veered the flapping sail, Death! was the helmsman's hail Death without quarter! Mid-ships with iron keel Struck we her ribs of steel; Down her black hulk did reel Through the black water! "As with his wings aslant, Sails the fierce cormorant, Seeking some rocky haunt, With his prey laden, So toward the open main, Beating to sea again, Through the wild hurricane, Bore I the maiden. "Three weeks we westward bore, And when the storm was o'er, Cloud-like we saw the shore Stretching to lee-ward; There for my lady's bower Built I the lofty tower, Which to this very hour, Stands looking sea-ward. "There lived we many years; Time dried the maiden's tears; She had forgot her fears, She was a mother; Death closed her mild blue eyes, Under that tower she lies; Ne'er shall the sun arise On such another! "Still grew my bosom then, Still as a stagnant fen! Hateful to me were men, The sun-light hateful. In the vast forest here, Clad in my warlike gear, Fell I upon my spear, O, death was grateful! "Thus, seamed with many scars Bursting these prison bars, Up to its native stars My soul ascended! There from the flowing bowl Deep drinks the warrior's soul, Skoal! to the Northland! skoal!" --Thus the tale ended. THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS It was the schooner Hesperus, That sailed the wintry sea: And the skipper had taken his little daughter, To bear him company. Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax, Her cheeks like the dawn of day, And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds, That ope in the month of May. The skipper he stood beside the helm, His pipe was in his mouth, And he watched how the veering flaw did blow The smoke now West, now South. Then up and spake an old Sailor, Had sailed the Spanish Main, "I pray thee, put into yonder port For I fear a hurricane. "Last night, the moon had a golden ring, And to-night no moon we see!" The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe, And a scornful laugh laughed he. Colder and louder blew the wind, A gale from the Northeast; The snow fell hissing in the brine, And the billows frothed like yeast. Down came the storm, and smote amain, The vessel in its strength; She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed, Then leaped her cable's length, "Come hither! come hither! my little daughter, And do not tremble so; For I can weather the roughest gale, That ever wind did blow." He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound her to the mast. "O father! I hear the church-bells ring, O say, what may it be?" "'Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!" And he steered for the open sea. "O father! I hear the sound of guns, O say, what may it be?" "Some ship in distress, that cannot live In such an angry sea!" "O father! I see a gleaming light, O say, what may it be?" But the father answered never a word, A frozen corpse was he. Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark, With his face turned to the skies, The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow On his fixed and glassy eyes. Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed That saved she might be; And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave, On the Lake of Galilee. And fast through the midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Towards the reef of Norman's Woe. And ever the fitful gusts between, A sound came from the land; It was the sound of the trampling surf, On the rocks and the hard sea-sand. The breakers were right beneath her bows, She drifted a dreary wreck, And a whooping billow swept the crew Like icicles from her deck. She struck where the white and fleecy waves Looked soft as carded wool, But the cruel rocks, they gored her side Like the horns of an angry bull. Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice, With the masts went by the board; Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank, Ho! ho! the breakers roared! At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach, A fisherman stood aghast, To see the form of a maiden fair, Lashed close to a drifting mast. The salt sea was frozen on her breast, The salt tears in her eyes; And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed, On the billows fall and rise. Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, In the midnight and the snow! Christ save us all from a death like this, On the reef of Norman's Woe! THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH Under a spreading chestnut tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands. His hair is crisp, and black, and long, His face is like the tan; His brow is wet with honest sweat, He earns whate'er he can, And looks the whole world in the face, For he owes not any man. Week in, week out, from morn till night, You can hear his bellows blow; You can hear him swing his heavy sledge, With measured beat and slow, Like a sexton ringing the village bell, When the evening sun is low. And children coming home from school Look in at the open door; They love to see the flaming forge, And hear the bellows roar, And catch the burning sparks that fly Like chaff from a threshing-floor. He goes on Sunday to the church, And sits among his boys He hears the parson pray and preach, He hears his daughter's voice, Singing in the village choir, And it makes his heart rejoice. It sounds to him like her mother's voice, Singing in Paradise! He needs must think of her once more, How in the grave she lies; And with his hard, rough hand he wipe A tear out of his eyes. Toiling,--rejoicing,--sorrowing, Onward through life he goes; Each morning sees some task begin, Each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, Has earned a night's repose. Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, For the lesson thou hast taught! Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each burning deed and thought! IT IS NOT ALWAYS MAY NO HAY PAJAROS EN LOS NIDOS DE ANTANO Spanish Proverb, The sun is bright,--the air is clear, The darting swallows soar and sing, And from the stately elms I hear The bluebird prophesying Spring. So blue yon winding river flows, It seems an outlet from the sky, Where, waiting till the west wind blows, The freighted clouds at anchor lie. All things are new;--the buds, the leaves, That gild the elm tree's nodding crest. And even the nest beneath the eaves; There are no birds in last year's nest! All things rejoice in youth and love, The fulness of their first delight! And learn from the soft heavens above The melting tenderness of night. Maiden, that read'st this simple rhyme, Enjoy thy youth, it will not stay; Enjoy the fragrance of thy prime, For O! it is not always May! Enjoy the Spring of Love and Youth, To some good angel leave the rest; For Time will teach thee soon the truth, There are no birds in last year's nest! EXCELSIOR The shades of night were falling fast, As through an Alpine village passed A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice, A banner with the strange device, Excelsior! His brow was sad; his eye beneath, Flashed like a falchion from its sheath, And like a silver clarion rung The accents of that unknown tongue, Excelsior! In happy homes he saw the light Of household fires gleam warm and bright; Above, the spectral glaciers shone, And from his lips escaped a groan, Excelsior! "Try not the Pass!" the old man said; "Dark lowers the tempest overhead, The roaring torrent is deep and wide!" And loud that clarion voice replied, Excelsior! "O stay," the maiden said, "and rest Thy weary head upon this breast!" A tear stood in his bright blue eye, But still he answered, with a sigh, Excelsior! "Beware the pine tree's withered branch! Beware the awful avalanche!" This was the peasant's last Good-night, A voice replied, far up the height, Excelsior! At break of day, as heavenward The pious monks of Saint Bernard Uttered the oft-repeated prayer, A voice cried through the startled air, Excelsior! A traveller, by the faithful hound, Half-buried in the snow was found, Still grasping in his hand of ice That banner with the strange device, Excelsior! There in the twilight cold and gray, Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay, And from the sky, serene and far, A voice fell, like a falling star, Excelsior! THE RAINY DAY The day is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains, and the wind is never weary; The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, But at every gust the dead leaves fall, And the day is dark and dreary. My life is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains, and the wind is never weary; My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past, But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast, And the days are dark and dreary. Be still, sad heart! and cease repining; Behind the clouds is the sun still shining; Thy fate is the common fate of all, Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary. THE ARROW AND THE SONG I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For, so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight. I breathed a song into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For who has sight so keen and strong, That it can follow the flight of song? Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroke; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend. THE DAY IS DONE The day is done, and the darkness Falls from the wings of Night, As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle in his flight. I see the lights of the village Gleam through the rain and the mist, And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me, That my soul cannot resist: A feeling of sadness and longing, That is not akin to pain, And resembles sorrow only As the mist resembles the rain. Come, read to me some poem, Some simple and heartfelt lay, That shall soothe this restless feeling, And banish the thoughts of day. Not from the grand old masters, Not from the bards sublime, Whose distant footsteps echo Through the corridors of Time. For, like strains of martial music, Their mighty thoughts suggest Life's endless toil and endeavor; And to-night I long for rest. Read from some humbler poet, Whose songs gushed from his heart, As showers from the clouds of summer, Or tears from the eyelids start; Who, through long days of labor, And nights devoid of ease, Still heard in his soul the music Of wonderful melodies. Such songs have power to quiet The restless pulse of care, And come like the benediction That follows after prayer. Then read from the treasured volume The poem of thy choice, And lend to the rhyme of the poet The beauty of thy voice. And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, And as silently steal away. WALTER VON DER VOGELWEIDE VOGELWEID, the Minnesinger, When he left this world of ours, Laid his body in the cloister, Under Wurtzburg's minster towers. And he gave the monks his treasures, Gave them all with this behest They should feed the birds at noontide Daily on his place of rest; Saying, "From these wandering minstrels I have learned the art of song; Let me now repay the lessons They have taught so well and long." Thus the bard of love departed; And, fulfilling his desire, On his tomb the birds were feasted By the children of the choir. Day by day, o'er tower and turret, In foul weather and in fair, Day by day, in vaster numbers, Flocked the poets of the air. On the tree whose heavy branches Overshadowed all the place, On the pavement, on the tombstone; On the poet's sculptured face, On the cross-bars of each window, On the lintel of each door, They renewed the War of Wartburg, Which the bard had fought before. There they sang their merry carols, Sang their lauds on every side; And the name their voices uttered Was the name of Vogelweid. Till at length the portly abbot Murmured, "Why this waste of food? Be it changed to loaves henceforward For our fasting brotherhood." Then in vain o'er tower and turret, From the walls and woodland nests, When the minster bells rang noontide, Gathered the unwelcome guests. Then in vain, with cries discordant, Clamorous round the Gothic spire, Screamed the feathered Minnesingers For the children of the choir. Time has long effaced the inscriptions On the cloister's funeral stones, And tradition only tells us Where repose the poet's bones. But around the vast cathedral, By sweet echoes multiplied, Still the birds repeat the legend, And the name of Vogelweid. THE BUILDERS All are architects of Fate, Working in these walls of Time; Some with massive deeds and great, Some with ornaments of rhyme. Nothing useless is, or low: Each thing in its place is best; And what seems but idle show Strengthens and supports the rest. For the structure that we raise, Time is with materials filled; Our to-days and yesterdays Are the blocks with which we build. Truly shape and fashion these; Leave no yawning gaps between Think not, because no man sees, Such things will remain unseen. In the elder days of Art, Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part! For the Gods see everywhere. Let us do our work as well, Both the unseen and the seen; Make the house, where Gods may dwell, Beautiful, entire, and clean. Else our lives are incomplete, Standing in these walls of Time, Broken stairways, where the feet Stumble as they seek to climb. Build to-day, then, strong and sure, With a firm and ample base And ascending and secure Shall to-morrow find its place. Thus alone can we attain To those turrets, where the eye Sees the world as one vast plain, And one boundless reach of sky. SANTA FILOMENA Whene'er a noble deed is wrought, Whene'er is spoken a noble thought, Our hearts, in glad surprise, To higher levels rise. The tidal wave of deeper souls Into our inmost being rolls, And lifts us unawares Out of all meaner cares. Honor to those whose words or deeds Thus help us in our daily needs, And by their overflow Raise us from what is low! Thus thought I, as by night I read Of the great army of the dead, The trenches cold and damp, The starved and frozen camp, The wounded from the battle-plain, In dreary hospitals of pain, The cheerless corridors, The cold and stony floors. Lo! in that house of misery A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom, And flit from room to room. And slow, as in a dream of bliss, The speechless sufferer turns to kiss Her shadow, as it falls Upon the darkening walls. As if a door in heaven should be Opened and then closed suddenly, The vision came and went, The light shone and was spent. On England's annals, through the long Hereafter of her speech and song, That light its rays shall cast From portals of the past. A Lady with a Lamp shall stand In the great history of the land, A noble type of good, Heroic womanhood. Nor even shall be wanting here The palm, the lily, and the spear, The symbols that of yore Saint Filomena bore. THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH CAPE A LEAF FROM KING ALFRED'S OROSIUS Othere, the old sea-captain, Who dwelt in Helgoland, To King Alfred, the Lover of Truth, Brought a snow-white walrus-tooth, Which he held in his brown right hand. His figure was tall and stately, Like a boy's his eye appeared; His hair was yellow as hay, But threads of a silvery gray Gleamed in his tawny beard. Hearty and hale was Othere, His cheek had the color of oak; With a kind of laugh in his speech, Like the sea-tide on a beach, As unto the King he spoke. And Alfred, King of the Saxons, Had a book upon his knees, And wrote down the wondrous tale Of him who was first to sail Into the Arctic seas. "So far I live to the northward, No man lives north of me; To the east are wild mountain-chains, And beyond them meres and plains; To the westward all is sea. "So far I live to the northward, From the harbor of Skeringes-hale, If you only sailed by day, With a fair wind all the way, More than a month would you sail. "I own six hundred reindeer, With sheep and swine beside; I have tribute from the Finns, Whalebone and reindeer-skins, And ropes of walrus-hide. "I ploughed the land with horses, But my heart was ill at ease, For the old seafaring men Came to me now and then, With their sagas of the seas; "Of Iceland and of Greenland And the stormy Hebrides, And the undiscovered deep;-- I could not eat nor sleep For thinking of those seas. "To the northward stretched the desert, How far I fain would know; So at last I sallied forth, And three days sailed due north, As far as the whale-ships go. "To the west of me was the ocean, To the right the desolate shore, But I did not slacken sail For the walrus or the whale, Till after three days more, "The days grew longer and longer, Till they became as one, And southward through the haze I saw the sullen blaze Of the red midnight sun. "And then uprose before me, Upon the water's edge, The huge and haggard shape Of that unknown North Cape, Whose form is like a wedge. "The sea was rough and stormy, The tempest howled and wailed, And the sea-fog, like a ghost, Haunted that dreary coast, But onward still I sailed. "Four days I steered to eastward, Four days without a night Round in a fiery ring Went the great sun, O King, With red and lurid light." Here Alfred, King of the Saxons, Ceased writing for a while; And raised his eyes from his book, With a strange and puzzled look, And an incredulous smile. But Othere, the old sea-captain, He neither paused nor stirred, Till the King listened, and then Once more took up his pen, And wrote down every word. "And now the land," said Othere, "Bent southward suddenly, And I followed the curving shore And ever southward bore Into a nameless sea. "And there we hunted the walrus, The narwhale, and the seal; Ha! 't was a noble game! And like the lightning's flame Flew our harpoons of steel. "There were six of us all together, Norsemen of Helgoland; In two days and no more We killed of them threescore, And dragged them to the strand! Here Alfred the Truth-Teller Suddenly closed his book, And lifted his blue eyes, with doubt and strange surmise Depicted in their look. And Othere the old sea-captain Stared at him wild and weird, Then smiled, till his shining teeth Gleamed white from underneath His tawny, quivering beard. And to the King of the Saxons, In witness of the truth, Raising his noble head, He stretched his brown hand, and said, "Behold this walrus-tooth!" SANDALPHON Have you read in the Talmud of old, In the Legends the Rabbins have told Of the limitless realms of the air,-- Have you read it.--the marvellous story Of Sandalphon, te Angel of Glory, Sandalphon, the Angel of Prayer? How, erect, at the outermost gates Of the City Celestial he waits, With his feet on the ladder of light, That, crowded with angels unnumbered, By Jacob was seen as he slumbered Alone in the desert at night? The Angels of Wind and of Fire, Chant only one hymn, and expire With the song's irresistible stress; Expire in their rapture and wonder, As harp-strings are broken asunder By music they throb to express. But serene in the rapturous throng, Unmoved by the rush of the song, With eyes unimpassioned and slow, Among the dead angels, the deathless Sandalphon stands listening breathless To sounds that ascend from below;-- From the spirits on earth that adore, From the souls that entreat and implore In the fervor and passion of prayer; From the hearts that are broken with losses, And weary with dragging the crosses Too heavy for mortals to bear. And he gathers the prayers as he stands, And they change into flowers in his hands, Into garlands of purple and red; And beneath the great arch of the portal, Through the streets of the City Immortal Is wafted the fragrance they shed. It is but a legend, I know,-- A fable, a phantom, a show, Of the ancient Rabbinical lore; Yet the old mediaeval tradition, The beautiful, strange superstition But haunts me and holds me the more. When I look from my window at night, And the welkin above is all white, All throbbing and panting with stars, Among them majestic is standing Sandalphon the angel, expanding His pinions in nebulous bars. And the legend, I feel, is a part Of the hunger and thirst of the heart, The frenzy and fire of the brain, That grasps at the fruitage forbidden, The golden pomegranates of Eden, To quiet its fever and pain. THE LANDLORD'S TALE PAUL REVERES RIDE Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year. He said to his friend, "If the British march By land or sea from the town to-night, Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch Of the North Church tower as a signal light,-- One, if by land, and two, if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm, For the country-folk to be up and to arm." Then he said, "Good night!" and with muffled oar Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, Just as the moon rose over the bay, Where swinging wide at her moorings lay The Somerset, British man-of-war; A phantom ship, with each mast and spar Across the moon like a prison bar, And a huge black hulk that was magnified By its own reflection in the tide. Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street, Wanders and watches with eager ears, Till in the silence around him he hears The muster of men at the barrack door, The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet, And the measured tread of the grenadiers, Marching down to their boats on the shore. Then he climbed to the tower of the church, Up the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread, To the belfry-chamber overhead, And startled the pigeons from their perch On the sombre rafters, that round him made Masses and moving shapes of shade,-- Up the trembling ladder, steep and tall, To the highest window in the wall, Where he paused to listen and look down A moment on the roofs of the town, And the moonlight flowing over all. Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead, In their night-encampment on the hill, Wrapped in silence so deep and still That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread, The watchful night-wind, as it went Creeping along from tent to tent, And seeming to whisper, "All is well!" A moment only he feels the spell Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread Of the lonely belfry and the dead; For suddenly all his thoughts are bent On a shadowy something far away, Where the river widens to meet the bay, A line of black that bends and floats On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats. Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride, Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere. Now he patted his horse's side, Now gazed at the landscape far and near, Then, impetuous, stamped the earth, And turned and tightened his saddlegirth; But mostly he watched with eager search The belfry-tower of the Old North Church, As it rose above the graves on the hill, Lonely and spectral and sombre and still. And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height A glimmer, and then a gleam of light! He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns, But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight A second lamp in the belfry burns! A hurry of hoofs in a village street, A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark, And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet; That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light, The fate of a nation was riding that night; And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight, Kindled the land into flame with its heat. He has left the village and mounted the steep, And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep, Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides; And under the alders, that skirt its edge, Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge, Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides. It was twelve by the village clock When he crossed the bridge into Medford town. He heard the crowing of the cock, And the barking of the farmer's dog, And felt the damp of the river fog, That rises after the sun goes down. It was one by the village clock, When he galloped into Lexington. He saw the gilded weathercock Swim in the moonlight as he passed, And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare, Gaze at him with a spectral glare, As if they already stood aghast At the bloody work they would look upon. It was two by the village clock, When he came to the bridge in Concord town. He heard the bleating of the flock, And the twitter of birds among the trees, And felt the breath of the morning breeze Blowing over the meadows brown. And one was safe and asleep in his bed Who at the bridge would be first to fall, Who that day would be lying dead, Pierced by a British musket-ball. You know the rest. In the books you have read, How the British Regulars fired and fled,-- How the farmers gave them ball for ball, From behind each fence and farmyard wall, Chasing the red-coats down the lane, Then crossing the fields to emerge again Under the trees at the turn of the road, And only pausing to fire and load. So through the night rode Paul Revere; And so through the night went his cry of alarm To every Middlesex village and farm, A cry of defiance and not of fear, A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, And a word that shall echo forevermore! For, borne on the night-wind of the Past, Through all our history, to the last, In the hour of darkness and peril and need, The people will waken and listen to hear The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed, And the midnight message of Paul Revere. THE SICILIAN'S TALE KING ROBERT OF SICILY Robert of Sicily, brother of Pope Urbane And Valmond, Emperor of Allemaine, Apparelled in magnificent attire, With retinue of many a knight and squire, On St. John's eve, at vespers, proudly sat And heard the priests chant the Magnificat. And as he listened, o'er and o'er again Repeated, like a burden or refrain, He caught the words, "Deposuit potentes De sede, et exaltavit humiles;" And slowly lifting up his kingly head He to a learned clerk beside him said, "What mean these words?" The clerk made answer meet, "He has put down the mighty from their seat, And has exalted them of low degree." Thereat King Robert muttered scornfully, "'Tis well that such seditious words are sung Only by priests and in the Latin tongue; For unto priests and people be it known, There is no power can push me from my throne!" And leaning back, he yawned and fell asleep, Lulled by the chant monotonous and deep. When he awoke, it was already night; The church was empty, and there was no light, Save where the lamps, that glimmered few and faint, Lighted a little space before some saint. He started from his seat and gazed around, But saw no living thing and heard no sound. He groped towards the door, but it was locked; He cried aloud, and listened, and then knocked, And uttered awful threatenings and complaints, And imprecations upon men and saints. The sounds re-echoed from the roof and walls As if dead priests were laughing in their stalls! At length the sexton, hearing from without The tumult of the knocking and the shout, And thinking thieves were in the house of prayer, Came with his lantern, asking, "Who is there?" Half choked with rage, King Robert fiercely said, "Open: 'tis I, the King! Art thou afraid?" The frightened sexton, muttering, with a curse, "This is some drunken vagabond, or worse!" Turned the great key and flung the portal wide; A man rushed by him at a single stride, Haggard, half naked, without hat or cloak, Who neither turned, nor looked at him, nor spoke, But leaped into the blackness of the night, And vanished like a spectre from his sight. Robert of Sicily, brother of Pope Urbane And Valmond, Emperor of Allemaine, Despoiled of his magnificent attire, Bare-headed, breathless, and besprent with mire, With sense of wrong and outrage desperate, Strode on and thundered at the palace gate; Rushed through the court-yard, thrusting in his rage To right and left each seneschal and page, And hurried up the broad and sounding stair, His white face ghastly in the torches' glare. From hall to hall he passed with breathless speed; Voices and cries he heard, but did not heed, Until at last he reached the banquet--room, Blazing with light, and breathing with perfume. There on the dais sat another king, Wearing his robes, his crown, his signet-ring, King Robert's self in features, form, and height, But all transfigured with angelic light! It was an Angel; and his presence there With a divine effulgence filled the air, An exaltation, piercing the disguise, Though none the hidden Angel recognize. A moment speechless, motionless, amazed, The throneless monarch on the Angel gazed, Who met his looks of anger and surprise With the divine compassion of his eves; Then said, "Who art thou? and why com'st thou here?" To which King Robert answered with a sneer, "I am the King, and come to claim my own From an impostor, who usurps my throne!" And suddenly, at these audacious words, Up sprang the angry guests, and drew their swords; The Angel answered, with unruffled brow, "Nay, not the King, but the King's Jester, thou Henceforth shalt wear the bells and scalloped cape, And for thy counsellor shaft lead an ape; Thou shalt obey my servants when they call, And wait upon my henchmen in the hall!" Deaf to King Robert's threats and cries and prayers, They thrust him from the hall and down the stairs; A group of tittering pages ran before, And as they opened wide the folding-door, His heart failed, for he heard, with strange alarms, The boisterous laughter of the men-at-arms, And all the vaulted chamber roar and ring With the mock plaudits of "Long live the King! Next morning, waking with the day's first beam, He said within himself, "It was a dream!" But the straw rustled as he turned his head, There were the cap and bells beside his bed, Around him rose the bare, discolored walls, Close by, the steeds were champing in their stalls, And in the corner, a revolting shape, Shivering and chattering sat the wretched ape. It was no dream; the world he loved so much Had turned to dust and ashes at his touch! Days came and went; and now returned again To Sicily the old Saturnian reign Under the Angel's governance benign The happy island danced with corn and wine, And deep within the mountain's burning breast Enceladus, the giant, was at rest. Meanwhile King Robert yielded to his fate, Sullen and silent and disconsolate. Dressed in the motley garb that Jesters wear, With looks bewildered and a vacant stare, Close shaven above the ears, as monks are shorn, By courtiers mocked, by pages laughed to scorn, His only friend the ape, his only food What others left,--he still was unsubdued. And when the Angel met him on his way, And half in earnest, half in jest, would say, Sternly, though tenderly, that he might feel The velvet scabbard held a sword of steel, "Art thou the King?" the passion of his woe Burst from him in resistless overflow, And, lifting high his forehead, he would fling The haughty answer back, "I am, I am the King!" Almost three years were ended; when there came Ambassadors of great repute and name From Valmond, Emperor of Allemaine. Unto King Robert, saying that Pope Urbane By letter summoned them forthwith to come On Holy Thursday to his city of Rome. The Angel with great joy received his guests, And gave them presents of embroidered vests, And velvet mantles with rich ermine lined, And rings and jewels of the rarest kind. Then he departed with them o'er the sea Into the lovely land of Italy, Whose loveliness was more resplendent made By the mere passing of that cavalcade, With plumes, and cloaks, and housings, and the stir Of jewelled bridle and of golden spur. And lo! among the menials, in mock state, Upon a piebald steed, with shambling gait, His cloak of fox-tails flapping in the wind, The solemn ape demurely perched behind, King Robert rode, making huge merriment In all the country towns through which they went. The Pope received them with great pomp and blare Of bannered trumpets, on Saint Peter's square, Giving his benediction and embrace, Fervent, and full of apostolic grace. While with congratulations and with prayers He entertained the Angel unawares, Robert, the Jester, bursting through the crowd, Into their presence rushed, and cried aloud, "I am the King! Look, and behold in me Robert, your brother, King of Sicily! This man, who wears my semblance to your eyes, Is an impostor in a king's disguise. Do you not know me? does no voice within Answer my cry, and say we are akin?" The Pope in silence, but with troubled mien, Gazed at the Angel's countenance serene; The Emperor, laughing, said, "It is strange sport To keep a madman for thy Fool at court!" And the poor, baffled Jester in disgrace Was hustled back among the populace. In solemn state the Holy Week went by, And Easter Sunday gleamed upon the sky; The presence of the Angel, with its light, Before the sun rose, made the city bright, And with new fervor filled the hearts of men, Who felt that Christ indeed had risen again. Even the Jester, on his bed of straw, With haggard eyes the unwonted splendor saw, He felt within a power unfelt before, And, kneeling humbly on his chamber floor, He heard the rushing garments of the Lord Sweep through the silent air, ascending heavenward. And now the visit ending, and once more Valmond returning to the Danube's shore, Homeward the Angel journeyed, and again The land was made resplendent with his train, Flashing along the towns of Italy Unto Salerno, and from there by sea. And when once more within Palermo's wall, And, seated on the throne in his great hall, He heard the Angelus from convent towers, As if the better world conversed with ours, He beckoned to King Robert to draw nigher, And with a gesture bade the rest retire; And when they were alone, the Angel said, "Art thou the King?" Then bowing down his head, King Robert crossed both hands upon his breast, And meekly answered him: "Thou knowest best! My sins as scarlet are; let me go hence, And in some cloister's school of penitence, Across those stones, that pave the way to heaven, Walk barefoot, till my guilty soul is shriven!" The Angel smiled, and from his radiant face A holy light illumined all the place, And through the open window, loud and clear, They heard the monks chant in the chapel near, Above the stir and tumult of the street "He has put down the mighty from their seat, And has exalted them of low degree!" And through the chant a second melody Rose like the throbbing of a single string "I am an Angel, and thou art the King!" King Robert, who was standing near the throne, Lifted his eyes, and lo! he was alone! But all apparelled as in days of old, With ermined mantle and with cloth of gold; And when his courtiers came, they found him there Kneeling upon the floor, absorbed in silent prayer. THE THEOLOGIAN'S TALE THE LEGEND BEAUTIFUL "HADST thou stayed, I must have fled!" That is what the Vision said. In his chamber all alone, Kneeling on the floor of stone, Prayed the Monk in deep contrition For his sins of indecision, Prayed for greater self-denial In temptation and in trial; It was noonday by the dial, And the Monk was all alone. Suddenly, as if it lightened, An unwonted splendor brightened All within him and without him In that narrow cell of stone; And he saw the Blessed Vision Of our Lord, with light Elysian Like a vesture wrapped about Him, Like a garment round Him thrown. Not as crucified and slain, Not in agonies of pain, Not with bleeding hands and feet, Did the Monk his Master see; But as in the village street, In the house or harvest-field, Halt and lame and blind He healed, When He walked in Galilee. In an attitude imploring, Hands upon his bosom crossed, Wondering, worshipping, adoring, Knelt the Monk in rapture lost. Lord, he thought, in heaven that reignest, Who am I, that thus thou deignest To reveal thyself to me? Who am I, that from the centre Of thy glory thou shouldst enter This poor cell, my guest to be? Then amid his exaltation, Loud the convent bell appalling, From its belfry calling, calling, Rang through court and corridor With persistent iteration He had never heard before. It was now the appointed hour When alike in shine or shower, Winter's cold or summer's heat, To the convent portals came All the blind and halt and lame, All the beggars of the street, For their daily dole of food Dealt them by the brotherhood; And their almoner was he Who upon his bended knee, Rapt in silent ecstasy Of divinest self-surrender, Saw the Vision and the Splendor. Deep distress and hesitation Mingled with his adoration; Should he go or should he stay? Should he leave the poor to wait Hungry at the convent gate, Till the Vision passed away? Should he slight his radiant guest, Slight this visitant celestial, For a crowd of ragged, bestial Beggars at the convent gate? Would the Vision there remain? Would the Vision come again? Then a voice within his breast Whispered, audible and clear As if to the outward ear "Do thy duty; that is best; Leave unto thy Lord the rest!" Straightway to his feet he started, And with longing look intent On the Blessed Vision bent, Slowly from his cell departed, Slowly on his errand went. At the gate the poor were waiting, Looking through the iron grating, With that terror in the eye That is only seen in those Who amid their wants and woes Hear the sound of doors that close, And of feet that pass them by; Grown familiar with disfavor, Grown familiar with the savor Of the bread by which men die! But to-day, they know not why, Like the gate of Paradise Seemed the convent gate to rise, Like a sacrament divine Seemed to them the bread and wine. In his heart the Monk was praying, Thinking of the homeless poor, What they suffer and endure; What we see not, what we see; And the inward voice was saying "Whatsoever thing thou doest To the least of mine and lowest, That thou doest unto me!" Unto me! but had the Vision Come to him in beggar's clothing, Come a mendicant imploring. Would he then have knelt adoring, Or have listened with derision, And have turned away with loathing? Thus his conscience put the question, Full of troublesome suggestion, As at length, with hurried pace, Towards his cell he turned his face, And beheld the convent bright With a supernatural light, Like a luminous cloud expanding Over floor and wall and ceiling. But he paused with awe-struck feeling At the threshold of his door, For the Vision still was standing As he left it there before, When the convent bell appalling, From its belfry calling, calling, Summoned him to feed the poor. Through the long hour intervening It had waited his return, And he felt his bosom burn, Comprehending all the meaning, When the Blessed Vision said, "Hadst thou stayed, I must have fled!" JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER PROEM To EDITION of 1847 I love the old melodious lays Which softly melt the ages through, The songs of Spenser's golden days, Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase, Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning dew. Yet, vainly in my quiet hours To breathe their marvellous notes I try; I feel them, as the leaves and flowers In silence feel the dewy showers, And drink with glad, still lips the blessing of the sky. The rigor of a frozen clime, The harshness of an untaught ear, The jarring words of one whose rhyme Beat often Labor's hurried time, Or Duty's rugged march through storm and strife, are here. Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace, No rounded art the lack supplies; Unskilled the subtle lines to trace, Or softer shades of Nature's face, I view her common forms with unanointed eyes. Nor mine the seer-like power to show The secrets of the hear and mind; To drop the plummet-line below Our common world of joy and woe, A more intense despair or brighter hope to find. Yet here at least an earnest sense Of human right and weal is shown; A hate of tyranny intense, And hearty in its vehemence, As if my brother's pain and sorrow were my own. O Freedom! if to me belong Nor mighty Milton's gift divine, Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song, Still with a love as deep and strong As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy shrine! THE FROST SPIRIT He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes! You may trace his footsteps now On the naked woods and the blasted fields and the brown hill's withered brow. He has smitten the leaves of the gray old trees where their pleasant green came forth, And the winds, which follow wherever he goes, have shaken them down to earth. He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes!--from the frozen Labrador,-- From the icy bridge of the Northern seas, which the white bear wanders o'er,-- Where the fisherman's sail is stiff with ice, and the luckless forms below In the sunless cold of the lingering night into marble statues grow! He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes!--on the rushing Northern blast, And the dark Norwegian pines have bowed as his fearful breath went past. With an unscorched wing he has hurried on, where the fires of Hecla glow On the darkly beautiful sky above and the ancient ice below. He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes!--and the quiet lake shall feel The torpid touch of his glazing breath, and ring to the skater's heel; And the streams which danced on the broken rocks, or sang to the leaning grass, Shall bow again to their winter chain, and in mournful silence pass. He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes!--let us meet him as we may, And turn with the light of the parlor-fire his evil power away; And gather closer the circle round, when that fire-light dances high, And laugh at the shriek of the baffled Fiend as his sounding wing goes by! SONGS OF LABOR DEDICATION I would the gift I offer here Might graces from thy favor take, And, seen through Friendship's atmosphere, On softened lines and coloring, wear The unaccustomed light of beauty, for thy sake. Few leaves of Fancy's spring remain But what I have I give to thee,-- The o'er-sunned bloom of summer's plain, And paler flowers, the latter rain Calls from the weltering slope of life's autumnal Above the fallen groves of green, Where youth's enchanted forest stood, Dry root and mossed trunk between, A sober after-growth is seen, As springs the pine where falls the gay-leafed maple wood! Yet birds will sing, and breezes play Their leaf-harps in the sombre tree, And through the bleak and wintry day It keeps its steady green alway,-- So, even my after-thoughts may have a charm for thee. Art's perfect forms no moral need, And beauty is its own excuse; But for the dull and flowerless weed Some healing virtue still must plead, And the rough ore must find its honors in its use. So haply these, my simple lays Of homely toil, may serve to show The orchard bloom and tasseled maize That skirt and gladden duty's ways, The unsung beauty hid life's common things below. Haply from them the toiler, bent Above his forge or plough, may gain A manlier spirit of content, And feel that life is wisest spent Where the strong working hand makes strong the working brain. The doom which to the guilty pair Without the walls of Eden came, Transforming sinless ease to care And rugged toil, no more shall bear The burden of old crime, or mark of primal shame. A blessing now,--a curse no more; Since He whose name we breathe with awe. The coarse mechanic vesture wore, A poor man toiling with the poor, In labor, as in prayer, fulfilling the same law. THE LUMBERMEN Wildly round our woodland quarters, Sad-voiced Autumn grieves; Thickly down these swelling waters Float his fallen leaves. Through the tall and naked timber, Column-like and old, Gleam the sunsets of November, From their skies of gold. O'er us, to the southland heading, Screams the gray wild-goose; On the night-frost sounds the treading Of the brindled moose. Noiseless creeping, while we're sleeping, Frost his task-work plies; Soon, his icy bridges heaping, Shall our log-piles rise. When, with sounds of smothered thunder, On some night of rain, Lake and river break asunder Winter's weakened chain, Down the wild March flood shall bear them To the saw-mill's wheel, Or where Steam, the slave, shall tear them With his teeth of steel. Be it starlight, be it moonlight, In these vales below, When the earliest beams of sunlight Streak the mountain's snow, Crisps the hoar-frost, keen and early, To our hurrying feet, And the forest echoes clearly All our blows repeat. Where the crystal Ambijejis Stretches broad and clear, And Millnoket's pine-black ridges Hide the browsing deer: Where, through lakes and wide morasses, Or through rocky walls, Swift and strong, Penobscot passes White with foamy falls; Where, through clouds, are glimpses given Of Katahdin's sides,-- Rock and forest piled to heaven, Torn and ploughed by slides! Far below, the Indian trapping, In the sunshine warm; Far above, the snow-cloud wrapping Half the peak in storm! Where are mossy carpets better Than the Persian weaves, And than Eastern perfumes sweeter Seem the fading leaves; And a music wild and solemn From the pine-tree's height, Rolls its vast and sea-like volumes On the wind of night; Not for us the measured ringing From the village spire, Not for us the Sabbath singing Of the sweet-voiced choir Ours the old, majestic temple, Where God's brightness shines Down the dome so grand and ample, Propped by lofty pines! Keep who will the city's alleys, Take the smooth-shorn plain,-- Give to us the cedar valleys, Rocks and hills of Maine! In our North-land, wild and woody, Let us still have part: Rugged nurse and mother sturdy, Hold us to thy heart! O, our free hearts beat the warmer For thy breath of snow; And our tread is all the firmer For thy rocks below. Freedom, hand in hand with labor, Walketh strong and brave; On the forehead of his neighbor No man writeth Slave! Lo, the day breaks! old Katahdin's Pine-trees show its fires, While from these dim forest gardens Rise their blackened spires. Up, my comrades! up and doing! Manhood's rugged play Still renewing, bravely hewing Through the world our way! BARCLAY OF URY Up the streets of Aberdeen, By the kick and college green, Rode the Laird of Ury; Close behind him, close beside, Foul of mouth and evil-eyed, Pressed the mob in fury. Flouted him the drunken churl, Jeered at him the serving-girl, Prompt to please her master; And the begging carlin, late Fed and clothed at Ury's gate, Cursed him as he passed her. Yet, with calm and stately mien, Up the streets of Aberdeen Came he slowly riding; And, to all he saw and heard, Answering not with bitter word, Turning not for chiding. Came a troop with broadswords swinging, Bits and bridles sharply ringing, Loose and free and froward; Quoth the foremost, "Ride him down! Push him! prick him! through the town Drive the Quaker coward!" But from out the thickening crowd Cried a sudden voice and loud "Barclay! Ho! a Barclay!" And the old man at his side Saw a comrade, battle tried, Scarred and sunburned darkly; Who with ready weapon bare, Fronting to the troopers there, Cried aloud: "God save us, Call ye coward him who stood Ankle deep in Lutzen's blood, With the brave Gustavus?" "Nay, I do not need thy sword, Comrade mine," said Ury's lord; "Put it up, I pray thee: Passive to His holy will, Trust I in my Master still, Even though He slay me. "Pledges of thy love and faith, Proved on many a field of death, Not, by me are needed." Marvelled much that henchman bold, That his laud, so stout of old, Now so meekly pleaded. "Woe's the day!" he sadly said, With a slowly shaking head, And a look of pity; "Ury's honest lord reviled, Mock of knave and sport of child, In his own good city! "Speak the word, and, master mine, As we charged on Tilly's line, And his Walloon lancers, Smiting through their midst we'll teach Civil look and decent speech To these boyish prancers!" "Marvel not, mine ancient friend, Like beginning, like the end:" Quoth the Laird of Ury, "Is the sinful servant more Than his gracious Lord who bore Bonds and stripes in Jewry? "Give me joy that in His name I can bear, with patient frame, All these vain ones offer; While for them He suffereth long, Shall I answer wrong with wrong, Scoffing with the scoffer? "Happier I, with loss of all, Hunted, outlawed, held in thrall, With few friends to greet me, Than when reeve and squire were seen, Riding out from Aberdeen, With bared heads to meet me. "When each goodwife, o'er and o'er, Blessed me as I passed her door; And the snooded daughter, Through her casement glancing down, Smiled on him who bore renown From red fields of slaughter. "Hard to feel the stranger's scoff, Hard the old friend's falling off, Hard to learn forgiving; But the Lord His own rewards, And His love with theirs accords, Warm and fresh and living. "Through this dark and stormy night Faith beholds a feeble light Up the blackness streaking; Knowing God's own time is best, In a patient hope I rest For the full day-breaking!" So the Laird of Ury said, Turning slow his horse's head Toward the Tolbooth prison, Where, through iron grates, he heard Poor disciples of the Word Preach of Christ arisen! Plot in vain, Confessor old, Unto us the tale is told Of thy day of trial; Every age on him who strays From its broad and beaten ways Pours its sevenfold vial. Happy he whose inward ear Angel comfortings can hear, O'er the rabble's laughter; And, while Hatred's fagots burn, Glimpses through the smoke discern Of the good hereafter. Knowing this, that never yet Share of Truth was vainly set In the world's wide fallow; After hands shall sow the seed, After hands from hill and mead Reap the harvest yellow. Thus, with somewhat of the Seer, Must the moral pioneer From the Future borrow; Clothe the waste with dreams of grain, And, on midnight's sky of rain, Paint the golden morrow! ALL'S WELL The clouds, which rise with thunder, slake Our thirsty souls with rain; The blow most dreaded falls to break From off our limbs a chain; And wrongs of man to man but make The love of God more plain. As through the shadowy lens of even The eye looks farthest into heaven On gleams of star and depths of blue The glaring sunshine never knew! RAPHAEL I shall not soon forget that sight: The glow of autumn's westering day, A hazy warmth, a dreamy light, On Raphael's picture lay. It was a simple print I saw, The fair face of a musing boy; Yet, while I gazed, a sense of awe Seemed blending with my joy. A simple print:--the graceful flow Of boyhood's soft and wavy hair, And fresh young lip and cheek, and brow Unmarked and clear, were there. Yet through its sweet and calm repose I saw the inward spirit shine; It was as if before me rose The white veil of a shrine. As if, as Gothland's sage has told, The hidden life, the man within, Dissevered from its frame and mould, By mortal eye were seen. Was it the lifting of that eye, The waving of that pictured hand? Loose as a cloud-wreath on the sky, I saw the walls expand. The narrow room had vanished,--space, Broad, luminous, remained alone, Through which all hues and shapes of grace And beauty looked or shone. Around the mighty master came The marvels which his pencil wrought, Those miracles of power whose fame Is wide as human thought. There drooped thy more than mortal face, O Mother, beautiful and mild! Enfolding in one dear embrace Thy Saviour and thy Child! The rapt brow of the Desert John; The awful glory of that day When all the Father's brightness shone Through manhood's veil of clay. And, midst gray prophet forms, and wild Dark visions of the days of old, How sweetly woman's beauty smiled Through locks of brown and gold! There Fornarina's fair young face Once more upon her lover shone, Whose model of an angel's grace He borrowed from her own. Slow passed that vision from my view, But not the lesson which it taught; The soft, calm shadows which it threw Still rested on my thought The truth, that painter, bard, and sage, Even in Earth's cold and changeful clime, Plant for their deathless heritage The fruits and flowers of time. We shape ourselves the joy or fear Of which the coming life is made, And fill our Future's atmosphere With sunshine or with shade. The tissue of the Life to be We weave with colors all our own, And in the field of Destiny We reap as we have sown. Still shall the soul around it call The shadows which it gathered here, And, painted on the eternal wall, The Past shall reappear. Think ye the notes of holy song On Milton's tuneful ear have died? Think ye that Raphael's angel throng Has vanished from his side? O no!--We live our life again Or warmly touched, or coldly dim, The pictures of the Past remain,-- Man's works shall follow him! SEED-TIME AND HARVEST As o'er his furrowed fields which lie Beneath a coldly-dropping sky, Yet chill with winter's melted snow, The husbandman goes forth to sow, Thus, Freedom, on the bitter blast The ventures of thy seed we cast, And trust to warmer sun and rain To swell the germ, and fill the grain. Who calls thy glorious service hard? Who deems it not its own reward? Who, for its trials, counts it less A cause of praise and thankfulness? It may not be our lot to wield The sickle in the ripened field; Nor ours to hear, on summer eves, The reaper's song among the sheaves. Yet where our duty's task is wrought In unison with God's great thought, The near and future blend in one, And whatsoe'er is willed, is done! And ours the grateful service whence Comes, day by day, the recompense; The hope, the trust, the purpose stayed, The fountain and the noonday shade. And were this life the utmost span, The only end and aim of man, Better the toil of fields like these Than waking dream and slothful ease. But life, though falling like our grain, Like that revives and springs again; And, early called, how blest are they Who wait in heaven their harvest-day! THE PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL 1697 Up and gown the village streets Strange are the forms my fancy meets, For the thoughts and things of to-day are hid, And through the veil of a closed lid The ancient worthies I see again: I hear the tap of the elder's cane, And his awful periwig I see, And the silver buckles of shoe and knee. Stately and slow, with thoughtful air, His black cap hiding his whitened hair, Walks the Judge of the great Assize, Samuel Sewall the good and wise. His face with lines of firmness wrought, He wears the look of a man unbought, Who swears to his hurt and changes not; Yet, touched and softened nevertheless With the grace of Christian gentleness, The face that a child would climb to kiss! True and tender and brave and just, That man might honor and woman trust. Touching and sad, a tale is told, Like a penitent hymn of the Psalmist old, Of the fast which the good man lifelong kept With a haunting sorrow that never slept, As the circling year brought round the time Of an error that left the sting of crime, When he sat on the bunch of the witchcraft courts, With the laws of Moses and Hales Reports, And spake, in the name of both, the word That gave the witch's neck to the cord, And piled the oaken planks that pressed The feeble life from the warlock's breast! All the day long, from dawn to dawn, His door was bolted, his curtain drawn; No foot on his silent threshold trod, No eye looked on him save that of God, As he baffled the ghosts of the dead with charms Of penitent tears, and prayers, and psalms, And, with precious proofs from the sacred word Of the boundless pity and love of the Lord, His faith confirmed and his trust renewed That the sin of his ignorance, sorely rued, Might be washed away in the mingled flood Of his human sorrow and Christ's dear blood! Green forever the memory be Of the Judge of the old Theocracy, Whom even his errors glorified, Like a far-seen, sunlit mountain-side By the cloudy shadows which o'er it glide! Honor and praise to the Puritan Who the halting step of his age outran, And, seeing the infinite worth of man In the priceless gift the Father gave, In the infinite love that stooped to save, Dared not brand his brother a slave! "Who doth such wrong," he was wont to say, In his own quaint, picture-loving way, "Flings up to Heaven a hand-grenade Which God shall cast down upon his head!" Widely as heaven and hell, contrast That brave old jurist of the past And the cunning trickster and knave of courts Who the holy features of Truth distorts,-- Ruling as right the will of the strong, Poverty, crime, and weakness wrong; Wide-eared to power, to the wronged and weak Deaf as Egypt's gods of leek; Scoffing aside at party's nod, Order of nature and law of God; For whose dabbled ermine respect were waste, Reverence folly, and awe misplaced; Justice of whom 't were vain to seek As from Koordish robber or Syrian Sheik! O, leave the wretch to his bribes and sins; Let him rot in the web of lies he spins! To the saintly soul of the early day, To the Christian judge, let us turn and say "Praise and thanks for an honest man!-- Glory to God for the Puritan!" I see, far southward, this quiet day, The hills of Newbury rolling away, With the many tints of the season gay, Dreamily blending in autumn mist Crimson, and gold, and amethyst. Long and low, with dwarf trees crowned, Plum Island lies, like a whale aground, A stone's toss over the narrow sound. Inland, as far as the eye can go, The hills curve round like a bonded bow; A silver arrow from out them sprung, I see the shine of the Quasycung; And, round and round, over valley and hill, Old roads winding, as old roads will, Here to a ferry, and there to a mill; And glimpses of chimneys and gabled eaves, Through green elm arches and maple leaves,-- Old homesteads sacred to all that can Gladden or sadden the heart of man,-- Over whose thresholds of oak and stone Life and Death have come and gone! There pictured tiles in the fireplace show, Great beams sag from the ceiling low, The dresser glitters with polished wares, The long clock ticks on the foot-worn stairs, And the low, broad chimney shows the crack By the earthquake made a century back. Lip from their midst springs the collage spire With the crest of its cock in the sun afire; Beyond are orchards and planting lands, And great salt marshes and glimmering sands, And, where north and south the coast-lines run, The blink of the sea in breeze and sun! I see it all like a chart unrolled, But my thoughts are full of the past and old, I hear the tales of my boyhood told; And the shadows and shapes of early days Flit dimly by in the veiling haze, With measured movement and rhythmic chime Weaving like shuttles my web of rhyme. I think of the old man wise and good Who once on yon misty hillsides stood, (A poet who never measured rhyme, A seer unknown to his dull-eared time,) And, propped on his staff of age, looked down, With his boyhood's love, on his native town, Where, written, as if on its hills and plains, His burden of prophecy yet remains, For the voices of wood, and wave, and wind To read in the ear of the musing mind:-- "As long as Plum Island, to guard the coast As God appointed, shall keep its post; As long as a salmon shall haunt the deep Of Merrimack River, or sturgeon leap; As long as pickerel swift and slim, Or red-backed perch, in Crane Pond swim; As long as the annual sea-fowl know Their time to come and their time to go; As long as cattle shall roam at will The green, grass meadows by Turkey Hill; As long as sheep shall look from the side Of Oldtown Hill on marishes wide, And Parker River, and salt-sea tide; As long as a wandering pigeon shall search The fields below from his white-oak perch, When the barley-harvest is ripe and shorn, And the dry husks fall from the standing corn; As long as Nature shall not grow old, Nor drop her work from her doting hold, And her care for the Indian corn forget, And the yellow rows in pairs to set;-- So long shall Christians here be born, Grow up and ripen as God's sweet corn!-- By the beak of bird, by the breath of frost Shall never a holy ear be lost, But husked by Death in the Planter's sight, Be sown again m the fields of light!" The Island still is purple with plums, Up the river the salmon comes, The sturgeon leaps, and the wild-fowl feeds On hillside berries and marish seeds,-- All the beautiful signs remain, From spring-time sowing to autumn rain The good man's vision returns again! And let us hope, as well we can, That the Silent Angel who garners man May find some grain as of old he found In the human cornfield ripe and sound, And the Lord of the Harvest deign to own The precious seed by the fathers sown! SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE Of all the rides since the birth of time, Told in story or sung in rhyme,-- On Apuleius's Golden Ass, Or one-eyed Calendar's horse of brass, Witch astride of a human back, Islam's prophet on Al-Borak,-- The strangest ride that ever was sped Was Ireson's, out from Marblehead! Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead! Body of turkey, head of owl, Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl, Feathered and ruffled in every part, Skipper Ireson stood in the cart. Scores of women, old and young, Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue, Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane, Shouting and singing the shrill refrain "Here's Flud Oirson, for his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women o' Morble'ead!" Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips, Girls in bloom of cheek and lips, Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase Bacchus round some antique vase, Brief of skirt, with ankles bare, Loose of kerchief and loose of hair, With conch-shells blowing and fish-horns' twang. Over and over the Maenads sang: "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women o' Morble'ead!" Small pity for him!--He sailed away From a leaking ship, in Chaleur Bay,-- Sailed away from a sinking wreck, With his own town's-people on her deck! "Lay by! lay by!" they called to him. Back he answered, "Sink or swim! Brag of your catch of fish again!" And off he sailed through the fog and rain! Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead! Fathoms deep in dark Chaleur That wreck shall lie forevermore. Mother and sister, wife and maid, Looked from the rocks of Marblehead Over the moaning and rainy sea,-- Looked for the coming that might not be! What did the winds and the sea-birds say Of the cruel captain who sailed away?-- Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead! Through the street, on either side, Up flew windows, doors swung wide; Sharp-tongued spinsters, old wives gray, Treble lent the fish-horn's bray. Sea-worn grandsires, cripple-bound, Hulks of old sailors run aground, Shook head, and fist, and hat, and cane, And cracked with curses the old refrain: "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women o' Morble'ead! Sweetly along the Salem road Bloom of orchard and lilac showed. Little the wicked skipper knew Of the fields so green and the sky so blue. Riding there in his sorry trim, Like an Indian idol glum and grim, Scarcely he seemed the sound to hear Of voices shouting, far and near: "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women o' Morble'ead!" "Hear me, neighbors!" at last he cried,"-- What to me is this noisy ride? What is the shame that clothes the skin To the nameless horror that lives within? Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck, And hear a cry from a reeling deck! Hate me and curse me,--I only dread The hand of God and the face of the dead!" Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead! Then the wife of the skipper lost at sea Said, God has touched him! why should we?" Said an old wife mourning her only son, "Cut the rogue's tether and let him run!" So with soft relentings and rude excuse, Half scorn, half pity, they cut him loose, And gave him a cloak to hide him in, And left him alone with his shame and sin. Poor Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead! THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE OF NEWBURY Far away in the twilight time Of every people, in every clime, Dragons and griffins and monsters dire, Born of water, and air, and fire, Or nursed, like the Python, in the mud And ooze of the old Deucalion flood, Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage, Through dusk tradition and ballad age. So from the childhood of Newbury town And its time of fable the tale comes down Of a terror which haunted bush and brake, The Amphisbaena, the Double Snake! Thou who makest the tale thy mirth, Consider that strip of Christian earth On the desolate shore of a sailless sea, Full of terror and mystery, Half-redeemed from the evil hold Of the wood so dreary, and dark, and old, Which drank with its lips of leaves the dew When Time was young, and the world was new, And wove its shadows with sun and moon, Ere the stones of Cheops were squared and hewn. Think of the sea's dread monotone, Of the mournful wail from the pine-wood blown, Of the strange, vast splendors that lit the North, Of the troubled throes of the quaking earth, And the dismal tales the Indian told, Till the settler's heart at his hearth grew cold, And he shrank from the tawny wizard's boasts, And the hovering shadows seemed full of ghosts, And above, below, and on every side, The fear of his creed seemed verified;-- And think, if his lot were now thine own, To grope with terrors nor named nor known, How laxer muscle and weaker nerve And a feebler faith thy need might serve; And own to thyself the wonder more That the snake had two heads, and not a score! Whether he lurked in the Oldtown fen Or the gray earth-flax of the Devil's Den, Or swam in the wooded Artichoke, Or coiled by the Northman's Written Rock, Nothing on record is left to show; Only the fact that he lived, we know, And left the cast of a double head in the scaly mask which he yearly shed. For he earned a head where his tail should be, And the two, of course, could never agree, But wriggled about with main and might, Now to the left and now to the right; Pulling and twisting this way and that, Neither knew what the other was at. A snake with two heads, lurking so near!-- Judge of the wonder, guess at the fear! Think what ancient gossips might say, Shaking their heads in their dreary way, Between the meetings on Sabbath-day! How urchins, searching at day's decline The Common Pasture for sheep or kine, The terrible double-ganger heard In the leafy rustle or whir of bird! Think what a zest it gave to the sport, In berry-time, of the younger sort, As over pastures blackberry-twined, Reuben and Dorothy lagged behind, And closer and closer, for fear of harm, The maiden clung to her lover's arm; And how the spark, who was forced to stay, By his sweetheart's fears, till the break of day, Thanked the snake for the fond delay! Far and wide the tale was told, Like a snowball growing while it rolled. The nurse hushed with it the baby's cry; And it served, in the worthy minister's eye, To paint the primitive serpent by. Cotton Mather came galloping down All the way to Newbury town, With his eyes agog and his ears set wide, And his marvellous inkhorn at his side; Stirring the while in the shallow pool Of his brains for the lore he learned at school, To garnish the story, with here a streak Of Latin, and there another of Greek: And the tales he heard and the notes he took, Behold! are they not in his Wonder-Book? Stories, like dragons, are hard to kill. If the snake does not, the tale runs still In Byfield Meadows, on Pipestave Hill. And still, whenever husband and wife Publish the shame of their daily strife, And, with mid cross-purpose, tug and strain At either end of the marriage-chain, The gossips say, with a knowing shake Of their gray heads, "Look at the Double Snake! One in body and two in will, The Amphisbaena is living still!" MAUD MULLER MAUD MULLER, on a summer's day, Raked the meadow sweet with hay. Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth Of simple beauty and rustic health. Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee The mock-bird echoed from his tree. But when she glanced to the far-off town, White from its hill-slope looking down, The sweet song died, and a vague unrest And a nameless longing filled her breast, A wish, that she hardly dared to own, For something better than she had known. The Judge rode slowly down the lane, Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane. He drew his bridle in the shade Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid, And ask a draught from the spring that flowed Through the meadow across the road. She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up, And filled for him her small tin cup, And blushed as she gave it, looking down On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown. "Thanks!" said the Judge; "a sweeter draught From a fairer hand was never quaffed." He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees, Of the singing birds and the humming bees; Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether The cloud in the west would bring foul weather. And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown, And her graceful ankles bare and brown; And listened, while a pleased surprise Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes. At last, like one who for delay Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away. Maud Muller looked and sighed: "Ah me! That I the Judge's bride might be! "He would dress me up in silks so fine, And praise and toast me at his wine. "My father should wear a broadcloth coat; My brother should sail a painted boat. "I'd dress my mother so grand and gay, And the baby should have a new toy each day. "And I'd feed the hungry and clothe the poor And all should bless me who left our door." The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill, And saw Maud Muller standing still. "A form more fair, a face more sweet Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet. "And her modest answer and graceful air Show her wise and good as she is fair. "Would she were mine, and I to-day, Like her, a harvester of hay "No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs, Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues, "But low of cattle and song of birds, And health and quiet and loving words." But he thought of his sisters, proud and cold, And his mother, vain of her rank and gold. So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on, And Maud was left in the field alone. But the lawyers smiled that afternoon, When he hummed in court an old love-tune; And the young girl mused beside the well, Till the rain on the unraked clover, He wedded a wife of richest dower, Who lived for fashion, as he for power. Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow, He watched a picture come and go; And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes Looked out in their innocent surprise. Oft, when the wine in his glass was red, He longed for the wayside well instead; And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms To dream of meadows and clover-blooms. And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain, "Ah, that I were free again! "Free as when I rode that day, Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay." She wedded a man unlearned and poor, And many children played round her door. But care and sorrow, and childbirth pain, Left their traces on heart and brain. And oft, when the summer sun shone hot On the new-mown hay in the meadow lot, And she heard the little spring brook fall Over the roadside, through the wall; In the shade of the apple-tree again She saw a rider draw his rein. And gazing down with timid grace She felt his pleased eyes read her face. Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls Stretched away into stately halls; The weary wheel to a spinnet turned, The tallow candle an astral burned, And for him who sat by the chimney lug, Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug, A manly form at her side she saw, And joy was duty and love was law. Then she took up her burden of life again, Saying only, "it might have been." Alas for maiden, alas for Judge, For rich repiner and household drudge! God pity them both! and pity us all, Who vainly the dreams of youth recall. For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: "It might have been!" Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies Deeply buried from human eyes; And, in the hereafter, angels may Roll the stone from its grave away! BURNS ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER IN BLOSSOM No more these simple flowers belong To Scottish maid and lover; Sown in the common soil of song, They bloom the wide world over. In smiles and tears, in sun and showers, The minstrel and the heather, The deathless singer and the flowers He sang of five together. Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns! The moorland flower and peasant! How, at their mention, memory turns Her pages old and pleasant! The gray sky wears again its gold And purple of adorning, And manhood's noonday shadows hold The dews of boyhood's morning. The dews that washed the dust and soil From off the wings of pleasure, The sky, that flecked the ground of toil With golden threads of leisure. I call to mind the summer day, The early harvest mowing, The sky with sun and clouds at play, And flowers with breezes blowing. I hear the blackbird in the corn, The locust in the haying; And, like the fabled hunter's horn, Old tunes my heart is playing. How oft that day, with fond delay, I sought the maple's shadow, And sang with Burns the hours away, Forgetful of the meadow! Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead I heard the squirrels leaping; The good dog listened while I read, And wagged his tail in keeping. I watched him while in sportive mood I read "The Two Dogs" story, And half believed he understood The poet's allegory. Sweet day, sweet songs!--The golden hours Grew brighter for that singing, From brook and bird and meadow flowers A dearer welcome bringing. New light on home-seen Nature beamed, New glory over Woman; And daily life and duty seemed No longer poor and common. I woke to find the simple truth Of fact and feeling better Than all the dreams that held my youth A still repining debtor: That Nature gives her handmaid, Art, The themes of sweet discoursing; The tender idyls of the heart In every tongue rehearsing. Why dream of lands of gold and pearl, Of loving knight and lady, When farmer boy and barefoot girl Were wandering there already? I saw through all familiar things The romance underlying; The joys and griefs that plume the wings Of Fancy skyward flying. I saw the same blithe day return, The same sweet fall of even, That rose on wooded Craigie-burn, And sank on crystal Devon. I matched with Scotland's heathery hills The sweet-brier and the clover; With Ayr and Doon, my native rills, Their wood-hymns chanting over. O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen, I saw the Man uprising; No longer common or unclean The child of God's baptizing! With clearer eyes I saw the worth Of life among the lowly; The Bible at his Cotter's hearth Had made my own more holy. And if at times an evil strain, To lawless love appealing, Broke in upon the sweet refrain Of pure and healthful feeling, It died upon the eye and ear, No inward answer gaining; No heart had I to see or hear The discord and the staining. Let those who never erred forget His worth, in vain bewailings; Sweet Soul of Song!--I own my debt Uncancelled by his failings! Lament who will the ribald line Which tells his lapse from duty, How kissed the maddening lips of wine Or wanton ones of beauty; But think, while falls that shade between The erring one and Heaven, That he who loved like Magdalen, Like her may be forgiven. Not his the song whose thunderous chime Eternal echoes render,-- The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme, And Milton's starry splendor! But who his human heart has laid To Nature's bosom nearer? Who sweetened toil like him, or paid To love a tribute dearer? Through all his tuneful art, how strong The human feeling gushes! The very moonlight of his song Is warm with smiles and blushes! Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time, So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry; Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme, But spare his Highland Mary THE HERO "O Fox a knight like Bayard, Without reproach or fear; My light glove on his casque of steel, My love-knot on his spear! "O for the white plume floating Sad Zutphen's field above, The lion heart in battle, The woman's heart in love! "O that man once more were manly, Woman's pride, and not her scorn That once more the pale young mother Dared to boast 'a man is born'! "But, now life's slumberous current No sun-bowed cascade wakes; No tall, heroic manhood The level dulness breaks. "O for a knight like Bayard, Without reproach or fear! My light glove on his casque of steel My love-knot on his spear!" Then I said, my own heart throbbing To the time her proud pulse beat, "Life hath its regal natures yet,-- True, tender, brave, and sweet! "Smile not, fair unbeliever! One man, at least, I know, Who might wear the crest of Bayard Or Sydney's plume of snow. "Once, when over purple mountains Died away the Grecian sun, And the far Cyllenian ranges Paled and darkened, one by one,-- "Fell the Turk, a bolt of thunder, Cleaving all the quiet sky, And against his sharp steel lightnings Stood the Suliote but to die. "Woe for the weak and halting! The crescent blazed behind A curving line of sabres Like fire before the wind! "Last to fly, and first to rally, Rode he of whom I speak, When, groaning in his bridle path, Sank down like a wounded Greek. "With the rich Albanian costume Wet with many a ghastly stain, Gazing on earth and sky as one Who might not gaze again! "He looked forward to the mountains, Back on foes that never spare, Then flung him from his saddle, And place the stranger there. "'Allah! hu!' Through flashing sabres, Through a stormy hail of lead, The good Thessalian charger Up the slopes of olives sped. "Hot spurred the turbaned riders; He almost felt their breath, Where a mountain stream rolled darkly down Between the hills and death. "One brave and manful struggle,-- He gained the solid land, And the cover of the mountains, And the carbines of his band!" "It was very great and noble," Said the moist-eyed listener then, "But one brave deed makes no hero; Tell me what he since hath been!" "Still a brave and generous manhood, Still and honor without stain, In the prison of the Kaiser, By the barricades of Seine. "But dream not helm and harness The sign of valor true; Peace bath higher tests of manhood Than battle ever knew. "Wouldst know him now? Behold him, The Cadmus of the blind, Giving the dumb lip language, The idiot clay a mind. "Walking his round of duty Serenely day by day, With the strong man's hand of labor And childhood's heart of play. "True as the knights of story, Sir Lancelot and his peers, Brave in his calm endurance As they in tilt of spears. "As waves in stillest waters, As stars in noonday skies, All that wakes to noble action In his noon of calmness lies. "Wherever outraged Nature Asks word or action brave, Wherever struggles labor, Wherever groans a slave,-- "Wherever rise the peoples, Wherever sinks a throne, The throbbing heart of Freedom finds An answer in his own. "Knight of a better era, Without reproach or fear! Said I not well that Bayards And Sidneys still are here? THE ETERNAL GOODNESS O friends! with whom my feet have trod The quiet aisles of prayer, Glad witness to your zeal for God And love of man I bear. I trace your lines of argument; Your logic linked and strong I weigh as one who dreads dissent, And fears a doubt as wrong. But still my human hands are weak To hold your iron creeds; Against the words ye bid me speak My heart within me pleads. Who fathoms the Eternal Thought? Who talks of scheme and plan? The Lord is God! He needeth not The poor device of man. I walk with bare, hushed feet the ground Ye tread with boldness shod: I dare not fix with mete and bound The love and power of God. Ye praise His justice; even such His pitying love I deem Ye seek a king; I fain would touch The robe that hath no seam. Ye see the curse which overbroods A world of pain and loss; I hear our Lord's beatitudes And prayer upon the cross. The wrong that pains my soul below I dare not throne above: I know not of His hate,--I know His goodness and His love. I dimly guess from blessings known Of greater out of sight, And, with the chastened Psalmist, own His judgments too are right. I long for household voices gone, For vanished smiles I long, But God bath led my dear ones on, And He can do no wrong. I know not what the future hath Of marvel or surprise, Assured alone that life and death His mercy underlies. And if my heart and flesh are weak To bear an untried pain, The bruised reed He will not break, But strengthen and sustain. No offering of my own I have, Nor works my faith to prove; I can but give the gifts He gave, And plead His love for love. And so beside the Silent Sea I wait the muffled oar; No harm from Him can come to me On ocean or on shore. I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care. O brothers! if my faith is vain, If hopes like these betray, Pray for me that my feet may gain The sure and safer way. And Thou, O Lord! by whom are seen Thy creatures as they be, Forgive me if too close I lean My human heart on Thee! THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW Pipes of the misty moorlands Voice of the glens and hills; The droning of the torrents, The treble of the rills! Not the braes of broom and heather, Nor the mountains dark with rain, Nor maiden bower, nor border tower, Have heard your sweetest strain! Dear to the Lowland reaper, And plaided mountaineer,-- To the cottage and the castle The Scottish pipes are dear;-- Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch O'er mountain, loch, and glade; But the sweetest of all music The Pipes at Lucknow played. Day by day the Indian tiger Louder yelled, and nearer crept; Round and round the jungle-serpent Near and nearer circles swept. "Pray for rescue, wives and mothers,-- Pray to-day!" the soldier said; "To-morrow, death's between us And the wrong and shame we dread." O, they listened, looked, and waited, Till their hope became despair; And the sobs of low bewailing Filled the pauses of their prayer. Then up spake a Scottish maiden, With her ear unto the ground "Dinna ye hear it?--dinna ye hear it? The pipes o' Havelock sound!" Hushed the wounded man his groaning; Hushed the wife her little ones; Alone they heard the drum-roll And the roar of Sepoy guns. But to sounds of home and childhood The Highland ear was true; As her mother's cradle-crooning The mountain pipes she knew. Like the march of soundless music Through the vision of the seer, More of feeling than of hearing, Of the heart than of the ear, She knew the droning pibroch, She knew the Campbell's call "Hark! hear ye no' MacGregor's,-- The grandest o' them all!" O, they listened, dumb and breathless, And they caught the sound at last; Faint and far beyond the Goomtee Rose and fell the piper's blast! Then a burst of wild thanksgiving Mingled woman's voice and man's "God be praised!--the March of Havelock! The piping of the clans!" Louder, nearer, fierce as vengeance, Sharp and shrill as swords at strife, Came the wild MacGregor's clan-call, Stinging all the air to life. But when the far-off dust-cloud To plaided legions grew, Full tenderly and blithesomely The pipes of rescue blew! Round the silver domes of Lucknow, Moslem mosque and Pagan shrine, Breathed the air to Britons dearest, The air of Auld Lang Syne. O'er the cruel roll of war-drums Rose that sweet and homelike strain; And the tartan clove the turban, As the Goomtee cleaves the plain. Dear to the corn-land reaper And plaided mountaineer,-- To the cottage and the castle The piper's song is dear. Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibroch O'er mountain, glen, and glade, But the sweetest of all music The Pipes at Lucknow played! COBBLER KEEZAR'S VISION The beaver cut his timber With patient teeth that day, The minks were fish-wards, and the crows Surveyors of high way,-- When Keezar sat on the hillside Upon his cobbler's form, With a pan of coals on either hand To keep his waxed-ends warm. And there, in the golden weather, He stitched and hammered and sung; In the brook he moistened his leather, In the pewter mug his tongue. Well knew the tough old Teuton Who brewed the stoutest ale, And he paid the good-wife's reckoning In the coin of song and tale. The songs they still are singing Who dress the hills of vine, The tales that haunt the Brocken And whisper down the Rhine. Woodsy and wild and lonesome, The swift stream wound away, Through birches and scarlet maples Flashing in foam and spray,-- Down on the sharp-horned ledges Plunging in steep cascade, Tossing its white-maned waters Against the hemlock's shade. Woodsy and wild and lonesome, East and west and north and south; Only the village of fishers Down at the river's mouth; Only here and there a clearing, With its farm-house rude and new, And tree-stumps, swart as Indians, Where the scanty harvest grew. No shout of home-bound reapers, No vintage-song he heard, And on the green no dancing feet The merry violin stirred. "Why should folk be glum," said Keezar, "When Nature herself is glad, And the painted woods are laughing At the faces so sour and sad?" Small heed had the careless cobbler What sorrow of heart was theirs Who travailed in pain with the births of God And planted a state with prayers,-- Hunting of witches and warlocks, Smiting the heathen horde,-- One hand on the mason's trowel And one on the soldier's sword! But give him his ale and cider, Give him his pipe and song, Little he cared for Church or State, Or the balance of right and wrong. "'Tis work, work, work," he muttered-- "And for rest a snuffle of psalms!" He smote on his leathern apron With his brown and waxen palms. "O for the purple harvests Of the days when I was young! For the merry grape-stained maidens, And the pleasant songs they sung "O for the breath of vineyards, Of apples and nuts and wine! For an oar to row and a breeze to blow Down the grand old river Rhine!" A tear in his blue eye glistened And dropped on his beard so gray. "Old, old am I," said Keezar, "And the Rhine flows far away!" But a cunning man was the cobbler; He could call the birds from the trees, Charm the black snake out of the ledges, And bring back the swarming bees. All the virtues of herbs and metals, All the lore of the woods, he knew, And the arts of the Old World mingled With the marvels of the New. Well he knew the tricks of magic, And the lapstone on his knee Had the gift of the Mormon's goggles Or the stone of Doctor Dee. For the mighty master Agrippa Wrought it with spell and rhyme From a fragment of mystic moonstone In the tower of Nettesheim. To a cobbler Minnesinger The marvellous stone gave he, And he gave it, in turn, to Keezar, Who brought it over the sea. He held up that mystic lapstone, He held it up like a lens, And he counted the long years coming, By twenties and by tens. "One hundred years," quoth Keezar. "And fifty have I told Now open the new before me, And shut me out the old!" Like a cloud of mist, the blackness Rolled from the magic stone, And a marvellous picture mingled The unknown and the known. Still ran the stream to the river, And river and ocean joined; And there were the bluffs and the blue sea-line. And cold north hills behind. But the mighty forest was broken By many a steepled town, By many a white-walled farm-house, And many a garner brown. Turning a score of mill-wheels, The stream no more ran free; White sails on the winding river, White sails on the far-off sea. Below in the noisy village The flags were floating gay, And shone on a thousand faces The light of a holiday. Swiftly the rival ploughmen Turned the brown earth from their shares; Here were the farmer's treasures, There were the craftsman's wares. Golden the good-wife's butter, Ruby her currant-wine; Grand were the strutting turkeys, Fat were the beeves and swine. Yellow and red were the apples, And the ripe pears russet-brown, And the peaches had stolen blushes From the girls who shook them down. And with blooms of hill and wildwood, That shame the toil of art, Mingled the gorgeous blossoms Of the garden's tropic heart. "What is it I see?" said Keezar: "Am I here or am I there? Is it a fete at Bingen? Do I look on Frankfort fair? "But where are the clowns and puppets, And imps with horns and tail? And where are the Rhenish flagons? And where is the foaming ale? "Strange things, I know, will happen,-- Strange things the Lord permits; But that droughty folk should be dolly Puzzles my poor old wits. "Here are smiling manly faces, And the maiden's step is gay; Nor sad by thinking, nor mad by drinking, Nor mopes, nor fools, are they. "Here's pleasure without regretting, And good without abuse, The holiday and the bridal Of beauty and of use. "Here's a priest and there is a Quaker, Do the cat and the dog agree? Have they burned the stocks for oven-wood? Have they cut down the gallows-tree? "Would the old folk know their children? Would they own the graceless town, With never a ranter to worry And never a witch to drown?" Loud laughed the cobbler Keezar, Laughed like a school-boy gay; Tossing his arms above him, The lapstone rolled away. It rolled down the rugged hillside, It spun like a wheel bewitched, It plunged through the leaning willows, And into the river pitched. There, in the deep, dark water, The magic stone lies still, Under the leaning willows In the shadow of the hill. But oft the idle fisher Sits on the shadowy bank, And his dreams make marvellous pictures Where the wizard's lapstone sank. And still, in the summer twilights. When the river seems to run Out from the inner glory, Warm with the melted sun, The weary mill-girl lingers Beside the charmed stream, And the sky and the golden water Shape and color her dream. Fair wave the sunset gardens, The rosy signals fly; Her homestead beckons from the cloud, And love goes sailing by! THE MAYFLOWERS Sad Mayflower! watched by winter stars, And nursed by winter gales, With petals of the sleeted spars, And leaves of frozen sails What had she in those dreary hours, Within her ice-rimmed bay, In common with the wild-wood flowers, The first sweet smiles of May? Yet, "God be praised!" the Pilgrim said, Who saw the blossoms peer Above the brown leaves, dry anal dead "Behold our Mayflower here!" "God wills it: here our rest shall be Our years of wandering o'er; For us the Mayflower of the sea, Shall spread her sails no more." O sacred flowers of faith and hope, As sweetly now as then Ye bloom on many a birchen slope, In many a pine-dark glen. Behind the sea-wall's rugged length, Unchanged, your, leaves unfold Like love behind the manly strength Of the brave hearts of old. So live the fathers in their sons, Their sturdy faith be ours, And ours the love that overruns Its rocky strength with flowers. The Pilgrim's wild and wintry day Its shadow round us draws; The Mayflower of his stormy bay, Our Freedom's struggling cause. But warmer suns erelong shall bring To life the frozen sod; And, through dead leaves of hope, shall spring Afresh the flowers of Cod! RALPH WALDO EMERSON GOOD-BYE Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine. Long through thy weary crowds I roam; A river-ark on the ocean brine, Long I've been tossed like the driven foam; But now, proud world! I'm going home. Good-bye to Flattery's fawning face; To Grandeur with his wise grimace; To upstart Wealth's averted eye; To supple Office, low and high; To crowded halls, to court and street; To frozen hearts and hasting feet; To those who go, and those who come; Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home. I am going to my own hearth-stone, Bosomed in yon green hills alone,-- A secret nook in a pleasant land, Whose groves the frolic fairies planned; Where arches green, the livelong day, Echo the blackbird's roundelay, And vulgar feet have never trod A spot that is sacred to thought and Cod. O, when I am safe in my sylvan home, I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome; And when I am stretched beneath the pines, Where the evening star so holy shines, I laugh at the lore and the pride of man At the sophist schools and the learned clan; For what are they all, in their high conceit, Where man in the bush with God may meet? EACH AND ALL Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown Of thee from the hill-top looking down; The heifer that lows in the upland faun, Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm; The sexton, tolling his bell at noon, Deems not that great Napoleon Stops his horse, and lists with delight, Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height; Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone. I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, Singing at dawn on the alder bough; I brought him home, in his nest, at even; He sings the song, but it cheers not now, For I did not bring home the river and sky;-- He sang to my ear,--they sang to my eye. The delicate shells lay on the shore; The bubbles of the latest wave Fresh pearls to their enamel gave, And the bellowing of the savage sea Greeted their safe escape to me. I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home, But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar. The lover watched his graceful maid, As 'mid the virgin train she strayed, Nor knew her beauty's best attire Was woven still by the snow-white choir. At last she came to his hermitage, Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage;-- The gay enchantment was undone, A gentle wife, but fairy none. Then I said, "I covet truth; Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat; I leave it behind with the games of youth:-- As I spoke, beneath my feet The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath, Running over the club-moss burrs; I inhaled the violet's breath; Around me stood the oaks and firs; Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground; Over me soared the eternal sky, Full of light and of deity; Again I saw, again I heard, The rolling river, the morning bird;-- Beauty through my senses stole; I yielded myself to the perfect whole. THE PROBLEM I like a church; I like a cowl; I love a prophet of the soul; And on my heart monastic aisles Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles; Yet not for all his faith can see Would I that cowled churchman be. Why should the vest on him allure, Which I could not on me endure? Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought; Never from lips of cunning fell The thrilling Delphic oracle; Out from the heart of nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old; The litanies of nations came, Like the volcano's tongue of flame, Up from the burning core below,-- The canticles of love and woe The hand that rounded Peter's dome And groined the aisles of Christian Rome; Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from God he could not free; He budded better than he knew;-- The conscious stone to beauty grew. Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's nest Of leaves, and feathers from her breast? Or how the fish outbuilt her shell, Painting with morn each annual cell? Or how the sacred pine-tree adds To her old leaves new myriads? Such and so grew these holy piles, Whilst love and terror laid the tiles. Earth proudly wears the Parthenon, As the best gem upon her zone, And Morning opes with haste her lids To gaze upon the Pyramids; O'er England's abbeys bends the sky, As on its friends, with kindred eye; For out of Thought's interior sphere These wonders rose to upper air; And Nature gladly gave them place, Adopted them into her race, And granted them an equal date With Andes and With Ararat. These temples grew as grows the grasses Art might obey, but not surpass. The passive Master lent his hand To the vast soul that o'er him planned; And the same power that reared the shrine Bestrode the tribes that knelt within. Ever the fiery Pentecost Girds with one flame the countless host, Trances the heart through chanting choirs, And through the priest the mind inspires. The word unto the prophet spoken Was writ on tables yet unbroken; The word by seers or sibyls told, In groves of oak, or fanes of gold, Still floats upon the morning wind, Still whispers to the willing mind. One accent of the Holy Ghost The heedless world hath never lost. I know what say the fathers wise, The book itself before me lies, Old Chrysostom, best Augustine, And he who blent both in his line, The younger Golden Lips or mines, Taylor, the Shakspeare of divines. His words are music in my ear, I see his cowled portrait dear; And yet, for all his faith could see, I would not the good bishop be. THE RHODORA ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER? In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the Woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook, The purple petals, fallen in the pool, Made the black water with their beauty gay; Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, And court the flower that cheapens his array. Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being Why thou went there, O rival of the rose! I never thought to ask, I never knew: But, in my simple ignorance, suppose The self-same Power that brought me there brought you. THE HUMBLE--BEE Burly, dozing humble-bee, Where thou art is clime for me. Let them sail for Porto Rique, Far-off heats through seas to seek; I will follow thee alone, Thou animated torrid-zone! Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer, Let me chase thy waving lines; Keep me nearer, me thy hearer, Singing over shrubs and vines. Insect lover of the sun, Joy of thy dominion Sailor of the atmosphere; Swimmer through the waves of air; Voyager of light and noon; Epicurean of June; Wait, I prithee, till I come Within earshot of thy hum,-- All without is martyrdom. When the south wind, in May days, With a net of shining haze Silvers the horizon wall, And with softness touching all, Tints the human countenance With a color of romance, And infusing subtle heats, Turns the sod to violets, Thou, in sunny solitudes, Rover of the underwoods, The green silence dolt displace With thy mellow, breezy bass. Hot midsummer's petted crone, Sweet to me thy drowsy tone Tells of countless sunny hours, Long days, and solid banks of flowers; Of gulfs of sweetness without bound In Indian wildernesses found; Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure, Firmest cheer, and bird-like pleasure. Aught unsavory or unclean Hath my insect never seen; But violets and bilberry bells, Maple-sap and daffodels, Grass with green flag half-mast high, Succory to match the sky, Columbine with horn of honey, Scented fern, and agrimony, Clover, catchfly, adder's-tongue And brier-roses, dwelt among; All beside was unknown waste, All was picture as he passed. Wiser far than human seer, Yellow-breeched philosopher Seeing only what is fair, Sipping only what is sweet, Thou dost mock at fate and care, Leave the chaff, and take the wheat. When the fierce northwestern blast, Cools sea and land so far and fast, Thou already slumberest deep; Woe and want thou canst outsleep; Want and woe, which torture us, Thy sleep makes ridiculous. THE SNOW-STORM Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farm-house at the garden's end. The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm. Come and see the north wind's masonry. Out of an unseen quarry evermore Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer Curves his white bastions with projected roof Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he For number or proportion. Mockingly, On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths; A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn; Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, Maugre the farmer's sighs; and at the gate A tapering turret overtops the work. And when his hours are numbered, and the world Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work, The frolic architecture of the snow. FABLE The mountain and the squirrel Had a quarrel, And the former called the latter "Little Prig"; Bun replied, "You are doubtless very big; But all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together, To make up a year And a sphere. And I think it no disgrace To occupy my place. If I'm not so large as you, You are not so small as I, And not half so spry. I'll snot deny you make A very pretty squirrel track; Talents differ; all is well and wisely put; If I cannot carry forests on my back, Neither can you crack a nut." FORBEARANCE Hast thou named all the birds without a gun? Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk? At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse? Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust? And loved so well a high behavior, In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained, Nobility more nobly to repay? O, be my friend, and teach me to be thine! CONCORD HYMN SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE BATTLE MONUMENT, APRIL 19, 1836 By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood And fired the shot heard round the world. The foe long since in silence slept; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; And Time the ruined bridge has swept Down the dark stream which seaward creep. On this green bank, by this soft stream, We set to-day a votive stone; That memory may their deed redeem, When, like our sires, our sons are gone. Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die, and leave their children free, Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee. BOSTON HYMN The word of the Lord by night To the watching Pilgrims came, As they sat beside the seaside, And filled their hearts with flame. Cod said, I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more; Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor. Think ve I made this ball A field of havoc and war, Where tyrants great and tyrants small Might harry the weak and poor? My angel,--his name is Freedom, Choose him to be your king; He shall cut pathways east and west And fend you with his wing. Lo! I uncover the land Which I hid of old time in the West, As the sculptor uncovers the statue When he has wrought his best; I show Columbia, of the rocks Which dip their foot in the seas And soar to the air-borne flocks Of clouds and the boreal fleece. I will divide my goods; Call in the wretch and slave None shall rule but the humble, And none but Toil shall have. I will have never a noble, No lineage counted great; Fishers and choppers and ploughmen Shall constitute a state. Go, cut down trees in the forest And trim the straightest boughs; Cut down trees in the forest And build me a wooden house. Call the people together, The young men and the sires, The digger in the harvest-field, Hireling and him that hires; And here in a pine state-house They shall choose men to rule In every needful faculty, In church and state and school. Lo, now! if these poor men Can govern the land and the sea And make just laws below the sun, As planets faithful be. And ye shall succor men; 'Tis nobleness to serve; Help them who cannot help again Beware from right to swerve. I break your bonds and masterships, And I unchain the slave Free be his heart and hand henceforth As wind and wandering wave. I cause from every creature His proper good to flow As much as he is and doeth, So much he shall bestow. But, laying hands on another To coin his labor and sweat, He goes in pawn to his victim For eternal years in debt. To-day unbind the captive, So only are ye unbound; Lift up a people from the dust, Trump of their rescue, sound! Pay ransom to the owner And fill the bag to the brim. Who is the owner? The slave is owner, And ever was. Pay him. O North! give him beauty for rags, And honor, O South! for his shame; Nevada! coin thy golden crags With Freedom's image and name. Up! and the dusky race That sat in darkness long,-- Be swift their feet as antelopes, And as behemoth strong. Come, East and West and North, By races, as snow-flakes, And carry my purpose forth, Which neither halts nor shakes. My will fulfilled shall be, For, in daylight or in dark, My thunderbolt has eyes to see His way home to the mark. THE TITMOUSE You shall not be overbold When you deal with arctic cold, As late I found my lukewarm blood Chilled wading in the snow-choked wood. How should I fight? my foeman fine Has million arms to one of mine East, west, for aid I looked in vain, East, west, north, south, are his domain, Miles off, three dangerous miles, is home; Must borrow his winds who there would come. Up and away for life! be fleet!-- The frost-king ties my fumbling feet, Sings in my ears, my hands are stones Curdles the blood to the marble bones, Tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense, And hems in life with narrowing fence. Well, in this broad bed lie and sleep,-- The punctual stars will vigil keep,-- Embalmed by purifying cold; The winds shall sing their dead-march old, The snow is no ignoble shroud, The moon thy mourner, and the cloud. Softly--but this way fate was pointing, 'Twas coming fast to such anointing, When piped a tiny voice hard by, Gay and polite, a cheerful cry, Chic-chic-a-dee-dee! saucy note Out of sound heart and merry throat, As if it said, "Good day, good sir! Fine afternoon, old passenger! Happy to meet you in these places Where January brings few faces." This poet, though he lived apart, Moved by his hospitable heart, Sped, when I passed his sylvan fort, To do the honors of his court, As fits a feathered lord of land; Flew near, with soft wing grazed my hand, Hopped on the bough, then, darting low, Prints his small impress on the snow, Shows feats of his gymnastic play, Head downward, clinging to the spray. Here was this atom in full breath, Hurling defiance at vast death; This scrap of valor just for play Fronts the north-wind in waistcoat gray, As if to shame my weak behavior; I greeted loud my little savior, "You pet! what dost here? and what for? In these woods, thy small Labrador, At this pinch, wee San Salvador! What fire burns in that little chest So frolic, stout and self-possest? Henceforth I wear no stripe but thine; Ashes and jet all hues outshine. Why are not diamonds black and gray, To ape thy dare-devil array? And I affirm, the spacious North Exists to draw thy virtue forth. I think no virtue goes with size; The reason of all cowardice Is, that men are overgrown, And, to be valiant, must come down To the titmouse dimension." 'Tis good will makes intelligence, And I began to catch the sense Of my bird's song: "Live out of doors In the great woods, on prairie floors. I dine in the sun; when he sinks in the sea, I too have a hole in a hollow tree; And I like less when Summer beats With stifling beams on these retreats, Than noontide twilights which snow makes With tempest of the blinding flakes. For well the soul, if stout within, Can arm impregnably the skin; And polar frost my frame defied, Made of the air that blows outside." With glad remembrance of my debt, I homeward turn; farewell, my pet! When here again thy pilgrim comes, He shall bring store of seeds and crumbs, Doubt not, so long as earth has bread, Thou first and foremost shah be fed; The Providence that is most large Takes hearts like throe in special charge, Helps who for their own need are strong, And the sky dotes on cheerful song. Henceforth I prize thy wiry chant O'er all that mass and minster vaunt; For men mis-hear thy call in Spring, As 'twould accost some frivolous wing, Crying out of the hazel copse, Phe-be! And, in winter, Chic-a-dee-dee! I think old Caesar must have heard In northern Gaul my dauntless bird, And, echoed in some frosty wold, Borrowed thy battle-numbers bold. And I will write our annals new, And thank thee for a better clew, I, who dreamed not when I came her To find the antidote of fear, Now hear thee say in Roman key. Paean! Veni, vidi, vici. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL HAKON'S LAY Then Thorstein looked at Hakon, where he sate, Mute as a cloud amid the stormy hall, And said: "O Skald, sing now an olden song, Such as our fathers heard who led great lives; And, as the bravest on a shield is borne Along the waving host that shouts him king, So rode their thrones upon the thronging seas!" Then the old man arose; white-haired he stood, White-bearded with eyes that looked afar From their still region of perpetual snow, Over the little smokes and stirs of men: His head was bowed with gathered flakes of years, As winter bends the sea-foreboding pine, But something triumphed in his brow and eye, Which whoso saw it, could not see and crouch: Loud rang the emptied beakers as he mused, Brooding his eyried thoughts; then, as an eagle Circles smooth-winged above the wind-vexed woods, So wheeled his soul into the air of song High o'er the stormy hall; and thus he sang: "The fletcher for his arrow-shaft picks out Wood closest-grained, long-seasoned, straight as light; And, from a quiver full of such as these, The wary bow-man, matched against his peers, Long doubting, singles yet once more the best. Who is it that can make such shafts as Fate? What archer of his arrows is so choice, Or hits the white so surely? They are men, The chosen of her quiver; nor for her Will every reed suffice, or cross-grained stick At random from life's vulgar fagot plucked: Such answer household ends; but she will have Souls straight and clear, of toughest fibre, sound Down to the heart of heart; from these she strips All needless stuff, all sapwood; hardens them; From circumstance untoward feathers plucks Crumpled and cheap; and barbs with iron will: The hour that passes is her quiver-boy; When she draws bow, 'tis not across the wind, Nor 'gainst the sun, her haste-snatched arrow sings, For sun and wind have plighted faith to her Ere men have heard the sinew twang, behold, In the butt's heart her trembling messenger! "The song is old and simple that I sing; Good were the days of yore, when men were tried By ring of shields, as now by ring of gold; But, while the gods are left, and hearts of men, And the free ocean, still the days are good; Through the broad Earth roams Opportunity And knocks at every door of but or hall, Until she finds the brave soul that she wants." He ceased, and instantly the frothy tide Of interrupted wassail roared along; But Leif, the son of Eric, sat apart Musing, and, with his eyes upon the fire, Saw shapes of arrows, lost as soon as seen; lint then with that resolve his heart was bent, Which, like a humming shaft, through many a stripe Of day and night across the unventured seas, Shot the brave prow to cut on Vinland sands The first rune in the Saga of the West. FLOWERS O poet! above all men blest, Take heed that thus thou store them; Love, Hope, and Faith shall ever rest, Sweet birds (upon how sweet a nest!) Watchfully brooding o'er them. And from those flowers of Paradise Scatter thou many a blessed seed, Wherefrom an offspring may arise To cheer the hearts and light the eyes Of after-voyagers in their need. They shall not fall on stony ground, But, yielding all their hundred-fold, Shall shed a peacefulness around, Whose strengthening joy may not be told! So shall thy name be blest of all, And thy remembrance never die; For of that seed shall surely fall In the fair garden of Eternity, Exult then m the nobleness Of this thy work so holy, Yet be not thou one jot the less Humble and meek and lowly, But let throe exultation be The reverence of a bended knee; And by thy life a poem write, Built strongly day by day-- on the rock of Truth and Right Its deep foundations lay. IMPARTIALITY I cannot say a scene is fair Because it is beloved of thee But I shall love to linger there, For sake of thy dear memory; I would not be so coldly just As to love only what I must. I cannot say a thought is good Because thou foundest joy in it; Each soul must choose its proper food Which Nature hath decreed most fit; But I shall ever deem it so Because it made thy heart o'erflow. I love thee for that thou art fair; And that thy spirit joys in aught Createth a new beauty there, With throe own dearest image fraught; And love, for others' sake that springs, Gives half their charm to lovely things. MY LOVE I not as all other women are Is she that to my soul is dear; Her glorious fancies come from far, Beneath the silver evening-star, And yet her heart is ever near. Great feelings has she of her own, Which lesser souls may never know; God giveth them to her alone, And sweet they are as any tone Wherewith the wind may choose to blow. Yet in herself she dwelleth not, Although no home were half so fair; No simplest duty is forgot, Life hath no dim and lowly spot That doth not in her sunshine share. She doeth little kindnesses, Which most leave undone, or despise; For naught that sets one heart at ease, And giveth happiness or peace, Is low-esteemed m her eyes. She hath no scorn of common things, And, though she seem of other birth, Round us her heart entwines and clings, And patiently she folds her wings To tread the humble paths of earth. Blessing she is: God made her so, And deeds of week-day holiness Fall from her noiseless as the snow, Nor hath she ever chanced to know That aught were easier than to bless. She is most fair, and thereunto Her life loth rightly harmonize; Feeling or thought that was not true Ne'er made less beautiful the blue Unclouded heaven of her eyes. She is a woman: one in whom The spring-time of her childish years Hath never lost its fresh perfume, Though knowing well that life bath room For many blights and many tears. I love her with a love as still As a broad river's peaceful might, Which, by high tower and lowly mill, Goes wandering at its own will, And yet doth ever flow aright. And, on its full, deep breast serene, Like quiet isles my duties lie; It flows around them and between, And makes them fresh and fair and green, Sweet homes wherein to live and die. THE FOUNTAIN Into the sunshine, Full of the light, Leaping and flashing From morn till night! Into the moonlight, Whiter than snow, Waving so flower-like When the winds blow! Into the starlight, Rushing in spray, Happy at midnight, Happy by day! Ever in motion, Blithesome and cheery. Still climbing heavenward, Never aweary Glad of all weathers, Still seeming best, Upward or downward, Motion thy rest;-- Full of a nature Nothing can tame, Changed every moment, Ever the same;-- Ceaseless aspiring, Ceaseless content, Darkness or sunshine Thy element;-- Glorious fountain! Let my heart be Fresh, changeful, constant, Upward, like thee! THE SHEPHERD OF KING ADMETUS There came a youth upon the earth, Some thousand years ago, Whose slender hands were nothing worth, Whether to plow, to reap, or sow. Upon an empty tortoise-shell He stretched some chords, and drew Music that made men's bosoms swell Fearless, or brimmed their eyes with dew. Then King Admetus, one who had Pure taste by right divine, Decreed his singing not too bad To hear between the cups of wine And so, well-pleased with being soothed Into a sweet half-sleep, Three times his kingly beard he smoothed, And made him viceroy o'er his sheep. His words were simple words enough, And yet he used them so, That what in other mouths was rough In his seemed musical and low. Men called him but a shiftless youth, In whom no good they saw; And yet, unwittingly, in truth, They made his careless words their law. They knew not how he learned at all, For idly, hour by hour, He sat and watched the dead leaves fall, Or mused upon a common flower. It seemed the loveliness of things Did teach him all their use, For, in mere weeds, and stones, and springs, He found a healing power profuse. Men granted that his speech was wise, But, when a glance they caught Of his slim grace and woman's eyes, They laughed, and called him good-for-naught. Yet after he was dead and gone, And e'en his memory dim, Earth seemed more sweet to live upon, More full of love, because of him. And day by day more holy grew Each spot where he had trod, Till after--poets only knew Their first-born brother as a god. ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION July 21, 1865 (Selection) Weak-Winged is Song, Nor aims at that clear-ethered height Whither the brave deed climbs for light We seem to do them wrong, Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their hearse Who in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse. Our trivial song to honor those who come With ears attuned to strenuous trump and drum. And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire Live battle-odes whose lines mere steel and fire: Yet sometimes feathered words are strong, A gracious memory to buoy up and save From Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common grave Of the unventurous throng. Many loved Truth, and lavished Life's best oil Amid the dust of books to find her, Content at last, for guerdon of their toil, With the cast mantle she hath left behind her. Many in sad faith sought for her, Many with crossed hands sighed for her; But these, our brothers, fought for her, At life's dear peril wrought for her, So loved her that they died for her, Tasting the raptured fleetness Of her divine completeness Their higher instinct knew Those love her best who to themselves are true, And what they dare to dream of, dare to do; They followed her and found her Where all may hope to find, Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind, But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her. Where faith made whole with deed Breathes its awakening breath Into the lifeless creed, They saw her plumed and mailed, With sweet, stern face unveiled, And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death. Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides Into the silent hollow of the past; What is there that abides To make the next age better for the last? Is earth too poor to give us Something to live for here that shall outlive us? Some more substantial boon Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon? The little that we sec: From doubt is never free; The little that we do Is but half-nobly true; With our laborious hiving What men call treasure, and the gods call dross, Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving, Only secure in every one's conniving, A long account of nothings paid with loss, Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires, After our little hour of strut and rave, With all our pasteboard passions and desires, Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires, Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave. But stay! no age was e'er degenerate, Unless men held it at too cheap a rate, For in our likeness still we shape our fate. Whither leads the path To ampler fates that leads? Not down through flowery meads, To reap an aftermath Of youth's vainglorious weeds, But up the steep, amid the wrath And shock of deadly-hostile creeds, Where the world's best hope and stay By battle's flashes gropes a desperate way, And every turf the fierce foot clings to bleeds. Peace hath her not ignoble wreath, Ere yet the sharp, decisive word Light the black lips of cannon, and the sword Dreams in its easeful sheath; But some day the live coal behind the thought, Whether from Baal's stone obscene, Or from the shrine serene Of God's pure altar brought, Bursts up in flame; the war of tongue and pen Learns with what deadly purpose it was fraught, And, helpless in the fiery passion caught, Shakes all the pillared state with shock of men Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, And trips reproachful: "Was it, then, my praise, And not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth; I claim of thee the promise of thy youth; Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase, The victim of thy genius, not its mate!" Life may be given in many ways, And loyalty to Truth be sealed As bravely in the closet as the field, So bountiful is Fate; But then to stand beside her, When craven churls deride her, To front a lie in arms and not to yield, This shows, methinks, God's plan And measure of a stalwart man, Limbed like the old heroic breeds, Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth, Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, Fed from within with all the strength he needs. Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, Whom late the Nation he had led, With ashes on her head, wept with the passion of an angry grief. Forgive me, if from present things I turn To speak what in my heart will beat and burn, And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn. Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw, And, choosing sweet clay from the breast Of the unexhausted West, With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, Vise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. How beautiful to see Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead; One whose meek flock the people joyed to be, Not lured by any cheat of birth, But by his clear-grained human worth, And brave old wisdom of sincerity! They knew that outward grace is dust; They could not choose but trust In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, And supple-tempered will That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust. His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind, Thrusting to thin air o er our cloudy bars, A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind; Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined, Fruitful and friendly for all human kind, Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars. Nothing of Europe here, Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still, Ere any names of Serf and Peer Could Nature's equal scheme deface And thwart her genial will; Here was a type of the true elder race, And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face. I praise him not; it were too late; And some innative weakness there must be In him who condescends to victory Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait, Safe in himself as in a fate. So always firmly he He knew to bide his time, And can his fame abide, Still patient in his simple faith sublime, Till the wise years decide. Great captains, with their guns and drums, Disturb our judgment for the hour, But at last silence comes; These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, Our children shall behold his fame, The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, New birth of our new soil, the first American. THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL PRELUDE TO PART FIRST Over his keys the musing organist, Beginning doubtfully and far away, First lets his fingers wander as they list, And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay: Then, as the touch of his loved instrument Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent Along the wavering vista of his dream. Not only around our infancy Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not. Over our manhood bend the skies; Against our fallen and traitor lives The great winds utter prophecies; With our faint hearts the mountain strives; Its arms outstretched, the druid wood Waits with its benedicite; And to our age's drowsy blood Mill shouts the inspiring sea. Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us; The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in, The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us, We bargain for the graves we lie in; At the devil's booth are all things sold, Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold; For a cap and bells our lives we pay, Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking 'Tis heaven alone that is given away, 'Tis only God may be had for the asking; No price is set on the lavish summer; June may be had by the poorest comer. And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays Whether we look, or whether we listen, We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; Every, clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers, And, groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; The flush of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in meadows green, The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean To be some happy creature's palace; The little bird sits at his door in the sun, Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, And lets his illumined being o'errun With the deluge of summer it receives; His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sink He pings to the wide world, and she to her nest, In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best? Now is the high-tide of the year, And whatever of life bath ebbed away Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer, Into every bare inlet and creek and bay; Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, We are happy now because God wills it; No matter how barren the past may have been, 'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green; We sit in the warm shade and feel right well How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell; We may shut our eyes but we cannot help knowing That skies are clear and grass is growing; The breeze comes whispering in our ear, That dandelions are blossoming near, That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, That the river is bluer than the sky, That the robin is plastering his house hard by; And if the breeze kept the good news back, For other couriers we should not lack; We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing, And hark! how clear bold chanticleer, Warmed with the new wine of the year, Tells all in his lusty crowing! Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how; Everything is happy now, Everything is upward striving; 'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,-- Tis the natural way of living Who knows whither the clouds have fled? In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake; And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, The heart forgets its sorrow and ache; The soul partakes the season's youth, And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. What wonder if Sir Launfal now Remembered the keeping of his vow? BIGLOW PAPERS I. WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS Guvener B. is a sensible man; He stays to his home an' looks arter his folks; He draws his furrer ez straight ez he can, An' into nobody's tater-patch pokes;-- But John P. Robinson he Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B. My! aint it terrible? Wut shall we du? We can't never choose him o' course,--thet's flat; Guess we shall hev to come round, (don't you?) An' go in fer thunder an' guns, an' all that; Fer John P. Robinson he Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man: He's ben on all sides thet give places or pelf; But consistency still wuz a part of his plan,-- He's been true to one party--an' thet is himself;-- So John P. Robinson he Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C. Gineral C. he goes in fer the war; He don't vally principle more 'n an old cud; Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer, But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an' blood? So John P. Robinson he Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C. We were gittin' on nicely up here to our village, With good old idees o' wut's right an' wut aint We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage, An' thet eppyletts worn't the best mark of a saint, But John P. Robinson he Sez this kind o' thing's an exploded idee. The side of our country must oilers be took, An' Presidunt Polk' you know he is our country. An' the angel thet writes all our sins in a book Puts the debit to him, an' to us the per contry An' John P. Robinson he Sez this is his view o' the thing to a T. Parson Wilbur he calls all these argimunts lies; Sez they're nothin' on airth but jest fee, faw, fum: An' thet all this big talk of our destinies Is half on it ign'ance, an' t' other half rum, But John P. Robinson he Sez it aint no seek thing; an', of course, so must we. Parson Wilbur sez he never heerd in his life Thet th' Apostles rigged out in their swaller-tail coats, An' marched round in front of a drum an' a fife, To git some on 'em office, an' some on 'em votes, But John P. Robinson he Sez they didn't know everthin' down in Judee. Wal, it's a marcy we've gut folks to tell us The rights an' the wrongs o' these matters, I vow, God sends country lawyers, an' other wise fellers To start the world's team wen it gits in a Slough; Fer John P. Robinson he Sez the world 'll go right, ef he hollers out Gee! II. THE COURTIN' God makes sech nights, all white an' still Fur 'z you can look or listen, Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill, All silence an' all glisten. Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown An' peeked in thru' the winder, An' there sot Huldy all alone, 'Ith no one nigh to hender. A fireplace filled the room's one side With half a cord o' wood in-- There warn't no stoves (tell comfort died) To bake ye to a puddin'. The wa'nut logs shot sparkles out Towards the pootiest, bless her, An' leetle flames danced all about The chiny on the dresser. Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung, An' in amongst 'em rusted The ole queen's arm thet gran'ther Young Fetched back from Concord busted. The very room, coz she was in, Seemed warm from floor to ceilin', An' she looked full ez rosy agin Ez the apples she was peelin'. 'Twas kin' o' kingdom-come to look On seek a blessed cretur, A dogrose blushin' to a brook Ain't modester nor sweeter. He was six foot o' man, A 1, Clean grit an' human natur'; None couldn't quicker pitch a ton Nor dror a furrer straighter. He'd sparked it with full twenty gals, He'd squired 'em, danced 'em, druv 'em, Fust this one, an' then thet, by spells-- All is, he couldn't love 'em. But long o' her his veins 'ould run All crinkly like curled maple, The side she breshed felt full o' sun Ez a south slope in Ap'il. She thought no v'ice hed sech a swing Ez hisn in the choir; My! when he made Ole Hunderd ring, She knowed the Lord was nigher. An' she'd blush scarlit, right in prayer, When her new meetin'-bunnet Felt somehow thru' its crown a pair O' blue eyes sot upun it. Thet night, I tell ye, she looked some! She seemed to 've gut a new soul, For she felt sartin-sure he'd come, Down to her very shoe-sole. She heered a foot, an' knowed it tu; A-raspin' on the scraper,-- All ways to once her feelin's flew Like sparks in burnt-up paper. He kin' o' l'itered on the mat, Some doubtfle o' the sekle, His heart kep' goin' pity-pat, But hern went pity Zekle. An' yit she gin her cheer a jerk Ez though she wished him furder, An' on her apples kep' to work, Parin' away like murder. "you want to see my Pa, I s'pose?" "Wal...no...I come dasignin'"-- "To see my Ma? She's sprinklin' clo'es Agin to-morrer's i'nin'." To say why gals acts so or so, Or don't, 'ould be presumin'; Mebby to mean yes an' say no Comes nateral to women. He stood a spell on one foot fust, Then stood a spell on t'other, An' on which one he felt the wust He couldn't ha' told ye nuther. Says he, "I'd better call agin;" Says she, "Think likely, Mister;" Thet last word pricked him like a pin, An'... Wal, he up an' kist her. When Ma bimeby upon 'em slips, Huldy sot pale ez ashes, All kin' o' smily roun' the lips An' teary roun' the lashes. For she was jes' the quiet kind Whose naturs never vary, Like streams that keep a summer mind Snowhid in Jenooary. The blood clost roun' her heart felt glued Too tight for all expressin', Tell mother see how metters stood, And gin 'em both her blessin'. Then her red come back like the tide Down to the Bay o' Fundy, An' all I know is they was cried In meetin' come nex' Sunday. III. SUNTHIN' IN THE PASTORAL LINE Once git a smell o' musk into a draw, An' it clings hold like precerdents in law; Your gra'ma'am put it there,--when, goodness knows,-- To jes this--worldify her Sunday-clo'es; But the old chist wun't sarve her gran'son's wife, (For, 'thout new funnitoor, wut good in life?) An' so ole clawfoot, from the precinks dread O' the spare chamber, slinks into the shed, Where, dim with dust, it fust or last subsides To holdin' seeds an' fifty things besides; But better days stick fast in heart an' husk, An' all you keep in't gits a scent o' musk. Jes' so with poets: wut they've airly read Git,s kind o' worked into their heart-an' head, So 's 't they can't seem to write but jest on sheers With furrin countries or played-out ideers, Nor hev a feelin', ef it doosn't smack O' wut some critter chose to feel 'way back. This makes 'em talk o' daisies, larks, an' things, Ez though we'd nothin' here that blows an' sings,-- (Why, I'd give more for one live bobolink Than a square mile o' larks in printer's ink,) This makes 'em think our fust o' May is May, Which 't ain't, for all the almanicks can say. O little city-gals, don't never go it Blind on the word o' noospaper or poet! They're apt to puff, an' May-day seldom looks Up in the country, ez it dons in books They're no more like than hornets'-nests an' hives, Or printed sarmons be to holy lives. I, with my trouses perched on cow-hide boots, Tuggin' my foundered feet out by the roots, Hev seen ye come to fling on April's hearse Your muslin nosegays from the milliner's, Puzzlin' to find dry ground your queen to choose, An' dance your throats sore m morocker shoes I've seen ye an' felt proud, thet, come wut would, Our Pilgrim stock wuz pithed with hardihood. Pleasure doos make us Yankees kind o' winch, Ez though 'twuz sunthin' paid for by the inch; But yit we du contrive to worry thru, Ef Dooty tells us thet the thing's to du, An' kerry a hollerday, ef we set out, Ez stidchly ez though 'twaz a redoubt. I, country-born an' bred, know where to find Some blooms thet make the season suit the mind, An' seem to metch the doubtin' bluebird's notes,-- Half-vent'rin' liverworts in furry coats, Bloodroots, whose rolled-up leaves ef you oncurl, Each on 'em 's cradle to a baby-pearl,-- But these are jes' Spring's pickets; sure ez sin, The rebble frosts'll try to drive 'em in; For half our May's so awfully like Mayn't, 'Twould rile a Shaker or an evrige saint; Though I own up I like our back'ard springs Thet kind o' haggle with their greens an' things, An' when you most give up, 'ithout more words Toss the fields full o' blossoms, leaves, an' birds Thet's Northun natur', slow an' apt to doubt, But when it doos git stirred, ther' 's no gin-out! Fust come the blackbirds clatt'rin' in tall trees, An' settlin' things in windy Congresses,-- Queer politicians, though, for I'll be skinned Ef all on 'em don't head against the wind. 'Fore long the trees begin to show belief, The maple crimsons to a coral-reef, Then saffern swarms swing off from' all the willers So plump they look like yaller caterpillars, Then gray hossches'nuts leetle hands unfold Softer'n a baby's be at three days old Thet's robin-redbreast's almanick; he knows Thet arter this ther' 's only blossom-snows So, choosin' out a handy crotch an' spouse, He goes to plast'rin' his adobe house. Then seems to come a hitch,--things lag behind, Till some fine mornin' Spring makes up her mind, An' ez, when snow-swelled avers cresh their dams Heaped-up with ice thet dovetails in an' jams, A leak comes spirtin thru some pin-hole cleft, Grows stronger, fercer, tears out right an' left, Then all the waters bow themselves an' come Suddin, in one gret slope o' shedderin' foam, Jes' so our Spring gits everythin' in tune An gives one leap from April into June Then all comes crowdin' in; afore you think, Young oak-leaves mist the side-hill woods with pink The catbird in the laylock-bush is loud; The orchards turn to heaps o' rosy cloud; Red-cedars blossom tu, though few folks know it, An' look all dipt in sunshine like a poet; The lime-trees pile their solid stacks o' shade An' drows'ly simmer with the bees' sweet trade; In ellum-shrouds the flashin' hangbird clings An' for the summer vy'ge his hammock slings; All down the loose-walled lanes in archin' bowers The barb'ry droops its strings o' golden flowers, Whose shrinkin' hearts the school-gals love to try With pins--they'll worry yourn so, boys, bimeby! But I don't love your cat'logue style,--do you?-- Ez ef to sell off Natur' b y vendoo; One word with blood in 't 's twice ez good ez two: 'Nuff sed, June's bridesman, poet o' the year, Gladness on wings, the bobolink, is here; Half-hid in tip-top apple-blooms he swings, Or climbs aginst the breeze with quiverin' wings, Or, givin' way to't in a mock despair, Runs down, a brook o' laughter, thru the air. I ollus feels the sap start in my veins In Spring, with curus heats an' prickly pains, Thet drive me, when I git a chance, to walk Off by myself to hev a privit talk With a queer critter thet can't seem to 'gree Along o' me like most folks,--Mister Me. Ther' 's times when I'm unsoshle ez a stone An' sort o' suffocate to be alone,-- I'm crowded jes' to think thet folks are nigh, An' can't bear nothin' closer than the sky; Now the wind's full ez shifty in the mind Ez wut it is ou'-doors, ef I ain't blind, An' sometimes, in the fairest sou'west weather, My innard vane pints east for weeks together, My natur' gits all goose-flesh, an' my sins Come drizzlin' on my conscience sharp ez pins: Wal, et sech times I jes' slip out o' sight An' take it out in a fair stan'-up fight With the one cuss I can't lay on the shelf, The crook'dest stick in all the heap,--Myself. 'Twuz so las' Sabbath arter meetin'-time: F'indin' my feelin's wouldn't noways rhyme With nobody's, but off the hendle flew An' took things from an east-wind pint o' view, I started off to lose me in the hills Where the pines be, up back o' Siah's Mills: Pines, ef you're blue, are the best friends I know, They mope an' sigh an' sheer your feelin's so,-- They hesh the ground beneath so, tu, I swan, You half-forgit you've gut a body on. "Ther' 's a small school'us' there where four road, meet, The door-steps hollered out by little feet, An side-posts carved with names whose owners grew To gret men, some on 'em an' deacons, tu; 'Tain't used no longer, coz the town hez gut A high-school, where they teach the Lord knows wut: Three-story larnin' 's poplar now: I guess We thriv' ez wal on jes' two stories less, For it strikes me ther' 's sech a thing ez sinnin' By overloadin' children's underpinnin: Wal, here it wuz I larned my A B C, An' it's a kind o' favorite spot with me. We're curus critters: Now ain't jes' the minute Thet ever fits us easy while we're in it; Long ez 'twuz futur', 'twould be perfect bliss,-- Soon ez it's past, thet time's wuth ten o' this An' yit there ain't a man thet need be told Thet Now's the only bird lays eggs o' gold. A knee-high lad, I used to plot an' plan An' think 'twuz life's cap-sheaf to be a man; Now, gittin' gray, there's nothin' I enjoy Like dreamin' back along into a boy: So the ole school'us' is a place I choose Afore all others, ef I want to muse; I set down where I used to set, an' git Diy boyhood back, an' better things with it,-- Faith, Hope, an' sunthin' ef it isn't Cherrity, It's want o' guile, an' thet's ez gret a rerrity. Now, 'fore I knowed, thet Sabbath arternoon Thet I sot out to tramp myself in tune, I found me in the school'us' on my seat, Drummin' the march to No-wheres with my feet. Thinkin' o' nothin', I've heerd ole folks say, Is a hard kind o' dooty in its way: It's thinkin' everythin' you ever knew, Or ever hearn, to make your feelin's blue. From this to thet I let my worryin' creep Till finally I must ha' fell asleep. Our lives in sleep are some like streams thet glide Twixt flesh an' sperrit boundin' on each side, Where both shores' shadders kind o' mix an' mingle In sunthin' thet ain't jes' like either single; An' when you cast off moorin's from To-day, An' down towards To-morrer drift away, The imiges thet tengle on the stream Make a new upside-down'ard world o' dream: Sometimes they seem like sunrise-streaks an' warnin's O' wut'll be in Heaven on Sabbath-mornin's, An', mixed right in ez ef jest out o' spite, Sunthin' thet says your supper ain't gone right. I'm gret on dreams: an' often, when I wake, I've lived so much it makes my mem'ry ache, An' can't skurce take a cat-nap in my cheer 'Thout hevin' 'em, some good, some bad, all queer. Now I wuz settin' where I'd ben, it seemed, An' ain't sure yit whether I rally dreamed, Nor, ef I did, how long I might ha' slep', When I hearn some un stompin' up the step, An' lookirz' round, ef two an' two make four, I see a Pilgrim Father in the door. He wore a steeple-hat, tall boots, an' spurs With rowels to 'em big ez ches'nut-burrs, An' his gret sword behind him sloped away Long'z a man's speech thet dunno wut to say.-- "Ef your name's Biglow, an' your given-name Hosee," sez he, "it's arter you I came; I'm your gret-gran they multiplied by three." "My wut?" sez I.--your gret-gret-gret," sez he: "You wouldn't ha' never ben here but for me. Two hundred an' three year ago this May, The ship I come in sailed up Boston Bay; I'd been a cunnle in our Civil War,-- But wut on girth hev ,you gut up one for? Coz we du things in England, 'tain't for you To git a notion you can du 'em tu: I'm told you write in public prints: ef true, It's nateral you should know a thing or two."-- "Thet air's an argymunt I can't endorse,-- 'Twould prove, coz you wear spurs, you kep' a horse: But du pray tell me, 'fore we furder go, How in all Natur' did you come to know 'Bout our affairs," sez I "in Kingdom-Come?"-- "Wal, I worked round at sperrit-rappin' some, An' danced the tables till their legs wuz gone, In hopes o' larnin wut wuz goin' on," Sez he, "but mejums lie so like all-split Thet I concluded it wuz best to quit. But, come now, ef you wun't confess to knowin', You've some conjectures how the thing's a-goin'."-- "Gran'ther," sez I, "a vane warn't never known Nor asked to hev a jedgment of its own; An' yit, ef 'tain't gut rusty in the jints, It's safe to trust its say on certin pints It knows the wind's opinions to a T, An' the wind settles wut the weather'll be." "I never thought a scion of our stock Could grow the wood to make a weathercock; When I wuz younger'n you, skurce more'n a shaver, No airthly wind," sez he, "could make me waver!" (Ez he said this, he clinched his jaw an' forehead, Hitchin' his belt to bring his sword-hilt forrard.) "Jes' so it wuz with me," sez I, "I swow, When I wuz younger'n wut you see me now,-- Nothin' from Adam's fall to Huldy's bonnet, Thet I warm't full-cocked with my jedgment on it; But now I'm gittin' on in life, I find It's a sight harder to make up my mind,-- Nor I don't often try tu, when events Will du it for me free of all expense. The moral question's ollus plain enough,-- It's jes' the human-natur' side thet's tough; Wut's best to think mayn't puzzle me nor you,-- The pinch comes in decidin' wut to du; Ef you read History, all runs smooth ez grease, Coz there the men ain't nothin' more'n idees,-- But come to make it, ez we must to-day, Th' idees hev arms an' legs an' stop the way It's easy fixin' things in facts an' figgers,-- They can't resist, nor warn't brought up with nigers; But come to try your the'ry on,--why, then Your facts an' figgers change to ign'ant men Actin' ez ugly--"--"Smite 'em hip an' thigh!" Sez gran'ther, "and let every man-child die! Oh for three weeks o' Crommle an' the Lord! Up, Isr'el, to your tents an' grind the sword! "Thet kind o' thing worked wal in ole Judee, But you forgit how long it's hen A.D.; You think thet's ellerkence--I call it shoddy, A thing," sez I, "wun't cover soul nor body; I like the plain all-wool o' common-sense, Thet warms ye now, an' will a twelvemonth hence. You took to follerin' where the Prophets beckoned. An', fust you knowed on, back come Charles the Second; Now, wut I want's to hev all we gain stick, An' not to start Millennium too quick; We hain't to punish only, but to keep, An' the cure's gut to go a cent'ry deep" "Wal, milk-an'-water ain't the best o' glue," Sez he, "an' so you'll find before you're thru; "Strike soon," sez he, "or you'll be deadly ailin'-- Folks thet's afeared to fail are sure o' failin'; God hates your sneakin' creturs thet believe He'll settle things they run away an' leave!" He brought his foot down fiercely, ez he spoke, An' give me sech a startle thet I woke. AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE What visionary tints the year puts on, When failing leaves falter through motionless air Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone! How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare, As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills The bowl between me and those distant hills, And smiles and shakes abroad her misty, tremulous hair! No more the landscape holds its wealth apart. Making me poorer in my poverty, But mingles with my senses and my heart; My own projected spirit seems to me In her own reverie the world to steep; 'Tis she that waves to sympathetic sleep, Moving, as she is moved, each field and hill, and tree. How fuse and mix, with what unfelt degrees, Clasped by the faint horizon's languid arms, Each into each, the hazy distances! The softened season all the landscape charms; Those hills, my native village that embay, In waves of dreamier purple roll away, And floating in mirage seem all the glimmering farms. Far distant sounds the hidden chickadee Close at my side; far distant sound the leaves; The fields seem fields of dream, where Memory Wanders like gleaning Ruth; and as the sheaves Of wheat and barley wavered in the eye Of Boaz as the maiden's glow went by, So tremble and seem remote all things the sense receives. The cock's shrill trump that tells of scattered corn, Passed breezily on by all his flapping mates, Faint and more faint, from barn to barn is borne, Southward, perhaps to far Magellan's Straits; Dimly I catch the throb of distant flails; Silently overhead the henhawk sails, With watchful, measuring eye, and for his quarry waits. The sobered robin, hunger-silent now, Leeks cedar-berries blue, his autumn cheer; The squirrel on the shingly shagbark's bough, Now saws, now lists with downward eye and ear, Then drops his nut, and, with a chipping bound, Whisks to his winding fastness underground; The clouds like swans drift down the streaming atmosphere. O'er yon bare knoll the pointed cedar shadows Drowse on the crisp, gray moss; the ploughman's call Creeps, faint as smoke from black, fresh-furrowed meadows; The single crow a single caw lets fall And all around me every bush and tree Says Autumn's here, and Winter soon will Who snows his soft, white sleep and silence over all. The birch, most shy and lady-like of trees, Her poverty, as best she may, retrieves, And hints at her foregone gentilities With some saved relics of her wealth of leaves The swamp-oak, with his royal purple on, Glares red as blood across the sinking sun, As one who proudlier to a falling fortune cleaves He looks a sachem, in red blanket wrapt, Who, mid some council of the sad-garbed whites, Erect and stern, in his own memories lapt, With distant eye broods over other sights, Sees the hushed wood the city's flare replace, The wounded turf heal o'er the railway's trace, And roams the savage Past of his undwindled rights. The red-oak, softer-grained, yields all for lost, And, with his crumpled foliage stiff and dry, After the first betrayal of the frost, Rebuffs the kiss of the relenting sky; The chestnuts, lavish of their long-hid gold, To the faint Summer, beggared now and old, Pour back the sunshine hoarded 'neath her favoring eye. The ash her purple drops forgivingly And sadly, breaking not the general hush; The maple-swamps glow like a sunset sea, Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush; All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting blaze; Of bushes low, as when, on cloudy days, Ere the rain falls, the cautious farmer burns his brush. O'er yon low wall, which guards one unkempt zone, Where vines, and weeds, and scrub-oaks intertwine Safe from the plough, whose rough, discordant stone Is massed to one soft gray by lichens fine, The tangled blackberry, crossed and recrossed, weaves A prickly network of ensanguined leaves; Hard by, with coral beads, the prim black-alders shine. Pillaring with flame this crumbling boundary, Whose loose blocks topple 'neath the ploughboy's foot, Who, with each sense shut fast except the eye, Creeps close and scares the jay he hoped to shoot, The woodbine up the elm's straight stem aspires. Coiling it, harmless, with autumnal fires; In the ivy's paler blaze the martyr oak stands mute. Below, the Charles--a stripe of nether sky, Now hid by rounded apple-trees between, Whose gaps the misplaced sail sweeps bellying by, Now flickering golden through a woodland screen, Then spreading out at his next turn beyond, A silver circle like an inland pond-- Slips seaward silently through marshes purple and green. Dear marshes! vain to him the gift of sight Who cannot in their various incomes share, From every season drawn, of shade and light, Who sees in them but levels brown and bare; Each change of storm or sunshine scatters free On them its largesse of variety, For nature with cheap means still works her wonders rare. In Spring they lie one broad expanse of green, O'er which the light winds run with glimmering feet; Here, yellower stripes track out the creek unseen here, darker growths o'er hidden ditches meet; And purpler stains show where the blossoms crowd, As if the silent shadow of a cloud Hung there becalmed, with the next breath to fleet. All round, upon the river's slippery edge, Witching to deeper calm the drowsy tide, Whispers and leans the breeze-entangling sedge; Through emerald glooms the lingering waters slide, Or, sometimes wavering, throw back the sun, And the stiff banks in eddies melt and run Of dimpling light, and with the current seem to glide. In Summer 'tis a blithesome sight to see, As step by step, with measured swing, they pass, The wide-ranked mowers evading to the knee, Their sharp scythes panting through the thick-set grass Then, stretched beneath a rick's shade in a ring, Their nooning take, while one begins to sing A stave that droops and dies 'neath the close sky of brass. Meanwhile the devil-may-care, the bobolink, Remembering duty, in mid-quaver stops Just ere he sweeps O'er rapture's tremulous brink, And 'twixt the winrows most demurely drops, A decorous bird of business, who provides For his brown mate and fledglings six besides, And looks from right to left, a farmer mid his crops. Another change subdues them in the Fall, But saddens not, they still show merrier tints, Though sober russet seems to cover all; When the first sunshine through their dew-drops glints, Look how the yellow clearness, streamed across, Redeems with rarer hues the season's loss, As Dawn's feet there had touched and left their rosy prints. Or come when sunset gives its freshened zest, Lean o'er the bridge and let the ruddy thrill, While the shorn sun swells down the hazy west, Glow opposite; the marshes drink their fill And swoon with purple veins, then slowly fade Through pink to brown, as eastward moves the shade, Lengthening with stealthy creep, of Simond's darkening hill. Later, and yet ere Winter wholly shuts, Ere through the first dry snow the runner grates, And the loath cart-wheel screams in slippery ruts, While the firmer ice the eager boy awaits, Trying each buckle and strap beside the fire, And until bedtime--plays with his desire, Twenty times putting on and off his new-bought skates;-- Then, every morn, the river's banks shine bright With smooth plate-armor, treacherous and frail, By the frost's clinking hammers forged at night, "Gainst which the lances of the sun prevail, Giving a pretty emblem of the day When guitar arms in light shall melt away, And states shall move free limbed, loosed from war's cramping mail. And now those waterfalls the ebbing river Twice everyday creates on either side Tinkle, as through their fresh-sparred grots they shiver In grass-arched channels to the sun denied; High flaps in sparkling blue the far-heard crow, The silvered flats gleam frostily below, Suddenly drops the gull and breaks the glassy tide. But, crowned in turn by vying seasons three, Their winter halo hath a fuller ring; This glory seems to rest immovably,-- The others were too fleet and vanishing; When the hid tide is at its highest flow, O'er marsh and stream one breathless trance of snow With brooding fulness awes and hushes everything. The sunshine seems blown off by the bleak wind, As pale as formal candles lit by day; Gropes to the sea the river dumb and blind; The brown ricks, snow-thatched by the storm in play, Show pearly breakers combing o'er their lee, White crests as of some just enchanted sea, Checked in their maddest leap and hanging poised midway. But when the eastern blow, with rain aslant, From mid-sea's prairies green and rolling plains Drives in his wallowing herds of billows gaunt, And the roused Charles remembers in his veins Old Ocean's blood and snaps his gyves of frost, That tyrannous silence on the shores is tost In dreary wreck, and crumbling desolation reigns. Edgewise or flat, in Druid-like device, With leaden pools between or gullies bare, The blocks lie strewn, a bleak Stonehenge of ice; No life, no sound, to break the grim despair, Save sullen plunge, as through the sedges stiff Down crackles riverward some thaw-sapped cliff, Or ashen the close-wedged fields of ice crunch here and there. But let me turn from fancy-pictured scenes To that whose pastoral calm before me lies: Here nothing harsh or rugged intervenes; The early evening with her misty dyes Smooths off the ravelled edges of the nigh, Relieves the distant with her cooler sky, And tones the landscape down, and soothes the wearied eyes There gleams my native village, dear to me, Though higher change's waves each day are seen, Whelming fields famed in boyhood's history, Sanding with houses the diminished green; There, in red brick, which softening time defies, Stand square and stiff the Muses' factories; How with my life knit up is every well-known scene! Flow on, dear river! not alone you flow To outward sight, and through your marshes wind; Fed from the mystic springs of long-ago, Your twin flows silent through my world of mind Grow dim, dear marshes, in the evening's gray! Before my inner sight ye stretch away, And will forever, though these fleshly eyes grow blind. A FABLE FOR CRITICS (Selections) I. Emerson. "There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one, Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on, Whose prose is grand verse, while his verse, the Lord knows, Is some of it pr---- No, 'tis not even prose; I'm speaking of metres; some poems have welled From those rare depths of soul that have ne'er been excelled; They're not epics, but that doesn't matter a pin, In creating, the only hard thing's to begin; A grass-blade's no easier to make than an oak, If you've once found the way you've achieved the grand stroke; In the worst of his poems are mines of rich matter, But thrown in a heap with a crash and a clatter Now it is not one thing nor another alone Makes a poem, but rather the general tone, The something pervading, uniting, the whole, The before unconceived, unconceivable soul, So that just in removing this trifle or that, you Take away, as it were, a chief limb of the statue; Roots, wood, bark, and leaves, singly perfect may be, But, clapt bodge-podge together, they don't make a tree. "But, to come back to Emerson, (whom by the way, I believe we left waiting,)--his is, we may say, A Greek head on right Yankee shoulders, whose range Has Olympus for one pole, for t' other the Exchange; Life, nature, lore, God, and affairs of that sort, He looks at as merely ideas; in short, As if they were fossils stuck round in a cabinet, Of such vast extent that our earth's a mere dab in it; Composed just as he is inclined to conjecture her, Namely, one part pure earth, ninety-nine parts pure lecturer; You are filled with delight at his clear demonstration, Each figure, word, gesture, just fits the occasion, With the quiet precision of science he'll sort em, But you can't help suspecting the whole a post mortem. II. Bryant. "There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified, As a smooth, silent iceberg, that never is ignified, Save when by reflection 'tis kindled o' nights, With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Nights. He may rank (Griswold says so) first bard of your nation, (There's no doubt that he stands in supreme iceolation,) Your topmost Parnassus he may set his heel on, But no warm applauses come, peal following peal on-- He's too smooth and too polished to hang any zeal on: Unqualified merits, I'll grant, if you choose, he has em, But he lacks the one merit of kindling enthusiasm; If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul, Like being stirred up with the very North Pole. "He is very nice reading in summer, but inter Nos, we don't want extra freezing in winter; Take him up in the depth of July, my advice is, When you feel an Egyptian devotion to ices. But, deduct all you can, there's enough that's right good in him, He has a true soul for field, river, and wood in him; And his heart, in the midst of brick walls, or where'er it is, Glows, softens, and thrills with the tenderest charities, To you mortals that delve in this trade-ridden planet? No, to old Berkshire's hills, with their lime stone and granite. III. Whinier. "There is Whinier, whose swelling and vehement heart Strains the strait-breasted drab of the Quaker apart, And reveals the live Man, still supreme and erect, Underneath the bemummying wrappers of sect; There was ne'er a man born who had more of the swing Of the true lyric bard and all that kind of thing; And his failures arise, (though perhaps he don't know it,) From the very same cause that has made him a poet,-- A fervor of mind which knows no separation 'Twixt simple excitement and pure inspiration, As my Pythoness erst sometimes erred from not knowing If 'twere I or mere wind through her tripod was blowing; Let his mind once get head in its favorite direction And the torrent of verse bursts the dams of reflection, While, borne with the rush of the metre along, The poet may chance to go right or go wrong, Content with the whirl and delirium of song; Then his grammar's not always correct, nor his rhymes, And he's prone to repeat his own lyrics sometimes, Not his best, though, for those are struck off at white-heats When the heart in his breast like a trip-hammer beats And can ne'er be repeated again any more Than they could have been carefully plotted before "All honor and praise to the right-hearted bard Who was true to The Voice when such service was hard, Who himself was so free he dared sing for the slave When to look but a protest in silence was brave; IV. Hawthorne. 'There is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking and rare That you hardly at first see the strength that is there; A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet, So earnest, so graceful, so solid, so fleet, Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet; 'Tis as if a rough oak that for ages had stood, With his gnarled bony branches like ribs of the wood Should bloom, after cycles of struggle and scathe, With a single anemone trembly and rathe; His strength is so tender; his wildness so meek, That a suitable parallel sets one to seek-- He's a John Bunyan Fouque, a Puritan Tieck; When nature was shaping him, clay was not granted For making so full-sized a man as she wanted, So, to fill out her model, a little she spared From some finer-grained stuff for a woman prepared. And she could not have hit a more excellent plan For making him fully and perfectly man. The success of her scheme gave her so much delight, That she tried it again, shortly after, in Dwight, Only, while she was kneading and shaping the clay, She sang to her work in her sweet childish way, And found, when she'd put the last touch to his soul, That the music had somehow got mixed with the whole. V. Cooper. "Here's Cooper, who's written six volumes to show He's as good as a lord: well, let's grant that he's so; If a person prefer that description of praise, Why, a coronet's certainly cheaper than bays; But he need take no pains to convince us he's not (As his enemies say) the American Scott. Choose any twelve men, and let C. read aloud That one of his novels of which he's most proud, And I'd lay any bet that, without ever quitting Their box, they'd be all, to a man, for acquitting. He has drawn you he's character, though, that is new, One wildflower he's plucked that is wet with the dew Of this fresh Western world, and, the thing not to mince, He has done naught but copy it ill ever since; His Indians, with proper respect be it said, Are just Natty Bumpo daubed over with red, And his very Long Toms are the same useful Nat, Rigged up in duck pants and a sou'-wester hat, (Though once in a Coffin, a good chance was found To have slipt the old fellow away underground.) All his other men-figures are clothes upon sticks The derniere chemise of a man in a fix, (As a captain besieged, when his garrison's small, bets up caps upon poles to be seen o'er the wall;) And the women he draws from one model don't vary, All sappy as maples and flat as a prairie. When a character's wanted, he goes to the task As a cooper would do in composing a cask; He picks out the staves, of their qualities heedful, Just hoops them together as tight as is needful, And, if the best fortune should crown the attempt, he Has made at the most something wooden and empty. "Don't suppose I would underrate Cooper's abilities If I thought you'd do that, I should feel very ill at ease; The men who have given to one character life And objective existence, are not very rife, You may number them all, both prose-writers and singers, Without overrunning the bounds of your fingers, And Natty won't go to oblivion quicker Than Adams the parson or Primrose the vicar. "There is one thing in Cooper I like, too, and that is That on manners he lectures his countrymen gratis, Not precisely so either, because, for a rarity, He is paid for his tickets in unpopularity. Now he may overcharge his American pictures, But you'll grant there's a good deal of truth in his strictures; And I honor the man who is willing to sink Half his present repute for the freedom to think, And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, Will risk t'other half for the freedom to speak, Caring naught for what vengeance the mob has in store, Let that mob be the upper ten thousand or lower. VI. Poe and Longfellow. "There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge, Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge, Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters, In a way to make people of common-sense damn metres, Who has written some things quite the best of their kind, But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the mind, Who--but hey-day! What's this? Messieurs Mathews and Poe, You mustn't fling mud-balls at Longfellow so, Does it make a man worse that his character's such As to make his friends love him (as you thin) too much? Why, there is not a bard at this moment alive More willing than he that his fellows should thrive, While you are abusing him thus, even now He would help either one of you out of a dough; You may say that he's smooth and all that till you're hoarse But remember that elegance also is force; After polishing granite as much as you will, The heart keeps its tough old persistency still; Deduct all you can that still keeps you at bay, Why, he'll live till men weary of Collins and Gray. 'Tis truth that I speak Had Theocritus written in English, not Greek, I believe that his exquisite sense would scarce change a line In that rare, tender, virgin-like pastoral Evangeline. That's not ancient nor modern, its place is apart Where time has no sway, in the realm of pure Art, 'Tis a shrine of retreat from Earth's hubbub and strife As quiet and chaste as the author's own life. VII. Irving. "What! Irving? thrice welcome, warm heart and fine brain, You bring back the happiest spirit from Spain, And the gravest sweet humor, that ever were there Since Cervantes met death in his gentle despair; Nay, don't be embarrassed, nor look so beseeching,-- I shan't run directly against my own preaching, And, having just laughed at their Raphaels and Dantes, Go to setting you up beside matchless Cervantes; But allow me to speak what I honestly feel,-- To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele, Throw in all of Addison, minus the chill, With the whole of that partnership's stock and good will, Mix well, and while stirring, hum o'er, as a spell, The fine old English Gentleman, simmer it well, Sweeten just to your own private liking, then strain That only the finest and clearest remain, Let it stand out of doors till a soul it receives From the warm lazy sun loitering down through green leaves, And you'll find a choice nature, not wholly deserving A name either English or Yankee,--just Irving. VIII. Holmes. "There's Holmes, who is matchless among you for wit; A Leyden-jar always full-charged, from which flit The electrical tingles of hit after hit; In long poems 'tis painful sometimes, and invites A thought of the way the new Telegraph writes, Which pricks down its little sharp sentences spitefully As if you got more than you'd title to rightfully, And you find yourself hoping its wild father Lightning Would flame in for a second and give you fright'ning. He has perfect sway of what I call a sham metre, But many admire it, the English pentameter, And Campbell, I think, wrote most commonly worse, With less nerve, swing, and fire in the same kind of verse, Nor e'er achieved aught in 't so worthy of praise As the tribute of Holmes to the grand Marseillaise. You went crazy last year over Bulwer's New Timon; Why, if B., to the day of his dying, should rhyme on, Heaping verses on verses and tames upon tomes, He could ne'er reach the best point and vigor of Holmes. His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satyric In a measure so kindly, you doubt if the toes That are trodden upon are your own or your foes'. IX. Lowell. "There is Lowell, who's striving Parnassus to climb With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme, He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders, But he can't with that bundle he has on his shoulders The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preaching; His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well, But he'd rather by half make a drum of the shell And rattle away till he's old as Methusalem, At the head of a march to the last new Jerusalem. X. Spirit of Ancient Poetry. "My friends, in the happier days of the muse, We were luckily free from such things as reviews, Then naught came between with its fog to make clearer The heart of the poet to that of his hearer; Then the poet brought heaven to the people, and they Felt that they, too, were poets in hearing his lay; Then the poet was prophet, the past in his soul Pre-created the future, both parts of one whole; Then for him there was nothing too great or too small. For one natural deity sanctified all; Then the bard owned no clipper and meter of moods Save the spirit of silence that hovers and broods O'er the seas and the mountains, the rivers and woods He asked not earth's verdict, forgetting the clods, His soul soared and sang to an audience of gods. 'Twas for them that he measured the thought and the line, And shaped for their vision the perfect design, With as glorious a foresight, a balance as true, As swung out the worlds in the infinite blue; Then a glory and greatness invested man's heart The universal, which now stands estranged and apart, In the free individual moulded, was Art; Then the forms of the Artist seemed thrilled with desire For something as yet unattained, fuller, higher, As once with her lips, lifted hands, and eyes listening, And her whole upward soul in her countenance glistening, Eurydice stood--like a beacon unfired, Which, once touched with flame, will leap heav'nward inspired-- And waited with answering kindle to mark The first gleam of Orpheus that pained the red Dark. Then painting, song, sculpture, did more than relieve the need that men feel to create and believe, And as, in all beauty, who listens with love Hears these words oft repeated--'beyond and above.' So these seemed to be but the visible sign Of the grasp of the soul after things more divine; They were ladders the Artist erected to climb O'er the narrow horizon of space and of time, And we see there the footsteps by which men had gained To the one rapturous glimpse of the never-attained, As shepherds could erst sometimes trace in the sod The last spurning print of a sky-cleaving god. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES OLD IRONSIDES Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky; Beneath it rung the battle shout, And burst the cannon's roar;-- The meteor of the ocean air Shall sweep the clouds no more! Her deck, once red with heroes' blood, Where knelt the vanquished foe, When winds were hurrying o'er the floods And waves were white below, No more shall feel the victor's tread, Or know the conquered knee;-- The harpies of the shore shall pluck The eagle of the sea! O better that her shattered hulk Should sink beneath the wave; Her thunders shook the mighty deep, And there should be her grave; Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storms, The lightning and the gale! THE LAST LEAF I saw him once before, As he passed by the door, And again The pavement stones resound, As he totters o'er the ground With his cane. They say that in his prime, Ere the pruning-knife of Time Cut him down, Not a better man was found, By the Crier on his round Through the town. But now he walks the streets, And he looks at all he meets Sad and wan, And he shakes his feeble head, That it seems as if he said, "They are gone." The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has prest In their bloom, And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On the tomb. My grandmamma has said-- Poor old lady, she is dead Long ago-- That he had a Roman nose, And his cheek was like a rose In the snow. But now his nose is thin, And it rests upon his chin Like a staff, And a crock is in his back, And a melancholy crack In his laugh. I know it is a sin For me to sit and grin At him here; But the old three-cornered hat, And the breeches, and all that, Are so queer! And if I should live to be The last leaf upon the tree In the spring, Let them smile, as I do now, At the old forsaken bough Where I cling. MY AUNT My aunt! my dear unmarried aunt! Long years have o'er her flown; Yet still she strains the aching clasp That binds her virgin zone; I know it hurts her,--though she looks As cheerful as she can; Her waist is ampler than her life, For life is but a span. My aunt! my poor deluded aunt! Her hair is almost gray; Why will she train that winter curl In such a spring-like way? How can she lay her glasses down, And say she reads as well, When through a double convex lens, She just makes out to spell? Her father--grandpapa! forgive This erring lip its smiles-- Vowed she should make the finest girl Within a hundred miles; He sent her to a stylish school; 'Twas in her thirteenth June; And with her, as the rules required, "Two towels and a spoon." They braced my aunt against a board, To make her straight and tall; They laced her up, they starved her down, To make her light and small; They pinched her feet, they singed her hair, They screwed it up with pins;-- O never mortal suffered more In penance for her sins. So, when my precious aunt was done, My grandsire brought her back; (By daylight, lest some rabid youth Might follow on the track;) "Ah!" said my grandsire, as he shook Some powder in his pan, "What could this lovely creature do Against a desperate man!" Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche, Nor bandit cavalcade, Tore from the trembling father's arms His all-accomplished maid. For her how happy had it been! And Heaven had spared to me To see one sad, ungathered rose On my ancestral tree. THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main,-- The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; Wrecked is the ship of pearl! And every chambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed,-- Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed! Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Mill, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched m his last-found home, and knew the old no more. Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap, forlorn! From thy dead lips a clearer note is born Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn! While on mine ear it rings, Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:-- Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! CONTENTMENT "Man wants but little here below." Little I ask; my wants are few; I only wish a hut of stone, (A very plain, brown stone' will do,) That I may call my own; And close at hand is such a one, In yonder street that fronts the sun. Plain food is quite enough for me; Three courses are as good as ten; If Nature can subsist on three, Thank Heaven for three. Amen! I always thought cold victual nice;-- My choice would be vanilla-ice. I care not much for gold or land; Give me a mortgage here and there, Some good bank-stock, some note of hand, Or trifling railroad share,-- I only ask that Fortune send A little more than I shall spend. Honors are silly toys, I know, And titles are but empty names; I would, perhaps, be Plenipo,-- But only near St. James; I'm very sure I should not care To fill our Gubernator's chair. Jewels are bawbles; 'tis a sin To care for such unfruitful things; One good-sized diamond in a pin,-- Some, not so large, in rings,-- A ruby, and a pearl, or so, Will do for me;--I laugh at show. My dame should dress in cheap attire; (Good, heavy silks are never dear;) I own perhaps I might desire Some shawls of true Cashmere,-- Some marrowy crapes of China silk, Like wrinkled skins on scalded milk. I would not have the horse I drive So fast that folks must stop and stare; An easy gait--two, forty-five-- Suits me; I do not care; Perhaps, for just a single spurt, Some seconds less would do no hurt. Of pictures, I should like to own Titians and Raphaels three or four, I love so much their style and tone,-- One Turner, and no more, (A landscape,--foreground golden dirt,-- The sunshine painted with a 'squirt.) Of books but few,--some fifty score For daily use, and bound for wear; The rest upon an upper floor;-- Some little luxury there Of red morocco's gilded gleam, And vellum rich as country cream. Busts, cameos, gems,--such things as these, Which others often show for pride, I value for their power to please, And selfish churls deride;-- One Stradivarius, I confess, Two Meerschaums, I would fain possess. Wealth's wasteful tricks I will not learn Nor ape the glittering upstart fool; Shall not carved tables serve my turn, But all must be of buhl? Give grasping pomp its double share,-- I ask but one recumbent chair. Thus humble let me live and die, Nor long for Midas' golden touch; If Heaven more generous gifts deny, I shall not miss them much,-- Too grateful for the blessing lent Of simple tastes and mind content! THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE; or THE WONDERFUL "ONE-HOSS SHAY" A LOGICAL STORY Have you heard of the wonderful one-horse shay, That was built in such a logical way It ran a hundred years to a day, And then, of a sudden, it--ah but stay, I'll tell you what happened without delay, Scaring the parson into fits, Frightening people out of their wits, Have you ever heard of that, I say? Seventeen hundred and fifty-five, Georgius Secundus was then alive, Snuffy old drone from the German hive. That was the year when Lisbon-town Saw the earth open and gulp her down And Braddock's army was done so brown, Left without a scalp to its crown. It was on the terrible Earthquake-day That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay. Now in building of chaises, I tell you what, There is always somewhere a weakest spot,-- In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill, In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill, In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace,--lurking still, Find it somewhere you must and will,-- Above or below, or within or without,-- And that's the reason, beyond a doubt, That a chaise breaks down, but doesn't wear out. But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do, With an "I dew vum," or an "I tell yeou,") He would build one shay to beat the taown 'n' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun'; It should be so built that it couldn' break daown, "Fur," said the Deacon, "It's mighty plain Thut the weakes' place mus' Stan' the strain; 'n' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain, Is only jest T' make that place uz strong uz the rest." So the Deacon inquired of the village folk Where he could find the strongest oak, That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke, That was for spokes and floor and sills; He sent for lancewood to make the thins; The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees. The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese, But lasts like iron for things like these; The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"-- Last of its timber,--they couldn't sell 'em, Never an axe had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died. That was the way he "put her through." "There!" said the Deacon, "naow she'll dew!" Do! I tell you, I rather guess She was a wonder, and nothing less! Colts grew horses, beards turned gray, Deacon and deaconess dropped away, Children and grandchildren--where were they? But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day EIGHTEEN HUNDRED;--it came and found The Deacon's masterpiece strong and sound. Eighteen hundred increased by ten;-- "Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then. Eighteen hundred and twenty came;-- Running as usual; much the same. Thirty and forty at last arrive, And then come fifty, and FIFTY-FIVE. Little of all we value here Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year Without both feeling and looking queer. In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth, So far as I know but a tree and truth. (This is a moral that runs at large; Take it.--You're welcome.--No extra charge.) FIRST of NOVEMBER,--the Earthquake-day-- There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay, A general flavor of mild decay, But nothing local, as one may say. There couldn't be,--for the Deacon's art Had made it so like in every part That there wasn't a chance for one to start. For the wheels were just as strong as the thins, And the floor was just as strong as the sills, And the panels just as strong as the floors And the whipple-tree neither less nor more, And the back-crossbar as strong as the fore, And spring and axle and hub encore. And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt In another hour it will be worn out! First of November, 'Fifty-five! This morning the parson takes a drive. Now, small boys, get out of the way! Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay, Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay. "Huddup!" said the parson.--Off went they. The parson was working his Sunday's text,-- Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed At what the--Moses--was coming next. All at once the horse stood still, Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill. First a shiver, and then a thrill, Then something decidedly like a spill,-- And the parson was sitting upon a rock, At half past nine by the meet'n'-house clock-- Just the hour of the Earthquake shock! What do you think the parson found, When he got up and stared around? The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, As if it had been to the mill and ground! You see, of course, if you're not a dunce, How it went to pieces all at once, All at once, and nothing first, Just as bubbles do when they burst. End of the wonderful one-boss shay. Logic is logic. That's all I say. THOMAS BUCHANAN READ STORM ON ST. BERNARD Oh, Heaven, it is a fearful thing Beneath the tempest's beating wing To struggle, like a stricken hare When swoops the monarch bird of air; To breast the loud winds' fitful spasms, To brave the cloud and shun the chasms, Tossed like a fretted shallop-sail Between the ocean and the gale. Along the valley, loud and fleet, The rising tempest leapt and roared, And scaled the Alp, till from his seat The throned Eternity of Snow His frequent avalanches poured In thunder to the storm below. And now, to crown their fears, a roar Like ocean battling with the shore, Or like that sound which night and day Breaks through Niagara's veil of spray, From some great height within the cloud, To some unmeasured valley driven, Swept down, and with a voice so loud It seemed as it would shatter heaven! The bravest quailed; it swept so near, It made the ruddiest cheek to blanch, While look replied to look in fear, "The avalanche! The avalanche!" It forced the foremost to recoil, Before its sideward billows thrown,-- Who cried, "O God! Here ends our toil! The path is overswept and gone!" The night came down. The ghostly dark, Made ghostlier by its sheet of snow, Wailed round them its tempestuous wo, Like Death's announcing courier! "Hark There, heard you not the alp-hound's bark? And there again! and there! Ah, no, 'Tis but the blast that mocks us so!" Then through the thick and blackening mist Death glared on them, and breathed so near, Some felt his breath grow almost warm, The while he whispered in their ear Of sleep that should out-dream the storm. Then lower drooped their lids,--when, "List! Now, heard you not the storm-bell ring? And there again, and twice and thrice! Ah, no, 'tis but the thundering Of tempests on a crag of ice!" Death smiled on them, and it seemed good On such a mellow bed to lie The storm was like a lullaby, And drowsy pleasure soothed their blood. But still the sturdy, practised guide His unremitting labour plied; Now this one shook until he woke, And closer wrapt the other's cloak,-- Still shouting with his utmost breath, To startle back the hand of Death, Brave words of cheer! "But, hark again,-- Between the blasts the sound is plain; The storm, inhaling, lulls,--and hark! It is--it is! the alp-dog's bark And on the tempest's passing swell-- The voice of cheer so long debarred-- There swings the Convent's guiding-bell, The sacred bell of Saint Bernard!" DRIFTING My soul to-day Is far away, Sailing the Vesuvian Bay; My winged boat A bird afloat, Swings round the purple peaks remote:-- Round purple peaks It sails, and seeks Blue inlets and their crystal creeks, Where high rocks throw, Through deeps below, A duplicated golden glow. Far, vague, and dim, The mountains swim; While an Vesuvius' misty brim, With outstretched hands, The gray smoke stands O'erlooking the volcanic lands. Here Ischia smiles O'er liquid miles; And yonder, bluest of the isles, Calm Capri waits, Her sapphire gates Beguiling to her bright estates. I heed not, if My rippling skiff Float swift or slow from cliff to cliff; With dreamful eyes My spirit lies Under the walls of Paradise. Under the walls Where swells and falls The Bay's deep breast at intervals At peace I lie, Blown softly by, A cloud upon this liquid sky. The day, so mild, Is Heaven's own child, With Earth and Ocean reconciled; The airs I feel Around me steal Are murmuring to the murmuring keel. Over the rail My hand I trail Within the shadow of the sail, A joy intense, The cooling sense Glides down my drowsy indolence. With dreamful eyes My spirit lies Where Summer sings and never dies, O'erveiled with vines She glows and shines Among her future oil and wines. Her children, hid The cliffs amid, Are gambolling with the gambolling kid; Or down the walls, With tipsy calls, Laugh on the rocks like waterfalls. The fisher's child, With tresses wild, Unto the smooth, bright sand beguiled, With glowing lips Sings as she skips, Or gazes at the far-off ships. Yon deep bark goes Where traffic blows, From lands of sun to lands of snows; This happier one,-- Its course is run From lands of snow to lands of sun. O happy ship, To rise and dip, With the blue crystal at your lip! O happy crew, My heart with you Sails, and sails, and sings anew! No more, no more The worldly shore Upbraids me with its loud uproar With dreamful eyes My spirit lies Under the walls of Paradise! WALT WHITMAN PIONEERS! O PIONEERS! (Selection) Come, my tan-faced children, Follow well in order, get your weapons ready; Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes? Pioneers! O pioneers! For we cannot tarry here; We must march, my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers O you youths, Western youths, So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, Plain I see you, Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, Pioneers! O pioneers Have the elder races halted? Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas? We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson, Pioneers! O pioneers! All the past we leave behind, We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world; Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march, Pioneers! O pioneers We detachments steady throwing, Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep, Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways, Pioneers! O pioneers! We primeval forests felling, We the rivers stemming, vexing and piercing deep the mines within, We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving, Pioneers! O pioneers! Colorado men are we; From the peaks gigantic, from the great Sierras and the high plateaus, From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail, we come, Pioneers! O pioneers! From Nebraska, from Arkansas, Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental blood intervein'd; All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern, Pioneers! O pioneers! O resistless restless race! O beloved race in all! O my-breast aches with tender love for all! O I mourn and yet exult, I am rapt with love for all, Pioneers! O pioneers! Raise the mighty mother mistress, Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress (bend your heads all), Raise the fang'd and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weapon'd mistress, Pioneers! O pioneers! See, my children, resolute children, By those swarms upon our rear we must never yield or falter, Ages back in ghostly millions frowning there behind us urging, Pioneers! O pioneers! On and on the compact ranks, With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly fill'd, Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping, Pioneers! O pioneers! Minstrels latent on the prairies (Shrouded bards of other lands, you may rest, you have done your work), Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us, Pioneers! 0 pioneers! Not for delectations sweet, Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful, and the studious, Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment, Pioneers! O Pioneers! Do the feasters gluttonous feast? Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock'd and bolted doors? Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground, Pioneers! O pioneers! Has the night descended? Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged nodding on our way? Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious, Pioneers! 0 pioneers Till with sound of trumpet, Far, far off the daybreak call--hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind! Swift! to the head of the army!--swift! Spring to your places, Pioneers! O pioneers! O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done The ship has weather'd every rack; the prize we sought is won; The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring. But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills-- For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning. Here, Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck You've fallen cold and dead. My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still; My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will. The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done; From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won. Exult, O shores! and ring, O bells! But I with mournful tread Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. NOTES ANNE DUDLEY BRADSTREET "One wishes she were more winning: yet there is no gainsaying that she was clever; wonderfully well instructed for those days; a keen and close observer; often dexterous in her verse--catching betimes upon epithets that are very picturesque: But--the Tenth Muse is too rash." --DONALD G. MITCHELL. Born in England, she married at sixteen and came to Boston, where she always considered herself an exile. In 1644 her husband moved deeper into the wilderness and there "the first professional poet of New England" wrote her poems and brought up a family of eight children. Her English publisher called her the "Tenth Muse, lately sprung up in America." CONTEMPLATION 2. Phoebus: Apollo, the Greek sun god, hence in poetry the sun. 7. delectable giving pleasure. 13. Dight: adorned. MICHAEL WIGGLESWORTH (1631-1705) "He was, himself, in nearly all respects, the embodiment of what was great earnest, and sad, in Colonial New England.... In spite, however, of all offences, of all defects, there are in his poetry an irresistible sincerity, a reality, a vividness, reminding one of similar qualities in the prose of John Bunyan." M. C. TYLER. Born in England, he was brought to America at the age of seven. He graduated from Harvard College and then became a preacher. He later added the profession of medicine and practiced both professions. THE DAY of DOOM There seems to be no doubt that this poem was the most popular piece of literature, aside from the Bible, in the New England Puritan colonies. Children memorized it, and its considerable length made it sufficient for many Sunday afternoons. Notice the double attempt at rhyme; the first, third, fifth, and seventh lines rhyme within themselves; the second line rhymes with the fourth, the sixth with the eighth. The pronunciation in such lines as 35, 77, 79, 93, 99, 105, and 107 requires adaptation to rhyme, as does the grammar in line 81, for example. 3. carnal: belonging merely to this world as opposed to spiritual. 11-15. See Matthew 25: 1-13. 40. wonted steads: customary places PHILIP FRENEAU (1752-1832) "The greatest poet born in America before the Revolutionary War.... His best poems are a few short lyrics, remarkable for their simplicity, sincerity, and love of nature." -REUBEN P. HALLECK. Born in New York, he graduated from Princeton at the age of nineteen and became school teacher, sea captain, interpreter, editor, and poet. He lost his way in a severe storm and was found dead the next day. TO A HONEY BEE 29-30. Pharaoh: King of Egypt in the time of Joseph, who perished in the Red Sea. See Exodus, Chapter xiv. 34. epitaph: an inscription in memory of the dead. 36. Charon: the Greek mythical boatman on the River Styx. EUTAW SPRINGS Eutaw Springs. Sept. 8th 1781, the Americans under General Greene fought a battle which was successful for the Americans, since Georgia and the Carolinas were freed from English invasion. 21. Greene: Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island was one of the men who became a leader early in the war and who in spite of opposition and failure stood by the American cause through all the hard days of the war. 25. Parthian: the soldiers of Parthia were celebrated as horse-archers. Their mail-clad horseman spread like a cloud round the hostile army and poured in a shower of darts. Then they evaded any closer conflict by a rapid flight, during which they still shot their arrows backwards upon the enemy. See Smith, Classical Dictionary. FRANCIS HOPKINSON (1737-1791) He was "a mathematician, a chemist, a physicist, a mechanician, an inventor, a musician and a composer of music, a man of literary knowledge and practice, a writer of airy and dainty songs, a clever artist with pencil and brush, and a humorist of unmistakable power." --MOSES COLT TYLER. Born in Philadelphia, he graduated from the College of Philadelphia and began the practice of law. He signed the Declaration of Independence and held various offices under the federal government. "The Battle of the Kegs" is his best-known production. THE BATTLE of THE KEGS 59. Stomach: courage. JOSEPH HOPKINSON (1770-1842) "His legal essays and decisions were long accepted as authoritative; but he will be longest remembered for his national song, 'Hail Columbia,' written in 1798, which attained immediate popularity and did much to fortify wavering patriotism." --NEW INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA THE BALLAD of NATHAN HALE For the story of Nathan Hale see any good history of the American Revolution. He is honored by the students of Yale as one of its noblest graduates, and the building in which he lived has been remodeled and marked with a memorial tablet, while a bronze statue stands before it. This is the last of Yale's old buildings and will now remain for many years. 31. minions: servile favorites. 48. presage: foretell. TIMOTHY DWIGHT (1752-1817) "He was in many ways the first of the great modern college presidents; if his was the day of small things, he nevertheless did so many of them and did them so well that he deserves admiration." --WILLIAM P. TRENT. Born in Northampton, Mass., he graduated from Yale and was then made a tutor there. He became an army chaplain in 1777, but his father's death made his return home necessary. He became a preacher later and finally president of Yale. His hymn, "Love to the Church," is the one thing we most want to keep of all his several volumes. SAMUEL WOODWORTH (1785-1842) "Our best patriotic ballads and popular lyrics are, of course, based upon sentiment, aptly expressed by the poet and instinctively felt by the reader. Hence just is the fame and true is the love bestowed upon the choicest songs of our 'single-poem poets': upon Samuel Woodworth's 'Old Oaken Bucket,' etc." --CHARLES F. RICHARDSON. Born at Scituate, Mass., he had very little education. His father apprenticed him to a Boston printer while he was a young boy. He remained in the newspaper business all his life, and wrote numerous poems, and several operas which were produced. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT (1794-1878) "A moralist, dealing chiefly with death and the more sombre phases of life, a lover and interpreter of nature, a champion of democracy and human freedom, in each of these capacities he was destined to do effective service for his countrymen, and this work was, as it were, cut out for him in his youth, when he was laboring in the fields, attending corn-huskings and cabin-raisings, or musing beside forest streams." --W. P. TRENT. Born in a mill-town village in western Massachusetts, he passed his boyhood on the farm. Unable to complete his college course, he practiced law until 1824, when he became editor of the New York Review. He continued all his life to be a man of letters. The poems by Bryant are used by permission of D. Appleton and Company, authorized publishers of his works. THANATOPSIS 34. patriarchs of the infant world: the leaders of the Hebrews before the days of history. 61. Barcan wilderness: waste of North Africa. 54. Why does Bryant suggest "the wings of the morning" to begin such a survey of the world? Would he choose the Oregon now? 28. ape: mimic. This poem is very simple in its form and is typical of Bryant's nature poems. First, is his observation of the waterfowl's flight and his question about it. Secondly, the answer is given. Thirdly, the application is made to human nature. Do you find such a comparison of nature and human nature in any other poems by Bryant? 9. plashy: swampy. 15. illimitable: boundless. GREEN RIVER Green River, flows near Great Barrington where Bryant practised law. 33. simpler: a collector of herbs for medicinal use. 58. This reference to Bryant's profession is noteworthy. His ambition for a thorough literary training was abandoned on account of poverty. He then took up the study of law and practiced it in Great Barrington, Mass., for nine years. His dislike of this profession is here very plainly shown. He abandoned it entirely in 1824 and gave himself to literature. "I Broke the Spell That Held Me Long" also throws a light on his choice of a life work. THE WEST WIND With this may be compared with profit Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" and Kingsley's "Ode to the Northeast Wind." State the contrast between the ideas of the west wind held by Shelley and by Bryant. A FOREST HYMN 2. architrave: the beam resting on the top of the column and supporting the frieze. 5. From these details can you form a picture of this temple in its exterior and interior? Is it like a modern church? darkling: dimly seen; a poetic word. Do you find any other adjectives in this poem which are poetic words? 23. Why is the poem divided here? Is the thought divided? Connected? Can you account in the same way for the divisions at lines 68 and 89? 34. vaults: arched ceilings. 44. instinct: alive, animated by. 66. emanation: that which proceeds from a source, as fragrance is an emanation from flowers. 89. This idea that death is the source of other life everywhere in nature is a favorite one with Bryant. It is the fundamental thought in his first poem, "Thanatopsis" (A View of Death), which may be read in connection with "The Forest Hymn." 96. Emerson discusses this question in "The Problem," See selections from Emerson. THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS 26. Bryant's favorite sister, Mrs. Sarah Bryant Shaw, died shortly after her marriage, of tuberculosis. This poem alludes to her and is in its early lines the saddest poem Bryant ever wrote. Notice the change of tone near the end. 29. unmeet: unsuitable. THE GLADNESS OF NATURE b. hang-bird: the American oriole, which hangs its nest from a branch. 8. wilding: the wild bee which belongs to no hive. To THE FRINGED GENTIAN No description of this flower can give an adequate idea of its beauty. The following account, from Reed's "Flower Guide, East of the Rockies," expresses the charm of the flower well: "Fringed Gentian because of its exquisite beauty and comparative rarity is one of the most highly prized of our wild flowers." "During September and October we may find these blossoms fully expanded, delicate, vase-shaped creations with four spreading deeply fringed lobes bearing no resemblance in shape or form to any other American species. The color is a violet-blue, the color that is most attractive to bumblebees, and it is to these insects that the flower is indebted for the setting of its seed.... The flowers are wide open only during sunshine, furling in their peculiar twisted manner on cloudy days and at night. In moist woods from Maine to Minnesota and southwards." This guide gives a good colored picture of the flower as do Matthews' "Field Guide to American Wildflowers" and many other flower books. 8. ground-bird: the vesper sparrow, so called because of its habit of singing in the late evening. Its nest is made of grass and placed in a depression on the ground. 11. portend: indicate by a sign that some event, usually evil, is about to happen. 16. cerulean: deep, clear blue. SONG of MARION'S MEN 4. Marion, Francis (1732-1795), in 1750 took command of the militia of South Carolina and carried on a vigorous partisan warfare against the English. Colonel Tarleton failed o find "the old swamp fox," as he named him, because the swamp paths of South Carolina were well known to him. See McCrady, "South Carolina in the Revolution," for full particulars of his life. 21. deem: expect. 30. up: over, as in the current expression, "the time is up." 41. barb: a horse of the breed introduced by the Moors From Barbary into Spain and noted for speed and endurance. 49. Santee: a river in South Carolina. 32. throes: agony. 44. Compare this final thought with the solution in "To a "Waterfowl." THE CROWDED STREET 32. throes: agony 44. Compare this final thought with the solution in "To a Waterfowl." THE SNOW-SHOWER All the New England poets felt the charm of falling snow, and several have written on the theme. In connection with this poem read Emerson's "Snow-Storm" and Whittier's "The Frost Spirit." The best known of all is Whittier's "Snow-Bound "; the first hundred and fifty lines may well be read here. 9. living swarm: like a swarm of bees from the hidden chambers of the hive. 12. prone: straight down. 17. snow-stars: what are the shapes of snowflakes 20. Milky way: the white path which seems to lead acre. The sky at night and which is composed of millions of stars. 21. burlier: larger and stronger. 35. myriads: vast, indefinite number. 37. middle: as the cloud seems to be between us and the blue sky, so the snowflakes before they fell occupied a middle position. ROBERT of LINCOLN "Robert of Lincoln" is the happiest, merriest poem written by Bryant. It is characteristic of the man that it should deal with a nature topic. In what ways does he secure the merriment? Analyze each stanza as to structure. Does the punctuation help to indicate the speaker? Look up the Bobolink in the Bird Guide or some similar book. How much actual information did Bryant have about the bird? Compare the amount of bird-lore given here with that of Shelley's or Wordsworth's "To a Skylark." Which is more poetic? Which interests you more? THE POET 5. deem: consider. Compare with the use in the "Song of Marion's Men," 1.21. 8. wreak: carry them out in your verse. The word usually has an angry idea associated with it. The suggestion may be here of the frenzy of a poet. 26. unaptly: not suitable to the occasion. 30. Only in a moment of great emotion (rapture) should the poet revise a poem which was penned when his heart was on fire with the idea of the poem. 38. limn: describe vividly. 54. By this test where would you place Bryant himself? Did he do what he here advises? In what poems do you see evidences of such a method? Compare your idea of him with Lowell's estimate in "A Fable for Critics," ll. 35-56. ABRAHAM LINCOLN In connection with this poem the following stanza from "The Battle-Field" seems very appropriate: "Truth, crushed to Earth, shill rise again; The eternal years of God are hers; But Error, wounded, writhes with pain, And dies among his worshippers." The American people certainly felt that Truth was Brushed to Earth with Lincoln's death, but believed that it would triumph. FRANCIS SCOTT KEY (1780-1843) Born in Maryland, he graduated from St. John's College, Md., and practiced law in Frederick City, Md. He was district attorney for the District of Columbia during the War of 1812 and while imprisoned by the British on board the ship Minden, Sept. 13, 1814, he witnessed the British attack on Fort McHenry and wrote this national anthem. THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER 30. Why is this mentioned as our motto? JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE (1795-1820) The "Culprit Fay" is so much better than American poetry had previously been that one is at first disposed to speak of it enthusiastically. An obvious comparison puts it in true perspective. Drake's life happened nearly to coincide with that of Keats.... Amid the full fervor of European experience Keats produced immortal work; Drake, whose whole life was passed amid the national inexperience of New York, produced only pretty fancies." --BARRETT WENDELL. Born in New York, he practiced medicine there. He died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-five, and left behind him manuscript verses which were later published by his daughter. "The Culprit Fay," from which selections are here given, is generally considered one of the best productions of early American literature. THE AMERICAN FLAG 6. milky baldric: the white band supposed by the ancients to circle the earth and called the zodiac. He may here mean the Milky Way as part of this band. 46. careering: rushing swiftly. 47. bellied: rounded, filled out by the gale. 56. welkin: sky. THE CULPRIT FAY 25. ising-stars: particles of mica. 30. minim: smallest. What objection may be made to this word? 37. Ouphe: elf or goblin. 45. behest: command. 78. shandy: resembling a shell or a scale. 94. oozy: muddy. 107. colen-bell: coined by Drake, probably the columbine. 114. nightshade: a flower also called henbane or belladonna. dern: drear. 119. thrids: threads, makes his way through. 160. prong: probably a prawn; used in this sense only in this one passage. 165. quarl: jelly fish. 178. wake-line: showing by a line of foam the course over which he has passed. 193. amain: at full speed. 210. banned: cursed as by a supernatural power. 216. henbane: see note on line 114. 223. fatal: destined to determine his fate. 245. sculler's notch: depression in which the oar rested. 255. wimpled: undulated. 257. athwart: across. 306. glossed: having gloss, or brightness. 329. This is only the first of the exploits of the Culprit Fay. The second quest is described by the monarch as follows "If the spray-bead gem be won, The stain of thy wing is washed away, But another errand must be done Ere thy crime be lost for aye; Thy flame-wood lamp is quenched and dark, Thou must re-illume its spark. Mount thy steed and spur him high To the heaven's blue canopy; And when thou seest a shooting star, Follow it fast, and follow it far The last feint spark of its burning train Shall light the elfin lamp again." FITZ-GREENE HALLECK (1790-1867) "The poems of Halleck are written with great care and finish, and manifest the possession of a fine sense of harmony and of genial and elevated sentiments." --ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA. Born in Guilford, Conn., he was the closest friend of Drake, at whose death he wrote his best poem, which is given in this collection. "Marco Bozzaris" aroused great enthusiasm, which has now waned in favor of his simple lines, "On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake." MARCO BOZZAARIS Marco Bozzaris (c. 1790-1823) was a prominent leader in the struggle for Greek liberty and won many victories from the Turks. During the night of August 20, 1823, the Greeks won a complete victory which was saddened by the loss of Bozzaris, who fell while leading his men to the final attack. 13. Suliote: a tribe of Turkish subjects of mixed Greek and Albanian blood, who steadily opposed Turkish rule and won for themselves a reputation for bravery. They fought for Grecian independence under Marco Bozzaris. 16-22. These lines refer to the military history of Greece. See Encyclopedia Britannica--article on Greece (Persian Wars subtitle) for account of the Persian invasion and battle of Plataea. 79. What land did Columbus see first? Where did he from? Why then is he called a Genoese? 107. pilgrim-circled: visited by pilgrims as are shrines. JOHN HOWARD PAYNE (1791--1802) Born in New York, he graduated from Union College and later went on the stage. He was appointed U.S. Consul to Tunis, where he died. He is now best remembered by "home Sweet Home" from one of his operas. EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849) "Small as the quantity of his true verse is, it more sustains his peculiar genius in American eyes than does his prose; and this is because it is so unique. He stands absolutely alone as a poet, with none like him." --GEORGE E. WOODBURY Born in Boston, he spent most of his literary years in New York. His parents, both actors, died when he was still a little child, and he was adopted by Mr. Allan, who educated him in Europe. He served as literary editor and hack writer for several journals and finally died in poverty. TO HELEN "To Helen" is said to have been written in 1823, when Poe was only fourteen years old. It refers to Mrs. Jane Stith Stanard, the mother of one of his school friends, whose death was a terrible blow to the sensitive lad. This loss was the cause of numerous poems of sorrow for death and permanently influenced his work. 2. Nicean: Nicaea, the modern Iznik in Turkey, was anciently a Greek province. 2. Nicean barks: the Greek ships that bore the wanderer, Ulysses, from Phaeacia to his home. Read "The Wanderings of Ulysses" in Gayley's Classic Myths, Chapter XXVII. 7. hyacinth: like Hyacinthus, the fabled favorite of Apollo; hence lovely, beautiful. 8. Naiad: a nymph presiding over fountains, lakes, brooks, and wells. 14. Psyche, a beautiful maiden beloved of Cupid, whose adventure with the lamp is told in all classical mythologies. ISRAFEL Israfel, according to the Koran, is the angel with the sweetest voice among God's creatures. He will blow the trump on the day of resurrection. 2. The idea that Israfel's lute was more than human is taken from Moore's "Lalla Rookh," although these very words do not occur there. The reference will be found in the last hundred lines of the poem. 12. levin: lightning. 26. Houri: one of the beautiful girls who, according to the Moslem faith, are to be companions of the faithful in paradise. LENORE 13. Peccavimus: we have sinned. 20. Avaunt: Begone! Away! 26. Paean: song of joy or triumph. THE COLISEUM 10. Eld: antiquity. 14. See Matthew 26: 36-56. 16. The Chaldxans were the world's greatest astrologers. 26-29. Poe here uses technical architectural terms with success. plinth: the block upon which a column or a statue rests. shafts: the main part of a column between the base and the capital. entablatures: the part of a building borne by the columns. frieze: an ornamented horizontal band in the entablature. cornices: the horizontal molded top of the entablatures. 32. corrosive: worn away by degrees; used figuratively of time. 36. At Thebes there is a statue which is supposed to be Memnon, the mythical king of Ethiopia, and which at daybreak was said to emit the music of the lyre. EULALIE.--A SONG 19. Astarte: the Phoenician goddess of love. THE RAVEN 41. Pallas: Greek goddess of wisdom. 46-47. Night's Plutonian shore: Pluto ruled over the powers of the lower world and over the dead. Darkness and gloom are constantly associated with him; the cypress tree was sacred to him and black victims were sacrificed to him. Why does the coming of the raven suggest this realm to the poet? 50. relevancy: appropriateness. 80. Seraphim: one of the highest orders of angels 82. respite and nepenthe: period of peace and forgetting. 89. balm in Gilead. See Jeremiah 8: 22; 46: 11 and Genesis 37: 25. 93. Aideen, fanciful spelling of Eden. 106. This line has been often criticized on the ground that a lamp could not cause any shadow on the floor if the bird sat above the door. Poe answered this charge by saying: "My conception was that of the bracket candelabrum affixed against the wall, high up above the door and bust, as is often seen in English palaces, and even in some of the better houses of New York." What effect does this poem have upon you? Work out the rhyme scheme in the first and second stanzas. Are they alike? Does this rhyme scheme help to produce the effect of the poem? Have you noticed a similar use of "more" in any other poem? Point out striking examples of repetition, of alliteration. Are there many figures of speech here? TO HELEN This Helen is Mrs. Whitman. 15. parterre: a flower garden whose beds are arranged in a pattern and separated by walks. 48. Dian: Roman goddess representing the moon. 60. elysian: supremely happy. 65. scintillant: sending forth flashes of light. 66. Venuses: morning stars. THE BELLS "The Bells" originally consisted of eighteen lines, and was gradually enlarged to its present form. 10. Runic: secret, mysterious. 11. Why does Poe use this peculiar word? Compare its use with that of "euphony," 1. 26, "jangling," 1. 62, "moLotone" 1. 8'3. 26. euphony: the quality of having a pleasant sound. 72. monody: a musical composition in which some one voice-part predominates. 88. Ghouls: imaginary evil beings of the East who rob graves. ELDORADO 6. Eldorado: any region where wealth may be obtained is abundance; hence, figuratively, the source of any abundance, as here. 21. "Valley of the Shadow" suggests death and is a fitting close to Poe's poetic work. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (1807-1882) "His verse blooms like a flower, night and day; Bees cluster round his rhymes; and twitterings Of lark and swallow, in an endless May, Are mingling with the tender songs he sings. Nor shall he cease to sing--in every lay Of Nature's voice he sings--and will alway." --JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY. Born in Portland, Maine, he graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825 and went abroad to prepare himself to teach the modern languages. He taught until 1854, when he became a professional author. During the remaining years of his fife he lived quietly at Craigie House in Cambridge and there he died. The poems by Longfellow are used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, authorized publishers of his works. HYMN To THE NIGHT "Night, thrice welcome." "Night, undesired by Troy, but to the Greeks Thrice welcome for its interposing gloom." -COWPER, TRANS. OF ILIAD VIII, 488. 21. Orestes-like. Orestes, the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, avenged the death of his father by killing his mother. The Furies chased him for many years through the world until at last he found pardon and peace. The story is told in several Greek plays, but perhaps best in AEschylus' "Libation Pourers" and "Furies" A PSALM of LIFE "I kept it," he said, "some time in manuscript, unwilling to show it to any one, it being a voice from my inmost heart." 7. "Dust thou art": quoted from Genesis 3:19, "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." 10. Pope in Epistle IV of his "Essay on Man" says: "0 happiness! our being's end and aim." How does Longfellow differ with him? THE SKELETON IN ARMOR The Skeleton in Armor. "The following Ballad was suggested to me while riding on the seashore at Newport. A year or two previous a skeleton had been dug up at Fall River, clad in broken and corroded armor; and the idea occurred to me of connecting it with the Round Tower at Newport, generally known hitherto as the Old Windmill, though now claimed by the Danes as a work of their early ancestors." 19. Skald: a Scandinavian minstrel who composed and sang or recited verses in celebration of famous deeds, heroes, and events. "And there, in many a stormy vale, The Scald had told his wondrous tale." --SCOTT, Lay of the Last Minstrel, can. 6, St. 22. 20. Saga: myth or heroic story. 28. ger-falcon: large falcon, much used in northern Europe in falconry. 38. were-wolf: a person who had taken the form of a wolf and had become a cannibal. The superstition was that those who had voluntarily become wolves could become men again at will. 42. corsair: pirate. Originally "corsair" was applied to privateers off the Barbary Coast who preyed upon Christian shipping under the authority of their governments. 49. "wassail-bout": festivity at which healths are drunk. 53. Berserk. Berserker was a legendary Scandinavian hero who never wore a shirt of mail. In general, a warrior who could assume the form and ferocity of wild beasts, and whom fire and iron could not harm. 94. Sea-mew: a kind of European gull. 110. Skaw: a cape on the coast of Denmark. 159. Skoal!: Hail! a toast or friendly greeting used by the Norse especially in poetry. THE WRECK of THE HESPERUS On Dec. 17, 1839, Longfellow wrote in his journal: "News of shipwrecks horrible, on the coast. Forty bodies washed ashore near Gloucester, one lashed to a piece of the wreck. There is a reef called Norman's Woe, where many of these took place; among others the schooner Hesperus." On Dec. 30 he added: "Sat till one o'clock by the fire, smoking, when suddenly it came into my head to write the Ballad of the schooner Hesperus, which I accordingly did. Then went o bed, but could not sleep. New thoughts were running in my mind, and I got up to add them to the ballad. It was three by the clock."... "I feel pleased with the ballad. it hardly cost mean effort. It did not come into my mind by lines but by stanzas." In a letter to Mr. Charles Lanman on Nov. 24, 1871, Mr. Longfellow said: "I had quite forgotten about its first publication; but I find a letter from Park Benjamin, dated Jan. 7, 1840, beginning...as follows:-- "'Your ballad, The Wreck of the Hesperus, is grand. Enclosed are twenty- five dollars (the sum you mentioned) for it, paid by the proprietors of The New World, in which glorious paper it will resplendently coruscate on Saturday next.'" 11. flaw: a sudden puff of wind. 14. Spanish Main: a term applied to that portion of the Caribbean Sea near the northeast coast of South America, including the route followed by Spanish merchant ships traveling between Europe and America. 37-48. This little dialogue reminds us of the "Erlkonig," a ballad by Goethe. 66. See Luke 8: 22-25. 60. Norman's Woe: a reef in", W. Glouster harbor, Mass. 70. carded wool. The process of carding wool, cotton, flax, etc. removes by a wire-toothed brush foreign matter and dirt, and leaves it combed out and cleansed. THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH 7. Crisp, and black, and long. Mr. Longfellow says that before this poem was published, he read it to his barber. The man objected that crisp black hair was never long, and as a result the author delayed publication until be was convinced in his own mind that no other adjectives would give a truer picture of the blacksmith as he saw him. 39-42. Mr. Longfellow's friends agree that these lines depict his own industry and temperament better than any others can. IT IS NOT ALWAYS MAY No hay pajaros en los nidos de antano. Translated in lines 12 and 24. 8. freighted: heavily laden. EXCELSIOR Mr. Longfellow explained fully the allegory of this poem in a letter to Mr. Henry T. Tuckerman. He said: "This (his intention) was no more than to display, in a series of pictures, the life of a man of genius, resisting all temptations, laying aside all fears, heedless of all warnings, and pressing right on to accomplish his purpose. His motto is Excelsior, 'higher.' He passes through the Alpine village,--through the rough, cold paths of the world--where the peasants cannot understand him, and where his watchword is 'an unknown tongue.' He disregards the happiness of domestic peace, and sees the glaciers--his fate--before him. He disregards the warnings of the old man's wisdom.... He answers to all, 'Higher yet'! The monks of St. Bernard are the representatives of religious forms and ceremonies, and with their oft-repeated prayer mingles the sound of his voice, telling them there is something higher than forms and ceremonies. Filled with these aspirations he perishes without having reached the perfection he longed for; and the voice heard in the air is the promise of immortality and progress ever upward." Compare with this Tennyson's "Merlin and The Gleam," in which he tells his own experience. 7. falchion: a sword with a broad and slightly curved blade, used in the Middle Ages; hence, poetically, any type of sword. THE DAY IS DOUR 26. In this stanza and the two following Longfellow describes what his poems have come to mean to us and the place they hold in American life. Compare with Whittier's "Dedication" to "Songs of Labor," Il. 26-36. WALTER VON DER VOGELWEIDE Walter von der Vogelweide: the most celebrated of medieval German lyric poets, who lived about the year 1200. He belonged to the lower order of "nobility of service." He livedin Tyrol, then the home of famous minnesingers from whom he learned his art. 4. Walter von der Vogelweide is buried in the cloisters adjoining the Neumunster church in Wurtzburg, which dates from the eleventh century. 10. The debt of the poet to the birds has been dwelt upon in many poems, the best known of which are Shelley's "Skylark" and Wordsworth's "To the Cuckoo." 27. War of Wartburg. In 1207 there occurred in this German castle, the Wartburg, a contest of the minstrels of the time. Wagner has immortalized this contest in "Tannhauser," in which he describes the victory of Walter von der Vogelweide over all the other singers. 42. Gothic spire. See note on "The Builders" 11. 17-19. THE BUILDERS 17-19. The perfection of detail in the structure and sculpture of Gothic cathedrals may be seen in the cathedrals of Chartres and Amiens. Numerous beautiful illustrations may be found in Marriage, "The Sculptures of Chartres Cathedral," and in Ruskin, "The Bible of Amiens." SANTA FILOMENA Santa Filomena stands for Miss Florence Nightingale, who did remarkable work among the soldiers wounded in the Crimean War (1854-56). This poem was published in 1857 while the story of her aid was fresh in the minds of the world. 42. The palm, the lily, and the spear: St. Filomena is represented in many Catholic churches and usually with these three emblems to signify her victory, purity, and martyrdom. Sometimes an anchor replaces the palm. THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH CAPE King Alfred's Orosius. Orosius, a Spaniard of the fifth century A.D., wrote at the request of the church a history of the world down to 414 A.D. King Alfred (849-901) translated this work and added at least one important story, that of the voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan. The part of the story used by Longfellow may be found in Cook and Tinkers's Translations from Old English Prose, in Bosworth's, and in Sweet's editions. 2. Helgoland: an island in the North Sea, belonging to Prussia. 42. Hebrides: islands west of Scotland. 90. a nameless sea. They sailed along the coast of Lapland and into the White Sea. 96-100. Alfred reports simply, "He says he was one of a party of six who killed sixty of these in two days." 116. The original says: "He made this voyage, in addition to his purpose of seeing the country, chiefly for walruses, for they have very good bone in their teeth--they brought some of these teeth to the king--and their hides are very good for ship-ropes." SANDALPHON Sandalphon: one of the oldest angel figures in the Jewish system. In the second century a Jewish writing described him as follows: "He is an angel who stands on the earth;.. he is taller than his fellows by the length of a journey of 500 years; he binds crowns for his Creator." These crowns are symbols of praise, and with them he brings before the Deity the prayers of men. See the Jewish Encyclopaedia for further particulars. 1. Talmud: the work which embodies the Jewish law of church and state. It consists of texts, and many commentaries and illustrations. 12. Refers to Genesis 28: 10-21. 39. Rabbinical: pertaining to Jewish rabbis or teachers of law. 44. welkin: poetical term for the sky. 48. nebulous: indistinct. THE LANDLORD'S TALE The "Tales of a Wayside Inn" were series of stories told on three separate days by the travelers at the Inn at Sudbury, Mass. It is the same device used by writers since the days of Chaucer, but cleverly handled furnishes an interesting setting for a variety of tales. Some of Longfellow's best-known narratives are in these series, among them the following selections. The story is self-explanatory. It is probably the best example of the simple poetic narrative of an historic event. 107-110. The reference is to one of the seven men who were killed at Lexington--possibly to Jonathan Harrington, Jr., who dragged himself to his own door-step before he died. Many books tell the story, but the following are the most interesting; Gettemy, Chas. F. True "Story of Paul Revere:" Colburn, F., The Battle of April 19, 1775. THE SICILIAN'S TALE This story of King Robert of Sicily is very old, as it is found among the short stories of the Gesta Romanorum written in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. 17. seditious: tending towards disorder and treason. 52. besprent: poetic for besprinkled. 66. seneschal: the official in the household of a prince of high noble who had the supervision of feasts and ceremonies. 106. Saturnian: the fabled reign of the god Saturn was the golden age of the world, characterized by simplicity, virtue, and happiness. 110. Enceladus, the giant. Longfellow's poem "Enceladus" emphasizes this reference. For the story of the giants and the punishment of Enceladus see any good Greek mythology. THE THEOLOGIAN'S TALE 9. dial: the sun-dial was the clock of the time. 41. iteration: repetition. 49. dole: portion. bl. almoner: official dispenser of alms. 100. See Matthew 25: 40. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER (1807-1892) "Best loved and saintliest of our singing train, Earth's noblest tributes to thy name belong. A lifelong record closed without a stain, A blameless memory shrived in deathless song." --OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. Born at East Haverhill, Mass., in surroundings which he faithfully describes in "Snow-Bound," he had little education. At the age of twenty-two he secured an editorial position in Boston and continued to write all his life. For some years he devoted all his literary ability to the cause of abolition, and not until the success of "Snow-Bound" in 1866 was he free from poverty. The poems by Whittier are used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, authorized publishers of his works. PROEM Proem: preface or introduction. 3. Spenser, Edmund (1552-1599). His best-known work is the "Faerie Queen." 4. Arcadian Sidney: Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586); an English courtier, soldier, and author. He stands as a model of chivalry. He was mortally wounded at the battle of Zutphen. "Arcadia" was his greatest work; hence the epithet here. 23. plummet-line: a weight suspended by a line used to test the verticality of walls, etc. Here used as if in a sounding process. 30. Compare this opinion of his own work with Lowell's comments in "A Fable for Critics." How do they agree? 32. For Whittier's opinion of Milton see also "Raphael," I. 7 0, and " Burns," 1. 104. 33. Marvell, Andrew (1621-1678): an English statesman, poet, and satirist, friend of Milton. THE FROST SPIRIT Whittier has an intense love and appreciation of winter. With this poem may be read "Snow Bound," the last stanzas of "Flowers in Winter," and "Lumbermen." Many others may be added to this list. Do you find this same idea in other poets? 11. Hecla: a volcano in Iceland which has had 28 known eruptions--one as late as 1878. It rises 5100 feet above the sea and has a bare irregular-shaped cone. Its appearance is extremely wild and desolate. SONGS OF LABOR. DEDICATION 8. The o'er-sunned bloom.... In this collection of poems are a few written in his youth, the more mature works of the "summer" of his life, and the later works of his old age. The figure here is carefully carried through and gives a clear, simplified picture of his literary life. 22. Whittier himself noted that he was indebted for this line to Emerson's "Rhodora" 26-3b. Compare Longfellow's "The Day is Done" for another idea of the influence of poetry. 36. Compare Genesis 3: 17-19. 43-45. Compare Luke 2: 51-52. THE LUMBERMEN 33. Ambijejis: lake in central Maine. 35. Millnoket: a lake in central Maine. 39. Penobscot: one of the most beutiful of Maine rivers. It is about 300 miles long and flows through the central part of the state. 42. Katahdin: Mount Katahdin is 5385 feet in height and is usually snow-covered. BARCLAY of URY Barclay of Ury: David Barclay (1610-1686). Served under Gustavus Adolphus, was an officer in the Scotch army during Civil War. He bought the estate of Ury, near Aberdeen, in 1648. He was arrested after the Restoration and for a short time was confined to Edinburgh Castle, where he was converted to Quakerism by a fellow prisoner. His son, also a Quaker, heard of the imprisonment mentioned in this poem and attempted to rescue his father. During the years between this trouble in 1676 and his death in 1686, the persecution seems to have been directed largely against his son. (See Dictionary of National Biography for details.) Whinier naturally felt keenly on this subject, as he himself was a Quaker. 1. Aberdeen: capital of Aberdeenshire, and chief seaport in north of Scotland; fourth Scottish town in population, industry, and wealth. The buildings of Aberdeen College, founded in 1494, are the glory of Aberdeen. 7. churl: a rude, low-bred fellow. 10. carlin: a bluff, good-natured man. 35. Lutzen: a town in Saxony where the Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus defeated the Austrians, Nov. 16, 1632. 36. Gustavus Adolphus, "The Great" (1594-1632). He was one of the great Swedish kings, and was very prominent in the Thirty Years' War (1618- 1648). 56. Tilly: Johann Tserklaes, Count von Tilly, a German imperial commander in the Thirty Years' War. 57. Walloon: a people akin to the French, inhabiting Belgium and some districts of Prussia. They have great vivacity than the Flemish, and more endurance than the French. 66. Jewry: Judea. 76. reeve: a bailiff or overseer. 31. snooded. The unmarried women of Scotland formerly wore a band around their heads to distinguish them from married women. 99. Tolbooth: Scotch word for prison. 126. This idea is expanded in the poem "Seed-time and Harvest." RAPHAEL Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520), the great Italian painter. Trained first by his father, later by the great Perugino. His work was done mainly in Florence and Rome. 6. This picture is the portrait of Raphael when scarcely more than a boy. 17. Gothland's sage: Sweden's wise man, Emanuel Swedenborg. 36. Raphael painted many madonnas, but the word "drooped" limits this description. Several might be included under this: "The Small Holy Family," "The Virgin with the Rose," or, most probable of all to me, "The Madonna of the Chair." 37. the Desert John: John the Baptist. 40. "The Transfiguration" is not as well known as some of the madonnas, but shows in wonderful manner Raphael's ability to handle a large group of people, without detracting from the central figure. It is now in the Vatican Gallery, at Rome. 42. There are few great Old Testament stories which are not depicted by Raphael. Among them are The Passage Through Jordan, The Fall of Jericho, Joshua Staying the Sun, David and Goliath, The Judgment of Solomon, The Building of the Temple, Moses Bringing the Tables of the Law, the Golden Calf, and many others equally well known. 45. Fornarina. This well-known portrait is now in the Palazzo Barberini in Rome. 70. holy song on Milton's tuneful ear. Poetry and painting are here spoken of together as producing permanent effects, and from the figure he uses we may add music to the list. Compare Longfellow's "The Arrow and the Song." In the last stanza the field is still further broadened until his thought is that all we do lives after us. SEED-TIME AND HARVEST Whittier's intense interest in Freedom is here apparent. His earlier poems were largely on the slavery question in America. His best work was not done until he began to devote his poetic ability to a wider range of subjects. 26. See Longfellow, "A Psalm of Life," 11. 9-12 and note. THE PROPHECY of SAMUEL SEWALL 12. Samuel Sewall is one of the most interesting characters in colonial American history. He was born in England in 1652, but came to America while still a child. He graduated from Harvard College in 1671 and finally became a justice of the peace. He was instrumental in the Salem witchcraft decision, but later bitterly repented. He made in 1697 a public confession of his share in the matter and begged that God would "not visit the sin... upon the Land." 28. Hales Reports. Sir Matthew Hale (1609-1676) was one of the most eminent judges of England. From 1671 to 1676 he occupied the position of Chief Justice of the King's Bench, the highest judicial position in England. Sewall was depending upon an authority of the day. 32. warlock's: a wizard, one who deals in incantations; synonymous with witch. 46. Theocracy: a state governed directly by the ministers of God. 58. hand-grenade: a hollow shell, filled with explosives, arranged to be thrown by hand among the enemy and to explode on impact. 73. Koordish robber. The Kurds were a nomadic people living in Kurdistan, Persia, and Caucasia. They were very savage and vindictive, specially towards Armenians. The Sheik was the leader of a clan or town and as such had great power. 81. Newbury, Mass. Judge Sewall's father was one of the founders of the town. 130-156. This prophecy is most effective in its use of local color for a spiritual purpose. Beginning with local conditions which might be changed, it broadens to include all nature which shall never grow old. SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE Skipper Ireson's Ride. Whittier was told after this poem was published that it was not historically accurate, since the crew and not Skipper Ireson was to blame for the desertion of the wreck. He stated that he had founded his poem on a song sung to him when he was a boy. 3. Apuleius's Golden Ass. Apuleius was a Latin satirical writer whose greatest work was a romance or novel called "The Golden Ass." The hero is by chance changed into an ass,, and has all sorts of adventures until he is finally freed from the magic by eating roses in the hands of a priest of Isis. 3. one-eyed Calendar's horse of brass. See the Arabian Nights' Entertainments for the story of the one-eyed beggar. 6. Al-Borak: according to the Moslem creed the animal brought by Gabriel to carry Mohammed to the seventh heaven. It had the face of a man, the body of a horse, the wings of an eagle, and spoke with a human voice. 11. Marblehead, in Massachusetts. 30. Maenads: the nymphs who danced and sang in honor of Bacchus, the god of vegetation and the vine. 35. Chalettr Bay, in Newfoundland, a part of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE of NEWBURY 6. Deucalion flood. The python was a monstrous serpent which arose from the mud left after the flood in which Deucalion survived. The python lived in a cave on Mount Parnassus and there Apollo slew him. Deucalion and his wife, Pyrrha were saved from the flood because Zeus respected their piety. They obeyed the oracle and threw stones behind them from which sprang men and women to repopulate the earth. 9. See "The Prophecy of Samuel Sewall" for another story of Newbury town. 22. stones of Cheops: an Egyptian king, about 2900 b.c.; built the great pyramid, which is called by his name. 59. Each town in colonial days set aside certain land for free pasture-land for the inhabitants. 80. double-ganger: a double or apparition of a person; here, a reptile moving in double form. 76. Cotton Mather (1663-1728). This precocious boy entered Harvard College at eleven and graduated at fifteen. At seventeen he preached his first sermon and all his life was a zealous divine. He was undoubtedly sincere in his judgments in the cases of witchcraft and was not thoughtlessly cruel. He was a great writer and politician and a public- minded citizen. 85. Wonder-Book of Cotton Mather is his story of early New England life called Magnalia Christi Americana. MAUD MULLER 94. astral: a lamp with peculiar construction so that the shadow is not cast directly below it. BURNS Burns. In connection with this poem may well be read the following poems by Robert Burns (1759-1796): "The Twa Dogs," "A Man's a Man for A' That," "Cotter's Saturday Night" (Selections), "Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon," "Highland Mary." 40. allegory: the expression of an idea indirectly by means of a story or narrative. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is probably the best-known allegory. What others can you name? 67. Craigie-burn and Devon were favorite Scotch streams. 71. Ayr: a river in Scotland. This whole region is full of associations with Burns. Near it he was born and there is the Auld Brig of Doon of Tam o' Shanter fame. Near the river is a Burns monument. Doon: a river of Scotland 30 miles long and running through wild and picturesque country. Burns has made it famous. 91-92. The unpleasant facts of Burns's life, due to weakness of character, should not be allowed to destroy our appreciation of what he accomplished when he was his better self. 99. Magdalen. See John 8:3-11 and many other instances in the Gospels. 103. The mournful Tuscan: Dante, who wrote "The Divine Comedy." THE HERO 1. Bayard, Pierre Terrail (1473-1524): a French soldier who, on account of his heroism, piety, and magnanimity was called "le chevalier sans noun et sans reproche," the fearless and faultless knight. By his contemporaries he was more often called "le bon chevalier," the good knight. 6. Zutphen: an old town in Holland, which was often besieged, especially during the wars of freedom waged by the Dutch. The most celebtated fight under its walls was in September, 1586, when Sir Philip Sidney was mortally wounded. 12. See John 16: 21. 28. Sidney. See note on line 6 and Proem, note on line 4. 31. Cyllenian ranges: Mount Cyllene, in southern Greece, the fabled birthplace of Hermes. 36. Suliote. See Fitz-Greene Halleck, "Marco Bozzaris," note on line 13 42. The reference is to Samuel G. Howe, who fought as a young man for the independence of Greece. 46. Albanian: pertaining to Albania, a province of western Turkey. 78. Cadmus: mythological king of Phoenicia; was regarded as the introducer of the alphabet from Phoenicia into Greece. 86. Lancelot stands for most of us as the example of a brave knight whose life was ruined by a great weakness. Malory writes of him in "Mort d'Arthur," and Tennyson has made him well known to us. THE ETERNAL GOODNESS 24. See John 19:23 and Matthew 9: 20-22. 36. After David had suffered, he wrote the greatest of the Psalms which are attributed to him. The idea of righteous judgement is to be found throughout them all, but seems especially strong in 9 and 147. 54. Compare Tennyson's Crossing the Bar. THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW 9. Lowland: the south and east of Scotland; distinguished from the Highlands. 13. pibroch: a wild, irregular martial music played on Scotch bagpipes. 18. A small English garrison was in possession of the city of Lucknow at the time of the great Sepoy Mutiny in India,. They were besieged, and their rescue is described here. 32. Sir Henry Havelock commanded the relieving army. 36. Sepoy: a native East-Indian soldier, equipped like a European soldier. 51. Goomtee: a river of Hindustan. 77. Gaelic: belonging to Highland Scotch or other Celtic people. COBBLER KEEZAR'S VISION The element of superstition which enters into many of Whittier's poems is well illustrated here. 19. the Brocken: in the Harz Mountains in Germany. 35. swart: dark-colored. 49. See "Prophecy of Samuel Sewall," note on line 32. 52. Religion among the Pilgrim fathers was a harsh thing. What illustrations of its character did you find in the early part of this book 84. Doctor Dee: an English astrologer (1527-1608). 85. Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius: German physician, theologian, and writer (1486-1535), who tried to turn less precious metals into gold. 89. Minnesinger. Hares Sachs (1494-1576), the famous cobbler singer, is probably referred to. For another famous minstrel see notes on Longfellow, "Walter von der Vogelweide." 139. Bingen, a city on the Rhine, has been made famous by the poem written in 1799 by Southey, "God's Judgment on a Wicked Bishop." Longfellow refers to this legend in "The Children's Hour." 140. Frankfort (on-the-Main), in Germany. 147. droughty: thirsty, wanting drink. THE MAYFLOWERS 1. Sad Mayflower: the trailing arbutus. 14. Our years of wandering o'er. The Pilgrim fathers sought refuge in Holland, but found life there unsatisfactory, as they were not entirely free. They then set out for Virginia and almost by chance settled in New England. RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882) "He shaped an ideal for the commonest life, he proposed an object to the humblest seeker after truth. Look for beauty in the world around you, he said, and you shall see it everywhere. Look within, with pure eyes and simple trust, and you shall find the Deity mirrored in your own soul. Trust yourself because you trust the voice of God in your inmost consciousness." --OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. Born in Boston, Mass., of a family with some literary attainments, he showed little promise of unusual ability during his years at Harvard. He became pastor of the Second Church in Boston for a time and later settled in Concord. He lectured extensively and wrote much, living a quiet, isolated life. The poems by Emerson are used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, authorized publishers of his works. GOOD-BYE "Good-Bye" was written in 1823 when Emerson, a young boy, was teaching in Boston. It does not refer to his retirement to the country twelve years later, but seems a kind of prophecy. 27. lore: learning. 28. sophist: a professed teacher of wisdom. EACH AND ALL 26. noisome offensive. THE PROBLEM 18. canticles: hymns belonging to church service. 19. The dome of St. Peter's was the largest in the world at the time of its construction and was a great architectural achievement. Emerson feels that it, like every other work that is worth-while, was the result of a sincere heart. 20. groined: made the roofs inside the churches according to a complicated, intersecting pattern. 28. Notice the figure of speech here. Is it effective? 39-40. All the mighty buildings of the world were made first in the minds of the builder or architect, and then took form. 44. The Andes and Mt. Ararat are very ancient formations and belong to Nature at her beginning on the earth. These great buildings are so in keeping with Nature that she accepts them and forgets how modern they are. 51. Pentecost: Whitsunday, when the descent of the Holy Spirit is celebrated. Emerson says here that this spirit animates all beautiful music and sincere preaching, as it does we do at our noblest. 65. Chrysostom, Augustine, and the more modern Taylor are all great religious teachers of the world, and all urged men enter the service of the church. Augustine: Saint Augustine, the great African bishop (354- 430). He was influential mainly through his numerous writings, which are still read. His greatest work was his Confessions. 68. Taylor: Dr. Jeremy Taylor, English bishop and author (1613-1667). One writer assigns to him "the good humour of gentleman, the eloquence of an orator, the fancy of a poet, acuteness of a schoolman, the profoundness of a philosopher, the wisdom of a chancellor, the sagacity of a prophet, reason of an angel, and the piety of a saint." Why should a man so endowed be compared to Shakespeare? THE HUMBLE-BEE 6. What characteristics of the bumblebee make animated torrid-zone applicable? Why doesn't he need to seek a milder climate in Porto Rico? 16. Epicurean: one addicted to pleasure of senses, specially eating and drinking. How does it apply to the bee? THE SNOW-STORM Emerson called this poem "a lecture on God's architecture, one of his beautiful works, a Day." 9. This picture is strikingly like Whittier's description of a similar day in "Snow-Bound." 13. bastions: sections of fortifications. 18. Parian wreaths were very white because the marble of Paros was pure. 21. Maugre: in spite of. FABLE This fable was written some years before its merits were recognized. Since then it has steadily grown in popularity. BOSTON HYMN 16. fend: defend. 24. boreal: northern. 80. behemoth: very large beast. THE TITMOUSE 76. impregnably: so that it can resist attack. 97. wold: Rood, forest. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1819-1891) "As political reformer, as editor, as teacher, above all as an example of the type of scholarly gentleman that the new world was able to produce, he perhaps did more than any of his contemporaries to dignify American literature at home and to win for it respect abroad." --W. B. CAIRNS. Born at Cambridge, Mass., he early showed a love of literature and says that while he was a student at Harvard he read everything except the prescribed textbooks. He opened a law office in Boston, but spent his time largely in reading and writing poetry. He became professor of literature at Harvard in 1854 and later edited the Atlantic Monthly. Later he was minister to Spain and to England. In 1885 he returned to his work at Harvard, where he remained until his death in the very house in which he was born. The poems by Lowell are used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, authorized publishers of his works. HAKON's LAY This poem is here given in its original form as published by Lowell in Graham's Magazine in January, 1855. It was afterwards expanded into the second canto of "The Voyage to Vinland." With what other poems in this book may "Hakon's Lay" be compared? 3. Skald. See Longfellow, 'The Skeleton in Armor,' note on I. 19. 10. Hair and beard were both white, we are told. Who is suggested in this line as white? 17. eyried. An eagle builds its aerie or nest upon a crag or inaccessible height above ordinary birds. The simile here begun before the eagle is mentioned, and the minstrel's thoughts are spoken of as born in the aerie of his brain, high above his companions. 20. One of the finest pictures of the singing of a minstrel before his lord is found in Scott's "Waverly." 21. fletcher: arrow-maker. 31. The work of Fate cannot be done by a reed which is proverbially weak or by a stick which is cut cross-grained and hence will split easily. She does not take her arrow at random from all the poor and weak weapons which life offers, but she chooses carefully. 35. sapwood: the new wood next the bark, which is not yet hardened. 37. Much of the value of an arrow lies in its being properly feathered. So when Fate chooses, she removes all valueless feathers which will hinder success. 40. In these ways her aim Would be injured. 43. butt's: target's. 52. frothy: trivial. 64. Leif, the son of Eric, near the end of the tenth century went from Greenland to Norway and was converted to Christianity. About 1000 he sailed southward and landed at what is perhaps now Newfoundland, then went on to some part of the New England coast and there spent the winter. 61. The coming of Leif Ericson with his brave ship to Vinland was the first happening in the story of America. 61. rune: a character in the ancient alphabet. FLOWERS "Flowers" is another very early poem, but it was included by Lowell in his first volume, "A Year's Life," in 1841. Compare this idea of a poet's duty and opportunity with that of other American writers. 12. Look up Matthew 13: 3-9. 18. Condensed expression; for some of that seed shall surely fall in such ground that it shall bloom forever. THE SHEPHERD OF KING ADMETUS 16. viceroy: ruler in place of the king. 44. Apollo, while he was still young, killed one of the Cyclops of Zeus and Zeus condemned him to serve a mortal Man as a shepherd. He served Admetus, as is here described, and secured many special favors for him from the gods. COMMEMORATION ODE 3. The men who fought for the cause they loved expressed their love in the forming of a squadron instead of a poem, and wrote their praise of battle in fighting-lines instead of tetrameters. 17. guerdon: reward. 36. A creed without defenders is lifeless. When to belief in a cause is added action in its behalf, the creed lives. 60. This is as life would be without live creeds and results that will endure. Compare Whittier's "Raphael." 67. aftermath: a second crop. 79. Baal's: belonging to the local deities of the ancient Semitic race. 105. With this stanza may well be compared "The Present Crisis." 113. dote: have the intellect weakened by age. 146. Plutarch's men. Plutarch wrote the lives of the greatest men of Greece and Rome. THE VISION of SIR LAUNFAL (PRELUDE) 7. auroral: morning. 12. Sinais. Read Exodus, Chapter 19. Why did Moses climb Mount Sinai? What would be the advantage to us if we knew when we climbed a Mount Sinai? 9-20. Wordsworth says: "Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy," etc. Lowell does not agree with him, and in these lines he declares that heaven is as near to the aged man as to the child, since the skies, the winds, the wood, and the sea have lessons for us always. 28. bubbles: things as useless and perishable as the child's soap-bubbles. 20-32. The great contrast! What does Lowell mean by Earth? Does he define it? Which does he love better? 79. Notice how details are accumulated to prove the hightide. Are his points definite? 91. sulphurous: so terrible as to suggest the lower world. BIGLOW PAPERS Lowell attempted a large task in the "Biglow Papers," and on the whole he succeeded well. He wished to discuss the current question in America under the guise of humorous Yankee attack. The first series appeared in 1848 and dealt with the problem of the Mexican War; the second series in 1866 and refers to the Civil War. From the two series are given here only three which are perhaps the best known. Mr. Hosea Biglow purports to be the writer. He is an uneducated Yankee boy who "com home (from Boston) considerabul riled." His father in No. 1, a letter, describes the process of composition as follows: "Arter I'd gone to bed I hearn Him a thrashin round like a shoot-tailed bull in flitime. The old woman ses she to me ses she, Zekle, sos she, our Hosie's gut the drollery or suthin anuther, ses she, don't you be skeered, ses I, he's oney a-makin poetery; ses I, he's ollers on hand at that ere busyness like Da & martin, and Shure enuf, cum mornin, Hosy he cum down stares full chizzle, hare on eend and cote tales flyin, and sot rite of to go reed his varses to Parson Wilbur." WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS 1. Guvener B.: George Nixon Briggs of Massachusetts. 6. John P. Robinson was a lawyer (1. 59) of Lowell, Mass. Mr. Lowell had no intention of attacking the individual here; Mr. Robinson changed his party allegiance and the letter published over his signature called Lowell's attention to him. lb. Gineral C.: General Caleb Gushing, who took a prominent part in the Mexican War, and was at this time the candidate for governor opposed to Governor Briggs. 16. pelf: money. 23. vally: value. 32. eppyletts: epaulets, the mark of an officer in the army or navy. 39. debit, per contry: makes him the debtor and on the other side credits us. THE COURTIN' 17. crook-necks: gourds. 19. queen's-arm: musket. 33-34. He had taken at least twenty girls to the social events of the town. 68. sekle: sequel, result. 94. The Bay of Fundy has an exceptionally high tide which rises with great rapidity. SUNTHIN' IN THE PASTORAL LINE 2. precerdents: legal decisions previously made which serve as models for later decisions. 4. this-worldify. The women in early New England dressed very simply and sternly, but the odor of musk would make them seem to belong to this world, which has beauty as well as severity. 7. clawfoot: a piece of furniture, here a chest, having clawfeet. 38. pithed with hardihood. New England people had hardihood at the center of their lives. 50. The bloodroot leaf is curled round the tiny write flower bud to protect it. 56. haggle: move slowly and with difficulty. 100. vendoo: vendue, public sale. 117. What American poets express a similar need of nearness to nature? 144. Lowell's own education was four-story: grammar school, high school, college, law school. 165. A good application of the old story of the man who killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. 157. Cap-sheaf: the top sheaf on a stack and hence the completion of any act. 165. Lowell, himself, seems to be talking in these last lines, and not young Hosea Biglow. 209. English Civil War (1642-1649), which ended in the establishment of the Commonwealth. 241. As Adam's fall "Brought death into the world, and all our woe," it was considered by all Puritans as an event of highest importance; most men agree that their wives' bonnets stand at the other end of the scale. 2&I. Crommle: Oliver Cromwell, under whom the English fought for a Commonwealth. See note on line 219. 270. After the short period of the Commonwealth, Charles II became ruler of England (1660-1685). 272. Millennium: a period when all government will be free from wickedness. AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 5. Autumn personified as Hebe, the cupbearer of the Greek gods. 11. projected spirit. The poet's own spirit seems to take on material form in the landscape before him. 28. See the book of Ruth in the Old Testament for this exquisite story. 32. Magellan's Strait: passage discovered by Magellan when he sailed around the southern end of South America. 51. retrieves: remedies. 59. lapt: wrapped. 77. Explain this simile. Has color any part in it? 83. ensanguined: made blood-red by frost. 92. The Charles is so placid and blue that it resembles a line of the sky. 99. In connection with this description of the marshes. Lanier's "The Marshes of Glynn" may well be read, as it is the best description of marshes in American literature. 133. Compare Bryant's "Robert of Lincoln." 140. Compare this figure with Bryant's in "To a Waterfowl," 1. 2. 157. Compare with the Prelude to the Second Part of "The Vision of Sir Launfal." 163. The river Charles near its mouth is affected by the ocean tides. 178. Why is the river pictured as dumb and blind? 182. Compare Whittier's "Snow-Bound." 187. gyves: fetters. 190. Druid-like device. At Stonehenge (1. 192) in England is a confused mass of stones, some of which are in their original positions and which are supposed to have been placed by the Druids. It is possible that the sun was worshiped here, but everything about the Druids is conjecture. 201. A view near at hand is usually too detailed to be attractive. But in the twilight, near-by objects become softened, the distance fades into the horizon, and a soothing picture is formed. 209. The schools and colleges. Probably Harvard College is here included, as Lowell graduated there. 217. Compare this idea with that in the following lines from Wordsworth's "The Daffodils": "I gazed--and gazed--but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought; For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils." The justice of these opinions should be tested by each student from his own experience. A FABLE FOR CRITICS 36. ignified: melted. 40. An example of Lowell's puns, which are generally critcized as belonging to a low order of humor. 41. Parnassus: a mountain in Greece, sacred to Apollo and the Muses, and hence the domain of the arts in general. 49. inter nos: between us. bl. ices. Isis was the Egyptian goddess of the arts and of agriculture. 60. bemummying: a word coined by Lowell to mean causing one to dry up like a mummy. 68.. Pythoness: woman with power of prophecy. 69. tripod: a bronze altar over which the Pythoness at Delphi uttered her oracles. "Most of his judgments are, however, those of posterity though often, as in the case of Hawthorns, he was characterizing writers who had not done their best work." --CAIRNS. 92. scathe: injury. 93. rathe: early in the season. 96. John Bunyan Fouque is an extraordinary combination of names as of characteristics. Bunyan is known everywhere for his devotion to truth as he saw it; the oak in character. Friederich Heinrich Karl, Baron de Lamotte-Fouque, was a German soldier, but is better known as a romantic writer. His best-known work is "Undine," the anemone in daintiness of fancy and delicacy of expression. A Puritan Tieck is another anomaly. From the early poems in this anthology the Puritan type is evident; Tieck was a German writer who revolted against the sternness of life and believed in beauty and romance. 110. In 1821 Scott published The Pilot, a novel of the sea, which was very popular. Cooper, however, thought he could improve upon it and so in 1823 he published "The Pilot," hoping to show his superiority. 112. The bay was used for a garland of honor to a poet. 124. Nathaniel Bumpo was "Leatherstocking," who gave his name to the series of Cooper s novels. 126. Long Tom Coffin was the hero in The Pilot. 130. derniere chemise. A pun upon the word "shift," which here means stratagem. 148. Parson Adams is one of the most delightful of all notion characters. Fielding pictures him in his novel Joseph Andrews in such a manner that you always sympathize with him even if you must laugh at his simplicity. Dr. Primrose in Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield is a direct literary descendant of Parson Adams. He is one of the best-known characters in English fiction. To be classed with these two men is high praise for Natty Bumpo. 161. Barnaby Rudge, the hero of Dickens's novel of that name, kept a tame raven. 162. fudge: nonsense, rubbish. 180. Collins and Gray: English poets. William Collins, an English lyric poet (1721-1759) was a friend of Dr. Johnson. Thomas Gray (1716-1771) is best known by his "Elegy in a Country Churchyard." 182. Theocritus, a Greek poet of the third century B.C., was the founder of pastoral poetry. Since his idea was the original one, his judgment of his followers would be better than that of any one else. 190. Irving had been so long a resident in Europe that America almost despaired of reclaiming him. He did return, however, in 1832, after making himself an authority on Spanish affairs. 196. Cervantes: the author of Don Quixote, and the most famous of all Spanish authors. He died on the same day as Shakespeare, April 23, 1616. 200. Addison and Steele together wrote the Spectator Papers (1711-1712), which had a great influence on the English reading public. The Sir Roger de Coverley papers are the most widely read of these essays at the present time. 224. New Timon, published in 1846; a satire in which Tennyson among others was severely lampooned. 237. The comparison suggests Bunyan's journey with his bundle of sin. 252. no clipper and meter: no person who could cut short or measure the moods of the poet. 271. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice may be found in any Greek mythology. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES (1809-1894) [In 1830] most of our writers were sentimental; a few were profound; and the nation at large began to be deeply agitated over social reforms and political problems. The man who in such a period showed the possibilities of humor, and whose humor was invariably tempered by culture and flavored with kindness, did a service to our literature that can hardly be overestimated." --WILLIAM J. LONG Born at Cambridge, Mass., he was brought up under the sternest type of New England theology. He graduated from Harvard College in 1829 after writing much college verse. It was Lowell who stimulated him to his best work. He himself says, "Remembering some crude contributions of mine to an old magazine, it occurred to me that their title might serve for some fresh papers, and so I sat down and wrote off what came into my head under the title, 'The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.'" He practiced medicine in Boston and taught Anatomy and Physiology in Harvard until 1882. The latter years of his life were spent happily in Boston, where he died. The poems by Holmes are used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, authorized publishers of his works. OLD IRONSIDES The frigate Constitution was popularly known as "Old Ironsides" and this poem was written when the naval authorities proposed to break it up as unfit for service. THE LAST LEAF Holmes says this poem was suggested by the appearance in Boston of an old man said to be a Revolutionary soldier. THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS 14. irised: having colors like those in a rainbow. 14. crypt: secret recess. CONTENTMENT 3. In 1857-1858, when this poem was written, the ideal of elegance in eastern cities of America was a "brown stone front" house. The possession of such a mansion indicated large wealth. In the light of this fact the humor of the verse is evident. The same principle is used throughout. 22. The position of Minister Plenipotentiary to the court of St. James-- England--was considered the highest diplomatic position in the disposal of the United States. How would such a position compare with filling the governor's chair of any state? 35. marrowy: rich. 48. The paintings of Raphael and Titian are beyond purchase price now. Most of them belong to the great galleries of Europe. Turner is a modern painter whose work is greatly admired and held almost above price. 64. vellum: fine parchment made of the skin of calves and used for manuscripts. It turns cream-color with age. 59. Stradivarius: a violin made by Antonio Stradivari, who lived (1644- 1737) in Cremona, Italy. These instruments created a standard so that they are now the most highly prized violins in existence. 64. buhl: brass, white metal, or tortoise shell inlaid in patterns is the wood of furniture. So named from the French woodworker who perfected it. THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE 10. Georgius Secundus: King George II of England. He was the son of George I, who was elector of Hanover, as well as king of England. 20, felloe: a part of the rim of a wooden wheel in which the spokes are inserted. 92. encore: we can say the same thing about their strength. THOMAS BUCHANAN READ (1822-1872) Born in Pennsylvania, he was early apprenticed to a tailor. He drifted until at last he made his way to Italy, where he studied and painted for several years. Later he made Rome his permanent residence, and died there. He was known as a clever artist and sculptor, but his best work is the two poem; here quoted. The poems by Read are used by special permission of J. B. Lippincott Company, the authorized publishers of the poems. STORM ON ST. BERNARD Storm on St. Bernard may be compared with Excelsior in general subject matter. Do they affect you in the same way? Are they alike in purpose? Which seems most real to you? Why is "Excelsior" the more familiar? DRIFTING Read was essentially an artist, and in this poem he expressed his artistic soul more truly than in anything else he ever did. 19. Ischia: an island in the bay of Naples. 22. Capri: an island in the Mediterranean, best known for the Blue Grotto. WALT WHITMAN (1819-1891) "Walt Whitman...the chanter of adhesiveness, of the love of man for man, may not be attractive to some of us... But Walt Whitman the tender nurse, the cheerer of hospitals, the saver of soldier lives, is much more than attractive he is inspiring." --W. P. TRENT. Born on Long Island, he entered a printer's office when he was thirteen. By the time he was twenty, he was editing his own paper, but he soon gave it up for work on a New York newspaper. When he was thirty, he traveled through the west; in "Pioneers" we have a part of the result. During the Civil War he gave himself up to nursing as long as his strength lasted. From 1873 to the time of his death he was a great invalid and poor, but every trial was nobly borne. The selections from Walt Whitman are included by special permission of Mitchell Kennerley, the publisher of the complete authorized editions of Walt Whitman's Works. PIONEERS! O PIONEERS 18. debouch: go out into. O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! Written to express the grief of the nation over the death of Abraham Lincoln at the time when the joy over the saving of the union was most intense. 
37980	----	DAYS WITH THE GREAT .POETS. LONGFELLOW [Illustration: _Painting by A. E. Jackson._ THE CHILDREN'S HOUR.] Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupations, That is known as the Children's Hour. * * * * * They climb up into my turret, O'er the arms and back of my chair; If I try to escape they surround me, They seem to be everywhere. A DAY WITH LONGFELLOW [Illustration: portrait of Longfellow] HODDER & STOUGHTON LTD., PUBLISHERS LONDON _Uniform with this Volume_ _DAYS WITH THE POETS_ BROWNING BURNS KEATS LONGFELLOW SHAKESPEARE TENNYSON _DAYS WITH THE COMPOSERS_ BEETHOVEN CHOPIN GOUNOD MENDELSSOHN TSCHAIKOVSKY WAGNER _Made and Printed in Great Britain for Hodder & Stoughton, Limited, by C. Tinling & Co., Ltd., Liverpool, London and Prescot._ A DAY WITH LONGFELLOW The expression of serious and tender thoughtfulness, which always characterized the quiet face of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, had deepened during his later years, into something akin to melancholy. The tragic loss of his beloved wife,--burned to death while she was sealing up in paper little locks of her children's hair,--had left its permanent and irrevocable mark upon his life. Still, he did not seclude himself with his sorrow: the professor of Modern Languages at Harvard could hardly do that. He remained the selfsame kindly, gentle, industrious man, welcoming with ready courtesy the innumerable visitors to the Craigie House. This is a large old-fashioned house in Cambridge, Massachusetts--a place of grassy terraces, long verandahs, lilac bushes, and shady trees--a perfect dwelling for a man of cultured tastes, as the interior also testifies. From the Poet's study, a spacious, sunny room upon the ground floor, he could look across the meadows behind the house to the distant silver windings of the River Charles. It was a most orderly room. Every book and paper lay where he could put his hand on it in a moment. Book-cases full of valuable volumes--precious first editions--busts and portraits,--were to be seen on every side. A certain austere simplicity was noticeable all over Longfellow's house. "His private rooms," it has been said, "were like those of a German professor." But the attractiveness and delightfulness of Craigie House arose not from any intrinsic opulence of its contents, but from the personality of the man who lived there. "By his mere presence he rendered the sunshine brighter, and the place more radiant of kindness and peace." The Poet began his day, so long as age and health permitted, by a brisk morning walk. He would be out and about by six, observing and enjoying the beauty of earth and air, and subsequently recording his exquisite impressions: O Gift of God! O perfect day: Whereon shall no man work, but play; Whereon it is enough for me, Not to be doing, but to be! Through every fibre of my brain, Through every nerve, through every vein, I feel the electric thrill, the touch Of life, that seems almost too much. I hear the wind among the trees Playing celestial symphonies; I see the branches downward bent, Like keys of some great instrument. And over me unrolls on high The splendid scenery of the sky, Where through a sapphire sea the sun Sails like a golden galleon, Towards yonder cloud-land in the West, Towards yonder Islands of the Blest, Whose steep sierra far uplifts Its craggy summits white with drifts. Blow, winds! and waft through all the rooms The snowflakes of the cherry-blooms! Blow, winds! and bend within my reach The fiery blossoms of the peach! O Life and Love! O happy throng Of thoughts, whose only speech is song! O heart of man! canst thou not be Blithe as the air is, and as free? _A Day of Sunshine._ The morning's post brought the first consignment of that enormous number of epistles which were at once an affliction and an amusement to him. The Poet was besieged by letters from ambitious aspirants seeking advice, and from self-styled failures, desirous of help. To these last he was peculiarly drawn, for he was distinguished by "a grace almost peculiar to himself at the time in which he lived--his tenderness towards the undeveloped artist, struggling towards individual expression." In short, his first desire was to help on people, and bring out the best in them. Of apparent failure or success he recked little, believing, like Stevenson, that the true success is labour,--that pursuit, and not attainment is the worthiest object of existence; and his philosophy is summed up in the well-known words of _The Ladder of Saint Augustine_, Saint Augustine! well hast thou said, That of our vices we can frame A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath our feet each deed of shame! All common things, each day's events, That with the hour begin and end, Our pleasures and our discontents, Are rounds by which we may ascend. * * * * * The longing for ignoble things; The strife for triumph more than truth; The hardening of the heart, that brings Irreverence for the dreams of youth; All thoughts of ill; all evil deeds, That have their root in thoughts of ill; Whatever hinders or impedes The action of the nobler will;-- All these must first be trampled down Beneath our feet, if we would gain In the bright fields of fair renown The right of eminent domain. We have not wings, we cannot soar; But we have feet to scale and climb By slow degrees, by more and more, The cloudy summits of our time. The mighty pyramids of stone That wedge-like cleave the desert airs, When nearer seen and better known, Are but gigantic flights of stairs. The distant mountains that uprear Their solid bastions to the skies, Are crossed by pathways, that appear As we to higher levels rise. The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night. Standing on what too long we bore With shoulders bent and downcast eyes, We may discern--unseen before-- A path to higher destinies. Nor deem the irrevocable Past As wholly wasted, wholly vain, If rising on its wrecks, at last To something nobler we attain. Constant requests for autographs formed the bulk of the day's budget, and these also never went unanswered--even when couched in terms the most _mal à propos_, much as those of the man who said that "he loved poetry in 'most any style,"--"and would you please copy your 'Break, break, break' for the writer?" Possibly the worst offenders, in this matter of autograph-hunting, were those multitudinous schoolgirls of whom Longfellow humorously complained that he was always "kept busy answering." They ignored the fact of his professional duties, and his own unremitting work; anything to get a reply in the handwriting of the celebrity! But he had a special delight in budding womanhood, and had depicted it with magical insight and rare delicacy of touch, in lines which have never been excelled in their charm and purity. Maiden! with the meek, brown eyes In whose orbs a shadow lies, Like the dusk in evening skies! Thou whose locks outshine the sun, Golden tresses, wreathed in one, As the braided streamlets run! Standing, with reluctant feet, Where the brook and river meet, Womanhood and childhood fleet! Seest thou shadows sailing by, As the dove, with startled eye, Sees the falcon's shadow fly? Hearest thou voices on the shore, That our ears perceive no more, Deafened by the cataract's roar? O, thou child of many prayers! Life hath quicksands,--Life hath snares! Care and age come unawares! Like the swell of some sweet tune, Morning rises into noon, May glides onward into June. Childhood is the bough, where slumbered Birds and blossoms many-numbered;-- Age, that bough with snows encumbered. Gather, then, each flower that grows, When the young heart overflows, To embalm that tent of snows. Bear a lily in thy hand; Gates of brass cannot withstand One touch of that magic wand. Bear through sorrow, wrong, and ruth, In thy heart the dew of youth, On thy lips the seal of truth. O, that dew, like balm shall steal Into wounds that cannot heal, Even as sleep our eyes doth seal; And that smile, like sunshine, dart Into many a sunless heart, For a smile of God thou art. _Maidenhood._ [Illustration: _Painting by W. H. Margetson._ MAIDENHOOD.] Maiden with the meek, brown eyes In whose orbs a shadow lies, Like the dusk in evening skies! Thou whose locks outshine the sun, Golden tresses, wreathed in one, As the braided streamlets run! The early instalment of letters attended to, the Poet could devote himself to his own affairs. He believed in _working_ at poetry, methodically, systematically: although inspiration might flow with sudden fervour, it was not to be waited for. "Regular, proportioned, resolute, incessant industry," was the secret of his success, and the erasures and substitutions in his MSS. bear witness to his care in craftsmanship. The least conspicuous word must be as perfect as he could make it. Longfellow's creed, as expounded in _The Builders_, allowed for no scamped work. All are architects of Fate, Working in these walls of Time: Some with massive deeds and great, Some with ornaments of rhyme. Nothing useless is, or low; Each thing in its place is best; And what seems but idle show Strengthens and supports the rest. For the structure that we raise, Time is with materials filled; Our to-days and yesterdays Are the blocks with which we build. Truly shape and fashion these; Leave no yawning gaps between; Think not, because no man sees, Such things will remain unseen. In the elder days of Art, Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part; For the Gods see everywhere. Let us do our work as well, Both the unseen and the seen; Make the house, where Gods may dwell, Beautiful, entire, and clean. Else our lives are incomplete, Standing in these walls of Time, Broken stairways, where the feet Stumble as they seek to climb. Build to-day, then, strong and sure, With a firm and ample base; And ascending and secure Shall to-morrow find its place. Thus alone can we attain To those turrets, where the eye Sees the world as one vast plain, And one boundless reach of sky. _The Builders._ Work, indeed, whether mental or physical, was his first instinct, and he has preached the gospel of honest work to the whole English-speaking world in some of the most familiar lines in the language. Under a spreading chestnut tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands. His hair is crisp, and black, and long, His face is like the tan; His brow is wet with honest sweat, He earns whate'er he can, And looks the whole world in the face, For he owes not any man. Week in, week out, from morn till night, You can hear his bellows blow; You can hear him swing his heavy sledge, With measured beat and slow, Like a sexton ringing the village bell, When the evening sun is low. And children coming home from school Look in at the open door: They love to see the flaming forge, And hear the bellows roar, And catch the burning sparks that fly Like chaff from a threshing floor. He goes on Sunday to the church, And sits among his boys; He hears the parson pray and preach, He hears his daughter's voice, Singing in the village choir, And it makes his heart rejoice. It sounds to him like her mother's voice, Singing in Paradise! He needs must think of her once more, How in the grave she lies; And with his hard, rough hand he wipes A tear out of his eyes. Toiling,--rejoicing,--sorrowing, Onward through life he goes; Each morning sees some task begin, Each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, Has earned a night's repose. Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, For the lesson thou hast taught! Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortune must be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each burning deed and thought! _The Village Blacksmith._ [Illustration: _Painting by Dudley Tennant._ THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH.] And children coming home from school Look in at the open door: They love to see the flaming forge, And hear the bellows roar, And catch the burning sparks that fly Like chaff from a threshing floor. Not for long, however, might Longfellow remain undisturbed in his sunny room. Sometimes he welcomed the opening door that saw "a little figure stealing gently in, laying an arm round his neck as he bent over his work, and softly whispering some childish secret in his ear." For this was no obstacle to the current of his tranquil thoughts. "My little girls are flitting about my study," he wrote to a friend, "as blithe as two birds. They are preparing to celebrate the birthday of one of their dolls.... What a beautiful world this child's world is! I take infinite delight in seeing it go on all around me." It was with absolute sincerity that he had exclaimed: Come to me, O ye children! For I hear you at your play, And the questions that perplexed me Have vanished quite away. Ye open the eastern windows, That look towards the sun, Where thoughts are singing swallows, And the brooks of morning run. In your hearts are the birds and the sunshine, In your thoughts the brooklet's flow; But in mine is the wind of Autumn, And the first fall of the snow. Ah! what would the world be to us, If the children were no more? We should dread the desert behind us Worse than the dark before. What the leaves are to the forest, With light and air for food, Ere their sweet and tender juices Have been hardened into wood,-- That to the world are children; Through them it feels the glow Of a brighter and sunnier climate Than reaches the trunks below Come to me, O ye children! And whisper in my ear What the birds and the winds are singing In your sunny atmosphere. For what are all our contrivings, And the wisdom of our books, When compared with your caresses, And the gladness of your looks? Ye are better than all the ballads That ever were sung or said; For ye are living poems, And all the rest are dead. _Children._ But these were congenial moments. There were visitors much less desirable. "He was besieged," as one of his friends declares, "by every possible form of interruption which the ingenuity of the human brain could devise." For his admirers, whose name was legion, were not satisfied with hero-worship afar off: they must needs force themselves into his presence, and express their admiration _vivâ-voce_. Most amazing folks swooped suddenly down upon him, ruthless and unabashed. Longfellow, always quick to see the comical side of a situation, would tell with great delight strange tales of his unexpected guests. "One man," he said, "a perfect stranger, came with an omnibus full of ladies. He introduced himself, then returning to the omnibus, took out all the ladies, one, two, three, four, five, with a little girl, and brought them in. I entertained them to the best of my ability, and they stayed an hour." On another occasion, an English gentleman, with no letter of introduction, abruptly introduced himself, thus: "In other countries, you know, we go to see ruins, and the like--but you have no ruins in your country, and I thought," growing embarrassed, "I would call and see _you_!" Another strange gentleman accosted him with great fervour, "Mr. Longfellow, I have long desired the honour of knowing you. I am one of _the few men_ who have read your _Evangeline_!" All these worshippers at his shrine were received by the Poet with his unfailing courtesy and patience; but he was invariably adroit in warding off compliments. To applause and flattery he was impervious--reference to his own works was distasteful to him. His perfect modesty was the reflex of his natural reticence. Longfellow regarded life from the standpoint of eternity, and thus was one who, in the words of à Kempis, "careth little for the praise or dispraise of men." His gaze was riveted upon that "Land of the Hereafter," to which he was always more than ready to set out, and in the departure of Hiawatha he had imaged his longing for the "Happiest Land." On the shore stood Hiawatha, Turned and waved his hand at parting; On the clear and luminous water Launched his birch canoe for sailing, From the pebbles of the margin Shoved it forth into the water; Whispered to it "Westward! westward!" And with speed it darted forward. And the evening sun descending Set the clouds on fire with redness, Burned the broad sky, like a prairie, Left upon the level water One long track and trail of splendour, Down whose stream, as down a river, Westward, westward Hiawatha Sailed into the fiery sunset, Sailed into the purple vapours, Sailed into the dusk of evening. And the people from the margin Watched him floating, rising, sinking, Till the birch canoe seemed lifted High into that sea of splendour, Till it sank into the vapours Like the new moon slowly, slowly Sinking in the purple distance. And they said "Farewell for ever!" Said "Farewell, O Hiawatha!" And the forests, dark and lonely, Moved through all their depths of darkness, Sighed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!" And the waves upon the margin Rising, rippling on the pebbles, Sobbed "Farewell, O Hiawatha!" And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, From her haunts among the fenlands, Screamed "Farewell, O Hiawatha!" Thus departed Hiawatha, Hiawatha the Beloved, In the glory of the sunset, In the purple mists of evening, To the regions of the home-wind, Of the Northwest wind Keewaydin, To the Islands of the Blessed, To the kingdom of Ponemah, To the land of the Hereafter! _Hiawatha._ [Illustration: _Painting by J. Finnemore._ HIAWATHA.] And the evening sun descending.... Left upon the level water One long track and trail of splendour, Down whose stream as down a river, Westward, westward Hiawatha Sailed into the fiery sunset, Sailed into the purple vapours, Sailed into the dusk of evening. Personal friends, of whom the Poet possessed many, would arrive in time for lunch, and be welcomed by the master of Craigie House at the gate in the lilac hedge. He would bring them into the large, cheerful dining-room, and the children would sit at a little table on the verandah, while the host, with his own hands, set the copper kettle singing, and made tea in the antique silver pot. It was a peaceful, happy hour for the guests. Longfellow, unlike Tennyson, was never much of a talker: he was a listener and observer, who dwelt in a speaking silence--in what has been defined as a heavenly unfathomableness. Ruskin had written: "You come as such a _calm_ influence to me ... you give me such a feeling of friendship and repose." And this feeling was enhanced by the man's natural dignity and grace, the refinement of his features, the perfect taste of his dress, and the exquisite simplicity of his manners. Many have alluded to his soft, musical voice, to his steady blue-grey eyes, to the "innate charm of tranquillity," which gave a peculiar spiritual sweetness to his smile. But the man was even more, and better than the poet; so much so that a young enthusiast exclaimed "All the vulgar and pretentious people in the world ought to be sent to Mr. Longfellow to show them how to behave!" Nor was this calm the outcome of natural placidity--it had been attained through bitter suffering: it was that gleam of a hero's armour which the "red planet Mars" unveils to a tear-dimmed sight, when The night is come, but not too soon; And sinking silently, All silently, the little moon Drops down behind the sky. There is no light in earth or heaven, But the cold light of stars; And the first watch of night is given To the red planet Mars. Is it the tender star of love? The star of love and dreams? O no! from that blue tent above, A hero's armour gleams. And earnest thoughts within me rise, When I behold afar, Suspended in the evening skies, The shield of that red star. O star of strength! I see thee stand And smile upon my pain; Thou beckonest with thy mailed hand, And I am strong again. Within my breast there is no light, But the cold light of stars; I give the first watch of the night To the red planet Mars. The star of the unconquered will, He rises in my breast, Serene, and resolute, and still, And calm and self-possessed. And thou, too, whosoe'er thou art, That readest this brief psalm, As one by one thy hopes depart, Be resolute and calm. O fear not in a world like this, And thou shalt know ere long, Know how sublime a thing it is To suffer and be strong. _The Light of Stars._ After lunch, the guests would be taken round the house, and its various treasures pointed out: books in every corner, and on every wall pictures and portraits; antique furniture, interesting mementoes of every sort. It was a home well worth seeing: and an old-world air pervaded all, from the quaint drawing-room, with its old-fashioned, rose-festooned wall-paper, to the upper rooms with the Dutch-tiled hearths. Later on, to those with whom he felt specially _en rapport_, Longfellow would read aloud some poems, new or old, his own, or those of other men. He was not a forcible or a dramatic reader; the simplicity which he loved "in all things," as he had said, "but specially in poetry," was evident also here. Yet perhaps no other man could have done equal justice to the lingering hexameters of his most successful poem--for such, by reason of its novelty, pathos, and beauty, _Evangeline_ must always be considered. "It has become a purifying portion," says Rossetti, "of the experiences of the heart ... a long-drawn sweetness and sadness"; and, though sixty years have elapsed since _Evangeline_ first appeared, the ideal maiden of this "idyll of the heart" has lost no fraction of her loveliness. Fair was she to behold, that maiden of seventeen summers. Black were her eyes as the berry that grows on the thorn by the wayside, Black, yet how softly they gleamed beneath the brown shade of her tresses! Sweet was her breath as the breath of kine that feed in the meadows. When in the harvest heat she bore to the reapers at noon-tide Flagons of home-brewed ale, ah! fair in sooth was the maiden. Fairer was she when, on Sunday morn, while the bell from its turret Sprinkled with holy sounds the air, as the priest with his hyssop Sprinkles the congregation, and scatters blessings upon them, Down the long street she passed, with her chaplet of beads and her missal, Wearing her Norman cap, and her kirtle of blue, and the ear-rings, Brought in the olden time from France, and since, as an heir-loom, Handed down from mother to child, through long generations. But a celestial brightness--a more ethereal beauty-- Shone on her face and encircled her form, when, after confession, Homeward serenely she walked with God's benediction upon her. When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music. _Evangeline._ In the course of the afternoon, some of the Poet's guests taking leave, others would accompany him to a concert, organ recital, or any other musical function which might be available. Longfellow was passionately fond of good music, and lost no opportunity of hearing it. His own lyrics are singularly susceptible, as all composers know, of an adequate musical setting. [Illustration: _Painting by H. M. Brock._ EVANGELINE.] But a celestial brightness--a more ethereal beauty-- Shone on her face and encircled her form, when, after confession, Homeward serenely she walked with God's benediction upon her. When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music. Few short poems in the world have been so often sung as "Stars of the summer night"--"Good-night, beloved"--"The rainy day"--and other well-known verses. A most effective sense of sound and rhythm, joined with perfect simplicity of diction, evince the inherent artistry of a man who was no musician in the technical sense, but who could express himself in such lines as The night is calm and cloudless, And still as still can be, And the stars come forth to listen To the music of the sea. They gather, and gather, and gather, Until they crowd the sky, And listen in breathless silence, To the solemn litany. It begins in rocky caverns, As a voice that chants alone To the pedals of the organ In monotonous undertone; And anon from shelving beaches And shallow sands beyond, In snow-white robes uprising The ghostly choirs respond. And sadly and unceasing The mournful voice sings on, And the snow-white choirs still answer Christe eleison! _The Golden Legend._ After dinner, to which perhaps an intimate friend or two remained, the poet would remain awhile in his study: not actually at work, for his writing was only done in the morning hours, but considering and criticising work already accomplished, and carefully perusing that great translation of Dante which he considered, rightly or wrongly, as the most important work of his life. The twilight would slowly fade into the dusk of a "blindman's holiday," and then came the sweetest moment of the day. Longfellow's intense affection for all little ones, his touching kindness to them, his sympathy with their most trivial joys or troubles, were focussed and centred in the love he bore to his own dear, motherless children. Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupations, That is known as the Children's Hour. I hear in the chamber above me The patter of little feet, The sound of a door that is opened, And voices soft and sweet. From my study I see in the lamplight, Descending the broad hall-stair, Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, And Edith with golden hair. A whisper, and then a silence: Yet I know by their merry eyes They are plotting and planning together To take me by surprise. A sudden rush from the stairway, A sudden raid from the hall! By three doors left unguarded They enter my castle wall! They climb up into my turret, O'er the arms and back of my chair; If I try to escape they surround me; They seem to be everywhere. They almost devour me with kisses, Their arms about me entwine, Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine! Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti, Because you have scaled the wall, Such an old moustache as I am Is not a match for you all! I have you fast in my fortress, And will not let you depart, But put you down in the dungeon In the round-tower of my heart. And there I will keep you for ever, Yes, for ever and a day, Till the walls shall crumble to ruin, And moulder in dust away! _The Children's Hour._ A brief period of childish gaiety would supervene, to which the man of childlike heart responded readily; and when the little feet had pattered bedward, and the house was silent from the merry little voices, the father would sit on until midnight in his spacious empty room. He would occupy himself with letters--long, fragrant, pleasant gossips to his best and most familiar friends at a distance: till midnight came upon him unawares. "It is nearly one o'clock--I am the only person up in the house: my candle is sinking in its socket." And a double loneliness descended upon him as his weary hand laid down the pen. He remained inert and brooding; the solitude was almost tangible. But this solitude was presently peopled by visions, fraught with ineffable consolation to a mind never out of touch with "other-worldly" influences. When the hours of Day are numbered, And the voices of the Night Wake the better soul, that slumbered, To a holy, calm delight; Ere the evening lamps are lighted, And, like phantoms grim and tall, Shadows from the fitful firelight Dance upon the parlour wall; Then the forms of the departed Enter at the open door; The beloved, the true-hearted, Come to visit me once more; He, the young and strong, who cherished Noble longings for the strife, By the roadside fell and perished, Weary with the march of life! They the holy ones and weakly, Who the cross of suffering bore, Folded their pale hands so meekly, Spake with us on earth no more! And with them the Being Beauteous, Who unto my youth was given, More than all things else to love me, And is now a saint in heaven. With a slow and noiseless footstep Comes that messenger divine, Takes the vacant chair beside me, Lays her gentle hand in mine. And she sits and gazes at me With those deep and tender eyes, Like the stars, so still and saint-like, Looking downward from the skies. Uttered not, yet comprehended, Is the spirit's voiceless prayer, Soft rebukes, in blessings ended, Breathing from her lips of air. O, though oft depressed and lonely, All my fears are laid aside, If I but remember only Such as these have lived and died! _Footsteps of Angels._ "_Empty_ is a horrid word," the Poet had written to a friend--but the room is no longer empty. It has become a habitation for other visitants than the motley throng of flatterers impelled by curiosity, who hindered his morning hours. Unspoken benedictions lie thick upon the air--the man's griefs are soothed away by the touch of invisible fingers. Patient, unselfish, indomitable, he resumes the burden of his daily life with new hope and courage for the morrow. As torrents in summer, Half dried in their channels, Suddenly rise, though the Sky is still cloudless, For rain has been falling Far off at their fountains; So hearts that are fainting Grow full to o'erflowing, And they that behold it Marvel, and know not That God at their fountains Far off has been raining. _Tales of a Wayside Inn._ 
37999	----	[Illustration: _Photo. by A. Marshall_ Arthur Macy.] POEMS BY ARTHUR MACY _With an Introduction by WILLIAM ALFRED HOVEY_ W. B. CLARKE CO. BOSTON 1905 COPYRIGHT 1905 BY MARY T. MACY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Editors of _The Youth's Companion_, _St. Nicholas_, and _The Smart Set_, The H. B. Stevens Company, The Oliver Ditson Company, and Messrs. G. Schirmer & Company, have kindly permitted the republication of several poems in this collection. INTRODUCTION Arthur Macy was a Nantucket boy of Quaker extraction. His name alone is evidence of this, for it is safe to say that a Macy, wherever found in the United States, is descended from that sturdy old Quaker who was one of those who bought Nantucket from the Indians, paid them fairly for it, treated them with justice, and lived on friendly terms with them. In many ways Arthur Macy showed that he was a Nantucketer and, at least by descent, a Quaker. He often used phrases peculiar to our island in the sea, and was given, in conversation at least, to similes which smacked of salt water. Almost the last time I saw him he said, "I'm coming round soon for a good long gam." He was a many-sided man. In his intercourse with a friend like myself he would show the side which he thought would interest me, and that only. He was above all things cheery, and, to his praise be it said, he hated a bore. I remember that a mutual friend was talking baseball to me by the yard. Arthur was sitting by, listening. It was a subject in which he was much interested. Nevertheless, turning to our mutual friend, he said, "Don't talk baseball to _him_. He don't care anything about it, he don't know anything about it, and he don't want to." On the other hand, although little given to telling of his war experiences, he was always ready to talk over the old days with me. Of what he did himself, he modestly said but little, but of the services of others, more especially of the men in the ranks, he was generous in his praise. Early in the war Macy enlisted in Company B, 24th Michigan Volunteer Infantry. He was twice wounded on the first day at Gettysburg, and managed to crawl into the town and get as far as the steps of the Court House, which was fast filling with wounded from both sides. His sense of humor was in evidence even at such a time. A Confederate officer rode up and asked, "Have those men in there got arms?" Quick as a flash Macy answered: "Some of them have and some of them haven't." He remained in this Court-House hospital, a prisoner within the Confederate lines, until the battle was over and Lee's army retreated. All wounded prisoners who could walk were forced to go with them, but Macy's wound was in the foot, and, fortunately for him, he was spared the horrors of a Southern prison. He was on duty later at the Naval Academy Hospital in Annapolis, presided over by Dr. Vanderkieft, perhaps as efficient a general hospital administrator as the army had. I knew Dr. Vanderkieft very well, and was on duty at his hospital when the exchanged prisoners came back from Andersonville. Although Macy and I never met there, it came out in our talk that we were there at the same time. He served his full three years, and was honorably discharged about the close of the war. It is given to but few to have the keen sense of humor which he possessed. Quick and keen at repartee, he never practised it save when worth while. He never said the clearly obvious thing. Failing something better than that, he held his peace. Had it not been for his disinclination to publish his verses, he long ago would have had a national reputation. His reason for this disinclination, as I gathered from many talks with him, was that he did not consider his work of sufficiently high _poetic_ standard. Every one praised his choice of words, his wonderful facility in rhyme, the perfection of his metre, and the daintiness and delicacy of his verse. "All right," he would say, "but that is not Poetry with a big P, and that is the only kind that should be published. And there is mighty little of it." It is fortunate that this severe judgment, creditable as it was to him, is not to prevail. Lovers of the beautiful are not to be robbed of "Sit Closer, Friends," nor of "A Poet's Lesson," and many who never heard of that remarkable Spanish pachyderm will take delight in the story of "The Rollicking Mastodon," whose home was "in the trunk of a Tranquil Tree." The greater part of his verses with which I am familiar I heard at Papyrus Club dinners. He was an early member, and one of the most esteemed. He was fairly sure to have something in his pocket, and the presiding officer never called upon him in vain. It was so at the Saint Botolph Club, of which he was long a member. Whenever there was an "occasion" when the need of verse seemed indicated, Arthur Macy could be counted on. His "Saint Botolph," which has become the Club song, and will be sung as long as the Club endures, was written for a Twelfth Night revel at my request. It has a peculiarly old English flavor. He makes of the Saint, not the jolly friar nor yet the severe recluse, but just a good, kind old man who "was loved by the sinners and loved by the good," one who was certain that there must be sin so long as "A few get the loaves and many get the crumbs, And some are born fingers and some are born thumbs." And here we get a glimpse of Arthur Macy's view of life, which was certainly broad and generous, with a philosophic flavor. Arthur Macy had a business side of which his Club intimates had but slight knowledge. He represented, in New England, one of the great commercial agencies of the country. His knowledge of business men, of their standing, commercially and financially, was extended and intimate, and was relied upon by our merchants and others as a basis for giving credit. His office work required the closest attention to details and the exercise of the most careful judgment. The whole success of such a company as that which he represented depends upon the reliability of the information which it gives. Without this it has no reason for existence. It was to Arthur Macy that the merchants of Boston largely turned for information concerning their customers scattered throughout New England, and it was because of his success in obtaining such information and his thorough knowledge of the business in all its details that the superior officers of the company placed such implicit confidence in his judgment and so high a value upon his advice. And in the conduct of this business he showed his Quaker straightforwardness. His work was not at all of the "detective" sort. If information was wanted concerning a man's business by those who had dealings with him, Macy went directly to the man himself, and told him that it was for his own best interest to show just where he stood, and, above all things, to tell the exact truth. Honest men had the truth told about them, and profited by it. Dishonest men and secretive men were passed over in severe silence, and their credit suffered accordingly. Few of those who sought Arthur Macy for business information ever suspected that they were talking to a poet and man of letters. I have not sought to tell Arthur Macy's life story. Neither have I entered upon any detailed consideration of his verse. It is for the reader to peruse the pages that follow and draw his own conclusion. I have merely tried to give a glimpse of the characteristics of one of the most charming personalities I ever knew. WILLIAM ALFRED HOVEY. ST. BOTOLPH CLUB, _Boston, June 7, 1905_. CONTENTS FRONTISPIECE _Portrait of Arthur Macy_ INTRODUCTION v POEMS In Remembrance 1 The Old Café 4 At Marliave's 8 The Passing of the Rose 9 A Valentine 10 Disenchantment 12 Constancy 15 A Poet's Lesson 17 "Place aux Dames" 19 All on a Golden Summer Day 20 Prismatic Boston 21 The Book Hunter 25 The Three Voices 27 Easy Knowledge 28 Susan Scuppernong 29 The Hatband 30 The Oyster 31 Wind and Rain 32 The Flag 34 My Masterpiece 36 A Ballade of Montaigne 40 The Criminal 42 A Bit of Color 45 Dinner Favors 48 The Moper 51 Various Valentines 54 Were all the World like You 59 Here and There 60 Uncle Jogalong 62 The Indifferent Mariner 64 On a Library Wall 66 Mrs. Mulligatawny 67 Euthanasia 70 Dainty Little Love 71 To M. 72 The Song 73 At Twilight Time 76 Céleste 78 Thistle-Down 80 The Slumber Song 81 Thou art to Me 82 Love 83 The Stranger-Man 84 The Honeysuckle Vine 86 Saint Botolph 87 The Gurgling Imps 90 The Worm will Turn 91 The Boston Cats 94 The Jonquil Maid 96 The Rollicking Mastodon 99 The Five Senses 102 Economy 103 Idylettes of the Queen 105 To M. E. 110 Bon Voyage 111 The Book of Life 112 POEMS IN REMEMBRANCE [W. L. C.] Sit closer, friends, around the board! Death grants us yet a little time. Now let the cheering cup be poured, And welcome song and jest and rhyme. Enjoy the gifts that fortune sends. Sit closer, friends! And yet, we pause. With trembling lip We strive the fitting phrase to make; Remembering our fellowship, Lamenting Destiny's mistake. We marvel much when Fate offends, And claims our friends. Companion of our nights of mirth, Where all were merry who were wise; Does Death quite understand your worth, And know the value of his prize? I doubt me if he comprehends-- He knows no friends. And in that realm is there no joy Of comrades and the jocund sense? Can Death so utterly destroy-- For gladness grant no recompense? And can it be that laughter ends With absent friends? Oh, scholars whom we wisest call, Who solve great questions at your ease, We ask the simplest of them all, And yet you cannot answer these! And is it thus your knowledge ends, To comfort friends? Dear Omar! should You chance to meet Our Brother Somewhere in the Gloom, Pray give to Him a Message sweet, From Brothers in the Tavern Room. He will not ask who 'tis that sends, For We were Friends. Again a parting sail we see; Another boat has left the shore. A kinder soul on board has she Than ever left the land before. And as her outward course she bends, Sit closer, friends! THE OLD CAFÉ You know, Don't you, Joe, Those merry evenings long ago? You know the room, the narrow stair, The wreaths of smoke that circled there, The corner table where we sat For hours in after-dinner chat, And magnified Our little world inside. You know, Don't you, Joe? Ah, those nights divine! The simple, frugal wine, The airs on crude Italian strings, The joyous, harmless revelings, Just fit for us--or kings! At times a quaint and wickered flask Of rare Chianti, or from the homelier cask Of modest Pilsener a stein or so, Amid the merry talk would flow; Or red Bordeaux From vines that grew where dear Montaigne Held his domain. And you remember that dark eye, None too shy; In fact, she seemed a bit too free For you and me. You know, Don't you, Joe? Then Pegasus I knew, And then I read to you My callow rhymes So many, many times; And something in the place Lent them a certain grace, Until I scarce believed them mine, Under the magic of the wine; But now I read them o'er, And see grave faults I had not seen before, And wonder how You could have listened with such placid brow, And somehow apprehend You sank the critic in the friend. You know, Don't you, Joe? And when we talked of books, How learned were our looks! And few the bards we could not quote, From gay Catullus' lines to Milton's purer note. Mayhap we now are wiser men, But we knew more than all the scholars then; And our conceit Was grand, ineffable, complete! We know, Don't we, Joe? Gone are those golden nights Of innocent Bohemian delights, And we are getting on; And anon, Years sad and tremulous May be in store for us; But should we ever meet Upon some quiet street, And you discover in an old man's eye Some transient sparkle of the days gone by, Then you will guess, perchance, The meaning of the glance; You'll know, Won't you, Joe? AT MARLIAVE'S At Marliave's when eventide Finds rare companions at my side, The laughter of each merry guest At quaint conceit, or kindly jest, Makes golden moments swiftly glide. No voice unkind our faults to chide, Our smallest virtue magnified; And friendly hand to hand is pressed At Marliave's. I lay my years and cares aside Accepting what the gods provide, I ask not for a lot more blest, Nor do I crave a sweeter rest Than that which comes with eventide At Marliave's. THE PASSING OF THE ROSE A White Rose said, "How fair am I. Behold a flower that cannot die!" A lover brushed the dew aside, And fondly plucked it for his bride. "A fitting choice!" the White Rose cried. The maiden wore it in her hair; The Rose, contented to be there, Still proudly boasted, "None so fair!" Then close she pressed it to her lips, But, weary of companionships, The flower within her bosom slips. O'ercome by all the beauty there, It straight confessed, "Dear maid, I swear 'Tis you, and you alone, are fair!" Turning its humbled head aside, The envious Rose, lamenting, died. A VALENTINE [FROM A VERY LITTLE BOY TO A VERY LITTLE GIRL] This is a valentine for you. Mother made it. She's real smart, I told her that I loved you true And you were my sweetheart. And then she smiled, and then she winked, And then she said to father, "Beginning young!" and then he thinked, And then he said, "Well, rather." Then mother's eyes began to shine, And then she made this valentine: "If you love me as I love you, No knife shall cut our love in two," And father laughed and said, "How new!" And then he said, "It's time for bed." So, when I'd said my prayers, Mother came running up the stairs And told me I might send the rhymes, And then she kissed me lots of times. Then I turned over to the wall And cried about you, and--that's all. DISENCHANTMENT Time and I have fallen out; We, who were such steadfast friends. So slowly has it come about That none may tell when it began; Yet sure am I a cunning plan Runs through it all; And now, beyond recall, Our friendship ends, And ending, there remains to me The memory of disloyalty. Long years ago Time tripping came With promise grand, And sweet assurances of fame; And hand in hand Through fairy-land Went he and I together In bright and golden weather. Then, then I had not learned to doubt, For friends were gods, and faith was sure, And words were truth, and deeds were pure, Before we had our falling out; And life, all hope, was fair to see, When Time made promise sweet to me. When first my faithless friend grew cold I sought to knit a closer bond, But he, less fond, Sad days and years upon me rolled, Pressed me with care, With envy tinged the boyhood hair, And ploughed unwelcome furrows in Where none had been. In vain I begged with trembling lip For our old sweet companionship, And saw, 'mid prayers and tears devout, The presage of our falling out. And now I know Time has no friends, Nor pity lends, But touches all With heavy finger soon or late; And as we wait The Reaper's call, The sickle's fatal sweep, We strive in vain to keep One truth inviolate, One cherished fancy free from doubt. It was not so Long years ago, Before we had our falling out. If Time would come again to me, And once more take me by the hand For golden walks through fairy-land, I could forgive the treachery That stole my youth And what of truth Was mine to know; Nor would I more his love misdoubt; And I would throw My arms around him so, That he'd forgive the falling out! CONSTANCY I first saw Phebe when the show'rs Had just made brighter all the flow'rs; Yet she was fair As any there, And so I loved her hours and hours. Then I met Helen, and her ways Set my untutored heart ablaze. I loved at sight And deemed it right To worship her for days and days. Yet when I gazed on Clara's cheeks And spoke the language Cupid speaks, O'er all the rest She seemed the best, And so I loved her weeks and weeks. But last of Love's sweet souvenirs Was Delia with her sighs and tears. Of her it seemed I'd always dreamed, And so I loved her years and years. But now again with Phebe met, I love the first one of the set. "Fickle," you say? I answer, "Nay, My heart is true to one quartette." A POET'S LESSON Poet, my master, come, tell me true, And how are your verses made? Ah! that is the easiest thing to do:-- You take a cloud of a silvern hue, A tender smile or a sprig of rue, With plenty of light and shade, And weave them round in syllables rare, With a grace and skill divine; With the earnest words of a pleading prayer, With a cadence caught from a dulcet air, A tale of love and a lock of hair, Or a bit of a trailing vine. Or, delving deep in a mine unwrought, You find in the teeming earth The golden vein of a noble thought; The soul of a statesman still unbought, Or a patriot's cry with anguish fraught For the land that gave him birth. A brilliant youth who has lost his way On the winding road of life; A sculptor's dream of the plastic clay; A painter's soul in a sunset ray; The sweetest thing a woman can say, Or a struggling nation's strife. A boy's ambition; a maiden's star, Unrisen, but yet to be; A glimmering light that shines afar For a sinking ship on a moaning bar; An empty sleeve; a veteran's scar; Or a land where men are free. And if the poet's hand be strong To weave the web of a deathless song, And if a master guide the pen To words that reach the hearts of men, And if the ear and the touch be true, It's the easiest thing in the world to do! "PLACE AUX DAMES" [To M.] With brilliant friends surrounding me, So cosy at the Club I'm sitting; While you at home I seem to see, Attending strictly to your knitting. When women have their rights, my dear, We'll hear no more of wrongs so shocking:-- You with your friends shall gather here; I'll stay at home and darn the stocking! ALL ON A GOLDEN SUMMER DAY All on a golden summer day, As through the leaves a single ray Of yellow sunshine finds its way So bright, so bright; The wakened birds that blithely sing Seem welcoming another spring; While all the woods are murmuring So light, so light. All on a golden summer day, When to my heart a single ray Of tender kindness finds its way, So bright, so bright; Then comes sweet hope and bravely dares To break the chain that sorrow wears-- And all my burdens, all my cares Are light, so light! PRISMATIC BOSTON Fair city by the famed Batrachian Pool, Wise in the teachings of the Concord School; Home of the Eurus, paradise of cranks, Stronghold of thrift, proud in your hundred banks; Land of the mind-cure and the abstruse book, The Monday lecture and the shrinking Cook; Where twin-lensed maidens, careless of their shoes, In phrase Johnsonian oft express their views; Where realistic pens invite the throng To mention "spades," lest "shovels" should be wrong; Where gaping strangers read the thrilling ode To Pilgrim Trousers on the West-End road; Where strange sartorial questions as to pants Offend our "sisters, cousins, and our aunts;" Where men expect by simple faith and prayer To lift a lid and find a dollar there; Where labyrinthine lanes that sinuous creep Make Theseus sigh and Ariadne weep; Where clubs gregarious take commercial risks 'Mid fluctuations of alluring disks; Where Beacon Hill is ever proud to show Her reeking veins of liquid indigo; To thee, fair land, I dedicate my song, And tell how simple, artless minds go wrong. A Common Councilman, with lordly air, One day went strolling down through Copley Square. Within his breast there beat a spotless heart; His taste was pure, his soul was steeped in art. For he had worshiped oft at Cass's shrine, Had daily knelt at Cogswell's fount divine, And chaste surroundings of the City Hall Had taught him much, and so he knew it all. Proud, in a sack coat and a high silk hat, Content in knowing just "where he was at," He wandered on, till gazing toward the skies, A nameless horror met his modest eyes; For where the artist's chisel had engrossed An emblem fit on Boston's proudest boast, There stood aloft, with graceful equipoise, Two very small, unexpurgated boys. Filled with solicitude for city youth, Whose morals suffer when they're told the truth, Whose ethic standards high and higher rise, When taught that God and nature are but lies, In haste he to the council chamber hied, His startled fellow-members called aside, His fearful secret whispering disclosed, Till all their separate joints were ankylosed. Appalling was the silence at his tale; Democrats turned red, Republicans turned pale. What mugwumps turned 'tis difficult to think, But probably they compromised on pink. When these stern moralists had their breaths regained, And told how deeply they were shocked and pained, They then resolved how wrong our children are, Said, "Boys should be contented with a scar," Rebuked Dame Nature for her deadly sins, And damned trustees who foster "Heavenly Twins." O Councilmen, if it were left for you To say what art is false and what is true, What strange anomalies would the world behold! Dolls would be angels, dross would count for gold; Vice would be virtue, virtues would be taints; Gods would be devils, Councilmen be saints; And this sage law by your wise minds be built: "No boy shall live if born without a kilt." Then you'd resolve, to soothe all moral aches, "We're always right, but God has made mistakes." THE BOOK HUNTER I've spent all my money in chasing For books that are costly and rare; I've made myself bankrupt in tracing Each prize to its ultimate lair. And now I'm a ruined collector, Impoverished, ragged, and thin, Reduced to a vanishing spectre, Because of my prodigal sin. How often I've called upon Foley, The man who's a friend of the cranks; Knows books that are witty or holy, And whether they're prizes or blanks. For volumes on paper or vellum He has a most accurate eye, And always is willing to sell 'em To dreamers like me who will buy. My purse requires fences and hedges, Alas! it will never stay shut; My coat-sleeves now have deckle edges, My hair is unkempt and "uncut." My coat is a true first edition, And rusty from shoulder to waist; My trousers are out of condition, Their "colophon" worn and defaced. My shoes have been long out of fashion, "Crushed leather" they both seem to be; My hat is a thing for compassion, The kind that is labelled "n. d." My vest from its binding is broken, It's what the French call a _relique_; What I think of it cannot be spoken, Its catalogue mark is "unique." I'm a book that is thumbed and untidy, The only one left of the set; I'm sure I was issued on Friday, For fate is unkind to me yet. My text has been cruelly garbled By a destiny harder than flint; But I wait for my grave to be "marbled," And then I shall be out of print. THE THREE VOICES There once was a man who asked for pie, In a piping voice up high, up high; And when he asked for a salmon roe, He spoke in a voice down low, down low; But when he said he had no choice, He always spoke in a medium voice. I cannot tell the reason why He sometimes spoke up high, up high; And why he sometimes spoke down low, I do not know, I do not know; And why he spoke in the medium way, Don't ask me, for I cannot say. EASY KNOWLEDGE How nice 'twould be if knowledge grew On bushes, as the berries do! Then we could plant our spelling seed, And gather all the words we need. The sums from off our slates we'd wipe, And wait for figures to be ripe, And go into the fields, and pick Whole bushels of arithmetic; Or if we wished to learn Chinese, We'd just go out and shake the trees; And grammar then, in all the towns, Would grow with proper verbs and nouns; And in the gardens there would be Great bunches of geography; And all the passers-by would stop, And marvel at the knowledge crop; And I my pen would cease to push, And pluck my verses from a bush! SUSAN SCUPPERNONG Silly Susan Scuppernong Cried so hard and cried so long, People asked her what was wrong. She replied, "I do not know Any reason for my woe-- I just feel like feeling so." THE HATBAND My hatband goes around my hat, And while there's nothing strange in that, It seems just like a lazy man Who leaves off where he first began. But then this fact is always true, The band does what it ought to do, And is more useful than the man, Because it does the best it can. THE OYSTER Two halves of an oyster shell, each a shallow cup; Here once lived an oyster before they ate him up. Oyster shells are smooth inside; outside very rough; Very little room to spare, but he had enough. Bedroom, parlor, kitchen, or cellar there was none; Just one room in all the house--oysters need but one. And he was never troubled by wind or rain or snow, For he had a roof above, another one below. I wonder if they fried him, or cooked him in a stew, And sold him at a fair, and passed him off for two. I wonder if the oysters all have names like us, And did he have a name like "John" or "Romulus"? I wonder if his parents wept to see him go; I wonder who can tell; perhaps the mermaids know. I wonder if our sleep the most of us would dread, If we slept like oysters, a million in a bed! WIND AND RAIN The rain came down on Boston Town, And the people said, "Oh, dear! It's early yet for our annual wet,-- 'Twas dry this time last year." In heavy suits and rubber boots They went to the weather man, And said, "Dear friend, do you intend To change your present plan?" In tones of scorn, he said, "Begone! I've ordered a week of rain. Away! disperse! or I'll do worse, And order a hurricane!" They sneered, "Oh, oh!" and they laughed, "Ho, ho!" And they said, "You surely jest. Your threats are vain, for a hurricane Is the thing that we like best. "Our throats are tinned, and a sharp east wind We really couldn't do without; But we complain of too much rain, And we think we'd like a drought." So the weather man took a palm-leaf fan And he waved it up on high, And he swept away the clouds so gray, And the sun shone out in the sky. And the sun shines down on Boston Town, And the weather still is clear; And they set their clocks by the equinox, And never the east wind fear. THE FLAG Here comes The Flag! Hail it! Who dares to drag Or trail it? Give it hurrahs,-- Three for the stars, Three for the bars. Uncover your head to it! The soldiers who tread to it Shout at the sight of it, The justice and right of it, The unsullied white of it, The blue and red of it, And tyranny's dread of it! Here comes The Flag! Cheer it! Valley and crag Shall hear it. Fathers shall bless it, Children caress it. All shall maintain it. No one shall stain it, Cheers for the sailors that fought on the wave for it, Cheers for the soldiers that always were brave for it, Tears for the men that went down to the grave for it! Here comes The Flag! MY MASTERPIECE I wrote the truest, tend'rest song The world had ever heard; And clear, melodious, and strong, And sweet was every word. The flowing numbers came to me Unbidden from the heart; So pure the strain, that poesy Seemed something more than art. No doubtful cadence marred a line, So tunefully it flowed, And through the measure, all divine The fire of genius glowed. So deftly were the verses wrought, So fair the legend told, That every word revealed a thought, And every thought was gold. Mine was the charm, the power, the skill, The wisdom of the years; 'Twas mine to move the world at will To laughter or to tears. For subtile pleasantry was there, And brilliant flash of wit; Now, pleading eyes were raised in prayer, And now with smiles were lit. I sang of hours when youth was king, And of one happy spot Where life and love were everything, And time was half forgot. Of gracious days in woodland ways, When every flower and tree Seemed echoing the sweetest phrase From lips in Arcadie. Of sagas old and Norseman bands That sailed o'er northern seas; Enchanting tales of fairy lands And strange philosophies. I sang of Egypt's fairest queen, With passion's fatal curse; Of that pale, sad-faced Florentine, As deathless as his verse. Of time of the Arcadian Pan, When dryads thronged the trees-- When Atalanta swiftly ran With fleet Hippomenes. Brave stories, too, did I relate Of battle-flags unfurled; Of glorious days when Greece was great-- When Rome was all the world! Of noble deeds for noble creeds, Of woman's sacrifice-- The mother's stricken heart that bleeds For souls in Paradise. Anon I told a tale of shame, And while in tears I slept, Behold! a white-robed angel came And read the words and wept! And so I wrote my perfect song, In such a wondrous key, I heard the plaudits of the throng, And fame awaited me. Alas! the sullen morning broke, And came the tempest's roar: 'Mid discord trembling I awoke, And lo! my dream was o'er! Yet often in the quiet night My song returns to me; I seize the pen, and fain would write My long lost melody. But dreaming o'er the words, ere long Comes vague remembering, And fades away the sweetest song That man can ever sing! A BALLADE OF MONTAIGNE I sit before the firelight's glow With all the world in apogee, And con good Master Florio With pipe a-light; and as I see Queen Bess herself with book a-knee, Reading it o'er and o'er again, Here, 'neath my cosy mantel-tree, I smoke my pipe and read Montaigne. Now howls the wind and drives the snow; The traveler shivers on the lea; While, with my precious folio, Behold a happy devotee To book and warmth and reverie! The blast upon the window-pane Disturbs me not, as trouble-free, I smoke my pipe and read Montaigne. I am content, and thus I know A mind as calm as summer sea,-- A heart that stranger is to woe. To happiness I hold the key In this rare, sweet philosophy; And while the Fates so fair ordain, Well pleased with Destiny's decree, I smoke my pipe and read Montaigne. ENVOY Dear Prince! aye, more than prince to me, Thou monarch of immortal reign! Always thy subject I would be, And smoke my pipe and read Montaigne! THE CRIMINAL Crime flourishes throughout the land, And bids defiance to the law, And wicked deeds on every hand O'erwhelm our souls with awe! I know one hardened criminal Whose maidenhood with crime begins; Who, safe behind a prison wall, Should expiate her sins. She is a thief whene'er she smiles, For then she steals my heart from me, And keeps it with a maiden's wiles, And never sets it free. She plunders sighs from humankind, She pilfers tears I would not weep, She robs me of my peace of mind, And she purloins my sleep. Of lawless ways she stands confessed, And is a burglar bold whene'er She finds a weakness in my breast, And slyly enters there. A gambler she, whose arts entrance, Whose victims yield without demur; Content to play Love's game of chance And lose their hearts to her. A graver crime is hers; for, when Her matchless beauty I admire, Of arson she is guilty then, And sets my heart on fire. A bandit, preying on mankind, Her captives by the score increase; No hand can e'er their chains unbind, No ransom bring release. She is a cruel murderess Whene'er her eyes send forth a dart, And as she holds me in duress It stabs me to the heart. Crime flourishes throughout the land, And bids defiance to the law, And wicked deeds on every hand O'erwhelm our souls with awe! A BIT OF COLOR [PARIS, 1896] Oh, damsel fair at the Porte Maillot, With the soft blue eyes that haunt me so, Pray what should I do When a girl like you Bestows her smile, her glance, and her sigh On the first fond fool that is passing by, Who listens and longs as the sweet words flow From her pretty red lips at the Porte Maillot? There were lips as red ere you were born, Now wreathed in smiles, now curled in scorn, And other bright eyes With their truth and lies, That broke the heart and turned the brain Of many a tender, lovelorn swain; But never, I ween, brought half the woe That comes from the lips at the Porte Maillot. A charming picture, there you stand, A perfect work from a master's hand! With your face so fair And your wondrous hair, Your glorious color, your light and shade, And your classic head that the gods have made, Your cheeks with crimson all aglow, As you wait for a lover at the Porte Maillot. There are gorgeous tints in the jeweled crown, There are brilliant shades when the sun goes down; But your lips vie With the western sky, And give to the world so rare a hue That the painter must learn his art anew, And the sunset borrow a brighter glow From the lips of the girl at the Porte Maillot. Come, tell me truly, fair-haired youth, Do her eyes flash love, her lips speak truth? Or does she beguile With her glance and smile, And burn you, spurn you all day long With a Circe's art and a Siren's song? Ah! would that your foolish heart might know The lie in the heart at the Porte Maillot! DINNER FAVORS TO S. I fill my goblet to the brim And clink the glasses rim to rim. Across the board I waft a kiss With thanks for such an hour as this, And clasping joy, bid sorrow flee, And welcome you my vis-à-vis. TO A. R. C. Of all the joys on earth that be There is no sweeter one to me Than sitting with a merry lass From consommé to demi-tasse. And yet a golden hour I'd steal, Reverse the order of the meal, And countermarching, backward stray From demi-tasse to consommé. TO S. B. F. Give me but a bit to eat, And an hour or two, Just a salad and a sweet, And a chat with you. Give me table full or bare, Crust or rich ragout; But whatever be the fare, Always give me you. THE HOST Between the two perplexed I go, A shuttlecock, tossed to and fro. I gaze on one, and know that she Is all that womankind can be; I seek the other, and she seems The perfect idol of my dreams; And so between the charming pair My heart is ever in the air. And yet, although it be my fate To hover indeterminate, I rest content, nor ask for more Than this sweet game of battledore. THE MOPER The Moper mopeth all the day; He mopeth eke at night; And never is the Moper gay, But, grim and serious alway, He is a sorry sight. He liketh not the merry quip; He hateth other men; Escheweth he companionship, Nor doth he e'er essay to trip The light fantastic ten. He seeketh not where murm'ring brooks With rippling music flow. He seeth naught in woman's looks, And never readeth he in books Except they tell of woe. He e'en forgetteth that the sun, Likewise God's balmy air, Were made to gladden every one; But he preferreth both to shun, And taketh not his share. He careth not for merry wights Who drink Château Yquem, But he would set the world to rights By peopling it with eremites-- And very few of them. When children sport with merry glee, He thinketh they are wild, And with them doth so disagree It seemeth verily that he Hath never been a child. He thinketh that it is not right Rare dishes to discuss, And knoweth not the keen delight Of one that hath an appetite Yclepèd ravenous. Of goodly raiment he hath none, He calleth it "display;" Wherefore the urchin poketh fun, Because he looketh like that one Unholy men call "jay." And so we see this foolish man All pleasant things doth scorn. Good folk, pray God to change his plan, And cheer the Moper if He can, Or let no more be born! VARIOUS VALENTINES I FROM A BIBLIOPHILE Lyke some choise booke thou arte toe mee, Bound all so daintilie; And 'neath the covers faire Are contents true and rare. Ne wolde I looke Ne reade inne any other booke If I belyke could find therein the charte And indice to thy hearte. The Great Wise Authour made but one Of this edition, then was don; And were this onlie copie mine, Then wolde I write therein, "My Valentyne." II FROM AN INCONSTANT-CONSTANT (_After Henri Murger_) Though I love many maidens fair As fondly as a heart may dare, Yet still are you the only one True goddess of my pantheon. And though my life is like a song, Each maid a stanza, clear and strong, Yet always I return again To you who are the sweet refrain. III FROM A COMMERCIAL LOVER If I were but a syndicate, And love were merchandise, I'd buy it at the market rate, And hold it for a rise. And should the price of all this love Bound upward like a ball, And reach 1000 or above, Still you should have it all. IV FROM AN UNCERTAIN MARKSMAN I send you two kisses Wrapped up in a rhyme; From Love's warm abysses I send you two kisses; If one of them misses Please wait till next time, And I'll send you _three_ kisses Wrapped up in a rhyme. V FROM A CONCHOLOGIST Were I a murm'ring ocean shell Pressed close against your ear, My constant whisperings would tell A story sweet to hear. I'd make the message from the sea Love's tidings on the shore, And I would woo with words so true That you could ask no more. So if some silvern nautilus Lay close beside your cheek, And you should hear a language dear Unto the heart I seek, You'll know within the simple shell That murmurs o'er and o'er I send to you a love more true Than e'er was breathed before. VI FROM A HYPERBOLIST Take all the love that e'er was told Since first the world began, Increase it twenty thousand-fold (If mathematics can), Add all the love the world shall see Till Gabriel's final call, And when compared with mine 'twill be Infinitesimal. WERE ALL THE WORLD LIKE YOU Were all the world like you, my dear, Were all the world like you, Oh, there'd be darts in all our hearts From sunset to the dew. For life would be Love's jubilee Where all were two and two, And lovers' rhyme the only crime, Were all the world like you, my dear, Were all the world like you. Were all the world like you, my dear, Were all the world like you, There'd be no pain nor clouds nor rain, No kisses overdue; But sweetest sighs and pleading eyes, Where Cupid's arrow flew, And lovers' rhyme the only crime, Were all the world like you, my dear, Were all the world like you. HERE AND THERE Sweet Phyllis went a-rambling here and there, Here and there. Her eyes were blue and golden was her hair. She said, "Oh, life is strange; I'm sure I need a change; 'Tis sad for _one_ to ramble here and there, Here and there." Young Strephon went a-rambling here and there, Here and there. He sighed, "It needs but two to make a pair. If I should meet a maid Not in the least afraid, How happy we'd go rambling here and there, Here and there." As youth and maid went rambling here and there, Here and there, They met, and loved at sight, for both were fair; And neither youth nor maid Was in the least afraid, And hand in hand they ramble here and there, Here and there. UNCLE JOGALONG My dear old Uncle Jogalong Was very slow, was very slow, And said he thought that folks were wrong To hurry so, to hurry so. When he walked out upon the street To take the air, to take the air, It seemed almost as if his feet Were fastened there, were fastened there. He thought that traveling by rail Was hurrying and scurrying, But said the slow and creeping snail Was just the thing, was just the thing. He thought a hasty appetite An awful crime, an awful crime, So never finished breakfast, quite, Till dinner time, till dinner time. He said the world turned round so fast He could not stay, he could not stay, And so he said "Good-by" at last, And went away, and went away. THE INDIFFERENT MARINER I'm a tough old salt, and it's never I care A penny which way the wind is, Or whether I sight Cape Finisterre, Or make a port at the Indies. Some folks steer for a port to trade, And some steer north for the whaling; Yet never I care a damn just where I sail, so long's I'm sailing. You never can stop the wind when it blows, And you can't stop the rain from raining; Then why, oh, why, go a-piping of your eye When there's no sort o' use in complaining? My face is browned and my lungs are sound, And my hands they are big and calloused. I've a little brown jug I sometimes hug, And a little bread and meat for ballast. But I keep no log of my daily grog, For what's the use o' being bothered? I drink a little more when the wind's offshore, And most when the wind's from the no'th'ard. Of course with a chill if I'm took quite ill, And my legs get weak and toddly, At the jug I pull, and turn in full, And sleep the sleep of the godly. But whether I do or whether I don't, Or whether the jug's my failing, It's never I care a damn just where I sail, so long's I'm sailing. ON A LIBRARY WALL When faltering fingers bid me cease to write, And, laying down the pen, I seek the Night, May those, to whom the Daylight still is sweet, With loving lips my name ofttimes repeat. And should Belshazzar's spirit hither stray, And linger o'er the lines I write to-day, May he, who wept for Babylonia's fall, Look kindly at _this_ "writing on the wall"! MRS. MULLIGATAWNY Mrs. Mulligatawny said, "I'm sure it's going to rain." Mr. Mulligatawny said, "To me it's very plain." William Mulligatawny said, "It must rain, anyhow." Mary Mulligatawny said, "I feel it raining now." And yet there were no clouds in sight, and 'twas a pleasant day, But Mrs. Mulligatawny always liked to have her way. With Mrs. Mulligatawny the family all agreed, For all the Mulligatawnys feared her very much indeed, And did, whenever they were bid, As Mrs. Mulligatawny did, And tried to think, as they were taught, As Mrs. Mulligatawny thought. Mrs. Mulligatawny said, "Now two and two are three." Mr. Mulligatawny said, "I'm sure they ought to be." William Mulligatawny said, "Arithmetic is wrong." Mary Mulligatawny said, "It's been so all along." Now two and two do not make three, and three they never were; But Mrs. Mulligatawny said 'twas near enough for her. With Mrs. Mulligatawny the family all agreed, For all the Mulligatawnys feared her very much indeed, And did, whenever they were bid, As Mrs. Mulligatawny did, And tried to think, as they were taught, As Mrs. Mulligatawny thought. Mrs. Mulligatawny fell out of the world one day. Mr. Mulligatawny said, "I don't know what to say." William Mulligatawny said, "I don't know what to do." Mary Mulligatawny said, "I feel the same as you." Mrs. Mulligatawny left the family sitting there. They couldn't think, they couldn't move, because they didn't dare; For Mrs. Mulligatawny had always thought for them, And all the Mulligatawnys thought the same as Mrs. M., And did, whenever they were bid, As Mrs. Mulligatawny did, And tried to think, as they were taught, As Mrs. Mulligatawny thought. EUTHANASIA [To E. C.] Oh, drop your eyelids down, my lady; Oh, drop your eyelids down. 'Twere well to keep your bright eyes shady For pity of the town! But should there any glances be, I pray you give them all to me; For though my life be lost thereby, It were the sweetest death to die! DAINTY LITTLE LOVE Dainty little Love came tripping Down the hill, Smiling as he thought of sipping Sweets at will. SHE said, "No, Love must go." Dainty little Love came tripping Down the hill. Dainty little Love went sighing Up the hill, All his little hopes were dying-- Love was ill. Vain he tried Tears to hide. Dainty little Love went sighing Up the hill. TO M. Sweet visions came to me in sleep, Ah! wondrous fair to see; And in my mind I strove to keep The dream to tell to thee. But morning broke with golden gleam, And shone upon thy face, And life was lovelier than a dream, And dreams had lost their grace. THE SONG I heard an old, familiar air Strummed idly by a careless hand, Yet in the melody were rare, Sweet echoings from childhood land. The well-remembered mother touch, The wise denials and consents, The trivial sorrows that were much, Small pleasures that were large events; The fancies, dreams, strange wonderings, The daily problems unexplained, Momentous as the cares of kings That on unhappy thrones have reigned, Came back with each unstudied tone; And came that song remembered best, Which, with a sweetness all its own, Once lulled the play-worn child to rest. And there, secure as Tarik's height, He slumbered, shielded from alarms, Safe from the mystery of night, Close folded in the mother's arms. Then Israel's mighty songs of old, And all the modern masters' art, Were less than simple lays that told The secret of the mother's heart. The sweetest melody that flows From lips that win the world's applause Charms not like that which childhood knows, Unfettered by the curb of laws. For though we rise to nobler themes, To grander harmonies attain, Their lives not in the academes The magic of the simpler strain. And we may spurn the cruder song, Or name it anything we will, Denounce the artifice as wrong, Yet to the child 'tis music still. Thus, list'ning to an idle air, Struck lightly by a careless hand, I heard, amid the cadence there, The sweetest song of childhood land. AT TWILIGHT TIME At twilight time when tolls the chime, And saddest notes are falling, A lonely bird with plaintive word Across the dusk is calling. Vain doth it wait for one dear mate, That ne'er shall know the morrow; Then sinks to rest with drooping crest In one long dream of sorrow. Dearest, when night is here, To thee I'm calling, Sadly as tear on tear Is slowly falling, Oh, fold me near, more near-- In love enthralling! Here on thy breast, While life shall last, With thee I stay. Here will I rest Till night is past, And comes the day! CÉLESTE Of sweethearts I have had a score, And time may bring as many more; Tho' I remember all the rest, Just now I worship dear Céleste; Hers may not be the greatest love, But ah! it is the latest love. For little Cupid's never stupid, As I've found out; And love is truest when 'tis newest, Beyond a doubt, beyond a doubt. Of sweethearts I have had a score, Céleste says I deserve no more; I take revenge on dear Céleste, By telling her I love her best; Hers may not be the greatest love, But ah! it is the latest love. For little Cupid's never stupid, As I've found out; And love is truest when 'tis newest, Beyond a doubt, beyond a doubt. THISTLE-DOWN The thistle-down floats on the air, the air, Whenever the soft wind blows, And the wind can tell just where, just where The feathery thistle-down goes. And it tells the bird in a single word, Who whispers it low to the bee; And they try to keep the mystery deep, And none of them tell it to me. But I know well, though they never will tell, Where the thistle-down goes when it says "Farewell," It floats and floats away on the air, And goes where the wind goes--everywhere! SLUMBER SONG Gently fall the shadows gray, Daylight softly veiling; Now to Dreamland we'll away, Sailing, sailing, sailing. Little eyes were made for sleeping, Little heads were made for rest, Golden locks were made for keeping Close to mother's breast; Little hands were made for folding, Little lips should never sigh; What dear mother's arms are holding, Love alone can buy. Gently fall the shadows gray, Daylight softly veiling; Now to Dreamland we'll away, Sailing, sailing, sailing. THOU ART TO ME Thou art to me As are soft breezes to a summer sea; As stars unto the night; Or when the day is born, As sunrise to the morn; As peace unto the fading of the light. Thou art to me As one sweet flower upon a barren lea; As rest to toiling hands; As one clear spring amid the desert sands; As smiles to maidens' lips; As hope to friends that wait for absent ships; As happiness to youth; As purity to truth; As sweetest dreams to sleep; As balm to wounded hearts that weep. All, all that I would have thee be Thou art to me. LOVE [TRIO] Oh, love hits all humanity, humanity, my dear; But after all it's vanity, a vanity, I fear; And sometimes 'tis insanity, insanity, so queer; Humanity, yes, a vanity, yes, insanity so queer. And love is often curious, so curious to see, And oftentimes is spurious, so spurious, ah, me! And surely 'tis injurious, injurious when free, So curious, yes, and spurious, yes, injurious when free. Oh, love brings much anxiety, anxiety and grief, But seasoned with propriety, propriety, relief, It's mixed with joy and piety, but piety is brief; Anxiety, yes, propriety, yes, but piety is brief. Oh, young love's all timidity, timidity, I'm told, Gains courage with rapidity, rapidity, so bold, With traces of acidity, acidity, when old; Timidity, yes, rapidity, yes, acidity, when old. THE STRANGER-MAN "Now what is that, my daughter dear, upon thy cheek so fair?" "'Tis but a kiss, my mother dear--kind fortune sent it there. It was a courteous stranger-man that gave it unto me, And it is passing red because it was the last of three." "A kiss indeed! my daughter dear; I marvel in surprise! Such conduct with a stranger-man I fear me was not wise." "Methought the same, my mother dear, and so at three forbore, Although the courteous stranger-man vowed he had many more." "Now prithee, daughter, quickly go, and bring the stranger here, And bid him hie and bid him fly to me, my daughter dear; For times be very, very hard, and blessings eke so rare, I fain would meet a stranger-man that hath a kiss to spare." THE HONEYSUCKLE VINE 'Twas a tender little honeysuckle vine That smiled and danced in the warm sunshine, And spied a maid as fair as all maids be, Who said, "Little honeysuckle, come up to me." So it climbed and climbed in the sun and the shade, And all summer long at her window stayed; For that is the way that honeysuckles go, And that is the way that true loves grow. Then the loving little honeysuckle vine Kissed the little maid in the warm sunshine; But the winter came with an angry frown, And the false little maid shut the window down; And the sorrowing vine on the wintry side Mourned and mourned for the love that died, And faded away in the wind and snow,-- And that is the way that some loves go. SAINT BOTOLPH Saint Botolph flourished in the olden time, In the days when the saints were in their prime. Oh, his feet were bare and bruised and cold, But his heart was warm and as pure as gold. And the kind old saint with his gown and his hood Was loved by the sinners and loved by the good, For he made the sinners as pure as the snow, And the good men needed him to keep them so. CHORUS Then drink, brave gentlemen, drink with me To the Lincolnshire saint by the old North Sea. A glass and a toast and a song and a rhyme To the barefooted saint of the olden time. He loved a friend and a flagon of wine, When the friend was true and the bottle was fine. He would raise his glass with a knowing wink, And this was the toast he would always drink:-- "Oh, here's to the good and the bad men too, For without them saints would have nothing to do. Oh, I love them both and I love them well, But which I love better, I never can tell." CHORUS Then drink, brave gentlemen, drink with me To the Lincolnshire saint by the old North Sea. A glass and a toast and a song and a rhyme To the barefooted saint of the olden time. As he journeyed along on the king's highway He gave all the boys and the girls "Good-day," And never a child saw the hood and gown But ran to the father of Botolph's Town. He'd a word for the wicked, and he called them kin, And he said, "I am certain that there must be sin While a few get the loaves and many get the crumbs, And some are born fingers and some born thumbs." CHORUS Then drink, brave gentlemen, drink with me To the Lincolnshire saint by the old North Sea. A glass and a toast and a song and a rhyme To the barefooted saint of the olden time. But the saint grew old, and sorry the day When his life went out with the tide in the bay; But he left a name and he left a creed Of the cheerful life and the kindly deed. Then remember the man of the days of old Whose heart was warm and as pure as gold, And remember the tears and the prayers he gave For any poor devil with a soul to save. CHORUS Then drink, brave gentlemen, drink with me To the Lincolnshire saint by the old North Sea. A glass and a toast and a song and a rhyme To the barefooted saint of the olden time. THE GURGLING IMPS The Gurgling Imps of Mummery Mum Lived in the Land of the Crimson Plum, And a language very strange had they, 'Twas merely a chattering ricochet. The Gurgling Imps of Mummery Mum Caught hummingbirds for the sake of the hum, Their cheeks were flushed with a sable tinge, Their eyelids hung on a silver hinge. The Gurgling Imps of Mummery Mum Called each other "My charming chum," And floated in tears of joy to see Their relatives hung in a cranberry tree. The Gurgling Imps of Mummery Mum Stole the whole of a half of a crumb, And a wind arose and blew the Imps Way off to the Land of the Lazy Limps. THE WORM WILL TURN I'm a gentle, meek, and patient human worm; Unattractive, Rather active, With a sense of right, original but firm. I was taught to be forgiving, For my enemies to pray; But what's the use of living If you never can repay All the little animosities that in your bosom burn-- Oh, it's pleasant to remember that "the worm will turn." I'm so gentle and so patient and so meek, Unpretending, Unoffending. But if, perchance, you smite me on the cheek, I will never turn the other, As I was taught to do By a puritanic mother, Whose theology was blue. Your experience will widen when explicitly you learn How a modest, mild, submissive little worm will turn. I'm so subtle and so crafty and so sly. I am humble, But I "tumble" To the slightest oscillation of the eye. When others think they're winning A fabulous amount, Then I do a little sinning On my personal account, And in my quiet, simple way a modest stipend earn As they slowly grasp the bitter fact that worms will turn. Oh, human worms are curious little things; Inoffensive, Rather pensive Till it comes to using little human stings. Oh, then avoid intrusion If you would be discreet, And cultivate seclusion In an underground retreat. And whenever you are tempted the lowly worm to spurn, Just bear in mind that little line, "The worm will turn." THE BOSTON CATS A Little Cat played on a silver flute, And a Big Cat sat and listened; The Little Cat's strains gave the Big Cat pains, And a tear on his eyelid glistened. Then the Big Cat said, "Oh, rest awhile;" But the Little Cat said, "No, no; For I get pay for the tunes I play;" And the Big Cat answered, "Oh! If you get pay for the tunes you play, I'm afraid you'll play till you drop; You'll spoil your health in the race for wealth, So I'll give you more to stop." Said the Little Cat, "Hush! you make me blush; Your offer is unusually kind; Though it's very, very hard to leave the back yard, I'll accept if you don't mind." So the Big Cat gave him a thousand pounds And a silver brush and a comb, And a country seat on Beacon Street, Right under the State House dome. And the Little Cat sits with other little kits, And watches the bright sun rise; And the voice of the flute is long since mute, And the Big Cat dries his eyes. THE JONQUIL MAID A little Maid sat in a Jonquil Tree, Singing alone, In a low love-tone, And the wind swept by with a wistful moan; For he longed to stay With the Maid all day; But he knew As he blew It was true That the dew Would never, never dry If the wind should die; So he hurried away where the rosebuds grew. And while to the Land of the Rose went he, Singing alone, In a low love-tone, A Little Maid sat in a Jonquil Tree. The Little Maid's eyes had a rainbow hue, And her sunset hair Was woven with care In a knot that was fit for a Psyche to wear; And she pressed her lips With her finger tips, Threw a sly Kiss to try If he'd sigh In reply, And said with a laugh, "Oh, it's not one half As sweet as I give when there's Some One nigh." And while to the Rosebud Land went he, Singing alone, In a low love-tone, A Little Maid sat in a Jonquil Tree. The wind swept back to the Jonquil Tree At the close of day, In the twilight gray; But the sweet Little Maid had stolen away; And whither she's flown Will never be known Till the Rose As it blows Shall disclose All it knows Of the Maid so fair With the sunset hair. And the sad wind comes and sighs and goes, And dreams of the day when he blew so free, When singing alone, In a low love-tone, A Little Maid sat in a Jonquil Tree. THE ROLLICKING MASTODON A Rollicking Mastodon lived in Spain, In the trunk of a Tranquil Tree. His face was plain, but his jocular vein Was a burst of the wildest glee. His voice was strong and his laugh so long That people came many a mile, And offered to pay a guinea a day For the fractional part of a smile. The Rollicking Mastodon's laugh was wide-- Indeed, 'twas a matter of family pride; And oh! so proud of his jocular vein Was the Rollicking Mastodon over in Spain. The Rollicking Mastodon said one day, "I feel that I need some air, For a little ozone's a tonic for bones, As well as a gloss for the hair." So he skipped along and warbled a song In his own triumphulant way. His smile was bright and his skip was light As he chirruped his roundelay. The Rollicking Mastodon tripped along, And sang what Mastodons call a song; But every note of it seemed to pain The Rollicking Mastodon over in Spain. A Little Peetookle came over the hill, Dressed up in a bollitant coat; And he said, "You need some harroway seed, And a little advice for your throat." The Mastodon smiled and said, "My child, There's a chance for your taste to grow. If you polish your mind, you'll certainly find How little, how little you know." The Little Peetookle, his teeth he ground At the Mastodon's singular sense of sound; For he felt it a sort of musical stain On the Rollicking Mastodon over in Spain. "Alas! and alas! has it come to this pass?" Said the Little Peetookle: "Dear me! It certainly seems your horrible screams Intended for music must be." The Mastodon stopped; his ditty he dropped, And murmured, "Good-morning, my dear! I never will sing to a sensitive thing That shatters a song with a sneer!" The Rollicking Mastodon bade him "adieu." Of course, 'twas a sensible thing to do; For Little Peetookle is spared the strain Of the Rollicking Mastodon over in Spain. THE FIVE SENSES Oh, why do men their glasses clink When good old honest wine they drink? Wine is so excellent a thing To lowest subject, or to highest king, That every sense alike should share The pleasure that can banish care. Thus may each merry eye _behold_ The sparkle of the red or gold. Our lips may _feel_ the goblet's edge And _taste_ the loving cup we pledge. While from each foaming glass escape The precious _perfumes_ of the grape. But ah, we _hear_ it not, and so We give the _touch_ that all men know. And thus do all the senses share The pleasure that can banish care. And that is why the glasses clink When good old honest wine we drink. ECONOMY [A VALENTINE] I send, O sweetest friend, A kiss; Such as fair ladies gave Of old, when knights were brave, And smiles were won Through foes undone. And this will be For you to give again to me; And then, its present errand o'er, I'll give it unto you once more, Ere briefest time elapse, With interest, perhaps. Its mission spent, Again to me it may be lent. And thus, day after day, As we a simple law obey, Forever, to and fro, The selfsame kiss will go; A busy shuttle that shall weave A web of love, to soften and relieve Our daily care. And so, As thus we share, With lip to lip, Our frugal partnership, One kiss will always do For two. And, oh, how easy it will be To practice this economy! IDYLETTES OF THE QUEEN I.--SHE I fain would write on pleasant themes; So let me prate Awhile of Kate; And if my rhyming effort seems Uncouth or rough, At any rate, She's Kate, And that's enough. II.--HER EYES Her eyes are bright-- I cannot say "like stars at night," Nor can I say "Like the Orb of Day," Because such phrases are archaic. And if I swear That they compare With diamonds rare, That's too prosaic. I've hunted my thesaurus through, "The Century" and "Webster," too, But all in vain; 'Tis therefore plain That they who made these books so wise Had never seen her eyes! III.--HER GOWN When Kate puts on her Sunday gown And goes to church all in her best, The watchful gargoyles looking down Relax their most forbidding frown, And smile with kindly interest. Discerning gargoyles! could I be One of your number looking down, With you I surely would agree And share your amiability At sight of Kate and Sunday gown. IV.--HER KNOWLEDGE How much she knows no one can tell; But she can read and write and spell, Divide and multiply and add, And name the apples Thomas had When John enticed him five to sell. For "jelly" she does not say "jell," Nor horrify us with "umbrell," For all of which we're very glad-- How much she knows! She knows the oyster by his shell, Detects the newsboy by his yell, Enumerates the bones in shad, And thinks my poetry is bad. Well! well! well! well! well! well! well! well! How much she knows! V.--HER SIGH When she utters a sigh 'Tis a breath from the roses, And a-hovering nigh, When she utters a sigh, The bees wonder why No garden discloses. When she utters a sigh 'Tis a breath from the roses. VI.--HER RING Her ring goes round her finger. Oh, foolish thing! Were I a ring, I'd not "go round"--I'd linger! VII.--HER FAULTS Of faults she has but one, And that is, she has none. VIII.--HER VOICE Sweet and soothing, rhythmic, tuneful, Dulcet, mellow, _un_bassoonful, Zither, 'cello, lute, guitar, And there you are! IX.--HER LOVE Do you love me? R. S. V. P. TO M. E. We keep in step as years roll by; You march behind and I before:-- The path is new to you; but I Have passed the ground you're walking o'er. Yet I march on with measured tread, And looking back, I smile and greet you:-- I fear the order, "Halt!" Instead, Would I might countermarch and meet you. BON VOYAGE [TO O. R.] Out from the Land of the Future, into the Land of the Past A comrade sails to the East, the sport of the wave and the blast. Oh, billow and breeze, be kind, and temper your strength to your guest, Kind for the sake of the friend,--for the sake of the hands he pressed. Oh, tenderest billow and breeze, welcome him even as we Would welcome if you were the friend and we were the wind and the sea! Welcome, protect him, and waft him westward and homeward at last Into the Land of the Future, out from the Land of the Past! THE BOOK OF LIFE Whoso his book of life doth con From title-leaf to colophon May read, if he but wrongly look, Some sorry pages in his book. But if he read aright each line, Interpreting the scheme divine, 'Twill be most fair to look upon From title-leaf to colophon. The Riverside Press _Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co._ _Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._ TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES: Text in italics is surrounded with underscores: _italics_. 
38410	----	THE STAR-TREADER AND OTHER POEMS BY CLARK ASHTON SMITH A. M. ROBERTSON STOCKTON STREET AT UNION SQUARE SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA MCMXII COPYRIGHT 1912 BY A. M. ROBERTSON Philopolis Press San Francisco TO MY MOTHER CONTENTS NERO CHANT TO SIRIUS THE STAR-TREADER THE MORNING POOL THE NIGHT FOREST THE MAD WIND SONG TO OBLIVION MEDUSA ODE TO THE ABYSS THE SOUL OF THE SEA THE BUTTERFLY THE PRICE THE MYSTIC MEANING ODE TO MUSIC THE LAST NIGHT ODE ON IMAGINATION THE WIND AND THE MOON LAMENT OF THE STARS THE MAZE OF SLEEP THE WINDS THE MASK OF FORSAKEN GODS A SUNSET THE CLOUD-ISLANDS THE SNOW-BLOSSOMS THE SUMMER MOON THE RETURN OF HYPERION LETHE ATLANTIS THE UNREVEALED THE ELDRITCH DARK THE CHERRY SNOWS FAIRY LANTERNS NIRVANA THE NEMESIS OF SUNS WHITE DEATH RETROSPECT AND FORECAST SHADOW OF NIGHTMARE THE SONG OF A COMET THE RETRIBUTION TO THE DARKNESS A DREAM OF BEAUTY THE DREAM BRIDGE A LIVE-OAK LEAF PINE NEEDLES TO THE SUN THE FUGITIVES AVERTED MALEFICE THE MEDUSA OF THE SKIES A DEAD CITY THE SONG OF THE STARS COPAN A SONG OF DREAMS THE BALANCE SATURN FINIS NERO This Rome, that was the toil of many men, The consummation of laborious years-- Fulfilment's crown to visions of the dead, And image of the wide desire of kings-- Is made my darkling dream's effulgency, Fuel of vision, brief embodiment Of wandering will, and wastage of the strong Fierce ecstacy of one tremendous hour, When ages piled on ages were a flame To all the years behind, and years to be. Yet any sunset were as much as this, Save for the music forced by hands of fire From out the hard strait silences which bind Dull Matter's tongueless mouth--a music pierced With the tense voice of Life, more quick to cry Its agony--and save that I believed The radiance redder for the blood of men. Destruction hastens and intensifies The process that is Beauty, manifests Ranges of form unknown before, and gives Motion and voice and hue where otherwise Bleak inexpressiveness had leveled all. If one create, there is the lengthy toil; The laboured years and days league tow'rd an end Less than the measure of desire, mayhap, After the sure consuming of all strength, And strain of faculties that otherwhere Were loosed upon enjoyment; and at last Remains to one capacity nor power For pleasure in the thing that he hath made. But on destruction hangs but little use Of time or faculty, but all is turned To the one purpose, unobstructed, pure, Of sensuous rapture and observant joy; And from the intensities of death and ruin, One draws a heightened and completer life, And both extends and vindicates himself. I would I were a god, with all the scope Of attributes that are the essential core Of godhead, and its visibility. I am but emperor, and hold awhile The power to hasten Death upon his way, And cry a halt to worn and lagging Life For others, but for mine own self may not Delay the one, nor bid the other speed. There have been many kings, and they are dead, And have no power in death save what the wind Confers upon their blown and brainless dust To vex the eyeballs of posterity. But were I god, I would be overlord Of many kings, and were as breath to guide Their dust of destiny. And were I god, Exempt from this mortality which clogs Perception, and clear exercise of will, What rapture it would be, if but to watch Destruction crouching at the back of Time, The tongueless dooms which dog the travelling suns; The vampire Silence at the breast of worlds, Fire without light that gnaws the base of things, And Lethe's mounting tide, that rots the stone Of fundamental spheres. This were enough Till such time as the dazzled wings of will Came up with power's accession, scarcely felt For very suddenness. Then would I urge The strong contention and conflicting might Of chaos and creation, matching them, Those immemorial powers inimical, And all their stars and gulfs subservient-- Dynasts of Time, and anarchs of the dark-- In closer war reverseless; and would set New discord at the universal core, A Samson-principle to bring it down In one magnificence of ruin. Yea, The monster Chaos were mine unleashed hound, And all my power Destruction's own right arm! I would exult to mark the smouldering stars Renew beneath my breath their elder fire, And feed upon themselves to nothingness. The might of suns, slow-paced with swinging weight Of myriad worlds, were made at my desire One long rapidity of roaring light, Through which the voice of Life were audible, And singing of the immemorial dead Whose dust is loosened into vaporous wings With soaring wrack of systems ruinous. And were I weary of the glare of these, I would tear out the eyes of light, and stand Above a chaos of extinguished suns, That crowd, and grind, and shiver thunderously, Lending vast voice and motion, but no ray To the stretched silence of the blinded gulfs. Thus would I give my godhead space and speech For its assertion, and thus pleasure it, Hastening the feet of Time with casts of worlds Like careless pebbles, or with shattered suns Brightening the aspect of Eternity. CHANT TO SIRIUS What nights retard thee, O Sirius! Thy light is as a spear, And thou penetratest them As a warrior that stabbeth his foe Even to the center of his life. Thy rays reach farther than the gulfs; They form a bridge thereover, That shall endure till the links of the universe Are unfastened, and drop apart, And all the gulfs are one, Dissevered by suns no longer. How strong art thou in thy place! Thou stridest thine orbit, And the darkness shakes beneath thee, As a road that is trodden by an army. Thou art a god, In thy temple that is hollowed with light In the night of infinitude, And whose floor is the lower void; Thy worlds are as priests and ministers therein. Thou furrowest space, Even as an husbandman, And sowest it with alien seed; It beareth alien fruits, And these are thy testimony, Even as the crops of his fields Are the testimony of an husbandman. THE STAR-TREADER I A voice cried to me in a dawn of dreams, Saying, "Make haste: the webs of death and birth Are brushed away, and all the threads of earth Wear to the breaking; spaceward gleams Thine ancient pathway of the suns, Whose flame is part of thee; And deeps outreach immutably Whose largeness runs Through all thy spirit's mystery. Go forth, and tread unharmed the blaze Of stars where through thou camest in old days; Pierce without fear each vast Whose hugeness crushed thee not within the past. A hand strikes off the chains of Time, A hand swings back the door of years; Now fall earth's bonds of gladness and of tears, And opens the strait dream to space sublime." II Who rides a dream, what hand shall stay! What eye shall note or measure mete His passage on a purpose fleet, The thread and weaving of his way! It caught me from the clasping world, And swept beyond the brink of Sense, My soul was flung, and poised, and whirled, Like to a planet chained and hurled With solar lightning strong and tense. Swift as communicated rays That leap from severed suns a gloom Within whose waste no suns illume, The wingèd dream fulfilled its ways. Through years reversed and lit again I followed that unending chain Wherein the suns are links of light; Retraced through lineal, ordered spheres The twisting of the threads of years In weavings wrought of noon and night; Through stars and deeps I watched the dream unroll, Those folds that form the raiment of the soul. III Enkindling dawns of memory, Each sun had radiance to relume A sealed, disused, and darkened room Within the soul's immensity. Their alien ciphers shown and lit, I understood what each had writ Upon my spirit's scroll; Again I wore mine ancient lives, And knew the freedom and the gyves That formed and marked my soul. IV I delved in each forgotten mind, The units that had builded me, Whose deepnesses before were blind And formless as infinity-- Knowing again each former world-- From planet unto planet whirled Through gulfs that mightily divide Like to an intervital sleep. One world I found, where souls abide Like winds that rest upon a rose; Thereto they creep To loose all burden of old woes. And one I knew, where warp of pain Is woven in the soul's attire; And one, where with new loveliness Is strengthened Beauty's olden chain-- Soft as a sound, and keen as fire-- In light no darkness may depress. V Where no terrestrial dreams had trod My vision entered undismayed, And Life her hidden realms displayed To me as to a curious god. Where colored suns of systems triplicate Bestow on planets weird, ineffable, Green light that orbs them like an outer sea, And large auroral noons that alternate With skies like sunset held without abate, Life's touch renewed incomprehensibly The strains of mirth and grief's harmonious spell. Dead passions like to stars relit Shone in the gloom of ways forgot; Where crownless gods in darkness sit The day was full on altars hot. I heard--once more a part of it-- The central music of the Pleiades, And to Alcyone my soul Swayed with the stars that own her song's control. Unchallenged, glad I trod, a revenant In worlds Edenic longly lost; Or walked in spheres that sing to these, O'er space no light has crossed, Diverse as Hell's mad antiphone uptossed To Heaven's angelic chant. VI What vasts the dream went out to find! I seemed beyond the world's recall In gulfs where darkness is a wall To render strong Antares blind! In unimagined spheres I found The sequence of my being's round-- Some life where firstling meed of Song, The strange imperishable leaf, Was placed on brows that starry Grief Had crowned, and Pain anointed long; Some avatar where Love Sang like the last great star at morn Ere Death filled all its sky; Some life in fresher years unworn Upon a world whereof Peace was a robe like to the calms that lie On pools aglow with latter spring: There Life's pellucid surface took Clear image of all things, nor shook Till touch of Death's obscuring wing; Some earlier awakening In pristine years, when giant strife Of forces darkly whirled First forged the thing called Life-- Hot from the furnace of the suns-- Upon the anvil of a world. VII Thus knew I those anterior ones Whose lives in mine were blent; Till, lo! my dream, that held a night Where Rigel sends no word of might, Was emptied of the trodden stars, And dwindled to the sun's extent-- The brain's familiar prison-bars, And raiment of the sorrow and the mirth Wrought by the shuttles intricate of earth. THE MORNING POOL All night the pool held mysteries, Vague depths of night that lay in dream, Where phantoms of the pale-white stars Wandered, with darkness-tangled gleam. And now it holds the limpid light And shadeless azure of the skies, Wherein, like some enclaspèd gem, The morning's golden glamour lies. THE NIGHT FOREST Incumbent seemingly On the jagged points of peaks That end the visible west, The rounded moon yet floods The valleys hitherward With fall of torrential light, Ere from the overmost Aggressive mountain-cusp, She slip to the lower dark. But here, on an eastward slope Pointed and thick with its pine, The forest scarcely remembers Her light that is gone as a vision Or ecstasy too poignant And perilous for duration. Withdrawn in what darker web Or dimension of dream I know not, In silence pre-occupied And solemnest rectitude The pines uprear, and no sigh For the rapture of moonlight past, Comes from their bosom of boughs. Far in their secrecy I stand, and the burden of dusk Dull, but at times made keen With tingle of fragrances, Falls on me as a veil Between my soul and the world. What veil of trance, O pines, Divides you from my soul, That I feel but enter not Your distances of dream? Ah! strange, imperative sense Of world-deep mystery That shakes from out your boughs-- A fragrance yet more keen, Pressing upon the mind. The wind shall question you Of the dream I may not gain, And all its sombreness And depth immeasurable, Shall tremble away in sound Of speech not understood That my heart must break to hear. THE MAD WIND What hast thou seen, O wind, Of beauty or of terror Surpassing, denied to us, That with precipitate wings, Mad and ecstatical, Thou spurnest the hollows and trees That offer thee refuge of peace, And findest within the sky No safety nor respite From the memory of thy vision? SONG TO OBLIVION Art thou more fair For all the beauty gathered up in thee, As gold and gems within some lightless sea? For light of flowers, and bloom of tinted air, Art thou more fair? Art thou more strong For powers that turn to thee as unto sleep? For world and star that find thy ways more deep Than light may tread, too wearisome for song Art thou more strong? Nay! thou art bare For power and beauty on thine impotence Bestowed by fruitful Time's magnificence; For fruit of all things strong, and bloom of fair, Thou still art bare. MEDUSA As drear and barren as the glooms of Death, It lies, a windless land of livid dawns, Nude to a desolate firmament, with hills That seem the fleshless earth's outjutting ribs, And plains whose face is crossed and rivelled deep With gullies twisting like a serpent's track. The leprous touch of Death is on its stones, Where for his token visible, the Head Is throned upon a heap of monstrous rocks, Grotesque in everlasting ugliness, Within a hill-ravine, that splits athwart Like some old, hideous and unhealing scar. Her lethal beauty crowned with twining snakes That mingle with her hair, the Gorgon reigns. Her eyes are clouds wherein Death's lightnings lurk, Yet, even as men that seek the glance of Life, The gazers come, where, coiled and serpent-swift, Those levins wait. As 'round an altar-base Her victims lie, distorted, blackened forms Of postured horror smitten into stone,-- Time caught in meshes of Eternity-- Drawn back from dust and ruin of the years, And given to all the future of the world. The land is claimed of Death: the daylight comes Half-strangled in the changing webs of cloud That unseen spiders of bewildered winds Weave and unweave across the lurid sun In upper air. Below, no zephyr comes To break with life the circling spell of death. Long vapor-serpents twist about the moon, And in the windy murkness of the sky, The guttering stars are wild as candle-flames That near the socket. Thus the land shall be, And Death shall wait, throned in Medusa's eyes. Till, in the irremeable webs of night The sun is snared, and the corroded moon A dust upon the gulfs, and all the stars Rotted and fall'n like rivets from the sky, Letting the darkness down upon all things. ODE TO THE ABYSS O many-gulfed, unalterable one, Whose deep sustains Far-drifting world and sun, Thou wast ere ever star put out on thee; And thou shalt be When never world remains; When all the suns' triumphant strength and pride Is sunk in voidness absolute, And their majestic music wide In vaster silence rendered mute. And though God's will were night to dusk the blue, And law to cancel and disperse The tangled tissues of the universe, And mould the suns anew, His might were impotent to conquer thee, O invisible infinity! Thy darks subdue All light that treads thee down a space, Exulting o'er thy deeps. The cycles die, and lo! thy darkness reaps The flame of mightiest stars; In aeon-implicating wars Thou tearest planets from their place; Worlds granite-spined To thine erodents yield Their treasures centrally confined In crypts by continental pillars sealed. What suns and worlds have been thy prey Through unhorizoned stretches of the Past! What spheres that now essay Time's undimensioned vast, Shall plunge forgotten to thy gloom at length, With life that cried its query of the Night To ears with silence filled! What worlds unborn shall dare thy strength, Girt by a sun's unwearied might, And dip to darkness when the sun is stilled! O incontestable Abyss, What light in thine embrace of darkness sleeps-- What blaze of a sidereal multitude No peopled world is left to miss! What motion is at rest within thy deeps-- What gyres of planets long become thy food-- Worlds unconstrainable, That plunged therein to peace, Like tempest-worn and crew-forsaken ships; And suns that fell To huge and ultimate eclipse, And lasting gyre-release! What sound thy gulfs of silence hold! Stupendous thunder of the meeting stars, And crash of orbits that diverged, With Life's thin song are merged; Thy quietudes enfold Paean and threnody as one, And battle-blare of unremembered wars With festal songs Sung in the Romes of ruined spheres, And music that belongs To younger, undiscoverable years With words of yesterday. Ah, who may stay Thy soundless world-devouring tide? O thou whose hands pluck out the light of stars, Are worlds grown but as fruit for thee? May no sufficient bars, Nor marks inveterate abide To baffle thy persistency? Still and unstriving now, What plottest thou, Within thy universe-ulterior deeps, Dark as the final lull of suns? What new advancement of the night On citadels of stars around whose might Thy slow encroachment runs, And crouching silence, thunder-potent, sleeps? THE SOUL OF THE SEA A wind comes in from the sea, And rolls through the hollow dark Like loud, tempestuous waters. As the swift recurrent tide, It pours adown the sky, And rears at the cliffs of night Uppiled against the vast. Like the soul of the sea-- Hungry, unsatisfied With ravin of shores and of ships-- Come forth on the land to seek New prey of tideless coasts, It raves, made hoarse with desire, And the sounds of the night are dumb With the sound of its passing. THE BUTTERFLY I O wonderful and wingèd flow'r, That hoverest in the garden-close, Finding in mazes of the rose, The beauty of a Summer hour! O symbol of Impermanence, Thou art a word of Beauty's tongue, A word that in her song is sung, Appealing to the inner sense! Of that great mystic harmony, All lovely things are notes and words-- The trees, the flow'rs, the songful birds, The flame-white stars, the surging sea, The aureate light of sudden dawn, The sunset's crimson afterglow, The summer clouds, the dazzling snow, The brooks, the moonlight chaste and wan. Lacking (who knows?) a cloud, a tree, A streamlet's purl, the ocean's roar From Nature's multitudinous store-- Imperfect were the melody! II O Beauty, why so sad my heart? Why stirs in me a nameless pain Which seems like some remembered strain, As on this product of thine art Enraptured, marvelling I gaze, And note how airily 'tis wrought-- A wingèd dream, a bodied thought, The spirit of the summer days? Thy beauty opes, O Butterfly, The doors of being, with subtle sense Of Beauty's frail impermanence, And grief of knowing it must die. Again I seem to know the tears Of other lives, the woe and pain Of days that died; resurgent wane The moons of countless bygone years. III On other worlds, on other stars, To us but tiny points of light, Or lost in distances of night Beyond our system's farthest bars, A priest to Beauty's service sworn, I sought and served her all my days, With music and with hymns of praise. In sunset and the fires of morn, With thrilling heart her form I knew, And in the stars she whitely gleamed, And all the face of Nature seemed Expression of her shape and hue. I grieved to watch the summers pass With all their gorgeous shows of bloom, And sterner autumn months assume Their realm with withered leaves and grass. Mine was the grief of Change and Death, Of fair things gone beyond recall, The paling light of dawns, and all The flowers' vanished hues and breath. IV From out the web of former lives, The ancient catenated chain Of joy and sorrow, loss and gain, One certain truth my heart derives:-- Though Beauty passes, this I know, From Change and Death, this verity: Her spirit lives eternally-- 'Tis but her forms that come and go. V Lo! I am Beauty's constant thrall, Must ever on her voice await, And follow through the maze of Fate Her luring, strange and mystical. Obedient to her summonings, Forever must my soul aspire, And seek, on wings of lyric fire, To penetrate the Heart of Things, Wherein she sits, augustly throned, In loveliness that renders dumb-- The Essence and the final Sum-- With peril and with wonder zoned What though I fail, my duller sense Baffled as by a wall of stone? The high desire, the search alone Are their own prize and recompense. THE PRICE Behind each thing a shadow lies; Beauty hath e'er its cost: Within the moonlight-flooded skies How many stars are lost! THE MYSTIC MEANING Alas! that we are deaf and blind To meanings all about us hid! What secrets lurk the woods amid? What prophecies are on the wind? What tidings do the billows bring And cry in vain upon the strand? If we might only understand The brooklet's cryptic murmuring! The tongues of earth and air are strange. And yet (who knows?) one little word Learned from the language of the bird Might make us lords of Fate and Change! ODE TO MUSIC O woven fabric and bright web of sound, Whose threads are magical, And with swift weaving thrall And hold the spirit bound! We may not know whence thy strange sorceries fall-- Whether they be Earth's voices wild and strong, Her high and perfect song. Or broken dreams of higher worlds unfound. For, lo, thou art as dreams. And to thy realm all hidden things belong-- All fugitive and evanescent gleams The soul hath vainly sought; All mystic immanence; All visions of ungrasped magnificence, And great ideals pinnacled in thought; All paths with marvel fraught That lead to lands obscure: For, lo, upon thy road of sound we pass, Seeking thy magic lure, To vales mist-implicated and unsure, Where all seems strange as visions in a glass; And wonder-haunted hills, Where Beauty is an echo and a dream In sighing pines, and rills Clouded and deep with imaged tree and sky; And where bright rivers gleam Past cities towering high, Each wonderful as some cloud-fantasy. Thou loosenest the bondage of the years, Making the spirit free Of all sublunar joys and fears. Who mounts on thine imperious wings shall see The ways of life as threads of day and night; Serene above their change, His eyes shall know but far transcendent things, His ears shall hark but voices free and strange; Vast seas of outer light Shall beat upon his sight, Eternal winds shall touch him with their wings; His heart shall thrill To larger, purer joy, and grief more deep Than earth may know; And e'en as dews of morning fill The opened flower, into his soul shall flow High melodies, like tears that angels weep. Then shall he penetrate The veils and outer barriers of sound, And near the soul of melody, Where, rapt in aural splendors ultimate, His soul shall see The marvel and the glory that surround Eternal Beauty's shrine; And catch afar the glint divine Of her moon-colored robe, or haply hear, With world-oblivious ear, Some echo of her voice's mystery. Thou hast Love's power to find The soul's most secret chords, that else were still, And stir'st them till they thrill Disclosed to least, faint movements of thy wind. Thine aural sorcery O'erwhelms the heart as sunset storms the sight, For thou art Beauty bodied forth in sound-- Her colors bright And diverse forms expressed in harmony: Within thy bound, The flare of morning is become a song, And tree and flower a music sweet and long. And in thy speech The power and majesty that swing Planet and sun, and each Dim atom of the system manifest, Become articulate, expressed Like ocean in the brooklet's whispering. Beyond the woof of finite things, Thy threads of wonder deep-entangled lie-- Time's intertexturings Within Eternity-- With Song, mayhap, to be his memories; For Beauty borders nigh The ultimate, eternal Verities. THE LAST NIGHT I dreamed a dream: I stood upon a height, A mountain's utmost eminence of snow, Whence I beheld the plain outstretched below To a far sea-horizon, dim and white. Beneath the sun's expiring, ghastly light, The dead world lay, phantasmally aglow; Its last fear-weighted voice, a wind, came low; The distant sea lay hushed, as with affright. I watched, and lo! the pale and flickering sun, In agony and fierce despair, flamed high, And shadow-slain, went out upon the gloom. Then Night, that grim, gigantic struggle won, Impended for a breath on wings of doom, And through the air fell like a falling sky. ODE ON IMAGINATION Imagination's eyes Outreach and distance far The vision of the greatest star That measures instantaneously-- Enisled therein as in a sea-- Its cincture of the system-laden skies. Abysses closed about with night A tribute yield To her retardless sight; And Matter's gates disclose the candent ores Rock-held in furnaces of planet-cores. She penetrates the sun's transplendent shield, And through the obstruction of his vestment dire, Pierces the centermost sublimity Of his terrific heart, whose gurge of fire Heaves upward like a monstrous sea, And inly riven by Titanic throes, Fills all his frame with outward cataract Of separate and immingling torrent streams. Her eyes exact From the Moon-Sphinx that wanes and grows In wastes celestial, alien dreams Brought down on wings of fleetest beams. Adown the clefts of under-space She rides, her steed a falling star, To seek, where void and vagueness are, Some mark or certainty of place. Upon their heavenly precipice The gathered suns shrink back aghast From that interminate abyss, And threat of sightless anarchs vast. She stands endued With supermundane crown, and vestitures Of emperies that include All under-worlds and over-worlds of dream-- Kingdoms o'ercast, and eminent heights extreme Where moon-transcending light endures. She wanders in fantastic lands, where grow In scarce-discernèd fields and closes blind, Vague blossoms stirred by wings of eidolons; Or roves in forests where all sound is low: Each voice that shuns The noiseful day, and enters there to find Twilight that naught exalts nor grieves, Is quickly tuned to the susurrous leaves. Upon some supersensual eminence She hears the fragments of a thunder loud, Where lightnings of ulterior Truth intense Flame through the walls of hollow cloud. But these she may not wholly grasp With incomplete terrestrial clasp. Her eyes inevitably see, 'Neath rounds and changes of exterior things, The movements of Essentiality-- Of ageless principles--that alter not To temporal alterings-- Unswerved by shattered worlds upbuilt once more. And stars no longer hot; Or broken constellations strewn Like coals about the heavenly floor, And rush of night upon the noon Of their lost worlds, unsphered restorelessly In icy deserts of the sky. From the beginning of the spheres, When systems nebulous out-thrown Drove back the brinks Of nullity with limitary marks, Till end of suns, and sunless death of years, To her are known The unevident inseparable links That bind all deeps, all suns, all days and darks. THE WIND AND THE MOON Oh, list to the wind of the night, oh, hark, How it shrieks as it goes on its hurrying quest! Forever its voice is a voice of the dark, Forever its voice is a voice of unrest. Oh, list to the pines as they shiver and sway 'Neath the ceaseless beat of its myriad wings-- How they moan and they sob like living things That cry in the darkness for light and day! Now bend they low as the wind mounts higher, And its eerie voice comes piercingly, Like the plaint of humanity's misery, And its burden of vain desire. Now to a sad, tense whisper it fails, Then wildly and madly it raves and it wails. Oh, the night is filled with its sob and its shriek, Its weird and its restless, yearning cry, As it races adown the darkened sky, With scurry of broken clouds that seek, Borne on the wings of the hastening wind, A place of rest that they never can find. And around the face of the moon they cling, Its fugitive face to veil they aspire; But ever and ever it peereth out, Rending the cloud-ranks that hem it about; And it seemeth a lost and phantom thing, Like a phantom of dead desire. LAMENT OF THE STARS One tone is mute within the starry singing, The unison fulfilled, complete before; One chord within the music sounds no more, And from the stir of flames forever winging The pinions of our sister, motionless In pits of indefinable duress, Are fallen beyond all recovery By exultation of the flying dance, Or rhythms holding as with sleep or trance The maze of stars that only death may free-- Flung through the void's expanse. In gulfs depressed nor in the gulfs exalted Shall shade nor lightening of her flame be found; In space that litten orbits gird around, Nor in the bottomless abyss unvaulted Of unenvironed, all-outlying night. Allotted gyre nor lawless comet-flight Shall find, and with its venturous ray return From gloom of undiscoverable scope, One ray of her to gladden into hope The doubtful eyes denied that truthward yearn, The faltering feet that grope. Beyond restrainless boundary-nights surpassing All luminous horizons limited, The substance and the light of her have fed Ruin and silence of the night's amassing: Abandoned worlds forever morningless; Suns without worlds, in frory beamlessness Girt for the longer gyre funereal; Inviolate silence, earless, unawaking That once was sound, and level calm unbreaking Where motion's many ways in oneness fall Of sleep beyond forsaking. Circled with limitation unexceeded Our eyes behold exterior mysteries And gods unascertainable as these-- Shadows and shapes irresolubly heeded; Phantoms that tower, and substance scarcely known. Our sister knows all mysteries one alone, One shape, one shadow, crowding out the skies; Whose eyeless head and lipless face debar All others nameless or familiar, Filling with night all former lips and eyes Of god, and ghost, and star: For her all shapes have fed the shape of night; All darker forms, and dubious forms, or pallid, Are met and reconciled where none is valid. But unto us solution nor respite Of mystery's multiform incessancy From unexplored or system-trodden sky Shall come; but as a load importunate, Enigma past and mystery foreseen Weigh mightily upon us, and between Our sorrow deepens, and our songs abate In cadences of threne. A gloom that gathers silence looms more closely, And quiet centering darkness at its heart; But from the certitude of night depart Uncertain god nor eidolon less ghostly; But stronger grown with strength obtained from light That failed, and power lent by the stronger night, Perplex us with new mystery, and doubt If these our flames, that deathward toss and fall Be festal lights or lights funereal For mightier gods within the gulfs without, Phantoms more cryptical. New shadows from the wings of Time unfolding Across the depth and eminence of years, Fall deeplier with the broadening gloom of fears. Prophetic-eyed, with planet-hosts beholding The night take form upon the face of suns, We see (thus grief's vaticination runs-- Presageful sorrow for our sister slain) A night wherein all sorrow shall be past, One with night's single mystery at last; Nor vocal sun nor singing world remain As Time's elegiast. THE MAZE OF SLEEP Sleep is a pathless labyrinth, Dark to the gaze of moons and suns, Through which the colored clue of dreams, A gossamer thread, obscurely runs. THE WINDS To me the winds that die and start, And strive in wars that never cease, Are dearer than the level peace That lies unstirred at summer's heart; More dear to me the shadowed wold, Where, with report of tempest rife, The air intensifies with life, Than quiet fields of summer's gold. I am the winds' admitted friend: They seal our linked fellowships With speech of warm or icy lips, With touch of west and east that blend. And when my spirit listless stands, With folded wings that do not live, Their own assuageless wings they give To lift her from the stirless lands. * * * * * Within the place unmanifest Where central Truth is immanent, Lies there a vast, entire content Of sound and movement one in rest? I know not this. Yet in my heart, I feel that where all truths concur, The shrine is peaceless with the stir Of winds that enter and depart. THE MASQUE OF FORSAKEN GODS SCENE: _A moonlit glade on a summer midnight_ THE POET What consummation of the toiling moon O'ercomes the midnight blue with violet, Wherein the stars turn grey! The summer's green, Edgèd and strong by day, is dull and faint Beneath the moon's all-dominating mood, That in this absence of the impassioned sun, Sways to a sleep of sound and calm of color The live and vivid aspect of the world-- Subdued as with the great expectancy Which blurs beginning features of a dream, Things and events lost 'neath an omening Of central and oppressive bulk to come. Here were the theatre of a miracle, If such, within a world long alienate From its first dreams, and shut with skeptic years, Might now befall. THE PHILOSOPHER The Huntress rides no more Across the upturned faces of the stars: 'Tis but the dead shell of a frozen world, Glittering with desolation. Earth's old gods-- The gods that haunt like dreams each planet's youth-- Are fled from years incredulous, and tired With penetrating of successive masks, That give but emptiness they served to hide. Remains not faith enough to bring them back-- Pan to his wood, Diana to her moon, And all the visions that made populous An eager world where Time grows weary now. Yet Youth, that lives, might for a little claim The pantheon of dream, on such a night, When 'neath the growing marvel of the moon The films of time wear perilously thin, And thought looks backward to the simpler years, Till all the vision seems but just beyond. If one have faith, it may be that he shall Behold the gods--once only, and no more, Because of Time's inhospitality, For which they may not stay. THE POET Within the marvel of the light, what flower Of active wonder from quiescence springs! Is it a throng of luminous white clouds, Phantoms of some old storm's death-driven Titans, That float beneath the moon, and speak with voices Like the last echoes of a thunder spent? 'Tis the forsaken gods, that win a foothold About the magic circle which the moon Draws like some old enchantress round the glade. THE PHILOSOPHER I see them not: the vision is addressed Only to thine acute and eager youth. JOVE All heaven and earth were once my throne; Now I have but the wind alone For shifting judgment-seat. The pillared world supported me: Yet man's old incredulity Left nothing for my feet. PAN Man hath forgotten me: Yet seems it that my memory Saddens the wistful voices of the wood; Within each erst-frequented spot Echo forgets my music not, Nor Earth my tread where trampling years have stood. ARTEMIS Time hath grown cold Toward beauty loved of old. The gods must quake When dreams and hopes forsake The heart of man, And disillusion's ban More chill than stone, Rears till the former throne Of loveliness Is dark and tenantless. Now must I weep-- Homeless within the deep Where once of old Mine orbèd chariot rolled,-- And mourn in vain Man's immemorial pain Uncomforted Of light and beauty fled. APOLLO Time wearied of my song-- A satiate and capricious king Who for his pleasure bade me sing, First of his minstrel throng. Till, cloyed with melody, His ear grew faint to voice and lyre; Forgotten then of Time's desire, His thought was void of me. APHRODITE I, born of sound and foam, Child of the sea and wind, Was fire upon mankind-- Fuelled with Syria, and with Greece and Rome. Time fanned me with his breath; Love found new warmth in me, And Life its ecstasy, Till I grew deadly with the wind of death. A NYMPH How can the world be still so beautiful When beauty's self is fled? Tis like the mute And marble loveliness of some dead girl; And we that hover here, are as the spirit Of former voice and motion, and live color In that which shall not stir nor speak again. ANOTHER NYMPH Nay, rather say this lovely, lifeless world Is but a rigid semblance, counterfeiting The world which was. Nor have the gods retained Such power as once informed and rendered vital The cryptic irresponsiveness of stone,-- That statue which Pygmalion made and loved. ATÈ I, who was discord among men, Alone of all Time's hierarchy Find that Time hath no need of me, No lack that I might fill again. THE POET Tell me, O gods, are ye forever doomed To fall and flutter among spacial winds, Finding release nor foothold anywhere-- Debarred from doors of all the suns, like spirits Whose names are blotted from the lists of Time, Though they themselves yet wander undestroyed? THE GODS TOGETHER Throneless, discrowned, and impotent, In man's sad disillusionment, We passed with Earth's returnless youth, Who were the semblances of truth, The veils that hid the vacantness Infinite, naked, meaningless, The blank and universal Sphinx Each world beholds at last--and sinks. New gods protect awhile the gaze Of man--each one a veil that stays-- Till the new gods, discredited, Like mist that melts with noon, are fled-- That power oppressive, limitless, The tyranny of nothingness. Our power is dead upon the earth With the first dews and dawns of Time; But in the far and younger clime Of other worlds, it hath re-birth. Yea, though we find not entrance here-- Astray like feathers on the wind, To neither earth nor heaven consigned-- Fresh altars in a distant sphere Are keen with fragrance, bright with fire, New hearths to warm us from the night, Till, banished thence, we pass in flight While all the flames of dream expire. A SUNSET As blood from some enormous hurt The sanguine sunset leapt; Across it, like a dabbled skirt, The hurrying tempest swept. THE CLOUD-ISLANDS What islands marvellous are these, That gem the sunset's tides of light-- Opals aglow in saffron seas? How beautiful they lie, and bright, Like some new-found Hesperides! What varied, changing magic hues Tint gorgeously each shore and hill! What blazing, vivid golds and blues Their seaward winding valleys fill! What amethysts their peaks suffuse! Close held by curving arms of land That out within the ocean reach, I mark a faery city stand, Set high upon a sloping beach That burns with fire of shimmering sand. Of sunset-light is formed each wall; Each dome a rainbow-bubble seems; And every spire that towers tall A ray of golden moonlight gleams; Of opal-flame is every hall. Alas! how quickly dims their glow! What veils their dreamy splendours mar! Like broken dreams the islands go, As down from strands of cloud and star, The sinking tides of daylight flow. THE SNOW-BLOSSOMS But yestereve the winter trees Reared leafless, blackly bare, Their twigs and branches poignant-marked Upon the sunset-flare. White-petaled, opens now the dawn, And in its pallid glow, Revealed, each leaf-lorn, barren tree Stands white with flowers of snow. THE SUMMER MOON How is it, O moon, that melting, Unstintedly, prodigally, On the peaks' hard majesty, Till they seem diaphanous And fluctuant as a veil, And pouring thy rapturous light Through pine, and oak, and laurel, Till the summer-sharpened green, Softening and tremulous, Is a lustrous miracle-- How is it that I find, When I turn again to thee, That thy lost and wasted light Is regained in one magic breath? THE RETURN OF HYPERION The dungeon-clefts of Tartarus Are just beyond yon mountain-girdle, Whose mass is bound around the bulk Of the dark, unstirred, unmoving East. Alike on the mountains and the plain, The night is as some terrific dream, That closes the soul in a crypt of dread Apart from touch or sense of earth, As in the space of Eternity. What light unseen perturbs the darkness? Behold! it stirs and fluctuates Between the mountains and the stars That are set as guards above the prison Of the captive Titan-god. I know That in the deeps beneath, Hyperion Divides the pillared vault of dark, And stands a space upon its ruin. Then light is laid upon the peaks, As the hand of one who climbs beyond; And, lo! the Sun! The sentinel stars Are dead with overpotent flame, And in their place Hyperion stands. The night is loosened from the land, As a dream from the mind of the dreamer. A great wind blows across the dawn, Like the wind of the motion of the world. LETHE I flow beneath the columns that upbear The world, and all the tracts of heaven and hell; Foamless I sweep, where sounds nor glimmers tell My motion nadir-ward; no moment's flare Gives each to each the shapes that, unaware, Commingle at my verge, to test the spell Of waves intense with night, whose deeps compel One face from pain, and rapture, and despair. The fruitless earth's denied and cheated sons Meet here, where fruitful and unfruitful cease. And when their lords, the mightier, hidden Ones, Have drained all worlds till being's wine is low, Shall they not come, and from the oblivious flow Drink at one draught a universe of peace? ATLANTIS Above its domes the gulfs accumulate To where the sea-winds trumpet forth their screed; But here the buried waters take no heed-- Deaf, and with closèd lips from press of weight Imposed by ocean. Dim, inanimate, On temples of an unremembered creed Involved in long, slow tentacles of weed, The dead tide lies immovable as Fate. From out the ponderous-vaulted ocean-dome, A clouded light is questionably shed On altars of a goddess garlanded With blossoms of some weird and hueless vine; And wingèd, fleet, through skies beneath the foam, Like silent birds the sea-things dart and shine. THE UNREVEALED How dense the glooms of Death, impervious To aught of old memorial light! How strait The sunless road, suspended, separate, That leads to later birth! Untremulous With any secret morn of stars, to us The Past is closed as with division great Of planet-girdling seas--unknown its gate, Beyond the mouths of shadows cavernous. Oh! may it be that Death in kindness strips The soul of memory's raiment, rendering blind Our vision, lest surmounted deeps appal, As when on mountain peaks a glance behind Betrays with knowledge, and the climber slips Down gulfs of fear to some enormous fall? THE ELDRITCH DARK Now as the twilight's doubtful interval Closes with night's accomplished certainty, A wizard wind goes crying eerily; And in the glade unsteady shadows crawl, Timed to the trees, whose voices rear and fall As with some dreadful witches' ecstasy, Flung upward to the dark, whence glitters free The crooked moon, impendent over all. Twin veils of covering cloud and silence thrown Across the movement and the sound of things, Make blank the night, till in the broken west The moon's ensanguined blade awhile is shown.... The night grows whole again.... The shadows rest, Gathered beneath a greater shadow's wings. THE CHERRY-SNOWS The cherry-snows are falling now; Down from the blossom-clouded sky Of zephyr-troubled twig and bough, In widely settling whirls they fly. The orchard earth, unclothed and brown, Is wintry-hued with petals bright; E'en as the snow they glimmer down; Brief as the snow's their stainless white. FAIRY LANTERNS 'Tis said these blossom-lanterns light The elves upon their midnight way; That fairy toil and elfin play Receive their beams of magic white. I marvel not if it be true; I know this flower has lighted me Nearer to Beauty's mystery, And past the veils of secrets new. NIRVANA Poised as a god whose lone, detachèd post, An eyrie, pends between the boundary-marks Of finite years, and those unvaried darks That veil Eternity, I saw the host Of worlds and suns, swept from the furthermost Of night--confusion as of dust with sparks-- Whirl tow'rd the opposing brink; as one who harks Some warning trumpet, Time, a withered ghost, Fled with them; disunited orbs that late Were atoms of the universal frame, They passed to some eternal fragment-heap. And, lo, the gods, from space discorporate, Who were its life and vital spirit, came, Drawn outward by the vampire-lips of Sleep! THE NEMESIS OF SUNS Lo, what are these, the gyres of sun and world, Fulfilled with daylight by each toiling sun-- Lo, what are these but webs of radiance spun Beneath the roof of Night, and torn or furled By Night at will? All opposite powers upwhirled Are less than chaff to this imperious one-- As wind-tossed chaff, until its sport be done, Scattered, and lifted up, and downward hurled. All gyres are held within the path unspanned Of Night's aeonian compass--loosely pent As with the embrace of lethal-tightening weight; All suns are grasped within the hollow hand Of Night, the godhead sole, omnipotent, Whose other names are Nemesis and Fate. WHITE DEATH Methought the world was bound with final frost; The sun, made hueless as with fear and awe, Illumined yet the lands it could not thaw. Then on my road, with instant evening crost, Death stood, and in its shadowy films enwound, Mine eyes forgot the light, until I came Where poured the inseparate, unshadowed flame Of phantom suns in self-irradiance drowned. Death lay revealed in all its haggardness-- Immitigable wastes horizonless; Profundities that held nor bar nor veil; All hues wherewith the suns and worlds were dyed In light invariable nullified; All darkness rendered shelterless and pale. RETROSPECT AND FORECAST Turn round, O Life, and know with eyes aghast The breast that fed thee--Death, disguiseless, stern; Even now, within thy mouth, from tomb and urn, The dust is sweet. All nurture that thou hast Was once as thou, and fed with lips made fast On Death, whose sateless mouth it fed in turn. Kingdoms debased, and thrones that starward yearn, All are but ghouls that batten on the past. Monstrous and dread, must it fore'er abide, This unescapable alternity? Must loveliness find root within decay, And night devour its flaming hues alway? Sickening, will Life not turn eventually, Or ravenous Death at last be satisfied? SHADOW OF NIGHTMARE What hand is this, that unresisted grips My spirit as with chains, and from the sound And light of dreams, compels me to the bound Where darkness waits with wide, expectant lips? Albeit thereat my footing holds, nor slips, The threats of that Omnipotence confound All days and hours of gladness, girt around With sense of near, unswervable eclipse. So lies a land whose noon is plagued with whirr Of bats, than their own shadows swarthier, Whose flight is traced on roofs of white abodes, Wherein from court to court, from room to room, In hieroglyphics of abhorrent doom, Is slowly trailed the slime of crawling toads. THE SONG OF A COMET A plummet of the changing universe, Far-cast, I flare Through gulfs the sun's uncharted orbits bind, And spaces bare That intermediate darks immerse By road of sun nor world confined. Upon my star-undominated gyre I mark the systems vanish one by one; Among the swarming worlds I lunge, And sudden plunge Close to the zones of solar fire; Or 'mid the mighty wrack of stars undone, Flash, and with momentary rays Compel the dark to yield Their aimless forms, whose once far-potent blaze In ashes chill is now inurned. A space revealed, I see their planets turned, Where holders of the heritage of breath Exultant rose, and sank to barren death Beneath the stars' unheeding eyes. Adown contiguous skies I pass the thickening brume Of systems yet unshaped, that hang immense Along mysterious shores of gloom; Or see--unimplicated in their doom-- The final and disastrous gyre Of blinded suns that meet, And from their mingled heat, And battle-clouds intense, O'erspread the deep with fire. Through stellar labyrinths I thrid Mine orbit placed amid The multiple and irised stars, or hid, Unsolved and intricate, In many a planet-swinging sun's estate. Ofttimes I steal in solitary flight Along the rim of the exterior night That grips the universe; And then return, Past outer footholds of sidereal light, To where the systems gather and disperse; And dip again into the web of things, To watch it shift and burn, Hearted with stars. On peaceless wings I pierce, where deep-outstripping all surmise, The nether heavens drop unsunned, By stars and planets shunned. And then I rise Through vaulting gloom, to watch the dark Snatch at the flame of failing suns; Or mark The heavy-dusked and silent skies, Strewn thick with wrecked and broken stars, Where many a fated orbit runs. An arrow sped from some eternal bow, Through change of firmaments and systems sent, And finding bourn nor bars, I flee, nor know For what eternal mark my flight is meant. THE RETRIBUTION Old Egypt's gods, Osiris, Ammon, Thoth, Came on my dream in thunder, and their feet Revealed, were as the levin's fire and heat. The hosts of Rome, the Arab and the Goth Have left their altars dark, yet stern and wroth In olden power they stood, whose wings were fleet, And mighty as with strength of storms that meet In mingled foam of clouds and ocean-froth. Above my dream, with arch of dreaded wings, In judgement and in sentence of what crime I knew not, sate the gods outcast of time. They passed, and lo, a plague of darkness fell, Unsleeping, and accurst with nameless things, And dreams that stood the ministers of Hell! TO THE DARKNESS Thou hast taken the light of many suns, And they are sealed in the prison-house of gloom. Even as candle-flames Hast thou taken the souls of men, With winds from out a hollow place; They are hid in the abyss as in a sea, And the gulfs are over them As the weight of many peaks, As the depth of many seas; Thy shields are between them and the light; They are past its burden and bitterness; The spears of the day shall not touch them, The chains of the sun shall not hale them forth. Many men there were, In the days that are now of thy realm, That thou hast sealed with the seal of many deeps; Their feet were as eagles' wings in the quest of Truth-- Aye, mightily they desired her face, Hunting her through the lands of life, As men in the blankness of the waste That seek for a buried treasure-house of kings. But against them were the veils That hands may not rend nor sabers pierce; And Truth was withheld from them, As a water that is seen afar at dawn, And at noon is lost in the sand Before the feet of the traveller. The world was a barrenness, And the gardens were as the waste. And they turned them to the adventure of the dark, To the travelling of the land without roads, To the sailing of the sea that hath no beacons. Why have they not returned? Their quest hath found end in thee, Or surely they had fared Once more to the place whence they came, As men that have travelled to a fruitless land. They have looked on thy face, And to them it is the countenance of Truth. Thy silence is sweeter to them than the voice of love, Thine embrace more dear than the clasp of the beloved. They are fed with the emptiness past the veil, And their hunger is filled; They have found the waters of peace, And are athirst no more. They know a rest that is deeper than the gulfs, And whose seal is unbreakable as the seal of the void; They sleep the sleep of the suns, And the vast is a garment unto them. A DREAM OF BEAUTY I dreamed that each most lovely, perfect thing That Nature hath, of sound, and form, and hue-- The winds, the grass, the light-concentering dew, The gleam and swiftness of the sea-bird's wing; Blueness of sea and sky, and gold of storm Transmuted by the sunset, and the flame Of autumn-colored leaves, before me came, And, meeting, merged to one diviner form. Incarnate Beauty 'twas, whose spirit thrills Through glaucous ocean and the greener hills, And in the cloud-bewildered peaks is pent. Like some descended star she hovered o'er, But as I gazed, in doubt and wonderment, Mine eyes were dazzled, and I saw no more. THE DREAM-BRIDGE All drear and barren seemed the hours, That passed rain-swept and tempest-blown. The dead leaves fell like brownish notes Within the rain's grey monotone. There came a lapse between the showers; The clouds grew rich with sunset gleams; Then o'er the sky a rainbow sprang-- A bridge unto the Land of Dreams. A LIVE-OAK LEAF How marvellous this bit of green I hold, and soon shall throw away! Its subtile veins, its vivid sheen, Seem fragment of a god's array. In all the hidden toil of earth, Which is the more laborious part-- To rear the oak's enormous girth, Or shape its leaves with poignant art? PINE NEEDLES O little lances, dipped in grey, And set in order straight and clean, How delicately clear and keen Your points against the sapphire day! Attesting Nature's perfect art Ye fringe the limpid firmament, O little lances, keenly sent To pierce with beauty to the heart! TO THE SUN Thy light is as an eminence unto thee, And thou are upheld by the pillars of thy strength. Thy power is a foundation for the worlds; They are builded thereon as upon a lofty rock Whereto no enemy hath access. Thou puttest forth thy rays, and they hold the sky As in the hollow of an immense hand. Thou erectest thy light as four walls, And a roof with many beams and pillars. Thy flame is a stronghold based as a mountain; Its bastions are tall, and firm like stone. The worlds are bound with the ropes of thy will; Like steeds are they stayed and contrained By the reins of invisible lightnings. With bands that are stouter than iron manifold, And stronger than the cords of the gulfs, Thou withholdest them from the brink Of outward and perilous deeps, Lest they perish in the desolations of the night, Or be stricken of strange suns; Lest they be caught in the pitfalls of the abyss, Or fall into the furnace of Arcturus. Thy law is as a shore unto them, And they are restrained thereby as the sea. Thou art food and drink to the worlds; Yea, by thy toil are they sustained, That they fail not upon the road of space, Whose goal is Hercules. When thy pillars of force are withdrawn, And the walls of thy light fall inward, Borne down by the sundering night, And thy head is covered with the Shadow, The worlds shall wander as men bewildered In the sterile and lifeless waste. Athirst and unfed shall they be, When the springs of thy strength are dust, And thy fields of light are black with dearth. They shall perish from the ways That thou showest no longer, And emptiness shall close above them. THE FUGITIVES O fugitive fragrances That tremble heavenward Unceasing, or if ye linger, Halt but as memories On the verge of forgetfulness, Why must ye pass so fleetly On wings that are less than wind, To a death unknowable? Soon ye are gone, and the air Forgets your faint unrest In the garden's breathlessness, Where fall the snows of silence. AVERTED MALEFICE Where mandrakes, crying from the moonless fen, Told how a witch, with gaze of owl or bat Found, and each root malevolently fat Pulled for her waiting cauldron, on my ken Upstole, escaping to the world of men, A vapor as of some infernal vat; Against the stars it clomb, and caught thereat As if their bright regard to veil again. Despite the web, methought they saw, appalled, The stealthier weft in which all sound was still ... Then sprang, as if the night found breath anew, A wind whereby the stars were disenthralled ... Far off, I heard the cry of frustrate ill-- A witch that wailed above her curdled brew. THE MEDUSA OF THE SKIES Haggard as if resurgent from a tomb, The moon uprears her ghastly, shrunken head, Crowned with such light as flares upon the dead From pallid skies more death-like than the gloom. Now fall her beams till slope and plain assume The whiteness of a land whence life is fled; And shadows that a sepulcher might shed Move livid as the stealthy hands of doom. O'er rigid hills and valleys locked and mute, A pallor steals as of a world made still When Death, that erst had crept, stands absolute-- An earth now frozen fast by power of eyes That malefice and purposed silence fill, The gaze of that Medusa of the skies. A DEAD CITY The twilight reigns above the fallen noon Within an ancient land, whose after-time Lies like a shadow o'er its ruined prime. Like rising mist the night increases soon Round shattered palaces, ere yet the moon On mute, unsentried walls and turrets climb, And touch with whiteness of sepulchral rime The desert where a city's bones are strewn. She comes at last; unburied, thick, they show In all the hoary nakedness of stone. From out a shadow like the lips of Death Issues a wind, that through the stillness blown, Cries like a prophet's ghost with wailing breath The weirds of finished and forgotten woe. THE SONG OF THE STARS From the final reach of the upper night To the nether darks where the comets die, From the outmost bourn of the reigns of light To the central gloom of the midmost sky, In our mazeful gyres we fly. And our flight is a choral chant of flame, That ceaseless fares to the outer void, With the undersong of the peopled spheres, The voices of comet and asteroid, And the wail of the spheres destroyed. Forever we sing to a god unseen-- In the dark shall our voices fail? The void is his robe inviolate, The night is his awful veil-- How our fires grow dim and pale! From the ordered gyres goes ever afar Our song of flame o'er the void unknown, Where circles nor world, nor comet, nor star. Shall it die ere it reach His throne? On the shoreless deeps of the seas of gloom Sailing, we venture afar and wide, Where ever await the tempests of doom, Where the silent maelstroms lurk and hide, And the darkling reefs abide. And the change and ruin of stars is a song That rises and ebbs in a tide of fire-- A music whose notes are of dreadful flame, Whose harmonies ever leap high'r Where the suns and the worlds expire. Is such music not fit for a god? Yet ever the deep is a dark, And ever the night is a void, Nor brightens a word nor a mark To show if our God may hark. From the gyres of change goes ever afar Our flaming chant o'er the deep unknown, The song of the death of planet and star. Shall it die ere it reach His throne? In our shadows of light the planets sweep, And endure for the span of our prime-- Globed atoms that hazard the termless deep With races that bow to the law of Time, And yet cherish a dream sublime. And they cry to the god behind the veil. Yet how should their voices pass the night, The silence that waits in the rayless void, If he hear not our music of light, And the thundrous song of our might? And they strive in the gloom for truth-- Yet how should they pierce the veil, When we, with our splendors of flame, In the darkness faint and fail, Our fires how feeble and pale! From the ordered gyres goes ever afar Our song of flame o'er the void unknown, Where circles nor world, nor comet, nor star, Shall it die ere it reach His throne? COPAN Around its walls the forests of the west Gloom, as about some mystery's final pale Might lie its multifold exterior veil. Sculptured with signs and meanings unconfessed, Its lordly fanes and palaces attest A past before whose wall of darkness fail Reason and fancy, finding not the tale Erased by time from history's palimpsest. Within this place, that from the gloom of Eld Still meets the light, a people came and went Like whirls of dust between its columns blown-- An alien race, whose record, shadow-held, Is sealed with those of others long forespent That died in sunless planets lost and lone. A SONG OF DREAMS A voice came to me from the night, and said, What profit hast thou in thy dreaming Of the years that are set And the years yet unrisen? Hast thou found them tillable lands? Is there fruit that thou canst pluck therein, Or any harvest to be mown? Shalt thou dig aught of gold from the mines of the past, Or trade for merchandise In the years where all is rotten? Are they a sea that will bring thee to any shore, Or a desert that vergeth upon aught but the waste? Shalt thou drink from the springs that are emptied, Or find sustenance in shadows? What value hath the future given thee? Is there aught in the days yet dark That thou canst hold with thy hands? Are they a fortress That will afford thee protection Against the swords of the world? Is there justice in them To balance the world's inequity, Or benefit to outweigh its loss? Then spake I in answer, saying, Of my dreams I have made a road, And my soul goeth out thereon To that unto which no eye hath opened, Nor ear become keen to hearken-- To the glories that are shut past all access Of the keys of sense; Whose walls are hidden by the air, And whose doors are concealed with clarity. And the road is travelled of secret things, Coming to me from far-- Of bodiless powers, And beauties without colour or form Holden by any loveliness seen of earth. And of my dreams have I builded an inn Wherein these are as guests. And unto it come the dead For a little rest and refuge From the hollowness of the unharvestable wind, And the burden of too great space. The fields of the past are not void to me, Who harvest with the scythe of thought; Nor the orchards of future years unfruitful To the hands of visionings. I have retrieved from the darkness The years and the things that were lost, And they are held in the light of my dreams, With the spirits of years unborn, And of things yet bodiless. As in an hospitable house, They shall live while the dreams abide. THE BALANCE The world upheld their pillars for awhile-- Now, where imperial On and Memphis stood, The hot wind sifts across the solitude The sand that once was wall and peristyle, Or furrows like the main each desert mile, Where ocean-deep above its ancient food Of cities fame-forgot, the waste is nude, Traceless as billows of each sunken pile. Lo! for that wrong shall vengeance come at last, When the devouring earth, in ruin one With royal walls and palaces undone, And sunk within the desolated past, Shall drift, and winds that wrangle through the vast Immingle it with ashes of the sun. SATURN Now were the Titans gathered round their king, In a waste region slipping tow'rd the verge Of drear extremities that clasp the world-- A land half-moulded by the hasty gods, And left beneath the bright scorn of the stars, Grotesque, misfeatured, blackly gnarled with stone; Or worn and marred from conflict with the deep Conterminate, of Chaos. Here they stood, Old Saturn midmost, like a central peak Among the lesser hills that guard its base. Defeat, that gloamed within each countenance Like the first tinge of death, upon a sun Gathering like some dusk vapor, found them cold, Clumsy of limb, and halting as with weight Of threatened worlds and trembling firmaments. A wind cried round them like a trumpet-voice Of phantom hosts--hurried, importunate, And intermittent with a tightening fear. Far off the sunset leapt, and the hard clouds, Molten among the peaks, seemed furnaces In which to make the fetters of the world. Seared by the lightning of the younger gods, They saw, beyond the grim and crouching hills, Those levins thrust like spears into the heart Of swollen clouds, or tearing through the sky Like severing swords. Then, as the Titans watched, The night rose like a black, enormous mist Around them, wherein naught was visible Save the sharp levin leaping in the north; And no sound came, except of seas remote, That seemed like Chaos ravening past the verge Of all the world, fed with the crumbling coasts Of Matter. Till the moon, discovering That harsh swart wilderness of sand and stone Tissued and twisted in chaotic weld, Lit with illusory fire each Titan's form, They sate in silence, mute as stranded orbs-- The wrack of Time, upcast on ruinous coasts, And in the slow withdrawal of the tide Safe for awhile. Small solace did they take From that frore radiance glistering on the dull Black desert gripped in iron silences, Like a false triumph o'er contestless fates, Or a mirage of life in wastes of Death. Yet were they moved to speak, and Saturn's voice Seeming the soul of that tremendous land Set free in sound, startled the haughty stars. "O Titans, gods, sustainers of the world, Is this the end? Must Earth go down to Chaos, Lacking our strength, beneath the unpracticed sway Of godlings vain, precipitate with youth, Who think, unrecking of disastrous chance, To bind their will as reins upon the sun, Or stand as columns to the ponderous heavens? Must we behold, with eyes of impotence That universal wrack, even though it whelm These our usurpers in impartial doom Beneath the shards and fragments of the world? Were it not preferable to return, And meeting them in fight unswervable, Drag down the earth, ourselves, and these our foes, One sacrifice unto the gods of Chaos? Why should we stay, and live the tragedy Of power that survives its use?" Now spake Enceladus, when that the echoings Of Saturn's voice had fled remote, and seemed Dead thunders caught and flung from star to star; "Wouldst hurl thy kingdom down the nightward gulf, Like to a stone a curious child might cast To test the fall of some dark precipice? Patience and caution should we take as mail, Not rashness for a weapon--too keen sword That cuts the strainèd knot of destiny, Ne'er to be tied again. Were it not best To watch the slow procedure of the days, That we may grasp a time more opportune, When desperation is not all our strength, Nor the foe newly filled with victory? Then may we hope to conquer back thy realm For thee, not for the gods of nothingness." He ceased, and after him no lesser god Gave voice upon the shaken silences, None venturing to risk comparison, Inevitable then, of eloquence With his; but silence like the ambiguousness Of signal and of lesser stars o'ercast And merged in one confusion by the moon, Possessed that multitude, till Saturn rose. Around his form the light intensified, And strengthened with addition wild and strange, Investing him as with a phantom robe, And gathering like a crown about his brow. His sword, whereon the shadows lay like rust He took, and dipping it within the moon, Made clean its length of blade, and from it cast Swift flickerings at the stars. And then his voice Came like a torrent, and from out his eyes Streamed wilder power that mingled with the sound. * * * * * And his resurgent power, in glance and word, Poured through the Titans' souls, and was become The fountains of their own, and at his flame Their fires were lit once more, whose restlessness Leapt and aspired against the steadfast stars. And now they turned, majestic with resolve, Where, red upon the forefront of the north, Arcturus was a beacon to the winds. And with the flickering winds, that lightly struck The desert dust, then sprang again in air, They passed athwart the foreland of the north. Against their march they saw the shrunken waste, A rivelled region like a world grown old Whose sterile breast knew not the lips of Life In all its epoch; or a world that was The nurse of infant Death, ere he became Too large, too strong for its restraining arms, And towered athwart the suns. And there they crossed Metallic slopes that rang like monstrous shields, But gave not to their tread, and clanging plains Like body-mail of greater, vaster gods. Where hills made gibbous shadows in the moon, They heard the eldritch laughters of the wind, Seeming the mirth of death; and 'neath their gaze Gaunt valleys deepened like an old despair. Yet strode they on, through the moon's fantasies, Bold with resolve, across a land like doubt. And now they passed among huge mountain-bulks, Themselves like peaks detached, and moving slow 'Mid fettered brethren, adding weight and gloom To that mute conclave great against the stars. Emerging thence, the Titans marched where still Their own portentous shadows went before Like night that fled but shrunk not, dusking all That desert way. And thus they came where Sleep, The sleep of weary victory, had seized The younger gods as captives, borne beyond All flight of mounting battle-ecstasies In that high triumph of forgetfulness. And on that sleep the striding Titans broke, Vague and immense at first like forming dreams To those disturbèd gods, in mist of drowse Purblind and doubtful yet, though soon they knew Their erst-defeated foes, and rising stood In silent ranks expectant, that appeared To move, with shaking of astonished fires That bristled forth, or were displayed like plumes Late folded close, now trembling terribly, Pending between the desert and the stars. Then, sudden as the waking from a dream, The battle leapt, where striving shapes of gods Moved brightly through the whirled and stricken air, Sweeping it to a froth of fire; and all That ancient, deep-established desert rocked, Shaken as by an onset of the gulfs Of gathered and impatient Chaos, while, Above the place where central battle burned The stars drew back in fright or dazzlement, Paling to more secluded distances. Lo, where the moon had wrought illusive dreams That clothed the wild in doubt and fantasy, Hiding its hideousness with bright mirage, Or deepening it with gulfs and glooms of Hell, Mightier confusion, chaos absolute Upon the imperilled sky and trembling world, Now made a certainty within itself, The one thing sure in shaken sky or world. Maelstroms of battle caught in storms of fire, Torn and involved by weaponry of gods-- Crescented blades that met with rounds of shields; Grappling of shapes, seen through the riven blaze An instant, then once more obscure, and known Only by giant heavings of that war Of furious gods and roused elements, Divided, leagued, contending evermore Along the desert--these, augmentative Round one thick center, stunned the faltering night. So huge that chaos, complicate within With movements of gigantic legionry, Antagonistic streams, impetuous-hurled Where Jove and Saturn thunder-crested, led In fight unswervable--so wide the strife Of differing impulse, that Decision found No foothold, till that first confusion should In ordered conflict re-arrange, and stand With its true forces known. This seemed remote, With that wide struggle pending terribly, As if all-various, colored Time had made A truce with white Eternity, and both Stood watching from afar. Through drifts of haze The broadening moon, made ominous with red, Glared from the westering night. And now that war Built for itself, far up, a cope of cloud, And drew it down, far off, upon all sides, Impervious to the moon and sworded stars. And by their own wild light the gods fought on 'Neath that stupendous concave like a sky Filled and illumed with glare of bursting suns. And cast by their own light, upon that sky The gods' own shadows moved like shapen gloom, Phantasmagoric, changed and amplified, A shifting frieze that flickered dreadfully In spectral battle indecisive. Then, Swift, as it had begun, the contest turned, And on the heaving Titans' massive front It seemed that all the motion and the strength Self-thwarting and confounded, of that strife, Was flung in centered impact terrible, With rush of all that fire, tempestuous-blown As if before some wind of further space, Striking the earth. Lo, all the Titans' flame Bent back upon themselves, and they were hurled In vaster disarray, with vanguard piled On rear and center. Saturn could not stem The loosened torrents of long-pent defeat; He, with his host, was but as drift thereon, Borne wildly down the whelmed and reeling world. Hurling like slanted rain, the lurid levin Fell o'er that flight of Titans, and behind, In striding menace, all-victorious Jove Loomed like some craggy cloud with thunders crowned And footed with the winds. In that defeat, With Jove's pursuit involved and manifold, Few found escape unscathed, and some went down Like senile suns that grapple with the dark, And reel in flame tremendous, and are still. Ebbing, the battle left those elder gods Upcast once more on coasts of black defeat-- Gripped in despair, a vaster Tartarus. The victor gods, their storms and thunders spent, Went dwindling northward like embattled clouds, And where the lingering haze of fight dissolved, The pallor of the dawn began to spread On darkness purple like the pain of Death. Ringed with that desolation, Saturn stood Mute, and the Titans answered unto him With brother silence. Motionless, they seemed Some peristyle or range of columns great, Alone enduring of a fallen fane In deserts of some vaster world whence Life And Faith have vanished long, that vaguely slips To an immemoried end. And twilight slow Crept round those lofty shapes august, and seemed Such as might be the faltering ghostly noon Of mightier suns that totter down to death. Then turned they, passing from that dismal place Blasted anew with battle, ere the swift Striding of light athwart stupendous chasms And wasteful plains, should overtake them there, Bowed with too heavy a burden of defeat. Slowly they turned, and passed upon the west Where, like a weariness immovable In menace huge, the plain its monstrous bulk, The peaks its hydra heads, the whole world crouched Against their march with the diminished stars. FINIS It seemed that from the west The live red flame of sunset, Eating the dead blue sky And cold insensate peaks, Was loosened slowly, and fell. Above it, a few red stars Burned down like low candle-flames Into the gaunt black sockets Of the chill insensible mountains. But in the ascendant skies (Cloudless, like some vast corpse Unfeatured, cerementless) Succeeded nor star nor planet. It may have been that black, Pulseless, dead stars arose And crossed as of old the heavens. But came no living orb, Nor comet seeming the ghost, Homeless, of an outcast world, Seeking its former place That is no more nor shall be In all the Cosmos again. Null, blank, and meaningless As a burnt scroll that blackens With the passing of the fire, Lay the dead infinite sky. Lo! in the halls of Time, I thought, the torches are out-- The revelry of the gods, Or lamentation of demons For which their flames were lit, Over and quiet at last With the closing peace of night, Whose dumb, dead, passionless skies Enfold the living world As the sea a sinking pebble. 
38766	----	SONGS OF THE MEXICAN SEAS BY JOAQUIN MILLER AUTHOR OF "SONGS OF THE SIERRAS," "SONGS OF ITALY," ETC. BOSTON ROBERTS BROTHERS 1887 Copyright, 1887, By Roberts Brothers. UNIVERSITY PRESS: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. TO ABBIE. NOTE.--The lines in this little book, as in all my others, were written, or at least conceived, in the lands where the scenes are laid; so that whatever may be said of the imperfections of my work, I at least have the correct atmosphere and color. I have now and then sent forth from Mexico, and from remoter shores of the Gulf, fragments of these thoughts as they rounded into form, and some of them have been used at a Dartmouth College Commencement, and elsewhere; but as a whole the book is new. From the heart of the Sierra, where I once more hear the awful heart-throbs of Nature, I now intrust the first reception of these lessons entirely to my own country. And may I not ask in return, now at the last, when the shadows begin to grow long, something of that consideration which, thus far, has been accorded almost entirely by strangers? Joaquin Miller. Mount Shasta, California, A.D. 1887. SONGS OF THE MEXICAN SEAS. THE SEA OF FIRE. In that far land, farther than Yucatan, Hondurian height, or Mahogany steep, Where the great sea, hollowed by the hand of man Hears deep come calling across to deep; Where the great seas follow in the grooves of men Down under the bastions of Darien: In that land so far that you wonder whether If God would know it should you fall down dead; In that land so far through the wilds and weather That the lost sun sinks like a warrior sped,-- Where the sea and the sky seem closing together, Seem closing together as a book that is read: In that nude warm world, where the unnamed rivers Roll restless in cradles of bright buried gold; Where white flashing mountains flow rivers of silver As a rock of the desert flowed fountains of old; By a dark wooded river that calls to the dawn, And calls all day with his dolorous swan: In that land of the wonderful sun and weather, With green under foot and with gold over head, Where the spent sun flames, and you wonder whether 'Tis an isle of fire in his foamy bed: Where the oceans of earth shall be welded together By the great French master in his forge flame red,-- Lo! the half-finished world! Yon footfall retreating,-- It might be the Maker disturbed at his task. But the footfall of God, or the far pheasant beating, It is one and the same, whatever the mask It may wear unto man. The woods keep repeating The old sacred sermons, whatever you ask. The brown-muzzled cattle come stealthy to drink, The wild forest cattle, with high horns as trim As the elk at their side: their sleek necks are slim And alert like the deer. They come, then they shrink As afraid of their fellows, of shadow-beasts seen In the deeps of the dark-wooded waters of green. It is man in his garden, scarce wakened as yet From the sleep that fell on him when woman was made. The new-finished garden is plastic and wet From the hand that has fashioned its unpeopled shade; And the wonder still looks from the fair woman's eyes As she shines through the wood like the light from the skies. And a ship now and then from some far Ophir's shore Draws in from the sea. It lies close to the bank; Then a dull, muffled sound of the slow-shuffled plank As they load the black ship; but you hear nothing more, And the dark dewy vines, and the tall sombre wood Like twilight droop over the deep sweeping flood. The black masts are tangled with branches that cross, The rich, fragrant gums fall from branches to deck, The thin ropes are swinging with streamers of moss That mantle all things like the shreds of a wreck; The long mosses swing, there is never a breath: The river rolls still as the river of death. I. In the beginning,--ay, before The six-days' labors were well o'er; Yea, while the world lay incomplete, Ere God had opened quite the door Of this strange land for strong men's feet,-- There lay against that westmost sea One weird-wild land of mystery. A far white wall, like fallen moon, Girt out the world. The forest lay So deep you scarcely saw the day, Save in the high-held middle noon: It lay a land of sleep and dreams, And clouds drew through like shoreless streams That stretch to where no man may say. Men reached it only from the sea, By black-built ships, that seemed to creep Along the shore suspiciously, Like unnamed monsters of the deep. It was the weirdest land, I ween, That mortal eye has ever seen: A dim, dark land of bird and beast, Black shaggy beasts with cloven claw,-- A land that scarce knew prayer or priest, Or law of man, or Nature's law; Where no fixed line drew sharp dispute 'Twixt savage man and silent brute. II. It hath a history most fit For cunning hand to fashion on; No chronicler hath mentioned it; No buccaneer set foot upon. 'Tis of an outlawed Spanish Don,-- A cruel man, with pirate's gold That loaded down his deep ship's hold. A deep ship's hold of plundered gold! The golden cruise, the golden cross, From many a church of Mexico, From Panama's mad overthrow, From many a ransomed city's loss, From many a follower stanch and bold, And many a foeman stark and cold. He found this wild, lost land. He drew His ship to shore. His ruthless crew, Like Romulus, laid lawless hand On meek brown maidens of the land, And in their bloody forays bore Red firebrands along the shore. III. The red men rose at night. They came, A firm, unflinching wall of flame; They swept, as sweeps some fateful sea O'er land of sand and level shore That howls in far, fierce agony. The red men swept that deep, dark shore As threshers sweep a threshing-floor. And yet beside the slain Don's door They left his daughter, as they fled: They spared her life, because she bore Their Chieftain's blood and name. The red And blood-stained hidden hoards of gold They hollowed from the stout ship's hold, And bore in many a slim canoe-- To where? The good priest only knew. IV. The course of life is like the sea: Men come and go; tides rise and fall; And that is all of history. The tide flows in, flows out to-day,-- And that is all that man may say; Man is, man was,--and that is all. Revenge at last came like a tide,-- 'Twas sweeping, deep, and terrible; The Christian found the land, and came To take possession in Christ's name. For every white man that had died I think a thousand red men fell,-- A Christian custom; and the land Lay lifeless as some burned-out brand. V. Ere while the slain Don's daughter grew A glorious thing, a flower of spring, A lithe slim reed, a sun-loved weed, A something more than mortal knew; A mystery of grace and face,-- A silent mystery that stood An empress in that sea-set wood, Supreme, imperial in her place. It might have been men's lust for gold,-- For all men knew that lawless crew Left hoards of gold in that ship's hold, That drew ships hence, and silent drew Strange Jasons to that steep wood shore, As if to seek that hidden store,-- I never either cared or knew. I say it might have been this gold That ever drew and strangely drew Strong men of land, strange men of sea, To seek this shore of mystery With all its wondrous tales untold: The gold or her, which of the two? It matters not; I never knew. But this I know, that as for me, Between that face and the hard fate That kept me ever from my own, As some wronged monarch from his throne, God's heaped-up gold of land or sea Had never weighed one feather's weight. Her home was on the wooded height,-- A woody home, a priest at prayer, A perfume in the fervid air, And angels watching her at night. I can but think upon the skies That bound that other Paradise. VI. Below a star-built arch, as grand As ever bended heaven spanned; Tall trees like mighty columns grew-- They loomed as if to pierce the blue, They reached as reaching heaven through. The shadowed stream rolled far below, Where men moved noiseless to and fro As in some vast cathedral, when The calm of prayer comes to men, With benedictions, bending low. Lo! wooded sea-banks, wild and steep! A trackless wood; a snowy cone That lifted from this wood alone! This wild wide river, dark and deep! A ship against the shore asleep! VII. An Indian woman crept, a crone, Hard by about the land alone, The relic of her perished race. She wore rich, rudely-fashioned bands Of gold above her bony hands: She hissed hot curses on the place! VIII. Go seek the red man's last retreat! A lonesome land, the haunted lands! Red mouths of beasts, red men's red hands: Red prophet-priest, in mute defeat! His boundaries in blood are writ! His land is ghostland! That is his, Whatever man may claim of this; Beware how you shall enter it! He stands God's guardian of ghostlands; Ay, this same wrapped half-prophet stands All nude and voiceless, nearer to The awful God than I or you. IX. This bronzed child, by that river's brink, Stood fair to see as you can think, As tall as tall reeds at her feet, As fresh as flowers in her hair; As sweet as flowers over-sweet, As fair as vision more than fair! How beautiful she was! How wild! How pure as water-plant, this child,-- This one wild child of Nature here Grown tall in shadows. And how near To God, where no man stood between Her eyes and scenes no man hath seen,-- This maiden that so mutely stood, The one lone woman of that wood. Stop still, my friend, and do not stir, Shut close your page and think of her. The birds sang sweeter for her face; Her lifted eyes were like a grace To seamen of that solitude, However rough, however rude. The rippled rivers of her hair, That ran in wondrous waves, somehow Flowed down divided by her brow,-- Half mantled her within its care, And flooded all, or bronze or snow, In its uncommon fold and flow. A perfume and an incense lay Before her, as an incense sweet Before blithe mowers of sweet May In early morn. Her certain feet Embarked on no uncertain way. Come, think how perfect before men, How sweet as sweet magnolia bloom Embalmed in dews of morning, when Rich sunlight leaps from midnight gloom Resolved to kiss, and swift to kiss Ere yet morn wakens man to bliss. X. The days swept on. Her perfect year Was with her now. The sweet perfume Of womanhood in holy bloom, As when red harvest blooms appear, Possessed her now. The priest did pray That saints alone should pass that way. A red bird built beneath her roof, Brown squirrels crossed her cabin sill, And welcome came or went at will. A hermit spider wove his web, And up against the roof would spin His net to catch mosquitoes in. The silly elk, the spotted fawn, And all dumb beasts that came to drink, That stealthy stole upon the brink In that dim while that lies between The coming night and going dawn, On seeing her familiar face Would fearless stop and stand in place. She was so kind, the beasts of night Gave her the road as if her right; The panther crouching overhead In sheen of moss would hear her tread And bend his eyes, but never stir Lest he by chance might frighten her. Yet in her splendid strength, her eyes, There lay the lightning of the skies; The love-hate of the lioness, To kill the instant, or caress: A pent-up soul that sometimes grew Impatient; why, she hardly knew. At last she sighed, uprose, and threw Her strong arms out as if to hand Her love, sun-born and all complete At birth, to some brave lover's feet On some far, fair, and unseen land, As knowing now not what to do! XI. How beautiful she was! Why, she Was inspiration! She was born To walk God's summer hills at morn, Nor waste her by this wood-dark sea. What wonder, then, her soul's white wings Beat at its bars, like living things! Once more she sighed! She wandered through The sea-bound wood, then stopped and drew Her hand above her face, and swept The lonesome sea, and all day kept Her face to sea, as if she knew Some day, some near or distant day, Her destiny should come that way. XII. How proud she was! How darkly fair! How full of faith, of love, of strength! Her calm, proud eyes! Her great hair's length,-- Her long, strong, tumbled, careless hair, Half curled and knotted anywhere, From brow to breast, from cheek to chin, For love to trip and tangle in! XIII. At last a tall strange sail was seen: It came so slow, so wearily, Came creeping cautious up the sea, As if it crept from out between The half-closed sea and sky that lay Tight wedged together, far away. She watched it, wooed it. She did pray It might not pass her by, but bring Some love, some hate, some anything, To break the awful loneliness That like a nightly nightmare lay Upon her proud and pent-up soul Until it barely brooked control. XIV. The ship crept silent up the sea, And came-- You cannot understand How fair she was, how sudden she Had sprung, full-grown, to womanhood: How gracious, yet how proud and grand; How glorified, yet fresh and free, How human, yet how more than good. XV. The ship stole slowly, slowly on;-- Should you in Californian field In ample flower-time behold The soft south rose lift like a shield Against the sudden sun at dawn, A double handful of heaped gold, Why you, perhaps, might understand How splendid and how queenly she Uprose beside that wood-set sea. The storm-worn ship scarce seemed to creep From wave to wave. It scarce could keep-- How still this fair girl stood, how fair! How proud her presence as she stood Between that vast sea and west wood! How large and liberal her soul, How confident, how purely chare, How trusting; how untried the whole Great heart, grand faith, that blossomed there! XVI. Ay, she was as Madonna to The tawny, lawless, faithful few Who touched her hand and knew her soul: She drew them, drew them as the pole Points all things to itself. She drew Men upward as a moon of spring, High wheeling, vast and bosom-full, Half clad in clouds and white as wool, Draws all the strong seas following. Yet still she moved as sad, as lone As that same moon that leans above, And seems to search high heaven through For some strong, all-sufficient love, For one brave love to be her own, To lean upon, to love, to woo, To lord her high white world, to yield His clashing sword against her shield. Oh, I once knew a sad, white dove That died for such sufficient love, Such high-born soul with wings to soar: That stood up equal in its place, That looked love level in the face, Nor wearied love with leaning o'er To lift love level where she trod In sad delight the hills of God. XVII. How slow before the sleeping breeze, That stranger ship from under seas! How like to Dido by her sea, When reaching arms imploringly,-- Her large, round, rich, impassioned arms, Tossed forth from all her storied charms,-- This one lone maiden leaning stood Above that sea, beside the wood! The ship crept strangely up the seas; Her shrouds seemed shreds, her masts seemed trees,-- Strange tattered trees of toughest bough That knew no cease of storm till now. The maiden pitied her; she prayed Her crew might come, nor feel afraid; She prayed the winds might come,--they came, As birds that answer to a name. The maiden held her blowing hair That bound her beauteous self about; The sea-winds housed within her hair: She let it go, it blew in rout About her bosom full and bare. Her round, full arms were free as air, Her high hands clasped, as clasped in prayer. XVIII. The breeze grew bold, the battered ship Began to flap her weary wings; The tall, torn masts began to dip And walk the wave like living things. She rounded in, she struck the stream, She moved like some majestic dream. The captain kept her deck. He stood A Hercules among his men; And now he watched the sea, and then He peered as if to pierce the wood. He now looked back, as if pursued, Now swept the sea with glass, as though He fled or feared some hidden foe. Swift sailing up the river's mouth, Swift tacking north, swift tacking south, He touched the overhanging wood; He tacked his ship; his tall black mast Touched tree-top mosses as he passed; He touched the steep shore where she stood. XIX. Her hands still clasped as if in prayer, Sweet prayer set to silentness; Her sun-browned throat uplifted, bare And beautiful. Her eager face Illumed with love and tenderness, And all her presence gave such grace, Dark shadowed in her cloud of hair, That she seemed more than mortal fair. XX. He saw. He could not speak. No more With lifted glass he sought the sea; No more he watched the wild new shore. Now foes might come, now friends might flee; He could not speak, he would not stir,-- He saw but her, he feared but her. The black ship ground against the shore, She ground against the bank as one With long and weary journeys done, That would not rise to journey more. Yet still this Jason silent stood And gazed against that sun-lit wood, As one whose soul is anywhere. All seemed so fair, so wondrous fair! At last aroused, he stepped to land Like some Columbus. They laid hand On lands and fruits, and rested there. XXI. He found all fairer than fair morn In sylvan land, where waters run With downward leap against the sun, And full-grown sudden May is born. He found her taller than tall corn Tiptoe in tassel; found her sweet As vale where bees of Hybla meet. An unblown rose, an unread book; A wonder in her wondrous eyes; A large, religious, steadfast look Of faith, of trust,--the look of one New welcomed in her Paradise. He read this book,--read on and on From titlepage to colophon: As in cool woods, some summer day, You find delight in some sweet lay, And so entranced read on and on From titlepage to colophon. XXII. And who was he that rested there,-- This Hercules, so huge, so rare, This giant of a grander day, This Theseus of a nobler Greece, This Jason of the golden fleece? And who was he? And who were they That came to seek the hidden gold Long hallowed from the pirate's hold? I do not know. You need not care. . . . . . . They loved, this maiden and this man, And that is all I surely know,-- The rest is as the winds that blow. He bowed as brave men bow to fate, Yet proud and resolute and bold; She, coy at first, and mute and cold, Held back and seemed to hesitate,-- Half frightened at this love that ran Hard gallop till her hot heart beat Like sounding of swift courser's feet. XXIII. Two strong streams of a land must run Together surely as the sun Succeeds the moon. Who shall gainsay The fates that reign, that wisely reign? Love is, love was, shall be again. Like death, inevitable it is; Perchance, like death, the dawn of bliss. Let us, then, love the perfect day, The twelve o'clock of life, and stop The two hands pointing to the top, And hold them tightly while we may. XXIV. How piteous strange is love! The walks By wooded ways; the silent talks Beneath the broad and fragrant bough. The dark deep wood, the dense black dell, Where scarce a single gold beam fell From out the sun. They rested now On mossy trunk. They wandered then Where never fell the feet of men. Then longer walks, then deeper woods, Then sweeter talks, sufficient sweet, In denser, deeper solitudes,-- Dear careless ways for careless feet; Sweet talks of paradise for two, And only two, to watch or woo. She rarely spake. All seemed a dream She would not waken from. She lay All night but waiting for the day, When she might see his face, and deem This man, with all his perils passed, Had found the Lotus-land at last. XXV. The year waxed fervid, and the sun Fell central down. The forest lay A-quiver in the heat. The sea Below the steep bank seemed to run A molten sea of gold. Away Against the gray and rock-built isles That broke the molten watery miles Where lonesome sea-cows called all day, The sudden sun smote angrily. Therefore the need of deeper deeps, Of denser shade for man and maid, Of higher heights, of cooler steeps, Where all day long the sea-wind stayed. They sought the rock-reared steep. The breeze Swept twenty thousand miles of seas; Had twenty thousand things to say Of love, of lovers of Cathay, To lovers 'mid these high-held trees. XXVI. To left, to right, below the height, Below the wood by wave and stream, Plumed pampas grasses grew to gleam And bend their lordly plumes, and run And shake, as if in very fright Before sharp lances of the sun. They saw the tide-bound battered ship Creep close below against the bank; They saw it cringe and shrink; it shrank As shrinks some huge black beast with fear When some uncommon dread is near. They heard the melting resin drip, As drip the last brave blood-drops when Life's battle waxes hot with men. XXVII. Yet what to her were burning seas, Or what to him was forest flame? They loved; they loved the glorious trees, The gleaming tides, or rise or fall; They loved the lisping winds that came From sea-lost spice-set isles unknown, With breath not warmer than their own: They loved, they loved,--and that was all. XXVIII. Full noon! Below the ancient moss With mighty boughs high clanged across, The man with sweet words, over-sweet, Fell pleading, plaintive, at her feet. He spake of love, of boundless love,-- Of love that knew no other land, Or face, or place, or anything; Of love that like the wearied dove Could light nowhere, but kept the wing Till she alone put forth her hand, And so received it in her ark From seas that shake against the dark! He clasped her hands, climbed past her knees, Forgot her hands and kissed her hair,-- The while her two hands clasped in prayer, And fair face lifted to the trees. Her proud breast heaved, her pure proud breast Rose like the waves in their unrest When counter storms possess the seas. Her mouth, her arched, uplifted mouth, Her ardent mouth that thirsted so,-- No glowing love-song of the South Can say; no man can say or know The glory there, and so live on Content without that glory gone! Her face still lifted up. And she Disdained the cup of passion he Hard pressed her panting lips to touch. She dashed it by despised, and she Caught fast her breath. She trembled much, And sudden rose full height, and stood An empress in high womanhood: She stood a tower, tall as when Proud Roman mothers suckled men Of old-time truth and taught them such. XXIX. Her soul surged vast as space is. She Was trembling as a courser when His thin flank quivers, and his feet Touch velvet on the turf, and he Is all afoam, alert, and fleet As sunlight glancing on the sea, And full of triumph before men. At last she bended some her face, Half leaned, then put him back a pace, And met his eyes. Calm, silently Her eyes looked deep into his eyes,-- As maidens down some mossy well Do peer in hope by chance to tell By image there what future lies Before them, and what face shall be The pole-star of their destiny. Pure Nature's lover! Loving him With love that made all pathways dim And difficult where he was not,-- Then marvel not at form forgot. And who shall chide? Doth priest know aught Of sign, or holy unction brought From over seas, that ever can Make man love maid or maid love man One whit the more, one bit the less, For all his mummeries to bless? Yea, all his blessing or his ban? The winds breathed warm as Araby: She leaned upon his breast, she lay A wide-winged swan with folded wing. He drowned his hot face in her hair, He heard her great heart rise and sing; He felt her bosom swell. The air Swooned sweet with perfume of her form. Her breast was warm, her breath was warm, And warm her warm and perfumed mouth As summer journeys through the South. XXX. The argent sea surged steep below, Surged languid in a tropic glow; And two great hearts kept surging so! The fervid kiss of heaven lay Precipitate on wood and sea. Two great souls glowed with ecstasy, The sea glowed scarce as warm as they. XXXI. 'Twas love's low amber afternoon. Two far-off pheasants thrummed a tune, A cricket clanged a restful air. The dreamful billows beat a rune Like heart regrets. Around her head There shone a halo. Men have said 'Twas from a dash of Titian That flooded all her storm of hair In gold and glory. But they knew, Yea, all men know there ever grew A halo round about her head Like sunlight scarcely vanishèd. XXXII. How still she was! She only knew His love. She saw no life beyond. She loved with love that only lives Outside itself and selfishness,-- A love that glows in its excess; A love that melts pure gold, and gives Thenceforth to all who come to woo No coins but this face stamped thereon,-- Ay, this one image stamped upon Its face, with some dim date long gone. XXXIII. They kept the headland high; the ship Below began to chafe her chain, To groan as some great beast in pain; While white fear leapt from lip to lip: "The woods are fire! the woods are flame! Come down and save us, in God's name!" He heard! he did not speak or stir,-- He thought of her, of only her. While flames behind, before them lay To hold the stoutest heart at bay! Strange sounds were heard far up the flood,-- Strange, savage sounds that chilled the blood! Then sudden from the dense dark wood Above, about them where they stood A thousand beasts came peering out; And now was thrust a long black snout, And now a tusky mouth. It was A sight to make the stoutest pause. "Cut loose the ship!" the black mate cried; "Cut loose the ship!" the crew replied. They drove into the sea. It lay As light as ever middle day. The while their half-blind bitch, that sat All slobber-mouthed, and monkish cowled With great, broad, floppy, leathern ears, Amid the men, rose up and howled, And doleful howled her plaintive fears, While all looked mute aghast thereat. It was the grimmest eve, I think, That ever hung on Hades' brink. Great broad-winged bats possessed the air, Bats whirling blindly everywhere; It was such troubled twilight eve As never mortal would believe. XXXIV. Some say the crazed hag lit the wood In circle where the lovers stood; Some say the gray priest feared the crew Might find at last the hoard of gold Long hidden from the black ship's hold,-- I doubt me if men ever knew. But such mad, howling, flame-lit shore No mortal ever saw before. Huge beasts above that shining sea, Wild, hideous beasts with shaggy hair, With red mouths lifting in the air, They piteous howled, and plaintively,-- The wildest sounds, the weirdest sight That ever shook the walls of night. How lorn they howled, with lifted head, To dim and distant isles that lay Wedged tight along a line of red, Caught in the closing gates of day 'Twixt sky and sea and far away,-- It was the saddest sound to hear That ever struck on human ear. They doleful called; and answered they The plaintive sea-cows far away,-- The great sea-cows that called from isles, Away across wide watery miles, With dripping mouths and lolling tongue, As if they called for captured young,-- The huge sea-cows that called the whiles Their great wide mouths were mouthing moss; And still they doleful called across From isles beyond the watery miles. No sound can half so doleful be As sea-cows calling from the sea. XXXV. The drowned sun sank and died. He lay In seas of blood. He sinking drew The gates of sunset sudden to, Where shattered day in fragments lay, And night came, moving in mad flame: The night came, lighted as he came, As lighted by high summer sun Descending through the burning blue. It was a gold and amber hue, And all hues blended into one. The night spilled splendor where she came, And filled the yellow world with flame. The moon came on, came leaning low Along the far sea-isles aglow; She fell along that amber flood A silver flame in seas of blood. It was the strangest moon, ah me! That ever settled on God's sea. XXXVI. Slim snakes slid down from fern and grass, From wood, from fen, from anywhere; You could not step, you would not pass, And you would hesitate to stir, Lest in some sudden, hurried tread Your foot struck some unbruisèd head: They slid in streams into the stream,-- It seemed like some infernal dream; They curved, and graceful curved across, Like graceful, waving sea-green moss,-- There is no art of man can make A ripple like a rippling snake! XXXVII. Abandoned, lorn, the lovers stood, Abandoned there, death in the air! That beetling steep, that blazing wood,-- Red flame! and red flame everywhere! Yet was he born to strive, to bear The front of battle. He would die In noble effort, and defy The grizzled visage of despair. He threw his two strong arms full length As if to surely test their strength; Then tore his vestments, textile things That could but tempt the demon wings Of flame that girt them round about, Then threw his garments to the air As one that laughed at death, at doubt, And like a god stood grand and bare. She did not hesitate; she knew The need of action; swift she threw Her burning vestments by, and bound Her wondrous wealth of hair that fell An all-concealing cloud around Her glorious presence, as he came To seize and bear her through the flame,-- An Orpheus out of burning hell! He leaned above her, wound his arm About her splendor, while the noon Of flood-tide, manhood, flushed his face, And high flames leapt the high headland!-- They stood as twin-hewn statues stand, High lifted in some storied place. He clasped her close, he spoke of death,-- Of death and love in the same breath. He clasped her close; her bosom lay Like ship safe anchored in some bay. XXXVIII. The flames! They could not stand or stay; Before the beetling steep, the sea! But at his feet a narrow way, A short steep path, pitched suddenly Safe open to the river's beach, Where lay a small white isle in reach,-- A small, white, rippled isle of sand Where yet the two might safely land. And there, through smoke and flame, behold The priest stood safe, yet all appalled! He reached the cross; he cried, he called; He waved his high-held cross of gold. He called and called, he bade them fly Through flames to him, nor bide and die! Her lover saw; he saw, and knew His giant strength would bear her through. And yet he would not start or stir. He clasped her close as death can hold, Or dying miser clasp his gold,-- His hold became a part of her. He would not give her up! He would Not bear her waveward though he could! That height was heaven; the wave was hell. He clasped her close,--what else had done The manliest man beneath the sun? Was it not well? was it not well? O man, be glad! be grandly glad, And kinglike walk thy ways of death! For more than years of bliss you had That one brief time you breathed her breath. Yea, more than years upon a throne That one brief time you held her fast, Soul surged to soul, vehement, vast,-- True breast to breast, and all your own. Live me one day, one narrow night, One second of supreme delight Like that, and I will blow like chaff The hollow years aside, and laugh A loud triumphant laugh, and I, King-like and crowned, will gladly die. Oh, but to wrap my love with flame! With flame within, with flame without! Oh, but to die like this, nor doubt-- To die and know her still the same! To know that down the ghostly shore Snow-white she waits me evermore! XXXIX. He poised her, held her high in air,-- His great strong limbs, his great arm's length!-- Then turned his knotted shoulders bare As birth-time in his splendid strength, And strode, strode with a lordly stride To where the high and wood-hung edge Looked down, far down upon the molten tide. The flames leapt with him to the ledge, The flames leapt leering at his side. XL. He leaned above the ledge. Below He saw the black ship idly cruise,-- A midge below, a mile below. His limbs were knotted as the thews Of Hercules in his death-throe. The flame! the flame! the envious flame! She wound her arms, she wound her hair About his tall form, grand and bare, To stay the fierce flame where it came. The black ship, like some moonlit wreck, Below along the burning sea Crept on and on all silently, With silent pygmies on her deck. That midge-like ship far, far below; That mirage lifting from the hill! His flame-lit form began to grow,-- To grow and grow more grandly still. The ship so small, that form so tall, It grew to tower over all. A tall Colossus, bronze and gold, As if that flame-lit form were he Who once bestrode the Rhodian sea, And ruled the watery world of old: As if the lost Colossus stood Above that burning sea of wood. And she, that shapely form upheld, Held high, as if to touch the sky, What airy shape, how shapely high,-- A goddess of the seas of eld! Her hand upheld, her high right hand, As if she would forget the land; As if to gather stars, and heap The stars like torches there to light Her Hero's path across the deep To some far isle that fearful night. It was as if Colossus came, Came proudly reaching from the flame Above the sea in sheen of gold, His sea-bride leaping from his hold; The lost Colossus, and his bride In bronze perfection at his side: As if the lost Colossus came Companioned from the past, his bride With torch all faithful at his side: With star-tipped torch that reached and rolled Through cloud-built corridors of gold: His bride, austere and stern and grand,-- Bartholdi's goddess by the sea, Far lifting, lighting Liberty From prison seas to Freedom's land. XLI. The flame! the envious flame, it leapt Enraged to see such majesty, Such scorn of death; such kingly scorn. Then like some lightning-riven tree They sank down in that flame--and slept And all was hushed above that steep So still, that they might sleep and sleep; As still as when a day is born. At last! from out the embers leapt Two shafts of light above the night,-- Two wings of flame that lifting swept In steady, calm, and upward flight; Two wings of flame against the white Far-lifting, tranquil, snowy cone; Two wings of love, two wings of light, Far, far above that troubled night, As mounting, mounting to God's throne. XLII. And all night long that upward light Lit up the sea-cow's bed below: The far sea-cows still calling so It seemed as they must call all night. All night! there was no night. Nay, nay, There was no night. The night that lay Between that awful eve and day,-- That nameless night was burned away. THE RHYME OF THE GREAT RIVER. PART I. Rhyme on, rhyme on in reedy flow, O river, rhymer ever sweet! The story of thy land is meet, The stars stand listening to know. Rhyme on, O river of the earth! Gray father of the dreadful seas, Rhyme on! the world upon its knees Shall yet invoke thy wealth and worth. Rhyme on, the reed is at thy mouth, O kingly minstrel, mighty stream! Thy Crescent City, like a dream, Hangs in the heaven of my South. Rhyme on, rhyme on! these broken strings Sing sweetest in this warm south wind; I sit thy willow banks and bind A broken harp that fitful sings. I. And where is my city, sweet blossom-sown town? And what is her glory, and what has she done? By the Mexican seas in the path of the sun Sit you down: in the crescent of seas sit you down. Ay, glory enough by my Mexican seas! Ay, story enough in that battle-torn town, Hidden down in the crescent of seas, hidden down 'Mid mantle and sheen of magnolia-strown trees. But mine is the story of souls; of a soul That bartered God's limitless kingdom for gold,-- Sold stars and all space for a thing he could hold In his palm for a day, ere he hid with the mole. O father of waters! O river so vast! So deep, so strong, and so wondrous wild,-- He embraces the land as he rushes past, Like a savage father embracing his child. His sea-land is true and so valiantly true, His leaf-land is fair and so marvellous fair, His palm-land is filled with a perfumed air Of magnolia blooms to its dome of blue. His rose-land has arbors of moss-swept oak,-- Gray, Druid old oaks; and the moss that sways And swings in the wind is the battle-smoke Of duellists, dead in her storied days. His love-land has churches and bells and chimes; His love-land has altars and orange flowers; And that is the reason for all these rhymes,-- These bells, they are ringing through all the hours! His sun-land has churches, and priests at prayer, White nuns, as white as the far north snow; They go where danger may bid them go,-- They dare when the angel of death is there. His love-land has ladies so fair, so fair, In the Creole quarter, with great black eyes,-- So fair that the Mayor must keep them there Lest troubles, like troubles of Troy, arise. His love-land has ladies, with eyes held down,-- Held down, because if they lifted them, Why, you would be lost in that old French town, Though you held even to God's garment hem. His love-land has ladies so fair, so fair, That they bend their eyes to the holy book Lest you should forget yourself, your prayer, And never more cease to look and to look. And these are the ladies that no men see, And this is the reason men see them not. Better their modest sweet mystery,-- Better by far than the battle-shot. And so, in this curious old town of tiles, The proud French quarter of days long gone, In castles of Spain and tumble-down piles These wonderful ladies live on and on. I sit in the church where they come and go; I dream of glory that has long since gone, Of the low raised high, of the high brought low, As in battle-torn days of Napoleon. These piteous places, so rich, so poor! One quaint old church at the edge of the town Has white tombs laid to the very church door,-- White leaves in the story of life turned down. White leaves in the story of life are these, The low white slabs in the long strong grass, Where Glory has emptied her hour-glass And dreams with the dreamers beneath the trees. I dream with the dreamers beneath the sod, Where souls pass by to the great white throne; I count each tomb as a mute milestone For weary, sweet souls on their way to God. I sit all day by the vast, strong stream, 'Mid low white slabs in the long strong grass Where Time has forgotten for aye to pass, To dream, and ever to dream and to dream. This quaint old church with its dead to the door, By the cypress swamp at the edge of the town, So restful seems that you want to sit down And rest you, and rest you for evermore. And one white tomb is a lowliest tomb, That has crept up close to the crumbling door,-- Some penitent soul, as imploring room Close under the cross that is leaning o'er. 'Tis a low white slab, and 'tis nameless, too-- Her untold story, why, who should know? Yet God, I reckon, can read right through That nameless stone to the bosom below. And the roses know, and they pity her, too; They bend their heads in the sun or rain, And they read, and they read, and then read again, As children reading strange pictures through. Why, surely her sleep it should be profound; For oh the apples of gold above! And oh the blossoms of bridal love! And oh the roses that gather around! The sleep of a night, or a thousand morns? Why what is the difference here, to-day? Sleeping and sleeping the years away With all earth's roses, and none of its thorns. Magnolias white and the roses red-- The palm-tree here and the cypress there: Sit down by the palm at the feet of the dead, And hear a penitent's midnight prayer. II. The old churchyard is still as death, A stranger passes to and fro As if to church--he does not go-- The dead night does not draw a breath. A lone sweet lady prays within. The stranger passes by the door-- Will he not pray? Is he so poor He has no prayer for his sin? Is he so poor! His two strong hands Are full and heavy, as with gold; They clasp, as clasp two iron bands About two bags with eager hold. Will he not pause and enter in, Put down his heavy load and rest, Put off his garmenting of sin, As some black burden from his breast? Ah, me! the brave alone can pray. The church-door is as cannon's mouth To sinner North, or sinner South, More dreaded than dread battle day. Now two men pace. They pace apart, And one with youth and truth is fair; The fervid sun is in his heart, The tawny South is in his hair. Ay, two men pace, pace left and right-- The lone, sweet lady prays within-- Ay, two men pace: the silent night Kneels down in prayer for some sin. Lo! two men pace; and one is gray, A blue-eyed man from snow-clad land, With something heavy in each hand,-- With heavy feet, as feet of clay. Ay, two men pace; and one is light Of step, but still his brow is dark His eyes are as a kindled spark That burns beneath the brow of night! And still they pace. The stars are red, The tombs are white as frosted snow; The silence is as if the dead Did pace in couples, to and fro. III. The azure curtain of God's house Draws back, and hangs star-pinned to space; I hear the low, large moon arouse, I see her lift her languid face. I see her shoulder up the east, Low-necked, and large as womanhood,-- Low-necked, as for some ample feast Of gods, within yon orange-wood. She spreads white palms, she whispers peace,-- Sweet peace on earth for evermore; Sweet peace for two beneath the trees, Sweet peace for one within the door. The bent stream, like a scimitar Flashed in the sun, sweeps on and on, Till sheathed like some great sword new-drawn In seas beneath the Carib's star. The high moon climbs the sapphire hill, The lone sweet lady prays within; The crickets keep a clang and din-- They are so loud, earth is so still! And two men glare in silence there! The bitter, jealous hate of each Has grown too deep for deed or speech-- The lone, sweet lady keeps her prayer. The vast moon high through heaven's field In circling chariot is rolled; The golden stars are spun and reeled, And woven into cloth of gold. The white magnolia fills the night With perfume, as the proud moon fills The glad earth with her ample light From out her awful sapphire hills. White orange blossoms fill the boughs Above, about the old church door,-- They wait the bride, the bridal vows,-- They never hung so fair before. The two men glare as dark as sin! And yet all seems so fair, so white, You would not reckon it was night,-- The while the lady prays within. IV. She prays so very long and late,-- The two men, weary, waiting there,-- The great magnolia at the gate Bends drowsily above her prayer. The cypress in his cloak of moss, That watches on in silent gloom, Has leaned and shaped a shadow-cross Above the nameless, lowly tomb. What can she pray for? What her sin? What folly of a maid so fair? What shadows bind the wondrous hair Of one who prays so long within? The palm-trees guard in regiment, Stand right and left without the gate; The myrtle-moss trees wait and wait; The tall magnolia leans intent. The cypress trees, on gnarled old knees, Far out the dank and marshy deep Where slimy monsters groan and creep, Kneel with her in their marshy seas. What can her sin be? Who shall know? The night flies by,--a bird on wing; The men no longer to and fro Stride up and down, or anything. For one so weary and so old Has hardly strength to stride or stir; He can but hold his bags of gold,-- But hug his gold and wait for her. The two stand still,--stand face to face. The moon slides on; the midnight air Is perfumed as a house of prayer-- The maiden keeps her holy place. Two men! And one is gray, but one Scarce lifts a full-grown face as yet: With light foot on life's threshold set,-- Is he the other's sun-born son? And one is of the land of snow, And one is of the land of sun; A black-eyed burning youth is one, But one has pulses cold and slow: Ay, cold and slow from clime of snow Where Nature's bosom, icy bound, Holds all her forces, hard, profound,-- Holds close where all the South lets go. Blame not the sun, blame not the snows; God's great schoolhouse for all is clime, The great school-teacher, Father Time; And each has borne as best he knows. At last the elder speaks,--he cries,-- He speaks as if his heart would break; He speaks out as a man that dies,-- As dying for some lost love's sake: "Come, take this bag of gold, and go! Come, take one bag! See, I have two! Oh, why stand silent, staring so, When I would share my gold with you? "Come, take this gold! See how I pray! See how I bribe, and beg, and buy,-- Ay, buy! buy love, as you, too, may Some day before you come to die. "God! take this gold, I beg, I pray! I beg as one who thirsting cries For but one drop of drink, and dies In some lone, loveless desert way. "You hesitate? Still hesitate? Stand silent still and mock my pain? Still mock to see me wait and wait, And wait her love, as earth waits rain?" V. O broken ship! O starless shore! O black and everlasting night, Where love comes never any more To light man's way with heaven's light. A godless man with bags of gold I think a most unholy sight; Ah, who so desolate at night Amid death's sleepers still and cold? A godless man on holy ground I think a most unholy sight. I hear death trailing like a hound Hard after him, and swift to bite. VI. The vast moon settles to the west: Two men beside a nameless tomb, And one would sit thereon to rest,-- Ay, rest below, if there were room. What is this rest of death, sweet friend? What is the rising up,--and where? I say, death is a lengthened prayer, A longer night, a larger end. Hear you the lesson I once learned: I died; I sailed a million miles Through dreamful, flowery, restful isles,-- She was not there, and I returned. I say the shores of death and sleep Are one; that when we, wearied, come To Lethe's waters, and lie dumb, 'Tis death, not sleep, holds us to keep. Yea, we lie dead for need of rest And so the soul drifts out and o'er The vast still waters to the shore Beyond, in pleasant, tranquil quest: It sails straight on, forgetting pain, Past isles of peace, to perfect rest,-- Now were it best abide, or best Return and take up life again? And that is all of death there is, Believe me. If you find your love In that far land, then like the dove Abide, and turn not back to this. But if you find your love not there; Or if your feet feel sure, and you Have still allotted work to do,-- Why, then return to toil and care. Death is no mystery. 'Tis plain If death be mystery, then sleep Is mystery thrice strangely deep,-- For oh this coming back again! Austerest ferryman of souls! I see the gleam of solid shores, I hear thy steady stroke of oars Above the wildest wave that rolls. O Charon, keep thy sombre ships! We come, with neither myrrh nor balm, Nor silver piece in open palm, But lone white silence on our lips. VII. She prays so long! she prays so late! What sin in all this flower-land Against her supplicating hand Could have in heaven any weight? Prays she for her sweet self alone? Prays she for some one far away, Or some one near and dear to-day, Or some poor, lorn, lost soul unknown? It seems to me a selfish thing To pray forever for one's self; It seems to me like heaping pelf In heaven by hard reckoning. Why, I would rather stoop, and bear My load of sin, and bear it well And bravely down to burning hell, Than ever pray one selfish prayer! VIII. The swift chameleon in the gloom-- This silence it is so profound!-- Forsakes its bough, glides to the ground, Then up, and lies across the tomb. It erst was green as olive-leaf, It then grew gray as myrtle moss The time it slid the moss across; But now 'tis marble-white with grief. The little creature's hues are gone; Here in the pale and ghostly light It lies so pale, so panting white,-- White as the tomb it lies upon. The two men by that nameless tomb, And both so still! You might have said These two men, they are also dead, And only waiting here for room. How still beneath the orange-bough! How tall was one, how bowed was one! The one was as a journey done, The other as beginning now. And one was young,--young with that youth Eternal that belongs to truth; And one was old,--old with the years That follow fast on doubts and fears. And yet the habit of command Was his, in every stubborn part; No common knave was he at heart, Nor his the common coward's hand. He looked the young man in the face, So full of hate, so frank of hate; The other, standing in his place, Stared back as straight and hard as fate. And now he sudden turned away, And now he paced the path, and now Came back, beneath the orange-bough Pale-browed, with lips as cold as clay. As mute as shadows on a wall, As silent still, as dark as they, Before that stranger, bent and gray, The youth stood scornful, proud, and tall. He stood, a tall palmetto-tree With Spanish daggers guarding it; Nor deed, nor word, to him seemed fit While she prayed on so silently. He slew his rival with his eyes; His eyes were daggers piercing deep,-- So deep that blood began to creep From their deep wounds and drop wordwise: His eyes so black, so bright that they Might raise the dead, the living slay, If but the dead, the living, bore Such hearts as heroes had of yore: Two deadly arrows barbed in black, And feathered, too, with raven's wing; Two arrows that could silent sting, And with a death-wound answer back. How fierce he was! how deadly still In that mesmeric, hateful stare Turned on the pleading stranger there That drew to him, despite his will: So like a bird down-fluttering, Down, down, beneath a snake's bright eyes, He stood, a fascinated thing, That hopeless, unresisting, dies. He raised a hard hand as before, Reached out the gold, and offered it With hand that shook as ague-fit,-- The while the youth but scorned the more. "You will not touch it? In God's name Who are you, and what are you, then? Come, take this gold, and be of men,-- A human form with human aim. "Yea, take this gold,--she must be mine She shall be mine! I do not fear Your scowl, your scorn, your soul austere, The living, dead, or your dark sign. "I saw her as she entered there; I saw her, and uncovered stood: The perfume of her womanhood Was holy incense on the air. "She left behind sweet sanctity, Religion lay the way she went; I cried I would repent, repent! She passed on, all unheeding me. "Her soul is young, her eyes are bright And gladsome, as mine own are dim; But, oh, I felt my senses swim The time she passed me by to-night!-- "The time she passed, nor raised her eyes To hear me cry I would repent, Nor turned her head to hear my cries, But swifter went the way she went,-- "Went swift as youth, for all these years! And this the strangest thing appears, That lady there seems just the same,-- Sweet Gladys-- Ah! you know her name? "You hear her name and start that I Should name her dear name trembling so? Why, boy, when I shall come to die That name shall be the last I know. "That name shall be the last sweet name My lips shall utter in this life! That name is brighter than bright flame,-- That lady is my wedded wife! "Ah, start and catch your burning breath! Ah, start and clutch your deadly knife! If this be death, then be it death,-- But that loved lady is my wife! "Yea, you are stunned! your face is white, That I should come confronting you, As comes a lorn ghost of the night From out the past, and to pursue. "You thought me dead? You shake your head, You start back horrified to know That she is loved, that she is wed, That you have sinned in loving so. "Yet what seems strange, that lady there, Housed in the holy house of prayer, Seems just the same for all her tears,-- For all my absent twenty years. "Yea, twenty years to-night, to-night, Just twenty years this day, this hour, Since first I plucked that perfect flower, And not one witness of the rite. "Nay, do not doubt,--I tell you true! Her prayers, her tears, her constancy Are all for me, are all for me,-- And not one single thought for you! "I knew, I knew she would be here This night of nights to pray for me! And how could I for twenty year Know this same night so certainly? "Ah me! some thoughts that we would drown Stick closer than a brother to The conscience, and pursue, pursue Like baying hound to hunt us down. "And then, that date is history; For on that night this shore was shelled, And many a noble mansion felled, With many a noble family. "I wore the blue; I watched the flight Of shells like stars tossed through the air To blow your hearth-stones--anywhere, That wild, illuminated night. "Nay, rage befits you not so well: Why, you were but a babe at best, Your cradle some sharp bursted shell That tore, maybe, your mother's breast! "Hear me! We came in honored war. The risen world was on your track! The whole North-land was at our back, From Hudson's bank to the North star! "And from the North to palm-set sea The splendid fiery cyclone swept. Your fathers fell, your mothers wept, Their nude babes clinging to the knee. "A wide and desolated track: Behind, a path of ruin lay; Before, some women by the way Stood mutely gazing, clad in black. "From silent women waiting there Some tears came down like still small rain; Their own sons on the battle plain Were now but viewless ghosts of air. "Their own dear daring boys in gray,-- They should not see them any more; Our cruel drums kept telling o'er The time their own sons went away. "Through burning town, by bursting shell-- Yea, I remember well that night; I led through orange-lanes of light, As through some hot outpost of hell! "That night of rainbow-shot and shell Sent from your surging river's breast To waken me, no more to rest,-- That night I should remember well! "That night amid the maimed and dead,-- A night in history set down By light of many a burning town, And written all across in red,-- "Her father dead, her brothers dead, Her home in flames,--what else could she But fly all helpless here to me, A fluttered dove, that night of dread? "Short time, hot time had I to woo Amid the red shells' battle-chime; But women rarely reckon time, And perils speed their love when true. "And then I wore a captain's sword; And, too, had oftentime before Doffed cap at her dead father's door, And passed a soldier's pleasant word. "And then--ah, I was comely then! I bore no load upon my back, I heard no hounds upon my track, But stood the tallest of tall men. "Her father's and her mother's shrine, This church amid the orange wood, So near and so secure it stood, It seemed to beckon as a sign. "Its white cross seemed to beckon me: My heart was strong, and it was mine To throw myself upon my knee, To beg to lead her to this shrine. "She did consent. Through lanes of light I led through that church-door that night-- Let fall your hand! Take back your face And stand,--stand patient in your place! "She loved me; and she loves me still. Yea, she clung close to me that hour As honey-bee to honey-flower,-- And still is mine, through good or ill. "The priest stood there. He spake the prayer; He made the holy, mystic sign. And she was mine, was wholly mine,-- Is mine this moment I will swear! "Then days, then nights, of vast delight,-- Then came a doubtful, later day; The faithful priest, now far away, Watched with the dying in the fight: "The priest amid the dying, dead, Kept duty on the battle-field,-- That midnight marriage unrevealed Kept strange thoughts running through my head. "At last a stray ball struck the priest: This vestibule his chancel was. And now none lived to speak her cause, Record, or champion her the least. "Hear me! I had been bred to hate All priests, their mummeries and all. Ah, it was fate,--ah, it was fate That all things tempted me to fall! "And then the rattling songs we sang Those nights when rudely revelling,-- The songs that only soldiers sing,-- Until the very tent-poles rang! "What is the rhyme that rhymers say Of maidens born to be betrayed By epaulettes and shining blade, While soldiers love and ride away? "And then my comrades spake her name Half taunting, with a touch of shame; Taught me to hold that lily-flower As some light pastime of the hour. "And then the ruin in the land, The death, dismay, the lawlessness! Men gathered gold on every hand,-- Heaped gold: and why should I do less? "The cry for gold was in the air, For Creole gold, for precious things; The sword kept prodding here and there Through bolts and sacred fastenings. "'Get gold! get gold!' This was the cry. And I loved gold. What else could I Or you, or any earnest one Born in this getting age have done? "With this one lesson taught from youth, And ever taught us, to get gold,-- To get and hold, and ever hold,-- What else could I have done, forsooth? "She, seeing how I sought for gold,-- This girl, my wife, one late night told Of treasures hidden close at hand, In her dead father's mellow land: "Of gold she helped her brothers hide Beneath a broad banana tree, The day the two in battle died,-- The night she dying fled to me. "It seemed too good; I laughed to scorn Her trustful tale. She answered not; But meekly on the morrow morn Two massive bags of bright gold brought. "And when she brought this gold to me, Red Creole gold, rich, rare, and old,-- When I at last had gold, sweet gold, I cried in very ecstasy! "Red gold! rich gold! two bags of gold! The two stout bags of gold she brought And gave with scarce a second thought,-- Why, her two hands could hardly hold! "Now I had gold! two bags of gold! Two wings of gold to fly, and fly The wide world's girth; red gold to hold Against my heart for aye and aye! "My country's lesson: 'Gold! get gold!' I learned it well in land of snow; And what can glow, so brightly glow, Long winter nights of Northern cold? "Ay, now at last, at last I had The one thing, all fair things above My land had taught me most to love! A miser now! and I grew mad. "With those two bags of gold my own, I then began to plan that night For flight, for far and sudden flight,-- For flight; and, too, for flight alone. "I feared! I feared! My heart grew cold,-- Some one might claim this gold of me! I feared her,--feared her purity, Feared all things but my bags of gold. "I grew to hate her face, her creed,-- That face the fairest ever yet That bowed o'er holy cross or bead, Or yet was in God's image set. "I fled,--nay, not so knavish low As you have fancied, did I fly; I sought her at that shrine, and I Told her full frankly I should go. "I stood a giant in my power,-- And did she question or dispute? I stood a savage, selfish brute,-- She bowed her head, a lily-flower. "And when I sudden turned to go, And told her I should come no more, She bowed her head so low, so low, Her vast black hair fell pouring o'er. "And that was all; her splendid face Was mantled from me, and her night Of hair half hid her from my sight As she fell moaning in her place. "And there, 'mid her dark night of hair, She sobbed, low moaning through her tears, That she would wait, wait all the years,-- Would wait and pray in her despair. "Nay, did not murmur, not deny,-- She did not cross me one sweet word! I turned and fled: I thought I heard A night-bird's piercing low death-cry!" THE RHYME OF THE GREAT RIVER. PART II. How soft this moonlight of the South! How sweet my South in soft moonlight! I want to kiss her warm sweet mouth As she lies sleeping here to-night. How still! I do not hear a mouse. I see some bursting buds appear; I hear God in His garden,--hear Him trim some flowers for His house. I hear some singing stars; the mouth Of my vast river sings and sings, And pipes on reeds of pleasant things,-- Of splendid promise for my South: My great South-woman, soon to rise And tiptoe up and loose her hair; Tiptoe, and take from all the skies God's stars and glorious moon to wear! I. The poet shall create or kill, Bid heroes live, bid braggarts die. I look against a lurid sky,-- My silent South lies proudly still. The lurid light of burning lands Still climbs to God's house overhead; Mute women wring white withered hands; Their eyes are red, their skies are red. Poor man! still boast your bitter wars! Still burn and burn, and burning die. But God's white finger spins the stars In calm dominion of the sky. And not one ray of light the less Comes down to bid the grasses spring; No drop of dew nor anything Shall fail for all your bitterness. The land that nursed a nation's youth, Ye burned it, sacked it, sapped it dry. Ye gave it falsehoods for its truth, And fame was fashioned from a lie. If man grows large, is God the less? The moon shall rise and set the same, The great sun spill his splendid flame And clothe the world in queenliness. And from that very soil ye trod Some large-souled seeing youth shall come Some day, and he shall not be dumb Before the awful court of God. II. The weary moon had turned away, The far North-Star was turning pale To hear the stranger's boastful tale Of blood and flame that battle day. And yet again the two men glared, Close face to face above that tomb; Each seemed as jealous of the room The other eager waiting shared. Again the man began to say,-- As taking up some broken thread, As talking to the patient dead,-- The Creole was as still as they: "That night we burned yon grass-grown town,-- The grasses, vines are reaching up; The ruins they are reaching down, As sun-browned soldiers when they sup. "I knew her,--knew her constancy. She said, this night of every year She here would come, and kneeling here, Would pray the live-long night for me. "This praying seems a splendid thing! It drives old Time the other way; It makes him lose all reckoning Of years that pagans have to pay. "This praying seems a splendid thing! It makes me stronger as she prays-- But oh the bitter, bitter days When I became a banished thing! "I fled, took ship,--I fled as far As far ships drive tow'rd the North-Star; For I did hate the South, the sun That made me think what I had done. "I could not see a fair palm-tree In foreign land, in pleasant place, But it would whisper of her face And shake its keen sharp blades at me. "Each black-eyed woman would recall A lone church-door, a face, a name, A coward's flight, a soldier's shame: I fled from woman's face, from all. "I hugged my gold, my precious gold, Within my strong, stout, buckskin vest. I wore my bags against my breast So close I felt my heart grow cold. "I did not like to see it now; I did not spend one single piece. I travelled, travelled without cease As far as Russian ship could plow. "And when my own scant hoard was gone, And I had reached the far North-land, I took my two stout bags in hand As one pursued, and journeyed on. "Ah, I was weary! I grew gray; I felt the fast years slip and reel As slip black beads when maidens kneel At altars when out-door is gay. "At last I fell prone in the road,-- Fell fainting with my cursèd load. A skin-clad cossack helped me bear My bags, nor would one shilling share. "He looked at me with proud disdain,-- He looked at me as if he knew; His black eyes burned me thro' and thro'; His scorn pierced like a deadly pain. "He frightened me with honesty; He made me feel so small, so base, I fled, as if the fiend kept chase,-- The fiend that claims my company! "I bore my load alone; I crept Far up the steep and icy way; And there, before a cross there lay A barefoot priest, who bowed and wept. "I threw my gold right down and sped Straight on. And oh my heart was light! A spring-time bird in spring-time flight Flies not so happy as I fled. "I felt somehow this monk would take My gold, my load from off my back; Would turn the fiend from off my track, Would take my gold for sweet Christ's sake! "I fled; I did not look behind; I fled, fled with the mountain wind. At last; far down the mountain's base I found a pleasant resting-place. "I rested there so long, so well, More grateful than all tongues can tell. It was such pleasant thing to hear That valley's voices calm and clear: "That valley veiled in mountain air, With white goats on the hills at morn; That valley green with seas of corn, With cottage islands here and there. "I watched the mountain girls. The hay They mowed was not more sweet than they; They laid brown hands in my white hair; They marvelled at my face of care. "I tried to laugh; I could but weep. I made these peasants one request,-- That I with them might toil or rest, And with them sleep the long, last sleep. "I begged that I might battle there, For that fair valley-land, for those Who gave me cheer when girt with foes, And have a country, loved and fair. "Where is that spot that poets name Our country? name the hallowed land? Where is that spot where man must stand Or fall when girt with sword and flame? "Where is that one permitted spot? Where is the one place man must fight? Where rests the one God-given right To fight, as ever patriots fought? "I say 'tis in that holy house Where God first set us down on earth: Where mother welcomed us at birth, And bared her breasts, a happy spouse. "But when some wrong, some deed of shame, Shall make that land no more our own-- Ah! hunger for that holy name My country, I have truly known! "The simple plough-boy from his field Looks forth. He sees God's purple wall Encircling him. High over all The vast sun wheels his shining shield. "This King, who makes earth what it is,-- King David bending to his toil! O lord and master of the soil, How envied in thy loyal bliss! "Long live the land we loved in youth,-- That world with blue skies bent about, Where never entered ugly doubt! Long live the simple, homely truth! "Can true hearts love some far snow-land, Some bleak Alaska bought with gold? God's laws are old as love is old; And Home is something near at hand. "Yea, change yon river's course; estrange The seven sweet stars; make hate divide The full moon from the flowing tide,-- But this old truth ye cannot change. "I begged a land as begging bread; I begged of these brave mountaineers To share their sorrows, share their tears; To weep as they wept, with their dead. "They did consent. The mountain town Was mine to love, and valley lands. That night the barefoot monk came down And laid my two bags in my hands! "On! On! And oh the load I bore! Why, once I dreamed my soul was lead; Dreamed once it was a body dead! It made my cold, hard bosom sore. "I dragged that body forth and back-- O conscience, what a baying hound! Nor frozen seas nor frosted ground Can throw this bloodhound from his track. "In farthest Russia I lay down A dying man, at last to rest; I felt such load upon my breast As seamen feel, who sinking drown. "That night, all chill and desperate, I sprang up, for I could not rest; I tore the two bags from my breast, And dashed them in the burning grate. "I then crept back into my bed; I tried, I begged, I prayed to sleep; But those red, restless coins would keep Slow dropping, dropping, and blood red. "I heard them clink and clink and clink,-- They turned, they talked within that grate. They talked of her; they made me think Of one who still must pray and wait. "And when the bags burned crisp and black, Two coins did start, roll to the floor,-- Roll out, roll on, and then roll back, As if they needs must journey more. "Ah, then I knew nor change nor space, Nor all the drowning years that rolled Could hide from me her haunting face, Nor still that red-tongued talking gold. "Again I sprang forth from my bed! I shook as in an ague fit; I clutched that red gold, burning red, I clutched, as if to strangle it. "I clutched it up--you hear me, boy?-- I clutched it up with joyful tears! I clutched it close, with such wild joy I had not felt for years and years! "Such joy! for I should now retrace My steps, should see my land, her face; Bring back her gold this battle day, And see her, see her, hear her pray! "I brought it back--you hear me, boy?-- I clutch it, hold it, hold it now: Red gold, bright gold that giveth joy To all, and anywhere or how; "That giveth joy to all but me,-- To all but me, yet soon to all. It burns my hands, it burns! but she Shall ope my hands and let it fall. "For oh I have a willing hand To give these bags of gold; to see Her smile as once she smiled on me Here in this pleasant, warm palm-land!" He ceased, he thrust each hard-clenched fist, He threw his gold hard forth again, As one impelled by some mad pain He would not or could not resist. The creole, scorning, turned away, As if he turned from that lost thief,-- The one that died without belief That awful crucifixion day. III. Believe in man, nor turn away. Lo! man advances year by year; Time bears him upward, and his sphere Of life must broaden day by day. Believe in man with large belief; The garnered grain each harvest-time Hath promise, roundness, and full prime For all the empty chaff and sheaf. Believe in man with proud belief: Truth keeps the bottom of her well, And when the thief peeps down, the thief Peeps back at him, perpetual. Faint not that this or that man fell; For one that falls a thousand rise To lift white Progress to the skies: Truth keeps the bottom of her well. Fear not for man, nor cease to delve For cool sweet truth, with large belief. Lo! Christ himself chose only twelve, Yet one of these turned out a thief. IV. Down through the dark magnolia leaves Where climbs the rose of Cherokee Against the orange-blossomed tree, A loom of moonlight weaves and weaves,-- A loom of moonlight, weaving clothes From snow-white rose of Cherokee, And bridal blooms of orange-tree, For fairy folk in fragrant rose. Down through the mournful myrtle crape, Through moving moss, through ghostly gloom, A long white moonbeam takes a shape Above a nameless, lowly tomb; A long white finger through the gloom Of grasses gathered round about,-- As God's white finger pointing out A name upon that nameless tomb. V. Her white face bowed in her black hair, The maiden prays so still within That you might hear a falling pin,-- Ay, hear her white unuttered prayer. The moon has grown disconsolate, Has turned her down her walk of stars: Why, she is shutting up her bars, As maidens shut a lover's gate. The moon has grown disconsolate; She will no longer watch and wait. But two men wait; and two men will Wait on till morning, mute and still: Still wait and walk among the trees, Quite careless if the moon may keep Her walk along her starry steep Above the Southern pearl-sown seas. They know no moon, or set or rise Of stars, or anything to light The earth or skies, save her dark eyes, This praying, waking, watching night. They move among the tombs apart, Their eyes turn ever to that door; They know the worn walks there by heart-- They turn and walk them o'er and o'er. They are not wide, these little walks For dead folk by this crescent town. They lie right close when they lie down, As if they kept up quiet talks. VI. The two men keep their paths apart; But more and more begins to stoop The man with gold, as droop and droop Tall plants with something at their heart. Now once again with eager zest He offers gold with silent speech; The other will not walk in reach, But walks around, as round a pest. His dark eyes sweep the scene around, His young face drinks the fragrant air, His dark eyes journey everywhere,-- The other's cleave unto the ground. It is a weary walk for him, For oh he bears a weary load! He does not like that narrow road Between the dead--it is so dim: It is so dark, that narrow place, Where graves lie thick, like yellow leaves: Give us the light of Christ and grace, Give light to garner in the sheaves. Give light of love; for gold is cold, And gold is cruel as a crime; It gives no light at such sad time As when man's feet wax weak and old. Ay, gold is heavy, hard, and cold! And have I said this thing before? Well, I will tell it o'er and o'er, 'Twere need be told ten thousand fold. "Give us this day our daily bread,"-- Get this of God, then all the rest Is housed in thine own honest breast, If you but lift a lordly head. VII. Oh, I have seen men, tall and fair, Stoop down their manhood with disgust, Stoop down God's image to the dust, To get a load of gold to bear; Have seen men selling day by day The glance of manhood that God gave: To sell God's image as a slave Might sell some little pot of clay! Behold! here in this green graveyard A man with gold enough to fill A coffin, as a miller's till; And yet his path is hard, so hard! His feet keep sinking in the sand, And now so near an opened grave! He seems to hear the solemn wave Of dread oblivion at hand. The sands, they grumble so, it seems As if he walks some shelving brink. He tries to stop, he tries to think, He tries to make believe he dreams: Why, he is free to leave the land, The silver moon is white as dawn; Why, he has gold in either hand, Has silver ways to walk upon. And who should chide, or bid him stay? Or taunt, or threat, or bid him fly? The world's for sale, I hear men say, And yet this man has gold to buy. Buy what? Buy rest? He could not rest! Buy gentle sleep? He could not sleep, Though all these graves were wide and deep As their wide mouths with the request. Buy Love, buy faith, buy snow-white truth? Buy moonlight, sunlight, present, past? Buy but one brimful cup of youth That calm souls drink of to the last? O God! 'tis pitiful to see This miser so forlorn and old! O God! how poor a man may be With nothing in this world but gold! VIII. The broad magnolia's blooms are white; Her blooms are large, as if the moon Had lost her way some lazy night, And lodged here till the afternoon. Oh, vast white blossoms breathing love! White bosom of my lady dead, In your white heaven overhead I look, and learn to look above. IX. All night the tall magnolia kept Kind watch above the nameless tomb: Two shapes kept waiting in the gloom And gray of morn, where roses wept. The dew-wet roses wept; their eyes All dew, their breath as sweet as prayer. And as they wept, the dead down there Did feel their tears and hear their sighs. The grass uprose as if afraid Some stranger foot might press too near; Its every blade was like a spear, Its every spear a living blade. The grass above that nameless tomb Stood all arrayed, as if afraid Some weary pilgrim seeking room And rest, might lay where she was laid. X. 'Twas morn, and yet it was not morn; 'Twas morn in heaven, not on earth,-- A star was singing of a birth, Just saying that a day was born. The marsh hard by that bound the lake,-- The great low sea-lake, Ponchartrain, Shut off from sultry Cuban main,-- Drew up its legs, as half awake: Drew long stork legs, long legs that steep In slime where alligators creep,-- Drew long green legs that stir the grass, As when the late lorn night-winds pass. Then from the marsh came croakings low, Then louder croaked some sea-marsh beast; Then, far away against the east, God's rose of morn began to grow. From out the marsh, against that east, A ghostly moss-swept cypress stood; With ragged arms above the wood It rose, a God-forsaken beast. It seemed so frightened where it rose! The moss-hung thing it seemed to wave The worn-out garments of the grave,-- To wave and wave its old grave-clothes. Close by, a cow rose up and lowed From out a palm-thatched milking-shed. A black boy on the river road Fled sudden, as the night had fled: A nude black boy, a bit of night That had been broken off and lost From flying night, the time it crossed The surging river in its flight: A bit of darkness, following The sable night on sable wing,-- A bit of darkness stilled with fear, Because that nameless tomb was near. Then holy bells came pealing out; Then steamboats blew, then horses neighed; Then smoke from hamlets round about Crept out, as if no more afraid. Then shrill cocks here, and shrill cocks there, Stretched glossy necks and filled the air. How many cocks it takes to make A country morning well awake! Then many boughs, with many birds,-- Young boughs in green, old boughs in gray,-- These birds had very much to say In their soft, sweet, familiar words. And all seemed sudden glad; the gloom Forgot the church, forgot the tomb; And yet like monks with cross and bead The myrtles leaned to read and read. And oh the fragrance of the sod! And oh the perfume of the air! The sweetness, sweetness everywhere, That rose like incense up to God! I like a cow's breath in sweet spring, I like the breath of babes new-born; A maid's breath is a pleasant thing,-- But oh the breath of sudden morn! Of sudden morn, when every pore Of mother earth is pulsing fast With life, and life seems spilling o'er With love, with love too sweet to last: Of sudden morn beneath the sun, By God's great river wrapped in gray, That for a space forgets to run, And hides his face as if to pray. XI. The black-eyed Creole kept his eyes Turned to the door, as eyes might turn To see the holy embers burn Some sin away at sacrifice. Full dawn! but yet he knew no dawn, Nor song of bird, nor bird on wing, Nor breath of rose, nor anything Her fair face lifted not upon. And yet he taller stood with morn; His bright eyes, brighter than before, Burned fast against that fastened door, His proud lips lifting up with scorn,-- With lofty, silent scorn for one Who all night long had plead and plead, With none to witness but the dead How he for gold must be undone. Oh, ye who feed a greed for gold, And barter truth, and trade sweet youth For cold hard gold, behold, behold! Behold this man! behold this truth! Why, what is there in all God's plan Of vast creation, high or low, By sea or land, by sun or snow, So mean, so miserly as man? Lo, earth and heaven all let go Their garnered riches, year by year! The treasures of the trackless snow, Ah, hast thou seen how very dear? The wide earth gives, gives golden grain, Gives fruits of gold, gives all, gives all! Hold forth your hand, and these shall fall In your full palm as free as rain. Yea, earth is generous. The trees Strip nude as birth-time without fear, And their reward is year by year To feel their fulness but increase. The law of Nature is to give, To give, to give! and to rejoice In giving with a generous voice, And so trust God and truly live. But see this miser at the last,-- This man who loves, grasps hold of gold, Who grasps it with such eager hold, To hold forever hard and fast: As if to hold what God lets go; As if to hold, while all around Lets go, and drops upon the ground All things as generous as snow. Let go your greedy hold, I say! Let go your hold! Do not refuse 'Till death comes by and shakes you loose, And sends you shamed upon your way. What if the sun should keep his gold? The rich moon lock her silver up? What if the gold-clad buttercup Became a miser, mean and old? Ah, me! the coffins are so true In all accounts, the shrouds so thin, That down there you might sew and sew, Nor ever sew one pocket in. And all that you can hold of lands Down there, below the grass, down there, Will only be that little share You hold in your two dust-full hands. XII. She comes! she comes! The stony floor Speaks out! And now the rusty door At last has just one word this day, With mute religious lips, to say. She comes! she comes! And lo, her face Is upward, radiant, fair as prayer! So pure here in this holy place, Where holy peace is everywhere. Her upraised face, her face of light And loveliness, from duty done, Is like a rising orient sun That pushes back the brow of night. How brave, how beautiful is truth! Good deeds untold are like to this. But fairest of all fair things is A pious maiden in her youth: A pious maiden as she stands Just on the threshold of the years That throb and pulse with hopes and fears, And reaches God her helpless hands. How fair is she! How fond is she! Her foot upon the threshold there. Her breath is as a blossomed tree,-- This maiden mantled in her hair! Her hair, her black, abundant hair, Where night, inhabited all night And all this day, will not take flight, But finds content and houses there. Her hands are clasped, her two small hands; They hold the holy book of prayer Just as she steps the threshold there, Clasped downward where she silent stands. XIII. Once more she lifts her lowly face, And slowly lifts her large, dark eyes Of wonder; and in still surprise She looks full forward in her place. She looks full forward on the air Above the tomb, and yet below The fruits of gold, the blooms of snow, As looking--looking anywhere. She feels--she knows not what she feels; It is not terror, is not fear, But there is something that reveals A presence that is near and dear. She does not let her eyes fall down, They lift against the far profound: Against the blue above the town Two wide-winged vultures circle round. Two brown birds swim above the sea,-- Her large eyes swim as dreamily And follow far, and follow high, Two circling black specks in the sky. One forward step,--the closing door Creaks out, as frightened or in pain; Her eyes are on the ground again-- Two men are standing close before. "My love," sighs one, "my life, my all!" Her lifted foot across the sill Sinks down,--and all things are so still You hear the orange blossoms fall. But fear comes not where duty is, And purity is peace and rest; Her cross is close upon her breast, Her two hands clasp hard hold of this. Her two hands clasp cross, book, and she Is strong in tranquil purity,-- Ay, strong as Samson when he laid His two hands forth, and bowed and prayed. One at her left, one at her right, And she between, the steps upon,-- I can but see that Syrian night, The women there at early dawn 'Tis strange, I know, and may be wrong, But ever pictured in my song; And rhyming on, I see the day They came to roll the stone away. XIV. The sky is like an opal sea, The air is like the breath of kine, But oh her face is white, and she Leans faint to see a lifted sign,-- To see two hands lift up and wave To see a face so white with woe, So ghastly, hollow, white as though It had that moment left the grave. Her sweet face at that ghostly sign, Her fair face in her weight of hair, Is like a white dove drowning there,-- A white dove drowned in Tuscan wine. He tries to stand, to stand erect. 'Tis gold, 'tis gold that holds him down! And soul and body both must drown,-- Two millstones tied about his neck. Now once again his piteous face Is raised to her face reaching there. He prays such piteous, silent prayer As prays a dying man for grace. It is not good to see him strain To lift his hands, to gasp, to try To speak. His parched lips are so dry Their sight is as a living pain. I think that rich man down in hell Some like this old man with his gold,-- To gasp and gasp perpetual Like to this minute I have told. XV. At last the miser cries his pain,-- A shrill, wild cry, as if a grave Just ope'd its stony lips and gave One sentence forth, then closed again. "'Twas twenty years last night, last night!" His lips still moved, but not to speak; His outstretched hands so trembling weak Were beggar's hands in sorry plight. His face upturned to hers, his lips Kept talking on, but gave no sound; His feet were cloven to the ground; Like iron hooks his finger-tips. "Ay, twenty years," she sadly sighed: "I promised mother every year That I would pray for father here, As she had prayed, the night she died: "To pray as she prayed, fervidly; As she had promised she would pray The sad night of her marriage day, For him, wherever he might be." Then she was still; then sudden she Let fall her eyes, and so outspake As if her very heart would break, Her proud lips trembling piteously: "And whether he come soon or late To kneel beside this nameless grave, May God forgive my father's hate As I forgive, as she forgave!" He saw the stone; he understood With that quick knowledge that will come Most quick when men are made most dumb With terror that stops still the blood. And then a blindness slowly fell On soul and body; but his hands Held tight his bags, two iron bands, As if to bear them into hell. He sank upon the nameless stone With oh such sad, such piteous moan As never man might seek to know From man's most unforgiving foe. He sighed at last, so long, so deep, As one heart breaking in one's sleep,-- One long, last, weary, willing sigh, As if it were a grace to die. And then his hands, like loosened bands, Hung down, hung down on either side; His hands hung down and opened wide: He rested in the orange lands. University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge. TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE. The following emendations have been made to the text: "You will not touch it? In God's name for 'You will not touch it? In God's name "That night of rainbow-shot and shell for That night of rainbow-shot and shell "That night amid the maimed and dead,-- for That night amid the maimed and dead,-- 
38880	----	THE LAND OF SONG BOOK II. _FOR LOWER GRAMMAR GRADES_ SELECTED BY KATHARINE H. SHUTE EDITED BY LARKIN DUNTON, LL.D. HEAD MASTER OF THE BOSTON NORMAL SCHOOL [Illustration] SILVER, BURDETT & COMPANY NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO 1899 COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY SILVER, BURDETT & COMPANY. BOSTON: C. J. PETERS & SON, TYPOGRAPHERS. Plimpton Press H. M. PLIMPTON & CO., PRINTERS & BINDERS, NORWOOD, MASS., U.S.A. _COMPILERS' PREFACE._ The inestimable value of literature in supplying healthful recreation, in opening the mind to larger views of life, and in creating ideals that shall mold the spiritual nature, is conceded now by every one who has intelligently considered the problems of education. But the basis upon which literature shall be selected and arranged is still a matter of discussion. Chronology, race-correspondence, correlation, and ethical training should all be recognized incidentally; but the main purpose of the teacher of literature is to send children on into life with a genuine love for good reading. To accomplish this, three things should be true of the reading offered: first, it should be _literature_; second, it should be literature of some scope, not merely some small phase of literature, such as the fables or the poetry of one of the less eminent poets; and third, it should appeal to children's natural interests. Children's interests, varied as they seem, center in the marvelous and the preternatural; in the natural world; and in human life, especially child life and the romantic and heroic aspects of mature life. In the selections made for each grade, we have recognized these different interests. To grade poetry perfectly for different ages is an impossibility; much of the greatest verse is for all ages--that is one reason why it _is_ great. A child of five will lisp the numbers of Horatius with delight; and Scott's _Lullaby of an Infant Chief_, with its romantic color and its exquisite human tenderness, is dear to childhood, to manhood, and to old age. But the Land of Song is a great undiscovered country to the little child; by some road or other he must find his way into it; and these volumes simply attempt to point out a path through which he may be led into its happy fields. Our earnest thanks are due to the following publishers for permission to use copyrighted poems: to Houghton, Mifflin & Co. for poems by Longfellow, Whittier, Emerson, Holmes, Lowell, Aldrich, Bayard Taylor, James T. Fields, Phoebe Cary, Lucy Larcom, Celia Thaxter, and Sarah Orne Jewett; to D. Appleton & Co. for a large number of Bryant's poems; to Charles Scribner's Sons for two poems by Stevenson, from _Underwoods_, and _A Child's Garden of Verse_; to J. B. Lippincott & Co. for two poems by Thomas Buchanan Read; and to Henry T. Coates & Co. for a poem by Charles Fenno Hoffman. The present volume is intended for the fourth, fifth, and sixth school years, or lower grammar grades. It is the second of three books prepared for use in the grades below the high school. As no collection of this size can supply as much poetry as may be used to advantage, and as many desirable poems by American writers have necessarily been omitted, we have noted at the end of this volume lists of poems which it would be well to add to the material given here, that our children may realize the scope and beauty of the poetry of their own land. CONTENTS PAGE ALICE BRAND 64 AT SEA 60 BANKS O' DOON, THE 217 BATTLE OF BLENHEIM, THE 141 BATTLE OF THE BALTIC, THE 103 BELEAGUERED CITY, THE 133 BELSHAZZAR 221 BOY AND THE ANGEL, THE 118 BRIGHTEST AND BEST OF THE SONS OF THE MORNING 157 BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE 22 BY COOL SILOAM'S SHADY RILL 30 CALM ON THE LISTENING EAR OF NIGHT 93 CA' THE YOWES 81 CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE, THE 89 CHILDREN IN THE WOOD, THE 71 CHORAL SONG OF ILLYRIAN PEASANTS 125 COMPANIONSHIP WITH NATURE 227 CONCORD HYMN 161 CORAL GROVE, THE 63 COUNCIL OF HORSES, THE 114 CORONACH 200 CRICKET, THE 193 DAFFODILS 15 DAFFODILS, THE 13 DEATH OF NELSON, THE 164 DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB 18 DEWDROP, THE 207 ELIXIR, THE 117 ENGLAND 170 EPITAPH ON A HARE 112 EVENING (John Fletcher) 150 EVENING (John Keble) 206 EVENING WIND, THE 123 EXILE OF ERIN 215 FAREWELL, A 152 FIDELITY 108 FINE DAY, A 35 FISHERMAN, THE 211 FOR A' THAT, AND A' THAT 69 GLADIATOR, THE 228 GOOD-NIGHT 207 GRASSHOPPER, THE 192 GRAVES OF A HOUSEHOLD, THE 121 GREEN CORNFIELD, A 41 HALLOWED GROUND 145 HERITAGE, THE 208 HOHENLINDEN 21 HOLY, HOLY, HOLY 19 HOME THEY BROUGHT HER WARRIOR DEAD 27 HONEY-BEE, THE 15 HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE 104 "HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX" 229 HYMN OF THE NATIVITY 234 HURRICANE, THE 175 INCHCAPE ROCK, THE 43 INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP 147 INGRATITUDE 57 JOCK OF HAZELDEAN 213 JERUSALEM, THE GOLDEN 204 KINGDOM OF GOD, THE 178 KING JOHN AND THE ABBOT OF CANTERBURY 126 LADY CLARE 218 LAMENT OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS 28 LIFE'S "GOOD-MORNING" 201 LLEWELLYN AND HIS DOG 105 LORD ULLIN'S DAUGHTER 211 LOVE OF GOD, THE 31 MARCH 42 MONTEREY 162 MOONRISE, A SELECTION 201 MORNING 149 MY HEART LEAPS UP WHEN I BEHOLD 37 NEW YEAR, THE 237 NIGHT 101 NOBLE NATURE, THE 179 NORTHERN SEAS, THE 61 ODE TO THE NORTH-EAST WIND 167 OH! WEEP FOR THOSE 17 O MOTHER DEAR, JERUSALEM 205 ON A FAVORITE CAT DROWNED IN A TUB OF GOLDFISHES 197 ON A SPANIEL CALLED "BEAU" KILLING A YOUNG BIRD 78 ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET (Leigh Hunt) 111 ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET (John Keats) 110 O WAD SOME POWER 37 PIBROCH OF DONUIL DHU 24 PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN, THE 46 PILGRIM FATHERS, THE 84 PIPES AT LUCKNOW, THE 224 PLANTING OF THE APPLE TREE 32 QUIET, LORD, MY FROWARD HEART 149 REBECCA'S HYMN 20 REST 191 REVENGE, THE 143 RHYMED LESSON, A 82 ROYAL GEORGE, THE 91 RUTH 116 SAILOR'S WIFE, THE 135 SANDALPHON 231 SELECTION FROM CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE, A 155 SELKIRK GRACE, THE 31 SHEPHERD'S HOME, THE 77 SHERIDAN'S RIDE 172 SKYLARK, THE 39 SOLDIER AND SAILOR 137 SOLDIER'S DREAM, THE 26 SOLITARY REAPER, THE 199 SONG FROM THE LADY OF THE LAKE 216 SONG OF MARION'S MEN 99 SONG OF THE GREEKS 170 SONG OF THE SEA, A 58 SONG: "ORPHEUS WITH HIS LUTE MADE TREES" 151 SOUND THE LOUD TIMBREL 125 SPRING 38 STARS 101 STORM, THE 190 SUMMER SHOWER, THE 36 SWEET PEAS 80 THY VOICE IS HEARD THROUGH ROLLING DRUMS 148 TO A MOUSE 153 TO A WATERFOWL 202 TO DAFFODILS 14 TO THE CUCKOO 40 TO THE SMALL CELANDINE 131 UNION AND LIBERTY 97 UPON THE MOUNTAIN'S DISTANT HEAD 16 VIRTUE 208 WHEN ALL THY MERCIES, O MY GOD 177 WHEN WILT THOU SAVE THE PEOPLE? 94 WINSTANLEY 180 WIVES OF BRIXHAM, THE 86 WREN'S NEST, A 194 YE MARINERS OF ENGLAND 163 _Index of Authors._ ADDISON, JOSEPH. When all thy Mercies, O my God 177 ANONYMOUS. O Mother Dear, Jerusalem 205 The Children in the Wood 71 The Wives of Brixham 86 ARNOLD. The Death of Nelson 164 BARBAULD, ANNA LETITIA. Life's "Good-Morning" 201 BLAKE, WILLIAM. Night 101 BROWNING, ROBERT. An Incident of the French Camp 147 "How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix" 229 The Boy and the Angel 118 The Pied Piper of Hamelin 46 BRYANT, WILLIAM CULLEN. March 42 Song of Marion's Men 99 The Evening Wind 123 The Hurricane 175 The Love of God 31 The Planting of the Apple Tree 32 To a Waterfowl 202 Upon the Mountain's Distant Head 16 BURNS, ROBERT. Ca' the Yowes 81 For A' That, and A' That 69 Lament of Mary, Queen of Scots 28 O wad some Power 37 The Banks o' Doon 217 The Selkirk Grace 31 To a Mouse 153 BYRON, LORD (GEORGE NOEL GORDON). A Selection from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage 155 Companionship with Nature, A Selection 227 Moonrise, A Selection 201 Oh! weep for Those 17 The Destruction of Sennacherib 18 The Gladiator, A Selection 228 CAMPBELL, THOMAS. Exile of Erin 215 Hallowed Ground 145 Hohenlinden 21 Lord Ullin's Daughter 211 Soldier and Sailor 137 Song of the Greeks 170 The Battle of the Baltic 103 The Soldier's Dream 26 Ye Mariners of England 163 COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR. Choral Song of Illyrian Peasants 125 COLLINS, WILLIAM. How Sleep the Brave 104 CORNWALL, BARRY. (See PROCTER.) COWLEY, ABRAHAM. The Grasshopper 192 COWPER, WILLIAM. Epitaph on a Hare 112 On a Spaniel called "Beau" killing a Young Bird 78 The Cricket 193 The Royal George 91 CUNNINGHAM, ALLAN. At Sea 60 DRAYTON, MICHAEL. A Fine Day 35 ELLIOTT, EBENEZER. When Wilt Thou save the People 94 EMERSON, RALPH WALDO. Concord Hymn 161 FLETCHER, JOHN. Evening 150 GAY, JOHN. The Council of Horses 114 GOETHE, JOHANN WOLFGANG. Rest 191 GRAY, THOMAS. On a Favorite Cat, drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes 197 HEBER, REGINALD. Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning 157 By Cool Siloam's Shady Rill 30 Holy, Holy, Holy 19 HEMANS, FELICIA. The Graves of a Household 121 The Pilgrim Fathers 84 HERBERT, GEORGE. The Elixir 117 Virtue 208 HERRICK, ROBERT. To Daffodils 14 HOFFMAN, CHARLES FENNO. Monterey 162 HOGG, JAMES. The Skylark 39 HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL. A Rhymed Lesson, Selections 82 Union and Liberty 97 HOOD, THOMAS. Ruth 116 HOWITT, MARY. The Northern Seas 61 HUNT, LEIGH. On the Grasshopper and Cricket 111 INGELOW, JEAN. Winstanley 180 JONSON, BEN. The Noble Nature 179 KEATS, JOHN. On the Grasshopper and Cricket 110 Sweet Peas, A Selection 80 KEBLE, JOHN. Evening 206 Morning 149 KINGSLEY, CHARLES. Ode to the North-East Wind 167 LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH. Sandalphon 231 The Beleaguered City 133 LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL. The Heritage 208 MICKLE, WILLIAM J. The Sailor's Wife 135 MILTON, JOHN. Hymn of the Nativity, A Selection 234 MOORE, THOMAS. Sound the Loud Timbrel 125 NASH, THOMAS. Spring 38 NEWTON, JOHN. Quiet, Lord, my Froward Heart 149 PERCIVAL, JAMES G. The Coral Grove 63 PERCY, THOMAS. King John and the Abbot of Canterbury 126 PROCTER, ADELAIDE. The Storm 190 PROCTER, BRYAN WALLER (BARRY CORNWALL). A Song of the Sea 58 Belshazzar 221 Stars 101 The Fisherman 211 QUARLES, FRANCIS. Good-Night 207 READ, THOMAS BUCHANAN. Sheridan's Ride 172 The Summer Shower 36 ROSSETTI, CHRISTINA G. A Green Cornfield 41 ST. BERNARD. Jerusalem, the Golden 204 SCOTT, SIR WALTER. Alice Brand 64 Coronach 200 Jock of Hazeldean 213 Pibroch of Donald Dhu 24 Rebecca's Hymn 20 Song From "The Lady of the Lake" 216 SEARS, EDMUND H. Calm on the Listening Ear of Night 93 SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM. Daffodils, A Selection 15 England, A Selection 170 Ingratitude, A Selection 57 Song: "Orpheus with his lute made trees" 151 The Honey-bee, A Selection 15 SHENSTONE, WILLIAM. The Shepherd's Home 77 SOUTHEY, ROBERT. Llewellyn and his Dog 105 The Battle of Blenheim 141 The Inchcape Rock 43 TENNYSON, ALFRED. A Farewell 152 Home they brought her Warrior dead 27 Lady Clare 218 The Charge of the Light Brigade 89 The New Year 237 The Revenge, A Selection 143 Thy Voice is heard through Rolling Drums 148 TRENCH, RICHARD C. The Dewdrop 207 The Kingdom of God 178 WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF. The Pipes at Lucknow 224 WOLFE, CHARLES. The Burial of Sir John Moore 22 WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM. A Wren's Nest 194 Fidelity 108 My heart leaps up when I behold 37 The Daffodils 13 The Solitary Reaper 199 To the Cuckoo 40 To the Small Celandine 131 THE LAND OF SONG: BOOK II. _PART I._ [Illustration: AUTUMN. E. SEMENOWSKY.] _THE LAND OF SONG: BOOK II._ PART ONE. [Illustration] THE DAFFODILS. I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they Outdid the sparkling waves in glee; A poet could not but be gay In such a jocund company; I gazed--and gazed--but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. TO DAFFODILS. Fair Daffodils, we weep to see You haste away so soon; As yet the early-rising Sun Has not attained his noon; Stay, stay, Until the hasting day Has run But to the evensong; And, having prayed together, we Will go with you along. We have short time to stay, as you; We have as short a spring; As quick a growth to meet decay As you, or anything: We die, As your hours do, and dry Away Like to the summer's rain; Or as the pearls of morning's dew, Ne'er to be found again. ROBERT HERRICK. DAFFODILS. Daffodils That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty. "_A Winter's Tale._" WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. THE HONEY-BEE. For so work the honey-bees, Creatures that by a rule in nature teach The act of order to a peopled kingdom. They have a king and officers of sorts; Where some, like magistrates, correct at home, Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad, Others, like soldiers, armèd in their stings, Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds, Which pillage they with merry march bring home To the tent-royal of their emperor; Who, busied in his majesty, surveys The singing masons building roofs of gold, The civil citizens, kneading up the honey, The poor mechanic porters crowding in Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate. "_King Henry V._" WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. [Illustration] UPON THE MOUNTAIN'S DISTANT HEAD. Upon the mountain's distant head, With trackless snows forever white, Where all is still, and cold, and dead, Late shines the day's departing light. But far below those icy rocks, The vales in summer bloom arrayed, Woods full of birds, and fields of flocks, Are dim with mist and dark with shade. 'Tis thus, from warm and kindly hearts, And eyes whose generous meanings burn, Earliest the light of life departs, But lingers with the cold and stern. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. [Illustration: LORD BYRON.] OH! WEEP FOR THOSE. Oh! weep for those that wept by Babel's stream, Whose shrines are desolate, whose land a dream; Weep for the harp of Judah's broken shell; Mourn--where their God hath dwelt, the godless dwell! And where shall Israel lave her bleeding feet? And when shall Zion's songs again seem sweet? And Judah's melody once more rejoice The hearts that leaped before its heavenly voice? Tribes of the wandering foot and weary breast, How shall ye flee away and be at rest! The wild dove hath her nest, the fox his cave, Mankind their country--Israel but the grave. LORD GEORGE NOEL GORDON BYRON. THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB. The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green, That host with their banners at sunset were seen; Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown, That host on the morrow lay withered and strown. For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed; And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still! And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide, But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride; And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf, And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf. And there lay the rider distorted and pale, With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail; And the tents were all silent, the banners alone, The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown. And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail, And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal; And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord! LORD GEORGE NOEL GORDON BYRON. HOLY, HOLY, HOLY. Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty! Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee; Holy, holy, holy! merciful and mighty! All Thy works shall praise Thy name in earth and sky and sea. Holy, holy, holy! all the saints adore Thee, Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea; Cherubim and Seraphim falling down before Thee, Which wert and art and evermore shalt be! Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide Thee, Though the eye of sinful man Thy glory may not see, Only Thou art holy, there is none beside Thee, Perfect in power, in love, and purity! _Altered from_ REGINALD HEBER. REBECCA'S HYMN. When Israel, of the Lord beloved, Out of the land of bondage came, Her father's God before her moved, An awful guide, in smoke and flame. By day, along the astonished lands The cloudy pillar glided slow; By night, Arabia's crimsoned sands Returned the fiery column's glow. There rose the choral hymn of praise, And trump and timbrel answered keen, And Zion's daughters poured their lays, With priest's and warrior's voice between. No portents now our foes amaze, Forsaken Israel wanders lone; Our fathers would not know Thy ways, And Thou hast left them to their own. But, present still, though now unseen, When brightly shines the prosperous day, Be thoughts of Thee a cloudy screen To temper the deceitful ray. And oh, when stoops on Judah's path In shade and storm the frequent night, Be Thou long-suffering, slow to wrath, A burning and a shining light! Our harps we left by Babel's streams, The tyrant's jest, the Gentile's scorn; No censer round our altar beams, And mute our timbrel, trump, and horn. But Thou hast said, the blood of goat, The flesh of rams I will not prize; A contrite heart, an humble thought, Are mine accepted sacrifice. _From "Ivanhoe."_ SIR WALTER SCOTT. HOHENLINDEN. On Linden, when the sun was low, All bloodless lay the untrodden snow; And dark as winter was the flow Of Iser, rolling rapidly. But Linden saw another sight, When the drum beat, at dead of night, Commanding fires of death to light The darkness of her scenery. By torch and trumpet fast arrayed Each horseman drew his battle blade, And furious every charger neighed To join the dreadful revelry. Then shook the hills, with thunder riven Then rushed the steed, to battle driven; And louder than the bolts of Heaven, Far flashed the red artillery. But redder yet that light shall glow On Linden's hills of stainèd snow; And bloodier yet the torrent flow Of Iser, rolling rapidly. 'Tis morn, but scarce yon level sun Can pierce the war clouds, rolling dun, Where furious Frank and fiery Hun Shout in their sulphurous canopy. The combat deepens. On, ye brave, Who rush to glory, or the grave! Wave, Munich, all thy banners wave! And charge with all thy chivalry! Few, few shall part, where many meet! The snow shall be their winding sheet; And every turf beneath their feet Shall be a soldier's sepulcher. THOMAS CAMPBELL. THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE. Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O'er the grave where our hero we buried. We buried him darkly at dead of night, The sods with our bayonets turning; By the struggling moonbeam's misty light, And the lantern dimly burning. No useless coffin inclosed his breast, Not in sheet nor in shroud we wound him; But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him. Few and short were the prayers we said, And we spoke not a word of sorrow; But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead, And we bitterly thought of the morrow. We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed, And smoothed down his lonely pillow, That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head, And we far away on the billow! Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone, And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him,-- But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on In the grave where a Briton has laid him. But half of our heavy task was done When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the distant and random gun That the foe was sullenly firing. Slowly and sadly we laid him down, From the field of his fame, fresh and gory; We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone-- But we left him alone with his glory! CHARLES WOLFE. [Illustration: SIR WALTER SCOTT.] PIBROCH OF DONUIL DHU. Pibroch of Donuil Dhu, Pibroch of Donuil, Wake thy wild voice anew, Summon Clan Conuil. Come away, come away, Hark to the summons! Come in your war array, Gentles and commons. Come from deep glen, and From mountains so rocky; The war pipe and pennon Are at Inverlocky. Come every hill plaid, and True heart that wears one, Come every steel blade, and Strong hand that bears one. Leave untended the herd, The flock without shelter; Leave the corpse uninterred, The bride at the altar; Leave the deer, leave the steer, Leave nets and barges; Come with your fighting gear, Broadswords and targes. Come as the winds come, when Forests are rended; Come as the waves come, when Navies are stranded; Faster come, faster come, Faster and faster, Chief, vassal, page, and groom, Tenant and master. Fast they come, fast they come; See how they gather! Wide waves the eagle plume Blended with heather. Cast your plaids, draw your blades, Forward each man set! Pibroch of Donuil Dhu Knell for the onset! SIR WALTER SCOTT. THE SOLDIER'S DREAM. Our bugles sang truce, for the night cloud had lowered, And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky; And thousands had sunk on the ground overpowered, The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die. When reposing that night on my pallet of straw By the wolf-scaring fagot that guarded the slain, At the dead of the night a sweet vision I saw; And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again. Methought from the battlefield's dreadful array Far, far, I had roamed on a desolate track; 'Twas autumn,--and sunshine arose on the way To the home of my fathers, that welcomed me back. I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft In life's morning march, when my bosom was young; I heard my own mountain goats bleating aloft, And knew the sweet strain that the corn reapers sung. Then pledged we the wine cup, and fondly I swore From my home and my weeping friends never to part; My little ones kissed me a thousand times o'er, And my wife sobbed aloud in her fullness of heart. "Stay, stay with us!--rest! thou art weary and worn!" And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay;-- But sorrow returned with the dawning of morn, And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away. THOMAS CAMPBELL. HOME THEY BROUGHT HER WARRIOR DEAD. Home they brought her warrior dead: She nor swooned, nor uttered cry; All her maidens, watching, said, "She must weep or she will die." Then they praised him, soft and low, Called him worthy to be loved, Truest friend and noblest foe; Yet she neither spoke nor moved. Stole a maiden from her place, Lightly to the warrior stept, Took the face cloth from the face; Yet she neither moved nor wept. Rose a nurse of ninety years, Set his child upon her knee-- Like summer tempest came her tears-- "Sweet my child, I live for thee." ALFRED TENNYSON. [Illustration] LAMENT OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS. ON THE APPROACH OF SPRING. Now Nature hangs her mantle green On every blooming tree, And spreads her sheets o' daisies white Out o'er the grassy lea: Now Phoebus cheers the crystal streams, And glads the azure skies; But nought can glad the weary wight That fast in durance lies. Now lav'rocks wake the merry morn, Aloft on dewy wing; The merlè, in his noon-tide bower, Makes woodland echoes ring; The mavis wild wi' mony a note Sings drowsy day to rest: In love and freedom they rejoice, Wi' care nor thrall opprest. Now blooms the lily by the bank, The primrose down the brae; The hawthorne's budding in the glen, And milk-white is the slae; The meanest hind in fair Scotland May rove their sweets amang; But I, the Queen of a' Scotland, Maun lie in prison strang! I was the Queen o' bonnie France, Where happy I hae been; Fu' lightly rase I in the morn, As blythe lay down at e'en: And I'm the sov'reign o' Scotland, And mony a traitor there; Yet here I lie in foreign bands, And never-ending care. My son! my son! may kinder stars Upon thy fortune shine; And may those pleasures gild thy reign, That ne'er wad blink on mine! God keep thee frae thy mother's faes, Or turn their hearts to thee: And, where thou meet'st thy mother's friend, Remember him for me! Oh! soon, to me, may summer suns Nae mair light up the morn! Nae mair, to me, the autumn winds Wave o'er the yellow corn! And in the narrow house o' death Let winter round me rave; And the next flow'rs that deck the spring Bloom on my peaceful grave! ROBERT BURNS. [Illustration] BY COOL SILOAM'S SHADY RILL. By cool Siloam's shady rill How sweet the lily grows! How sweet the breath beneath the hill Of Sharon's dewy rose! Lo, such the child whose early feet The paths of peace have trod; Whose secret heart, with influence sweet, Is upward drawn to God. By cool Siloam's shady rill The lily must decay; The rose that blooms beneath the hill Must shortly fade away. REGINALD HEBER. THE SELKIRK GRACE. Some hae meat and canna eat, And some wad eat that want it; But we hae meat and we can eat, And sae the Lord be thankit. ROBERT BURNS. THE LOVE OF GOD. All things that are on earth shall wholly pass away, Except the love of God, which shall live and last for aye. The forms of men shall be as they had never been; The blasted groves shall lose their fresh and tender green; The birds of the thicket shall end their pleasant song, And the nightingale shall cease to chant the evening long. The kine of the pasture shall feel the dart that kills, And all the fair white flocks shall perish from the hills. The goat and antlered stag, the wolf and the fox, The wild boar of the wood, and the chamois of the rocks, And the strong and fearless bear, in the trodden dust shall lie; And the dolphin of the sea, and the mighty whale, shall die. And realms shall be dissolved, and empires be no more, And they shall bow to death, who ruled from shore to shore; And the great globe itself, so the holy writings tell, With the rolling firmament, where the starry armies dwell, Shall melt with fervent heat--they shall all pass away, Except the love of God, which shall live and last for aye. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. _From the Provençal of Bernard Rascas._ [Illustration] THE PLANTING OF THE APPLE TREE. Come, let us plant the apple tree. Cleave the tough greensward with the spade; Wide let its hollow bed be made; There gently lay the roots, and there Sift the dark mold with kindly care, And press it o'er them tenderly, As, round the sleeping infant's feet We softly fold the cradle sheet; So plant we the apple tree. What plant we in this apple tree? Buds, which the breath of summer days Shall lengthen into leafy sprays; Boughs where the thrush, with crimson breast, Shall haunt and sing and hide her nest; We plant, upon the sunny lea, A shadow for the noontide hour, A shelter from the summer shower, When we plant the apple tree. What plant we in this apple tree? Sweets for a hundred flowery springs To load the May wind's restless wings, When, from the orchard row, he pours Its fragrance through our open doors; A world of blossoms for the bee, Flowers for the sick girl's silent room, For the glad infant sprigs of bloom, We plant with the apple tree. What plant we in this apple tree? Fruits that shall swell in sunny June, And redden in the August noon, And drop, when gentle airs come by, That fan the blue September sky, While children come, with cries of glee, And seek them where the fragrant grass Betrays their bed to those who pass, At the foot of the apple tree. And when, above this apple tree, The winter stars are quivering bright, And winds go howling through the night, Girls, whose young eyes overflow with mirth, Shall peel its fruit by cottage hearth, And guests in prouder homes shall see, Heaped with the grape of Cintra's vine And golden orange of the line, The fruit of the apple tree. The fruitage of this apple tree Winds, and our flag of stripe and star, Shall bear to coasts that lie afar, Where men shall wonder at the view, And ask in what fair groves they grew; And sojourners beyond the sea Shall think of childhood's careless day And long, long hours of summer play, In the shade of the apple tree. Each year shall give this apple tree A broader flush of roseate bloom, A deeper maze of verdurous gloom, And loosen, when the frost clouds lower, The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower. The years shall come and pass, but we Shall hear no longer, where we lie, The summer's songs, the autumn's sigh, In the boughs of the apple tree. And time shall waste this apple tree. Oh, when its aged branches throw Thin shadows on the ground below, Shall fraud and force and iron will Oppress the weak and helpless still? What shall the tasks of mercy be, Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears, Of those who live when length of years Is wasting this apple tree? "Who planted this old apple tree?" The children of that distant day Thus to some aged man shall say; And, gazing on its mossy stem, The gray-haired man shall answer them: "A poet of the land was he, Born in the rude but good old times; 'Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes On planting the apple tree." WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. [Illustration] A FINE DAY. Clear had the day been from the dawn, All chequer'd was the sky, Thin clouds like scarfs of cobweb lawn Veiled heaven's most glorious eye. The wind had no more strength than this, That leisurely it blew, To make one leaf the next to kiss, That closely by it grew. MICHAEL DRAYTON. [Illustration] THE SUMMER SHOWER. Before the stout harvesters falleth the grain, As when the strong storm wind is reaping the plain; And loiters the boy in the briery lane; But yonder aslant comes the silvery rain, Like a long line of spears brightly burnished and tall. Adown the white highway like cavalry fleet, It dashes the dust with its numberless feet. Like a murmurless school, in their leafy retreat, The wild birds sit listening, the drops round them beat; And the boy crouches close to the blackberry wall. The swallows alone take the storm on their wing, And, taunting the tree-sheltered laborers, sing; Like pebbles the rain breaks the face of the spring, While a bubble darts up from each widening ring; And the boy in dismay hears the loud shower fall. But soon are the harvesters tossing their sheaves; The robin darts out from his bower of leaves; The wren peereth forth from the moss-covered eaves; And the rain-spattered urchin now gladly perceives That the beautiful bow bendeth over them all. THOMAS BUCHANAN READ. MY HEART LEAPS UP WHEN I BEHOLD. My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. O WAD SOME POWER. O Wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursel's as others see us! It wad frae mony a blunder free us An' foolish notion; What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us, And ev'n devotion! ROBERT BURNS. [Illustration] SPRING. Spring, the sweet spring, is the year's pleasant king; Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring; Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing, Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo! The palm and may make country houses gay, Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day; And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay, Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo. The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet, Young lovers meet, old wives a sunning sit; In every street these tunes our ears do greet, Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo! Spring! the sweet spring! THOMAS NASH. [Illustration] THE SKYLARK. Bird of the wilderness, Blithesome and cumberless, Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea! Emblem of happiness, Blest is thy dwelling-place-- Oh, to abide in the desert with thee! Wild is thy lay and loud, Far in the downy cloud, Love gives it energy, love gave it birth. Where, on thy dewy wing, Where art thou journeying? Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth. O'er fell and fountain sheen, O'er moor and mountain green, O'er the red streamer that heralds the day, Over the cloudlet dim, Over the rainbow's rim, Musical cherub, soar, singing, away! Then, when the gloaming comes, Low in the heather blooms Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be! Emblem of happiness, Best is thy dwelling-place-- Oh, to abide in the desert with thee! JAMES HOGG. TO THE CUCKOO. O Blithe newcomer! I have heard, I hear thee and rejoice. O Cuckoo! shall I call thee bird, Or but a wandering voice? While I am lying on the grass Thy twofold shout I hear, From hill to hill it seems to pass, At once far off and near! Though babbling only to the vale, Of sunshine and of flowers, Thou bringest unto me a tale Of visionary hours. Thrice welcome, darling of the spring! Even yet thou art to me No bird, but an invisible thing, A voice, a mystery; The same whom in my schoolboy days I listened to; that cry Which made me look a thousand ways In bush, and tree, and sky. To seek thee did I often rove Through woods and on the green; And thou wert still a hope, a love; Still longed for, never seen. And I can listen to thee yet; Can lie upon the plain And listen, till I do beget That golden time again. O blessèd bird! the earth we pace Again appears to be An unsubstantial, fairy place: That is fit home for thee! WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. A GREEN CORNFIELD. "And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest." The earth was green, the sky was blue: I saw and heard one sunny morn A skylark hang between the two, A singing speck above the corn; A stage below, in gay accord, White butterflies danced on the wing, And still the singing skylark soared And silent sank, and soared to sing. The cornfield stretched a tender green To right and left beside my walks; I knew he had a nest unseen Somewhere among the million stalks: And as I paused to hear his song While swift the sunny moments slid, Perhaps his mate sat listening long, And listened longer than I did. CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI. [Illustration] MARCH. The stormy March is come at last With wind, and cloud, and changing skies; I hear the rushing of the blast, That through the snowy valley flies. Ah, passing few are those who speak, Wild, stormy month! in praise of thee; Yet, though thy winds are loud and bleak, Thou art a welcome month to me. For thou, to northern lands, again The glad and glorious sun dost bring, And thou hast joined the gentle train And wear'st the gentle name of spring. And, in thy reign of blast and storm, Smiles many a long, bright, sunny day, When the changed winds are soft and warm, And Heaven puts on the blue of May. Then sing aloud the gushing rills In joy that they again are free, And, brightly leaping down the hills, Begin their journey to the sea. The year's departing beauty hides Of wintry storms the sullen threat; But in thy sternest frown abides A look of kindly promise yet. Thou bring'st the hope of those calm skies, And that soft time of sunny showers, When the wide bloom, on earth that lies, Seems of a brighter world than ours. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. THE INCHCAPE ROCK. No stir in the air, no stir in the sea, The ship was still as she could be; Her sails from heaven received no motion, Her keel was steady in the ocean. Without either sign or sound of their shock The waves flowed over the Inchcape Rock; So little they rose, so little they fell, They did not move the Inchcape bell. The good old Abbot of Aberbrothok Had placed that bell on the Inchcape Rock; On a buoy in the storm it floated and swung, And over the waves its warning rung. When the Rock was hid by the surges' swell, The mariners heard the warning bell; And then they knew the perilous Rock, And blest the Abbot of Aberbrothok. The sun in heaven was shining gay, All things were joyful on that day; The seabirds screamed as they wheeled around, And there was joyance in their sound. The buoy of the Inchcape bell was seen A darker speck on the ocean green; Sir Ralph the Rover walked his deck, And he fixed his eye on the darker speck. He felt the cheering power of spring, It made him whistle, it made him sing; His heart was mirthful to excess, But the Rover's mirth was wickedness. His eye was on the Inchcape float; Quoth he, "My men, put out the boat, And row me to the Inchcape Rock, And I'll plague the priest of Aberbrothok." The boat is lowered, the boatmen row, And to the Inchcape Rock they go; Sir Ralph bent over from the boat, And he cut the bell from the Inchcape float. Down sunk the bell, with a gurgling sound, The bubbles rose and burst around; Quoth Sir Ralph, "The next who comes to the Rock Won't bless the Abbot of Aberbrothok." Sir Ralph the Rover sailed away; He scoured the seas for many a day; And now grown rich with plunder's store, He steers his course for Scotland's shore. So thick a haze o'erspreads the sky, They cannot see the sun on high; The wind hath blown a gale all day, At evening it hath died away. On the deck the Rover takes his stand; So dark it is they see no land. Quoth Sir Ralph, "It will be lighter soon, For there is the dawn of the rising moon." "Can'st hear," said one, "the breakers roar? For methinks we should be near the shore; Now where we are I cannot tell, But I wish I could hear the Inchcape bell." They hear no sound, the swell is strong; Though the wind hath fallen, they drift along, Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock; Cried they, "It is the Inchcape Rock!" Sir Ralph the Rover tore his hair, And curst himself in his despair; The waves rush in on every side, The ship is sinking beneath the tide. But even in his dying fear One dreadful sound could the Rover hear, A sound as if with the Inchcape bell The fiends below were ringing his knell. ROBERT SOUTHEY. THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN. Hamelin Town's in Brunswick, By famous Hanover city; The river Weser deep and wide Washes its walls on the southern side; A pleasanter spot you never spied; But, when begins my ditty, Almost five hundred years ago, To see the townsfolk suffer so From vermin, was a pity. Rats! They fought the dogs and killed the cats, And bit the babies in their cradles, And ate the cheeses out of the vats, And licked the soup from the cook's own ladles, Split open the kegs of salted sprats, Made nests inside men's Sunday hats, And even spoiled the women's chats, By drowning their speaking With shrieking and squeaking In fifty different sharps and flats. [Illustration: ROBERT BROWNING.] At last the people in a body To the town hall came flocking: "'Tis clear," cried they, "our Mayor's a noddy: And as for our Corporation--shocking To think we buy gowns lined with ermine For dolts that can't or won't determine What's best to rid us of our vermin! You hope, because you're old and obese, To find in the furry civic robe ease! Rouse up, Sirs! Give your brains a racking To find the remedy we're lacking, Or, sure as fate, we'll send you packing! At this the Mayor and Corporation Quaked with a mighty consternation. An hour they sat in council; At length the Mayor broke silence: "For a guilder I'd my ermine gown sell; I wish I were a mile hence! It's easy to bid one rack one's brain-- I'm sure my poor head aches again, I've scratched it so, and all in vain. Oh, for a trap, a trap, a trap!" Just as he said this, what should hap At the chamber door but a gentle tap? "Bless us," cried the Mayor, "what's that? Anything like the sound of a rat Makes my heart go pitapat! "Come in!" the Mayor cried, looking bigger; And in did come the strangest figure! His queer long coat from heel to head Was half of yellow and half of red; And he himself was tall and thin, With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin, No tuft on cheek, nor beard on chin, But lips where smiles went out and in-- There was no guessing his kith and kin! And nobody could enough admire The tall man and his quaint attire: Quoth one, "It's as my great-grandsire, Starting up at the trump of Doom's tone, Had walked this way from his painted tombstone!" He advanced to the council table: And, "Please your honors," said he, "I'm able, By means of a secret charm, to draw All creatures living beneath the sun, That creep, or swim, or fly, or run, After me so as you never saw! And I chiefly use my charm On creatures that do people harm, The mole, the toad, the newt, the viper; And people call me the Pied Piper." And here they noticed round his neck A scarf of red and yellow stripe, To match with his coat of the selfsame check; And at the scarf's end hung a pipe; And his fingers, they noticed, were ever straying, As if impatient to be playing Upon this pipe, as low it dangled Over his vesture so old fangled. "Yet," said he, "poor piper as I am, In Tartary I freed the Cham, Last June, from his huge swarm of gnats; I eased in Asia the Nizam Of a monstrous brood of vampire bats: And as for what your brain bewilders, If I can rid your town of rats Will you give me a thousand guilders?" "One? fifty thousand!" was the exclamation Of the astonished Mayor and Corporation. Into the street the Piper stept, Smiling first a little smile, As if he knew what magic slept In his quiet pipe the while; Then like a musical adept, To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled, And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled, Like a candle flame where salt is sprinkled; And ere three shrill notes the pipe had uttered, You heard as if an army muttered; And the muttering grew into a grumbling; And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling; And out of the houses the rats came tumbling-- Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats, Brown rats, black rats, gray rats, tawny rats, Grave old plodders, gay young friskers, Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, Curling tails, and pricking whiskers, Families by tens and dozens, Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives,-- Followed the Piper for their lives. From street to street he piped, advancing, And step for step they followed, dancing, Until they came to the river Weser Wherein all plunged and perished, Save one, who stout as Julius Cæsar, Swam across, and lived to carry (As he the manuscript he cherished) To Rat-land home his commentary, Which was, "At the first shrill notes of the pipe, I heard a sound as of scraping tripe, And putting apples wondrous ripe Into a cider press's gripe; And a moving away of pickle-tub boards, And a leaving ajar of conserve cupboards, And a drawing the corks of train-oil flasks, And a breaking the hoops of butter casks; And it seemed as if a voice (Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery Is breathed) called out, O rats, rejoice! The world is grown to one vast drysaltery! So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon, Breakfast, dinner, supper, luncheon! And just as a bulky sugar puncheon, All ready staved, like a great sun shone Glorious, scarce an inch before me, Just as methought it said, 'Come, bore me!' --I found the Weser rolling o'er me." You should have heard the Hamelin people Ringing the bells till they rocked the steeple; "Go," cried the Mayor, "and get long poles! Poke out the nests, and block up the holes! Consult with carpenters and builders, And leave in town not even a trace Of the rats!" When suddenly up the face Of the Piper perked in the market place, With a "First, if you please, my thousand guilders!" A thousand guilders! The Mayor looked blue; So did the Corporation too. For council dinners made rare havoc With Claret, Moselle, Vin-de-Grave, Hock; And half the money would replenish Their cellar's biggest butt with Rhenish. To pay this sum to a wandering fellow With a gypsy coat of red and yellow! "Besides," quoth the Mayor, with a knowing wink, "Our business was done at the river's brink; We saw with our eyes the vermin sink, And what's dead can't come to life, I think. So, friend, we're not the folks to shrink From the duty of giving you something for drink, And a matter of money to put in your poke; But, as for the guilders, what we spoke Of them, as you very well know, was in joke-- Beside, our losses have made us thrifty: A thousand guilders! Come, take fifty!" The Piper's face fell, and he cried, "No trifling! I can't wait; beside I've promised to visit by dinner time Bagdat, and accept the prime Of the head cook's pottage, all he's rich in, For having left in the Caliph's kitchen, Of a nest of scorpions no survivor. With him I proved no bargain-driver; With you, don't think I'll bate a stiver! And folks who put me in a passion May find me pipe to another fashion." "How?" cried the Mayor, "d'ye think I'll brook Being worse treated than a cook? Insulted by a lazy ribald With idle pipe and vesture piebald? You threaten us, fellow? Do your worst, Blow your pipe there till you burst!" Once more he stept into the street, And to his lips again Laid his long pipe of smooth, straight cane; And ere he blew three notes (such sweet Soft notes as yet musician's cunning Never gave the enraptured air), There was a rustling that seemed like a bustling, Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling, Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering, Little hands clapping and little tongues chattering, And, like fowls in a farmyard when barley is scattering, Out came the children running: All the little boys and girls, With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls, And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls, Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after The wonderful music with shouting and laughter. The Mayor was dumb, and the Council stood As if they were changed into blocks of wood, Unable to move a step, or cry To the children merrily skipping by,-- And could only follow with the eye That joyous crowd at the Piper's back. And now the Mayor was on the rack, And the wretched Council's bosoms beat, As the Piper turned from the High Street To where the Weser rolled its waters Right in the way of their sons and daughters! However, he turned from south to west, And to Koppelberg Hill his steps addressed, And after him the children pressed; Great was the joy in every breast. "He never can cross that mighty top! He's forced to let the piping drop, And we shall see our children stop!" When, lo! as they reached the mountain's side, A wondrous portal opened wide, As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed; And the Piper advanced, and the children followed; And when all were in to the very last, The door in the mountain side shut fast. Did I say, all? No! one was lame, And could not dance the whole of the way; And in after years, if you would blame His sadness, he was used to say,-- "It's dull in our town since my playmates left! I can't forget that I'm bereft Of all the pleasant sights they see, Which the Piper also promised me: For he led us, he said, to a joyous land, Joining the town and just at hand, Where waters gushed and fruit trees grew, And flowers put forth a fairer hue, And everything was strange and new; The sparrows were brighter than peacocks here, And their dogs outran our fallow deer, And honeybees had lost their stings, And horses were born with eagles' wings; And just as I became assured My lame foot would be speedily cured, The music stopped and I stood still, And found myself outside the hill, Left alone against my will, To go now limping as before, And never hear of that country more!" [Illustration: THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN. H. KAULBACH.] The Mayor sent east, west, north, and south, To offer the Piper by word of mouth, Wherever it was man's lot to find him, Silver and gold to his heart's content, If he'd only return the way he went, And bring the children behind him. But when they saw 'twas a lost endeavor, And Piper and dancers were gone forever, They made a decree that lawyers never Should think their records dated duly, If after the day of the month and year These words did not as well appear, "And so long after what happened here On the twenty-second of July, Thirteen hundred and seventy-six." And the better in memory to fix The place of the children's last retreat, They called it the Pied Piper's Street-- Where any one playing on pipe or tabor, Was sure for the future to lose his labor. Nor suffered they hostelry or tavern To shock with mirth a street so solemn; But opposite the place of the cavern They wrote the story on a column, And on the great church window painted The same, to make the world acquainted How their children were stolen away; And there it stands to this very day. And I must not omit to say That in Transylvania there's a tribe Of alien people, that ascribe The outlandish ways and dress On which their neighbors lay such stress, To their fathers and mothers having risen Out of some subterraneous prison, Into which they were trepanned Long ago in a mighty band, Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land; But how or why, they don't understand. So, Willy, let you and me be wipers Of scores out with all men,--especially pipers; And whether they pipe us free from rats or from mice, If we've promised them aught, let us keep our promise. ROBERT BROWNING. INGRATITUDE. Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man's ingratitude; Thy tooth is not so keen, Because thou art not seen, Although thy breath be rude. Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, Thou dost not bite so nigh As benefits forgot: Though thou the waters warp, Thy sting is not so sharp As friend remembered not. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. _From "As You Like It."_ [Illustration] A SONG OF THE SEA. The sea! the sea! the open sea! The blue, the fresh, the ever free! Without a mark, without a bound, It runneth the earth's wide regions 'round; It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies, Or like a cradled creature lies. I'm on the sea! I'm on the sea! I am where I would ever be; With the blue above, and the blue below, And silence wheresoe'er I go; If a storm should come and awake the deep, What matter? I shall ride and sleep. I love (O! how I love) to ride On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide, When every mad wave drowns the moon, Or whistles aloft his tempest tune, And tells how goeth the world below, And why the southwest blasts do blow. I never was on the dull, tame shore, But I loved the great sea more and more, And backwards flew to her billowy breast, Like a bird that seeketh its mother's nest; And a mother she was and is to me; For I was born on the open sea! The waves were white, and red the morn, In the noisy hour when I was born; And the whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled, And the dolphins bared their backs of gold; And never was heard such an outcry wild As welcomed to life the ocean child! I've lived since then, in calm and strife, Full fifty summers a sailor's life, With wealth to spend, and a power to range, But never have sought, nor sighed for change; And Death, whenever he come to me, Shall come on the wide, unbounded sea! BRYAN WALLER PROCTER (_Barry Cornwall_). AT SEA. A wet sheet and a flowing sea, A wind that follows fast And fills the white and rustling sail And bends the gallant mast; And bends the gallant mast, my boys, While like the eagle free Away the good ship flies, and leaves Old England on the lee. "Oh for a soft and gentle wind!" I heard a fair one cry; But give to me the snoring breeze And white waves heaving high; And white waves heaving high, my lads, The good ship tight and free:-- The world of waters is our home, And merry men are we. There's tempest in yon hornèd moon, And lightning in yon cloud; But hark the music, mariners! The wind is piping loud; The wind is piping loud, my boys, The lightning flashes free:-- While the hollow oak our palace is, Our heritage the sea. ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. [Illustration] THE NORTHERN SEAS. Up! up! let us a voyage take; Why sit we here at ease? Find us a vessel tight and snug, Bound for the northern seas. I long to see the northern lights With their rushing splendors fly, Like living things with flaming wings, Wide o'er the wondrous sky. I long to see those icebergs vast, With heads all crowned with snow, Whose green roots sleep in the awful deep, Two hundred fathoms low. I long to hear the thundering crash Of their terrific fall, And the echoes from a thousand cliffs Like lonely voices call. There shall we see the fierce white bear, The sleepy seals aground, And the spouting whales that to and fro Sail with a dreary sound. There may we tread on depths of ice, That the hairy mammoth hide; Perfect as when, in times of old, The mighty creature died. And while the unsetting sun shines on Through the still heaven's deep blue, We'll traverse the azure waves, the herds Of the dread sea horse to view. We'll pass the shores of solemn pine, Where wolves and black bears prowl; And away to the rocky isles of mist, To rouse the northern fowl. Up there shall start ten thousand wings With a rustling, whistling din; Up shall the auk and fulmar start, All but the fat penguin. And there in the wastes of the silent sky, With the silent earth below, We shall see far off to his lonely rock The lonely eagle go. Then softly, softly will we tread By inland streams, to see Where the pelican of the silent North Sits there all silently. MARY HOWITT. THE CORAL GROVE. Deep in the wave is a coral grove, Where the purple mullet and goldfish rove; Where the sea flower spreads its leaves of blue, That never are wet with the falling dew; But in bright and changeful beauty shine, Far down in the green and glassy brine. The floor is of sand, like the mountain's drift, And the pearl shells spangle the flinty snow; From coral rocks the sea plants lift Their boughs, where the tides and billows flow. The water is calm and still below, For the winds and waves are absent there, And the sands are bright as the stars that glow In the motionless fields of upper air. There, with its waving blade of green, The sea flag streams through the silent water, And the crimson leaf of the dulse is seen To blush like a banner bathed in slaughter; There, with a light and easy motion, The fan coral sweeps through the clear, deep sea; And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean Are bending like corn on the upland lea: And life in rare and beautiful forms Is sporting amid those bowers of stone, And is safe, when the wrathful spirit of storms Has made the top of the waves his own: And when the ship from his fury flies, When the myriad voices of ocean roar, When the wind god frowns in the murky skies, And demons are waiting the wreck on shore, Then, far below, in the peaceful sea, The purple mullet and goldfish rove, Where the waters murmur tranquilly Through the bending twigs of the coral grove. JAMES GATES PERCIVAL. [Illustration] ALICE BRAND. Merry it is in the good greenwood, When the mavis and merle are singing, When the deer sweeps by, and the hounds are in cry, And the hunter's horn is ringing. "O Alice Brand, my native land Is lost for love of you; And we must hold by wood and wold, As outlaws wont to do! "O Alice, 'twas all for thy locks so bright, And 'twas all for thine eyes so blue, That on the night of our luckless flight, Thy brother bold I slew. "Now I must teach to hew the beech The hand that held the glaive, For leaves to spread our lowly bed, And stakes to fence our cave. "And for vest of pall, thy fingers small, That wont on harp to stray, A cloak must shear from the slaughtered deer, To keep the cold away." "O Richard! if my brother died, 'Twas but a fatal chance: For darkling was the battle tried, And fortune sped the lance. "If pall and vair no more I wear, Nor thou the crimson sheen, As warm, we'll say, is the russet gray; As gay the forest green. "And, Richard, if our lot be hard, And lost thy native land, Still Alice has her own Richàrd, And he his Alice Brand." II. 'Tis merry, 'tis merry, in good greenwood, So blithe Lady Alice is singing; On the beech's pride and oak's brown side, Lord Richard's ax is ringing. Up spoke the moody Elfin King, Who wonn'd within the hill,-- Like wind in the porch of a ruined church, His voice was ghostly shrill. "Why sounds yon stroke on beach and oak, Our moonlight circle's screen? Or who comes here to chase the deer, Beloved of our Elfin Queen? Or who may dare on wold to wear The fairies' fatal green? "Up, Urgan, up! to yon mortal hie, For thou wert christened man: For cross or sign thou wilt not fly, For muttered word or ban. "Lay on him the curse of the withered heart, The curse of the sleepless eye; Till he wish and pray that his life would part, Nor yet find leave to die!" III. 'Tis merry, 'tis merry, in good greenwood, Though the birds have stilled their singing; The evening blaze doth Alice raise, And Richard is fagots bringing. Up Urgan starts, that hideous dwarf, Before Lord Richard stands, And as he crossed and blessed himself, "I fear not sign," quoth the grisly elf, "That is made with bloody hands." But out then spoke she, Alice Brand, That woman void of fear,-- "And if there's blood upon his hand, 'Tis but the blood of deer." "Now loud thou liest, thou bold of mood! It cleaves unto his hand, The stain of thine own kindly blood, The blood of Ethert Brand." Then forward stepped she, Alice Brand, And made the holy sign,-- "And if there's blood on Richard's hand, A spotless hand is mine. "And I conjure thee, Demon elf, By Him whom Demons fear, To show us whence thou art thyself, And what thine errand here?" IV. "'Tis merry, 'tis merry, in Fairyland, When fairy birds are singing, When the court doth ride by their monarch's side, With bit and bridle ringing: "And gayly shines the Fairyland-- But all is glistening show, Like the idle gleam that December's beam Can dart on ice and snow. "And fading, like that varied gleam, Is our inconstant shape, Who now like knight and lady seem, And now like dwarf and ape. "It was between the night and day, When the Fairy King has power, That I sunk down in a sinful fray, And 'twixt life and death, was snatched away, To the joyless Elfin bower. "But wist I of a woman bold, Who thrice my brow durst sign, I might regain my mortal mold, As fair a form as thine." She crossed him once--she crossed him twice-- That lady was so brave; The fouler grew his goblin hue, The darker grew the cave. She crossed him thrice, that lady bold! He rose beneath her hand The fairest knight on Scottish mold, Her brother, Ethert Brand! Merry it is in good greenwood, When the mavis and merle are singing; But merrier were they in Dumfermline gray When all the bells were ringing. SIR WALTER SCOTT. FOR A' THAT, AND A' THAT. Is there, for honest poverty, That hangs his head, and a' that? The coward slave, we pass him by, We dare be poor for a' that! For a' that, and a' that, Our toils obscure, and a' that; The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The man's the gowd for a' that! What tho' on hamely fare we dine, Wear hoddin gray, and a' that; Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine, A man's a man, for a' that! For a' that, and a' that, Their tinsel show, and a' that; The honest man, though e'er sae poor, Is king o' men for a' that! Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord, Wha struts, and stares, and a' that: Though hundreds worship at his word, He's but a coof for a' that: For a' that, and a' that, His riband, star, and a' that; The man of independent mind, He looks and laughs at a' that. [Illustration: ROBERT BURNS.] A king can make a belted knight, A marquis, duke, and a' that; But an honest man's aboon his might! Guid faith, he mauna fa' that; For a' that, and a' that, Their dignities, and a' that; The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth, Are higher ranks than a' that. Then let us pray that come it may-- As come it will, for a' that-- That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth, May bear the gree, and a' that! For a' that, and a' that, It's comin' yet for a' that; That man to man, the warld o'er, Shall brothers be for a' that! ROBERT BURNS. THE CHILDREN IN THE WOOD. Now ponder well, you parents dear, These words which I shall write; A doleful story you shall hear, In time brought forth to light. A gentleman of good account In Norfolk dwelt of late, Who did in honor far surmount Most men of his estate. Sore sick he was, and like to die, No help his life could save; His wife by him as sick did lie, And both possessed one grave. No love between these two was lost, Each was to other kind; In love they lived, in love they died, And left two babes behind. The one, a fine and pretty boy, Not passing three years old; The other, a girl more young than he, And framed in beauty's mold. The father left his little son, As plainly doth appear, When he to perfect age should come, Three hundred pounds a year. And to his little daughter Jane, Five hundred pounds in gold, To be paid down on her marriage day, Which might not be controlled: But if the children chanced to die Ere they to age should come, Their uncle should possess their wealth; For so the will did run. "Now, brother," said the dying man, "Look to my children dear; Be good unto my boy and girl, No friends else have they here: To God and you I recommend My children dear this day; But little while be sure we have Within this world to stay. "You must be father and mother both, And uncle all in one; God knows what will become of them When I am dead and gone." With that bespake their mother dear, "O brother kind," quoth she, "You are the man must bring our babes To wealth or misery. "And if you keep them carefully, Then God will you reward; But if you otherwise should deal, God will your deeds regard." With lips as cold as any stone, They kissed their children small: "God bless you both, my children dear;" With that their tears did fall. These speeches then their brother spake To this sick couple there: "The keeping of your little ones, Sweet sister, do not fear. God never prosper me or mine, Nor aught else that I have, If I do wrong your children dear When you are laid in grave." The parents being dead and gone, The children home he takes, And brings them straight unto his house, Where much of them he makes. He had not kept these pretty babes A twelvemonth and a day, But, for their wealth, he did devise To make them both away. He bargained with two ruffians strong Which were of furious mood, That they should take these children young And slay them in a wood. He told his wife an artful tale: He would the children send To be brought up in fair London, With one that was his friend. Away then went those pretty babes, Rejoicing at that tide, Rejoicing with a merry mind, They should on cockhorse ride. They prate and prattle pleasantly, As they rode on the way, To those that should their butchers be And work their lives' decay. So that the pretty speech they had, Made murder's heart relent; And they that undertook the deed Full sore did now repent. Yet one of them, more hard of heart, Did vow to do his charge, Because the wretch that hired him Had paid him very large. The other won't agree thereto, So here they fall to strife; With one another they did fight About the children's life: And he that was of mildest mood, Did slay the other there, Within an unfrequented wood: The babes did quake for fear! He took the children by the hand, Tears standing in their eye, And bade them straightway follow him, And look they did not cry; And two long miles he led them on, While they for food complain: "Stay here," quoth he, "I'll bring you bread, When I come back again." These pretty babes, with hand in hand, Went wandering up and down; But never more could see the man Approaching from the town: Their pretty lips with blackberries Were all besmeared and dyed, And when they saw the darksome night, They sat them down and cried. Thus wandered these poor innocents Till death did end their grief, In one another's arms they died, As wanting due relief. No burial this pretty pair Of any man received, Till Robin Redbreast piously Did cover them with leaves. And now the heavy wrath of God Upon their uncle fell; Yea, fearful fiends did haunt his house, His conscience felt an hell: His barns were fired, his goods consumed, His lands were barren made, His cattle died within the field, And nothing with him stayed. And in the voyage to Portugal Two of his sons did die; And to conclude, himself was brought To want and misery. He pawned and mortgaged all his land Ere seven years came about. And now at length this wicked act Did by this means come out: The fellow that did take in hand These children for to kill, Was for a robbery judged to die, Such was God's blessèd will. Who did confess the very truth, As here hath been displayed: Their uncle having died in gaol, Where he for debt was laid. You that executors be made, And overseers eke Of children that be fatherless, And infants mild and meek; Take you example by this thing, And yield to each his right, Lest God with such like misery Your wicked minds requite. _Old Ballad._ [Illustration] THE SHEPHERD'S HOME. My banks they are furnished with bees, Whose murmur invites one to sleep; My grottoes are shaded with trees, And my hills are white over with sheep. I seldom have met with a loss, Such health do my fountains bestow; My fountains all bordered with moss, Where the harebells and violets blow. Not a pine in the grove is there seen, But with tendrils of woodbine is bound; Not a beech's more beautiful green, But a sweetbrier entwines it around. Not my fields in the prime of the year, More charms than my cattle unfold; Not a brook that is limpid and clear, But it glitters with fishes of gold. I have found out a gift for my fair, I have found where the wood pigeons breed, But let me such plunder forbear, She will say 'twas a barbarous deed; For he ne'er could be true, she averred, Who would rob a poor bird of its young; And I loved her the more when I heard Such tenderness fall from her tongue. WILLIAM SHENSTONE. ON A SPANIEL CALLED "BEAU" KILLING A YOUNG BIRD. A spaniel, Beau, that fares like you, Well fed, and at his ease,-- Should wiser be than to pursue Each trifle that he sees. But you have killed a tiny bird, Which flew not till to-day, Against my orders, whom you heard Forbidding you the prey. Nor did you kill that you might eat, And ease a doggish pain; For him, though chased with furious heat, You left where he was slain. Nor was he of the thievish sort, Or one whom blood allures; But innocent was all his sport Whom you have torn for yours. My dog! what remedy remains, Since, teach you all I can, I see you, after all my pains, So much resemble man? BEAU'S REPLY. Sir, when I flew to seize the bird In spite of your command, A louder voice than yours I heard, And harder to withstand. You cried--"Forbear!" but in my breast A mightier cried--"Proceed!"-- 'Twas Nature, sir, whose strong behest Impelled me to the deed. Yet much as Nature I respect, I ventured once to break (As you perhaps may recollect) Her precept for your sake; And when your linnet on a day, Passing his prison door, Had fluttered all his strength away, And panting pressed the floor: Well knowing him a sacred thing, Not destined to my tooth, I only kissed his ruffled wing, And licked the feathers smooth. Let my obedience then excuse My disobedience now, Nor some reproof yourself refuse From your aggrieved Bow-wow; If killing birds be such a crime, (Which I can hardly see), What think you, sir, of killing Time With verse addressed to me! WILLIAM COWPER. SWEET PEAS. A SELECTION. Here are sweet peas, on tiptoe for a flight: With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white, And taper fingers catching at all things, To bind them all about with tiny rings. Linger awhile upon some bending planks That lean against a streamlet's rushy banks, And watch intently Nature's gentle doings: They will be found softer than ringdove's cooings. How silent comes the water round that bend! Not the minutest whisper does it send To the o'erhanging sallows: blades of grass Slowly across the chequer'd shadows pass. JOHN KEATS. CA' THE YOWES. Ca' the yowes to the knowes, Ca' them where the heather grows, Ca' them where the burnie rowes-- My bonnie dearie! Hark the mavis' evening sang Sounding Cluden's woods amang! Then a faulding let us gang, My bonnie dearie! We'll gae down by Cluden side, Thro' the hazels spreading wide, O'er the waves that sweetly glide To the moon sae clearly. Yonder Cluden's silent towers, Where at moonshine midnight hours, O'er the dewy bending flowers, Fairies dance so cheery. Ghaist nor bogie shalt thou fear; Thou'rt to love and heaven sae dear, Nocht of ill may come thee near, My bonnie dearie! Fair and lovely as thou art, Thou hast stown my very heart; I can die--but canna part-- My bonnie dearie! Ca' the yowes to the knowes, Ca' them where the heather grows; Ca' them where the burnie rowes-- My bonnie dearie! ROBERT BURNS. SELECTIONS FROM A RHYMED LESSON. Shalt thou be honest? Ask the worldly schools, And all will tell thee knaves are busier fools; Prudent? Industrious? Let not modern pens Instruct "Poor Richard's" fellow citizens. Be firm! one constant element in luck Is genuine, solid, old Teutonic pluck; See yon tall shaft; it felt the earthquake's thrill, Clung to its base, and greets the sunrise still. * * * * * Yet in opinions look not always back; Your wake is nothing, mind the coming track; Leave what you've done for what you have to do; Don't be "consistent," but be simply true. * * * * * Once more; speak clearly, if you speak at all; Carve every word before you let it fall; Don't, like a lecturer or dramatic star, Try over hard to roll the British R; Do put your accents in the proper spot; Don't,--let me beg you,--don't say "How?" for "What?" And, when you stick on conversation's burrs, Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful _urs_. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. [Illustration: OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.] THE PILGRIM FATHERS. The breaking waves dashed high On a stern and rock-bound coast, And the woods against a stormy sky Their giant branches tossed; And the heavy night hung dark The hills and waters o'er, When a band of exiles moored their bark On the wild New England shore. Not as the conqueror comes, They, the true-hearted, came; Not with the roll of the stirring drums, And the trumpet that sings of fame; Not as the flying come, In silence and in fear;-- They shook the depths of the desert gloom With their hymns of lofty cheer. Amidst the storm they sang, And the stars heard, and the sea; And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang To the anthem of the free! The ocean eagle soared From his nest by the white wave's foam; And the rocking pines of the forest roared-- This was their welcome home! There were men with hoary hair Amidst that pilgrim band; Why had they come to wither there Away from their childhood's land? There was woman's fearless eye, Lit by her deep love's truth; There was manhood's brow, serenely high, And the fiery heart of youth. What sought they thus afar? Bright jewels of the mine? The wealth of seas, the spoils of war? They sought a faith's pure shrine! Ay, call it holy ground, The soil where first they trod. They have left unstained what there they found-- Freedom to worship God. FELICIA HEMANS. [Illustration] [Illustration] THE WIVES OF BRIXHAM. A TRUE STORY. The merry boats of Brixham Go out to search the seas; A stanch and sturdy fleet are they, Who love a swinging breeze; And before the woods of Devon, And the silver cliffs of Wales, You may see, when summer evenings fall, The light upon their sails. But when the year grows darker, And gray winds hunt the foam, They go back to Little Brixham, And ply their toil at home. And thus it chanced one winter's night, When a storm began to roar, That all the men were out at sea, And all the wives on shore. Then as the wind grew fiercer, The women's cheeks grew white,-- It was fiercer in the twilight, And fiercest in the night. The strong clouds set themselves like ice, Without a star to melt; The blackness of the darkness Was darkness to be felt. The old men they were anxious, They dreaded what they knew; What do you think the women did? Love taught them what to do! Out spake a wife, "We've beds at home, We'll burn them for a light,-- Give us the men and the bare ground, We want no more to-night." They took the grandame's blanket, Who shivered and bade them go; They took the baby's pillow, Who could not say them no; And they heaped a great fire on the pier, And knew not all the while If they were heaping a bonfire, Or only a funeral pile. And fed with precious food, the flame Shone bravely on the black, Till a cry rang through the people, "A boat is coming back!" Staggering dimly through the fog Come shapes of fear and doubt, But when the first prow strikes the pier, Cannot you hear them shout? Then all along the breath of flame, Dark figures shrieked and ran, With "Child, here comes your father!" Or, "Wife, is this your man?" And faint feet touch the welcome shore, And wait a little while; And kisses drop from frozen lips, Too tired to speak or smile. So, one by one, they struggled in All that the sea would spare; We will not reckon through our tears The names that were not there; But some went home without a bed, When all the tale was told, Who were too cold with sorrow To know the night was cold. And this is what the men must do Who work in wind and foam; And this is what the women bear Who watch for them at home. So when you see a Brixham boat Go out to face the gales, Think of the love that travels Like light upon her sails. _Selected._ [Illustration: ALFRED TENNYSON.] THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE. Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. "Forward the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!" he said: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. "Forward the Light Brigade!" Was there a man dismayed? Not tho' the soldier knew Some one had blundered: Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them Volleyed and thundered; Stormed at with shot and shell, Boldly they rode and well, Into the jaws of Death, Into the mouth of Hell Rode the six hundred. Flashed all their sabers bare, Flashed as they turned in air Sab'ring the gunners there, Charging an army, while All the world wondered: Plunged in the battery smoke, Right thro' the line they broke; Cossack and Russian Reeled from the saber stroke Shattered and sundered. Then they rode back, but not Not the six hundred. Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon behind them Volleyed and thundered; Stormed at with shot and shell, While horse and hero fell, They that had fought so well Came thro' the jaws of Death, Back from the mouth of Hell, All that was left of them, Left of six hundred. When can their glory fade? O the wild charge they made! All the world wondered. Honor the charge they made! Honor the Light Brigade, Noble six hundred! ALFRED TENNYSON. [Illustration] THE ROYAL GEORGE. Toll for the brave! The brave that are no more! All sunk beneath the wave Fast by their native shore! Eight hundred of the brave, Whose courage well was tried, Had made the vessel heel And laid her on her side. A land breeze shook the shrouds, And she was overset; Down went the Royal George With all her crew complete. Toll for the brave! Brave Kempenfelt is gone; His last sea fight is fought, His work of glory done. It was not in the battle; No tempest gave the shock; She sprang no fatal leak, She ran upon no rock. His sword was in its sheath, His fingers held the pen, When Kempenfelt went down With twice four hundred men. Weigh the vessel up, Once dreaded by our foes! And mingle with our cup The tear that England owes. Her timbers yet are sound, And she may float again Full charged with England's thunder, And plow the distant main: But Kempenfelt is gone, His victories are o'er; And he and his eight hundred Shall plow the wave no more. WILLIAM COWPER. CALM ON THE LISTENING EAR OF NIGHT. Calm on the listening ear of night Come heaven's melodious strains, Where wild Judea stretches far Her silver-mantled plains. Celestial choirs from courts above Shed sacred glories there; And angels, with their sparkling lyres, Make music on the air. The answering hills of Palestine Send back the glad reply; And greet, from all their holy heights, The Dayspring from on high. O'er the blue depths of Galilee There comes a holier calm, And Sharon waves in solemn praise Her silent groves of palm. "Glory to God!" the sounding skies Loud with their anthems ring, "Peace to the earth, good-will to men, From heaven's eternal King!" Light on thy hills, Jerusalem! The Savior now is born! And bright on Bethlehem's joyous plains Breaks the first Christmas morn. EDMUND H. SEARS. WHEN WILT THOU SAVE THE PEOPLE? When wilt Thou save the people? O God of mercy, when? Not kings and lords, but nations! Not thrones and crowns, but men! Flowers of Thy heart, O God, are they; Let them not pass, like weeds, away, Their heritage, a sunless day. God, save the people! Shall crime bring crime forever, Strength aiding still the strong? Is it Thy will, O Father, That man shall toil for wrong? No, say Thy mountains; No, Thy skies; Man's clouded sun shall brightly rise, And songs ascend, instead of sighs. God, save the people! When wilt Thou save the people? O God of mercy, when? The people, Lord, the people, Not thrones and crowns, but men! God save the people; Thine they are, Thy children, as Thine angels fair. From vice, oppression, and despair, God, save the people! EBENEZER ELLIOTT. THE LAND OF SONG: BOOK II. _PART II._ [Illustration: DANIEL C. FRENCH. THE MINUTE MAN.] PART TWO. [Illustration] UNION AND LIBERTY. Flag of the heroes who left us their glory, Borne through their battlefields' thunder and flame, Blazoned in song and illumined in story, Wave o'er us all who inherit their fame! Up with our banner bright, Sprinkled with starry light, Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore, While through the sounding sky Loud rings the Nation's cry,-- UNION AND LIBERTY! ONE EVERMORE! Light of our firmament, guide of our Nation, Pride of her children, and honored afar, Let the wide beams of thy full constellation Scatter each cloud that would darken a star! Up with our banner bright, Sprinkled with starry light, Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore, While through the sounding sky Loud rings the Nation's cry,-- UNION AND LIBERTY! ONE EVERMORE! Empire unsceptered! what foe shall assail thee, Bearing the standard of Liberty's van? Think not the God of thy fathers shall fail thee, Striving with men for the birthright of man! Up with our banner bright, Sprinkled with starry light, Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore, While through the sounding sky Loud rings the Nation's cry,-- UNION AND LIBERTY! ONE EVERMORE! Yet if, by madness and treachery blighted, Dawns the dark hour when the sword thou must draw, Then with the arms of thy millions united, Smite the bold traitors to Freedom and Law! Up with our banner bright, Sprinkled with starry light, Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore, While through the sounding sky Loud rings the Nation's cry,-- UNION AND LIBERTY! ONE EVERMORE! Lord of the Universe! shield us and guide us, Trusting Thee always, through shadow and sun! Thou hast united us, who shall divide us? Keep us, O keep us, the MANY IN ONE! Up with our banner bright, Sprinkled with starry light, Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore, While through the sounding sky Loud rings the Nation's cry,-- UNION AND LIBERTY! ONE EVERMORE! OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. SONG OF MARION'S MEN. Our band is few, but true and tried, Our leader frank and bold; The British soldier trembles When Marion's name is told. Our fortress is the good greenwood, Our tent the cypress tree; We know the forest round us, As seamen know the sea. We know its walls of thorny vines, Its glades of reedy grass, Its safe and silent islands Within the dark morass. Woe to the English soldiery That little dread us near, On them shall light at midnight A strange and sudden fear: When, waking to their tents on fire, They grasp their arms in vain, And they who stand to face us Are beat to earth again; And they who fly in terror deem A mighty host behind, And hear the tramp of thousands Upon the hollow wind. Then sweet the hour that brings release From danger and from toil: We talk the battle over, And share the battle's spoil. The woodland rings with laugh and shout, As if a hunt were up, And woodland flowers are gathered To crown the soldier's cup. With merry songs we mock the wind That in the pine-top grieves, And slumber long and sweetly On beds of oaken leaves. Well knows the fair and friendly moon The band that Marion leads-- The glitter of their rifles, The scampering of their steeds. 'Tis life to guide the fiery barb Across the moonlight plain; 'Tis life to feel the night wind That lifts his tossing mane. A moment in the British camp-- A moment--and away Back to the pathless forest, Before the peep of day. Grave men there are by broad Santee, Grave men with hoary hairs, Their hearts are all with Marion, For Marion are their prayers. And lovely ladies greet our band With kindliest welcoming, With smiles like those of summer, And tears like those of spring. For them we wear these trusty arms, And lay them down no more Till we have driven the Briton, Forever, from our shore. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. STARS. They glide upon their endless way, Forever calm, forever bright; No blind hurry, no delay, Mark the Daughters of the Night; They follow in the track of Day, In divine delight. Shine on, sweet-orbèd Souls for aye, Forever calm, forever bright; We ask not whither lies your way, Nor whence ye came, nor what your light. Be--still a dream throughout the day, A blessing through the night. BRYAN WALLER PROCTER (BARRY CORNWALL). NIGHT. The sun descendeth in the west, The evening star does shine; The birds are silent in their nest, And I must seek for mine. The moon, like a flower, In heaven's high bower, With silent delight Sits and smiles on the night. Farewell, green fields and happy groves, Where flocks have ta'en delight; Where lambs have nibbled, silent moves The feet of angels bright; Unseen, they pour blessing, And joy without ceasing, On each bud and blossom, And each sleeping bosom. They look in every thoughtless nest, Where birds are covered warm, They visit caves of every beast, To keep them all from harm. If they see any weeping That should have been sleeping, They pour sleep on their head, And sit down by their bed. WILLIAM BLAKE. [Illustration] THE BATTLE OF THE BALTIC. Of Nelson and the North Sing the glorious day's renown, When to battle fierce came forth All the might of Denmark's crown, And her arms along the deep proudly shone; By each gun the lighted brand In a bold determined hand, And the Prince of all the land Led them on.-- Like leviathans afloat, Lay their bulwarks on the brine; While the sign of battle flew On the lofty British line: It was ten of April morn by the chime: As they drifted on their path, There was silence deep as death; And the boldest held his breath, For a time.-- But the might of England flushed To anticipate the scene; And her van the fleeter rushed O'er the deadly space between. "Hearts of oak!" our captains cried; when each gun From its adamantine lips Spread a death shade round the ships, Like the hurricane eclipse Of the sun. Again! again! again! And the havoc did not slack, Till a feeble cheer the Dane, To our cheering sent us back;-- Their shots along the deep slowly boom:-- Then cease--and all is wail, As they strike the shattered sail; Or, in conflagration pale, Light the gloom.-- Now joy, Old England, raise For the tidings of thy might, By the festal cities' blaze, Whilst the wine cup shines in light; And yet amidst that joy and uproar, Let us think of them that sleep Full many a fathom deep By thy wild and stormy steep, Elsinore. THOMAS CAMPBELL. HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE. How sleep the brave who sink to rest By all their Country's wishes blest! When Spring, with dewy fingers cold, Returns to deck their hallowed mold, She there shall dress a sweeter sod Than Fancy's feet have ever trod. By fairy hands their knell is rung, By forms unseen their dirge is sung: There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay, And Freedom shall awhile repair To dwell a weeping hermit there! WILLIAM COLLINS. LLEWELLYN AND HIS DOG. The spearmen heard the bugle sound, And cheer'ly smiled the morn; And many a dog, and many a hound, Attend Llewellyn's horn. And still he blew a louder blast, And gave a louder cheer; "Come, Gelert! why art thou the last Llewellyn's horn to hear? "Oh, where does faithful Gelert roam, The flower of all his race? So true, so brave--a lamb at home, A lion in the chase." That day Llewellyn little loved The chase of hart or hare, And scant and small the booty proved, For Gelert was not there. Unpleased, Llewellyn homeward hied, When, near the portal seat, His truant Gelert he espied, Bounding his lord to greet. But when he gained the castle door, Aghast the chieftain stood; The hound was smeared with gouts of gore, His lips and fangs ran blood! Llewellyn gazed with wild surprise; Unused such looks to meet, His fav'rite checked his joyful guise, And crouched, and licked his feet. Onward in haste Llewellyn passed (And on went Gelert too), And still, where'er his eyes were cast, Fresh blood gouts shocked his view. O'erturned his infant's bed he found, The bloodstained cover rent; And all around the walls and ground With recent blood besprent. He called his child--no voice replied; He searched with terror wild; Blood! blood! he found on every side, But nowhere found his child! "Hell-hound! by thee my child's devoured!" The frantic father cried; And to the hilt his vengeful sword He plunged in Gelert's side. His suppliant, as to earth he fell, No pity could impart; But still his Gelert's dying yell Passed heavy o'er his heart. Aroused by Gelert's dying yell, Some slumberer wakened nigh; What words the parent's joy can tell, To hear his infant cry! Concealed beneath a mangled heap, His hurried search had missed, All glowing from his rosy sleep, His cherub boy he kissed! Nor scratch had he, nor harm, nor dread, But the same couch beneath Lay a great wolf, all torn and dead,-- Tremendous still in death! Ah, what was then Llewellyn's pain! For now the truth was clear; The gallant hound the wolf had slain, To save Llewellyn's heir. Vain, vain was all Llewellyn's woe; "Best of thy kind, adieu! The frantic deed which laid thee low This heart shall ever rue!" And now a gallant tomb they raised, With costly sculpture decked; And marbles storied with his praise Poor Gelert's bones protect. Here never could the spearman pass, Or forester, unmoved, Here oft the tear-besprinkled grass Llewellyn's sorrow proved. And here he hung his horn and spear, And oft, as evening fell, In fancy's piercing sounds would hear, Poor Gelert's dying yell. ROBERT SOUTHEY. FIDELITY. A barking sound the shepherd hears, A cry as of a dog or fox; He halts--and searches with his eyes Among the scattered rocks: And now at distance can discern A stirring in a brake of fern; And instantly a dog is seen, Glancing through that covert green. The dog is not of mountain breed; Its motions, too, are wild and shy; With something, as the shepherd thinks, Unusual in its cry: Nor is there anyone in sight All round, in hollow or on height; Nor shout, nor whistle strikes his ear; What is the creature doing here? It was a cove, a huge recess, That keeps, till June, December's snow; A lofty precipice in front, A silent tarn below! Far in the bosom of Helvellyn, Remote from public road or dwelling, Pathway, or cultivated land; From trace of human foot or hand. There sometimes doth a leaping fish Send through the tarn a lonely cheer; The crags repeat the raven's croak, In symphony austere; Thither the rainbow comes--the cloud-- And mists that spread the flying shroud; And sunbeams; and the sounding blast, That, if it could, would hurry past; But that enormous barrier holds it fast. Not free from boding thoughts, a while The shepherd stood; then makes his way O'er rocks and stones, following the dog As quickly as he may; Nor far had gone before he found A human skeleton on the ground; The appalled discoverer with a sigh Looks round, to learn the history. From those abrupt and perilous rocks The man had fallen, that place of fear! At length upon the shepherd's mind It breaks, and all is clear: He instantly recalled the name, And who he was, and whence he came; Remembered, too, the very day On which the traveler passed this way. But hear a wonder, for whose sake This lamentable tale I tell! A lasting monument of words This wonder merits well. The dog, which still was hovering nigh, Repeating the same timid cry, This dog, had been through three months' space A dweller in that savage place. Yes, proof was plain that, since the day When this ill-fated traveler died, The dog had watched about the spot, Or by his master's side: How nourished here through such long time He knows, who gave that love sublime; And gave that strength of feeling, great Above all human estimate! WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. [Illustration] ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET. The poetry of earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead; That is the grasshopper's--he takes the lead In summer luxury,--he has never done With his delights, for when tired out with fun, He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. The poetry of earth is ceasing never: On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, The grasshopper's among some grassy hills. JOHN KEATS. ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET. Green little vaulter in the sunny grass, Catching your heart up at the feel of June, Sole voice that's heard amidst the lazy noon, When ev'n the bees lag at the summoning brass; And you, warm little housekeeper, who class With those who think the candles come too soon, Loving the fire and with your tricksome tune Nick the glad silent moments as they pass; Oh sweet and tiny cousins, that belong, One to the fields, the other to the hearth, Both have your sunshine; both, though small are strong At your dear hearts; and both were sent on earth To sing in thoughtful ears this natural song,-- Indoors and out, summer and winter, mirth! LEIGH HUNT. [Illustration] EPITAPH ON A HARE. Here lies, whom hound did ne'er pursue, Nor swifter greyhound follow, Whose foot ne'er tainted morning dew, Nor ear heard huntsman's hallo! Old Tiney, surliest of his kind, Who, nursed with tender care, And to domestic bounds confined, Was still a wild Jack hare. Though duly from my hand he took His pittance every night, He did it with a jealous look, And, when he could, would bite. His diet was of wheaten bread, And milk, and oats, and straw; Thistles, or lettuces instead, With sand to scour his maw. On twigs of hawthorn he regaled, On pippin's russet peel, And when his juicy salads failed, Sliced carrot pleased him well. A Turkey carpet was his lawn, Whereon he loved to bound, To skip and gambol like a fawn, And swing himself around. His frisking was at evening hours, For then he lost his fear, But most before approaching showers, Or when a storm drew near. Eight years and five round-rolling moons He thus saw steal away, Dozing out all his idle noons, And every night at play. I kept him for his humor's sake, For he would oft beguile My heart of thoughts that made it ache, And force me to a smile. But now, beneath this walnut shade, He finds his long last home, And waits, in snug concealment laid, Till gentler Puss shall come. He, still more aged, feels the shocks From which no care can save, And, partner once of Tiney's box, Must soon partake his grave. WILLIAM COWPER. THE COUNCIL OF HORSES. Upon a time a neighing steed, Who grazed among a numerous breed, With mutiny had fired the train, And spread dissension through the plain. On matters that concerned the state, The council met in grand debate. A colt whose eyeballs flamed with ire, Elate with strength and youthful fire, In haste stept forth before the rest, And thus the listening throng addressed: "Goodness, how abject is our race, Condemned to slavery and disgrace! Shall we our servitude retain, Because our sires have borne the chain? Consider, friends! your strength and might; 'Tis conquest to assert your right. How cumbrous is the gilded coach! The pride of man is our reproach. Were we designed for daily toil, To drag the plowshare through the soil, To sweat in harness through the road, To groan beneath the carrier's load? How feeble are the two-legg'd kind! What force is in our nerves combined! Shall then our nobler jaws submit To foam and champ the galling bit? Shall haughty man my back bestride? Shall the sharp spur provoke my side? Forbid it, heavens! reject the rein; Your shame, your infamy, disdain. Let him the lion first control, And still the tiger's famished growl. Let us, like them, our freedom claim, And make him tremble at our name." A general nod approved the cause, And all the circle neighed applause. When, lo! with grave and solemn pace, A steed advanced before the race, With age and long experience wise; Around he cast his thoughtful eyes, And, to the murmurs of the train, Thus spoke the Nestor of the plain. "When I had health and strength like you The toils of servitude I knew; Now grateful man rewards my pains, And gives me all these wide domains. At will I crop the year's increase; My latter life is rest and peace. I grant, to man we lend our pains, And aid him to correct the plains; But doth he not divide the care, Through all the labors of the year? How many thousand structures rise, To fence us from inclement skies! For us he bears the sultry day, And stores up all our winter's hay. He sows, he reaps the harvest's gain; We share the toil and share the grain. Since every creature was decreed To aid each other's mutual need, Appease your discontented mind, And act the part by heaven assigned." The tumult ceased, the colt submitted, And, like his ancestors, was bitted. JOHN GAY. [Illustration] RUTH. She stood breast high amid the corn, Clasped by the golden light of morn, Like the sweetheart of the sun, Who many a glowing kiss had won. On her cheek an autumn flush, Deeply ripened;--such a blush In the midst of brown was born, Like red poppies grown with corn. Round her eyes her tresses fell, Which were blackest none could tell, But long lashes veiled a light, That had else been all too bright. And her hat, with shady brim, Made her tressy forehead dim;-- Thus she stood amid the stocks, Praising God with sweetest looks:-- Sure, I said, heav'n did not mean, Where I reap thou shouldst but glean, Lay thy sheaf adown and come, Share my harvest and my home. THOMAS HOOD. THE ELIXIR. Teach me, my God and King, In all things Thee to see, And what I do in anything, To do it as for Thee. All may of Thee partake: Nothing can be so mean Which with this tincture, for Thy sake, Will not grow bright and clean. A servant with this clause Makes drudgery divine; Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws, Makes that and the action fine. This is the famous stone That turneth all to gold; For that which God doth touch and own Cannot for less be told. GEORGE HERBERT. THE BOY AND THE ANGEL. Morning, evening, noon, and night, "Praise God!" sang Theocrite. Then to his poor trade he turned, Whereby the daily meal was earned. Hard he labored, long and well; O'er his work the boy's curls fell. But ever, at each period, He stopped and sang, "Praise God!" Then back again his curls he threw, And cheerful turned to work anew. Said Blaise, the listening monk, "Well done; I doubt not thou art heard, my son: "As well as if thy voice to-day Were praising God, the Pope's great way. "This Easter Day, the Pope at Rome Praises God from Peter's dome." Said Theocrite, "Would God that I Might praise Him that great way, and die!" Night passed, day shone, And Theocrite was gone. With God a day endures alway, A thousand years are but a day. God said in heaven, "Nor day nor night Now brings the voice of my delight." Then Gabriel, like a rainbow's birth, Spread his wings and sank to earth; Entered, in flesh, the empty cell, Lived there, and played the craftsman well; And morning, evening, noon, and night, Praised God in place of Theocrite. And from a boy, to youth he grew: The man put off the stripling's hue: The man matured and fell away Into the season of decay: And ever o'er the trade he bent, And ever lived on earth content. (He lived God's will; to him, all one If on the earth or in the sun.) God said, "A praise is in mine ear; There is no doubt in it, no fear: "So sing old worlds, and so New worlds that from my footstool go. "Clearer loves sound other ways: I miss my little human praise." Then forth sprang Gabriel's wings, off fell The flesh disguise, remained the cell. 'Twas Easter Day: he flew to Rome, And paused above Saint Peter's dome. In the tiring-room close by The great outer gallery, With his holy vestments dight, Stood the new Pope Theocrite: And all his past career Came back upon him clear, Since when, a boy, he plied his trade, Till on his life the sickness weighed; And in his cell, when death drew near, An angel in a dream brought cheer: And, rising from the sickness drear, He grew a priest, and now stood here. To the East with praise he turned, And on his sight the angel burned. "I bore thee from thy craftsman's cell, And set thee here; I did not well. "Vainly I left my angel sphere, Vain was thy dream of many a year. "Thy voice's praise seemed weak; it dropped-- Creation's chorus stopped! "Go back and praise again The early way, while I remain. "With that weak voice of our disdain, Take up creation's pausing strain. "Back to the cell and poor employ: Resume the craftsman and the boy!" Theocrite grew old at home; A new Pope dwelt in Peter's dome. One vanished as the other died: They sought God side by side. ROBERT BROWNING. THE GRAVES OF A HOUSEHOLD. They grew in beauty, side by side, They filled one home with glee; Their graves are severed far and wide, By mount, and stream, and sea. The same fond mother bent at night O'er each fair, sleeping brow; She had each folded flower in sight: Where are those sleepers now? One, midst the forest of the West, By a dark stream is laid; The Indian knows his place of rest, Far in the cedar shade. The sea, the blue, lone sea, hath one; He lies where pearls lie deep; He was the loved of all, yet none O'er his low bed may weep. One sleeps where southern vines are dressed Above the noble slain; He wrapped the colors round his breast On a blood-red field of Spain. And one--o'er her the myrtle showers Its leaves by soft winds fanned; She faded midst Italian flowers-- The last of that fair band. And parted thus, they rest who played Beneath the same green tree; Whose voices mingled as they prayed Around one parent knee. They that with smiles lit up the hall, And cheered with song the hearth; Alas for love! if thou wert all, And nought beyond, O earth! FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS. [Illustration] [Illustration: WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.] THE EVENING WIND. Spirit that breathest through my lattice, thou That cool'st the twilight of the sultry day, Gratefully flows thy freshness round my brow: Thou hast been out upon the deep at play, Riding all day the wild blue waves till now, Roughening their crests, and scattering high their spray, And swelling the white sail. I welcome thee To the scorched land, thou wanderer of the sea! Nor I alone--a thousand bosoms round Inhale thee in the fullness of delight; And languid forms rise up, and pulses bound Livelier, at coming of the wind of night; And, languishing to hear thy grateful sound, Lies the vast inland stretched beyond the sight. Go forth into the gathering shade; go forth, God's blessing breathed upon the fainting earth! Go, rock the little wood bird in his nest, Curl the still waters, bright with stars, and rouse The wide old wood from his majestic rest, Summoning from the innumerable boughs The strange, deep harmonies that haunt his breast: Pleasant shall be thy way where meekly bows The shutting flower, and darkling waters pass, And where the o'ershadowing branches sweep the grass. The faint old man shall lean his silver head To feel thee; thou shalt kiss the child asleep, And dry the moistened curls that overspread His temples, while his breathing grows more deep; And they who stand about the sick man's bed, Shall joy to listen to thy distant sweep, And softly part his curtains to allow Thy visit, grateful to his burning brow. Go--but the circle of eternal change, Which is the life of nature, shall restore, With sounds and scents from all thy mighty range, Thee to thy birthplace of the deep once more; Sweet odors in the sea air, sweet and strange, Shall tell the homesick mariner of the shore; And, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem He hears the rustling leaf and running stream. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. SOUND THE LOUD TIMBREL Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea! Jehovah has triumphed,--His people are free! Sing,--for the pride of the tyrant is broken, His chariots, his horsemen, all splendid and brave,-- How vain was their boasting! the Lord hath but spoken, And chariots and horsemen are sunk in the wave. Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea! Jehovah has triumphed,--His people are free! Praise to the Conqueror, praise to the Lord! His word was our arrow, His breath was our sword. Who shall return to tell Egypt the story Of those she sent forth in the hour of her pride? For the Lord hath looked out from His pillar of glory, And all her brave thousands are dashed in the tide. Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea! Jehovah hath triumphed,--His people are free! THOMAS MOORE. CHORAL SONG OF ILLYRIAN PEASANTS. Up! up! ye dames, ye lasses gay! To the meadows trip away, 'Tis you must tend the flocks this morn, And scare the small birds from the corn. Not a soul at home may stay: For the shepherds must go With lance and bow To hunt the wolf in the woods to-day. Leave the hearth and leave the house To the cricket and the mouse: Find grannam out a sunny seat, With babe and lambkin at her feet. Not a soul at home may stay: For the shepherds must go With lance and bow To hunt the wolf in the woods to-day. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. KING JOHN AND THE ABBOT OF CANTERBURY. An ancient story I'll tell you anon Of a notable prince, that was called King John; And he ruled England with main and with might, For he did great wrong and maintained little right. And I'll tell you a story, a story so merry, Concerning the Abbot of Canterbury; How for his housekeeping and high renown, They rode post for him to fair London town. An hundred men, the king did hear say, The Abbot kept in his house every day; And fifty gold chains, without any doubt, In velvet coats waited the Abbot about. "How now, father Abbot, I hear it of thee, Thou keepest a far better house than me; And for thy housekeeping and high renown, I fear thou work'st treason against my crown." "My liege," quoth the Abbot, "I would it were known I never spend nothing but what is my own; And I trust your Grace will do me no deere For spending of my own true gotten geere." [Illustration: KING JOHN AND THE ABBOT OF CANTERBURY.] "Yes, yes, father Abbot, thy fault it is high, And now for the same thou needest must die; For except thou canst answer me questions three, Thy head shall be smitten from thy bodie. "And first," quoth the king, "when I'm in this stead, With my crown of gold so fair on my head, Among all my liegemen so noble of birth, Thou must tell me to one penny what I am worth. "Secondly tell me, without any doubt, How soon I may ride the whole world about; And at the third question thou must not shrink, But tell me here truly what I do think." "O these are hard questions for my shallow wit, Nor I cannot answer your Grace as yet; But if you will give me but three weeks' space, I'll do my endeavor to answer your Grace." "Now three weeks' space to thee will I give, And that is the longest time thou hast to live; For if thou dost not answer my questions three, Thy land and thy livings are forfeit to me." Away rode the Abbot all sad at that word, And he rode to Cambridge and Oxenford; But never a doctor there was so wise, That could with his learning an answer devise. Then home rode the Abbot of comfort so cold, And he met his shepherd a-going to fold: "How now, my lord Abbot, you are welcome home; What news do you bring us from good King John?" "Sad news, sad news, shepherd, I must give, That I have but three days more to live; For if I do not answer him questions three, My head will be smitten from my bodie. "The first is to tell him there in that stead, With his crown of gold so fair on his head, Among all his liegemen so noble of birth, To within one penny of what he is worth. "The second to tell him without any doubt, How soon he may ride this whole world about; And at the third question I must not shrink, But tell him there truly what he does think." "Now cheer up, sir Abbot, did you never hear yet That a fool he may learn a wise man wit? Lend me horse, and serving men, and your apparel, And I'll ride to London to answer your quarrel. "Nay, frown not, if it hath been told unto me, I am like your lordship as ever may be; And if you will but lend me your gown There is none shall know us in fair London town." "Now horses and serving men thou shalt have, With sumptuous array most gallant and brave, With crozier, and miter, and rochet, and cope, Fit to appear 'fore our father the Pope." "Now welcome, sir Abbot," the king he did say, "'Tis well thou'rt come back to keep thy day: For and if thou canst answer my questions three, Thy life and thy living both saved shall be. "And first, when thou seest me here in this stead, With my crown of gold so fair on my head, Among all my liegemen so noble of birth, Tell me to one penny what I am worth." "For thirty pence our Savior was sold Among the false Jews, as I have been told: And twenty-nine is the worth of thee, For I think thou art one penny worser than he." The King he laughed, and swore by St. Bittel, "I did not think I had been worth so little! Now secondly tell me, without any doubt, How soon I may ride this whole world about." "You must rise with the sun, and ride with the same, Until the next morning he riseth again; And then your Grace need not make any doubt But in twenty-four hours you'll ride it about." The King he laughed, and swore by St. Jone, "I did not think it could be gone so soon. Now from the third question thou must not shrink, But tell me here truly what do I think." "Yea, that I shall do and make your Grace merry; You think I'm the Abbot of Canterbury; But I'm his poor shepherd, as plain you may see, That am come to beg pardon for him and for me." The King he laughed, and swore by the mass, "I'll make thee lord abbot this day in his place!" "Nay, nay, my liege, be not in such speed, For alack, I can neither write nor read." "Four nobles a week, then, I will give thee, For this merry jest thou hast shown unto me; And tell the old Abbot, when thou com'st home, Thou hast brought him a pardon from good King John." THOMAS PERCY. TO THE SMALL CELANDINE. Pansies, lilies, kingcups, daisies, Let them live upon their praises; Long as there's a sun that sets, Primroses will have their glory; Long as there are violets, They will have a place in story: There's a flower that shall be mine, 'Tis the little Celandine. Eyes of some men travel far For the finding of a star; Up and down the heavens they go, Men that keep a mighty rout! I'm as great as they, I trow, Since the day I found thee out, Little flower!--I'll make a stir, Like a sage astronomer. Modest, yet withal an elf Bold, and lavish of thyself; Since we needs must first have met I have seen thee, high and low, Thirty years or more, and yet 'Twas a face I did not know; Thou hast now, go where I may, Fifty greetings in a day. Ere a leaf is on a bush, In the time before the thrush Has a thought about her nest, Thou wilt come with half a call, Spreading out thy glossy breast Like a careless prodigal; Telling tales about the sun, When we've little warmth, or none. Poets, vain men in their mood! Travel with the multitude: Never heed them; I aver That they are all wanton wooers; But the thrifty cottager, Who stirs little out of doors, Joys to spy thee near her home; Spring is coming, thou art come! Comfort have thou of thy merit, Kindly, unassuming spirit! Careless of thy neighborhood, Thou dost show thy pleasant face On the moor, and in the wood, In the lane;--there's not a place, Howsoever mean it be, But 'tis good enough for thee. Ill befall the yellow flowers, Children of the flaring hours! Buttercups, that will be seen, Whether we will see or no; Others, too, of lofty mien; They have done as worldlings do, Taken praise that should be thine, Little, humble Celandine! Prophet of delight and mirth, Ill requited upon earth; Herald of a mighty band, Of a joyous train ensuing, Serving at my heart's command, Tasks that are no tasks renewing, I will sing, as doth behove, Hymns in praise, of what I love! WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. THE BELEAGUERED CITY. I have read, in some old, marvelous tale, Some legend strange and vague, That a midnight host of specters pale Beleaguered the walls of Prague. Beside the Moldau's rushing stream, With the wan moon overhead, There stood, as in an awful dream, The army of the dead. White as a sea fog, landward bound, The spectral camp was seen, And, with a sorrowful, deep sound, The river flowed between. No other voice nor sound was there, No drum, nor sentry's pace; The mistlike banners clasped the air, As clouds with clouds embrace. But, when the old cathedral bell Proclaimed the morning prayer, The white pavilions rose and fell On the alarmèd air. [Illustration: HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.] Down the broad valley, fast and far The troubled army fled; Up rose the glorious morning star, The ghastly host was dead. I have read, in the marvelous heart of man, That strange and mystic scroll, That an army of phantoms vast and wan Beleaguer the human soul. Encamped beside Life's rushing stream, In Fancy's misty light, Gigantic shapes and shadows gleam Portentous through the night. Upon its midnight battle ground The spectral camp is seen, And, with a sorrowful, deep sound, Flows the River of Life between. No other voice, nor sound is there, In the army of the grave; No other challenge breaks the air, But the rushing of Life's wave. And, when the solemn and deep church bell Entreats the soul to pray, The midnight phantoms feel the spell, The shadows sweep away. Down the broad Vale of Tears afar The spectral camp is fled; Faith shineth as a morning star, Our ghastly fears are dead. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. THE SAILOR'S WIFE. And are ye sure the news is true? And are ye sure he's weel? Is this a time to think o' wark? Ye jades, lay by your wheel; Is this the time to spin a thread, When Colin's at the door? Reach down my cloak, I'll to the quay, And see him come ashore. For there's nae luck about the house, There's nae luck at a'; There's little pleasure in the house When our gudeman's awa. And gie to me my bigonet, My bishop's satin gown; For I maun tell the baillie's wife That Colin's in the town. My Turkey slippers maun gae on, My stockins pearly blue; It's a' to pleasure our gudeman, For he's baith leal and true. Rise, lass, and mak a clean fireside, Put on the muckle pot; Gie little Kate her button gown And Jock his Sunday coat; And mak their shoon as black as slaes, Their hose as white as snaw; It's a' to please my ain gudeman, For he's been long awa. There's twa fat hens upo' the coop Benn fed this month and mair; Mak haste and thraw their necks about, That Colin weel may fare; And spread the table neat and clean, Gar ilka thing look braw, For wha can tell how Colin fared When he was far awa? Sae true his heart, sae smooth his speech, His breath like caller air; His very foot has music in't As he comes up the stair. And will I see his face again? And will I hear him speak? I'm downright dizzy wi' the thought, In troth I'm like to greet! If Colin's well, and weel content, I hae nae mair to crave; And gin I live to keep him sae, I'm blest aboon the lave: And will I see his face again? And will I hear him speak? I'm downright dizzy wi' the thought, In troth I'm like to greet. For there's nae luck about the house, There's nae luck at a'; There's little pleasure in the house When our gudeman's awa. WILLIAM J. MICKLE. [Illustration] SOLDIER AND SAILOR. I love contemplating, apart From all his homicidal glory, The traits that soften to our heart Napoleon's story! 'Twas when his banners at Boulogne Armed in our island every freeman, His navy chanced to capture one Poor British seaman. They suffered him, I know not how, Unprisoned on the shore to roam; And aye was bent his longing brow On England's home. His eye, methinks, pursued the flight Of birds to Britain halfway over With envy; _they_ could reach the white Dear cliffs of Dover. A stormy midnight watch, he thought, Than this sojourn would have been dearer, If but the storm his vessel brought To England nearer. At last, when care had banished sleep, He saw one morning--dreaming--doating, An empty hogshead from the deep Come shoreward floating; He hid it in a cave, and wrought The livelong day laborious; lurking Until he launched a tiny boat By mighty working. Heaven help us! 'Twas a thing beyond Description, wretched: such a wherry Perhaps ne'er ventured on a pond, Or crossed a ferry. For plowing in the salt sea field, It would have made the boldest shudder; Untarred, uncompassed, and unkeeled, No sail--no rudder. From neighb'ring woods he interlaced His sorry skiff with wattled willows; And thus equipped he would have passed The foaming billows-- But Frenchmen caught him on the beach, His little Argo sorely jeering; Till tidings of him chanced to reach Napoleon's hearing. With folded arms Napoleon stood, Serene alike in peace and danger; And, in his wonted attitude, Addressed the stranger:-- "Rash man, that wouldst yon Channel pass On twigs and staves so rudely fashioned; Thy heart with some sweet British lass Must be impassioned." "I have no sweetheart," said the lad; "But--absent long from one another-- Great was the longing that I had To see my mother." "And so thou shalt," Napoleon said, "Ye've both my favor fairly won; A noble mother must have bred So brave a son." He gave the tar a piece of gold, And, with a flag of truce, commanded He should be shipped to England Old, And safely landed. Our sailor oft could scantly shift To find a dinner, plain and hearty; But _never_ changed the coin and gift Of Bonaparté. THOMAS CAMPBELL. THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM. It was a summer's evening, Old Kaspar's work was done, And he before his cottage door Was sitting in the sun; And by him sported on the green His little grandchild Wilhelmine. She saw her brother Peterkin Roll something large and round, Which he beside the rivulet, In playing there, had found. He came to ask what he had found, That was so large, and smooth, and round. Old Kaspar took it from the boy, Who stood expectant by; And then the old man shook his head, And, with a natural sigh, "'Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he, "Who fell in the great victory! "I find them in the garden, For there's many here about; And often when I go to plow, The plowshare turns them out; For many thousand men," said he, "Were slain in that great victory!" "Now, tell us what 'twas all about," Young Peterkin he cries; And little Wilhelmine looks up With wonder-waiting eyes; "Now tell us all about the war, And what they killed each other for." "It was the English," Kaspar cried, "Who put the French to rout; But what they killed each other for I could not well make out. But everybody said," quoth he, "That 'twas a famous victory! "My father lived at Blenheim then, Yon little stream hard by; They burned his dwelling to the ground, And he was forced to fly; So with his wife and child he fled, Nor had he where to rest his head. "With fire and sword the country round Was wasted far and wide; And many a childing mother then And new-born baby died. But things, like that, you know, must be At every famous victory. "They say it was a shocking sight After the field was won; For many thousand bodies here Lay rotting in the sun. But things like that, you know, must be After a famous victory. "Great praise the Duke of Marlborough won, And our good Prince Eugene." "Why, 'twas a very wicked thing!" Said little Wilhelmine. "Nay, nay, my little girl," quoth he, "It was a famous victory! "And everybody praised the Duke Who this great fight did win." "But what good came of it at last?" Quoth little Peterkin. "Why, that I cannot tell," said he, "But 'twas a famous victory!" ROBERT SOUTHEY. THE REVENGE. And the night went down, and the sun smiled out far over the summer sea, And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay round us all in a ring; But they dared not touch us again, for they feared that we still could sting; So they watched what the end would be. And we had not fought them in vain, But in perilous plight were we, Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain, And half of the rest of us maimed for life In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife; And the sick men down in the hold were most of them stark and cold, And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the powder was all of it spent; And the masts and the rigging were lying over the side; But Sir Richard cried in his English pride, "We have fought such a fight for a day and a night As may never be fought again! We have won great glory, my men! And a day less or more At sea or ashore, We die--does it matter when? Sink me the ship, Master Gunner--sink her, split her in twain! Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!" And the gunner said, "Ay, ay," but the seamen made reply: "We have children, we have wives, And the Lord hath spared our lives. We will make the Spaniard promise, if we yield, to let us go; We shall live to fight again, and to strike another blow." And the lion there lay dying, and they yielded to the foe. And the stately Spanish men to their flagship bore him then, Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir Richard caught at last, And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign grace; But he rose upon their decks, and he cried: "I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true; I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do: With a joyful spirit I, Sir Richard Grenville, die!" And he fell upon their decks, and he died. ALFRED TENNYSON. _From "The Revenge."_ HALLOWED GROUND. What's hallowed ground? Has earth a clod Its maker meant not should be trod By man, the image of his God, Erect and free, Unscourged by Superstition's rod To bow the knee? That's hallowed ground--where, mourned and missed, The lips repose our love has kissed:-- But where's their memory's mansion? Is't Yon churchyard's bowers? No! in ourselves their souls exist, A part of ours. What hallows ground where heroes sleep? 'Tis not the sculptured piles you heap! In dews that heavens far distant weep Their turf may bloom; Or Genii twine beneath the deep Their coral tomb: But strew his ashes to the wind Whose sword or voice has served mankind-- And is he dead, whose glorious mind Lifts thine on high?-- To live in hearts we leave behind, Is not to die. Is't death to fall for Freedom's right? He's dead alone that lacks her light! And murder sullies in Heaven's sight The sword he draws:-- What can alone ennoble fight? A noble cause! What's hallowed ground? 'Tis what gives birth To sacred thoughts in souls of worth!-- Peace! Independence! Truth! go forth Earth's compass round; And your high priesthood shall make earth _All hallowed ground_. THOMAS CAMPBELL. [Illustration] INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP. You know we French stormed Ratisbon: A mile or so away On a little mound, Napoleon Stood on our storming-day; With neck out thrust, you fancy how, Legs wide, arms locked behind, As if to balance the prone brow Oppressive with its mind. Just as perhaps he mused, "My plans That soar, to earth may fall, Let once my army leader Lannes Waver at yonder wall,--" Out 'twixt the battery smokes there flew A rider, bound on bound Full galloping; nor bridle drew Until he reached the mound. Then off there flung in smiling joy, And held himself erect By just his horse's mane, a boy: You hardly could suspect-- (So tight he kept his lips compressed, Scarce any blood came through), You looked twice ere you saw his breast Was all but shot in two. "Well," cried he, "Emperor, by God's grace We've got you Ratisbon! The Marshal's in the market place, And you'll be there anon To see your flag-bird flap his vans Where I, to heart's desire, Perched him!" The chief's eye flashed; his plans Soared up again like fire. The chief's eye flashed; but presently Softened itself, as sheathes A film the mother eagle's eye When her bruised eaglet breathes. "You're wounded!" "Nay," the soldier's pride Touched to the quick, he said: "I'm killed, Sire!" And his chief beside, Smiling, the boy fell dead. ROBERT BROWNING. THY VOICE IS HEARD THRO' ROLLING DRUMS. Thy voice is heard thro' rolling drums, That beat to battle where he stands; Thy face across his fancy comes, And gives the battle to his hands: A moment, while the trumpets blow, He sees his brood about thy knee; The next, like fire he meets the foe, And strikes him dead for thine and thee. ALFRED TENNYSON. QUIET, LORD, MY FROWARD HEART. Quiet, Lord, my froward heart: Make me teachable and mild, Upright, simple, free from art,-- Make me as a weanèd child: From distrust and envy free, Pleased with all that pleaseth Thee. What Thou shalt to-day provide, Let me as a child receive; What to-morrow may betide, Calmly to Thy wisdom leave; 'Tis enough that Thou wilt care: Why should I the burden bear? As a little child relies On a care beyond his own, Knows he's neither strong nor wise, Fears to stir a step alone; Let me thus with Thee abide, As my Father, Guard, and Guide. JOHN NEWTON. MORNING. Oh! timely happy, timely wise, Hearts that with rising morn arise! Eyes that the beam celestial view, Which evermore makes all things new! New every morning is the love Our wakening and uprising prove; Through sleep and darkness safely brought, Restored to life, and power, and thought. New mercies, each returning day, Hover around us while we pray; New perils past, new sins forgiven, New thoughts of God, new hopes of Heaven. JOHN KEBLE. EVENING. Shepherds all, and maidens fair, Fold your flocks up, for the air 'Gins to thicken, and the sun Already his great course has run. See the dewdrops how they kiss Every little flower that is, Hanging on their velvet heads, Like a rope of crystal beads. See the heavy clouds low falling, And bright Hesperus down calling The dead night from underground, At whose rising, mists unsound, Damps and vapors fly apace, Hovering o'er the wanton face Of these pastures, where they come Striking dead both bud and bloom. Therefore from such danger lock Every one of his loved flock; And let your dogs lie loose without, Lest the wolf come, as a scout From the mountain, and ere day Bear a kid or lamb away; Or the crafty thievish fox Break upon your simple flocks. To secure yourselves from these, Be not too secure in ease. So shall you good shepherds prove, And deserve your master's love. Now, good night! may sweetest slumbers And soft silence fall in numbers On your eyelids; so, farewell; Thus I end my evening knell. JOHN FLETCHER. SONG. Orpheus with his lute made trees And the mountain tops that freeze Bow themselves when he did sing: To his music, plants and flowers Ever sprung; as sun and showers There had made a lasting spring. Everything that heard him play, Even the billows of the sea, Hung their heads, and then lay by. In sweet music is such art, Killing care and grief of heart Fall asleep, or, hearing, die. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. [Illustration] A FAREWELL. Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea, Thy tribute wave deliver: No more by thee my steps shall be, For ever and for ever. Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea, A rivulet, then a river: Nowhere by thee my steps shall be, For ever and for ever. But here will sigh thine alder tree, And here thine aspen shiver; And here by thee will hum the bee, For ever and for ever. A thousand suns will stream on thee. A thousand moons will quiver; But not by thee my steps shall be, For ever and for ever. ALFRED TENNYSON. [Illustration] TO A MOUSE. ON TURNING HER UP IN HER NEST WITH THE PLOW. Wee, sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie, O, what a panic's in thy breastie! Thou need na start awa sae hasty, Wi' bickering brattle! I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee, Wi' murd'ring pattle! I'm truly sorry man's dominion Has broken nature's social union, An' justifies that ill opinion, Which makes thee startle At me, thy poor earthborn companion, An' fellow mortal! I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve; What then? poor beastie, thou maun live! A daimen icker in a thrave 'S a sma' request: I'll get a blessin' wi' the lave, And never miss't! Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin; Its silly wa's the win's are strewin'! An' naething, now, to big a new ane, O' foggage green! An' bleak December's winds ensuin', Baith snell and keen! Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste, An' weary winter comin' fast, An' cozie here, beneath the blast, Thou thought to dwell, Till, crash! the cruel coulter past Out thro' thy cell. That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble, Has cost thee mony a weary nibble! Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble, But house or hald, To thole the winter's sleety dribble, An' cranreuch cauld! But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane, In proving foresight may be vain: The best laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft a-gley, An' lea'e us nought but grief and pain, For promis'd joy. Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me! The present only toucheth thee: But, och! I backward cast my e'e, On prospects drear! An' forward, tho' I canna see, I guess an' fear. ROBERT BURNS. [Illustration] A SELECTION FROM CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe, and feel What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal. Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean--roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;-- Man marks the earth with ruin--his control Stops with the shore;--upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, When for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown. The armaments which thunderstrike the walls Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake, And monarchs tremble in their capitals, The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make Their clay creator the vain title take Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war; These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar. Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee-- Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters washed them power while they were free, And many a tyrant since: their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts:--not so thou, Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play-- Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow-- Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Glasses itself in tempests; in all time Calm or convulsed--in breeze, or gale, or storm, Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime Dark-heaving;--boundless, endless, and sublime-- The image of Eternity--the throne Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone. And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy I wantoned with thy breakers--they to me Were a delight; and if the freshening sea Made them a terror--'twas a pleasing fear, For I was as it were a child of thee, And trusted to thy billows far and near, And laid my hand upon thy mane--as I do here. LORD GEORGE NOEL GORDON BYRON. BRIGHTEST AND BEST OF THE SONS OF THE MORNING. Brightest and best of the Sons of the morning! Dawn on our darkness and lend us thine aid! Star of the East, the horizon adorning, Guide where our Infant Redeemer is laid! Cold on His cradle the dewdrops are shining, Low lies His head with the beasts of the stall; Angels adore Him in slumber reclining, Maker and Monarch and Savior of all! Say, shall we yield Him, in costly devotion, Odors of Edom and offerings divine? Gems of the mountain and pearls of the ocean, Myrrh from the forest, or gold from the mine? Vainly we offer each ample oblation; Vainly with gifts would His favor secure: Richer by far is the heart's adoration; Dearer to God are the prayers of the poor. Brightest and best of the Sons of the morning! Dawn on our darkness and lend us thine aid! Star of the East, the horizon adorning, Guide where our Infant Redeemer is laid! REGINALD HEBER. THE LAND OF SONG: BOOK II. _PART III._ [Illustration: CONCORD BRIDGE.] PART THREE. CONCORD HYMN. SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE BATTLE MONUMENT, APRIL 19, 1836. By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world. The foe long since in silence slept; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; And Time the ruined bridge has swept Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. On this green bank, by this soft stream, We set to-day a votive stone; That memory may their deed redeem, When, like our sires, our sons are gone. Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die, and leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. MONTEREY. We were not many--we who stood Before the iron sleet that day-- Yet many a gallant spirit would Give half his years if he but could Have been with us at Monterey. Now here, now there, the shot, it hailed In deadly drifts of fiery spray, Yet not a single soldier quailed When wounded comrades round them wailed Their dying shout at Monterey. And on--still on our column kept Through walls of flame its withering way; Where fell the dead, the living stept, Still charging on the guns that swept The slippery streets of Monterey. The foe himself recoiled aghast, When, striking where he strongest lay, We swooped his flanking batteries past And braving full their murderous blast Stormed home the towers of Monterey. Our banners on those turrets wave, And there our evening bugles play; Where orange boughs above their grave Keep green the memory of the brave Who fought and fell at Monterey. We are not many--we who pressed Beside the brave who fell that day; But who of us has not confessed He'd rather share their warrior rest, Than not have been at Monterey? CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN. YE MARINERS OF ENGLAND. Ye mariners of England That guard our native seas! Whose flag has braved, a thousand years, The battle and the breeze! Your glorious standard launch again To match another foe: And sweep through the deep, While the stormy winds do blow; While the battle rages loud and long And the stormy winds do blow. The spirits of your fathers Shall start from every wave-- For the deck it was their field of fame, And Ocean was their grave: Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell Your manly hearts shall glow, As ye sweep through the deep, While the stormy winds do blow; While the battle rages loud and long And the stormy winds do blow. Britannia needs no bulwarks No towers along the steep; Her march is o'er the mountain waves, Her home is on the deep. With thunders from her native oak She quells the floods below-- As they roar on the shore, When the stormy winds do blow; When the battle rages loud and long, And the stormy winds do blow. The meteor flag of England Shall yet terrific burn; Till danger's troubled night depart And the star of peace return. Then, then, ye ocean warriors! Our song and feast shall flow To the fame of your name, When the storm has ceased to blow; When the fiery fight is heard no more, And the storm has ceased to blow. THOMAS CAMPBELL. [Illustration: ADMIRAL HORATIO NELSON.] THE DEATH OF NELSON. 'Twas in Trafalgar's bay We saw the Frenchmen lay; Each heart was bounding then. We scorned the foreign yoke, Our ships were British oak, And hearts of oak our men. Our Nelson marked them on the wave, Three cheers our gallant seamen gave, Nor thought of home and beauty. Along the line this signal ran,-- "England expects that every man This day will do his duty." And now the cannons roar Along the affrighted shore; Brave Nelson led the way: His ship the Victory named; Long be that victory famed! For victory crowned the day. But dearly was that conquest bought, Too well the gallant hero fought For England, home, and beauty. He cried, as 'midst the fire he ran,-- "England shall find that every man This day will do his duty!" At last the fatal wound Which shed dismay around, The hero's breast received. "Heaven fights on our side; The day's our own!" he cried; "Now long enough I've lived. In honor's cause my life was passed, In honor's cause I fall at last, For England, home, and beauty!" Thus ending life as he began; England confessed that every man That day had done his duty. ARNOLD. [Illustration: CHARLES KINGSLEY.] ODE TO THE NORTHEAST WIND. Welcome, wild Northeaster! Shame it is to see Odes to every zephyr; Ne'er a verse to thee. Welcome, black Northeaster! O'er the German foam; O'er the Danish moorlands, From thy frozen home. Tired we are of summer, Tired of gaudy glare, Showers soft and steaming, Hot and breathless air. Tired of listless dreaming, Through the lazy day; Jovial wind of winter Turn us out to play! Sweep the golden reed beds; Crisp the lazy dike; Hunger into madness Every plunging pike. Fill the lake with wild fowl; Fill the marsh with snipe; While on dreary moorlands Lonely curlew pipe. Through the black fir forest Thunder harsh and dry, Shattering down the snowflakes Off the curdled sky. Hark! the brave Northeaster! Breast high lies the scent, On by bolt and headland, Over heath and bent. Chime, ye dappled darlings, Through the sleet and snow, Who can override you? Let the horses go! Chime, ye dappled darlings, Down the roaring blast; You shall see a fox die Ere an hour be past. Go! and rest to-morrow, Hunting in your dreams, While our skates are ringing O'er the frozen streams. Let the luscious South wind Breathe in lovers' sighs, While the lazy gallants Bask in ladies' eyes. What does he but soften Heart alike and pen? 'Tis the hard gray weather Breeds hard English men. What's the soft Southwester? 'Tis the ladies' breeze, Bringing home their true loves Out of all the seas; But the black Northeaster, Through the snowstorm hurled, Drives our English hearts of oak Seaward round the world! Come! as came our fathers, Heralded by thee, Conquering from the eastward, Lords by land and sea. Come! and strong within us Stir the Vikings' blood; Bracing brain and sinew; Blow, thou wind of God! CHARLES KINGSLEY. ENGLAND. This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands, This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. _From "Richard II."_ SONG OF THE GREEKS. Again to the battle, Achaians! Our hearts bid the tyrants defiance! Our land, the first garden of Liberty's tree-- It has been, and shall yet be, the land of the free. For the cross of our faith is replanted, The pale dying crescent is daunted, And we march that the footprints of Mahomet's slaves May be washed out in blood from our forefathers' graves. Their spirits are hovering o'er us, And the sword shall to glory restore us. Ah! what though no succor advances, Nor Christendom's chivalrous lances Are stretched in our aid--be the combat our own! And we'll perish or conquer more proudly alone; For we've sworn by our country's assaulters, By the virgins they've dragged from our altars, By our massacred patriots, our children in chains, By our heroes of old, and their blood in our veins, That, living, we shall be victorious, Or that, dying, our deaths shall be glorious. A breath of submission we breathe not; The sword that we've drawn we will sheathe not! Its scabbard is left where our martyrs are laid, And the vengeance of ages has whetted its blade. Earth may hide--waves engulf--fire consume us, But they shall not to slavery doom us: If they rule, it shall be o'er our ashes and graves; But we've smote them already with fire on the waves, And new triumphs on the land are before us, To the charge!--Heaven's banner is o'er us. This day shall ye blush for its story, Or brighten your lives with its glory. Our women, oh, say, shall they shriek in despair, Or embrace us from conquest with wreaths in their hair? Accursed may his memory blacken, If a coward there be that would slacken Till we've trampled the turban, and shown ourselves worth Being sprung from and named for the godlike of earth. Strike home, and the world shall revere us As heroes descended from heroes. Old Greece lightens up with emotion Her inlands, her isles of the Ocean; Fanes rebuilt and fair towns shall with jubilee ring, And the Nine shall new hallow their Helicon's spring: Our hearths shall be kindled in gladness, That were cold and extinguished in sadness; Whilst our maidens shall dance with their white waving arms, Singing joy to the brave that delivered their charms, When the blood of yon Mussulman cravens Shall have purpled the beaks of our ravens. THOMAS CAMPBELL. SHERIDAN'S RIDE. OCTOBER 19, 1864. Up from the South at break of day, Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay, The affrighted air with a shudder bore, Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain's door, The terrible grumble, and rumble, and roar, Telling the battle was on once more, And Sheridan twenty miles away. And wider still those billows of war Thundered along the horizon's bar; And louder yet into Winchester rolled The roar of that red sea uncontrolled, Making the blood of the listener cold, As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray, And Sheridan twenty miles away. But there is a road from Winchester town, A good broad highway leading down; And there, through the flash of the morning light, A steed as black as the steeds of night Was seen to pass as with eagle flight; As if he knew the terrible need, He stretched away with the utmost speed; Hills rose and fell--but his heart was gay, With Sheridan fifteen miles away. Still sprung from those swift hoofs, thundering South, The dust, like smoke from the cannon's mouth; On the tail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster, Forboding to traitors the doom of disaster. The heart of the steed and the heart of the master Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls, Impatient to be where the battlefield calls; Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play, With Sheridan only ten miles away. Under his spurning feet the road Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed, And the landscape flowed away behind, Like an ocean flying before the wind; And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace ire, Swept on with his wild eyes full of fire; But lo! he is nearing his heart's desire, He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray, With Sheridan only five miles away. The first that the General saw were the groups Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops; What was done--what to do--a glance told him both, Then, striking his spurs, with a terrible oath, He dashed down the lines 'mid a storm of huzzas, And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because The sight of the master compelled it to pause. With foam and with dust the black charger was gray, By the flash of his eye and the red nostril's play He seemed to the whole great army to say: "I've brought you Sheridan all the way From Winchester down to save the day!" Hurrah! hurrah! for Sheridan! Hurrah! hurrah! for horse and man! And when their statues are placed on high, Under the dome of the Union sky-- The American soldier's temple of fame-- There with the glorious General's name, Be it said, in letters both bold and bright: "Here is the steed that saved the day By carrying Sheridan into the fight From Winchester, twenty miles away!" THOMAS BUCHANAN READ. [Illustration] THE HURRICANE. Lord of the winds! I feel thee nigh, I know thy breath in the burning sky! And I wait, with a thrill in every vein, For the coming of the hurricane! And lo! on the wing of the heavy gales, Through the boundless arch of heaven he sails; Silent and slow, and terribly strong, The mighty shadow is borne along, Like the dark eternity to come; While the world below, dismayed and dumb, Through the calm of the thick hot atmosphere, Looks up at its gloomy folds with fear. They darken fast; and the golden blaze Of the sun is quenched in the lurid haze, And he sends through the shade a funeral ray-- A glare that is neither night nor day, A beam that touches, with hues of death, The clouds above and the earth beneath. To its covert glides the silent bird, While the hurricane's distant voice is heard Uplifted among the mountains round, And the forests hear and answer the sound. He is come! he is come! do ye not behold His ample robes on the winds unrolled? Giant of air! we bid thee hail!-- How his gray skirts toss in the whirling gale: How his huge and writhing arms are bent, To clasp the zone of the firmament, And fold at length, in their dark embrace, From mountain to mountain the visible space. Darker--still darker! the whirlwinds bear The dust of the plains to the middle air: And hark to the crashing, long and loud, Of the chariot of God in the thundercloud! You may trace its path by the flashes that start From the rapid wheels where'er they dart, As the fire-bolts leap to the world below, And flood the skies with a lurid glow. What roar is that?--'tis the rain that breaks In torrents away from the airy lakes, Heavily poured on the shuddering ground, And shedding a nameless horror round. Ah! well-known woods, and mountains, and skies, With the very clouds!--ye are lost to my eyes. I seek ye vainly, and see in your place The shadowy tempest that sweeps through space, A whirling ocean that fills the wall Of the crystal heaven, and buries all. And I, cut off from the world, remain Alone with the terrible hurricane. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. [Illustration: JOSEPH ADDISON.] WHEN ALL THY MERCIES, O MY GOD. When all Thy mercies, O my God, My rising soul surveys; Transported with the view, I'm lost In wonder, love, and praise. O how shall words with equal warmth The gratitude declare That glows within my ravished heart! But Thou canst read it there. Unnumbered comforts on my soul Thy tender care bestowed, Before my infant heart conceived From whom these comforts flowed. Ten thousand thousand precious gifts My daily thanks employ; Nor is the least a cheerful heart, That tastes those gifts with joy. Through every period of my life, Thy goodness I'll pursue; And after death in distant worlds, The glorious theme renew. Through all eternity, to Thee A joyful song I'll raise; For, oh! eternity's too short To utter all Thy praise. JOSEPH ADDISON. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. I say to thee, do thou repeat To the first man thou mayest meet In lane, highway, or open street-- That he and we and all men move Under a canopy of love, As broad as the blue sky above; That doubt and trouble, fear and pain And anguish, all are shadows vain, That death itself shall not remain; That weary deserts we may tread, A dreary labyrinth may thread, Through dark ways underground be led; Yet, if we will one Guide obey, The dreariest path, the darkest way, Shall issue out in heavenly day; And we, on divers shores now cast, Shall meet, our perilous voyage past, All in our Father's house at last. RICHARD C. TRENCH. THE NOBLE NATURE. It is not growing like a tree In bulk, doth make man better be; Or standing long an oak three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere; A lily of a day Is fairer far in May, Although it fall and die that night-- It was the plant and flower of Light. In small proportions we just beauty see; And in short measures life may perfect be. BEN JONSON. WINSTANLEY. Winstanley's deed, you kindly folk, With it I fill my lay, And a nobler man ne'er walked the world, Let his name be what it may. The good ship Snowdrop tarried long; Up at the vane looked he; "Belike," he said, for the wind had dropped, "She lieth becalmed at sea." The lovely ladies flocked within, And still would each one say, "Good mercer, be the ships come up?"-- But still he answered, "Nay." Then stepped two mariners down the street, With looks of grief and fear: "Now, if Winstanley be your name, We bring you evil cheer! "For the good ship Snowdrop struck,--she struck On the rock,--the Eddystone, And down she went with threescore men, We two being left alone. "Down in the deep with freight and crew, Past any help she lies, And never a bale has come to shore Of all thy merchandise." "For cloth o' gold and comely frieze," Winstanley said and sighed, "For velvet coif, or costly coat, They fathoms deep may bide. "O thou brave skipper, blithe and kind, O mariners, bold and true, Sorry at heart, right sorry am I, A-thinking of yours and you. "Many long days Winstanley's breast Shall feel a weight within, For a waft of wind he shall be 'feared, And trading count but sin. "To him no more it shall be joy To pace the cheerful town, And see the lovely ladies gay Step on in velvet gown." The Snowdrop sank at Lammas tide, All under the yeasty spray; On Christmas Eve the brig Content Was also cast away. He little thought o' New Year's night, So jolly as he sat then, While drank the toast and praised the roast The round-faced Aldermen,-- He little thought on Plymouth Hoe, With every rising tide, How the wave washed in his sailor lads, And laid them by his side. There stepped a stranger to the board: "Now, stranger, who be ye?" He looked to the right, he looked to the left, And "Rest you merry," quoth he; "For you did not see the brig go down, Or ever a storm had blown; For you did not see the white wave rear At the rock,--the Eddystone. "She drave at the rock with stern sails set; Crash went the masts in twain; She staggered back with her mortal blow, Then leaped at it again. "There rose a great cry, bitter and strong; The misty moon looked out! And the water swarmed with seamen's heads, And the wreck was strewed about. "I saw her mainsail lash the sea, As I clung to the rock alone; Then she heeled over, and down she went, And sank like any stone. "She was a fair ship, but all's one! For naught could bide the shock."-- "I will take horse," Winstanley said, "And see this deadly rock. "For never again shall bark o' mine Sail o'er the windy sea, Unless, by the blessing of God, for this Be found a remedy." Winstanley rode to Plymouth town All in the sleet and the snow; And he looked around on shore and sound, As he stood on Plymouth Hoe. Till a pillar of spray rose far away, And shot up its stately head, Reared, and fell over, and reared again: "'Tis the rock! the rock!" he said. Straight to the Mayor he took his way: "Good Master Mayor," quoth he, "I am a mercer of London town, And owner of vessels three. "But for your rock of dark renown, I had five to track the main."-- "You are one of many," the old Mayor said, "That of the rock complain. "An ill rock, mercer! your words ring right, Well with my thoughts they chime, For my two sons to the world to come It sent before their time." "Lend me a lighter, good Master Mayor, And a score of shipwrights free; For I think to raise a lantern tower On this rock o' destiny." The old Mayor laughed, but sighed also: "Ah, youth," quoth he, "is rash; Sooner, young man, thou'lt root it out From the sea that doth it lash. "Who sails too near its jagged teeth, He shall have evil lot; For the calmest seas that tumble there Froth like a boiling pot. "And the heavier seas few look on nigh, But straight they lay him dead; A seventy-gun-ship, sir!--they'll shoot Higher than her masthead. "Oh, beacons sighted in the dark, They are right welcome things, And pitch pots flaming on the shore Show fair as angel wings. "Hast gold in hand? then light the land, It 'longs to thee and me; But let alone the deadly rock In God Almighty's sea." Yet said he, "Nay,--I must away, On the rock to set my feet; My debts are paid, my will I made, Or ever I did thee greet. "If I must die, then let me die By the rock and not elsewhere; If I may live, Oh let me live To mount my lighthouse stair." The old Mayor looked him in the face, And answered, "Have thy way; Thy heart is stout, as if round about It was braced with an iron stay: "Have thy will, mercer! choose thy men, Put off from the storm-rid shore; God with thee be, or I shall see Thy face and theirs no more." Heavily plunged the breaking wave, And foam flew up the lea; Morning and even the drifted snow Fell into the dark gray sea. Winstanley chose him men and gear; He said, "My time I waste," For the seas ran seething up the shore, And the wrack drave on in haste. But twenty days he waited and more, Pacing the strand alone, Or ever he sat his manly foot On the rock,--the Eddystone. Then he and the sea began their strife, And worked with power and might; Whatever the man reared up by day The sea broke down by night. He wrought at ebb with bar and beam, He sailed to shore at flow; And at his side, by that same tide, Came bar and beam also. "Give in, give in," the old Mayor cried, "Or thou wilt rue the day."-- "Yonder he goes," the townsfolk sighed, "But the rock will have its way. "For all his looks that are so stout, And his speeches brave and fair, He may wait on the wind, wait on the wave, But he'll build no lighthouse there." In fine weather and foul weather The rock his arts did flout, Through the long days and the short days, Till all that year ran out. With fine weather and foul weather Another year came in; "To take his wage," the workmen said, "We almost count a sin." Now March was gone, came April in, And a sea fog settled down, And forth sailed he on a glassy sea, He sailed from Plymouth town. With men and stores he put to sea, As he was wont to do: They showed in the fog like ghosts full faint,-- A ghostly craft and crew. And the sea fog lay and waxed alway, For a long eight days and more; "God help our men," quoth the women then "For they bide long from shore." They paced the Hoe in doubt and dread; "Where may our mariners be?" But the brooding fog lay soft as down Over the quiet sea. A Scottish schooner made the port, The thirteenth day at e'en; "As I am a man," the captain cried, "A strange sight I have seen: "And a strange sound heard, my masters all, At sea, in the fog and the rain, Like shipwrights' hammers tapping low, Then loud, then low again. "And a stately house one instant showed, Through a rift on the vessel's lea; What manner of creatures may be those That build upon the sea." Then sighed the folk, "The Lord be praised!" And they flocked to the shore amain: All over the Hoe that livelong night, Many stood out in the rain. It ceased; and the red sun reared his head, And the rolling fog did flee; And, lo! in the offing faint and far Winstanley's house at sea! In fair weather with mirth and cheer The stately tower uprose; In foul weather with hunger and cold They were content to close; Till up the stair Winstanley went, To fire the wick afar; And Plymouth in the silent night Looked out and saw her star. Winstanley set his foot ashore; Said he, "My work is done; I hold it strong to last as long As aught beneath the sun. "But if it fail, as fail it may, Borne down with ruin and rout, Another than I shall rear it high, And brace the girders stout. "A better than I shall rear it high, For now the way is plain; And though I were dead," Winstanley said, "The light would shine again. "Yet were I fain still to remain, Watch in my tower to keep, And tend my light in the stormiest night That ever did move the deep; "And if it stood, why then 'twere good, Amid their tremulous stirs, To count each stroke when the mad waves broke, For cheers of mariners. "But if it fell, then this were well, That I should with it fall; Since, for my part, I have built my heart In the courses of its wall. "Ay! I were fain, long to remain, Watch in my tower to keep, And tend my light in the stormiest night That ever did move the deep." With that Winstanley went his way, And left the rock renowned, And summer and winter his pilot star Hung bright o'er Plymouth Sound. But it fell out, fell out at last, That he would put to sea, To scan once more his lighthouse tower On the rock o' destiny. And the winds broke, and the storm broke, And wrecks came plunging in; None in the town that night lay down Or sleep or rest to win. The great mad waves were rolling graves, And each flung up its dead; The seething flow was white below, And black the sky o'erhead. And when the dawn, the dull, gray dawn, Broke on the trembling town, And men looked south to the harbor mouth, The lighthouse tower was down. Down in the deep, where he doth sleep Who made it shine afar, And then in the night that drowned its light, Set, with his pilot star. Many fair tombs in the glorious glooms At Westminster they show; The brave and the great lie there in state; Winstanley lieth low. JEAN INGELOW. [Illustration] THE STORM. The tempest rages wild and high, The waves lift up their voice and cry Fierce answers to the angry sky,-- _Miserere Domine._ Through the black night and driving rain, A ship is struggling, all in vain, To live upon the stormy main;-- _Miserere Domine._ The thunders roar, the lightnings glare, Vain is it now to strive or dare; A cry goes up of great despair,-- _Miserere Domine._ The stormy voices of the main, The moaning wind and pelting rain Beat on the nursery window pane:-- _Miserere Domine._ Warm curtained was the little bed, Soft pillowed was the little head; "The storm will wake the child," they said:-- _Miserere Domine._ Cowering among his pillows white He prays, his blue eyes dim with fright, "Father, save those at sea to-night!"-- _Miserere Domine._ The morning shone all clear and gay, On a ship at anchor in the bay, And on a little child at play,-- _Gloria tibi Domine!_ ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER. REST. Rest is not quitting The busy career; Rest is the fitting Of self to one's sphere: 'Tis the brook's motion, Clear without strife; Fleeting to ocean, After its life: 'Tis loving and serving The highest and best; 'Tis onward, unswerving, And this is true rest. GOETHE. [Illustration] THE GRASSHOPPER. Happy insect! what can be In happiness compared to thee? Fed with nourishment divine, The dewy morning's gentle wine! Nature waits upon thee still, And thy verdant cup does fill; 'Tis fill'd wherever thou dost tread, Nature's self thy Ganymede. Thou dost drink, and dance, and sing, Happier than the happiest king! All the fields which thou dost see, All the plants belong to thee, All that summer hours produce, Fertile made with early juice: Man for thee does sow and plow; Farmer he and landlord thou! Thou dost innocently joy, Nor does thy luxury destroy. The shepherd gladly heareth thee, More harmonious than he. Thee, country minds with gladness hear, Prophet of the ripened year: Thee Phoebus loves and does inspire; Phoebus is himself thy sire. To thee of all things upon earth, Life is no longer than thy mirth. Happy insect! happy thou, Dost neither age nor winter know: But when thou'st drunk, and danced, and sung Thy fill, the flowery leaves among, (Voluptuous and wise withal, Epicurean animal,) Sated with the summer feast Thou retir'st to endless rest. ABRAHAM COWLEY. THE CRICKET. Little inmate, full of mirth, Chirping on my kitchen hearth, Wheresoe'er be thine abode, Always harbinger of good, Pay me for thy warm retreat With a song more soft and sweet; In return thou shalt receive Such a strain as I can give. Thus thy praise shall be expressed, Inoffensive, welcome guest! While the rat is on the scout, And the mouse with curious snout, With what vermin else infest Ev'ry dish, and spoil the best; Frisking thus before the fire, Thou hast all thine heart's desire. Though in voice and shape they be Formed as if akin to thee, Thou surpassest, happier far, Happiest grasshoppers that are; Theirs is but a summer's song, Thine endures the winter long, Unimpaired, and shrill, and clear, Melody throughout the year. Neither night, nor dawn of day, Puts a period to thy play: Sing then--and extend thy span Far beyond the date of man. Wretched man, whose years are spent In repining discontent, Lives not, aged though he be, Half a span, compared with thee. WILLIAM COWPER. A WREN'S NEST. Among the dwellings framed by birds In field or forest with nice care, Is none that with the little wren's In snugness may compare. No door the tenement requires, And seldom needs a labored roof; Yet is it to the fiercest sun Impervious, and stormproof. So warm, so beautiful withal, In perfect fitness for its aim, That to the kind by special grace Their instinct surely came. And when for their abodes they seek An opportune recess, The hermit has no finer eye For shadowy quietness. These find, 'mid ivied abbey walls, A canopy in some still nook; Others are penthoused by a brae That overhangs a brook. There to the brooding bird her mate Warbles by fits his low clear song; And by the busy streamlet both Are sung to all day long. Or in sequestered lanes they build, Where, till the flitting bird's return, Her eggs within the nest repose, Like relics in an urn. But still, where general choice is good, There is a better and a best; And, among fairest objects, some Are fairer than the rest; This, one of those small builders proved In a green covert, where, from out The forehead of a pollard oak, The leafy antlers sprout; For she who planned the mossy lodge, Mistrusting her evasive skill, Had to a primrose looked for aid Her wishes to fulfill. High on the trunk's projecting brow, And fixed an infant's span above The budding flowers, peeped forth the nest, The prettiest of the grove! The treasure proudly did I show To some whose minds without disdain Can turn to little things; but once Looked up for it in vain: 'Tis gone--a ruthless spoiler's prey, Who heeds not beauty, love, or song, 'Tis gone! (so seemed it) and we grieved Indignant at the wrong. Just three days after, passing by In clearer light the moss-built cell I saw, espied its shaded mouth; And felt that all was well. The primrose for a veil had spread The largest of her upright leaves; And thus, for purposes benign, A simple flower deceives. Concealed from friends who might disturb Thy quiet with no ill intent, Secure from evil eyes and hands On barbarous plunder bent, Rest, mother bird! and when thy young Take flight, and thou art free to roam, When withered is the guardian flower, And empty thy late home, Think how ye prospered, thou and thine, Amid the unviolated grove, Housed near the growing primrose tuft In foresight, or in love. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. [Illustration] ON A FAVORITE CAT, DROWNED IN A TUB OF GOLDFISHES. 'Twas on a lofty vase's side Where China's gayest art had dyed The azure flowers that blow, Demurest of the tabby kind, The pensive Selima, reclined, Gazed on the lake below. Her conscious tail her joy declared: The fair, round face, the snowy beard, The velvet of her paws, Her coat that with the tortoise vies, Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes,-- She saw, and purred applause. Still had she gazed, but 'midst the tide Two angel forms were seen to glide, The Genii of the stream: Their scaly armor's Tyrian hue, Through richest purple, to the view Betrayed a golden gleam. The hapless Nymph with wonder saw: A whisker first, and then a claw, With many an ardent wish, She stretched, in vain, to reach the prize,-- What female heart can gold despise? What cat's averse to fish? Presumptuous maid! with looks intent, Again she stretched, again she bent, Nor knew the gulf between,-- Malignant Fate sat by and smiled,-- The slippery verge her feet beguiled; She tumbled headlong in! Eight times emerging from the flood, She mewed to every watery god Some speedy aid to send: No Dolphin came, no Nereid stirred, Nor cruel Tom nor Susan heard,-- A favorite has no friend! From hence, ye Beauties! undeceived, Know one false step is ne'er retrieved, And be with caution bold: Not all that tempts your wandering eyes And heedless hearts is lawful prize, Nor all that glitters gold! THOMAS GRAY. THE SOLITARY REAPER. Behold her, single in the field, Yon solitary Highland Lass! Reaping and singing by herself; Stop here, or gently pass! Alone she cuts and binds the grain, And sings a melancholy strain; O listen! for the vale profound Is overflowing with the sound. No nightingale did ever chaunt More welcome notes to weary bands Of travelers in some shady haunt, Among Arabian sands; A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard, In springtime from the cuckoo bird, Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides. Will no one tell me what she sings?-- Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago: Or is it some more humble lay, Familiar matter of to-day? Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, That has been, and may be again? Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang As if her song could have no ending; I saw her singing at her work, And o'er the sickle bending;-- I listened, motionless and still; And, as I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. CORONACH. He is gone on the mountain, He is lost to the forest, Like a summer-dried fountain, When our need was the sorest. The fount reappearing From the raindrops shall borrow; But to us comes no cheering, To Duncan no morrow! The hand of the reaper Takes the ears that are hoary, But the voice of the weeper Wails manhood in glory. The autumn winds, rushing, Waft the leaves that are searest, But our flower was in flushing When blighting was nearest. Fleet foot on the correi, Sage counsel in cumber, Red hand in the foray, How sound is thy slumber! Like the dew on the mountain, Like the foam on the river, Like the bubble on the fountain, Thou art gone, and forever. SIR WALTER SCOTT. LIFE'S "GOOD-MORNING." Life! we have been long together, Through pleasant and through cloudy weather. 'Tis hard to part when friends are dear; Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear; Then steal away, give little warning, Choose thine own time; Say not "Good-night," but in some brighter clime Bid me "Good-morning." ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD. MOONRISE. The moon is up, and yet it is not night-- Sunset divides the sky with her--a sea Of glory streams along the Alpine height Of blue Friuli's mountains; Heaven is free From clouds, but of all colors seems to be-- Melted to one vast Iris of the West, Where the Day joins the past Eternity; While, on the other hand, meek Dian's crest Floats through the azure air--an island of the blest. A single star is at her side, and reigns With her o'er half the lovely heaven; but still Yon sunny lea heaves brightly, and remains Roll'd o'er the peak of the far Rhætian hill, As Day and Night contending were, until Nature reclaim'd her order:--gently flows The deep-dyed Brenta, where their hues instill The odorous purple of a new-born rose, Which streams upon her stream, and glassed within it glows. LORD GEORGE NOEL GORDON BYRON. _From "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage."_ [Illustration] TO A WATERFOWL. Whither, midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way? Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly seen against the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along. Seek'st thou the plashy brink Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, Or where the rocking billows rise and sink On the chafed ocean side? There is a Power whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,-- The desert and illimitable air,-- Lone wandering, but not lost. All day thy wings have fanned, At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere; Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, Though the dark night is near. And soon that toil shall end; Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, And shall not soon depart. He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. JERUSALEM, THE GOLDEN. Jerusalem, the golden! With milk and honey blest; Beneath thy contemplation Sink heart and voice opprest. I know not, O I know not What joys await us there; What radiancy of glory, What bliss beyond compare. They stand, those halls of Zion, All jubilant with song, And bright with many an angel, And all the martyr throng. The Prince is ever in them, The daylight is serene; The pastures of the blessèd Are decked in glorious sheen. There is the throne of David; And there, from care released, The shout of them that triumph, The song of them that feast. And they, who with their Leader, Have conquered in the fight, Forever and forever Are clad in robes of white. ST. BERNARD (translated by John M. Neale). O MOTHER DEAR, JERUSALEM. O Mother dear, Jerusalem! When shall I come to thee? When shall my sorrows have an end? Thy joys when shall I see? O happy harbor of God's saints! O sweet and pleasant soil! In thee no sorrow can be found, Nor grief, nor care, nor toil. No murky cloud o'ershadows thee, Nor gloom, nor darksome night; But every soul shines as the sun; For God Himself gives light. O my sweet home, Jerusalem! Thy joys when shall I see? The King that sitteth on thy throne In His felicity? Thy gardens and thy goodly walks Continually are green, Where grow such sweet and pleasant flowers As nowhere else are seen. Right through thy streets, with pleasing sound The living waters flow, And on the banks, on either side, The trees of life do grow. Those trees each month yield ripened fruit; For evermore they spring, And all the nations of the earth To thee their honors bring. O Mother dear, Jerusalem! When shall I come to thee? When shall my sorrows have an end? Thy joys when shall I see? ANONYMOUS. EVENING. Abide with me from morn till eve, For without Thee I cannot live: Abide with me when night is nigh, For without Thee I dare not die. Thou Framer of the light and dark, Steer through the tempest Thine own ark: Amid the howling wintry sea We are in port if we have Thee. If some poor wandering child of Thine Have spurned, to-day, the voice divine, Now, Lord, the gracious work begin; Let him no more lie down in sin. Watch by the sick: enrich the poor With blessings from Thy boundless store: Be every mourner's sleep to-night Like infants' slumbers, pure and light. Come near and bless us when we wake, Ere through the world our way we take; Till in the ocean of Thy love We lose ourselves in Heaven above. JOHN KEBLE. GOOD-NIGHT. Close now thine eyes, and rest secure; Thy soul is safe enough; thy body sure; He that loves thee, He that keeps And guards thee, never slumbers, never sleeps. The smiling Conscience in a sleeping breast Has only peace, has only rest: The music and the mirth of kings Are all but very discords, when she sings: Then close thine eyes and rest secure; No sleep so sweet as thine, no rest so sure. FRANCIS QUARLES. THE DEWDROP. A dewdrop, falling on the ocean wave, Exclaimed, in fear, "I perish in this grave!" But, in a shell received, that drop of dew Unto a pearl of marvelous beauty grew; And, happy now, the grace did magnify Which thrust it forth--as it had feared--to die; Until again, "I perish quite!" it said Torn by rude diver from its ocean bed: O, unbelieving!--So it came to gleam Chief jewel in a monarch's diadem. RICHARD C. TRENCH. VIRTUE. Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright-- The bridal of the earth and sky; The dew shall weep thy fall to-night; For thou must die. Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye, Thy root is ever in its grave, And thou must die. Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, A box where sweets compacted lie, My music shows ye have your closes, And all must die. Only a sweet and virtuous soul, Like seasoned timber, never gives; But though the whole world turns to coal, Then chiefly lives. GEORGE HERBERT. THE HERITAGE. The rich man's son inherits lands, And piles of brick, and stone, and gold, And he inherits soft white hands, And tender flesh that fears the cold, Nor dares to wear a garment old; A heritage, it seems to me, One scarce would wish to hold in fee. The rich man's son inherits cares; The bank may break, the factory burn, A breath may burst his bubble shares, And soft white hands could hardly earn A living that would serve his turn; A heritage, it seems to me, One scarce would wish to hold in fee. The rich man's son inherits wants, His stomach craves for dainty fare; With sated heart, he hears the pants Of toiling hinds with brown arms bare, And wearies in his easy-chair; A heritage, it seems to me, One scarce would wish to hold in fee. What doth the poor man's son inherit? Stout muscles and a sinewy heart, A hardy frame, a hardier spirit; King of two hands, he does his part In every useful toil and art; A heritage, it seems to me, A king might wish to hold in fee. What doth the poor man's son inherit? Wishes o'erjoyed with humble things, A rank adjudged by toil-won merit, Content that from employment springs, A heart that in his labor sings; A heritage, it seems to me, A king might wish to hold in fee. What doth the poor man's son inherit? A patience learned of being poor, Courage, if sorrow come, to bear it, A fellow-feeling that is sure To make the outcast bless his door; A heritage, it seems to me, A king might wish to hold in fee. O rich man's son! there is a toil That with all others level stands; Large charity doth never soil, But only whiten, soft white hands,-- This is the best crop from thy lands; A heritage, it seems to me, Worth being rich to hold in fee. O poor man's son! scorn not thy state; There is worse weariness than thine, In merely being rich and great; Toil only gives the soul to shine, And makes rest fragrant and benign; A heritage, it seems to me, Worth being poor to hold in fee. Both, heirs to some six feet of sod, Are equal in the earth at last; Both, children of the same dear God, Prove title to your heirship vast By record of a well-filled past; A heritage, it seems to me, Well worth a life to hold in fee. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. THE FISHERMAN. A perilous life, and sad as life may be, Hath the lone fisher, on the lonely sea, O'er the wild waters laboring far from home, For some bleak pittance e'er compelled to roam: Few hearts to cheer him through his dangerous life, And none to aid him in the stormy strife: Companion of the sea and silent air, The lonely fisher thus must ever fare: Without the comfort, hope,--with scarce a friend, He looks through life and only sees its end! BRYAN WALLER PROCTER (_Barry Cornwall_). [Illustration] LORD ULLIN'S DAUGHTER. A chieftain, to the Highlands bound, Cries, "Boatman, do not tarry! And I'll give thee a silver pound, To row us o'er the ferry." "Now who be ye, would cross Lochgyle, This dark and stormy water?" "O, I'm the chief of Ulva's isle, And this Lord Ullin's daughter. "And fast before her father's men Three days we've fled together, For should he find us in the glen, My blood would stain the heather. "His horsemen hard behind us ride; Should they our steps discover, Then who will cheer my bonny bride When they have slain her lover?" Out spoke the hardy Highland wight, "I'll go, my chief--I'm ready: It is not for your silver bright; But for your winsome lady: "And by my word! the bonny bird In danger shall not tarry: So though the waves are raging white, I'll row you o'er the ferry." By this the storm grew loud apace, The water wraith was shrieking; And in the scowl of heaven each face Grew dark as they were speaking. But still as wilder blew the wind, And as the night grew drearer, Adown the glen rode armèd men, Their trampling sounded nearer. "Oh haste thee, haste!" the lady cries, "Though tempests round us gather; I'll meet the raging of the skies, But not an angry father." The boat has left a stormy land, A stormy sea before her,-- When, Oh! too strong for human hand, The tempest gathered o'er her. And still they rowed amidst the roar Of waters fast prevailing: Lord Ullin reached that fatal shore, His wrath was changed to wailing. For sore dismayed, through storm and shade, His child he did discover: One lovely hand she stretched for aid, And one was round her lover. "Come back! come back!" he cried in grief, "Across this stormy water: And I'll forgive your Highland chief, My daughter!--oh my daughter!" 'Twas vain: the loud waves lashed the shore, Return or aid preventing: The waters wild went o'er his child, And he was left lamenting. THOMAS CAMPBELL. JOCK OF HAZELDEAN. "Why weep ye by the tide, ladie? Why weep ye by the tide? I'll wed ye to my youngest son, And ye sall be his bride: And ye sall be his bride, ladie, Sae comely to be seen"-- But aye she loot the tears down fa' For Jock of Hazeldean. "Now let this wilfu' grief be done, And dry that cheek so pale; Young Frank is chief of Errington, And lord of Langley-dale; His step is first in peaceful ha', His sword in battle keen"-- But aye she loot the tears down fa' For Jock of Hazeldean. "A chain of gold ye sall not lack, Nor braid to bind your hair; Nor mettled hound, nor managed hawk, Nor palfrey fresh and fair; And you, the foremost o' them a', Shall ride our forest queen"-- But aye she loot the tears down fa' For Jock of Hazeldean. The kirk was decked at morningtide, The tapers glimmered fair; The priest and bridegroom wait the bride, And dame and knight are there. They sought her baith by bower and ha', The ladie was not seen! She's o'er the Border, and awa' Wi' Jock of Hazeldean. SIR WALTER SCOTT. EXILE OF ERIN. There came to the beach a poor Exile of Erin, The dew on his thin robe was heavy and chill; For his country he sighed, when at twilight repairing To wander alone by the wind-beaten hill: But the day-star attracted his eye's sad devotion, For it rose o'er his own native isle of the ocean, Where once, in the fire of his youthful emotion, He sang the bold anthem of Erin go bragh. Sad is my fate! said the heartbroken stranger; The wild deer and wolf to a covert can flee, But I have no refuge from famine and danger, A home and a country remain not to me. Never again, in the green sunny bowers, Where my forefathers lived, shall I spend the sweet hours, Or cover my harp with the wild woven flowers, And strike to the numbers of Erin go bragh! Erin, my country! though sad and forsaken, In dreams I revisit thy sea-beaten shore; But, alas! in a far foreign land I awaken, And sigh for the friends who can meet me no more! Oh cruel fate! wilt thou never replace me In a mansion of peace--where no perils can chase me? Never again shall my brothers embrace me? They died to defend me or live to deplore! Where is my cabin door, fast by the wild wood? Sisters and sire! did ye weep for its fall? Where is the mother that looked on my childhood? And where is the bosom friend clearer than all? Oh! my sad heart! long abandoned by pleasure, Why did it dote on a fast-fading treasure? Tears, like the raindrop, may fall without measure, But rapture and beauty they cannot recall. Yet all its sad recollections suppressing, One dying wish my lone bosom can draw; Erin! an exile bequeathes thee his blessing! Land of my forefathers! Erin go bragh! Buried and cold, when my heart stills her motion, Green be thy field,--sweetest isle of the ocean! And thy harp-striking bards sing aloud with devotion,-- Erin mavournin--Erin go bragh! THOMAS CAMPBELL. SONG. The heath this night must be my bed, The bracken curtain for my head, My lullaby the warder's tread, Far, far from love and thee, Mary; To-morrow eve, more stilly laid, My couch may be my bloody plaid, My vesper song thy wail, sweet maid! It will not waken me, Mary! I may not, dare not, fancy now The grief that clouds thy lovely brow; I dare not think upon thy vow, And all it promised me, Mary. No fond regret must Norman know; When bursts Clan-Alpine on the foe, His heart must be like bended bow, His foot like arrow free, Mary. A time will come with feeling fraught! For, if I fall in battle fought, Thy hapless lover's dying thought Shall be a thought on thee, Mary: And if returned from conquered foes, How blithely will the evening close, How sweet the linnet sing repose To my young bride and me, Mary. SIR WALTER SCOTT. _From "The Lady of The Lake."_ THE BANKS O' DOON. (SECOND VERSION.) Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon, How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair; How can ye chant, ye little birds, And I sae weary, fu' o' care! Thou'll break my heart, thou warbling bird, That wantons thro' the flowering thorn: Thou minds me o' departed joys, Departed--never to return! Aft hae I roved by bonnie Doon, To see the rose and woodbine twine; And ilka bird sang o' its luve, And fondly sae did I o' mine. Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose, Fu' sweet upon its thorny tree; And my fause lover stole my rose, But, ah! he left the thorn wi' me. ROBERT BURNS. [Illustration] LADY CLARE. It was the time when lilies blow, And clouds are highest up in air, Lord Ronald brought a lily-white doe To give his cousin, Lady Clare. I trow they did not part in scorn: Lovers long betrothed were they: They two will wed the morrow morn: God's blessing on the day! "He does not love me for my birth, Nor for my lands so broad and fair; He loves me for my own true worth, And that is well," said Lady Clare. In there came old Alice the nurse, Said, "Who was this that went from thee?" "It was my cousin," said Lady Clare, "To-morrow he weds with me." "O God be thanked!" said Alice the nurse, "That all comes round so just and fair: Lord Ronald is heir of all your lands, And you are not the Lady Clare." "Are ye out of your mind, my nurse, my nurse?" Said Lady Clare, "that ye speak so wild?" "As God is above," said Alice the nurse, "I speak the truth: you are my child. "The old Earl's daughter died at my breast; I speak the truth, as I live by bread! I buried her like my own sweet child, And put my child in her stead." "Falsely, falsely have ye done, O mother," she said, "if this be true, To keep the best man under the sun So many years from his due." "Nay now, my child," said Alice the nurse, "But keep the secret for your life, And all you have will be Lord Ronald's, When you are man and wife." "If I'm a beggar born," she said, "I will speak out, for I dare not lie. Pull off, pull off, the brooch of gold, And fling the diamond necklace by." "Nay now, my child," said Alice the nurse, "But keep the secret all ye can." She said, "Not so: but I will know If there be any faith in man." "Nay now, what faith?" said Alice the nurse, "The man will cleave unto his right." "And he shall have it," the lady replied, "Tho' I should die to-night." "Yet give one kiss to your mother dear! Alas, my child, I sinned for thee." "O mother, mother, mother," she said, "So strange it seems to me. "Yet here's a kiss for my mother dear, My mother dear, if this be so, And lay your hand upon my head, And bless me, mother, ere I go." She clad herself in a russet gown, She was no longer Lady Clare: She went by dale, and she went by town, With a single rose in her hair. The lily-white doe Lord Ronald had brought Leapt up from where she lay, Dropt her head in the maiden's hand, And followed her all the way. Down stept Lord Ronald from his tower: "O Lady Clare, you shame your worth! Why come you drest like a village maid, That are the flower of the earth?" "If I come drest like a village maid, I am but as my fortunes are: I am a beggar born," she said, "And not the Lady Clare." "Play me no tricks," said Lord Ronald, "For I am yours in word and deed. Play me no tricks," said Lord Ronald, "Your riddle is hard to read." O and proudly stood she up! Her heart within her did not fail: She looked into Lord Ronald's eyes, And told him all her nurse's tale. He laughed a laugh of merry scorn: He turned and kissed her where she stood: "If you are not the heiress born, And I," said he, "the next in blood-- "If you are not the heiress born, And I," said he, "the lawful heir, We two will wed to-morrow morn, And you shall still be Lady Clare." ALFRED TENNYSON. BELSHAZZAR. Belshazzar is king! Belshazzar is lord! And a thousand dark nobles all bend at his board: Fruits glisten, flowers blossom, meats steam, and a flood Of the wine that man loveth, runs redder than blood; Wild dancers are there, and a riot of mirth, And the beauty that maddens the passions of earth; And the crowds all shout, Till the vast roofs ring,-- "All praise to Belshazzar, Belshazzar the king!" "Bring forth," cries the Monarch, "the vessels of gold, Which my father tore down from the temples of old;-- Bring forth, and we'll drink, while the trumpets are blown, To the gods of bright silver, of gold, and of stone; Bring forth!" and before him the vessels all shine, And he bows unto Baal, and drinks the dark wine; Whilst the trumpets bray, And the cymbals ring,-- "Praise, praise to Belshazzar, Belshazzar the king!" Now what cometh--look, look!--without menace, or call? Who writes, with the lightning's bright hand, on the wall? What pierceth the king like the point of a dart? What drives the bold blood from his cheek to his heart? "Chaldeans! Magicians! the letters expound!" They are read--and Belshazzar is dead on the ground! Hark!--the Persian is come On a conqueror's wing; And a Mede's on the throne of Belshazzar the king. BRYAN WALLER PROCTER (_Barry Cornwall_). [Illustration: BELSHAZZAR'S FEAST. J. MARTIN.] [Illustration] THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW. AN INCIDENT OF THE SEPOY MUTINY. Pipes of the misty moorlands, Voice of the glens and hills; The droning of the torrents, The treble of the rills! Not the braes of broom and heather, Nor the mountains dark with rain, Nor maiden bower, nor border tower, Have heard your sweetest strain! Dear to the Lowland reaper, And plaided mountaineer,-- To the cottage and the castle The Scottish pipes are dear;-- Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch O'er mountain, loch, and glade; But the sweetest of all music The pipes at Lucknow played. Day by day the Indian tiger Louder yelled, and nearer crept; Round and round, the jungle serpent Near and nearer circles swept. "Pray for rescue, wives and mothers,-- Pray to-day!" the soldier said, "To-morrow, death's between us And the wrong and shame we dread," Oh, they listened, looked, and waited, Till their hope became despair; And the sobs of low bewailing Filled the pauses of their prayer. Then up spake a Scottish maiden, With her ear unto the ground: "Dinna ye hear it?--dinna ye hear it? The pipes o' Havelock sound!" Hushed the wounded man his groaning; Hushed the wife her little ones; Alone they heard the drum-roll And the roar of Sepoy guns. But to sounds of home and childhood The Highland ear was true;-- As her mother's cradle crooning The mountain pipes she knew. Like the march of soundless music Through the vision of the seer, More of feeling than of hearing, Of the heart than of the ear, She knew the droning pibroch, She knew the Campbell's call: "Hark! hear ye no' MacGregor's, The grandest o' them all!" Oh, they listened, dumb and breathless, And they caught the sound at last; Faint and far beyond the Goomtee Rose and fell the piper's blast! Then a burst of wild thanksgiving Mingled woman's voice and man's; "God be praised!--the march of Havelock! The piping of the clans!" Louder, nearer, fierce as vengeance, Sharp and shrill as swords at strife, Came the wild MacGregor's clan-call, Stinging all the air to life. But when the far-off dust cloud To plaided legions grew, Full tenderly and blithesomely The pipes of rescue blew! Round the silver domes of Lucknow, Moslem mosque and Pagan shrine, Breathed the air to Britons dearest, The air of Auld Lang Syne. O'er the cruel roll of war drums Rose that sweet and homelike strain; And the tartan clove the turban, As the Goomtee cleaves the plain. Dear to the corn-land reaper And plaided mountaineer,-- To the cottage and the castle The piper's song is dear. Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibroch O'er mountain, glen, and glade; But the sweetest of all music The pipes at Lucknow played! JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. [Illustration: THE RESIDENCY, LUCKNOW, INDIA.] COMPANIONSHIP WITH NATURE. Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends; Where rolled the ocean, thereon was his home; Where a blue sky, and glowing clime, extends, He had the passion and the power to roam; The desert, forest, cavern, breaker's foam, Were unto him companionship; they spake A mutual language, clearer than the tome Of his land's tongue, which he would oft forsake For Nature's pages glassed by sunbeams on the lake. LORD GEORGE NOEL GORDON BYRON. _From "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage."_ THE GLADIATOR. I see before me the Gladiator lie: He leans upon his hand--his manly brow Consents to death, but conquers agony, And his drooped head sinks gradually low-- And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one, Like the first of a thunder shower; and now The arena swims around him--he is gone, Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won. He heard it, but he heeded not--his eyes Were with his heart, and that was far away; He recked not of the life he lost nor prize, But where his rude hut by the Danube lay, There were his young barbarians all at play, There was their Dacian mother--he, their sire, Butchered to make a Roman holiday-- All this rushed with his blood--Shall he expire, And unavenged?--Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire. LORD GEORGE NOEL GORDON BYRON. _From "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage."_ "HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX." I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he; I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three; "Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gate bolts undrew; "Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through; Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest, And into the midnight we galloped abreast. Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place; I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight, Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right, Rebuckled the cheek strap, chained slacker the bit, Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit. 'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear; At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see; At Düffield, 'twas morning as plain as could be; And from Mecheln church steeple we heard half the chime, So, Joris broke silence with, "Yet there is time!" At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun, And against him the cattle stood black every one, To stare thro' the mist at us galloping past, And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last, With resolute shoulders, each butting away The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray: And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track; And one eye's black intelligence,--ever that glance O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance! And the thick heavy spume flakes which aye and anon His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on. By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, "Stay spur! Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her, We'll remember at Aix"--for one heard the quick wheeze Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees, And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank, As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank. So, we were left galloping, Joris and I, Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky; The broad sun above laughs a pitiless laugh, 'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff; Till over by Dalhem a dome spire sprang white, And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix is in sight. "How they'll greet us!"--and all in a moment his roan Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone; And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate, With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim, And with circles of red for his eye sockets' rim. Then I cast loose my buff coat, each holster let fall, Shook off both my jack boots, let go belt and all, Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear, Called my Roland his pet name, my horse without peer; Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood. And all I remember is, friends flocking round As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground; And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine, As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine, Which (the burgesses voted by common consent) Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent. ROBERT BROWNING. [Illustration] SANDALPHON. Have you read in the Talmud of old, In the Legends the Rabbins have told Of the limitless realms of the air, Have you read it,--the marvelous story Of Sandalphon, the Angel of Glory, Sandalphon, the Angel of Prayer? How, erect, at the outermost gates Of the City Celestial he waits, With his feet on the ladder of light, That, crowded with angels unnumbered, By Jacob was seen, as he slumbered Alone in the desert at night? The Angels of Wind and of Fire Chant only one hymn, and expire With the song's irresistible stress; Expire in their rapture and wonder, As harp strings are broken asunder By music they throb to express. But serene in the rapturous throng, Unmoved by the rush of the song, With eyes unimpassioned and slow, Among the dead angels, the deathless Sandalphon stands listening breathless To sounds that ascend from below;-- From the spirits on earth that adore, From the souls that entreat and implore In the fervor and passion of prayer; From the hearts that are broken with losses, And weary with dragging the crosses Too heavy for mortals to bear. And he gathers the prayers as he stands, And they change into flowers in his hands, Into garlands of purple and red; And beneath the great arch of the portal, Through the streets of the City Immortal Is wafted the fragrance they shed. It is but a legend, I know,-- A fable, a phantom, a show, Of the ancient Rabbinical lore; Yet the old mediæval tradition, The beautiful, strange superstition, But haunts me and holds me the more. When I look from my window at night, And the welkin above is all white, All throbbing and panting with stars, Among them majestic is standing Sandalphon, the angel, expanding His pinions in nebulous bars. And the legend, I feel, is a part Of the hunger and thirst of the heart, The frenzy and fire of the brain, That grasps at the fruitage forbidden, The golden pomegranates of Eden, To quiet its fever and pain. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. [Illustration: JOHN MILTON.] HYMN. ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY. It was the winter wild While the heaven-born child All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies; Nature in awe to him Has doffed her gaudy trim, With her great Master so to sympathize: No war, or battle's sound Was heard the world around; The idle spear and shield were high up hung; The hookèd chariot stood Unstained with hostile blood; The trumpet spake not to the armèd throng; And kings sat still with awful eye, As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by. But peaceful was the night Wherein the Prince of Light His reign of peace upon the earth began; The winds with wonder whist, Smoothly the waters kissed Whispering new joys to the mild ocean-- Who now hath quite forgot to rave, While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmèd wave. The stars with deep amaze, Stand fixed in steadfast gaze, Bending one way their precious influence; And will not take their flight For all the morning light, Or Lucifer that often warned them thence; But in their glimmering orbs did glow Until their Lord himself bespake, and bid them go. Yea, Truth and Justice then Will down return to men, Orbed in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing, Mercy will sit between Throned in celestial sheen, With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering And Heaven, as at some festival Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall. [Illustration: HOLY NIGHT. H. GRASS.] But wisest Fate says no; This must not yet be so; The Babe yet lies in smiling infancy That on the bitter cross Must redeem our loss; So both himself and us to glorify; Yet first, to those ychained in sleep, The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep. But see, the Virgin blest Hath laid her Babe to rest; Time is, our tedious song should here have ending; Heaven's youngest-teemèd star Hath fixed her polished car, Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending: And all about the courtly stable Bright-harnessed angels sit in order serviceable. JOHN MILTON. _A Selection._ [Illustration] THE NEW YEAR. Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light: The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow; The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true. Ring out the grief that saps the mind, For those that here we see no more; Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind. Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws. Ring out the want, the care, the sin, The faithless coldness of the times; Ring out, ring out, my mournful rhymes, But ring the fuller minstrel in. Ring out false pride in place and blood, The civic slander and the spite; Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good. Ring out old shapes of foul disease; Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace. Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be. ALFRED TENNYSON. [Illustration] _RECOMMENDED POEMS._ As it has been impossible to include in this collection as many poems by American authors as we desired, we recommend the following, all of which are published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., with the exception of Bryant's poems, which are published by D. Appleton & Co. ALDRICH, THOMAS BAILEY. After the Rain. Barberries. Before the Rain. The Bluebells of New England. BRYANT, WILLIAM CULLEN. A Northern Legend. The Gladness of Nature. CARY, ALICE. The Gray Swan. EMERSON, RALPH WALDO. The Humblebee. HARTE, BRET. The Reveillé. HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL. A Sunday Hymn. Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill. The Chambered Nautilus. The Height of the Ridiculous. The Music Grinders. The One Hoss Shay. LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH. A Psalm of Life. Burial of the Minnisink. Christmas Bells. Enceladus. Paul Revere's Ride. Santa Filomena. Snowflakes. Song of the Silent Land. The Bell of Atri. The Builders. The Day is Done. The Old Clock on the Stairs. The Open Window. The Ropewalk. The Two Angels. Victor Galbraith. LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL. Stanzas on Freedom. The Fatherland. The Shepherd of King Admetus. WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF. Abraham Davenport. Laus Deus. My Psalm. Nanhaught, the Deacon. The Corn Song. 
39032	----	[Illustration: Cover] SONGS YSAME Dainty Volumes of Poetry [Illustration: decoration] Price, per volume, $1.25 [Illustration: decoration] GOLDEN TREASURY OF AMERICAN SONGS AND LYRICS. Edited by F. L. KNOWLES. CAP AND GOWN. First Series. Edited by J. L. HARRISON. CAP AND GOWN. Second Series. Edited by F. L. KNOWLES. SONGS YSAME. By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON and ALBION FELLOWS BACON. OUT OF THE HEART. Edited by J. W. CHADWICK. L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY, Publishers (INCORPORATED) 196 Summer Street, Boston [Illustration: _Motherhood_] SONGS YSAME BY ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON AND ALBION FELLOWS BACON [Illustration] BOSTON L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY (INCORPORATED) MDCCCXCVII _Copyright, 1897_, BY L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY (INCORPORATED) Colonial Press: Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. Boston, Mass., U. S. A. TO Our Mother MARY ERSKINE FELLOWS CONTENTS. ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON PAGE [A]AT A TENEMENT WINDOW 53 [A]AT EARLY CANDLE-LIGHTING 18 BANDITTI 65 [B]"BOB WHITE" 25 ECHOES FROM ERIN 47 ELINOR 114 [B]FELIPA, WIFE OF COLUMBUS 60 INTERLUDE 79 IN THIS CRADLE-LIFE OF OURS 74 MY CAROL 71 OCTOBER 88 ON A FLY-LEAF OF "AFTERWHILES" 118 ON A FLY-LEAF OF "FLUTE AND VIOLIN" 115 PRELUDE (NOW I CAN SING, ETC.) xiii RETROSPECTION 45 SPENDTHRIFT 67 THE FICKLE HEART 64 THE LEGEND OF THE PANSIES 102 [A]THROUGH AN AMBER PANE 50 TRAILING ARBUTUS 100 'TWIXT CREEK AND BAY 62 VOICES OF THE OLD, OLD DAYS 39 ALBION FELLOWS BACON. A MADRIGAL 98 [C]A MOOD 101 A RESOLVE 123 A SONG 55 AN ALPINE VALLEY 49 AN OLD-TIME PEDAGOGUE 31 AT LAST 125 AT TWILIGHT 90 CHIARO-OSCURO 120 ECLIPSE 57 ELIZABETH 113 GRANDFATHER 27 HER TITLE-DEEDS 34 HERE AND THERE 75 IN THE DARK 58 INSPIRATION 116 LEFT OUT 95 LOST 69 MAY-TIME 84 MARRIED 108 MOTHERHOOD 109 "OH, DREARY DAY" 83 ON A FLY-LEAF OF IRVING 117 OPHELIA 111 "OUR FATHER" 97 PRELUDE (WE CANNOT SING, ETC.) xiii REQUIEM 112 SILENT KEYS 41 SPRING'S COPHETUA 86 STRANDED 124 SUFFICIENCY 110 THE LIGHTING OF THE CANDLES 17 THE MILKY WAY 76 THE OLD BELL 106 THE OLD CHURCH 29 THE POTTER'S FIELD 93 THE PROPHET 91 THE ROBBER 70 THE SEA 107 THE SILENT BROTHERHOOD 66 THE TIME O' DAY 99 THE TOWER OF BABEL 104 WINTER BEAUTY 87 WHEN YOUTH IS GONE 63 WHEN SHE COMES HOME 122 FOOTNOTES: [A] By permission of _Youth's Companion_. [B] By permission of _Harper's Weekly_. [C] By permission of _Frank Leslie_. PRELUDE. _WE cannot sing of life, whose years are brief, Nor sad heart-stories tell, who know no grief, Nor write of shipwrecks on the seas of Fate, Whose ship from out the harbor sailed but late. But we may sing of fair and sunny days, Of Love that walks in peace through quiet ways; And unto him who turns the page to see Our simple story, haply it may be As when in some mild day in early spring, One through the budding woods goes wandering; And finds, where late the snow has blown across, Beneath the leaves, a violet in the moss._ _1887._ _A. F. B._ _NOW I can sing of life, whose days are brief, For I have walked close hand in hand with grief. And I may tell of shipwrecked hopes, since mine Sank just outside the happy harbor line. But still my song is of those sunny days When Love was with me in those quiet ways. And unto him who turns the page to see That day's short story, haply it may be, The joy of those old memories he feels: As one who through the wintry twilight steals, And sees, across the chilly wastes of snow, The darkened sunset's rosy afterglow._ _1892._ _A. F. J._ PART I. SONGS YSAME The Lighting of the Candles. WHENCE came the ember That touched our young souls' candles first with light; In shadowy years, too distant to remember, Where childhood merges backward into night? I know not, but the halo of those tapers Has ever since around all nature shone; And we have looked at life through golden vapors Because of that one ember touch alone. At Early Candle-Lighting. THOSE, who have heard the whispered breath Of Nature's secret "Shibboleth," And learned the pass-word to unroll The veil that hides her inmost soul, May follow; but this by-path leads Through mullein stalks and jimson-weeds. And he who scorning treads them down Would deem but poor and common-place Those whom he'll meet in homespun gown. But they who lovingly retrace Their steps to scenes I dream about, Will find the latch-string hanging out. With them I claim companionship, And for them burn my tallow-dip, At early candle-lighting. To these low hills, around which cling My fondest thoughts, I would not bring An alien eye long used to sights Among the snow-crowned Alpine heights. An eagle does not bend its wing To low-built nests where robins sing. Between the fence's zigzag rails, The stranger sees the road that trails Its winding way into the dark, Fern-scented woods. He does not mark The old log cabin at the end As I, or hail it as a friend, Or catch, when daylight's last rays wane, The glimmer through its narrow pane Of early candle-lighting. As anglers sit and half in dream Dip lazy lines into the stream, And watch the swimming life below, So I watch pictures come and go. And in the flame, Alladin-wise, See genii of the past arise. If it be so that common things Can fledge your fancy with fast wings; If you the language can translate Of lowly life, and make it great, And can the beauty understand That dignifies a toil-worn hand, Look in this halo, and see how The homely seems transfigured now At early candle-lighting. A fire-place where the great logs roar And shine across the puncheon floor, And through the chinked walls, here and there, The snow steals, and the frosty air. Meager and bare the furnishings, But hospitality that kings Might well dispense, transmutes to gold, The welcome given young and old. Plain and uncouth in speech and dress, But richly clad in kindliness, The neighbors gather, one by one, At rustic rout when day is done. Vanish all else in this soft light,-- The past is ours again tonight; 'Tis early candle-lighting. Oh, well-remembered scenes like these: The candy-pullings, husking-bees-- The evenings when the quilting frames Were laid aside for romping games; The singing school! The spelling match! My hand still lingers on the latch, I fain would wider swing the door And enter with the guests once more. Though into ashes long ago That fire faded, still the glow That warmed the hearts around it met, Immortal, burns within me yet. Still to that cabin in the wood I turn for highest types of good At early candle-lighting. How fast the scenes come flocking to My mind, as white sheep jostle through The gap, when pasture bars are down, And pass into the twilight brown. Grandmother's face and snowy cap, The knitting work upon her lap, The creaking, high-backed rocking-chair; The spinning-wheel, the big loom where The shuttle carried song and thread; The valance on the high, white bed Whose folds the lavender still keep. Oh! nowhere else such dreamless sleep On tired eyes its deep spell lays, As that which came in those old days At early candle-lighting. A kitchen lit by one dim light, And 'round the table in affright, A group of children telling tales. Outside, the wind--a banshee--wails. Even the shadows, that they throw Upon the walls, to giants grow. The hailstones 'gainst the window panes Fall with the noise of clanking chains, Till, glancing back, they almost feel Black shapes from out the corners steal, And, climbing to the loft o'erhead, The witches follow them to bed. The low flame flickers. Snuff the wick! For ghosts and goblins crowd so thick At early candle-lighting. An orchard path that tramping feet For half a century have beat; Here to the fields at sun-up went The reapers. Here, on errands sent, Small bare-feet loitered, loath to go. Here apple-boughs dropped blooming snow, Through garden borders gaily set With touch-me-nots and bouncing Bet; Here passed at dusk the harvester With quickened step and pulse astir At sight of some one's fluttering gown, Who stood with sunbonnet pulled down And called the cows. Ah, in a glance One reads that simple, old romance At early candle-lighting. One picture more. A winter day Just done, and supper cleared away. The romping children quiet grow, And in the reverent silence, slow The old man turns the sacred page, Guide of his life and staff of age. And then, the while my eyes grow dim, The mother's voice begins a hymn: "_Sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer That calls me from a world of care!_" What wonder from those cabins rude Came lives of stalwart rectitude, When hearth-stones were the altars where Arose the vestal flame of prayer At early candle-lighting. No crumbling castle walls are ours, No ruined battlements and towers. Our history, on callow wings, Soared not in time of feudal kings; No strolling minstrel's roundelay Tells of past glory in decay, But rugged life of pioneer Has passed away among us here; And as the ivy tendrils grow About the ancient turrets, so The influence of its sturdy truth Shall live in never-ending youth, When simple customs of its day Have, long-forgotten, passed away With early candle-lighting. Bob White. JUST now, beyond the turmoil and the din Of crowded streets that city walls shut in, I heard the whistle of a quail begin: "Bob White! Bob White!" So faintly and far away falling It seemed that a dream voice was calling "Bob White! Bob White!" How the old sights and sounds come thronging And thrill me with a sudden longing! Through quiet country lanes the sunset shines. Fence corners where the wild rose climbs and twines, And blooms in tangled black-berry vines, "Bob White! Bob White!" I envy yon home-going swallow, Oh, but swiftly to rise and follow-- Follow its flight, Follow it back with happy flying, Where green-clad hills are calmly lying. Wheat fields whose golden silences are stirred By whirring insect wings, and naught is heard But plaintive callings of that one sweet word, "Bob White! Bob White!" And a smell of the clover growing In the meadow lands ripe for mowing, All red and white. Over the shady creek comes sailing, Past willows in the water trailing. Tired heart, 'tis but in dreams I turn my feet, Again to wander in the ripening wheat And hear the whistle of the quail repeat "Bob White! Bob White!" But oh! there is joy in the knowing That somewhere green pastures are growing, Though out of sight. And the light on those church spires dying, On the old home meadow is lying. Grandfather. HOW broad and deep was the fireplace old, And the great hearth-stone how wide! There was always room for the old man's chair By the cosy chimney side, And all the children that cared to crowd At his knee in the evening-tide. Room for all of the homeless ones Who had nowhere else to go; They might bask at ease in the grateful warmth And sun in the cheerful glow, For Grandfather's heart was as wide and warm As the old fireplace, I know. And he always found at his well-spread board Just room for another chair; There was always rest for another head On the pillow of his care; There was always place for another name In his trustful morning prayer. Oh, crowded world with your jostling throngs! How narrow you grow, and small; How cold, like a shadow across the heart, Your selfishness seems to fall, When I think of that fireplace warm and wide, And the welcome awaiting all. The Old Church. CLOSE to the road it stood among the trees, The old, bare church, with windows small and high, And open doors that gave, on meeting day, A welcome to the careless passer by. Its straight, uncushioned seats, how hard they seemed! What penance-doing form they always wore To little heads that could not reach the text, And little feet that could not reach the floor. What wonder that we hailed with strong delight The buzzing wasp, slow sailing down the aisle, Or, sunk in sin, beguiled the constant fly From weary heads, to make our neighbors smile. How softly from the churchyard came the breeze That stirred the cedar boughs with scented wings, And gently fanned the sleeper's heated brow Or fluttered Grandma Barlow's bonnet strings. With half-shut eyes, across the pulpit bent, The preacher droned in soothing tones about Some theme, that like the narrow windows high, Took in the sky, but left terrestrials out. Good, worthy man, his work on earth is done; His place is lost, the old church passed away; And with them, when they went, there must have gone That sweet, bright calm, my childhood's Sabbath day. An Old-Time Pedagogue. SLOWLY adown the village street With groping cane and faltering feet, He goes each day through cold or heat-- Old Daddy Hight. His hair is scant upon his head, His eyes are dim, his nose is red, And yet, his mien is stern and dread-- Old Daddy Hight. The village lads his form descry While yet afar, and boldly cry-- (For bears are scarce and rods are high) "Old Daddy Hight!" But when their fathers meet his glance, They nod and smile and look askance. He taught them once the Modoc dance-- Old Daddy Hight. How long we cling to servitude, How long we keep the schoolboy's mood! Still seems with awful power endued-- Old Daddy Hight. They feel a cringing of the knee, Those fathers, yet, whene'er they see Adown the walk pace solemnly-- Old Daddy Hight. Wide is his fame, of how he taught, And how he flogged, and reckoned naught The toils and pains that knowledge bought-- Old Daddy Hight. He had no lack of "ways and means" To track the loiterers on the greens; He scorned all counterfeits and screens-- Old Daddy Hight. Oh, dire the day that brewed mishap! That brought to luckless back his strap, To hanging head his Dunce's cap-- Old Daddy Hight. No blotted page dared meet his eye; The owner quaked and wished to die, When rod in hand, with wrath strode by-- Old Daddy Hight. He helped them up the thorny steep Of wisdom's path with pain to creep, With vigilance that might not sleep-- Old Daddy Hight. Now, down his life's long, slow decline, He walks alone at eighty-nine-- The last of his illustrious line-- Old Daddy Hight. Her Title-Deeds. INSIDE the cottage door she sits, Just where the sunlight, softest there, Slants down on snowy kerchief's bands, On folded hands and silvered hair. The garden pale her world shuts in, A simple world made sweet with thyme, Where life, soft lulled by droning bees, Flows to the mill-stream's lapsing rhyme. Poor are her cottage walls, and bare; Too mean and small to harbor pride, Yet with a musing gaze she sees Her broad domains extending wide. Green slopes of hills, and waving fields, With blooming hedges set between, Through shifting veils of tender mist, Smile, half revealed, a mingled scene. All hers, for lovingly she holds A yellow packet in her hand, Whose ancient, faded script proclaims Her title to this spreading land. Old letters! On the trembling page Drop unawares, unheeded tears. These are her title-deeds, her lands Spread through the realms of by-gone years. INTERLUDES. Voices of the Old, Old Days. OH, voices of the old, old days, Speak once again to me, I walk alone the old, old ways And miss your melody. To-night I close my tired eyes And hear the rain drip slow, And dream a hand is on my brow That pressed it long ago. My thoughts stray through the lonely night Until I seem to see Home faces, in the firelight, That always smiled on me. Those shadows dancing on the walls Are not by embers cast, They are the forms my heart recalls From out the happy past. Forgotten is the gathering gloom, The night's deep loneliness, As round me in the silent room With noiseless tread they press. Though in the dark the rain sobs on, I heed its sound no more; For voices of the old, old days Are calling as of yore. Silent Keys. AS we would touch with soft caress the brow Of one who dreams, the spell of sleep to break, Across the yellowed keys I sweep my hand, The old, remembered music to awake; But something drops from out those melodies-- There are some silent keys. So is it when I call to those I loved, Who blessed my life with tender care and fond: So is it with those early dreams and hopes, Some voices answer and some notes respond, But in the chords that I would strike, like these, There are some silent keys. Heart, dost thou hear not in those pauses fall A still, small voice that speaks to thee of peace? What though some hopes may fail, some dreams be lost, Though sometimes happy music break and cease. We might miss part of heaven's minstrelsies But for these silent keys. PART II. Retrospection. THE grandsire, in the chimney corner, takes The almanac from its accustomed place, And while the kettle swings upon the crane, And firelight flickers on his wrinkled face, Reviews the slow procession of the months; And sees again upon the hills of green The gypsy Springtime pitch her airy tent Among the blossoms. Then the silver sheen Of harvest moon shines down on rustling corn Until the hazy air of Autumn thrills With sound of woodman's ax and hunter's horn, And darker shadows climb the russet hills. But while he ponders on the open page, The last sand in the hour-glass slips away. The end seems near of his long pilgrimage, And he would call the fleeting year to stay. But passing on, she goes--a sweet-faced nun-- To take within the Convent of the Past The veil of silence. Then the gates swing shut, And Time, the grim old warden, bolts them fast. No more can come again those halcyon days The Year took with it to its dim-lit cell; But often at the bars they stand and gaze, When through the heart rings memory's matin-bell. Echoes From Erin. ACROSS old Purple Mountain I hear a bugle call, And down the rocks, like water, the echoes leap and fall. One note alone can startle the voices of the peaks, And waken songs of Erin, whene'er the bugle speaks. They call and call and call, Until the voices all Ring down the dusky hollows and in the distance fall. Methinks, like Purple Mountain, the past will sometimes rise, And memory's call awaken its echoing replies. Within the tower of Shandon again the bells will sway, And follow, with their ringing, the Lee upon its way, And chime and chime and chime, Where ivy tendrils climb, Till bells and river mingle to sound the silvery rhyme. Again the daisied grasses beside the castle walls Will stir with softest sighing, to hear the wind's footfalls; And through the moss-grown abbey, along Killarney's shore, The melodies of Erin will echo evermore, And roll and roll and roll, Till spirit hands shall toll The music of the uplands unto the listening soul. _Killarney, Ireland._ An Alpine Valley. OH, happy valley at the mountain's feet, If half your happiness you could but know! Though over you a shadow always falls, And far above you rise those heights of snow, So far, your yearning love you may not speak With rosy flush like some high sister peak, Yet you may clasp its feet in fond embrace, And gaze up in its face. And sometimes down its slopes a wind will come And bring a sudden, noiseless sweep of snow, Like a soft greeting from those summits sent To comfort you below. What more? Love may not ask too great a boon. Enough to be so near, though cast so low. Think that a sea had rolled between you twain If careless fortune had decreed it so, And you could only lie and look across To distant cloudy heights and know your loss, And see some favored valley, fair and sweet, Heap flowers at its feet. _Cham, Switzerland._ Through an Amber Pane. BY some strange alchemy that turns to gold The light that drops from gray and leaden skies, Though heavy mists the outer world enfold, 'Tis always sunshine where Napoleon lies. No more an exile by an alien sea, Forgetful of the banishment and bane; Now lies he there, in kingly dignity, His tomb a Mecca shrine beside the Seine. And there the pilgrim hears the story told, How Paris placed above her hero, dead, A window that should turn to yellow gold The light that on his resting place is shed. So on him falls, though summers wane, The sunshine of that amber pane. By some strange miracle, maybe divine, The sunlight falls upon the buried past And turns its water into sparkling wine, And gilds the coin its coffers have amassed. Could it have been those long-lost halcyon days Trailed not a cloud across our April sky? Faltered we not along those untried ways? Grew we not weary as the days went by? Ah, yes! But unreturning feet forget Rough places trodden in the long ago, Rememb'ring only paths with flowers beset, While pressing onward, wearily and slow. For Memory's windows but retain The sunshine of an amber pane. The little white, wind-blown anemone By one round dewdrop may be fully filled, And by some light-winged, passing honey-bee Its cup of crystal water may be spilled. So does the child heart hold its happiness: A drop will fill it to its rosy rim. It is not that these later days bring less, That joy so rarely rises to the brim; It is because the heart has deeper grown. A fuller knowledge must its thirst assuage. Perhaps we would not deem those pleasures flown As bright as those which star the present age, Had not upon them long years lain The sunshine of an amber pane. The dust of dim forgetfulness piles fast Upon the chains that thralled us yesterday. So will it be when this day, too, is past, And in its arms we've seen it bear away The cares that brooded in the tired brain; The work that weighted down the weary hand; The high hopes that we struggled to attain; The problems that we could not understand. Washed of its stain, bereft of any sting, Seen through the window of the Memory, Perchance, a gentler grace to it may cling Than we may now think possible to see. For skies will gleam, though gray with rain, Like sunshine through that amber pane. We may not stand on Patmos, and look through The star-hinged portals where the great pearls gleam. No brush that unveiled beauty ever drew, Save one, that caught its shadow in a dream. So lest we falter, faithless and afraid, The Merciful, remembering we are dust, Reveals not heaven for which our hearts have prayed, But by a token teaches us to trust; And day by day allows us to look through The window of the Memory, broad and vast, (Till jasper minarets rise into view) Upon the happy heaven of the past; And gives, till purer light we gain, The sunshine of that amber pane. At a Tenement Window. SOMETIMES my needle stops with half-drawn thread (Not often though, each moment's waste means bread, And missing stitches leave the little mouths unfed). I look down on the dingy court below: A tuft of grass is all it has to show,-- A broken pump, where thirsty children go. Above, there shines a bit of sky, so small That it might be a passing blue-bird's wing. One tree leans up against the high brick wall, And there the sparrows twitter of the spring, Until they waken in my heart a cry Of hunger, that no bread can satisfy. Always before, when Maytime took her way Across the fields, I followed close. To-day I can but dream of all her bright array. My work drops down. Across the sill I lean, And long with bitter longing, for unseen Rain-freshened paths, where budding woods grow green. The water trickles from the pump below Upon the stones. With eyes half shut, I hear It falling in a pool where rushes grow, And feel a cooling presence drawing near. And now the sparrows chirp again. No, hark!-- A singing as of some far meadow lark. It is the same old miracle applied Unto myself, that on the mountain-side The few small loaves and fishes multiplied. Behold, how strange and sweet the mystery! The birds, the broken pump, the gnarled tree, Have brought the fullness of the spring to me. For in the leaves that rustle by the wall All forests find a tongue. And so that grass Can, with its struggling tuft of green, recall Wide, bloom-filled meadows where the cattle pass. How it can be, but dimly I divine. These crumbs, God given, make the whole loaf mine. A Song. "Home-keeping hearts are happiest."--LONGFELLOW. THERE will be distant journeyings enough To reach that Land beyond the ether's sea, To satisfy the veriest roaming heart,-- Let me stay home with thee! There will be new companionships enough In that bright spirit-life. Why should we flee So soon to alien hearts and stranger scenes? I would stay home with thee. The heart grows homesick, thinking of the change When these familiar things no more shall be; When e'en the thought of them, perchance, shall fade,-- Let me stay home with thee. I would imprint upon my mind each scene, Each meadow path, and stream, and orchard-tree, Beloved since childhood, holy with our hopes, Sweet with the thoughts of thee. And each dear household place, let me learn all By heart, where I am wont thy form to see. Who knows what things shall pass? If I may share A hearth in heaven with thee? Eclipse. GOD keep us from the sordid mood That shrinks to self-infinitude, That sees no thing as good or grand, That answers not the hour's demand, And throws o'er Heaven's splendors furled The shadow of our little world. In the Dark. HERE in the dark I lie, and watch the stars That through the soft gloom shine like tear-bright eyes Behind a mourner's veil. The darkness seems Almost a vapor, palpable and dense, In which my room's familiar outlines melt, And all seems one black pall that folds me round. Only a mirror glimmers through the dusk, And on the wall a dim, uncertain square Shows where a portrait hangs. Ah, even so Beloved faces fade into the past And naught remains except a space of light To show us where they were. How still it seems! The busy clock, whose tell-tale talk was drowned By Day's uproarious voices, calls aloud, Undaunted by the dark, the flight of time, And through the halls its tones ring drearily. The breeze on tiptoe seems to tread, as though It were afraid to rouse the drowsy leaves. The long, dim street is quiet. Nothing breaks The dream of Night, asleep on Nature's breast. Hark! Some one passes. On the pavement stones Each stealthy step gives back a muffled sound, Till the last foot-fall seems in distance drowned. So Death might pass, bent on his mission dread, Adown the silent street, and none might know What hour he passed or what he bore away. Ah, sadder thought! So Life goes, unawares, Noiseless and swift and resolutely on, While the dumb world lies folded in the gloom, Unconscious and uncaring in its sleep. And towards the west, the stars, all silently Like golden sands in God's great hour-glass, glide And fall into the nether crystal globe. Felipa, Wife of Columbus. MORE than the compass to the mariner, Wast thou, Felipa, to his dauntless soul. Through adverse winds that threatened wreck, and nights Of rayless gloom, thou pointed ever to The North Star of his great ambition. He Who once has lost an Eden, or has gained A paradise by Eve's sweet influence, Alone can know how strong a spell lies in The witchery of a woman's beckoning hand. And thou didst draw him, tide-like, higher still, Felipa, whispering the lessons learned From thy courageous father, till the flood Of his ambition burst all barriers And swept him onward to his longed-for goal. Before the jewels of a Spanish queen Built fleets to waft him on his untried way, Thou gavest thy wealth of wifely sympathy To build the lofty purpose of his soul. And now the centuries have cycled by, Till thou art all-forgotten by the throng That lauds the great Pathfinder of the deep. It matters not in that infinitude Of space, where thou dost guide thy spirit-bark To undiscovered lands, supremely fair. If to this little planet thou couldst turn And voyage, wraithlike, to its cloud-hung rim, Thou wouldst not care for praise. And if, perchance, Some hand held out to thee a laurel bough, Thou wouldst not claim one leaf, but fondly turn To lay thy tribute, also, at his feet. 'Twixt Creek and Bay. 'TWIXT creek and bay We whisper to our white sails "stay! Oh, Life, a little while delay! 'Twixt creek and bay." So loath to go From these calm shallows that we know, We fain would stay the year's swift flow, Nor onward go To banks more wide, Where seaward drawings of the tide Impel to deeper depths untried, Where Life grows wide. 'Twixt creek and bay-- The morning deepens into day, And richer freight we bear, alway, When in the bay. When Youth is Gone. HOW can we know when youth is gone,-- When age has surely come at last? There is no marked meridian Through which we sail, and feel when past. A keener air our faces strike, A chiller current swifter run; They meet and glide like tide with tide, Our youth and age, when youth is done. The Fickle Heart. CANST tell me, thou inconstant heart, What like unto thou art? A gypsy wandering up and down Through April's green and Autumn's brown, Until the year is spent; And then, when hills are white with snow, And brooks, ice-bound, have ceased to flow, No place to pitch his tent. Banditti. UPON Life's lonely highway, robber bands Of grim-faced years seize with relentless hands Each traveler, and wrest from out his grasp The treasures that he fain would closer clasp. None can escape. Each year demands its toll, Till robbed of youth, we grope toward the goal, Halting and blind, of all but life bereft, And death claims that--the only boon that's left. The Silent Brotherhood. ON through the cloisters of eternity The years, like monks, in slow procession pass, Telling their rosary beads, the golden days, With penance prayers of dark and dismal nights. Hooded and cowled, with silence on they pass, Nor will they pause until their vesper rings A solemn curfew at the sunset hour, When all the fires of life are buried low, And all the worlds drop down upon their knees, To say a last mass ere the death of Time. Spendthrift. HE was a king one time, And they wrapped the ermine around him, And the bells rang out when they crowned him, Rang with a joyful chime. And he sat on a throne! The wealth that a world could offer Was heaped in the New Year's coffer, For the world was his own. He was a spendthrift though, And the coins of his lavish giving Were the golden moments of living,-- Coins that he squandered so. He is a beggar now. In the night and the storm he lingers, No gold in his prodigal fingers,-- King with the uncrowned brow. Nothing to call his own! His fortune scattered behind him; Death empty-handed shall find him,-- A New Year takes his throne. Lost. CHILDHOOD flits by with flowers in both its hands,-- We know not why it leaves, nor when it goes; But suddenly we miss some subtle grace, As perfume passes from a fading rose; We scarce divine, yet somehow faintly feel In the soft air a far-blown breath of snows. Straying afar, unheeded and alone Upon life's highway 'mid the busy throng, Swept in its eager, restless race along To the great future, unexplored, unknown, The little child is lost. And when with haste The wanderer's footsteps through the streets are traced, They find a man with features pale and stern, But the lost child will nevermore return. The Robber. DO you know why Time flies by so slow When we are sad and old? Why he turns and waits as if loath to go On his journey cold? Because from our coffers of hope and youth, Where we kept life's gold, He has stolen our treasures all, in sooth, From their sacred hold. He who came with a gift in hand Was a robber bold. He whose greeting was smooth and bland Was a wolf in the fold. And this is the reason that he goes by, When we're worn and old, So slowly, because he can scarcely fly With his weight of gold. My Carol. 'TIS the time when holly berries Grow red as the Yule-log's glow, And hearth and hall are decked by all With the green of the mistletoe. Time when the joy of giving Is felt at each fireside, And wings seek rest in the old home nest, For the time is Christmas-tide. Though only a carol singer With nothing of gold in store, And little to bring as an offering, I stand outside your door. Open! This blessed morning Peace be to thee and thine! Here to you all I gaily call A greeting from me and mine. Haply it may awaken Some joy that so long ago, On the frosty dawn of a Christmas gone, You found in your stocking toe. Though but an old, old carol, It bears love's myrrh and gold, And the frankincense of a joy intense That the angel hosts foretold. Carol. _Listen! The heralds proclaim Him! Follow! A star leads the way! Oh, joy, in the City of David The Christ-child reigns to-day!_ I greet you this blessed morning. Peace be to thee and thine! To the dear ones here be Christmas cheer, And the love of me and mine. "In This Cradle Life of Ours." THE world swings slowly back and forth, From dawn to dusk, from dusk to dawn, And we forget the hand that rocks, But, cradle-like, the world swings on. A little while to stir and fret, Or sob with trembling lip Because the sunbeams we would grasp Through helpless fingers slip. A little while to moan, and start From fevered dreams, and weep, For still the cradle sways and swings Until we fall asleep. The broad earth's pillow is so soft To weary heads, and who can tell But through that sleep sound lullabies Of the white angel, Israfel? Here and There. HOW must they sing, those angel choirs, Who breathe Heaven's pure, sweet air! They need but waft it from their lips To make it music rare. Here on these chill, damp plains below, Where stifling vapors rise, We draw the heavy air of earth, And breathe it out in sighs. The Milky Way. UP the steep heights whereon God's citadel Is set, the prayers of mortals to that bourne, For ages toiling, in the adamant, Across the sky a glittering path have worn. INTERLUDE. Interlude. WITHIN the pauses of the anthem falls a hush, And the deep organ's solemn voice goes on alone In a low undertone, As rain comes sometimes with a sudden sweeping rush, And then is still, save that it slowly drips and falls From leaves at intervals. So memory sings alone Between the busy hours when comes a lull, And naught is audible But its low undertone. So darkness drops between the days, an interlude When night's low sighing stirs the sleepy solitude. So, when the little cycle of this life is rounded, Before the spirit enters into life unbounded, It waits to hear, with bated breath, The solemn interlude of death. PART III. "Oh, Dreary Day!" OH, dreary day, that had so late a dawn! Oh, dreary day, so long, though early gone! Fold thy gray mantle round thy form and go To find the lost sun, while Night comes on, Across the plain, with silent step and slow. I weary of thy dark, unsmiling mood, I weary of thy dull disquietude, And thy complaining voice that tells of pain, Not with the tempest's trumpet, but subdued In broken sentences of falling rain. Now, soft as household spirit, comes the Night And draws the curtains, fanning still more bright The cheerful fire, while for her gentle sake The tapers burst in bloom with yellow light, Like evening primroses just kissed awake. May-Time. THE Spring steals through the city streets, Silent and shrinking, half afraid, As if there came, from woods and fields, Some timid, bashful, country maid. The lofty houses coldly frown, And coldly stares the stony street; But here and there from out a cleft There springs a flower to kiss her feet. And here and there a crocus smiles A friendly greeting, or a spray Of blooming lilacs, fresh and sweet, Leans down and nods across her way. Till, reassured, she smiles and sings, And on she passes, glad and fleet, And little children at their play Look up to catch her glances sweet. Is it her robe's soft fluttering That gently fans the passer by? He only feels the freshened air, Nor knows the gracious presence nigh. But some sweet influence he feels, That charms care's gloomy shade away, And pours into his wakened heart The golden gladness of the May. So, like an angel visitant, She glides among the haunts of men, And faint hearts bound, and sad eyes smile, Because the Spring has come again. Spring's Cophetua. SHE came with garments scant and poor and thin, And white feet gleaming bare; With pallid smiles where April tears had been, And snowflakes on her hair. Oh, never--Winter thought--such gentle look In all the land was seen! From his gray locks the diadem he took And crowned her as his queen. And now, in silken robes and gems arrayed, Fair Spring reigns in his stead. Upon his throne she sits, the beggar maid-- "Cophetua" is dead. Winter Beauty. WHEN I go through the meadows brown, Where stand the tall weeds, sere and dead, Think you I find no beauty there, Since Summer through the fields has fled? The edges of the frozen stream, Whose quiet waters late were crossed By shadows of the bending fern, Are fair with fringes of the frost. Wherever cowslips crowded thick, Or banks of buttercups would be, A host of airy forms in white, Like ghosts of flowers returned, I see. It may be clustered flakes of snow, Or frozen dew still glistening there, But still it seems as if there came A rare, strange odor through the air. October. ACROSS the stubble fields the lazy breezes pass, From Autumn orchards sloping southward in the sun, Where dropping from the low-hung branches, one by one, The apples hide in tangles of the wind-blown grass. A warm, sweet scent of mellow fruit fills all the air, And faintly over hills and hollows comes the cry Of some shrill bluejay, and his mate's far-off reply. Like Ruth, the winds will go a-gleaning, by and by, And garner in the leaves till all the woods are bare. But now my boyhood's love has come again to me, October--in her royal red and gold arrayed! She comes with glowing cheeks, my dusky Indian maid, And all the world seems bright because so bright is she. Unto her lips the wild grapes hold their spicy wine. Persimmons, sweet and golden with an early frost, Drop at her feet; and where the narrow creek has crossed The woods, and in the ferns and flag its way has lost, Blood-red the corals of the dog-wood berries shine. And thus she comes, my Love I loved when I was young! We wander for a little while across the hills, And, as of old, her sunny presence warms and fills My heart. But like a lute with one string left unstrung, When I would sing again the song of other years, Something is lost. The harmony is incomplete. And though the same old melody I still repeat, One alto note of joy is gone that made it sweet, And something trembles in the Autumn haze like tears. At Twilight. A TINY bird flits through the twilight brown, When sunset dreams make all the garden fair, Whose soft notes fall into the quiet air Like olive leaves on waters smooth dropped down. Emblems of rest, when floods of care do cease, Into my heart, as well, they fall and float, An olive leaf each faint and dreamy note-- I recognize their sign, and feel at peace. The Prophet. DARKNESS and silence, such as only fall At midnight, wrap the sleeping hamlets all; No life in all the dim world seems to be. Then suddenly, Across the hills, far off and faint, I hear Sound through the dark, as through a dream, the call (How strange it seems!) of some bold chanticleer. (Half in my sleep I hear that clarion ring, With distant calls, like echoes, answering; And, as at war's alarum, soldiers leap From guarded sleep And seize their arms, and hasten from their tents, So, at this sound, my drowsy senses spring, Alert to man the mind's dark battlements.) To tell night's mid-hour tolls no startled bell; Only thy voice is heard, brave sentinel, Who, like the ancient watchman on the towers, Calls forth the hours, And to the wistful questioners, who see No gleam through pain's long vigil, dost foretell "The morning cometh," oft and cheerily. How canst thou know when, weary with his race, The Day turns back, his pathway to retrace? Canst thou the maiden Dawn's light footsteps hear, Approaching near? Or dost thou stand in converse with the skies, And know what time she leaves her hiding-place By joyful flashes of their starry eyes? Thou art a prophet, like to those of old, Who in the darkness sat, but firm and bold Looked with undaunted eyes towards the dim Horizon's rim, And thrilled with faith of waiting ages born, That soon from out the Night's strong prisonhold, Should burst the golden glory of the Morn. The Potter's Field. JUST outside of the noisy town, Half through thicket and wood revealed, Hemmed about by a wall of stone, Wide it lieth, the Potter's Field. Brambles wander across the grass, Vines creep over the broken wall, Bindweeds blossom, and here and there Stands a waif of the forest tall. There no columns of gleaming white Mark the dust that is sacred still; Swings the gate on its rusty hinge-- All may enter and roam at will. Who should hinder the ruthless hand, Who protect from a vagrant's tread? Guard the urns of the rich and great-- No one cares for the pauper dead! Outlawed felon and sinless child All find room in the Potter's Field. There lies a Judas who sold his Lord, Here a Mary, His pity healed. Who could know of the shame and sin Safely under the sod concealed? Weary burdens of want and grief, Laid away in the Potter's Field. Who could guess?--for as swift and light O'er it the feet of the seasons go; Summer hides it with grace of flowers, Winter spreads it with folds of snow. Rains weep over the lonely mound, Sunlight lingers, and swift shades pass; Tender hands of the gentle wind Smooth the knots of the tangled grass. What though hallowed by Death alone, Rest unbroken the sod doth yield; Peace is here, for His constant watch God doth set o'er the Potter's Field. Left Out. WELL he knew that his clothes were poor: He was common, he humbly thought; Child as he was, he could understand Why he was slighted and never sought. Yet could he help it,--his mother gone,-- Help the weight of his father's shame? Hardest sentence of childish law: Blaming innocence not to blame. It was hard when the children played All together, to be left out,-- Stand aside, with a stinging sense That 'twas he that they laughed about. Thoughtless children, they felt no wrong,-- Pushed him out of the ring at play. No one heard how his voice was choked, No one cared when he stole away. No one saw how he crept at last Through the gate and the grasses deep, Past the wall to a lonely grave Where his mother was laid asleep. Could she feel in her narrow bed, Wee, cold hands, as they groped about-- Feel the tears that were dropped because Even her grave had left him out? "Our Father." I HAVE no part with all the great, proud world: It cares not how I live, nor when I die; But every lily smiling in the field, And every tiny sparrow darting by, Claims kinship with me, mortal though they be,-- The One who cares for them doth care for me. A Madrigal. WOODBINE. THE wild bee clings to it Most fond and long. The wild bird sings to it Its sweetest song. The wild breeze brings to it A life more strong. So all things lend to thee Some charm, some grace. The world's a friend to thee, In love's embrace. All hearts do bend to thee, In thy queen's place. The Time o' Day. IF I should look for the time o' day On the rose's dial red, I would think it was just the sunrise hour, From the flush of its petals spread. And if I would tell by the lily-bell, I would think it was calm, white noon; And the violet's blue would tell by its hue Of the evening coming soon. But when I would know by my lady's face, I am all perplexed the while; For it's always starlight by her eyes, And sunlight by her smile. Trailing Arbutus. THERE may be hearts that lie so deep 'Neath griefs and cares that weigh like drifted snow, That love seems chilled in endless sleep, And budding hopes may never dare to grow. Yet under all, some memory Trails its arbutus flowers of tender thought,-- All buried in the snow maybe, Still with the sweetest fragrance fraught. A Mood. SOMETHING has made the world so changed, Something is lost from field and sky, And the earth and sun are sadly estranged, And the songs of Nature seemed turned to a cry. Yet I heard my blithe little neighbor tell How fair is the spring to see. Ah, well,-- Perhaps the change is in me. Something has gone from your smile, sweetheart; Something I miss from your look, your tone. Though you stand quite near, we are still apart, You may clasp me close, but I feel alone. Yet over and over your love you tell, And as you say, it must be. Ah, well,-- Perhaps the change is in me. The Legend of the Pansies. ONE night in Fairyland, when all the court Held carnival to welcome in the June, And to the wind-harp's music, flying feet Were dancing on the rose leaves night had strewn; The naughty Puck crept up the castle stair, And called the sleeping princes from their bed; And with their royal pages following, Away the tricksy little fairies sped. Mounted on snowy night-moths, off they raced, Startling the gnomes, asleep within the shade Of gloomy forests, with their merry cries, As at forbidden games all night they played. But when at sunrise blew an elfin horn, Mischievous Puck was nowhere to be seen, The disobedient princes stood forlorn; Like dew-drops fell their tears on grasses green. For fairy children, not within the bounds Of Queen Titania's realm at morning's dawn, Change into blooming flowers where they stand, And bloom there till the summer time is gone. Now, where the little princes played all night In robes of royal purple and of gold, The flowers we call pansies sprang in sight, And round them stood the little pages bold, In liveries of yellow, blue, and white; While upward through the east the great sun rolled. Then some, repentant, sadly drooped their heads; Some turned their saucy faces to the sky; But now they all alike must wait the day When they can bid the summer time good-by. Sometimes, when bees upon their busy rounds Stop to deliver some sweet message sent From Fairyland, the thoughtful faces smile And seem to grow a little more content. When cooling shadows creep along the grass, And mother birds are twittering lullabies To sleepy nestlings, then the south winds pass, And close with fingers soft the pansies' eyes. Upon the wings of dreams they're borne along To loving arms that rock them all the night, And fairy voices soothe their sleep with song, Till they are waked by kisses of the light. The Tower of Babel. ONCE, many centuries ago, Men tried to build a tower so high That rising upward, round on round, Its pinnacle should reach the sky. And as they toiled and built and dreamed and planned, What hopes went upward with the rising stone! That daring feet ere long should mount and stand Upon the golden stairway to the throne. And then a dire confusion fell Upon the workers, building there. Men called and shouted each to each With strange, uncomprehended speech, And what it meant no one could tell; So they left building in despair. Yet in their hearts still lived the hope that they Might scale the ramparts of the sky some day. Sometimes our souls expand and glow With holy visions bright and pure; But when from these deep vales below We proudly try to climb and reach With clumsy masonry of speech, And rounds of rhyme that shall endure, That sky-born thing, that heavenly theme, Touched only by a prayer or dream, A swift confusion o'er us flies, And sudden chills our hands benumb. Our minds are blurred, our tongues are dumb, The vision fades away and dies. Yet still we dream that song some day may be Rung through the arches of Eternity. The Old Bell. THE vines have grown so thick and twined so strong, With clinging hold, about the bell that swings In the old tower, that now it never rings. No one has heard its voice for seasons long. Sit by me on the broken belfry stair, And I will tell the simple tale to you Of those whose graves through yonder arch you view, Scattered about the churchyard, here and there. Ah me! How closely memory's tendrils twine About the heart, and choke the words that spring. It only throbs, the touch half-answering, Like this old bell, held speechless by the vine. The Sea. FOREVER, like a heart that knows no peace, Like one who wanders weary to and fro About the earth, but finds no resting-place, The sweeping tides of ocean ebb and flow. Like a discarded lover who entreats For favor still, and will not be denied, Up to the beach, with soft, caressing touch And tearful broken whispers, steals the tide. But still repulsed, it slow and sad withdraws, Yet at the dear one's feet its treasures lays, And turns again, to wail its sorrows out Through all the hopeless nights and dreary days. Married. IT is such a little while From the time the fledgling tries To tip from the edge of the nest to the bough, Then lifts its wings and flies. Till it sits in its own wee nest, Surprised out of growth or ken, And half-way feels that in some strange way It is learning to fly again. Motherhood. FOR two dear heads of bronze and amber, For baby eyes of blue and brown, For two who cling, and kiss, and clamber, And on my shoulder nestle down. All little hearts are dearer to me, All little faces sweet and bright, All childish tears and woes undo me, And I would heal them all to-night. Sufficiency. THE bird that sings one only strain, To tell his passion o'er and o'er, Can feel as much of joy or pain As if he knew a thousand more. And thou, sweet maid, whose gentle thought In smiles or tears finds present vent, What feeling could thy soul be taught, Or who has words more eloquent? Ophelia. CALM dost thou lie in wave-swept resting-place. No more the glances of the haughty Dane Can fill thy gentle breast with longing vain. The waves that stilled thy heart have drowned thy pain, And washed the sorrow from thy sweet, pale face, Ophelia. Thine be the violets, but his the rue. Though hope should sleep, and deep regret should wake, Thy clasped hand from Death's he could not take; The spell on those mute lips he could not break. What more with life and love hast thou to do, Ophelia? Requiem. SLEEP, thou, whom Care so long oppressed. Care whispers by thy couch no more. Kind Death has shut the outer door; None can disturb thee,--sleep and rest. Thy hands are folded on thy breast That throbs with Life's deep pain no more. Though Love waits grieving by thy door, He cannot enter,--sleep and rest. Elizabeth. ELIZABETH, Thou comest a refreshing breath From meadows green, where morning stays, To those who bear the noon-tide blaze. Elizabeth, Thou couldst look in the eyes of Death, Undaunted, did he promise thee Some bright new scene of mirth or glee. I cannot think that time will gray That sun-bright head, nor bear away One dimple in those rose-cheeks hid; Sure he were daring if he did. Elinor. IN that shadow-land, where the Sisters three Are weaving the web of destiny, There floated once through the fateful gloom A thread of sunshine, that gleamed upon The thread of a life from the distaff drawn, And mingling, they passed to the busy loom. The wondering Parcea looked and smiled, As the light grew into the soul of a child, And in and out and through devious ways, They wove it in with the woof of days. But they said on earth (who knew not the Fates) "As the lily's chalice holds the dew, So in her heart, at the morning's gates, She caught the sunshine, when she came through." On a Fly-Leaf of "Flute and Violin." A MASTER-HAND hath swept Life's violin and flute. For him they laughed and wept When others found them mute. From his high altitude He catches, fine and clear, The notes that might elude A less discerning ear. Transposing to a lower key The dream-song that he hears, He sets his heavenly melody To human smiles and tears. Inspiration. THE singer walks by wood and rill, By town and stately river, And varied scenes his vision fill, And make his pulses quiver. But when his song comes borne across On winds from dreamland blowing, We cannot tell what mystic touch Has set his chimes a-going. We hear the robins in his rhyme, We see the orchards drifted With crests of bloom that glimmer white When mists of tears are lifted. A hundred tunes seem intertwined To mingle in his singing, When but a single rose, perhaps, Has set his fancy winging. On a Fly-Leaf of Irving. WELCOME art thou, O singer! If thou dost know a song That makes the long eve shorter Because its joys are long. Welcome art thou, tale-bearer, If thou canst bear away Part of the cares that burden The dull and dreary day. On a Fly-Leaf of Riley's "Afterwhiles." UNTO him alone who strays Sometimes through the yesterdays, Lingering long in wood and field, Is the meaning all revealed Of these songs. Adown the rhymes Runs a path to bygone times; But 'tis found by those alone, Who the fresh green hills have known, And have felt the tender mood Of the country solitude; Who through lanes of pink peach blooms Used to see the lilac's plumes Nodding welcome by the door Where the home-folks come no more. Blest the singer, then, who leads Back again through clover meads, 'Til old scenes we seem to see, Fair as once they used to be. Who can call from years long gone, Friends we trusted, leaned upon; For whose sake we learned to bless Toilworn hands and homespun dress. As he sings of them, and thus Wafts the pure air back to us Of the fields, there comes again Childhood's faith in God and man. Chiaro-Oscuro. SOMEHOW I love to look at the picture I made of her, Work of an idle time, the summer of life's long year; For as I stand and gaze, dreaming of those lost days, Almost it seems to me I can see her sitting here. That is the way she sat, with her head a trifle raised, Looking thoughtfully out at a scene I could never see. Delicate color of rose dawning and dying down, Flushing the rare sweet face as she listened or spoke to me. Whitest light of the sky I showered on her upturned brow, Gathered the darkest shades and brushed them into her hair, Thinking the while I worked of the law that always sends The deepest shadows to follow the high lights everywhere. Now as I sit and gaze at the dream on the canvas caught, Sadly the thought comes back, to torture with unbelief-- Why must it always be that the strong white light of love Is followed forevermore by the deepest shadow of grief? When She Came Home. "When she comes home again, a thousand ways I fashion to myself the tenderness Of my glad welcome." RILEY. "WHEN she comes home," I thought with throbbing heart, That danced a measure to my mind's refrain. Again from out the door I leaned and looked, Where she should come along the leafy lane. And then she came.--I heard the measured sound Of slow, oncoming feet, whose heavy tread Seemed trampling out my life. I saw her face. Then through my brain a sudden numbness spread. The earth seemed spun away, the sun was gone, And time, and place, and thought. There was no thing In all the universe, save one who lay So still and cold and white, unanswering Save by a graven smile my broken moan. She had come home, yet there I knelt _alone_. A Resolve. THE fields of thought are plowed so deep, So carefully are tilled, That all the granaries of the world With plenteous store are filled. Unless I deeper plow and sow, What sheaf, then, can I bring? So like the black-bird in the field, I'll eat the wheat and sing. Stranded. WE found a wreck cast up on the shore, Battered and bruised, and scarred and rent, And I spoke aloud, "Here was worthless work, And a barque unfit to the sea was sent." But he said, my friend, in his gentle mood, "Nay, none may say but the barque was good, For none can tell of the seas it sailed, Of the waves it braved and the storms withstood." Then we spoke no more, but I mutely mused And thought, oh, heart and oh, life of man That we find wrecked! we may never know How brave you were when your course began. At Last. WHAT will you give me, O World, O World! If I run in the race and win? Will you give me a fame that can never fade, Will you give me a crown that will never rust, Can you save my soul from the pall of sin, Can you keep my heart from the dust? What will you give me, O Earth, O Earth! If I fight in the fray and win? More than you gave those kings, who lay Ages past in forgotten clay? Can you give me more than the grave shuts in, Or the years can bear away? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Fame will fade and crowns will rust. Give me, O Earth, but your true embrace, When the battle is lost or won. Hide me away from the day's white face, From the eye of the dazzling sun. So I may lay my head on your breast, Forget the struggle and be at rest; Forget the laurels that fade away, The love that lasts but a wild, brief day; Forget it all, on your bosom pressed, Forever at rest--at rest! * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Varied hyphenation retained. Page 21, "spining" changed to "spinning" (The spinning-wheel, the big) Page 71, in original, first word of poem is not all-capped. This was changed to match rest of the form of the book. Page 118, "After-Whiles" changed to "Afterwhiles" (Riley's "Afterwhiles") 
38475	----	POEMS OF PHILIP FRENEAU VOLUME I THE POEMS OF PHILIP FRENEAU POET OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION EDITED FOR THE PRINCETON HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION BY FRED LEWIS PATTEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE COLLEGE, AUTHOR OF "A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE" "THE FOUNDATIONS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE" ETC. VOLUME I PRINCETON N. J. THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 1902 Copyright 1902 by The Princeton University Library _C. S. Robinson & Co. University Press_ _Princeton N. J._ PREFACE The present edition of the poetical works of Philip Freneau was begun at the advice of the late lamented Moses Coit Tyler. In his opinion there were few fields in American history that needed exploring more, and few that would require on the part of the explorer more of the Columbus spirit. It would be almost impossible for a poet to pass more completely into the shadow than has Freneau during the century since his activities closed. His poems are, almost all of them in their earliest editions, exceedingly rare and costly and only to be read by those who can have access to the largest libraries, his letters and papers have almost entirely disappeared, and his biography in almost every book of reference has been so distorted by misstatement and omission as to be really grotesque. This neglect has resulted not from lack of real worth in the man, but from prejudices born during one of the most bitter and stormy eras of partisan politics that America has ever known. What Sidney Smith said of Scotland at this period was true here: "The principles of the French Revolution were fully afloat and it is impossible to conceive a more violent and agitated state of society." Freneau was a victim of this intense era. New England rejected him with scorn and all admirers of Washington echoed his epithet, "that rascal Freneau." Thus it has become the tradition to belittle his work, to vilify his character, and to sum up his whole career, as a prominent New Englander has recently done, by alluding to him as a "creature of the opposition." Unprejudiced criticism, however, has always exalted Freneau's work. The great Scotch dictator Jeffrey, with all his scorn for American literature, could say that "the time would arrive when his poetry, like that of Hudibras, would command a commentator like Gray;" and Sir Walter Scott once declared that "Eutaw Springs [was] as fine a thing as there is of the kind in the language." E. A. Duyckinck did not hesitate to group him as one of "four of the most original writers whom the country has produced," and S. G. W. Benjamin could say in 1887: "In all the history of American letters, or of the United States press, there is no figure more interesting or remarkable, no career more versatile and varied than that of Philip Freneau." Such testimony might be multiplied. Surely had the poet been an ordinary man, Jefferson would never have said "his paper has saved our Constitution," Madison would not have pronounced him a man of genius, and Adams would hardly have admitted that he was a leading element in his defeat. I have endeavored not only to rescue the most significant of Freneau's poems, but to arrange them as far as possible in their order of composition, or at least in the order in which they first appeared in print. It has seemed to me highly important to do this since such an arrangement, especially with a poet like Freneau, who drew his themes almost wholly from the range of his own observation, would be virtually an autobiography, and since it would also furnish a running commentary upon the history of a stirring period in our annals. The task has been no slight one. It has necessitated a search through the files of a large proportion of the early newspapers and periodicals and a minute investigation of every other source of possible information. Much material has been rescued that, as far as the public was concerned, had practically become extinct. I have introduced the unique fragment of an unpublished drama, "The Spy," which I was the first to explore. I have taken pains to reproduce the poet's early poetical pamphlets dealing with the first year of the Revolution, not one of which has ever been republished. The revisions of many of these used by Freneau in his later collections were so thoroughgoing as to be in reality entirely new poems. "The Voyage to Boston," for instance, published during the siege of Boston, was cut down for the 1786 edition from six hundred and five lines to three hundred and six lines, and of these more than half were entirely changed. From the standpoint of the historian, at least, the original version is much more valuable than that made several years after the war was over. This is true of all the earlier pamphlet poems. Aside from their value as specimens of Freneau's earlier muse they are valuable commentaries on the history of the stormy times that called them forth, and I have not hesitated to reprint them verbatim in connection with the revised versions. The pamphlet poems "American Liberty" and "General Gage's Confession," (until recently supposed to have been lost) exist only in unique copies. Freneau never attempted to revise them. Some of the other early poems, notably "The House of Night," I have annotated with care, showing the evolution of the poem from its first nucleus to its final fragmentary form. In the case of a few of the more important poems, especially those dealing with the Revolution, I have given variorum readings. Aside from this early material, which has a real historical value, I have introduced very few poems not included in Freneau's collected editions of 1786, 1788, 1795, 1809 and 1815. Previous to 1795 the poet reprinted with miserly care almost all the verses which he had contributed to the press. In his later years he was more prodigal of his creations. I have, however, reprinted from newspapers very few poems not found elsewhere, and these few only on the best evidence that they were genuine, for it has been my experience that when a poem is not to be found in the collected editions of the poet it is almost certain that it is not genuine. In justice to Freneau, who had the welfare of his writings much at heart, and who cut and pruned and remodeled with tireless hand, I have usually given the latest version. I wish to acknowledge here my great indebtedness to the descendants of Philip Freneau, especially Miss Adele M. Sweeney, Mr. Weymer J. Mills, Mrs. Helen K. Vreeland, and Mrs. Eleanor F. Noël, who have allowed me to consult freely all the papers and literary remains of the poet and have supplied me with all possible information. I would also express my great obligation to many librarians, collectors, and scholars, who have cheerfully aided me, especially to Mr. Wilberforce Eames, of the New York Public Library, the late Paul Leicester Ford, Mr. Robert H. Kelby, of the New York Historical Society, Mr. John W. Jordan, of the Pennsylvania Historical Society, Mr. A. S. Salley, Jr., of Charleston, S. C., Mr. E. M. Barton, of the American Antiquarian Society, and Dr. E. C. Richardson, of Princeton University, who with their courteous helpfulness have made possible the work. I wish also to express my thanks to Professor A. Howry Espenshade, and Mr. John Rogers Williams, to whose careful and patient work upon the proofs the accuracy of the text depends. F. L. P. STATE COLLEGE, Pa., Sept. 19, 1902. CONTENTS PAGE VOLUME I PREFACE v LIFE OF PHILIP FRENEAU xiii PART I _Early Poems. 1768-1775_ HISTORY OF THE PROPHET JONAH 3 ADVENTURES OF SIMON SWAUGUM 14 THE PYRAMIDS OF EGYPT 25 THE MONUMENT OF PHAON 30 THE POWER OF FANCY 34 THE PRAYER OF ORPHEUS 39 THE DESERTED FARM-HOUSE 40 THE CITIZEN'S RESOLVE 42 THE DYING ELM 45 COLUMBUS TO FERDINAND 46 THE RISING GLORY OF AMERICA 49 ON RETIREMENT 84 DISCOVERY 85 THE PICTURES OF COLUMBUS 89 EXPEDITION OF TIMOTHY TAURUS, ASTROLOGER 123 PART II _The First Poetic Period. 1775-1781_ A POLITICAL LITANY 139 AMERICAN LIBERTY, A POEM 142 GENERAL GAGE'S SOLILOQUY 152 THE MIDNIGHT CONSULTATIONS, OR, A TRIP TO BOSTON 158 THE SILENT ACADEMY 182 LINES TO A COASTING CAPTAIN 184 TO THE AMERICANS 185 THE VERNAL AGUE 188 GENERAL GAGE'S CONFESSION 189 THE DISTREST SHEPHERDESS 195 MARS AND HYMEN 197 MACSWIGGEN, A SATIRE 206 THE HOUSE OF NIGHT 212 THE JAMAICA FUNERAL 239 THE BEAUTIES OF SANTA CRUZ 249 ON A HESSIAN DEBARKATION, 1776 269 THE JEWISH LAMENTATION AT EUPHRATES 270 AMERICA INDEPENDENT 271 ON AMANDA'S SINGING BIRD 283 ON THE NEW AMERICAN FRIGATE ALLIANCE 285 ON THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN NICHOLAS BIDDLE 288 CAPTAIN JONES'S INVITATION 290 THE SEA VOYAGE 293 LIFE OF PHILIP FRENEAU 1752-1832 LIFE OF PHILIP FRENEAU I. In the possession of the Freneau descendants there is an old French Bible, printed in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1587, which preserves an unbroken roll of the heads of the family back to the original owner of the book, Philip Fresneau, who on his death-bed in La Chapelle, France, in 1590, gave it into the hands of his eldest son. For five generations the book remained in the little suburban village, its possessors sturdy, industrious tradesmen, who stood high in the esteem of their community and yet who on account of their Protestant faith were often imposed upon and at times even persecuted. It was doubtless this feeling of insecurity, if not positive persecution, which compelled André Fresneau, like so many of his fellow Huguenots, to leave his native village and to seek a home in a more tolerant land. He landed in New York in 1707. He was in his thirty-sixth year, an active, handsome man, almost brilliant in certain directions, of pleasing address, and skilled from his youth in the handling of affairs. He became at once a leader in the little Huguenot Colony whose center was the quaint old church "du St. Esprit" on Pine street. He was soon in the midst of a thriving shipping business, dealing largely in imported wines, and in 1710, three years after his arrival, he was able to furnish a beautiful home on Pearl street, near Hanover Square, for his young bride, Mary Morin, a daughter of Pierre Morin, of the French Congregation. Of the comfort and hospitality of this home there are many contemporary references. John Fontaine, the French traveller, was entertained here in 1716 and he speaks highly of his host and his entertainment.[1] In 1721 Mrs. Fresneau died at the early age of twenty-seven, leaving behind a family of five children, the oldest only nine years of age. Four years later the father followed. But the young family was far from destitute. The business house in New York had grown to be very profitable and there was a large landed estate in eastern New Jersey, a part of which was sold in 1740. Soon the two eldest sons, Andrew, born 1712, and Pierre, born January 22, 1718, were able to continue their father's business. For years their firm name was familiar in New York. Pierre Freneau (the family seem to have dropped the "s" about 1725) was married in 1748 to Agnes Watson, daughter of Richard Watson, of Freehold, whose property bordered upon the Freneau estate. They made their home in Frankfort street, New York, and here on January 2 (O. S.), 1752, was born their eldest child, Philip Morin Freneau, the subject of our sketch. Four other children came from their union, of whom only one, Peter, born April 5, 1757, who in later years became a prominent figure in Charleston, S. C., need be mentioned. The home of the Freneau's was one of comfort and even refinement. There was a large and well selected library, the pride of its owner. "There," he would say to his visitors, pointing to his books, "use them freely, for among them you will find your truest friends." He delighted in men of refinement, and his home became a social center for the lovers of books and of culture. He looked carefully after the education of his children; and all of them early became omnivorous readers. In such an environment the young poet passed his first ten years. In 1762 the family decided to leave New York and to make their home permanently on their estate, "Mount Pleasant," near Middletown Point, N. J. The estate at this time contained nearly a thousand acres, and with its large buildings, its slaves and its broad area under cultivation, was in many respects like a southern plantation. Heretofore the elder Freneau had made it of secondary importance. He had used it as a summer resort, and as a pleasant relief to the monotony of his city business, but now, perhaps on account of failing health, he determined to devote to it all of his energies. Philip was left behind in New York. For the next three years he lived at a boarding school in the city, going home only during the long vacations. At the age of thirteen he was sent to the Latin school at Penolopen, then presided over by the Rev. Alexander Mitchell, to prepare for college. The father of the family died Oct. 17, 1767. This, however, did not disturb the plans of the eldest son, and on Nov. 7, 1768, he entered the sophomore class at Princeton so well prepared that President Witherspoon is said to have sent a letter of congratulation to his mother. II. Of the college life of Philip Freneau we have only fragmentary records. He was in his sixteenth year when he entered, a somewhat dreamy youth who had read very widely, especially in the English poets and the Latin classics, and who already commanded a facile pen, especially in the field of heroic verse. During the year in which he entered Princeton he composed two long poems, "The History of the Prophet Jonah," and "The Village Merchant,"--surely notable work for the pen of a college sophomore. During the following year he wrote "The Pyramids of Egypt," and before his graduation he had completed several other pieces, some of them full of real poetic inspiration. The period during which Freneau resided at Princeton was a most significant one. In the same class with him were James Madison, H. H. Brackenridge, the author of "Modern Chivalry" and a conspicuous figure in later Pennsylvania history, and Samuel Spring, who was to become widely influential in religious circles. In the class below him were the refined and scholarly William Bradford and the brilliant Aaron Burr. The shadow of the coming struggle with Great Britain was already lengthening over the Colonies and nowhere was its presence more manifest than in the colleges, always the most sensitive areas in times of tyranny and oppression. On August 6, 1770, the senior class at Princeton voted unanimously to appear at commencement dressed in American manufactures. Another circumstance made the period a notable one. On June 24, 1769, a little band of students, headed by Madison, Brackenridge, Bradford and Freneau, organized an undergraduate fraternity to be called the American Whig Society. One year later The Well Meaning Club, a rival literary organization founded in 1765, became the Cliosophic Society. The act was the signal for a war, the echoes of which have even yet not died away at Princeton. There exists a manuscript book,[2] rescued from the papers of William Bradford, in which are preserved the poetic tirades, called forth in this first onset. Its title page is as follows: "Satires | against the Tories. | Written in the last War between the Whigs & Cliosophians | in which | the former obtained a compleat Victory. --Arm'd for virtue now we point the pen Brand the bold front of shameless, guilty men Dash the proud Tory in his gilded Car Bare the mean heart that hides beneath a star." It opens with ten "pastorals" by Brackenridge, of which the ninth begins thus: "Spring's Soliloquy that morning before he hung himself. O World adieu! the doleful time draws nigh I cannot live and yet I fear to die Warford is dead! and in his turn Freneau Will send me headlong to the shades below. What raging fury or what baleful Star Did find--ingulph me in the whiggish war The deeds of darkness which my soul hath done Are now apparent as the noon-day sun A Thousand things as yet remain untold My secret practice and my sins of old." Then follow several satires by Freneau, full of fire and invective, but like the work of all the others, not always refined or quotable in print. His satire, "McSwiggen," printed in 1775, contains nearly half of the poems,--the only lines indeed which are of any real merit. The three concluding poems of the collection, and these by all means the worst of the lot, are from no less a pen than Madison's. No patriotic citizen will ever venture to resurrect them. There is a tradition very widely current that Freneau was for a time the room-mate of Madison. However this may be, there is no question as to who was his most intimate friend. With Brackenridge he had much in common. Both had dreams of a literary life, both had read largely in polite literature, both scribbled constantly in prose and verse. In the same manuscript volume with the Clio-Whig satires there is an extensive fragment of a novel written alternately by Brackenridge and Freneau, between September 20th and October 22d, 1770. Its manuscript title page is as follows: "Father Bombo's | Pilgrimage to Mecca in Arabia. | Vol. II. | Wherein is given a true account of the innumerable and | surprizing adventures which befell him in the course of that | long and tedious Journey, | Till he once more returned safe to his native Land, as related | by his own mouth. | Written By B. H. and P. F.--1770. Mutato nomine Fabula de te narratur--_Hor._ Change but the name The story's told of you. MDVIILXX." The adventures of the hero read like chapters from the "Arabian Nights." He has been for seven days a close captive on a French man-of-war, but he is rescued by an Irish privateer, only to be taken for a wizard and thrown overboard in a cask which is finally washed ashore on the north coast of Ireland. It would be useless to recount all of his adventures both afloat and ashore. He finally succeeds in reaching Mecca, and in returning safely home to America. The final chapter recounts the details of his death and moralizes on his life and character. The work is crude and hasty. Whole chapters of it were evidently written at one sitting. The part signed H. B. is unquestionably the best; the prose is vigorous and the movement rapid. The only merit in Freneau's section lies in its lyric lament at the close of one of the chapters. The hero suddenly bursts into minor song, the opening stanzas of which are: Sweet are the flow'rs that crown the Vale And sweet the spicy breathing Gale That murmurs o'er the hills: See how the distant lowing throng Thro' verdant pastures move along, Or drink the Limpid Streams and crystal rills. Ah see in yonder gloomy Grove The Shepherd tells his tale of Love And clasps the wanton fair: While winds and trees and shades conspire To fann with Love the Gentle Fire, And banish every black and boding care. But what has Love to do with me Unknown ashore, distress'd by sea, Now hast'ning to the Tomb: Whilst here I rove, and pine and weep, Sav'd from the fury of the deep To find alas on shore a harder doom. The nature of the undergraduate work done by Princeton in Freneau's time was thus summed up by President Witherspoon in his "Address to the Inhabitants of Jamaica," published in Philadelphia in 1772: "In the first year they read Latin and Greek, with the Roman and Grecian antiquities, and Rhetoric. In the second, continuing the study of the languages, they learn a compleat system of Geography, with the use of the globes, the first principles of Philosophy, and the elements of mathematical knowledge. The third, though the languages are not wholly omitted, is chiefly employed in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. And the senior year is employed in reading the higher classics, proceeding in the Mathematics and Natural Philosophy and going through a course of Moral Philosophy. In addition to these, the President gives lectures to the juniors and seniors, which consequently every Student hears twice over in his course, first, upon Chronology and History, and afterwards upon Composition and Criticism. He has also taught the French language last winter, and it will continue to be taught to all who desire to learn it. * * * "As we have never yet been obliged to omit or alter it for want of scholars, there is a fixed Annual Commencement on the last Wednesday of September, when, after a variety of public exercises, always attended by a vast concourse of the politest company, from the different parts of this province and the cities of New York and Philadelphia. * * *" Of Freneau's proficiency as a student we have no record. Of the details of the Commencement of September 25, 1771, when he received his degree, we have but a brief account. Brackenridge opened the exercises with a salutatory, and following came four other exercises which completed the morning's programme. The audience assembled again at three, and after singing by the students there came: "6. An English forensic dispute on this question, 'Does ancient poetry excel the modern?' Mr. Freneau, the respondent, his arguments in favor of the ancients were read. Mr. Williamson answered him and Mr. McKnight replied." "7. A poem on 'The Rising Glory of America,' by Mr. Brackenridge, was received with great applause by the audience." Madison on account of ill health did not appear. The "Rising Glory" had been written conjointly by Brackenridge and Freneau. Although the former was given on the Commencement programme full credit for the exercise, it was surely Freneau who conceived the work and who gave it its strength and high literary value. Brackenridge in later years confessed to his son that "on his part it was a task of labor, while the verse of his associate flowed spontaneously." The poem was printed in Philadelphia the following year, and in 1786 Freneau isolated his own portion for publication in the first edition of his works. This detaching of Freneau's portion from the complete work destroyed at the outset the original unity of the piece. The changes and omissions made necessary by the process of separating the part from the whole, the deliberate readjustment of perspective to bring the poem up to the historical conditions of the later date, and the careful editing which strove to remove blemishes and weaknesses due to inexperience, combine to make the 1786 version practically a new poem. The first glimpse of Freneau after his graduation from Princeton is furnished by a letter to Madison, dated Somerset County, in Maryland, November 22, 1772:[3] "If I am not wrongly informed by my memory, I have not seen you since last April, you may recollect I was then undertaking a School at Flatbush on Long Island. I did not enter upon the business it is certain and continued in it thirteen days--but--'Long Island I have bid adieu, With all its bruitish, brainless crew. The youth of that detested place, Are void of reason and of grace. From Flushing hills to Flatbush plains, Deep ignorance unrivalld reigns.' I'm very poetical, but excuse it. 'Si fama non venit ad aures,'--if you have not heard the rumour of this story (which, by the by is told in various taverns and eating houses) you must allow me to be a little prolix with it. Those who employed me were some gentlemen of New York, some of them are bullies, some merchants, and others Scoundrels: They sent me eight children, the eldest of whom was 10 years. Some could read, others spell and a few stammer over a chapter of the Bible--these were my pupils and over these was I to preside. My salary moreover was £40,--there is something else relating to that I shall not at present mention--after I forsook them they proscribed me for four days and swore that if I was caught in New York they would either Trounce or Maim me: but I luckily escaped with my goods to Princetown--where I remained till commencement--so much for this affair. "I have printed a poem in New York called the American Village, containing about 450 Lines, also a few short pieces added; I would send you one if I had a proper opportunity--the additional poems are--A Poem to the Nymph I never saw--The miserable Life of a Pedagogue--and Stanzas on an ancient Dutch house on Long Island--As to the main poem it is damned by all good and judicious judges--my name is in the title page, this is called vanity by some--but 'who so fond as youthful bards of fame?' "I arrived at this Somerset Academy the 18th of October, and intend to remain here till next October. I am assistant to Mr. Brakenridge. This is the last time I shall enter into such a business; it worries me to death and by no means suits my 'giddy, wandring brain.' I would go over for the gown this time two years, but the old hag Necessity has got such a prodigious gripe of me that I fear I shall never be able to accomplish it. I believe if I cannot make this out I must turn quack, and indeed I am now reading Physic at my leisure hours, that is, when I am neither sleeping, hearing classes, or writing Poetry--for these three take up all my time. "It is now late at night, not an hour ago I finished a little poem of about 400 lines, entitled a Journey to Maryland--being the Sum of my adventures--it begins 'From that fam'd town where Hudson's flood--unites with Stream perhaps as good; Muse has your bard begun to roam--& I intend to write a terrible Satire upon certain vicious persons of quality in New York--who have also used me ill--and print it next fall it shall contain 5 or 600 lines. Sometimes I write pastorals to shew my Wit. 'Deep to the woods I sing a Shepherd's care, Deep to the woods, Cyllenus calls me there, The last retreat of Love and Verse I go, Verse made me mad at first and----will keep me so.' "I should have been glad to have heard from you before now; while I was in college I had but a short participation of your agreeable friendship, and the few persons I converse with and yet fewer, whose conversation I delight in, make me regret the Loss of it. I have met with a variety of rebuffs this year, which I forbear to mention, I look like an unmeaning Teague just turn'd out of the hold of an irish Ship coming down hither I met with a rare adventure at Annapolis. I was destitute even of a brass farthing. I got clear very handsomely. "Could one expect ever to see you again, if I travel through Virginia I shall stop and talk with you a day or two. I should be very glad to receive a letter from you if it can be conveniently forwarded--in short 'Non sum qualis eram' as Partridge says in Tom Jones--My hair is grown like a mop, and I have a huge tuft of beard directly upon my chin--I want but five weeks of twenty-one years of age and already feel stiff with age--We have about 30 Students in this academy, who prey upon me like Leaches--'When shall I quit this whimpering pack, and hide my head in Acomack?'--Shall I leave them and go 'Where Pokomokes long stream meandering flows-- "Excuse this prodigious scrawl without stile or sense--I send this by Mr. Luther Martin who will forward it to Col. Lee--and he to you I hope. Mr. Martin lives in Acomack in Virginia this side the bay. Farewell and be persuaded I remain your truly humble Serv't and friend PH. F-R-E-N-E-A-U-" The scene of Freneau's new labors was the famous old school near Princess Anne, Md., which in 1779 was incorporated as Washington Academy. Brackenridge became Master here shortly after his graduation, and in the words of his son and biographer, received "a handsome salary." "He continued here," says his biographer, "during several years until the breaking out of the American Revolution, in the midst of a wealthy and highly polished society, greatly respected as a man of genius and scholarship. He used to speak with the pride of a Porson, of the Winders, the Murrays, the Parnells and others who afterward became distinguished."[4] For many years the academy drew to it the sons of the best families of Northern Virginia, Maryland and Delaware. The length of Freneau's stay in Maryland is uncertain. There is evidence that he remained as Second Master of the school for several years. There is a tradition in the family that it was the wish of Freneau's father that he study divinity and that for a time he joined with Brackenridge in preparing for this profession; and there is another, which is very persistent, that he left Maryland to study the law in Philadelphia, but I can find no positive evidence. The period between 1772 and 1775 is at best a vague one in our life of the poet. III. In the early summer of 1775, Freneau suddenly appeared in New York as a publicist of remarkable fluency. Before November he had issued no less than eight long poems as separate publications, nearly all of them called forth by the new crisis in American affairs. Beginning with "American Liberty," issued by Anderson, the editor of the new patriotic weekly, _The Constitutional Gazette_, he published pamphlet after pamphlet in rapid succession, all of them throwing upon Gage and the British cause in Boston all the satire and invective which he had used so mercilessly in the old society war at Princeton. Two of these were published by Hugh Gaine, and another, "The Voyage to Boston," first issued by Anderson, was reprinted at once in Philadelphia. All of them have fared hardly during the years. Several, like "General Gage's Soliloquy," and "Timothy Taurus," which recounts the story of a journey made by Freneau to Passaic Falls, near Paterson, New Jersey, in August, have disappeared entirely, one of them, the "General Gage's Confession," has never been republished in any form, and all the others were cut down and altered by the author for later editions until they were almost in every respect entirely new poems. That these voluminous and vigorous tirades, which their author evidently poured forth with perfect ease, were criticised and condemned by the fastidious we have no evidence. Certain it is that judging by the contemporary newspaper press they were exceedingly popular. Yet, in November we find Freneau in a sad state of discouragement, ready to give up forever all association with the muses. Some one, envious of his rising fame, has criticised him unmercifully. He seeks out the old Clio-Whig satires and after adapting and reshaping them he hurls them at the head of his enemy whom he designates as McSwiggen. Great Jove in wrath a spark of genius gave And bade me drink the mad Pierian wave, Hence came those rhymes with truth ascribed to me, That urge your little soul to jealousy. * * * * * Devoted mad man what inspired your rage, Who bade your foolish muse with us engage? Against a windmill would you try your might, Against a castle would a pigmy fight? The young poet had begun to realize how barren was the new world in poetic appreciation; how impossible it was for even a true poet to practice his art where few could appreciate, and none really cared: Alone I stand to meet the foul-mouthed train Assisted by no poets of the plain. He looked longingly across the water where poets were appreciated: Long have I sat on this disastrous shore, And sighing sought to gain a passage o'er To Europe's towns, where as our travellers say Poets may flourish, or perhaps they may. The poem was a valedictory. I to the sea with weary steps descend, Quit the mean conquest, that such swine must yield And leave McSwiggen to enjoy the field. In distant isles some happier scene I'll choose And court in softer shades the unwilling muse. Freneau had determined to spend the winter in the West Indies. He had become acquainted during the autumn with a West Indian gentleman by the name of Hanson, who owned large estates in the islands, and who sailed master of his own vessel. Upon his invitation Freneau became a passenger late in November for the Island of Santa Cruz. Early in the voyage the mate died, and the young poet, his education outweighing his inexperience in nautical matters, was chosen to fill his place. The study of navigation, made necessary by this step, doubtless turned the direction of his whole life. For the next two years Freneau made his home on Captain Hanson's estate on the Island of Santa Cruz. A selection from one of his letters charmingly describes the spot. "The town at the west end is but mean and ordinary, consisting of a fort and perhaps 80 or 90 wooden houses. The harbor is nothing but an open road, where, however, ships lie in the utmost security at their moorings, the bottom being good for anchorage and the wind always off shore. About two miles to the eastward of this town, along the seashore, is the estate of Capt. Hanson, into which the sea has formed a beautiful little bay, called Buttler's Bay, about 100 yards across; it has a sandy shore and an excellent landing, though all the rest of the shore is sharp craggy rocks. My agreeable residence at this place for above two years, off and on during the wars in America, renders the idea of it all too pleasing, and makes me feel much the same anxiety at a distance from it as Adam did after he was banished from the bowers of Eden."[5] He seems to have been employed at intervals by Captain Hanson in voyages about the islands. Thus he records of the Island of St. James, that "I went over July 13, 1777, and remained there eight days. We loaded our vessel with coral rock, which is used in these islands for burning lime of a very excellent quality." It was while at the ideal retreat at Butler's Bay that Freneau wrote three of his most significant poems, "Santa Cruz," "The House of Night," and "The Jamaica Funeral," the first two of which were contributed to the _United States Magazine_ in 1779. Of these the "House of Night" is the most significant, containing as it does evidence of a high creative power and a romantic imagination, rare indeed in English poetry in 1776. There are evidences that Freneau composed the first draught of the poem before leaving for the West Indies, but the point is not an important one. For the edition of 1786 he nearly doubled the original version, but in 1795 he cut it down to a few stanzas, taking from it nearly everything which had made it a notable creation. On April 1, 1778, Freneau sailed from Santa Cruz for the Bermuda Islands, where for a time he was the guest of the English Governor. In an elaborate letter to Brackenridge, dated Bermuda, May 10, afterward published in the _United States Magazine_, he describes at length the islands. "These," he says in conclusion, "are a few particulars concerning this little country where I resided upwards of five weeks, and if this slight description gives you any satisfaction, it will amply repay me for the fatigues I underwent in sailing thither." On June 6th he was again in Santa Cruz; on the 15th he set out on his homeward voyage, after an absence of nearly three years. The run home was destined to be eventful. Off the Delaware capes the vessel was taken by the British, but Freneau, being a passenger, was landed on July 9th and allowed to go his way. The young poet now retired to Mount Pleasant, where doubtless he quietly remained until the autumn of the following year. In August, 1778, he published with Bell in Philadelphia the pamphlet poem "America Independent." On January 1, 1779, Brackenridge issued in Philadelphia the first number of the _United States Magazine_,[6] and Freneau at once became an important contributor. His work in prose and verse may be found in nearly every number. There are prose papers on the West Indies, purporting to be extracts from the letters of "a young philosopher and _bel esprit_ just returned from several small voyages amongst these islands." There are several early poems for the first time put into print, like "Columbus to Ferdinand" and "The Dying Elm," and there are several notable long poems, like "Santa Cruz" and "The House of Night." At least three of the poetical contributions were written expressly for the magazine: "George the Third's Soliloquy," "Psalm cxxxvii Imitated,"--signed "Monmouth, Sept. 10,"--and the "Dialogue between George and Fox." It is evident, however, that Freneau, though his work very greatly strengthened the periodical, was only a "valued contributor." The psalm in the September issue, the first of the poems to bear his name, had a foot-note explaining that the author was "a young gentleman to whom in the course of this work we are greatly indebted." The _United States Magazine_ is a notable landmark in American literary history. Its methods, as we view them to-day, seem singularly modern, and its materials and arrangement are indeed remarkable when we view them against the background of their times. It was a spirited, intensely patriotic, and highly literary periodical; the single fact that "The House of Night" first appeared in its columns is enough to stamp it as no ordinary work. It died with its twelfth issue, owing to the troubled state of the country and the unsettled nature of the currency. Then, too, the audience to which it appealed was found to be a small one. In his valedictory the editor complains bitterly of the unliterary atmosphere in America. A large class, he declares, "inhabit the region of stupidity, and cannot bear to have the tranquility of their repose disturbed by the villanous shock of a book. Reading is to them the worst of all torments, and I remember very well that at the commencement of the work it was their language, 'Art thou come to torment us before the time?' We will now say to them, 'Sleep on and take your rest.'" Late in September, 1779, Freneau shipped as super-cargo on the brig _Rebecca_, Captain Chatham, bound for the Azores. After an exciting voyage, during which they were several times chased by British ships, they arrived at Santa Cruz, in the island of Teneriffe, where they remained two months. A part of Freneau's notebook during this voyage has been preserved. It shows him to have been a careful and conscientious student of navigation, making each day an observation of his own and minutely tabulating his results. His cash account with the crew during the stay in the islands is interesting and suggestive. The early spring of 1780 was spent by the poet at the old home, but his mind was evidently tossing upon the ocean. He longed to visit again his beloved West Indies, and accordingly on the 25th of May he took passage at Philadelphia, in the ship _Aurora_, for St. Eustatia. Freneau's account of this voyage and its after results is still extant.[7] A few quotations will tell the story. "On the 25th of May, in beating down the Delaware Bay, we unfortunately retook a small sloop from the refugees loaded with corn, which hindered us from standing out to sea that night, whereby in all probability we should have avoided the enemy which afterwards captured us. "Friday morning, May 26. The air very smoky and the wind somewhat faintish, though it afterward freshened up. The wind was so that we stood off E.S.E., after putting the pilot on board the small sloop, handcuffing the prisoners, and sending the prize to Cape May. About three o'clock in the afternoon we discovered three sail bearing from us about E.N.E.; they were not more than five leagues from us when we discovered them from the foretop; at the same time we could see them from the quarter-deck. One appeared to be a pretty large ship, the other two brigs. We soon found they were in chase of us; we therefore tacked immediately, set all sail we could crowd, and stood back from the bay. My advice to the officers was to stand for Egg Harbor or any part of the Jersey shore, and run the ship on the flats, rather than be taken; but this was disregarded. We continued to stand in till we saw Cape Henlopen; the frigate, in the meantime, gaining on us apace; sun about half an hour high. We were abreast of the Cape, close in, when the wind took us aback, and immediately after we were becalmed; the ebb of the tide at the same time setting very strong out of the bay, so that we rather drifted out. Our design was, if possible, to get within the road around the point, and then run the ship on shore; but want of wind and the tide being against us, hindered from putting this into execution. We were now within three hundred yards of the shore. The frigate in the meantime ran in the bay to leeward of us about one-quarter of a mile (her distance from the Cape hindering it from becalming her as it did us) and began to bring her cannon to bear on us. Her two prizes hove to; one we knew to be the brig _Active_, Captain Mesnard; the other, as we afterward learned, was a Salem brig from the West Indies. The frigate was the _Iris_, returning from Charleston to New York, with the express of the former's being taken. We now began to fire upon each other at the distance of about three hundred yards. The frigate hulled us several times. One shot went betwixt wind and water, which made the ship leak amazingly, making twenty-four inches in thirty minutes. We found our four-pounders were but trifles against the frigate, so we got our nine-pounder, the only one we had, pointed from the cabin windows, with which we played upon the frigate for about half an hour. At last a twelve-pound shot came from the frigate, and, striking a parcel of oars lashed upon the starboard quarter, broke them all in two, and continuing its destructive course, struck Captain Laboyteaut in the right thigh, which it smashed to atoms, tearing part of his belly open at the same time with the splinters from the oars; he fell from the quarter-deck close by me, and for some time seemed very busily engaged in setting his legs to rights. He died about eleven the same night, and next day was sewed up in his hammock and sunk. Every shot seemed now to bring ruin with it. A lad named Steel had his arm broken and some others complained of slight wounds; whereupon, finding the frigate ready and in a position to give us a broadside, we struck, after having held a very unequal contest with her for about an hour.... As soon as we struck, one Squires with some midshipmen came on board and took possession of the vessel." Freneau at first supposed that, being a passenger, he would be taken with the prize to New York and there released; but despite his protests, he was driven into the barge with the other prisoners and taken to the _Iris_. All his baggage was left behind, and he was destined never to see it again. Arriving on board, the prisoners were driven between decks, where the air was hot and stifling. "There were about one hundred prisoners forward, the stench of whom was almost intolerable. So many melancholy sights and dismal countenances made it a pretty just representation of the infernal region. I marched through a torrent of cursing and blasphemy to my station, viz., at the blacksmith's vice, where the miserable prisoners were handcuffed two and two. At last it came my turn. 'Pray,' said I, 'is it your custom to handcuff passengers? The Americans, I am confident, never used the English so.' "'Are you a passenger?' said the blacksmith. At the same time happening to look up, I saw Hugh Ray looking steadily at me, who immediately seized my hand, and asked me how I did. 'Do you know him?' said Holmes, the master-at-arms. 'Then you are free from irons; come over among the gentlemen.' "This was an unexpected deliverance from a cursed disgrace which I hardly knew how I should get clear of. After this I was used well by everybody." On the 29th the _Iris_ reached New York and the common prisoners were sent to the prison ships in the harbor. Freneau, however, was retained with the officers. He had been promised his liberty at the first possible moment, but on Thursday, June 1st, at the Commissioner's office, the charge was brought by the second mate that Freneau had been among those stationed at the guns during the fight. He was refused parole, though he promised security in any amount up to ten thousand pounds, and the same day was placed on board the _Scorpion_ prison ship, "lying off the college in the North River." Freneau's experiences during his stay upon the _Scorpion_ have been described by him in graphic style in his poem, "The Prison Ship." "On the night of June 4th, thirty-five of the prisoners formed a design of making their escape, in which they were favored by a large schooner accidentally alongside of us. She was one that was destined for the expedition to Elizabeth Town, and anchored just astern of us. We were then suffered to continue upon deck, if we chose, till nine o'clock. We were all below at that time except the insurgents, who rushed upon the sentries and disarmed them in a moment; one they tied by his neck-stock to the quarter rails, and carried off his musquet with them (they were all Hessians); the rest they drove down with their arms into the cabin and rammed the sentry box down the companion in such a manner that no one could get it up or down. One, Murphy, possessed himself of Gauzoo's silver-hilted sword, and carried it off with him. When the sentries were all silent, they manned the ship's boat and boarded the schooner, though the people on board attempted to keep them off with handspikes. The wind blowing fresh at south and the flood of tide being made, they hoisted sail and were out of sight in a few minutes. Those particulars we learned from some who were on duty, but were unsuccessful in getting into the boat. As soon as the sentries got possession of the vessel again, which they had no difficulty in doing, as there was no resistance made, they posted themselves at each hatchway and most basely and cowardly fired fore and aft among us, pistols and musquets, for a full quarter of an hour without intermission. By the mercy of God they touched but four, one mortally.... After this no usage seemed severe enough for us." On June 22d, Freneau, who was weak with fever, was taken to the _Hunter_ hospital ship, lying in the East River. Here he languished with an intermittent fever, that threatened constantly to become "putrid" and fatal, until July 12th, when: "The flag came alongside and cleared the hospital ship. But the miseries we endured in getting to Elizabeth Town were many. Those that were very bad, of which the proportion was great, naturally took possession of the hold. No prisoner was allowed to go to the cabin, so that I, with twenty or thirty others, were obliged to sleep out all night, which was uncommonly cold for the season. About ten next morning we arrived at Elizabeth Town Point, where we were kept in the burning sun several hours, till the Commissary came to discharge us. "I was afflicted with such pains in my joints, I could scarcely walk, and besides was weakened with a raging fever; nevertheless I walked two miles to Elizabeth Town; here I got a passage in a wagon to within a mile of Crow's Ferry, which I walked; got a passage over the ferry and walked on as far as Molly Budleigh's, where I stayed all night. Next morning, having breakfasted on some bread and milk, I set homeward; when I came to Obadiah Budleigh's corner I turned to the right and came home round about through the woods, for fear of terrifying the neighbors with my ghastly looks had I gone through Mount Pleasant." Some days later he despatched the following note to his friend at Santa Cruz: "SIR:--I take this opportunity to inform you that instead of arriving, as I fondly promised myself, at the fragrant groves and delectable plains of Santa Cruz, to enjoy the fruits and flowers of that happy clime, I was unfortunately taken and confined on board a prison ship at New York, and afterwards in a Hospital Ship, where the damnable draughts of a German doctor afforded far different feelings to my stomach than the juice of the orange or more nourishing milk of the cocoa." IV. On April 25, 1781, there was established in Philadelphia a new weekly newspaper, the _Freeman's Journal or North American Intelligencer_, which was to be "open to all parties but influenced by none," and which had for its object "To encourage genius, to deter vice, and disrobe tyranny and misrule of every plumage." The proprietor and printer of this paper was Mr. Francis Bailey, who not long before had removed his office from Lancaster, Pa. The editor and ruling spirit, although his name during three years did not once appear in its columns, was Philip Freneau. The mark of the young poet is upon every page. Its opening editorial, which was from his pen, sounded a note that was not once lowered or weakened while he was in control. "At no period of time, in no era of important events from the first establishment of social government, have the liberties of man, have the rights even of human nature, been more deeply interested than at the time in which we presume to address you. While Liberty, the noblest ornament of society, and without which no community can be well organized, seemed to pine and sicken under the trammels of despotic restraint in every one of the ancient nations of the earth, it fairly promises to resume its pristine majesty here, and the new world begins to emerge from the fangs and tyranny of the old.... One of the first sources of her decline in those countries where she last resided spring from the wanton and unhallowed restraints which the jealous arm of despotism hath imposed on the freedom of the press.... "That freemen may be made acquainted with the real state of their affairs, and that the characters of their public servants, both individually and collectively, be made manifest, is our object. With this patriotic view, and under the tutelage of law and the constitution, has the subscriber opened a Free Press, universally free to every citizen indiscriminately, whose principles coincide with those of the Revolution, and whose object is confessedly known to point at public or private good." From this time until June, 1784, Freneau resided principally in Philadelphia, and edited the journal. During all of this time his muse was exceedingly active. He followed carefully the last years of the war, and put into satiric verse every movement of the "insolent foe." He sang the victory of Jones, and mourned in plaintive numbers the dead at Eutaw Springs. He voiced his indignation over the destructive career of Cornwallis, and burst into a _Laus Deo_ at his fall. The ludicrous plight of Rivington and Gaine, the distress of the Tories, and the final departure of the British filled him with glee, which he poured out in song after song. It was his most prolific and spontaneous period. He wrote, too, an abundance of prose. The series of graceful papers entitled "The Pilgrim" is from his pen, besides many a political study and literary sketch signed with a sounding name. Everywhere are manifest his love of true literature and his desire to lead a merely literary life, but here and there are notes of discouragement. "Barbers cannot possibly exist as such," he writes, "among a people who have neither hair nor beards. How, then, can a poet hope for success in a city where there are not three persons possessed of elegant ideas?" During the year 1783 Freneau's pen was very busy in various lines of work. It is probable that he assisted Bailey in many ways,--writing introductions to publications issued by the office and performing the various other duties incumbent upon the literary editor of a publishing house. During this year he translated the "New Travels through North America," which had just been issued by the Abbé Robin, one of the chaplains of the French Army in America, and the translation was issued first by Bailey and later by Powers and Willis of Boston. Freneau's introduction is characteristic: "Most of those accounts of North America, given to the public by British explorators and others, previous to the Revolution, are generally taken up, with the recitals of wonderful adventures, in the woods beyond the Lakes, or with the Histories and records of the wild Indian nations, so that by the time the reader gets through one of those performances, he never fails to be better acquainted with the _Ottagnies_, _Chereokees_, _Miamees_, _Nadouwessians_, and a hundred others, with their various customs of _paw-wawing_, or methods of making _wampum_, than with the most interesting particulars relative to the _inhabitants_ of the then colonies _these_ were but rarely thought worthy mentioning by those gentlemen, and when they are, it is mortifying enough to see them constantly considered as mere beasts of burden, calculated solely for the support of the grandeur, wealth and omnipotence of Great-Britain, than as men and Free-Men. "Our French Author is more liberal--two years before the present peace he considered the United States as a great independent nation, advancing with hasty strides to the summit of power and sovereignty." It was during this year that the poet, for the first time, met with positive opposition and abuse. Oswald, the editor of the newly established _Gazette_, quarrelled with Bailey, and a poetical battle was one phase of the contest. The details of this affair will be found in the proper place, and I need not recount them here, but suffice it to say that Freneau soon found his muse assailed by the meanest of all critics. His extremely sensitive nature could brook no criticism. His Celtic temperament could fight fiercely in the presence of an open foe, but it was easily depressed and discouraged by criticism and covert attack. He lost heart in his work, and at the end of the third volume he quietly withdrew from his editorship. The three volumes of the _Journal_ which bear his impress are notable for their vigor of policy, their high ideals, their unswerving patriotism, and their real literary merit. It is to be hoped that a selection from Freneau's prose writings during this critical era in our history may sometime be made. Nowhere else can we gain so distinct a picture of the man, with his sanguine, impetuous temperament, his proud spirit, and his intense hatred of every form of tyranny. He wrote vigorously not only on British oppression, but on such topics as the wrongs of negro slavery, cruelty to animals, the wanton destruction of trees, the evils of intemperance, and the rights of woman. The "Epistle to Sylvius" was his valedictory. In it he deplores the lack of literary taste in America, and the sad fate which has befallen his youthful poetic dreams. The age is grown mercantile, and Sejanus the mighty tradesman,-- "Sejanus has in house declared 'These States, as yet, can boast no bard, And all the sing-song of our clime Is merely nonsense fringed with rhyme.'" A bard with more Teutonic blood, if he knew within himself that he was indeed a poet, and the only real poet of his time, would have staid at his post and made himself heard, despite narrow criticism and mean abuse, but Freneau was too proud to fight for recognition. The people had crowned him, to be sure, but if the critics, those who should be the real judges, rejected him, he would strive no longer. He would leave the field. "Then, Sylvius, come--let you and I On Neptune's aid, once more rely: Perhaps the muse may still impart The balm to ease the aching heart. Though cold might chill and storms dismay, Yet Zoilus will be far away." On June 24, 1784, Freneau sailed from Middletown Point as master of the brig _Dromilly_, bound for Jamaica. The voyage was indeed a memorable one. On the night of July 30, while off the end of the island, the ship encountered a violent hurricane. According to contemporary accounts, "No more than eight out of one hundred and fifty sail of vessels in the ports of Kingston and Port Royal were saved." The _Dromilly_ survived the storm, but it was a mere wreck when the next morning it crept into Kingston Harbor. Freneau remained in Jamaica until September 24, when he left for Philadelphia in the brig _Mars_, arriving November 4. His experiences in trying to fit out the wrecked _Dromilly_ are not recorded, but the one incident of his poetic reply to the keeper of the King's water works, who had refused him a puncheon of water, is characteristic. From this time until 1790, Freneau's life is redolent of the ocean. A complete itinerary of this wandering era may be compiled from the shipping news of the various seaport newspapers, but it is useless to go into details. He was master for a time of the sloop _Monmouth_, plying for freight between Charleston, S. C., New York, and Savannah. His brother Peter, in Charleston, had become a man not only of influence, but of means, and together they owned the vessel and shared its profits. For several years advertisements like this appeared in the Charleston papers: "For freight to any part of this State or Georgia; for charter in any free port in the West Indies, the sloop _Monmouth_, Philip Freneau, Master, burden about 40 tons. She is new, stanch, well-formed and draws six feet when loaded. Will carry about one hundred barrels of rice. For further particulars inquire of said master on board at Mrs. Motte's wharf or Peter Freneau." On the 1st of June, 1786, there was issued from Bailey's press the first collected edition of Freneau's poetry. During the entire year its author was at sea almost continuously. It is evident that he had little to do with the edition. The copy furnished to Bailey consisted of the manuscript of a few early poems, revised copies of the 1775 pamphlets, and corrected and enlarged versions of his contributions to the _United States Magazine_. The bulk of the book is made up of Freneau's contributions to the _Freeman's Journal_, printed _seriatim_ and without change. The poem "Rivington's Confessions" is even divided into two parts, with another poem between, as it first appeared in the paper. An index of the poetry in the first four volumes of the _Journal_ is a nearly perfect index of the 1786 edition, after the poem "The Prison Ship." Bailey wrote for the edition the following introduction: "The pieces now collected and printed in the following sheets, were left in my hands, by the author, above a year ago, with permission to publish them whenever I thought proper. A considerable number of the performances contained in this volume, as many will recollect, have appeared at different times in Newspapers (particularly the Freeman's Journal) and other periodical publications in the different States of America, during the late war, and since; and from the avidity and pleasure with which they generally appear to have been read by persons of the best taste, the Printer now the more readily gives them to the world in their present form, (without troubling the reader with any affected apologies for their supposed or real imperfections) in hopes they will afford a high degree of satisfaction to the lovers of poetical wit, and elegance of expression." This edition is the most spontaneous and poetic of the poet's works. In it we see Freneau before he has lost his early poetic dream, before he has become hardened by close contact with the world of affairs and the cold, practical round of political life. This and the 1788 edition contain by far the most valuable part of his poetic work. In those days before the invention of book reviews, the fate of a book turned largely upon its immediate reception by the reading public. Criticism was by word of mouth: the poems were discussed in polite circles and over the morning coffee. Thus we have nothing to quote to show how America received her bard. We know, however, that the poems were successful even beyond Bailey's expectations. In less than five months he was out with proposals for "an additional collection of entertaining original performances in prose and verse by Philip Freneau." The book was to be published as soon as five hundred subscribers could be secured, and the subscribers' names were to be printed at the beginning of the volume. "Such persons as are disposed to encourage American authors (particularly at a time when we are surfeited with stale publications retailed to us from British presses) and are not unwilling to be known as promoters of polite literature and the fine arts in these Republican States are requested to deliver in their names." One bit of contemporary praise, however, has been preserved. On June 8th, one week after the appearance of Freneau's first volume, Col. Parke of Philadelphia composed the following, which was first published in the _Journal_ of June 21st, and afterward included in his volume of "The Lyric Works of Horace, ... to which are added a Number of Original Poems," issued later in the year: "To Mr. PHILIP FRENEAU, on his Volume of excellent POEMS, Printed by Mr. BAILEY. "_Difficile est Satiram non Scribere._"--_Juv._ "Tho' I know not your person, I well know your merit, Your satires admire--your muse of true spirit; Who reads them must smile at poetical story Except the k--g's printer, or some such like tory; Sir William, sir Harry, and would-be sir John, Cornwallis, the devil, those bucks of the ton; Black Dunmore and Wallace with sun-setting nose, Who steak hogs and sheep, secure--_under the Rose_.[A] But a fig for the anger of such petty rogues, To the devil we pitch them without shoes or brogues! "Pythag'ras' choice scheme my belief now controuls, I sign to his creed--transmigration of souls; Euphorbas's shield he no doubt did employ, And bravely let blood on the plains of old Troy: The souls of great Marlbro' and warlike Eugene Conspicuous in Washington's glory are seen: Sage Pluto beams wisdom from Franklin's rich brain, And sky-taught sir Isaac[B] is seen here again. But Hugh when he migrates may daily be found Cracking bones in a kitchen in form of a hound; When his compeer shall die--while no Christian shall weep him, Old Pluto, below, for a devil will keep him; Unless he's sent up on some hasty dispatch, The whigs to abuse, and more falsehoods to hatch. Thou red-jerkin'd fops, whom your muse I've heard sing From Hounslow's bold heroes successively spring; From Tyburn they tumble as supple as panders, Then migrate straightway into knights and commanders. But you, worthy poet, whose soul-cutting pen In gall paints the crimes of all time-serving men, The fiend of corruption, the wretch of an hour, The star-garter'd villain, the scoundrel in pow'r, From souls far unlike may announce your ascension, The patriot all-worthy, above bribe or pension, The martyr who suffered for liberty's sake Grim dungeons, more horrid than hell's bitter lake: Your name to bright honor, the spirits shall lift, That glow'd in the bosoms of Churchill and Swift. "And when you are number'd, alas! with the dead, Your works by true wits will forever be read, Who, pointing the finger, shall pensively shew The lines that were written, alas! by Freneau." _Philadelphia, June 8, 1786._ [A] He commanded the _Rose_ sloop. [B] David Rittenhouse, Esq., the Ingenious inventor of the celebrated perpendicular Orrery. The second volume of poems did not appear promptly. One year after the first proposals, Bailey advertised that the book was at last in press. "An unusual hurry of other business (of a nature not to be postponed), has unavoidably delayed the printer in its publication to so late a period." It is notable that of the four hundred and sixty-three subscribers, two hundred and fifty, or over half, were in Charleston, S. C., and one hundred and twenty-six in New York. Philadelphia subscribed for very few of the volumes. The printer's advertisement was as follows: "The following Essays and Poems, selected from some printed and manuscript papers of Mr. Freneau, are now presented to the public of the United Slates in hopes they will prove at least equally acceptable with his volume of poems published last year. Some few of the pieces in this volume have heretofore appeared in American newspapers; but through a fatality, not unusually attending publications of that kind, are now, perhaps, forgotten; and, at any time, may possibly never have been seen or attended to but by very few." Of the forty-nine poems in the volume, one, "Slender's Journey," had been published separately by Bailey early in 1787, and nearly half of the others had first seen the light between April, 1786, and January, 1788, in the columns of the _Freeman's Journal_. The greater number of the others were doubtless printed from the poet's manuscripts. A few of the prose papers, like "The Philosopher of the Forest," were selected from the columns of the _Journal_, especially from the series entitled "The Pilgrim," but much of the rest was from the poet's manuscripts now first published. In the meantime the poet was leading a stormy and adventurous career upon the sea. As master of the sloop _Industry_, and later of the schooner _Columbia_, plying irregularly on all kinds of coastwise voyages between Georgia and New York, he experienced every phase of life upon the ocean. As a sample of his adventurous career during this period, note the following letter[8] to Bailey, written from Norfolk, Va., in the summer of 1788: "_Norfolk, Virginia, August 6, 1788._ "_Mr._ BAILEY, "I have the mortification to inform you that, after leaving New-York on the 21st of July, I had the misfortune to have my vessel dismasted, thrown on her beam ends, shifted and ruined the bulk of her cargo, lost every sail, mast, spar, boat, and almost every article upon deck, on the Wednesday afternoon following, in one of the hardest gales that ever blew upon this coast. Capt. William Cannon, whom I think you know, who was going passenger with me to Charleston, and Mr. Joseph Stillwell, a lad of a reputable family in New-Jersey, were both washed overboard and drowned, notwithstanding every effort to save them. All my people besides, except one, an old man who stuck fast in one of the scuttles, were several times overboard, but had the fortune to regain the wreck, and with considerable difficulty save their lives.--As to myself, I found the vessel no longer under any guidance--I took refuge in the main weather shrouds, where indeed I saved myself from being washed into the sea, but was almost staved to pieces in a violent fall I had upon the main deck, the main-mast having given way six feet above the deck, and gone overboard--I was afterward knocked in the head by a violent stroke of the tiller, which entirely deprived me of sensation for (I was told) near a quarter of an hour.--Our pumps were now so choaked with corn that they would no longer work, upward of four feet of water was in the hold, fortunately our bucket was saved, and with this we went to baling, which alone prevented us from foundering in one of the most dismal nights that ever man witnessed. "The next morning the weather had cleared away and the wind came round to the N. E. which during the gale had been E. N. E.--the land was then in sight, about 5 miles distant, latitude at noon 36-17, I then rigged out a broken boom, and set the fore top-sail, the only sail remaining, and steered for cape Henry; making however but very little way, the vessel being very much on one side and ready to sink with her heavy cargo of iron, besides other weighty articles. We were towed in next day, Friday, by the friendly assistance of capt. Archibald Bell, of the ship Betsey, from London--I have since arrived at this port by the assistance of a Potowmac pilot.--Nothing could exceed our distress--no fire, no candle, our beds soaked with sea water, the cabbin torn to pieces, a vast quantity of corn damaged and poisoning us to death, &c. &c. &c. As we entered this port, on the 29th of July, the very dogs looked at us with an eye of commiseration--the negros pitied us, and almost every one shewed a disposition to relieve us. In the midst of all this vexation the crew endeavoured to keep up their spirits with a little grog, while I have recourse to my old expedient of philosophy and reflection. I have unloaded my cargo, partly damaged, partly otherwise--This day I also begin to refit my vessel, and mean to proceed back to New-York as soon as refitted, which cannot be sooner than the 25th, perhaps the 30th of this month. It is possible, however, that I may be ordered to sell the vessel here; if so, I shall take a passage to Baltimore, and go to New-York by the way of Philadelphia, to look out for another more fortunate barque than that which I now command. Your's &c. PHILIP FRENEAU." I cannot forbear quoting another letter[9] written nearly a year later, since it gives us a charming glimpse of the Freneau of this period: "Yamacraw, Savanna, March 14th, 1789. "SIR: Amongst a number of my good natured acquaintance, who have lately sympathized with me, on account of what they term my misfortunes, during great part of last year, I know of no one more entitled to my acknowledgments, on the occasion, than yourself. When an old woman talks of witches, ghosts, or blue devils, we naturally make an allowance for bad education, or the imbicility of intellect, occasioned by age. When one man seriously supposes another unfortunate, for the sake of two or three successive disasters, which no prudence or foresight could have avoided, the same allowance ought to be made, provided the same excuses could be assigned. "Can you be serious, then in advising me to quit all future intercourse with an element, that has for some years, with all its dangers and losses, afforded to your humble servant attractions, far more powerful than those of Apollo! Formerly, when I wrote poetry, most of those that attended to it, would not allow my verses to be good. I gave credit to what I deemed the popular opinion, and made a safe retreat in due time, to the solitary wastes of Neptune. I am not, however, inclined to believe people so readily now, when they alledge my vessel is not sound, and when several gentlemen, for reasons best known to themselves, and perhaps not over willing to risque the uncertainties of the world to come, effect to doubt of her ability to waft their carcases in safety. But my ambition is greatly concerned in this matter: a schooner is confided to my care, humble, indeed, when compared to those lofty piles which I have seen you so much admire, but which is, nevertheless, really capable of an European, nay of an India voyage. Read all history, ransack libraries, call tradition to your aid, search all records, examine a million of manuscripts on vellum, on parchment, on paper, on marble, on what you please, and I defy you to find the most distant hint of any _poet_, in any age or country, from Hesiod down to Peter Pindar, having been trusted with the controul or possession of anything fit to be mentioned or compared with the same barque, which you say, _I have the misfortune to command._ "To be serious: misfortune ought to be only the topic of such men as do not think or reason with propriety, upon the nature of things. Some writer says, it is but another name for carelessness or inattention: Though that may not at all times be the case, it is in the power of every man to place himself beyond the supposed baneful influence of this inexorable deity, by _assuming_ a dignity of mind, (if it be not the gift of nature) that will, in the end, get the better of the untoward events, that may frequently cross our best purposes. Indeed, the _sea_ is the _best_ school for philosophy (I mean of the moral kind); in thirteen or fourteen years' acquaintance with this element, I am convinced a man ought to imbibe more of your right genuine _stoical_ stuff, than could be gained in half a century on shore.--I must add that, be our occupations what they may, or our fortunes what they will, there is a certain delectable, inexpressible satisfaction in now and then encountering the rubs and disasters of life, and I am entirely of the opinion which (says Dr. Langhorne) "Weakness wrote in Petrarch's gentle strain, When once he own'd at love's unfavouring shrine _A thousand pleasures art not worth one pain_!" "I must now conclude this scrawl, with telling you, that I am receiving on board my vessel a small cargo of lumber, at a place called Yamacraw, a little above Savanna. The weather is extremely warm, I am tired of my letter, and must, of course, conclude. I do not know whether you ever mean to make a voyage to sea--if you should, thrice welcome shall you be to such accommodations as my little embarkation affords. Poets and philosophers, shall ever travel with me at a cheap rate indeed! Not only because they are not generally men of this world, but because, even supposing the barque that bears them, should make an external exit to the bottom of the ocean, the busy world, as things go, will regret the loss of most of them very little, perhaps not at all. Your's, &c., P. FRENEAU." On the 24th of April, 1789, when Washington arrived in New York to enter upon the duties of the presidency, in the fleet that accompanied him from Elizabethtown Point was the schooner _Columbia_, Capt. Freneau, eight days from Charleston. In June the _Columbia_ again entered New York Harbor, and on December 28th she was at Sunbury, Georgia. On February 12th, 1790, Freneau arrived in New York, passenger from Middletown Point in the brig _Betsy_, Capt. Motley, to become editor of Child and Swaine's _New York Daily Advertiser_. For several months negotiations had been pending. Every appearance of the poet in New York for a year past had been marked by a small budget of poems in the _Advertiser_ from the pen of "Capt. Freneau," but it was not until February, 1790, that he was induced to leave his beloved _Columbia_ and settle down to a life upon shore. The poem "Neversink," written some months later, is his valedictory to the ocean. "Proud heights: with pain so often seen (With joy beheld once more) On your firm base I take my stand, Tenacious of the shore: Let those who pant for wealth or fame Pursue the watery road;-- Soft sleep and ease, blest days and nights, And health, attend these favoring heights, Retirement's blest abode." The poem "Constantia" may record the poet's reasons for leaving the ocean, for on the 19th of May, 1790, there appeared in Peter Freneau's Charleston paper, the _City Gazette_, _or the Daily Advertiser_, the following: "_Married_, on the fifteenth of April, at Middletown Point, East New Jersey, Capt. Philip Freneau to Miss Eleanor Forman, daughter of Mr. Samuel Forman, of that place." The Forman family with which the poet allied himself was one of great respectability and even prominence in New Jersey. Its record during the Revolution had been a conspicuous one, and its connection included the Ledyards, the Seymours, and many other prominent families. Mrs. Freneau, in the words of her daughter, "was remarkable for her gentle, lady-like manners, amiable disposition and finely informed mind. She was affable and sprightly in her conversation, and there were, even when she had reached the advanced age of eighty-seven, few handsomer women." In her early years she dabbled a little in poetry herself, and there is a tradition in the family that the prenuptial correspondence was for a long time wholly in verse. Freneau was now fairly settled in life, and for the next seven or eight years he was engaged almost continuously in newspaper work. V. During the next year and more Freneau, as editor of the _Daily Advertiser_, brought to bear upon the paper all the vigor and literary skill which had so marked the _Freeman's Journal_. The tone of the editorial comment was patriotic and spirited. The note of reform, of opposition to everything that was degrading to high ideals, or that in any way threatened personal liberty, was never absent. Despite the manifold duties incumbent upon the editor of a city daily, he found time to write finished prose sketches and to woo the muses. His poetry of this period is notable both as to quantity and quality. Some of it was drawn from the notebooks of his years of wandering, but the greater part dealt with more timely topics. In June he published the advertisement: "Mr. Freneau proposes publishing a volume of original poems, to contain about two hundred and fifty pages, 12mo, neatly printed.... As soon as there appears a sufficiency of subscribers to defray the expenses of paper and printing, the collection shall be put to press." Judging from several poems of this period which were printed as from the author's new volume, "The Rising Empire," this was to be the title of the book. The advertisement was dropped in October, and "The Rising Empire" never appeared, though most of its poems were printed in the edition of 1795. On September 20, 1791, Freneau's daughter, Eleanor, was born at Mount Pleasant. His salary as editor of the _Advertiser_ was not large; the little family, it appears, was in straightened circumstances. A letter[10] from Aedanus Burke of Charleston to Madison, dated September 13, 1801, throws light upon the period. "I remember, it was about the last fortnight that we served together in Congress, in 1791, I one day called you aside, and mentioned the name of Mr. Phillip Freneau to you, as one I knew you esteemed, and then lay strugling under difficulties, with his family. My memory brings to my recollection, that you mentioned the matter to the Secretary of State, Mr. Jefferson. Freneau was invited from N. York, and had the place of interpreter, with a mere trifle of Salary. Little did William Smith know, that you were the author or cause of bringing Freneau from New York; or he might have turned against you, his terrible battery of the slanders and invectives which he poured forth against Mr. Jefferson for three or four years afterwards." Madison acted promptly. On the 28th of February, 1791, Jefferson wrote to Freneau as follows: "SIR: The clerkship for foreign languages in my office is vacant the salary indeed is very low, being but two hundred & fifty dollars a year; but also it gives so little to do as not to interfere with any other calling the person may chuse, which would not absent him from the seat of government. I was told a few days ago that it might perhaps be convenient to you to accept it--if so, it is at your service. It requires no other qualification than a moderate knowledge of the French. Should anything better turn up within my department that might suit you, I should be very happy to bestow it as well. Should you conclude to accept the present, you may consider it as engaged to you, only be so good as to drop me a line informing me of your resolution. I am with great esteem, Sir, Your very humble serv't, TH. JEFFERSON." Freneau's letter in reply has been lost. On May 1st, however, Madison wrote Jefferson, so that we may gather its import: "I have seen Freneau also and given him a line to you. He sets out for Philada. today or tomorrow, though it is not improbable that he may halt in N. Jersey. He is in the habit, I find, of translating the Leyden _Gazette_ and consequently must be fully equal to the task you have alloted for him. He had supposed that besides this degree of skill, it might be expected that he should be able to translate with equal propriety into French: and under this idea, his delicacy had taken an insuperable objection to the undertaking. Being now set right as to this particular and being made sensible of the advantages of Philada. over N. Jersey for his private undertaking, his mind is taking another turn; and if the scantiness of his capital should not be a bar, I think he will establish himself in the former. At all events he will give his friends there an opportunity of aiding his decision by their information & counsel. The more I learn of his character, talents and principles, the more I should regret his burying himself in the obscurity he had chosen in N. Jersey. It is certain that there is not to be found in the whole catalogue of American Printers, a single name that can approach towards a rivalship." Jefferson replied on May 9th: "Your favor of the 1st came to hand on the 3d. Mr. Freneau has not followed it. I suppose therefore he has changed his mind back again, for which I am really sorry." That Jefferson had made overtures to Freneau about the establishing of a paper at the seat of government, or at least had discussed the matter with those who had, is evident from the following letter written to his son-in-law, Randolph, six days later: "I enclose you Bache's as well as Fenno's papers. You will have perceived that the latter is a paper of pure Toryism, disseminating the doctrines of Monarchy, aristocracy, & the exclusion of the people. We have been trying to get another _weekly_ or _half weekly_ set up, excluding advertisements, so that it might go through the states & furnish a _whig vehicle_ of intelligence. We hoped at one time to have persuaded Freneau to set up here, but failed." It is a testimonial to the energy and the ability of Freneau that leaders like Madison and Jefferson should have sought him so persistently. Notwithstanding Freneau's refusal, Jefferson, on July 21st, wrote to Madison: "I am sincerely sorry that Freneau has declined coming here. Tho' the printing business be sufficiently full here, yet I think he would have set out on such advantageous ground as to have been sure of success. His own genius in the first place is so superior to that of his competitors. I should have given him the perusal of all my letters of foreign intelligence & all foreign newspapers; the publication of all proclamations & other public notices within my department, & the printing of the laws, which added to his salary would have been a considerable aid. Besides this, Fenno's being the only weekly, or half weekly paper, & under general condemnation for its toryism & its incessant efforts to overturn the government, Freneau would have found that ground as good as unoccupied." This being brought to Freneau's attention, he determined to hold out no longer. On July 25th he wrote to Madison from Middletown Point: "Some business detains me here a day or two longer from returning to New York. When I come, which I expect will be on Thursday, if you should not have left the City, I will give you a decisive answer relative to printing my paper at the Seat of Govt. instead of in N. York. If I can get Mr. Childs to be connected with me on a tolerable plan, I believe I shall sacrifice other considerations and transfer myself to Philadelphia." Mr. Francis Childs, who was one of the proprietors of the _Advertiser_, as we have already seen, agreed to the enterprise, and the following document was soon signed: "DEPARTMENT OF STATE OF THE UNITED STATES. "Philip Freneau is hereby appointed Clerk for foreign languages in the office of Secretary of State with a salary of two hundred & fifty dollars a year, to commence from the time he shall take the requisite oaths of qualification. Given under my hand and seal this 16th day of August 1791. TH. JEFFERSON." I have considered this episode somewhat minutely since it throws light upon what follows. The first number of _The National Gazette_ appeared on Monday, October 31st. It was issued Mondays and Thursdays. Its typography and arrangement were neat and attractive; its news columns were well filled, and its literary department was carefully attended to. Its success was all that had been predicted by Madison. On May 7, 1792, the editor announced that the subscription to the _Gazette_ had succeeded beyond his most sanguine expectations. The period covered by the two years of the _National Gazette_ was one of singular unrest in America. The French Revolution was in progress; everything seemed tottering. America believed that all Europe was soon to cast off its chains of monarch; she believed that the torch of the Rights of Man had been lighted in America, and she looked with almost paternal interest on the progress of the Revolution. In his poetical salutatory in the first number of the _Gazette_, Freneau writes: "From the spark that we kindled, a flame has gone forth To astonish the world and enlighten mankind: With a code of new doctrines the universe rings, And Paine is addressing strange sermons to Kings." The columns of the _Gazette_ are full of ringing words on the Rights of Man, the Age of Reason, the final doom of monarchy. In poem after poem the editor pours out his sympathy for republicanism and the cause of the French insurgents. That the French had been largely instrumental in the gaining of our own independence, increased the interest. "On the Fourteenth of July," "On the French Republicans," "On the Anniversary of the Storming of the Bastile," "Ode to Liberty," and "Demolition of the French Monarchy," are a few of the poems that Freneau poured forth during this incendiary period. It is significant that he included none of these verses in his edition of 1809. That he was honest to the core in his belief cannot for a moment be doubted. His impulsive Celtic temperament threw his whole soul into his work. "Ah! while I write, dear France allied, My ardent wish I scarce restrain, To throw these sybil leaves aside And fly to join you on the main." The frenzy among the American Republicans culminated with the arrival of Citizen Genet, in 1793. At the Republican dinner given Genet, May 18th, Citizen Freneau was elected by acclamation to translate Pichon's ode. On June 1st, at the civic feast, Freneau's ode, "God Save the Rights of Man," was received with thunderous applause. One must study carefully this incendiary period of Freneau's life before he can understand fully the much discussed episode of the _National Gazette_. The wine of French Republicanism was sadly intoxicating. It could make Freneau write such a stanza as this: "_Virtue, Order and Religion_, Haste, and seek some other region; Your plan is fixed to hunt them down, Destroy the mitre, rend the gown, And that vile b-tc-h--Philosophy--restore, Did ever paper plan so much before?" And then explain it by saying that "_The National Gazette_ is the vehicle of party spleen and opposition to the great principles of order, virtue and religion." In view of all this, it is not strange that he should have been impatient with the conservative party, who not only did not grow enthusiastic over the French Revolution, but even looked upon it with actual disapprobation. From the very first, the editor of the _Gazette_ criticised the leading Federalists, especially Adams and Hamilton, and he even mildly rebuked Washington, the hero of his earlier muse. The administration, in his mind, was leaning toward monarchial ideas. Washington, in his opinion, had exceeded his power in the matter of the banks, and the precedent was a dangerous one. The ceremonials with which the President had hedged himself about were greatly at variance with simple democratic ideas; and, to crown all, the ingratitude of the administration (to the extremists it could have no other name) in its attitude toward Genet and the French people hurt him deeply. I believe that Freneau was fundamentally honest in his position. It is almost impossible to believe that a note like this, in the _Jersey Chronicle_ of 1795, is not sincere: "The conduct of the Federal Executive of this country toward the Republic of France, so far as it may appear inimical, has given great and general disgust to the citizens of the United States.... It would be well if some that might be mentioned would recollect the nation that supported us in the late war when our infant Republic was on the point of annihilation. Enmity to France is treason against Republicanism." In regard to Adams, who had danced at the King's ball in a scarlet suit, and Hamilton, the father of the Federalists, Freneau had no scruples. The attacks of the _Gazette_ became more and more pointed with every issue, though much of the more incendiary matter was not from Freneau's pen. The "Probationary Odes," for instance, attributed to him by contemporary enemies, and in later years quoted by Buckingham and Duyckinck as from his pen, were written by St. George Tucker. They were published in book form by Tucker in 1796. In the sensitive state of party politics at this time, such frank criticism could not fail to raise a tempest of rebuttal and of counter abuse. It was soon noted that the _Gazette_, in its attacks upon the administration, spared the State department. Jefferson was never mentioned except for praise. The inference was obvious: either he had "muzzled" the paper by granting it certain favors, or he was making use of it as a weapon against the very administration of which he was a member. Hamilton naturally inclined toward the latter view, and much bitterness was the result. On July 25, 1792, he inserted this anonymous bit in _Fenno's Gazette of the United States_, the Federalist organ: "The Editor of the _National Gazette_ receives a salary from Government: "Quere--Whether this salary is paid him for _translations_; or for _publications_, the design for which is to vilify those to whom the voice of the people has committed the administration of our public affairs--to oppose the measures of Government, and, by false insinuations, to disturb the public peace? "In common life it is thought ungrateful for a man to bite the hand that puts bread in his mouth; but if the man is hired to do it, the case is altered. T. L." This was the beginning of a series of anonymous attacks in the Federalist newspaper, written undoubtedly by Hamilton. A second article, still more definite, appeared on August 4th. In it the writer directly charged Jefferson with being the soul and spirit of the _National Gazette_. "Mr. Freneau was thought a fit instrument," and so was deliberately engaged; he was simply the "faithful and devoted servant of the head of a party from whose hands he received a boon." The article then proceeds at length to arraign Jefferson and to appeal to the American people, whether they will consent to see the precious legacies which are theirs "frittered away" in so shameless a manner. This attack called forth (from Freneau) an affidavit which was printed in the _Gazette_, August 8, 1792: "Personally appeared before me, Matthew Clarkson, Mayor of the City of Philadelphia, Philip Freneau, of the City of Philadelphia, who, being duly sworn, doth depose and say, That no negociation was ever opened with him by Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State, for the establishment or institution of the _National Gazette_: that the deponent's coming to the City of Philadelphia, as publisher of a Newspaper, was at no time urged, advised, or influenced by the above officer, but that it was his own voluntary act; and that the said Gazette, nor the Editor thereof, was ever directed, controuled, or attempted to be influenced, in any manner, either by the Secretary of State, or any of his friends; nor was a line ever, directly or indirectly, written, dictated, or composed for it by that officer, but that the Editor has consulted his own judgment alone in the conducting of it--free--unfettered--and uninfluenced. "PHILIP FRENEAU. "Sworn the 6th August, 1772, before "MATTHEW CLARKSON, Mayor." Hamilton followed, August 11th, with another article. He emphatically discredited Freneau's oath, declaring that "facts spoke louder than words, and under certain circumstances louder than oaths;" that "the editor of the _National Gazette_ must not think to swear away their efficacy;" that "if he was truly, as they announced, the pensioned tool of the public character who had been named, no violation of truth in any shape ought to astonish; equivocations and mental reservations were the too common refuge of minds struggling to escape from disgraceful imputations." The article then proceeded to show that Jefferson did really establish the _Gazette_ through a particular friend. Freneau at once declined to answer further the attacks, on the ground that they were mere "personal charges," and Hamilton promptly branded this as "a mere subterfuge." Thus Freneau found himself in the midst of a perfect hornet's nest of partisan strife that involved the country from end to end. The Federal organ continued its attacks, and Freneau, always restive under criticism, increased in bitterness. On September 9, 1792, Jefferson put himself on record in a letter to Washington.[11] The letter is extremely long, since it covers the entire contest with Hamilton from the beginning. In it he declared: "While the Government was at New York I was applied to on behalf of Freneau to know if there was any place within my department to which he could be appointed. I answered there were but four clerkships, all of which I found full, and continued without any change. When we removed to Philadelphia, Mr. Pintard, the translating clerk, did not choose to remove with us. His office then became vacant. I was again applied to there for Freneau, and had no hesitation to promise the clerkship for him. I cannot recollect whether it was at the same time, or afterwards, that I was told he had a thought of setting up a newspaper there. But whether then, or afterwards, I considered it a circumstance of some value, as it might enable me to do, what I had long wished to have done, that is, to have the material parts of the Leyden Gazette brought under your eye, and that of the public, in order to possess yourself and them of a juster view of the affairs of Europe than could be obtained from any other public source. This I had ineffectually attempted through the press of Mr. Fenno, while in New York, selecting and translating passages myself at first, then having it done by Mr. Pintard, the translating clerk, but they found their way too slowly into Mr. Fenno's papers. Mr. Bache essayed it for me in Philadelphia, but his being a daily paper, did not circulate sufficiently in the other States. He even tried, at my request, the plan of a weekly paper of recapitulation from his daily paper, in hopes, that that might go into the other States, but in this too we failed. Freneau, as translating clerk, and the printer of a periodical paper likely to circulate through the States (uniting in one person the parts of Pintard and Fenno) revived my hopes that the thing could at length be effected. On the establishment of his paper, therefore, I furnished him with the Leyden Gazettes, with an expression of my wish that he could always translate and publish the material intelligence they contained, and have continued to furnish them from time to time, as regularly as I received them. But as to any other direction or indication of my wish how his press should be conducted, what sort of intelligence he should give, what essays encourage, I can protest, in the presence of Heaven that I never did by myself, or any other, or indirectly, say a syllable, nor attempt any kind of influence. I can further protest, in the same awful presence, that I never did, by myself, or any other, directly or indirectly, write, dictate or procure any one sentence or sentiment to be inserted _in his_, _or any other gazette_, to which my name was not affixed, or that of my office.... Freneau's proposition to publish a paper, having been about the time that the writings of Publicola, and the discourses on Davila, had a good deal excited the public attention, I took for granted from Freneau's character, which had been marked as that of a good Whig, that he would give free place to pieces written against the aristocratical and monarchial principles these papers had inculcated. This having been in my mind, it is likely enough I may have expressed it in conversation with others, though I do not recollect that I did. To Freneau I think I could not, because I had still seen him but once, and that at a public table, at breakfast, at Mrs. Elsworth's, as I passed through New York the last year. And I can safely declare that my expectations looked only to the chastisement of the aristocratical and monarchial writers, and not to any criticisms on the proceedings of Government. Colonel Hamilton can see no motive for any appointment, but that of making a convenient partisan. But you, sir, who have received from me recommendations of a Rittenhouse, Barlow, Paine, will believe that talents and science are sufficient motives with me in appointments to which they are fitted; and that Freneau, as a man of genius, might find a preference in my eye to be a translating clerk, and make good title to the little aids I could give him as the editor of a gazette, by procuring subscriptions to his paper, as I did some before it appeared, and as I have with pleasure done for the labors of other men of genius. I hold it to be one of the distinguishing excellences of elective over hereditary successions, that the talents which nature has provided in sufficient proportion, should be selected by the society for the government of their affairs, rather than this should be transmitted through the loins of knaves and fools, passing from the debauches of the table to those of the bed. Colonel Hamilton, alias 'Plain Facts,' says, that Freneau's salary began before he resided in Philadelphia. I do not know what quibble he may have in reserve on the word 'residence.' He may mean to include under that idea the removal of his family; for I believe he removed himself before his family did, to Philadelphia. But no act of mine gave commencement to his salary before he so far took up his abode in Philadelphia, as to be sufficiently in readiness for the duties of the office. As to the merits or demerits of his paper, they certainly concern me not. He and Fenno are rivals for the public favor. The one courts them by flattery, the other by censure, and I believe it will be admitted that the one has been as servile, as the other severe. But is not the dignity, and even decency of Government committed, when one of its principal ministers enlists himself as an anonymous writer or paragraphist for either the one or the other of them? No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, no one ever will. If virtuous, it need not fear the fair operation of attack and defence. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting out the truth either in religion, law, or politics. I think it as honorable to the Government neither to know, nor notice, its sycophants or censors, as it would be undignified and criminal to pamper the former and persecute the latter."[12] But if the _National Gazette_ concerned Jefferson not at all, as he alleged, it certainly did exasperate Washington. Later on, when the Genet affair had urged Freneau into still greater excesses, Washington, on the 23d of May, 1793, had a conversation with Jefferson, which the latter recorded in his _Ana_: "He [the President] adverted to a piece in Freneau's paper of yesterday, he said he despised all their attacks on him personally, but that there never had been an act of the government, not meaning in the Executive line only, but in any line, which that paper had not abused. He had also marked the word republic thus----where it was applied to the French republic [see the original paper]. He was evidently sore & warm, and I took his intention to be that I should interpose in some way with Freneau; perhaps withdraw his appointment of translating clerk to my office. But I will not do it. His paper has saved our constitution, which was galloping fast into monarchy, & has been checked by no one means so powerfully as by that paper. It is well and universally known, that it has been that paper which has checked the career of the monocrats, & the President, not sensible of the designs of the party, has not with his usual good sense and _sang froid_, looked on the efforts and effects of this free press and seen that, though some bad things have passed through it to the public, yet the good have preponderated immensely."[13] Washington even brought the affair into a meeting of the Cabinet, declaring, according to Jefferson's _Ana_, that, "That rascal, Freneau, sent him three copies of his paper every day as if he thought he (Washington) would become the distributor of them; that he could see in this nothing but an impudent design to insult him; he ended in a high tone."[14] The _National Gazette_ published its last issue, October 23, 1793. The collapse of the Genet bubble--the revulsion of feeling after the Frenchman had threatened to appeal from Washington to the people, brought on a tidal wave which swept away all the idols of French Republicanism in America, and the _National Gazette_ could not withstand the tide. Subscribers withdrew their subscriptions at a ruinous rate, the notes of the proprietors were protested, and the paper was abandoned. Freneau had no idea, however, of final surrender. His last word was a promise which, however, was never fulfilled. "With the present number concludes the second volume and second year's publication of the _National Gazette_. Having just imported on his own account a considerable quantity of new and elegant printing types from Europe, it is the editor's intention to resume the publication of this paper in a short time and previous to the meeting of Congress in December next." It is upon this episode that the reputation of Freneau among the generality of people chiefly rests. "That rascal Freneau" is the epithet that has clung to his name through all the intervening century. It is this one affair, more than anything else, that has kept him from the recognition he deserves, both as a patriot and a poet. The attitude of New England may be expressed in the words of President Dwight, written during the summer of 1793: "Freneau, your printer, linguist, &c., is regarded here as a mere incendiary, or rather as a despicable tool of bigger incendiaries, and his paper as a public nuisance." Letters might be multiplied in showing the same spirit in all of the Federalists. It must not be forgotten, however, that Freneau acted from pure and honest motives; that the excitement and bitter partisanship of the period were extraordinary, and that the air was heavily charged with the subtle magnetism that in France had created a reign of terror. It cannot be denied that Freneau went to excess in his denunciations; but so did Hamilton, who in reality began the conflict; so did Jefferson; so did many others. As to the extent to which Jefferson went in subsidizing the _Gazette_ for his own use, the reader may judge for himself. Neither side is free from blame; Freneau is certainly no more culpable than the others who held far higher positions than he. It is but justice to say of Freneau, in the words of Jefferson's biographer, Randall-- "He was always a warm, and after the period of which we write, became a violent partisan. It is but justice to his memory, however, to say that his honor and his veracity as a man were never questioned by those who knew him, and that his reputation in these particulars is now as free from all taint of suspicion as is that of any of the distinguished gentlemen whose names were associated with his in the controversy." The following words of Madison, taken from Mr. Trist's memoranda of a conversation, May 25, 1827, and published in Tucker's Life of Jefferson, probably presents the affair in its true light: "Mr. Madison said: 'Freneau's paper was another cause of soreness in General Washington. Among its different contributors, some were actuated by over-heated zeal, and some, perhaps, by malignity. Every effort was made in Fenno's paper, and by those immediately around him (Washington) to impress on his mind a belief that this paper had been got up by Mr. Jefferson to injure him and oppose the measures of his administration. Freneau himself was an old College mate of mine, a poet and man of literary and refined tastes, knowing nothing of the world. He was a French scholar, and employed at first as translator. Henry Lee, who was also his College mate, and had also a friendly feeling for him, was the more immediate cause of his establishing a paper. Our main object in encouraging it, was to provide an antidote against Fenno's paper, which was devoted to monarchy, and had begun to publish extracts from Mr. Adams's book. I used occasionally to throw in an article, all of which I have marked, and some of which I have shown you, with a view chiefly to counteract the monarchial spirit and partisanship of the British government which characterized Fenno's paper. I never engaged in the party criminations.'" It deserves mention that Freneau stuck to his post during the yellow fever epidemic of 1793, and that for weeks he was the only active editor in the city. On October 1st he resigned his position as translator, and soon after removed to his old home at Mount Pleasant. For a time he was without employment. He contemplated several newspaper enterprises. He evidently took steps toward the publication of a paper in Monmouth County, New Jersey, as the following advertisement, published in the _Jersey Chronicle_, May 30, 1795, would show: "A number of persons in Freehold and other parts of Monmouth subscribed last year to a paper the editor then proposed to set on foot. As various causes delayed him prosecuting his intended purpose until the present spring, and as he supposes, many of them might in the meantime have engaged with other printers, he hopes they will if possible transfer their subscription to the _Chronicle_." On November 2, 1794, he writes Madison, recommending his old friend Bailey for the office of public printer, and on May 6th following, he received a reply: "I delayed acknowledging your favour long ago received, until I could inform you of the prospects of Mr. Bailey in whose favor it was written. I have now the pleasure to tell you that although his wishes are not to be immediately fulfilled he is looking to obtain under the auspices of Mr. Beckley and Mr. Randolph a share of employment hereafter which may be very valuable to him. I congratulate you on the public intelligence just received from Holland which gives joy to all true Republicans, and wish you all the private happiness which an exchange of your former travelled scenes for the shade and tranquility of your present life can afford. Remember, however, as you have not chosen any longer to labor in the field of politics it will be expected by your friends that you cultivate with the more industry your inheritance on Parnassus." On May the 20th following, Freneau continued the correspondence: "My respected friend: By some accident your kind letter of April 6th was a long time in finding its way hither, having not come to hand till the 17th inst. I sincerely thank you for the interest you have taken in Mr. Bailey. He is a good Republican and a worthy honest man, which qualifications, I have thought, entitled him to some notice from the Government, in his line of business--I was heartily laughed at, however, a few weeks ago in N. York, by some Aristocrats, for having in my Letter to you or Mr. Beckley, I forget which, extolled his Military services in the late War--I am sensible he never cut off the heads of Giants or drove hosts before him, as some have done; at the same time it ought to be remembered that he was an officer in the Pennsylvania Militia in the season that tried men's souls (as Paine says) and I believe never acted otherwise than became the character in which he acted.-- I meet you at least half way in your congratulations on the public intelligence received from Holland. It is but another step toward the advancement and completion of that great and philanthropic System which I have been anticipating for many years, and which you as well as myself, I hope, will live to see realized--When I first went to reside in Philada. in 1791 I wished to be one of those who would have the honour and happiness of announcing these great events to the public through the medium of a newspaper: A variety of circumstances however, needless to trouble you with, urged my departure from that city after completing a two years publication--As I mean to pass the remainder of my days on a couple of hundred of acres of an old sandy patrimony, I have, by the way of filling up the vacuities of time set on foot a small weekly Newspaper calculated for the part of the country in which I am. Should you have any curiosity to see it I will forward it to you free of all expence except that of postage. I will not make high promises in regard to what it may contain. It will scarcely be expected that in a rude barbarous part of the country I could calculate it for the polite taste of Philadelphia.--Should your fixed residence be in Philada. I can transmit the papers to you once a week by the Public Post, who stops every Wednesday at my door. A Letter put into the Post Office at Philadelphia on Saturday morning, will be sure to reach me on Wednesday.--The public papers some time ago announced your Marriage.--I wish you all possible happiness with the lady whom you have chosen for your Companion through life--Mrs. Freneau joins me in the same, and desires me to present her best respects to your lady and yourself--and should you ever take an excursion to these parts of Jersey, we will endeavour to give Mrs. Madison and yourself--'if not a costly welcome, yet a kind.'" The _Jersey Chronicle_, an eight-paged paper of the size of a sheet of letter paper, issued its initial number from the editor's little office at Mount Pleasant, Saturday, May 2, 1795. It bore the motto, "_Inter Sylvas Academi quaerere verum_.--Hor.;" and its object, in the words of its editor, was "to present ... a complete history of the foreign and domestic events of the Times, together with such essays, remarks, and observations as shall tend to illustrate the politics, or mark the general character of the age and country in which we live." The editor's salutatory is characteristic of its author: "Never was there a more interesting period than the present, nor ever was there a time within the reach of history when mankind have been so generally united in attending to the cultivation of the mind, examining into the natural and political rights of nations, and emancipating themselves from those shackles of despotism which have so long impeded the happiness of the human species, and rendered the rights of the many subservient to the interests of the few. "At this time, when new Republics are forming and new Empires bursting into birth; when the great family of mankind are evidently making their egress from the dark shadows of despotism which have so long enveloped them, & are assuming a character suitable to the dignity of their species, the Editor seizes the opportunity to renew his efforts for contributing, in some small degree, to the general information of his fellow citizens in the present history and politics of the world. No pains shall be spared, on his part, to procure the best, the most authentic, and earliest intelligence from every quarter, and circulating it by every method and means in his power; and to whatever parts his subscription will enable him to do it. "When it is considered that few Advertisements are reasonably to be expected in these more eastern parts of New-Jersey, the terms of subscription will appear low, and, it may be added, are within the power of almost every man who has the will and inclination to encourage literature, promote the interests, or enlarge the ideas of the rising generation, and contribute to the general diffusion of knowledge among his fellow citizens. "Should the publication of The Jersey Chronicle be suitably encouraged, the Editor will in due time enlarge the size of the sheet; but that now published on is, in his opinion, every way adequate to an experiment whether the attempt be practicable or not." Freneau's essays contributed to the _Chronicle_ are among the most notable prose productions from his pen. He began a series of studies "On Monarchial and Mixed Forms of Government;" he wrote "Observations on Monarchy," and discussed at length the leading arguments for and against Jay's Treaty with England. On May 23d he began to publish a series of papers entitled "Tomo Cheeki, the Creek Indian in Philadelphia," in which the manners and absurdities of the Americans are described from the standpoint of an observant savage. In nearly every issue of the paper there was an elaborate essay on some political subject. Of poetry there was very little. The _National Gazette_ had contained little poetry from the editor's pen, save earlier verses reprinted, and a few political satires and republican lyrics. The influence of Peter Pindar was becoming more and more manifest in the poet's style. Politics and party strife had for a time displaced the muse. This is nowhere more evident than in the collected edition of his poems printed on his own press and issued in June, 1795. In many respects this is the most interesting of Freneau's collections: it brings us into the very presence of the poet. The earlier editions had been published without his supervision, the material for this one passed all of it under the author's critical eye. Scarcely a poem escaped revision. After noting the scrupulous care with which he changed adjectives, improved rhymes, added new stanzas, or cut out old ones, repunctuated sentences, and rearranged material, one cannot join the somewhat large band of hasty and superficial critics who allude flippantly to the poet as a hasty and careless improviser of ephemeral trash. As a matter of fact, Freneau was a miser with his verses. When a newspaper poem suspected to be his, especially in the period previous to 1795, cannot be found in any of his collections, grave doubts at once arise as to whether the poem is his. He was never tired of revising, and cutting, and pruning. The poems so carefully edited in 1795 were again carefully revised in 1809. As an instance of his concern for the fate of his poems let me quote a letter, written August 29, 1781, to Matthew Carey: "I see by this day's paper that my verses on General Washington's arrival, etc., are to appear in your next _Museum_. If it is not too late, I would request the favour of you to rectify an error (which was entirely of the press) in the fifth line of the thirteenth stanza, as it materially affects the sense. Instead of 'whom' please to read 'who.'" The 1795 edition is interesting from another standpoint. The resources of the little country office were taxed to the utmost in the production of the book. At best it is a crude piece of printing. There is manifest everywhere an effort to keep the work within bounds, to economize space. Titles are abbreviated, mottoes dropped, foot notes cut out, and many earlier poems reduced, or omitted entirely. The list of omissions is very suggestive: scenes one and two were cut from the "Pictures of Columbus," the long song of Ismenius was dropped from "The Monument of Phaon," "The Jamaica Funeral," and "The House of Night" were reduced to mere fragments, "Female Frailty" was dropped save for the opening lyric, and there were other notable changes. In every case it will be found that the poet threw overboard the light and imaginative element, the purely poetic. The reason for these omissions has been often sought. Prof. C. F. Richardson in particular has wondered at the dropping of the intensely original and weirdly strong poem "The House of Night,"--in his opinion the best thing Freneau ever did. It is not difficult to answer the question after a careful study of the evolution of Freneau's poetic ideals. He began to write poetry after a thorough course of reading in the Latin and English classics. His early work is redolent of Virgil's "Eclogues," of Horace, of Shakespeare, of Milton's minor poems, of Gray's "Elegy." If ever there was a sensitive, beauty-loving, poetic soul, the young Freneau was one. In his early inexperience he even dreamed of a poetic career in which he might perhaps win a place beside the great masters of song. His early work like the "Ode to Fancy," and similar pieces, and the strong and original "House of Night" and "Santa Cruz" show what he might have done in another environment. But Revolutionary America had little encouragement for an imaginative poet. There was something in the air that seemed to put into men the Franklin spirit. It was the era of common-sense, of stern reality, of practical affairs. Madison voiced the age when in 1774 he advised Bradford, the cultured and imaginative young lover of poetry and all art, to turn to sterner things: "I was afraid you would not easily have loosened your affections from the Belles Lettres. A Delicate Taste and warm imagination like yours must find it hard to give up such refined & exquisite enjoyments for the coarse and dry study of the Law. It is like leaving a pleasant flourishing field for a barren desert; perhaps I should not say barren either because the Law does bear fruit but it is sour fruit that must be gathered and pressed and distilled before it can bring pleasure or profit.... I myself use to have too great a hankering after those amusing studies. Poetry wit and Criticism Romances Plays &c captivated me much: but I begin to discover that they deserve but a moderate portion of a _mortal's_ Time and that something more substantial more durable more profitable befits our riper age. It would be exceeding improper for a labouring man to have nothing but flowers in his Garden or to determine to eat nothing but sweet-meats and confections. Equally absurd would it be for a Scholar and man of Business to make up his whole Library with Books of Fancy and feed his mind with nothing but such Luscious performances."[15] The first half of Freneau's life, as we have seen, was one of disillusion. It took twenty-five years to kill the spark in his breast, but the process though slow was sure. After the fierce period of the _National Gazette_ he thought of himself only as a worker in the tide of practical affairs, a champion of the rights of man, a protestor against tyranny and wrong, and his muse had become a mere drudge, aiding by satire and song what he now conceived to be his life work. He had taken a deliberate though sorrowful leave of his early muse in 1787, one year after the appearance of his first volume of poems: "On these bleak climes by fortune thrown Where rigid Reason reigns alone, Where flowery Fancy holds no sway Nor golden forms around her play, Nor Nature takes her magic hue, Alas what has the muse to do! An age employed in painting steel Can no poetic raptures feel; No fabled Love's enchanting power No tale of Flora's shady bower. Nor wood-land haunt, or murmuring grove Can its prosaic bosom move. The muse of love in no request, I'll try my fortune with the rest; Which of the nine shall I engage To suit the humor of the age? On one, alas, my choice must fall, The least engaging of them all! Her visage stern, severe her style, A clouded brow, a cruel smile, A mind on murdered victims placed, She, only she, can please the taste." One cannot read long the columns of the _Jersey Chronicle_ without realizing forcibly the change that had come over Freneau. The poet who emerged from the crucible of the _National Gazette_ was not at all like the poet of "The House of Night" period. He could look upon this product of his early imagination much as Madison would have done, and he could in cold blood cut it down to a mere fragment which would voice his new French Deistic ideas, that he might have room for his Republican songs. The poem "To the Americans of the United States," written in 1797, gives us a true picture of this later Freneau. He would be no courtly singer "beneath some great man's ceiling placed," no solitary dreamer. He would be a man of action travelling over lands and seas, a poet who caught his subjects from the varying scene of human things. "To seize some _features_ from the faithless past; Be this our care--before the century close: The colours strong! for, if we deem aright, The _coming age will be an age of prose_: When _sordid cares_ will break the muses' dream, And COMMON SENSE be ranked in seat supreme." With the fifty-second number of the _Chronicle_, published April 30, 1796, the paper came to an end. Freneau's final editorial stated that: "In number one of the Jersey Chronicle the editor announced his intention of extending the publication beyond the first year, provided the attempt should in the meantime be suitably encouraged and found practicable. But the necessary number of subscribers having not yet appeared, scarcely to defray the expenses of the undertaking, notwithstanding the very low rate at which it has been offered, the editor with some regret declines a further prosecution of his plan at this time. He embraces the present opportunity to return his sincere thanks to such persons in this and the neighboring counties as have favored him with their subscriptions; and have also by their punctuality in complying with the terms originally proposed, thus far enabled him to issue a free, independent, and republican paper." A letter[16] written by Freneau from New York, to Madison, dated December 1, 1796, reveals what was in the poet's mind during the months following the abandonment of the _Chronicle_: "Having three or four months since formed a resolution to bid adieu for a few years to some old Trees in Jersey under the shade of which I edited, amongst ditching and grubbing, a small weekly Paper entitled the Jersey Chronicle, I did not know how to employ that interval better than in striking out here with some printer, if such could be found, already engaged in supporting the good old Republican cause. After experiencing one or two disappointments in accomplishing this object, I am now through the kind aid of some friends here nearly completing the project of a copartnership with Thomas Greenleaf in his two Papers, _The Argus_, a daily publication, and the New York Journal, twice a week; both on a pretty respectable footing, and noted for a steady attachment to Republican principles, though open to all decent speculations from any party if they choose to transmit them. In short, I would wish to revive something in the spirit of the National Gazette, if time and circumstances allow, and with proper assistance hope to succeed--Thus, A Raven once an acorn took From Bashan's strongest stoutest tree; He hid it near a murmuring brook, And liv'd another oak to see. As I consider the bargain the same as concluded, my next object is to make all the friends here that I decently can among men of eminence and ability. This I have in some small degree attempted and gained, but for want of certain insinuating qualities, natural enough I suppose to some men, I feel myself sadly at a loss to get acquainted with some characters here to whom I could wish to be known upon motives of public as well as private utility. "Among these is the chancellor of this State, Robert R. Livingston, with whom, if I recollect right, you are upon terms of intimacy. If I am not mistaken in this point, and you can with propriety accede to my request, you would confer a favor upon me by mentioning me to him in your next Letter, in such manner as you may think best, so that this new connexion may attract some share of his attention, and thereby the countenance of the Livingston family in general, which would operate greatly, through this State at least, in advancing our Subscription and printing Interest in general." The partnership with Greenleaf, mentioned to Madison, for some reason was never consummated. On March 13, 1797, however, Freneau issued in New York the first number of a new journal, _The Time Piece and Literary Companion_, to be devoted to "literary amusement and an abridgement of the most interesting intelligence foreign and domestic." He "associated himself," as he expressed it, "as a partner in the typographical line of business with Mr. Alexander Menut of that profession, sometime since from Canada," though, during the first year at least, Freneau had entire control of the editing of the paper. His address to the public is of considerable interest: "Several months having elapsed since the publication of a periodical paper in this city was first contemplated by the subscriber, he now informs his friends and the public in general that he has at length so far matured his plan as to attempt a paper of this kind to be published three times a week and transmitted to city subscribers early on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. "The _Time Piece and Literary Companion_ will on all occasions be open to political, moral, or other interesting discussion from any quarter whatever provided such communications are written with candor, decency, and liberality, their object such as to promote the general good of our great Confederate Commonwealth, or the common interest of man, and conceived in that disinterested spirit which while it carefully avoids as far as possible irritating the feelings of individuals, holds itself obligated under any circumstances whatever to consider truth, the moral and political happiness of our species, social harmony, and good order, the basis of all its exertions, the end of all its aims, views and endeavors." The paper is a tastily arranged and neatly printed sheet, and its contents show constantly its editor's rare ability to cater to the public needs. Refinement and a fastidious taste are evidenced everywhere in its columns. Duyckinck comments on "the skill of the selection and the general elegance of the material," which were certainly unusual in those early days of American journalism. The paper had a large number of feminine contributors, who gave freely of their sentimental lyrics and sprightly letters. The poet himself contributed many poems, the most of them, as usual, concerned with contemporary affairs. He republished his translation from the Abbé Robin made in 1783 since, as he declared, only a small edition was then printed, and the work was in the hands of a very few. He republished also his "Tomo Cheeki" letters, introducing them thus: "A number of eccentric writings under the subsequent title and to the amount of a considerable volume are in the hands of the editor of the Time Piece said to be translated from one of the Indian languages of this country. They were transmitted to him more than two years ago and a few numbers published in a gazette edited by him in a neighboring State, but discontinued with that paper. If the contributions of a rude aboriginal of America shall appear to afford any gratification to the generality of our readers the whole will be occasionally offered to the public through the medium of the Time Piece." His pen was constantly active. He wrote vigorous editorials on all passing political measures, and on September 1, 1897, proposed to edit Ledyard's Journals: "The subscriber having procured from the hands of his relatives the original MSS. of Mr. Ledyard now offers to the public of the United States an opportunity of gratifying their curiosity and at the same time paying a token of respect to the memory of Ledyard. Ledyard's travels will be compiled by P. Freneau from the original MSS. of the author, consisting of letters, journals, notes, etc., etc., and such documents as have appeared in print, both in America and Europe, particularly a work published by the British African Society, in whose service, with a view of exploring the interior of Africa, his last expedition was undertaken and terminated in his death at Cairo, in Egypt. "One vol. at least 250 pages. "A life of the author collected from authentic materials will be prefixed to the work, with some other preliminary matter." Freneau evidently made some progress with the work, for on August 30, 1798, the following advertisement appeared in the _Time Piece_, as well as in the Charleston _City Gazette_: "The interesting travels of John Ledyard, with a summary of his life, are now in the hands of the printer. "It shall be printed on fine paper with new type ornamented with a full length portrait of the author in the attitude of taking leave on his departure for Africa. Page octavo, handsomely bound and lettered. Calculated to contain between 400 and 500 pages. $2 per volume." The volume, whether from a failure to secure subscribers or other reasons, was never published. The partnership of Freneau and Menut was dissolved September 13, 1797, and shortly after, the imprint of the paper was changed to read "Published by P. Freneau and M. L. Davis, No. 26 Moore Street, near Whitehall." On January 3, 1798, Freneau made a visit to Charleston, taking passage in the sloop _Katy_, and arriving after a rough voyage of thirty-one days. During the following month he was the guest of his brother, Peter, and in the words of his daughter, of "his many friends there, among whom were Charles Pinckney, Governor of South Carolina, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, General Bull, Edge, and many others where he was as much at home as at his brother's." He embarked from Charleston March 7th and arrived in New York after a week's voyage. The affairs of the _Time Piece_ were in a critical condition. A part of the subscribers lived at a distance from New York and the expenses were large. Freneau was unwilling to run further risks, and a few days after his return from the South, he withdrew from the firm, having been editor of the paper just one year. He thereupon retired with his family to the little estate at Mount Pleasant, where he made his home for the rest of his life. VI. The quiet period after the anxiety and stress of editorship in a great city was for a time grateful to the poet. He managed the farm in a desultory way, but his main occupation was composing verses under his favorite locust tree which had been planted by his father and which had increased in size and numbers until in the words of his daughter, "it was a complete grove of locust trees surrounding a house grown old with its time worn owner, his venerable mother and maiden sister beloved and respected for her many virtues. Her decease, which took place a few years previous to his own, he says in an obituary, he can say no more nor less than that 'she was as good and innocent as an angel.'" This sister, Mary Freneau, a beautiful woman, had been wooed at one time by Madison, but for some reason she had refused him. Freneau's family consisted of four daughters: Eleanor, born in 1791; Agnes W., born June 22, 1794; Catherine L., born February 25, 1798; and Margaret Alaire, born June 10, 1801. Eleanor married a Mr. Hammill, and the four daughters of this union died unmarried; Agnes married Dr. Edward Leadbeater, and the eldest son of this union, at the earnest request of the poet, was christened Philip Leadbeater Freneau, his grandfather putting into his infant hands the ancestral Bible, which was the family treasure. The descendants of Agnes Freneau and Dr. Leadbeater are very numerous. The two younger daughters of the poet never married. The active pen of Freneau, so long practiced in discussing the affairs of the day, could not rest idle during his period of retirement. He began a series of letters to the Philadelphia _Aurora_ and other papers, and on December 30, 1799, issued them in a volume entitled "Letters on Various Interesting and Important Subjects, many of which have appeared in the Aurora." It bore his old pen name, Robert Slender, with the added title, O. S. M., interpreted later to mean "One of the Swinish Multitude." The book has surprising merit. The letters are written in a breezy, colloquial style, and the simple-minded old cobbler is well characterized. Freneau has actually succeeded in making him a living creature, and his opinions and "whim whams" are full of hard sense and practical wisdom. The book is by all means the best prose that Freneau ever wrote. So easy is the style and so natural is the characterization that I cannot forbear quoting at some length from a chapter chosen almost at random: LETTER XXII MR. EDITOR, Having heard that there was a tavern at about the distance of a mile or so from my favourite country spot, where now and then a few neighbours meet to spit, smoke segars, drink apple whiskey, cider or cider-royal, and read the news--a few evenings ago, I put on my best coat, combed out my wig, put my spectacles in my pocket, and a quarter dollar--This I thought was right; for although Mrs. Slender told me eleven-pence was enough, says I, I'll e'en take the quarter dollar, for a man always feels himself of more consequence when he has got good money in his pocket--so out I walks with a good stout stick in my hand, which I always make a point to carry with me, lest the dogs should make rather freer with my legs than I could wish. But I had not gone more than half the way, when, by making a false step, I splash'd my stocking from knee to the ancle. Odds my heart, said I, see what a hand I have made of my stocking; I'll be bail, added I, I'll hear of this in both sides of my head--but it can't now be helped--this, and a thousand worse accidents, which daily happen, are all occasioned by public neglect, and the misapplication of the public's money--Had I, said I, (talking to myself all the while) the disposal of but half the income of the United States, I could at least so order matters, that a man might walk to his next neighbour's without splashing his stockings or being in danger of breaking his legs in ruts, holes, gutts, and gullies. I do not know, says I to myself, as I moralized on my splash'd stocking, but money might with more profit be laid out in repairing the roads, than in marine establishments, supporting a standing army, useless embassies, exorbitant salaries, given to many flashy fellows that are no honour to us, or to themselves, and chartering whole ships to carry a single man to another nation--Odds my life, continued I, what a number of difficulties a man labours under, who has never read further than Lilly's grammar, and has but a poor brain--had I been favoured with a good education, I could no doubt readily see the _great usefulness_ of all these measures of government, that now appear to me so unaccountable--I could then, said I, still talking to myself, see the reason why the old patriots, whose blood flowed so freely in purchasing our independence, are cast aside, like a broken pitcher, (as the scripture says) and why the old tories and active refugees are advanced to places of power, honour and trust--I could then be able to explain why Robbins, an American citizen, for killing an Englishman who held him a slave, and so gaining his liberty, was delivered to the English to be hanged--and Sterret, who killed a veteran sailor, who had formerly fought and bled in the cause of his country, and then was bravely doing his duty, yet, remains unpunished.... As I said this, by accident I looked up, and perceived to my surprise, that if I had gone but one step further, I would have actually knocked my nose against the sign-post--I declare, said I, here I am, this is a tavern indeed. I then felt in my pocket, if I had my quarter dollar, which to my joy I found--I then unbuttoned my coat, to shew my silk waistcoat, pulled my watch chain a good piece longer out of my pocket, fixed my hat a little better on my head--and then advanced boldly into the tavern--But I see I am got to the end of my page, and therefore must defer the remainder of my adventure to another opportunity." In the advertisement of the book, the author made the half promise of more letters in the same vein: "Should these letters meet with a favourable reception in their present form, a second volume will shortly be published, containing besides those that have since appeared separately a variety of original ones upon such interesting subjects as may hereafter claim the public attention." The volume was never published. The little family at Mount Pleasant could not subsist alone on letters and poems, however brilliant. The outlook was not a bright one, as the following letter[17] to his brother Peter, in Charleston, dated March 1, 1801, would indicate: "Having been here [New York] a day or two and finding the brig Echo, Capt. Webb, to sail for Charleston, I take the opportunity of dropping you a line by him. "I left all well at home last Thursday, and the place, etc., as well as could be expected after my poor mother's absence. I have been and shall be for some time busy in repairing old fences and making new ones, and some other small improvements, as far as I personally can with the money you let me have. Helen goes to school here, the other two girls are at home, but Agnes is to come here next month for the same purpose for awhile. There are more cares and vexations coming on, but still they must be got through with at some rate. Probably I shall have to embark on some new expedition or plan before long wherever or to whatever the devil, etc., shall see fit to drive me. But I shall attempt nothing if I can before I see you here, in April or May, as you promised. "I return this morning to Jersey. Mr. Hunn, Peggy, Mamma and Polly all desire their love to you. My love and respects to Mrs. Freneau and Miss Dora with her mother and family. Remembrances, love, etc., to Mr. Davis, and may I expect to have a line from you by Capt. Peter." Freneau was at best a half-hearted farmer. A little anecdote told by the family is eloquent. One day the poet and his wife, who had walked together into the field to inspect the work, found a slave asleep in the young corn. Mrs. Freneau seizing his hoe declared that she would show him how to work. At the very first attempt, however, she cut down a hill of corn, whereupon the slave remarked gleefully: "Ho, ho, Missie Freneau, if that's the way you hoe, the corn'll never grow." She threw down the hoe in disgust, declaring that "No wonder the farm doesn't pay when even the slaves talk in rhymes." The affairs of the poet were soon such as to give real concern to his friends. In a letter dated September 13, 1801, a part of which we have already quoted, Aedanus Burke wrote Madison: "I am sorry to have it to say that Freneau, with his wife and two children, is still in embarrassed circumstances. He is a virtuous, honest man, and an undeviating Republican; yet utterly incapable of soliciting anything for himself. The best apology I can offer for mentioning it, is that I know you have great regard for him. You were at College together, as I heard you often say." However this letter may have been received, Freneau obtained no appointment either from Madison or Jefferson, though there is a persistent tradition among his descendants that he was offered a good position under President Jefferson but refused it on the ground that the latter had deserted him in the _National Gazette_ affair. On October 23, 1803, his old-time friend, Francis Bailey, addressed Madison: "My dear sir: The death of Col. Bauman of New York has left the Post Office without a Master. I know of no man in the United States who would fill the office with more ability, or greater integrity, than Philip Freneau." As far as we know, there was no response, though the family declare that Madison sent for him and that the poet proudly said, "James Madison knows where I live, let him come to see me." The "expedition" to mend his fortunes, which he had mentioned to his brother as a disagreeable possibility, became at length inevitable. On Saturday, November 27th, he embarked at New York as Master of the schooner _John_, bound for Fredericksburg, Virginia, with a cargo of salt. A minute log book of this voyage is still to be seen.[18] After an exceedingly hard experience he returned to New York, January 12, 1803, and the last entry in the log reads "Finished discharging the wheat--1264 bushels at 17 cents a bushel freight--214 dollars and 88 cents." This was the opening voyage of his last period at sea. His brother Peter had fitted out at Charleston a new brig for the Madeira trade, and until 1807 Freneau was busy plying between Charleston and the Azores. In one of his books of navigation is inscribed the following: "Sailed from Charleston for Maderia with brig Washington, May 12, 1803. Got there June 23. Arrived back at Charleston Aug. 16. "Sailed in ditto from Charleston Jan. 25, 1804. Arrived in Maderia March 7th following. A hurricane of wind the whole way. April 12, sailed from Funchal Road for Teneriff. Arrived at Santa Cruz the 15th; at Arasava, 22nd. Sailed May 11th. Arrived in Charleston, June 10." On June 30, 1806, he was in Savannah, Georgia, as Master of the sloop _Industry_. He made his last voyage to the Azores in the _Washington_ in 1807. During this last period of sea life we find evidences everywhere that this old enthusiasm for nautical adventure had greatly waned. He was a sailor now from sheer necessity; he was approaching old age and he longed for the quiet of his home and his family. In one of his books of navigation of this period is penned a verse made in mid Atlantic: "In dreams condemned to roam He left his native home O'er land and ocean vast and wide With oar and sail, with wind and tide, Proceeding an imaginary way." In 1809, Freneau now in retirement at Mount Pleasant, began a new edition of his poems. On April 8, he wrote Madison:[19] "SIR,--I do myself the pleasure to enclose to you a copy of Proposals for the publication of a couple of Volumes of Poems shortly to be put to the Press in this city. Perhaps some of your particular friends in Virginia may be induced from a view of the Proposals in your hands to subscribe their names. If so, please to have them forwarded to this place by Post, addressed to the Publisher at No. 10 North Alley, Philadelphia. "Accept my congratulations on your late Election to the Presidency of the United States, and my hopes that your weight of State Affairs may receive every alleviation in the gratitude and esteem of the Public whom you serve in your truly honourable and exalted Station." Madison's reply has been lost, but on May 12th, Freneau answered from Philadelphia:[20] "SIR,--After a month's ramble through the States of New Jersey and New York, I returned to this place on Saturday last, and found your friendly Letter on Mr. Bailey's table, with the contents. There was no occasion of enclosing any Money, as your name was all I wanted to have placed at the head of the Subscription list.--I hope you will credit me when I say that the republication of these Poems, such as they are, was not a business of my own seeking or forwarding. I found last Winter an Edition would soon be going on at all events, and in contradiction to my wishes, as I had left these old scribblings, to float quietly down the stream of oblivion to their destined element the ocean of forgetfulness. However, I have concluded to remain here this Summer, and have them published in a respectable manner, and free as possible from the blemishes imputable to the two former Editions, over which I had no controul, having given my manuscripts away, and left them to the mercy of chance.--I am endeavouring to make the whole work as worthy of the public eye as circumstances will allow. 1500 copies are to be printed, only; but I have a certainty, from the present popular frenzy, that three times that number might soon be disposed of.--I will attend to what you direct on the subject, and will forward the ten you mention by the middle of July or sooner.--I will consider of what you say relative to the insertion of a piece or two in prose, but suspect that anything I have written in that way is so inferior to the Poetry, that the contrast will be injurious to the credit of the Publication.--I feel much in the humour of remaining here about two years, to amuse myself, as well as the Public, with such matter as that of the fat man you refer to, and if the public are in the same humour they shall be gratified.--But I am intruding on your time and will add no more at present.--I had almost said-- "'Cum tot sustineas et tanta negotia solus Res Italas armis tuteris, moribus ornes Legibus emendes, in publica commoda peccem Si longo sermone mores[21] tua tempora, Caesar--' "My best wishes, Sir, will ever await you, and in particular that your Presidential Career may be equally honourable though less stormy than that of your predecessor." It is evident that Freneau wrote also to Jefferson, for on May 22, 1809, the latter wrote from Monticello.[22] "SIR,--I subscribe with pleasure to the publication of your volumes of poems. I anticipate the same pleasure from them which the perusal of those heretofore published has given me. I have not been able to circulate the paper because I have not been from home above once or twice since my return, and because in a country situation like mine, little can be done in that way. The inhabitants of the country are mostly industrious farmers employed in active life and reading little. They rarely buy a book of whose merit they can judge by having it in their hand, and are less disposed to engage for those yet unknown to them. I am becoming like them myself in a preference of the healthy and cheerful employment without doors, to the being immured within four brick walls. But under the shade of a tree one of your volumes will be a pleasant pocket companion. "Wishing you all possible success and happiness, I salute you with constant esteem and respect." The reply to Freneau's second letter to Jefferson has also been lost, but Freneau's letter dated Philadelphia, May 27th, has escaped destruction:[23] "SIR,--Yesterday your Letter, dated May 22d came to hand.--Perhaps you a little misunderstood me, when I wrote to you from this place in April last, inclosing the Proposal Paper, respecting the Poems.--I only wished your name to be placed at the head of the list, and did not wish you to be at the pains of collecting Subscriptions, further than as any of your neighbours might choose to put down their names--Indeed, the whole Subscription plan was Set a going without my knowledge or approbation, last Winter. But as I found the matter had gone too far to be recalled, I thought it best to submit, in the present Edition, to the course and order of things as they are and must be.--Sir, if there be anything like happiness in this our State of existence, it will be such to me, when these two little Volumes reach you in August ensuing, if the sentiments in them under the poetical Veil, amuse you but for a single hour.--This is the first Edition that I have in reality attended to, the other two having been published, in a strange way, while I was wandering over gloomy Seas, until _embargoed_ by the necessity of the times, and now again, I fear, I am reverting to the folly of scribbling Verses. "That your shades of Monticello may afford you complete happiness is the wish and hope of all the worthy part of Mankind, and my own in particular. In such the philosophers of antiquity preferred to pass life, or if that was not allowed, their declining days. "Will you be so good as to read the inclosed Verses? They were published early in March last in the Trenton True American Newspaper, and in the Public Advertiser, of New York." On August 7, 1809, Freneau wrote finally to Madison:[24] "SIR,--The two Volumes of Poems that in April last I engaged to have published, are finished, and will be ready for delivery in two or three days. The ten Setts you subscribed for I am rather at a loss how to have safely transmitted to you at your residence in Virginia, where I find by the Newspapers, you mean to Continue until the end of September. Will you on receipt of this, send me a line or two, informing me whether you would prefer having the Books put into the hands of some Confidential person here, to be sent or; that they be sent to the Post Office at Washington; or that they be forwarded directly to yourself in Orange County. The precise direction is not in my power." The 1809 collection is the most elaborate of all the earlier editions of Freneau's works. His statement that it was the only one which received his personal supervision is certainly wrong, for he had carefully supervised the 1795 edition. On the title page he announced that the poems were "now republished from the original manuscripts," and that he had added several "translations from the ancients and other pieces not heretofore in print," but the new poems that had not previously appeared in the _Time Piece_ were very few. On the title page also he placed the stanza: "Justly to record the deeds of fame, A muse from heaven should touch the soul with flame; Some powerful spirit in superior lays Should tell the conflicts of the stormy days." The poet's advertisement is as follows: "The Poems, included in these two volumes, were originally written between the years 1768 and 1793; and were partly published in the transient prints of the times, and afterwards collected into two editions of 1786 and 1795. The present is a revision of the whole, and now published agreeable to the terms of the subscription issued in this city, in April last. Such, perhaps, as are not attracted by mere novelty or amusement, will attend more particularly to the Poems originating from the temporary events of the American war. These Poems were intended, in part to expose to vice and treason, their own hideous deformity; to depict virtue, honour and patriotism in their native beauty. Such (says a most distinguished foreign author) was the intention of poetry from the beginning, and here her purpose should end. Whether the following verses have any real claim to the attention of the citizens of the American United States, who may honour them with a reading, is left for the Public to decide. "To his Countrymen, the real _Patriotic Americans_, the _Revolutionary Republicans_, and the rising generation who are attached to their sentiments and principles, the writer hopes this collection will not prove unacceptable. A more complete edition might have been published, so as to include a great number of miscellaneous Poems and animadversions on public events down to the present year, 1809; but it has been judged most proper, to restrict what is now printed to the date of 1793; with the exception of only a very few pieces of later composition which have been retained, and inserted in the body of the work, but not so as to materially interrupt the general tenor of the Poems that arose from the incidents of the American revolutionary contest. "The Author will only add, that to this Edition are prefixed two copper-plate engravings: the one representing ST. TAMMANY, observing a hostile fleet approaching his shores; the other a nocturnal view of Captain Jones's engagement with the Seraphis.--These, it is hoped will be considered not inelegant embellishments of the edition now presented to the public. "_Philadelphia, August 2d, 1809._" The work is divided into four parts: "Book I. Containing translations from the ancients; and other pieces on various subjects, written in America. "Book II. Containing original pieces, with some relative to the more early events of the American Revolutionary War. "Book III. Containing original poems, written and published at different periods, during the Revolutionary War. "Book IV. Consisting of Miscellaneous pieces, on the events of the times, interspersed with others on moral, satirical, and political subjects." The author made almost no attempt to arrange the material chronologically as to the dates of composition. He resurrected none of the material dropped from the 1795 collection, but cut from the edition some fifty-five other poems, among them nearly all of the material relating to the French Revolution, the greater number of the New Year Odes, and such fine pieces as "Neversink," "The Country Printer," "Slender's Journey," and "The Wintry Prospect." The text was taken largely from the 1795 version, and a few minor amendments and changes made, but in no case were they so frequent or so careful as those made for the second edition. The poet's editorial work consisted mainly in elaborated titles with Latin quotations, in foot-notes, and in division of the material into books. The next few years of Freneau's life were spent quietly at Mount Pleasant. He passed his time, as his daughter describes, "in writing poetry, and in answering and receiving letters." Her picture of the man at this period is full of interest. "Although no farmer, he loved to see the work going on. He was very fond of feeding poultry and all the dumb animals, and when the season came for slaughtering the porkers, he generally managed it so as to have some business in New York, and he was usually absent when poultry was wanted for dinner. Mrs. Freneau had to give orders to the blacks to do it privately. He confessed it a weakness and tried to conceal it." His interest in politics was still keen. He watched carefully all the premonitory signs of the approaching storm of 1812, and when war was found to be inevitable, his harp was in full tune to satirize the foe, which he had never ceased to hate, and to celebrate the heroes and the victories of his country. On January 12, 1815, we find him again in correspondence with his old friend Madison:[25] "SIR,--Since my last return from the Canary Islands in 1807 to Charleston and from thence to New York; with my Brigantine Washington, quitting the bustle and distraction of active life, my walks have been confined, with now and then a short excursion, to the neighbourhood of the Never Sink hills, and under some old hereditary trees, and on some fields, which I well recollect for sixty years. During the last Seven Years my pen could not be entirely idle, and for amusement only now and then I had recourse to my old habit of scribbling verses. A Bookseller in New York, Mr. Longworth, by some means discovered this, and has prevailed on me to put my papers into his hands for publication. With some reluctance I consented to gratify his wish, altho' I think after the age of fifty, or thereabouts, the vanity of authorship ought to cease, at least it has been the case with myself. Mr. Longworth informs me the work will be published early in February in two duodecimo volumes. I have directed him, when done, to forward a copy to yourself, of which I beg your acceptance. I do not know that the Verses are of any superior or very unusual merit; but he tells me the Town will have them: and of course, have them they will, and must, it seems. The Work cannot be very tedious, for in two small Volumes there will be upwards of one hundred and thirty Poems on different subjects, moral, political, or merely amusing, and not a few upon the events of the times since May 1812. However, you know a short production may sometimes be tedious, and a long one very lively and captivating. None of my effusions in these Volumes much exceed two hundred lines, and several do not reach more than the fourth part of that number of lines. "When I left Philadelphia, about the middle of September 1809, the ten copies of the Revolutionary Poems, which you subscribed for, were put into a box well secured, and forwarded according to your direction, under the care of General Steele, then Collector of the Port of Philadelphia: I have not since heard whether they reached you or not. "That Edition was published by _Subscription_ merely for the benefit of, and to assist Mrs. Bailey, an unfortunate but deserving widowed female, niece to General Steele, and this consideration alone induced me to pay some attention to that third Edition. "But, in mentioning these matters I fear I am intruding both on your time and patience, constantly, or always perpetually engaged, as you undoubtedly are, in the duties of your station at a stormy period, a tempestuous Presidency indeed: May you weather all the conflicts of these mighty times, and return safe at the proper period to your Virginian Groves, fields and streams: sure I am, different very different indeed from your long intercourse with political Life and the affairs of a 'grumbling Hive.' My best wishes attend Yourself, and Mrs. Madison, to whom, tho' I never had the pleasure of her acquaintance, I beg you to present my best compliments and regards." On March 3d following, he writes again to Madison:[26] "SIR,--When I mentioned in my few lines to you, dated from my residence in New Jersey on the 22d of January last, the two Volumes of Poems publishing in this city by Mr. Longworth, I did really think to have had a small box of them at Washington by the middle of February at farthest, with a particular direction of a couple of copies to Yourself bound in an elegant manner. Finding, however, that the business went on slowly here, and a little vexed to be under the necessity of leaving my Solitude and the wild Scenes of nature in New Jersey for the ever execrated streets and company of this Capital, I embarked near Sandy Hook in a snow storm, about the last of January, and shortly after arrived here, fortunately unnoticed and almost unknown--At my time of life, 63!!! abounding however in all the powers of health and vigour, though I consider my poetry and poems as mere trifles, I was seriously out of humour on my arrival here to see my work delayed, as well from the severity of the cold, which has been unremitting for more than a month past, and perhaps to some other causes it would not be prudent _here_ to explain. By my incessant exertions in spurring on the indolence of typography, the work, such as it is, is now finished, in two small Volumes of about 180 pages each.--The moment they are out of the bookbinder's hands, Mr. Longworth will forward you a Copy, and by the first Vessel to Alexandria, Georgetown, or Washington a Box of them to his correspondents in these places. A Copy or two of the Revolutionary poems will be forwarded to your direction--I am sorry the Copies you had were doomed to the flames, but the author had nearly suffered the same fate in the year 1780.--Yesterday I received from New Jersey a Copy of your friendly Letter of the 1st February: a Copy, I say, for my wife, or some one of my four Girls, daughters, would not forward me the original, but keep it until my return for fear of accidents. "To-morrow morning I embark again for Monmouth, and among other cares, when I arrive at my magical grove, I shall hasten to exert all the poetical energy I possess, on the grand Subject of the Repulse of the British Army from New Orleans. There is a subject indeed! far above my power, I fear. If there be anything in inspiration, it will be needful on such a theme. Eight hundred lines in Heroic Measure I mean to devote to this animating subject.--In due time you shall hear more from me on this business, if I am not anticipated by some one more muse beloved than myself.--Hoping that all health and happiness may attend you, and that your libraries in future may escape the ravages and flames of Goths and Barbarians--I remain, etc." Madison's reply has been lost. On May 10, 1815, Freneau wrote his last letter, as far as we know, to Madison:[27] "SIR,--Mrs. Anna Smyth, the Lady of Charles Smyth Esquire, a respectable Citizen of this place, being to set out in a few days on a tour to Virginia, and expecting to be in your neighbourhood, either at Washington, or at Montpelier, does me the favour to take under her particular care, to put, or transmit into your hands, the two little Volumes I mentioned to you in my letter last Winter, and to which I received your friendly and obliging Answer. "Be pleased to accept them as a mark of my attention, respect, and esteem, in regard to your private as well as public character. "I have written to Mr. Carey, in Philadelphia, Book-seller there, to forward on to you, if he has them, the two Volumes of the Revolutionary Poems, published in Philadelphia in the Summer of 1809, and which you wished to regain, since the loss of your Copies in the conflagration at Washington last year. I flatter myself, the arrangement I have made with him will replace them in your hands.--I will only add, that any attention paid by you to Mrs. Smyth, I will consider as conferred on myself." The 1815 edition contains no poems previously published in the poet's earlier collections. The work shows no falling off in vigor from the earlier martial standard set by the poet in his more vigorous years. Some critics have declared that the poet's best work is in this collection. Certain it is that a few of the lyrics of battle have a spirit and swing that make them notable productions. Freneau placed upon the title-page the ringing challenge: "Then England come!--a sense of wrong requires To meet with thirteen stars your thousand fires: Through these stern times the conflict to maintain, Or drown them, with your commerce, in the main." He introduced the work as follows: "The poetical pieces contained in these volumes were composed at different periods, and on a variety of occasions, between the years 1797 and 1815, and are now presented to the public, printed from the author's original and corrected manuscripts, and, it is hoped, in such a style of typography, as will not be unacceptable to the reader.--Several of the performances, comprised in this collection, and chiefly those on political subjects, and other events of the times, have heretofore appeared in several periodical publications of _this_ and other STATES of the union. It is presumed, however, that the poems of this description will not be the less acceptable to the friends of the muses, now they are collected in these volumes; with the advantage of having at one view what were before scattered in those bulky vehicles of information, whose principal object can be little more than to record the common events and business of the day, and soon descend into comparative oblivion.--Whatever may be the fate of the work, they are respectfully offered to the world, in hopes it may obtain a share of their attention, and particularly, from the friends of poetical composition; and in a country where it may be expected, the fine arts in general will, with the return of peace, find that share of encouragement, which they seem entitled to demand, in every nation that makes any pretensions to refinement and civilization.--It is only necessary to add, that care has been taken to execute the typographical part as _correctly_ as possible." The poems were reviewed for the _Analectic Magazine_ by Mr. Gulian C. Verplanck, who said in part: "He depicts land battles and naval fights with much animation and gay coloring; and being himself a son of old Neptune, he is never at a loss ... when the scene lies at sea. His martial and political ballads are free from bombast and affectation, and often have an arch simplicity in their manner that renders them very poignant and striking. If the ballads and songs of Dibdin have cheered the spirits and incited the valor of the British tars, the strains of Freneau, in like manner, are calculated to impart patriotic impulses to the hearts of his countrymen, and their effect in this way should be taken as the test of their merit, without entering into a very nice examination of the rhyme or the reason. For our own part, we have no inclination to dwell on his defects; we had much rather-- "'With full applause, in honor to his age, Dismiss the veteran poet from the stage, Crown his last exit with distinguished praise, And kindly hide his baldness with the bays.'" The last lines used by Verplanck are from "American Bards," a poem published in Philadelphia in 1820. The reference to Freneau is not without interest: "Let Freneau live, though Flattery's baleful tongue, Too early tuned his youthful lyre to song, And ripe old age, in ill directed zeal, Has made an enervated last appeal; His song could fire the sailor on the wave, Raise up the coward,--animate the brave, While wit and satire cast their darts around, And fools and cowards tremble at the sound. Although ambition never soared to claim The meed of polished verse, or classic fame, And caustic critics honor but condemn, A strain of feeling, but a style too tame. Let the old bard whose patient voice has fanned The fire of freedom that redeemed our land, Live on the scroll with kindred names that swell The page of history, where their honors dwell; With full applause, in honor to his age, Dismiss the veteran poet from the stage, Crown his last exit with distinguished praise, And kindly hide his baldness with the bays." The last years of Freneau's life were eventless, passed quietly at Mount Pleasant, and varied only with frequent visits to New York. Shortly after the issue of the 1815 edition of his poems, the ancestral home was completely destroyed by fire, together with most of the poet's papers, manuscript poems, valuable letters and books--the collection of a lifetime. During his last years he contemplated a complete and final edition of his poetical works. He wrote Dr. Mease of Philadelphia whether there was "enough of the old spirit of patriotism abroad to insure the safety of such an adventure;" and it was the testimony of Alexander Anderson, the once celebrated engraver on wood, that Freneau once consulted with him as to the cost of an illustrated volume of his poems, and departed sadly remarking that his purse was not equal to the venture. The best picture of the poet in his old age is from the pen of the genial Dr. John W. Francis of New York, who knew him well during his last years:[28] "I had, when very young, read the poetry of Freneau, and as we instinctively become attached to the writers who first captivate our imaginations, it was with much zest that I formed a personal acquaintance with the revolutionary bard. He was at that time about seventy-six years old, when he first introduced himself to me in my library. I gave him an earnest welcome. He was somewhat below the ordinary height; in person thin yet muscular, with a firm step, though a little inclined to stoop; his countenance wore traces of care, yet lightened with intelligence as he spoke; he was mild in enunciation, neither rapid nor slow, but clear, distinct, and emphatic. His forehead was rather beyond the medium elevation, his eyes a dark grey, occupying a socket deeper than common; his hair must have once been beautiful, it was now thinned and of an iron grey. He was free of all ambitious displays; his habitual expression was pensive. His dress might have passed for that of a farmer. New York, the city of his birth, was his most interesting theme; his collegiate career with Madison, next. His story of many of his occasional poems was quite romantic. As he had at command types and a printing press, when an incident of moment in the Revolution occurred, he would retire for composition, or find shelter under the shade of some tree, indite his lyrics, repair to the press, set up his types, and issue his productions. There was no difficulty in versification with him. I told him what I had heard Jeffrey, the Scotch Reviewer, say of his writings, that the time would arrive when his poetry, like that of Hudibras, would command a commentator like Gray. On some of the occasions when Freneau honored me with a visit, we had within our circle one of my earliest friends, that rare Knickerbocker, Gulian C. Verplanck. I need not add that the charm of my interview with the bard was heightened by the rich funds of antiquarian lore possessed by the latter. "It is remarkable how tenaciously Freneau preserved the acquisitions of his early classical studies, notwithstanding he had for many years, in the after portion of his life, been occupied in pursuits so entirely alien to books. There is no portrait of the patriot Freneau; he always firmly declined the painter's art, and would brook no 'counterfeit presentiment.'" Freneau's frequent visits to New York were the chief solace of his last years. Says Dr. Francis: "Freneau was widely known to a large circle of our most prominent and patriotic New Yorkers. His native city, with all his wanderings, was ever uppermost in his mind and in his affections. While in the employment of Jefferson, as a translator in the department of state, upon the organization of Congress, with Washington at its head, he had the gratification of witnessing the progress of improvement, and might have enjoyed increased facilities had he not enlisted with an indiscreet zeal as an advocate of the radical doctrines of the day. Freneau was, nevertheless, esteemed a true patriot; and his private worth, his courteous manner, and his general bearing won admiration with all parties. His pen was more acrimonious than his heart. He was tolerant, frank in expression, and not deficient in geniality. He was highly cultivated in classical knowledge, abounding in anecdotes of the revolutionary crisis, and extensively acquainted with prominent characters. "It were easy to record a long list of eminent citizens who ever gave him a cordial welcome. He was received with the warmest greetings by the old soldier, Governor George Clinton. He, also, in the intimacy of kindred feeling, found an agreeable pastime with the learned Provoost, the first regularly consecrated Bishop of the American Protestant Episcopate, who himself had shouldered a musket in the Revolution, and hence was sometimes called the fighting bishop. They were allied by classical tastes, a love of natural science, and ardor in the cause of liberty. With Gates he compared the achievements of Monmouth with those at Saratoga. With Col. Fish he reviewed the capture of Yorktown; with Dr. Mitchell he rehearsed, from his own sad experience, the physical sufferings and various diseases of the incarcerated patriots of the Jersey prison-ship; and descanted on Italian poetry and the piscatory eclogues of Sannazarius. He, doubtless, furnished Dr. Benjamin Dewitt with data for his funeral discourse on the remains of the 11,500 American martyrs. With Pintard he could laud Horace and talk largely of Paul Jones. With Major Fairlie he discussed the tactics and chivalry of Baron Steuben. With Sylvanus Miller he compared notes on the political clubs of 1795-1810. With Dewitt Clinton and Cadwallader D. Colden he debated the projects of internal improvement and artificial navigation, based on the famous precedent of the Languedoc canal." The death of Freneau was a sad one. On the evening of the 18th of December, 1832, he had gone on an errand to Freehold, some two miles distant. When he set out to return, late in the evening, a fierce and blinding storm was in progress. His friends sought to dissuade him, but he insisted on returning. Instead of taking the long way round by the road, he took the usual short way through the fields, and was soon lost in the roaring "blizzard." He circled into a swamp, and doubtless, after hours of wandering, sank down benumbed and hopeless, to be found by his friends a few hours later, still breathing but nearly lifeless. For the whispered tradition that he was intoxicated when he left the town, there is no foundation. The next issue of the _Monmouth Press_ contained a notice of his death: "Mr. Freneau was in the village and started, towards evening, to go home, about two miles. In attempting to go across he appears to have got lost and mired in a bog where his lifeless corpse was discovered yesterday morning. Captain Freneau was a stanch Whig in the time of the Revolution, a good soldier, and a warm patriot. The productions of his pen animated his countrymen in the darkest days of '76 and the effusions of his muse cheered the desponding soldier as he fought the battles of freedom." His old friend, John Pintard, wrote a biographical notice of the poet in the _New York Mirror_ for January 12, 1833, in which he dwelt largely upon his mental endowments and accomplishments: "He was a man of great reading and extensive acquirements; few were more thoroughly versed in classical literature, and fewer still who knew as much about the early history of our country, the organization of the government, and the use and progress of parties." The house which Freneau occupied during his last years is still standing. His remains rest in the little cemetery at Mount Pleasant, which recently, in honor of the poet, has been rechristened Freneau. VII. The personality of Philip Freneau, if we judge from contemporary testimony and the effect which his personal presence invariably exerted, was a singularly winning one. The bluff, hearty old sailor breathed out good-will and honesty with every breath. He was the soul of honor, and, despite his caustic pen, the kindest hearted creature in the world. All that one of his grand-daughters can remember of him is that once he took her upon his knee and chided her for having killed a fly. "Surely," he said, "it was not made without some wise end, and its little life was as dear to him as is yours to you." It reminds one of "My Uncle Toby." There is a cheery optimism in many of his poems. A stanza like this might have been written by Browning: "All nature must decay, 'tis true, But nature shall her face renew, Her travels in a circle make, Freeze but to thaw, sleep but to wake, Die but to live and live to die." His temperament was Celtic. He inherited with his French blood a passionate love for beauty, a sensuous, dreamy delight in the merely poetic, in the weird and romantic. He had not the Teutonic stability; he was easily exalted, easily depressed; he went often to extremes; he was sensitive to a degree that made criticism a torture, and he was proud beyond all reason. He had been deeply touched by the principles of the Revolution; he had suffered personally at the hands of the enemy; he had followed Paine in his democratic doctrines even to the extremes, and he tried to live consistently with these exalted ideals. His honesty and his ignorance of the world prevented him from seeing how greatly these principles must be modified to become of really practical value. His kindly heart made him a fierce foe to all kinds of tyranny and oppression. He saw sights in the West Indies that made him a bitter opponent of human slavery. Again and again in his poems and prose sketches does he condemn the evil. His message is almost as intense as Whittier's: "O come the time and haste the day When man shall man no longer crush, When reason shall enforce her sway, Nor these fair regions raise the blush Where still the African complains And mourns his yet unbroken chains." Not only slavery, but every other form of oppression and wrong received his condemnation. He wrote boldly against intemperance in a day when the use of intoxicating liquors was well-nigh universal and wholly uncriticised; he spoke eloquently on cruelty to animals; and he was one of the earliest to demand equal rights for man and woman. Freneau's religious inclinations have been sometimes harshly criticised by those of puritanic creed. The school of Dr. Dwight could speak of him only in contempt, yet it is true that the poet was a deeply religious man. His love of freedom and his perfect sincerity affected his creed. He had an intense dislike for hollow formalism. In his "Jamaica Funeral" he has pictured a hypocritical priest in colors as vivid almost as Chaucer's. He detested "The holy man by Bishops holy made." He loved sincerity, and the creed that came not from dry formalism, but from reason and from an honest heart. It has often been overlooked by his critics that Freneau was a widely read and thoroughly cultured man; that he was a linguist of more than ordinary powers; and that he knew intimately the chief writings in Latin, Italian, French, and English. He was no ignorant, careless scribbler, tossing into the ephemeral columns of the press hasty rhymes of which he never thought again. He revised and corrected with patient care, and he took a deep interest in the children of his pen, rescuing at one time or another almost every one of them from the oblivion of the newspaper. VIII. As to the absolute literary value of Freneau's literary remains, there is room for honest difference of opinion. He is certainly not, if we judge him from what he actually produced, a great poet. But he must in fairness be viewed against the background of his age and his environment. Nature had equipped him as she has equipped few other men. He had the poet's creative imagination; he had an exquisite sense of the beautiful; and he had a realization of his own poetic endowments that kept him during a long life constantly true to the muse. Scarcely a month went by in all his life, from his early boyhood, that was not marked by poetic composition. Few poets, even in later and more auspicious days, have devoted their lives more assiduously to song. Freneau was the first to catch what may be called the new poetic impulse in America--the new epic note. Previous to the Revolutionary era, America was destitute even of the germs of an original literature. Before she could produce anything really strong and individual, there was necessary some great primal impulse that should stir mightily the whole people; that should strike from their hands the old books and the old models; that should arouse them to a true realization of themselves; and that should clear the atmosphere for a new and broader view of human life. Such new forces are always needed by society, but they stalk with long strides over the centuries. In pre-Revolutionary America such an upheaval was near at hand. It came with appalling suddenness. The colonists had had no gradual preparation for the idea of separation from England. As late as 1775, Franklin declared before the House of Commons that in all of his journeyings up and down the colonies he had not heard expressed one single wish for complete independence. Even after Concord and Bunker Hill, Freneau, the radical, could write: "Long may Britannia rule our hearts again, Rule as she ruled in George the Second's reign." The idea of independence came all in a moment; but once it had come, it went with leaps and bounds to its extreme. Never in all history has a whole people been lifted by such rapid stages into a region of such vast outlook. We can trace the growth of the new spirit, not decade by decade, but month by month: Justice, Freedom, Independence, and then the radiant vision of perfect Liberty and the Rights of Man, and then like a torrent the sense of boundless possibilities and glorious destiny: "No pent-up Utica contracts our powers, But the whole boundless continent is ours." The soul of man stirred by such ideals, and successful in realizing them beyond all dreams, struggled for utterance. It is such upheavals in human society that make poets and bring outbursts of song and periods in the history of literature. But there was no burst of song in America; instead there followed one of the most pathetic spectacles in all literary history--a people with a vision that transported them into the clouds, yet powerless through environment and early education to transmute that vision into song. The South, thrilled by the new spirit, turned it at once into action, and took the leadership in war and statesmanship. New England lifted up her voice, but she could speak only through the medium of old spiritual conceptions and worn-out poetic forms. A young Connecticut parson, thrilled through and through, pours his enthusiasm into an epic of the wars of Joshua done in the heroics of Pope; a brilliant Boston lad would sing of "War and Washington," but he must set it to the tune of Dryden; and a gifted Connecticut satirist, overflowing with the true poetic spirit, is content simply to add new American stanzas to "Hudibras." With all her rhymers and all her inspiration, New England gave forth not a single original note. It was the repeating of the old spectacle of a heavenly anthem sung unto shepherds,--unto those utterly unable to give it utterance. We see them, however, struggling heroically with the burden. From 1774, when Dwight completed his "Conquest of Canaan," "the first piece of this kind ever attempted in this country," as he observed in his preface, until 1808, which ends the period with Barlow's "Columbiad"--the "Polyolbion" of American poetry--the years are strewn thick with the wrecks of epics. Every poet of the era felt his soul burn with the epic fire. Charles Brockden Brown, when only sixteen, had started no less than three of these Homeric efforts: one on the discovery of America, and one each on the conquests of Mexico and Peru. It was our heroic era, but it yielded almost nothing of value. Mere exaltation availeth little unless it be grounded either upon genius or long-continued culture. America, however, was not without her genius. Before Dwight and Barlow and Trumbull had written a line, Freneau at Princeton was planning epics American in scene and spirit. He had dreamed, over his Virgil, of a greater Aeneas who had sailed into the pathless West to discover a new world, and to plant there the seeds of a greater than Rome; he had translated with beating heart the words of Seneca: "The time shall come, when numerous years are past, When ocean shall unloose the bands of things, And an extended region rise at last; "And Typhis shall disclose the mighty land Far, far away, where none have rov'd before; Nor shall the world's remotest region be Gibraltar's rock, or Thule's savage shore." "Fired at the theme," he had mapped out the epic of a new world; but his work of this era, like all schoolboy epics, had resulted only in fragments which were to strew his earlier volumes. How strong and original was this youthful dream one can judge from the ringing lines of "Columbus to Ferdinand," "Discovery," and the "Pictures of Columbus," which are mere epic fragments. There is an originality and a fire in them utterly new in American poetry. There is poetry of a high order in such a climax as that recording the soliloquy of the dying Columbus, beginning: "The winds blow high; one other world remains, Once more without a guide I find the way." But Commencement was at hand. Here was a chance, indeed; here was a theme commensurate with the occasion. The two young dreamers would outline an epic poem; they would essay "Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme": "Now shall the adventurous Muse attempt a theme More new, more noble, and more flush of fame Than all that went before." Never was graduating exercise based on broader foundations. The young graduates bewail at every step their limitations of space. The plan they suggest is the plan of a "Columbiad." They would begin with all the tale of Columbus; they would rehearse the story of Cortez and Pizarro; they would discuss at learned length the origin and the characteristics of the Indians; they would tell the story of the early colonies; and would trace the course of settlement and review the progress and the promise of agriculture and commerce; they would peer into the future and mark the time "When we shall spread Dominion from the North and South and West, Far from the Atlantic to Pacific shores, And shackle half the convex of the main." But, alas, the time! An epic cannot be condensed into a graduation exercise. Suddenly the poet bursts into true prophetic rapture: "I see, I see A thousand kingdoms rais'd, cities, and men Num'rous as sand upon the ocean shore; Th' Ohio then shall glide by many a town Of note: and where the Mississippi stream, By forests shaded now runs weeping on, Nations shall grow and States not less in fame Than Greece and Rome of old: we too shall boast Our Alexanders, Pompeys, heroes, kings That in the womb of time yet dormant lye Waiting the joyful hour of life and light. O snatch us hence, ye muses! to those days When, through the veil of dark antiquity, Our sons shall hear of us as things remote, That blossom'd in the morn of days, alas! How could I weep that we were born so soon, In the beginning of more happy times! It is not a great poem when we measure it by absolute standards, but "The Rising Glory of America" is a very great poem if we view it in connection with the conditions and the environment that produced it. Full as it is of Latin influence and Commencement day zeal, it is the first real poem that America ever made--the first poem that was impelled hot from a man's soul. It is more than this, it is the first real fruit of a new influence in the world of letters--the first literary product of that mighty force that was to set in motion the American and French Revolutions, with all that they mean in human history. America should have recognized this new and original voice, and should have encouraged it to sing the new message which it had to proclaim to the world, but she was not yet ready. How the young dreamer, who had seen life from his earliest years only through the medium of his books, was gradually disillusioned, we have endeavored to show. His first book, put forth in the enthusiasm of inexperience, with his name on the title-page, was "damned by all good and judicious judges." So was Wordsworth's; so have been the earliest ventures of every innovator in the field of song. Gradually the young poet awoke to a realization of his position: America was unprepared for her prophet; she would not listen. The discovery disheartened him; his Celtic temperament would not patiently wait for recognition, as did Wordsworth; he was too proud to force his poetry upon an unwilling public. He would leave the scene, for three years to dwell in the dreamy seclusion of the tropic islands. This was his period of pure invention, where he showed the possibilities of his genius. With the "House of Night" he became one of the earliest pioneers in that dimly-lighted region which was soon to be exploited by Coleridge and Poe. The poem is the first distinctly romantic note heard in America. Moreover, one may search in vain in the English poetry of the early romantic movement for anything that can equal it in strength of conception, in mastery of weird epithet, and in sustained command over the vaguely terrible. The page that recounts the poet's departure from the house of night, quaking with fear,-- "Beneath my feet substantial darkness lay, And screams were heard from the distempered ground," his timid look behind him to find the windows of the infernal dome a "flaming hell-red," the fearful shrieks of the dying monster within the walls, the "hell-red wandering light" that led him to the graves, the sudden peal of the iron bell above him in the darkness, and then the troop of spectres galloping fiercely on Death's horses, while "their busy eyes shot terror to my soul,"--all this is worthy of Poe. As a product of pure imagination, the poem is most remarkable, especially when we view it in connection with the English literature of its day. In its weird supernaturalism it anticipated Scott, and in its unearthly atmosphere it clearly anticipated Coleridge. In the "Jamaica Funeral" the poet outlined his early philosophy of life. He was fast breaking from the influence of Gray, his early master. It is a Gallic philosophy that he outlines; he is becoming infected with Deism; he is a true bacchanalian. Is there not a ring of the "Rubaiyat" in a stanza like this: "Count all the trees that crown Jamaica's hills, Count all the stars that through the heavens you see, Count every drop that the wide ocean fills, Then count the pleasures Bacchus yields to me?" Freneau's early dream of a purely poetic career was rudely broken by the sudden clash of war and by the sternly practical nature of the American people. Circumstances decided for him his career. There was needed a poetic voice to arouse the common people to action. There was no demand for an imaginative creator, for a sensuous singer of love and wine,--America needed a popular voice, one that could be understood by the unlettered, one that with satire and patriotic appeal could arouse and fire the land. Freneau laid aside for a time the harp and the lyre and took up the trumpet and the bagpipes, and of his influence on the stormy period of the Revolution there can be no two opinions. His ballads and satires were scattered far and wide; they were sold in broadsides in every port and city and camp. Even in the war of 1812 his poems flew like leaves everywhere that men were gathered together. To be the lyrist of a righteous revolution, and above all to be the people's poet, is in itself no small distinction. His poems of the war are in themselves a running history of the struggle, especially of its last years. His heart was in his work; the prison ship had blotted for a time all memories of the old criticisms of his early work, all his early dreams, everything save "the insulting foe" who was making desolate his dear mother land. He lampooned without mercy Clinton, Cornwallis, Carleton, and the royalist printers, Rivington and Gaine. He sang tender lyrics of the patriot dead at Eutaw Springs, who "Saw their injured Country's woe; The flaming town, the wasted field; Then rushed to meet the insulting foe; They took the spear,--but left the shield." He sang peans of victory over the downfall at Yorktown; he exalted the fame of Washington; he called down maledictions on the ship that bore the "worthless Arnold" from American shores. These are more than the fleeting voices of a newspaper muse; they are true poems, and they are American to the core. Scott declared that "Eutaw Springs [was] as fine a thing as there is of the kind in the language." With a few fiery songs he placed himself at the head of the small group of naval lyrists, a position which even to-day he has not wholly lost. In dash and fire, in ability to catch and reproduce the odors and the atmosphere of the ocean, in enthusiasm and excitement that is contagious and that plunges the reader at once into the heart of the action, and in glowing patriotism that makes the poems national hymns, no American poet has excelled this earliest singer of the American ocean. No true patriot can read without a thrill of pride such songs as "Captain Jones's Invitation" and "The Death of Captain Biddle," a song of the intrepid seaman who from the _Randolph_ poured death into the British ship: "Tremendous flash! and hark, the ball Drives through old Yarmouth, flames and all," and then in a fatal moment was blown up by his own magazine, and "Stanzas on the New Frigate Alliance," the gallant ship "who walks the ocean like its queen," and "Barney's Victory over the General Monk," that rollicking song of battle and of triumph, and best of all, perhaps, "The Sailor's Invitation," which is full of the very salt and vigor of the western seas. "The Memorable Victory of Paul Jones," written when America was ringing with the first news of the battle, is one of the glories of American literature. Longfellow or Whittier never wrote a more stirring ballad. It moves with leaps and bounds; it is full of the very spirit of battle. "She felt the fury of her ball, Down, prostrate down, the Britons fall; The decks are strew'd with slain: Jones to the foe his vessel lash'd; And while the black artillery flash'd Loud thunders shook the main." It is not impertinent to observe that Thomas Campbell was but four years of age when this appeared. It was not Scott or Cooper who added the domain of the ocean to literature; it was Freneau. His books are full of the roar and the sweep of the open sea, which he knew as the farmer knows his ancestral acres. There is no more true and vigorous picture of an ocean voyage and a naval combat than that contained in Canto I of "The British Prison Ship." The episode of the boatswain's fiery prayer, just before the conflict, is unique in literature. The war over, Freneau would return to his dream; he would pour forth the poetic message that was in him; but his countrymen, delighting in his hard blows and biting sarcasm, refused to listen to the merely poetic. They demanded jingles and clever hits. The poet turned fiercely upon them. "For men I keep a pen," he cried, "for dogs a cane." The time for using the cane was past; he would use it no more. But who would listen to anything that was not rant and bombast? Fate had thrown him into a "bard-baiting clime." A wave of the old bitterness swept over him: "Expect not in these times of rude renown That verse like yours will have the chance to please: No taste for plaintive elegy is known, Nor lyric ode,--none care for things like these." How he at length deliberately turned from the muse of his choice, and how after a long experience with the world of actual affairs he exchanged his old poetic ideals for those of mere reason and common sense, we have attempted to show. Here was a man equipped by nature for a true poet, a man with a message, yet dwarfed and transformed by his environment. America was not ready for her singer. It took half a century more to make way in the wilderness for the new message that had been whispered to Freneau in his young manhood. Had he been a great world-poet, he would have been heard despite all difficulties; he would have trampled down the barriers about him and have compelled his age to listen, but the task was beyond him. America, to this day, has produced no poet who single-handed and alone could have performed such a labor of Hercules. Sadly Freneau turned to other things. He has never been adequately recognized. Had the first edition of his poems, published the same year as the Kilmarnock edition of Burns, been an English book, it long ago would have figured largely in the histories of the romantic and naturalistic movement which made possible the great outburst of the nineteenth century. That Freneau was the most conspicuous pioneer in the dim romantic world that was to be explored by Coleridge and Poe, we have already shown; that he was a pioneer in the movement that succeeded in throwing off the chain forged by Pope is evident to any one who will examine his early work. "The Wild Honey Suckle," for instance, which was written in 1786, twelve years before the "Lyrical Ballads," is as spontaneous and as free from Pope as anything written by Wordsworth. It is a nature lyric written with the eye upon the object, without recollection of other poetry, and it draws from the humble flower a lesson for humanity in the true Wordsworthian manner. Before Freneau, American poetry had been full of the eglantine, the yew, the Babylonian willow, the lark--the flora and fauna of the Hebrew and British bards. In our poet we find, for the first time, the actual life of the American forest and field--the wild pink, the elm, the wild honeysuckle, the pumpkin, the blackbird, the squirrel, the partridge, "the loquacious whip-poor-will," and in addition to this the varied life of the American tropic islands. We find for the first time examples of that true poetic spirit that can find inspiration in humble and even vulgar things; that, furthermore, can draw from lowly nature and her commonplaces deep lessons for human life. Freneau sees the reflection of the stars in the bosom of the river, "But when the tide had ebbed away The scene fantastic with it fled, A bank of mud around me lay And sea-weed on the river's bed," and from this he draws the obvious moral for human life. Consider what Pope would have said of mud. Indeed, to appreciate Freneau, one must come to him after a careful reading of the classic poets who preceded him. What a shock to this school would have been the vividly realistic poem on "Logtown." Just how much Freneau influenced the school of poets who in England broke away from the trammels of the eighteenth century, we can never know; yet no one can read long in the American poet and not be convinced that his influence was considerable. His poems were known and read freely in England at the very dawn of the critical period in British poetry, and their echoes can be detected more than once. In his use of his native land and his familiar surroundings as a background for art, Freneau discovered the poetical side of the Indian, and thus became the literary father of Brockden Brown, Cooper, and the little school of poets which in the early years of the century fondly believed that the aboriginal American was to be the central figure in the poetry of the new world. To the little real poetry that there is in the Indian, Freneau did full justice, but he went to no such absurd lengths as did Eastburn and Whittier. The "Indian Death Song," if it indeed be his, is full of the wild, stoical heroism of the brave who is dying beneath the torture of his enemies. In "The Indian Student" he has covered fully the Indian's love for the pathless forest, and to the untamable wildness of his nature. "The Dying Indian" and "The Indian Burying-Ground" sum up what is essentially poetic in Indian legend and all that is pathetic in the fate of the vanishing race. Poetry, if it is to confine itself to the truth, can do little more for the Indian. Such was Philip Freneau, a man in every respect worthy to bear the title of "the father of American poetry." He was the first true poet born upon our continent; he realized in his early youth his vocation; he gave himself with vigor and enthusiasm to his calling; he fitted himself by wide reading and classic culture; he received the full inspiration of a great movement in human society; he lifted up his voice to sing, but he was smothered and silenced by his contemporaries. He was all alone; he had about him no circle of "Pleiades" to encourage and assist; he had no traditions, religious or otherwise, that would compel silence. He was out of step with the theology of his generation; he was out of tune with the music of his day; he was beating time a half century ahead of the chorus about him. The people have to be educated to revolution, and America had not yet learned to take the initiative in things intellectual and æsthetic. She must follow the literary fashions beyond the sea. Freneau was for breaking violently away from England and for setting up a new standard of culture and literary art on this side the water. "Can we never be thought To have learning or grace Unless it be brought From that damnable place?" he cried. But he reckoned without his countrymen. Not until Emerson's day did it dawn upon America that it was possible for her to think for herself and make poetry that did not echo the English bards. Thus did America reject her earliest prophet; thus did she stop her ears and compel him to lay aside his seven-stringed lyre for the horn and the bagpipes. Freneau lived to see his discarded harp in full tune in other hands, first in England and then in his own land. There is something truly pathetic in the figure of the old minstrel, who had realized almost nothing of his early dreams, and yet who had been told by the great Jeffries that the time would surely come when his poems would command a commentator like Gray, who had been extravagantly praised by such masters as Scott and Campbell, who had written to Madison as late as 1815, "my publisher tells me the town will have them [his verses] and of course have them they will," it is pathetic to see this poet, in his hoary old age, for he lived until 1832, realizing that he had been utterly forgotten, witnessing the triumph of the very songs that had haunted his youth, and seeing those who had not half his native ability crowned by those who had rejected and forgotten him. Such ever is the penalty of being born out of due time. The present age has also been unjust to Freneau. It has left his poems in their first editions, which are now extremely rare and costly; it has scattered his letters and papers to the winds; it has garbled and distorted his life in every book of reference; it has left untold the true story of his career; it has judged him from generalizations that have floated from no one knows where. But time works slowly with her verdicts; true merit in the end is sure to receive its deserts; and Freneau may even yet be given the place that is his. [1] Ann Maury's _Memoirs of a Huguenot_. [2] In the possession of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. [3] Madison Papers, Vol. XIII. p. 9. [4] Introduction to the 1846 edition of "Modern Chivalry." [5] The _United States Magazine_, February number. [6] A perfectly preserved copy is in the possession of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. [7] In the possession of Miss Adele M. Sweeney, Jersey City. [8] Published in the _Freeman's Journal_, August 20, 1788. [9] Published in the _Freeman's Journal_, July 8, 1789. [10] _American Historical Review_, January, 1898. [11] Randall's _Life of Jefferson_, vol. ii, 78. [12] Randall's _Life of Thomas Jefferson_, ii, 81. [13] _Writings of Jefferson_, i, 231. [14] _Writings of Jefferson_, i, 251. [15] Wallace Papers, vol. i. Pa. Hist. Soc. [16] Madison Papers, vol. xxi, p. 70. [17] In the possession of Adele M. Sweeney. [18] In the possession of Mrs. Helen K. Vreeland. [19] Madison Papers, xxxiv, p. 77. [20] Madison Papers, vol. xxxv, p. 17. [21] Morer. Horace, _Epistles_, Lib. ii, lines 1-4. [22] Jefferson Papers, series 2, vol. 34, p. 135. [23] Jefferson Papers, series 2, vol. 34, p. 134. [24] Madison Papers, vol. liv, p. 49. [25] Madison Papers, vol. liv, p. 49. [26] Madison Papers, vol. lv, p. 5. [27] Madison Papers, vol. lv, p. 77. [28] Contributed to Duyckinck's _Cyclopædia of American Literature_. * * * * * PART I EARLY POEMS 1768--1775 THE POEMS OF PHILIP FRENEAU THE HISTORY OF THE PROPHET JONAH[29] Versified (or rather paraphrased) from the sacred writings. CANTO I. In ages past, when smit with warmth sublime, Their bards foretold the dark events of time, And piercing forward through the mystic shade, Kings yet to come, and chiefs unborn survey'd, Amittai's son perceiv'd, among the rest, The mighty flame usurp his labouring breast:-- For this, in dreams, the voice unerring came Of Him, who lives through every age the same: "Arise! and o'er the intervening waste, "To Nineveh's imperial turrets haste; "That mighty town to ruin I decree, "Proclaim destruction, and proclaim from me: "Too long it stands, to God and man a foe, "Without one virtue left to shield the blow; "Guilt, black as night, their speedy ruin brings, "And hottest vengeance from the King of Kings." The prophet heard--but dared to disobey, (Weak as he was) and fled a different way; In Joppa's port a trading ship he found Far o'er the main to distant Tarshish bound: The price of passage to her chief he paid, And there conceal'd with wandering sailors stay'd, His purpose fixt, at once perverse and blind, To leave his country, and his God behind. But He who spread the ocean's vast expanse, And views all nature with a single glance, Forth from its prison bade the tempest fly-- The tempest swell'd the ocean to the sky; The trembling barque, as the fierce billow knocks, Scarce bears the fury of repeated shocks; Her crew distrest, astonish'd and afraid, Each to his various god in anguish pray'd, Nor trust alone to penitence and prayer, They clear the decks, and for the worst prepare, The costly lading to the deep they throw, That lighter o'er the billows she may go, Nor with regret the wealthy cargo spared, For wealth is nothing when with life compared. But to the ship's remotest chambers fled There pensive Jonah droop'd his languid head, And, new to all the dangers of the deep, Had sunk, dejected, in the arms of sleep-- 'Twas then the master broke the prophet's rest, And thus exclaim'd, and smote his frantic breast-- "O sleeper, from thy stupid slumbers rise, "At such an hour can sleep invade thine eyes?-- "If ever thou to heaven didst send a prayer, "Now send thy warmest supplications there, "Perhaps thy God may pity our distress, "And save us, foundering in this dark abyss." Thus warn'd, the seer his vows repentant paid-- Meantime, the seamen to their fellows said: "No common waves our shatter'd vessel rend, "There must be one for whom these storms impend, "Some wretch we bear, for whom these billows rise, "Foe to the gods, and hated by the skies; "Come, since the billows all our arts defy, "Come, let the lot decide for whom we die." Instant the lots amidst the vase they threw, And the markt lot dejected Jonah drew! Then thus their chief the guilty man address'd, "Say, for what crime of thine are we distrest? "What is thy country, what thy calling, say, "Whence dost thou come, what potentate obey? "Unfold it all, nor be the truth deny'd."-- The master spoke, and Jonah thus reply'd: "A Hebrew I, from neighbouring regions came, "A Jewish prophet, of no vulgar fame: "That God I fear who spread this raging sea, "Who fixt the shores by his supreme decree, "And reigns throughout immeasurable space, "His footstool earth, the heaven his dwelling place. "But I, regardless of his high command, "His mandate slighting, fled my native land, "Fool that I was, from Joppa's port to fly, "Who thought to shun his all-pervading eye! "For this the tempest rends each tatter'd sail, "For this your vessel scarce supports the gale!" The seamen heard, distracted and dismay'd; When thus again their trembling pilot said: "How couldst thou thus, ungenerous as thou art, "Affront thy patron, and with us depart?-- "Lo! for thy crimes, and not our own, we die; "Mark, how the wild waves threaten from on high, "Our sails in fragments flit before the blast, "Scarce to its station we confine the mast; "What shall we do, unhappy man, declare, "How shall we act, or how direct our prayer, "That angry Neptune may his rage restrain, "And hush once more these tumults of the main?" The seer reply'd, "The means are in your power "To still the tempest in this dreadful hour:-- "High on the sea-beat prow will I ascend, "And let the boldest of your crew attend "To plunge me headlong from that giddy steep "Down to the bosom of the unfathom'd deep; "So shall the ocean from its raging cease, "And the fierce tempest soon be hush'd to peace:-- "'Tis for my crimes this angry ocean raves, "'Tis for my sin we plough these fearful waves; "Dislodge me soon--the storm shall then decay, "Which still grows louder while on board I stay." Thus he--but they, to save their vagrant guest, Refus'd as yet to grant his strange request, And though aloft on mountain waves they ride, And the tost galley reels from side to side, Yet to their breasts they drew the sweepy oar, And vainly strove to gain the distant shore: The ruffian winds refuse that wish'd retreat, And fiercer o'er the decks the billows beat. Then to the skies the chief his prayer addrest, "Thou Jove supreme, the greatest and the best! "Because thy sovereign pleasure doth require "That death alone must satisfy thine ire, "O spare us for thy dying prophet's sake, "Nor let us perish for the life we take; "If we are wrong, his lot was thy decree, "And thou hast done as it seem'd best to thee." Then from the summit of the washy prow, They plunged the prophet to the depths below, And straight the winds, and straight the billows cease, And every threatening surge lay hush'd in peace; The trembling crew adore the Power Supreme Who kindly thus from ruin rescued them; Their vows they send to his imperial throne, And victims offer to this God unknown. CANTO II. When from the prow's intimidating height They plung'd the prophet to the realms of night, Not long he languished in the briny deep, In death's cold arms not yet decreed to sleep.-- Jehovah saw him, from the abodes of bliss, Sunk to the bottom of the vast abyss, And bade a whale, the mightiest of the kind, His prophet in these dismal mansions find-- The hostile form, approaching through the wave, Receiv'd him living to a living grave, Where three long days in dark distress he lay, And oft repenting, to his God did pray-- The power benign, propitious to his prayer, Bade the huge fish to neighbouring shores repair-- Instant the whale obey'd the high command, And cast him safe on Palestina's strand. The prophet then his past transgressions mourn'd, And grateful, thus to heaven his thanks return'd: "Afflicted from the depths of hell I pray'd, "The dark abyss of everlasting shade: "My God in mercy heard the earnest prayer, "And dying Jonah felt thy presence there. "Because I dared thy mandate disobey, "Far didst thou plunge me from the face of day: "In the vast ocean, where no land is found, "The mighty waters closed thy prophet round: "On me the waves their utmost fury spent, "And all thy billows o'er my body went, "Yet then, surrounded by the dismal shade, "Thus to my Maker from the depths I said: "Though hid beneath the caverns of the main, "To thy blest temple will I look again, "Though from thy sight to utter darkness thrown, "Still will I trust, and trust on thee alone-- "With anguish deep I felt the billows roll, "Scarce in her mansion stay'd my frighted soul; "About my head were wrapt the weeds of night, "And darkness, mingled with no ray of light; "I reached the caves the briny ocean fills, "I reached the bases of the infernal hills, "Earth, with her bars, encompass'd me around, "Yet, from the bottom of that dark profound "Where life no more the swelling vein supplies, "And death reposes, didst thou bid me rise. "When fainting nature bow'd to thy decree, "And the lone spirit had prepar'd to flee, "Then from my prison I remember'd thee. "My prayer towards thy heavenly temple came, "The temple sacred to Jehovah's name.-- "Unhappy they, who vanities pursue, "And lies believing, their own souls undo-- "But to thine ear my grateful song shall rise, "For thee shall smoke the atoning sacrifice, "My vows I'll pay at thy imperial throne, "Since my salvation was from thee alone." CANTO III. Once more the voice to humbled Jonah came Of Him, who lives through every age the same: "Arise! and o'er the intervening waste "To Nineveh's exalted turrets haste, "And what to thee my Spirit shall reveal, "That preach--nor dare the sacred truth conceal-- "To desolation I that town decree; "Proclaim destruction, and proclaim from me." Obedient to Jehovah's high command, The prophet rose, and left Judea's land, And now he near the spiry city drew, (Euphrates pass'd, and rapid Tigris too:) So vast the bulk of this prodigious place, Three days were scant its lengthy streets to trace; But as he enter'd, on the first sad day, Thus he began his tidings of dismay: "O Nineveh! to heaven's decree attend! "Yet forty days, and all thy glories end; "Yet forty days, the skies protract thy fall, "And desolation then shall bury all, "Thy proudest towers their utter ruin mourn, "And domes and temples unextinguished burn! "O Nineveh! the God of armies dooms "Thy thousand streets to never-ending glooms: "Through mouldering fanes the hollow winds shall roar, "And vultures scream where monarchy lodg'd before! "Thy guilty sons shall bow beneath the sword, "Thy captive matrons own a foreign lord.-- "Such is the vengeance that the heavens decree, "Such is the ruin that must bury thee!" The people heard, and smit with instant fear, Believ'd the fatal warnings of the seer: This sudden ruin so their souls distrest, That each with sackcloth did his limbs invest, From him that glitter'd on the regal throne, To him that did beneath the burden groan.-- Soon to their monarch came this voice of fate. Who left his throne and costly robes of state, And o'er his limbs a vest of sackcloth drew, And sate in ashes, sorrowful to view-- His lords and nobles, now repentant grown, With equal grief their various sins bemoan, And through the city sent this loud decree, With threatening back'd, and dreadful penalty: "Ye Ninevites! your wonted food refrain, "Nor touch, ye beasts, the herbage of the plain, "Let all that live be humbled to the dust, "Nor taste the waters, though ye die of thirst; "Let men and beasts the garb of sorrow wear, "And beg yon' skies these guilty walls to spare: "Let all repent the evil they pursue, "And curse the mischief that their hands would do-- "Perhaps that God, who leans to mercy still, "And sent a prophet to declare his will, "May yet the vengeance he designs, adjourn, "And, ere we perish, from his anger turn." Jehovah heard, and pleas'd beheld at last Their deep repentance for transgressions past, With pity moved, he heard the earnest prayer Of this vast city, humbled in despair; Though justly due, his anger dies away, He bids the angel of destruction stay:-- The obedient angel hears the high command, And sheathes the sword, he drew to smite the land. CANTO IV. But anger swell'd the haughty prophet's breast, Rage burn'd within, and robb'd his soul of rest; Such was his pride, he wish'd they all in flame Might rather perish than belie his fame, And God's own bolts the tottering towers assail, And millions perish, than his word should fail. Then to the heavens he sent this peevish prayer-- (Vain, impious man, to send such pinings there): "While yet within my native land, I stay'd, "This would at last reward my toil, I said, "Destruction through the Assyrian streets to cry, "And then the event my mission falsify; "For this I strove to shun thy sight before, "And sought repose upon a foreign shore; "I knew thou wert so gracious and so kind, "Such mercy sways thy all creating mind, "Averse thy bolts of vengeance to employ, "And still relenting when you should'st destroy, "That when I had declar'd thy sacred will, "Thou would'st not what I prophesy'd fulfil, "But leave me thus to scorn, contempt, and shame, "A lying prophet, blasted in my fame-- "And now, I pray thee, grant my last request, "O take my life, so wretched and unblest! "If here I stay, 'tis but to grieve and sigh; "Then take my life--'tis better far to die!" "Is it thy place to swell with rage and pride, "(Thus to his pining prophet, God reply'd) "Say is it just thy heart should burn with ire "Because yon' city is not wrapt in fire? "What if I choose its ruin to delay, "And send destruction on some future day, "Must thou, for that, with wasting anguish sigh, "And, hostile to my pleasure, wish to die?" Then Jonah parted from the mourning town, And near its eastern limits sate him down, A booth he builded with assiduous care, (Form'd of the cypress boughs that flourish'd there) And anxious now beneath their shadow lay, Waiting the issue of the fortieth day-- As yet uncertain if the Power Divine Or would to mercy, or to wrath incline-- Meantime the leaves that roof'd his arbour o'er, Shrunk up and faded, sheltered him no more; But God ordain'd a thrifty gourd to rise, To screen his prophet from the scorching skies; High o'er his head aspired the spreading leaf, Too fondly meant to mitigate his grief. So close a foliage o'er his head was made, That not a beam could pierce the happy shade: The wondering seer perceiv'd the branches grow And bless'd the shadow that reliev'd his woe; But when the next bright morn began to shine (So God ordain'd) a worm attack'd the vine, Beneath his bite its goodly leaves decay, And wasting, withering, die before the day! Then as the lamp of heaven still higher rose From eastern skies a sultry tempest blows, The vertic sun as fiercely pour'd his ray, And beam'd around insufferable day. How beat those beams on Jonah's fainting head! How oft he wish'd a place among the dead! All he could do, was now to grieve and sigh, His life detest, and beg of God to die. Again, Jehovah to his prophet said, "Art thou so angry for thy vanish'd shade-- "For a mere shadow dost thou well to grieve, "For this poor loss would'st thou thy being leave?"-- "My rage is just, (the frantic prophet cry'd), "My last, my only comfort is deny'd-- "The spreading vine that form'd my leafy bower; "Behold it vanish'd in the needful hour! "To beating winds and sultry suns a prey, "My fainting spirit droops and dies away-- "Give me a mansion in my native dust, "For though I die with rage, my rage is just." Once more the Almighty deign'd to make reply-- "Does this lost _gourd_ thy sorrow swell so high, "_Whose_ friendly shade not to thy toil was due, "Alone it sprouted and alone it grew; "A night beheld its branches waving high, "And the next sun beheld those branches die; "And should not pity move the Lord of all "To spare the vast Assyrian capital, "Within whose walls uncounted myriads stray, "Their Father I, my sinful offspring they?-- "Should they not move the creating mind "With six score thousand of the infant kind, "And herds untold that graze the spacious field, "For whom yon' meads their stores of fragrance yield; "Should I this royal city wrap in flame, "And slaughter millions to support thy fame, "When now repentant to their God they turn, "And their past follies, low in ashes, mourn?-- "Vain, thoughtless wretch, recall thy weak request, "Death never came to man a welcome guest;-- "Why wish to die--what madness prompts thy mind? "Too long the days of darkness thou shalt find; "Life was a blessing by thy Maker meant, "Dost thou despise the blessings he has lent-- "Enjoy my gifts while yet the seasons run "True to their months, and social with the sun; "When to the dust my mandate bids thee fall, "All these are lost, for death conceals them all-- "No more the sun illumes the sprightly day, "The seasons vanish, and the stars decay: "The trees, the flowers, no more thy sense delight, "Death shades them all in ever-during night. "Then think not long the little space I lent-- "Of thy own sins, like Nineveh, repent; "Rejoice at last the mighty change to see, "And bear with them as I have borne with thee." [29] Found only in the 1786, 1795, and 1809 editions of the poet. The 1786 edition has the note: "This is rather to be considered as a paraphrase upon than a mere versification of the story of the Bible. Done in the year 1768." THE ADVENTURES OF SIMON SWAUGUM, A VILLAGE MERCHANT[30] Written in 1768. PRELIMINARY PARTICULARS Sprung from a race that had long till'd the soil, And first disrobed it of its native trees, He wish'd to heir their lands, but not their toil, And thought the ploughman's life no life of ease;-- "'Tis wrong (said he) these pretty hands to wound "With felling oaks, or delving in the ground: "I, who at least have forty pounds in cash "And in a country store might cut a dash, "Why should I till these barren fields (he said) "I who have learnt to cypher, write and read, "These fields that shrubs, and weeds, and brambles bear, "That pay me not, and only bring me care!" Some thoughts had he, long while, to quit the sod, In sea-port towns to try his luck in trade, But, then, their ways of living seem'd most odd-- For dusty streets to leave his native shade, From grassy plats to pebbled walks removed-- The more he thought of them, the less he loved: The city springs he could not drink, and still Preferr'd the fountain near some bushy hill: And yet no splendid objects there were seen, No distant hills, in gaudy colours clad, Look where you would, the prospect was but mean, Scrub oaks, and scatter'd pines, and willows sad-- Banks of a shallow river, stain'd with mud; A stream, where never swell'd the tide of flood, Nor lofty ship her topsails did unlose, Nor sailor sail'd, except in long canoes. It would have puzzled Faustus, to have told, What did attach him to this paltry spot; Where even the house he heir'd was very old, And all its outworks hardly worth a groat: Yet so it was, the fancy took his brain A country shop might here some custom gain: Whiskey, he knew, would always be in vogue, While there are country squires to take a cogue, Laces and lawns would draw each rural maid, And one must have her shawl, and one her shade.-- THE SHOP DESCRIBED AND THE MERCHANT'S OUTSET Hard by the road a pigmy building stood, Thatch'd was its roof, and earthen were its floors; So small its size, that, in a jesting mood, It might be call'd a house turn'd out of doors-- Yet here, adjacent to an aged oak, Full fifty years old dad his hams did smoke, Nor ceas'd the trade, 'till worn with years and spent, To Pluto's smoke-house he, himself, was sent. Hither our merchant turn'd his curious eye, And mused awhile upon this sable shell; "Here father smoked his hogs (he said) and why "In truth, may not our garret do as well?" So, down he took his hams and bacon flitches, Resolv'd to fill the place with other riches; From every hole and cranny brush'd the soot, And fixt up shelves throughout the crazy hut; A counter, too, most cunningly was plann'd, Behind whose breast-work none but he might stand, Excepting now and then, by special grace, Some brother merchant from some other place. Now, muster'd up his cash, and said his prayers, In Sunday suit he rigs himself for town, Two raw-boned steeds (design'd for great affairs) Are to the waggon hitch'd, old Bay and Brown; Who ne'er had been before a league from home, But now are doom'd full many a mile to roam, Like merchant-ships, a various freight to bring Of ribbons, lawns, and many a tawdry thing. Molasses too, blest sweet, was not forgot, And island Rum, that every taste delights, And teas, for maid and matron must be bought, Rosin and catgut strings for fiddling wights-- But why should I his invoice here repeat? 'Twould be like counting grains in pecks of wheat. Half Europe's goods were on his invoice found, And all was to be bought with forty pound! Soon as the early dawn proclaim'd the day, He cock'd his hat with pins, and comb'd his hair: Curious it was, and laughable to see The village-merchant, mounted in his chair: Shelves, piled with lawns and linens, in his head, Coatings and stuffs, and cloths, and scarlets red-- All that would suit man, woman, girl, or boy; Muslins and muslinets, jeans, grograms, corduroy. Alack! said I, he little, little dreams That all the cash he guards with studious care-- His cash! the mother of a thousand schemes, Will hardly buy a load of earthen ware! But why should I excite the hidden tear By whispering truths ungrateful to his ear; Still let him travel on, with scheming pate, As disappointment never comes too late.-- HIS JOURNEY TO THE METROPOLIS; AND MERCANTILE TRANSACTIONS Through woods obscure and rough perplexing ways, Slow and alone, he urged the clumsy wheel; Now stopping short, to let his horses graze, Now treating them with straw and Indian meal: At length a lofty steeple caught his eye, "Higher (thought he) than ever kite did fly:-- But so it is, these churchmen are so proud They ever will be climbing to a cloud; Bound on a sky-blue cruise, they always rig The longest steeple, and the largest wig." Now safe arrived upon the pebbled way, Where well-born steeds the rattling coaches trail, Where shops on shops are seen--and ladies gay Walk with their curtains some, and some their veil; Where sons of art their various labors shew And one cries fish! and one cries muffins ho! Amaz'd, alike, the merchant, and his pair Of scare-crow steeds, did nothing else but stare; So new was all the scene, that, smit with awe, They grinn'd, and gaz'd, and gap'd at all they saw, And often stopp'd, to ask at every door, "Sirs, can you tell us where's the cheapest store!" "The cheapest store (a sly retailer said) "Cheaper than cheap, guid faith, I have to sell; "Here are some colour'd cloths that never fade: "No other shop can serve you half so well; "Wanting some money now, to pay my rent, "I'll sell them at a loss of ten per cent.-- "Hum-hums are here--and muslins--what you please-- "Bandanas, baftas, pullcats, India teas; "Improv'd by age, and now grown very old, "And given away, you may depend--not sold!" Lured by the bait the wily shopman laid, He gave his steeds their mess of straw and meal, Then gazing round the shop, thus, cautious said, "Well, if you sell so cheap, I think we'll deal; "But pray remember, 'tis for goods I'm come, "For, as to polecats, we've enough at home-- "Full forty pounds I have, and that in gold "(Enough to make a trading man look bold) "Unrig your shelves, and let me take a peep; "'Tis odds I leave them bare, you sell so cheap." The city merchant stood, with lengthen'd jaws; And stared awhile, then made this short reply-- "You clear my shelves! (he said)--this trunk of gauze "Is more than all your forty pounds can buy:-- "On yonder board, whose burthen seems so small "That one man's pocket might contain it all, "More value lies, than you and all your race "From Adam down, could purchase or possess." Convinced, he turn'd him to another street, Where humbler shopmen from the crowd retreat; Here caught his eye coarse callicoes and crape, Pipes and tobacco, ticklenburghs and tape. Pitchers and pots, of value not so high But he might sell, and forty pounds would buy. Some jugs, some pots, some fifty ells of tape, A keg of wine, a cask of low proof rum, Bung'd close--for fear the spirit should escape That many a sot was waiting for at home; A gross of pipes, a case of home-made gin, Tea, powder, shot--small parcels he laid in; Molasses, too, for swichell[A]-loving wights, (Swichell, that wings Sangrado's boldest flights, When bursting forth the wild ideas roll, Flash'd from that farthing-candle, call'd his soul:) All these he bought, and would have purchased more, To furnish out his Lilliputian store; But cash fell short--and they who smiled while yet The cash remain'd, now took a serious fit:-- No more the shop-girl could his talk endure, But, like her cat, sat sullen and demure.-- The dull retailer found no more to say, But shook his head, and wish'd to sneak away, Leaving his house-dog, now, to make reply, And watch the counter with a lynx's eye.-- Our merchant took the hint, and off he went, Resolv'd to sell at twenty-five per cent. [A] Molasses and water: A beverage much used in the eastern states.--_Freneau's note._ THE MERCHANT'S RETURN Returning far o'er many a hill and stone And much in dread his earthen ware would break, Thoughtful he rode, and uttering many a groan Lest at some worm-hole vent his cask should leak-- His cask, that held the joys of rural squire Which even, 'twas said, the parson did admire, And valued more than all the dusty pages That Calvin penn'd, and fifty other sages-- Once high in fame--beprais'd in verse and prose, But now unthumb'd, enjoy a sweet repose. At dusk of eve he reach'd his old abode, Around him quick his anxious townsmen came, One ask'd what luck had happ'd him on the road, And one ungear'd the mud-bespatter'd team. While on his cask each glanced a loving eye, Patient, to all he gave a brisk reply-- Told all that had befallen him on his way, What wonders in the town detain'd his stay-- "Houses as high as yonder white-oak tree "And boats of monstrous size that go to sea, "Streets throng'd with busy folk, like swarming hive; "The Lord knows how they all contrive to live-- "No ploughs I saw, no hoes, no care, no charge, "In fact, they all are gentlemen at large, "And goods so thick on every window lie, "They all seem born to sell--and none to buy." THE CATASTROPHE, OR THE BROKEN MERCHANT Alack-a-day! on life's uncertain road How many plagues, what evils must befal;-- Jove has on none unmingled bliss bestow'd, But disappointment is the lot of all: Thieves rob our stores, in spite of locks and keys, Cats steal our cream, and rats infest our cheese, The gayest coat a grease-spot may assail, Or Susan pin a dish-clout to its tail,-- Our village-merchant (trust me) had his share Of vile mis-haps--for now, the goods unpackt, Discover'd, what might make a deacon swear, Jugs, cream-pots, pipes, and grog-bowls sadly crackt-- A general groan throughout the crowd was heard; Most pitied him, and some his ruin fear'd; Poor wight! 'twas sad to see him fret and chafe, While each enquir'd, "Sir, is the rum-cask safe?" Alas! even that some mischief had endured;-- One rascal hoop had started near the chine!-- Then curiously the bung-hole they explored, With stem of pipe, the leakage to define-- Five gallons must be charged to loss and gain!-- "--Five gallons! (cry'd the merchant, writh'd with pain) "Now may the cooper never see full flask, "But still be driving at an empty cask-- "Five gallons might have mellowed down the 'squire "And made the captain strut a full inch higher; "Five gallons might have prompted many a song, "And made a frolic more than five days long: "Five gallons now are lost, and--sad to think, "That when they leak'd--no soul was there to drink!" Now, slightly treated with a proof-glass dram, Each neighbour took his leave, and went to bed, All but our merchant: he, with grief o'ercome, Revolv'd strange notions in his scheming head-- "For losses such as these, (thought he) 'tis meant, "That goods are sold at twenty-five per cent: "No doubt these trading men know what is just, "'Tis twenty-five times what they cost at first!" So rigging off his shelves by light of candle, The dismal smoke-house walls began to shine: Here, stood his tea-pots--some without a handle-- A broken jar--and there his keg of wine; Pipes, many a dozen, ordered in a row; Jugs, mugs, and grog-bowls--less for sale than show: The leaky cask, replenish'd from the well, Roll'd to its birth--but we no tales will tell.-- Catching the eye in elegant display, All was arranged and snug, by break of day: The blue dram-bottle, on the counter plac'd, Stood, all prepared for him that buys to taste;-- Sure bait! by which the man of cash is taken, As rats are caught by cheese or scraps of bacon. Now from all parts the rural people ran, With ready cash, to buy what might be bought: One went to choose a pot, and one a pan, And they that had no pence their produce brought, A hog, a calf, safe halter'd by the neck; Potatoes (Ireland's glory) many a peck; Bacon and cheese, of real value more Than India's gems, or all Potosi's ore. Some questions ask'd, the folks began to stare-- No soul would purchase, pipe, or pot, or pan: Each shook his head--hung back--"Your goods so dear! "In fact (said they) the devil's in the man! "Rum ne'er shall meet my lips (cry'd honest Sam) "In shape of toddy, punch, grog, sling, or dram; "No cash of mine you'll get (said pouting Kate) "While gauze is valued at so dear a rate." Thus things dragg'd on for many a tedious day; No custom came; and nought but discontent Gloom'd through the shop.--"Well, let them have their way, (The merchant said) I'll sell at cent per cent, "By which, 'tis plain, I scarce myself can save, "For cent per cent is just the price I gave." "Now! (cry'd the squire who still had kept his pence) "Now, Sir, you reason like a man of sense! "Custom will now from every quarter come; "In joyous streams shall flow the inspiring rum, "'Till every soul in pleasing dreams be sunk, "And even our Socrates himself--is drunk!" Soon were the shelves disburthen'd of their load; In three short hours the kegs of wine ran dry-- Swift from its tap even dull molasses flow'd; Each saw the rum cask wasting, with a sigh-- The farce concluded, as it was foreseen-- With empty shelves--long trust--and law suits keen-- The woods resounding with a curse on trade,-- An empty purse--sour looks--and hanging head.-- THE PUNCHEON'S EULOGY "Here lies a worthy corpse (Sangrado said) "Its debt to Commerce now, no doubt, is paid.-- "Well--'twas a vile disease that kill'd it, sure, "A quick consumption, that no art could cure! "Thus shall we all, when life's vain dream is out, "Be lodg'd in corners dark, or kick'd about! "Time is the tapster of our race below, "That turns the key, and bids the juices flow: "Quitting my books, henceforth be mine the task "To moralize upon this empty cask-- "Thank heaven we've had the taste--so far 'twas well; "And still, thro' mercy, may enjoy the smell!" EPILOGUE[31] Well!--strange it is, that men will still apply Things to themselves, that authors never meant: Each country merchant asks me, "Is it I On whom your rhyming ridicule is spent?" Friends, hold your tongues--such myriads of your race Adorn Columbia's fertile, favour'd climes, A man might rove seven years from place to place Ere he would know the subject of my rhymes.-- Perhaps in Jersey is this creature known, Perhaps New-England claims him for her own: And if from Fancy's world this wight I drew, What is the imagin'd character to you?" [30] From the 1809 edition of Freneau's poems. This piece does not appear in the editions of 1786 and 1788. It ran as a serial for several weeks in the _National Gazette_, beginning May 17, 1792, and it was immediately reprinted by Bache in his _Aurora_. I can find no earlier trace of it. It was printed, together with "The Country Printer," in 1794 by Hoff and Derrick, Philadelphia, as a 16-page pamphlet, under the title, "The Village Merchant," and it was given a place in the 1795 edition, dated "Anno 1768." In the 1809 edition it was first divided into sections with sub-titles. [31] The epilogue was first added in 1795. _Debemur morti nos nostraque!_ THE PYRAMIDS OF EGYPT[32] A Dialogue. Written in 1770. _Scene._--Egypt. _Persons._--Traveller, Genius, Time. _Traveller_ Where are those famed piles of human grandeur, Those sphinxes, pyramids, and Pompey's pillar, That bid defiance to the arm of Time-- Tell me, dear Genius: for I long to see them. _Genius_ At Alexandria rises Pompey's pillar, Whose birth is but of yesterday, compar'd With those prodigious fabricks that you see O'er yonder distant plain--upon whose breast Old Nile hath never roll'd his swelling streams, The only plain so privileg'd in Egypt. These pyramids may well excite your wonder, They are of most remote antiquity, Almost co-eval with those cloud-crown'd hills That westward from them rise--'twas the same age That saw old Babel's tower aspiring high, When first the sage Egyptian architects These ancient turrets to the heavens rais'd;-- But Babel's tower is gone, and these remain! _Traveller_ Old Rome I thought unrivall'd in her years, At least the remnants that we find of Rome, But these, you tell me, are of older date. _Genius_ Talk not of Rome!--before they lopt a bush From the seven hills where Rome, earth's empress, stood, These pyramids were old--their birth day is Beyond tradition's reach, or history. _Traveller_ Then let us haste toward those piles of wonder That scorn to bend beneath this weight of years-- Lo! to my view, the aweful mansions rise The pride of art, the sleeping place of death! Are these the four prodigious monuments That so astonish every generation-- Let us examine this, the first and greatest-- A secret horror chills my breast, dear Genius, To touch these monuments that are so ancient, The fearful property of ghosts and death!-- Yet of such mighty bulk that I presume A race of giants were the architects.-- Since these proud fabricks to the heavens were rais'd How many generations have decay'd, How many monarchies to ruin pass'd! How many empires had their rise and fall! While these remain--and promise to remain As long as yonder sun shall gild their summits, Or moon or stars their wonted circles run. _Genius_ The time will come When these stupendous piles you deem immortal, Worn out with age, shall moulder on their bases, And down, down, low to endless ruin verging, O'erwhelm'd by dust, be seen and known no more!-- Ages ago, in dark oblivion's lap Had they been shrouded, but the atmosphere In these parch'd climates, hostile to decay, Is pregnant with no rain, that by its moisture Might waste their bulk in such excess of time, And prove them merely mortal. 'Twas on this plain the ancient Memphis stood, Her walls encircled these tall pyramids-- But where is Pharoah's palace, where the domes Of Egypt's haughty lords?--all, all are gone, And like the phantom snows of a May morning Left not a vestige to discover them! _Traveller_ How shall I reach the vortex of this pile-- How shall I clamber up its shelving sides? I scarce endure to glance toward the summit, It seems among the clouds--When was't thou rais'd, O work of more than mortal majesty-- Was this produc'd by persevering man, Or did the gods erect this pyramid? _Genius_ Nor gods, nor giants rais'd this pyramid-- It was the toil of mortals like yourself That swell'd it to the skies-- See'st thou yon' little door? Through that they pass'd, Who rais'd so high this aggregate of wonders! What cannot tyrants do, When they have subject nations at their will, And the world's wealth to gratify ambition! Millions of slaves beneath their labours fainted Who here were doom'd to toil incessantly, And years elaps'd while groaning myriads strove To raise this mighty tomb--and but to hide The worthless bones of an Egyptian king.-- O wretch, could not a humbler tomb have done, Could nothing but a pyramid inter thee! _Traveller_ Perhaps old Jacob's race, when here oppress'd, Rais'd, in their years of bondage this dread pile. _Genius_ Before the Jewish patriarchs saw the light, While yet the globe was in its infancy These were erected to the pride of man-- Four thousand years have run their tedious round Since these smooth stones were on each other laid, Four thousand more may run as dull a round Ere Egypt sees her pyramids decay'd. _Traveller_ But suffer me to enter, and behold The interior wonders of this edifice. _Genius_ 'Tis darkness all, with hateful silence join'd-- Here drowsy bats enjoy a dull repose, And marble coffins, vacant of their bones, Show where the royal dead in ruin lay! By every pyramid a temple rose Where oft in concert those of ancient time Sung to their goddess Isis hymns of praise; But these are fallen!--their columns too superb Are levell'd with the dust--nor these alone-- Where is thy vocal statue, Memnon, now, That once, responsive to the morning beams, Harmoniously to father Phoebus sung! Where is the image that in past time stood High on the summit of yon' pyramid?-- Still may you see its polish'd pedestal-- Where art thou ancient Thebes?----all bury'd low, All vanish'd! crumbled into mother dust, And nothing of antiquity remains But these huge pyramids, and yonder hills. _Time_ Old Babel's tower hath felt my potent arm I ruin'd Ecbatan and Babylon, Thy huge Colossus, Rhodes, I tumbled down, And on these pyramids I smote my scythe; But they resist its edge--then let them stand. But I can boast a greater feat than this, I long ago have shrouded those in death Who made those structures rebels to my power-- But, O return!--These piles are not immortal! This earth, with all its balls of hills and mountains, Shall perish by my hand--then how can these, These hoary headed pyramids of Egypt, That are but dwindled warts upon her body, That on a little, little spot of ground Extinguish the dull radiance of the sun, Be proof to Death and me?----Traveller return-- There's nought but God immortal----He alone Exists secure, when Man, and Death, and Time, (Time not immortal, but a fancied point In the vast circle of eternity) Are swallow'd up, and, like the pyramids, Leave not an atom for their monument! [32] The text is from the edition of 1786. The 1795 edition has the note "anno 1769." THE MONUMENT OF PHAON[33] Written 1770. Phaon, the admirer of Sappho, both of the isle of Lesbos, privately forsook this first object of his affections, and set out to visit foreign countries. Sappho, after having long mourned his absence (which is the subject of one of Ovid's finest epistles), is here supposed to fall into the company of Ismenius a traveller, who informs her that he saw the tomb of a certain Phaon in Sicily, erected to his memory by a lady of the island, and gives her the inscriptions, hinting to her that, in all probability, it belonged to the same person she bemoans. She thereupon, in a fit of rage and despair, throws herself from the famous Leucadian rock, and perishes in the gulph below. _Sappho_ No more I sing by yonder shaded stream, Where once intranc'd I fondly pass'd the day, Supremely blest, when Phaon was my theme, But wretched now, when Phaon is away! Of all the youths that grac'd our Lesbian isle He, only he, my heart propitious found, So soft his language, and so sweet his smile, Heaven was my own when Phaon clasp'd me round! But soon, too soon, the faithless lover fled To wander on some distant barbarous shore-- Who knows if Phaon is alive or dead, Or wretched Sappho shall behold him more. _Ismenius_ As late in fair Sicilia's groves I stray'd, Charm'd with the beauties of the vernal scene I sate me down amid the yew tree's shade, Flowers blooming round, with herbage fresh and green. Not distant far a monument arose Among the trees and form'd of Parian stone, And, as if there some stranger did repose, It stood neglected, and it stood alone. Along its sides dependent ivy crept, The cypress bough, Plutonian green, was near, A sculptur'd Venus on the summit wept, A pensive Cupid dropt the parting tear. Strains deep engrav'd on every side I read, How Phaon died upon that foreign shore-- Sappho, I think your Phaon must be dead, Then hear the strains that do his fate deplore: Thou swain that lov'st the morning air, To those embowering trees repair, Forsake thy sleep at early dawn. And of this landscape to grow fonder, Still, O still persist to wander Up and down the flowery lawn; And as you there enraptur'd rove From hill to hill, from grove to grove, Pensive now and quite alone, Cast thine eye upon this stone, Read its melancholy moan; And if you can refuse a tear To the youth that slumbers here, Whom the Lesbians held so dear, Nature calls thee not her own. Echo, hasten to my aid! Tell the woods and tell the waves, Tell the far off mountain caves (Wrapt in solitary shade); Tell them in high tragic numbers, That beneath this marble tomb, Shrouded in unceasing gloom Phaon, youthful Phaon, slumbers, By Sicilian swains deplor'd-- That a narrow urn restrains Him who charm'd our pleasing plains, Him, whom every nymph ador'd. Tell the woods and tell the waves, Tell the mossy mountain caves, Tell them, if none will hear beside, How our lovely Phaon died. In that season when the sun Bids his glowing charioteer Phoebus, native of the sphere, High the burning zenith run; Then our much lamented swain, O'er the sunny, scorched plain, Hunting with a chosen train, Slew the monsters of the waste From those gloomy caverns chac'd Round stupendous Etna plac'd.-- Conquer'd by the solar beam At last he came to yonder stream; Panting, thirsting there he lay On this fatal summer's day, While his locks of raven jett Were on his temples dripping wet; The gentle stream ran purling by O'er the pebbles, pleasantly, Tempting him to drink and die-- He drank indeed--but never thought Death was in the gelid draught!-- Soon it chill'd his boiling veins, Soon this glory of the plains Left the nymphs and left the swains, And has fled with all his charms Where the Stygian monarch reigns, Where no sun the climate warms!-- Dread Pluto then, as once before, Pass'd Avernus' waters o'er; Left the dark and dismal shore, And strait enamour'd, as he gloomy stood, Seiz'd Phaon by the waters of the wood. Now o'er the silent plain We for our much lov'd Phaon call again, And Phaon! Phaon! ring the woods amain-- From beneath this myrtle tree, Musidora, wretched maid, How shall Phaon answer thee, Deep in vaulted caverns laid!-- Thrice the myrtle tree hath bloom'd Since our Phaon was entomb'd, I, who had his heart, below, I have rais'd this turret high, A monument of love and woe That Phaon's name may never die.-- With deepest grief, O muse divine, Around his tomb thy laurels twine And shed thy sorrow, for to morrow Thou, perhaps, shalt cease to glow-- My hopes are crost, my lover lost, And I must weeping o'er the mountains go! _Sappho_ Ah, faithless Phaon, thus from me to rove, And bless my rival in a foreign grove! Could Sicily more charming forests show Than those that in thy native Lesbos grow-- Did fairer fruits adorn the bending tree Than those that Lesbos did present to thee! Or didst thou find through all the changing fair One beauty that with Sappho could compare! So soft, so sweet, so charming and so kind, A face so fair, such beauties of the mind-- Not Musidora can be rank'd with me Who sings so well thy funeral song for thee!--[34] I'll go!--and from the high Leucadian steep Take my last farewell in the lover's leap, I charge thee, Phaon, by this deed of woe To meet me in the Elysian shades below, No rival beauty shall pretend a share, Sappho alone shall walk with Phaon there. She spoke, and downward from the mountain's height Plung'd in the plashy wave to everlasting night. [33] Text from the edition of 1786. For the edition of 1795 Freneau cut out the song of Ismenius, beginning "Thou swain that lov'st the morning air," and extending to the speech of Sappho, "Ah, faithless Phaon." [34] This and the preceding line omitted from the later versions. THE POWER OF FANCY[35] Written 1770. Wakeful, vagrant, restless thing, Ever wandering on the wing, Who thy wondrous source can find, Fancy, regent of the mind; A spark from Jove's resplendent throne, But thy nature all unknown. This spark of bright, celestial flame, From Jove's seraphic altar came, And hence alone in man we trace, Resemblance to the immortal race. Ah! what is all this mighty whole, These suns and stars that round us roll! What are they all, where'er they shine, But Fancies of the Power Divine! What is this globe, these lands, and seas, And heat, and cold, and flowers, and trees, And life, and death, and beast, and man, And time--that with the sun began-- But thoughts on reason's scale combin'd, Ideas of the Almighty mind! On the surface of the brain Night after night she walks unseen, Noble fabrics doth she raise In the woods or on the seas, On some high, steep, pointed rock, Where the billows loudly knock And the dreary tempests sweep Clouds along the uncivil deep. Lo! she walks upon the moon, Listens to the chimy tune Of the bright, harmonious spheres, And the song of angels hears; Sees this earth a distant star,[A] Pendant, floating in the air; Leads me to some lonely dome, Where Religion loves to come, Where the bride of Jesus dwells, And the deep ton'd organ swells In notes with lofty anthems join'd, Notes that half distract the mind. Now like lightning she descends To the prison of the fiends, Hears the rattling of their chains, Feels their never ceasing pains-- But, O never may she tell Half the frightfulness of hell. Now she views Arcadian rocks, Where the shepherds guard their flocks, And, while yet her wings she spreads, Sees chrystal streams and coral beds, Wanders to some desert deep, Or some dark, enchanted steep, By the full moonlight doth shew Forests of a dusky blue, Where, upon some mossy bed, Innocence reclines her head. Swift, she stretches o'er the seas To the far off Hebrides, Canvas on the lofty mast Could not travel half so fast-- Swifter than the eagle's flight Or instantaneous rays of light! Lo! contemplative she stands On Norwegia's rocky lands-- Fickle Goddess, set me down Where the rugged winters frown Upon Orca's howling steep, Nodding o'er the northern deep, Where the winds tumultuous roar, Vext that Ossian sings no more. Fancy, to that land repair, Sweetest Ossian slumbers there; Waft me far to southern isles Where the soften'd winter smiles, To Bermuda's orange shades, Or Demarara's lovely glades; Bear me o'er the sounding cape, Painting death in every shape, Where daring Anson spread the sail Shatter'd by the stormy gale-- Lo! she leads me wide and far, Sense can never follow her-- Shape thy course o'er land and sea, Help me to keep pace with thee, Lead me to yon' chalky cliff, Over rock and over reef, Into Britain's fertile land, Stretching far her proud command. Look back and view, thro' many a year, Cæsar, Julius Cæsar, there. Now to Tempe's verdant wood, Over the mid-ocean flood Lo! the islands of the sea-- Sappho, Lesbos mourns for thee: Greece, arouse thy humbled head, Where are all thy mighty dead, Who states to endless ruin hurl'd And carried vengeance through the world?-- Troy, thy vanish'd pomp resume, Or, weeping at thy Hector's tomb, Yet those faded scenes renew, Whose memory is to Homer due. Fancy, lead me wandering still Up to Ida's cloud-topt hill; Not a laurel there doth grow But in vision thou shalt show,-- Every sprig on Virgil's tomb Shall in livelier colours bloom, And every triumph Rome has seen Flourish on the years between. Now she bears me far away In the east to meet the day, Leads me over Ganges' streams, Mother of the morning beams-- O'er the ocean hath she ran, Places me on Tinian; Farther, farther in the east, Till it almost meets the west, Let us wandering both be lost On Taitis sea-beat coast, Bear me from that distant strand, Over ocean, over land, To California's golden shore-- Fancy, stop, and rove no more. Now, tho' late, returning home, Lead me to Belinda's tomb; Let me glide as well as you Through the shroud and coffin too, And behold, a moment, there, All that once was good and fair-- Who doth here so soundly sleep? Shall we break this prison deep?-- Thunders cannot wake the maid, Lightnings cannot pierce the shade, And tho' wintry tempests roar, Tempests shall disturb no more. Yet must those eyes in darkness stay, That once were rivals to the day?-- Like heaven's bright lamp beneath the main They are but set to rise again. Fancy, thou the muses' pride, In thy painted realms reside Endless images of things, Fluttering each on golden wings, Ideal objects, such a store, The universe could hold no more: Fancy, to thy power I owe Half my happiness below; By thee Elysian groves were made, Thine were the notes that Orpheus play'd; By thee was Pluto charm'd so well While rapture seiz'd the sons of hell-- Come, O come--perceiv'd by none, You and I will walk alone. [A] Milton's Paradise Lost, B. II, V. 1052.--_Freneau's note._ [35] From the edition of 1786. The later editions omitted all but the first twenty and the last fourteen lines of the poem, and gave to this fragment the title "Ode to Fancy." The omitted lines, much changed, were then made a separate poem, under the title "Fancy's Ramble." THE PRAYER OF ORPHEUS Sad monarch of the world below, Stern guardian of this drowsy shade, Through these unlovely realms I go To seek a captive thou hast made. O'er Stygian waters have I pass'd, Contemning Jove's severe decree, And reached thy sable court at last To find my lost Eurydicè. Of all the nymphs so deckt and drest Like Venus of the starry train, She was the loveliest and the best, The pride and glory of the plain. O free from thy despotic sway This nymph of heaven-descended charms, Too soon she came this dusky way-- Restore thy captive to my arms! As by a stream's fair verdant side In myrtle shades she roved along, A serpent stung my blooming bride, This brightest of the female throng-- The venom hastening thro' her veins Forbade the freezing blood to flow. And thus she left the Thracian plains For these dejected groves below. Even thou may'st pity my sad pain, Since Love, as ancient stories say, Forced thee to leave thy native reign, And in Sicilian meadows stray: Bright Proserpine thy bosom fired, For her you sought unwelcome light, Madness and love in you conspired To seize her to the shades of night. But if, averse to my request, The banished nymph, for whom I mourn, Must in Plutonian chambers rest, And never to my arms return---- Take Orpheus too--his warm desire Can ne'er be quench'd by your decree: In life or death he must admire, He must adore Eurydicè! THE DESERTED FARM-HOUSE[36] This antique dome the insatiate tooth of time Now level with the dust has almost laid;-- Yet ere 'tis gone, I seize my humble theme From these low ruins, that his years have made. Behold the unsocial hearth!--where once the fires Blazed high, and soothed the storm-stay'd traveller's woes; See! the weak roof, that abler props requires, Admits the winds, and swift descending snows. Here, to forget the labours of the day, No more the swains at evening hours repair, But wandering flocks assume the well known way To shun the rigours of the midnight air. In yonder chamber, half to ruin gone, Once stood the ancient housewife's curtained bed-- Timely the prudent matron has withdrawn, And each domestic comfort with her fled. The trees, the flowers that her own hands had reared, The plants, the vines, that were so verdant seen,-- The trees, the flowers, the vines have disappear'd, And every plant has vanish'd from the green. So sits in tears on wide Campania's plain Rome, once the mistress of a world enslaved; That triumph'd o'er the land, subdued the main, And Time himself, in her wild transports, braved. So sits in tears on Palestina's shore The Hebrew town, of splendour once divine-- Her kings, her lords, her triumphs are no more; Slain are her priests, and ruin'd every shrine. Once, in the bounds of this deserted room, Perhaps some swain nocturnal courtship made, Perhaps some Sherlock mused amidst the gloom; Since Love and Death forever seek the shade. Perhaps some miser, doom'd to discontent, Here counted o'er the heaps acquired with pain; He to the dust--his gold, on traffick sent, Shall ne'er disgrace these mouldering walls again. Nor shall the glow-worm fopling, sunshine bred, Seek, at the evening hour this wonted dome-- Time has reduced the fabrick to a shed, Scarce fit to be the wandering beggar's home. And none but I its dismal case lament-- None, none but I o'er its cold relics mourn, Sent by the muse--(the time perhaps misspent)-- To write dull stanzas on this dome forlorn. [36] The first trace that I can find of this poem is in the _Freeman's Journal_ of May 18, 1785. I have little doubt that it is the "Stanzas on an Ancient Dutch House on Long Island," mentioned in 1773 in a letter to Madison as forming a part of Freneau's publication, "_The American Village_," now lost. After its appearance in the _Freeman's Journal_, it was widely copied. The _Independent Gazetteer_ printed it in 1787, introduced as follows: "The following is copied from Perryman's _London Morning Herald_ of July 22, 1787: 'The Deserted Farm House,' written in America by Mr. Freneau, whose political productions tended considerably to keep alive the spirit of independence during the late civil war." I have followed the text of 1809. The poet constantly emended this poem; he seldom reprinted it without minor changes, usually for the better. THE CITIZEN'S RESOLVE[37] "Far be the dull and heavy day "And toil, and restless care, from me-- "Sorrow attends on loads of gold, "And kings are wretched, I am told. "Soon from the noisy town removed "To such wild scenes as Plato[38] lov'd, "Where, placed the leafless oaks between, "Less haughty grows the wintergreen, "There, Night, will I (lock'd in thy arms, "Sweet goddess of the sable charms) "Enjoy the dear, delightful dreams "That fancy prompts by shallow[39] streams, "Where wood nymphs walk their evening round, "And fairies haunt the moonlight ground. "Beneath some mountain's towering height "In cottage low I hail the night, "Where jovial swains with heart sincere "Welcome the new returning year;-- "Each tells a tale or chaunts a song "Of her, for whom he sigh'd so long, "Of Cynthia[40] fair, or Delia coy, "Neglecting still her love-sick boy-- "While, near, the hoary headed sage "Recalls the feats of youth's gay age, "All that in past time e'er was seen, "And many a frolic on the green, "How champion he with champions met, "And fiercely they did combat it-- "Or how, full oft, with horn and hound "They chaced the deer the forest round-- "The panting deer as swiftly flies, "Yet by the well-aimed musquet dies! "Thus pass the evening hours away, "Unnoticed dies the parting day; "Unmeasured flows that happy juice, "Which mild October did produce, "No surly sage, too frugal found, "No niggard housewife deals it round: "And deep they quaff the inspiring bowl "That kindles gladness in the soul.--[41] "But now the moon, exalted high, "Adds lustre to the earth and sky, "And in the mighty ocean's glass "Admires the beauties of her face-- "About her orb you may behold "The circling stars that freeze with cold-- "But they in brighter seasons please, "Winter can find no charms in these, "While less ambitious, we admire, "And more esteem domestic fire. "O could I there a mansion find "Suited exactly to my mind "Near that industrious, heavenly train "Of rustics honest, neat, and plain; "The days, the weeks, the years to pass "With some good-natured, longing lass, "With her the cooling spring to sip, "And seize, at will, her damask lip; "The groves, the springs, the shades divine, "And all Arcadia should be mine! "Steep me, steep me, some poppies deep "In beechen bowl, to bring on sleep; "Love hath my soul in fetters bound, "Through the dull night no sleep I found;-- "O gentle sleep! bestow thy dreams "Of fields, and woods, and murmuring streams, "Dark, tufted groves, and grottoes rare, "And Flora, charming Flora, there. "Dull Commerce, hence, with all thy train "Of debts, and dues, and loss, and gain; "To hills, and groves, and purling streams, "To nights of ease, and heaven-born dreams, "While wiser Damon hastes away, "Should I in this dull city stay, "Condemn'd to death by slow decays "And care that clouds my brightest days? "No--by Silenus' self I swear, "In rustic shades I'll kill that care." So spoke Lysander, and in haste His clerks discharg'd, his goods re-cased, And to the western forests flew With fifty airy schemes in view; His ships were set to public sale-- But what did all this change avail?-- In three short months, sick of the heavenly train, In three short months--he moved to town again. [37] From the edition of 1809. The 1786 edition has the note, "Written 1770." [38] Shenstone.--_Ed. 1786._ [39] Sylvan.--_Ed. 1786._ [40] Dolly.--_Ed. 1786._ [41] "But swift as changing goblets pass, They bless the virtues of the glass."--_Ed. 1786._ THE DYING ELM[42] Sweet, lovely Elm, who here dost grow Companion of unsocial care, Lo! thy dejected branches die Amidst this torrid air-- Smit by the sun or blasting moon, Like fainting flowers, their verdure gone. Thy withering leaves, that drooping hang, Presage thine end approaching nigh; And lo! thy amber tears distill, Attended with that parting sigh-- O charming tree! no more decline, But be thy shades and love-sick whispers mine. Forbear to die--this weeping eye Shall shed her little drops on you, Shall o'er thy sad disaster grieve, And wash thy wounds with pearly dew, Shall pity you, and pity me, And heal the languor of my tree! Short is thy life, if thou so soon must fade, Like angry Jonah's gourd at Nineveh, That, in a night, its bloomy branches spread, And perish'd with the day.-- Come, then, revive, sweet lovely Elm, lest I, Thro' vehemence of heat, like Jonah, wish to die. [42] First published in the June number of the _United States Magazine_, 1779, under the title, "The Dying Elm: An Irregular Ode." This earliest version was much changed in its later editions; the third stanza was added for the edition of 1786. It may be doubted if Freneau much improved the poem from its first draft, save by the additional stanza. Following are some of the lines as they stood originally: "Companion of my musing care;" "Like fainting flowers that die at noon;" "O gentle tree, no more decline;" "And flourish'd for a day;" "Come, then, revive, sweet shady elm, lest I." With two minor exceptions the text was unvaried for the later editions. COLUMBUS TO FERDINAND[43] Columbus was a considerable number of years engaged in soliciting the Court of Spain to fit him out, in order to discover a new continent, which he imagined existed somewhere in the western parts of the ocean. During his negotiations, he is here supposed to address king Ferdinand in the following Stanzas. Illustrious monarch of Iberia's soil, Too long I wait permission to depart; Sick of delays, I beg thy list'ning ear-- Shine forth the patron and the prince of art. While yet Columbus breathes the vital air, Grant his request to pass the western main: Reserve this glory for thy native soil, And what must please thee more--for thy own reign. Of this huge globe, how small a part we know-- Does heaven their worlds to western suns deny?-- How disproportion'd to the mighty deep The lands that yet in human prospect lie! Does Cynthia, when to western skies arriv'd, Spend her sweet beam upon the barren main, And ne'er illume with midnight splendor, she, The natives dancing on the lightsome green?-- Should the vast circuit of the world contain Such wastes of ocean, and such scanty land?-- 'Tis reason's voice that bids me think not so, I think more nobly of the Almighty hand. Does yon' fair lamp trace half the circle round To light the waves and monsters of the seas?-- No--be there must beyond the billowy waste Islands, and men, and animals, and trees. An unremitting flame my breast inspires To seek new lands amidst the barren waves, Where falling low, the source of day descends, And the blue sea his evening visage laves. Hear, in his tragic lay, Cordova's sage:[A] "_The time shall come, when numerous years are past, "The ocean shall dissolve the bands of things, "And an extended region rise at last;_ [A] Seneca the poet, native of Cordova in Spain.--_Freneau's note_ (_1786_). _Venient annis secula seris, quibus oceanus vincula rerum laxet, et ingens pateat tellus, Typhisque novos detegat orbes; nec sit terris Ultima Thule._--Seneca, Med., Act. III, V. 375. (_Ibid. Ed. 1795 et seq._) "_And Typhis shall disclose the mighty land "Far, far away, where none have rov'd before; "Nor shall the world's remotest region be "Gibraltar's rock, or Thule's[B] savage shore._"[44] [B] Supposed by many to be the Orkney or Shetland Isles.--_Freneau's note._ Fir'd at the theme, I languish to depart, Supply the barque, and bid Columbus sail, He fears no storms upon the untravell'd deep; Reason shall steer, and skill disarm the gale. Nor does he dread to lose the intended course, Though far from land the reeling galley stray, And skies above, and gulphy seas below Be the sole objects seen for many a day. Think not that Nature has unveil'd in vain The mystic magnet to the mortal eye: So late have we the guiding needle plann'd Only to sail beneath our native sky? Ere this was found, the ruling power of all Found for our use an ocean in the land, Its breadth so small we could not wander long, Nor long be absent from the neighbouring strand. Short was the course, and guided by the stars, But stars no more shall point our daring way; The Bear shall sink, and every guard be drown'd, And great Arcturus scarce escape the sea, When southward we shall steer--O grant my wish. Supply the barque, and bid Columbus sail, He dreads no tempests on the untravell'd deep, Reason shall steer, and shall disarm the gale. [43] According to the edition of 1786, this poem was "written 1770." The first trace that I find of it is in the June number of the _United States Magazine_, 1779. The 1786 text, which I have followed, was changed but little in the later editions. [44] This is a translation of the passage from Seneca used on the title page of _The Rising Glory of America_. THE RISING GLORY OF AMERICA[45] Being part of a Dialogue pronounced on a public occasion. ARGUMENT The subject proposed.--The discovery of America by Columbus.-- A philosophical enquiry into the origin of the savages of America.--The first planters from Europe.--Causes of their migration to America.--The difficulties they encountered from the jealousy of the natives.--Agriculture descanted on.--Commerce and navigation.--Science.--Future prospects of British usurpation, tyranny, and devastation on this side the Atlantic.--The more comfortable one of Independence, Liberty and Peace.--Conclusion. _Acasto_ Now shall the adventurous muse attempt a theme More new, more noble and more flush of fame Than all that went before-- Now through the veil of ancient days renew The period famed when first Columbus touched 5 These shores so long unknown--through various toils, Famine, and death, the hero forced his way, Through oceans pregnant with perpetual storms, And climates hostile to adventurous man. But why, to prompt your tears, should we resume, 10 The tale of Cortez, furious chief, ordained With Indian blood to dye the sands, and choak, Famed Mexico, thy streams with dead? or why Once more revive the tale so oft rehearsed Of Atabilipa, by thirst of gold, 15 (Too conquering motive in the human breast,) Deprived of life, which not Peru's rich ore Nor Mexico's vast mines could then redeem? Better these northern realms demand our song, Designed by nature for the rural reign, 20 For agriculture's toil.--No blood we shed For metals buried in a rocky waste.-- Cursed be that ore, which brutal makes our race And prompts mankind to shed their kindred blood. _Eugenio_ But whence arose 25 That vagrant race who love the shady vale, And choose the forest for their dark abode?-- For long has this perplext the sages' skill To investigate.--Tradition lends no aid To unveil this secret to the human eye, 30 When first these various nations, north and south, Possest these shores, or from what countries came; Whether they sprang from some primæval head In their own lands, like Adam in the east,-- Yet this the sacred oracles deny, 35 And reason, too, reclaims against the thought: For when the general deluge drowned the world Where could their tribes have found security, Where find their fate, but in the ghastly deep?-- Unless, as others dream, some chosen few 40 High on the Andes 'scaped the general death, High on the Andes, wrapt in endless snow, Where winter in his wildest fury reigns, And subtile æther scarce our life maintains. But here philosophers oppose the scheme: 45 This earth, say they, nor hills nor mountains knew Ere yet the universal flood prevailed; But when the mighty waters rose aloft, Roused by the winds, they shook their solid base, And, in convulsions, tore the deluged world, 50 'Till by the winds assuaged, again they fell, And all their ragged bed exposed to view. Perhaps far wandering toward the northern pole The streights of Zembla, and the frozen zone, And where the eastern Greenland almost joins 55 America's north point, the hardy tribes Of banished Jews, Siberians, Tartars wild Came over icy mountains, or on floats, First reached these coasts, hid from the world beside.-- And yet another argument more strange, 60 Reserved for men of deeper thought, and late, Presents itself to view:--In Peleg's days, (So says the Hebrew seer's unerring pen) This mighty mass of earth, this solid globe, Was cleft in twain,--"divided" east and west, 65 While then perhaps the deep Atlantic roll'd,-- Through the vast chasm, and laved the solid world; And traces indisputable remain Of this primæval land now sunk and lost.-- The islands rising in our eastern main 70 Are but small fragments of this continent, Whose two extremities were Newfoundland And St. Helena.--One far in the north, Where shivering seamen view with strange surprize The guiding pole-star glittering o'er their heads; 75 The other near the southern tropic rears Its head above the waves--Bermuda's isles, Cape Verd, Canary, Britain, and the Azores, With fam'd Hibernia, are but broken parts Of some prodigious waste, which once sustain'd 80 Nations and tribes, of vanished memory, Forests and towns, and beasts of every class, Where navies now explore their briny way. _Leander_ Your sophistry, Eugenio, makes me smile; The roving mind of man delights to dwell 85 On hidden things, merely because they're hid: He thinks his knowledge far beyond all limit, And boldly fathoms Nature's darkest haunts;-- But for uncertainties, your broken isles, Your northern Tartars, and your wandering Jews, 90 (The flimsy cobwebs of a sophist's brain) Hear what the voice of history proclaims:-- The Carthagenians, ere the Roman yoke Broke their proud spirits, and enslaved them too, For navigation were renowned as much 95 As haughty Tyre with all her hundred fleets. Full many a league their venturous seamen sailed Through streight Gibraltar, down the western shore Of Africa, to the Canary isles: By them called Fortunate; so Flaccus sings. 100 Because eternal spring there clothes the fields And fruits delicious bloom throughout the year.-- From voyaging here, this inference I draw, Perhaps some barque with all her numerous crew Falling to leeward of her destined port, 105 Caught by the eastern Trade, was hurried on Before the unceasing blast to Indian isles, Brazil, La Plata, or the coasts more south-- There stranded, and unable to return, Forever from their native skies estranged. 110 Doubtless they made these virgin climes their own, And in the course of long revolving years A numerous progeny from these arose, And spread throughout the coasts--those whom we call Brazilians, Mexicans, Peruvians rich, 115 The tribes of Chili, Patagon, and those Who till the shores of Amazon's long stream.-- When first the power of Europe here attained, Vast empires, kingdoms, cities, palaces And polished nations stock'd the fertile land. 120 Who has not heard of Cusco, Lima, and The town of Mexico--huge cities form'd From Indian architecture; ere the arms Of haughty Spain disturb'd the peaceful soil?-- But here, amid this northern dark domain, 125 No towns were seen to rise.--No arts were here; The tribes unskill'd to raise the lofty mast, Or force the daring prow thro' adverse waves, Gazed on the pregnant soil, and craved alone Life from the unaided genius of the ground,-- 130 This indicates they were a different race; From whom descended, 'tis not ours to say-- That power, no doubt, who furnish'd trees, and plants, And animals to this vast continent, Spoke into being man among the rest,-- 135 But what a change is here!--what arts arise! What towns and capitals! how commerce waves Her gaudy flags, where silence reign'd before! _Acasto_ Speak, learned Eugenio, for I've heard you tell The dismal story, and the cause that brought 140 The first adventurers to these western shores! The glorious cause that urged our fathers first To visit climes unknown, and wilder woods Than e'er Tartarian or Norwegian saw, And with fair culture to adorn a soil 145 That never felt the industrious swain before. _Eugenio_ All this long story to rehearse, would tire; Besides, the sun towards the west retreats, Nor can the noblest theme retard his speed, Nor loftiest verse--not that which sang the fall 150 Of Troy divine, and fierce Achilles' ire.-- Yet hear a part:--By persecution wronged And sacerdotal rage, our fathers came From Europe's hostile shores to these abodes, Here to enjoy a liberty in faith, 155 Secure from tyranny and base controul. For this they left their country and their friends, And plough'd the Atlantic wave in quest of peace; And found new shores, and sylvan settlements, And men, alike unknowing and unknown. 160 Hence, by the care of each adventurous chief New governments (their wealth unenvied yet) Were form'd on liberty and virtue's plan. These searching out uncultivated tracts Conceived new plans of towns, and capitals, 165 And spacious provinces.--Why should I name Thee, Penn, the Solon of our western lands; Sagacious legislator, whom the world Admires, long dead: an infant colony, Nursed by thy care, now rises o'er the rest 170 Like that tall pyramid in Egypt's waste O'er all the neighbouring piles, they also great. Why should I name those heroes so well known, Who peopled all the rest from Canada To Georgia's farthest coasts, West Florida, 175 Or Apalachian mountains?--Yet what streams Of blood were shed! what Indian hosts were slain, Before the days of peace were quite restored! _Leander_ Yes, while they overturn'd the rugged soil And swept the forests from the shaded plain 180 'Midst dangers, foes, and death, fierce Indian tribes With vengeful malice arm'd, and black design, Oft murdered, or dispersed, these colonies-- Encouraged, too, by Gallia's hostile sons, A warlike race, who late their arms display'd, 185 At Quebec, Montreal, and farthest coasts Of Labrador, or Cape Breton, where now The British standard awes the subject host. Here, those brave chiefs, who, lavish of their blood, Fought in Britannia's cause, in battle fell!-- 190 What heart but mourns the untimely fate of Wolfe, Who, dying, conquered!--or what breast but beats To share a fate like his, and die like him! _Acasto_ But why alone commemorate the dead, And pass those glorious heroes by, who yet 195 Breathe the same air, and see the light with us?-- The dead, Leander, are but empty names, And they who fall to-day the same to us As they who fell ten centuries ago!-- Lost are they all that shined on earth before; 200 Rome's boldest champions in the dust are laid, Ajax and great Achilles are no more, And Philip's warlike son, an empty shade!-- A Washington among our sons of fame Will rise conspicuous as the morning star 205 Among the inferior lights:-- To distant wilds Virginia sent him forth-- With her brave sons he gallantly opposed The bold invaders of his country's rights, Where wild Ohio pours the mazy flood, 210 And mighty meadows skirt his subject streams.-- But now delighting in his elm tree's shade, Where deep Potowmac laves the enchanting shore, He prunes the tender vine, or bids the soil Luxuriant harvests to the sun display.-- 215 Behold a different scene--not thus employed Were Cortez, and Pizarro, pride of Spain, Whom blood and murder only satisfied, And all to glut their avarice and ambition!-- _Eugenio_ Such is the curse, Acasto, where the soul 220 Humane is wanting--but we boast no feats Of cruelty like Europe's murdering breed:-- Our milder epithet is merciful, And each American, true hearted, learns To conquer, and to spare; for coward souls 225 Alone seek vengeance on a vanquished foe. Gold, fatal gold, was the alluring bait To Spain's rapacious tribes--hence rose the wars From Chili to the Caribbean sea, And Montezuma's Mexican domains: 230 More blest are we, with whose unenvied soil Nature decreed no mingling gold to shine, No flaming diamond, precious emerald, No blushing sapphire, ruby, chrysolite, Or jasper red--more noble riches flow 235 From agriculture, and the industrious swain, Who tills the fertile vale, or mountain's brow. Content to lead a safe, a humble life, Among his native hills, romantic shades Such as the muse of Greece of old did feign, 240 Allured the Olympian gods from chrystal skies, Envying such lovely scenes to mortal man. _Leander_ Long has the rural life been justly fam'd, And bards of old their pleasing pictures drew Of flowery meads, and groves, and gliding streams: 245 Hence, old Arcadia--wood-nymphs, satyrs, fauns; And hence Elysium, fancied heaven below!-- Fair agriculture, not unworthy kings, Once exercised the royal hand, or those Whose virtues raised them to the rank of gods. 250 See old Laertes in his shepherd weeds Far from his pompous throne and court august, Digging the grateful soil, where round him rise, Sons of the earth, the tall aspiring oaks, Or orchards, boasting of more fertile boughs, 255 Laden with apples red, sweet scented peach, Pear, cherry, apricot, or spungy plumb; While through the glebe the industrious oxen draw The earth-inverting plough.--Those Romans too, Fabricius and Camillus, loved a life 260 Of neat simplicity and rustic bliss, And from the noisy Forum hastening far, From busy camps, and sycophants, and crowns, 'Midst woods and fields spent the remains of life, Where full enjoyment still awaits the wise. 265 How grateful, to behold the harvests rise, And mighty crops adorn the extended plains!-- Fair plenty smiles throughout, while lowing herds Stalk o'er the shrubby hill or grassy mead, Or at some shallow river slake their thirst.-- 270 The inclosure, now, succeeds the shepherd's care, Yet milk-white flocks adorn the well stock'd farm, And court the attention of the industrious swain.-- Their fleece rewards him well, and when the winds Blow with a keener blast, and from the north 275 Pour mingled tempests through a sunless sky (Ice, sleet, and rattling hail) secure he sits Warm in his cottage, fearless of the storm, Enjoying now the toils of milder moons, Yet hoping for the spring.--Such are the joys, 280 And such the toils of those whom heaven hath bless'd With souls enamoured of a country life. _Acasto_ Such are the visions of the rustic reign-- But this alone, the fountain of support, Would scarce employ the varying mind of man; 285 Each seeks employ, and each a different way: Strip Commerce of her sail, and men once more Would be converted into savages;-- No nation e'er grew social and refined 'Till Commerce first had wing'd the adventurous prow, 290 Or sent the slow-paced caravan, afar, To waft their produce to some other clime, And bring the wished exchange--thus came, of old, Golconda's golden ore, and thus the wealth Of Ophir, to the wisest of mankind. 295 _Eugenio_ Great is the praise of Commerce, and the men Deserve our praise, who spread the undaunted sail, And traverse every sea--their dangers great, Death still to combat in the unfeeling gale, And every billow but a gaping grave:-- 300 There, skies and waters, wearying on the eye, For weeks and months no other prospect yield But barren wastes, unfathomed depths, where not The blissful haunt of human form is seen To cheer the unsocial horrors of the way.-- 305 Yet all these bold designs to Science owe Their rise and glory.--Hail, fair Science! thou, Transplanted from the eastern skies, dost bloom In these blest regions.--Greece and Rome no more Detain the Muses on Citheron's brow, 310 Or old Olympus, crowned with waving woods, Or Hæmus' top, where once was heard the harp, Sweet Orpheus' harp, that gained his cause below, And pierced the souls of Orcus and his bride; That hush'd to silence by its voice divine 315 Thy melancholy waters, and the gales O Hebrus! that o'er thy sad surface blow.-- No more the maids round Alpheus' waters stray, Where he with Arethusa's stream doth mix, Or where swift Tiber disembogues his waves 320 Into the Italian sea, so long unsung; Hither they wing their way, the last, the best Of countries, where the arts shall rise and grow, And arms shall have their day;--even now we boast A Franklin, prince of all philosophy, 325 A genius piercing as the electric fire, Bright as the lightning's flash, explained so well, By him, the rival of Britannia's sage.-- This is the land of every joyous sound, Of liberty and life, sweet liberty! 330 Without whose aid the noblest genius fails, And Science irretrievably must die. _Leander_ But come, Eugenio, since we know the past-- What hinders to pervade with searching eye The mystic scenes of dark futurity? 335 Say, shall we ask what empires yet must rise, What kingdoms, powers and states, where now are seen Mere dreary wastes and awful solitude, Where Melancholy sits, with eye forlorn, And time anticipates, when we shall spread 340 Dominion from the north, and south, and west, Far from the Atlantic to Pacific shores, And people half the convex of the main!-- A glorious theme!--but how shall mortals dare To pierce the dark events of future years 345 And scenes unravel, only known to fate? This might we do, if warmed by that bright coal Snatch'd from the altar of cherubic fire Which touched Isaiah's lips--or if the spirit Of Jeremy and Amos, prophets old, 350 Might swell the heaving breast--I see, I see Freedom's established reign; cities, and men, Numerous as sands upon the ocean shore, And empires rising where the sun descends!-- The Ohio soon shall glide by many a town 355 Of note; and where the Mississippi stream, By forests shaded, now runs weeping on, Nations shall grow, and states not less in fame Than Greece and Rome of old!--we too shall boast Our Scipios, Solons, Catos, sages, chiefs 360 That in the lap of time yet dormant lie, Waiting the joyous hour of life and light.-- O snatch me hence, ye muses, to those days When, through the veil of dark antiquity, A race shall hear of us as things remote, 365 That blossomed in the morn of days.--Indeed, How could I weep that we exist so soon, Just in the dawning of these mighty times, Whose scenes are painting for eternity! Dissentions that shall swell the trump of fame, 370 And ruin hovering o'er all monarchy! _Eugenio_ Nor shall these angry tumults here subside Nor murder cease, through all these provinces, Till foreign crowns have vanished from our view And dazzle here no more--no more presume 375 To awe the spirit of fair Liberty;-- Vengeance must cut the thread,--and Britain, sure Will curse her fatal obstinacy for it! Bent on the ruin of this injured country, She will not listen to our humble prayers. 380 Though offered with submission: Like vagabonds and objects of destruction, Like those whom all mankind are sworn to hate, She casts us off from her protection, And will invite the nations round about, 385 Russians and Germans, slaves and savages, To come and have a share in our perdition.-- O cruel race, O unrelenting Britain, Who bloody beasts will hire to cut our throats, Who war will wage with prattling innocence, 390 And basely murder unoffending women!-- Will stab their prisoners when they cry for quarter, Will burn our towns, and from his lodging turn The poor inhabitant to sleep in tempests!-- These will be wrongs, indeed, and all sufficient 395 To kindle up our souls to deeds of horror, And give to every arm the nerves of Samson-- These are the men that fill the world with ruin, And every region mourns their greedy sway,-- Not only for ambition---- 400 But what are this world's goods, that they for them Should exercise perpetual butchery? What are these mighty riches we possess, That they should send so far to plunder them?-- Already have we felt their potent arm-- 405 And ever since that inauspicious day, When first Sir Francis Bernard His ruffians planted at the council door, And made the assembly room a home for vagrants, And soldiers, rank and file--e'er since that day 410 This wretched land, that drinks its children's gore, Has been a scene of tumult and confusion!-- Are there not evils in the world enough? Are we so happy that they envy us? Have we not toiled to satisfy their harpies, 415 Kings' deputies, that are insatiable; Whose practice is to incense the royal mind And make us despicable in his view?-- Have we not all the evils to contend with That, in this life, mankind are subject to, 420 Pain, sickness, poverty, and natural death-- But into every wound that nature gave They will a dagger plunge, and make them mortal! _Leander_ Enough, enough!--such dismal scenes you paint, I almost shudder at the recollection.-- 425 What! are they dogs that they would mangle us?-- Are these the men that come with base design To rob the hive, and kill the industrious bee!-- To brighter skies I turn my ravished view, And fairer prospects from the future draw:-- 430 Here independent power shall hold her sway, And public virtue warm the patriot breast: No traces shall remain of tyranny, And laws, a pattern to the world beside, Be here enacted first.---- 435 _Acasto_ And when a train of rolling years are past, (So sung the exiled seer in Patmos isle) A new Jerusalem, sent down from heaven. Shall grace our happy earth,--perhaps this land, Whose ample bosom shall receive, though late, 440 Myriads of saints, with their immortal king, To live and reign on earth a thousand years, Thence called Millennium. Paradise anew Shall flourish, by no second Adam lost, No dangerous tree with deadly fruit shall grow, 445 No tempting serpent to allure the soul From native innocence.--A Canaan here, Another Canaan shall excel the old, And from a fairer Pisgah's top be seen. No thistle here, nor thorn, nor briar shall spring, 450 Earth's curse before: the lion and the lamb In mutual friendship linked, shall browse the shrub. And timorous deer with softened tygers stray O'er mead, or lofty hill, or grassy plain; Another Jordan's stream shall glide along, 455 And Siloah's brook in circling eddies flow: Groves shall adorn their verdant banks, on which The happy people, free from toils and death. Shall find secure repose. No fierce disease, No fevers, slow consumption, ghastly plague, 460 (Fate's ancient ministers) again proclaim Perpetual war with man: fair fruits shall bloom, Fair to the eye, and sweeter to the taste; Nature's loud storms be hushed, and seas no more Rage hostile to mankind--and, worse than all, 465 The fiercer passions of the human breast Shall kindle up to deeds of death no more, But all subside in universal peace.---- Such days the world, And such America at last shall have 470 When ages, yet to come, have run their round, And future years of bliss alone remain. [45] The text is from the edition of 1809. The poem, given originally as the graduating address of Freneau and Brackenridge at Princeton, Brackenridge delivering it, was first published In 1772 at Philadelphia, by Joseph Crukshank, for R. Aitken, bookseller. This pamphlet edition is the only one extant of the original poem. Freneau reprinted his own part, with many modifications and additions, in the first edition of his poems, 1786, explaining it with the following note: "This poem is a little altered from the original (published in Philadelphia in 1772), such parts being only inserted here as were written by the author of this volume. A few more modern lines towards the conclusion are incorporated with the rest, being a supposed prophetical anticipation of subsequent events." The text of the edition of 1772, which is now exceedingly rare, is as follows: A POEM ON THE RISING GLORY OF AMERICA Being an Exercise delivered at the Public Commencement at Nassau-Hall, September 25, 1771. ARGUMENT The subject proposed.--The discovery of America by Columbus and others.--A philosophical enquiry into the origin of the savages of America.--Their uncultivated state.--The first planters of America.--The cause of their migration from Europe.--The difficulties they encountered from the resentment of the natives and other circumstances.--The French war in North America.--The most distinguished heroes who fell in it; Wolf, Braddock, &c.--General Johnson,--his character.--North America, why superior to South.--On Agriculture.--On commerce.--On science.--Whitefield,--his character.--The present glory of America.--A prospect of its future glory, in science,--in liberty,--and the gospel.--The conclusion of the whole. LEANDER No more of Memphis and her mighty kings. Or Alexandria, where the Ptolomies Taught golden commerce to unfurl her sails, And bid fair science smile: No more of Greece Where learning next her early visit paid, And spread her glories to illume the world; No more of Athens, where she flourished, And saw her sons of mighty genius rise, Smooth flowing Plato, Socrates and him Who with resistless eloquence reviv'd The spirit of Liberty, and shook the thrones Of Macedon and Persia's haughty king. No more of Rome, enlighten'd by her beams, Fresh kindling there the fire of eloquence, And poesy divine; imperial Rome! Whose wide dominion reach'd o'er half the globe; Whose eagle flew o'er Ganges to the East, And in the West far to the British isles. No more of Britain and her kings renown'd, Edward's and Henry's thunderbolts of war; Her chiefs victorious o'er the Gallic foe; Illustrious senators, immortal bards, And wise philosophers, of these no more. A Theme more new, tho' not less noble, claims Our ev'ry thought on this auspicious day; The rising glory of this western world. Where now the dawning light of science spreads Her orient ray, and wakes the muse's song; Where freedom holds her sacred standard high, And commerce rolls her golden tides profuse Of elegance and ev'ry joy of life. ACASTO Since then, Leander, you attempt a strain So new, so noble and so full of fame; And since a friendly concourse centers here, America's own sons, begin O muse! Now thro' the veil of ancient days review The period fam'd when first Columbus touch'd The shore so long unknown, thro' various toils, Famine and death, the hero made his way, Thro' oceans bellowing with eternal storms. But why, thus hap'ly found, should we resume The tale of Cortez, furious chief, ordain'd With Indian blood to dye the sands, and choak Fam'd Amazonia's stream with dead! Or why Once more revive the story old in fame, Of Atabilipa, by thirst of gold Depriv'd of life: which not Peru's rich ore, Nor Mexico's vast mines cou'd then redeem. Better these northern realms deserve our song, Discover'd by Britannia for her sons; Undeluged with seas of Indian blood, Which cruel Spain on southern regions spilt; To gain by terrors what the gen'rous breast Wins by fair treaty, conquers without blood. EUGENIO High in renown th' intrepid hero stands, From Europe's shores advent'ring first to try New seas, new oceans, unexplor'd by man. Fam'd Cabot too may claim our noblest song, Who from th' Atlantic surge decry'd these shores, As on he coasted from the Mexic bay To Acady and piny Labradore. Nor less than him the muse would celebrate Bold Hudson stemming to the pole, thro' seas Vex'd with continual storms, thro' the cold straits, Where Europe and America oppose Their shores contiguous, and the northern sea Confin'd, indignant, swells and roars between. With these be number'd in the list of fame Illustrious Raleigh, hapless in his fate: Forgive me, Raleigh, if an infant muse Borrows thy name to grace her humble strain; By many nobler are thy virtues sung; Envy no more shall throw them in the shade; They pour new lustre on Britannia's isle. Thou too, advent'rous on th' Atlantic main, Burst thro' its storms and fair Virginia hail'd, The simple natives saw thy canvas flow, And gaz'd aloof upon the shady shore: For in her woods America contain'd, From times remote, a savage race of men. How shall we know their origin, how tell, From whence or where the Indian tribes arose? ACASTO And long has this defy'd the sages skill T'investigate: Tradition seems to hide The mighty secret from each mortal eye, How first these various nations South and North Possest these shores, or from what countries came; Whether they sprang from some premoeval head In their own lands, like Adam in the East; Yet this the sacred oracles deny, And reason too reclaims against the thought. For when the gen'ral deluge drown'd the world, Where could their tribes have found security? Where find their fate but in the ghastly deep? Unless, as others dream, some chosen few High on the Andes 'scap'd the gen'ral death, High on the Andes, wrapt in endless snow, Where winter in his wildest fury reigns. But here Philosophers oppose the scheme, The earth, say they, nor hills nor mountains knew E'er yet the universal flood prevail'd: But when the mighty waters rose aloft, Rous'd by the winds, they shook their solid case And in convulsions tore the drowned world! 'Till by the winds assuag'd they quickly fell And all their ragged bed exposed to view. Perhaps far wand'ring towards the northern pole, The straits of Zembla and the Frozen Zone, And where the eastern Greenland almost joins America's north point, the hardy tribes Of banish'd Jews, Siberians, Tartars wild Came over icy mountains, or on floats First reach'd these coasts hid from the world beside. And yet another argument more strange Reserv'd for men of deeper thought and late Presents Itself to view: In Peleg's days, So says the Hebrew seer's inspired pen, This mighty mass of earth, this solid globe Was cleft in twain--cleft east and west apart While strait between the deep Atlantic roll'd. And traces indisputable remain Of this unhappy land now sunk and lost; The islands rising in the eastern main Are but small fragments of this continent, Whose two extremities were Newfoundland And St. Helena.--One far in the north Where British seamen now with strange surprise Behold the pole star glitt'ring o'er their heads; The other in the southern tropic rears Its head above the waves; Bermudas and Canary isles, Britannia and th' Azores, With fam'd Hibernia are but broken parts Of some prodigious waste which once sustain'd Armies by lands, where now but ships can range. LEANDER Your sophistry, Acasto, makes me smile; The roving mind of man delights to dwell On hidden things, merely because they're hid; He thinks his knowledge ne'er can reach too high And boldly pierces nature's inmost haunts But for uncertainties; your broken isles, Your northern Tartars, and your wand'ring Jews, Hear what the voice of history proclaims. The Carthaginians, e'er the Roman yoke Broke their proud spirits and enslav'd them too, For navigation were reknown'd as much As haughty Tyre with all her hundred fleets; Full many a league their vent'rous seamen sail'd Thro' strait Gibralter down the western shore Of Africa, and to Canary isles By them call'd fortunate, so Flaccus sings, Because eternal spring there crowns the fields, And fruits delicious bloom throughout the year. From voyaging here this inference I draw, Perhaps some barque with all her num'rous crew Caught by the eastern trade wind hurry'd on Before th' steady blast to Brazil's shore, New Amazonia and the coasts more south. Here standing and unable to return. For ever from their native skies estrang'd, Doubtless they made the unknown land their own. And in the course of many rolling years A num'rous progeny from these arose, And spread throughout the coasts; those whom we call Brazilians, Mexicans, Peruvians rich, Th' tribes of Chili, Patagon and those Who till the shores of Amazon's long stream. When first the pow'rs of Europe here attain'd, Vast empires, kingdoms, cities, palaces And polish'd nations stock'd the fertile land; Who has not heard of Cusco, Lima and The town of Mexico; huge cities form'd From Europe's architecture, e'er the arms Of haughty Spain disturb'd the peaceful soil. EUGENIO Such disquisition leads the puzzled mind From maze to maze by queries still perplex'd. But this we know, if from the east they came. Where science first and revelation beam'd, Long since they've lost all memory, all trace Of this their origin: Tradition tells Of some great forefather beyond the lakes Oswego, Huron, Mechigan, Champlaine Or by the stream of Amazon which rolls Thro' many a clime; while others simply dream That from the Andes or the mountains north, Some hoary fabled ancestor came down To people this their world. LEANDER How fallen, Oh! How much obscur'd is human nature here! Shut from the light of science and of truth They wander'd blindfold down the steep of time; Dim superstition with her ghastly train Of dæmons, spectres and foreboding signs Still urging them to horrid rites and forms Of human sacrifice, to sooth the pow'rs Malignant, and the dark infernal king. Once on this spot perhaps a wigwam stood With all its rude inhabitants, or round Some mighty fire an hundred savage sons Gambol'd by day, and filled the night with cries; In what superior to the brutal race That fled before them thro' the howling wilds, Were all those num'rous tawny tribes which swarm'd From Baffin's bay to Del Fuego south, From California to the Oronoque? Far from the reach of fame they liv'd unknown In listless slumber and inglorious ease; To them fair science never op'd her stores, Nor sacred truth sublim'd the soul to God; No fix'd abode their wand'ring genius knew; No golden harvest crown'd the fertile glebe; No city then adorn'd the river's bank, Nor rising turret overlook'd the stream. ACASTO Now view the prospect chang'd; far off at sea The mariner descry's our spacious towns, He hails the prospect of the land and views A new, a fair, a fertile world arise; Onward from India's isles far east, to us Now fair-ey'd commerce stretches her white sails, Learning exalts her head, the graces smile And peace establish'd after horrid war Improves the splendor of these early times. But come, my friends, and let us trace the steps By which this recent happy world arose, To this fair eminence of high renown This height of wealth, of liberty and fame. LEANDER Speak then, Eugenio, for I've heard you tell The pleasing hist'ry, and the cause that brought The first advent'rers to these happy shores; The glorious cause that urg'd our fathers first To visit climes unknown and wilder woods Than e'er Tartarian or Norwegian saw, And with fair culture to adorn that soil Which never knew th' Industrious swain before. EUGENIO All this long story to rehearse would tire; Besides, the sun toward the west retreats, Nor can the noblest tale retard his speed, Nor loftiest verse; not that which sung the fall Of Troy divine and smooth Scamander's stream. Yet hear a part.--By persecution wrong'd And popish cruelty, our fathers came From Europe's shores to find this blest abode, Secure from tyranny and hateful man, And plough'd th' Atlantic wave in quest of peace; And found new shores and sylvan settlements Form'd by the care of each advent'rous chief, Who, warm in liberty and freedom's cause, Sought out uncultivated tracts and wilds, And fram'd new plans of cities, governments And spacious provinces: Why should I name Thee, Penn, the Solon of our western lands; Sagacious legislator, whom the world Admires tho' dead: an infant colony, Nurs'd by thy care, now rises o'er the rest Like that tall Pyramid on Memphis' stand O'er all the lesser piles, they also great. Why should I name those heroes so well known Who peopled all the rest from Canada To Georgia's farthest coasts, West Florida Or Apalachian mountains; yet what streams Of blood were shed! What Indian hosts were slain Before the days of peace were quite restor'd. LEANDER Yes, while they overturn'd the soil untill'd, And swept the forests from the shaded plain 'Midst dangers, foes and death, fierce Indian tribes With deadly malice arm'd and black design, Oft murder'd half the hapless colonies. Encourag'd too by that inglorious race False Gallia's sons, who once their arms display'd At Quebec, Montreal and farthest coasts Of Labrador and Esquimaux where now The British standard awes the coward host. Here those brave chiefs, who lavish of their blood Fought in Britannia's cause, most nobly fell. What Heart but mourns the untimely fate of Wolf, Who dying conquer'd, or what breast but beats To share a fate like his, and die like him? ACASTO And he demands our lay who bravely fell By Monangahela and the Ohio's stream; By wiles o'ercome the hapless hero fell, His soul too gen'rous for that dastard crew Who kill unseen and shun the face of day. Ambush'd in wood, and swamp and thick grown hill, The bellowing tribes brought on the savage war. What could avail, O Braddock, then the flame, The gen'rous flame which fir'd thy martial soul! What could avail Britannia's warlike troops, Choice spirits of her isle? What could avail America's own sons? The skulking foe, Hid in the forest lay and fought secure, What could the brave Virginians do, o'erpower'd By such vast numbers and their leader dead? 'Midst fire and death they bore him from the field, Where in his blood full many a hero lay. 'Twas there, O Halkut! thou so nobly fell, Thrice valiant Halkut, early son of fame! We still deplore a face so immature, Fair Albion mourns thy unsuccessful end, And Caledonia sheds a tear for him Who led the bravest of her sons to war. EUGENIO But why alas commemorate the dead? And pass those glorious heroes by, who yet Breathe the same air and see the light with us? The dead, Acasto, are but empty names And he who dy'd to day the same to us As he who dy'd a thousand years ago. A Johnson lives, among the sons of fame Well known, conspicuous as the morning star Among the lesser lights: A patriot skill'd In all the glorious arts of peace or war. He for Britannia gains the savage race, Unstable as the sea, wild as the winds, Cruel as death, and treacherous as hell, Whom none but he by kindness yet could win, None by humanity could gain their souls, Or bring from woods and subteranean dens The skulking crew, before a Johnson rose, Pitying their num'rous tribes: ah how unlike The Cortez' and Acosta's, pride of Spain Whom blood and murder only satisfy'd. Behold their doleful regions overflow'd With gore, and blacken'd with ten thousand deaths From Mexico to Patagonia far, Where howling winds sweep round the southern cape, And other suns and other stars arise! ACASTO Such is the curse, Eugenio, where the soul Humane is wanting, but we boast no feats Of cruelty like Spain's unfeeling sons. The British Epithet is merciful: And we the sons of Britain learn like them To conquer and to spare; for coward souls Seek their revenge but on a vanquish'd foe. Gold, fatal gold was the alluring bait To Spain's rapacious mind, hence rose the wars From Chili to the Caribbean sea, O'er Terra-Firma and La Plata wide. Peru then sunk in ruins, great before With pompous cities, monuments superb Whose tops reach'd heav'n. But we more happy boast No golden metals in our peaceful land, No flaming diamond, precious emerald, Or blushing saphire, ruby, chrysolite Or jasper red; more noble riches flow From agriculture and th' industrious swain, Who tills the fertile vale or mountain's brow, Content to lead a safe, a humble life 'Midst his own native hills; romantic scenes, Such as the muse of Greece did feign so well. Envying their lovely bow'rs to mortal race. LEANDER Long has the rural life been justly fam'd; And poets old their pleasing pictures drew Of flow'ry meads, and groves and gliding streams. Hence, old Arcadia, woodnymphs, satyrs, fauns And hence Elysium, fancy'd heav'n below. Fair agriculture, not unworthy kings, Once exercis'd the royal hand, or those Whose virtue rais'd them to the rank of gods. See old Laertes in his shepherd weeds, Far from his pompous throne and court august, Digging the grateful soil, where peaceful blows The west wind murm'ring thro' the aged trees Loaded with apples red, sweet scented peach And each luxurious fruit the world affords, While o'er the fields the harmless oxen draw Th' industrious plough. The Roman heroes too, Fabricius and Camillus, lov'd a life Of sweet simplicity and rustic joy; And from the busy Forum hast'ning far, 'Midst woods and fields spent the remains of age. How grateful to behold the harvests rise And mighty crops adorn the golden plains! Fair plenty smiles throughout, while lowing herds Stalk o'er the grassy hill or level mead, Or at some winding river slake their thirst. Thus fares the rustic swain; and when the winds Blow with a keener breath, and from the North Pour all their tempests thro' a sunless sky, Ice, sleet and rattling hail, secure he sits In some thatch'd cottage fearless of the storm; While on the hearth a fire still blazing high Chears ev'ry mind, and nature sits serene On ev'ry countenance, such the joys And such the fate of those whom heav'n hath bless'd With souls enamour'd of a country life. EUGENIO Much wealth and pleasure agriculture brings; Far in the woods she raises palaces, Puisant states and crowded realms where late A desart plain or frowning wilderness Deform'd the view; or where with moving tents The scatter'd nations seeking pasturage, Wander'd from clime to clime incultivate; Or where a race more savage yet than these, In search of prey o'er hill and mountain rang'd, Fierce as the tygers and the wolves they slew. Thus lives th' Arabian and the Tartar wild In woody wastes which never felt the plough; But agriculture crowns our happy land, And plants our colonies from north to south, From Cape Breton far as the Mexic bay, From th' Eastern shores to Mississippi's stream. Famine to us unknown, rich plenty reigns And pours her blessings with a lavish hand. LEANDER Nor less from golden commerce flow the streams Of richest plenty on our smiling land. Now fierce Bellona must'ring all her rage, To other climes and other seas withdraws, To rouse the Russian on the desp'rate Turk There to conflict by Danube and the straits Which join the Euxine to th' Egean Sea. Britannia holds the empire of the waves, And welcomes ev'ry bold adventurer To view the wonders of old Ocean's reign. Far to the east our fleets on traffic sail, And to the west thro' boundless seas which not Old Rome nor Tyre nor mightier Carthage knew. Daughter of commerce, from the hoary deep New-York emerging rears her lofty domes, And hails from far her num'rous ships of trade, Like shady forests rising on the waves. From Europe's shores or from the Caribbees, Homeward returning annually they bring The richest produce of the various climes. And Philadelphia, mistress of our world, The seat of arts, of science, and of fame, Derives her grandeur from the pow'r of trade. Hail, happy city, where the muses stray, Where deep philosophy convenes her sons And opens all her secrets to their view! Bids them ascend with Newton to the skies, And trace the orbits of the rolling spheres, Survey the glories of the universe. Its suns and moons and ever blazing stars! Hail, city, blest with liberty's fair beams, And with the rays of mild religion blest! ACASTO Nor these alone, America, thy sons In the short circle of a hundred years Have rais'd with toil along thy shady shores. On lake and bay and navigable stream, From Cape Breton to Pensacola south, Unnnmber'd towns and villages arise. By commerce nurs'd these embrio marts of trade May yet awake the envy and obscure The noblest cities of the eastern world; For commerce is the mighty reservoir From whence all nations draw the streams of gain. 'Tis commerce joins dissever'd worlds in one, Confines old Ocean to more narrow bounds; Outbraves his storms and peoples half his world. EUGENIO And from the earliest times advent'rous man On foreign traffic stretch'd the nimble sail; Or sent the slow pac'd caravan afar O'er barren wastes, eternal sands where not The blissful haunt of human form is seen Nor tree, not ev'n funeral cypress sad Nor bubbling fountain. Thus arriv'd of old Golconda's golden ore, and thus the wealth Of Ophir to the wisest of mankind. LEANDER Great is the praise of commerce, and the men Deserve our praise who spread from shore to shore The flowing sail; great are their dangers too; Death ever present to the fearless eye And ev'ry billow but a gaping grave; Yet all these mighty feats to science owe Their rise and glory.--Hail fair science! thou, Transplanted from the eastern climes, dost bloom In these fair regions, Greece and Rome no more Detain the muses on Cithæron's brow, Or old Olympus crown'd with waving woods; Or Hæmus' top where once was heard the harp, Sweet Orpheus' harp that ravish'd hell below And pierc'd the soul of Orcus and his bride, That hush'd to silence by the song divine Thy melancholy waters, and the gales O Hebrus! which o'er thy sad surface blow. No more the maids round Alpheus' waters stray Where he with Arethusa's stream doth mix, Or where swift Tiber disembogues his waves Into th' Italian sea so long unsung. Hither they've wing'd their way, the last, the best Of countries where the arts shall rise and grow Luxuriant, graceful; and ev'n now we boast A Franklin skill'd in deep philosophy, A genius piercing as th' electric fire, Bright as the light'ning's flash, explain'd so well By him, the rival of Britannia's sage. This is a land of ev'ry joyous sound Of liberty and life; sweet liberty! Without whose aid the noblest genius fails, And science irretrievably must die. ACASTO This is a land where the more noble light Of holy revelation beams, the star Which rose from Judah lights our skies, we feel Its influence as once did Palestine And Gentile lands, where now the ruthless Turk Wrapt up in darkness sleeps dull life away. Here many holy messengers of peace As burning lamps have given light to men. To thee, O Whitefield; favourite of Heav'n, The muse would pay the tribute of a tear. Laid in the dust thy eloquence no more Shall charm the list'ning soul, no more Thy bold imagination paint the scenes Of woe and horror in the shades below; Of glory radiant in the fields above; No more thy charity relieve the poor; Let Georgia mourn, let all her orphans weep. LEANDER Yet tho' we wish'd him longer from the skies, And wept to see the ev'ning of his days, He long'd himself to reach his final hope, The crown of glory for the just prepar'd. From life's high verge he hail'd th' eternal shore And, freed at last from his confinement, rose An infant seraph to the worlds on high. EUGENIO For him we found the melancholy lyre, The lyre responsive to each distant sigh: No grief like that which mourns departing souls Of holy, just and venerable men, Whom pitying Heav'n sends from their native skies To light our way and bring us nearer God. But come, Leander, since we know the past And present glory of this empire wide, What hinders to pervade with searching eye The mystic scenes of dark futurity? Say, shall we ask what empires yet must rise, What kingdoms, pow'rs and states where now are seen But dreary wastes and awful solitude, Where melancholy sits with eye forlorn And hopes the day when Britain's sons shall spread Dominion to the north and south and west Far from th' Atlantic to Pacific shores? A glorious theme, but how shall mortals dare To pierce the mysteries of future days, And scenes unravel only known to fate. ACASTO This might we do if warm'd by that bright coal Snatch'd from the altar of seraphic fire, Which touch'd Isaiah's lips, or if the spirit Of Jeremy and Amos, prophets old, Should fire the breast; but yet I call the muse And what we can will do. I see, I see A thousand kingdoms rais'd, cities and men Num'rous as sand upon the ocean shore; Th' Ohio then shall glide by many a town Of note: and where the Mississippi stream By forests shaded now runs weeping on, Nations shall grow and states not less in fame Than Greece and Rome of old: we too shall boast Our Alexanders, Pompeys, heroes, kings That in the womb of time yet dormant lye Waiting the joyful hour for life and light. O snatch us hence, ye muses! to those days When, through the veil of dark antiquity, Our sons shall hear of us as things remote, That blossom'd in the morn of days, alas! How could I weep that we were born so soon, In the beginning of more happy times! But yet perhaps our fame shall last unhurt. The sons of science nobly scorn to die; Immortal virtue this denies, the muse Forbids the men to slumber in the grave Who well deserve the praise that virtue gives. EUGENIO 'Tis true no human eye can penetrate The veil obscure, and in fair light disclos'd Behold the scenes of dark futurity; Yet if we reason from the course of things, And downward trace the vestiges of time, The mind prophetic grows and pierces far Thro' ages yet unborn. We saw the states And mighty empires of the East arise In swift succession from the Assyrian To Macedon and Rome; to Britain thence Dominion drove her car, she stretch'd her reign O'er many isles, wide seas, and peopled lands. Now in the west a continent appears; A newer world now opens to her view, She hastens onward to th' Americ shores And bids a scene of recent wonders rise. New states, new empires and a line of kings, High rais'd in glory, cities, palaces, Fair domes on each long bay, sea, shore or stream, Circling the hills now rear their lofty heads. Far in the Arctic skies a Petersburgh, A Bergen, or Archangel lifts its spires Glitt'ring with Ice, far in the West appears A new Palmyra or an Ecbatan And sees the slow pac'd caravan return O'er many a realm from the Pacific shore, Where fleets shall then convey rich Persia's silks, Arabia's perfumes, and spices rare Of Philippine, Coelebe and Marian isles, Or from the Acapulco coast our India then, Laden with pearl and burning gems and gold. Far in the south I see a Babylon, As once by Tigris or Euphrates stream, With blazing watch tow'rs and observatories Rising to heav'n; from thence astronomers With optic glass take nobler views of God In golden suns and shining worlds display'd Than the poor Chaldean with the naked eye. A Nineveh where Oronoque descends With waves discolour'd from the Andes high, Winding himself around a hundred isles Where golden buildings glitter o'er his tide. To mighty nations shall the people grow Which cultivate the banks of many a flood, In chrystal currents poured from the hills Apalachia nam'd, to lave the sands Of Carolina, Georgia, and the plains Stretch'd out from thence far to the burning Line, St. Johns or Clarendon or Albemarle. And thou Patowmack, navigable stream, Rolling thy waters thro' Virginia's groves, Shall vie with Thames, the Tiber or the Rhine, For on thy banks I see an hundred towns And the tall vessels wafted down thy tide. Hoarse Niagara's stream now roaring on Thro' woods and rocks and broken mountains torn, In days remote far from their antient beds, By some great monarch taught a better course, Or cleared of cataracts shall flow beneath Unnumbr'd boats and merchandise and men; And from the coasts of piny Labradore, A thousand navies crowd before the gale, And spread their commerce to remotest lands, Or bear their thunder round the conquered world. LEANDER And here fair freedom shall forever reign. I see a train, a glorious train appear, Of Patriots plac'd in equal fame with those Who nobly fell for Athens or for Rome. The sons of Boston, resolute and brave, The firm supporters of our injur'd rights, Shall lose their splendours in the brighter beams Of patriots fam'd and heroes yet unborn. ACASTO 'Tis but the morning of the world with us And Science yet but sheds her orient rays. I see the age, the happy age, roll on Bright with the splendours of her mid-day beams, I see a Homer and a Milton rise In all the pomp and majesty of song, Which gives immortal vigour to the deeds Atchiev'd by Heroes in the fields of fame. A second Pope, like that Arabian bird Of which no age can boast but one, may yet Awake the muse by Schuylkill's silent stream, And bid new forests bloom along her tide. And Susquehanna's rocky stream unsung, In bright meanders winding round the hills, Where first the mountain nymph, sweet echo, heard The uncouth musick of my rural lay, Shall yet remurmur to the magic sound Of song heroic, when in future days Some noble Hambden rises into fame. LEANDER Or Roanoke's and James's limpid waves The sound of musick murmurs in the gale: Another Denham celebrates their flow, In gliding numbers and harmonious lays. EUGENIO Now in the bow'rs of Tuscororah hills, As once on Pindus all the muses stray, New Theban bards high soaring reach the skies And swim along thro' azure deeps of air. LEANDER From Alleghany in thick groves imbrown'd, Sweet music breathing thro' the shades of night Steals on my ear, they sing the origin Of those fair lights which gild the firmament; From whence the gale that murmurs in the pines; Why flows the stream down from the mountains brow And rolls the ocean lower than the land. They sing the final destiny of things, The great result of all our labours here, The last day's glory, and the world renew'd. Such are their themes, for in these happier days The bard enraptur'd scorns ignoble strains, Fair science smiling and full truth revealed, The world at peace, and all her tumults o'er, The blissful prelude to Emanuel's reign. EUGENIO And when a train of rolling years are past, (So sang the exil'd seer in Patmos isle,) A new Jerusalem sent down from heav'n Shall grace our happy earth, perhaps this land, Whose virgin bosom shall then receive, tho' late, Myriads of saints with their almighty king, To live and reign on earth a thousand years Thence call'd Millennium. Paradise anew Shall flourish, by no second Adam lost. No dang'rous tree or deathful fruit shall grow, No tempting serpent to allure the soul, From native innocence; a Canaan here Another Canaan shall excel the old, And from fairer Pisgah's top be seen. No thistle here or briar or thorn shall spring, Earth's curse before: the lion and the lamb In mutual friendship link'd shall browse the shrub, And tim'rous deer with rabid tygers stray O'er mead or lofty hill or grassy plain. Another Jordan's stream shall glide along And Siloah's brook in circling eddies flow, Groves shall adorn their verdant banks, on which The happy people free from second death Shall find secure repose; no fierce disease No fevers, slow consumption, direful plague Death's ancient ministers, again renew Perpetual war with man: Fair fruits shall bloom Fair to the eye, sweet to the taste, if such Divine inhabitants could need the taste Of elemental food, amid the joys, Fit for a heav'nly nature. Music's charms Shall swell the lofty soul and harmony Triumphant reign; thro' ev'ry grove shall sound The cymbal and the lyre, joys too divine For fallen man to know. Such days the world And such, America, thou first shall have When ages yet to come have run their round And future years of bliss alone remain. ACASTO This is thy praise. America, thy pow'r, Thou best of climes, by science visited, By freedom blest and richly stor'd with all The luxuries of life. Hail, happy land, The seat of empire, the abode of kings, The final stage where time shall introduce Renowned characters, and glorious works Of high invention and of wond'rous art Which not the ravages of time shall waste Till he himself has run his long career; Till all those glorious orbs of light on high, The rolling wonders that surround the ball, Drop from their spheres extinguish'd and consum'd; When final ruin with her fiery car Rides o'er creation, and all nature's works Are lost in chaos and the womb of night. The 1786 edition, which was evolved with such great changes from the original version, furnished the text of the 1795 edition. There were some twenty variations and three added lines, viz., lines 354, 427, 438. Line 265 was changed from "Which full enjoyment only finds for fools," to its final form; line 352 was changed from "A thousand kingdoms rais'd;" line 360, from "Our Alexanders, Pompeys, heroes, kings;" line 371, from "One monarchy;" and 461, from "Death's ancient." The other changes were largely verbal, nearly all being for the better. For the edition of 1809, Freneau used the 1795 text, with some twenty-one variations and one added line, viz., line 67. These variations, which nearly all concern single words, are generally not at all for the better: for instance, "Shackle," in line 343, is changed to "people;" "our sons," in line 365, is changed to "a race;" "were born," in 367, to "we exist;" and "strumpets," in 409, to "vagrants." Freneau's notes in the various editions were as follows: 62. Genesis x, 25. 100. Hor. Epod. 16. 207. 1755. 251. Hom. Odyss. B. 24. 328. Newton. 373. The Massacre at Boston. March 5th, 1770, is here more particularly glanced at. ON RETIREMENT[46] (By Hezekiah Salem) A hermit's house beside a stream, With forests planted round, Whatever it to you may seem More real happiness I deem Than if I were a monarch crown'd. A cottage I could call my own, Remote from domes of care; A little garden walled with stone, The wall with ivy overgrown, A limpid fountain near, Would more substantial joys afford, More real bliss impart Than all the wealth that misers hoard, Than vanquish'd worlds, or worlds restored-- Mere cankers of the heart! Vain, foolish man! how vast thy pride, How little can your wants supply!-- 'Tis surely wrong to grasp so wide-- You act as if you only had To vanquish--not to die! [46] The title in the edition of 1786 was "Retirement." In 1795 it was changed to "The Wish of Diogenes." DISCOVERY[47] Six thousand years in these dull regions pass'd, 'Tis time, you'll say, we knew their bounds at last, Knew to what skies our setting stars retire, And where the wintry suns expend their fire; What land to land protracts the varied scene, And what extended oceans roll between; What worlds exist beneath antarctic skies, And from Pacific waves what verdant islands rise. In vain did Nature shore from shore divide: Art formed a passage and her waves defied: When his bold plan the master pilot drew Dissevered worlds stept forward at the view, And lessening still the intervening space, Disclosed new millions of the human race. Proud even of toil, succeeding ages joined New seas to vanquish, and new worlds to find; Age following age still farther from the shore, Found some new wonder that was hid before, 'Till launched at length, with avarice doubly bold, Their hearts expanding as the world grew old, Some to be rich, and some to be renowned, The earth they rifled, and explored it round. Ambitious Europe! polished in thy pride, Thine was the art that toil to toil allied, Thine was the gift, to trace each heavenly sphere, And seize its beams, to serve ambition here: Hence, fierce Pizarro stock'd a world with graves, Hence Montezuma left a race of slaves.-- Which project suited best with heaven's decree, To force new doctrines, or to leave them free?-- Religion only feigned to claim a share, Their riches, not their souls, employed your care.-- Alas! how few of all that daring train That seek new worlds embosomed in the main, How few have sailed on virtue's nobler plan, How few with motives worthy of a man!-- While through the deep-sea waves we saw them go Where'er they found a man they made a foe; Superior only by superior art, Forgot the social virtues of the heart, Forgetting still, where'er they madly ran, That sacred friendship binds mankind to man, Fond of exerting power untimely shewn, The momentary triumph all their own! Met on the wrecks and ravages of time, They left no native master of his clime, His trees, his towns, with hardened front they claimed, Seized every region that a despot named And forced the oath that bound him to obey Some prince unknown, ten thousand miles away. Slaves to their passions, man's imperious race, Born for contention, find no resting place, And the vain mind, bewildered and perplext, Makes this world wretched to enjoy the next. Tired of the scenes that Nature made their own, They rove to conquer what remains unknown: Avarice, undaunted, claims whate'er she sees, Surmounts earth's circle, and foregoes all ease: Religion, bolder, sends some sacred chief To bend the nations to her own belief. To their vain standard Europe's sons invite, Who hold no other world can think aright. Behold their varied tribes, with self applause, First in religion, liberty, and laws, And while they bow to cruelty and blood, Condemn the Indian with his milder god.-- Ah, race to justice, truth, and honour blind, Are thy convictions to convert mankind!-- Vain pride--convince them that your own are just, Or leave them happy, as you found them first. What charm is seen through Europe's realms of strife That adds new blessings to the savage life?-- On them warm suns with equal splendor shine, Their each domestic pleasure equals thine, Their native groves as soft a bloom display, As self-contented roll their lives away, And the gay soul, in fancy's visions blest, Leaves to the care of chance her heaven of rest. What are the arts that rise on Europe's plan But arts destructive to the bliss of man? What are all wars, where'er the marks you trace, But the sad records of our world's disgrace? Reason degraded from her tottering throne, And precepts, called divine, observed by none. Blest in their distance from that bloody scene, Why spread the sail to pass the gulphs between?-- If winds can waft to ocean's utmost verge, And there new islands and new worlds emerge-- If wealth, or war, or science bid thee roam, Ah, leave religion and thy laws at home, Leave the free native to enjoy his store, Nor teach destructive arts, unknown before-- Woes of their own those new found worlds invade, There, too, fierce passions the weak soul degrade, Invention there has winged the unerring dart, There the swift arrow vibrates to the heart. Revenge and death contending bosoms share, And pining envy claims her subjects there. Are these too few?--then see despotic power Spends on a throne of logs her busy hour. Hard by, and half ambitious to ascend, Priests, interceding with the gods, attend-- Atoning victims at their shrines they lay, Their crimson knives tremendous rites display, Or the proud despot's gore remorseless shed. Through life detested, or adored when dead. Born to be wretched, search this globe around, Dupes to a few the race of man is found! Seek some new world in some new climate plac'd, Some gay Ta-ia[A] on the watery waste, Though Nature clothes in all her bright array, Some proud tormentor steals her charms away: Howe'er she smiles beneath those milder skies, Though men decay the monarch never dies! Howe'er the groves, howe'er the gardens bloom, A monarch and a priest is still their doom! [A] Commonly called Otaheite, an island in the Southern Pacific Ocean, noted for the natural civilization of its inhabitants.--_Freneau's note._ [47] The edition of 1786 has the date 1772 for this poem. Very little change was made in the text for the later editions. THE PICTURES OF COLUMBUS, THE GENOESE[48] PICTURE I. Columbus making Maps[A] [A] History informs us this was his original profession: and from the disproportionate vacancy observable in the drafts of that time between Europe and Asia to the west, it is most probable he first took the idea of another continent, lying in a parallel direction to, and existing between both.--_Freneau's note._ As o'er his charts Columbus ran, Such disproportion he survey'd, He thought he saw in art's mean plan Blunders that Nature never made; The land in one poor corner placed, And all beside, a swelling waste!-- "It can't be so," Columbus said; "This world on paper idly drawn,[49] "O'er one small tract so often gone "The pencil tires; in this void space "Allow'd to find no resting place. "But copying Nature's bold design, "If true to her, no fault is mine; "Perhaps in these moist regions dwell "Forms wrought like man, and lov'd as well. "Yet to the west what lengthen'd seas! "Are no gay islands found in these, "No sylvan worlds that Nature meant "To balance Asia's vast extent? "As late a mimic globe I made "(Imploring Fancy to my aid) "O'er these wild seas a shade I threw, "And a new world my pencil drew. "But westward plac'd, and far away "In the deep seas this country lay "Beyond all climes already known, "In Neptune's bosom plac'd alone. "Who knows but he that hung this ball "In the clear void, and governs all, "On those dread scenes, remote from view, "Has trac'd his great idea too. "What can these idle charts avail-- "O'er real seas I mean to sail; "If fortune aids the grand design, "Worlds yet unthought of shall be mine. "But how shall I this country find! "Gay, painted picture of the mind! "Religion[B] holds my project vain, "And owns no worlds beyond the main. [B] The Inquisition made it criminal to assert the existence of the Antipodes.--_Freneau's note._ "'Midst yonder hills long time has stay'd[50] "In sylvan cells a wondrous maid, "Who things to come can truly tell, "Dread mistress of the magic spell. "Whate'er the depths of time can shew "All pass before her in review, "And all events her eyes survey, "'Till time and nature both decay. "I'll to her cave, enquiring there "What mighty things the fates prepare; "Whether my hopes and plans are vain, "Or I must give new worlds to Spain." PICTURE II.[51] The Cell of an Inchantress _Inchantress_ Who dares attempt this gloomy grove Where never shepherd dream'd of love, And birds of night are only found, And poisonous weeds bestrew the ground: Hence, stranger, take some other road, Nor dare prophane my dark abode; The winds are high, the moon is low-- Would you enter?--no, no, no:-- _Columbus_ Sorceress of mighty power![A] Hither at the midnight hour Over hill and dale I've come, Leaving ease and sleep at home: With daring aims my bosom glows; Long a stranger to repose, I have come to learn from you Whether phantoms I pursue, Or if, as reason would persuade, New worlds are on the ocean laid-- Tell me, wonder-working maid, Tell me, dire inchantress, tell, Mistress of the magic spell! [A] The fifteenth century was, like many of the preceding, an age of superstition, cruelty, and ignorance. When this circumstance, therefore, is brought into view, the mixture of truth and fiction will not appear altogether absurd or unnatural. At any rate, it has ever been tolerated in this species of poetry.--_Freneau's note._ _Inchantress_ The staring owl her note has sung; With gaping snakes my cave is hung; Of maiden hair my bed is made, Two winding sheets above it laid; With bones of men my shelves are pil'd, And toads are for my supper boil'd; Three ghosts attend to fill my cup, And four to serve my pottage up; The crow is waiting to say grace:-- Wouldst thou in such a dismal place The secrets of thy fortune trace? _Columbus_ Though death and all his dreary crew Were to be open'd on my view, I would not from this threshold fly 'Till you had made a full reply. Open wide this iron gate, I must read the book of fate: Tell me, if beyond the main Islands are reserv'd for Spain; Tell me, if beyond the sea Worlds are to be found by me: Bid your spirits disappear, Phantoms of delusive fear, These are visions I despise, Shadows and uncertainties. _Inchantress_ Must I, then, yield to your request! Columbus, why disturb my rest!-- For this the ungrateful shall combine, And hard misfortune shall be thine;-- For this the base reward remains Of cold neglect and galling chains![B] In a poor solitude forgot, Reproach and want shall be the lot Of him that gives new worlds to Spain, And westward spreads her golden reign. Before you came to vex my bower I slept away the evening hour, Or watch'd the rising of the moon, With hissing vipers keeping tune, Or galloping along the glade Took pleasure in the lunar shade, And gather'd herbs, or made a prize Of horses' tails and adders' eyes: Now open flies the iron gate, Advance, and read the book of fate! On thy design what woes attend! The nations at the ocean's end, No longer destin'd to be free, Shall owe distress and death to thee! The seats of innocence and love Shall soon the scenes of horror prove: But why disturb these Indian climes, The pictures of more happy times! Has avarice, with unfeeling breast, Has cruelty thy soul possess'd? May ruin on thy boldness wait!-- Advance, and read the book of fate. When vulture, fed but once a week, And ravens three together shriek, And skeleton for vengeance cries, Then shall the fatal curtain rise! Two lamps in yonder vaulted room, Suspended o'er a brazen tomb, Shall lend their glimmerings, as you pass, To find your fortune in that glass Whose wondrous virtue is, to show Whate'er the inquirer wants to know. [B] In 1498 he was superseded in his command at Hispaniola and sent home in irons. Soon after finishing his fourth voyage, finding himself neglected by the Court of Spain after all his services, he retired to Valladolid, in Old Castile, where he died on the 20th of May. A. D. 1506.--_Freneau's note._ PICTURE III. The Mirror _Columbus_ Strange things I see, bright mirror, in thy breast:-- There Perseverance stands, and nobly scorns The gabbling tongue of busy calumny; Proud Erudition in a scholar's garb Derides my plans and grins a jeering smile. Hypocrisy, clad in a doctor's gown, A western continent deems heresy: The princes, kings, and nobles of the land Smile at my projects, and report me mad: One royal woman only stands my friend, Bright Isabell, the lady of our hearts, Whom avarice prompts to aid my purposes, And love of toys--weak female vanity!-- She gains her point!--three slender barques I see (Or else the witch's glass deceives mine eye) Rigg'd trim, and furnish'd out with stores and men, Fitted for tedious journeys o'er the main: Columbus--ha!--their motions he directs; Their captains come, and ask advice from him, Holding him for the soul of resolution. Now, now we launch from Palos! prosperous gales Impel the canvas: now the far fam'd streight Is pass'd, the pillars of the son of Jove, Long held the limits of the paths of men: Ah! what a waste of ocean here begins, And lonely waves, so black and comfortless! Light flies each bounding galley o'er the main; Now Lancerota gathers on our view, And Teneriffe her clouded summit rears: Awhile we linger at these islands fair That seem the utmost boundaries of the world, Then westward aiming on the unfathom'd deep Sorrowing, with heavy hearts we urge our way. Now all is discontent--such oceans pass'd, No land appearing yet, dejects the most; Yet, fertile in expedients, I alone The mask of mild content am forc'd to wear: A thousand signs I see, or feign to see, Of shores at hand, and bottoms underneath, And not a bird that wanders o'er the main, And not a cloud that traverses the sky But brings me something to support their hopes: All fails at last!--so frequently deceiv'd They growl with anger--mad to look at death They gnash their teeth, and will be led no more; On me their vengeance turns: they look at me As their conductor to the realms of ruin: Plot after plot discover'd, not reveng'd, They join against their chief in mutiny: They urge to plunge him in the boiling deep As one, the only one that would pursue Imaginary worlds through boundless seas:-- The scene is chang'd--Fine islands greet mine eye, Cover'd with trees, and beasts, and yellow men; Eternal summer through the vallies smiles And fragrant gales o'er golden meadows play!-- Inchantress, 'tis enough!--now veil your glass-- The curtain falls--and I must homeward pass. PICTURE IV. Columbus addresses King Ferdinand Prince and the pride of Spain! while meaner crowns, Pleas'd with the shadow of monarchial sway, Exact obedience from some paltry tract Scarce worth the pain and toil of governing, Be thine the generous care to send thy fame Beyond the knowledge, or the guess of man. This gulphy deep (that bounds our western reign So long by civil feuds and wars disgrac'd) Must be the passage to some other shore Where nations dwell, children of early time, Basking in the warm sunshine of the south, Who some false deity, no doubt, adore, Owning no virtue in the potent cross: What honour, sire, to plant your standards there,[A] And souls recover to our holy faith That now in paths of dark perdition stray Warp'd to his worship by the evil one! Think not that Europe and the Asian waste, Or Africa, where barren sands abound, Are the sole gems in Neptune's bosom laid: Think not the world a vast extended plain: See yond' bright orbs, that through the ether move, All globular; this earth a globe like them Walks her own rounds, attended by the moon, Bright comrade, but with borrowed lustre bright. If all the surface of this mighty round Be one wide ocean of unfathom'd depth Bounding the little space already known, Nature must have forgot her wonted wit And made a monstrous havock of proportion. If her proud depths were not restrain'd by lands, And broke by continents of vast extent Existing somewhere under western skies, Far other waves would roll before the storms Than ever yet have burst on Europe's shores, Driving before them deluge and confusion. But Nature will preserve what she has plann'd: And the whole suffrage of antiquity, Platonic dreams, and reason's plainer page All point at something that we ought to see Buried behind the waters of the west, Clouded with shadows of uncertainty. The time is come for some sublime event Of mighty fame:--mankind are children yet, And hardly dream what treasures they possess In the dark bosom of the fertile main, Unfathom'd, unattempted, unexplor'd. These, mighty prince, I offer to reveal, And by the magnet's aid, if you supply Ships and some gallant hearts, will hope to bring From distant climes, news worthy of a king. [A] It is allowed by most historians, that Ferdinand was an implicit believer and one of the must superstitious bigots of his age.--_Freneau's note._ PICTURE V. Ferdinand and his First Minister _Ferdinand_ What would this madman have, this odd projector! A wild address I have to-day attended, Mingling its folly with our great affairs, Dreaming of islands and new hemispheres Plac'd on the ocean's verge, we know not where-- What shall I do with this petitioner? _Minister_ Even send him, sire, to perish in his search: He has so pester'd me these many years With idle projects of discovery-- His name--I almost dread to hear it mention'd: He is a Genoese of vulgar birth And has been round all Europe with his plans Presenting them to every potentate; He lives, 'tis said, by vending maps and charts,[52] And being us'd to sketch imagin'd islands On that blank space that represents the seas, His head at last grows giddy with this folly, And fancied isles are turned to real lands With which he puzzles me perpetually: What pains me too, is, that our royal lady Lends him her ear, and reads his mad addresses, Oppos'd to reason and philosophy. _Ferdinand_ He acts the devil's part in Eden's garden; Knowing the man was proof to his temptations He whisper'd something in the ear of Eve, And promis'd much, but meant not to perform. _Minister_ I've treated all his schemes with such contempt That any but a rank, mad-brain'd enthusiast, Pushing his purpose to extremities, Would have forsook your empire, royal sir, Discourag'd, and forgotten long ago. _Ferdinand_ Has he so long been busy at his projects?-- I scarcely heard of him till yesterday: A plan pursued with so much obstinacy Looks not like madness:--wretches of that stamp Survey a thousand objects in an hour, In love with each, and yet attach'd to none Beyond the moment that it meets the eye-- But him I honour, tho' in beggar's garbs, Who has a soul of so much constancy As to bear up against the hard rebuffs, Sneers of great men, and insolence of power, And through the opposition of them all Pursues his object:--Minister, this man Must have our notice:--Let him be commissioned Viceroy of all the lands he shall discover, Admiral and general in the fleets of Spain; Let three stout ships be instantly selected, The best and strongest ribb'd of all we own, With men to mann them, patient of fatigue: But stay, attend! how stands our treasury?-- _Minister_ Empty--even to the bottom, royal sir! We have not coin for bare necessities, Much less, so pardon me, to spend on madmen. PICTURE VI. Columbus addresses Queen Isabella While Turkish queens, dejected, pine, Compell'd sweet freedom to resign; And taught one virtue, to obey, Lament some eastern tyrant's sway, Queen of our hearts, bright Isabell! A happier lot to you has fell, Who makes a nation's bliss your own, And share the rich Castilian throne. Exalted thus, beyond all fame, Assist, fair lady, that proud aim Which would your native reign extend To the wide world's remotest end. From science, fed by busy thought, New wonders to my view are brought: The vast abyss beyond our shore I deem impassable no more. Let those that love to dream or sleep Pretend no limits to the deep: I see beyond the rolling main Abounding wealth reserv'd for Spain. From Nature's earliest days conceal'd, Men of their own these climates yield, And scepter'd dames, no doubt, are there, Queens like yourself, but not so fair. But what should most provoke desire Are the fine pearls that they admire, And diamonds bright and coral green More fit to grace a Spanish queen. Their yellow shells, and virgin gold, And silver, for our trinkets sold, Shall well reward this toil and pain, And bid our commerce shine again. As men were forc'd from Eden's shade By errors that a woman made, Permit me at a woman's cost To find the climates that we lost. He that with you partakes command, The nation's hope, great Ferdinand, Attends, indeed, to my request, But wants no empires in the west. Then, queen, supply the swelling sail, For eastward breathes the steady gale That shall the meanest barque convey To regions richer than Cathay.[A] [A] The ancient name for China.--_Freneau's note._ Arriv'd upon that flowery coast Whole towns of golden temples boast, While these bright objects strike our view Their wealth shall be reserv'd for you. Each swarthy king shall yield his crown, And smiling lay their sceptres down, When they, not tam'd by force of arms, Shall hear the story of your charms. Did I an empty dream pursue Great honour still must wait on you, Who sent the lads of Spain to keep Such vigils on the untravell'd deep, Who fix'd the bounds of land and sea, Trac'd Nature's works through each degree, Imagin'd some unheard of shore But prov'd that there was nothing more. Yet happier prospects, I maintain, Shall open on your female reign, While ages hence with rapture tell How much they owe to Isabell! PICTURE VII. Queen Isabella's Page of Honour writing a reply to Columbus Your yellow shells, and coral green. And gold, and silver--not yet seen, Have made such mischief in a woman's mind The queen could almost pillage from the crown, And add some costly jewels of her own, Thus sending you that charming coast to find Where all these heavenly things abound, Queens in the west, and chiefs renown'd. But then no great men take you by the hand, Nor are the nobles busied in your aid; The clergy have no relish for your scheme, And deem it madness--one archbishop said You were bewilder'd in a paltry dream That led directly to undoubted ruin, Your own and other men's undoing:-- And our confessor says it is not true, And calls it heresy in you Thus to assert the world is round, And that Antipodes are found Held to the earth, we can't tell how.-- But you shall sail; I heard the queen declare That mere geography is not her care;-- And thus she bids me say, "Columbus, haste away, "Hasten to Palos, and if you can find "Three barques, of structure suited to your mind, "Strait make a purchase in the royal name; "Equip them for the seas without delay, "Since long the journey is (we heard you say) "To that rich country which we wish to claim.-- "Let them be small--for know the crown is poor "Though basking in the sunshine of renown. "Long wars have wasted us: the pride of Spain "Was ne'er before so high, nor purse so mean; "Giving us ten years' war, the humbled Moor "Has left us little else but victory: "Time must restore past splendor to our reign." PICTURE VIII. Columbus at the Harbour of Palos, in Andalusia _Columbus_ In three small barques to cross so vast a sea, Held to be boundless, even in learning's eye, And trusting only to a magic glass, Which may have represented things untrue, Shadows and visions for realities!--[53] It is a bold attempt!--Yet I must go, Travelling the surge to its great boundary; Far, far away beyond the reach of men, Where never galley spread her milk-white sail Or weary pilgrim bore the Christian name! But though I were confirm'd in my design And saw the whole event with certainty, How shall I so exert my eloquence, And hold such arguments with vulgar minds As to convince them I am not an idiot Chasing the visions of a shatter'd brain, Ending in their perdition and my own? The world, and all its wisdom is against me; The dreams of priests; philosophy in chains; False learning swoln with self-sufficiency; Men seated at the helm of royalty Reasoning like school-boys;--what discouragements! Experience holds herself mine enemy, And one weak woman only hears my story!-- I'll make a speech--"Here jovial sailors, here! "Ye that would rise beyond the rags of fortune, "Struggling too long with hopeless poverty, "Coasting your native shores on shallow seas, "Vex'd by the gallies of the Ottoman; "Now meditate with me a bolder plan, "Catching at fortune in her plenitude! "He that shall undertake this voyage with me "Shall be no longer held a vulgar man: "Princes shall wish they had been our companions, "And Science blush she did not go along "To learn a lesson that might humble pride "Now grinning idly from a pedant's cap, "Lurking behind the veil of cowardice. "Far in the west a golden region lies "Unknown, unvisited for many an age, "Teeming with treasures to enrich the brave. "Embark, embark--Columbus leads the way-- "Why, friends, existence is alike to me "Dear and desireable with other men; "What good could I devise in seeking ruin? "Embark, I say; and he that sails with me "Shall reap a harvest of immortal honour: "Wealthier he shall return than they that now "Lounge in the lap of principalities, "Hoarding the gorgeous treasures of the east."-- Alas, alas! they turn their backs upon me, And rather choose to wallow in the mire Of want, and torpid inactivity, Than by one bold and masterly exertion Themselves ennoble, and enrich their country! PICTURE IX. A Sailor's Hut, near the Shore Thomas and Susan _Thomas_ I wish I was over the water again! 'Tis a pity we cannot agree; When I try to be merry 'tis labour in vain, You always are scolding at me; Then what shall I do With this termagant Sue; Tho' I hug her and squeeze her I never can please her-- Was there ever a devil like you! _Susan_ If I was a maid as I now am a wife With a sot and a brat to maintain, I think it should be the first care of my life, To shun such a drunkard again: Not one of the crew Is so hated by Sue; Though they always are bawling, And pulling and hauling-- Not one is a puppy like you.[54] _Thomas_ Dear Susan, I'm sorry that you should complain: There is nothing indeed to be done; If a war should break out, not a sailor in Spain Would sooner be found at his gun: Arriving from sea I would kneel on one knee, And the plunder presenting To Susan relenting-- Who then would be honour'd like me! _Susan_ To-day as I came by the sign of the ship, A mighty fine captain was there, He was asking for sailors to take a small trip, But I cannot remember well where: He was hearty and free, And if you can agree To leave me, dear honey, To bring me some money!-- How happy--indeed--I shall be! _Thomas_ The man that you saw not a sailor can get, 'Tis a captain Columbus, they say; To fit out a ship he is running in debt, And our wages he never will pay: Yes, yes, it is he, And, Sue, do ye see, On a wild undertaking His heart he is breaking-- The devil may take him for me! PICTURE X. Bernardo, a Spanish Friar, in his canonicals Did not our holy book most clearly say This earth is built upon a pillar'd base; And did not Reason add convincing proofs That this huge world is one continued plain Extending onward to immensity, Bounding with oceans these abodes of men, I should suppose this dreamer had some hopes, Some prospects built on probability. What says our lord the pope--he cannot err-- He says, our world is not orbicular, And has rewarded some with chains and death Who dar'd defend such wicked heresies. But we are turning heretics indeed!-- A foreigner, an idiot, an impostor, An infidel (since he dares contradict What our most holy order holds for truth) Is pouring poison in the royal ear; Telling him tales of islands in the moon, Leading the nation into dangerous errors, Slighting instruction from our brotherhood!-- O Jesu! Jesu! what an age is this! PICTURE XI. Orosio, a Mathematician, with his scales and compasses This persevering man succeeds at last! The last gazette has publish'd to the world That Ferdinand and Isabella grant Three well rigg'd ships to Christopher Columbus; And have bestow'd the noble titles too Of Admiral and Vice-Roy--great indeed!-- Who will not now project, and scrawl on paper-- Pretenders now shall be advanc'd to honour; And every pedant that can frame a problem, And every lad that can draw parallels Or measure the subtension of an angle, Shall now have ships to make discoveries. This simple man would sail he knows not where; Building on fables, schemes of certainty;-- Visions of Plato, mix'd with idle tales Of later date, intoxicate his brain: Let him advance beyond a certain point In his fantastic voyage, and I foretell He never can return: ay, let him go!-- There is a line towards the setting sun Drawn on an ocean of tremendous depth, (Where nature plac'd the limits of the day) Haunted by dragons, fond of solitude, Red serpents, fiery forms, and yelling hags, Fit company for mad adventurers.-- There, when the sun descends, 'tis horror all; His angry globe through vast abysses gliding Burns in the briny bosom of the deep Making a havoc so detestable, And causing such a wasteful ebullition That never island green, or continent Could find foundation, there to grow upon. PICTURE XII. Columbus and a Pilot _Columbus_ To take on board the sweepings of a jail Is inexpedient in a voyage like mine, That will require most patient fortitude, Strict vigilance and staid sobriety, Contempt of death on cool reflection founded, A sense of honour, motives of ambition, And every sentiment that sways the brave.-- Princes should join me now!--not those I mean Who lurk in courts, or revel in the shade Of painted ceilings:--those I mean, more worthy, Whose daring aims and persevering souls, Soaring beyond the sordid views of fortune, Bespeak the lineage of true royalty. _Pilot_ A fleet arrived last month at Carthagene From Smyrna, Cyprus, and the neighbouring isles: Their crews, releas'd from long fatigues at sea, Have spent their earnings in festivity, And hunger tells them they must out again. Yet nothing instantly presents itself Except your new and noble expedition: The fleet must undergo immense repairs, And numbers will be unemploy'd awhile: I'll take them in the hour of dissipation (Before reflection has made cowards of them, Suggesting questions of impertinence) When desperate plans are most acceptable, Impossibilities are possible, And all the spring and vigour of the mind Is strain'd to madness and audacity: If you approve my scheme, our ninety men (The number you pronounce to be sufficient) Shall all be enter'd in a week, at most. _Columbus_ Go, pilot, go--and every motive urge That may put life into this expedition. Early in August we must weigh our anchors. Time wears apace---bring none but willing men, So shall our orders be the better borne, The people less inclin'd to mutiny. PICTURE XIII. Discontents at Sea _Antonio_ Dreadful is death in his most gentle forms! More horrid still on this mad element, So far remote from land--from friends remote! So many thousand leagues already sail'd In quest of visions!--what remains to us But perishing in these moist solitudes; Where many a day our corpses on the sea Shall float unwept, unpitied, unentomb'd! O fate most terrible!--undone Antonio! Why didst thou listen to a madman's dreams, Pregnant with mischief--why not, comrades, rise!-- See, Nature's self prepares to leave us here; The needle, once so faithful to the pole, Now quits his object and bewilders us; Steering at random, just as chance directs-- O fate most terrible!--undone Antonio!-- _Hernando_ Borne to creation's utmost verge, I saw New stars ascending, never view'd before! Low sinks the bear!--O land, my native land, Clear springs and shady groves! why did I change Your aspect fair for these infernal wastes, Peopled by monsters of another kind; Ah me! design'd not for the view of man! _Columbus_ Cease, dastards, cease; and be inform'd that man Is nature's lord, and wields her to his will; If her most noble works obey our aims, How much more so ought worthless scum, like you, Whose whole existence is a morning dream, Whose life is sunshine on a wintry day, Who shake at shadows, struck with palsied fear: Measuring the limit of your lives by distance. _Antonio_ Columbus, hear! when with the land we parted You thirty days agreed to plough the main, Directing westward.--Thirty have elaps'd, And thirty more have now begun their round, No land appearing yet, nor trace of land, But distant fogs that mimic lofty isles, Painting gay landscapes on the vapourish air, Inhabited by fiends that mean our ruin-- You persevere, and have no mercy on us-- Then perish by yourself--we must return-- And know, our firm resolve is fix'd for Spain; In this resolve we are unanimous. Juan de Villa-Real to Columbus (A Billet) "I heard them over night a plot contriving "Of fatal purpose--have a care, Columbus!-- "They have resolv'd, as on the deck you stand, "Aiding the vigils of the midnight hour, "To plunge you headlong in the roaring deep, "And slaughter such as favour your design "Still to pursue this western continent." _Columbus, solus_ Why, nature, hast thou treated those so ill, Whose souls, capacious of immense designs, Leave ease and quiet for a nation's glory, Thus to subject them to these little things, Insects, by heaven's decree in shapes of men! But so it is, and so we must submit, Bending to thee, the heaven's great chancellor! But must I fail!--and by timidity! Must thou to thy green waves receive me, Neptune, Or must I basely with my ships return, Nothing accomplish'd!--not one pearl discover'd, One bit of gold to make our queen a bracelet, One diamond for the crown of Ferdinand! How will their triumph be confirm'd, who said That I was mad!--Must I then change my course, And quit the country that would strait appear, If one week longer we pursued the sun!-- The witch's glass was not delusion, sure!-- All this, and more, she told me to expect!--[55] (_To the crew_) "Assemble, friends; attend to what I say: "Signs unequivocal, at length, declare "That some great continent approaches us: "The sea no longer glooms unmeasur'd depths,[56] "The setting sun discovers clouds that owe "Their origin to fens and woodland wastes, "Not such as breed on ocean's salt domain:-- "Vast flocks of birds attend us on our way, "These all have haunts amidst the watry void. "Sweet scenes of ease, and sylvan solitude, "And springs, and streams that we shall share with them. "Now, hear my most importunate request: "I call you all my friends; you are my equals, "Men of true worth and native dignity, "Whose spirits are too mighty to return "Most meanly home, when nothing is accomplish'd-- "Consent to sail our wonted course with me "But one week longer, and if that be spent, "And nought appear to recompence our toil, "Then change our course and homeward haste away-- "Nay, homeward not!--for that would be too base-- "But to some negro coast,[57] where we may hide, "And never think of Ferdinand again." _Hernando_ One week!--too much--it shall not be, Columbus! Already are we on the verge of ruin, Warm'd by the sunshine of another sphere, Fann'd by the breezes of the burning zone, Launch'd out upon the world's extremities!-- Who knows where one week more may carry us? _Antonio_ Nay, talk not to the traitor!--base Columbus, To thee our ruin and our deaths we owe! Away, away!--friends!--men at liberty, Now free to act as best befits our case, Appoint another pilot to the helm, And Andalusia be our port again! _Columbus_ Friends, is it thus you treat your admiral, Who bears the honours of great Ferdinand, The royal standard, and the arms of Spain! Three days allow me--and I'll show new worlds. _Hernando_ Three days!--one day will pass too tediously-- But in the name of all our crew, Columbus, Whose speaker and controuler I am own'd; Since thou indeed art a most gallant man, Three days we grant--but ask us not again! PICTURE XIV. Columbus at Cat Island _Columbus, solus_ Hail, beauteous land! the first that greets mine eye Since, bold, we left the cloud capp'd Teneriffe, The world's last limit long suppos'd by men.-- Tir'd with dull prospects of the watry waste And midnight dangers that around us grew, Faint hearts and feeble hands and traitors vile, Thee, Holy Saviour, on this foreign land We still adore, and name this coast from thee![A] In these green groves who would not wish to stay, Where guardian nature holds her quiet reign, Where beardless men speak other languages, Unknown to us, ourselves unknown to them. [A] He called the island San Salvador (Holy Saviour). It lies about ninety miles S.E. from Providence; is one of the Bahama cluster, and to the eastward of the Grand Bank.--_Freneau's note._ _Antonio_ In tracing o'er the isle no gold I find-- Nought else but barren trees and craggy rocks Where screaming sea-fowl mix their odious loves, And fields of burning marle, where devils play And men with copper skins talk barbarously;-- What merit has our chief in sailing hither, Discovering countries of no real worth! Spain has enough of barren sands, no doubt, And savages in crowds are found at home;-- Why then surmount the world's circumference Merely to stock us with this Indian breed? _Hernando_ Soft!--or Columbus will detect your murmuring-- This new found isle has re-instated him In all our favours--see you yonder sands?-- Why, if you see them, swear that they are gold, And gold like this shall be our homeward freight, Gladding the heart of Ferdinand the great, Who, when he sees it, shall say smilingly, "Well done, advent'rous fellows, you have brought "The treasure we expected and deserv'd!"-- Hold!--I am wrong--there goes a savage man With gold suspended from his ragged ears: I'll brain the monster for the sake of gold; There, savage, try the power of Spanish steel-- 'Tis of Toledo[B]--true and trusty stuff! He falls! he falls! the gold, the gold is mine! First acquisition in this golden isle!-- [B] The best steel-blades in Spain are manufactured at Toledo and Bilboa.--_Freneau's note._ _Columbus, solus_ Sweet sylvan scenes of innocence and ease, How calm and joyous pass the seasons here! No splendid towns or spiry turrets rise, No lordly palaces--no tyrant kings Enact hard laws to crush fair freedom here; No gloomy jails to shut up wretched men; All, all are free!--here God and nature reign; Their works unsullied by the hands of men.-- Ha! what is this--a murder'd wretch I see,[58] His blood yet warm--O hapless islander, Who could have thus so basely mangled thee, Who never offer'd insult to our shore-- Was it for those poor trinkets in your ears Which by the custom of your tribe you wore,-- Now seiz'd away--and which would not have weigh'd One poor piastre! Is this the fruit of my discovery! If the first scene is murder, what shall follow But havock, slaughter, chains and devastation In every dress and form of cruelty! O injur'd Nature, whelm me in the deep, And let not Europe hope for my return, Or guess at worlds upon whose threshold now So black a deed has just been perpetrated!-- We must away--enjoy your woods in peace, Poor, wretched, injur'd, harmless islanders;-- On Hayti's[C] isle you say vast stores are found Of this destructive gold--which without murder Perhaps, we may possess!--away, away! And southward, pilots, seek another isle, Fertile they say, and of immense extent: There we may fortune find without a crime. [C] This island is now called Hispaniola, but is of late recovering its ancient name.--_Freneau's note._ PICTURE XV. Columbus in a Tempest, on his return to Spain The storm hangs low; the angry lightning glares And menaces destruction to our masts; The Corposant[A] is busy on the decks, The soul, perhaps, of some lost admiral Taking his walks about most leisurely, Foreboding we shall be with him to-night: See, now he mounts the shrouds--as he ascends The gale grows bolder!--all is violence! Seas, mounting from the bottom of their depths, Hang o'er our heads with all their horrid curls Threatening perdition to our feeble barques, Which three hours longer cannot bear their fury, Such heavy strokes already shatter them; Who can endure such dreadful company!-- Then, must we die with our discovery! Must all my labours, all my pains, be lost, And my new world in old oblivion sleep?-- My name forgot, or if it be remember'd, Only to have it said, "He was a madman "Who perish'd as he ought--deservedly-- "In seeking what was never to be found!"-- Let's obviate what we can this horrid sentence, And, lost ourselves, perhaps, preserve our name. 'Tis easy to contrive this painted casket, (Caulk'd, pitch'd, secur'd with canvas round and round) That it may float for months upon the main, Bearing the freight within secure and dry: In this will I an abstract of our voyage, And islands found, in little space enclose: The western winds in time may bear it home To Europe's coasts: or some wide wandering ship By accident may meet it toss'd about, Charg'd with the story of another world. [A] A vapour common at sea in bad weather, something larger and rather paler than the light of a candle; which, seeming to rise out of the sea, first moves about the decks, and then ascends or descends the rigging in proportion to the increase or decrease of the storm. Superstition formerly imagined them to be the souls of drowned men.--_Freneau's note._ PICTURE XVI. Columbus visits the Court at Barcelona _Ferdinand_ Let him be honour'd like a God, who brings Tidings of islands at the ocean's end! In royal robes let him be straight attir'd. And seated next ourselves, the noblest peer. _Isabella_ The merit of this gallant deed is mine: Had not my jewels furnish'd out the fleet Still had this world been latent in the main.-- Since on this project every man look'd cold, A woman, as his patroness, shall shine; And through the world the story shall be told, A woman gave new continents to Spain. _Columbus_ A world, great prince, bright queen and royal lady, Discover'd now, has well repaid our toils; We to your bounty owe all that we are; Men of renown and to be fam'd in story. Islands of vast extent we have discover'd With gold abounding: see a sample here Of those most precious metals we admire; And Indian men, natives of other climes, Whom we have brought to do you princely homage, Owning they hold their diadems from you. _Ferdinand_ To fifteen sail your charge shall be augmented: Hasten to Palos, and prepare again To sail in quest of this fine golden country, The Ophir, never known to Solomon; Which shall be held the brightest gem we have, The richest diamond in the crown of Spain. PICTURE XVII. Columbus in Chains[A] [A] During his third voyage, while in San Domingo, such unjust representations were made of his conduct to the Court of Spain, that a new admiral, Bovadilla, was appointed to supersede him, who sent Columbus home in irons.--_Freneau's note._ Are these the honours they reserve for me, Chains for the man that gave new worlds to Spain! Rest here, my swelling heart!--O kings, O queens, Patrons of monsters, and their progeny, Authors of wrong, and slaves to fortune merely! Why was I seated by my prince's side, Honour'd, caress'd like some first peer of Spain? Was it that I might fall most suddenly From honour's summit to the sink of scandal! 'Tis done, 'tis done!--what madness is ambition! What is there in that little breath of men, Which they call Fame, that should induce the brave To forfeit ease and that domestic bliss Which is the lot of happy ignorance, Less glorious aims, and dull humility?-- Whoe'er thou art that shalt aspire to honour, And on the strength and vigour of the mind Vainly depending, court a monarch's favour, Pointing the way to vast extended empire; First count your pay to be ingratitude, Then chains and prisons, and disgrace like mine! Each wretched pilot now shall spread his sails, And treading in my footsteps, hail new worlds, Which, but for me, had still been empty visions. PICTURE XVIII. Columbus at Valladolid[A] [A] After he found himself in disgrace with the Court of Spain, he retired to Vallodolid, a town of Old Castile, where he died, it is said, more of a broken heart than any other disease, on the 20th of May, 1506.--_Freneau's note._ 1 How sweet is sleep, when gain'd by length of toil! No dreams disturb the slumbers of the dead-- To snatch existence from this scanty soil, Were these the hopes deceitful fancy bred; And were her painted pageants nothing more Than this life's phantoms by delusion led? 2 The winds blow high: one other world remains; Once more without a guide I find the way; In the dark tomb to slumber with my chains-- Prais'd by no poet on my funeral day, Nor even allow'd one dearly purchas'd claim-- My new found world not honour'd with my name. 3 Yet, in this joyless gloom while I repose, Some comfort will attend my pensive shade, When memory paints, and golden fancy shows My toils rewarded, and my woes repaid; When empires rise where lonely forests grew, Where Freedom shall her generous plans pursue. 4 To shadowy forms, and ghosts and sleepy things, Columbus, now with dauntless heart repair; You liv'd to find new worlds for thankless kings, Write this upon my tomb--yes--tell it there-- Tell of those chains that sullied all my glory-- Not mine, but their's--ah, tell the shameful story. [48] First published in the edition of 1788, the text of which I have reproduced. Aside from several significant changes in Picture I., and the total omission of Pictures II. and III., the later editions contain but few variations. The edition of 1795 is signed "Anno 1774." [49] The four stanzas beginning "This world on paper idly drawn," are omitted from later editions, and the stanza beginning "But westward plac'd" is made to read: "Far to the west what lengthen'd seas! "Are no gay islands found in these, "No sylvan worlds, by Nature meant "To balance Asia's vast extent?" [50] In later editions the last three stanzas are omitted, and in their place is added the following, taken partly from the words of the Inchantress in the next picture: "If Neptune on my prowess smiles, And I detect his hidden isles, I hear some warning spirit say: '_No monarch will your toils repay: 'For this the ungrateful shall combine, 'And hard misfortune must be thine; 'For this the base reward remains 'Of cold neglect and galling chains! 'In a poor solitude forgot, 'Reproach and want shall be the lot 'Of him that gives new worlds to Spain 'And westward spreads her golden reign. 'On thy design what woes attend! 'The nations at the ocean's end 'No longer destined to be free 'Shall owe distress and death to thee! 'The seats of innocence and love 'Shall soon the scenes of horror prove; 'But why disturb these Indian climes, 'The pictures of more happy times! 'Has avarice, with unfeeling breast, 'Has cruelty thy soul possess'd? 'May ruin on thy boldness wait!-- 'And sorrow crown thy toils too late!_'" [51] Pictures II. and III. are omitted from later editions. [52] The six lines beginning here are omitted in the later versions. [53] This and the two preceding lines omitted in later versions. [54] "Not one is so noisy as you."--_Ed. 1795._ [55] This and preceding line omitted in later versions. [56] Two lines added in later editions: "Small motes I see, from ebbing rivers borne, And Neptune's waves a greener aspect wear." [57] "But to the depths below."--_Ed. 1795._ [58] One line added in later versions: "A Spanish ponyard thro' his entrails driven." THE EXPEDITION OF TIMOTHY TAURUS, ASTROLOGER TO THE FALLS OF PASSAICK RIVER, IN NEW JERSEY[59] Written soon after an excursion to the village at that place in August, 1775, under the character of Timothy Taurus, a student in astrology; and formerly printed in New-York. CHARACTERS OF THE POEM Timothy Taurus, Astrologer, in love with Tryphena. Slyboots, a Quaker, and his two Daughters. Dullman, a City Broker. Deacon Samuel. Brigadier-General Nimrod. Lawyer Ludwick. Parson Pedro. Doctor Sangrado. Saunders, a Horse Jockey. Gubbin, a Tavern-keeper. Scalpella Gubbin, his Wife. Mithollan, a Farmer. My morning of life is beclouded with care! I will go to Passaick, I say and I swear-- To the falls of Passaick, that elegant scene, Where all is so pretty, and all is so green-- That river Passaick!--celestial indeed! That river of rivers, no rivers exceed.-- Now why, I would ask, should I puzzle my brain The nature of stars, or their use to explain-- To trace the effects they may have on our earth, How govern our actions, or rule at our birth? Five years have I been at these studies, and scanned All the books on the subject that sophists have planned! I am sorry to say (yet it ought to be said) The stars have not sent me one rye loaf of bread! Not a shilling to purchase a glass of good beer,-- By my soul, it's enough to make ministers swear. Tryphena may argue, and say what she will, I am sure all my fortune is going down hill: Dear girl! if you wait 'till the planets are for us Your name will scarce alter to Tryphena Taurus. Tryphena! I love you--have courted you long-- But find all my labours will end in a song!-- "Will you play at all-fours?"--she said, very jolly;-- I answered, The play at all-fours is all folly! "Will you play, then, at whist?"--she obligingly said;-- I answered, the game is gone out of my head-- Indeed, I am weary--I feel rather sick, So, I leave you, Tryphena, to win the odd trick.-- There's a music some talk of, that's play'd by the spheres:-- I wish him all luck who this harmony hears; And the people who hear it, I hope they may find It is not a music that fills them with wind.-- There's Saturn, and Venus, and Jove, and the rest: Their music to me is not quite of the best.-- These orbs of the stars, and that globe of the moon To me, I am certain, all play a wrong tune. Not a creature that plods in, or ploughs up the dirt, But from the mean clod gets a better support: Then farewell to Mars, and the rest of the gang, And the comets--I tell them they all may go hang; I mean, if they only with music will treat, It is not to me the best cooked of all meat. They may go where they will, and return when they please,-- And I hope they'll remember to pay up my fees-- So I leave them awhile, to be cheerful below, And away to Passaick most merrily go! The month, it was August, and meltingly warm, Not a cloud in the sky nor the sign of a storm; So I jumped in the stage, with the freight of the fair, And in less than a day at Passaick we were.-- Well, arrived at the Falls, I procured me a bed In a box of a house--you might call it a shed; The best of the taverns were all pre-engaged, So I barely was lodged, or rather encaged; Yet, cage as it was, I enjoyed a regale Of victuals three times every day, without fail: There was poultry, and pyes, and a dozen things more That the damnable college had never in store: I feasted, and lived on such fat of the place That the college would not have remembered my face-- So long had I fed on their trash algebraic, Indeed, it was time I went to Passaick!-- The rocks were amazing, and such was the height, They struck me at once with surprize and delight. The waters rushed down with a terrible roar-- What a pleasure it was to be lounging on shore! They now were as clear as old Helicon's stream, Or as clear as the clearest in poetry's dream.-- These falls were stupendous, the fountains so clear, That another Narcissus might see himself here, Nor only Narcissus--some ill-featured faces From the springs were reflected--not made up of graces. But now I must tell you--what people were met: They were, on my conscience, a wonderful sett; Some came for their health, and some came for their pleasure, And to steal from the city a fortnight of leisure; Some came for a day, and yet more for a week, Some came from the college, tormented with Greek, To continue as long as their means would afford, That is, while the taverns would trust them their board: (Of this last mentioned class, I confess I was one, For why should I fib when the mischief is done?) This age may decay, and another may rise, Before it is fully revealed to our eyes, That Latin, and Hebrew, Chaldaic, and Greek, To the shades of oblivion must certainly sneak; Too much of our time is employed on such trash When we ought to be taught to accumulate cash. Supposing I knew them as pat as my prayers (And to know them completely would cost me twelve years) Supposing, I say, I had Virgil by rote, And could talk with old Homer--'tis not worth a groat; If with Rabbi Bensalem I knew how to chat, Where lies the advantage?--and what of all that? Were this cart load of learning the whole that I knew, I could sooner get forward by mending a shoe: I could sooner grow rich by the axe or the spade, Or thrive by the meanest mechanical trade, The tinker himself would be richer than I, For the tinker has something that people must buy, While such as have little but Latin to vend, On a shadow may truly be said to depend; Old words, and old phrases that nothing bestow, And the owners discarded ten ages ago.-- Here were people on people--I hardly know who-- There was Mammon the merchant, and Japhet the Jew: There was Slyboots the Quaker, whose coat had no flaps, With two of his Lambkins, as plain in their caps. In silks of the richest I saw them array, But nothing was cut in our mode of the day, They hung to old habits as firm as to rocks, And are just what they were in the days of George Fox. They talked in a style that was wholly their own; They shunned the vain world, and were mostly alone, One talked in the Nay, and one talked in the Yea, And of light in their lanthorns that no one could see: They hated the crowd, and they hated the play, And hoped the vain actors would soon run away;-- No follies like that would the preachers allow; And Tabitha said thee, and Rebecca said thou. Here was Dullman, the broker, who looked as demure As if a false key had unlocked the shop door: He seemed to enjoy not a moment of rest, So unhappy to be--far away from his chest. He was all on the fidgets to be with his gold: Both honour and conscience he bartered, or sold-- The devil himself--excuse me, I pray-- Old Satan--oh no--take it some other way-- The God of this world had him fast by a chain, And there let us leave him--and let him remain.-- Here was Samuel, the Deacon, who read a large book, Though few but himself on its pages would look; Would you know what it was?--an abridgement of Flavell,[A] With Bunyan's whole war between soul and the devil;-- It seemed very old, and the worse for the wear, And might last the next century, handled with care; But if fashions and folly should not have a fall, I presume it will hardly be handled at all.-- Here was Nimrod the soldier--he wore a long sword, And, of course, all the ladies his courage adored; Two fringed epaulettes on his shoulders displayed, Discovered the rank of this son of the blade. "O la!" cried Miss Kitty, "how bold he must be! Papa! we must beg him to join us at tea! How much like a hero he looketh--good me! Full many a battle, no doubt, he has stood, And waded shoe deep through a mill pond of mud! What heads have been sliced from the place they possessed By the sword at his side!--all, I hope, for the best!" Then the soldier went out, to refresh at the inn-- Perhaps he did not--if he did it's no sin-- He made his congee, and he bowed to us all, And said he was going to Liberty Hall: 'Tis certain he went, but certainly where I cannot inform, and the devil may care. But now to proceed, in describing in rhyme The folks that came hither to pass away time: There were more that had heads rather shallow than strong, And more than had money to bear them out long. In short, there were many more ladies than gents, And the latter complained of the heavy expense! And some I could see, with their splendour and show, That their credit was bad, and their pockets were low; Many females were gadding, I saw with concern, Who had better been knitting, or weaving their yarn. And many went into Passaick to lave Whose hides were, indeed, a disgrace to the wave; Who should have been home at their houses and farms, Not here to be dabbling, to shew us their charms: It would have been better to wash their own walls Than here--to come here, to be washed in the falls. A judge of the court (in the law a mere goose) Here wasted his time with a lawyer let loose. Their books were thrown by--so I begged of the fates That the falls of Passaick might fall on their pates. This lawyer was Ludwick, who scarce had a suit, And for once in his life was disposed to be mute, But was mostly engaged in some crazy dispute: A cause against Smyth[B] he could never defend, As well might the Old One with Michael contend: The road was before him, the country was spacious, And he knew an old fellow called _fieri facias_:-- I saw him demurr, when they asked him to pay-- With a _noli-pros-equi_ he scampered away.-- Though his head was profusely be-plaistered with meal, One sorrowful secret it could not conceal, That he drew his first breath when a two penny star Presided, and governed this son of the bar. Here was Pedro, the parson, who looked full as grave As it he had lodged in Trophonius's cave. He talked of his wine, and he talked of his beer, And he talked of his texts, that were not very clear; And many suspected he talked very queer.-- He talked with Scalpella, the inn-holder's wife, Then dwelt on her beauties, and called her his life!-- He ogled Scalpella!--and spake of her charms; And oh! how he wished to repose in her arms: He called her his deary, and talked of their loves; And left her at last--a pair of old gloves! I was sorry to see him deranged and perplext That no one would ask him to handle a text:-- All gaped when he spoke, and incessantly gazed, And thought him no witch, but a parson be-crazed. Fine work did he make of Millennium, I trow, Which he told us would come (tho' it comes very slow) When earth with the pious and just will abound And Eden itself at Egg-Harbour be found: No musketoes to bite us, no rats to molest, And lawyers themselves rocked into something like rest. But most of us judged it was rather a whim, Or, at least, that the prospect was distant and dim. So I saw him pack up his polemical gown, To retreat while he could from the noise of the town.[C] He said there was something in Falls he admired, But of constantly hearing the roar--he was tired! With their damp exhalations his fancy was dimmed, He would come the next spring with his surplice new trimmed, Besides there were fogs in the morning (he said) That rose on the river and muddled his head!-- Thus he quitted Passaick!--deserted her shore, And the taverns that knew him shall know him no more! One farmer Milhollan--I saw him come here, Almost at the busiest time in the year; His intent might be good, but I never could learn Who coaxed him away from his crib and his barn: Each morning he tippled three glasses of gin With as many, at least, as three devils therein. He quarrelled with Jack, and he wrangled with Tom, 'Till scarcely a negro but wished him at home; He talked over much of the badness of times, And read us a list of the governor's[D] crimes, From which it was clearly predicted, and plain, That his honour would hardly be chosen again. He fought with Tim Tearcoat, and cudgelled with Ben, And wrestled with Sampson--all quarrelsome men;-- I was sorry to see him thus wasting his force On fellows who kicked with the heels of a horse. Tho' strong in my arms, and of strength to contest With the youths of my age in the wars of the fist, I thought it was better to let them pursue The quarrels they had, than to be one of their crew; I saw it was madness to join in the fray, So I left them to wrangle--each dog his own way. He spoke thrice an hour of his crop that had failed, And losses, he feared, that would get him enjailed; He mentioned his poultry, and mentioned his pigs, And railed at some Tories, converted to Whigs.-- (Excuse me retailing so much in my rhymes Of the chatt of the day and the stuff of the times; 'Tis thus in the acts of a play, we perceive All the parts are not cast to the wise, or the brave; Not all is discoursed by the famed or the fair, The demons of dullness have also their share; Statira in play-house has not all the chance, For hags are permitted to join in the dance: Not Catos, or Platos engross every play, For clowns and clod-hoppers must, too, have their day; Not the nobles of nature say all that is said, And monarchs are frequently left in the shade; There must be some nonsense, to step in between, There must be some fools to enliven the scene.) Here was Doctor Sangrado, with potion and pill, And his price was the same, to recover or kill. He waddled about, and was vext to the soul To see so much health in this horrible hole; He seemed in a fret there was nobody sick, And enquired of the landlord, "What ails your son Dick?" "What ails him? (said Gubbins) why nothing at all!" "By my soul (said the quack) he's as white as the wall; I must give him a potion to keep down his gall! There is bile on his stomach--I clearly see that; This night he will vomit as black as my hat: Here's a puke and a purge--twelve doses of bark; Let him swallow them all--just an hour before dark!" "O dear! (said the mother) the lad is quite well!"-- Said the Doctor, "No, no! he must take calomel: It will put him to rights, as I hope to be saved!" "Or rather (said Gubbins) you hope him engraved!" So, the Doctor walked off in a pitiful plight, And he lodged in a dog-house (they told me) that night. Here were wives, and young widows, and matrons, and maids, Who came for their health, or to stroll in the shades; Here were Nellies, and Nancies, and Hetties, by dozens, With their neighbours, and nephews, and nieces, and cousins-- All these had come hither to see the famed Fall, And you, pretty Sally, the best of them all. Here was Saunders, the jockey, who rode a white horse, His last, it was said, and his only resource; And the landlord was careful to put us in mind That hell and destruction were riding behind: He often had told him, "Do, Saunders, take care, This swilling of gin is a cursed affair: Indeed--and it puts a man off from his legs, And brings us at last to be pelted with eggs-- The wit of your noddle should carry you through,-- Break your bottle of rum--give the devil his due! Keep the reason about you that nature designed, And you have the respect and regard of mankind!" This steed of poor Saunders' was woefully lean, And he looked, as we thought, like the flying machine; And, in short, it appeared, by the looks of his hide, That the stables he came from were poorly supplied: A bundle of bones--and they whispered it round, That he came from the hole where the Mammoth was found.[E] They stuff'd him with hay, and they crammed him with oats While Saunders was gaming and drinking with sots: (For the de'il in the shape of a bottle of rum Deceived him with visions of fortune to come;) His landlady had on the horse a sheep's-eye, So Saunders had plenty of whiskey and pye: He had gin of the best, and he treated all round, 'Till care was dismissed and solicitude drowned, And a reckoning was brought him of more than three pound. As he had not a groat in his lank looking purse, The landlord made seizure of saddle and horse:-- Scalpella, the hostess, cried, "Fly from this room, Or I'll sweep you away with my hickory broom!" Thus Saunders sneaked off in a sorrowful way, And the Falls were his fall--to be beggar next day.-- The lady of ladies that governed the inn Was a sharper indeed, and she kept such a din!-- Scalpella!--and may I remember the name!-- Could scratch like a tyger, or play a tight game. A bludgeon she constantly held in her hand, The sign of respect, and a sign of command: She could scream like a vulture, or wink like an owl; Not a dog in the street like Scalpella could howl.-- She was a Scalpella!--I am yet on her books, But, oh! may I never encounter her looks!-- I owe her five pounds--I am that in her debt, And my dues from the stars have not cleared it off yet. If she knew where I am!--I should fare very ill; Instead of some beer she would drench me with swill; I should curse and reflect on the hour I was born.-- If she thought I had fixed on the pitch of Cape Horn, She would find me!--Scalpella! set down what I owe In the page of bad debts--due to Scalpy and Co!-- Her boarders she hated, and drove with a dash, And nothing about them she liked but their cash; Except they were Tories--ah, then she was kind-- And said to their honours, "You are men to my mind! Sit down, my dear creatures--I hope you've not dined!"-- She talked of the king, and she talked of the queen, And she talked of her floors--that were not very clean:-- She talked of the parson, and spoke of the 'squire, She talked of her child that was singed in the fire-- The Tories, poor beings, were wishing to kiss her--oh-- If they had--all the stars would have fought against--Cicero.[F] She talked, and she talked--now angry, now civil, 'Till the Tories themselves wished her gone to the devil. How I tremble to think of her tongue and her stick,-- Tryphena, Tryphena! I've played the odd trick! Now the soldier re-entered--the ladies were struck: And "she that can win him will have the best luck!" "La! father (said Kitty) observe the bold man! I will peep at his phyz from behind my new fan! What a lace on his beaver!--his buttons all shine! In the cock of a hat there is something divine! Since the days of Goliah, I'll venture to lay There never was one that could stand in his way: What a nose!--what an eye!--what a gallant address! If he's not a hero, then call me Black Bess! What a gaite--what a strut--how noble and free! I'm ravished!--I'm ruined!---good father!--good me!" "Dear Kitty, (he answered) regard not his lace, The devil I see in the mould of his face: Cockades have been famous for crazing your sex Since Helen played truant, and left the poor Greeks; And while her good husband was sleeping, and snored, Eloped with Sir Knight from his bed, and his board.-- Three things are above me, yea, four, I maintain, Have puzzled the cunningest heads to explain! The way of a snake on a rock--very sly-- The way of an eagle, that travels the sky, The way of a ship in the midst of the sea, And the way of a soldier--with maidens like thee." At length, a dark fortnight of weather came on, And most of us thought it high time to be gone.-- The moon was eclipsed, and she looked like a fright; Indeed--and it was a disconsolate night! Our purses were empty--the landlord looked sour, I gave them leg-bail in a terrible shower:-- Scalpella!--her face was as black as the moon, Her voice, was the screech of a harpy, or loon,-- I quitted Passaick--that elegant place, While a hurricane hindered them giving me chace. [A] An English divine of considerable note, who died about a century ago.--_Freneau's note._ [B] William Smyth, Esq. Before the Revolution a celebrated lawyer in New York, author of the History of New Jersey, and other works. Afterwards, taking part with the British, he was made Chief Justice of Lower Canada--He is since dead.--_Freneau's note._ [C] Passaick Village is at present called Patterson, noted for its unfortunate manufacturing establishments.--_Freneau's note._ [D] William Franklin, Esq., then Governor of New Jersey.--_Freneau's note._ [E] These two lines were inserted since the first publication of this Poem in Sept., 1775.--_Freneau's note._ [F] They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera. _Ancient History.--Freneau's note._ [59] Freneau mentions in this poem that it was printed in New York in September, 1775. I can find no trace of it, either as a separate publication or a contribution to a newspaper. As far as I can find, the poem is unique in the edition of 1809. Mr. William Nelson of Paterson, N. J., Secretary of the New Jersey Historical Society, believes that the local allusions in the poem cannot be verified. He writes: "There were but two taverns at the Passaic Falls at that time; one kept by Abraham Godwin, the other by James Leslie. Godwin and three of his sons went in the American Army at the beginning of the Revolution, and he died in the service. His widow survived him and carried on the tavern for a number of years. She had an intolerant hatred of all Tories. In 1776 Leslie was keeping a tavern at the present Passaic, a few miles below the Passaic Falls, and he continued there during the greater part of the Revolution, I think. "The character of the tavern-keeper's wife, 'Scalpella,' is either purely fictitious or based on the character of some other person. Moreover, I do not think Passaic Falls was ever a summer resort of the character depicted in this poem. Travellers merely went there to see the Falls, occasionally staying over night, but I cannot think it possible that there could have been such a party assembled there at one time as indicated in the poem. I do not think the two taverns together could have accommodated so many people. The place was never called 'Passaic Village,' as stated in the note, but was known as Totown Bridge until 1792, when Paterson was founded. Passaic Village was the name given about forty years ago to the present city of Passaic. "The only allusions in the poem which have some semblance of reality are the references to 'Miss Kitty,' by whom is perhaps meant the daughter of Lord Stirling; and 'Liberty Hall,' the residence of her uncle, Gov. Livingstone, near Elizabethtown. There was no such person as 'Gubbins.' I should think that the scene of the poem, if it has any foundation whatever in fact, was more probably laid somewhere near Philadelphia." * * * * * PART II THE FIRST POETIC PERIOD 1775--1781 THE FIRST POETIC PERIOD 1775-1781[A] [A] In August, 1775, Freneau emerges from the obscurity which has concealed him since the year of his graduation at Princeton, and enters upon an era of marvelous productiveness. For four months, poetry must have been his one thought, his one occupation. It was during this period of his life that he did his most spontaneous and original work. A POLITICAL LITANY[60] _Libera Nos, Domine._--Deliver us, O Lord, not only from British dependence, but also From a junto that labour with absolute power, Whose schemes disappointed have made them look sour, From the lords of the council, who fight against freedom, Who still follow on where delusion[61] shall lead them. From the group at St. James's, who slight our petitions, And fools that are waiting for further submissions-- From a nation whose manners are rough and severe, From scoundrels and rascals,--do keep us all clear.[62] From pirates sent out by command of the king To murder and plunder, but never to swing. From Wallace and Greaves, and Vipers and Roses,[A] Whom, if heaven pleases, we'll give bloody noses. From the valiant Dunmore, with his crew of banditti, Who plunder Virginians at Williamsburg city,[63] From hot-headed Montague, mighty to swear, The little fat man with his pretty white hair.[64] From bishops in Britain, who butchers are grown, From slaves that would die for a smile from the throne, From assemblies that vote against Congress proceedings, (Who now see the fruit of their stupid misleadings.) From Tryon[65] the mighty, who flies from our city, And swelled with importance disdains the committee: (But since he is pleased to proclaim us his foes, What the devil care we where the devil he goes.) From the caitiff,[66] lord North, who would bind us in chains, From a royal king Log, with his tooth-full of brains, Who dreams, and is certain (when taking a nap) He has conquered our lands, as they lay on his map.[67] From a kingdom that bullies, and hectors, and swears, We send up to heaven our wishes and prayers That we, disunited, may freemen be still, And Britain go on--to be damned if she will. [A] Captains and ships in the British navy, then employed on the American coast.--_Freneau's note._ During the summer of 1775, Capt. Wallace and his vessel, the _Rose_, kept the American coast cities in a state of constant terror. The colonial newspapers show how widespread and real was this terror. [60] The earliest trace I can find of this poem is in the 1786 edition of Freneau, where it is dated "New York, Sept. 26, 1775." In this edition, and in that of 1795, it had the title "Libera Nos, Domine." In the edition of 1809, which I have followed, it is dated "_New-York, June, 1775._" The earlier date is probably the date of publication. [61] "The devil."--_Ed. 1786._ [62] "Whom gold can corrupt."--_Ed. 1786._ [63] Lord Dunmore was the last Royal Governor of Virginia. In April, 1775, he had removed the public stores from Williamsburg, and with the aid of the navy and what forces he could raise, was waging open war on the colonies. [64] George Montagu, admiral of the British fleet during the early part of the war, did much to exasperate the colonists. "He stopped and searched vessels without adequate pretext, and fired at the market boats as they entered Newport harbor. He treated the farmers on the islands much as the Saracens in the Middle Ages treated the coast population of Italy." He was mild in appearance, but testy and arbitrary to an extraordinary degree. He covered the British retreat from Boston, aided Lord Dunmore to escape from Virginia, and took part in the capture of New York City. [65] William Tryon, the last Royal Governor of New York, informed of a resolution of the Continental Congress: "That it be recommended to the several provincial assemblies, in conventions and councils or committees of safety, to arrest and secure every person in their respective colonies whose going at large may, in their opinion, endanger the safety of the colony or the liberties of America," discerning the signs of the times, took refuge on board the Halifax packet in the harbour, and left the city in the middle of October, 1775.--_Duyckinck._ [66] Scoundrel.--_Ed. 1786._ [67] "From a dunce of a king who was born without brains, The utmost extent of whose sense is to see That reigning and making of buttons agree."--_Ed. 1786._ AMERICAN LIBERTY, A POEM[68] ARGUMENT Present Situation of Affairs in North-America.--Address to the Deity.--Unhappy Situation of New-England, in particular.--The first Emigrations of the Colonists from Europe.--Cruelties of the Indian Natives.--All our Hopes of future Safety depend secondarily on our present Resolution and Activity.--Impossible for British Soldiers to join heartily for the purpose of enslaving us.--Present happy Unanimity among the Colonies.--The Baseness of pensioned Writers against their native Country.--General Gage's late Proclamation.--The Odium consequent upon his Undertaking his present Office.--Character of a weak Monarch.--Popery established in Canada.--General Washington.--The Honourable Continental Congress.--Hancock.--Adams.--Invitation to Foreigners to retire hither from their respective Slavish Regions.--Bravery of the New-England Forces in the late Engagements.--The determined Resolution of the Colonies to be free.--The future Happiness of America if she surmounts the present Difficulties. Once more Bellona, forc'd upon the stage, Inspires new fury, and awakes her rage, From North to South her thun'dring trumpet spreads Tumults, and war and death, and daring deeds. What breast but kindles at the martial sound? What heart but bleeds to feel its country's wound? For thee, blest freedom, to protect thy sway, We rush undaunted to the bloody fray; For thee, each province arms its vig'rous host, Content to die, e'er freedom shall be lost. Kind watchful power, on whose supreme command The fate of monarchs, empires, worlds depend, Grant, in a cause thy wisdom must approve, Undaunted valour kindled from above, Let not our souls descend to dastard fear, Be valour, prudence both united here, Now as of old thy mighty arm display; Relieve the opprest, and saving power convey. 'Tis done, and see th' omnipotent befriends, The sword of Gideon, and of God descends. Ah, see with grief fair Massachusetts' plains, The seat of war, and death's terrific scenes; Where darling peace with smiling aspect stood, Lo! the grim soldier stalks in quest of blood: What madness, heaven, has made Britannia frown? Who plans our schemes to pull Columbia[A] down? See Boston groan beneath the strong blockade, Her freedom vanish'd, and destroy'd her trade; Injur'd, opprest, no tyrant could exceed The cruel vengeance of so base a deed. New Albion's[B] sons whom honest freedom moves, (My heart admires them, and my verse approves), Tir'd of oppression in a Stuart's reign, A Popish faction, ministerial train; Bravely resolv'd to leave their native shore And some new world, they knew not where, explore, Far in the West, beyond where Poets said, The Sun retir'd, and Cynthia went to bed. Few then had seen the scarce discover'd Bourne, From whence like death yet fewer did return: Dire truths from thence the wand'ring sailor brought, Enlarg'd by terror, and the power of thought, With all the forms that pict'ring fancy gives, With all the dread that in idea lives; Fierce Cannibals that sought the blood of man, Vast cruel tribes that through the desart ran, Giants whose height transcends the tow'ring oak, Brutes with whose screams the trembling forest shook,-- All these and more they held no cause of fear, Since naught but slavery, dreadful could appear. Ah, see the day, distressful to the view, Wives, husbands, fathers, bid a long adieu. Dear native land, how heav'd the heavy sigh, When thy last mountains vanish'd on the eye; Then their frail barks, just enter'd on the sea, Pursu'd the long, uncomfortable way: But pitying heav'n the just design surveys, Sends prosp'rous gales, and wafts them o'er the seas. Behold the shore; no rising cities there, To hail them welcome from the sea appear, In the wild woods the exil'd host were spread, The heavens their covering, and the earth their bed: What expectations but a life of woe? Unnumber'd myriads of the savage foe, Whose brutal fury rais'd, at once might sweep The adventurers all to death's destructive sleep; Yet 'midst this scene of horror and despair, Stout industry began his office here, Made forests bend beneath his sturdy stroke, Made oxen groan beneath the sweaty yoke, Till half the desart smil'd and look'd as gay As northern gardens in the bloom of May. But ah, review the sorrows interwove, How the fierce native with the stranger strove;-- So heaven's bright lamp, the all-reviving sun, Just as his flaming journey is begun, Mists, fogs and vapours, sprung from damps of night, Mount up and strive to dim the approach of light; But he in triumph darts his piercing ray, Scatters their forces and pursues his way. Oft when the husband did his labour leave To meet his little family at eve, Stretch'd in their blood he saw each well known face, His dear companion and his youthful race; Perhaps the scalp with barbarous fury torn, The visage mangled, and the babe unborn Ripp'd from its dark abode, to view the sun, Ere nature finish'd half she had begun. And should we now when spread thro' ev'ry shore, Submit to that our fathers shunn'd before? Should we, just heaven, our blood and labour spent, Be slaves and minions to a parliament? Perish the thought, nor may one wretch remain, Who dares not fight and in our cause be slain; The cause of freedom daunts the hireling foe, And gives each Sampson's strength toward the blow, And each, like him whom fear nor force confines, Destroys a thousand modern Philistines. Who fights to take our liberty away, Dead-hearted fights and falls an easy prey; The cause, the cause, most cruel to enslave, Disheartens thousands, and unmans the brave: Who could have thought that Britons bore a heart, Or British troops to act so base a part? Britons of old renown'd, can they descend T' enslave their brethren in a foreign land? What oath, what oath, inform us if you can, Binds them to act below the worth of man? Can they whom half the world admires, can they Be advocates for vile despotic sway? Shall they, to every shore and clime renown'd, Enforce those acts that tyranny did found? 'Yet sure if this be their resolv'd design, 'Conquer they shall where'er the sun doth shine; 'No expedition prov'd unhappy yet, 'Can we Havanna's bloody siege forget,[69] 'Where British cannon the strong fortress tore, 'And wing'd whole legions to its infernal shore. 'Or does the voice of fame so soon forego 'Gibraltar's action, and the vanquish'd foe, 'Where art and nature both at once combin'd 'To baffle all our hardy troops design'd?-- 'Yet there Britannia's arms successful sped, 'While haughty Spaniards trembled, felt and fled.' So say the pensioned fools of slavery, So say our traitors, but so say not I-- (Tories or traitors, call them what you choose, Tories are rogues, and traitors imps broke loose). But know, ye few, the scandal of our land, On whom returns the blood that we expend, Those troops whose fears are told on every shore, Here lose their spirit and are brave no more; When armies fight to gain some cruel cause, Establish tyrants or destructive laws, True courage scorns to inspire the hateful crew, Recall past fame, or spur them on to new; Dark boding thoughts the heavy soul possess, And ancient valour turns to cowardice. Dark was the prospect, gloomy was the scene, When traitors join'd to break our union chain: But soon, by heaven inspir'd, arose the cry, Freedom or death, unite, unite or die. Now far and wide a manly spirit reigns, From Canada to Georgia's sun burnt plains; Few now insult with falsehood's shameless pen. Monsters from Tophet, driv'n in shapes of men: Few pension'd scribblers left the daring head, Some have turn'd lunatics and some have fled-- Some, late converted, scarce their pensions hold. And from mere force disdain the charms of gold. What deep offence has fir'd a monarch's rage, What moonstruck madness seized the brain of Gage? Laughs not the soul, when an imprison'd few Affect to pardon those they can't subdue? Tho' twice repuls'd and hemm'd up to their stations, Yet issue pardons, oaths, and proclamations, As if at sea some desperate madman crew Should threat the tempest with what they could do, And like proud Xerxes lash the angry waves, At the same instant that they find their graves. But not the pomps and favours of a crown, A nation's anger, or a statesman's frown, Could draw the virtuous man from virtue's way, To chain by force what treach'ry can't betray. Virtue disdains to own tyrannic laws, Takes part with freedom, and assumes its cause; No part had she, her fiercest forces own, To bring so far this heavy vengeance on; She stood with Romans while their hearts were true, And so she shall, Americans, with you. Should heaven in wrath decree some nation's fall, Whose crimes from thence for sacred vengeance call, A monarch first of vulgar soul should rise, A sure fore-runner of its obsequies, Whose heart should glow with not one gen'rous thought, Born to oppress, to propagate, and rot. Whose lengthen'd reign no deed of worth should grace, None trusted but a servile pensioned race; Too dull to know what saving course to take, That heaven in time its purpose might forsake, Too obstinately will'd to bow his ear To groaning thousands or petitions hear, Dare break all oaths that bind the just like fate, Oaths, that th' Arch-Devil would blush to violate, And, foe to truth, both oaths and honour sell, To establish principles, the growth of hell,-- Still those who aim to be his truest friends, Traitors, insidious rebels, madmen, fiends, Hoodwink'd and blind, deceived by secret foes, Whose fathers once with exil'd tyrants rose, Bless'd with as little sense as God e'er gave, Slave to wrong schemes, dupe to a noble knave. So odd a monarch heaven in wrath would plan, And such would be the fury of a man. See far and wide o'er long Canadia's plains, Old popish fraud and superstition reigns; The scarlet whore long hath heaven withstood, Who cries for murder and who thirsts for blood, Establish'd there, marks down each destined name, And plants the stake impatient for the flame, With sanguinary soul her trade begins, To doom her foes to hell or pardon sins; Her crafty priests their impious rites maintain, And crucify their Saviour once again; Defend his rights, who, scatt'ring lies abroad, With shameless front usurps the seat of God: Those are, we fear, who his vile cause assert, But half reform'd and papists at the heart. Bear me, some power, as far as the winds can blow, As ships can travel, or as waves can flow, To some lone island beyond the southern pole, Or lands round which pacific waters roll, There should oblivion stop the heaving sigh, There should I live at least with liberty. But honour checks my speed and bids me stay, To try the fortune of the well fought day. Resentment for my country's fate I bear, And mix with thousands for the willing war; See Washington New Albion's freedom owns, And moves to war with half Virginia's sons, Bold in the fight, whose actions might have aw'd A Roman Hero, or a Grecian God. He, he, as first his gallant troops shall lead, Undaunted man, a second Diomede; As when he fought at wild Ohio's flood, When savage thousands issu'd from the wood, When Braddock's fall disgrac'd the mighty day, And Death himself stood weeping o'er his prey, When doubting vict'ry chang'd from side to side, And Indian sod with Indian blood was dy'd, When the last charge repuls'd th' invenom'd foe, And lightnings lit them to the shades below. See where from various distant climes unites A generous council to protect our rights, Fix'd on a base too steadfast to be mov'd, Loving their country, by their country lov'd, Great guardians of our freedom, we pursue Each patriot measure as inspir'd by you, Columbia, nor shall fame deny it owes Past safety to the counsel you propose; And if they do not keep Columbia free, What will alas! become of Liberty? Great souls grow bolder in their country's cause, Detest enslavers, and despise their laws. O Congress fam'd, accept this humble lay, The little tribute that the muse can pay; On you depends Columbia's future fate, A free asylum or a wretched state. Fall'n on disastrous times we push our plea, Heard or not heard, and struggle to be free. Born to contend, our lives we place at stake, And grow immortal by the stand we make. O you, who, far from liberty detain'd, Wear out existence in some slavish land, Fly thence from tyrants, and their flatt'ring throng, And bring the fiery freeborn soul along. Neptune for you shall smooth the hoary deep, And awe the wild tumultuous waves to sleep; Here vernal woods, and flow'ry meadows blow, Luxuriant harvests in rich plenty grow, Commerce extends as far as waves can roll, And freedom, God-like freedom, crowns the whole. And you, brave men, who scorn the dread of death, Resolv'd to conquer to the latest breath, Soldiers in act, and heroes in renown, Warm in the cause of Boston's hapless town, Still guard each pass; like ancient Romans, you At once are soldiers, and are farmers too; Still arm impatient for the vengeful blow, And rush intrepid on the yielding foe; As when of late midst clouds of fire and smoke, Whole squadrons fell, or to the center shook, And even the bravest to your arm gave way, And death, exulting, ey'd the unhappy fray. Behold, your Warren bleeds, who both inspir'd To noble deeds, and by his actions fir'd; What pity, heaven!--but you who yet remain Affect his spirit as you lov'd the man: Once more, and yet once more for freedom strive, To be a slave what wretch would dare to live? We too to the last drop our blood will drain, And not till then shall hated slavery reign, When every effort, every hope is o'er, And lost Columbia swells our breasts no more. O if that day, which heaven avert, must come, And fathers, husbands, children, meet their doom, Let one brave onset yet that doom precede, To shew the world America can bleed, One thund'ring raise the midnight cry, And one last flame send Boston to the sky. But cease, foreboding Muse, not strive to see Dark times deriv'd by fatal destiny; If ever heaven befriended the distrest, If ever valour succour'd those opprest, Let America rejoice, thy standard rear, Let the loud trumpet animate to war: Thy guardian Genius, haste thee on thy way, To strike whole hosts with terror and dismay. Happy some land, which all for freedom gave, Happier the men whom their own virtues save; Thrice happy we who long attacks have stood, And swam to Liberty thro' seas of blood; The time shall come when strangers rule no more, Nor cruel mandates vex from Britain's shore; When Commerce shall extend her short'ned wing, And her free freights from every climate bring; When mighty towns shall flourish free and great, Vast their dominion, opulent their state; When one vast cultivated region teems, From ocean's edge to Mississippi's streams; While each enjoys his vineyard's peaceful shade, And even the meanest has no cause to dread; Such is the life our foes with envy see, Such is the godlike glory to be free. [A] Columbia, America sometimes so called from Columbus, the first discoverer.--_Freneau's note._ [B] New Albion, properly New England, but is often applied to all British America.--_Freneau's note._ [68] This was published by Anderson in 1775. In Holt's _New York Journal_ of July 6, it is advertised as just published. The advertisement observes that "This poem is humbly addressed to all true lovers of this once flourishing country, whether they shine as soldiers or statesmen. In it Ciceronian eloquence and patriotic fire are happily blended." The poet never reprinted it. The only copy of the poem extant, as far as I can discover, is that in the Library of Congress at Washington. [69] Of the siege of Havana, in July, 1762, Bancroft writes: "This siege was conducted in midsummer, against a city which lies just within the tropic. The country around the Moro Castle is rocky. To bind and carry the fascines was of itself a work of incredible labor;... sufficient earth to hold the fascines firm was gathered with difficulty from the crevices of the rocks. Once, after a drought of fourteen days, the grand battery took fire from the flames, and crackling and spreading where water could not follow it, nor earth stifle it, was wholly consumed. The climate spoiled a great part of the provisions. Wanting good water, many died in agonies of thirst. More fell victims of a putrid fever.... Hundreds of carcasses floated on the ocean. And yet such was the enthusiasm of the English, such the resolute zeal of the sailors and soldiers, such the unity of action between the fleet and army, that the vertical sun of June and July, the heavy rains of August, raging fever, and strong and well defended fortresses, all the obstacles of nature and art were surmounted, and the most decisive victory of the war was gained." GENERAL GAGE'S SOLILOQUY[70] _Scene._--Boston, besieged by the Men of Massachusetts Written and published in New-York, 1775 Why, let the stricken deer go weep, The hart, unwounded, play, For some must write, while some must speak; So runs the world away! _--Shakespeare._ Destruction waits my call!--some demon say Why does destruction linger on her way! Charlestown is burnt, and Warren is deceased-- Heavens! shall we never be from war released? Ten years the Greeks besieged the walls of Troy, But when did Grecians their own towns destroy? Yes, that's the point!--Let those who will, say, No; If George and North decree--it must be so. Doubts, black as night, disturb my loved repose-- Men that were once my friends have turned my foes-- What if we conquer this rebellious town, Suppose we burn it, storm it, tear it down-- This land's like Hydra, cut off but one head, And ten shall rise, and dare you in its stead. If to subdue a league or two of coast Requires a navy, and so large a host, How shall a length of twice seven hundred miles Be brought to bend to two European Isles?-- And that, when all their utmost strength unite, When twelve[A] dominions swear to arm and fight, When the same spirit darts from every eye, One fixed resolve to gain their point or die. As for myself--true--I was born to fight As George commands, let him be wrong or right, While from his hand I squeeze the golden prize,[71] I'll ask no questions, and he'll tell no lies;-- But did I swear, I ask my heart again, In their base projects monarchs to maintain?--[72] Yes--when Rebellion her artillery brings And aims her arrows at the best of kings, I stand a champion in my monarch's cause-- The men are rebels that resist his laws.[73] A viceroy I, like modern monarchs, stay Safe in the town--let others guide the fray: A life like mine is of no common worth, 'Twere wrong, by heaven, that I should sally forth![74] A random bullet from a rifle sent Might pierce my heart, and ruin North's intent: Let others combat in the dusty field, Let petty captains scorn to live or yield, I'll send my ships to neighbouring isles, where stray[75] Unnumb'red herds, and steal those herds away; I'll strike the women in this town with awe, And make them tremble at my martial law. Should gracious heaven befriend our troops and fleet, And throw this vast dominion at my feet, How would Britannia echo with my fame! What endless honours would await my name! In every province should the traveller see Recording marble, raised to honour me.--[76] Hard by the lakes, my sovereign lord would grant A rural empire to supply my want, A manor would but poorly serve my turn, Less than an empire from my soul I scorn![77] An ample kingdom round Ontario's lake, By heaven! should be the least reward I'd take. There might I reign, unrivalled and alone, An ocean and an empire of my own!-- What though the scribblers and the wits might say, He built his pile on vanquished Liberty-- Let others meanly dread the slanderous tongue, While I obey my king, can I do wrong? Then, to accomplish all my soul's desire, Let red-hot bullets set their towns on fire; May heaven, if so the righteous judgment pass,[78] Change earth to steel, the sky to solid brass, Let hosts combined, from Europe centering here,[79] Strike this base offspring with alarm and fear; Let heaven's broad concave to the center ring, And blackest night expand her sable wing, The infernal powers in dusky combat join, Wing the swift ball, or spring the deadly mine; (Since 'tis most true, tho' some may think it odd, The foes of England are the foes of God): Let bombs, like comets, kindle all the air, Let cruel famine prompt the orphan's prayer, And every ill that war or want can bring Be shower'd on subjects that renounce their king. What is their plea?--our sovereign only meant This people should be taxed without consent, Ten years the court with secret cunning tried To gain this point--the event their hopes belied: How should they else than sometimes miss the mark Who sleep at helm, yet think to steer the barque? North, take advice; thy lucky genius show, Dispatch Sir Jeffery[B] to the states below. That gloomy prince, whom mortals Satan call,[80] Must help us quickly, if he help at all-- You strive in vain by force of bribes to tie; They see through all your schemes with half an eye; If open force with secret bribes I join, The contest sickens--and the day is mine. But hark the trumpet's clangor--hark--ah me! What means this march of Washington and Lee? When men like these such distant marches make, Fate whispers something--that we can't mistake;[81] When men like these defy my martial rule, Good heaven! it is no time to play the fool-- Perhaps, they for their country's freedom rise; North has, perhaps, deceived me with his lies.-- If George at last a tyrant should be found, A cruel tyrant, by no sanctions bound, And I, myself, in an unrighteous cause, Be sent to execute the worst of laws, How will those dead whom I conjured to fight-- Who sunk in arms to everlasting night, Whose blood the conquering foe conspired to spill At Lexington and Bunker's fatal hill, Whose mangled corpses scanty graves embrace-- Rise from those graves, and curse me to my face!-- Alas! that e'er ambition bade me roam, Or thirst of power, forsake my native home-- What shall I do?--there, crowd the hostile bands; Here, waits a navy to receive commands;-- I speak the language of my heart--shall I Steal off by night, and o'er the ocean fly, Like a lost man to unknown regions stray, And to oblivion leave this stormy day?--[82] Or shall I to Britannia's shores again, And big with lies, conceal my thousands slain?-- Yes--to some distant clime[83] my course I steer, To any country rather than be here, To worlds where reason scarce exerts her law,[84] A branch-built cottage, and a bed of straw.-- Even Scotland's coast seems charming in my sight, And frozen Zembla yields a strange delight.-- But such vexations in my bosom burn, That to these shores I never will return, 'Till fruits and flowers on Greenland's coast be known, And frosts are thawed in climates once their own. Ye souls of fire, who burn for chief command, Come! take my place in this disastrous land; To wars like these I bid a long good-night-- Let North and George themselves such battles fight. [A] Georgia had not at this time acceded to the Union of the Thirteen States.--_Freneau's note._ [B] Sir Jeffery Amherst, who about this time refused to act against the Colonial cause.--_Freneau's note._ [70] From the edition of 1809. The original edition, which consisted of 114 lines, was first published in New York, by H. Gaine, in August, 1775. The poem was thus written and published in the early days of the siege. General Gage, the last royal governor of Massachusetts, arrived in Boston May, 1774, and remained until October, 1775, when he was succeeded by Major General Howe. The siege of Boston began with the arrival of Washington before the city, early in July, 1775, and continued until Howe was forced to evacuate the city, the following March. Gage's incompetency was admitted even by his own countrymen. He was narrow-minded, and prejudiced, and unable to estimate justly the forces that were against him. His only argument was force and dictatorial interference. [71] This and the following line not in edition of 1775. [72] To fight for Britons against Englishmen.--_Ed. 1775._ In such damn'd service to harass my brain.--_Ed. 1786._ [73] Four lines of the original edition omitted: "North take advice, thy lucky genius show, Dismiss a legate to the world below, Sir Belzebub, for aid like thine we sue, Send up the damned and let them help me too." [74] A life like mine is of such mighty worth, I'll wrong my king if I should sally forth. [75] This and the following line is not in edition of 1775. [76] Some trophy of my tedious victory.--_Ed. 1775._ [77] The Lordship of a manor I would scorn.--_Ed. 1775._ [78] In place of the next eight lines, the edition of 1775 has the following: "Let heaven's broad concave to the center ring, And Imps from hell their swifter vengeance wing; May heaven, if so the righteous judgment pass, Change earth to steel, the sky to solid brass." [79] Let hell-cats darting from some blackguard sphere.--_Ed. 1786._ [80] This and the four following lines not found in the edition of 1775. [81] It shows they think their freedom lies at stake.--_Ed. 1775._ [82] In the original edition these two lines read as follows: "Like Captain Cook to Southern islands stray, And take new kings and kingdoms in my way." [83] "Foreign clime."--_Ed. 1775._ "Negro clime."--_Ed. 1786._ [84] This line, and the nine following, are not found in the edition of 1775. THE MIDNIGHT CONSULTATIONS;[85] OR, A TRIP TO BOSTON First published in 1775 Small bliss is theirs whom Fate's too heavy hand Confines through life to some small square of land; More wretched they whom heaven inspires to roam, Yet languish out their lives and die at home. Heaven gave to man this wide extended round, 5 No climes confine him and no oceans bound; Heaven gave him forest, mountain, vale, and plain, And bade him vanquish, if he could, the main; But sordid cares our short-lived race confine, Some toil at trades, some labour in the mine, 10 The miser hoards, and guards his shining store, The sun still rises where he rose before-- No happier scenes his earth-born fancy fill Than one dark valley, or one well-known hill. To other shores his mind, untaught to stray, 15 Dull and inactive, slumbers life away. But by the aid of yonder glimmering beam The pole star, faithful to my vagrant dream, Wild regent of my heart! in dreams convey Where the herded Britons their bold ranks display; 20 So late the pride of England's fertile soil, (Her grandeur heightened by successive toil) See how they sicken in these hostile climes, Themes for the stage, and subjects for our rhimes. What modern poet have the muses led 25 To draw the curtain that conceals the dead? What bolder bard to Boston shall repair, To view the peevish, half-starved spectres there? O thou wronged country! why sustain these ills? Why rest thy navies on their native hills? 30 See, endless forests shade the uncultured plain, Descend, ye forests, and command the main: A leafy verdure shades the mighty mast, And the tall oak bends idly to the blast, Earth's entrails teem with stores for your defence, 35 Descend and drag the stores of war from thence: Your fertile soil the flowing sail supplies, And Europe's arts in every village rise-- No want is yours--Disdain unmanly fear, And swear no tyrant shall reign master here; 40 Know your own strength--in rocky desarts bred, Shall the fierce tiger by the dog be led, And bear all insults from that snarling race Whose courage lies in impudence of face?-- No--rather bid the wood's wild native turn, 45 And from his side the unfaithful guardian spurn. Now, pleased I wander to the dome of state Where Gage resides, our western potentate-- Chief of ten thousand, all a race of slaves,[86] Sent to be shrouded in untimely graves;[87] 50 Sent by our angry Jove, sent sword in hand To murder, burn, and ravage through the land.-- You dream of conquest--tell me how or whence-- Act like a man, and get you gone from hence; A madman sent you to this hostile shore 55 To vanquish nations, that shall spill your gore.-- Go, fiends, and in a social league combined Destroy, distress, and triumph o'er mankind!-- Tis not our peace this murdering hand restrains, The want of power is made the monster's chains; 60 Compassion is a stranger to his heart, Or if it came, he bade the guest depart; The melting tear, the sympathising groan Were never yet to Gage or Jefferies[A] known; The seas of blood his heart fore-dooms to spill 65 Is but a dying serpent's rage to kill. What power shall drive these vipers from our shore, These monsters swoln with carnage, death, and gore! Twelve was the hour--congenial darkness reigned, And no bright star a mimic day-light feigned-- 70 First, Gage we saw--a crimson chair of state Received the honour of his Honour's weight; This man of straw the regal purple bound, But dullness, deepest dullness, hovered round. Next Graves, who wields the trident of the brine, 75 The tall arch-captain of the embattled line, All gloomy sate--mumbling of flame and fire, Balls, cannon, ships, and all their damned attire; Well pleased to live in never-ending hum, But empty as the interior of his drum. 80 Hard by, Burgoyne assumes an ample space, And seemed to meditate with studious face, As if again he wished our world to see Long, dull, dry letters, writ to General Lee-- Huge scrawls of words through endless circuits drawn 85 Unmeaning as the errand he's upon.-- Is he to conquer--he subdue our land?-- This buckram hero, with his lady's hand? By Cesars to be vanquished is a curse, But by a scribbling fop--by heaven, is worse![88] 90 Lord Piercy seemed to snore--but may the Muse This ill-timed snoring to the peer excuse; Tired was the long boy of his toilsome day, Full fifteen miles he fled--a tedious way; How could he then the dews of Somnus shun, 95 Perhaps not used to walk--much less to run. Red-faced as suns, when sinking to repose, Reclined the infernal captain of the _Rose_,[B] In fame's proud temple aiming for a niche, With those who find her at the cannon's breech; 100 Skilled to direct the cannonading shot, No Turkish rover half so murdering hot, Pleased with base vengeance on defenceless towns, His heart was malice--but his words were, Zounds! Howe, vexed to see his starving army's doom, 105 In prayer, besought the skies for elbow room--[89] Small was his stock, and theirs, of heavenly grace, Yet just enough to ask a larger place.-- He cursed the brainless minister that planned His bootless errand to this hostile land, 110 But, awed by Gage, his bursting wrath recoiled, And in his inmost bosom doubly boiled. These, chief of all the tyrant-serving train, Exalted sate--the rest (a pensioned clan), A sample of the multitude that wait, 115 Pale sons of famine, at perdition's gate, North's friends down swarming (so our monarch wills), Hungry as death, from Caledonian hills; Whose endless numbers if you bid me tell, I'll count the atoms of this globe as well,-- 120 Knights, captains, 'squires--a wonder-working band, Held at small wages 'till they gain the land, Flocked pensive round--black spleen assailed their hearts, (The sport of plough-boys, with their arms and arts) And made them doubt (howe'er for vengeance hot) 125 Whether they were invincible or not. Now Gage upstarting from his cushioned seat Swore thrice, and cried--"'Tis nonsense to be beat! Thus to be drubbed! pray, warriors, let me know Which be in fault, myself, the fates, or you-- 130 Henceforth let Britain deem her men mere toys-- Gods! to be frightened thus by country boys; Why, if your men had had a mind to sup, They might have eat that scare-crow[90] army up-- Three thousand to twelve hundred thus to yield, 135 And twice five hundred stretched upon the field!--[91] O shame to Britain, and the British name, Shame damps my heart, and I must die with shame-- Thus to be worsted, thus disgraced and beat!-- You have the knack, Lord Piercy,[92] to retreat, 140 The death you escaped my warmest blood congeals, Heaven grant me, too, so swift a pair of heels--[93] In Chevy-Chace, as, doubtless, you have read, Lord Piercy would have sooner died than fled-- Behold the virtues of your house decay-- 145 Ah! how unlike the Piercy of that day!" Thus spoke the great man in disdainful tone To the gay peer--not meant for him alone-- But ere the tumults of his bosom rise Thus from his bench the intrepid peer replies: 150 "When once the soul has reached the Stygian shore, My prayer book says, it shall return no more-- When once old Charon hoists his tar-blacked sail, And his boat swims before the infernal gale, Farewell to all that pleased the man above, 155 Farewell to feats of arms, and joys of love! Farewell the trade that father Cain began, Farewell to wine, that cheers the heart of man; All, all farewell!--the pensive shade must go Where cold Medusa turns to stone below, 160 Where Belus' maids eternal labours ply To drench the cask that stays forever dry, And Sysiphus, with many a weary groan, Heaves up the mount the still recoiling stone! "Since, then, this truth no mortal dares deny, 165 That heroes, kings--and lords, themselves, must die, And yield to him who dreads no hostile sword, But treats alike the peasant and the lord; Since even great George must in his turn give place And leave his crown, his Scotchmen, and his lace,-- 170 How blest is he, how prudent is the man Who keeps aloof from fate--while yet he can; One well-aimed ball can make us all no more Than shipwrecked scoundrels on that leeward shore. "But why, my friends, these hard reflections still 175 On Lexington affairs--'tis Bunker's hill-- O fatal hill!--one glance at thee restrains My once warm blood, and chills it in my veins-- May no sweet grass adorn thy hateful crest That saw Britannia's bravest troops distrest-- 180 Or if it does--may some destructive gale The green leaf wither, and the grass turn pale-- All moisture to your brow may heaven deny, And God and man detest you, just as I;-- 'Tis Bunker's hill, this night has brought us here, 185 Pray question him who led your armies there, Nor dare my courage into question call, Or blame Lord Piercy for the fault of all." Howe chanced to nod while heathenish Piercy spoke, But as his Lordship ceased, his Honour awoke, 190 (Like those whom sermons into sleep betray) Then rubbed his eyes, and thus was heard to say: "Shall those who never ventured from the town, Or their ships' sides, now pull our glory down? We fought our best--so God my honour save!-- 195 No British soldiers ever fought so brave-- Resolved I led them to the hostile lines, (From this day famed where'er great Phoebus shines) Firm at their head I took my dangerous stand, Marching to death and slaughter, sword in hand, 200 But wonted Fortune halted on her way, We fought with madmen, and we lost the day-- Putnam's brave troops, your honours would have swore Had robbed the clouds of half their nitrous store, With my bold veterans strewed the astonished plain, 205 For not one musquet was discharged in vain.-- But, honoured Gage, why droops thy laurelled head?-- Five hundred foes we packed off to the dead.--[94] Now captains, generals, hear me and attend! Say, shall we home for other succours send? 210 Shall other navies cross the stormy main?-- They may, but what shall awe the pride of Spain? Still for dominion haughty Louis pants-- Ah! how I tremble at the thoughts of France.-- Shall mighty George, to enforce his injured laws, 215 Transport all Russia to support the cause?-- That allied empire countless shoals may pour Numerous as sands that strew the Atlantic shore; But policy inclines my heart to fear They'll turn their arms against us when they're here-- 220 Come, let's agree--for something must be done Ere autumn flies, and winter hastens on-- When pinching cold our navy binds in ice, You'll find 'tis then too late to take advice." The clock strikes two!--Gage smote upon his breast, 225 And cried,--"What fate determines, must be best-- But now attend--a counsel I impart That long has laid the heaviest at my heart-- Three weeks--ye gods!--nay, three long years it seems Since roast-beef I have touched except in dreams. 230 In sleep, choice dishes to my view repair, Waking, I gape and champ the empty air.-- Say, is it just that I, who rule these bands, Should live on husks, like rakes in foreign lands?--[95] Come, let us plan some project ere we sleep, 235 And drink destruction to the rebel sheep. "On neighbouring isles uncounted cattle stray, Fat beeves and swine, an ill-defended prey-- These are fit visions for my noon day dish, These, if my soldiers act as I would wish, 240 In one short week should glad your maws and mine; On mutton we will sup--on roast beef dine." Shouts of applause re-echoed through the hall, And what pleased one as surely pleased them all; Wallace was named to execute the plan, 245 And thus sheep-stealing pleased them to a man. Now slumbers stole upon the great man's eye, His powdered foretop nodded from on high, His lids just opened to find how matters were, Dissolve, he said, and so dissolved ye are, 250 Then downward sunk to slumbers dark and deep,-- Each nerve relaxed--and even his guts asleep.[96] [A] An inhuman, butchering English judge in the time of Charles the first.--_Freneau's note._ [B] Capt. Wallace.--_Freneau's note._ Sir James Wallace was a prominent naval officer during the Revolution. In 1774-5 he commanded the _Rose,_ a 20-gun frigate, and greatly annoyed the people of Rhode Island by his detention of shipping and his seizure of private property. His severity and activity made him greatly detested by the colonists during the entire Revolution. EPILOGUE What are these strangers from a foreign isle, That we should fear their hate or court their smile?-- Pride sent them here, pride blasted in the bud, 255 Who, if she can, will build her throne in blood, With slaughtered millions glut her tearless eyes, And bid even virtue fall, that she may rise. What deep offence has fired a monarch's rage? What moon-struck madness seized the brain of Gage? 260 Laughs not the soul when an imprisoned crew Affect to pardon those they can't subdue, Though thrice repulsed, and hemmed up to their stations, Yet issue pardons, oaths, and proclamations!-- Too long our patient country wears their chains, 265 Too long our wealth all-grasping Britain drains. Why still a handmaid to that distant land? Why still subservient to their proud command? Britain the bold, the generous, and the brave Still treats our country like the meanest slave, 270 Her haughty lords already share the prey, Live on our labours, and with scorn repay;-- Rise, sleeper, rise, while yet the power remains, And bind their nobles and their chiefs in chains: Bent on destructive plans, they scorn our plea, 275 'Tis our own efforts that must make us free-- Born to contend, our lives we place at stake, And rise to conquerors by the stand we make.-- The time may come when strangers rule no more, Nor cruel mandates vex from Britain's shore, 280 When commerce may extend her shortened wing, And her rich freights from every climate bring, When mighty towns shall flourish free and great, Vast their dominion, opulent their state, When one vast cultivated region teems 285 From ocean's side to Mississippi streams, While each enjoys his vineyard's peaceful shade, And even the meanest has no foe to dread. And you, who, far from Liberty detained, Wear out existence in some slavish land-- 290 Forsake those shores, a self-ejected throng, And armed for vengeance, here resent the wrong: Come to our climes, where unchained rivers flow, And loftiest groves, and boundless forests grow. Here the blest soil your future care demands; 295 Come, sweep the forests from these shaded lands, And the kind earth shall every toil repay, And harvests flourish as the groves decay. O heaven-born Peace, renew thy wonted charms-- Far be this rancour, and this din of arms-- 300 To warring lands return, an honoured guest, And bless our crimson shore among the rest-- Long may Britannia rule our hearts again, Rule as she ruled in George the Second's reign, May ages hence her growing grandeur see, 305 And she be glorious--but ourselves as free! [85] Text from the edition of 1809. The poem was first published in New York in 1775 by Anderson, under the title, "A Voyage to Boston, a poem," and a second edition was printed the same year in Philadelphia for William Woodhouse. The revision of the poem in the 1786 edition of Freneau's works mentions that the poem was published in September, 1775. This is evidently a mistake. In the issue of October 21, of Anderson's _Constitutional Gazette,_ appears the advertisement, "This day is published & to be sold by the printer, 'A Voyage to Boston: a Poem.'" The copy of the poem in possession of the Library Company, Philadelphia, has endorsed upon it, "published in October, 1775." This earliest version, only a fragment of which was given in the various editions of the poet's works, has never before been reprinted. It is as follows: A VOYAGE TO BOSTON, A POEM ARGUMENT Introductory reflections. A traveller undertakes a voyage to Boston: arrives in a river of Massachusetts: has there a sight of the native Genius of North-America, who presents him with a mantle, and acquaints him with its virtue of rendering the wearer invisible; desires him to visit the town in that state and remark the transactions there. Accordingly he arrives at General Gage's mansion, where are several other ministerial tools sitting in council. The striking similarity of Gage's temper and conduct to that of Hernando Cortez. Some account of Cortez, and his horrid devastations in Mexico, &c. The traveller enters their junto, and gives an account of the chief members of it, viz., General Gage, Admiral Greaves, General Burgoyne, Lord Percy, General Howe, Capt. Wallace, and a numerous fry of dependents and needy favourites waiting for posts and estates in America, as soon as they shall have compelled us to resign our liberties: General Gage's surprize at their several defeats in New-England, and questions his leaders thereupon. Lord Percy's answer: Greaves's reply to that nobleman: Gage's raillery upon Percy for his nimble retreat on April 19, 1775. Percy's defence of his conduct on that day, and the reason of his activity; and desires them to forget Lexington for the present, and turn their eyes to the late loss at Bunker's Hill. General Howe's speech concerning that action. Burgoyne's harrangue, with his invectives against Colonel Grant, who "pledged himself for the general cowardice of all America:" Gage's brief reply; and communicates his intention of purloining cattle from the islands, and plans that right honourable exploit; but being overcome by sleep, dismisses his counsellors. The cutting down the Liberty Tree in Boston, and untimely end of one of the wretches employed in that sneaking affair. Distresses of the imprisoned citizens in Boston. Dissection of a Tory. The traveller leaves Boston, and visits the Provincial Camp; meets the Genius of America again on the way and resigns the mantle, whereby he again becomes visible; arrives at the camp. View of the Rifle-men, Virginians, &c. Speech of an American soldier; his determined resolution, which is that of all America, to defend our rights and privileges. Grief that he must fight against our own nation. Mention of Carleton and Johnson; concludes with a melancholy recital of our present distractions, and sincere hope of reconcilation with Great Britain before a wicked ministry render it too late. Conclusion. How curs'd the man whom fate's unhappy doom Confines, unluckly, to his native home, How doubly curs'd by cross grain'd stars is he, Whom fate ties down, tho' struggling to be free! Heaven gave to man this vast extended round. No climes confine him and no oceans bound; Heaven gave him forest, mountain, vale and plain, And bade him vanquish, if he could, the main: Then, miser, hoard and heap thy riches still, View the sun rise above thy well known hill, Vile as the swine, enjoy thy gloomy den, Sweat in the compass of a squalid pen, 'Till sick of life, on terms with death agree, And leave thy fortune, not thy heart, to me. So mus'd the bard who this rough verse indites, Asserting freedom, and his country's rights: Nor mus'd in vain; the fruitful musings brought To practice what in theory he thought; And gave desire, a keen desire, to roam A hundred or two hundred leagues from home. Where should he go? The eastern hills reply, Come, pensive traveller, with thy tearful eye, Come, and fair Boston from our summit see, No city sits so widow-like as she; Her trading navies spread their sails no more, Remotest nations cease to seek her shore, Deep are her weeds--in darkest sable clad, O come and view the Queen of all that's sad, Long are her nights, that yield no chearful sound, Like endless nights in tombs below the ground, Low burns her lamp before th' insulting rout; See, the lamp dies, and every light goes out! O Britain come, and, if you can, relent This rage, that better might on Spain be spent. Touch'd with the mountain's melancholy prayer (Perhaps a mountain or Dame Fancy there) Could I refuse, since mutual grief endears, To seek New Albion's Lady all in tears? But doubts perplexing hover'd o'er my mind, Whether to chuse the aid of horse or wind; That suits the best with bards of place and state, This must be needy Rhymers compensate, Since Jove his ancient bounty has deny'd, And grants no modern Pegasus to ride. Dark was the night, the winds tempestuous roar'd From western skies, and warn'd us all aboard; Spread were the sails, the nimble vessel flies O'er Neptune's bosom and reflected skies; Nor halt I here to tell you how she roves O'er Tython's chambers and his coral groves. Let some prose wand'rer long-sun journals keep, I haste me, like the vessel, o'er the deep; Nor tire you with descriptions of the coast, New mountains gain'd or hills in æther lost,-- The muse can only hint at scenes like these, Not stop to spend her poem in their praise: Three days we cut the brine with steady prore, The fourth beheld as on New Albion's shore. Guard me, ye heavens, shield this defenceless head, While travelling o'er these sanguine plains of dead; Nor only me, may heaven defend us all From the harsh rigour of King George's ball. Far in the depth of an aspiring wood, Where roll'd its waves a silver winding flood, Our weary vessel urg'd its darksome way, And safely anchor'd in a shady bay. Landing, I left the weather-beaten crew, And pensive rov'd as home-sick travellers do; When all at once before my wand'ring eyes, The Genius of the river seem'd to rise; Tall and erect, untaught by years to bow, But not a smile relax'd his clouded brow: His swarthy features vengeful deeds forebode, Terror march'd on before him as he trode; His rattling quiver at his shoulder hung, His pointed spear and glitt'ring helmet rung; The tall oaks trembled at the warlike shade, When thus the Genius of the water said: "O curious stranger, come from far to see What grieves us all, but none so much as me! The free-born Genius of the woods am I, Who scorn to dwell in lands of slavery; I, tho' unseen, command the heart to dare, And spread the soul of freedom thro' the air, That each may taste and value if he can, This sovereign good that constitutes the man: Here, in the center of tyrannic sway, I spread my spirit and forbid dismay, To every bosom dart may influence round, Like the sun beams that fructify the ground; But waft a timorous and ignoble breath Where conscience, conscience bids them shrink at death. "O stranger, led by Heaven's supreme decree, Go, view the dire effects of tyranny, Strait to the town direct thy fated way, But heark attentive, listen and obey, I to thy care commit this magic vest, To guard thee 'midst yon' spires, a viewless guest; Whene'er its wreathy folds thy limbs embrace, No mortal eye thy roving step shall trace; Unseen as ghosts that quit the clay below, Yet seeing all securely thou shalt go. There watch the motions of the hostile lines, Observe their counsels, watch their deep designs; Trace all their schemes, the lawless strength survey Of licens'd robbers howling for their prey." So spoke the Genius of the shaded wave, And then the vest of wondrous virtue gave, Which scarce my limbs enwrapt, when I began To move as ne'er before did mortal man. Light as the air, as free as winds I stray'd, Pierc'd firmest rocks and walls for prisons made, Soar'd high, nor ask'd the feeble aid of art, And trac'd all secrets but the human heart. Then to the town I held my hasty course, To Boston's town subdu'd by lawless force; Close by a centinel I took my stride, The wretch ne'er saw me tho' I graz'd his side: But for my vest, what pains had been my lot. What gibes, what sneers, reproaches, and what not? Or in their place the robbers had constrained To turn a Tory, which my heart disdained. Now stalk'd I on towards the dome of state, Where Gage resides, our western Potentate, A second Cortez,[a] sent by heaven's command, To murder, rage, and ravage o'er our land; A very Cortez--what's the difference? He wants his courage and he wants his sense; E'en Cortez would our tyrant's part disdain. That murder'd strangers; this his countrymen; In all the rest resemblance so exact, No glass Venetian could more true reflect. In all their rest, congenial souls combin'd, The scourge, the curse and scandal of our kind. Cortez was sent by Spain's black brotherhood, Whose faith is murder, whose religion blood; Sent unprovok'd, with his Iberian train, To fat the soil with millions of the slain: Poor Mexico! arouse thy sanguine head, Peru, disclose thy hosts of murder'd dead! Let your vast plains all white with human bones, That bleeding lie, and ask sepulchral stones, Force a dumb voice and echo to the sky, The blasting curse of papal tyranny; And let your rocks, and let your hills proclaim, That Gage and Cortez' errand is the same. Say then what cause this murd'rous band restrains? The want of power is made the monster's chains, The streams of blood his heart foredooms to spill, Is but a dying serpent's rage to kill: What power shall drive this serpent from our shore, This scorpion, swoln with carnage, death, and gore? Twelve was the hour,--infernal darkness reign'd, Low hung the clouds, the stars their light restrain'd: High in the dome a dire assembly sat, A stupid council on affairs of state; To their dim lamps I urg'd my fearless way, And marching 'twixt their guards without delay, Step'd boldly in, and safely veil'd from view, Stood in the center of the black-guard crew. First, Gage was there--a mimic chair of state, [a] Hernando Cortez, one of the original conquerors of Spanish America, who depopulated many provinces, and slew several millions of the natives of this continent. See Father Barthol. Du Casis's History.--_Freneau's note._ Here follow lines 72-131 above, with the following variations: line 75, "trident of the sea"; 76, "of artillery"; 79, "everlasting hum"; 80, "But senseless as the echo of a drum"; 81, "his ample chair supplies"; 82, "in studious guise"; 83, "to grant the world to see"; 87-90, "His arm and pen of equal strength we call, This kills with dullness, just like that with hall." 91, "O conscious muse"; 93, "the Hero"; 95, "How should"; 97, "as Sol descending to repose"; 98, "the furious Captain"; 100, "'mongst those who find it"; 104, "His forked tongue hiss'd nothing else but Zounds!"; 105, "his army's fatal doom"; 106, "Ceas'd to beseech"; 107-108, "(How could the skies refuse the pious man When half the pray'r was blood! and death! and damn!)" 110, "sleeveless errand to a distant land"; 113, "the Pandemonian crew"; 114, "a pension'd few"; 116, "In dreams of Indian gold and Indian state;" 118, "hungry as hell"; 121, "a secondary band"; 123, "assail'd the crowd"; 124, "Black as the horrors of a wintry cloud"; 125, "for doubts had place to grow"; 126, "or no"; 127-131, Gage starts, rebounding from his ample seat, Swears thrice, and cries--"Ye furies, are we beat? Thrice are we drubb'd?--Pray gentles let me know, Whether it be the fault of fate or you?" He ceas'd, the anger flash'd from both his eyes, While Percy to his query thus replies,-- "Let gods and men attest the words I say, Our soldiers flinch'd not from the dubious fray, Had each a head of tempered steel possest, A heart of brass, and admantine breast, More courage ne'er had urg'd them to the fray, More true-born valour made them scorn dismay." "Whoe'er," said Greaves, "their cowardice denies, Or Lord, or Knight, or 'Squire. I say he lies: How could the wretches help but marching on, When at their backs your swords were ready drawn, To pierce the man that flinch'd a single pace, From all hell's light'ning blazing in his face? Death on my life! My Lord, had I been there, I'd sent New-England's army thro' the air, Wrench'd their black hearts from this infernal brood, And turn'd their streams to Oliverian blood. Here follow lines 131-200 above, with the following variations: 131, "but toys"; 132, "to be conquer'd thus"; 134, "this play-thing army"; 135, "Five thousand to five hundred"; 136, "And fourteen hundred"; 139, "Indeed," cries Gage, "'tis twice we have been beat"; 141, "You 'scap'd my very blood"; 147, "So spoke the Hero"; 148, "The brilliant Peer replies"; 149, 150, not in the original version; 151, "old Styx's shore"; 153, "his sable sail"; 154, "the lazy gale"; 157, "Farewell Quadrille, that helps out life's short span"; following 158. "Farewell my steeds that stretch across the plain, More swift than navies bounding o'er the main." 160, "dull Medusa"; 163, 164, not in original version; 165-168, "Since then, this truth is by mankind confess'd, That ev'ry Lord must yet be Pluto's guest." 170, "And leave his coursers starting for the race"; 172, "aloof from Styx"; 174, "Than leaky vessels;" 177, "thy ghastly sight restrains;" following 178, "May no gay flowers or vernal blooming tree Scent thy vile air or shade the face of thee!" 180, "nodded o'er Britannia's troops"; 183, "to your breast"; 185, "has fix'd us here"; 186, "Pray query"; 189, "fluent Percy"; 194, "our conduct down"; 196, "more brave"; 199, "my bloody stand." In place of lines 201-208, the 1775 version has the following: 'Till met the strength of each opposing force, Like blazing-stars in their etherial course That all on fire with rapid swiftness fly, Then clash and shake the concave of the sky. Twice we gave way, twice shunn'd the infernal rout, And twice you would have cry'd all hell's broke out. They fought like those who press for death's embrace, And laugh the grizly monarch in the face. Putnam's brave troops, your honor would have swore, Had robb'd the clouds of half their sulph'rous store, Call'd thunder down whence Jove his vengeance spreads, And drove it mix'd with lightning on our heads! What tho' Cop's-hill its black artillery play'd, Clouding the plains in worse than Stygian shade; Tho' floating batteries rais'd their dismal roar, Tho' all the navy bellow'd from the shore, They roar'd in vain, death claim'd from them no share, But helpless, spent their force in empty air. Alas! what scenes of slaughter I beheld, What sudden carnage flush'd the glutted field! Heaven gave the foe to thin my warlike train, For not a musket was discharg'd in vain; Yes, that short hour, while heaven forbore to smile, Made many widows in Britannia's isle, And shewing all what power supreme can do, Gave many orphans to those widows too. But Gage arouse, come lift thy languid head, Full fifty foes we pack'd off to the dead: Who feeling death, from their hot posts, withdrew, And Warren with the discontented crew-- Blest be the hand that laid his head so low, Not fifty common deaths could please me so-- But to be short, so quick our men came in, The hostile army was so very thin; We fix'd our bay'nets and resum'd the fray, Then forc'd their lines and made the dogs give way." Next rose Burgoyne and rais'd his brazen voice, And cry'd, "We have no reason to rejoice. Warren is dead--in that we all agree, Not fate itself is half so fix'd as he; But my suspecting heart bids me foredoom A thousand Warrens rising in his room-- Heaven knows I left my native country's air, In full belief of things that never were; Deceiv'd by Grant, I've sail'd thus far in vain, And like a fool may now sail back again-- Grant call'd them cowards--curse the stupid ass, Their sides are Iron and their hearts are brass-- Cowards he said, and lest that should not do, He pawn'd his oath and swore that they were so: O, were he here, I'd make him change his note, Disgorge his lie or cut the rascal's throat. Here follow lines 209-252 above, with the following variations: 209, "But Captains"; 213, 214, not in original version; 215, "to make his law obey'd"; 216, "ten thousand Russians to our aid"; 218, "form the ocean shore"; 219, "commands my heart"; 225, "strikes three"; 230, "I've eat no fresh provision, but in dreams"; 231, "to my eyes"; 232, "and chew"; 235, "hold a council"; 236, "some consultation how to filch their sheep"; 237, "Unnumbered cattle"; 238, "sheep an undefended prey"; 239, "fit victims"; 240, "if the Gods would act"; 241, "shall glad your hearts"; 242, "on beef we'll dine"; 247, "the chieftain's eye"; 251, 252, "to dullest slumbers deep, And in his arms embrac'd the powers of sleep." In Boston's southern end there stands a tree Long sacred held to darling Liberty; Its branching arms with verdant leaves were crown'd, Imparting shade and grateful coolness round: To its fam'd trunk, invisible as air, I from the sleepy council did repair. And at its root, fair Freedom's shrine, I paid My warmest vows, and blest the virtuous shade. Now shin'd the gay fac'd sun with morning light. All Nature joy'd exulting at the sight, When swift as wind, to vent their base-born rage, The Tory Williams[b] and the Butcher Gage Rush'd to the tree, a nameless number near, Tories and Negroes following in the rear-- Each, axe in hand, attack'd the honour'd tree, Swearing eternal war with Liberty; Nor ceas'd their strokes, 'till each repeated wound Tumbled its honours headlong to the ground; But e'er it fell, not mindless of its wrong, Aveng'd it took one destin'd head along. A Tory soldier on its topmost limb-- The Genius of the shade look'd stern at him, And mark'd him out that self same hour to dine, Where unsnuff'd lamps burn low at Pluto's shrine, Then tripp'd his feet from off their cautious stand; Pale turn'd the wretch--he spread each helpless hand, But spread in vain, with headlong force he fell, Nor stopp'd descending 'till he stopp'd in Hell. Next, curious to explore, I wander'd where Our injur'd countrymen imprison'd are, Some closely coop'd in the unwelcome town; Some in dark dungeons held ignobly down; Gage holds them there, and all recess denies, For 'tis in these the coward's safety lies; Were these once out, how would our troops consign Each licens'd robber to the gulphy brine, Or drive them foaming to the ships for aid, To beg of stormy Greaves to cannonade, And midnight vengeance point, like Vandeput, Voiding his hell-hounds to their devilish glut. A deed like that the muse must blush to name, And bids me stamp a coward on thy fame; Rage, ruffian, rage, nor lay thy thunder down, 'Till all our Tories howl and flee the town. What is a Tory? Heavens and earth reveal! What strange blind monster does that name conceal? There! there he stands--for Augury prepare, Come lay his heart and inmost entrails bare, I, by the forelock, seize the Stygian hound; You bind his arms and bind the dragon down. Surgeon, attend with thy dissecting knife, Aim well the stroke that damps the springs of life, Extract his fangs, dislodge his teeth of prey, Clap in your pincers, and then tear away.-- Soldier, stand by, the monster may resist. You draw your back-sword, and I'll draw my fist. Lo! mixt with air his worthless ghost has fled; Surgeon, his paleness speaks the monster dead; Part, part the sutures of his brazen scull, Hard as a rock, impenetrably dull. Hold out his brain, and let his brethren see That tortoise brain, no larger than a pea-- Come, rake his entrails, whet thy knife again, Let's see what evils threat the next campaign, If ministerial force shall prove too great, Or if the Congress save their mighty freight: See on his breast, deep grav'd with iron pen, "Passive obedience to the worst of men." There to his lights direct thy searching eyes, "Slavery I love, and freedom I despise." View next his heart, his midriff just above, "To my own country I'll a traitor prove." Hard by his throat, for utterance meant, I spy, "I'll fight for tyrants and their ministry." His crowded guts unnumber'd scrawls contain, The scandal of our country and the bane; His bleeding entrails shew some great design, Which shall abortive prove, as I divine; But, freedom lost, nor danger do I see, If we can only with ourselves agree. How like St. George, invincible I stand, This home bred dragon stretch'd beneath my hand! Here may he lie, and let no traveller dare The grass green hillock o'er his carcase rear, Or heap up piles of monumental stones, To shield from Phoebus and the stars his bones. This feat perform'd, I girt my magic gown, And march'd, unlicens'd, from the guarded town. To our fam'd camp I held my eager course, Curious to view the courage and the force Of those, whose hearts are flush'd with freedom's flame, Who yet stand foremost in the field of fame, And deeply griev'd with their departing laws, Arm in conviction of a righteous cause. But e'er I reach'd the great encampment's bound The friendly Genius on the way I found; Graceful he smil'd his azure locks he shook, While from his lips these flowing accents broke: "O mortal! guided by the fates and me, To view what thousands wish in vain to see; Now to my care the magic vest restore, Chearful return to what thou wast before, I to the shades this wond'rous mantle bear, And hang it safe in Fancy's temple there; Nor let its loss provoke thee to repine, The vest was Jove's, the will to lend it mine." So said the God, and blending with the light, I walk'd conspicuous and reveal'd to sight, No more impervious to the human view, But seeing all, and seen by others too. Now throngs on throngs on ev'ry side surround, Beneath the burthen groans the heaving ground, Those fam'd afar to drive the deadly shot, With truest level to the central spot; Those whom Virginia's vast dominion sends, From her chaste streams and intervening lands, And those who conscious of their country's claim, From Pennsylvania's happy climate came. These, and ten thousand more were scatter'd round In black battalions on the tented ground, Prepar'd, whene'er the trumpet's iron roar Should summon forth to all the woes of war, To hear with joy the loud alarming call, And rush perhaps to their own funeral. Just in the center of the camp arose An elm, whose shade invited to repose; Thither I rov'd, and at the cool retreat A brave, tho' rough-cast, soldier chanc'd to meet: No fop in arms, no feather on his head, No glittering toys the manly warrior had, His auburne face the least employ'd his care, He left it to the females to be fair; And tho't the men, whom shining trifles sway, But pageant soldiers for a sun-shine day. Marking my pensive step, his hand he laid On his hard breast, and thus the warrior said: "Stranger, observe, behold these warlike fields, Mark well the ills, that civil discord yields: No crimes of our's this vengeful doom require, Our city ravag'd and our towns on fire, Troops pour'd on troops to Britain's lasting shame, That threaten all with universal flame; These are the kings, the monarchs of the sea, Exerting power in lawless tyranny, These, hot for power, and burning for command, Would rule the ocean and subject the land; But while this arm the strength of man retains, While true-born courage revels through my veins, I'll spill my blood yon' hostile force to quell, And lawless power by lawful strength repel; This rough, black cannon shall our cause defend, This black, rough cannon is my truest friend. This, arm'd with vengeance, belching death afar, Confus'd their thousands marching to the war: Yet, deeply griev'd, the tears bedew my eyes, For this, the greatest of calamities; That our keen weapons, meant for other ends, Should spend their rage on Britons, once our friends; But Liberty!--no price hast thou below, And e'en a Briton's life for thee must go. Come, then, my weapons, rise in Freedom's aid, Her steps attend and be her call obey'd; Let Carleton arm his antichristian might, And sprinkle holy-water 'ere he fight, And let him have, to shield his limbs from hurt, St. Stephen's breeches,[c] and St. Stephen's shirt,[c] Don Quixote's sword, the valiant knight of Spain, Which now may grace a madman's side again, St. Bernard's hose,[c] and lest we give too few, John Faustus' cap, and Satan's cloven shoe; (These precious relicks may defend their backs, And good Guy Johnson should, I think, go snacks) Nay, let him, ere the clashing armies cope, Procure a pardon from his friend the Pope, That if his soul should be dislodg'd from hence, Heaven may with all his scarlet sins dispense, And place him safe beyond the reach of ball, Where Abrah'm's bosom may be had for all. Some powerful cause disarms my heart of fear, And bids me bring some future battle near, When crowds of dead shall veil the ghastful plain, And mighty Lords like Percy, fly again; When every pulse with treble force shall beat And each exert his valour to retreat. And each shall wish his stature may be made, Long as it seems at Sol's descending shade: So tallest trees that tour toward the skies, From simple acorns take their humble rise. To see from death their boasted valour shrink, And basely fly, has sometimes made me think, The true great heart is often found remote From the gay trappings of a scarlet coat. Stranger, in pity lend one pensive sigh, For all that dy'd and all that yet may die, If wars intestine long their rage retain, This land must turn a wilderness again. While civil discord plumes her snaky head, What streams of human gore most yet be shed, With sanguine floods shall Mystick's waves be dy'd, And ting'd the ocean, with her purple tide; Enough.--The prospect fills my heart with woe; Back to the heart my freezing spirits flow, No more remains; no more than this, that all Must fight like Romans, or like Romans fall: O heaven-born peace, renew thy wonted charms, Where Neptune westward spreads his aged arms; To hostile lands return an honour'd guest, And bless our crimson shores among the rest; 'Till then may heaven assert our injur'd claims, And second every stroke Columbia aims, Direct our counsels and our leaders sway, Confound our foes and fill them with dismay. So shall past years, those happy years, return, And war's red lamp in Boston cease to burn: Hear and attest the warmest wish I bring, God save the Congress and reform the King! Long may Britannia rule our hearts again, Rule as she rul'd in George the Second's reign; May ages hence her growing empire see, And she be glorious, but ourselves be free, In that just scale an equal balance hold, And grant these climes a second age of gold." He ceas'd, and now the sun's declining beam With fainter radiance shot a trembling gleam, The thickening stars proclaim'd the day expir'd, And to their tented mansions all retir'd. [b] A notable Tory in Boston.--_Freneau's note._ [c] Certain well known relicks among the Papists.--_Freneau's note._ [86] "Huns."--_Ed. 1786._ [87] "Slaughter'd by our Rifle-guns."--_Ed. 1786._ [88] "Proud of his soldiership, Burgoyne rated himself higher yet in his character as an author."--_Trevelyan._ He was a voluminous letter-writer, and his vivid and interesting letters, of which great numbers have been preserved, throw much light upon the period. [89] This expression belongs to Burgoyne rather than Howe. "Burgoyne took no pains to hide them [his sentiments] in any company. He exclaimed to the first colonist whom he met ... 'Let us get in and we will soon find elbow-room.' The saying caught the public ear, and the time was not far distant when its author learned to his cost that it is more easy to coin a phrase than to recall it from circulation."--_Trevelyan, Am. Rev._ [90] "School-boy army."--_Ed. 1786._ [91] The first detachment of troops, which left Boston on the night of April 18th, consisted of 800 men; the reinforcements that met them just beyond Lexington consisted of 1,200 men. "On this eventful day, the British lost 273 of their number, while the Americans lost 93."--_Fiske's American Revolution._ [92] Lord Percy was at the head of the reinforcements which rescued the British regulars on their retreat from Concord and Lexington, and it was under his leadership that the disastrous retreat was continued to Boston. [93] "I believe the fact, stripped of all coloring," Washington wrote six weeks later on, "to be plainly this: that if the retreat had not been as precipitate as it was (and God knows it could not have been more so), the ministerial troops must have surrendered or been totally cut off."--_Trevelyan's American Revolution._ [94] "In this battle, in which not more than one hour was spent in actual fighting, the British loss in killed and wounded was 1,054.... The American loss, mainly incurred at the rail fence and during the hand-to-hand struggle at the redoubt, was 449."--_Fiske's American Revolution._ [95] Burgoyne, in one of his letters, declares that "a pound of fresh mutton could only be bought for its weight in gold." [96] Gage's inertness and procrastination were a constant source of ridicule both in England and America. No man was ever more severely criticised. Hume even branded him as a contemptible coward. THE SILENT ACADEMY[97] Subjected to despotic sway, Compelled all mandates to obey, Once in this dome I humbly bowed, A member of the murmuring crowd, Where Pedro Blanco held his reign, The tyrant of a small domain. By him a numerous herd controuled, The smart, the stupid, and the bold, Essayed some little share to gain Of the vast treasures of his brain; Some learned the Latin, some the Greek, And some in flowery style to speak; Some writ their themes, while others read, And some with Euclid stuffed the head; Some toiled in verse, and some in prose, And some in logick sought repose; Some learned to cypher, some to draw, And some began to study law. But all is ruined, all is done, The tutor to the shades is gone, And all his pupils, led astray, Have each found out a different way. Some are in chains of wedlock bound, And some are hanged and some are drowned; Some are advanced to posts and places, And some in pulpits screw their faces; Some at the bar a living gain, Perplexing what they should explain; To soldiers turned, a bolder band Repel the invaders of the land; Some to the arts of physic bred, Despatch their patients to the dead; Some plough the land, and some the sea, And some are slaves, and some are free; Some court the great, and some the muse, And some subsist by mending shoes-- While others--but so vast the throng, The Cobblers shall conclude my song. [97] In the 1786 edition the title is "The Desolate Academy." In place of the first six lines above, the 1786 edition had the following: "Subjected to despotic rule Once in this dome I went to school, Where _Pedro Passive_ held his reign, The tyrant of a small domain." LINES TO A COASTING CAPTAIN[98] Shipwrecked and Nearly Drowned on Hatteras Shoals So long harassed by winds and seas, 'Tis time, at length, to take your ease, Change ruffian waves for quiet groves[99] And war's loud blast for sylvan loves. In all your rounds, 'tis passing strange No fair one tempts you to a change-- Madness it is, you must agree, To lodge alone 'till forty-three. Old Plato said, no blessing here Could equal Love--if but sincere; And writings penn'd by heaven, have shown That man can ne'er be blest alone. O'er life's meridian have you pass'd; The night of death advances fast! No props you plant for your decline, No partner soothes these cares of thine. If Neptune's self, who ruled the main, Kept sea-nymphs there to ease his pain; Yourself, who skim that empire o'er, Might surely keep one nymph on shore. Myrtilla fair, in yonder grove, Has so much beauty, so much love, That, on her lip, the meanest fly Is happier far than you or I. [98] In the 1786 edition the title is "The Sea-Faring Bachelor;" in 1795 it was changed to "Advice to a Friend." [99] "And seek a bride--for few can find The sea a mistress to their mind."--_Ed. 1786._ TO THE AMERICANS[100] ON THE RUMOURED APPROACH OF THE HESSIAN FORCES, WALDECKERS, &C. (PUBLISHED 1775) _The blast of death! the infernal guns prepare-- "Rise with the storm and all its dangers share."_ Occasioned by General Gage's Proclamation that the Provinces were in a state of Rebellion, and out of the King's protection.[101] Rebels you are--the British champion[102] cries-- Truth, stand thou forth!--and tell the wretch, He lies:-- Rebels!--and see this mock imperial lord Already threats these rebels with the cord.[103] The hour draws nigh, the glass is almost run, When truth will shine, and ruffians[104] be undone; When this base miscreant[105] will forbear to sneer, And curse his taunts and bitter insults here.[106] If to controul the cunning of a knave, Freedom respect, and scorn the name of slave; If to protest against a tyrant's laws, And arm for vengeance in a righteous cause, Be deemed Rebellion--'tis a harmless thing: This bug-bear name, like death, has lost its sting. Americans! at freedom's fane adore! But trust to Britain, and her flag,[107] no more; The generous genius of their isle has fled, And left a mere impostor in his stead. If conquered, rebels (their Scotch records show),[108] Receive no mercy from the parent [A]foe;[109] Nay, even the grave, that friendly haunt of peace, (Where Nature gives the woes of man to cease,) Vengeance will search--and buried corpses there Be raised, to feast the vultures of the air-- Be hanged on gibbets, such a war they wage-- Such are the devils that swell our souls with rage![110] If Britain conquers, help us, heaven, to fly: Lend us your wings, ye ravens of the sky;-- If Britain conquers--we exist no more; These lands will redden with their children's gore, Who, turned to slaves, their fruitless toils will moan, Toils in these fields that once they called their own! To arms! to arms! and let the murdering sword Decide who best deserves the hangman's cord: Nor think the hills of Canada too bleak When desperate Freedom is the prize you seek; For that, the call of honour bids you go O'er frozen lakes and mountains wrapt in snow:[111] No toils should daunt the nervous and the bold, They scorn all heat or wave-congealing cold. Haste!--to your tents in iron fetters bring These slaves, that serve a tyrant and a king;[112] So just, so virtuous is your cause, I say, Hell must prevail if Britain gains the day. [A] After the battle of Culloden: See Smollett's History of England.--_Freneau's note._ [100] The first trace that I can find of this poem is in the Oct. 18, 1775, issue of Anderson's _Constitutional Gazette_, where it has the title, "Reflections on Gage's Letter to Gen. Washington of Aug. 13." It was published in the 1786 edition with the title, "On the Conqueror of America shut up in Boston. Published in New York, _August_ 1775." The 1795 edition changed the title to "The Misnomer." I have followed the title and text of the 1809 edition. [101] General Gage's proclamation, issued June 12, 1775, was as follows: "Whereas the infatuated multitudes, who have long suffered themselves to be conducted by certain well-known incendiaries and traitors, in a fatal progression of crimes against the constitutional authority of the state, have at length proceeded to avowed rebellion, and the good effects which were expected to arise from the patience and lenity of the king's government have been often frustrated, and are now rendered hopeless by the influence of the same evil counsels, it only remains for those who are intrusted with the supreme rule, as well for the punishment of the guilty as the protection of the well-affected, to prove that they do not bear the sword in vain." [102] "The hopeful general."--_Constitutional Gazette._ [103] On June 11, Washington had written Gage, among other things, "that the officers engaged in the cause of liberty and their country, who by the fortune of war had fallen into your hands, have been thrown indiscriminately into a common gaol appropriated for felons," and threatening retaliation in like cases, "exactly by the rule you shall observe towards those of ours now in your custody." To this Cage replied, on the 13th: "Britons, ever pre-eminent in mercy, have outgone common examples, and overlooked the criminal in the captive. Upon these principles your prisoners, whose lives, by the law of the land, _are destined to the cord_, have hitherto been treated with care and kindness," &c.--_Duyckinck._ [104] "Gage shall be."--_Gazette._ [105] "Black monster."--_Gazette._ [106] The _Gazette_ version adds here the lines, "Nay, with himself, ere freedom sent to quell Had seen the lowest lurking place of hell." [107] "British clemency."--_Ed. 1786._ [108] "Their past records show."--_Ed, 1786._ "Gage already lets us know."--_Gazette._ [109] "The viper foe."--_Gazette._ [110] This and the preceding line not in the earlier versions. In place of them the _Gazette_ has the lines: "Spoil'd of their shrouds and o'er Canadia's plains Be hung aloft to terrify in chains." [111] The _Gazette_ version ends the poem from this point as follows: "Let Baker's head be snatch'd from infamy, And Carleton's Popish scull be fixt on high, And all like him o'er St. John's castle swing, To show that freedom is no trifling thing." [112] "Their tyrant of a king."--_Ed. 1786._ THE VERNAL AGUE Where the pheasant[113] roosts at night, Lonely, drowsy, out of sight,[114] Where the evening breezes sigh Solitary, there stray I. Close along the shaded stream, Source of many a youthful dream, Where branchy cedars dim the day, There I muse, and there I stray. Yet, what can please amid this bower, That charmed the eye for many an hour! The budding leaf is lost to me, And dead the bloom on every tree. The winding stream, that glides along, The lark, that tunes her early song, The mountain's brow, the sloping vale, The murmuring of the western gale, Have lost their charms!--the blooms are gone! Trees put a darker aspect on, The stream disgusts that wanders by, And every zephyr brings a sigh. Great guardian of our feeble kind! Restoring Nature, lend thine aid! And o'er the features of the mind Renew those colours, that must fade, When vernal suns forbear to roll, And endless winter chills the soul. [113] "Blackbird."--_Ed. 1786._ [114] "In groves of half distinguish'd light."--_Ib._ GENERAL GAGE'S CONFESSION[115] Being the Substance of His Excellency's Last Conference with his Ghostly Father, Father Francis Compassion!--'tis a stranger to my heart, Or if it comes--unwelcome guest depart,-- Boston, farewell, thy final doom is pass'd, North hears my prayers, and I'm recall'd at last;[116] Sailor on high thy canvas wings display, Howl, ye west winds, and hurry me away; Rise, boisterous clouds, and bellowing from on high, Whisk me along, ye tyrants of the sky-- Quick! let me leave these friendless shores that shed Ten thousand curses on my hated head.-- But why so swift, why ask I gales so strong, Since conscience, cruel conscience, goes along? Must conscience rack my bosom o'er the deep? I live in hell while she forbears to sleep; Come, Father Francis, be my heart display'd, My burden'd conscience asks thy pious aid; Come, if confession can discharge my sin, I will confess till hell itself shall grin, And own the world has found in me again A second Nero; nay, another Cain. _Friar_ Why swells thy breast with such distressing woe? Your honour surely has the sense to know Your sins are venial--trust me when I say Your deepest sins may all be purged away.-- But if misfortunes rouse this nightly grief, Sure Friar Francis can afford relief: I thought e're this that leaders of renown Would scorn to bow to giddy fortune's frown; See yon bright star (the dewy eve begun) Walks his gay round and sparkles in the sun; Faints not, encircled by the ambient blaze, Tho' pestering clouds may sometimes blunt his rays; But come, confession makes the conscience light, Confess, my son, and be absolv'd this night. _Gage_ First of the first, I tell it in your ear (For tho' we whisper, heaven, you know, can hear) This faultless country ne'er deserv'd my hate; Just are its pleas; unmerited its fate. When North ordained me to this thankless place, My conscience rose and star'd me in the face, And spite of all I did to quench its flame, Convinc'd me I was wrong before I came.-- But what, alas, can mortal heroes do, They are but men, as sacred writings shew,-- Tho' I refus'd, they urged me yet the more, Nay, even the king descended to implore, And often with him in his closet pent, Was plagu'd to death to rule this armament; Who could a monarch's favourite wish deny? I yielded just for peace--ay, faith did I-- If this be sin, O tell me, reverend sage, What will, alas, become of guilty Gage? _Friar_ If this be sin--'tis sin, I make no doubt, But trust me, honour'd sir, I'll help you out, Even tho' your arms had rag'd from town to town, And mow'd like flags these rebel nations down, And joyful bell return'd the murdering din, And you yourself the master butcher been,-- All should be well--from sins like this, I ween, A dozen masses shall discharge you clean; Small pains in purgatory you'll endure, And hell, you know, is only for the poor, Pay well the priest and fear no station there, For heaven must yield to vehemence of prayer. _Gage_ Heaven grant that this may be my smallest sin; Alas, good friar, I'm yet deeper in-- Come round my bed, with friendly groans condole, To gratify my paunch, I've wrong'd my soul; Arms I may wield and murder by command, Spread devastation thro' a guiltless land, Whole ranks to hell with howling cannon sweep-- But what had I to do with stealing sheep?[117] I've read my orders, conn'd them o'er with care, But not a word of stealing sheep is there; Come, holy friar, can you make a shift To help a sinner at so dead a lift? Or must I onward to perdition go, With theft and murder to complete my woe? _Friar_ Murder--nay, hold!--your honour is too sad, Things are not yet, I hope, become so bad, Murder, indeed--you've stole, and that I know, But, sir, believe me, you've not struck a blow; Some few Americans have bled, 'tis true, But 'twas the soldiers killed them, and not you. _Gage_ Well said, but will this subtile reasoning stand? Did not the soldiers murder by command, By my command?--Friar, they did, I swear, And I must answer for their deeds, I fear. _Friar_ Let each man answer for his proper deed, From sins of murder I pronounce you freed, And this same reasoning will your honour keep From imputations of purloining sheep: Wallace for this to Rome shall post away, And for this crying sin severely pay, And tho' his zeal may think his penance slight, Hair cloth and logs shall be his bed at night, Coarse fare by day--till his repeated groans Convince the world he for this sin atones. _Gage_ Alas, poor Wallace, how I pity thee!-- But let him go--'tis better him than me; Yes, let him harbour in some convent there, And fleas monastic bite him till he swear; But, friar, have you patience for the rest? Half my transgressions are not yet confest. _Friar_ Not half!--you are a harmless man, I'm told-- Pray, cut them short--the supper will be cold. _Gage_ Some devil, regardless of exalted station, In evil hour assail'd me with temptation, To issue forth a damned proclamation, What prince, what king, from Belzebub is free, He tempted Judas, and has tempted me! This, this, O friar, was a deadly flaw, This for the civil founded martial law,[118] This crime will Gage to Lucifer consign, And purgatory must for this be mine. Next--and for this I breathe my deepest sigh, Ah cruel, flinty, hard, remorseless I!-- How could I crowd my dungeons dark and low With wounded captives of our injur'd foe? How could my heart, more hard than hardened steel, Laugh at the pangs that mangled captives feel? Why sneer'd I at my fellow men distrest, Why banished pity from this iron breast! O friar, could heaven approve my acting so, Heaven still to mercy swift, to vengeance slow?-- O no--you say, then cease your soothing chat, Cowards are cruel, I can instance that.-- But hold! why did I, when the fact was done, Deny it all to gallant Washington? Why did I stuff the epistolary page With vile invectives only worthy Gage?[119] Come, friar, help--shall I recant and say I writ my letter on a drunken day? How will it sound, if men should chance to tell A drunken hero can compose so well? _Friar_ Your fears are groundless, give me all the blame, I writ the letter, you but sign'd your name, Nor let the proclamation cloud your mind, 'Twas I compos'd it and you only sign'd.-- I, Friar Francis--papist tho' I be, You private papists can't but value me; Your sins in Lethe shall be swallowed up, I'll clear you, if you please, before we sup. _Gage_ Nay, clear me not--tho' I should cross the brine, And pay my vows in distant Palestine, Or land in Spain, a stranger poor and bare, And rove on foot a wretched pilgrim there, And let my eyes in streams perpetual flow, Where great Messiah dy'd so long ago, And wash his sacred footsteps with my tears, And pay for masses fifty thousand years, All would not do--my monarch I've obey'd, And now go home, perhaps to lose my head;-- Pride sent me here, pride blasted in the bud, Which, if it can, will build its throne in blood, With slaughter'd millions glut its tearless eyes, And make all nature fall that it may rise;-- Come, let's embark, your holy whining cease, Come, let's away, I'll hang myself for peace: So Pontius Pilate for his murder'd Lord In his own bosom sheath'd the deadly sword-- Tho' he confess'd and wash'd his hands beside, His heart condemn'd him and the monster dy'd. [115] "General Gage's Confession" was printed in pamphlet form in 1775. As far as I can ascertain, there exists but a single copy of this publication, that in the possession of the Library Company of Philadelphia. A manuscript note upon this copy, unquestionably the handwriting of Freneau, is as follows: "By Gaine. Published October 25, 1775." The poem was manifestly written after Gage's recall. The poet never reprinted it. [116] On July 28, 1775, George III. wrote to Lord North: "I have desired Lord Dartmouth to acquaint Lt. G. Gage that as he thinks nothing further can be done this campaign in the province of Massachusetts Bay that he is desired instantly to come over, that he may explain the various wants for carrying on the next campaign." "It was a kindly pretext devised to spare the feelings of an unprofitable but a faithful and a brave servant."--_Trevelyan._ General Gage embarked at Boston for England, Oct. 12, 1775. [117] The scarcity of provisions in the British camp during the siege of Boston has been already alluded to. "When marauding expeditions," says Bancroft, "returned with sheep and hogs and cattle captured from islands, the bells were rung as for victory." [118] Alluding to the proclamation of June 12, five days before Bunker Hill, which established martial law throughout Massachusetts and proscribed Hancock and Samuel Adams. By this proclamation, all who were in arms about Boston, every member of the State Government and of the Continental Congress, were threatened with condign punishment as rebels and traitors. [119] Washington had written to Gage, remonstrating against the cruel treatment of certain American officers, who were denied the privileges and immunities due their rank. Almost the last official act of Gage was to reply through Burgoyne in a letter addressed to "George Washington, Esqr.," that "Britons, ever pre-eminent in mercy, have overlooked the criminal in the captive. Your prisoners, whose lives by the law of the land are destined to the cord, have hitherto been treated with care and kindness;--indiscriminately, it is true, for I acknowledge no rank that is not derived from the King." THE DISTREST SHEPHERDESS[120] or, Mariana's Complaint for the Death of Damon Written 1775 What madness compell'd my dear shepherd to go To the siege of Quebec, and distract me with woe! My heart is so full, it would kill me to tell How he died on the banks of the river Sorel. O river Sorel! Thou didst hear him complain, When dying he languish'd, and called me in vain! When, pierc'd by the Briton he went to repel, He sunk on the shores of the river Sorel. O cruel misfortune, my hopes to destroy: He has left me alone with my Colin, his boy; With sorrow I see him, with tears my eyes swell; Shall we go, my sweet babe, to the river Sorel? But why should I wander, and give him such pain? My Damon will ne'er see his Colin again: To wander so far where the wild Indians dwell, We should faint ere we came to the river Sorel. But even to see the pale corpse of my dear Would give me such rapture, such pleasure sincere! I'll go, my dear boy, and my grief I will tell To the willows that grow by the river Sorel. How shall I distinguish my shepherd's dear grave Amidst the long forest that darkens the wave:-- Perhaps they could give him no tomb when he fell; Perhaps he is sunk in the river Sorel. He was a dear fellow!--O, had he remain'd! For he was uneasy whene'er I complain'd; He call'd me his charmer, and call'd me his belle, What a folly to die on the banks of Sorel! Then let me remain in my lonely retreat; My shepherd departed I never shall meet-- Here's Billy O'Bluster--I love him as well, And Damon may stay at the river Sorel. [120] This poem is unique in the 1788 edition of Freneau's works. It is evidently an earlier version of the "Mars and Hymen" below. MARS AND HYMEN[121] Occasioned by the separation of a young widow from a young military lover, of the troops sent to attack Fort Chamblee, in Canada; in which expedition he lost his life [1775] _Persons of the Poem_--Lucinda, Damon, Thyrsis _Damon_ Why do we talk of shaded bowers, When frosts, my fair one, chill the plain, And nights are cold, and long the hours That damp the ardour of the swain, Who, parting from his rural fire, All pleasure doth forego-- And here and there, And everywhere, Pursues the invading foe. Yes, we must rest on frosts and snows! No season shuts up our campaign! Hard as the rocks, we dare oppose The autumnal, or the wintery reign. Alike to us, the winds that blow In summer's season, gay, Or those that rave On Hudson's wave, And drift his ice away. Winter and war may change the scene! The ball may pierce, the frost may chill; And dire misfortunes intervene, But freedom must be powerful still, To drive these Britons from our shore, Who come with sail, who come with oar, So cruel and unkind, With servile chain, who strive in vain, Our freeborn souls to bind. [_Exit_] _Lucinda_ (_two months after_) They scold me, and tell me I must not complain, To part a few weeks with my favourite swain! He goes to the battle!--and leaves me to mourn-- And tell me--and tell me--and will he return?[122] When he left me, he kiss'd me--and said, My sweet dear, In less than a month I again will be here; But still I can hardly my sorrows adjourn-- You may call me a witch--if ever I return.[123] I said, My dear soldier, I beg you would stay; But he, with his farmers,[124] went strutting away-- With anguish and sorrow my bosom did burn, And I wept--for I thought he would never return.[125] _Thyrsis_ Fairest of the female train, You must seek another swain, Damon will not come again! All his toils are over! As you prized him, to excess, Your loss is great, I will confess, But, lady, yield not to distress-- I will be your lover. _Lucinda_ Not all the swains the land can shew, (If Damon is not living now)[126] Can from my bosom drive my woe, Or bid a second passion glow;-- For Damon has possession; Not all the gifts that wealth can bring, Nor all the airs that you can sing, Nor all the music of the string Can banish his impression. _Thyrsis_ Wedlock and death too often prove Pernicious to the fires of Love: With equal strength they both combine Hearts best united[127] to disjoin: Hence ardent loves too soon remit; Thus die the fires that Cupid lit. Female tears and April snow Sudden come and sudden go. Since his head is levelled low, Cease remembrance of your woe. Can it be in reason found To be crazy for Love's wound?[128] Must you live in sorrows drowned For a lover under ground? _Lucinda_ What a picture have I seen! What can all these visions mean! Wintry groves and vacant halls, Coffins hid by sable palls, Monuments and funerals! Forms terrific to the sight, Ghastly phantoms clad in white; Streams that ever seemed to freeze, Shaded o'er by willow trees,[129] Ever drooping--hardly green-- What a vision have I seen! One I saw of angel kind, From the dregs of life refined; On her visage such a smile,[130] And she talk'd in such a style! All was heaven upon her brow;-- Yes, I think I see her now! All in beams of light arrayed; And these cheering words she said: Fair Lucinda, come to me; What has grief to do with thee? O forsake your wretched shore, Crimsoned with its children's gore![131] Could you but a moment stray In the meadows where I play, You would die to come away. Come away, and speed your wing--[132] Here we love, and here we sing! _Thyrsis_ You will not yet forget your glooms, The heavy heart, the downcast eye, The cheek that scarce a smile assumes, The never-ending sigh![133] _Lucinda_ Had you the secret cause to grieve-- That in this breast doth lie, Instead of wishing to relieve You would be just as I. _Thyrsis_ What secret cause have you to grieve?-- A lover gone astray?--[134] If one was able to deceive, Perhaps another may. _Lucinda_ My lover has not me deceived, An act he would disdain; Oh! he is gone--and I am grieved-- He'll never come again! He'll never come again! _Thyrsis_ The turtle on yon' withered bough Who lately moaned her murdered mate, Has found another partner now,-- Such changes all await. Again her drooping plume is dress'd, Again she wishes to be bless'd, And takes a husband to her nest. If nature has decreed it so With some above, and all below, Let us, Lucinda, banish woe,[135] Nor be perplext with sorrow: If I should leave your arms this night, And die before the morning light, I would advise you--and you might Wed again to-morrow. _Lucinda_ The turtle on yon' withered tree!-- That turtle never felt like me! Her grief is but a moment's date, Another day, another mate: And true it is, the feathered race Hold many a partner no disgrace. How would the world my fault display, What would censorious Sally[136] say? Would say, while grinning malice sneers,--[137] She made a conquest by her tears! _Thyrsis_ My Polly!--once the pride of all, That shepherd lads their charmers call, Too early parted with her bloom, And sleeps in yonder sylvan tomb: Her death has set me free-- Fair as the day, and sweet as May, But what is that to me! Since all must bow to fate's arrest,[138] No love deceased shall rack my breast-- Come, then, Lucinda, and be blest. _Lucinda_ My Damon! Oh, can I forget The hour you left these moistened eyes, O'er northern lakes to wander far To colder climes and dreary skies! There, vengeful, in their wastes of snow The Britons guard the frozen shore, And Damon there is perished now, The swain that shall return no more! _Thyrsis_ Weep, weep no more, my Jersey lass,[139] The pang is past that fixed his doom-- They, too, shall to destruction pass, Perhaps--and hardly find a tomb. Refrain your tears--enough are shed-- They, too, shall have their share of woe: Fled is their fame, their honours fled; And Washington shall lay them low. _Lucinda_ If you had but yon' sergeant's size, His mien and looks, so debonaire, You might seem lovely in my eyes, Nor should you quite despair.[140] There's something in your looks, I find, Recalling Damon to my mind-- He is dead, and I must be resigned! His lively step, his sun-burnt face, His nervous arm in you I trace-- Indeed,--I think you no disgrace.[141] _Thyrsis_ On this dismal, cloudy day,[142] In these fighting times, I say, Will you Yea, or will you Nay? _Lucinda_ Oh! I will not tell you Nay, You have such a coaxing way! _Thyrsis_ Call the music!--half is done That my heart could count upon-- From the grave I seize a prize! Here she is, and where he lies, She or I but little care! O, what animals we are! For you!--I would forego all ease,[143] And traverse sands or travel seas. Of all they sent us from above, Nothing, nothing is like love! Happiest passion of the mind, Sent from heaven to bless mankind, Though at variance with your charms, Fate's eternal mandate stands; Hymen, come!--unite our hands, And give Lucinda to my arms! [121] This poem seems first to have appeared in the edition of 1786, where it bore the title, "Female Frailty. Written _November 1775_." Freneau made use of the opening speeches of Damon and Lucinda in his drama, _The Spy_. He omitted the poem from the 1795 edition of his works, retaining, however, the opening lyric, which he entitled "The Northern Soldier." The poem was reprinted in the edition of 1809, the text of which I have used. The poet edited the earlier version with great care, making verbal variations in almost every line, and adding lines and even stanzas. I have marked only a few of the more notable changes. [122] "And, say what you please, he will never return."--_Ed. 1786._ [123] "With anguish and sorrow my bosom did burn, And I wept, being sure he would never return."--_Ib._ [124] "With his soldiers."--_Ib._ [125] "Then why should I longer my sorrows adjourn?-- You may call me a fool if he ever return."--_Ib._ [126] Not in the earliest version. [127] "Hearts once united."--_Ed. 1786._ [128] "Never yet was reason found So distracted with love's wound As to be in sorrow drown'd."--_Ib._ [129] "Planted round with cypress trees."--_Ed. 1786._ [130] Four lines beginning with this not in original version. [131] "Shrouded all with darkness o'er."--_Ib._ [132] "'Come away! and speed thy flight, All with me is endless light.'"--_Ib._ [133] "The breast that heaves a sigh."--_Ed. 1786._ [134] "A lover gone away?"--_Ib._ [135] "Let us, like them, forget our woe, And not be kill'd with sorrow."--_Ed. 1786._ [136] "Censorious Chloe."--_Ib._ [137] "While laughing folly hears."--_Ib._ [138] "Death's arrest."--_Ed. 1786._ [139] "My lovely lass."--_Ib._ [140] "If you had once a soldier's guise, The splendid coat, the sprightly air, You might seem charming in these eyes, Nor would I quite despair."--_Ed. 1786._ [141] "His handsome shape, his manly face, His youthful step in you I trace-- All, all I wish for, but the lace."--_Ib._ [142] The following eleven lines not in the original version. [143] The 1786 version ended as follows: _Thyrsis_ For you I would forego my ease, And traverse lakes, or ravage seas, And dress in lace, or what you please. This enchanting month of May, So bright, so bloomy, and so gay, Claims our nuptials on this day. For her vernal triumphs, we Tune the harp to symphony-- Conquest has attended me. Brightest season for the mind, Vigorous, free, and unconfin'd, Golden age of human kind. Still at variance with thy charms Death's eternal empire stands-- _Hymen_, come--while rapture warms, And give Lucinda to my arms. MAC SWIGGEN[144] A SATIRE Written 1775 Long have I sat on this disast'rous shore, And, sighing, sought to gain a passage o'er To Europe's towns, where, as our travellers say, Poets may flourish, or, perhaps they may; But such abuse has from your coarse pen fell I think I may defer my voyage as well; Why should I far in search of honour roam, And dunces leave to triumph here at home? Great Jove in wrath a spark of genius gave. And bade me drink the mad Pierian wave, Hence came these rhimes, with truth ascrib'd to me, That swell thy little soul to jealousy:[145] If thus, tormented at these flighty lays, You strive to blast what ne'er was meant for praise, How will you bear the more exalted rhime, By labour polish'd, and matur'd by time? Devoted madman! what inspir'd thy rage, Who bade thy foolish muse with me engage? Against a wind-mill would'st thou try thy might, Against a giant[146] would a pigmy fight? What could thy slanderous pen with malice arm To injure him, who never did thee harm?[147] Have I from thee been urgent to attain The mean ideas of thy barren brain? Have I been seen in borrowed clothes to shine, And, when detected, swear by Jove they're mine? O miscreant, hostile to thine own repose, From thy own envy thy destruction flows! Bless'd be our western world--its scenes conspire To raise a poet's fancy and his fire, Lo, blue-topt mountains to the skies ascend! Lo, shady forests to the breezes bend! See mighty streams meandering to the main! See lambs and lambkins sport on every plain! The spotted herds in flowery meadows see! But what, ungenerous wretch, are these to thee?-- You find no charms in all that nature yields, Then leave to me the grottoes and the fields: I interfere not with your vast design-- Pursue your studies, and I'll follow mine, Pursue, well pleas'd, your theologic schemes, Attend professors, and correct your themes, Still some dull nonsense, low-bred wit invent, Or prove from scripture what it never meant, Or far through law, that land of scoundrels, stray, And truth disguise through all your mazy way; Wealth you may gain, your clients you may squeeze, And by long cheating, learn to live at ease; If but in Wood or Littleton well read, The devil shall help you to your daily bread. O waft me far, ye muses of the west-- Give me your green bowers and soft seats of rest-- Thrice happy in those dear retreats to find A safe retirement from all human kind. Though dire misfortunes every step attend, The muse, still social, still remains a friend-- In solitude her converse gives delight, With gay poetic dreams she cheers the night, She aids me, shields me, bears me on her wings, In spite of growling whelps, to high, exalted things, Beyond the miscreants that my peace molest, Miscreants, with dullness and with rage opprest. Hail, great Mac Swiggen![148] foe to honest fame,[149] Patron of dunces, and thyself the same, You dream of conquest--tell me, how, or whence? Act like a man and combat me with sense-- This evil have I known, and known but once,[150] Thus to be gall'd and slander'd by a dunce, Saw rage and weakness join their dastard plan To crush the shadow, not attack the man. What swarms of vermin from the sultry south Like frogs surround thy pestilential mouth-- Clad in the garb of sacred sanctity, What madness prompts thee to invent a lie? Thou base defender of a wretched crew, Thy tongue let loose on those you never knew, The human spirit with the brutal join'd, The imps of Orcus in thy breast combin'd, The genius barren, and the wicked heart, Prepar'd to take each trifling scoundrel's part, The turn'd up nose, the monkey's foolish face, The scorn of reason, and your sire's disgrace-- Assist me, gods, to drive this dog of rhime Back to the torments of his native clime, Where dullness mingles with her native earth,[151] And rhimes, not worth the pang that gave them birth! Where did he learn to write or talk with men?-- A senseless blockhead, with a scribbling pen-- In vile acrostics thou may'st please the fair,[152] Not less than with thy looks and powder'd hair, But strive no more with rhime to daunt thy foes, Or, by the flame that in my bosom glows, The muse on thee shall her worst fury spend, And hemp, or water, thy vile being end. Aspers'd like me, who would not grieve and rage! Who would not burn, Mac Swiggen to engage? Him and his friends, a mean, designing race, I, singly I, must combat face to face-- Alone I stand to meet the foul-mouth'd train,[153] Assisted by no poets of the plain, Whose timerous Muses cannot swell their theme Beyond a meadow or a purling stream.-- Were not my breast impervious to despair, And did not Clio reign unrivall'd there, I must expire beneath the ungenerous host, And dullness triumph o'er a poet lost. Rage gives me wings, and fearless prompts me on To conquer brutes the world should blush to own; No peace, no quarter to such imps I lend, Death and perdition on each line I send; Bring all the wittlings that your host supplies, A cloud of nonsense and a storm of lies-- Your kitchen wit--Mac Swiggen's loud applause, That wretched rhymer with his lanthorn jaws-- His deep-set eyes forever on the wink, His soul extracted from the public sink-- All such as he, to my confusion call-- And tho' ten myriads--I despise them all. Come on, Mac Swiggen, come--your muse is willing, Your prose is merry, but your verse is killing-- Come on, attack me with that whining prose, Your beard is red, and swine-like is your nose, Like burning brush your bristly head of hair, The ugliest image of a Greenland bear-- Come on--attack me with your choicest rhimes, Sound void of sense betrays the unmeaning chimes-- Come, league your forces; all your wit combine, Your wit not equal to the bold design-- The heaviest arms the Muse can give, I wield, To stretch Mac Swiggen floundering on the field, 'Swiggen, who, aided by some spurious Muse, But bellows nonsense, and but writes abuse, 'Swiggen, immortal and unfading grown,[154] But by no deeds or merits of his own.-- So, when some hateful monster sees the day, In spirits we preserve it from decay, But for what end, it is not hard to guess-- Not for its value, but its ugliness. Now, by the winds which shake thy rubric mop, (That nest of witches, or that barber's shop) Mac Swiggen, hear--Be wise in times to come, A dunce by nature, bid thy muse be dumb, Lest you, devoted to the infernal skies, Descend, like Lucifer, no more to rise.-- Sick of all feuds, to Reason I appeal[155] From wars of paper, and from wars of steel, Let others here their hopes and wishes end, I to the sea with weary steps descend, Quit the mean conquest that such swine might yield, And leave Mac Swiggen to enjoy the field-- In distant isles some happier scene I'll choose, And court in softer shades the unwilling Muse, Thrice happy there, through peaceful plains to rove, Or the cool verdure of the orange grove, Safe from the miscreants that my peace molest, Miscreants, with dullness and with rage opprest. [144] I can find only two versions of this poem: that in the 1786 edition of the poet, which I have reproduced, and that in the 1809 edition, in which the title is changed to "A Satire in Answer to a Hostile Attack. [First written, and published 1775.]" From the nature of the concluding lines of the poem, it may be inferred that it was the last work done by the poet before starting on his voyage to the West Indies, late In November. I have not been able to find a trace of the hostile attack in the newspapers or publications of the period, or of the original publication of "Mac Swiggen." The poem was omitted from the 1795 edition, only the first eight lines being used in the short poem "To Shylock Ap-Shenken." The poet made many verbal changes for the later edition, but I have marked only the most significant. [145] "Urge your little soul to cruelty."--_Ed. 1809._ [146] "Castle."--_Ed. 1809._ [147] "Meant you harm."--_Ib._ [148] "Thou bright genius." In each case where Mac Swiggen is used in the earlier version, it is changed later.--"This giant," "Sangrado," "dear satirist," "a green goose," "scribbler," and "insect," are supplied in its place. [149] Of the ninety-four remaining lines of the poem, fifty were taken from the satires written by the poet while in college, in the war between the Whig and Cliosophic Societies. Many of the lines were much changed. The portion used by Freneau may be said to comprise all of the three early satires that could be quoted with decency. [150] This line and the one following not in the Clio-Whig satires. [151] This line and the one following not in the Clio-Whig satires. [152] This line and the seven following not in the Clio-Whig satires. [153] This line and the seven following not in the Clio-Whig satires. [154] Six lines not in Clio-Whig satires. [155] The remainder of the poem not in the Clio-Whig satires. THE HOUSE OF NIGHT[156] A Vision ADVERTISEMENT--This Poem is founded upon the authority of Scripture, inasmuch as these sacred books assert, that _the last enemy that shall be conquered is Death_. For the purposes of poetry he is here personified, and represented as on his dying bed. The scene is laid at a solitary palace, (the time midnight) which, tho' before beautiful and joyous, is now become sad and gloomy, as being the abode and receptacle of Death. Its owner, an amiable, majestic youth, who had lately lost a beloved consort, nevertheless with a noble philosophical fortitude and humanity, entertains him in a friendly manner, and by employing Physicians, endeavours to restore him to health, altho' an enemy; convinced of the excellence and propriety of that divine precept, _If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink_. He nevertheless, as if by a spirit of prophecy, informs this (fictitiously) wicked being of the certainty of his doom, and represents to him in a pathetic manner the vanity of his expectations, either of a reception into the abodes of the just, or continuing longer to make havock of mankind upon earth. The patient finding his end approaching, composes his epitaph, and orders it to be engraved on his tombstone, hinting to us thereby, that even Death and Distress have vanity; and would be remembered with honour after he is no more, altho' his whole life has been spent in deeds of devastation and murder. He dies at last in the utmost agonies of despair, after agreeing with an avaricious Undertaker to intomb his bones. This reflects upon the inhumanity of those men, who, not to mention an enemy, would scarcely cover a departed friend with a little dust, without certainty of reward for so doing. The circumstances of his funeral are then recited, and the visionary and fabulous part of the poem disappears. It concludes with a few reflections on the impropriety of a too great attachment to the present life, and incentives to such moral virtue as may assist in conducting us to a better. 1 Trembling I write my dream, and recollect A fearful vision at the midnight hour; So late, Death o'er me spread his sable wings, Painted with fancies of malignant power! 2 Such was the dream the sage Chaldean saw 5 Disclos'd to him that felt heav'n's vengeful rod, Such was the ghost, who through deep silence cry'd, Shall mortal man--be juster than his God? 3 Let others draw from smiling skies their theme, And tell of climes that boast unfading light, 10 I draw a darker scene, replete with gloom, I sing the horrors of the House of Night. 4 Stranger, believe the truth experience tells, Poetic dreams are of a finer cast Than those which o'er the sober brain diffus'd, 15 Are but a repetition of some action past. 5 Fancy, I own thy power--when sunk in sleep Thou play'st thy wild delusive part so well You lift me into immortality, Depict new heavens, or draw the scenes of hell. 20 6 By some sad means, when Reason holds no sway, Lonely I rov'd at midnight o'er a plain Where murmuring streams and mingling rivers flow Far to their springs, or seek the sea again. 7 Sweet vernal May! tho' then thy woods in bloom 25 Flourish'd, yet nought of this could Fancy see, No wild pinks bless'd the meads, no green the fields, And naked seem'd to stand each lifeless tree: 8 Dark was the sky, and not one friendly star Shone from the zenith or horizon, clear, 30 Mist sate upon the woods, and darkness rode In her black chariot, with a wild career. 9 And from the woods the late resounding note Issued of the loquacious Whip-poor-will,[A] Hoarse, howling dogs, and nightly roving wolves 35 Clamour'd from far off cliffs invisible. [A] A Bird peculiar to America, of a solitary nature, who never sings but in the night. Her note resembles the name given to her by the country people.--_Freneau's note._ 10 Rude, from the wide extended Chesapeke I heard the winds the dashing waves assail, And saw from far, by picturing fancy form'd, The black ship travelling through the noisy gale. 40 11 At last, by chance and guardian fancy led, I reach'd a noble dome, rais'd fair and high, And saw the light from upper windows flame, Presage of mirth and hospitality. 12 And by that light around the dome appear'd 45 A mournful garden of autumnal hue, Its lately pleasing flowers all drooping stood Amidst high weeds that in rank plenty grew. 13 The Primrose there, the violet darkly blue, Daisies and fair Narcissus ceas'd to rise, 50 Gay spotted pinks their charming bloom withdrew, And Polyanthus quench'd its thousand dyes. 14 No pleasant fruit or blossom gaily smil'd, Nought but unhappy plants or trees were seen, The yew, the myrtle, and the church-yard elm, 55 The cypress, with its melancholy green. 15 There cedars dark, the osier, and the pine, Shorn tamarisks, and weeping willows grew, The poplar tall, the lotos, and the lime, And pyracantha did her leaves renew. 60 16 The poppy there, companion to repose, Display'd her blossoms that began to fall, And here the purple amaranthus rose With mint strong-scented, for the funeral. 17 And here and there with laurel shrubs between 65 A tombstone lay, inscrib'd with strains of woe, And stanzas sad, throughout the dismal green, Lamented for the dead that slept below. 18 Peace to this awful dome!--when strait I heard The voice of men in a secluded room, 70 Much did they talk of death, and much of life, Of coffins, shrouds, and horrors of a tomb. 19 Pathetic were their words, and well they aim'd To explain the mystic paths of providence, Learn'd were they all, but there remain'd not I 75 To hear the upshot of their conference. 20 Meantime from an adjoining chamber came Confused murmurings, half distinguish'd sounds, And as I nearer drew, disputes arose Of surgery, and remedies for wounds. 80 21 Dull were their feuds, for they went on to talk Of _Anchylosis_,[B] and the shoulder blade, _Os Femoris_,[B] _Trochanters_[B]--and whate'er Has been discuss'd by Cheselden or Meade: [B] _Anchylosis_--a morbid contraction of the joints. _Os Femoris_--the thigh bone. _Trochanters_--two processes in the upper part of the thigh bone, otherwise called _rotator major et minor_, in which the tendons of many muscles terminate.--_Freneau's notes._ 22 And often each, to prove his notion true, 85 Brought proofs from Galen or Hippocrates-- But fancy led me hence--and left them so, Firm at their points of hardy No and Yes. 23 Then up three winding stairs my feet were brought To a high chamber, hung with mourning sad, 90 The unsnuff'd candles glar'd with visage dim, 'Midst grief, in ecstacy of woe run mad. 24 A wide leaf'd table stood on either side, Well fraught with phials, half their liquids spent, And from a couch, behind the curtain's veil, 95 I heard a hollow voice of loud lament. 25 Turning to view the object whence it came, My frighted eyes a horrid form survey'd; Fancy, I own thy power--Death on the couch, With fleshless limbs, at rueful length, was laid. 100 26 And o'er his head flew jealousies and cares, Ghosts, imps, and half the black Tartarian crew, Arch-angels damn'd, nor was their Prince remote, Borne on the vaporous wings of Stygian dew. 27 Around his bed, by the dull flambeaux' glare, 105 I saw pale phantoms--Rage to madness vext, Wan, wasting grief, and ever musing care, Distressful pain, and poverty perplext. 28 Sad was his countenance, if we can call That countenance, where only bones were seen 110 And eyes sunk in their sockets, dark and low, And teeth, that only show'd themselves to grin. 29 Reft was his scull of hair, and no fresh bloom Of chearful mirth sate on his visage hoar: Sometimes he rais'd his head, while deep-drawn groans 115 Were mixt with words that did his fate deplore. 30 Oft did he wish to see the daylight spring, And often toward the window lean'd to hear, Fore-runner of the scarlet-mantled morn, The early note of wakeful Chanticleer. 120 31 Thus he--But at my hand a portly youth Of comely countenance, began to tell, "That this was Death upon his dying bed, "Sullen, morose, and peevish to be well; 32 "Fixt is his doom--the miscreant reigns no more 125 "The tyrant of the dying or the dead; "This night concludes his all-consuming reign, "Pour out, ye heav'ns, your vengeance on his head. 33 "But since, my friend (said he), chance leads you here, "With me this night upon the sick attend, 130 "You on this bed of death must watch, and I "Will not be distant from the fretful fiend. 34 "Before he made this lofty pile his home, "In undisturb'd repose I sweetly slept, "But when he came to this sequester'd dome, 135 "'Twas then my troubles came, and then I wept: 35 "Twice three long nights, in this sad chamber, I, "As though a brother languish'd in despair, "Have 'tended faithful round his gloomy bed, "Have been content to breathe this loathsome air. 140 36 "A while relieve the languors that I feel, "Sleep's magic forces close my weary eyes; "Soft o'er my soul unwonted slumbers steal, "Aid the weak patient till you see me rise. 37 "But let no slumbers on your eye-lids fall, 145 "That if he ask for powder or for pill "You may be ready at the word to start, "And still seem anxious to perform his will. 38 "The bleeding Saviour of a world undone "Bade thy compassion rise toward thy foe; 150 "Then, stranger, for the sake of Mary's son, "Thy tears of pity on this wretch bestow. 39 "'Twas he that stole from my adoring arms "Aspasia, she the loveliest of her kind, "Lucretia's virtue, with a Helen's charms, 155 "Charms of the face, and beauties of the mind. 40 "The blushy cheek, the lively, beaming eye, "The ruby lip, the flowing jetty hair, "The stature tall, the aspect so divine, "All beauty, you would think, had center'd there. 160 41 "Each future age her virtues shall extol, "Nor the just tribute to her worth refuse; "Fam'd, to the stars Urania bids her rise, "Theme of the moral, and the tragic Muse. 42 "Sweet as the fragrance of the vernal morn, 165 "Nipt in its bloom this faded flower I see; "The inspiring angel from that breast is gone, "And life's warm tide forever chill'd in thee! 43 "Such charms shall greet my longing soul no more, "Her lively eyes are clos'd in endless shade, 170 "Torpid, she rests on yonder marble floor; "Approach, and see what havock Death has made. 44 "Yet, stranger, hold--her charms are so divine, "Such tints of life still on her visage glow, "That even in death this slumbering bride of mine 175 "May seize thy heart, and make thee wretched too. 45 "O shun the sight--forbid thy trembling hand "From her pale face to raise the enshrouding lawn,-- "Death claims thy care, obey his stern command, "Trim the dull tapers, for I see no dawn!" 180 46 So said, at Death's left side I sate me down, The mourning youth toward his right reclin'd; Death in the middle lay, with all his groans, And much he toss'd and tumbled, sigh'd and pin'd. 47 But now this man of hell toward me turn'd, 185 And strait, in hideous tone, began to speak; Long held he sage discourse, but I forebore To answer him, much less his news to seek. 48 He talk'd of tomb-stones and of monuments, Of Equinoctial climes and India shores, 190 He talk'd of stars that shed their influence, Fevers and plagues, and all their noxious stores. 49 He mention'd, too, the guileful _calenture_,[C] Tempting the sailor on the deep sea main, That paints gay groves upon the ocean floor, 195 Beckoning her victim to the faithless scene. [C] _Calenture_--an inflammatory fever, attended with a delirium, common in long voyages at sea, in which the diseased persons fancy the sea to be green fields and meadows, and, if they are not hindered, will leap overboard.--_Freneau's note._ 50 Much spoke he of the myrtle and the yew, Of ghosts that nightly walk the church-yard o'er, Of storms that through the wint'ry ocean blow And dash the well-mann'd galley on the shore, 200 51 Of broad-mouth'd cannons, and the thunderbolt, Of sieges and convulsions, dearth and fire, Of poisonous weeds--but seem'd to sneer at these Who by the laurel o'er him did aspire. 52 Then with a hollow voice thus went he on: 205 "Get up, and search, and bring, when found, to me, "Some cordial, potion, or some pleasant draught, "Sweet, slumb'rous poppy, or the mild Bohea. 53 "But hark, my pitying friend!--and, if you can, "Deceive the grim physician at the door-- 210 "Bring half the mountain springs--ah! hither bring "The cold rock water from the shady bower. 54 "For till this night such thirst did ne'er invade, "A thirst provok'd by heav'n's avenging hand; "Hence bear me, friends, to quaff, and quaff again 215 "The cool wave bubbling from the yellow sand. 55 "To these dark walls with stately step I came, "Prepar'd your drugs and doses to defy; "Smit with the love of never dying fame, "I came, alas! to conquer--not to die!" 220 56 Glad, from his side I sprang, and fetch'd the draught, Which down his greedy throat he quickly swills, Then on a second errand sent me strait, To search in some dark corner for his pills. 57 Quoth he, "These pills have long compounded been, 225 "Of dead men's bones and bitter roots, I trow; "But that I may to wonted health return, "Throughout my lank veins shall their substance go." 58 So down they went.--He rais'd his fainting head And oft in feeble tone essay'd to talk; 230 Quoth he, "Since remedies have small avail, "Assist unhappy Death once more to walk." 59 Then slowly rising from his loathsome bed, On wasted legs the meagre monster stood, Gap'd wide, and foam'd, and hungry seem'd to ask, 235 Tho' sick, an endless quantity of food. 60 Said he, "The sweet melodious flute prepare, "The anthem, and the organ's solemn sound, "Such as may strike my soul with ecstacy, "Such as may from yon' lofty wall rebound. 240 61 "Sweet music can the fiercest pains assuage, "She bids the soul to heaven's blest mansions rise, "She calms despair, controuls infernal rage "And deepest anguish, when it hears her, dies. 62 "And see, the mizzling, misty midnight reigns, 245 "And no soft dews are on my eye-lids sent!-- "Here, stranger, lend thy hand; assist me, pray, "To walk a circuit of no large extent."-- 63 On my prest shoulders leaning, round he went, And could have made the boldest spectre flee, 250 I led him up stairs, and I led him down, But not one moment's rest from pain got he. 64 Then with his dart, its cusp unpointed now, Thrice with main strength he smote the trembling floor; The roof resounded to the fearful blow, 255 And Cleon started, doom'd to sleep no more. 65 When thus spoke Death, impatient of controul, "Quick, move, and bring from yonder black bureau "The sacred book that may preserve my soul "From long damnation, and eternal woe. 260 66 "And with it bring--for you may find them there, "The works of holy authors, dead and gone, "The sacred tome of moving Drelincourt, "Or what more solemn Sherlock mus'd upon: 67 "And read, my Cleon, what these sages say, 265 "And what the sacred Penman hath declar'd, "That when the wicked leaves his odious way, "His sins shall vanish, and his soul be spar'd." 68 But he, unmindful of the vain command, Reason'd with Death, nor were his reasonings few: 270 Quoth he--"My Lord, what frenzy moves your brain, "Pray, what, my Lord, can Sherlock be to you, 69 "Or all the sage divines that ever wrote, "Grave Drelincourt, or heaven's unerring page; "These point their arrows at your hostile breast, 275 "And raise new pains that time must ne'er assuage. 70 "And why should thus thy woe disturb my rest? "Much of Theology I once did read, "And there 'tis fixt, sure as my God is so, "That Death shall perish, tho' a God should bleed. 280 71 "The martyr, doom'd the pangs of fire to feel, "Lives but a moment in the sultry blast; "The victim groans, and dies beneath the steel, "But thy severer pains shall always last. 72 "O miscreant vile, thy age has made thee doat-- 285 "If peace, if sacred peace were found for you, "Hell would cry out, and all the damn'd arise "And, more deserving, seek for pity too. 73 "Seek not for Paradise--'tis not for thee, "Where high in heaven its sweetest blossoms blow, 290 "Nor even where, gliding to the Persian main, "Thy waves, Euphrates, through the garden flow! 74 "Bloody has been thy reign, O man of hell, "Who sympathiz'd with no departing groan; "Cruel wast thou, and hardly dost deserve 295 "To have _Hic Jacet_ stampt upon thy stone. 75 "He that could build his mansion o'er the tombs, "Depending still on sickness and decay, "May dwell unmov'd amidst these drowsier glooms, "May laugh the dullest of these shades away. 300 76 "Remember how with unrelenting ire "You tore the infant from the unwilling breast-- "Aspasia fell, and Cleon must expire, "Doom'd by the impartial God to endless rest: 77 "In vain with stars he deck'd yon' spangled skies, 305 "And bade the mind to heaven's bright regions soar, "And brought so far to my admiring eyes "A glimpse of glories that shall blaze no more! 78 "Even now, to glut thy devilish wrath, I see "From eastern realms a wasteful army rise: 310 "Why else those lights that tremble in the north? "Why else yon' comet blazing through the skies? 79 "Rejoice, O fiend; Britannia's tyrant sends "From German plains his myriads to our shore. "The fierce Hibernian with the Briton join'd-- 315 "Bring them, ye winds!--but waft them back no more. 80 "To you, alas! the fates in wrath deny "The comforts to our parting moments due, "And leave you here to languish and to die, "Your crimes too many, and your tears too few. 320 81 "No cheering voice to thee shall cry, Repent! "As once it echoed through the wilderness-- "No patron died for thee--damn'd, damn'd art thou "Like all the devils, nor one jot the less. 82 "A gloomy land, with sullen skies is thine, 325 "Where never rose or amaranthus grow, "No daffodils, nor comely columbine, "No hyacinths nor asphodels for you. 83 "The barren trees that flourish on the shore "With leaves or fruit were never seen to bend, 330 "O'er languid waves unblossom'd branches hang, "And every branch sustains some vagrant fiend. 84 "And now no more remains, but to prepare "To take possession of thy punishment; "That's thy inheritance, that thy domain, 335 "A land of bitter woe, and loud lament. 85 "And oh that He, who spread the universe, "Would cast one pitying glance on thee below! "Millions of years in torments thou might'st fry, "But thy eternity!--who can conceive its woe!" 340 86 He heard, and round with his black eye-balls gaz'd, Full of despair, and curs'd, and rav'd, and swore: "And since this is my doom," said he, "call up "Your wood-mechanics to my chamber door: 87 "Blame not on me the ravage to be made; 345 "Proclaim,--even Death abhors such woe to see; "I'll quit the world, while decently I can, "And leave the work to George my deputy." 88 Up rush'd a band, with compasses and scales To measure his slim carcase, long and lean-- 350 "Be sure," said he, "to frame my coffin strong, "You, master workman, and your men, I mean: 89 "For if the Devil, so late my trusty friend, "Should get one hint where I am laid, from you, "Not with my soul content, he'd seek to find 355 "That mouldering mass of bones, my body, too! 90 "Of hardest ebon let the plank be found, "With clamps and ponderous bars secur'd around, "That if the box by Satan should be storm'd, "It may be able for resistance found." 360 91 "Yes," said the master workman, "noble Death, "Your coffin shall be strong--that leave to me-- "But who shall these your funeral dues discharge? "Nor friends nor pence you have, that I can see." 92 To this said Death--"You might have ask'd me, too, 365 "Base caitiff, who are my executors, "Where my estate, and who the men that shall "Partake my substance, and be call'd my heirs. 93 "Know, then, that hell is my inheritance, "The devil himself my funeral dues must pay-- 370 "Go--since you must be paid--go, ask of him, "For he has gold, as fabling poets say." 94 Strait they retir'd--when thus he gave me charge, Pointing from the light window to the west, "Go three miles o'er the plain, and you shall see 375 "A burying-yard of sinners dead, unblest. 95 "Amid the graves a spiry building stands "Whose solemn knell resounding through the gloom "Shall call thee o'er the circumjacent lands "To the dull mansion destin'd for my tomb. 380 96 "There, since 'tis dark, I'll plant a glimmering light "Just snatch'd from hell, by whose reflected beams "Thou shalt behold a tomb-stone, full eight feet, "Fast by a grave, replete with ghosts and dreams. 97 "And on that stone engrave this epitaph, 385 "Since Death, it seems, must die like mortal men; "Yes--on that stone engrave this epitaph, "Though all hell's furies aim to snatch the pen. 98 "_Death in this tomb his weary bones hath laid,_ "_Sick of dominion o'er the human kind--_ 390 "_Behold what devastations he hath made,_ "_Survey the millions by his arm confin'd._ 99 "_Six thousand years has sovereign sway been mine,_ "_None, but myself, can real glory claim;_ "_Great Regent of the world I reign'd alone,_ 395 "_And princes trembled when my mandate came._ 100 "_Vast and unmatch'd throughout the world, my fame_ "_Takes place of gods, and asks no mortal date--_ "_No; by myself, and by the heavens, I swear,_ "_Not Alexander's name is half so great._ 400 101 "_Nor swords nor darts my prowess could withstand,_ "_All quit their arms, and bowd to my decree,_ "_Even mighty Julius died beneath my hand,_ "_For slaves and Cæsars were the same to me!_ 102 "_Traveller, wouldst thou his noblest trophies seek,_ 405 "_Search in no narrow spot obscure for those;_ "_The sea profound, the surface of all land_ "_Is moulded with the myriads of his foes._" 103 Scarce had he spoke, when on the lofty dome Rush'd from the clouds a hoarse resounding blast-- 410 Round the four eaves so loud and sad it play'd As though all musick were to breathe its last. 104 Warm was the gale, and such as travellers say Sport with the winds on Zaara's barren waste; Black was the sky, a mourning carpet spread, 415 Its azure blotted, and its stars o'ercast! 105 Lights in the air like burning stars were hurl'd, Dogs howl'd, heaven mutter'd, and the tempest blew, The red half-moon peeped from behind a cloud As if in dread the amazing scene to view. 420 106 The mournful trees that in the garden stood Bent to the tempest as it rush'd along, The elm, the myrtle, and the cypress sad More melancholy tun'd its bellowing song. 107 No more that elm its noble branches spread, 425 The yew, the cypress, or the myrtle tree, Rent from the roots the tempest tore them down, And all the grove in wild confusion lay. 108 Yet, mindful of his dread command, I part Glad from the magic dome--nor found relief; 430 Damps from the dead hung heavier round my heart, While sad remembrance rous'd her stores of grief. 109 O'er a dark field I held my dubious way Where Jack-a-lanthorn walk'd his lonely round, Beneath my feet substantial darkness lay, 435 And screams were heard from the distemper'd ground. 110 Nor look'd I back, till to a far off wood, Trembling with fear, my weary feet had sped-- Dark was the night, but at the inchanted dome I saw the infernal windows flaming red. 440 111 And from within the howls of Death I heard, Cursing the dismal night that gave him birth, Damning his ancient sire, and mother sin, Who at the gates of hell, accursed, brought him forth. 112 [For fancy gave to my enraptur'd soul 445 An eagle's eye, with keenest glance to see, And bade those distant sounds distinctly roll, Which, waking, never had affected me.] 113 Oft his pale breast with cruel hand he smote, And tearing from his limbs a winding sheet, 450 Roar'd to the black skies, while the woods around, As wicked as himself, his words repeat. 114 Thrice tow'rd the skies his meagre arms he rear'd, Invok'd all hell, and thunders on his head, Bid light'nings fly, earth yawn, and tempests roar, 455 And the sea wrap him in its oozy bed. 115 "My life for one cool draught!--O, fetch your springs, "Can one unfeeling to my woes be found! "No friendly visage comes to my relief, "But ghosts impend, and spectres hover round. 460 116 "Though humbled now, dishearten'd and distrest, "Yet, when admitted to the peaceful ground, "With heroes, kings, and conquerors I shall rest, "Shall sleep as safely, and perhaps as sound." 117 Dim burnt the lamp, and now the phantom Death 465 Gave his last groans in horror and despair-- "All hell demands me hence,"--he said, and threw The red lamp hissing through the midnight air. 118 Trembling, across the plain my course I held, And found the grave-yard, loitering through the gloom, 470 And, in the midst, a hell-red, wandering light, Walking in fiery circles round the tomb. 119 Among the graves a spiry building stood, Whose tolling bell, resounding through the shade, Sung doleful ditties to the adjacent wood, 475 And many a dismal drowsy thing it said. 120 This fabrick tall, with towers and chancels grac'd, Was rais'd by sinners' hands, in ages fled; The roof they painted, and the beams they brac'd, And texts from scripture o'er the walls they spread: 480 121 But wicked were their hearts, for they refus'd To aid the helpless orphan, when distrest, The shivering, naked stranger they mis-us'd, And banish'd from their doors the starving guest. 122 By laws protected, cruel and prophane, 485 The poor man's ox these monsters drove away;-- And left Distress to attend her infant train, No friend to comfort, and no bread to stay. 123 But heaven look'd on with keen, resentful eye, And doom'd them to perdition and the grave, 490 That as they felt not for the wretch distrest, So heaven no pity on their souls would have. 124 In pride they rais'd this building tall and fair, Their hearts were on perpetual mischief bent, With pride they preach'd, and pride was in their prayer, 495 With pride they were deceiv'd, and so to hell they went. 125 At distance far approaching to the tomb, By lamps and lanthorns guided through the shade, A coal-black chariot hurried through the gloom, Spectres attending, in black weeds array'd, 500 126 Whose woeful forms yet chill my soul with dread, Each wore a vest in Stygian chambers wove, Death's kindred all--Death's horses they bestrode, And gallop'd fiercely, as the chariot drove. 127 Each horrid face a grizly mask conceal'd, 505 Their busy eyes shot terror to my soul As now and then, by the pale lanthorn's glare, I saw them for their parted friend condole. 128 Before the hearse Death's chaplain seem'd to go, Who strove to comfort, what he could, the dead; 510 Talk'd much of Satan, and the land of woe, And many a chapter from the scriptures read. 129 At last he rais'd the swelling anthem high, In dismal numbers seem'd he to complain; The captive tribes that by Euphrates wept, 515 Their song was jovial to his dreary strain. 130 That done, they plac'd the carcase in the tomb, To dust and dull oblivion now resign'd, Then turn'd the chariot tow'rd the House of Night, Which soon flew off, and left no trace behind. 520 131 But as I stoop'd to write the appointed verse, Swifter than thought the airy scene decay'd; Blushing the morn arose, and from the east With her gay streams of light dispell'd the shade. 132 What is this Death, ye deep read sophists, say?-- 525 Death is no more than one unceasing change; New forms arise, while other forms decay, Yet all is Life throughout creation's range. 133 The towering Alps, the haughty Appenine, The Andes, wrapt in everlasting snow, 530 The Apalachian and the Ararat Sooner or later must to ruin go. 134 Hills sink to plains, and man returns to dust, That dust supports a reptile or a flower; Each changeful atom by some other nurs'd 535 Takes some new form, to perish in an hour. 135 Too nearly join'd to sickness, toils, and pains, (Perhaps for former crimes imprison'd here) True to itself the immortal soul remains, And seeks new mansions in the starry sphere. 540 136 When Nature bids thee from the world retire, With joy thy lodging leave, a fated guest; In Paradise, the land of thy desire, Existing always, always to be blest. [156] The text is from the edition of 1786, which contains the only complete version. The poem was first published in the August number of _The United States Magazine_, 1779, which also contained the following note: "_'The House of Night'_, a poem in the present number of the Magazine, is from a young gentleman who has favoured us with several original pieces in the course of this work; and readers of taste will no doubt be pleased with it, as perfectly original both in the design and manner of it." It bore the title "The House of Night; or, Six Hours Lodging with Death, A Vision," and the quotation: "_Felix qui potiut rerum cognoscere causas, Atque metus omnes et inexorable Fatum Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari._ VIRG. GEORG. II., v. 490." As printed in the magazine it consisted of seventy-three stanzas, which coincide with the following numbers of the 1786 edition: 3, 4, 6-10, 12, 14, 18, 20-26, 28, 29, 31, 32, 47-54, 58, 59, 65, 66, 68, 69, 72, 74, 75, 78, 79, 86, 87, 94, 96-100, 102-106, 111, 113-115, 117, 118, 125-127, 130, 131. Following are the variations: Line 10, "eternal light"; 11, "a deeper scene"; 21, "the mind cannot recall"; 23, "where Chesapeque's deep rivers upward flow"; 25, "Though then the woods, in fairest vernal bloom"; 28, "childless tree"; 29, "a friendly star"; 35, "Hoarse roaring wolves, and nightly roving bears"; 37, "Fierce from the loudly sounding Chesapeque"; 45, 46, "When to my view a pile of buildings stood, And near, a garden of autumnal hue"; 55, "The yew, the willow"; 69, "Peace to those buildings; when at once I heard"; 70, "in a remoter dome"; 77, "a superior chamber"; 78, "Confused murmurs, scarce distinguish'd sounds"; 81, "Long were their feuds, for they design'd to talk"; 95, "And from a bed behind a curtain veil"; 97, "Turning to view from whence the murmur came"; 99, "Death, dreary death, upon the gloomy couch"; 100, "in rueful form"; 101, "High o'er his head"; 109, 110, "Sad was his aspect, if we so can call, That aspect where but skin and bones were seen"; 111, "deep and low"; 121, 122, "Then at my hand I saw a comely youth, Of port majestic, who began to tell"; 126, "The monarch"; 127, "melancholy reign"; 185, "the man"; 186, "with frightful tone"; 188, "To answer, and"; 192, "their sickly stores"; 194, "the placid main"; 195, "fine groves"; 196, "Beckoning his footsteps"; 198, "The summer winds, and of the church-yard hoar"; 202, "Of fevers and contagions"; 206, "Arise, make search"; 229, 230, "But now refresh'd, the phantoms rais'd his head, And writhing, seem'd to aim once more to talk"; 232, "expiring death"; 234, "the monstrous spectre"; 257, "Now to the anxious youth his speech he turn'd"; 274, "inspired page"; 275, "harden'd breast"; 285, "Wicked old man"; 295, 296, "nor dost thou now deserve To have 'here lies' engrav'd"; 299, 300, "Might dwell unmov'd amidst November's glooms, And laugh the dullest of his shades away"; 309, "thy savage rage"; 310, "a bloody army"; 315, "The Caledonian with the Albion join'd." Here in the 1779 version occur the following stanzas: "Why runs thy stream dejected to the main, O Hudson, Hudson, dreary, dull and slow? Seek me no more along that mountain stream, For on his banks is heard the sound of woe. Sword, famine, thirst, and pining sickness there, Shall people half the realms this monster owns; He like the cruel foe, accursed he, Laughs at our pains, rejoices in our groans. Now wilt you tremble if you hear your fate, Out of the dread Apocalypse your doom, That death and hell must perish in the lake Of fire, dispelling half hell's ancient gloom." 341, "black optics"; 348, "And leave the business to some deputy"; 373, "Now thus the drooping victim gave me charge"; 381, "A quivering light"; 383, "by whose far glimmering beams"; 384, "arrayed with ghosts"; 388, "furies snatch the engraving pen"; 390-392, "Tir'd of his long continued victory: What glory can there be to vanquish those Who all beneath his stroke are sure to die?" 398, "Is borne secure, and rides aloft in state"; 399, "No, the stars"; 410, "Burst from the skies the fury of a blast"; 411, "Round the four eaves"; 414, "Sport with the sands"; 417, "Lights through the air like blazing stars"; 420, "As if afraid the fearful"; 424, "its dreary song"; 441, "Now from within"; 451, "Roar'd like a devil; while the woods around"; 458-460, "Haste, seize the wretch who my request denies. Tophet receive him to thy lowest pit, Chain'd midst eternal oaths and blasphemies." 470, "And found the coemetery in the gloom"; 471, "a hell-red waving light"; 472, "horrid circles"; 497, 498, "to the grave"; 499, 500, "A sable chariot drove with wild career, And following close a gloomy cavalcade"; 501, "Whose spectre forms"; 502, "by Pluto's consort wove"; 507, "lanthorn's beam"; 517, "Now deep was plac'd"; 520, "The sable steeds went swifter than the wind"; 523, 524, "Blooming the morn arose, and in the east Stalk'd gallantly in her sun-beam parade." The poem closes in the 1779 version with the following stanzas: "Waking I found my weary night a dream; Dreams are perhaps forebodings of the soul; Learn'd sages tell why all these whims arose, And from what source such mystic visions roll. Do they portend approaching death, which tells I soon must hence my darksome journey go? Sweet Cherub Hope! Dispel the clouded dream Sweet Cherub Hope, man's guardian god below. Stranger, who'er thou art, who this shall read, Say does thy nightly fancy rove like mine; Transport thee o'er wide lands and wider seas Now underneath the pole and now the burning line? Poet, who thus dost rove, say, shall thou fear New Jordan's stream prefigured by the old? It will but waft thee where thy fathers are The bards with long eternity enroll'd. It will but waft thee where thy Homer shrouds His laurell'd head in some Elysian grove, And on whose skirts perhaps in future years, At awful distance you and I may rove. Enough--when God and nature give the word, I'll tempt the dusky shore and narrow sea: Content to die, just as it be decreed, At four score years, or now at twenty-three." In the edition of 1795, Freneau used only stanzas 3-17, 119-124 of the poem, giving it the title "The Vision of the Night. A Fragment." In this there are some sixteen variations from the earlier text, nearly all minor verbal changes not always for the better. Several, however, are significant, for instance, line 12 is made to read, "I sing the horrors and the shades of night"; line 32 is changed to "with her ebon spear"; line 478 to "raised by churchmen's hands"; and 480 to "texts from Moses." The poet used the 1786 edition as a sort of quarry for his later editions. He used thirteen stanzas for "The Sexton's Sermon," q.v.; stanzas 39-43 were reprinted in the 1809 edition in connection with stanzas 35-38 of "Santa Cruz" and entitled "Elegiac Lines"; stanza 79 became stanza one and 55 stanza two of the "Hessian Embarkation," and stanza 49 was inserted after stanza 90 of the 1809 version of "Santa Cruz." THE JAMAICA FUNERAL[157] 1776 1 Alcander died--the rich, the great, the brave; Even such must yield to heaven's severe decree, Death, still at hand, conducts us to the grave, And humbles monarchs as he humbled thee. 2 When, lingering, to his end Alcander drew, Officious friends besieg'd his lofty door, Impatient they the dying man to view And touch that hand they soon must touch no more. 3 "Alas, he's gone!" the sad attendants cry, Fled is the breath that never shall return-- "Alas! he's gone!" his tearful friends reply, "Spread the dark crape, and round his pale corpse mourn. 4 "Ye that attend the pompous funeral, due, "In sable vestments let your limbs be clad, "For vulgar deaths a common sorrow shew, "But costly griefs are for the wealthy dead. 5 "Prepare the blessings of the generous vine, "Let bulls and oxen groan beneath the steel, "Throughout the board let choicest dainties shine, "To every guest a generous portion deal." 6 A mighty crowd approach'd the mourning dome, Some came to hear the sermon and the prayer, Some came to shun Xantippe's voice at home, And some with Bacchus to relieve their care. 7 A Levite came, and sigh'd among the rest, A rusty band and tatter'd gown he wore, His leaves he tumbled, and the house he blest, And conn'd his future sermon o'er and o'er. 8 And oft a glance he cast towards the wine That briskly sparkled in the glassy vase, And often drank, and often wish'd to dine, And red as Phoebus glow'd his sultry face. 9 Much did he chatter, and on various themes, He publish'd news that came from foreign climes, He told his jests, and told his last year's dreams, And quoted dull stuff from lord Wilmot's rhymes. 10 And dunn'd the mourners for his parish dues With face of brass, and scrutinizing eye, And threaten'd law-suits if they dar'd refuse To pay his honest earnings punctually. 11 An honest sire, who came in luckless hour To hear the sermon and to see the dead, Presuming on this consecrated hour, Ventur'd to check the parson on that head. 12 Quoth he, "My priest, such conduct is not fit, "For other speech this solemn hour demands: "What if your parish owes its annual debt, "Your parish ready to discharge it stands." 13 No more he said--for charg'd with wounds and pain, The parson's staff, like Jove's own lightning, flew, Which cleft his jaw-bone and his cheek in twain, And from their sockets half his grinders drew. 14 Nor less deceas'd some moments lay the sire Than if from heav'n the forked lightnings thrown Had pierc'd him with their instantaneous fire, And sent him smoking to the world unknown. 15 At last he mov'd, and, weltering in his gore. Thus did the rueful, wounded victim say, "Convey me hence--so bloody and so sore "I cannot wait to hear the parson pray; 16 "And if I did, what pleasure could be mine-- "Can he allure me to the world of bliss-- "Can he present me at the heavenly shrine "Who breaks my bones, and knocks me down in this? 17 "The scripture says--the text I well recall-- "_A Priest or Bishop must no striker be_, "Then how can such a wicked priest but fall, "Who at a funeral thus has murdered me?" 18 Thus he--But now the sumptuous dinner came, The Levite; boldly seiz'd the nobler place, Beside him sate the woe-struck widow'd dame, Who help'd him drain the brimful china vase. 19 Which now renew'd, he drank that ocean too, Like Polypheme, the boon Ulysses gave; Another came, nor did another do, For still another did the monster crave. 20 With far-fetch'd dainties he regal'd his maw, And prais'd the various meats that crown'd the board: On tender capons did the glutton gnaw, And well his platter with profusion stor'd. 21 But spoke no words of grace--I mark'd him well, I fix'd my eye upon his brazen brow-- He look'd like Satan aiming to rebel, Such pride and madness were his inmates now. 22 But not contented with this hectoring priest, Sick of his nonsense, softly I withdrew, And at a calmer table shar'd the feast, To sorrow sacred, and to friendship due. 23 Which now atchiev'd, the tolling bell remote Summon'd the living and the dead to come, And through the dying sea-breeze swell'd the note, Dull on the ear, and lengthening through the gloom. 24 The bier was brought, the costly coffin laid, And prayers were mutter'd in a doleful tone, While the sad pall, above the body spread, From many a tender breast drew many a groan. 25 The Levite, too, some tears of Bacchus shed-- Reeling before the long procession, he Strode like a general at his army's head, His gown in tatters, and his wig--ah me! 26 The words of faith in both his hands he bore, Prayers, cut and dry, by ancient prelates made, Who, bigots while they liv'd, could do no more Than leave them still by bigots to be said. 27 But he admir'd them all!--he read with joy St. Athanasius in his thundering creed, And curs'd the men whom Satan did employ To make King Charles, that heav'n-born martyr, bleed. 28 At last they reach'd the spiry building high, And soon they enter'd at the eastern gate-- The parson said his prayers most learnedly, And mutter'd more than memory can relate. 29 Then through the temple's lengthy aisles they went, Approaching still the pulpit's painted door, From whence, on Sundays, many a vow was sent, And sermons plunder'd from some prelate's store. 30 Here, as of right, the priest prepar'd to rise, And leave the corpse and gaping crowd below, Like sultry Phoebus glar'd his flaming eyes, Less fierce the stars of Greenland evenings glow. 31 Up to the pulpit strode he with an air, And from the Preacher thus his text he read: "More I esteem, and better is by far "A dog existing than a lion dead. 32 "Go, eat thy dainties with a joyful heart, "And quaff thy wine with undissembled glee, "For he who did these heavenly gifts impart "Accepts thy prayers, thy gifts, thy vows, and thee." THE SERMON 33 These truths, my friends, congenial to my soul, Demand a faithful and attentive ear-- No longer for your 'parted friend condole, No longer shed the tributary tear. 34 Curs'd be the sobs, these useless floods of woe That vainly flow for the departed dead-- If doom'd to wander on the coasts below, What are to him these seas of grief you shed? 35 If heaven in pleasure doth his hours employ-- If sighs and sorrows reach a place like this, They blast his glories, and they damp his joy, They make him wretched in the midst of bliss. 36 And can you yet--and here he smote his breast-- And can you yet bemoan that torpid mass Which now for death and desolation drest, Prepares the deep gulph of the grave to pass. 37 You fondly mourn--I mourn Alcander too, Alcander late the living, not the dead; His casks I broach'd, his liquors once I drew, And freely there on choicest dainties fed. 38 But vanish'd are they now!--no more he calls, No more invites me to his plenteous board; No more I caper at his splendid balls, Or drain his cellars, with profusion stor'd. 39 Then why, my friends, for yonder senseless clay, That ne'er again befriends me, should I mourn? Yon' simple slaves that through the cane-lands stray Are more to me than monarchs in the urn. 40 The joys of wine, immortal as my theme, To days of bliss the aspiring soul invite; Life, void of this, a punishment I deem, A Greenland winter, without heat or light. 41 Count all the trees that crown Jamaica's hills, Count all the stars that through the heavens you see. Count every drop that the wide ocean fills; Then count the pleasures Bacchus yields to me. 42 The aids of wine for toiling man were meant; I prize the smiling Caribbean bowl-- Enjoy those gifts that bounteous nature lent, Death to thy cares, refreshing to the soul. 43 Here fixt to-day in plenty's smiling vales, Just as the month revolves we laugh or groan, September comes, seas swell with horrid gales, And old Port Royal's fate may be our own. 44 A few short years, at best, will bound our span, Wretched and few, the Hebrew exile said; Live while you may, be jovial while you can, Death as a debt to nature must be paid. 45 When nature fails, the man exists no more, And death is nothing but an empty name, Spleen's genuine offspring at the midnight hour, The coward's tyrant, and the bad man's dream. 46 You ask me where these mighty hosts have fled, That once existed on this changeful ball?-- If aught remains, when mortal man is dead, Where, ere their birth they were, they now are all.[A] [A] "_Quæris, quo jaceas post obitum loco?-- Quo non nata jacent._"--Senec. Troas.--_Freneau's note._ 47 Like insects busy, in a summer's day, We toil and squabble, to increase our pain, Night comes at last, and, weary of the fray, To dust and darkness all return again. 48 Then envy not, ye sages too precise, The drop from life's gay tree, that damps our woe, Noah himself, the wary and the wise, A vineyard planted, and the vines did grow: 49 Of social soul was he--the grape he press'd, And drank the juice oblivious to his care; Sorrow he banish'd from his place of rest, And sighs and sobbing had no entrance there. 50 Such bliss be ours through every changing scene; The glowing face bespeaks the glowing heart; If heaven be joy, wine is to heaven a-kin, Since wine, on earth, can heavenly joys impart. 51 Mere glow-worms are we all, a moment shine; I, like the rest, in giddy circles run, And Grief shall say, when I this life resign, "His glass is empty, and his frolics done!" 52 He said, and ceas'd--the funeral anthem then From the deep choir and hoarse-ton'd organ came; Such are the honours paid to wealthy men, But who for Irus would attempt the same? 53 Now from the church returning, as they went, Again they reach'd Alcander's painted hall, Their sighs concluded, and their sorrows spent, They to oblivion gave the Funeral. 54 The holy man, by bishops holy made, Tun'd up to harmony his trembling strings, To various songs in various notes he play'd, And, as he plays, as gallantly he sings. 55 The widow'd dame, less pensive than before, To sprightly tunes as sprightly did advance, Her lost Alcander scarce remember'd more; And thus the funeral ended in a dance. [157] As far as I can discover, this poem occurs only in the edition of 1786. Freneau seems deliberately to have abandoned it after this edition. A few stanzas from this poem are scattered through the poem entitled "The Sexton's Sermon," _q.v._ Stanza 43 was inserted after stanza 15 of the later versions of "Santa Cruz." THE BEAUTIES OF SANTA CRUZ[A][158] 1776 Sweet orange grove, the fairest of the isle, In thy soft shade luxuriously reclin'd, Where, round my fragrant bed, the flowrets smile, In sweet delusions I deceive my mind. But Melancholy's glooms assail my breast, For potent nature reigns despotic here;-- A nation ruin'd, and a world oppress'd, Might rob the boldest Stoic of a tear. [A] Or St. Croix, a Danish island (in the American Archipelago), commonly, tho' erroneously included in the cluster of the Virgin Islands; belonging to the crown of Denmark.--_Freneau's note_ [_Ed. 1809_]. 1 Sick of thy northern glooms, come, shepherd, seek More equal climes, and a serener sky: Why shouldst thou toil amid thy frozen ground, Where half year's snows, a barren prospect lie, 2 When thou mayst go where never frost was seen, Or north-west winds with cutting fury blow, Where never ice congeal'd the limpid stream, Where never mountain tipt its head with snow? 3 Twice seven days prosperous gales thy barque shall bear To isles that flourish in perpetual green, Where richest herbage glads each shady vale, And ever verdant plants on every hill are seen. 4 Nor dread the dangers of the billowy deep, Autumnal winds shall safely waft thee o'er; Put off the timid heart, or, man unblest, Ne'er shalt thou reach this gay enchanting shore. 5 Thus Judah's tribes beheld the promis'd land, While Jordan's angry waters swell'd between; Thus trembling on the brink I see them stand, Heav'n's type in view, the Canaanitish green. 6 Thus, some mean souls, in spite of age and care, Are so united to this globe below, They never wish to cross death's dusky main, That parting them and happiness doth flow. 7 Though reason's voice might whisper to the soul That nobler climes for man the gods design-- Come, shepherd, haste--the northern breezes blow, No more the slumbering winds thy barque confine. 8 From the vast caverns of old ocean's bed, Fair Santa Cruz, arising, laves her waist, The threat'ning waters roar on every side, For every side by ocean is embrac'd. 9 Sharp, craggy rocks repel the surging brine, Whose cavern'd sides by restless billows wore, Resemblance claim to that remoter isle [_Eolia_ Where once the winds' proud lord the sceptre bore. 10 Betwixt old Cancer and the mid-way line, In happiest climate lies this envied isle, Trees bloom throughout the year, streams ever flow, And fragrant Flora wears a lasting smile. 11 Cool, woodland streams from shaded clifts descend, The dripping rock no want of moisture knows, Supply'd by springs that on the skies depend, That fountain feeding as the current flows. 12 Such were the isles which happy Flaccus sung, Where one tree blossoms while another bears, Where spring forever gay, and ever young, Walks her gay round through her unwearied years. 13 Such were the climes which youthful Eden saw Ere crossing fates destroy'd her golden reign-- Reflect upon thy loss, unhappy man, And seek the vales of Paradise again. 14 No lowering skies are here--the neighbouring sun Clear and unveil'd, his brilliant journey goes, Each morn emerging from the ambient main, And sinking there each evening to repose. 15 In June's fair month the spangled traveller gains The utmost limits of his northern way, And blesses with his beams cold lands remote, Sad Greenland's coast, and Hudson's frozen bay. 16 The shivering swains of those unhappy climes Behold the side-way monarch through the trees, We feel his fiercer heat, his vertic beams, Temper'd with cooling winds and trade-wind breeze. 17 Yet, though so near heav'n's blazing lamp doth run, We court the beam that sheds the golden day, And hence are called the children of the sun, Who, without fainting, bear his downward ray. 18 No threatening tides upon our island rise, Gay Cynthia scarce disturbs the ocean here, No waves approach her orb, and she, as kind, Attracts no water to her silver sphere. 19 The happy waters boast, of various kinds, Unnumber'd myriads of the scaly race, Sportive they glide above the delug'd sand, Gay as their clime, in ocean's ample vase. 20 Some streak'd with burnish'd gold, resplendent glare, Some cleave the limpid deep, all silver'd o'er, Some, clad in living green, delight the eye, Some red, some blue; of mingled colours more. 21 Here glides the spangled Dolphin through the deep, The giant-carcas'd whales at distance stray. The huge green turtles wallow through the wave, Well pleas'd alike with land or water, they. 22 The Rainbow cuts the deep, of varied green, The well fed Grouper lurks remote, below, The swift Bonetta coasts the watry scene, The diamond coated Angels kindle as they go. 23 Delicious to the taste, salubrious food, Which might some temperate studious sage allure To curse the fare of his abstemious school, And turn, for once, a cheerful Epicure. 24 Unhurt, may'st thou this luscious food enjoy, To fulness feast upon the scaly kind; These, well selected from a thousand more, Delight the taste, and leave no plague behind. 25 Nor think Hygeia[B] is a stranger here; To sensual souls the climate may fatal prove, Anguish and death attend, and pain severe, The midnight revel, and licentious love. [B] Goddess of Health.--_Freneau's note._ 26 Full many a swain, in youth's serenest bloom, Is borne untimely to this alien clay, Constrain'd to slumber in a foreign tomb, Far from his friends, his country far away. 27 Yet, if devoted to a sensual soul, If fondly their own ruin they create, These victims to the banquet and the bowl Must blame their folly only, not their fate. 28 But thou, who first drew breath in northern air, At early dawn ascend the sloping hills, And oft' at noon to lime tree shades repair, Where some soft stream from neighbouring groves distils. 29 And with it mix the liquid of the lime, The old ag'd essence of the generous cane, And sweetest syrups of this liquorish clime, And drink, to cool thy thirst, and drink again. 30 This happy beverage, joy inspiring bowl, Dispelling far the shades of mental night, Wakes bright ideas on the raptur'd soul, And sorrow turns to pleasure and delight. 31 Sweet verdant isle, through thy dark woods I rove, And learn the nature of each native tree, The fustick hard, the poisonous manchineel, Which for its fragrant apple pleaseth thee: 32 Alluring to the smell, fair to the eye, But deadliest poison in the taste is found-- O shun the dangerous tree, nor taste, like Eve, This interdicted fruit in Eden's ground. 33 The lowly mangrove, fond of watry soil, The white bark'd gregory, rising high in air, The mastick in the woods you may descry, Tamarind, and lofty plumb-trees flourish there. 34 Sweet orange groves in lonely vallies rise And drop their fruits, unnotic'd and unknown, And cooling acid limes in hedges grow, The juicy lemons swell in shades their own. 35 Once in these groves divine Aurelia stray'd!-- Then, conscious nature, smiling, look'd more gay; But soon she left the dear delightful shade, The shade, neglected, droops and dies away, 36 And pines for her return, but pines in vain, In distant isles belov'd Aurelia died, Pride of the plains, ador'd by every swain, Sweet warbler of the woods, and of the woods the pride. 37 Philander early left this rural maid, Nor yet return'd, by fate compell'd to roam, But absent from the heavenly girl he stray'd, Her charms forgot, forgot his native home. 38 O fate severe, to seize the nymph so soon, The nymph, for whom a thousand shepherds sigh, And in the space of one revolving moon To doom the fair one and her swain to die! 39 Sweet, spungy plumbs on trees wide spreading hang, Bell-apples here, suspended, shade the ground, Plump grenadilloes and güavas grey, With melons in each plain and lawn abound. 40 The conic form'd cashew, of juicy kind, Which bears at once an apple and a nut; Whose poisonous coat, indignant to the lip, Doth in its cell a wholesome kernel shut. 41 The prince of fruits, whom some jayama call, Anana some, the happy flavour'd pine; In which unite the tastes and juices all Of apple, peach, quince, grape, and nectarine, 42 Grows to perfection here, and spreads his crest; His diadem toward the parent sun; His diadem, in fiery blossoms drest, Stands arm'd with swords from potent nature won. 43 Yon' cotton shrubs with bursting knobs behold, Their snow white locks these humble groves array; On slender trees the blushing coffee hangs Like thy fair cherry, and would tempt thy stay. 44 Safe from the winds, in deep retreats, they rise; Their utmost summit may thy arm attain; Taste the moist fruit, and from thy closing eyes Sleep shall retire, with all his drowsy train. 45 The spicy berry, they güava call, Swells in the mountains on a stripling tree; These some admire, and value more than all, My humble verse, besides, unfolds to thee. 46 The smooth white cedar, here, delights the eye, The bay-tree, with its aromatic green, The sea-side grapes, sweet natives of the sand, And pulse, of various kinds, on trees are seen. 47 Here mingled vines that downward shadows cast, Here, cluster'd grapes from loaded boughs depend, Their leaves no frosts, their fruits no cold winds blast, But, rear'd by suns, to time alone they bend. 48 The plantane and banana flourish here, Of hasty growth, and love to fix their root Where some soft stream of ambling water flows, To yield full moisture to their cluster'd fruit. 49 No other trees so vast a leaf can boast, So broad, so long--through these refresh'd I stray, And though the noon-sun all his radiance shed, These friendly leaves shall shade me all the way, 50 And tempt the cooling breeze to hasten there, With its sweet odorous breath to charm the grove; High shades and verdant seats, while underneath A little stream by mossy banks doth rove, 51 Where once the Indian dames slept with their swains, Or fondly kiss'd the moon-light eves away; The lovers fled, the tearful stream remains, And only I console it with my lay. 52 Among the shades of yonder whispering grove The green palmittoes mingle, tall and fair, That ever murmur, and forever move, Fanning with wavy bough the ambient air. 53 Pomegranates grace the wild, and sweet-sops there Ready to fall, require thy helping hand, Nor yet neglect the papaw or mamee Whose slighted trees with fruits unheeded stand. 54 Those shaddocks juicy shall thy taste delight, And yon' high fruits, the richest of the wood, That cling in clusters to the mother tree, The cocoa-nut; rich, milky, healthful food. 55 O grant me, gods, if yet condemn'd to stray, At least to spend life's sober evening here, To plant a grove where winds yon' shelter'd bay, And pluck these fruits that frost nor winter fear. 56 Cassada shrubs abound--transplanted here From every clime, exotic blossoms blow; Here Asia plants her flowers, here Europe seeds, And hyperborean plants, un-winter'd, grow. 57 Here, a new herbage glads the generous steed, Mules, goats, and sheep enjoy these pastures fair, And for thy hedges, nature has decreed, Guards of thy toils, the date and prickly pear. 58 But chief the glory of these Indian isles Springs from the sweet, uncloying sugar-cane, Hence comes the planter's wealth, hence commerce sends Such floating piles to traverse half the main. 59 Whoe'er thou art that leav'st thy native shore, And shall to fair West India climates come, Taste not the enchanting plant--to taste forbear, If ever thou wouldst reach thy much lov'd home. 60 Ne'er through the Isle permit thy feet to rove, Or, if thou dost, let prudence lead the way, Forbear to taste the virtues of the cane, Forbear to taste what will complete thy stay. 61 Whoever sips of this enchanting juice, Delicious nectar, fit for Jove's own hall, Returns no more from his lov'd Santa Cruz, But quits his friends, his country, and his all. 62 And thinks no more of home--Ulysses so Dragg'd off by force his sailors from that shore Where lotos grew, and, had not strength prevail'd, They never would have sought their country more. 63 No annual toil inters this thrifty plant, The stalk lopt off, the freshening showers prolong, To future years, unfading and secure, The root so vigorous, and the juice so strong. 64 Unnumber'd plants, besides, these climates yield, And grass peculiar to the soil, that bears Ten thousand varied herbs, array the field, This glads thy palate, that thy health repairs. 65 Along the shore a wondrous flower is seen, Where rocky ponds receive the surging wave, Some drest in yellow, some array'd in green, Beneath the water their gay branches lave. 66 This mystic plant, with its bewitching charms, Too surely springs from some enchanted bower; Fearful it is, and dreads impending harms, And _Animal_ the natives call the flower. 67 From the smooth rock its little branches rise, The objects of thy view, and that alone, Feast on its beauties with thy ravish'd eyes, But aim to touch it, and--the flower is gone. 68 Nay, if thy shade but intercept the beam That gilds their boughs beneath the briny lake, Swift they retire, like a deluding dream, And even a shadow for destruction take. 69 Warn'd by experience, seek not thou to gain The magic plant thy curious hand invades; Returning to the light, it mocks thy pain, Deceives all grasp, and seeks its native shades. 70 On yonder steepy hill, fresh harvests rise, Where the dark tribe from Afric's sun-burnt plain Oft o'er the ocean turn their wishful eyes To isles remote high looming o'er the main, 71 And view soft seats of ease and fancied rest, Their native groves new painted on the eye, Where no proud misers their gay hours molest, No lordly despots pass unsocial by. 72 See yonder slave that slowly bends this way, With years, and pain, and ceaseless toil opprest, Though no complaining words his woes betray, The eye dejected proves the heart distrest. 73 Perhaps in chains he left his native shore, Perhaps he left a helpless offspring there, Perhaps a wife, that he must see no more, Perhaps a father, who his love did share. 74 Curs'd be the ship that brought him o'er the main, And curs'd the hands who from his country tore, May she be stranded, ne'er to float again, May they be shipwreck'd on some hostile shore-- 75 O gold accurst, of every ill the spring, For thee compassion flies the darken'd mind, Reason's plain dictates no conviction bring, And passion only sways all human kind. 76 O gold accurst! for thee we madly run With murderous hearts across the briny flood, Seek foreign climes beneath a foreign sun, And there exult to shed a brother's blood. 77 But thou, who own'st this sugar-bearing soil, To whom no good the great First Cause denies, Let freeborn hands attend thy sultry toil, And fairer harvests to thy view shall rise. 78 The teeming earth shall mightier stores disclose Than ever struck thy longing eyes before, And late content shall shed a soft repose, Repose, so long a stranger at thy door. 79 Give me some clime, the favourite of the sky, Where cruel slavery never sought to rein-- But shun the theme, sad muse, and tell me why These abject trees lie scatter'd o'er the plain? 80 These isles, lest nature should have prov'd too kind, Or man have sought his happiest heaven below, Are torn with mighty winds, fierce hurricanes, Nature convuls'd in every shape of woe. 81 Nor scorn yon' lonely vale of trees so reft; There plantane groves late grew of lively green, The orange flourish'd, and the lemon bore, The genius of the isle dwelt there unseen. 82 Wild were the skies, affrighted nature groan'd As though approach'd her last decisive day, Skies blaz'd around, and bellowing winds had nigh Dislodg'd these cliffs, and tore yon' hills away. 83 O'er the wild main, dejected and afraid, The trembling pilot lash'd his helm a-lee, Or, swiftly scudding, ask'd thy potent aid, Dear pilot of the Galilëan sea. 84 Low hung the clouds, distended with the gale The clouds dark brooding wing'd their circling flight, Tremendous thunders join'd the hurricane, Daughter of chaos and eternal night. 85 And how, alas! could these fair trees withstand The wasteful madness of so fierce a blast, That storm'd along the plain, seiz'd every grove, And delug'd with a sea this mournful waste. 86 That plantane grove, where oft I fondly stray'd, Thy darts, dread Phoebus, in those glooms to shun, Is now no more a refuge or a shade, Is now with rocks and deep sands over-run. 87 Those late proud domes of splendour, pomp and ease No longer strike the view, in grand attire; But, torn by winds, flew piece-meal to the seas, Nor left one nook to lodge the astonish'd squire. 88 But other groves the hand of Time shall raise, Again shall nature smile, serenely gay, So soon each scene revives, why should I leave These green retreats, o'er the dark seas to stray? 89 For I must go where the mad pirate roves, A stranger on the inhospitable main, Torn from the scenes of Hudson's sweetest groves, Led by false hope, and expectation vain. 90 There endless plains deject the wearied eye, And hostile winds incessant toil prepare; And should loud bellowing storms all art defy, The manly heart alone must conquer there. 91 On these blue hills, to pluck the opening flowers, Might yet awhile the unwelcome task delay, And these gay scenes prolong the fleeting hours To aid bright Fancy on some future day. 92 Thy vales, Bermuda, and thy sea-girt groves, Can never like these southern forests please; And, lash'd by stormy waves, you court in vain The northern shepherd to your cedar trees. 93 Not o'er those isles such equal planets rule, All, but the cedar, dread the wintry blast: Too well thy charms the banish'd Waller sung; Too near the pilot's star thy doom is cast. 94 Far o'er the waste of yonder surgy field My native climes in fancied prospect lie, Now hid in shades, and now by clouds conceal'd, And now by tempests ravish'd from my eye. 95 There, triumphs to enjoy, are, Britain, thine, There, thy proud navy awes the pillag'd shore; Nor sees the day when nations shall combine That pride to humble and our rights restore. 96 Yet o'er the globe shouldst thou extend thy reign, Here may thy conquering arms one grotto spare; Here--though thy conquest vex--in spite of pain, I quaff the enlivening glass, in spite of care. 97 What, though we bend to a tyrannic crown; Still Nature's charms in varied beauty shine-- What though we own the proud imperious Dane, Gold is his sordid care, the Muses mine. 98 Winter, and winter's glooms are far remov'd; Eternal spring with smiling summer join'd;-- Absence and death, and heart-corroding care, Why should they cloud the sun-shine of the mind? 99 But, shepherd, haste, and leave behind thee far Thy bloody plains, and iron glooms above, Quit the cold northern star, and here enjoy, Beneath the smiling skies, this land of love. 100 The drowsy pelican wings home his way, The misty eve sits heavy on the sea, And though yon' sail drags slowly o'er the main, Say, shall a moment's gloom discourage thee? 101 To-morrow's sun now paints the faded scene, Though deep in ocean sink his western beams, His spangled chariot shall ascend more clear, More radiant from the drowsy land of dreams. 102 Of all the isles the neighbouring ocean bears, None can with this their equal landscapes boast: What could we do on Saba's cloudy height; Or what could please on 'Statia's barren coast? 103 Couldst thou content on rough Tortola stray, Confest the fairest of the Virgin train; Or couldst thou on these rocky summits play Where high St. John stands frowning o'er the main? 104 Haste, shepherd, haste--Hesperian fruits for thee, And cluster'd grapes from mingled boughs depend-- What pleasure in thy forests can there be That, leafless now, to every tempest bend? 105 To milder stars, and skies of clearer blue, Sworn foe to arms, at least a-while repair, And, till to mightier force proud Britain bends, Despise her triumphs, and deceive thy care. 106 Soon shall the genius of the fertile soil A new creation to thy view unfold; Admire the works of Nature's magic hand, But scorn that vulgar bait, all potent gold. 107 Yet, if persuaded by no lay of mine, You still admire your climes of frost and snow, And pleas'd, prefer above our southern groves The darksome forests, that around thee grow: 108 Still there remain--thy native air enjoy, Repell the tyrant who thy peace invades, While, pleas'd, I trace the vales of Santa Cruz, And sing with rapture her inspiring shades. [158] Text from the edition of 1786. The poem was first published in the February (1779) issue of the _United States Magazine_, as a part of an extended article, with the title, "Account of the Island of Santa Cruz: Containing an original Poem on the Beauties of that Island. In a letter to A. P. Esq." The poem is introduced as follows: "I believe the best thing I can do with the rest of this paper is to transcribe a few dull heavy lines which I composed near two years ago on the spot." The poem consisted of fifty-two stanzas, corresponding to the following above: 1-4, 6-10, 14-16, 18-23, 31-34, 39, 40, 48-51, 53, 54, 56, 58-63, 70, 79-82, 85, 88, 96, 98, 100, 101, 104, 106-108. Freneau revised it with a careful hand for his edition of 1786. Some of the lines changed most notably are as follows: Stanza 1. "Less rigorous climes, and a more friendly sky." 6. "So some dull minds, in spite of age and care, Are grown so wedded to this globe below." 39. "Sweet spungy plumbs on trees wide spreading hang, The happy flavour'd pine grows crested from the ground." 51. "Where once the Indian dames inchanted slept." 56. "Cassada shrubs abound, whose poison root, Supplies the want of snow-white Northern flour; This grated fine, and steep'd in water fair, Forsakes each particle of noxious power." 70. "On yonder peaked hill fresh harvests rise, Where wretched he--the Ethiopian swain." 79. "He pants a land of freedom and repose, Where cruel slavery never sought to reign, O quit thee them, my muse, and tell me why." 88. "But now the winds are past, the storm subsides, All nature smiles again serenely gay, The beauteous groves renew'd--how shall I leave My green retreat at Butler's verdant bay." 96. "Fain would I view my native climes again, But murder marks the cruel Briton there-- Contented here I rest, in spite of pain, And quaff the enlivening juice in spite of care." 100. "The misty night sits heavy on the sea, Yon lagging sail drags slowly o'er the main, Night and its kindred glooms are nought to me." 104. "Then shepherd haste, and leave behind thee far The bloody plains and iron glooms above, Quit thy cold northern star, and here enjoy, Beneath the smiling skies this land of love." Each of the later editions passed under the revising pen of Freneau, but the variations consisted largely of verbal changes. As a sample of his revision, note the following: Stanza 3, 1779, "Two weeks, with prosperous gales"; 1786, "Twice seven days prosperous gales"; 1809, "Twice ten days prosperous gales"; 26, 1779, "And tho' fierce Sol his beams directly shed"; 1786, "And though the noon-sun all his radiance shed"; 1795, "The noon sun his fierce radiance shed"; 30, 1779, "fruits that over-top the wood"; 1786, "fruits, the richest of the wood"; 1795, "fruits the noblest of the wood"; 38, 1779, "peaked hill"; 1786, "steepy hill"; 1795, "blue-brow'd hill"; 41, 1779, "lovely green"; 1786, "lively green"; 1795, "liveliest green." Freneau added three stanzas to the later versions. After stanza 16 above, be added the following: "The native here, in golden plenty blest, Bids from the soil the verdant harvests spring; Feasts in the abundant dome, the joyous guest; Time short,--life easy,--pleasure on the wing." Following this he added stanza 43 of "The Jamaica Funeral." Stanza 49 of "The House of Night" was interpolated between 90 and 91. Stanzas 35-38 were omitted from the 1786 version, and in connection with stanzas 39-43 of "The House of Night," became the "Elegiac Lines" of the later editions. The text of the 1795 version was almost unrevised for the 1809 edition. ON A HESSIAN DEBARKATION[159] 1776 _There is a book, tho' not a book of rhymes, Where truth severe records a nation's crimes;-- To check such monarchs as with brutal might Wanton in blood, and trample on the right._ Rejoice, O Death!--Britannia's tyrant sends From German plains his myriads to our shore; The Caledonian with the English joined:-- Bring them, ye winds, but waft them back no more. To these far climes with stately step they come, Resolved all prayers, all prowess to defy; Smit with the love of countries not their own, They come, indeed, to conquer--not to die. In the slow breeze (I hear their funeral song,) The dance of ghosts the infernal tribes prepare: To hell's dark mansions haste, ye abandoned throng, Drinking from German sculls old Odin's beer. From dire Cesarea[A] forced, these slaves of kings, Quick, let them take their way on eagle's wings: To thy strong posts, Manhattan's isle, repair, To meet the vengeance that awaits them there! [A] The old Roman name of Jersey.--_Freneau's note._ [159] This poem first appears in the 1795 edition, though the opening stanzas had formed a part of "The House of Night" in the 1786 edition. It must have been composed after this edition was published. I have inserted it here on account of its historical significance. Text is from the edition of 1809. THE JEWISH LAMENTATION AT EUPHRATES[160] By Babel's streams we sate and wept, When Sion bade our sorrows flow; Our harps on lofty willows slept That near those distant waters grow: The willows high, the waters clear, Beheld our toils and sorrows there. The cruel foe, that captive led Our nation from their native soil, The tyrant foe, by whom we bled, Required a song, as well as toil: "Come, with a song your sorrows cheer, "A song, that Sion loved to hear." How shall we, cruel tyrant, raise A song on such a distant shore?-- If I forget my Sion's praise, May my right hand assume no more To strike the silver sounding string, And thence the slumbering music bring. If I forget that happy home, My perjured tongue, forbear to move! My eyes, be closed in endless gloom-- My joy, my rapture, and my love! No rival grief my mind can share, For thou shalt reign unrivalled there. Remember, Lord, that hated foe (When conquered Sion drooped her head) Who laughing at our deepest woe, Thus to our tears and sorrows said, "From its proud height degrade her wall, "Destroy her towers--and ruin all." Thou, Babel's offspring, hated race, May some avenging monster seize, And dash your venom in your face For crimes and cruelties like these: And, deaf to pity's melting moan, With infant blood stain every stone. [160] First published in the _United States Magazine_ for September, 1779, under the title, "Psalm CXXXVII Imitated. By Philip Freneau, a young gentleman to whom in the course of this work we are greatly indebted." Signed, "Monmouth, Sept. 10, 1779." In the 1786 edition it bore the title, "Psalm CXXXVII Versified." AMERICA INDEPENDENT AND HER EVERLASTING DELIVERANCE FROM BRITISH TYRANNY AND OPPRESSION[161] First published in Philadelphia, by Mr. Robert Bell, in 1778 _To him who would relate the story right, A mind supreme should dictate, or indite.-- Yes!--justly to record the tale of fame, A muse from heaven should touch the soul with flame, Some powerful spirit, in superior lays, Should tell the conflicts of these stormy days!_ 'Tis done! and Britain for her madness sighs-- Take warning, tyrants, and henceforth be wise, If o'er mankind man gives you regal sway, Take not the rights of human kind away. When God from chaos gave this world to be, Man then he formed, and formed him to be free, In his own image stampt the favourite race-- How darest thou, tyrant, the fair stamp deface! When on mankind you fix your abject chains, No more the image of that God remains; O'er a dark scene a darker shade is drawn, His work dishonoured, and our glory gone! When first Britannia sent her hostile crew To these far shores, to ravage and subdue, We thought them gods, and almost seemed to say No ball could pierce them, and no dagger slay-- Heavens! what a blunder--half our fears were vain; These hostile gods at length have quit the plain, On neighbouring isles the storm of war they shun, Happy, thrice happy, if not quite undone. Yet soon, in dread of some impending woe, Even from these islands shall these ruffians go-- This be their doom, in vengeance for the slain, To pass their days in poverty and pain; For such base triumphs, be it still their lot To triumph only o'er the rebel Scot, And to their insect isle henceforth confined No longer lord it o'er the human kind.-- But, by the fates, who still prolong their stay, And gather vengeance to conclude their day, Yet, ere they go, the angry Muse shall tell The treasured woes that in her bosom swell:-- Proud, fierce, and bold, O Jove! who would not laugh To see these bullies worshipping a calf: But they are slaves who spurn at Reason's rules; And men, once slaves, are soon transformed to fools.-- To recommend what monarchies have done, They bring, for witness, David and his son; How one was brave, the other just and wise, And hence our plain Republics they despise; But mark how oft, to gratify their pride, The people suffered, and the people died; Though one was wise, and one Goliah slew, _Kings are the choicest curse that man e'er knew!_ Hail, worthy Briton!--how enlarged your fame; How great your glory, terrible your name; "Queen of the isles, and empress of the main,"-- Heaven grant you all these mighty things again; But first insure the gaping crowd below That you less cruel, and more just may grow: If fate, vindictive for the sins of man, Had favour shown to your infernal plan, How would your nation have exulted here, And scorned the widow's sigh, the orphan's tear! How had your prince, of all bad men the worst, Laid worth and virtue prostrate in the dust! A second Sawney[A] had he shone to-day, A world subdued, and murder but his play; How had that prince, contemning right or law, Glutted with blood his foul, voracious maw: In him we see the depths of baseness joined, Whate'er disgraced the dregs of human kind; Cain, Nimrod, Nero--fiends in human guise, Herod, Domitian--these in judgment rise, And, envious of his deeds, I hear them say None but a George could be more vile than they. Swoln though he was with wealth, revenge, and pride, How could he dream that heaven was on his side-- Did he not see, when so decreed by fate, They placed the crown upon his royal pate, Did he not see the richest jewel fall--[B] Dire was the omen, and astonished all.-- That gem no more shall brighten and adorn; No more that gem by British kings be worn, Or swell to wonted heights of fair renown The fading glories of their boasted crown. Yet he to arms, and war, and blood inclined, (A fair-day warrior with a feeble mind, Fearless, while others meet the shock of fate, And dare that death, which clips his thread too late.) He to the fane (O hypocrite!) did go, While not an angel there but was his foe, There did he kneel, and sigh, and sob, and pray, Yet not to lave his thousand sins away, Far other motives swayed his spotted soul; 'Twas not for those the secret sorrow stole Down his pale cheek--'twas vengeance and despair Dissolved his eye, and planted sorrow there;-- How could he hope to bribe the impartial sky By his base prayers, and mean hypocrisy?-- Heaven still is just, and still abhors all crimes, Not acts like George, the Nero of our times. What were his prayers--his prayers could be no more Than a thief's wishes to recruit his store:-- Such prayers could never reach the worlds above; They were but curses in the ear of Jove;-- You prayed that conquest might your arms attend, And crush that freedom virtue did defend, That the fierce Indian, rousing from his rest, Might these new regions with his flames invest, With scalps and tortures aggravate our woe, And to the infernal world dismiss your foe. No mines of gold our fertile country yields, But mighty harvests crown the loaded fields, Hence, trading far, we gained the golden prize, Which, though our own, bewitched their greedy eyes-- For that they ravaged India's climes before, And carried death to Asia's utmost shore-- Clive was your envied slave, in avarice bold-- He mowed down nations for his dearer gold; The fatal gold could give no true content, He mourned his murders, and to Tophet went. Led on by lust of lucre and renown, Burgoyne came marching with his thousands down, High were his thoughts, and furious his career, Puffed with self-confidence, and pride severe, Swoln with the idea of his future deeds, Onward to ruin each advantage leads: Before his hosts his heaviest curses flew, And conquered worlds rose hourly to his view: His wrath, like Jove's, could bear with no controul, His words bespoke the mischief in his soul; To fight was not this general's only trade, He shined in writing, and his wit displayed-- To awe the more with titles of command He told of forts he ruled in Scottish land;-- Queen's colonel as he was, he did not know That thorns and thistles, mixed with honours, grow; In Britain's senate, though he held a place, All did not save him from one long disgrace, One stroke of fortune that convinced them all That men could conquer, and lieutenants fall. Foe to the rights of man, proud plunderer, say Had conquest crowned you on that mighty day When you, to Gates, with sorrow, rage, and shame Resigned your conquests, honours, arms, and fame, When at his feet Britannia's wreathes you threw, And the sun sickened at a sight so new; Had you been victor--what a waste of woe! What souls had vanished to where souls do go! What dire distress had marked your fatal way, What deaths on deaths disgraced that dismal day! Can laurels flourish in a soil of blood, Or on those laurels can fair honours bud-- Cursed be that wretch who murder makes his trade, Cursed be all wars that e'er ambition made! What murdering Tory now relieves your grief, Or plans new conquests for his favourite chief; Designs still dark employ that ruffian race, Beasts of your choosing, and our own disgrace, So vile a crew the world ne'er saw before, And grant, ye pitying heavens, it may no more: If ghosts from hell infest our poisoned air, Those ghosts have entered their base bodies here; Murder and blood is still their dear delight-- Scream round their roofs, ye ravens of the night! Whene'er they wed, may demons and despair, And grief and woe, and blackest night be there; Fiends leagued from hell the nuptial lamp display, Swift to perdition light them on their way, Round the wide world their devilish squadrons chace, To find no realm, that grants one resting place. Far to the north, on Scotland's utmost end An isle there lies, the haunt of every fiend, No shepherds there attend their bleating flocks, But withered witches rove among the rocks; Shrouded in ice, the blasted mountains show Their cloven heads, to daunt the seas below; The lamp of heaven in his diurnal race There scarcely deigns to unveil his radiant face, Or if one day he circling treads the sky He views this island with an angry eye, Or ambient fogs their broad, moist wings expand, Damp his bright ray, and cloud the infernal land; The blackening winds incessant storms prolong, Dull as their night, and dreary as my song; When stormy winds and gales refuse to blow, Then from the dark sky drives the unpitying snow; When drifting snows from iron clouds forbear, Then down the hail-stones rattle through the air-- There screeching owls, and screaming vultures rest, And not a tree adorns its barren breast; No peace, no rest, the elements bestow, But seas forever rage, and storms forever blow. There, Loyals, there, with loyal hearts retire, There pitch your tents, and kindle there your fire; There desert Nature will her stings display, And fiercest hunger on your vitals prey, And with yourselves let John Burgoyne retire To reign the monarch, whom your hearts admire. Britain, at last to arrest your lawless hand, Rises the genius of a generous land, Our injured rights bright Gallia's prince defends, And from this hour that prince and we are friends; Feuds, long upheld, are vanished from our view. Once we were foes--but for the sake of you-- Britain, aspiring Briton, now must bend-- Can she at once with France and us contend, When we alone, remote from foreign aid, Her armies captured, and distressed her trade? Britain and we no more in combat join, No more, as once, in every sea combine; Dead is that friendship which did mutual burn, Fled is the sceptre, never to return; By sea and land, perpetual foes we meet, Our cause more honest, and our hearts as great; Lost are these regions to Britannia's reign, Nor need these strangers of their loss complain,[162] Since all, that here with greedy eyes they view, From our own toil to wealth and empire grew. Our hearts are ravished from our former queen Far as the ocean God hath placed between, They strive in vain to join this mighty mass Torn by convulsions from its native place. As well might men to flaming Hecla join The huge high Alps, or towering Appenine: In vain they send their half-commissioned tribe, And whom they cannot conquer, strive to bribe; Their pride and madness burst our union chain, Nor shall the unwieldy mass unite again. Nor think that France sustains our cause alone; With gratitude her helping hand we own, But hear, ye nations--Truth herself can say We bore the heat and danger of the day: She calmly viewed the tumult from afar, We braved each insult, and sustained the war: Oft drove the foe, or forced their hosts to yield, Or left them more than once a dear bought field-- 'Twas then, at last, on Jersey plains distrest, We swore to seek the mountains of the west, There a free empire for our seed obtain, A terror to the slaves that might remain.[163] Peace you demand, and vainly wish to find Old leagues renewed, and strength once more combined-- Yet shall not all your base dissembling art Deceive the tortures of a bleeding heart-- Yet shall not all your mingled prayers that rise Wash out your crimes, or bribe the avenging skies; Full many a corpse lies mouldering on the plain That ne'er shall see its little brood again: See, yonder lies, all breathless, cold, and pale, Drenched in her gore, Lavinia of the vale;[C] The cruel Indian seized her life away, As the next morn began her bridal day!-- This deed alone our just revenge would claim, Did not ten thousand more your sons defame. Returned, a captive, to my native shore, How changed I find those scenes that pleased before! How changed those groves where fancy loved to stray, When spring's young blossoms bloom'd along the way; From every eye distils the frequent tear, From every mouth some doleful tale I hear! Some mourn a father, brother, husband, friend: Some mourn, imprisoned in their native land, In sickly ships what numerous hosts confin'd At once their lives and liberties resigned: In dreary dungeons woeful scenes have passed, Long in the historian's page the tale will last, As long as spring renews the flowery wood, As long as breezes curl the yielding flood!-- Some sent to India's sickly climes afar, To dig, with slaves, for buried diamonds there, There left to sicken in a land of woe Where o'er scorched hills infernal breezes blow, Whose every blast some dire contagion brings, Fevers or death on its destructive wings, 'Till fate relenting, its last arrows drew, Brought death to them, and infamy to you. Pests of mankind! remembrance shall recall And paint these horrors to the view of all; Heaven has not turned to its own works a foe Nor left to monsters these fair realms below, Else had your arms more wasteful vengeance spread, And these gay plains been dyed a deeper red. O'er Britain's isle a thousand woes impend, Too weak to conquer, govern, or defend, To liberty she holds pretended claim-- The substance we enjoy, and they the name; Her prince, surrounded by a host of slaves, Still claims dominion o'er the vagrant waves: Such be his claims o'er all the world beside,-- An empty nothing--madness, rage and pride. From Europe's realms fair freedom has retired, And even in Britain has the spark expired-- Sigh for the change your haughty empire feels, Sigh for the doom that no disguise conceals! Freedom no more shall Albion's cliffs survey; Corruption there has centered all her sway, Freedom disdains her honest head to rear, Or herd with nobles, kings, or princes there;[164] She shuns their gilded spires and domes of state, Resolved, O Virtue, at thy shrine to wait; 'Midst savage woods and wilds she dares to stray, And bids uncultured nature bloom more gay. She is that glorious and immortal sun, Without whose ray this world would be undone, A mere dull chaos, sunk in deepest night, An abject something, void of form and light, Of reptiles, worst in rank, the dire abode, Perpetual mischief, and the dragon's brood. Let Turks and Russians glut their fields with blood, Again let Britain dye the Atlantic flood, Let all the east adore the sanguine wreathe And gain new glories from the trade of death-- America! the works of peace be thine, Thus shalt thou gain a triumph more divine-- To thee belongs a second golden reign, Thine is the empire o'er a peaceful main; Protect the rights of human kind below, Crush the proud tyrant who becomes their foe, And future times shall own your struggles blest, And future years enjoy perpetual rest. Americans! revenge your country's wrongs; To you the honour of this deed belongs, Your arms did once this sinking land sustain, And saved those climes where Freedom yet must reign-- Your bleeding soil this ardent task demands, Expel yon' thieves from these polluted lands, Expect no peace till haughty Britain yields, 'Till humbled Britons quit your ravaged fields-- Still to the charge that routed foe returns, The war still rages, and the battle burns-- No dull debates, or tedious counsels know, But rush at once, embodied, on your foe; With hell-born spite a seven years' war they wage, The pirate Goodrich, and the ruffian Gage. Your injured country groans while yet they stay, Attend her groans, and force their hosts away; Your mighty wrongs the tragic muse shall trace, Your gallant deeds shall fire a future race; To you may kings and potentates appeal, You may the doom of jarring nations seal; A glorious empire rises, bright and new! Firm be the structure, and must rest on you!-- Fame o'er the mighty pile expands her wings, Remote from princes, bishops, lords, and kings, Those fancied gods, who, famed through every shore, Mankind have fashioned, and like fools, adore. Here yet shall heaven the joys of peace bestow, While through our soil the streams of plenty flow, And o'er the main we spread the trading sail, Wafting the produce of the rural vale. [A] Alexander the Great.--_Freneau's note._ [B] A real event of that day: See REMEMBRANCER of 1777.--_Freneau's note._ [C] Miss M'Crea. See histories of the revolutionary war.--_Freneau's note._ "A most pathetic story was told of one Jenny M'Rea, murdered by Indians near Fort Edward. Her family were Loyalists; she herself was engaged to be married to a Loyalist officer. She was dressed to receive her lover when a party of Indians burst into the house, carried off the whole family to the woods, and there murdered, scalped, and mangled them in a most horrible manner."--_Hildreth's United States._ See also Irving's _Life of Washington_. Barlow, in the sixth book of the _Columbiad_, has given a poetic version of the story. [161] From the edition of 1809. The poem was written, according to the edition of 1786, in August, 1778. It was first published in conjunction with a work entitled "Travels of the Imagination," by Robert Bell of Philadelphia, and reissued twice by him during the same year. In this edition it bore the title, "American Independence an Everlasting Deliverance from British Tyranny. A Poem." Later were added the words. "By Philip F----u." [162] "Nor shall these upstarts of their loss complain, Since all the debt we owe to Britain's throne Was mere idea, and the rest our own."--_Ed. 1786._ [163] "In this dark day of peril to the cause and to himself (at the close of 1776) Washington remained firm and undaunted. In casting about for some stronghold where he might make a desperate stand for the liberties of his country, his thoughts reverted to the mountain regions of his early campaigns. General Mercer was at hand, who had shared his perils among those mountains, and his presence may have contributed to bring them to his mind. 'What think you.' said Washington, 'if we should retreat to the back parts of Pennsylvania, would the Pennsylvanians support us?' 'If the lower counties give up, the back counties will do the same,' was the discouraging reply. 'We must then retire to Augusta County, in Virginia,' said Washington. 'Numbers will repair to us for safety, and we will try a predatory war. If overpowered, we must cross the Alleghanies.' Such was the indomitable spirit, rising under difficulties and buoyant in the darkest moment, that kept our tempest-tossed cause from foundering."--_Irving's Washington_, II, 448. [164] "To herd with _North_, or _Bute_, or _Mansfield_ there,"--_Ed. 1786._ ON AMANDA'S SINGING BIRD[165] A native of the Canary Islands, confined in a small cage Happy in my native grove, I from spray to spray did rove, Fond of music, full of love. Dressed as fine as bird could be, Every thing that I did see, Every thing was mirth to me. There had I been, happy still, With my mate to coo and bill In the vale, or on the hill. But the cruel tyrant, man, (Tyrant since the world began) Soon abridged my little span. How shall I the wrong forget! Over me he threw a net; And I am his prisoner yet. To this rough Bermudian shore Ocean I was hurried o'er, Ne'er to see my country more! To a narrow cage confined, I, who once so gaily shined, Sing to please the human kind. Dear Amanda!--leave me free, And my notes will sweeter be; On your breast, or in the tree![166] On your arm I would repose-- One--oh make me--of your beaus-- There I would relate my woes. Now, all love, and full of play, I so innocently gay, Pine my little life away. Thus to grieve and flutter here, Thus to pine from year to year; This is usage too severe. From the chiefs who rule your isle, I will never court a smile; All, with them, is prison style.[167] But from your superior mind Let me but my freedom find, And I will be all resigned. Then your kiss will hold me fast-- If but once by you embraced, In your 'kerchief I will rest. Gentle shepherds of the plain, Who so fondly hear my strain; Help me to be free again. 'Tis a blessing to be free:-- Fair Amanda![168]--pity me, Pity him who sings for thee. But if, cruel, you deny That your captive bird should fly, Here detained so wrongfully, Full of anguish, faint with woe, I must, with my music, go To the cypress groves below. [165] Published in the _Freeman's Journal_, July 3, 1782, under the title "On a Lady's Singing Bird, a native of the Canary Islands, confined in a very small cage. Written in Bermuda, 1778." [166] This stanza and the next original in the edition of 1809. [167] This stanza and the two following original in the edition of 1809. [168] "Belinda."--_Ed. 1786._ ON THE NEW AMERICAN FRIGATE ALLIANCE[169] As Neptune traced the azure main That owned, so late, proud Britain's reign, A floating pile approached his car, The scene of terror and of war. As nearer still the monarch drew (Her starry flag displayed to view) He asked a Triton of his train "What flag was this that rode the main? "A ship of such a gallant mien "This many a day I have not seen, "To no mean power can she belong, "So swift, so warlike, stout, and strong. "See how she mounts the foaming wave-- "Where other ships would find a grave, "Majestic, aweful, and serene, "She sails the ocean, like its queen."-- "Great monarch of the hoary deep, "Whose trident awes the waves to sleep, (Replied a Triton of his train) "This ship, that stems the western main, "To those new, rising States belongs, "Who, in resentment of their wrongs, "Oppose proud Britain's tyrant sway, "And combat her, by land and sea. "This pile, of such superior fame, "From their strict union takes her name, "For them she cleaves the briny tide, "While terror marches by her side. "When she unfurls her flowing sails, "Undaunted by the fiercest gales, "In dreadful pomp, she ploughs the main, "While adverse tempests rage in vain. "When she displays her gloomy tier, "The boldest foes congeal with fear, "And, owning her superior might, "Seek their best safety in their flight. "But when she pours the dreadful blaze, "And thunder from her cannon plays, "The bursting flash that wings the ball, "Compells those foes to strike, or fall. "Though she, with her triumphant crew, "Might to their fate all foes pursue, "Yet, faithful to the land that bore, "She stays, to guard her native shore. "Though she might make the cruisers groan "That sail within the torrid zone, "She kindly lends a nearer aid, "Annoys them here, and guards the trade. "Now, traversing the eastern main, "She greets the shores of France and Spain; "Her gallant flag, displayed to view, "Invites the old world to the new. "This task atchieved, behold her go "To seas congealed with ice and snow, "To either tropic, and the line, "Where suns with endless fervour shine. "Not, Argo, on thy decks were found "Such hearts of brass, as here abound; "They for their golden fleece did fly, "These sail--to vanquish tyranny." [169] "Built up the River Merrimack at Salisbury, Massachusetts, she was first sailed in the spring of 1778, soon after her being launched, and was then commanded by Capt. Landais, a Frenchman, who was preferred to the command as a compliment to his nation and the alliance made with us, a new people." "As Philadelphians we are entitled to some preeminence for our connection with this peculiar frigate. After the close of the War of Independence, she was owned in our city and employed as a merchant ship. When no longer seaworthy, she has been stretched upon the margin of Petty's Island to remain for a century to come, a spectacle to many river passengers."--_Watson's Annals_, III, 338. The _Alliance_ was the only one of our first navy, of the class of frigates, which escaped capture or destruction during the war. She was during the Revolution what "Old Ironsides" became in later years, the idol of the American people. She was in many engagements and was always victorious. Freneau's poem first appeared, as far as I can find, in the 1786 edition. It was probably written shortly after the launch of the frigate. ON THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN NICHOLAS BIDDLE[170] Commander of the _Randolph_ Frigate, Blown up near Barbadoes, 1776 What distant thunders rend the skies, What clouds of smoke in columns rise, What means this dreadful roar? Is from his base Vesuvius thrown, Is sky-topt Atlas tumbled down, Or Etna's self no more! Shock after shock torments my ear; And lo!--two hostile ships appear, Red lightnings round them glow: The _Yarmouth_ boasts of sixty-four, The _Randolph_ thirty-two--no more-- And will she fight this foe! The _Randolph_ soon on Stygian streams Shall coast along the land of dreams, The islands of the dead! But Fate, that parts them on the deep, May save the Briton yet to weep His days of victory fled.[171] Say, who commands that dismal blaze, Where yonder starry streamer plays? Does Mars with Jove engage! 'Tis Biddle wings those angry fires, Biddle, whose bosom Jove inspires, With more than mortal rage. Tremendous flash!--and hark, the ball Drives through old _Yarmouth,_ flames and all; Her bravest sons expire; Did Mars himself approach so nigh, Even Mars, without disgrace, might fly The _Randolph's_ fiercer fire. The Briton views his mangled crew, "And shall we strike to thirty-two?-- (Said Hector, stained with gore) "Shall Britain's flag to these descend-- "Rise, and the glorious conflict end, "Britons, I ask no more!" He spoke--they charged their cannon round, Again the vaulted heavens resound, The _Randolph_ bore it all, Then fixed her pointed cannons true-- Away the unwieldy vengeance flew; Britain, thy warriors fall. The _Yarmouth_ saw, with dire dismay, Her wounded hull, shrouds shot away, Her boldest heroes dead-- She saw amidst her floating slain The conquering _Randolph_ stem the main-- She saw, she turned--and fled! That hour, blest chief, had she been thine, Dear Biddle, had the powers divine Been kind as thou wert brave; But Fate, who doomed thee to expire, Prepared an arrow, tipt with fire, And marked a watery grave. And in that hour, when conquest came, Winged at his ship a pointed flame, That not even he could shun-- The battle ceased, the _Yarmouth_ fled, The bursting _Randolph_ ruin spread, And left her task undone![172] [170] This poem was first published as a pamphlet in 1781, by Francis Bailey of Philadelphia, in connection with "The Prison Ship." Nicholas Biddle, born in Philadelphia in 1750, was a sailor from his boyhood. At one time he served beside Nelson in the British navy. In 1776, when the new frigate _Randolph_, of thirty-two guns, was launched at Philadelphia, he was made commander, and after several unimportant cruises he was placed over a small fleet of war vessels, with the _Randolph_ as flagship. In March, 1779, he fell in with the British ship _Yarmouth_, and after a vigorous action of twenty minutes, the _Randolph_ was blown up by her own magazine, only four men escaping with their lives. Freneau has made several minor errors. The date 1776, which is found on all the versions of the poem, should manifestly be 1779. The _Yarmouth_ did not attempt flight, nor did Biddle die at the moment of victory, as the poet represents. In the words of Cooper, "Victory was almost hopeless, even had all his vessels behaved equally well with his own ship." Captain Vincent had only five men killed and twelve wounded at the time of the explosion, yet the gallantry and skill of Biddle in the face of great odds justify all the praise that Freneau gives him. [171] "His ancient honours fled."--_Ed. 1786._ This stanza was omitted from the 1795 edition, but returned again in 1809. [172] "And lost what honour won."--_Ed. 1786._ "And lost what courage won."--_Ed. 1795._ CAPTAIN JONES'S INVITATION[173] Thou, who on some dark mountain's brow Hast toil'd thy life away till now, And often from that rugged steep Beheld the vast extended deep, Come from thy forest, and with me Learn what it is to go to sea. There endless plains the eye surveys As far from land the vessel strays; No longer hill nor dale is seen, The realms of death intrude between, But fear no ill; resolve, with me To share the dangers of the sea. But look not there for verdant fields-- Far different prospects Neptune yields; Green seas shall only greet the eye, Those seas encircled by the sky. Immense and deep--come then with me And view the wonders of the sea. Yet sometimes groves and meadows gay Delight the seamen on their way; From the deep seas that round us swell With rocks the surges to repel Some verdant isle, by waves embrac'd, Swells, to adorn the wat'ry waste. Though now this vast expanse appear With glassy surface, calm and clear; Be not deceiv'd--'tis but a show, For many a corpse is laid below-- Even Britain's lads--it cannot be-- They were the masters of the sea! Now combating upon the brine, Where ships in flaming squadrons join, At every blast the brave expire 'Midst clouds of smoke, and streams of fire; But scorn all fear; advance with me-- 'Tis but the custom of the sea. Now we the peaceful wave divide, On broken surges now we ride, Now every eye dissolves with woe As on some lee-ward coast we go-- Half lost, half buried in the main Hope scarcely beams on life again. Above us storms distract the sky, Beneath us depths unfathom'd lie, Too near we see, a ghastly sight,[174] The realms of everlasting night, A wat'ry tomb of ocean green And only one frail plank between! But winds must cease, and storms decay, Not always lasts the gloomy day, Again the skies are warm and clear, Again soft zephyrs fan the air, Again we find the long lost shore, The winds oppose our wish no more. If thou hast courage to despise The various changes of the skies, To disregard the ocean's rage, Unmov'd when hostile ships engage, Come from thy forest, and with me Learn what it is to go to sea. [173] From the 1786 edition. In the 1795 edition the title was changed to "The Invitation." Captain John Paul Jones sailed from Isle de Groaix, France, on his memorable cruise, August 14, 1779. To secure a crew for his fleet had been the work of many months. [174] "Disheartening sight."--_Ed. 1795._ THE SEA VOYAGE[175] From a gay island green and fair, With gentle blasts of southern air, Across the deep we held our way, Around our barque smooth waters played, No envious clouds obscur'd the day, Serene came on the evening shade. Still farther to the north we drew, And Porto Rico's mountains blue, Were just decaying on the eye, When from the main arose the sun; Before his ray the shadows fly, As we before the breezes run. Now northward of the tropic pass'd, The fickle skies grew black at last; The ruffian winds began to roar, The sea obey'd their tyrant force, And we, alas! too far from shore, Must now forsake our destin'd course. The studding sails at last to hand, The vent'rous captain gave command; But scarcely to the task went they When a vast billow o'er us broke, And tore the sheets and tacks away, Nor could the booms sustain the stroke. Still vaster rose the angry main. The winds through every shroud complain; The topsails we could spread no more, Though doubly reef'd, the furious blast Away the fluttering canvas bore, And vow'd destruction to the mast. When now the northern storm was quell'd, A calm ensued--but ocean swell'd Beyond the towering mountain's height, Till from the south new winds arose; Our sails we spread at dead of night, And fair, though fierce, the tempest blows. When morning rose, the skies were clear The gentle breezes warm and fair, Convey'd us o'er the wat'ry road; A ship o'ertook us on the way, Her thousand sails were spread abroad, And flutter'd in the face of day. At length, through many a climate pass'd, Cæsaria's hills we saw at last, And reach'd the land of lovely dames; My charming Cælia there I found, 'Tis she my warmest friendship claims, The fairest maid that treads the ground. [175] Unique in the October number of the _United States Magazine_, 1779. The poem doubtless describes the poet's voyage home from the West Indies, in June and July, 1778. END OF VOL. I 
38529	----	POEMS OF PHILIP FRENEAU VOLUME II THE POEMS OF PHILIP FRENEAU POET OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION EDITED FOR THE PRINCETON HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION BY FRED LEWIS PATTEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE COLLEGE, AUTHOR OF "A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE" "THE FOUNDATIONS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE" ETC. VOLUME II PRINCETON, N.J. THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 1903 Copyright 1902 by The Princeton University Library _C S. Robinson & Co. University Press_ _Princeton N. J._ CONTENTS PAGE VOLUME II PART II _Continued_ _The First Poetic Period. 1775-1781_ GEORGE THE THIRD'S SOLILOQUY 3 SIR HARRY'S INVITATION 7 DIALOGUE BETWEEN HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY AND MR. FOX 9 THE BRITISH PRISON SHIP 18 THE SPY 39 PART III _Era of the Freeman's Journal. 1781-1790_ ON THE MEMORABLE VICTORY OF PAUL JONES 75 AN ADDRESS 81 A NEW-YORK TORY 84 TO LORD CORNWALLIS 86 A LONDON DIALOGUE 87 LORD CORNWALLIS TO SIR HENRY CLINTON 89 THE VANITY OF EXISTENCE 91 ON THE FALL OF GENERAL EARL CORNWALLIS 92 TO THE MEMORY OF THE BRAVE AMERICANS 101 ARNOLD'S DEPARTURE 103 PLATO TO THEON 104 PROLOGUE TO A THEATRICAL ENTERTAINMENT 108 RUINS OF A COUNTRY INN 110 THE ROYAL ADVENTURER 112 LORD DUNMORE'S PETITION 114 EPIGRAM 116 A SPEECH BY THE KING OF BRITAIN 117 RIVINGTON'S LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT 120 LINES OCCASIONED BY MR. RIVINGTON'S NEW TITULAR TYPES 124 LINES ON MR. RIVINGTON'S NEW ENGRAVED KING'S ARMS 125 A PROPHECY, WRITTEN 1782 126 THE ARGONAUT OR LOST ADVENTURER 128 THE POLITICAL BALANCE 130 DIALOGUE AT HYDE PARK CORNER 140 ON THE LATE ROYAL SLOOP OF WAR GENERAL MONK 142 TRUTH ANTICIPATED 143 BARNEY'S INVITATION 147 SONG ON CAPTAIN BARNEY'S VICTORY 149 ON SIR HENRY CLINTON'S RECALL 153 SIR GUY CARLETON'S ADDRESS 156 SCANDANAVIAN WAR SONG 159 THE PROJECTORS 160 ON GENERAL ROBERTSON'S PROCLAMATION 162 A PICTURE OF THE TIMES 165 PRINCE WILLIAM HENRY'S SOLILOQUY 167 SATAN'S REMONSTRANCE 169 THE REFUGEES' PETITION TO SIR GUY CARLETON 172 SIR GUY'S ANSWER 173 TO A CONCEALED ROYALIST 174 TO THE CONCEALED ROYALIST, IN ANSWER TO A SECOND ATTACK 177 TO THE CONCEALED ROYALIST ON HIS FAREWELL 179 TO THE ROYALIST UNVEILED 181 TO SHYLOCK AP-SHENKIN 185 THE PROPHECY OF KING TAMMANY 187 RIVINGTON'S REFLECTIONS 190 NEW YEAR'S VERSES, JANUARY 1, 1783 197 NEW YEAR'S VERSES, JANUARY 8, 1783 198 HUGH GAINE'S LIFE 201 STANZAS OCCASIONED BY THE DEPARTURE OF THE BRITISH FROM CHARLESTON, DECEMBER 14, 1782 214 ON THE BRITISH KING'S SPEECH 217 A NEW-YORK TORY'S EPISTLE 219 MANHATTAN CITY 223 VERSES OCCASIONED BY GENERAL WASHINGTON'S ARRIVAL IN PHILADELPHIA 225 RIVINGTON'S CONFESSIONS 229 A NEWS-MAN'S ADDRESS 238 NEW YEAR'S VERSES, JANUARY 7, 1784 240 THE HAPPY PROSPECT 242 THE DYING INDIAN, TOMO-CHEQUI 243 LINES INTENDED FOR MR. PEALE'S EXHIBITION 246 THE HURRICANE 250 TO THE KEEPER OF THE KING'S WATER WORKS 252 LINES WRITTEN AT PORT ROYAL 253 TO SIR TOBY, A SUGAR PLANTER 258 ELEGY ON MR. ROBERT BELL 260 ON THE FIRST AMERICAN SHIP THAT EXPLORED THE ROUT TO INDIA 261 THE NEWSMONGER 263 SKETCHES OF AMERICAN HISTORY 269 THE PROGRESS OF BALLOONS 276 ON THE EMIGRATION TO AMERICA 280 THE SEASONS MORALIZED 282 ON THE DEATH OF COLONEL LAURENS 283 ON THE VICISSITUDES OF THINGS 284 PEWTER-PLATTER ALLEY IN PHILADELPHIA 287 ON THE DEATH OF GENERAL JOSEPH REED 288 A RENEGADO EPISTLE 290 THE AMERICAN SIBERIA 293 EPISTLE TO SYLVIUS 295 THE DEPARTURE, 1785 298 A NEWSMAN'S ADDRESS 301 LITERARY IMPORTATION 303 THE ENGLISHMAN'S COMPLAINT 305 THE WILD HONEY SUCKLE 306 ON A BOOK CALLED UNITARIAN THEOLOGY 307 TO ZOILUS 309 ON THE LEGISLATURE OF GREAT-BRITAIN PROHIBITING THE SALE OF DR. RAMSAY'S HISTORY 312 THE DEATH SONG OF A CHEROKEE INDIAN 313 STANZAS WRITTEN AT THE FOOT OF MONTE SOUFFRIERE 314 ON THE CREW OF A CERTAIN VESSEL 317 THE BERMUDA ISLANDS 318 FLORIO TO AMANDA 319 PHILANDER: OR THE EMIGRANT 321 THE FAIR SOLITARY 325 AMANDA IN A CONSUMPTION 326 ELEGIAC LINES 328 THE INSOLVENT'S RELEASE 329 MAY TO APRIL 331 TO AN AUTHOR 332 TO MISFORTUNE 335 TO CRACOVIUS PUTRIDUS 336 SLENDER'S JOURNEY 338 THE HERMIT OF SABA 359 THE INDIAN BURYING GROUND 369 THE INDIAN STUDENT 371 THE MAN OF NINETY 374 ALCINA'S ENCHANTED ISLAND 376 HORACE, LIB. I. ODE 15 377 A SUBSCRIPTION PRAYER 379 EPISTLE TO THE PATRIOTIC FARMER 380 PALEMON TO LAVINIA 381 A NEWSMAN'S ADDRESS 383 ON THE PROSPECT OF A REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 385 TO A DOG 387 TO LYDIA 387 TO CYNTHIA 391 AMANDA'S COMPLAINT 392 HATTERAS 394 ST. CATHARINE'S 397 TO MR. CHURCHMAN 398 THE PROCESSION TO SYLVANIA 399 THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 401 SANGRADO'S EXPEDITION TO SYLVANIA 402 THE DISTREST THEATRE 404 TO MEMMIUS 406 PART II (_Continued_) THE FIRST POETIC PERIOD 1775-1781 THE POEMS OF PHILIP FRENEAU GEORGE THE THIRD'S SOLILOQUY[1] What mean these dreams, and hideous forms that rise Night after night, tormenting to my eyes-- No real foes these horrid shapes can be, But thrice as much they vex and torture me. How cursed is he--how doubly cursed am I-- 5 Who lives in pain, and yet who dares not die; To him no joy this world of Nature brings, In vain the wild rose blooms, the daisy springs. Is this a prelude to some new disgrace, Some baleful omen to my name and race!-- 10 It may be so--ere mighty Cæsar died Presaging Nature felt his doom, and sighed; A bellowing voice through midnight groves was heard, And threatening ghosts at dusk of eve appeared-- Ere Brutus fell, to adverse fates a prey, 15 His evil genius met him on the way, And so may mine!--but who would yield so soon A prize, some luckier hour may make my own? Shame seize my crown ere such a deed be mine-- No--to the last my squadrons shall combine, 20 And slay my foes, while foes remain to slay, Or heaven shall grant me one successful day. Is there a robber close in Newgate hemmed, Is there a cut-throat, fettered and condemned? Haste, loyal slaves, to George's standard come, 25 Attend his lectures when you hear the drum; Your chains I break--for better days prepare, Come out, my friends, from prison and from care, Far to the west I plan your desperate sway, There 'tis no sin to ravage, burn, and slay, 30 There, without fear, your bloody aims pursue, And shew mankind what English thieves can do. That day, when first I mounted to the throne, I swore to let all foreign foes alone. Through love of peace to terms did I advance, 35 And made, they say, a shameful league with France.[2] But different scenes rise horrid to my view, I charged my hosts to plunder and subdue-- At first, indeed, I thought short wars to wage And sent some jail-birds to be led by Gage,[3] 40 For 'twas but right, that those we marked for slaves Should be reduced by cowards, fools, and knaves; Awhile directed by his feeble hand, Whose troops were kicked and pelted through the land, Or starved in Boston, cursed the unlucky hour 45 They left their dungeons for that fatal shore. France aids them now, a desperate game I play, And hostile Spain will do the same, they say; My armies vanquished, and my heroes fled, My people murmuring, and my commerce dead, 50 My shattered navy pelted, bruised, and clubbed, By Dutchmen bullied, and by Frenchmen drubbed, My name abhorred, my nation in disgrace, How should I act in such a mournful case! My hopes and joys are vanished with my coin, 55 My ruined army, and my lost Burgoyne! What shall I do--confess my labours vain, Or whet my tusks, and to the charge again! But where's my force--my choicest troops are fled, Some thousands crippled, and a myriad dead-- 60 If I were owned the boldest of mankind, And hell with all her flames inspired my mind, Could I at once with Spain and France contend, And fight the rebels on the world's green end?-- The pangs of parting I can ne'er endure, 65 Yet part we must, and part to meet no more! Oh, blast this Congress, blast each upstart State, On whose commands ten thousand captains wait; From various climes that dire Assembly came, True to their trust, as hostile to my fame, 70 'Tis these, ah these, have ruined half my sway, Disgraced my arms, and led my slaves astray-- Cursed be the day when first I saw the sun, Cursed be the hour when I these wars begun: The fiends of darkness then possessed my mind, 75 And powers unfriendly to the human kind. To wasting grief, and sullen rage a prey, To Scotland's utmost verge I'll take my way, There with eternal storms due concert keep And while the billows rage, as fiercely weep-- 80 Ye highland lads, my rugged fate bemoan, Assist me with one sympathizing groan,[4] For late I find the nations are my foes, I must submit, and that with bloody nose, Or, like our James, fly basely from the state, 85 Or share, what still is worse--old Charles's fate. [1] From the edition of 1809. The poem was first published in the May number of the _United States Magazine_, 1779, and much revised and enlarged for the edition of 1786, where it bore the title, "George III. His Soliloquy for 1779." This earliest version, which began with the startling line, "O Damn this Congress, damn each _upstart_ state," was made up as follows, the numbering referring to the above version: Lines 68-72, 47-64, followed by "Yet rogues and savage tribes I must employ, And what I cannot conquer will destroy." Lines 23-32, followed by "Ye daring hosts that croud Columbia's shore, Tremble ye traitors, and exult no more; Flames I shall hurl with an unceasing hand, Till fires eternal blaze throughout your land, And every dome and every town expires, And traitors perish in the unfeeling fires; But hold--though this be all my soul's desire, Will my own towns be proof to _rebel_ fire. If in revenge my raging foes should come, And burn my London--it would strike me dumb, To see my children and my queen in tears, And these tall piles come tumbling round my ears, Would to its inmost caverns fright my mind, And stun ourself, the boldest of mankind." Lines 73-76, followed by "My future years I consecrate to woe, For this great loss my soul in tears shall flow." Ending with lines 77-82. [2] Alluding to the peace of 1761 and the forced retirement of Pitt. [3] "And sent a scoundrel by the name of Gage."--_Ed. 1786._ [4] "O let the earth my rugged fate bemoan, And give at least one sympathizing groan." --_United States Magazine, 1779._ SIR HARRY'S INVITATION[5] Come, gentlemen Tories, firm, loyal, and true, Here are axes and shovels, and something to do! For the sake of our king, Come, labour and sing; You left all you had for his honour and glory, And he will remember the suffering Tory: We have, it is true, Some small work to do; But here's for your pay Twelve coppers a day, And never regard what the rebels may say, But throw off your jerkins and labour away. To raise up the rampart, and pile up the wall, To pull down old houses and dig the canal, To build and destroy-- Be this your employ, In the day time to work at our fortifications, And steal in the night from the rebels your rations: The king wants your aid, Not empty parade; Advance to your places Ye men of long faces, Nor ponder too much on your former disgraces, This year, I presume, will quite alter your cases. Attend at the call of the fifer and drummer, The French and the Rebels are coming next summer, And forts we must build Though Tories are kill'd-- Then courage, my jockies, and work for your king, For if you are taken no doubt you will swing-- If York we can hold I'll have you enroll'd; And after you're dead Your names shall be read As who for their monarch both labour'd and bled, And ventur'd their necks for their beef and their bread. 'Tis an honour to serve the bravest of nations, And be left to be hang'd in their capitulations-- Then scour up your mortars And stand to your quarters, 'Tis nonsense for Tories in battle to run, They never need fear sword, halberd, or gun; Their hearts should not fail 'em, No balls will assail 'em, Forget your disgraces And shorten your faces, For 'tis true as the gospel, believe it or not, Who are born to be hang'd, will never be shot. [5] According to Frank Moore's _Songs and Ballads of the Revolution_, this poem was first issued as a ballad-sheet in 1779. It was reprinted in the _Freeman's Journal_, April 17, 1782, and was published in the author's three editions. The text follows the edition of 1795. Sir Henry Clinton was left in command of New York City, July 5, 1777, when Howe started on his expedition for the capture of Philadelphia. Freneau's poem indicates his treatment of the Tory refugees. A DIALOGUE BETWEEN HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY AND MR. FOX[6] Supposed to have passed about the time of the approach of the combined fleets of France and Spain to the British coasts, August, 1779. _King G._ Good master Fox,[7] your counsel I implore, Still George the third, but potent George no more. By North conducted to the brink of fate, I mourn my folly and my pride too late: The promises he made, when once we met In Kew's gay shades,[A] I never shall forget, That at my feet the western world should fall, And bow to me the potent lord of all-- Curse on his hopes, his councils and his schemes, His plans of conquest, and his golden dreams, These have allur'd me to the jaws of hell, By Satan tempted thus Iscariot fell: Divested of majestic pomp I come, My royal robes and airs I've left at home, Speak freely, friend, whate'er you choose to say, Suppose me equal with yourself to-day: How shall I shun the mischiefs that impend? How shall I make Columbia[B] yet my friend? I dread the power of each revolted State, The convex East hangs balanc'd with their weight. How shall I dare the rage of France and Spain, And lost dominion o'er the waves regain? Advise me quick, for doubtful while we stand, Destruction gathers o'er this wretched land: These hostile squadrons to my ruin led, These Gallic thunders fill my soul with dread, If these should conquer--Britain, thou must fall And bend, a province, to the haughty Gaul: If this must be--thou earth, expanding wide, Unlucky George in thy dark entrails hide-- Ye oceans, wrap me in your dark embrace-- Ye mountains, shroud me to your lowest base-- Fall on my head, ye everlasting rocks-- But why so pensive, my good master Fox?[8] [A] The royal gardens at Kew.--_Freneau's note._ [B] America, so called, by poetical liberty, from its discoverer.--_Freneau's note._ _Fox_ While in the arms of power and peace you lay, Ambition led your restless soul astray. Possest of lands extending far and wide, And more than Rome could boast in all her pride, Yet, not contented with that mighty store, Like a true miser, still you sought for more; And, all in raptures for a tyrant's reign, You strove your subjects dearest rights to chain: Those ruffian hosts beyond the ocean sent, By your commands on blood and murder bent, With cruel hand the form of man defac'd, And laid the toils of art and nature waste. (For crimes like these imperial Britain bends, For crimes like these her ancient glory ends) These lands, once truest to your name and race, Whom the wide ocean's utmost waves embrace, Your just protection basely you deny'd, Their towns you plunder'd, and you burnt beside. Virginia's slaves, without one blush of shame, Against their lords[9] you arm'd with sword and flame; At every port your ships of war you laid, And strove to ruin and distress their trade, Yet here, ev'n here, your mighty projects fail'd; For then from creeks their hardy seamen sail'd, In slender barques they cross'd a stormy main, And traffick'd for the wealth of France and Spain; O'er either tropic and the line they pass'd, And, deeply laden, safe return'd at last: Nor think they yet had bow'd to Britain's sway, Though distant nations had not join'd the fray, Alone they fought your armies and your fleet, And made your Clintons and your Howes retreat, And yet while France stood doubting if to join, Your ships they captur'd, and they took Burgoyne! How vain is Briton's strength, her armies now Before Columbia's bolder veterans bow; Her gallant veterans all our force despise, Though late from ruin[C] we beheld them rise; Before their arms our strongest bulwarks fall, They storm the rampart and they scale the wall;[D] With equal dread, on either service sent, They seize a fortress, or they strike a tent. But should we bow beneath a foreign yoke, And potent France atchieve the humbling stroke, Yet every power, and even ourselves, must say, "Just is the vengeance of the skies to-day:" For crimes like ours dire vengeance[10] must atone; Forbear your fasts, and let the skies[11] alone-- By cruel kings, in fierce Britannia bred, Such seas of blood have first and last been shed, That now, distrest for each inhuman deed, Our turn has come--our turn has come to bleed: Forbear your groans; for war and death array, March to the foe, and give the fates their way. Can you[12] behold, without one hearty groan, The fleets of France superior to your own? Can you behold, without one poignant pang, The foreign conquests of the brave D'Estaing?[E] North is your friend, and now destruction knocks, Still take his counsel, and regard not Fox. [C] The Year 1776.--_Freneau's note._ [D] Stoney Point, Powles Hook, &c.--_Ib._ [E] Grenada, &c.--_Ib._ _King G._ Ah! speak not thus--your words will break my heart, Some softer counsel to my ears impart, How can I march to meet the insulting foe, Who never yet to hostile plains did go? When was I vers'd in battles or in blood? When have I fought upon the faithless flood? Much better could I at my palace door Recline and hear the distant cannons roar. Generals and admirals Britain yet can boast, Some fight on land, and some defend the coast; The fame of these throughout the globe resounds, To these I leave the glory and the wounds; But since this honour for no blood atones, I must and will be careful of my bones. What pleasure to your monarch would it be, If Lords and Commons could at last agree; Could North with Fox in firm alliance stand, And Burke with Sandwich shake the social hand, Then should we bring the rebels to our feet, And France and Spain ingloriously retreat, Her ancient glories to this isle return, And we no more for lost Columbia mourn. _Fox_ Alliance!--what![F]--Your Highness must be mad: Say, what alliance can with these be had? Can lambs and wolves in social bands ally? When these prove friendly, then will North and I. Alliance! no--I curse the horrid thought; Ally with those their country's ruin sought! Who to perdition sold their native land, Leagu'd with the foe, a close connected band-- Ally with these!--I speak it to your face-- Alliance here is ruin and disgrace. Angels and devils in such bonds unite, So hell is ally'd to the realms of light-- Let North or Germaine[13] still my prayers deride, Let turn-coat Johnston[G] take the courtly side, Even Pitt, if living, might with these agree; But no alliance shall they have with me. But since no shame forbids your tongue to own A royal coward fills Britannia's throne; Since our best chiefs must fight your mad campaigns, And be disgrac'd at last by him who reigns,[H] No wonder, heaven! such ill success attends! No wonder North and Mansfield are your friends! Take my advice, with these to battle go, These book-learned heroes may confront the foe-- Those first who led us tow'rds the brink of fate, Should still be foremost when at Pluto's gate; Let them, grown desperate by our run of woes, Collect new fury from this host of foes, And, ally'd with themselves, to ruin steer, The just conclusion of their mad career. [F] _Alliance!--what_, &c. See his speech in the House of Commons, _June 22, 1779_, in answer to Lord Nugent.--_Freneau's note._ [G] _Let turn-coat Johnston_, &c. The worthy British commissioner, of bribing memory, who, for the sake of a few guineas, belied his own conscience, and sided with the majority.--_Ib._ [H] _And be disgrac'd at last by him who reigns._ As Gage, the Howes, Burgoyne, &c, for not doing impossibilities.--_Ib._ _King G._ No comfort in these cruel words I find-- Ungrateful words to my tormented mind! With me alone both France and Spain contend, And not one nation will be call'd my friend: Unpitying now the Dutchman sees me fall, The Russian leaves me to the haughty[14] Gaul, The German, grown as brutish[15] as the Dane, Consigns my carcase to the jaws of Spain. Where are the hosts they promis'd me of yore, When rich and great they heard my thunders roar, While yet confess'd the master of the sea, The Germans drain'd their wide domain for me, And aiding Britain with a friendly hand, Helpt to subdue the rebels and their land?[I] Ah! rebels, rebels! insolent and mad; My Scottish rebels were not half so bad,[J] They soon submitted to superior sway;[K] But these grow stronger as my hosts decay: What hosts have perish'd on their hostile shore! They went for conquest, but return'd no more. Columbia, thou a friend in better times! Lost are to me thy pleasurable climes. You wish me buried in eternal night, You curse the day when first I saw the light-- Thy[16] commerce vanish'd, hostile nations share, And thus you leave me[17] naked, poor, and bare; Despised by those who should my[18] cause defend, And helpless left without one pitying friend. These dire afflictions shake my changeful throne, And turn my brain--a very idiot grown: Of all the isles, the realms with which I part, Columbia sits the heaviest at my heart, She, she provokes the deepest, heaviest sigh, And makes me doubly wretched ere I die. Some dreary convent's unfrequented gloom (Like Charles of Spain)[L] had better be my doom: There while in absence from my crown I sigh, The[19] Prince of Wales these ills may rectify; A happier fortune may his crown await, He yet perhaps may save this sinking state. I'll to my prayers, my bishops and my beads,[M] And beg God's pardon for my heinous deeds; Those streams of blood, that, spilt by my command, Call out for vengeance on this guilty land. [I] The Hessians, Waldeckers, Anspachers, &c.--_Freneau's note._ [J] The Year 1745.--_Ib._ [K] Culloden.--_Ib._ [L] _Like Charles of Spain_, &c. Charles V. who, in 1556, resigning the crown to his son Philip II., shut himself up in the monastery of St. Just, in Spain, where he died two years after.--_Ib._ [M] _I'll to my prayers, my bishops, and my beads._ This is not said without foundation, as he established the Roman Catholic religion in Canada, in 1775.--_Ib._ _Fox_ You ask for mercy--can you cry to God,[20] Who had no mercy on poor parson Dodd?[N] No inward image of the power divine, No gentle feelings warm that soul of thine; Convents you have--no need to look for new, Your convents are the brothel and the stew. One horrid act[O] disgrac'd old Jesse's son, And that one blemish have you hit upon; You seiz'd an English Quaker's tempting wife,[P] And push'd him off to lose his sneaking life; Even to that coast where freedom sent to quell, All in their pride the flower of Britain fell. But ruin'd was your scheme, the plan was vain, For when were Quakers in a battle slain? As well might Whales by closing waves expire, Or Salamanders perish in the fire. When France and Spain are thund'ring at your doors, Is this a time for kings to lodge with whores? In one short sentence take my whole advice, (It is no time to flatter and be nice) With all your soul for instant peace contend, Thus shall you be your country's truest friend-- Peace, heavenly[21] peace, may stay your tottering throne, But wars and death and blood can profit none. To Russia[22] send, in humblest guise array'd, And beg her intercession, not her aid: Withdraw your armies from th' Americ' shore, And vex Columbia[23] with your fleets no more; Vain are their conquests, past experience shews, For what this hour they gain, the next they lose. Implore the friendship of these injur'd States; No longer strive against the stubborn fates. Since heav'n has doom'd Columbia to be free, What is her commerce and her wealth to thee? Since heav'n that land of promise has denied, Regain by prudence[24] what you lost by pride: Immediate ruin each delay attends, Imperial Britain scarce her coast defends; Hibernia sees the threat'ning foes advance, And feels an ague at the thoughts of France; Jamaica mourns her half-protected state, Barbadoes soon may share Grenada's fate, And every isle that owns your reign to-day, May bow to-morrow to great Louis'[25] sway. Yes--while I speak, your empire, great before, Contracts its limits, and is great no more. Unhappy prince! what madness has possest, What worse than madness seiz'd thy vengeful breast, When white-rob'd peace before thy portal stood, To drive her hence, and stain the world with blood? For this destruction threatens from the skies; See hostile navies to our ruin rise; Our fleets inglorious shun the force of Spain, And France triumphant stems the subject main. [N] Dr. William Dodd, whose history is well known.--_Freneau's note._ [O] In the case of Uriah.--_Ib._ [P] "The connection between vice and meanness is a fit object for satire; but when the satire is a fact, it cuts with the irresistible power of a diamond. If a Quaker, in defence of his just rights, his property, and the chastity of his house, takes up a musket, he is expelled the meeting; but the present king of England, who seduced and took into keeping a sister of their society, is reverenced and supported with repeated testimonies, while the friendly noodle from whom she was taken, (and who is now in this city) continues a drudge in the service of his rival, as if proud of being cuckolded by a creature called a king."--_American Crisis_, No. 3, _Printed at Philadelphia_, 1777.--_Ib._ [6] First published in the _United States Magazine_, December, 1779. The test follows the edition of 1786. "Early in June, the French fleet of thirty-one ships of the line, yielding to Spanish importunities, put to sea from Brest; and yet they were obliged to wait off the coast of Spain for the Spaniards. After a loss of two months in the best season of the year, a junction was effected with more than twenty ships of war under the command of ... Count Gaston; and the combined fleet, the largest force that had ever been afloat, sailed for the British Channel.... The united fleet rode unmolested by the British.... On the 16th of August they appeared off Plymouth, but did not attack the town. After two idle days a strong wind drove them to the west; when the gale had abated, the allies rallied, returned up the channel, and the British retreated before them. No harmony existed between the French and Spanish officers. A deadly malady ravaged the French ships and infected the Spanish. The combined fleet never had one chief. The French returned to port and remained there; the Spaniards sailed for Cadiz, execrating their allies."--_Bancroft._ [7] "Charly Fox."--_Ed. 1795._ [8] Fox's opposition to the American war is too well known to need comment. [9] "Their cause."--_Ed. 1795._ [10] "Sufferings."--_Ed. 1809._ [11] "Gods."--_Ed. 1795._ [12] "We."--_Ib._ [13] "_Sackville._"--_Ed. 1795._ [14] "Thundering."--_Ib._ [15] "Careless."--_Ib._ [16] "Our."--_Ed. 1795._ [17] "Us."--_Ib._ [18] "Our."--_Ib._ [19] "George."--_Ed. 1795._ [20] This and the following seventeen lines omitted from the edition of 1795. [21] "Instant."--_Ed. 1795._ [22] "Catharine."--_Ib._ [23] "Her oceans."--_Ib._ [24] "Cunning."--_Ed. 1809._ [25] "The Frenchman's."--_Ed. 1795._ THE BRITISH PRISON SHIP[26] Written 1780 CANTO I.--THE CAPTURE _Amid these ills no tyrant dared refuse My right to pen the dictates of the muse, To paint the terrors of the infernal place, And fiends from Europe, insolent as base._ Assist me, Clio! while in verse I tell The dire misfortunes that a ship befell, Which outward bound, to St. Eustatia's shore, Death and disaster through the billows bore. From Philadelphia's crowded port she came; For there the builder plann'd her lofty frame, With wond'rous skill, and excellence of art He form'd, dispos'd, and order'd every part, With joy beheld the stately fabric rise To a stout bulwark of stupendous size, 'Till launch'd at last, capacious of the freight, He left her to the Pilots, and her fate. First from her depths the tapering masts ascend, On whose firm bulk the transverse yards depend, By shrouds and stays secur'd from side to side Trees grew on trees, suspended o'er the tide, Firm to the yards extended, broad and vast They hung the sails susceptive of the blast, Far o'er the prow the lengthy bowsprit lay, Supporting on the extreme the taught Gib-stay, Twice ten six pounders at their port holes plac'd And rang'd in rows, stood hostile in the waist: Thus all prepar'd, impatient for the seas, She left her station with an adverse breeze, This her first outset from her native shore, To seas a stranger, and untry'd before. From the bright radiance that his glories spread Ere from the east gay Phoebus lifts his head, From the sweet morn, a kindred name she won, _Aurora_ call'd, the offspring of the sun, Whose form projecting, the broad prow displays, Far glittering o'er the wave, a mimic blaze. The gay ship now, in all her pomp and pride, With sails expanded, flew along the tide; 'Twas thy deep stream, O Delaware, that bore This pile intended for a southern shore, Bound to those isles where endless summer reigns, Fair fruits, gay blossoms, and enamell'd plains; Where sloping lawns the roving swain invite, And the cool morn succeeds the breezy night, Where each glad day a heaven unclouded brings And sky-topt mountains teem with golden springs. From Cape Henlopen, urg'd by favouring gales, When morn emerg'd, we sea-ward spread our sails, Then east-south-east explor'd the briny way, Close to the wind, departing from the bay; No longer seen the hoarse resounding strand, With hearts elate we hurried from the land, Escap'd the dangers of that shelvy ground, To sailors fatal, and for wrecks renown'd.-- The gale increases as we stem the main, Now scarce the hills their sky-blue mist retain, At last they sink beneath the rolling wave That seems their summits, as they sink, to lave; Abaft the beam the freshening breezes play, No mists advancing to deform the day, No tempests rising o'er the splendid scene, A sea unruffled, and a heaven serene. Now Sol's bright lamp, the heav'n born source of light, Had pass'd the line of his meridian height, And westward hung--retreating from the view Shores disappear'd, and every hill withdrew, When, still suspicious of some neighbouring foe, Aloft the Master bade a Seaman go, To mark if, from the mast's aspiring height Through all the round a vessel came in sight. Too soon the Seaman's glance, extending wide, Far distant in the east a ship espy'd, Her lofty masts stood bending to the gale, Close to the wind was brac'd each shivering sail; Next from the deck we saw the approaching foe, Her spangled bottom seem'd in flames to glow When to the winds she bow'd in dreadful haste And her lee-guns lay delug'd in the waste: From her top-gallant flow'd an English Jack; With all her might she strove to gain our track, Nor strove in vain--with pride and power elate, Wing'd on by hell, she drove us to our fate; No stop no stay her bloody crew intends, (So flies a comet with its host of fiends) Nor oaths, nor prayers arrest her swift career, Death in her front, and ruin in her rear. Struck at the sight, the Master gave command To change our course, and steer toward the land-- Swift to the task the ready sailors run, And while the word was utter'd, half was done: As from the south the fiercer breezes rise Swift from her foe alarm'd Aurora flies, With every sail extended to the wind She fled the unequal foe that chac'd behind; Along her decks dispos'd in close array Each at its port, the grim artillery lay, Soon on the foe with brazen throat to roar; But, small their size, and narrow was their bore; Yet faithful they their destin'd station keep To guard the barque that wafts them o'er the deep, Who now must bend to steer a homeward course And trust her swiftness rather than her force, Unfit to combat with a powerful foe; Her decks too open, and her waist too low. While o'er the wave with foaming prow she flies, Once more emerging, distant landscapes rise; High in the air the starry streamer plays, And every sail its various tribute pays: To gain the land we bore the weighty blast; And now the wish'd for cape appear'd at last; But the vext foe, impatient of delay, Prepar'd for ruin, press'd upon her prey; Near, and more near, in aweful grandeur came The frigate _Iris_, not unknown to fame; _Iris_ her name, but _Hancock_ once she bore, Fram'd and completed on New Albion's shore, By Manly lost, the swiftest of the train That fly with wings of canvas o'er the main. Now, while for combat some with zeal prepare, Thus to the heavens the Boatswain sent his prayer: "List, all ye powers that rule the skies and seas! "Shower down perdition on such thieves as these, "Fate, strike their hearts with terror and dismay, "And sprinkle on their powder salt-sea spray! "May bursting cannon, while his aim he tries, "Destroy the Gunner, and be-damn his eyes-- "The chief who awes the quarter-deck, may he, "Tripp'd from his stand, be tumbled in the sea. "May they who rule the round-top's giddy height "Be canted headlong to perpetual night; "May fiends torment them on a leeward coast, "And help forsake them when they want it most-- "From their wheel'd engines torn be every gun-- "And now, to sum up every curse in one, "May latent flames, to save us, intervene, "And hell-ward drive them from their magazine!"-- The Frigate now had every sail unfurl'd, And rush'd tremendous o'er the wat'ry world; Thus fierce Pelides, eager to destroy, Chac'd the proud Trojan to the gates of Troy-- Swift o'er the waves while hostile they pursue As swiftly from their fangs _Aurora_ flew, At length Henlopen's cape we gain'd once more, And vainly strove to force the ship ashore; Stern fate forbade the barren shore to gain, Denial sad, and source of future pain! For then the inspiring breezes ceas'd to blow, Lost were they all, and smooth the seas below; By the broad cape becalm'd, our lifeless sails No longer swell'd their bosoms to the gales; The ship, unable to pursue her way, Tumbling about, at her own guidance lay, No more the helm its wonted influence lends, No oars assist us, and no breeze befriends; Meantime the foe, advancing from the sea, Rang'd her black cannon, pointed on our lee, Then up she luff'd, and blaz'd her entrails dire, Bearing destruction, terror, death and fire. Vext at our fate, we prim'd a piece, and then Return'd the shot, to shew them we were men. Dull night at length her dusky pinions spread, And every hope to 'scape the foe was fled; Close to thy cape, Henlopen, though we press'd, We could not gain thy desert, dreary breast; Though ruin'd trees beshroud thy barren shore With mounds of sand half hid, or cover'd o'er, Though ruffian winds disturb thy summit bare, Yet every hope and every wish was there; In vain we sought to reach the joyless strand, Fate stood between, and barr'd us from the land. All dead becalm'd, and helpless as we lay, The ebbing current forc'd us back to sea, While vengeful _Iris_, thirsting for our blood, Flash'd her red lightnings o'er the trembling flood, At every flash a storm of ruin came 'Till our shock'd vessel shook through all her frame-- Mad for revenge, our breasts with fury glow To wreak returns of vengeance on the foe; Full at his hull our pointed guns we rais'd, His hull resounded as the cannon blaz'd; Through his main top-sail one a passage tore, His sides re-echo'd to the dreadful roar, Alternate fires dispell'd the shades of night-- But how unequal was this daring fight! Our stoutest guns threw but a six-pound ball, Twelve pounders from the foe our sides did maul, And, while no power to save him intervenes, A bullet struck our captain of Marines; Fierce, though he bid defiance to the foe He felt his death and ruin in the blow, Headlong he fell, distracted with the wound, The deck distain'd, and heart blood streaming round. Another blast, as fatal in its aim, Wing'd by destruction, through our rigging came, And, whistling tunes from hell upon its way, Shrouds, stays, and braces tore at once away, Sails, blocks, and oars in scatter'd fragments fly-- Their softest language was--_submit, or die!_ Repeated cries throughout the ship resound; Now every bullet brought a different wound; 'Twixt wind and water, one assail'd the side, Through this aperture rush'd the briny tide-- 'Twas then the Master trembled for his crew, And bade thy shores, O Delaware, adieu!-- And must we yield to yon' destructive ball, And must our colours to these ruffians fall!-- They fall!--his thunders forc'd our pride to bend, The lofty topsails with their yards descend, And the proud foe, such leagues of ocean pass'd, His wish completed in our woe at last. Convey'd to York, we found, at length, too late, That Death was better than the prisoner's fate; There doom'd to famine, shackles and despair, Condemn'd to breathe a foul, infected air In sickly hulks, devoted while we lay, Successive funerals gloom'd each dismal day-- But what on captives British rage can do, Another Canto, friend, shall let you know. CANTO II.--THE PRISON SHIP The various horrors of these hulks to tell, These Prison Ships where pain and horror dwell, Where death in tenfold vengeance holds his reign, And injur'd ghosts, yet unaveng'd, complain; This be my task--ungenerous Britons, you Conspire to murder those you can't subdue.-- Weak as I am, I'll try my strength to-day And my best arrows at these hell-hounds play, To future years one scene of death prolong, And hang them up to infamy, in song. That Britain's rage should dye our plains with gore, And desolation spread through every shore, None e'er could doubt, that her ambition knew, This was to rage and disappointment due; But that those monsters whom our soil maintain'd, Who first drew breath in this devoted land, Like famish'd wolves, should on their country prey, Assist its foes, and wrest our lives away, This shocks belief--and bids our soil disown Such friends, subservient to a bankrupt crown, By them the widow mourns her partner dead, Her mangled sons to darksome prisons led, By them--and hence my keenest sorrows rise, My friend, my guardian, my Orestes dies; Still for that loss must wretched I complain, And sad Ophelia mourn her favourite swain. Ah! come the day when from this bloody shore Fate shall remove them to return no more-- To scorch'd Bahama shall the traitors go With grief and rage, and unremitting woe, On burning sands to walk their painful round, And sigh through all the solitary ground, Where no gay flower their haggard eyes shall see, And find no shade but from the cypress tree. So much we suffer'd from the tribe I hate, So near they shov'd me to the brink of fate, When two long months in these dark hulks we lay,[27] Barr'd down by night, and fainting all the day In the fierce fervours of the solar beam, Cool'd by no breeze on Hudson's mountain-stream; That not unsung these threescore days shall fall To black oblivion that would cover all!-- No masts or sails these crowded ships adorn, Dismal to view, neglected and forlorn! Here, mighty ills oppress the imprison'd throng, Dull were our slumbers, and our nights too long-- From morn to eve along the decks we lay Scorch'd into fevers by the solar ray; No friendly awning cast a welcome shade, Once was it promis'd, and was never made; No favours could these sons of death bestow, 'Twas endless cursing, and continual woe: Immortal hatred doth their breasts engage, And this lost empire swells their souls with rage. Two hulks on Hudson's stormy bosom lie, Two, farther south, affront the pitying eye-- There, the black _Scorpion_ at her mooring rides, There, _Strombolo_ swings, yielding to the tides; Here, bulky _Jersey_ fills a larger space, And _Hunter_, to all hospitals disgrace-- Thou, _Scorpion_, fatal to thy crowded throng, Dire theme of horror and Plutonian song, Requir'st my lay--thy sultry decks I know, And all the torments that exist below! The briny wave that Hudson's bosom fills Drain'd through her bottom in a thousand rills, Rotten and old, replete with sighs and groans, Scarce on the waters she sustain'd her bones; Here, doom'd to toil, or founder in the tide, At the moist pumps incessantly we ply'd,[28] Here, doom'd to starve, like famish'd dogs we tore The scant allowance, that our tyrants bore. Remembrance shudders at this scene of fears-- Still in my view some English brute appears, Some base-born Hessian slave walks threat'ning by, Some servile Scot with murder in his eye Still haunts my sight, as vainly they bemoan Rebellions manag'd so unlike their own! O may I never feel the poignant pain To live subjected to such fiends again, Stewards and Mates that hostile Britain bore, Cut from the gallows on their native shore;[29] Their ghastly looks and vengeance-beaming eyes Still to my view in dismal colours rise-- O may I ne'er review these dire abodes, These piles for slaughter, floating on the floods,-- And you, that o'er the troubled ocean go, Strike not your standards to this miscreant foe, Better the greedy wave should swallow all, Better to meet the death-conducted ball, Better to sleep on ocean's deepest bed, At once destroy'd and number'd with the dead, Than thus to perish in the face of day Where twice ten thousand deaths one death delay. When to the ocean dives the western sun, And the scorch'd Tories fire their evening gun, "Down, rebels, down!" the angry Scotchmen cry, "Damn'd dogs, descend, or by our broad swords die!" Hail, dark abode! what can with thee compare-- Heat, sickness, famine, death, and stagnant air-- Pandora's box, from whence all mischief flew, Here real found, torments mankind anew!-- Swift from the guarded decks we rush'd along, And vainly sought repose, so vast our throng: Three hundred wretches here, denied all light, In crowded mansions pass the infernal night, Some for a bed their tatter'd vestments join, And some on chests, and some on floors recline;[30] Shut from the blessings of the evening air, Pensive we lay with mingled corpses there, Meagre and wan, and scorch'd with heat below, We loom'd like ghosts, ere death had made us so-- How could we else, where heat and hunger join'd Thus to debase the body and the mind, Where cruel thirst the parching throat invades, Dries up the man, and fits him for the shades. No waters laded from the bubbling spring To these dire ships the British monsters bring-- By planks and ponderous beams completely wall'd In vain for water, and in vain, I call'd-- No drop was granted to the midnight prayer, To Dives in these regions of despair!-- The loathsome cask a deadly dose contains, Its poison circling through the languid veins; "Here, generous Britain, generous, as you say, "To my parch'd tongue one cooling drop convey, "Hell has no mischief like a thirsty throat, "Nor one tormentor like your David Sproat."[A] Dull flew the hours, till, from the East display'd, Sweet morn dispells the horrors of the shade; On every side dire objects meet the sight, And pallid forms, and murders of the night, The dead were past their pain, the living groan, Nor dare to hope another morn their own; But what to them is morn's delightful ray, Sad and distressful as the close of day, O'er distant streams appears the dewy green, And leafy trees on mountain tops are seen, But they no groves nor grassy mountains tread, Mark'd for a longer journey to the dead. Black as the clouds that shade St. Kilda's shore, Wild as the winds that round her mountains roar, At every post some surly vagrant stands, Pick'd from the British or the Irish bands, Some slave from Hesse, some hangman's son at least Sold and transported, like his brother beast-- Some miscreant Tory, puff'd with upstart pride, Led on by hell to take the royal side; Dispensing death triumphantly they stand, Their musquets ready to obey command; Wounds are their sport, as ruin is their aim; On their dark souls compassion has no claim, And discord only can their spirits please: Such were our tyrants here, and such were these. Ingratitude! no curse like thee is found Throughout this jarring world's extended round, Their hearts with malice to our country swell Because in former days we us'd them well!-- This pierces deep, too deeply wounds the breast; We help'd them naked, friendless, and distrest, Receiv'd their vagrants with an open hand, Bestow'd them buildings, privilege, and land-- Behold the change!--when angry Britain rose, These thankless tribes became our fiercest foes, By them devoted, plunder'd, and accurst, Stung by the serpents whom ourselves had nurs'd. But such a train of endless woes abound, So many mischiefs in these hulks are found, That on them all a poem to prolong Would swell too high the horrors of my song-- Hunger and thirst to work our woe combine, And mouldy bread, and flesh of rotten swine, The mangled carcase, and the batter'd brain, The doctor's poison, and the captain's cane, The soldier's musquet, and the steward's debt, The evening shackle, and the noon-day threat. That juice destructive to the pangs of care Which Rome of old, nor Athens could prepare, Which gains the day for many a modern chief When cool reflection yields a faint relief, That charm, whose virtue warms the world beside, Was by these tyrants to our use denied, While yet they deign'd that healthy juice to lade The putrid water felt its powerful aid; But when refus'd--to aggravate our pains-- Then fevers rag'd and revel'd through our veins; Throughout my frame I felt its deadly heat, I felt my pulse with quicker motions beat: A pallid hue o'er every face was spread, Unusual pains attack'd the fainting head, No physic here, no doctor to assist, My name was enter'd on the sick man's list; Twelve wretches more the same dark symptoms took, And these were enter'd on the doctor's book; The loathsome _Hunter_ was our destin'd place, The _Hunter_, to all hospitals disgrace; With soldiers sent to guard us on our road, Joyful we left the _Scorpion's_ dire abode; Some tears we shed for the remaining crew, Then curs'd the hulk, and from her sides withdrew. [A] Commissary of Prisoners at New-York.--_Freneau's note._ CANTO III.--THE HOSPITAL PRISON SHIP Now tow'rd the _Hunter's_ gloomy sides we came, A slaughter-house, yet hospital in name;[31] For none came there (to pass through all degrees) 'Till half consum'd, and dying with disease;-- But when too near with labouring oars we ply'd, The Mate with curses drove us from the side; That wretch who, banish'd from the navy crew, Grown old in blood, did here his trade renew; His serpent's tongue, when on his charge let loose, Utter'd reproaches, scandal, and abuse, Gave all to hell who dar'd his king disown, And swore mankind were made for George alone: Ten thousand times, to irritate our woe, He wish'd us founder'd in the gulph below; Ten thousand times he brandish'd high his stick, And swore as often that we were not sick-- And yet so pale!--that we were thought by some A freight of ghosts from Death's dominions come-- But calm'd at length--for who can always rage, Or the fierce war of endless passion wage, He pointed to the stairs that led below To damps, disease, and varied shapes of woe-- Down to the gloom I took my pensive way, Along the decks the dying captives lay; Some struck with madness, some with scurvy pain'd, But still of putrid fevers most complain'd! On the hard floors these wasted objects laid, There toss'd and tumbled in the dismal shade, There no soft voice their bitter fate bemoan'd, And Death strode stately, while the victims groan'd; Of leaky decks I heard them long complain, Drown'd as they were in deluges of rain, Deny'd the comforts of a dying bed, And not a pillow to support the head-- How could they else but pine, and grieve, and sigh, Detest a wretched life--and wish to die? Scarce had I mingled with this dismal band When a thin spectre seiz'd me by the hand-- "And art thou come, (death heavy on his eyes) "And art thou come to these abodes," he cries; "Why didst thou leave the _Scorpion's_ dark retreat, "And hither haste a surer death to meet? "Why didst thou leave thy damp infected cell? "If that was purgatory, this is hell-- "We, too, grown weary of that horrid shade, "Petitioned early for the doctor's aid; "His aid denied, more deadly symptoms came, "Weak, and yet weaker, glow'd the vital flame; "And when disease had worn us down so low "That few could tell if we were ghosts or no, "And all asserted, death would be our fate-- "Then to the doctor we were sent--too late. "Here wastes away Autolycus the brave, "Here young Orestes finds a wat'ry grave, "Here gay Alcander, gay, alas! no more, "Dies far sequester'd from his native shore; "He late, perhaps, too eager for the fray, "Chac'd the vile Briton o'er the wat'ry way "'Till fortune jealous, bade her clouds appear, "Turn'd hostile to his fame, and brought him here. "Thus do our warriors, thus our heroes fall, "Imprison'd here, base ruin meets them all, "Or, sent afar to Britain's barbarous shore, "There die neglected, and return no more: "Ah! rest in peace, poor, injur'd, parted shade, "By cruel hands in death's dark weeds array'd, "But happier climes, where suns unclouded shine, "Light undisturb'd, and endless peace are thine."-- From Brookland groves a Hessian doctor came, Not great his skill, nor greater much his fame; Fair Science never call'd the wretch her son, And Art disdain'd the stupid man to own;-- Can you admire that Science was so coy, Or Art refus'd his genius to employ!-- Do men with brutes an equal dullness share, Or cuts yon' grovelling mole the midway air? In polar worlds can Eden's blossoms blow? Do trees of God in barren desarts grow? Are loaded vines to Etna's summit known, Or swells the peach beneath the torrid zone?-- Yet still he doom'd his genius to the rack, And, as you may suppose, was own'd a quack. He on his charge the healing work begun With antimonial mixtures, by the tun, Ten minutes was the time he deign'd to stay, The time of grace allotted once a day-- He drencht us well with bitter draughts, 'tis true, Nostrums from hell, and cortex from Peru-- Some with his pills he sent to Pluto's reign, And some he blister'd with his flies of Spain; His cream of Tartar walk'd its deadly round, Till the lean patient at the potion frown'd, And swore that hemlock, death, or what you will, Were nonsense to the drugs that stuff'd his bill.-- On those refusing he bestow'd a kick, Or menac'd vengeance with his walking stick; Here uncontroul'd he exercis'd his trade, And grew experienced by the deaths he made; By frequent blows we from his cane endur'd He kill'd at least as many as he cur'd; On our lost comrades built his future fame, And scatter'd fate, where'er his footsteps came. Some did not seem obedient to his will, And swore he mingled poison with his pill, But I acquit him by a fair confession, He was no Englishman--he was a Hessian,[32]-- Although a dunce, he had some sense of sin, Or else the Lord knows where we now had been; Perhaps in that far country sent to range Where never prisoner meets with an exchange-- Then had we all been banish'd out of time Nor I return'd to plague the world with rhyme. Fool though he was, yet candour must confess Not chief Physician was this dog of Hesse-- One master o'er the murdering tribe was plac'd, By him the rest were honour'd or disgrac'd;-- Once, and but once, by some strange fortune led He came to see the dying and the dead-- He came--but anger so deform'd his eye, And such a faulchion glitter'd on his thigh, And such a gloom his visage darken'd o'er, And two such pistols in his hands he bore! That, by the gods!--with such a load of steel He came, we thought, to murder, not to heal-- Hell in his heart, and mischief in his head, He gloom'd destruction, and had smote us dead, Had he so dar'd--but fate with-held his hand-- He came--blasphem'd--and turn'd again to land. From this poor vessel, and her sickly crew An English ruffian all his titles drew, Captain, esquire, commander, too, in chief, And hence he gain'd his bread, and hence his beef, But, sir, you might have search'd creation round Ere such another miscreant could be found-- Though unprovok'd, an angry face he bore, We stood astonish'd at the oaths he swore; He swore, till every prisoner stood aghast, And thought him Satan in a brimstone blast; He wish'd us banish'd from the public light, He wish'd us shrouded in perpetual night! That were he king, no mercy would he show, But drive all rebels to the world below; That if we scoundrels did not scrub the decks His staff should break our damn'd rebellious necks; He swore, besides, that if the ship took fire We too should in the pitchy flame expire; And meant it so--this tyrant, I engage, Had lost his breath to gratify his rage.-- If where he walk'd a captive carcase lay, Still dreadful was the language of the day-- He call'd us dogs, and would have us'd us so, But vengeance check'd the meditated blow, The vengeance from our injur'd nation due To him, and all the base, unmanly crew. Such food they sent, to make complete our woes, It look'd like carrion torn from hungry crows, Such vermin vile on every joint were seen, So black, corrupted, mortified, and lean That once we try'd to move our flinty chief, And thus address'd him, holding up the beef: "See, captain, see! what rotten bones we pick, "What kills the healthy cannot cure the sick: "Not dogs on such by Christian men are fed, "And see, good master, see, what lousy bread!" "Your meat or bread (this man of flint replied) "Is not my care to manage or provide-- "But this, damn'd rebel dogs, I'd have you know, "That better than you merit we bestow; "Out of my sight!"----nor more he deign'd to say, But whisk'd about, and frowning, strode away. Each day, at least three carcases we bore, And scratch'd them graves along the sandy shore; By feeble hands the shallow graves were made, No stone memorial o'er the corpses laid; In barren sands, and far from home, they lie, No friend to shed a tear, when passing by; O'er the mean tombs insulting Britons tread, Spurn at the sand, and curse the rebel dead. When to your arms these fatal islands fall, (For first or last they must be conquer'd all) Americans! to rites sepulchral just, With gentlest footstep press this kindred dust, And o'er the tombs, if tombs can then be found, Place the green turf, and plant the myrtle round. Americans! a just resentment shew, And glut revenge on this detested foe; While the warm blood exults the glowing vein Still shall resentment in your bosoms reign, Can you forget the greedy Briton's ire, Your fields in ruin, and your domes on fire, No age, no sex from lust and murder free, And, black as night, the hell born refugee! Must York forever your best blood entomb, And these gorg'd monsters triumph in their doom, Who leave no art of cruelty untry'd; Such heavy vengeance, and such hellish pride! Death has no charms--his realms dejected lie In the dull climate of a clouded sky; Death has no charms, except in British eyes, See, arm'd for death, the infernal miscreants rise; See how they pant to stain the world with gore, And millions murder'd, still would murder more; This selfish race, from all the world disjoin'd, Perpetual discord spread throughout mankind, Aim to extend their empire o'er the ball, Subject, destroy, absorb, and conquer all, As if the power that form'd us did condemn All other nations to be slaves to them-- Rouse from your sleep, and crush the thievish band, Defeat, destroy, and sweep them from the land, Ally'd like you, what madness to despair, Attack the ruffians while they linger there; There Tryon sits, a monster all complete, See Clinton there with vile Knyphausen meet, And every wretch whom honour should detest There finds a home--and Arnold with the rest. Ah! traitors, lost to every sense of shame, Unjust supporters of a tyrant's claim; Foes to the rights of freedom and of men, Flush'd with the blood of thousands you have slain, To the just doom the righteous skies decree We leave you, toiling still in cruelty, Or on dark plans in future herds to meet, Plans form'd in hell, and projects half complete: The years approach that shall to ruin bring Your lords, your chiefs, your miscreant of a king, Whose murderous acts shall stamp his name accurs'd, And his last triumphs more than damn the first. [26] First published in Philadelphia, by Francis Bailey, in 1781. Freneau wrote the poem during the summer of 1780, immediately after his exchange. The original manuscript is in the possession of Miss Adele M. Sweeney, a great-granddaughter of the poet. The text follows the edition of 1786. On May 25, 1780, Freneau, in the ship _Aurora_, started from Philadelphia as a passenger for Santa Cruz. The next day, while off Cape Henlopen, the ship was captured by the British frigate _Iris_, Capt. Hawkes, and the crew and passengers sent to New York as prisoners. For Freneau's account of his capture and captivity, see _Some Account of the Capture of the Ship Aurora_, 1899. [27] Freneau was placed on board the _Scorpion_, June 1, and was exchanged July 12, 1780. [28] "The weather was very stormy and the river uncommonly rough. The ship rolled considerably, and the water gushed into some of the lower ports, which made some of the landsmen who slept in the cable tier imagine she was sinking. In a moment the alarm became general. 'The ship is sinking! the ship is sinking!' was echoed fore and aft. I expected every moment to feel myself afloat in the berth where I lay; but at the same time considering it would be a folly to drown between decks when I perhaps might get on shore somehow, I jumped up and hurried toward the main hatchway, where a multitude was endeavouring to get out; the sentries at the same time beating on their heads with their drawn swords and marquets without mercy.... Some lamented that they should never see their wives and children again; others begged by the love of God to be let upon deck and they would bind themselves slaves forever on board a man-of-war, or any other service.... After some trouble we got a light, and examining the pump-well, found the ship dry and tight."--_Freneau's Journal._ [29] "One, Gauzoo, was steward of the ship--one of the most brutal of mankind, who abused us continually. It is impossible for words to give his character; it seemed as though he could not give any of us a civil word upon the most indifferent occasion. When he was not cursing us, he kept in his cabin in gloomy reserve, the most vile and detestable of mortals."--_Freneau's Journal._ [30] "At sundown we were ordered down between the decks, to the number of nearly three hundred of us. The best lodgings I could procure this night was on a chest, almost suffocated with the heat and stench. I expected to die before morning, but human nature can bear more than one would at first suppose."--_Freneau's Journal._ [31] "The _Hunter_ had been very newly put to the use of a hospital-ship. She was miserably dirty and cluttered. Her decks leaked to such a degree that the sick were deluged with every shower of rain. Between decks they lay along struggling in the agonies of death; dying with putrid and bilious fevers; lamenting their hard fate to die at such a fatal distance from their friends; others totally insensible, and yielding their last breath in all the horrors of light-headed frenzy.... Our allowance in the _Hunter_, to those upon full diet, was one pound of bread and one pound of fresh beef per diem; to those upon half diet, one pound of bread and one-half pound of beef or mutton per diem. Every other day we had a cask of spruce beer sent on board. Our fresh meat was generally heads or shanks, and would just answer to make soup."--_Freneau's Journal._ [32] "A German doctor attended every morning at eight o'clock and administered such remedies as were thought proper. Thus things went on, two or three dying every day, who were carried on shore and buried in the bank, till three of our crew, who had got pretty hearty, stole the boat one night and made their escape. This occasioned new trouble. The doctor refused to come on board, and as he rowed past us next morning to see somebody in the _Jersey_, which lay near us, some of the sick calling to him for blisters, he told them to put tar on their backs, which would serve as well as anything, and so rowed away. However, after two or three days his wrath was appeased, and he deigned to come on board again."--_Freneau's Journal._ THE SPY[33] Sir Henry Clinton, Major André, Lucinda, Amelia, Arnold, Gen. Green, Servants to Arnold, Peasants, Knyphausen, Gen. Robertson. SCENE I.--_West Point Fort._ Jeffery _and_ Pasquin, _servants to_ ARNOLD, _working in a garden_. _Pasq._ (_Throwing down his spade_) Faith, Jeffery, I am weary of toiling among these rocks and precipices. I must e'en give o'er. Our master should have fetched his soil along with him to these savage retreats. We may work till we are gray-headed ere we can produce a turnip or a cabbage for him on these barren, unthrifty rocks. _Jeff._ Be not discouraged, Pasquin, we shall have better soil to work in ere long. _Pasq._ How know you that? _Jeff._ I overheard my master t'other day telling a friend of his, whom, by the by, the people of this country call a Tory, that he had planned matters so that in a little time the war would be over, and then he would purchase one of the most fertile tracts of land in America and entitle it a Manor; that he would settle the same goodly possession with tenants and vassals, and so being master among them, spend the remainder of his days in quiet. _Pasq._ I pray for the speedy fulfilling of this design. Our master, I know, is an able general. Why, I suppose he intends to rout the enemy out of New York, retake Charleston, conquer the warships of Britain, kill the king, and so force the English nation to make peace with the Americans. _Jeff._ Heaven only knows in what manner he intends to act or what his plan may be, but this I am sure of, he keeps it very secret, and I believe there are not above one or two of his friends that know anything of it. _Pasq._ Well, the sooner he gets a new garden for us the better. I have worn out a dozen mattocks and as many spades on these cursed craggy rocks. One's tools to work here should be made of adamant. But, Jeffery, do you not observe how gracious and intimate our master has been for these several months past with some who are called disaffected? _Jeff._ I have had it in my mind to make the same observation to you, and do you not perceive that their intimacy daily increases? _Pasq._ And then, when our master is at table with some of these chosen favorites, how he sneers and hints ludicrous things against the American officers and army. One would think he heartily despised them, by his behaviour. _Jeff._ And what was it he said of the French the other day? Did he not say they were a perfidious nation of knaves, a herd of needy scoundrels who were endeavoring to conquer this country from the king of Britain, that they might add it to their own dominions and make the people here slaves? _Pasq._ And when the general gives a dance or an entertainment or a ball, we see none of the true-heart Americans invited. His guests are a lukewarm, half-disaffected sort of people, who say more than for their own sakes I would choose to mention to everybody. _Jeff._ Well, this may all be true, and yet I cannot help thinking our master is a hearty friend to his country. He does these things for a feint, under a mask, as it were, to find out secrets from the enemy. In good faith, I am of opinion he will shortly drive every British soldier off the continent and then become possessed of his Lordship or Manor, or what-so you call it. _Pasq._ Amen, I say, and so let us work on in hopes of better times. SCENE II.--_Scene changes to New York._ SIR HENRY CLINTON _and_ MAJOR ANDRÉ _in a private apartment_. _Sir Henry._ André, my friend and faithful confidant, Since Fortune now vouchsafes to smile again, And stubborn Charlestown bends to Britain's yoke, What shall we next attempt or next achieve? I have transmitted home a full account Of that great capture, that important city Which long has bid defiance to our arms, With all particulars and circumstances Attending on the siege, and in the list Of British officers with honour mentioned, You, sir, are not forgot. I must confess, By your advice I planned that expedition, Which now shall set me high in royal favor, By your unconquered spirit and perseverance, A mind that laughs at toils and difficulties, I carried on the siege with fire and vigour Against a foe with hearts of adamant, And found them to submit--but princely favor Is like a fire that only burns as long As you afford it fuel. Before this conquest Of Charlestown wears away, and hardly leaves A faint impression on the royal mind, Let's hatch some great exploit, some daring action That strikes into the heart of this rebellion, That one deed, treading on the heels of t'other, May make us great indeed. _Maj. André._ I have been thinking Some time, Sir Henry, what we should be doing. 'Tis yet but early in the active season; The summer scarce has finished her career, And in this mild, this pleasing temperate climate Three months as yet are open for campaigns; But then our worn-out, dying, wounded soldiers Demand our pity. Those who came from Charlestown Have brought with them a lingering hectic fever Which hardly one survives. Our soldiers here Who do the duty of the garrison, With constant watching, unremitted labor, Cannot be spared from hence. Were we sufficient In horse and foot to combat with the foe, I forthwith would advise your Excellency Once more to try the force of Washington, That so, by killing and by captivating Him and his troops, we totally might ruin This only stay, this bulwark of rebellion. But since our circumstances don't allow With open force t' attack the hostile lines, Let's try the witching power of bribery. We read the Prince of Macedon declared That those strong gates his javelins could not pierce Nor battering ram effect a breach upon, Were open still to gold. [_Pauses_ _Sir Henry._ Speak on, my friend, For I approve the motion to my soul If any project likely to succeed, Or well-planned scheme thou canst impart to me, Gold shall not be deficient. Millions lie Appropriated to this very purpose, And often have I sent to sound some chiefs Whose qualities and influence are great In yonder hostile camp, but their stern souls Are so well armed with more than Spartan virtue That there corruption seems to have no power, And all my schemes and plans are come to nothing. _Maj. André._ I know a man Who, wouldst thou think it, by his chieftain trusted, And even this moment placed in high command, And honoured to profusion by his country-- The Americans in truth almost adore him-- That I do correspond with daily. O Britain, Britain, That one descended from thy true-born sons Should plot against the soil that gave him birth, And for the value of a little gold Betray its dearest rights. But traitors are the growth of every country And Arnold is our own! _Sir Henry._ What say you? Arnold? Can Arnold then be bought? I greet you now! Arnold, in chief command at West Point fort? Arnold, who galled our sides in Canada? Arnold, who took and plundered Montreal? Gold shall not here be scarce if gold can buy him; Ten thousand sterling pounds are at his service, And twice ten thousand more if he deliver This West Point fort with its dependencies Into the hand of Clinton. _Maj. André._ If we can gain the fort we all things gain, The country round must at our mercy lie; Then may our shipping sail to Albany, Disbark the troops that march for Saratoga, Who, taking thence the route to Lake Champlain, May soon reduce the forts, and in a month Open a new acquaintance with the north, Communicated free to Canada.-- Another great advantage we shall gain: By being masters then of Hudson's river, We shall cut off all intercourse and passage Between the eastern and the southern states, Which I conceive will be of consequence Toward the speedy ending of the war. _Sir Henry._ And so you say that we can buy the fort; Then happy I--my fame and fortune sure; This service will be of such eminence That Britain never can requite Sir Henry. _Maj. André._ I do report that you can buy the fort, For well I know the man I have to deal with; For just ten thousand guineas The troops, the fort, and Arnold are your own. And to this man, altho' he be a rascal, You must consider we are obligated. He quits his friends, his honour, and his country, The fame of all his great and brilliant actions, And the encomiums both of France and Spain, Perhaps all Europe, Britain not excepted, Sold for ten thousand guineas and to serve us. _Sir Henry._ And obligated we confess ourselves. This West Point fort--for this a long campaign I spent along the shores of Hudson's river, And failed at last with loss of Stony Point, The works, the stores, and twice three hundred soldiers, The prime of all my pack;--yes, powerful gold, I own thy aid in this extremity. Tho' Britain be the greatest in the world In ships and men with genius for the sea, Yet cannot her stout navy take this fort By open force with all its weight of cannon. It stands upon a craggy eminence, All fenced around with towers and battlements, The works of mighty nature. To these subjoined the nicest aids of art-- Glacis and bastions, flanks and counter scarps, Horn works and moat, half moons and covert way, Trenches and mines, tenaille and battery, With guns of every size and every bore, And such a host of desperadoes there, Who to the last drop of their blood would hold it, That none but devils, I presume, can take it. Beside, in sailing up the Hudson river, When from this fort you're yet a full mile distant, You turn a point at whose extremity So high the mountains swell above the flood That in a moment all your sails are lifeless; The southern breezes die that blew with vigor, And there you lie at mercy of the fort, Your ships raked fore and aft and ruin around you. But all these difficulties cease if Arnold Betray the place, as you would fain assure me. Now tell me, friend, the manner, how and when You did entice this champion from his duty. _Maj. André._ From some connection I have had with him, I found the leading feature of his soul Was avarice. He could feign and counterfeit, Persuade you black was white or white was black, And swear, as interest prompted, false or true. This known, I reasoned thus: If his base soul Can toil and fret and browbeat death itself, Endure the summer suns and winter snows In tedious route through hyperborean wilds, And sordid wealth alone incites him to it, Why may not British gold have some effect On such a slavish soul? I wrote him straight (Your pardon, sir, it was without your leave) And by a trusty lad I sent the letter, Sewed in a jacket, to the following import: That if he would forego his present station, Betray the fortress and the garrison, And he himself come over to our interest, He should be recompensed in such a manner That he might sit him down at ease in England, Up to the eyes in wealth and laugh at rebels. _Sir Henry._ And, pray, what answer did he send to this? _Maj. André._ One that almost outdid my expectation. He wrote me back that if I would adventure To trust myself within the Americ lines, He would, by means of secret friends and passports, Gain me admittance to his residence; Or meeting close in personal interview In some lone place hereafter to be fixed on, Confer with me upon the fittest means Of rendering up his charge. He further added That he was weary of this damned rebellion, For ten thousand guineas would be yours, That doing thus he meant his country's good, And would pursue it to his utmost power. _Sir Henry._ Upon a lucky hour you thought of Arnold. But, friend, I charge you, if this scheme succeed, Take not the merit of it to yourself; But let the world imagine it was Clinton Who schemed, who plotted, and seduced the villain; That by this deed more honour I may gain Than if I had defeated Washington By dint of blows on yonder Jersey plain. Your recompense shall not be wanting, André; My trusty friend, go make haste toward the highlands. A frigate shall be ready to convey you. Accept the proffered conference, and bring Plans of the fort and all its avenues, The number of the soldiers that defend it, And whate'er else may be of service to us; That tho' if by chance his treason be discovered, And his designments lose their consummation, We may have somewhat to facilitate-- Some bold attack that may hereafter be Upon this proud and self-sufficient fortress. _Maj. André._ But, sir, consider. If I undertake So bold a stroke as this, I risk my life, Perhaps may meet an ignominious death. When once I pass the British lines, that instant Do I become a spy. That character Ever belongs to common, vulgar men, To suttlers and to pedlars, desperate wretches, The rubbish and the scourings of the world; Can I descend to so desperate an office? _Sir Henry._ But, then, your country!-- Consider what it is you owe your country. Distressed she combats with revolted nations, And can't by force reduce them to subjection; Assist her while you can, and take my word, You need not fear an apprehension. I charge you, be not found within their lines; Remember still to keep on neutral ground, Unless a flag of truce be sent from Arnold That will secure your person and the plot. But if by chance you should be questioned By any scouting parties of militia, A purse of shillings scattered to the wretches Will soon procure a passage unmolested. I long to hear the upshot of this meeting, The _Vulture_ man-of-war is at your service, And shall to-morrow take you up the river As far as she with safety may adventure. _Maj. André._ Then for the sake of Britain and of you Will I to Arnold haste away, Sir Harry. If things succeed, as I expect they shall, Within three days will I be back to tell you The means we fall upon to gain the fort. ACT II. SCENE I.--_Enter an aide-de-camp from_ GENERAL WASHINGTON _to_ ARNOLD. _Scene, West Point Fort. Time, midnight._ _Aide D. C._ Sir, I am sent by our renowned general To let you know that in his best opinion Five hundred men in reason are too few To man the works of this important post. Three thousand, he informs, are at your service, Lying at camp, with stores and baggage ready, Whene'er you send a requisition for them. _Arnold._ Five hundred are too few! Why, sir, what means he? I do assert, and do insist upon it, That with the aid of scant two hundred men I could defend this fort and all its outworks (Its strength is so prodigious in defence) Against ten legions of the boldest Britons, With Clinton at the head to lead them on, Whether he choose to come by sea or land. _Aide D. C._ Well be it so. I have discharged my duty In bringing you our noble general's message. Pray, sir, have you commands to send from hence? My time to stay is short; I must be going. _Arnold._ Tho' I am steady to my sentiment, That these five hundred men are full sufficient, Yet, to comply with the spirit of his meaning, You may inform the general, two hours' warning Will bring me in four thousand of militia. They are as rugged and as hardy fellows, As bold and desperate in the works of war, As skilled to hit the mark or push the bagnet, As any of the choicest continentals. Pray tell the general this, and I am sure, I'm satisfied, he'll be of my opinion. [_Exit Aide D. C._ _Arnold_ (_solus_). This is the time for dark and dangerous action; This is the time that thieves and murderers choose To execute their desperate designs. But art thou, Arnold, less than murderer, Who thus prepare to stab thy bleeding country? And can I then descend to be a traitor! By honest toils a name have I acquired, Great and unequalled in the rolls of fame; And shall that name to infamy be doomed By one base act that mars and cankers all? For this have I in winter's joyless reign Explored the naked wilds of northern clime, When mid the snows and frosts and chilling winds Cold earth has been my bed. Ambition, rise And fire my soul to nobler purposes. To-morrow Major André comes to meet me, And I am to consult on ways and means To give this fort up to my country's foes. Shall I repent of my unjust proceedings, Admit this daring Briton to my portal, And say I did thus to entrap the man Who is grand vizar to Sir Henry Clinton? Whose scheming head doth hurt our country more Than all their host beside? But that would be ungenerous--more than that, Ten thousand guineas are the offered price Of my desertion--more than that, perhaps I shall henceforward be caressed by kings And bear a generalship that may reduce These states revolted back to Britain's sway. * * * * * For now I do imagine They have no rights, no claims to independence. Born were we all, subjected to a king, And that subjection must return again. The people are not dull republicans, By nature they incline to monarchy. How glorious should I be to have a share In bringing back my country to allegiance. Can France uphold them in their proud demand, That race of puny, base, perfidious dogs? Sooner shall all the house of Bourbon sink Their Rochambault, D'Estang and La Fayette, And Spain confederate cease to be a nation, And all their allies dwindle into atoms, Ere Britain will withdraw her righteous claim Or yield a jot of her dominion here To any people living. Then, André, come, The sooner Britain gains this fort the better. SCENE II.--MAJOR ANDRÉ, LUCINDA. _Parlor._ _Maj. André._ I cannot leave this city, sweet Lucinda, without imparting to you that I am going a little way toward the American lines, at the request of his Excellency, upon some business of importance. I am come to chat a little with you ere I go. It may be some days before you see me again. _Lucinda._ If it be not too great a presumption in me, my dear Major, I would beg to know whether you depart on a peaceable or hostile errand. You must pardon a woman's curiosity. I had a frightful dream about you a few nights ago, which I cannot banish from my mind ever since. _Maj. André._ I am happy, madam, in being the subject of your dreams. But dreams are delusions of the mind, mere vagaries and whimsies not to be attended to. You may remember that, prior to our Charlestown expedition, you discouraged me a good deal with a vision you had of a vessel shipwrecked, and myself with the other passengers drowned, and yet little or nothing was intimated thereby. We made our passage safe, conquered the place, and returned with victory and honor. _Lucinda._ True. But your fleet endured a terrible hurricane, in which many perished. _Maj. André._ O Lucinda, thou art a dreamer of dreams, thou thinkest, love. _Lucinda._ This last was represented to my mind in quite a different manner, in such lively colours that I cannot help thinking some evil is foreboded to you. _Maj. André._ Poh! Let's hear the extraordinary dream, then, that we may laugh a little at it. _Lucinda._ I imagined myself in a country where the skies were forever cloudy and gloomy, with frequent bursts of thunder and flashes of lightning. Among many other objects, all of which seemed disconsolate and melancholy, I saw you endeavouring to reach the summit of a sharp, craggy precipice. You leaped with surprising agility over dark gulfs and apertures therein, which no other man would have thought of passing. The spectators admired your activity and daring spirit. The continual obstacles in your way seemed nothing to you, and at length you bid fair to gain the summit, when, catching hold of a shrub, which was but slightly rooted in one of the crevices of the rock, it instantly gave way, and you tumbled to the bottom, dashed to pieces on the pointed crags and torn in a shocking manner. I shrieked out and waked. _Maj. André._ Your dream was frightful indeed; but still it was nothing but a dream. Why, I have imagined before now in my sleep that I have tumbled down ten thousand fathoms in a perpendicular line; but all this was owing to mere mechanical causes, the motion of the animal spirits or the veins being rather too replete with blood. _Lucinda._ Well, be it so. I hope my dream may be the forerunner of no mischief. But are you going out on a fighting expedition, sir, if I may be so bold to ask the question? _Maj. André._ My dearest love, I will conceal nothing from you. I know you are the girl of a thousand for keeping a secret. It must not take air. I have corrupted General Arnold. He is to sell West Point fort to me, and this evening I am to set out and consult with him upon the fittest means to blind the eyes of the Samson and deliver up the place to Sir Henry without danger of failure. _Lucinda._ But could not some person be deputized for this purpose whose life is not of such value to Britain as yours? You are a proud soul to Sir Henry Clinton. He enterprises nothing without first having your advice and direction. If you should be intercepted in your way by the Americans, would it not endanger your life, my dear André, to be found without some mission or any plausible excuse for being within an enemy's lines? _Maj. André._ You are too timorous, Lucinda. I shall go and come by water in an armed ship. I may perhaps just venture on shore in a ----[34] of time, but shall take care not to expose myself to any danger. I well know how far to venture, but if the worst come to the worst, I can tell them I have deserted from the British. Then I shall be caressed among them till such times as I can find an opportunity to escape and join my countrymen. _Lucinda._ You venture all this, you say, at the request of Sir Henry? _Maj. André._ Yes; but chiefly to serve my country. Had I a thousand lives, I would lay them all down for Britain and my king. But I must go. You deject my spirits, my girl. A woman is destructive to the spirit of enterprise in a man. Poh! I am growing melancholy too. You must cheer my drooping soul, Lucinda. I heard you humming a little song the other day. Do let's have it. I think it begins thus: "My native shades delight no more." _Lucinda._ Although I am in no humour for music, you shall hear it, my love. I suppose it was made by some British officer on his setting out for America, who was as great an idolater to his king and country as most English gentlemen. [_Sings_ My native shades delight no more,[35] I haste to meet the ocean's roar, I seek a wild inclement shore Beyond the Atlantic main: 'Tis virtue calls!--I must away!-- Nor care nor pleasure tempts my stay, Nor all that love himself can say, A moment shall detain. To meet those hosts who dare disown Allegiance to Britannia's throne, I draw the sword that pities none, I draw their rebel blood; Amazement shall their troops confound, When hackt and prostrate on the ground; My blade shall drink from every wound A life-restoring flood! The swarthy Indian, yet unbroke, Shall bind his neck to Britain's yoke, Or flee from her avenging stroke To deserts all unknown; The southern isles shall own her sway, Peru and Mexico obey, And those who yet to Satan pray Beyond the southern zone. For George the Third I dare to fall, Since he to me is all in all; May he subdue this earthly ball And nations tribute bring. Yon western states shall wear his chain, Where traitors now with tyrants reign, And subject shall be all the main To George, our potent king. When honour calls to guard his throne, My life I dare not call my own; My life I yield without a groan For him whom I adore. In lasting glory shall he reign, 'Tis he shall conquer France and Spain, Tho' I perhaps may ne'er again Behold my native shore. _Maj. André._ You sing charmingly, Lucinda. The poor fellow's resolution pleases me. He engages to give his life, if necessary, for his king and country, and yet perhaps he feels the ingratitude of both every hour in the day. It must, however, be so. Nature has formed us with a principle of love to our native land. What say you, Lucinda? _Lucinda._ It may be so, sir; and yet that love need not carry us to such an idolatrous extravagance as is manifested in the little stanzas I had the pleasure of singing to you. _Maj. André._ Indeed you are in the right, but we are slaves to custom. _Lucinda._ I have sung to please you, my love; now, if you have leisure, I would beg your attention a moment to a little ditty that pleases myself. _Maj. André._ Most gladly, my angel; I can prolong half an hour yet in your agreeable company. [_Looking at his watch_ _Lucinda sings_[36] You chide me and tell me I must not complain To part a few days from my favourite swain. He is gone to the battle and leaves me to mourn, And say what you please, he will never return. When he left me he kissed me, and said, my sweet dear, In less than a month I again will be here; With anguish and sorrow my bosom did burn, And I wept, being sure he would never return. I said, my dear creature, I beg you would stay, But he with his soldiers went strutting away. Then why should I longer my sorrows adjourn, For I know in my heart he will never return. Whenever there's danger he loves to be there, He fights like a hero when others despair. In this expedition he goes to his urn; You call me a fool if he ever return. _Maj. André._ The application of this I must take to myself, I suppose. Fie upon you, lady; you need to divert me with merry jokes and a strain of wit peculiar to yourself. You now are pensive, demure, and melancholy. You make me so, too. _Lucinda._ Yonder comes Sir Henry. I suppose he has some private business with you. I must retire. [_Exit Lucinda. Enter Sir Henry and others_ _Maj. André._ How do your Excellencies? Will you please to sit? _Sir Henry._ Till you return from this important errand I am a slave to impatience, Major André. I beg you would this night equip with speed, And on an eagle's wings to Arnold haste. The frigate lies at single anchor ready, And winds propitious to our purpose blow. But hark ye, friend, and tell the general then That if he can by any means at all, On any artful, plausible pretence, So manage matters and with such address As to entice the great Americ chief, At that same hour the fort is yielded to us, There to be present on some feigned business, That so we may be master of his person, Tell him if he does this his pay is double. Besides ten thousand guineas we have promised, Ten thousand more with gratitude I'll pay, And think him cheaply bought. He is the soul, The great upholder of this long contention. I dread his prudence and his courage more Than all the armies that the Congress raise, Than all the troops or all the ships of France. _Maj. André._ Well thought! I shall obey your Excellency. It is a bold and dangerous undertaking, 'Tis hazardous, but not impossible. To win on this great chief--'tis a bright thought. He'll think himself as safe at West Point Fort As in the bosom of his spacious camp, And therefore will not hesitate to come Only attended by a score of guards. The same attempt may seize the fort and him. _Sir Henry._ And be precise to fix the time, when we Must take possession of the citadel. Against the hour that I expect you back Five thousand troops shall be embarked and ready To execute whatever plan you fix on. [_Exit Sir Henry. Reënter Lucinda with a handkerchief to her eyes_ _Maj. André._ The time is come that is appointed for my departure. It is impossible that even beauty or wit or tears can now withhold me from my purpose. I have promised his Excellency and now to hesitate would prove me to be a coward, one altogether unworthy to be trusted with any business that requires wit and dexterity. _Lucinda._ Your resolution is fixed, and I do not desire you to fall from it; only if heaven should so order that any fatal accident befall you, remember the unfortunate Lucinda. She sends her good wishes along with you, and prays for all imaginable prosperity on every undertaking in which Major André bears a part. _Maj. André._ My thanks to you, my dearest. If a heart so good as thine petition heaven for my safety, I have nothing to fear. Thy prayers are my guardian angels, and will protect me in every danger. My honour calls me and I must go. Give me a parting kiss, my dear. Adieu, adieu. [_He leaves her_ Now native courage warm my wavering breast, And fires of resolution blaze within me, For I must on a dangerous errand go, With secret cunning to deceive the foe, Whose active souls in dire connections meet, Where one false step my ruin makes complete. Ye guardian powers that still protect the brave, Some pity on distressed Britain have. By me she seeks some portion to regain Of her lost empire, tried so oft in vain. But dreadful scenes before my eyes appear, And dangers thicken as they draw more near. But soft--no dangers can my heart appal, I have a soul that can despise them all. More than an equal chance for life I see, But life and death must be the same to me. [_Exit_ ACT III. SCENE I.--_Robinson's house. A stormy night._ ARNOLD. PASQUIN. _Arnold._ How looks the weather? _Pasquin._ Stormy, sir; very stormy; it blows terrifically and there is heavy rain. _Arnold._ Pasquin! _Pasquin._ Sir. _Arnold._ Tell the sentries upon duty to-night that I expect a gentleman of my acquaintance here about ten o'clock. When he comes to the outer gate, bid one of them conduct him to my apartment. _Pasquin._ Your honour shall be obeyed. [_Exit_ _Arnold_ (_solus_). Peace to this gloomy grove that sees me acting What open daylight would disdain to own. Ye wood, be witness of my dark designs, And shade me o'er, ye lofty eminences; Tremendous gloom, encompass me around In clouds that wing from Greenland's foggy caves, Plutonian darkness on your pinions bring, Conceal my base intent from human view, And be the daylight still a stranger to it. Storm on, ye wind, the tempest that ye make In the broad regions of the troubled ether Is quiet to the tumult of my soul! Departing honour,--take thy last adieu, 'Tis this night's deed that stamps me for a villain. Who comes there? [_Enter Pasquin_ _Pasquin._ Sir, there is a traveller just alighted at Sergeant Jones's quarters, who desires to know whether he can have a little private conference with you, and asked me whether you were alone or no. _Arnold._ A traveller? How is he dressed? _Pasquin._ He has on a plain suit of blue clothes, a cocked beaver hat and draw boots. He rides a common bay horse, and by his general appearance one would suppose him to be a commissary, or perhaps a quarter-master. _Arnold._ How came you to know all these particulars; the night being so dark and stormy? _Pasquin._ I had a glimpse of him by means of a lanthorn we carried out when he got off his horse. Over all, I forgot to mention, he had a fear-naught riding coat. _Arnold._ A plain blue suit, you say? _Pasquin._ Yes. _Arnold._ And draw boots? _Pasquin._ Yes. _Arnold._ And wore he sword? _Pasquin._ No; he had no sword, that I saw. _Arnold._ And what aspect is he? Is he a well-looking man? _Pasquin._ As handsome a man, please your honour, as ever the sun shone upon. It did me good to look upon him. _Arnold_ (_aside_). This must be him. [_To Pasquin_] Bid the sergeant show him the way to me immediately, and put up his horse in my own stable. He is from Philadelphia, a friend and relative of mine. [_Exit Pasquin_ _Arnold_ (_solus_). This is Major André, indeed. We have agreed in our correspondence that he shall pass here under the name of Captain Ashton, to prevent suspicion. [_Sergeant introduces Major André_ _Arnold._ Captain Ashton, my friend, how are you? Please to draw near the fire and sit. How do our friends at Philadelphia? [_Exit sergeant_] The booby is now gone, and we may talk freely without suspicion. _Maj. André._ I am happy at length to see General Arnold, with whom I have corresponded so long at a distance. I hope, my dear general, you are ready to perform your promise. _Arnold._ Undoubtedly the fort shall be yours within three days, upon the conditions I mentioned to you in my last letter. I hope you have apprised Sir Henry of them. _Maj. André._ Yes, sir. He is satisfied, and thinks your demand really moderate; but now let us to the point. We must fall upon some plan by which we must act without much danger of miscarriage. Would it not be best that our troops should seem to take the fort by surprise, and thus prevent the world from having any suspicion of treachery in the case? _Arnold._ I have had the same thought, my dear sir. Besides, if we can make this pass, I shall become a prisoner of war to you in appearance, be exchanged after a little time, and so be in a capacity to serve you again; or, pretending the fort not tenable, I may make my escape during your attack, and all this without any suspicion on the part of the Americans. _Maj. André._ God grant your scheme may be successful. _Arnold._ Now hear what I have to propose further. When you are embarked with your army, suppose one or two thousand men or more sail up the river as far as you safely can, short of the fort, and endeavour to make the country believe you are on a plundering expedition. I shall have companies out who will give me notice of all your movements. Then land your men, march up to the fort, demand a surrender, which I will absolutely refuse. Upon which hang out your bloody flag and fire against the walls point blank, without mercy. In that part of the fortress where I shall be, you will see a small white flag flying. Do not fire to that quarter. The garrison shall discharge the artillery three times over your heads, after which I will surrender and open the gates to you. Then, by not putting one of the garrison to death, which would be your right, you having stormed it, you will have an excellent opportunity of giving the world a new instance of British humanity. Then you may pour your troops into the fort, take possession of it, and hoist the British flag. The prisoners may immediately be sent to the shipping and ordered to New York before the Continental forces will have a chance of hindering the embarkation. What say you? _Maj. André._ Excellently well imagined. I hope it may succeed. The money shall be paid you on your arrival at York; but there is another service Sir Henry would fain hope you could indulge him in, and your reward shall be double. _Arnold._ What may it be? _Maj. André._ He is eager to be possessed of your Commander-in-Chief. Could you contrive no way to get him into our hands? He is the soul of this obstinate rebellion. Were he a prisoner to us, America would soon be ours again. _Arnold_ (_pausing_). Why, true, it would greatly facilitate the recovery of the colonies. Let me see. I will endeavour to prevail upon him to spend a day or two at Robinson's home. Nay, I am sure he will be here next Monday, and the garrison. There are a number of disaffected people not far from hence, whom I can engage to secure his person and convey him on board the _Vulture_ ship of war. _Maj. André._ If we become by your means possessed of these two jewels, General Washington and this important fort, we shall never think the obligation sufficiently acknowledged. You will become the greatest man in the world. Britain will adore you. She will kiss the very ground you tread upon, besides lavishing wealth upon you by millions. _Arnold._ She is heartily welcome to such poor services as I can render her. What I do is from principle, from the consciousness of a rectitude of heart and love to my country. _Maj. André._ Sir, you were born to be a great man. Now, if you will be pleased to deliver me the plan of the fort, signals of recognizance and other papers of consequence in this affair, I will be going. I do not think myself safe till such times as I get within the British lines again. _Arnold._ The danger is trifling. With a passport from me, you may go anywhere in these colonies. _Maj. André._ Sir, I thank you. It may be of service indeed. _Arnold._ I will write it immediately. There, sir; and here is the packet. I will not detain you, because I know the business requires dispatch. You will, however, sup with me, and take a glass of wine before you go. _Maj. André._ I shall hardly have time; however, I will wait half an hour. _Arnold._ Walk with me into this other apartment; we soldiers do not stand upon ceremony. But how do you carry these papers so as to conceal them in case you meet with any over-curious persons? _Maj. André._ I have an expedient. I can carry them in the foot of my boot. Do you see how snug they lie? [_Putting them on_ _Arnold._ Aye, faith, that was well thought of; but do not put the passport in your boot. _Maj. André._ No, no. That goes into my pocket. SCENE II.--_An ancient stone building in the Dutch taste. Three officers_, VINCENT, AMBROSE, ASMITH. VINCENT _and_ ASMITH _entering_. _Am._ Well are we met in these sequestered wilds; Whence come ye, brothers, at so late an hour? _Vin._ From scouring all the country up and down, To seize, if fortune please, illicit traders, Who are so bold and unscrupulous grown That oft in open day, as well as night, They bear large cargoes of provision down To yonder ships that still infest our river. How I detest these underhanded scoundrels, Who, hungry as the grave for British gold, Feed the vile foe that lurks within our harbours. _Am._ Gods! Can they be so base,--but there are they Who sell their country for a mess of pottage,-- A servile, scheming race whose god is gain, Who for a little gold would stab their fathers And plunder life from her who gave them life. These are not true Americans. They are A spurious race--scum, dregs, and bastards all. They are not true Americans, I say. _As._ They cannot be, they help toward our ruin. But, gentlemen, I'll tell you what I think; We have so many lurking foes within, And such a potent enemy without, That I almost despair, I must confess, That ever we shall rend these thirteen States From persevering Britain, and compel Acknowledgment of independence here. _Vin._ Say not so. The rights of humanity, 'tis these we fight for, And not to carry ruin round the globe. Appearances are so much in our favour That he who doubts that this event shall be, Must be as blind as he whose useless orbs Have never drank the radiated light. Nay, he who doubts of this, who dares to doubt (If nature be not ----[37] to miracles And devils rule with delegated sway) Deserves not nor is worthy to enjoy The paradise we look for. _Amb._ Be it so. But let us leave the great event to fate, Who soon or late will bring to light its purpose; Our duty to our country must be done, And in so doing we its freedom hasten. But, friends, why stay we here? By yonder stars That still revolving point toward the pole, I find it must be midnight. _Vin._ I do expect a score of peasants here, A set of hardy, bold, and faithful fellows, Whom I can trust in all emergencies. In different parties I shall these despatch Toward the hostile lines, for I suspect That intercourse too often doth subsist Between our disaffected and the foe. _Amb._ And are these peasants armed? _Vin._ Armed with a musquet and a bayonet; A true and desperate soldier wants no more. _As._ And thirty cartridges to every man, With three days' victuals in their knapsacks stored. _Amb._ It is enough. I hope they will not tarry. SCENE III.--_A number of armed peasants in an outhouse._ _1st P._ Do you know what we are sent for, brother Harry? _2nd P._ To go on some secret expedition, I suppose. _1st P._ And which way shall we bend, think ye? _2nd P._ God bless you. Why do you ask such a question? It is not for us to know where we are going. We shall know bye and bye, I warrant you, after we have marched two or three score of miles. _1st P._ And where are our officers? _2nd P._ They are in the adjoining house. They will be with us presently. _3rd P._ And how shall we pass the time till they come? _2nd P._ O, merrily enough. We can dance and sing. _1st P._ Harry, you can sing. Give us a song. _2nd P._ [_Sings_ Ours not to sleep in shady bowers,[38] When frosts are chilling all the plain, And nights are cold and long the hours To check the ardor of the swain, Who parting from his cheerful fire All comforts doth forego, And here and there And everywhere Pursues the prowling foe. _2nd P._ How like you that? _3rd P._ O, very well. I love to hear anything that touches upon the hardships of a soldier's life. _4th P._ Give us the rest; give us the rest. I love that song, Harry. _2nd P._ But we must sleep in frost and snows, No season shuts up our campaign; Hard as the oaks, we dare oppose The autumn's or the winter's reign. Alike to us the winds that blow In summer's season gay, Or those that rave On Hudson's wave And drift his ice away. For Liberty, celestial maid, With joy all hardships we endure. In her blest smiles we are repaid, In her protection are secure. Then rise superior to the foe, Ye freeborn souls of fire; Respect these arms, 'Tis freedom warms, To noble deeds aspire. Winter and death may change the scene, The cold may freeze, the ball may kill, And dire misfortunes intervene; But freedom shall be potent still To drive these Britons from our shore, Who, cruel and unkind, With slavish chain Attempt in vain Our freeborn limbs to bind. _Pasq._ O, excellent--"Our freeborn limbs to bind"--by my soul, they never shall bind mine. Harry, give us another song on our affairs and then we'll be ready. _All._ Ay, ay; another, another. _2nd P._ I have not many by heart. I do recollect one at present, but it was made at the beginning of the war. _All._ No matter, no matter; let's hear it. _2nd P._ [_Sings_ The cohorts of Britain are now all complete, She has brushed up her soldiers and manned out her fleet; The lion has roared whose trade is to kill, And we are the victims whose blood he must spill. But ere I am slaughtered and wrapped in a shroud I must tell you the motive that makes him so proud. The monkeys and puppies that bow to his rule Have told him a lie and deceived the old fool. They say we are cowards, not dressed in red coats, That he without danger may cut all our throats; If we see but a Briton, confounded with fear, We'll throw down our muskets and run like a deer. That one thousand men with a captain would dare To march from New Hampshire to Georgia, they swear. But here lies the trick of these wonderful men, They tell us they'll do it, but do not say when. Such a motive to fight would you ever conceive, Yet such is the motive that makes him so brave. On such a presumption, in hopes of applause, He whets up his grinders and sharpens his claws. But hark, Mr. Lion, and be not so stout, In fancy alone you have put us to rout. To show you how little your threat'nings avail, Here's a kick at your breech and a clip at your tail.[39] * * * * * * * But everything seems poisoned where I tread, And I am tortured to perfection. [_Exit. Enter an officer of the guard_ SCENE IV.--_Another apartment in said house. Enter_ AIDE _to_ GEN. ARNOLD. _Aide._ General Arnold here? _Jeff._ Two hours have hardly yet elapsed since he Across the river to the garrison On some important business went in haste, So as I told to his attendant here. For since the general parted I arrived. Is he, then, at the garrison? by heaven, We'll have him in a trice. _Aide._ You'll have him in a trice. Pray, what means that? _Jeff._ I see your ignorance, my honest friend. Why such a damned, unnatural plot has happened That when I mention it, if you have feeling, At the first word your blood must chill with horror And admiration shake your very soul. This traitor Arnold, this vile, abandoned traitor, This monster of ingratitude unequalled, Has been conspiring with an English spy To render tip the fort to General Clinton. _Aide._ What fort? the fort at West Point, mean you? _Jeff._ The fort at West Point, on my sacred honour, The garrison, dependencies, and stores, And, what is more, the person of our leader. Five thousand troops at York are now embarked, And even wait this night to take possession. _Aide._ Is this reality; sure you are jesting. And yet you serious seem to be of countenance. Lips that quiver, eyes that glow with passion, Tempt me to think your story may be true. And yet I doubt it. Came you here to seize him? _Jeff._ Nay, doubt it not. I have the papers with me That at a glance betray this horrid treason. _Aide._ For what could he do this? Was it Resentment, Avarice, Ambition That prompted him to act the traitor's part? And yet I'm sure it never could be avarice. His country lavishes her wealth upon him; He has the income of a little king, And perquisites that by a hundred ways Not only the base wants of life supply, But deck him out in elegance and grandeur. Perhaps, indeed, he has ambitious views: He aims to make his court to Britain's king, And rise upon the ruins of his country. Perhaps it is resentment and disgust, For many hate him, and have often said He fattens on the plunder of the public. _Jeff._ 'Tis avarice, sir, that base, unmanly motive. The glare of British gold has captivated This hero, as we thought him. What a curse, That human souls can of such stuff be moulded, That they, foregoing fame and character, E'en for the sake of what is despicable, Be foe to virtue and to virtue's friend. But such are to be found, and every age has seen 'em, Who, for the sake of mere external show, Some qualities that seemed to them attractive----[40] [33] This fragment of a drama, as far as I can find, was never published. Freneau, judging from indications, wrote it shortly after his "Prison Ship," in the autumn of 1780, only a few weeks after the events took place which it records. It exists, as far as I know, only in Freneau's fragmentary and much-revised autograph manuscript now in the possession of Miss Adele M. Sweeney of Jersey City. The arrest of André took place September 23, 1780. [34] Here occurs an illegible word in Freneau's manuscript. [35] This poem was first published in the edition of 1786 under the title, "The English Quixote of 1778; or, Modern Idolatry." In the 1809 edition Freneau added the following: EPILOGUE 'Tis so well known 'tis hardly worth relating That men have worshipped gods, though of their own creating: Art's handy work they thought they might adore, And bowed to gods that were but logs before. Idols, of old, were made of clay or wood, And, in themselves, did neither harm nor good, Acted as though they knew the good old rule, "Friend, hold thy peace, and you'll be thought no fool." Britons! their case is yours--and linked in fate, You, like your Indian allies--good and great-- Bow to some frowning block yourselves did rear, And worship _wooden monarchs_--out of fear. [36] This lyric has been used by Freneau in his poem, "Mars and Hymen," _q. v._ [37] An illegible word. [38] This poem had also been used in "Mars and Hymen." In later editions it was printed as a distinct lyric, with the title "The Northern Soldier." The present version, reprinted from Freneau's manuscript, will be seen to differ considerably from the others. [39] A part of the manuscript is missing at this point. [40] Here the manuscript ends abruptly. * * * * * PART III ERA OF THE FREEMAN'S JOURNAL 1781--1790 ERA OF THE FREEMAN'S JOURNAL 1781--1790[41] [41] This period began in August, 1781, when Freneau became connected with Mr. Francis Bailey's _Freeman's Journal_, in Philadelphia. In June, 1784, he left Philadelphia for a wandering career upon the ocean, which continued until 1790, when his assumption of the editorship of the _New York Advertiser_ and his marriage put an end for a time to his wanderings. The greater part of the poems written during this period appeared originally in the _Freeman's Journal_. ON THE MEMORABLE VICTORY[42] Obtained by the gallant Captain Paul Jones, of the _Good Man Richard_, over the _Seraphis_, etc., under the command of Captain Pearson. Written August, 1781 1 O'er the rough main with flowing sheet The guardian of a numerous fleet, _Seraphis_ from the Baltic came; A ship of less tremendous force Sail'd by her side the self-same course, _Countess of Scarb'ro'_ was her name. 2 And now their native coasts appear, Britannia's hills their summits rear Above the German main; Fond to suppose their dangers o'er, They southward coast along the shore, Thy waters, gentle Thames, to gain. 3 Full forty guns _Seraphis_ bore, And _Scarb'ro's Countess_ twenty-four, Mann'd with Old England's boldest tars-- What flag that rides the Gallic seas Shall dare attack such piles as these, Design'd for tumults and for wars! 4 Now from the top-mast's giddy height A seaman cry'd--"Four sail in sight "Approach with favouring gales;" Pearson, resolv'd to save the fleet, Stood off to sea these ships to meet, And closely brac'd his shivering sails. 5 With him advanc'd the _Countess_ bold, Like a black tar in wars grown old: And now these floating piles drew nigh; But, muse, unfold what chief of fame In th' other warlike squadron came, Whose standards at his mast head fly. 6 'Twas Jones, brave Jones, to battle led As bold a crew as ever bled Upon the sky surrounded main; The standards of the Western World Were to the willing winds unfurl'd, Denying Britain's tyrant reign. 7 The _Good Man Richard_ led the line; The _Alliance_ next: with these combine The Gallic ship they _Pallas_ call: The _Vengeance_, arm'd with sword and flame, These to attack the Britons came-- But two accomplish'd all. 8 Now Phoebus sought his pearly bed: But who can tell the scenes of dread, The horrors of that fatal night! Close up these floating castles came; The _Good Man Richard_ bursts in flame; _Seraphis_ trembled at the sight. 9 She felt the fury of her ball, Down, prostrate down, the Britons fall; The decks were strew'd with slain: Jones to the foe his vessel lash'd; And, while the black artillery flash'd, Loud thunders shook the main. 10 Alas! that mortals should employ Such murdering engines, to destroy That frame by heav'n so nicely join'd; Alas! that e'er the god decreed That brother should by brother bleed, And pour'd such madness in the mind. 11 But thou, brave Jones, no blame shalt bear; The rights of men demand thy care: For these you dare the greedy waves-- No tyrant on destruction bent Has planned thy conquests--thou art sent To humble tyrants and their slaves. 12 See!--dread _Seraphis_ flames again-- And art thou, Jones, among the slain, And sunk to Neptune's caves below-- He lives--though crowds around him fall, Still he, unhurt, survives them all; Almost alone he fights the foe. 13 And can thy ship these strokes sustain? Behold thy brave companions slain, All clasp'd in ocean's dark embrace. "Strike, or be sunk!"--the Briton cries-- "Sink, if you can!"--the chief replies, Fierce lightnings blazing in his face. 14 Then to the side three guns he drew, (Almost deserted by his crew) And charg'd them deep with woe: By Pearson's flash he aim'd the balls; His main-mast totters--down it falls-- Tremendous was the blow.[43] 15 Pearson as yet disdain'd to yield, But scarce his secret fears conceal'd, And thus was heard to cry-- "With hell, not mortals, I contend; "What art thou--human, or a fiend, "That dost my force defy? 16 "Return, my lads, the fight renew!" So call'd bold Pearson to his crew; But call'd, alas! in vain; Some on the decks lay maim'd and dead; Some to their deep recesses fled, And more were bury'd in the main.[44] 17 Distress'd, forsaken, and alone, He haul'd his tatter'd standard down, And yielded to his gallant foe; Bold _Pallas_ soon the _Countess_ took, Thus both their haughty colours struck, Confessing what the brave can do. 18 But, Jones, too dearly didst thou buy These ships possest so gloriously, Too many deaths disgrac'd the fray: Thy barque that bore the conquering flame, That the proud Briton overcame, Even she forsook thee on thy way; 19 For when the morn began to shine, Fatal to her, the ocean brine Pour'd through each spacious wound; Quick in the deep she disappear'd, But Jones to friendly Belgia steer'd, With conquest and with glory crown'd. 20 Go on, great man, to daunt the foe, And bid the haughty Britons know They to our Thirteen Stars shall bend; The Stars that veil'd in dark attire, Long glimmer'd with a feeble fire, But radiant now ascend; 21 Bend to the Stars that flaming rise In western, not in eastern, skies, Fair Freedom's reign restor'd. So when the Magi, come from far, Beheld the God-attending Star, They trembled and ador'd. [42] This was the first poem contributed by Freneau to the _Freeman's Journal_. It appeared August 8, 1781. The exploit of Jones is too well known to need further comment; it took place September 23, 1779. The text follows the edition of 1786. [43] "Overwhelming half below."--_Ed. 1795._ [44] "And hosts were shrouded in the main."--_Ed. 1795._ AN ADDRESS[45] To the Commander-in-Chief, Officers, and Soldiers of the American Army Accept, great men, that share of honest praise A grateful nation to your merit pays: Verse is too mean your merit to display, And words too weak our praises to convey. When first proud Britain raised her hostile hand With claims unjust to bind our native land, Transported armies, and her millions spent To enforce the mandate that a tyrant sent; "Resist! resist!" was heard through every state, You heard the call, and feared your country's fate; Then rising fierce in arms, for war arrayed, You taught to vanquish those who dared invade. Those British chiefs whom former wars had crowned With conquest--and in every clime renowned; Who forced new realms to own their monarch's law, And whom even George beheld with secret awe-- Those mighty chiefs, compelled to fly or yield, Scarce dared to meet you on the embattled field; To Boston's port you chased the trembling crew, Quick, even from thence the British veterans flew-- Through wintry waves they fled, and thought each wave Their last, best safety from a foe so brave![46] What men, like you, our warfare could command, And bring us safely to the promised land?-- Not swoln with pride,[47] with victory elate-- 'Tis in misfortune you are doubly great: When Howe victorious our weak armies chased, And, sure of conquest, laid Cesarea waste, When prostrate, bleeding, at his feet she lay, And the proud victor tore her wreathes away, Each gallant chief[48] put forth his warlike hand And raised the drooping genius of the land, Repelled the foe, their choicest warriors slain, And drove them howling to their ships again. While others kindle into martial rage Whom fierce ambition urges to engage, An iron race, by angry heaven designed To conquer first and then enslave mankind; Here chiefs and heroes[49] more humane we see, They venture life, that others may be free. O! may you live to hail that glorious day When Britain homeward shall pursue her way-- That race subdued, who filled the world with slain And rode tyrannic o'er the subject main!-- What few presumed, you boldly have atchieved, A tyrant humbled, and a world relieved. O Washington, who leadst this glorious train,[50] Still may the fates thy valued life maintain.-- Rome's boasted chiefs, who, to their own disgrace, Proved the worst scourges of the human race, Pierced by whose darts a thousand nations bled, Who captive princes at their chariots led; Born to enslave, to ravage, and subdue-- Return to nothing when compared to you; Throughout the world your growing fame has spread, In every country are your virtues read; Remotest India hears your deeds of fame, The hardy Scythian stammers at your name; The haughty Turk, now longing to be free, Neglects his Sultan to enquire of thee; The barbarous Briton hails you to his shores, And calls him Rebel, whom his heart adores. Still may the heavens prolong your vital date, And still may conquest on your banners wait: Whether afar to ravaged lands you go, Where wild Potowmac's rapid waters flow, Or where Saluda laves the fertile plain And, swoln by torrents, rushes to the main; Or if again to Hudson you repair To smite the cruel foe that lingers there-- Revenge their cause, whose virtue was their crime, The exiled hosts from Carolina's clime. Late from the world in quiet mayest thou rise And, mourned by millions, reach your native skies-- With patriot kings and generous chiefs to shine, Whose virtues raised them to be deemed divine: May Vasa[A] only equal honours claim, Alike in merits--not the first in fame! [A] Gustavus Vasa of Sweden, the deliverer of his country.--_Freneau's note._ In the earlier editions this read _Louis_. First changed for the edition of 1795. [45] First published in the _Freeman's Journal_, September 5, 1781, under the title "To his Excellency General Washington," and reprinted without change in the edition of 1786. The same paper contained the following news item: "On Thursday, the 30th of August, at one o'clock in the afternoon, his excellency General Washington, Commander-in-chief of the American Armies, accompanied by the Generals Rochambeau and Chattelux, with their respective suites, arrived in this city." The early version was addressed wholly to Washington, the opening line reading, "Accept, great chief," etc. For the edition of 1795 it was changed to include officers and soldiers. [46] "* * * they fled, and thought the sea With all its storms less terrible than thee!"--_Ed. 1786._ [47] "Not _Clinton-like_."--_Ib._ [48] "You undismay'd."--_Ib._ [49] "In him a hero."--_Ib._ [50] This and the line following not in the original version. A NEW-YORK TORY[51] To His Friend in Philadelphia Dear Sir, I'm so anxious to hear of your health, I beg you would send me a letter by stealth: I hope a few months will quite alter the case, When the wars are concluded, we'll meet and embrace. For I'm led to believe from our brilliant success, And, what is as clear, your amazing distress, That the cause of rebellion has met with a check That will bring all its patrons to hang by the neck. Cornwallis has managed so well in the South, Those rebels want victuals to put in their mouth; And Arnold has stript them, we hear, to the buff[52]-- Has burnt their tobacco, and left them--the snuff. Dear Thomas, I wish you would move from that town Where meet all the rebels of fame and renown; When our armies, victorious, shall clear that vile nest You may chance, though a Tory, to swing with the rest. But again--on reflection--I beg you would stay-- You may serve us yet better than if moved away-- Give advice to Sir Harry of all that is passing, What vessels are building, what cargoes amassing; Inform, to a day, when those vessels will sail, That our cruisers may capture them all, without fail-- By proceedings like these, your peace will be made, The rebellious shall swing, but be you ne'er afraid. I cannot conceive how you do to subsist-- The rebels are starving, except those who 'list; And as you reside in the land of Gomorrah, You must fare as the rest do, I think, to your sorrow. Poor souls! if ye knew what a doom is decreed, (I mean not for you, but for rebels indeed), You would tremble to think of the vengeance in store, The halters and gibbets--I mention no more. The rebels must surely conclude they're undone, Their navy is ruined, their armies have run; It is time they should now from delusion awaken-- The rebellion is done--for the _Trumbull_[53] is taken! [51] _Freeman's Journal_, September 5, 1781. [52] Cornwallis, in command of the British army in the South, was in the early part of 1781 working his way steadily northward from South Carolina. Benedict Arnold arrived in the Chesapeake, January 2, 1781, and, supported by the British navy there, committed extensive ravages on the rivers and unprotected coasts of Virginia. Arnold offered to spare Richmond if he were given its stores of tobacco. The offer being rejected, the city with its tobacco was burned. [53] The American frigate _Trumbull_, 20, Captain James Nicholson, was chased off the capes of the Delaware, August 8th, 1781, by three British cruisers. As it was blowing heavily towards night, the fore-topmast of the _Trumbull_ was carried away by a squall, bringing down with it, on deck, the main-topgallant mast. About ten o'clock at night, one of the British vessels, the _Iris_, 32, came up and closed with her while still encumbered with the wreck. "In the midst of rain and squalls, in a tempestuous night, with most of the forward hamper of the ship over her bows, or lying on the forecastle, with one of the arms of the fore-topsail yard run through her fore-sail, and the other jammed on deck, and with a disorganized crew, Captain Nicholson found himself compelled to go to quarters, or to strike without resistance. He preferred the first; but the English volunteers, instead of obeying orders, went below, extinguished the lights, and secreted themselves. Near half of the remainder of the people imitated this example, and Captain Nicholson could not muster fifty of even the diminished crew he had, at the guns. The battle that followed might almost be said to have been fought by the officers. These brave men, sustained by a party of the petty officers and seamen, managed a few of the guns for more than an hour, when the _General Monk_, 18, coming up and joining in the fire of the _Iris_, the _Trumbull_ submitted."--_Cooper's Naval History._--[_Duyckinck's note, ed. of 1865._] TO LORD CORNWALLIS[54] At York, Virginia Hail, great destroyer (equalled yet by none) Of countries not your master's, nor your own; Hatched by some demon on a stormy day, Satan's best substitute to burn and slay; Confined at last, hemmed in by land and sea, Burgoyne himself was but a type of thee! Like his, to freedom was your deadly hate, Like his your baseness, and be his your fate: To you, like him, no prospect Nature yields, But ruined wastes and desolated fields[55]-- In vain you raise the interposing wall, And hoist those standards that, like you, must fall, In you conclude the glories of your race, Complete your monarch's and your own disgrace. What has your lordship's pilfering arms attained?-- Vast stores of plunder, but no State regained-- That may return, though you perhaps may groan, Restore it, Charley,[56] for 'tis not your own-- Then, lord and soldier, headlong to the brine Rush down at once--the devil and the swine. Wouldst thou at last with Washington engage, Sad object of his pity, not his rage? See, round thy posts how terribly advance The chiefs, the armies, and the fleets of France;[57] Fight while you can, for warlike Rochambeau Aims at your head his last decisive blow, Unnumbered ghosts from earth untimely sped, Can take no rest till you, like them, are dead-- Then die, my Lord; that only chance remains To wipe away dishonourable stains, For small advantage would your capture bring, The plundering servant of a bankrupt king. [54] This did not appear in the _Freeman's Journal_. In the edition of 1786 it bore the title, "To Lord Cornwallis, at York, Virginia, October 8, 1781." [55] Cornwallis arrived in Virginia from his Southern campaign early in the summer of 1781, and immediately began with extreme vigor to subjugate that State. His cruelty and severity were exceptional, even in the annals of war. "The Americans of that day," says Bancroft, "computed that Cornwallis, in his midsummer marchings up and down Virginia, destroyed property to the value of three million pounds sterling." [56] "Ruffian."--_Ed. 1786._ [57] On October 8th, Cornwallis, at York, was surrounded by the American army, who had just completed the first line of trenches. The redoubts were so far enough completed on the 9th that the Americans and French felt ready to begin the bombardment of the British works. A LONDON DIALOGUE[58] Between My Lords, Dunmore and Germaine _Dunmore_ Ever since I return'd to my dear native shore, No poet in Grubstreet was ever dunned more-- I'm dunned by my barber, my taylor, my groom; How can I do else than to fret and to fume? They join to attack me with one good accord, From morning till night 'tis "my lord, and my lord." And there comes the cobler, so often denied-- If I had him in private, I'd thresh his tough hide. _Germaine_ Would you worry the man that has found you in shoes? Come, courage, my lord, I can tell you good news-- Virginia is conquered, the rebels are banged,[59] You are now to go over and see them safe hanged: I hope it is not to your nature abhorrent To sign for these wretches a handsome death warrant-- Were I but in your place, I'm sure it would suit To sign their death warrants, and hang them to boot. _Dunmore_ My lord!--I'm amazed--have we routed the foe?-- I shall govern again then, if matters be so-- And as to the hanging, in short, to be plain, I'll hang them so well, they'll ne'er want it again. With regard to the wretches who thump at my gates, I'll discharge all their dues with the rebel estates; In less than three months I may send a polacca As deep as she'll swim, sir, with corn and tobacco. _Germaine_ And send us some rebels--a dozen or so-- They'll serve here in London by way of a show; And as to the Tories, believe me, dear cousin, We can spare you some hundreds to pay for the dozen. [58] _Freeman's Journal_, September 19, 1781. The original title, the one used in the 1786 edition, was "Dialogue between the Lords Dunmore and Mansfield." Lord Dunmore was Governor of Virginia at the beginning of the war, in 1775, and was driven from that State by the outraged colonists. He continued in America, in various capacities, until near the close of the war. Lord George Germaine was Colonial Secretary under George III., and so had charge of the American War. [59] Alluding to the vigorous campaign of Cornwallis. In June, Germaine had written to Cornwallis: "The rapidity of your movements is justly matter of astonishment to all Europe." On August 2nd he wrote: "I see nothing to prevent the recovery of the whole country to the King's obedience." LORD CORNWALLIS TO SIR HENRY CLINTON[60] [From York, Virginia] From clouds of smoke, and flames that round me glow, To you, dear Clinton, I disclose my woe: Here cannons flash, bombs glance, and bullets fly; Not Arnold's[61] self endures such misery. Was I foredoomed in tortures[62] to expire, Hurled to perdition in a blaze of fire? With these blue flames can mortal man contend-- What arms can aid me, or what walls defend? Even to these gates last night a phantom strode, And hailed me trembling to his dark abode: Aghast I stood, struck motionless and dumb, Seized with the horrors of the world to come. Were but my power as mighty as my rage, Far different battles would Cornwallis wage; Beneath his sword yon' threat'ning hosts should groan, The earth would quake with thunders all his own. O crocodile! had I thy flinty hide, Swords to defy, and glance the balls aside, By my own prowess would I rout the foe, With my own javelin would I work their woe-- But fates averse, by heaven's supreme decree, Nile's serpent formed more excellent than me. Has heaven, in secret, for some crime decreed That I should suffer, and my soldiers bleed? Or is it by the jealous powers concealed, That I must bend, and they ignobly yield? Ah! no--the thought o'erwhelms my soul with grief: Come, bold Sir Harry, come to my relief; Come, thou brave man, whom rebels Tombstone call, But Britons, Graves[63]--come Digby, devil and all; Come, princely William, with thy potent aid, Can George's blood by Frenchmen be dismayed? From a king's uncle once Scotch rebels run, And shall not these be routed by a son? Come with your ships to this disastrous shore, Come--or I sink--and sink to rise no more; By every motive that can sway the brave Haste, and my feeble, fainting army save; Come, and lost empire o'er the deep regain, Chastise these upstarts that usurp the main; I see their first rates to the charge advance, I see lost _Iris_ wear the flags of France; There a strict rule the wakeful Frenchman keeps; There, on no bed of down, Lord Rawdon sleeps! Tired with long acting on this bloody stage, Sick of the follies of a wrangling age, Come with your fleet, and help me to retire To Britain's coast, the land of my desire-- For, me the foe their certain captive deem, And every trifler[64] takes me for his theme-- Long, much too long in this hard service tried, Bespattered still, be-deviled, and belied; With the first chance that favouring fortune sends I fly, converted, from this land of fiends; Convinced, for me, she has no gems in store, Nor leaves one triumph, even to hope for more. [60] First published in the _Freeman's Journal_, October 17, 1781, two days before the final surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. "On the seventeenth [of September] Cornwallis reported to Clinton: 'This place is in no state of defence. If you cannot relieve me very soon, you must be prepared to hear the worst.'"--_Bancroft._ [61] "Satan's self."--_Ed. 1786._ [62] "Like Korah."--_Ib._ [63] "Lord Sandwich, after the retirement of Howe, gave the naval command at New York to officers without ability; and the aged Arbuthnot was succeeded by Graves, a coarse and vulgar man of mean ability, and without skill in his profession."--_Bancroft._ [64] "School-boy."--_Ed. 1786._ THE VANITY OF EXISTENCE[65] To Thyrsis In youth, gay scenes attract our eyes, And not suspecting their decay Life's flowery fields before us rise, Regardless of its winter day. But vain pursuits and joys as vain, Convince us life is but a dream. Death is to wake, to rise again To that true life you best esteem. So nightly on some shallow tide, Oft have I seen a splendid show; Reflected stars on either side, And glittering moons were seen below. But when the tide had ebbed away, The scene fantastic with it fled, A bank of mud around me lay, And sea-weed on the river's bed. [65] Published in the _Freeman's Journal_, October 24, 1781, under the title "A Moral Thought," and reprinted without change in the edition of 1786. ON THE FALL OF GENERAL EARL CORNWALLIS Who, with above seven thousand Men, surrendered themselves prisoners of war to the renowned and illustrious General GEORGE WASHINGTON, Commander-in-chief of the allied armies of France and America, on the memorable 19th of _October_, 1781.[66] "Give us the proudest prisoner of the Goths, "That we may hew his limbs, and on a pile "_Ad manes fratrum_ sacrifice his flesh, "Before this earthly prison of their bones; "That so the shadows be not unappeas'd, "Nor we disturb'd with prodigies on earth." --_Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus_, Act I, Scene II. A Chieftain join'd with[67] Howe, Burgoyne, and Gage, Once more, nor this the last, provokes my rage-- Who saw these Nimrods first for conquest burn! Who has not seen them to the dust return? This ruffian[68] next, who scour'd our ravag'd fields, Foe to the human race,[69] Cornwallis yields!-- None e'er before essay'd such desperate crimes, Alone he stood, arch-butcher of the times, Rov'd uncontroul'd this wasted country o'er, Strew'd plains with dead, and bath'd his jaws with gore?[70] 'Twas thus the wolf, who sought by night his prey, And plunder'd all he met with on his way, Stole what he could, and murder'd as he pass'd, Chanc'd on a trap, and lost his head at last. What pen can write, what human tongue can tell The endless murders of this man of hell![71] Nature in him disgrac'd the form divine; Nature mistook, she meant him for a--swine: That eye his forehead to her shame adorns; Blush! nature, blush--bestow him tail and horns!-- By him the orphans mourn--the widow'd dame Saw ruin spreading in the wasteful flame; Gash'd o'er with wounds beheld with streaming eye A son, a brother, or a consort, die!-- Through ruin'd realms bones lie without a tomb, And souls he sped to their eternal doom, Who else had liv'd, and seen their toils again Bless'd by the genius of the rural reign. But turn your eyes, and see the murderer fall,[72] Then say--"Cornwallis has atchiev'd it all."-- Yet he preserves the honour and the fame That vanquish'd heroes only ought to claim-- Is he a hero!--Read, and you will find Heroes are beings of a different kind:-- Compassion to the worst of men is due, And mercy heaven's first attribute, 'tis true; Yet most presume it was too nobly done To grant mild terms to Satan's first-born son. Convinc'd we are, no foreign spot on earth But Britain only, gave this reptile[73] birth. That white-cliff'd isle, the vengeful dragon's[74] den, Has sent us monsters where we look'd for men. When memory paints their horrid deeds anew, And brings these murdering miscreants to your view, Then ask the leaders of these bloody bands, Can they expect compassion at our hands?-- But may this year, the glorious eighty-one, Conclude successful, as it first begun;[75] This brilliant year their total downfall see, And what Cornwallis is, may Clinton be.[76] O come the time, nor distant be the day, When our bold navy shall its wings display; Mann'd by our sons, to seek that barbarous shore,[77] The wrongs revenging that their fathers bore: As Samuel hew'd the tyrant Agag down,[78] So hew the wearer of the British crown; Unpitying, next his hated offspring slay, Or into foreign lands the fiends convey:[79] Give them their turn to pine and die in chains, 'Till not one monster[80] of the race remains. Thou, who resid'st on those thrice happy shores, Where white rob'd peace her envied blessings pours, Stay, and enjoy the pleasures that she yields; But come not, stranger, to our wasted fields, For warlike hosts on every plain appear, War damps the beauties of the rising year: In vain the groves their bloomy sweets display; War's clouded winter chills the charms of May: Here human blood the trampled harvest stains; Here bones of men yet whiten all the plains; Seas teem with dead; and our unhappy shore Forever blushes with its children's gore. But turn your eyes--behold the tyrant fall, And think[81]--Cornwallis has atchiev'd it all.-- All mean revenge Americans disdain, Oft have they prov'd it, and now prove again; With nobler fires their generous bosoms glow; Still in the captive they forget the foe:-- But when a nation takes a wrongful cause, And hostile turns to heaven's and nature's laws; When, sacrificing at ambition's shrine, Kings slight the mandates of the power divine, And devastation spread on every side, To gratify their malice or their pride, And send their slaves their projects to fulfil, To wrest our freedom, or our blood to spill:-- Such to forgive, is virtue too sublime; For even compassion has been found a crime. A prophet once, for miracles renown'd, Bade Joash smite the arrows on the ground-- Taking the mystic shafts, the prince obey'd, Thrice smote them on the earth--and then he stay'd-- Griev'd when he saw full victory deny'd, "Six times you should have smote," the prophet cry'd, "Then had proud Syria sunk beneath thy power, "Now thrice you smite her--but shall smite no more." Cornwallis! thou art rank'd among the great; Such was the will of all-controuling fate. As mighty men, who liv'd in days of yore, Were figur'd out some centuries before; So you with them in equal honour join, Your great precursor's name was Jack Burgoyne! Like you was he, a man in arms renown'd, Who, hot for conquest, sail'd the ocean round; This, this was he, who scour'd the woods for praise, And burnt down cities[A] to describe the blaze! So, while on fire, his harp Rome's tyrant strung, And as the buildings flam'd, old Nero sung. Who would have guess'd the purpose of the fates, When that proud boaster bow'd to conquering Gates!-- Then sung the sisters[B] as the wheel went round, (Could we have heard the invigorating sound) Thus surely did the fatal sisters sing-- "When just four years do this same season bring, "And in his annual journey, when the sun "Four times completely shall his circuit run, "An angel then shall rid you of your fears, "By binding Satan for a thousand years, "Shall lash the serpent[82] to the infernal shore, "To waste the nations and deceive no more, "Make wars and blood, and tyranny to cease, "And hush the fiends of Britain[83] into peace." Joy to your lordship, and your high descent, You are the Satan that the sisters meant. Too soon you found your race of ruin run, Your conquests ended, and your battles done! But that to live is better than to die, And life you chose, though life with infamy, You should have climb'd your loftiest vessel's deck,[84] And hung a millstone round your halter'd neck--[85] Then plung'd forever to the wat'ry bed, Hell in your heart, and vengeance on your head.[86] All must confess, that in regard to you,[87] 'Twas wrong to rob the devil of his due-- For Hayne, for Hayne![88] no death but thine atones; For thee, Cornwallis, how the gallows groans! That injur'd man's, and all the blood you've shed, That blood shall rest on your devoted head; Asham'd to live, and yet afraid to die, Your courage slacken'd as the foe drew nigh-- Ungrateful wretch, to yield your favourite band To chains and prisons in a hostile land: To the wide world your Negro friends to cast, And leave your Tories to be hang'd at last!-- You should have fought with horror and amaze, 'Till scorch'd to cinders in the cannon blaze, 'Till all your host of Beelzebubs[89] was slain, Doom'd to disgrace no human shape again-- As if from hell this horned host he drew,[90] Swift from the South the embodied ruffians[91] flew; Destruction follow'd at their cloven feet, 'Till you, Fayette, constrain'd them to retreat, And held them close, 'till thy fam'd squadron came, De Grasse, completing their eternal shame. When the loud cannon's unremitting glare And red hot balls compell'd you to despair, How could you stand to meet your generous foe? Did not the sight confound your soul with woe?-- In thy great soul what god-like virtues shine, What inborn greatness, Washington, is thine!-- Else had no prisoner trod these lands to-day, All, with his lordship, had been swept away, All doom'd alike death's vermin to regale, Nor one been left to tell the dreadful tale! But his own terms the vanquish'd murderer[92] nam'd-- He nobly gave the miscreant[93] all he claim'd, And bade Cornwallis, conquer'd and distress'd, Bear all his torments in his tortur'd breast. Now curs'd with life, a foe to man and God, Like Cain, I drive you to the land of Nod. He with a brother's blood his hands did stain, One brother he, you have a thousand slain. And, O! may heaven affix some public mark[94] To know Cornwallis--may he howl and bark!-- On eagle's wings explore your downward flight[95] To the deep horrors of the darkest night,[96] Where, rapt in shade on ocean's utmost bound,[97] No longer sun, nor moon, nor stars are found; Where never light her kindling radiance shed, But the dark comets rove with all their dead,[C] Doom'd through the tracks of endless space to run No more revolving to confound the sun. Such horrid deeds your spotted soul[98] defame We grieve to think your shape and ours the same! Enjoy what comfort in this life you can,[99] The form you have, not feelings of a man; Haste to the rocks, thou curse to human kind, There thou may'st wolves and brother tygers find; Eternal exile be your righteous doom And gnash your dragon's teeth in some sequester'd gloom; Such be the end of each relentless foe Who feels no pity for another's woe; So may they fall[100]--even you, though much too late, Shall curse the day you languished to be great; Haste from the torments of the present life,[101] Quick, let the halter end thee or the knife; So may destruction rush with speedy wing, Low as yourself, to drag your cruel king;[102] His head torn off, his hands, his feet, and all,[103] Deep in the dust may Dagon's image fall; His stump alone escape the vengeful steel, Sav'd but to grace the gibbet or the wheel. [A] Charlestown, near Boston. See his letter on that occasion.--_Freneau's note._ The poet has satirized Burgoyne's literary pretentions in the "Voyage to Boston," _q. v._ [B] The _Parcæ_, or _Fates_, who, according to the Heathen mythology, were three in number.--_Ib._ [C] See Whiston's Hypothesis.--_Freneau's note._ [66] This title was changed for the edition of 1795 by leaving out the words "the renowned and illustrious General George Washington, Commander-in-chief of," and also the quotation from Shakespeare. The same title was used in 1809, with the added quotation: "_One brilliant game our arms have won to-day, Another_, PRINCES, _yet remains to play, Another mark our arrows must attain--_ GALLIA _assist!--nor be our efforts vain_." --_Hom. Odyssey, Book XXII._ In the issue of the _Freeman's Journal_ of October 24, 1781, the editor voiced his joy by printing the following in huge letters, that covered more than half of the first page of the paper: BE IT REMEMBERED That on the 17th day of October, 1781, Lieut. General Charles Earl Cornwallis with above 5000 British troops surrendered themselves prisoners of war to his excellency Gen. George Washington, commander in chief of the allied forces of France and America. LAUS DEO!-- Two weeks later, in the issue of November 7th, Freneau printed the above poem. It was so mutilated and changed for the edition of 1795 that I have reproduced the test of the 1786 edition, which was printed verbatim from the newspaper, and have indicated in the footnotes the most significant changes. [67] "Formed on."--_Ed. 1795._ [68] "Conqueror."--_Ib._ [69] "Foe to the rights of man."--_Ib._ [70] This does not overdo the contemporary estimate of Cornwallis. Attempting to crush at once the American rebellion by the use of the harshest measures, he inaugurated a veritable reign of terror. "Cruel measures seek and find cruel agents; officers whose delight was in blood patrolled the country, burned houses, ravaged estates, and put to death whom they would.... For two years cold-blooded assassinations, often in the house of the victim and in the presence of his wife and little children, were perpetrated by men holding the king's commission."--_Bancroft._ [71] "Lord of war."--_Ed. 1795._ [72] This line and the nine following lines were omitted from the edition of 1795. [73] "Warrior."--_Ed. 1795._ [74] "Tyrant's."--_Ib._ [75] "And all wars be done."--_Ib._ [76] "Sir Henry be."--_Ib._ [77] "Manned by brave souls, to see the British shore."--_Ib._ [78] "As earthquakes shook the huge Colossus down."--_Ed. 1795._ [79] "By force convey."--_Ib._ [80] "Tyrant."--_Ib._ [81] "Nor say."--_Ib._ [82] "His godship."--_Ed. 1795._ [83] "The rage of Europe."--_Ib._ [84] "Mast."--_Ib._ [85] "Took one sad survey of your wanton waste."--_Ib._ [86] "Lost all your honours--even your memory dead."--_Ib._ [87] This and the five following lines omitted in edition of 1795. [88] An allusion to the brutal execution of the patriot, Isaac Hayne, of Charlestown, by General Rawdon, in the summer of 1781. The guilt of this crime rests almost wholly upon Rawdon. Yet "his first excuse for the execution was in the order of Cornwallis which had filled the woods of Carolina with assassins."--_Bancroft._ [89] "Gog-magogs."--_Ed. 1795._ [90] "From depth of woods this hornet host he drew."--_Ib._ [91] "Envenom'd ruffians."--_Ib._ [92] "The mean invader."--_Ib._ [93] "The prisoner."--_Ib._ [94] This line and the next omitted from later editions. [95] "Homeward flight."--_Ed. 1795._ [96] "Plan future conquests and new battles fight."--_Ib._ [97] This and the following five lines omitted from later editions. [98] "Your murdering host."--_Ed. 1795._ [99] This and the following seven lines omitted from later editions. [100] "Remorse be theirs."--_Ed. 1809._ [101] This line and the following omitted from later editions. [102] "Each tyrant king."--_Ed. 1809._ [103] The later editions end at this point as follows: "Swept from this stage, the race that vex our ball, Deep in the dust may every monarch fall, To wasted nations bid a long adieu, Shrink from an injured world--and fare like you." TO THE MEMORY OF THE BRAVE AMERICANS[104] Under General Greene, in South Carolina, who fell in the action of September 8, 1781 At Eutaw Springs the valiant died; Their limbs with dust are covered o'er-- Weep on, ye springs, your tearful tide; How many heroes are no more![105] If in this wreck of ruin, they Can yet be thought to claim a tear, O smite your gentle breast, and say The friends of freedom slumber here! Thou, who shalt trace this bloody plain, If goodness rules thy generous breast, Sigh for the wasted rural reign; Sigh for the shepherds, sunk to rest! Stranger, their humble graves adorn; You too may fall, and ask a tear; 'Tis not the beauty of the morn That proves the evening shall be clear.-- They saw their injured country's woe; The flaming town, the wasted field; Then rushed to meet the insulting foe; They took the spear--but left the shield.[106] Led by thy conquering genius, Greene, The Britons they compelled to fly; None distant viewed the fatal plain, None grieved, in such a cause to die-- But, like the Parthian, famed of old. Who, flying, still their arrows threw, These routed Britons, full as bold, Retreated, and retreating slew.[107] Now rest in peace, our patriot band; Though far from nature's limits thrown, We trust they find a happier land, A brighter sunshine of their own. [104] First published in the _Freeman's Journal_, November 21, 1781. The patriot army under Greene spent the summer of 1781 in the High Hills of Santee, in South Carolina. "On the 22d of August, Greene broke up his camp very quietly and started out on the last of his sagacious campaigns.... By vigilant scouting parties, he so completely cut off the enemy's means of information that Stuart remained ignorant of his approach until he was close at hand. The British commander then fell back on Eutaw Springs, about fifty miles from Charleston, where he waited in a strong position. The battle of Eutaw Springs may be resolved into two brief actions between sunrise and noon of the 8th of September, 1781. In the first action the British line was broken and driven from the field. In the second, Stuart succeeded in forming a new line, supported by a brick house and palisaded garden, and from this position Greene was unable to drive him. It has therefore been set down as a British victory. If so, it was a victory followed the next evening by the hasty retreat of the victors, who were hotly pursued by Marion and Lee."--_Fiske._ [105] "In the two engagements the Americans lost in killed, wounded, and missing, five hundred and fifty-four men."--_Bancroft._ [106] Scott borrowed this line in the introduction to the third canto of _Marmion_, in the apostrophe to the Duke of Brunswick, which reads thus: "Lamented Chief!--not thine the power To save in that presumptuous hour, When Prussia hurried to the field And snatched the spear but left the shield." [107] After the first engagement the British fled in confusion. Greene, in his eagerness, pursued them too closely, and sheltered by the brick house, they inflicted upon the advancing Americans the greater part of the loss of life incurred during the battle. ARNOLD'S DEPARTURE[108] Imitated from Horace "_Mala soluta navis exit alite Ferens olentem Mævium_," &c. With evil omens from the harbour sails The ill-fated barque that worthless Arnold bears,-- God of the southern winds, call up the gales, And whistle in rude fury round his ears. With horrid waves insult his vessel's sides, And may the east wind on a leeward shore Her cables part while she in tumult rides, And shatter into shivers every oar. And let the north wind to her ruin haste, With such a rage, as when from mountains high He rends the tall oak with his weighty blast, And ruin spreads where'er his forces fly. May not one friendly star that night be seen; No moon, attendant, dart one glimmering ray, Nor may she ride on oceans more serene Than Greece, triumphant, found that stormy day, When angry Pallas spent her rage no more On vanquished Ilium, then in ashes laid, But turned it on the barque that Ajax[A] bore, Avenging thus her temple and the maid. [A] Ajax the younger, son of Oileus, king of the Locrians. He debauched Cassandra in the temple of Pallas, which was the cause of his misfortune on his return from the siege of Troy.--_Freneau's note._ When tossed upon the vast Atlantic main Your groaning ship the southern gales shall tear, How will your sailors sweat, and you complain And meanly howl to Jove, that will not hear! But if, at last, upon some winding shore A prey to hungry cormorants you lie, A wanton goat to every stormy power,[B] And a fat lamb, in sacrifice, shall die. [B] The _Tempests_ were Goddesses amongst the Romans.--_Ib._ [108] First published in the July 10, 1782, issue of the _Freeman's Journal_, under the title "The 10th Ode Horace's Book of Epodes Imitated. Written in December, 1781, upon the departure of General Arnold from New-York." The poem was reprinted verbatim in the 1786 edition. "The capitulation at Yorktown having virtually put an end to the war, and Arnold, finding himself neither respected by the British officers nor likely to be further employed in the service, obtained permission from Sir Henry Clinton to go to England. He sailed from New York with his family in December, 1781."--_Sparks' Life of Arnold._ PLATO, THE PHILOSOPHER, TO HIS FRIEND THEON[109] _Semel omnibus calcanda via Lethi._--Hor. Why, Theon, wouldst thou longer groan Beneath a weight of years and woe, Thy youth is lost, thy pleasures flown, And time proclaims, "'Tis time to go." To willows sad and weeping yews With me a while, dear friend, repair,[110] Nor to the vault thy steps refuse, Thy constant home shall soon be there. To summer suns and winter moons Prepare to bid a long adieu, Autumnal seasons shall return And spring shall bloom, but not for you. Why so perplext with cares and toil To rest upon this darksome road, 'Tis but a thin, a thirsty soil, A barren and a bleak abode. Constrain'd to dwell with pain and care, These dregs of life are bought too dear, 'Tis better far to die than bear The torments of another year.[111] Subjected to perpetual ills A thousand deaths around us grow, The frost the tender blossom kills, And roses wither as they blow. Cold nipping winds thy fruits assail, The infant[112] apple seeks the ground, The peaches fall, the cherries fail, The grape receives a fatal wound. The breeze that gently ought to blow Swells to a storm and rends the main, The sun that charm'd the grass to grow Turns hostile and consumes the plain; The mountains waste, the shores decay, Once purling streams are dead and dry-- 'Twas nature's work--'tis nature's play, And nature says that all must die. Yon' flaming lamp, the source of light, In chaos dark shall shroud his beam And leave the world to mother night, A farce, a phantom, or a dream. What now is young must soon be old, Whate'er we love, we soon must leave, 'Tis now too hot, 'tis now too cold-- To live is nothing but to grieve. How bright the morn her course begun, No mists bedimm'd the solar sphere-- The clouds arise--they shade the sun, For nothing can be constant here. Now hope the longing soul employs, In expectation we are blest; But soon the airy phantom flies, For, lo! the treasure is possest. Those monarchs proud that havoc spread, (While pensive nature[113] dropt a tear) Those monarchs have to darkness fled And ruin bounds their mad career. The grandeur of this earthly round, Where Theon[114] would forever be, Is but a name, is but a sound-- Mere emptiness and vanity. Give me the stars, give me the skies, Give me the heaven's remotest sphere, Above these gloomy scenes to rise Of desolation and despair. Those native fires that warmed the mind Now languid grown too dimly glow, Joy has to grief the heart resigned And love itself is changed to woe. The joys of wine are all you boast, These for a moment damp thy pain; The gleam is o'er, the charm is lost-- And darkness clouds the soul again. Then seek no more for bliss below, Where real bliss can ne'er be found, Aspire where sweeter blossoms blow And fairer flowers bedeck the ground. Where plants of life the plains invest And green eternal crowns the year, The little god within thy breast[115] Is weary of his mansion here. Like Phosphor clad in bright array[116] His height meridian to regain, He can, nor will no longer stay[117] To shiver on a frozen plain. Life's journey past, for death[118] prepare, 'Tis but the freedom of the mind, Jove made us mortal--his we are, To Jove, dear Theon,[119] be resigned. [109] _Freeman's Journal_, January 2, 1782. In the editions of 1795 and 1809, the title is "To an Old Man." [110] "With me a while, old man, repair."--_Ed. 1795._ [111] "The torments of life's closing year."--_Ed. 1795._ [112] "Blasted."--_Ib._ [113] "Reason."--_Ed. 1795._ [114] "Folly."--_Ib._ [115] "That swells the breast."--_Ed. 1795._ [116] "Sent before the day."--_Ib._ [117] "The dawn arrives--he must not stay."--_Ib._ [118] "Fate."--_Ib._ [119] "Be all our cares."--_Ib._ PROLOGUE[120] To a Theatrical Entertainment in Philadelphia Wars, cruel wars, and hostile Britain's rage Have banished long the pleasures of the stage; From the gay painted scene compelled to part, (Forgot the melting language of the heart) Constrained to shun the bold theatric show, To act long tragedies of real woe, Heroes, once more attend the comic muse; Forget our failings, and our faults excuse. In that fine language is our fable drest Which still unrivalled, reigns o'er all the rest; Of foreign courts the study and the pride, Who to know this abandon all beside; Bold, though polite, and ever sure to please; Correct with grace, and elegant with ease; Soft from the lips its easy accents roll, Formed to delight and captivate the soul: In this _Eugenia_ tells her easy lay, The brilliant work of courtly Beaumarchais: In this Racine, Voltaire, and Boileau sung, The noblest poets in the noblest tongue. If the soft story in our play expressed Can give a moment's pleasure to your breast, To you, Great Men,[121] we must be proud to say That moment's pleasure shall our pains repay: Returned from conquest and from glorious toils, From armies captured and unnumbered spoils; Ere yet again, with generous France allied, You rush to battle, humbling British pride; While arts of peace your kind protection share, O let the Muses claim an equal care. You bade us first our future greatness see, Inspired by you, we languished to be free; Even here where Freedom lately sat distrest, See, a new Athens rising in the west! Fair science blooms, where tyrants reigned before, Red war, reluctant, leaves our ravaged shore-- Illustrious heroes, may you live to see These new Republics powerful, great, and free; Peace, heaven born peace, o'er spacious regions spread, While discord, sinking, veils her ghastly head. [120] First published in the _Freeman's Journal_, January 9, 1782, with the following introduction: "On Wednesday evening, the 2d instant [January 2, 1782] Alex. Quesnay, Esq., exhibited a most elegant entertainment at the playhouse, where were present his excellency Gen. Washington, the Minister of France, the President of the State, a number of officers of the army, and a brilliant assemblage of ladies and gentlemen of the city who were invited. After a prologue suitable to the occasion, EUGENIE, an elegant French comedy, was first presented (written by the celebrated M. Beaumarchais), and in the opinion of several good judges was extremely well acted by the young gentlemen students in that polite language. After the comedy was acted the LYING VARLET, a farce; to this succeeded several curious dances, followed by a brilliant illumination, consisting of thirteen pyramidal pillars, representing the thirteen States,--on the middle column was seen a cupid, supporting a laurel crown over the motto, 'WASHINGTON, _the pride of his Country and terror of Britain_.' On the summit was the word _Virginia_, on the right _Connecticut_, with the names GREENE and LA FAYETTE, on the left the word _Pennsylvania_, with the names WAYNE and STEUBEN, and so on according to the birthplace and State proper to each general. The spectacle ended with an artificial illumination of the thirteen columns." The prologue, written at the request of Mr. Quesnay, is as above. [121] In the 1786 version, which was reprinted verbatim from the newspaper, this read "Great Sir," with the foot-note, "Addressed to His Excellency General Washington," and the rest of the poem was made to refer solely to him. In the later versions this was changed so as to read, "Addressed to the Commander in Chief and several of the officers of the American army then present at the theatre in Southwark." STANZAS[122] Occasioned by the Ruins of a Country Inn, unroofed and blown down in a storm Where now these mingled ruins lie A temple once to Bacchus rose, Beneath whose roof, aspiring high, Full many a guest forgot his woes: No more this dome, by tempests torn, Affords a social safe retreat; But ravens here, with eye forlorn, And clustering bats henceforth will meet. The Priestess of this ruined shrine, Unable to survive the stroke, Presents no more the ruddy wine, Her glasses gone, her china broke. The friendly Host, whose social hand Accosted strangers at the door, Has left at length his wonted stand, And greets the weary guest no more. Old creeping Time, that brings decay, Might yet have spared these mouldering walls, Alike beneath whose potent sway A temple or a tavern falls. Is this the place where mirth and joy, Coy nymphs and sprightly lads were found? Indeed! no more the nymphs are coy, No more the flowing bowls go round. Is this the place where festive song Deceived the wintry hours away? No more the swains the tune prolong, No more the maidens join the lay: Is this the place where Nancy slept In downy beds of blue and green?-- Dame Nature here no vigils kept, No cold unfeeling guards were seen. 'Tis gone!--and Nancy tempts no more, Deep, unrelenting silence reigns; Of all that pleased, that charmed before, The tottering chimney scarce remains! Ye tyrant winds, whose ruffian blast Through doors and windows blew too strong, And all the roof to ruin cast, The roof that sheltered us so long. Your wrath appeased, I pray be kind If Mopsus should the dome renew; That we again may quaff his wine, Again collect our jovial crew. [122] Published in the _Freeman's Journal_, January 23, 1782. THE ROYAL ADVENTURER[123] Prince William of the Brunswick race, To witness George's sad disgrace The Royal Lad came over Rebels to kill by Right Divine-- Deriv'd from that illustrious line The beggars of Hanover. So many chiefs got broken pates In vanquishing the rebel States, So many nobles fell, That George the Third in passion cry'd, "Our royal blood must now be try'd; "'Tis that must break the spell: "To you (the fat pot-valiant Swine To Digby said) dear friend of mine, "To you I trust my boy. "The rebel tribes shall quake with fears, "Rebellion die when he appears; "My Tories leap with joy." So said, so done--the boy was sent, But never reach'd the continent, An Island held him fast-- Yet there his friends danc'd rigadoons, The Hessians sung in High Dutch tunes, "Prince William's come at last." "Prince William comes!"--the Briton cry'd-- "The glory of our empire wide "Shall now be soon restor'd-- "Our monarch is in William seen, "He is the image of our queen, "Let William be ador'd!" The Tories came with long address, With poems groan'd the Royal press, And all in William's praise-- The boy astonish'd look'd about To find their vast dominions out, Then answer'd in amaze, "Where all your empire wide can be, "Friends, for my soul I cannot see: "'Tis but an empty name; "Three wasted islands and a town "In rubbish bury'd--half burnt down, "Is all that we can claim: "I am of royal birth, 'tis true, "But what, alas! can princes do, "No armies to command? "Cornwallis conquer'd and distrest, "Sir Henry Clinton grown a jest, "I curse and leave the land." [123] Published in the _Freeman's Journal_, January 30, 1782. "Prince William Henry, third son of George III, afterwards William IV, entered the navy as midshipman at the age of fourteen in 1779. He sailed in the _Prince George_ of 98 guns to Gibralter, in the course of which cruise he saw some service under Rodney in conflict with the Spanish fleet; and it was in this ship, accompanied by Admiral Digby, that he arrived at New York in September, 1781."--_Duyckinck._ He was received with great enthusiasm and ceremony. In the _Freeman's Journal_ of January 25, 1782, was the following, doubtless from the pen of Freneau: "It is observable that the arrival of Prince William Henry in New York filled the British with 'joy ineffable and universal.' The very chimney sweeps, smitten with the poetic flame, composed odes in his praise, some of which were inserted in _The Royal Gazette_." The 1809 edition was given a long French motto from Mirabeau, which Freneau translates as follows: "The favourites of a throne bask in its sunshine, like butterflies in a fine day. Their very slaves at the foot of royalty partake of the delusion. They keep a nation under their feet, and their every folly influences and is followed by the multitude. They care not if their fathers and their nearest relatives are trampled into the dust, provided _they_ can figure away in the circles of a court, etc." LORD DUNMORE'S PETITION TO THE LEGISLATURE OF VIRGINIA[124] _Humbly Sheweth--_ That a silly old fellow, much noted of yore, And known by the name of John, earl of Dunmore, Has again ventured over to visit your shore. The reason of this he begs leave to explain-- In England they said you were conquered and slain, (But the devil take him who believes them again)-- So, hearing that most of you rebels were dead, That some had submitted, and others had fled, I mustered my Tories, myself at their head, And over we scudded, our hearts full of glee, As merry as ever poor devils could be, Our ancient dominion, Virginia, to see; Our shoe-boys, and tars, and the very cook's mate Already conceived he possessed an estate, And the Tories no longer were cursing their fate. Myself, (the don Quixote) and each of the crew, Like Sancho, had islands and empires in view-- They were captains, and kings, and the devil knows who: But now, to our sorrow, disgrace, and surprise, No longer deceived by the Father of Lies,[A] We hear with our ears, and we see with our eyes:-- [A] The printer of the Royal Gazette.--_Freneau's note, ed. of 1786._ I have therefore to make you a modest request, (And I'm sure, in my mind, it will be for the best) Admit me again to your mansions of rest. There are Eden, and Martin, and Franklin, and Tryon,[125] All waiting to see you submit to the Lion, And may wait till the devil is king of Mount Sion:-- Though a brute and a dunce, like the rest of the clan, I can govern as well as most Englishmen can; And if I'm a drunkard, I still am a man: I missed it some how in comparing my notes, Or six years ago I had joined with your votes; Not aided the negroes in cutting your throats.[126] Although with so many hard names I was branded, I hope you'll believe, (as you will if you're candid) That I only performed what my master commanded. Give me lands, whores and dice, and you still may be free; Let who will be master, we sha'nt disagree; If king or if Congress--no matter to me;-- I hope you will send me an answer straitway, For 'tis plain that at Charleston we cannot long stay-- And your humble petitioner ever shall pray. DUNMORE. CHARLESTON, _Jan. 6, 1782_. [124] First published in the _Freeman's Journal_, February 13, 1782, and printed almost without change in the various editions. Lord Dunmore was appointed Royal Governor of Virginia in 1770, but, after a stormy career was forced to flee from the colony after the news of Lexington had reached the Southern patriots. [125] "The last Royal Governors: Robert Eden of Maryland; Joseph Martin of North Carolina; William Franklin of New Jersey; William Tryon of New York."--_Duyckinck._ [126] After the second patriot convention assembled in Richmond, Va., in March, 1775, to take measures toward putting the colony in a state of defence, Dunmore, "To intimidate the Virginians, issued proclamations and circulated a rumor that he would incite an insurrection of their slaves.... 'The whole country,' said he, 'can easily be made a solitude; and by the living God! if any insult is offered to me or to those who have obeyed my orders, I will declare freedom to the slaves and lay the town in ashes.'"--_Bancroft._ EPIGRAM[127] Occasioned by the title of Mr. Rivington's[A] New York Royal Gazette being scarcely legible [A] Royal printer to his Britannic majesty while his forces held the city of New York, from 1776 to November 25, 1783.--_Freneau's note._ Says Satan to Jemmy, "I hold you a bet "That you mean to abandon our Royal Gazette, "Or, between you and me, you would manage things better "Than the Title to print on so sneaking a letter. "Now being connected so long in the art "It would not be prudent at present to part; "And people, perhaps, would be frightened, and fret "If the devil alone carried on the Gazette." Says Jemmy to Satan (by the way of a wipe), "Who gives me the matter should furnish the type; "And why you find fault, I can scarcely divine, "For the types, like the printer, are certainly thine. "'Tis yours to deceive with the semblance of truth, "Thou friend of my age, and thou guide of my youth! "But, to prosper, pray send me some further supplies, "A sett of new types, and a sett of new lies." [127] Published in the _Freeman's Journal_, February 13, 1782. A SPEECH[128] That should have been spoken by the King of the Island of Britain to his Parliament My lords, I can hardly from weeping refrain, When I think of this year and its cursed campaign;[129] But still it is folly to whine and to grieve, For things will yet alter, I hope and believe. Of the four southern States we again are bereav'd, They were just in our grasp (or I'm sadly deceiv'd): There are wizards and witches that dwell in those lands, For the moment we gain them, they slip from our hands. Our prospects at present most gloomy appear; Cornwallis returns with a flea in his ear, Sir Henry is sick of his station we know-- And Amherst, though press'd, is unwilling to go. The Hero[130] that steer'd for the cape of Good Hope With Monsieur Suffrein was unable to cope-- Many months are elaps'd, yet his task is to do-- To conquer the cape, and to conquer Peru: When his squadron at Portsmouth he went to equip He promis'd great things from his fifty-gun ship; But let him alone--while he knows which is which, He'll not be so ready "_to die in a ditch_." This session, I thought to have told you thus much, "A treaty concluded, and peace with the Dutch"-- But as stubborn as ever, they vapour and brag, And sail by my nose with the Prussian flag. The empress refuses to join on our side, As yet with the Indians we're only ally'd: (Though such an alliance is rather improper, For we English are white, but their colour is copper.) The Irish, I fear, have some mischief in view; They ever have been a most troublesome crew-- If a truce or a treaty hereafter be made, They shall pay very dear for their present free trade. Dame Fortune, I think, has our standards forsaken, For Tobago, they say, by Frenchmen is taken; Minorca's besieg'd--and as for Gibraltar, By Jove, if it's taken I'll take to the halter. It makes me so wroth, I could scold like Xantippe When I think of our losses along Mississippi-- And see in the Indies that horrible Hyder, His conquests extending still wider and wider. 'Twixt Washington, Hyder, Don Galvez, De Grasse, By my soul we are brought to a very fine pass-- When we've reason to hope new battles are won, A packet arrives--and an army's undone!-- In the midst of this scene of dismay and distress, What is best to be done, is not easy to guess, For things may go wrong though we plan them aright, And blows they must look for, whose trade is to fight. In regard to the rebels, it is my decree That dependent on Britain they ever shall be; Or I've captains and hosts that will fly at my nod And slaughter them all--by the blessing of God. But if they succeed, as they're likely to do, Our neighbours must part with their colonies too: Let them laugh and be merry, and make us their jest, When La Plata revolts, we shall laugh with the rest-- 'Tis true that the journey to castle St. Juan Was a project that brought the projectors to ruin; But still, my dear lords, I would have you reflect, Who nothing do venture can nothing expect. If the Commons agree to afford me new treasures, My sentence once more is for vigorous measures: Accustom'd so long to head winds and bad weather, Let us conquer or go to the devil together. [128] In the _Freeman's Journal_ of February 2, 1782, is given his Majesty's speech of November 27, 1781, in full, followed by the speech he should have given. The first tidings of the surrender of Cornwallis reached England November 25. The king's speech to Parliament was confused and aimless. [129] Alluding to the last campaign of the war, which culminated in the surrender of Cornwallis. [130] "Commodore George Johnstone, commanding the British East India fleet, was attacked by the French fleet under M. de Suffrein at St. Jago, one of the Cape de Verd Islands, in 1781. Johnstone's flag-ship was the Rodney, 50."--_Duyckinck._ RIVINGTON'S LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT[131] [A True Copy from the Records][132] Since life is uncertain, and no one can say, How soon we may go, or how long we shall stay, Methinks he is wisest who soonest prepares, And settles in season his worldly affairs: Some folks are so weak they can scarce avoid crying, And think when they're making their wills they are dying; 'Tis surely a serious employment--but still, Who e'er died the sooner for making his will? Let others be sad when their lives they review, But I know whom I've serv'd--and him faithfully too; And though it may seem a fanatical story, He often has show'd me a glimpse of his glory. IMPRIMIS, my carcase I give and devise To be made into cakes of a moderate size, To nourish those tories whose spirits may droop, And serve the king's army with Portable Soup. Unless I mistake, in the scriptures we read That "worms on the dead shall deliciously feed," The scripture stands true--and that I am firm in, For what are our tories and soldiers but vermin?-- This soup of soups can't be call'd that of beef, And this may to some be a matter of grief: But I'm certain the Bull would occasion a laugh, That beef Portable Soup should be made of a Calf. To the king, my dear master, I give a full sett (In volumes bound up) of the Royal Gazette, In which he will find the vast record contain'd Of provinces conquer'd and victories gain'd. As to Arnold the traitor and Satan his brother, I beg they will also accept of another; And this shall be bound in Morocco red leather, Provided they'll read it like brothers together. But if Arnold should die, 'tis another affair, Then Satan surviving shall be the sole heir; He often has told me he thought it quite clever, So to him and his heirs I bequeath it forever. I know there are some (that would fain be thought wise) Who say my Gazette is the record of lies; In answer to this, I shall only reply-- All the choice that I had was to starve or to lie. My fiddles, my flutes, French horns and guittars[A] I leave to our heroes now weary of wars-- To the wars of the stage they more boldly advance, The captains shall play and the soldiers shall dance.[B] [A] The articles of bequest in this poem were incessantly advertised in the Royal Gazette, and puffed off with a dexterity peculiar to the editor of that paper.--_Freneau's note in ed. of 1809._ [B] It became fashionable at this period with the British officers to assume the business of the Drama, to the no small mortification of those who had been holding them up as the undoubted conquerors of North America.--_Ib._ To Sir Henry Clinton, his use and behoof, I leave my French brandy of very high proof; It will give him fresh spirits for battle and slaughter And make him feel bolder by land and by water: Yet I caution the knight, for fear he do wrong, 'Tis _avant la viande et apres le poisson_[C] It will strengthen his stomach, prevent it from turning, And digest the affront of his effigy burning. [C] Before flesh and after fish.--_See the Royal Gazette.--Ib._ To Baron Knyphausen,[133] his heirs and assigns, I bequeath my old hock, and my Burgundy wines, To a true Hessian drunkard no liquors are sweeter, And I know the old man is no foe to the creature. To a general, my namesake,[D] I give and dispose Of a purse full of clipp'd, light, sweated half joes; I hereby desire him to take back his trash, And return me my Hannay's infallible Wash.[E] [D] General James Robertson.--_Ib._ [E] Used in the venereal disease.--_Ib._ My chessmen and tables, and other such chattels I give to Cornwallis renowned in battles: By moving of these (not tracing the map) He'll explain to the king how he got in the trap. To good David Mathews[135] (among other slops) I give my whole cargo of Maredant's drops, If they cannot do all, they may cure him in part, And scatter the poison that cankers his heart: Provided, however, and nevertheless, That what other estate I enjoy and possess At the time of my death (if it be not then sold) Shall remain to the Tories to have and to hold. As I thus have bequeath'd them both carcase and fleece, The least they can do is to wait my decease; But to give them what substance I have, ere I die, And be eat up with vermin, while living--not I-- In Witness whereof (though no ailment I feel) Hereunto I set both my hand and my seal; (As the law says) in presence of witnesses twain, 'Squire _John Coghill Knap_,[F] and brother _Hugh Gaine_. [F] A Notary Public in New-York.--_Freneau's note._ "'Knapp,' says Dawson, in a note to _New York City During the Revolution_, was 'a notorious pettifogger, a convict who had fled from England for his own benefit.'"--_Duyckinck._ JAMES RIVINGTON, (_L.S._) NEW-YORK, _Feb. 20, 1782_. [131] Published in the _Freeman's Journal_, February 27, 1782. One week earlier it was advertised for sale as a broadside. I have followed the 1786 version. James Rivington, an Englishman, was a bookseller and printer in New York from 1761 until the close of the Revolution. In 1773 he published the first number of _The New York Gazetteer, or the Connecticut, New Jersey, Hudson's River and Quebec Weekly Advertiser_. At the opening of the war he became a violent British partisan. His office was destroyed by the Whigs in 1775. Two years later he established _Rivington's New York Loyal Gazette_, which became the official British newspaper in America. On December 13 of the same year, he changed the name to the _Royal Gazette_. In the last years of the Revolution, when British success seemed more and more uncertain, Rivington began to lean toward the Whig side, but he was never trusted by the patriots, and he passed his last years in loneliness and poverty. [132] Omitted in later editions. [133] Baron Wilhelm von Knyphausen, in command of the Hessian troops. [134] "Tremendous."--_Ed. 1809._ [135] David Mathews, Mayor of New York during the British occupancy. LINES Occasioned by Mr. Rivington's new Titular Types to his _Royal Gazette_, of February 27, 1782[136] Well--now (said the devil) it looks something better! Your title is struck on a charming new Letter: Last night in the dark, as I gave it a squint, I saw my dear partner had taken the hint. I ever surmised (though 'twas doubted by some) That the old types were shadows of substance to come: But if the new Letter is pregnant with charms, It grieves me to think of those cursed King's Arms! The _Dieu et mon droit_ (his God and his right) Is so dim, that I hardly know what is meant by't; The paws of the Lion can scarcely be seen, And the Unicorn's guts are most shamefully lean! The Crown is so worn of your master the Despot, That I hardly know whether 'tis a crown or a pisspot: When I rub up my day-lights, and look very sharp I just can distinguish the Irishman's Harp: Another device appears rather silly, Alas! it is only the shade of the Lilly! For the honour of George, and the fame of our nation, Pray give his escutcheons a rectification-- Or I know what I know, (and I'm a queer shaver) Of Him and his Arms I'll be the In-grave-r. [136] Published in the _Freeman's Journal_, March 13, 1782. LINES On Mr. Rivington's new engraved King's Arms to his _Royal Gazette_[137] From the regions of night, with his head in a sack, Ascended a person accoutred in black, And upward directing his circular eye whites; (Like the Jure-divino political Levites) And leaning his elbow on Rivington's shelf, While the printer was busy, thus mus'd with himself: "My mandates are fully complied with at last, "New arms are engrav'd, and new letters are cast: "I therefore determine and freely accord, "This servant of mine shall receive his reward." Then turning about, to the printer he said, "Who late was my servant shall now be my Aid; "Since under my banners so bravely you fight, "Kneel down!--for your merits I dubb you a knight, "From a passive subaltern I bid you to rise "The Inventor as well as the Printer of lies." [137] _Freeman's Journal_, March 27, 1782. The _Gazette_, among the Whigs at least, was the synonym for falsity and unfairness. It was generally alluded to as the _Lying Gazette_. A PROPHECY[138] Written 1782 When a certain great king, whose initial is G, Shall force stamps upon paper, and folks to drink tea; When these folks burn his tea, and stampt paper, like stubble, You may guess that this king is then coming to trouble. But when a petition he treads under his feet, And sends over the ocean an army and fleet; When that army, half-starved, and frantic with rage, Shall be coop'd up with a leader whose name rhymes to cage, When that leader goes home, dejected and sad, You may then be assur'd the king's prospects are bad: But when B and C with their armies are taken, This king will do well if he saves his own bacon. In the year seventeen hundred and eighty and two, A stroke he shall get that will make him look blue; In the years eighty-three, eighty-four, eighty-five, You hardly shall know that the king is alive;[139] In the year eighty-six[140] the affair will be over, And he shall eat turnips that grow in Hanover. The face of the lion then shall become pale, He shall yield fifteen teeth, and be sheer'd of his tail. O king, my dear king, you shall be very sore, The Stars and the Lilly shall run you on shore, And your lion shall growl, but never bite more. [138] Published in the _Freeman's Journal_, March 27, 1782, with the following introduction: "Mr. Printer: The people of England at this time seem persuaded or rather deluded into the opinion that the American revolt will be quashed in the year 1786, and under that idea it is likely will prosecute the war with vigour for some time to come. This infatuation chiefly owes its birth to a prophecy of one John Cosins, who lived in the reign of the Second Charles, importing that a certain transatlantic insurrection, and the Kirk of Scotland, will both fall to the ground in the year above mentioned. Cosins's predictions are as follows, taken from the _Royal Gazette_ of the 18th ult.: 'When a branch of the thistle gets over the Atlantic, And in a new world the root shall be planted, And when it doth arrive at a degree of perfection It surely will breed a great insurrection. In the year seventy and four the root will be polished, And in eighty and six it will be quite abolished. The lily and the thistle in that year will unite, But the lion and the dun cow will put them to flight. The eagle will eagerly join in the fray, But luna will clip both their wings in a day. O thistle, O thistle, thy wounds will be sore. Kirk and kirk government will be no more, And you'll be abridg'd of all civil power.' To show that America has not been wholly destitute of oracular sages in past times, I send you the following choice words or prophetical hints of an illiterate fisherman, who died about thirty years ago at his habitation, a few miles above the mouth of the Susquehanna. I discovered the paper containing them by mere accident in tumbling over the leaves of an old book at an inn near that place. If you think the lines worth inserting in your paper, they are at your service." Reprinted without change in the edition of 1786, the text of which I have followed above. In later editions the prophecy was changed somewhat to conform to historical facts. [139] In the later editions these two lines are made to read: "And soon, very soon, shall the season arrive When _Nebuchadnezzar_ to pasture shall drive." [140] "In the year eighty-three."--_Ed. 1795._ THE ARGONAUT OR, LOST ADVENTURER[141] True to his trade--the slave of fortune still-- In a sweet isle, where never winter reigns, I found him at the foot of a tall hill, Mending old sails, and chewing sugar canes: Pale ivy round him grew, and mingled vines, Plaintains, bananas ripe, and yellow pines. And flowering night-shade, with its dismal green, Ash-coloured iris, painted by the sun, And fair-haired hyacinth was near him seen, And China pinks by marygolds o'er-run:-- "But what (said he) have men that sail the seas, "Ah, what have they to do with things like these! "I did not wish to leave those shades, not I, "Where Amoranda turns her spinning-wheel; "Charmed with the shallow stream, that murmured by, "I felt as blest as any swain could feel, "Who, seeking nothing that the world admires, "On one poor valley fixed his whole desires. "With masts so trim, and sails as white as snow, "The painted barque deceived me from the land, "Pleased, on her sea-beat decks I wished to go, "Mingling my labours with her hardy band; "To reef the sail, to guide the foaming prow "As far as winds can waft, or oceans flow. "To combat with the waves who first essayed, "Had these gay groves his lightsome heart beguiled, "His heart, attracted by the charming shade, "Had changed the deep sea for the woody wild; "And slighted all the gain that Neptune yields "For Damon's cottage, or Palemon's fields. "His barque, the bearer of a feeble crew, "How could he trust when none had been to prove her; "Courage might sink when lands and shores withdrew, "And feeble hearts a thousand deaths discover: "But Fortitude, tho' woes and death await, "Still views bright skies, and leaves the dark to fate. "From monkey climes where limes and lemons grow, "And the sweet orange swells her fruit so fair, "To wintry worlds, with heavy heart, I go "To face the cold glance of the northern bear, "Where lonely waves, far distant from the sun, "And gulphs, of mighty strength, their circuits run. "But how disheartening is the wanderer's fate! "When conquered by the loud tempestuous main, "On him, no mourners in procession wait, "Nor do the sisters of the harp complain.-- "On coral beds and deluged sands they sleep, "Who sink in storms, and mingle with the deep. "'Tis folly all--and who can truly tell "What storms disturb the bosom of that main, "What ravenous fish in those dark climates dwell "That feast on men--then stay, my gentle swain! "Bred in yon' happy shades, be happy there, "And let these quiet groves claim all your care." So spoke poor Ralph, and with a smooth sea gale Fled from the magic of the enchanting shore, But whether winds or waters did prevail, I saw the black ship ne'er returning more, Though long I walked the margin of the main, And long have looked--and still must look in vain! [141] From the edition of 1809. In 1788 this was entitled "The Lost Sailor;" in 1795, "Argonauta." THE POLITICAL BALANCE[142] Or, The Fates of Britain and America Compared A Tale _Deciding Fates, in Homer's stile, we shew, And bring contending gods once more to view._ As Jove the Olympian (who both I and you know, Was brother to Neptune, and husband to Juno) Was lately reviewing his papers of state, He happened to light on the records of Fate: In Alphabet order this volume was written-- So he opened at B, for the article Britain-- She struggles so well, said the god, I will see What the sisters in Pluto's dominions decree. And first, on the top of a column he read "Of a king with a mighty soft place in his head, "Who should join in his temper the ass and the mule, "The third of his name, and by far the worst fool: "His reign shall be famous for multiplication, "The sire and the king of a whelp generation: "But such is the will and the purpose of fate, "For each child he begets he shall forfeit a State: "In the course of events, he shall find to his cost "That he cannot regain what he foolishly lost; "Of the nations around he shall be the derision, "And know by experience the rule of Division." So Jupiter read--a god of first rank-- And still had read on--but he came to a blank: For the Fates had neglected the rest to reveal-- They either forgot it, or chose to conceal: When a leaf is torn out, or a blot on a page That pleases our fancy, we fly in a rage-- So, curious to know what the Fates would say next, No wonder if Jove, disappointed, was vext. But still as true genius not frequently fails, He glanced at the Virgin, and thought of the Scales; And said, "To determine the will of the Fates, "One scale shall weigh Britain, the other the States." Then turning to Vulcan, his maker of thunder, Said he, "My dear Vulcan, I pray you look yonder, "Those creatures are tearing each other to pieces, "And, instead of abating, the carnage increases. "Now, as you are a blacksmith, and lusty stout ham-eater, "You must make me a globe of a shorter diameter; "The world in abridgment, and just as it stands "With all its proportions of waters and lands; "But its various divisions must so be designed, "That I can unhinge it whene'er I've a mind-- "How else should I know what the portions will weigh, "Or which of the combatants carry the day?" Old Vulcan complied, (we've no reason to doubt it) So he put on his apron and strait went about it-- Made center, and circles as round as a pancake, And here the Pacific, and there the Atlantic. An axis he hammered, whose ends were the poles, (On which the whole body perpetually rolls) A brazen meridian he added to these, Where four times repeated were[143] ninety degrees. I am sure you had laughed to have seen his droll attitude, When he bent round the surface the circles of latitude, The zones and the tropics, meridians, equator, And other fine things that are drawn on salt water. Away to the southward (instructed by Pallas) He placed in the ocean the Terra Australis, New Holland, New Guinea, and so of the rest-- America lay by herself in the west: From the regions where winter eternally reigns, To the climes of Peru he extended her plains; Dark groves, and the zones did her bosom adorn, And the Crosiers,[A] new burnished, he hung at Cape Horn. [A] Stars, in the form of a cross, which mark the South Pole in Southern latitudes.--_Freneau's note._ The weight of two oceans she bore on her sides, With all their convulsions of tempests and tides; Vast lakes on her surface did fearfully roll, And the ice from her rivers surrounded the pole. Then Europe and Asia he northward extended, Where under the Arctic with Zembla they ended; (The length of these regions he took with his garters, Including Siberia, the land of the Tartars.) In the African clime (where the cocoa-nut tree grows) He laid down the desarts, and even the negroes, The shores by the waves of four oceans embraced, And elephants strolling about in the waste. In forming East India, he had a wide scope, Beginning his work at the cape of Good Hope; Then eastward of that he continued his plan, 'Till he came to the empire and isles of Japan. Adjacent to Europe he struck up an island, (One part of it low, but the other was high land) With many a comical creature upon it, And one wore a hat, and another a bonnet. Like emmits or ants in a fine summer's day, They ever were marching in battle array, Or skipping about on the face of the brine, Like witches in egg-shells (their ships of the line). These poor little creatures were all in a flame, To the lands of America urging their claim, Still biting, or stinging, or spreading their sails; (For Vulcan had formed them with stings in their tails). So poor and so lean, you might count all their ribs,[B] Yet were so enraptured with crackers and squibs, That Vulcan with laughter almost split asunder, "Because they imagined their crackers were thunder." [B] Their national debt being now above _l._ 200,000,000 sterling.--_Freneau's note._ Due westward from these, with a channel between, A servant to slaves, Hibernia was seen, Once crowded with monarchs, and high in renown, But all she retained was the Harp and the Crown! Insulted forever by nobles and priests,[144] And managed by bullies, and governed by beasts, She looked!--to describe her I hardly know how-- Such an image of death in the scowl on her brow. For scaffolds and halters were full in her view, And the fiends of perdition their cutlasses drew: And axes and gibbets around her were placed, And the demons of murder her honours defaced. With the blood of the worthy her mantle was stained, And hardly a trace of her beauty remained. Her genius, a female, reclined in the shade, And, sick of oppression,[145] so mournfully played, That Jove was uneasy to hear her complain, And ordered his blacksmith to loosen her chain: Then tipt her a wink, saying, "Now is your time, "(To rebel is the sin, to revolt is no crime) "When your fetters are off, if you dare not be free "Be a slave and be damned,[146] but complain not to me." But finding her timid, he cried in a rage-- "Though the doors are flung open, she stays in the cage! "Subservient to Britain then let her remain, "And her freedom shall be, but the choice[147] of her chain," At length, to discourage all stupid pretensions, Jove looked at the globe, and approved its dimensions, And cried in a transport--"Why what have we here! "Friend Vulcan, it is a most beautiful sphere! "Now while I am busy in taking apart "This globe that is formed with such exquisite art, "Go, Hermes, to Libra, (you're one of her gallants) "And ask, in my name, for the loan of her balance." Away posted Hermes, as swift as the gales, And as swiftly returned with the ponderous scales, And hung them aloft to a beam in the air, So equally poised, they had turned with a hair. Now Jove to Columbia his shoulders applied, But aiming to lift her, his strength she defied-- Then, turning about to their godships, he says-- "A body so vast is not easy to raise; "But if you assist me, I still have a notion "Our forces, united, can put her in motion, "And swing her aloft, (though alone I might fail) "And place her, in spite of her bulk, in our scale; "If six years together the Congress have strove, "And more than divided the empire with Jove; "With a Jove like myself, who am nine times as great, "You can join, like their soldiers, to heave up this weight." So to it they went, with handspikes and levers, And upward she sprung, with her mountains and rivers! Rocks, cities, and islands, deep waters and shallows, Ships, armies, and forests, high heads and fine fellows: "Stick to it!" cries Jove, "now heave one and all! "At least we are lifting 'one-eighth of the ball!' "If backward she tumbles--then trouble begins, "And then have a care, my dear boys, of your shins!" When gods are determined what project can fail? So they gave a hard shove, and she mounted the scale; Suspended aloft, Jove viewed her with awe-- And the gods,[C] for their pay, had a hearty--huzza! [C] American soldiers.--_Freneau's note._ But Neptune bawled out--"Why Jove you're a noddy, "Is Britain sufficient to poise that vast body? "'Tis nonsense such castles to build in the air-- "As well might an oyster with Britain compare." "Away to your waters, you blustering bully," Said Jove, "or I'll make you repent of your folly, "Is Jupiter, Sir, to be tutored by you?-- "Get out of my sight, for I know what to do!" Then searching about with his fingers for Britain, Thought he, "this same island I cannot well hit on; "The devil take him who first called her the Great: "If she was--she is vastly diminished of late!" Like a man that is searching his thigh for a flea. He peeped and he fumbled, but nothing could see; At last he exclaimed--"I am surely upon it-- "I think I have hold of a Highlander's bonnet." But finding his error, he said with a sigh, "This bonnet is only the island of Skie!"[D] So away to his namesake the planet he goes, And borrowed two moons to hang on his nose. [D] An Island on the north-west of Scotland.--_Freneau's note._ Through these, as through glasses, he saw her quite clear, And in raptures cried out--"I have found her--she's here! "If this be not Britain, then call me an ass-- "She looks like a gem in an ocean of glass. "But, faith, she's so small I must mind how I shake her; "In a box I'll inclose her, for fear I should break her: "Though a god, I might suffer for being aggressor, "Since scorpions, and vipers, and hornets possess her; "The white cliffs of Albion I think I descry-- "And the hills of Plinlimmon appear rather nigh-- "But, Vulcan, inform me what creatures are these, "That smell so of onions, and garlick, and cheese?" Old Vulcan replied--"Odds splutter a nails! "Why, these are the Welch, and the country is Wales! "When Taffy is vext, no devil is ruder-- "Take care how you trouble the offspring of Tudor! "On the crags of the mountains _hur_ living _hur_ seeks, "_Hur_ country is planted with garlick and leeks; "So great is _hur_ choler, beware how you teaze _hur_, "For these are the Britons--unconquered by Cæsar."[148] "But now, my dear Juno, pray give me my mittens, "(These insects I am going to handle are Britons) "I'll draw up their isle with a finger and thumb, "As the doctor extracts an old tooth from the gum." Then he raised her aloft--but to shorten our tale, She looked like a clod in the opposite scale-- Britannia so small, and Columbia so large-- A ship of first rate, and a ferryman's barge! Cried Pallas to Vulcan, "Why, Jove's in a dream-- "Observe how he watches the turn of the beam! "Was ever a mountain outweighed by a grain? "Or what is a drop when compared to the main?" But Momus alledged--"In my humble opinion, "You should add to Great-Britain her foreign dominion, "When this is appended, perhaps she will rise, "And equal her rival in weight and in size." "Alas! (said the monarch), your project is vain, "But little is left of her foreign domain; "And, scattered about in the liquid expanse, "That little is left to the mercy of France; "However, we'll lift them, and give her fair play"-- And soon in the scale with their mistress they lay; But the gods were confounded and struck with surprise, And Vulcan could hardly believe his own eyes! For (such was the purpose and guidance of fate) Her foreign dominions diminished her weight-- By which it appeared, to Britain's disaster, Her foreign possessions were changing their master. Then, as he replaced them, said Jove with a smile-- "Columbia shall never be ruled by an isle-- "But vapours and darkness around her may rise, "And tempests conceal her awhile from our eyes; "So locusts in Egypt their squadrons display, "And rising, disfigure the face of the day; "So the moon, at her full, has a frequent eclipse, "And the sun in the ocean diurnally dips. "Then cease your endeavours, ye vermin of Britain-- (And here, in derision, their island he spit on) "'Tis madness to seek what you never can find, "Or to think of uniting what nature disjoined; "But still you may flutter awhile with your wings, "And spit out your venom and brandish your stings: "Your hearts are as black, and as bitter as gall, "A curse to mankind--and a blot on the Ball."[E] [E] It is hoped that such a sentiment may not be deemed wholly illiberal--Every candid person will certainly _draw a line between a brave and magnanimous people, and a most vicious and vitiating government_. Perhaps the following extract from a pamphlet lately published in London and republished at Baltimore (June, 1809) by Mr. _Bernard Dornin_, will place the preceding sentiment in a fair point of view: "A better spirit than exists in the English people, never existed in any people in the world; it has been misdirected, and squandered upon party purposes in the most degrading and scandalous manner; they have been led to believe that they were benefiting the commerce of England by destroying the commerce of America, that they were defending their sovereign by perpetuating the bigoted oppression of their fellow subjects; their rulers and their guides have told them that they would equal the vigour of France by equalling her atrocity, and they have gone on, wasting that opulence, patience and courage, which if husbanded by prudent, and moderate counsels, might have proved the salvation of mankind. The same policy of turning the good qualities of Englishmen to their own destruction, which made Mr. Pitt omnipotent, continues his power to those who resemble him only in his vices; advantage is taken of the loyalty of Englishmen, to make them meanly submissive; their piety is turned into persecution; their courage into useless and obstinate contention; they are plundered because they are ready to pay, and soothed into assinine stupidity because they are full of virtuous patience. If England must perish at last, so let it be: that event is in the hands of God; we must dry up our tears, and submit. But that England should perish swindling and stealing; that it should perish waging war against lazar-houses and hospitals; that it should perish persecuting with monastic bigotry; that it should calmly give itself up to be ruined by the flashy arrogance of one man, and the narrow fanaticism of another: these events are within the power of human beings, but I did not think that the magnanimity of Englishmen would ever stoop to such degradations."--_Freneau's note._ [142] This poem appeared in the April 3, 1782, issue of the _Freeman's Journal_, filling the entire first page of the paper. I have followed the text of the 1809 edition. [143] "On which were engraven twice."--_Ed. 1786._ [144] This and the nine following lines were written for the edition of 1809. [145] "Merely for music."--_Ed. 1786._ [146] "If you will,"--_Ib._ [147] "Length."--_Ed. 1786._ [148] In the 1786 edition there was inserted at this point the following stanza omitted in the later versions: "Jove peep'd thro' his moons, and examin'd their features, And said, 'By my truth, they are wonderful creatures, 'The beards are so long that encircle their throats, 'That (unless they are Welchmen) I swear they are _goats_.'" DIALOGUE AT HYDE-PARK CORNER[149] (London) _Burgoyne_ Let those who will, be proud and sneer And call you an unwelcome peer, But I am glad to see you here: The prince that fills the British throne, Unless successful, honours none; Poor Jack Burgoyne!--you're not alone. _Cornwallis_ Thy ships, De Grasse, have caused my grief-- To rebel shores and their relief There never came a luckier chief: In fame's black page it shall be read, By Gallic arms my soldiers bled-- The rebels thine in triumph led. _Burgoyne_ Our fortunes different forms assume, I called and called for elbow-room,[150] Till Gates discharged me to my doom;[151] But you, that conquered far and wide, In little York thought fit to hide, The subject ocean at your side. _Cornwallis_ And yet no force had gained that post-- Not Washington, his country's boast, Nor Rochambeau, with all his host, Nor all the Gallic fleet's parade-- Had Clinton hurried to my aid, And Sammy Graves been not afraid. _Burgoyne_ For head knocked off, or broken bones, Or mangled corpse, no price atones; Nor all that prattling rumour says, Nor all the piles that art can raise, The poet's or the parson's praise. _Cornwallis_ Though I am brave, as well as you, Yet still I think your notion true; Dear brother Jack, our toils are o'er-- With foreign conquests plagued no more, We'll stay and guard our native shore. [149] Text from the edition of 1809. The poem first appeared in the _Freeman's Journal_, April 24, 1782. [150] See Vol. I, page 166, note. [151] "Had I been blest with _elbow-room_, I might have found a different doom."--_Ed. 1786._ ON THE LATE ROYAL SLOOP OF WAR GENERAL MONK[152] (Formerly the Washington) Mounting Six Quarter Deck Wooden Guns When the _Washington_ ship by the English was beat, They sent her to England to shew their great feat, And Sandwich straitway, as a proof of his spunk, Dashed out her old name, and called her the _Monk_. "This _Monk_ hated Rebels (said Sandy)--'od rot 'em-- "So heave her down quickly, and copper her bottom; "With the sloops of our navy we'll have her enrolled, "And manned with picked sailors to make her feel bold; "To shew that our king is both valiant and good, "Some guns shall be iron, and others be wood, "And, in truth, (though I wish not the secret to spread) "All her guns should be wooden--to suit with his head." [152] First published in the _Freeman's Journal_, April 24, 1782. On April 10, the Journal contained the following account of the battle: "Yesterday the _Hyder Ally_, a vessel fitted out for the protection of this river and its trade, returned to Chester after a severe conflict with a vessel of superior force, which with great gallantry and good conduct on the part of Capt. Barney and his crew, has been captured and brought into port. The particulars of the action, as far as we have been able to collect them, are that a fleet of merchantmen, having proceeded down the bay, were met by an enemy's frigate of forty guns, with the _General Monk_, Sloop of War, and _Fair American_, privateer; the _General Monk_ having eighteen nine pounders and one hundred and fifty men. The fleet endeavored to return, but were pursued by the frigate, sloop, and privateer. The _Fair American_ being engaged with one of the fleet, and the frigate being at a considerable distance, gave the _Hyder Ally_ an opportunity to attack the _General Monk_ singly, which Capt. Barney embraced, and after a very close and brave attack of about thirty minutes, the _General Monk_ surrendered to her inferior adversary. The _General Monk_ had fifty-three men killed and wounded, among whom are most of the officers; on board the _Hyder Ally_ there were fifteen killed and wounded. A brig, one of the fleet, was taken, and the _General Greene_ left engaged with the _Fair American_. The conduct of Capt. Barney has given the greatest satisfaction and shows him truly worthy of the trust committed to him." TRUTH ANTICIPATED[153][A] A Rivingtonian Dialogue [A] "Occasioned by the naval victory gained by Admiral Rodney and Capt. Cornwallis, of the British fleet in the West Indies, over the squadron of Count De Grasse."--_Freneau's note to 1809 edition._ What brilliant events have of late come to pass, No less than the capture of Monsieur de Grasse! His majesty's printer has told it for true, As we had it from him, so we give it to you. Many folks of discernment the story believed, And the devil himself it at first had deceived, Had it not been that Satan imported the stuff, And signed it George Rodney, by way of high proof.[154] Said Satan to Jemmy, "Let's give them the whappers-- "Some news I have got that will bring in the coppers, "And truth it shall be, though I pass it for lies, "And making a page of your newspaper size. "A wide field is open to favour my plan, "And the rebels may prove that I lie--if they can; "Since they jested and laughed at our lying before, "Let it pass for a lie, to torment them the more. "My wings are yet wet with the West-India dew, "And Rodney I left, to come hither to you, "I left him bedeviled with brimstone and smoke, "The French in distress, and their armament broke. "For news so delightful, with heart and with voice "The Tories of every degree may rejoice; "With charcoal and sulphur shall utter their joy "'Till they all get as black as they paint the old Boy." Thus, pleased with the motion, each cutting a caper, Down they sat at the table, with pen, ink, and paper; In less than five minutes the matter was stated, And Jemmy turned scribe, while Satan dictated. "Begin (said the devil) in the form of a Letter, "(If you call it true copy, 'tis so much the better) "Make Rodney assert he met the French fleet, "Engaged it, and gave 'em a total defeat. "But the better to vamp up a show of reality, "The tale must be told with circumstantiality, "What vessels were conquered by Britain's bold sons, "Their quotas of men, and their number of guns. "There's the _Villa de Paris_--one hundred and ten-- "Write down that George Rodney has killed half her men-- "That her hull and her rigging are shattered and shaken, "Her flag humbled down, and her admiral taken. "_Le Cesar_, 'tis true, is a seventy-four, "But the _Villa de Paris_ was thirty-six more; "With a grey goose's quill if that ship we did seize on, "_Le Cesar_ must fall, or I'll know what's the reason. "The next that I fix on to take is the _Hector_, "(Her name may be Trojan, but shall not protect her) "Don't faulter, dear comrade, and look like a goose, "If we've taken these three, we can take _Glorieuse_. "The last mentioned ship runs their loss up to four, "_Le Diadem_ sunk, shall make it one more; "And now, for the sake of round numbers, dear cousin, "Write _Ardent_, and then we have just half-a-dozen!" Jemmy smiled at the notion, and whispered "O fy! "Indeed 'tis a shame to persuade one to lie"-- But Satan replied--"Consider, my son, "I am a prince of the winds, and have seen what is done: "With a conquest like this, how bright we shall shine! "That Rodney has taken six ships of the line, "Will be in your paper a brilliant affair; "How the Tories will laugh, and the rebels will swear. "But farther, dear Jemmy, make Rodney to say, "If the sun two hours longer had held out the day, "The rest were so beaten, so baisted, so tore, "He had taken them all, and he knew not but more." So the partners broke up, as good friends as they met, And soon it was all in the _Royal Gazette_; The Tories rejoiced at the very good news, And said, There's no fear we shall die in our shoes. Now let us give credit to Jemmy, forsooth, Since once in a way he has hit on the truth: If again he returns to his practice of lies, He hardly reflects where he'll go when he dies. But still, when he dies, let it never be said That he rests in his grave with no verse at his head; But furnish, ye poets, some short epitaph, And something like this, that readers may laugh: Here _lies_ a King's Printer, we needn't say who: There is reason to think that he tells what is true: But if he _lies_ here, 'tis not over-strange, His present position is but a small change, So, reader, pass on--'tis a folly to sigh, For all his life long he did little but _lie_. [153] The first trace that I can find of this poem is in the 1786 edition, where it is signed, "Written _April, 1782_." On June 5, 1782, Freneau printed the following in the Journal: "Formidable, between Guadaloupe and Monpenat, April 14, 1782. "Sir: I am this moment favoured with your excellency's letter, and have the happiness to acquaint you that after having had a partial engagement with the enemy on the 9th, wherein 16 of my rear were prevented by calms from joining in the action, on the 12th I had the good fortune to bring them to a general action, which lasted from seven o'clock in the morning until half-past six in the afternoon, without a moment's intermission. Count de Grasse, with the _Ville de Paris_ and four other ships of the line and one sunk, graced the victory. The remainder of their fleet was so miserably shattered and their loss of men so very great from their having their whole army consisting of 5,500 men on board the ships of war, that I am convinced it will be almost impossible to put them in a condition for service for some considerable time. I am hastening with my whole fleet, etc. G. B. RODNEY." Freneau's early doubts as to this victory, which was loudly proclaimed in the _Royal Gazette_, is evidenced not only by the poem, but by the following comment on Rodney's letter: "The unskilful forger of Sir George Rodney's letter, which is pretended to have been wafted from Jamaica to Savannah and thence to Charleston, exhibits Sir George not as a British admiral, but as a saucy upstart.... To comment on this absurd forgery would be nugatory." [154] "For that was enough."--_Ed. 1786._ BARNEY'S INVITATION[155] Come all ye lads who know no fear, To wealth and honor with me steer In the _Hyder Ali_ privateer, Commanded by brave Barney. She's new and true, and tight and sound, Well rigged aloft, and all well found-- Come away and be with laurel crowned, Away--and leave your lasses. Accept our terms without delay, And make your fortunes while you may, Such offers are not every day In the power of the jolly sailor. Success and fame attend the brave, But death the coward and the slave, Who fears to plow the Atlantic wave, To seek the bold invaders. Come, then, and take a cruising bout, Our ship sails well, there is no doubt, She has been tried both in and out, And answers expectation. Let no proud foes whom Europe bore, Distress our trade, insult our shore-- Teach them to know their reign is o'er, Bold Philadelphia sailors! We'll teach them how to sail so near, Or to venture on the Delaware, When we in warlike trim appear And cruise without Henlopen. Who cannot wounds and battle dare Shall never clasp the blooming fair; The brave alone their charms should share, The brave are their protectors. With hand and heart united all, Prepared to conquer or to fall, Attend, my lads, to honour's call, Embark in our _Hyder Ali_. From an Eastern prince[156] she takes her name, Who, smit with Freedom's sacred flame, Usurping Britons brought to shame, His country's wrongs avenging; See, on her stern the waving stars-- Inured to blood, inured to wars, Come, enter quick, my jolly tars, To scourge these warlike Britons. Here's grog enough--then drink a bout, I know your hearts are firm and stout; American blood will never give out, And often we have proved it. Though stormy oceans round us roll, We'll keep a firm undaunted soul, Befriended by the cheering bowl, Sworn foes to melancholy: While timorous landsmen lurk on shore, 'Tis ours to go where cannons roar-- On a coasting cruise we'll go once more, Despisers of all danger; And Fortune still, who crowns the brave, Shall guard us over the gloomy wave A fearful heart betrays a knave-- Success to the _Hyder Ali_. [155] "A number of gentlemen having met in the evening [about April 1, 1782] at Crawford and Donaldson's insurance office in High street and, conversing on the subject of the captures making in the bay by the _General Monk_, just then arrived, it was resolved to raise a loan of money by which to fit out a vessel which might succeed to capture her. The money was obtained of the Bank of North America upon the responsibility of sundry individuals; the _Hyder Ali_ was purchased of John W. Stanley and the command given to Capt. Barney; a crew of volunteers, chiefly from the regular service, was engaged, and a commission of a letter of marque procured. In a week the vessel was ready and sailed."--Watson's _Annals of Philadelphia_. The poem was included in the editions of 1786 and 1809. Why Freneau omitted this spirited lyric and also 'Barney's Victory over the _Monk_' from his edition of 1795 has never been explained. [156] Hyder Ali, a prince of Mysore, India, who defeated in 1767 the British troops and forced them to sue for peace. In 1780, assisted by the French, he invaded Carnatic, but was defeated the following year by Sir Eyre Coote. From his hostility to the English and his alliance with the French he was hailed with enthusiasm by the American patriots. SONG[157] On Captain Barney's Victory over the Ship _General Monk_ O'er the waste of waters cruising, Long the _General Monk_ had reigned; All subduing, all reducing, None her lawless rage restrained: Many a brave and hearty fellow Yielding to this warlike foe, When her guns began to bellow Struck his humbled colours low. But grown bold with long successes, Leaving the wide watery way, She, a stranger to distresses, Came to cruise within Cape May: "Now we soon (said captain Rogers) "Shall their men of commerce meet; "In our hold we'll have them lodgers, "We shall capture half their fleet. "Lo! I see their van appearing-- "Back our topsails to the mast-- "They toward us full are steering "With a gentle western blast: "I've a list of all their cargoes, "All their guns, and all their men: "I am sure these modern Argos "Cant escape us one in ten: "Yonder comes the _Charming Sally_ "Sailing with the _General Greene_-- "First we'll fight the _Hyder Ali_, "Taking her is taking them: "She intends to give us battle, "Bearing down with all her sail-- "Now, boys, let our cannon rattle! "To take her we cannot fail. "Our eighteen guns, each a nine pounder, "Soon shall terrify this foe; "We shall maul her, we shall wound her, "Bringing rebel colours low."-- While he thus anticipated Conquests that he could not gain, He in the Cape May channel waited For the ship that caused his pain. Captain Barney then preparing, Thus addressed his gallant crew-- "Now, brave lads, be bold and daring, "Let your hearts be firm and true; "This is a proud English cruiser, "Roving up and down the main, "We must fight her--must reduce her, "Though our decks be strewed with slain. "Let who will be the survivor, "We must conquer or must die, "We must take her up the river, "Whate'er comes of you or I: "Though she shews most formidable "With her eighteen pointed nines, "And her quarters clad in sable, "Let us baulk her proud designs. "With four nine pounders, and twelve sixes "We will face that daring band; "Let no dangers damp your courage, "Nothing can the brave withstand. "Fighting for your country's honour, "Now to gallant deeds aspire; "Helmsman, bear us down upon her, "Gunner, give the word to fire!" Then yard arm and yard arm meeting, Strait began the dismal fray, Cannon mouths, each other greeting, Belched their smoky flames away: Soon the langrage, grape and chain shot, That from Barney's cannons flew, Swept the _Monk_, and cleared each round top, Killed and wounded half her crew. Captain Rogers strove to rally But they from their quarters fled, While the roaring _Hyder Ali_ Covered o'er his decks with dead. When from their tops their dead men tumbled, And the streams of blood did flow, Then their proudest hopes were humbled By their brave inferior foe. All aghast, and all confounded, They beheld their champions fall, And their captain, sorely wounded, Bade them quick for quarters call. Then the _Monk's_ proud flag descended, And her cannon ceased to roar; By her crew no more defended, She confessed the contest o'er. Come, brave boys, and fill your glasses, You have humbled one proud foe, No brave action this surpasses, Fame shall tell the nations so-- Thus be Britain's woes completed, Thus abridged her cruel reign, 'Till she ever, thus defeated, Yields the sceptre of the main. [157] First published in the _Freeman's Journal_ May 8, 1782, with the following introduction: "Mr. Bailey: "Reading Capt. Barney's late gallant exploit in your and other newspapers, I could not restrain myself from scribbling the few following stanzas relative to that affair and descriptive not of what was really said or done in the most minute particulars but of what might be supposed to have passed in similar circumstances. Yours, RUSTICUS. "Dover, April 26, 1782. "To the Tune of the Tempest or Hosier's Ghost." The omission of this stirring lyric from the edition of 1795 I can ascribe only to accident. ON SIR HENRY CLINTON'S RECALL[158] The dog that is beat has a right to complain-- Sir Harry returns a disconsolate man, To the face of his master, the Lord's[159] oil-anointed, To the country provided for thieves disappointed. Our freedom, he thought, to a tyrant must fall, He concluded the weakest must go to the wall; The more he was flattered, the bolder he grew-- He quitted the old world to conquer the new. But in spite of the deeds he has done in his garrison, (And they have been curious beyond all comparison) He now must go home, at the call of his king, To answer the charges that Arnold may bring. But what are the acts that this chief has atchieved?-- If good, it is hard he should now be aggrieved, And the more, as he fought for his national glory, Nor valued, a farthing, the right of the story. This famous great man, and two birds[A] of his feather, In the _Cerberus_ frigate came over together; But of all the bold chiefs that re-measure the trip, Not two have been known to return in one ship.[160] [A] Generals Howe and Burgoyne.--_Freneau's note._ Like children that wrestle and scuffle in sport, They are very well pleased as long as unhurt, But a thump on the nose, or a blow in the eye, Ends the fray--and they go to their daddy and cry. Sir Clinton, thy deeds have been mighty and many, You said all our paper was not worth a penny, ('Tis nothing but rags,[B] quoth honest Will Tryon, Are rags to discourage the Sons of the Lion?) [B] See his Letters to Gen. Parsons.--_Freneau's note._ But Clinton thought thus--"It is folly to fight, "When things may by easier methods come right, "There is such an art as counterfeit-ation-- "And I'll do my utmost to honour our nation; "I'll shew this damned country that I can enslave her, "And that by the help of a skilful engraver, "And then let the rebels take care of their bacon, "We'll play them a trick, or I'm vastly mistaken." But the project succeeded not quite to your liking, So you paid off your artist and gave up bill striking; But 'tis an affair I am glad you are quit on, You had surely been hanged had you tried it in Britain. At the taking of Charleston you cut a great figure, The terms you propounded were terms full of rigour, Yet could not foresee poor Charley's[C] disgrace, Nor how soon your own colours would go to the case. [C] Cornwallis.--_Ib._ When the town had surrendered, the more to disgrace ye, (Like another true Briton that did it at 'Statia) You broke all the terms yourself had extended, Because you supposed the rebellion was ended; Whoever the Tories marked out as a Whig, If gentle, or simple, or little, or big, No matter to you--to kill 'em and spite 'em, You soon had 'em up where the dogs couldn't bite 'em. Then thinking these rebels were snug and secure, You left them to Rawdon and Nesbit Balfour: (The face of the latter a mask should be drawed on, And to fish for the devil my bait should be Rawdon.) Returning to York with your ships and your plunder, And boasting that rebels must shortly knock under, The first thing that struck you, as soon as you landed, Was the fortress at West-Point, where Arnold commanded. Thought you, "If friend Arnold this fort will deliver, "We then shall be masters of all Hudson's river, "The east and the south losing communication, "The Yankies will die by the act of starvation." So off you sent André (not guided by Pallas) Who soon purchased Arnold, and with him the gallows; Your loss I conceive than your gain was far greater, You lost a good fellow, and got a vile[161] traitor. Now Carleton comes over to give you relief, A knight like yourself, and commander in chief, But the chief he will get, you may tell the dear honey, Will be a black eye, hard knocks, and no money. Now with--"Britons, strike home!" your sorrows dispel, Away to your master, and honestly tell, That his arms and his artists can nothing avail, His men are too few, and his tricks are too stale. Advise him at length to be just and sincere; Of which not a sympton as yet doth appear, As we plainly perceive from his sending Sir Guy The Treaty to break with our Gallic Ally.[162] [158] First published in the _Freeman's Journal_, May 22, 1782. Sir Henry Clinton was superseded as Commander-in-Chief of the British armies in America by Sir Guy Carleton, who took command May 5, 1782. [159] "Devil's."--_Ed. 1786._ [160] In 1775 Lord Howe was appointed Admiral of the British fleet in North America and leader of the commission to effect if possible a reconciliation with the colonists. With him were sent two major-generals, Clinton and Burgoyne, to conduct the war with vigor if war were found to be inevitable. The three leaders arrived in Boston May 25, 1775. [161] "Damn'd."--_Ed. 1786._ [162] "Commission'd to steal, and commission'd to lie."--_Ed. 1786._ SIR GUY CARLETON'S ADDRESS TO THE AMERICANS[163] From Britain's famed island once more I come over, (No island on earth is in prowess above her) With powers and commissions your hearts to recover! Our king, I must tell you, is plagued with a phantom (Independence they call it) that hourly doth haunt him, And relief, my dear rebels, you only can grant him. Tom Gage and Sir Harry, Sir William, (our boast) Lord Howe, and the rest that have travelled the coast, All failed in their projects of laying this ghost: So unless the damned spectre myself can expel It will yet kill our monarch, I know very well, And gallop him off on his lion to hell. But I heartily wish, that, instead of Sir Guy, They had sent out a seer from the island of Skie, Who rebels, and devils, and ghosts could defy: So great is our prospect of failing at last, When I look at the present, and think of the past, I wish with our heroes I had not been classed; For though, to a man, we are bullies and bruisers, And covered with laurels, we still are the losers, 'Till each is recalled with his Tory accusers: But the war now is altered, and on a new plan; By negociation we'll do what we can-- And I am an honest, well-meaning old man; Too proud to retreat, and too weak to advance, We must stay where we are, at the mercy of chance, 'Till Fortune shall help us to lead you a dance. Then lay down your arms, dear rebels--O hone! Our king is the best man that ever was known, And the greatest that ever was stuck on a throne: His love and affection by all ranks are sought; Here take him, my honies, and each pay a groat-- Was ever a monarch more easily bought? In pretty good case and very well found, By night and by day we carry him round: He must go for a groat, if we can't get a pound. Break the treaties you made with Louis Bourbon; Abandon the Congress, no matter how soon, And then, all together, we'll play a new tune. 'Tis strange that they always would manage the roast, And force you their healths and the Dauphin's to toast; Repent, my dear fellows, and each get a post: Or, if you object that one post is too few, We generous Britons will help you to two, With a beam laid across--that will certainly do. The folks that rebelled in the year forty-five, We used them so well that we left few alive, But sent them to heaven in swarms from their hive. Your noble resistance we cannot forget, 'Tis nothing but right we should honour you yet; If you are not rewarded, we die in your debt. So, quickly submit and our mercy implore, Be as loyal to George as you once were before, Or I'll slaughter you all--and probably more. What puzzled Sir Harry, Sir Will, and his brother, Perhaps may be done by the son of my mother, With the Sword in one hand and a Branch in the other. My bold predecessors (as fitting their station) At their first coming out, all spoke Proclamation; 'Tis the custom with us, and the way of our nation. Then Kil-al-la-loo!--Shelaly, I say;-- If we cannot all fight, we can all run away-- And further at present I choose not to say. [163] First published in the _Freeman's Journal_, June 5, 1782 and dated May 30, 1782. Carleton was not only empowered to take command of the army in America, but he was also sent as "Commissioner for making peace in North America." He remained in the city until November 25, 1783, when he departed with the army. SCANDANAVIAN WAR SONG[164] _Balderi patris scamna Parata scio in aula: Bibemus Cerevisiam Ex concavis crateribus craniorum. Non gemit vir fortis contra mortem Magnifici in Odini domibus, &c._ _Translation_ Brave deeds atchieved, at death's approach I smile, In Balder's hall I see the table spread, The enlivening ale shall now reward my toil, Quaffed from their sculls, that by my faulchion bled. Heroes no more at death's approach shall groan: In lofty Odin's dome all sighs forbear-- Conscious of bloody deeds, my fearless soul Mounts to great Odin's hall, and revels there. [164] First printed June 19, 1782, in number 16 of the series of papers contributed to the first volume of the _Freeman's Journal_ under the title _The Pilgrim_, and reprinted to some extent in the edition of 1788 under the title _The Philosopher of the Forest_. The essay, which might be entitled "On the Irrationality of War," contained the following passage: "They [the Scandinavians] imagined the chief pleasure of this immortality would be to drink beer out of bowls made of the skulls of the enemies they had slain in battle, according to the number of which every one was to be esteemed and honored in the mansions of another world. Their war songs were particularly horrible to the imagination, and full of those savage notions of valor and romantic heroism that is to this day observable in the North American Indians.... Is it possible that a being illuminated by the rays of that spiritual sun could in his senses write the following lines: they were composed (with a great deal more) by one of the warrior chiefs of the Scandinavians more than 800 years since, a few hours before he expired?" THE PROJECTORS[165] Before the brazen age began, And things were yet on Saturn's plan, None knew what sovereign bliss there lay In ruling, were it but a day. Each with spontaneous food content, His life in Nature's affluence spent; The sun was mild, serene and clear, And walked in Libra all the year; No tempests did the heaven deform, 'Twas not too cold nor yet too warm; People were then at small expence, They dug no ditch, and made no fence, No patentees by sleight or chance For Indian lands got double grants, Not for their wants, but just to say, "If you come here, expect to pay." Base grasping souls, your pride repress; Beyond your wants must you possess? If ten poor acres will supply A rustic and his family, Why, Jobbers, would you have ten score, Ten thousand and ten thousand more? It is a truth well understood, "All would be tyrants if they could." The love of sway has been confessed The ruling passion of the breast: Those who aspire to govern states, If baulked by disapproving fates, Resolve their purpose to fulfil, And scheme for tenants at their will. Ten thousand acres, fit for toil, In Indiana's fertile soil-- Ten thousand acres! come, agree-- Timon is named[166] the patentee, And, as the longing stomach craves, He'll honour fools and flatter knaves. If Rome, of old, to greatness rose Triumphant over all her foes, None need believe that people then Were more in strength than modern men; If o'er the world their eagles waved, 'Twas property their freedom saved;[167] From lands, not shared amongst the few, An independent spirit grew: Each on a small and scanty spot, With much ado his living got, Inured to labour from his birth,[168] Each Roman soldier tilled the earth, Great as a monarch on the throne By having something of his own. [165] First published in the _Freeman's Journal_, July 3, 1782, under the signature "Cassibilan." I have followed the 1809 text. [166] "Let me become."--_Ed. 1786._ [167] "'Twas policy the world enslav'd."--_Ib._ [168] This line and the following not in the 1786 version. ON GENERAL ROBERTSON'S PROCLAMATION[169] Old Judas the traitor (nor need we much wonder) Falling down from the gallows, his paunch split asunder, Affording, 'tis likely, a horrible scent Rather worse than the sulphur of hell, where he went. So now this bra' chieftain, who long has suspended And kept out of view what his master intended, Bursts out all at once, and an inside discloses, Disgusting the Tories, who stop up their noses. The short of the matter is this, as I take it-- New-York of true Britons is plainly left naked, And their conduct amounts to an honest confession, That they cannot depend on the run-a-way Hessian. In such a dilemma pray what should they do? Hearts loyal, to whom should they look but to You?-- You know pretty well how to handle the spade, To dig their canals and to make a parade; The city is left to your valiant defence, And of course it will be but of little expence, Since there is an old fellow that looks somewhat sooty Who, gratis, will help you in doing your duty-- "In doing our duty!--'tis duty indeed "(Says a Tory) if this be the way that we speed; "We never loved fighting, the matter is clear-- "If we had, I am sure we had never come here. "George we owned for our king, as his true loyal sons, "But why will he force us to manage his guns?-- "Who 'list in the army or cruise on the wave, "Let them do as they will--'tis their trade to be brave. "Guns, mortars and bullets,[170] we easily face, "But when they're in motion--it alters the case; "To skirmish with Huddies[A] is all our desire "For though we can murder, we cannot stand fire. [A] Capt. Huddy, an American Captain, who, after capitulating in a block-house, was hanged by refugees, called new levies.--_Freneau's note._ "To the standards of Britain we fled for protection, "And there we are gathered, a goodly collection; "And most of us think it is rather too hard "For refusing to arm to be put under guard; "Who knows under guard what ills we may feel!-- "It is an expression that means a great deal-- "'Mongst the rebels they fine 'em who will not turn out, "But here we are left in a sorrowful doubt;-- "These Britons were always so sharp and so shifty-- "The rebels excuse you from serving when fifty, "But here we are counted such wonderful men "We are kept in the ranks, till we are four score and ten. "Kicked, cuffed and ill treated from morning till night "We have room to conjecture that all is not right, "For Freedom we fled from our country's defence "And freedom we'll get--when death sends us hence.[171] "If matters go thus, it is easy to see "That as idiots we've been, so slaves we shall be; "And what will become of that peaceable train "Whose tenets enjoin them from war to abstain? "Our city commandant must be an odd shaver, "Not a single exception to make in their favour!-- "Come let us turn round and rebelliously sing, "Huzza for the Congress!--the de'il take the king." [169] First published in the _Freeman's Journal_, June 10, 1782, prefaced by the following reprint of the proclamation taken from Rivington's _Royal Gazette_ of the 26th of June: "By His Excellency Lieutenant-General JAMES ROBERTSON, _Governor of New York, &c., &c._ The Commander-in-chief having shown the great confidence he reposes in the Citizens of New York by trusting his Majesty's interest there, to their Zeal, Loyalty, and Gallantry, I persuade myself that every citizen will with alacrity claim his title to a share of the Militia duty; that none may be deprived of this, and that those whose zeal would lead them to appear whenever called for, may not be called for too often, I think proper to declare: "That all persons are to perform the Militia duty, excepting the Ministers of God's Word, his Majesty's Counsellors and principal servants whose avocations to religious and civil, necessarily prevents their attendance on Military duties. "All persons who from age or infirmity are unable to act, may do duty by substitutes, providing those they offer are judged sufficient by the Colonel of the regiment, or commanding officer of the corps to which they belong. "If any of the Gentlemen of the learned professions find themselves so usefully employed as to be induced to avoid the honour of appearing in person, they are supposed to be judges of the importance of their own time, and may act by proper substitutes. "As no person deserves protection in a place of which he refuses to contribute to the defence; every person who refuses to appear when summoned to his Militia duty is to be confined in the Main-Guard by the Colonel or commanding Officer of the corps to which he belongs, where he is to be kept till further orders. JAMES ROBERTSON. New York, June 22, 1782." [170] "Gun bullets in boxes."--_Ed. 1786._ [171] In place of this stanza, the edition of 1786 had the following: "Provided the clergy but preach non-resistance "And passive obedience--they wave their assistance; "But we--tho' we're sick and have death in our faces, "Must purchase a proxy to serve in our places." A PICTURE OF THE TIMES[172] With Occasional Reflections Still round the world triumphant Discord flies, Still angry kings to bloody contest rise; Hosts bright with steel, in dreadful order plac'd, And ships contending on the watery waste; Distracting demons every breast engage, Unwearied nations glow with mutual rage; Still to the charge the routed Briton turns, The war still rages and the battle burns; See, man with man in deadly combat join, See, the black navy form the flaming line; Death smiles alike at battles lost or won-- Art does for him what Nature would have done. Can scenes like these delight the human breast?-- Who sees with joy humanity distrest; Such tragic scenes fierce passion might prolong, But slighted Reason says, they must be wrong. Curs'd be the day, how bright soe'er it shin'd, That first made kings the masters of mankind; And curs'd the wretch who first with regal pride Their equal rights to equal men deny'd. But curs'd o'er all, who first to slav'ry broke Submissive bow'd and own'd a monarch's yoke, Their servile souls his arrogance ador'd And basely own'd a brother for a lord; Hence wrath and blood, and feuds and wars began, And man turned monster to his fellow man. Not so that age of innocence and ease When men, yet social, knew no ills like these; Then dormant yet, ambition (half unknown) No rival murder'd to possess a throne; No seas to guard, no empires to defend-- Of some small tribe the father and the friend. The hoary sage beneath his sylvan shade Impos'd no laws but those which reason made; On peace not war, on good not ill intent, He judg'd his brethren by their own consent; Untaught to spurn those brethren to the dust; In virtue firm, and obstinately just, For him no navies rov'd from shore to shore. No slaves were doom'd to dig the glitt'ring ore; Remote from all the vain parade of state, No slaves in diamonds saunter'd at his gate, Nor did his breast the guilty passions tear, He knew no murder and he felt no fear. Was this the patriarch sage?--Then turn thine eyes And view the contrast that our age supplies; Touch'd from the life, I trace no ages fled, I draw no curtain that conceals the dead; To distant Britain let thy view be cast, And say the present far exceeds the past; Of all the plagues that e'er the world have curs'd, Name George the tyrant, and you name the worst! What demon, hostile to the human kind, Planted these fierce disorders in the mind? All urg'd alike, one phantom we pursue, But what has war with happiness to do? In death's black shroud this gem can ne'er be found; Who deals for that the life-destroying wound, Or pines with grief to see a brother live, That life dissolving which we cannot give? 'Tis thine, Ambition!--Thee these horrors suit: Lost to the human, she assumes the brute; She proudly vain or insolently bold, Her heart revenge, her eye intent on gold, Sway'd by the madness of the present hour Mistakes for happiness extent of power; That shining bait which dropt in folly's way Tempts the weak mind, and leads the heart astray! Thou happiness! still sought but never found, We, in a circle, chase thy shadow round; Meant all mankind in different forms to bless, Which yet possessing, we no more possess:-- Thus far remov'd and painted on the eye Smooth verdant fields seem blended with the sky, But where they both in fancied contact join In vain we trace the visionary line; Still as we chase, the empty circle flies, Emerge new mountains or new oceans rise. [172] Contributed to the July 19, 1782, issue of the _Freeman's Journal_ over the signature "Philomeides." The title in the 1786 edition was "Philosophical Reflections." I have used the original text. PRINCE WILLIAM HENRY'S SOLILOQUY[173] Occasioned by Public Rejoicings in Philadelphia for the birth of the Dauphin of France, son to Louis XVI People are mad thus to adore the Dauphin-- Heaven grant the brat may soon be in his coffin--[174] The honours here to this young Frenchman shown, Of right should be Prince George's, or my own; And all those wreathes that bloom on Louis now, Should hang, unfading, on my father's brow. To these far shores with longing hopes I came, (By birth a Briton, not unknown to fame) Pleasures to share that loyalty imparts, Subdue the rebels, and regain their hearts. Weak, stupid expectation--all is done! Few are the prayers that rise for George's son; Nought through the waste of these wide realms I trace, But rage, contempt, and curses on our race, Hosts with their chiefs by bold usurpers won, And not a blessing left for George's son! Here on these isles[A] (my terrors not a few) I walk attended by the Tory crew: These from the first have done their best to please, But who would herd with sycophants like these? This exiled race, who their lost shores bemoan, Would bow to Satan, if he held our throne-- Rul'd by their fears--and what is meaner far, Have worshipp'd William only for his star! To touch my hand their thronging thousands strove, And tir'd my patience with unceasing love-- In fame's fair annals told me I should live, But they, poor creatures, had no fame to give: Must Digby's royal pupil walk the streets, And smile on every ruffian that he meets; Or teach them, as he has done--he knows when-- That kings and princes are no more than men? Must I alas disclose, to our disgrace, That Britain is too small for George's race? Here in the west, where all did once obey, Three islands only, now, confess our sway; And in the east we have not much to boast, For _Hyder Ali_ drives us from the coast: Yield, rebels, yield--or I must go once more Back to the white cliffs of my native shore; (Where, in process of time, shall go sir Guy, And where sir Harry has returned to sigh, Whose hands grew weak when things began to cross, Nor made one effort to retrieve our loss) Oatmeal and Scottish kale pots round me rise, And Hanoverian turnips greet mine eyes;-- Welch goats and naked rocks my bosom swell, And Teague! dear Teague!--to thee I bid farewell-- Curse on the Dauphin and his friends, I say, He steals our honours and our rights away. Digby--our anchors!--weigh them to the bow, And eastward through the wild waves let us plow: Such dire resentments in my bosom burn, That to these shores I never will return, 'Till fruits and flowers on Zembla's coast are known, And seas congeal beneath the torrid zone. [A] New York and the neighbouring islands.--_Freneau's note._ [173] _Freeman's Journal_, July 24, 1782. Text from edition of 1786. [174] The prayer of the prince was soon answered. SATAN'S REMONSTRANCE[175] [Occasioned by Mr. Rivington's Late Apology for _Lying_] Your golden dreams, your flattering schemes, Alas! where are they fled, Sir? Your plans derang'd, your prospects chang'd, You now may go to bed, Sir.-- How could you thus, my partner dear, Give up the hopes of many a year?-- Your fame retriev'd, and soaring high, In Truth's resemblance seem'd to fly; But now you grow so wondrous wise, You turn, and own that all is lies. A fabric that from hell we rais'd, On which astonish'd rebels gaz'd, And which the world shall ne'er forget, No less than Rivington's Gazette, Demolish'd at a single stroke-- The angel Gabriel might provoke. "That all was lies," might well be true, But why must this be told by you? Great master of the wooden head, Where is thy wonted cunning fled? It was a folly to engage That truth henceforth should fill your page, When you must know, as well as I, Your only mission is to lie. Such are the plans which folly draws-- We now, like bears, may suck our paws;-- Brought up in lying from your youth, You should have dy'd a foe to truth, Since none but fools in this accord, That Virtue is its own reward.[176] Your fortune was as good as made, Great artist in the lying trade! But now I see with grief and pain Your credit cannot rise again: No more the favourite of my heart, No more will I my gifts impart. Yet something shall you gain at last For lies contriv'd in seasons past-- When pressing to the narrow gate I'll show the portal mark'd by Fate, Where all mankind (as parsons say) Are apt to take the wider way, And, though the Royal Printer swear, Will bolt him in, and keep him there! [175] First published in the _Freeman's Journal_, August 7, 1782, with the note, "See the _Royal Gazette_ of the 10th ult. and our last." The article in the _Royal Gazette_ is as follows: "_To the Public:_ "The Publisher of this paper, sensible that his zeal for the success of his Majesty's arms, his sanguine wishes for the good of his country and his friendship for individuals, have at times led him to credit and circulate paragraphs without investigating the facts so closely as his duty to the public demanded, trusting to their feelings and depending on their generosity, he begs them to look over past errors and depend on future correctness, for henceforth he will neither desire nor expect nor solicit their favors longer than his endeavors shall stamp the same degree of authenticity and credit on the _Royal Gazette_ (of N. Y.) as all Europe allow to the _Royal Gazette_ of London." The _Freeman's Journal_ reprinted this on July 31, with the comment: "From hence it is to be presumed that Satan, Rivington & Co. have thoughts of breaking up partnership." The text follows the edition of 1786. [176] This stanza, printed in the edition of 1786, was omitted from the later editions. THE REFUGEES' PETITION TO SIR GUY CARLETON[177] _Humbly Sheweth--_ That your Honour's petitioners,[178] Tories by trade, From the first of the war have lent Britain their aid, And done all they could, both in country and town, In support of the king and the rights of his crown; But now, to their grief and confusion, they find "The de'il may take them who are farthest behind." In the rear of all rascals they still have been placed And Rebels and Frenchmen[179] full often have faced, Have been in the midst of distresses and doubt Whene'er they came in or whene'er they went out; Have supported the king and defended his church And now, in the end, must be left in the lurch. Though often, too often, his arms were disgraced, We still were in hopes he would conquer at last, And restore us again to our sweethearts and wives The pride of our hearts and the joy of our lives-- But he promised too far, and we trusted too much, And who could have looked for a war with the Dutch? Our board broken up, and discharged from our stations, Sir Guy! it is cruel to cut off our rations; Of a project like that, whoe'er was the mover, It is, we must tell you, a hellish manoeuvre, A plan to destroy us--the basest of tricks By means of starvation, a stigma to fix.[180] If a peace be intended, as people surmise, (Though we hope from our souls these are nothing but lies) Inform us at once what we have to expect, Nor treat us, as usual, with surly neglect; Or else, while you Britons are shipping your freights[181] We'll go to the Rebels, and get our estates. [177] First published in the _Freeman's Journal_, August 28, 1782. Sir Guy Carleton's generous and humane nature was in marked contrast with the cruelty of his predecessors. Text is from the edition of 1809. [178] The anxiety of the Tories during the closing months of the war was exceedingly great. Sir Guy Carleton, the commander-in-chief, was, during all his stay in America, delayed with petitions, complaints, and remonstrances. [179] "Halters and gibbets."--_Ed. 1786._ [180] "To get us away to the shallows of Styx."--_Ed. 1786._ [181] "By the mass and the will of the fates."--_Ib._ SIR GUY'S ANSWER We have reason to think there will soon be a peace, And that war with the Rebels will certainly cease; But, be that as it will, I would have you to know That as matters are changing, we soon may change too; In short, I would say, (since I have it at heart) Though the war should continue, yet we may depart. Four offers in season I therefore propose, (As much as I can do in reason, God knows) In which, though there be not too plentiful carving, There still is sufficient to keep you from starving. And, first of the first, it would mightily charm me To see you, my children, enlist in the army, Or enter the navy, and get for your pay, A farthing an hour, which is sixpence per day-- There's Hector Clackmanan, and Arthur O'Gregor And Donald M'Donald shall rule you with vigour: If these do not suit you, then take your new plan, Make your peace with the rebels, (march off to a man):[182] There rank and distinction perhaps you may find And rise into offices fit to your mind-- But if still you object--I advise you to take a Farewell to New-York--and away to Jamaica.[183] [182] "That is, if you can."--_Ed. 1786._ [183] "But if still you object--to be all on a level, _Burn up your red coats and go off to the Devil_." --_Ib._ TO A CONCEALED ROYALIST[184] On a Virulent Attack "_We have force to crumble you into dust, although you were as hard as rocks, adamant, or jasper._" KIEN-LHI, _alias_ JOHN TUCK, _Viceroy of Canton_.[185] When round the bark the howling tempest raves Tossed in the conflict of a thousand waves, The lubber landsmen weep, complain, and sigh, And on the pilot's skill, or heaven, rely; Lurk in their holes, astonished and aghast, Dreading the moment that must be their last. The tempest done--their terror also ceases, And up they come, and shew their shameless faces, At once feel bold, and tell the pilot, too, He did no more than they--themselves--could do! A Foe to Tyrants! one your pen restores:-- There is a Tyrant whom your soul adores: And every line you write too plainly shows, Your heart is hostile to that tyrant's foes. What, worse than folly, urged this genius dull With Churchill's[186] wreathes to shade his leaden scull: So, midnight darkness union claims with light: So, oil and water in one mass unite:-- No more your rage in plundered verse repeat, Sink into prose--even there no safe retreat.[187] Reed's[188] patriot fame to distant years may last, When rancorous reptiles to the dogs are cast, Or, where oblivion spreads her weary wings, Lost in the lumber of forgotten things; And none shall ask, nor wish to know, nor care, Who--what their names--or when they lived--or where.[189] [184] During the summer of 1782 the _Freeman's Journal_ waged a bitter warfare with the _Independent Gazetteer_, a paper which had been established in Philadelphia on April 13, 1782, by Eleazer Oswald. To such extremes did this quarrel go that Oswald, defeated by the more nimble pen of his adversary, at length challenged him to a duel. The above poem marks the beginning of the poetical phase of the battle. It appeared in the _Journal_ on the 28th of August and was a reply to the following effusion published in the _Gazetteer_ four days previously: "MR. OSWALD: The following lines are addressed to a most infamous Tyrant,... and to a noted speculator when high in office. Yours, &c., A FOE TO TYRANTS. "Be wicked as you will, do all that's base, Proclaim yourselves the monsters of your race, Let vice and folly your dark souls divide, Be proud with meanness and be mean with pride, Deaf to the voice of faith and honour, fall From side to side, yet be of none at all: Spurn all those charities, those sacred ties, Which nature, in her bounty, good as wise, To work our safety and ensure her plan, Contriv'd to bind and rivet man to man: Lift against Virtue pow'r's oppressive rod, Betray your country, and deny your God." But candour in some future day will scan The actions of pale Joe and brazen Sam, Who're lost to virtue and all sense of shame, They've barter'd honour for some villain's name: Yet may they pass unnotic'd in the throng And, free from envy, safely sneak along; Let Clarkson tell how Joe is in disgrace And honest Jack will follow up the chase." [185] This title first appeared in the 1809 edition. In the edition of 1795 the title was "To Shylock Ap-Shenkin, an abusive court writer." [186] The twelve lines in quotation points in the poem by "The Foe to Tyrants" were taken, with little change, from Churchill's "Epistle to William Hogarth." [187] "Sneak into prose--the dunce's last retreat."--_Ed. 1786._ [188] The attack of "The Foe to Tyrants" was directed mainly against General Joseph Reed, the "pale Joe" of the poem. So bitter and persistent were the attacks of "Oswald's Scribblers" that Reed, in the _Journal_ of Sept. 11, published a protest against the "set of men in this city [who] uninjured and unprovoked by me are weekly pouring forth some abuse under anonymous signatures." And early in 1783 he put forth a pamphlet entitled "Remarks on a late publication in the _Independent Gazetteer_, with a short address to the people of Pennsylvania on the many libels and slanders which have lately appeared against the author." A second edition was called for several weeks after the first issue of this pamphlet. [189] Freneau signed these lines as they appeared in the _Journal_ "A FOE TO MALICE." TO THE CONCEALED ROYALIST[190] In Answer to a Second Attack[191] _Quid immerentes hospites vexas, canis Ignavus adversum lupos? Quin huc inanes, si potes, vertis minas, Et me remorsurum petis?--_ --Hor. _Epod._ 10. Base as they are, this rancorous royal crew[192] Seem baser still, when they are praised by you. By you adorned in regal garb they shine, Sweat through your verse, and stink in every line. True child of folly--eldest of her tribe-- How could you dream that you were worth a bribe.-- Ill-fated scribbler, with a pointless quill, Retract the threat you dare not to fulfil: Round your own neck the wythe or halter twine, And be the science of a hangman thine:--[193] Have we from you purloined one shred of wit, Or did we imitate one line you writ? Peace to your verse!--we do not rob the dead, The clay-cold offspring of a brazen head. Doctor! retire! what madness would it be To point artillery at a mite like thee?-- Such noxious vermin clambering from their shell, By squibs and crackers might be killed as well. But, if you must torment the world with rhymes, (Perhaps you came to curse us for our crimes) In sleepy odes indulge your smoky wit, Pindarics would your happy genius fit-- With your coarse white-wash daub some miscreant's face, Puppies advanced, or traitors in disgrace:[194] To gain immense renown we leave you free, Go, scratch and scribble, uncontrouled by me:-- Haste to the realms of nonsense and despair-- The ghosts of murdered rhymes will meet you there; Like rattling chains provoke unceasing fears, And with eternal jinglings--stun your ears. [190] This poem appeared in the _Journal_, September 4, 1782, in answer to the following, which had been published in the _Gazetteer_, August 31, 1782: "MR. OSWALD: _Please give the following Lines, addressed to the_ Foe to Malice, _a Place in your useful Paper; in order to convince this great_ Poet (_who never borrowed a Line in his Life_) _how easy it is to take his Battery, and turn it against himself_. A FOE TO TYRANTS. "When in the Bark, the unskilful Pilot raves, And lets her drive amidst conflicting waves; The free-born Landsmen rous'd, complain, and cry. What Pilot's this, on whom we can't rely? We're wreck'd, undone, and driven on the shore, Unless you quit the helm, and steer no more. The Pilot, conscious of the mischief done, Not knowing what to do, or where to run, Lurks to his hole, astonish'd and aghast, Dreading the moment that must be his last. The tempest o'er--his terrors also fled, Once more upon the deck he shews his head, At once grown brave, he tells the people too, He did for them, whatever man could do. But cease thy boasting--Freemen all will think, A Bark thus manag'd, in the deep must sink. "A FOE TO TYRANTS--ne'er receiv'd a Bribe, Nor Gold ador'd, nor stuck to Johnston's side; With malice stupid, ev'ry line must show, The man that's Johnston's friend is not thy foe. What wond'rous fancy urg'd thy genius bright, To speak of Churchill--as if thou coud'st write; To shine in _borrow'd plumes_, with base design, And to oblivion worthy men consign. Reptiles and Dogs, and all those dreary things, Bespeak the mind from whence such slander springs; Dirt thou may'st throw--the dunce's last retreat, For none but dunces will thy lines repeat. Not Churchill's wreathes, but hick'ry withes will do, To twine thy brows, and lace thy jacket too; Leave thy friend R----, we've had enough of him, For abler Pilots live the Bark to trim. What! if a thousand JOES should wince and bawl, One honest JACK would make amends for all." [191] The title in the edition of 1786 was "To the Foe to Tyrants," and in 1795 "To Shylock Ap-Shenkin." Freneau translates the stanza from Horace as follows: "A dog, cowardly against wolves, yet molests strangers that have no quarrel with him--approach, whelp, and attack us, who are able to dash your teeth down your throat." [192] "Vile as they are, this lukewarm Tory crew."--_Ed. 1786._ [193] "And round your neck the wythe or halter twine, And be the office of the hangman mine."--_Ed. 1786._ [194] "Blockheads in power or traitors in disgrace."--_Ed. 1786._ TO THE CONCEALED ROYALIST[195] On His Farewell "I will meet you, Brutus, at Philippi."--_Roman History._ Since ink, thank heaven! is all the blood you spill, Health to the driver of the grey goose quill: Such war shall leave no widow in despair, Nor curse one orphan with the public care. 'Tis the worst wound the heart of man can feel, When touched, or worried, by an ass's heel-- With generous satire give your foes their due, Nay, give them more, and prove them scoundrels too: Make them as black as hell's remotest gloom, But still to genius let them owe their doom:-- By Jove's red lightnings 'tis no shame to bleed, But by a grovelling swine--is death indeed!-- Now, by the laurels of your royal crew, I knew no shame, till I engaged with you:-- But such an odour atmosphered your song, I held my nose, and quickly passed along, Grieved for the wretch who could such filth display, His maw disgorging in the public way. Armed though we are, unusual tumults rise;-- But all resentment in my bosom dies. We deem, that in the skirmish of a day, This bard must perish, and his verse decay: This day he goes to black oblivion's clime; Turned, chased, and routed by the "power of rhyme." We wished him still unhandled and unhurt-- We wished no evils to this man of dirt; We thought to leave him sweltering in his den, Not with such rotten trash to tinge the pen: But his mean labours wrought his present woe, And his own scribblings, now, have laid him low! Before his eyes the sexton's spade appears, And muffled bells disorganize his ears: Already is his mean existence fled, Sense, wit, and reason--all proclaim him dead: In his own lines he tolled his funeral bell, And when he could not sing--he stunk--farewell! [195] In the _Journal_ of September 11, 1782, in answer to the effusion of the "Foe to Tyrants" in the _Gazetteer_ of September 7, entitled, "To the Foe to Malice. The Farewell." This farewell began as follows: "When men will prostitute the power of rhime, Their dirt and malice jingling out of time; When men the sacred shrine of truth forsake, And deal in slander, just for slander's sake, 'Tis time to quit plain reason, common sense, And in their stile Correction to dispense. "Our Theme first pointed to your _pale-fac'd_ friend Whom you forsook--unable to defend; To save his fame, you thought it best to fly To vile abuse, and low scurrility; Then feel the Weapons you yourself have us'd And blame not those you've dirtily abus'd." The rest of the poem is too vile to reproduce. TO THE ROYALIST UNVEILED[196] (And addressed to all whom it may concern) The sage who took the wrong sow by the ears, And more than kingdoms claimed for Vermonteers; Who, from twelve wigwams down to eight decreased, Is now your prophet, and may serve for priest-- Ye, who embraced the democratic plan, Yet with false tears beheld the wrongs of man-- To him apply--go--soothe him in distress,[197] To him fall prostrate--and to him confess. When first that slave of slaves began to write, Truth cursed his pen, and Reason took her flight: Dullness on him her choicest opiates shed, Black as his heart, and sleepy as his head. Him on her soil Hibernia could not bear; The viper sickened in that wholesome air,-- Then rushed abroad, a Jesuit, in disguise, Flush, on the wings of malice, rage, and lies; To this new world a nuisance and a pest, To curse the worthy, and abuse the best. Thou base born mass of insolence and dirt, With all the will, but not the power to hurt; Whose shallow brain each empty line reveals-- Art thou worth draggling at our chariot wheels? Who, on the surface of a rugged ground, Would stoop to trail your carcass round and round?-- No--like a Felon, hanged to after time, Be one more victim to the "force of rhyme." Waft us, ye powers, to some sequestered place, Where never malice shewed its hateful face-- Remove us far from all the ruffian kind (Baseness with insolence forever joined) To some retreat of solitude and rest-- Nor shall another pang disturb the breast-- When thought returns--and one regrets to know, He had to combat with a two-faced foe. [196] This poem appeared September 25, 1782. The laureate of the _Independent Gazetteer_, after his farewell on September 7, was silent until October 15, when he produced the following: "STANZAS addressed to _little_ FR--N--U, Poetaster to the _Skunk-scented_ association, and successful imitator of STERNHOLD and HOPKINS, of _poetical_ memory; in humble imitation of _his own_ doggerel. "Fr--n--u, great man! 'tis thee I sing, And to thy shrine just incense bring The attribute of praise; To thee, who scorn'd all common rules, Supreme of dunces, chief of fools, I dedicate my lays. "Sternhold is dead! What though he be? Another Sternhold now in thee Beotia's sons explore; Like this, thy mind is clear and bright, Transparent as the darkest night, When angry tempests roar. "Thy verse, but ah! my powers are vain, To tell the wonders of thy brain Where mists of dullness sit; Cimmerian darkness round thy head, It's sable mantle long hath spread, To veil thy wooden wit. "Thy satire, mystic type of lead, Keen as a dart without a head, And vigorous as age; 'Twould almost make a mill-stone cry To have thy muse its enemy, When cloathed in her rage. "Thy bold, heroic numbers swell, As lofty as the deepest well Where noxious vapours rise; Thy song as sweet as Bellman's note, When spun through Mitchell's[a] brazen throat, Or midnight Watchmen's cries. [a] Cryer of Philadelphia. "Thy eyes, the index of the soul, With mad, poetic fury roll, In eager search of fame; Thy face, ye gods! ah! what a face! Thy air, thy port, thy quaint grimmace, Add honor to thy name. "When, late, sleep's Goddess, clos'd my eyes, And dreams in sweet gradation rise, Soul-soothing guests of night, Methought the cloud-invelop'd Queen[b] Display'd her dull, somnific mien, In majesty and might. [b] The Queen of Dullness. "Thick, opiate dews she did dispense, Whilst poppies, foes to wit and sense, Hung pendant from her head; Safe in her hand, by love, impell'd. Great Fr--n--u's sacred form she held, Impress'd on genuine lead. "With blinking, am'rous, rush-light eyes She view'd her blest Saturnine prize, As conscious of his worth; Then smooth'd the wrinkles of her frown, And shook her poppy-teeming crown, With unaffected mirth. "'Go on (she cry'd), with fervent zeal, Thou glory of that common-weal, Where dullness bears the sway! E'en L--e to thee shall yield the chair, His rhimes shall vanish into air, Before thy duller lay. "'Corcoran,[c] long ago, hath fled, And roving Jem,[d] 'tis said, is dead, Those foes to common sense; Now Fr--n--u thou, their son and heir. More stupid than a stupid mare, Steps forth in my defence. [c] Dr. Corcoran, a poetaster, well known. [d] Jemmy, the rover, a sonnetter of the Pennsylvania line. "'Thee shall no wisdom e'er molest, No wit shall perforate thy breast, Nor humour shew her face; Thy drowsy verse shall prove a balm, Specific as the hundredth psalm, When W--ch--r sings base. "'Each flow'r of Billingsgate I'll cull, To render thee, my son, more dull, If duller thou canst be, Thy works with Sternhold's shall be bound, While Hopkins, from the dark profound, Shall yield the palm to thee.' "She ceas'd, and all that own'd her cause, In one loud transport of applause, Burst like a sudden gale; All hail, great man! was Bailey's cry, Hail! Joe, and Skunk, and Tom, reply, Dullness and Fr--n--u, hail!" [197] "To him apply, dear Oswald, in distress."--_Independent Gazetteer._ TO SHYLOCK AP-SHENKIN[198] Long have I sate on this disastrous shore, And, sighing, sought to gain a passage o'er To Europe's courts, where, as our travellers say, Poets may flourish, or--perhaps--they may; But such abuse has from your coarse pen fell Perhaps I may defer my voyage as well, Why should I far in search of patrons roam, And Shylock leave to triumph here at home? Should Shylock's poems[199] style you all that's base, Abuse your stature, and malign[200] your face, Make you the worst and vilest of your kind, With not one spark of virtue[201] in your mind; Would you to Shylock's[202] rancorous page reply, So fam'd for scandal, and so prone to lie? Still may those bag-pipes of sedition play, (For fools may write[203] and knaves must have their day) Still from that page let clamorous bards[204] defame, And madness rave, and malice take her aim: May scribes on scribes in verse and prose combine, And fiend-like Sawney roar[205] through every line; Long may they write, unquestion'd and unhurt, And all their rage discharge, and all their dirt: Night-owls must screech, by heaven's supreme decree, And wolves must howl, or wolves they would not be. From empty froth these scribbling insects rose; What honest man but counts them for his foes? When they are lash'd, may dunce with dunce condole, And bellow nonsense from the tortured soul; When they are dead and in some dungeon cramm'd, (For die they will, and all their works be damn'd) When they have belch'd their last departing groans, May dogs and doctors barbecue[206] their bones, And, the last horrors of their souls to calm, Shylock, their bard,[207] console them with--a psalm! [198] The first eight lines of this poem appeared first as the opening stanza of MacSwiggin, published in 1775; the rest of the poem was first published in the _Freeman's Journal_ of Dec. 18, 1782, and republished in the 1786 edition under the title "To Whom it may Concern." The above version was made for the edition of 1795, but was not reprinted in 1809. The _Gazetteer_ of the following week (Dec. 21) contained several parodies of Freneau's poem, one of which was as follows: "MR. OSWALD:--Whereas a copy of verses of my composition appeared in Bailey's paper, of whom I should have expected more circumspection, I have sent you a genuine copy as they ought to have been printed, the justice of which I hope everybody acquainted with the persons will acknowledge. THE AUTHOR. "Should Oswald's painters all my features trace, And shew me as I am in soul and face; Among the vile and worthless of mankind, Without a spark of virtue in my mind, And write my name beneath, I would reply, The portrait, though a true one, told a lie. "Still shall my bagpipes of sedition play, And I, like other dogs, shall have my day; My hoarse-mouth'd cry shall war with sense proclaim, And madly howl at ev'ry virtuous name; Our hungry scribes in verse and prose shall join, Though Chaos glooms through ev'ry stupid line; In spite of sense we'll write, by shame unhurt, And all our rage discharge, and all our dirt, Night-owls will screech, since Heav'n has left them free, And wolves will howl, or wolves they would not be. "Although from dirt, we like musquetoes rose, And quiet people count us still their foes; When we are crush'd, or chas'd from hole to hole, We'll strive to tease and torture ev'ry soul. When we are dead and in some ditch are cram'd (For die we must, and with our works be damn'd), When we shall howl our last departing groans, And brother dogs regale upon our bones; The horrors of our souls awhile to calm, Let me compose, and Duffield sing a psalm." [199] "Oswald's scribblers."--_Freeman's Journal._ [200] "Blaspheme."--_Ed. 1786._ [201] "Reason."--_Ib._ [202] "Who would to Oswald's."--_Freeman's Journal._ [203] "Must prate and dogs."--_Ed. 1786._ [204] "Hoarse-mouth'd whelps."--_Ib._ [205] "And one dark chaos gloom."--_Ib._ [206] "Canonize."--_Freeman's Journal._ [207] "Fallon, the priest."--_Ed. 1786._ THE PROPHECY OF KING TAMMANY[208] The Indian chief who, famed of yore, Saw Europe's sons adventuring here, Looked, sorrowing, to the crowded shore, And sighing dropt a tear! He saw them half his world explore, He saw them draw the shining blade, He saw their hostile ranks displayed, And cannons blazing through that shade Where only peace was known before. "Ah, what unequal arms!" he cried, "How art thou fallen, my country's pride, "The rural, sylvan reign! "Far from our pleasing shores to go "To western rivers, winding slow, "Is this the boon the gods bestow! "What have we done, great patrons, say, "That strangers seize our woods away, "And drive us naked from our native plain? "Rage and revenge inspire my soul, "And passion burns without controul; "Hence, strangers, to your native shore! "Far from our Indian shades retire, "Remove these gods that vomit fire, "And stain with blood these ravaged glades no more; "In vain I weep, in vain I sigh, "These strangers all our arms defy, "As they advance our chieftains die!-- "What can their hosts oppose! "The bow has lost its wonted spring, "The arrow faulters on the wing, "Nor carries ruin from the string "To end their being and our woes. "Yes, yes,--I see our nation bends; "The gods no longer are our friends;-- "But why these weak complaints and sighs? "Are there not gardens in the west, "Where all our far-famed Sachems rest?-- "I'll go, an unexpected guest, "And the dark horrors of the way despise. "Even now the thundering peals draw nigh, "'Tis theirs to triumph, ours to die! "But mark me, Christian, ere I go-- "Thou, too, shalt have thy share of woe; "The time rolls on, not moving slow, "When hostile squadrons for your blood shall come, "And ravage all your shore! "Your warriors and your children slay, "And some in dismal dungeons lay, "Or lead them captive far away "To climes unknown, through seas untried before. "When struggling long, at last with pain "You break a cruel tyrant's chain, "That never shall be joined again, "When half your foes are homeward fled, "And hosts on hosts in triumph led, "And hundreds maimed and thousands dead, "A sordid race will then succeed, "To slight the virtues of the firmer race, "That brought your tyrant to disgrace, "Shall give your honours to an odious train, "Who shunned all conflicts on the main "And dared no battles on the bloody plain, "Whose little souls sunk in the gloomy day "When virtue only could support the fray "And sunshine friends kept off--or ran away." So spoke the chief, and raised his funeral pyre-- Around him soon the crackling flames ascend; He smiled amid the fervours of the fire To think his troubles were so near their end, 'Till the freed soul, her debt to nature paid, Rose from the ashes that her prison made, And sought the world unknown, and dark oblivion's shade. [208] Published in the _Freeman's Journal_, December 11, 1782. Tammany was an Indian chieftain of the Lenni Lennape Confederacy of New York and Pennsylvania during the early colonial era. There is a tradition that he was the first Indian to welcome William Penn to America. Some traditions locate his lodge near the present site of Princeton College and others make him end his long life near a spring in Bucks county, Pa. He figures in Cooper's novel, "The Last of the Mohicans." RIVINGTON'S REFLECTIONS[209] I. The more I reflect, the more plain it appears, If I stay, I must stay at the risque of my ears, I have so be-peppered the foes of our throne, Be-rebelled, be-deviled, and told them their own, That if we give up to these rebels at last,[210] 'Tis a chance if my ears will atone for the past. 'Tis always the best to provide for the worst-- So evacuation I'll mention the first: If Carleton should sail for our dear native shore (As Clinton, Cornwallis, and Howe did before) And take off the soldiers that serve for our guard, (A step that the Tories would think rather hard) Yet still I surmise, for aught I can see, No Congress or Senates would meddle with me. For what have I done, when we come to consider, But sold my commodities to the best bidder? If I offered to lie for the sake of a post, Was I to be blamed if the king offered most? The King's Royal Printer!--Five hundred a year! Between you and me, 'twas a handsome affair: Who would not for that give matters a stretch, And lie back and forward, and carry and fetch, May have some pretensions to honour and fame-- But what are they both but the sound of a name, Mere words to deceive us, as I have found long since, Live on them a week, and you'll find them but nonsense. The late news from Charleston my mind has perplext, If that is abandoned,--I know what goes next: This city of York is a place of great note, And that we should hold it I now give my vote; But what are our votes against Shelburne's[211] decrees? These people at helm steer us just where they please, So often they've had us all hands on the brink, They'll steer us at last to the devil, I think: And though in the danger themselves have a share, It will do us small good that they also go there. It is true that the Tories, their children, and wives Have offered to stay at the risque of their lives, And gain to themselves an immortal renown By all turning soldiers, and keeping the town: Whoe'er was the Tory that struck out the plan, In my humble conceit, was a very good man; But our words on this subject need be very few-- Already I see that it never will do: For, suppose a few ships should be left us by Britain, With Tories to man them, and other things fitting, In truth we should be in a very fine box, As well they might guard us with ships on the stocks, And when I beheld them aboard and afloat, I am sure I should think of the bear in the boat.[A] On the faith of a printer, things look very black-- And what shall we do, alas! and alack! Shall we quit our young princes and full blooded peers, And bow down to viscounts and French chevaliers? Perhaps you may say, "As the very last shift "We'll go to New-Scotland, and take the king's gift." Good folks, do your will--but I vow and I swear, I'll be boil'd into soup before I'll live there: Is it thus that our monarch his subjects degrades?-- Let him go and be damned, with his axes and spades, Of all the vile countries that ever were known In the frigid, or torrid, or temperate zone, (From accounts that I've had) there is not such another; It neither belongs to this world or the other: A favor they think to send us there gratis To sing like the Jews at the river Euphrates, And, after surmounting the rage of the billows, Hang ourselves up at last with our harps on the willows; Ere I sail for that shore, may I take my last nap-- Why, it gives me the palsy to look on its map! And he that goes there (though I mean to be civil) May fairly be said to have gone to the devil. Shall I push for Old England, and whine at the throne? Indeed! they have Jemmies enough of their own! Besides, such a name I have got from my trade, They would think I was lying, whatever I said; Thus scheme as I will, or contrive as I may, Continual difficulties rise in the way: In short, if they let me remain in this realm, What is it to Jemmy who stands at the helm? I'll petition the rebels (if York is forsaken) For a place in their Zion which ne'er shall be shaken I am sure they'll be clever: it seems their whole study: They hung not young Asgill for old captain Huddy,[212] And it must be a truth that admits no denying, If they spare us for Murder they'll spare us for Lying. [A] See Gay's Fables.--_Freneau's note, Ed. 1786._ II. Folks may think as they please, but to me it would seem, That our great men at home have done nothing but dream: Such trimming and twisting and shifting about, And some getting in, and others turned out; And yet, with their bragging and looking so big, All they did was to dance a theatrical jig. Seven years now, and more, we have tried every plan, And are just as near conquering as when we began, Great things were expected from Clinton and Howe, But what have they done, or where are they now? Sir Guy was sent over to kick up a dust, Who already prepares to return in disgust-- The object delusive we wish to attain Has been in our reach, and may be so again-- But so oddly does heaven its bounties dispense, And has granted our king such a small share of sense That, let Fortune favour or smile as she will, We are doomed to drive on, like a horse in a mill, And though we may seem to advance on our rout, 'Tis but to return to where we sate out. From hence I infer (by way of improvement) That nothing is got by this circular movement; And I plainly perceive, from this fatal delay, We are going to ruin the round-about way! Some nations, like ships, give up to the gale, And are hurried ashore with a full flowing sail; So Sweden submitted to absolute power, And freemen were changed to be slaves in an hour; Thus Theodore soon from his grandeur came down, Forsaking his subjects and Corsican crown; But we--'tis our fate, without ally or friend, To go to perdition, close hauled to the wind. The case is too plain, that if I stay here I have something to hope and something to fear: In regard to my carcase, I shouldn't mind that-- I can say "I have lived," and have grown very fat; Have been in my day remarkable shifty, And soon, very soon, will be verging on fifty. 'Tis time for the state of the dead to prepare, 'Tis time to consider how things will go there; Some few are admitted to Jupiter's hall, But the dungeons of Pluto are open to all-- The day is approaching as fast as it can When Jemmy will be a mere moderate man, Will sleep under ground both summer and winter, The hulk of a man, and the shell of a printer, And care not a farthing for George, or his line, What empires start up, or what kingdoms decline. Our parson last Sunday brought tears from my eyes, When he told us of heaven, I thought of my lies-- To his flock he described it, and laid it before 'em, (As if he had been in its _Sanctum Sanctorum_) Recounted its beauties that never shall fade, And quoted John Bunyan to prove what he said; Debarred from the gate who the Truth should deny, Or "whosoe'er loveth or maketh a lie." Through the course of my life it has still been my lot In spite of myself, to say "things that are not." And therefore suspect that upon my decease Not a poet will leave me to slumber in peace, But at least once a week be-scribble the stone Where Jemmy, poor Jemmy, lies sleeping alone! Howe'er in the long run these matters may be, If the scripture is true, it has bad news for me-- And yet, when I come to examine the text, And the learned annotations that Poole has annexed, Throughout the black list of the people that sin I cannot once find that I'm mention'd therein; Whoremongers, idolators, all are left out, And wizards and dogs (which is proper, no doubt) But he who says, I'm there, mistakes or forgets-- It mentions no Printers of Royal Gazettes! In truth, I have need of a mansion of rest, And here to remain might suit me the best-- Philadelphia in some things would answer as well, (Some Tories are there, and my papers might sell) But then I should live amongst wrangling and strife, And be forced to say _credo_ the rest of my life: For their sudden conversion I'm much at a loss-- I am told that they bow to the wood of the cross, And worship the reliques transported from Rome, St. Peter's toe-nails, and St. Anthony's comb.-- If thus the true faith they no longer defend I scarcely can think where the madness will end-- If the greatest among them submit to the Pope, What reason have I for indulgence to hope? If the Congress themselves to the Chapel did pass,[B] Ye may swear that poor Jemmy would have to sing mass. [B] "On the 4th of November last, the clergy and select men of Boston paraded through the streets after a crucifix, and joined in a procession in praying for a departed soul out of Purgatory; and for this they gave the example of Congress, and other American leaders, on a former occasion at Philadelphia, some of whom, in the height of their zeal, even went so far as to sprinkle themselves with what they call _Holy water_."--_Royal Gazette_, of December 11 inst.--_Freneau's note._ [209] Published in the _Freeman's Journal_, December, 1782, in two installments and inserted without change in the edition of 1786. The first installment bore the motto "_Inclusus poenam expectat_.--Virg.," and the second the motto "_Incertus quo fata ferant, quo sistere detur_.--Virg." Almost no change was made in the text for the later editions. Rivington bore this attack with coolness; he calmly inserted the first installment of the poem in his _Royal Gazette_ for December 14, and gave to it the following introduction: "Mr. Rivington, having been applied to by many gentlemen for a pleasant publication respecting himself, exhibited in the Philadelphia _Freeman's Journal_, of December 4th, takes leave to copy it into this Day's Gazette, and assures the Author that a Column shall at any time be most cheerfully reserved to convey that Gentleman's lively Lucubrations to the Public." [210] "Rivington, in his _Gazette_, fought the _Rebels_, a term of which he made very frequent use while he entertained the opinion that the Americans would be subjected by the British arms."--Thomas's _History of Printing_. [211] Shelburne was at the head of the British ministry but seven months, yet in that time, by his firmness and zeal, he accomplished a final settlement of the quarrel with the colonies. "The treaty," says Bancroft, "which ruled the fate of a hemisphere was mainly due to Lord Shelburne." [212] The _Freeman's Journal_ of April 24 and May 1, 1782, gives full details of the Huddy affair. I can do no better than to quote Freneau's own version of the episode contributed to the _Journal_ for June 12: "Capt. Huddy, of the Jersey militia, was attacked in a small fort on Tom's river, by a party of refugees in the British pay and service, was made prisoner, together with his company, carried to New York, and lodged in the provost of that city; about three weeks after which, he was taken out of the provost down to the water side, put into a boat and brought again to the Jersey shore, and there, contrary to the practice of all nations but savages, was hung up on a tree [April 8, 1782] and left hanging until found by our people, who took him down and buried him. "The inhabitants of that part of the country where the murder was committed, sent a deputation to general Washington, with a full and certified state of the fact. Struck as every human breast must be, with such outrage, and determined both to punish and prevent it for the future, the general represented the case to general Clinton, who then commanded, and demanded that the refugee officer who ordered and attended the execution, and whose name is Lippencut, should be delivered up as a murderer, and in case of refusal that the person of some British officer should suffer in his stead. The demand, though not refused, has not been complied with, and the melancholy lot (not by selection, but by casting lots) has fallen upon captain Asgil of the guards, who, as I have already mentioned, is on his way from Lancaster to camp, a martyr to the general wickedness of the cause he engaged in, and the ingratitude of those he has served." Asgill was finally released. NEW YEAR'S VERSES Addressed to those Gentlemen who have been pleased to favour FRANCIS WRIGLEY, News Carrier, with their custom January 1, 1783 According to custom, once more I appear With the verse you expect at the dawn of the year: For at length we have got into Eighty and Three; And in spite of proud Britain, are happy and free. If the times have been hard, and our commerce gone wrong, We still have been able to struggle along. If some, through misfortunes, are slack in the purse, It is not so bad but it might have been worse. Great things, the year past, were reveal'd to our eyes: The Dutch have confess'd us their friends and allies; And humbled the pride of our haughty invaders, By fighting their fleets and destroying their traders, If the English succeeded in taking the Count, To what, in the end, did their conquest amount? With their boasts, and their brags, and their shouts of applause, It but sav'd them from ruin--not ruin'd our cause. But leaving the weight of political cares To those, who are plac'd at the helm of affairs, To the humours of fortune in all things resign'd, I mean by my visit to put you in mind, That, as true as a clock, both early and late, With the news of the day I have knock'd at your gate, And gave you to know what the world was a doing, What Louis intended, or George was a brewing. If sometimes the papers were trifling and flat, And the news went against us,--I cou'dn't help that; If parties were angry, and vented their spite, I bro't you their wranglings--not help'd them to write. I therefore presume (and not without reason) You'll remember your Newsman, and think of the season; The markets are high, and the weather is cold; No party I serve, and no pension I hold. We Hawkers are men, and have children and wives To comfort our hearts, and to solace our lives: But if I say more, you'll think it is stuff; And a word to the wise is, in reason, enough. NEW YEAR'S VERSES[213] Addressed to the Customers of the FREEMAN'S JOURNAL, by the Lad who carries it January 8, 1783 Let those who will, in hackney'd rhyme And common cant, take up your time, And even the muse's aid implore To tell you what you knew before, The days are short and nights are long, The weather cold and hunger strong, The markets high--and such like stuff-- I'm sure you know it well enough;-- Untaught by us, I dare to say, You hit, exactly, New Year's day, And knew at least as well as we The present year is eighty-three;-- (Such simple things as these to tell A mere drum head would do as well--) All this I knew you knew before, And therefore knock'd not at your door Upon the individual day When eighty-three came into play, With verses for the purpose plann'd Bidding you gravely watch your sand, Since death is always near at hand; All this I left to those whose trade is To threaten beaus and frighten ladies, And brought my papers, (swiftly speeding) The _Freeman's Journal_, for your reading. Unhappy Journal, doom'd by fate To meet with unrelenting hate, From those who can their venom spit, Yet condescend to steal your wit; While Timon, with malicious spirit, Allows you not a grain of merit, While he an idle pomp assumes Let him return his borrow'd plumes, And you will find the insect creeping With not a feather worth the keeping. But this is neither here nor there, May quarrels past dissolve in air; In Stygian waves of sable hue Be all absorb'd with Eighty-Two, Or, lost on Lethe's silent shore, Disgrace our rising State no more. Another word I meant to say, (Kind customers, have patience, pray, My subject is the New Year's Day) How came it that mistaken man Has thus inverted nature's plan, And contradicted common reason By making this the mirthful season, When all is dreary, dull, and dead, The sun to southern climates fled To dart his fierce and downright beams Intensely on Brazilian streams; No daisies on the frozen plain, No daffodils to please the swain, The limpid wave compell'd to freeze, And not a leaf upon the trees!-- 'Tis wrong--the very birds will say, Their New Year is the bloom of May; Then nature calls to soft delights, And they obey as she invites. And yet this happiness below, Which all would gain but few know how, Is not to time or place confin'd, 'Tis seated only in the mind; Let seasons vary as they will, Contentment leaves us happy still, Makes life itself pass smooth away, Makes every hour a New Year's day. [213] Text of this and the preceding poem from the edition of 1786. The last twenty-four lines of the above were republished in the edition of 1795, under the title "On the New-Year's Festival." POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY[214] HUGH GAINE'S LIFE[A] CITY OF NEW-YORK, JAN. 1, 1783.[B] _To the_ Senate[C] _of York, with all due submission, Of honest_ HUGH GAINE _the humble Petition;[215] An account of his Life he will also prefix, And some trifles that happened in_ seventy-six; _He hopes that your Honours will take no offence, If he sends you some groans of contrition from hence, And, further, to prove that he's truly sincere, He wishes you all a_ happy New Year. [A] A character well remembered in New York, and the adjacent States,--now deceased.--_Freneau's note._ Gaine died April 25, 1807. [B] The British army evacuated New York the November following.--_Ib._ [C] The Legislature of the State were at this time in session at Fishkill.--_Ib._ And, first, he informs, in his representation, That he once was a printer of good reputation, And dwelt in the street called Hanover Square, (You'll know where it is, if you ever was there) Next door to the dwelling[216] of doctor Brownjohn, (Who now to the drug-shop[217] of Pluto is gone) But what do I say--who e'er came to town, And knew not Hugh Gaine at the Bible and Crown. Now, if I was ever so given to lie, My dear native country I wouldn't deny; (I know you love Teagues) and I shall not conceal That I came from the kingdom where Phelim O'Neale And other brave worthies ate butter and cheese, And walk'd in the clover-fields up to their knees; Full early in youth, without basket or burden, With a staff in my hand, I passed over Jordan, (I remember my comrade was doctor Magraw,[D] And many strange things on the waters we saw, Sharks, dolphins, and sea-dogs, bonettas, and whales, And birds at the tropic, with quills in their tails) And came to your city and government seat, And found it was true you had something to eat; When thus I wrote home--"The country is good, "They have plenty of victuals and plenty of wood: "The people are kind, and, whatever they think, "I shall make it appear, I can swim where they'll sink; "Dear me! they're so brisk, and so full of good cheer, "By my soul, I suspect they have always new year, "And therefore conceive it is good to be here." So said, and so acted--I put up a press, And printed away with amazing success; Neglected my person, and looked like a fright, Was bothered all day, and was busy all night, Saw money come in, as the papers went out, While Parker and Weyman[E] were driving about, And cursing and swearing, and chewing their cuds, And wishing Hugh Gaine and his press in the suds: Ned Weyman was printer, you know to the king, And thought he had got all the world in a string, (Though riches not always attend on a throne) So he swore I had found the philosopher's stone, And called me a rogue, and a son of a bitch, Because I knew better than him to get rich. To malice like that 'twas in vain to reply-- You had known by his looks he was telling a lie. Thus life ran away, so smooth and serene-- Ah! these were the happiest days I had seen! But the saying of Jacob I found to be true, "The days of thy servant are evil and few!" The days that to me were joyous and glad, Are nothing to those which are dreary and sad! The feuds of the Stamp Act foreboded foul weather, And war and vexation all coming together: Those days were the days of riots and mobs, Tar, feathers, and tories, and troublesome jobs-- Priests preaching up war for the good of our souls, And libels, and lying, and Liberty poles, From which, when some whimsical colours you waved, We had nothing to do, but look up and be saved-- (You thought, by resolving, to terrify Britain-- Indeed, if you did, you were damnably bitten) I knew it would bring an eternal reproach, When I saw you a-burning Cadwallader's[F] coach; I knew you would suffer for what you had done, When I saw you lampooning poor Sawney his son, And bringing him down to so wretched a level, As to ride him about in a cart with the devil. [D] A cynical and very eccentric Physician.--_Freneau's note._ [E] New York Printers, many years before the Revolution.--_Ib._ Parker and Weyman were in partnership in the printing business between the years 1753 and 1759, during which time they were the leading printers of New York. [F] Lieutenant-Governor Cadwallader Colden.--_Ib._ * * * * * Well, as I predicted that matters would be-- To the stamp-act succeeded a tax upon Tea: What chest-fulls were scattered, and trampled, and drowned, And yet the whole tax was but threepence per pound! May the hammer of Death on my noddle descend, And Satan torment me to time without end, If this was a reason to fly into quarrels, And feuds that have ruined our manners and morals; A parson himself might have sworn round the compass, That folks for a trifle should make such a rumpus, Such a rout as to set half the world in a rage, Make France, Spain, and Holland with Britain engage, While the Emperor, the Swede, the Russ, and the Dane, All pity John Bull--and run off with his gain. But this was the season that I must lament-- I first was a whig with an honest intent; Not a Yankee[218] among them talked louder or bolder, With his sword by his side, or his gun on his shoulder; Yes, I was a whig, and a whig from my heart, But still was unwilling with Britain to part-- I thought to oppose her was foolish and vain, I thought she would turn and embrace us again, And make us as happy as happy could be, By renewing the æra of mild Sixty-Three: And yet, like a cruel, undutiful son, Who evil returns for the good to be done, Unmerited odium on Britain to throw,[219] I printed some treason for Philip Freneau, Some damnable poems reflecting on Gage,[220] The King and his Council, and writ with such rage, So full of invective, and loaded with spleen, So sneeringly smart, and so hellishly keen, That, at least in the judgment of half our wise men, Alecto herself put the nib to his pen. * * * * * At this time arose a certain king Sears,[221] Who made it his study to banish our fears: He was, without doubt, a person of merit, Great knowledge, some wit, and abundance of spirit; Could talk like a lawyer, and that without fee, And threatened perdition to all that drank tea. Long sermons did he against Scotchmen prepare,[222] And drank like a German, and drove away care; Ah! don't you remember what a vigorous hand he put To drag off the great guns, and plague captain Vandeput.[G] That night[H] when the Hero (his patience worn out) Put fire to the cannons and folks to the rout, And drew up his ship with a spring on her cable, And gave us a second confusion of Babel, And (what was more solid than scurrilous language) Poured on us a tempest of round shot and langrage; Scarce a broadside was ended 'till another began again --By Jove! it was nothing but _Fire away Flanagan!_[I] Some thought him saluting his Sally's and Nancy's,[223] 'Till he drove a huge ball through the roof of Sam Francis;[J] The town by his flashes was fairly enlightened, The women miscarried, the beaux were all frighten'd; For my part, I hid in a cellar (as sages And Christians were wont in the primitive ages: Thus the Prophet of old that was wrapt to the sky, Lay snug in a cave 'till the tempest went by, But, as soon as the comforting spirit had spoke, He rose and came out with his mystical cloak) Yet I hardly could boast of a moment of rest, The dogs were a-howling, the town was distrest! But our terrors soon vanished, for suddenly Sears Renewed our lost courage and dried up our tears. Our memories, indeed, must have strangely decayed If we cannot remember what speeches he made, What handsome harangues upon every occasion, How he laughed at the whim of a British invasion! "P--x take 'em (said he) do ye think they will come? "If they should--we have only to beat on our drum, "And run up the flag of American freedom, "And people will muster by millions to bleed 'em! "What freeman need value such blackguards as these! "Let us sink in our channel some Chevaux de frise --"And then let 'em come--and we'll show 'em fair play-- "But they are not madmen--I tell you--not they!" From this very day 'till the British came in, We lived, I may say, in the Desert of Sin; Such beating, and bruising, and scratching, and tearing; Such kicking, and cuffing, and cursing and swearing! But when they advanced with their numerous fleet, And Washington made his nocturnal retreat,[K] (And which they permitted, I say, to their shame, Or else your New Empire had been but a name) We townsmen, like women, of Britons in dread, Mistrusted their meaning, and foolishly fled; Like the rest of the dunces I mounted my steed, And galloped away with incredible speed, To Newark I hastened,--but trouble and care Got up on the crupper and followed me there! There I scarcely got fuel to keep myself warm, And scarcely found spirits to weather the storm; And was quickly convinced I had little to do, (The Whigs were in arms, and my readers were few) So after remaining one cold winter season, And stuffing my papers with something like treason, And meeting misfortunes and endless disasters, And forced to submit to a hundred new masters, I thought it more prudent to hold to the one-- And (after repenting of what I had done, And cursing my folly and idle pursuits) Returned to the city, and hung up my boots. [G] Captain of the Asia man of war, who cannonaded the city.--_Freneau's note._ [H] August, 1775.--_Ib._ [I] A cant phrase among privateers men.--_Freneau's note._ [J] A noted Inn-holder in New-York.--_Ib._ "Black Sam."--_Ed. 1786._ [K] From Long-Island.--_Freneau's note._ * * * * * As matters have gone, it was plainly a blunder, But then I expected the Whigs must knock under, And I always adhere to the sword that is longest, And stick to the party that's like to be strongest: That you have succeeded is merely a chance, I never once dreamt of the conduct of France!-- If alliance with her you were promised--at least You ought to have showed me your Star in the East, Nor let me go off uninformed as a beast. When your army I saw without stockings or shoes, Or victuals--or money, to pay them their dues, (Excepting your wretched Congressional paper, That stunk in my nose like the smoke of a taper, A cart load of which for a dram might be spent all, That damnable bubble the old Continental, That took people in at this wonderful crisis, With its mottoes and emblems, and cunning devices; Which, bad as it was, you were forced to admire, And which was, in fact, the pillar of fire, To which you directed your wandering noses, Like the Jews in the desert conducted by Moses) When I saw them attended with famine and fear, Distress in their front, and Howe in their rear; When I saw them for debt incessantly dunned, Not a shilling to pay them laid up in your fund; Your ploughs at a stand, and your ships run ashore-- When this was apparent (and need I say more?) I handled my cane, and I looked at my hat, And cryed--"God have mercy on armies like that!" I took up my bottle, disdaining to stay, And said--"Here's a health to the Vicar of Bray," And cocked up my beaver, and--strutted away. * * * * * Ashamed of my conduct, I sneaked into town, (Six hours and a quarter the sun had been down) It was, I remember, a cold frosty night, And the stars in the firmament glittered as bright As if (to assume a poetical stile) Old Vulcan had give them a rub with his file. 'Till this cursed night, I can honestly say, I ne'er before dreaded the dawn of the day; Not a wolf or a fox that is caught in a trap E'er was so ashamed of his nightly mishap-- I couldn't help thinking what ills might befall me, What rebels and rascals the British would call me, And how I might suffer in credit and purse, If not in my person, which still had been worse: At length I resolved (as was surely my duty) To go for advice to parson Auchmuty;[L] The parson, who now I hope is in glory, Was then upon earth, and a terrible[224] tory, Not Cooper[M] himself, of ideas perplext, So nicely could handle and torture a text, When bloated with lies, through his trumpet he sounded The damnable sin of opposing a crowned head; Like a penitent sinner, and dreading my fate, In the grey of the morning I knocked at his gate; (No doubt he was vexed that I roused him so soon, For his saintship was mostly in blankets 'till noon.) At length he approached in his vestments of black-- (Alas, my poor heart! it was then on the rack, Like a man in an ague, or one to be tried; I shook--and recanted, and blubbered, and sighed) His gown, of itself, was amazingly big, Besides, he had on his canonical wig, And frowned at a distance; but, when I came near, Looked pleasant and said--"What, Hugh, are you here! "Your heart, I am certain, is horribly hardened, "But if you confess--your sin will be pardoned; "In spite of my preachments, and all I could say, "Like the prodigal son, you wandered away, "Now tell me, dear penitent, which is the best, "To be with the rebels, pursued and distrest, "Devoid of all comfort, all hopes of relief, "Or else to be here, and partake the king's beef? "More people resemble the snake than the dove, "And more are converted by terror than love: "Like a sheep on the mountains, or rather a swine, "You wandered away from the ninety and nine: "Awhile at the offers of mercy you spurned, "But your error you saw, and at length have returned: "Our Master will therefore consider your case, "And restore you again to favour and grace, "Great light shall arise from utter confusion, "And rebels shall live to lament their delusion." "Ah, rebels! (said I) they are rebels indeed-- "Chastisement, I hope, by the king is decreed: "They have hung up his subjects with bed-cords and halters, "And banished his prophets, and thrown down his altars. "And I--even I--while I ventured to stay, "They sought for my life--to take it away! "I therefore propose to come under your wing, "A foe to rebellion--a slave to the king." [L] A high church Episcopalian, then rector of Trinity Church, N. Y., since deceased.--_Freneau's note._ [M] Miles Cooper, President of Kings (now Columbia College).--_Ib._ * * * * * Such solemn confession,[225] in scriptural stile Worked out my salvation, at least for a while; The parson pronounced me deserving of grace, And so they restored me to printing and place. But days, such as these, were too happy to last: The sand of felicity settled too fast! When I swore and protested I honoured the throne The least they could do was to let me alone; Though George I compared to an angel above, They wanted some solider proofs of my love; And so they obliged me each morning to come And turn in the ranks at the beat of the drum, While often, too often (I tell it with pain) They menaced my head with a hickory cane, While others, my betters, as much were opprest-- But shame and confusion shall cover the rest. You, doubtless, will think I am dealing in fable When I tell you I guard an officer's stable-- With usage like this my feelings are stung; The next thing will be, I must heave out the dung! Six hours in the day is duty too hard, And Rivington sneers whene'er I mount guard, And laughs till his sides are ready to split With his jests, and his satires, and sayings of wit: Because he's excused, on account of his post He cannot go by without making his boast, As if I was all that is servile and mean-- But Fortune, perhaps, may alter the scene, And give him his turn to stand in the street, Burnt brandy supporting his animal heat--[226] But what for the king or the cause has he done That we must be toiling while he can look on? Great conquests he gave them on paper--'tis true[227] When Howe was retreating, he made him pursue; Alack! it's too plain that Britons must fall-- When loaded with laurels--they go to the wall. From hence you may guess I do nothing but grieve, And where we are going I cannot conceive-- The wisest among us a change are expecting, It is not for nothing, these ships are collecting, It is not for nothing, that Matthews, the mayor, And legions of Tories, for sailing prepare; It is not for nothing, that John Coghill Knap Is filing his papers, and plugging his tap; See Skinner himself, the fighting attorney, Is boiling potatoes, to serve a long journey; But where they are going, or meaning to travel, Would puzzle John Faustus himself to unravel, Perhaps to Penobscot, to starve in the barrens, Perhaps to St. John's, in the gulph of St. Lawrence; Perhaps to New-Scotland, to perish with cold, Perhaps to Jamaica, like slaves to be sold, Where, scorched by the summer, all nature repines, Where Phoebus, great Phoebus, too glaringly shines, And fierce from the zenith diverging his ray Oppresses the isle with a torrent of day. Since matters are thus, with proper submission Permit me to offer my humble Petition: (Though the form is uncommon, and lawyers may sneer, With truth I can tell you, the scribe is sincere.) * * * * * That, since it is plain we are going away, You will suffer Hugh Gaine unmolested to stay, His sand is near run (life itself is a span) So leave him to manage the best that he can: Whoe'er are his masters, or monarchs, or regents, For the future he's ready to swear them allegiance; The Crown he will promise to hold in disgrace:[228] The Bible--allow him to stick in its place, 'Till that, in due season, you wish to put down And bid him keep shop at the sign of the crown. If the Turk with his turban should set up at last here While he gives him protection, he'll own him his master, And yield due obedience (when Britain is gone) Though ruled by the sceptre of Presbyter John. My press, that has called you (as tyranny drove her) Rogues, rebels, and rascals, a thousand times over, Shall be at your service by day and by night, To publish whate'er you think proper to write; Those types which have raised George the third to a level With angels--shall prove him as black as the devil, To him that contrived him a shame and disgrace, Nor blest with one virtue to honour his race! Who knows but, in time, I may rise to be great, And have the good fortune to manage a State? Great noise among people great changes denotes, And I shall have money to purchase their votes-- The time is approaching, I venture to say, When folks worse than me will come into play, When your double faced[229] people will give themselves airs, And aim to take hold of the helm of affairs, While the honest bold soldier, who sought your renown, Like a dog in the dirt, shall be crushed and held down. Of honours and profits allow me a share! I frequently dream of a president's chair! And visions full often intrude on my brain, That for me to interpret, would rather be vain. Blest seasons advance, when Britons[230] shall find That they can be happy, and you[231] can be kind, When Rebels no longer at Traitors shall spurn, When Arnold himself will in triumph return! But my paper informs me it's time to conclude; I fear my Address has been rather too rude-- If it has--for my boldness your pardon I pray, And further, at present, presume not to say, Except that (for form's sake) in haste I remain Your humble Petitioner--honest--HUGH GAINE.[232] [214] First published in the _Freeman's Journal_ in several installments, the first appearing Jan. 8, 1783. Hugh Gaine began as a printer in New York in 1750, and two years later established the _New York Mercury_. His imprint for many years was "Printed by Hugh Gaine, Printer, Bookseller, Stationer, at the Bible and Crown, in Hanover Square." Upon the beginning of hostilities with England he at first sided with the patriots. "Gaine's political creed it seems was to join the strongest party. When the British troops were about to take possession of New York in 1776, he left the city and set up his press at Newark; but soon after, in the belief that appearances were against the ultimate success of the United States, be privately withdrew from Newark and returned to New York. At the conclusion of the war, he petitioned the State legislature for leave to remain in the city and, having obtained permission, his press was employed in book printing, etc., but his newspaper was discontinued when the British army left."--Thomas' _History of Philadelphia_. I have used the text from the edition of 1809. [215] "It is to be questioned if Gaine ever wrote a petition."--_Paul Leicester Ford._ [216] "Drug shop."--_Ed. 1786._ [217] "Dog house."--_Ib._ [218] "Fellow."--_Ed. 1786._ [219] "To gain a mere trifle, a shilling or so."--_Ed. 1786._ [220] _General Gage's Soliloquy_, and _General Gage's Confession_, both printed in 1775. [221] "Under orders from the New York Convention Isaac Sears, in the night of the twenty-fourth of August [1775] removed cannon from the battery of the city. Captain Vandeput of the _Asia_, a British man-of-war in the harbor of the city, kept up a heavy but ineffective fire on the working party, who succeeded in removing twenty-one eighteen pounders with their carriages. It was feared that a bombardment would follow and families began to retreat into the country."--_Bancroft._ [222] This line and the following not in the 1786 edition. [223] "At first we supposed it was only a sham."--_Ed. 1786._ [224] "Moderate."--_Ed. 1786._ [225] "Pitiful whining."--_Ed. 1795._ [226] "With his paunch of a hog, and his brains of an oyster, Whence the mischief came he with his radical moisture."--_Ed. 1786._ [227] This line and the three following not in the edition of 1786. [228] This line and the three following not in the original version. [229] "The false-hearted Tory."--_Ed. 1786._ [230] "Tories."--_Ed. 1786._ [231] "Whigs."--_Ib._ [232] Dr. Francis, in his paper on Christopher Colles, records this story: "While on one of his visits at Gaine's a customer saluted him loudly by name, the sound of which arrested the attention of the old Royalist, who, lifting up his eyes, interrogated him: 'Is your name Freneau?' 'Yes,' answered the Republican poet. '_Philip_ Freneau?' rejoined Gaine. 'Yes sir! the same.' 'Then, sir,' warmly uttered Gaine, 'you are a very clever fellow. Let me have the pleasure of taking you by the hand. Will you walk round the corner and join me in my parlor. We will take a glass of wine together. You, sir, have given me and my paper a wide reputation." STANZAS[233] Occasioned by the Departure of the British from Charleston, December 14, 1782 His triumphs of a moment done, His race of desolation run, The Briton, yielding to his fears, To other shores with sorrow steers: To other shores--and coarser climes He goes, reflecting on his crimes, His broken oaths, a murdered Hayne, And blood of thousands, spilt in vain. To Cooper's stream, advancing slow, Ashley no longer tells his woe; No longer mourns his limpid flood Discoloured deep with human blood. Lo! where those social streams combine, Again the friends of Freedom join; And, while they stray, where once they bled, Rejoice to find their tyrants fled. Since memory paints that dismal day When British squadrons held the sway, And circling close on every side, By sea and land retreat denied-- Can she recall that mournful scene, And not the virtues of a Greene, Who great in war--in danger tried, Has won the day, and crushed their pride. Through barren wastes and ravaged lands, He led his bold undaunted bands; Through sickly climes his standard bore Where never army marched before: By fortitude, with patience joined, (The virtues of a noble mind) He spread, where'er our wars are known, His country's honour and his own. Like Hercules, his generous plan Was to redress the wrongs of men; Like him, accustomed to subdue, He freed a world from monsters too. Through every want and every ill We saw him persevering still, Through Autumn's damps and Summer's heat, 'Till his great purpose was complete. Like the bold eagle, from the skies That stoops, to seize his trembling prize, He darted on the slaves of kings At Camden plains and Eutaw Springs. Ah! had our friends that led the fray Survived the ruins of that day, We should not damp our joy with pain, Nor, sympathizing, now complain. Strange! that of those who nobly dare Death always claims so large a share, That those of virtue most refined Are soonest to the grave consigned!-- But fame is theirs--and future days On pillared brass shall tell their praise; Shall tell--when cold neglect is dead-- "These for their country fought and bled." [233] Published in the _Freeman's Journal_, February 19, 1783, and copied by the Charleston _Weekly Gazette_, May 13 following. Text from the edition of 1809. ON THE BRITISH KING'S SPEECH[234] Recommending Peace with the American States Grown sick of war, and war's alarms, Good George has changed his note at last-- Conquest and death have lost their charms; He, and his nation stand aghast, To think what fearful lengths they've gone, And what a brink they stand upon. Old Bute and North, twin sons of hell, If you advised him to retreat Before our vanquished thousands fell, Prostrate, submissive at his feet: Awake once more his latent flame, And bid us yield you all you claim.[235] The Macedonian wept and sighed Because no other world was found Where he might glut his rage and pride, And by its ruin be renowned; The world that Sawney wished to view George fairly had--and lost it too! Let jarring powers make war or peace, Monster!--no peace can greet your breast: Our murdered friends can never cease To hover round and break your rest! The Furies will your bosom tear, Remorse, distraction, and despair And hell, with all its fiends, be there! Cursed be the ship that e'er sets sail Hence, freighted for your odious shore; May tempests o'er her strength prevail, Destruction round her roar! May Nature all her aids deny, The sun refuse his light, The needle from its object fly, No star appear by night: 'Till the base pilot, conscious of his crime, Directs the prow to some more Christian[236] clime. Genius! that first our race designed, To other kings impart The finer feelings of the mind, The virtues of the heart; Whene'er the honours of a throne Fall to the bloody and the base, Like Britain's tyrant, pull them down, Like his, be their disgrace! Hibernia, seize each native right! Neptune, exclude him from the main; Like her that sunk with all her freight, The _Royal George_,[237] take all his fleet, And never let them rise again: Confine him to his gloomy isle, Let Scotland rule her half, Spare him to curse his fate awhile, And Whitehead,[A] thou to write his epitaph. [A] _William Whitehead_, Poet Laureat to his Majesty--author of the execrable birth-day Odes.--_Freneau's note, Ed. 1786._ [234] First published in the _Freeman's Journal_, March 12, 1783. "King George of England was mastered by a consuming grief for the loss of America, and knew no ease of mind by day or by night. When on the fifth of December [1782], in his speech at the opening of Parliament, he came to read that he had offered to declare the colonies of America free and independent States, his manner was constrained and his voice full."--_Bancroft._ [235] "And feed with hope his heart's desire."--_Ed. 1786._ [236] "Grateful."--_Ed. 1786._ [237] The _Royal George_, 108 guns, while being refitted at Spithead, August 29, 1782, was heeled over too far by her crew, causing her suddenly to sink. Admiral Kempenfelt and nearly 800 men perished in this disaster. A NEW-YORK TORY'S EPISTLE[238] To one of his Friends in Pennsylvania.--Written previous to his Departure for Nova Scotia May, 1783 Dark glooms the day that sees me leave this shore, To which fate whispers I must come no more: From civil broils what dire disasters flow-- Those broils condemn me to a land of woe Where barren pine trees shade the dreary steep, Frown o'er the soil or murmur to the deep, Where sullen fogs their heavy wings expand, And nine months' winter chills the dismal land! Could no kind stars have mark'd a different way, Stars that presided on my natal day?-- Why is not man endued with power to know The ends and upshots of events below? Why did not heaven (some other gift deny'd) Teach me to take the true-born Buckskin side, Show me the balance of the wavering fates And fortune smiling on these new-born States! Friend of my heart!--my refuge and relief, Who help'd me on through seven long years of grief, Whose better genius taught you to remain In the soft quiet of your rural reign, Who still despised the Rebels and their cause, And, while you paid the taxes, damn'd their laws, And wisely stood spectator of the fray, Nor trusted George, whate'er he chose to say; Thrice happy thou, who wore a double face, And as the balance turn'd could each embrace; Too happy Janus! had I shar'd thy art, To speak a language foreign to my heart, And stoop'd from pomp and dreams of regal state, To court the friendship of the men I hate, These strains of woe had not been penn'd to-day, Nor I to foreign climes been forc'd away: Ah! George--that name provokes my keenest rage, Did he not swear, and promise, and engage His loyal sons to nurture and defend, To be their God, their father and their friend-- Yet basely quits us on a hostile coast, And leaves us wretched where we need him most: His is the part to promise and deceive, By him we wander and by him we grieve; Since the first day that these dissentions grew, When Gage to Boston brought his blackguard crew,[239] From place to place we urge our vagrant flight To follow still this vapour of the night, From town to town have run our various race, And acted all that's mean and all that's base-- Yes--from that day until this hour we roam, Vagrants forever from our native home! And yet, perhaps, fate sees the golden hour When happier hands shall crush rebellious power, When hostile tribes their plighted faith shall own And swear subjection to the British throne, When George the Fourth shall their petitions spurn, And banish'd Tories to their fields return. From dreams of conquest, worlds and empires won Britain awaking, mourns her setting sun, No rays of joy her evening hour illume, 'Tis one sad chaos, one unmingled gloom! Too soon she sinks unheeded to the grave, No eye to pity and no hand to save: What are her crimes that she alone must bend? Where are her hosts to conquer and defend-- Must she alone with these new regions part, These realms that lay the nearest to her heart, But soar'd at once to independent power, Not sunk like Scotland in the trying hour?-- See slothful Spaniards golden empires keep, And rule vast realms beyond the Atlantic deep; Must we alone surrender half our reign, And they their empires and their worlds retain? Britannia, rise--send Johnstone to Peru, Seize thy bold thunders and the war renew, Conquest or ruin--one must be thy doom, Strike--and secure a triumph or a tomb! But we, sad outcasts from our native reign, Driven from these shores, a poor deluded train, In distant wilds, conducted by despair, Seek, vainly seek, a hiding place from care! Even now yon' tribes, the foremost of the band, Croud to the ships and cover all the strand: Forc'd from their friends, their country, and their God, I see the unhappy miscreants leave the sod! Matrons and men walk sorrowing side by side And virgin grief, and poverty, and pride, All, all with aching hearts prepare to sail And late repentance that has no avail! While yet I stand on this forbidden ground I hear the death-bell of destruction sound, And threat'ning hosts with vengeance on their brow Cry, "Where are Britain's base adherents now?" These, hot for vengeance, by resentment led, Blame on our hearts the failings of the head; To us no peace, no favours they extend, Their rage no bounds, their hatred knows no end; In one firm league I see them all combin'd, We, like the damn'd, can no forgiveness find-- As soon might Satan from perdition rise, And the lost angels gain their vanish'd skies As malice cease in their dark souls to burn, Or we, once fled, be suffer'd to return. Curs'd be the union that was form'd with France, I see their lillies and the stars advance! Did they not turn our triumphs to retreats, And prove our conquests nothing but defeats?-- My heart misgives me as their chiefs draw near, I feel the influence of all potent fear, Henceforth must I, abandon'd and distrest, Knock at the door of pride, a beggar guest, And learn from years of misery and pain Not to oppose fair Freedom's cause again!-- One truth is clear from changes such as these,[240] Kings cannot always conquer when they please, Nor are they rebels who mere freedom claim, Conquest alone can ratify the name-- But great the task, their efforts to controul When genuine virtue fires the stubborn soul; The warlike beast in Lybian deserts plac'd To reign the master of the sun-burnt waste, Not tamely yields to bear a servile chain, Force may attempt it, and attempt in vain, Nervous and bold, by native valour led, His prowess strikes the proud invader dead, By force nor fraud from freedom's charms beguil'd He reigns secure the monarch of the wild. TANTALUS. [238] _Freeman's Journal_, May 7, 1783. In the later editions it was entitled "Renegado Epistle." Text from the edition of 1786. [239] Two added lines in the later editions: "Amused with conquests, honours, riches, fame, Posts, titles, earldoms--and a deathless name." [240] "From nature constant still Kings hold not worlds or empires at their will."--_Ed. 1795._ MANHATTAN CITY[241] A Picture Fair mistress of a warlike State, What crime of thine deserves this fate? While other ports to Freedom rise, In thee that flame of honour dies. With wars and horrors overspread, Seven years, and more, we fought and bled: Seized British hosts and Hessian bands, And all--to leave you in their hands. While British tribes forsake our plains, In you, a ghastly herd[242] remains: Must vipers to your halls[243] repair; Must poison taint that purest air? Ah! what a scene torments the eye: In thee, what putrid monsters lie! What dirt, and mud, and mouldering walls, Burnt domes, dead dogs, and funerals! Those grassy banks, where oft we stood,[244] And fondly viewed the passing flood; There, owls obscene, that daylight shun, Pollute the waters, as they run. Thus in the east--once Asia's queen-- Palmyra's tottering towers are seen; While through her streets the serpent feeds, Thus she puts on her mourning weeds! Lo! Skinner there for Scotia hails The sweepings of Cesarean jails:[245] While, to receive the odious[246] freight, A thousand sable transports wait. Had he been born in days of old When men with gods their 'squires[247] enrolled, Hermes had claimed his aid above, Arch-quibbler in the courts of Jove.[248] O chief, that wrangled at the bar-- Grown old in less successful war; What crowds of miscreants round you stand, What vagrants bow to your command! [241] In the edition of 1786 entitled "New-York, September, 1783." [242] "A motley crew."--_Ed. 1786._ [243] "Through thy streets."--_Ib._ [244] "I stood."--_Ed. 1786._ [245] "Lo! _Skinner_ there collects a crew, (Their temples brushed with Stygian dew)"--_Ib._ [246] "Ghastly."--_Ib._ [247] "Beasts."--_Ib._ [248] "Like Nero's horse, he had been made A consul for some Nero's aid."--_Ib._ VERSES[249] Occasioned by General Washington's arrival in Philadelphia, on his way to his seat in Virginia _December, 1783_ 1 The great, unequal conflict past, The Briton banish'd from our shore, Peace, heav'n-descended, comes at last, And hostile nations rage no more; From fields of death the weary swain Returning, seeks his native plain. 2 In every vale she smiles serene, Freedom's bright stars more radiant rise, New charms she adds to every scene, Her brighter sun illumes our skies; Remotest realms admiring stand, And hail the Hero of our land: 3 He comes!--the Genius of these lands-- Fame's thousand tongues his worth confess, Who conquer'd with his suffering bands, And grew immortal by distress: Thus calms succeed the stormy blast, And valour is repaid at last. 4 O Washington!--thrice glorious name, What due rewards can man decree-- Empires are far below thy aim, And sceptres have no charms for thee; Virtue alone has thy regard, And she must be thy great reward. 5 Encircled by extorted power, Monarchs must envy thy Retreat, Who cast, in some ill fated hour, Their country's freedom at their feet; 'Twas thine to act a nobler part For injur'd Freedom had thy heart. 6 For ravag'd realms and conquer'd seas Rome gave the great imperial prize, And, swell'd with pride, for feats like these, Transferr'd her heroes to the skies:-- A brighter scene your deeds display, You gain those heights a different way. 7 When Faction rear'd her snaky head,[250] And join'd with tyrants to destroy, Where'er you march'd the monster fled, Tim'rous her arrows to employ; Hosts catch'd from you a bolder flame, And despots trembled at your name. 8 Ere war's dread horrors ceas'd to reign, What leader could your place supply?-- Chiefs crowded to the embattled plain, Prepar'd to conquer or to die-- Heroes arose--but none like you Could save our lives and freedom too. 9 In swelling verse let kings be read, And princes shine in polish'd prose; Without such aid your triumphs spread Where'er the convex ocean flows, To Indian worlds by seas embrac'd, And Tartar, tyrant of the waste. 10 Throughout the east you gain applause, And soon the Old World, taught by you, Shall blush to own her barbarous laws, Shall learn instruction from the New: Monarchs shall hear the humble plea, Nor urge too far the proud decree. 11 Despising pomp and vain parade, At home you stay, while France and Spain The secret, ardent wish convey'd, And hail'd you to their shores in vain: In Vernon's groves you shun the throne, Admir'd by kings, but seen by none. 12 Your fame, thus spread to distant lands, May envy's fiercest blasts endure, Like Egypt's pyramids it stands, Built on a basis more secure; Time's latest age shall own in you The patriot and the statesman too. 13 Now hurrying from the busy scene, Where thy Potowmack's waters flow, May'st thou enjoy thy rural reign, And every earthly blessing know; Thus He[A] whom Rome's proud legions sway'd, Return'd, and sought his sylvan shade. [A] Cincinnatus.--_Freneau's note._ 14 Not less in wisdom than in war Freedom shall still employ your mind, Slavery shall vanish, wide and far, 'Till not a trace is left behind; Your counsels not bestow'd in vain Shall still protect this infant reign. 15 So when the bright, all-cheering sun From our contracted view retires, Though fools may think his race is run, On other worlds he lights his fires: Cold climes beneath his influence glow, And frozen rivers learn to flow. 16 O say, thou great, exalted name! What Muse can boast of equal lays, Thy worth disdains all vulgar fame, Transcends the noblest poet's praise, Art soars, unequal to the flight, And genius sickens at the height. 17 For states redeem'd--our western reign Restor'd by thee to milder sway, Thy conscious glory shall remain When this great globe is swept away, And all is lost that pride admires, And all the pageant scene expires. [249] Published in the _Freeman's Journal_, December 10, 1783. Washington arrived in Philadelphia from New York, December 8th. The earliest version of this poem remained practically unchanged in the later editions. The text follows the edition of 1786. [250] "Bristly head."--_Ed. 1809._ RIVINGTON'S CONFESSIONS[251] Addressed to the Whigs of New-York _December 31, 1783_ PART I Long life and low spirits were never my choice, As long as I live I intend to rejoice; When life is worn out, and no wine's to be had 'Tis time enough then to be serious and sad. 'Tis time enough then to reflect and repent When our liquor is gone, and our money is spent, But I cannot endure what is practis'd by some This anticipating of evils to come: A debt must be paid, I am sorry to say, Alike, in their turns, by the grave and the gay, And due to a despot that none can deceive Who grants us no respite and signs no reprieve. Thrice happy is he that from care can retreat, And its plagues and vexations put under his feet; Blow the storm as it may, he is always in trim, And the sun's in the zenith forever to him. Since the world then in earnest is nothing but care, (And the world will allow I have also my share) Yet, toss'd as I am in the stormy expanse, The best way, I find, is to leave it to chance. Look round, if you please, and survey the wide ball And chance, you will find, has direction of all: 'Twas owing to chance that I first saw the light, And chance may destroy me before it is night! 'Twas a chance, a mere chance, that your arms gain'd the day, 'Twas a chance that the Britons so soon went away, To chance by their leaders the nation is cast And chance to perdition will send them at last. Now because I remain when the puppies are gone You would willingly see me hang'd, quarter'd and drawn, Though I think I have logic sufficient to prove That the chance of my stay--is a proof of my love. For deeds of destruction some hundreds are ripe, But the worst of my foes are your lads of the type: Because they have nothing to put on their shelves They are striving to make me as poor as themselves. There's Loudon[252] and Kollock,[253] these strong bulls of Bashan, Are striving to hook me away from my station, And Holt,[254] all at once, is as wonderful great As if none but himself was to print for the State. Ye all are convinc'd I'd a right to expect That a sinner returning you would not reject-- Quite sick of the scarlet and slaves of the throne, 'Tis now at your option to make me your own. Suppose I had gone with the Tories and rabble To starve, or be drown'd on the shoals of cape Sable, I had suffer'd, 'tis true--but I'll have you to know, You nothing had gain'd by the voice of my woe. You say that with grief and dejection of heart I pack'd up my awls with a view to depart, That my shelves were dismantled, my cellars unstor'd, My boxes afloat, and my hampers on board: And hence you infer (I am sure without reason) That a right you possess to entangle my weazon-- Yet your barns I ne'er burnt, nor your blood have I spilt, And my terror alone was no proof of my guilt. The charge may be true--for I found it in vain To lean on a staff that was broken in twain, And ere I had gone at Port Roseway to fix, I had chose to sell drams on the margin of Styx. I confess, that, with shame and contrition opprest, I sign'd an agreement to go with the rest, But ere they weigh'd anchor to sail their last trip, I saw they were vermin, and gave them the slip. Now, why you should call me the worst man alive, On the word of a convert, I cannot contrive, Though turn'd a plain honest republican, still You own me no proslelyte, do what I will. My paper is alter'd--good people, don't fret; I call it no longer the _Royal Gazette_:[255] To me a great monarch has lost all his charms, I have pull'd down his Lion, and trampled his Arms. While fate was propitious, I thought they might stand, You know I was zealous for George's command, But since he disgrac'd it, and left us behind, If I thought him an angel--I've alter'd my mind. On the very same day that his army went hence I ceas'd to tell lies for the sake of his pence; And what was the reason--the true one is best-- I worship no suns when they move to the west: In this I resemble a Turk or a Moor, Bright Phoebus ascending, I prostrate adore; And, therefore, excuse me for printing some lays, An ode or a sonnet in Washington's praise. His prudence alone[256] has preserv'd your dominions, This bravest and boldest of all the Virginians! And when he is gone--I pronounce it with pain-- We scarcely shall meet with his equal again.[257] Old Plato asserted that life is a dream And man but a shadow (whate'er he may seem)[258] By which it is plain he intended to say That man, like a shadow, must vanish away: If this be the fact, in relation to man, And if each one is striving to get what he can, I hope, while I live, you will all think it best, To allow me to bustle along with the rest. A view of my life, though some parts might be solemn, Would make, on the whole, a ridiculous volume: In the life that's hereafter (to speak with submission) I hope I shall publish a better edition: Even swine you permit to subsist in the street;-- You pity a dog that lies down to be beat-- Then forget what is past--for the year's at a close-- And men of my age have some need of repose. PART II But as to the Tories that yet may remain, They scarcely need give you a moment of pain: What dare they attempt when their masters are fled;-- When the soul is departed who wars with the dead? Poor souls! for the love of the king and his nation They have had their full quota of mortification; Wherever they fought, or whatever they won The dream's at an end--the delusion is done. The Temple you rais'd was so wonderful large Not one of them thought you could answer the charge, It seem'd a mere castle constructed of vapour, Surrounded with gibbets and founded on Paper. On the basis of freedom you built it too strong! And Clinton[259] confess'd, when you held it so long, That if any thing human the fabric could shatter The _Royal Gazette_ must accomplish the matter.[A] [A] "Si Pergama dextra Defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent."--_Virg._ --_Freneau's note._ An engine like that, in such hands as my own Had shaken king Codjoe[B] himself from his throne, In another rebellion had ruin'd the Scot, While the Pope and Pretender had both gone to pot. [B] The Negro king in Jamaica, whom the English declared independent in 1739. See our _Freeman's Journal_, No. 37, for the treaty.--_Freneau's note in 1783._ If you stood my attacks, I have nothing to say-- I fought, like the Swiss, for the sake of my pay; But while I was proving your fabric unsound Our vessel miss'd stay, and we all went aground. Thus ended in ruin what madness begun, And thus was our nation disgrac'd and undone, Renown'd as we were, and the lords of the deep, If our outset was folly, our exit was sleep. A dominion like this, that some millions had cost!-- The king might have wept when he saw it was lost;-- This jewel--whose value I cannot describe; This pearl--that was richer than all his Dutch tribe. When the war came upon us, you very well knew My income was small and my riches were few-- If your money was scarce, and your prospects were bad, Why hinder me printing for people that had? 'Twould have pleas'd you, no doubt, had I gone with a few setts Of books, to exist in your cold Massachusetts; Or to wander at Newark, like ill fated Hugh, Not a shirt to my back, nor a soal to my shoe. Now, if we mistook (as we did, it is plain) Our error was owing to wicked Hugh Gaine, For he gave us such scenes of your starving and strife As prov'd that his pictures were drawn from the life. On the waves of the Styx had he rode quarantine, He could not have look'd more infernally lean Than the day, when returning dismay'd and distrest, Like the doves to their windows, he flew to his nest.[260] The part that he[261] acted, by some men of sense Was wrongfully held to be malice propense, When to all the world it was perfectly plain, One principle rul'd him[262]--a passion for gain. You pretend I have suffer'd no loss in the cause, And have, therefore, no right to partake of your laws: Some people love talking--I find to my cost, I too am a loser--my character's lost![263] Nay, did not your printers repeatedly stoop To descant and reflect on my Portable Soup? At me have your porcupines darted the quill, You have plunder'd my Office,[C] and publish'd my Will.[264] [C] November, 1775.--_Freneau's note._ On November 27, 1775, a band of armed men, under Sears of Connecticut, entered the city on horseback, destroyed his press and scattered his types. Resolv'd upon mischief, you held it no crime To steal my _Reflections_,[265] and print them in rhyme, When all the world knew, or at least they might guess, That the time to reflect was no time to confess;[266] You never consider'd my children and wife,[267] That my lot was to toil and to struggle[268] through life; My windows you broke--they are all on a jar, And my house you have made a mere old man of war. And still you insist I've no right to complain!-- Indeed if I do, I'm afraid it's in vain-- Yet am willing to hope you're too learnedly read To hang up a printer for being misled. If this be your aim, I must think of a flight-- In less than a month I must bid you good-night, And hurry away to that whelp ridden shore Where Clinton and Carleton retreated before. From signs in the sky, and from tokens on land I'm inclin'd to suspect my departure's at hand: The man in the moon is unusually big, And Inglis, they tell me, has grown a good Whig.[269] For many days past, as the town can attest, The tail of the weather-cock hung to the west--[270] My shop, the last evening, seem'd all in a blaze, And a hen crow'd at midnight, my waiting man says; Even then, as I lay with strange whims in my head, A ghost hove in sight, not a yard from my bed, It seem'd Gen'ral Robertson,[271] brawly array'd, But I grasp'd at the substance, and found him a shade! He appear'd as of old, when, head of the throng, And loaded with laurels, he waddled along-- He seem'd at the foot of my bedstead to stand And cry'd--"Jemmy Rivington, reach me your hand; "And Jemmy, (said he) I am sorry to find "Some demon advis'd you to loiter behind; "The country is hostile--you had better get off it, "Here's nothing but squabbles, all plague and no profit! "Since the day that Sir William came here with his throng "He manag'd things so that they always went wrong, "And tho' for his knighthood, he kept Meschianza, "I think he was nothing but mere Sancho Pança. "That famous conductor of moon-light retreats, "Sir Harry, came next with his armies and fleets, "But, finding the rebels were dying and dead, "He grounded his arms and retreated to bed. "Other luck we had once at the battle of Boyne! "But here they have ruin'd Earl Charles and Burgoyne, "Here brave col'nel Monckton was thrown on his back, "And here lies poor André! the best of the pack." So saying, he flitted away in a trice, Just adding, "he hop'd I would take his advice"-- Which I surely shall do if you push me too hard-- And so I remain, with eternal regard, JAMES RIVINGTON, printer, of late, to the king, But now a republican--under your wing-- Let him stand where he is--don't push him down hill, And he'll turn a true Blue-Skin, or just what you will. [251] First published in the _Freeman's Journal_, December 31, 1783. The text follows the 1786 version. [252] A New York printer, publisher of _The New York Packet_ during the Revolutionary period. From 1776 until 1783 he published the paper at Fishkill. [253] Shepard Kollock, soldier-editor of the Revolution. Established the _New Jersey Journal_ at Chatham, N. J., in 1779. Removed in 1783 to New York, where he undertook the _New York Gazetteer_. Later, in 1787, he moved to Elizabeth-Town, N. J., and revived his first journal, which he successfully edited for thirty-one years. Kollock died in Philadelphia, July 28, 1839. [254] John Holt, printer, born in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1721, died in New York City, January 30, 1784. Holt founded in 1776 the _New York Journal_, which during the Revolution bore the famous device of a snake cut into parts, with the motto "Unite or Die." [255] After the war Rivington removed from the head-line of his paper the arms of Great Britain and changed the title to _Rivington's New York Gazette and Universal Advertiser_. [256] "His prudence and caution."--_Ed. 1795._ [257] The edition of 1809 added at this point the following six lines not in the earlier editions: "The gods for that hero did trouble prepare, But gave him a mind that could feed upon care, They gave him a spirit, serene but severe, Above all disorder, confusion, and fear; In him it was fortune where others would fail: He was born for the tempest, and weathered the gale." [258] "A cloud, or a stream."--_Ed. 1795._ [259] "CARLETON."--_Ed. 1795._ [260] In the later editions this stanza was inserted after stanza 1, Part II, and made to refer to the Tories. [261] "That I acted."--_Ed. 1795._ [262] "Rul'd me."--_Ib._ [263] "My PENSION is lost!"--_Ed. 1795._ [264] See page 120. [265] See page 190. [266] "When all the town knew (and a number confess'd) That papers, like these, were no cause of arrest."--_Ed. 1795._ [267] "My struggles and strife."--_Ib._ [268] "To worry."--_Ib._ [269] In place of these lines, the edition of 1795 has the following: "Old Argo the ship,--in a peep at her star, I found they were scraping her bottom for TAR." [270] "A boy with a feather-bed troubled my rest."--_Ed. 1795._ [271] Royal Governor of New York. He arrived in the city March 21, 1780. He was considered harsh and arbitrary by the patriots. A NEWS-MAN'S ADDRESS[272] What tempests gloom'd the by-past year-- What dismal prospects then arose! Scarce at your doors I dar'd appear, So many were our griefs and woes: But time at length has chang'd the scene, Our prospects, now, are more serene. Bad news we brought you every day, Your seamen slain, your ships on shore, The army fretting for their pay-- ('Twas well they had not fretted more!) 'Twas wrong indeed to wear out shoes, To bring you nothing but bad news. Now let's be joyful for the change-- The folks that guard the English throne Have given us ample room to range, And more, perhaps, than was their own; To western lakes they stretch our bounds, And yield the Indian hunting grounds. But pray read on another year, Remain the humble newsman's friend; And he'll engage to let you hear What Europe's princes next intend.-- Even now their brains are all at work To rouse the Russian on the Turk. Well--if they fight, then fight they must, They are a strange contentious breed; One good effect will be, I trust, The more are kill'd, the more you'll read; For past experience clearly shews, That Wrangling is the Life of News. [272] From the edition of 1795. The poem was first published as a broadside in 1784, with the title, "New-Year Verses, For those who carry the Pennsylvania Gazette To the Customers. January 1, 1784," and was reproduced almost verbatim in the 1786 edition. NEW YEAR'S VERSES[273] Addressed to the customers of the _Freeman's Journal_, by the Lad who carries it January 7, 1784 Blest be the man who early prov'd And first contriv'd to make it clear That Time upon a dial mov'd, And trac'd that circle call'd a year; Ere he arose, the savage, man, No bounds to years or seasons knew, On Nature's book his reckoning ran, And social festivals were few. In after days, when folks grew wise New wonderments were daily found, Systems they built on pumpkin pies, And prov'd that every thing went round. Experience shows they reason'd right, (With laurels we their tombs should crown) For half the world is in such plight That one would swear it upside down. Now I am one, (and pray attend) Who, marching in a smaller sphere, To set you right, my service lend, By bringing Papers through the year, Which to your Honours may impart A thousand new invented schemes, The works of wit, and toils of art, News, commerce, politics, and dreams: Though in a sheet, at random cast, Our motley knowledge we dispose, From such a mass, in ages past, Have less substantial fabrics rose; The Sybil wise, as Virgil says, Her writings to the leaves consign'd, Which soon were borne a thousand ways, Derang'd and scatter'd by the wind. Not such neglect in me is seen-- Soon as my leaves have left the press I haste to bring them, neat and clean, At all times in a New Year's dress. Though winds their ancient spite retain, And strive to tear them from my hold, I bear them safe through wind and rain, Despising heat, despising cold. While thus employ'd, from week to week, You surely will not think it hard If, with the rest, I come to seek Some humble token of regard. Nor will you deem my conduct strange If what I long have thought be true-- That life itself is constant change, And death, the want of something new. [273] Text from the 1786 edition. The poem appears in the 1795 edition under the title "A News-Carrier's Petition." THE HAPPY PROSPECT[274] Though clad in winter's gloomy dress all Nature's works appear, Yet other prospects rise to bless the new returning year: The active sail again is seen to greet our western shore, Gay plenty smiles with brow serene, and wars distract no more. No more the vales, no more the plains an iron harvest yield; Peace guards our doors, impells our swains to till the grateful field: From distant climes, no longer foes (their years of misery past) Nations arrive, to find repose in these domains at last. And, if a more delightful scene attracts the mortal eye, Where clouds nor darkness intervene, behold, aspiring high, On Freedom's soil those Fabrics plann'd, on virtue's basis laid, That make secure our native land, and prove our toils repaid. Ambitious aims and pride severe, would you at distance keep, What wanderer would not tarry here, here charm his cares to sleep! O, still may health her balmy wings o'er these fair fields expand, While commerce from all climates brings the products of each land. Through toiling care and lengthen'd views, that share alike our span, Gay, smiling hope her heaven pursues, the eternal friend of man: The darkness of the days to come she brightens with her ray, And smiles o'er Nature's gaping tomb, when sickening to decay! [274] This is Freneau's hymn of thanksgiving at the close of the war. Text from the 1795 edition, where, as far as I can discover, it was first published. THE DYING INDIAN[275] TOMO-CHEQUI "On yonder lake I spread the sail no more! Vigour, and youth, and active days are past-- Relentless demons urge me to that shore On whose black forests all the dead are cast:-- Ye solemn train, prepare the funeral song, For I must go to shades below, Where all is strange and all is new; Companion to the airy throng!-- What solitary streams, In dull and dreary dreams, All melancholy, must I rove along! To what strange lands must Chequi take his way! Groves of the dead departed mortals trace: No deer along those gloomy forests stray, No huntsmen there take pleasure in the chace, But all are empty unsubstantial shades, That ramble through those visionary glades; No spongy fruits from verdant trees depend, But sickly orchards there Do fruits as sickly bear, And apples a consumptive visage shew, And withered hangs the hurtle-berry blue. Ah me! what mischiefs on the dead attend! Wandering a stranger to the shores below, Where shall I brook or real fountain find? Lazy and sad deluding waters flow-- Such is the picture in my boding mind! Fine tales, indeed, they tell Of shades and purling rills, Where our dead fathers dwell Beyond the western hills, But when did ghost return his state to shew; Or who can promise half the tale is true? I too must be a fleeting ghost!--no more-- None, none but shadows to those mansions go; I leave my woods, I leave the Huron shore, For emptier groves below! Ye charming solitudes, Ye tall ascending woods, Ye glassy lakes and prattling streams, Whose aspect still was sweet, Whether the sun did greet, Or the pale moon embraced you with her beams-- Adieu to all! To all, that charmed me where I strayed, The winding stream, the dark sequestered shade; Adieu all triumphs here! Adieu the mountain's lofty swell, Adieu, thou little verdant hill, And seas, and stars, and skies--farewell, For some remoter sphere! Perplexed with doubts, and tortured with despair, Why so dejected at this hopeless sleep? Nature at last these ruins may repair, When fate's long dream is o'er, and she forgets to weep Some real world once more may be assigned, Some new born mansion for the immortal mind! Farewell, sweet lake; farewell surrounding woods, To other groves, through midnight glooms, I stray, Beyond the mountains, and beyond the floods, Beyond the Huron bay! Prepare the hollow tomb, and place me low, My trusty bow and arrows by my side, The cheerful bottle and the venison store; For long the journey is that I must go, Without a partner, and without a guide." He spoke, and bid the attending mourners weep, Then closed his eyes, and sunk to endless sleep! [275] Text from the edition of 1809. First published in the _Freeman's Journal_, March 17, 1784. It was inserted without change into the edition of 1786, where it bore the title: "The Dying Indian, or Last Words of Shalum. _March, 1784._ Debemur morti nos, nostraque." The two later editions were unchanged save in title. LINES[276] Intended for Mr. Peale's Exhibition May 10, 1784 1 Toward the skies What columns rise In Roman style, profusely great! What lamps ascend, What arches bend, And swell with more than Roman state! 2 High o'er the central arch display'd Old Janus shuts his temple door, And shackles war in darkest shade; Saturnian times in view once more. 3 Pride of the human race, behold In Gallia's king the virtues glow, Whose conduct prov'd, whose goodness told, That kings can feel for human woe. Thrice happy France in Louis blest, Thy genius droops her head no more; In the calm virtues of the mind Equal to him no Titus shin'd-- No Trajan--whom mankind adore. 4 Another scene too soon displays! Griefs have their share, and claim their part, They monuments to ruin raise, And shed keen anguish o'er the heart: Those heroes that in battle fell Demand a sympathetic tear, Who fought, our tyrants to repell-- Memory preserves their laurels here. In vernal skies Thus tempests rise, And clouds obscure the brightest sun-- Few wreathes are gain'd With blood unstain'd, No honours without ruin won. 5 The arms of France three lillies mark-- In honour's dome with these enroll'd The plough, the sheaf, the gliding barque The riches of our State unfold. 6 Ally'd in Heaven, a sun and stars Friendship and peace with France declare-- The branch succeeds the spear of Mars, Commerce repairs the wastes of war: In ties of concord ancient foes engage Proving the day-spring of a brighter age. 7 These States defended by the brave, Their military trophies, see! The virtue that of old did save Shall still maintain them great and free: Arts shall pervade the western wild, And savage hearts become more mild. 8 Of science proud, the source of sway, Lo! emblematic figures shine; The arts their kindred forms display, Manners to soften and refine: A stately tree to heaven its summit sends And cluster'd fruit from thirteen boughs depends. 9 With laurel crown'd A chief renown'd (His country sav'd) his faulchion sheaths; Neglects his spoils For rural toils And crowns his plough with laurel wreaths: While we this Roman chief survey, What apt resemblance strikes the eye! Those features to the soul convey A Washington in fame as high, Whose prudent, persevering mind Patience with manly courage join'd, And when disgrace and death were near, Look'd through the black distressing shade, Struck hostile Britons with unwonted fear And blasted their best hopes, and pride in ruin laid. 10 Victorious virtue! aid me to pursue The tributary verse to triumphs due-- Behold the peasant leave his lowly shed, Where tufted forests round him grow;-- Tho' clouds the dark sky overspread, War's dreadful art his arm essays, He meets the hostile cannon's blaze, And pours redoubled vengeance on the foe. 11 Born to protect and guard our native land, Victorious virtue! still preserve us free; Plenty--gay child of peace, thy horn expand, And, Concord, teach us to agree! May every virtue that adorns the soul Be here advanc'd to heights unknown before; Pacific ages in succession roll, 'Till Nature blots the scene, Chaos resumes her reign And heaven with pleasure views its works no more. [276] Published in the _Freeman's Journal_, May 19, 1784, which the text follows. Practically unchanged for the later editions. The following description of this arch appeared in the _Journal_, May 12th: "Monday at noon, the sheriff, attended by the proper officers, made proclamation of the Definitive Treaty of Peace concluded between America and Great-Britain. At the same time the state flag was hoisted on Market street wharf, and in the evening the transparent paintings which were designed in celebration of the general peace, and were to have been shewn on the 22d January last, but prevented by an unfortunate accident; being revived by subscription, and executed by the ingenious Mr. Peale, were exhibited, and afforded great satisfaction to many thousands of spectators. The following is a Description of the Triumphal Arch and its ornaments: THE Arch is fifty Feet and six Inches wide, and thirty-five Feet and six Inches high, exclusive of the Ballustrade, which is three Feet and nine Inches in height. The Arch is fourteen Feet wide in the clear, and each of the smaller Arches nine feet. The Pillars are of the _Ionic_ Order. The Entablature, all the other Parts, and the Proportions correspond with that Order; and the whole Edifice is finished in the Style of Architecture proper for such a Building, and used by the _Romans_. The Pillars are adorned with spiral Festoons of Flowers in their natural Colours.... [Then follows a half-column description of the various ornaments and devices.] The whole Building illuminated by about twelve hundred Lamps." THE HURRICANE[277] Happy the man who, safe on shore, Now trims, at home, his evening fire; Unmov'd, he hears the tempests roar, That on the tufted groves expire: Alas! on us they doubly fall, Our feeble barque must bear them all. Now to their haunts the birds retreat, The squirrel seeks his hollow tree, Wolves in their shaded caverns meet, All, all are blest but wretched we-- Foredoomed a stranger to repose, No rest the unsettled ocean knows. While o'er the dark abyss[A] we roam, Perhaps, with last departing gleam, We saw the sun descend in gloom, No more to see his morning beam; But buried low, by far too deep, On coral beds, unpitied, sleep! [A] Near the east end of Jamaica, July 30, 1784.--_Freneau's note._ But what a strange, uncoasted strand Is that, where fate permits no day-- No charts have we to mark that land, No compass to direct that way-- What Pilot shall explore that realm, What new Columbus take the helm! While death and darkness both surround, And tempests rage with lawless power, Of friendship's voice I hear no sound, No comfort in this dreadful hour-- What friendship can in tempests be, What comfort on this raging sea? The barque, accustomed to obey, No more the trembling pilots guide: Alone she gropes her trackless way, While mountains burst on either side-- Thus, skill and science both must fall; And ruin is the lot of all. [277] First published in the April 13, 1785, issue of the _Freeman's Journal_, under the title, "Verses, made at Sea, in a Heavy Gale," and reprinted verbatim in the 1786 edition. In the August 20, 1788, issue of the _Journal_ the poem was republished in connection with the following note (in italics): "In that violent hurricane at Jamaica, on the night of the 30th of July, 1784, in which, no more than eight, out of 150 sail of vessels, in the ports of Kingston and Port-Royal, were saved, capt. Freneau was at sea, and arrived at Kingston next morning, a mere wreck. On that occasion, the following beautiful lines, extracted from the first volume of his writings, were penned." Text from the edition of 1809. TO THE KEEPER OF THE KING'S WATER WORKS[278] Near Kingston,[279] in the island of Jamaica, on being refused a puncheon of water Written August, 1784 "_The celestial Deities protect and relieve strangers in every country, as long as those strangers respect and submit to the laws of the country._" --KIEN-LHI, _alias_ JOHN TUCK, _Viceroy of Canton_. Can he, who o'er two Indies holds the sway, Where'er the ocean flows, whose fleets patrole, Who bids Hibernia's rugged sons obey, And at whose nod (you say) shakes either pole:-- Can he, whose crown a thousand jewels grace Of worth untold--can he, so rich, deny One wretched puncheon from this ample waste, Begg'd by his quondam subject--very dry? Vast are the springs in yonder cloud-capt hill: Why, then, refuse the abundant flowing wave? Where hogs, and dogs, and keepers drink their fill, May we not something from such plenty crave? Keeper!--must we with empty cask return! Just view the limpid stream that runs to waste!-- Denied the stream that flows from Nature's urn, By locks and bolts secur'd from rebel taste? Well!--if we must, inform the royal ear, Poor are some kings that now in Britain live: Tell him, that Nature is no miser here; Tell him--that he withholds--what beggars give. [278] From the edition of 1809. The poem seems first to have appeared in the _National Gazette_ of January 12, 1792, with the following note: "The following lines were written some years ago (Sept. 1784) on board the brig _Dromilly_, in Kingston harbour, Jamaica; and sent to the keeper of the King's waterworks, near Rock fort; who had refused the writer a puncheon of water from a reservoir that was, by royal order, appropriated to the use of the royal navy." The present text is somewhat varied from that in the edition of 1795. [279] "Rock-Fort."--_Ed. 1795._ LINES[280] Written at Port-Royal, in the Island of Jamaica Here, by the margin of the murmuring main, While her proud remnants I explore in vain, And lonely stray through these dejected lands Fann'd by the noon-tide breeze on burning sands, Where the dull Spaniard once possess'd these shades, And ports defended by his Pallisades[A]-- Tho' lost to us, Port Royal claims a sigh, Nor shall the Muse the unenvied gift deny. Of all the towns that grac'd Jamaica's isle This was her glory, and the proudest pile, Where toils on toils bade wealth's gay structures rise, And commerce swell'd her glory to the skies: St. Jago, seated on a distant plain, Ne'er saw the tall ship entering from the main, Unnotic'd streams her Cobra's[B] margin lave Where yond' tall plantains shade her glowing wave, And burning sands or rock surrounded hill Confess its founder's fears--or want of skill. While o'er these wastes with wearied step I go, Past scenes of death return, in all their woe,[281] O'er these sad shores in angry pomp he pass'd, Mov'd in the winds, and rag'd with every blast-- Here,[C] opening gulphs confess'd the almighty hand, Here, the dark ocean roll'd across the land, Here, piles on piles an instant tore away, Here, crowds on crowds in mingled ruin lay, Whom fate scarce gave to end their noon-day feast, Or time to call the sexton, or the priest. Where yond' tall barque, with all her ponderous load, Commits her anchor to its dark abode, Eight fathoms down, where unseen waters flow To quench the sulphur of the caves below, Here midnight sounds torment the sailor's ear, And drums and fifes play drowsy concerts here,[282] Sad songs of woe prevent the hours of sleep, And Fancy aids the fiddlers of the deep; Dull Superstition hears the ghostly hum, Smit with the terrors of the world to come. What now is left of all thy boasted pride! Lost are thy glories that were spread so wide, A spit of sand is thine, by heaven's decree, And wasting shores that scarce resist the sea: Is this Port-Royal on Jamaica's coast, The Spaniard's envy, and the Briton's boast! A shatter'd roof o'er every hut appears, And mouldering brick-work prompts the traveller's fears; A church, with half a priest, I grieve to see, Grass round its door, and rust upon its key!-- One only inn with tiresome search I found Where one sad negro dealt his beverage round;-- His was the part to wait the impatient call, He was our landlord, post-boy, pimp, and all; His wary eyes on every side were cast, Beheld the present, and revolv'd the past, Now here, now there, in swift succession stole, Glanc'd at the bar, or watch'd the unsteady bowl. No sprightly lads or gay bewitching maids[283] Walk on these wastes or wander in these shades; To other shores past times beheld them go, And some are slumbering in the caves below; A negro tribe but ill their place supply, With bending back, short hair, and downcast eye;[284] A feeble rampart guards the unlucky town, Where banish'd Tories come to seek renown, Where worn-out slaves their bowls of beer retail, And sun-burnt strumpets watch the approaching sail. Here (scarce escap'd the wild tornado's rage) Why sail'd I here to swell my future page! To these dull scenes with eager haste I came To trace the reliques of their ancient fame, Not worth the search!--what domes are left to fall, Guns, gales, and earthquakes shall destroy them all-- All shall be lost!--tho' hosts their aid implore, The Twelve Apostles[D] shall protect no more, Nor guardian heroes awe the impoverish'd plain; No priest shall mutter, and no saint remain, Nor this palmetto yield her evening shade, Where the dark negro his dull music play'd, Or casts his view beyond the adjacent strand And points, still grieving, to his native land, Turns and returns from yonder murmuring shore, And pants for countries he must see no more-- Where shall I go, what Lethe shall I find To drive these dark ideas from my mind! No buckram heroes can relieve the eye, And George's honours only raise a sigh-- Not even these walls a glad remembrance claim,[285] Where grief still wastes a half deluded dame, Whom to these coasts a British Paris bore, And basely left, lost virtue to deplore.-- In foreign climes detain'd from all she lov'd, By friends neglected, long by fortune prov'd, While sad and solemn pass'd the unwelcome day, What charms had life for her, to tempt her stay! Deceiv'd in all--for meanness could deceive-- Expecting still, and still condemn'd to grieve, She scarcely saw, to different hearts allied, That her dear Florio ne'er pursued a bride.-- Are griefs like thine to Florio's bosom known? Must these, alas, be ceaseless in your own?-- Life is a dream--its varying shades I see, But this base wanderer hardly dreams of thee. Ye mountains vast, whose heights the heaven sustain, Adieu, ye mountains, and fair Kingston's plain; Where Nature still the toils of art transcends-- In this dull spot the fine delusion ends, Where burning sands are borne by every blast And these mean fabrics still bewail the past; Where want, and death, and care, and grief reside, And threatening moons advance the imperious tide:-- Ye stormy winds, awhile your wrath suspend, Who leaves the land, a bottle, and a friend, Quits this bright isle for yon' blue seas and sky, Or even Port-Royal quits--without a sigh! _Sept. 1784._ [A] Pallisades a narrow strip of land about seven miles in length, running nearly from north to south, and forming the harbours of Port Royal and Kingston.--_Freneau's note, 1809 edition._ [B] A small river falling into Kingston Bay, nearly opposite Port Royal--and which has its source in the hills beyond Spanish Town.--_Freneau's note, 1809 edition._ [C] Old Port-Royal contained more than 1500 buildings, and these for the most part large and elegant. This unfortunate town was for a long time reckoned the most considerable mart of trade in the West Indies. It was destroyed on the 17th of June, 1692, by an earthquake which in two minutes sunk the far greater part of the buildings; in which disaster near 3000 people lost their lives.--_Freneau's note._ [D] A Battery so called, on the side of the harbour opposite to Port-Royal.--_Freneau's note._ [280] First published in the 1788 edition, the text of which I have followed. For the 1809 edition Freneau made numerous verbal changes. On an average, he changed a word in every line. No poem of Freneau's shows more clearly his peculiar mania for revision. In the 1795 edition the title is "Port Royal," in the 1809 edition it is "Written at Port Royal, in the Island of Jamaica--September, 1784." [281] The edition of 1809 adds: "Here _for their crimes_ (_perhaps_) in ages fled, Some vengeful fiend, familiar with the dead--" [282] The edition of 1809 adds: "Of ghosts all restless!--(cease they to complain-- More than a century should relieve their pain--)." A footnote adds the comment: "A superstition, at present, existing only among the ignorant." [283] "Handsome _Yankee_ maids."--_Ed. 1809._ [284] The edition of 1809 adds: "That gloomy race lead up the evening dance, Skip on the sands, or dart the alluring glance: Sincere are they?--no--on your gold they doat-- And in one hour--for that would cut your throat. All is deceit--half hell is in their song And from the silent thought?--_You have done us wrong!_" [285] This line and the fifteen following omitted from the later editions. TO SIR TOBY[286] A Sugar Planter in the interior parts of Jamaica, near the City of San Jago de la Vega, (Spanish Town) 1784 "_The motions of his spirit are black as night, And his affections dark as Erebus._" --SHAKESPEARE. If there exists a hell--the case is clear-- Sir Toby's slaves enjoy that portion here: Here are no blazing brimstone lakes--'tis true; But kindled Rum too often burns as blue; In which some fiend, whom nature must detest, Steeps Toby's brand, and marks poor Cudjoe's breast.[A] Here whips on whips excite perpetual fears, And mingled howlings vibrate on my ears: Here nature's plagues abound, to fret and teaze, Snakes, scorpions, despots, lizards, centipees-- No art, no care escapes the busy lash; All have their dues--and all are paid in cash-- The eternal driver keeps a steady eye On a black herd, who would his vengeance fly, But chained, imprisoned, on a burning soil, For the mean avarice of a tyrant, toil! The lengthy cart-whip guards this monster's reign-- And cracks, like pistols, from the fields of cane. Ye powers! who formed these wretched tribes, relate, What had they done, to merit such a fate! Why were they brought from Eboe's[B] sultry waste, To see that plenty which they must not taste-- Food, which they cannot buy, and dare not steal; Yams and potatoes--many a scanty meal!-- One, with a gibbet wakes his negro's fears, One to the windmill nails him by the ears; One keeps his slave in darkened dens, unfed, One puts the wretch in pickle ere he's dead: This, from a tree suspends him by the thumbs, That, from his table grudges even the crumbs! O'er yond' rough hills a tribe of females go, Each with her gourd, her infant, and her hoe; Scorched by a sun that has no mercy here, Driven by a devil, whom men call overseer-- In chains, twelve wretches to their labours haste; Twice twelve I saw, with iron collars graced!-- Are such the fruits that spring from vast domains? Is wealth, thus got, Sir Toby, worth your pains!-- Who would your wealth on terms, like these, possess, Where all we see is pregnant with distress-- Angola's natives scourged by ruffian hands, And toil's hard product shipp'd to foreign lands. Talk not of blossoms, and your endless spring; What joy, what smile, can scenes of misery bring?-- Though Nature, here, has every blessing spread, Poor is the labourer--and how meanly fed!-- Here Stygian paintings light and shade renew, Pictures of hell, that Virgil's[C] pencil drew: Here, surly Charons make their annual trip, And ghosts arrive in every Guinea ship, To find what beasts these western isles afford, Plutonian scourges, and despotic lords:-- Here, they, of stuff determined to be free, Must climb the rude cliffs of the Liguanee;[D] Beyond the clouds, in sculking haste repair, And hardly safe from brother traitors there.--[E] [A] This passage has a reference to the West India custom (sanctioned by law) of branding a newly imported slave on the breast, with a red hot iron, as an evidence of the purchaser's property.--_Freneau's note._ [B] A small negro kingdom near the river Senegal.--_Freneau's note._ [C] See Eneid, Book 6th.--and Fenelon's Telemachus, Book 18.--_Ib._ [D] The mountains northward of Kingston.--_Freneau's note._ [E] Alluding to the _Independent_ negroes in the blue mountains, who for a stipulated reward, deliver up every fugitive that falls into their hands, to the English Government.--_Ib._ [286] Text from the edition of 1809. The poem seems first to have been published in the _National Gazette_ of July 21, 1792, under the title, "The Island Field Hand," with the note: "Written some years ago at a sugar plantation in Jamaica." The present text contains numerous minor variations from the edition of 1795. The four lines beginning "The eternal driver" are original in the 1809 edition. ELEGY ON MR. ROBERT BELL[287] The celebrated humourist, and truly philanthropic Book-seller formerly of Philadelphia, written, 1786 By schools untaught, from Nature's source he drew That flow of wit which wits with toil pursue, Above dependence, bent to virtue's side; Beyond the folly of the folio's pride; Born to no power, he took no splendid part, Yet warm for freedom glowed his honest heart Foe to all baseness, not afraid to shame The little tyrant that usurped his claim: Bound to no sect, no systems to defend, He loved his jest, a female, and his friend:-- The tale well told, to each occasion fit, In him was nature--and that nature wit: Alike to pride and wild ambition dumb, He saw no terrors in the world to come. But, slighting sophists and their flimsy aid, To God and Reason left the works they made. In chace of fortune, half his life was whim, Yet fortune saw no sycophant in him; Bold, open, free, the world he called his own, But wished no wealth that cost a wretch a groan-- Too social Bell! in others so refined, One sneaking virtue ne'er possessed your mind-- Had Prudence only held her share of sway, Still had your cup been full, yourself been gay! But while we laughed, and while the glass went round, The lamp was darkened--and no help was found; On distant shores you died, where none shall tell, "Here rest the virtues and the wit of Bell." [287] First published in the _Freeman's Journal_, February 28, 1787, with the explanation, "Written more than two years ago." The date in the title above, taken from the 1809 edition, is doubtless wrong. "It is believed that Robert Bell, an Englishman or a Scotchman, who came to Philadelphia about 1772 or 1773, was the first person who kept a circulating library in this city. He had his place of business in Third street below Walnut. He was also one of the first to establish book auctions here, in which effort he met very serious opposition from the booksellers. He published several works prior to the Revolutionary War, but during that struggle he seems to have left the city. He died in Richmond, Va., Sept. 26, 1784."--_Watson's Annals._ He published Freneau's _American Independence_ in Philadelphia in 1778. ON THE FIRST AMERICAN SHIP[288] _Empress of China_, Capt. Greene That explored the rout to China, and the East-Indies, after the Revolution, 1784 With clearance from Bellona won She spreads her wings to meet the Sun, Those golden regions to explore Where George forbade to sail before. Thus, grown to strength, the bird of Jove, Impatient, quits his native grove, With eyes of fire, and lightning's force Through the blue æther holds his course. No foreign tars are here allowed To mingle with her chosen crowd, Who, when returned, might, boasting, say They shewed our native oak the way. To that old track no more confined, By Britain's jealous court assigned, She round the Stormy Cape[A] shall sail, And, eastward, catch the odorous gale. [A] _Cabo Tormentosa_ (The Cape of Storms) so called by _Vasco da Gama_, and by the earliest Portuguese adventurers to India--now called the cape of Good Hope.--_Freneau's note._ To countries placed in burning climes And islands of remotest times She now her eager course explores, And soon shall greet Chinesian shores. From thence their fragrant teas to bring Without the leave of Britain's king; And Porcelain ware, enchased in gold, The product of that finer mould. Thus commerce to our world conveys All that the varying taste can please; For us, the Indian looms are free, And Java strips her spicy tree. Great pile proceed!--and o'er the brine May every prosperous gale be thine, 'Till freighted deep with Asia's stores, You reach again your native shores. [288] Text from the edition of 1809. THE NEWSMONGER[289] A Character An insect lives among mankind For what wise ends by fate designed 'Tis hard, 'tis very hard, to find. In pain for all, but thanked by few Not twice a year he gets his due-- Yet, patiently he struggles through. Beneath some garret roof restrained To one dull place forever chained His word is, "little money gained." The flowers that deck the summer field, The bloom of spring, too long concealed, To him no hour of pleasure yield. His life is everlasting whim; The seasons change--but scarce for him-- On sheets of news his eyes grow dim. He life maintains on self-esteem, He plans, contrives, and lives by--scheme-- And blots good paper--many a ream. Distrest for those he never saw-- Of kings and nobles not in awe, He scorns their mandates, and their law. Relief he finds for others' woes-- The wants of all the world he knows-- His boots are only out at toes. Now, Europe's feuds distract his brains: Now, Asia's news his head contains-- But still his labour for his pains. The river Scheldt he opens wide, And Joseph's ships in triumph ride,-- The Dutchmen are not on his side. On great affairs condemned to fret,-- The interest on our foreign debt, He hopes good Louis may forget. He fears the banks will hurt our trade; And fall they must--without his aid-- Meanwhile his taylor goes unpaid. Our western posts, which Britons keep In spite of treaties, break his sleep-- He plans their capture--at one sweep. He grumbles at the price of flour, And mourns and mutters, many an hour, That congress have so little power, Although he has no ships to lose, The Algerines he loves to abuse-- And hopes to hear--some bloody news. The French (he thinks) will soon prepare To undertake some grand affair-- So 'tis but war "we need not care." Where Mississippi laves the plain He hopes the bold Kentucky swain, Will seize the forts, and plague Old Spain: Such morning whims, such evening dreams! Through wakeful nights he plans odd schemes, To dispossess her of those streams. He prophesies, the time must come When few will drink West India rum-- Our spirits will be proof at home. The Tories on New Scotland's coast, He thinks may of full bellies boast In half a century--at most. Then shakes his head, and shifts the scene-- Talks much about the "Empress Queen"-- And wonders what the Austrians mean? He raves, and scolds and seems afraid The States will break by China trade, "Since specie for their tea is paid." Then tells, that, "just about next June, Lunardi in his new balloon Will make a journey--to the moon." Thus, all the business of mankind, And all the follies we might find Are huddled in his shattered mind. 'Till taught to think of new affairs, At last, with death, he walks down stairs, And leaves--the wide world to his heirs. [289] Published in the _Freeman's Journal_, February 21, 1787. In the 1809 edition, which the text follows, 1784 is given as the date of composition. SKETCHES OF AMERICAN HISTORY[290] This American world, all our histories say, Secluded from Europe, long centuries lay, And peopled by beings whom white-men detest, The sons of the Tartars, that came from the west. These Indians, 'tis certain, were here long before ye all, And dwelt in their wigwams from time immemorial; In a mere state of nature, untutored, untaught, They did as they pleased, and they spoke as they thought-- No priests they had then for the cure of their souls, No lawyers, recorders, or keepers of rolls; No learned physicians vile nostrums concealed-- Their druggist was Nature--her shop was the field. In the midst of their forests how happy and blest, In the skin of a bear or buffalo drest! No care to perplex, and no luxury seen But the feast, and the song, and the dance on the green. Some bowed to the moon, and some worshipped the sun, And the king and the captain were centered in one; In a cabin they met, in their councils of state, Where age and experience alone might debate. With quibbles they never essayed to beguile, And Nature had taught them the orator's style; No pomp they affected, not quaintly refined The nervous idea that glanced on the mind. When hunting or battle invited to arms, The women they left to take care of their farms-- The toils of the summer did winter repay, While snug in their cabins they snored it away. If death came among them his dues to demand, They still had some prospects of comfort at hand-- The dead man they sent to the regions of bliss, With his bottle and dog, and his fair maids to kiss. * * * * * Thus happy they dwelt in a rural domain, Uninstructed in commerce, unpractised in gain, 'Till, taught by the loadstone to traverse the seas, Columbus came over, that bold Genoese. From records authentic, the date we can shew, One thousand four hundred and ninety and two Years, borne by the seasons, had vanished away, Since the babe in the manger at Bethlehem lay. What an æra was this, above all that had passed, To yield such a treasure, discovered at last-- A new world, in value exceeding the old, Such mountains of silver, such torrents of gold! Yet the schemes of Columbus, however well planned Were scarcely sufficient to find the main land; On the islands alone with the natives he spoke, Except when he entered the great Oronoque: In this he resembled old Moses, the Jew, Who, roving about with his wrong-headed crew, When at length the reward was no longer denied, From the top of Mount Pisgah he saw it, and died. These islands and worlds in the watery expanse, Like most mighty things, were the offspring of chance, Since steering for Asia, Columbus they say, Was astonished to find such a world in his way! No wonder, indeed, he was smit with surprize-- This empire of Nature was new to their eyes-- Cut short in their course by so splendid a scene, Such a region of wonders intruding between! Yet great as he was, and deserving no doubt, We have only to thank him for finding the rout; These climes to the northward, more stormy and cold, Were reserved for the efforts of Cabot the bold. * * * * * Where the sun in December appears to decline Far off to the southward, and south of the line, A merchant[A] of Florence, more fortunate still, Explored a new track, and discovered Brazil: [A] Americus Vespucius.--_Freneau's note._ Good Fortune, Vespucius, pronounced thee her own, Or else to mankind thou hadst scarcely been known-- By giving thy name, thou art ever renowned-- Thy name to a world that another had found! Columbia, the name was, that merit decreed, But Fortune and Merit have never agreed-- Yet the poets, alone, with commendable care Are vainly attempting the wrong to repair. The bounds I prescribe to my verse are too narrow To tell of the conquests of Francis Pizarro; And Cortez 'tis needless to bring into view, One Mexico conquered, the other Peru. Montezuma with credit in verse might be read, But Dryden has told you the monarch[B] is dead! And the woes of his subjects--what torments they bore, Las Casas, good bishop, has mentioned before: [B] Indian Emperor, a tragedy.--_Freneau's note._ Let others be fond of their stanzas of grief-- I hate to descant on the fall of the leaf-- Two scenes are so gloomy, I view them with pain, The annals of death, and the triumphs of Spain. Poor Atahualpa we cannot forget-- He gave them his utmost--yet died in their debt, His wealth was a crime that they could not forgive, And when they possessed it, forbade him to live. Foredoomed to misfortunes (that come not alone) He was the twelfth Inca that sat on the throne, Who fleecing his brother[C] of half his domains, At the palace of Cusco confined him in chains. [C] Huascar, who was legal heir to the throne.--_Ib._ * * * * * But what am I talking--or where do I roam? 'Tis time that our story was brought nearer home-- From Florida's cape did Cabot explore To the fast frozen region of cold Labradore. In the year fourteen hundred and ninety and eight He came, as the annals of England relate, But finding no gold in the lengthy domain, And coasting the country, he left it again. Next Davis--then Hudson adventured, they say, One found out a streight, and the other a bay, Whose desolate region, or turbulent wave One present bestowed him--and that was a grave. * * * * * In the reign of a virgin (as authors discover) Drake, Hawkins, and Raleigh in squadrons came over While Barlow and Grenville succeeded to these, Who all brought their colonies over the seas. These, left in a wilderness teeming with woes, The natives, suspicious, concluded them foes, And murdered them all without notice or warning, Ralph Lane, with his vagabonds, scarcely returning. In the reign of king James (and the first of the name,) George Summers, with Hacluit, to Chesapeake came, Where far in the forests, not doomed to renown, On the river Powhatan[D] they built the first town.[E] [D] James River, Virginia.--_Freneau's note._ [E] James Town.--_Ib._ Twelve years after this, some scores of dissenters To the northernmost district came seeking adventures; Outdone by the bishops, those great faggot fighters; They left them to rule with their cassocks and mitres. Thus banished forever, and leaving the sod, The first land they saw was the pitch of Cape Cod, Where famished with hunger and quaking with cold They planned their New-Plymouth--so called from the old. They were, without doubt, a delightful collection;-- Some came to be rid of a Stuart's direction, Some sailed with a view to dominion and riches, Some to pray without book, and a few to hang witches. Some, came on the Indians to shed a new light, Convinced long before that their own must be right, And that all who had died in the centuries past On the devil's lee shore were eternally cast. These exiles were formed in a whimsical mould, And were awed by their priests, like the Hebrews of old; Disclaimed all pretences to jesting and laughter, And sighed their lives through, to be happy hereafter. On a crown immaterial their hearts were intent, They looked towards Zion, wherever they went, Did all things in hopes of a future reward, And worried mankind--for the sake of the Lord. With rigour excessive they strengthened their reign, Their laws were conceived in the ill-natured strain, With mystical meanings the saint was perplext, And the flesh and the devil were slain by a text. The body was scourged, for the good of the soul, All folly discouraged by peevish controul, A knot on the head was the sign of no grace, And the Pope and his comrade were pictured in lace. A stove in their churches, or pews lined with green, Were horrid to think of, much more to be seen, Their bodies were warmed with the linings of love, And the fire was sufficient that flashed from above. 'Twas a crime to assert that the moon was opaque, To say the earth moved, was to merit the stake; And he that could tell an eclipse was to be, In the college of Satan had took his degree. On Sundays their faces were dark as a cloud-- The road to the meeting was only allowed, And those they caught rambling, on business or pleasure, Were sent to the stocks, to repent at their leisure. This day was the mournfullest day in the week-- Except on religion, none ventured to speak-- This day was the day to examine their lives, To clear off old scores, and to preach to their wives. Their houses were forts, that seemed proof against light; Their parlours, all day, were the blackness of night: And, as if at their thresholds a cannon did roar, The animals hardly dared open their door 'Till the sun disappeared--then, like a mole's snout In the dusk of the evening, their noses popped out. In the school of oppression though woefully taught, 'Twas only to be the oppressors they sought; All, all but themselves were be-deviled and blind, And their narrow-souled creed was to serve all mankind. This beautiful system of nature below They neither considered, nor wanted to know, And called it a dog-house wherein they were pent, Unworthy themselves, and their mighty descent. They never perceived that in Nature's wide plan There must be that whimsical creature called Man, Far short of the rank he affects to attain, Yet a link in its place, in creation's vast chain. * * * * * Whatever is foreign to us and our kind Can never be lasting, though seemingly joined-- The hive swarmed at length, and a tribe that was teazed Set out for Rhode-Island to think as they pleased. Some hundreds to Britain ran murmuring home-- While others went off in the forests to roam, When they found they had missed what they looked for at first, The downfall of sin, and the reign of the just. Hence, dry controversial reflections were thrown, And the old dons were vexed in the way they had shown; So those that are held in the work-house all night Throw dirt the next day at the doors, out of spite. Ah pity the wretches that lived in those days, (Ye modern admirers of novels and plays) When nothing was suffered but musty, dull rules, And nonsense from Mather and stuff from the schools! No story, like Rachel's, could tempt them to sigh, Susanna and Judith employed the bright eye-- No fine spun adventures tormented the breast, Like our modern Clarissa, Tom Jones, and the rest. Those tyrants had chosen the books for your shelves, (And, trust me, no other than writ by themselves, For always by this may a bigot be known, He speaks well of nothing but what is his own.) From indwelling evil these souls to release, The Quakers arrived with their kingdom of peace-- But some were transported and some bore the lash, And four they hanged fairly, for preaching up trash. The lands of New-England (of which we now treat) Were famous, ere that, for producing of wheat; But the soil (or tradition says strangely amiss) Has been pestered with pumpkins from that day to this. * * * * * Thus, feuds and vexations distracted their reign, (And perhaps a few vestiges still may remain) But time has presented an offspring as bold, Less free to believe, and more wise than the old. Their phantoms, their wizzards, their witches are fled, Matthew Paris's[F] story with horror is read-- His daughters, and all the enchantments they bore-- And the demon, that pinched them, is heard of no more. [F] See Neale's History of New England.--_Freneau's note._ Their taste for the fine arts is strangely increased, And Latin's no longer a mark of the beast: Mathematics, at present, a farmer may know, Without being hanged for connections below. Proud, rough, Independent, undaunted and free, And patient of hardships, their task is the sea, Their country too barren their wish to attain, They make up the loss by exploring the main. Wherever bright Phoebus awakens the gales I see the bold Yankees expanding their sails, Throughout the wide ocean pursuing their schemes, And chacing the whales on its uttermost streams. No climate, for them, is too cold or too warm, They reef the broad canvass, and fight with the storm; In war with the foremost their standards display, Or glut the loud cannon with death, for the fray. No valour in fable their valour exceeds, Their spirits are fitted for desperate deeds; No rivals have they in our annals of fame, Or if they are rivalled, 'tis York has the claim. Inspired at the sound, while the name she repeats, Bold Fancy conveys me to Hudson's retreats-- Ah, sweet recollection of juvenile dreams In the groves, and the forests that skirted his streams! How often, with rapture, those streams were surveyed, When, sick of the city, I flew to the shade-- How often the bard, and the peasant shall mourn Ere those groves shall revive, or those shades shall return! Not a hill, but some fortress disfigures it round! And ramparts are raised where the cottage was found! The plains and the vallies with ruin are spread, With graves in abundance, and bones of the dead. The first that attempted to enter the streight (In anno one thousand six hundred and eight) Was Hudson (the same that we mentioned before, Who was lost in the gulph that he went to explore.) For a sum that they paid him (we know not how much) This captain transferred all his right to the Dutch; For the time has been here, (to the world be it known,) When all a man sailed by, or saw, was his own. The Dutch on their purchase sat quietly down, And fixed on an island to lay out a town; They modelled their streets from the horns of a ram, And the name that best pleased them was, New Amsterdam. They purchased large tracts from the Indians for beads, And sadly tormented some runaway Swedes, Who (none knows for what) from their country had flown, To live here in peace, undisturbed and alone. New Belgia, the Dutch called their province, be sure, But names never yet made possession secure, For Charley (the second that honoured the name) Sent over a squadron, asserting his claim: (Had his sword and his title been equally slender, In vain had they summoned Mynheer to surrender) The soil they demanded, or threatened their worst, Insisting that Cabot had looked at it first. The want of a squadron to fall on their rear Made the argument perfectly plain to Mynheer-- Force ended the contest--the right was a sham, And the Dutch were sent packing to hot Surinam. 'Twas hard to be thus of their labours deprived, But the age of Republics had not yet arrived-- Fate saw--though no wizzard could tell them as much-- That the crown, in due time, was to fare like the Dutch. [290] Published in the _Freeman's Journal_, December 15, 1784, under the pseudonym "K." Republished in the editions of 1795 and 1809. Text from the latter edition. THE PROGRESS OF BALLOONS[291] "_Perdomita tellus, tumida cesserunt freta,_ "_Inferna nostros regna sensere impetus;_ "_Immune coelum est, degnus Alcidæ labor,_ "_In alta mundi spatia sublimes feremur._" --_Senec. Herc. Furens._ Assist me, ye muses, (whose harps are in tune) To tell of the flight of the gallant balloon! As high as my subject permit me to soar To heights unattempted, unthought of before, Ye grave learned Doctors, whose trade is to sigh, Who labour to chalk out a road to the sky, Improve on your plans--or I'll venture to say, A chymist, of Paris, will show us the way. The earth on its surface has all been survey'd, The sea has been travell'd--and deep in the shade The kingdom of Pluto has heard us at work, When we dig for his metals wherever they lurk. But who would have thought that invention could rise To find out a method to soar to the skies, And pierce the bright regions, which ages assign'd To spirits unbodied, and flights of the mind. Let the gods of Olympus their revels prepare-- By the aid of some pounds of inflammable air We'll visit them soon--and forsake this dull ball With coat, shoes and stockings, fat carcase and all! How France is distinguish'd in Louis's reign! What cannot her genius and courage attain? Thro'out the wide world have her arms found the way, And art to the stars is extending her sway. At sea let the British their neighbours defy-- The French shall have frigates to traverse the sky, In this navigation more fortunate prove, And cruise at their ease in the climates above. If the English should venture to sea with their fleet, A host of balloons in a trice they shall meet. The French from the zenith their wings shall display, And souse on these sea-dogs and bear them away. Ye sages, who travel on mighty designs, To measure meridians and parallel lines-- The task being tedious--take heed, if you please-- Construct a balloon--and you'll do it with ease. And ye who the heav'n's broad concave survey, And, aided by glasses, its secrets betray, Who gaze, the night through, at the wonderful scene, Yet still are complaining of vapours between, Ah, seize the conveyance and fearlesly rise To peep at the lanthorns that light up the skies, And floating above, on our ocean of air, Inform us, by letter, what people are there. In Saturn, advise us if snow ever melts, And what are the uses of Jupiter's belts; (Mars being willing) pray send us word, greeting, If his people are fonder of fighting than eating. That Venus has horns we've no reason to doubt, (I forget what they call him who first found it out) And you'll find, I'm afraid, if you venture too near, That the spirits of cuckolds inhabit her sphere. Our folks of good morals it wofully grieves, That Mercury's people are villains and thieves, You'll see how it is--but I'll venture to shew For a dozen among them, twelve dozens below. From long observation one proof may be had That the men in the moon are incurably mad; However, compare us, and if they exceed They must be surprizingly crazy indeed. But now, to have done with our planets and moons-- Come, grant me a patent for making balloons-- For I find that the time is approaching--the day When horses shall fail, and the horsemen decay. Post riders, at present (call'd Centaurs of old) Who brave all the seasons, hot weather and cold, In future shall leave their dull poneys behind And travel, like ghosts, on the wings of the wind. The stagemen, whose gallopers scarce have the power Through the dirt to convey you ten miles in an hour, When advanc'd to balloons shall so furiously drive You'll hardly know whether you're dead or alive. The man who at Boston sets out with the sun, If the wind should be fair, may be with us at one, At Gunpowder Ferry drink whiskey at three And at six be at Edentown, ready for tea. (The machine shall be order'd, we hardly need say, To travel in darkness as well as by day) At Charleston by ten he for sleep shall prepare, And by twelve the next day be the devil knows where[292]. When the ladies grow sick of the city in June, What a jaunt they shall have in the flying balloon! Whole mornings shall see them at toilets preparing, And forty miles high be their afternoon's airing. Yet more with its fitness for commerce I'm struck; What loads of tobacco shall fly from Kentuck, What packs of best beaver--bar-iron and pig, What budgets of leather from Conocoheague! If Britain should ever disturb us again, (As they threaten to do in the next George's reign) No doubt they will play us a set of new tunes, And pepper us well from their fighting balloons. To market the farmers shall shortly repair With their hogs and potatoes, wholesale, thro' the air, Skim over the water as light as a feather, Themselves and their turkies conversing together. Such wonders as these from balloons shall arise-- And the giants of old, that assaulted the skies With their Ossa on Pelion, shall freely confess That all they attempted was nothing to this. [291] _Freeman's Journal_, December 22, 1784. The year 1782, in which Cavallo made his memorable experiments, may be taken as the initial date in the history of aerial navigation. In October, 1753, Rozier ventured upon the first balloon ascension, though he ventured only fifty feet from the ground. On November 21st of the same year, with the Marquis d'Arlandes, he made the first aerial expedition, ascending from the castle la Muette in the presence of a vast multitude and remaining in the air twenty-five minutes. Text follows the edition of 1786 which bears the date "1785." [292] Freneau's wild dream has been realized, but not in the way which he indicated. ON THE EMIGRATION TO AMERICA[293] And Peopling the Western Country To western woods, and lonely plains, Palemon from the crowd departs, Where Nature's wildest genius reigns, To tame the soil, and plant the arts-- What wonders there shall freedom show, What mighty states successive grow! From Europe's proud, despotic shores Hither the stranger takes his way, And in our new found world explores A happier soil, a milder sway, Where no proud despot holds him down, No slaves insult him with a crown. What charming scenes attract the eye, On wild Ohio's savage stream! There Nature reigns, whose works outvie The boldest pattern art can frame; There ages past have rolled away, And forests bloomed but to decay. From these fair plains, these rural seats, So long concealed, so lately known, The unsocial Indian far retreats, To make some other clime his own, When other streams, less pleasing, flow, And darker forests round him grow. Great Sire[A] of floods! whose varied wave Through climes and countries takes its way, To whom creating Nature gave Ten thousand streams to swell thy sway! No longer shall they useless prove, Nor idly through the forests rove; [A] Mississippi.--_Freneau's note._ Nor longer shall your princely flood From distant lakes be swelled in vain, Nor longer through a darksome wood Advance, unnoticed, to the main, Far other ends, the heavens decree-- And commerce plans new freights for thee. While virtue warms the generous breast, There heaven-born freedom shall reside, Nor shall the voice of war molest, Nor Europe's all-aspiring pride-- There Reason shall new laws devise, And order from confusion rise. Forsaking kings and regal state, With all their pomp and fancied bliss,[294] The traveller owns, convinced though late, No realm so free, so blest as this-- The east is half to slaves consigned, Where kings and priests enchain the mind.[295] O come the time, and haste the day, When man shall man no longer crush, When Reason shall enforce her sway, Nor these fair regions raise our blush, Where still the African complains, And mourns his yet unbroken chains. Far brighter scenes a future age, The muse predicts, these States will hail, Whose genius may the world engage, Whose deeds may over death prevail, And happier systems bring to view, Than all the eastern sages knew. [1784.] [293] First published in Bailey's _Pocket Almanac_ for 1785, and reprinted almost without change in the later editions of Freneau. Text from the edition of 1809. [294] (A debt that reason deems amiss).--_Ed. 1786._ [295] And half to slavery more refin'd.--_Ib._ THE SEASONS MORALIZED[296] They who to warmer regions run, May bless the favour of the sun, But seek in vain what charms us here, Life's picture, varying with the year. Spring, and her wanton train advance Like Youth to lead the festive dance, All, all her scenes are mirth and play, And blushing blossoms own her sway. The Summer next (those blossoms blown) Brings on the fruits that spring had sown, Thus men advance, impelled by time, And Nature triumphs in her prime. Then Autumn crowns the beauteous year, The groves a sicklier aspect wear; And mournful she (the lot of all) Matures her fruits, to make them fall. Clad in the vestments of a tomb, Old age is only Winter's gloom-- Winter, alas! shall spring restore, But youth returns to man no more. [296] First published in Bailey's _Pocket Almanac_ for 1785. The edition of 1809 is used. ON THE DEATH OF COLONEL LAURENS[297] Since on her plains this generous chief expired, Whom sages honoured, and whom France admired;[298] Does Fame no statues to his memory raise, Nor swells one column to record his praise Where her palmetto shades the adjacent deeps, Affection sighs, and Carolina weeps! Thou, who shalt stray where death this chief confines, Revere the patriot, subject of these lines: Not from the dust the muse transcribes his name, And more than marble shall declare his fame Where scenes more glorious his great soul engage, Confest thrice worthy in that closing page When conquering Time to dark oblivion calls, The marble totters, and the column falls. LAURENS! thy tomb while kindred hands adorn, Let northern muses, too, inscribe your urn.-- Of all, whose names on death's black list appear, No chief, that perished, claimed more grief sincere, Not one, Columbia, that thy bosom bore, More tears commanded, or deserved them more! Grief at his tomb shall heave the unwearied sigh, And honour lift the mantle to her eye: Fame through the world his patriot name shall spread, By heroes envied and by monarchs read: Just, generous, brave--to each true heart allied: The Briton's terror, and his country's pride; For him the tears of war-worn soldiers ran, The friend of freedom, and the friend of man. Then what is death, compared with such a tomb, Where honour fades not, and fair virtues bloom; When silent grief on every face appears, The tender tribute of a nation's tears; Ah! what is death, when deeds like his, thus claim The brave man's homage, and immortal fame! [297] Published in the _Freeman's Journal_, October 17, 1787, introduced as follows: "Mr. BAILEY, The subsequent lines were written two or three years after the event that occasioned them, but have never been printed. If you think them in any degree worthy of the memory of the patriotic young officer they attempt to celebrate (and whose death has been so deeply regretted throughout America) I must request you to insert them in your Journal. A. B." The 1788 edition prints the poem with this title: "To the Memory of the brave, accomplished and patriotic Col. JOHN LAURENS, Who in the 27th year of his age, was killed in an engagement with a detachment of the British from Charleston, near the river Cambahee, in South Carolina, _August 1782_." The text follows the edition of 1809. [298] In 1780 Laurens was sent by Congress on a mission to France for a loan and supplies, in which he was successful. ON THE VICISSITUDES OF THINGS[299] "The constant lapse of rolling years Awakes our hopes, provokes our fears Of something yet unknown; We saw the last year pass away, But who, that lives can safely say, The next shall be his own?" So hundreds talk--and thousands more Descant their moral doctrines o'er; And when the preaching's done, Each goes his various, wonted way, To labour some, and some to play-- So goes the folly on. How swift the vagrant seasons fly; They're hardly born before they die, Yet in their wild career, Like atoms round the rapid wheel, We seem the same, though changing still, Mere reptiles of a year. Some haste to seek a wealthy bride, Some, rhymes to make on one that died; And millions curse the day, When first in Hymen's silken bands The parson joined mistaken hands, And bade the bride obey. While sad Amelia vents her sighs, In epitaphs and elegies, For her departed dear, Who would suppose the muffled bell, And mourning gowns, were meant to tell, Her grief will last--a year? In folly's path how many meet-- What hosts will live to lie and cheat-- How many empty pates May, in this wise, eventful year, In native dignity appear To manage Rising States! How vain to sigh!--the wheel must on And straws are to the whirlpool drawn, With ships of gallant mien-- What has been once, may time restore; What now exists, has been before-- Years only change the scene. In endless circles all things move; Below, about, far off, above, This motion all attain-- If Folly's self should flit away, She would return some New year's day, With millions in her train. Sun, moon, and stars, are each a sphere, The earth the same, (or very near), Sir Isaac has defined-- In circles each coin is cast, And hence our cash departs so fast, Cash--that no charm can bind. From you to us--from us it rolls To comfort other cloudy souls:-- If again we make it square,[A] Perhaps the uneasy guest will stay To cheer us in some wintry day, And smooth the brow of care. [A] The old Continental.--_Freneau's note._ [299] This appeared first as the regular New Year's sheet of the _Freeman's Journal_, January 1, 1785. Its original title was, "New Year's Verses, addressed to the Customers of the Freeman's Journal by the Lad who carries it." Text from the edition of 1809. PEWTER-PLATTER ALLEY[300] In Philadelphia (As it appeared in January, 1784) From Christ-Church graves, across the way, A dismal, horrid place is found, Where rushing winds exert their sway, And Greenland winter chills the ground: No blossoms there are seen to bloom, No sun pervades the dreary gloom! The people of that gloomy place In penance for some ancient crime Are held in a too narrow space, Like those beyond the bounds of time, Who darkened still, perceive no day, While seasons waste, and moons decay. Cold as the shade that wraps them round, This icy region prompts our fear; And he who treads this frozen ground Shall curse the chance that brought him here-- The slippery mass predicts his fate, A broken arm, a wounded pate. When August sheds his sultry beam, May Celia never find this place, Nor see, upon the clouded stream, The fading summer in her face; And may she ne'er discover there The grey that mingles with her hair. The watchman sad, whose drowsy call Proclaims the hour forever fled, Avoids this path to Pluto's hall; For who would wish to wake the dead!-- Still let them sleep--it is no crime-- They pay no tax to know the time. No coaches here, in glittering pride, Convey their freight to take the air, No gods nor heroes here reside, Nor powdered beau, nor lady fair-- All, all to warmer regions flee, And leave the glooms to Towne[A] and me. [A] BENJAMIN TOWNE, then Printer of the EVENING POST.--_Freneau's note._ [300] _Freeman's Journal_, February 23, 1795. ON THE DEATH OF THE REPUBLICAN PATRIOT AND STATESMAN, GENERAL JOSEPH REED[A] [A] First published in the _Freeman's Journal_, March 9, 1785, with the following introduction: "On Saturday morning last [March 5] departed this life in the forty-third year of his age, GENERAL JOSEPH REED, Esq., formerly President of this State; and on Sunday his remains were interred in the Presbyterian burying ground in Arch Street. His funeral was attended by his excellency the President and the Superior Executive Council, the Honourable the Speaker and the General Assembly, the Militia Officers and a greater number of citizens than we've ever seen here on any similar occasion." Text follows the edition of 1809. Reed was one of the leading figures of the Revolutionary era. As delegate to the Continental Congress, aide and secretary to Washington, Adjutant General, volunteer soldier, and Governor of Pennsylvania, he was an active and able man, and his early death was much regretted. Soon to the grave[301] descends each honoured name That raised their country to this blaze[302] of fame: Sages, that planned, and chiefs that led the way To Freedom's temple, all too soon decay, Alike submit to one impartial[303] doom, Their glories closing in perpetual gloom, Like the pale[304] splendours of the evening, fade, While night advances, to complete the shade. REED, 'tis for thee we shed the unpurchased tear, Bend o'er thy tomb, and plant our laurels there: Your acts, your life,[305] the noblest pile transcend, And Virtue, patriot Virtue, mourns her friend, Gone to those realms, where worth may claim regard, And gone where virtue meets her best reward. No single art engaged his vigorous[306] mind, In every scene his active genius shined: Nature in him, in honour to our age, At once composed the soldier and the sage-- Firm to his purpose, vigilant, and bold, Detesting traitors, and despising gold, He scorned all bribes from Britain's hostile throne For all his country's wrongs he held[307] his own. REED, rest in peace: for time's impartial page Shall raise the blush on[308] this ungrateful age: Long in these climes thy name shall flourish fair, The statesman's pattern, and the poet's care; Long in these climes[309] thy memory shall remain, And still new tributes from new ages gain, Fair to the eye that injured honour rise-- Nor traitors triumph while the patriot dies. The following are the variations in the 1786 edition: [301] Swift to the dust. [302] These heights. [303] Unalter'd. [304] Dim. [305] Thy own brave deeds. [306] Manly. [307] Were _thrice_. [308] Blast the wrongs of. [309] On these plains. A RENEGADO EPISTLE[310] To the Independent Americans We Tories, who lately were frightened away, When you marched into York all in battle array, Dear Whigs, in our exile have somewhat to say. From the clime of New Scotland we wish you to know We still are in being--mere spectres of woe, Our dignity high, but our spirits are low. Great people we are, and are called the king's friends; But on friendships like these what advantage attends? We may stay and be starved[311] when we've answered his ends! The Indians themselves, whom no treaties can bind, We have reason to think are perversely inclined-- And where we have friends is not easy to find. From the day we arrived on this desolate shore We still have been wishing to see you once more, And your freedom enjoy, now the danger is o'er. Although we be-rebelled you up hill and down, It was all for your good--and to honour a crown Whose splendours have spoiled better eyes than our own. That traitors we were, is no more than our due, And so may remain for a century through, Unless we return, and be tutored by you. Although with the dregs of the world we are classed, We hope your resentment will soften at last, Now your toils are repaid, and our triumphs are past. When a matter is done, 'tis a folly to fret-- But your market-day mornings we cannot forget, With your coaches to lend, and your horses to let. Your dinners of beef, and your breakfasts of toast! But we have no longer such blessings to boast, No cattle to steal, and no turkies to roast. Such enjoyments as these, we must tell you with pain, 'Tis odds we shall only be wishing in vain Unless we return, and be brothers again. We burnt up your mills and your meetings, 'tis true, And many bold fellows we crippled and slew-- (Aye! we were the boys that had something to do!) Old Huddy[312] we hung on the Neversink shore-- But, Sirs, had we hung up a thousand men more, They had all been avenged in the torments we bore, When Asgill to Jersey you foolishly fetched, And each of us feared that his neck would be stretched, When you were be-rebelled, and we were be-wretched. In the book of destruction it seems to be written The Tories must still be dependent on Britain-- The worst of dependence that ever was hit on. Now their work is concluded--that pitiful jobb-- They send over convicts to strengthen our mob-- And so we do nothing but snivel and sob. The worst of all countries has fallen to our share, Where winter and famine provoke our despair, And fogs are for ever obscuring the air. Although there be nothing but sea dogs to feed on, Our friend Jemmy Rivington made it an Eden-- But, alas! he had nothing but lies to proceed on. Deceived we were all by his damnable schemes-- When he coloured it over with gardens and streams, And grottoes and groves, and the rest of his dreams. Our heads were so turned by that conjuror's spell, We swallowed the lies he was ordered to tell-- But his "happy retreats" were the visions of hell. We feel so enraged we could rip up his weazon, When we think of the soil he described with its trees on, And the plenty that reigned, and the charms of each season. Like a parson that tells of the joys of the blest To a man to be hanged--he himself thought it best To remain where he was, in his haven of rest. Since he helped us away by the means of his types, His precepts should only have lighted our pipes, His example was rather to honour your stripes. Now, if we return, as we're bone of your bone, We'll renounce all allegiance to George and his throne And be the best subjects that ever were known. In a ship, you have seen (where the duty is hard) The cook and the scullion may claim some regard, Though it takes a good fellow to brace the main yard. Howe'er you despise us, because you are free, The world's at a loss for such people as we, Who can pillage on land, and can plunder at sea. So long for our rations they keep us in waiting-- The Lords and the Commons, perhaps, are debating If Tories can live without drinking or eating. So we think it is better to see you, by far-- And have hinted our meaning to governor Parr[A]-- The worst that can happen is--feathers and tar. [A] Then Governor of Nova-Scotia.--_Freneau's note._ _Nova-Scotia, Feb. 1784._ [310] Text from the edition of 1809. First published in the _Freeman's Journal_, March 30, 1785, under the title, "A New York Tory's Epistle." [311] "We may starve and be damn'd."--_Ed. 1786._ [312] See note to poem "On Gen. Robertson's Proclamation," Vol. II, p. 162. THE AMERICAN SIBERIA[313] When Jove from darkness smote the sun, And Nature earth from chaos won, One part she left a barren waste By stormy seas and fogs embraced. Jove saw her vile neglect, and cried, "What madness did your fancy guide-- Why have you left so large a space With winter brooding o'er its face? No trees of stately growth ascend, Eternal fogs their wings expand-- My favorite--man--I placed not there, But spirits of a darker sphere. If Nature's self neglects her trade What strange confusion will be made: Such climes as these I doomed to fall On Saturn's cold unsocial ball: But such a blemish, here, to see-- How can it else but anger me? Where chilling winds forever freeze, What fool will fix on lands like these?" Nature, abashed, thus made reply: "When earth I formed, I don't deny, Some parts I portioned out for pain, Hard storms, dull skies, and--little gain. Mankind are formed with different souls: Some will be suited near the poles, Some pleased beneath the scorching line, And some, New Scotland, will be thine. Yet, in due time, my plastic hand Shall mould it o'er, if you command; By you I act--if you stand still The world comes tumbling down the hill!" Untouched--(said Jove)--remain the place! In days to come I'll form a race, Born to betray their country's cause, And aid an alien monarch's laws. When traitors to their country die, To lands, like this, their phantoms fly; But when the brave by death decay The mind explores a different way. Then, Nature, hold your aiding hand-- Let fogs and tempests chill the land; While this degenerate work of thine To knaves and knapsacks I resign. [313] Text follows the edition of 1809. EPISTLE TO SYLVIUS[314] On the Folly of Writing Poetry Of all the fools that haunt our coast The scribbling tribe I pity most: Their's is a standing scene of woes, And their's no prospect of repose. Then, Sylvius, why this eager claim To light your torch at Clio's flame? To few she shews sincere regard, And none, from her, should hope reward. A garret high, dark dismal room, Is still the pensive poet's doom: Hopes raised to heaven must be their lot, Yet bear the curse, to be forgot. Hourly they deal with Grecian Jove, And draw their bills on banks above: Yet stand abashed, with all their fire, When brought to face some country 'squire. To mend the world, is still their aim: The world, alas! remains the same, And so must stand to every age, Proof to the morals of the page! The knave that keeps a tippling inn, The red-nosed boy that deals out gin, If aided by some paltry skill May both be statesmen when they will. The man that mends a beggar's shoes, The quack that heals your negro's bruise, The wretch that turns a cutler's stone, Have wages they can call their own: The head, that plods in trade's domains, Gets something to reward its pains; But Wit--that does the world beguile, Takes for its pay--an empty smile! Yet each presumes his works will rise, And gain a name that never dies; From earth, and cold oblivion freed, Immortal, in the poets' creed! Can Reason in that bosom reign Which fondly feeds a hope so vain, When every age that passes by Beholds a crowd of poets die! Poor Sappho's fate shall Milton know-- His scenes of grief and tales of woe No honours, that all Europe gave, No merit--shall from ruin save. To all that write and all that read Fate shall, with hasty step, succeed! Even Shakespeare's page, his mirth, his tears May sink beneath this weight of years. Old Spenser's doom shall, Pope, be thine The music of each moving line Scarce bribes an age or two to stay, Admire your strain--then flit away. The people of old Chaucer's times Were once in raptures with his rhymes, But Time--that over verse prevails, To other ears tells other tales. Why then so sad, dear rhyming friends-- One common fate on both attends, The bards that sooth the statesman's ear, And him--who finds no audience there. Mere structures formed of common earth, Not they from heaven derive their birth, Or why through life, like vagrants, pass To mingle with the mouldering mass?-- Of all the souls, from Jove that came To animate this mortal frame, Of all the myriads, on the wing, How few can taste the Muse's spring! Sejanus, of mercantile skill, Without whose aid the world stands still, And by whose wonder-working play The sun goes round--(his flatterers say) Sejanus has in house declared "These States, as yet, can boast no bard, And all the sing-song of our clime Is merely nonsense, fringed with rhyme." With such a bold, conceited air When such assume the critic's chair, Low in the dust is genius laid, The muses with the man in trade. Then, Sylvius, come--let you and I On Neptune's aid, once more rely: Perhaps the muse may still impart Her balm to ease the aching heart. Though cold might chill and storms dismay, Yet Zoilus will be far away: With us at least, depart and share No garret--but resentment there. [314] On Nov. 24, 1785, Freneau sailed from Middletown Point as Master of the sloop _Monmouth_ bound for southern ports. This lyric, first published in the edition of 1788, seems to have been his valedictory to the muse for a season. His conflict with Oswald and other critics had much embittered him. The text is from the edition of 1809. THE DEPARTURE[315] 1785 From Hudson's cold, congealing streams As winter comes, I take my way Where other suns prompt other dreams, And shades, less willing to decay, Beget new raptures in the heart, Bid spleen's dejective crew depart, And wake the sprightly lay. Good-natur'd Neptune, now so mild, Like rage asleep, or madness chain'd, By dreams amus'd or love beguil'd, Sleep on 'till we our port have gain'd. The gentle breeze that curls the deep, Shall paint a finer dream on sleep!-- Ye nymphs, that haunt his grottoes low, Where sea green trees on coral grow, No tumults make Lest he should wake, And thus the passing shade betray The sails that o'er his waters stray. Sunk is the sun from yonder hill, The noisy day is past; The breeze decays, and all is still, As all shall be at last; The murmuring on the distant shore, The dying wave is all I hear, The yellow fields now disappear, No painted butterflies are near, And laughing folly plagues no more. The woods that deck yon' fading waste, That every wanton gale embrac'd, Ere summer yet made haste to fly; How smit with frost the pride of June! How lost to me! how very soon The fairy prospects die! Condemn'd to bend to winter's stroke, Low in the dust the embowering oak Has bid the fading leaf descend, Their short liv'd verdure at an end; How desolate the forests seem, Beneath whose shade The enamour'd maid Was once so fond to dream. What now is left of all that won The eye of mirth while summer stay'd-- The birds that sported in the sun, The sport is past, the song is done; And nature's naked forms declare, The rifled groves, the vallies bare, Persuasively, tho' silent, tell, That at the best they were but drest Sad mourners for the funeral bell! Now while I spread the venturous sail To catch the breeze from yonder hill, Say, what does all this folly mean? Why grieve to pass the wat'ry scene? Is fortitude to heaven confin'd?-- No--planted also in the mind, She smooths the ocean when she will. But life is pain--what ills must try, What malice dark and calumny, Indifference, with her careless eye, And slander, with her tale begun; Bold ignorance, with forward air, And cowardice, that has no share In honours gain'd, or trophies won. To these succeed, (and these are few Of nature's dark, unseemly crew) Unsocial pride, and cold disgust, Servility, that licks the dust; Those harpies that disgrace the mind; Unknown to haunt the human breast When pleasure her first garden dress'd-- But vanish'd is the shade so gay, And lost in gloom the summer day That charm'd the soul to rest. What season shall restore that scene When all was calm and all serene, And happiness no empty sound, The golden age, that pleas'd so well?-- The Mind that made it shall not tell To those on life's uncertain road; Where lost in folly's idle round, And seeking what shall ne'er be found We press to one abode. [315] This poem was first published in the _Freeman's Journal_, April 18, 1787, with a note "Written at leaving Sandy Hook on a voyage to the West Indies." It is dated Nov. 26, 1785; it was, therefore, written at sea. It was published in the 1788 edition, which the text follows, and omitted from the 1809 edition. A NEWSMAN'S ADDRESS[316] Old Eighty-Five discharg'd and gone, Another year comes hastening on To quit us in its turn: With outspread wings and running glass Thus Time's deluding seasons pass, And leave mankind to mourn. But strains like this add grief to grief;-- We are the lads that give relief With sprightly wit and merry lay: Our various page to all imparts Amusement fit for social hearts, And drives the monster, spleen, away. Abroad our leaves of knowledge fly, And twice a week they live and die; Short seasons of repose! Fair to your view our toils display The monarch's aim, what patriots say, Or sons of art disclose: Whate'er the barque of commerce brings From sister States, or foreign kings, No atom we conceal: All Europe's prints we hourly drain, All Asia's news our leaves contain, And round our world we deal. If falsehoods sometimes prompt your fears, And horrid news from proud Algiers, That gives our tars such pain; Remember all must have their share, And all the world was made for care, The monarch and the swain. If British isles (that once were free, In Indian seas, to you and me) All entrance still restrain, Why let them starve with all their host When British pride gives up the ghost, And courts our aid in vain. We fondly hope some future year Will all our clouded prospects clear, And commerce stretch her wings; New tracks of trade new wealth disclose, While round the globe our standard goes In spite of growling kings. Materials thus together drawn To tell you how the world goes on May surely claim regard; One simple word we mean to say, This is our jovial New Year's day, And now, our toils reward. [316] Freneau arrived in Charleston Dec. 8, and remained there until Jan. 23, when he cleared for Sunbury. On Jan. 1st, he wrote the above verses for the carriers of the Charleston _Columbian Herald_. They were republished in the editions of 1788 and 1795, which later edition the text follows. LITERARY IMPORTATION[317] However we wrangled with Britain awhile We think of her now in a different stile, And many fine things we receive from her isle; Among all the rest, Some demon possessed Our dealers in knowledge and sellers of sense To have a good bishop imported from thence. The words of Sam Chandler[A] were thought to be vain, When he argued so often and proved it so plain "That Satan must flourish till bishops should reign:" Though he went to the wall With his project and all, Another bold Sammy[B], in bishop's array, Has got something more than his pains for his pay. [A] "Who laboured for the establishment of an American Episcopacy, previously to the revolutionary war."--_Freneau's note._ [B] Bishop Samuel Seabury, of Connecticut.--_Ib._ It seems we had spirit to humble a throne, Have genius for science inferior to none, But hardly encourage a plant of our own: If a college be planned, 'Tis all at a stand 'Till to Europe we send at a shameful expense, To send us a book-worm to teach us some sense. Can we never be thought to have learning or grace Unless it be brought from that horrible[318] place Where tyranny reigns with her impudent face; And popes and pretenders, And sly faith-defenders Have ever been hostile to reason and wit, Enslaving a world that shall conquer them yet. 'Tis a folly to fret at the picture I draw: And I say what was said by a Doctor Magraw;[C] "If they give us their Bishops, they'll give us their law." How that will agree With such people as we, Let us leave to the learned to reflect on awhile, And say what they think in a handsomer stile. [C] A noted practitioner in physic, formerly of N. York.--_Freneau's note, Ed. 1788._ [317] First published, as far as can be learned, in the 1788 edition, and dated Charleston, S. C., 1786. The text is taken from the edition of 1809. [318] "Damnable."--_Ed. 1788._ THE ENGLISHMAN'S COMPLAINT[319] In Carolina Arriving from Britain with cargo so nice Once more have I touched at these regions of rice! Dear Ashley, with pleasure thy stream I review: But how changed are these plains that we wished to subdue. If through the wild woods he extended his reign, And death and the hangman were both in his train, Cornwallis no longer disturbs your repose, His lordship is dead or at least in a doze. By Sullivan's island how quiet we pass; Fort Johnson no longer salutes us, alas!-- The season has been you did nothing but mourn, But now you will laugh at a Briton's return! Instead of gay soldiers that walked the parade, Here is nothing but draymen and people in trade; Instead of our navy that thundered around, Here is nothing but ships without guns to be found. Instead of Lord Rawdon and Nesbit Balfour, Whose names and whose notions you cannot endure, But whom in their glory you could not forget When puffed by the froth of the Royal Gazette: Instead of those tyrants, who homewards have flown, This country is ruled by a race of its own, Whom once we could laugh at--but now we must say Seem rising to be in a handsomer way. To us and our island eternally foes, How tedious you are in forgetting your woes, Your plundered plantations you still will remember, Although we have left you--three years last December! [319] This first appeared in the 1788 edition. The date of composition is indicated by the last line. The British evacuated the city in 1782. The edition of 1809 has been followed. THE WILD HONEY SUCKLE[320] Fair flower, that dost so comely grow, Hid in this silent, dull retreat, Untouched thy honied blossoms blow, Unseen thy little branches greet: No roving foot shall crush thee here, No busy hand provoke a tear. By Nature's self in white arrayed, She bade thee shun the vulgar eye, And planted here the guardian shade, And sent soft waters murmuring by; Thus quietly thy summer goes, Thy days declining to repose. Smit with those charms, that must decay, I grieve to see your future doom; They died--nor were those flowers more gay, The flowers that did in Eden bloom; Unpitying frosts, and Autumn's power Shall leave no vestige of this flower. From morning suns and evening dews At first thy little being came: If nothing once, you nothing lose, For when you die you are the same; The space between, is but an hour, The frail duration of a flower. [320] Freneau doubtless wrote this poem in Charleston, S. C., in July, 1786. It appeared first in the _Freeman's Journal_, August 2, 1786, and was republished in the edition of 1788, and in the later editions, almost without change. The poet probably refers to the _Rhododendron Viscosum_, or as some call it the _Asalia viscosun_ since it is the only flower popularly known as the wild honeysuckle that is both white and fragrant. According to Chapman's _Southern Flora_, it flowers in the latitude of Charleston in July and August. The text is from the edition of 1809. ON A BOOK CALLED UNITARIAN THEOLOGY[321] In this choice work, with wisdom penned, we find The noblest system to reform mankind, Bold truths confirmed, that bigots have denied, By most perverted, and which some deride. Here, truths divine in easy language flow, Truths long concealed, that now all climes shall know Here, like the blaze of our material sun, Enlightened Reason proves, that God is One-- As that, concentered in itself, a sphere, Illumes all Nature with its radiance here, Bids towards itself all trees and plants aspire, Awakes the winds, impels the seeds of fire, And still subservient to the Almighty plan, Warms into life the changeful race of man; So--like that sun--in heaven's bright realms we trace One Power of Love, that fills unbounded space, Existing always by no borrowed aid, Before all worlds--eternal, and not made-- To That indebted, stars and comets burn, Owe their swift movements, and to That return! Prime source of wisdom, all-contriving mind, First spring of Reason, that this globe designed; Parent of order, whose unwearied hand Upholds the fabric that his wisdom planned, And, its due course assigned to every sphere, Revolves the seasons, and sustains the year!-- Pure light of Truth! where'er thy splendours shine, Thou art the image of the power divine; Nought else, in life, that full resemblance bears, No sun, that lights us through our circling years, No stars, that through yon' charming azure stray, No moon, that glads us with her evening ray, No seas, that o'er their gloomy caverns flow, No forms beyond us, and no shapes below! Then slight--ah slight not, this instructive page, For the mean follies of a dreaming age: Here to the truth, by Reason's aid aspire, Nor some dull preacher of romance admire; See One, Sole God, in these convincing lines, Beneath whose view perpetual day-light shines; At whose command all worlds their circuits run, And night, retiring, dies before the sun! Here, Man no more disgraced by Time appears, Lost in dull slumbers through ten thousand years; Plunged in that gulph, whose dark unfathomed wave Men of all ages to perdition gave; An empty dream, or still more empty shade, The substance vanished, and the form decayed:-- Here Reason proves, that when this life decays, Instant, new life in the warm bosom plays, As that expiring, still its course repairs Through endless ages, and unceasing years. Where parted souls with kindred spirits meet, Wrapt to the bloom of beauty all complete; In that celestial, vast, unclouded sphere, Nought there exists but has its image here! All there is Mind!--That Intellectual Flame, From whose vast stores all human genius came, In which all Nature forms on Reason's plan-- Flows to this abject world, and beams on Man! [321] This was published in the _Freeman's Journal_, Oct 4, 1786, under the title "On the Honourable Emanuel Swedenborg's Universal Theology." A column advertisement of the book appeared in the _Journal_ Oct. 25. The poem was reprinted in the 1788 collection and in the later edition of 1809, which the text follows. TO ZOILUS[322] [A Severe Critic] Six sheets compos'd, struck off, and dry The work may please the world (thought I)-- If some impell'd by spleen or spite, Refuse to read, then let them write: I too, with them, shall have my turn, And give advice--to tear or burn. Now from the binder's, hurried home, In neat array my leaves are come: Alas, alas! is this my all? The volume is so light and small, That, aim to save it as I can, 'Twill fly before Myrtilla's fan. Why did I no precautions use? To curb these frolics of the Muse? Ah! why did I invoke the nine To aid these humble toils of mine-- That now forebode through every page The witling's sneer, the critic's rage. Did I, for this, so often rise Before the sun illum'd the skies, And near my Hudson's mountain stream Invoke the Muses' morning dream, And scorn the winds that blew so cool! I did--and I was more the fool. Yet slender tho' the book, and small, And harmless, take it all in all, I see a monstrous wight appear, A quill suspended from his ear; Its fate depends on his decree, And what he says must sacred be! A brute of such terrific mien At wild Sanduski ne'er was seen, And in the dark Kentuckey groves No beast, like this, for plunder roves, Nor dwells in Britain's lowering clime A reptile, so severe on rhyme. The monster comes, severe and slow, His eyes with arrowy lightnings glow, Takes up the book, surveys it o'er, Exclaims, "damn'd stuff!"--but says no more: The book is damn'd by his decree, And what he says must gospel be! But was there nothing to his taste?-- Was all my work a barren waste-- Was not one bright idea sown, And not one image of my own?-- Its doom was just, if this be true: But Zoilus shall be sweated too. Give me a cane of mighty length, A staff proportion'd to my strength, Like that, by whose destructive aid The man of Gath his conquests made; Like that, which once on Etna's shore The shepherd of the mountain bore: For wit traduc'd at such a rate To other worlds I'll send him, straight, Where all the past shall nothing seem, Or just be imag'd, like a dream; Where new vexations are design'd, No dull quietus for the mind! Arm'd with a staff of such a size Who would not smite this man of lies: Here, scribbler, help me! seize that pen With which he blasts all rhyming men: His goose-quill must not with him go To persecute the bards below.-- How vast a change an hour may bring! How abject lies this snarling thing! No longer wit to him shall bow, To him the world is nothing now; And all he writ, and all he read Is, with himself, in silence laid! Dead tho' he be--(not sent to rest) No keen remorse torments my breast: Yet, something in me seems to tell I might have let him live, as well;-- 'Twas his to snarl, and growl, and grin, And life had, else, a burthen been. [322] This was first published in the _Freeman's Journal_, Oct 11, 1786, though it undoubtedly was written before the poet left Philadelphia. It was republished in the 1788 edition under the title "The Pamphleteer and the Critic." The text follows the 1795 edition. ON THE LEGISLATURE OF GREAT-BRITAIN PROHIBITING THE SALE, IN LONDON, OF Doctor David Ramsay's History of the Revolutionary war in South Carolina[323] Some bold bully Dawson, expert in abusing, Having passed all his life in the practice of bruising; At last, when he thinks to reform and repent, And wishes his days had been soberly spent, Though a course of contrition in earnest begins, He scarcely can bear to be told of his sins. So the British, worn out with their wars in the west (Where burning and murder their prowess confessed) When, at last, they agreed 'twas in vain to contend (For the days of their thieving were come to an end) They hired some historians to scribble and flatter, And foolishly thought they could hush up the matter. But Ramsay[324] arose, and with Truth on his side, Has told to the world what they laboured to hide; With his pen of dissection, and pointed with steel, If they ne'er before felt he has taught them to feel, Themselves and their projects has truly defined, And dragged them to blush at the bar of mankind. As the author, his friends, and the world might expect, They find that the work has a damning effect-- In reply to his Facts they abuse him and rail, And prompted by malice, prohibit the sale. But, we trust, their chastisement is only begun; Thirteen are the States--and he writes but of one; Ere the twelve that are silent their story have told, The king will run mad, and the book will be sold. [323] _Freeman's Journal_, Oct. 11, dated Philadelphia, Oct. 9. The text follows the edition of 1809. [324] David Ramsay's "History of the Revolution in South Carolina," was published at Trenton, New Jersey, in 1785. THE DEATH SONG OF A CHEROKEE INDIAN[325] The sun sets in night, and the stars shun the day, But glory remains when their lights fade away. Begin, ye tormentors: your threats are in vain For the son of Alknomock can never complain. Remember the woods, where in ambush he lay, And the scalps which he bore from your nation away! Why do ye delay?--'till I shrink from my pain? Know the son of Alknomock can never complain. Remember the arrows he shot from his bow Remember your chiefs by his hatchet laid low The flame rises high, you exult in my pain? Know the son of Alknomock will never complain. I go to the land where my father is gone: His ghost shall rejoice in the fame of his son Death comes like a friend, he relieves me from pain And thy son, O Alknomock, has scorned to complain. [325] The first trace I can find of this poem is in the initial number of Matthew Carey's _American Museum_, Jan. 1, 1787, where it is placed among the selected poetry and assigned to P. Freneau. This testimony of Carey's as to its genuineness carries with it considerable weight. Knapp, who in 1829 reviewed the poem as Freneau's, doubtless had before him a copy of the _Museum_. The poem, however, is not included in any of the poet's collections and I can find no earlier newspaper appearance, although my search has not been exhaustive. The authenticity of a poem suspected to be Freneau's may always be gravely doubted if it is not found to be included in his collected works, for he hoarded his poetic product, especially in his earlier period, with miserly care. The poem appeared in 1806 among the poems of Mrs. John Hunter with the title "The Death Song, written for and adapted to, an original Indian air." Several of Mrs. Hunter's best poems had been long in circulation before she was induced to collect them. In 1822 Maria Edgeworth introduced the poem into her book "Rosamond," ascribing it to her. She added the following note: "The idea of this ballad was suggested several years ago by hearing a gentleman who resided many years among the tribe called the Cherokees, sing a wild air, which he assured me was customary for these people to chant with a barbarous jargon implying contempt for their enemies in the moments of torture and death. I have endeavored to give something of the characteristic spirit and sentiment of those brave savages." STANZAS Written at the foot of Monte Souffriere, near the Town of Basseterre, Guadaloupe[326] These Indian isles, so green and gay In summer seas by nature placed-- Art hardly told us where they lay, 'Till tyranny their charms defaced: Ambition here her efforts made, And avarice rifled every shade. Their genius wept, his sons to see By foreign arms untimely fall, And some to distant climates flee, Where later ruin met them all: He saw his sylvan offspring bleed, That envious natures might succeed. The Chief, who first o'er untried waves To these fair islands found his way, Departing, left a race of slaves, Cortez, your mandate to obey, And these again, if fame says true, To extirpate the vulgar crew. No more to Indian coasts confined, The Patron, thus, indulged his grief; And to regret his heart resigned, To see some proud European chief, Pursue the harmless Indian race, Torn by his dogs in every chace.[327] Ah, what a change! the ambient deep No longer hears the lover's sigh; But wretches meet, to wail and weep The loss of their dear liberty: Unfeeling hearts possess these isles, Man frowns--and only nature smiles. Proud of the vast extended shores The haughty Spaniard calls his own, His selfish heart restrains his stores, To other climes but scarcely known:[328] His Cuba lies a wilderness, Where slavery digs what slaves possess. Jamaica's sweet, romantic vales In vain with golden harvests teem; Her endless spring, her fragrant gales More than Elysian magic seem:[329] Yet what the soil profusely gave Is there denied the toiling slave. Fantastic joy and fond belief Through life support the galling chain; Hope's airy prospects banish griefs, And bring his native lands again: His native groves a heaven display, The funeral is the jocund day. For man oppressed and made so base, In vain from Jove fair virtue fell; Distress be-glooms the toiling race, They have no motive to excel: In death alone their miseries end, The tyrant's dread--is their best friend. How great their praise let truth declare, Who touched with honour's sacred flame, Bade freedom to some coasts repair To urge the slave's neglected claim; And scorning interest's swinish plan, Gave to mankind the rights of man. Ascending there, may freedom's sun In all his force serenely clear, A long, unclouded circuit run, Till little tyrants disappear; And a new race, not bought or sold, Rise from the ashes of the old. [326] Published in the _Freeman's Journal_ of Jan. 31, 1787, with the introduction "The following verses, wrote by Mr. Freneau are subjoined to a short and accurate account of the West Indies in the printer's _Pocket Almanac_ for the present year." The title of the poem suffered many variations in later editions. In the 1788 edition, where it was reprinted from the _Journal_, it was entitled "Stanzas written In a blank leaf of Burke's History of the West India Islands," and it was signed "Pennsylvania, 1786." In the 1795 edition it was entitled "Caribbeana," and in the edition of 1809, the text of which I have followed, it received the title above given. The poem was carefully revised for the edition of 1795. [327] "While he to tears his heart resign'd With pain he saw the falling leaf; 'And thus (he cry'd) our reign must end, We, like the leaves, must now descend.'" _Ed. 1788._ [328] "No other world may share those stores To other worlds so little known." _Ed. 1788._ [329] "Did more to me than magic seem." _Ib._ ON THE CREW OF A CERTAIN VESSEL[330] Several of whom happened to be of similar names to Celebrated Foreign Clergymen In life's unsettled, odd career What changes every day appear To please or plague the eye: A goodly brotherhood of priests Are here transformed to swearing beasts Who heaven and hell defy. Here Bonner, bruised with many a knock, Has changed his surplice for a frock; Old Erskine swabs the decks, And Watts, who once such pleasure took In writing Hymns--here, turned a cook, Sinners no longer vex. Here Burnet, Tillotson, and Blair, With Jemmy Hervey, curse and swear, Here Cudworth mixes grog; Pearson the crew to dinner hails, A graceless Sherlock trims the sails, And Bunyan heaves the log. [330] The index to the edition of 1795 instead of "vessel" gives "ship of war." The text follows the edition of 1809. THE BERMUDA ISLANDS[331] "Bermuda, walled with rocks, who does not know, That happy island, where huge lemons grow," &c. _Waller's Battle of the Summer Islands._ These islands fair with many a grove are crowned, With cedars tall, gay hills, and verdant vales, But dangerous rocks on every side is found, Fatal to him who unsuspecting sails. The gay Palmetto shades the adjacent wave: Blue, ocean water near the lime-tree breaks!-- I leave the scene!--this stormy quarter leave, And rove awhile by Harrington's sweet lake. In every vale fair woodland nymphs are seen In bloom of youth, to mourn some absent love, Who, wandering far on Neptune's rude domain, Heaves the fond sigh at every new remove. From hill to hill I see Amanda stray, Searching, with anxious view, the encircling main, To espy the sail, so long, so far away, Rise from the waves, and bless her sight again. Now, on some rock, with loose, dishevelled hair, Near dashing waves, the sorrowing beauty stands, Hoping that each approaching barque may bear Homeward the wandering youth from foreign lands. Oh! may no gales such faithful loves destroy, No hidden rock to Hymen fatal prove: And thou, fond swain, thy nicest art employ Once more on these sweet isles to meet your love. When verging to the height of thirty-two, And east or west you guide the dashy prow; Then fear by night the dangers of this shore, Nature's wild garden, placed in sixty-four.[A] Here many a merchant his lost freight bemoans, And many a gallant ship has laid her bones. [A] Lat. 32 deg. 20 min. N.--Long. 63.40 W.--and about 780 miles East of the coast of South Carolina.--_Freneau's note._ [331] During several weeks in 1778 Freneau resided in Bermuda. While there he seems to have been greatly impressed by an instance of inconstancy. He has in several prose sketches, notably in "Light Summer Reading," 1788, and in the following series of poems, composed at different times, described the incident. There is a tradition that Freneau spent several weeks in the family of the Governor of Bermuda and that it was the daughter of this official who was the unfortunate Amanda. Some traditions have mentioned Freneau himself as the lover. The text is from the edition of 1809. FLORIO TO AMANDA[332] Lamp of the pilot's hope! the wanderer's dream, Far glimmering o'er the wave, we saw thy beam: Forced from your aid by cold December's gale As near your isle we reefed the wearied sail: From bar to bar, from cape to cape I roam, From you still absent, still too far from home.-- What shall repay me for these nights of pain, And weeks of absence on this restless main, Where every dream recalls that charming shade, Where once, Amanda, once with you I strayed, And fondly talked, and counted every tree, And minutes, ages, when removed from thee. What sad mistake this wandering fancy drew To quit my natives shores, the woods, and You, When safely anchored on that winding stream, Where you were all my care, and all my theme: There, pensive, loitering, still from day to day, The pilot wondered at such strange delay, Musing, beheld the northern winds prevail, Nor once surmised that Love detained the sail. Blest be the man, who, fear beneath him cast, From his firm decks first reared the tapering mast; And catching life and motion from the breeze, Stretched his broad canvas o'er a waste of seas; And taught some swain, whom absence doomed to mourn His distant fair one--taught a quick return: He, homeward borne by favouring gales, might find Remembrance welcome to his anxious mind, And grateful vows, and generous thanks might pay To Him, who filled the sail, and smoothed the way. To me, indeed! the heavens less favouring prove: Each day, returning, finds a new remove-- Sorrowing, I spread the sail, while slowly creeps The weary vessel o'er a length of deeps; Her northern course no favouring breeze befriends, Hail, storm, and lightning, on her path attends: Here, wintry suns their shrouded light restrain, Stars dimly glow, and boding birds complain; Here, boisterous gales the rapid Gulph controul, Tremendous breakers near our Argo roll; Here cloudy, sullen Hatteras, restless, raves Scorns all repose, and swells his weight of waves: Here, drowned so late, sad cause of many a tear, Amyntor floats upon his watery bier; By bursting seas to horrid distance tossed, Thou, Palinurus, in these depths wert lost, When, torn by waves, and conquered by the blast, Art strove in vain, and ruin seized each mast. Now, while the winds their wonted aid deny, For other ports, from day to day, we try Strive, all we can, to gain the unwilling shore, Dream still of you--the faithful chart explore; See other groves, in happier climates placed Untouched their bloom, and not one flower defaced. Did Nature, there, a heaven of pleasure shew, Could they be welcome, if not shared with you?-- Lost are my toils--my longing hopes are vain: Yet, 'midst these ills, permit me to complain, And half regret, that, finding fortune fail, I left your cottage--to direct the sail: Unmoved, amidst this elemental fray, Let me, once more, the muses' art essay, Once more--amidst these scenes of Nature's strife, Catch at her forms and mould them into life; By Fancy's aid, to unseen coasts repair, And fondly dwell on absent beauty there. [332] On Jan. 20, 1789, Freneau was at Castle Ireland, Bermuda, where eleven years before he had passed five delightful weeks in the family of the English Governor. The above lines were written on the tempestuous return voyage, doubtless inspired by her who soon afterward became his wife. The text follows the 1809 version. PHILANDER: OR THE EMIGRANT[333] While lost so long to his Arcadian shade, Careless of fortune and of fame he stray'd, Philander to a barbarous region came And found a partner in a colder shade, Fair as Amanda; and perhaps might claim With her the impassion'd soul, and friendship's holy flame; For sprightly loves upon her bosom play'd, And youth was in her blush, and every shepherd said She was a modest and accomplish'd dame. What have I done, (the wandering shepherd cry'd) Thus to be banish'd from a face so fair, (For now the frosts had spoil'd the daisies' pride, And he once more for roving did prepare) Ah, what have I to do with swelling seas Who once could pipe upon the hollow reed?-- I take no joy in such rude scenes as these, Nor look with pleasure on the vagrant weed That gulphy streams from rugged caverns bore, Which floats thro' every clime, and never finds a shore! But other fields and other flowers were mine, 'Till wild disorder drove me from the plain. And the black dogs of war were seen to join, Howl o'er the soil, and dispossess the swain: Why must I leave these climes of frost and snow?-- Were it not better in these glooms to stay, And, while on high the autumnal tempests blow, Let others o'er the wild seas take their way, And I with my Livinia's tresses play?-- Ah, no, no, no! the imperious wave demands That I must leave these shores, and lose these lands And southward to the high equator stray: But Fancy now has lost her vernal hue; See Nature in her wintry garb array'd-- And where is that fine dream which once she drew While yet by Cambria's stream she fondly play'd! Lavinia heard his long complaint, and said, Wouldst thou, for me, detain the expecting sail--? Go, wanderer, go--the trees have lost their shade, And my gay flowers are blasted by the gale, And the bright stream is chill'd that wandered thro' the vale: Ah, why, Philander, do you sigh, so sad! Why all this change in such a jovial lad? Smooth seas shall be your guard, and, free from harms, Restore you, safely, to Lavinia's arms! Or should the eastern tempest rend your sail, Trust me, dear shepherd, should the seas prevail, And you be laid in Neptune's cradle low, The winds will bring me back the woeful tale When I must to the long shore weeping go, And while I see the ruffian surge aspire, Some consolation will it be to know No pain or anguish can afflict the head The limbs or stomach, when the heart is dead. Thus long discoursing, on the bank they stood, The heavy burthen'd barque at anchor lay, While the broad topsails, from the yards unfurl'd, Shook in the wind, and summon'd him away; Brisk blew the gales, and curl'd the yielding flood, Nor had he one excuse to urge his stay-- Be chang'd (he said) ye winds that blow so fair; Why do not tempests harrow up the deep, And all but the moist south in quiet sleep! To the bleak shore the parting lovers came, And while Philander did his sighs renew, So near the deep they bade their last farewell That the rough surge, to quench the mutual flame Burst in and broke the embrace, and o'er Lavinia flew; While a dark cloud hung lowering o'er the main, From whence the attendants many an omen drew, And said Philander would not come again! Now to their various heights the sails ascend, And southward from the land their course they bore. Lavinia mourn'd the lover and the friend, And stood awhile upon the sandy shore, 'Till interposing seas the hull conceal'd, And distant sails could only greet her view, Like a faint cloud that brush'd the watery field, And swell'd by whistling winds, impetuous, flew: Then to a neighbouring hill the nymph withdrew, And the dear object from that height survey'd, 'Till all was lost and mingled with the main, And night descended, with her gloomy shade, And kindled in the heavens her starry train. Safe to the south the ocean-wading keel In one short month its rapid course achiev'd, And the cold star, that marks the Arctic pole, Was in the bosom of the deep receiv'd: And now the weary barque at anchor rode Where Oronoko pours his sultry wave, Moist Surinam, by torrents overflow'd, And Amazonia vends the fainting slave;-- Philander, there, not fated to return, Perceiv'd destruction in his bosom burn, And the warm flood of life too fiercely, glow: The vertic sun a deadly fever gave, And the moist soil bestow'd his bones a grave, Deep in the waste, where oceans overflow, And Oronoko's streams the forests lave. Oft' to the winding shore Lavinia came Where fond Philander bade his last adieu, (And that steep hill which gave her the last view) Till seven long years had round their orbits ran, Yet no Philander came, or none she knew; Alas (she cry'd) for every nymph but me Each sea-bleach'd sail some welcome wanderer brings, And all but I get tidings of their friends; Sad Mariamne drowns herself in woe If one poor month Amyntor quits her arms, And says, "from Ashley's stream he comes too slow,"-- And bodes the heavy storm, and midnight harms: What would she say, if doom'd to wait, like me, And mourn long years, and no Philander see! [333] The text follows the edition of 1795. THE FAIR SOLITARY[334] No more these groves a glad remembrance claim Where grief consumes a half deluded dame, Whom to these isles a modern Theseus bore, And basely left, frail virtue to deplore;-- In foreign climes detained from all she loved, By friends neglected, long by Fortune proved, While sad and solemn passed the unwelcome day What charms had life for her, to tempt her stay? Deceived in all; for meanness could deceive, Expecting still, and still condemned to grieve, She scarcely saw--to different hearts allied That her dear Florio ne'er pursued a bride! Are griefs, like thine, to Florio's bosom known?-- Must these, alas! be ceaseless in your own? Life is a dream!--its varying shades I see; But this cold wanderer hardly dreams of thee-- The bloom of health, which bade all hearts adore, To your pale cheek what physic shall restore? Vain are those drugs that art and love prepares, No art redeems the waste of sighs and tears! [334] Published in the 1795 edition under the title "The Mourning Nun." Text from the edition of 1809. AMANDA IN A CONSUMPTION[335] Smit by the glance of your bright eyes When I, Amanda, fondly gaze, Strange feelings in my bosom rise And passion all my reason sways: Worlds I would banish from my view, And quit the gods--to talk with you. The smile that decks your fading cheek, To me a heavy heart declares; When you are silent I would speak But cowardice alarms my fears: All must be sense that you do prize, All that I say--be grave and wise. When wandering in the evening shade I shared her pain, and calmed her grief, A thousand tender things I said, But all I said gave no relief: When from her hair I dried the dew, She sighed, and said--I am not for you! When drooping, dull, and almost dead With fevers brought from sultry climes, She would not wrap my fainting head; But recommended me some rhymes On patience and on fortitude, And other things--less understood. When, aiming to engage her heart With verses from the muses' stock; She sighed, regardless of the art, And counted seconds by the clock; "And thus, (she said) will verse decay, "And thus the muse will pass away!" When languishing upon her bed In willow shades, remote from towns, We came; and while Priscilla read Of chrystal skies and golden crowns: She bade us at a distance stand, And leaned her head upon her hand. So, drooping hangs the fading rose, When summer sends the beating shower: So, to the grave Amanda goes, Her whole duration--but an hour! Who shall controul the sad decree, Or what, fair girl, recover thee? Such virtue in that spirit dwells-- Such fortitude amidst such pain!-- And, now, with pride my bosom swells, To think I have not lived in vain. For, slighting all the sages knew, I learn philosophy from you. [335] The _Freeman's Journal_ printed this poem on Feb. 7, 1787, with the date of composition Jan. 26, 1787. The lady's name in this original version was Cynthia. The poem was reprinted in the 1788 collection as a part of the story "Light Summer Reading." The half mad poet, who is infatuated with the lovely Marcia, writes the verses and inscribes them "To Marcia." It seems to have been a favorite with the poet. He republished it in the _National Gazette_ in 1792 under the title "Marcella in a Consumption." Text from the edition of 1809. ELEGIAC LINES[336] With life enamoured, but in death resigned, To seats congenial flew the unspotted mind: Attending spirits hailed her to that shore Where this world's winter chills the soul no more. Learn hence, to live resigned;--and when you die No fears will seize you, when that hour is nigh. Transferred to heaven, Amanda has no share In the dull business of this world of care. Her blaze of beauty, even in death admired, A moment kindled, but as soon expired. Sweet as the favourite offspring of the May Serenely mild, not criminally gay: Adorned with all that nature could impart To please the fancy and to gain the heart; Heaven ne'er above more innocence possessed, Nor earth the form of a diviner guest: A mind all virtue!--flames descended here From some bright seraph of some nobler sphere; Yet, not her virtues, opening into bloom, Nor all her sweetness saved her from the tomb, From prospects darkened, and the purpose crossed, Misfortune's winter,--and a lover lost; Nor such resemblance to the forms above, The heart of goodness, and the soul of love! Ye thoughtless fair!--her early death bemoan, Sense, virtue, beauty, to oblivion gone.[337] [336] In the 1788 edition this appeared as two poems. The opening six lines had the title "Epitaph" and the remainder was entitled "Lines on the Death of a Lady." In the 1809 edition, the text of which is followed here, the poem was placed in the group of Amanda poems. [337] "And while you mourn your fate, think on your own."--_Ed. 1788._ THE INSOLVENT'S RELEASE[338] (By H. Salem) Not from those dismal dreary coasts I come Where wizzard Faustus chews his brimstone rolls, Nor have I been to wrangle with the men Of that sad country, where, for want of rum, Dead putrid water from the stagnant fen Is drank, unmingled, by departed souls: Nor from that dog-house do I bring you news, Where Macedonian Philip[A] mends old shoes, But from that dreadful place arrived, Where men in debt at cribbage play, And I most cunningly contrived To fatten on two groats a day-- Full on my back now turned the key, The 'squire himself is not so free. When to these rugged walls, a fathom thick, I came, directed by the sheriff's stick, Alas, said I, what can they mean to do! I am not conscious of one roguish trick! I am no thief--I took no Christian's life, Nor have I meddled with the parson's wife, (Which would have been a dreadful thing you know) Then, by these gloomy walls, this iron gate Appointed by the wisdom of your state To shut in little rogues, and keep out great; Tell me, ye pretty lads, that deal in law, Ye men of mighty wigs, ye judges, say-- Say! by the jailor's speckled face That never beamed one blush of grace; How long must I In prison lie For just nine guineas--that I cannot pay! Return, ye happy times, when all were free, No jails on land, no nets at sea; When mountain beasts unfettered ran, And man refused to shut up man, As men of modern days have shut up me!-- This is the dreary dark abode Of poverty and solitude; Such was the gloomy cell where Bunyan lay While his dear pilgrim helped the time away-- Such was the place where Wakefield's vicar drew Grave morals from the imprisoned crew, And found both time to preach and pray. In bed of straw and broken chair What consolation could be found! No gay companions ventured there To push the ruddy liquor round! From jug of stone I drank, alone, A beverage, neither clear nor strong No table laid, No village maid Came there to cheer me with her song; My days were dull, my nights were long! My evening dreams, My morning schemes Were how to break that cruel chain, And, Jenny, be with you again. [338] The version in the _Freeman's Journal_ is dated Philadelphia, April 10, 1787. The title in the 1788 version is "The Insolvent's Release and Miseries of a Country Jail." The "H. Salem" was first added in the edition of 1809, the text of which I have followed. [A] See Lucian's Dialogues; to the following effect: "Great scholars have in Lucian read, When Philip, king of Greece, was dead His soul and body did divide. And each part took, a different side; One rose a star, the other fell Below--and mended shoes in hell."--_Freneau's note._ MAY TO APRIL[339] Without your showers, I breed no flowers, Each field a barren waste appears; If you don't weep, my blossoms sleep, They take such pleasures in your tears. As your decay made room for May, So I must part with all that's mine: My balmy breeze, my blooming trees To torrid suns their sweets resign! O'er April dead, my shades I spread: To her I owe my dress so gay-- Of daughters three, it falls on me To close our triumphs on one day: Thus, to repose, all Nature goes; Month after month must find its doom: Time on the wing, May ends the Spring, And Summer dances on her tomb! [339] First published in the _Freeman's Journal_ where it was signed Philadelphia, April 16, 1787. Text from the edition of 1809. TO AN AUTHOR[340] Your leaves bound up compact and fair, In neat array at length prepare, To pass their hour on learning's stage,[341] To meet the surly critic's rage; The statesman's slight, the smatterer's[342] sneer-- Were these, indeed, your only[343] fear, You might be tranquil and resigned: What most should touch your fluttering mind;[344] Is that, few critics[345] will be found To sift[346] your works, and deal the wound. Thus, when one fleeting year is past On some bye-shelf your book is cast--[347] Another comes, with something new,[348] And drives you fairly out of view: With some to praise, but more to blame, The mind[349] returns to--whence it came; And some alive, who scarce could read[350] Will publish satires on the dead. Thrice happy Dryden[A], who could meet Some rival bard in every street! When all were bent on writing well It was some credit to excel:--[351] [A] See Johnson's lives of the English Poets.--_Freneau's note._ Thrice happy Dryden, who could find A Milbourne for his sport designed-- And Pope, who saw the harmless rage Of Dennis bursting o'er his page Might justly spurn the critic's aim, Who only helped to swell his fame. On these bleak climes by Fortune thrown, Where rigid Reason reigns alone, Where lovely Fancy has no sway, Nor magic forms about us[352] play-- Nor nature takes her summer hue Tell me, what has the muse to do?-- An age employed in edging steel Can no poetic raptures feel; No solitude's attracting power,[353] No leisure of the noon day hour, No shaded stream, no quiet grove Can this fantastic century move; The muse of love in no request-- Go--try your fortune[354] with the rest, One of the nine you should engage,[355] To meet the follies of the age:-- On one, we fear, your choice must fall-- The least engaging of them all--[356] Her visage stern--an angry style-- A clouded brow--malicious smile-- A mind on murdered victims placed-- She, only she, can please the taste! [340] First published in the 1788 edition. It doubtless records the poet's mood a year or two after his first book, the 1786 collection, was given to the public. Its original title was "An Author's Soliloquy." In 1795 the title was changed to "An Author on Authorship." Text from the 1809 edition. [341] "Time's broad stage."--_Ed. 1788._ [342] "Pedants."--_Ib._ [343] The poem in the 1788 version is wholly in the first person. [344] "What most torments my boding mind."--_Ed. 1788._ [345] "No critic."--_Ib._ [346] "Read."--_Ib._ [347] "With dead men's works my book is class'd."--_Ib._ [348] This line and the following not in the original version. [349] "Soul."--_Ib._ [350] "And I must wear the marks of time Who hardly flourish'd in my prime."--_Ed. 1788._ [351] In the 1788 version two lines follow: "While those condemn'd to stand alone Can only by themselves be known."--_Ib._ [352] "Around her."--_Ib._ [353] "No fabled Love's enchanting power, Nor tale of Flora's painted bower, Nor woodland haunt, or murmuring grove, Can their prosaic bosoms move."--_Ib._ [354] "I'll try my fortune."--_Ib._ [355] "Which of the Nine shall I engage To suit the humour of the age."--_Ib._ [356] Followed by: "So late she does her wreathes prepare I hardly think them worth my care."--_Ib._ TO MISFORTUNE[357] Dire Goddess of the haggard brow, Misfortune! at that shrine I bow Where forms uncouth pourtray thee still, A leaky ship, a doctor's bill: A poet damn'd, a beggar's prayer, The critic's growl, the pedant's sneer, The urgent dun, the law severe, A smoky house, rejected love, And friends that all but friendly prove. Foe to the pride of scheming man Whose frown controuls the wisest plan, To your decree we still submit Our views of gain, our works of wit. Untaught by you the feeble mind A dull repose, indeed, might find: But life, unvext by such controul, Can breed no vigour in the soul. The calm that smooths the summer seas May suit the man of sloth and ease: But skies that fret and storms that rave Are the best schools to make us brave. On Heckla's heights who hopes to see The blooming grove, the orange tree Awhile on hope may fondly lean 'Till sad experience blots the scene. If Nature acts on Reason's plan, And Reason be the guide of man: Why should he paint fine prospects there, Then sigh, to find them disappear? For ruin'd states or trade perplext 'Tis almost folly to be vext: The world at last will have its way And we its torrent must obey. On other shores a happier guest The mind must fix her haven of rest, Where better men and better climes Shall soothe the cares of future times. [357] Published in the _Freeman's Journal_, July 18, 1787; dated "Philadelphia, July 16." Republished in the 1788 and 1795 editions, the latter of which I have followed. TO CRACOVIUS PUTRIDUS[358] The Sailor, toss'd on stormy seas, Implores his patron-god for ease When Luna hides her paler blaze, And stars, obscurely, dart their rays: For ease the Yankee, fierce in war, His stores of vengeance points afar: For ease, the toiling Dutchman sighs, Which gold, nor gems, nor purple buys! No treasur'd hoards, from India trade, No doctor's, or the lawyer's aid Can ease the tumults of the mind, Or cares to gilded roofs assign'd. The end of life he, best, completes Whose board is spread with frugal treats, Whose sleep no fears, no thirst of gain, Beneath his homely shed, restrain. Why, then, with wasting cares engage, Weak reptiles of so frail an age-- Why, thus, to far-off climates run, And lands beneath another sun? For, though to China's coasts we roam, Ourselves we ne'er can leave at home: Care, swift as deer--as tempests strong, Ascends the prow, and sails along. The mind that keeps an even state, And all the future leaves to fate, In every ill shall pleasure share, As every pleasure has it's care. Fate early seal'd Montgomery's doom, In youth brave Laurens found a tomb; While Arnold spends in peace and pride The years, that heaven to them denied. A host of votes are at your call; A seat, perhaps, in Congress-Hall;[359] And vestments, soak'd in Stygian dye, Where'er you go, alarm the eye: On me, a poor and small domain, With something of a poet's vein The muse bestow'd--and share of pride To spurn a scoundrel from my side. [358] Published in the _Freeman's Journal_, Sept. 5, 1787. In the 1788 edition it was entitled "Horace, Lib. II, Ode 16, Imitated and addressed to Governor Parr. _Otium divos rogat in patenti_, &c." The poem seems to have been occasioned by the return of General Arnold to Nova Scotia from England. Text from the edition of 1795. [359] "An hundred _slaves_ before you fall, A coach and six attends your call."--_Ed. 1788._ SLENDER'S JOURNEY[A][360] _Sit mihi fas audita loqui._--Virg. [A] Mr. Robert Slender, of Philadelphia (Stocking Weaver). _Freneau's note._ I. PRELIMINARY REFLECTIONS Tormented with landlords and pester'd with care, This life, I protest, is a tedious affair; And, since I have got a few dollars to spare, I'll e'en take a jaunt, for the sake of fresh air. Since the day I return'd to this king-hating shore Where George and his cronies are masters no more, And others are plac'd at the helm of affairs, Relieving the weight of his majesty's cares; For many long weeks, it has still been my doom To sit like a mopus, confin'd to my loom,[B] Whose damnable clatter so addles my brain, That, say what they will, I am forc'd to complain. Our citizens think, when they sit themselves down In the gardens that grow in the skirts of the town, They think they have got in some rural retreat, Where the nymphs of the groves, and the singing birds meet When only a fence shuts them out from the street; With the smoke of the city be-clouding their eyes They sit in their boxes, and look very wise, Take a sip of bad punch, or a glass of sour wine; Conceiting their pleasures are equal to mine, Who rove where I will, and wherever I roam, In spite of new faces, am always at home. Poor Richard, the reel-man, had nothing to say; He knew very well I would have my own way;-- When I said, "My dear Richard, I'm sick of the town, "And Dutchmen that worry me, upstairs and down, "A book of bad debts, and a score of bad smells, "The yelping of dogs, and the chiming of bells; "I am sick of the house, and the sight of small beer, "And the loom may be going, tho' I am not here; "I therefore shall leave you, and that, to be plain, "'Till I feel in a humour to see you again."-- Poor Richard said nothing to all that I spoke, But kindled his pipe, and redoubled his smoke. Yet it would have been nothing but friendship in him To have said,--"Robert Slender, 'tis only a whim:-- A trip to the Schuylkill, that nothing would cost, Might answer your ends, and no time would be lost; But if you are thinking to make a long stay, Consider, good Robert, what people will say: His rent running on, and his loom standing still-- The man will be ruin'd!--he must, if he will--! If tradesmen will always be flaunting about, They may live to repent it--before the year's out!" [B] The stocking-loom was invented by a young man who paid his addresses to a handsome stocking-knitter, and being rejected, in revenge contrived this curious machine, which, it is said, consists of no less than six thousand different pieces. _Freneau's note, 1788 edition._ II. _Characters of the_ TRAVELLERS WILLIAM SNIP, _Merchant Taylor_ As I never could relish to travel alone, I look'd round about, but could hit upon none Whom Satan was tempting to leave their own houses And ramble to York with their daughters and spouses; At last, by repeating my trouble and care, And preaching a month on the sweets of fresh air, And the curse and the plague of remaining in town, Where the heat was sufficient to melt a man down, I got a few friends to consent to the trip; And the first I shall mention was honest Will. Snip, Philadelphia the famous had own'd to his birth, The gravest of towns on the face of the earth; Where saints of all orders their freedom may claim, And poets, and painters, and girls of the game: To him all its streets and its alleys were known, But his travels had never exceeded the town:-- A salesman by trade (and a dabster was he To make a silk knee-band set snug to the knee) With his wife (and he says I may mention her name) Susanna Snipinda--so charming a dame, The sun had with pleasure look'd down on her head, So freckled was she, and her tresses so red. To wait on the will of so handsome a lady A youngster was order'd to hold himself ready, A sly looking lad that was 'prentice to Snip, And long had been learning to cabbage and clip;-- When Snip was in sight, he was mild as a lamb; When absent, old Satan could hardly rule Sam. III. O'KEEF, _a Swaggering Captain_ The next I describe is bold captain O'Keef, A killer of men, and a lover of beef: With the heroes of old he had put in his claim, And catch'd at their mantles, and rose into fame: To the sound of a fife and the tune of no song With his Andra Ferrara[C] he paddled along: From his manners so rough, and his dealing in ruin, He was known thro' the town by the name of Sir Bruin; He was, among women, a man of great parts, A captain of foot, and a master of arts: He had, a sweet creature put under his care, (Whose style of address was, my dear, and my dear) A Milliner's girl, with a bundle of lace, Whom Cynthia[D] he call'd, for the sake of her face, At a ball or a frolic how glib his tongue ran, He was, I may say, an unparallell'd man, Very apt to harangue on the hosts he has slain Of people--perhaps that may meet him again: Yet so kind to the sex of the feminine make, By his words, he would venture to die for their sake, Whence some have suspected, that some he ador'd Have more than made up for the wastes of his sword. [C] A large kind of sword, in use among the Italians.--_Freneau's note, 1795 edition._ [D] Cynthia is also a poetical name for the Moon.--_Freneau's note, 1788 edition._ IV. TOUPPEE: _a French Hair Dresser_ The third in succession was Monsieur Touppee, A barber from Paris, of royal degree, (For oft when he takes up his razor, to strap it, He tells his descent from the house of Hugh Capet[E]) Tho' soft in the head, his discourses were long, Now counting his honours, and now his l'argent. This barber, tho' meaning for pleasure to stray, Yet had some pomatum to sell by the way, Perfumes, and fine powders, and essence of myrrh, A bundle of brooms, and a firkin of beer:-- His merits are great (he would have us suppose) For Louis (it seems) he has had by the nose, Has bid him, when drooping, to hold up his chin, And handled a tongs--at the head of the Queen. [E] A popular French nobleman, who, A. D. 987, usurped the crown of France, and was the first of a new race of monarchs.--_Freneau's note, 1788 edition._ V. BOB: _a Ballad Singer_ A singer of ballads was next in our train, Who long had been dealing in ballads in vain; He sometimes would sing in a musical tone, And sometimes would scribble a song of his own: Yet never was seen with his brethren to mix-- And laugh'd at your poets in coaches and six; Who sing, like the birds, when the weather is fine; Whose verses the ladies pronounce "so divine;" Who ride with Augustus, wherever he goes, And, meeting old Homer, would turn up the nose-- As to those, like himself, that were held to the ground, He knew it was folly to feed them with sound-- He knew it was nonsense to crown them with bays, And was too much their friend to insult them with praise. For a dozen long years he had liv'd by the mob: On the word of a weaver, I pitied poor Bob![361] He had sung for the great and had rhym'd for the small, But scarcely a shilling had got by them all-- So bad was his luck, and so poor was the trade, And the Muses, he thought, were so sneakingly paid, That if times didn't alter, and that very soon, He said and he swore, he must sing his last tune. Some devil had put it, somehow, in his head If he took a short journey his fortune was made: Some devil had told him (but whether in dreams Or waking, I know not) some devil, it seems, Had made him believe that the nymphs and the swains Were fairly at war with their old fashion'd strains, That the tunes which the kirk or the curates had made (And which always had ruin'd the balladman's trade) Were wholly disus'd, and that now was the time For singers of catches and dealers in rhyme To step from their stalls, where they long were disgrac'd, Reform the old music, and fix a new taste. VI. O'BLUSTER: _a Seaman_ A mate of a schooner, bespatter'd with tar, Who had lately come in from Savanna-la-Mar,[F] For, the sake of an airing had stept from his deck And ventur'd a jaunt, at the risque of his neck, His name and his nation no soul could mistake.-- He was Bryan O'Bluster, and much of a rake; From morning till night he was still on the move, Was always in taverns, or always in love: His life was sustain'd by the virtues of grog, And many long miles he had sail'd by the log.-- Of battles and storms he had known a full share, And his face, it was plain, was the worse for the wear; To see a mean fellow, lord how it would fret him; And he hated a puppy, wherever he met him-- He was ready to bleed for the good of each State, But since they had left the poor seamen to fate; Themselves in the dumps, and their fair ones in tears, And many brave fellows detain'd in Algiers!-- Had spirit sufficient to make themselves free, But not to resent their affronts on the sea! As this was the case--he must bid us good night, And sail with a flag that would do itself right. At cursing and swearing he play'd a good hand, But never was easy a minute on land; If the wind was a-head, or his Kitty untrue, Why, patience was all the relief that he knew:-- In the midst of misfortune he still was serene, And Kitty, he said, was a feeble machine: His heart was too hard for a lady to sigh, Yet I guess'd him a rogue by the leer in his eye: "The world (he would say) is a whimsical dance-- And reason had taught him to leave it to chance. In chace of dame Fortune his prime he had pass'd, And now was beginning to fail very fast, But thought it was folly his heart to perplex, As Fortune was just like the rest of her sex;-- Designing, and fickle, and taken with show, Now fond of a monkey, and now of a beau:-- Yet, still, as the goddess was made up of whim, He meant to pursue 'till she smil'd upon him." And tho' he was always deceiv'd in the chace, He smooth'd up his whiskers, and wore a bold face. On horseback he first had attempted to go, But the horse was no fool, and had give him a throw; He fell in a pond, and with not a dry rag on The horse brought him back to the sign of the waggon, Where three times he call'd for a dram of their best, And three times the virtues of brandy confess'd; Then took some tobacco, and soberly said, "De'il take such a vessel; she's all by the head, Broach'd to on a sudden, and then, d'ye see, Myself and the saddle went over the lee." His head was so full of his ragged command He could scarcely believe he was yet on dry land; He would rise in his sleep; call the watch up at four, Ask the man at the helm how the Eddystone bore; Then, rubbing his eyes, bawl out, "By my soul, "We are bearing right down on the Hatteras shoal; "The devil may trust to such pilots as you: "We are close on the breakers--the breakers--halloo!" [F] A seaport town in the S. W. quarter of Jamaica.--_Freneau's note, 1788 edition._ VII. EZEKIEL: _a Rhode-Island Lawyer_ The sixth, and the last, that attended our journey, Was a man of the law, a Rhode-Island attorney, As cunning as Satan to argue or plead, To break an entailment, or get himself fee'd They call'd him Ezekiel--I cannot tell what-- Perhaps I forget it--perhaps I do not-- He had once been a parson, and studied at Yale,[G] But took to the law, when his preaching grew stale; In his system of thinking, not well understood, I wander'd about, like a man in a wood; From morning 'till night he was nothing but whim, Not a man in the town held opinions, like him: In regard to the vulgar, he argued that Law Was better than preaching, to keep them in awe: That the dread of a gallows had greater effect, And a post or a pillory claim'd more respect From a knave--and would sooner contribute to mend, Than all the grave precepts that ever were penn'd. [G] Yale College in New-Haven.--_Freneau's note, 1788 edition._ VIII. _The Chapter of_ DEBATES Having pitch'd on our party, there rose a dispute On the mode of conveyance--in waggon or boat? For my part, said Snip, I was always afraid Of sailors, and sloops and the shallopman's trade, And the reason thereof I will candidly tell, My grandmother, Mopsy, was drown'd in a well; I therefore intreat you, and fervently pray We may go with the waggons the Burlington way. "Hold, master," the sailor replied in a fret, "The devil's not ready to bait for you yet: Even this way, you know, there is water to pass, And twenty long miles we should sail with an ass;-- But, gentlemen all, will you take my advice? Here's Albertson's[H] sloop; she's so new and so nice, Her bottom so sleek, and her rigging so trim, Not Bailey[H] or Hyde[H] can be mentioned with him; In her cabbin and steerage is plenty of room, And how clever she looks with her flying jib-boom, A topsail aloft, that will stand by the wind, And a yard rigg'd athwart, for a squaresail design'd. "Odds fish! I would sooner some little delay Than go, like a booby, the fresh-water way Where your cream-colour'd captains ne'er swear a bad word, And sail without compass or quadrant on board, Catch catfish and sturgeons, but never a whale, Nor balance a mizen, to fight with the gale: But Albertson goes by the route of Cape May, Salt-water, and sees the bold porpusses play: Where the shore of the coast the proud ocean controuls He travels, nor strikes on the Barnegat shoals." "You tar-smelling monster! (Snipinda rejoin'd) Your jargon has almost distracted my mind. If Snip should be drownded, and lost in the sea, You never once think what a loss it would be! I should then be a widow, dejected and sad And where would I find such another sweet lad! And Doctor Sangrado a letter has wrote, And how, in three weeks he will want a new coat."-- Snip's heart, at her answer, seem'd ready to break: "Snipinda," said he, "I would live for your sake! If I should be drownded, indeed, it is true, It would be a bad journey for Sam and for you!"-- For fear they should hear him, Sam whisper'd, "In troth I would give my new hat that the devil had both." "If Snip should be drown'd," said the valiant O'Keef, "Poor woman! already I guess at her grief-- However, for aught that a stranger can see, There are dozens as brisk at the needle as he, And, tho' it were hard that the sea-fish should tear him, I'm fully convinc'd that his brethren can spare him: "But were I to mention the very best way, And the quickest to boot (for they go in a day) I would sleep over night at the sign of the Queen,[I] (Where the wine is so good, and the beds are so clean) Then starting by day-break, and riding in state, Arriving in Bristol--we breakfast at eight, Then push on our way, with a rapid career, With nothing to hinder, and nothing to fear, Till Trenton, and Princeton, and Brunswick are pass'd, And safe on the Hudson they drop us at last." When the captain had finish'd, the Frenchman arose, And smoothing his whiskers, and squaring his toes, With a bend of his back, and a swing of his head Thus expressing his wish, with a flourish, he said: "Wherever pomatums are most in demand That route has my vote, be it water or land: Wherever I travel, through sun-shine or glooms, May fortune direct me to powders and plumes!-- So, gentlemen, choose, I beseech you, that road Where ladies prefer to be dress'd in the mode." "Hold, varlet, be still"--said the Yankee attorney, "Are you to decide on the route of our journey? These run-about fellows, I cannot but hate 'em, With their rings, and their ruffles, and rolls of pomatum: But, gentlemen, (if I may venture to speak In the stile I was wont when I dabbled in Greek, When I blew on my trumpet, and call'd up my pack, Who thought I was holy because I was black; Or, if you allow me a moral to draw From some words that were frequent with Doctor Magraw);-- "We all have in view to arrive at one town, "Yet each one would find out a way of his own; "What a pity it is that we cannot agree "To march all together to Zion"--said he-- But, since I'm convinc'd that it cannot be so, (For his journey resembles our journey below) Like the sects in religion, I heartily pray That each, as he pleases, may have his own way, Let Snip, and the captain, adventure by land, The sailor by sea--he can reef, steer, and hand; Let the Frenchman set out in a gaudy balloon, (He'll either be there, or be dead, very soon,) For my own part, I'm fond of the Burlington boat, But still, if you're willing, I'll put it to vote: The hint was sufficient--he put it to vote, And fate bade us go with the Burlington boat. [H] Commanders of Philadelphia and New-York packets.--_Ib._ [I] Indian Queen.--_Freneau's note, 1788 edition._ IX. _The Passage to_ BURLINGTON The morning was fair, and the wind was at west, The flood coming in, and the ladies were drest; At the sign of the Billet we all were to meet, And Snip was the first that appear'd in the street; He strutted along with a mighty brisk air, While Sam and Snipinda walked slow in the rear. Dress'd, booted, and button'd, and "cutting a shine" The captain came next, with his loaded carbine; Then handed on board the milliner's maid: The barber and ballad-man longer delay'd For one had his ballads to sing and to play, And the other some beards to take off by the way: At last they arriv'd, and the sailor along, (But he was besotted--his dram had been strong--) The lawyer, Ezekiel, was last to appear, With a cane in his hand and a quill at his ear. But, just as we all were prepar'd to embark, The wind came a-head, and the weather look'd dark: So, whilst they were busy in hoisting the sails And trimming close aft' to encounter the gales, Our seaman advis'd them to take in a reef As the vessel was light--but the skipper was deaf: "His boat was his own"--and he knew to a hair The "worth of her freight," and the "sail she could bear." Then a storm coming on, we stow'd away snug, Some link'd with a lady, and some with a jug: Snipinda and Sam were inclining to sleep, And the lawyer harangu'd on the risques of the deep. O'Bluster was busy in looking for squalls, And Cynthia discours'd upon dances and balls, And while the poor ballad-man gave us a song The Frenchman complain'd that his stomach felt wrong. Arriving, at length at the end of this stage, We quitted our cabbin (or rather our cage) To the sign of the Anchor we then were directed, Where captain O'Keef a fine turkey dissected; And Bryan O'Bluster made love to egg-nog, And pester'd the ladies to taste of his grog: Without it (said Bryan) I never can dine, 'Tis better, by far, than your balderdash wine, It braces the nerves and it strengthens the brain, A world--and no grog--is a prison of pain, And Man, the most wretched of all that are found To creep in the dust, or to move on the ground! It is, of all physic, the best I have seen To keep out the cold, and to cut up the spleen-- Here, madam--miss Cynthia--'tis good--you'll confess-- Now taste--and you'll wish you had been in my mess-- With grog I'm as great as a king on his throne; The worst of all countries is--where there is none, New Holland, New Zealand--those islands accurs'd-- Here's health to the man that invented it first. X. VEXATIONS _and_ DISASTERS Coop'd up in a waggon, the curtains let down, At three in the morning we drove out of town: A morning more dark I ne'er saw in my life, And the fog you might almost have cut with a knife, It was a fit season for murders and rapes, For drunken adventures and narrow escapes:-- So, with something to think of, but little to say, The driver drove on, looking out for the way, 'Till we came to the brow of a horrible hill, Six miles on our road, when the cattle stood still-- "Are you sure you have took the right road?"--queried Snip; "I am"--said the driver--and crack'd with his whip. Then away ran the horses, but took the wrong road, And away went the waggon, with all its full load; Down, deep in a valley, roll'd over and over, Fell the flying-machine, with its curtains and cover, Where shatter'd and shiver'd--no glimpse yet of day, A mass of destruction, together we lay! Then howlings were heard, that would frighten a stone, And screeching, and screaming, and many a groan, The bruising of heads, and the breaking of shins, Contrition of heart, and confession of sins. First rose from his ruins tall captain O'Keef, And call'd to Ezekiel, and begg'd for his brief:[J] A writ he demanded, as soon as 'twas day, And ask'd his advice, if a suit would not lay? Then felt for his sword, but chanc'd on a cane, And rush'd at the stageman, to cleave him in twain. As fortune would have it, the stageman had fled, And Snip the whole vengeance receiv'd on his head; The staff had been whirl'd with so deadly a sweep Poor Will in a moment was all in a heap: There was room to surmise that his senses were hurt, For, in spite of our bruises, he made us some sport: His head, he conceited, was made of new cheese; And ask'd, if the sexton would give up his fees?-- Then, rolling away on the side of the hill, With his head in a horse-pond, he lay very still: At last he bawl'd out--"I'm sick at my heart! Come hither, companions, and see me depart! Snipinda, Snipinda!--alas, I must leave her-- And all, for the sake of this villainous weaver, Who never would give me a moment of rest 'Till I left my dear shop-board, and thus am distrest! But a time will arrive (if I deem not amiss) When Slender, the weaver, will suffer for this-- May his breeches, be always too big for his wear, Or so narrow and scant as to torture his rear; May his waistcoat be ever too long or too short, And the skirts of his tunic not both of a sort;-- And, when from this sorrowful jaunt you return, Tell Doctor Sangrado 'tis needless to mourn: Ah! tell him I firmly believ'd I was going Where people no longer are wed-ding and wooing, Where white linen stockings will ever be clean, And sky-men are clad in the best of nankeen; Where with old Continental our debts we can pay, And a suit of best broad-cloth will last but a day; Where with pretty brass thimbles the streets are all pav'd, And a remnant--if not a whole piece--shall be sav'd, Where cloth may be cabbag'd--and that without fear-- And journeymen work--thirteen months to the year!" Snipinda was mov'd at so dismal a yell, And groping about to find where he fell, Exclaim'd, "I have got a sad bruise on one hip, But matters, I fear, are much worse with poor Snip." "Yes, yes"--answer'd Snip--"I'm preparing to go-- Be speedy, Snipinda, my pulse is so low!" Then she went where he lay, and took hold of his head, And whisper'd the captain, "how much he has bled!" (For she thought, as he lay with his nose in the puddle, That the water was blood, that had flow'd from his noddle.) "Ah! where is the doctor, to give him a pill; And where is the Lawyer, to write his last-will? Ezekiel! Ezekiel! attend to his words; If I am his widow, I must have my thirds! But can you"--and here she reclin'd on his breast-- "And can you resolve to forsake me distrest, Is it thus you would quit me, my joy and my love, And leave me alone for the shop-boards above: Is it thus you consign me to trouble and woe?-- When you are departed, ah! where shall I go? I shall then be a widow--forsaken and sad-- And where shall I find such another sweet lad? Who then will afford me a mint-water dram, Gallant me to meeting--and who will flog Sam?" By this time the story was currently spread, And most were convinc'd that the taylor was dead,-- "The taylor is dead beyond all relief! The taylor is dead," cry'd captain O'Keef: "To fetch up a fashion, or trump up a whim, Not a knight of the thimble was equal to him!" "The taylor is dead"--(the lawyer exclaim'd) God speed him!--'tis better to die than be maim'd: If life is a race, as the learned pretend, God help him! his racing is soon at an end: His anchor is cast, and his canvas is furl'd; A creature he was, so attach'd to the world, So eager for money--(I say it with grief) He never consider'd the 'fall of the leaf.' He is come (we may say) to the end of his tether Where the maid and her master shall lay down together.-- For the place where he's gone may we also prepare, Where the Mind, when admitted, shall rest from her care, And fiddles--the finest that ever were seen, Shall play, for his comfort, a brisk Bonny Jean. "The taylor is dead" (said the company round) "The taylor is dead"--the dark forests resound.-- "He is dead!"--blubber'd Sam, with a counterfeit sigh-- When the sailor bawl'd out--"By my soul it's a lie! The fellow has only a mind for some fun, His blood is not cold, and his race is not run. His head, it is true, may have had a small shock: I'll bind it--'twill only be strapping a block: Here, hand me a neck-cloth, a napkin, a clout! Now--heave up his noddle, and strap it about! Success to the skull that can bear a good jirk-- They only have damag'd his ginger-bread work." The matters turn'd out as he said and he swore, And the taylor threw open his peepers once more. [J] A Lawyer's compend, in which he notes down the heads of arguments in Law-suits.--_Freneau's note, 1795 edition._ XI. CONCLUSION _of the Journey_ When the morning appear'd, it is horrid to tell What mischiefs the most of our crew had befel: A bundle lay here, and a budget lay there; The Frenchman was fretting and pulling his hair, The horses were feeding about on the hill, And Snip, with his head on a hassock lay still, The driver beseech'd us the fault to excuse, The night had been dark--and "he lost both his shoes"-- Then he rais'd up his waggon, rejoicing to find That, by leaving the top and the curtains behind, We still might proceed--for the body was sound, And the wheels, upon searching, uninjur'd all 'round. But dull and dishearten'd we travell'd along, Our waggon dismantled, our harness all wrong: The lawyer was vext that we went a snail's pace, And Cynthia was sure she had lost half her lace; While Bryan O'Bluster, who Snip had restor'd, Asserted, that Snip was the Jonas on board, And often declar'd, in his moments of glee, "He would give him a souse, if he had him at sea." At length, we arriv'd, with the marks of our fall, And halted to dine at the town of Road-Hall: Honest David has always a dish of the best, But Snipinda declar'd there was nothing well drest-- "And Snip (she exclaim'd) I would ask him to eat, But I know that he never could relish roast-meat: I think it were better to get him some Tea, He always was fond of slop dinners, like me, But then he could never endure your Bohea-- La! madam, is this the best tea that you keep? By the taste and the smell, you have purchas'd it cheap! No Hyson or Congo to give a sick stranger! Poor man! I've no doubt but his life is in danger! "No doctor like Neptune for people like him, (Quoth O'Bluster)--his illness is merely a whim: If I had him at sea, with the rest of our crew, He should dance to the tune of a bowl of Burgoo!" "From all that appears (said captain O'Keef) I judge he might venture to taste the roast beef, Nay--I think I can guess, from the cast of his eye, He longs to have hold of the gooseberry pye!" "Why captain (she cry'd) would you kill the poor sinner? If he cannot have tea, he shall go without dinner!" At length to the Ferry we safely arrive, Each thanking his genius he still was alive: Poor Cynthia complain'd of abundance of harms, The black on her face and the blue on her arms: Snipinda exclaim'd that she wanted a patch, For Snip, in his ravings, had give her a scratch: The corpse of the captain was merely a wreck, And the sailor complain'd of a kink in his neck, He had a contusion, beside, on his thigh; And the ballad-man talk'd of a bruise on his eye, Just adding, "how much he was vext at the heart That no one regarded the song-singing art: Yet the town was in love with his music (he said) But never consider'd he liv'd by the trade; That affronts and neglect were forever his lot, And the lovers of music respected him--not; He had sung for the nymphs, and had sung for the swains, But they were unwilling to purchase his strains, When he put up his ballads and call'd for his pay, The shepherds slunk off, and the nymphs ran away." So, we said what we could to encourage poor Bob, And pitied his fortune,--to live by the mob: Advis'd him to cobble, cut throats, or dig ditches If he wish'd to advance to perferment and riches; That the time had arriv'd, when a sycophant race Of poets are only promoted to place-- He should scorn them alike, if attach'd to a crown, Singing lies to a court, or disguis'd in the gown; That a poet of genius (all history shews) Ne'er wanted a puppy, to bark at his muse: And, though their productions were never once read, Yet Bavius and Mevius must also be fed. Then the skipper came in, with a terrible noise, Exclaiming, "The wherry is ready, my boys: The sails are unfurl'd, and the clock has struck eight; Away to the wharf, for no longer I wait!" Now all were embark'd, and the boat under sail, With a dark cloudy sky and a stiff blowing gale: In plying to windward we delug'd our decks-- O'Bluster discours'd of disasters and wrecks-- Snip offer'd the skipper five dollars, and more, And a pair of new trowsers, to run us on shore; "And, if I was there (said the faint-hearted swain) No money should tempt me to travel again! I had rather, by far, I had broken both legs, Been rotting in prison, or pelted with eggs! Now comrades and captains, I bid you good night, And you, Mr. Slender, our journey will write; A journey like this will attention attract, Related in metre, and known to be fact."-- Snipinda was sorry she ever left home-- Ezekiel confess'd it was madness to roam;-- Toupee was alarm'd at the break of the seas, And you, Robert Slender, were not at your ease; Yet couldn't help laughing at captain O'Keef, Who shunn'd little Cynthia, and cast up his beef: "And, Bruin (she said) I am sick at my heart, Come hither, I pray you--and see me depart: What wretches e'er travell'd so rugged a route; Alas! I am sorry that e'er we set out!" And Sam, while he own'd what a thief he had been, O'Bluster made love to a bottle of gin-- Bob's ballads and poems lay scatter'd and torn Himself in the dumps and his visage forlorn;-- Snip lay with his head by the side of a pot, In doubt if his soul was departing or not, Complaining, and spewing, and cursing his luck-- Then look'd at Snipinda--and call'd her his duck. At last to relieve us, when thought of the least, The wind came about to the south of southeast, The barque that was buried in billows before Now flew like a gull by the Long-Island shore, And gaining the port where we wish'd to arrive, Was safe in the bason--precisely at five. [360] First published in pamphlet form by Bailey, April, 1787, under the title, "A Journey from Philadelphia to New-York by way of Burlington and South-Amboy. By Robert Slender, Stocking Weaver." The advertisement in the _Freeman's Journal_ of April 25 declares that "Some truth in the occasion and a good deal of fancy in the colouring mark the character of the above performance. The style is smooth and easy and the pleasurable air that is diffused over the whole piece will certainly render the whole poem acceptable to such as choose to read it." The poem was republished in the editions of 1788 and 1795, the text of the latter of which I have used. It was again republished in a twenty-four page pamphlet by Thomas Neversink, Philadelphia, Dec. 20, 1809, under the title "A Laughable Poem; or Robert Slender's Journey from Philadelphia to New York." The earlier versions, of which the 1788 text was a reprint, had the poem divided into four cantos. In the 1795 edition the subdivision into sections was made. Freneau thoroughly revised the poem for the 1795 edition, making very many changes, all for the better. He cut out nearly all of the indelicate allusions and expressions of the earlier edition, including the coarse but highly picturesque dialogue between the skipper and the captain, and it has seemed best to me not to resurrect them. The 1809 edition was reprinted with little change from the 1795 version. [361] The 1788 version here adds this couplet: "The _Babes in the wood_ was his favourite song, Or _Barbara Allan_, or _Johnny Armstrong_." THE HERMIT OF SABA[362] Hermit, First Mariner, Second Mariner, Third Mariner SCENE, _The Island of Saba_[A] [A] One of the windward Islands in the W. Indies. It is small, and appears like an immense cone, or sugar loaf, rising out of the surrounding ocean.--The inhabitants are of Dutch origin, and are equally strangers to the luxury and tyranny of the Sugar Islands.--Lat. 17° 30´ N. Lon. 63° 12´ W.--_Freneau's note._ _Hermit_ Though many years on these tall cliffs residing I recollect not such a dreadful quarrel Between the seas and water-vexing tempests As now torments my ears, and pains my eyes-- Clouds, low suspended, seem to embrace the foam Of yonder angry ocean--bursting thunders, With their pale sheets of lightning, are as busy As though they meant to cleave this mass of nature, Proving at once the world's mortality-- But am I safe on this sea-girded island, Or can these shores, thus beaten, bear the shock Of such a bold assault--? When universal ruin shall approach, Will the grand scene be more astonishing When thou, sky-pointing Saba, Shalt tremble on thy base most fearfully!-- Night comes!--I'll to my cavern in the mountain, Far from the torrent's roar and bursting billow; That cavern, where I oft have found repose Since on this barren isle, a shipwrecked stranger, I made my sole escape--Ha! what are these! A barque half buried in the spouting surge Comes rushing towards the isle, impelled by winds That scorn all motives of compassion. Hark! now she strikes the iron pointed reef Foundering; the horrid surge that breaks upon her Has sealed their doom, and hope itself forsakes them Man is too weak to combat with the power Of these mad elements, that conquer all, Ending the day light of our misery!-- Yes, yes--I'll to my haunt, for scenes like these Pain the shocked soul and damp all resolution;-- Or, shall I to the shore, while day remains, And search among the shell-incrusted coral, Lest if by some great chance or miracle Some wretch survives upon the ragged rocks, Who knowing not of human kind residing On this sequestered, unfrequented isle, Tired in contending with the angry billows And beaten by the surge the whole night through For want of such relief, may die ere morning-- Perdition! three I see upon the rocks Clinging, to keep off death, while the rude billow Swells o'er their heads, insultingly victorious: Now from the reef upborne I see them struggle, Heaven grant, successfully!--they labour on, Now headlong to the shore, now back they go Despairing to the main!--now, now they land Safe in that calm recess, a narrow bay To them the heaven from impending ruin-- So what are you?-- _First Mariner_ If thou art an inhabitant of the isle, Lend your kind aid to three half perished wretches Of threescore souls, the only three remaining-- And if thou knowest of any sheltered spot Where from these horrid blasts and water spouts We may retire to pass the long dull night: Or if thou knowest of any standing pool Or running stream, or earth-supported spring, O tell us! and, as nothing more remains, Our gratitude must be thy sole reward. _Hermit_ Among the hills, on their declivities Full many a sylvan haunt I have espied Ere now, in wandering when the heaven was bright; But springs or running streams abound not here The skies alone supply the hollowed rock From whence I drain my annual full supply: Yet to my cavern you shall all resort To taste a hermit's hospitality-- If you have strength, ascend this winding path And amongst these rugged rocks, still following me, We soon shall reach a safe retreat, removed Alike from noisy seas, and mountain torrents. _Second Mariner_ Lo! here the tall palmettoe, and the cedar, The lime tree, and sweet scented shrubs abundant With mingling branches, form a blest abode; Here, bleating lambs crowd to the evening fold And goats and kids, that wander o'er the hills, Vext by the storm, herd to the social hermit; In neighbouring groves the juicy lemon swells, The golden orange charms the admiring eye, And the rich cocoa yields her milky stream. _Hermit_ Here, strangers, here repose your wearied limbs While some dead boughs I bring from yonder thicket, To wake the friendly blaze.--To drain the dams Of these impatient kids, be next my care: The cocoa's milky flesh, dried pulse and roots Shall be your fare to night; and when to-morrow Dispells the gloom, and this tornado ceases, We'll search along the shores, and find where lie The bodies of your dear and lost companions, That so we may commit them to the dust, And thus obliterate from our remembrance The horrid havock that this storm occasioned. _Third Mariner_ O good old man, how do I honour thee! My future days, my services are your's; For you, will I be earlier than the sun To bring you sticks to light the morning fire; For you, will I attempt these dangerous cliffs And climb on high to pluck the blushing plum; For you will I from yonder rocky height Drain chrystal waters, to delight your taste: But now be kind; I wish to hear you tell What chance or fortune brought you to these shores: Whether alone on these rough craggs you dwell Where wandering mist is gathered into showers, Or whether town or village decks the plain; Or is there sheltered port, where swelling sails Lodge lofty ships, from hurricanes secure, Fenced in by reefs, or locked by neighbouring hills. _Hermit_ No town or village owns this scanty soil, Nor round its coast one safe recess is seen, Where lofty ship, or barque of meaner freight Might rest secure, untroubled by the winds, Which still pursue the restless surge that pours, And spits its venom, on these ragged shores; Nor in these woody wilds, till you were wrecked, Except myself, did Christian man reside, Wandering from Europe to these Indian isles So late discovered on the world's green end.-- All lies as Nature formed it, rough throughout, And chance has planted here this garden wild, For such as I, who wandering from the world; Cities, and men, and civilized domains, The farther distant, find the bliss more pure. _Third Mariner_ In such a sad retreat, and all alone!-- To hold no converse but with senseless trees, To have no friendship but with wandering goats, And worthless reptiles that infest the ground-- Can man be happy in so dull a scene? _Hermit_ To the steep summit of this slighted isle I often climb at early dawn of day, And o'er the vast expanse I throw my view, Not idly thence the busy scene surveying-- Vast fleets I sometimes see, each kept at bay, Or joining both in angry conversation, Their object avarice half, and half ambition-- What is it all to me? what are they seeking That can give more than a sufficiency?-- That object I have here which they pursue, Grasping it, miser-like, in my embraces-- The stream distilling from the shaded cliff, And fruits mature from trees by Nature planted, And contemplation, heaven-born contemplation! These are my riches! I am wealthier far Than Spain's proud fleets, that load the groaning ocean-- Wait you in yonder cave--I will return-- My herd of goats is wandering in the wild, And I must house them, ere the close of day. (_Exit_) _First Mariner_ Who can this hermit be--what doth he here? In such a dismal cell who would inhabit Thus lonely, who has crowds and cities seen-- Is he some savage offspring of the isle, The mountain goat his food, his god the sun; Some wretch produced from mingled heat and moisture. Full brother to the hungry pelican; His friend, some monster of the adjacent wood; His wife, some sorceress, red haired hag from hell; His children, serpents, scorpions, centipedes-- _Third Mariner_ It was but now, (he spoke before he thought) he told me, That he is richer than the fleets of Spain That burden the wide bosom of the ocean; And then he seemed so pleased and satisfied, Boasting himself the happiest of mankind. _Second Mariner_ Where should this wealth be hid--his cave shows none: A prayer book and a cross, a string of beads, A bed of moss, a cap, an earthen jug, And some few goat skins, furnish out his cave: But still this humble guise of poverty Vast sums of splendid riches may conceal: The flooring of his den is a loose sand-- Searching a fathom deep may shew strange things, While we, so long pursuing, hit on fortune.-- Perhaps this hermit is some bloody pirate, Who having plundered friends and foes, alike, Has brought his booty here, to bury it. _First Mariner_ Lo! there he comes, driving his goats before him: He means to fence them from the tempest's rage Under the shelter of those tufted cedars: It does, indeed, appear most possible, That in this cavern rests his plundered wealth: When sleep has locked his senses in repose We'll seize him on his couch, and binding him, Cast him from yonder jutting promontory That hangs a hundred fathoms o'er the deep-- Thus, shall his fate prevent discovery. _Second Mariner_ Your project pleases me--it is most wrong That such a savage should enjoy such hoards Of useful wealth, he has not heart to use:-- He builds no ships, employs no mariners; But, like a miser, hides the ill-gotten store, And had he died before we wandered hither His gold had perished, and none been the wiser. _Third Mariner_ While you observe his motions, fellow sufferers, Of twisted bark I'll make a sett of thongs Wherewith to bind him at the midnight hour, Lest waking, he should struggle to be free And slip our hands before we gain the summit From whence we mean to plunge his tawny carcase:-- There, there he comes--"Now, hermit, now befriend us, "For cruel, merciless hunger gnaws our vitals, "And every mischief that can man dishearten "Is ripe to drive us into desperation!" _Hermit_ Have patience, till from yonder arched grotto I bring my bowls of milk, and seasoned roots, And fruits I plucked before the day was high: Now, friends, enjoy my hospitality: All's at your service, wretched shipwrecked men; And when you've satisfied the rage of hunger Repose on these soft skins; your sea-beat limbs Demand the aid of kind refreshing sleep: I'll to my evening prayers, as I am wont, And early dreams;--for travelling o'er the hills, And pelted by the storm the whole day past, My knees grow feeble, and I wish for rest. (_Exit_) _Second Mariner_ Yes, yes--first pray, and then repose in peace, Hermit of Saba, ne'er to wake again! Or should you wake, it must be in convulsions, Tossed from the peak of yonder precipice, Transfixt on pointed rocks, most bloodily. _Third Mariner_ Now, now's the time: he sleeps: I hear him snore-- This hidden gold has so possessed my brain, That I, at all events, must handle it: Yet should the hermit 'wake while thus engaged, Sad mischief might ensue: his nervous arm (More than a match for our exhausted vigour) Might exercise most horrible revenge! Long practising among these rugged mountains, Pursuing goats, bounding from rock to rock, And cleaving trees to feed his evening fire, His nerves and blood are all activity: And then he is of so robust a fabrick That we should be mere children in his hands, Whirling us from the precipice at pleasure, (Thus turning on ourselves our own designs) Or catching up some fragment of a rock Grind into atoms our pale, quivering limbs; Taking full vengeance on ingratitude. _First Mariner_ Fast bound in chains of sleep, I first assail him; This knotty club shall give the unerring blow; You follow on, and boldly second me! Thus--comrades--thus!--that stroke has crushed his brain! He groans! he dies?--now bear him to the summit Of yon' tall cliff, and having thence dislodged him, Uninterrupted we shall dig his riches, Heirs to the wealth and plenty of his cave. _Second Mariner_ (_conscience struck_) 'Tis done, 'tis done--the hermit is no more:-- Say nothing of this deed, ye hills, ye trees, But let eternal silence brood upon it. O, base, base, base!!--why was I made a man, And not some prowling monster of the forest, The worst vile work of Nature's journeymen! Ye lunar shadows! no resemblance yield From craggy pointed rock, or leafy bush, That may remind me of this murdered hermit. _Third Mariner_ Deep have I fathomed in his cave, but find No glimpse of gold--we surely did mistake him: His treasures were not of that glittering kind; Dryed fruits, and one good book; his goats, his kids, These were, indeed, his riches-- Now, hermit, now I feel remorse within me: While here we stay thy shadow will torment us, From every haunted rock, or bush, projecting; And when from hence we go, that too shall follow, Crying--Perdition on these fiends from Europe, Whose bloody malice, or whose thirst for gold, Fresh from the slaughter-house of innocence Unpeoples isles, and lays the world in ruin! [362] This poem was doubtless a product of Freneau's earlier Muse, as were also the poems "The Indian Burying Ground," "The Indian Student," "The Man of Ninety," and "Alcina's Enchanted Island" which follow. They were, however, first printed in the edition of 1788 and there is no other hint as to their date. I have followed in all cases except the last the 1809 text. THE INDIAN BURYING GROUND[363] In spite of all the learned have said, I still my old opinion keep; The posture, that we give the dead, Points out the soul's eternal sleep. Not so the ancients of these lands-- The Indian, when from life released, Again is seated with his friends, And shares again the joyous feast.[A] [A] "The North American Indians bury their dead in a sitting posture; decorating the corpse with wampum, the images of birds, quadrupeds, &c: And (if that of a warrior) with bows, arrows, tomhawks, and other military weapons."--_Freneau's note._ His imaged birds, and painted bowl, And venison, for a journey dressed, Bespeak the nature of the soul, Activity, that knows no rest. His bow, for action ready bent, And arrows, with a head of stone, Can only mean that life is spent, And not the old ideas gone. Thou, stranger, that shalt come this way, No fraud upon the dead commit-- Observe the swelling turf, and say They do not lie, but here they sit. Here still a lofty rock remains, On which the curious eye may trace (Now wasted, half, by wearing rains) The fancies of a ruder race. Here still an aged elm aspires, Beneath whose far-projecting shade (And which the shepherd still admires) The children of the forest played! There oft a restless Indian queen (Pale Shebah, with her braided hair) And many a barbarous form is seen To chide the man that lingers there. By midnight moons, o'er moistening dews; In habit for the chase arrayed, The hunter still the deer pursues, The hunter and the deer, a shade![364] And long shall timorous fancy see The painted chief, and pointed spear, And Reason's self shall bow the knee To shadows and delusions here. [363] In the 1788 edition this has the title "Lines Occasioned by a Visit to an old Indian Burying Ground." [364] Campbell borrowed this line for his poem "O'Connor's Child." Stanza IV of the poem begins as follows: "Bright as the bow that spans the storm In Erin's yellow vesture clad, A son of light--a lovely form He comes and makes her glad; Now on the grass-green turf he sits, His tassel'd horn beside him laid; Now o'er the hills in chase he flits, The hunter and the deer a shade!" THE INDIAN STUDENT Or, Force of Nature[365] From Susquehanna's farthest springs Where savage tribes pursue their game, (His blanket tied with yellow strings,) A shepherd of the forest came. Not long before, a wandering priest Expressed his wish, with visage sad-- "Ah, why (he cried) in Satan's waste, "Ah, why detain so fine a lad? "In white-man's land there stands a town "Where learning may be purchased low-- "Exchange his blanket for a gown, "And let the lad to college go."-- From long debate the council rose, And viewing Shalum's tricks with joy To Cambridge Hall,[A] o'er wastes of snows, They sent the copper-coloured boy. [A] Harvard College, at Cambridge in Massachusetts.--_Freneau's note, edition 1788._ One generous chief a bow supplied, This gave a shaft, and that a skin; The feathers, in vermillion dyed, Himself did from a turkey win: Thus dressed so gay, he took his way O'er barren hills, alone, alone! His guide a star, he wandered far, His pillow every night a stone. At last he came, with foot so lame, Where learned men talk heathen Greek, And Hebrew lore is gabbled o'er, To please the Muses,--twice a week. Awhile he writ, awhile he read, Awhile he conned their grammar rules-- (An Indian savage so well bred Great credit promised to the schools.) Some thought he would in law excel, Some said in physic he would shine; And one that knew him, passing well, Beheld, in him, a sound Divine. But those of more discerning eye Even then could other prospects show, And saw him lay his Virgil by To wander with his dearer bow. The tedious hours of study spent, The heavy-moulded lecture done, He to the woods a hunting went, Through lonely wastes he walked, he run. No mystic wonders fired his mind; He sought to gain no learned degree, But only sense enough to find The squirrel in the hollow tree. The shady bank, the purling stream, The woody wild his heart possessed, The dewy lawn, his morning dream In fancy's gayest colours dressed. "And why (he cried) did I forsake "My native wood for gloomy walls; "The silver stream, the limpid lake "For musty books and college halls. "A little could my wants supply-- "Can wealth and honour give me more; "Or, will the sylvan god deny "The humble treat he gave before? "Let seraphs gain the bright abode, "And heaven's sublimest mansions see-- "I only bow to Nature's God-- "The land of shades will do for me. "These dreadful secrets of the sky "Alarm my soul with chilling fear-- "Do planets in their orbits fly, "And is the earth, indeed, a sphere? "Let planets still their course pursue, "And comets to the centre run-- "In Him my faithful friend I view, "The image of my God--the Sun. "Where Nature's ancient forests grow, "And mingled laurel never fades, "My heart is fixed;--and I must go "To die among my native shades." He spoke, and to the western springs, (His gown discharged, his money spent, His blanket tied with yellow strings,) The shepherd of the forest went.[366] [365] The 1788 version bore under the title the motto: "_Rura mihi et rigui placeant in vallibus amnes; Flumina amem, sylvasque inglorius._" VIRG. Georg. II. V. 483. [366] The 1788 version has this additional stanza: "Returning to this rural reign The Indians welcom'd him with joy; The council took him home again, And bless'd the copper-colour'd boy." THE MAN OF NINETY "To yonder boughs that spread so wide, Beneath whose shade soft waters glide, Once more I take the well known way; With feeble step and tottering knee I sigh to reach my white-oak tree, Where rosy health was wont to play. If to the shades, consuming slow, The shadow of myself, I go, When I am gone, wilt thou remain!-- From dust you rose, and grew like me; I man became, and you a tree, Both natives of one grassy plain. How much alike; yet not the same!-- You could no kind protector claim; Alone you stood, to chance resigned: When winter came, with blustering sky, You feared its blasts--and so did I, And for warm suns in secret pined. When vernal suns began to glow You felt returning vigour flow; Which once a year new leaves supplied; Like you, fine days I wished to see, And May was a sweet month to me, But when November came--I sighed! If through your bark some ruffian arm A mark impressed, you took the alarm, And tears awhile I saw descend; Till Nature's kind maternal aid A plaister on your bruises laid, And bade your trickling sorrows end. Like you, I feared the lightning's stroke, Whose flame dissolves the strength of oak, And ends at once this mortal dream;-- You saw, with grief, the soil decay That from your roots was torn away; You sighed--and cursed the stream. With borrowed earth, and busy spade, Around your roots new life I laid, While joy revived in every vein; (The care of man shall life impart)-- Though Nature owns the aid of art, No art, immortal, makes their reign. How much alike our fortune--say-- Yet, why must I so soon decay When thou hast scarcely reached thy prime-- Erect and tall, you joyous stand; The staff of age has found my hand, That guides me to the grave of time. Could I, fair tree, like you, resign, And banish all those fears of mine, Grey hairs would be no cause of grief; Your blossoms die, but you remain, Your fruit lies scattered o'er the plain-- Learn wisdom from the falling leaf. As you survive, by heaven's decree, Let withered flowers be thrown on me Sad compensation for my doom, While winter greens and withering pines And cedars dark, and barren vines, Point out the lonely tomb. The enlivening sun, that burns so bright, Ne'er had a noon without a night, So Life and Death agree; The joys of man by years are broke"-- 'Twas thus the man of ninety spoke, Then rose, and left his tree. ALCINA'S ENCHANTED ISLAND[367] In These fair fields unfading flowers abound, Here purple roses cloathe the enchanted ground; Here, to the sun expand the lillies pale Fann'd by the sweet breath of the western gale: Here, fearless hares through dark recesses stray, And troops of leverets take the woodland way, Here stately stags, with branching horns, appear, And rove unsought for, unassail'd by fear: Unknown the snare, the huntsman's fatal dart That wings the death of torture to the heart, In social bands they trace their sylvan reign, Chew the rich cud, or graze along the plain. In these gay shades the nimble deer delight, While herds of goats ascend the rocky height, Browse on the shrubs that shade the vale below, And crop the plants, that there profusely grow. [367] Published in the 1788 edition under the title "Ariosto's Description of the Gardens in Alcina's Inchanted Island. From the Italian." Text from the edition of 1795. HORACE, LIB. I. ODE 15[368] Nereus prophesies the destruction of Troy[369] As 'cross the deep to Priam's shore The Trojan prince bright Helen bore, Old Nereus hushed each noisy breeze And calmed the tumults of the seas. Then, musing on the traitor's doom, Thus he foretold the woes to come; "Ah why remove, mistaken swain, "The prize that Greece shall seize[370] again! "With omens sad, you sail along; "And Europe shall resent the wrong, "Conspire to seize your bride away, "And Priam's town in ashes lay. "Alas! what toils and deaths combined! "What hosts of men and horses joined!-- "Bold Pallas now prepares her shield, "And arms her chariot for the field. "Can you with heavenly forms engage, "A goddess kindling into rage; "Who ne'er have dared a mortal foe "And wars, alone, of Venus, know. "In vain you dress your flowing hair, "And songs, to aid the harp, prepare; "The harp, that sung to female ears, "Shall fail when Mars and Greece appears. "In vain will you bewail your bride, "And meanly in her chamber hide, "In hopes to shun, when lingering there, "The massy dart, and Cretan spear. "In vain will you, with quickening pace, "Avoid fierce Ajax in the chace; "For late those locks, that please the eye, "In dust and death must scattered lie. "Do you not see Ulysses, too, "The sage that brings your nation low: "And Nestor from the land of Pyle-- "Chiefs skilled in arms and martial toil. "Dost thou not see bold Teucer here, "And him--no tardy chariotteer; "Who both pursue with eager force, "And both controul the thundering horse. "Thou, to thy grief, shalt Merion know, "And Tydeus' son shall prove thy foe, "Who wastes your realms with sword and fire; "Tydides, greater than his sire. "Like timorous deer, prepared to fly "When hungry wolves are passing by, "No more the herbs their steps detain, "They quit their pastures, and the plain: "So you from his triumphant arms "Will fly, with all your female charms; "Can deeds, like these, your valour prove, "Was this your promise to your love? "Achilles' wrath shall but delay "Your ruin to a later day-- "The Trojan matrons then may mourn, "And Troy by Grecian vengeance burn." [368] First found in the 1788 edition; text from the 1809 edition. [369] The 1788 edition had the following line after the title: "_Pastor quum traheret per freta navibus_, etc." [370] "Fetch."--_Ed. 1788._ A SUBSCRIPTION PRAYER[371] For defraying the burial expences of an Old Soldier Ah! Give him a tomb, for a tomb is his due, A shilling, great man, is a trifle to You: If you give him a tomb, that his name may survive, May Fortune attend you, and help you to thrive: May you always have something to praise and approve, And the pleasure to dream of the girl that you love. Prepar'd for the worst, but enjoying the best, With a girl and a bottle he feather'd his nest: Half sick of the world, in the wane of his life, To hasten his exit, he took him a wife, But, finding his fair one a damnable elf, He grounded his arms--and took leave of himself. [371] Entitled in 1788, "Patrick Mulhoni. A Subscription Prayer. _Date obolum Belisario._" Text from the 1795 edition. EPISTLE TO THE PATRIOTIC FARMER[372] Thus, while new laws the stubborn States reclaim, And most for pensions, some for honours aim, You, who first aimed a shaft at George's crown, And marked the way to conquest and renown, While from the vain, the lofty, and the proud, Retiring to your groves, you shun the crowd,-- Can toils, like yours, in cold oblivion end, Columbia's patriot, and her earliest friend? Blest, doubly blest, from public scenes retired, Where public welfare all your bosom fired; Your life's best days in studious labours past Your deeds of virtue make your bliss at last; When all things fail, the soul must rest on these!-- May heaven restore you to your favourite trees, And calm content, best lot to man assigned, Be heaven's reward to your exalted mind. When her base projects you beheld, with pain, And early doomed an end to Britain's reign. When rising nobly in a generous cause (Sworn foe to tyrants and imported laws) Thou Dickinson! the patriot and the sage, How much we owed to your convincing page:[A] That page--the check of tyrants and of knaves, Gave birth to heroes who had else been slaves, Who, taught by you, denied a monarch's sway; And if they brought him low--you planned the way. Though in this glare of pomp you take no part Still must your conduct warm each generous heart: What, though you shun the patriot vain and loud, While hosts neglect, that once to merit bowed, Shun those gay scenes, were recent laurels grow, The mad Procession, and the painted show; In days to come, when pomp and pride resign, Who would not change his proudest wreathes for thine, In fame's fair fields such well-earned honours share, And Dickinson confess unrivalled there! [1788] [A] The Farmer's Letters, and others of his truly valuable writings.--_Freneau's note._ [372] John Dickinson (1732-1808), a lawyer in Philadelphia, and a member of the Colonial Congress of 1765 and of the Continental Congress of 1774, first came into wide prominence in 1767 through the publication of his series of papers entitled "Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies." From this time until his death he was a vigorous and voluminous publicist. His influence upon his times was very great. The text of the poem is from the 1809 edition. PALEMON TO LAVINIA[373] [Written 1788] "Torn from your arms by rude relentless hands, No tears recall our lost Alcander home, Who, far removed by fierce piratic bands, Finds in a foreign soil[A] an early tomb: [A] Algiers, the piratical city on the coast of Barbary.--_Freneau's note._ Well may you grieve!--his race so early done, No years he reached, to urge some task sublime;-- No conquests made, no brilliant action won, No verse to bear him through the gulph of time. Amidst these shades and heart depressing glooms, What comfort shall we give--what can we say; In her distress shall we discourse on tombs, Or tell Lavinia, 'tis a cloudy day? The pensive priest accosts her with a sigh: With movement slow, in sable robes he came-- But why so sad, philosopher, ah, why, Since from the tomb alone all bliss we claim? By pining care and wakeful sorrow worn, While silent griefs her downcast heart engage, She saw me go, and saw me thrice return To pen my musings on some vacant page. To learning's store, to Galen's science bred, I saw Orestes rove through all the plain: His pensive step no friendly genius led To find one plant that might relieve your pain! Say, do I wake?--or are your woes a dream! Depart, dread vision!--waft me far away: Seek me no more by this sky painted stream That glides, unconscious, to the Indian bay. Alcander!--ah!--what tears for thee must flow-- What doom awaits the wretch that tortured thee! May never flower in his cursed garden blow, May never fruit enrich his hated tree: May that fine spark, which Nature lent to man, Reason, be thou extinguished in his brain; Sudden his doom, contracted be his span, Ne'er to exist, or spring from dust again. May no kind genius save his step from harms: Where'er he sails, may tempests rend the sea; May never maiden yield to him her charms, Nor prattling infant hang upon his knee! Retire, retire, forget the inhuman shore: Dark is the sun, when woes like these dismay; Resign your groves, and view with joy no more The fragrant orange, and the floweret gay." [373] First published in the 1795 edition. Text from the edition of 1809. A NEWSMAN'S ADDRESS[374] Though past events are hourly read, The various labours of the dead, In vain their story we recall, The rise of empires, or the fall; Our modern men, a busy crew, Must, in their turn, have something new. By moralists we have been told That "Time himself in time grows old; "The seasons change, the moons decay, "The sun shines weaker every day, "Justice is from the world withdrawn, "Virtue and friendship almost gone, "Religion fails (the clergy shew) "And man, alas, must vanish too." Let others such opinions hold, (Since grumbling has been always old;) All Nature must decay, 'tis true, But Nature shall her face renew, Her travels in a circle make, Freeze but to thaw, sleep but to wake. Die but to live, and live to die, In summer smile, in autumn sigh, Resume the garb that once she wore, Repeat the words she said before, Bow down with age, or, fresh and gay, Change, only to prevent decay. As up and down, with weary feet, I travel each fatiguing street, Meeting the frowns of party men, Foes to the freedom of the pen, And to your doors our sheets convey-- I sometimes think I hear you say, "Ah, were it not for what he brings, (This messenger of many things) We should be in a sorry plight; The wars of Europe out of sight, No paragraphs of home affairs To tell us how the fabric wears Which Freedom built on Virtue's plan, And Virtue only can maintain." But something further you pretend,-- From want of money, heaven defend! Leave that to those who sleep in sheds, Or on the pavement make their beds, Who clean the streets, or carry news, Repair old coats, or cobble shoes-- Of every ill with which we're curs'd This want of money is the worst: This was the curse that fell on Cain, The vengeance for a brother slain: For this he quit his native sod, Retreated to the land of Nod, And, in the torture of despair, Turn'd poet, pimp, or newsman there-- Divines have labour'd in the dark To find the meaning of his mark: How many idle things they wrote-- 'Twas nothing but a ragged coat. Should money, now, be scarce with you, With me, alas, 'tis nothing new! We news-men always are in need, (So Beer and Bacchus have decreed) And still your bounty shall implore Till--printing presses are no more!-- Did we not conjure up our strain The year might come and go again, Seasons advance, and moons decay, And life itself make haste away, And news-men only vex their brains To have their labour for their pains-- Such usage I may find, 'tis true, But then it would be--something new! [374] I have not been able to find the paper which first used these New Year's verses. The 1788 edition gave them the title "New Year's Verses for 1788. [Supposed to be written by the Printer's lad, who supplies the customers with his weekly paper.]" Text from the edition of 1795. ON THE PROSPECT OF A REVOLUTION IN FRANCE[375] _"Now, at the feast they plan the fall of Troy; "The stern debate ATRIDES hears with joy"._ --_Hom. Odys._ Borne on the wings of time another year Sprung from the past, begins its proud career: From that bright spark which first illumed these lands, See Europe kindling, as the blaze expands, Each gloomy tyrant, sworn to chain the mind, Presumes no more to trample on mankind: Even potent Louis trembles on his throne, The generous prince who made our cause his own, More equal rights his injured subjects claim, No more a country's strength--that country's shame; Fame starts astonished at such prizes won, And rashness wonders how the work was done. Flushed with new life, and brightening at the view, Genius, triumphant, moulds the world anew; To these far climes in swift succession moves Each art that Reason owns and sense approves. What though his age is bounded to a span Time sheds a conscious dignity on man, Some happier breath his rising passion swells, Some kinder genius his bold arm impels, Dull superstition from the world retires, Disheartened zealots haste to quench their fires; One equal rule o'er twelve[A] vast States extends, Europe and Asia join to be our friends, Our active flag in every clime displayed Counts stars on colours that shall never fade; A far famed chief o'er this vast whole presides Whose motto Honor is--whom Virtue guides His walks forsaken in Virginia's groves Applauding thousands bow where'er He moves, Who laid the basis of this Empire sure Where public faith should public peace secure. Still may she rise, exalted in her aims, And boast to every age her patriot names, To distant climes extend her gentle sway, While choice--not force--bids every heart obey: Ne'er may she fail when Liberty implores, Nor want true valour to defend her shores, 'Till Europe, humbled, greets our western wave, And owns an equal--whom she wished a slave. [A] At this time, Rhode-Island was not a member of the general Confederation of the American States. [1788]--_Freneau's note._ [375] This appeared first in the _Daily Advertiser_ of New York, March 7, 1790. It is the first of Freneau's series of poems on the French Revolution and its message. Text from the edition of 1809. TO A DOG[376] Occasioned by putting him on shore at the Island of Sapola, for theft Since Nature taught you, Tray, to be a thief, What blame have you, for working at your trade? What if you stole a handsome round of beef; Theft, in your code of laws, no crime was made. The ten commandments you had never read, Nor did it ever enter in your head: But art and Nature, careful to conceal, Disclos'd not even the Eighth--_Thou shalt not steal_. Then to the green wood, caitiff, haste away: There take your chance to live--for Truth must say, We have no right, for theft, to hang up Tray. [376] First published in the _National Gazette_, Nov. 3, 1791. Sapola Island is one of the sea-islands of McIntosh County, Georgia, forty-two miles southwest of Savannah. The somewhat unusual proceeding of putting a worthless dog on shore, instead of the more common expedient of killing him at once, is only another evidence of the poet's kindly heart. Text from the edition of 1809. TO LYDIA[377] "_Tu procul a patria, ah dura! inculta deserta, Me sine, sola videbis----_ VIRG. ECLOG. Thus, safe arrived, she greets the strand, And leaves her pilot for the land; But Lydia, why to deserts roam, And thus forsake your floating home! To what fond care shall I resign The bosom, that must ne'er be mine: With lips, that glow beyond all art, Oh! how shall I consent to part!-- Long may you live, secure from woes, Late dying, meet a calm repose, And flowers, that in profusion grow, Bloom round your steps, where'er you go. On you all eyes delight to gaze, All tongues are lavish in your praise; With you no beauty can compare, Nor Georgia boast one flower so fair. Could I, fair girl, transmit this page, A present, to some future age, You should through every poem shine, You, be adored in every line: From Jersey coasts too loth to sail, Sighing, she left her native vale; Borne on a stream that met the main, Homeward she looked, and looked again. The gales that blew from off the land Most wantonly her bosom fanned, And, while around that heaven they strove, Each whispering zephyr owned his love. As o'er the seas, with you I strayed, The hostile winds our course delayed, But, proud to waft a charge so fair, To me were kind--and held you there. I could not grieve, when you complained That adverse gales our barque detained Where foaming seas to mountains grow, From gulphs of death, concealed below. When travelling o'er that lonely wave To me your feverish hand you gave, And sighing, bade me tell you, true, What lands again would rise to view! When night came on, with blustering gale, You feared the tempest would prevail, And anxious asked, if I was sure That on those depths we sailed secure? Delighted with a face so fair, I half forgot my weight of care, The dangerous shoal, that seaward runs, Encircled moons, and shrouded suns. With timorous heart and tearful eyes, You saw the deep Atlantic rise, Saw wintry clouds their storms prepare, And wept, to find no safety there. Throughout the long December's night, (While still your lamp was burning bright) To dawn of day from evening's close My pensive girl found no repose. Then now, at length arrived from sea, Consent, fair nymph, to stay with me-- The barque--still faithful to her freight, Shall still on your direction wait. Such charms as your's all hearts engage! Sweet subject of my glowing page, Consent, before my Argo roves To sun-burnt isles and savage groves. When sultry suns around us glare, Your poet, still, with fondest care, To cast a shade, some folds will spread Of his coarse topsails o'er your head. When round the barque the billowy wave And howling winds, tempestuous, rave, By caution ruled, the helm shall guide Safely, that Argo o'er the tide. Whene'er some female fears prevail, At your request we'll reef the sail, Disarm the gales that rudely blow, And bring the loftiest canvas low. When rising to harass the main Old Boreas drives his blustering train, Still shall they see, as they pursue, Each tender care employed for you. To all your questions--every sigh! I still will make a kind reply; Give all you ask, each whim allow, And change my style to _thee_ and _thou_. If verse can life to beauty give, For ages I can make you live; Beyond the stars, triumphant, rise, While Cynthia's tomb neglected lies: Upon that face of mortal clay I will such lively colours lay, That years to come shall join to seek All beauty from your modest cheek. Then, Lydia, why our bark forsake; The road to western deserts take? That lip--on which hung half my bliss, Some savage, now, will bend to kiss; Some rustic soon, with fierce attack, May force his arms about that neck; And you, perhaps, will weeping come To seek--in vain--your floating home! [377] There is a discrepancy in the dates given to this poem. It was published in the _Freeman's Journal_, Sept. 3, 1788, with the preliminary remarks: "The following copy of verses came accidentally into my hands. I am told that it was written by Capt. Freneau and addressed to a young Quaker lady who went passenger in his vessel to Georgia to reside in the western parts of that State. From the New York Daily Advertiser." It was reprinted in the 1795 edition, and in the edition of 1809, where it has the note: "Miss Lydia Morris, a young quaker lady, on her landing from the sloop Industry, at Savannah, in Georgia, December 30th, 1806." I have followed the 1809 text. TO CYNTHIA[378] Through Jersey[379] groves, a wandering stream That still its wonted music keeps, Inspires no more my evening dream, Where Cynthia, in retirement, sleeps. Sweet murmuring stream! how blest art thou To kiss the bank where she resides, Where Nature decks the beechen bough That trembles o'er your shallow tides. The cypress-tree on Hermit's height, Where Love his soft addresses paid By Luna's pale reflected light-- No longer charms me to its shade! To me, alas! so far removed, What raptures, once, that scenery gave, Ere wandering yet from all I loved, I sought a deeper, drearier wave. Your absent charms my thoughts employ: I sigh to think how sweet you sung, And half adore the painted toy That near my careless heart you hung. Now, fettered fast in icy fields, In vain we loose the sleeping sail; The frozen wave no longer yields, And useless blows the favouring gale. Yet, still in hopes of vernal showers, And breezes, moist with morning dew, I pass the lingering, lazy hours, Reflecting on the spring--and you. [378] This poem appeared in the _Freeman's Journal_, Jan. 29, 1789, under the title: "Stanzas written at Baltimore in Maryland, Jan. 1789, by Capt. P. Freneau." It was republished in the _Daily Advertiser_, Jan. 5, 1790, under the title "To Harriot." It was used in the editions of 1795 and 1809. The text follows the latter edition. [379] "Monmouth's."--_Ed. 1789._ "Morven's vale."--_Ed. 1790._ AMANDA'S COMPLAINT[380] "In shades we live, in shades we die, Cool zephyrs breathe for our repose; In shallow streams we love to play, But, cruel you, that praise deny Which you might give, and nothing lose, And then pursue your destined way. Ungrateful man! when anchoring here, On shore you came to beg relief; I shewed you where the fig trees grow, And wandering with you, free from fear, To hear the story of your grief I pointed where the cisterns are, And would have shewn, if streams did flow! The Men that spurned your ragged crew, So long exposed to Neptune's rage-- I told them what your sufferings were: Told them that landsmen never knew The trade that hastens frozen age, The life that brings the brow of care. A lamb, the loveliest of the flock, To your disheartened crew I gave, Life to sustain on yonder deep-- Sighing, I cast one sorrowing look When on the margin of the main You slew the loveliest of my sheep. Along your native northern shores, From cape to cape, where'er you stray, Of all the nymphs that catch the eye, They scarce can be excelled by our's-- Not in more fragrant shades they play;-- The summer suns come not so nigh. Confess your fault, mistaken swain, And own, at least, our equal charms-- Have you no flowers of ruddy hue, That please your fancy on the plain?-- Would you not guard those flowers from harm, If Nature's self each picture drew! Vain are your sighs--in vain your tears, Your barque must still at anchor lay, And you remain a slave to care; A thousand doubts, a thousand fears, 'Till what you said, you shall unsay, Bermudian damsels are not fair! [380] First published in the _New York Daily Advertiser_, Sept. 7, 1790, under the title, "Written at Cape Hatteras," and dated June, 1789. The last line of this version reads, "Hatteras maidens are not fair." It was republished in the _National Gazette_, March 19, 1792, under the title "Tormentina's Complaint," and dated "Castle Island, Bermuda, Jan. 20, 1789." In the 1809 edition, the text of which I have followed, it was grouped with the Amanda poems. HATTERAS[381] In fathoms five the anchor gone; While here we furl the sail, No longer vainly labouring on Against the western gale: While here thy bare and barren cliffs, O Hatteras, I survey, And shallow grounds and broken reefs-- What shall console my stay! The dangerous shoal, that breaks the wave In columns to the sky; The tempests black, that hourly rave, Portend all danger nigh: Sad are my dreams on ocean's verge! The Atlantic round me flows, Upon whose ancient angry surge No traveller finds repose! The Pilot comes!--from yonder sands He shoves his barque, so frail, And hurrying on, with busy hands, Employs both oar and sail. Beneath this rude unsettled sky Condemn'd to pass his years, No other shores delight his eye, No foe alarms his fears. In depths of woods his hut he builds, Devoted to repose, And, blooming, in the barren wilds His little garden grows: His wedded nymph, of sallow hue, No mingled colours grace-- For her he toils--to her is true, The captive of her face. Kind Nature here, to make him blest, No quiet harbour plann'd; And poverty--his constant guest, Restrains the pirate band: His hopes are all in yonder flock, Or some few hives of bees, Except, when bound for Ocracock,[A] Some gliding barque he sees: [A] All vessels from the northward that pass within Hatteras Shoals, bound for Newbern and other places on Palmico Sound, commonly in favourable weather take a Hatteras pilot to conduct them over the dangerous bar of Ocracock, eleven leagues north southwest of the cape.--_Freneau's note._ His Catharine then he quits with grief, And spreads his tottering sails, While, waving high her handkerchief, Her commodore she hails: She grieves, and fears to see no more The sail that now forsakes, From Hatteras' sands to banks of Core Such tedious journies takes! Fond nymph! your sighs are heav'd in vain; Restrain those idle fears: Can you--that should relieve his pain-- Thus kill him with your tears! Can absence, thus, beget regard, Or does it only seem? He comes to meet a wandering bard That steers for Ashley's stream. Though disappointed in his views, Not joyless will we part; Nor shall the god of mirth refuse The Balsam of the Heart: No niggard key shall lock up Joy-- I'll give him half my store Will he but half his skill employ To guard us from your shore. Should eastern gales once more awake, No safety will be here:-- Alack! I see the billows break, Wild tempests hovering near: Before the bellowing seas begin Their conflict with the land, Go, pilot, go--your Catharine join, That waits on yonder sand. [381] Text from the edition of 1795. The poem seems to have appeared first in the _Freeman's Journal_ of Dec. 9, 1789, with the title "The Pilot of Hatteras, by Capt. Philip Freneau." Affixed was the note: "This celebrated genius, the Peter Pindar of America, is now a master of a packet which runs between New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston. His tuneful numbers during the war did much to soften the disagreeable sensations which a state of warfare so generally occasions." The poem was reprinted in the _National Gazette_ of Jan. 16, 1792, with the note, "Written off the Cape, July, 1789, on a voyage to South Carolina, being delayed sixteen days with strong gales ahead." The poem was omitted from the edition of 1809. ST. CATHARINE'S[A][382] [A] An island on the sea-coast of Georgia.--_Freneau's note._ He that would wish to rove a while In forests green and gay, From Charleston bar to Catharine's isle Might sigh to find the way! What scenes on every side appear, What pleasure strikes the mind, From Folly's train, thus wandering far, To leave the world behind. The music of these savage groves In simple accents swells, And freely here, their sylvan loves The feather'd nation tells; The panting deer through mingled shades Of oaks forever green The vegetable world invades, That skirts the watery scene. Thou sailor, now exploring far The broad Atlantic wave, Crowd all your canvas, gallant tar, Since Neptune never gave On barren seas so fine a view As here allures the eye, Gay, verdant scenes that Nature drew In colours from the sky. Ye western winds! awhile delay To swell the expecting sail-- Who would not here, a hermit, stay In yonder fragrant vale, Could he engage what few can find, That coy, unwilling guest (All avarice banish'd from the mind) Contentment, in the breast! [382] Text from the edition of 1795. The poem seems to have appeared first in the _National Gazette_ of Feb. 16, 1792, under the title, "Lines written at St. Catharine's Island on the coast of Georgia, November, 1789." The poem is not found in the 1809 edition. TO MR. CHURCHMAN[383] On the rejection of his Petition to the Congress of the United States, to enable him to make a voyage to BAFFIN'S BAY, to ascertain the truth of his Variation Chart Churchman! methinks your scheme is rather wild Of travelling to the pole Where icy billows roll, And pork and pease Are said to freeze Even at the instant they are boil'd. Rejected, now, your humble, ardent prayer For cash, to speed your way To Baffin's frozen bay, 'Tis your own fault if you repine! You should have mention'd some rich golden mine-- Not Variation Charts, that claim no care. Avarice, alone, would sooner bid you go Than all the inducements Art can shew: The men, whom you petition for some dollars, Tho' willing to be thought prodigious scholars, Yet care as much for variation charts As king of spades, and knave of hearts. Churchman! 'tis best to quit this vain pursuit This Variation is a common thing! Rather attach yourself to Cæsar's wing-- You'll find it better--better, sir, by half, To sooth Pomposo's ear--or make him laugh: So shall you, mounted in a coach and six, Ride envoy to the country of the Creeks-- So shall you visit Europe's gaudy courts, And see the polish'd world, at public charge; Return--and spend your life in sports, Be air'd in coach, and sail'd in barge:-- Pursue this track, thou man of curious soul, Nor, like a whale, go puffing to the pole. [383] This poem is found only in the 1795 edition. The Journal of the House of Representatives, 1st Congress, 1st Session, April 20, 1789, notes the investigations of John Churchman in regard to the magnetic needle and the determination of longitude by his method and grants to Churchman the right of exclusive use of his invention. Unfavorable report on his petition for aid to enable him to make a voyage to Baffin's Bay to pursue his investigations of the causes of the variation of the magnetic needle. THE PROCESSION TO SYLVANIA[384] In Life's dull round, how often folks are cross'd, Their projects spoil'd, their sayings misapplied; Some friends in woods and some in oceans lost, Some doom'd to walk on foot, while others ride. But, now, let preachers moralize in verse, While I to yonder caravan attend That all prepar'd, like some slow moving herse Begins its journey to an Indian land; Bound for Sylvania!--sad, disheartening town, When thou art nam'd how many a nymph will sigh, Sigh, lest her sweet-heart should return a clown With grizly homespun coat, long beard, and pumpkin pye. This caravan with wondrous geer is stow'd, All sorts of moveables--straw beds, and cradles, Old records, salted fish, make up their load, With kegs of brandy, frying pans, and ladles. A pensive Printer in a one-horse chair (Dragg'd slowly on by sullen sleepy steed, With some ill-fated squires) brings up the rear, Contriving future news for folks to read. To guard the whole, a trusty knight appears, With chosen men, to keep the wolves at bay: They march--and lo! Belinda all in tears That bears must hug instead of ladies gay. [384] Published in the _Daily Advertiser_, Dec. 30, 1789, with this introduction: "The seat of government in South Carolina is removed by act of Assembly from Charleston to Columbia, a dismal place in the centre of that state consisting of only four houses. This removal is by many in Carolina considered as premature and amongst other animadversions has occasioned the two following poetic pieces which from several circumstances we conclude to have been written by Mr. Freneau." The title of the poem was originally "The Procession to Columbia." It was published only in the 1795 edition. THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS[385] From his obscure abode, On many a tiresome road The pilgrim, musing, took his way: Through dark and dismal groves Where the sad turtle loves To pass the night, and kill the day. In an obscure retreat, I saw the pilgrim greet, A barren soil and dreary town;-- Thy streets be-gloomed with trees With pain the traveller sees, Sylvania, barren of renown.-- What can console him there?-- Not even a house of prayer With glittering spire is seen to rise-- No nymphs in gaudy trim Will there be seen by him;-- No music, sermons, balls, or pigeon pies. Dull, melancholy streams, Dutch politics and schemes, Owls screeching in the empty street-- Wolves howling at the doors-- Bears breaking into stores; These make the picture of the town--complete. [385] In the _Daily Advertiser_ of Dec. 30, 1789, this bore the title, "A View of Columbia," and the opening line was "From Charleston's gay abode." In the 1795 edition the title was changed to "Lysander's Retreat." Text from the edition of 1809. SANGRADO'S EXPEDITION TO SYLVANIA[386] Tir'd of his journey o'er a sandy waste, Sangrado to Sylvania[387] came at last: A bear-skin coat was round his carcase roll'd, Shivering with northern winds,[388] that blew so cold: Dark was the night--much for his shins he fear'd, For not one lamp in all the town appear'd, Twelve was the hour--the citizens, in bed, Slept sound--of bears and wolves no more in dread; No city-guards, no watchmen hove in sight, No chyming bell sung out the time of night; But foggy blasts their wintry music blew Through shabby trees that round the court-house[389] grew; At length, alighting at one scurvy dome, He knock'd--and hop'd the people were at home.-- Ho!--(cry'd the man within) ho! who are you?-- What! heigh!--from Cambria?[390]--have you nothing new?-- _Sangrado_ Nothing at all--the times are shameful bad; Money at ten per cent--hard to be had: With apples and potatoes, our dear cousins The northern men, are pouring in by dozens: The French, 'tis said, will soon discharge their king-- This, friend, is all I know--and all I bring-- _Citizen_ What! not some oysters, gather'd near the coast, Such as in days of old we lov'd to roast? _Sangrado_ No, not an oyster--faith, you're in a dream, To think I'd load my little nag with them: We both are weary; let me in, I pray, Even though you turn us out at break of day. _Citizen_ 'Tis midnight now--return from whence you come-- High time all honest people were at home. _Sangrado_ Brother, me thinks my toes are somewhat cold-- Unbar your door--if one may be so bold: Wet to the skin, and travelling all the day, I want some rest--open the door, I say! _Citizen_ Open the door, forsooth! the man is mad: Lodging is not so easy to be had; It is an article we do not trade in, Nor shall my bed by all the world be laid in. Our very hay-loft is as full as can be-- Push off, my friend, and try your luck at Granby. [386] Published in the _Daily Advertiser_, Feb. 5, 1790, under the title "A Columbian Dialogue from the Charleston Gazette, supposed to have been written by Capt. Freneau." Text from the 1795 edition. [387] "Columbia."--_Ed. 1790._ [388] "Shivering with Hobaw winds."--_Ib._ [389] "The State house."--_Ib._ [390] "Charleston."--_Ib._ THE DISTREST THEATRE[A][391] [A] Harmony Hall, at Charleston, now demolished.--_Freneau's note._ Health to the Muse!--and fill the glass, Heaven grant her soon some better place, Than earthen floor and fabric mean, Where disappointment shades the scene: There as I came, by rumour led, I sighed and almost wished her dead; Her visage stained with many a tear, No Hallam and no Henry here! But what could all their art attain?-- When pointed laws the stage restrain The prudent Muse obedience pays To sleepy squires, that damn all plays. Like thieves they hang beyond the town, They shove her off--to please the gown;-- Though Rome and Athens owned it true, The stage might mend our morals too. See, Mopsus all the evening sits O'er bottled beer, that drowns his wits; Were Plays allowed, he might at least Blush--and no longer act the beast. See, Marcia, now from guardian free, Retailing scandal with her tea;-- Might she not come, nor danger fear From Hamlet's sigh, or Juliet's tear. The world but acts the player's part[B]-- (So says the motto of their art)-- That world in vice great lengths is gone That fears to see its picture drawn. [B] _Totus Mundus agit Histrionem.--Freneau's note._ Mere vulgar actors cannot please; The streets supply enough of these; And what can wit or beauty gain When sleepy dullness joins their train? A State betrays a homely taste, By which the stage is thus disgraced, Where, drest in all the flowers of speech, Dame virtue might her precepts teach. Let but a dancing bear arrive, A pig, that counts you four, or five-- And Cato, with his moral strain May strive to mend the world in vain. [391] Published in the _National Gazette_, Nov. 21, 1791, with the following explanation: "The amusements of the Theatre were some time since prohibited within the limits of the City of Charleston by an act of the Legislature of the State of South Carolina. In obedience to this act all subsequent dramatic exhibitions were removed to an obscure building in the City of liberties called Harmony Hall. The following stanzas owe their origin to the above edict." Text from the 1809 edition. TO MEMMIUS[392] Whoe'er at Court would hope to cut a dash, He must go loaded with some useful trash, Something, sage Dullness, to prolong your reign; All fancy--stuff--all ornament is vain! Happy the man who plans, by force of steam To drive his boat twelve knots against the stream; Still happier he, who, born to build a bridge, Schemes mighty matters on some river's edge:-- Such to the world the noblest light impart, The first in genius, and the first in art! Hence, then, ye bards, from our wise court refrain; Wiseacres have forestall'd the present reign: "No empty scribblings we endure at court" (Cries Publius, poring o'er a dull Report;) "Nothing but useful projects we require, (Cries a new-fangled, self-important 'squire) "Even Churchman, with his chart, will just but do, "Who to the pole will now all art pursue: "For foreign courts have fail'd our men of song, "And trust me, bards, the Muses went along; "Since that bright morn they stept on board their brig, "No Muses here--no Muses are with pig; "Nor 'till their barque shall heave in sight, once more, "Shall one true Muse grow pregnant on this shore!" Now, had not wayward Fortune fix'd me fast, Firm to a point, that never shall be pass'd; Did I the smiles of Fortune still pursue, And, Memmius, wish to rise in fame, like you, Were this my scheme, I'd quit at once the sail, And haste to court with compasses and scale, Quit all the hopes the finer arts bestow, The flowers of fancy, and--no fruits that grow; Indulge that powerful something in the scull That makes us wealthy while it keeps us dull, To the best place ensures a certain claim, The road to fortune, and the road to fame. [392] This poem is unique, as far as I can discover, in the 1795 edition. The reference to steamboats alludes to Fitch, who at that time was experimenting with steam navigation. In 1790 he completed his fourth boat, which during the summer made regular trips from Philadelphia to Burlington, at the rate of eight miles per hour. END OF VOLUME II 
39909	----	produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) POEMS OF PHILIP FRENEAU VOLUME III THE POEMS OF PHILIP FRENEAU POET OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION EDITED FOR THE PRINCETON HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION BY FRED LEWIS PATTEE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE COLLEGE, AUTHOR OF "A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE," "THE FOUNDATIONS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE," ETC. VOLUME III PRINCETON, N. J. THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 1907 Copyright, 1907, by THE PRINCETON UNIVERSITY LIBRARY PRESS OF THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY LANCASTER, PA. CONTENTS VOLUME III PAGE PART IV _The Period of Editorship. 1790-1797_ NEVERSINK 3 THE RISING EMPIRE 5 LOG-TOWN TAVERN 19 THE WANDERER 22 ON THE DEMOLITION OF FORT GEORGE 24 CONGRESS HALL, N. Y. 26 EPISTLE TO PETER PINDAR, ESQ. 28 THE NEW ENGLAND SABBATH-DAY CHACE 29 ON THE SLEEP OF PLANTS 31 ON THE DEMOLITION OF AN OLD COLLEGE 33 ON THE DEATH OF DR. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 36 EPISTLE FROM DR. FRANKLIN TO HIS POETICAL PANEGYRISTS 36 CONSTANTIA 38 STANZAS OCCASIONED BY LORD BELLAMONT'S, LADY HAY'S AND OTHER SKELETONS BEING DUG UP 40 THE ORATOR OF THE WOODS 41 NANNY 42 NABBY 44 THE BERGEN PLANTER 45 TOBACCO 46 THE BANISHED MAN 47 THE DEPARTURE 49 THE AMERICAN SOLDIER 51 OCCASIONED BY A LEGISLATION BILL 52 LINES OCCASIONED BY A LAW PASSED FOR CUTTING DOWN THE TREES 53 TO THE PUBLIC 56 LINES BY H. SALEM 57 MODERN DEVOTION 59 THE COUNTRY PRINTER 60 SEVENTEEN HUNDRED AND NINETY ONE 65 LINES WRITTEN ON A PUNCHEON OF JAMAICA SPIRITS 66 THE PARTING GLASS 68 A WARNING TO AMERICA 70 THE DISH OF TEA 71 ON THE FOURTEENTH OF JULY 72 TO CRISPIN O'CONNOR 74 CRISPIN'S ANSWER 75 TO SHYLOCK AP-SHENKIN 76 TO MY BOOK 78 STANZAS TO ROBERT SEVIER AND WILLIAM SEVIER 79 TO A PERSECUTED PHILOSOPHER 80 TO AN ANGRY ZEALOT 81 THE PYRAMID OF THE FIFTEEN AMERICAN STATES 82 ON THE DEMOLITION OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY 84 ON THE FRENCH REPUBLICANS 88 ON THE PORTRAITS OF LOUIS AND ANTOINETTE 89 TO A REPUBLICAN 90 ODE TO LIBERTY 92 ODE 99 ON THE DEATH OF A REPUBLICAN PRINTER 101 ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE STORMING OF THE BASTILLE 102 THOUGHTS ON THE EUROPEAN WAR SYSTEM 103 A MATRIMONIAL DIALOGUE 104 ON THE MEMORABLE NAVAL ENGAGEMENT BETWEEN THE AMBUSCADE AND THE BOSTON 106 TO SHYLOCK AP-SHENKIN 109 PESTILENCE 110 ON DR. SANGRADO'S FLIGHT 111 ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF A BLACKSMITH 112 TO SYLVIUS 113 THE BLESSINGS OF THE POPPY 114 QUINTILIAN TO LYCIDAS 115 THE BAY ISLET 116 JEFFERY, OR THE SOLDIER'S PROGRESS 117 TO SHYLOCK AP-SHENKIN 119 TO A WINTER OF PANEGYRIC 119 THE FOREST BEAU 120 EPISTLE TO A STUDENT OF DEAD LANGUAGES 121 TO A NOISY POLITICIAN 122 THE SEXTON'S SERMON 122 ON A LEGISLATIVE ACT PROHIBITING THE USE OF SPIRITUOUS LIQUORS 126 ADDRESSED TO A POLITICAL SHRIMP 127 HERMIT'S VALLEY 128 TO MY BOOK 129 THE REPUBLICAN GENIUS OF EUROPE 129 THE RIVAL SUITORS FOR AMERICA 130 MR. JAY'S TREATY 132 PARODY 133 ON THE INVASION OF ROME IN 1796 135 ON THE DEATH OF CATHARINE II. 136 PREFATORY LINES TO A PERIODICAL PUBLICATION 137 ON THE WAR PROJECTED WITH THE REPUBLIC OF FRANCE 139 TO MYRTALIS 141 TO MR. BLANCHARD 142 ON HEARING A POLITICAL ORATION 144 MEGARA AND ALTAVOLA 146 THE REPUBLICAN FESTIVAL 151 ODE FOR JULY THE FOURTH, 1799 [1797] 152 ADDRESS TO THE REPUBLICANS OF AMERICA 154 TO PETER PORCUPINE 156 ON THE ATTEMPTED LAUNCH OF A FRIGATE 157 ON THE LAUNCHING OF THE FRIGATE CONSTITUTION 158 ON THE FREE USE OF THE LANCET 159 THE BOOK OF ODES ODE I. 161 ODE II. TO THE FRIGATE CONSTITUTION 162 ODE III. TO DUNCAN DOOLITTLE 164 ODE IV. TO PEST-ELI-HALI 166 ODE V. TO PETER PORCUPINE 167 ODE VI. ADDRESS TO A LEARNED PIG 169 ODE VII. ON THE FEDERAL CITY 171 ODE VIII. ON THE CITY ENCROACHMENTS ON THE RIVER HUDSON 173 ODE IX. ON THE FRIGATE CONSTITUTION 174 ODE X. TO SANTONE SAMUEL 176 ODE XI. TO THE PHILADELPHIA DOCTORS 178 ODE XII. THE CROWS AND THE CARRION 179 ODE XIII. ON DEBORAH GANNET 182 ON THE FEDERAL CITY 184 THE ROYAL COCKNEYS IN AMERICA 185 TO THE SCRIBE OF SCRIBES 185 TO THE AMERICANS OF THE UNITED STATES 187 TO A NIGHT-FLY 189 THE INDIAN CONVERT 189 THE PETTIFOGGER 189 ON A CELEBRATED PERFORMER ON THE VIOLIN 193 NEW YEAR'S VERSES, 1798 194 PART V _The Final Period of Wandering. 1798-1809_ ON ARRIVING IN SOUTH CAROLINA 199 ODE TO THE AMERICANS 203 ON THE WAR PATRONS 207 TO THE DEMOCRATIC COUNTRY EDITORS 210 THE SERIOUS MENACE 213 REFLECTIONS ON THE MUTABILITY OF THINGS 215 THE POLITICAL WEATHER-COCK 216 REFLECTIONS 217 COMMERCE 220 ON FALSE SYSTEMS 221 ON THE PROPOSED SYSTEM OF STATE CONSTITUTIONS 225 ON A PROPOSED NEGOTIATION WITH THE FRENCH REPUBLIC 226 STANZAS TO AN ALIEN 228 STANZAS WRITTEN IN BLACKBEARD'S CASTLE 229 LINES WRITTEN AT SEA 231 STANZAS TO THE MEMORY OF GENERAL WASHINGTON 232 STANZAS UPON THE SAME SUBJECT 234 STANZAS OCCASIONED BY CERTAIN ABSURD, EXTRAVAGANT, AND EVEN BLASPHEMOUS PANEGYRICS ON THE LATE GENERAL WASHINGTON 235 TO THE MEMORY OF EDWARD RUTLEDGE, ESQ. 238 ON THE DEPARTURE OF PETER PORCUPINE 240 THE NAUTICAL RENDEZVOUS 242 TO THE MEMORY OF AEDANUS BURKE 243 TO THE REV. SAMUEL S. SMITH, D.D. 244 STANZAS PUBLISHED AT THE PROCESSION TO THE TOMB OF THE PATRIOTS 246 THE TOMB OF THE PATRIOTS 249 ON THE PEAK OF PICO 254 A BACCHANALIAN DIALOGUE 255 STANZAS WRITTEN AT THE ISLAND OF MADEIRA 257 ON THE PEAK OF TENERIFFE 261 ANSWER TO A CARD OF INVITATION TO VISIT A NUNNERY 263 ON SENIORA JULIA 265 LINES ON SENIORA JULIA 266 ON A RURAL NYMPH 268 ON GENERAL MIRANDA'S EXPEDITION 271 ON THE ABUSE OF HUMAN POWER 272 OCTOBER'S ADDRESS 273 TO A CATY-DID 275 ON PASSING BY AN OLD CHURCHYARD 277 STANZAS OCCASIONED BY AN OLD ENGLISH TOBACCO BOX 278 ON THE DEATH OF A MASTER BUILDER 281 ON THE DEATH OF A MASONIC GRAND SACHEM 283 ON A HONEY BEE 285 ON THE FALL OF AN ANCIENT OAK TREE 285 STANZAS ON THE DECEASE OF THOMAS PAINE 286 PART VI. _The War of 1812. 1809-1815._ ON THE SYMPTOMS OF HOSTILITIES 291 LINES ADDRESSED TO MR. JEFFERSON 293 ON THE PROSPECT OF WAR 296 ON THE BRITISH COMMERCIAL DEPREDATIONS 300 TO AMERICA 301 THE SUTTLER AND THE SOLDIER 304 MILITARY RECRUITING 308 ON THE CAPTURE OF THE GUERRIERE 310 THEODOSIA 312 IN MEMORY OF JAMES LAWRENCE, ESQUIRE 313 ON THE LAKE EXPEDITIONS 314 THE BATTLE OF LAKE ERIE 315 ON THE CAPTURE OF THE UNITED STATES FRIGATE ESSEX 318 THE TERRIFIC TORPEDOES 321 THE NORTHERN MARCH 329 ON POLITICAL SERMONS 330 LINES ON NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 333 ON THE DISMISSION OF BONAPARTE 334 THE PRINCE REGENT'S RESOLVE 336 THE VOLUNTEER'S MARCH 337 THE BATTLE OF STONINGTON 338 ON THE BRITISH INVASION 341 ON THE ENGLISH DEVASTATIONS AT WASHINGTON 343 ON THE CONFLAGRATIONS AT WASHINGTON 344 TO THE LAKE SQUADRONS 347 THE BATTLE OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN 349 A DIALOGUE AT WASHINGTON'S TOMB 352 SIR PETER PETRIFIED 354 ON THE DEATH OF GENERAL ROSS 356 ON THE NAVAL ATTACK NEAR BALTIMORE 357 ON THE BRITISH BLOCKADE 358 ROYAL CONSULTATIONS 361 ON THE LOSS OF THE PRIVATEER BRIGANTINE GENERAL ARMSTRONG 363 ON THE BRIGANTINE PRIVATEER PRINCE DE NEUFCHATEL 366 THE PARADE AND SHAM-FIGHT 368 RETALIATION 373 ON THE LAUNCHING OF THE INDEPENDENCE 374 THE BROOK OF THE VALLEY 376 APPENDIX. A. THE AMERICAN VILLAGE, &C. THE AMERICAN VILLAGE 381 THE FARMER'S WINTER EVENING 394 THE MISERABLE LIFE OF A PEDAGOGUE 396 UPON A VERY ANCIENT DUTCH HOUSE ON LONG ISLAND 399 B. LIST OF OMITTED POEMS 401 C. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE POETRY OF PHILIP FRENEAU 407 INDEX 419 PART IV THE PERIOD OF EDITORSHIP 1790-1797 THE POEMS OF PHILIP FRENEAU In February, 1790, Freneau left the sea and settled down in the employ of the New York _Daily Advertiser_. During the next seven years he was successively editor of the _National Gazette_, _The Jersey Chronicle_, and _The Time Piece and Literary Companion_. The period ends late in 1797 when he left New York and went for a time to Charleston, South Carolina. NEVERSINK[1] These Hills, the pride of all the coast, To mighty distance seen, With aspect bold and rugged brow, That shade the neighbouring main: These heights, for solitude design'd, This rude, resounding shore-- These vales impervious to the wind, Tall oaks, that to the tempest bend, Half Druid, I adore. From distant lands, a thousand sails Your hazy summits greet-- You saw the angry Briton come, You saw him, last, retreat! With towering crest, you first appear The news of land to tell; To him that comes, fresh joys impart, To him that goes, a heavy heart, The lover's long farewell. 'Tis your's to see the sailor bold,[2] Of persevering mind, To see him rove in search of care, And leave true bliss behind; To see him spread his flowing sails To trace a tiresome road, By wintry seas and tempests chac'd To see him o'er the ocean haste, A comfortless abode! Your thousand springs of waters blue What luxury to sip, As from the mountain's breast they flow To moisten Flora's lip! In vast retirements herd the deer, Where forests round them rise, Dark groves, their tops in æther lost, That, haunted still by Huddy's[3] ghost, The trembling rustic flies. Proud heights! with pain so often seen, (With joy beheld once more) On your firm base I take my stand, Tenacious of the shore:-- Let those who pant for wealth or fame Pursue the watery road;-- Soft sleep and ease, blest days and nights, And health, attend these favourite heights, Retirement's blest abode! [1] The first trace I can find of this poem is in the _Freeman's Journal_, February 2, 1791, where it is entitled "Stanzas written on the Hills of Neversink near Sandy Hook, 1790." In the republication of the poem in the _National Gazette_, November 28, 1791, the month "July" was added to the title. It was the poet's valedictory to the ocean after his wanderings. He was married in May, 1790, and he now evidently looked forward to a settled career. The poem has been placed slightly out of order as will be seen. It was republished only in the 1795 edition which the text follows. The first five lines of the original version were as follows: "In early days and vanished years To rougher toils resigned, You saw me rove in search of care And leave true bliss behind; You saw me rig the barque so trim," etc. [2] "I quit your view no more."--_Freeman's Journal, 1791._ [3] See Volume II, page 193. THE RISING EMPIRE[4] ON AMERICAN ANTIQUITY.[5] America, to every climate known, Spreads her broad bosom to the burning zone, To either pole extends her vast domain Where varying suns o'er different summers reign. Wide wandering streams, vast plains, and pathless woods, Bold shores, confined by circumscribing floods, Denote this land, whose fertile, flowery breast Teems with all life--and man, its nobler guest. In days of old, from ocean's deepest bed, Gulphs unexplored, and countries of the dead, Rous'd by some voice, that shook all nature's frame, From the vast depths this new creation came: Perpetual change its varying nature feels, The wave once flow'd that now with frost congeals, Suns on its breast have shed a feebler fire, Oceans have roll'd where mountains now aspire. The soil's proud lord a changeful temper knows, From differing earths his various nature grows: Long, long before the time that sophists plan Existed in these woods the race of man, Warm'd into life by some creating flame, All worlds pervading, and through all, the same! Not from the west their swarthy tribes they brought, As Europe's pride and Asia's folly taught;-- With the same ease the great disposing power Produced a man, a reptile, or a flower:-- See the swift deer, in lonely wilds that strays, See the tall elk, that in the valley plays, See the fierce tiger's raging, ravenous band, And wolves (their race as ancient as the land) Did these of old from bleak Kamschatka come, And traverse seas, to find a happier home?-- No?--from the dust, this common dust, they drew Their different forms, proud man, that moulded you. At first, half beasts, untaught to till the land, Careless, you fed from Nature's fostering hand; In depths of deserts dream'd your lives away, Sought no new worlds, nor look'd beyond to-day: The Almighty power, that lives and breathes through all, Bade some faint rays on these dark nations fall; Early, to them did reasoning souls impart, Inventive genius, and some dawn of art; Then left them here, with sense enough to win, Or cheat the bear, or panther of his skin; Mean huts to build, regardless of their form, Completely blest, if shelter'd from the storm; To see the seasons change, day turn to night: Bow to the lamps of heaven that gave them light, Beam'd on the spring, or bade the summer glow, Their harvests ripen, and their gardens grow-- A VIEW OF RHODE ISLAND[6] Wash'd by surrounding seas, and bold her coasts, A grateful soil the fair _Rhode Island_ boasts. The admiring eye no happier fields can trace, Here seas are crowned with the scaly race, Nature has strove to make her native blest And owns no fairer Eden in the west: Here lovliest dames in frequent circles seen, Catch the fine tint of health from beauty's queen, No aid they want to seize the enraptur'd view Nor art's false colours to improve the true; Here, love the traveller holds--loth to depart Some charming creature slays his wandering heart, Bids him forget from clime to clime to rove, And even dull prudence--here--submits to love. On grassy farms, their souls enslav'd to gain, Reside the masters of the rural reign; Vast herds they feed, that glut the abundant pail, Break the stiff sod, or freight the adventurous sail; The nervous steed, the stanchest of the kind Here walks his rounds in pastures unconfin'd:-- Half that the lands produce or seas contain To other shores transported o'er the main Returns in coin, to cheer the miser's eye, In foreign _sweets_, that fancied wants supply, Or tawdry stuffs, to deck the limbs of pride, That thus expends what avarice strove to hide. But, hostile to themselves, this jarring race In desperate interests, different plans embrace-- _One_, bold in wrong, his paper fabric rears And steels his bosom to the orphan's tears To those he ruin'd grants no late relief! But leaves the wretched to subsist on grief! In lost advice his days the gownsman spends, He gives his prayers and teachings to the winds,-- In vain he tells of virtue's sure reward; No words but this attract a swain's regard-- Talk not of Laws!--where innocence must fall, One spark of honour more than damns them all; And vainly Science her assistance lends Where knavery shapes it to the basest ends, Fraud walks at large,--each selfish passion reigns, And cheats enforce what honesty disdains. Hurt at the view, I leave the ungrateful shore And thy rough soil, Connecticut, explore: TERRA VULPINA, OR, THE LAND OF FOXES[7] Here fond remembrance stampt her much loved names, Here boasts the soil its London and its Thames; Through all her shores commodious ports abound, Clear flow the waters of the unequal ground; Cold nipping winds a lengthened winter bring, Late rise the products of the unwilling spring, The impoverished fields the labourer's pains disgrace, And hawks and vultures scream through all the place; The broken soil a nervous breed requires, Where the rough glebe no generous crops admires-- Dame Nature meanly did her gifts impart, But smiles to see how much is forced by art. As Boreas keen, who guides their wintry reign, All bow to lucre, all are bent on gain. In contact close their neat abodes are thrown, Its house, each acre; every mile, its town; With glittering spire the frequent church is seen,[8] Where yews and myrtles wave their gloomy green, Where fast-day sermons tell the hungry guest That a cameleon's dinner is the best: There mobs of deacons awe the ungodly wight, And hell's black master meets the unequal fight-- Eternal squabblings grease the lawyer's paw, All have their suits, and all have studied Law: With tongue, that Art and Nature taught to speak, Some rave in Latin, some dispute in Greek: Proud of their parts, in ancient lore they shine, And one month's study makes a learned Divine;[9] Bards of huge fame in every hamlet rise, Each (in idea) of Virgilian size: Even beardless lads a rhyming knack display-- Iliads begun, and finished in a day! Rhymes, that of old on Blackmore's wheel were spun, Come rattling down on Zion's reverend son;[10] Madly presumed time's vortex to defy! Things born to live an hour--then squeak and die. Some, to grow rich, through Indian forests roam, Some deem it best to stay and thrive at home: In spite of all the priest and squire can say, This world--this wicked world--will have its way; Honest through fear, religious by constraint, How hard to tell the sharper from the saint!-- Fond of discourse, with deep designing views They pump the unwary traveller of his news; Fond of that news, but fonder to be paid, Each house a tavern, claims a tavern's trade, While he that comes as surely hears them praise The hospitality of modern days. Yet, brave in arms, of enterprizing soul, They tempt old Neptune to the farthest pole, In learning's walks explore the mazy way, (For genius there has shed his golden ray) In war's bold art through many a contest tried True to themselves, they took the nobler side, And party feuds forgot, joined to agree That power alone supreme--that left them free. MASSACHUSETTS[11] Here, in vast flocks, the fleecy nation strays, Here, endless herds the upland meadow graze, Here smiling plenty crowns the labourer's pain And blooming beauty weds the industrious swain: Were this thy all, what happier state could be!-- But avarice drives the native to the sea, Fictitious wants all thoughts of ease controul, Proud Independence sways the aspiring soul, 'Midst foreign waves, a stranger to repose, Through the moist world the keen adventurer goes; Not India's seas restrain his daring sail, Far to the south he seeks the polar whale: From those vast banks where frequent tempests rave, And fogs eternal brood upon the wave, There (furled his sail) his daring hold he keeps, Drags from their depths the natives of those deeps; Then to some distant clime explores his way, Bold avarice spurs him on--he must obey. Yet from such aims one great effect we trace That holds in happier bonds this restless race; Like some deep lake, by circling shores comprest, Man's nature tends to universal rest: Unfed by springs, that find some secret pass To mix their current with the mightier mass, Unmoved by moons, that some strange impulse guides To lift its waters, and propel its tides, Unvext by winds, that scowl across its waste, Tear up the wave, and discompose its breast, Soon would that lake (a putrid nuisance grown,) Lose all its virtue, praised or prized by none: Thus, avarice lends new vigour to mankind, Not vainly planted in the unsteady mind; With her, Ambition linked, they proudly drive, Rule all our race, and keep the world alive. Here, first, to quench her once loved Freedom's flame, With their proud fleets, Britannia's warriors came; Here, sure to conquer, she began her fires, Here, sent her lords, her admirals, and her squires: All, all too weak to effect the vast design[12] For which we saw half Europe's arms combine, Uncounted navies rove from main to main, Threats, bribery, treachery--tried and tried again; Mandate on mandate, edict, and decree, To rivet fetters, and enslave the free! Long, long from Boston's hills shall strangers gaze On those vast mounds that magic seemed to raise; Stupendous piles that hastened Britain's flight, Extended hills, the offspring of a night!-- In that devoted town they hoped to stay And, fed by rapine, sleep soft years away: Vain hopes, vain schemes--the unconquered spirit rose That still survived through all succeeding woes; Imprisoned crowds, in cruel durance held, Disarmed, restrained from honour's earliest field; Imprisoned thousands, worn with poignant grief, Now, half adoring, met their guardian chief,[A] Whose thundering cannon bade the foe retreat, Disgrace their portion, and their rout complete. [A] Washington.--_Freneau's note._ A BATAVIAN PICTURE[13] Sons of the earth, for plodding genius fam'd, Batavia long her earth-born natives claim'd: Begot from industry, and not from love, Swarming at length, to these fair climes they move.-- Still in these climes their numerous race survive,[14] And, born to labour, still are found to thrive; Thro' rain and sunshine toiling for their heirs They hold no nation on this earth like theirs. Fond of themselves, no generous motives bind, To those that speak their gibberish, only kind:-- Yet still some virtues, candour must confess, And truth shall own, some virtues they possess: Where'er they fix, all nature smiles around Groves bend with fruit and plenty clothes the ground; No barren trees to shade their domes are seen, Trees must be fertile, and their dwellings clean, No idle fancy dares its whims apply, Or hope attention from the master's eye, All tends to something that must pelf produce, All for some end, and every thing its use:-- Eternal scowerings keep their floors afloat, Neat as the outside of the Sunday coat; The hoe, the loom, the female band employ, These all their pleasure, these their darling joy;-- The strong-ribb'd lass no idle passions move, No frail ideas of romantic love; He to her heart the readiest path can find Who comes with gold, and courts her to be kind, She heeds not valour, learning, wit, or birth, Minds not the swain--but asks him what he's worth. No female fears in her firm breast prevail, The helm she handles and she trims the sail, In some small barque the way to market finds, Hauls aft the sheet, or veers it to the winds, While placed a-head, subservient to her will, Hans smokes his pipe, and wonders at her skill. Health to their toils--thus may they still go on-- Curse on my pen! What pictures have I drawn! Is this the general taste? No (Truth replies)-- If fond of beauty, guiltless of disguise, See--(where, the social circle meant to grace) The fair Cesarean shades her lovely face,-- She, earlier held to happier tasks at home, Prefers the labours that her sex become, Remote from view, directs some favourite art, And leaves to hardier man the ruder part. PENNSYLVANIA [A Fragment] Spread with stupendous hills, far from the main, Fair Pennsylvania holds her golden rein, In fertile fields her wheaten harvest grows, Charged with its freights her favorite Delaware flows; From Erie's Lake her soil with plenty teems To where the Schuylkill rolls his limpid streams-- Sweet stream! what pencil can thy beauties tell-- Where, wandering downward through the woody vale, Thy varying scenes to rural bliss invite, To health and pleasure add a new delight: Here Juniata, too, allures the swain, And gay Cadorus roves along the plain; Sweetara, tumbling from the distant hill, Steals through the waste, to turn the industrious mill-- Where'er those floods through groves or mountains stray, That God of Nature still directs the way, With fondest care has traced each river's bed And mighty streams thro' mighty forests led, Bade agriculture thus export her freight, The strength and glory of this favoured State. She, famed for science, arts, and polished men, Admires her Franklin, but adores her Penn, Who, wandering here, made barren forests bloom, And the new soil a happier robe assume: He planned no schemes that virtue disapproves, He robbed no Indian of his native groves, But, just to all, beheld his tribes increase, Did what he could to bind the world in peace, And, far retreating from a selfish band, Bade Freedom flourish in this foreign land. Gay towns unnumbered shine through all her plains, Here every art its happiest height attains: The graceful ship, on nice proportions planned, Here finds perfection from the builder's hand, To distant worlds commercial visits pays, Or war's bold thunder o'er the deep conveys.[15] MARYLAND Laved by vast depths that swell on either side Where Chesapeake intrudes his midway tide, Gay Maryland attracts the admiring eye, A fertile region with a temperate sky. In years elapsed, her heroes of renown From British Anna named one favourite town:[B] But, lost her commerce, though she guards their laws, Proud Baltimore that envied commerce draws. Few are the years since there, at random placed, Some wretched huts her quiet-port disgraced; Safe from all winds, and covered from the bay, There, at his ease, the thoughtless native lay. Now, rich and great, no more a slave to sloth, She claims importance from her towering growth-- High in renown, her streets and domes arranged, A groupe of cabins to a city changed. Though rich at home, to foreign lands they stray, For foreign trappings trade the wealth away. Politest manners through their towns prevail, And pleasure revels, though their funds should fail; In each gay dome, soft music charms its lord, Where female beauty strikes the trembling chord; On the fine air with nicest touches dwells, While from the tongue the according ditty swells: Proud to be seen, 'tis their's to place delight In dances measured by the winter's night, The evening feast, that wine and mirth prolong, The lamp of splendor, and the midnight song. Religion here no gloomy garb assumes, Exchanged her tears for patches and for plumes: The blooming belle (untaught heaven's beaus to win) Talks not of seraphs, but the world she's in: Attached to earth, here born, and to decay, She leaves to better worlds all finer clay. In those, whom choice or different fortunes place On rural scenes, a different mind we trace; There solitude, that still to dullness tends, To rustic forms no sprightly action lends; Heeds not the garb, mopes o'er the evening fire; And bids the maiden from the man retire. On winding floods the lofty mansion stands, That casts a mournful view o'er neighbouring lands; There the sad master strays amidst his grounds, Directs his negroes, or reviews his hounds; Then home returning, plies his pasteboard play, Or dreams o'er wine, that hardly makes him gay: If some chance guest arrive in weary plight, He more than bids him welcome for the night; Kind to profusion, spares no pains to please, Gives him the product of his fields and trees; On his rich board shines plenty from her source, --The meanest dish of all his own discourse. [B] Annapolis.--_Freneau's note._ OLD VIRGINIA[16] Vast in extent, Virginia meets our view, With streams immense, dark groves, and mountains blue; First in provincial rank she long was seen, Built the first town, and first subdued the plain: This was her praise--but what can years avail, When times succeeding see her efforts fail! On northern fields more vigorous arts display, Where pleasure holds no universal sway; No herds of slaves parade their sooty band From the rough plough to save the fopling's hand, Where urgent wants the daily pittance ask, Compel to labour, and complete the task.[17] A race of slaves, throughout their country spread, From different soils extort the owner's bread;[18] Averse to toil, the natives still rely On the sad negro for the year's supply;[19] He, patient, early quits his poor abode, Toils at the hoe, or totes some ponderous load,[20] Sweats at the axe, or, pensive and forlorn, Sighs for the eve, to parch his stinted corn! With watchful eye maintains his much-loved fire, Nor even in summer lets its sparks expire-- At night returns, his evening toils to share, Lament his rags, or sleep away his care, Bind up the recent wound, with many a groan; Or thank his gods that Sunday is his own. To these far climes the scheming Scotchman flies, Quits his bleak hills to court Virginian skies; Removed from oat-meal, sour-crout, debts, and duns, Prudent, he hastes to bask in kinder suns; Marks well the native--views his weaker side, And heaps up wealth from luxury and pride, Exports the produce of a thousand plains, Nor fears a rival, to divide his gains. Deep in their beds, as distant to their source Here many a river winds its wandering course: Proud of her bulky freight, through plains and woods Moves the tall ship, majestic, o'er the floods, Where James's strength the ocean brine repels, Or, like a sea, the deep Potowmack swells: Yet here the sailor views with wondering eye Impoverished fields that near their margins lie, Mercantile towns, where languor holds her reign, And boors inactive, on the exhausted plain.[21] [4] In the _Charleston City Gazette or Daily Advertiser_ of February 2, 1790, appeared "A Characteristic Sketch of the Long Island Dutch. From The Rising Empire: a Poem." Two days later the New York _Daily Advertiser_ published "A View of Rhode Island. [Extracted from a new Poem, entitled The Rising Empire, not yet published.]" That Freneau for a time was actively engaged upon this projected volume is evident from the poems on the states which appeared in the _Daily Advertiser_, chiefly during the month of March, 1790. The last of these poems, "A Descriptive Sketch of Virginia," appeared June 11, 1790. On June 25 Freneau issued proposals for a new volume of poems, presumably to bear the title "The Rising Empire," but the volume was never published. Many of the pieces that undoubtedly would have gone to make up the book appeared in the _Daily Advertiser_. Of those that came directly under the title (and they are doubtless but a fragment of what the poet intended to write) all but "A View of Rhode Island" appeared in a greatly changed form in the poet's later volumes. I have followed in each case the edition of 1809. [5] In the _Daily Advertiser_ of March 13, 1790, this poem bore the title "Philosophical Sketch of America." [6] Text from the New York _Daily Advertiser_ of February 4, 1790. [7] In the original version published in the _Daily Advertiser_, May 10, 1790, this bore the title "Description of Connecticut." [8] Followed in the original version by the line: "Sacred to him, that taught them to be keen;" [9] The fourteen lines following this are not in the original version. [10] In the edition of 1795 this reads "Greenfield's reverend son," alluding to Dr. Dwight. [11] In the index to the 1809 edition the title was "Lines on the old patriotic state, Massachusetts." [12] "All, all too weak to effect the vast design That swell'd, poor GAGE, that puny heart of thine, That urg'd BURGOYNE to slight his _Celia's_ charms, The brother HOWES to furbish up their arms And modern PERCIES lose their wonted sleep To conquer countries, that they could--not keep." --Original version in the _Daily Advertiser_, March 29, 1790. [13] The original title of this poem was "A Characteristic Sketch of the Long Island Dutch." [14] The original version in the _Daily Advertiser_ began at this point. [15] The earliest version, as it appeared in the _Daily Advertiser_, March 17, 1790, had the following in place of the last six lines: "Thy followers, FOX, pacific in each aim, In this far climate still revere your name; To them long practice prudent foresight gave, Proof to the projects of the keenest knave. On things to come they fix an anxious eye Fond to be thought the favourites of the sky, Paths of their own they clear to future bliss, Praise _other_ worlds but keep their hold on _this_. Nor mean I, hence, to censure or condemn, Perhaps 'twere best the world should think like them;-- What tho' on visions they may place their trust, I hold their general principles are just, _Good will to all, themselves their first great care, Precise in dealing, foes to blood and war_; Let kings invade, or potentates assault, No aid they lend, for passive to a fault, They still are found, all complaisant to power To bow to ruffians in the trying hour." [16] In the edition of 1795 this bore the title "Virginia. [A Fragment]" [17] The original version in the _Daily Advertiser_, June 11, 1790, added here these lines: "Yet shall not malice rob them of their due, Not all their worth is center'd in a few: On Fame's bright lists their sages they enroll, Theirs is the brave, and high aspiring soul, Heroes and chiefs, the firm unconquer'd mind That rul'd in councils, or in battles shin'd, Sent traitorous bands new regions to explore And drove their titled miscreant[a] from the shore." [a] Lord Dunmore.--_Freneau's note._ [18] The original version added here the following: "Rais'd by their care, _tobacco_ spreads its leaf, The master's pleasure, and the labourer's grief; Hence comes the lofty port, the haughty air, The proud demeanour, and the brow severe." [19] The original version added here the couplet: "While the keen lash some little tyrant wields, Foe to the free-born genius of the fields." [20] The original version added here: "Silent beholds (proud object of reproach) His whole year's labour lost on Mammon's coach!" [21] As originally printed in the _Daily Advertiser_ the poem ended as follows: "Mercantile towns where dullness holds her reign And boors, too lazy to manure the plain:-- There, where two creeks divide the sickly lands, Mis-shapen pile, the gloomy college stands, With mingled _chess_ the sophs their vigils keep And _William_ nods to _Mary_--half asleep; The mopish muse no lively theme essays But toils in _law_, that best her toil repays, With modern Latin, ancient trash explains, Or deals in Logic--for the want of brains. "Attach'd to other times, I cast my view To former days, when all was fresh & new, When _Pocahunta_, in her bearskin clad, Sigh'd to be happy with her English lad: Queen of those woods, embarking on the main, (With _Tomocomo_ following in her train) First of her race, she reach'd the British shore But doom'd to perish, saw her own no more! Chang'd is the scene--where once her gardens smil'd A negro race now wander through the wild And with base gabbling, vex that injur'd shade Where Freedom flourish'd and _Powhatan_ stray'd." LOG-TOWN TAVERN[22] [By Hezekiah Salem][23] Through sandy wastes and floods of rain To this dejected place I came, Where swarthy nymphs, in tattered gowns, From pine-knots catch their evening flame: Where barren oaks, in close array, With mournful melody condole; Where no gay fabrics meet the eye, Nor painted board, nor barber's pole. Thou town of logs! so justly called, In thee who halts at evening's close, Not dreams from Jove, but hosts of fleas Shall join to sweeten his repose. A curse on this dejected place Where cold, and hot, and wet, and dry, And stagnant ponds of ample space The putrid steams of death supply. Since here I paced on weary steed Ah, blame me not, should I repine That sprightly girl, nor social bed, Nor jovial glass this night is mine. The landlord, gouged in either eye, Here drains his bottle to the dregs, Or borrows Susan's pipe, while she Prepares the bacon and the eggs. Jamaica, that inspires the soul, In these abodes no time has seen To dart its generous influence round, To kindle wit and kill the spleen. The squire of this disheartening inn Affords to none the generous bowl, Displays no Bacchus on the sign To warm the heart and cheer the soul. To cyder, drawn from tilted cask, While each a fond attention paid All grieved to see the empty flask, Its substance gone, its strength decayed. A rambling hag, in dismal notes Screeched out a song, to cheer my grief; Two lads their dull adventures told, A shepherd each--and each a thief. Dame justice here in rigour reigns-- Each has on each the griping paw: Whoe'er with them a bargain makes, Scheme as he will, it ends in law. With scraps of songs and smutty words Each lodger here adorns the walls: The wanton muse no pencil gives, A coal her mean idea scrawls. No merry thought, no flash of wit Was scrawled by this unseemly crew, With pain I read the words they writ Immodest and immoral too. The god of verse, the poet's friend, Whom Nature all indulgent finds-- That god of verse will never lend His powers to such degraded minds. In murmuring streams no chrystal wave To cheer the wretched hamlet flows; But frowning to the distant bog Rosanna with the pitcher goes. At dusk of eve the tardy treat Was placed on board of knotty pine; Each gaping gazed, to see me eat While round me lay the slumbering swine. Unblessed be she, whose aukward hand Before me laid the mouldy pone;[A] May she still miss the joyous kiss, Condemned to fret and sleep alone. [A] A composition of Indian meal and water, baked hastily before the fire on a board or hoe.--_Freneau's note._ The horse that bore me on my way Around me cast a wishful eye, He looked, and saw no manger near, And hung his head, and seemed to sigh. At stump of pine, for want of stall, All night, beneath a dripping tree, Not fed with oats, but filled with wind, And buckwheat straw, alone stood he. Discouraged at so vile a treat, Yet pleased to see the approaching dawn, In haste, we left this dreary place, Nor staid to drink their dear Yoppon.[B] [B] A shrub leaf very commonly used in the Carolinas, as a substitute for tea.--_Freneau's note._ May travellers dread to wander here, Unless on penance they be bound-- O may they never venture near, Such fleas and filthiness abound. But should ye come--be short your stay, For Lent is here forever kept-- Depart, ye wretches, haste away, Nor stop to sleep--where I have slept. [22] _Daily Advertiser_, February 19, 1790, entitled "Lines Descriptive of a Tavern at Log-Town, a small Place in the Pine Barrens of North-Carolina." The poem appeared originally in the _North Carolina Gazette_. [23] The signature "By Hezekiah Salem" or "By H. Salem" is peculiar to the 1809 edition. Freneau added it to many poems which in previous editions had been unsigned. THE WANDERER[24] As Southward bound to Indian isles O'er lonely seas he held his way, A songster of the feather'd kind Approach'd, with golden plumage gay: By sympathetic feelings led And grieving for her sad mischance, Thus Thyrsis to the wanderer said, As circling in her airy dance. "Sad pilgrim on a watery waste, What cruel tempest has compell'd To leave so far your native grove, To perish on this liquid field! Not such a dismal swelling scene (Dread Neptune's wild unsocial sea) But crystal brooks and groves of green, Dear rambling bird, were made for thee. Ah, why amid some flowery mead Did you not stay, where late you play'd: Not thus forsake the cypress grove That lent its kind protecting shade. In vain you spread your weary wings To shun the hideous gulph below; Our barque can be your only hope-- But man you justly deem your foe. Now hovering near, you stoop to lodge Where yonder lofty canvas swells-- Again take wing--refuse our aid, And rather trust the ruffian gales. But Nature tires! your toils are vain-- Could you on stronger pinions rise Than eagles have--for days to come All you could see are seas and skies. Again she comes, again she lights, And casts a pensive look below-- Weak wanderer, trust the traitor, Man, And take the help that we bestow." Down to his side, with circling flight, She flew, and perch'd, and linger'd there; But, worn with wandering, droop'd her wing, And life resign'd in empty air. [24] Printed in the _Daily Advertiser_, February 22, 1790, under the title "The Bird at Sea," and republished only in the edition of 1795, from which the text is taken. ON THE DEMOLITION OF FORT-GEORGE In New-York--1790[25] As giants once, in hopes to rise, Heaped up their mountains to the skies; With Pelion piled on Ossa, strove To reach the eternal throne of Jove; So here the hands of ancient days Their fortress from the earth did raise, On whose proud heights, proud men to please, They mounted guns and planted trees. Those trees to lofty stature grown-- All is not right!--they must come down, Nor longer waste their wonted shade Where Colden slept, or Tryon strayed. Let him be sad that placed them there,-- We shall a youthful race prepare; Another grove shall bloom, we trust, When this lies prostrate in the dust. Where Dutchmen once, in ages past, Huge walls and ramparts round them cast, New fabrics raised, on new design, Gay streets and palaces shall shine. To foreign kings no more a slave (Disgrace to Freedom's passing wave) No flags we rear, we feign no mirth, Nor prize the day that gave them birth. While time degrades Palmyra low, Augusta lifts her lofty brow-- While Europe falls to wars a prey, Her monarchs here, should have no sway. Another George shall here reside, While Hudson's bold, unfettered tide Well pleased to see this chief so nigh, With livelier aspect passes by. Along his margin, fresh and clean, Ere long shall belles and beaux be seen, Through moon-light shades, delighted, stray, To view the islands and the bay. Of evening dews no more afraid, Reclining in some favourite shade, Each nymph, in rapture with her trees, Shall sigh to quit the western breeze. To barren hills far southward shoved, These noisy guns shall be removed, No longer here a vain expense, Where time has proved them no defence.-- Advance, bright days! make haste to crown With such fair scenes this honoured town.-- Freedom shall find her charter clear, And plant her seat of commerce here. [25] In the _Daily Advertiser_ of June 12, 1790, there appeared from the pen of Freneau a long article entitled "Description of New-York one Hundred years hence, By a Citizen of those Times:" The following is an extract: "At the South western part of this city formerly stood a strong fort, with stone walls, near thirty feet in height, upon which were mounted a considerable number of large pieces of cannon. This fortress was originally constructed by the Dutch possessors of the place to defend the town, then in its infancy, from the insults of pirates on the one side, and the aborigines of the country on the other. After this territory fell into the hands of the English nation, the fort was at different times enlarged, strengthened and repaired, and was the usual place of residence for the British Governors, who, in the true spirit of European royalty and despotism chose to live separate from their fellow-citizens, and in several instances treated them with a degree of contempt and disrespect proportionate to the confidence they had in the number of their cannon, and in the strength of the walls and ramparts that surrounded them. "History mentions that in the year 1790, fourteen years after this republic had shaken off its yoke of foreign bondage, this fort was totally demolished by an edict of the Senate, and the space it occupied employed to better purpose in making room for those elegant streets and buildings which now adorn this quarter of the city." The poem appeared in the issue of March 9, 1790, and was entitled "On the proposed demolition of Fort George, in this City." The text of the 1809 edition has been followed. CONGRESS HALL, N. Y.[26] With eager step and wrinkled brow, The busy sons of care (Disgusted with less splendid scenes) To Congress Hall repair. In order placed, they patient wait To seize each word that flies, From what they hear, they sigh or smile, Look cheerful, grave, or wise. Within these walls the doctrines taught Are of such vast concern, That all the world, with one consent, Here strives to live--and learn. The timorous heart, that cautious shuns All churches, but its own, No more observes its wonted rules; But ventures here, alone. Four hours a day each rank alike, (They that can walk or crawl) Leave children, business, shop, and wife, And steer for Congress Hall. From morning tasks of mending soals The cobler hastes away; At three returns, and tells to Kate The business of the day. The debtor, vext with early duns, Avoids his hated home; And here and there dejected roves 'Till hours of Congress come. The barber, at the well-known time, Forsakes his bearded man, And leaves him with his lathered jaws, To trim them as he can. The tailor, plagued with suits on suits, Neglects Sir Fopling's call, Throws by his goose--slips from his board, And trots to Congress Hall. [26] _Daily Advertiser_, March 12, 1790. The title of the poem as given in the index of the 1809 edition, the text of which I have followed, is "On the Immense Concourse at Federal Hall, in 1790, while the Funding System was in agitation." The title in the 1795 edition was "Federal Hall." The seat of the national government was at this time in New York City. EPISTLE TO PETER PINDAR, ESQ.[27] Peter, methinks you are the happiest wight That ever dealt in ink, or sharpen'd quill. 'Tis yours on every rank of fools to write-- Some prompt with pity, some with laughter kill; On scullions or on dukes you run your rigs, And value George no more than _Whitbread's_ pigs. From morn to night, thro' London's busy streets, New subjects for your pen in crowds are seen, At church, in taverns, balls, or birth-day treats, Sir Joseph Banks, or England's breeding queen; How happy you, whom fortune has decreed Each character to hit--where all will read. We, too, have had your monarch by the nose, And pull'd the richest jewel from his crown-- Half Europe's kings are fools, the story goes, Mere simpletons, and ideots of renown, Proud, in their frantic fits, man's blood to spill-- 'Tis time they all were travelling down the hill. But, Peter, quit your dukes and little lords, Young princes full of blood and scant of brains-- Our _rebel_ coast some similes affords, And many a subject for your pen contains Preserv'd as fuel for your comic rhymes, (Like Egypt's gods) to give to future times. [27] Text from the _Daily Advertiser_, March 15, 1790. "Peter Pindar" was the pen name of the voluminous and well-known English satirist and humorist, Dr. John Walcott. The first collection of his poems was published in 1789. From this point his influence upon the poetry of Freneau was considerable. An American edition of Peter Pindar was published in Philadelphia in 1792. THE NEW ENGLAND SABBATH-DAY CHACE[28] [Written Under the Character of Hezekiah Salem] On a fine Sunday morning I mounted my steed And southward from Hartford had meant to proceed; My baggage was stow'd in a cart very snug, Which Ranger, the gelding, was destined to lug; With his harness and buckles, he loom'd very grand, And was drove by young Darby, a lad of the land-- On land, or on water, most handy was he, A jockey on shore, and a sailor at sea, He knew all the roads, he was so very keen And the Bible by heart, at the age of fifteen. As thus I jogg'd on, to my saddle confined, With Ranger and Darby a distance behind; At last in full view of a steeple we came With a cock on the spire (I suppose he was game; A dove in the pulpit may suit your grave people, But always remember--a cock on the steeple) Cries Darby--"Dear master, I beg you to stay; Believe me, there's danger in driving this way; Our deacons on Sundays have power to arrest And lead us to church--if your honour thinks best-- Though still I must do them the justice to tell, They would choose you should pay them the fine--full as well." The fine (said I) Darby, how much may it be-- A shilling or sixpence?--why, now let me see, Three shillings are all the small pence that remain, And to change a half joe would be rather profane. Is it more than three shillings, the fine that you speak on; What say you good Darby--will that serve the deacon. "Three shillings (cried Darby) why, master, you're jesting!-- Let us luff while we can and make sure of our westing-- Forty shillings, excuse me, is too much to pay It would take my month's wages--that's all I've to say. By taking this road that inclines to the right The squire and the sexton may bid us good night, If once to old Ranger I give up the rein The parson himself may pursue us in vain." "Not I, my good Darby (I answer'd the lad) Leave the church on the left! they would think we were mad; I would sooner rely on the heels of my steed, And pass by them all like a Jehu indeed:-- As long as I'm able to lead in the race Old Ranger, the gelding, will go a good pace, As the deacon pursues, he will fly like a swallow, And you in the cart must, undoubtedly, follow." Then approaching the church, as we pass'd by the door The sexton peep'd out, with a saint or two more, A deacon came forward and waved us his hat, A signal to drop him some money--mind that!-- "Now, Darby (I halloo'd) be ready to skip, Ease off the curb bridle--give Ranger the whip: While you have the rear, and myself lead the way, No doctor or deacon shall catch us this day." By this time the deacon had mounted his poney And chaced for the sake of our souls and--our money: The saint, as he followed, cried--"Stop them, halloo!" As swift as he followed, as swiftly we flew-- "Ah master! (said Darby) I very much fear We must drop him some money to check his career, He is gaining upon us and waves with his hat There's nothing, dear master, will stop him but that. Remember the Beaver (you well know the fable) Who flying the hunters as long as he's able, When he finds that his efforts can nothing avail But death and the puppies are close at his tail, Instead of desponding at such a dead lift He bites off their object, and makes a free gift-- Since fortune all hope of escaping denies Better give them a little, than lose the whole prize." But scarce had he spoke, when we came to a place Whose muddy condition concluded the chace, Down settled the cart--and old Ranger stuck fast Aha! (said the Saint) have I catch'd ye at last? * * * * * Cætera desunt. [28] First published, as far as I can find, in the _Daily Advertiser_, March 16, 1790. It was there introduced as follows (italics): "In several parts of New England it is customary not to suffer travellers to proceed on a journey on the Sabbath day. If a person is obstinate on these occasions, he is either forcibly (and commonly to the ridicule of the whole Congregation) conducted to the Church door, led through the principal ile (_sic_), and placed in a conspicuous seat by the wardens, or must be detained till next day under guard, and submit to pay a fine, or be committed. The following lines commemorate an event of this sort, which some years ago really befel Mr. P. the noted performer in feats of horsemanship. The author, however, seems to have left his poem incomplete." Text from the 1809 edition. ON THE SLEEP OF PLANTS[29] When suns are set, and stars in view, Not only man to slumber yields; But Nature grants this blessing too, To yonder plants, in yonder fields. The Summer heats and lengthening days (To them the same as toil and care) Thrice welcome make the evening breeze, That kindly does their strength repair. At early dawn each plant survey, And see, revived by Nature's hand, With youthful vigour, fresh and gay, Their blossoms blow, their leaves expand. Yon' garden plant, with weeds o'er-run, Not void of thought, perceives its hour, And, watchful of the parting sun, Throughout the night conceals her flower. Like us, the slave of cold and heat, She too enjoys her little span-- With Reason, only less complete Than that which makes the boast of man. Thus, moulded from one common clay, A varied life adorns the plain; By Nature subject to decay, By Nature meant to bloom again! [29] Published in the _Daily Advertiser_, March 20, 1790. Text from the edition of 1809. ON THE DEMOLITION OF AN OLD COLLEGE[30] On New-Year's eve, the year was eighty-nine, All clad in black, a back-woods' college crew With crow-bar, sledge, and broad axe did combine To level with the dust their antique hall, In hopes the President would build a new: Yes, yes, (said they), this ancient pile shall fall, And laugh no longer at yon' cobbler's stall. The clock struck seven--in social compact joined, They pledged their sacred honors to proceed: The number seventy-five this feat designed: And first some oaths they swore by candle light On Euclid' Elements--no bible did they need: One must be true, they said, the other might-- Besides, no bible could be found that night. Now darkness o'er the plain her pinions spread, Then rung the bell an unaccustomed peal: Out rushed the brave, the cowards went to bed, And left the attempt to those who felt full bold To pull down halls, where years had seen them kneel: Where Wheelock oft at rakes was wont to scold, Or sung them many a psalm, in days of old. Advancing then towards the tottering hall, (That now at least one hundred years had stood) They gave due notice that it soon should fall-- Lest there some godly wight might gaping stand; (For well they knew the world wants all its good To fright the sturdy sinners of the land, And shame old Satan, with his sooty band.) The reverend man that college gentry awes, Hearing the bell at this unusual hour, Vext at the infringement of the college laws, With Indian stride out-sallied from his den, And made a speech (as being a man in power)-- Alas! it was not heard by one in ten-- No time to heed his speeches, or his pen. "Ah, rogues, said he, ah, whither do ye run, "Bent on the ruin of this antique pile-- "That, all the war, has braved both sword and gun? "Reflect, dear boys, some reverend rats are there, "That now will have to scamper many a mile, "For whom past time old Latin books did spare, "And Attic Greek, and manuscripts most rare. "Relent, relent! to accomplish such designs "Folks bred on college fare are much too weak; "For such attempts men drink your high-proof wines, "Not spiritless switchel[A] and vile hogo drams, "Scarcely sufficient to digest your Greek-- "Come, let the college stand, my dear black lambs-- "Besides--I see you have no battering rams." [A] A mixture of molasses and water.--_Freneau's note._ Thus he--but sighs, and tears, and prayers were lost-- So, to it they went with broad-axe, spade, and hammer-- One smote a wall, and one dislodged a post, Tugged at a beam, or pulled down pigeon-holes Where Indian lads were wont to study grammar-- Indeed, they took vast pains and dug like moles, And worked as if they worked to save their souls. Now to its deep foundation shook the dome: Farewell to all its learning, fame and honor! So fell the capitol of heathen Rome, By Goths and Vandals levelled with the dust-- And so shall die the works of Neal O'Connor, (Which he himself will even outlive, we trust:) But now our story's coming to the worst-- Down fell the Pile!--aghast these rebels stood, And wondered at the mischiefs they had done To such a pile, composed of white-oak wood; To such a pile, so antique and renowned, Which many a prayer had heard and many a pun-- So, three huzzas they gave, and fired a round, Then homeward trudged--half drunk--but safe and sound. [30] Published in the _Daily Advertiser_, March 22, 1790, under the title "On the Demolition of Dartmouth College." This earliest version was introduced thus (italics): "On December the 31st last, the old College at Dartmouth in New-Hampshire, was entirely demolished by the Students, notwithstanding every endeavour of the Rev. President to persuade them to desist from their unwarrantable undertaking. It stood the shock of their united efforts about 20 minutes, and then fell to the ground." The facts as given by Freneau are in the main true. During the absence of the second Wheelock in Europe to secure funds for the college "Professor Woodward," according to Chase's _History of Dartmouth College_, "acted as chief executive and Professor Ripley resided with the family in the presidential mansion. The students, it seems, took advantage of the opportunity to rid themselves and the faculty of the little log hut, 'the first sprout of the college,' that stood near the mansion house. Being remitted to the occupancy of servants, it was by this time in a deplorable state of neglect and decay, and obnoxious to everybody. On a December evening in 1782 or 1783 Professor Ripley in the President's house happened to be entertaining a friend from Connecticut, and dilating with much satisfaction upon the orderly behaviour of the students and the freedom from noise and disturbance. In the midst of it they became aware of an unusual commotion without, and on going to see about it, discovered a body of students assailing the log house in such a manner that in a very short time little was left of it. The professor made an effort to stay the work but the noise overpowered his voice." In the edition of 1795 the title was "On the Demolition of a Log-College," and in the index of the edition of 1809, the text of which I have used, the title was given "On the Demolition of an ancient New-England College." ON THE DEATH OF DR. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN[31] Thus, some tall tree that long hath stood The glory of its native wood, By storms destroyed, or length of years, Demands the tribute of our tears. The pile, that took long time to raise, To dust returns by slow decays: But, when its destined years are o'er, We must regret the loss the more. So long accustomed to your aid, The world laments your exit made; So long befriended by your art, Philosopher, 'tis hard to part!-- When monarchs tumble to the ground, Successors easily are found: But, matchless Franklin! what a few Can hope to rival such as you, Who seized from kings their sceptred pride, And turned the lightning's darts aside![A] [A] Eripuit coelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis!--_Freneau's note._ [31] First published in the _Daily Advertiser_, April 28, 1790. Text from the 1809 edition. Franklin died April 17. EPISTLE[32] From Dr. Franklin [deceased] to his Poetical Panegyrists, on some of their Absurd Compliments "Good Poets, why so full of pain, Are you sincere--or do you feign? Love for your tribe I never had, Nor penned three stanzas, good or bad. At funerals, sometimes, grief appears, Where legacies have purchased tears: 'Tis folly to be sad for nought, From me you never gained a groat. To better trades I turned my views, And never meddled with the muse; Great things I did for rising States, And kept the lightning from some pates. This grand discovery, you adore it, But ne'er will be the better for it: You still are subject to those fires, For poets' houses have no spires. Philosophers are famed for pride; But, pray, be modest--when I died, No "sighs disturbed old ocean's bed," No "Nature wept" for Franklin dead! That day, on which I left the coast, A beggar-man was also lost: If "Nature wept," you must agree She wept for him--as well as me. There's reason even in telling lies-- In such profusion of her "sighs," She was too sparing of a tear-- In Carolina, all was clear: And, if there fell some snow and sleet, Why must it be my winding sheet? Snows oft have cloathed the April plain, Have melted, and will melt again. Poets, I pray you, say no more, Or say what Nature said before; That reason should your pens direct, Or else you pay me no respect. Let reason be your constant rule, And Nature, trust me, is no fool-- When to the dust great men she brings, Make her do--some uncommon things." [32] Published in the _Daily Advertiser_, May 24, 1790, with the title "Verses from the Other World, by Dr. Fr--k--n." Text from the 1809 edition. CONSTANTIA[33] [On a Project of Retiring to Bethlehem] Sick of the world, in prime of days Constantia took a serious fit-- Resolved to shun all balls and plays And only read what saints had writ-- To Convent Hall she would repair And be a pensive sister there. "What are they all--this glare of things, These insects that around me shine; These beaux and belles on silken wings-- Indeed their pleasures make not mine-- My happiness is all delayed-- I'll go, and find it in the shade." A sailor, loitering from his crew, As chance would have it, passed along-- She told him what she had in view, And he replied--"Fair maid you're wrong, "Let faded nymphs to cloisters go, "Where kisses freeze and love is snow. "The druids' oak and hermits' pine "Afford a gloomy, sad delight; "But why that blush of health resign, "The mingled tint of red and white? "In moistening cells the flowers expire "That, on the plain, all eyes admire. "With such a pensive, pious train "Who, but a hermit, could agree-- "Ah, rather stay to grace the plain, "Or wander on the wave with me: "For you the painted barque shall wait "And I would die for such a freight." "No wandering stranger (she replied) "Can tempt me to forego my plan; "No barque that wafts him o'er the tide, "Nor many a better looking man: "Go, wanderer, plough your gloomy sea, "Constantia must a sister be. "To gain so fair a flower as you, "(The Tar returned) who would not plead? "Nor shall you, nymph, to convents go "While love can write what you must read: "Come, to yon' meadow let us stray, "I have some handsome things to say." "Love has its wish when reason fails-- "In vain he sighed, in vain he strove: "Forsake (said she) those swelling sails "If you would have me--think of love: "Great merit has your sailing art, "But absence would distract my heart." What else was said, we secret keep;-- The Tar, grown fonder of the shore, Neglects his prospects on the deep, And she of convents talks no more:-- He slyly quits the coasting trade She pities her--who seeks the shade. [33] Printed in the _Daily Advertiser_, May 1, 1790. It was republished both in the _Freeman's Journal_ and in the _National Gazette_. Text from the 1809 edition. STANZAS Occasioned by Lord Bellamont's, Lady Hay's, and Other Skeletons, being dug up in Fort George (N. Y.), 1790.[34] To sleep in peace when life is fled, Where shall our mouldering bones be laid-- What care can shun--(I ask with tears) The shovels of succeeding years! Some have maintained, when life is gone, This frame no longer is our own: Hence doctors to our tombs repair, And seize death's slumbering victims there. Alas! what griefs must Man endure! Not even in forts he rests secure:-- Time dims the splendours of a crown, And brings the loftiest rampart down. The breath, once gone, no art recalls! Away we haste to vaulted walls: Some future whim inverts the plain, And stars behold our bones again. Those teeth, dear girls--so much your care-- (With which no ivory can compare) Like these (that once were lady Hay's) May serve the belles of future days. Then take advice from yonder scull; And, when the flames of life grow dull, Leave not a tooth in either jaw, Since dentists steal--and fear no law. He, that would court a sound repose, To barren hills and deserts goes: Where busy hands admit no sun, Where he may doze, 'till all is done. Yet there, even there tho' slyly laid, 'Tis folly to defy the spade: Posterity invades the hill, And plants our relics where she will. But O! forbear the rising sigh! All care is past with them that die: Jove gave, when they to fate resigned, An opiate of the strongest kind: Death is a sleep, that has no dreams: In which all time a moment seems-- And skeletons perceive no pain Till Nature bids them wake again. [34] Published in the _Daily Advertiser_, June 17, 1790. The bodies were removed at the time the demolition of Fort George was in progress. Text from the 1809 edition. THE ORATOR OF THE WOODS[35] Each traveller asks, with fond surprize, Why Thyrsis wastes the fleeting year Where gloomy forests round him rise, And only rustics come to hear-- His taste is odd (they seem to say) Such talents in so poor a way! To those that courts and titles please How dismal is his lot; Beyond the hills, beneath some trees, To live--and be forgot-- In dull retreats, where Nature binds Her mass of clay to vulgar minds. While you lament his barren trade, Tell me--in yonder vale Why grows that flower beneath the shade, So feeble and so pale!-- Why was she not in sun-shine placed To blush and please your men of taste? In lonely wilds, those flowers so fair No curious step allure; And chance, not choice, has placed them there, (Still charming, tho' obscure) Where, heedless of such sweets so nigh, The lazy hind goes loitering by. [35] Published in the _Daily Advertiser_, June 29, 1790, with the explanation: "Occasioned by hearing a very elegant Discourse preached in a mean Building, by the Parson of an obscure Parrish." Text from the 1809 edition. NANNY[A] The Philadelphia Housekeeper, to Nabby, her Friend in New-York[36] [A] Occasioned by the intended removal of the Supreme Legislature of the United States from New-York to Philadelphia--a measure much agitated at the time the above was written--1790.--_Freneau's note._ Six weeks my dear mistress has been in a fret And nothing but Congress will do for her yet: She says they must come, or her senses she'll lose, From morning till night she is reading the news, And loves the dear fellows that vote for our town (Since no one can relish New-York but a clown, Where your beef is as lean, as if fattened on chaff, And folks are too haughty to worship--a calf) She tells us as how she has read in her books That God gives them meat, but the devil sends cooks; And Grumbleton told us (who often shoots flying) That fish you have plenty--but spoil them in frying; That your streets are as crooked, as crooked can be, Right forward three perches he never could see But his view was cut short with a house or a shop, That stood in his way--and obliged him to stop. Those speakers that wish for New-York to decide,-- 'Tis a pity that talents are so misapplied! My mistress declares she is vext to the heart That genius should take such a pitiful part; For the question, indeed, she is daily distrest, And Gerry, I think, she will ever detest, Who did all he could, with his tongue and his pen To keep the dear Congress shut up in your Den. She insists, the expense of removing is small, And that two or three thousands will answer it all, If that is too much, and we're so very poor-- The passage by water is cheaper, be sure; If people object the expence of a team, Here's Fitch with his wherry, will bring them by steam; And, Nabby!--if once he should take them on board, The Honour will be a sufficient reward. But, as to myself, I vow and declare I wish it would suit them to stay where they are; I plainly foresee, that if once they remove Throughout the long day, we shall drive, and be drove, My madam's red rag will ring like a bell, And the hall and the parlour will never look well; Such scouring will be as has never been seen, We shall always be cleaning, and never be clean, And threats in abundance will work on my fears, Of blows on the back, and of cuffs on the ears-- Two trifles, at present, discourage her paw, The fear of the Lord, and the fear of the law-- But if Congress arrive, she will have such a sway, That gospel and law will be both done away;-- For the sake of a place I must bear all her din, And if ever so angry, do nothing but grin; So Congress, I hope in your town will remain, And Nanny will thank them again and again. [36] Published in the _Daily Advertiser_, July 1, 1790. Text from the 1809 edition. NABBY The New-York Housekeeper, to Nanny, her Friend in Philadelphia[37] Well, Nanny, I am sorry to find, since you writ us, The Congress at last has determined to quit us; You now may begin with your dish-clouts and brooms, To be scouring your knockers and scrubbing your rooms; As for us, my dear Nanny, we're much in a pet, And hundreds of houses will be to be let; Our streets, that were just in a way to look clever, Will now be neglected and nasty as ever; Again we must fret at the Dutchified gutters And pebble-stone pavements, that wear out our trotters.-- My master looks dull, and his spirits are sinking, From morning till night he is smoking and thinking, Laments the expence of destroying the fort, And says, your great people are all of a sort-- He hopes and he prays they may die in a stall, If they leave us in debt--for Federal Hall-- And Strap has declared, he has such regards, He will go, if they go, for the sake of their beards. Miss Letty, poor lady, is so in the pouts, She values no longer our dances and routs, And sits in a corner, dejected and pale, As dull as a cat, and as lean as a rail!-- Poor thing, I'm certain she's in a decay, And all--because Congress Resolve--not to stay!-- This Congress unsettled is, sure, a sad thing, Seven years, my dear Nanny, they've been on the wing; My master would rather saw timber, or dig, Than see them removing to Conegocheague, Where the houses and kitchens are yet to be framed, The trees to be felled, and the streets to be named; Of the two, we had rather your town should receive 'em-- So here, my dear Nanny, in haste I must leave 'em, I'm a dunce at inditing--and as I'm a sinner, The beef is half raw--and the bell rings for dinner! [37] Published in the _Daily Advertiser_, July 15, 1790. Text from the edition of 1809. THE BERGEN PLANTER[38] Attach'd to lands that ne'er deceiv'd his hopes, This rustic sees the seasons come and go, His autumn's toils return'd in summer's crops, While limpid streams, to cool his herbage, flow; And, if some cares intrude upon his mind, They are such cares as heaven for man design'd. He to no pompous dome comes, cap in hand, Where new-made 'squires affect the courtly smile: Nor where Pomposo, 'midst his foreign band Extols the sway of kings, in swelling style, With tongue that babbled when it should have hush'd, A head that never thought--a face that never blush'd. He on no party hangs his hopes or fears, Nor seeks the vote that baseness must procure; No stall-fed Mammon, for his gold, reveres, No splendid offers from his chests allure. While showers descend, and suns their beams display, The same, to him, if Congress go or stay. He at no levees watches for a glance, (Slave to disgusting, distant forms and modes) Heeds not the herd at Bufo's midnight dance, Dullman's mean rhymes, or Shylock's birth-day odes: Follies, like these, he deems beneath his care, And Titles leaves for simpletons to wear. Where wandering brooks from mountain sources roll, He seeks at noon the waters of the shade, Drinks deep, and fears no poison in the bowl That Nature for her happiest children made: And from whose clear and gently-passing wave All drink alike--the master and the slave. The scheming statesman shuns his homely door, Who, on the miseries of his country fed, Ne'er glanc'd his eye from that base pilfer'd store To view the sword, suspended by a thread-- Nor that "hand-writing," grav'd upon the wall, That tells him--but in vain--"the sword must fall." He ne'er was made a holiday machine, Wheel'd here and there by 'squires in livery clad, Nor dreads the sons of legislation keen, Hard-hearted laws, and penalties most sad-- In humble hope his little fields were sown, A trifle, in your eye--but all his own. [38] Published in the _Daily Advertiser_, July 12, 1790. Reprinted in the _National Gazette_ under the title "The Pennsylvania Planter." Text from the 1795 edition. TOBACCO [Supposed to be written by a Young Beginner[39]] This Indian weed, that once did grow On fair Virginia's fertile plain, From whence it came--again may go, To please some happier swain: Of all the plants that Nature yields This, least beloved, shall shun my fields. In evil hour I first essayed To chew this vile forbidden leaf, When, half ashamed, and half afraid, I touched, and tasted--to my grief: Ah me! the more I was forbid, The more I wished to take a quid. But when I smoaked, in thought profound, And raised the spiral circle high, My heart grew sick, my head turned round-- And what can all this mean, (said I)-- Tobacco surely was designed To poison, and destroy mankind. Unhappy they, whom choice, or fate Inclines to prize this bitter weed; Perpetual source of female hate; On which no beast--but man will feed; That sinks my heart, and turns my head, And sends me, reeling, home to bed! [39] Published in the _Daily Advertiser_, July 31, 1790. Text from the edition of 1809. THE BANISHED MAN[40] Since man may every region claim, And Nature is, in most, the same, And we a part of her wide plan, Tell me, what makes The Banish'd Man. The favourite spot, that gave us birth, We fondly call our mother earth; And hence our vain distinctions grow, And man to man becomes a foe. That friendship to all nations due, And taught by reason to pursue, That love, which should the world combine, To country, why do we confine? The Grecian sage[A] (old stories say) When question'd where his country lay, Inspired by heaven, made no reply, But rais'd his finger to the sky. [A] Anaxagoras.--_Freneau's note._ No region has, on earth, been known But some, of choice, have made their own:-- Your tears are not from Reason's source If choice assumes the path of force. "Alas! (you cry) that is not all: "My former friendships I recall, "My house, my farm, my days, my nights, "Scenes vanish'd now, and past delights."-- Distance for absence you mistake-- Here, days and nights their circuits make: Here, Nature walks her beauteous round, And friendship may--perhaps--be found. If times grow dark, or wealth retires, Let Reason check your proud desires: Virtue the humblest garb can wear, And loss of wealth is loss of care. Thus half unwilling, half resign'd, Desponding, why, the generous mind?-- Think right,--nor be the hour delayed That flies the sun, to seek the shade. Though injured, exiled, or alone, Nobly presume the world your own, Convinced that, since the world began, Time, only, makes The Banish'd Man. [40] Published in the _Daily Advertiser_, September 1, 1790, with the introduction: "A little before Lord Bolingbroke was banished into France, he wrote an essay upon Exile.--Some of his thoughts on that occasion are expressed in the following Stanzas." Text from the 1809 edition. THE DEPARTURE[41] Occasioned by the Removal of Congress from New-York to Philadelphia.--[1790.] From Hudson's banks, in proud array, (Too mean to claim a longer stay) Their new ideas to improve, Behold the generous Congress move! Such thankless conduct much we feared, When Timon's coach stood ready geered, And He--the foremost on the floor, Stood pointing to the Delaware shore. So long confined to little things, They sigh to be where Bavius sings, Where Sporus builds his splendid pile, And Bufo's tawdry Seasons smile. New chaplains, now, shall ope their jaws, New salaries grease unworthy paws: Some reverend man, that turtle carves, Will fatten, while the solder starves. The Yorker asks--but asks in vain-- "What demon bids them 'move again? "Whoever 'moves must suffer loss, "And rolling stones collect no moss. "Have we not paid for chaplains' prayers, "That heaven might smile on state affairs?-- "Put some things up, pulled others down, "And raised our streets through half the town? "Have we not, to our utmost, strove "That Congress might not hence remove-- "At dull debates no silence broke, "And walked on tip-toe while they spoke? "Have we not toiled through cold and heat, "To make the Federal Pile complete-- "Thrown down our Fort, to give them air, "And sent our guns, the devil knows where? "Times change! but Memory still recalls "The Day, when ruffians scaled their walls-- "Sovereigns besieged by angry men, "Mere prisoners in the town of Penn? "Can they forget when, half afraid, "The timorous Council[A] lent no aid; "But left them to the rogues that rob, "The tender mercies of the mob? [A] See the history of those times.--_Freneau's note._ "Oh! if they can, their lot is cast; "One hundred miles will soon be passed-- "This Day the Federal Dome is cleared, "To Paulus'-Hook the barge is steered, "Where Timon's coach stands ready geered!" [1790.] [41] In the edition of 1795 this bore the title "On the Departure of the Grand Sanhedrim." Text from the 1809 edition. THE AMERICAN SOLDIER[42] [A Picture from the Life] "_To serve with love, And shed your blood, Approved may be above, And here below (Examples shew) 'Tis dangerous to be good._" --LORD OXFORD. Deep in a vale, a stranger now to arms, Too poor to shine in courts, too proud to beg, He, who once warred on Saratoga's plains, Sits musing o'er his scars, and wooden leg. Remembering still the toil of former days, To other hands he sees his earnings paid;-- They share the due reward--he feeds on praise, Lost in the abyss of want, misfortune's shade. Far, far from domes where splendid tapers glare, 'Tis his from dear bought peace no wealth to win, Removed alike from courtly cringing 'squires, The great-man's Levee, and the proud man's grin. Sold are those arms which once on Britons blazed, When, flushed with conquest, to the charge they came; That power repelled, and Freedom's fabrick raised, She leaves her soldier--famine and a name! [1790] [42] The first trace I can find of this poem is in the edition of 1795. Text from the 1809 edition. OCCASIONED[43] By a Legislation Bill proposing a Taxation upon Newspapers "'Tis time to tax the News, (Sangrado cries) "Subjects were never good that were too wise: "In every hamlet, every trifling town, "Some sly, designing fellow sits him down, "On spacious folio prints his weekly mess, "And spreads around the poison of his Press. "Hence, to the World the streams of scandal flow, "Disclosing secrets, that it should not know, "Hence courtiers strut with libels on their backs;-- "And shall not news be humbled by a tax! "Once ('tis most true) such papers did some good, "When British chiefs arrived in angry mood: "By them enkindled, every heart grew warm, "By them excited, all were taught to arm, "When some, retiring to Britannia's clime, "Sat brooding o'er the vast events of time; "Doubtful which side to take, or what to say, "Or who would win, or who would lose the day. "Those times are past; (and past experience shews) "The well-born sort alone, should read the news, "No common herds should get behind the scene "To view the movements of the state machine: "One paper only, filled with courtly stuff, "One paper, for one country is enough, "Where incense offered at Pomposo's shrine "Shall prove his house-dog and himself divine." [43] Published in the _Daily Advertiser_ early in 1791. Text from the 1809 edition. LINES[44] Occasioned by a Law passed by the Corporation of New-York, early in 1790, for cutting down the trees in the streets of that City, previous to June 10, following THE CITIZEN'S SOLILOQUY A man that owned some trees in town, (And much averse to cut them down) Finding the Law was full and plain, No trees should in the streets remain, One evening seated at his door, Thus gravely talked the matter o'er: "The fatal Day, dear trees, draws nigh, When you must, like your betters, die, Must die!--and every leaf will fade That many a season lent its shade, To drive from hence the summer's heat, And make my porch a favourite seat. "Thrice happy age, when all was new, And trees untouched, unenvied grew, When yet regardless of the axe, They feared no law, and paid no tax! The shepherd then at ease was laid, Or walked beneath their cooling shade; From slender twigs a garland wove, Or traced his god within the grove; Alas! those times are now forgot, An iron age is all our lot: Men are not now what once they were, To hoard up gold is all their care: The busy tribe old Plutus calls To pebbled streets and painted walls; Trees now to grow, is held a crime, And These must perish in their prime! "The trees that once our fathers reared, And even the plundering Briton spared, When shivering here full oft he stood, Or kept his bed for want of wood-- These trees, whose gently bending boughs Have witnessed many a lover's vows, When half afraid, and half in jest, With Nature busy in his breast, With many a sigh, he did not feign, Beneath these boughs he told his pain, Or coaxing here his nymph by night, Forsook the parlour and the light, In talking love, his greatest bliss To squeeze her hand or steal a kiss-- These trees that thus have lent their shade, And many a happy couple made, These old companions, thus endeared, Who never tattled what they heard, Must these, indeed, be killed so soon-- Be murdered by the tenth of June! "But if my harmless trees must fall, A fortune that awaits us all, (All, all must yield to Nature's stroke, And now a man, and now an oak) Are those that round the churches grow In this decree included too? Must these, like common trees, be bled? Is it a crime to shade the dead? Review the law, I pray, at least, And have some mercy on the priest Who every Sunday sweats in black To make us steer the skyward track: The church has lost enough, God knows, Plundered alike by friends and foes-- I hate such mean attempts as these-- Come--let the parson keep his trees! "Yet things, perhaps, are not so bad-- Perhaps, a respite may be had: The vilest rogues that cut our throats, Or knaves that counterfeit our notes, When, by the judge their sentence passed, The gallows proves their doom at last, Swindlers and pests of every kind, For weeks and months a respite find; And shall such nuisances as they, Who make all honest men their prey-- Shall they for months avoid their doom, And you, my trees, in all your bloom, Who never injured small or great, Be murdered at so short a date! "Ye men of law, the occasion seize, And name a counsel for the trees-- Arrest of judgment, sirs, I pray; Excuse them till some future day: These trees that such a nuisance are, Next New-Year we can better spare, To warm our shins, or boil the pot-- The Law, by then, will be forgot." [44] This was published in the _National Gazette_ of March 8, 1792, with this introduction: "Legislatures and city corporations have ever been inimical to trees in cities.--About nine years ago the attempt was made in Philadelphia to cut down all the trees--The public, however, demurred to the decree, which, together with Mr. Hopkinson's Columnal Orator, saved the lives of these useful and amusing companions. "In a neighboring city, a similar attempt was made about a year ago by its corporation. A universal extirpation was ordered, without respect to age or quality, by the 10th of June, 1791.--The public interfered in this, as in the other case, and the trees were saved,* except a few, which having been injudiciously placed, above a century ago, had nearly grown into the inhabitants' houses; and consequently suffered the sentence of the law.... * _A copy of verses, on this occasion, were as follow_: THE LANDLORD'S SOLILOQUY, etc." TO THE PUBLIC[45] This age is so fertile of mighty events, That people complain, with some reason, no doubt, Besides the time lost, and besides the expence, With reading the papers they're fairly worn out; The past is no longer an object of care, The present consumes all the time they can spare. Thus grumbles the reader, but still he reads on With his pence and his paper unwilling to part: He sees the world passing, men going and gone, Some riding in coaches, and some in a cart: For a peep at the farce a subscription he'll give,-- Revolutions must happen, and printers must live: For a share of your favour we aim with the rest: To enliven the scene we'll exert all our skill, What we have to impart shall be some of the best, And _Multum in Parvo_ our text, if you will; Since we never admitted a clause in our creed, That the greatest employment of life is--to read. The king of the French and the queen of the North At the head of the play, for the season, we find: From the spark that we kindled, a flame has gone forth To astonish the world and enlighten mankind: With a code of new doctrines the universe rings, And Paine is addressing strange sermons to kings. Thus launch'd, as we are, on the ocean of news, In hopes that your pleasure our pains will repay, All honest endeavours the author will use To furnish a feast for the grave and the gay: At least he'll essay such a track to pursue That the world shall approve--and his news shall be true. [45] First published in number one of the _National Gazette_, October 31, 1791, under the title "Poetical Address to the Public of the United States." It was Freneau's salutatory at the beginning of his new career in Philadelphia. Text from the edition of 1795. The poem was omitted from the edition of 1809. LINES[46] By H. Salem, on his Return from Calcutta Your men of the land, from the king to Jack Ketch, All join in supposing the sailor a wretch, That his life is a round of vexation and woe, With always too much or too little to do: In the dead of the night, when other men sleep, He, starboard and larboard, his watches must keep; Imprisoned by Neptune, he lives like a dog, And to know where he is, must depend on a Log, Must fret in a calm, and be sad in a storm; In winter much trouble to keep himself warm: Through the heat of the summer pursuing his trade, No trees, but his topmasts, to yield him a shade: Then, add to the list of the mariner's evils, The water corrupted, the bread full of weevils, Salt junk to be eat, be it better or worse, And, often bull beef of an Irishman's horse: Whosoever is free, he must still be a slave, (Despotic is always the rule on the wave;) Not relished on water, your lords of the main Abhor the republican doctrines of Paine, And each, like the despot of Prussia, may say That his crew has no right, but the right to obey. Such things say the lubbers, and sigh when they've said 'em, But things are not so bad as their fancies persuade 'em: There ne'er was a task but afforded some ease, Nor a calling in life, but had something to please. If the sea has its storms, it has also its calms, A time to sing songs and a time to sing psalms.-- Yes--give me a vessel well timbered and sound, Her bottom good plank, and in rigging well found, If her spars are but staunch, and her oakham swelled tight, From tempests and storms I'll extract some delight-- At sea I would rather have Neptune my jailor, Than a lubber on shore, that despises a sailor. Do they ask me what pleasure I find on the sea?-- Why, absence from land is a pleasure to me: A hamper of porter, and plenty of grog, A friend, when too sleepy, to give me a jog, A coop that will always some poultry afford, Some bottles of gin, and no parson on board, A crew that is brisk when it happens to blow, One compass on deck and another below, A girl, with more sense than the girl at the head, To read me a novel, or make up my bed-- The man that has these, has a treasure in store That millions possess not, who live upon shore: But if it should happen that commerce grew dull, Or Neptune, ill-humoured, should batter our hull, Should damage my cargo, or heave me aground, Or pay me with farthings instead of a pound: Should I always be left in the rear of the race, And this be forever--forever the case; Why then, if the honest plain truth I may tell, I would clew up my topsails, and bid him farewell. [46] Published in the _National Gazette_, November 14, 1791, under the title "A Mistake Rectified." Included in the 1795 edition with the title, "Epistle to a Desponding Sea-man." Text from the edition of 1809. It is very doubtful if Freneau ever sailed to Calcutta. MODERN DEVOTION[47] [By H. Salem] To church I went, with good intent, To hear Sangrado preach and pray; But objects there, black, brown and fair, Turned eyes and heart a different way. Miss Patty's fan, Miss Molly's man, With powdered hair and dimple cheek; Miss Bridget's eyes, that once made prize Of Fopling with his hair so sleek: Embroidered gowns, and play-house tunes Estranged all hearts from heaven too wide: I felt most odd, this house of God Should all be flutter, pomp, and pride. Now, pray be wise, no prayers will rise To heaven--where hearts are not sincere. No church was made for Cupid's trade; Then why these arts of ogling here? Since time draws nigh, when you and I, At church, must claim the sexton's care!-- Leave pride at home, when'er you come To pay to heaven your offerings, there! [47] Published in the _National Gazette_, December 5, 1791. Text from the edition of 1809. THE COUNTRY PRINTER[48] I. DESCRIPTION OF HIS VILLAGE Beside a stream, that never yet ran dry, There stands a Town, not high advanced in fame; Tho' few its buildings raised to please the eye, Still this proud title it may fairly claim; A Tavern (its first requisite) is there, A mill, a black-smith's shop, a place of prayer. Nay, more--a little market-house is seen And iron hooks, where beef was never hung, Nor pork, nor bacon, poultry fat or lean, Pig's head, or sausage link, or bullock's tongue: Look when you will, you see the vacant bench No butcher seated there, no country wench. Great aims were his, who first contriv'd this town; A market he would have--but, humbled now, Sighing, we see its fabric mouldering down, That only serves, at night, to pen the cow: And hence, by way of jest, it may be said That beef is there, tho' never beef that's dead. Abreast the inn--a tree before the door, A Printing-Office lifts its humble head Where busy Type old journals doth explore For news that is thro' all the village read; Who, year from year, (so cruel is his lot) Is author, pressman, devil--and what not? Fame says he is an odd and curious wight, Fond to distraction of this native place; In sense, not very dull nor very bright, Yet shews some marks of humour in his face, One who can pen an anecdote, complete, Or plague the parson with the mackled sheet. Three times a week, by nimble geldings drawn A stage arrives; but scarcely deigns to stop, Unless the driver, far in liquor gone, Has made some business for the black-smith-shop; Then comes this printer's harvest-time of news, Welcome alike from Christians, Turks, or Jews. Each passenger he eyes with curious glance, And, if his phiz be mark'd of courteous kind, To conversation, straight, he makes advance, Hoping, from thence, some paragraph to find, Some odd adventure, something new and rare, To set the town a-gape, and make it stare. II. All is not Truth ('tis said) that travellers tell-- So much the better for this man of news; For hence the country round, that know him well, Will, if he prints some lies, his lies excuse. Earthquakes, and battles, shipwrecks, myriads slain-- If false or true--alike to him are gain. But if this motley tribe say nothing new, Then many a lazy, longing look is cast To watch the weary post-boy travelling through, On horse's rump his budget buckled fast; With letters, safe in leathern prison pent, And, wet from press, full many a packet sent. Not Argus with his fifty pair of eyes Look'd sharper for his prey than honest Type Explores each package, of alluring size, Prepar'd to seize them with a nimble gripe, Did not the post-boy watch his goods, and swear That village Type shall only have his share. Ask you what matter fills his various page? A mere farrago 'tis, of mingled things; Whate'er is done on Madam Terra's stage He to the knowledge of his townsmen brings: One while, he tells of monarchs run away; And now, of witches drown'd in Buzzard's bay. Some miracles he makes, and some he steals; Half Nature's works are giants in his eyes: Much, very much, in wonderment he deals,-- New-Hampshire apples grown to pumpkin size, Pumpkins almost as large as country inns, And ladies bearing, each,--three lovely twins. He, births and deaths with cold indifference views; A paragraph from him is all they claim: And here the rural squire, amongst the news Sees the fair record of some lordling's fame; All that was good, minutely brought to light, All that was ill,--conceal'd from vulgar sight! III. THE OFFICE Source of the wisdom of the country round! Again I turn to that poor lonely shed Where many an author all his fame has found, And wretched proofs by candle-light are read, Inverted letters, left the page to grace, Colons derang'd, and commas out of place. Beneath this roof the Muses chose their home;-- Sad was their choice, less bookish ladies say. Since from the blessed hour they deign'd to come One single cob-web was not brush'd away:-- Fate early had pronounc'd this building's doom, Ne'er to be vex'd with boonder, brush, or broom. Here, full in view, the ink-bespangled press Gives to the world its children, with a groan, Some born to live a month--a day--some less; Some, why they live at all, not clearly known, All that are born must die--Type well knows that-- The Almanack's his longest-living brat. Here lie the types, in curious order rang'd Ready alike to imprint your prose or verse; Ready to speak (their order only chang'd) Creek-Indian lingo, Dutch, or Highland Erse; These types have printed Erskine's _Gospel Treat_, Tom Durfey's songs, and Bunyan's works, complete. But faded are their charms--their beauty fled! No more their work your nicer eyes admire; Hence, from this press no courtly stuff is read; But almanacks, and ballads for the Squire, Dull paragraphs, in homely language dress'd, The pedlar's bill, and sermons by request. Here, doom'd the fortune of the press to try, From year to year poor Type his trade pursues-- With anxious care and circumspective eye He dresses out his little sheet of news; Now laughing at the world, now looking grave, At once the Muse's midwife--and her slave. In by-past years, perplext with vast designs, In cities fair he strove to gain a seat; But, wandering to a wood of many pines, In solitude he found his best retreat, When sick of towns, and sorrowful at heart, He to those deserts brought his favorite art. IV. Thou, who art plac'd in some more favour'd spot, Where spires ascend, and ships from every clime Discharge their freights--despise not thou the lot Of humble Type, who here has pass'd his prime; At case and press has labour'd many a day, But now, in years, is verging to decay. He, in his time, the patriot of his town, With press and pen attack'd the royal side, Did what he could to pull their Lion down, Clipp'd at his beard, and twitch'd his sacred hide, Mimick'd his roarings, trod upon his toes, Pelted young whelps, and tweak'd the old one's nose. Rous'd by his page, at church or court-house read, From depths of woods the willing rustics ran, Now by a priest, and now some deacon led With clubs and spits to guard the rights of man; Lads from the spade, the pick-ax, or the plough, Marching afar, to fight Burgoyne or Howe. Where are they now?--the Village asks with grief, What were their toils, their conquests, or their gains?-- Perhaps, they near some State-House beg relief, Perhaps, they sleep on Saratoga's plains; Doom'd not to live, their country to reproach For seven-years' pay transferr'd to Mammon's coach. Ye Guardians of your country and her laws! Since to the pen and press so much we owe Still bid them favour freedom's sacred cause, From this pure source, let streams unsullied flow; Hence, a new order grows on reason's plan, And turns the fierce barbarian into--man. Child of the earth, of rude materials fram'd, Man, always found a tyrant or a slave, Fond to be honour'd, valued, rich, or fam'd Roves o'er the earth, and subjugates the wave: Despots and kings this restless race may share,-- But knowledge only makes them worth your care! [48] Published in four installments in the _National Gazette_, beginning December 19, 1791. Issued in pamphlet form, together with "The Village Merchant," in 1794. Republished only in the edition of 1795, the text of which I have followed. SEVENTEEN HUNDRED AND NINETY-ONE[49] Great things have pass'd the last revolving year; France on a curious jaunt has seen her king go,-- Hush'd are the growlings of the Russian bear, Rebellion has broke loose in St. Domingo-- Sorry we are that Pompeys, Cæsars, Catos Are mostly found with Negroes and Mulattoes. Discord, we think, must always be the lot Of this poor world--nor is that discord vain, Since, if these feuds and fisty-cuffs were not, Full many an honest Type would starve--that's plain; Wars are their gain, whatever cause is found-- Empires--or Cats-skins brought from Nootka-sound. The Turks, poor fellows! have been sadly baisted-- And many a Christian despot stands, contriving Who next shall bleed--what country next be wasted-- This is the trade by which they get their living: From Prussian Frederick, this the general plan To Empress Kate--that burns the Rights of Man, The Pope (at Rome) is in a sweat, they tell us; Of freedom's pipe he cannot bear the music, And worst of all when Frenchmen blow the bellows, Enough almost (he thinks) to make a Jew sick: His Priesthood too, black, yellow, white, and grey, All think it best to keep--the good old way. Britain, (fame whispers) has unrigg'd her fleet-- Now tell us what the world will do for thunder?-- Battles, fire, murder, maiming, and defeat Are at an end when Englishmen knock under: Sulphur will now in harmless squibs be spent, Lightning will fall--full twenty five per cent. [49] I have found this only in the edition of 1795. LINES[50] Written on a Puncheon of Jamaica Spirits Within these wooden walls, confined, The ruin lurks of human kind; More mischiefs here, united, dwell, And more diseases haunt this cell Than ever plagued the Egyptian flocks, Or ever cursed Pandora's box. Within these prison-walls repose The seeds of many a bloody nose; The chattering tongue, the horrid oath; The fist for fighting, nothing loth; The passion quick, no words can tame, That bursts like sulphur into flame; The nose with diamonds glowing red, The bloated eye, the broken head! Forever fastened be this door-- Confined within, a thousand more Destructive fiends of hateful shape, Even now are plotting an escape, Here, only by a cork restrained, In slender walls of wood contained, In all their dirt of death reside Revenge, that ne'er was satisfied; The tree that bears the deadly fruit Of murder, maiming, and dispute; Assault, that innocence assails, The Images of gloomy jails The Giddy Thought, on mischief bent, The midnight hour, in folly spent, All These within this cask appear, And Jack, the hangman, in the rear! Thrice happy he, who early taught By Nature, ne'er this poison sought; Who, friendly to his own repose, Treads under foot this worst of foes,-- He, with the purling stream content, The beverage quaffs that Nature meant; In Reason's scale his actions weighed, His spirits want no foreign aid-- Not swell'd too high, or sunk too low, Placid, his easy minutes flow; Long life is his, in vigour pass'd, Existence, welcome to the last, A spring, that never yet grew stale-- Such virtue lies in--Adam's Ale! [50] Published in the _National Gazette_ for January 23, 1792, introduced by a short essay upon country taverns. The following is an extract: "Happy would it be for every community if ardent spirits could be banished from amongst them.... I shall conclude these observations with some lines written last winter at a country tavern, where from the introduction of a single _jug of rum_, conviviality and good humour were changed into madness and brutality, and numbers of the guests, who came, perhaps, only to pass a social hour, went away maimed, muttering, and lastingly embittered against each other." The poem appeared in the edition of 1795 with the title "The Jug of Rum." Text from the edition of 1809. THE PARTING GLASS[51] [Written at an Inn. By Hezekiah Salem.] The man that joins in life's career And hopes to find some comfort here; To rise above this earthly mass, The only way's to drink his Glass. But, still, on this uncertain stage, Where hopes and fears the soul engage; And while, amid the joyous band, Unheeded flows the measured sand, Forget not as the moments pass, That Time shall bring the parting glass! In spite of all the mirth I've heard, This is the glass I always feared; The glass that would the rest destroy, The farewell cup, the close of joy! With You, whom Reason taught to think, I could, for ages, sit and drink: But with the fool, the sot, the ass, I haste to take the parting glass. The luckless wight, that still delays His draught of joys to future days, Delays too long--for then, alas! Old age steps up, and--breaks the glass! The nymph, who boasts no borrowed charms, Whose sprightly wit my fancy warms; What tho' she tends this country inn, And mixes wine, and deals out gin? With such a kind, obliging lass I sigh, to take the parting glass. With him, who always talks of gain, (Dull Momus, of the plodding train)-- The wretch, who thrives by others' woes, And carries grief where'er he goes:-- With people of this knavish class The first is still my parting glass. With those that drink before they dine-- With him that apes the grunting swine, Who fills his page with low abuse, And strives to act the gabbling goose Turned out by fate to feed on grass-- Boy, give me quick, the parting glass. The man, whose friendship is sincere, Who knows no guilt, and feels no fear:-- It would require a heart of brass With him to take the parting glass! With him, who quaffs his pot of ale; Who holds to all an even scale; Who hates a knave, in each disguise, And fears him not--whate'er his size-- With him, well pleased my days to pass, May heaven forbid the Parting Glass! [51] Published in the _National Gazette_, May 10, 1790. Text from the 1809 edition. A WARNING TO AMERICA[52] Removed from Europe's feuds, a hateful scene (Thank heaven, such wastes of ocean roll between) Where tyrant kings in bloody schemes combine, And each forbodes in tears, Man is no longer mine! Glad we recall the Day that bade us first Spurn at their power, and shun their wars accurst; Pitted and gaffed no more for England's glory Nor made the tag-rag-bobtail of their story. Something still wrong in every system lurks, Something imperfect haunts all human works-- Wars must be hatched, unthinking men to fleece, Or we, this day, had been in perfect peace, With double bolts our Janus' temple shut, Nor terror reigned through each back-woods-man's hut, No rattling drums assailed the peasant's ear Nor Indian yells disturbed our sad frontier, Nor gallant chiefs, 'gainst Indian hosts combined Scaped from the trap--to leave their tails behind. Peace to all feuds!--and come the happier day When Reason's sun shall light us on our way; When erring man shall all his Rights retrieve, No despots rule him, and no priests deceive, Till then, Columbia!--watch each stretch of power, Nor sleep too soundly at the midnight hour, By flattery won, and lulled by soothing strains, Silenus took his nap--and waked in chains-- In a soft dream of smooth delusion led Unthinking Gallia bowed her drooping head To tyrants' yokes--and met such bruises there, As now must take three ages to repair. Then keep the paths of dear bought freedom clear, Nor slavish systems grant admittance here. [1792] [52] Written for July 4th, 1792, and published in the _National Gazette_ under the title "Independence." Text from the edition of 1809. THE DISH OF TEA[53] Let some in beer place their delight, O'er bottled porter waste the night, Or sip the rosy wine: A dish of Tea more pleases me, Yields softer joys, provokes less noise, And breeds no base design. From China's groves, this present brought, Enlivens every power of thought, Riggs many a ship for sea: Old maids it warms, young widows charms; And ladies' men, not one in ten But courts them for their Tea. When throbbing pains assail my head, And dullness o'er my brain is spread, (The muse no longer kind) A single sip dispels the hyp: To chace the gloom, fresh spirits come, The flood-tide of the mind. When worn with toil, or vext with care, Let Susan but this draught prepare, And I forget my pain. This magic bowl revives the soul; With gentlest sway, bids care be gay; Nor mounts, to cloud the brain. If learned men the truth would speak They prize it far beyond their Greek, More fond attention pay; No Hebrew root so well can suit; More quickly taught, less dearly bought, Yet studied twice a day. This leaf, from distant regions sprung, Puts life into the female tongue, And aids the cause of love. Such power has Tea o'er bond and free; Which priests admire, delights the 'squire, And Galen's sons approve. [53] Published in the _National Gazette_, July 7, 1792. Text from the 1809 edition. ON THE FOURTEENTH OF JULY[54] A Day ever Memorable to Regenerated France Bright Day,[55] that did to France restore What priests and kings had seiz'd away, That bade her generous sons disdain The fetters that their fathers wore, The titled slave, a tyrant's sway, That ne'er shall curse her soil again! Bright day! a partner in thy joy, Columbia hails the rising sun, She feels her toils, her blood repaid, When fiercely frantic to destroy, (Proud of the laurels he had won) The Briton, here, unsheath'd his blade. By traitors driven to ruin's brink Fair Freedom dreads united knaves, The world must fall if she must bleed;-- And yet, by heaven! I'm proud to think The world was ne'er subdued by slaves-- Nor shall the hireling herd succeed. Boy! fill the generous goblet high; Success to France, shall be the toast: The fall of kings the fates foredoom, The crown decays, its' splendours die; And they, who were a nation's boast, Sink, and expire in endless gloom. Thou, stranger, from a distant shore,[A] Where fetter'd men their rights avow, Why on this joyous day so sad? Louis insults with chains no more,-- Then why thus wear a clouded brow, When every manly heart is glad? [A] Addressed to the Aristocrats from Hispaniola.--_Freneau's note._ Some passing days and rolling years May see the wrath of kings display'd, Their wars to prop the tarnish'd crown; But orphans' groans, and widows' tears, And justice lifts her shining blade To bring the tottering bauble down. [1792] [54] This was published in the _National Gazette_, July 14, 1792, introduced as follows: "ODES ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. "_HE who does not read in the book of the Odes, is like a man standing with his face flat against a wall: he can neither move forward, nor stir an inch backward._--Hau Kiou Choaan." This was Ode I of the series. It was republished only in the edition of 1795, the text of which I have followed. [55] On July 14, 1789, the French people made their first armed stand against monarchial institutions, attacking and destroying the Bastile. TO CRISPIN O'CONNER A BACK-WOODSMAN[56] [Supposed to be written by Hezekiah Salem] Wise was your plan when twenty years ago From Patrick's isle you first resolved to stray, Where lords and knights, as thick as rushes grow, And vulgar folks are in each other's way; Where mother-country acts the step-dame's part, Cuts off, by aid of hemp, each petty sinner, And twice or thrice in every score of years Hatches sad wars to make her brood the thinner. How few aspire to quit the ungrateful soil That starves the plant it had the strength to bear: How many stay, to grieve, and fret, and toil, And view the plenty that they must not share. This you beheld, and westward set your nose, Like some bold prow, that ploughs the Atlantic foam, And left less venturous weights, like famished crows,-- To feed on hog-peas, hips, and haws, at home. Safe landed here, not long the coast detained Your wary steps:--but wandering on, you found Far in the west, a paltry spot of land, That no man envied, and that no man owned. A woody hill, beside a dismal bog-- This was your choice; nor were you much to blame: And here, responsive to the croaking frog, You grubbed, and stubbed, and feared no landlord's claim. An axe, an adze, a hammer, and a saw; These were the tools, that built your humble shed: A cock, a hen, a mastiff, and a cow: These were your subjects, to this desert led. Now times are changed--and labour's nervous hand Bids harvests rise where briars and bushes grew; The dismal bog, by lengthy sluices drained, Supports no more hoarse captain Bull Frog's crew.-- Prosper your toil!--but, friend, had you remained In lands, where starred and gartered nobles shine, When you had, thus, to sixty years attained, What different fate, 'Squire Crispin, had been thine! Nine pence a day, coarse fare, a bed of boards, The midnight loom, high rents, and excised beer; Slave to dull squires, kings' brats, and huffish lords, (Thanks be to Heaven) not yet in fashion here! [56] Published in the _National Gazette_, July 18, 1792, as Ode II in "Odes on Various Subjects." Text from the 1809 edition. CRISPIN'S ANSWER Much pleased am I, that you approve Freedom's blest cause that brought me here: Ireland I loved--but there they strove To make me bend to King and Peer. I could not bow to noble knaves, Who Equal Rights to men deny: Scornful, I left a land of slaves, And hither came, my axe to ply: The axe has well repaid my toil-- No king, no priest, I yet espy To tythe my hogs, to tax my soil, And suck my whiskey bottle dry. In foreign lands what snares are laid! There royal rights all right defeat; They taxed my sun, they taxed my shade, They taxed the offal that I eat. They taxed my hat, they taxed my shoes, Fresh taxes still on taxes grew; They would have taxed my very nose, Had I not fled, dear friends, to you. TO SHYLOCK AP-SHENKIN[57] Since the day I attempted to print a gazette, This Shylock Ap-Shenkin does nothing but fret: Now preaching and screeching, then nibbling and scribbling, Remarking and barking, and whining and pining, and still in a pet, From morning 'till night, with my humble gazette. Instead of whole columns our page to abuse, Your readers would rather be treated with News: While wars are a-brewing, and kingdoms undoing, While monarchs are falling, and princesses squalling, While France is reforming, and Irishmen storming-- In a glare of such splendour, what folly to fret At so humble a thing as a poet's Gazette! No favours I ask'd from your friends in the East: On your wretched soup-meagre I left them to feast; So many base lies you have sent them in print, That scarcely a man at our paper will squint:-- And now you begin (with a grunt and a grin, With the bray of an ass, and a visage of brass, With a quill in your hand and a Lie in your mouth) To play the same trick on the men of the South! One Printer for Congress (some think) is enough, To flatter, and lie, to palaver, and puff, To preach up in favour of monarchs and titles, And garters, and ribbands, to prey on our vitals: Who knows but Pomposo will give it in fee, Or make mister Shenkin the Grand Patentee!!! Then take to your scrapers, ye Republican Papers, No rogue shall go snacks--and the News-Paper Tax Shall be puff'd to the skies, as a measure most wise-- So, a spaniel, when master is angry, and kicks it, Sneaks up to his shoe, and submissively licks it. [57] Text from the edition of 1795. First published in the _National Gazette_, July 28, 1792, as number three of the Odes. In this, its earliest version, the opening line was "Since the day we attempted the Nation's Gazette." Before the title was the following: "Note well--the following is to be sung or said as occasion may require." Not reprinted in 1809. TO MY BOOK[58] Seven years are now elaps'd, dear rambling volume, Since, to all knavish wights a foe, I sent you forth to vex and gall 'em, Or drive them to the shades below: With spirit, still, of Democratic proof, And still despising Shylock's canker'd hoof: What doom the fates intend, is hard to say, Whether to live to some far-distant day, Or sickening in your prime, In this bard-baiting clime, Take pet, make wings, say prayers, and flit away. "Virtue, order, and religion, "Haste, and seek some other region; "Your plan is laid, to hunt them down, "Destroy the mitre, rend the gown, "And that vile hag, Philosophy, restore"-- Did ever volume plan so much before? For seven years past, a host of busy foes Have buzz'd about your nose, White, black, and grey, by night and day; Garbling, lying, singing, sighing: These eastern gales a cloud of insects bring That fluttering, snivelling, whimpering--on the wing-- And, wafted still as discord's demon guides, Flock round the flame, that yet shall singe their hides. Well!--let the fates decree whate'er they please: Whether you're doom'd to drink oblivion's cup, Or Praise-God Barebones eats you up, This I can say, you've spread your wings afar, Hostile to garter, ribbon, crown, and star; Still on the people's, still on Freedom's side, With full determin'd aim, to baffle every claim Of well-born wights, that aim to mount and ride. [58] First published in the _National Gazette_, August 4, 1792, as Ode IV in the series, "Odes on Various Subjects." It bore the title "To the National Gazette." The opening stanza was as follows: "Nine months are now elaps'd, dear rambling paper, Since first on this world's stage you cut your caper With spirit still of democratic proof, And still despising _Whaacum's_ canker'd hoof-- What doom the fates decree, is hard to say, Whether to live to some far distant day, Or sickening in your prime In this news-taxing clime, Take pet, make wings, say prayers, and flit away. AIR. _Virtue_, _Order_, and _Religion_,* Haste and seek some other region," etc. The poem was revised for the edition of 1795, so as to refer to the edition of 1788, issued seven years before the edition of 1795. It was not published in 1809. "*'The National Gazette is--the vehicle of party spleen and opposition to the great principles of order, virtue, and religion.' Gaz. U. States." STANZAS[59] To the memory of two young persons (twin brothers), ROBERT SEVIER and WILLIAM SEVIER, who were killed by the Savages on Cumberland River, in North-Carolina, in attempting to assist a new settler, who was then passing the river with a numerous family In the same hour two lovely youths were born, Nature, with care, had moulded either clay: In the same hour, from this world's limits torn, The murderous Indian seiz'd their lives away. Distress to aid, impell'd each generous breast; With nervous arm they brav'd the adverse tide, In friendship's cause encounter'd death's embrace, Blameless they liv'd, in honour's path they died. But ah! what art shall dry a father's tears! Who shall relieve, or what beguile his pain! Clouds shade his sun, and griefs advance with years-- Nature gave joys, to take those joys again. Thou, that shall come to these sequester'd streams, When times to come their story shall relate; Let the fond heart, that native worth esteems, Revere their virtues, and bemoan their fate. [59] Published in the _National Gazette_, July 28, 1792, with a note explaining that the brothers were killed "on the 15th day of January last." TO A PERSECUTED PHILOSOPHER[60] As Aristippus once, with weary feet, Pursued his way through polish'd Athens' street, Minding no business but his own; Out rush'd a set of whelps With sun-burnt scalps, (Black, red, and brown,) That nipt his heels, and nibbled at his gown. While, with his staff, he kept them all at bay Some yelp'd aloud, some howl'd in dismal strain, Some wish'd the sage to bark again:-- Even little Shylock seem'd to say, "Answer us, sir, in your best way:-- "We are, 'tis true, a snarling crew, "But with our jaws have gain'd applause, "And--sir--can worry such as you." The sage beheld their spite with steady eye, And only stopp'd to make this short reply: "Hark ye, my dogs, I have not learn'd to yelp, "Nor waste my breath on every lousy whelp; "Much less, to write, or stain my wholesome page "In answering puppies--bursting with their rage: "Hence to your straw!--such contest I disdain: "Learn this, ('tis not amiss) "For Men I keep a pen, "For dogs, a cane!" [60] First printed in the _National Gazette_, August 29, 1792, under the title, "An Old Heathen Story. Adapted to Modern Times." Republished only in the 1795 edition. TO AN ANGRY ZEALOT[61] [In Answer to Sundry Virulent Charges] If of Religion I have made a sport, Then why not cite me to the Bishop's Court? Fair to the world let every page be set, And prove your charge from all I've said and writ:-- What if this heart no narrow notions bind, Its pure good-will extends to all mankind: Suppose I ask no portion from your feast, Nor heaven-ward ride behind your parish priest, Because I wear not Shylock's Sunday face Must I, for that, be loaded with disgrace? The time has been,--the time, I fear, is now, When holy phrenzy would erect her brow, Round some poor wight with painted devils meet, And worse than Smithfield blaze through every street; But wholesome laws prevent such horrid scenes, No more afraid of deacons and of deans, In this new world our joyful Psalm we sing That Even a Bishop is a Harmless Thing! [61] Text from the edition of 1795. First published in the _National Gazette_, Sept. 26, 1792, with the following introduction: "It is asserted in Mr. Russel's (Boston) _Columbian Centinel_ of Sept. 12 (and copied into Mr. Fenno's _Gazette of the United States_ of last Saturday) that 'the Clergy of this country are constantly vilified, and _religion_ ridiculed through the medium of the _National Gazette_.' The author of the assertion is requested to produce one or more passages from the National Gazette to support his charge, otherwise, we shall conclude it only _a dirty attempt to prevent the circulation of the National Gazette in the Eastern States_:--But further," here follows the poem. Not printed in edition of 1809. THE PYRAMID OF THE FIFTEEN AMERICAN STATES[62] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Barbara Pyramidum sileat miracula Memphis;[a] Heu, male servili marmora structa manu! Libera jam, ruptis, Atlantias ora, catenis, Jactat opus Phario marmore nobilius: Namque Columbiadæ, facti monumenta parantes, Vulgarem spernunt sumere materiam; Magnanimi coelum scandunt, perituraque saxa Quod vincat, celsa de Jovis arce petunt Audax inde cohors stellis _E Pluribus Unum_ Ardua Pyramidos tollit ad astra caput. Ergo, Tempus edax, quamvis durissima sævo Saxa domas morsu, nil ibi juris habes: Dumque polo solitis cognata nitoribus ardent Sidera fulgebit Pyramis illa suis! [a] The Latin verses were written by Mr. John Carey, formerly of Philadelphia.--_Freneau's note._ [IN IMITATION OF THE PRECEDING LINES] No more let barbarous Memphis boast Huge structures reared by servile hands-- A nation on the Atlantic coast Fettered no more in foreign bands, A nobler Pyramid displays Than Egypt's tyranny could raise. Columbia's sons, to extend the fame Of their exploits to future years, No marble from the quarry claim, But, soaring to the starry spheres, Materials seek in Jove's blue sky To endure when brass and marble die! Arrived among the shining host, Fearless, the proud invaders spoil From countless gems, in æther lost, These Stars, to crown their mighty toil: To heaven a Pyramid they rear And point the summit with a star. Old wasteful Time! though still you gain Dominion o'er the brazen tower, On This your teeth will gnaw in vain, Finding its strength beyond their power: While kindred stars in æther glow, This Pyramid will shine below! [1792] [62] Published in the _National Gazette_, Dec. 15, 1792. The Latin verses had been contributed several weeks before with the request that some reader of the paper furnish a translation. Text from the 1809 edition. ON THE DEMOLITION OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY[63] From Bourbon's brow the crown remov'd, Low in the dust is laid; And, parted now from all she lov'd, Maria's[A] beauties fade: [A] Maria Antoinette, late queen of France.--_Freneau's note._ What shall relieve her sad distress, What power recall that former state When drinking deep her seas of bliss, She smil'd and look'd so sweet!-- With aching heart and haggard eye She views the palace,[B] towering high, Where, once, were pass'd her brightest days, And nations stood, in wild amaze, Louis! to see you eat. [B] Thuilleries--within view of which the royal family of France were at this time imprisoned.--1792.--_Ib._ This gaudy vision to restore Shall fate its laws repeal, And cruel despots rise once more To plan a new Bastille! Shall, from their sheathes, ten thousand blades[C] In glittering vengeance start To mow down slaves, and slice off heads, Taking a monarch's part?-- Ah no!--the heavens this hope refuse; Despots! they send you no such news-- Nor Conde, fierce, nor Frederick, stout, Nor Catharine brings this work about, Nor Brunswick's warlike art: [C] Alluding to Mr. Edmund Burke's rant upon this subject.--_Ib._ The poet here refers to the well-known passage in Burke's _Reflections on the Revolution in France_, published October, 1790, in which after describing the queen of France as he had seen her in 1774 and the "prostrate homage" which her nation had paid to her at that time, he dwells upon the contrast of 1789: "Oh, what a revolution! and what a heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, oeconomists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever." Nor He,[D] that once, with fire and sword, This western world alarm'd: Throughout our clime whose thunders roar'd, Whose legions round us swarm'd-- Once more his tyrant arm invades A race[E] that dare be free: His Myrmidons, with murdering blades, In one base cause agree!-- Ill fate attend on every scheme That tends to darken Reason's beam: And, rising with gigantic might In Virtue's cause, I see unite Worlds, under Freedom's Tree! [D] George III.--_Freneau's note._ [E] The French Republicans.--_Ib._ Valour, at length, by Fortune led, The Rights of Man restores; And Gallia, now from bondage freed, Her rising sun adores: On Equal Rights, her fabric plann'd, Storms idly round it rave, No longer breathes in Gallic land A monarch, or a slave! At distance far, and self-remov'd From all he own'd and all he lov'd, See!--turn'd his back on Freedom's blaze, In foreign lands the Emigrant strays, Or finds an early grave! Enroll'd with these--and close immur'd, The gallant chief[F] is found, That, once, admiring crowds ador'd, Through either world renown'd, Here, bold in arms, and firm in heart, He help'd to gain our cause, Yet could not from a tyrant part, But, turn'd to embrace his laws!-- Ah! hadst thou stay'd in fair Auvergne,[G] And Truth from Paine vouchsaf'd to learn; There, happy, honour'd, and retir'd, Both hemispheres had still admir'd, Still crown'd you with applause. [F] La Fayette; at this time in the Prussian prison of Spandau.--_Freneau's note._ [G] The province of France, where the Marquis's family estate lay.--_Ib._ See!--doom'd to fare on famish'd steeds, The rude Hungarians fly; Brunswick, with drooping courage leads Death's meagre family: In dismal groups, o'er hosts of dead, Their madness they bemoan, No friendly hand to give them bread, No Thionville their own! The Gaul, enrag'd as they retire, Hurls at their heads his blaze of fire-- What hosts of Frederick's reeking crew Dying, have bid the world adieu, To dogs their flesh been thrown! Escap'd from death, a mangled train In scatter'd bands retreat: Where, bounding on Silesia's plain, The Despot[H] holds his seat; With feeble step, I see them go The heavy news to tell Where Oder's lazy waters flow, Or glides the swift Moselle; Where Rhine his various journey moves Through marshy lands and ruin'd groves, Or, where the vast Danubian flood (So often stain'd by Austrian blood) Foams with the autumnal swell. [H] The Monarch of Prussia.--_Freneau's note._ But shall they not some tidings bear Of Freedom's sacred flame, And shall not groaning millions hear The long abandon'd name?-- Through ages past, their spirits broke, I see them spurn old laws, Indignant, burst the Austrian yoke, And clip the Eagle's[I] claws: From shore to shore, from sea to sea They join, to set the wretched free, And, driving from the servile court Each titled slave--they help support The Democratic Cause! [I] The imperial standard of Germany.--_Ib._ O France! the world to thee must owe A debt they ne'er can pay: The Rights of Man you bid them know, And kindle Reason's Day! Columbia, in your friendship blest, Your gallant deeds shall hail-- On the same ground our fortunes rest, Must flourish, or must fail: But--should all Europe's slaves combine Against a cause so fair as thine, And Asia aid a league so base-- Defeat would all their aims disgrace, And Liberty Prevail! PHILADELPHIA, December 19, 1792. [63] First published in the _National Gazette_, December 19, 1792, under the title "Present View of France and Her combined Enemies," and reproduced in the editions of 1795 and 1809. Text from the former edition. ON THE FRENCH REPUBLICANS[64] These gallant men that some so much despise Did not, like mushrooms, spring up in a night: By them instructed, France again shall rise, And every Frenchman learn his native right. American! when in your country's cause You march'd, and dar'd the English lion's jaws, Crush'd Hessian slaves, and made their hosts retreat, Say, were you not Republican--complete? Forever banish'd, now, be prince and king, To Nations and to Laws our reverence due: And let not language to my memory bring, A word that might recall the infernal crew, Monarch!--henceforth I blot it from my page, Monarchs and slaves too long disgrace this age; But thou, Republican, that some disclaim, Shalt save a world, and damn a tyrant's fame. Friends to Republics, cross the Atlantic brine, Low in the dust see regal splendour laid: Hopeless forever, sleeps the Bourbon line Long practis'd adepts in the murdering trade! With patriot care the nation's will expressing Republicans shall prove all Europe's blessing, Pull from his height each blustering Noble down And chace all modern Tarquins from the throne. [64] I have found this only in the 1795 version. ON THE PORTRAITS Of Louis and Antoinette, in the Senate Chamber[65] Discharg'd by France, no more the royal pair Claim from a nation's love a nation's care: Their splendid race no more a palace holds,-- While Louis frets, Antonietta scolds; Folly's sad victims, fortune's bitter sport, They take their stand among the "common sort," Doom'd through the world, in sad reverse, to roam, Perhaps--without a shelter or a home! To shew our pity for their short-liv'd reign What shall we do, or how express our pain? Since for their persons no relief is found But cruel mobs degrade them to the ground, To shew how deeply we regret their fall We hang their portraits in our Senate Hall! [65] Published Dec. 22, 1792, in the _National Gazette_ and republished only in the 1795 edition. "These large and elegantly framed _pictures_ [of the King and Queen of France] arrived at Philadelphia in the ship Queen of France, being presents from the king. They were set up in the large committee-room of the senate, at the south-east corner of Sixth and Chestnut streets--thence went to Washington city, and were burned, I believe, by the British under General Ross."--_Watson's Annals of Philadelphia._ TO A REPUBLICAN With Mr. Paine's Rights of Man[66] Thus briefly sketch'd the sacred Rights of Man, How inconsistent with the Royal Plan! Which for itself exclusive honour craves, Where some are masters born, and millions slaves. With what contempt must every eye look down On that base, childish bauble call'd a crown, The gilded bait, that lures the crowd, to come, Bow down their necks, and meet a slavish doom; The source of half the miseries men endure, The quack that kills them, while it seems to cure. Rous'd by the Reason of his manly page, Once more shall Paine a listening world engage: From Reason's source, a bold reform he brings, In raising up mankind, he pulls down kings, Who, source of discord, patrons of all wrong, On blood and murder have been fed too long: Hid from the world, and tutor'd to be base, The curse, the scourge, the ruin of our race, Theirs was the task, a dull designing few, To shackle beings that they scarcely knew, Who made this globe the residence of slaves, And built their thrones on systems form'd by knaves-- Advance, bright years, to work their final fall, And haste the period that shall crush them all. Who, that has read and scann'd the historic page But glows, at every line, with kindling rage, To see by them the rights of men aspers'd, Freedom restrain'd, and Nature's law revers'd, Men, rank'd with beasts, by monarchs will'd away, And bound young fools, or madmen to obey: Now driven to wars, and now oppress'd at home, Compell'd in crowds o'er distant seas to roam, From India's climes the plundered prize to bring To glad the strumpet, or to glut the king. Columbia, hail! immortal be thy reign: Without a king, we till the smiling plain; Without a king, we trace the unbounded sea, And traffic round the globe, through each degree; Each foreign clime our honour'd flag reveres, Which asks no monarch, to support the Stars: Without a king, the Laws maintain their sway, While honour bids each generous heart obey. Be ours the task the ambitious to restrain, And this great lesson teach--that kings are vain; That warring realms to certain ruin haste, That kings subsist by war, and wars are waste: So shall our nation, form'd on Virtue's plan, Remain the guardian of the Rights of Man, A vast Republic, fam'd through every clime, Without a king, to see the end of time. [66] Text from the 1795 edition. ODE TO LIBERTY[67] Thou Liberty! celestial light So long conceal'd from Gallic lands, Goddess, in ancient days ador'd By Gallia's conquering bands: Thou Liberty! whom savage kings Have plac'd among forbidden things, Tho' still averse that man be free, Secret, they bow to Liberty-- O, to my accents lend an ear, Blest object of each tyrant's fear, While I to modern days recall The Lyric muse of ancient Gaul. Ere yet my willing voice obeys The transports of the heart, The goddess to my view displays A temple rear'd in ancient days, Fit subject for the muse's art. Now, round the world I cast my eye, With pain, its ruins I descry: This temple once to Freedom rais'd Thermopylae! in thy fam'd strait-- I see it to the dust debas'd, And servile chains, its fate! In those fair climes, where freedom reign'd, Two thousand years degrade the Grecian name, I see them still enslav'd, enchain'd; But France from Rome and Athens caught the flame-- A temple now to heaven they raise Where nations bound in ties of peace With olive-boughs shall throng to praise The gallant Gaul, that bade all discord cease. Before this Pantheon, fair and tall, The piles of darker ages fall, And freemen here no longer trace The monuments of man's disgrace: Before its porch, at Freedom's tree Exalt the Cap of Liberty, The cap[A] that once Helvetia knew (The terror of the tyrant crew) And on our country's altar trace The features of each honour'd face-- The men that strove for equal laws, Or perish'd, martyrs in their cause. [A] Which owes its origin to William Tell, the famous deliverer of Switzerland.--_Freneau's note._ Ye gallant chiefs, above all praise, Ye Brutuses of ancient days! Tho' fortune long has strove to blast, Your virtues are repaid at last. Your heavenly feasts awhile forbear And deign to make my song your care; My lyre a bolder note attains, And rivals old Tyrtoeus' strains; The ambient air returns the sound, And kindles rapture all around. With thee begins the lofty theme, Eternal Nature--power supreme, Who planted Freedom in the mind, The first great right of all mankind: Too long presumptuous folly dar'd To veil our race from thy regard; Tyrants on ignorance form'd their plan, And made their crimes, the crimes of man, Let victory but befriend our cause And reason deign to dictate laws; And once mankind their rights reclaim And honour pay to thy great name.-- But O! what cries our joys molest, What discord drowns sweet music's feast! What demon, from perdition, leads Night, fire and thunder o'er our heads! In northern realms, prepar'd for fight, A thousand savage clans unite.-- To avenge a faithless Helen's doom All Europe's slaves, determin'd, come Freedom's fair fabric to destroy And wrap in flames our modern Troy! These these are they--the murdering bands, Whose blood, of old, distain'd our lands, By our forefathers chac'd and slain, The monuments of death remain: Hungarians, wet with human blood, Ye Saxons fierce, so oft subdued By ancient Gauls on Gallic plains, Dread, dread the race that still remains: Return, and seek your dark abodes, Your dens and caves in northern woods, Nor stay to tell each kindred ghost What thousands from your tribes are lost. A friend[B] from hell, of murderous brood, Stain'd with a hapless husband's blood, Unites with Danube[C] and the Spree,[C] Who arm to make the French their prey: To check their hosts and chill with fear, Frenchmen, advance to your frontier. There dig the Eternal Tomb of kings, Or Poland's fate each monster brings, Mows millions down, your cause defeats, And Ismael's horrid scene[D] repeats. [B] Catharine the 2d, present Empress of Russia, who deposed her husband, Peter the 3d, and deprived him of life in July, 1762, while in prison.--_Freneau's note._ [C] Two great rivers of Germany; here metaphorically designating the Austrian and Prussian powers.--_Ib._ [D] The Turkish fortress of Ismael, in 1786, stormed by the Russian army. After carrying it by assault, upwards of 30,000 persons, men, women, and children were slaughtered by the Russian barbarians, in less than three hours.--_Ib._ Ye nations brave, so long rever'd, Whom Rome, in all her glory, fear'd; Whose stubborn souls no tyrant broke To bow the neck to Cæsar's yoke-- Scythians! whom Romans never chain'd; Germans! that unsubdued remain'd, Ah! see your sons, a sordid race, With despots leagu'd, to their disgrace Aid the base cause that you abhor, And hurl on France the storm of war. Our bold attempts shake modern Rome, She bids her kindred despots come; From Italy her forces draws To waste their blood in Tarquin's cause: A hundred hords of foes advance, Embodying on the verge of France; 'Mongst these, to guide the flame of war, I see Porsenna's[E] just a score, While from the soil, by thousands, spring Scevola's[F] to destroy each king. [E] An ancient king of Etruria who took Tarquin's part against the Romans.--_Freneau's note._ [F] Scevola, who attempted the life of Porsenna in his own camp, but failed.--_Ib._ O Rome! what glory you consign To those who court your ancient fame! Frenchmen, like Romans, now shall shine, And copying them, their ancient honours claim. O France, my native clime, my country dear, While youth remains, may I behold you free, Each tyrant crush'd, no threatening despot near To endanger Liberty! By you unfetter'd be all human kind, No slaves on earth be known And man be blest, in friendship join'd, From Tyber to the Amazon! [67] The Philadelphia _General Advertiser_ of May 21, 1793, reports in full the "Republican dinner" given Genet, May 18, at which about one hundred citizens were present, chiefly "French, French-Americans, officers of the Frigate l'Embuscade, etc." The following is from this report: "After the third toast [The United States], an elegant ode, suited to the occasion, and composed by Citizen PICHON, a young Frenchman of promising abilities, was read by Citizen DUPONCEAU, and universally applauded. The society, on motion, ordered that Citizen FRENEAU should be requested to translate it into English verse, and that the original and translation should be published. The society also unanimously voted that Citizen PICHON should be recommended to the notice of the Minister." The French version of the Ode appeared in the _Advertiser_ on May 27; the translation was printed May 31. Both ode and translation were published in the edition of 1795, the text of which I have followed. It was not republished in 1809. Following is the French text as it appeared in the _Advertiser_: ODE A LA LIBERTE. By Citizen PICHON, read at the late dinner given to Citizen GENET, by the French of this City. O toi, dont l'auguste lumiere Si long tems avait fui nos yeux! Toi, jadis l'idole premiere De mes invincibles ayeux, LIBERTE, qu'un tyran sauvage, A l'instant meme qu'il t'outrage Honore par des voeux secrets; A mes accens prete l'oreille, Aujourdhui ma muse reveille L'antique lutte des vieux Français. Avant que ma voix obeisse Au transport que saisit mes sens, Montre moi deesse propice Un temple digne de mes chants! Mon oeil a parcouru la terre J'y trouve a peine la pouissiere D'un dome a ton nom consacré, Un tyran siege aux Thermopyles Et sous les chaines les plus viles Le capitole est encombré. Vingt siecles de honte et de chaines Ont pese sur ces lieux divins; C'est nous qui de Rome et de l'Athenes Resusciterons les destins. Francais, soyons seuls notre exemple Qu'a ma voix on eleve un temple Ou tous les peuples a jamais Depouillant des haines sauvages Viennent de palmes et d'homages Couronner les heros Français. Devant ce Pantheon sublime Brisez ces palais infamans De nos opprobres et du crime Honteux et cruels monumens. Au pied de ses nobles portiques Plantez ces bonnets Helvetiques Devenus la terreur des rois; Et sur l'autel de la patrie Gravez l'honorable effigie Des martirs sacrés de nos droits. Vous m'entendez, manes augustes De Thrasibule et de Brutus! Les Destins trop long tems injustes Couronnent enfin vos vertus-- Paraissez, ombres adorées Venez de vos fetes sacrées Remplir les sublimes concerts Deja ma lyre transportée Rivale des chants de Tyrtée De ses sons etonne les airs. C'est par toi que l'hymne commence Maitre supreme, etre eternal! Toi qui sis de l'independance Le premier besoin du mortel. Long tems l'ignorance et l'audace Couvrirent ton auguste face, Du masque impur de leurs forfaits Un seul combat, une victoire Venge nos droits et rend ta gloire Plus eclatante que jamais. Mais quels cris viennent de nos fetes Troubler les chants majestueux? Quel demon porte sur nos tetes La nuit, le tonnerre, et les feux? Verrons nous des hordes sauvages Inonder encore nos rivages, Des terrens du Septentrion; Et pour venger une autre Helene Tout la force Europeene Investit une autre Ilion. C'etoient ces bandes homicides Dont le sang versé tant de fois De mes ancetres intrepides Atteste encore les exploits-- Fiers _Saxons_, Hongres Sanguinaires Esclaves jadis de mes peres Craignez leurs braves descendans Rentrez en vos cavernes sombres Ou craignez d'avertir leurs ombres Des revoltes de vos enfans: Une Tisiphone egarée Teinte encore du sang d'un epoux Avec le Danube et la Sprée S'unit et s'arme contre nous A ces despotes sanguinaires: Francais, volez sur vos frontieres Creuser un eternel tombeau; Ou craignez pour votre patrie, Et l'opprobe de Warsovie Et les horreurs d'Ismailow! Et vous qu'au sort de ses conquetes Rome craignit pour ses remparts Peuples dont les augustes tetes S'indignant du joug des Cesars, Scythes aux fers inaccessibles, Fiers Germains, Teutons invincibles, Voyez vos laches descendans D'une main vile et sanguinaire Sur les bienfaiteurs de la terre Lancer la foudre des tyrans. Ainsi, par des faits heroiques Rome allarmant tous ses voisins Vit tous les peuples Italiques Vendre leurs bras a ses Tarquins. Sur ses frontieres investies Avec cent hordes ennemies La France voit vingt Porsennas Contre tant de liberticides Nos phalanges tyrannicides Vomiront mille Scevolas. O Rome! tu leguas ta gloire Aux peuples faits pour l'imiter! C'est nous Français que la victoire Au meme faite veut porter. O France, O ma chere patrie! Puisse-je au printems de ma vie Te voir les despotes soumis Et que par toi l'univers libre De l'Amazone jusqu'au Tibre N'offre que des peuples amis! ODE[68] God save the Rights of Man! Give us a heart to scan Blessings so dear: Let them be spread around Wherever man is found, And with the welcome sound Ravish his ear. Let us with France agree, And bid the world be free, While tyrants fall! Let the rude savage host Of their vast numbers boast-- Freedom's almighty trust Laughs at them all! Though hosts of slaves conspire To quench fair Gallia's fire, Still shall they fail: Though traitors round her rise, Leagu'd with her enemies, To war each patriot flies, And will prevail. No more is valour's flame Devoted to a name, Taught to adore-- Soldiers of Liberty Disdain to bow the knee, But teach Equality To every shore. The world at last will join To aid thy grand design, Dear Liberty! To Russia's frozen lands The generous flame expands: On Afric's burning sands Shall man be free! In this our western world Be Freedom's flag unfurl'd Through all its shores! May no destructive blast Our heaven of joy o'ercast, May Freedom's fabric last While time endures. If e'er her cause require!-- Should tyrants e'er aspire To aim their stroke, May no proud despot daunt-- Should he his standard plant, Freedom will never want Her hearts of oak! [68] This ode was sung at the Civic Feast given to Genet in Philadelphia by the French and Citizens, June 1, 1793. The affair is described in detail in Bache's _Aurora_ of June 4th. After three of the toasts the artillery fired salutes with two twelve pounders, fifteen rounds each. Freneau's ode was sung after the seventh toast, "with great effect." As to the date of composition of the ode I can find no reliable evidence. Conway, in his life of Paine, mentions that it was sung in 1791 at the November Festival of the London Revolution Society. It was published in the edition of 1795, but was not reproduced in 1809. ON THE DEATH[69] Of a Republican Printer [By his Partner and Successor] Like Sybil's leaves, abroad he spread His sheets, to awe the aspiring crew: Stock-jobbers fainted while they read; Each hidden scheme display'd to view-- Who could such doctrines spread abroad So long, and not be clapper-claw'd! Content with slow uncertain gains, With heart and hand prepar'd he stood To send his works to distant plains, And hills beyond the Ohio-flood-- And, since he had no time to lose, Preach'd whiggish lectures with his news. Now death, with cold unsparing hand, (At whose decree even Capets fall) From life's poor glass has shook his sand, And sent him, fainting, to the wall-- Because he gave you some sad wipes, O Mammon! seize not thou his types. What shall be done, in such a case?-- Shall I, because my partner fails, Call in his bull-dogs from the chace To loll their tongues and drop their tails-- No, faith--the title-hunting crew No longer fly than we pursue. [69] Published in the _National Gazette_, July 6, 1793, under the title "Reflections on the Death of a Country Printer." Republished in the edition of 1795, which the text follows, and not inserted in the 1809 edition. ON THE ANNIVERSARY[70] Of the Storming of the Bastille, at Paris, July 14th, 1789 The chiefs that bow to Capet's reign, In mourning, now, their weeds display; But we, that scorn a monarch's chain, Combine to celebrate the Day To Freedom's birth that put the seal, And laid in dust the proud Bastille. To Gallia's rich and splendid crown, This mighty Day gave such a blow As Time's recording hand shall own No former age had power to do: No single gem some Brutus stole, But instant ruin seiz'd the whole. Now tyrants rise, once more to bind In royal chains a nation freed-- Vain hope! for they, to death consign'd, Shall soon, like perjur'd Louis, bleed: O'er every king, o'er every queen Fate hangs the sword, and guillotine. "Plung'd in a gulf of deep distress France turns her back--(so traitors say) Kings, priests, and nobles, round her press, Resolv'd to seize their destin'd prey: Thus Europe swears (in arms combin'd) To Poland's doom is France consign'd." Yet those, who now are thought so low From conquests that were basely gain'd, Shall rise tremendous from the blow And free Two Worlds, that still are chain'd, Restrict the Briton to his isle, And Freedom plant in every soil. Ye sons of this degenerate clime, Haste, arm the barque, expand the sail; Assist to speed that golden time When Freedom rules, and monarchs fail; All left to France--new powers may join, And help to crush the cause divine. Ah! while I write, dear France Allied, My ardent wish I scarce restrain, To throw these Sybil leaves aside, And fly to join you on the main: Unfurl the topsail for the chace And help to crush the tyrant race! [70] Printed in the _National Gazette_, July 17, 1793, and republished in the edition of 1795. Omitted from the edition of 1809. THOUGHTS ON THE EUROPEAN WAR SYSTEM[71] By H. Salem The People in Europe are much to be praised, That in fighting they choose to be passing their days; If their wars were abolished, there's room to suppose Our Printers would growl, for the want of New-News. May our tidings of warfare be ever from thence, Nor that page be supplied at Columbia's expence! No kings shall rise here, at the nod of a court, Ambition, or Pride, with men's lives for to sport. In such a display of the taste of the times-- The murder of millions--their quarrels and crimes, A horrible system of ruin we scan, A history, truly descriptive of man: A Being, that Nature designed to be blest-- With abundance around him--yet rarely at rest, A Being, that lives but a moment in years, Yet wasting his life in contention and wars; A Being, sent hither all good to bestow, Yet filling the world with oppression and woe! But, consider, ye sages, (and pray be resigned) What ills would attend a reform of mankind-- Were wars at an end, and no nation made thinner, My neighbour, the gun-smith, would go without dinner; The Printers, themselves, for employment would fail, And soldiers, by thousands, be starving in jail. [71] Published in the 1795 and 1809 editions, the latter of which I have followed. A MATRIMONIAL DIALOGUE[72] Humbly Inscribed to My Lord Snake One Sabbath-day morning said Sampson to Sue "I have thought and have thought that a Title will do; Believe me, my dear, it is sweeter that syrup To taste of a title, as cooked up in Europe; "Your ladyship" here and "your ladyship" there, "Sir knight," and "your grace," and "his worship the mayor!" But here, we are nothing but vulgar all over, And the wife of a cobbler scarce thinks you above her: What a country is this, where Madam and Miss Is the highest address from each vulgar-born cur, And I--even I--am but Mister and Sir! Your Equal-Right gentry I ne'er could abide That all are born equal, by Me is denied: And Barlow and Paine shall preach it in vain; Look even at brutes, and you'll see it confest That some are intended to manage the rest; Yon' dog of the manger, how stately he struts! You may swear him well-born, from the size of his guts; Not a better-born whelp ever snapped at his foes, All he wants is a Glass to be stuck on his Nose: And then, my dear Sue, between me and you, He would look like the gemman whose name I forget, Who lives in a castle and never pays debt." "My dear (answered Susan) 'tis said, in reproach, That you climb like a bear when you get in a coach: Now, your nobles that spring from the nobles of old, Your earls, and your knights, and your barons, so bold, From Nature inherit so handsome an air They are noblemen born, at first glance we may swear: But you, that have cobbled, and I, that have spun, 'Tis wrong for our noddles on Titles to run: Moreover, you know, that to make a fine show, Your people of note, of arms get a coat; A boot or a shoe would but sneakingly do, And would certainly prove our nobility New." "No matter (said Sampson) a coach shall be bought: Though the low-born may chatter, I care not a groat; Around it a group of devices shall shine, And mottoes, and emblems--to prove it is mine; Fair liberty's Cap, and a Star, and a Strap; A Dagger, that somewhat resembles an Awl, A pumpkin-faced Goddess supporting a Stall: All these shall be there--how people will stare! And Envy herself, that our Title would blast May smile at the motto,--the First shall be Last."[A] [A] Qui primus fuit nunc ultimus.--Motto on a certain coach.--_Freneau's note._ [72] First published in the _National Gazette_, August 11, 1792, under the title "A Curious Dialogue." In this earliest version it is noted that the piece was "occasioned by emblematic devices on a certain travelling coach." Text from the 1809 edition. ON THE MEMORABLE[73] Naval Engagement between the Republican Frigate _L'Ambuscade_ Captain Bompard, and the British Royal Frigate _Boston_, Captain Courtney, off the coast of New-Jersey.--1792 Resolved for a chace, All Frenchmen to face, Bold Boston from Halifax sailed, With a full flowing sheet, The pride of the fleet, Not a vessel she saw, but she hailed; With Courtney, commander, who never did fear, Nor returned from a fight with a "flea in his ear." As they stered for the Hook, Each swore by his book, "No prayers should their vengeance retard; "They would plunder and burn, "They would never return "Unattended by Captain Bompard! "No Gaul can resist us, when once we arouse, "We'll drown the monsieurs in the wash of our bows." A sail now appeared, When toward her they steered, Each crown'd with his Liberty-Cap; Under colours of France did they boldly advance, And a small privateer did entrap-- The time may have been when their nation was brave, But now, their best play is to cheat and deceive. Arrived at the spot Where they meant to dispute, Thus Courtney sent word, in a heat: "Since fighting's our trade, "Their bold Ambuscade "Must be sunk, or compelled to retreat: "Tell Captain Bompard, if his stomach's for war, "To advance from his port, and engage a bold tar." Brave Captain Bompard When this challenge he heard, Though his sails were unbent from the yards, His topmasts struck down, And his men half in town; Yet sent back his humble regards-- The challenge accepted; all hands warned on board, Bent, their sails, swore revenge, and the frigate unmoored. The Boston, at sea, Being under their lee, For windward manoeuvred in vain; 'Till night coming on, Both laid by 'till dawn, Then met on the watery plain, The wind at north-east, and a beautiful day, And the hearts of the Frenchmen in trim for the fray. So, to it they went, With determined intent The fate of the day to decide By the virtues of powder; (No argument louder Was e'er to a subject applied) A Gaul with a Briton in battle contends, Let them stand to their guns, and we'll see how it ends. As the Frenchman sailed past, Boston gave him a blast, Glass bottles, case knives, and old nails, A score of round shot, And the devil knows what, To cripple his masts and his sails. The Boston supposed it the best of her play To prevent him from chacing--if she ran away. The Frenchman most cool, (No hot-headed fool,) Returned the broadside in a trice; So hot was the blast, He disabled one mast, And gave them some rigging to splice, Some holes for to plug, where the bullets had gone, Some yards to replace, and some heads to put on. Three glasses, and more, Their cannons did roar, Shot flying in horrible squads; 'Midst torrents of smoke, The Republican spoke, And frightened the Anglican gods! Their frigate so mauled, they no longer defend her, And, Courtney shot down--they bawled out to surrender! "O la! what a blunder "To provoke this French thunder! "We think with the devil he deals-- "But since we dislike "To surrender and strike, "Let us try the success of our heels: "We may save the king's frigate by running away, "The Frenchman will have us--all hands--if we stay!" So squaring their yards, On all Captain Bompard's, A volley of curses they shed-- Having got their Discharge, They bore away large, While the Frenchman pursued, as they fled. But vain was his haste--while his sails he repaired, He ended the fray in a chace-- The Gaul got the best of the fight, 'tis declared; The Briton--the best of the race! [73] Published in the _National Gazette_, Aug. 17, 1793. The frigate _L'Ambuscade_, which had borne Citizen Genet from France to Charleston, where he arrived April 8, 1792, and which was soon after stationed at Philadelphia, caused much trouble to the federal government by making American ports her basis for operations upon English shipping. She captured several British ships, among them the _Grange_ and the _Little Sarah_. Text from the 1809 edition. TO SHYLOCK AP-SHENKIN[74] [In Reply to Big Looks and Menaces] Because some pumpkin-shells and lobster claws, Thrown o'er his garden walls by Crab-tree's duke, Have chanc'd to light within your meagre jaws, (A dose, at which all honest men would puke:) Because some treasury-luncheons you have gnaw'd, Like rats, that prey upon the public store: Must you, for that, your crude stuff belch abroad, And vomit lies on all that pass your door! To knavery's tribe my verse still fatal found, Alike to kings and coblers gives their due: Spruce tho' you be, your heels may drum the ground, And make rare pass-time for the sportive crew. Why all these hints of menace, dark and sad, What is my crime, that thus Ap-Shenkin raves? No secret-service-money have I had For waging two years' war with fools and knaves. Abus'd at court, unwelcome to the Great-- This page of mine no well-born aspect wears: On honest yeomen I repose its fate, Clodhopper's dollar is as good as theirs. Why wouldst thou then with ruffian hand destroy A wight, that wastes his ink in Freedom's cause: Who, to the last, his arrows will employ To publish Freedom's rights, and guard her laws! O thou! that hast a heart so flinty hard Thus oft, too oft, a poet to rebuke, From those that rhyme you ne'er shall meet regard; Of Crab-tree's dutchy--you shall be no Duke. [74] Called forth by Hamilton's letters in Fenno's _Gazette_, charging Freneau with being a mere hired tool of Jefferson. Published in the 1795 edition, but omitted from the 1809 collection. PESTILENCE[75] Hot, dry winds forever blowing, Dead men to the grave-yards going: Constant hearses, Funeral verses; Oh! what plagues--there is no knowing! Priests retreating from their pulpits!-- Some in hot, and some in cold fits In bad temper, Off they scamper, Leaving us--unhappy culprits! Doctors raving and disputing, Death's pale army still recruiting-- What a pother One with t'other! Some a-writing, some a-shooting. Nature's poisons here collected, Water, earth, and air infected-- O, what pity, Such a City, Was in such a place erected! [75] Published in the 1795 edition. In the index of the 1809 edition, the text of which I have used, it bears the title "Pestilence: written during the Prevalence of a yellow fever." It refers to the well-known epidemic in Philadelphia during the late summer and early autumn of 1793. ON DR. SANGRADO'S FLIGHT[76] From Philadelphia, in the Time of the Yellow Fever--1793 On prancing steed, with spunge at nose, From town behold Sangrado fly; Camphor and Tar where'er he goes Th' infected shafts of death defy-- Safe in an atmosphere of scents, He leaves us to our own defence. 'Twas right to fly! for well, I ween, In Stygian worlds, all scribes agree, No blushing blossom e'er was seen, Or running brook, or budding tree: No splendid meats, no flowing bowls, Smile on the meagre feast of souls: No sprightly songs, to banish grief, No balls, the Elysian beaus prepare, And he that throve on rounds of beef, On onion shells shall famish there-- Monarchs are there of little note, And Cæsar wears a shabby coat. Chloes on earth, of air and shape, Whose eyes destroy'd poor love-lorn wights, There lower their topsails to the cap, Rig in their booms and furl their kites:-- Where Cupid's bow was never bent, What lover asks a maid's consent? All this, and more, Sangrado knew, (In Lucian is the story told) Took horse--clapped spurs--and off he flew, Leaving his Sick to fret and scold; Some soldiers, thus, to honour lost, In day of battle quit their post. [76] First published in the _National Gazette_, September 4, 1793, under the title "Orlando's Flight." Text from the 1809 edition. ELEGY[77] On the Death of a Blacksmith With the nerves of a Sampson, this son of the sledge, By the anvil his livelihood got; With the skill of old Vulcan could temper an edge; And struck--while his iron was hot. By forging he lived, yet never was tried, Or condemned by the laws of the land; But still it is certain, and can't be denied, He often was burnt in the hand. With the sons of St. Crispin no kindred he claimed, With the last he had nothing to do; He handled no awl, and yet in his time Made many an excellent shoe. He blew up no coals of sedition, but still His bellows was always in blast; And we will acknowledge (deny it who will) That one Vice, and but one, he possessed. No actor was he, or concerned with the stage, No audience, to awe him, appeared; Yet oft in his shop (like a crowd in a rage) The voice of a hissing was heard. Tho' steelling[78] was certainly part of his cares, In thieving he never was found; And, tho' he was constantly beating on bars, No vessel he e'er ran aground. Alas and alack! and what more can I say Of Vulcan's unfortunate son?-- The priest and the sexton have borne him away, And the sound of his hammer is done. [77] Published in the _National Gazette_, September 18, 1793. Text from the 1809 edition. TO SYLVIUS[79] On his Preparing to Leave the Town Can love of fame the gentle muse inspire Where he that hoards the most has all the praise; Where avarice, and her tribe, each bosom fire, All heap the enormous store for rainy days; Proving by such perpetual round of toil That man was born to grovel on the soil? Expect not, in these times of rude renown That verse, like your's, will have the chance to please: No taste for plaintive elegy is known, Nor lyric ode--none care for things like these-- Gold, only gold, this niggard age delights, That honours none but money-catching wights. Sink not beneath the mean abusive strain Of puny wits, dull sycophants in song, Who, post, or place, or one poor smile to gain, Besiege Mambrino's door, and round him throng Like insects creeping to the morning sun To enjoy his heat--themselves possessing none. All must applaud your choice, to quit a stage Where knaves and fools in every scene abound; Where modest worth no patron can engage-- But boisterous folly walks her noisy round; Some narrow-hearted demi-god adores, And Fortune's path with servile step explores. [78] "Tho' steelling of axes was part of his cares."--_1795 Ed._ [79] Text from the 1809 edition. This was Freneau's valedictory on leaving Philadelphia after the failure of the _National Gazette_. THE BLESSINGS OF THE POPPY[80] --_Opifer per Orbem dicor._ "In this the God, benevolent to man, Lulls every woe, and deadens every pain." When the first men to this world's climates came Smit by the winter's rude inclement blast, Unskilled to raise the wall, or wake the fire, Badly, in narrow huts, their lives they passed. Conscious of pains they knew not how to cure, In vain they sighed, and sighing begged relief, No druggist came, by art or reason taught With strength of potent herbs, to calm their grief. Fierce tortures to allay, some reverend sage Preach'd Patience to the pangs, that could not hear; For restless anguish doomed her victim still To groan thro' life, and sigh from year to year, At length from Jove, and heaven's etherial dome Sky-walking Hermes came to view these plains: He looked--and saw what fate or gods had done, And gave the Poppy, to relieve all pains. Then to the sons of grief his speech addressed, "Through this dull flower is shed such potent dew, "When pain distracts--drink this--and drown in sleep "All ills, that Nature sent to torture you. "From other worlds, by other beings trod, "To these bleak climes this plundered plant I bore; "Receive a gift, all worthy of a god, "Since pain, when hushed to sleep,--is pain no more." [80] Text from the 1809 edition. QUINTILIAN TO LYCIDAS[81] "While other lads their books forsake, Or sigh to meet the hours of play: You, Lycidas, no leisure take, But still through learned volumes stray:-- With years so few, ah why so grave; Why every hour to books a slave? Hence, Lycidas, I pray, retire: Go with your mates, and take your play-- Not him I prize, or much admire, Who, curious, hangs on all I say: The lad that's wise before his time, Will be a coxcomb in his prime. Stay not too close in learning's shop;-- 'Till time a riper mind prepares, The ball, the marble, and the top Are books, that should divide your cares-- The lads that life's gay morn enjoy, I'm pleased to see them act the boy. I hate the pert, I hate the bold, Who, proud of years but half a score, With none but men would converse hold, And things beyond their reach explore: Like the famed Cretan, soaring high, To melt their waxen wings and die." [81] First published, as far as I can find, in the 1795 edition. Text from the 1809 edition. THE BAY ISLET[82] In shallow streams, a league from town, (Its baby Light-House tumbled down) Extends a country, full in view, Beheld by all, but known to few. Surrounded by the briny waste No haven here has Nature placed; But those who wish to pace it o'er Must land upon the open shore. There as I sailed, to view the ground; No blooming goddesses I found-- But yellow hags, ordained to prove The death, and antidote of love. Ten stately trees adorn the isle, The house, a crazy, tottering pile, Where once the doctor plied his trade On feverish tars and rakes decayed. Six hogs about the pastures feed (Sweet mud-larks of the Georgia breed) Who, while the hostess deals out drams, Can oysters catch, and open clams. Upon its surface, smooth and clean, A world, in miniature, is seen; Though scarce a journey for a snail We meet with mountain, hill, and vale. To those that guard this stormy place, Two cities stare them in the face: There, York its spiry summits rears, And here Cummunipaw appears. The tenant, now but ill at ease, Derives no fuel from his trees: And Jersey boats, though begged to land, All leave him on the larboard hand. Some monied man, grown sick of care, To this neglected spot repair: What Nature sketched, let art complete, And own the loveliest Country Seat. [82] First published, as far as I have been able to find, in the 1795 edition. Text from the 1809 edition. JEFFERY, OR, THE SOLDIER'S PROGRESS[83] Lured by some corporal's smooth address, His scarlet coat and roguish face, One Half A Joe on drum head laid, A tavern treat--and reckoning paid; See yonder simple lad consigned To slavery of the meanest kind. With only skill to drive a plough A musquet he must handle now; Must twirl it here and twirl it there, Now on the ground, now in the air: Its every motion by some rule Of practice, taught in Frederick's school,[A] Must be directed--nicely true-- Or he be beaten black--and blue. [A] The Prussian manual exercise.--_Freneau's note._ A sergeant, raised from cleaning shoes, May now this country lad abuse:-- On meagre fare grown poor and lean, He treats him like a mere machine, Directs his look, directs his step, And kicks him into decent shape, From aukward habits frees the clown, Erects his head--or knocks him down. Last Friday week to Battery-green The sergeant came with this Machine-- One motion of the firelock missed-- The Tutor thumped him with his fist: I saw him lift his hickory cane, I heard poor Jeffery's head complain!-- Yet this--and more--he's forced to bear; And thus goes on from year to year, 'Till desperate grown at such a lot, He drinks--deserts--and so is shot! [83] First published in the 1795 edition. Text from the 1809 edition. TO SHYLOCK AP-SHENKIN[84] In shallow caves, with shrill voic'd conchs hung round, And pumpkin-shells, responding all they hear, A bard, call'd Shylock, catches every sound, Governs their tone, pricks up his lengthy ear: In putrid ink then dips his pen of lead And scribbles down what learn'd Pomposo said. Bard of the lengthy ode! whose knavish paw Ne'er touch'd the helm, besprent with odious pitch! 'Twas better far, you knew, to practice Law, Whine at the church, or in the court-house screech: No soul had you to face the wintry blast, Combat the storm, or climb the tottering mast. Then why so wroth, thou bard of narrow soul, If wavering Fortune bade me seek the brine: I drank no nectar from your leaden bowl, Nor from your poems filch'd a single line: When I do that--then publish from your caves, Who robs a beggar--is the worst of knaves! [84] This poem is unique, as far as I can discover, in the 1795 edition. TO A WRITER OF PANEGYRIC[85] Occasioned by certain fulsome Congratulatory Verses on the election of a High Constable Be advised by a friend, who advises but rarely, Be cautious of praising 'till praise is earned fairly: There was a sage Ancient this truth did bequeath, "That merit is only determined by death." Panegyric I'm sorry to see you engage in-- Old Nero, at first, was a Titus, or Trajan: The Indians of Siam bow down to a Log, And Egypt is said to have worshipped a Dog.[A] [A] ANUBIS.--One of the tutelar deities of ancient Egypt.--_Freneau's note._ If you will be throwing your jewels to swine, No wonder they rend you--whenever they dine-- Pray, leave it to puppies to cry up their worth, And to dunces, to honour the day of their birth. Whoever the road to preferment would find, With the eyes of a Dutchman must look at mankind; From the basest of motives, cry cowards are brave, And laugh in his sleeve--when he flatters a knave. [85] I can find no earlier trace of this poem than the 1795 edition. Text from the 1809 edition. THE FOREST BEAU[86] [A Picture from Reality] When first to feel Love's fire Jack Straw begins, He combs his hair, and cocks his hat with pins, Views in some stream, his face, with fond regard, Plucks from his upper lip the bristly beard, With soap and sand his homely visage scours (Rough from the joint attacks of sun and showers) The sheepskin breeches decorate his thighs-- Next on his back the homespun coat he tries; Round his broad breast he wraps the jerkin blue, And sews a spacious soal on either shoe. Thus, all prepared, the fond adoring swain Cuts from his groves of pine a ponderous cane; In thought a beau, a savage to the eye, Forth, from his mighty bosom, heaves the sigh; Tobacco is the present for his fair, This he admires, and this best pleases her-- The bargain struck,--few cares his bosom move How to maintain, or how to lodge his love; Close at his hand the piny forest grows, Thence for his hut a slender frame he hews, With art, (not copied from Palladio's rules,) A hammer and an axe, his only tools, By Nature taught, a hasty hut he forms Safe in the woods, to shelter from the storms;-- There sees the summer pass and winter come, Nor envies Britain's king his loftier home. [86] From the edition of 1809. First published, as far as I can discover, in 1795. EPISTLE[87] To a Student of Dead Languages I pity him, who, at no small expense, Has studied sound instead of sense: He, proud some antique gibberish to attain; Of Hebrew, Greek, or Latin, vain, Devours the husk, and leaves the grain. In his own language Homer writ and read, Nor spent his life in poring on the dead: Why then your native language not pursue In which all ancient sense (that's worth review) Glows in translation, fresh and new? He better plans, who things, not words, attends, And turns his studious hours to active ends; Who Art through every secret maze explores, Invents, contrives--and Nature's hidden stores From mirrours, to their object true, Presents to man's obstructed view, That dimly meets the light, and faintly soars:-- His strong capacious mind By fetters unconfin'd Of Latin lore and heathen Greek, Takes Science in its way, Pursues the kindling ray 'Till Reason's morn shall on him break! [87] Unique, as far as I can find, in the 1795 edition. TO A NOISY POLITICIAN[88] Since Shylock's Book has walk'd the circles here, What numerous blessings to our country flow! Whales on our shores have run aground, Sturgeons are in our rivers found; Nay, ships have on the Delaware sail'd, A sight most new! Wheat has been sown, harvests have grown, And Shylock held strange dialogues with Sue. On coaches, now, gay coats of arms are wore By some, who hardly had a coat before: Silk gowns instead of homespun, now, are seen, And, sir, 'tis true ('twixt me and you) That some have grown prodigious fat, That were prodigious lean! [88] Unique, as far as I can discover, in the edition of 1795. THE SEXTON'S SERMON[89] At the Burial of a Deist A few short years, at most, will bound our span; ("Wretched and few," the Hebrew patriarch said) Live while you may, be jovial while you can; Too soon our debt to Nature, must be paid. When Nature fails, the man exists no more, And death is nothing but an empty name, Spleen's odious offspring, in some gloomy hour;-- The coward's tyrant, and the bad man's dream. You ask me, where those numerous hosts have fled That once existed on this changeful ball? If aught remains, when mortal man is dead,[A] Where ere their birth they were, they now are all. [A] Queris quo loco jaceant omnes mortui? ------------ Ubi non nata jacent. _Seneca Trag.--Freneau's note._ Seek not for Paradise!--'tis not for you Where, high in heaven, its sweetest blossoms blow; Nor even, where gliding to the Persian main, Your waves, Euphrates, through the garden flow, What is this Death, ye thoughtless mourners, say? Death is no more than never-ceasing change: New forms arise, while other forms decay, Yet, all is life throughout creation's range. The towering Alps, the haughty Appenine, The Andes, wrapt in everlasting snow, The Apalachian, and the Ararat, Sooner or later, must to ruin go. Hills sink to plains, and man returns to dust; That dust supports a reptile or a flower; Each changeful atom, by some other nursed, Takes some new form, to perish in an hour. When Nature bids thee from the world retire, With joy thy lodging leave, a sated guest, In sleep's blest state (our Dullman's fond desire) Existing always--always to be blest. Like insects busy in a summer's day, We toil and squabble, to increase our pain: Night comes at last, and weary of the fray, To dust and silence all are sent again! Beneath my hand what numerous crowds retire-- By the cold turf for ages, now, oppressed! Millions have fallen--and millions must expire, Doomed by the impartial Power to endless rest. In vain with stars He decked yon' spangled skies, And bade the mind to heaven's bright regions soar, And brought so far to your admiring eyes A glimpse of glories, that shall blaze no more! What is there here, that man should wish to bear A weight of years?--such rage to madness vext; Wan, wasting, grief, and ever musing care, Distressful pain, and poverty perplext?-- What is there here, but tombs and monuments-- Tyrants--who misery spread through every shore; Wide wasting wars, the scourge of innocence; Fevers and plagues, with all their noxious store? Before we called this wrangling world our home, In undisturbed abodes we sweetly slept: But when dame Nature made that world our doom, 'Twas then our troubles came--and then we wept! Though humbled now, disheartened, or distressed, Yet, when returning to the peaceful ground, With heroes, kings, and conquerors we shall rest; Shall sleep as sweetly, and no doubt, as sound. Ne'er shall we hope to see the day-light spring Or from the up-lifted window lean to hear (Fore-runner of the scarlet-mantled morn) The early note of wakeful Chanticleer! Oblivion there, expands her raven wing:-- We soon must go where all the dead are gone, Trace the dull path, explore the gloomy road To that dark country, where I see no dawn. Then why these sobs, these useless floods of woe, That vainly flow for the departed dead? If doomed to wander on the coasts below, What are to them these floods of grief you shed? Since heaven in rapture doth their hours employ-- If empty sighs, or groans, could reach them there, These funeral howls would damp their heaven of joy, Would make them wretched, and renew their care. The joys of wine, immortal as my theme, To days of mirth the aspiring soul invite: Life, void of this, a punishment I deem, A Greenland winter, robbed of heat and light. Ah! envy not, ye sages too precise, The drop from life's gay tree, that kills our woe-- Noah himself, the wary and the wise, A vineyard planted--and the vines did grow. (Of social soul was he)--the grape he pressed, And drank the juice, oblivious to his care: Sorrow he banished from his place of rest, And sighs, and sextons, had no business there. Such bliss be our's through every changing scene: The jovial face bespeaks the glowing heart; If heaven be joy, wine is to heaven a-kin, Since wine, on earth, can heavenly joys impart. Mere glow-worms are we all--a moment shine!-- I, like the rest, in giddy circles run, And grief shall say, when I this breath resign, His glass is empty, and his sermon done! [89] Freneau seems deliberately to have manufactured this poem for his edition of 1795 from fragments of his discarded poems, the _House of Night_ and the _Jamaica Funeral_. It is made up as follows: _Jamaica Funeral_, stanzas 44-46; _House of Night_ 73, 132-134, 139; _Jamaica Funeral_ 47; _House of Night_ 76, 77; an original stanza; _House of Night_ 48, 34, 116, 30, 43; _Jamaica Funeral_ 34, 35, 40, 48-51. Many of these stanzas are much changed. Text from the 1809 edition. ON A LEGISLATIVE ACT[90] Prohibiting the use of Spirituous Liquors to Prisoners in certain Jails of the United States Give to the wretched, drink that's strong, (Said David's Son) but we, more wise, With Cyder, from the hogshead, rough, Molasses-Beer, and such dull stuff, The miseries of the imprison'd host prolong. "Shut up in jail from day to day (Methinks I hear a Debtor say) "Victims to public rage and private spite, "All that we had to keep our spirits up "Was glowing wine that fill'd the cheering cup, "This banish'd care, and check'd the rising sigh "Chac'd grief from every heart, gave joy to every eye. "And will ye not this only comfort leave, "Ye men that frame the public laws?-- "Parted from children, friends, and wives, "How heavily the moments roll: "What comfort have we of our lives "If you deny this cordial of the soul? "'Tis this that kills the tedious hour, "Puts misery out of fortune's power. "'Tis this that to the dial's hand lends wings, "Gives to the beggar all the pride of kings, "Sheds joy throughout our gloomy cage "And bids us scorn the little tyrant's rage, "They that are unconfin'd drink what they will-- "Who gave the right to limit men in jail? "Because misfortune sent us here "Must we for that be drench'd with 'table beer,' "Or, in its stead, with Adam's ale?-- "Relent--relent! contrive some other plan; "Wine is the dearest, choicest friend of man-- "They that are out of jail, of all degrees, "Can spend their leisure as they please, "We, that are in, must pass it as we can." [90] Unique in the 1795 edition. ADDRESSED[91] To a Political Shrimp, or, Fly upon the Wheel The man that doth an Elephant pursue Whose capture gains a mighty price, Amidst the chace, heeds not the barking crew, Or lesser game of rats and mice. On ocean's waste who chace the royal flag Stop not to take the privateer; Who mean to seize the steed, neglect the nag; No squirrel-hunter kills a deer. Reptile! your venom ever spits in vain-- To honour's coat no drop adheres:-- To court!--return to Britain's tyrant reign, White-wash her king, and scowr her peers. Some scheming knaves, that strut in courtly guise, May vile abuse, through you, impart-- But they that on no Treasury lean, despise Your venal pen--your canker'd heart. [91] The only trace I can find of this poem is in the 1795 edition. From the last stanza it is evident that it was aimed at Hamilton. HERMIT'S VALLEY[92] With eastern[93] winds and flowing sail To these sequestered haunts we came, Where verdant trees and chrystal streams Adorn the sloping, winding vale; Where, from the breezy grove we claim, Our heaven on earth--poetic dreams. These simple scenes have pleasures more Than all the busy town can show-- More pleasure here Philanthus took, And more he prized this lonely shore, His pen, his pencil, and his book, Than all the groves Madeira bore: Here still is seen a hermit's cell, Who, fond the haunts of men to fly, Enjoyed his heaven beneath this shade: In mouldering caves so blest to dwell, He sought not from the flowers that die, A verdure, that would never fade. To crowded courts and would-be kings, Where fawning knaves are most caressed, Who would, though oft' invited, go-- When here so many charming things By Nature to perfection dressed, To please the man of fancy, grow? The native of this happy spot No cares of vain ambition haunt: Pleased with the partner of his nest, Life flows--and when the dream is out, The earth, which once supplied each want, Receives him--fainting--to her breast. [92] The earliest trace I can find of this is in the 1795 edition. Text from the 1809 edition. In the table of contents of the latter edition the title is given, "Hermit's Valley, a rural scene on the Schuylkill." [93] "Western."--_Ed. 1795._ TO MY BOOK[94] Unhappy Volume!--doom'd by fate To meet with unrelenting hate From those who can their venom spit, Yet condescend to steal your wit: While Shylock with malicious spirit, Allows you not a grain of merit, While he an idle pomp assumes, Let him return his borrowed plumes, And you will find the insect creeping, With not a feather worth the keeping. [94] This appeared originally as a part of the "New Year's Verses" for 1783. See Volume II, page 199, supra. Text from the 1795 edition, which is the "unhappy volume" alluded to. THE REPUBLICAN GENIUS OF EUROPE[95] Emperors and kings! in vain you strive Your torments to conceal-- The age is come that shakes your thrones, Tramples in dust despotic crowns, And bids the sceptre fail. In western worlds the flame began: From thence to France it flew-- Through Europe, now, it takes its way, Beams an insufferable day, And lays all tyrants low. Genius of France! pursue the chace Till Reason's laws restore Man to be Man, in every clime;-- That Being, active, great, sublime Debas'd in dust no more. In dreadful pomp he takes his way O'er ruin'd crowns, demolish'd thrones-- Pale tyrants shrink before his blaze-- Round him terrific lightnings play-- With eyes of fire, he looks them through, Crushes the vile despotic crew, And Pride in ruin lays. [95] Published in the _Jersey Chronicle_, May 23, 1795, from which the text is taken. It forms the basis of the poem "On the Royal Coalition Against Republican Liberty," in the 1815 edition, but the later form is so greatly inferior that I have not hesitated to reproduce the earlier version. THE RIVAL SUITORS FOR AMERICA[96] Like some fair girl in beauty's bloom, To court her, see what suitors come! An heiress, she, to large estate, What rivals for her favours wait! All haste to clasp her in their arms, Each sees in her a thousand charms-- The Gems that on her bosom glow Attract where love was cold--'till now. Freed from a cruel parent's care, This maid so wealthy and so fair Of each that for possession sues Can hardly tell which beau to choose. Proud of his vast extended reign, (His fancied empire o'er the main) The Briton came, with haughty stride, Preferr'd his suit--but was denied. She thought his style, by much, too rude, By ruffians she would not be woo'd; From Man she wish'd to choose a mate, But not in such a savage state. A Dane, a Dutchman, and a Swede All hop'd to enjoy the charming maid: The Russian, bred in frost and snow, Made love to her that said--no, no. The Spaniard grave, with cloak and sword, Some favour from the nymph implor'd-- Vain were his tears and coaxing art-- She could not bear a jealous heart. The Turk himself, to engage her love, From Asia's coasts began to move; While faded lay his Tartar crown He sigh'd to make this girl his own. In vain they paid the fond address-- No Pope, no Sultan would she bless-- No monarch, tho' allur'd with art, Could gain her wealth, or touch her heart. The Frenchman comes--salutes the fair-- She likes his gallant, marshal air!-- With eager eye, around her waist He clasp'd his arms, and her embrac'd: Smit with his lofty, generous mien, She admires the Gaul, as soon as seen, Grants him her Commerce--yields her charms, And takes a hero to her arms! [96] Published in the _Jersey Chronicle_, May 30, 1795, with the above text. The poem was greatly expanded and changed for the 1815 edition, where it bore the title, "The Political Rival Suitors." MR. JAY'S TREATY[97] Disclosed by Stephens Thomson Mason When the Senate assembled had shut up their door, And had left us no clew their designs to explore, The people were anxious, and whispered their care, But their voice was too weak for the dignified ear. Ye are down, down, down, keep ye down. At length the Sanhedrim were ready to rise, And the crowd were distending their ears and their eyes; But the rabble had nothing to hear or to view, Says the twenty, the secret's too sacred for you, Ye are down, down, down, keep ye down. But Stephens T. Mason, a man we revere, With his name bid the infamous treaty appear, 'Twas the act of a freeman, who join'd with the Ten, To save us from tyranny, rank us with men, Altho' down, down, and like to be down. He gave his assistance, enlighten'd our eyes, And a cloud from all quarters begins to arise, _Vox Dei, Vox Populi_, truly but one, Shall tell dark designers--our will shall be done Till you're down, down, twenty times down. [97] Published in the _Jersey Chronicle_, September 12, 1795, from which the text is taken. As far as I can find the poet never republished it. Jay's treaty with England was laid before the Senate in June, 1795, and after two weeks of fierce discussion was ratified by a very small majority. The Senate, fearing popular criticism, forbade the publication of the treaty, a course which caused such widespread indignation that Mason on his own responsibility gave a perfect copy of the text to the Philadelphia _Aurora_ for publication. The act was as much praised by one party as it was condemned by the other. PARODY[98] On the attempt to force the British Treaty on the People of the United States Americans! behold the fruits, The end of all your vain pursuits, Whole years in blood and warfare spent To save this injur'd continent.-- How must it mortify your pride To take once more the British side; How will your eyes contain their tears When all the sad effect appears! This Treaty in one page confines The sad result of base designs; The wretched purchase here behold Of traitors--who their country sold. Here, in their proper shape and mien Fraud, perjury, and guilt are seen. And few, a chosen few, must know The Mysteries that lurk below. Go home, ye merchants, poor and lean, And kiss the--_hand_--of Britain's queen. I see you of your cargoes stript Your vessels stolen, your seamen whipt, I see them from their decks compell'd To wander o'er the wat'ry field;-- In British ships, by force detain'd I see the gallant sailor band Engage the power that lent us aid When Britain here her entry made-- I see them mix'd with George's sons, I see them torn by gallic guns, Disfigur'd, in the ocean cast To find a resting place at last. Philosophy! thou friend of man, Teach me these strange events to scan; Aid me to learn the secret cause That alien seems from Nature's laws, Why on this stage of human things Man bows his neck to tyrant kings? Say did the God, when life he gave, Design his Image for a slave?-- Necessity, the tyrant's law, All human race doth this way draw, All prompted by the same desire The vigorous youth, and aged sire-- Observe, the coward and the bold Agree to have their freedom sold; Physician, lawyer, and divine All make oblation at this shrine. Yet from this dismal state of things In time a new creation springs; From vile materials, fresh, shall rise And fill the earth, and air, and skies; In various forms appear again, Popes, Presidents, and gentlemen: So Jove pronounc'd among the Gods, Olympus trembling as he nods! [98] The poet never reprinted this poem from the _Jersey Chronicle_, where it first appeared, April 23, 1796. Great dissatisfaction with Jay's treaty with England is evident in almost every number of the _Chronicle_. Freneau himself was the author of the series of papers entitled "Features of Mr. Jay's Treaty." ON THE INVASION OF ROME[99] In 1796 Lo! to the gates of long forgotten Rome Active as flame, the gallic legions come, While pale with fear to their despotic wastes On shorten'd wing the Austrian army hastes. Where, consecrated to the pagan god The silent vestal graced his dark abode, Where Cæsars, once, in awful grandeur reign'd, Or, Vandals ruin'd what of Rome remain'd, Or where, excresence of a later age, The mitred pontiff trod religion's stage, There march the heroic bands that bring defeat, Or bring reform on superstition's seat. And may their march to honor's purpose tend, May each new conquest all the past transcend, Still may those hosts their first great plan pursue, And honor, freedom, virtue keep in view. Thus taught; and still propitious heaven their trust, All past mis-rule shall crumble to the dust, Nor will saint Peter, more, their cause regard, Lost are his keys and every gate unbarr'd, No sacred reliques from some saintly grave, No saint Sebastian shall from ruin save: All, all must yield; submissive to the dart Of Gaul's firm legions led by Bonaparte, Who, sent by heaven, to Rome's disastrous walls Loud and more loud for his last victim calls; While superstition's dark inveterate train Turns pale, and sickens at their blasted reign, And hosts reviving, round the standard throng, Exult, and wonder how they slept so long. [99] From the edition of 1815. ON THE DEATH OF CATHARINE II[100] Empress of all the Russias Confusion to that iron sway Which bids the brute, not man, obey, And dooms him to Siberian soil, Chains, whips, and vassalage, and toil. This female wolf, whom wolves did nurse, So long of polar worlds the curse, This Catharine, skill'd in royal arts, To the dark world at last departs. In style, the second of her name, She to the crown by treason came; To Peter, drowsy, royal drone, She gave a prison for a throne. She would have sent her Tartar bands To waste and ravage gallic lands, She would have sent her legions o'er, Columbia! to invade your shore!-- But, even in conquest, she foresaw Destruction to despotic law; She fear'd, in hordes returning home, That liberty would with them come. She fear'd the savage from the den Would see and learn the rights of men; And hence, in time, destruction bring To hell's vicegerents--queen and king. No thanks to her! she fear'd her beasts, Enslaved by kings, enslaved by priests, Even if all freedom they o'er ran, Would learn the dignity of man; And kept them home, and held them there, Oppression's iron reign to bear; And never meet a beam of light, Involved in worse than Zembla's night. Now she is dead, and Paul will rise As fierce as she, but not as wise; He may his barbarous millions send, He may the fall of France intend; But they who see with keener eye Will see them faint, will see them fly; With hostile step will see them come To turn their backs, or meet their doom. [100] From the edition of 1815. Catharine II died November 6, 1796. PREFATORY LINES[101] To a Periodical Publication Wherever this volume[102] may chance to be read For the feast of good humor a table I spread; Here are dishes by dozens; whoever will eat Will have no just cause to complain of the treat. If the best of the market is not to be had I'll help you to nothing that's seriously bad;[103] To sense and to candor no place I refuse, Pick here and pick there, and wherever you choose.[104] If I give you a frolic I hope for no fray; My style I adapt to the taste of the day, The feast of amusement we draw from all climes, The best we can give in a run of hard times.[105] The guest, whom the pepper of satire may bite Is wrong, very wrong, if he shows us his spite;[106] Should a fit of resentment be-ruffle his mind, Sit still, I would tell him, be calm and resign'd.[107] In the service of freedom forever prepared, We have done[108] our endeavor the goddess to guard; This idol, whom reason should only adore, And banish'd from Europe,[109] to dwell on our shore. In a country like this, exalted by fame, The trade of an author[110] importance may claim Which monarchs would never permit them to find, Whose views are to chain and be-darken the mind. Ye sons of Columbia! our efforts befriend; To you all the tyrants of Europe shall bend Till reason at length shall illumine the ball[111] And man from his state of debasement recall. Republics of old, that are sunk in the dust, Could once like our own, of their liberty boast; Both virtue and wisdom in Athens appear'd, Each eye saw their charms, and all bosoms revered. But as virtue and morals fell into disgrace Pride, splendor, and folly stept into their place; Where virtues domestic no longer were known, Simplicity lost, and frugality flown. Where the virtues, that always a republic adorn, Were held in contempt, or were laugh'd into scorn, There, tyrants and slaves were the speedy effect Of virtue dishonor'd or fall'n to neglect:[112] Then tyrants and slaves, the worst plagues of this earth, From the lapse of good manners[113] were hatch'd into birth; And soon the base maxim all popular grew, And allowed, that the many were made for the few. From the fate of republics, or Athens, or Rome, Tis time we should learn a sad lesson at home-- From their faults and their errors a warning receive, And steer from the shoals where they both found a grave. Columbians! forever may freedom remain, And virtue forever that freedom maintain; To these, all attracting, all views should submit All labors of learning, all essays of wit. Tis time a new system of things was embraced To prevail on a planet so often debased;[114] As here, with our freedom, that system began, Here, at least keep it pure--for the honor of man. [101] From the edition of 1815. This was Freneau's salutatory in the first number of the _Time-Piece_, March 13, 1797. Here it bore the title "Poetical Address" and differed in many respects from the final version. I have indicated in the following notes only the most significant revisions. [102] "Our pages."--_Time-Piece._ [103] "We'll mend what is middling, and better the bad."--_Ib._ [104] "And give the due substance and sum of the NEWS."--_Ib._ [105] "Embark'd on this ocean, and wishing no fray, We'll strive for a chance with the prints of the day; The news of all nations import from all climes, And carefully copy _the cast of_ THE TIMES."--_Time-Piece._ [106] "In political squib or poetical wit."--_Ib._ [107] "He's equally free _to return it in kind_."--_Ib._ [108] "We'll join."--_Ib._ [109] "Britain."--_Ib._ [110] "_Of the_ PRESS."--_Ib._ [111] "'TIS THIS that will throw a new light on the ball."--_Ib._ [112] This stanza not in the _Time-Piece_ version. [113] "The change of old manners."--_Ib._ [114] "To encircle a world that has long been debas'd."--_Ib._ ON THE WAR[115] Projected with the Republic of France The cause that rests on reason's ground, Shall potent through the world be found, Mankind must yield to that decree Which humbles pride and tyranny. O'er this wide globe what darkness broods, What misery, murder, wars and feuds!-- Does man deserve the solar light While he performs the deeds of night? When to the gates of modern Rome We see the gallic legions come, Their triumphs should, in honor, be To make them men, and make them free. In these new wars new views we trace, Not fetters for the human race, And, France, where'er you dart your rays Old superstition's reign decays. But look again!--what myriads join The vast reform to undermine! What labor, bribes, and deep-laid schemes To quench the sun, and reason's beams! Shall these succeed? and will that sun Continue, still, his race to run O'er scenes that he must blush to see Disorder, chains, and tyranny? Must systems, still, of monstrous birth, Enslave mankind, deform this earth? No!--to the question answers fate, These efforts come an age too late. In such a system to combine, Columbia, can the wish be thine! Could such a thought assail your heart, To take that base, ungrateful part. From Britain's yoke so lately freed Would she her hosts, her legions lead To crush that power, which jointly gain'd And once her sinking cause sustain'd? From all true hearts be banish'd far The thought of so profane a war-- A curse would on her arms attend And all her well-earn'd honors end. Fortune no more your toils would crown, Your flag would fall before her frown; No gallant men the foe would dare, No Greenes no Washingtons appear; No chiefs, that check'd the pride of kings On Monmouth's plains--at Eutaw springs; But blundering hordes, not brave or warm, With broken heart, and nerveless arm, Would sail, to attack your gallic foe, Would strive in vain a cause t'o'erthrow Which, sink or not, will live in fame, While Europe can one patriot claim. [115] From the edition of 1815. It appeared first in the _Time-Piece_, March 29, 1797, under the title "To the Americans." TO MYRTALIS[116] On her Lightning Wires, or Conductors[A] [A] See Brydone's Letters from Sicily to Becksford, alderman of London. In one of these he seems, rather seriously, to argue, that any one, by being armed with a conductor, in a thunder squall, may probably be secure from danger of lightning.--It is said the plan has been carried into practice in Scotland.--_Freneau's Note._ How bold this project, to defy The artillery of a summer sky: Round you, unmoved, the lightning plays, While others perish in the blaze. The fluid fire, in deafening peals, Along the warm conductor steals; And thence directed to the ground, It glances off without a wound! Thus guarded, while the heavens are bowed, You, fearless, see the passing cloud; And Jove's red bolts unheeded fall, Near You, who slight, or scorn them all. The beaver on your sacred scull, (Secure as Salamander's wool) Assists to keep from your rigg'd head The flash that strikes us, wretches, dead. But while the sulphur of the skies, Disarmed, from this fair lady flies; Or while the warm electric fire In flashes darts along her spire, She, not so merciful or kind, (Or we, not guarded to her mind) By Cupid's darts, procures our fall, By Cupid's arrows kills us all. [116] Published in the _Time-Piece_, April 7, 1797. Text from the 1809 edition. TO MR. BLANCHARD[117] The celebrated �ronaut, on his ascent in a Balloon, from the jail-yard in Philadelphia, 1793 By Science taught, on silken wings Beyond our grovelling race you rise, And, soaring from terrestial things, Explore a passage to the skies-- O, could I thus exalted sail, And rise, with you, beyond the Jail! Ah! when you rose, impell'd by fear Each bosom heav'd a thousand sighs; To you each female lent a tear, And held the 'kerchief to her eyes: All hearts still follow'd, as you flew, All eyes admir'd a sight so new. Whoe'er shall thus presume to fly, While downward with disdain they look Shall own this journey, through the sky, The dearest jaunt they ever took; And choose, next time, without reproach, A humbler seat in Inskeep's coach. The birds, that cleave the expanse of air, Admiring, view your globe full-blown, And, chattering round the painted car, Complain your flight out-does their own: Beyond their track you proudly swim, Nor fear the loss of life or limb. How vast the height, how grand the scene That your enraptured eye surveys, When, towering in your gay machine, You leave the astonish'd world to gaze, And, wandering in the ætherial blue, Our eyes, in vain, your course pursue. The Orb of Day, how dazzling bright! In paler radiance gleams the Moon, And Terra, whence you took your flight, Appears to you--a meer balloon: Its noisy crew no longer heard, Towns, cities, forests, disappear'd. Yet, travelling through the azure road, Soar not too high for human ken; Reflect, our humble safe abode Is all that Nature meant for men: Take in your sails before you freeze, And sink again among the trees. [117] Published in the _Time-Piece and Literary Companion_, May 15, 1797, under the title "Stanzas Written Some Years Since on Mr. Blanchard's Forty-fifth Ascension from the Jail-Yard in Philadelphia, January 9, 1793." Text from the 1795 edition. ON HEARING[118] A Political Oration, Superficially Composed on an Important Subject Sound without sense, and words devoid of force, Through which no art could find a clue, And mean and shackling was the whole discourse That kept me, Tully, long from you. Heads of harangues, to heads less general, split, Seem'd like small laths, cleft from some heavy log; I heard the inference, that no object hit-- All congelation, vapor, smoke, or fog. And what avail'd the argument unsound That nothing proved, or on the expecting mind Forced no conviction--just as well might sound To the deaf ear with sentiments abound. Long did we wait for application time To find what sense or reason might apply:-- It came--attended with the false sublime, And thread-bare truths, no mortal could deny. Repeated thoughts, and periods of a mile, Remarks devoid of dignity or power, Exploded notions, dress'd in brilliant style, Exhausted patience, and consumed the hour. Thus when of old some town some folks besieged, Before the walls the invader sat him down, While those who mann'd them, at their foes enraged, Threw many a load of ancient lumber down; And wore them out, with tumbling on their heads Bricks, tiles, and paving-stones, huge logs of timber, Pump-water, cold or boiling, shovels, spades,-- And more, by far, than you or I remember. Ah, speaker! with artillery like your own Hard will it be one Federal to awake, Trust me, although you scold, and chafe, and frown, You may besiege, but are not like to take Their three wall'd town. [118] From the 1815 edition. In the edition of 1809 it bore the title: "The American Demosthenes. Occasioned by a very weak and insipid discourse on a Fourth of July, indirectly reprobating the Democratic Representative System." This version consisted of the first, second, and last stanzas above, with the following after the second stanza: "Grunts, and long groans, and periods of a mile, Were on the sleepy audience tumbled down;-- 'Twas thus from forts, contrived in antique style, From Troy's high walls (Where flew no balls) The men who fought With reason thought, They had a right From that safe height, (By way of lessening their besiegers' number) To tumble on their heads Rocks, beams, or roofs of sheds, Cows' horns, bricks, rubbish, chamber pots, or lumber." MEGARA AND ALTAVOLA[119] To a Female Satirist (an English Actress) on receiving from her No. 1. of a very Satirical and Biting Attack[A] "_In the rag, in the rag--whewgh!_-- "_O well-flown dart._"-- _Shakespeare's_ KING LEAR. [A] Six copies only, of this little Poem were printed and sent to the satirist--here the correspondence ended, 1797.--_Freneau's note._ A Satire is arrived this day, And it must be repelled this night: Ye Powers! assist us what to say, For, from ourselves, we nothing write. We could have laughed at all you said, But when you writ--it struck us dead!-- Megara!--do forbear to write, Or rage with less malignant spite. Leave it to men to snap and snarl-- Be you the sweet engaging girl-- Great in your smiles--weak in your arm-- All vengeance, with no power to harm. I'll borrow from a scribbling set A Raven's feather, black as jet, And with the vengeance of the pen Create confusion in your Den. This, from an impulse all unknown, Shall temper down your heart of stone, Turn storms of hail to showers of rain, And bring your happy smiles again. But still, unwilling to resent What folly for a Satire meant, Peruse a fable that may blast, And your number one--make number last. In ancient times, no matter when, A lady, in some ancient reign (Perhaps in Greece, perhaps in Rome, Perhaps in countries nearer home.) This lady, rather fond of Fun, Had put a suit of armour on: With bow and arrows, and her fan She conquered many an honest man. One day she met, in a desart waste A wight unseemely to her taste; His brow, she thought, had too much frown; Thought she, "I'll fetch the fellow down." And strait she bends her twanging bow, And to his breast the arrows go! They tore a passage through his vest, But bounded from his solid chest. Another dart she aimed, and missed, Then boarded him, and bit his fist-- Her grinders left a trifling mark-- They were not grinders of a shark. She scampered then, and, as she flew, Another feeble arrow threw, Which though intended for one spot, It glanced aside, and touched him not. Enraged, he threw his mantle off, And said, She shall be plagued enough! Then, swift as fate, her pace defied, Out went her trot, and joined her side.-- Megara was in such a glow!-- When thus the ruffian hailed her, "Hoa!-- What, Madam, are your spirits low?-- Heave to!--you are my prisoner now!"-- Megara saw that all was gone!-- She saw, her teeth would now be drawn: She saw her weapons were his prize, She saw it, and with flowing eyes, And with a feeble squeak or two, She faintly bawled out, Who are you? _Altavola_ "From whence I came, or what I am, "Perhaps I may inform you, Ma'am: "I come from lands of Pure Delight, "Where female warriors do not Bite. "You view me with an eye of scorn!-- "When I was old you were unborn: "When I aspired on eagle's wings "You were among unthought of things. "And did you hope to escape my rage, "You toy-shop on a strolling stage! "You insect of a puny race, "You baggage formed of gauze and lace! "The proudest strength you can assume, "Shakes not one feather from my plume. "My lot is in the æther cast, "I sail upon the northern blast; "Am mostly seen when whirlwinds rise, "And love the storm that rends the skies. "When thunders roar and lightnings flash, "Then is my time to cut a dash: "The clouds of hell alarm me less "Than you, some sad old fashioned dress. "And, if to answer some great end, "I to this wrangling world descend, "With force unknown, and pinions strong, "I travel quick and stay not long. "My spear is like a weaver's beam, "And pointed well at each extreme; "It flies with a tremendous force, "And rivals lightning in its course. "Of all things that are seen or known, "I hate a Calm--and say, Begone "Stagnation from this rolling ball, "Or slumbers in this Dreadful All! "I rise upon the drift of snow-- "In polar frosts my spirits glow-- "In the torrid zone, I temperate keep, "And wake!--when you, Megara, sleep. "I come from ghosts, that dreary brood, "Whose aspect would congeal your blood! "A people on the infernal coast, "Who know me well, and love me most. "I courted there, and found her kind, "A ghostess, suited to my mind; "Her wedding gown was flounced with soot, "And near her nose hung snuff and smut: "She pointed to her father's gate, "(A graveyard was his whole estate) "The bars were weak, the boards were thin, "She sung a psalm--and took me in. "Of shadowy stuff my parents were, "Composed of fogs, or framed of air: "He sold his brimstone to the skies, "While nitre kindled in Her eyes. "They feasted on the vapours blue, "Their glass of wine was evening dew; "On Etna's top they made their bed, "And there was I, their devil, bred. "My prowess is almost adored, "I blunt the edge of Orion's sword; "I seize Aquarius by the throat, "Nor care for Libra, or the Goat. "My word is, when I meet my foes, "Here's to the Lucky Wind that blows! "And, instant, all is sighs and groans, "And battered heads, and broken bones. "I now reward you for your spite-- "I draw my weapon--see, how bright! "My last exploit in war I crown, "And thus--and thus--I throw you down! "Ah, miscreant! why that scream of death? "I only meant to--draw your teeth!-- "Oh no!--I scorn to take your life-- "Go, Madam,--be a prudent wife. "But, lady, I would have you know "You lose your arrows and your bow: "They are indeed of slender make, "And, in your hands might kill a rake: "So, to prevent such fatal harms, "I leave you destitute of arms-- "I now must go!"--he, laughing, said, And vanished to the Stygian shade. This contest with Megara done, Thou dear, defeated Amazon!-- As happy, now, as man can be, I hang my pen on yonder tree: It only asks one day of rest, It yields to every changing blast-- Yes--let it stay suspended there, And strike My Colours--if you dare! [119] I have found no trace of this outside of the 1809 edition. THE REPUBLICAN FESTIVAL[120] In Compliment to Colonel Munroe, on his return to America, 1797 As late at a feast that she gave to Munroe, Her mark of attention to show, Young liberty gave her libations to flow, To honor where honor is due. Return'd from the country that trampled on crowns Where high in opinion he stood, Dark malace attack'd him, with sneers, and with frowns, But he met the applause of the good. To the Knight of the Sceptre unwelcome he came But freedom his merit confess'd-- He look'd at their malice, and saw it was fame, And pity forgave them the rest. Good humor, and pleasure, and friendship did join, And reason the pleasure increased; And the hero, who captured the British Burgoyne, Presided and honor'd the feast. On a broomstick from hell, with a quill in his hand, Baal-Zephou came riding the air; He look'd, and he saw that among the whole band Not a single apostate was there. Disappointed, he sigh'd, but still hover'd about Till the toasts, with a vengeance, began-- He met the first four; when the next they gave out[A] To his cavern he fled back again. [A] Public censure, arm'd with the spear of Ithurial: may it discover the demons of tyranny, wherever they lurk, and pursue them to their native obscurity.--_Freneau's note._ In liberty's temple, the petulant cur Could see not a man but he hates; With a curse on her cause, and a sneer, and a spur He fled from the frown of a Gates. [120] From the edition of 1815. Monroe was United States Minister to France from May, 1794, until August, 1796, when he was recalled for lack of sympathy with the administration. He did not arrive in America until the following year. He was loudly hailed by the Republican forces, and a dinner was arranged for him in Philadelphia over which General Gates presided and at which Jefferson, the Vice President, Dayton, the Speaker, McKean, the Chief Justice, and many others conspicuous in the government were present. ODE[121] For July the Fourth, 1799 Once more, our annual debt to pay, We meet on this auspicious day That will, through every coming age, Columbia's patriot sons engage. From this fair day we date the birth, Of freedom's reign, restored to earth, And millions learn, too long depraved, How to be govern'd, not enslaved.[122] Thou source of every true delight Fair peace, extend thy sway, While to thy temple we invite All nations on this day.[123] O dire effects of tyrant power! How have ye darken'd every hour, And made those hours embitter'd flow That nature meant for joys below. With sceptred pride, and brow of awe Oppression gave the world her law, And man, who should such law disdain, Resign'd to her malignant reign. Here on our quiet native coast No more we dread the warring host That once alarm'd, when Britain rose, And made Columbia's sons her foes. Parent of every cruel art That stains the soul, that steels the heart, Fierce war, with all thy bleeding band, Molest no more this rising land. May thy loud din be changed for peace, All human woe and warfare cease, And nations sheath the sword again To find a long, pacific reign.[124] Soon may all tyrants disappear And man to man be less severe; The ties of love more firmly bind, Not fetters, that enchain mankind. But virtue must her strength maintain, Or short, too short, is freedom's reign, And, if her precepts we despise, Tyrants and kings again will rise.[125] No more an angry, plundering race, May man in every clime embrace, And we on this remoter shore, Exult in bloody wars no more. On this returning annual day May we to heaven our homage pay, Happy, that here the time's began That made mankind the friend of man!-- [121] From the edition of 1815. The title is manifestly wrong. The poem was first printed in a small pamphlet with the following title page: "Means | for the | Preservation | of | Public Liberty. | An | Oration | delivered in the New Dutch Church, | on the | Fourth of July, 1797. | Being the twenty-first | Anniversary of our Independence. | By G. J. Warner. | [_Ten lines from Freneau_] | New York: | Printed at the Argus Office, | for | Thomas Greenleaf and Naphtali Judah. | 1797." At the end of the pamphlet is the poem with the title: "Ode | (Composed for the Occasion, by P. Freneau.) | The Musick Performed | by the | Uranian Musical Society." [122] This stanza in 1797 was: "Red war will soon be chang'd for peace, All human woe for human bliss, And nations that embrace again Enjoy a long pacific reign." [123] This stanza was the chorus to be repeated after every eight lines. [124] This stanza is not in the original version. ADDRESS[126] To the Republicans of America Say--shall we pause, and here conclude our page, Or waft it onward to the coming age?-- Just as You say, whose efforts shook his throne, And plucked the brightest gem from George's crown-- Who, armed in Freedom's cause with hearts of steel, Have through these stormy times toiled for the common weal; Nor quit that standard thousands have deserted, By foreign arts, or gold, or titles re-converted. If You, propitious to the press and pen, Gave vigour to the cause that roused up men When slavery's sons approached with Britain's fleet, Still we demand your aid--for Britain hates you yet: Not with the sword and gun she now contends But wages silent war, and by corruption bends, Foe to the system that enlightens man, Here, thrones she would erect, and frustrate Freedom's plan. Here, on this virgin earth, the soil unstained, Where yet no tyrant has his purpose gained, Keep bright that flame which every bosom fired When Hessian hirelings from these lands retired, When, worn and wasted, all that murdering crew And British squadrons from the Hudson flew; When, leagued with France, you darts of vengeance hurled, And bade defiance to the despot world. Ye heirs and owners of the future age Who soon will shove old actors from the stage, To you the care of liberty they trust When Washington and Gates are laid in dust-- When Jefferson, with Greene, in long repose Shall sleep, unconscious of your bliss or woes, Seeming to say, Be wise, be free, my sons, Nor let one tyrant trample on our bones. [125] The chorus at this point was changed in the original edition to: "O Virtue! source of pure delight, Extend thy happy sway, etc." [126] First published in the _Time-Piece_, September 13, 1797. Freneau used this poem to end Volume I of his edition of 1809. I have followed the latter version. TO PETER PORCUPINE.[127] From Penn's famous city what hosts have departed, The streets and the houses are nearly deserted, But still there remain Two Vipers, that's plain, Who soon, it is thought, yellow flag will display; Old Porcupine preaching, And Fenno beseeching Some dung-cart to wheel him away. Philadelphians, we're sorry you suffer by fevers, Or suffer such scullions to be your deceivers; Will. Pitt's noisy whelp With his red foxy scalp Whom the kennels of London spew'd out in a fright, Has skulk'd over here To snuffle and sneer, Like a puppy to snap, or a bull dog to bite. If cut from the gallows, or kick'd from the post, Such fellows as these are of England the boast But Columbia's disgrace! Begone from that place That was dignified once by a Franklin and Penn, But infested by you And your damnable crew Will soon be deserted by all honest men. [127] Published in the _Time-Piece_, September 13, 1797, and never again reprinted by Freneau. The poem bore the following introduction: "Among a despicable mess of scurrility in one of Porcupine's Gazettes of last week, he mentions that 'he was plagued with the Time-Piece for several months.'--It has also been a plague to some others of his brethren, and will go on to be so, till they are hustled into their native dog kennels.--At the commencement of the Time-Piece, by way of soliciting an exchange of papers, the Editor transmitted one copy to each printer of a newspaper in Philadelphia. The compliment was immediately returned by them all except Porcupine. The Editor of the Time-Piece was in no want of his dirty vehicle of ribaldry, for the purposes of compilation. The paper, however, continued to be sent for a few weeks, till finding the hoggishness of the fellow, in not consenting to an exchange, the transmission was discontinued." ON THE ATTEMPTED LAUNCH[128] Of a Frigate, designed for war against a Sister Republic.--1798 Unless it be for mere defence May shipwrights fail to launch you hence, At best, the comrade of old Nick-- Some folks will smile to see you stick. But now, suppose the matter done, And her the element upon; What cause have we mad wars to wage Or join the quarrels of the age? Remote from Europe's wrangling race, Who show us no pacific face Let's tread negociation's track Before we venture to attack. But to the seas if we must go, 'Tis clearly seen who is the foe, Who hastens, at no distant date, To repossess his lost estate. I see them raise the storm of war, To cloud the gay columbian star, I see them, bloody, brave and base Make us the object of their chase. Their ships of such superior might All we possess will put to flight, Or bear them off, with all on board, To make a meal for George the third. One frigate, only, will not do-- She must retreat while they pursue, To make her drink affliction's cup, And, heaven preserve us, eat her up. A navy of stupendous strength 'Tis plain, must be our lot at length, To sweep the seas, to guard the shore, And crush their haughtiest seventy four. Those puny ships that now we frame, (The way that England plays her game) Will to their bull-dogs fall a prey The hour we get them under weigh.-- [128] Text from the 1815 edition. ON THE LAUNCHING OF THE FRIGATE CONSTITUTION[129] The builders had the ship prepared, And near her stood a triple guard, For fear of secret foes. Some, tiptoe stood to see her start, And would have said, with all their heart, In raptures, there she goes! The stubborn ship, do what they could, Convinced them, she was made of wood Though plann'd with art supreme; All art, all force the ship defy'd-- Nor brilliant day, nor top of tide Could urge her to the stream. Some, with their airs aristocratic, And some with honors diplomatic, Advanced to see the show: In vain the builder to her call'd-- In vain the shipwrights pull'd and haul'd-- She could not--would not go. Each anti-federal, with a smile Observed the yet unfloating pile As if he meant to say, Builder, no doubt, you know your trade, A constitution you have made But should her ways have better laid. Well now to heave the ship afloat, To move from this unlucky spot, Take our advice, and give them soon, What should have long ago been done, Amendments--You Know What. [129] Text from 1815 edition. ON THE FREE USE OF THE LANCET[130] In Yellow Fevers[A] [A] A practice very prevalent at the time the above was written.--_Freneau's note._ In former days your starch'd divines From notes of twenty thousand lines Held many a long dispute; One argued this, one argued that, And reverend wigs, as umpires sat, All sophists to confute. They dwelt on things beyond their ken And teazed and puzzled simple men To hold them in the dark; But their long season now is past, The churchman's horn has blown its blast, Things take a different mark. Physicians now to quiet pain Stick lancet in the patient's vein That burns with feverish heat: The next contend, they're wholly wrong, That life will leak away ere long If thus the case they treat. Meantime a practice gets about, Perhaps to make some doctors pout: Old Shelah, with her herbs and teas, And scarce a shilling for her fees, In many instances, at least, When deaths and funerals increased, Did more to dispossess the fever, Did more from dying beds deliver Than all the hippocratian host Could by the lancet's virtue boast; To which, I trow, full many a ghost Will have a grudge forever. [130] From the edition of 1815. The yellow fever epidemic of 1797 created more than usual consternation. It was supposed to be of a more deadly type than that of 1793. The medical profession was divided as to the treatment of the disease. "Two hostile schools sprang up. At the head of one was William Currie. Benjamin Rush led the other. The Currie men declared the fever was imported and contagious. The Rush school maintained that it was not. Filthy streets, they held, and loathsome alleys had much to do with the sickness, and they urged the use of mercurial purges and the copious letting of blood_."--McMaster._ THE BOOK OF ODES[131] ODE I "He that readeth not in the Book of Odes is like a man standing with his face against a wall; he can neither move a step forward, nor survey any object."--_Hau Kiou Choaan._ Blest is the man who shuns the place Where Demo's love to meet, Who scorns to gnaw their bread and cheese, And hates their small beer treat: But in the glare of splendid halls Doth place his whole delight, And there by day eats force-meat balls, And roasted hogs by night. He, like some thrifty pumpkin vine, Near Hartford that doth grow, Shall creep, and spread, and twist, and twine, And shade the weeds below. Puff'd by all dunces far and near He'll swell to station high, While Democrats confus'd appear As he rides rattling by. Not so the man of vulgar birth, And Democratic phiz; Want, toil, and every plague on earth, Shall certainly be his. Poor as a snake, and ever vile Shall his condition be, Who to the men of royal style Neglects to bend the knee. He, with the herd of little note, May starve on bread and cheese, And soon shall be without a coat Or sent to pay jail-fees. ODE II[132] TO THE FRIGATE CONSTITUTION "A ship carpenter being once asked, what sort of ships are the _safest_, he answered, _those which are hauled up on dry land_." Madam!--Stay where you are, 'Tis better, sure, by far Than venturing on an element of danger, Where heavy seas and stormy gales May wreck your hulk and rend your sails, Or Europe's black-guards treat you like a stranger, When first you stuck upon your ways (Where half New England came to gaze) We antifederals thought it something odd That where all art had been display'd, And even the builder deem'd a little god, He had your ways not better laid. Omens, indeed, are now exploded, But you have something dismal boded: Say--must the navy-system go to rack, And things advance at such a rate That every wisely govern'd state Will hold the author of the scheme a quack. O frigate Constitution! stay on shore: Why would you meet old Ocean's roar? Was man design'd To be confin'd In those fire-spitting hells a navy nam'd, Where Vice herself, abash'd, asham'd, Turns from the horrid scene of blood and bones, And mangled carcases of men; and grunts and groans. Remaining on the stocks, in gloomy pride, Without an anchor thou shalt safely ride; No pumping there, To make men swear, Waves you'll despise, Tho' fierce they rise To heaven when storms and tempests blow: Steady as fate, unmov'd will you appear When other ships the foaming surges tear-- No fear of broaching to. Nor useless need you be, if right we deem, For harmless purposes you proper seem-- Scorn to be made a bloody, murdering den; Let folks of sense At less expense Convert you into stores--to bring in rents; Stow pumpkins there--or anything but Men. ODE III[133] TO DUNCAN DOOLITTLE A "_half-starved_" Democrat "Lodge where you must, drink small-beer where you can, "But eat no roast pig, if no Federal man." Duncan, with truth it may be said, Your mouth was made for rye or barley bread; What claim have you to halls of state, Whose business is to stand and wait, Subserviant to command? What right have you to white-bread, superfine, Who were by nature destin'd for "a _swine_"-- As said good Edmund Burke, The drudge of Britain's dirty work, Whose mighty pamphlets rous'd the royal band! When passing by a splendid dome of pride By speculation built (and built so vast That there a standing army might reside) Say, Duncan, stood you not aghast, When gazing up (like fox that look'd for grapes) You saw so many things in curious shapes, Trees rang'd along the table, And sugar-columns, far above the rabble, With roses blooming in October, And wisdom's figure--dull and sober. Ah! how you smack'd your lips, and look'd so wishful When pigs and poultry--many a lovely dish-full, Imparted to your nose the savoury scent For royal noses--not for Duncan's--meant. For things like these you, caitiff, were not born-- A pewter spoon was for your chops intended; Some shins of beef, and garlands made of thorn-- On things like these has Freedom's feast depended. Though in the days of fight you musquet carried, Or wandered up and down, a cannon-hauling, Better you might in Jericho have tarried And rebel-starving made your loyal calling. Among our far-fam'd chieftains that are dead (Like beer set by in mug without a lid, And sure, a half-gill glass I'll put it all in) I'll toast your health--yes, to the very brim And to the little gaping world proclaim You are a Hero fallen: One of the wights who dar'd all death, or wound, And warr'd for two and sixpence in the pound. Of public virtue you're a rare example-- Go, mind your hoe, your pick-ax, or your spade; A hut of six foot square shall be your "temple," And all your honour--strutting on parade. But pray, beware of public good; It will not always find you food, And if your son should anything inherit, Bequeath him not your public spirit, But sixpence, to be train'd to sawing wood. ODE IV[134] TO PEST-ELI-HALI A Democratic Printer on the Western Banks of the Hudson No easy task that press assumes Which takes the lead in Freedom's band, And scatters in nocturnal glooms The blaze of Reason through our land: Each empty bellows would, no doubt, Rise, and aspire to put it out. Blamed though you are, pursue your way; Night evermore precedes the sun; Whate'er some angry king's-men say, You play a game that must be won: The bliss of man--is the great prize That yet at stake with tyrants lies. When first a mean, designing few Their poisonous dregs by Herald spread; An antidote, by such as you, Was at the root of mischief laid; With a simple herb from Reason's plains You kept all right in Freedom's veins. Now hostile views, and low design Are busy to annoy your page, Controul its strength, its fires confine, And war with sense and reason wage: They hope, with fogs to quench the sun, They hope your useful race is run. But though some narrow hearts contrive To shove you from your mounted car; Right pleasantly we see you drive, And hardly heed their little war: Like insects, creeping in the dirt, They merely serve to make you sport. Who looks at Kings, a court, a queen, With childish pomp, and borrowed fame, But wonders from what genius mean Their chaos of confusion came-- Yet those on little things depend, And every reptile is their friend. ODE V[135] TO PETER PORCUPINE "That one may write--and write--and be a villain, "At least, I'm sure it may be so in--Denmark."--_Hamlet._ "While with the loss of blood and spirits some faint, "Others are seen to rise, triumphant, "O'er slaughter'd thousands sent to Pluto's shores, "Where Stygian water in dull torrent roars-- "What hosts, what myriads fell, "By lancet and by calomell, "All gone, in Philadelphia's epidemic, "And sent the substance of mankind to mimic." So said that Man divine Bold Peter Porcupine, Who through these climes his vast subscription spread, And rais'd four thousand ghosts; and struck with dread, All Democratic knaves, Disorganizing slaves-- He with bold wit, And spirit and spit, From Nova Scotia to the woods of Maine, True federalism did maintain; And through those mighty thriving states, Distributed his dainty, blackguard bits. Ah--Peter!--Thou, poor lousy numps Who loadest little horses' rumps, And mak'st them trot and sweat, On sandy road Beneath the load Of trash call'd _Peter Porcupine's Gazette_. What have you done to claim Columbia's love That she--like some base-- Should court a scoundrel from a foreign shore And make him tool to--some apostate Jove, Ah! now I see poor Carolina's horses, With pedlar's pack, Pil'd high on back, Pursuing their mean, blackguard courses, Through solitary groves and woods of pine Transporting Goods, like thine, --------Damned stuff! Of which Columbia, sure, has had--enough-- There Pickens, Sumpter, Greene, for freedom fought, And Liberty her wonders wrought. What do I hear? And have we lent thee wings To waft thy poison into Eutaw Springs? Those, clearer than Castalia's waters, found, For many a hero, dead, who might have claim'd Life--but for brutish George, Who, having robb'd and plunder'd half the east, Came here to close his Vulture's feast. Now, Peter! take advice from Doctor Rush; And--convert to the system you would crush; Pray, let him draw your blackguard blood; (And calomell might, also, do some good.) Four thousand drops exhausted from your veins Will save the future exercise of canes: And, tell him to be speedy with his lancet, For 'tis a truth; and many dare advance it, That howe'er in life well fed, No Doctor bleeds a man--when dead. ODE VI[136] ADDRESS TO A LEARNED PIG Of Particular Eminence, who, in a certain Great City, was visited by Persons of the First Taste and Distinction O thou, marked out by Fate from vulgar swine, Among the learned of our age to shine, On whom 'squires, ladies, parsons, come to gaze, Bold, science-loving pig, Who, without gown or wig Can force your way through learning's thorny maze --How many high learned wights in days of old (Whom Fame has with the great enrolled) Starved by their wits--were banished, hanged, or sold; --While you, on better ages fallen, O lucky swine! Can by your wit on pyes and sweetmeats dine-- When house and lands are gone and spent, Then learning is most excellent-- (So says a proverb through the world well known)-- You, that were pigged to grovel in a stye, Have left your swill for science high:-- Without a rival of your race, You hold a most distinguished place-- All that the heart can wish flows in to you, Who real happiness pursue, And are well fed, on whate'er hog stye thrown. Now, if one had the chance to choose one's state On this world's stage, and not controuled by Fate, Who would not wish to have his little brains Lodged in the head of Learned Pig, Rather than be a man, and toil, and sweat, and dig With all the sense the human scull contains. With Us, we all are wise, we all things know, But every pig--inferior is to you-- The rest are fools and simpletons--and so-- What, next, will be the science You attain? Science!--to You, that opens all her store?-- Already have you in your sapient brain More than most aldermen--and gumption more Than some, who capers cut on Congress floor. May we not hope, in this improving age Of human things--to see on Terra's stage Hogs take the lead of men, and from their styes To honours, riches, office, rise! Adepts in Latin, Commerce, Physick, Law?-- From what is seen, such inference we draw-- ODE VII[137] ON THE FEDERAL CITY "Thus Cain of old, poor Abel slain, "Departing from his native plain, "In land of Nod, beneath the heaven's frowns, "Built sky-topt towers and federal towns." Enough of learned pigs, Pigg'd for immense designs, And shame our men of mighty wigs-- Enough of Peter Porcupines, Whose quills, like pop-guns shooting at a fort, Be sure have done the Demos mighty hurt, A subject now of real weight inspires, That soon will kindle every muse's fires, No less than federal town, Immortal in renown, Which in her district--ten miles square The center fills, like spider in her web Catching all silly flies that venture near, And fattening on the folly of the tribe. When fates decreed, Or nature said "This spot is destin'd for a future town," Between them both they so contriv'd the matter (Altho' perhaps not wholly wrong the latter) That this should be a town of silent halls And like Palmyra famous in the east, Erect her columns huge and lofty walls-- Yet there in vain for men do travellers seek, And hardly meet a townsman once a week! Virginia's sons, as through this town they pass Each cries, "Alas, No sound of fiddle here, All dull and drear, No merry bells that jingle on the ear, No glittering females, balls, or billiards dear-- No fighting cocks, no gallant steeds for racing: Well-stap my vitals--is it not distressing? No gallant ship with canvas swelling high Engag'd in war or commerce passes by; But corn-boats mean from Alleghany hills, Or buck-wheat laden hulks from country mills!" Amidst these huge hotels and regal domes Frequent some townsman walks, as midst the tombs, And cries, "The founders of this city blundered In rearing up such piles for eighteen hundred: Waiting for that must Congress absent stay?-- Ah! curse the Law's delay! Rather than hold them there, (Though, doubtless, it may sadly grieve her) May Philadelphia twelve months every year Be plagu'd and blooded for the yellow fever!" ODE VIII[138] ON THE CITY ENCROACHMENTS ON THE RIVER HUDSON Where Hudson, once, in all his pride In surges burst upon the shore They plant amidst his flowing tide Moles, to defy his loudest roar; And lofty mansions grow where late Half Europe might discharge her freight. From northern lakes and wastes of snow The river takes a distant rise, Now marches swift, now marches slow, And now adown some rapid flies Till join'd the Mohawk, in their course They travel with united force. But cease, nor with too daring aim Encroach upon this giant flood; No rights reserved by nature, claim, Nor on his ancient bed intrude:-- The river may in rage awake And time restore him all you take. The eastern stream, his sister, raves To see such moles her peace molest A London built upon her waves, The weight of mountains on her breast: With quicken'd flow she seeks the main As on her bed new fabrics gain. Bold streams! and may our verse demand Is there not coast for many a mile, And soils, as form'd by nature's hand That border all Manhattan's isle: Then why these mounds does avarice raise And build the haunts of pale disease. Yet in your aim to clip their wing (It asks no wizard to descry,) That time the woful day will bring When Hudson's passion, swelling high, May in a foam his wrongs repay And sweep both house and wharf away. ODE IX[139] ON THE FRIGATE CONSTITUTION "And in those days men settled themselves on the waters, and lived there, not because land was wanting, but that they wished to be slaves to such as were great and mighty on the land."--_Modern History._ Thus launch'd at length upon the main And soon prepar'd the seas to roam, In your capacious breast ere long Will many an idler find a home That sells his freedom for a song, Quits fields and trees For boisterous seas, To tread his native soil no more, And see--but not possess the shore. Well! let them go--can there be loss In those who Nature's bounty slight, From rural vales and freedom's shades To this dull cage who take their flight, The axe, the hoe, The plough forego, The buxom milk-maid's simple treat, The bliss of country life forget, For tumult here And toil severe, A gun their pillow when they sleep, And when they wake, are wak'd to weep. Dick Brothers said, "The time will come, "When war no more shall prowl the sea, "Nor men for pride or plunder roam, "And my millenium brings them home, "How'eer dispers'd through each degree." If Richard proves a prophet true, Why may not we be quiet too, And turn our bull-dogs into lambs, Saw off the horns of battering rams As well as Europe's sons? Ye Quakers! see with pure delight, The times approach when men of might, And squadrons roving round the ball, Shall fight each other not at all, Or fight with wooden guns. And yet that Being you address Who shaped old Chaos into form, May speak--and with a word suppress The tryant and the storm. ODE X[140] TO SANTONE SAMUEL The Millennial Prophet, on his System of Universal Pacification With aspect wild, in ranting strain You bring the brilliant period near, When monarchy will close her reign And wars and warriors disappear; The lion and the lamb will stray, And, social, walk the woodland way. I fear, with superficial view You contemplate dame nature's plan:-- She various forms of being drew, And made the common tryant--man: She form'd them all with wise design, Distinguish'd each, and drew the line. Observe the lion's visage bold His iron tooth, his murderous claw, His aspect cast in anger's mould; The strength of steel is in his paw: Could he be meant with lambs to stray Or feed along the woodland way? Since first his race on earth began War was his trade and war will be: And when he quits that ancient plan With milder natures to agree, He will be changed to something new And have some other part to do. One system see through all this frame, Apparent discord still prevails; The forest yields to active flame, The ocean swells with stormy gales; No season did the God decree When leagued in friendship these should be. And do you think that human kind Can shun the all-pervading law-- That passion's slave we ever find-- Who discord from their nature draw:-- Ere discord can from man depart He must assume a different heart. Yet in the slow advance of things A time may come our race may rise, By reason's aid to stretch their wings, And see the light with other eyes; And when the ancient mist is pass'd; To find their nature changed at last, The sun himself, the powers ordain, Should in no perfect circle stray; He shuns the equatorial plane, Prefers an odd serpentine way, And lessens yearly, sophists prove, His angle in the voids above. When moving in his ancient line, And no oblique ecliptic near, With some new influence he may shine But you and I will not be here To see the lion shed his teeth Or kings forget the trade of death. ODE XI[141] TO THE PHILADELPHIA DOCTORS "And the Angel Michael disputed with the Devil about the body of Moses."--_Ancient History._ "To bleed or not to bleed--that is the question! Whether 'tis better in our beds to suffer The slights and snufflings of outrageous doctors, Or by the Lancet--quit them." In ancient days divines, in dismal humour, With disputation kept the presses going; Wrangled about some wonderous mighty things The difference "'twixt a shadow and a shade," And scribbled much of "way of man with maid." At length, as fades the crown Their bludgeons they lay down; And you, wise doctors, take the wrangle up, Each cursing all who will not drink his cup. Ah, Philadelphians! still to knaves a prey, Take your old philosophic way; When from the native spring you seiz'd your draught, Health bloom'd on every face, and all was gay-- Dejection was remote--and Nature laugh'd. A question now, of mighty weight is put, Whether, to bleed a man is best, or not, When scarce three drops (or not one drop) remains In the poor devil's veins!-- Well! you decide, who are in Galen read-- Take Boorhaave's, if you please--whatever system-- (Why are men such that doctors can enlist 'em?) Whether your methods be the right or wrong, And man's existence shorten or prolong, We feverish fellows, must be--put to bed. The secret has leak'd out--be cautious doctors (The whole shall be disclos'd in room with lock'd doors) Old women, with their simple herbs and teas (And asking hardly two-pence for their fees) Disarm this dreadful epidemic fever; Make it as tame and innocent, (Whether home-bred or from West Indies sent) As Continental soldier, turn'd to Weaver. ODE XII[142] THE CROWS AND THE CARRION A Medical Story If Ephraim on his bed complains Of feverish pulse and boiling veins, And throbs and pulses in his brains, Then round him flock a ghastly crew Of doctors old and doctors new, And doctors, some--the Lord knows who. Hoping the men had learned their trade, Poor Ephraim begs them for their aid, And promises they shall be paid. Each quotes some book, by way of sham, Or reads some text from Sydenham, Which some approve, and some condemn. At once he hears a barbarous noise, Like that from herds of butchers' boys, That ever hope of life destroys. He promises all bills to pay, But they proceed in angry fray-- Poor Ephraim frets--and well he may. Each looks at each with vengeful eyes, As if contending for a prize He wants his share--when Ephraim dies. One talks of cure by Calomel; But his wise brother, Sydrophel, Swears, 'tis the readiest way to hell. While one the lancet recommends, Another for a blister sends, And each his every cure defends. Weary of all they have to say, At last the patient faints away: Poor Ephraim swoons--and well he may. In Fancy's dreams, he thinks he roams In realms where doctor Satan foams, With Sydrophels and Curry-combs. Revived at length, he begs release, And whines, "Do let your quarrels cease, Do, doctors, let me die in peace. "Oh! had I sent for doctress Nan, Or anything but cruel man, To put me on my legs again: "She, with her cooling tamarind tea, At least would not have murdered me-- Come! if you love me, do agree. "She would have held my dizzy head-- She would have something to me read-- Or would have somewhat cheering said. "Good heavens! you cannot all be right-- O do not scratch!--O do not bite!-- Good doctors, do not, do not fight!"-- Here they began a louder fray-- Oh! Ephraim's dead!--to them all play-- Poor Ephraim dies!--and well he may. ODE XIII[143] A Soldier should be made of Sterner Stuff ON DEBORAH GANNET The American heroine, who on Tuesday last presented a petition to Congress for a pension, in consideration of services rendered during the whole of the late war, in the character of a common follower in the regular armies of America Ye congress men and men of weight, Who fill the public chairs, And many a favor have conferr'd On some, unknown to Mars; And ye, who hold the post of fame, The helmsmen of our great affairs, Afford a calm, attentive ear To her who handled sword and spear, A heroine in a bold career, Assist a war-worn dame. With the same vigorous soul inspired As Joan of Arc, of old, With zeal against the Briton fired, Her spirit warm and bold, She march'd to face her country's foes Disguised in male attire: Where'er they prowl'd through field or town With steady step she follow'd on; Resolved the conflict to sustain, She met them on the hill, the plain, And hostile to the English reign, She hurl'd the blasting fire. Now for such generous toils endured, Her day of warfare done, In life's decline at length reward This faithful amazon: She asks no thousands at your hands, Though mark'd with many a scar; She asks no share of indian lands, Though lands you have to spare: But something in the wane of days To make her snug, and keep her warm, A cottage, and the cheery blaze, To shield her from the storm; And something to the pocket too, Your bounty might afford, Of her, who did our foes pursue With bayonet, gun, and sword. Reflect how many tender ties A female must forego Ere to the martial camp she flies To meet the invading foe: How many bars has nature placed, And custom many more, Lest slighted woman should be graced With trophies gain'd in war. All these she nobly overcame, And scorn'd a censuring age, Join'd in the ranks, her road to fame, Despis'd the Briton's rage; And men, who, with contracted mind, All arrogant, condemn And make disgrace in womankind What honor is in them. [131] These odes first appeared in the _Time-Piece_, where they were published in rapid succession between October 16 and November 13, 1797. Three of them--the fourth, sixth, and eleventh--were republished, greatly revised, in the edition of 1809. The eighth, tenth, and thirteenth were used in revised form in the 1815 edition. The others are here republished for the first time. The first ode, which is manifestly an adaptation of Dr. Watts' well-known hymn, seems to have been objected to in some quarters, for in the _Time-Piece_ for December 22 appeared the following: "Some serious animadversions appear in the Connecticut Courant on the first number of the _Book of Odes_, published in the Time-Piece of the 14th ult. being a profane parody, as the writer insinuates, on the first Psalm of David--where the _aristocrat_ corresponds with the _saint_ in the psalm, and the _democrat_ with the _impenitent sinner_. These gentlemen writers ought to consider that the parody in question (as they choose to call it) was not meant to be sung through a deacon's nose, to the sound of the organ: nor yet to the timbrel of seven strings: it was merely intended to be _harped_ upon _out of doors_, for the benefit of all good democrats, and the utter astoundment and confusion of _the contrary character_. In the name of common sense how did the printers of the Connecticut Courant _dare_ to act so _irreverantly_ as to place the parody before the psalm? Are they trampling on all sanctity; or what do they mean? Let them beware--serious times are coming on, gentlemen: 'Your life is but a vapour, sure, A mere old woman's qualm-- And good king David's lyric harp, May close it--with a psalm.'" [132] _Time-Piece_, October 18, 1797. [133] The _Time-Piece_, October 20, 1797. [134] From the edition of 1809, the text of which I have followed in all but the title which is "To a Democratic Editor." This poem first appeared in the _Time-Piece_, October 23, 1797, with the following introduction: "'He that first put a real mark upon the forehead of the BEAST was the inventor of Printing. This mark was impressed deeply, and becomes deeper from day to day.'--_Erasmus._" [135] The _Time-Piece_, October 25, 1797. William Cobbett, an English adventurer, settled in Philadelphia in 1792. Under the signature "Peter Porcupine" he wrote many political pamphlets, and edited a paper called _Porcupine's Gazette_. He left America in 1800 after having been convicted of libel. His works in twelve volumes, including many selections from the _Gazette_, were published in 1801, in London. He was an avowed enemy to the Democrats of America; he opposed the French interests, and abused roundly Dr. Priestly, Benjamin Franklin, and Dr. Rush. [136] Text from the edition of 1809. Originally in the _Time-Piece_, October 27, 1797, with the following introduction: "Let but a dancing bear arrive, A pig that counts you four or five, And Cato, with his moral strain, Shall strive to mend the town--in vain." [137] From the _Time-Piece_, October 31, 1797. [138] From the 1815 edition. The _Time-Piece_ version, November 1, 1797, bore the title "To Thos. Swawgum, a Wharf Builder," with the following introduction: "'And Alexander built a solid mole from the coast, even unto the isle of Tyre, through the deep waters of the channel between: and people said it would be everlasting; and yet at this day it is overwhelmed, and few vestiges left thereof.'--_Modern Travels._" [139] From the Time-Piece, October 31, 1797. The following account of the launch is given in the same issue: "BOSTON, _October 23_, The Launch! On Saturday last at fifteen minutes P. M. the frigate CONSTITUTION was launched into the adjacent element, on which she now rides an elegant and superb specimen of American naval architecture, combining the unity of wisdom, strength, and beauty. On a signal being given from on board, her ordnance, on shore, announced to the neighboring Country, that the CONSTITUTION WAS SECURE." [140] From the edition of 1815, with the exception of the title, which is, "The Millennium--To a Ranting Field Orator." [141] From the _Time-Piece_, November 13, 1797. [142] Text from the edition of 1809. The title of the newspaper version was "To the Philadelphia Doctors," with the following motto: "And he said unto him, Physician Heal Thyself." [143] Published in the _Time-Piece_, December 4, 1797, and reprinted in the edition of 1815, the text of which I have used, though I have retained the title of the newspaper version. In the 1815 edition the title is "The Heroine of the Revolution. _To the men in power_," with the note "On December 23, 1797, Deborah Gannet presented a petition to congress for a pension, in consideration of services rendered during the whole of the American Revolutionary war, in the rank of a common soldier in the regular armies of the United States. The above lines were written on this occasion, at the request of the heroine. It is needless to say, she had a competency bestowed on her during her natural life." Freneau's daughter has thus recounted the circumstances under which the affair became known to the poet: "While editor of the _Time-Piece_ his office was thronged with visitors mostly wanting favors of one kind or another. One day he came into dinner and told Mrs. Freneau that there had been rather an eccentric character in the office that morning, telling him that she had served through the Revolutionary War in man's attire and had received several wounds and showed the scars. All he could do for her was to send her to Washington with a petition, which he did. Her name was Deborah Gannet. She went to Congress, presented her petition, and received her pension. Though he put not his name to it, it was immediately known, as many of the members were his correspondents, also Thomas Jefferson, the President." ON THE FEDERAL CITY[144] 1797 All human things must have their rise, And Rome advanced from little size Till future ages saw her grown The mistress of the world, then known. So, bounding on Potowmac's flood, Where ancient oaks so lately stood An infant city grows apace Intended for a ruling race. Here capitols of awful height-- Already burst upon the sight, And buildings, meant for embryo kings Display their fronts and spread their wings. This city bodes no common fate-- All other towns, as books relate, With huts at first were thinly spread, With hovels mean, or humble shed. But matters here are quite reversed, Here, palaces are built the first, And late will common rustics come In such abodes to find a home. Meantime, it will be fair and just (Nor will our congress fret, we trust) If while the poor at distance lurk-- Themselves do their own dirty work. Rome's earliest citizens were thieves, So history tells, and man believes, May matters be again reversed, May they who here inhabit first Instruct the late historians pen To write--that they were honest men. [144] From the 1815 edition. A young Englishman, Thomas Twining, who visited Washington in 1796, describes it as follows: "Having crossed an extensive tract of level country somewhat resembling an English heath, I entered a large wood through which a very imperfect road had been made, principally by removing the trees or the upper parts of them in the usual manner. After some time this indistinct way assumed more the appearance of a regular avenue, the trees having been cut down in a straight line although no habitation of any kind was visible. I had no doubt but I was now riding along one of the streets of the metropolitan city. I continued in this spacious avenue for half a mile and then came out upon a large spot cleared of wood, in the center of which I saw two unfinished buildings and men at work on one of them. Advancing and speaking to these workmen, they informed me that I was in the center of the city and that the building was the Capitol. Looking from where I stood I saw on every side a thick wood pierced with avenues in a more or less perfect state." THE ROYAL COCKNEYS IN AMERICA[145] 1797 Why travel so far from your insular home, Ye cockneys of London, and all in a foam, To talk, and to talk, with coxcombical phiz, And tell what a nuisance democracy is: Twas a lesson we learn'd When you were concern'd In wishing success to the vast preparations To conquer and pillage the royal-plantations. We Americans far from your king-ridden isle Do humbly beseech you, all democrat haters, For fear that your bodies or souls you defile, Would fairly go off, with your lies and your satires: The monarch you worship requests your assistance, And how can you help him at such a long distance? Tis an Englishman's creed, And they all have agreed That, out of old England, there's nothing, they swear, That can with old England--dear England--compare; So, away to old England, or we'll send you there. A swarm is arrived from the hives of the east, Determined to sap the republic's foundation; And who is their leader, their scribe, and their priest? Why, Porcupine Peter, The democrat-eater, Transported by Pitt, at the charge of the nation, To preach to the demos a new revelation. His patrons in England, and some who are here, Consented to join in his sink of scurrility, And gave him, tis certain, four thousand a year To print a damn'd libel, to please our nobility: Where I--is the hero of all that is said I--Corporal Cobbett[A]-a man of the blade! If his countrymen thought That for nothing we fought And they mean to regain, by the aid of his press, A country they lost, to their shame and disgrace, Let them fairly engage In some liberal page: We can give them an answer, not relish'd by some, Who will see their friend Peter go, whimpering, home. [A] Alluding to the egotistical style of his writings.--_Freneau's note._ [145] From the edition of 1815. TO THE SCRIBE OF SCRIBES[146] By the gods of the poets, Apollo and Jove, By the muse who directs me, the spirits that move, I council you, Peter, once more, to retire Or satire shall pierce, with her arrows of fire. Be careful to stop in your noisy career, Or homeward retreat, for your danger is near: The clouds are collecting to burst on your head, Their sulphur to dart, or their torrents to shed. Along with the tears, I foresee you will weep, In the cave of oblivion I put you to sleep;-- This dealer in scandal, this bladder of gall, This sprig of Parnassus must go to the wall. From a star of renown in the reign of night He has dwindled away to a little rush-light: Then snuff it, and snuff it, while yet it remains And Peter will leave you the snuff for your pains.-- [146] From the edition of 1815. TO THE AMERICANS OF THE UNITED STATES[147] First published November, 1797 Men of this passing age!--whose noble deeds Honour will bear above the scum of Time: Ere this eventful century expire, Once more we greet you with our humble rhyme: Pleased, if we meet your smiles, but--if denied, Yet, with Your sentence, we are satisfied. Catching our subjects from the varying scene Of human things; a mingled work we draw, Chequered with fancies odd, and figures strange, Such, as no courtly poet ever saw; Who writ, beneath some Great Man's ceiling placed; Travelled no lands, nor roved the watery waste. To seize some features from the faithless past; Be this our care--before the century close: The colours strong!--for, if we deem aright, The coming age will be an age of prose: When sordid cares will break the muses' dream, And Common Sense be ranked in seat supreme. Go, now, dear book; once more expand your wings: Still in the cause of Man severely true: Untaught to flatter pride, or fawn on kings;-- Trojan, or Tyrian,[A]--give them both their due.-- When they are right, the cause of both we plead, And both will please us well,--if both will read. [A] Tros, Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur.--Virg_.--Freneau's note._ [147] This was used as the introductory poem to Volume II of the 1809 edition. TO A NIGHT-FLY[148] Approaching a Candle Attracted by the taper's rays, How carelessly you come to gaze On what absorbs you in its blaze! O Fly! I bid you have a care: You do not heed the danger near; This light, to you a blazing star. Already you have scorch'd your wings: What courage, or what folly brings You, hovering near such blazing things? Ah me! you touch this little sun-- One circuit more and all is done!-- Now to the furnace you are gone!-- Thus folly with ambition join'd, Attracts the insects of mankind, And sways the superficial mind: Thus, power has charms which all admire, But dangerous is that central fire-- If you are wise in time retire.-- [148] First published in the _Time-Piece_, December 8, 1797. Text from the edition of 1815. THE INDIAN CONVERT[149] An Indian, who lived at Muskingum, remote, Was teazed by a parson to join his dear flock, To throw off his blanket and put on a coat, And of grace and religion to lay in a stock. The Indian long slighted an offer so fair, Preferring to preaching his fishing and fowling; A sermon to him was a heart full of care, And singing but little superior to howling. At last by persuasion and constant harassing Our Indian was brought to consent to be good; He saw that the malice of Satan was pressing, And the means to repel him not yet understood. Of heaven, one day, when the parson was speaking, And painting the beautiful things of the place, The convert, who something substantial was seeking, Rose up, and confessed he had doubts in the case.-- Said he, Master Minister, this place that you talk of, Of things for the stomach, pray what has it got; Has it liquors in plenty?--If so I'll soon walk off And put myself down in the heavenly spot. You fool (said the preacher) no liquors are there! The place I'm describing is most like our meeting, Good people, all singing, with preaching and prayer; They live upon these without eating or drinking. But the doors are all locked against folks that are wicked; And you, I am fearful, will never get there:-- A life of Repentance must purchase the ticket, And few of you, Indians, can buy it, I fear. Farewell (said the Indian) I'm none of your mess; On victuals, so airy, I faintish should feel, I cannot consent to be lodged in a place Where's there's nothing to eat and but little to steal. [149] First published in the _Time-Piece_, December 11, 1797, under the title, "Thomas Swagum, an Oneida Indian and a Missionary Parson." Text from the 1809 edition. THE PETTIFOGGER,[150] or Fee Simple, Esquire In a town I could mention, a lawyer resided As cunning as Satan, and fond of disputes; In wrangles and quarrels he ever confided, To keep on his docquet a long string of suits. Of little importance, nay, paltry and mean, The matter contested, a pig or a hen; But one thing he stuck to, he ever was seen To have for his pleading just one pound ten. With pleasure he saw that the quarrels increased, Each day he had business from wranglesome men, But all to the 'squire was a holiday feast While he got his dear Fee, the one pound ten. A parchment, Caveto, hung up in his hall Which cautioned the reader to read and attend, That for one pound ten he would quibble and brawl, Twist, lie, and do all things a cause to defend. Sometimes when the limits of lots were disputed He would put all to rights in the turn of a straw; From the tenth of an inch he his pocket recruited Till he made the two parties curse lawyer and law. Thus matters went on, and the lawyer grown rich Fed high, and swilled wine 'till the dropsy began To bloat up his guts to so monstrous a pitch, You would hardly have known him to be the same man. At last he departed, and when he had died, His worship arriving at Beelzebub's den; How much is the entrance (demanded the guide?--) Old Devil made answer, 'Tis One Pound Ten. [150] First published in the _Time-Piece_, December 13, 1797. Text from the 1809 edition. ON A CELEBRATED PERFORMER ON THE VIOLIN[151] Who, as it was said, went out, in the year 1797, to excite discontents and insurrections in the western country, particularly, in Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee Musician of the west! whose vast design Schemes our new states with England to combine; How vain the hope, with violin and bow, Such feeble arms, to work internal wo! How weak the attempt our union to divide With not a sword or pistol at your side! Not even a drum your engineer employs:-- He's right--a drum would blast the plot, by noise: All must be done in midnight silence, all Your plans must ripen or your projects fall. Unknown, unseen, till in the destined hour Descends the stroke of trans-atlantic power! By music's note to sway the western wild Indeed is new;--we heard it and we smiled. In cold December's iron-hearted reign Would you with blushing blossoms deck the plain; Would you with sound immure the Thirteen Stars, Or plant a garland on the front of Mars? To sound, not sense, once brutes, they say, advanced, When Orpheus whistled, fauns and satyrs danced-- You are no Orpheus--and it may be true He play'd some tunes that are unknown to you. Hopes, such as yours, on cat-gut who would place; On tenor, treble, counter, or the bass: Who arm'd with horse-hair, hopes a world to win Who gains dominion from a violin? Such if there was, in times, the lord knows when, He must have been at least the first of men-- But now--the world would have not much to prize In such a warfare where no soldier dies: Thus would it say--by sad experience taught, 'Oh! may we never fight as these have fought! 'These to the charge with Thespian arms advanced, 'And when they should have fought, the soldiers danced; 'They had no drums, they felt no martial flame, 'But, cold as Christmas, to the conflict came!' My dreams present you thrumming on your string Playing at proper stands, God save the king! I see you march, a pedlar with his pack, And that poor fiddle swung athwart your back, (Like Reynard from some hen-roost hurrying home With plunder'd poultry for the feast to come) Trudging the wilds, on bold adventures bent, The woods at once your coverlet and tent, To fierce rebellions our back-woods to call-- The attempt how mighty! and the means how small. Amphion once, the classic stories say, When on his organ he began to play, So soft, so sweet, so melting were his tunes That even the savage rocks danced rigadoons, The trees, themselves, with frantic passions fired Leap'd from their roots and every note admired: Quitting the spot, where many a year they grew Quick to the music sprung the enchanted crew, Form'd o'er his head a sun-repelling power And bow'd their shadowy heads to music's power. If what, this moment, some relate be true Still greater wonders are reserved for you. Your music, far, all Amphion's art exceeds, Not trees and rocks, but provinces it leads. All Alleghany capers to the sound, And southward moves to meet the iberian bound; Kentucky hears the soul-enlivening notes And on the artist and his music doats; Remote Sanduskie spreads her eager wings, And wild Miami with the concert rings; Tiptoe, for flight, stands every hill and tree From Huron's shores to savage Tennessee; Arthur St. Clair might soon its influence feel; But Arthur knows no music--but of steel: Arthur St. Clair attends, with listening ears, And when the purpose of your march appears, Such music only will excite his rage, He'll come, and drive you from your dancing stage; Cut every string, the bridge, and sound-board seize, By your own cat-gut hang you to the trees, And bid you know, too late, It is no jest To play rebellion's music to the west. [151] From the edition of 1815. NEW YEAR'S VERSES[152] The Carrier of the Time-Piece, presents the following Address to His Patrons, with the Compliments of the Season Fellow Citizens: The glass has run--see ninety-seven has fled, And ninety-eight comes on with equal speed; While safe from harm, beneath their spreading vine, Columbia's sons in virtuous actions shine: Their generous contributions feed the poor, And sends them smiling from their patron's door; Sweet Peace and Plenty crowns the festive board, Where man reveres no domineering lord; But free from scenes of desolating war, Where kingdoms clash and mighty empires jar, He lives secure from all the dread alarms Of fell invaders and the din of arms:-- Such scenes now past have once defil'd our shore And drench'd Columbia in her children's gore, Let man exult, the raging storm is o'er. To you, my customers, I bring the news Of feuds domestic and of foreign woes; Of Liberty extending her domain, And Truth triumphant in her glorious reign. Consider, patrons through the storm and snow With constant care I am oblig'd to go; Shivering and cold, I want the lively cup To cheer my heart and keep my spirits up: To stern winter's gloom can joy inspire; Now social circles grace the Hickory fire; And on your board, for friends and neighbors spread, The turkey smokes the industrious peasant fed: But not to me these blessings are dispos'd, Fortune's capricious hand to me is clos'd; I am condemn'd to labour long and hard, Unknown my troubles, scanty my reward. Such is the humble German's life of toil, Who now solicits your approving smile; My grateful heart still let your bounty share, And Peace and Freedom reign from year to year. _New-York, January 1, 1798._ [152] This was published as a broadside, and distributed with the paper. As far as I can discover Freneau never reprinted it. PART V THE FINAL PERIOD OF WANDERING 1798-1809 THE FINAL PERIOD OF WANDERING 1798-1809[153] ON ARRIVING IN SOUTH CAROLINA, 1798[154] A happy gale presents, once more, The gay and ever verdant shore, Which every pleasure will restore To those who come again: You, Carolina, from the seas Emerging, claim all power to please, Emerge with elegance and ease From Neptune's briny main. To find in you a happier home, Retirement for the days to come, From northern coasts you saw me roam, By flattering fancy moved: I came, and in your fragrant woods, Your magic isles and gay abodes, In rural haunts and passing floods Review'd the scenes I loved, When sailing oft, from year to year And leaving all I counted dear, I found the happy country here Where manly hearts abound; Where friendship's kind extended hand, All social, leads a generous band; Where heroes, who redeem'd the land Still live to be renown'd: Who live to fill the trump of fame, Or, dying, left the honor'd name Which Athens had been proud to claim From her historian's page-- These with invading thousands strove, These bade the foe their prowess prove, And from their old dominions drove The tyrants of the age. Long, long may every good be thine, Sweet country, named from Caroline, Once seen in Britain's court to shine The fairest of the fair: Still may the wanderer find a home Where'er thy varied forests bloom, And peace and pleasure with him come To take their station here. Here Ashley, with his brother stream, By Charleston gliding, all, may claim, That ever graced a poet's dream Or sooth'd a statesman's cares; She, seated near her forests blue, Which winter's rigor never knew, With half an ocean in her view Her shining turrets rears. Here stately oaks of living green Along the extended coast are seen, That rise beneath a heaven serene, Unfading through the year-- In groves the tall Palmetto grows, In shades inviting to repose, The fairest, loveliest, scenes disclose-- All nature charms us here. Dark wilds are thine, the yellow field, And rivers by no frost congeal'd, And, Ceres, all that you can yield To deck the festive board; The snow white fleece, from pods that grows, And every seed that Flora sows-- The orange and the fig-tree shows A paradise restored. There rural love to bless the swains In the bright eye of beauty reigns, And brings a heaven upon the plains From some dear Emma's charms; Some Laura fair who haunts the mead, Some Helen, whom the graces lead, Whose charms the charms of her exceed That set the world in arms. And distant from the sullen roar Of ocean, bursting on the shore, A region rises, valued more Than all the shores possess: There lofty hills their range display, Placed in a climate ever gay, From wars and commerce far away, Sweet nature's wilderness. There all that art has taught to bloom, The streams that from the mountain foam, And thine, Eutaw, that distant roam, Impart supreme delight: The prospect to the western glade, The ancient forest, undecay'd-- All these the wildest scenes have made That ever awed the sight. There Congaree his torrent pours, Saluda, through the forest roars, And black Catawba laves his shores With waters from afar, Till mingled with the proud Santee, Their strength, united, finds the sea, Through many a plain, by many a tree, Then rush across the bar. But, where all nature's fancies join, Were but a single acre mine, Blest with the cypress and the pine, I would request no more; And leaving all that once could please, The northern groves and stormy seas-- I would not change such scenes as these For all that men adore. [153] This period comprises the time between the poet's abandonment of the _Time-Piece_ in New York in 1798, and his final farewell to the sea, which was, in reality, in 1807. During this time Freneau lived in retirement at Mount Pleasant, making now and then voyages along the southern coast and to the Madeira Islands. The poems of the period dwell largely on the dangers of monarchy. He became more and more philosophical as he grew older. He delighted in his leisure hours to translate from the old Latin writers, and to make moralizing verses of a somewhat tedious nature. I have omitted all of the translations of this period and most of the moralizings. [154] Freneau sailed as passenger to Charleston, January 3, 1798, and arrived on February 3, after a rough voyage. He sailed back from Charleston in the ship _Maria_, March 7, arriving in New York one week later. Text from the 1815 edition. ODE TO THE AMERICANS[155] That the progress of liberty and reason in the world is slow and gradual; but, considering the present state of things, and the light of science universally spreading, that it cannot be long impeded, or its complete establishment prevented.--1798 They who survey the human stage, In reason's view; through time's past age, Will find, whatever nature plann'd Came, first, imperfect from her hand, Or what ourselves imperfect call; In nature's eye, though perfect all-- To man she gave to improve, adorn; But let him halt--and all things turn To assume their wild primeval cast, The growth of a neglected waste. Yond' stately trees, so fresh and fair, That now such golden burthens bear, Were once mean shrubs that, far from view, In desert woods, unthrifty grew. Man saw the seeds of something good In these rude children of the wood; Apply'd the knife, and pruned with care, Till art has made them what they are. With curious eye, search history's page, And Man observe, through every age; At first a mere barbarian, he Bore nothing good, (like that wild tree). At length by thought and reason's aid, Reflection piercing night's dark shade, Improvements gain'd, by slow advance Direction, not the work of chance. Forsaking, first, the savage den And fellow-beasts less fierce than men, New plans they form'd for war or power, And sunk the ditch and raised the tower. In course of years the human mind, Advancing slow proved more refined, Less brutal in external show, But native mischief lurk'd below. Despots and kings begun their part, And millions fell by rules of art; Or malice, rankling all the while, Lay hid beneath the treacherous smile. Religion brought her potent aid To kings, their subjects to degrade-- Religion!--to profane your name The hag of superstition came, And seized your place, the world to ensnare, A bitter harvest doom'd to bear! And priests, or history much deceives, Turn'd aide-de-camps to sceptred thieves. At last that Cherub from the skies, (Our nature meant to humanize) And sway, without a king or crown, Philosophy, from heaven came down. Adorn'd with all her native charms She clasp'd her offspring in her arms, In hope the mists of night to chase And hold them in her fond embrace. She, only she, for virtue warm Dissolved the spell and broke the charm, That bade mankind their hands imbue In blood, to please the scheming few. Arm'd with a dart of fire and love She left the seats and courts above, And her celestial power display'd Not to compel, but to persuade. The moment she had whirl'd her sling Each trembling war-hawk droop'd his wing: They saw that reason's game was won, They saw the trade of tyrants done: And all was calm--she saw, well pleased, The havoc done, the tumult ceased, She saw her throne was now adored, She saw the reign of peace restored, And said, 'I leave you--pray, be wise! 'I'm on a visit to the skies, 'Let incense on my altars burn 'And you'll be blest till I return.' But sad reverse!--when out of sight The fiends of darkness watch'd her flight-- What she had built, they soon displaced, Her temples burn'd, her tracks effaced. Their force they join'd, to quench her flame, A thousand ghastly legions came To blast the blossom in the bud And retrograde to chains and blood. The people--to be bought and sold, Were still the prize they wish'd to hold;-- All peasants, soldiers, sailors, slaves, The common sink of rogues and knaves. Yet, nature must her circle run-- Can they arrest the rising sun? Prevent his warm reviving ray, Or shade the influence of the day? If Europe to the yoke returns, Columbia at the idea spurns-- Let Britain wield barbarian rage We meet her here, through every stage. In vain her navy spreads its sails, The strength of mind at last prevails; And reason! thy prodigious power Has brought it to its closing hour. Appeal to arms henceforth should cease, And man might learn to live in peace; No kings with iron hearts should reign, To seize old ocean's free domain. Americans! would you conspire To extinguish this increasing fire? Would you, so late from fetters freed, Join party in so base a deed? Would you dear freedom sacrifice, Bid navies on the ocean rise, Be bound by military laws, And all, to aid a tyrant's cause? Oh, no! but should all shame forsake, And gratitude her exit make, Could you, as thousands say you can, Desert the common cause of man? A curse would on your efforts wait Old british sway to reinstate; No hireling hosts could force a crown Nor keep the bold republic down: The rising race, combined once more, Would honor to our cause restore, And in your doom and downfall seal Such woes as wicked kings shall feel. O liberty! seraphic name, With whom from heaven fair virtue came, For whom, through years of misery toss'd, One hundred thousand lives were lost; Still shall all grateful hearts to thee Incline the head and bend the knee; For thee this dream of life forego And quit the world when thou dost go. [155] From the 1815 edition. ON THE WAR PATRONS, 1798[156] Weary of peace, and warm for war, Who first will mount the iron car? Who first appear, to shield the Stars, Who foremost, take the field of Mars? For death and blood, with bold design, Who bids a hundred legions join? To see invasions in the air From France, the moon, or heaven knows where; In freedom's mouth to fix the gag, And aid afford t' a wither'd hag; This is the purpose of a few; But this we see will scarcely do. Who bears the brunt, or pays the bill? The friends of war alone can tell: Observe, six thousand heroes stand With not three privates to command; No matter for the nation's debt If some can wear the epaulette. If reason no attention finds, What magic shall unite all minds? If war a patronage ensures That fifty thousand men procures, Is such a force to humble France? Will these against her arms advance? To fight her legions, near the Rhine, Or England's force in Holland join? In dreams, that on the brain intrude, When nature takes her sleepy mood, And when she frolics through the mind, By sovereign reason unconfined, When her main spring is all uncoil'd And fancy acts in whimsy wild-- I saw a chieftain, cap-a-pee, Arm'd for the battle,--who but he?-- I saw him draw his rusty sword, A present from a London lord: The point was blunt, the edge too dull I deem'd to cleave a dutchman's scull; And with this sword he made advance, And with this sword he struck at France-- This sword return'd without its sheath, Too weak to cause a single death; And there he found his work complete, And then he made a safe retreat, Where folly finds the camp of rest And patience learns to do her best. What next, will policy contrive To bid the days of war arrive: Is there no way to pick a quarrel, And deck the martial brow with laurel? Is there no way to coax a fight And gratify some men of might? To some, who sit at helm of state, State-business is no killing weight, They sign their names, inquire the news, Look wise,--take care to get their dues; At levees, note down who attends-- And there the mighty business ends: To some that deal in state affairs The world comes easy, with its cares; To some who wish for crown and king, A quarrel is a charming thing: They, seated at the fountain head Quaff bowls of nectar, and are fed With all the danties of the land That cash, or market may command: But others doom'd to station low, Their choicest draughts are but--so, so. Hard knocks are theirs, and blood, and wounds, Ten thousand thumps for twenty pounds: Their youth they sell for paltry pay For sixpence, and six kicks a day, A pound of pork and rotten bread, A coat lapell'd, with badge of red; A life of din from year to year, And thus concludes the mad career. Ye rising race, consider well What has been read, or what we tell. From wars all regal mischiefs flow, And kings make wars a raree-show, A business to their post assign'd To torture, damn, enslave mankind. For this, of old, did priests anoint 'em, Be ours the task to disappoint 'em. But when a foe your soil invades, A soldier is the first of trades; Then, every step a soldier takes, Reflection in his breast awakes, That duty calls him to the field Till all invaders are expell'd; That honor sends him to the fight, That he is acting what is right, To guard the soil, and all that's dear; From such as would be tyrants here. [156] Text from the 1815 edition. During the early part of the year 1798 America was full of rumors of a French invasion. Talleyrand was scattering obscure hints that an invading army was preparing; that France well knew that America was divided; that only the Federalists would support the administration. The Federalists, supported by President Adams and by Washington, took active measures at once. In July they formally abrogated the treaty between the two countries and authorized the President to grant letters to shipmen empowering them to seize French vessels. The army was put into readiness, and financial legislation was enacted to procure means for carrying on the war. All believed that war with France was inevitable. TO THE DEMOCRATIC COUNTRY EDITORS[157] On a Charge of Bribery You, Journalists, are bribed--that's clear, And paid French millions by the year; We see it in the coats you wear; Such damning, such convincing proof Of such a charge, is strong enough-- Your suits are made of costly stuff. Dear boys! you lodge in mansions grand-- In time you'll own six feet of land, Where now the sexton has command. Your lodging is in garret high; But where your best possessions lie, Yourselves know best--and Him on high. And have you had a foreign bribe?-- Then, why so lean?--shall we describe The leanness of your honest tribe? Why did you not with Tories join To hold the British king divine-- And all his mandates very fine? Then had your faces shined with fat-- Then had you worn the gold-laced hat-- And--said your lessons--very pat.-- Your lives are, now, continual trial, Existence, constant self-denial, To keep down some, who would be royal. For public good you wear out types, For public good you get dry wipes-- For public good you may get--stripes. One half your time in Federal court, On libel charge--you're made a sport-- You pay your fees--nor dare retort.-- All pleasure you are sworn to shun; Are always cloistered, like a nun, And glad to hide from Ragman's dun.-- All night you sit by glare of lamp, Like Will o' Wisp in vapoury swamp, To write of armies and the camp.-- You write--compile--compile and write, 'Till you have nearly lost your sight-- Then off to jail; and so, good night. Turned out as poor as Christ-church rat, Once more the trade you would be at Which never yet made lean man fat. You send your journals far and wide, And though undone, and though belied; You choose to take the patriot side. Your works are in Kentucky found; And there your politics go round-- And there you trust them many a pound.-- At home, to folks residing near, You grant a credit, half a year; And pine, mean while, on cakes and beer. The time elapsed when friends should pay, You urge your dun from day to day; And so you must--and so you may. One customer begins to fret, And tells the dunner in a pet, "Plague take the Printer and his debt: "Ungrateful man--go hang--go burn-- "I read his paper night and morn, "And now experience this return! "Sir! was I not among the first "Who did my name on paper trust, "To help this Journalist accursed? "Thus am I used for having signed: "But I have spirit, he shall find-- "Ah me! the baseness of mankind!" Thus, on you strive with constant pain, The kindest tell you, call again!-- And you their humble dupe remain. Who aims to prosper--should be sold-- If bribes are offered, take the gold, Nor live to be forever fooled. SALEM. [157] Found only in the edition of 1809. The anti-federal press opposed the administration of Adams, and the whole affair of the threatened French war. THE SERIOUS MENACE[158] Or Botany Bay and Nootka Sound: In answer to the Communications of a Persecuting Royalist Last week we heard a king's man say, Do tell me where is Botany Bay? There are, quoth he, a meddling few, That shall go there--and we know who. This Botany Bay is in an isle Removed from us twelve thousand mile, There rogues are banish'd, to atone For roguish things in England done. Ye vultures, here on sufferance fed, Who curse the hand that gives you bread, Recall your threats, or, by the way, You'll find us act a serious play. The haughty prince that England owns, To make more room for royal sons, Has given the hint, I would suspect-- And are you one of his Elect? Ye busy tribe, of harpy face, In search of power, in search of place, Ye rancorous hearts, who build your all On royal wrongs and freedom's fall, This have we seen, and well we know, Each son of freedom is your foe, And these you would, unheard, convey To places worse than Botany Bay. Be cautious how you talk so loud-- Above your heads there hangs a cloud, That, bursting with explosion vast, May scatter vengeance in its blast; And send you all, on th' devil's dray, A longer road than--Botany Bay. Another threat alarm'd us much-- (Indeed, we hourly meet with such)-- A cockney said, but spoke it low, For fear the street his mind should know: "And is there no sedition act? ("'Tis almost time to doubt the fact,) "By which this gabbling crew are bound "The nearest way to Nootka Sound?" Can you but smile!--who would have thought That they who writ, who march'd, who fought For many a year, and little got But liberty, and dearly bought Must now away With half their pay, And seek on ocean's utmost bound Their chance to starve at Nootka Sound! This Nootka Sound, so far remote, Would make us sing a serious note, If it be true what travellers tell That there a race of natives dwell Who, when they would their brethren treat And give them a regale of meat Unchain their prisoners from the den, And scrape the bones of bearded men. God save us from so hard a fate! As to be spitted, soon or late; It is a lot that few admire-- So let us for a while retire; And live to see some traitors drown'd I' the deepest swash of Nootka Sound. [158] Text from the 1815 edition. REFLECTIONS[159] On the Mutability of Things--1798 The time is approaching, deny it who may, The days are not very remote, When the pageant that glitter'd for many a day, On the stream of oblivion will float. The times are advancing when matters will turn, And some, who are now in the shade, And pelted by malice, or treated with scorn, Will pay, in the coin that was paid: The time it will be, when the people aroused, For better arrangements prepare, And firm to the cause, that of old they espoused, Their steady attachment declare: When tyrants will shrink from the face of the day, Or, if they presume to remain, To the tune of peccavi, a solo will play, And lower the royalty strain: When government favors to flattery's press Will halt on their way from afar, And people will laugh at the comical dress Of the knights of the garter and star: When a monarch, new fangled, with lawyer and scribe, In junto will cease to convene, Or take from old England a pitiful bribe, To pamper his "highness serene;" When virtue and merit will have a fair chance The loaves and the fishes to share, And Jefferson, you to your station advance, The man for the president's chair: When honesty, honor, experience, approved, No more in disgrace will retire; When fops from the places of trust are removed And the leaders of faction retire. [159] Text from the 1815 edition. THE POLITICAL WEATHER-COCK[160] 'Tis strange that things upon the ground Are commonly most steady found While those in station proud Are turned and twirled, or twist about, Now here and there, now in or out, Mere play things to a cloud. See yonder influential man, So late the stern Republican While interest bore him up; See him recant, abjure the cause, See him support tyrannic laws, The dregs of slavery's cup! Thus, on yon' steeple towering high, Where clouds and storms distracted fly, The weather-cock is placed; Which only while the storm does blow Is to one point of compass true, Then veers with every blast. But things are so appointed here That weather-cocks on high appear, On pinnacle displayed, While Sense, and Worth, and reasoning wights, And they who plead for Human Rights, Sit humble in the shade. [160] From the 1809 edition. REFLECTIONS[161] On the Gradual Progress of Nations from Democratical States to Despotic Empires Mantua vae miserae nimium vicina Cremonae!--VIRGIL. Oh fatal day! when to the Atlantic shore, European despots sent the doctrine o'er, That man's vast race was born to lick the dust; Feed on the winds, or toil through life accurst; Poor and despised, that rulers might be great And swell to monarchs, to devour the state. Whence came these ills, or from what causes grew This vortex vast, that only spares the few, Despotic sway, where every plague combined, Distracts, degrades, and swallows up mankind; Takes from the intellectual sun its light, And shrouds the world in universal night? Accuse not nature for the dreary scene, That glooms her stage or hides her heaven serene, She, equal still in all her varied ways, An equal blessing to the world displays. The suns that now on northern climates glow, Will soon retire to melt Antarctic snow, The seas she robb'd to form her clouds and rain, Return in rivers to that source again; But man, wrong'd man, borne down, deceived and vex'd, Groans on through life, bewilder'd and perplex'd; No suns on him but suns of misery shine, Now march'd to war, now grovelling in the mine. Chain'd, fetter'd, prostrate, sent from earth a slave, To seek rewards in worlds beyond the grave. If in her general system, just to all, We nature an impartial parent call, Why did she not on man's whole race bestow, Those fine sensations angels only know; Who, sway'd by reason, with superior mind In nature's state all nature's blessings find, Which shed through all, does all their race pervade, In streams not niggard by a despot made? Leave this a secret in great nature's breast, Confess that all her works tend to the best, Or own that man's neglected culture here Breeds all the mischiefs that we feel or fear. In all, except the skill to rule her race, Man, wise and skilful, gives each part its place: Each nice machine he plans, to reason true, Adapting all things to the end in view, But taught in this, the art himself to rule His sense is folly, and himself a fool. Where social strength resides, there rests, 'tis plain, The power, mankind to govern and restrain: This strength is not but in the social plan Controling all, the common good of man, That power concentred by the general voice, In honest men, an honest people's choice, With frequent change, to keep the patriot pure, And from vain views of power the heart secure: Here lies the secret, hid from Rome or Greece, That holds a state in awe, yet holds in peace. See through the world, in ages now retired, Man foe to man, as policy required: At some proud tyrant's nod what millions rose, To extend their sway, and make a world their foes. View Asia ravaged, Europe drench'd with blood, In feuds whose cause no nation understood. The cause we fear, of so much misery sown, Known at the helm of state, and there alone. Left to himself, wherever man is found, In peace he aims to walk life's little round; In peace to sail, in peace to till the soil, Nor force false grandeur from a brother's toil. All but the base, designing, scheming, few, Who seize on nations with a robber's view, With crowns and sceptres awe his dazzled eye, And priests that hold the artillery of the sky; These, these, with armies, navies, potent grown, Impoverish man and bid the nations groan. These with pretended balances of states Keep worlds at variance, breed eternal hates, Make man the poor base slave of low design, Degrade his nature to its last decline, Shed hell's worse blots on his exalted race, And make them poor and mean, to make them base. Shall views like these assail our happy land, Where embryo monarchs thirst for wide command, Shall a whole nation's strength and fair renown Be sacrificed, to prop a tottering throne, That, ages past, the world's great curse has stood, Has throve on plunder, and been fed on blood.-- Americans! will you control such views? Speak--for you must--you have no hour to lose. [161] From the 1815 edition. COMMERCE[162] That internal commerce only, promotes the morals of a country situated like America, and prevents its growth of luxury, and its consequent vices To every clime, through every sea The bold adventurer steers; In bounding barque, through each degree His country's produce bears.-- How far more blest to stay at home Than thus on Neptune's wastes to roam, Where fervors melt, or frosts congeal-- Ah ye! with toils and hardships worn, Condemn'd to face the briny foam; Ah! from such fatal projects turn The wave-dividing keel. The product of the furrow'd plain-- Transferr'd to foreign shores, To pamper pride and please the vain The reign of kings restores: Hence, every vice the sail imports, The glare of crowns, the pomp of courts, And War, with all his crimson train! Thus man design'd to till the ground, A stranger to himself is found-- Is sent to toil on yonder wave, Is made the dreary ocean's sport, Since commerce first to avarice gave To sail the ocean round. How far more wise the grave Chinese, Who ne'er remotely stray, But bid the world surmount the seas And hard-earn'd tribute pay. Hence, treasure to their country flows Freed from the danger, and the woes Of distant seas and dreary shores. There commerce breeds no foreign war; At home they find their wants supplied, And ask, why nations come so far To seek superfluous stores? Americans! why half neglect The culture of your soil? From distant traffic why expect The harvest of your toil? At home a surer harvest springs From mutual interchange of things, Domestic duties to fulfil.-- Vast lakes within your realm abound Where commerce now expands her sail, Where hostile navies are not found To bend you to their will. [162] From the edition of 1815. ON FALSE SYSTEMS[163] Of Government, and the Generally Debased Condition of Mankind Does there exist, or will there come An age with wisdom to assume, The Rights by heaven designed; The Rights which man was born to claim, From Nature's God which freely came, To aid and bless mankind.-- No monarch lives, nor do I deem There will exist one crown supreme The world in peace to sway; Whose first great view will be to place On their true scale the human race, And discord's rage allay. Republics! must the task be your's To frame the code which life secures, And Right from man to man-- Are you, in Time's declining age, Found only fit to tread the stage Where tyranny began? How can we call those systems just Which bid the few, the proud, the first Possess all earthly good; While millions robbed of all that's dear In silence shed the ceaseless tear, And leeches suck their blood. Great orb, that on our planet shines, Whose power both light and heat combines, You should the model be; To man, the pattern how to reign With equal sway, and how maintain True human dignity. Impartially to all below The solar beams unstinted flow, On all is poured the Ray, Which cheers, which warms, which clothes the ground In robes of green, or breathes around Life;--to enjoy the day. But crowns not so;--with selfish views They partially their bliss diffuse Their minions feel them kind;-- And, still opposed to human right, Their plans, their views in this unite, To embroil and curse mankind. Ye tyrants, false to Him, who gave Life, and the virtues of the brave, All worth we own, or know:-- Who made you great, the lords of man, To waste with wars, with blood to stain The Maker's works below? You have no iron race to sway-- Illume them well with Reason's ray; Inform our active race; True honour, to the mind impart, With virtue's precepts tame the heart, Not urge it to be base; Let laws revive, by heaven designed, To tame the tiger in the mind And drive from human hearts That love of wealth, that love of sway Which leads the world too much astray, Which points envenomed darts: And men will rise from what they are; Sublimer, and superior, far, Than Solon guessed, or Plato saw; All will be just, all will be good-- That harmony, "not understood," Will reign the general law. For, in our race, deranged, bereft, The parting god some vestige left Of worth before possessed; Which full, which fair, which perfect shone When love and peace, in concord sown, Ruled, and inspired each breast. Hence, the small Good which yet we find, Is shades of that prevailing mind Which sways the worlds around:-- Let these depart, once disappear, And earth would all the horrors wear In hell's dominions found. Just, as yon' tree, which, bending, grows To chance, not fate, its fortune owes; So man from some rude shock, Some slighted power, some hostile hand, Has missed the state by Nature planned, Has split on passion's rock. Yet shall that tree, when hewed away (As human woes have had their day) A new creation find: The infant shoot in time will swell, (Sublime and great from that which fell,) To all that heaven designed. What is this earth, that sun, these skies; If all we see, on man must rise, Forsaken and oppressed-- Why blazes round the eternal beam, Why, Reason, art thou called supreme, Where nations find no rest.-- What are the splendours of this ball-- When life is closed, what are they all? When dust to dust returns Does power, or wealth, attend the dead; Are captives from the contest led-- Is homage paid to urns? What are the ends of Nature's laws; What folly prompts, what madness draws Mankind in chains, too strong:-- Nature, to us, confused appears, On little things she wastes her cares, The great seem sometimes wrong. [163] Unique, as far as I can find, in the edition of 1809. ON THE PROPOSED SYSTEM[164] Of State Consolidation, &c., about 1799 In thoughtless hour some much misguided men, And more, who held a prostituted pen, From monstrous creeds a monstrous system drew, That every State into one kettle threw, And boil'd them up until the goodly mass Might for a kingdom, or a something, pass. In the gay circle of saint James's placed, From thence, no doubt, this modest plan they traced, Suit with the splendor that surrounds a king, Too many sigh'd, and wish'd to be that thing. Thence came a book (where came it but from thence?) Made up of all things but a grain of sense. Lawyers and counsellors echo'd back the note And lying journals praised the trash they wrote. Though British armies could not long prevail, Yet British politics may turn the scale: In ten short years, of freedom weary grown, The state, republic, sickens for a throne; Senates and sycophants a pattern bring A mere disguise for parliament and king. A pensioned army! Whence a plan so base?-- A despot's safety, liberty's disgrace. What saved these states from Britain's wasting hand, Who but the generous rustics of the land, A free-born race, inured to every toil, Who clear the forest and subdue the soil? They tyrants banish'd from this injured shore, And home-bred traitors may expel once more. Ye, who have propp'd the venerated cause, Who freedom honor'd, and sustain'd her laws! When thirteen states are moulded into one, Your rights are vanish'd and your glory gone; The form of freedom will alone remain-- Rome had her senate when she hugg'd her chain. Sent to revise our system,--not to change, What madness that whole system to derange, Amendments, only, was the plan in view, You scorn amendments, and destroy it too. How much deceived! would heroes of renown Scheme for themselves, and pull the fabric down, Bid in its place Columbia's column rise Inscribed with these sad words,--Here freedom lies! [164] From the 1815 edition. ON A PROPOSED NEGOTIATION[165] With the French Republic, and Political Reformation--1799 Thus to the verge of battle brought Reflection leads a happy thought, Agrees, half way, the Gaul to meet, Prepared to fight him or to treat. Fatigued with long oppression's reign, Tis time to break oppression's chain; One gem we ravish'd from one crest And time, perhaps, will take the rest. The revolutions of this age (To swell the late historian's page) Are but old prospects drawing near, The outset of a new career. What Plato saw, in ages fled, What Solon to the Athenians said, What fired the British Sydney's page, The Solon of a modern age, Is now unfolding to our view; A system liberal, great, and new, Which from a long experience springs And bodes a better course of things. And will these States, whose beam ascends, On whose resolve so much depends; Will these, whose Washington, or Greene, Gave motion to the vast machine; Will these be torpid, careless found To help the mighty wheel go round; These, who began the immortal strife, And liberty preferr'd to life. If not the cause of France we aid Yet never should the word be said That we, to royal patrons prone, Made not the cause of man our own. Could Britain here renew her sway, And we a servile homage pay, The coming age, too proud to yield, Would drive her myriads from the field. Time will mature the mighty scheme, We build on no platonic dream; The light of truth shall shine again, And save the democratic reign. [165] From the 1815 edition. An embassy, headed by Chief Justice Ellsworth, had been appointed by Adams early in 1799 for the purpose of negotiating a treaty with France, but owing to diplomatic tangles it did not depart until late in the year. STANZAS TO AN ALIEN[166] Who after a Series of Persecutions emigrated to the Southwestern Country.--1799 Remote, beneath a sultry star, Where Mississippi flows afar, I see you rambling, God knows where. Sometimes, beneath a cypress bough, When met in dreams, with spirits low, I long to tell you what I know. How matters go, in this our day, When monarchy renews her sway, And royalty begins her play. I thought you wrong to come so far Till you had seen our western star Above the mists ascended clear. I thought you right, to speed your sails If you were fond of loathsome jails, And justice with uneven scales. And so you came and spoke too free And soon they made you bend the knee, And lodged you under lock and key. Discharged at last, you made your peace With all you had, and left the place With empty purse and meagre face.-- You sped your way to other climes And left me here to teaze with rhymes The worst of men in worst of times. Where you are gone the soil is free And freedom sings from every tree, "Come quit the crowd and live with me!" Where I must stay, no joys are found; Excisemen haunt the hateful ground, And chains are forged for all around. The scheming men, with brazen throat, Would set a murdering tribe afloat To hang you for the lines you wrote. If you are safe beyond their rage Thank heaven, and not our ruling sage, Who shops us up in jail and cage. Perdition seize that odious race Who, aiming at distinguish'd place, Would life and liberty efface; With iron rod would rule the ball And, at their shrine, debase us all, Bid devils rise and angels fall. Oh wish them ill, and wish them long To be as usual in the wrong In scheming for a chain too strong. So will the happy time arrive When coming home, if then alive, You'll see them to the devil drive. [166] From the 1815 edition. STANZAS[167] Written in Blackbeard's, the Pirate's, Castle, near the Town of St. Thomas, in the West Indies.--1799 The ancient knave, who raised these walls, Now to oblivion half resign'd-- His fortress to the mind recalls The nerve that stimulates mankind; When savage force exerts its part And ruffian blood commands the heart. This pirate, known to former days, The scourge of these unhappy climes, In this strong fabric thought to raise A monument to future times: To guard himself and guard his gold, Or shelter robbers, uncontrol'd. A standard on these walls he rear'd, And here he swore the oath profane, That by his god, and by his beard, Sole, independent, he would reign; And do his best to crush the sway Of legal right and honesty. Within these walls, and in these vaults, Of princely power and wealth possess'd, Dominion hung on all his thoughts, And here he hoped an age of rest; The wealth of princes flowing in That from the Spaniards he did win. He many a chief and captain awed, Or chain'd with fetters, foot and hand; Uncheck'd, his fleets he sent abroad, Commission gave, conferr'd command; And if his sailors skulk'd or fled, He made them shorter--by a head. Half Europe's flags he bade retire From ponderous guns he hurl'd the ball-- He fill'd his glass with liquid fire And drank damnation to them all: For many a year he held the sway And thousands at his mercy lay. Confiding in his castle's strength Mann'd by a fierce, heroic crew, He blunder'd on till they at length, The model of a city drew, Where he might reign and be obey'd, And be the tyrant of all trade. Vain hope! his fort neglected stands And, crumbling, hastens to decay;-- Where, once, he train'd his daring bands The stranger scarcely finds his way: The bushes in the castle grow Where once he menaced friend and foe. In this mysterious scene of things There must be laws or who could live? There must be laws to aid the wings Of those who on the ocean strive To earn by commerce, bold and free, The honest gains of industry. [167] Text from the 1815 edition. LINES WRITTEN AT SEA[168] No pleasure on earth can afford such delights, As the heavenly view of these tropical nights: The glow of the stars, and the breeze of the sea, Are heaven--if heaven on ocean can be.-- The star of old Cancer is right overhead, And the sun in the water has travelled to bed; He is gone, as some say, to recline at his ease, And not, like ourselves, to be pestered with fleas. What pity that here is no insular spot, Where quarrels, and murder, and malice are not: Where a stranger might land, to recruit his worn crew, Replenish the casks, and the water renew. On this Empire of waves, this expanse of the main, In the track we are sailing, no island is seen: The glow of the stars, and the breath of the wind Are lost!--for they bring not the scent of the land! Huge porpoises swim, where there should be an isle, Where an Eden might bloom, or a Cyprus might smile-- From Palma,[A] thus far, with a tedious delay, Salt water and æther is all we survey! [A] The most north-westerly of the Canary Islands.--_Freneau's note._ Like an artist that's busy in melting his lead, At random it falls, and is carelessly spread, So Nature, though wisely the globe she has planned, Left the surface to chance--to be sea, or be land. [168] Unique in the edition of 1809. STANZAS[169] To the memory of General WASHINGTON, who died December 14, 1799 _Terra tegit, populus mæret, cælum habet!_ Departing with the closing age To virtue, worth, and freedom true, The chief, the patriot, and the sage To Vernon bids his last adieu: To reap in some exalted sphere The just rewards of virtue here. Thou, Washington, by heaven design'd To act a part in human things That few have known among mankind, And far beyond the task of kings; We hail you now to heaven received, Your mighty task on earth achieved. While sculpture and her sister arts, For thee their choicest wreaths prepare, Fond gratitude her share imparts And begs thy bones for burial there; Where, near Virginia's northern bound Swells the vast pile on federal ground. To call from their obscure abodes The Grecian chief, the Roman sage, The kings, the heroes, and the gods Who flourish'd in time's earlier age, Would be to class them not with you,-- Superior far, in every view. Those ancients of ferocious mould, Blood their delight, and war their trade, Their oaths profaned, their countries sold, And fetter'd nations prostrate laid; Could these, like you, assert their claim To honor and immortal fame? Those monarchs, proud of pillaged spoils, With nations shackled in their train, Returning from their desperate toils With trophies,--and their thousands slain; In all they did no traits are known Like those that honor'd Washington. Who now will save our shores from harms, The task to him so long assign'd? Who now will rouse our youth to arms Should war approach to curse mankind? Alas! no more the word you give, But in your precepts you survive. Ah, gone! and none your place supply, Nor will your equal soon appear; But that great name can only die When memory dwells no longer here, When man and all his systems must Dissolve, like you, and turn to dust. [169] From the 1815 edition. STANZAS[170] Upon the Same Subject with the Preceding The chief who freed these suffering lands From Britain's bold besieging bands, The hero, through all countries known,-- The guardian genius of his own, Is gone to that celestial bourne From whence no traveller can return, Where Scipio and where Trajan went; And heaven reclaims the soul it lent. Each heart with secret wo congeals; Down the pale cheek moist sorrow steals, And all the nobler passions join To mourn, remember, and resign. O ye, who carve the marble bust To celebrate poor human dust, And from the silent shades of death Retrieve the form but not the breath, Vain is the attempt by force of art To impress his image on the heart: It lives, it glows, in every breast, And tears of millions paint it best. Indebted to his guardian care, And great alike in peace and war, The loss they feel these States deplore,-- Their friend--their father--is no more. What will they do to avow their grief? No sighs, no tears, afford relief: Dark mourning weeds but ill express The poignant wo that all confess; Nor will the monumental stone Assuage one tear--relieve one groan. O Washington! thy honor'd dust To parent nature we entrust; Convinced that your exalted mind Still lives, but soars beyond mankind, Still acts in virtue's sacred cause, Nor asks from man his vain applause. In raptures with a theme so great, While thy famed actions they relate, Each future age from thee shall know All that is good and great below; Shall glow with pride to hand thee down To latest time, to long renown, The brightest name on freedom's page, And the first honor of our age. [170] From the 1815 edition. STANZAS[171] Occasioned by certain absurd, extravagant, and even blasphemous panegyrics and encomiums on the character of the late Gen. Washington, that appeared in several pamphlets, journals, and other periodical publications, in January, 1800 No tongue can tell, no pen describe The phrenzy of a numerous tribe, Who, by distemper'd fancy led, Insult the memory of the dead. Of old, there were in every age Who stuff'd with gods the historian's page, And raised beyond the human sphere Some who, we know, were mortal here. Such was the case, we know full well, When darkness spread her pagan spell; Mere insects, born for tombs and graves, They changed into celestial knaves; Made some, condemn'd to tombs and shrouds, Lieutenant generals in the clouds. In journals, meant to spread the news, From state to state--and we know whose-- We read a thousand idle things That madness pens, or folly sings. Was, Washington, your conquering sword Condemn'd to such a base reward? Was trash, like that we now review, The tribute to your valor due? One holds you more than mortal kind, One holds you all ethereal mind, This puts you in your saviour's seat, That makes you dreadful in retreat. One says you are become a star, One makes you more resplendent, far; One sings, that, when to death you bow'd, Old mother nature shriek'd aloud. We grieve to see such pens profane The first of chiefs, the first of men.-- To Washington--a man--who died, As _abba father_ well applied? Absurdly, in a frantic strain, Why ask him not for sun and rain?-- We sicken at the vile applause That bids him give the ocean laws. Ye patrons of the ranting strain, What temples have been rent in twain? What fiery chariots have been sent To dignify the sad event?-- O, ye profane, irreverent few, Who reason's medium never knew: On you she never glanced her beams; You carry all things to extremes. Shall they, who spring from parent earth, Pretend to more than mortal birth? Or, to the omnipotent allied, Control his heaven, or join his side? O, is there not some chosen curse, Some vengeance due, with lightning's force That far and wide destruction spreads, To burst on such irreverent heads! Had they, in life, be-praised him so, What would have been the event, I know He would have spurn'd them, with disdain, Or rush'd upon them, with his cane. He was no god, ye flattering knaves, He own'd no world, he ruled no waves; But--and exalt it, if you can, He was the upright, Honest Man. This was his glory, this outshone Those attributes you doat upon: On this strong ground he took his stand, Such virtue saved a sinking land. [171] From the 1815 edition. TO THE MEMORY OF EDWARD RUTLEDGE, ESQ.[172] Late Governor of South Carolina Removed from life's uncertain stage, In virtue firm, in honor clear,-- One of the worthies of our age, Rutledge! resigns his station here. Alike in arts of war and peace, And form'd by nature to excel, From early Rome and ancient Greece, He modell'd all his actions well. When Britons came with chains to bind, Or ravage these devoted lands, He our firm league of freedom sign'd And counsell'd how to break their bands. To the great cause of honor true, He took his part with manly pride, His spirit o'er these regions flew, The patriots' and the soldiers' guide. In arts of peace, in war's bold schemes Amongst our brightest stars he moved, The Lees, the Moultries, Sumpters, Greenes-- By all admired, by all beloved. A patriot of superior mould, He dared all foreign foes oppose, Till, from a tyrant's ashes cold, The mighty pile of freedom rose. In process of succeeding days When peace resumed her joyous reign, With laurel wreaths and twining bays He sought less active life again. There, warm to plead the orphan's cause From misery's eye to dry the tear, He stood where justice guards the laws At once humane, at once severe. 'Twas not his firm enlighten'd mind, So ardent in affairs of state; 'Twas not that he in armies shined That made him so completely great: Persuasion dwelt upon his tongue, He spoke--all hush'd, and all were awed;-- From all he said conviction sprung, And crowds were eager to applaud. Thus long esteem'd, thus early loved, The tender husband, friend sincere; The parent, patriot, sage, approved, Had now survived his fiftieth year-- Had now the highest honors met That Carolina could bestow; Presiding o'er that potent state Where streams of wealth and plenty flow. Where labor spreads her rural reign To western regions bold and free; And commerce on the Atlantic main Wafts her rich stores of industry: Then left this stage of human things To shine in a sublimer sphere Where time to one assemblage brings All virtuous minds, all hearts sincere. [172] From the 1815 edition. Edward Rutledge was a member of the Continental Congress from South Carolina and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was a conspicuous figure during the whole war. He was elected governor of South Carolina in 1798, but died January 23, 1800, before completing his term. ON THE DEPARTURE OF PETER PORCUPINE[173] For England A bird of night attends the sail That now towards us turns her tail With Porcupine, escaped from jail. O may the sharks enjoy their bait: He came such mischief to create We wish him not a better fate. This hero of the pension'd pen Has left our shores, and left his den To write at home for English men. Five thousand dollars,[174] we may guess, Have made his pension something less-- So, Peter left us,--in distress. He writ, and writ, and writ so long[A] That sheriff came, with writ more strong, And he went off, and all went wrong. [A] For several years he published newspapers and other periodical works in Philadelphia which had a vast circulation; the whole scope and tendency of which was, as is well remembered, to render the republican institutions of this country contemptible, as well as odious to the people; and by discontenting them with their government, to open the way for the introduction of a monarchial system. He was thought to be a pensioner of the English government; but whether such or not is uncertain.--_Freneau's note._ May southern gales that vex the main, Or Boreas, with his whistling train Make Peter howl and howl again. I hear him screech, I hear him shout!-- The storm has put his Rush light[B] out-- I see him famish'd with sour crout. [B] A weekly pamphlet publication, in which the political as well as private character of Dr. Rush, and other persons of celebrity, was vilified to the lowest degree of scurrility, malignancy and falsehood.--_Ib._ May on the groaning vessel's side All Neptune's ruffian strength be try'd Till every seam is gaping wide. And while the waves about him swell May not one triton blow the shell (A sign at sea of doing well): But should he reach the british shore, (The land that englishmen adore) One trouble will he find and more: His pen will run at such a rate, His malice so provoke the great, They soon will drive him out of date. With broken heart and blunted pen He'll sink among the little men Or scribble in some Newgate den. Alack, alack! he might have stay'd And followed here the scribbling trade, And lived without the royal aid. But democratic laws he hated, Our government he so be-rated That his own projects he defeated. He took his leave from Sandy-Hook, And parted with a surly look, That all observed and few mistook. [173] From the 1815 edition. William Cobbett sailed for England in June, 1800. [174] Cobbett was sued by Dr. Rush for libel, was found guilty, and compelled to pay a fine of $5,000. THE NAUTICAL RENDEZVOUS[175] Written at a house in Guadaloupe, in 1800, where they were collecting Recruits for a Privateer The ship preparing for the main Enlists a wild, but gallant train, Who in a moving jail would roam Disgusted with the world at home. They quit the fields and quit the trees To seek their bread on stormy seas; Perhaps to see the land no more, Or see, but not enjoy the shore. There must be some as this world goes Who every joy and pleasure lose, And round the world at random stray To gain their bread the shortest way. They hate the ax, they hate the hoe And execrate the rural plough, The mossy bank, the sylvan shade Where once they wrought, where once they play'd: Prefer a boisterous, mad career, A broken leg, and wounds severe, To all the joys that can be found On mountain top or furrow'd ground. A hammock holds them when they sleep; A tomb, when dying, in the deep, A crowded deck, a cann of beer These sons of Amphitrite prefer To all the verdure of the fields Or all a quiet pillow yields. There must be such a nervous race, Who venture all, and no disgrace; Who will support through every blast, The shatter'd ship, the falling mast-- Who will support through every sea The sacred cause of liberty, And every foe to ruin drag Who aims to strike the gallic flag. [175] From the 1815 edition. TO THE MEMORY[176] Of the Late �danus Burke, Esq., of South-Carolina _Quiesco--ubi saeva indignatio, Ulterius cor lacerare nequit!_ A land enslaved, his generous heart disdain'd Which tyrants fetter'd, and where tyrants reign'd: Disgusted there, he left the hibernian shore The laws that bound him, and the isle that bore. Bold, open, free, he call'd the world his own, Preferr'd our new republics to a throne; And lent his aid their insults to repay, Repel the britons and to win the day. In every art of subtlety untaught, He spoke no more, than "just the thing he ought;" For justice warm, he spurn'd, with just disdain, The mean evasion, and the law's chicane. Burke! to thy shade we pay this last address, And only say what all, who knew, confess: Your virtues were not of the milder kind, But rugged independence ruled your mind, And, stern, in all that binds to honor's cause, No interest sway'd you to desert her laws. Then rest in peace, the portion of the just, Where Carolina guards your honor'd dust: Beneath a tree, remote, obscure, you sleep, But all the sister virtues, round you, weep; Your native worth, no tongue, no time arraigns, That last memorial, and the best remains! [176] From the edition of 1815. �danus Burke, a native of Ireland, died in Charleston, S. C., March 30, 1802. He was a soldier of the Revolution, a judge of the State Supreme Court, and a member of the first Federal Congress. He was a man of the purest patriotism, and his influence was wide and potent. TO THE REV. SAMUEL STANHOPE SMITH, D.D.[177] And president of Nassau-hall, at Princeton, New-Jersey, on the rebuilding of that noble edifice, which had been destroyed by fire This honor'd pile, so late in ashes laid, Once more emerges, by your generous aid; Your aid, and their's, who through our vast domain, Befriend the muses, and their cause sustain. In flames involved, that stately fabric fell, Where, long presiding, you deserved so well; But to the dust when you beheld it fall, The honor'd, famed, majestic, Nassau-Hall, Not then repining in that darkened hour Your native genius show'd its native power, And plann'd the means to bid a structure rise Pride of the arts, and favorite of the wise. For this we saw you trace the unwearied mile And saw the friends of Nassau on you smile; They to your efforts lent their generous aid, And every honor to your genius paid, To the firm patron of the arts they gave What Alfred lavish'd, and what arts should have. For this we saw you rove the southern waste In our Columbia's milder climates placed, Those happier shores, where Carolina proves The friend of Princeton's academic groves, Where Georgia owns the wreath to science due And honor'd science, genius, art, and you: And Charleston every generous wish return'd, Sigh'd for the loss, and for her favorite mourn'd, Proud of her sons, who by your cares are seen Lights of the world, and pride of social man. There Ramsay met you, esculapian sage, The famed historian of a warring age, His word gave vigor to your vast design, And his strong efforts equall'd all but thine. Nassau revived, from thence in time proceed Chiefs, who shall empire sway, or legions lead, Who, warm'd with all that philosophic glow Which Greece, or Rome, or reasoning powers bestow, Shall to mankind the friends and guardians be Shall make them virtuous, and preserve them free. From that lost pile, which, now to ashes turn'd; The sage regretted and the muses mourn'd, Sprung, once, a race who firm to freedom's cause, Repell'd oppression and despotic laws, Unsceptered kings, or one at least dismiss'd, With half the lords and prefects on his list: Such, early, here imbibed the sacred flame That glanced from heaven, or from true science came; With these enroll'd, be every honor done To our firm statesman, patriot, Madison, Form'd to the purpose of a reasoning age, To raise its genius, and direct its rage. This tribute from a friendly heart receive, O Smith! which must your kind indulgence crave, If half a stranger to the poet's lay, It fails your just, your due reward to pay. [177] The text is from the edition of 1815. The interior of Nassau Hall was destroyed by fire March 6, 1802. The damage was promptly repaired by generous contributions from the alumni and friends of the institution. President Smith took an active part in the work of rebuilding and it was in no small measure due to his efforts that the edifice was so quickly restored. Nassau Hall, the oldest and because of its historical associations the most interesting of the Princeton buildings, was erected in 1756 from plans drawn by Robert Smith and Dr. Shippen of Philadelphia. It was for many years the handsomest and most commodious academic structure in the colonies and as such attracted no little attention. During the Revolution it served repeatedly as barracks and hospital for both armies and suffered considerable damage. From the 26th of June until the 4th of November, 1783, it was the national capitol. Within its walls the Congress of the nation found a safe retreat and for more than four months held quiet session in the spacious library-room remote from the mutinous troops at Philadelphia. Here the Minister from the States General of Holland, the first ambassador accredited to America after the declaration of peace was received, and here the grateful acknowledgments of Congress were tendered Washington for his services in establishing the freedom and independence of the United States. STANZAS PUBLISHED AT THE PROCESSION TO THE TOMB OF THE PATRIOTS In the Vicinity of the Former Stations of the Prison Ships, at New-York.[178] Beneath these banks, along this shore, And underneath the waters, more Forgotten corpses rest; More bones by cruelty consigned To death, than shall be told mankind To chill the feeling breast: More bones of those who, dying here In floating dungeons, anchored near, A prey to fierce disease, Than fame in her recording page Will tell some late enquiring age, When telling things like these. Ah me! what ills, what sighs, what groans, What spectre forms, what moving moans, What woes on woes were found; When here oppressed, insulted, crossed, The vigour of the soul was lost In miseries thickening round. The youths of firm undaunted mind, To climate nor to coast confined, All misery taught to bear-- I saw them, as the sail they spread, I saw them by misfortune led To capture, and to care. Though night and storms were round them cast, They climbed the well-supported mast, And reefed the fluttering sail; Though thunders roared and lightnings glared, They toil, nor death, nor danger feared, They braved the loudest gale.-- Great Cause, that brought them all their woe: Thou, Freedom!--bade their spirits glow; But forced, at last, to yield, Died in despair each sickening crew: They vanished from the world--but you, Columbia, kept the field. They sunk, unpitied, in their bloom,-- They scarcely found a shallow tomb To hide the naked bones: For, feeble was the nervous hand That once could toil, or once command The force of Neptune's sons. In aid of that immortal cause Which spurned at England's tyrant laws, These passed the troubled main; They dared the seas she called her own, To meet the ruffians of a throne, And honour's purpose gain. All generous--while that power was proved, To war the brave adventurers moved, And catched the seaman's art, Met on their own domain, the crew Of foreign slaves, that never knew The independent heart. Thou, Independence, vast design; The efforts of the brave were thine, When doubtful all, and dark; It was a chaos to explore; It seemed all sea, without a shore, Nor on that sea an ark. For You, the young, the firm, the brave, Too often met an early grave, Unnoticed and unknown: On naked shores were seen to lie, In scorching heats were doomed to die With agonizing groan. By strength, or chance, if some survived Disease, which hosts of life deprived, That life they should devote, To venture all in Freedom's cause, To combat tyrants, and their laws, So felt near this sad spot. Yes--and the spirit which began, (We swear by all that's great in man) That spirit shall go on, To brighten and illume the mind, 'Till tyrants vanish from mankind And Tyranny is Done. [178] From the edition of 1809. THE TOMB OF THE PATRIOTS[179][A] Quae Tiberine, videbis Funera, cum, tumulum praeter labore recentum! _Virg._ [A] Occasioned by the general procession of many thousands of the citizens of New York on the 26th of May, 1808, to inter the bones and skeletons of american prisoners who perished in the old Jersey, and other prison ships, during the revolutionary war; and which were now first discovered by the wasting of the shores and banks on Long Island, where they had been left.--_Freneau's note._ When Philip's son possess'd his native lands And train'd on grecian fields his grecian bands, In Thebes subdued, or Athens near her fall, He saw no honor, or despised it all. To be reduced to universal sway The world's vast prospect in perspective lay;-- While yet restricted to Larissa's plain He cursed his fortune for a lot so mean, On all his steps the gloom of sadness hung, And fierce resentment all his bosom stung That fortune's whim restrain'd to such a floor, Had done so little, and might do no more. Mercantile Tyre his laboring mind oppress'd, The persian throne deprived his soul of rest-- The world his stage, he meant to play his part, And unsubjected India gall'd his heart! Look to the east where Tamerlane display'd His crescent[B] moons and nations prostrate laid, March where he would, the world before him bow'd In conquest mighty, as of conquest proud-- What was the event? let tragic story tell While sad sensations in the bosom swell-- What were the effects? in every step we trace The wasteful havoc of a royal race, Once fertile fields a howling desert made The town in ashes, or the town decay'd, Degraded man to native wildness turn'd, His prospects clouded and his commerce spurn'd-- If such the outset of this mad career What will the last disgusting scene appear, Of all he conquer'd, when no more remains Than vagrant subjects, or unpeopled plains! [B] The three crescent moons in the turkish military standard, which had their origin, it is said, from the asiatic Tartars. Timurbeck (or Tamerlane) was of tartarian extraction.--_Freneau's note._ Thus, when ambition prompts the ardent mind, The soul, eccentric, frantic, unconfined, To peace a stranger, soars to heights unknown, And, slighting reason, yields the will to none; Mere passion rules, degrading powers prevail, And cool reflection quits the unbalanced scale. It leaves the haunts of happiness and rest To float on winds, disorder'd and unblest, Quits all the calm that nature meant for man To find some prize, or form the aspiring plan; That plan ungain'd, the object cheats the view, Or, if attain'd, they other marks pursue; Till all is closed in disappointment's shade And folly wonders at the flight she made: Ambition's self finds every prospect vain, The visions vanish, and the glooms remain. And such the vice, with nations as with man, Such the great failing since the world began: To power exalted, as to power they rose By honest toils, and humbling all their foes; That zenith gain'd, they covet vast domains And all, that pride from vast possession gains, Till glittering visions bring the uneasy sigh And uncontrol'd dominion blasts the eye. Britain! we cite you to our bar, once more; What but ambition urged you to our shore?-- To abridge our native rights, seven years you strove; Seven years were ours your arm of death to prove, To find, that conquest was your sovereign view; Your aims, to fetter, humble, and subdue, To seize a soil which not your labor till'd When the rude native scarcely we repell'd, When, with unbounded rage, their nations swore To hurl the out-law'd stranger from their shore, Or swell the torrent with their thousands slain No more to approach them, or molest their reign.-- What did we ask?--what right but reason owns? Yet even the mild petition met your frowns. Submission, only, to a monarch's will Could calm your rage, or bid your storm be still, Before our eyes the angry shades appear Of those, whose relics we this day inter: They live, they speak, reproach you, and complain Their lives were shorten'd by your galling chain: They aim their shafts, directed to your breast,-- Let rage, and fierce resentment tell the rest. These coffins, tokens of our last regard, These mouldering bones your vengeance might have spared.-- If once, in life, they met you on the main, If to your arms they yielded on the plain,-- Man, once a captive, all respect should claim That Britain gave, before her days of shame. How changed their lot! in floating dungeons thrown, They sigh'd unpitied, and relieved by none: In want of all that nature's wants demand, They met destruction from some traitor's hand, Who treated all with death or poison here, Or the last groan, with ridicule severe. A sickening languor to the soul returns And kindling passion at the motive spurns: The murders here, did we at length display Would more than paint an indian tyrant's sway: Then hush the theme, and to the dust restore These, once so wretched near Manhattan's shore, When tyrants ruled, whose hearts no mercy felt: In blood they wallow'd as in death they dealt. Thou who shalt come, by sad reflection taught, To seek on Nassau's isle this lonely vault; Think, when surveying this too gloomy scene, Think what, had heaven decreed, you might have been. When, with the rest, you pass'd the weary hour Chain'd or subjected to some ruffian's power, Think, as you see the sad procession pass'd, Think what these are, and you must be at last.-- Learn, as you hope to find your heart's applause, To love your country and respect her laws; Revere the sages, who your rights explain'd, Revere the patriots, who your cause sustain'd. Your country's Hero, rising to your view, Attend his precepts, and with care pursue, He first to shield you, rais'd his powerful arm, To honor steady as for freedom warm; When she relumed her half-extinguish'd fire, Then, not till then, did Washington retire, And left a light, a radiance to display, And mark his efforts, when he led the way. When war's long waste your independence crown'd And Hudson heard th' invigorating sound! His was the task; to him the part assign'd To paralize the vultures of mankind. Admit no tyrants, to debase your minds; Some selfish motive to all tyrants binds; If robed in ermine or in scarlet clad, The worst of idiots is a king run mad: And Rome's worst prince accomplish'd by a word No more, than by his councils, George the third! How oft has rugged nature charged my pen With gall, to shed it on that worst of men, Who, dumb to all that reason might decide, Mankind, their reason, and their prayers defy'd: Who, firm to all that phrenzy could pursue, Explored the ancient world, to chain the new; And tired the despot, search'd each dark recess, And ransack'd hell, to find the hireling hesse:-- Could he be here, a witness to this day, With calm delight he would this scene survey, Would see unmoved, with apathy of mind, The gaping vault, this havoc of mankind! Without a tear, these mouldering bones review, That fell by ruffian hands--employ'd by you. His phrenzy, rampant with the right divine, Inspired a nation with a black design, To blast with poison, like a wizard's spell, And plant on man the characters of hell!-- Thou, who shalt come, of feeling mind possest, And, heaven's first gift, the patriotic breast, On this bleak coast, to tread the island plain, Think, what revenge disgraced a monarch's reign! Who, not content with wealth and power we gave, Forgot the subject, to enthral the slave: Such was his hope;--that hope to realize He sent his myriads to demand the prize; What were the splendid trophies he acquired? Were these bleach'd bones the trophies he admired? While passion fires, or kindred sorrows fall, Ask not, if this sequester'd cell is all, Is all that honors these collected bones?-- Enough is done to stigmatize all thrones: Ask not, while passion with resentment fires, Why to the skies no monument aspires?-- Enough is done to rouse the patriot glow And bid the rising race your feelings know. [179] From the edition of 1815. ON THE PEAK OF PICO ONE OF THE AZORES, OR WESTWARD ISLANDS[180] Attracted to this airy steep Above the subject hills, Ocean, from his surrounding deep The urn of Pico fills. Thence gushing streams, unstinted, stray To glad the mountain's side; Or, winding through the vallies, gay, Through fields, and groves, and vineyards glide. To him the plains their verdure owe Confessing what your smiles bestow, Thou Peak of the Azores. From day to day the unwearied sail Surveys your towering cone, And when th' adjacent prospects fail, And neighboring isles no more they hail, You meet the eye alone. Twice forty miles the exploring eye Discerns you o'er the waste, Now, a blue turret in the sky When not by mists embraced. Long may you stand, the friendly mark, To those who sail afar, A spot that guides the wandering barque, A second polar star. [180] From the edition of 1815. Freneau sailed for the Madeira Islands May 12, 1803, arriving there on June 23. He was back in Charleston on August 16 following. A BACCHANALIAN DIALOGUE Written 1803[181] Arrived at Madeira, the island of vines, Where mountains and vallies abound, Where the sun the wild juice of the cluster refines, To gladden the magical ground: As pensive I stray'd in her elegant shade, Now halting and now on the move, Old Bacchus I met, with a crown on his head, In the darkest recess of a grove. I met him with awe, but no symptom of fear As I roved by his mountains and springs, When he said with a sneer, "how dare you come here, You hater of despots and kings?-- Do you know that a prince, and a regent renown'd Presides in this island of wine? Whose fame on the earth has encircled it round And spreads from the pole to the line? Haste away with your barque: on the foam of the main To Charleston I bid you repair: There drink your Jamaica, that maddens the brain; You shall have no Madeira--I swear." "Dear Bacchus," (I answered) for Bacchus it was That spoke in this menacing tone: I knew by the smirk and the flush on his face It was Bacchus, and Bacchus alone-- "Dear Bacchus, (I answered) ah, why so severe?-- Since your nectar abundantly flows, Allow me one cargo--without it I fear Some people will soon come to blows: I left them in wrangles, disorder, and strife, Political feuds were so high, I was sick of their quarrels, and sick of my life, And almost requested to die." The deity smiling, replied, "I relent:-- For the sake of your coming so far, Here, taste of my choicest--go, tell them repent, And cease their political war. With the cargo I send, you may say, I intend To hush them to peace and repose; With this present of mine, on the wings of the wind You shall travel, and tell them, here goes A health to old Bacchus! who sends them the best Of the nectar his island affords, The soul of the feast and the joy of the guest, Too good for your monarchs and lords. No rivals have I in this insular waste, Alone will I govern the isle With a king at my feet, and a court to my taste, And all in the popular style. But a spirit there is in the order of things, To me it is perfectly plain, That will strike at the scepters of despots and kings, And only king Bacchus remain." [181] From edition of 1815. STANZAS WRITTEN AT THE ISLAND OF MADEIRA[182] On the fatal and unprecedented torrents of water which collected from the mountains on the ninth of October, 1803, and destroyed a considerable part of the city of Funchal, drowned a vast number of people, and damaged, to a great amount, several plantations and villages in that neighborhood. The rude attack, if none will tell, On Bacchus, in his favorite isle; If none in verse describe it well, If none assume a poet's style These devastations to display;-- Attend me, and perhaps I may. To those who own the feeling heart This tragic scene I would present, No fiction, or the work of art, Nor merely for the fancy meant: Twas all a shade, a darken'd scene, Old Noah's deluge come again! From hills beyond the clouds that soar, The vaults of heaven, the torrents run, And rushing with resistless power, Assail'd the island of the sun: Fond nature saw the blasted vine, And seem'd to sicken and repine. As skyward stream'd the electric fire The heavens emblazed, or wrapt in gloom; The clouds appear, the clouds retire And terror said, "the time is come When all the groves, and hill, and plain Will sink to ocean's bed again." The cheery god, who loves to smile And gladness to the heart bestows, Almost resolved to quit his isle, And in unwonted passion rose; He sought his caves in wild dismay And left the heavens to have their way. The whistling winds had ceased to blow; Not one, of all the aerial train-- No gale to aid that night of wo Disturb'd the slumbers of the main; In distant woods they silent slept; Or, in the clouds, the tempest kept. The bursting rains in seas descend, Machico[A] heard the distant roar, And lightnings, while the heavens they rend, Show'd ruin marching to the shore: Egyptian darkness brought her gloom And fear foreboded nature's doom. [A] A distant village on the island.--_Freneau's note._ The heavens on fire, an ocean's force Seized forests, vineyards, herds, and men, And swelling streams from every source Bade ancient chaos come again: Through Fonchal's[B] road their courses held And ocean saw his waves repell'd. [B] The capital town of the island.--_Ibid._ Ill fated town!--what works of pride In one short hour were swept away! Huge piles that time had long defy'd, In ruthless ruin scatter'd lay: Some buried in the opening deep-- With crowds dismiss'd to endless sleep, From her fond arms the daughter torn, The mother saw destruction near; Both on the whirling surge were borne, Forgetful of the farewell tear: At distance torn, with feeble cries, Far from her arms the infant dies. Her dear delight, her darling boy In morn of days and dawning bloom, This opening bud of promised joy Too early found a watery tomb, Or floated on the briny waste; No more beloved, no more embraced. From heights immense, with force unknown, Enormous rocks and mangled trees Were headlong hurl'd and hurrying down, Fix'd their foundation in the seas! Or, rushing with a mountain's weight, Hurl'd to the deeps their domes of state. On heaven intent the affrighted priest Where church was left, to churches ran, With suppliant voice the skies addrest, And wail'd the wickedness of man: For which he thought, this scourge was meant, And, weeping, said, repent, repent! But Santa Clara's lofty walls, Where pines through life the pious nun, Whose prison to the mind recalls What superstition's power has done: No conquest there the floods essay'd, Religion guarded man and maid. What seem'd beyond the cannon's power, The walls of rock, were torn away; To ruin sunk the church and tower, And no respect the flood would pay To silver saints, or saints of wood, The bishop's cap, the friar's hood. Hard was their fate! more happy thou The lady of the mountain tall;[C] When desolation raged below She stood secure, and scorn'd it all, Where Gordon,[D] for retirement, chose His groves, his gardens, and the muse. [C] Nossa Senyora da Montana, a fine church on a high eminence in the mountains.--_Freneau's note._ [D] A respectable gentleman of the island.--_Ibid._ Who on this valley's drowning bed Would plan a street, or build again, Unthinking as the Brazen head[E] For wretches builds a source of pain, A church, a street, that soon or late May share the same, or a worse fate. [E] A rocky promontory a few miles eastward of the capital.--_Ibid._ Let some vast bridge assume their place Like those the romans raised of old, With arches, firm as nature's base, Of architecture grand and bold; So will the existing race engage The thanks of a succeeding age. Pontinia[F] long must wear the marks Of this wide-wasting scene of wo, Where near the Loo, the tar embarks When prosperous winds, to waft him, blow: These ravages may time repair, But he and I will not be there. [F] The western quarter, near the Loo fort, where is the only eligible place of landing.--_Ibid._ [182] From the edition of 1815. Freneau sailed from Charleston January 25, 1804, and on March 7 he arrived at Madeira. On April 15 he was at Santa Cruz, and on May 11 he sailed for home. GENERAL NOTE. From the best accounts that could be procured at Madeira, there perished in and near the city of Funchal, five hundred and fifty persons. The ravages were chiefly confined to the eastern parts of the town where the loss was immense in bridges, houses, streets and other property, public as well as private--there was one magnificent church totally destroyed, standing near the sea, and called in the portuguese tongue, Nossa Senyora da Caillou (lady of the beach) besides this, there were five handsome chapels carried away. Five very considerable streets with their immense stone buildings have entirely disappeared, or but some insignificant parts remaining. The water rose in a short space of time from 14 to 16 feet in the adjacent parts of the city, and bursting into the buildings, where it did not much injure the latter, it greatly damaged the merchantile property lodged therein. There were about two hundred persons supposed to be lost in other parts of the island, particularly in the villages, and small towns. The following circumstance it was asserted, added not a little to the devastations occasioned by the accumulation of water in the vallies. The governor, with several other considerable landholders in the mountains, had, for several years back, been in the practice of erecting stone dams across the vast and spacious valley above the city, at different intervals of distance for the purpose of watering the adjacent grounds, or leading off streams in a variety of directions--when the immense body of rain fell in October last, all this gave way, and carried death and destruction therewith.--_Freneau's note._ ON THE PEAK OF TENERIFFE 1804[183] No mean, no human artist laid The base of this prodigious pile, The towering peak--but nature said Let this adorn Tenaria's isle; And be my work for ages found The polar star to islands round. The conic-point that meets the skies Indebted to volcanic fire, First from the ocean bid to rise, To heaven was suffer'd to aspire; But man, ambitious, did not dare To plant one habitation there: For torrents from the mountain came; What molten floods were seen to glow! Expanded sheets of vivid flame, To inundate the world below! These, older than the historian's page Once bellow'd forth vext nature's rage. In ages past, as may again, Such lavas from those ridges run. And hastening to the astonish'd main Exposed earth's entrails to the sun; These, barren, once, neglected, dead, Are now with groves and pastures spread. Upon the verdant, scented lawn The flowers a thousand sweets disperse, And pictures, there, by nature drawn, Inspire some island poet's verse, While streams through every valley rove To bless the garden, grace the grove. To blast a scene above all praise Should fate, at last, be so severe, May this not hap' in Julia's[A] days,-- While Barrey[A] dwells all honor'd, here: While Little[A] lives, of generous mind, Or Armstrong,[A] social as refined.-- [A] A lady, and gentlemen of the first respectability, then residing at Santa Cruz, san Christoval de Laguna, and Port Oratava in the island of Teneriffe.--_Freneau's note._ [183] From the edition of 1815. ANSWER TO A CARD OF INVITATION To visit a nunnery at Garrichica, on the north side of Teneriffe[184] It came to hand, your friendly card, No doubt, a token of regard; But time is short, and I must leave Your pensive town of Oratave, And, soon departing, well you know, Have many a weary mile to go. Then stay and sip Canary wines, While I return to oaks and pines, To rail at kings, or court the muse, To smoke a pipe, or turn recluse, To think upon adventures past-- To think of what must come at last-- To drive the quill--and--to be brief, To think no more of Teneriffe.-- How happy you who once a week, Can storm a fort at Garrichique, Or talk, familiar with the nuns Secluded there with Levi's sons; To see them smile, or hear them prate, Or chant, and chat behind the grate! All this is heaven, I half suspect, And who would such a heaven neglect? All I can say is what I mean, May you embrace each Iphigene, And hug and kiss them all the while, These fair Calypsoes of the isle: Then if what Sappho said, be true, Blest as the immortal gods are you. For me, not favor'd so by fate, I venture not behind the grate: There dragons guard the golden fleece, And nymphs immured find no release: Forbidden fruit you weekly see, Forbidden fruit on every tree, When he who tastes, may look for strife, Where he who touches ventures life. The jealous priests, with threatening eye Look hard at all approaching nigh: The monks have charge of brittle ware, The friar bids you have a care; That they alone the fruit may eat That fills religion's last retreat: The mother abbess looks as sour'd As if you had the fruit devour'd, And bids the stranger haste away,-- Not rich enough for fruit to pay. How much unlike, our western fair, Who breathe the sweets of freedom's air; Go where they please, do what they will, Themselves are their own guardians still:-- Then come, and on our distant shore Some blooming rural nymph adore; And do not make the day remote, For time advances, quick as thought, When thus some grave rebuke will say When you approach the maiden gay: 'You should have courted in your prime, 'Our Anastasia's, at that time 'When blood ran quick, and Hymen said, 'Colin! my laws must be obey'd.' Your card to slight, I'm much distrest, Your card has robb'd me of my rest: Should I attempt the nuns to accost The priests might growl, and all be lost: My cash might fail me when to pay; No chance, perhaps, to run away;-- So, I decline the needless task Return to Charleston, with the cask Of wine, you send from Teneriffe, To glad some hearts, and dry up grief: I add, some dangerous neighbors here May disappoint my hopes I fear; The breakers near the vessel roll; The lee-ward shore, the rocky shoal! The whitening seas that constant lave The craggy strand of Oratave; The expected gale, the adjacent rock Each moment threatens all our stock, And Neptune, in his giant cup Stands lurking near, to gulp it up. But here's a health to Neptune's sons Who man the yard--nor dream of nuns. [184] From the edition of 1815. ON SENIORA JULIA Leaving a Dance, under Pretence of Drowsiness[185] She, at the soul enlivening, ball, And in the lamp illumined hall But small amusement found; She shunn'd the cards' bewitching play, She shunn'd the noisy and the gay, Nor cared for music's sound. No nymph discover'd so much spleen, Was so reserved as Julia, seen On that enchanting night: And yet she had her part to say When young Almagro shared the play, Then cards were her delight. But he retired, amid the dance; He heard, he said, of news from France, And of a serious cast: He wish'd to know beyond all doubt, What Bonaparte was now about, How long his sway would last. Then, Julia made a good retreat, But left the assembly incomplete; She was with sleep oppress'd.-- Who shall the midnight dance prolong Who lead the minuet, raise the song Where Julia is no guest? Yet, love declared her judgment right, And whisper'd, when she bade good night And feign'd an aching head, "While some retreat and some advance, Let them enjoy the festive dance, You, Julia, go to bed." [185] From the edition of 1815. LINES ON SENIORA JULIA of Port Oratave[186] Adorn'd with every charm that beauty gives, That nature lends, or female kind receives, Good sense and virtue on each feature shine; She is--she is not--yes, she is divine. She speaks, she moves with all attracting grace, And smiles display the angel on the face; Her aspect all, what female would not share? What youth but worship, with a mind so fair? In this famed isle, the cloud-capp'd Teneriffe, Where health abounds and languor finds relief; In this bright isle, where Julia treads the plain, What rapture fires the bosom of the swain! At her approach, the breast untaught to glow, Like the vast peak, retains eternal snow. Feels not the first, best ardors of the mind; Respect and awe, to love and friendship join'd. When to Laguna's[A] heights she deigns to stray, To myrtle bowers, and gardens ever gay, Where spring eternal on the fragrant grove Breathes the bright scenes of harmony and love; All eyes, attracted, by her graceful mein View her, the unrivall'd favorite of the green, And when, too soon, she would the garden leave, See Paradise forsaken by its Eve. [A] An ancient town once the capital. Four miles from the sea.--_Freneau's note._ Return bright nymph, attractive as admired, And be what Plato from your sex required; Mild as your clime, that rarely knows a storm, The angelic nature in a female form. Canary's[B] towns their splendid halls prepare, But all is dark, when Julia is not there. Not Oratava, on the sea-beat shore, In her gay circles finds one Julia more, Not high Lavelia[C] boasts so sweet a face; Not Garrachica could yourself replace; Not old Laguna can supply your loss, Nor yet the city of the holy-cross.[D] [B] Canary, a large island south eastward of Teneriffe.--_Ibid._ [C] An old city in the mountains.--_Ibid._ [D] Santa Cruz, the Capital; on the southeast quarter of the island.--_Ibid._ Where love and passion, from the world conceal'd: Devotion's winter has to frost congeal'd; Yet beauty, there, adorns the brilliant dome, Invites her loves, and bids her votaries come; Fair Santa-Cruz her beauty, too, commands, And, was but Julia there, unrivall'd stands. Flush'd with the blessings of the generous vine, The island bards, to honor you, combine; The stranger guest, all tongues, when you appear, Confess you, lovely, charming, all things dear; Among the rest, accept my homely lay: The last respect I can to Julia pay: A different subject soon my verse awaits, Contending powers, or disunited states; Yet shall remembrance renovate the past, And, when you die, your name unfading last: Though mists obscure, or oceans round me swell, To the deep seas I go, the world to tell That Julia, foremost, does this isle engage, And moves the first, bright Venus of my page. [186] From the edition of 1815. ON A RURAL NYMPH Descending from one of the Madeira mountains, with a bundle of fuel wood, on her head[187] Six miles, and more, with nimble foot She came from some sequestered spot, A handsome, swarthy, rustic maid With furze and fern, upon her head: The burthen hid a bonnet blue, The only hat, perhaps, she knew, No slippers on her feet were seen; Yet every step display'd a mein As if she might in courts appear, Though placed by wayward fortune here. An english man, who saw her, said, Your burthen is too heavy laid, Dear girl your lot is rather hard, And, after all, a poor reward: This is not labor suiting you, Come with me home to England go, And you shall have a coach and four, A silken gown--and something more. 'Disturb me not (the girl replied) 'I choose to walk--let others ride: 'I would not leave yond' rugged hill 'To have your London at my will-- 'You are too great for such as I:--' When thus the briton made reply: 'Had I but thirty years to spare, 'And you precisely what you are, 'Had seen you thirty years ago 'In style of living, high or low, 'You should have been a lady gay, 'And dizzen'd out as fine as May: 'Why stay you here, to face the sun, 'And drudging till the day is done, 'While little to the purse it brings 'But little store of little things?' She said, 'before the sun was up 'I finish'd with my chocolate cup: 'A hank of yarn I fairly spun, 'And, when the hank of yarn was done, 'To have a fire, and cook our mess 'I travell'd yonder wilderness; 'I climb'd a mountain very tall, 'Unwearied, and without a fall, 'And gather'd up this little pack 'Which now you see me carrying back;-- 'Your northern girls at this might laugh, 'But such a jaunt would kill them half-- 'Disturb me not, I must go on; 'Ten minutes, while I talk, are gone.'-- If she grew rich by hanks of yarn, Is more than we shall ever learn; If thrive she did by climbing hills, No history or tradition tells; But this we know, and this we say, That where a despot holds the sway, To pay the tax of king and queen The common herd are poor and mean. The slaves of lords the slaves of priests, And nearly saddled, like the beasts.-- Where liberty erects her reign Dulcina would have had her swain, With horse and cow--which she had not, Nor ever to possess them thought: She would have had, to save her feet, A pair of shoes and suit complete. A decent dress, and not of rags, A state above the rank of hags; A language if not over fine, At least above the beggar's whine. Yet such attend on fortune's frowns, And such support the pride of crowns. [187] From the edition of 1815. ON GENERAL MIRANDA'S EXPEDITION Towards the Caraccas, Spanish Provinces in South America, February--1805[188] To execute a vast design, The soul, Miranda, was not thine: With you the fates did not combine To make an empire free. We saw you spread Leander's sail, We saw the adverse winds prevail, Sad omen that the cause would fail That led you to the sea. By feeble winds the sail was fill'd By feebler hands the helm was held-- We saw you from the port repell'd[A] You might have made your own. We saw you leave a manly crew To the base spaniard, to imbrue His hands in blood--and not a few Were on his mercy thrown: [A] Porto Cavallo, or Cabello, a seaport town of Terra Firma, in South America, on the coast of the Caraccas, and the Caribbean Sea; said to have been the first object of Miranda's expedition.--_Freneau's note._ In dungeons vile they pass'd the day, Far from their country, far away From pitying friends, from liberty! That years could scarce retrieve! Twas thus Miranda play'd his game; But who with him should share the blame? Perhaps if we the men did name, Credulity would not believe! [188] From the edition of 1815. Miranda was a Spanish-American revolutionist, who devoted his life to the emancipation of Venezuela from Spanish rule. His first expedition was a failure. ON THE ABUSE OF HUMAN POWER As exercised over opinion[189] What human power shall dare to bind The mere opinions of the mind? Must man at that tribunal bow Which will no range to thought allow, But his best powers would sway or sink, And idly tells him what to Think? Yes! there are such, and such are taught To fetter every power of thought; To chain the mind, or bend it down To some mean system of their own, And make religion's sacred cause Amenable to human laws. Has human power the simplest claim Our hearts to sway, our thoughts to tame; Shall she the rights of heaven assert, Can she to falsehood truth convert, Or truth again to falsehood turn, And at the test of reason spurn? All human sense, all craft must fail And all its strength will nought avail, When it attempts with efforts blind To sway the independent mind, Its spring to break, its pride to awe, Or give to private judgment, law. Oh impotent! and vile as vain, They, who would native thought restrain! As soon might they arrest the storm Or take from fire the power to warm, As man compel, by dint of might, Old darkness to prefer to light. No! leave the mind unchain'd and free, And what they ought, mankind will be, No hypocrite, no lurking fiend, No artist to some evil end, But good and great, benign and just, As God and nature made them first. [189] From the edition of 1815. OCTOBER'S ADDRESS[190] October came the thirtieth day: And thus I heard October say; "The lengthening nights and shortening days Have brought the year towards a close, The oak a leafless bough displays And all is hastening to repose; To make the most of what remains Is now to take the greater pains. "An orange hue the grove assumes, The indian-summer-days appear; When that deceitful summer comes Be sure to hail the winter near: If autumn wears a mourning coat Be sure, to keep the mind afloat. "The flowers have dropt, their blooms are gone, The herbage is no longer green; The birds are to their haunts withdrawn, The leaves are scatter'd through the plain; The sun approaches Capricorn, And man and creature looks forlorn. "Amidst a scene of such a cast, The driving sleet, or falling snow, The sullen cloud, the northern blast, What have you left for comfort now, When all is dead, or seems to die That cheer'd the heart or charm'd the eye? "To meet the scene, and it arrives, (A scene that will in time retire) Enjoy the pine--while that remains You need not want the winter fire. It rose unask'd for, from the plain, And when consumed, will rise again. "Enjoy the glass, enjoy the board, Nor discontent with fate betray, Enjoy what reason will afford, Nor disregard what females say; Their chat will pass away the time, When out of cash or out of rhyme. "The cottage warm and cheerful heart Will cheat the stormy winter night, Will bid the glooms of care depart And to December give delight."-- Thus spoke October--rather gay, Then seized his staff, and walk'd away. [190] From the edition of 1815. TO A CATY-DID[A][191] [A] A well-known insect, when full grown, about two inches in length, and of the exact color of a green leaf. It is of the genus cicada, or grasshopper kind, inhabiting the green foliage of trees and singing such a song as Caty-did in the evening, towards autumn.--_Freneau's note._ In a branch of willow hid Sings the evening Caty-did: From the lofty locust bough Feeding on a drop of dew, In her suit of green array'd Hear her singing in the shade Caty-did, Caty-did, Caty-did! While upon a leaf you tread, Or repose your little head, On your sheet of shadows laid, All the day you nothing said: Half the night your cheery tongue Revell'd out its little song, Nothing else but Caty-did. From your lodgings on the leaf Did you utter joy or grief--? Did you only mean to say, I have had my summer's day, And am passing, soon, away To the grave of Caty-did:-- Poor, unhappy Caty-did! But you would have utter'd more Had you known of nature's power-- From the world when you retreat, And a leaf's your winding sheet, Long before your spirit fled, Who can tell but nature said, Live again, my Caty-did! Live, and chatter Caty-did. Tell me, what did Caty do? Did she mean to trouble you?-- Why was Caty not forbid To trouble little Caty-did?-- Wrong, indeed at you to fling, Hurting no one while you sing Caty-did! Caty-did! Caty-did! Why continue to complain? Caty tells me, she again Will not give you plague or pain:-- Caty says you may be hid Caty will not go to bed While you sing us Caty-did. Caty-did! Caty-did! Caty-did! But, while singing, you forgot To tell us what did Caty not: Caty-did not think of cold, Flocks retiring to the fold, Winter, with his wrinkles old, Winter, that yourself foretold When you gave us Caty-did. Stay securely in your nest; Caty now, will do her best, All she can, to make you blest; But, you want no human aid-- Nature, when she form'd you, said, "Independent you are made, My dear little Caty-did: Soon yourself must disappear With the verdure of the year,"-- And to go, we know not where, With your song of Caty-did. [191] From the edition of 1815. ON PASSING BY AN OLD CHURCHYARD[192] Pensive, on this green turf I cast my eye, And almost feel inclined to muse and sigh: Such tokens of mortality so nigh. But hold,--who knows if these who soundly sleep, Would not, alive, have made some orphan weep, Or plunged some slumbering victim in the deep. There may be here, who once were virtue's foes, A curse through life, the cause of many woes, Who wrong'd the widow, and disturb'd repose. There may be here, who with malicious aim Did all they could to wound another's fame, Steal character, and filch away good name. Perhaps yond' solitary turf invests Some who, when living, were the social pests, Patrons of ribands, titles, crowns and crests. Can we on such a kindred tear bestow? They, who, in life, were every just man's foe, A plague to all about them!--oh, no, no. What though sepultured with the funeral whine; Why, sorrowing on such tombs should we recline, Where truth, perhaps, has hardly penn'd a line. --Yet, what if here some honest man is laid Whom nature of her best materials made, Who all respect to sacred honor paid. Gentle, humane, benevolent, and just, (Though now forgot and mingled with the dust, There may be such, and such there are we trust.) Yes--for the sake of that one honest man We would on knaves themselves bestow a tear, Think nature form'd them on some crooked plan, And say, peace rest on all that slumber here. [192] From the edition of 1815. STANZAS OCCASIONED BY A MELANCHOLY SURVEY OF AN OLD ENGLISH TOBACCO BOX INSCRIBED 1708[193] Written in a dearth of tobacco, by Hezekiah Salem. Had I but what this box contained Since good Queen Anne in Britain reigned, My happiness would be increased To more, perhaps, than she possessed. This box, in many a pocket worn (And to be used by some unborn) Has been unfilled a week or more, And curses the tobacco store, Which now has had its turn to fail; The door shut up, the man in jail Who late behind the counter stood And vended what was pretty good. ("And are you here?--the turnkey said, "I rather would have seen you dead!"-- --Yes! I am here--the man replied-- And better so than to have died!) This box again, in spite of that, Shall be repackt with--I know what-- Again I'll fill its empty chest With old Virginia's very best. The fragrance of that mild perfume Again shall cheer the reading room, Again delight your men of wit Who have the taste to relish it. This box I deem a small estate Where all my prospects are complete, Whose oval round, and clasp, confines The riches of Potosi's mines. My best ideas here are sown, (And best expressed when most alone) Here, every muse can find a place Yet take no atom of its space. Tobacco! what to thee we owe, Is what alone true smokers know: To thee they owe the lively thought, And joys without repentance bought. To thee they owe the moral song, The night that never seems too long, The pleasant dream, refreshing sleep, And sense that all should strive to keep. It cures the pride of self-debate, And pensive care, and deadly hate; And love itself would nearer bring, Did females love this coaxing thing.-- But they, the slaves of custom's rule, Are ever to the smoker cool, And hate the plant, whose gentle sway Bids us their noisy tongues obey. The happy days I would recall When Jane to me was all in all! The firm we to the town did show Was, Salem, Jane, Segar, and Co. The sanded box was near us placed Which held the dregs we chose to waste; Thus pleased to pass the winter's eve, And thus the lingering hours deceive. No wrangling was permitted there-- 'Twas friendship all, and love sincere; And they received affronts enough Who entered with the Cloven Hoof. The social whiff went cheerly on!-- But Jane is to that people gone Where dear tobacco!--strong and sound-- Is not upon their invoice found!-- It sheds a magic on my pen To deaden all despotic men, A charm that can the soul command, Nor kings, nor courtiers shall withstand: Such, vested with imperial sway, O'er bodies reign, dull, stupid, blind; But us the nobler powers obey, We reign, despotic, o'er the mind! It aids us in the tuneful art To catch the ear, or move the heart; An hour with Nancy can beguile, But meets not her approving smile. Of northern pine her floors were made, A carpet on the boards was spread; And who shall dare this floor prophane, Which Nancy keeps without a stain? The watchful demon in her eye The smallest speck can there espy; And he shall curse his natal hour Who spits upon this velvet floor: I saw her anger waxing hot, I heard her threaten, Do it not, Or, instant, quit these doors of mine, And be converted into swine.-- This powerful plant, if fortune frown, Can make the bitter draught go down; It keeps me warm in Greenland's frost, And gives me more than all I lost. The joys of wine, without its bane, That kindles frenzy in the brain; All these are here--and more than these In this tobacco box I'll squeeze. It holds a part of all I prize Within this world that bounded lies; And when the ashes only shows, The spirit into aether goes. Dismissed to that Serene Abode, Where no tobacco is allowed!---- The comfort is, that free from care, We neither wish, nor want it There. [193] From the edition of 1809. ON THE DEATH OF A MASTER BUILDER Or Free Mason of High Rank[194] (Written by Request.) Assembled this day on occasion of grief, We mourn the occasion, the loss of our chief; A Mason, our master, that built up a pile By the compass and square in the masonic style. At the word of the Builder, who built All at first, Turned chaos to order, and darkness dispersed, Our architect leaves us, that mason so skilled, The fabric of virtue and freedom to build. As far as this nature, called human, can go, A pattern he was of perfection below; By the line and the plummet he built up a wall, As firm as old time, and, we trust, not to fall. By science enlightened, a friend to mankind, He came, for the purpose exactly designed; Like the Baptist of old, in the annals of fate, Precursor of all that is noble and great. He thought it an honour the trowel to hold, And to be with the craft, as a brother enrolled: To the practice of virtue he knew they were bound Wherever a lodge or a mason is found. Designed as he was, to excel and transcend, Yet he courted the titles of brother and friend, And these in the fabric of masons are more Than monarchs can give,--and which tyrants abhor. With a patron like this, we are proud to prepare The stone and the mortar, our building to rear, And copy, from Him, who can make it endure, Who raised the first building, and keeps all secure. In such a grand master all masons were blessed; The world and all masons his merits confessed; But now he is gone in new orbits to move And join the first builder of all things above. [194] From the edition of 1809. ON THE DEATH OF A MASONIC GRAND SACHEM[195] This day we unite And all Brethren invite To honour a man of our nation; Who, honest as brave, Is gone to his grave And takes an unchangeable station. In our subject we view (To Liberty true) The officer firm in all danger; Who stood to his post At the head of a host His country to save, and avenge her. By compass and square This artisan rare Defeated all foreign invasion, Then returned to his farm When no longer alarm Distracted the mind of the nation. In all that he did, In all that he said The bliss of mankind was intended;-- He rose for their good, To support them he stood, And Liberty ever defended. The foundation he laid, And the fabric he made No mason but he could pretend to; It will stand, we foresee, 'Till that era shall be When the globe of the world there's an end to. So, fame to the man Who the building began, Whose model all nations will take When kingdoms are fled, Standing armies are dead, And monarchs--no longer awake. [195] From the edition of 1809. ON A HONEY BEE Drinking from a Glass of Wine and Drowned Therein[196] (By Hezekiah Salem.) Thou, born to sip the lake or spring, Or quaff the waters of the stream, Why hither come on vagrant wing?-- Does Bacchus tempting seem-- Did he, for you, this glass prepare?-- Will I admit you to a share? Did storms harass or foes perplex, Did wasps or king-birds bring dismay-- Did wars distress, or labours vex, Or did you miss your way?-- A better seat you could not take Than on the margin of this lake. Welcome!--I hail you to my glass: All welcome, here, you find; Here, let the cloud of trouble pass, Here, be all care resigned.-- This fluid never fails to please, And drown the griefs of men or bees. What forced you here, we cannot know, And you will scarcely tell-- But cheery we would have you go And bid a glad farewell: On lighter wings we bid you fly, Your dart will now all foes defy. Yet take not, oh! too deep a drink, And in this ocean die; Here bigger bees than you might sink, Even bees full six feet high. Like Pharoah, then, you would be said To perish in a sea of red. Do as you please, your will is mine; Enjoy it without fear-- And your grave will be this glass of wine, Your epitaph--a tear-- Go, take your seat in Charon's boat, We'll tell the hive, you died afloat. [196] From the edition of 1809. ON THE FALL OF AN ANCIENT OAK TREE[197] While onward moves each circling year Thy mandates, Nature, all obey, As with this moving, changeful sphere The seasons change and never stay; Old Oak, I to your place return, Where late you stood, and viewing mourn, For the great loss my heart sustained When you declined, long will I sigh, That hour when you no more remained To cheer the summer, passing by; No longer blessed my eager view, But like some dying friend withdrew. Though frequent, by that nipping frost, The blast which cold November sends, I saw your leafy honours lost; Hope, for such losses, made amends: The spring again beheld them grow, And we were pleased, and so was you. Since I your fatal fall survive, Remembrance long shall hold you dear, And bid some young successor live; By sad Amyntor planted here; Its buds to swell, its leaves to spread, And shade the place when he is dead. A prince among your towering race, What more your vanished form endears Is that your presence in this place Had been at least one hundred years; And men that long in dust have laid, When boys, beneath your shadow played. You had your time to feel the sun, To wanton in his cheering ray;-- That time is past, your race is run, And we have nothing more to say, Than, may your oaken spirit go Among Elysian oaks below. [197] From the edition of 1809. STANZAS ON THE DECEASE OF THOMAS PAINE Who died at New-York, on the 8th of June, 1809[198] Princes and kings decay and die And, instant, rise again: But this is not the case, trust me, With men like Thomas Paine. In vain the democratic host His equal would attain: For years to come they will not boast A second Thomas Paine. Though many may his name assume; Assumption is in vain; For every man has not his plume-- Whose name is Thomas Paine. Though heaven bestow'd on all its sons Their proper share of brain, It gives to few, ye simple ones, The mind of Thomas Paine. To tyrants and the tyrant crew, Indeed, he was the bane; He writ, and gave them all their due, And signed it,--Thomas Paine. Oh! how we loved to see him write And curb the race of Cain! They hope and wish that Thomas P---- May never rise again. What idle hopes!--yes--such a man May yet appear again.-- When they are dead, they die for aye: --Not so with Thomas Paine. [198] From the edition of 1815. PART VI THE WAR OF 1812 1809-1815 THE WAR OF 1812 1809-1815 ON THE SYMPTOMS OF HOSTILITIES.[199] 1809 But will they once more be engaged in a war, Be fated to discord again? A peace to the nations will nothing restore But the challenge of death and a deluge of gore! A modern crusade Is undoubtedly made:-- With treaties rejected, and treaties renew'd, A permanent treaty they never conclude. And who is to blame? we submissively ask-- Did nature predestine this curse to mankind; Or is it the cruel detestable task That tyrants impose, with their minions combined? We are anxious to know The source of our wo In a world where the blessings of nature abound Why discord, the bane of her blessings, is found. Must our freedom, our labors, our commerce, our all Be tamely surrender'd, to tyrants convey'd; Must the flag of the country disgracefully fall, To be torn by the dogs of the slaughtering trade? Does no one reply, With a tear in his eye, It must be the case, if we do not resent What monarchs have menaced and tyranny meant. Not a ship, or a barque, that departs from the shore But her cargo is plunder'd, her sailors are slain, Or arriving in England, we see them no more, Condemn'd in the court of deceit and chicane, Where their wicked decrees And their costs and their fees Have ruin'd the merchant--mechanics half fed, And sailors uncaptured are begging their bread. To reason with tyrants is surely absurd; To argue with them is to preach to the deaf: They argue alone by the length of the sword; Their honor the same as the word of a thief. In such to confide When a cause they decide, Is the wolf and the lamb (if the tale we recall) Where the weakest and meekest must go to the wall. But an englishman's throat is expanded so wide Not the ocean itself is a mess for his maw: And missions there are, and a scoundrel employ'd To divide, and to rule by the florentine law[A]: New-England must join In the knavish design, As some have predicted to those who believe 'em; --The event is at hand--may the devil deceive 'em. [A] Nicholas Machiavel's maxim, _divide et impera_; divide and govern. He was a native of Florence, in Italy.--_Freneau's note._ With an empire at sea and an empire on land, And the system projected, monopolization, The western republic no longer will stand Than answers the views of a desperate nation, Who have shackled the east, Made the native a beast, And are scheming to give us--the matter is clear-- A man of their own for the president's chair, Then arouse from your slumbers, ye men of the west, Already the indian his hatchet displays; Ohio's frontier, and Kentucky distrest; The village, and cottage, are both in a blaze:-- Then indian and english No longer distinguish, They bribe, and are bribed, for a warfare accurst; Of the two, we can hardly describe which is worst. In the court of king Hog was a council convened, In which they agreed we are growing too strong: They snuffled and grunted, and loudly complained The sceptre would fall, if they suffer'd it long; To cut up our trade Was an object, they said, The nearest and dearest of all in their view; Not a fish should be caught if old England said, No! Then arouse from your slumbers, ye men of the west, A war is approaching, there's room to suppose; The rust on your guns we abhor and detest, So brighten them up--we are coming to blows With the queen of the ocean The prop of devotion, The bulwark of all that is truly divine; A motto she often has put on her sign. [199] The poems in this section are all from the edition of 1815. LINES ADDRESSED TO MR. JEFFERSON, On his retirement from the Presidency of the United States.--1809. Praesenti tibi maturos largimur honores--_Hor._ To you, great sir, our heartfelt praise we give, And your ripe honors yield you--while you live. At length the year, which marks his course, expires, And Jefferson from public life retires; That year, the close of years, which own his claim, And give him all his honors, all his fame. Far in the heaven of fame I see him fly, Safe in the realms of immortality: On Equal Worth his honor'd mantle falls, Him, whom Columbia her true patriot calls; Him, whom we saw her codes of freedom plan, To none inferior in the ranks of man. When to the helm of state your country call'd No danger awed you and no fear appall'd; Each bosom, faithful to its country's claim, Hail'd Jefferson, that long applauded name; All, then, was dark, and wrongs on wrongs accrued Our treasures wasted, and our strength subdued; What seven long years of war and blood had gain'd, Was lost, abandon'd, squander'd, or restrain'd: Britania's tools had schemed their easier way, To conquer, ruin, pillage, or betray; Domestic traitors, with exotic, join'd, To shackle this last refuge of mankind; Wars were provoked, and France was made our foe, That George's race might govern all below, O'er this wide world, uncheck'd, unbounded, reign, Seize every clime, and subjugate the main. All this was seen--and rising in your might, By genius aided, you reclaim'd our right, That Right, which conquest, arms, and valor gave To this young nation--not to live a slave. And what but toil has your long service seen? Dark tempests gathering over a sky serene-- For wearied years no mines of wealth can pay, No fame, nor all the plaudits of that day, Which now returns you to your rural shade, The sage's heaven, for contemplation made, Who, like the Roman, in their country's cause Exert their valor, or enforce its laws, And late retiring, every wrong redress'd, Give their last days to solitude and rest. This great reward a generous nation yields-- Regret attends you to your native fields; Their grateful thanks for every service done, And hope, your thorny race of care is run. From your sage counsels what effects arise! The vengeful briton from our waters flies; His thundering ships no more our coasts assail, But seize the advantage of the western gale. Though bold and bloody, warlike, proud, and fierce, They shun your vengeance for a Murdered Pearce, And starved, dejected, on some meagre shore, Sigh for the country they shall rule no more. Long in the councils of your native land, We saw you cool, unchanged, intrepid, stand: When the firm Congress, still too firm to yield, Stay'd masters of the long contested field, Your wisdom aided, what their counsels framed-- By you the murdering savages were tamed-- That Independence we had sworn to gain, By you asserted (nor Declared in vain) We seized, triumphant, from a tyrant's throne, And Britain totter'd when the work was done. You, when an angry faction vex'd the age, Rose to your place at once, and check'd their rage; The envenom'd shafts of malice you defied, And turn'd all projects of revolt aside:-- We saw you libell'd by the worst of men, While hell's red lamp hung quivering o'er his pen, And fiends congenial every effort try To blast that merit which shall never die-- These had their hour, and traitors wing'd their flight, To aid the screechings of distracted night. Vain were their hopes--the poison'd darts of hell, Glanced from your flinty shield, and harmless fell. All this you bore--beyond it all you rose, Nor ask'd despotic laws to crush your foes. Mild was your language, temperate though severe; And not less potent than Ithuriel's spear To touch the infernals in their loathsome guise, Confound their slanders and detect their lies. All this you braved--and, now, what task remains, But silent walks on solitary plains: To bid the vast luxuriant harvest grow, The slave be happy and secured from wo-- To illume the statesmen of the times to come With the bold spirit of primeval Rome; To taste the joys your long tried service brings, And look, with pity, on the cares of kings:-- Whether, with Newton, you the heavens explore, And trace through nature the creating power, Or, if with mortals you reform the age, (Alike, in all, the patriot and the sage) May peace and soft repose, attend you, still, In the lone vale, or on the cloud-capp'd hill, While smiling plenty decks the abundant plain, And hails Astrea to the world again. ON THE PROSPECT OF WAR, AND AMERICAN WRONGS. Americans! rouse at the rumors of war, Which now are distracting the hearts of the nation, A flame blowing up, to extinguish your power And leave you, a prey, to another invasion; A second invasion, as bad as the old, When, northward or southward, wherever they stroll'd With heart and with hand, a murdering band Of vagrants, came over to ravage your land: For liberty's guard, you are ever array'd And know how to fight, in the sun or the shade. Remember the cause that induced you to rise When oppression advanced, with her king-making host, Twas the cause of our nation that bade you despise And drive to destruction all England's proud host, Who, with musket and sword, under men they adored, Rush'd into each village and rifled each shade To murder the planter, and ravish the maid. What though you arose, and resolved to be free, With spirit to humble all Europe combining, You had soon bit the dust or been drown'd in the sea By the slaves of a king, and a court all designing, Had not liberty swore she would cover your shore, Her colors display'd, and with vengeance repaid The myriads that came from a blood-thirsty isle Our groves, and our streams, and our beds to defile. Our churches defaced, by a merciless foe, Or made the poor captive's distress'd habitation: The prison-ship, fraught with its cargo of wo, Where thousands were starved, without shame or compassion; All these, and yet more, were the evils we bore From a motherly dame, Great Britain her name, From a nation, that once we accounted our friends, Who would shackle the country, that freedom defends. All true-born americans! join, as of old; For freedom's defence, be your firm resolution; Whoever invades you by force, or with gold, Alike is a foe to a free constitution: Unite to pull down that imposture, a crown; Oppose it at least, tis a mark of the beast: All tyranny's engines again are at work To make you as poor and as base as the turk. Abandon'd to all the intrigues of a knave, Abounding with sharpers of every description, They would plunder our towns, and prohibit the wave; Their treaties of commerce are all a deception: Not a ship do we send but they rob without end; With their law of blockade they have ruin'd our trade; The shops of mechanics at midnight they burn That home manufactures may cease to be worn. Look round the wide world; and observe with a sigh, Wherever a monarch presides o'er a nation, Sweet nature appears with a tear in her eye, And the mantle of sorrow enshrouds the creation. The ocean is chain'd, all freedom restrain'd, The soil is resign'd to the pests of mankind, To royals and nobles, the guard of the throne, And the slaves they have bribed, to make freedom their own. All hail to the nation, immortal and great, Who, rising on bold philosophical pinion, Reforms, and enlightens, and strengthens the state, Not places her weal in excess of dominion. What reason can do she intends to pursue; And true to the plan, on which she began, Will the volume unfold she to freedom assign'd, Till tyrants are chased from the sight of mankind. Since the day we declared, they were masters no more, The day we arose from the colony station, Has England attack'd us, by sea and by shore, In war by the sword, as in peace by vexation; Impressment they claim'd, till our seamen, ashamed, Grew sick of our flag, that against the old hag Of Britain, no longer their freedom protected But left them, like slaves, to be lash'd and corrected. Old Rome, that in darkness so long had been lost, Since on her republic bright freedom was shining: The warmth of her spirit congeal'd in a frost, Under tyrants and popes, many centuries, pining: At the close of the page, who can bridle his rage To see her return to the fetters she broke, When tyranny sicken'd, and liberty spoke: What an image of clay have they thrown in her way! The king and the priest on her carcass will feast; When these are allied, the world they divide; The nations they plunder, the nations they kill, And bend all the force of the mind to their will: Not the spirit to rise, or the strength to command, But friars and monks--and the scum of the land.-- No more of your Nero's or Caesars complain, Leave Brutus and Cato, and take them again. But reason, that sun, whose unquenchable ray Progressive, has dawn'd on the night of the mind, From the source of all good, may hereafter display, And man a more dignified character find: As far as example and vigor can go, As long as forbearance and patience will do, The western republic will carry it through--: May order and peace through the nations increase, And murder, and plunder, and tyranny cease: May justice and honor through empires prevail And all the bad passions weigh light in the scale, Till man is the being that nature at first Placed here, to be happy, and not to be cursed. Approaching, at hand, in the progress of time, An era will come, to begin its career, When freedom reviving, and man in his prime, His rights will assert, and maintain without fear Of that cunning, bold race, who our species disgrace; On the blood of a nation who make calculation To rise into splendor and fill a high station; Nay, climb to the throne on a villanous plan To plunder his substance, and trample on man. ON THE BRITISH COMMERCIAL DEPREDATIONS. As gallant ships as ever ocean stemm'd-- A thousand ships are captured, and condemn'd! Ships from our shores, with native cargoes fraught, And sailing to the very shores they ought: And yet at peace!--the wrong is past all bearing; The very comets[A] are the war declaring: Six thousand seamen groan beneath your power, For years immured, and prisoners to this hour: [A] A large comet appeared for several months, about this time.--_Freneau's note._ Then England come! a sense of wrong requires To meet with thirteen stars your thousand fires; On your own seas the conflict to sustain, Or drown them, with your commerce in the main! True do we speak, and who can well deny, That England claims all water, land, and sky Her power expands--extends through every zone, Nor bears a rival--but must rule alone. To enforce her claims, a thousand sails unfurl'd Pronounce their home the cock-pit of the world; The modern Tyre, whose fiends and lions prowl, A tyrant navy, which in time must howl.[B] Heaven send the time--the world obeys her nod: Her nods, we hope, the sleep of death forbode; Some mighty change, when plunder'd thrones agree, And plunder'd countries, to make commerce free. [B] Howl, ye ships of Tarshish, &c.--Ezekiel.--_Freneau's note._ TO AMERICA: On the English Depredations on the American Coast. When Alfred held the english throne, And England's self was little known, Yet, when invaded by the Dane, He early faced them on the main. That scythian race who ruled the sea-- He soon pronounced their destiny; To leave his isle, to sheath the sword; Disgraced, defeated, and abhorr'd. So now, these worse than danes appear To do their deeds of havoc here-- For all they did in seasons past, The day of grief must come at last. For plains, yet white with human bones, For murders past, no prayer atones; For ruin spread in former years, Not even the mitred clergy's tears. Let us but act the part we ought, And tyrants will be dearly taught That they, who aid a country's claim, Fight not for ribands, or a name. Still hostile to the rights of man, A deadly war, the english plan; The gothic system will prevail, To ruin where they can assail; A war, where seas of blood may flow To ornament their scenes of wo. O Washington! thy honored dust The foe will not profane, we trust; Or if they do, will vengeance sleep, Or fail to drive them to the deep? For shores well known, they shape their course, An english fleet, with all its force; A british fleet may soon appear To ravage all we counted dear. Advancing swift, by beat of drum, Half England's dregs, or Scotland's scum; With these unite the indian tribes, Now hostile made by force of bribes-- And they will dare the eagle's frown, Though half his force can put them down. The envenom'd foe, inured to war, May scatter vengeance wide and far, Unless, to assert our country's right, All hearts resolve, all hands unite. Let party feuds be hush'd, forgot, Past discord from the memory blot, And Britain, from our coasts repell'd, Shall rue the day she took the field. The dart, to assail the english power, In time must reach that hostile shore, And red with vengeance, on its way, Their naval power in ruins lay. The western world a blow must deal To let them know, and make them feel That much too long a plundering hag Has mortified all Europe's flag. By wars and death while despots thrive What pity one remains alive! By them the seeds of war are sown, By them, our lives are not our own. Their deadly hate to freedom's growth, To reason's light--that spurns them both, That deadly hate predicts our doom, And digs the pit for freedom's tomb. Be not deceived--the league of kings, Confederate crowns, this warfare brings; These send their hosts to forge our chains, Harass our shores, renew their reigns. At Pilnitz they who join'd to swear And wage with France wide wasting war Till freedom should her claims recall, And Louis reign, or myriads fall; At Pilnitz, with decided aim, They form'd their schemes to blast our fame: And, faithful now to what they swore, Would, kings dismiss'd and thrones, restore. Ye hearts of steel, observe these hosts! The odious train my soul disgusts; They rise upon the vultures wings To prop the tottering cause of kings. Observe them well--through every grade They exercise the robber's trade; They sail upon a plundering scheme, They march, to give you sword and flame. And burn you must, if, slow to act, You wait to see your cities sack'd, Yourselves enslav'd, and all things lose That labor earns or wealth bestows; If slow to send your heated balls, Indignant, through their wooden walls. O may you see their squadrons yield Their legions sink on every field; And new Burgoynes, to slaughter bred, Burgoynes, once more, in fetters led. And may you see all foreign power Forever banish'd from your shore, And see disheartened tyrants mourn, And Britain to her hell return. THE SUTTLER AND THE SOLDIER. "Who would refuse this cheering draught?" The suttler said, and saying, laugh'd The soldier, then, the liquor quaff'd, And felt right bold. The suttler soon foresaw the rest, And thus the son of Mars address'd, "This brandy is the very best Of all I've sold. "The journey you are bound to go, In former times, I travell'd too, When Arnold march'd, with lord knows who, To seize Quebec. "And if he fail'd in that assault, It was not, sure, the brandy's fault; The best, at times, may make a halt, Ay, break his neck. "Now hear a dotard of your trade:-- Of old I lived by flint and blade, But, disregarded, and decay'd, I'm nothing now. "This leaky shed is not my own, And here I stay, unheard, unknown, Poor Darby, and without a Joan, Nor horse, nor cow. "But mend your draught--I have more to say:-- You now are young, and under pay; Be warn'd by me, whose hairs are grey; The time will come "When you may find this trade of arms, The march, that now your bosom warms, Has little but illusive charms, Mere beat of drum: "But yet, in such a cause as this I deem your ardor not amiss-- I know you are no hireling swiss; Your country calls: "And when she calls, you must obey; For wages not--fig for the pay-- Tis honor calls you out this day To face the balls. "You have to go where George Provost Has many a soldier made a ghost, Where indians many a prisoner roast Or seize their scalps. "And what of that?--mere fate of war-- God grant you may have better fare-- Go, fight beneath a kinder star, And scourge the whelps. "They scarce are men--mere flesh and blood-- Mere ouran-outangs of the wood, Forever on the scent of blood, And deers at heart. "When men, like you, approach them nigh, They make a yell, retreat, and fly: On equal ground, they never try The warrior's art. "Then dare their strength--at honor's call Explore the road to Montreal, To dine, perchance, in Drummond's hall, Perhaps in jail. "Of all uncertain things below The chance of war is doubly so; For this I saw, and this I know;-- Yet, do not fail. "To live, for months on scanty fare, To sleep, by night in open air, To fight, and every danger share; All these await. "But bear them all!--wherever led, And live contented, though half fed:-- A couch of straw, and canvas shed Shall be your fate! "And mind the mark--remember me-- When full of fight, and full of glee, Be of your brandy not too free:-- Ay, mind the mark! "Who drinks too much, the day he fights, Calls danger near, and death invites To dim, or darken all his lights;-- His noon is dark! "It is a friend in a stormy day; Then brandy drives all care away, But, over done, it will betray The wisest sage. "Then strictly guard the full canteen-- Its power enlivens every scene, And helps to keep the soul serene When battles rage. "This potent stuff, if managed well, (And strong it is, the sort I sell) Can every doubt and fear expel, When prudence guides. "Though mountains rise, or rocks intrude, This nectar smooths the roughest road, And cheers the heart, and warms the blood Through all its tides. "Then drink you this, and more," (he said, And held the pitcher to his head) "This drink of gods, when Ganymede Hands round the bowl, "Will nerve the arm, and bid you go Where prowls the vagrant Eskimau,[A] Where torpid winter tops with snow The darkened pole,--" [A] The savage inhabitants of Labrador, or New-Britain.--_Freneau's note._ "Enough, enough!"--(the sergeant said) "Now, suttler, he must go to bed-- See! topsy-turvy goes his head; I hear him snort." "Since I know where to get my pay (The suttler answered rather gay) No matter what I said or say-- I've sold my quart." MILITARY RECRUITING To a Recruit Fond of Segar Smoking ----Ex fumo dare lucem Cogitat, ut speciosa dehinc miracula promat--_Hor._ When first I arrived to the age of a man And met the distraction of care, As the day to a close rather sorrowful ran Yet I smiled and I smoked my segar: O, how sweet did it seem What a feast, what a dream What a pleasure to smoke the segar! In vain did the din of the females assail Or the noise of the carts in the street, With a spanish segar and a pint of good ale I found my enjoyment complete: Old care I dismiss'd While I held in my fist The pitcher, and smoked the segar. What a world are we in, if we do not retire, And, at times, to the tavern repair To read the gazette, by a hickory fire, With a sixpence or shilling to spare, To handle the glass And an evening pass With the help of a lively segar. The man of the closet, who studies and reads, And prepares for the wars of the bar; The priest who harangues, or the lawyer who pleads, What are they without the segar? What they say may be right, But they give no delight Unless they have smoked the segar. The farmer still plodding, who follows his plough, A calling, the first and the best, Would care not a fig for the sweat on his brow If he smoked a segar with the rest: To the hay-loft alone I would have it unknown, For there a segar I detest. The sailor who climbs and ascends to the yard Bespatter'd and blacken'd with tar, Would think his condition uncommonly hard If he did not indulge the segar, To keep them in trim While they merrily swim On the ocean, to countries afar. The soldier untry'd, in the midst of the smoke, The havoc and carnage of war, Would stand to his cannon, as firm as a rock, Would they let him but smoke his segar: Every gun in the fort Should make its report From the fire which illumes the segar. Come then, to the tavern, ye sons of the sword, No fear of a wound or a scar; If your money is gone, your account will be scored By the lady who tends at the bar: And this I can say, Not a cent need you pay For the use of the social segar. ON THE CAPTURE OF THE GUERRIERE, Captain Dacres, August 19, 1812--by the Constitution, american frigate, capt. Hull. AN IRREGULAR ODE. Long the tyrant of our coast Reign'd the famous Guerriere; Our little navy she defy'd, Public ship and privateer: On her sails in letters red, To our captains were display'd Words of warning, words of dread, All, who meet me, have a care! I am England's Guerriere.[A] [A] Female warrior, or amazon.--_Freneau's note._ On the wide, Atlantic deep (Not her equal for the fight) The Constitution, on her way, Chanced to meet these men of might: On her sails was nothing said, But her waist the teeth displayed That a deal of blood could shed, Which, if she would venture near, Would stain the decks of the Guerriere. Now our gallant ship they met-- And, to struggle with John Bull-- Who had come, they little thought, Strangers, yet, to Isaac Hull: Better, soon, to be acquainted: Isaac hail'd the lord's anointed-- While the crew the cannon pointed, And the balls were so directed With a blaze so unexpected; Isaac did so maul and rake her That the decks of captain Dacres Were in such a woful pickle As if death, with scythe and sickle, With his sling, or with his shaft Had cut his harvest fore and aft. Thus, in thirty minutes ended, Mischiefs that could not be mended: Masts, and yards, and ship descended, All to David Jones' locker-- Such a ship in such a pucker! Drink about to the Constitution! She perform'd some execution Did some share of retribution For the insults of the year When she took the Guerriere. May success again await her, Let who will again command her Bainbridge, Rodgers, or Decatur-- Nothing like her can withstand her, With a crew, like that on board her Who so boldly call'd "to order" One bold crew of english sailors, Long, too long our seamen's jailors, Dacre' and the Guerriere! THEODOSIA In the _Morning Star_.[200] The fatal and perfidious barque! Built in the eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark, That sunk so low that angel form of thine! The morning star, resplendent in the east, May be our station, when from life released, Tempestuous cape! how fatal proved the day When from thy shores the faithless ship withdrew, Yet, prosperous gales impell'd her on her way Till the broad canvas vanish'd from the view. Long on that height the pensive friends remain'd Till ocean's curve conceal'd her from the eye, And all was hope that she her port attain'd Ere ten more suns illumed the morning sky. Fond friends! false hope! no port beheld her come With flowing sheet, to meet the pilot's sail: No pilot met her on the Atlantic foam-- What could the pilot, or his art, avail? Detested barque! nor art thou yet arrived-- Nor wilt thou come! three years are roll'd away! You, Theodosia of her life deprived, You sunk her from the cheerful beams of day! Where dost thou rest, with her whose genius rose Above her sex--for science so renown'd-- But does her spirit in the deep repose Or find new mansions on celestial ground? That soars above to heights unknown before, Where all is joy, and life that never ends; Where all is rapture, all admire, adore; Immortal nature, with angelic friends. Oh! shed no more the tears of sad regret; The hymns of joy, the lofty verse prepare-- Her briny doom, the ingulphing wave forget For Theodosia in the Morning Star. [200] Theodosia, the brilliant and accomplished daughter of Aaron Burr, embarked from Charleston, S. C., December 29, 1812, in the schooner _Patriot_ for New York. The boat never was heard from afterwards. It doubtless foundered off Cape Hatteras in the severe gale which sprang up soon after the vessel had left the harbor. IN MEMORY OF JAMES LAWRENCE, ESQUIRE, Late commander of the United States frigate Chesapeake, who fell in the action, with the british ship of war Shannon, June 1st. 1813 --Semper honoratum habebo--_Virg._ To lift his name to high renown His native merits led the way; His morning sun resplendent shone Till clouds obscured the fading ray: His country's voice his worth confess'd, His country's tears disclose the rest, In battle brave, his lofty mind Aspired to all that fame relates Of those, who on her page we find Defenders of insulted states: Of all who fought, or all who fell, The noblest part he copied well. For Lawrence dead, his Jersey mourns, With tearful eye laments the day When all the worth that men adorns One fatal moment snatch'd away! On honor's bed his doom he found, In honor's cause, the deadly wound. To what vast heights his mind aspired, Who knew him best can best relate:-- A longer term the cause required That urged him to an early fate: But He, whose fires illumed his breast, Knew what was right and what was best. His country to her breast receives His mangled form, and holds it dear; She plants her marble, while she grieves, Where all, who read, might drop a tear, And say, while memory calls to mind The chief, who with our worthies shined, Here Lawrence rests, his country's pride, On valor's decks who fought and died! ON THE LAKE EXPEDITIONS Where Niagara's awful roar Convulsive shakes the neighboring shore, Alarm'd I heard the trump of war, Saw legions join! And such a blast, of old, they blew, When southward from st. Lawrence flew The indian, to the english true, Led by Burgoyne. United, then, they sail'd Champlain, United now, they march again, A land of freedom to profane With savage yell. For this they scour the mountain wood; Their errand, death, their object, blood: For this they stem thy subject flood, O stream Sorel! Who shall repulse the hireling host, Who force them back through snow and frost, Who swell the lake with thousands lost, Dear freedom? say!-- Who but the sons of freedom's land, Prepared to meet the bloody band; Resolved to make a gallant stand Where lightnings play. Their squadrons, arm'd with gun and sword, Their legions, led by knight and lord Have sworn to see the reign restored Of George, the goth; Whose mandate, from a vandal shore, Impels the sail, directs the oar, And, to extend the flames of war, Employs them both. THE BATTLE OF LAKE ERIE September 10, 1813 "To clear the lake of Perry's fleet And make his flag his winding sheet This is my object--I repeat--" --Said Barclay, flush'd with native pride, To some who serve the british crown:-- But they, who dwell beyond the moon, Heard this bold menace with a frown, Nor the rash sentence ratified. Ambition so bewitch'd his mind, And royal smiles had so combined With skill, to act the part assign'd He for no contest cared, a straw; The ocean was too narrow far To be the seat of naval war; He wanted lakes, and room to spare, And all to yield to Britain's law. And thus he made a sad mistake; Forsooth he must possess the lake, As merely made for England's sake To play her pranks and rule the roast; Where she might govern, uncontrol'd, An unmolested empire hold, And keep a fleet to fish up gold, To pay the troops of George Provost. The ships approach'd, of either side, And Erie, on his bosom wide Beheld two hostile navies ride, Each for the combat well prepared: The lake was smooth, the sky was clear, The martial drum had banish'd fear, And death and danger hover'd near, Though both were held in disregard. From lofty heights their colors flew, And Britain's standard all in view, With frantic valor fired the crew That mann'd the guns of queen Charlotte. "And we must Perry's squadron take, And England shall command the lake;-- And you must fight for Britain's sake, (Said Barclay) sailors, will you not?" Assent they gave with heart and hand; For never yet a braver band To fight a ship, forsook the land, Than Barclay had on board that day;-- The guns were loosed the game to win, Their muzzles gaped a dismal grin, And out they pulled their tompion pin, The bloody game of war to play. But Perry soon, with flowing sail, Advanced, determined to prevail, When from his bull-dogs flew the hail Directed full at queen Charlotte. His wadded guns were aim'd so true, And such a weight of ball they threw, As, Barclay said, he never knew To come, before, so scalding hot! But still, to animate his men From gun to gun the warrior ran And blazed away and blazed again-- Till Perry's ship was half a wreck: They tore away both tack and sheet,-- Their victory might have been complete, Had Perry not, to shun defeat In lucky moment left his deck. Repairing to another post, From another ship he fought their host And soon regain'd the fortune lost, And down, his flag the briton tore: With loss of arm and loss of blood Indignant, on his decks he stood To witness Erie's crimson flood For miles around him, stain'd with gore! Thus, for dominion of the lake These captains did each other rake, And many a widow did they make;-- Whose is the fault, or who to blame?-- The briton challenged with his sword, The yankee took him at his word, With spirit laid him close on board-- They're ours--he said--and closed the game. ON THE CAPTURE OF THE UNITED STATES FRIGATE ESSEX, Of thirty-two guns, David Porter, esq. commander, in the neutral port of Valparisso, on the coast of Chili, in South America, January, 1814, by the british frigate Phoebe, capt. Hillyer, of forty-nine guns, and the Cherub of thirty-two guns. "All the devils were there, and hell was empty!" From cruising near the southern pole Where wild antarctic oceans roll, With a gallant crew, a manly soul, Heroic Porter came. Then, weathering round the stormy cape, And facing death in every shape, Which Anson[A] hardly could escape, (So says the page of fame.) [A] See Lord Anson's voyage round the world between 1740 and 1744, by his chaplain, the rev. Richard Walter. The terrors and dangers of a winter passage round Cape Horn into the Western Ocean, are depicted in that work by a masterly hand, who was witness to the scene.--_Freneau's note._ He made the high chilesian coast, The Andes, half in vapor lost, The Andes, topp'd with snow and frost, Eternal winter's reign! Then, to the rugged western gale, He spread the broad columbian sail; And, Valparisso, thy fair vale Received him, with his men. There, safely moor'd, his colors fly, Columbia's standard waved on high; The neutral port, his friends, were nigh; So gallant Porter thought; Nor deem'd a foe would heave in sight Regardless of all neutral right; And yet, that foe he soon must fight, And fight them as he ought. His Essex claim'd his fondest care, With her he every storm could dare, With her, to meet the blast of war, His soul was still in trim: In her he cruised the northern main, In her he pass'd the burning line, In her he all things could attain, If all would act like him. At length, two hostile ships appear, And for the port they boldly steer-- The Phoebe first, and in her rear The Cherub, all secure. They loom'd as gay as for a dance, Or ladies painted in romance-- Do, mind how boldly they advance. Who can their fire endure? The Phoebe mounted forty-nine-- All thought her on some grand design-- Does she alone the fight decline? Say, Captain Hillyer, say? The Cherub's guns were thirty-two-- And, Essex! full a match for you-- Yet to her bold companion true, She hugg'd her close, that day. Ye powers, that rule the southern pole! Are these the men of English soul? Do these, indeed, the waves control? Are these the ocean's lords? Though challenged singly to the fight (As Porter, Hillyer, did invite) These men of spunk, these men of might, Refused to measure swords! What, fight alone! bold Hillyer said-- I will not fight without my Aid-- The Cherub is for war array'd, And she must do her share! Now Porter saw their dastard plan-- To fight them both was surely vain; We should have thought a man insane That would so madly dare. Then, hands on deck! the anchors weigh! --And for the sea he left the bay, A running fight to have that day, And thus escape his foes. But oh!--distressing to relate-- As round a point of land he beat A squall from hell the ship beset, And her maintopmast goes! Unable to attain that end, He turns toward the neutral friend, And hoped protection they might lend, But no protection found. In this distress, the foe advanced-- With such an eye at Essex glanced! And such a fire of death commenced As dealt destruction round! With every shot they raked the deck, Till mingled ruin seized the wreck: No valor could the ardor check Of England's martial tars! One hundred men the Essex lost: But Phoebe found, and to her cost, That Porter made them many a ghost To serve in Satan's wars. Oh, clouded scene!--yet must I tell Columbia's flag, indignant, fell-- To Essex, now, we bid farewell; She wears the english flag! But Yankees she has none on board To point the gun or wield the sword; And though commanded by a lord They'll have no cause to brag. THE TERRIFIC TORPEDOES[201] OR SIR THOMAS HARDY'S SOLILOQUY. "Then traitor come! as black revenge excites, Extinguish all our claims with all my lights! But keen remorse, which vengeful furies lead, Will act her part for this inhuman deed. How will her vultures on your vitals prey! How will her stings our every death repay!-- O nature! is all sympathy a jest; Art thou a stranger to the human breast? Has manly prowess quit the abandon'd stage, Are midnight plots the order of the age? "Where proud New-London holds her flaming guide To steer Decatur through the darksome tide, I stay too long! what station can I find To shake distraction from a tortured mind! "Then, traitor, come! your dark attack begin, Renown'd inventor of the black machine: But mark!--for when some future poet tells, Or some historian on the subject dwells, No word of praise shall meet the listening ear, Disgustful story, to repeat or hear-- Was you, an infant, to a mother press'd, Or did ferocious tigers give the breast-- Did nature in some angry moment plan Some fierce hyena to degrade the man? Resolve me quick, for doubtful while I stay These dark torpedoes may be on their way. Does nature thus her heaviest curse impart And will she give such countenance to art?-- She gave you all that rancor could bestow, She lent her magic from the world below; She gave you all that madness could propose, And all her malice in your bosom glows; She gave you sulphur, charcoal, nitre join'd: She gave you not--a great and generous mind." So spoke the knight, and slamm'd the door, And thus went on, with feelings sore: "I relish not torpedo war:-- Die when I will, or where I may, I would not choose so short a way: These twenty nights I did my best To shut my eyes, and take my rest, But drowsy Morpheus might as well Upon the main mast try his spell. No potion from the poppy's leaf Can close my lids;--and, to be brief, This Fulton, with his dashing plans, Distracts my head, my heart unmans: And, every night, I have my fears Of such infernal engineers; Who, when I sup, or could I sleep Might row their wherry through the deep, And screw their engine to the keel, And blow us--where there's no appeal; No question how, or where we died, But how we lived, and how applied The little sense our heads contain To save our souls, and live again. "They, who support torpedo plans Should have no plaudit for their pains; Should be employ'd on dark designs, Explorers of peruvian mines; Such have not felt the patriot glow, A feeling they could never know: For treasons they were surely made, Have princes slain and kings betray'd.-- Ye powers above! and must I wait Till these prevail in every state, Till pale disease, or shivering age Drives such false patriots from the stage! "The chaplain said he heard me snore, But many a fib he told before; And if I snored, I'm satisfied Twas when my eyes were open wide. "Torpedoes! who contrived the word? Torpedoes! worse than gun or sword! They are a mode of naval war We cannot have a relish for:-- In all the chronicles I read Of former times, they nothing said Of such a horrible machine That would disgrace an algerine, And only yankees would employ, Not to distress, but to destroy. "What human eye, without dismay Can see torpedo-lightning's play? What mortal heart, but dreads a foe That fights unseen from fields below! "What passion must that heart inspire That dives the sea, to deal in fire, What can he fear, I trembling ask Who undertakes the daring task? "With engines of perdition spread, Amazed, I see the ocean's bed! And find with rage, regret, despair, I have no power to meet them there! "Alack! my nerves are on the rack-- They're hammering at the garboard streak! Some yankee dog is near the keel! Ho, sailors give the ship a heel: Go, chaplain, to the starboard chains And ask the rascal what he means? Who knows but Fulton's self is there With all his dark infernal gear: Who knows but he has fix'd his screws, And left a match, to fire the fuze-- Who knows, but in this very hour, The Ramillies will be no more! Will only live in empty fame, And I, myself, be but a name! "Should the torpedo take effect, Her carcass will be worse than wreck'd; In scatter'd fragments to the sky This ship of ships will clattering fly: And then--ah, chaplain!--ah, what then! Where will I be, and all my men? And where will you a lodging find, A traveller on a gale of wind! And where will be the pretty maid That sweeps my floor and makes my bed? Oh Fanny, Fanny! must we part?-- Torpedoes!--I am sick at heart!-- How will the flames those lips deface! How will they spoil that blooming face! How will they scorch your auburn hair--? --You'll have your plagues, and I my share. And must I all my fears impart; And do these guns my ship ensure? And must I ask my fluttering heart If on these decks I stand secure? "Do, Fanny, go and boil some tea: Come hither, love, and comfort me: A glass of wine! my spirits sink! The last perhaps that I shall drink!-- Or go--unlock the brandy case And let us have a dram a piece;-- No matter if your nose is red, We shall be sober when we're dead. "In fancy's view the mine is sprung, The rudder from the stern unhung, My valiant sailors torn asunder, The ship herself a clap of thunder, From fathoms down, a deadly blast Unbolts the keel, unsteps the mast, While Fulton, with a placid grin Exulting, views the infernal scene! The sails are vanish'd, tack and clue, The rigging burnt, by lord knows who, The star that glitter'd on my breast Is gone to Davy Jones's chest; The glorious ensign of st. George, Of Spain the dread, of France the scourge, Is from the staff, unpitied, torn And for a cloak by satan worn: The Lion mounted on the prow, To awe the subject sea below With flames that Lion is oppress'd-- They will not spare the royal beast.-- O vengeance! why does vengeance sleep? The yards are scatter'd o'er the deep, Our guns are buried in the seas, And thus concludes the Ramillies! "The world, I think, can witness bear My name was never stain'd by fear: At least the british fleet can say I never shunn'd the face of clay: But Fulton's black, infernal art-- Has stamp'd me--coward--to the heart! "When Nelson met the spanish fleet, And every pulse for conquest beat, At Nelson's side I had my stand; When Nelson fell I took command: Not Etna's self, with all her flames-- Vesuvius--such description claims; Not Hecla, in her wildest rage, Does with such fires the heavens engage, As on that day, in mourning clad, Was thunder'd from the Trinidad.[A] [A] The Santa Trinidada, the spanish admiral's ship, of 112 guns, from the mizen top of which admiral Nelson was mortally wounded by a musket shot. Another account says, he received his death wound from the Redoubtable, french 74.--_Freneau's note._ "And yet, amidst that awful scene, I stood unhurt, composed, serene; Though balls, by thousands, whistled round, Not one had leave to kill or wound-- But here! in this torpedo war I perish, with my glittering star, The laurels that adorn my brow-- My laurels are surrender'd now. O Fanny! these envenom'd states Have doom'd our deaths among the rats, In one explosion, to the sky Our chaplain, rats, and sailors fly. "To deal in such inhuman war Is more than English blood can bear; It brings again the gothic age, Renews that period on the stage, When men against the gods rebell'd, And Ossa was on Pelion piled: The trojan war, when Diomede In battle, made fair Venus bleed; Or, when the giants of renown Attempted Jove's imperial crown:-- From such a foe, before we meet, The safest way, is to retreat, To leave this curst unlucky shore And come to trouble them no more. "But, should it be my fate to-night Not to behold to-morrow's light But mingle with the vulgar dead, With all my terrors on my head-- Should such a fate be mine, I say, Dear Fanny, you must lead the way;-- You are the saint that will atone For what amiss I might have done: If such as you will intercede The chaplain may a furlow plead, While you and I in raptures go Where stormy winds no longer blow, Where guns are not, to shed our blood, Or if there be, are made of wood; Where all is love, and no one hates; No falling kings or rising states; No colors that we must defend, If sick, or dead, or near our end; Where yankees are admitted not To hatch their damn'd torpedo plot: Where you will have no beds to make, Nor I be doom'd to lie awake." [201] It is a fact well ascertained that during a great part of the summer of 1814 the knight was under such serious apprehensions of being blown up by the Torpedo men, that he enjoyed no sleep or rest for many nights together. With such feelings, and under such impressions, he is supposed to begin his soliloquy abruptly, under all the emotions of horror, incident to such an occasion.--_Freneau's note._ Sir Thomas Hardy was commander of the 74 gun ship _Ramillies_, the leader of the squadron which lay off New London during the summer of 1814. The following in _Niles' Register_, May 7, 1814, is suggestive: "It appears the British squadron off _New London_ are yet disturbed by torpedoes. One of them lately exploded under the sprit-sail yard of the _La Hoque_, and threw up a volume of water near her fore top. The enemy, it seems, has a list of the persons concerned in the management of these machines!" THE NORTHERN MARCH Written Previously to the Battles of Chippewa and Bridgewater.[202] Come, to the battle let us go, Hurl destruction on the foe; Who commands us, well we know, Tis the gallant general Brown. Haste away from field or town, Pull the hostile standard down-- If but led by general Brown What will be the event, we know. If but led against that foe, Soon their doom the english know, Soon their haughtiest blood shall flow, When opposed to general Brown. Haste away from town and farm: If we meet them, where's the harm? English power has lost its charm, England's fame is tumbling down. Long she ruled the northern waste, Freedom is by her debased, Freedom is not to her taste; All the world must wear her chain!!! "Not a keel shall plough the wave, Not a sail, without her leave; Not a fleet, the nations have, Safe from her, shall stem the main!!! Let this day's heroic deeds Let the generous breast that bleeds, Let our chief who bravely leads Tell them that their reign is done: Soon to quit Columbia's shore, Is their doom--we say no more; General Brown, in the cannon's roar Tells them how the field is won! [202] Early in the year 1814 the British army obtained possession of Fort Niagara and thereupon determined to remove the seat of the war to the Niagara frontier. The American expedition intended to invade Canada was directed, under command of General Jacob Brown, to dislodge the British from this position. The first decisive action was the battle of Chippewa, fought July 5, 1814, on Canadian soil, opposite Niagara Falls. Three weeks later, July 25, he again closed with the British at Bridgewater, or Lundy Lane, in the same vicinity. In both engagements the Americans were victorious. ON POLITICAL SERMONS When parsons preach on politics, pray why Should declamation cease, if you go by? We heard a lecture, or a scold, And, doubtful which it might be call'd, But senseless as the bell that toll'd, And pleasing neither young nor old. We kept our seats amid the din, Then quit the field, with all our sin, Just as good as we went in. Tell me what the preacher said, Ye, who somewhat longer stay'd Till the last address was made:-- Why,--he talk'd of ruin'd states, Demagogues and democrates, Falling stars, and Satan's baits. Did he mention nothing more?-- Simply, what he said before-- Repetitions, twenty score. His arguments could nothing prove, His text alarm'd the sacred grove, His prayer displeased the powers above. He would not pray for those who rule, But hoped that in Bethesda's pool They all might dip, to make them cool. He deprecated blood and war, Its many mischiefs did deplore Except when England mounts the car. At Congress he had such a fling, As plainly show'd, he wish'd a king, Might here arrive, on Vulture's wing; And that himself an horn might blow To shake our modern Jericho, And bring its ramparts very low. To english notes his psalm was sung, With politics the pulpit rung, And thrice was bellow'd from his tongue, "The president is always wrong! "He brought these evils on our land, And he must go--the time's at hand-- With Bonaparte to take his stand."-- Must not the wheels of fate go on? Must not the lion's teeth be drawn, Because it suits not Prester John!-- A Bishop's Lawn is such a prize Such virtue in a mitre lies, Democracy before it flies. And these he hopes, if George prevails, In time may hoist his shorten'd sails And waft him on, with fortune's gales. To gain by preaching, nett and clear, Some twenty hundred pounds a year; Which democrats would never bear. To England why so much a friend, Or why her cause with heat defend?-- There is, no doubt, some selfish end. Dear Momus come, and help me laugh-- This England is the stay and staff Of true religion--more than half! She is the prop of all that's good, A bulwark, which for ages stood To guard the path and mark the road! One proof of which can soon be brought, The temple rais'd to Jaggernaut,[A] And India to his temple brought, [A] The temple of Jaggernaut, an idolatrous establishment in India, to the support of which the english government contributed largely. The unwieldy idol, to which the temple is dedicated, is, on certain days, carried about the streets on a huge carriage, under the wheels of which the superstitious multitude, it is said, suffer themselves to be trampled and crushed to pieces, by hundreds, from a superstitious motive. If this be not fiction, may the british government exert its influence to eradicate so barbarous and bloody a superstition from the minds of millions of idolatrous wretches.--_Freneau's note._ To see her murder'd, mangled sons, To worship idols, stocks, and stones, Or reliques of some scoundrel's bones. And "long may heaven on England smile-- (So says our preacher, all the while) The world's last hope, fast anchor'd isle!"-- Religion there is made no sport, State tailors there have deckt her out In a birth-day suit--to go to court!-- LINES ON NAPOLEON BONAPARTE[203] Napoleon, born for regal sway, With fortune in a smiling mood, To a foreign land explored his way, Where Cairo stands, or Memphis stood. And still he fought, and still she smiled, And urged him far, and spurr'd him on, And on his march, at length beguiled, One thinking man to wear a crown. The crown attracted many a care, And war employ'd him, day and night; He by a princess had an heir Born to succeed him, or--who might. Through russian tribes he forced his way, To blast their hopes and hurl them down Whose valor might dispute his sway, Or dispossess him of a crown. At last arrived the fatal time, When powerful tyrants, jealous grown, Agreed to count it for a crime A commoner should fill a throne. European states, with England join'd To keep unmixt the royal race, And let the famed Napoleon find A dotard might supply his place. [203] This poem and the one following were written shortly after the news of Napoleon's banishment to Elba, April 11, 1814, had reached America. ON THE DISMISSION OF BONAPARTE From the French Throne. Famed Bonaparte, in regal pride, Put slighted Josephine aside, And wedded an imperial bride, Of fortune sure. But when he droop'd, and when he fell, (I took my pen and mark'd it well) This jilt of jilts, this austrian belle, No longer styled him, Mon Amour; Which means, I think, my dearest heart, My love!--but lovers often part When friendship does not point the dart, Nor fix the flame. And warning, hence, let others take, Nor love's decree for interest break; In marriage, too much lies at stake To slight its claim. Retreating to the tuscan coast, An empire, wife, and fortune lost, He found the throne a dangerous post, And wars a cheat; Where all, who play their game too deep, Must hazard life, and discord reap, Or thrown from grandeur's giddy steep, Lament their fate. Napoleon, with an empty chest! An austrian princess must detest; And yet, she wears upon her breast The painted toy;[A] [A] A miniature picture of the late emperor Napoleon.--_Freneau's note._ And often weeps, the story goes, That royal blood not wholly flows In every vein, from head to toes, Of her dear boy. To Elba's isle she could not go-- The royal orders said "No, no! On Elba's island we bestow No royal throne:" And thus Napoleon, shoved from power, Has many a lonely gloomy hour To walk on Elba's sea-beat shore, Alone! alone! O save us from ambition's sway, Ye powers, who tread the milky way; It will deceive, it will betray Nine out of ten. Napoleon's history let us read: In science he was great indeed-- Ambition's lantern did mislead This prince of men:-- And yet, ambition had its use, It check'd the royal game of goose, And many a flagrant vile abuse Fell at his frown. But, doom'd to share immortal fame, Despotic powers will dread his name, Though he, perhaps, was much the same, Raised to a throne! THE PRINCE REGENT'S RESOLVE The regent prince, enraged to find The standard from his frigates torn, To a full court thus spoke his mind, With hand display'd and soul of scorn, "Since fate decreed Napoleon's fall, Now, now's the time to conquer all! "We at the head of all that's great, Tis ours to hold the world in awe: Let Louis reign in regal state, And let his subjects own his law; Their tide of power tis ours to stem-- We'll govern those who govern them. "But here's the rub, and here's my grief; My frigates from the seas are hurl'd! What shall we do? how find relief? How strike and stupefy the world? Our flag, that long control'd the main, Our standard must be raised again. "A land there lies towards the west There must my royal will be done; That land is an infernal nest Of reptiles, rul'd by Madison: That nest I swear to humble down, There plant a king, and there a crown. "Depart, my fleet, depart, my slaves, Invade that nest, attack and burn; Where'er the ocean rolls his waves, Subdue, or dare not to return; Subdue and plunder all you can, Who plunders most--shall be my man. "To scatter death, by fire and sword, To prostrate all, where'er you go: That is the mandate, that the word, Though seas of blood around you flow: No more!--go, aid the indian yell: Be conquerors, and I'll feed you well. So spoke the prince, but little knew His minions were for slaughter fed; Nor did he guess, that vengeance, too, Would fall on his devoted head; When all his plans and projects fail, And he ascends Belshazzar's scale.[A] [A] Mene mene, Tekel, Peres!--thou art weighed in the balance, and art found wanting!--Daniel.--_Freneau's note._ THE VOLUNTEER'S MARCH[A] July, 1814 Dulce est pro patria mori. [A] This little ode, with the addition of two new stanzas is somewhat altered from one of Robert Burns' compositions, and applied to an american occasion: the original being Bruce's supposed address to his army, a little before the battle of Bannockbourne.--_Freneau's note._ Ye, whom Washington has led, Ye, who in his footsteps tread, Ye, who death nor danger dread, Haste to glorious victory. Now's the day and now's the hour; See the British navy lour, See approach proud George's power, England! chains and slavery. Who would be a traitor knave? Who would fill a coward's grave? Who so base to be a slave? Traitor, coward, turn and flee. Meet the tyrants, one and all; Freemen stand, or freemen fall-- At Columbia's patriot call, At her mandate, march away! Former times have seen them yield, Seen them drove from every field, Routed, ruin'd, and repell'd-- Seize the spirit of those times! By oppression's woes and pains-- By our sons in servile chains We will bleed from all our veins But they shall be--shall be free. O'er the standard of their power Bid Columbia's eagle tower, Give them hail in such a shower As shall blast them--horse and man! Lay the proud invaders low, Tyrants fall in every foe; Liberty's in every blow, Forward! let us do or die. THE BATTLE OF STONINGTON ON THE SEABOARD OF CONNECTICUT In an attack upon the town and a small fort of two guns, by the Ramillies, seventy-four gun ship, commanded by Sir Thomas Hardy; the Pactolus, 38 gun ship, Despatch, brig of 22 guns, and a razee, or bomb ship.--August, 1814. Four gallant ships from England came Freighted deep with fire and flame, And other things we need not name, To have a dash at Stonington. Now safely moor'd, their work begun; They thought to make the yankees run, And have a mighty deal of fun In stealing sheep at Stonington. A deacon, then popp'd up his head And parson Jones's sermon read, In which the reverend doctor said That they must fight for Stonington. A townsman bade them, next, attend To sundry resolutions penn'd, By which they promised to defend With sword and gun, old Stonington. The ships advancing different ways, The britons soon began to blaze, And put th' old women in amaze, Who fear'd the loss of Stonington. The yankees to their fort repair'd, And made as though they little cared For all that came--though very hard The cannon play'd on Stonington. The Ramillies began the attack, Despatch came forward--bold and black-- And none can tell what kept them back From setting fire to Stonington. The bombardiers with bomb and ball, Soon made a farmer's barrack fall, And did a cow-house sadly maul That stood a mile from Stonington. They kill'd a goose, they kill'd a hen, Three hogs they wounded in a pen-- They dash'd away, and pray what then? This was not taking Stonington. The shells were thrown, the rockets flew, But not a shell, of all they threw, Though every house was full in view, Could burn a house at Stonington. To have their turn they thought but fair;-- The yankees brought two guns to bear, And, sir, it would have made you stare, This smoke of smokes at Stonington. They bored Pactolus through and through, And kill'd and wounded of her crew So many, that she bade adieu T' the gallant boys of Stonington. The brig Despatch was hull'd and torn-- So crippled, riddled, so forlorn, No more she cast an eye of scorn On th' little fort at Stonington. The Ramillies gave up th' affray And, with her comrades, sneak'd away-- Such was the valor, on that day, Of british tars near Stonington. But some assert, on certain grounds, (Besides the damage and the wounds) It cost the king ten thousand pounds To have a dash at Stonington. ON THE BRITISH INVASION 1814[204] From France, desponding and betray'd, From liberty in ruins laid, Exulting Britain has display'd Her flag, again to invade us. Her myrmidons, with murdering eye, Across the broad Atlantic fly Prepared again their strength to try, And strike our country's standard. Lord Wellington's ten thousand slaves,[A] And thrice ten thousand, on the waves, And thousands more of brags and braves Are under sail, and coming [A] Lord Wellington's army embarked on the river Garonne, in France, in several divisions, for the invasion of the United States, amounting, it was said, to sixty or seventy thousand men.--_Freneau's note._ To burn our towns, to seize our soil, To change our laws, our country spoil, And Madison to Elba's isle To send without redemption. In Boston state they hope to find A yankee host of kindred mind To aid their arms, to rise and bind Their countrymen in shackles: But no such thing--it will not do-- At least, not while a Jersey Blue Is to the cause of freedom true, Or the bold Pennsylvanian. A curse on England's frantic schemes! Both mad and blind--her monarch dreams Of crowns and kingdoms in these climes Where kings have had their sentence. Though Washington has left our coast, Yet other Washingtons we boast, Who rise, instructed by his ghost, To punish all invaders. Go where they will, where'er they land, This pilfering, plundering, pirate band, They liberty will find at hand To hurl them to perdition: If in Virginia they appear, Their fate is fix'd, their doom is near, Death in their front and hell their rear-- So says the gallant buckskin. All Carolina is prepared, And Charleston doubly on her guard; Where, once, sir Peter badly fared, So blasted by fort Moultrie. If farther south they turn their views, With veteran troops, or veteran crews, The curse of heaven their march pursues To send them all a-packing: The tallest mast that sails the wave, The longest keel its waters lave, Will bring them to an early grave On the shores of Pensacola. [204] This poem was written early in August, on receipt of the news that a large squadron was on its way across the Atlantic to lay waste the seaboard cities. The squadron finally sailed into Chesapeake Bay and turned its attention first to Washington and Baltimore. ON THE ENGLISH DEVASTATIONS AT THE CITY OF WASHINGTON[205] Their power abused! that power may soon descend: Years, not remote, may see their glory end:-- The british power, the avaricious crown, Pull'd every flag, hurl'd every standard down; Columbian ships they seized on every sea, Condemn'd those ships, nor left our sailors free.-- So long a tyrant on the watery stage, They thought to tyrannize through every age; They hoped all commerce to monopolize; Europe, at sea, they affected to despise; They laugh'd at France contending for a share Of commerce, one would think, as free as air. They captured most, without remorse or plea, And grew as proud as arrogance could be. Stung by a thousand wrongs, at length arose The Western States, these tyrants to oppose; With just resentment, met them on the main, And burnt, or sunk their ships, with hosts of slain. The blood ran black from every english heart To see their empire from the seas depart, To see their flag to thirteen stripes surrender, And many an english ship made fire and tinder; They swore, they raged; they saw, with patience spent, Each last engagement had the same event-- What could they do? revenge inspired their breasts, And hell's sensations seized their swelling chests.-- All to revenge, to Maryland they came, And costly works of art assail'd with flame; In Washington they left a dismal void,-- Poor compensation for their ships destroy'd!-- We burn, where guns their frigates poorly guard; They burn, where scarce a gun is seen or heard! [205] Washington was taken by the British, August 24, 1814. "It was only the vandalism of the British soldiers and sailors, incited by Cockburn and ill restrained by Ross, that made this incursion at once memorable and infamous. To public edifices, having no immediate relation to the war, the torch was applied; to the unfinished Capitol (which contained the library of Congress); the President's house, the Treasury,--to all the government buildings in fact, except the Patent Office, besides numerous private dwellings about Capitol Hill."--Schouler's _History of the United States_. "All this was the more shameful because done under strict orders from home."--Green's _History of the English People_. ON THE CONFLAGRATIONS AT WASHINGTON August 24, 1814 ----Jam deiphobi dedit ampla ruinam, Vulcano superante, domus; jam proximus ardet Ucalegon.--_Virgil._ Now, George the third rules not alone, For George the vandal shares the throne, True flesh of flesh and bone of bone. God save us from the fangs of both; Or, one a vandal, one a goth, May roast or boil us into froth. Like danes, of old, their fleet they man And rove from Beersheba to Dan, To burn, and beard us--where they can. They say, at George the fourth's command This vagrant host were sent, to land And leave in every house--a brand. An idiot only would require Such war--the worst they could desire-- The felon's war--the war of fire. The warfare, now, th' invaders make Must surely keep us all awake, Or life is lost for freedom's sake. They said to Cockburn, "honest Cock! To make a noise and give a shock Push off, and burn their navy dock: "Their capitol shall be emblazed! How will the buckskins stand amazed, And curse the day its walls were raised!" Six thousand heroes disembark-- Each left at night his floating ark And Washington was made their mark. That few would fight them--few or none-- Was by their leaders clearly shown-- And "down," they said, "with Madison!" How close they crept along the shore! As closely as if Rodgers saw her-- A frigate to a seventy-four. A veteran host, by veterans led, With Ross and Cockburn at their head-- They came--they saw--they burnt--and fled. But not unpunish'd they retired; They something paid, for all they fired, In soldiers kill'd, and chiefs expired. Five hundred veterans bit the dust, Who came, inflamed with lucre's lust-- And so they waste--and so they must. They left our congress naked walls-- Farewell to towers and capitols! To lofty roofs and splendid halls! To courtly domes and glittering things, To folly, that too near us clings, To courtiers who--tis well--had wings. Farewell to all but glorious war, Which yet shall guard Potomac's shore, And honor lost, and fame restore. To conquer armies in the field Was, once, the surest method held To make a hostile country yield. The mode is this, now acted on; In conflagrating Washington, They held our independence gone! Supposing George's house at Kew Were burnt, (as we intend to do,) Would that be burning England too? Supposing, near the silver Thames We laid in ashes their saint James, Or Blenheim palace wrapt in flames; Made Hampton Court to fire a prey, And meanly, then, to sneak away, And never ask them, what's to pay? Would that be conquering London town? Would that subvert the english throne, Or bring the royal system down? With all their glare of guards or guns, How would they look like simpletons, And not at all the lion's sons! Supposing, then, we take our turn And make it public law, to burn, Would not old english honor spurn At such a mean insidious plan Which only suits some savage clan-- And surely not--the english man! A doctrine has prevail'd too long; A king, they hold, can do no wrong-- Merely a pitch-fork, without prong: But de'il may trust such doctrines, more,-- One king, that wrong'd us, long before, Has wrongs, by hundreds, yet in store. He wrong'd us forty years ago; He wrongs us yet, we surely know; He'll wrong us till he gets a blow That, with a vengeance, will repay The mischiefs we lament this day, This burning, damn'd, infernal play; Will send one city to the sky, Its buildings low and buildings high, And buildings--built the lord knows why; Will give him an eternal check That breaks his heart or breaks his neck, And plants our standard on Quebec. TO THE LAKE SQUADRONS[206] The brilliant task to you assign'd Asks every effort of the mind, And every energy, combined, To crush the foe. Sail where they will, you must be there; Lurk where they can, you will not spare The blast of death--but all things dare To bring them low. To wield his thunders on Champlain, Macdonough leads his gallant train, And, his great object to sustain, Vermont unites Her hardy youths and veterans bold From shelter'd vale and mountain cold, Who fought, to guard, in days of old Their country's rights. That country's wrongs are all your own And to the world the word is gone-- Her independence must to none Be sign'd away. Be to the nation's standard true, To Britain, and to Europe shew That you can fight and conquer too, And prostrate lay. That bitter foe, whose thousands rise No more to fight us in disguise, But count our freedom for their prize, If valor fails: Beneath your feet let fear be cast, Remember deeds of valor past, And nail your colors to the mast And spread your sails. In all the pride and pomp of war Let thunders from the cannon roar, And lightnings flash from shore to shore, To wing the ball. Let Huron from his slumbers wake, Bid Erie to his centre shake, Till, foundering in Ontario's lake, You swamp them all! [206] This poem refers to the campaign during the late summer of 1814 against the English fleet on Lake Ontario and Lake Champlain. THE BATTLE OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN September 11, 1814 Between the british squadron, of 93 guns and 1050 men, and the American fleet of 86 guns and 820 men. The Confiance, of 39 and the Saratoga, of 26 guns, were the flag ships of the two commanders, Downie and Macdonough. Parading near saint Peter's flood Full fourteen thousand soldiers stood; Allied with natives of the wood, With frigates, sloops, and galleys near; Which southward, now, began to steer; Their object was, Ticonderogue. Assembled at Missisqui bay A feast they held, to hail the day, When all should bend to british sway From Plattsburg to Ticonderogue. And who could tell, if reaching there They might not other laurels share And England's flag in triumph bear To the capitol, at Albany!!! Sir George advanced, with fire and sword, The frigates were with vengeance stored, The strength of Mars was felt on board,-- When Downie gave the dreadful word, Huzza! for death or victory! Sir George beheld the prize at stake, And, with his veterans, made the attack, Macomb's brave legions drove him back; And England's fleet approach'd to meet A desperate combat, on the lake. With sulphurous clouds the heavens were black; We saw advance the Confiance, Shall blood and carnage mark her track, To gain dominion on the lake. Then on our ships she pour'd her flame, And many a tar did kill or maim, Who suffer'd for their country's fame, Her soil to save, her rights to guard. Macdonough, now, began his play, And soon his seamen heard him say, No Saratoga yields, this day, To all the force that Britain sends. "Disperse, my lads, and man the waist, Be firm, and to your stations haste, And England from Champlain is chased, If you behave as you'll see me." The fire began with awful roar; At our first flash the artillery tore From his proud stand, their commodore, A presage of the victory. The skies were hid in flame and smoke, Such thunders from the cannon spoke, The contest such an aspect took As if all nature went to wreck! From isle La Motte to Saranac[A] [A] A river which rises from several small lakes among the mountains to the westward of Lake Champlain, and after a north easterly course of near seventy-five miles, enters the grand lake in the vicinity of Plattsburg.--_Freneau's note._ Amidst his decks, with slaughter strew'd, Unmoved, the brave Macdonough stood, Or waded through a scene of blood, At every step that round him stream'd: He stood amidst Columbia's sons, He stood amidst dismounted guns, He fought amidst heart-rending groans, The tatter'd sail, the tottering mast. Then, round about, his ship he wore, And charged his guns with vengeance sore, And more than Etna shook the shore-- The foe confess'd the contest vain. In vain they fought, in vain they sail'd, That day; for Britain's fortune fail'd, And their best efforts nought avail'd To hold dominion on Champlain. So, down their colors to the deck The vanquish'd struck--their ships a wreck-- What dismal tidings for Quebec, What news for England and her prince! For, in this fleet, from England won, A favorite project is undone: Her sorrows only are begun-- And she may want, and very soon, Her armies for her own defence. A DIALOGUE AT WASHINGTON'S TOMB Genius of Virginia--and--Virginia. _Genius._ Who are these that lawless come Washington! too near thy tomb?-- Are they those who, long before, Came to subjugate this shore?-- Are they those whom he repell'd, Captured, or imprison'd held? Or the sons of those of old Cast in nature's rudest mould,-- Dear Virginia, can it be? What a stain is laid on thee! _Virginia._ Such a stain as I do swear Fills my swelling heart with care How to wash away the stain, How to be myself again. From my breast the hero rose, In my soil his bones repose: But this insult to thy shade, Washington, shall be repaid. _Genius._ Dear Virginia! tell me how?-- Tell me not, or tell me now, Can you wield the bolts of Jove, Seize the lightnings from above? Tear the mountain from its base To confound this hated race, Who, with hostile step, presume To violate the honor'd tomb Of my bravest, noblest son, Of th' immortal Washington! _Virginia._ Not the artillery of the sky, Not the vengeance from on high Did I want, to guard my son, I have lightnings of my own! But I wanted---- _Genius._ ----Wanted what? Tell me now, or tell me not. _Virginia._ Men, whom Washington had taught, Men of fire, and men of thought, All their spirits in a glow, Ever ready for the foe; Born to meet the hostile shock, Sturdy as the mountain oak-- Active, steady, on their guard, For the scene of death prepared; Such I wanted--say no more; Time, perhaps, may such restore. _Genius._ By the powers that guard this spot, Want them longer you shall not, I, the patron of your land, From this moment take command, Kindle flames in every breast, Thirst of vengeance for the past; Vengeance, that from shore to shore Shall dye your bay with english gore, And see them leave their thousands slain, If they dare to land again: This is all I choose to say-- Seize your armour--let's away! SIR PETER PETRIFIED On the Modern Sir Peter Parker's[207] Expedition to Kent Island in Chesapeake Bay. --1814-- Sir Peter came, with bold intent, To persecute the men of Kent His flag aloft display'd: He came to see their pleasant farms, But ventured not without his arms To talk with man or maid. And then the gallant colonel Reed Said, "we must see the man indeed; He comes perhaps in want-- Who knows but that his stores are out: Tis hard to dine on mere sour krout, His water may be scant." He spoke--but soon the men of Kent Discover'd what the errand meant, And some, discouraged, said, "Sir Peter comes to petrify, He points his guns, his colors fly, His men for war array'd!" Secure, as if they own'd the land, Advanced this daring naval band, As if in days of peace; Along the shore they, prowling, went, And often ask'd some friends in Kent Where dwelt the fattest geese? The farmers' geese were doom'd to bleed; But some there were, with colonel Reed, Who would not yield assent; And said, before the geese they take, Sir Peter must a bargain make With us, the boys of Kent. The Britons march'd along the shore, Two hundred men, or somewhat more; Next, through the woods they stray'd: The geese, still watchful, as they went, To save the capitol of Kent Their every step betray'd. The british march'd with loaded gun To seize the geese that gabbling run About the isle of Kent: But, what could hardly be believed, Sir Peter was of life bereaved Before he pitch'd his tent. Some kentish lad, to save the geese, And make their noisy gabbling cease Had took a deadly aim: By kentish hands sir Peter fell, His men retreated, with a yell And lost both geese and game! Now what I say, I say with grief, That such a knight, or such a chief On such an errand died!!! When men of worth their lives expose For little things, where little grows They make the very geese their foes; The geese his fall deride: And, sure, they laugh, if laugh they can, To see a star and garter'd man For life of goose expose his own, And bite the dust, with many a groan-- Alas! a gander cry'd-- "Behold, (said he,) a man of fame Who all the way from England came No more than just to get the name Of Peter Petrified!" [207] Sir Peter Parker, commander of the British Frigate _Menelaus_, was prominent for a month in the blockading squadron in Chesapeake Bay during the summer of 1814. After the burning of Washington he was ordered down the bay "but Sir Peter said he 'must have a frolic with the yankees before he left them' and on the 30th of August after dancing and drinking they proceeded to the sport and made a circuitous route to surprise Col. Read encamped in Moore's fields not far from Georgetown X Roads on the eastern shore of Maryland. The Colonel was fully apprised of their proceedings.... The ground was obstinately contended for nearly an hour when the enemy retreated leaving thirteen killed and three wounded on the field. It is ascertained that they carried off seventeen others among whom was Sir Peter who, with several others, are since dead."--_Niles' Register._ ON THE DEATH OF GENERAL ROSS[208] Who had the principal command of the english army at the attack upon Baltimore, in which he fell, while out with a reconnoitering party. Give them the shadow of the cypress bough! The chief who came our prowess to defy, Who came, to bind fresh laurels on his brow, Who came, too sure to conquer not to die:-- Low lies the chief upon th' unconscious plain, The laurels wither, and no wreathes remain. To kindle up your torch, ambition's flame Heroic chief, had all its flames supplied; A monarch's smiles, a never-dying name, The historian's subject, and the soldier's pride; Your native land with splendid trophies hung; Joy sparkling in the eye, and praise from every tongue. Deceived how much! a name alone remains, Not yet complete in fame, nor ripe in years;-- What is the applause such thirst of glory gains, Which not the grave regards or valor hears: In war's wild tumult, for a name he died, He fell, the victim of a monarch's pride. A country's rights, or freedom to defend May sooth the anguish of a dying hour, A ravaged land to succor or befriend, To brave the efforts of a tyrant's power: These may console, when mad ambition's train Fade from the view, or sooth the soul in vain. [208] General Robert Ross, who with Sir George Cockburn had burned Washington, was killed at North Point, Md., Sept. 12, 1814. ON THE NAVAL ATTACK NEAR BALTIMORE[209] September 14, 1814 The sons of old ocean advanced from the bay To achieve an exploit of renown; And Cochrane and Cockburn commanded, that day, And meant to exhibit a tragical play, Call'd, The plunder and burning of Baltimore town. The scenes to be acted were not very new, And when they approach'd, with their rat-tat-too, As merry as times would allow, We ran up the colors to liberty true, And gave them a shot, with a tow-row-dow. By land and by water how many have fail'd In attacking an enemy's town, But britons they tell us, have always prevail'd Wherever they march'd, or wherever they sail'd, To honor his majesty's sceptre and crown: Wherever they went, with the trumpet and drum, And the dregs of the world, and the dirt, and the scum, As soon as the music begun, The colors were struck, and surrender'd the town When the summons was given of down, down, down! But fortune, so fickle, is turning her tide, And safe is old Baltimore town, Though Cockburn and Cochrane, with Ross at their side, The sons of Columbia despised and defy'd, And determined to batter it down; Rebuff'd and repulsed in disgrace they withdrew, With their down, down, down, and their rat-tat-too, As well as the times would allow: And the sight, we expect, will be not very new When they meet us again, with our tow-row-dow. [209] After the burning of Washington the British fleet and army concentrated upon Baltimore. Here they met a stubborn resistance and were at length beaten off. It was during the bombardment of Fort McHenry near the city that Francis Scott Key composed the patriotic song "The Star Spangled Banner." ON THE BRITISH BLOCKADE And Expected Attack on New York, 1814 Old Neversink,[A] with bonnet blue, The present times may surely rue When told what England means to do: [A] The highlands, a little southward of Sandy Hook; being a tract of bold high country, several thousand acres in extent; to the southward of which there is no land that may be termed mountainous, on the whole coast of the United States to Cape Florida. The real aboriginal name of this remarkable promontory was Navesink, since corrupted into Neversink.--_Freneau's note._ Where from the deep his head he rears The din of war salutes his ears, That teazed him not for thirty years. He eastward looks toward the main To see a noisy naval train Invest his bay, our fleets detain. What can be done in such a case?-- His rugged heights the blast must face, The storm that menaces the place. With tents I see his mountain spread, The soldier to the summit led, And cannon planted on his head: From Shrewsbury beach to Sandy Hook The country has a martial look, And quakers skulk in every nook.-- What shall be done in such a case?-- We ask again with woful face To save the trade and guard the place? Where mounted guns the porte secure, The cannon at the embrasure, Will british fleets attempt to moor? Perhaps they may--and make a dash, To fill their pockets with our cash-- Their dealings now are rather harsh. They menace to assail the coast With such a fleet and such a host As may devour us--boil'd or roast. Their feelings are alive and sore For what they got at Baltimore, When, with disgrace, they left the shore, And will revenge it, if they can, On town and country, maid and man-- And all they fear is Fulton's plan; Torpedoes planted in the deep, Whose blast may put them all to sleep, Or ghostify them at a sweep. Another scheme, entirely new, Is hammering on his anvil too, That frightens christian, turk, and jew. A frigate,[B] mounting thirty six!-- Who'er with her a quarrel picks Will little get but cuffs and kicks: [B] The steam frigate _Fulton the First_: Qui me percellit morti debetur--who strikes at me to death is doomed!--_Freneau's note._ A frigate meant to sail by steam!-- How can she else but torture them, Be proof to all their fire and flame. A feast she cooks for England's sons Of scalded heads and broken bones Discharged from iron hearted guns. Black Sam[C] himself, before he died, Such _suppers_ never did provide;-- Such dinners roasted, boil'd, and fry'd. [C] A character well known in New York several years since, remarkable for elegance and luxurious refinements in the art of cookery.--_idem._ To make a brief of all I said-- If to attack they change blockade Their godships will be well repaid With water, scalding from the pot, With melted lead and flaming shot, With vollies of--I know not what, The british lads will be so treated: Their wooden walls will be so heated, Their ruin will be soon completed. Our citizens shall stare and wonder-- The Neversink repel their thunder And Cockburn miss a handsome plunder. ROYAL CONSULTATIONS Relative to the Disposal of Lord Wellington's Army Said the goth to the vandal, the prince to the king, Let us do a mad action, to make the world ring: With Wellington's army we now have the means To make a bold stroke and exhibit new scenes. A stroke at the states is my ardent desire, To waste, and harass them with famine and fire; My vengeance to carry through village and town, And even to batter their capitol down. The vandal then answer'd, and said to the goth, Dear George, with yourself I am equally wroth: Of Wellington's army dispose as you please, It is best, I presume, they should go beyond seas; For, should they come home, I can easily show The hangman will have too much duty to do. So, away came the bruisers, and when they came here Some mischief they did, where no army was near: They came to correct, and they came to chastise And to do all the evil their heads could devise. At Washington city, they burnt and destroy'd Till among the big houses they made a huge void; Then back to their shipping they flew like the wind, But left many more than five hundred behind Of wounded and dead, and others say, double; And thus was the hangman excused from some trouble. Alexandria beheld them in battle array; Alexandria they plunder'd a night and a day. Then quickly retreated, with moderate loss, Their forces conducted by Cockburn and Ross. At Baltimore, next, was their place of attack; But Baltimore drove them repeatedly back; There Rodgers they saw, and their terror was such, They saw they were damn'd when they saw him approach. The forts were assail'd by the strength of their fleet, And the forts, in disorder beheld them retreat So shatter'd and crippled, so mangled and sore, That the tide of Patapsco was red with their gore. Their legions by land no better succeeded-- In vain they manoeuvered, in vain they paraded, Their hundreds on hundreds were strew'd on the ground, Each shot from the rifles brought death or a wound. One shot from a buckskin completed their loss, And their legions no longer were headed by Ross! Where they mean to go next, we can hardly devise, But home they would go if their master was wise. Yet folly so long has directed their course; Such madness is seen in the waste of their force, Such weakness and folly, with malice combined, Such rancor, revenge, and derangement of mind, That, all things consider'd, with truth we may say, Both Cochrane and Cockburn are running away.[A] [A] About this time, September, 1814, the admirals Cochrane and Cockburn quitted the coast of the United States in their respective flag ships.--_Freneau's note._ To their regent, the prince, to their master the king They are now on the way, they are now on the wing, To tell them the story of loss and disaster, One begging a pension, the other a plaister. Let them speed as they may, to us it is plain They will patch up their hulks for another campaign, Their valor to prove, and their havoc to spread When Wellington's army is missing or dead. ON THE LOSS OF THE PRIVATEER BRIGANTINE GENERAL ARMSTRONG Captain Samuel C. Reid, of New-York, which sailed from Sandy Hook, on a cruise, the ninth of September, 1814, and on the 26th came to anchor in the road of Fayal, one of the Azores, or Western Islands, a neutral port belonging to the crown of Portugal. She anchored in that port for the purpose of procuring a supply of fresh water, when she was attacked by the british ship of war Plantaganet, of 74 guns, capt. Lloyd; the Rota frigate of 36 guns, and the armed national brig Carnation, of 18 guns, and many barges of considerable force, all of which she repulsed, with an immense slaughter, and was then scuttled and sunk by order of Captain Reid, to prevent her falling into the hands of the enemy. The Armstrong arrived in the port of Fayal, And her actions of valor we mean to recall; Brave Reid, her commander, his valorous crew, The heroes that aided, his officers, too. Shall it fall to their lot To be basely forgot? O no! while a bard has a pen to command Their fame shall resound through american land. In the road of Fayal, when their anchors were cast, The british were watching to give them a blast; Not far from the port, for destruction sharp set, Lay the Rota, Carnation, and Plantagenet: With a ship of the line Did a frigate combine, And a brig of great force, with her boats in the rear, To capture or burn one New-York privateer! Four boats from the brig were despatch'd in great haste, And onward they came, of the Armstrong to taste; To taste of her powder, to taste of her ball, To taste of the death she must hurl on them all!-- They came in great speed, And with courage, indeed, Well mann'd and well arm'd--so they got along side, Destruction their motto, damnation their guide. Now the Armstrong, with vengeance, had open'd her fire, And gave them as much as they well could desire; A score of them fell--full twenty fell dead-- Then quarters! they cried, and disgracefully fled:-- To their ships they return'd Half shatter'd and burn'd-- Not quite in good humor, perhaps in a fret, And waited new orders from Plantagenet. Then the Armstrong haul'd in, close abreast of the beach, So near, that a pistol the castle could reach; And there she awaited the rest of their plan, And there they determined to die, to a man, Ere the lords of the waves With their sorrowful slaves, The tyrants, who claim the command of the main, With strength, though superior, their purpose should gain. And now the full moon had ascended the sky, Reid saw by her light that the british were nigh: The bell of Fayal told the hour--it was nine-- When the foe was observed to advance in a line; They manoeuvred a while With their brig, in great style, Till midnight approach'd when they made their attack, Twelve boats, full of men, and the brig at their back! They advanced to the conflict as near as they chose, When the Armstrong her cannon discharged on her foes-- The town of Fayal stood aghast in amaze The Armstrong appear'd like all hell in a blaze! At the blast of Long Tom The foe was struck dumb: O lord! are the sons of old England alarm'd-- With music like this they were formerly charm'd! Huzza for old England! three cheers, and a damn! And up to the conflict they manfully came; On the bows and the quarters they grappled a hold, And board! was the word in those barges so bold; But board they could not--to no devil she strikes, So the Armstrong repell'd them with pistols and pikes-- From her musquetry fire They by dozens expire! And soon was the work of destruction complete, And soon was determined their total defeat--! Three hundred brave fellows were wounded and kill'd, Their boats and their barges with slaughter were fill'd; With shame they retreated, the few that remain'd, To tell the event of the battle--not gain'd: Their commander in chief Was astounded with grief!-- Dont grieve, my good fellows--he hail'd them--I beg I too have my wounds--"an ox trod on my leg!" But to save the stout Armstrong--even Reid could not do-- A ship of the line with a frigate in tow--! A brig of their navy accoutred for war--! All this was too much for e'en yankees to dare: So he scuttled his barque-- Nor need we remark That she sunk on the sands by the beach of Fayal With her colors all flying--no colors could fall! Of neutrals what nonsense some tell us each day! Exists there a neutral where Britain has sway? The rights of a neutral!--away with such stuff-- What neutral remains that can England rebuff?-- To be safe from disgrace The deep seas are our place: The flag of no neutral our flag can defend, By ourselves we must fight, on ourselves must depend. Now in bumpers of reason, success to brave Reid! Himself and his heroes are heroes indeed!-- In conquests, like this, can an englishman glory, One traitor among us, one Halifax tory? If they can--let them brag-- Here's success to our flag! May it ever be ready, the britons to maul, As the Armstrong behaved in the road of Fayal.-- ON THE BRIGANTINE PRIVATEER Prince de Neufchatel[210] Ordonneaux, commander, which arrived at Boston some time since, from a cruise of three months, chiefly in the english and irish channels, in which she captured thirteen or fourteen valuable prizes, to the amount, it was said, of more than a million of dollars. Quid petis hic est.--_Martial._ What is wealth, that men will roam, Risque their all, and leave their home, Face the cannon, beat the drum, And their lives so cheaply sell! Let them reason on the fact Who would rather think than act-- Their brains were not with morals rack'd Who mann'd the prince of Neufchatel. Having play'd a lucky game, Homeward, with her treasure, came This privateer of gallant fame, Call'd the prince of Neufchatel. Are the english cruisers near? Do they on the coast appear To molest this privateer?-- --She shall be defended well. Soon a frigate hove in sight:-- As the wind was rather light, She, five barges, out of spite, Sent, to attack, with gun and blade. On our decks stood rugged men, Little more than three times ten; And I tremble, while my pen Tells the havoc that was made. Up they came, with colors red, One a stern, and one a head-- Shall I tell you what they said?-- Yankees! strike the buntin rag! Three were ranged on either side-- Then the ports were open'd wide, And the sea with blood was dyed; Ruin to the english flag! Now the angry cannons roar, Now they hurl the storm of war, Now in floods of human gore Swam the prince of Neufchatel! Then the captain, Ordonneaux, Seconded the seaman's blow, And the remnant of the foe Own'd the brig defended well. For the million she contain'd He contended, sword in hand, Follow'd by as brave a band Of tars, as ever, trod a deck. In these bloody barges, five, Scarce a man was left alive, And about the seas they drive; Some were sunk, and some a wreck. Every effort that they made With boarding pike, or carronade, Every effort was repaid, Scarcely with a parallel! Fortune, thus, upon the wave, Crown'd the valor of the brave:-- Little lost, and much to save, Had the prince of Neufchatel. [210] Of the numerous vessels fitted out during the war by private parties to prey on British commerce the Prince de Neufchatel was doubtless the most successful. THE PARADE AND SHAM-FIGHT A Pine Forest Picture--on a Training Day. ----Invictaque bello Dextera! non illi se quisquam impune tulisset Obvius armato---- _Virg._ The drum was beat, the flag display'd, The soldiers met upon parade, And all for action ready made With loud huzza! When forth a stately figure strode, Of stature such, of such a mode, As those who lived before the flood, If stuff'd with straw. His vigor seem'd by years unbroke; But then his phiz had such a look, As if preserved in Etna's smoke For half an age. God help us all to look our best! This man was captain of the rest, And valor seem'd to fire his breast With martial rage. His horse was of an iron grey; (A prancing steed he rode that day,) Not of the bold virginian breed, Nor yet remote from Quixote's steed. This chief was of the bullet mould; To meet the conflict, firm and bold, His coat was patch'd, his boots new soal'd, Ham stuff'd his maw: Two pounds of powder fill'd his horn, His pantaloons were old and worn, A cap and hat his head adorn-- The chapeau bras. With vengeance heated, long in store, He sallied forth, a man of war; And all that meet him, pray take care Of rusty pikes. He had no helmet for the head, But death and ruin near him tread, And slaughter, in a suit of red, That deadly strikes. A blanket from his shoulders hung, Three dollars in his pockets rung, And to his thigh a faulchion clung, That made us quake: A veteran in the fighting trade! The owner of so keen a blade! Do not provoke him, man or maid, For mercy's sake. O could you but one furlong ride With such a faulchion at your side, Your bosom would for glory beat And show Napoleon all complete! Two pistols, to his girdle tied, Foreboded vengeance, far and wide, To all that were not on our side, With heart and hand. Accoutred thus, with martial air, He gave the warning word, "Take care!" And, in a moment, all was war, Sublime and grand. They march'd, and march'd, as thick as bees. Then march'd towards a clump of trees; And "blaze away!" the leader says-- "Each take his aim! "Who wounds a tree can kill a man-- "If you but practise on that plan, "The britons shall go home again With grief and shame!" Not Philip's famed, unrivall'd son, For Greece subdued, or India won, Not Cockburn, burning Washington, Look'd so elate: Not Bonaparte, on Egypt's sands With such importance gave commands, With such discretion train'd his bands, Assumed such state! Not Caesar, when he pass'd the Rhine, Not Marlborough leading up his line, Not Perry, when he said, "they're mine!" Put on such airs;-- As now were shown to front and rear When victory seem'd to hover near. Indeed not purchased very dear-- No wounds nor scars. Departing from the norman shore, Not William such a feature wore When England hail'd him conqueror, With loud acclaim: Not Fulton, when his steam he try'd And Neptune's car stemm'd Hudson's tide Felt such a generous glow of pride For well earn'd fame. That day Cornwallis met his fate, Not Washington felt half so great When tow'rd him flew the gallic fleet To share his smile: Not conquest had for Gates such charms When, yielding to the victor's arms, He bade Burgoyne resign his arms, In soldier's style. Not Ajax' self, with such a grace Gave orders to attack a place; Not Hannibal with bolder face Approach'd old Rome,-- When marching for the Tiber shore, He yet his alpine jacket wore, And hoped to sweep the senate floor, And fix their doom: Not Parker,[A] when he cross'd the bar Of Charleston with his men of war, Was, near fort Moultrie, half so sure Of victory gain'd: [A] Sir Peter Parker, it is well remembered, attacked fort Moultrie, on Sullivan's Island, in 1776, and after a sanguinary action, was repulsed with great loss.--_Freneau's note._ Not Parker, when departing thence So shatter'd--at the king's expense-- Was so provoked at the defence, Felt so chagrined, As did our chief (no captain Brag) When he perceiv'd some worthless wag Had stolen away the brandy keg-- Ah! loss indeed! For this, he swore he would resign, All future trust in man decline; Of whom, at least, there was one swine, They all agreed-- And cry'd "like hell his heart is black-- Pursue him, boys, and scent his track, If drunk or dead, we'll have him back, This man of scum!" Each took his mark, and hit a tree; The battle's done!--all sober, we; Huzza! we have the victory! Then scamper'd home! RETALIATION A Marine Ode--1814 "Ye powers who rule the western gale Not for the golden fleece we sail, Nor yet on wild ambition's plan, But vengeance gathers man with man. For wrongs which wearied patience bore, For slighted rules of legal war, We rear our flag, our sails display, And east north east explore our way. Let some assert, ten thousand pounds Would place our fleet on british grounds, And urge us onward to saint James To wrap his palaces in flames. A motive of so mean a cast Allures no mind, excites no breast; From such reward we loathing turn And would at such a proffer spurn. No--to retaliate on the foe, Free-will'd, we independent go, Our ship well mann'd, in war's attire, To light the skies with english fire. November comes! tis time to sail, The nights are long and brisk the gale, And England, soon, the odds may prove Between our hatred and our love." ON THE LAUNCHING Of the Seventy-four Gun Ship _Independence_,[211] at Charlestown, near Boston Our trade to restore as it stood once before We have launched a new ship from the stocks, Her rate is our first, and her force will, we trust, Be sufficient to humble the hawks; The hawks of old England we mean, don't mistake, Some harpies of England our prizes we'll make. Independence her name, independent our minds, And prepared for the toils of the sea, We are ready to combat the waves and the winds, And fight till the ocean is free: Then, away to your stations, each man on our list Who, when danger approaches, will never be miss'd. In asserting our rights we have rather been slow And patient till patience was tired; We were plunder'd and press'd ere we ventur'd a blow Till the world at our patience admired, And language was held, of contempt and disgrace, And Europe mis-call'd us a pitiful race. Twas time to arise in the strength of our might When Madison publish'd the war, And many have thought that he would have been right Had he published it three years before; While France was unpester'd with traitors and knaves, Nor Europe polluted with Wellington's slaves. To arm for our country is never too late, No fetters are yet on our feet; Our hands are more free, and our hearts are as great As the best in the enemy's fleet: And look at the list of their navy, and think, How many are left, to burn, capture, and sink! Let the nations of Europe surrender the sea, Or crouch at the foot of a throne; In liberty's soil we have planted her tree, And her rights will relinquish to none: Then stand to your arms, Then stand to your arms, Then stand to your arms--half the battle is done! And bravely accomplish what valor begun. The day is approaching, a day not remote, A day with impatience we hail, When Decatur and Hull shall again be afloat, And Bainbridge commission'd to sail; To raise his blockades, will advance on the foe, And bulwark with Bull to the bottom shall go. On the waves of Lake Erie we show'd the old brag We, too, could advance in a line, And batter their frigates and humble their flag; "I have met them," said Perry, "they're mine!" And so, my dear boys, we can meet them again On the waves of the sea, or the waves of Champlain. To the new Independence then, pour out a glass, And drink, with the sense of a man: She soon will be ready, this pride of her class, Sir Thomas[A] to meet on his plan: He hates our torpedoes--then teaze him no more, Let him venture his luck with our Seventy-four. Then stand to your arms, you shall ne'er be enslav'd, Let the battle go on till the nation is saved! [A] Sir Thomas Hardy, of the Ramillies 74.--_Freneau's note._ [211] The _Independence_ was one of the four 74-gun frigates authorized by Congress at the opening of the war. It was launched late in 1814, too late to play any part in the war. THE BROOK OF THE VALLEY The world has wrangled half an age, And we again in war engage, While this sweet, sequester'd rill Murmurs through the valley still. All pacific as you seem: Such a gay elysian stream;-- Were you always thus at rest How the valley would be blest. But, if always thus at rest; This would not be for the best: In one summer you would die And leave the valley parch'd and dry. Tell me, where your waters go, Purling as they downward flow? Stagnant, now, and now a fall?-- To the gulph that swallows all. Flowing, peaceful, from your urn Are your waters to return?-- Though the same you may appear, You're not the same we saw last year. Not a drop of that remains-- Gone to visit other plains, Gone, to stray through other woods, Gone, to join the ocean floods! Yes--they may return once more To visit scenes they knew before;-- Yonder sun, to cheer the vale From the ocean can exhale Vapors, that your waste supply, Turn'd to rain from yonder sky; Moisture, vapors, to revive And keep your margin all alive. But, with all your quiet flow, Do you not some quarrels know! Lately, angry, how you ran! All at war--and much like man. When the shower of waters fell, How you raged, and what a swell! All your banks you overflow'd, Scarcely knew your own abode! How you battled with the rock! Gave my willow such a shock As to menace, by its fall, Underwood and bushes, all: Now you are again at peace: Time will come when that will cease; Such the human passions are; --You again will war declare. Emblem, thou, of restless man; What a sketch of nature's plan! Now at peace, and now at war, Now you murmur, now you roar; Muddy now, and limpid next, Now with icy shackles vext-- What a likeness here we find! What a picture of mankind! APPENDIX A. THE AMERICAN VILLAGE, &C. B. LIST OF OMITTED POEMS. C. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE POETRY OF PHILIP FRENEAU. THE AMERICAN VILLAGE.[212] WHERE yonder stream divides the fertile plain, Made fertile by the labours of the swain; And hills and woods high tow'ring o'er the rest, Behold a village with fair plenty blest: Each year tall harvests crown the happy field; Each year the meads their stores of fragrance yield, And ev'ry joy and ev'ry bliss is there, And healthful labour crowns the flowing year. THOUGH _Goldsmith_ weeps in melancholy strains, Deserted Auburn and forsaken plains, And mourns his village with a patriot sigh, And in that village sees Britannia die: Yet shall this land with rising pomp divine, In it's own splendor and Britannia's shine. O muse, forget to paint her ancient woes, Her Indian battles, or her Gallic foes; Resume the pleasures of the rural scene, Describe the village rising on the green, It's harmless people, born to small command, Lost in the bosom of this western land: SO shall my verse run gentle as the floods, So answer all ye hills, and echo all ye woods; So glide ye streams in hollow channels pent, Forever wasting, yet not ever spent. Ye clust'ring boughs by hoary thickets borne! Ye fields high waving with eternal corn! Ye woodland nymphs the tender tale rehearse, The fabled authors of immortal verse: Ye Dryads fair, attend the scene I love, And Heav'n shall centre in yon' blooming grove. What tho' thy woods, AMERICA, contain The howling forest, and the tiger's den, The dang'rous serpent, and the beast of prey, Men are more fierce, more terrible than they. No monster with it's vile contagious breath, No flying scorpion darting instant death; No pois'nous adder, burning to engage, Has half the venom or has half the rage. What tho' the Turk protests to heav'n his ire, With lift up hand amidst his realms of fire; And Russia's Empress sends her fleets afar, To aid the havock of the burning war: Their rage dismays not, and their arms in vain, In dreadful fury bathe with blood the plain; Their terrors harmless, tho' their story heard, How this one conquer'd, or was nobly spar'd: Vain is their rage, to us their anger vain, The deep Atlantic raves and roars between. TO yonder village then will I descend, There spend my days, and there my ev'nings spend; Sweet haunt of peace whose mud' wall'd sides delight, The rural mind beyond the city bright: Their tops with hazles or with alders wove, Remurmur magic to the neighb'ring grove; And each one lab'ring in his own employ, Comes weary home at night, but comes with joy: The soil which lay for many thousand years O'er run by woods, by thickets and by bears; Now reft of trees, admits the chearful light, And leaves long prospects to the piercing sight; Where once the lynx nocturnal sallies made, And the tall chestnut cast a dreadful shade: No more the panther stalks his bloody rounds, Nor bird of night her hateful note resounds; Nor howling wolves roar to the rising moon, As pale arose she o'er yon eastern down. Some prune their trees, a larger load to bear Of fruits nectarine blooming once a year: See groaning waggons to the village come Fill'd with the apple, apricot or plumb; And heavy beams suspended from a tree, To press their juice against the winter's day: Or see the plough torn through the new made field, Ordain'd a harvest, yet unknown to yield. The rising barn whose spacious floor receives The welcome thousands of the wheaten sheaves, And spreads it's arms to take the plenteous store, Sufficient for its master and the poor: For as Eumoeus us'd his beggar guest The great Ulysses in his tatters drest: So here fair Charity puts forth her hand, And pours her blessings o'er the greatful land: No needy wretch the rage of winter fears, Secure he sits and spends his aged years, With thankful heart to gen'rous souls and kind, That save him from the winter and the wind. A LOVELY island once adorn'd the sea, Between New-Albion and the Mexic' Bay; Whose sandy sides washed by the ocean wave, Scarce heard a murmur but what ocean gave: Small it's circumference, nor high it's coast, But shady woods the happy isle could boast; On ev'ry side new prospects catch'd the eye, There rose blue mountains to the arched sky: Here thunder'd ocean in convulsive throws, And dash'd the island as it's waters rose: Yet peaceful all within, no tumults there, But fearless steps of the unhunted hare; And nightly chauntings of the fearless dove, Or blackbird's note, the harbinger of love. So peaceful was this haunt that nature gave, Still as the stars, and silent as the grave; No loud applause there rais'd the patriot breast, No shouting armies their mad joy confest, For battles gain'd, or trophies nobly won, Or nations conquer'd near the rising sun; No clam'rous crews, or wild nocturnal cheer, Or murd'rous ruffians, for no men were here. On it's east end a grove of oak was seen, And shrubby hazels fill'd the space between; Dry alders too, and aspin leaves that shook With ev'ry wind, conspired to shade a brook, Whose gentle stream just bubbling from the ground, Was quickly in the salter ocean drown'd: Beyond whose fount, the center of the isle, Wild plumb trees flourish'd on the shaded soil. In the dark bosom of this sacred wood, Secluded from the world, and all it's own, Of other lands unknowing, and unknown. Here might the hunter have destroy'd his prey, Transfix'd the goat before the dawn of day; And trudging homeward with his welcome load, The fruit of wand'rings thro' each by-way road: Thrown down his burthen with the needless sigh, And gladly feasted his small family. Small fields had then suffic'd, and grateful they, The annual labours of his hands to pay; And free his right to search the briny flood For fish, or slay the creatures of the wood. THUS spent his days in labour's pleasant pain, Had liv'd and dy'd the homely shepherd swain: Had seen his children and his children's heirs, The fruit of love and memory of years To agriculture's first fair service bent, The work of mortals, and their great intent. So had the Sire his days of pleasure known, And wish'd to change no country for his own: So had he with his fair endearing wife, Pass'd the slow circle of a harmless life; With happy ignorance divinely blest, The path, the centre and the home of rest. Long might the sun have run his bright career, And long the moon her mantled visage rear; And long the stars their nightly vigils kept, And spheres harmonious either sung or wept: He had not dream'd of worlds besides his own, And thought them only stars, beyond the moon; Enjoy'd himself, nor hear'd of future hell, Or heav'n, the recompence of doing well; Had scarcely thought of an eternal state, And left his being in the hands of fate.-- O had this isle such souls sublime contain'd, And there for ages future sons remain'd: But envious time conspiring with the sea, Wash'd all it's landscapes, and it's groves away. It's trees declining, stretch'd upon the sand, No more their shadows throw across the land. It's vines no more their clust'ring beauty show, Nor sturdy oaks embrace the mountain's brow. Bare sands alone now overwhelm the coast, Lost in it's grandeur, and it's beauty lost. THUS, tho' my fav'rite isle to ruin gone, Inspires my sorrow, and demands my moan; Yet this wide land it's place can well supply With landscapes, hills and grassy mountains high. O HUDSON! thy fair flood shall be my theme, Thy winding river, or thy glassy stream; On whose tall banks tremendous rocks I spy, Dread nature in primæval majesty. Rocks, to whose summits clouds eternal cling, Or clust'ring birds in their wild wood notes sing. Hills, from whose sides the mountain echo roars, Rebounding dreadful from the distant shores; Or vallies, where refreshing breezes blow, And rustic huts in fair confusion grow, Safe from the winds, secur'd by mountains high, That seem to hide the concave of the sky; To whose top oft' the curious hind ascends, And wonders where the arch'd horizon bends; Pleas'd with the distant prospects rising new, And hills o'er hills, a never ending view. Through various paths with hasty step he scours, And breathes the odours of surrounding flow'rs, Caught from their bosoms by the fragrant breath, Of western breezes, or the gale of death.[A] Then low descending, seeks the humble dome, And centres all his pleasures in his home, 'Till day returning, brings the welcome toil, To clear the forest, or to tame the soil; To burn the woods, or catch the tim'rous deer, To scour the thicket, or contrive the snare. [A] South wind.--_Freneau's note._ SUCH was the life our great fore-fathers led, The golden season now from Britain fled, E'er since dread commerce stretch'd the nimble sail, And sent her wealth with ev'ry foreign gale.-- Strange fate, but yet to ev'ry country known, To love all other riches but it's own. Thus fell the mistress of the conquer'd earth, Great ROME, who owed to ROMULUS her birth. Fell to the monster Luxury, a prey, Who forc'd a hundred nations to obey. She whom nor mighty CARTHAGE could withstand, Nor strong JUDEA'S once thrice holy land: She all the west, and BRITAIN could subdue, While vict'ry with the ROMAN eagles flew; She, she herself eternal years deny'd, Like ROME she conquer'd, but by ROME she dy'd: But if AMERICA, by this decay, The world itself must fall as well as she. No other regions latent yet remain, This spacious globe has been research'd in vain. Round it's whole circle oft' have navies gone, And found but sea or lands already known. When she has seen her empires, cities, kings, Time must begin to flap his weary wings; The earth itself to brighter days aspire, And wish to feel the purifying fire. NOR think this mighty land of old contain'd The plund'ring wretch, or man of bloody mind: Renowned SACHEMS once their empires rais'd On wholesome laws; and sacrifices blaz'd. The gen'rous soul inspir'd the honest breast, And to be free, was doubly to be blest: 'Till the east winds did here COLUMBUS blow, And wond'ring nations saw his canvas flow. 'Till here CABOT descended on the strand, And hail'd the beauties of the unknown land; And rav'nous nations with industrious toil, Conspir'd to rob them of their native soil: Then bloody wars, and death and rage arose, And ev'ry tribe resolv'd to be our foes. Full many a feat of them I could rehearse, And actions worthy of immortal verse: Deeds ever glorious to the INDIAN name, And fit to rival GREEK or ROMAN fame, But one sad story shall my Muse relate, Full of paternal love, and full of fate; Which when ev'n yet the northern shepherd hears, It swells his breast, and bathes his face in tears, Prompts the deep groan, and lifts the heaving sigh, Or brings soft torrents from the female eye. FAR in the arctic skies, where HUDSON'S BAY Rolls it's cold wave and combats with the sea, A dreary region lifts it's dismal head, True sister to the regions of the dead. Here thund'ring storms continue half the year, Or deep-laid snows their joyless visage rear: Eternal rocks, from whose prodigious steep The angry tiger stuns the neighb'ring deep; While through the wild wood, or the shrouded plain, The moose deer seeks his food, but often seeks in vain: Yet in this land, froze by inclement skies, The Indian huts in wild succession rise; And daily hunting, when the short-liv'd spring Shoots joyous forth, th' industrious people bring Their beaver spoils beneath another sky, PORT NELSON, and each BRITISH factory: In slender boats from distant lands they sail, Their small masts bending to the inland gale, On traffic sent to gain the little store, Which keeps them plenteous, tho' it keeps them poor. Hither CAFFRARO in his flighty boat, One hapless spring his furry riches brought; And with him came, for sail'd he not alone, His consort COLMA, and his little son. While yet from land o'er the deep wave he plough'd, And tow'rds the shore with manly prowess row'd. His barque unfaithful to it's trusted freight, Sprung the large leak, the messenger of fate; But no lament or female cry was heard, Each for their fate most manfully prepar'd, From bubbling waves to send the parting breath To lands of shadows, and the shade of death. O FATE! unworthy such a tender train, O day, lamented by the Indian swain! Full oft' of it the strippling youth shall hear, And sadly mourn their fortune with a tear: The Indian maids full oft' the tale attend, And mourn their COLMA as they'd mourn a friend. NOW while in waves the barque demerg'd, they strive, Dead with despair, tho' nature yet alive: Forth from the shore a friendly brother flew, In one small boat, to save the drowning crew. He came, but in his barque of trifling freight, Could save but two, and one must yield to fate. O dear CAFFRARO, said the hapless wife, O save our son, and save thy dearer life: 'Tis thou canst teach him how to hunt the doe, Transfix the buck, or tread the mountain snow, Let me the sentence of my fate receive, And to thy care my tender infant leave. He sigh'd, nor answer'd, but as firm as death, Resolv'd to save her with his latest breath: And as suspended by the barque's low side, He rais'd the infant from the chilling tide, And plac'd it safe; he forc'd his COLMA too To save herself, what more could mortal do? But nobly scorning life, she rais'd her head From the flush'd wave, and thus divinely said: OF life regardless, I to fate resign, But thou, CAFFRARO, art forever mine. O let thy arms no future bride embrace, Remember COLMA, and her beauteous face, Which won thee youthful in thy gayest pride, With captives, trophies, victors at thy side; Now I shall quick to blooming regions fly, A spring eternal, and a nightless sky, Far to the west, where radiant Sol descends, And wonders where the arch'd horizon ends: There shall my soul thy lov'd idea keep, And 'till thy image comes, unceasing weep. There, tho' the tiger is but all a shade, And mighty panthers but the name they had; And proudest hills, and lofty mountains there, Light as the wind, and yielding as the air; Yet shall our souls their ancient feelings have, More strong, more noble than this side the grave. There lovely blossoms blow throughout the year, And airy harvests rise without our care: And all our sires and mighty ancestors, Renown'd for battles and successful wars, Behold their sons in fair succession rise, And hail them happy to serener skies. There shall I see thee too, and see with joy Thy future charge, my much lov'd Indian boy: The thoughtless infant, whom with tears I see, Once sought my breast, or hung upon my knee; Tell him, ah tell him, when in manly years, His dauntless mind, nor death nor danger fears, Tell him, ah tell him, how thy COLMA dy'd, His fondest mother, and thy youthful bride: Point to my tomb thro' yonder furzy glade, And show where thou thy much lov'd COLMA laid. O may I soon thy blest resemblance see, And my sweet infant all reviv'd in thee. 'Till then I'll haunt the bow'r or lonely shade, Or airy hills for contemplation made, And think I see thee in each ghostly shoal, And think I clasp thee to my weary soul. Oft, oft thy form to my expecting eye, Shall come in dreams with gentle majesty; Then shall I joy to find my bliss began To love an angel, whom I lov'd a man! She said, and downward in the hoary deep Plung'd her fair form to everlasting sleep; Her parting soul it's latest struggle gave, And her last breath came bubbling thro' the wave. THEN sad CAFFRARO all his grief declares, And swells the torrent of the gulph with tears; And senseless stupid to the shore is borne In death-like slumbers, 'till the rising morn, Then sorrowing, to the sea his course he bent Full sad, but knew not for what cause he went, 'Till, sight distressing, from the lonely strand, He saw dead COLMA wafting to the land. Then in a stupid agony of pray'r, He rent his mantle, and he tore his hair; Sigh'd to the stars, and shook his honour'd head, And only wish'd a place among the dead! O had the winds been sensible of grief, Or whisp'ring angels come to his relief; Then had the rocks not echo'd to his pain, Nor hollow mountains answer'd him again: Then had the floods their peaceful courses kept, Nor the sad pine in all it's murmurs wept; Nor pensive deer stray'd through the lonely grove, Nor sadly wept the sympathising dove.-- Thus far'd the sire through his long days of pain, Or with his offspring rov'd the silent plain; Till years approaching, bow'd his sacred head Deep in the dust, and sent him to the dead: Where now perhaps in some strange fancy'd land, He grasps the airy bow, and flies across the strand; Or with his COLMA shares the fragrant grove, It's vernal blessings, and the bliss of love. FAREWELL lamented pair, and whate'er state Now clasps you round, and sinks you deep in fate; Whether the firey kingdom of the sun, Or the slow wave of silent Acheron, Or Christian's heaven, or planetary sphere, Or the third region of the cloudless air; Or if return'd to dread nihility, You'll still be happy, for you will not be. NOW fairest village of the fertile plain, Made fertile by the labours of the swain; Who first my drowsy spirit did inspire, To sing of woods, and strike the rural lyre: Who last shou'd see me wand'ring from thy cells, And groves of oak where contemplation dwells, Wou'd fate but raise me o'er the smaller cares, Of Life unwelcome and distressful years, Pedantic labours and a hateful ease, Which scarce the hoary wrinkled sage cou'd please. Hence springs each grief, each long reflective sigh, And not one comfort left but poetry. Long, long ago with her I could have stray'd, To woods, to thickets or the mountain shade; Unfit for cities and the noisy throng, The drunken revel and the midnight song; The gilded beau and scenes of empty joy, Which please a moment and forever die. Here then shall center ev'ry wish, and all The tempting beauties of this spacious ball: No thought ambitious, and no bold design, But heaven born contemplation shall be mine. In yonder village shall my fancy stray, Nor rove beyond the confines of to-day; The aged volumes of some plain divine, In broken order round my hut shou'd shine; Whose solemn lines should soften all my cares, And sound devotion to th' eternal stars: And if one sin my rigid breast did stain, Thou poetry shou'dst be the darling sin; Which heav'n without repentance might forgive, And which an angel might commit and live: And where yon' wave of silent water falls, O'er the smooth rock or Adamantine walls: The summer morns and vernal eves should see, MILTON, immortal bard my company; Or SHAKESPEARE, DRYDEN, each high sounding name, The pride of BRITAIN, and one half her fame: Or him who wak'd the fairy muse of old, And pleasing tales of lands inchanted told. Still in my hand, he his soft verse shou'd find His verse, the picture of the poets mind: Or heav'nly POPE, who now harmonious mourns, "Like the rapt seraph that adores and burns." Then in sharp satire, with a giant's might, Forbids the blockhead and the fool to write: And in the centre of the bards be shown The deathless lines of godlike ADDISON; Who, bard thrice glorious, all delightful flows, And wrapt the soul of poetry in prose. NOW cease, O muse, thy tender tale to chaunt, The smiling village, or the rural haunt; New scenes invite me, and no more I rove, To tell of shepherds, or the vernal grove. [212] "The American Village," Freneau's first distinct poetical publication, was for many years known only from his description of it in a letter to Madison (see Vol. I, page xxii, _supra_). It was supposed to have been lost, until a copy was discovered in a volume of miscellaneous pamphlets which had been purchased by the Library of Congress in November, 1902. A second copy, still more recently discovered, is now in the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. I have reproduced the entire text of this little volume with the original punctuation and spelling, using however the modern form of the "s", and correcting the _errata_ noted by the author. THE FARMER'S WINTER EVENING A POEM _To the_ NYMPH _I never saw_. FAR be the pleasures of the day, And mirth and festive joy from me, When cold December nips the plains, Or frozen January reigns. Far he the hunts-man's noisy horn, And coursers fleet thro' thickets borne, Swift as the wind, and far the sight, Of snowy mountains, sadly white; But thou, O night, with sober charms, Shall clasp me in thy sable arms. For thee I love the winter eve, The noisy day for thee I leave. Beneath some mountain's tow'ring height, In cottage low I hail the night, Where jovial swains, with heart sincere, And timely mirth dishearten care: Each tells his tale, or chaunts a song Of her for whom he sigh'd so long; Of CLARA fair, or FLORA coy, Disdaining still her shepherd boy, While near the hoary headed sage, Recalls the days of youthful age, Describes his course of manly years, His journey thro' this vale of tears; How champion he with champions met, And fiercely did they combat it, 'Till envious night in ebon chair, Urg'd faster on her chariotteer, And robb'd him, O for shame, of glory And feats fit for renown in story.-- Thus spent in tales the ev'ning hour, And quaffing juice of sober pow'r, Which handsome KATE with malt did steep, To lead on balmy visag'd sleep, While her neat hand the milk pail strains, A sav'ry supper for the swains. And now the moon exalted high, Gives lustre to the earth and sky, And from the mighty ocean's glass, Reflects the beauty of her face: About her orb you may behold, A thousand stars of burnish'd gold, Which slowly to the west retire, And lose awhile their glitt'ring fire. O COULD I here find my abode, And live within this fancy'd wood, With thee the weeks and years to pass, My pretty rural shepherdess; With thee the cooling spring to sip, Or live upon thy damask lip: Then sacred groves, and shades divine, And all ARCADIA should be mine. Steep me, steep me some poppies deep In beechen bowl, to bring on sleep; Love hath my mind in shackles kept, Thrice the cock crew, nor once I slept. O gentle sleep, wrap me in dreams, Of fields and woods, and running streams; Of rivers wide, and castles rare, And be my lovely FLORA there: A larger draught, a larger bowl To gratify my drowsy soul; "A larger draught is yet in store, Perhaps with this you wake no more." Then I my lovely maid shall see thee Drinking the deep streams of LETHE, Where now dame ARETHUSA scatters Her soft stream with ALPHEUS' waters, To forget her earthly cares, Lost in LETHE, lost in years! And I too will quaff the water, Lest it should be said, O daughter Of my giddy, wand'ring brain, I sigh'd for one I've never seen. THE MISERABLE LIFE OF A PEDAGOGUE[213] TO form the manners of our youth, To guide them in the way of truth, To lead them through the jarring schools, Arts, sciences, and grammar rules; Is certainly an arduous work, Enough to tire out Jew or Turk; And make a christian bite his nails, For do his best, he surely fails; And spite of all that some may say, His praise is trifling as his pay. FOR My part I, tho' vers'd in booking, Still sav'd my carcase from such cooking; And always slyly shunn'd a trade, Too trifling as I thought and said; But at a certain crazy season, When men have neither sense or reason; By some confounded misadventure, I found myself just in it's centre. ODD'S fish and blood, and noun and neuter, And tenses present, past and future: I utter'd with a wicked sigh, Where are my brains, or where am I? The dullest creature of the wood, Knows how to shun the distant flood; Whales, dolphins, and a hundred more, Are not the fools to run ashore. WELL, now contented I must be, Forc'd by the dame Necessity, Who like the tribunal of Spain, Let's you speak once, but not again; And swift to execute the blow, Ne'er tells you why or whence it's so. NOW I am ask'd a thousand questions, Of ALEXANDERS and EPHESTIONS; With sly designs to know if I Am vers'd in GRECIAN history; And then again my time destroy, With aukward grace to tell of TROY: From that huge giant POLYPHEMUS, Quite down to ROMULUS and REMUS. Then I'm oblig'd to give them lectures, On quadrants, circles, squares and sectors; Or in my wretched mem'ry bear, What weighs a cubic inch of air. "SIR, here's my son, I beg you'd mind, The graces have been very kind, And on him all their blessings shed, [Except a genius and a head] Teach him the doctrine of the sphere, The sliding circle and the square, And starry worlds, I know not where: And let him quickly learn to say, Those learned words Penna, Pennae; Which late I heard our parson call As learning, knowledge all in all." AND then a city dame approaches, Known by her horsemen, chairs and coaches: "Sir, here's my son, teach him to speak The Hebrew, Latin, and the Greek: And this I half forgot, pray teach My tender boy--the parts of speech-- But never let this son of me, Learn that vile thing astronomy: Upon my word it's all a sham,"-- O I'm your humble servant ma'am. There certainly is something in it-- "Boy, drive the coach off in a minute." And thus I'm left in street or road, A laughing stock to half the crowd, To argue with myself the case, And prove its being to my face. A plague I say on such employment, Where's neither pleasure nor enjoyment: Whoe'er to such a life is ty'd, Was born the day he should have dy'd; Born in an hour when angry spheres Were tearing caps, or pulling ears: And Saturn slow 'gainst swift Mercurius, Was meditating battles furious; Or comets with their blazing train, Decreed their life, a life of pain. [213] This poem was undoubtedly written while Freneau was conducting his school at Flatbush early in 1772. See Vol. I, page xxi. UPON A VERY ANCIENT DUTCH HOUSE ON LONG ISLAND.[214] Behold this antique dome by envious time, Grown crazy, and in ev'ry part decay'd; Full well, alas, it claims my humble rhyme, For such lone haunts and contemplation made. Ah see the hearth, where once the chearful fire Blaz'd high, and warm'd the winter trav'lers toes; And see the walls, which once did high aspire, Admit the storms, and ev'ry wind that blows. In yonder corner, now to ruin gone, The ancient housewife's curtain'd bed appear'd, Where she and her man JOHN did sleep alone, Nor nightly robber, nor the screech owl fear'd. There did they snore full oft' the whole night out, Smoking the sable pipe, 'till that did fall, Reft from their jaws by Somnus' sleepy rout, And on their faces pour'd its scorched gall. And in the compass of yon' smaller gang, The swain BATAVIAN once his courtship made, To some DUTCH lass, as thick as she was long; "Come then, my angel, come," the shepherd said, "And let us for the bridal bed prepare; For you alone shall ease my future life, And you alone shall soften all my care, My strong, my hearty, and industrious wife." Thus they--but eating ruin now hath spread Its wings destructive o'er the antique dome; The mighty fabrick now is all a shed, Scarce fit to be the wand'ring beggar's home. And none but me it's piteous fate lament, None, none but me o'er it's sad ashes mourn, Sent by the fates, and by APOLLO sent, To shed their latest tears upon it's silent urn. [214] This is the germ of the poem, "The Deserted Farm-House," Vol. I, p. 40, _supra_. A comparison of the two versions will illustrate the thorough way in which Freneau often revised his poems. B. LIST OF OMITTED POEMS. It has been found necessary for various reasons to omit some of the poems that appear in the various editions of Freneau. For the most part this omitted material has no historic or poetic significance. Nothing would be gained by resurrecting it. It is only just to the poet, however, to state that aside from a single piece, nothing has been omitted on account of coarseness alone. In each case the earliest known title is given in the list that follows. When a title was significantly changed in later editions, the variation has been given in a foot note, with date of edition. FROM THE 1786 EDITION. Epitaph Intended for the Tombstone of Patrick Bay, an Irish Soldier and Innholder, Killed by an Ignorant Physician.--1769.[215] Epitaph on Peter Abelard. From the Latin. The Distrest Orator. [Occasioned by R---- A----'s memory failing him in the midst of a public discourse he had got by rote.][216] The Retort.[217] The Flagellators. Humanity and Ingratitude; A Common Case. [From the French.] December 1784.[218] Elegaic Verses on the Death of a favorite Dog, 1785.[219] The Five Ages. New Year's Verses, Addressed to the Customers of the Pennsylvania Evening Post, by the Printer's Lad who carries it. January 4, 1783. The Literary Plunderers.[220] FROM THE 1788 EDITION. The Scornful Lady. The Prisoner. Few Honest Coblers; A Poem. In Imitation of Dr. Watts's _Indian Philosopher_. The Almanac Maker. Female Caprice; or, the Student's Complaint. The Drunken Soldier. A Parody. St. Preux to Eloisa. The Fiddler's Farewell.[221] The Modern Miracle.[222] The Dull Moralist.[223] The Misfortune of March. [Written in the pastoral style of the old British Poets.][224] Elegaic Lines. Highland Sawney.[225] FROM THE 1795 EDITION. Epistolary Lines on the Death of a Fiddler. Farmer Dobbins's Complaint. The Debtor's Soliloquy. The Fair Buckle-Thief. Advice to the Ladies, Not to Neglect the Dentist. Lines to the memory of a young American Lady; who died soon after her Arrival in London. The Market Girl. Elegaic Stanzas on a Young Gentleman Drowned in a Mill-Pond. The Drunkard's Apology.[226] On a Painter who was Endeavouring to Recover, from Memory, the Features of a Deceased Young Lady. Marriage A-la Mode; (Or the Run-a-way Match.) The Bridge of Delaware. Minerva's Advice. Mars and Venus. Charity A-la-Mode.[227] The Invalid. Under the Portraiture of Martha Ray. Epistle to a Gay Young Lady that was Married to a Doating old Deacon.[228] The Menace.[229] The Prudent Philosopher. The Origin of Wars. Lines Written in a Severe February on a Shad, &c., caught in a Mild January. Epitaph on Frederick the Second, late King of Prussia. [From the French.] A Dialogue between Shadrach and Whiffle. To the memory of a Lady.[230] To Clarissa: a handsome Shop-Keeper. To Cynthia. To a Very Little Man, Fond of Walking with a Very Long Cane. The Rural Bachelor. To Messieurs Fungus, Froth, and Co. Shadrach and Pomposo: A Tale. On Pest-Eli-Hali, the Traveling Speculator.[231] Elegiac lines on a Theological Script-Monger. On the Approaching Dissolution of Transatlantic Jurisdiction in America. FROM THE 1809 EDITION. Translation of the Third Elegy of the First Book of Ovid's Tristia. Description of the Plague which Happened at Athens ... From the Sixth Book of Lucretius on the Nature of Things. Love's Suicide. Stanzas Intended for the Tomb Stone of a Person who Killed Himself in Consequence of his Suit being Rejected by a Young Lady. Translation, from Ovid's Tristia. Book 3d, Elegy 3d. Stanzas Written near a Certain Clergyman's Garden. On a Nocturnal View of the Planet Jupiter, and several of his Satellites, through a Telescope. The Fading Rose. A College Story. On a Man Killed by a Buffaloe (or wild Cow.) To the Dog Sancho, on his being Wounded in the Head with a Sabre, in a Midnight Assault and Robbery, near the Neversink Hills, 1778. Science, Favourable to Virtue. Reflections on the Constitution, or Frame of Nature. On the Powers of the Human Understanding. Lines Written in a very Small Garden. Nereus and Thetis. A Usurer's Prayer. Suicide: the Weakness of the Human Mind. A Marine Anecdote. The Gougers: on Seeing a Traveller Gouged, and otherwise ill treated by some Citizens of Logtown, near a Pine Barren. Lines written for Mr. Ricketts, on the Exhibitions at his Equestrian Circus. Monumental Lines, Addressed to a Disconsolate Person, that was Successively Enamoured of Two Sisters, who Died of a Consumption within about Two Years of Each other, in the Prime of Youth and Beauty. Esperanza's March: being Stanzas, Addressed to a Person who Complained "He was always unfortunate." FROM THE 1815 EDITION. The New Age; or Truth Triumphant. On Superstition. The Royal Apprentice, A London Story. The Modern Jehu; or, Nobility on Four Wheels. On a Lady, Now Deceased, that had been both Deaf and Blind Many Years. The Mistake; a Modern Short Story. Lines written in a french novel, Adelaide and Durval. Human Frailty. On Happiness, as proceeding from the practice of Virtue. Ode to Good Fortune. Reflections on doctor Perkins' metallic points, or tractors. Publius to Pollia. Supposed to have been written during a cruising expedition. On the Uniformity and Perfection of Nature. Translation of Gray's Ode, Written at the grand Chartreuse. On the Universality and Other Attributes of the God of Nature. On the Religion of Nature. The Reward of Innocence. On the Evils of Human Life. The Scurrilous Scribe. Belief and Unbelief: humbly recommended to the serious consideration of creed makers. Susanna's Tomb. Stanzas on a Political Projector, who was making interest, to be employed on an embassy to Constantinople. Nature's Debt. New Year's Eve. The Order of the Day: to readers of the history of wars ancient and modern. The Bethlehemite; or, fair solitary. The Hermit and the Traveller. Lines on the Establishment of the New Theatre, and the management of the house being placed in the hands of Mr. Cooper. The Musical Savage. Supposed to express, to the musician, the extatic emotions of a missouri indian, on his first hearing the violin played, or band of music, that accompanied captain Lewis on his expedition to the Columbia-River. Epitaph on a worthy person, whose decease closed a series of fortune and misfortune in his 50th year. Written at Poplar-Hill,--Pennsylvania. The Blast of November. Occasioned by a fatal accident on the Hudson. The Duelists. On Seeing a Beautiful Print of a Shipwrecked Sailor sitting on a Rock. Heaving the Lead: a Marine Story, Founded on Fact. Translated from the Third Book of Lucretius _de natura rerum_, or, On the nature of Things. The Two Genii: Addressed to a young Lady, of a consumptive habit, departing from New-York, by sea, for South-Carolina, in 1805. The Hypochondriac. On Finding a Terrapin in the Woods, which had A. D. 1756 Marked on the Back of his Shell. Pythona: or the Prophetess of En-Dor. To Ismenia. [215] Epitaph Intended for the Tombstone of Patrick Bay, Innholder, Killed by an Ignorant Physician.--1809. [216] Lines on a Distrest Orator, at a Public Exhibition.--1809. This was an undergraduate skit by Freneau on his college mate Robert Archibald, of the Class of 1772. [217] To My Lord Snake, [A Title Hunter.]--1795. The Impertinent.--1809. [218] Humanity and Ingratitude, A Common Case. [Translated from the French.]--1795. [219] To a Deceased Dog.--1795. [220] Devastations in a Library.--1795. On Devastations Committed in a Bookseller's Library, by Rats, Mice, &c.--1809. [221] The Minstrel's Complaint.--1795. [222] Susanna's Revival.--1795. [223] To the Grand Mufti.--1795. [224] Palaemon: or, the Skaiter.--1795. [225] Highland Sawney, or the Emigrant Beau.--1795. [226] An Apology for Intemperance.--1809. [227] Merchantile Charity.--1809. [228] The Preposterous Nuptials: or, January and June.--1809. [229] The Nova Scotia Menace.--1809. [230] To the Memory of Mrs. Burnet of Elizabeth-town, N. J. By Request.--1809. [231] On a Travelling Speculator.--1809. C. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE POETRY OF PHILIP FRENEAU The following is a list of the individual and collected poetical publications of Freneau. For a more complete view of the poet's literary activities the reader is referred to the painstaking and admirable "Bibliography of the separate and collected works of Philip Freneau," by Mr. Victor Hugo Paltsits (N. Y., Dodd, Mead & Co., 1903). Opportunity has been taken here to bring the list up to date, to correct a few omissions and errors in Mr. Paltsits' volume, and to locate copies whose existence he overlooked. To avoid confusion the abbreviations used by him have been retained, viz: AAS = American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass.; BA = Boston Athenæum, Boston, Mass.; BM = British Museum, London, England; BPL = Boston Public Library, Boston, Mass.; BU = Brown University Library, Providence, R. I.; C = Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.; GSMT = General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, N. Y. City; HC = Harvard University Library, Cambridge, Mass.; HSP = Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa.; LCP = Library Company of Philadelphia, Pa.; MHS = Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Mass.; NA = New York Public Library, Astor Foundation, N. Y. City; NJSL = New Jersey State Library, Trenton, N. J.; NkPL = Newark Free Public Library, Newark, N. J.; NL = New York Public Library, Lenox Foundation, N. Y. City; NYHS = New York Historical Society, N. Y. City; NYSL = New York State Library, Albany, N. Y.; PU = Princeton University Library, Princeton, N. J.; SPL = Springfield Public Library, Springfield, Mass. 1772 The | American Village,| a Poem.| To which are added,| Several other original Pieces in Verse.| By Philip Freneau, A. B.| [_Quotation of two lines from Horace._] New York:| Printed by S. Inslee and A. Car, on Moor's Wharf.| M, DCC, LXXII.| 12mo; pp. [1]-27, [1]. See Vol. I, xxii, and Vol. III, Appendix A, _supra_. _Copies_: BU, C. 1772 A | Poem, | on the | Rising Glory | of | America;| being an | Exercise | Delivered at the Public Commencement at | Nassau-Hall, September 25, 1771. |[_Quotation of six lines from Seneca._]| Philadelphia:| Printed by Joseph Crukshank, for R. Aitken,| bookseller, opposite the London-coffee-|house, in Front-Street.| M, DCC, LXXII.| 12mo; pp. [3]-27. See Vol. I, xxi, and 49, _supra_. _Copies_: BU, C, HSP, MHS, NYHS, PU. 1775 American Liberty,| a | Poem.| [_Quotations one line from Virgil and two lines from Pope_].| New-York:| Printed by J. Anderson, at Beekman-Slip.| MDCCLXXV.| 12mo; pp. 3-12. See Vol. I, 142, _supra_. _Copies_: C, LCP. 1775 General Gage's Soliloquy. New York: Printed by Hugh Gaine, 1775. No printed copy of this has thus far been discovered. A manuscript copy of unknown origin is in the Du Simitière collection of the Library Company of Philadelphia. Endorsed upon it are the words "Printed in New York August. 1775. By Gaine." See Vol. I, 152 _supra_. 1775 A | Voyage | to | Boston. | A | Poem.| [_Quotation of five lines from Shakespeare._] By the Author of American Liberty, a Poem: General | Gage's Soliloquy, &c.| New-York: Printed by John Anderson,| at Beekman's Slip.| 12mo; pp. [III]-IV, [5]-24. See Vol. I, 158, _supra_. _Copies_: C, LCP, NYHS. 1775 A | Voyage | to | Boston. | A | Poem.| [_Quotation of five lines from Shakespeare._]| By the Author of American Liberty, a Poem: General | Gage's Soliloquy, &c.| Philadelphia: | Sold by | William Woodhouse, | in Front street.| M, DCC, LXXV.| 12mo; pp. [III]-iv, [5]-24. A reprint of the Anderson edition. _Copies_: AAS, HSP, NYHS, PU. 1775 General Gage's | Confession,| Being the Substance of | His Excellency's last Conference,| With his Ghostly Father, Friar Francis.| [_Quotation of one line from Virgil._]| By the Author of the Voyage to Boston. | A Poem, &c.| Printed in the Year, 1775.| Small 8vo; pp. [3]-8. The copy in the possession of the Library Company of Philadelphia is at present believed to be unique. Written on the title page by a contemporary hand are the words "By Gaine. Published October 25: 1775." 1778 The | Travels | of the | Imagination;| a true Journey from | New Castle to London.| To which are added,| American Independence,| an | everlasting deliverance | from | British Tyranny: | a Poem.| Philadelphia: | Printed, by Robert Bell, in Third-Street.| M DCC LXXVIII.| 12mo. The main work is by James Murray. Freneau's poem, pp. [113]-126 of the volume, has the title page: American | Independence,| an everlasting | Deliverance | from | British Tyranny.| A Poem.| By Philip F----, Author of the American Village,| Voyage to Boston, &c.| [_Quotation of six lines from Shakespeare._]| Philadelphia: Printed, by Robert Bell, in Third-Street.| M DCC LXXVIII.| The same sheets were used to form part VI of "Miscellanies | for | Sentimentalists," published the same year by Bell. See Vol. I, 271, _supra_. _Copy_: HSP. 1779 Sir Henry Clinton's Invitation to the Refugees. The only evidence at present of the separate publication of this piece is the entry in Frank Moore's _Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution_ (N. Y. 1856, p. 259): "We have it in a ballad sheet, dated 1779." See Vol. II, p. 7, _supra_. 1781 The British Prison-Ship:|A | Poem,| in four Cantoes.| { 1. The Capture, { 2. The Prison-Ship, Viz. Canto { 3. The Prison-Ship, continued, { 4. The Hospital-Prison-Ship. To which is added,| A Poem on the Death of Capt. N. Biddle,| who was blown up, in an Engagement with the | Yarmouth, near Barbadoes.| [_Quotation of thirteen lines from Milton._]| Philadelphia:| Printed by F. Bailey, in Market-Street.| M. DCC. LXXXI.| 12mo; pp. [3]-23. See Vol. II, p. 18, _supra_. _Copies_: BU, LCP, NYHS. 1783 New Year Verses,| Addressed to those Gentlemen who have been | pleased to favour Francis Wrigley, News Car-|rier, with their Custom.| January 1, 1783.| Folio, broadside. See Vol. II, p. 197, _supra_. _Copy_: C. 1783 New Year's Verses, addressed to The Customers of the Pennsylvania Evening Post, by the Printer's Lad who carries it. January 4, 1783. This is known only through the version in the 1786 edition of Freneau's poems, pp. 383-385. It was undoubtedly first issued as a broadside. 1783 New Year's | Verses | Addressed to the Customers of | The Freeman's Journal,| By the Lad who carries it.| January 8th, 1783.| Folio, broadside. See Vol. II, p. 198, _supra_. _Copy_: C. 1784 New-Year | Verses, | For those who Carry the | Pennsylvania Gazette | to the | Customers.| January 1, 1784.| Small folio, broadside. Reprinted in the 1786 edition, pp. 387-388; in the 1795 edition, p. 265; and in the 1809 edition, Vol. II, pp. 161-162. In the two latter versions, with the title changed to "A News-man's Address," the original first line: "How things are chang'd since last New Year" was altered to read: "What tempests gloomed the by-past year--" See Vol. II, p. 238, _supra_. _Copy_: HSP. 1784 New Year's Verses, Addressed To the Customers of the Freeman's Journal, by the Lad who carries it. January 7, 1784. The original broadside has not been found. The only version at present known is in the 1786 edition, pp. 389-390. See Vol. II, p. 240, _supra_. 1785 New Year's Verses, addressed to the Customers of the Freeman's Journal, by the Lad who Carries it. January 1, 1785. The first trace of this is to be found in the 1786 edition, pp. 391-393. It was doubtless first issued as a broadside. See Vol. II, p. 284, _supra_. 1786 New Year's Verses, for 1786. [Written for the Carriers of the _Columbian Herald_.] The first trace to be found of this is in the 1788 edition, pp. 142-144. This is signed "Charleston (S. C.) _Jan. 1786_." It doubtless appeared as a broadside. See Vol. II, p. 301, _supra_. 1786 The | Poems | of | Philip Freneau.| Written chiefly during the late War.| Philadelphia:| Printed by Francis Bailey, at | Yorick's Head, in Market street. | M DCC LXXXVI.| Small 8vo; pp. [v]-vii, [1]-407. This is the first collected edition of Freneau's poems. See Vol. I, p. xxxix-xli, _supra_. _Copies_: BM, BPL, BU, C, HSP, LCP, MHS, NA, NL, NYHS, NYSL, PU. 1787 A | Journey | from | Philadelphia | to | New-York, | by Way of Burlington and South-Amboy.| By | Robert Slender, Stocking Weaver.| Extracted from the Author's Journals.| [_Quotation of two lines from Horace._] Philadelphia; Printed by Francis Bailey, at Yorick's Head, in | Market-street.| M DCC LXXXVII.| 12mo; pp. vi, [7]-28. See Vol. II, p. 388, _supra_. _Copies_: BU, C, NYHS, PU. 1788 New Year's Verses for 1788. [Supposed to be written by the Printer's lad, who supplies the customers with his weekly paper.] The first trace of this is in the 1788 edition, pp. 393-395. It was doubtless first issued as a broadside for some newspaper. See Vol. II, p. 383, _supra_. 1788 The | Miscellaneous | Works | of | Mr. Philip Freneau | containing his | Essays,| and | additional Poems.| Philadelphia:| Printed by Francis Bailey, at Yorick's | Head, in Market Street.| M DCC LXXXVIII.| Small 12mo; pp. xii [1]-429. The second collected edition of Freneau's poems. It contained no poems that had been published in the first collection. See Vol. I, p. xliii, _supra_. _Copies:_ BM, BPL, BU, C, HSP, LCP, MHS, NA, NL, NYHS, NYSL, PU. 1794 The | Village Merchant: | A | Poem. To which is added the | Country Printer. | [_Four lines from section five of The Village Merchant._]| Philadelphia: | Printed by Hoff and Derrick,| M, DCC, XCIV.| Small 8vo; pp. [3]-16. See Vol. II, p. 14, _supra_. _Copies:_ BU, HSP. 1795 Poems | Written between the Years 1768 & 1794,| by | Philip Freneau,| of | New Jersey: | A New Edition, Revised and Corrected by the | Author; Including a considerable number of | Pieces never before published.| [_Pyramid of fifteen stars, followed by two lines of Latin from Page 435._]| Monmouth | [N. J.] | Printed | At the Press of the Author, at Mount-Pleasant, near | Middletown-Point; M, DCC, XCV: and, of |--American Independence--| XIX.| 8vo; pp. xv, [1]-455, [1]. The third collected edition of Freneau. See Vol. I, pp. lxvi-lxviii, _supra_. _Copies:_ AAS, BA, BM, BPL, BU, C, HC, HSP, LCP, MHS, NL, NYHS, NYSL, PU, SPL, GSMT, NkPL. 1797 Means | for the | Preservation | of | Public Liberty. | An | Oration | delivered in the New Dutch Church, | on the | Fourth of July, 1797.| Being the twenty-first | Anniversary of our Independence.| By G. J. Warner.| [_Ten lines from Freneau's poem To a Republican with Mr. Paine's Rights of Man._]| New York: | Printed at the Argus Office,| for | Thomas Greenleaf and Naphtali Judah.| 1797.| 8vo; pp. [7]-22. On pp. 20-21 Ode | (Composed for the Occasion, by P. Freneau.) The Musick performed | by the Uranian Musical Society.| See Vol. III, p. 152, _supra_. _Copy:_ NL. 1797 Megara and Altavola. To a female satirist (an English actress) on receiving from her no. 1 of a very satirical and biting attack. Six copies only were printed, of which none is at present known to exist. See the 1809 edition, Vol. II, p. 30; and Vol. III, p. 146, _supra_. 1798 New Year's Verses. Issued as a broadside for the _Time Piece_ and dated "January 1, 1798." The only copy that is known at present is bound with the file _Time Piece_ in the library of the New York Historical Society. See Vol. III, p. 194, _supra_. 1809 Poems | written and published during the | American Revolutionary War,| and now | republished from the original Manuscripts;| interspersed | with Translations from the Ancients,| and other Pieces not heretofore in | Print.| By Philip Freneau.| [Four lines of poetry.]| The Third Edition, in two Volumes.| Vol. I. [II.]| Philadelphia: From the Press of Lydia R. Bailey, No. 10.| North-Alley.| 1809.| 2 vols.; 12mo; Vol. I, pp. 280, iv; Vol. II, pp. 302, XII. This is generally known as the fourth collected edition. See Vol. I, p. lxxxiv-lxxxvi, _supra_. _Copies_: BM, BPL, BU, C, HSP, LCP, NL, NYHS, NYSL, PU, NJSL. 1809 A Laughable Poem;| or | Robert Slender's | Journey | from | Philadelphia to New York, | by | Way of Burlington and South Amboy.| By Philip Freneau, |Author of Poems written during the American Revo-|lutionary War, and lately published in this City | by Lydia R. Bailey, in two Volumes, Duodecimo.| Persons of the Poem.| [Nine lines for nine characters.]| Philadelphia: | Printed for Thomas Neversink.| December 20, 1809.| 12mo; pp. [3]-24. A reprint with few variations of the 1787 edition. See Vol. II, p. 338, _supra_. _Copies_: BU, HSP, LCP. 1815 A | Collection of | Poems,| on | American Affairs, and a variety of other Subjects,| chiefly moral and political;| written between the Year 1797 and the pre-|sent Time.| By Philip Freneau,| Author of Poems written during the Revolutionary | War, Miscellanies, &c. &c.| In two Volumes.| [_Four lines from Freneau's poem On the British Commercial Depredations._]| Vol. I. [II.]| New York: Published by David Longworth,| At the Dramatic Repository,| Shakespeare-Gallery.| 1815.| 2 vols.; small 12mo; Vol. I, pp. viii, [13]-188; Vol. II, pp. 176. See Vol. I, pp. xc-xci, _supra_. _Copies:_ BA, BM, BPL, BU, C, LCP, NL, NYHS, NYSL, PU, GSMT, NkPL. 1861 Poems on various Subjects, | but chiefly illustrative of the | Events and Actors in the American | War of Independence.| By Philip Freneau. | Reprinted from the rare edition printed at | Philadelphia in 1786.| With a Preface. London:| John Russell Smith,| Soho Square.| 1861.| Small 8vo; pp. xxii, [1]-362. Printed at the Chiswick Press. _Copies:_ BPL, BU, C, HSP, NL, NYHS, NYSL, PU, NkPL. 1865 Poems | relating to the | American Revolution | By Philip Freneau.| With an introductory memoir and notes.| By | Evert A. Duyckinck.| New York:| W. J. Widdleton, Publisher.| M.DCCC. LXV. 12mo; pp. xxxviii, [1]-288. por. and facsim. _Copies:_ AAS, BM, BPL, C, HSP, LCP, NA, NL, NYHS, NYSL, PU, SPL, NkPL. One hundred copies also on large paper, royal 8vo. 1891 Poems | relating to the | American Revolution | by | Philip Freneau | With an introductory memoir and notes | By | Evert A. Duyckinck | New York | Thomas Y. Crowell Co. | 46 East Fourteenth Street. | 12mo. pp. xxxviii, 288. This is a reissue of the 1865 edition printed with red line borders for Crowell's "Red Line Series of the Poets." Cover title misprinted "_Frenau's_ Poems," Also issued without red line border. 1902 The | Poems of Philip Freneau | Poet of the American Revolution | Edited for | the Princeton Historical Association | By | Fred Lewis Pattee | Princeton N.J. | the University Library | 1902 |. 8^o; 3 vols. pp. CXII, 294; X, 407; XIV, 430 (Vol. II, 1903, Vol. III, 1907). 1906 The American Village | A Poem by | Philip Freneau | Reprinted in facsimile from the original| edition published at New York | in 1772, with an introduction | by | Harry Lyman Roopman | and | Bibliographical Data | by | Victor Hugo Paltsits | [Device] | Providence, Rhode Island | 1906. Square 8vo. pp. XXI, [1]-69. Edition of 100 copies. The third publication of the Club for Colonial Reprints, of Providence, R. I. See Vol. III, Appendix A, _supra_. INDEX Adams, John, i. liv; iii. 207, 210 Adams, Samuel, i. 193 Aitken, R., i. 49 Albertson, Captain, ii. 346 Algiers, pirates of, ii. 302, 344, 381 Amanda poems, ii. 318, 319, 321, 326, 328, 392 "American Crisis, The," ii. 16 _American Museum_, i. lxvii; ii. 313 Americus Vespucius, ii. 268 Amherst, Sir Jeffrey, i. 156; ii. 117 _Analectic Magazine_, i. xci Anderson, Alexander, i. xcii Anderson, publisher, i. 142, 158, 185 André, Major John, ii. 39 Annapolis, Md., iii. 15 Arbuthnot, Admiral Marriot, ii. 90 _Argus_, i. lxxii Arnold, Benedict, ii. 39ff., 103, 336 Asgill, Capt. Charles, ii. 193, 291 Auchmuty, Rev. Samuel, ii. 209 Bache, Benjamin F., i. lviii Bailey, Commander of packet, ii. 346 Bailey, Francis, i. xxxiv, xxxvi, xl, xliiiff., lxiii, lxiv, lxxx; ii. 18, 75, 338 Bailey, Lydia H., i. lxxxviii Bainbridge, Commodore Joseph, iii. 311 Balfour, Nesbit, ii. 155 Balloons, ii. 265, 276; iii. 142 Barlow, Joel, i. c, ci, 279 Barney, Capt. Joshua, ii. 142, 147, 149 Bastille, Fall of, iii. 72, 102 Bauman, Col., i. lxxx Beckley, Mr., i. lxix Bell, Capt. Archibald, i. xlv Bell, Robert, publisher, i. xxviii, 271; ii. 260 Bellamont, Richard, Earl of, iii. 40 Bermuda, i. xxviii, 266, 283; ii. 318, 319, 393 Bernard, Sir Francis, i. 80 Biddle, Capt. Nicholas, i. cvi, 288 Blackbeard, pirate, iii. 229 Blanchard, balloonist, iii. 142 Bolingbroke, Lord, iii. 47 Bompard, Captain of _Ambuscade_, iii. 106 _Bon Homme Richard_ and _Serapis_, ii. 75 Bonaparte, Napoleon, iii. 135, 333, 334 Boston, Mass., i. 84, 152, 158, 171, 185, 193; ii. 196 Bradford, William, Papers, i. xvii Brackenridge, H. H., i. xvi, xx, xxii, xxviii, xxix Brown, Gen. Jacob, iii. 329 Burgoyne, General, i. 164, 165, 171; ii. 96, 140 Burke, Aedanus, i. xlix, lxxix; iii. 243 Burke, Edmund, ii. 13; iii. 84, 164 Burns, Robert, iii. 337 Burr, Aaron, i. xvi; Theodosia, iii. 312 Campbell, Thomas, ii. 370 Cannon, Capt. William, i. xliv Carey, John, iii. 82; Matthew, i. lxvii; ii. 313; Thomas, i. xc Carleton, Sir Guy, i. 79; ii. 153, 156, 169, 172, 173, 190, 194 Catharine of Russia, ii. 17; iii. 97, 136 Chandler, Bishop Samuel, ii. 303 Charles V of Spain, ii. 15 Charleston, S. C., i. xiv, xxxix, xliii, xlviii, lxxv, lxxxi; ii. 214, 399, 401, 402, 404; iii. 3, 199, 201 Chatham, Capt. Brig _Rebecca_, i. xxx Childs, Francis, i. lii Churchill, Charles, ii. 175 Churchman, John, ii. 398, 406 Clarkson, Matthew, i. lvi Clinton, Sir Henry, ii. 7, 41, 57, 89, 153 Cobbett, William, iii. 167. See "Peter Porcupine" Cochrane, Sir Alexander, iii. 362 Cockburn, Sir George, iii. 343, 356, 362 Cockneys in America, iii. 185 Colden, Cadwallader, ii. 203 Colles, Christopher, ii. 214 Columbia, S. C., ii. 399, 401, 402 Columbus, Christopher, i. ci, 46, 89 Commerce, the hope of America, iii. 220 Concord and Lexington, i. 168 Connecticut, iii. 8 Cooper, President Miles, ii. 209 Corcoran, Dr., poetaster, ii. 184 Cornwallis, Captain, ii. 143; Earl of, ii. 84, 86, 88, 89, 92, 93, 97, 117, 140 Cosins, John, ii. 126 Courtney, Captain of the _Boston_, iii. 106 Crukshank, Joseph, publisher, i. 49 Currie, Dr. William, iii. 159 Dacres, Capt., of _Guerrière_, iii. 310 Dartmouth College, iii. 33 Dartmouth, Lord, i. 189 Dauphin of France, birth, ii. 167 Davis, Matthew L., i. lxxv Dayton, Jonathan, iii. 151 Dickinson, John, ii. 380 Digby, Admiral, ii. 112 Dodd, Dr. William, ii. 16 Dornin, Bernard, ii. 139 Downie, Capt. George, iii. 349 Dunmore, Gov., of Virginia, i. 140; ii. 87, 114, 115; iii. 17 Duponceau, iii. 92 Dwight, Timothy, i. lxi, xcvii, c, ci; iii. 9 Edgeworth, Maria, ii. 313 Ellsworth, Oliver, iii. 226; Mrs. Oliver, i. lix Emigration, ii. 280; iii. 228 England, National debt, ii. 134 "Eugenie," Beaumarchais' comedy, ii. 108 Eutaw Springs, Battle of, ii. 101 "Father Bombo's Pilgrimage," i. xvii Fayal, fight in harbor of, iii. 363 "Features of Mr. Jay's Treaty," iii. 133 Fenno, John, i. li Fitch, John, and steam navigation, ii. 406 Fontaine, John, traveller, i. xiv Forman, Eleanor, marries Freneau, i. xlviii. Fort George, N. Y., destroyed, iii. 24, 40 Fox, Charles James, ii. 9; George, quaker, iii. 14 France, war with, threatened, iii. 139, 157, 207; treaty, 226 Francis, John W., i. xciii; ii. 214; Sam, New York innkeeper, ii. 206; iii. 360 Franklin, Benjamin, iii. 36; William, i. 131; ii. 115 Freemasons, iii. 281, 282 French Revolution, i. lii, liv; ii. 385; iii. 57, 70, 72, 84, 86, 88ff., 92, 99, 102, 106, 129, 135 Freneau Bible, i. xiii. Freneau Family: Agnes, i. lxxv, lxxix; André, i. xiii; Andrew, i. xiv; Catharine L., i. lxxvi; Eleanor, i. xlix, lxxvi; Helen, i. lxxiv; Margaret, i. lxxvi; Mary, i. lxxvi; Philip L., i. lxxvi; Peter, i. xiv, xxxix, xlviii, lxxviii, lxxxi; Pierre, i. xiv Freneau Philip, Birth, xiv; enters Princeton, xv; College mates, xvi; undergraduate verse, xvii, xviii, xxi, ciii, i. 49; graduated (1771), xx; teacher at Flatbush, xxi; publishes "The American Village," xxii; teacher in Somerset Academy, Md., xxii; begins poetic career in New York, xxiv, i. 139; criticized, i. 206; sails for West Indies, xxvi; at Bermuda (1778), xxviii, ii. 318; writes "The House of Night," xxvii, i. 221; returns (June, 1778), xxviii, i. 293; contributes to the _United States Magazine_, xxviii; visits the Azores (1779), xxx; sails for the West Indies (1780), xxx; captured by the British and confined in prison ships, xxxiiff., ii. 18ff.; the _Freeman's Journal_, xxxv, ii. 75; prologue to "Eugenie," ii. 108; quarrels with Oswald, xxxvii, ii. 174; and Hugh Gaine, ii. 201, 214; lampoons Rivington, ii. 229; hymn at close of war, ii. 242; at Jamaica (1784), xxxviii, xxxix, ii. 250, 252, 258; denounces slavery, ii. 258; master of the _Monmouth_ (1785), xxxix, ii. 295; first edition of his poems (1786), xxxix, xli; in Charleston, S. C. (1786), ii. 301; his second volume (1788), xliii; at Norfolk (1788), xliv; at Castle Island, Bermuda (1789), ii. 319; at Yamacraw, Ga. (1789), xiv; enters New York with Washington's fleet (1789), xlvii; farewell to the ocean, iii. 3; editor of New York _Daily Advertiser_, xlvii, iii. 3; marriage (April 15, 1790), xlviii, iii. 3; plans "The Rising Empire," xlix, iii. 5; is recommended to Madison by Burke, xlix; clerkship, l, lii, lxiii; founds the _National Gazette_ (Oct. 31, 1791), lii; sympathy with French Revolution, liii, ii. 385; translates Pichon's Ode, liv, iii. 92; becomes incendiary in the _Gazette_, lv; attacked by Hamilton, lvi; exasperates Washington, lx; in Philadelphia during yellow fever epidemic (1793), lxiii; suspends the _Gazette_, xi; valedictory on leaving Philadelphia, iii. 113; founds the _Jersey Chronicle_, lxiii; writes against Jay's treaty, iii. 133; the third edition of his poems (1795), lxvii; abandons the _Jersey Chronicle_, lxxi; founds the _Time Piece_ (1797), lxxii, iii. 137; plans biography of Ledyard, lxxiv; visited by Deborah Gannett, iii. 182; resigns editorship of the _Time Piece_ (1798), lxxv; a farmer, lxxv, lxxix, iii. 199; "Letters on Various Interesting Subjects," lxxvi; urged for New York postmastership, lxxx; resumes seafaring life (1802), lxxx, lxxxi; last voyage to the Azores (1807), lxxxi; correspondence with Madison and Jefferson, lxxxff., i. lxxxviiff.; 1809 edition of his poems, lxxxivff.; visits the castle of Blackbeard the pirate, iii. 229; at Guadeloupe, iii. 242; the 1815 edition, xc; last years, xcii; death, xcv; character and personality, xcviff.; poetry, xcviiiff., cvi, cixff.; mania for revision, lxvii, ii. 253; miserly care of his poems, viii, lxvii, ii. 313; services to the Revolution, cv. _See_ Poems. Fresneau, André, i. xiii Funchal, Madeira, iii. 257 Gage, General, i. 152, 158, 185, 189, 193, 194 Gaine, Hugh, i. 152, 189; ii. 201, 205, 214 Gannett, Deborah, iii. 182 Garrick's "Dying Valet," ii. 108 Gaston, Count, ii. 9 Gates, General, iii. 151 Genet, Citizen, iii. 92, 106 Georgia, i. 153; ii. 387, 397 George, III, ii. 3, 9, 16, 117, 126, 217 Germaine, Lord George, ii. 87 Godwin, Abraham, Innkeeper at Passaic, N. J., i. 123 Greene, General, ii. 101 Greenleaf, Thomas, i. lxxii Guadaloupe, W. I., ii. 314; iii. 242 Hamilton, Alexander, i. liv; iii. 109, 127 Hammill, Mr., marries Freneau's daughter, i. lxxvi Hancock, John, i. 193 Hanson, Capt., i. xxvi Hardy, Sir Thomas, iii. 321, 338 Harmony Hall, Charleston, ii. 404 Harvard College, ii. 371 Havana, Siege of, i. 146 Hawkes, Capt. of the _Iris_, ii. 19 Hay, Lady, iii. 40 Hezekiah, Salem, Freneau's pseudonym, ii. 329; iii. 19 Hatteras, Cape, i. 184; ii. 320, 392, 394 Hessians, i. 185, 269; ii. 35 Hillyer, Capt. James, of the _Phoebe_, iii. 318 Hispaniola, i. 117 Hoff & Derrick, publish "The Village Merchant," i. 14 Holt, John, printer, ii. 231 Hopkins, John, ii. 181 Hopkinson, Francis, iii. 53 Horace, quoted and imitated, i. 57; ii. 103, 177, 336, 377 Howe, Admiral, ii. 153 Howe, General, placed in command at Boston, 1775, i. 152; his campaign in New Jersey, ii. 7 Huddy, Capt. of N. J. Militia, ii. 163, 193, 291 Hudson River, iii. 173 Hunter, Mrs. John, and "The Death Song," ii. 313 Hull, Isaac, Capt. of the _Constitution_, iii. 310 Hyde, Commander of a packet ship, ii. 346 Hyder, Ali, East Indian insurgent, ii. 148 Indians, i. xxxvi, lxvi, cx, cxi; ii. 187, 243, 313, 369, 371; iii. 189, 293, 381 Jamaica, i. 239; ii. 250, 252, 253, 258 Jamestown, Va., ii. 270 Jay's Treaty, i. lxvi; iii. 132, 133 Jefferson, Thomas, i. l, lvii, lxxx, lxxxiii; iii. 151, 216, 293 Jefferies, Judge, i. 163 Jeffrey, the critic, praises Freneau, i. vi Jemmy, the rover, Pennsylvania sonnetter, ii. 184 Johnson, Guy, i. 179 Johnston, British Commissioner, ii. 14 Johnstone, Commodore George, ii. 117 "Jonah, History of the Prophet," i. 3 Jones, John Paul, i. 290; ii. 75 Katy-did, the, iii. 275 Kempenfelt, Admiral, ii. 218 Key, Francis Scott, iii. 357 King's College, ii. 209 Knapp, John Coghill, ii. 123 Knyphausen, Baron, ii. 38, 39, 122 Kollock, Shepard, ii. 231 Laboyteant, Captain _Aurora_, i. xxi Lafayette, iii. 86 Lake Champlain, Battle of, iii. 349 Lake Erie, Battle of, iii. 315 Landais, Capt., of the _Alliance_, i. 285 Latin and Greek, iii. 121 Laurens, John, ii. 283, 337 Lawrence, James, killed in action with the _Shannon_, iii. 313 Leadbeater, Edward, i. lxxvi. Ledyard, John, i. lxxiv. Lee, Henry, i. lxiii; ii. 101 Leslie, James, Innkeeper at Passaic, N. J., i. 123 "Letters on Various Interesting Subjects," i. lxxvi Lexington and Concord, i. 168 Liberty Cap, iii. 94, 106, 107 Liberty tree of Boston, i. 159, 172 Library, Circulating, in Philadelphia, ii. 260 "Light Summer Reading," ii. 318, 326 Liquor in jails, iii. 126 Livingston, R. R., i. lxxii Livingston, Gov. William, i. 124 London Revolution Society, iii. 99 Long Island Dutch, iii. 12 Longworth, publishes the 1815 edition, i. lxxxvii Loudon, New York printer, ii. 231 Louis XVI., ii. 167, 385 Lunardi, balloonist, ii. 265 Lundy's Lane, Battle of, iii. 329 "Lying Valet," presented in Philadelphia, ii. 108 MacDonough, Capt. Thomas, iii. 349 Madeira Islands, iii. 254, 257 Madison, James, i. xvi, xviii, xxi, xlix, lxii, lxix, lxxxviiff. Magraw, Dr., New York physician, ii. 202, 304 Manly, Captain of the _Hancock_, ii. 22 Mansfield, Lord, ii. 87 Marion, General Francis, at Eutaw Springs, ii. 101 Martin, Luther, i. xxiii Mason, Stephens T., iii. 132 Matthews, David, Mayor of New York, ii. 123 McKean, Thomas, iii. 151 M'Rea, Jenny, i. 279 "Means for the Preservation of Liberty," iii. 152 Menut, Alexander, i. lxxii, lxxv Mercer, General Hugh, i. 279 Mesnard, Capt. brig _Active_, i. xxxi Mirabeau, motto from, translated by Freneau, ii. 113 Miranda, General, iii. 271 Mississippi River, i. 74, 76; ii. 281 Mitchell, cryer of Philadephia, ii. 182 Mitchell, Rev. Alexander, i. xv "Modern Chivalry" by Brackenridge, i. xvi, xxiv "Monarchical and Mixed Forms of Government," i. lxvi Monroe, James, iii. 151 Montagu, George, i. 140 Morin, Pierre, i. xiv; Mary, i. xiv Motley, Capt. brig _Betsy_, i. xlvii Mount Pleasant, Freneau moves to, i. xv Moultrie, Fort, iii. 342 Moultrie, General William, iii. 238 Murphy, refugee from _Scorpion_, i. xxxiii Nassau Hall, _see_ Princeton Navy, _see_ Ships Naval lyrics, "Capt. Jones' Invitation," i. cvi, 290; "Death of Capt. Biddle," i. cvi, 288; "Stanzas on the New Frigate Alliance," i. cvii, 285; "On the Memorable Victory," i. cvii, ii. 76; "Barney's Invitation," i. cvii, ii. 147; "Song on Capt. Barney's Victory," i. cvii, ii. 149; "On the Memorable Naval Engagement," iii. 106; "On the Capture of the Guerriere," iii. 310; "Battle of Lake Erie," iii. 315; "On the Capture of the Essex," iii. 318; "The Battle of Stonington," iii. 338; "Battle of Lake Champlain," iii. 349; "On the Loss of the General Armstrong," iii. 363; "On the Privateer Prince de Neufchatel," iii. 366 Nelson, William, i. 123 Neversink, Thomas, prints "A Laughable Poem," ii. 338 New London, iii. 321 Neversink Highlands, iii. 3, 358 Newspapers,-- _Aurora_, Philadelphia, i. lxxvi, 14, iii. 132; _City Gazette or the Daily Advertiser_, Charleston, xlviii, iii. 5; _Columbian Centinel_, Boston, iii. 81; _Columbian Herald_, Charleston, ii. 301; _Connecticut Courant_, iii. 161; _Constitutional Gazette_, N. Y., i. xxiv, 158, 185; _Evening Post_, Philadelphia, ii. 288; _Fenno's Gazette of the U. S._, Philadelphia, i. lvi; iii. 81, 109; _Freeman's Journal_, Phila., xxxivff., xl, xliii; ii. 92, 174, 198, 240; _General Advertiser_, Phila., iii. 92; _Independent Gazetteer_, Phila., i. xxxvii, 41; ii. 174, 176, 177, 179, 181, 185; _Jersey Chronicle_, lxv, lxx, lxxi; iii. 3; _London Morning Herald_, i. 41; _Monmouth Press_, i. xcv; _National Gazette_, i. liiff., lx, lxi; iii 56, 60, 76, 78, 81; _New Jersey Journal_, Chatham, ii. 231; _New York Daily Advertiser_, i. xlviii, ii. 75, 388, iii. 3; _New York Gazetteer_, ii. 120, 231; _New York Journal_, i. lxxii, 42; ii. 231; _New York Mercury_, ii. 203; _New York Mirror_, i. xcv; _New York Packet_, ii. 231; _North Carolina Gazette_, iii. 19; _Porcupine's Gazette_, iii. 156, 167, 168; _Rivington's N. Y. Loyal Gazette_, ii. 120; _Royal Gazette_, ii. 113, 115, 116, 120, 124, 125, 126, 143, 146, 162, 169, 190, 232, 234; _Time-Piece_, lxxii, ii. 3, 137; _Weekly Gazette_, Charleston, ii. 212, 402 Newspaper tax, iii. 52 "New Travels through North America," translated by Freneau, i. xxxvi New York City, ii. 7, 112, 162, 205, 223; iii. 24, 26, 42, 49, 53, 116, 123, 173 Nicholson, Capt. James, of the _Trumbull_, ii. 85 North Carolina, iii. 19 North, Lord, i. 189 Nova Scotia, ii. 219, 293 Nugent, Lord, ii. 13 "Observations on Monarchy," i. lxvi "Odes on Various Subjects," ii. 73 Ohio, iii. 366 Ordonneaux, Commander of _Prince de Neufchatel_, iii. 366 Oswald, Eleazer, i. xxxvii; ii. 175, 185 Paine, Thomas, i. lix, lxiv; iii. 90, 286 Paris, Matthew, ii. 274 Parke, Col., Poem to Freneau, i. xli Parker, New York printer, ii. 203 Parker, Sir Peter, iii. 342, 354 Parr, Governor of Nova Scotia, ii. 293 Passaic Falls, N. J., i. xxv, 123 Paterson, N. J., i. xxv, 123, 131 Peale's Exhibition, ii. 246 Pearson, commander of Serapis, ii. 78 Pennsylvania, iii. 13 Percy, Lord, i. 168; iii. 11 Perry, Commodore, iii. 315 Pewter Platter Alley, Philadelphia, ii. 287 Philadelphia, i. xxxivff., 68, 285; ii. 81, 108, 147, 167, 225, 246, 260, 287; iii. 42, 49. 53, 92, 106, 110, 111, 113, 142, 151, 159, 178 "Philosopher of the Forest," Freneau writes, i. xliii; ii. 159 Pichon, Citizen, "Ode to Liberty," iii. 92 Pico, the peak of, iii. 254 "Pilgrim, The" Freneau's, i. xxxvi, xliii; ii. 159 Pindar, Peter, ii. 394; iii. 28 Pintard, John, i. lviii, xcv _Pocket Almanac_, Bailey's, ii. 280, 282, 314 Poems by Freneau Addressed to a Political Shrimp, iii. 127; Address to a Learned Pig, iii. 169; Address to the Commander in Chief, ii. 81; Address to the Republicans of America, iii. 154; Adventures of Simon Swangum, i. 14; Advice to a Friend, i. 184; Advice to the Ladies, iii. 402; Alcina's Enchanted Island, ii. 376; Almanac Maker, iii. 402; Amanda in a Consumption, ii. 326; Amanda's Complaint, ii. 392; America Independent, i. xxviii, 271, ii. 261; American Demosthenes, iii. 144; American Independence, i. 271; American Liberty, a Poem, i. xxiv, 142; American Siberia, ii. 293; American Soldier, iii. 51; American Village, i. xxii, 41; iii. 381; Answer to a Card of Invitation, iii. 263; Apology for Intemperance, iii. 403; Argonaut, ii. 128; Argonauta, ii. 128; Ariosto's Description, ii. 376; Arnold's Departure, ii. 103; Author's Soliloquy, ii. 332; Author on Authorship, ii. 332. Bacchanalian Dialogue, iii. 255; Banished Man, iii. 47; Barney's Invitation, i. cvii; ii. 147; Batavian Picture, iii. 12; Battle of Lake Champlain, iii. 349; Battle of Lake Erie, iii. 315; Battle of Stonington, iii. 338; Bay Islet, iii. 116; Beauties of Santa Cruz, i. xxvii, 222, 239, 249; Belief and Unbelief, iii. 405; Bergen Planter, iii. 45; Bermuda Islands, ii. 318; Bethlehemite, iii. 406; Bird at Sea, iii. 22; Blast of November, iii. 406; Blessings of the Poppy, iii. 114; Book of Odes, iii. 161; Bridge of the Delaware, iii. 403; British Prison Ship, i. xxxiii, cvii, ii. 18; Brook of the Valley, iii. 376. Captain Jones's Invitation, i. cvi, 290; Caribbean, ii. 314; Charity a-la-Mode, iii. 403; Citizen's Resolve, i. 42; College Story, iii. 404; Columbus to Ferdinand, i. xxix, ci, 46; Commerce, iii. 220; Congress Hall, iii. 26; Constantia, i. xlviii, iii. 38; Country Printer, i. lxxxvi, 14, iii. 60; Crispin's Answer, iii. 75; Crows and the Carrion, iii. 179. Death Song of a Cherokee Indian, i. cx, ii. 315; Debtor's Soliloquy, iii. 402; Departure, ii. 298; Departure, iii. 49; Description of Connecticut, iii. 8; Description of the Plague in Athens, iii. 404; Deserted Farm-House, i. 40, iii. 399; Desolate Academy, i. 182; Devastations in a Library, iii. 402; Dialogue at Hyde-Park Corner, ii. 140; Dialogue at Washington's Tomb, iii. 352; Dialogue between his Britannic Majesty and Mr. Fox, i. xxix, ii. 9; Dialogue between Shadrach and Whiffle, iii. 403; Discovery, i. ci, 85; Dish of Tea, iii. 71; Distrest Orator, iii. 401; Distrest Shepherdess, i. 195; Distrest Theatre, ii. 404; Drunkard's Apology, iii. 403; Drunken Soldier, iii. 402; Duelists, iii. 406; Dull Moralist, iii. 402; Dying Elm, i. xxix, 45; Dying Indian, i. cxi, ii. 243. Elegiac Lines, i. 222, 253, ii. 328, iii. 402; Elegiac Lines on a Theological Script-Monger, iii. 404; Elegaic Stanzas on a Young Gentleman, iii. 403; Elegaic Verses on a Dog, iii. 401; Elegy on the Death of a Blacksmith, iii. 112; Elegy on Mr. Robert Bell, ii. 260; Englishman's Complaint, ii. 305; English Quixote, ii. 54; Epigram, iii. 116; Epistle from Dr. Franklin, iii. 36; Epistle to a Desponding Seamen, iii. 57; Epistle to a Gay Young Lady, iii. 403; Epistle to a Student of Dead Languages, iii. 121; Epistle to the Patriotic Farmer, ii. 380; Epistle to Peter Pindar, iii. 28; Epistle to Sylvius, i. xxxviii, ii. 295; Epitaph, ii. 328; Epitaph on a Worthy Parson, iii. 406; Epitaph on Frederick the Second, iii. 403; Epitaph on Peter Abelard, iii. 401; Epitaph on the Tombstone of Patrick Bay, iii. 401; Epistolary Lines on the Death of a Fiddler, iii. 402; Esperanza's March, iii. 405; Eutaw Springs, i. cvi, ii. 101; Expedition of Timothy Taurus, i. xxvii, 123. Fading Rose, iii. 404; Fair Buckle-Thief, iii. 402; Fair Solitary, ii. 325; Fancy's Ramble, i. 34; Farmer Dobbins's Complaint, iii. 402; Farmer's Winter Evening, iii. 394; Federal Hall, iii. 26; Female Caprice, iii. 402; Female Frailty, i. lxviii. 197; Few Honest Coblers, iii. 402; Fiddler's Farewell, iii. 402; Five Ages, iii. 401; Flagelators, iii. 401; Florio to Amanda, ii. 319; Forest Bean, iii. 120. General Gage's Confession, i. xxv, 189, ii. 205; General Gage's Soliloquy, i. xxv, 152, ii. 205; George the Third's Soliloquy, i. xxix, ii. 3; God Save the Rights of Man, i. liv, iii. 99; Gougers, iii. 404. Happy Prospect, ii. 243; Hatteras, ii. 394; Heaving the Lead, iii. 406; Hermit and the Traveller, iii. 406; Hermit of Saba, ii. 359; Hermit's Valley, iii. 128; Heroine of the Revolution, iii. 182; Hessian Embarkation, i. 222; Highland Sawney, iii. 402; History of the Prophet Jonah, i. xvi, 3; Horace, Lib. I. Ode 15, ii. 377; Horace, Lib. II. Ode 16, Imitated, ii. 336; House of Night, i. xxvii, lxviii, civ, 212, 253, 269, iii. 122; Human Frailty, iii. 405; Humanity and Ingratitude, iii. 401; Hurricane, ii. 250; Hypochondriac, iii. 406. In Memory of James Lawrence, iii. 313; Impertinent, iii. 401; Indian Burying Ground, i. cxi, ii. 369; Indian Convert, iii. 189; Indian Student, i. cx, ii. 371; Insolvent's Release, ii. 329; Invalid, iii. 403; Invitation, i. 290; Island Field Hand, ii. 258. Jamaica Funeral, i. lxviii, xcvii, cv, 239, 253, iii. 122; Jeffrey, or the Soldier's Progress, iii. 117; Jewish Lamentation at the Euphrates, i. 270; Journey from Philadelphia to New York, ii. 338; Jug of Rum, iii. 66. Laughable Poem, ii. 338; Libera Nos, Domine, i. 139; Lines Addressed to Mr. Jefferson, iii. 293; Lines by H. Salem, on his Return from Calcutta, iii. 57; Lines Intended for Mr. Peale's Exhibition, ii. 246; Lines Occasioned by a Visit to an Old Indian Burying Ground, ii. 369; Lines Occasioned by Mr. Rivington's new Titular Types, ii. 124; Lines on a Distrest Orator, iii. 401; Lines on a February Shad, iii. 403; Lines on Cutting down Trees in the Streets, ii. 53; Lines on Mr. Rivington's New Engraved King's Arms, ii. 125; Lines on Napoleon Bonaparte, iii. 333; Lines on Seniora Julia, iii. 366; Lines on the Death of a Lady, ii. 328; Lines on the New Theatre, iii. 406; Lines to a Coasting Captain, i. 184; Lines to the Memory of a Young American Lady, iii. 402; Lines Written at Port Royal, ii. 253; Lines Written at Sea, iii. 231; Lines Written at St. Catharine's Island, ii. 397; Lines Written for Mr. Ricketts, iii. 405; Lines Written in a French Novel, iii. 405; Lines Written in a very Small Garden, iii. 404; Lines Written on a Puncheon, iii. 66; Literary Importations, ii. 303; Literary Plunderers, iii. 402; Log-Town Cabin, i. cx, iii. 19; London Dialogue, ii. 87; Lord Dunmore's Petition, ii. 114; Lost Sailor, ii. 128; Love's Suicide, iii. 404; Lysander's Retreat, ii. 401. MacSwiggin, i. xviii, xxv, 206, ii. 185; Manhattan City, ii. 223; Man of Ninety, ii. 374; Marcella in a Consumption, ii. 326; Market Girl, iii. 402; Marriage a-la-mode, iii. 403; Mars and Hymen, i. 195, 197, ii. 56, 57; Mars and Venus, iii. 403; Maryland, iii. 15; Matrimonial Dialogue, iii. 104; May to April, ii. 331; Megara and Altavola, iii. 146; Menace, iii. 403; Mercantile Charity, iii. 403; Midnight Consultations, i. 158; Military Recruiting, iii. 308; Millenium, iii. 176; Minerva's Advice, iii. 403; Minstrel's Complaint, iii. 402; Miserable Life of a Pedagogue, iii. 396; Misfortune of March, iii. 402; Misnomer, i. 185; Mistake, iii. 405; Modern Devotion, iii. 54; Modern Idolatry, ii. 54; Modern Jehu, iii. 405; Modern Miracle, iii. 402; Monumental Lines, iii. 405; Monument of Phaon, i. lxviii, 30; Moral Thought, ii. 91; Mourning Nun, ii. 325; Mr. Jay's Treaty, iii. 132; Musical Savage, iii. 406. Nanny to Nabby, iii. 42; Nabby to Nanny, iii. 44; Nature's Debt, iii. 406; Nautical Rendezvous, The, iii. 242; Nereus and Thetis, iii. 404; Neversink, i. xlvii, lxxxvi, iii. 3; New Age, iii. 405; New England Sabbath-Day Chase, iii. 29; News-Carrier's Petition, ii. 240; News-Man's Address, 1784, ii. 238; News-Man's Address, 1786, ii. 301; News-Man's Address, 1788, ii. 383; Newsmonger, ii. 263; New Year's Eve, iii. 406; New Year's Verses, 1783, ii. 197; New Year's Verses, 1783, ii. 198, iii. 129, 401; New Year's Verses, 1784, ii. 240; New Year's Verses, 1785, ii. 284; New Year's Verses, 1788, ii. 383; New Year's Verses, 1798, iii. 194; New York Tory, ii. 84; New York Tory's Epistle, ii. 290; New York Tory's Epistle to one of His Friends, ii. 219; Northern March, iii. 329; Northern Soldier, i. 197, ii. 67; Nova Scotia Menace, iii. 403. Occasioned by the Bill Proposing a Taxation on Newspapers, iii. 52; October's Address, iii. 273; Ode, iii. 99; Ode for July 4, 1799, iii. 152; Ode to Fancy, i. lviii, 34; Ode to Good Fortune, iii. 405; Ode to Liberty, i. liii, iii. 92; Ode to the Americans, iii. 203; Old Virginia, iii. 17; On a Book Called Unitarian Theology, ii. 307; On a Celebrated Performer on the Violin, iii. 192; On a Hessian Debarkation, i. 222, 269; On a Honey Bee, iii. 284; On a Lady Now Deceased, iii. 405; On a Lady's Singing Bird, i. 283; On a Legislative Act, iii. 126; On Amanda's Singing Bird, i. 283; On a Man Killed by a Buffalo, iii. 404; On American Antiquity, iii. 5; On a Nocturnal View of the Planet Jupiter, iii. 404; On a Painter, iii. 403; On a Proposed Negotiation, iii. 226; On Arriving in South Carolina, iii. 199; On a Rural Nymph, iii. 268; On a Travelling Speculator, iii. 404; On Deborah Gannett, iii. 182; On Dr. Sangrado's Flight, iii. 111; On False Systems of Government, iii. 221; On Finding a Terrapin, iii. 406; On General Miranda's Expedition, iii. 271; On General Robertson's Proclamation, ii. 162; On Happiness, iii. 405; On Hearing a Political Oration, iii. 144; On Passing by an Old Churchyard, iii. 277; On Pest-Eli-Hali, iii. 404; On Political Sermons, iii. 330; On Prohibiting the Sale of Ramsey's History, ii. 312; On Retirement, i. 84; On Seeing a Beautiful Print, iii. 406; On Seniora Julia Leaving a Dance, iii. 265; On Sir Henry Clinton's Recall, ii. 153; On Superstition, iii. 405; On Swedenborg's Universal Theology, ii. 307; On the Abuse of Human Power, iii. 272; On the Approaching Dissolution, iii. 404; On the Anniversary of the Storming of the Bastile, i. liii, iii. 102; On the Attempted Launch of a Frigate, iii. 157; On the Brigantine Privateer Prince de Neufchatel, iii. 366; On the British Blockade, iii. 358; On the British Commercial Depredations, iii. 300; On the British Invasion, iii. 341; On the British King's Speech, ii. 217; On the Capture of the Essex, iii. 318; On the Capture of the Guerriere, iii. 310; On the City Encroachments on the River Hudson, iii. 173; On the Conflagrations at Washington, iii. 344; On the Conqueror of America, i. 185; On the Crew of a Certain Vessel, ii. 317; On the Death of a Masonic Grand Sachem, iii. 282; On the Death of a Master Builder, iii. 281; On the Death of a Republican Printer, iii. 101; On the Death of Capt. Nicholas Biddle, i. cvi, 288; On the Death of Catharine II., iii. 136; On the Death of Colonel Laurens, ii. 283; On the Death of Dr. Benjamin Franklin, iii. 36; On the Death of General Reed, ii. 288; On the Death of General Ross, iii. 356; On the Demolition of an Old College, iii. 33; On the Demolition of Fort George, iii. 24; On the Demolition of the French Monarchy, i. liii, iii. 84; On the Departure of the Grand Sanhedrim, iii. 49; On the Departure of Peter Porcupine, iii. 240; On the Dismission of Bonaparte, iii. 334; On the Emigration to America, ii. 280; On the English Devastations, iii. 343; On the Evils of Human Life, iii. 405; On the Fall of an Ancient Oak, iii. 285; On the Fall of General Earl Cornwallis, ii. 92; On the Federal City, iii. 171, 184; On the First American Ship, ii. 261; On the Fourteenth of July, i. liii, iii. 72; On the Free Use of the Lancet, iii. 159; On the French Republicans, i. liii, iii. 88; On the Frigate Constitution, iii. 174; On the Invasion of Rome, iii. 135; On the Lake Expeditions, iii. 314; On the Late Sloop of War General Monk, ii. 142; On the Launching of the Frigate Constitution, iii. 158; On the Launching of the Independence, iii. 374; On the Loss of the Armstrong, iii. 363; On the Memorable Naval Engagement, iii. 106; On the Memorable Victory, i. cvii, ii. 75; On the Naval Attack Near Baltimore, iii. 357; On the New American Frigate, Alliance, i. cvii, 285; On the New Year's Festival, ii. 198; On the Peak of Pico, iii. 254; On the Peak of Teneriffe, iii. 261; On the Proposed System of State Consolidation, iii. 225; On the Portraits of Louis and Antoinette, iii. 89; On the Powers of the Human Understanding, iii. 404; On the Prospect of a Revolution in France, ii. 385; On the Prospect of War, iii. 296; On the Religion of Nature, iii. 405; On the Royal Coalition, iii. 129; On the Sleep of Plants, iii. 31; On the Symptoms of Hostilities, iii. 291; On the Uniformity and Perfection of Nature, iii. 405; On the Universality of the God of Nature, iii. 405; On the Vicissitudes of Things, ii. 284; On the War Patrons, iii. 98; On the War Projected with the Republic of France, iii. 139; Orator of the Woods, iii. 41; Order of the Day, iii. 406; Origin of Wars, iii. 403; Orland's Flight, iii. 111. Palæmon: or, the Skaiter, iii. 402; Palemon to Lavinia, ii. 381; Pamphleteer and the Critic, ii. 309; Parade and Sham-fight, iii. 368; Parody on the Attempt to Force the British Treaty, iii. 133; Parting Glass, iii. 68; Patrick Mulponi, ii. 379; Pestilence, iii. 110; Pettifogger, iii. 191; Pewter Platter Alley, ii. 287; Philander: or the Emigrant, ii. 321; Philosophical Reflections, ii. 165; Pictures of Columbus, i. lxviii, ci, 89; Picture of the Times, ii. 165; Pilgrim's Progress, ii. 401; Pilot of Hatteras, ii. 394; Plato, the Philosopher, to Theon, ii. 104; Political Balance, ii. 130; Political Biography, ii. 201; Political Litany, i. 139; Political Rival Suitors, iii. 130; Political Weathercock, iii. 216; Power of Fancy, i. 34; Prayer of Orpheus, i. 39; Prefatory Lines, iii. 137; Preposterous Nuptials, iii. 403; Prince Regent's Resolve, iii. 336; Prince William Henry's Soliloquy, ii. 167; Prisoner, iii. 402; Prison Ship, i. xxxiii, 288; Procession to Columbia, ii. 399; Procession to Sylvania, ii. 399; Progress of Balloons, ii. 276; Projectors, ii. 160; Prologue to a Theatrical Entertainment, ii. 108; Prophecy, ii. 126; Prophecy of King Tammany, ii. 187; Prudent Philosopher, iii. 403; Psalm CXXXVII Imitated, i. xxix, 270; Publius to Pollia, iii. 405; Pyramid of the American States, iii. 82; Pyramids of Egypt, i. xvi, 25; Pythona, iii. 406. Quintilian to Lycidas, iii. 115. Reflections, iii. 217; Reflections on Dr. Perkins' Metallic Points, iii. 405; Reflections on the Constitution of Nature, iii. 404; Reflections on the Death of a Country Printer, iii. 101; Reflections on Mutability of Things, iii. 215; Refugees' Petition to Sir Guy Carleton, ii. 172; Renegado Epistle, ii. 219; Renegado Epistle, ii. 290; Republican Festival, iii. 151; Republican Genius of Europe, iii. 129; Retaliation, a Marine Ode, iii. 373; Retirement, i. 84; Retort, iii. 401; Reward of Innocence, iii. 405; Rising Glory of America, i. xxi, ciii, 49; Rival Suitors for America, iii. 130; Rivington's Confessions, i. xl, ii. 229; Rivington's Last Will, ii. 120; Rivington's Reflections, ii. 190; Royal Adventurer, ii. 112; Royal Apprentice, iii. 405; Royal Cockneys in America, iii. 185; Royal Consultations, iii. 361; Rural Bachelor, iii. 403. St. Preux to Eloisa, iii. 402; Sangrado's Expedition to Sylvania, ii. 402; Santa Cruz, i. 222, 239, 249; Satan's Remonstrance, ii. 169; Satire in Answer to a Hostile Attack, i. 206; Scandinavian War Song, ii. 159; Science Favorable to Virtue, iii. 404; Scornful Lady, iii. 402; Scurrilous Scribe, iii. 405; Sea-Faring Bachelor, i. 184; Seasons Moralized, ii. 282; Sea Voyage, i. 293; Serious Menace, iii. 213; Seventeen Hundred and Ninety-one, iii. 65; Sexton's Sermon, i. 222, 239, iii. 122; Shadrach and Pomposo, iii. 403; Silent Academy, i. 182; Sir Guy Carleton's Address, ii. 156; Sir Guy's Answer, ii. 173; Sir Harry's Invitation, ii. 7; Sir Peter Petrified, iii. 354; Sketches of American History, ii. 266; Slender's Journey, i. xliii, lxxxvi, ii. 338; Song on Captain Barney's Victory, i. cvii, ii. 149; Speech, ii. 117; Spy, i. 197, ii. 39; Stanzas Occasioned by Absurd Panegyrics, iii. 235; Stanzas Occasioned by the Departure of the British, ii. 214; Stanzas Occasioned by the Ruins of a Country Inn, ii. 110; Stanzas on a Political Projector, iii. 406; Stanzas on an Ancient Dutch House, i. 40; Stanzas on an old English Tobacco Box, iii. 278; Stanzas on the Decease of Thomas Paine, iii. 286; Stanzas on the same Subject as the Preceding, iii. 234; Stanzas Published at the Procession to the Tombs of the Patriots, iii. 246; Stanzas on Skeletons Dug up in Fort George, iii. 40; Stanzas to an Alien, iii. 228; Stanzas to the Memory of General Washington, iii. 232; Stanzas to the Memory of two Young Persons, ii. 79; Stanzas Written at Baltimore, ii. 391; Stanzas written at the Foot of Monte Souffiere, ii. 314; Stanzas written at the Island of Madeira, iii. 257; Stanzas Written in a Clergyman's Garden, iii. 404; Stanzas Written in a Blank Leaf of Burke's History, ii. 314; Stanzas Written in Blackbeard's Castle, iii. 229; St. Catharine's, ii. 397; Subscription Prayer, ii. 379; Suicide, iii. 404; Susanna's Revival, iii. 402; Susanna's Tomb, iii. 405; Suttler and the Soldier, iii. 304. Terra Vulpina, iii. 8; Terrific Torpedoes, iii. 321; Theodosia, iii. 312; Tenth Ode of Horace's Book of Epodes, ii. 103; Thoughts on the European War System, iii. 103; Timothy Taurus, i. xxv; To a Caty-did, iii. 275; To a Concealed Royalist, ii. 174; To a Democratic Editor, iii. 166; To a Deceased Dog, iii. 401; To a Dog, ii. 387; To America, iii. 301; To an Angry Zealot, iii. 81; To an Author, ii. 332; To a Night Fly, iii. 189; To an Old Man, ii. 104; To a Noisy Politician, iii. 122; To a Persecuted Philosopher, iii. 81; To a Republican, iii. 90; To a Very Little Man, iii. 403; To a Writer of Panegyric, iii. 119; Tobacco, iii. 46; To Clarissa, iii. 403; To Cracovius Patridas, ii. 336; To Crispin O'Conner, ii. 74; To Cynthia, ii. 391, iii. 403; To Duncan Dolittle, iii. 164; To Fungus, Froth & Co., iii. 403; To Harriot, ii. 391; To His Excellency, General Washington, ii. 81; To Ismenia, iii. 406; To Lord Cornwallis, ii. 86; To Lydia, ii. 387; To Marcia, ii. 326; Tomb of the Patriots, iii. 249; To Memmius, ii. 406; To Misfortune, ii. 335; To Mr. Blanchard, iii. 142; To Mr. Churchman, ii. 398; To My Book, iii. 78; To My Book, iii. 129; To My Lord Snake, iii. 401; To Myrtalis, iii. 141; To Pest-Eli-Hali, iii. 166; To Peter Porcupine, iii. 156; To Peter Porcupine, iii. 167; Tormentina's Complaint, ii. 393; To Sanstone Samuel, iii. 176; To Sylock Ap Shenkin, i. 206, ii. 185, 177, iii. 76, 119; To Sylock Ap Shenkin, an Abusive Court Writer, ii. 174; To Sylock Ap Shenkin in Reply to Big Looks, iii. 109; To Sir Toby, ii. 258; To Sylvius, iii. 113; To the Americans of the United States, i. lxx, iii. 188; To the Americans on the Rumored Approach of the Hessians, i. 185; To the Concealed Royalist, ii. 177; To the Concealed Royalist on his Farewell, ii. 179; To the Democratic Country Editors, iii. 210; To the Dog Sancho, iii. 404; To the Foe to Tyrants, ii. 177; To the Frigate _Constitution_, iii. 162; To the Grand Mufti, iii. 402; To the Keeper of the King's Water Works, ii. 252; To the Lake Squadrons, iii. 347; To the Memory of a Lady, iii. 403; To the Memory of Edward Rutledge, iii. 238; To the Memory of Mrs. Burnet, iii. 403; To the Memory of the Late Aedanus Burke, iii. 243; To the Memory of the Brave Americans, ii. 101; To the Philadelphia Doctors, iii. 178; To the Public, iii. 56; To the Rev. Samuel Stanhope Smith, iii. 244; To the Royalist Unveiled, ii. 181; To the Scribe of Scribes, iii. 187; To Whom it May Concern, ii. 185; To Zoilus, ii. 309; Translated from the Third Book of Lucretius, iii. 406; Translation from Ovid's Tristia, iii. 404; Translation of Gray's Ode, iii. 405; Translation of the Third Elegy of Ovid, iii. 404; Truth Anticipated, ii. 143; Two Genii, iii. 406. Under the Portraiture of Martha Ray, iii. 403; Upon a very ancient Dutch House, iii. 399; Usurer's Prayer, iii. 404. Vanity of Existence, ii. 91; Vernal Ague, i. 188; Verses Made at Sea, ii. 250; Verses occasioned by Washington's Arrival, ii. 225; View of Colombia, ii. 401; View of Rhode Island, iii. 7; Village Merchant, i. xvi, 14, iii. 60; Vision of the Night, i. 222; Volunteer's March, iii. 337; Voyage to Boston, i. xxv, 158. Wanderer, iii. 22; Warning to America, iii. 70; Wild Honey Suckle, i. cix, ii. 306; Wish of Diogenes, i. 84; Written at Cape Hatteras, ii. 392; Written at Poplar Hill, iii. 406; Written at Port Royal, ii. 253. Porcupine, Peter, iii. 156, 167, 187, 240 Powers and Willis, printers, i. xxxvi Princeton, i. xvff., xxv, 49, 50, 208, iii. 244 Printer, A Country, iii. 101, 166 Prison-ships, ii. 18, iii. 246, 249; _The Jersey_, ii. 27, iii. 249; _The Hunter_, ii. 27, 31, 32; _The Scorpion_, ii. 26, 27, 31; _The Strombolo_, ii. 27 Privateering, iii. 242, 366 Prophecies, Freneau's; Rise of the West, i. 76; America a world-power, ii. 282; ballooning, ii. 279; Europe owns America her equal, ii. 386; science displaces the classics, iii. 121; America's navy, iii. 158; era of prose, iii. 188; Jefferson president, iii. 216 Pyramid of the States, iii. 82 Quesnay, Alexander, ii. 108 Ramsay, David, ii. 312, iii. 245 Randolph, John, i. li, lxiv Rawdon, Lord, ii. 97 Ray, Hugh, i. xxxii Read, Col., iii. 354 Reed, Gen. Joseph, ii. 176, 288 Reid, Samuel C., Captain of _General Armstrong_, iii. 363 Rhode Island, ii. 386, iii. 7 Rights of Man, iii. 65, 90 "Rising Empire, The," i. xlix, iii. 5 Rittenhouse, David, i. xlii, lix Rivington, James, ii. 116, 120, 124, 125, 143, 162, 169, 190, 229, 232 Robin, Abbé Claude, i. xxxvi, lxxiii Robertson, General James, ii. 39, 122, 162, 237 Rodney, Admiral, George, ii. 143 Rogers, Captain of the _General Monk_, ii. 150 Ross, General Robert, iii. 89, 343, 356 _Royal George_, Loss of, ii. 218 Rozier, balloonist, ii. 276 Rush, Dr. Benjamin, iii. 159, 167, 169, 240 Rutledge, Gov. Edward, iii. 238 Rum, the curse of, iii. 66 Saint Esprit, Church, New York, i. xiii Sandwich, Lord, ii. 13, 90 St. James Island, i. xxvii Santa Cruz Island, West Indies, i. xxvi, xxvii, xxxiv, 249 "Satires against the Tories," i. xvii Schuylkill River, iii. 128 Scott, Sir Walter, i. vi, cvi; ii. 102 Seabury, Bishop Samuel, ii. 303 Sears, Isaac, raids Rivington's office, ii. 205, 236 Sevier, Robert and William, iii. 79 Shelburne, Earl of, settles the quarrel with the Colonies, ii. 191 Shippen, Dr. William, iii. 244 SHIPS. _Active_, Am. brig, i. xxxi; _Alliance_, Am. frigate, i. 285, ii. 77; _Ardent_, Fr. man of war, ii. 145; _Asia_, Br. man of war, ii. 205; _Aurora_, Am. ship, i. xxx, ii. 19, 21, 23; _Betsy_, Am. brig, i. xlvii; _Betsey_, Br. ship, i. xlv; _Boston_, Br. frigate, iii. 106; _Carnation_, Br. armed brig, iii. 363; _Cerberus_, Br. frigate, ii. 153; _Charming Sally_, Br. privateer, ii. 150; _Cherub_, Br. frigate, iii. 318; _Chesapeake_, Am. frigate, iii. 313; _Columbia_, Freneau's schooner, i. xliii, xlvii, xlviii; _Confidence_, Br. warship, iii. 349; _Constitution_, Am. frigate, iii. 157, 158, 162, 174, 310; _Countess of Scarborough_, Br. man of war, ii. 75; _Despatch_, Br. war brig, iii. 338; _Dromilly_, Freneau's brig, i. xxxvii, ii. 252; _Echo_, Am. brig, i. lxxix; _Empress of China_, Am. merchant ship, ii. 261; _Essex_, Am. frigate, iii. 318; _Fair American_, Br. privateer, ii. 142; _Formidable_, Br. frigate, ii. 143; _Fulton the First_, Am. steam frigate, iii. 360; _General Armstrong_, Am. privateer brig, iii. 363; _General Greene_, Am. privateer, ii. 142, 150; _General Monk_, Am. sloop of war, ii. 85, 142, 147, 149; _Good Man Richard_, Am. frigate, ii. 77; _Glorieuse_, French man of war, ii. 145; _Grange_, Br. ship, iii. 106; _Guerriere_, Br. frigate, iii. 310; _Hancock_, former name of the _Iris_, ii. 22; _Hector_, Fr. man of war, ii. 145; _Hunter_ (see Prison Ships); _Hyder Ali_, Am. privateer, ii. 142, 147, 168; _Independence_, iii. 374; _Industry_, Freneau's sloop, i. xliii, lxxxi, ii. 388; _Iris_, Br. frigate, i. xxxi, xxxii, ii. 19, 22, 23, 85, 90; _Jersey_ (see Prison Ships); _John_, Freneau's schooner, i. lxxx; _Katy_, Am. sloop, i. lxxv; _La Hoke_, Br. warship, iii. 321; _Le Cesar_, Fr. frigate, ii. 145; _Le Diadem_, Fr. frigate, ii. 145; _L'Embuscade_, Fr. frigate, iii. 92, 106; _Little Sarah_, Br. ship, iii. 106; _Maria_, Am. ship, iii. 199; _Mars_, Am. brig, i. xxxix; _Menelaus_, Br. frigate, iii. 354; _Monmouth_, Freneau's sloop, i. xxix, ii. 295; _Pactolus_, Br. ship of war, iii. 338; _Pallas_, Fr. man of war, ii. 77, 79; _Patriot_, Am. schooner, iii. 312; _Phoebe_, Br. frigate, iii. 318; _Plantagenet_, Br. frigate, iii. 363; _Prince de Neufchatel_, Am. privateer, iii. 366; _Prince George_, Br. frigate, ii. 112; _Queen Charlotte_, Br. ship of war, iii. 316; _Queen of France_, Fr. ship, iii. 89; _Ramillies_, Br. frigate, iii. 321, 338; _Randolph_, Am. frigate, i. cvii, 288; _Rebecca_, Am. brig, i. xxx; _Rodney_, Br. flag ship, ii. 117; _Rose_, Br. frigate, i. xlii, 140, 165; _Rota_, Br. frigate, iii. 363; _Royal George_, Br. frigate, ii. 218; _Saratoga_, Am. war ship, iii. 349; _Scorpion_, see Prison Ships; _Seraphis_, Br. frigate, ii. 75; _Shannon_, Br. frigate, iii. 313; _Strombolo_, see Prison Ships; _Trumbull_, Am. frigate, ii. 85; _Vengeance_, Am. man of war, ii. 77; _Ville de Paris_, Fr. frigate, ii. 145; _Viper_, Br. frigate, ii. 140; _Vulture_, Br. man of war, ii. 48; _Washington_, former name of the _Gen. Monk_, ii. 142; _Washington_, Freneau's brig, i. lxxxi, lxxxvii; _Yarmouth_, Br. frigate, i. 288 Slavery, Freneau's opposition to, i. xcvii, ii. 258 Slender, Robert, i. xliii, lxxvi Smith, Robert, architect, iii. 244 Smith, Samuel S., iii. 242 Smyth, William, i. 129 Smyth, Mrs. Charles (Anna), i. lxxxix Somerset Academy, Md., i. xxii South Carolina, ii. 305, 402, iii. 199, 238 Spring, Samuel, i. xvi Sproat, David, commissary of prisoners at N. Y., ii. 29 State Consolidation, iii. 225 Steamboats, ii. 406 Steele, Gen., Collector of the port of Philadelphia, i. lxxxviii Stillwell, Joseph, i. xliv Stirling, Lord, i. 124 Stuart, General, ii. 101 Suffrein, M. de, ii. 117 Swedenborg, Emanuel, ii. 307 Sweeney, Miss Adele, i. xxx, lxxviii, 19, 39 Tammany, Indian Chieftain, ii. 187 Tea, iii. 71 Teneriffe, iii. 261, 263 Tennessee, iii. 192 Theatre, ii. 108, 404 Tobacco, iii. 46, 278, 308 Tomo Cheeki Papers, i. lxvi, lxxiv Tories, ii. 84, 162, 172, 219, 290, 293 Towne, Benjamin, printer, ii. 288 "Travels of the Imagination," i. 271 Treaty between Great Britain and America, ii. 246 Trees in Cities, iii. 53 Trumbull, John, i. ci Tryon, Gov. William, i. 140, ii. 115 Twining, Thomas, iii. 184 _United States Magazine_, i. xxvii, xxix, xl, 45, 46, 212, 249, 270, 293; ii. 3, 9 Uranian Musical Society, iii. 152 Vanderput, Capt. of the Asia, ii. 205 Venezuela, iii. 271 Verplanck, G. C., reviews Freneau's poems, i. xci Vincent, Capt., i. 288 Virginia legislature petitioned by Lord Dunmore, ii. 114 Virginia, iii. 17 Vreeland, Mrs. Helen K., i. lxxx Walcott, Dr. John, poet, iii. 28 Wallace, Captain of the _Rose_, i. xli "War and Washington," i. c War of 1812, iii. 133, 155, 292, 297ff., 305, 310, 313ff., 318, 321, 329, 338, 341, 343, 347, 356, 357, 363 Warner, G. J., iii. 152 Washington Academy, Md., i. xxiii Washington, City of, iii. 171, 184, 343, 344, 361 Washington, George, i. xlvii, liv, lx, 169, 185, 194, 279, ii. 81, 82, 92, 225, iii. 232, 234, 235, 244, 352 Watson, Agnes, i. xiv; Richard, i. xiv Wellington's Army in the War of 1812, iii. 341, 361 West Indies, i. 239, 249, ii. 250, 252, 258, 314, 359, iii. 229, 242 Western emigration, ii. 280 Weyman, Ned, printer, ii. 203 William Henry, Prince, ii. 112, 167 Witherspoon, President John, i. xv, xix Wheelock, President John, iii. 33 Whitehead, William, poet laureate, ii. 219 Woodhouse, William, i. 158 Wrigley, Francis, newscarrier, ii. 197 Yale College, ii. 346 Yamacraw, Ga., i. xlvi Yellow Fever, iii. 110, 159, 167, 178 Yorktown, ii. 89, 92 
4006	----	Transcribed from the 1910 Gay and Hancock edition David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org YESTERDAYS BY ELLA WHEELER WILCOX GAY AND HANCOCK, LTD. 12 & 13, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN LONDON 1910 [_All rights reserved_] CONTENTS Foreword An Old Heart Warp and Woof So Long If I could only weep Why should we sigh A wakeful night If one should dive deep Two No comfort It does not matter The under-tone Worth living More fortunate He will not come Worn out Rondeau Trifles Courage The other Mad Which Love's burial Incomplete On rainy days Geraldine Only in dreams Circumstance Simple creeds The bridal eve Good night No place Found A man's reverie When my sweet lady sings Spectres Only a line Parting Estranged Before and after An empty crib The arrival Go back Why I love her Discontent A dream The night New Year Reverie The law Spirit of a Great Control Noon The search A man's good-bye At the hop Met Returned birds A crushed leaf A curious story Jenny Lind Life's key Bridge of prayer New year Deceitful calm Un Rencontre Burned out Only a glove Reminders A dirge Not anchored The new love An east wind Cheating time Only a slight flirtation What the rain saw After Our petty cares The ship and the boat Come near A suggestion A fisherman's baby Content and happiness The Cusine I wonder why A woman's hand Presentiment Two rooms Three at the opera A strain of music Smoke An autumn day Wishes The play As we look back Why Listen Together One night Lost nation The captive No song Two friends I didn't think A burial Their faces The lullaby Mirage Alone in the house An old bouquet At the bridal Best FOREWORD This little volume might be called 'Echoes from the land of youthful imaginings'; or 'Ghosts of old dreams.' It has been compiled at the request of Messrs. Gay and Hancock (my only authorised publishers in Great Britain), and contains verses written in my early youth, and which never before (with the exception, perhaps, of three or four) have been placed in book form. Given the poetical temperament, and a lonely environment, with few distractions, youthful imagination is sure to express itself in mournful wails and despairing moans. Such wails and moans will be found to excess in this little book, and will serve to show better than any amount of common-sense reasoning, how fleeting are the sorrows of youth, and how slight the foundation on which the young build towers of despair. In the days when these verses were written, each little song represented a few dollars (to my emaciated purse), and so the slightest experience of my own, or of any friend, with every passing mood, every trivial happening, was utilised by my imaginative and thrifty muse. That the writer has always possessed robust health, and has lived to a good age, is proof positive that the verses are not all expressions of personal experiences, since no human being could have borne such continual agonies and retained life and reason. All the verses in the book were written while I bore the name of Ella Wheeler, and are quite inconsistent with the ideas and philosophy of ELLA WHEELER WILCOX. _August_ 1910. AN OLD HEART How young I am! Ah! heaven, this curse of youth Doth mock me from my mirror with great eyes, And pulsing veins repeat the unwelcome truth, That I must live, though hope within me dies. So young, and yet I have had all of life. Why, men have lived to see a hundred years, Who have not known the rapture, joy, and strife Of my brief youth, its passion and its tears. Oh! what are years? A ripe three score and ten Hold often less of life, in its best sense, Than just a twelvemonth lived by other men, Whose high-strung souls are ardent and intense. But having seen all depths and scaled all heights, Having a heart love thrilled, and sorrow wrung, Knowing all pains, all pleasures, all delights, Now I would die--but cannot, being young. Nothing is left me, but supreme despair; The bitter dregs that tell of wasted wine. Come furrowed brow, dull eye, and frosted hair, Companions fit for this old heart of mine. WARP AND WOOF Through the sunshine, and through the rain Of these changing days of mist and splendour, I see the face of a year-old pain Looking at me with a smile half tender. With a smile half tender, and yet all sad, Into each hour of the mild September It comes, and finding my life grown glad Looks down in my eyes, and says 'Remember.' Says 'Remember,' and points behind To days of sorrow, and tear-wet lashes; When joy lay dead and hope was blind, And nothing was left but dust and ashes. Dust and ashes and vain regret, Flames fanned out, and the embers falling. But the sun of the saddest day must set, And hope wakes ever with Springtime's calling. With Springtime's calling the pulses thrill; And the heart is tuned to a sweeter measure. For never a green Spring crossed the hill That came not laden with some new pleasure. Some new pleasure that brings content; And the heart looks up with a smile of gladness, And wonders idly when sorrow went Out of the life that seemed all sadness. That seemed all sadness, and yet grew bright With colours we thought could tinge it never. Yet I think the pain though out of sight, Like the warp of the carpet, is there for ever. There for ever, and by and by When the woof wears thin, or draws asunder, We see the sombre threads that lie Intertwining and twisting under. Twisting under and binding so The brighter threads that they may not sever. Thus the pain of a year ago Must stay a part of my life for ever. SO LONG The dawn grows red in the eastern sky, (Long, so long is the day,) And I lean from my lattice and sigh and sigh, As I watch the night fog creeping by And vanish over the bay. The thrush soars up, over green clad hills, (The day is long, so long;) Like liquid silver his music spills, And ever it quivers, and runs, and trills In a glad sweet burst of song. Under my window there blooms a rose, (How long a day can be.) And I lean and whisper what no soul knows Of my heart's sorrows and secret woes, And the red rose sighs, 'Ah me!' A ship sails into the waiting bay, (The day is long, alack,) But what would that matter to me, I pray If the ship that sailed out yesterday Should never more come back. The summer sun rides high and clear, (The day is long, so long,) How long it must be ere it grows to a year-- How deep the sorrow that finds no tear, But only a wail of song. IF I COULD ONLY WEEP If I could only weep, I think sweet help with my salt tears would come, To ease the cruel pain that is so dumb, And will not let me sleep. Down in my heart, down deep A poisoned arrow burns. It would fall out And tears would wash the wound, I have no doubt, If I could only weep. Maybe my pulse would leap, And bring one thrill back, of a vanished day, Instead of throbbing in this dull, dead way, If I could only weep. O silent Fates who steep Nectar or gall for us through all the years, Take what thou wilt, but give me back my tears, And let me weep and weep. WHY SHOULD WE SIGH Why should we sigh o'er a summer that's dead-- Let us think of the summer to be. It always better to look ahead, For the rose will come again just as red And just as fair to see. Why should we weep o'er a pleasure past-- Let us look for the pleasure to be. New shells on the shore by new waves are cast; Let us prize each new joy more than the last, And laugh if the old joy flee. What folly to die for a love that was-- Let us live for the one to be. For time is passing, and will not pause; How foolish the shore were it sad because One wave ebbed out to sea. Then let us not sing of a year that is fled-- Though dear its memory be: For though summer and pleasure and love seem dead, Love will be sweet, and the rose will be red When they blossom for you and me. A WAKEFUL NIGHT In the dark and the gloom when winds were fretting Like restless children worn out with play, I said to my heart, 'This task, forgetting-- Is harder now than it is by day. For a hungry love that hides from the light, Like a tiger steals forth, and is bold at night.' The wind wailed low like a woman weeping; Deeper and darker the dense gloom grew. And, oh! for the old, sweet nights of sleeping, When dreams were happy, and love was true. Before the stars from heaven went out In a sudden blackness of dread and doubt. The wind wailed loud, like a madman shrieking, And I said to my heart, 'Oh! vain, vain strife; We cannot forget, and the peace we are seeking Can only be won at the end of life. For see! like a lurid and living spark The eyes of the tiger shine through the dark.' The wind sighed low like a sick man dying, And the dawn crept silently over the hill. And I said, 'O heart! there is no use trying, We must _remember_, and love on still.' And the tiger, appeased with its midnight feast, Fled as the dawn rose red in the East. IF ONE SHOULD DIVE DEEP Once more on the beach with the shifting clouds o'er me (Like the friends of a day), And the sea all unchanged, like a true friend before me, How the years flow away, How the summers go by. The shifting clouds o'er me, the shifting sands under; Why need it seem strange, Why need I feel bitter, and why should I wonder That hearts, too, should change As the summers go by. Down here is the path where we wandered together, 'Neath the midsummer moon. Her love was sweet as the sweet summer weather, And left us as soon, And the summers go by. The bathers laugh loud in the surf over yonder. If one should dive deep, And rise not--no more need he suffer or ponder O'er losses, or weep, But sink low and sleep While the summers go by. TWO As I sat in my opera box last night In a glimmer of gems and a blaze of light, And smiling that all might see, This curious thought came all unsought-- That there were _two_ of me. One who sat in her silk and lace, With gems on her bosom and smiles on her face, And hot-house blossoms in her hair, While her fan kept time to the swaying rhyme Of the lilting opera air. And one who sat in the dark somewhere, With her wan face hid by her falling hair, And her hands clasped over her eyes; And the sickening pain of heart and brain Breathed out in long-drawn sighs. One in the sheen of her opera suit; And one who was swathed from head to foot, In crepe of the blackest dye. One hiding her heart and playing a part, And one with her mask thrown by. But over the voice of the singer there, The one who sat with a rose in her hair, Seemed ever to hear the moan Of the one who kept in the dark and wept With her desolate heart alone. NO COMFORT O mad with mirth are the birds to-day That over my head are winging. There is nothing but glee in the roundelay That I hear them singing, singing. On wings of light, up, out of sight-- I watch them airily flying. What do they know of the world below, And the hopes that are dying, dying? The roses turn to the sun's warm sky, Their sweet lips red and tender; Oh! life to them is a dream of bliss, Of love, and passion, and splendour. What know they of the world to-day, Of hearts that are silently breaking; Of the human breast, and its great unrest, And its pitiless aching, aching? They send me out into Nature's heart For help to bear my sorrow, Nothing of strength can she impart, No peace from her can I borrow. Her rose-red June and her billing tune, Her birds and blossoms only, Mocked at the grief that seeks relief, And leave me lonely--lonely. If I might stand on the treacherous sand, And know I was sinking, sinking, While the moaning sea sang a dirge for me,-- Why, that were comfort, I'm thinking. IT DOES NOT MATTER It does not matter very much to me Through what strange ways my pathway now may lead; Since I know that it runs away from thee, I give it little heed. It does not matter if in calm or strife, There ebb or flow for me the future's tide. I had but one great longing in my life, And that has been denied. It does not matter if I stand or fall, Or walk with kings, or with the rank and file; Life's loftiest aims and best ambitions all Were centred in thy smile. It does not matter what the world may say: I feel no interest in its blame or praise. I only know we dwell apart to-day, And shall through endless days. It does not matter. For my restless heart Is numb to sorrow, or to pleasure's touch. Since it must be that we two drift apart, Why, nothing matters much. THE UNDER-TONE In the dull, dim dawn of day I heard The twitter and thrill of a brown-backed bird, As he sat and sang in the leafless tree, A herald of beautiful days to be. But the minor running under the strain Went to my heart with a sudden pain, For never so sad a sound I heard As the troubled thrill of the brown-backed bird. Not in the wearisome wash of waves, With moaning murmur of wrecks and graves, Not in the weird winds' wildest wail, Not in the roar of the rushing gale. Not in the sob of dying years Are sounds so solemn and full of tears. O herald of days that are green and glad, Why was your morning song so sad? Have you a secret hidden away, Of sorrow to come with a coming day? Folded under a folded leaf, Lies there trouble and bitter grief? The shadow of death, and tears, and gloom Coming to me when roses bloom? Will the beautiful days I long for so Hold like your song a strain of woe? What is the secret you hide from me O herald of days that are to be? And why was that desolate minor moan Lurking under your gladdest tone? WORTH LIVING I know not what the future may hold, Or how to others it seems, But I know my skies have held more gold Than I used to find in my dreams. Though the whole world sings of hopes death chilled, In grateful truth I say, That my best hopes have been fulfilled, And more than fulfilled to-day. Though oft my arrow I aim at the sun To see it fall into the sand, Yet just as often some work I have done Is better than I have planned. I do not always grasp the pleasure For which I reach, maybe; But quite as frequently over-measure Is given by joy to me. To-morrow may bring a grief behind it That will thoroughly change my mood; But we only can speak of a thing as we find it-- And I have found life good. MORE FORTUNATE I hold that life more fortunate by far That sits with its sweet memories alone And cherishes a joy for ever flown Beyond the reach of accident to mar. (Some joy that was extinguished like a star) Than that which makes the prize so much its own That its poor commonplacenesses are shown; (Which in all things, when viewed too closely, are.) Better to mourn a blossom snatched away Before it reached perfection, than behold With dry, unhappy eyes, day after day, The fresh bloom fade, and the fair leaf decay. Better to lose the dream, with all its gold, Than keep it till it changes to dull grey. HE WILL NOT COME Take out the blossom in your hair abloom, No more it seemeth beautiful, or bright, And sickening is its subtly sweet perfume-- He will not come to-night. Take off the necklace with its sparkling gem, And rings that glow and glitter in the light, And fling them in the case that waits for them-- He will not come to-night. Take off the robe a little while ago You chose, to make you fairer in his sight; 'Tis ten o'clock. So late you can but know He will not come to-night. He will not come. God grant you strength and grace, For never more upon your mortal sight Shall dawn a glimpse of that beloved face That did not come to-night. He will not come. And through the shadowed years, The perfume of that blossom that you wore Shall stir the fount of salt and bitter tears-- For one who comes no more. WORN OUT I saw a young heart in the grasp of pain; With bruised breast, and broken, bleeding wing Shipwrecked on hopeless love's tempestuous main, Lay the poor tortured thing. It pulsed with all the anguish of despair; It ached with all a fond heart's awful power; Yet I, who stood unhurt above it there, Envied its lot that hour. I, who have wasted all the sacred, deep Emotions of my soul in spendthrift fashion, Until no sorrow now can make me weep-- No joy stir me with passion. I, who have scattered here and there the gold Of my heart's store, until I spent the whole; Yet unto each so little gave to hold, That I enriched no soul. I, who have sold the birthright of sweet tears, And no more feel a thrill in pulse or brain, Would gladly have exchanged my tasteless years For one salt hour of pain. Weep on, ye mourners. Glory in the cross Of some great grief. Thank God you do not know The greater grief that comes but with the loss Of power to suffer woe. RONDEAU As you forgot I may forget, When summer dews cease to be wet. When whippoorwills disdain the night, When sun and moon are no more bright, And all the stars at midnight set. When jay birds sing, and thrushes fret, When snowfalls come in flakes of jet, When hearts that shelter love are light, I may forget. When mortal life no cares beset, When April brings no violet, When wrong no longer wars with right, When all hope's ships shall heave in sight, And memory holds no least regret, I may forget. TRIFLES Only a spar from a broken ship Washed in by a careless wave; But it brought back the smile of a vanished lip, And his past peered out of the grave. Only a leaf that an idle breeze Tossed at her passing feet; But she seemed to stand under the dear old trees, And life again was sweet. Only the bar of a tender strain They sang in days gone by; But the old love woke in her heart again, The love they had sworn should die. Only the breath of a faint perfume That floated up from a rose; But the bolts slid back from a marble tomb, And I looked on a dear dead face. Who vaunts the might of a human will, When a perfume or a sound Can wake a Past that we bade lie still, And open a long closed wound? COURAGE Whether the way be dark or light My soul shall sing as I journey on, As sweetly sing in the deeps of night As it sang in the burst of the golden dawn. Nothing can crush me, or silence me long, Though the heart be bowed, yet the soul will rise, Higher and higher on wings of song, Till it swims like the lark in a sea of skies. Though youth may fade, and love grow cold, And friends prove false, and best hopes blight, Yet the sun will wade in waves of gold, And the stars in glory will shine at night. Though all earth's joys from my life are missed, And I of the whole world stand bereft, Yet dawns will be purple and amethyst, And I cannot be sad while the seas are left. For I am a part of the mighty whole; I belong to the system of life and death. I am under the law of a Great Central, And strong with the courage of love and faith. THE OTHER All alone with my heart to-night I sit, and wonder, and sigh. What is she like, is she dark, or light, This other woman who has the right To love him better than I? We never have spoken her name, we two; There was no need somehow, But she lives, and loves, and her heart is true; From the very first this much I knew, So why should it hurt me now. I fancy her tall, and I think her fair, Oh! fairer than I by half. With sweet, calm eyes, and a wealth of hair, And a heart as perfectly free from care As is her silvery laugh. She loves rich jewels that flash in the light, And revels in costly lace, And first in the morning, and last at night She kisses one ring on her finger white; (How came those tears on my face?) She has all best things to make life sweet: Youth, and beauty, and gold, And a love that renders it quite complete. (I wonder why from my head to my feet I feel so deathly cold?) Yet in all the store of her great delight (And she has so much, so much) She cannot be gladder than I, in the bright Sweet smile he gave her when he said good night-- And his warm hand's close, kind touch. I must put out the light and go to bed; I wonder would she care If she knew, when I knelt with low bowed head, I prayed for her, but that I said His name the last in my prayer? MAD Could I but hear you laugh across the street, Though I, or mine, shared nothing in your glee, Could I taste that one drop of bitter sweet, 'Twere more than life to me. If I might see you coming through the door, Though with averted face and smileless eye, Were I allowed that little boon, no more, Then I were glad to die. But oh, my God! this living day on day, Stripped of the only joy your starved heart had, Shut in a prison world and forced to stay-- Why that way souls go mad! To-day I heard a woman say the earth, All blossom garlanded, was fair to see. I laughed with such intensity of mirth, The woman shrank from me. Fair? Why, I see the blackness of the tomb Where'er I turn, and grave mould on each brow; And grinning faces peer out of the gloom-- Good God! I _am_ mad now. WHICH We are both of us sad at heart, But I wonder who can say Which has the harder part, Or the bitterer grief to-day. You grieve for a love that was lost Before it had reached its prime; I sit here and count the cost Of a love that has lived its time. Your blossom was plucked in its May, In its dawning beauty and pride; Mine lived till the August day, And reached fruition and died. You pressed its leaves in a book, And you weep sweet tears o'er them. Dry eyed I sit and look On a withered and broken stem. And now that all is told, Which is the sadder, pray, To give up your dream with its gold, Or to see it fade into grey? LOVE'S BURIAL See him quake and see him tremble, See him gasp for breath. Nay, dear, he does not dissemble, This is really Death. He is weak, and worn, and wasted, Bear him to his bier. All there is of life he's tasted-- He has lived a year. He has passed his day of glory, All his blood is cold, He is wrinkled, thin, and hoary, He is very old. Just a leaf's life in the wild wood, Is a love's life, dear. He has reached his second childhood When he's lived a year. Long ago he lost his reason, Lost his trust and faith-- Better far in his first season Had he met with death. Let us have no pomp or splendour, No vain pretence here. As we bury, grave, yet tender, Love that's lived a year. All his strength and all his passion, All his pride and truth, These were wasted, spendthrift fashion, In his fiery youth. Since for him life holds no beauty Let us shed no tear, As we do the last sad duty-- Love has lived a year. INCOMPLETE The summer is just in its grandest prime, The earth is green and the skies are blue; But where is the lilt of the olden time, When life was a melody set to rhyme, And dreams were so real they all seemed true? There is sun on the meadow, and blooms on the bushes, And never a bird but is mad with glee; But the pulse that bounds, and the blood that rushes, And the hope that soars, and the joy that gushes, Are lost for ever to you and me. There are dawns of amber and amethyst; There are purple mountains, and pale pink seas That flush to crimson where skies have kist; But out of life there is something missed-- Something better than all of these. We miss the faces we used to know, The smiling lips and the eyes of truth. We miss the beauty and warmth and glow Of the love that brightened our long ago, And ah! we miss our youth. ON RAINY DAYS On rainy days old dreams arise, From graves where they have lonely lain; With wan white cheeks and mournful eyes, They press against the window pane. One dream is bolder than the rest: She enters at the door and stays, A welcome yet unbidden guest On rainy days. On rainy days, my dream and I Turn back the hands of memory's books: We sup on pleasures long gone by-- We drink of unforgotten brooks; We ransack garrets of the Past, We sing old songs, we play old plays; While hurrying Time looks on aghast, On rainy days. On rainy days, my ghostly dreams Come clothed in garments like the mist, But through that vapoury veiling, gleams The lustrous eyes my lips have kissed. A radiant head leans on my heart, We walk in well-remembered ways; But oh! the sorrow when we part, On rainy days. GERALDINE Just as the sun went bathing in a sea Of liquid amber, flecked with caps of gold, I told The sweet old story unto Geraldine, my Queen, Who long hath made the whole of life for me. But though she smiled upon me yesterday, And heaven seemed near because she was so kind, I find She held me but as one of many men; and then Dismissed me in her proud, yet gracious way. Ah, Geraldine! my lady of sweet arts, There waits for thee not very far away, a day When thou shalt waken out of tranquil sleep, and weep Such bitter tears as spring from anguished hearts. Thou shalt look in thy mirror with dismay To find upon each feature of thy face, the trace Of time, the lover who shall follow thee, and see Thy rare youth slipping suddenly away. So self-assured, so certain of thy power, It shall come on thee with a swift surprise. Thine eyes Appalled, shall fall upon each certain, strange, sad change, And rob thee of thy triumph in an hour. And when that day shall come, as come it must, You then will think of me, sweet Geraldine, my Queen, And of the faithful heart there tossed away one day, Before thy dead sea apples turned to dust. To dust and ashes, leaving nothing more, That day will come, my lady, I can wait; and Fate Shall right my wrongs. Thou smilest, Geraldine, my Queen! Ah well, so have fair women smiled before. ONLY IN DREAMS How strange are dreams. Last night I dreamed about you. All that old bitterness of loss and pain, The desolation of my lot without you, The keen regret, all, all came back again. Again I faced that terrible old sorrow; Too numb to weep, too cowardly to pray. Again the blankness of a dread to-morrow Filled me with sickly terror and dismay. I woke in tears; but lo! a moment after, When every vestige of my dream was fled, I broke the silence of my room with laughter, To think sleep had revived a thing so dead. Thank God, that only in the realms of fancy Can that old sorrow wake again to strife. No fate is strong enough--no necromancy-- To make it stir one pulse of my calm life. My heart is light, my lot is blest without you, Our early sorrows are not what they seem, Now in my slumber, if I dream about you I wake to laugh at such an idle dream. CIRCUMSTANCE Talk not to me of souls that do conceive Sublime ideals, but, deterred by Fate And bound by circumstances, sit desolate, And long for heights they never can achieve. It is not so. That which we most desire, With _understanding_, we at last obtain, In part or whole. I hold there is no rain, No deluge, that can quench a heavenly fire. Show me thy labour, I straightway will name The nature of thy thoughts. Who bends the bow, And lets the arrow from the strained string go, Strikes somewhere near the object of his aim. We build our ships from timbers of the brain; With products of the soul we load the hold; Where lies the blame if they bring back no gold, Or if they spring a leak upon the main? There is no Fate, no Providence, no Chance, The will is all. So be it thou art pure, And strong of purpose, thy success is sure; But fools and sluggards prate of circumstance. SIMPLE CREEDS If this were our creed it were creed enough To keep us thoughtful and make us brave; On this sad journey o'er pathways rough That lead us steadily on to the grave. _Speak no evil_, _and cause no ache_, _Utter no jest that can pain awake_; _Guard your actions and bridle your tongue_, _Words are adders when hearts are stung_. If this were our aim, it were all, in sooth, That any soul needs, to climb to heaven, And we would not cumber the way of truth With dreary dogmas, or rites priest given. _Help whoever_, _whenever you can_, _Man for ever needs aid from man_. _Let never a day die in the West_, _That you have not comforted some sad heart_. Were this our belief we need not brood O'er intricate _isms_ and modes of faith-- For this embodies the highest goal For the life we are living, or after death. _We meet no trials we do not need_; _Well borne sorrow is holy seed_; _It shall rise in a harvest of golden grain_, _And a wise soul ever thanks God for pain_. THE BRIDAL EVE I stand in the blaze of the candle rays, While my merry maidens three Arrange each tress, and loop my dress, And render me fair to see. But oh! for the eyes that never again Will smile like the stars on me. I sweep down the stair, a bride most fair, And some one takes my hand. I am numb and cold, but the lie is told, I smile and my lord is bland. But oh! for a sight of my rover wild, Who wanders abroad in the land. I am queen of the ball and the festal hall; I have beauty and youth and gold, Men bow at the shrine of this lord of mine-- Lord of his sums untold. But oh! to be off in the wilds to-night With my lover brave and bold. I dream a dream while the candles gleam, While the dancers merrily glide. Neath the evening star I am speeding far, Oh! a good steed do I ride; And my heart beats high with hope and cheer, For my love is at my side. We ride and sing, and the echoes ring With our voices blithe and free, We have no wealth but our love and health, And our cot on the wide green lea; But I love my love with a mighty love, And I know that he loves me. We ride away in the dying day, We ride till we reach the spot Where all alone in the wilds unknown We find our lonely cot. And I have no wish in the whole wide world, And I know that my love has not. With a dreary moan the viols groan, And the dancers pause for breath, And my lord says, 'Dear, you are ill, I fear, You are paler than your wreath.' O God! O God! to be out in the night, Riding with love or death. GOOD NIGHT The day is at its golden height, No shadow falls on sea or land; And yet to thee I say Good night, As we stand here hand clasped in hand, Good night--Good night. The laughing waves are summer blue, The bees hum in the sun's warm light; But frosts of winter chill me through, I shiver as I say Good night. Good night--Good night. How often at the close of day With smiling lips we've said those words: And listened as we turned away To hear them echoed by the birds, Good night--Good night. We did not dream then of this hour, This sad, sad hour for you and me; We did not dream there was a power Could force us for eternity To say Good night. Good night--nay, turn your eyes away; I cannot bear their tender light. Now evermore to golden day, To golden hope, a last Good night, Good night--Good night. NO PLACE When days grow long, and brain and hands grow weary, And hot the city street, Forth to the haunts, by cooling winds made cheery We fly with willing feet. We leave our cares and labours all behind us, The city's noise and din, And, hid securely where they cannot find us, We drink the sunshine in. But when the days grow long with bitter sorrow, And hearts grow sick with woe, Where are the haunts that we may seek to-morrow? Where can we hide or go? Holds earth no nook, where hearts with sorrow breaking, May find a summer's rest? A season's respite from the weary aching That gnaws within the breast? O God! if we could fly and leave behind us Our crosses and our grief, Could hide a season where they could not find us, What infinite relief. FOUND Found--as I rushed through the great world's mart, In a race for gold and a pleasure quest, A passionate, throbbing human heart Suddenly found in my breast. I had always laughed at the foolish word; I had said aloud in my boasting glee, That never a heart in my bosom stirred, That my _brain_ governed me. I was proud with the sense of my might and power 'It is will, not heart that wins,' I said. But I suddenly found one sad, strange hour That the strength of my will had fled. For up in my breast there rose supreme A strong man's heart, and all on fire: Drunk with the wine of a wild, sweet dream, And tortured with desire. It is tossed with hope, and fear, and doubt, It is mad with the fever of love's unrest, I wish to God I could pluck it out-- This heart I found in my breast. A MAN'S REVERIE How cold the old porch seems. A dreary chill Creeps upward from the river at twilight, And yet, I like to linger here at night, And dream the summer tarries with us still. The summer and the summer guests, or guest. (Men rarely dream in plurals.) Over there Beyond the pillars, stands the rustic chair, As bare and empty as a robin's nest. No pretty head reclines its golden bands Against the back. No playful winds disclose Distracting glimpses of embroidered hose: No palm leaf waves in dainty, dangerous hands. How cold it is! That star up yonder gleams A white ice sickle from the heavenly eaves. That bleak wind from the river sighs and grieves, Perchance o'er some poor fellow's broken dreams. Come in, and shut the door, and leave that star To watch above the lonely portico. Summer and summer guests and dreams must go. Well, Fate was kind to leave me my cigar. WHEN MY SWEET LADY SINGS When she, my lady, smiles, I feel as one who, lost in darksome wilds, Sees suddenly the sun in middle sky Shining upon him like a great glad eye. When my sweet lady smiles. When she, my lady laughs, I feel as one who some elixir quaffs; Some nameless nectar, made of wines of suns, And through my veins a subtle iveresse runs. When my sweet lady laughs. And when my lady talks, I am as one who by a brooklet walks, Some sweet-tongued brooklet, which the whole long day, Holds converse with the birds along the way. When my loved lady talks. And when my lady sings, Oh then I hear the beat of silver wings; All that is earthly from beneath me slips, And in the liquid cadence of her lips I float, so near the Infinite, I seem Lost in the glory of a white starred dream. When my sweet lady sings. SPECTRES How terrible these nights are when alone With our scarred hearts, we sit in solitude, And some old sorrow, to the world unknown, Does suddenly with silent steps intrude. After the guests departed, and the light Burned dimly in my room, there came to me, As noiselessly as shadows of the night, The spectre of a woe that used to be. Out of the gruesome darkness and the gloom I saw it peering; and, in still despair, I watched it gliding swift across the room, Until it came and stood beside my chair. Why, need I tell thee what its shape or name? Thou hast thy secret hidden from the light: And be it sin or sorrow, woe or shame, Thou dost not like to meet it in the night. And yet it comes. As certainly as death, And far more cruel since death ends all pain, On lonesome nights we feel its icy breath, And turn and face the thing we fancied slain. With shrinking hearts, we view the ghastly shape; We look into its eyes with fear and dread, And know that we can never more escape Until the grave doth fold us with the dead. On the swift maelstrom of the eddying world We hurl our woes, and think they are no more. But round and round by dizzy billows whirled, They reach out sinewy arms and swim to shore. ONLY A LINE Only a line in the paper, That somebody read aloud, At a table of languid boarders, To the dull indifferent crowd. Markets and deaths--and a marriage: And the reader read them all. How could he know a hope died then, And was wrapped in a funeral pall. Only a line in the paper, Read in a casual way, But the glow went out of one young life, And left it cold and grey. Colder than bleak December, Greyer than walls of rock, But the reader paused, and the room grew full Of laughter and idle talk. If one slipped off to her chamber, Why, who could dream or know, That one brief line in the paper Had sent her away with her woe? Away into lonely sorrow, To bitter and blinding tears; Only a line in the paper, But it meant such desolate years. PARTING Lean down, and kiss me, O my love, my own; The day is near when thy fond heart will miss me; And o'er my low green bed, with bitter moan, Thou wilt lean down, but cannot clasp or kiss me. How strange it is, that I, so loving thee, And knowing we must part, perchance to-morrow, Do comfort find, thinking how great will be Thy lonely desolation, and thy sorrow. And stranger--sadder, O mine own other part, That I should grudge thee some surcease of weeping; Why do I not rejoice, that in thy heart, Sweet love will bloom again when I am sleeping? Nay, make no promise. I would place no bar Upon thy future, even wouldst thou let me. Thou hast, thou dost, well love me, like a man: And, like a man, in time thou wilt forget me. Why should I care, so near the Infinite-- Why should I care, that thou wilt cease to miss me? O God! these earthly ties are knit so tight-- Quick, quick, lean lower, O my love, and kiss me! ESTRANGED So well I knew your habits and your ways, That like a picture painted on the skies, At the sweet closing of the summer days, You stand before my eyes. I see you on the old verandah there, While slow the shadows of the twilight fall, I see the very carving on the chair You tilt against the wall. The West grows dim. The faithful evening star Comes out and sheds its tender patient beam. I almost catch the scent of your cigar, As you sit there and dream. But dream of what? I know your outward life-- Your ways, your habits; know they have not changed. But has one thought of me survived the strife Since we two were estranged? I know not of the workings of your heart; And yet I sometimes make myself believe That I perchance do hold some little part Of reveries at eve. I think you could not wholly put away The memories of a past that held so much. As birds fly homeward at the close of day, A word, a kiss, a touch, Must sometimes come and nestle in your breast And murmur to you of the long ago. Oh do they stir you with a vague unrest? What would I give to know! BEFORE AND AFTER Before I lost my love, he said to me: 'Sweetheart, I like deep azure tints on you.' But I, perverse as any girl will be Who has too many lovers, wore not blue. He said, 'I love to see my lady's hair Coiled low like Clytie's--with no wanton curl.' But I, like any silly, wilful girl, Said, 'Donald likes it high,' and wore it there. He said, 'I wish, love, when you sing to me, You would sing sweet, sad things--they suit your voice.' I tossed my head, and sung light strains of glee-- Saying, 'This song, or that, is Harold's choice.' But now I wear no colour--none but blue. Low in my neck I coil my silken hair. He does not know it, but I strive to do Whatever in his eyes would make me fair. I sing no songs but those he loved the best. (Ah! well, no wonder: for the mournful strain Is but the echo of the voice of pain, That sings so mournfully within my breast.) I would not wear a ribbon or a curl For Donald, if he died from my neglect-- Oh me! how many a vain and wilful girl Learns true love's worth, but--when her life is wrecked. AN EMPTY CRIB Beside a crib that holds a baby's stocking, A tattered picture book, a broken toy, A sleeping mother dreams that she is rocking Her fair-haired cherub boy. Upon the cradle's side her light touch keeping, She gently rocks it, crooning low a song; And smiles to think her little one is sleeping, So peacefully and long. Step light, breathe low, break not her rapturous dreaming, Wake not the sleeper from her trance of joy, For never more save in sweet slumber-seeming Will she watch o'er her boy. God pity her when from her dream Elysian She wakes to see the empty crib, and weep; Knowing her joy was but a sleeper's vision, Tread lightly--let her sleep. THE ARRIVAL 'What do I hear at the window? Did some one call me?' Nay, It was only the wind, my darling, Grieving the night away. Only the wind and the casement Talking as two friends may. 'But now I hear some one speaking, Oh listen and you will hear.' It is only the night bird calling To her mate in sudden fear. Only the dead leaves falling; The last lone leaves of the year. 'But now there is some one coming, I hear a step on the stair.' Nay, nay, it is nothing, darling, Rest, and be free from care. I have just been out in the hallway, I am sure there is no one there. Never a knock at the doorway, Never a step in the hall, Yet the King is coming, coming,-- How lightly his footsteps fall. A sigh, and a straightening downward-- And silence is over all. GO BACK When winds of March by the springtime bidden Over the great earth race and shout, Forth from my breast where it long hath hidden My same old sorrow comes creeping out. I think each winter--its life is ended, For it makes no stir while the snows lie deep. I say to myself, 'Its soul has blended Into the past where it lay asleep.' But as soon as the sun, like some fond lover, Smiles and kisses the earth's round cheeks, This sad, sad sorrow throws off its cover, And out of the depths of its anguish, speaks. In every bud by the wayside springing It finds a sword for its half-healed wounds; In every note that the thrush is singing It hears the saddest of minor sounds. In the cup of gold that the sun is spilling It finds, unsweetened, a drop of gall; It sees through the warp that the Spring is filling, The black threads twining in under it all. Go back, O spring! till pain, forsaking These haunts of sorrow, shall sink to rest. Go back! go back! for my heart is breaking, And the same old anguish hurts my breast. WHY I LOVE HER Why do I love my sweetheart? Well I really never tried to tell. I love her mayhap for her smile, So innocent and free from guile. Perhaps I love her for her mien, So calmly cheerful and serene; Or it may be her silken hair, First caught and tangled Cupid there. And since I came to analyse; Her chiefest beauty is her eyes. Her mouth, too, that is Cupid's bow-- Perhaps that's why I love her so. And now I think of it, her voice First made my rusty heart rejoice And then her hand--'tis my belief It quite outvies the lily leaf. Perhaps I love her for her ways That blend in with the sunny days. Tush--to be brief and plain with you, I love her _just because I do_. DISCONTENT Like a thorn in the flesh, like a fly in the mesh, Like a boat that is chained to shore, The wild unrest of the heart in my breast Tortures me more and more. I wot not why, it should wail and cry Like a child that is lost at night, For it knew no grief, but has found relief, And it is not touched with blight. It has had of pleasure full many a measure; It has thrilled with love's red wine; It has hope and health, and youth's rare wealth-- Oh rich is this heart of mine. Yet it is not glad--it is wild and mad Like a billow before it breaks; And its ceaseless pain is worse than vain, Since it knows not why it aches. It longs to be, like the waves of the sea That rise in their might and beat And dash and lunge, and hurry and plunge, And die at the grey rocks' feet. It wearies of life and it sickens of strife And yet it tires of rest. Oh! I know not why it should ache and cry-- 'Tis a troublesome heart at best. Though not understood, I think it a good And God-like discontent. It springs from the soul that longs for its goal-- For the source from which it was sent. Then surge, O breast, with thy wild unrest-- Cry, heart, like a child at night, Till the mystic shore of the Evermore Shall dawn on thy eager sight. A DREAM In the night I dreamed that you had died, And I thought you lay in your winding sheet; And I kneeled low by your coffin side, With my cheek on your heart that had ceased to beat. And I thought as I looked on your form so still, A terrible woe, and an awful pain, Fierce as vultures that slay and kill, Tore at my bosom and maddened my brain. And then it seemed that the chill of death Over me there like a mantle fell, And I knew by my fluttering, failing breath That the end was near, and all was well. I woke from my dream in the black midnight-- It was only a dream at worst or best-- But I lay and thought till the dawn of light, Had the dream been true we had both been blest. Better to kneel by your still dead form, With my cheek on your breast, and die that way, Than to live and battle with night and storm, And drift away from you day by day. Better the anguish of death and loss, The sharp, quick pain, and the darkness, then, Than living on with this heavy cross To bear about in the world of men. THE NIGHT Oh! give me the night, the dark, dark night, The night with never a star. When the stars are veiled and the moon has sailed Beyond the horizon's bar. When thought grows weary of groping its way Through darkness dense and deep, And buries its head in oblivion's bed, Wrapped warm in the mantle of sleep. For I hate the night, the moon-white night, The night with a pallid face, When a million eyes from the watchful skies Peers into each secret place. For thought awakes and the old wound aches, And Sorrow she cannot rest, But all night long walks to and fro Through the aisles of my troubled breast. And Memory thinks it her royal hour When the heavens glitter and shine; And she fills the cup of the past well up With a bitter and scalding wine. And she calls for a toast to the ghastly ghost Of a joy that used to be. And that terrible face in the dear old moon Stares steadily down at me. So give me the night, the deep, dark night, The night with never a star, When the skies are veiled and the moon has sailed Beyond the horizon's bar. NEW YEAR The year like a ship in the distance Comes over life's mystical sea. We know not what change of existence 'Tis bringing to you or to me. But we wave out the ship that is leaving And we welcome the ship coming in, Although it be loaded with grieving, With trouble, or losses, or sin. Old year passing over the border,-- And fading away from our view; All idleness, sloth, and disorder, All hatred and spite go with you. All bitterness, gloom, and repining Down into your stronghold are cast. Sail out where the sunsets are shining, Sail out with them into the past. Good reigns over all; and above us, As sure as the sun gives us light, Great forces watch over and love us, And lead us along through the night. Look up, and reach out, and believe them-- Believe in your infinite worth. Do nothing to wound or to grieve them, And you shall find heaven on earth. The body needs conflict and tussle, To render it forceful and grand; The soul, too, has sinew and muscle, Which sorrow alone can expand. Though troubles come faster and faster, Rise up, brace yourself for each blow; It is only Fate's great fencing Master Instructing your spirit to grow. The new ship comes nearer and nearer, We know not what freight she may hold; Hope stands at the helm there to steer her, Our hearts are courageous and bold. Sail in with new joys and new sorrows, Sail in with new banners unfurled, Sail in with unwritten to-morrows, Sail in with new tasks for the world. REVERIE The day has been wild and stormy, And full of the wind's unrest, And I sat down alone by the window, While the sunset dyed the West; And the holy rush of twilight, As the day went over the hill, Like the voice of a spirit seemed speaking And saying, 'Peace be still.' Then I thought with sudden longing, That it might be so with my woes; That the life so wild and restless, When it reached the eve's repose, Might glow with a sudden glory, And be crowned with peace and rest; And the holy calm of twilight Might come to my troubled breast. All of the pain and passion That trouble my life's long day As the winds go down at sunset, May suddenly pass away. And the wild and turbulent billows, That surge in my heart at will, Shall be hushed into calm and silence By the whisper, 'Peace be still.' And my soul grew full of patience, And I said, 'I can bear it all, Though the day be long and stormy, The twilight at last must fall.' THE LAW The tide of love swells in me with such force, It sweeps away all hate and all distrust. As eddying straws and particles of dust Are lost by some swift river in its course. So much I love my friends, my life, my art, Each shadow flies; the light dispels the gloom. Love is so fair, I find I have no room For anything less worthy in my heart. Love is a germ which we can cultivate-- To grace and perfume sweeter than the rose, Or leave neglected while our heart soil grows Rank with that vile and poison thistle, hate. Love is a joyous thrush, that one can teach To sing sweet lute-like songs which all may hear. Or we can silence him and tune the ear To caw of crows, or to the vulture's screech. Love is a feast; and if the guests divide With all who pass, though thousands swell the van, There shall be food and drink for every man; The loaves and fishes will be multiplied. Love is the guide. I look to heights above So beautiful, so very far away; Yet I shall tread their sunlit peaks some day, Since close in mine I hold the hand of love. Love is the law. But yield to its control And thou shalt find all things work for the best, And in the calm, still heaven of thy breast, That God, Himself, sits talking with thy soul. SPIRIT OF A GREAT CONTROL Spirit of a Great Control, Gird me with thy strength and might, Essence of the Over-Soul-- Fill me, thrill me with thy light; Though the waves of sorrow beat Madly at my very feet, Though the night and storm are near, Teach me that I need not fear. Though the clouds obscure the sky, When the tempest sweeps the lands, Still about, below, on high, God's great solar system stands. Never yet a star went out. What have I to fear or doubt?-- I, a part of this great whole, Governed by the Over-Soul. Like the great eternal hills, Like the rock that fronts the wave, Let me meet all earthly ills With a fearless heart and brave; Like the earth that drinks the rain, Let me welcome floods of pain, Till I grow in strength to be Worthy of my source in Thee. NOON As some contented bird doth coo She trilled a song of fond delight, The while she spread the cloth of white, And set the cups and plates for two. She leaned beyond the window sill, And looked along the busy street, And listened for his coming feet. The skies were calm, the winds were still. 'O love, my love, why art thou late? The kettle boils, the cloth is spread, The clock points close to noon,' she said. O clock of time! O clock of fate! She heard the moon's glad sound of cheer; (The hiss, the whirl, the crash, the creak, Of maddened wheels, the awful shriek Of awestruck men--she did not hear.) She lightly tripped about the room, And near the window, where his eyes Might greet it with a pleased surprise, She placed a pot of fragrant bloom. Strange nervous steps were at the gate. Why grew her heart so cold, so numb? The clock struck twelve, the noon had come. Ah! noon of time! O noon of fate! A shattered vase beside the wall; A young face grey with awful fear, A rigid shape, a covered bier, A shadowed life, and that is all. THE SEARCH The rain falls long, and the rain falls light, With a desolate drip--drop, sad to hear. But never a star shines through the night As I sit afar, from the world anear. Down in the parlour some one sings; The children laugh in the nursery hall; But my heart like a bird has spread its wings, And leaves the music, and mirth, and all. Out in the rain and the eerie night, Into the darkness it speeds away. Ah me! ah me! 'tis a gruesome flight, Seeking for you till the dawn of day. If it only knew which way to go; Where you wander, or where you lie. To valleys of sunshine, or hills of snow, Thither at once my heart would fly. Fly and follow wherever you led, Over the desert and over the wave; Or if it found you lying dead, It would sit in the rain by your lonely grave. Sit in the rain, and cover the grass With passionate kisses above your face. Sit there waiting till death should pass, And bear it to you in his strong embrace. But hither and thither all is vain, It flies in the darkness, and seeks for you. Back in the morning, drenched with rain, The poor thing cometh with never a clue. But all night long the rain falls down, Like a poor crazed thing that has lost its way, Through the forest and through the town It searches for you till the break of day. A MAN'S GOOD-BYE Do you think, dear, as you say Such a light good-bye to-day, That this parting time may be Mayhaps less to you, than me? What a wonder of surprise Looks out from your sunny eyes. 'Just a nice acquaintance.' So We have called it, dear, I know. Now you end it with a word, While my inmost soul is stirred. No--you cannot understand. But, dear, as I touch your hand, Listening to your light good-bye, All a man's roused passions cry Like a tiger, stirred, at bay. Oh! you draw your hand away. 'I've no right to speak so?' Pray Was it _your_ right day by day By your sweet coquettish arts To invade my heart of hearts? It is death to let you go. You will hate me, dear, I know; But I swear, ere you go hence, I will have some recompense. For those fires you lit in vain, Cheeks and lips shall bear the stain Of my kisses till you die. Go now! this is my good-bye. AT THE HOP 'Tis time to dress. Dost hear the music surging Like sobbing waves that roll up from the sea? Yes, yes, I hear--I yield--no need of urging; I know your wishes,--send Lisette to me. I hate the ballroom; hate its gilded pleasure; I hate the crowd within it, well you know; But what of that? I am your lawful treasure-- And when you would display me I must go. You bought me with a mother's pain and trouble. I've been a great expense to you alway. And now, if you can sell me, and get double The sum I cost--why, what have I to say? You've done your duty: kept me in the fashion, And shown me off at every stylish place. 'Twas not your fault I had a heart of passion; 'Twas not your fault I ever _saw_ his face. The dream was brief, and beautiful, and tender, (O God! to live those golden hours once more. The silver moonlight, and his dark eyes' splendour, The sky above us, and the sea before.) Come, come, Lisette, bring out those royal laces; To-night must make the victory complete. Among the crowd of masked and smiling faces, I'll move with laughter, and with smiles most sweet. Make me most fair! with youth and grace and beauty, I needs must conquer bloated age and gold. She shall not say I have not done my duty; I'm ready now--a daughter to be sold! MET How odd and strange seems our meeting Like a grim rendezvous of the dead. All day I have sat here repeating The commonplace things that we said. They sounded so oddly when uttered-- They sound just as odd to me now; _Was_ it we, or our two ghosts who muttered Last evening, with simper and bow? I had grown used to living without you. In revel and concert and ball, I had flown from much thinking about you, And your picture I turned to the wall. For to call back the dream that was broken, To fancy your hand on my hair, To remember the words we had spoken, Was madness, and gall, and despair. I knew I could never forget you; But I wanted to put you away. And now, just to think how I met you-- It has seemed like a nightmare all day. We two with our record of passion, We two who have been as one heart, To meet in that calm, quiet fashion, And chat for a moment and part. We two who remember such blisses Not heaven itself can eclipse, We two who had kissed with the kisses That draw out the soul through the lips, We two who have known the ideal, The rare perfect love in its might-- Nay, nay, they were ghosts, and not real, Who met, and who parted, last night. They were ghosts, unprepared for the meeting; 'Twas a chance rendezvous of the dead; And all day I sit here repeating The odd sounding words that were said. RETURNED BIRDS My heart to-day is like a southern wood, Through summer months it has been drunk with heat; And slumbered on unmindful of the beat Of life beyond it: sleep alone seemed good. Now milder Autumn's tints are in the sky; The fervid heats of summer noons depart; And backward to the old haunts in my heart The golden robins and the blue birds fly. I hear the flutter of their airy wings, They flock about the Spring's deserted nest, And suddenly I feel within my breast The stirring of sweet half-forgotten things. Bright sunny mornings--golden growing hours-- The building of glad birds among the trees; Wide open windows and the kindly breeze Bringing the perfume of half-open flowers. A blithe face at the window fair with truth; A mellow laugh that falls like silver spray; Down through the sunlight of the perfect day, Ecstatic hopes, that bud with Spring and Youth. The morning time grew rank with summer blight; The birds flew northward, fresher fields to find; And in our hearts we closed the folding blind, While drooping blossoms withered in the light. The fair face at the window could not stay; The laugh grew weary, with a minor strain That borders on the foreign realm of pain, And hopes that blossomed, ripened to decay. Come, happy birds, and sing of vanished joy, Of that sweet Spring for ever passed away; No winter lies between us and that day. (But what is sadder than the sweets that cloy.) My heart is green with leafage; come and wake The old-time echoes with the songs of glee, For only echoes now are left to me, Though bloom and beauty cling to bush and brake. A CRUSHED LEAF An hour ago when the wind blew high At my lady's window a red leaf beat. Then dropped at her door, where, passing by, She carelessly trod it under her feet. I have taken it out of the dust and dirt, With a tender pity but half defined. Ah! poor bruised leaf, with your stain and hurt, 'A fellow-feeling doth make us kind.' On winds of passion my heart was blown, Like an autumn leaf one hapless day. At my lady's window with tap and moan It burned and fluttered its life away. Bright with the blood of its wasting tide It glowed in the sun of her laughing eyes. What cared she though a stray heart died-- What to her were its sobs and sighs. The winds of passion were spent at last, And my heart like the leaf in her pathway lay; And under her slender foot as she passed, My lady she trod it and went her way. So I picked the leaf from its dusty place, With a tender pity--too well defined. And I laid it here in this velvet case, Ah! a fellow-feeling doth make us kind. A CURIOUS STORY I heard such a curious story Of Santa Claus: once, so they say, He set out to see what people were kind, Before he took presents their way. 'This year I will give but to givers, To those who make presents themselves,' With a nod of his head old Santa Claus said To his band of bright officer-elves. 'Go into the homes of the happy Where pleasure stands page at the door. Watch well how they live, and report what they give To the hordes of God's suffering poor. Keep track of each cent and each moment; Yes, tell me each word, too, they use: To silver line clouds for earth's suffering crowds, And tell me, too, when they refuse.' So into our homes flew the fairies, Though never a soul of us knew, And with pencil and book they sat by and took Each action, if false, or if true. White marks for the deeds done for others-- Black marks for the deeds done for self. And nobody hid what he said or he did, For no one, of course, sees an elf. Well, Christmas came all in its season, And Santa Claus, so I am told, With a very light pack of small gifts on his back, And his reindeers all left in the fold, Set out on a leisurely journey, And finished ere midnight, they say. And there never had been such surprise and chagrin Before on the breaking of day, As there was on that bright Christmas morning When stockings, and cupboards, and shelves Were ransacked and sought in, for gifts that were not in-- But wasn't it fun for the elves! And what did _I_ get? You confuse me-- _I got not one thing_, and that's true; But had I suspected my actions detected I would have had gifts, wouldn't you? JENNY LIND There was a something in your song, men say No later singer voices: some strange power Like to the essence in a rare June day, Or like the subtle perfume of a flower. Awed and inspired, your listeners turned away, Baptized in your sweet music's holy shower. For through that music shone the glorious dower Of your great soul: here all the secret lay. Not for the honours of this earth you sang-- Not for its gold or glory, not for art, Not for the fortunes at your fair feet hurled. The love of God through all your measures rang, And each pure note bespoke a noble heart. When worth weds genius, lo! they rule the world. LIFE'S KEY The hand that fashioned me, tuned my ear To chord with the major key, In the darkest moments of life I hear Strains of courage, and hope, and cheer From choirs that I cannot see. And the music of life seems so inspired That it will not let me grow sad or tired. Yet through and under the major strain, I hear with the passing of years, The mournful minor measure of pain, Of souls that struggle and toil in vain For a goal that never nears. And the sorrowful cadence of good gone wrong, Breaks more and more into earth's glad song. And oft in the dark of the night I wake And think of sorrowing lives, And I long to comfort the hearts that ache, To sweeten the cup that is bitter to take, And to strengthen each soul that strives. I long to cry to them 'Do not fear, Help is coming and aid is near.' However desolate, weird, or strange Life's melody sounds to you, Before to-morrow the air may change, And the Great Director of music arrange A programme perfectly new. And the dirge in minor may suddenly be Turned into a jubilant song of glee. BRIDGE OF PRAYER The bridge of prayer from heavenly heights suspended Unites the earth with spirit-realms in Space. The interests of those separate worlds are blended For those whose feet turn often toward that place. In troubled nights of sorrow and repining, When joy and hope seem sunk in dark despair, We still may see above the shadows shining, The gleaming archway of the bridge of prayer. From that fair height, our souls may lean and listen To sounds of music from the farther shore, And through the vapours, sometimes dear eyes glisten Of loved ones who have hastened on before. And angels come from their Celestial City-- And meet us half way on the bridge of prayer. God sends them forth, full of divinest pity To strengthen us for burdens we must bear. Oh! you whose feet walk in some shadowed by-way, Far from the scenes of pleasure and delight, Still free to you hangs this suspended highway, Where heavenly glories dawn upon the sight. And common paths glow with a grace supernal, And happiness walks hand in hand with care, And faith becomes a knowledge fixed, eternal, For those who often seek the bridge of prayer. NEW YEAR Know this! there is nothing can harm you If you are at peace with your soul. Know this, and the knowledge shall arm you With courage and strength to the goal. Your spirit shall break every fetter, And love shall cast out every fear. And grander, and gladder, and better Shall be every added new year. DECEITFUL CALM The winds are still; the sea lies all untroubled Beneath a cloudless sky; the morn is bright, Yet, Lord, I feel my need of Thee is doubled; Come nearer to me in this blaze of light; The night must fall,--the storm will burst at length. Oh! give me strength. So well, so well, I know the treacherous seeming Of days like this; they are too heavenly fair. Those waves that laugh like happy children dreaming, Are mighty forces brewing some despair For thoughtless hearts, and ere the hour of need, Let mine take heed. Joy cannot last; it must give place to sorrow As certainly as solar systems roll. I would not wait till that time comes to borrow The strength prayer offers to a suffering soul. Here in the sunlight--yet undimmed by shade, I cry for aid. I dare not lightly drain the cup of pleasure, Though Thine the hand that proffers me the draught. Such bitter lees lie lower in the measure, I shall need courage, ere the potion's quaffed; Then strengthen me before that time befall, To drink the gall. I need Thee in my joys and my successes, To make me humble, grateful, and not vain. I need Thee when the weight of sorrow presses The tortured heart that cries aloud in pain, So close great pleasures and great anguish lie. Lord, Lord, come nigh. UN RENCONTRE Now ought we to laugh or to weep-- Was it comical, or was it grave? When we who had waded breast deep In passion's most turbulent wave Met out on an isle in Time's ocean, With never one thrill of emotion. We had parted in sorrow and tears; Our letters were frequent and wet; We wrote about pitiless years, And we swore we could never forget. An angel you called me alway, And I thought you a god gone astray. We met in an everyday style; Unmoved by a tremor or start; Shook hands, smiled a commonplace smile; (With a happy new love in each heart), And I thought you the homeliest man As you awkwardly picked up my fan! And I know (or I haven't a doubt) Though you did not say so to my face, That you thought I was growing too stout: I, once your ideal of grace. And ere the encounter was o'er Each voted the other a bore. What a proof that fond passion can die, In this prosaic meeting we had! Now, ought we to laugh or to cry-- Was it sorrowful, or was it sad? 'Tis a puzzle not worthy our time, So let's give it up--with this rhyme. BURNED OUT Blow out the light: there is no oil to feed it: That dim blue light unworthy of the name. Better to sit with folded hands, I say, And wait for night to pass, and bring the day, Than to depend upon that flickering flame. Take back your vow: there is no love to bind it: Take back this little shining, golden thing. Better to walk on bravely all alone, Than strive to hold up, or retain our own, By soulless pledge, or fetter of a ring. When first the lamp was lit, too high you turned it; The oil was wasted in a blinding blaze. Your passion was too ardent in the start-- Set by the lamp: farewell. God gird the heart Through darkened hours, and lone and loveless ways. ONLY A GLOVE Only a glove that has touched her fingers, But it seems to me something half divine. A delicate fragrance about it lingers, And it stirs my blood like wine-- Yes, thrills and warms me like wine. So well I remember the night she wore it-- How I held the hand in its dainty glove, And whispered sweetly as I leaned o'er it-- Whispered a tale of love-- A story of my mad love. There was mirth, and music, and light and laughter, The viols played and the dancers whirled. We were part of it all--but a moment after Were alone in love's fair world-- Alone in God's own world. But now of that night of glow and splendour, Of happy hope and beautiful love, Of youthful dreams that were sweetly tender, There is nothing left but a glove, Nothing but this one glove. REMINDERS When in the early dawn I hear the thrushes, And like a flood of waters o'er my heart The memory of another summer rushes, How can I rise up, and perform my part? When in the languid eve I hear the wailing Of the uncomforted sad mourning dove, Whose grief, like mine, seems deep as unavailing, What will I do with all this wealth of love? When the sweet rain falls over hills and meadows, And the tall poplar's silver leaves are wet, And, like my soul, the world seems draped in shadow, How shall I hush this passionate regret? When the wild bee is wooing the red clover, And the fair rose smiles on the butterfly, Missing thy smile and kiss, O love, my lover, Who on God's earth so desolate as I? My tortured senses new despair will borrow From those reminders of a vanished day, That was as full of joy as this of sorrow-- O beautiful, sad summer keep away! A DIRGE Death and a dirge at midnight; Yet never a soul in the house Heard anything more than the throb and beat Of a beautiful waltz of Strauss. Dead, dead, dead, and staring, With a ghastly smile on its face; But the world saw only laughing eyes And roses, and billows of lace. Floating and whirling together, Into the beautiful night, How little you dreamed of the ghastly thing I was hiding away from your sight. Meeting your dark eyes' splendour, Feeling your warm, sweet breath, How could you know that my passionate heart Had died a horrible death? Died in its fever and fervour, Died in its beautiful bloom; And that waltz of Strauss was a funeral dirge, Leading the way to the tomb. But you held my hand at parting, And I smiled back a gay good night; And you never knew of the ghastly corpse I was hiding away from your sight. Yet whenever I hear the Danube-- Under its pulsing strain, I catch the wail of the funeral dirge, And my heart dies over again. NOT ANCHORED My heart is like a ship that finds no rest, Tossed here and there upon the stormy breast Of loves of many hearts too oft conferred. Thy love is like the harbour, safe and still, Into whose calm that ship may glide at will, Under the slope of God's Eternal Will. So near the perfect peace that knows no word; Yet with an empty, white emotion stirred, It folds its wings like some contented bird. At rest, and yet not _anchored_; and some day Out of the restful peace of this calm bay The winds of Fate will drift it far away. THE NEW LOVE I thought my heart was death chilled, I thought its fires were cold; But the new love, the new love, It warmeth like the old. I thought its rooms were shadowed With the gloom of endless night; But the new love, the new love, It fills them full of light. I thought the chambers empty, And proclaimed it unto men; But the new love, the new love, It peoples them again. I thought its halls were silent, And hushed the whole day long; But the new love, the new love, It fills them full of song. Then here is to the new love, Let who will sing the old; The new love, the new love, 'Tis more than fame or gold. For it gives us joy for sorrow, And it gives us warmth for cold; Oh! the new love, the new love, 'Tis better than the old. AN EAST WIND The glitter of wheels far down the street (Ah me, and alack a day.) And I heard the thud of his horse's feet Beating a roundelay. And I felt a little song coming, coming Over my lips as humming, humming, I turned my eyes that way. Somebody passed, who was wont to pause: (Ah me, and alack a day.) He bowed and smiled; yet for some cause The mirth went out of my lay. A wind from the east rose, sighing, sighing, I felt my little song dying, dying, _She laughed as they rode away_. CHEATING TIME Kiss me, sweetheart. One by one Swift and sure the moments run. Soon, too soon, for you and me Gone for aye the day will be. Do not let time cheat us then, Kiss me often and again. Every time a moment slips Let us count it on our lips While we're kissing, strife and pain Cannot come between us twain. If we pause too long a space, Who can tell what may take place? You may pout, and I may scold, Souls be sundered, hearts grow cold; Death may come, and love take wings; Oh! a thousand cruel things May creep in to spoil the day, If we throw the time away. Let us time, the cheater, cheat, Kiss me, darling, kiss me, sweet. ONLY A SLIGHT FLIRTATION 'Twas just a slight flirtation, And where's the harm, I pray, In that amusing pastime So much in vogue to-day? Her hand was plighted elsewhere To one she held most dear, But why should she sit lonely When other men were near? They walked to church together, They sat upon the shore. She found him entertaining, He found her something more. They rambled in the moonlight; It made her look so fair. She let him praise her beauty, And kiss her flowing hair. 'Twas just a nice flirtation. 'So sad the fellow died. Was drowned one day while boating, The week she was a bride.' A life went out in darkness, A mother's fond heart broke, A maiden pined in secret-- With grief she never spoke. While robed in bridal whiteness, Queen of a festal throng, She moved, whose slight flirtation Had wrought this triple wrong. WHAT THE RAIN SAW Winds of the summer time what are you saying, What are ye seeking, and what do you miss? Locks like the thistledown floating and straying, Cheeks like the budding rose, tinted to kiss. See ye yon mist rising up from the river? That is the spirit of yesterday's rain. Go to it, fly to it, call to it, cry to it, What did ye see when ye fell on the plain? Rosewood, and velvet, and pansies, and roses, Blossoms from loving hands tenderly cast. Lids like the leaves of a lily that closes After its brief little day-life is past. Beautiful hands on a beautiful bosom, Folded so quietly, folded in rest. Mouth like the bud of a white-petalled blossom, Creased where the lips of an angel had pressed. Lower, and lower, and lower, and lower, Dust unto dust--but a mound on the plain. Left alone, lonely, this, and this only, Saw we, and see we to-day, said the rain. Winds of the summer time vain is your seeking, Vain is your calling with sobs in your breath. Lips that are tender, eyes full of splendour, Wooed away, sued away, vanished with death. AFTER After the end that is drawing near Comes, and I no more see your face Worn with suffering, lying here, What shall I do with the empty place? You are so weary, that if I could I would not hinder, I would not keep The great Creator of all things good, From giving his own beloved sleep. But over and over I turn this thought. After they bear you away to the tomb, And banish the glasses, and move the cot, What shall I do with the empty room? And when you are lying at rest, my own, Hidden away in the grass and flowers, And I listen in vain for your sigh and moan, What shall I do with the silent hours? O God! O God! in the great To Be What canst Thou give me to compensate For the terrible silence, the vacancy, Grim, and awful, and desolate? Passing away, my beautiful one, Out of the old life into the new. But when it is over, and all is done, God of the Merciful, what shall I do? Sweetest of slumber, and soundest rest, No more sorrow, and no more gloom. I am quite contented, and all is best,-- _But the empty bed--and the silent room_! OUR PETTY CARES Our petty cares wear on us so,-- More cruel than our great despairs, More rasping than a mighty woe, Our petty cares. Less need of strength hath he who bears Courageously some stinging blow, Of Fate which takes him unawares. Not solitary griefs we know Induce old age and whitening hairs; But that malicious, endless row-- Our petty cares. THE SHIP AND THE BOAT In the great ship Life we speed along, With sails and pennons spread. And tethered, beside the great ship, glide The mystic boats for the dead. Over the deck of the ship of Life Our loved and lost we lower. And calm and steady, his small boat ready, Death silently sits at the oar. He rows our dead away from our sight-- Away from our hearing or ken. We call and cry for a last good-bye, But they never come back again. The ship of Life bounds on and on; The river of Time runs fast; And yet more swift our dear dead drift For ever back into the Past. We do not forget those loved and lost, But they fade away like a dream: As we hurry along on the current strong Of Time's great turbulent stream. On and on, and ever away, Our sails are filled by the wind; We see new places, we meet new faces, And the dead are far behind. Their boats have drifted into the sea That laves God's holy feet. But the river's course, too, seeks that source, So the ship and the boat shall meet. COME NEAR Come near to me, I need Thy glorious presence. Through the dense darkness of this troubled hour Shine on my soul, and fill it with the essence Of Thy pervading and uplifting power. Come near, come near to me! Come nearer yet, I have no strength to reach Thee; My soul is like a bird with broken wings. Lean down from Thy fair height of peace, and teach me The balm Thy touch to mortal bruises brings. Lean down, O God, lean down! Come near, and yet if those eternal places Hold greater tasks to occupy Thy hands, Send Thy blest angels whose celestial faces Smile sometimes on us from the spirit lands. Send one, send one to me! I must have help. I am so weak and broken I cannot help myself. I know not how That moral force of which so much is spoken Will not sustain or fortify me now. I must, I must have help! Some outside aid, some strength from spirit Sources, We all must have in hours like this, or die. To one, or all of those mysterious Forces Which men call God, I lift my voice and cry, Come near, come near to me! A SUGGESTION As I go and shop, sir! If a car I stop, sir! Where you chance to sit, And you want to read, sir! Never mind or heed, sir! I'll not care a bit. For it's now aesthetic To be quite athletic. That's our fad, you know. I can hold the strap, sir! And keep off your lap, sir! As we jolting go. If you read on blindly, I shall take it kindly, All the car's not mine. But, if you sit and stare, sir! At my eyes and hair, sir! I must draw the line. If the stare is meant, sir! For a compliment, sir! As we jog through town, Allow me to suggest, sir! A woman oft looks best, sir! When she's sitting down. A FISHERMAN'S BABY Oh! hush little baby, thy Papa's at sea, The big billows rock him as Mama rocks thee. He hastes to his dear ones o'er breakers of foam. Then hush little darling till Papa comes home. Sleep little baby, hush little baby, Papa is coming, no longer to roam. The shells and the pebbles all day tossed about Are lulled into sleep by the tide ebbing out. The weary shore slumbers, stretched out in the sand, While the waves hurry off at mid ocean's command. Then hush little baby, sleep little darling, Sleep baby, rocked by thy mother's own hand. The winds that have rollicked all day in the west Are soothed into sleep on the calm evening's breast. The boats that were out with the wild sea at play Are now rocked to sleep in the arms of the bay. Then rest little baby, sleep little baby, Papa will come at the break of the day. CONTENT AND HAPPINESS How is it that men pray their earthly lot May be 'content and happiness'? Dire foes Without one common trait which kinship shows I hold these two. Contentment comes when sought, While Happiness pursued was never caught. But, sudden, storms the heart with mighty throes Whenceforth, mild eyed Content affrighted goes, To seek some calmer heart, less danger fraught. Bold Happiness knows but one rival--Fear; Who follows ever on his footsteps, sent By jealous Fate who calls great joy a crime. While in far ways 'mong leaves just turning sere, With gaze serene and placid, walks Content. No heart ere held these two guests at one time. THE CUSINE The woman who looks upon man as a sinner Unsaved as to soul, and uncertain in heart, Should learn how to cook, and prepare him a dinner, And serve it with talent, refinement, and art. Full many a question is solved by digestion. Bad morals are caused, oftentimes by bad cooks, And many a riot results from poor diet-- Conversion may lie in the leaves of cook books. About the dull stalk of the thorntree of duty Plant flowers of fragrance and vines of good taste. Surround the coarse needs of the body with beauty, Make common things noble, make vulgar things chaste. Put art in housekeeping, nor think culture sleeping Because the base animal, man, must be fed. Delsarte should be able to speak in the table-- 'Expression' may lie in a light loaf of bread. Though hard be the labour, the end recompenses-- Though weary the journey, reward is the goal. For the soul of a man must be reached through his senses, As the senses of woman are reached through her soul. Speak first to his spirit, he never will hear it; Speak first to his body, his soul will reply; The mortal man fare for, his appetites care for, And lo! he will follow your footsteps on high. Love born in the boudoir oft dies in the kitchen, The failure of marriage oft starts in the soup. The stomach appeal to, and men's heart you steal to-- Would you reach to the last? To the first you must stoop. I WONDER WHY Do you remember that glorious June When we were lovers, you and I? Something there was in the robin's tune, Something there was in earth and sky, That was never before, and never since then. I wonder why. Do you remember the bridge we crossed, And lingered to see the ships go by, With snowy sails to the free winds tossed? I never pass that bridge but I sigh With a sense at my heart as of something lost. I wonder why. Do you remember the song we sung, Under the beautiful starlit sky? The world was bright, and our hearts were young-- I cannot forget though I try and try. How you smiled in my eyes while the echoes rung. I wonder why. Do you remember how debonair The new moon shone when we said good-bye? How it listened and smiled when we parted there? I shall hate the new moon until I die-- Hate it for ever, nor think it fair. I wonder why. A WOMAN'S HAND All day long there has haunted me A spectre out of my lost youth-land. Because I happened last night to see A woman's beautiful snow-white hand. Like part of a statue broken away, And carefully kept in a velvet case, On the crimson rim of her box it lay; The folds of the curtain hid her face. Years had drifted between us two, In another clime, in another land, We had lived and parted, and yet I knew That cruelly beautiful perfect hand. The ringless beauty of fingers fine, The sea-shell tint of their taper tips, The sight of them stirred my blood like wine, Oh, to hold them again to my lips! To feel their tender touch on my hair, Their mute caress, and their clinging hold; Oh for the past that was green and fair, With a cloudless sky, and a sun of gold! But the sun has set, and a dead delight Shadows my life with a dull despair, Oh why did I see that hand of white, Like a marble ornament lying there? PRESENTIMENT As unseen spheres cast shadows on the Earth Some unknown cause depresses me to-night. The house is full of laughter and sweet mirth, The day has held but pleasure and delight. Down in the parlour some one blithely sings; A chime of laughter echoes in the hall; But all unseen by other eyes, strange things Rat-like do seem to glide along the wall. I rise, and laugh, and say I will not care; I call them idle fancies, one and all. And yet, suspended by a single hair, The sword of Fate seems trembling soon to fall. I leave the house, and walk the lighted street; And mingle with the pleasure-seeking throng. And close behind me follow spectre feet That pause with me, or with me move along. I seek my room, and close and bolt the door; I draw the curtain, and turn up the light; But close beside me, closer than before, This nameless _something_ stands, but out of sight. Ye mystic messenger of woe to come, Ye nameless nothing called 'Presentiment,' Take form and face me; be no longer dumb, But tell who thou art, and wherefore sent. TWO ROOMS One room is full of luxury, and dim With that soft moonlit radiance of light That she best loves, who sits and dreams of him Her heart has crowned as knight. And one is bare, and comfortless, and dim With that strange, fitful glimmer that is shed By candles casting shadows weird and grim, Above the sheeted dead. In one, a round and beautiful young face Is full of wordless rapture; and so fair You know her breast is joy's best dwelling-place; You know sweet love is there. In one, there lies a white and wasted face Whereon is frozen such supreme despair, You need but look to know what left the trace; You know love _has been_ there. To one he comes! She leans her head of gold Upon his breast and bids him no more roam. Ah God! Ah God! and one lies stark and cold, Because he ceased to come. THREE AT THE OPERA Last night the house was crowded. Were you there? You thought our box held only two, maybe-- Myself and chaperon, a matron fair. There was another whom you did not see. Close, close beside me, sat a phantom form; Above the music and loud cheer on cheer That rose, and thundered like a sudden storm, I heard his low voice whispering in my ear. A dead man's voice. You know when dead men speak There is no noise their least tone will not drown. His sweet soft words brought blushes to my cheek, And made my happy eyelids flutter down. There were so many glasses turned on me, My chaperon was proud. She called me fair, And said I drew their glances. Well, may be. _I_ think they saw that dead man sitting there. A dead man at an opera: how strange! I know it must have seemed much out of place. He smiled, and spoke, and there was little change In the white pallor of his perfect face. Yet he was dead. I knew it all the while, I do not wonder people looked that way. It seemed so odd to see a dead man smile; Its strangeness never struck me till to-day. He rose and went out when we left our stall; Rose up, went out, and vanished in the night. He always sits beside me in that hall, But goes when goes the music and the light. A STRAIN OF MUSIC In through the open window To the chamber where I lay, There came the beat of merry feet, From the dancers over the way. And back on the wings of the music That rose on the midnight air, My rare youth came and spoke my name, And lo! I was young and fair. Once more in the glitter of gaslight I stood in my life's glad prime: And heart and feet in a rhythm sweet Were keeping the music's time. Like a leaf in the breeze of summer I drifted down the hall, On an arm that is cold with death and mould, And is hidden under the pall. Once more at a low voice's whisper (A voice that is long since stilled) I felt the flush of a rising blush, And my pulses leaped and thrilled. Once more in a sea of faces, I only saw one face; And life grew bright with a new delight, And sweet with a nameless grace. A crash of passionate music, A hush and a silence then; The dancers rest in their pleasure quest, And lo! I am old again. Old and alone in my chamber, While the night wears wearily on, And the pallid wraith of a broken faith-- Keeps watch with me till the dawn. SMOKE Last summer, lazing by the sea, I met a most entrancing creature, Her black eyes quite bewildered me-- She had a Spanish cast of feature. She often smoked a cigarette, And did it in the cutest fashion. Before a week passed by she set My young heart in a raging passion. I swore I loved her as my life, I gave her gems (don't tell my tailor). She promised to become my wife, But whispered, 'Papa is my jailer.' 'We must be very sly, you see, For Papa will not list to reason. You must not come to call on me Until he's gone from home a season. 'I'll send you word, now don't forget, Take this as pledge, I will remember.' She gave me a perfumed cigarette, And turned and left me with September. To-day she sent her 'cards' to me. 'My presence asked' to see her marry That millionaire old banker C--- She _has_ my 'presents,' so I'll tarry. And still I feel a keen regret (About the jewels that I gave her) I've smoked the little cigarette-- It had a most delicious flavour. AN AUTUMN DAY Leaden skies and a lonesome shadow Where summer has passed with her gorgeous train; Snow on the mountain, and frost on the meadow-- A white face pressed to the window pane; A cold mist falling, a bleak wind calling, And oh! but life seems vain. Rain is better than golden weather, When the heart is dulled with a dumb despair. Dead leaves lie where they walked together, The hammock is gone, and the rustic chair. Let bleak snows cover the whole world over-- It will never again seem fair. Time laughs lightly at youth's sad 'Never,' Summer shall come again, smiling once more, High o'er the cold world the sun shines for ever, Hearts that seemed dead are alive at the core. Oh, but the pain of it--oh, but the gain of it, After the shadows pass o'er. WISHES Whatever you want, if you wish for it long, With constant yearning and fervent desire, If your wish soars upward on wings so strong That they never grow languid and never tire,-- Why, over the storm clouds and out of the dark It shall come flying some day to you. As the dove with the olive branch flew to the ark, And the dream you have cherished--it shall come true. But lest much rapture shall make you mad, Or too bright sunshine should strike you blind, Along with your blessing a something sad Shall come like a shadow that follows behind. Something unwelcome and unforeseen, Yet of your hope and your wish, a part, Shall stand like a sentinel in between The perfect joy and the human heart. I wished for a cloudless and golden day; It came, but I looked from my window to see A giant shadow which seemed to say, 'If you ask for the sunlight you must take me.' Oh! a wonderful thing is the human will, When seeking one purpose, and serving one end; But I think it is wiser to just sit still, And accept whatever the gods may send. THE PLAY In the rosy light of my day's fair morning, Ere ever a storm cloud darkened the west, Ere even a shadow of night gave warning When life seemed only a pleasure quest, Why then all humour and comedy scorning-- I liked high tragedy best. I liked the challenge, the fierce fought duel, With a death or a parting in every act. I liked the villain to be more cruel Than the basest villain could be in fact: For it fed the fires of my mind with the fuel Of the things that my life lacked. But as time passed on, and I met real sorrow, And she played at night on the stage--my heart, I found I could not forget on the morrow The pain I had felt in her tragic part. For alas! no longer I needed to borrow My grief from the actor's art. And as life grows older, and therefore sadder (Though sweeter maybe with its autumn haze), I find more pleasure in watching the gladder And lighter order of humorous plays. Where the mirth is as mad, or maybe madder, Than the mirth of my lost days. I like to be forced to laugh and be merry, Though the earth with sorrow and pain is rife: I like for an evening at least to bury All thoughts of trouble, or pain, or strife. In sooth, I like to be moved to the very Emotions I miss in life. AS WE LOOK BACK (RONDEAU) As we look back at our lost Used-to-Be, 'The light that never was on land or sea' Touches the distant mountain peaks with gold, And through the glass of memory we behold Such blossoms as grow not on any lea. The double leaf upon the poplar tree Turns up its silver side to you and me, And glow-worm lanterns light the lonely wold As we look back. No sounds we hear but echoes of young glee; No winds we feel but west winds blowing free, From those fair isles that seem a thousandfold More beautiful than in the days of old; And all the clouds that hang above them flee, As we look back. WHY Why do eyes that were tender, Averted, turn away? Why has our dear love's splendour All faded into gray? Why is it that lips glow not That late were all aglow? I know not, dear, I know not, I only know 'tis so. Why do you no more tremble Now when I kiss your cheek? Why do we both dissemble The thoughts we used to speak? Why is it that words flow not That used to fondly flow? I know not, dear, I know not, I only know 'tis so. Have we outlived the passion That late lit earth and sky? And is this but the fashion A fond love takes to die? Is it, that we shall know not Again love's rapture glow? I trust not, sweet, I trust not-- And yet it may be so. LISTEN Whoever you are as you read this, Whatever your trouble or grief, I want you to know and to heed this, The day draweth near with relief. No sorrow, no woe, is unending; Though heaven seems voiceless and dumb, Remember your cry is ascending, And an answer will certainly come. Whatever temptation is near you, Whose eyes on this simple verse fall, Remember good angels will hear you, And help you, so sure as you call. Who stunned with despair, I beseech you, Whatever your losses, your need, Believe when these printed words reach you-- Believe you were born to succeed. TOGETHER We two in the fever, and fervour, and glow Of life's high tide have rejoiced together. We have looked out over the glittering snow, And known we were dwelling in summer weather. For the seasons are made by the heart, I hold, And not by the outdoor heat or cold. We two in the shadows of pain and fear Have journeyed together in dim, dark places, Where black-robed sorrow walked to and fro, And fear and trouble with phantom faces Peered out upon us, and froze our blood, Though June's fair roses were all in bud. We two have measured all depths, all heights; We have bathed in tears, we have sunned in laughter; We have known all sorrow, and all delights, They never could keep us apart hereafter. Wherever your spirit was sent I know, I would find my way in the dark, and go. If they took my soul into Paradise, And told me I must be content without you, I would weary them so with my homesick cries, And the ceaseless questions I asked about you, They would open the gates and set me free, Or else they would find you and bring you to me. ONE NIGHT Was it last summer, or ages gone, That damp, dark night in the August dusk, When I waited for you by the gate alone? And the air was heavy with scents like musk. Swiftly and silently shooting down Like the lonesome light of a falling star, I saw through the shadows dense and brown, The dull red light of your fine cigar. Like a king who taketh his own, you came Through the lowering night and the falling dew. Like one who yields to a rightful claim, I waited there in the dusk for you. Never again when the day grows late, Never again in the years to be, Shall I stand in the dark and dew, and wait, And never again will you come to me. But always and ever when high and far The old moon hideth her troubled face, I think how the light like a falling star Lit all my world with a new strange grace. The passionate glow of your splendid eyes Shines into my heart as it shone that night, And its slumberous billows surge and rise As the ocean is stirred by the tempest's might. LOST NATION Oh! we are a lone, lost nation, We, who sing your songs. With his moods, and his desolation The poet nowhere belongs. We are not of the people Who labour, believe, and doubt. Like the bell that rings in the steeple, We are in the world, yet out. In the rustic town, or the city We seek our place in vain; And our hearts are starved for pity, And our souls are sick with pain. Yes, the people are buying, selling, And the world is one great mart. And woe for the thoughts that are dwelling Up in the poet's heart. We know what the waves are saying As they roll up from the sea, And the weird old wind is playing Our own sad melody. We send forth a song to wander Like a spirit of ill or good; And here it is heard, and yonder, But is nowhere understood. For the world it lives for fashion, For glory, and gain, and strife; And what can it know of the passion And pain of a poet's life? THE CAPTIVE My lady is robed for the ball to-night, All in a shimmer and silken sheen. She glides down the stairs like a thing of light, The ballroom's beautiful queen. Priceless gems on her bosom glow-- Half hid by laces a queen might wear. Robed is she, as befits, you know, The wife of a millionaire. Gliding along at her liege lord's side, Out-shining all in that company, Into the mind of the old man's bride There creeps a curious simile. She thinks how once in the Long Ago, A beautiful captive, all aflame With jewels that weighed her down like woe, Close in the wake of her captor came. All day long in that mocking plight, She followed him in a dumb despair; And the people thought her a goodly sight, Decked in her jewels rare. And now at her lawful master's side, With a pain in her heart, as great as then (So thinks this old man's beautiful bride), Zenobia walks again. NO SONG These summer days when all the poets sing I have no voice for song. I see the birds of summer taking wing, And days so sweet and long, Each seemed a little heaven with no end, I know are gone for evermore, dear friend. Nay, by and by comes another Spring; And long, sweet, perfect days. And by and by I shall have voice to sing My old glad, happy lays. More blithesome songs, more days that have no end; More golden summers; but _like thee_ no friend. TWO FRIENDS One day Ambition, in his endless round, All filled with vague and nameless longings, found Slow wasting Genius, who from spot to spot Went idly grazing, through the Realms of Thought. Ambition cried, 'Come, wander forth with me; I like thy face--but cannot stay with thee.' 'I will,' said Genius, 'for I needs must own I'm getting dull by being much alone.' 'Your hands are cold--come, warm them at my fire,' Ambition said. 'Now, what is thy desire?' Quoth Genius, ''Neath the sod of yonder heather Lie gems untold. Let's plough them out together.' They bent like strong young oxen to the plough, This done, Ambition questioned, 'Whither now? We'll leave these gems for all the world to see! New sports and pleasures wait for thee and me.' Said Genius, 'Yonder ghostly ruin stands A blot and blemish on surrounding lands; Let's fling sweet, blooming fancies everywhere.' Soon all the world in wonder came to stare. 'Come, come!' Ambition cried; 'Pray, do be gone From this dull place: I would go further on.' 'There lies,' said Genius, 'up on yonder peak A Prize, alone, I have not cared to seek.' Up, up they went--as swift, as sure as Time, They seemed to soar: (in truth they did but climb), And there in sight of all the world beneath-- Ambition crowned fair Genius with a wreath. All day they journeyed, swift from place to place; Ambition led, and Genius joined the chase. In every realm of fancy, or of thought, All depths they sounded, and all heights they sought. Now hand in hand for evermore they stray, And if they part, or quarrel for a day, You'll find Ambition, aimless, reckless, wild, And Genius moping, like an idle child. I DIDN'T THINK If all the troubles in the world Were traced back to their start, We'd find not one in ten begun From want of willing heart. But there's a sly, woe-working elf Who lurks about youth's brink, And sure dismay he brings alway-- The elf, 'I didn't think.' He seems so sorry when he's caught; His mien is all contrite; He so regrets the woe he wrought, And wants to make things right. But wishes do not heal a wound Or weld a broken link; The heart aches on, the link is gone, All through--'I didn't think.' I half believe that ugly sprite, Bold, wicked, 'I don't care,' In life's long run less harm has done Because he is so rare; And one can be so stern with him, Can make the monster shrink; But, lack a day, what can we say To whining 'Didn't think'? This most unpleasant imp of strife Pursues us everywhere. There's scarcely one whole day of life He does not cause us care; Small woes and great he brings the world, Strong ships are forced to sink, And trains from iron track are hurled, alack, By stupid 'Didn't think.' When brain is comrade to the heart, And heart from soul draws grace, 'I didn't think will quick depart For lack of resting-place. If from that great, unselfish stream, The Golden Rule we drink, We'll keep God's laws, and have no cause To say 'I didn't think.' A BURIAL To-day I had a burial of my dead. There was no shroud, no coffin, and no pall, No prayers were uttered and no tears were shed-- I only turned a picture to the wall. A picture that had hung within my room For years and years; a relic of my youth. It kept the rose of love in constant bloom To see those eyes of earnestness and truth. At hours wherein no other dared intrude, I had drawn comfort from its smiling grace. Silent companion of my solitude, My soul held sweet communion with that face. I lived again the dream so bright, so brief, Though wakened as we all are by some Fate; This picture gave me infinite relief, And did not leave me wholly desolate. To-day I saw an item, quite by chance, That robbed me of my pitiful poor dole: A marriage notice fell beneath my glance, And I became a lonely widowed soul. With drooping eyes, and cheeks a burning flame, I turned the picture to the blank wall's gloom. My very heart had died in me of shame, If I had left it smiling in my room. Another woman's husband. So, my friend, My comfort, my sole relic of the past, I bury thee, and, lonely, seek the end. Swift age has swept my youth from me at last. THEIR FACES O Beautiful white Angels! who control The inner workings of each poet soul, Thou who hast touched my mind with tender graces Come near to me that I may see thy faces. Me, didst thou bless before I came to earth; Me, hast thou kissed, and dowered at my birth, With such a wealth of sweet imaginings, That, even in sleep, my dreaming fancy sings. Sometimes when seeing snow-white clouds at noon, Or watching silver shadows from the moon, Within my soul has stirred a joy like fear, As if some kindred spirit lingered near. Come closer, Angels! thou whose haloed wings Do gild for me the meanest ways and things, With beauty borrowed from the Infinite-- Stand forth, let me behold thee in the light. O thought supreme! O death! O life! unknown I shall not solve thy mystery alone. The angels who have kissed me at my birth Shall take again my soul when done with earth, And as we soar through vast, star-lighted spaces, At last, at last I shall behold their faces. THE LULLABY When the long day leans to the twilight, When the Evening star climbs to the moon, With a heart that is silently breaking, I sit in the gloaming and croon. I croon a low song for my darling, My wee one, my baby, my own; Who, cradled in rosewood and velvet, Sleeps out in the churchyard alone. Alone with no arms to enfold her, Alone with no pillowing breast, Alone with no hand on her cradle, To rock her to soundlier rest. But each day in the hush of the twilight, Is silenced my broken heart's cry; And I sit where I sat with my darling, And sing her the old lullaby. Oh! the dreams that come back to me mocking, The sorrow that makes the days long; As I sit in the twilight there rocking, And singing that lullaby song. But I think my wee darling rests better As the night shadows lengthen, and creep Across her low bed, in the churchyard, If her mother's voice sings her to sleep. And so with a heart that is breaking I sing the old 'Lullaby dear' That hushed her so oft into slumber-- O baby--my own--do you hear? MIRAGE When the beautiful mountain ash is turning-- As lovely a sight as the eyes desire; When the leaves of the sumac bush are burning, Like the steady flame of a winter fire; When the weeds by the roadside all grow golden, When maples are glowing and asters gleam, It is then that the new is changed to the olden, And back to my heart comes the past like a dream. Like a mirage I see the blue haze o'er me, The City of Youth that I left behind. Oh! whitely its turrets are gleaming before me, And out of the window lean faces kind. And I hear the echo of jubilant voices; There are cheeks of beauty and eyes of truth: And every pulse in my heart rejoices-- There's no other place like the City of Youth. And lo! the City is full of splendour, And a voice in my soul breaks into song. Yes, a passionate love, as fair as tender, Creeps out of the grave where it slept so long. As the strings of a harp by winds are shaken, To endless music my heart is stirred, When my name is breathed and my hand is taken, Though I cannot utter a single word. But with souls that are full of the beautiful weather, And the perfect peace that has no name, Under the autumn skies together We stray, by the sumacs all aflame. And the forest flushes to fuller glory: Brighter glow asters and golden rod, As eye unto eye tells the old, old story, And the sunlight seems like the smile of God. Alone I stand and sorrowful hearted; The dead leaves fall in the chilly wind. The mirage is fled, and the glory departed, And the City of Youth is far behind. ALONE IN THE HOUSE I am all alone in the house to-night; They would not have gone away Had they known of the terrible, bloodless fight I have held with my heart to-day. With the old sweet love and the old fierce pain I have battled hour by hour; But the fates have willed that the strife is vain. Alone in the hour my thoughts have reign, And I yield myself to their power. Yield myself to the old time charm Of a dream of vanished bliss, The thrill of a voice, and the fold of an arm, And a red lip's lingering kiss. It all comes back like a flowing tide; That brief, but beautiful day. Though it oft is checked by the dam of pride, Till the waters flow back to the other side, To-night it has broken away. I gave you all that I had to give, O love, the lavish whole. And you threw it away, and now I live A starved and beggared soul. And I feed on crumbs that memory throws From her table over-filled, And I lay awake when others repose, And slake my thirst when no one knows, With the wine that she has spilled. I go my way and I do my part In the world's great scene of strife, But I do it all with an empty heart, Dead to the best of life. And ofttimes weary and tempest tossed, When I am not ruled by pride, I wish ere the die was throne and lost, Ere I played for love without counting the cost, That I, like my heart, had died. AN OLD BOUQUET I opened a long closed drawer to-day, And among the souvenirs stored away Were the faded leaves of an old bouquet. Those faded leaves were as white as snow, With a background of green, to make them show, When you gave them to me long years ago. They carried me back in a flash of light To a perfumed, perfect summer night, And a rider who came on a steed of white. I can see it all--how you rode down Like a knight of old, from the dusty town, With a passionate glow in your eyes of brown. Again I stand by the garden gate, While the golden sun slips low, and wait And watch your coming, my love, my fate. Young and handsome and debonair You leap to my side in the garden there, And I take your flowers, and call them fair. Out of the west the glory dies, As we stand under the sunset skies, With love in our hearts, and love in our eyes. Love too tender and love too great To die with death, or to yield to fate; But your restless steed tells the hour is late. You mount him again and you ride away Into the west that is growing gray. Oh! turn the key on that dear bouquet. It is dry and faded and I am old: And the hand that gave it is green with mould, And the winter of life is cold--so cold. AT THE BRIDAL Oh! but the bride was lovely, Oh! but the scene was bright, And why was the bridegroom's face as pale As his lady's robe of white? Did you not see beside him A guest unasked, unbid? Who came up the aisle with silent feet And gazed at him? he did! He saw her eyes upon him, He felt her icy breath; And under the bride's warm clinging hand There crept the touch of death. And above the low responses There fell upon his ear A voice forbidding the nuptial banns; But no one else could hear. And when the ring was given, And when the prayer was said, He knew, as he led his bride away, That he was not truly wed. And while they sat at the banquet, And mirth flowed like the wine, A dead girl's voice hissed in his ear, 'You are not hers, but mine.' Oh! never beside his hearthstone, And never in any place, Shall he be free from the haunting thought Of that accusing face. BEST In the gruesome night and the wintry weather, I watched two dear friends die, And I buried them both in one grave together. Oh! who is so sad as I? For the old love, and the old year, They both have passed away; And I never can find the old cheer Come what will or may. I heard the bell in the tall church steeple Clang out a joyful strain. And I thought, 'Of all the great world's people, I have the bitterest pain.' For the old year was a good year, And the old love was sweet; And how could my heart hold any cheer When both lay dead at my feet. Life may smile and the skies may brighten, Winter will pass with its snows; Grief will wane and the burden lighten-- And June will come with the rose. But it cannot bring the old cheer To fill my empty breast; For the old year was the one year, And the old love was best. 
40560	----	THE BEE'S BAYONET (A LITTLE HONEY AND A LITTLE STING) --CAMOUFLAGE IN WORD PAINTING-- BY EDWIN ALFRED WATROUS _Author of "The Fooliam"_ BOSTON RICHARD G. BADGER THE GORHAM PRESS COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY EDWIN ALFRED WATROUS All Rights Reserved Made in the United States of America The Gorham Press, Boston, U.S.A. Dedicated to THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CIVILIZATION'S CRUSADER. To Thee, My Native Land, AMERICA! My heart with pride is filled: my lips exult Because Thou art my Home--my Fatherland. Beneath the Constellation of the States, Set in the firmament of fadeless blue, I bare my head and hail the Stars and Stripes, Proud Emblem of our Unity and Might. My Country calls! I give what I possess,-- All! _All_ I say! and giving thus, regret That my poor contribution to thy needs, In hours of peril when dark war-clouds loom, Is such a paltry thing When measured by the debt of gratitude I owe for LIBERTY. All that I am and have belongs to Thee. Upon thy Altar Fires, Where Freedom glows and glorifies Mankind, I consecrate My flood-tide strength, my substance--life itself! And rate not this as sacrifice That gives me pleasure to repay In this small way Thy boon and bounty, priceless LIBERTY. CONTENTS PROEM BEHOLD A MAN! THE JULOGY ENGLAND PREPAREDNESS THE FUGITIVE KISS NEW MEXICAN NATIONAL ANTHEM LOVE STRONGARM'S WATERLOO THE SPIRIT OF FRANCE WAR SONG OF THE SAMSONS SIX DAYS A PROTEST A PRAYER SINCE THE LITTLE ONE CAME RUN ALONG, LITTLE GIRL! A RETROSPECT THE EAGLE SCREAMS THE SERVICE STAR SOME DAY THE CRUISE OF THE SEA SERPENT AMERICA LIFE AND LOVE LIFE IN DEATH GERMANY ITALY MARY IS MERRY NO MORE I SHOT AN ARROW FIXING THE BLAME LOVE'S RECOMPENSE ADAM'S ALE RUSSIA BELGIUM OUR FRIENDS ACROSS THE STREET EPITAPHS THE CONQUEST OF THE SUN OWED TO A ROACH THE MOODS OF THE WINDS THE TOXIC TIPPET TWENTY-THIRD PSALM FRIENDSHIP PARAMOUNT PROBLEMS A REUNION THE CRUISE OF THE SQUIRREL JINGLES THE WEIGHT OF LOVE DO IT! AMENITIES "DANSER SUR UN VULCAN" AT THE BULGING UDDER TIME VAGARIES A SHATTERED ROMANCE THE MILKY WAY THE LOGOTHETE THE PRICE OF PEACE MEN HAD HORNS THEN SUB ROSA WHITMANESQUE AN APEOLOGY THE BUG WAKE, MY LOVE! FIRST PSALM NOT PEACE, BUT REVENGE! HEREDITY THE CALL OF THE HOMESTEAD DECIMAL POINTS BELLES-LETTRES SANDY, THE PIPER "BEN BOLT" EXCELSIOR HER AND HIM THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIVING THE SIXTH OF APRIL BENEATH A CLOUD THE COLUMBIAD HE'S ALL RIGHT, BUT--! NATURE'S STUDIO PICARDY AMERICA'S PRAYER EPILOGUE PROEM If you can find, within, a single line To give you pleasure, then the pleasure's mine; But if you fail and whine, or _josh_ like Billings, You might (I say you _might_!) get back your shillings. But better yet! Bestow this Book of Verses On some friend-foe you love with hate and curses, And your revenge will be attained thereafter For, when he reads it, he will die with laughter. And, Cheerful Reader, if this work contains A soporific for your bulging brains So that you'll _rave about it_ to your neighbors, I'll feel repaid for all rebuffs and labors. Though "Wisdom sometimes borrows, sometimes lends," You'll borrow trouble lending this to friends; But earn my thanks if, when you've praised or shown it, You'll sit upon the lid and never loan it: For ev'ry copy sold, thru friends or slapbacks, Just puts Mo'lasses on my buckwheat flapjacks. And, Critic Friend, who halts Ambition's flight And ties the can to Aspiration's kite, Pray recollect that when _you_ plied the pen And had some stuff accepted now and then, Your tales, O! Henry, did not prove inviting Or else you'd be no Cynic but still writing. THE BEE'S BAYONET BEHOLD A MAN! There stands a MAN! unyielding and defiant, A master LEADER, bold and self-reliant. He seeks no conquest but his lance is set Against the ruthless Despot's parapet. Alert and conscious of his strength, his thrust Is sure and timely, for his cause is just. Invincible, he rallies to his cause Those who love Justice and respect the laws. To skulking traitors and to spying foes He shows no mercy, but his heart o'erflows For those oppressed, who live, nay! who exist Where arrogance and tyranny persist: But, tho distressed by all this human grief, He weeps not idly, but _compels_ relief: And those he serves by act or speech or pen, One Hundred Million _freemen_, shout, AMEN! "Safe for Democracy the world must be, And all its bondaged peoples shall be free!" So spake the MAN: America thus voiced Its ultimatum, and the Earth rejoiced! Intensely human, cast from mortal clay In Nature's mould, one epoch-making day, Behold a MAN! he seems a higher sort, Refined with purest gold from God's Retort And filled with skill and wisdom, Heaven-sent: God bless and keep our peerless PRESIDENT! THE JULOGY To those who never heard my Songs before, And those _who have_, and _want to nevermore_, This Rhapsody, with all its pithy phrases, Has passed the Censors with the highest praises. Released by favor of the Board's caprice, It takes its proper place--a masterpiece! Soft pedal, please! The Knockers are outclassed, And Genius finds its recompense at last! Whene'er I read about this war-time pelf It makes me sick: I can't contain myself! The profits on the _die_-stuffs sent to France Make Croesus' wealth a trifling circumstance; And what the Farmers get for mules and wheat Makes fortunes hitherto quite obsolete. In by-gone days the Bards were praised and pensioned Who now are at the Front--and rarely mentioned: And all these hardships they endure while men _Who write big checks_, thus scandalize the pen. The Writers should throw off their yokes and collars And drill their brains to cultivate the dollars. The talents they possess are strictly mental And can't be utilized for food and rental. Their thoughts are capital, but who'll invest In Sonnet Stock without some _interest_? Or who'd take stock in Poem Plants? Alack! He who invests expects the yellowback. But here I'm talking _money_: what a joke For one to thus discourse who's always broke! Since "money talks" we'll suffer it to speak,-- "I am the thing that countless millions seek; Greed's inspiration, Evil's very root, The Nemesis of those in my pursuit. Kings pay me homage, pawn their crowns to me And, deathless, I enslave their progeny. Men famed for noble deeds, who court my smile, Ofttimes surrender probity to guile: Who, needy, follows my uncertain path, I may elude and favor him who hath,-- For I have wings, and lightning speeds my flight,-- Wealthy to-day, a pauper overnight! The Ticker tells the tale from day to day: Brings joy to some, to others dire dismay." This Work is copyrighted just to show To what low depths the Pirate Press will go. They borrow thunder from the Vulcan forge, Then draw the fire and put the smut on George. Each song or verse, it seems to me, should be Distinguished by originality If nothing else (the matter may be sloppy,-- But that's no matter if there's ample copy) So that the Author's face could be unmasked And recognized without a question asked; Or, so identify Calliope By strident notes of high-toned quality; Or thus detect some Poet's "fist" and style By I. O. U.'s unhonored yet awhile. The Pirates thus would cease perforce their trade, And Bacon would not be confused with Ade. In all my songs I do the work myself, And draw no inspiration from the Shelf. Perhaps my lines would be more read, if cribbed, But George and I, you know, have never fibbed, And what is more, I think my lines are sweeter Than those of Dante, with infernal meter; And more heroic, and not half so sad As Homer's couplets in the _Ill_iad; And far more musical and much prettier Than those by Tennyson or by Whittier. Each bar is known to me, its licensee, And ev'ry note has had my scrutiny: I also watch my pauses, moods and tenses, And have no words with fair amanuenses. If you could see my workshop (do not ask it!) You'd find more "carbons" in my paper-basket, More rough, unpolished diamonds there immured Than you, Dear Reader, ever have endured. I have no Jewish blood, not e'en a strain: That's what I lack! If ever born again I'd requisition Hebrew sire and dam, Something akin, methinks, to Abraham, And take these "jewels," doomed unseen to flash, Gloss o'er their flaws, and turn them into cash. Here's where I doff my bonnet to the Jew! Tho' sore oppressed they're still the Chosen Few: A _few_ in numbers but a mighty host When reckoned by the things that count the most,-- I mean _achievements_, won by toilsome stages In spite of persecutions thru the Ages. I see these Davids watching o'er their flocks In Palestine. (To-day they watch their stocks And clip the coupons from their bonds, you see, Just as they sheared the lambs in Galilee.) _There_ milk and honey in abundance vied To keep the Simple Simons satisfied; But _here_ to luxuries the Josephs cling, And milk the honey from most everything. Time was when you were treated with disdain But now the tune is quite a changed refrain, And Gentiles everywhere take special pains To pay respectful tribute to your brains! Behold your ancient hills and rugged rocks; Your fruitful valleys with their golden shocks Of Grain that, grouped around the stately dates, Seem to defy the _threshing_ that awaits! Here olives ripen 'neath the summer skies And yield rich oil,--first Standard Oil supplies; 'Twas here the mighty Samson filled with awe The Philistines and flayed them with his jaw; (No man before, or since, thus courted fame, For woman holds these records in _her_ name.) And here wise Solomon refused the vote In statecraft matters to the Petticoat; But when the Referendum was installed The wise old King's objection was Recalled. And then there's David caring for his sheep, And big Goliath (_rocking_ him to sleep). There Japheth, Shem and Ham are; Ham tabooed By Moses in his Treatises on Food; And Jehu with his pair of chestnut colts Trotting the highway down like thunderbolts. If Jehu _reined_ to-day he'd swap his stable For high-power Auto, with a foreign label, And hold the record for the Shore Road trip From Tyre to Sidon at a lightning clip,-- And make his whiskers, driven by the breeze, Look like a storm-tossed frigate on the seas. There's Jacob dreaming, seeing more than Esau, And giving him the double-cross and hee-haw; Obtaining Esau's birthright (Silly Dupe!) For three brass spheroids and a bowl of soup. He traded for it--didn't have to buy it! 'Cause Brother Hairy, glutton, wouldn't diet. But "chickens come back home to roost," forsooth, And Jacob in his dotage learned this truth, When Leah's sons, of ordinary clay, Put Rachel's Joseph in the consommé. As Financiers the palm has been bestowed, In panegyric, melody and ode, On Jacob's sons. The caravans, that passed Thru burning sands, from cities far and vast, Into their land that teemed with grain and gold, Were richly laden. Thus they bought and sold, Exchanging corn and cattle, hides and honey For finest silks and linens, gems and money,-- Until, thru bargain-insight, skill and daring, They cornered all the fabrics used for wearing, And then proceeded, with discerning lust, To hump themselves and form a Camel Trust. The Traders who had plied this Cargo Route Could never, in their deals, get cash to boot From Jacob's sons. Sometimes a fleece or skin, Of little size and worth, would be thrown in, But shekels--No! And so the nomad Sheik In quest of easy picking; Turk and Greek; The wily Fellah from the distant Nile Whose gaudy gewgaw "gems" reflect his guile; The sleepy Peddlers from the Land of Nod, Who still shekinah on ancestral sod; And all the Wise Men from the Eastern marts Who plan their ventures by the Astral charts, Plotted and vowed, by Imps and Endor Witches, To wrest from Jacobs Brothers all their riches. So, working now with Bulls, anon with Bears; Rigging the market to advance their wares Or to depress the House of Jacobs' shares, It looked as if the plotters might make good Against the unsuspecting Brotherhood. But patiently the Brethren stood their ground, Unmindful of the rumors passed around, Or baits to tempt Cupidity thrown out, That throttle Judgment and put Sense to rout,-- Until the market, unsupported, broke: Then, feigning sleep, they suddenly awoke And took possession of the Stock Exchange. Like beaten curs or mongrels with the mange The Plotters cringed. The _Shorts_ in wild dismay To cover ran, but Zounds! they had to pay Four prices to the Brethren who controlled The entire issue of the short stock sold. And thus the Brethren made a tidy sum, Keeping their standing in Financialdom. Keen businessmen, they sold or bought as well, But never showed _anxiety_ to sell. So Jacob's Sons became, as was their bent, The mighty Merchants of the Orient. No goose that ever layed a golden egg Would needs have come to one of them to beg For life or respite. "Nay! Lay on, Good Goose! We'll shield thee and thy gander from abuse!" Long-headed and kind-hearted, in such cases Their noses were not lopped to spite their faces. Too wise they were: they had too good a teacher To make the nose too prominent a feature! While yet the goose was itching for the nest They egged her on and Quack! she did the rest. A goose she would appear to give so much To those who had--but Life is ever such. But Jacob's Sons like Isaac, sturdy Oak, Made no complaint but bore their golden yolk, And, thrifty men, in many baskets stored The golden ovals and increased their hoard. And so their nests were feathered, as we know, But cautious men they were, who didn't crow. And so we see them on the filmy screens, Matching their talents 'gainst the Philistines: And looking close, we notice that the Brothers Have bigger _stacks_ before them than the others. And then there's Job, the Paradox, who toils To show good humor when beset by boils; And Jinxy Jonah, ducked and rudely whaled, Because he had no passport when he sailed. (Whene'er I see the Ocean Mammal spout Methinks it's habit--_spewing Jonah out_.) Delilah's "next"! Tonsorial Adept-- A cutting up while headstrong Samson slept. Shear nonsense--that man's vigor could be sapped Because he had a haircut when he napped, Or lose his nerve, e'en at the yawning grave, Tho' just escaping by the closest shave. With Samson's case a multitude compare, For men miss greatness ofttimes by a hair. 'Twas his conceit that made him lose his nerve, As long-haired, whiskered men, bereft, deserve. The facts are these: that Samson used to wear A wig with ringlets, 'cause his head was bare. One night, in playful mood, Delilah stole Up to his cot and touched the poor old soul For his toupee. He woke, chagrined, and fled Because his capillary roots were dead. What transformation! Thus the Man of Might Became a pussyfooter overnight, And went to writing verses from that minute Finding his strength, not _on_ his head, but in it. Of all your rulers, Roman, Jew or Fezzer, The first or most pronounced is Nebu'nezzar. (_Too long_ this monstrous name has been derided, And so the _chad_, for rhythm, is elided.) "Neb" is enough, for short, and apropos Of Shadrach, Meshack and Abednego, The King waxed wroth because these three live wires Passed thru his melting pots and furnace fires Without a burn: remarkable endurance! Because protected by good Fire Insurance. He paid the price for arson ere he died, Was kept lit up and rightly classified Among the beasts: and now that all is over 'Tis safe to say he did not live in clover, But roamed the pastures, when he lost his pull, And grazed himself to death: he was _some_ bull. Then next we come to Ruth, the Moabite: Her husband Chilion (not her!) one night Blew out the gas, and Ruth was thus bereft; But Naomi, her Ma-in-Law, was left To comfort her: and jolly well she did it! For Ruth's great grief soon ceased or else she hid it. Then to Naomi's Land the two repaired, Their love enhanced by sorrows they had shared. And so the elder of the widowed twain Set out to find, for Ruth, another swain; And all her schemes, 'tis said, succeeded so as To marry Ruth to wealthy kinsman Boaz. Unselfish? No! _She_ was too old to wed, So Ruth agreed to give her board and bed, Trusting to Boaz not to spoil her plan Who swallowed hook and line like any man. The attic room, or one just off the hall, Was where Naomi nightly had to crawl; And all her meals, unleavened bread and 'taters, Were eaten in the kitchen with the waiters,-- For Boaz, when the honeymoon was spent, Tightened his purse-strings--wouldn't spend a cent! And Naomi as welcome was, I think, As hungry roaches in the kitchen sink. This is the only case,--I know no other! Where widowed wife abided husband's mother; Or, where a woman, in such circumstance, Would give her son's relict another chance. There's Baal and those exalting Gods of brass; And Balaam, Prophet: but we'll let him pass! And John the Baptist, man who lost his head To fair Salomé, tho she cut him dead. There's Absalom the Vain, whose hair was long, Who, in the final parting, got in wrong: And Pharaoh, with chariots and fighters Pursuing Moses and the Israeliters; Who, half-seas over, when the King dropped in, Punished the latter for his divers sin, And rescued on the Red Sea bar his folk, Athirst for freedom from the Ptolemy yoke. While yet the rushes bent beneath the blast Of Red Sea winds, a prodigy was cast. (From common _mold_, perhaps, but 'tis enough To know that he was made of proper stuff.) And little did the Tempest wot his noise Was silence likened to the bawling boy's. The Earth breathed on the shape and gave it speech, Or something vocally akin, a screech. Thus Moses had his coming out--and lo! He rushed into the arms of Fairy O (Daughter of Pharaoh, the mighty King) Who bore him to the Palace 'neath her wing. Fed on the Milk of Kindness to begin, With Medica Materia thrown in, He grew until appointed, by decree, To Little Egypt, Princess, the M.D. Thus Doctor Moses hung his shingle out, And soon his fame was heralded about. To doctors since, no fame like his doth cling: No Specialist: he doctored everything! He analyzed and stopped the human leak; (His patience was rewarded, so to speak) He charged his people to eschew the swine, And made the Ten Commandments seem benign. Not only as Physician did he rate, But as a Surgeon: he could amputate! He cut off Pharaoh in his pursuit And, by this operation, gained repute. He set his people right and made no bones Of driving lepers from the Safety Zones; He gave them tablets for their moral healing, Knowing their pulses without even feeling. His praises now resound from every lip Because he saved the Jews from Phar'oh's grippe. Still 'long the Nile the pink-winged curlews flock Where Moses took his henchmen out of hock; The minions of Æolus hurtle on, Leaving a trail of foam the waves upon,-- Stopping anon, where restless driftwood crushes The lotus pads that hover near the rushes, To chant a requiem and breathe a prayer Over the spot that cradled Moses there. If modern doctors would obey the rule Of common sense prescribed by Moses' School; If they would note our pulses and our looks Instead of feeling of our pocket-books And judging circulation by the latter, We'd sometimes know, perhaps, just what's the matter. What doctor now would diagnosis make And call it simple, old-time belly-ache, Charging a trifling fee to cure the pain? Ah, no! those days will not return again! No more, alas! will green-fruit cramps delight us, For colic now is styled appendicitis. By leaps and bounds have grown the "trifling fees"; "Five hundred!" now, succeeds "One Dollar, please!" And germs, in league with doctors, have their station At vital points to force inoculation, So that our Systems pay a pretty price For ev'ry nostrum, ev'ry fake device Known to the School of Quacks: and so we suffer Imposed upon by patentee and duffer. O, for a Moses! That's our crying need-- To cure Physicians of unbridled greed And probe, no matter where it hurts, the cause Of Doctors' strange immunity from laws. O! for an instrument--an act or sermon-- Of Moses' kind--to cut the germ from German! And lead them from the Wilderness of Vice Whose hearts were warm but now have turned to ice! All these and many more increase the lustre Distinguishing this brilliant Jewish cluster. And Abraham? We save him for the last, Tho first in line, renowned Iconoclast. Of all the Israelites, the men of mark, Who else compares with this grand Patriarch? And who besides, of all the racial roots, Developed half the lusty leaves and shoots, Strong limbs and branches, virile seed? _some_ trunk! The Ark, with all this luggage, would have sunk! And so 'twere well the Deluge didst o'erwhelm The Earth, ere this, with Noah at the helm, Else to preserve the chosen and elite Of Israel's line would needs have taxed a fleet. I love these ancient tribesmen who illumine The Archives of the Past: they were so human! Their frailties were but habits of the Race Since Father Adam set the human pace Hitched up with Eve who, chafing at the bit, Did well her part or bit, in spite of it. But all their mortal weaknesses were nil Compared with virtues that their Records fill; And good or bad, or medium or fair, No Tribe excelled their morals anywhere. They freely gave their tithes, but did it pay To advertise their wealth? a give away! And so their pockets have been worn and frayed By frequent contributions they have made To Charity and Church. I hope and pray They've saved a little for a rainy day! I think they have! for Money talked,--confessed That Hebrews were the ones he liked the best, Because they never slighted or abused him, And always were so careful how they used him. And so, O Sons of Abraham, I say You've come into your own and come to stay! The Promised Land is yours, but what is more, The Earth and Seas and Skies with all their store. You wandered from Judea, but why care? Because your home is here as well as there; And we would miss you just as much, I vum, As those who wait you in Capernaum; For Broadway would despair and sackcloth don If you should leave New York for Ascalon. No more, thank God! will Infidels profane Jerusalem. For centuries the stain Of Turkish rule has laid its unclean hand Upon the Altars of the Holy Land. But now the Prophet's promise is fulfilled, And Jews and Gentiles are rejoiced and thrilled As Men of Allenby, God's Sword, restore The Holy City: _yours_ forevermore. ENGLAND O, Mighty Atlas, thou hast borne the load Of hapless peoples smarting from the goad Of Tyranny, until thy giant strength Seems overtaxed and doomed to break at length. Unless thy vim endures with steadfast force; Unless thy Ship of State keeps on its course; Unless thou gird thy loins and stand astride, Colossus-like, the struggles that betide-- While all the Furies strive, the Turk and Hun, To sap thy power--undo what thou hast done-- Of what avail will all thy efforts be Against the tottering walls of Tyranny? And to what purpose will have lived thy men Who won imposing fame with sword or pen? And what, I pray, will all thy thousands slain Avail thy Empire if they've died in vain? PREPAREDNESS The Ostrich has his wings, but not for flight; He flies _on foot_ when danger is in sight; His mate lays eggs upon the desert reaches And "sands" them over when the leopard screeches. The eggs, thus mounded, fall an easy prey To feline foragers who slink that way. The Ostrich, thus, guards not his nest: instead He hides, in burning sands, his shameless head And lets his monoplane and rudder be Stripped of their plumage by an enemy. Ostriches should Carry Their Eggs in a Basket And use their Feathers For Dusting over the Desert. The Squirrel is quite a different kind of fowl: He works while others sleep, the sly old owl! And stores up food, against the rainy day, In secret nooks, from forest thieves away. When winter comes, or when besieged by foes, Securely housed he feasts and thumbs his nose And ridicules starvation: he's immune! While others, shiftless, sing another tune. The Squirrel, you see, is much misfortune spared In times of stress because he is prepared. Improvident Nuts Should Tear a Leaf From the Squirrel's Diary. A Heifer on the Railroad Crossing stood Chewing Contentment's Cud, as heifers should,-- When, rushing madly, "late again," there came The Noonday Mail. The Heifer was to blame For choosing her position, I would say, Because the Engine had the Right of Whey. The Cow was unprepared! Her switching tail Failed signally to flag the Noonday Mail. But why keep beefing over milk that's spilled? She heeded not the sign and thus was killed. Heifers with Unprotected Flanks should not Invite Rear-guard Actions. The Busy Bee improves the shining hours And gathers honey from the fragrant flowers. When Winter comes, forsaking field and rill, He _hivernates_, but lives in clover still. While Famine stalks without, his Home, _Sweet_ Home Is stored with tempting food from floor to dome. He never lacks, nor has to buy, but cells His surplus food gleaned from the flower-fringed dells. A thrifty fellow is the Busy Bee And fortified against Emergency. A Bee's Ears Contain no Wax And he Saves his Combings Against the Baldness of Old Age. The Mule is well equipped but lacks the _mind_; His strategy is in his heels, behind. If pointed wrong, his practice is not dreaded, But kick he will, no matter how he's headed. With foresight lacking, hindsight to the fore, He'll be just simple Mule forevermore; Without the range or sight he'll blaze away And thwart his purpose with his brazen bray. If well-directed effort were his cult No fortress could withstand his catapult. A Mule should Conserve His Ammunition and Not Shoot-off his Mouth. The Burglar, have you noticed? never troubles To look for petty loot in obscure hovels. He packs his kit and steals adown the road To Gaspard Moneybags' renowned abode. He knows the house-plan ("inside" dope, no doubt) And when he's _in_, old Moneybags is _out_. But Jimmy does not dent the window-sash; He enters _thru the door_ and gets the cash. Prepared? Well, yes! He knew just where to look, For Nora hung the key upon the hook. Team-work is The Handmaiden Of Efficiency. It pays to be Prepared, you see, and so The Snail in Armored Car goes safe, tho' slow; And Alligators in their Coats of Mail Withstand assaults where those, defenceless, fail. The Tortoise totes his Caripace around And dwells in safety where his foes abound; While Wasps, with poisoned javelins, defend Successfully their offspring to the _end_. A Sheep with ramparts has no thought of fear, But guards his buttress when his foes appear, And any Skunk can frighten and harass An Army with Asphyxiating Gas. THE FUGITIVE KISS How I loved her! There on the gate we'd lean, (The dear, old gate that never gave away The loving nothings we were wont to say) From day to day, And sometimes after dark; She was my Angel-Sweetheart, just sixteen. But I was shy! And while I longed to taste The nectar of her lips, I was afraid To draw her to my breast and kiss the Maid: But I essayed! And this is what I drew-- "There's Papa with the bulldog, so make haste!" What could I do? The "bark" was flecked with foam, And old man Jones was meaner than a cur; So there I stood 'twixt fear, and love of her And didn't stir Until they came: and then I kissed them _all_ Good-bye and _beat it home_. _NEW_ MEXICAN NATIONAL ANTHEM My Country vast and grand, Sweet Montezuma Land, My Stingareé. Land of the Knife and Gun, Villa and Scorpion; Land of the Evil One I weep for thee! Smallpox and Rattlesnakes Lurk in thy Cactus brakes, And Yellow Jack. Spiders and Centipedes Gloat o'er thy murd'rous deeds: To cure thy crying needs, Call Diaz back. Tarantula and Flies Poison your lands and skies: Behold your graves! Carranza's waving beard By Pancho's Band is feared, And will be till he's sheared Or dyes or shaves. Horned Toads and Vampire Bats, Gilas and Mountain Cats, Where'er you go! Buzzards and Vultures reign Over a million slain; And Mescal is the bane Of Mexico. O, Land of Chili con Carne and Obregon, Let murders cease! Keep Freedom's fires aglow Where La Frijólés grow; Throw up your Sombrero And Keep the Peace! LOVE I Love is the Mecca of our Heart's Desire: We worship at its shrine and feel its thrill; Burning our Hopes upon its Altar Fire Till Passion be consumed, but not until. II Then Love assumes a calmer mood, when spent-- His quiver empty and his bow unstrung-- And peers into the pleasing Past, content To live, unmoved, his memories among. STRONGARM'S WATERLOO _Some_ drive! From tee to green in one: par, three! That's putting proper English on, you see! And, Goodness Golfus! See the ball roll up To easy putting distance from the cup. Who is this man? Professional, no doubt! He'll "card" a thirty-seven going out; And if he gets the "breaks" he'll make, methinks, A new low record for the Piedmont Links. See with what confidence he wends his way The Fairway thru to make his hole out play! The Gallery, expectant, follows thru To see the Champion go down in _two_. Then to the ball he makes his last address, (The ball was peeved at what he said, I guess) And pulls his gooseneck back a foot or so Before he hits the sphere the fateful blow. Alas for human frailty! See it flit Across the green into the sandy pit! The sighing winds, in protest, moaned Beware! While he invoked the Deity in prayer. And then he played his third, but topped the sphere, The Rubber Rogue responding with a leer. A halo hung around the Stranger's head It seemed: but, nay! 'twas brimstone fire instead, For what he said, in type is not displayed Except on fire-proof paper, I'm afraid. Four! Five! Six! But still far from the goal! The Player loses all his self-control And breaks the "goose" in twain: then hark the din, When Caddie trails the ball and _kicks it in_! Far from the scene of strife the Club House becks The weary Golfers on their inward treks; And close beside, beneath the porch's shade, The Nineteenth hole dispenses lemonade And other cheering drinks, within the law; But little ice that cuts: who cares a straw? THE SPIRIT OF FRANCE Yes! I've done my bit, as you fellows would say, If serving one's country deserves any praise: Two years at the front, then an arm shot away! And this is my "cross" in reward for those days. But I can do more! While there's blood in my veins I'll give the last drop, while the hoof of the Hun Polluted and cloven in Alsace remains: Until France is free we must fight: every one! Of course I'll go back to the trenches again: My wound is fast healing and soon will be sound; Six chevrons have I, but I'll fight with the men Who fill up the shell-holes like moles in the ground. I'll charge with the Boys when they hurdle the top, The Tri-color lashed to my half-useless arm, With pistol or sword in my hand, till I drop: For Freedom is menaced: Go sound the alarm! France needs every son, be they crippled or strong, To rid our fair land of the murderous horde: So flock to the Colors, Brave Boys: come along! And fight till the Glory of France is restored! Our women are outraged, our children enslaved; Up, Frenchmen! and strike till the last dying breath! We can _never_ turn back, so be it engraved On our spears and escutcheons,--_Vengeance or Death_! WAR Down by the village runs the stream Once placid, now a raging flood: Behold it, by the day's last gleam Gorged with the dead and dyed with blood. The Chapel bell has tolled its last; The trees are bare, tho this be Spring: Death's shroud is on the village cast, And Ruin reigns o'er everything. A grist of carnage clogs the Mill, And shells have razed the quondam homes: Fresh graves the trampled vineyards fill, Whose cellars are but catacombs. Beyond the village, Refugees Stand, herded, cowed by fear and grief, Or, _gassed_, implore on bended knees For death, despairing of relief. With bayonets and faces set The Grenadiers, by L'Aiglon led, Present a gruesome parapet,-- Thus, _still defending_, tho they're dead. SONG OF THE SAMSONS We are Samsons, Biff! Boom! Bang! Here to pot the Potsdam Gang. If Bad Bill is found in Metz, We'll not vouch for what he gets! If in Essen he is caught, Good Night! Kultur, Him und Gott! Shades of Bismarck! Watch him faint When he finds his Empire _ain't_! To our Sweethearts we said "Knit," We must go and do our Bit! How d'ye do, Pierrot? Pierrette? We are friends of Lafayette! Wait until our Drive begins,-- Bill, you'll suffer for your sins! Sick 'em, Prince! We'll tie the fuse Onto Frederich Wilhelm's shoes. When we occupy Cologne-- Phew! How big and strong you've grown! We will paint each shop and lodge With bright red in camouflage! Then to Carlsbad we will swing; Need the baths like everything! Frauleins leave your fears behind; We don't war on womankind! We are filled with fire and zeal: Watch us pick the locks to Kiel! We are coming to our own In Lorraine across the Rhone! When our Flocks of Eaglets fly-- Dunder! Blitzen! Bill, Good-bye! Beaks of Steel and Claws of Lead-- Sun eclipsed! The Geezer's dead. CHORUS O, you U Boats, That for U! We slipped thru you; How d'y' do? Hindenberg? Ach, let him rant! He won't stop us _'cause he can't_! Zepps and Taubs are falling down; Butcher Bill will lose his crown; Watch your step, you Horrid Hun, You can't _goosestep_ when you _run_! Hooray for the crimson, white and blue! 'Rah for Old Glory! _Chapeau bas vous!_ 'Rah for the Tri-Color! We're at home In _la belle_ France by the _eau de_ Somme; Hooray for our Allies true and brave! We'll all sweep thru like a tidal wave Over the _top_ in a mighty Drive-- And never stop while the HUNDS survive! SIX DAYS O, the comfort we feel When we finish a meal Consisting of rice cakes and whey; Because beyond question There's no indigestion At the end of a Meatless day. When the "buck" dough doth rise From y'East to the skies And hot griddled pancakes--oh, say! With sausages frying There's no use denying Your welcome, O Wheatless day. When the house is afrost Without fuel: its cost Is more than we're able to pay: With our hearts all aglow We can thaw ice or snow Making light of a Heatless day. When there's discord with wife There's a shadow on life That once was so sunny and gay; But billing and cooing Subordinate stewing At the end of a Sweetless day! When will beefsteak and ham Not be sold by the gram? How long will these high prices stay? When the bad Profiteers Show contrition and tears At the dawn of a Cheatless day. When our Soldiers in France Do their Indian dance And scalp all the Huns in the fray, The Kaiser will holler, With rope for a collar, At the end of his Ruthless day! A PROTEST While now 'tis meet to eat fish, eggs and maize, _Vice_ meat and wheat whene'er we dine or sup, So be it! but this protest I would raise-- In spite of warnings--veal keeps bobbing up! A PRAYER O Sun and Skies, that Hoover o'er our Fields Where Grains implanted lie, and Silos stand,-- Pour out thy Warmth and Rains till Hunger yields Thruout the World to our blest _Fodder_land! SINCE THE LITTLE ONE CAME I seem to have taken a new lease on life Since the little one came; I've lost the old grouch, and I say to my wife, Do you think I'm to blame Because I have changed in my feelings towards you Since the Little One came? The furnace, 'tis true, gave me something to do, But I think it a shame That some tiny tie like the Little One here (How is Snooks for a name?) Was not sooner left on our doorstep, my dear! The Store takes my time, but a very small part,-- It's all over at four! I've cut Clancy's out and have made a new start; All my cronies are sore! But what do I care? I have mended my ways, So I rush from the Store And hasten back home where the Little One plays On the ruggèd hall floor, And pick him up quick (O, how pretty he looks!) Without shutting the door; So anxious I am to caress little _Snooks_. The chafing-dish chafes and the Joy-car is sore; We have given them up! The Two-step and Bridge are tabooed evermore; There is Joy in our Cup! We've cut out the movies and dining about For our own modest sup; And billiards and golfing, I've cut them both out! As I did to the Hup. With playthings and drum (and a ruppy, tup, tup!) Loaded up like a Krupp, I beat it to Snooky,--our _English Bull Pup_. RUN ALONG, LITTLE GIRL! Run along, Little Girl! for it's bed-time now: Your Dollies are sleepy and poor old Bow-wow Is weary and lonesome, curled up in a heap-- 'Twould take little rocking to put him to sleep! Your Teddy Bear's growling: or is it a snore? Perhaps he objects to his bed on the floor? So pick up your treasures and when prayers are said-- Run along, Little Girl, and climb in to bed! Run along, Little Girl! The Sandman is here; You've crowded too much into one day, I fear! Poor, little, tired Girlie, you've worked at your play Till the bloom of your cheeks has faded away. To-morrow, again, you can sit by the fire And dress all your Dollies in gala attire. Say, Good Night! to your thimble, needle and seams; Run along, Little Girl, and sweet be your dreams! Run along, Little Girl, and cover up tight! There's nothing to harm you, no spooks in the night Nor Bogeymen glaring when you are awake; For they're _bad_ little girls that Bogeymen take. To-morrow Bow-wow can be hitched to your sled And draw you to Grandma's to see Piggie fed; No harm can befall you when Mother is near; Run along, Little Girl, and God bless you, Dear! A RETROSPECT Picture a Home with love aglow and laughter Reverberating from each joist and rafter; A sweet-faced Mother kissing you "Good Night"! With "Go to sleep! lest Santa Claus take fright And dashes by--leaving no books or toys For naughty, wide-eyed, little girls and boys." Then see her tip-toe down the stairs, and trim The tree--a toy on ev'ry outstretched limb; The rocking-horse and wagon at the base, And candy-stockings in the big fireplace: For thus we retrospect to show, no other Would scheme and work and "fabricate" like Mother To make our Christmas Day a grand fruition, And keep the secret of its sweet tradition. THE EAGLE SCREAMS We have arrived! America is First! Here Freedom cradled; here its pæan burst Upon the ears of nations, near and far Till Light of Freedom is the Guiding Star Thruout the world; though Thraldom still obscures The Guiding Star where Tyranny endures. 'Twas ever thus till Boston's "Reb" array Upset King George's teapot in the Bay, And Pegasus, whom we Revere, astride His high-bred hobby, warned the countryside. Before that time the Briton played the game Of _pour la tea_ or Golf (its proper name). With confidence and brassie nerve, methinks, Until they struck a Bunker on our links That thwarted all their prowess--'pon my soul! And left them groggy at the nineteenth hole. But still they puttered 'round and drank our rum Till Washington's avenging time had come; When, with his army, steeled at Valley Forge, He, George the First, uncrowned the other George, And all the "red-breasts," from our eyries shooed Where now the Bird of Freedom guards his brood. THE SERVICE STAR The stars are agleam in their azurine field, Diffusing effulgence afar; But magnitude, lustre and fixedness yield To the glorious Service Star. In aureate setting, a pendant aglare, Is the radiant Service Star; That blazes with fire like a rare solitaire, A gift to the Valkyr of War. Protect thou our treasure, O, Valkyr! Restore Our Jewel so priceless! and bar From Valhalla's Dungeons, where Death's torrents pour, Our sanctified Service Star! SOME DAY Some day when the war is ended And we sail from France away, With sorrow and longings blended, Back home to America; And we live once more in Blighty A thousand years in a day, In the Land of God Almighty Where the Old Folks watch and pray: Some day, when we hit the pillow Again on a box-spring bed, As snug as an armadillo With his shell-protected head; When bugles refrain from tooting, And noises of battle stop; When victory ends recruiting, Or charging Over the Top: _Some_ day! when we're thru with fighting And the beaten Hun retreats; When the Cooties cease from biting And we sleep between the sheets! THE CRUISE OF THE SEA SERPENT And now behold the Merchant Submarine! Only its peeking periscope is seen, But what a cyclorama it reveals To those below! Thru surging seas it steals And vies with dolphins, porpoises and sharks To keep apace with brigantines and barks; And, tho itself unseen, it's proud to show To what low depths a submarine can go. The Cyclops sees as well by night as day; Its father, Neptune, gives it right of way: Amphibious, it rides the Ocean's crest, Or in its sunken Gardens takes its rest. This new-type boat we designate as It Because no other pronoun seems to fit. No water-laden craft could be a He, Nor one unspoken could be rated She. The Germans call it _unter_: O. U. Cargo! They aim to close the bar on the embargo. Beneath the waves no lurching doth it feel But speeds its course upon an even keel. With duplex engines and a double crew, (It's "manned" by mermaids when it's hid from view). It scoffs at dangers, tho they lurk around, And shuts its _eye_ to perils that abound. There's scant spare space, but still its ribs enfold A priceless cargo in its shallow hold. Past hostile ships into a neutral haven, It comes up smiling with all flags a wavin'. But now these "Cargo Craft" throw off disguise And cut our neutral throats: it's no surprise That dastards, who as "scraps of paper" rate Their solemn Treaties, would thus lie in wait And murder innocents without emotion, Making a shambles of the outraged Ocean. Now lashed to fury, see the waves rebel And sweep these Prussian Pirates down to Hell! No longer neutral the Avenging Sword Is in our hands to smite the Hun-hound horde. The God of Joshua, in righteous wrath Will, in its flight thru empyrean path, Command the Sun to stop: it is His will! Till _Kultur_ be effaced--and not until. AMERICA America, Crusader in the Cause Of Liberty, before thy shrine we pause And offer grateful prayer that thou art Right In making demonstration of thy Might. Without a thought of Conquest doth thou draw Thine honored sword for Liberty and Law, That Nations of a common tongue, tho weak, May gain the Peace with Freedom that they seek; And occupy again, when battles cease, Their places in the Firmament of Peace. Fight on! Defender of the Cause! till Truth Shall banish Tyranny and Wars forsooth, And throttle _Kultur_ and its godless School, Till Teutons, purged, obey the Golden Rule! LIFE AND LOVE Life is the Echo of the Buried Past; A Soul reclaimed, an Atom born anew: Its fire burns on, tho flickering at the last, And finds its grand fulfillment, Love, in you. LIFE IN DEATH Why should we dread the Messenger of Death? Who comes as friend when sufferings beset, And gives surcease of pain with final breath So that Life leaves, rejoiced, without regret. GERMANY O, Hun, from what low beast didst thou descend? That thou shouldst have the lust to kill and rend; The bestial passion to enjoy the groans Of suffering victims, while you crunch their bones Or gouge their eyes, that mutely plead in vain For quick oblivion and ease from pain? Of ponderous cast and savage mien, what teat, With Hatred filled and Passion's fiery heat, Reared thee more wolf than man? ill-bred,--a curse To thine own kind, and to the Universe! ITALY Italians, hold! Rienzi pleads again Against the Tyrants: hold if ye be men! Let not the foe despoil your fertile lands Or wrest historic treasures from your hands! Guard well your daughters! Shield your budding sons! Lest they be maimed or murdered by the Huns. Soldiers of Italy, would ye be slaves To Teuton hordes? Behold the sacred graves Of Garibaldi and your martyred dead Who made ye Freemen! Wouldst be slaves instead? The Alpine Passes that were yours are lost; Your Northern Rivers have been reached and crossed; Hold, Romans, hold! Halt further Teuton gains, And drive their looting legions from your plains! Hold! Men of Italy! Your wall of steel Can save fair Venice from the Despot's heel: Hold! Every man! for Honor, Country, Home-- And for the Glory of Eternal Rome! MARY IS MERRY NO MORE The Lamb that accompanied Mary Without aid of cudgel or rope, Was raised by her sire Elder Berry, And washed with dioxygen soap. Its fleece, like the linen-spread table, Was snow-white: the lambkin was prized And kept from the sheep in the stable Who never were deodorized. The lamb had a yearning for knowledge, And schoolward would follow the lass Till she was admitted to college, A graduate out of his class. Then sheep-eyes were made by the teacher, And Mary was quick to decide 'Twixt him and the poor, woolly creature Who made lambentations and died. She married her Teacher,--a lesson! Dyspeptic and old, he's a fright! Her thoughts fail of fitting expression, So she lams her own kids just for spite. She looks at her spouse with deep loathing, And sighs for her dead quadruped, And wishes the "wolf in sheep's clothing"-- Her husband, were dead in his stead. Alas, lass! You've forded the ferry; Your tombstone was graven for two; The lamb, chiseled there, stands for Mary, And the _Old English_ MARY for yew. The lamb reached the end of his tether When Mary ascended on High, But surely, in spite of the wether, They'll meet in the Sweet Bye-and-Bye. I SHOT AN ARROW I shot an arrow: how it sang! It was a poisoned arrow! And when it turned, a boomerang, It chilled me to the marrow. I know not where the arrow struck, And care but little whether It came straight back or ran amuck Upon the near-by heather. But _this_ I know; however fast The arrow homeward scurried, My getaway was unsurpassed-- For, Goodness, how I hurried! FIXING THE BLAME The almost-King of Verdun, still uncrowned, Wearied of _driving_, walked the ramparts 'round To see his father, Mr. William Kaiser, Who was to him an Oracle and wiser. "O Sire! Inform me! Tell your first-born son, Who caused the War, and why it was begun? Who slipped the leash, and what was the excuse For turning Europe's rabid War Dogs loose? Did you? Or was it Cousin George, or Nick Who stacked the cards and played the dirty trick? Or was it Joe, or Ferdinand, or Grey Who sawed the bridge and pulled the props away?" "My Son, I swear by all the periscopes And Zeppelins to which I pin my hopes; By all the Ocean Sharks and Bats a-sky, By Gott-in-Himmel! As I hope to die, _I'm_ not to blame! I didn't use the spurs, Or try to overwork Geographers! I fought for Peace, and ne'er defiance hurled, Altho' the Fatherland _should_ rule the world. But here's the truth: a secret I'll disclose! A stranger 'twas who made us come to blows! It happened thus: a mighty Nimrod came From Afric wilds, where he had played the game Until his cudgel bore a hundred nicks, (A record this for all Prodigious Sticks) To Germany. No pussyfoot was his, But there was courage in his Nobel phiz; And in his stride were energy and grace Enough to make the goose-step commonplace. I took him to my Palace, as my guest, And poured libations from the cellar's _best_, (He was a _certified_ non-drinker--See? So just accord this proper secrecy!) And then arranged to hold a Grand Review Of all my Armies and Reservists too. 'De-lighted!' said my guest, and nothing more, As we reviewed my legions corps by corps; But this blunt comment signified his zeal, And so I mobilized my fleet at Kiel; And on my Royal Yacht, my guest and I Watched the maneuvres as my ships passed by. 'De-lighted, Bill!' the Hardy Hunter shouted-- 'With such a fleet I'd have the whole world routed; And with your armies I would soon disperse The Fighting Units of the Universe!' Such praise was pleasing to my ears, altho My Wasps and Devil-fish I didn't show: I deemed it best to _meld_ this 'hundred aces' When all my ships and men were in their places. Had he seen _these_, I knew he would advise The conquest of the Earth and Seas and Skies: But, Shades of Bismarck! _that_, you understand Might prove a strain upon the Fatherland. And so I kept the Peace, but thought about The many martial plans we figured out; And how the cost of my Frontier Defences Compared with his proposed campaign expenses. You see, Mein Heir, this man was full of guile And caused the War: this Bey of Oyster Isle. He hypnotized me: put it in my mind To be the Potentate of all Mankind! So blame me not! The fault I must disown, And put the guilt on Theodore alone! Whatever comes anon, I'm not whipped yet! And with it all, I have but one regret-- That _he_ was not impressed to lead my drive To Petersburg to take the Czar alive; And then, a Marshal, ordered to Paree To capture it and bring it back to me; Then take my fleet, the English Channel over And put King George to rout and bombard Dover; And then supplant the Sultan, take his Fez And lead my peerless Forces to Suez. While _you_ have failed, and Hindenburg and Mack, _He_ never fizzles when he makes attack. See what I've missed! for, _see what he has done_! And yet his vast campaign is just begun. He leads his Legions, Bull Moose, Calf and Cow To capture a Convention _even now_." * * * * * An orderly approached the Royal Pair Just at this stage and left despatches there. He stood at close attention, hand to head, While this absorbing cablegram was read-- "Outflanked and captured; resignation tendered; Mooses dehorned and all the herd surrendered! Am looking for another job already,-- Would take the German Presidency--Teddy." * * * * * The Kaiser turned, looked at the Prince and wept, While noxious gases o'er the bulwarks crept. LOVE'S RECOMPENSE "Do you really, truly love me, with a love that mocks at Fate?" Cried the rustic, buxom maiden to her lover at the gate; "Yes, my Pet! And when Dame Fortune smiles upon us we will wed; I will strew your path with roses: Bear me witness, Gods o'erhead!" Thus he spake unto his sweetheart, under Heaven's starry blue, And the angels, smiling on him, heard his vow to "e'er be true." Then he placed his arms around her--kissed her: they were in a trance! And two _soles_ toward Heav'n were lifted as the bulldog grabbed his pants. ADAM'S ALE Come, Comrades, gather 'round the festal board And quaff the sparkling Water from the gourd! _This_ is the drink that Adam's Tribe imbibed Before the Wines of Gath were diatribed. (Methinks some other brand was drunk by Cain The day that Abel ruthlessly was slain.) And won, against all other potions there, The First White Ribbon at the Gaza Fair. You'll never know, until you take a sip Its power to soothe, and cool the fevered lip. Had Noah _stuck to_ water he would shine As undisputed Master of the Brine. The Water-wagon that he launched, at first Steered Noah straight but didn't cure his thirst: So when he _spoke_ the Ararat Café He soon fell off,--his rudder washed away. But wallward turn the picture you're beholding And hang more cheerful paintings on the moulding! Behold a _watercolor_ of eclat! This, fair Rebecca had the skill to _draw_: She stands beside the well and plies the sweep, While sweat and blushes o'er her features creep. Such grace and poise, such strength and skill, Such sweeping gestures and unbending will Are indices of Abstinence complete; (We can't abstain from loving you, Petite!) Upon her head she rests the dripping urn And goes straight home: she doesn't _dare_ to turn! Don't stumble, Miss! Or suffer teasing boys To cause derangement of your equipoise! But keep your head and waver not at all Lest you be deluged by the waterfall! So daily to the pool Rebecca strayed And drank the water, when she didn't wade: And thus her framework waxed like iron; I trust 'Twas ne'er assailed or undermined by rust. So, fill the gourd and pass it to your friend! It's Safety First and safety to the end. No headaches lurk within, no tinge of sorrow, No dark forebodings or remorse to-morrow! And furthermore, it isn't hard to take: If you've not tried it, _do_, for Mercy's sake! Behold the Oaken Bucket, hanging high, By Bards and Singers lauded to the sky. It never touched, in all its useful days, A thing but water. Here fair Psyche plays Beside the spring that mirrors all her graces. (Would you object to _water in_ such cases?) Now mark the fate befalling Jack and Jill Because they slipped and let the water spill; And see poor Tantalus for water crying, Thus punished for his sins,--athirst and dying! And note this "Titian," called "The Drunkard's Fate," In which the crimson hues predominate. He holds the lamp-post in his close embrace And has a package from Pat Murphy's place To carry home. His eyes are red and dim, So close the bar and turn the hose on him! This drink was ever priceless, yet it's free; The Source and Fountain of Sobriety; And so we offer without bar or price Enough of THIS to put your thirst on ice. So drink to WATER, while the billows swell: The World wants Prohibition--and all's WELL! RUSSIA Canst Thou, in all this babel, build aright Freedom's Palladium? The long, black night That, ages thru, hath dimmed your yearning eyes And dulled your minds, still hovers o'er your skies. A rift there was, disclosing to your view The Dawn of Day, but then the darkness grew Yet more intense, as if the Sun rebelled At such a cheerless greeting and withheld Its Light. And now again Night reigns supreme, But just beyond the Day is all agleam. BELGIUM Sad-eyed and weary, Thou must suffer more, Until thy supermen have paid the score For outraged daughters, murdered sons and wives; For ravaged homesteads, and brave soldiers' lives. Be not dismayed! Altho your Cup of Woe Is full to overflowing from the blow; Tho Justice seems indifferent to your prayer, And ruin stalks about you everywhere. The day of reckoning is near at hand, When Justice will restore your pillaged Land, And Vengeance will unsheath its righteous blade And flay the Teutons till your score is paid. OUR FRIENDS ACROSS THE STREET (To S. and W. A.) When we're tired of reading essays, Tho they be a mental treat; When we're bored by social callers, Be they ever so elite; When we crave some relaxation Or the Foursome's incomplete, We S. O. S. or telephone To our Friends across the Street. When our larder needs renewing Or our ice succumbs to heat; When the signs of Drought are brewing 'Cause our "stock" is incomplete; And our chairs are insufficient When we have some guests to seat, Why, we just go out and borrow From our Friends across the Street. When we're worried or in trouble, And our projects meet defeat; When our prospects seem quite hopeless,-- Life seems bitter that was sweet; When we lose our nerve and falter 'Cause the rough way wounds our feet, We can always find sweet comfort In our Friends across the Street. When we end, at last, our journey And the saintly Peter greet, Or descend to Realms Infernal Where the Goats, rejected, bleat, We would never feel contented, Whether mixed with Chaff or Wheat, If we couldn't be together With our Friends across the Street. EPITAPHS I left this Vale of Tears to gain repose, And change, for Harp and Wings, my worldly clothes; There's no redress, so if I _fall_ from grace I'll be quite cool enough for _either_ place. Wed Bled Fled Dead Nufsed Go not the way I went, O Mortal Man! But follow out a more successful plan, Lest you, as I am now, remorseful be For imitating U. S. Currency. For forty cents an hour I slaved At Delpont's Powder Mills; And all the money that I saved Scarce paid my funeral bills. Erected to our father is this stone: He couldn't leave the whiskey flask alone; To Spirit World he vanished from our sight; We hope he's very snug, and _know_ he's tight. Above the clouds I sojourn now, The twinkling stars between, Because I tried to figure how To cook with gasolene. I'm _dead_ all right, but not quite _all right_ dead, For schemes of vengeance hurtle thru my head; My wife eloped, a cheating chicken she; Forsook her nest, and then flew back to me With all her brood: I love her as I useter But I'm a-laying for that other Rooster. I followed Father with the rake The day he scythed the clover; So _green_, he cut _me_, by mistake And my heydays were over. Here sleeps, at last, our little baby Yorick! _We_ couldn't make him _without paregoric_. I'm not averse to being dead, But this I do despise,-- To have a tombstone at my head Inscribed with blooming lies: "A faithful spouse, a parent kind; Alas, too soon he went!" But this is all they had in mind-- To get my last red cent. Assembled here my Wife is, Helen Nation: 'Twas gasoline that caused the separation, Which shows how very short the mortal lease is,-- I think 'twas lucky to have saved the pieces! Here let me rest without a sigh or tear, I've learned my lesson--not to interfere! If I could live my mortal life agin I'd be a pussyfoot and not butt in. My Mother, famous for her pies Lies buried 'neath this shaft; I wonder if, in Paradise, She still pursues her craft? She'll be too much engrossed, 'twould seem, In picking on the lyre To give attention to a scheme To bake without a fire. But if perchance she had the dough And couldn't make it rise, I'm sure she'd know just where to go To look for _heat_ supplies. He called me "Liar!" Like a flash My honor I defended, Until his razor cut a gash So deep, that I was ended. If I could live my life again I'd not invite an issue But say, when villified, Amen! And thus preserve my tissue. THE CONQUEST OF THE SUN The Morning Sun, with golden dart, Crept to Milady's bed; And as he drew the screens apart A halo crowned her head. Such radiance he'd never viewed; Enraptured, he surveyed Her virgin charms: beatitude! He stooped and kissed the maid. Entranced because her splendor seemed To dazzle as it shone, He conjured all his wiles and beamed Her burning cheeks upon. And then she woke, Milady fair, Enchanted by his art, To find, 'midst fires a slumb'ring there, His dart had pierced her heart. And so the Morning Sun can gain Milady when he tries, But Midnight Sons must lose, 'tis plain, Because they're late to rise. OWED TO A ROACH O, Thou, who thru the sink doth blithely go; (O, Little Roach, how could you _sink_ so low?) Who pipeth all your kin from kitchens near Wherever crumbs of comfort may appear; Who layeth siege, in mural cracks or trenches, Where grease spots lure or rampant be the stenches; Who hideth in the dough when bread is rising,-- I ask you to a Feast, of my devising,-- To eat these _powders_, 'round the plumbing placed, Until your glutted carcass be effaced. O, Little Roach, if you would selfish be And not "ring in" your whole fool family, We'd tolerate you: nay, a pet would make you If you'd not scamper all our pie and cake thru! THE MOODS OF THE WINDS O, Breezes of Spring! How they rollick and ring With delight as they sing Like birds on the wing. O, Zephyrs of May! With your balm and bouquet; How you gladden the day Like Fairies at play. O, Winds of the Fall! How they thrill and enthrall, How they hurtle and call With shrill caterwaul. O, Winter's bleak Breath! How it freezes and saith To the ice-vested wraith, "Thou'rt shrouded in Death." THE TOXIC TIPPET 'Tis said that Mary, she of Reader note, Was wrapped up in her lamb--her lambskin coat-- E'en after his demise, beatified. He served her well, and for his mistress dyed. Then Mary died, and took angelic form, Because the lambskin (used to keep her warm) Gave her the anthrax: what a cruel blow To be thus snatched above from furbelow! TWENTY-THIRD PSALM My Shepherd careth for His flock: Beneath a cloudless sky In pastures green, by spring-cleft rock, In luxury I lie. He brings contentment to my soul And leads me to the Light, By which I see the Heav'nly goal From dismal depths of Night. Though Poverty attend my way And sorrow fills my heart, Thy Guidance will disaster stay, So good and pure Thou art! Thou, in the presence of my foes, Bestoweth favors rare, And giveth pleasure and repose In answer to my prayer. To such a Shepherd I will give My everlasting love, And glory in the Hope--to live With Him, at last, Above. FRIENDSHIP True Friends are rare: who counts them by the score Is blest indeed, for we have, seldom, more. If we possess just one real, _trusting_ friend Who shares our troubles, loyal to the end; Who, when we fall, will help us to our feet; Who finds with us contentment most complete; Whose pocket-book and heart are open thrown Whether we need affection or a loan, And makes no record of the favor done, But gives, with equal pleasure, either one-- That's Friendship _true_! If I had twenty such, With all their purses open to my touch, And each disposed to "stake" me and forget The circumstance and measure of the debt, I'd soon be on the road to ease and plenty, But wish I had _such_ friendships _more than twenty_. PARAMOUNT PROBLEMS Shall Women vote? Shall Demon Rum survive Or be, thru Woman Suffrage, flayed alive? These are the questions that engross the nation: Shall Women vote or be kept on probation? Are they not gentle, honest, sweet and kind? A single missing virtue we can't find, And yet we say--"Stay home and can the cherries! You're far too frail and fine for statecraft worries! The Sacred Home for you! Just 'tend your chicks! You'd soil your hands to mix in Politics! And then there's scrubbing, cooking and a few Odd jobs besides: you couldn't ballot _too_!" But how absurd! Fair Woman, in her wrath, Will make our future course a thorny path: Unless we meet her fairly in these matters, She'll tear our senseless arguments to tatters, And rule _both_ Home and State to suit herself, Putting deceitful _man_ upon the shelf. As sure as death or taxes, day or night, She'll have the _vote_ without, or _with_ a fight; And those of us who counsel Peace, as best, Should not oppose and put her to the test; And when she _gets_ the vote, by force or gift, The clouds obscuring Temperance will lift; For all the Wets will vanish, ev'ry one! Evaporate like mists before the sun. True, Women drink; it's foolish to deny it! But not as men do--as a steady diet; They'll take a punch, or sip a little claret, But when it comes to liquor--they can't bear it. And so we ask again--shall Women vote? Shall men surrender to the petticoat And give up all their freedom and their tipples Just to return to Lacteal Life and Nipples? The War is on! Nebraska bids defiance To Rum Dispensers and the Booze Alliance: Hereafter all our barley, wheat and corn Will be quite unresponsive to the _horn_. The _essence_ of the grain will be tabooed And ev'ry seed accounted for as _food_. No more will Barleycorn assail our vitals Or be the Leader in our Song Recitals: No more will Liquor check our ardent thirst, And so we'll go from bad, perhaps, to worst. If we must _eat_, perforce, and never rum it, What will befall the man who has to gum it; Whose teeth are absent and who food eschews, Drawing his daily nourishment from booze; Who can't obtain a single drop of gin To comfort and sustain the man within? Pleading for drinks, unheeded he'll grow wheezy, But he'll improve his breath if he'll Speak Easy. The Drunkard's fate would be a dreadful warning, Who, having "opened" Riley's place each morning Found, one cold dawn, the foot-rail gone and read-- "Soft Drinks for Sale" where Schnapps was sold instead. Picture his sorrow! See him pallid grow When told the facts: a spectacle of woe! Back to his wife he slinks: he couldn't face her! Because he missed his usual "morning bracer." The Place is sold: it's now a candy store Where Schnapps will be dispensed _with_ evermore. Good-bye, Old Demijohn; Decanters, too! His life will empty be--and so are you! Where once the Canteen flourished 'neath our flag, Now Prohibition flags the soldier's jag; And where Josephus keeps his arid log The water-pitcher has succeeded grog. Some Commonwealths already have the pluck To ban, humanely, those who _chase the duck_; And other States have punished Rum enough To have compassion on the _boot-leg_ stuff. Thus Prohibition grows: but so does wheat And corn and rye: I wonder which will beat? But what of Woman? Where's her rightful freedom? They ought to have the vote, because we need 'em To purge our land of drunkenness and crime And save our striplings from the slough and slime. Why _shouldn't_ Women vote? Perhaps they may! Should Drunkards or Illiterates say nay? Could citizens of foreign birth refuse To give our Native Daughters what they choose? Our Native Sons with chivalry invoke Fair play for women,--freedom from the yoke; And shouldn't other Freemen rise in flocks To help our Women win the Ballot Box? The trouble lies, not _here_, but with the Bosses Who trade in graft and deal in _double crosses_. The sooner we eliminate this class The quicker will _full freedom_ come to pass. But watch the Anti! Make her hold her tongue, Or duck her in the pond, the geese among; Or lock her in the booth, without a mirror, Where she can't see herself and we can't hear her. Thus, neck and neck, these two great questions lead: Will men be equal to their Country's need? If one Reform upon the other waits, Speed Equal Suffrage to the White House gates, And Prohibition (Farewell, Dear old Liquor!) Will follow as the tape pursues the ticker! But if, perchance, the Dry's should get a trimmin', _Smile_, if you please,--but don't _prohibit_ Women! A REUNION Once more, Good Friends, we're gathered 'round the board To feel the joys of fellowship restored. There's nothing like them! _Friends_ can't be replaced, Nor thoughts of them from Memory be effaced! Of course we form _new_ friendships, but I feel That these, like _old_ ones, are not staunch and real. It takes long years to _prove_ our friends, you know,-- Those who are steadfast in our weal or woe. So here's to you, Miss Prim! and you, Miss Prude! We wouldn't have you different if we could! Two Roses rare you are, and sweet; I ween You were not doomed to bloom and blush unseen. I've seen your cheeks suffused with crimson hues; (Dame Nature's _make-up_ is the rouge you use!) I've seen your lips in saucy challenge perked; (But for your protests, they'd be overworked!) I've seen your eyes with mischief filled and tears; (But I could never _pity_ you, My Dears!) I've seen your breasts with agitation heave; (Your _hearts_ must be affected, I believe!) I've seen your shapely forms pass in review Before my lonely couch, in dreams of you,-- And what I haven't seen, some little bird Has told me all about. Upon my word, If what he says be true, what I have _heard_ To what I've seen, methinks, would be preferred. Then here's to Friendship! What more potent force Doth link mankind together? Love, of course, Doth fetter us betimes, but Time must say Whom we shall cherish, whom to cast away. When Love and Friendship, heart and hand, are bound, What more of Joy can compass us around? So, Friends and Sweethearts, Comrades tried and true, We pledge our love and loyalty to you! THE CRUISE OF THE SQUIRREL Somewhere, sometime, I've heard it said, or read That Fools butt in where Angels fear to tread. A single "Angel" with a Pack of Fools Is not enough to change established rules; And so, I think, the "Angel" in this case Should bear, alone, the onus and disgrace,-- For Angels should know better than to swoop Upon the Dove of Peace and fowl her coop. The Good Ship Squirrel has left our shores behind To measure human breath 'gainst Ocean Wind. "Laden with Nuts" her clearance shows. Four Bells! She's off! to fight for Peace with all those shells. No Port, however, figures in her quest, Her "papers" show,--and this is manifest! The Dove of Peace, perched on the mizzen-top, Hath disappointments sticking in her crop. The peaceful bird is shy and very frail; Can't stand the weight of salt upon her tail; The War has made her nervous, and the roar Of many cannon made the poor bird soar. Up springs a storm! The Dove's white feathers show, While Nuts are cracking on the deck below. And then an iceberg looms against the sky, But still the Dove is far too proud to fly; But when, anon, a periscope appears The Bird of Peace is overcome by fears, And "beats it" to the iceberg's crystal crest, Where she prepares to build her neutral nest. The Submarine atop the billows now, Stands by the Squirrel until she dips her bow And sinks beneath the waves; then looks above And takes a parting broadside at the Dove. The "Angel" then, in Neptune's sky-machine Ascendeth in a blaze of gasoline; The Dove, marooned, broods over many things, Nestling her poor _cold feet_ beneath her wings. * * * * * Regenerate, the Angel has returned From empyrean Flight, to Earth, and learned (I think Saint Peter gave him sound advice!) To keep the Pacifistic Germ on ice Until a Luther, if there still remains One decent man where Wilhelm Cæsar reigns, Denounces all the crimes of Germany, And proselytes to crush Autocracy. JINGLES Little Bo Peep Went fast to sleep; Losing her sheep. There were ninety and nine of these lambkins that fled When poor, little Bo was asleep in her bed; And when they returned they were _mutton_ instead. O, what a stew! 'Twixt me and yew What could Bo do? O! Jack and Jill Went up the hill, Their pail to fill. The water was _running_: they didn't pursue, But filled up their growler with Double X Brew, And Jill, in a measure, was full, and Jack too. Both had a thirst: Jack's was the worst: He tumbled first. Horner boy Jack Had the right knack; Cornered the snack. His fortune grew fast from that one Christmas plum; His profits on 'Change showed a marvelous sum, Till he soon had Financialdom under his thumb. O! what a wiz! Jack knew his biz: All now is his. Good old King Cole, "Merry old Soul," Knew how to _bowl_. No high-balls were spared at his nocturnal spread, And the fumes of the liquor would strike in his head Till, knocked off his pins, he was set up in bed. Jackass or king Will have his fling: Naughty, Old Thing. Old Lady Drew Lived in a shoe: Children there too. Their home was too cramped for a dozen or more, But others have suffered from tight shoes before, So the latch-string was always hung out on the door. To upper skies Good old sole flies, With all her ties. The Drews and Jack Horner lived on the same street: Jack gambled with Hymen and Drew Marguerite, And love for his sole-mate affected his feet. There ne'er was a "comeback" to poor Jack and Jill; The King followed after them going "down hill," And Bo, left alone, is a sheepish maid still. THE WEIGHT OF LOVE I was sitting in the parlor With my Sweetheart on my knee, And the fireplace lights and shadows Silhouetted her and me. Heavy grew she towards the morning, When the gold-fringed sunbeams leap: _She_ was wide awake as ever But my leg was fast asleep. Flesh is weak and so I shifted My loved load, as best I could, From the numb knee to the other; From the leg of flesh to wood. Then I felt my Sweetheart shiver, And I realized her state When she drew a white-ash sliver From the leg _articulate_. DO IT! Dare to do it! You'll not rue it If you save some Human Craft From the rocks where fierce gales blew it, Using Kindness for a raft. O, dare to do! Be kind and true To the friends you make thru life; Then High Heaven will reward you With immunity from strife. If a Lion Were a dyin', Would you go into his lair And attempt to soothe his cryin'? Do it! Do it, if you _dare_! AMENITIES The Parson tied the Hymen knot That made two halves a whole; The while a speculating what Would be his marriage toll. The Groom, when he had kissed the Bride, Was taken with the chills: Her icy lips could not abide Osculatory thrills. But soon his fever was effaced; His hand obeyed his will, And in the Parson's palm he placed A soiled One Dollar Bill. "Anathema!" the preacher cried,-- "Thou reptile of the Earth!" The Groom replied--"Then take the Bride! I think it's all she's worth!" "DANSER SUR UN VULCAN" Now goeth forth the Swell elite, With patent leathers on his feet; With collar spotless, cuffs to suit, In truth bon-ton, from hat to boot. A bootblack, with an eye to biz, With dirty hands and ugly phiz, Beholds him as he goes, and throws Banana peels beneath his toes. Along the pave Adonis trips; He steps upon the peel, and slips Into the juicy gutter: His eyes are filled with fire and ire, But water, muck and mire conspire To drown the words he'd utter. L'ENVOI Go where you will, the stars will _shine_, And so will Tony, I opine: But O! the stars Adonis spied When he went "out," a sewerside. AT THE BULGING UDDER TIME Years have passed since I, an urchin, Drove the Cow, so sleek and prime, Down the path, where crows were perchin' At the Bulging Udder Time. Those were days well worth one's living, When I watched, with joy sublime, What the generous Cow was giving At the Bulging Udder Time. Later on, when we grew older, Father gave us each a dime-- Me and Bill--to milk and _hold_ her, At the Bulging Udder Time: But, alas! we came to grieving: Bill was kicked and smeared with grime, And the Cow boo-booed on leaving-- "Come around some _udder_ time!" VAGARIES The husky Corn has pushed ahead with silken locks atop; O, Brother, ain't it shocking? And Colonels are expecting quite a bumper Bourbon crop-- Saloonward they are flocking! But when they strip the ears and find the wasteful worms surrounding, 'Twill make the "moonshine" dimmer; For ev'ry still has coils of worms illicitly abounding Where sour-mash mixtures simmer. The hillside Stills their fragrance breathe, and wood birds are a sounding; My jug is in the hollow: So fill it up, but watch your step and Secret Service hounding! The scent is sweet to follow. The Cotton Bolls are bursting forth with weevils in the sepals; Come, Dinah, get to picking! And rush the staple to the mart to clothe the naked peoples! Or you will get a licking! The baleful Gins are all prepared to do the fibre-squeezing: Get busy, Massa Willie! And set the weevils back a bit, and save the folks from freezing! It's getting powerful chilly! You Pickaninnies hustle now, and do the proper bagging! The possum's cooking, Honey! And when the work is thru we'll do our banjo stunts, and ragging And get our "Cakewalk" money. A SHATTERED ROMANCE My heart is aflame with a love that enslaves My passion for thee is afire; My soul is athirst for the love that it craves, And you are the one I admire. Pray speak, Dear! and say your affections are mine, And all the sweet charms you possess; Then I will surrender my wishes to thine And be but thy slave, I confess. When she answered, at length, I felt very sure I'd pleaded my cause quite enough; "You're the one man on earth I _couldn't endure_, So cut out that comedy stuff!" THE MILKY WAY I went to school, like any lad, And learned to read and write: With pencil, books and writing-pad I grew quite erudite. Promoted soon, my Teacher thought I would some day, be great; And so painstakingly he taught Me how to conjugate. And talked to me about the Moon, Of Venus, Saturn, Mars, Till I was rated, very soon, Authority on Stars. A graduate, I searched the skies For orbs unknown before, Determined that I'd specialize In Astronomic lore: But how to buy a telescope And all the charts required? An _attick_ was my only hope Of all the things desired: And so I compromised and bought Binoculars and case, And ev'ry night the Stars I sought At Daly's Burlesque Place. The one, bright, meteoric Flame In all that stellar group, Soon _fell for me_; then took my name And quit the Burlesque Troupe. But I'm eclipsed! the Satellite That twinkles in the crib, Keeps Mother _pinning_, day and night, A didy or a bib. THE LOGOTHETE "Beware the dog!" Beware the Logothete! The Octoped with elephantine feet: (I mean by this--with the _big understanding_; The Byzantine Pup of Theodore's branding.) A thousand years chained to Hellespont's brink, He never once whimpered or lapped up a drink. Hydrophobia? No! just aphasia, 'Cause he couldn't cross over to Asia. The old Logothete is the Watch Dog of State: He feeds upon figures (he'll cipher an eight!) And starts ev'ry meal with a twelve or sixteen, Then multiplies units to munch on between. Voracity thus as an integer stands For his diurnal gorge on multiplicands. Numerical strength makes the Logothete thrive, And fractions he dotes on--just eats 'em alive! He lashes his tail by Marmora's flood, But eats from the hand of Sultan Ahmud; A collar of gold, set with aquamarines, Makes him the envy of Justin's near-queens; His Kennel-Kiosque (the hyphen's germane!) Rivals the harems of Constantine's reign. Innocuous? No! nor yet desuetude, For he daily absorbs whole columns of food. His teeth are as sharp as the Damaskeene blade That severed the chains on the Macedon maid; And as keen as the knife avenging the dame Who was sold to the Sheik in Mesopotame. But the point that I make--no whimper or yelp Had ever been voiced by this Logothete whelp Until Archæologists, searching the grounds, Unearthed dogmatisms and bitumen sounds Of the highest known pitch, resembling a whine Or unrav'ling snarls of the Octopedine. And thus they've exploded the silence complete Tradition ascribes to the old Logothete[1]-- And so, in unleashing this Byzantine Pup, They merit grave censure for _digging things up_. [1] From _Logos_ (word) and _Thete_ (Theodore)--The word of Theodore. THE PRICE OF PEACE There's music in the Eagle's shriek; There's ditto in the Lion's roar, But discord marks the Bolshevik Because the Bear doth growl no more. The Dogs of War are out of tune,-- No harmony doth move the critters: Unless they cease their fighting soon The wounded whelps will have no litters. Jerusalem! the Turk is spent! The bagpipes took his breath, I think. The Crescent now is badly bent, And Allah's cause is on the blink. The Bulgar too has shot his bolt, And soon will quit--the poor pariah! For now there's rumor of revolt In Ananias and Sofia. The Hun is playing with the Slav-- The Kremlin Mouse and Potsdam Cat; But Cossack, too, can smear the salve, And 'twixt them twain doth Peace fall flat. Some day the Dove of Peace will swoop With long, befigured _bill_, and put it Against the Vulture-Kultur coop And make the Prussian Junkers _foot it_. MEN HAD HORNS THEN Newspaper Item, Athens, Pa., July 29: The archaeologists who are traversing the Susquehanna River Valley, visiting sites of Indian villages and digging up aborigines and other relics, are said to have made a most astounding discovery on the Murray farm, near here, in finding the bones of sixty-eight pre-historic men. The average height of these men when their skeletons were assembled was seven feet, while many were much taller. Additional evidence of their gigantic size is found in the massive stone battle axes in their graves. The average age of these men is said to have been from thirty to forty. Another amazing point of this discovery is the allegation that "perfectly formed skulls were found from which horns grew straight out from the head." The Homestead of Satan, they say, has been found Near Athens, P. A., in a hole in the ground; And people are flocking from Athens and Sayre To view the remains of their ancestors there. When Satan established himself in this zone He found it distasteful to live all alone; So he went to Towanda in quest of a bride, And then tilled the soil till his seed multiplied. So scores of young Devils at Murray's were born That measured five cubits between hoof and horn. Each one was equipped with a tail and two wings, And _asbestos garments_ at Nick's Sulphur Springs. And that's why you find all their skeletons here In good preservation: but isn't it queer That Devils at Athens, the place of their birth, Were the sole legatees of Hell upon Earth? But Devils, like men, reach the ends of their ropes, And have disappointments and unfulfilled hopes,-- So Satan discovered, too late we are told, The climate at Murray's was too beastly cold. His imps all contracted pneumonia and died; So he buried them here in the Pit, side by side, Near Athens, P. A., by the River Chemung, Where they've been unmolested till now, and unsung. And there their bones bleached, in the Sulphuric Pits, Until Archæologists came with their kits And made excavations, not thinking of harm, But raising the devil at Rube Murray's Farm. Now Satan's _exposed_ and his ossified get, (A few yet remain in the flesh, I regret!) And Murray of Athens is living, I wot On skeletons dug from this Hell-enic spot. SUB ROSA The Busy Bee, to gather honey, goes Touching the clover bloom and then the rose; An easy prey, the clover blossom yields Its treasures garnered from the fragrant fields; But all the sweetness that the rose adorns, Protected is from theft by jealous thorns. The Bee, ergo, in quest the flowers among, Gets sometimes honey and gets sometimes _stung_. WHITMANESQUE The snow is falling on the hemlock boughs: Courage, Comrade, Spring will come again! The birds are leaving the evergreen trees, And that's why they are not deciduous. O, Winter! I shake thy icy hand, And, shaking, shovel the beautiful snow: But what shall I do with such an abundance? It is already piled high in my neighbor's yard, And he is watching me from his attic window. And yet more snow! How pure you seem tho' falling! AN APEOLOGY This is the Ape, made famous, you'll agree, By Darwin's Evolution Theory. His destiny fulfilled, he rests at ease With tribal Apes, Baboons and Chimpanzees; Preferring, so, to recreation find, Than with his tailless counterpart, Mankind, A doubtful branch of his posterity: And makes a _monkey_, thus, of you and me. THE BUG This is the Bug, unable to resist The blandishments of Entomologist. He soon succumbs to net or trap or pin And fills his place the _cabinet_ within. A volume then explains his habits, source, And all his secrets and his aims of course; Which leads me to conclude, when facts are dug, The Man of Science is the biggest "Bug." WAKE, MY LOVE! Darling, I my vigil keep Close beside you, while you sleep. Let the Dream of Love abide! Cupid will not be denied; For he whispers to you now, And prints kisses on your brow; While his velvet finger tips Hush the protest on your lips. Wake, My Love! And do not chide Cupid pleading by your side! Darkness lingers in the skies Till the light of your bright eyes Adds new brilliance to the sun: Not till then is Day begun! Ope your lips and speak one word-- Sweetest cadence ever heard! Loose your tresses! Let them rest On your snowy, virgin breast, And entwine these roses rare In the ringlets nestling there. Wake, My Love! The sunbeams shed Golden treasures on your head; While Æolus woos your cheeks, And exacts the kiss he seeks. Love, aquiver, draws his bow And demands that sleep must go; For a jealous elf is he Who will brook no rivalry. So let Love a Kingdom make In his Heart for Thee: Awake! FIRST PSALM Happy indeed is he who goes The Straight and Narrow Way, And heedeth not the lure of those Who from His precepts stray. With joy observeth he the acts The Master doth proclaim, And, day or night, no fervor lacks To bless His holy name. And he shall be a fruitful tree Deep-rooted in the Truth; And not a leaf shall withered be Nor fruitage cease, forsooth. But those who follow not the Course The Master hath decreed, Shall shrivel and decay, perforce, And barren be their seed. It follows then, that those who sin Must turn again to clay, While righteous men are gathered in On Resurrection Day. For God rewards the Pure in Heart And knoweth all their needs; While those who from his ways depart Shall be like broken reeds. _NOT_ PEACE, BUT REVENGE! Peace? do you say? When my homestead is razed, And Death stalks the fields where my cattle once grazed; And the Dear One is dead Whom I courted and wed, The Joy of my Life when the hearthstone fires blazed. Peace? What a travesty! Give back my wife And the brave little son, who gave up his life That she might escape From the murder or rape Of helmeted hordes in the unequal strife! Peace? Where is my father? Cleaning your shoes! Like a thousand old men you maim and abuse. He was true to his Land, So you cut off his hand And left him but slav'ry or famine to choose. Peace? My wounds cry aloud: Never! I say Till your legions are killed or driven away And my country is free: But, stay! What's that to me, Since all my own Loved Ones lie murdered to-day? No!! _Not_ Peace, but REVENGE! Here is my gun-- Surrendered? O, No! for its work is not done: When my bayonet's sting Smites the heart of your King, And your hell-hounds are flayed,--_then_ Peace will be _won_! HEREDITY I see her creeping 'long the nursery floor,-- A dainty, blue-eyed Babe, scarce old enough To realize 'tis _she_ whom I adore,-- She is a priceless diamond in the rough. Again I see her playing with a host Of noisy, kindergarten girls and boys; She seems to me the fairest and the most Refined: a _pure gold_ girl without alloys. And thus from stage to stage I watch the maid As she develops like the budding rose, And then, Ah me! I'm jealously afraid That she admires me less than other beaux. And then, anon, I see her on the knee Of Willie Jones: I think she shouldn't oughter! But then my Courtship Days come back to me-- _Just like her Ma!_ She is my only Daughter! THE CALL OF THE HOMESTEAD There's a dear, little spot, near my Hoosier hometown, Where the mortgage runs up as the buildings run down, That I love to return to, a restful retreat, Just to slush around there with the mud on my feet. There's the forked, wormy apple-tree, dead to the bark, And the sickle and grindstone, brought out of the Ark; And the Shed, where I fled, with my illicit pipe, To assuage stomach-aches when green apples were "ripe." There's the collar and churn, _worn_ by Dash day by day, And the chain that prevented his running away; And the yoke for the oxen--Haw, Buck! and Gee, Bride! And the Troth for the Squealers the hen-house beside. There's the Dovecote, unroofed, and the sweep by the well, And the ooze in the barnyard and natural-gas smell: There's the hayrake and silo; the tin weathervane, And the two, moss-grown graves where the Old Folks were lain. And the milk-stools are there, and the cowpath and stile; And a few hardy scarecrows remain yet awhile; And the taxes, unpaid, still appear on the book Of the County Collector, Nathaniel U. Crook. So I keep coming back, to my old Hoosier shack, To inhale the sweet mildew of hay in the stack, And to drink from the spring where the bull-frogs abound That protect the young cowslips that grow all around. Now the mortgage is due and the int'rest unpaid, And I can't get a cent for the place, I'm afraid; But I love to return here, at vacation time, Just to revel again in the mud and the slime. DECIMAL POINTS The Paleface undertook, with sword and gun, To civilize the Redskins one by one; And Lo attempted, with his bow and arrow, To sap the Paleface of his very marrow. As fast as one, on either side, was slain Another took his place to fight again; Thus both the warring tribes said--"What's the use?" And straightway called a halt and signed a truce. Then Paleface planned and dug--and _well_ of course-- A pit for Lo, without resort to force; And Lo, in turn, a counter plan invented To clear the forests where the Paleface tented. And so the Paleface, from his fullness, gave A cask of Laughing Water to each Brave; And Lo, whose giving was an artful knack, Took up the scent and sent tobacco back. So, Time discloses how each plan availed; Which won, at last, and which, in order, failed, For now in _Peace_ the Paleface moves about, While Lo and Laughing Water _fight it out_. He was the first to fly--Darius Green! But Green had trouble with his _crude_ machine And failed to make a mark for lofty flying, And so he just _dropped out_ and gave up trying. The Pickaninny to the bayou goes And caches on the bank his homespun clothes; Then headlong leaps into the pool below Where Imps of Darkness destined are to go. An alligator sees the urchin dive And, Holy Moses! swallows him alive, Not thinking that the Afric _strength_, thus caged, Would prove his match and master when engaged: But so it did! for Fate evolved a plan To snatch the "charcoal" from the saurian; And as the latter spewed and lashed his tail, (A tale like Jonah wrestling with the whale) The lad escaped; of course he had to shout some! So overjoyed was he at such an _outcome_. When Aaron Burr decided to invite His hated rival to a pistol fight, He knew, of course, because his aim was wicked, That his opponent, in advance, was líckéd. And thus the scheme of Providence began To canonize the Hamiltonian. Had Mary tied her lambkin in the barn, There might have been a different kind of yarn. She could have said "I leave you" with the bull, Or "I'll return anon," and pulled the wool; The lamb could have replied--"What's all this for? I'll meet you, Mary, in the abattoir!" But No! They had to make the sheep the goat And tie a siren bell around his throat, And make him go to school. "Kids," as a rule, Would rather _much_ be killed than go to school. Had Nero played on burning Rome the hose Instead of fiddling while the blazes rose, He might have been, in Fame's Retort, a hero, Firemano Primo Volunteero Nero. But quite another part this Cæsar played, The part of Arson in red robes arrayed. He watched the fire, in all its flares and phases, Quite unconcerned, but fiddled on like blazes. But Nero didn't finish what he started Because, while Rome still burned, his E string parted. Tho Julius Cæsar's Wars our lives inspire This Cæsar wouldn't even fight a fire; Nor would he lead the Roman Legions, tho He was reputed skillful with the bow; Perhaps the smoke-screen from the burning city Was planned to hide the discords of his ditty; And when at last this King is placed on trial, This verdict will prevail,--his work was viol. Had Antony been less a Marc and kept His armor on while Cleopatra slept, He might have been a Conqueror of note Instead of Captor of a Petticoat; And, traitor to his country, judged to be A Soldier less than Slave to Lingerie. Some Commentators--and I blush with shame-- Contend that "Cle" and Sheba were the same: If this contention's true, as I surmise, It follows that King Solomon was wise; And so was Sheba when she left his regions By camel-carriage for the Roman Legions,-- Leaving the King, with all his wives and breeders, To pine for her among the stately cedars. I'm not quite sure, but who's the bigger dunce? The King? Or Marc, who got in wrong _but once_? The oldtime Reader taught us self-reliance (But this refers to school-days--not to Science!) And pointed out, in no uncertain style, Examples we should follow or revile. Old Rover, for example, was to me The highest standard of true loyalty. He used to hang around the playground gate And there for Bones, his Master, sit and wait, Though Bones, poor dunce, each day when school was over, Was kept and spanked, but waited still old Rover. The Reader states that Rover, too, was fleet, And never knew the anguish of de feet; And had a face so honest, ear so quick, That he could steal a bone and dodge a stick. That's all the Reader says, but I believe He grew too diabetic to retrieve, And so was cast aside--the poor old brute! Because the mange affected his hirsute; Was driven from the confines of his birth Because not prized: Great Scott! a Kennelworth: And so, a rover still, thus doomed to flea Far from his home and consanguinity; But, cast adrift in sinking bark, O, Setter! Than wienerwursts or sausages is better! There was a time when Henry Clay awoke To see his fame and name go up in smoke. His reputation only went this far, That he was featured as a choice cigar. Before that day, when his renown was ripe, He also was distinguished as a pipe. Eliminating all attempts at joking, He was thus honored then, and still is smo-King. Had Eve, a woman of unusual birth, Who had the love of ev'ry man on earth, Been given what the modern wife receives, Fine frocks and hats instead of wreaths and leaves; A mansion, bank-account and car or carriage, Hers would have been the first ideal marriage. But selfish Adam took her to a cavern (Our present bridal parties seek a tavern.) And made her wash and sew and hem and haw With fitting meekness 'cause his word was law. First Lady of the Land, she should have had 'em-- All creature comforts but the stingy Adam. Faithful to husband, she should have instead Broken her marriage vows upon his head. No wonder she was tempted: if she fell 'Twas circumstantial, else she wouldn't tell. BELLES-LETTRES Hear the perfume of the belles, Social belles! What a loud auroma, a monopoly in smells! How they stinkle, stinkle, stinkle, When the corsage bursts in sight! While the powder in each wrinkle And the gewgaw gems that twinkle Make them ugly in the light; Reeking scent, scent, scent, When they're upright, prone or bent While the sachet begs for freedom, and the musk, revolting, yells On the belles, belles, belles, belles, Belles, belles, belles, On the weary, bleary, smeary Social Belles. Hear the monstrous Schoolhouse bells, Direful bells! What a dirge of irony their ting-a-ling expels! Like the chanticleer at morn, How they torture us, and warn We must hurry or be canned At call of roll. How they peel their tunics and Whoop 'er up, with tireless tongues, to beat the band; What a toll! O, you blatant, brazen shells! You ringers for Mephisto, from superheated hells, With your knells! Truth compels That we voice our joy with yells 'Cause you're hung and bound in cells While we're swearing and despairing, O, you bells, bells, bells, Wicked bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells, O, you rocking, mocking, shocking Schoolhouse bells! SANDY, THE PIPER Do ye know me mon Sandy,--Sandy the Piper? 'E's 'ome on a leave, with 'is chin shot away! They wouldn't a 'armed 'im, but some blooming sniper Just slipped 'im a slug from a roof in Bombay. 'Ow did it all 'appen? Well, just one battalion Was left in the Barracks: the rest 'ad been sent To guard the new Viceroy, with Major MacCallion: It was dubbed the "'Ot Scotch," this 12th Regiment. The Colonel was sick with a Jungle disorder, And 'arf of the time was well out of 'is 'ead; And when the Sepoys, from the 'Yderbad Border Revolted and rushed us, the Colonel was dead. So Sandy and men were besieged and near choking, And most the battalion was killed or 'ad fell, While the fiends in the street, like devils a stoking, Were firing this 'ell 'ole with bullet and shell. 'Twas 'ere that me Sandy broke out thru a window, Disguised as a Rajah, with turban and sword; And so, quite unnoticed (they thought him a Indoo!) 'E soon joined the ranks of the mutinous 'orde. And then 'e 'arrangued 'em ('e knew all their jargon!) And urged 'em to scatter and uphold the law; But 'ere 'e was thru 'e was sick of 'is bargain When a bloody bomb-bullet 'alf shattered 'is jaw. So Sandy's back 'ome, but his features are altered: What a close shave 'e 'ad! 'is face is a sight! But when duty called 'e was there and ne'er faltered: With toot, shoot or Hoot, Mon! 'e mixed in the fight. 'Is goatee is gone, with the chin where 'e grew it: 'E was once very bonnie when 'e was a lad; And 'is bagpipe would charm me: my, 'ow 'e blew it! When 'e marched with 'is squad, a playing like mad. And I makes o'er 'im still, tho Sandy's not pretty, But a 'ero 'e is in Northlands and South: A gude wife I've been, tho I think it a pity That Sandy was given to _shoot off 'is mouth_. "BEN BOLT" Ben Franklin was a Jester of the sort That fused, with wit, rare wisdom in retort; And, on his mettle, tempered by a smile His irony could hold them _all_ awhile. King Louis' Court to impotence made plea Before the onslaughts of his repartee. His well-aimed jibes were quite as hard to dodge As meteors agleam with persiflage. His oily tongue worked on a swinging swivel, For he _spat out_ his thoughts and didn't drivel. The Quakers, in his absence, had attacks Of blues, because they missed his almanacs; And Frenchmen soon began to understand And praise his jokes (in England contraband). He said to Louis, "Sire, the skies are down; I wouldn't give a Fillip for your crown." And added, "Nay, I wouldn't give a sou! There's just one Philip, but sixteen of you!" He had no fear, you see, of raining Kings, And, with umbrella raised, enjoyed his flings. Such pointed puns _disfavor_ oft beget, But Louis laughed and so did Lafayette. Tho galley slave, like creatures of his type, He broke his chains, when Freedom's plans were ripe, And put the U. S. A. upon the chart, Allied to France, thru diplomatic art. To-day Ben Bolt, who clipped the lion's claws, For lightning work gets thunderous applause. The thunderbolts obeyed at his command, And currents, insubordinate, were canned. He kept the Upper Regions on the string And shocked the Lower World like everything. All praise to Franklin, Diplomatic Star! He went where he was sent, but not _too far_: And tho he flew his mortal kite so high, Poor Richard's name illuminates the sky. EXCELSIOR The bale consigned to O. U. Crook, Upholsterer--marked, USE NO HOOK, Was not curled hair or even moss, Nor yet a mixture or a cross, Excelsior! "This Davenport was made to wear; Fine leather and best camel hair!" Said Crook (a patent skin all right, But all the "hair" was out of sight). Excelsior! And so Crook sold the lounge or couch To some poor Boob with gold-filled pouch; And also sold an easy chair (The Easy Mark was stuffed for fair.) Excelsior! And thus he plied his artful trade (A better Craftsman ne'er was made) Until the shavings, dyed and curled, Resembled hair for all the world. Excelsior! O, baleful occupation his! The way he made his mattresses Would make a lounging layman sick. He sold for cash and gave no tick tick-- Excelsior! A mark-down sale Crook staged in time-- "Such bed-rock prices are a crime," "I get my hair by camel-train": But all his "hair" was cut in Maine-- Excelsior! And then a fire occurred at length To bolster Crook's financial strength: The _glue_ that mocked the incensed air Mistaken was for burning hair; Excelsior! Beware the pine-tree's fibrous heart! But this gave Crook his fiscal start, And now a tall, pine shaft is seen Above Crook's grave; 'tis evergreen-- Excelsior! HER AND HIM HER To-day's her birthday: I'll not say which one,-- But I have known her twenty years or more When courtship days were joyously begun, And she had reached her sixteenth year, before. And so her age is no concern of mine: She may have dropped a birthday now and then, But surely she's improved with age like wine: I wouldn't wish her in her _teens_ again. And she's my Pal! O, yes, we love, of course! But feel, besides, the joy of comradeship That finds expression at Love's very source In language of the heart--not of the lip. And so she is my everlasting pride: To Beauty's very pinnacle she's grown! Thru life we'll seek our pleasures side by side; Her heart athrob with love for me alone. HIM O, yes! we're splendid friends, Old Jack and I: He's growing grave and wrinkles now appear Where once the smiles his cheeks were wont to ply. He's losing all his energy, I fear. I married him some twenty years ago When dancing was a chief delight of his; But now alone I trip the Terpsic toe, For poor, old Jack has got the rheumatiz. He's aging fast: I see it every day! He's fat and short of breath, yet how he snores! His few remaining hairs are saffron-grey, For nicotine keeps oozing from his pores. He seems so childish, but I humor him Altho my friends declare I'm such a dunce. Wrinkled, rheumatic; bare of brains and vim-- Good-bye, Old Jack! You were a good one _once_! THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIVING We bivouac here and barely get acquainted Until the furlough ends; then we are sainted, Whether our acts deserve rebuke or praise. When we are _dead_ the recollection stays Of virtues only: vices are excused, But to the _living_ pardon is refused. And yet, alive, I'd rather be unsung, Than any Saint the catacombs among. Tho critics flay me and the censors sneer, 'Twere better so, than praises on my bier. And so we walk life's slender rope till, bing! We slip and fall or someone cuts the string. Ambition lures us, but the pinkest peach Is always just beyond us, out of reach: And when, at last, we think we are in line To cross the threshold, lo! the Full House sign. We never quite obtain the golden urn Tho rainbows beckon every way we turn. Who ever found, I ask you, all he sought? Our best endeavors ofttimes come to naught: And yet we trudge along, loath to confess We're only groping in a wilderness; Plodding the sands that burn our feet, and hurt; Seeking the Promised Land, our just desert. Had Cæsar reached the zenith of his life When Brutus cut his friendship with the knife? The ladder broke and he was headlong flung While setting foot upon the topmost rung. Thus picture Cæsar giving up the ghost Just when he reached the pinnacle, almost! Did Bonaparte receive his proper due? He _got_ it, but too late, at Waterloo. He played with fire, aroused the seething crater, And now, with Nick, inhabits the Equator. So we conclude, delving the lines between, He might as well have clung to Josephine. Tho Tell's renown illumes the Alpine sky Whose target was the Apple of his eye, As much distinction, and applause to boot, Should be bestowed on William's steady _shoot_: More praise to him, than the Toxopholite, Who held the apple but eschewed a bite! The _worst_ of us hath goodness in his breast; The _best_ of us but fails, put to the test,-- So, in arrears, we strive to pay the price For Fortune's frowns or Fate's disastrous dice Until we're bankrupt or too spent to wrest Long hoped-for treasure from Mad Mammon's chest. Tho life hath ups and downs, the weeping willow Our ends shapes better than the downy pillow. It takes stern measures to incline the bantling, In right direction, without switch or scantling. The optimist with farthings in his pouch, Gets more enjoyment than the wealthy Grouch; Thus cheerfulness, a product underrated, In every household should be cultivated. Give me the man who, tho in direst straits, Will thumb his sharp proboscis at the Fates; Who'll take the flimsy fire escape, or dive Into the net, glad to get out alive; Who, tho the skies be unpropitious, crowds His way along, unmindful of the clouds; Who never quits, in life's unequal bout, But keeps on fighting till he's counted out. THE SIXTH OF APRIL Awake, Americans! Awake! Awake! 'Tis April Sixth! A _year_ of War and yet The Hun lines hold: Louvain is unavenged. Be Thou our Guide, O God of Joshua! Thru battles yet unstaged, and Comfort when, From War's Inferno comes the phantom file, The endless, ghastly file of martyred dead. Daughters of Belgium, thy vestal tears Make _womanhood_ still more an honored name; And Germany, when Reason reappears, Must dearly pay for her revolting shame! Awake, Americans! Our task is grim; For Hell and all the Imps of Sin deride The Code of Morals, spit upon the Cross, Drive torturing nails into the bleeding flesh Of all Mankind who follow Him thru paths Made plain and gladsome by the Golden Rule; And foist vile _kultur_ as Refinement's height. And what of skulking Sharks, scum of the sea, That prey on Innocents, while o'er them fly Poised to inflict a further agony, The Vampire Bats that violate the sky? Behold the ravaged homes of Serbia! Where are her people? Ask the godless Goths Whose Car of Kultur crushed beneath its wheels This stalwart Race! Ask, too, the Bulgar hordes, The mountain wolves, who pounce upon and rend, In guise of Pacifiers of the Land, Those who escaped the onslaughts of the Huns. Tho sapped by hunger and disease; tho crushed By overwhelming numbers of the foe, Thy Star, O, Serb, when battles' din be hushed, Shall rise again, suffused with Freedom's glow! Now in the sacred name of God our guide, Home, Country, Honor, Love and Motherhood, Can we indifferent be to ravishment, Wanton destruction, murder steeped in hate-- This loathsome litter whelped by Junkerdom? 'Tis _ours_ to dare and crush this monstrous THING: Our Allies worn and bleeding, struggle on. Armenian tears, a flood of pent-up grief, Flow on and on, a torrent of despair. Rape! Murder! Pillage! Is there no relief For Niobe, deserted, weeping there? Nation Invincible, unsheath thy blade! God be thy leader: Justice be thy Sword! Nor pause until the ruthless BEAST is flayed With sated steel--and Liberty restored! BENEATH A CLOUD Under a passing cloud the moon was hid. I really was delighted to be rid Of _Super_ light, for I was with my Nell, And I could see by her bright eyes as well. We didn't need the aid of spheres above, For that's _our_ proper sphere--a making love. Midst whispering pines we pledged our love aloud, And thus our plight began _beneath a cloud_. THE COLUMBIAD AMERICA! Our home, our native land! The joy of it--the rapture! when we say-- We who are freemen and can understand-- This is our heritage--the U. S. A.! Hewn from the virgin forests by our sires, And launched by giants capable and true, Our Ship of State was manned, when Freedom's fires Were beacon lights, by sturdy, godly crew,-- And so hath kept, steered by the Guiding Star Of Faith, her steadfast course, thru shoal or blast, Aloof from sirens luring from afar, With Stars and Stripes still waving at the mast. Here in our Land, where Plenty hath its store, Where fertile fields teem with abundant grain, Hunger ne'er casts its shadow on the door, And Famine hath no lodge on hill or plain. In truth doth Luxury with Plenty vie To fill our laps with all the luscious things That Nature doth provide--loath to deny The satisfaction that such bounty brings. To us was Freedom's heritage bequeathed To have and hold while life and pride remain: And so our sword must ever be unsheathed To guard this priceless boon from hurt or stain-- So that the war-worn hosts in Europe's maze, Who fight against the Despot's ruthless spear, May see the light of Liberty ablaze, Diffusing matchless splendor over here; And, friendly beacon, be to them a sign And Bow of Promise, in their dismal sky, The Light of Hope eternally to shine In God's resplendent galaxy on High. But grim starvation, at the board, presides Across the seas, where once the farmsteads poured Autumnal wealth--and Desolation rides Rough shod along where tramped the Prussian horde. No life remains: the fields are stark and sere; The forests, leaf and branch and root, are fled; The flowers lie trampled on the soldier's bier: Destroyed are e'en the shelters of the dead. The gardens that held plenty in their wombs Are stripped and barren as the sands of Dearth, And now, instead, keep vigil o'er the tombs Of demigods, redeemers of the Earth. The vineyards where the fragrant fruitage hung To cheer the peaceful peasant in his toil Are desolate where Death his shroud has flung Upon the breadth of France's sacred soil. Wrecked are the homesteads: buzzard broods abound Where shell-holes gape, and heaps of carnage rise Above the naked bosom of the ground, Mutely denying guilt, in sacrifice. Still with the jackal at her wounds doth France Fight on unmindful of her pains, and lo! We hear her call and, seizing shield and lance, Crusader-like, to her assistance go. Her cause is just: we make her Cause our own! For Liberty doth in the balance swing, And we must guard her, if we fight alone To rid the world of this malignant _Thing_ That, in the guise of Kultur, hides its hoofs And horns, its tail and spear and hideous face, And, as a pious priest, on Moslem roofs, Extols itself, usurping Allah's place. What blasphemy! Obsessed to germinate Its propaganda, its infernal cult; Condoning Cain's offense, instilling hate, It strikes with poison, dirk and catapult Against the precepts of the Prince of Peace; Against the Conscience of the Universe. But hatred, lust and war will never cease Until God's Sword destroys this monstrous curse. Audaciously the Priests of Kultur strive To spread their doctrine, but the graven god Against the Living Christ cannot survive, And in His time will scourged be with His rod. And so our Ship of State to battle hastes, All sails a-drawing, sheets secure and taut, Manned by a stalwart crew, stripped to the waists, Inspired by battles that our fathers fought. In port at last whence Lafayette once sailed To aid our fight that made Britannia halt, They take their stand where Frenchmen never failed To hold the Verdun forts against assault. A mighty effort this! To send our force Three thousand miles, thru shark-infested sea, Beneath dark skies where vultures lay their course, To face the foe and ransom Liberty, Thru sacrificial offering of our sons; To arm and clothe five million men, and then Build, to convey and feed them, countless tons Of mighty vessels--transports, merchantmen; To furnish, in addition, vast supplies To allied Powers whose Cause we have embraced, To hearten them--to strengthen friendly ties And stay the hand that layeth Europe waste. A task indeed! But let it not be thought By foemen or by those whom we befriend That Liberty our trust, so dearly bought, Will not be guarded to the very end. Tho Hercules the Strong should heave in sight And challenge us to tests of thews and nerve, We'd enter the arena in our might And win new honors for the Land we serve; For Antaeus and all the myths of old 'Gainst whom the supermen of yore engaged, Were never half so mighty, half so bold As peaceful freemen, righteously enraged: And all the modern Bullies who presume To dominate the world against the Right, Must see their day-dreams doomed to blackest gloom When Truth prevails against the Imps of Night. So let us fabricate in forge and mill; So let us plant and nurture grain and seed; So let us labor and conserve until There be an end to Kultur's cruel creed. Each one of us must fight or toil or save; _Co-ordination_ be our battle song; Hardships endure and gravest dangers brave If we would victors be and right the wrong. God's ways to mortal eyes are not revealed, But Faith our guidance is thru War's grim task, And with His help the _Hosts of Sin_ must yield And Satan be denuded of his mask. HE'S ALL RIGHT, BUT--!" I like the good old-fashioned way-- A handshake or a slap,-- The boys who jab your ribs and say "You're all right, Bill, Old Chap!" I like the lad who sees you first And always shouts your name,-- Who, tho your luck be at its worst, Says--"Cheer up, Bill! Be game!" I like the chum who's always glad To soothe you when you're ill,-- Who, when he finds you broke and sad, Says--"Here's a Dollar, Bill!" I'd like to grab him by the throat And hold his mouth tight shut,-- Who, questioned, makes you out the goat-- "Who? Bill? He's all right, _but_--!" NATURE'S STUDIO Go where the winds keep vigil o'er the trees, Rocking the tender saplings in the breeze; Go where the sunbeams play on rill and stream, Making the purling waters all agleam; Go where the birds rehearse their songs and trills In cool retreats, led by the Whippoorwills; Go where the bees, midst clover blooms, indulge Their honey habit till their bellies bulge; Go where the trout, in alder-arbored brooks, Abate their hunger but eschew the hooks; Go where the flowers, by fairy weavers spun, Pour out their grateful incense to the Sun; Go where the deer in secret nooks disport And Nature, clad in verdure, holds her Court; Go where--nay, stay! Yonder the artist stands, With brush and prismy palette in her hands, Before her easel, where the canvas seems A masterpiece in wondrous color schemes. What artistry! What fascinating views Dame Nature paints! Behold the rainbow hues That tint the dainty flowers and make the rose Blush to its sepals when it seeks repose; That tinge the moors and fields and turquoise sky, And stain the Autumn leaves with crimson dye! So tarry here, where moss and bluebells grow Upon the floor of Nature's Studio! PICARDY With heads uncovered and with cautious tread Approach ye here! where lie our martyred dead In graves unmarked, here, there and everywhere: So lest, ashamed, ye trample them, beware! AMERICA'S PRAYER God bless our Allies! damn the Huns! And consecrate our swords and guns! EPILOGUE They say that a stitch that is timely saves nine: You haven't your needle? O, well then, take mine; And all my Dream Outfit--my pipe and my dope! I've smoked my last hemp _to the end of my rope_. 
40598	----	Children of Christmas _AND OTHERS_ BY EDITH M. THOMAS _Author of "The Dancers and Other Legends and Lyrics" "Cassia and Other Verse"_ BOSTON RICHARD G. BADGER The Gorham Press 1907 _Copyright, 1907, by Edith M. Thomas_ _All Rights Reserved_ _The Gorham Press, Boston_ I _CHILDREN OF CHRISTMAS_ _CONTENTS_ I _CHILDREN OF CHRISTMAS_ _Cradle Song_ _How Many_ _Her Christmas Present_ _A Christmas Spy_ _Refreshments for Santa Claus_ _How the Christmas Tree was brought to Nome_ _Holly and Mistletoe_ _The Firebrand_ _The Foundling_ _Meeting the Kings_ _The Procession of the Kings_ _Melchior's Ride_ _One of the Twelve_ _The Witch's Child_ _Babushka_ _A Christmas Offering_ _Christmas Post_ _The Christmas Sheaf_ _The Birds on the Christmas Sheaf_ _What the Pine Trees Said_ _Two Child Angels_ _The Old Doll_ II _OTHER CHILDREN_ _The Apple-blossom Switch_ _The Indignant Baby_ _A Question of Spelling_ "_Yours Severely_" _A Lack of Attention_ "_I Ought to Mustn't_" _A Vain Regret_ _In the Dark Little Flat_ _The Little Girl from Town_ _For Every Day_ _The Day-Dreamer_ _Born Deaf, Dumb, and Blind_ _The Cradle-Child_ _Some Ladies of the Olden Time_ _A Water-Lily_ _The Kinderbank_ _Buonamico_ _The Prince and the Whipping-Boy_ _Master Corvus_ "_P. Abbott_" _The Giant's Daughter_ _Erotion and the Dove_ _The Homesick Soldier_ _The Cossack Mother_ _The Blossom-Child_ _The Clock of the Year_ III _SOME OF THEIR FRIENDS_ _The Young of Spring_ _The Triumph of the Brown Thrush_ _Day--Wide Day!_ _The Blossoms of To-morrow_ _The Nest in the Heather_ _Lady Grove (Silver Birches)_ _Shadow Brook_ _The Brook and the Bird_ _The Birds of Soleure_ _The Prairie Nest_ _The Moving of the Nest_ _The Widowed Eagle_ _The Chicadee_ _The Earth-Mother and her Children_ "_When the Leaves are Gone_" _The First Thanksgiving_ "_Mascots_" _Mother Fur_ _What the Cat-Mother Said_ _What the Bird-Mother Said_ _What the Friends of Both Said_ _The Little Brown Bat_ _The Lost Charter_ _The Saving of Jack_ _Skye of Skye_ _Tip's Kitten_ _The King of Cats_ _Waifs_ _Frost-Flowers of the Pavement_ _Stars of the Snow_ _June in the Sky_ _Mother Earth_ _The Rain Rains Every Day_ _The Good By_ CRADLE SONG _For one Born at Christmas_ Happy thou, a winter comer, Happier with the snows around thee Than if rosy-fingered summer In thy cradle-nest had crowned thee. Tender is the night, and holy: Little clouds, like cherub faces, Up the moon path, drifting slowly, Vanish in the heavenly spaces. Clothed in splendor, past our earth night, Sphere on sphere is chanting _Nowel_: Child, thy birthnight keeps a Birthnight Dearest in all Time's bestowal! He who slept within a manger Guards the pillow thou art pressing-- Sent thee hither, little stranger, Blest--to be our Christmas Blessing! HOW MANY Resting her curly head on my knee, And slipping her small hand into mine, My baby girl asks how many there'll be On Christmas day when we dine. Though I've told her before, and she knows very well, "There'll be grandpa and grandma," I repeat, And Uncle Charlie and Aunt Estelle And Cousin Marguerite. And Uncle Philip and Cousin Kate, And mamma's old friend, Miss Madeline; And--let me see--ah, yes, that is eight, And Mr. Brownell makes nine! As I close my story I hear a sigh, The curly head closer nestles, and then, In a sad little voice, "How many are I?" "My darling! At least you are ten!" HER CHRISTMAS PRESENT _A True Incident_ With doll in arms to court she came,-- A mite of tender years Between her sobs she put the case, Her eyes brimmed up with tears. "They've put my mamma into jail-- And oh, I love her so! She's very good--my mamma is-- Please, won't you let her go?" "Just look! She made this doll for me" (She held it up to view). The judge did look. "Don't cry," he said, "We'll see what we can do." "What charge against the prisoner, clerk?" "Sold apples in the street. She had no license, and, when fined, The fine she could not meet." "My mamma's good. Please, let her go." The judge looked down and smiled; "So well you've pleaded, she shall be Your Christmas Present, child." "Now take this paper, little one, It sets your mother free. She should be very proud of you; Go, tell her so, from me." With doll in arms away she went, And soon the prison gained; And when her mother clasped her close, The happy child explained: "A kind, good man like Santa Claus, With hair as white as snow, He let you out because--because I asked him too, you know!" A CHRISTMAS SPY When Poebe brought the wood and coal; To lay the fire, what did she see But Baby--dropped upon one knee And peering up the chimney-hole! She never turned her little head, With all its curly, yellow hair: I asked, "What are you doing there?" "Me look for Santa Taus!" she said. REFRESHMENTS FOR SANTA CLAUS "It may be late and stormy and cold When Santa Claus reaches our street; And Santa, you know, is very old, So I'll leave him something to eat." "And what do you think he would like, dear heart," "Something nice and sweet," she said; "Jelly and jam, and a cranberry tart, And a _teenty_ piece of bread!" So there on the sideboard is Santa's feast, Which her own small hands have spread; Jelly and jam,--three kinds at least, And a tart--but _where is the bread_?" HOW THE CHRISTMAS TREE WAS BROUGHT TO NOME Night of the winter--winter and night in the city of Nome, There where the many are dwelling, but no man yet has a home! Desolate league upon league, ice-pack and tundra and hill; And the dark of the year when the gold-hunter's rocker and dredge are still! By the fire that is no man's hearth,--by the fire more precious than gold,-- They are passing the time as they may, encompassed by storm and by cold: And their talk is of pay-streak and bedrock, of claim by seashore or creek, Of the brigantine fast in the ice-pack this many and many a week; Wraiths of the mist and the snow encumber her canvas and deck,-- And the Eskimos swear that a crew out of ghostland are crowding the wreck! Thus, in the indolent dark of the year, in the city of Nome, They were passing the time as they might, but ever their thoughts turned home. Said the Man from the East, "In God's country now (where we'd all like to be), You may bet your life there's a big boom on for the Christmas Tree; And we'd have one here, but there isn't a shrub as high as my hand, Nor the smell of spruce, for a hundred miles, in all this land!" Then the Man from the South arose: "I allow, if the Tree could be found, I'd 'tend to the fruit myself, and stand ye a treat all round!" "Done!" said the Man from the West (the youngest of all was he). "I'll lose my claim in the ruby sand--or I'll find the Tree!" The restless Aurora is waving her banners wide through the dome, And the Man from the West is off, while yet they are sleeping in Nome! Off, ere the low-browed dawn, with Eskimo, sledge, and team: He is leaving the tundra behind, he is climbing the source of the stream! On, beyond Sinrock--on, while the miles and the dim hours glide-- On, toward the evergreen belt that darkens the mountain side! 'Tis a hundred miles or more; but his team is strong, is swift, And brief are his slumbers at night, in the lee of the feathery drift! * * * * * There were watchful eyes, there were anxious hearts in the city of Nome; And they cheered with a will when the Man from the West with his prize came home! And they cheered again for the Christmas Tree that was brought from far, Chained to his sledge, like a king of old to the conqueror's car! Said the Man from the South, "I'll 'tend to the fruit that grows on the Tree!" Said the Man from the East, "Leave the Christmas dinner and trimmings to me!" HOLLY AND MISTLETOE Said the Holly to the Mistletoe: "Of this holy-tide what canst know,-- Thou a pagan--thou Of the leafless bough? My leaves are green, my scarlet berries shine At thought of things divine!" To the Holly spake the Mistletoe: "Matters not, my leafless boughs but show Berries pale as pearl-- Ask yon boy and girl! If human mirth and love be not some sign Of share in things divine!" THE FIREBRAND (_Northern Ohio, Christmas Eve, 1804_) Hark to a story of Christmas Eve In the lonely days of yore: 'Tis of the measureless, savage woods By the great lake's windy shore-- Of mother and child, in a firelit span, Where the wilderness bows to the toil of man! "Christmas is coming, and father'll be here; Through the woods he is coming, I know! Over his shoulder his ax is laid, And his beard is white with snow! Yes, but look in the fire, my child, At the strange cities there, so bright and so wild!" "Mother, what are those restless flames That close by the window pass?" "Only the firelight fairies, child, That dance on the window-glass! But look, how the sparks up the chimney fly, Up, and away, to the snowy sky!" "Oh, listen, what are those shuddering cries,-- Mother, what can they be?" "Only the branches that grate on the roof, When the wind bends down the tree! Now sing me the song I've taught to you, That I, myself, as a little child knew!" "But, mother, those flames dart back and forth-- Like balls of fire they play! And those shuddering cries are at the door; '_You must let us in_,' they say!"-- "My child! Your father's whistle I hear-- Say a prayer for him--he is coming near!" She has seized the tongs, she has snatched a brand, And waved it abroad at the door! Through the drifting snow a form she sees-- He is safe, in a moment more; Safe--and afar are those shuddering cries, And the baleful lights of the _wolves' red eyes_! Thus did it chance on a Christmas Eve, In the days that are long since fled; But a light so brave, and a gleam so true, Through the waste of the years is shed, As I think of that blazing, windblown brand, Waved at the door by a slim, white hand! THE FOUNDLING I The good man sat before the fire, And oftentimes he sighed; The good wife softly wept the while Her evening work she plied: One year ago this happy time The little Marie died! II "And surely, now, if she had lived, She would have reached my knee!" "And surely, now, if she had lived, How cunning would she be!" In fancy each a darling face Beside their hearth could see. III The door swung wide--a gust of wind The fitful candle blew; 'Twas Franz, the awkward stable-boy, His clattering step they knew. "But Franz, speak up, speak up, and tell What thing has chanced to you!" IV His round blue eyes with wonder shone, His bashful fears had fled: "I saw--I saw the cattle kneel Upon their strawy bed; And in a manger lay the Child-- A light shone round His head!" V "He must have dreamed," the good man said, "A vision, it would seem." "Nay, master, for the light shone bright On stall and loft and beam." Then said the good wife, "I, perhaps, Might go and dream this dream!" VI No further words, but forth she fared, With Franz to lead the way. They reached the barn, whose sagging door Shot out a yellow ray; The kine did kneel upon the straw, As truthful Franz did say! VII And there--oh, lovely, lovely sight, Oh, pleading, tender sight! Within a manger, lapped in hay, A smiling, rosy mite The good wife saw, and nearer held The lantern's yellow light. VIII She took the foundling in her arms, And on its sleeping face Her tears and kisses fell in one: "How great is Heaven's grace! It is the Christ-Child's gift to me, To ease the aching place!" MEETING THE KINGS (_Suggested by "A Provençal Christmas Postscript," Thomas A. Janvier_) Long, long ago, in dear Provence, we three! Three children, ruddy with the _midi_ sun (And blither none the all-seeing sun might see), How happy when the harvest-time was done, The last slow drop from out the winepress run; And when the frost at morn was thick like snow; And when Clotilde at evening sang and spun, And old folk, by the new fire's ruddy glow, Would tell, as I do now, the tales of long ago! Those tales--ah, most of all, we begged to hear The tales our grandsires from their grandsires had-- How, in the darkening undertime of year, When with first-fallen snow the fields were clad, That blessèd time when nothing can be sad (Such peace through Christ's dear might encircles all), How, then, the sleeping hives made murmur glad-- The white ox knelt within his littered stall, And voices strange and sweet were heard through heaven to call! We were three children--René, Pierre, Annette. The little sister listened, wonder-eyed; Each held her hand (that touch, I feel it yet!), And all three drank those tales of Christmas tide. The leaden-footed time how shall we bide? How many days and hours we know full well, Almost the little minutes that divide! Meanwhile, like music of a hidden bell, Our beating hearts keep up the chime, _Noël_, _Noël_! One thing there was, desired above all things: "Say, will they come (as ever from of old)-- The wise, the good, the three great Eastern Kings, Who brought rich gifts,--frankincense, myrrh, and gold?" How often of their names had we been told-- Balthasar, Melchior, Gaspard,--splendid all, Wide-turbaned, sandal-shod, and purple-stoled, Perhaps upon white steeds, curbed-in, and tall, Or else on camels with the velvet-soft footfall! "Will they at vespers be, on Holy Night? And will they stop and see the little shrine Where Jesus lies beneath the Star's true light, As when, at first, they found him by that sign?" "Hush, René, hush! and if the eve be fine, Thou--yes, all three--shall go to meet the Kings. But children--mark ye well these words of mine! Each way, of four, to town the traveler brings; So it may chance ye miss them in your wanderings." Such sage replies our questions would receive. The Holy Time drew near, and yet more near; At last, it was the morning of the Eve, All day we swayed from lovely hope to fear. "'Too early?' Nay, 'tis twilight, mother dear-- At least, so very soon the sun will set!" "Your warmest coats--the air is sharp and clear. And in your hurry, children, don't forget That baby feet tire soon--remember p'tite Annette!" "No, no! I do not tire, though fast I run!" Ah, how we laughed to see the red lips pout-- The small sweet pride that would not be outdone In such a race, by brothers big and stout! "Annette the first shall see the Kings, no doubt"-- It was our grandsire spake with twinkling eye. "Yes, yes; she shall," impatient to be out, We answered. Once beneath the deepening sky, We ever took the sunset way--as late birds thither fly! For thus we reasoned with one grave consent: If yonder star above our mountain's crest Should be that Eastern star for guidance lent, Then must the Kings be journeying from the West. So on we ran, past harvest fields at rest, Past sheepfolds where the flock of summer dreamed (Full soon they would be kneeling, as we guessed!) And on, and on--and now, at times, it seemed Far down the twilight road rich banners waved and gleamed. But ever of enchanted weft they proved, On sunset's pageant field emblazoned low; And caravans, still moving as we moved, At length, for straggling olive trees would show. Then, while less confident our pace would grow, Wiser than I--a twelvemonth and a day, Would René counsel: Might it not be so-- As we had heard our own dear mother say-- _The roads are four_--the Kings had come another way? No time to lose. We took the homeward track, The Kings at vespers might be lingering still. Soon were we in the church. Alack, alack! The Kings had passed; for though they bore good will To our good parish, yet must they fulfil The prayers of all; and there were other folk Who, if unvisited, would take it ill. "'Tis said they must reach Arle by midnight stroke; Sweet spices they have left--judge by the censer's smoke!" We boys took manfully this frown of Fate; But tears stood in petite Annette's blue eyes. "Another year, my precious,--thou canst wait; Besides, to-morrow morn a fine surprise There'll be for children who are sage and wise. Gifts--but I may not tell you now, my child."-- 'Twas mother-love that did such cure devise For bud-nipped hopes and hearts unreconciled; We slept, and dreamed, on this--and then, the morning smiled! Time passed. We never saw the Kings. Ah, well-- At least the two of us saw not, I know. But how shall I the wonder of it tell? There came a winter wild and dim with snow. It seemed to us that sheeted ghosts did go Upon the wind, that never ceased to moan. And one of us with fever was laid low: Like leaves the little hands were tossed and thrown, And on her cheek the rose of fever was o'erblown! The storm was done. The day threw off its shroud-- ('Twas Christmas Eve--till then by all forgot), And suddenly, across a scarp of cloud One crimson flame, a parting sunbeam shot. It reached Annette upon the low, white cot, It touched our mother's face, Madonna-mild. With dreaming eyes that saw us, yet saw not, Petite Annette threw out her hand and smiled: "Pierre! The Kings have come, and with them is a Child!" Long, long ago in dear Provence was grief. In vain the troubadour may sing Noël! In vain the birds give thanks for Christmas sheaf, In vain I heard, "God loved Annette so well That He hath taken her to heaven to dwell." No comfort till René would whisper me: "O brother, think upon it--who can tell?-- Perhaps there was no other way, to _see_! And, Pierre, remember how she told the news to thee!" THE PROCESSION OF THE KINGS The little town is muffled all in snow; Yet there _Weihnachten_[1] love is burning clear. And on each door three letters[2] in a row Proclaim the Three Kings' Day is drawing near. Oh, then will Caspar, Melchior, Balthazar Ride through the country on their horses white! And all the people, live they far or near, Will early rise and follow with delight. And never will the great procession stop Till they Christkindlein and his mother greet: Then on their knees the turbaned kings will drop, And fill her lap with gifts, and kiss his feet; For they will find her, sitting still and meek Upon a bench beside some stable-shed, Her soft hair brushing dear Christkindlein's cheek, And sunshine brightness all around each head! Then, while the old folk smile through happy tears, Blame not the children if a shout they raise When little _Esel_,[3] with his pointed ears, Leans o'er the fence with puzzled, wistful gaze. There, too, the gentle, great black ox will stand: Folk say he knelt at night in strawy stall; Perchance he knows these kings from Eastern land, For now he lifts his head with lowing call! [1] _Weihnachten_--Christmas [2] In many parts of Southern Germany it is a custom to place on the outer door the initials of the three kings--C. M. B. [3] _Esel_--German for "donkey," MELCHIOR'S RIDE Melchior rides from door to door, Large Christmas doles he seeks; A pannier wide receives the store, Yet never a word he speaks! The _nougat_ bells so merrily ring Yet never a note he hears; He gathers the gifts the good folk bring, And onward still he steers. The children laugh, and the children chaff, He sits so stiff and straight, And grandpère waves, with his thorn-tree staff, A greeting at the gate! Olives and almonds, and cheese and bread, And the pack on his back grows stout! Let the hungry poor to their fill be fed, While the _nougat_ bells ring out. Thus, Melchior rides from door to door, Seeking of all his fee; And their presents into his pannier pour, Yet never a whit cares he! For a wicker-work man is Melchior droll, A wicker-work man, and no more; But the people love him, with heart and soul, As he rides from door to door! ONE OF THE TWELVE A CHRISTMAS CAROL _From the Provençal of Roumanille_ "Great stir among the shepherd folk; To Bethlehem they go, To worship there a God whose head On straw is laid full low; Upon the lovely newborn Child Their gifts will they bestow. "But I, who am as poor as Job-- A widowed mother I, Who for my little son's sweet sake For alms to all apply-- Ah, what have I that I can take The Child of Love most high? "Thy cradle and thy pillow, too, My little lamb forlorn, Thou sorely needest them--no, no, I cannot leave thee shorn! I cannot take them to the God That in the straw was born." Oh, miracle! The nursing babe-- The babe e'en as he fed-- Smiled in his tender mother's face, And, "Go, go quick!" he said; "To Jesus, to my Saviour, take My kisses and my bed." The mother, all thrilled through and through, To heaven her hands did raise; She gave the babe her breast, then took The cradle--went her ways,... And now, at Bethlehem arrived, To Mary Mother says: "O Mary, Pearl of Paradise, That heaven on earth hath shed, O Virgin Mother, hear the word My little babe hath said: To Jesus, to my Saviour, take My kisses and my bed. "Here, Mary, here the cradle is; Thy need is more than mine; Receive, and in it lay thy Son, Messiah all-divine! And let me kiss, upon my knees, That darling Babe of thine!" The blessed Virgin, then, at once, Right glad of heart, bent low, And in the cradle laid her Child, And kissed him, doing so. Then with his foot St. Joseph rocked The cradle to and fro. "Now, thanks to thee, good woman, thanks, For this that thou hast done." Thus say they both, with friendly looks. "Of thanks I merit none; Yet, holy Mother, pity me, For sake of thy dear Son." Since then a happy soul was hers; God's blessing on her fell; One of the Twelve her child became, That with our Lord did dwell. Thus was this story told to me, Which I afar would tell. THE WITCH'S CHILD 'Tis Elfinell--a witch's child, From holy minster banned.... Again the old glad bells ring out Through all the Christmas land. No gift might she receive or give, Nor kneel to Mary's child: She watched from far the joyous troop That past the Crib defiled; Far in the shadow of the porch, Yet even there espied: "Now, hence away, unhallowed Elf!" The sacristan did chide. "Hence, till some witness thou canst bring Of gift received from thee, In His dear name, whose birth we sing, But this shall never be!" Poor Elfinell--she turned away: "Though none for me may speak, Yet there be those may take my gift; And them I go to seek!" So, flitting light through lonesome fields By summer long forgot, She crossed the valley drifted deep-- The brook in icy grot; And gained, at last, a still, white wood All hung with flowers of snow: There, down she sat, and quaintly called In tender tones and low. They heard and came--the doe and fawn, The squirrel and the hare, And dwellers shy in earthy homes, And wanderers of the air! To these she gave fresh leaves of kale. To those the soft white bread, Or filberts smooth, or yellow corn; So each and all she fed. She fed them from her hand--she sighed; "Might you but speak for me, And say, ye took my Christmas gift, Then, I the Crib might see!" At this, those glad, wild creatures join, And close the child around; They draw her on, she scarce knows how, Across the snowy ground! They crowd with soft, warm, furry touch; They stoop with frolic wing: Grown strangely bold, to haunts of men The elfin child they bring! They reach the town, the minster door; The door they straightway pass; And up the aisle and by the priest That saith the holy mass. Nor stay, until they reach the Crib With all its wreathen greens; And there above, with eyes of love, The witch-child looks and leans! Spake, then, the priest to all his flock: "Forbid no more this child! To speak for her, God sendeth these, His loved ones of the wild! "'Twas God that made them take her gift, Our stubborn hearts to shame! Melt, hearts of ours; and open, hands, And give in Christ's dear name." Thus, Elfinell with gifts was showered, Upon a Christmas Day; The while, beside the altar's font, The ban was washed away. A carven stall the minster shows, Whereon ye see the priest priest-- The kneeling child--and clustering forms Of friendly bird and beast. BABUSHKA (_A Russian Legend_) Babushka sits before the fire Upon a winter's night; The driving winds heap up the snow, Her hut is snug and tight; The howling winds,--they only make Babushka's more bright! She hears a knocking at the door: So late--who can it be? She hastes to lift the wooden latch, No thought of fear has she; The wind-blown candle in her hand Shines out on strangers three. Their beards are white with age, and snow That in the darkness flies; Their floating locks are long and white, But kindly are their eyes That sparkle underneath their brows, Like stars in frosty skies. "Babushka, we have come from far, We tarry but to say, A little Prince is born this night, Who all the world shall sway. Come, join the search; come, go with us, Who go our gifts to pay." Babushka shivers at the door: "I would I might behold The little Prince who shall be King, But ah! the night is cold, The wind so fierce, the snow so deep, And I, good sirs, am old." The strangers three, no word they speak, But fade in snowy space! Babushka sits before her fire, And dreams, with wistful face: "I would that I had questioned them, So I the way might trace! "When morning comes with blessèd light, I'll early be awake; My staff in hand I'll go,--perchance, Those strangers I'll o'ertake; And, for the Child some little toys I'll carry, for His sake." The morning came, and, staff in hand, She wandered in the snow. She asked the way of all she met, But none the way could show. "It must be farther yet," she sighed; "Then farther will I go." And still, 'tis said, on Christmas Eve, When high the drifts are piled, With staff, with basket on her arm, Babushka seeks the Child: At every door her face is seen,-- Her wistful face and mild! Her gifts at every door she leaves; She bends, and murmurs low, Above each little face half-hid By pillows white as snow: "And is He here?" Then, softly sighs, "Nay, farther must I go!" A CHRISTMAS OFFERING (_Florence, Italy_) I shall never forget Cimabue's Madonna, No, nor the niche close by in the wall, Where, on the straw, the Bambino was lying, While the oxen knelt in the stall. Rude are the images, tinsel the flowers; But a tear to the eye unconsciously starts, Beholding the tribute the children have rendered, In the votive gift of "hearts"! Among them a little gold watch was hanging, That told of some sick child's treasured wealth, Sent with a prayer that his Christmas present Might be the good gift of health! CHRISTMAS POST In Sulz-am-Neckar, when night shuts down, And the Christmas Eve has come, All through the little snow-white town There's a joyous stir and hum. Now here and now there, along the street, From windows wide open flung, Float childish laughter and prattle sweet In the kindly German tongue. For the happy moment at last is here, When each child a letter sends, Directed to _Christkindlein_ dear-- The Children's Friend of Friends! Then, out at the window--strung on a thread, The precious letter is cast; Though far and high on the night wind sped, 'Twill be found and read at last! In Sulz-am-Neckar, prompt as the day, The children awake to find Among the Christmas branches gay _Christkindlein's_ answer kind! THE CHRISTMAS SHEAF (_Provençal_) It was a gleaner in the fields,-- The fields gleaned long ago: The evening wind swept down from heights Already brushed with snow. The gleaner turned to right, to left, With searching steps forlorn; The stubble-blade beneath her feet Was sharp as any thorn. But as she stooped, and as she searched, Half blind with gathering tears, Beside her in the field stood One Whose voice beguiled her fears: "What seek ye here, this bitter eve, The harvest long gone by?" She lifted up her weary face, She answered with a sigh: "I seek but some few heads of wheat To nail against the wall, To feed at morn the blessed birds, When with loud chirps they call. "Poor ever have I been, God knows! Yet ne'er so poor before, But they might taste their glad Noël Beside my cottage door." Then answer made that Presence sweet, "Go home, and trust right well The birds beside your cottage door Shall find their glad Noël." And so it was--from soundest sleep The gleaner woke at morn, To see, nailed up beside her door, A sheaf of golden corn! And thereupon the birds did feast,-- The birds from far and wide: All know it was Our Lord Himself That goodly sheaf supplied! THE BIRDS ON THE CHRISTMAS SHEAF "And wherefore," the finch to the starling said, On the Christmas sheaf, as they hungrily fed, "Wherefore do now the children of men Open their hands, when, again and again, They drove us away from their plenteous store, From the corn in the field, from the threshing-floor?" "That," said the starling, "I'll try to explain: They are feasting, themselves, and they spare us this grain; For oft, as they feast and make merry, they sing, 'Peace upon earth and good will'----" "But this thing" (Said the finch), "we birds have been singing all year, Then, why not before have they shared their good cheer?" WHAT THE PINE TREES SAID I heard the swaying pine trees speak, As I went down the glen: "Next year," said one, "the wind shall seek, But find me not again!" "I shall go forth upon the seas, A mast, or steering-beam; On me shall breathe the tropic breeze, Above, strange stars shall gleam.' "And I--the ax shall cleave my grain, And many times divide; From my dear brood I'll shed the rain, And roof their ingleside." Then up and spake a slender shaft, That like an arrow grew; "No breeze my leafless stem shall waft, No ax my trunk shall hew-- But though a single hour is mine, How happy shall I be! Young hearts shall leap, young eyes shall shine To greet their Christmas tree!" TWO CHILD ANGELS Two Child Angels on Christmas Night, They stood on the brow of Heaven's hill; The stars beneath them were glancing bright, And the air was clear and still. "That is the Earth that dazzles so-- That shines with a glad and a radiant light-- That is the Earth where, long ago, I was born on the Christmas Night!" Thus said the one, and the other replied, "Forever dear is the Earth in my sight; For there, full long ago, I died, On the holy Christmas Night!" THE OLD DOLL (_Just after Christmas_) Little one, little one, open your arms, Now are your wishes come true, come true! Here is a love with a thousand charms, And see! she is reaching her hands out to you! Put the old doll by, asleep let her lie, And open your arms to welcome the new. Little one, little one, play your sweet part, Mother-love lavishes treasure untold. Whisper fond words, and close to your heart, Your warm little heart, the new idol enfold. ('Tis so with us all,--to worship we fall Before the new shrine, forgetting the old!) * * * * * Little one, little one, wherefore that sigh? Weary of playing the long day through? But there's something that looks like a tear in your eye, And your lips--why, your lips are quivering, too! Do I guess aright?--it is coming night, And you cry for the old--you are tired of the new? Little one, little one, old loves are best; And the heart still clings though the hands loose their hold! Take the old doll back, in your arms she shall rest, When you wander away to the dreamland fold. (With all, even so,--ere to sleep we go, The wavering heart wavers back to the old!) II _OTHER CHILDREN_ THE APPLE-BLOSSOM SWITCH It was the daughter of a fairy witch,-- A sweet, though wayward child. "Go, naughty Elfinella, bring a switch From yonder fruit tree wild!" (It was the charming time of all the year,-- The darling month of May And every bush and thicket, far and near, With leaves and flowers was gay.) Poor Elfinella heard, and off she went, With lagging steps and slow, To where, amidst the wild, a fruit tree bent, Her branches spreading low. With blossomy boughs the motherly old tree The tearful child begirt: "My twigs are clothed with flowers; and you will see The switch will never hurt!" She broke a branch, with blossoms thickly set, And lightly homeward tripped,-- The switch was used--but little did she fret; For she with flowers was whipped! THE INDIGNANT BABY Baby was out with Papa for a walk. When their friends they met, it was "Oh!" and "Ah!" "What a darling she is!" "Can the little kid talk?" "Well--no; I don't think that she can," said Papa, "Though she seems to understand." She was only two, but she understood, And her small, rosy mouth was made up to cry-- But no! she would _talk_--she would show that she could. And, "Mamma," and "pretty," and "laly"--"by-by," She said with a wave of her hand! A QUESTION OF SPELLING They were looking through their book With pictures of the Zoo; Both too young to read the text, But each the pictures knew. Will was three, and Ray was five-- And five years old is _old_! When his wiser brother spoke, Will did as he was told! "Look! I've found the _efalunt_!" "Don't say _efalunt_," said Ray. Said their mother: "You should tell Little brother what to say." "Don't say efalunt--that's wrong; It's _efalint_!" said Ray. "_Efalint_!" said little Will, In his confiding way. "YOURS SEVERELY" (_The Letter of a Five Year Old_) Once more she dipped her pen in ink, And wrote: "I love you dearly." "And now," she said, and stopped to think, "I'll put, 'I'm _Yours severely_.'" A LACK OF ATTENTION She had folded her hands, and had never stirred Nor even spoken one little word. In fact, she was good as good could be, While the grown folks talked, and sipped their tea At last, a small voice from the corner we heard: "Nobody pays any pension to me!" "I OUGHT TO MUSTN'T" The chair was so near, and the shelf was so low, And I opened the door just in time to see The last of the coveted caramels go, While a look imploring was cast on me, "I ought to mustn't, I know!" The chair was so near, and the shelf was so low,-- To punish, alas! no courage I had: And I did as, perhaps, you yourself might do,-- I kissed her, right there, so sweet and so bad! But "I ought to mustn't," I knew! A VAIN REGRET He was six years old, just six that day, And I saw he had something important to say, As he held in his hand a broken toy: He looked in my face for an instant, and then He said, with a sigh, and a downcast eye, "If I could live my life over again, I think I could be a better boy!" IN THE DARK LITTLE FLAT AT THE END OF THE COURT What can the children in cities do, The children shut in from wholesome sport-- The children that live, all winter through, In the dark little flat at the end of the court? Yet a comfort they have (and a beautiful one!), Though the days are chill and the days are short; At noon, for a moment, looks in the sun, In the dark little flat at the end of the court. Then, the dazzled baby drops his toy, Down tumbles the four-year-old's tottering fort-- "Sunshine!" they all cry out, in their joy, In the dark little flat at the end of the court. THE LITTLE GIRL FROM TOWN Us children liked her, though she was so queer, When she came out to Pleasantville, last year; She "mustn't walk upon the grass," she said: We asked her _why_?--and she just shook her head! Oh, yes, us children liked the little kid, Although she didn't know one thing _we_ did, And said the oddest things you ever heard; She saw a goose, and asked, "_What kind o' bird?_" Us children liked the little kid, oh, yes! She wa'n't a bit afraid to tear her dress; One day, when she went barefoot, just like us, She got a stone-bruise; but she didn't _fuss_! Oh, yes! us children liked her, but oh, my! We had to teach her how to play "high spy"; She came to see us,--called our house "_a flat_"-- I wonder now--what _could_ she mean by that? FOR EVERY DAY A flower for every day That slips the sheath of jealous Night in May! The violet at our feet, The lilac's honeyed bough, The wind-flower frail and sweet, The apple-blossom now-- Each keeps its promise, as Love keeps its vow: A flower for every day in flowerful May! A song for every day That breaks in music from the heart of May! The warbler mid new leaves, The lark in fields remote, The housewren at our eaves, The oriole's haunting note When orchard blooms down fitful zephyrs float: A song for every day in songful May! A joy for every day That stirs the heart to count its joys in May! Now Fear and Doubt take flight, Borne down the season's stream; Grief grows a shape of light, And melts, a tender dream! Now but to be alive is boon supreme-- A joy for every day in joyful May! Be thanks for every day That from thy heaven thou dost send in May! My morn an anthem wake, My noon sweet incense bear Of labor for thy sake, My evening breath a prayer. For bloom--for song--for joy--shed everywhere, Be thanks to thee each day in thankful May! THE DAY-DREAMER There's a day-dream strange and sweet, Softly hovering in the air: Now it stays the restless feet, Now, it smoothes the wayward hair. Now, it droops the curly head, Propped upon the window-sill-- Parts the lips of rosebud red, While the eyes with fancies fill. Sunbeams from the summer sky Kiss the arm so round and bare: There's a day-dream sweet and shy, Softly hovering in the air! Is that dream of field or wood, Mossy bank, or violet dell, Thrush's nest, with downy brood Lately prisoned in the shell? Comes that dream from fairyland, Blown about in wondrous ways, Like a skein of gossamer fanned By a troop of laughing fays? Or, upon some elfin brook, Wing of dragon-fly for sail, Passing many a wildflower nook Did it drift so light and frail? Little dreamer, if I dared, I would say, "your day-dream tell!" But it never can be shared, And one word would break its spell! BORN DEAF, DUMB, AND BLIND (_At an Asylum_) A flower-soft hand once took my own,-- That touch I never shall forget! A strange voice spoke--so strange a tone Mine ear had never met! It said, "Come--see--my--garden,--Come!" (The flower-soft fingers closer twined): The voice of one born deaf and dumb, The touch of one born blind! They thrilled me so, the tears came fast; But in glad haste she led the way; Through hall and open door we passed Into a garden gay. Her share was but a little space. It bloomed with pansies dark and bright; And each looked up with elfin grace, As though to win her sight. She smiled--the pansy-faces smiled Through tears--or was it morning dew? Down knelt the deaf and dumb, blind child "I do--give--all--to--you!" I could not stay those fingers swift, She plucked me all the flowers she had! I never shall have any gift So sweet as this,--so sad! THE CRADLE-CHILD Forgotten, in a chamber lone, The hooded Cradle, brown and old, Began to rock, began to moan, "Where are the babes I used to hold?" "To men and women they are grown, And through the world their way must make." The Cradle rocked and made its moan, "My babes no single step could take!" "A helmsman one, on wide seas blown, His sinewy hands the wheel employs." The Cradle rocked and made its moan, "My babes could scarcely grasp their toys." "And one, with words of winning tone, God's shepherd, goes the lost to seek." The Cradle rocked and still made moan, "The babes I held no word could speak!" "And one, with children of her own,-- Her life is toil and love and prayer!" The Cradle rocked and still made moan, "My babes of babes could take no care!" "Now all that once were mine are flown But one, that still with me shall bide"-- (The Cradle ceased to rock, to moan)-- "The sweetest one--the babe who died!" SOME LADIES OF THE OLDEN TIME A long time ago in Childhood's Land, A troop of sweet ladies I knew, If the truth must be told, I myself Was their lady's maid, patient and true! I served them, I dressed them, I took them to walk, I made the fine clothes that they wore; Very dainty,--and delicate, too, were they all, For they never arose until four! Wide were their flounces of crimson or white, A little old fashioned for now; Prim were their figures--ah, yes, I must own, Their heads they never could bow! Their heads were so round and so small and so green-- Not clever nor learnèd were they; But then, they were only Four o'Clock Ladies, And their life, 'twas a short one and gay! A WATER LILY Did I behold the Lady of the Lake Part the cool water with a slender hand? And brought she for her loved knight errant's sake Out of some liquid crypt the magic brand? I dreamed it was the Lady of the Lake-- I did but dream! Again I looked, and knew The water lily, white as winter's flake, But with a heart all gold and fragrant dew. THE KINDERBANK[4] THE LITTLE MOTHERS It was a day in warm July, It was a far countree; The bees were humming in the flowers That filled the linden tree. The linden made a cooling shade For many a yard around, And flecks of sunlight here and there Did dot the shady ground. A long, low, easy seat there was Beneath the linden green; And _Kinderbank_ across the back In letters large was seen. I did not need that word to read, To know the Children's Seat; For there the grass was trodden down By many little feet. Upon this day the _Kinderbank_ Was full as it could be, With children sitting in a row, A pleasant sight to see. Each little woman bent her head, Too busy far to speak; Each had a lock of yellow hair Slipped down across her cheek. Each little woman pursed her lips Into a rosebud small, And never knew how fast time flew-- So busy were they all. One made the knitting-needles click, With shining head bent low, And earnest eyes intent to see The winter stocking grow. Another, toiling at a seam, The thread drew in and out; And once she sighed--so hard she tried To make the stitches stout! But ever, as they worked away, And would not look around, They watched the little ones that played Before them on the ground. The little ones they laughed and cooed, And talked their baby-talk; Their feet so bare were rosy-fair-- For only one could walk! His flaxen hair in ringlets stood Upon his serious head; His eyes so blue were serious, too; And, drawing near, I said: "Whose precious baby boy is this, So thoughtful and so sweet?" Then up and spoke a little maid, Of those upon the seat: "This baby--he belongs to me. He goes just where I go; And I'm his Little Mother--yes, _My_ mother told me so! "She said that he was mine 'all day.' And so it must be true; I brushed his hair--I take good care, As she herself would do. "And I'm quite sure that I can cure, And drive the pain away, With kisses, if my baby hurts His little hand at play!" "And whose are all these babies here? "Why--we--oh, don't you know?" We all are Little Mothers--yes, _Our_ mothers told us so!" The Little Mothers all looked up, And each did nod her head: "Our mothers told us so!" "Ah, then 'Tis true, indeed," I said. I left them as I found them, there Beneath the linden tree; And often since that day I've thought I'd like to go and see If still the Little Mothers sit Upon the Children's Seat, And watch their babies as they play And tumble at their feet. [4] In German, the Children's Seat. BUONAMICO _A Legend of Florence_ I When Monte Morello is capped with snow, And the wind from the north comes whistling down, It is chill to rise with the morning star, In the "City of Flowers"--in Florence town. II Light is the sleep of the old, for they know How brief are their few remaining days; But when hearts are young, sleep lingers long, And too sweet to leave are the dreamful ways. III So, Tafi, the master, awoke with the light, But the prentice lad, Buonamico, was young, And his dreaming ears were loath to hear The daybreak bell's awakening tongue. IV For it seemed to speak with old Tafi's voice, "Colors to grind, and the shop to be swept!" Then, out of his bed, on the bare stone floor, Poor Buonamico, shivering, crept. V Busy all day with his quick, young hands,-- Busy his thoughts with a project bold. "The master will find," he said to himself, "'Tis not well to work in the dark and the cold!" VI But the master, unheeding the prentice lad, Matched the mosaics fine and quaint; Till his tablets of stone revealed the forms Of Mother and Child, of cherub and saint. VII Buonamico, meanwhile, forsook his tasks, And, prying in crevice of wall or ground, With a patience and skill boys only know, Thirty great beetles the truant found. VIII As many wax tapers, then, he took-- Thirty small tapers (nor less, nor more), And presto! each beetle, clumsy and slow, On its broad black back a candle bore. IX Next morning, ere dawn, when Tafi awoke, Ere his lips could frame their usual call, A sight he beheld that froze his veins-- An impish procession of tapers small! X Slowly they came, and slowly went (And they seemed to pass through a crack 'neath the door): So slowly they moved, he counted them all, Thirty they numbered, nor less, nor more! XI "Surely, some evil these hands have wrought, That the powers of darkness invade my cell!" And many an _Ave_ the master said, To reverse and undo the unholy spell. XII When daylight was come, Buonamico he told: "A good lad ever thou wert, and indeed, Wise for thy years; and, therefore, speak out, And, as best thou canst, this mystery read." XIII "May it not be," Buonamico said, "The powers of darkness, that good men hate, Are vexed with my master, who falters not In faithful service, early and late?" XIV "Ay, that they are," said the master, "no doubt!" Said the prentice-boy, "_Their_ time is night, And it _may_ be they like not this wondrous work Which thou risest to do ere peep of light!" XV "Well hast thou counseled," the master replied, "So young of years--so sage in thy thought; I will rise no more ere the day hath dawned-- A work of light should in light be wrought!" XVI Thus runs the legend, which also saith Spite of his pranks Buonamico became, When the years were fled, and Tafi was gone, A painter who rivaled his master's fame. THE PRINCE AND THE WHIPPING-BOY Upon a day of olden days, A royal lad at school, In mischief apt, with many a prank, Defied the good dame's rule. But England's prince no rod might strike, Though rich was his desert; Another must the penance bear, Another feel the hurt! The "whipping-boy" stood forth to take The blows he had not earned; Full meek he stood; no sense of wrong Within his bosom burned. Young Edward saw the rod upraised, His "whipping-boy" to smite; And suddenly his princely soul Revolted at the sight. The shame, the shame, the tingling shame No blood of kings could brook! Forward he sprung, the falling rod In his own hand he took: "Mine is the blame--be mine the shame For what I only wrought; Let none but me endure the pain My deed alone has brought!" Thus on a day of days, it chanced, A royal schoolboy learned That noble hearts in every age A coward's shield have spurned. MASTER CORVUS In Rome, beside the Forum, A cobbler had his shop, Where, on his way to school, The schoolboy loved to stop. The sheets of well-tanned leather Hung all about the wall; The cobbler stitched and scolded, Bent over last and awl. 'Twas not the cobbler's scolding At which the schoolboys laughed, Nor did they care to watch His cunning handicraft. It was a dapper person With coat as black as night, That offered to the schoolboy An all-year-round delight-- A droll yet silent person, "Good morrow"--all his speech; He stood upon a rostrum, As though to teach or preach. It was the cobbler's raven, "Good morrow!" clear and loud He called, with mimic laughter That charmed the truant crowd, Until, at last, reminded Of school and pedagogue, Of lecture, and of ferrule To point his apologue. And now, would Master Corvus, To while the time away, Look 'round, to see what mischief He might devise to-day. Alas, the raven's cunning No bound nor measure knew; Alas, the cobbler's temper-- It never better grew! And when his choicest leather Embossed with claw and beak, He saw--upon the raven Swift vengeance he did wreak! Which done, morose and sullen, He sat him down once more; Nor scolded when the schoolboys Called through the open door: "Good morrow, Master Corvus!"... No shrill and joyous croak Responded from within; And then their anger broke. "How daredst thou kill the raven,-- The better man of two?" They seized and beat the cobbler, Till he for life did sue. Then took they Master Corvus From where he lifeless lay-- Their dear and droll companion, And carried him away. Said one, "There is a duty Which to our friend we owe: In life we gave him honor, And honor still we'll show!" "That will we!" cried they warmly (Young Romans long ago)-- "In life we gave him honor, And honor still we'll show!" Next day, along the Forum, With slow and measured tread, Defiled the long cortège Of Master Corvus dead. His bier was heaped with garlands, A piper went before; And (as they had been kinsmen) Two blacks the casket bore. Then, down the Via Sacra The sad procession moved, While at their doors and windows The people all approved. And thus to Master Corvus Full rites his friends did pay, And buried him, 'tis said, Beside the Appian Way, With lightly sprinkled earth Above his glossy breast-- With stone, and due inscription, _Hic jacet_--and the rest. "P. ABBOTT" (_A Tradition of Westminster Abbey_) 'Tis a saying that stolen sweets are sweeter, And so with my hero it was, I think, "P. Abbott,"--if Philip or Paul or Peter, 'Twill never be known; there's a missing link. The legend declares (without praise or censure) A youth had been challenged to sleep all night In the gray old Abbey; a madcap adventure, But madcap adventures were his delight. In the Chapel of Kings, in Westminster Abbey, You may see the stone that was brought from Scone, And above it, the armchair, old and shabby, Where every king has _once_ had his throne. Monarchs in marble, greater or lesser, And at least three queens of the English land-- In a circle they lie, round the good Confessor, Crown on the head and scepter in hand. Gone from his tomb are the wondrous riches It once did hold, both of gems and gold; But you still may see the Gothic niches Where the sick awaited the cure of old. Beggar or lord, poor drudge or duchess, Alike might they hope for the good saint's aid; And they left their jewels, or dropped their crutches As token that not in vain had they prayed. 'Twas St. Edward's Day, and the throng, gladhearted With the blessing of peace had gone its way; The last red beam of the sun had departed, And twilight spread through the chapel gray. And the marble kings on their marble couches Once more they are lying in state, alone Save for a nimble shadow that crouches Behind the stone that was brought from Scone; And the aged verger was never the wiser, As he passed that stone and the oaken chair; Though watchful was he as watchful miser, He never discovered my hero was there. When the keys at his leather girdle jingled, How loud did they sound in young Abbott's ear! And when they were still, how the silence tingled! How dim was the light!--yet why should he fear? The night was before him, the shadows were dreary As forth from his hiding-place he crept. There was nothing to do; his eyelids grew weary, And into the chair he crept and slept. Never before, and nevermore since then, Hath any but royalty sat in that chair; But my hero himself, I hold, was a prince then-- Of the Realm of Youth and of dreams most fair! But with the dawn his slumbers were broken, And, rubbing his eyes, he sat bolt upright. "'Twere folly," he cried, "if I left no token To prove that I stayed in the Abbey all night." So he carved his name, and carved it quaintly, As pleased him best, on that ancient seat. And the sculptured kings in the dawn smiled faintly-- But never a one forbade the feat! Then, somehow and somewhere, discreetly he flitted; And when the old verger returned for the day, "I warrant," he muttered, with bent brows knitted, "Something uncanny hath passed this way!" With the record of kings and of statesmen and sages, This of a mischievous youth is shown: "P. Abbott,"--a name that has lasted for ages, Nicked on the seat of that oaken throne! THE GIANT'S DAUGHTER My story's of the olden day Beside the hurrying, blue Rhine water,-- My story's of a runaway,-- The Giant Niedeck's little daughter! She wanders at her own sweet will, Her flaxen ringlets wide she tosses: A dozen steps--she climbs the hill, A dozen more--a vineyard crosses! The pine trees young aside are brushed, As though they were but nodding grasses; She laughs aloud--the birds are hushed, And hide away until she passes! She heeds them not,--the giant mite, So bent upon her own wild pleasure; And now she sees a wondrous sight, A curious thing for her to treasure! "Oh, what a lovely toy I've found!" She clapped her hands in childish wonder. (The great trees trembled, miles around, The rocks gave back a sound like thunder.) A plowman with his horse,--the toy,-- A plowman at his daily drudging: She snatched them up with eager joy; And home the giant child went trudging. She reached the castle out of breath, And from her pocket (says my fable) She drew the ploughman, scared to death, And laid him swooning on the table. And then away in haste she sped, To bring her nurse and lady mother; "Now, burn my wooden dolls," she said. "Live toys are best--I'll have no other!" The giant lady, fair and mild, Thus spake unto her little daughter: "Go, take the plowman back, my child, To fields beside the blue Rhine water. "Though weak and small, his heart is great; And Liebchen, if we kept him here, All day, beside his cottage gate, Would weep for him his children dear." Then back the giant child did go, And left the plowman where she found him; And when the sun was sinking low, He started up and looked around him. "I must have dreamed," he laughed outright, As when some sudden fancy pleases; "And I will tell my dream to-night When Gretchen for a story teases!" EROTION AND THE DOVE. I was too young, they said (I was not seven), But I would understand, as I grew older, Why the White Dove that died was not in heaven. But they were wrong, for when I came to heaven,-- When first I came, and all was strange and lonely, My pretty pet flew straight upon my shoulder! And there she stays all day; at evening only, Between my hands, close to my breast, I fold her. THE HOMESICK SOLDIER The soldier woke at the quail's first note, At dawn, on the grassy couch where he lay: "O bird, that calls from the fields of home, What do my darlings so far away?" "They are up and ready to roam; They scatter the dew with their small bare feet, And laugh as they wade through the meadow sweet." The soldier paused on the dusty march, And stooped by the cooling stream to drink: "O river, that runs through the fields of home, What do my dear ones, who dwell on thy brink?" "Farther and farther they roam-- They are sending their mimic fleets adrift; And they follow them borne on my current swift." The soldier sank on the twilight sward, And the vigilant lights were thronging above; "O stars that shine on the fields of home, What do they now, whom most I love?" "They have ceased to roam, to roam,-- And are lisping a prayer at their mother's knee; And that prayer, and her tears, are for thee, for thee!" THE COSSACK MOTHER My little one will die to-night (Then break, my heart, oh, break!); But 'twill not be a lonely flight Her tender soul shall take. For there, where smoky clouds are spread, That blot the sunset sky, Are many dying, many dead, And others yet to die. My child loved soldiers so! And they, Whene'er they passed this door, Would toss her in their arms, in play, And laugh when she cried, "More!" So, when she passes hence to-night, They, too,--the brave, the strong, As up they climb the heavenly height, Will bear her soul along! With spirit lances shining clear, They reach God's citadel:-- My little one will have no fear, With friends she loves so well. THE BLOSSOM-CHILD The flowers, the haunted flowers of May, They bring delight, they bring heartache; What wondrous things to me they say! So bright--so dim, so sad--so gay, No stem of theirs I dare to break-- The flowers--the haunted flowers of May! When lip to lip they softly lay-- As soft, as still, as flake on flake, What wondrous things to me they say! For lo! there comes with them to play, A child, whose feet no imprint make-- The flowers--the haunted flowers of May! From Childhood's Land they take their way, They bloom but for that flower-child's sake-- What wondrous things to me they say! With them it lives, their little day; With them, each new-born year, 'twill wake; The flowers--the haunted flowers of May, What wondrous things to me they say! THE CLOCK OF THE YEAR 'Tis the Curfew of the Year, when falls and fades the maple's leafy fire. 'Tis Midnight of the Year, when streams beneath a fretted roof retire. It is the Small Hours of the Year, when none of all that sleep will wake, Howe'er the legion storms of heaven their deep and hidden fastness shake. It is the Dark Hour ere the Dawn, when, through the growing rifts of sleep, The wistful-eyed and moaning dreams of other days begin to peep. But when, amid the softening rain, aloft, so mellow and so clear, The first flute of the robin sounds, it is the Daybreak of the Year! III SOME OF THEIR FRIENDS THE YOUNG OF SPRING There are so many, many young! So many, in thy world, O Spring, And scarcely yet they find a tongue, Their wants to cry, their joys to sing. There are so many, many young young-- Be tender to such tenderness; And let soft arms be round them flung, Keep them from blight, from weather stress! White lambs upon the green-lit sward, And dappled darlings of the kine-- O Spring, have them in watch and ward And mother them--for all are thine. There are so many, many young! Thine, too, the wild mouse and her brood Within a last year's bird's-nest swung-- And all shy litters of the wood! There are so many, many young young-- Guard all--guard closeliest this year's nest; Oh, guard, for Joy, the songs unsung Within the thrush's speckled breast! THE TRIUMPH OF THE BROWN THRUSH A recent convention of Nature's musicians (Their entire resolutions the Owlet quotes) Took "high southern ground," and, from lofty positions, All muffled in feathers and down, to their throats, Resolved to expel, without any conditions, The cuckoo-like fellow who stole their best notes. With spirit the Song-sparrow opened the session; "I'm with you," whistled the Oriole, "I Would like him subjected to public confession"-- "And fined!" the Vireo said with a sigh. "Pshaw!" hissed the Wren, with ruffled aggression, "Pluck him, I say, and then bid him fly!" Answered the Brown Thrush, high in his palace, "'Tis true I have taken your notes--less or more-- And mingled them well (for I bear you no malice), Just as the wines some wizard of yore Would mingle together, then pour from his chalice Magic new wine never tasted before!" DAY--WIDE DAY! Day to the washing seas, and to the patient land, And to the little nautilus upon the sand. Day to the toiler gone afield, and to the child, And to the peetweet's brood amid the marshes wild. While these awake to toil and those awake to play, How glad are all that breathe, that night has winged away! For light and life are friends, and night their ancient foe. Awake, ye birds, to song, ye buds, begin to blow! THE BLOSSOMS OF TO-MORROW The sun was shining, after rain, The garden gleamed and glistened; I heard a humblebee complain-- I bent me down and listened. Around a nodding stalk he flew, That bore white lilies seven; And five were opened wide, and two Slept in their lily heaven. The foolish bee, the grumbling bee, That might have found a palace (As any one beside could see) Within the honeyed chalice-- The grumbling bee, the foolish bee, Still hummed one note of sorrow: "Oh, that to-day would give to me The blossoms of to-morrow." From bud to bud, the livelong hour, I saw him pass and hover, And pry about each fast-shut flower, Some entrance to discover. A discontented mind, no doubt, A moral here should borrow; I only say: "Don't fret about The blossoms of to-morrow!" THE NEST IN THE HEATHER (_In Scotland it was an old custom for the young people on Easter morning to hunt for eggs of the wild fowl_) Oh, fine it is at Easter To hunt the wild fowl's nest! A rush o' wings--a feather From aff a broodin' breast-- A twinkle o' the heather-- An' weel ye ken the rest! Before we've ta'en a dewbit, A' in the morning gray, It's callin' ane anither In haste to be away-- It's cryin', "Wish me, mither, The best luck o' the day!" An' mither's gi'en us kisses, Wi' little sighs between; An' if a teardrop's blinkin' Within her tender een, It's, maybe, that she's thinkin' O' Easters that hae been! Then lads and lassies scatter, To hunt the eggs sae white; They thither run, an' hither, An' shout in their delight! An' if twa hunt thegither, They ken it isna right! No laddie to a lassie Of hidden nest may tell; Nor lass of laddie ask it, But she maun seek hersel'! Wha brings the fullest basket-- Guid luck wi' him shall dwell! Oh, fine it is at Easter To hunt the wild fowl's nest; An' when the sun is beamin', It's hame we'll gang in haste; For now the brose is steamin,' The chair for us is placed! But oh! for a' the pleasure, Ae thing I canna thole-- The puir wild birdie's greetin'-- It's pierced my verra soul! I hear ilk ane repeatin', "It was my eggs ye stole!" LADY-GROVE (SILVER BIRCHES) This side the deeper wood, Of somber oak and pine, A dryad sisterhood Upon the hill's incline, In poised expectance stand, As waiting but the sign, To dance a saraband! The oaks and pines, alway, A darkling mystery hide. In Lady-Grove, all day, The cheerful sunbeams glide; And many a singing brood In peace and joy abide With this lov'd sisterhood. Their raiment fair is wove Of tender green and white: Come, Breeze, to Lady-Grove And put their trance to flight; For if they once were freed-- My Silver Birches light-- Ah, what a dance they'd lead! SHADOW BROOK Shadow Brook creeps round the hill, Shadow Brook darts past the mill-- Coming from the wood, in haste Seeks again its native waste! Meanwhile, every friend it meets For protection it entreats; Saying: "Willows, close around, That my path may not be found! Grass and sedges interlace, Throw a veil across my face! Clematis and gold-thread weave Meshes that can best deceive! Celandine and gentian rise, And my ripples help disguise! Pebbles, do not tempt to play Lest my laughter should betray! Silent as my minnows are, I would glide afar, afar: Help me, friends, to reach the wood, And its happy solitude, Where I have my chosen bed Of the brown leaves underspread." Thus, in ways it knoweth best, Shadow Brook runs on its quest, Shadow Brook--a hermit stream-- Finding life a pleasant dream. THE BROOK AND THE BIRD I listened to a summer brook That rippled past my shady seat; Now far, now near, now vague, now clear, The music of its liquid feet. Few tones the slender rillet has has-- That few how sweet, how soothing sweet! A live delight, by day, by night, The music of its liquid feet! While there I mused, a songbird lit And swung above my shady seat: He heard the brook, and straightway took The music of its liquid feet! A bird's bright glance on me he bent,-- A bird's glance, fearless yet discreet; As who might say, "This roundelay Of liquid joy I can repeat!" The mimic carol done, once more He needs must try its measures sweet;-- Again, again, that rippling strain My songbird did repeat, repeat! Since then I've learned that human breasts To few and simple measures beat; O blessed bird, my heart-warm word I, too, repeat, repeat, repeat! THE BIRDS OF SOLEURE Thrifty the folk in the town of Soleure, And they steadily ply their fathers' trade; Proud are they, too, that, year after year, The watches and clocks of the world they have made. Click go the seconds, kling go the hours, In the town of Soleure the time is well kept! Ever, new steel they cut and trim, While into the street the filings are swept. Only waste metal, unfit for use; But it catches the sunshine and glitters still-- And what are those thrushes doing there, Each with a scrap of steel in its bill? The watchmaker's boy has paused with his broom, And he follows the birds with a boy's keen eye; Their secret he learns, and whither they go, In the leafy tent of yon linden high! Their secret he guards the springtime through, And he smiles when he hears the young ones call; "Never had birdlings a cradle like theirs-- Surely to them can no harm befall!" When the leaves are flying and birds are flown, 'Tis out on the linden bough he swings-- The fearless lad that he is--and thence, A wonderful nest of steel he brings! It yet may be seen in the town of Soleure, To show how the skill of the birds began At the point where human skill fell short; For they used what was waste in the hands of man. THE PRAIRIE NEST Where, think you, a little gray finch in the far wide West Chose (of all places!) to build and to brood her nest? Well, I will tell you the tale that the hunter told: (Strange things has he seen--this hunter grizzled and old.) He spoke of the cattle that came to no herder's call, Roaming the fenceless prairie from springtime to fall. A shot from his rifle laid low the king of the herd-- When, hark! the sharp cry of a circling and hovering bird! What did it mean? The hunter drew in his rein, And leaped to the ground, where dead lay the lord of the plain! Stilled was the beating heart, and glazed were the eyes; The fluttering bird circled higher, and sharper her cries; While, finer and fainter, yet many, and all as keen, Came cries from below, as in answer. What could it mean? The hunter bent down; and his heart with wonder was stirred, When he saw, between the wide horns, the nest of a bird, Like a crown which the prairie's monarch might choose to wear On his shaggy forelock, and lined with the friendly hair! The hunter stood still, abashed in the midst of the plain, To hear the little gray mother's cry of pain, And the faint fine voices of nestlings answer the cry; While their fearless friend lay dead between earth and sky! THE MOVING OF THE NEST Do not ask me _why?_ or _how?_-- All in Fairyland it chanced, As the leaves upon the bough In the autumn breezes danced! "Quip-a-quip-a-quip-a-queer!" Said the Thrush unto his mate. "We must soon be gone from here; No one else would stay so late!" Do not ask me _why?_ or _how?_-- But his mate did sorely grieve: "My dear nest upon this bough It will break my heart to leave!" Do not ask me _how?_ or _why?_-- But the thrush's children, too, Perched around, began to cry, "Oh, whatever shall we do?" "Cheep-a-cheep-a-cheep-a-cheer! Never such a nest as ours; We would rather have it, _here_, Than Bermuda and the flowers!" "Cheep-a-cheep-a-cheep-a-cheer," Pleaded then the thrush's mate: "Let us take the nest, my dear, It is light and we are eight!" (Do not ask me _why?_ or _how?_--) But the thrushes, with a cheer, Took that nest from off the bough-- "Quip-a-quip-a-quip-a-queer! "Quip-a-quip-a-quip-a-queer! Firmly, now, with beak and claw; Spread your wings, and never fear,-- _You_ to push, and _you_ to draw!" So the thrushes took their nest, Every one his strength applied; But the youngest 'twas thought best Should be snugly tucked inside. All in Fairyland it chanced! There is nothing more to say; Ere the morn was far advanced, They were miles and miles away! THE WIDOWED EAGLE Out from the aërie beloved we flew, Now through the white, and now through the blue; Glided beneath us hilltop and glen, River and meadow and dwellings of men! We flew, we flew through the regions of light And the wind's wild pæan followed our flight! Free of the world, we flew, we flew-- Bound to each other alone,--we two! To the shivering migrant we called "Adieu!" Mid the frost-sweet weather, we flew, we flew! Till, hark from below! the hiss of lead, And one of us dropped, as a plume is shed! Around and around I flew, I flew, Wheeling my flight, ever closer I drew! There, on the earth, my belovèd lay, With a crimson stain on her breast-plumes gray! And creatures of earth we had scorned before, Now measured the wings that would lift no more: And I stooped, as an arrow is shot from the height, And sought to bear her away in my flight flight-- Away to our aërie far to seek! Well did I fight with talons and beak; But the craven foe, in their numbers and might, Bore her in triumph out of my sight! THE CHICKADEE Black-cap, madcap, Never tired of play, What's the news to-day? "Faint-heart, faint-heart, Winter's coming up this way, And the winter comes to stay!" Black-cap, madcap, Whither will you go, Now the storm-winds blow? "Faint-heart, faint-heart, In the pine boughs, thick and low, We are sheltered from the snow!" Black-cap, madcap, In the snow and sleet, What have you to eat? "Faint-heart, faint-heart, Seeds and berries are a treat, When the frost has made them sweet!" Black-cap, madcap, Other birds have flown To a summer zone! "Faint-heart, faint-heart, When they're gone, we black-caps own Our white playground all alone!" THE EARTH-MOTHER AND HER CHILDREN Her children all were gathered round her, One olden, golden day; Between her tender, drooping eyelids She watched them feed or play. Upon the lion's living velvet She pillowed her fair head; A white fawn pushed its dewy muzzle Beneath the hand that fed. A goldfinch clung upon a ringlet That brushed her wide, smooth brow; And, thence, right merrily he answered His comrades on the bough. But at her feet there lay a sleeper, Of subtly-fashioned limb; Whose motion, force and will to be, Kept yet their prison dim. And round about his couch of slumber The rest a space did make: "Your peace" (the Mother told her children) "Is broken, if he wake! "Lo! this--the best of all created-- Shall yet an evil bring: And ye in doubt shall graze the pasture, And ye in fear shall sing. "For your dear sake, my lesser children, I keep him long asleep; Play on, sing on, a happy season-- His dreams be passing deep!" Thus, while her children gathered round her, And while Man sleeping lay, The fair Earth-Mother softly murmured, "It is your Golden Day!" "WHEN THE LEAVES ARE GONE" When the leaves are gone, the birds are gone, And 'tis very silent at the dawn. Snowbird, nuthatch, chickadee,-- Come and cheer the lonely tree! When the leaves are gone, the flowers are gone, Fast asleep beneath the ground withdrawn. Flowers of snow, so soft and fine-- Clothe the shivering branch and vine! THE FIRST THANKSGIVING (1621) I would like to lift the curtain Hides the past from mortal view, For a glimpse of one Thanksgiving When New England still was new. I would like to see that feast day Bradford for his people made, Ere the onset of the winter, That their hearts might be upstayed. First he sent a score of yeomen, Skilled in woodcraft, sure of aim; All one day they spent in hunting, That there might be store of game. Fathers, brothers (aye, and lovers!), Home they bring the glossy deer; Some but praise their hunter's prowess, Some, soft-hearted, drop a tear. I would like to see those housewives, Busy matrons, maidens too, Watching by the ripening oven, Bending o'er the home-made brew. I would like to see the feasting Where the snowy cloth is spread; Here shall no one be forgotten, Here shall all be warmed and fed. Welcome, too, ye friendly shadows At the white man's feast and sport, Tufted warriors, grave onlooking, Massasoit and his court. "MASCOTS" Home they come from Cuba Libre; And they march with hastening feet Underneath the floating banners, Up the thronged and ringing street. When you cheer your sunburnt heroes, Don't forget their pensioners small, Led along, or perched on shoulder, Four-foot, furry "mascots" all! Comrades of the march and bivouac, Sharers of the cup and can, All unconscious of their portion In the drama played by man. Did they bring, perchance, good fortune (As they brought their owners joy)? Ask the youth who owns the "mascot"-- For a soldier's but a boy! MOTHER FUR I wonder what charm there can be in fur? The kitten curls up and begins to purr, The puppy tumbles about in the rug In his silly way and gives it a hug, And mousekin, that even a shadow can scare, For a moment lies still in the long, soft hair Then slips away to its home in the wall. Can it be--poor darlings! that each and all Believe 'tis their mother, and hasten to her? All babies, I think, love old Mother Fur; For my little brother--too little to speak-- See how he nestles his peach-blossom cheek In the velvet coat that the tiger wore, As it lies stretched out at length on the floor! Tiger, if you were alive--dear me! I shudder to think how cruel you'd be. No doubt in your day you did harm enough, But now you're safe as my tippet or muff! You, too, I will call (since you never can stir) Old Mother Fur, kind Mother Fur! WHAT THE CAT-MOTHER SAID We live in a cave the wild-rose bushes hide, For my kittens and I were turned out of the house. There are plenty of birds here, on every side-- And a bird I must catch, for I can't find a mouse! WHAT THE BIRD-MOTHER SAID Keep still in the nest, O my birdlings dear, While I search for a worm! Do not chirrup one word! There's a cruel tigress crouching so near-- For her hungry cubs she is seeking a bird! WHAT THE FRIEND OF BOTH SAID The friend of both to pity was stirred, And a wish divided, her heart possessed: "May you hungry kittens lack never a bird"-- "May you birdlings dear be safe in your nest!" THE LITTLE BROWN BAT Quoth the little brown bat: "I rise with the owl,-- Wisest and best of the feathered fowl; Let other folks rise, if they will, with the lark, And be early and bright--I am early and dark!" Quoth the little brown bat: "I'm awake and up, When the night-moth sips from the lily's white cup; While the firefly lanterns are searching the sky, I am glancing about, with fiery eye!" Quoth the little brown bat: "The night has its noon As well as its day--and I'm friends with the moon. Many a secret she tells me alone, Which never a bird or a bee has known!" Quoth the little brown bat: "There is house-room for me, When the winter comes, in some hollow tree; Or under barn eaves, near the fragrant hay, I sleep the dull winter hours away." THE LOST CHARTER (_Based on an Arabic Legend_) PERSONS Bounce, a wire-haired Terrier; Tip, a tortoise-shell Cat; An old and faithful Servant of both. Prologue by Old Servant, as follows: We three before the fire, one night, Had but its flickering blaze for light-- My dog, my cat, on either side; I mused, while they grew sleepy-eyed. But, if they waked, or if they slept, Still each some watch on other kept. Now what is this, good Bounce, good Tip, That mars your perfect fellowship? Speak up! Speak up! you, Tip,--you, Bounce, Your mutual grievances announce. At this my dog awoke from doze, Drew near, and thrust a foolish nose Beneath my hand; then, deeply sighed. Her gold-stone eyes Tip opened wide, The middle of the hearth she took, And cast on Bounce a scornful look; And then, this colloquy began, Which I record as best I can. THE DIALOGUE TIP: Dear Mistress, plainly I must speak; For _he_, who should be dumb and meek, The simple truth would never say And his own foolish act betray betray-- BOUNCE (_interrupting pleadingly_): Oh, do not heed her, Mistress dear; Think how I love you, guard you, cheer! TIP (_proceeds with withering disregard_): When all we creatures were assigned Our places with your human kind, ('Twas long ago) while some became Your slaves--as spiritless as tame, We two, as friends, beneath your roof Were lodged, because we each gave proof proof-- BOUNCE (_licking Old Servant's hand_): Yes, yes--I of my faithfulness-- Man calls on me in all distress! TIP (_severely_): You blundering, careless beast, be still! My cleanliness, my grace, my skill, Did, quite as much myself commend! That we should live, not slave, but friend To Master Man was then agreed: But since of caution there is need, We asked a written document; To which our Master did consent. Puffed up with confidence and pride, _He_ took the document to hide. [_Extends her paw towards Bounce, who winces and buries his nose deeper under old Servant's hand_ He hid it in his old bone-cave; And then, no further thought he gave The precious charter of our rights-- Engaged in noisy bouts and fights! Bounce (_excitedly_): There was foul play, O Mistress mine-- The other creatures did combine! TIP: Hush! 'twas your carelessness, in chief, That gave the chance to knave and thief! The jealous Ox and Horse conspired, And then, the villain Rat they hired To delve in darkness underground Till he the precious charter found, And brought the Horse and Ox, who thought Their liberty could thus be bought,-- The tiresome creatures! To this day They drudge and drudge, the same old way! The Ox, the Ass, the Horse--these all Divided with the Rat their stall, And from their mangers grain they gave-- Such price they paid the thievish knave! What loss was ours, we scarce can know-- The charter we could never show! I might have had a dais spread With crimson velvet, and been fed On golden finches every day; But, as for _him_ (_indicating Bounce_), he's naught to say (He lost the charter of our rights)-- When flogged, or chained on moonlight nights! Upon one subject, only, we Can always heartily agree, [_gracefully waving her paw_, You, careless Dogs, we, careful Cats-- Our common enemy-- BOUNCE: Yes, Rats! [_Joyously embracing opportunity to reinstate himself_ Old Servant (_starting up suddenly_): Ah, who said "Rats!" just now--and where? And why cannot you two play fair? [_At this, Tip is seen to be occupying her own corner of the hearth, and Bounce to be sound asleep, his nose deeply buried between his forepaws. Old Servant rubs her eyes, then smiles thoughtfully, and settles back in easy-chair_ THE SAVING OF JACK _An East Side Incident_ "Whose dog is Jack?" He belongs to this street. Needs anti-fat--has too much to eat. "Houseless and homeless?"--Well I guess not; In the whole of this block there isn't a tot But has had Jack home to board and to sleep, And he pays 'em in fun, every cent of his keep. He's the best-natured dog, and the smartest, too; No end of the tricks we've taught him to do. Got a heap of sense in his yellow hide! He's the wonderf'lest dog on the whole East Side; Why, even the dog-man doesn't know What breed Jack is,--for he told me so! The dog-catchers came a'most every day, But Jack knew their cart, and he'd hide away; Then out he'd come, laughing, when they'd got past. Can't _guess_ how he ever was cotched at last; But he was, and they boosted him into their cart, And nobody there could take his part. My! but the little kids cried like mad, And us bigger ones, too,--we felt just as bad; For he'd rode us all on his old yellow back. It looked as though it was all up with Jack, And I watched him go; but he cocked one eye As much as to say, "I'll be back by and by." The look that he gave me--it made me _think_; And I thought of a plan as quick as wink And I says, "Feller-citizens, ladies and gents, I guess that we've each of us got a few cents, And we'll club together and have a show, And charge a price, not high nor low; And we'll raise the money, right here and now, That'll buy Jack back by to-morrow--that's how! Tony, the Eyetalian boy, he'll sing; And Patsy McGovern'll do his handspring; And Ikey Aarons'll swallow his knife, And make us all think he's taking his life, And little Freda, she'll pass round the hat, She'll smile and say nothing--she's just good for that!" Well, we emptied our pockets--you bet we did!-- Every one of us big 'uns and each little kid Ran home for their banks as fast as they could; And we raised the money, and all felt good; And next day, early, we brought Jack back. So, now, things run in the same old track, But he's got his license and _don't have to hide_! And we've bought him a _byootiful collar beside_. SKYE OF SKYE Skye, of Skye, when the night was late, And the burly porter drowsy grew, Ran down to the silent pier, to wait Till the boat came in with its hardy crew. Skye, of Skye, as he sat on the pier, Turned seaward ever a watchful eye, And his shaggy ears were pricked to hear The plash of oars, as the boat drew nigh. Skye, of Skye, when they leaped ashore, Greeted the crew with a joyful cry-- Kissed their hands, and trotted before To the inn that stood on the hilltop high. Within, was the porter sound asleep-- They could almost hear his lusty snore: Then Skye, of Skye, with an antic leap, Would pull on the bellrope that swung by the door. Then was the bolt drawn quickly back back-- Then did the jolly crew stream in; And--"Landlaird, bring us your best auld sack!" And--"Aweel, aweel, where hae ye been?" Then Skye, of Skye, on the beach-white floor, Sanded that day by the housemaid neat, Lay down to rest him--his vigils o'er, With his honest nose between his feet. But Skye, of Skye as he rolled his eye On the friendly crowd, heard his master say, "Na, na, that doggie ye couldna buy-- Not though his weight in gold ye would pay!" Skye, of Skye, they have made him a bed On the wind-swept cliff, by the ocean's swell; On the stone they have reared above his head, You may see a little dog ringing a bell. TIP'S KITTEN The master,--he loved my kitten, my kitten; She was still too weak to stand, When he placed her upon one hand, And over it laid the other, And looked at me kindly, and said, "Tip, you're a proud little mother!" For they'd left me but one, my kitten, my kitten-- As sweet as a kitten could be-- And I loved her for all the three They had taken away without warning. I watched her from daylight till dark, Watched her from night until morning! I never left my kitten, my kitten (For I feared--and I loved her so!) Till I thought it time she should know That cats in the house have a duty, And a right to be proud of their skill, As well as their grace and their beauty. I only left my kitten, my kitten, A few short moments in all, To punish the mouse in the wall, Each day growing bolder and bolder; And I brought her the mouse to show What kittens must do when older. I brought her the mouse--my kitten, my kitten! I tossed it, I caught it for her; But she would not see, nor stir. My heart it beat fast and faster; And I caught her up in my mouth, And carried her so, to the master. I thought he would help--my kitten, my kitten! And I laid her down at his feet-- (Never a kitten so sweet, And he knew that I had no other!) But he only said, "Poor Tip, 'Tis a sad day for you, little mother!" THE KING OF CATS I The wind comes down the chimney with a sigh, The kettle sings, chain-swung from grimy hook, While ticks the clock unseen on mantel high. The black cat holds the cosiest chimney-nook, Straight in the blaze his gold-stone eyeballs look, And children four do pay him flattering court. The baby brings to him its picture-book, And shows the way to build a castled fort. The black cat shares, indeed, their every thought and sport. II The black cat came to us a twelvemonth since; The black cat is a stranger with us yet; We treat him well; we call him our Black Prince. So thick and glossy is his coat of jet You well might say that you have never met A cat so lordly, though he seems to brood Over some wrong he never can forget. We know that he could tell us, if he would-- Our dear Black Prince, so sad, so gentle, and so good! III "You prattle, children. Fritz, bestir yourself! The fire needs wood, so hungry is the wind; And Elsa, bring the platters from the shelf And lay the table. You, too, Gretchen, mind, For you of late are carelessly inclined, And brittle is the _blaue glocken_ ware. Make haste, else will your father come and find, For all his day's hard work, but churlish fare. Full sure I am no man works harder anywhere." IV The good house-mother speaks, and not in vain, For promptly all her willing brood obey. They hear the dead leaves click against the pane, Updriven by the wind in its mad play. "One might be thankful that one need not stray On such a night as this--'tis just the night When the Wild Huntsman (as the people say), With all his hounds is scouring heaven's height, And you may see him if, as now, the moon be bright." V "It is an old and foolish tale. Be still, For now, I think, your father's step I hear, Though not the tune he whistles down the hill. He comes--is at the door. Why, goodman, dear, You're out of breath! Bad news you bring, I fear." "Bad news" (the goodman smiles, with half a frown), "But not for us; and so take heart of cheer. I own I'm out of breath--but sit ye down And hear the strangest thing e'er happened in this town." VI The children gather at their father's knees And, wonder-eyed, the coming story wait-- The story strange, the story sure to please. The black cat, who absorbed their cares but late, Is left to hold his solitary state. "'Twas thus," the father said, "as I came home, I reached the ruined castle's postern gate Just at the time the bats begin to roam And dart with heedless wings about the ivied gloam; VII "When, on my left, along the crumbling wall, Sharp-graved against the pallid afterglow, I saw a funeral train, with sweeping pall, And mournful bearers in a double row. I rubbed my eyes, I looked again, and lo! No human forms composed that funeral train!" (The black cat's eyes of gold-stone glitter so! He rises from the spot where he hath lain And listens well, as one who does not list in vain.) VIII "Folk say the Schloss was ever haunted ground; But tell us, father, what those mourners were." The father answered, smiling as he frowned: "Now, if 'twere told by some strange traveller, I'd say, 'Too much you tax our faith, good sir.' But truth was ever priceless unto me. Those mourners, clad in somber coats of fur, _Were cats--no more, nor less_! This I did see, And that the dead grimalkin was of high degree." IX Up, up the chimney go the sparks apace; Up, up, to vanish in the gusty sky. The black cat--look! he leaves his wonted place, And hark! he speaks: "_Then, king of cats am I!_" And with this first and last word for good-by, Up, up the chimney he hath vanished quite. "Our dear, our good Black Prince!" the children cry; "We always thought he should be king by right, But we shall miss him sadly, both by day and night." X The legend saith (I know no more than you, Reader of fairy lore with fancy fraught), That humble hearth nor evil fortune knew, Nor discontent. Long time the children sought For tidings of the lost; yet heard they naught; But sometimes, of a winter eventide, When all was bright within, the children thought That, when they called up through the chimney wide, Thence, with a gentle purr, their olden friend replied. WAIFS Wept the Child that no one knew, Wandering on, without a clew; Wept so softly none did stay; So, farther yet, he went astray. Cried the Lamb that missed the fold, Trembling more from fear than cold-- "I am lost, and thou art lost-- Both upon the wide world tossed! Why not wander on together, Through the bright or cloudy weather?" Then the Child that no one knew Looked through eyes that shone like dew. Laughed, and wept, "Lost as I am, Come with me, thou poor lost Lamb!" Moaned the youngling wood-dove left By the flock, of flight bereft, "Thou art lost, and we are lost-- All upon the wide world tossed! Why not wander on together, Through the bright or cloudy weather?" Then the Child that no one knew Closer to the nestling drew, Hand beneath, and hand above, Thus he held the quivering Dove. Still they wander on together, Through the bright or cloudy weather,-- Spotless Lamb and Dove and Child, Comrades in the lonesome wild; Child and Lamb and nestling Dove,-- Truth and Innocence and Love! Blest their hearth, and blest their field, Who to these a shelter yield. FROST-FLOWERS OF THE PAVEMENT I sighed for flowers, in wintry hours When gardens were a loveless waste; Mine eye fell on the pavement stone, There flowers and flowers and flowers were traced. For me alone, the pavement stone, That garden pleasance did prepare; Or else, would others stop to see What flowers and flowers and flowers bloom there! STARS OF THE SNOW The stars are falling, are falling, By stream-side and meadow and wood; They silence the whispering leaves; And swiftly and softly they brood The robin's lone nest in the eaves. The stars are falling, are falling, Yet Night has lost never a one, Of all that are gathered below; To-morrow they'll melt in the sun-- For these are the stars of the snow. The stars are falling, are falling-- Look! On your sleeve is a star! Six-pointed and perfect its form, Six-pointed its comrades are,-- All, gems of this wonder-storm! JUNE IN THE SKY Slow through the light and silent air, Up climbs the smoke on its spiral stair-- The visible flight of some mortal's prayer; The trees are in bloom with the flowers of frost, But never a feathery leaf is lost; The spring, descending, is caught and bound Ere its silver feet can touch the ground; So still is the air that lies, this morn, Over the snow-cold fields forlorn, 'Tis as though Italy's heaven smiled In the face of some bleak Norwegian wild; And the heart in me sings--I know not why-- 'Tis winter on earth, but June in the sky! June in the sky! Ah, now I can see The souls of roses about to be, In gardens of heaven beckoning me, Roses red-lipped, and roses pale, Fanned by the tremulous ether gale! Some of them climbing a window-ledge, Some of them peering from wayside hedge, As yonder, adrift on the aery stream, Love drives his plumed and filleted team; The Angel of Summer aloft I see, And the souls of roses about to be! And the heart in me sings--the heart knows why-- 'Tis winter on earth, but June in the sky. MOTHER EARTH O mother, tuck the children in, And draw the curtains round their heads; And mother, when the storms begin, Let storms forbear those cradle beds. And if the sleepers wake too soon, Say, "Children, 'tis too early yet!" And hush them with a sleepy tune, And closer draw the coverlet. O Mother Earth, be good to all The little sleepers in thy care; And when 'tis time to wake them, call A beam of sun, a breath of air! THE RAIN RAINS EVERY DAY Said the robin to his mate In the dripping orchard tree: "Our dear nest will have to wait Till the blue sky we can see. Birds can neither work nor play, For the rain rains every day, And the rain rains all the day!" Said the violet to the leaf: "I can scarcely ope my eye; So, for fear I'll come to grief, Close along the earth I lie. All we flowers for sunshine pray, But the rain rains every day, And the rain rains all the day!" And the children, far and wide, They, too, wished away the rain; All their sports were spoiled outside By the "black glove" at the pane. Very dull indoors to stay While "the rain rains every day, And the rain rains all the day!" Up and down the murmurs run, Shared by child and bird and flower. Suddenly the golden sun Dazzled through a clearing shower. Then they all forgot to say That "the rain rains every day, And the rain rains all the day!" THE GOOD BY When the Little Girl said Good by, At the turn of the road, on the hill, Was there a tear in her eye? And why did she keep so still? When the Little Girl said Good by, She never looked back at all! Was there a tear in her eye? I thought I could hear it fall! And then were the flowers more sweet, And the grass breathed a long, low sigh-- I know--for I heard my heart beat-- There _was_ a tear in her eye! 
409	----	POEMS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. BY PHILLIS WHEATLEY, NEGRO SERVANT TO MR. JOHN WHEATLEY, OF BOSTON, IN NEW-ENGLAND. CONTENTS. To Maecenas On Virtue To the University of Cambridge, in New England To the King's Most Excellent Majesty On being brought from Africa On the Rev. Dr. Sewell On the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield On the Death of a young Lady of five Years of Age On the Death of a young Gentleman To a Lady on the Death of her Husband Goliath of Gath Thoughts on the Works of Providence To a Lady on the Death of three Relations To a Clergyman on the Death of his Lady An Hymn to the Morning An Hymn to the Evening On Isaiah lxiii. 1-8 On Recollection On Imagination A Funeral Poem on the Death of an Infant aged twelve Months To Captain H. D. of the 65th Regiment To the Right Hon. William, Earl of Dartmouth Ode to Neptune To a Lady on her coming to North America with her Son, for the Recovery of her Health To a Lady on her remarkable Preservation in a Hurricane in North Carolina To a Lady and her Children on the Death of the Lady's Brother and Sister, and a Child of the Name of Avis, aged one Year On the Death of Dr. Samuel Marshall, To a Gentleman on his Voyage to Great-Britain, for the Recovery of his Health To the Rev. Dr. Thomas Amory on reading his Sermons on Daily Devotion, in which that Duty is recommended and assisted On the Death of J. C. an Infant An Hymn to Humanity To the Hon. T. H. Esq; on the Death of his Daughter Niobe in Distress for her Children slain by Apollo, from Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book VI, and from a View of the Painting of Mr. Richard Wilson To S. M. a young African Painter, on seeing his Works To his Honour the Lieutenant-Governor, on the Death of his Lady A Farewel to America A Rebus by I. B. An Answer to ditto, by Phillis Wheatley TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON, THE FOLLOWING P O E M S ARE MOST RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED. BY HER MUCH OBLIGED, VERY HUMBLE AND DEVOTED SERVANT. PHILLIS WHEATLEY. BOSTON, JUNE 12, 1773. P R E F A C E. THE following POEMS were written originally for the Amusement of the Author, as they were the Products of her leisure Moments. She had no Intention ever to have published them; nor would they now have made their Appearance, but at the Importunity of many of her best, and most generous Friends; to whom she considers herself, as under the greatest Obligations. As her Attempts in Poetry are now sent into the World, it is hoped the Critic will not severely censure their Defects; and we presume they have too much Merit to be cast aside with Contempt, as worthless and trifling Effusions. As to the Disadvantages she has laboured under, with Regard to Learning, nothing needs to be offered, as her Master's Letter in the following Page will sufficiently show the Difficulties in this Respect she had to encounter. With all their Imperfections, the Poems are now humbly submitted to the Perusal of the Public. The following is a Copy of a LETTER sent by the Author's Master to the Publisher. PHILLIS was brought from Africa to America, in the Year 1761, between seven and eight Years of Age. Without any Assistance from School Education, and by only what she was taught in the Family, she, in sixteen Months Time from her Arrival, attained the English language, to which she was an utter Stranger before, to such a degree, as to read any, the most difficult Parts of the Sacred Writings, to the great Astonishment of all who heard her. As to her WRITING, her own Curiosity led her to it; and this she learnt in so short a Time, that in the Year 1765, she wrote a Letter to the Rev. Mr. OCCOM, the Indian Minister, while in England. She has a great Inclination to learn the Latin Tongue, and has made some Progress in it. This Relation is given by her Master who bought her, and with whom she now lives. JOHN WHEATLEY. Boston, Nov. 14, 1772. To the PUBLIC. AS it has been repeatedly suggested to the Publisher, by Persons, who have seen the Manuscript, that Numbers would be ready to suspect they were not really the Writings of PHILLIS, he has procured the following Attestation, from the most respectable Characters in Boston, that none might have the least Ground for disputing their Original. WE whose Names are under-written, do assure the World, that the POEMS specified in the following Page,* were (as we verily believe) written by Phillis, a young Negro Girl, who was but a few Years since, brought an uncultivated Barbarian from Africa, and has ever since been, and now is, under the Disadvantage of serving as a Slave in a Family in this Town. She has been examined by some of the best Judges, and is thought qualified to write them. His Excellency THOMAS HUTCHINSON, Governor. The Hon. ANDREW OLIVER, Lieutenant-Governor. The Hon. Thomas Hubbard, | The Rev. Charles Chauncey, D. D. The Hon. John Erving, | The Rev. Mather Byles, D. D. The Hon. James Pitts, | The Rev. Ed. Pemberton, D. D. The Hon. Harrison Gray, | The Rev. Andrew Elliot, D. D. The Hon. James Bowdoin, | The Rev. Samuel Cooper, D. D. John Hancock, Esq; | The Rev. Mr. Saumel Mather, Joseph Green, Esq; | The Rev. Mr. John Moorhead, Richard Carey, Esq; | Mr. John Wheat ey, her Master. N. B. The original Attestation, signed by the above Gentlemen, may be seen by applying to Archibald Bell, Bookseller, No. 8, Aldgate-Street. _________________________________________________________ *The Words "following Page," allude to the Contents of the Manuscript Copy, with are wrote at the Back of the above Attestation. P O E M S O N V A R I O U S S U B J E C T S. ___________ To M AE C E N A S. MAECENAS, you, beneath the myrtle shade, Read o'er what poets sung, and shepherds play'd. What felt those poets but you feel the same? Does not your soul possess the sacred flame? Their noble strains your equal genius shares In softer language, and diviner airs. While Homer paints, lo! circumfus'd in air, Celestial Gods in mortal forms appear; Swift as they move hear each recess rebound, Heav'n quakes, earth trembles, and the shores resound. Great Sire of verse, before my mortal eyes, The lightnings blaze across the vaulted skies, And, as the thunder shakes the heav'nly plains, A deep felt horror thrills through all my veins. When gentler strains demand thy graceful song, The length'ning line moves languishing along. When great Patroclus courts Achilles' aid, The grateful tribute of my tears is paid; Prone on the shore he feels the pangs of love, And stern Pelides tend'rest passions move. Great Maro's strain in heav'nly numbers flows, The Nine inspire, and all the bosom glows. O could I rival thine and Virgil's page, Or claim the Muses with the Mantuan Sage; Soon the same beauties should my mind adorn, And the same ardors in my soul should burn: Then should my song in bolder notes arise, And all my numbers pleasingly surprise; But here I sit, and mourn a grov'ling mind, That fain would mount, and ride upon the wind. Not you, my friend, these plaintive strains become, Not you, whose bosom is the Muses home; When they from tow'ring Helicon retire, They fan in you the bright immortal fire, But I less happy, cannot raise the song, The fault'ring music dies upon my tongue. The happier Terence* all the choir inspir'd, His soul replenish'd, and his bosom fir'd; But say, ye Muses, why this partial grace, To one alone of Afric's sable race; From age to age transmitting thus his name With the finest glory in the rolls of fame? Thy virtues, great Maecenas! shall be sung In praise of him, from whom those virtues sprung: While blooming wreaths around thy temples spread, I'll snatch a laurel from thine honour'd head, While you indulgent smile upon the deed. *He was an African by birth. As long as Thames in streams majestic flows, Or Naiads in their oozy beds repose While Phoebus reigns above the starry train While bright Aurora purples o'er the main, So long, great Sir, the muse thy praise shall sing, So long thy praise shal' make Parnassus ring: Then grant, Maecenas, thy paternal rays, Hear me propitious, and defend my lays. O N V I R T U E. O Thou bright jewel in my aim I strive To comprehend thee. Thine own words declare Wisdom is higher than a fool can reach. I cease to wonder, and no more attempt Thine height t' explore, or fathom thy profound. But, O my soul, sink not into despair, Virtue is near thee, and with gentle hand Would now embrace thee, hovers o'er thine head. Fain would the heav'n-born soul with her converse, Then seek, then court her for her promis'd bliss. Auspicious queen, thine heav'nly pinions spread, And lead celestial Chastity along; Lo! now her sacred retinue descends, Array'd in glory from the orbs above. Attend me, Virtue, thro' my youthful years! O leave me not to the false joys of time! But guide my steps to endless life and bliss. Greatness, or Goodness, say what I shall call thee, To give me an higher appellation still, Teach me a better strain, a nobler lay, O thou, enthron'd with Cherubs in the realms of day. TO THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, IN NEW-ENGLAND. WHILE an intrinsic ardor prompts to write, The muses promise to assist my pen; 'Twas not long since I left my native shore The land of errors, and Egyptian gloom: Father of mercy, 'twas thy gracious hand Brought me in safety from those dark abodes. Students, to you 'tis giv'n to scan the heights Above, to traverse the ethereal space, And mark the systems of revolving worlds. Still more, ye sons of science ye receive The blissful news by messengers from heav'n, How Jesus' blood for your redemption flows. See him with hands out-stretcht upon the cross; Immense compassion in his bosom glows; He hears revilers, nor resents their scorn: What matchless mercy in the Son of God! When the whole human race by sin had fall'n, He deign'd to die that they might rise again, And share with him in the sublimest skies, Life without death, and glory without end. Improve your privileges while they stay, Ye pupils, and each hour redeem, that bears Or good or bad report of you to heav'n. Let sin, that baneful evil to the soul, By you be shun'd, nor once remit your guard; Suppress the deadly serpent in its egg. Ye blooming plants of human race divine, An Ethiop tells you 'tis your greatest foe; Its transient sweetness turns to endless pain, And in immense perdition sinks the soul. TO THE KING'S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY. 1768. YOUR subjects hope, dread Sire-- The crown upon your brows may flourish long, And that your arm may in your God be strong! O may your sceptre num'rous nations sway, And all with love and readiness obey! But how shall we the British king reward! Rule thou in peace, our father, and our lord! Midst the remembrance of thy favours past, The meanest peasants most admire the last* May George, beloved by all the nations round, Live with heav'ns choicest constant blessings crown'd! Great God, direct, and guard him from on high, And from his head let ev'ry evil fly! And may each clime with equal gladness see A monarch's smile can set his subjects free! * The Repeal of the Stamp Act. On being brought from Africa to America. 'TWAS mercy brought me from my Pagan land, Taught my benighted soul to understand That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too: Once I redemption neither sought nor knew, Some view our sable race with scornful eye, "Their colour is a diabolic die." Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train. On the Death of the Rev. Dr. SEWELL, 1769. ERE yet the morn its lovely blushes spread, See Sewell number'd with the happy dead. Hail, holy man, arriv'd th' immortal shore, Though we shall hear thy warning voice no more. Come, let us all behold with wishful eyes The saint ascending to his native skies; From hence the prophet wing'd his rapt'rous way To the blest mansions in eternal day. Then begging for the Spirit of our God, And panting eager for the same abode, Come, let us all with the same vigour rise, And take a prospect of the blissful skies; While on our minds Christ's image is imprest, And the dear Saviour glows in ev'ry breast. Thrice happy saint! to find thy heav'n at last, What compensation for the evils past! Great God, incomprehensible, unknown By sense, we bow at thine exalted throne. O, while we beg thine excellence to feel, Thy sacred Spirit to our hearts reveal, And give us of that mercy to partake, Which thou hast promis'd for the Saviour's sake! "Sewell is dead." Swift-pinion'd Fame thus cry'd. "Is Sewell dead," my trembling tongue reply'd, O what a blessing in his flight deny'd! How oft for us the holy prophet pray'd! How oft to us the Word of Life convey'd! By duty urg'd my mournful verse to close, I for his tomb this epitaph compose. "Lo, here a man, redeem'd by Jesus's blood, "A sinner once, but now a saint with God; "Behold ye rich, ye poor, ye fools, ye wise, "Not let his monument your heart surprise; "Twill tell you what this holy man has done, "Which gives him brighter lustre than the sun. "Listen, ye happy, from your seats above. "I speak sincerely, while I speak and love, "He sought the paths of piety and truth, "By these made happy from his early youth; "In blooming years that grace divine he felt, "Which rescues sinners from the chains of guilt. "Mourn him, ye indigent, whom he has fed, "And henceforth seek, like him, for living bread; "Ev'n Christ, the bread descending from above, "And ask an int'rest in his saving love. "Mourn him, ye youth, to whom he oft has told "God's gracious wonders from the times of old. "I too have cause this mighty loss to mourn, "For he my monitor will not return. "O when shall we to his blest state arrive? "When the same graces in our bosoms thrive." On the Death of the Rev. Mr. GEORGE WHITEFIELD. 1770. HAIL, happy saint, on thine immortal throne, Possest of glory, life, and bliss unknown; We hear no more the music of thy tongue, Thy wonted auditories cease to throng. Thy sermons in unequall'd accents flow'd, And ev'ry bosom with devotion glow'd; Thou didst in strains of eloquence refin'd Inflame the heart, and captivate the mind. Unhappy we the setting sun deplore, So glorious once, but ah! it shines no more. Behold the prophet in his tow'ring flight! He leaves the earth for heav'n's unmeasur'd height, And worlds unknown receive him from our sight. There Whitefield wings with rapid course his way, And sails to Zion through vast seas of day. Thy pray'rs, great saint, and thine incessant cries Have pierc'd the bosom of thy native skies. Thou moon hast seen, and all the stars of light, How he has wrestled with his God by night. He pray'd that grace in ev'ry heart might dwell, He long'd to see America excell; He charg'd its youth that ev'ry grace divine Should with full lustre in their conduct shine; That Saviour, which his soul did first receive, The greatest gift that ev'n a God can give, He freely offer'd to the num'rous throng, That on his lips with list'ning pleasure hung. "Take him, ye wretched, for your only good, "Take him ye starving sinners, for your food; "Ye thirsty, come to this life-giving stream, "Ye preachers, take him for your joyful theme; "Take him my dear Americans, he said, "Be your complaints on his kind bosom laid: "Take him, ye Africans, he longs for you, "Impartial Saviour is his title due: "Wash'd in the fountain of redeeming blood, "You shall be sons, and kings, and priests to God." Great Countess,* we Americans revere Thy name, and mingle in thy grief sincere; New England deeply feels, the Orphans mourn, Their more than father will no more return. But, though arrested by the hand of death, Whitefield no more exerts his lab'ring breath, Yet let us view him in th' eternal skies, Let ev'ry heart to this bright vision rise; While the tomb safe retains its sacred trust, Till life divine re-animates his dust. *The Countess of Huntingdon, to whom Mr. Whitefield was Chaplain. On the Death of a young Lady of Five Years of Age. FROM dark abodes to fair etherial light Th' enraptur'd innocent has wing'd her flight; On the kind bosom of eternal love She finds unknown beatitude above. This known, ye parents, nor her loss deplore, She feels the iron hand of pain no more; The dispensations of unerring grace, Should turn your sorrows into grateful praise; Let then no tears for her henceforward flow, No more distress'd in our dark vale below, Her morning sun, which rose divinely bright, Was quickly mantled with the gloom of night; But hear in heav'n's blest bow'rs your Nancy fair, And learn to imitate her language there. "Thou, Lord, whom I behold with glory crown'd, "By what sweet name, and in what tuneful sound "Wilt thou be prais'd? Seraphic pow'rs are faint "Infinite love and majesty to paint. "To thee let all their graceful voices raise, "And saints and angels join their songs of praise." Perfect in bliss she from her heav'nly home Looks down, and smiling beckons you to come; Why then, fond parents, why these fruitless groans? Restrain your tears, and cease your plaintive moans. Freed from a world of sin, and snares, and pain, Why would you wish your daughter back again? No--bow resign'd. Let hope your grief control, And check the rising tumult of the soul. Calm in the prosperous, and adverse day, Adore the God who gives and takes away; Eye him in all, his holy name revere, Upright your actions, and your hearts sincere, Till having sail'd through life's tempestuous sea, And from its rocks, and boist'rous billows free, Yourselves, safe landed on the blissful shore, Shall join your happy babe to part no more. On the Death of a young Gentleman. WHO taught thee conflict with the pow'rs of night, To vanquish satan in the fields of light? Who strung thy feeble arms with might unknown, How great thy conquest, and how bright thy crown! War with each princedom, throne, and pow'r is o'er, The scene is ended to return no more. O could my muse thy seat on high behold, How deckt with laurel, how enrich'd with gold! O could she hear what praise thine harp employs, How sweet thine anthems, how divine thy joys! What heav'nly grandeur should exalt her strain! What holy raptures in her numbers reign! To sooth the troubles of the mind to peace, To still the tumult of life's tossing seas, To ease the anguish of the parents heart, What shall my sympathizing verse impart? Where is the balm to heal so deep a wound? Where shall a sov'reign remedy be found? Look, gracious Spirit, from thine heav'nly bow'r, And thy full joys into their bosoms pour; The raging tempest of their grief control, And spread the dawn of glory through the soul, To eye the path the saint departed trod, And trace him to the bosom of his God. To a Lady on the Death of her Husband. GRIM monarch! see, depriv'd of vital breath, A young physician in the dust of death: Dost thou go on incessant to destroy, Our griefs to double, and lay waste our joy? Enough thou never yet wast known to say, Though millions die, the vassals of thy sway: Nor youth, nor science, not the ties of love, Nor ought on earth thy flinty heart can move. The friend, the spouse from his dire dart to save, In vain we ask the sovereign of the grave. Fair mourner, there see thy lov'd Leonard laid, And o'er him spread the deep impervious shade. Clos'd are his eyes, and heavy fetters keep His senses bound in never-waking sleep, Till time shall cease, till many a starry world Shall fall from heav'n, in dire confusion hurl'd Till nature in her final wreck shall lie, And her last groan shall rend the azure sky: Not, not till then his active soul shall claim His body, a divine immortal frame. But see the softly-stealing tears apace Pursue each other down the mourner's face; But cease thy tears, bid ev'ry sigh depart, And cast the load of anguish from thine heart: From the cold shell of his great soul arise, And look beyond, thou native of the skies; There fix thy view, where fleeter than the wind Thy Leonard mounts, and leaves the earth behind. Thyself prepare to pass the vale of night To join for ever on the hills of light: To thine embrace this joyful spirit moves To thee, the partner of his earthly loves; He welcomes thee to pleasures more refin'd, And better suited to th' immortal mind. G O L I A T H O F G A T H. 1 SAMUEL, Chap. xvii. YE martial pow'rs, and all ye tuneful nine, Inspire my song, and aid my high design. The dreadful scenes and toils of war I write, The ardent warriors, and the fields of fight: You best remember, and you best can sing The acts of heroes to the vocal string: Resume the lays with which your sacred lyre, Did then the poet and the sage inspire. Now front to front the armies were display'd, Here Israel rang'd, and there the foes array'd; The hosts on two opposing mountains stood, Thick as the foliage of the waving wood; Between them an extensive valley lay, O'er which the gleaming armour pour'd the day, When from the camp of the Philistine foes, Dreadful to view, a mighty warrior rose; In the dire deeds of bleeding battle skill'd, The monster stalks the terror of the field. From Gath he sprung, Goliath was his name, Of fierce deportment, and gigantic frame: A brazen helmet on his head was plac'd, A coat of mail his form terrific grac'd, The greaves his legs, the targe his shoulders prest: Dreadful in arms high-tow'ring o'er the rest A spear he proudly wav'd, whose iron head, Strange to relate, six hundred shekels weigh'd; He strode along, and shook the ample field, While Phoebus blaz'd refulgent on his shield: Through Jacob's race a chilling horror ran, When thus the huge, enormous chief began: "Say, what the cause that in this proud array "You set your battle in the face of day? "One hero find in all your vaunting train, "Then see who loses, and who wins the plain; "For he who wins, in triumph may demand "Perpetual service from the vanquish'd land: "Your armies I defy, your force despise, "By far inferior in Philistia's eyes: "Produce a man, and let us try the fight, "Decide the contest, and the victor's right." Thus challeng'd he: all Israel stood amaz'd, And ev'ry chief in consternation gaz'd; But Jesse's son in youthful bloom appears, And warlike courage far beyond his years: He left the folds, he left the flow'ry meads, And soft recesses of the sylvan shades. Now Israel's monarch, and his troops arise, With peals of shouts ascending to the skies; In Elah's vale the scene of combat lies. When the fair morning blush'd with orient red, What David's fire enjoin'd the son obey'd, And swift of foot towards the trench he came, Where glow'd each bosom with the martial flame. He leaves his carriage to another's care, And runs to greet his brethren of the war. While yet they spake the giant-chief arose, Repeats the challenge, and insults his foes: Struck with the sound, and trembling at the view, Affrighted Israel from its post withdrew. "Observe ye this tremendous foe, they cry'd, "Who in proud vaunts our armies hath defy'd: "Whoever lays him prostrate on the plain, "Freedom in Israel for his house shall gain; "And on him wealth unknown the king will pour, "And give his royal daughter for his dow'r." Then Jesse's youngest hope: "My brethren say, "What shall be done for him who takes away "Reproach from Jacob, who destroys the chief. "And puts a period to his country's grief. "He vaunts the honours of his arms abroad, "And scorns the armies of the living God." Thus spoke the youth, th' attentive people ey'd The wond'rous hero, and again reply'd: "Such the rewards our monarch will bestow, "On him who conquers, and destroys his foe." Eliab heard, and kindled into ire To hear his shepherd brother thus inquire, And thus begun: "What errand brought thee? say "Who keeps thy flock? or does it go astray? "I know the base ambition of thine heart, "But back in safety from the field depart." Eliab thus to Jesse's youngest heir, Express'd his wrath in accents most severe. When to his brother mildly he reply'd. "What have I done? or what the cause to chide? The words were told before the king, who sent For the young hero to his royal tent: Before the monarch dauntless he began, "For this Philistine fail no heart of man: "I'll take the vale, and with the giant fight: "I dread not all his boasts, nor all his might." When thus the king: "Dar'st thou a stripling go, "And venture combat with so great a foe? "Who all his days has been inur'd to fight, "And made its deeds his study and delight: "Battles and bloodshed brought the monster forth, "And clouds and whirlwinds usher'd in his birth." When David thus: "I kept the fleecy care, "And out there rush'd a lion and a bear; "A tender lamb the hungry lion took, "And with no other weapon than my crook "Bold I pursu'd, and chas d him o'er the field, "The prey deliver'd, and the felon kill'd: "As thus the lion and the bear I slew, "So shall Goliath fall, and all his crew: "The God, who sav'd me from these beasts of prey, "By me this monster in the dust shall lay." So David spoke. The wond'ring king reply'd; "Go thou with heav'n and victory on thy side: "This coat of mail, this sword gird on," he said, And plac'd a mighty helmet on his head: The coat, the sword, the helm he laid aside, Nor chose to venture with those arms untry'd, Then took his staff, and to the neighb'ring brook Instant he ran, and thence five pebbles took. Mean time descended to Philistia's son A radiant cherub, and he thus begun: "Goliath, well thou know'st thou hast defy'd "Yon Hebrew armies, and their God deny'd: "Rebellious wretch! audacious worm! forbear, "Nor tempt the vengeance of their God too far: "Them, who with his Omnipotence contend, "No eye shall pity, and no arm defend: "Proud as thou art, in short liv'd glory great, "I come to tell thee thine approaching fate. "Regard my words. The Judge of all the gods, "Beneath whose steps the tow'ring mountain nods, "Will give thine armies to the savage brood, "That cut the liquid air, or range the wood. "Thee too a well-aim'd pebble shall destroy, "And thou shalt perish by a beardless boy: "Such is the mandate from the realms above, "And should I try the vengeance to remove, "Myself a rebel to my king would prove. "Goliath say, shall grace to him be shown, "Who dares heav'ns Monarch, and insults his throne?" "Your words are lost on me," the giant cries, While fear and wrath contended in his eyes, When thus the messenger from heav'n replies: "Provoke no more Jehovah's awful hand "To hurl its vengeance on thy guilty land: "He grasps the thunder, and, he wings the storm, "Servants their sov'reign's orders to perform." The angel spoke, and turn'd his eyes away, Adding new radiance to the rising day. Now David comes: the fatal stones demand His left, the staff engag'd his better hand: The giant mov'd, and from his tow'ring height Survey'd the stripling, and disdain'd the fight, And thus began: "Am I a dog with thee? "Bring'st thou no armour, but a staff to me? "The gods on thee their vollied curses pour, "And beasts and birds of prey thy flesh devour." David undaunted thus, "Thy spear and shield "Shall no protection to thy body yield: "Jehovah's name------no other arms I bear, "I ask no other in this glorious war. "To-day the Lord of Hosts to me will give "Vict'ry, to-day thy doom thou shalt receive; "The fate you threaten shall your own become, "And beasts shall be your animated tomb, "That all the earth's inhabitants may know "That there's a God, who governs all below: "This great assembly too shall witness stand, "That needs nor sword, nor spear, th' Almighty's hand: "The battle his, the conquest he bestows, "And to our pow'r consigns our hated foes." Thus David spoke; Goliath heard and came To meet the hero in the field of fame. Ah! fatal meeting to thy troops and thee, But thou wast deaf to the divine decree; Young David meets thee, meets thee not in vain; 'Tis thine to perish on th' ensanguin'd plain. And now the youth the forceful pebble slung Philistia trembled as it whizz'd along: In his dread forehead, where the helmet ends, Just o'er the brows the well-aim'd stone descends, It pierc'd the skull, and shatter'd all the brain, Prone on his face he tumbled to the plain: Goliath's fall no smaller terror yields Than riving thunders in aerial fields: The soul still ling'red in its lov'd abode, Till conq'ring David o'er the giant strode: Goliath's sword then laid its master dead, And from the body hew'd the ghastly head; The blood in gushing torrents drench'd the plains, The soul found passage through the spouting veins. And now aloud th' illustrious victor said, "Where are your boastings now your champion's "dead?" Scarce had he spoke, when the Philistines fled: But fled in vain; the conqu'ror swift pursu'd: What scenes of slaughter! and what seas of blood! There Saul thy thousands grasp'd th' impurpled sand In pangs of death the conquest of thine hand; And David there were thy ten thousands laid: Thus Israel's damsels musically play'd. Near Gath and Edron many an hero lay, Breath'd out their souls, and curs'd the light of day: Their fury, quench'd by death, no longer burns, And David with Goliath's head returns, To Salem brought, but in his tent he plac'd The load of armour which the giant grac'd. His monarch saw him coming from the war, And thus demanded of the son of Ner. "Say, who is this amazing youth?" he cry'd, When thus the leader of the host reply'd; "As lives thy soul I know not whence he sprung, "So great in prowess though in years so young:" "Inquire whose son is he," the sov'reign said, "Before whose conq'ring arm Philistia fled." Before the king behold the stripling stand, Goliath's head depending from his hand: To him the king: "Say of what martial line "Art thou, young hero, and what sire was thine?" He humbly thus; "The son of Jesse I: "I came the glories of the field to try. "Small is my tribe, but valiant in the fight; "Small is my city, but thy royal right." "Then take the promis'd gifts," the monarch cry'd, Conferring riches and the royal bride: "Knit to my soul for ever thou remain "With me, nor quit my regal roof again." Thoughts on the WORKS OF PROVIDENCE. A R I S E, my soul, on wings enraptur'd, rise To praise the monarch of the earth and skies, Whose goodness and benificence appear As round its centre moves the rolling year, Or when the morning glows with rosy charms, Or the sun slumbers in the ocean's arms: Of light divine be a rich portion lent To guide my soul, and favour my intend. Celestial muse, my arduous flight sustain And raise my mind to a seraphic strain! Ador'd for ever be the God unseen, Which round the sun revolves this vast machine, Though to his eye its mass a point appears: Ador'd the God that whirls surrounding spheres, Which first ordain'd that mighty Sol should reign The peerless monarch of th' ethereal train: Of miles twice forty millions is his height, And yet his radiance dazzles mortal sight So far beneath--from him th' extended earth Vigour derives, and ev'ry flow'ry birth: Vast through her orb she moves with easy grace Around her Phoebus in unbounded space; True to her course th' impetuous storm derides, Triumphant o'er the winds, and surging tides. Almighty, in these wond'rous works of thine, What Pow'r, what Wisdom, and what Goodness shine! And are thy wonders, Lord, by men explor'd, And yet creating glory unador'd! Creation smiles in various beauty gay, While day to night, and night succeeds to day: That Wisdom, which attends Jehovah's ways, Shines most conspicuous in the solar rays: Without them, destitute of heat and light, This world would be the reign of endless night: In their excess how would our race complain, Abhorring life! how hate its length'ned chain! From air adust what num'rous ills would rise? What dire contagion taint the burning skies? What pestilential vapours, fraught with death, Would rise, and overspread the lands beneath? Hail, smiling morn, that from the orient main Ascending dost adorn the heav'nly plain! So rich, so various are thy beauteous dies, That spread through all the circuit of the skies, That, full of thee, my soul in rapture soars, And thy great God, the cause of all adores. O'er beings infinite his love extends, His Wisdom rules them, and his Pow'r defends. When tasks diurnal tire the human frame, The spirits faint, and dim the vital flame, Then too that ever active bounty shines, Which not infinity of space confines. The sable veil, that Night in silence draws, Conceals effects, but shows th' Almighty Cause, Night seals in sleep the wide creation fair, And all is peaceful but the brow of care. Again, gay Phoebus, as the day before, Wakes ev'ry eye, but what shall wake no more; Again the face of nature is renew'd, Which still appears harmonious, fair, and good. May grateful strains salute the smiling morn, Before its beams the eastern hills adorn! Shall day to day, and night to night conspire To show the goodness of the Almighty Sire? This mental voice shall man regardless hear, And never, never raise the filial pray'r? To-day, O hearken, nor your folly mourn For time mispent, that never will return. But see the sons of vegetation rise, And spread their leafy banners to the skies. All-wise Almighty Providence we trace In trees, and plants, and all the flow'ry race; As clear as in the nobler frame of man, All lovely copies of the Maker's plan. The pow'r the same that forms a ray of light, That call d creation from eternal night. "Let there be light," he said: from his profound Old Chaos heard, and trembled at the sound: Swift as the word, inspir'd by pow'r divine, Behold the light around its Maker shine, The first fair product of th' omnific God, And now through all his works diffus'd abroad. As reason's pow'rs by day our God disclose, So we may trace him in the night's repose: Say what is sleep? and dreams how passing strange! When action ceases, and ideas range Licentious and unbounded o'er the plains, Where Fancy's queen in giddy triumph reigns. Hear in soft strains the dreaming lover sigh To a kind fair, or rave in jealousy; On pleasure now, and now on vengeance bent, The lab'ring passions struggle for a vent. What pow'r, O man! thy reason then restores, So long suspended in nocturnal hours? What secret hand returns the mental train, And gives improv'd thine active pow'rs again? From thee, O man, what gratitude should rise! And, when from balmy sleep thou op'st thine eyes, Let thy first thoughts be praises to the skies. How merciful our God who thus imparts O'erflowing tides of joy to human hearts, When wants and woes might be our righteous lot, Our God forgetting, by our God forgot! Among the mental pow'rs a question rose, "What most the image of th' Eternal shows?" When thus to Reason (so let Fancy rove) Her great companion spoke immortal Love. "Say, mighty pow'r, how long shall strife prevail, "And with its murmurs load the whisp'ring gale? "Refer the cause to Recollection's shrine, "Who loud proclaims my origin divine, "The cause whence heav'n and earth began to be, "And is not man immortaliz'd by me? "Reason let this most causeless strife subside." Thus Love pronounc'd, and Reason thus reply'd. "Thy birth, coelestial queen! 'tis mine to own, "In thee resplendent is the Godhead shown; "Thy words persuade, my soul enraptur'd feels "Resistless beauty which thy smile reveals." Ardent she spoke, and, kindling at her charms, She clasp'd the blooming goddess in her arms. Infinite Love where'er we turn our eyes Appears: this ev'ry creature's wants supplies; This most is heard in Nature's constant voice, This makes the morn, and this the eve rejoice; This bids the fost'ring rains and dews descend To nourish all, to serve one gen'ral end, The good of man: yet man ungrateful pays But little homage, and but little praise. To him, whose works arry'd with mercy shine, What songs should rise, how constant, how divine! To a Lady on the Death of three Relations. WE trace the pow'r of Death from tomb to tomb, And his are all the ages yet to come. 'Tis his to call the planets from on high, To blacken Phoebus, and dissolve the sky; His too, when all in his dark realms are hurl'd, From its firm base to shake the solid world; His fatal sceptre rules the spacious whole, And trembling nature rocks from pole to pole. Awful he moves, and wide his wings are spread: Behold thy brother number'd with the dead! From bondage freed, the exulting spirit flies Beyond Olympus, and these starry skies. Lost in our woe for thee, blest shade, we mourn In vain; to earth thou never must return. Thy sisters too, fair mourner, feel the dart Of Death, and with fresh torture rend thine heart. Weep not for them, and leave the world behind. As a young plant by hurricanes up torn, So near its parent lies the newly born-- But 'midst the bright ehtereal train behold It shines superior on a throne of gold: Then, mourner, cease; let hope thy tears restrain, Smile on the tomb, and sooth the raging pain. On yon blest regions fix thy longing view, Mindless of sublunary scenes below; Ascend the sacred mount, in thought arise, And seek substantial and immortal joys; Where hope receives, where faith to vision springs, And raptur'd seraphs tune th' immortal strings To strains extatic. Thou the chorus join, And to thy father tune the praise divine. To a Clergyman on the Death of his Lady. WHERE contemplation finds her sacred spring, Where heav'nly music makes the arches ring, Where virtue reigns unsully'd and divine, Where wisdom thron'd, and all the graces shine, There sits thy spouse amidst the radiant throng, While praise eternal warbles from her tongue; There choirs angelic shout her welcome round, With perfect bliss, and peerless glory crown'd. While thy dear mate, to flesh no more confin'd, Exults a blest, an heav'n-ascended mind, Say in thy breast shall floods of sorrow rise? Say shall its torrents overwhelm thine eyes? Amid the seats of heav'n a place is free, And angels open their bright ranks for thee; For thee they wait, and with expectant eye Thy spouse leans downward from th' empyreal sky: "O come away," her longing spirit cries, "And share with me the raptures of the skies. "Our bliss divine to mortals is unknown; "Immortal life and glory are our own. "There too may the dear pledges of our love "Arrive, and taste with us the joys above; "Attune the harp to more than mortal lays, "And join with us the tribute of their praise "To him, who dy'd stern justice to stone, "And make eternal glory all our own. "He in his death slew ours, and, as he rose, "He crush'd the dire dominion of our foes; "Vain were their hopes to put the God to flight, "Chain us to hell, and bar the gates of light." She spoke, and turn'd from mortal scenes her eyes, Which beam'd celestial radiance o'er the skies. Then thou dear man, no more with grief retire, Let grief no longer damp devotion's fire, But rise sublime, to equal bliss aspire, Thy sighs no more be wafted by the wind, No more complain, but be to heav'n resign'd 'Twas thine t' unfold the oracles divine, To sooth our woes the task was also thine; Now sorrow is incumbent on thy heart, Permit the muse a cordial to impart; Who can to thee their tend'rest aid refuse? To dry thy tears how longs the heav'nly muse! An HYMN to the MORNING ATTEND my lays, ye ever honour'd nine, Assist my labours, and my strains refine; In smoothest numbers pour the notes along, For bright Aurora now demands my song. Aurora hail, and all the thousand dies, Which deck thy progress through the vaulted skies: The morn awakes, and wide extends her rays, On ev'ry leaf the gentle zephyr plays; Harmonious lays the feather'd race resume, Dart the bright eye, and shake the painted plume. Ye shady groves, your verdant gloom display To shield your poet from the burning day: Calliope awake the sacred lyre, While thy fair sisters fan the pleasing fire: The bow'rs, the gales, the variegated skies In all their pleasures in my bosom rise. See in the east th' illustrious king of day! His rising radiance drives the shades away-- But Oh! I feel his fervid beams too strong, And scarce begun, concludes th' abortive song. An HYMN to the EVENING. SOON as the sun forsook the eastern main The pealing thunder shook the heav'nly plain; Majestic grandeur! From the zephyr's wing, Exhales the incense of the blooming spring. Soft purl the streams, the birds renew their notes, And through the air their mingled music floats. Through all the heav'ns what beauteous dies are spread! But the west glories in the deepest red: So may our breasts with ev'ry virtue glow, The living temples of our God below! Fill'd with the praise of him who gives the light, And draws the sable curtains of the night, Let placid slumbers sooth each weary mind, At morn to wake more heav'nly, more refin'd; So shall the labours of the day begin More pure, more guarded from the snares of sin. Night's leaden sceptre seals my drowsy eyes, Then cease, my song, till fair Aurora rise. ISAIAH lxiii. 1-8. SAY, heav'nly muse, what king or mighty God, That moves sublime from Idumea's road? In Bosrah's dies, with martial glories join'd, His purple vesture waves upon the wind. Why thus enrob'd delights he to appear In the dread image of the Pow'r of war? Compres'd in wrath the swelling wine-press groan'd, It bled, and pour'd the gushing purple round. "Mine was the act," th' Almighty Saviour said, And shook the dazzling glories of his head, "When all forsook I trod the press alone, "And conquer'd by omnipotence my own; "For man's release sustain'd the pond'rous load, "For man the wrath of an immortal God: "To execute th' Eternal's dread command "My soul I sacrific'd with willing hand; "Sinless I stood before the avenging frown, "Atoning thus for vices not my own." His eye the ample field of battle round Survey'd, but no created succours found; His own omnipotence sustain'd the right, His vengeance sunk the haughty foes in night; Beneath his feet the prostrate troops were spread, And round him lay the dying, and the dead. Great God, what light'ning flashes from thine eyes? What pow'r withstands if thou indignant rise? Against thy Zion though her foes may rage, And all their cunning, all their strength engage, Yet she serenely on thy bosom lies, Smiles at their arts, and all their force defies. On RECOLLECTION. MNEME begin. Inspire, ye sacred nine, Your vent'rous Afric in her great design. Mneme, immortal pow'r, I trace thy spring: Assist my strains, while I thy glories sing: The acts of long departed years, by thee Recover'd, in due order rang'd we see: Thy pow'r the long-forgotten calls from night, That sweetly plays before the fancy's sight. Mneme in our nocturnal visions pours The ample treasure of her secret stores; Swift from above the wings her silent flight Through Phoebe's realms, fair regent of the night; And, in her pomp of images display'd, To the high-raptur'd poet gives her aid, Through the unbounded regions of the mind, Diffusing light celestial and refin'd. The heav'nly phantom paints the actions done By ev'ry tribe beneath the rolling sun. Mneme, enthron'd within the human breast, Has vice condemn'd, and ev'ry virtue blest. How sweet the sound when we her plaudit hear? Sweeter than music to the ravish'd ear, Sweeter than Maro's entertaining strains Resounding through the groves, and hills, and plains. But how is Mneme dreaded by the race, Who scorn her warnings and despise her grace? By her unveil'd each horrid crime appears, Her awful hand a cup of wormwood bears. Days, years mispent, O what a hell of woe! Hers the worst tortures that our souls can know. Now eighteen years their destin'd course have run, In fast succession round the central sun. How did the follies of that period pass Unnotic'd, but behold them writ in brass! In Recollection see them fresh return, And sure 'tis mine to be asham'd, and mourn. O Virtue, smiling in immortal green, Do thou exert thy pow'r, and change the scene; Be thine employ to guide my future days, And mine to pay the tribute of my praise. Of Recollection such the pow'r enthron'd In ev'ry breast, and thus her pow'r is own'd. The wretch, who dar'd the vengeance of the skies, At last awakes in horror and surprise, By her alarm'd, he sees impending fate, He howls in anguish, and repents too late. But O! what peace, what joys are hers t' impart To ev'ry holy, ev'ry upright heart! Thrice blest the man, who, in her sacred shrine, Feels himself shelter'd from the wrath divine! On IMAGINATION. THY various works, imperial queen, we see, How bright their forms! how deck'd with pomp by thee! Thy wond'rous acts in beauteous order stand, And all attest how potent is thine hand. From Helicon's refulgent heights attend, Ye sacred choir, and my attempts befriend: To tell her glories with a faithful tongue, Ye blooming graces, triumph in my song. Now here, now there, the roving Fancy flies, Till some lov'd object strikes her wand'ring eyes, Whose silken fetters all the senses bind, And soft captivity involves the mind. Imagination! who can sing thy force? Or who describe the swiftness of thy course? Soaring through air to find the bright abode, Th' empyreal palace of the thund'ring God, We on thy pinions can surpass the wind, And leave the rolling universe behind: From star to star the mental optics rove, Measure the skies, and range the realms above. There in one view we grasp the mighty whole, Or with new worlds amaze th' unbounded soul. Though Winter frowns to Fancy's raptur'd eyes The fields may flourish, and gay scenes arise; The frozen deeps may break their iron bands, And bid their waters murmur o'er the sands. Fair Flora may resume her fragrant reign, And with her flow'ry riches deck the plain; Sylvanus may diffuse his honours round, And all the forest may with leaves be crown'd: Show'rs may descend, and dews their gems disclose, And nectar sparkle on the blooming rose. Such is thy pow'r, nor are thine orders vain, O thou the leader of the mental train: In full perfection all thy works are wrought, And thine the sceptre o'er the realms of thought. Before thy throne the subject-passions bow, Of subject-passions sov'reign ruler thou; At thy command joy rushes on the heart, And through the glowing veins the spirits dart. Fancy might now her silken pinions try To rise from earth, and sweep th' expanse on high: From Tithon's bed now might Aurora rise, Her cheeks all glowing with celestial dies, While a pure stream of light o'erflows the skies. The monarch of the day I might behold, And all the mountains tipt with radiant gold, But I reluctant leave the pleasing views, Which Fancy dresses to delight the Muse; Winter austere forbids me to aspire, And northern tempests damp the rising fire; They chill the tides of Fancy's flowing sea, Cease then, my song, cease the unequal lay. A Funeral POEM on the Death of C. E. an Infant of Twelve Months. THROUGH airy roads he wings his instant flight To purer regions of celestial light; Enlarg'd he sees unnumber'd systems roll, Beneath him sees the universal whole, Planets on planets run their destin'd round, And circling wonders fill the vast profound. Th' ethereal now, and now th' empyreal skies With growing splendors strike his wond'ring eyes: The angels view him with delight unknown, Press his soft hand, and seat him on his throne; Then smilling thus: "To this divine abode, "The seat of saints, of seraphs, and of God, "Thrice welcome thou." The raptur'd babe replies, "Thanks to my God, who snatch'd me to the skies, "E'er vice triumphant had possess'd my heart, "E'er yet the tempter had beguil d my heart, "E'er yet on sin's base actions I was bent, "E'er yet I knew temptation's dire intent; "E'er yet the lash for horrid crimes I felt, "E'er vanity had led my way to guilt, "But, soon arriv'd at my celestial goal, "Full glories rush on my expanding soul." Joyful he spoke: exulting cherubs round Clapt their glad wings, the heav'nly vaults resound. Say, parents, why this unavailing moan? Why heave your pensive bosoms with the groan? To Charles, the happy subject of my song, A brighter world, and nobler strains belong. Say would you tear him from the realms above By thoughtless wishes, and prepost'rous love? Doth his felicity increase your pain? Or could you welcome to this world again The heir of bliss? with a superior air Methinks he answers with a smile severe, "Thrones and dominions cannot tempt me there." But still you cry, "Can we the sigh forbear, "And still and still must we not pour the tear? "Our only hope, more dear than vital breath, "Twelve moons revolv'd, becomes the prey of death; "Delightful infant, nightly visions give "Thee to our arms, and we with joy receive, "We fain would clasp the Phantom to our breast, "The Phantom flies, and leaves the soul unblest." To yon bright regions let your faith ascend, Prepare to join your dearest infant friend In pleasures without measure, without end. To Captain H-----D, of the 65th Regiment. SAY, muse divine, can hostile scenes delight The warrior's bosom in the fields of fight? Lo! here the christian and the hero join With mutual grace to form the man divine. In H-----D see with pleasure and surprise, Where valour kindles, and where virtue lies: Go, hero brave, still grace the post of fame, And add new glories to thine honour'd name, Still to the field, and still to virtue true: Britannia glories in no son like you. To the Right Honourable WILLIAM, Earl of DARTMOUTH, His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for North-America, &c. HAIL, happy day, when, smiling like the morn, Fair Freedom rose New-England to adorn: The northern clime beneath her genial ray, Dartmouth, congratulates thy blissful sway: Elate with hope her race no longer mourns, Each soul expands, each grateful bosom burns, While in thine hand with pleasure we behold The silken reins, and Freedom's charms unfold. Long lost to realms beneath the northern skies She shines supreme, while hated faction dies: Soon as appear'd the Goddess long desir'd, Sick at the view, she languish'd and expir'd; Thus from the splendors of the morning light The owl in sadness seeks the caves of night. No more, America, in mournful strain Of wrongs, and grievance unredress'd complain, No longer shalt thou dread the iron chain, Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand Had made, and with it meant t' enslave the land. Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song, Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung, Whence flow these wishes for the common good, By feeling hearts alone best understood, I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate Was snatch'd from Afric's fancy'd happy seat: What pangs excruciating must molest, What sorrows labour in my parent's breast? Steel'd was that soul and by no misery mov'd That from a father seiz'd his babe belov'd: Such, such my case. And can I then but pray Others may never feel tyrannic sway? For favours past, great Sir, our thanks are due, And thee we ask thy favours to renew, Since in thy pow'r, as in thy will before, To sooth the griefs, which thou did'st once deplore. May heav'nly grace the sacred sanction give To all thy works, and thou for ever live Not only on the wings of fleeting Fame, Though praise immortal crowns the patriot's name, But to conduct to heav'ns refulgent fane, May fiery coursers sweep th' ethereal plain, And bear thee upwards to that blest abode, Where, like the prophet, thou shalt find thy God. O D E T O N E P T U N E. On Mrs. W-----'s Voyage to England. I. WHILE raging tempests shake the shore, While AElus' thunders round us roar, And sweep impetuous o'er the plain Be still, O tyrant of the main; Nor let thy brow contracted frowns betray, While my Susanna skims the wat'ry way. II. The Pow'r propitious hears the lay, The blue-ey'd daughters of the sea With sweeter cadence glide along, And Thames responsive joins the song. Pleas'd with their notes Sol sheds benign his ray, And double radiance decks the face of day. III. To court thee to Britannia's arms Serene the climes and mild the sky, Her region boasts unnumber'd charms, Thy welcome smiles in ev'ry eye. Thy promise, Neptune keep, record my pray'r, Not give my wishes to the empty air. Boston, October 12, 1772. To a LADY on her coming to North-America with her Son, for the Recovery of her Health. INDULGENT muse! my grov'ling mind inspire, And fill my bosom with celestial fire. See from Jamaica's fervid shore she moves, Like the fair mother of the blooming loves, When from above the Goddess with her hand Fans the soft breeze, and lights upon the land; Thus she on Neptune's wat'ry realm reclin'd Appear'd, and thus invites the ling'ring wind. "Arise, ye winds, America explore, "Waft me, ye gales, from this malignant shore; "The Northern milder climes I long to greet, "There hope that health will my arrival meet." Soon as she spoke in my ideal view The winds assented, and the vessel flew. Madam, your spouse bereft of wife and son, In the grove's dark recesses pours his moan; Each branch, wide-spreading to the ambient sky, Forgets its verdure, and submits to die. From thence I turn, and leave the sultry plain, And swift pursue thy passage o'er the main: The ship arrives before the fav'ring wind, And makes the Philadelphian port assign'd, Thence I attend you to Bostonia's arms, Where gen'rous friendship ev'ry bosom warms: Thrice welcome here! may health revive again, Bloom on thy cheek, and bound in ev'ry vein! Then back return to gladden ev'ry heart, And give your spouse his soul's far dearer part, Receiv'd again with what a sweet surprise, The tear in transport starting from his eyes! While his attendant son with blooming grace Springs to his father's ever dear embrace. With shouts of joy Jamaica's rocks resound, With shouts of joy the country rings around. To a LADY on her remarkable Preservation in an Hurricane in North-Carolina. THOUGH thou did'st hear the tempest from afar, And felt'st the horrors of the wat'ry war, To me unknown, yet on this peaceful shore Methinks I hear the storm tumultuous roar, And how stern Boreas with impetuous hand Compell'd the Nereids to usurp the land. Reluctant rose the daughters of the main, And slow ascending glided o'er the plain, Till AEolus in his rapid chariot drove In gloomy grandeur from the vault above: Furious he comes. His winged sons obey Their frantic sire, and madden all the sea. The billows rave, the wind's fierce tyrant roars, And with his thund'ring terrors shakes the shores: Broken by waves the vessel's frame is rent, And strows with planks the wat'ry element. But thee, Maria, a kind Nereid's shield Preserv'd from sinking, and thy form upheld: And sure some heav'nly oracle design'd At that dread crisis to instruct thy mind Things of eternal consequence to weigh, And to thine heart just feelings to convey Of things above, and of the future doom, And what the births of the dread world to come. From tossing seas I welcome thee to land. "Resign her, Nereid," 'twas thy God's command. Thy spouse late buried, as thy fears conceiv'd, Again returns, thy fears are all reliev'd: Thy daughter blooming with superior grace Again thou see'st, again thine arms embrace; O come, and joyful show thy spouse his heir, And what the blessings of maternal care! To a LADY and her Children, on the Death of her Son and their Brother. O'ERWHELMING sorrow now demands my song: From death the overwhelming sorrow sprung. What flowing tears? What hearts with grief opprest? What sighs on sighs heave the fond parent's breast? The brother weeps, the hapless sisters join Th' increasing woe, and swell the crystal brine; The poor, who once his gen'rous bounty fed, Droop, and bewail their benefactor dead. In death the friend, the kind companion lies, And in one death what various comfort dies! Th' unhappy mother sees the sanguine rill Forget to flow, and nature's wheels stand still, But see from earth his spirit far remov'd, And know no grief recals your best-belov'd: He, upon pinions swifter than the wind, Has left mortality's sad scenes behind For joys to this terrestial state unknown, And glories richer than the monarch's crown. Of virtue's steady course the prize behold! What blissful wonders to his mind unfold! But of celestial joys I sing in vain: Attempt not, muse, the too advent'rous strain. No more in briny show'rs, ye friends around, Or bathe his clay, or waste them on the ground: Still do you weep, still wish for his return? How cruel thus to wish, and thus to mourn? No more for him the streams of sorrow pour, But haste to join him on the heav'nly shore, On harps of gold to tune immortal lays, And to your God immortal anthems raise. To a GENTLEMAN and LADY on the Death of the Lady's Brother and Sister, and a Child of the Name of Avis, aged one Year. ON Death's domain intent I fix my eyes, Where human nature in vast ruin lies: With pensive mind I search the drear abode, Where the great conqu'ror has his spoils bestow'd; There where the offspring of six thousand years In endless numbers to my view appears: Whole kingdoms in his gloomy den are thrust, And nations mix with their primeval dust: Insatiate still he gluts the ample tomb; His is the present, his the age to come. See here a brother, here a sister spread, And a sweet daughter mingled with the dead. But, Madam, let your grief be laid aside, And let the fountain of your tears be dry'd, In vain they flow to wet the dusty plain, Your sighs are wafted to the skies in vain, Your pains they witness, but they can no more, While Death reigns tyrant o'er this mortal shore. The glowing stars and silver queen of light At last must perish in the gloom of night: Resign thy friends to that Almighty hand, Which gave them life, and bow to his command; Thine Avis give without a murm'ring heart, Though half thy soul be fated to depart. To shining guards consign thine infant care To waft triumphant through the seas of air: Her soul enlarg'd to heav'nly pleasure springs, She feeds on truth and uncreated things. Methinks I hear her in the realms above, And leaning forward with a filial love, Invite you there to share immortal bliss Unknown, untasted in a state like this. With tow'ring hopes, and growing grace arise, And seek beatitude beyond the skies. On the Death of Dr. SAMUEL MARSHALL. 1771. THROUGH thickest glooms look back, immortal shade, On that confusion which thy death has made: Or from Olympus' height look down, and see A Town involv'd in grief bereft of thee. Thy Lucy sees thee mingle with the dead, And rends the graceful tresses from her head, Wild in her woe, with grief unknown opprest Sigh follows sigh deep heaving from her breast. Too quickly fled, ah! whither art thou gone? Ah! lost for ever to thy wife and son! The hapless child, thine only hope and heir, Clings round his mother's neck, and weeps his sorrows there. The loss of thee on Tyler's soul returns, And Boston for her dear physician mourns. When sickness call'd for Marshall's healing hand, With what compassion did his soul expand? In him we found the father and the friend: In life how lov'd! how honour'd in his end! And must not then our AEsculapius stay To bring his ling'ring infant into day? The babe unborn in the dark womb is tost, And seems in anguish for its father lost. Gone is Apollo from his house of earth, But leaves the sweet memorials of his worth: The common parent, whom we all deplore, From yonder world unseen must come no more, Yet 'midst our woes immortal hopes attend The spouse, the sire, the universal friend. To a GENTLEMAN on his Voyage to Great-Britain for the Recovery of his Health. WHILE others chant of gay Elysian scenes, Of balmy zephyrs, and of flow'ry plains, My song more happy speaks a greater name, Feels higher motives and a nobler flame. For thee, O R-----, the muse attunes her strings, And mounts sublime above inferior things. I sing not now of green embow'ring woods, I sing not now the daughters of the floods, I sing not of the storms o'er ocean driv'n, And how they howl'd along the waste of heav'n. But I to R----- would paint the British shore, And vast Atlantic, not untry'd before: Thy life impair'd commands thee to arise, Leave these bleak regions and inclement skies, Where chilling winds return the winter past, And nature shudders at the furious blast. O thou stupendous, earth-enclosing main Exert thy wonders to the world again! If ere thy pow'r prolong'd the fleeting breath, Turn'd back the shafts, and mock'd the gates of death, If ere thine air dispens'd an healing pow'r, Or snatch'd the victim from the fatal hour, This equal case demands thine equal care, And equal wonders may this patient share. But unavailing, frantic is the dream To hope thine aid without the aid of him Who gave thee birth and taught thee where to flow, And in thy waves his various blessings show. May R----- return to view his native shore Replete with vigour not his own before, Then shall we see with pleasure and surprise, And own thy work, great Ruler of the skies! To the Rev. DR. THOMAS AMORY, on reading his Sermons on DAILY DEVOTION, in which that Duty is recommended and assisted. TO cultivate in ev'ry noble mind Habitual grace, and sentiments refin'd, Thus while you strive to mend the human heart, Thus while the heav'nly precepts you impart, O may each bosom catch the sacred fire, And youthful minds to Virtue's throne aspire! When God's eternal ways you set in sight, And Virtue shines in all her native light, In vain would Vice her works in night conceal, For Wisdom's eye pervades the sable veil. Artists may paint the sun's effulgent rays, But Amory's pen the brighter God displays: While his great works in Amory's pages shine, And while he proves his essence all divine, The Atheist sure no more can boast aloud Of chance, or nature, and exclude the God; As if the clay without the potter's aid Should rise in various forms, and shapes self-made, Or worlds above with orb o'er orb profound Self-mov'd could run the everlasting round. It cannot be--unerring Wisdom guides With eye propitious, and o'er all presides. Still prosper, Amory! still may'st thou receive The warmest blessings which a muse can give, And when this transitory state is o'er, When kingdoms fall, and fleeting Fame's no more, May Amory triumph in immortal fame, A nobler title, and superior name! On the Death of J. C. an Infant. NO more the flow'ry scenes of pleasure rife, Nor charming prospects greet the mental eyes, No more with joy we view that lovely face Smiling, disportive, flush'd with ev'ry grace. The tear of sorrow flows from ev'ry eye, Groans answer groans, and sighs to sighs reply; What sudden pangs shot thro' each aching heart, When, Death, thy messenger dispatch'd his dart? Thy dread attendants, all-destroying Pow'r, Hurried the infant to his mortal hour. Could'st thou unpitying close those radiant eyes? Or fail'd his artless beauties to surprise? Could not his innocence thy stroke controul, Thy purpose shake, and soften all thy soul? The blooming babe, with shades of Death o'er-spread, No more shall smile, no more shall raise its head, But, like a branch that from the tree is torn, Falls prostrate, wither'd, languid, and forlorn. "Where flies my James?" 'tis thus I seem to hear The parent ask, "Some angel tell me where "He wings his passage thro' the yielding air?" Methinks a cherub bending from the skies Observes the question, and serene replies, "In heav'ns high palaces your babe appears: "Prepare to meet him, and dismiss your tears." Shall not th' intelligence your grief restrain, And turn the mournful to the cheerful strain? Cease your complaints, suspend each rising sigh, Cease to accuse the Ruler of the sky. Parents, no more indulge the falling tear: Let Faith to heav'n's refulgent domes repair, There see your infant, like a seraph glow: What charms celestial in his numbers flow Melodious, while the foul-enchanting strain Dwells on his tongue, and fills th' ethereal plain? Enough--for ever cease your murm'ring breath; Not as a foe, but friend converse with Death, Since to the port of happiness unknown He brought that treasure which you call your own. The gift of heav'n intrusted to your hand Cheerful resign at the divine command: Not at your bar must sov'reign Wisdom stand. An H Y M N to H U M A N I T Y. To S. P. G. Esq; I. LO! for this dark terrestrial ball Forsakes his azure-paved hall A prince of heav'nly birth! Divine Humanity behold, What wonders rise, what charms unfold At his descent to earth! II. The bosoms of the great and good With wonder and delight he view'd, And fix'd his empire there: Him, close compressing to his breast, The sire of gods and men address'd, "My son, my heav'nly fair! III. "Descend to earth, there place thy throne; "To succour man's afflicted son "Each human heart inspire: "To act in bounties unconfin'd "Enlarge the close contracted mind, "And fill it with thy fire." IV. Quick as the word, with swift career He wings his course from star to star, And leaves the bright abode. The Virtue did his charms impart; Their G-----! then thy raptur'd heart Perceiv'd the rushing God: V. For when thy pitying eye did see The languid muse in low degree, Then, then at thy desire Descended the celestial nine; O'er me methought they deign'd to shine, And deign'd to string my lyre. VI. Can Afric's muse forgetful prove? Or can such friendship fail to move A tender human heart? Immortal Friendship laurel-crown'd The smiling Graces all surround With ev'ry heav'nly Art. To the Honourable T. H. Esq; on the Death of his Daughter. WHILE deep you mourn beneath the cypress-shade The hand of Death, and your dear daughter laid In dust, whose absence gives your tears to flow, And racks your bosom with incessant woe, Let Recollection take a tender part, Assuage the raging tortures of your heart, Still the wild tempest of tumultuous grief, And pour the heav'nly nectar of relief: Suspend the sigh, dear Sir, and check the groan, Divinely bright your daughter's Virtues shone: How free from scornful pride her gentle mind, Which ne'er its aid to indigence declin'd! Expanding free, it sought the means to prove Unfailing charity, unbounded love! She unreluctant flies to see no more Her dear-lov'd parents on earth's dusky shore: Impatient heav'n's resplendent goal to gain, She with swift progress cuts the azure plain, Where grief subsides, where changes are no more, And life's tumultuous billows cease to roar; She leaves her earthly mansion for the skies, Where new creations feast her wond'ring eyes. To heav'n's high mandate cheerfully resign'd She mounts, and leaves the rolling globe behind; She, who late wish'd that Leonard might return, Has ceas'd to languish, and forgot to mourn; To the same high empyreal mansions come, She joins her spouse, and smiles upon the tomb: And thus I hear her from the realms above: "Lo! this the kingdom of celestial love! "Could ye, fond parents, see our present bliss, "How soon would you each sigh, each fear dismiss? "Amidst unutter'd pleasures whilst I play "In the fair sunshine of celestial day, "As far as grief affects an happy soul "So far doth grief my better mind controul, "To see on earth my aged parents mourn, "And secret wish for T-----! to return: "Let brighter scenes your ev'ning-hours employ: "Converse with heav'n, and taste the promis'd joy" NIOBE in Distress for her Children slain by APOLLO, from Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book VI. and from a view of the Painting of Mr. Richard Wilson. APOLLO's wrath to man the dreadful spring Of ills innum'rous, tuneful goddess, sing! Thou who did'st first th' ideal pencil give, And taught'st the painter in his works to live, Inspire with glowing energy of thought, What Wilson painted, and what Ovid wrote. Muse! lend thy aid, nor let me sue in vain, Tho' last and meanest of the rhyming train! O guide my pen in lofty strains to show The Phrygian queen, all beautiful in woe. 'Twas where Maeonia spreads her wide domain Niobe dwelt, and held her potent reign: See in her hand the regal sceptre shine, The wealthy heir of Tantalus divine, He most distinguish'd by Dodonean Jove, To approach the tables of the gods above: Her grandsire Atlas, who with mighty pains Th' ethereal axis on his neck sustains: Her other grandsire on the throne on high Rolls the loud-pealing thunder thro' the sky. Her spouse, Amphion, who from Jove too springs, Divinely taught to sweep the sounding strings. Seven sprightly sons the royal bed adorn, Seven daughters beauteous as the op'ning morn, As when Aurora fills the ravish'd sight, And decks the orient realms with rosy light From their bright eyes the living splendors play, Nor can beholders bear the flashing ray. Wherever, Niobe, thou turn'st thine eyes, New beauties kindle, and new joys arise! But thou had'st far the happier mother prov'd, If this fair offspring had been less belov'd: What if their charms exceed Aurora's teint. No words could tell them, and no pencil paint, Thy love too vehement hastens to destroy Each blooming maid, and each celestial boy. Now Manto comes, endu'd with mighty skill, The past to explore, the future to reveal. Thro' Thebes' wide streets Tiresia's daughter came, Divine Latona's mandate to proclaim: The Theban maids to hear the orders ran, When thus Maeonia's prophetess began: "Go, Thebans! great Latona's will obey, "And pious tribute at her altars pay: "With rights divine, the goddess be implor'd, "Nor be her sacred offspring unador'd." Thus Manto spoke. The Theban maids obey, And pious tribute to the goddess pay. The rich perfumes ascend in waving spires, And altars blaze with consecrated fires; The fair assembly moves with graceful air, And leaves of laurel bind the flowing hair. Niobe comes with all her royal race, With charms unnumber'd, and superior grace: Her Phrygian garments of delightful hue, Inwove with gold, refulgent to the view, Beyond description beautiful she moves Like heav'nly Venus, 'midst her smiles and loves: She views around the supplicating train, And shakes her graceful head with stern disdain, Proudly she turns around her lofty eyes, And thus reviles celestial deities: "What madness drives the Theban ladies fair "To give their incense to surrounding air? "Say why this new sprung deity preferr'd? "Why vainly fancy your petitions heard? "Or say why Caeus offspring is obey'd, "While to my goddesship no tribute's paid? "For me no altars blaze with living fires, "No bullock bleeds, no frankincense transpires, "Tho' Cadmus' palace, not unknown to fame, "And Phrygian nations all revere my name. "Where'er I turn my eyes vast wealth I find, "Lo! here an empress with a goddess join'd. "What, shall a Titaness be deify'd, "To whom the spacious earth a couch deny'd! "Nor heav'n, nor earth, nor sea receiv'd your queen, "Till pitying Delos took the wand'rer in. "Round me what a large progeny is spread! "No frowns of fortune has my soul to dread. "What if indignant she decrease my train "More than Latona's number will remain; "Then hence, ye Theban dames, hence haste away, "Nor longer off'rings to Latona pay; "Regard the orders of Amphion's spouse, "And take the leaves of laurel from your brows." Niobe spoke. The Theban maids obey'd, Their brows unbound, and left the rights unpaid. The angry goddess heard, then silence broke On Cynthus' summit, and indignant spoke; "Phoebus! behold, thy mother in disgrace, "Who to no goddess yields the prior place "Except to Juno's self, who reigns above, "The spouse and sister of the thund'ring Jove. "Niobe, sprung from Tantalus, inspires "Each Theban bosom with rebellious fires; "No reason her imperious temper quells, "But all her father in her tongue rebels; "Wrap her own sons for her blaspheming breath, "Apollo! wrap them in the shades of death." Latona ceas'd, and ardent thus replies The God, whose glory decks th' expanded skies. "Cease thy complaints, mine be the task assign'd "To punish pride, and scourge the rebel mind." This Phoebe join'd.--They wing their instant flight; Thebes trembled as th' immortal pow'rs alight. With clouds incompass'd glorious Phoebus stands; The feather'd vengeance quiv'ring in his hands. Near Cadmus' walls a plain extended lay, Where Thebes' young princes pass'd in sport the day: There the bold coursers bounded o'er the plains, While their great masters held the golden reins. Ismenus first the racing pastime led, And rul'd the fury of his flying steed. "Ah me," he sudden cries, with shrieking breath, While in his breast he feels the shaft of death; He drops the bridle on his courser's mane, Before his eyes in shadows swims the plain, He, the first-born of great Amphion's bed, Was struck the first, first mingled with the dead. Then didst thou, Sipylus, the language hear Of fate portentous whistling in the air: As when th' impending storm the sailor sees He spreads his canvas to the fav'ring breeze, So to thine horse thou gav'st the golden reins, Gav'st him to rush impetuous o'er the plains: But ah! a fatal shaft from Phoebus' hand Smites thro' thy neck, and sinks thee on the sand. Two other brothers were at wrestling found, And in their pastime claspt each other round: A shaft that instant from Apollo's hand Transfixt them both, and stretcht them on the sand: Together they their cruel fate bemoan'd, Together languish'd, and together groan'd: Together too th' unbodied spirits fled, And sought the gloomy mansions of the dead. Alphenor saw, and trembling at the view, Beat his torn breast, that chang'd its snowy hue. He flies to raise them in a kind embrace; A brother's fondness triumphs in his face: Alphenor fails in this fraternal deed, A dart dispatch'd him (so the fates decreed:) Soon as the arrow left the deadly wound, His issuing entrails smoak'd upon the ground. What woes on blooming Damasichon wait! His sighs portend his near impending fate. Just where the well-made leg begins to be, And the soft sinews form the supple knee, The youth sore wounded by the Delian god Attempts t' extract the crime-avenging rod, But, whilst he strives the will of fate t' avert, Divine Apollo sends a second dart; Swift thro' his throat the feather'd mischief flies, Bereft of sense, he drops his head, and dies. Young Ilioneus, the last, directs his pray'r, And cries, "My life, ye gods celestial! spare." Apollo heard, and pity touch'd his heart, But ah! too late, for he had sent the dart: Thou too, O Ilioneus, art doom'd to fall, The fates refuse that arrow to recal. On the swift wings of ever flying Fame To Cadmus' palace soon the tidings came: Niobe heard, and with indignant eyes She thus express'd her anger and surprise: "Why is such privilege to them allow'd? "Why thus insulted by the Delian god? "Dwells there such mischief in the pow'rs above? "Why sleeps the vengeance of immortal Jove?" For now Amphion too, with grief oppress'd, Had plung'd the deadly dagger in his breast. Niobe now, less haughty than before, With lofty head directs her steps no more She, who late told her pedigree divine, And drove the Thebans from Latona's shrine, How strangely chang'd!--yet beautiful in woe, She weeps, nor weeps unpity'd by the foe. On each pale corse the wretched mother spread Lay overwhelm'd with grief, and kiss'd her dead, Then rais'd her arms, and thus, in accents slow, "Be sated cruel Goddess! with my woe; "If I've offended, let these streaming eyes, "And let this sev'nfold funeral suffice: "Ah! take this wretched life you deign'd to save, "With them I too am carried to the grave. "Rejoice triumphant, my victorious foe, "But show the cause from whence your triumphs flow? "Tho' I unhappy mourn these children slain, "Yet greater numbers to my lot remain." She ceas'd, the bow string twang'd with awful sound, Which struck with terror all th' assembly round, Except the queen, who stood unmov'd alone, By her distresses more presumptuous grown. Near the pale corses stood their sisters fair In sable vestures and dishevell'd hair; One, while she draws the fatal shaft away, Faints, falls, and sickens at the light of day. To sooth her mother, lo! another flies, And blames the fury of inclement skies, And, while her words a filial pity show, Struck dumb--indignant seeks the shades below. Now from the fatal place another flies, Falls in her flight, and languishes, and dies. Another on her sister drops in death; A fifth in trembling terrors yields her breath; While the sixth seeks some gloomy cave in vain, Struck with the rest, and mingled with the slain. One only daughter lives, and she the least; The queen close clasp'd the daughter to her breast: "Ye heav'nly pow'rs, ah spare me one," she cry'd, "Ah! spare me one," the vocal hills reply'd: In vain she begs, the Fates her suit deny, In her embrace she sees her daughter die. * "The queen of all her family bereft, "Without or husband, son, or daughter left, "Grew stupid at the shock. The passing air "Made no impression on her stiff'ning hair. * This Verse to the End is the Work of another Hand. "The blood forsook her face: amidst the flood "Pour'd from her cheeks, quite fix'd her eye-balls "stood. "Her tongue, her palate both obdurate grew, "Her curdled veins no longer motion knew; "The use of neck, and arms, and feet was gone, "And ev'n her bowels hard'ned into stone: "A marble statue now the queen appears, "But from the marble steal the silent tears." To S. M. a young African Painter, on seeing his Works. TO show the lab'ring bosom's deep intent, And thought in living characters to paint, When first thy pencil did those beauties give, And breathing figures learnt from thee to live, How did those prospects give my soul delight, A new creation rushing on my sight? Still, wond'rous youth! each noble path pursue, On deathless glories fix thine ardent view: Still may the painter's and the poet's fire To aid thy pencil, and thy verse conspire! And may the charms of each seraphic theme Conduct thy footsteps to immortal fame! High to the blissful wonders of the skies Elate thy soul, and raise thy wishful eyes. Thrice happy, when exalted to survey That splendid city, crown'd with endless day, Whose twice six gates on radiant hinges ring: Celestial Salem blooms in endless spring. Calm and serene thy moments glide along, And may the muse inspire each future song! Still, with the sweets of contemplation bless'd, May peace with balmy wings your soul invest! But when these shades of time are chas'd away, And darkness ends in everlasting day, On what seraphic pinions shall we move, And view the landscapes in the realms above? There shall thy tongue in heav'nly murmurs flow, And there my muse with heav'nly transport glow: No more to tell of Damon's tender sighs, Or rising radiance of Aurora's eyes, For nobler themes demand a nobler strain, And purer language on th' ethereal plain. Cease, gentle muse! the solemn gloom of night Now seals the fair creation from my sight. To his Honour the Lieutenant-Governor, on the Death of his Lady. March 24, 1773. ALL-Conquering Death! by thy resistless pow'r, Hope's tow'ring plumage falls to rise no more! Of scenes terrestrial how the glories fly, Forget their splendors, and submit to die! Who ere escap'd thee, but the saint * of old Beyond the flood in sacred annals told, And the great sage, + whom fiery coursers drew To heav'n's bright portals from Elisha's view; Wond'ring he gaz'd at the refulgent car, Then snatch'd the mantle floating on the air. From Death these only could exemption boast, And without dying gain'd th' immortal coast. Not falling millions sate the tyrant's mind, Nor can the victor's progress be confin'd. But cease thy strife with Death, fond Nature, cease: He leads the virtuous to the realms of peace; * Enoch. + Elijah. His to conduct to the immortal plains, Where heav'n's Supreme in bliss and glory reigns. There sits, illustrious Sir, thy beauteous spouse; A gem-blaz'd circle beaming on her brows. Hail'd with acclaim among the heav'nly choirs, Her soul new-kindling with seraphic fires, To notes divine she tunes the vocal strings, While heav'n's high concave with the music rings. Virtue's rewards can mortal pencil paint? No--all descriptive arts, and eloquence are faint; Nor canst thou, Oliver, assent refuse To heav'nly tidings from the Afric muse. As soon may change thy laws, eternal fate, As the saint miss the glories I relate; Or her Benevolence forgotten lie, Which wip'd the trick'ling tear from Misry's eye. Whene'er the adverse winds were known to blow, When loss to loss * ensu'd, and woe to woe, Calm and serene beneath her father's hand She sat resign'd to the divine command. No longer then, great Sir, her death deplore, And let us hear the mournful sigh no more, Restrain the sorrow streaming from thine eye, Be all thy future moments crown'd with joy! Nor let thy wishes be to earth confin'd, But soaring high pursue th' unbodied mind. Forgive the muse, forgive th' advent'rous lays, That fain thy soul to heav'nly scenes would raise. A Farewel to AMERICA. To Mrs. S. W. I. ADIEU, New-England's smiling meads, Adieu, the flow'ry plain: I leave thine op'ning charms, O spring, And tempt the roaring main. II. In vain for me the flow'rets rise, And boast their gaudy pride, While here beneath the northern skies I mourn for health deny'd. III. Celestial maid of rosy hue, O let me feel thy reign! I languish till thy face I view, Thy vanish'd joys regain. IV. Susanna mourns, nor can I bear To see the crystal show'r, Or mark the tender falling tear At sad departure's hour; V. Not unregarding can I see Her soul with grief opprest: But let no sighs, no groans for me, Steal from her pensive breast. VI. In vain the feather'd warblers sing, In vain the garden blooms, And on the bosom of the spring Breathes out her sweet perfumes. VII. While for Britannia's distant shore We sweep the liquid plain, And with astonish'd eyes explore The wide-extended main. VIII. Lo! Health appears! celestial dame! Complacent and serene, With Hebe's mantle o'er her Frame, With soul-delighting mein. IX. To mark the vale where London lies With misty vapours crown'd, Which cloud Aurora's thousand dyes, And veil her charms around. X. Why, Phoebus, moves thy car so slow? So slow thy rising ray? Give us the famous town to view, Thou glorious king of day! XI. For thee, Britannia, I resign New-England's smiling fields; To view again her charms divine, What joy the prospect yields! XII. But thou! Temptation hence away, With all thy fatal train, Nor once seduce my soul away, By thine enchanting strain. XIII. Thrice happy they, whose heav'nly shield Secures their souls from harms, And fell Temptation on the field Of all its pow'r disarms! Boston, May 7, 1773. A REBUS, by I. B. I. A BIRD delicious to the taste, On which an army once did feast, Sent by an hand unseen; A creature of the horned race, Which Britain's royal standards grace; A gem of vivid green; II. A town of gaiety and sport, Where beaux and beauteous nymphs resort, And gallantry doth reign; A Dardan hero fam'd of old For youth and beauty, as we're told, And by a monarch slain; III. A peer of popular applause, Who doth our violated laws, And grievances proclaim. Th' initials show a vanquish'd town, That adds fresh glory and renown To old Britannia's fame. An ANSWER to the Rebus, by the Author of these POEMS. THE poet asks, and Phillis can't refuse To show th' obedience of the Infant muse. She knows the Quail of most inviting taste Fed Israel's army in the dreary waste; And what's on Britain's royal standard borne, But the tall, graceful, rampant Unicorn? The Emerald with a vivid verdure glows Among the gems which regal crowns compose; Boston's a town, polite and debonair, To which the beaux and beauteous nymphs repair, Each Helen strikes the mind with sweet surprise, While living lightning flashes from her eyes, See young Euphorbus of the Dardan line By Manelaus' hand to death resign: The well known peer of popular applause Is C----m zealous to support our laws. Quebec now vanquish'd must obey, She too much annual tribute pay To Britain of immortal fame. And add new glory to her name. F I N I S. 
41016	----	THE LAND OF SONG BOOK III. _FOR UPPER GRAMMAR GRADES_ SELECTED BY KATHARINE H. SHUTE EDITED BY LARKIN DUNTON, LL.D. HEAD MASTER OF THE BOSTON NORMAL SCHOOL [Illustration] SILVER, BURDETT & COMPANY NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO 1899 Copyright, 1899, By Silver, Burdett & Company. C. J. PETERS & SON, TYPOGRAPHERS, BOSTON. Plimpton Press H. M. PLIMPTON & CO., PRINTERS & BINDERS, NORWOOD, MASS., U.S.A. _COMPILERS' PREFACE._ The inestimable value of literature in supplying healthful recreation, in opening the mind to larger views of life, and in creating ideals that shall mold the spiritual nature, is conceded now by every one who has intelligently considered the problems of education. But the basis upon which literature shall be selected and arranged is still a matter of discussion. Chronology, race-correspondence, correlation, and ethical training should all be recognized incidentally; but the main purpose of the teacher of literature is to send children on into life with a genuine love for good reading. To accomplish this, three things should be true of the reading offered: first, it should be _literature_; second, it should be literature of some scope, not merely some small phase of literature, such as the fables, or the poetry of one of the less eminent poets; and third, it should appeal to children's natural interests. Children's interests, varied as they seem, center in the marvelous and the preternatural; in the natural world; and in human life, especially child life and the romantic and heroic aspects of mature life. In the selections made for each grade, we have recognized these different interests. To grade poetry perfectly for different ages is an impossibility; much of the greatest verse is for all ages--that is one reason why it _is_ great. A child of five will lisp the numbers of Horatius with delight; and Scott's _Lullaby of an Infant Chief_, with its romantic color and its exquisite human tenderness, is dear to childhood, to manhood, and to old age. But the Land of Song is a great undiscovered country to the little child; by some road or other he must find his way into it; and these volumes simply attempt to point out a path through which he may be led into its happy fields. Our earnest thanks are due to the following publishers for permission to use copyrighted poems: to Houghton, Mifflin & Co. for poems by Longfellow, Whittier, Emerson, Holmes, Lowell, Aldrich, Bayard Taylor, James T. Fields, Ph[oe]be Cary, Lucy Larcom, Celia Thaxter, and Sarah Orne Jewett; to D. Appleton & Co. for a large number of Bryant's poems: to Charles Scribner's Sons for two poems by Stevenson, from _Underwoods_, and _A Child's Garden of Verses_; to J. B. Lippincott & Co. for two poems by Thomas Buchanan Read; and to Henry T. Coates & Co. for a poem by Charles Fenno Hoffman. The present volume is intended for the seventh, eighth, and ninth school years, or higher grammar grades. It is the third of three books prepared for use in the grades below the high school. As no collection of this size can supply as much poetry as may be used to advantage, and as many desirable poems by American writers have necessarily been omitted, we have noted at the end of this volume lists of poems which it would be well to add to the material given here, that our children may realize the scope and beauty of the poetry of their own land. CONTENTS PAGE ABIDE WITH ME 72 ADVERSITY 92 ANNIE LAURIE 168 ANNIE OF THARAW 199 ANTONY'S EULOGY ON CÆSAR 221 ANTIQUITY OF FREEDOM, THE 13 APPARITIONS 253 AULD LANG SYNE 112 AWAKENING OF SPRING, THE 68 BALLAD OF THE BOAT, THE 119 BANNOCKBURN 52 BEFORE SEDAN 109 BEGGAR MAID, THE 98 BIRKENHEAD, THE 108 "BLESSED ARE THEY THAT MOURN" 151 BONNIE DUNDEE 53 BONNIE LESLEY 167 BOOT AND SADDLE 231 BUILDING OF THE SHIP, THE 46 CAVALIER, THE 230 CONSOLATION, A 261 COUNTY GUY 96 CROSSING THE BAR 269 CUMNOR HALL 27 DEATHBED, THE 152 DEATH THE LEVELER 60 DESERTED HOUSE, THE 238 DORA 160 DOWNFALL OF WOLSEY, THE 177 EACH AND ALL 172 ELAINE 247 ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD 184 EVENING (Milton) 212 EVENING (Scott) 97 FAITH 206 FALL OF POLAND, THE 181 FLOW GENTLY, SWEET AFTON 196 FORBEARANCE 260 GLENARA 104 GOOD GREAT MAN, THE 59 GROWING OLD 253 HARP THAT ONCE THROUGH TARA'S HALLS, THE 183 HELVELLYN 101 HERVÉ RIEL 141 HESTER 165 HIGH TIDE ON THE COAST OF LINCOLNSHIRE, THE 17 HOME THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD 69 HORATIUS 31 HYMN BEFORE SUNRISE IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI 214 HYMN OF TRUST 159 HYMN TO DIANA 101 HYMN TO THE NORTH STAR, 211 ICHABOD 178 IMMORTALITY 202 IN HEAVENLY LOVE ABIDING 245 IVRY 136 JACOBITE'S EPITAPH, A 236 JACOBITE IN EXILE, A 232 JAFFAR 57 JOHN ANDERSON 113 KNIGHT'S TOMB, THE 103 LADY OF SHALOTT, THE 76 LAST LEAF, THE 239 LAST ROSE OF SUMMER, THE 15 LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS, THE 111 LIGHT SHINING OUT OF DARKNESS, THE 134 LOCHIEL'S WARNING 61 LOCHINVAR 50 LONDON, 1802 229 LORD OF HIMSELF 58 LOST LEADER, THE 180 LUCY 192 MAN AND NATURE 74 MAN THAT HATH NO MUSIC IN HIMSELF, THE 91 MORNING 75 MY DOVES 206 MY LOVE 254 NECKAN, THE 116 NIGHT AND DEATH 201 NORA'S VOW 255 ODE ON THE DEATH OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON 226 OF OLD SAT FREEDOM 49 O GOD, OUR HELP IN AGES PAST 140 OH FAIREST OF THE RURAL MAIDS 195 OH, WERT THOU IN THE CAULD BLAST 260 ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER 218 ON HIS BLINDNESS 46 ON THE RECEIPT OF MY MOTHER'S PICTURE 241 ON THE SEA 120 OUTLAW, THE 257 OZYMANDIAS OF EGYPT 61 PATRIOT, THE 150 PETITION TO TIME, A 104 PILLAR OF THE CLOUD, THE 135 POET AND THE BIRD, THE 115 QUA CURSUM VENTUS 210 QUALITY OF MERCY, THE 30 QUIET WORK 213 RAISING OF LAZARUS, THE 204 RECESSIONAL 270 RHODORA, THE 174 ROMANCE OF THE SWAN'S NEST 82 ROSABELLE 24 RUGBY CHAPEL 147 SAFE HOME 133 ST. AGNES' EVE 246 SANDS OF DEE, THE 16 SAY NOT, THE STRUGGLE NAUGHT AVAILETH 45 SEVEN SISTERS; OR, THE SOLITUDE OF BINNORIE, THE 106 SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY 99 SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT 200 SIR GALAHAD 249 SLEEP 156 SLEEP, THE 153 SNOWSTORM, THE 67 SONG FROM "PIPPA PASSES," 73 SONG OF THE CAMP, A 169 SONG OF THE WESTERN MEN, THE 56 SONG: "WHO IS SILVIA? WHAT IS SHE?" 256 SONNET ON CHILLON 14 STANZAS FOR MUSIC 196 TELLING THE BEES 86 THANKSGIVING TO GOD FOR HIS HOUSE, A 157 THERE'LL NEVER BE PEACE 231 THREE FISHERS, THE 236 TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY 95 TO A SKYLARK (Shelley) 261 TO A SKYLARK (Wordsworth) 26 TO THE DAISY 92 TRIUMPH OF CHARIS 198 TRUE KNIGHTHOOD 252 TWILIGHT CALM 70 ULYSSES 218 VILLAGE PREACHER, THE 190 WATERLOO 266 WENDELL PHILLIPS 149 WHERE LIES THE LAND TO WHICH THE SHIP WOULD GO 114 WHITE SHIP, THE 121 _INDEX OF AUTHORS._ PAGE ARNOLD, MATTHEW. Quiet Work 213 Rugby Chapel: A Selection 147 The Neckan 116 BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT. Man and Nature 74 My Doves 206 Romance of the Swan's Nest 82 The Poet and the Bird 115 The Sleep 153 BROWNING, ROBERT. Apparitions 253 Boot and Saddle 231 Growing Old: A Selection 253 Hervé Riel 141 Home Thoughts from Abroad 69 Song from "Pippa Passes" 73 The Lost Leader 180 The Patriot 150 BRYANT, WILLIAM CULLEN. "Blessed are They that Mourn" 151 Hymn to the North Star 211 Oh Fairest of the Rural Maids 195 The Antiquity of Freedom 13 BURNS, ROBERT. Auld Lang Syne 112 Bannockburn 52 Bonnie Lesley 167 Flow Gently, Sweet Afton 196 John Anderson 113 Oh, wert Thou in the Cauld Blast 260 There'll Never be Peace 231 To a Mountain Daisy 95 BYRON, LORD (George Noel Gordon). She walks in Beauty 9 Sonnet on Chillon 14 Stanzas for Music 196 Waterloo: A Selection 266 CAMPBELL, THOMAS. Glenara 104 Lochiel's Warning 61 The Fall of Poland 181 CLOUGH, ARTHUR HUGH. Qua Cursum Ventus 210 Say not, the Struggle Naught availeth 45 Where lies the Land to which the Ship would go 114 COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR. Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni 214 The Good Great Man 59 The Knight's Tomb 103 CORNWALL, BARRY. (See Procter.) COWPER, WILLIAM. Light Shining out of Darkness, The 134 On the receipt of my Mother's Picture 241 DOBSON, AUSTIN. Before Sedan 109 DOUGLAS, WILLIAM. Annie Laurie. 168 EMERSON, RALPH WALDO. Each and All 172 Forbearance 260 The Rhodora 174 The Snowstorm 67 GARNETT, RICHARD. The Ballad of the Boat 119 GOLDSMITH, OLIVER. The Village Preacher 190 GRAY, THOMAS. Elegy written in a Country Churchyard 184 HAWKER, ROBERT S. The Song of the Western Men 56 HERRICK, ROBERT. A Thanksgiving to God for His House 157 HAYWOOD, THOMAS. Morning 75 HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL. Hymn of Trust 159 The Last Leaf 239 HOOD, THOMAS. The Deathbed 152 HUNT, LEIGH. Jaffar 57 INGELOW, JEAN. The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire 17 JOHNSON, BEN. Hymn to Diana 101 Triumph of Charis 198 KEATS, JOHN. On First Looking into Chapman's Homer 218 On the Sea 120 KINGSLEY, CHARLES. The Sands of Dee 16 The Three Fishers 236 KIPLING, RUDYARD. Recessional 270 LAMB, CHARLES. Hester 165 LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH. Annie of Tharaw 199 The Building of the Ship: A Selection 46 LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL. My Love 254 Wendell Phillips 149 LYTE, HENRY F. Abide with Me 72 MACAULEY, THOMAS BABBINGTON. A Jacobite's Epitaph 236 Horatius: A Selection 31 Ivry 136 MICKLE, WILLIAM F. Cumnor Hall 27 MILTON, JOHN. Evening: A Selection 212 On his Blindness 46 MONTGOMERY, JAMES. Immortality 202 MOORE, THOMAS. The Harp that once through Tara's Halls 183 The Last Rose of Summer 15 The Light of Other Days 111 NEWMAN, JOHN HENRY. The Pillar of the Cloud 135 PROCTER, BRYAN WALLER. A Petition to Time 104 ROSSETTI, CHRISTINA G. Twilight Calm 70 ROSSETTI, DANTE GABRIEL. The White Ship 121 ST. JOSEPH OF THE STUDIUM. Safe Home. Translated by J. M. Neale 133 SCOTT, SIR WALTER. Bonnie Dundee 53 County Guy 96 Evening 97 Helvellyn 101 Lochinvar 50 Nora's Vow 255 Rosabelle 24 The Cavalier 230 The Outlaw 257 SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM. A Consolation 261 Adversity: A Selection 92 Antony's Eulogy on Caesar: A Selection 221 Sleep: A Selection 156 Song: "Who is Silvia? what is she?" From "Two Gentlemen of Verona" 256 The Downfall of Wolsey: A Selection 177 The Man that hath no Music in Himself: A Selection 91 The Quality of Mercy: A Selection 30 SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE. Ozymandias of Egypt 61 To a Skylark 261 SHIRLEY, JAMES. Death the Leveler 60 SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES. A Jacobite in Exile 232 TAYLOR, BAYARD. A Song of the Camp 169 TENNYSON, ALFRED. Crossing the Bar 269 Dora 160 Elaine: A Selection from "The Idylls of the King" 247 Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington: A Selection 226 Of Old sat Freedom 49 St. Agnes' Eve 246 Sir Galahad 249 The Awakening of Spring: A Selection 68 The Beggar Maid 98 The Deserted House 238 The Lady of Shalott 76 The Raising of Lazarus: A Selection 204 True Knighthood: A Selection 252 Ulysses 218 WARING, ANNA L. In Heavenly Love abiding 245 WATTS, ISAAC. O God, our Help in Ages Past 140 WHITE, JOSEPH BLANCO. Night and Death 201 WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF. Ichabod 178 Telling the Bees 86 WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM. Faith: A Selection 206 London, 1802 229 Lucy 192 She was a Phantom of Delight 200 The Seven Sisters: or, The Solitude of Binnorie 106 To a Skylark 26 To the Daisy 92 WOTTON, SIR HENRY. Lord of Himself 58 YULE, SIR HENRY. The Birkenhead 108 THE LAND OF SONG: BOOK III. _PART I._ [Illustration: TITO CONTI. IRIS.] _The Land of Song: Book III._ PART ONE. [Illustration] THE ANTIQUITY OF FREEDOM. A SELECTION. Oh Freedom! thou art not, as poets dream, A fair young girl, with light and delicate limbs, And wavy tresses gushing from the cap With which the Roman master crowned his slave When he took off the gyves. A bearded man, Armed to the teeth, art thou; one mailèd hand Grasps the broad shield, and one the sword; thy brow, Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarred With tokens of old wars; thy massive limbs Are strong with struggling. Power at thee has launched His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee; They could not quench the life thou hast from heaven. Merciless power has dug thy dungeon deep, And his swart armorers, by a thousand fires, Have forged thy chain; yet, while he deems thee bound, The links are shivered, and the prison walls Fall outward; terribly thou springest forth, As springs the flame above a burning pile, And shoutest to the nations, who return Thy shoutings, while the pale oppressor flies. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. SONNET ON CHILLON. Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind! Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art, For there thy habitation is the heart-- The heart which love of thee alone can bind; And when thy sons to fetters are consigned-- To fetters, and the damp vault's day less gloom, Their country conquers with their martyrdom, And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. Chillon! thy prison is a holy place, And thy sad floor an altar--for 'twas trod, Until his very steps have left a trace Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod, By Bonnivard! May none those marks efface! For they appeal from tyranny to God. LORD GEORGE NOEL GORDON BYRON. [Illustration] THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER. 'Tis the last rose of summer, Left blooming alone; All her lovely companions Are faded and gone; No flower of her kindred, No rosebud is nigh, To reflect back her blushes, Or give sigh for sigh! I'll not leave thee, thou lone one! To pine on the stem; Since the lovely are sleeping, Go, sleep thou with them; Thus kindly I scatter Thy leaves o'er the bed Where thy mates of the garden Lie scentless and dead. So soon may I follow, When friendships decay, And from love's shining circle The gems drop away! When true hearts lie withered, And fond ones are flown, O, who would inhabit This bleak world alone? THOMAS MOORE. THE SANDS OF DEE. "O Mary, go and call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, Across the sands of Dee." The western wind was wild and dank with foam, And all alone went she. The western tide crept up along the sand, And o'er and o'er the sand, And round and round the sand, As far as eye could see. The rolling mist came down and hid the land: And never home came she. "Oh! is it weed, or fish, or floating hair,-- A tress of golden hair, A drownèd maiden's hair, Above the nets at sea? Was never salmon yet that shone so fair Among the stakes on Dee." They rowed her in across the rolling foam, The cruel crawling foam, The cruel hungry foam, To her grave beside the sea. But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home, Across the sands of Dee. CHARLES KINGSLEY. [Illustration: JEAN INGELOW.] THE HIGH TIDE ON THE COAST OF LINCOLNSHIRE. (1571.) The old mayor climbed the belfry tower, The ringers ran by two, by three; "Pull, if ye never pulled before; Good ringers, pull your best," quoth he. "Play uppe, play uppe, O Boston bells! Play all your changes, all your swells, Play uppe 'The Brides of Enderby.'" Men say it was a stolen tyde-- The Lord that sent it, He knows all; But in myne ears doth still abide The message that the bells let fall: And there was naught of strange, beside The flights of mews and peewits pied By millions crouched on the old sea wall. I sat and spun within the doore, My thread brake off, I raised myne eyes; The level sun, like ruddy ore, Lay sinking in the barren skies; And dark against day's golden death She moved where Lindis wandereth, My sonne's faire wife, Elizabeth. "Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!" calling, Ere the early dews were falling, Farre away I heard her song. "Cusha! Cusha!" all along; Where the reedy Lindis floweth, Floweth, floweth, From the meads where melick groweth Faintly came her milking song-- "Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!" calling, "For the dews will soone be falling; Leave your meadow grasses mellow, Mellow, mellow; Quit your cowslips, cowslips yellow; Come uppe Whitefoot, come uppe Lightfoot; Quit the stalks of parsley hollow, Hollow, hollow; Come uppe Jetty, rise and follow, From the clovers lift your head; Come uppe Whitefoot, come uppe Lightfoot, Come uppe Jetty, rise and follow, Jetty, to the milking shed." If it be long, ay, long ago, When I beginne to think how long, Againe I hear the Lindis flow, Swifte as an arrow, sharpe and strong; And all the aire, it seemeth mee, Bin full of floating bells (sayth shee), That ring the time of Enderby. Alle fresh the level pasture lay, And not a shadow mote be seene, Save where full fyve miles away The steeple towered from out the greene; And lo! the great bell farre and wide Was heard in all the country side That Saturday at eventide. The swanherds where their sedges are Moved on in sunset's golden breath, The shepherde lads I heard afarre, And my sonne's wife, Elizabeth; Till floating o'er the grassy sea Came downe that kyndly message free, The "Brides of Mavis Enderby." Then some looked uppe into the sky, And all along where Lindis flows To where the goodly vessels lie, And where the lordly steeple shows. They sayde, "And why should this thing be? What danger lowers by land or sea? They ring the tune of Enderby! "For evil news from Mablethorpe, Of pyrate galleys warping down; For shippes ashore beyond the scorpe, They have not spared to wake the towne: But while the west bin red to see, And storms be none, and pyrates flee, Why ring 'The Brides of Enderby'?" I looked without, and lo! my sonne Came riding downe with might and main: He raised a shout as he drew on, Till all the welkin rang again, "Elizabeth! Elizabeth!" (A sweeter woman ne'er drew breath Than my sonne's wife, Elizabeth.) "The olde sea wall (he cried) is downe, The rising tide comes on apace, And boats adrift in yonder towne Go sailing uppe the market-place." He shook as one that looks on death: "God save you, mother!" straight he saith, "Where is my wife, Elizabeth?" "Good sonne, where Lindis winds her way, With her two bairns I marked her long; And ere yon bells beganne to play Afar I heard her milking song." He looked across the grassy lea, To right, to left, "Ho Enderby!" They rang "The Brides of Enderby!" With that he cried and beat his breast; For, lo! along the river's bed A mighty eygre reared his crest, And uppe the Lindis raging sped. It swept with thunderous noises loud; Shaped like a curling snow-white cloud, Or like a demon in a shroud. And rearing Lindis backward pressed Shook all her trembling bankes amaine; Then madly at the eygre's breast Flung uppe her weltering walls againe. Then bankes came downe with ruin and rout-- Then beaten foam flew round about-- Then all the mighty floods were out. So farre, so fast the eygre drave, The heart had hardly time to beat, Before a shallow seething wave Sobbed in the grasses at oure feet: The feet had hardly time to flee Before it brake against the knee, And all the world was in the sea. Upon the roofe we sate that night, The noise of bells went sweeping by; I marked the lofty beacon light Stream from the church tower, red and high-- A lurid mark and dread to see; And awsome bells they were to mee, That in the dark rang "Enderby." They rang the sailor lads to guide From roofe to roofe who fearless rowed; And I--my sonne was at my side, And yet the ruddy beacon glowed; And yet he moaned beneath his breath, "O come in life, or come in death! O lost! my love, Elizabeth." And didst thou visit him no more? Thou didst, thou didst, my daughter deare; The waters laid thee at his doore, Ere yet the early dawn was clear. Thy pretty bairns in fast embrace, The lifted sun shone on thy face, Downe drifted to thy dwelling-place. That flow strewed wrecks upon the grass, That ebbe swept out the flocks to sea; A fatal ebbe and flow, alas! To manye more than myne and mee: But each will mourn his own (she saith); And sweeter woman ne'er drew breath Than my sonne's wife, Elizabeth. I shall never hear her more By the reedy Lindis shore, "Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!" calling, Ere the early dews be falling; I shall never hear her song, "Cusha! Cusha!" all along Where the sunny Lindis floweth, Goeth, floweth; From the meads where melick groweth, When the water winding down, Onward floweth to the town. I shall never see her more Where the reeds and rushes quiver, Shiver, quiver; Stand beside the sobbing river, Sobbing, throbbing, in its falling To the sandy lonesome shore; I shall never hear her calling, "Leave your meadow grasses mellow, Mellow, mellow; Quit your cowslips, cowslips yellow; Come uppe Whitefoot, come uppe Lightfoot; Quit your pipes of parsley hollow, Hollow, hollow; Come uppe Lightfoot, rise and follow; Lightfoot, Whitefoot, From your clovers lift the head; Come uppe Jetty, follow, follow, Jetty, to the milking shed." JEAN INGELOW. [Illustration] ROSABELLE. O listen, listen, ladies gay! No haughty feat of arms I tell; Soft is the note, and sad the lay, That mourns the lovely Rosabelle. "Moor, moor the barge, ye gallant crew! And, gentle ladye, deign to stay! Rest thee in Castle Ravensheuch, Nor tempt the stormy firth to-day. "The blackening wave is edged with white; To inch and rock the sea-mews fly; The fishers have heard the Water-Sprite, Whose screams forebode that wreck is nigh. "Last night the gifted Seer did view A wet shroud swathed round ladye gay; Then stay thee, Fair, in Ravensheuch; Why cross the gloomy firth to-day?" "'Tis not because Lord Lindesay's heir To-night at Roslin leads the ball, But that my ladye-mother there Sits lonely in her castle hall. "'Tis not because the ring they ride, And Lindesay at the ring rides well, But that my sire the wine will chide, If 'tis not filled by Rosabelle." O'er Roslin all that dreary night, A wondrous blaze was seen to gleam; 'Twas broader than the watch-fire's light, And redder than the bright moonbeam. It glared on Roslin's castle rock, It ruddied all the copse-wood glen; 'Twas seen from Dryden's groves of oak, And seen from caverned Hawthornden. Seemed all on fire that chapel proud, Where Roslin's chiefs uncoffined lie, Each Baron, for a sable shroud, Sheathed in his iron panoply. Seemed all on fire within, around, Deep sacristy and altar's pale; Shone every pillar foliage-bound, And glimmered all the dead men's mail. Blazed battlement and pinnet high, Blazed every rose-carved buttress fair-- So still they blaze, when fate is nigh The lordly line of high St. Clair. There are twenty of Roslin's barons bold Lie buried within that proud chapelle; Each one the holy vault doth hold-- But the sea holds lovely Rosabelle! And each St. Clair was buried there, With candle, with book, and with knell; But the sea-caves rung, and the wild winds sung, The dirge of lovely Rosabelle! SIR WALTER SCOTT. [Illustration] TO A SKYLARK. Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky! Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound? Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground? Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will, Those quivering wings composed, that music still! To the last point of vision, and beyond, Mount, daring warbler!--that love-prompted strain --'Twixt thee and thine a never-failing bond-- Thrills not the less the bosom of the plain: Yet might'st thou seem, proud privilege, to sing All independent of the leafy spring. Leave to the nightingale her shady wood; A privacy of glorious light is thine; Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood Of harmony, with instinct more divine; Type of the wise who soar, but never roam; True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home! WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. [Illustration] CUMNOR HALL. The dews of summer night did fall; The moon, sweet regent of the sky, Silvered the walls of Cumnor Hall, And many an oak that grew thereby. Now naught was heard beneath the skies, The sounds of busy life were still, Save an unhappy lady's sighs That issued from that lonely pile. "Leicester!" she cried, "is this thy love That thou so oft hast sworn to me, To leave me in this lonely grove, Immured in shameful privity? "No more thou com'st with lover's speed Thy once-belovèd bride to see; But, be she alive, or be she dead, I fear, stern Earl, 's the same to thee. "Not so the usage I received When happy in my father's hall; No faithless husband then me grieved, No chilling fears did me appall. "I rose up with the cheerful morn, No lark more blithe, no flower more gay; And like the bird that haunts the thorn So merrily sung the livelong day. "If that my beauty is but small, Among court ladies all despised, Why didst thou rend it from that hall, Where, scornful Earl! it well was prized? "But, Leicester, or I much am wrong, Or, 'tis not beauty lures thy vows; Rather, ambition's gilded crown Makes thee forget thy humble spouse. "Then, Leicester, why,--again I plead, The injured surely may repine,-- Why didst thou wed a country maid, When some fair princess might be thine? "Why didst thou praise my humble charms, And oh! then leave them to decay? Why didst thou win me to thy arms, Then leave to mourn the livelong day? "The village maidens of the plain Salute me lowly as they go; Envious they mark my silken train, Nor think a countess can have woe. "How far less blest am I than them! Daily to pine and waste with care! Like the poor plant, that, from its stem Divided, feels the chilling air. "My spirits flag--my hopes decay-- Still that dread death-bell smites my ear: And many a boding seems to say, Countess, prepare, thy end is near!" Thus sore and sad that Lady grieved In Cumnor Hall so lone and drear; And many a heartfelt sigh she heaved, And let fall many a bitter tear. And ere the dawn of day appeared, In Cumnor Hall so lone and drear, Full many a piercing scream was heard, And many a cry of mortal fear. The death-bell thrice was heard to ring; An aërial voice was heard to call, And thrice the raven flapped its wing Around the towers of Cumnor Hall. The mastiff howled at village door, The oaks were shattered on the green; Woe was the hour--for never more That hapless countess e'er was seen! And in that manor now no more Is cheerful feast and sprightly ball; For ever since that dreary hour Have spirits haunted Cumnor Hall. The village maids, with fearful glance, Avoid the ancient mossgrown wall; Nor ever lead the merry dance Among the groves of Cumnor Hall. Full many a traveler oft hath sighed And pensive wept the countess' fall, As wand'ring onwards they've espied The haunted towers of Cumnor Hall. WILLIAM F. MICKLE. THE QUALITY OF MERCY. The quality of mercy is not strained, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes The thronèd monarch better than his crown: His scepter shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptered sway; It is enthronèd in the heart of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God's When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, Though justice be thy plea, consider this, That, in the course of justice, none of us Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy; And that same prayer doth teach us all to render The deeds of mercy. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. _The "Merchant of Venice."_ [Illustration] HORATIUS. A SELECTION. But the Consul's brow was sad, And the Consul's speech was low, And darkly looked he at the wall, And darkly at the foe. "Their van will be upon us Before the bridge goes down; And if they once may win the bridge, What hope to save the town?" Then out spake brave Horatius, The Captain of the Gate: "To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers, And the temples of his Gods; "And for the tender mother Who dandled him to rest, And for the wife who nurses His baby at her breast, And for the holy maidens Who feed the eternal flame, To save them from false Sextus That wrought the deed of shame? "Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul, With all the speed ye may; I, with two more to help me, Will hold the foe in play. In yon straight path a thousand May well be stopped by three. Now who will stand on either hand, And keep the bridge with me?" Then out spake Spurius Lartius; A Ramnian proud was he: "Lo, I will stand at thy right hand, And keep the bridge with thee." And out spake strong Herminius; Of Titian blood was he: "I will abide on thy left side, And keep the bridge with thee." "Horatius," quoth the Consul, "As thou sayest, so let it be." And straight against that great array Forth went the dauntless Three. For Romans in Rome's quarrel Spared neither land nor gold, Nor son, nor wife, nor limb, nor life, In the brave days of old. Then none was for a party; Then all were for the state; Then the great man helped the poor, And the poor man loved the great: Then lands were fairly portioned; Then spoils were fairly sold: The Romans were like brothers In the brave days of old. Now Roman is to Roman More hateful than a foe, And the Tribunes beard the high, And the Fathers grind the low, As we wax hot in faction, In battle we wax cold: Wherefore men fight not as they fought In the brave days of old. Now while the Three were tightening Their harness on their backs, The Consul was the foremost man To take in hand an ax: And Fathers mixed with Commons Seized hatchet, bar, and crow, And smote upon the planks above, And loosed the props below. Meanwhile the Tuscan army, Right glorious to behold, Came flashing back the noonday light, Rank behind rank, like surges bright Of a broad sea of gold. Four hundred trumpets sounded A peal of warlike glee, As that great host, with measured tread, And spears advanced, and ensigns spread, Rolled slowly towards the bridge's head, Where stood the dauntless Three. The Three stood calm and silent, And looked upon the foes, And a great shout of laughter From all the vanguard rose; And forth three chiefs came spurring Before that deep array; To earth they sprang, their swords they drew, And lifted high their shields, and flew To win the narrow way; Aunus from green Tifernum, Lord of the Hill of Vines; And Seius, whose eight hundred slaves Sicken in Ilva's mines; And Picus, long to Clusium Vassal in peace and war, Who led to fight his Umbrian powers From that gray crag where, girt with towers, The fortress of Nequinum towers O'er the pale waves of Nar. Stout Lartius hurled down Aunus Into the stream beneath: Herminius struck at Seius, And clove him to the teeth: At Picus Brave Horatius Darted one fiery thrust; And the proud Umbrian's gilded arms Clashed in the bloody dust. Then Ocnus of Falerii Rushed on the Roman Three; And Lausulus of Urgo, The rover of the sea; And Aruns of Volsinium, Who slew the great wild boar, The great wild boar that had his den Amidst the reeds of Cosa's fen, And wasted fields, and slaughtered men, Along Albinia's shore. Herminius smote down Aruns: Lartius laid Ocnus low: Right to the heart of Lausulus Horatius sent a blow. "Lie there," he cried, "fell pirate! No more, aghast and pale, From Ostia's walls the crowd shall mark The track of thy destroying bark. No more Campania's hinds shall fly To woods and caverns when they spy Thy thrice accursèd sail." But now no sound of laughter Was heard among the foes, A wild and wrathful clamor From all the vanguard rose. Six spears' lengths from the entrance Halted that deep array, And for a space no man came forth To win the narrow way. But hark! the cry is "Astur"; And lo! the ranks divide; And the great Lord of Luna Comes with his stately stride. Upon his ample shoulders Clangs loud the fourfold shield, And in his hand he shakes the brand Which none but he can wield. He smiled on those bold Romans A smile serene and high; He eyed the flinching Tuscans, And scorn was in his eye. Quoth he, "The she-wolf's litter Stands savagely at bay: But will ye dare to follow, If Astur clears the way?" Then, whirling up his broadsword With both hands to the height, He rushed against Horatius, And smote with all his might. With shield and blade Horatius Right deftly turned the blow. The blow, though turned, came yet too nigh; It missed his helm, but gashed his thigh; The Tuscans raised a joyful cry To see the red blood flow. He reeled, and on Herminius He leaned one breathing-space; Then, like a wild cat mad with wounds, Sprang right at Astur's face. Through teeth, and skull, and helmet So fierce a thrust he sped, The good sword stood a hand-breadth out Behind the Tuscan's head. And the great Lord of Luna Fell at that deadly stroke, As falls on Mount Alvernus A thunder-smitten oak. Far o'er the crashing forest The giant arms lie spread; And the pale augurs, muttering low, Gaze on the blasted head. On Astur's throat Horatius Right firmly pressed his heel, And thrice and four times tugged amain, Ere he wrenched out the steel. "And see," he cried, "the welcome, Fair guests, that waits you here! What noble Lucumo comes next To taste our Roman cheer?" But at his haughty challenge A sullen murmur ran, Mingled of wrath, and shame, and dread, Along that glittering van. There lacked not men of prowess, Nor men of lordly race; For all Etruria's noblest Were round the fatal place. But all Etruria's noblest Felt their hearts sink to see On the earth the bloody corpses, In the path the dauntless Three. And from the ghastly entrance Where those bold Romans stood, All shrank, like boys who unaware, Ranging the woods to start a hare, Come to the mouth of the dark lair Where, growling low, a fierce old bear Lies amidst bones and blood. Was none who would be foremost To lead such dire attack: But those behind cried, "Forward!" And those before cried, "Back!" And backward now and forward Wavers the deep array; And on the tossing sea of steel, To and fro the standards reel; And the victorious trumpet-peal Dies fitfully away. Yet one man for one moment Stood out before the crowd; Well known was he to all the Three, And they gave him greeting loud. "Now welcome, welcome, Sextus! Now welcome to thy home! Why dost thou stay, and turn away, Here lies the road to Rome." Thrice looked he at the city; Thrice looked he at the dead; And thrice came on in fury, And thrice turned back in dread; And, white with fear and hatred, Scowled at the narrow way Where, wallowing in a pool of blood, The bravest Tuscans lay. But meanwhile ax and lever Have manfully been plied; And now the bridge hangs tottering Above the boiling tide. "Come back, come back, Horatius!" Loud cried the Fathers all, "Back, Lartius! back, Herminius! Back, ere the ruin fall!" Back darted Spurius Lartius; Herminius darted back: And, as they passed, beneath their feet They felt the timbers crack. But when they turned their faces, And on the farther shore Saw brave Horatius stand alone, They would have crossed once more. But with a crash like thunder Fell every loosened beam, And, like a dam, the mighty wreck Lay right athwart the stream; And a long shout of triumph Rose from the walls of Rome, As to the highest turret-tops Was splashed the yellow foam. And like a horse unbroken When first he feels the rein, The furious river struggled hard, And tossed his tawny mane, And burst the curb, and bounded, Rejoicing to be free; And whirling down, in fierce career, Battlement, and plank, and pier, Rushed headlong to the sea. Alone stood brave Horatius, But constant still in mind; Thrice thirty thousand foes before, And the broad flood behind. "Down with him!" cried false Sextus, With a smile on his pale face. "Now yield thee," cried Lars Porsena, "Now yield thee to our grace." Round turned he, as not deigning Those craven ranks to see; Naught spake he to Lars Porsena, To Sextus naught spake he; But he saw on Palatinus The white porch of his home; And he spake to the noble river That rolls by the towers of Rome. "Oh, Tiber! father Tiber! To whom the Romans pray, A Roman's life, a Roman's arms, Take thou in charge this day." So he spake, and speaking sheathed The good sword by his side, And with his harness on his back, Plunged headlong in the tide. No sound of joy or sorrow Was heard from either bank; But friends and foes, in dumb surprise, With parted lips and straining eyes, Stood gazing where he sank; And when above the surges They saw his crest appear, All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry, And even the ranks of Tuscany Could scarce forbear to cheer. But fiercely ran the current, Swollen high by months of rain: And fast his blood was flowing And he was sore in pain, And heavy with his armor, And spent with changing blows: And oft they thought him sinking, But still again he rose. Never, I ween, did swimmer, In such an evil case, Struggle through such a raging flood Safe to the landing-place: But his limbs were borne up bravely By the brave heart within; And our good father Tiber Bore bravely up his chin. "Curse on him!" quoth false Sextus; "Will not the villain drown? But for this stay, ere close of day We should have sacked the town!" "Heaven help him!" quoth Lars Porsena, "And bring him safe to shore; For such a gallant feat of arms Was never seen before." And now he feels the bottom; Now on dry earth he stands; Now round him throng the Fathers To press his gory hands; And now, with shouts and clapping, And noise of weeping loud, He enters through the River-Gate, Borne by the joyous crowd. They gave him of the corn-land, That was of public right, As much as two strong oxen Could plow from morn till night; And they made a molten image, And set it up on high, And there it stands unto this day To witness if I lie. It stands in the Comitium, Plain for all folk to see; Horatius in his harness, Halting upon one knee: And underneath is written, In letters all of gold, How valiantly he kept the bridge, In the brave days of old. And still his name sounds stirring Unto the men of Rome, As the trumpet-blast that cries to them To charge the Volscian home; And wives still pray to Juno For boys with hearts as bold As his who kept the bridge so well In the brave days of old. And in the nights of winter, When the cold north winds blow, And the long howling of the wolves Is heard amidst the snow; When round the lonely cottage Roars loud the tempest's din, And the good logs of Algidus Roar louder yet within; When the oldest cask is opened, And the largest lamp is lit; When the chestnuts glow in the embers, And the kid turns on the spit; When young and old in circle Around the firebrands close; When the girls are weaving baskets, And the lads are shaping bows; When the goodman mends his armor, And trims his helmet's plume; When the goodwife's shuttle merrily Goes flashing through the loom; With weeping and with laughter Still is the story told, How well Horatius kept the bridge In the brave days of old. THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. [Illustration: THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.] SAY NOT, THE STRUGGLE NAUGHT AVAILETH. Say not, the struggle naught availeth, The labor and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not, nor faileth, And as things have been they remain. If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars; It may be, in yon smoke concealed, Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers, And, but for you, possess the field. For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, Seem here no painful inch to gain, Far back, through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in, the main. And not by eastern windows only, When daylight comes, comes in the light, In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly, But westward, look, the land is bright. ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. [Illustration] ON HIS BLINDNESS. When I consider how my light is spent, Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent, which is death to hide, Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest He, returning, chide,-- "Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?" I fondly ask:--But Patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need Either man's work, or His own gifts; who best Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best: His state Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed And post o'er land and ocean without rest:-- They also serve who only stand and wait." JOHN MILTON. [Illustration: HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.] THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP. A SELECTION. All is finished! and at length Has come the bridal day Of beauty and of strength. To-day the vessel shall be launched! With fleecy clouds the sky is blanched, And o'er the bay, Slowly, in all his splendors dight, The great sun rises to behold the sight. * * * * * On the deck another bride Is standing by her lover's side. Shadows from the flags and shrouds, Like the shadows cast by clouds, Broken by many a sunny fleck, Fall around them on the deck. * * * * * Then the Master, With a gesture of command, Waved his hand; And at the word, Loud and sudden there was heard, All around them and below, The sound of hammers, blow on blow, Knocking away the shores and spurs. And see! she stirs! She starts,--she moves,--she seems to feel The thrill of life along her keel, And, spurning with her foot the ground, With one exulting, joyous bound, She leaps into the ocean's arms! * * * * * Sail forth into the sea of life, O gentle, loving, trusting wife, And safe from all adversity Upon the bosom of that sea Thy comings and thy goings be! For gentleness and love and trust Prevail o'er angry wave and gust; And in the wreck of noble lives Something immortal still survives! Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O UNION, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate! We know what Master laid thy keel, What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, What anvils rang, what hammers beat, In what a forge and what a heat Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 'Tis of the wave and not the rock; Tis but the flapping of the sail, And not a rent made by the gale! In spite of rock and tempest's roar, In spite of false lights on the shore, Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee,--are all with thee! HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. [Illustration] OF OLD SAT FREEDOM. Of old sat Freedom on the heights, The thunders breaking at her feet: Above her shook the starry lights: She heard the torrents meet. There in her place she did rejoice, Self-gathered in her prophet-mind, But fragments of her mighty voice Came rolling on the wind. Then stept she down thro' town and field To mingle with the human race, And part by part to men revealed The fullness of her face-- Grave mother of majestic works, From her isle-altar gazing down, Who, godlike, grasps the triple forks, And kinglike, wears the crown: Her open eyes desire the truth. The wisdom of a thousand years Is in them. May perpetual youth Keep dry their light from tears; That her fair form may stand and shine, Make bright our days and light our dreams, Turning to scorn with lips divine The falsehood of extremes! ALFRED TENNYSON. LOCHINVAR. Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the west. Through all the wide Border his steed was the best, And save his good broadsword he weapons had none; He rode all unarmed, and he rode all alone. So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war, There never was knight like the young Lochinvar. He stayed not for brake, and he stopped not for stone, He swam the Eske River where ford there was none; But ere he alighted at Netherby gate The bride had consented, the gallant came late: For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar. So boldly he entered the Netherby Hall, Among bridesmen and kinsmen and brothers and all: Then spoke the bride's father, his hand on his sword (For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word), "Oh, come ye in peace here, or come ye in war, Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?" "I long wooed your daughter, my suit you denied;-- Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide-- And now am I come, with this lost love of mine, To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine. There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far, That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar." The bride kissed the goblet; the knight took it up; He quaffed off the wine, and he threw down the cup. She looked down to blush, and she looked up to sigh, With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye. He took her soft hand ere her mother could bar,-- "Now tread we a measure!" said young Lochinvar. So stately his form, and so lovely her face, That never a hall such a galliard did grace; While her mother did fret, and her father did fume, And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume, And the bridemaidens whispered, "'Twere better by far To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar." One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear, When they reached the hall door, and the charger stood near; So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung, So light to the saddle before her he sprung! "She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur; They'll have fleet steeds that follow," quoth young Lochinvar. There was mounting 'mong Græmes of the Netherby clan; Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran: There was racing and chasing on Cannobie Lee, But the lost bride of Netherby ne'er did they see. So daring in love, and so dauntless in war, Have ye e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar? SIR WALTER SCOTT. BANNOCKBURN. Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled, Scots, wham Bruce has aften led; Welcome to your gory bed, Or to victorie! Now's the day, and now's the hour; See the front o' battle lour: See approach proud Edward's pow'r-- Chains and slaverie! Wha will be a traitor-knave? Wha can fill a coward's grave? Wha sae base as be a slave? Let him turn and flee! Wha for Scotland's king and law, Freedom's sword will strongly draw, Freeman stand, or freeman fa', Let him follow me! By oppression's woes and pains! By our sons in servile chains! We will drain our dearest veins, But they shall be free! Lay the proud usurpers low! Tyrants fall in every foe! Liberty's in every blow!-- Let us do or die! ROBERT BURNS. BONNIE DUNDEE. To the Lords of Convention 'twas Claver'se who spoke, "Ere the King's crown shall fall there are crowns to be broke; So let each Cavalier who loves honor and me, Come follow the bonnet of Bonnie Dundee. Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can, Come saddle your horses, and call up your men; Come open the West Port, and let me gang free, And it's room for the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee!" Dundee he is mounted, he rides up the street, The bells are rung backward, the drums they are beat; But the Provost, douce man, said, "Just e'en let him be, The Gude Town is weel quit of that Deil of Dundee!" As he rode down the sanctified bends of the Bow, Ilk carline was flyting and shaking her pow; But the young plants of grace they looked couthie and slee, Thinking, luck to thy bonnet, thou Bonnie Dundee! With sour-featured Whigs the Grassmarket was crammed, As if half the West had set tryst to be hanged; There was spite in each look, there was fear in each e'e, As they watched for the bonnet of Bonnie Dundee. These cowls of Kilmarnock had spits and had spears, And lang-hafted gullies to kill Cavaliers; But they shrunk to close-heads, and the causeway was free, At the toss of the bonnet of Bonnie Dundee. He spurred to the foot of the proud Castle rock, And with the gay Gordon he gallantly spoke; "Let Mons Meg and her marrows speak twa words or three For the love of the bonnet of Bonnie Dundee." The Gordon demands of him which way he goes: "Where'er shall direct me the shade of Montrose! Your Grace in short space shall hear tidings of me, Or that low lies the bonnet of Bonnie Dundee. "There are hills beyond Pentland, and lands beyond Forth, If there's lords in the Lowlands, there's chiefs in the North; There are wild Duniewassals three thousand times three, Will cry _hoigh!_ for the bonnet of Bonnie Dundee. "There's brass on the target of barkened bull hide; There's steel in the scabbard that dangles beside; The brass shall be burnished, the steel shall flash free, At a toss of the bonnet of Bonnie Dundee. "Away to the hills, to the caves, to the rocks, Ere I own a usurper, I'll couch with the fox; And tremble, false Whigs, in the midst of your glee, You have not seen the last of my bonnet and me!" He waved his proud hand, and the trumpets were blown, The kettledrums clashed, and the horsemen rode on, Till on Ravelston's cliffs and on Clermiston's lee Died away the wild war notes of Bonnie Dundee. Come fill up my cup, and fill up my can, Come saddle the horses and call up the men, Come open your gates, and let me gae free, For it's up with the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee! SIR WALTER SCOTT. [Illustration] THE SONG OF THE WESTERN MEN. A good sword and a trusty hand! A merry heart and true! King James's men shall understand What Cornish lads can do. And have they fixed the where and when? And shall Trelawny die? Here's twenty thousand Cornish men Will know the reason why! Out spake their captain brave and bold, A merry wight was he: "If London Tower were Michael's hold, We'll set Trelawny free! "We'll cross the Tamar, land to land, The Severn is no stay, With one and all, and hand in hand, And who shall bid us nay? "And when we come to London Wall, A pleasant sight to view, Come forth! come forth! ye cowards all, Here's men as good as you. "Trelawny he's in keep and hold, Trelawny he may die; But here's twenty thousand Cornish bold Will know the reason why!" ROBERT S. HAWKER. JAFFAR. Jaffar, the Barmecide, the good Vizier, The poor man's hope, the friend without a peer,-- Jaffar was dead, slain by a doom unjust; And guilty Haroun, sullen with mistrust Of what the good, and e'en the bad, might say, Ordained that no man living, from that day, Should dare to speak his name on pain of death. All Araby and Persia held their breath. All but the brave Mondeer.--He, proud to show How far for love a grateful soul could go, And facing death for very scorn and grief, For his great heart wanted a great relief, Stood forth in Bagdad, daily in the square Where once had stood a happy home, and there Harangued the tremblers at the scymitar On all they owed to the divine Jaffar. "Bring me this man," the caliph cried: the man Was brought, was gazed upon. The mutes began To bind his arms. "Welcome, brave cords," cried he; "From bonds far worse Jaffar delivered me; From wants, from shames, from loveless household fears; Made a man's eyes friends with delicious tears; Restored me, loved me, put me on a par With his great self. How can I pay Jaffar?" Haroun, who felt that on a soul like this The mightiest vengeance could but fall amiss, Now deigned to smile, as one great lord of fate Might smile upon another half as great. He said, "Let worth grow frenzied if it will; The caliph's judgment shall be master still. "Go, and since gifts so move thee, take this gem, The richest in the Tartar's diadem, And hold the giver as thou deemest fit." "Gifts!" cried the friend. He took: and holding it High toward the heavens, as though to meet his star, Exclaimed, "This, too, I owe to thee, Jaffar." LEIGH HUNT. LORD OF HIMSELF. How happy is he born or taught Who serveth not another's will; Whose armor is his honest thought, And simple truth his highest skill: Whose passions not his masters are; Whose soul is still prepared for death-- Not tied unto the world with care Of prince's ear or vulgar breath; Who hath his ear from rumors freed; Whose conscience is his strong retreat; Whose state can neither flatterers feed, Nor ruin make oppressors great; Who envies none whom chance doth raise, Or vice; who never understood How deepest wounds are given with praise, Nor rules of state but rules of good; Who God doth late and early pray More of his grace than gifts to lend, And entertains the harmless day With a well-chosen book or friend-- This man is free from servile bands Of hope to rise or fear to fall: Lord of himself, though not of lands, And, having nothing, yet hath all. SIR HENRY WOTTON. THE GOOD GREAT MAN. How seldom, friend, a good great man inherits Honor or wealth, with all his worth and pains! It sounds like stories from the land of spirits, If any man obtain that which he merits, Or any merit that which he obtains. For shame, dear friend; renounce this canting strain. What wouldst thou have a good great man obtain? Place, titles, salary, a gilded chain-- Or throne of corses which his sword hath slain? Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends. Hath he not always treasures, always friends, The good great man? three treasures--love and light, And calm thoughts, regular as infants' breath; And three firm friends, more sure than day and night-- Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. DEATH THE LEVELER. The glories of our blood and state Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armor against fate; Death lays his icy hand on kings: Scepter and crown Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made With the poor crooked scythe and spade. Some men with swords may reap the field, And plant fresh laurels where they kill; But their strong nerves at last must yield; They tame but one another still: Early or late They stoop to fate, And must give up their murmuring breath, When they, pale captives, creep to death. The garlands wither on your brow; Then boast no more your mighty deeds; Upon Death's purple altar now, See where the victor victim bleeds: Your heads must come To the cold tomb; Only the actions of the just Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust. JAMES SHIRLEY. OZYMANDIAS OF EGYPT. I met a traveler from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. [Illustration: THOMAS CAMPBELL.] LOCHIEL'S WARNING. WIZARD--LOCHIEL. WIZARD. Lochiel, Lochiel! beware of the day When the lowlands shall meet thee in battle array! For a field of the dead rushes red on my sight, And the clans of Culloden are scattered in fight. They rally, they bleed, for their kingdom and crown; Woe, woe to the riders that trample them down! Proud Cumberland prances, insulting the slain, And their hoof-beaten bosoms are trod to the plain. But hark! through the fast-flashing lightning of war, What steed to the desert flies frantic and far? 'Tis thine, oh Glenullin! whose bride shall await, Like a love-lighted watch fire, all night at the gate. A steed comes at morning: no rider is there; But its bridle is red with the sign of despair. Weep, Albin! to death and captivity led! Oh weep, but thy tears cannot number the dead: For a merciless sword on Culloden shall wave, Culloden! that reeks with the blood of the brave. LOCHIEL. Go, preach to the coward, thou death-telling seer; Or, if gory Culloden so dreadful appear, Draw, dotard, around thy old wavering sight This mantle, to cover the phantoms of fright. WIZARD. Ha! laugh'st thou, Lochiel, my vision to scorn? Proud bird of the mountain, thy plume shall be torn! Say, rushed the bold eagle exultingly forth, From his home, in the dark rolling clouds of the north? Lo! the death-shot of foemen outspeeding, he rode Companionless, bearing destruction abroad; But down let him stoop from his havoc on high! Ah! home let him speed,--for the spoiler is nigh. Why flames the far summit? Why shoot to the blast Those embers, like stars from the firmament cast? 'Tis the fire shower of ruin, all dreadfully driven From his eyrie, that beacons the darkness of heaven. Oh, crested Lochiel! the peerless in might, Whose banners arise on the battlements' height, Heaven's fire is around thee, to blast and to burn; Return to thy dwelling! all lonely return! For the blackness of ashes shall mark where it stood, And a wild mother scream o'er her famishing brood. LOCHIEL. False Wizard, avaunt! I have marshaled my clan, Their swords are a thousand, their bosoms are one! They are true to the last of their blood and their breath, And like reapers descend to the harvest of death. Then welcome be Cumberland's steed to the shock! Let him dash his proud foam like a wave on the rock! But woe to his kindred, and woe to his cause, When Albin her claymore indignantly draws; When her bonneted chieftains to victory crowd, Clanronald the dauntless, and Moray the proud, All plaided and plumed in their tartan array-- WIZARD. --Lochiel, Lochiel! beware of the day; For, dark and despairing, my sight I may seal, But man cannot cover what God would reveal; 'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore, And coming events cast their shadows before. I tell thee, Culloden's dread echoes shall ring With the bloodhounds that bark for thy fugitive king. Lo! anointed by Heaven with the vials of wrath, Behold where he flies on his desolate path! Now in darkness and billows, he sweeps from my sight: Rise, rise! ye wild tempests, and cover his flight! 'Tis finished. Their thunders are hushed on the moors: Culloden is lost, and my country deplores. But where is the ironbound prisoner? Where? For the red eye of battle is shut in despair. Say, mounts he the ocean wave, banished, forlorn, Like a limb from his country cast bleeding and torn? Ah no! for a darker departure is near; The war drum is muffled, and black is the bier; His death bell is tolling: oh! mercy, dispel Yon sight, that it freezes my spirit to tell! Life flutters convulsed in his quivering limbs, And his blood-streaming nostril in agony swims. Accursed be the fagots, that blaze at his feet, Where his heart shall be thrown, ere it ceases to beat, With the smoke of its ashes to poison the gale-- LOCHIEL. --Down, soothless insulter! I trust not the tale: For never shall Albin a destiny meet, So black with dishonor, so foul with retreat. Tho' my perishing ranks should be strewed in their gore, Like ocean weeds heaped on the surf-beaten shore, Lochiel, untainted by flight or by chains, While the kindling of life in his bosom remains, Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low, With his back to the field, and his feet to the foe! And leaving in battle no blot on his name, Look proudly to Heaven from the deathbed of fame. THOMAS CAMPBELL. [Illustration: _"Announced by all the trumpets of the sky"_] THE SNOWSTORM. Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end. The sled and traveler stopped, the courier's feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, inclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm. Come see the north wind's masonry. Out of an unseen quarry evermore Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer Curves his white bastions with projected roof Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work So fanciful, so savage, naught cares he For number or proportion. Mockingly, On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths; A swanlike form invests the hidden thorn: Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, Maugre the farmer's sighs; and at the gate A tapering turret overtops the work. And when his hours are numbered, and the world Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, Built in an age, the mad wind's night work, The frolic architecture of the snow. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. [Illustration] THE AWAKENING OF SPRING. Now fades the last long streak of snow, Now bourgeons every maze of quick About the flowering squares, and thick By ashen roots the violets blow. Now rings the woodland loud and long, The distance takes a lovelier hue, And drowned in yonder living blue The lark becomes a sightless song. Now dance the lights on lawn and lea, The flocks are whiter down the vale, And milkier every milky sail On winding stream or distant sea; Where now the seamew pipes, or dives In yonder greening gleam, and fly The happy birds, that change their sky To build and brood; that live their lives From land to land; and in my breast Spring wakens too; and my regret Becomes an April violet, And buds and blossoms like the rest. ALFRED TENNYSON. _From "In Memoriam."_ [Illustration] HOME THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD. Oh, to be in England now that April's there, And whoever wakes in England sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf Round the elm tree hole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England--now! And after April, when May follows, And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows! Hark, where my blossomed pear tree in the hedge Leans to the field and scatters on the clover Blossoms and dewdrops--at the bent spray's edge-- That's the wise thrush: he sings each song twice over Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture! And, though the fields look rough with hoary dew All will be gay when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children's dower --Far brighter than this gaudy melon flower! ROBERT BROWNING. TWILIGHT CALM. O Pleasant eventide! Clouds on the western side Grow gray and grayer, hiding the warm sun: The bees and birds, their happy labors done, Seek their close nests and bide. Screened in the leafy wood The stockdoves sit and brood: The very squirrel leaps from bough to bough But lazily; pauses; and settles now Where once he stored his food. One by one the flowers close, Lily and dewy rose Shutting their tender petals from the moon: The grasshoppers are still; but not so soon Are still the noisy crows. The dormouse squats and eats Choice little dainty bits Beneath the spreading roots of a broad lime; Nibbling his fill he stops from time to time And listens where he sits. From far the lowings come Of cattle driven home: From farther still the wind brings fitfully The vast continual murmur of the sea, Now loud, now almost dumb. The gnats whirl in the air, The evening gnats; and there The owl opes broad his eyes and wings to sail For prey; the bat wakes; and the shell-less snail Comes forth, clammy and bare. Hark! that's the nightingale. Telling the selfsame tale Her song told when this ancient earth was young: So echoes answered when her song was sung In the first wooded vale. We call it love and pain, The passion of her strain; And yet we little understand or know: Why should it not be rather joy that so Throbs in each throbbing vein? In separate herds the deer Lie; here the bucks, and here The does, and by its mother sleeps the fawn: Through all the hours of night until the dawn They sleep, forgetting fear. The hare sleeps where it lies, With wary half-closed eyes: The cock has ceased to crow, the hen to cluck: Only the fox is out, some heedless duck Or chicken to surprise. Remote, each single star Comes out, till there they are All shining brightly: how the dews fall damp! While close at hand the glowworm lights her lamp Or twinkles from afar. But evening now is done As much as if the sun Day-giving had arisen in the east: For night has come; and the great calm has ceased, The quiet sands have run. CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI. [Illustration] ABIDE WITH ME. Abide with me! Fast falls the eventide; The darkness deepens: Lord, with me abide! When other helpers fail, and comforts flee, Help of the helpless, O abide with me! Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day; Earth's joys grow dim; its glories pass away: Change and decay in all around I see; O Thou, who changest not, abide with me! Not a brief glance I beg, a passing word, But as Thou dwell'st with Thy disciples, Lord, Familiar, condescending, patient, free, Come, not to sojourn, but abide with me! Come not in terrors, as the King of kings; But kind and good, with healing in Thy wings: Tears for all woes, a heart for every plea:-- Come, Friend of sinners, and thus bide with me! Thou on my head in early youth didst smile, And, though rebellious and perverse meanwhile, Thou hast not left me, oft as I left Thee; On to the close, O Lord, abide with me! I need Thy presence every passing hour: What but Thy grace can foil the Tempter's power? Who like Thyself my guide and stay can be? Through cloud and sunshine, O abide with me! I fear no foe with Thee at hand to bless: Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness. Where is Death's sting? where, Grave, thy victory? --I triumph still, if Thou abide with me. Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes; Shine through the gloom, and point me to the skies: Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee:-- In life and death, O Lord, abide with me! HENRY F. LYTE. SONG FROM "PIPPA PASSES." The year's at the spring, And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in His heaven-- All's right with the world. ROBERT BROWNING. MAN AND NATURE. A sad man on a summer day Did look upon the earth and say-- "Purple cloud, the hilltop binding, Folded hills, the valleys wind in, Valleys, with fresh streams among you, Streams, with bosky trees along you, Trees, with many birds and blossoms, Birds, with music-trembling bosoms, Blossoms, dropping dews that wreathe you To your fellow flowers beneath you, Flowers, that constellate on earth, Earth, that shakest to the mirth Of the merry Titan ocean, All his shining hair in motion! Why am I thus the only one Who can be dark beneath the sun?" But when the summer day was past, He looked to heaven and smiled at last, Self-answered so-- "Because, O cloud, Pressing with thy crumpled shroud Heavily on mountain top,-- Hills, that almost seem to drop, Stricken with a misty death, To the valleys underneath,-- Valleys, sighing with the torrent,-- Waters, streaked with branches horrent,-- Branchless trees, that shake your head Wildly o'er your blossoms spread Where the common flowers are found,-- Flowers, with foreheads to the ground,-- Ground, that shriekest while the sea With his iron smiteth thee-- I am, besides, the only one Who can be bright _without_ the sun." ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. [Illustration] MORNING. Pack, clouds, away, and welcome day, With night we banish sorrow, Sweet air blow soft, mount lark aloft To give my Love good morrow. Wings from the wind, to please her mind, Notes from the lark I'll borrow; Bird prune thy wing, nightingale sing, To give my Love good morrow; To give my Love good morrow Notes from them all I'll borrow. Wake from thy nest, robin redbreast, Sing birds in every furrow, And from each hill, let music shrill, Give my fair Love good morrow: Blackbird and thrush, in every bush, Stare, linnet, and cock sparrow! You pretty elves, amongst yourselves Sing my fair Love good morrow. To give my Love good morrow Sing birds in every furrow. THOMAS HEYWOOD. THE LADY OF SHALOTT. PART I. On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the wold and meet the sky; And thro' the field the road runs by To many-towered Camelot; And up and down the people go, Gazing where the lilies blow Round an island there below, The island of Shalott. Willows whiten, aspens quiver, Little breezes dusk and shiver Thro' the wave that runs forever By the island in the river Flowing down to Camelot. Four gray walls, and four gray towers, Overlook a space of flowers, And the silent isle imbowers The Lady of Shalott. By the margin, willow-veiled, Slide the heavy barges trailed By slow horses; and unhailed The shallop flitteth silken-sailed, Skimming down to Camelot: But who hath seen her wave her hand? Or at the casement seen her stand? Or is she known in all the land, The Lady of Shalott? Only reapers, reaping early In among the bearded barley, Hear a song that echoes cheerly From the river winding clearly, Down to towered Camelot: And by the moon the reaper weary, Piling sheaves in uplands airy, Listening, whispers "'Tis the fairy Lady of Shalott." PART II. There she weaves by night and day A magic web with colors gay. She has heard a whisper say, A curse is on her if she stay To look down to Camelot. She knows not what the curse may be, And so she weaveth steadily, And little other care hath she, The Lady of Shalott. And moving thro' a mirror clear That hangs before her all the year, Shadows of the world appear. There she sees the highway near Winding down to Camelot; There the river eddy whirls, And there the surly village churls, And the red cloaks of market-girls, Pass onward from Shalott. Sometimes a troop of damsels glad, An abbot on an ambling pad, Sometimes a curly shepherd lad, Or long-haired page in crimson clad, Goes by to towered Camelot; And sometimes thro' the mirror blue The knights come riding two and two; She hath no loyal knight and true, The Lady of Shalott. But in her web she still delights To weave the mirror's magic sights, For often thro' the silent nights A funeral, with plumes and lights, And music, went to Camelot: Or when the moon was overhead, Came two young lovers lately wed; "I am half sick of shadows," said The Lady of Shalott. PART III. A bowshot from her bower eaves, He rode between the barley sheaves, The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves, And flamed upon the brazen greaves Of bold Sir Lancelot. A red-cross knight for ever kneeled To a lady in his shield, That sparkled on the yellow field, Beside remote Shalott. The gemmy bridle glittered free, Like to some branch of stars we see Hung in the golden Galaxy. The bridle bells rang merrily As he rode down to Camelot: And from his blazoned baldric slung A mighty silver bugle hung, And as he rode his armor rung, Beside remote Shalott. All in the blue unclouded weather Thick-jeweled shone the saddle leather, The helmet and the helmet feather Burned like one burning flame together, As he rode down to Camelot. As often thro' the purple night, Below the starry clusters bright, Some bearded meteor, trailing light, Moves over still Shalott. His broad clear brow in sunlight glowed; On burnished hooves his war horse trode; From underneath his helmet flowed His coal-black curls as on he rode, As he rode down to Camelot. From the bank and from the river He flashed into the crystal mirror, "Tirra, lirra," by the river Sang Sir Lancelot. She left the web, she left the loom, She made three paces thro' the room, She saw the water lily bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She looked down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror cracked from side to side; "The curse is come upon me," cried The Lady of Shalott. PART IV. In the stormy east wind straining, The pale yellow woods were waning, The broad stream in his banks complaining, Heavily the low sky raining Over towered Camelot; Down she came and found a boat Beneath a willow left afloat, And round about the prow she wrote _The Lady of Shalott_. And down the river's dim expanse-- Like some bold seër in a trance, Seeing all his own mischance-- With a glassy countenance Did she look to Camelot. And at the closing of the day She loosed the chain, and down she lay; The broad stream bore her far away, The Lady of Shalott. Lying, robed in snowy white That loosely flew to left and right-- The leaves upon her falling light-- Thro' the noises of the night She floated down to Camelot: And as the boat head wound along The willowy hills and fields among, They heard her singing her last song, The Lady of Shalott. Heard a carol, mournful, holy, Chanted loudly, chanted lowly, Till her blood was frozen slowly, And her eyes were darkened wholly, Turned to towered Camelot; For ere she reached upon the tide The first house by the water-side, Singing in her song she died, The Lady of Shalott. Under tower and balcony, By garden wall and gallery, A gleaming shape she floated by, Dead-pale between the houses high, Silent into Camelot. Out upon the wharfs they came, Knight and burgher, lord and dame, And round the prow they read her name, _The Lady of Shalott_. Who is this? and what is here? And in the lighted palace near Died the sound of royal cheer; And they crossed themselves for fear, All the knights at Camelot: But Lancelot mused a little space; He said, "She has a lovely face; God in his mercy lend her grace, The Lady of Shalott." ALFRED TENNYSON. [Illustration] ROMANCE OF THE SWAN'S NEST. Little Ellie sits alone 'Mid the beeches of the meadow, By a stream-side on the grass; And the trees are showering down Doubles of their leaves in shadow, On her shining hair and face. She has thrown her bonnet by; And her feet she has been dipping In the shallow water's flow. Now she holds them nakedly In her hands, all sleek and dripping, While she rocketh to and fro. Little Ellie sits alone, And the smile she softly uses, Fills the silence like a speech; While she thinks what shall be done,-- And the sweetest pleasure chooses For her future within reach. Little Ellie in her smile Chooses, "I will have a lover, Riding on a steed of steeds! He shall love me without guile; And to _him_ I will discover That swan's nest among the reeds. "And the steed shall be red-roan, And the lover shall be noble, With an eye that takes the breath; And the lute he plays upon, Shall strike ladies into trouble, As his sword strikes men to death! "And the steed it shall be shod All in silver, housed in azure, And the mane shall swim the wind; And the hoofs, along the sod, Shall flash onward and keep measure, Till the shepherds look behind. "But my lover will not prize All the glory that he rides in, When he gazes in my face; He will say, 'O Love, thine eyes Build the shrine my soul abides in; And I kneel here for thy grace.' "Then, ay, then he shall kneel low, With the red-roan steed anear him, Which shall seem to understand-- Till I answer, 'Rise, and go!' For the world must love and fear him Whom I gift with heart and hand. "Then he will arise so pale, I shall feel my own lips tremble With a _yes_ I must not say-- Nathless maiden-brave, 'Farewell,' I will utter and dissemble-- 'Light to-morrow with to-day.' "Then he'll ride among the hills To the wide world past the river, There to put away all wrong, To make straight distorted wills, And to empty the broad quiver Which the wicked bear along. "Three times shall a young foot-page Swim the stream and climb the mountain, And kneel down beside my feet-- 'Lo! my master sends this gage, Lady, for thy pity's counting! What wilt thou exchange for it?' "And the first time I will send A white rosebud for a guerdon, And the second time a glove; But the third time--I may bend From my pride, and answer--'Pardon, If he comes to take my love.' "Then the young foot-page will run-- Then my lover will ride faster, Till he kneeleth at my knee: 'I am a duke's eldest son! Thousand serfs do call me master, But, O Love, I love but _thee_!' "He will kiss me on the mouth Then; and lead me as a lover, Through the crowds that praise his deeds; And, when soul-tied by one troth, Unto _him_ I will discover That swan's nest among the reeds." Little Ellie, with her smile Not yet ended, rose up gayly, Tied the bonnet, donned the shoe-- And went homeward, round a mile, Just to see, as she did daily, What more eggs were with the _two_. Pushing through the elm-tree copse Winding by the stream, light-hearted, Where the osier pathway leads, Past the boughs she stoops, and stops. Lo, the wild swan had deserted-- And a rat had gnawed the reeds! Ellie went home sad and slow. If she found the lover ever, With his red-roan steed of steeds, Sooth, I know not! but I know She could never show him--never, That swan's nest among the reeds. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. [Illustration] TELLING THE BEES. Here is the place; right over the hill Runs the path I took; You can see the gap in the old wall still, And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook. There is the house, with the gate red-barred, And the poplars tall; And the barn's brown length, and the cattle yard, And the white horns tossing above the wall. There are the beehives ranged in the sun; And down by the brink Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o'errun, Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink. A year has gone, as the tortoise goes, Heavy and slow; And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows, And the same brook sings of a year ago. There's the same sweet clover smell in the breeze; And the June sun warm Tangles his wings of fire in the trees, Setting, as then, over Fernside farm. I mind me how with a lover's care From my Sunday coat I brushed off the burs, and smoothed my hair, And cooled at the brookside my brow and throat. Since we parted, a month had passed,-- To love, a year; Down through the beeches I looked at last On the little red gate and the well sweep near. I can see it all now,--the slantwise rain Of light through the leaves, The sundown's blaze on her windowpane, The bloom of her roses under the eaves. Just the same as a month before,-- The house and the trees, The barn's brown gable, the vine by the door,-- Nothing changed but the hives of bees. Before them, under the garden wall, Forward and back, Went drearily singing the chore-girl small, Draping each hive with a shred of black. Trembling, I listened: the summer sun Had the chill of snow; For I knew she was telling the bees of one Gone on the journey we all must go! Then I said to myself, "My Mary weeps For the dead to-day: Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps The fret and the pain of his age away." But her dog whined low; on the doorway sill, With his cane to his chin, The old man sat; and the chore-girl still Sung to the bees stealing out and in. And the song she was singing ever since In my ears sounds on:-- "Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence! Mistress Mary is dead and gone!" JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. THE LAND OF SONG: Book III. _PART II_. [Illustration: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.] [Illustration: SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE.] PART TWO. THE MAN THAT HATH NO MUSIC IN HIMSELF. The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night And his affections dark as Erebus: Let no such man be trusted. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. _From "The Merchant of Venice."_ ADVERSITY. Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; And this our life exempt from public haunt Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. _From_ "_As You Like It._" [Illustration] TO THE DAISY. In youth from rock to rock I went, From hill to hill in discontent Of pleasure high and turbulent, Most pleased when most uneasy. But now my own delights I make,-- My thirst at every rill can slake, And gladly Nature's love partake, Of thee, sweet daisy! Thee winter in the garland wears That thinly decks his few gray hairs; Spring parts the clouds with softest airs That she may sun thee; Whole summer fields are thine by right: And autumn, melancholy wight! Doth in thy crimson head delight When rains are on thee. In shoals and bands, a morrice train, Thou greet'st the traveler in the lane; Pleased at his greeting thee again; Yet nothing daunted, Nor grieved if thou be set at naught: And oft alone in nooks remote We meet thee, like a pleasant thought, When such are wanted. Be violets in their secret mews The flowers the wanton zephyrs choose; Proud be the rose, with rains and dews Her head impearling. Thou liv'st with less ambitious aim, Yet hast not gone without thy fame; Thou art indeed by many a claim The poet's darling. If to a rock from rains he fly, Or, some bright day of April sky, Imprisoned by hot sunshine, lie Near the green holly, And wearily at length should fare; He needs but look about, and there Thou art!--a friend at hand, to scare His melancholy. A hundred times, by rock or bower, Ere thus I have lain couched an hour, Have I derived from thy sweet power Some apprehension; Some steady love; some brief delight; Some memory that had taken flight; Some chime of fancy wrong or right; Or stray invention. If stately passions in me burn, And one chance look to thee should turn, I drink out of an humbler urn A lowlier pleasure; The homely sympathy that heeds The common life, our nature breeds; A wisdom fitted to the needs Of hearts at leisure. Fresh-smitten by the morning ray, When thou art up, alert and gay, Then, cheerful flower! my spirits play With kindred gladness: And when, at dusk, by dews opprest Thou sink'st, the image of thy rest Hath often eased my pensive breast Of careful sadness. And all day long I number yet, All seasons through, another debt, Which I, wherever thou art met, To thee am owing; An instinct call it, a blind sense; A happy, genial influence, Coming one knows not how, nor whence, Nor whither going. Child of the Year! that round dost run Thy pleasant course,--when day's begun As ready to salute the sun As lark or leveret, Thy long-lost praise thou shalt regain; Nor be less dear to future men Than in old time;--thou not in vain Art Nature's favorite. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY. ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOW IN APRIL, 1786. A SELECTION. Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow'r, Thou's met me in an evil hour; For I maun crush amang the stoure Thy slender stem: To spare thee now is past my pow'r, Thou bonnie gem. Alas! it's no thy neebor sweet, The bonnie lark, companion meet! Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet, Wi' spreckled breast, When upward springing, blythe, to greet The purpling east. Cauld blew the bitter-biting north Upon thy early, humble birth; Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth Amid the storm, Scarce reared above the parent earth Thy tender form. The flaunting flowers our gardens yield, High shelt'ring woods and wa's maun shield; But thou, beneath the random bield O' clod or stane, Adorns the histie stibble-field, Unseen, alane. There, in thy scanty mantle clad, Thy snawie bosom sunward spread, Thou lifts thy unassuming head In humble guise; But now the share uptears thy bed, And low thou lies! ROBERT BURNS. COUNTY GUY. Ah! County Guy, the hour is nigh, The sun has left the lea, The orange flower perfumes the bower, The breeze is on the sea. The lark, his lay who trilled all day, Sits hushed his partner nigh; Breeze, bird, and flower, confess the hour-- But where is County Guy? The village maid steals through the shade, Her shepherd's suit to hear; To beauty shy, by lattice high, Sings highborn Cavalier. The star of Love, all stars above, Now reigns o'er earth and sky; And high and low the influence know-- But where is County Guy? SIR WALTER SCOTT. [Illustration] EVENING. The sun upon the lake is low, The wild birds hush their song; The hills have evening's deepest glow, Yet Leonard tarries long. Now all whom varied toil and care From home and love divide, In the calm sunset may repair Each to the loved one's side. The noble dame on turret high, Who waits her gallant knight, Looks to the western beam to spy The flash of armor bright. The village maid, with hand on brow The level ray to shade, Upon the footpath watches now For Colin's darkening plaid. Now to their mates the wild swans row, By day they swam apart; And to the thicket wanders slow The hind beside the hart. The wood lark at his partner's side Twitters his closing song-- All meet whom day and care divide,-- But Leonard tarries long! SIR WALTER SCOTT. THE BEGGAR MAID. Her arms across her breast she laid; She was more fair than words can say: Barefooted came the beggar maid Before the king Cophetua. In robe and crown the king stept down, To meet and greet her on her way; "It is no wonder," said the lords, "She is more beautiful than day." As shines the moon in clouded skies, She in her poor attire was seen: One praised her ankles, one her eyes, One her dark hair and lovesome mien. So sweet a face, such angel grace, In all that land had never been: Cophetua sware a royal oath: "This beggar maid shall be my queen!" ALFRED TENNYSON. SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY. She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies. One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impaired the nameless grace Which waves in every raven tress, Or softly lightens o'er her face; Where thoughts serenely sweet express How pure, how dear their dwelling place. And on that cheek, and o'er that brow, So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, The smiles that win, the tints that glow, But tell of days in goodness spent, A mind at peace with all below, A heart whose love is innocent! LORD GEORGE NOEL GORDON BYRON. [Illustration: DIANA.] HYMN TO DIANA. Queen and Huntress, chaste and fair, Now the sun is laid to sleep, Seated in thy silver chair, State in wonted manner keep: Hesperus entreats thy light, Goddess, excellently bright. Earth, let not thy envious shade Dare itself to interpose; Cynthia's shining orb was made Heaven to clear, when day did close: Bless us then with wishèd sight, Goddess, excellently bright. Lay thy bow of pearl apart And thy crystal shining quiver; Give unto the flying hart Space to breathe, how short soever: Thou that mak'st a day of night, Goddess, excellently bright. BEN JONSON. [Illustration] HELVELLYN. I climbed the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn, Lakes and mountains beneath me gleamed misty and wide, All was still, save by fits, when the eagle was yelling, And starting around me the echoes replied. On the right, Striden-edge round the Red-tarn was bending, And Catchedicam its left verge was defending, One huge nameless rock in the front was ascending, When I marked the sad spot where the wanderer had died. Dark green was the spot, 'mid the brown mountain heather, Where the pilgrim of nature lay stretched in decay, Like the corpse of an outcast abandoned to weather, Till the mountain winds wasted the tenantless clay. Nor yet quite deserted, though lonely extended, For, faithful in death, his mute favorite attended, The much-loved remains of her master defended, And chased the hill fox and the raven away. How long didst thou think that his silence was slumber? When the wind waved his garment, how oft didst thou start? How many long days and long weeks didst thou number, Ere he faded before thee, the friend of thy heart? And, O, was it meet, that,--no requiem read o'er him, No mother to weep, and no friend to deplore him, And thou, little guardian, alone stretched before him-- Unhonored the pilgrim from life should depart? When a prince to the fate of a peasant has yielded, The tapestry waves dark round the dim-lighted hall; With scutcheons of silver the coffin is shielded, And pages stand mute by the canopied pall; Through the courts, at deep midnight, the torches are gleaming, In the proudly arched chapel the banners are beaming, Far adown the long isle sacred music is streaming, Lamenting a chief of the people should fall. But meeter for thee, gentle lover of nature, To lay down thy head like the meek mountain lamb; When, 'wildered, he drops from some rock huge in stature, And draws his last sob by the side of his dam; And more stately thy couch by this desert lake lying, Thy obsequies sung by the gray plover flying, With one faithful friend but to witness thy dying, In the arms of Helvellyn and Catchedicam. SIR WALTER SCOTT. THE KNIGHT'S TOMB. Where is the grave of Sir Arthur O'Kellyn? Where may the grave of that good man be?-- By the side of a spring, on the breast of Helvellyn, Under the twigs of a young birch tree! The oak that in summer was sweet to hear, And rustled its leaves in the fall of the year, And whistled and roared in the winter alone, Is gone,--and the birch in its stead is grown. The knight's bones are dust, And his good sword rust;-- His soul is with the saints, I trust. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. A PETITION TO TIME. Touch us gently, Time! Let us glide adown thy stream Gently,--as we sometimes glide Through a quiet dream! Humble voyagers are we, Husband, wife, and children three,-- (One is lost,--an angel, fled To the azure overhead!) Touch us gently, Time! We've not proud nor soaring wings, Our ambition, our content, Lies in simple things. Humble voyagers are we, O'er Life's dim, unsounded sea, Seeking only some calm clime;-- Touch us gently, gentle Time! BRYAN WALLER PROCTER (_Barry Cornwall_). GLENARA. O heard ye yon pibroch sound sad in the gale, Where a band cometh slowly with weeping and wail? 'Tis the chief of Glenara laments for his dear; And her sire, and the people, are called to her bier. Glenara came first with the mourners and shroud; Her kinsmen they followed, but mourned not aloud: Their plaids all their bosoms were folded around; They marched all in silence,--they looked on the ground. In silence they reached over mountain and moor, To a heath, where the oak tree grew lonely and hoar: "Now here let us place the gray stone of her cairn: Why speak ye no word?"--said Glenara the stern. "And tell me, I charge you! ye clan of my spouse, Why fold ye your mantles, why cloud ye your brows?" So spake the rude chieftain:--no answer is made, But each mantle unfolding, a dagger displayed. "I dreamt of my lady, I dreamt of her shroud," Cried a voice from the kinsmen, all wrathful and loud: "And empty that shroud and that coffin did seem: Glenara! Glenara! now read me my dream!" O! pale grew the cheek of that chieftain, I ween, When the shroud was unclosed, and no lady was seen; When a voice from the kinsmen spoke louder in scorn, 'Twas the youth who had loved the fair Ellen of Lorn: "I dreamt of my lady, I dreamt of her grief, I dreamt that her lord was a barbarous chief: On a rock of the ocean fair Ellen did seem; Glenara! Glenara! now read me my dream!" In dust, low the traitor has knelt to the ground, And the desert revealed where his lady was found; From a rock of the ocean that beauty is borne-- Now joy to the house of fair Ellen of Lorn! THOMAS CAMPBELL. THE SEVEN SISTERS; OR, THE SOLITUDE OF BINNORIE. Seven daughters had Lord Archibald, All children of one mother: You could not say in one short day What love they bore each other. A garland, of seven lilies wrought! Seven sisters that together dwell; But he, bold knight as ever fought, Their father, took of them no thought, He loved the wars so well. Sing mournfully, oh! mournfully, The solitude of Binnorie! Fresh blows the wind, a western wind, And from the shores of Erin, Across the wave, a rover brave To Binnorie is steering: Right onward to the Scottish strand The gallant ship is borne; The warriors leap upon the land, And hark! the leader of the band Hath blown his bugle horn. Sing mournfully, oh! mournfully, The solitude of Binnorie! Beside a grotto of their own, With boughs above them closing, The seven are laid, and in the shade They lie like fawns reposing. But now upstarting with affright At noise of man and steed, Away they fly, to left, to right-- Of your fair household, father knight, Methinks you take small heed! Sing mournfully, oh! mournfully, The solitude of Binnorie! Away the seven fair Campbells fly; And, over hill and hollow, With menace proud, and insult loud, The youthful rovers follow. Cried they, "Your father loves to roam: Enough for him to find The empty house when he comes home; For us your yellow ringlets comb, For us be fair and kind!" Sing mournfully, oh! mournfully, The solitude of Binnorie! Some close behind, some side by side, Like clouds in stormy weather, They run and cry, "Nay, let us die, And let us die together." A lake was near; the shore was steep; There foot had never been; They ran, and with a desperate leap Together plunged into the deep, Nor ever more were seen. Sing mournfully, oh! mournfully, The solitude of Binnorie! The stream that flows out of the lake, As through the glen it rambles, Repeats a moan o'er moss and stone, For those seven lovely Campbells. Seven little islands, green and bare, Have risen from out the deep: The fishers say those sisters fair By fairies are all buried there, And there together sleep. Sing mournfully, oh! mournfully, The solitude of Binnorie! WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. THE BIRKENHEAD. Amid the loud ebriety of War, With shouts of "la République" and "la Gloire," The Vengeur's crew, 'twas said, with flying flag And broadside blazing level with the wave Went down erect, defiant, to their grave Beneath the sea.--Twas but a Frenchman's brag, Yet Europe rang with it for many a year. Now we recount no fable; Europe, hear! And when they tell thee "England is a fen Corrupt, a kingdom tottering to decay, Her nerveless burghers lying an easy prey For the first comer," tell how the other day A crew of half a thousand Englishmen Went down into the deep in Simon's Bay! Not with the cheer of battle in the throat, Or cannon-glare and din to stir their blood, But, roused from dreams of home to find their boat Fast sinking, mustered on the deck they stood, Biding God's pleasure and their chief's command. Calm was the sea, but not less calm that band Close ranged upon the poop, with bated breath, But flinching not though eye to eye with Death! Heroes! Who were those Heroes? Veterans steeled To face the King of Terrors mid the scaith Of many a hurricane and trenchèd field? Far other: weavers from the stocking frame; Boys from the plow; cornets with beardless chin, But steeped in honor and in discipline! Weep, Britain, for the Cape whose ill-starred name, Long since divorced from Hope suggests but shame, Disaster, and thy Captains held at bay By naked hordes; but as thou weepest, thank Heaven for those undegenerate sons who sank Aboard the Birkenhead in Simon's Bay! SIR HENRY YULE. [Illustration] BEFORE SEDAN. Here in this leafy place Quiet he lies, Cold, with his sightless face Turned to the skies; 'Tis but another dead; All you can say is said. Carry his body hence,-- Kings must have slaves; Kings climb to eminence Over men's graves; So this man's eyes are dim;-- Throw the earth over him. What was the white you touched There at his side? Paper his hand had clutched Tight ere he died;-- Message or wish, may be;-- Smooth the folds out and see. Hardly the worst of us Here could have smiled!-- Only the tremulous Words of a child;-- Prattle, that has for stops Just a few ruddy drops. Look. She is sad to miss, Morning and night, His--her dead father's--kiss, Tries to be bright, Good to mamma, and sweet; That is all. "Marguerite." Ah, if beside the dead Slumbered the pain! Ah, if the hearts that bled Slept with the slain! If the grief died;--but no;-- Death will not have it so. AUSTIN DOBSON. THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS. Oft in the stilly night, Ere slumber's chain has bound me Fond Memory brings the light Of other days around me: The smiles, the tears Of boyhood's years, The words of love then spoken; The eyes that shone, Now dimmed and gone, The cheerful hearts now broken! Thus in the stilly night, Ere slumber's chain has bound me, Sad Memory brings the light Of other days around me. When I remember all The friends so linked together I've seen around me fall, Like leaves in wintry weather, I feel like one Who treads alone Some banquet hall deserted, Whose lights are fled, Whose garlands dead, And all but he departed! Thus in the stilly night, Ere slumber's chain has bound me, Sad Memory brings the light Of other days around me. THOMAS MOORE. [Illustration: ROBERT BURNS.] AULD LANG SYNE. Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to min'? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And days o' lang syne? For auld lang syne, my dear, For auld lang syne, We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet, For auld lang syne! We twa hae run about the braes, And pu't the gowans fine; But we've wandered mony a weary foot, Sin' auld lang syne. For auld lang syne, my dear, For auld lang syne, We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet, For auld lang syne! We twa hae paidl't i' the burn, Frae mornin' sun till dine: But seas between us braid hae roared, Sin' auld lang syne. For auld lang syne, my dear, For auld lang syne, We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet, For auld lang syne! ROBERT BURNS. JOHN ANDERSON. John Andersson, my jo, John, When we were first acquent, Your locks were like the raven, Your bonnie brow was brent; But now your brow is beld, John, Your locks are like the snaw; But blessings on your frosty pow, John Anderson, my jo. John Anderson, my jo, John, We clamb the hill thegither; And mony a canty day, John, We've had wi' are anither: Now we maun totter down, John, But hand in hand we'll go; And sleep thegither at the foot, John Anderson, my jo. ROBERT BURNS. [Illustration] WHERE LIES THE LAND TO WHICH THE SHIP WOULD GO? Where lies the land to which the ship would go; Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know. And where the land she travels from? Away, Far, far behind, is all that they can say. On sunny noons upon the deck's smooth face, Linked arm in arm, how pleasant here to pace; Or, o'er the stern reclining, watch below The foaming wake far widening as we go. On stormy nights when wild northwesters rave, How proud a thing to fight with wind and wave! The dripping sailor on the reeling mast Exults to bear, and scorns to wish it past. Where lies the land to which the ship would go? Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know. And where the land she travels from? Away, Far, far behind, is all that they can say. ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. THE POET AND THE BIRD. Said a people to a poet--"Go out from among us straightway! While we are thinking earthly things, thou singest of divine. There's a little fair brown nightingale, who, sitting in the gateway, Makes fitter music to our ear, than any song of thine!" The poet went out weeping--the nightingale ceased chanting, "Now, wherefore, O thou nightingale, is all thy sweetness done?"-- --"I cannot sing my earthly things, the heavenly poet wanting, Whose highest harmony includes the lowest under the sun." The poet went out weeping,--and died abroad, bereft there. The bird flew to his grave and died amid a thousand wails. And, when I last came by the place, I swear the music left there Was only of the poet's song, and not the nightingale's. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. [Illustration: MATTHEW ARNOLD.] THE NECKAN. In summer, on the headlands, The Baltic Sea along, Sits Neckan with his harp of gold, And sings his plaintive song. Green rolls beneath the headlands, Green rolls the Baltic Sea; And there, below the Neckan's feet, His wife and children be. He sings not of the ocean, Its shells and roses pale; Of earth, of earth the Neckan sings, He hath no other tale. He sits upon the headlands, And sings a mournful stave Of all he saw and felt on earth, Far from the kind sea wave. Sings how, a knight, he wandered By castle, field, and town-- But earthly knights have harder hearts Than the sea children own. Sings of his earthly bridal-- Priests, knights, and ladies gay. "--And who art thou," the priest began, "Sir Knight, who wedd'st to-day?"-- "--I am no knight," he answered; "From the sea waves I come."-- The knights drew sword, the ladies screamed, The surpliced priest stood dumb. He sings how from the chapel He vanished with his bride, And bore her down to the sea halls, Beneath the salt sea tide. He sings how she sits weeping 'Mid shells that round her lie. "--False Neckan shares my bed," she weeps; "No Christian mate have I."-- He sings how through the billows He rose to earth again, And sought a priest to sign the cross, That Neckan Heaven might gain. He sings how, on an evening, Beneath the birch trees cool, He sate and played his harp of gold, Beside the river pool. Beside the pool sate Neckan-- Tears filled his mild blue eye. On his white mule, across the bridge, A cassocked priest rode by. "--Why sitt'st thou there, O Neckan, And play'st thy harp of gold? Sooner shall this my staff bear leaves, Than thou shalt Heaven behold."-- But, lo, the staff, it budded! It greened, it branched, it waved. "--O ruth of God," the priest cried out, "This lost sea creature saved!" The cassocked priest rode onwards, And vanished with his mule; But Neckan in the twilight gray Wept by the river pool. He wept: "The earth hath kindness, The sea, the starry poles; Earth, sea, and sky, and God above-- But, ah, not human souls!" In summer, on the headlands, The Baltic Sea along, Sits Neckan with his harp of gold, And sings this plaintive song. MATTHEW ARNOLD. [Illustration] THE BALLAD OF THE BOAT. The stream was smooth as glass; we said, "Arise and let's away:" The Siren sang beside the boat that in the rushes lay; And spread the sail, and strong the oar; we gayly took our way. When shall the sandy bar be crossed? when shall we find the bay? The broadening flood swells slowly out o'er cattle-dotted plains, The stream is strong and turbulent, and dark with heavy rains; The laborer looks up to see our shallop speed away. When shall the sandy bar be crossed? when shall we find the bay? Now are the clouds like fiery shrouds; the sun, superbly large, Slow as an oak to woodman's stroke sinks flaming at their marge. The waves are bright with mirrored light as jacinths on our way. When shall the sandy bar be crossed? when shall we find the bay? The moon is high up in the sky, and now no more we see The spreading river's either bank, and surging distantly There booms a sudden thunder as of breakers far away. Now shall the sandy bar be crossed, now shall we find the bay! The seagull shrieks high overhead, and dimly to our sight The moonlit crests of foaming waves gleam towering through the night. We'll steal upon the mermaid soon, and start her from her lay, When once the sandy bar is crossed, and we are in the bay. What rises white and awful as a shroud-enfolded ghost? What roar of rampant tumult bursts in clangor on the coast? Pull back! pull back! The raging flood sweeps every oar away. O stream, is this thy bar of sand? O boat, is this the bay? RICHARD GARNETT. ON THE SEA. It keeps eternal whisperings around Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound. Often 'tis in such gentle temper found, That scarcely will the very smallest shell Be moved for days from where it sometime fell, When last the winds of heaven were unbound. O ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired, Feast them upon the wideness of the sea; O ye! whose ears are dinned with uproar rude, Or fed too much with cloying melody,-- Sit ye near some old cavern's mouth, and brood Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quired! JOHN KEATS. [Illustration] THE WHITE SHIP. HENRY I. OF ENGLAND.--25th NOVEMBER, 1120. By none but me can the tale be told, The butcher of Rouen, poor Berold. (_Lands are swayed by a King on a throne._) 'Twas a royal train put forth to sea, Yet the tale can be told by none but me. (_The sea hath no King but God alone._) King Henry held it as life's whole gain That after his death his son should reign. 'Twas so in my youth I heard men say, And my old age calls it back to-day. King Henry of England's realm was he, And Henry Duke of Normandy. The times had changed when on either coast "Clerkly Harry" was all his boast. Of ruthless strokes full many a one He had struck to crown himself and his son; And his elder brother's eyes were gone. And when to the chase his court would crowd, The poor flung plowshares on his road, And shrieked: "Our cry is from King to God!" But all the chiefs of the English land Had knelt and kissed the Prince's hand. And next with his son he sailed to France To claim the Norman allegiance: And every baron in Normandy Had taken the oath of fealty. 'Twas sworn and sealed, and the day had come When the King and the Prince might journey home: For Christmas cheer is to home hearts dear, And Christmas now was drawing near. Stout Fitz-Stephen came to the King,-- A pilot famous in seafaring; And he held to the King, in all men's sight, A mark of gold for his tribute's right. "Liege Lord! my father guided the ship From whose boat your father's foot did slip When he caught the English soil in his grip, "And cried: 'By this clasp I claim command O'er every rood of English land!' "He was borne to the realm you rule o'er now In that ship with the archer carved at her prow: "And thither I'll bear, an' it be my due, Your father's son and his grandson too. "The famed White Ship is mine in the bay; From Harfleur's harbor she sails to-day, "With masts fair-pennoned as Norman spears And with fifty well-tried mariners." Quoth the King: "My ships are chosen each one, But I'll not say nay to Stephen's son. "My son and daughter and fellowship Shall cross the water in the White Ship." The King set sail with the eve's south wind, And soon he left that coast behind. The Prince and all his, a princely show, Remained in the good White Ship to go. With noble knights and with ladies fair, With courtiers and sailors gathered there, Three hundred living souls we were: And I Berold was the meanest hind In all that train to the Prince assigned. The Prince was a lawless, shameless youth; From his father's loins he sprang without ruth: Eighteen years till then he had seen, And the devil's dues in him were eighteen. And now he cried: "Bring wine from below; Let the sailors revel ere yet they row: "Our speed shall o'ertake my father's flight Though we sail from the harbor at midnight." The rowers made good cheer without check; The lords and ladies obeyed his beck; The night was light, and they danced on the deck. But at midnight's stroke they cleared the bay, And the White Ship furrowed the water way. The sails were set, and the oars kept tune To the double flight of the ship and the moon: Swifter and swifter the White Ship sped Till she flew as the spirit flies from the dead: As white as a lily glimmered she Like a ship's fair ghost upon the sea. And the Prince cried, "Friends, 'tis the hour to sing! Is a song bird's course so swift on the wing?" And under the winter stars' still throng, From brown throats, white throats, merry and strong, The knights and the ladies raised a song. A song,--nay, a shriek that rent the sky, That leaped o'er the deep!--the grievous cry Of three hundred living that now must die. An instant shriek that sprang to the shock As the ship's keel felt the sunken rock. 'Tis said that afar--a shrill strange sigh-- The King's ships heard it and knew not why. Pale Fitz-Stephen stood by the helm 'Mid all those folk that the waves must whelm. A great King's heir for the waves to whelm, And the helpless pilot pale at the helm! The ship was eager and sucked athirst, By the stealthy stab of the sharp reef pierced: And like the moil round a sinking cup, The waters against her crowded up. A moment the pilot's senses spin,-- The next he snatched the Prince 'mid the din, Cut the boat loose, and the youth leaped in. A few friends leaped with him, standing near. "Row! the sea's smooth and the night is clear!" "What! none to be saved but these and I?" "Row, row as you'd live! All here must die!" Out of the churn of the choking ship, Which the gulf grapples and the waves strip, They struck with the strained oars' flash and dip. [Illustration: J. M. W. TURNER. THE SHIPWRECK.] 'Twas then o'er the splitting bulwarks' brim The Prince's sister screamed to him. He gazed aloft, still rowing apace, And through the whirled surf he knew her face. To the toppling decks clave one and all As a fly cleaves to a chamber wall. I, Berold, was clinging anear; I prayed for myself and quaked with fear, But I saw his eyes as he looked at her. He knew her face and he heard her cry, And he said, "Put back! she must not die!" And back with the current's force they reel Like a leaf that's drawn to a water wheel. 'Neath the ship's travail they scarce might float, But; he rose and stood in the rocking boat. Low the poor ship leaned on the tide: O'er the naked keel as she best might slide, The sister toiled to the brother's side. He reached an oar to her from below, And stiffened his arms to clutch her so. But now from the ship some spied the boat, And "Saved!" was the cry from many a throat. And down to the boat they leaped and fell: It turned as a bucket turns in a well, And nothing was there but the surge and swell. The Prince that was and the King to come, There in an instant gone to his doom, Despite of all England's bended knee And maugre the Norman fealty! He was a Prince of lust and pride; He showed no grace till the hour he died. When he should be King, he oft would vow, He'd yoke the peasant to his own plow. O'er him the ships score their furrows now. God only knows where his soul did wake, But I saw him die for his sister's sake. By none but me can the tale be told, The butcher of Rouen, poor Berold. (_Lands are swayed by a King on a throne._) 'Twas a royal train put forth to sea, Yet the tale can be told by none but me. (_The sea hath no King but God alone._) And now the end came o'er the water's womb Like the last great day that's yet to come. With prayers in vain and curses in vain, The White Ship sundered on the midmain: And what were men and what was a ship, Were toys and splinters in the sea's grip. I, Berold, was down in the sea; And passing strange though the thing may be, Of dreams then known I remember me. Blithe is the shout on Harfleur's strand When morning lights the sails to land: And blithe is Honfleur's echoing gloam When mothers call the children home: And high do the bells of Rouen beat When the Body of Christ goes down the street. These things and the like were heard and shown In a moment's trance 'neath the sea alone; And when I rose, 'twas the sea did seem, And not these things, to be all in a dream. The ship was gone and the crowd was gone, And the deep shuddered and the moon shone: And in a straight grasp my arms did span The mainyard rent from the mast where it ran; And on it with me was another man. Where lands were none 'neath the dim sea sky, We told our names, that man and I. "O I am Godefroy de l'Aigle hight, And son I am to a belted knight." "And I am Berold the butcher's son Who slays the beasts in Rouen town." Then cried we upon God's name, as we Did drift on the bitter winter sea. But lo! a third man o'er the wave, And we said, "Thank God! us three may He save!" He clutched to the yard with panting stare, And we looked and knew Fitz-Stephen there. He clung, and "What of the Prince?" quoth he. "Lost, lost!" we cried. He cried, "Woe on me!" And loosed his hold and sank through the sea. And soul with soul again in that space We two were together face to face: And each knew each, as the moments sped, Less for one living than for one dead: And every still star overhead Seemed an eye that knew we were but dead. And the hours passed; till the noble's son Sighed, "God be thy help! my strength's foredone! "O farewell, friend, for I can no more!" "Christ take thee!" I moaned; and his life was o'er. Three hundred souls were all lost but one, And I drifted over the sea alone. At last the morning rose on the sea Like an angel's wing that beat towards me. Sore numbed I was in my sheepskin coat; Half dead I hung, and might nothing note, Till I woke sun-warmed in a fisher boat. The sun was high o'er the eastern brim As I praised God and gave thanks to Him. That day I told my tale to a priest, Who charged me, till the shrift was released, That I should keep it in mine own breast. And with the priest I thence did fare To King Henry's court at Winchester. We spoke with the King's high chamberlain, And he wept and mourned again and again, As if his own son had been slain: And round us ever there crowded fast Great men with faces all aghast: And who so bold that might tell the thing Which now they knew to their lord the King? Much woe I learnt in their communing. The King had watched with a heart sore stirred For two whole days, and this was the third: And still to all his court would he say, "What keeps my son so long away?" And they said: "The ports lie far and wide That skirt the swell of the English tide; "And England's cliffs are not more white Than her women are, and scarce so light Her skies as their eyes are blue and bright; "And in some port that he reached from France The Prince has lingered for his pleasance." But once the King asked: "What distant cry Was that we heard 'twixt the sea and sky?" And one said: "With suchlike shouts, pardie! Do the fishers fling their nets at sea." And one: "Who knows not the shrieking quest When the seamew misses its young from the nest?" 'Twas thus till now they had soothed his dread, Albeit they knew not what they said: But who should speak to-day of the thing That all knew there except the King? Then pondering much they found a way, And met round the King's high seat that day: And the King sat with a heart sore stirred, And seldom he spoke and seldom heard. 'Twas then through the hall the King was 'ware Of a little boy with golden hair, As bright as the golden poppy is That the beach breeds for the surf to kiss: Yet pale his cheek as the thorn in spring, And his garb black like the raven's wing. Nothing was heard but his foot through the hall, For now the lords were silent all. And the King wondered, and said, "Alack! Who sends me a fair boy dressed in black? "Why, sweet heart, do you pace through the hall As though my court were a funeral?" Then lowly knelt the child at the dais, And looked up weeping in the King's face. "O wherefore black, O King, ye may say, For white is the hue of death to-day. "Your son and all his fellowship Lie low in the sea with the White Ship." King Henry fell as a man struck dead; And speechless still he stared from his bed When to him next day my rede I read. There's many an hour must needs beguile A King's high heart that he should smile,-- Full many a lordly hour, full fain Of his realm's rule and pride of his reign:-- But this King never smiled again. By none but me can the tale be told, The butcher of Rouen, poor Berold. (_Lands are swayed by a King on a throne._) 'Twas a royal train put forth to sea, Yet the tale can be told by none but me. (_The sea hath no King but God alone._) DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. SAFE HOME. Safe home, safe home in port! Rent cordage, shattered deck, Tom sails, provisions short, And only not a wreck: But, oh, the joy upon the shore, To tell our voyage,--perils o'er! The prize, the prize secure! The athlete nearly fell; Bare all he _could_ endure, And bare not always well: But he may smile at troubles gone, Who sets the victor-garland on! No more the foe can harm; No more of leaguered camp, And cry of night alarm, And need of ready lamp: And yet how nearly he had failed,-- How nearly had that foe prevailed! The exile is at home! O nights and days of tears, O longings not to roam, O sins, and doubts, and fears: What matter now this bitter fray? The King has wiped those tears away. ST. JOSEPH OF THE STUDIUM, A.D. 870 (translated by J. M. Neale). THE LIGHT SHINING OUT OF DARKNESS. GOD moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm. Deep in unfathomable mines Of never-failing skill, He treasures up His bright designs, And works His sovereign will. Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take, The clouds ye so much dread Are big with mercy, and shall break In blessings on your head. Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, But trust Him for His grace; Behind a frowning Providence He hides a smiling face. His purposes will ripen fast, Unfolding every hour; The bud may have a bitter taste, But sweet will be the flower. Blind unbelief is sure to err And scan His work in vain; God is His own interpreter, And He will make it plain. WILLIAM COWPER. THE PILLAR OF THE CLOUD. LEAD, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead Thou me on! The night is dark, and I am far from home-- Lead Thou me on! Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene,--one step enough for me. I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou Shouldst lead me on. I loved to choose and see my path; but now Lead Thou me on! I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears, Pride ruled my will: remember not past years. So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still Will lead me on, O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till The night is gone; And with the morn those angel faces smile Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. IVRY. A SONG OF THE HUGUENOTS. Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are! And glory to our Sovereign Liege, King Henry of Navarre! Now let there be the merry sound of music and of dance, Through thy cornfields green, and sunny vines, oh pleasant land of France! And thou, Rochelle, our own Rochelle, proud city of the waters, Again let rapture light the eyes of all thy mourning daughters. As thou wert constant in our ills, be joyous in our joy, For cold, and stiff, and still are they who wrought thy walls annoy. Hurrah! Hurrah! a single field hath turned the chance of war, Hurrah! Hurrah! for Ivry, and Henry of Navarre. Oh! how our hearts were beating, when, at the dawn of day, We saw the army of the league drawn out in long array; With all its priest-led citizens, and all its rebel peers, And Appenzel's stout infantry, and Egmont's Flemish spears. There rose the brood of false Lorraine, the curses of our land; And dark Mayenne was in the midst, a truncheon in his hand: And, as we looked on them, we thought of Seine's empurpled flood, And good Coligni's hoary hair all dabbled with his blood; And we cried unto the living God, who rules the fate of war, To fight for His own holy name, and Henry of Navarre. The King is come to marshal us, in all his armor drest, And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant crest, He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye; He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern and high. Right graciously he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing, Down all our line, a deafening shout, "God save our Lord the King!" "And if my standard bearer fall, as fall full well he may, For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray, Press where ye see my white plume shine, amidst the ranks of war, And be your oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre." Hurrah! the foes are moving! Hark to the mingled din Of fife, and steed, and trump, and drum, and roaring culverin. The fiery duke is pricking fast across Saint André's plain, With all the hireling chivalry of Guelders and Almayne. Now by the lips of those ye love, fair gentlemen of France, Charge for the golden lilies,--upon them with the lance! A thousand spurs are striking deep, a thousand spears in rest, A thousand knights are pressing close behind the snow-white crest; And in they burst, and on they rushed, while, like a guiding star, Amidst the thickest carnage blazed the helmet of Navarre. Now, God be praised, the day is ours. Mayenne hath turned his rein. D'Aumale hath cried for quarter. The Flemish count is slain. Their ranks are breaking like thin clouds before a Biscay gale; The field is heaped with bleeding steeds, and flags, and cloven mail. And then we thought on vengeance, and, all along our van, "Remember St. Bartholomew," was passed from man to man. But out spake gentle Henry, "No Frenchman is my foe: Down, down with every foreigner, but let your brethren go." Oh! was there ever such a knight, in friendship or in war, As our Sovereign Lord, King Henry, the soldier of Navarre? Right well fought all the Frenchmen who fought for France to-day, And many a lordly banner God gave them for a prey. But we of the religion have borne us best in fight; And the good Lord of Rosny has ta'en the cornet white. Our own true Maximilian the cornet white hath ta'en, The cornet white with crosses black, the flag of false Lorraine. Up with it high; unfurl it wide; that all the host may know How God hath humbled the proud house which wrought His church such woe. Then on the ground, while trumpets sound their loudest point of war, Fling the red shreds, a footcloth meet for Henry of Navarre. Ho! maidens of Vienna; Ho! matrons of Lucerne; Weep, weep, and rend your hair for those who never shall return. Ho! Philip, send, for charity, thy Mexican pistoles, That Antwerp monks may sing a mass for thy poor spear-men's souls. Ho! gallant nobles of the League, look that your arms be bright; Ho! burghers of Saint Genevieve, keep watch and ward to-night. For our God hath crushed the tyrant, our God hath raised the slave, And mocked the counsel of the wise, and the valor of the brave. Then glory to His holy name, from whom all glories are; And glory to our Sovereign Lord, King Henry of Navarre. THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. O GOD, OUR HELP IN AGES PAST. O God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come, Our shelter from the stormy blast, And our eternal home: Under the shadow of Thy throne Thy saints have dwelt secure; Sufficient is Thine arm alone, And our defense is sure. Before the hills in order stood, Or earth received her frame, From everlasting Thou art God, To endless years the same. A thousand ages in Thy sight Are like an evening gone; Short as the watch that ends the night Before the rising sun. Time, like an ever-rolling stream, Bears all its sons away; They fly forgotten, as a dream Dies at the opening day. O God, our help in ages past; Our hope for years to come; Be Thou our guard while troubles last, And our eternal home! ISAAC WATTS. HERVÉ RIEL. On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two, Did the English fight the French,--woe to France! And the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter thro' the blue, Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue, Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the Rance, With the English fleet in view. 'Twas the squadron that escaped, with the victor in full chase; First and foremost of the drove, in his great ship, Damfreville; Close on him fled, great and small, Twenty-two good ships in all; And they signaled to the place, "Help the winners of a race! Get us guidance, give us harbor, take us quick--or, quicker still, Here's the English can and will!" Then the pilots of the place put out brisk and leapt on board; "Why, what hope or chance have ships like these to pass?" laughed they: "Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the passage scarred and scored, Shall the _Formidable_ here with her twelve and eighty guns Think to make the river mouth by the single narrow way, Trust to enter where 'tis ticklish for a craft of twenty tons, And with flow at full beside? Now, 'tis slackest ebb of tide. Reach the mooring? Rather say, While rock stands or water runs, Not a ship will leave the bay!" Then was called a council straight. Brief and bitter the debate: "Here's the English at our heels; would you have them take in tow All that's left us of the fleet, linked together stern and bow, For a prize to Plymouth Sound? Better run the ships aground!" (Ended Damfreville his speech.) Not a minute more to wait! "Let the Captains all and each Shove ashore, then blow up, burn the vessels on the beach! France must undergo her fate. Give the word!" But no such word Was ever spoke or heard; For up stood, for out stepped, for in struck amid all these --A Captain? A Lieutenant? A Mate--first, second, third? No such man of mark, and meet With his betters to compete! But a simple Breton sailor pressed by Tourville for the fleet, A poor coasting pilot he, Hervé Riel the Croisickese. And, "What mockery or malice have we here?" cries Hervé Riel: "Are you mad, you Malouins? Are you cowards, fools, or rogues? Talk to me of rocks and shoals, me who took the soundings, tell On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every swell 'Twixt the offing here and Grève where the river disembogues? Are you bought by English gold? Is it love the lying's for? Morn and eve, night and day, Have I piloted your bay, Entered free and anchored fast at the foot of Solidor. [Illustration: HERVÉ RIEL AND THE ADMIRAL.] "Burn the fleet and ruin France? That were worse than fifty Hogues! Sirs, they know I speak the truth! Sirs, believe me there's a way! Only let me lead the line, Have the biggest ship to steer, Get this _Formidable_ clear, Make the others follow mine, And I lead them, most and least, by a passage I know well, Right to Solidor past Grève, And there lay them safe and sound; And if one ship misbehave, --Keel so much as grate the ground, Why, I've nothing but my life,--here's my head!" cries Hervé Riel. Not a minute more to wait. "Steer us in, then, small and great! Take the helm, lead the line, save the squadron!" cried its chief. "Captains, give the sailor place! He is Admiral, in brief." Still the north wind, by God's grace! See the noble fellow's face, As the big ship with a bound, Clears the entry like a hound, Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide seas profound! See, safe thro' shoal and rock, How they follow in a flock, Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the ground, Not a spar that comes to grief! The peril, see, is past, All are harbored to the last, And just as Hervé Riel hollas "Anchor!"--sure as fate Up the English come, too late! So, the storm subsides to calm: They see the green trees wave On the heights o'erlooking Grève. Hearts that bled are stanched with balm. "Just our rapture to enhance, Let the English rake the bay, Gnash their teeth and glare askance, As they cannonade away! 'Neath rampired Solidor pleasant riding on the Rance!" How hope succeeds despair on each Captain's countenance! Out burst all with one accord, "This is Paradise for Hell! Let France, let France's King Thank the man that did the thing!" What a shout, and all one word, "Hervé Riel!" As he stepped in front once more, Not a symptom of surprise In the frank blue Breton eyes, Just the same man as before. Then said Damfreville, "My friend, I must speak out at the end, Though I find the speaking hard. Praise is deeper than the lips: You have saved the King his ships, You must name your own reward. 'Faith our sun was near eclipse! Demand whate'er you will, France remains your debtor still. Ask to heart's content and have! or my name's not Damfreville." Then a beam of fun outbroke On the bearded mouth that spoke, As the honest heart laughed through Those frank eyes of Breton blue: "Since I needs must say my say, Since on board the duty's done, And from Malo Roads to Croisic Point, what is it but a run?-- Since 'tis ask and have, I may-- Since the others go ashore-- Come! A good whole holiday! Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the Belle Aurore!" That he asked and that he got,--nothing more. Name and deed alike are lost: Not a pillar nor a post In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell; Not a head in white and black On a single fishing smack, In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack All that France saved from the fight whence England bore the bell. Go to Paris: rank on rank Search the heroes flung pell-mell On the Louvre, face and flank! You shall look long enough ere you come to Hervé Riel. So, for better and for worse, Hervé Riel, accept my verse! In my verse, Hervé Riel, do thou once more Save the squadron, honor France, love thy wife, the Belle Aurore! ROBERT BROWNING. RUGBY CHAPEL. But thou wouldst not _alone_ Be saved, my father! _alone_ Conquer and come to thy goal, Leaving the rest in the wild. We were weary, and we Fearful, and we in our march Fain to drop down and die. Still thou turnedst, and still Beckonedst the trembler, and still Gavest the weary thy hand. If, in the paths of the world, Stones might have wounded thy feet, Toil or dejection have tried Thy spirit, of that we saw Nothing--to us thou wast still Cheerful, and helpful, and firm! Therefore to thee it was given Many to save with thyself; And, at the end of thy day, O faithful shepherd! to come, Bringing thy sheep in thy hand. And through thee I believe In the noble and great who are gone; Pure souls honored and blest By former ages.... * * * * * Servants of God!--or sons Shall I not call you? because Not as servants ye knew Your Father's innermost mind, His, who unwillingly sees One of His little ones lost-- Yours is the praise, if mankind Hath not as yet in its march Fainted, and fallen, and died! * * * * * Then, in such hour of need Of your fainting, dispirited race, Ye, like angels, appear, Radiant with ardor divine. Beacons of hope, ye appear! Languor is not in your heart, Weakness is not in your word, Weariness not on your brow. Ye alight in our van! at your voice, Panic, despair, flee away. Ye move through the ranks, recall The stragglers, refresh the outworn, Praise, reinspire the brave. Order, courage, return; Eyes rekindling, and prayers, Follow your steps as ye go. Ye fill up the gaps in our files, Strengthen the wavering line, Stablish, continue our march, On, to the bound of the waste, On, to the City of God. MATTHEW ARNOLD. [Illustration: JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.] WENDELL PHILLIPS. He stood upon the world's broad threshold; wide The din of battle and of slaughter rose; He saw God stand upon the weaker side, That sank in seeming loss before its foes; Many there were who made great haste and sold Unto the cunning enemy their swords, He scorned their gifts of fame, and power, and gold, And, underneath their soft and flowery words, Heard the cold serpent hiss; therefore he went And humbly joined him to the weaker part, Fanatic named, and fool, yet well content So he could be the nearer to God's heart, And feel its solemn pulses sending blood Through all the widespread veins of endless good. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. THE PATRIOT. AN OLD STORY. It was roses, roses, all the way, With myrtle mixed in my path like mad; The house roofs seemed to heave and sway, The church spires flamed, such flags they had A year ago on this very day. The air broke into a mist with bells, The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries. Had I said, "Good folk, mere noise repels-- But give me your sun from yonder skies!" They had answered, "And afterward, what else?" Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun To give it my loving friends to keep! Naught man could do, have I left undone: And you see my harvest, what I reap This very day, now a year is run. There's nobody on the house tops now-- Just a palsied few at the windows set; For the best of the sight is, all allow, At the Shambles' Gate--or, better yet, By the very scaffold's foot, I trow. I go in the rain, and, more than needs, A rope cuts both my wrists behind; And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds, For they fling, whoever has a mind, Stones at me for my year's misdeeds. Thus I entered, and thus I go! In triumphs, people have dropped down dead. "Paid by the world, what dost thou owe Me?"--God might question; now instead, 'Tis God shall repay: I am safer so. ROBERT BROWNING. "BLESSED ARE THEY THAT MOURN." Oh, deem not they are blest alone Whose lives a peaceful tenor keep: The Power who pities man, has shown A blessing for the eyes that weep. The light of smiles shall fill again The lids that overflow with tears; And weary hours of woe and pain Are promises of happier years. There is a day of sunny rest For every dark and troubled night; And grief may bide an evening guest, But joy shall come with early light. And thou, who, o'er thy friend's low bier Dost shed the bitter drops like rain, Hope that a brighter, happier sphere Will give him to thy arms again. Nor let the good man's trust depart, Though life its common gifts deny,-- Though with a pierced and bleeding heart And spurned of men, he goes to die. For God hath marked each sorrowing day And numbered every secret tear, And heaven's long age of bliss shall pay For all his children suffer here. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. THE DEATHBED. We watched her breathing thro' the night, Her breathing soft and low, As in her breast the wave of life Kept heaving to and fro. So silently we seemed to speak, So slowly moved about, As we had lent her half our powers To eke her living out. Our very hopes belied our fears, Our fears our hopes belied-- We thought her dying when she slept, And sleeping when she died. For when the morn came dim and sad, And chill with early showers, Her quiet eyelids closed--she had Another morn than ours. THOMAS HOOD. THE SLEEP. "He giveth his beloved sleep."--PSALM cxxvii. 2. Of all the thoughts of God that are Borne inward unto souls afar, Along the Psalmist's music deep, Now tell me if that any is, For gift or grace, surpassing this-- "He giveth His beloved, sleep"? What would we give to our beloved? The hero's heart, to be unmoved, The poet's star-tuned harp, to sweep, The patriot's voice, to teach and rouse, The monarch's crown, to light the brows?-- He giveth His beloved, sleep. What do we give to our beloved? A little faith all undisproved, A little dust to overweep, And bitter memories to make The whole earth blasted for our sake. He giveth His beloved, sleep. "Sleep soft, beloved!" we sometimes say, But have no tune to charm away Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep. But never doleful dream again Shall break the happy slumber when He giveth His beloved, sleep. O earth, so full of dreary noises! O men, with wailing in your voices! O delvèd gold, the wailers heap! O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall! God strikes a silence through you all, And giveth His beloved, sleep. His dews drop mutely on the hill; His cloud above it saileth still, Though on its slope men sow and reap. More softly than the dew is shed, Or cloud is floated overhead, He giveth His beloved, sleep. Ay, men may wonder while they scan A living, thinking, feeling man Confirmed in such a rest to keep; But angels say, and through the word I think their happy smile is _heard_-- "He giveth His beloved, sleep." For me, my heart that erst did go Most like a tired child at a show, That sees through tears the mummers leap, Would now its wearied vision close, Would childlike on His love repose, Who giveth His beloved, sleep. And, friends, dear friends,--when it shall be That this low breath is gone from me, And round my bier ye come to weep, Let one, most loving of you all, Say, "Not a tear must o'er her fall; 'He giveth His beloved, sleep.'" ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. [Illustration: ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.] SLEEP. How many thousand of my poorest subjects Are at this hour asleep! O sleep, O gentle sleep, Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down And steep my senses in forgetfulness? Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee And hushed with buzzing night flies to thy slumber, Than in the perfumed chambers of the great, Under the canopies of costly state, And lulled with sound of sweetest melody? O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile In loathsome beds, and leavest the kingly couch A watch case or a common 'larum bell? Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast Seal up the ship boy's eyes, and rock his brains In cradle of the rude imperious surge And in the visitation of the winds, Who take the ruffian billows by the top, Curling their monstrous heads and hanging them With deafening clamor in the slippery clouds, That, with the hurly, death itself awakes? Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose To the wet sea boy in an hour so rude, And in the calmest and most stillest night, With all appliances and means to boot, Deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie down! Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. _From "King Henry IV."_ [Illustration] A THANKSGIVING TO GOD FOR HIS HOUSE. Lord, Thou hast given me a cell Wherein to dwell; A little house, whose humble roof Is weather proof; Under the spars of which I lie Both soft, and dry; Where Thou my chamber for to ward Hast set a guard Of harmless thoughts, to watch and keep Me, while I sleep. Low is my porch, as is my fate, Both void of state; And yet the threshold of my door Is worn by the poor, Who thither come, and freely get Good words, or meat: Like as my parlor, so my hall And kitchen's small: A little buttery, and therein A little bin, Which keeps my little loaf of bread Unchipt, unflead: Some brittle sticks of thorn or brier Make me a fire, Close by whose living coal I sit, And glow like it. Lord, I confess too, when I dine The pulse is Thine, And all those other bits, that be There placed by Thee; The worts, the purslain, and the mess Of water cress, Which of Thy kindness Thou hast sent; And my content Makes those, and my beloved beet, To be more sweet. 'Tis Thou that crown'st my glittering hearth With guiltless mirth; And giv'st me wassail bowls to drink, Spiced to the brink. Lord, 'tis Thy plenty-dropping hand That soils my land; And giv'st me, for my bushel sown, Twice ten for one: Thou mak'st my teeming hen to lay Her egg each day: Besides my healthful ewes to bear Me twins each year: The while the conduits of my kine Run cream (for wine.) All these, and better, Thou dost send Me, to this end, That I should render, for my part, A thankful heart; Which, fired with incense, I resign, As wholly Thine; But the acceptance,--that must be, My Christ, by Thee. ROBERT HERRICK. HYMN OF TRUST. O Love Divine, that stooped to share Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear, On Thee we cast each earthborn care, We smile at pain while Thou art near! Though long the weary way we tread, And sorrow crown each lingering year, No path we shun, no darkness dread, Our hearts still whispering, Thou art near! When drooping pleasure turns to grief, And trembling faith is changed to fear, The murmuring wind, the quivering leaf, Shall softly tell us, Thou art near! On Thee we fling our burdening woe, O Love Divine, forever dear, Content to suffer while we know, Living and dying, Thou art near! OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. DORA. With farmer Allan at the farm abode William and Dora. William was his son, And she his niece. He often looked at them, And often thought, "I'll make them man and wife." Now Dora felt her uncle's will in all, And yearned towards William; but the youth, because He had been always with her in the house, Thought not of Dora. Then there came a day When Allan called his son, and said, "My son, I married late, but I would wish to see My grandchild on my knees before I die; And I have set my heart upon a match. Now therefore look to Dora: she is well To look to; thrifty too beyond her age. She is my brother's daughter; he and I Had once hard words, and parted, and he died In foreign lands; but for his sake I bred His daughter Dora: take her for your wife; For I have wished this marriage, night and day, For many years." But William answered short: "I cannot marry Dora; by my life, I will not marry Dora." Then the old man Was wroth, and doubled up his hands, and said: "You will not, boy! you dare to answer thus! But in my time a father's word was law, And so it shall be now for me. Look to it; Consider, William: take a month to think, And let me have an answer to my wish; Or, by the Lord that made me, you shall pack, And never more darken my doors again." But William answered madly; bit his lips, And broke away. The more he looked at her The less he liked her; and his ways were harsh; But Dora bore them meekly. Then before The month was out he left his father's house And hired himself to work within the fields; And half in love, half spite, he wooed and wed A laborer's daughter, Mary Morrison. Then, when the bells were ringing, Allan called His niece and said, "My girl, I love you well; But if you speak with him that was my son, Or change a word with her he calls his wife, My home is none of yours. My will is law." And Dora promised, being meek. She thought, "It cannot be; my uncle's mind will change!" And days went on, and there was born a boy To William; then distresses came on him; And day by day he passed his father's gate, Heart-broken, and his father helped him not. But Dora stored what little she could save, And sent it them by stealth, nor did they know Who sent it; till at last a fever seized On William, and in harvest time he died. Then Dora went to Mary. Mary sat And looked with tears upon her boy, and thought Hard things of Dora. Dora came and said: "I have obeyed my uncle until now, And I have sinned, for it was all thro' me This evil came on William at the first. But, Mary, for the sake of him that's gone, And for your sake, the woman that he chose, And for this orphan, I am come to you; You know there has not been for these five years So full a harvest; let me take the boy, And I will set him in my uncle's eye Among the wheat; that when his heart is glad Of the full harvest, he may see the boy, And bless him for the sake of him that's gone." And Dora took the child, and went her way Across the wheat, and sat upon a mound That was unsown, where many poppies grew. Far off the farmer came into the field And spied her not; for none of all his men Dare tell him Dora waited with the child; And Dora would have risen and gone to him, But her heart failed her; and the reapers reaped, And the sun fell, and all the land was dark. But when the morrow came, she rose and took The child once more, and sat upon the mound; And made a little wreath of all the flowers That grew about, and tied it round his hat To make him pleasing in her uncle's eye. Then, when the farmer passed into the field, He spied her, and he left his men at work, And came and said: "Where were you yesterday? Whose child is that? What are you doing here?" So Dora cast her eyes upon the ground, And answered softly, "This is William's child!" "And did I not," said Allan, "did I not Forbid you, Dora?" Dora said again: "Do with me as you will, but take the child And bless him for the sake of him that's gone!" And Allan said, "I see it is a trick Got up betwixt you and the woman there. I must be taught my duty, and by you! You knew my word was law, and yet you dared To slight it. Well--for I will take the boy; But go you hence, and never see me more." So saying, he took the boy, that cried aloud And struggled hard. The wreath of flowers fell At Dora's feet. She bowed upon her hands, And the boy's cry came to her from the field, More and more distant. She bowed down her head, Remembering the day when first she came, And all the things that had been. She bowed down And wept in secret; and the reapers reaped, And the sun fell, and all the land was dark. Then Dora went to Mary's house, and stood Upon the threshold. Mary saw the boy Was not with Dora. She broke out in praise To God, that helped her in her widowhood. And Dora said, "My uncle took the boy; But, Mary, let me live and work with you: He says that he will never see me more." Then answered Mary, "This shall never be, That thou shouldst take my trouble on thyself; And, now I think, he shall not have the boy, For he will teach him hardness, and to slight His mother; therefore thou and I will go, And I will have my boy, and bring him home; And I will beg of him to take thee back. But if he will not take thee back again, Then thou and I will live within one house, And work for William's child, until he grows Of age to help us." So the women kissed Each other, and set out, and reached the farm. The door was off the latch; they peeped, and saw The boy set up betwixt his grandsire's knees, Who thrust him in the hollows of his arm, And clapt him on the hands and on the cheeks, Like one that loved him; and the lad stretched out And babbled for the golden seal, that hung From Allan's watch, and sparkled by the fire. Then they came in; but when the boy beheld His mother, he cried out to come to her; And Allan set him down, and Mary said: "O Father!--if you let me call you so-- I never came a begging for myself, Or William, or this child; but now I come For Dora; take her back; she loves you well. O Sir, when William died, he died at peace With all men; for I asked him, and he said, He could not ever rue his marrying me-- I had been a patient wife; but, Sir, he said That he was wrong to cross his father thus; 'God bless him!' he said, 'and may he never know The troubles I have gone thro'!' Then he turned His face and passed--unhappy that I am! But now, Sir, let me have my boy, for you Will make him hard, and he will learn to slight His father's memory; and take Dora back, And let all this be as it was before." So Mary said, and Dora hid her face By Mary. There was silence in the room; And all at once the old man burst in sobs:-- "I have been to blame--to blame. I have killed my son. I have killed him--but I loved him--my dear son. May God forgive me!--I have been to blame. Kiss me, my children." Then they clung about The old man's neck, and kissed him many times. And all the man was broken with remorse; And all his love came back a hundredfold; And for three hours he sobbed o'er William's child, Thinking of William. So those four abode Within one house together; and as years Went forward, Mary took another mate; But Dora lived unmarried till her death. ALFRED TENNYSON. [Illustration: CHARLES LAMB.] HESTER. When maidens such as Hester die, Their place ye may not well supply, Though ye among a thousand try, With vain endeavor. A month or more hath she been dead, Yet cannot I by force be led To think upon the wormy bed And her together. A springy motion in her gait, A rising step, did indicate Of pride and joy no common rate, That flushed her spirit. I know not by what name beside I shall it call:--if 'twas not pride, It was a joy to that allied, She did inherit. Her parents held the Quaker rule, Which doth the human feeling cool, But she was trained in Nature's school, Nature had blest her. A waking eye, a prying mind, A heart that stirs, is hard to bind, A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blind, Ye could not Hester. My sprightly neighbor! gone before To that unknown and silent shore, Shall we not meet, as heretofore, Some summer morning, When from thy cheerful eyes a ray Hath struck a bliss upon the day, A bliss that would not go away, A sweet forewarning? CHARLES LAMB. BONNIE LESLEY. O saw ye bonnie Lesley As she ga'ed o'er the border? She's gane, like Alexander, To spread her conquests farther. To see her is to love her, And love but her for ever; For Nature made her what she is, And ne'er made sic anither! Thou art a queen, fair Lesley, Thy subjects we, before thee; Thou art divine, fair Lesley, The hearts o' men adore thee. The deil he could na scaith thee, Or aught that wad belang thee; He'd look into thy bonnie face, And say, "I canna wrang thee." The powers aboon will tent thee; Misfortune sha' na steer thee; Thou'rt like themselves sae lovely, That ill they'll ne'er let near thee. Return again, fair Lesley, Return to Caledonie; That we may brag, we hae a lass There's nane again sae bonnie. ROBERT BURNS. ANNIE LAURIE. Maxwelton braes are bonnie Where early fa's the dew, And it's there that Annie Laurie Gie'd me her promise true,-- Gie'd me her promise true, Which ne'er forgot will be; And for bonnie Annie Laurie I'd lay me doune and dee. Her brow is like the snawdrift, Her throat is like the swan, Her face it is the fairest That e'er the sun shone on,-- That e'er the sun shone on; And dark blue is her e'e; And for bonnie Annie Laurie I'd lay me doune and dee. Like dew on the gowan lying Is the fa' o' her fairy feet; Like the winds in summer sighing, Her voice is low and sweet,-- Her voice is low and sweet; And she's a' the world to me; And for bonnie Annie Laurie I'd lay me doune and dee. WILLIAM DOUGLAS. [Illustration: BAYARD TAYLOR.] A SONG OF THE CAMP. "Give us a song!" the soldiers cried, The outer trenches guarding, When the heated guns of the camp allied Grew weary of bombarding. The dark Redan, in silent scoff, Lay grim and threatening under; And the tawny mound of the Malakoff No longer belched its thunder. There was a pause. A guardsman said: "We storm the forts to-morrow; Sing while we may, another day Will bring enough of sorrow." They lay along the battery's side, Below the smoking cannon,-- Brave hearts from Severn and from Clyde, And from the banks of Shannon. They sang of love, and not of fame; Forgot was Britain's glory; Each heart recalled a different name, But all sang "Annie Laurie." Voice after voice caught up the song, Until its tender passion Rose like an anthem rich and strong, Their battle eve confession. Dear girl! her name he dared not speak; But as the song grew louder, Something upon the soldier's cheek Washed off the stains of powder. Beyond the darkening ocean burned The bloody sunset's embers, While the Crimean valleys learned How English love remembers. And once again a fire of hell Rained on the Russian quarters, With scream of shot and burst of shell, And bellowing of the mortars! And Irish Nora's eyes are dim For a singer dumb and gory; And English Mary mourns for him Who sang of "Annie Laurie." Sleep, soldiers! still in honored rest Your truth and valor wearing; The bravest are the tenderest,-- The loving are the daring. BAYARD TAYLOR. [Illustration: RALPH WALDO EMERSON.] EACH AND ALL. Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown Of thee from the hilltop looking down; The heifer that lows in the upland farm, Far heard, lows not thine ear to charm; The sexton, tolling his bell at noon, Deems not that great Napoleon Stops his horse, and lists with delight, Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height; Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone. I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, Singing at dawn on the alder bough; I brought him home, in his nest, at even; He sings the song, but it cheers not now, For I did not bring home the river and sky; He sang to my ear,--they sang to my eye. The delicate shells lay on the shore; The bubbles of the latest wave Fresh pearls to their enamel gave, And the bellowing of the savage sea Greeted their safe escape to me. I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar. The lover watched his graceful maid, As 'mid the virgin train she strayed, Nor knew her beauty's best attire Was woven still by the snow-white choir. At last she came to his hermitage, Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage;-- The gay enchantment was undone, A gentle wife, but fairy none. Then I said, "I covet truth; Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat; I leave it behind with the games of youth:"-- As I spoke, beneath my feet The ground pine curled its pretty wreath, Running over the club moss burs; I inhaled the violet's breath; Around me stood the oaks and firs; Pine cones and acorns lay on the ground; Over me soared the eternal sky, Full of light and of deity; Again I saw, again I heard, The rolling river, the morning bird; Beauty through my senses stole; I yielded myself to the perfect whole. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. THE RHODORA. ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER? In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook. The purple petals, fallen in the pool, Made the black water with their beauty gay; Here might the redbird come his plumes to cool, And court the flower that cheapens his array. Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being. Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose! I never thought to ask, I never knew: But, in my simple ignorance, suppose The selfsame Power that brought me there brought you. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. THE LAND OF SONG: Book III. _PART III._ [Illustration: R. WESTALL. CARDINAL WOLSEY RECEIVED AT THE ABBEY.] PART THREE. THE DOWNFALL OF WOLSEY. Farewell! a long farewell, to all my greatness! This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth The tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honors thick upon him; The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a ripening, nips his root, And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured, Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, This many summers in a sea of glory, But far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride At length broke under me and now has left me, Weary and old with service, to the mercy Of a rude stream, that must forever hide me. Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye: I feel my heart new opened. O, how wretched Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favors! There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to, That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, More pangs and fears than wars or women have: And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, Never to hope again. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. _From "Henry VIII."_ [Illustration: JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.] ICHABOD! So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn Which once he wore! The glory from his gray hairs gone Forevermore! Revile him not,--the Tempter hath A snare for all; And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, Befit his fall! O, dumb be passion's stormy rage, When he who might Have lighted up and led his age, Falls back in night. Scorn! would the angels laugh, to mark A bright soul driven, Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark, From hope and heaven! Let not the land once proud of him Insult him now, Nor brand with deeper shame his dim, Dishonored brow. But let its humbled sons, instead, From sea to lake, A long lament, as for the dead, In sadness make. Of all we loved and honored, naught Save power remains,-- A fallen angel's pride of thought, Still strong in chains. All else is gone: from those great eyes The soul has fled: When faith is lost, when honor dies, The man is dead! Then, pay the reverence of old days To his dead fame; Walk backward, with averted gaze, And hide the shame! JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. THE LOST LEADER. Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat-- Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us, Lost all the others she lets us devote; They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver, So much was theirs who so little allowed: How all our copper had gone for his service! Rags--were they purple, his heart had been proud! We that had loved him so, followed him, honored him, Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, Learned his great language, caught his clear accents, Made him our pattern to live and to die! Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us, Burns, Shelley, were with us,--they watch from their graves! He alone breaks from the van and the freemen, He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves! We shall march prospering,--not thro' his presence; Songs may inspirit us,--not from his lyre; Deeds will be done,--while he boasts his quiescence, Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire. Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more, One task more declined, one more footpath untrod, One more devil's triumph, and sorrow for angels, One wrong more to man, one more insult to God! Life's night begins: let him never come back to us! There would be doubt, hesitation and pain, Forced praise on our part--the glimmer of twilight, Never glad, confident morning again! Best fight on well, for we taught him--strike gallantly, Menace our heart ere we master his own; Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us, Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne! ROBERT BROWNING. THE FALL OF POLAND. O sacred Truth! thy triumph ceased a while, And Hope, thy sister, ceased with thee to smile, When leagued Oppression poured to Northern wars Her whiskered pandoors and her fierce hussars, Waved her dread standard to the breeze of morn, Pealed her loud drum, and twanged her trumpet horn; Tumultuous horror brooded o'er her van, Presaging wrath to Poland--and to man. Warsaw's last champion from her height surveyed, Wide o'er the fields, a waste of ruin laid,-- O Heaven! he cried, my bleeding country save!-- Is there no hand on high to shield the brave? Yet, though destruction sweep those lovely plains, Rise, fellow-men! our country yet remains! By that dread name, we wave the sword on high, And swear for her to live--with her to die! He said, and on the rampart heights arrayed His trusty warriors, few, but undismayed; Firm-paced and slow, a horrid front they form, Still as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm; Low murmuring sounds along their banners fly, Revenge, or death,--the watchword and reply; Then pealed the notes, omnipotent to charm, And the loud tocsin tolled their last alarm. In vain, alas! in vain, ye gallant few! From rank to rank your volleyed thunder flew:-- Oh, bloodiest picture in the book of Time, Sarmatia fell, unwept, without a crime; Found not a generous friend, a pitying foe, Strength in her arms, nor mercy in her woe. Dropped from her nerveless grasp the shattered spear, Closed her bright eye, and curbed her high career;-- Hope, for a season, bade the world farewell, And Freedom shrieked--as Kosciusko fell. The sun went down, nor ceased the carnage there, Tumultuous murder shook the midnight air-- On Prague's proud arch the fires of ruin glow, His blood-dyed waters murmuring far below; The storm prevails, the rampart yields a way, Bursts the wild cry of horror and dismay. Hark, as the smoldering piles with thunder fall, A thousand shrieks for hopeless mercy call! Earth shook--red meteors flashed along the sky, And conscious Nature shuddered at the cry! O righteous Heaven! ere Freedom found a grave, Why slept the sword, omnipotent to save? Where was thine arm, O Vengeance! where thy rod, That smote the foes of Zion and of God; That crushed proud Ammon, when his iron car Was yoked in wrath, and thundered from afar? Where was the storm that slumbered till the host Of blood-stained Pharaoh left their trembling coast; Then bade the deep in wild commotion flow, And heaved an ocean on their march below? Departed spirits of the mighty dead! Ye that at Marathon and Leuctra bled! Friends of the world! restore your swords to man, Fight in his sacred cause, and lead the van! Yet for Sarmatia's tears of blood atone, And make her arm puissant as your own! Oh! once again to Freedom's cause return The patriot Tell--the Bruce of Bannockburn! Yes, thy proud lords, unpitied land, shall see That man hath yet a soul--and dare be free. A little while, along thy saddening plains, The starless night of desolation reigns; Truth shall restore the light by Nature given, And, like Prometheus, bring the fire of Heaven. Prone to the dust Oppression shall be hurled, Her name, her nature, withered from the world. THOMAS CAMPBELL. _From "The Pleasures of Hope."_ THE HARP THAT ONCE THROUGH TARA'S HALLS. The harp that once through Tara's halls The soul of music shed, Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls As if that soul were fled. So sleeps the pride of former days, So glory's thrill is o'er, And hearts that once beat high for praise Now feel that pulse no more. No more to chiefs and ladies bright, The harp of Tara swells: The chord alone, that breaks at night, Its tale of ruin tells. Thus Freedom now so seldom wakes, The only throb she gives, Is when some heart indignant breaks, To show that still she lives. THOMAS MOORE. [Illustration: STOKE POGIS CHURCH. (_The Scene of Gray's Elegy._)] ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds. Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower The moping owl does to the moon complain Of such as, wandering near her secret bower, Molest her ancient solitary reign. Beneath those rugged elms, that yew tree's shade, Where heaves the turf in many a moldering heap, Each in his narrow cell forever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care, No children run to lisp their sire's return, Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share. Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke; How jocund did they drive their team afield! How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke! Let not ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the poor. The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike the inevitable hour: The paths of glory lead but to the grave. Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault If memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise, Where thro' the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. Can storied urn or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust, Or flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death? Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire, Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre: But knowledge to their eyes her ample page Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll; Chill penury repressed their noble rage, And froze the genial current of the soul. Full many a gem of purest ray serene, The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear; Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air. Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood; Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest; Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood. The applause of listening senates to command, The threats of pain and ruin to despise, To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, And read their history in a nation's eyes, Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined; Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne, And shut the gates of mercy on mankind; The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, Or heap the shrine of luxury and pride With incense, kindled at the muse's flame. Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, Their sober wishes never learned to stray; Along the cool sequestered vale of life They keep the noiseless tenor of their way. Yet e'en these bones from insult to protect, Some frail memorial still erected nigh, With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked, Implores the passing tribute of a sigh. Their name, their years, spelt by th' unlettered Muse, The place of fame and elegy supply; And many a holy text around she strews, That teach the rustic moralist to die. For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind? On some fond breast the parting soul relies, Some pious drops the closing eye requires; E'en from the tomb the voice of nature cries, E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires. For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonored dead, Dost in these lines their artless tale relate, If 'chance, by lonely contemplation led, Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate, Haply some hoary-headed swain may say: "Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn Brushing with hasty steps the dews away, To meet the sun upon the upland lawn; "There at the foot of yonder nodding beech, That wreathes its old, fantastic roots so high, His listless length at noontide would he stretch, And pore upon the brook that babbles by. "Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, Muttering his wayward fancies, he would rove; Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn, Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love. "One morn I missed him on the customed hill, Along the heath, and near his favorite tree; Another came; nor yet beside the rill, Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he. "The next, with dirges due, in sad array, Slow thro' the church-way path we saw him borne. Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn." THE EPITAPH. Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth A youth to fortune and to fame unknown: Fair science frowned not on his humble birth, And melancholy marked him for her own. Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere, Heaven did a recompense as largely send: He gave to misery all he had, a tear: He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend. No farther seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose,) The bosom of his Father and his God. THOMAS GRAY. [Illustration: OLIVER GOLDSMITH.] THE VILLAGE PREACHER. Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled, And still where many a garden flower grows wild, There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose, The village preacher's modest mansion rose. A man he was to all the country dear, And passing rich with forty pounds a year. Remote from towns he ran his godly race, Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change, his place; Unpracticed he to fawn, or seek for power By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour; Far other aims his heart had learned to prize, More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise. His house was known to all the vagrant train, He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain; The long-remembered beggar was his guest, Whose beard descending swept his aged breast; The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud, Claimed kindred there, and had his claims allowed; The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay, Sat by his fire, and talked the night away, Wept o'er his wounds, or, tales of sorrow done, Shouldered his crutch and showed how fields were won. Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow, And quite forgot their vices in their woe; Careless their merits or their faults to scan, His pity gave ere charity began. Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride, And even his failings leaned to virtue's side; But in his duty prompt at every call, He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all: And, as a bird each fond endearment tries To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies, He tried each art, reproved each dull delay, Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way. Beside the bed where parting life was laid, And sorrow, guilt, and pain by turns dismayed, The reverend champion stood: at his control Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul; Comfort came down the trembling wretch to raise, And his last faltering accents whispered praise. At church, with meek and unaffected grace, His looks adorned the venerable place; Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway, And fools who came to scoff remained to pray. The service past, around the pious man, With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran; Even children followed, with endearing wile, And plucked his gown, to share the good man's smile: His ready smile a parent's warmth exprest, Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distrest. To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given, But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven: As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form, Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, Eternal sunshine settles on its head. OLIVER GOLDSMITH. _From "The Deserted Village."_ [Illustration: WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.] LUCY. Three years she grew in sun and shower; Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower On earth was never sown: This child I to myself will take; She shall be mine, and I will make A lady of my own. "Myself will to my darling be Both law and impulse: and with me The girl, in rock and plain, In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, Shall feel an overseeing power To kindle or restrain. "She shall be sportive as the fawn That, wild with glee, across the lawn Or up the mountain springs; And hers shall be the breathing balm, And hers the silence and the calm Of mute, insensate things. "The floating clouds their state shall lend To her; for her the willow bend; Nor shall she fail to see E'en in the motions of the storm Grace that shall mold the maiden's form By silent sympathy. "The stars of midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face. "And vital feelings of delight Shall rear her form to stately height, Her virgin bosom swell; Such thoughts to Lucy I will give While she and I together live Here in this happy dell." Thus Nature spake--the work was done-- How soon my Lucy's race was run! She died, and left to me This heath, this calm and quiet scene; The memory of what has been, And nevermore will be. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. [Illustration] OH, FAIREST OF THE RURAL MAIDS. Oh, fairest of the rural maids! Thy birth was in the forest shades; Green boughs, and glimpses of the sky, Were all that met thine infant eye. Thy sports, thy wanderings, when a child, Were ever in the sylvan wild; And all the beauty of the place Is in thy heart and on thy face. The twilight of the trees and rocks Is in the light shade of thy locks; Thy step is as the wind, that weaves Its playful way among the leaves. Thine eyes are springs, in whose serene And silent waters heaven is seen; Their lashes are the herbs that look On their young figures in the brook. The forest depths, by foot impressed, Are not more sinless than thy breast; The holy peace, that fills the air Of those calm solitudes, is there. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. STANZAS FOR MUSIC. There be none of Beauty's daughters With a magic like thee; And like music on the waters Is thy sweet voice to me: When, as if its sound were causing The charmèd ocean's pausing, The waves lie still and gleaming, And the lulled winds seem dreaming: And the midnight moon is weaving Her bright chain o'er the deep; Whose breast is gently heaving, As an infant's asleep: So the spirit bows before thee, To listen and adore thee; With a full but soft emotion, Like the swell of Summer's ocean. LORD GEORGE NOEL GORDON BYRON. FLOW GENTLY, SWEET AFTON. Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes, Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise; My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream-- Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream. Thou stockdove, whose echo resounds thro' the glen; Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den; Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear-- I charge you disturb not my slumbering fair. How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighboring hills, Far marked with the courses of clear, winding rills; There daily I wander as noon rises high, My flocks and my Mary's sweet cot in my eye. How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below, Where wild in the woodlands the primroses blow. There, oft as mild evening weeps over the lea, The sweet-scented birk shades my Mary and me. Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides, And winds by the cot where my Mary resides; How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave, As gathering sweet flow'rets she stems thy clear wave. Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays. My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream-- Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream! ROBERT BURNS. [Illustration] TRIUMPH OF CHARIS. See the chariot at hand here of Love, Wherein my lady rideth! Each that draws is a swan, or a dove, And well the car, Love guideth. As she goes, all hearts do duty Unto her beauty, And, enamored, do wish, so they might But enjoy such a sight, That they still were to run by her side Through swords, through seas, whither she would ride. Do but look on her eyes! they do light All that Love's world compriseth; Do but look on her hair! it is bright As Love's star when it riseth! Do but mark--her forehead's smoother Than words that soothe her! And from her arched brows such a grace Sheds itself through the face, As alone there, triumphs to the life, All the gain, all the good, of the elements' strife. Have you seen but a bright lily grow, Before rude hands have touched it? Have you marked but the fall of the snow, Before the soil hath smutched it? Have you felt the wool of the beaver? Or swan's down ever? Or have smelt o' the bud of the brier? Or nard i' the fire? Or have tasted the bag of the bee? Oh, so white! oh, so soft! oh, so sweet, is she! BEN JONSON. ANNIE OF THARAW. FROM THE LOW GERMAN OF SIMON DACH. Annie of Tharaw, my true love of old, She is my life, and my goods, and my gold. Annie of Tharaw, her heart once again To me has surrendered in joy and in pain. Annie of Tharaw, my riches, my good, Thou, O my soul, my flesh, and my blood! Then come the wild weather, come sleet or come snow, We will stand by each other, however it blow. Oppression, and sickness, and sorrow, and pain Shall be to our true love as links to the chain. As the palm tree standeth so straight and so tall, The more the hail beats, and the more the rains fall,-- So love in our hearts shall grow mighty and strong, Through crosses, through sorrows, through manifold wrong. Shouldst thou be torn from me to wander alone In a desolate land where the sun is scarce known,-- Through forests I'll follow, and where the sea flows, Through ice, and through iron, through armies of foes. Annie of Tharaw, my light and my sun, The threads of our two lives are woven in one. Whate'er I have bidden thee thou hast obeyed, Whatever forbidden thou hast not gainsaid. How in the turmoil of life can love stand, Where there is not one heart, and one mouth, and one hand? Some seek for dissension, and trouble, and strife; Like a dog and a cat live such man and wife. Annie of Tharaw, such is not our love; Thou art my lambkin, my chick, and my dove. Whate'er my desire is, in thine may be seen; I am king of the household, and thou art its queen. It is this, O my Annie, my heart's sweetest rest, That makes of us twain but one soul in one breast. This turns to a heaven the hut where we dwell; While wrangling soon changes a home to a hell. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT. She was a phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight; A lovely apparition, sent To be a moment's ornament; Her eyes as stars of twilight fair; Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful dawn; A dancing shape, an image gay, To haunt, to startle, and waylay. I saw her upon nearer view, A spirit, yet a woman too! Her household motions light and free, And steps of virgin liberty; A countenance in which did meet Sweet records, promises as sweet; A creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food; For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles. And now I see with eye serene The very pulse of the machine; A being breathing thoughtful breath, A traveler between life and death; The reason firm, the temperate will, Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; A perfect woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command; And yet a spirit still, and bright With something of angelic light. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. NIGHT AND DEATH. Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew Thee from report divine, and heard thy name, Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, This glorious canopy of light and blue? Yet 'neath the curtain of translucent dew, Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, Hesperus, with the host of heaven, came; And lo! creation widened in man's view. Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed Within thy beams, O Sun? or who could find, While fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed, That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind? Why do we then shun death with anxious strife?-- If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life? JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE. IMMORTALITY. Forever with the Lord! Amen! so let it be! Life from the dead is in that word, And immortality! Here in the body pent, Absent from Him I roam, Yet nightly pitch my moving tent A day's march nearer home. My Father's house on high, Home of my soul! how near, At times, to Faith's foreseeing eye, Thy golden gates appear. Ah! then my spirit faints To reach the land I love, The bright inheritance of saints, Jerusalem above! Yet clouds will intervene, And all my prospect flies; Like Noah's dove, I flit between Rough seas and stormy skies. Anon the clouds depart, The winds and waters cease; While sweetly o'er my gladdened heart Expands the bow of peace! Beneath its glowing arch, Along the hallowed ground, I see cherubic armies march, A camp of fire around. I hear at morn and even, At noon and midnight hour, The choral harmonies of Heaven Earth's Babel tongues o'erpower. Then, then I feel, that He, Remembered or forgot, The Lord, is never far from me, Though I perceive Him not. JAMES MONTGOMERY. [Illustration: ALFRED TENNYSON.] THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. When Lazarus left his charnel cave, And home to Mary's house returned, Was this demanded--if he yearned To hear her weeping by his grave? "Where wert thou, brother, those four days?" There lives no record of reply, Which telling what it is to die Had surely added praise to praise. From every house the neighbors met, The streets were filled with joyful sound, A solemn gladness even crowned The purple brows of Olivet. Behold a man raised up by Christ! The rest remaineth unrevealed; He told it not; or something sealed The lips of that Evangelist. Her eyes are homes of silent prayer, Nor other thought her mind admits But, he was dead, and there he sits, And he that brought him back is there. Then one deep love doth supersede All other, when her ardent gaze Roves from the living brother's face, And rests upon the Life indeed. All subtle thought, all curious fears Borne down by gladness so complete, She bows, she bathes the Saviour's feet With costly spikenard and with tears. Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers, Whose loves in higher love endure; What souls possess themselves so pure, Or is there blessedness like theirs? ALFRED TENNYSON. _From "In Memoriam."_ FAITH. I have seen A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract Of inland ground, applying to his ear The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell; To which, in silence hushed, his very soul Listened intensely; and his countenance soon Brightened with joy; for from within were heard Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed Mysterious union with its native sea. Even such a shell the universe itself Is to the ear of Faith; and there are times, I doubt not, when to you it doth impart Authentic tidings of invisible things; Of ebb and flow, and everduring power; And central peace, subsisting at the heart Of endless agitation. Here you stand, Adore, and worship, when you know it not; Pious beyond the intention of your thought; Devout above the meaning of your will. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. _From "The Excursion."_ MY DOVES. My little doves have left a nest Upon an Indian tree, Whose leaves fantastic take their rest Or motion from the sea; For, ever there, the sea winds go With sunlit paces to and fro. The tropic flowers looked up to it, The tropic stars looked down, And there my little doves did sit With feathers softly brown, And glittering eyes that showed their right To gentle Nature's deep delight. And God them taught, at every close Of murmuring waves beyond, And green leaves round to interpose Their choral voices fond, Interpreting that love must be The meaning of the earth and sea. Fit ministers! Of living loves, Theirs hath the calmest fashion, Their living voice the likest moves To lifeless intonation, The lovely monotone of spring And winds, and such insensate things. My little doves were ta'en away From that glad nest of theirs, Across an ocean rolling gray, And tempest-clouded airs. My little doves,--who lately knew The sky and wave by warmth and blue! And now, within the city prison, In mist and chillness pent, With' sudden upward look they listen For sounds of past content-- For lapse of water, swell of breeze, Or nut fruit falling from the trees. The stir without the glow of passion, The triumph of the mart, The gold and silver as they clash on Man's cold metallic heart-- The roar of wheels, the cry for bread,-- These only sounds are heard instead. Yet still, as on my human hand Their fearless heads they lean, And almost seem to understand What human musings mean, (Their eyes, with such a plaintive shine, Are fastened upwardly to mine!) Soft falls their chant as on the nest Beneath the sunny zone; For love that stirred it in their breast Has not aweary grown, And 'neath the city's shade can keep The well of music clear and deep. And love that keeps the music, fills With pastoral memories: All echoing from out the hills, All droppings from the skies, All flowings from the wave and wind, Remembered in their chant, I find. So teach ye me the wisest part, My little doves! to move Along the city ways with heart Assured by holy love, And vocal with such songs as own A fountain to the world unknown. 'Twas hard to sing by Babel's stream-- More hard, in Babel's street! But if the soulless creatures deem Their music not unmeet For sunless walls--let _us_ begin, Who wear immortal wings within! To me, fair memories belong Of scenes that used to bless, For no regret, but present song, And lasting thankfulness, And very soon to break away, Like types, in purer things than they. I will have hopes that cannot fade, For flowers the valley yields! I will have humble thoughts instead Of silent, dewy fields! My spirit and my God shall be My seaward hill, my boundless sea. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. [Illustration] QUA CURSUM VENTUS. As ships becalmed at eve, that lay With canvas drooping, side by side, Two towers of sail at dawn of day Are scarce, long leagues apart, descried; When fell the night, upsprung the breeze, And all the darkling hours they plied, Nor dreamt but each the selfsame seas By each was cleaving, side by side: E'en so,--but why the tale reveal Of those whom, year by year unchanged, Brief absence joined anew to feel, Astounded, soul from soul estranged? At dead of night their sails were filled, And onward each rejoicing steered; Ah, neither blame, for neither willed, Or wist, what first with dawn appeared! To veer, how vain! On, onward strain, Brave barks! In light, in darkness too, Through winds and tides one compass guides,-- To that, and your own selves, be true. But O blithe breeze, and O great seas, Though ne'er, that earliest parting past, On your wide plain they join again, Together lead them home at last! One port, methought, alike they sought, One purpose hold where'er they fare,-- O bounding breeze, O rushing seas, At last, at last, unite them there! ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. HYMN TO THE NORTH STAR. The sad and solemn night Hath yet her multitude of cheerful fires; The glorious host of light Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires; All through her silent watches, gliding slow, Her constellations come, and climb the heavens, and go. Day, too, hath many a star To grace his gorgeous reign, as bright as they: Through the blue fields afar, Unseen, they follow in his flaming way: Many a bright lingerer, as the eve grows dim, Tells what a radiant troop arose and set with him. And thou dost see them rise, Star of the Pole! and thou dost see them set. Alone, in thy cold skies, Thou keep'st thy old unmoving station yet, Nor join'st the dances of that glittering train, Nor dipp'st thy virgin orb in the blue western main. There, at morn's rosy birth, Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air, And eve, that round the earth Chases the day, beholds thee watching there; There noontide finds thee, and the hour that calls The shapes of polar flame to scale heaven's azure walls. Alike, beneath thine eye, The deeds of darkness and of light are done; High towards the starlit sky Towns blaze, the smoke of battle blots the sun, The night storm on a thousand hills is loud And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea and cloud. On thy unaltering blaze The half-wrecked mariner, his compass lost, Fixes his steady gaze, And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast; And they who stray in perilous wastes, by night, Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their footsteps right. And, therefore, bards of old, Sages and hermits of the solemn wood, Did in thy beams behold A beauteous type of that unchanging good, That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray The voyager of time should shape his heedful way. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. EVENING. Now came still evening on, and twilight gray Had in her sober livery all things clad: Silence accompanied; for beast and bird, They to their grassy couch, these to their nests, Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale; She all night long her amorous descant sung; Silence was pleased: now glowed the firmament With living sapphires: Hesperus, that led The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon, Rising in clouded majesty, at length, Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light, And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw. JOHN MILTON. _From "Paradise Lost."_ QUIET WORK. One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee, One lesson which in every wind is blown, One lesson of two duties kept at one Though the loud world proclaim their enmity-- Of toil unsevered from tranquillity; Of labor, that in lasting fruit outgrows Far noisier schemes, accomplished in repose, Too great for haste, too high for rivalry. Yes, while on earth a thousand discords ring, Man's senseless uproar mingling with his toil, Still do thy quiet ministers move on, Their glorious tasks in silence perfecting; Still working, blaming still our vain turmoil, Laborers that shall not fail, when man is gone. MATTHEW ARNOLD. [Illustration: SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.] HYMN BEFORE SUNRISE, IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI. Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star In his steep course? so long he seems to pause On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc! The Arvé and Arveiron at thy base Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form, Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines, How silently! Around thee and above, Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black, An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it, As with a wedge! But when I look again, It is thy own calm home, thy crystal shrine, Thy habitation from eternity! O dread and silent mount! I gazed upon thee, Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, Didst vanish from my thoughts: entranced in prayer I worshiped the Invisible alone. Yet, like some sweet, beguiling melody, So sweet, we know not we are listening to it, Thou the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought, Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy: Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused, Into the mighty vision passing,--there, As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven! Awake, my soul! not only passive praise Thou owest,--not alone these swelling tears, Mute thanks, and secret ecstasy! Awake, Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake! Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn! Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the vale! O, struggling with the darkness all the night, And visited all night by troops of stars, Or when they climb the sky or when they sink; Companion of the morning star at dawn, Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn Coherald! O, wake, and utter praise! Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth? Who filled thy countenance with rosy light? Who made thee parent of perpetual streams? And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad, Who called you forth from night and utter death, From dark and icy caverns called you forth, Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks, Forever shattered and the same forever? Who gave you your invulnerable life, Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, Unceasing thunder and eternal foam? And who commanded--and the silence came-- "Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?" Ye ice falls! ye that from the mountain's brow, Adown enormous ravines slope amain, Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice, And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge! Motionless torrents! silent cataracts! Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven Beneath the keen, full moon? Who bade the sun Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet? "God!" let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer; and let the ice plains echo, "God!" "God!" sing, ye meadow streams with gladsome voice! Ye pine groves, with your soft and soullike sounds! And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder, "God!" Ye living flowers, that skirt the eternal frost! Ye wild goats, sporting round the eagle's nest! Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain storm! Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! Ye signs and wonders of the elements! Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise! Thou, too, hoar mount, with thy sky-pointing peaks! Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard, Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene Into the depths of clouds that veil thy breast, Thou, too, again, stupendous mountain! thou That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low In adoration, upward from thy base Slow traveling with dim eyes suffused with tears, Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud, To rise before me,--rise, O, ever rise, Rise like a cloud of incense, from the earth! Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills, Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven, Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky, And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun, Earth, with her thousand voices praises God. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. [Illustration: MONT BLANC. (Vale of Chamouni.)] ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER. Much have I traveled in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne: Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold. Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific--and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise-- Silent, upon a peak in Darien. JOHN KEATS. ULYSSES. It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times have I enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honored of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' Gleams that untraveled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As tho' to breathe were life. Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains: but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. This is my son, mine own Telemachus, To whom I leave the scepter and the isle-- Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill This labor, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. There lies the port: the vessel puffs her sail: There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me-- That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads--you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honor and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides: and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. ALFRED TENNYSON. [Illustration: DEATH OF CÆSAR.] ANTONY'S EULOGY ON CÆSAR. Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Cæsar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interrèd with their bones; So let it be with Cæsar. The noble Brutus Hath told you Cæsar was ambitious: If it were so, it were a grievous fault, And grievously hath Cæsar answered it. Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest-- For Brutus is an honorable man; So are they all, all honorable men-- Come I to speak in Cæsar's funeral. He was my friend, faithful and just to me: But Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honorable man. He hath brought many captives home to Rome, Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill: Did this in Cæsar seem ambitious? When that the poor have cried, Cæsar hath wept: Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honorable man. You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And, sure, he is an honorable man. I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, But here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once, not without cause: What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him? O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason. Bear with me: My heart is in the coffin there with Cæsar, And I must pause till it come back to me. * * * * * But yesterday the word of Cæsar might Have stood against the world; now lies he there, And none so poor to do him reverence. O masters, if I were disposed to stir Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage, I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong, Who, you all know, are honorable men: I will not do them wrong; I rather choose To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you, Than I will wrong such honorable men. But here's a parchment with the seal of Cæsar; I found it in his closet, 'tis his will: Let but the commons hear this testament-- Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read-- And they would go and kiss dead Cæsar's wounds And dip their napkins in his sacred blood, Yea, beg a hair of him for memory, And, dying, mention it within their wills, Bequeathing it as a rich legacy Unto their issue. * * * * * Have patience, gentle friends, I must not read it; It is not meet you know how Cæsar loved you. You are not wood, you are not stones, but men; And, being men, hearing the will of Cæsar, It will inflame you, it will make you mad: Tis good you know not that you are his heirs; For, if you should, O, what would come of it! * * * * * Will you be patient? will you stay awhile? I have o'ershot myself to tell you of it: I fear I wrong the honorable men Whose daggers have stabbed Cæsar; I do fear it. * * * * * You will compel me, then, to read the will? Then make a ring about the corpse of Cæsar, And let me show you him that made the will. Shall I descend? and will you give me leave? * * * * * Nay, press not so upon me; stand far off. * * * * * If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. You all do know this mantle: I remember The first time ever Cæsar put it on; 'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent, That day he overcame the Nervii: Look, in this place ran Cassius' dagger through: See what a rent the envious Casca made: Through this the well-belovèd Brutus stabbed; And as he plucked his cursèd steel away, Mark how the blood of Cæsar followed it, As rushing out of doors, to be resolved If Brutus so unkindly knocked, or no; For Brutus, as you know, was Cæsar's angel: Judge, O you gods, how dearly Cæsar loved him! This was the most unkindest cut of all: For when the noble Cæsar saw him stab, Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms, Quite vanquished him: then burst his mighty heart; And, in his mantle muffling up his face, Even at the base of Pompey's statua, Which all the while ran blood, great Cæsar fell. O, what a fall was there, my countrymen! Then I, and you, and all of us fell down, Whilst bloody treason flourished over us. O, now you weep; and, I perceive, you feel The dint of pity: these are gracious drops. Kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold Our Cæsar's vesture wounded? Look you here, Here is himself, marred, as you see, with traitors. * * * * * Stay, countrymen. * * * * * Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up To such a sudden flood of mutiny. They that have done this deed are honorable: What private griefs they have, alas, I know not, That made them do it: they are wise and honorable, And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you. I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts: I am no orator, as Brutus is; But, as you know me, a plain blunt man, That love my friend; and that they know full well That gave me public leave to speak of him: For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech, To stir men's blood: I only speak right on: I tell you that which you yourselves do know: Show you sweet Cæsar's wounds, poor, poor dumb mouths, And bid them speak for me: but were I Brutus, And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony Would ruffle up your spirits and put a tongue In every wound of Cæsar that should move The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny. * * * * * Yet hear me, countrymen; yet hear me speak. * * * * * Why, friends, you go to do you know not what: Wherein hath Cæsar thus deserved your loves? Alas, you know not: I must tell you, then: You have forgot the will I told you of. * * * * * Here is the will, and under Cæsar's seal. To every Roman citizen he gives, To every several man, seventy five drachmas. * * * * * Hear me with patience. * * * * * Moreover, he hath left you all his walks, His private arbors, and new-planted orchards, On this side Tiber; he hath left them you, And to your heirs forever, common pleasures, To walk abroad, and recreate yourselves. Here was a Cæsar! when comes such another? WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. _From "Julius Cæsar."_ [Illustration: DUKE OF WELLINGTON.] ODE ON THE DEATH OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. A SELECTION. Lo, the leader in these glorious wars Now to glorious burial slowly borne, Followed by the brave of other lands, He, on whom from both her open hands Lavish Honor showered all her stars, And affluent Fortune emptied all her horn. Yea, let all good things await Him who cares not to be great, But as he saves or serves the state. Not once or twice in our rough island-story, The path of duty was the way to glory: He that walks it, only thirsting For the right, and learns to deaden Love of self, before his journey closes, He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting Into glossy purples, which outredden All voluptuous garden roses. Not once or twice in our fair island-story, The path of duty was the way to glory: He, that ever following her commands, On with toil of heart and knees and hands, Thro' the long gorge to the far light has won His path upward, and prevailed, Shall find the toppling crags of Duty scaled Are close upon the shining table lands To which our God himself is moon and sun, Such was he: his work is done, But while the races of mankind endure, Let his great example stand Colossal, seen of every land, And keep the soldier firm, the statesman pure; Till in all lands and thro' all human story The path of duty be the way to glory: And let the land whose hearths he saved from shame For many and many an age proclaim At civic revel and pomp and game, And when the long-illumined cities flame, Their ever loyal iron leader's fame, With honor, honor, honor, honor to him, Eternal honor to his name. ALFRED TENNYSON. [Illustration: JOHN MILTON.] LONDON, 1802. Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters! altar, sword, and pen, Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancient English dower Of inward happiness. We are selfish men; Oh! raise us up, return to us again; And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart: Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. THE CAVALIER. While the dawn on the mountain was misty and gray, My truelove has mounted his steed, and away Over hill, over valley, o'er dale, and o'er down,-- Heaven shield the brave gallant that fights for the crown! He has doffed the silk doublet the breastplate to bear, He has placed the steel cap o'er his long-flowing hair, From his belt to his stirrup his broadsword hangs down,-- Heaven shield the brave gallant that fights for the crown! For the rights of fair England that broadsword he draws; Her King is his leader, her church is his cause; His watchward is honor, his pay is renown,-- God strike with the gallant that strikes for the crown! They may boast of their Fairfax, their Waller, and all The roundheaded rebels of Westminster Hall; But tell these bold traitors of London's proud town, That the spears of the North have encircled the crown. There's Derby and Cavendish, dread of their foes; There's Erin's high Ormond, and Scotland's Montrose! Would you match the base Skippon, and Massey, and Brown With the Barons of England, that fight for the crown? Now joy to the crest of the brave Cavalier! Be his banner unconquered, resistless his spear, Till in peace and in triumph his toils he may drown, In a pledge to fair England, her church, and her crown. SIR WALTER SCOTT. THERE'LL NEVER BE PEACE. By yon castle wa', at the close of the day, I heard a man sing, though his head it was gray; And as he was singing the tears down came, There'll never be peace till Jamie comes hame. The church is in ruins, the state is in jars; Delusions, oppressions, and murderous wars; We darena weel say't, though we ken wha's to blame, There'll never be peace till Jamie comes hame! My seven braw sons for Jamie drew sword, And now I greet round their green beds in the yerd. It brak the sweet heart of my faithfu' auld dame-- There'll never be peace till Jamie comes hame. Now life is a burthen that bows me down, Since I tint my bairns, and he tint his crown; But till my last moments my words are the same-- There'll never be peace till Jamie comes hame! ROBERT BURNS. BOOT AND SADDLE. Boot, saddle, to horse, and away! Rescue my castle before the hot day Brightens to blue from its silvery gray, (_Chorus_) _Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!_ Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you'd say; Many's the friend there will listen and pray "God's luck to gallants that strike up the lay-- (_Chorus_) '_Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!_'" Forty miles off, like a roebuck at bay, Flouts Castle Brancepeth the Roundheads' array: Who laughs, "Good fellows ere this, by my fay, (_Chorus_) '_Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!_'" Who? My wife Gertrude; that, honest and gay, Laughs when you talk of surrendering, "Nay! I've better counselors; what counsel they? (_Chorus_) '_Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!_'" ROBERT BROWNING. A JACOBITE IN EXILE. The weary day rins down and dies, The weary night wears through: And never an hour is fair wi' flower And never a flower wi' dew. I would the day were night for me, I would the night were day: For then would I stand in my ain fair land, As now in dreams I may. O lordly flow the Loire and Seine, And loud the dark Durance: But bonnier shine the braes of Tyne Than a' the fields of France; And the waves of Till that speak sae still Gleam goodlier where they glance. O weel were they that fell fighting On dark Drumossie's day: They keep their hame ayont the faem And we die far away. O sound they sleep, and saft, and deep, But night and day wake we; And ever between the sea banks green Sounds loud the sundering sea. And ill we sleep, sae sair we weep, But sweet and fast sleep they; And the mool that haps them roun' and laps them Is e'en their country's clay; But the land we tread that are not dead Is strange as night by day. Strange as night in a strange man's sight, Though fair as dawn it be: For what is here that a stranger's cheer Should yet wax blithe to see? The hills stand steep, the dells lie deep, The fields are green and gold; The hill streams sing, and the hillsides ring, As ours at home of old. But hills and flowers are nane of ours, And ours are over sea: And the kind strange land whereon we stand, It wotsna what were we Or ever we came, wi' scathe and shame, To try what end might be. Scathe and shame, and a waefu' name, And a weary time and strange, Have they that seeing a weird for dreeing Can die, and cannot change. Shame and scorn may we thole that mourn, Though sair be they to dree: But ill may we bide the thoughts we hide, Mair keen than wind and sea. Ill may we thole the night's watches, And ill the weary day: And the dreams that keep the gates of sleep, A waefu' gift gie they; For the songs they sing us, the sights they bring us, The morn blaws all away. On Aikenshaw the sun blinks braw, The burn rins blithe and fain; There's naught wi' me I wadna gie To look thereon again. On Keilder-side the wind blaws wide: There sounds nae hunting horn That rings sae sweet as the winds that beat Round banks where Tyne is born. The Wansbeck sings with all her springs, The bents and braes give ear; But the wood that rings wi' the sang she sings I may not see nor hear; For far and far thae blithe burns are, And strange is a' thing near. The light there lightens, the day there brightens, The loud wind there lives free: Nae light comes nigh me or wind blaws by me That I wad hear or see. But O gin I were there again, Afar ayont the faem, Cauld and dead in the sweet saft bed That haps my sires at hame! We'll see nae mair the sea banks fair, And the sweet gray gleaming sky, And the lordly strand of Northumberland, And the goodly towers thereby; And none shall know but the winds that blow The graves wherein we lie. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. [Illustration: ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.] A JACOBITE'S EPITAPH. To my true king I offered free from stain Courage and faith; vain faith, and courage vain. For him, I threw lands, honors, wealth, away, And one dear hope, that was more prized than they. For him I languished in a foreign clime, Gray-haired with sorrow in my manhood's prime; Heard on Lavernia Scargill's whispering trees, And pined by Arno for my lovelier Tees; Beheld each night my home in fevered sleep, Each morning started from the dream to weep; Till God, who saw me tried too sorely, gave The resting place I asked--an early grave. Oh thou, whom chance leads to this nameless stone, From that proud country which was once mine own, By those white cliffs I never more must see, By that dear language which I speak like thee, Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear O'er English dust. A broken heart lies here. THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. THE THREE FISHERS. Three fishers went sailing out into the west, Out into the west as the sun went down; Each thought on the woman who loved him the best, And the children stood watching them out of the town; For men must work, and women must weep, And there's little to earn, and many to keep, Though the harbor bar be moaning. Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower, And they trimmed the lamps as the sun went down; They looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower, And the night-rack came rolling up ragged and brown. But men must work and women must weep, Though storms be sudden and waters deep, And the harbor bar be moaning. Three corpses lay out on the shining sands In the morning gleam as the tide went down, And the women are weeping and wringing their hands, For those who will never come home to the town; For men must work, and women must weep, And the sooner 'tis over, the sooner to sleep And good-by to the bar and its moaning. CHARLES KINGSLEY. [Illustration: CHARLES KINGSLEY.] THE DESERTED HOUSE. Life and Thought have gone away Side by side, Leaving door and windows wide: Careless tenants they! All within is dark as night; In the windows is no light; And no murmur at the door, So frequent on its hinge before. Close the door, the shutters close, Or thro' the windows we shall see The nakedness and vacancy Of the dark, deserted house. Come away: no more of mirth Is here or merry-making sound. The house was builded of the earth, And shall fall again to ground. Come away: for life and thought Here no longer dwell; But in a city glorious-- A great and distant city--have bought A mansion incorruptible. Would they could have stayed with us! ALFRED TENNYSON. [Illustration] THE LAST LEAF. I saw him once before, As he passed by the door, And again The pavement stones resound, As he totters o'er the ground With his cane. They say that in his prime, Ere the pruning knife of Time Cut him down, Not a better man was found By the crier on his round Through the town. But now he walks the streets, And he looks at all he meets Sad and wan, And he shakes his feeble head, That it seems as if he said, "They are gone." The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has prest In their bloom, And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On the tomb. My grandmamma has said-- Poor old lady, she is dead Long ago-- That he had a Roman nose, And his cheek was like a rose In the snow. But now his nose is thin, And it rests upon his chin Like a staff, And a crook is in his back, And a melancholy crack In his laugh. I know it is a sin For me to sit and grin At him here; But the old three cornered hat, And the breeches, and all that, Are so queer! And if I should live to be The last leaf upon the tree In the spring, Let them smile, as I do now, At the old forsaken bough Where I cling. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. ON THE RECEIPT OF MY MOTHER'S PICTURE. O that those lips had language! Life has passed With me but roughly since I heard thee last. Those lips are thine--thy own sweet smile I see, The same that oft in childhood solaced me; Voice only fails, else how distinct they say, "Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!" The meek intelligence of those dear eyes (Blest be the art that can immortalize, The art that baffles Time's tyrannic claim To quench it) here shines on me still the same. Faithful remembrancer of one so dear, O welcome guest, though unexpected here! Who bidd'st me honor with an artless song, Affectionate, a mother lost so long. I will obey, not willingly alone, But gladly, as the precept were her own; And, while that face renews my filial grief, Fancy shall weave a charm for my relief, Shall steep me in Elysian reverie, A momentary dream, that thou art she. My mother! when I learned that thou wast dead, Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed? Hovered thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son, Wretch even then, life's journey just begun? Perhaps thou gav'st me, though unfelt, a kiss; Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in bliss-- Ah that maternal smile! it answers--Yes. I heard the bell tolled on thy burial day, I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away, And, turning from my nursery window, drew A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu! But was it such?--It was.--Where thou art gone, Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown. May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore, The parting word shall pass my lips no more! Thy maidens, grieved themselves at my concern, Oft gave me promise of thy quick return. What ardently I wished, I long believed, And, disappointed still, was still deceived. By expectation every day beguiled, Dupe of _to-morrow_ even from a child. Thus many a sad to-morrow came and went, Till, all my stock of infant sorrow spent, I learned at last submission to my lot, But, though I less deplored thee, ne'er forgot. Where once we dwelt our name is heard no more, Children not thine have trod my nursery floor; And where the gardener Robin, day by day, Drew me to school along the public way, Delighted with my bauble coach and wrapped In scarlet mantle warm, and velvet cap, 'Tis now become a history little known, That once we called the pastoral house our own. Short-lived possession! but the record fair, That memory keeps of all thy kindness there, Still outlives many a storm, that has effaced A thousand other themes less deeply traced. Thy nightly visits to my chamber made, That thou might'st know me safe and warmly laid; Thy morning bounties ere I left my home, The biscuit; or confectionery plum; The fragrant waters on my cheeks bestowed By thy own hand, till fresh they shone and glowed: All this, and more endearing still than all, Thy constant flow of love, that knew no fall. Ne'er roughened by those cataracts and breaks, That humor interposed too often makes; All this still legible in memory's page, And still to be so to my latest age, Adds joy to duty, makes me glad to pay Such honors to thee as my numbers may; Perhaps a frail memorial, but sincere, Not scorned in Heaven, though little noticed here. Could Time, his flight reversed, restore the hours, When, playing with thy vesture's tissued flowers, The violet, the pink, and jessamine, I pricked them into paper with a pin (And thou wast happier than myself the while, Wouldst softly speak, and stroke my head, and smile), Could those few pleasant days again appear, Might one wish bring them, would I wish them here? I would not trust my heart--the dear delight Seems so to be desired, perhaps I might,-- But no--what here we call our life is such, So little to be loved, and thou so much, That I should ill requite thee to constrain Thy unbound spirit into bonds again. Thou, as a gallant bark from Albion's coast (The storms all weathered and the ocean crossed), Shoots into port at some well-havened isle, Where spices breathe, and brighter seasons smile, There sits quiescent on the floods, that show Her beauteous form reflected clear below, While airs impregnated with incense play Around her, fanning light her streamers gay; So thou, with sails how swift! hast reached the shore, "Where tempests never beat, nor billows roar," And thy loved consort on the dangerous tide Of life long since has anchored by thy side. But me, scarce hoping to attain that rest, Always from port withheld, always distressed-- Me howling blasts drive devious, tempest-tossed, Sails ripped, seams opening wide, and compass lost, And day by day some current's thwarting force Sets me more distant from a prosperous course. Yet O the thought, that thou art safe, and he! That thought is joy, arrive what may to me. My boast is not, that I deduce my birth From loins enthroned, and rulers of the earth; But higher far my proud pretensions rise-- The son of parents passed into the skies. And now, farewell--Time unrevoked has run His wonted course, yet what I wished is done. By contemplation's help, not sought in vain, I seemed to have lived my childhood o'er again; To have renewed the joys that once were mine, Without the sin of violating thine; And, while the wings of Fancy still are free, And I can view this mimic show of thee, Time has but half succeeded in his theft-- Thyself removed, thy power to soothe me left. WILLIAM COWPER. IN HEAVENLY LOVE ABIDING. In heavenly love abiding, No change my heart shall fear, And safe is such confiding, For nothing changes here. The storm may roar without me, My heart may low be laid; But God is round about me, And can I be dismayed? Wherever He may guide me, No want shall turn me back; My Shepherd is beside me, And nothing can I lack. His wisdom ever waketh, His sight is never dim, He knows the way He taketh, And I will walk with Him. Green pastures are before me, Which yet I have not seen; Bright skies will soon be o'er me, Where darkest clouds have been. My hope I cannot measure, My path to life is free; My Father has my treasure, And He will walk with me. ANNA H. WARING. ST. AGNES' EVE. Deep on the convent roof the snows Are sparkling to the moon: My breath to heaven like vapor goes: May my soul follow soon! The shadows of the convent towers Slant down the snowy sward, Still creeping with the creeping hours That lead me to my Lord: Make Thou my spirit pure and clear As are the frosty skies, Or this first snowdrop of the year That in my bosom lies. As these white robes are soiled and dark, To yonder shining ground, As this pale taper's earthly spark, To yonder argent round; So shows my soul before the Lamb, My spirit before Thee, So in mine earthly house I am, To that I hope to be. Break up the heavens, O Lord! and far, Thro' all yon starlight keen, Draw me, thy bride, a glittering star, In raiment white and clean. He lifts me to the golden doors; The flashes come and go; All heaven bursts her starry floors, And strews her lights below, And deepens on and up! the gates Roll back, and far within For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits, To make me pure of sin. The sabbaths of eternity, One sabbath deep and wide-- A light upon the shining sea-- The Bridegroom with his bride! ALFRED TENNYSON. [Illustration: ELAINE.] ELAINE. But ten slow mornings past, and on the eleventh Her father laid the letter in her hand, And closed the hand upon it, and she died. So that day there was dole in Astolat. But when the next sun brake from underground, Then, those two brethren slowly with bent brows Accompanying, the sad chariot-bier Past like a shadow thro' the field, that shone Full summer, to that stream whereon the barge, Palled all its length in blackest samite, lay. There sat the lifelong creature of the house, Loyal, the dumb old servitor, on deck, Winking his eyes, and twisted all his face. So those two brethren from the chariot took And on the black decks laid her in her bed, Set in her hand a lily, o'er her hung The silken case with braided blazonings, And kissed her quiet brows, and saying to her "Sister, farewell for ever," and again "Farewell, sweet sister," parted all in tears. Then rose the dumb old servitor, and the dead, Steered by the dumb, went upward with the flood-- In her right hand the lily, in her left The letter--all her bright hair streaming down-- And all the coverlid was cloth of gold Drawn to her waist, and she herself in white All but her face, and that clear-featured face Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead, But fast asleep, and lay as tho' she smiled. ALFRED TENNYSON. _From "Launcelot and Elaine," The Idyls of the King._ SIR GALAHAD. My good blade carves the casques of men, My tough lance thrusteth sure, My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure. The shattering trumpet shrilleth high, The hard brands shiver on the steel, The splintered spear shafts crack and fly, The horse and rider reel; They reel, they roll in clanging lists, And when the tide of combat stands Perfume and flowers fall in showers, That lightly rain from ladies' hands. How sweet are looks that ladies bend On whom their favors fall! For them I battle to the end, To save from shame and thrall; But all my heart is drawn above, My knees are bowed in crypt and shrine; I never felt the kiss of love, Nor maiden's hand in mine. More bounteous aspects on me beam, Me mightier transports move and thrill; So keep I fair thro' faith and prayer A virgin heart in work and will. When down the stormy crescent goes, A light before me swims, Between dark stems the forest glows, I hear a noise of hymns: Then by some secret shrine I ride; I hear a voice, but none are there; The stalls are void, the doors are wide, The tapers burning fair. Fair gleams the snowy altar cloth, The silver vessels sparkle clean, The shrill bell rings, the censer swings, And solemn chants resound between. Sometimes on lonely mountain meres I find a magic bark, I leap on board: no helmsman steers; I float till all is dark. A gentle sound, an awful light! Three angels bear the holy Grail: With folded feet, in stoles of white, On sleeping wings they sail. Ah, blessed vision! blood of God! My spirit beats her mortal bars, As down dark tides the glory slides, And starlike mingles with the stars. When on my goodly charger borne Thro' dreaming towns I go, The cock crows ere the Christmas morn, The streets are dumb with snow. The tempest crackles on the leads, And, ringing, springs from brand and mail; But o'er the dark a glory spreads, And gilds the driving hail. I leave the plain, I climb the height; No branchy thicket shelter yields; But blessed forms in whistling storms Fly o'er waste fens and windy fields. A maiden knight--to me is given Such hope, I know not fear; I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven That often meet me here. I muse on joy that will not cease, Pure spaces clothed in living beams, Pure lilies of eternal peace, Whose odors haunt my dreams; And, stricken by an angel's hand, This mortal armor that I wear, This weight and size, this heart and eyes, Are touched, are turned to finest air. The clouds are broken in the sky, And thro' the mountain walls A rolling organ harmony Swells up, and shakes and falls. Then move the trees, the copses nod, Wings flutter, voices hover clear: "O just and faithful Knight of God! Ride on! the prize is near." So pass I hostel, hall, and grange; By bridge and ford, by park and pale, All armed I ride, whate'er betide, Until I find the holy Grail. ALFRED TENNYSON. TRUE KNIGHTHOOD. But I was first of all the kings who drew The knighthood-errant of this realm and all The realms together under me, their Head, In that fair order of my Table Round, A glorious company, the flower of men, To serve as models for the mighty world, And be the fair beginning of a time. I made them lay their hands in mine and swear To reverence the King, as if he were Their conscience, and their conscience as their King, To break the heathen and uphold the Christ, To ride abroad redressing human wrongs, To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it, To lead sweet lives in purest chastity, To love one maiden only, cleave to her, And worship her by years of noble deeds, Until they won her; for indeed I knew Of no more subtle master under heaven Than is the maiden passion for a maid, Not only to keep down the base in man, But teach high thoughts, and amiable words And courtliness, and the desire of fame, And love of truth, and all that makes a man. ALFRED TENNYSON. _From "Guinevere," The Idylls of the King._ GROWING OLD. Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made; Our times are in His hand Who saith "A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!" ROBERT BROWNING. _From "Rabbi Ben Ezra."_ APPARITIONS. Such a starved bank of moss Till, that May morn, Blue ran the flash across: Violets were born! Sky--what a scowl of cloud Till, near and far, Ray on ray split the shroud: Splendid, a star! World--how it walled about Life with disgrace Till God's own smile came out: That was thy face! ROBERT BROWNING. MY LOVE. Not as all other women are Is she that to my soul is dear; Her glorious fancies come from far, Beneath the silver evening star, And yet her heart is ever near. Great feelings hath she of her own, Which lesser souls may never know; God giveth them to her alone, And sweet they are as any tone Wherewith the wind may choose to blow. She is most fair, and thereunto Her life doth rightly harmonize; Feeling or thought that was not true Ne'er made less beautiful the blue Unclouded heaven of her eyes. She is a woman: one in whom The springtime of her childish years Hath never lost its fresh perfume, Though knowing well that life hath room For many blights and many tears. I love her with a love as still As a broad river's peaceful might, Which, by high tower and lowly mill, Seems wandering its own wayward will, And yet doth ever flow aright. And, on its full, deep breast serene, Like quiet isles my duties lie; It flows around them and between, And makes them fresh and fair and green, Sweet homes wherein to live and die. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. NORA'S VOW. Hear what Highland Nora said,-- "The Earlie's son I will not wed, Should all the race of nature die, And none be left but he and I. For all the gold, for all the gear, And all the lands both far and near, That ever valor lost or won, I would not wed the Earlie's son." "A maiden's vows," old Callum spoke, "Are lightly made, and lightly broke; The heather on the mountain's height Begins to bloom in purple light; The frost wind soon shall sweep away That luster deep from glen and brae; Yet Nora, ere its bloom be gone, May blithely wed the Earlie's son."-- "The swan," she said, "the lake's clear breast May barter for the eagle's nest; The Awe's fierce stream may backward turn, Ben-Cruaichan fall, and crush Kilchurn; Our kilted clans, when blood is high, Before their foes may turn and fly; But I, were all these marvels done, Would never wed the Earlie's son." Still in the water lily's shade Her wonted nest the wild swan made; Ben-Cruaichan stands as fast as ever, Still downward foams the Awe's fierce river; To shun the clash of foeman's steel, No Highland brogue has turned the heel: But Nora's heart is lost and won, --She's wedded to the Earlie's son! SIR WALTER SCOTT. SONG. Who is Silvia? what is she, That all our swains commend her? Holy, fair and wise is she; The heaven such grace did lend her That she might admirèd be. Is she kind, as she is fair? For beauty lives with kindness. Love doth to her eyes repair, To help him of his blindness; And, being helped, inhabits there. Then to Silvia let us sing, That Silvia is excelling; She excels each mortal thing Upon the dull earth dwelling; To her let us garlands bring. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. _From "The Two Gentlemen of Verona."_ [Illustration: SILVIA.] THE OUTLAW. O Brignall banks are wild and fair, And Greta woods are green, And you may gather garlands there Would grace a summer queen. And as I rode by Dalton Hall Beneath the turrets high, A maiden on the castle wall Was singing merrily,-- "O, Brignall banks are fresh and fair, And Greta woods are green; I'd rather rove with Edmund there, Than reign our English queen." --"If, maiden, thou wouldst wend with me, To leave both tower and town, Thou first must guess what life lead we, That dwell by dale and down. And if thou canst that riddle read, As read full well you may, Then to the greenwood shalt thou speed As blithe as Queen of May." Yet sung she, "Brignall banks are fair, And Greta woods are green; I'd rather rove with Edmund there, Than reign our English queen. "I read you by your bugle horn And by your palfrey good, I read for you a ranger sworn, To keep the king's greenwood." --"A ranger, lady, winds his horn, And 'tis at peep of light; His blast is heard at merry morn, And mine at dead of night." Yet sung she, "Brignall banks are fair, And Greta woods are gay; I would I were with Edmund there, To reign his Queen of May! "With burnished brand and musketoon, So gallantly you come, I read you for a bold dragoon That lists the tuck of drum." --"I list no more the tuck of drum, No more the trumpet hear; But when the beetle sounds his hum, My comrades take the spear. And O! though Brignall banks be fair And Greta woods be gay, Yet mickle must the maiden dare, Would reign my Queen of May! "Maiden! a nameless life I lead, A nameless death I'll die! The fiend, whose lantern lights the mead Were better mate than I! And when I'm with my comrades met Beneath the greenwood bough, What once we were we all forget, Nor think what we are now. Yet Brignall banks are fresh and fair, And Greta woods are green, And you may gather garlands there Would grace a summer queen." SIR WALTER SCOTT. _From "Rokeby."_ OH, WERT THOU IN THE CAULD BLAST. Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast, On yonder lea, on yonder lea, My plaidie to the angry airt, I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee: Or did misfortune's bitter storms Around thee blaw, around thee blaw, Thy bield should be my bosom, To share it a', to share it a'. Or were I in the wildest waste, Sae black and bare, sae black and bare, The desert were a paradise, If thou wert there, if thou wert there: Or were I monarch o' the globe, Wi' thee to reign, wi' thee to reign, The brightest jewel in my crown Wad be my queen, wad be my queen. ROBERT BURNS. FORBEARANCE. Hast thou named all the birds without a gun? Loved the wood rose, and left it on its stalk? At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse? Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust? And loved so well a high behavior, In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained, Nobility more nobly to repay? O, be my friend, and teach me to be thine! RALPH WALDO EMERSON. A CONSOLATION. When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate; Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possest, Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee--and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate; For thy sweet love remembered, such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. [Illustration: PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.] TO A SKYLARK. Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert, That from heaven, or near it Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest; Like a cloud of fire The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun O'er which clouds are brightening, Thou dost float and run, Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. The pale purple even Melts around thy flight; Like a star of heaven In the broad daylight Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight: Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere, Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. All the earth and air With thy voice is loud, As, when night is bare, From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed. What thou art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. Like a poet hidden In the light of thought, Singing hymns unbidden, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: Like a high-born maiden In a palace tower, Soothing her love-laden Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower: Like a glowworm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aërial hue Among he flowers and grass, which screen it from the view: Like a rose embowered In its own green leaves, By warm winds deflowered, Till the scent it gives Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-wingèd thieves. Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain-awakened flowers, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. Chorus hymeneal Or triumphal chaunt Matched with thine, would be all But an empty vaunt-- A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains? What shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? With thy clear keen joyance Languor cannot be: Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee: Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. Waking or asleep Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? We look before and after And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. Yet if we could scorn Hate, and pride, and fear; If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow The world should listen then, as I am listening now! PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. WATERLOO. There was a sound of revelry by night, And Belgium's capital had gathered then Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men; A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a marriage bell; But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell! Did ye not hear it?--No; 'twas but the wind, Or the car rattling o'er the stony street; On with the dance! let joy be unconfined; No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet To chase the glowing hours with flying feet. But hark!--that heavy sound breaks in once more, As if the clouds its echo would repeat; And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before! Arm, arm! it is--it is--the cannon's opening roar! Within a windowed niche of that high hall Sate Brunswick's fated chieftain; he did hear That sound, the first amidst the festival, And caught its tone with Death's prophetic ear; And when they smiled because he deemed it near, His heart more truly knew that peal too well Which stretched his father on a bloody bier, And roused the vengeance blood alone could quell: He rushed into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell. [Illustration: C. STEUBEN. NAPOLEON AT WATERLOO.] Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro, And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress, And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness; And there were sudden partings, such as press The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs Which ne'er might be repeated: who could guess If ever more should meet those mutual eyes, Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise! And there was mounting in hot haste: the steed, The mustering squadron, and the clattering car, Went pouring forward with impetuous speed, And swiftly forming in the ranks of war; And the deep thunder peal on peal afar; And near, the beat of the alarming drum Roused up the soldier ere the morning star; While thronged the citizens with terror dumb, Or whispering with white lips--"The foe! They come! they come!" And wild and high the "Cameron's gathering" rose, The war note of Lochiel, which Albyn's hills Have heard, and heard, too, have her Saxon foes: How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills Savage and shrill! But with the breath which fills Their mountain pipe, so fill the mountaineers With the fierce native daring which instills The stirring memory of a thousand years, And Evan's, Donald's fame rings in each clansman's ears! And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves, Dewy with Nature's tear drops, as they pass, Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves, Over the unreturning brave,--alas! Ere evening to be trodden like the grass Which now beneath them, but above shall grow In its next verdure, when this fiery mass Of living valor, rolling on the foe, And burning with high hope, shall molder cold and low. Last noon beheld them full of lusty life, Last eve in beauty's circle proudly gay, The midnight brought the signal sound of strife, The morn the marshaling in arms,--the day Battle's magnificently stern array! The thunder clouds close o'er it, which when rent The earth is covered thick with other clay, Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent, Rider and horse,--friend, foe,--in one red burial blent! LORD GEORGE NOEL GORDON BYRON. _From "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage."_ CROSSING THE BAR. Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea, But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home. Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark; For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar. ALFRED TENNYSON. RECESSIONAL. A VICTORIAN ODE. God of our fathers, known of old-- Lord of our far-flung battle line-- Beneath whose awful hand we hold Dominion over palm and pine-- Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget--lest we forget! The tumult and the shouting dies-- The Captains and the Kings depart-- Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart. Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget--lest we forget! Far-called, our navies melt away-- On dune and headland sinks the fire-- Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! Judge of the Nations, spare us yet Lest we forget--lest we forget! If, drunk with sight of power, we loose Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe-- Such boasting as the Gentiles use, Or lesser breeds without the Law-- Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget--lest we forget! For heathen heart that puts her trust In reeking tube and iron shard-- All valiant dust that builds on dust, And guarding calls not Thee to guard-- For frantic boast and foolish word, Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord! _Amen._ RUDYARD KIPLING. _RECOMMENDED POEMS._ As it has been impossible to include in this collection as many poems by American authors as we desired, we recommend the following, all of which are published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., with the exception of Bryant's poems, which are published by D. Appleton & Co:-- ALDRICH, THOMAS BAILEY. An Arab Welcome. A Turkish Legend. Baby Bell. Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book. In the Old Church Tower. On Lynn Terrace. BRYANT, WILLIAM CULLEN. A Forest Hymn. Thanatopsis. The Conqueror's Grave. EMERSON, RALPH WALDO. Boston. Days. Good-bye. Sea-shore. The Apology. The Titmouse. HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL. Bill and Joe. Boston Common. Contentment. Dorothy Q. Latter-Day Warnings. Sun and Shadow. The Boston Tea Party. The Boys. The Last Survivor. The Living Temple. The Old Cruiser. To a Caged Lion. Whittier's Seventieth Birthday. LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH. Killed at the Ford. King Robert of Sicily. Ser Federigo's Falcon. The Arsenal at Springfield. The Birds of Killingworth. The Leap of Roushan Beg. The North Cape. The Skeleton in Armor. The Three Kings. To the River Charles. To the River Rhone. Warden of the Cinque Ports. LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL. Ambrose. Commemoration Ode (Selections from). Irene. Mahmood, the Image-breaker. The Beggar. The Birch Tree. The Courtin'. The Dandelion. The Singing Leaves. The Vision of Sir Launfal. Under the Old Elm. Under the Willows. Yussouf. SILL, EDWARD ROWLAND. A Morning Thought. Opportunity. WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF. Among the Hills. Amy Wentworth. Barclay of Ury. Benedicite. King Volmer and Elsie. Mary Garvin. Maud Muller. Skipper Ireson's Ride. Snow-Bound. The Eternal Goodness. The Gift of Tritemius. The Two Rabbis. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Inconsistent punctuation corrected without comment. Archaic spellings retained. 
41162	----	PERSONAE OF EZRA POUND LONDON ELKIN MATHEWS, VIGO STREET MCMIX "_Make-strong old dreams lest this our world lose heart._" THIS BOOK IS FOR MARY MOORE OF TRENTON, IF SHE WANTS IT CONTENTS GRACE BEFORE SONG LA FRAISNE CINO NA AUDIART VILLONAUD FOR THIS YULE A VILLONAUD: BALLAD OF THE GIBBET MESMERISM FIFINE ANSWERS IN TEMPORE SENECTUTIS FAMAM LIBROSQUE CANO SCRIPTOR IGNOTUS PRAISE OF YSOLT CAMARADERIE MASKS TALLY-O BALLAD FOR GLOOM FOR E. Mc C AT THE HEART O' ME XENIA OCCIDIT SEARCH AN IDYL FOR GLAUCUS IN DURANCE GUILLAUME DE LORRIS BELATED IN THE OLD AGE OF THE SOUL ALBA BELINGALIS FROM SYRIA FROM THE SADDLE MARVOIL REVOLT AND THUS IN NINEVEH THE WHITE STAG PICCADILLY NOTES PERSONAE Grace before Song Lord God of heaven that with mercy dight Th' alternate prayer-wheel of the night and light Eternal hath to thee, and in whose sight Our days as rain drops in the sea surge fall, As bright white drops upon a leaden sea Grant so my songs to this grey folk may be: As drops that dream and gleam and falling catch the sun, Evan'scent mirrors every opal one Of such his splendour as their compass is, So, bold My Songs, seek ye such death as this. La Fraisne[1] SCENE: _The Ash Wood of Malvern._ For I was a gaunt, grave councillor Being in all things wise, and very old, But I have put aside this folly and the cold That old age weareth for a cloak. I was quite strong--at least they said so-- The young men at the sword-play; But I have put aside this folly, being gay In another fashion that more suiteth me. I have curled mid the boles of the ash wood, I have hidden my face where the oak Spread his leaves over me, and the yoke Of the old ways of men have I cast aside. By the still pool of Mar-nan-otha Have I found me a bride That was a dog-wood tree some syne. She hath called me from mine old ways She hath hushed my rancour of council, Bidding me praise Naught but the wind that flutters in the leaves. She hath drawn me from mine old ways, Till men say that I am mad; But I have seen the sorrow of men, and am glad, For I know that the wailing and bitterness are a folly. And I? I have put aside all folly and all grief. I wrapped my tears in an ellum leaf And left them under a stone And now men call me mad because I have thrown All folly from me, putting it aside To leave the old barren ways of men, Because my bride Is a pool of the wood, and Though all men say that I am mad It is only that I am glad, Very glad, for my bride hath toward me a great love That is sweeter than the love of women That plague and burn and drive one away. Aie-e! 'Tis true that I am gay Quite gay, for I have her alone here And no man troubleth us. Once when I was among the young men.... And they said I was quite strong, among the young men. Once there was a woman.... .... but I forget.... she was.... .... I hope she will not come again. .... I do not remember.... I think she hurt me once, but.... That was very long ago. I do not like to remember things any more. I like one little band of winds that blow In the ash trees here: For we are quite alone Here mid the ash trees. [Footnote 1: Prefatory note at end of volume.] Cino _Italian Campagna_ 1309, _the open road._ Bah! I have sung women in three cities, But it is all the same; And I will sing of the sun. Lips, words, and you snare them, Dreams, words, and they are as jewels, Strange spells of old deity, Ravens, nights, allurement: And they are not; Having become the souls of song. Eyes, dreams, lips, and the night goes. Being upon the road once more, They are not. Forgetful in their towers of our tuneing Once for Wind-runeing They dream us-toward and Sighing, say, "Would Cino, Passionate Cino, of the wrinkling eyes, Gay Cino, of quick laughter, Cino, of the dare, the jibe, Frail Cino, strongest of his tribe That tramp old ways beneath the sun-light, Would Cino of the Luth were here!" Once, twice, a year-- Vaguely thus word they: "Cino?" "Oh, eh, Cino Polnesi The singer is't you mean?" "Ah yes, passed once our way, A saucy fellow, but.... (Oh they are all one these vagabonds), Peste! 'tis his own songs? Or some other's that he sings? But _you_, My Lord, how with your city? But you "My Lord," God's pity! And all I knew were out, My Lord, you Were Lack-land Cino, e'en as I am, O Sinistro. I have sung women in three cities. But it is all one. I will sing of the sun. .... eh?.... they mostly had grey eyes, But it is all one, I will sing of the sun. "'Pollo Phoibee, old tin pan, you Glory to Zeus' aegis-day, Shield o' steel-blue, th' heaven o'er us Hath for boss thy lustre gay! 'Pollo Phoibee, to our way-fare Make thy laugh our wander-lied; Bid thy 'fulgence bear away care. Cloud and rain-tears pass they fleet! Seeking e'er the new-laid rast-way To the gardens of the sun.... * * * * * * * * * * I have sung women in three cities But it is all one. I will sing of the white birds In the blue waters of heaven, The clouds that are spray to its sea. Na Audiart _Que be-m vols mal._ NOTE: Any one who has read anything of the troubadours knows well the tale of Bertran of Born and My Lady Maent of Montaignac, and knows also the song he made when she would none of him, the song wherein he, seeking to find or make her equal, begs of each preeminent lady of Langue d'Oc some trait or some fair semblance: thus of Cembelins her "esgart amoros" to wit, her love-lit glance, of Aelis her speech free-running, of the Vicomptess of Chales her throat and her two hands, at Roacoart of Anhes her hair golden as Iseult's; and even in this fashion of Lady Audiart "although she would that ill come unto him" he sought and praised the lineaments of the torse. And all this to make "Una dompna soiseubuda" a borrowed lady or as the Italians translated it "Una donna ideale." Though thou well dost wish me ill Audiart, Audiart, Where thy bodice laces start As ivy fingers clutching through Its crevices, Audiart, Audiart, Stately, tall and lovely tender Who shall render Audiart, Audiart Praises meet unto thy fashion? Here a word kiss! Pass I on Unto Lady "Miels-de-Ben," Having praised thy girdle's scope How the stays ply back from it; I breathe no hope That thou shouldst.... Nay no whit Bespeak thyself for anything. Just a word in thy praise, girl, Just for the swirl Thy satins make upon the stair, 'Cause never a flaw was there Where thy torse and limbs are met: Though thou hate me, read it set In rose and gold.[2] Or when the minstrel, tale half told, Shall burst to lilting at the phrase "Audiart, Audiart".... Bertrans, master of his lays, Bertrans of Aultaforte thy praise Sets forth, and though thou hate me well, Yea though thou wish me ill Audiart, Audiart. Thy loveliness is here writ till, Audiart, Oh, till thou come again.[3] And being bent and wrinkled, in a form That hath no perfect limning, when the warm Youth dew is cold Upon thy hands, and thy old soul Scorning a new, wry'd casement Churlish at seemed misplacement Finds the earth as bitter As now seems it sweet, Being so young and fair As then only in dreams, Being then young and wry'd, Broken of ancient pride, Thou shalt then soften, Knowing I know not how Thou wert once she Audiart, Audiart For whose fairness one forgave Audiart, Audiart Que be-m vols mal. [Footnote 2: _I.e. in illumed manuscript._] [Footnote 3: Reincarnate.] Villonaud for this Yule Towards the Noel that morte saison (_Christ make the shepherds' homage dear!_) Then when the grey wolves everychone Drink of the winds their chill small-beer And lap o' the snows food's gueredon Then makyth my heart his yule-tide cheer (Skoal! with the dregs if the clear be gone!) Wineing the ghosts of yester-year. Ask ye what ghosts I dream upon? (_What of the magians' scented gear?_) The ghosts of dead loves everyone That make the stark winds reek with fear Lest love return with the foison sun And slay the memories that me cheer (Such as I drink to mine fashion) Wineing the ghosts of yester-year. Where are the joys my heart had won? (_Saturn and Mars to Zeus drawn near!_)[4] Where are the lips mine lay upon, Aye! where are the glances feat and clear That bade my heart his valour don? I skoal to the eyes as grey-blown mere (Who knows whose was that paragon?) Wineing the ghosts of yester-year. Prince: ask me not what I have done Nor what God hath that can me cheer But ye ask first where the winds are gone Wineing the ghosts of yester-year. [Footnote 4: _Signum Nativitatis._] A Villonaud Ballad of the Gibbet Or the song of the sixth companion SCENE: "_En cest bourdel ou tenoms nostr estat._" It being remembered that there were six of us with Master Villon, when that expecting presently to be hanged he writ a ballad whereof ye know: "_Frères humains qui après nous vivez_." Drink ye a skoal for the gallows tree! Francois and Margot and thee and me, Drink we the comrades merrily That said us, "Till then" for the gallows tree! Fat Pierre with the hook gauche-main, Thomas Larron "Ear-the-less," Tybalde and that armouress Who gave this poignard its premier stain Pinning the Guise that had been fain To make him a mate of the "Haulte Noblesse" And bade her be out with ill address As a fool that mocketh his drue's disdeign. Drink we a skoal for the gallows tree! Francois and Margot and thee and me, Drink we to Marienne Ydole, That hell brenn not her o'er cruelly. Drink we the lusty robbers twain, Black is the pitch o' their wedding-dress,[5] Lips shrunk back for the wind's caress As lips shrink back when we feel the strain Of love that loveth in hell's disdeign And sense the teeth through the lips that press 'Gainst our lips for the soul's distress That striveth to ours across the pain. Drink we skoal to the gallows tree! Francois and Margot and thee and me, For Jehan and Raoul de Vallerie Whose frames have the night and its winds in fee. Maturin, Guillaume, Jacques d'Allmain, Culdou lacking a coat to bless One lean moiety of his nakedness That plundered St. Hubert back o' the fane: Aie! the lean bare tree is widowed again For Michault le Borgne that would confess In "faith and troth" to a traitoress, "Which of his brothers had he slain?" But drink we skoal to the gallows tree! Francois and Margot and thee and me: These that we loved shall God love less And smite alway at their faibleness? Skoal!! to the Gallows! and then pray we: God damn his hell out speedily And bring their souls to his "Haulte Citee." [Footnote 5: Certain gibbeted corpses used to be coated with tar as a preservative; thus one scarecrow served as warning for considerable time. See Hugo "L'Homme qui Rit."] Mesmerism "_ And a cat's in the water-butt_."--ROBERT BROWNING. Aye you're a man that! ye old mesmerizer Tyin' your meanin' in seventy swadelin's, One must of needs be a hang'd early riser To catch you at worm turning. Holy Odd's bodykins! "Cat's i' the water butt!" Thought's in your verse-barrel, Tell us this thing rather, then we'll believe you, You, Master Bob Browning, spite your apparel Jump to your sense and give praise as we'd lief do. You wheeze as a head-cold long-tonsilled Calliope, But God! what a sight you ha' got o' our in'ards, Mad as a hatter but surely no Myope, Broad as all ocean and leanin' man-kin'ards. Heart that was big as the bowels of Vesuvius, Words that were wing'd as her sparks in eruption, Eagled and thundered as Jupiter Pluvius, Sound in your wind past all signs o' corruption. Here's to you, Old Hippety-hop o' the accents, True to the Truth's sake and crafty dissector, You grabbed at the gold sure; had no need to pack cents Into your versicles. Clear sight's elector! Fifine Answers "_Why is it that, disgraced they seem to relish life the more?_" --FIFINE AT THE FAIR, VII, 5. Sharing his exile that hath borne the flame, Joining his freedom that hath drunk the shame And known the torture of the Skull-place hours Free and so bound, that mingled with the powers Of air and sea and light his soul's far reach Yet strictured did the body-lips beseech "To drink" "I thirst." And then the sponge of gall. Wherefore we wastrels that the grey road's call Doth master and make slaves and yet make free, Drink all of life and quaffing lustily Take bitter with the sweet without complain And sharers in his drink defy the pain That makes you fearful to unfurl your souls. We claim no glory. If the tempest rolls About us we have fear, and then Having so small a stake grow bold again. We know not definitely even this But 'cause some vague half knowing half doth miss Our consciousness and leaves us feeling That somehow all is well, that sober, reeling From the last carouse, or in what measure Of so called right or so damned wrong our leisure Runs out uncounted sand beneath the sun, That, spite your carping, still the thing is done With some deep sanction, that, we know not how, Sans thought gives us this feeling; you allow That this not need we _know_ our every thought Or see the work shop where each mask is wrought Wherefrom we view the world of box and pit, Careless of wear, just so the mask shall fit And serve our jape's turn for a night or two. Call! eh bye! the little door at twelve! I meet you there myself. In Tempore Senectutis "For we are old And the earth passion dieth; We have watched him die a thousand times, When he wanes an old wind crieth, For we are old And passion hath died for us a thousand times But we grew never weary. Memory faileth, as the lotus-loved chimes Sink into fluttering of wind, But we grow never weary For we are old. The strange night-wonder of your eyes Dies not, though passion flieth Along the star fields of Arcturus And is no more unto our hands; My lips are cold And yet we twain are never weary, And the strange night-wonder is upon us, The leaves hold our wonder in their flutterings, The wind fills our mouths with strange words For our wonder that grows not old. The moth-hour of our day is upon us Holding the dawn; There is strange Night-wonder in our eyes Because the Moth-Hour leadeth the dawn As a maiden, holding her fingers, The rosy, slender fingers of the dawn." He saith: "Red spears bore the warrior dawn Of old Strange! Love, hast thou forgotten The red spears of the dawn, The pennants of the morning?" She saith: "Nay, I remember, but now Cometh the Dawn, and the Moth-Hour Together with him; softly For we are old." Famam Librosque Cano Your songs? Oh! The little mothers Will sing them in the twilight, And when the night Shrinketh the kiss of the dawn That loves and kills, What time the swallow fills Her note, the little rabbit folk That some call children, Such as are up and wide Will laugh your verses to each other, Pulling on their shoes for the day's business, Serious child business that the world Laughs at, and grows stale; Such is the tale --Part of it--of thy song-life Mine? A book is known by them that read That same. Thy public in my screed Is listed. Well! Some score years hence Behold mine audience, As we had seen him yesterday. Scrawny, be-spectacled, out at heels, Such an one as the world feels A sort of curse against its guzzling And its age-lasting wallow for red greed And yet; full speed Though it should run for its own getting, Will turn aside to sneer at 'Cause he hath No coin, no will to snatch the aftermath Of Mammon. Such an one as women draw away from For the tobacco ashes scattered on his coat And sith his throat Show razor's unfamiliarity And three days' beard: Such an one picking a ragged Backless copy from the stall, Too cheap for cataloguing, Loquitur, "Ah-eh! the strange rare name.... Ah-eh! He must be rare if even _I_ have not.... And lost mid-page Such age As his pardons the habit, He analyzes form and thought to see How I 'scaped immortality. Scriptor Ignotus Ferrara 1715 To K.R.H. "When I see thee as some poor song-bird Battering its wings, against this cage we Today, Then would I speak comfort unto thee, From out the heights I dwell in, when That great sense of power is upon me And I see my greater soul-self bending Sibylwise with that great forty year epic That you know of, yet unwrit But as some child's toy 'tween my fingers, And see the sculptors of new ages carve me thus, And model with the music of my couplets in their hearts: Surely if in the end the epic And the small kind deed are one; If to God the child's toy and the epic are the same, E'en so, did one make a child's toy, He might wright it well And cunningly, that the child might Keep it for his children's children And all have joy thereof. Dear, an this dream come true, Then shall all men say of thee "She 'twas that played him power at life's morn, And at the twilight Evensong, And God's peace dwelt in the mingled chords She drew from out the shadows of the past, And old world melodies that else He had known only in his dreams Of Iseult and of Beatrice. Dear, an this dream come true, I, who being poet only, Can give thee poor words only, Add this one poor other tribute, This thing men call immortality. A gift I give thee even as Ronsard gave it. Seeing before time, one sweet face grown old, And seeing the old eyes grow bright From out the border of Her fire-lit wrinkles, As she should make boast unto her maids "Ronsard hath sung the beauty, _my_ beauty, Of the days that I was fair." So hath the boon been given, by the poets of old time (Dante to Beatrice,--an I profane not--) Yet with my lesser power shall I not strive To give it thee? All ends of things are with Him From whom are all things in their essence. If my power be lesser Shall my striving be less keen? But rather more! if I would reach the goal, Take then the striving! "And if," for so the Florentine hath writ When having put all his heart Into his "Youth's Dear Book" He yet strove to do more honour To that lady dwelling in his inmost soul He would wax yet greater To make her earthly glory more. Though sight of hell and heaven were price thereof, If so it be His will, with whom Are all things and through whom Are all things good, Will I make for thee and for the beauty of thy music A new thing As hath not heretofore been writ. Take then my promise! Praise of Ysolt In vain have I striven to teach my heart to bow; In vain have I said to him "There be many singers greater than thou." But his answer cometh, as winds and as lutany. As a vague crying upon the night That leaveth me no rest, saying ever, "Song, a song." Their echoes play upon each other in the twilight Seeking ever a song. Lo, I am worn with travail And the wandering of many roads hath made my eyes As dark red circles filled with dust. Yet there is a trembling upon me in the twilight, And little red elf words crying "A song," Little grey elf words crying for a song, Little brown leaf words crying "A song," Little green leaf words crying for a song. The words are as leaves, old brown leaves in the spring time Blowing they know not whither, seeking a song. White words as snow flakes but they are cold Moss words, lip words, words of slow streams. In vain have I striven to teach my soul to bow, In vain have I pled with him, "There be greater souls than thou." For in the morn of my years there came a woman As moon light calling As the moon calleth the tides, "Song, a song." Wherefore I made her a song and she went from me As the moon doth from the sea, But still came the leaf words, little brown elf words Saying "The soul sendeth us." "A song, a song!" And in vain I cried unto them "I have no song For she I sang of hath gone from me." But my soul sent a woman, a woman of the wonder folk, A woman as fire upon the pine woods crying "Song, a song." As the flame crieth unto the sap. My song was ablaze with her and she went from me As flame leaveth the embers so went she unto new forests And the words were with me crying ever "Song, a song." And I "I have no song," Till my soul sent a woman as the sun: Yea as the sun calleth to the seed, As the spring upon the bough So is she that cometh the song-drawer She that holdeth the wonder words within her eyes The words little elf words that call ever unto me "Song, a song." ENVOI In vain have I striven with my soul to teach my soul to bow. What soul boweth while in his heart art thou? Camaraderie "_E tuttoque to fosse a la compagnia di molti, quanto alla vista_." Sometimes I feel thy cheek against my face Close-pressing, soft as is the South's first breath That all the subtle earth-things summoneth To spring in wood-land and in meadow space. Yea sometimes in a bustling man-filled place Me seemeth some-wise thy hair wandereth Across mine eyes, as mist that halloweth The air awhile and giveth all things grace. Or on still evenings when the rain falls close There comes a tremor in the drops, and fast My pulses run, knowing thy thought hath passed That beareth thee as doth the wind a rose. Masks These tales of old disguisings, are they not Strange myths of souls that found themselves among Unwonted folk that spake a hostile tongue, Some soul from all the rest who'd not forgot The star-span acres of a former lot Where boundless mid the clouds his course he swung, Or carnate with his elder brothers sung E'er ballad makers lisped of Camelot? Old singers half-forgetful of their tunes, Old painters colour-blind come back once more, Old poets skilless in the wind-heart runes, Old wizards lacking in their wonder-lore: All they that with strange sadness in their eyes Ponder in silence o'er earth's queynt devyse? Tally-O What ho! the wind is up and eloquent. Through all the Winter's halls he crieth Spring. Now will I get me up unto mine own forests And behold their bourgeoning. Ballad for Gloom For God, our God, is a gallant foe That playeth behind the veil. I have loved my God as a child at heart That seeketh deep bosoms for rest, I have loved my God as maid to man But lo, this thing is best: To love your God as a gallant foe that plays behind the veil, To meet your God as the night winds meet beyond Arcturus' pale. I have played with God for a woman, I have staked with my God for truth, I have lost to my God as a man, clear eyed, His dice be not of ruth. For I am made as a naked blade But hear ye this thing in sooth: Who loseth to God as man to man Shall win at the turn of the game. I have drawn my blade where the lightnings meet But the ending is the same: Who loseth to God as the sword blades lose Shall win at the end of the game. For God, our God, is a gallant foe that playeth behind the veil, Whom God deigns not to overthrow Hath need of triple mail. For E. Mc C _That was my counter-blade under Leonardo Terrone,_ _Master of Fence_. Gone while your tastes were keen to you, Gone where the grey winds call to you, By that high fencer, even Death, Struck of the blade that no man parrieth; Such is your fence, one saith, One that hath known you. Drew you your sword most gallantly Made you your pass most valiantly 'Gainst that grey fencer, even Death. Gone as a gust of breath Faith! no man tarrieth, "_Se il cor ti manca_" but it failed thee not! "_Non ti fidar_" it is the sword that speaks "_In me_."[6] Thou trusted'st in thyself and met the blade 'Thout mask or gauntlet, and art laid As memorable broken blades that be Kept as bold trophies of old pageantry. As old Toledos past their days of war Are kept mnemonic of the strokes they bore, So art thou with us, being good to keep In our heart's sword-rack, though thy sword-arm sleep. ENVOI Struck of the blade that no man parrieth Pierced of the point that toucheth lastly all, 'Gainst that grey fencer, even Death, Behold the shield! He shall not take thee all. [Footnote 6: Sword-rune "If thy heart fail thee trust not in me."] At the Heart o' Me A.D. 751 With ever one fear at the heart o' me Long by still sea-coasts coursed my Grey-Falcon, And the twin delights of shore and sea were mine, Sapphire and emerald with fine pearls between. Through the pale courses of the land-caressing in-streams Glided my barge and the kindly strange peoples Gave to me laugh for laugh, and wine for my tales of wandering. And the cities gave me welcome and the fields free passage, With ever one fear at the heart o' me. An thou should'st grow weary ere my returning, An "_they_" should call to thee from out the borderland, What should avail me booty of whale-ways? What should avail me gold rings or the chain-mail? What should avail me the many-twined bracelets? What should avail me, O my beloved, Here in this "Middan-gard"[7] what should avail me Out of the booty and gain of my goings? [Footnote 7: Anglo Saxon "Earth".] XENIA And Unto thine eyes my heart Sendeth old dreams of the spring-time, Yea of wood-ways my rime Found thee and flowers in and of all streams That sang low burthen, and of roses, That lost their dew-bowed petals for the dreams We scattered o'er them passing by. Occidit Autumnal breaks the flame upon the sun-set herds. The sheep on Gilead as tawn hair gleam Neath Mithra's dower and his slow departing, While in the sky a thousand fleece of gold Bear, each his tribute, to the waning god. Hung on the rafters of the effulgent west, Their tufted splendour shields his decadence, As in our southern lands brave tapestries Are hung king-greeting from the ponticells And drag the pageant from the earth to air, Wherein the storied figures live again, Wind-molden back unto their life's erst guise, All tremulous beneath the many-fingered breath That Aufidus[8] doth take to house his soul. [Footnote 8: The West wind.] Search I have heard a wee wind searching Through still forests for me; I have seen a wee wind searching O'er still sea. Through woodlands dim have I taken my way; And o'er silent waters night and day Have I sought the wee wind. An Idyl for Glaucus _Nel suo aspetto tal dentro mifei_ _Qual si fe' Glauco nel gustar dell' erba_ _Che il fe' consorto in mar degli altri dei._ PARADISO, I, 67-9. "_As Glaucus tasting the grass that made_ _him sea-fellow with the other gods._" I Whither he went I may not follow him. His eyes Were strange to-day. They always were, After their fashion, kindred of the sea. To-day I found him. It is very long That I had sought among the nets, and when I asked The fishermen, they laughed at me. I sought long days amid the cliffs thinking to find The body-house of him, and then There at the blue cave-mouth my joy Grew pain for suddenness, to see him 'live. Whither he went I may not come, it seems He is become estranged from all the rest, And all the sea is now his wonder-house. And he may sink unto strange depths, he tells me of, That have no light as we it deem. E'en now he speaks strange words. I did not know One half the substance of his speech with me. And then when I saw naught he sudden leaped And shot, a gleam of silver, down, away. And I have spent three days upon this rock And yet he comes no more. He did not even seem to know I watched him gliding through the vitreous deep. II They chide me that the skein I used to spin Holds not my interest now, They mock me at the route, well, I have come again. Last night I saw three white forms move Out past the utmost wave that bears the white foam crest. I somehow knew that he was one of them. Oimè, Oimè. I think each time they come Up from the sea heart to the realm of air They are more far-removed from the shore. When first I found him here, he slept E'en as he might after a long night's taking on the deep. And when he woke some whit the old kind smile Dwelt round his lips and held him near to me. But then strange gleams shot through the grey-deep eyes As though he saw beyond and saw not me. And when he moved to speak it troubled him. And then he plucked at grass and bade me eat. And then forgot me for the sea its charm And leapt him in the wave and so was gone. III I wonder why he mocked me with the grass. I know not any more how long it is Since I have dwelt not in my mother's house. I know they think me mad, for all night long I haunt the sea-marge, thinking I may find Some day the herb he offered unto me. Perhaps he did not jest; they say some simples have More wide-spanned power than old wives draw from them. Perhaps, found I this grass, he'd come again. Perhaps 'tis some strange charm to draw him here, 'Thout which he may not leave his new-found crew That ride the two-foot coursers of the deep, And laugh in storms and break the fishers' nets. Oimè, Oimè! SONG. _Voices in the Wind._ We have worn the blue and vair, And all the sea-caves Know us of old, and know our new-found mate. There's many a secret stair The sea-folk climb.... _Out of the Wind._ Oimè, Oimè! I wonder why the wind, even the wind doth seem To mock me now, all night, all night, and Have I strayed among the cliffs here They say, some day I'll fall Down through the sea-bit fissures, and no more Know the warm cloak of sun, or bathe The dew across my tired eyes to comfort them. They try to keep me hid within four walls. I will not stay! Oimè! And the wind saith; Oimè! I am quite tired now. I know the grass Must grow somewhere along this Thracian coast, If only he would come some little while and find it me. ENDETH THE LAMENT FOR GLAUCUS In Durance I am homesick after mine own kind, Oh I know that there are folk about me, friendly faces, But I am homesick after mine own kind. "These sell our pictures"! Oh well, They reach me not, touch me some edge or that, But reach me not and all my life's become One flame, that reacheth not beyond Mine heart's own hearth, Or hides among the ashes there for thee. "Thee"? Oh "thee" is who cometh first Out of mine own-soul-kin, For I am homesick after mine own kind And ordinary people touch me not. Yea, I am homesick After mine own kind that know, and feel And have some breath for beauty and the arts. Aye, I am wistful for my kin of the spirit And have none about me save in the shadows When come _they_, surging of power, "DAEMON," "Quasi KALOUN" S.T. says, Beauty is most that a "calling to the soul." Well then, so call they; the swirlers out of the mist of my soul, They that come mewards bearing old magic. But for all that, I am home sick after mine own kind And would meet kindred e'en as I am, Flesh-shrouded bearing the secret. "All they that with strange sadness" Have the earth in mock'ry, and are kind to all, My fellows, aye I know the glory Of th' unbounded ones, but ye, that hide As I hide most the while And burst forth to the windows only whiles or whiles For love, or hope, or beauty or for power, Then smoulder, with the lids half closed And are untouched by echoes of the world. Oh ye, my fellows: with the seas between us some be, Purple and sapphire for the silver shafts Of sun and spray all shattered at the bows Of such a "Veltro" of the vasty deep As bore my tortoise house scant years agone: And some the hills hold off, The little hills to east us, though here we Have damp and plain to be our shutting in. And yet my soul sings "Up!" and we are one. Yea thou, and Thou, and THOU, and all my kin To whom my breast and arms are ever warm, For that I love ye as the wind the trees That holds their blossoms and their leaves in cure And calls the utmost singing from the boughs That 'thout him, save the aspen, were as dumb Still shade, and bade no whisper speak the birds of how "Beyond, beyond, beyond, there lies...." Guillaume de Lorris Belated A Vision of Italy Wisdom set apart from all desire, A hoary Nestor with youth's own glad eyes, Him met I at the style, and all benign He greeted me an equal and I knew, By this his lack of pomp, he was himself. Slow-Smiling is companion unto him, And Mellow-Laughter serves, his trencherman. And I a thousand beauties there beheld. And he and they made merry endlessly. And love was rayed between them as a mist, And yet so fine and delicate a haze It did impede the eyes no whit, Unless it were to make the halo round each one Appear more myriad-jewelled marvellous, Than any pearled and ruby diadem the courts o' earth ha' known. Slender as mist-wrought maids and hamadryads Did meseem these shapes that ministered, These formed harmonies with lake-deep eyes, And first the cities of north Italy I did behold, Each as a woman wonder-fair, And svelte Verona first I met at eve; And in the dark we kissed and then the way Bore us somewhile apart. And yet my heart keeps tryst with her, So every year our thoughts are interwove As fingers were, such times as eyes see much, and tell. And she that loved the master years agone, That bears his signet in her "Signor Square," "Che lo glorifico."[9] She spread her arms, And in that deep embrace All thoughts of woe were perished And of pain and weariness and all the wrack Of light-contending thoughts and battled-gleams, (That our intelligence doth gain by strife against itself) Of things we have not yet the earnèd right to clearly see. And all, yea all that dust doth symbolize Was there forgot, and my enfranchised soul Grew as the liquid elements, and was infused With joy that is not light, nor might nor harmony, And yet hath part and quality of all these three, Whereto is added calm past earthly peace. Thus with Verona's spirit, and all time Swept on beyond my ken, and as the sea Hath in no wise a form within itself, _Cioè_, as liquid hath no form save where it bounden is By some enshrouding chalice of hard things-- As wine its graven goblet, and the sea Its wave-hewn basalt for a bordering, So had my thought and now my thought's remembrance No "_in_formation" of whatso there passed For this long space the dream-king's horny gate. And when that age was done and the transfusion Of all my self through her and she through me, I did perceive that she enthroned two things: Verona, and a maid I knew on earth; And dulled some while from dream, and then become That lower thing, deductive intellect, I saw How all things are but symbols of all things,[10] And each of many, do we know But the equation governing. And in my rapture at this vision's scope I saw no end or bourn to what things mean, So praised Pythagoras and once more raised By this said rapture to the house of Dream, Beheld Fenicè as a lotus-flower Drift through the purple of the wedded sea And grow a wraith and then a dark-eyed she, And knew her name was "All-forgetfulness," And hailed her: "Princess of the Opiates," And guessed her evil and her good thereby. And then a maid of nine "Pavia" hight, Passed with a laugh that was all mystery, And when I turned to her She reached me one clear chalice of white wine, Pressed from the recent grapes that yet were hung Adown her shoulders, and were bound Right cunningly about her elfish brows; So hale a draught, the life of every grape Lurked without ferment in the amber cloud. And memory, this wine was, of all good. And more I might have seen: Firenza, Goito, Or that proudest gate, Ligurian Genoa, Cornelia of Colombo of far sight, That, man and seer in one, had well been twain, And each a glory to his hills and sea; And past her a great band Bright garlanded or rich with purple skeins, And crimson mantles and queynt fineries That tarnished held but so the more Of dim allurement in their half-shown folds: So swept my vision o'er their filmy ranks, Then rose some opaque cloud, Whose name I have not yet discerned, And music as I heard it one clear night Within our earthly night's own mirroring, _Cioè_,--San Pietro by Adige,[11] Where altar candles blazed out as dim stars, And all the gloom was soft, and shadowy forms Made and sang God, within the far-off choir. And in a clear space high behind Them and the tabernacle of that place, Two tapers shew the master of the keys As some white power pouring forth itself. And all the church rang low and murmured Thus in my dream of forms the music swayed. And I was lost in it and only woke When something like a mass bell rang, and then That white-foot wind, pale Dawn's annunciatrice. Me bore to earth again, but some strange peace I had not known so well before this swevyn Clung round my head and made me hate earth less. [Footnote 11: For notes on this poem see end of volume--A Vision of Italy.] In the Old Age of the Soul I do not choose to dream; there cometh on me Some strange old lust for deeds. As to the nerveless hand of some old warrior The sword-hilt or the war-worn wonted helmet Brings momentary life and long-fled cunning, So to my soul grown old-- Grown old with many a jousting, many a foray, Grown old with many a hither-coming and hence-going-- Till now they send him dreams and no more deed; So doth he flame again with might for action, Forgetful of the council of the elders, Forgetful that who rules doth no more battle, Forgetful that such might no more cleaves to him So doth he flame again toward valiant doing. Alba Belingalis Phoebus shineth ere his splendour flieth Aurora drives faint light athwart the land And the drowsy watcher crieth, "ARISE." _Ref_ O'er cliff and ocean the white dawn appeareth It passeth vigil and the shadows cleareth. They be careless of the gates, delaying, Whom the ambush glides to hinder, Whom I warn and cry to, praying, "ARISE." _Ref_ O'er cliff and ocean the white dawn appeareth It passeth vigil and the shadows cleareth. Forth from out Arcturus, North Wind bloweth The stars of heaven sheathe their glory And sun-driven forth-goeth Settentrion. _Ref._ O'er sea mist, and mountain is the dawn display'd It passeth watch and maketh night afraid. From a tenth-century MS. From Syria The song of Peire Bremon "Lo Tort" that he made for his Lady in Provença: he being in Syria a crusader. In April when I see all through Mead and garden new flowers blow, And streams with ice-bands broken flow, Eke hear the birds their singing do; When spring's grass-perfume floateth by Then 'tis sweet song and birdlet's cry Do make mine old joy come anew. Such time was wont my thought of old To wander in the ways of love. Burnishing arms and clang thereof, And honour-services manifold Be now my need. Whoso combine Such works, love is his bread and wine, Wherefore should his fight the more be bold. Song bear I, who tears should bring Sith ire of love mak'th me annoy, With song think I to make me joy. Yet ne'er have I heard said this thing: "He sings who sorrow's guise should wear." Natheless I will not despair That sometime I'll have cause to sing. I should not to despair give way That some while I'll my lady see. I trust well He that lowered me Hath power again to make me gay. But if e'er I come to my Love's land And turn again to Syrian strand, God keep me there for a fool, alway! God for a miracle well should Hold my coming from her away, And hold me in His grace alway That I left her, for holy-rood. An I lose her, no joy for me, Pardi, hath the wide world in fee. Nor could He mend it, if He would. Well did she know sweet wiles to take My heart, when thence I took my way. 'Thout sighing, pass I ne'er a day For that sweet semblance she did make To me, saying all in sorrow: "Sweet friend, and what of me to-morrow?" "Love mine, why wilt me so forsake?" ENVOI Beyond sea be thou sped, my song, And, by God, to my Lady say That in desirous, grief-filled way My nights and my days are full long. And command thou William the Long-Seer To tell thee to my Lady dear, That comfort be her thoughts among. The only bit of Peire Bremon's work that has come down to us, and through its being printed with the songs of Giraut of Bornelh he is like to lose credit for even this.--E.P. From the Saddle D'AUBIGNE TO DIANE Wearied by wind and wave death goes With gin and snare right near alway Unto my sight. Behind me bay As hounds the tempests of my foes. Ever on ward against such woes, Pistols my pillow's service pay, Yet Love makes me the poet play. Thou know'st the rime demands repose, So if my line disclose distress, The soldier and my restlessness And teen, Pardon, dear Lady mine, For since mid war I bear love's pain 'Tis meet my verse, as I, show sign Of powder, gun-match and sulphur stain. Marvoil A poor clerk I, "Arnaut the less" they call me, And because I have small mind to sit Day long, long day cooped on a stool A-jumbling o' figures for Maitre Jacques Polin, I ha' taken to rambling the South here. The Vicomte of Beziers's not such a bad lot. I made rimes to his lady this three year: Vers and canzone, till that damn'd son of Aragon, Alfonso the half-bald, took to hanging _His_ helmet at Beziers. Then came what might come, to wit: three men and one woman, Beziers off at Mont-Ausier, I and his lady Singing the stars in the turrets of Beziers, And one lean Aragonese cursing the seneschal To the end that you see, friends: Aragon cursing in Aragon, Beziers busy at Beziers-- Bored to an inch of extinction, Tibors all tongue and temper at Mont-Ausier, Me! in this damn'd inn of Avignon, Stringing long verse for the Burlatz; All for one half-bald, knock-knee'd king of the Aragonese, Alfonso, Quatro, poke-nose. And if when I am dead They take the trouble to tear out this wall here, They'll know more of Arnaut of Marvoil Than half his canzoni say of him. As for will and testament I leave none, Save this: "Vers and canzone to the Countess of Beziers In return for the first kiss she gave me." May her eyes and her cheek be fair To all men except the King of Aragon, And may I come speedily to Beziers Whither my desire and my dream have preceded me. O hole in the wall here! be thou my jongleur As ne'er had I other, and when the wind blows, Sing thou the grace of the Lady of Beziers, For even as thou art hollow before I fill thee with this parchment, So is my heart hollow when she filleth not mine eyes, And so were my mind hollow, did she not fill utterly my thought. Wherefore, O hole in the wall here, When the wind blows sigh thou for my sorrow That I have not the Countess of Beziers Close in my arms here. Even as thou shalt soon have this parchment. O hole in the wall here, be thou my jongleur, And though thou sighest my sorrow in the wind, Keep yet my secret in thy breast here; Even as I keep her image in my heart here. _Mihi pergamena deest._ Revolt Against the crepuscular spirit in modern poetry I would shake off the lethargy of this our time, and give For shadows--shapes of power For dreams--men. "It is better to dream than do"? Aye! and, No! Aye! if we dream great deeds, strong men, Hearts hot, thoughts mighty. No! if we dream pale flowers, Slow-moving pageantry of hours that languidly Drop as o'er-ripened fruit from sallow trees. If so we live and die not life but dreams, Great God, grant life in dreams, Not dalliance, but life! Let us be men that dream, Not cowards, dabblers, waiters For dead Time to reawaken and grant balm For ills unnamed. Great God, if we be damn'd to be not men but only dreams, Then let us be such dreams the world shall tremble at And know we be its rulers though but dreams! Then let us be such shadows as the world shall tremble at And know we be its masters though but shadow! Great God, if men are grown but pale sick phantoms That must live only in these mists and tempered lights And tremble for dim hours that knock o'er loud Or tread too violent in passing them; Great God, if these thy sons are grown such thin ephemera, I bid thee grapple chaos and beget Some new titanic spawn to pile the hills and stir This earth again. And Thus in Nineveh "Aye! I am a poet and upon my tomb Shall maidens scatter rose leaves And men myrtles, ere the night Slays day with her dark sword. "Lo! this thing is not mine Nor thine to hinder, For the custom is full old, And here in Nineveh have I beheld Many a singer pass and take his place In those dim halls where no man troubleth His sleep or song. And many a one hath sung his songs More craftily, more subtle-souled than I; And many a one now doth surpass My wave-worn beauty with his wind of flowers, Yet am I poet, and upon my tomb Shall all men scatter rose leaves Ere the night slay light With her blue sword. "It is not, Raama, that my song rings highest Or more sweet in tone than any, but that I Am here a Poet, that doth drink of life As lesser men drink wine." The White Stag I ha' seen them mid the clouds on the heather. Lo! they pause not for love nor for sorrow, Yet their eyes are as the eyes of a maid to her lover, When the white hart breaks his cover And the white wind breaks the morn. "_'Tis the white stagy Fame, we're a-hunting, Bid the world's hounds come to horn!_" _Piccadilly_ _Beautiful, tragical faces,_ _Ye that were whole, and are so sunken;_ _And, O ye vile, ye that might have been loved,_ _That are so sodden and drunken,_ _Who hath forgotten you?_ _O wistful, fragile faces, few out of many!_ _The gross, the coarse, the brazen,_ _God knows I cannot pity them, perhaps, as I should do,_ _But, oh, ye delicate, wistful faces,_ _Who hath forgotten you?_ NOTES NOTE PRECEDENT TO "LA FRAISNE" "When the soul is exhausted of fire, then doth the spirit return unto its primal nature and there is upon it a peace great and of the woodland "_magna pax et silvestris_." Then becometh it kin to the faun and the dryad, a woodland-dweller amid the rocks and streams "_consociis faunis dryadisque inter saxa sylvarum_." Janus of Basel.[1] Also has Mr. Yeats in his "Celtic Twilight" treated of such, and I because in such a mood, feeling myself divided between myself corporal and a self aetherial "a dweller by streams and in woodland," eternal because simple in elements "_ Aeternus quia simplex naturae_." Being freed of the weight of a soul "capable of salvation or damnation," a grievous striving thing that after much straining was mercifully taken from me; as had one passed saying as one in the Book of the Dead, "I, lo I, am the assembler of souls," and had taken it with him leaving me thus _simplex naturae_, even so at peace and transsentient as a wood pool I made it. The Legend thus: "Miraut de Garzelas, after the pains he bore a-loving Riels of Calidorn and that to none avail, ran mad in the forest. "Yea even as Peire Vidal ran as a wolf for her of Penautier though some say that twas folly or as Garulf Bisclavret so ran truly, till the King brought him respite (See 'Lais' Marie de France), so was he ever by the Ash Tree." Hear ye his speaking: (low, slowly he speaketh it, as one drawn apart, reflecting) (égaré). [Footnote 1: Referendum for contrast. "Daemonalitas" of the Rev. Father Sinistrari of Ameno (1600 circ.) "A treatise wherein is shown that there are in existence on earth rational creatures besides man, endowed like him with a body and soul, that are born and die like him, redeemed by our Lord Jesus Christ, and capable of receiving salvation or damnation." Latin and English text, pub. Liseux, Paris, 1879.] NOTES ON NEW POEMS VISION OF ITALY. 1. "_che lo glorifico_." In the Piazza dei Signori, you will find an inscription which translates thus: "It is here Can Grande della Scala gave welcome to Dante Alighieri, the _same which glorified him_, dedicating to him that third his song eternal." "C.G. vi accolse D.A. che lo glorifico dedicandogli la terza, delle eterne sue cantiche." 2. Ref. Richard of St. Victor. "On the preparation of the soul for contemplation," where he distinguishes between cogitation, meditation, and contemplation. In cogitation the thought or attention flits aimlessly about the subject. In meditation it circles round it, that is, it views it systematically, from all sides, gaining perspective. In contemplation it radiates from a centre, that is, as light from the sun it reaches out in an infinite number of ways to things that are related to or dependent on it. The words above are my own, as I have not the Benjamin Minor by me. Following St. Victor's figure of radiation: Poetry in its acme is expression from contemplation. 3. San Pietro Incarnato. There are several rows of houses intervening between it and the river. ALBA BELINGALIS MS. in Latin, with refrain, "L alba par umet mar atras el poy Pas abigil miraclar Tenebris." It was and may still be the oldest fragment of Provençal known. MARVOIL The Personae are: Arnaut of Marvoil, a troubadour, date 1170-1200. The Countess (in her own right) of Burlatz, and of Beziers, being the wife of The Vicomte of Beziers. Alfonso IV of Aragon. Tibors of Mont-Ausier. For fuller mention of her see the "razos" on Bertran of Born. She is contemporary with the other persons, but I have no strict warrant for dragging her name into this particular affair. Marco Londonio's Italian version of "Nel Biancheggiar": Nel biancheggiar di delicata rosa Risplendono i colori D' occidentali fiori Prima che l'alba, in esultanza ascosa Voglia baciarli. Ed aleggiar io sento Qual su dolce lïuto Nel lor linguaggio muto Fiorir di gioia e tocco di tormento Cosi un' arcano senso di languore, Le sue sognanti dita Fanno scordar la vita Spirando in verso tutto pien d'amore.... Senza morir: chè sanno i suoni alati, Vedendo il nostro stato, Ch' è dal dolor turbato, Di lasciarci, morendo, desolati. 
41955	----	Transcriber's note: Minor spelling and punctuation inconsistencies have been harmonized. Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. THE SHIP IN THE DESERT. THE SHIP IN THE DESERT. BY JOAQUIN MILLER, AUTHOR OF "SONGS OF THE SIERRAS" AND "SONGS OF THE SUN-LANDS." [Illustration] BOSTON: ROBERTS BROTHERS. 1875. Copyright, 1875, BY C. H. MILLER. _Cambridge: Press of John Wilson & Son._ DEDICATED TO MY DEAR PARENTS, ON THE FOOTHILLS OF THE OREGON SIERRAS. [Illustration] PREFACE. With deep reverence I inscribe these lines, my dear parents, to you. I see you now, away beyond the seas, beyond the lands where the sun goes down in the Pacific like some great ship of fire, resting still on the green hills, watching your herds, waiting "Where rolls the Oregon, And hears no sound save its own dashing." Nearly a quarter of a century ago you took me the long and lonesome half-year's journey across the mighty continent, wild, and rent, and broken up, and sown with sand and ashes, and crossed by tumbling, wooded rivers that ran as if glad to get away, fresh and strange and new as if but half-fashioned from the hand of God. All the time as I tread this strange land I re-live those scenes, and you are with me. How dark and deep, how sullen, strong, and lion-like the mighty Missouri rolled between his walls of untracked wood and cleft the unknown domain of the middle world before us! Then the frail and buffeted rafts on the river, the women and children huddled together, the shouts of the brawny men as they swam with the bellowing cattle; the cows in the stormy stream, eddying, whirling, spinning about, calling to their young, their bright horns shining in the sun.... The wild men waiting on the other side, painted savages leaning silent on their bows, despising our weakness, opening a way, letting us pass on to the unknown distances, where they said the sun and moon lay down together and brought forth the stars.... The long and winding lines of wagons, the graves by the wayside, the women weeping together as they passed on. Then hills, then plains, parched lands like Syria, dust, and ashes, and alkali, cool streams with woods, camps by night, great wood fires in circles, tents in the centre like Cæsar's battle-camps, painted men that passed like shadows, showers of arrows, the wild beasts howling from the hill.... You, my dear parents, will pardon the thread of fiction on which I have strung these scenes and descriptions of a mighty land of mystery, and wild and savage grandeur, for the world will have its way, and, like a spoiled child, demands a tale. "Yea, We who toil and earn our bread Still have our masters...." A ragged and broken story it is, with long deserts, with alkali and ashes, yet it may, like the land it deals of, have some green places, and woods, and running waters, where you can rest.... Three times now I have ranged the great West in fancy, as I did in fact for twenty years, and gathered unknown and unnamed blossoms from mountain-top, from desert level, where man never ranged before, and asked the world to receive my weeds, my grasses, and blue-eyed blossoms. But here it ends. Good or bad, I have done enough of this work on the border. The Orient promises a more grateful harvest. I have been true to my West. She has been my only love. I have remembered her greatness. I have done my work to show to the world her vastness, her riches, her resources, her valor and her dignity, her poetry and her grandeur. Yet while I was going on, working so in silence, what were the things she said of me? But let that pass, my dear parents. Others will come after us. Possibly I have blazed out the trail for great minds over this field, as you did across the deserts and plains for great men a quarter of a century ago. JOAQUIN MILLER. LAKE COMO, Italy. [Illustration ] THE SHIP IN THE DESERT. I. A Man in middle Aridzone Stood by the desert's edge alone, And long he look'd, and lean'd. He peer'd, Above his twirl'd and twisted beard, Beneath his black and slouchy hat ... Nay, nay, the tale is not of that. A skin-clad trapper, toe-a-tip, Stood on a mountain top, and he Look'd long and still and eagerly. "It looks so like some lonesome ship That sails this ghostly lonely sea,-- This dried-up desert sea," said he, "These tawny sands of Arazit" ... Avaunt! the tale is not of it. A chief from out the desert's rim Rode swift as twilight swallows swim, Or eagle blown from eyrie nest. His trim-limb'd steed was black as night, His long black hair had blossom'd white, With feathers from the koko's crest; His iron face was flush'd and red, His eyes flash'd fire as he fled, For he had seen unsightly things; Had felt the flapping of their wings. A wild and wiry man was he, This tawny chief of Shoshonee; And O his supple steed was fleet! About his breast flapp'd panther skins, About his eager flying feet Flapp'd beaded, braided moccasins: He rode as rides the hurricane; He seem'd to swallow up the plain; He rode as never man did ride, He rode, for ghosts rode at his side, And on his right a grizzled grim-- No, no, this tale is not of him. An Indian warrior lost his way While prowling on this desert's edge In fragrant sage and prickly hedge, When suddenly he saw a sight, And turn'd his steed in eager flight. He rode right through the edge of day, He rode into the rolling night. He lean'd, he reach'd an eager face, His black wolf skin flapp'd out and in, And tiger claws on tiger skin Held seat and saddle to its place; But that gray ghost that clutch'd thereat ... Arrête! the tale is not of that. A chieftain touch'd the desert's rim One autumn eve: he rode alone And still as moon-made shadows swim. He stopp'd, he stood as still as stone, He lean'd, he look'd, there glisten'd bright From out the yellow yielding sand A golden cup with jewell'd rim. He lean'd him low, he reach'd a hand, He caught it up, he gallop'd on, He turn'd his head, he saw a sight ... His panther skins flew to the wind, The dark, the desert lay behind; The tawny Ishmaelite was gone; But something sombre as death is ... Tut, tut! the tale is not of this. A mountaineer, storm-stained and brown, From farthest desert touched the town, And, striding through the crowd, held up Above his head a jewell'd cup. He put two fingers to his lip, He whisper'd wild, he stood a-tip, And lean'd the while with lifted hand, And said, "A ship lies yonder dead," And said, "Doubloons lie sown in sand In yon far desert dead and brown, Beyond where wave-wash'd walls look down, As thick as stars set overhead. That three shipmasts uplift like trees" ... Away! the tale is not of these. An Indian hunter held a plate Of gold above his lifted head, Around which kings had sat in state ... "'Tis from that desert ship," they said, "That sails with neither sail nor breeze, Or galleon, that sank below Of old, in olden dried-up seas, Ere yet the red men drew the bow." But wrinkled women wagg'd the head, And walls of warriors sat that night In black, nor streak of battle red, Around against the red camp light, And told such wondrous tales as these Of wealth within their dried-up seas. And one, girt well in tiger's skin, Who stood, like Saul, above the rest, With dangling claws about his breast, A belt without, a blade within, A warrior with a painted face, And lines that shadow'd stern and grim, Stood pointing east from his high place, And hurling thought like cannon shot, Stood high with visage flush'd and hot ... But, stay! this tale is not of him. II. By Arizona's sea of sand Some bearded miners, gray and old, And resolute in search of gold, Sat down to tap the savage land. They tented in a canñon's mouth That gaped against the warm wide south, And underneath a wave-wash'd wall, Where now nor rains nor winds may fall, They delved the level salt-white sands For gold, with bold and hornéd hands. A miner stood beside his mine, He pull'd his beard, then look'd away Across the level sea of sand, Beneath his broad and hairy hand, A hand as hard as knots of pine. "It looks so like a sea," said he. He pull'd his beard, and he did say, "It looks just like a dried-up sea." Again he pull'd that beard of his, But said no other thing than this. A stalwart miner dealt a stroke, And struck a buried beam of oak. An old ship's beam the shaft appear'd, With storm-worn faded figure-head. The miner twisted, twirled his beard, Lean'd on his pick-axe as he spoke: "'Tis from some long-lost ship," he said, "Some laden ship of Solomon That sail'd these lonesome seas upon In search of Ophir's mine, ah me! That sail'd this dried-up desert sea." ... Nay, nay, 'tis not a tale of gold, But ghostly land storm-slain and old. III. But this the tale. Along a wide And sounding stream some silent braves, That stole along the farther side Through sweeping wood that swept the waves Like long arms reach'd across the tide, Kept watch and ward and still defied.... A low black boat that hugg'd the shores, An ugly boat, an ugly crew, Thick-lipp'd and woolly-headed slaves, That bow'd, that bent the white-ash oars, That cleft the murky waters through, That climb'd the swift Missouri's waves,-- The surly, woolly-headed slaves. A grand old Neptune in the prow, Gray-hair'd, and white with touch of time, Yet strong as in his middle prime; A grizzled king, I see him now, With beard as blown by wind of seas, And wild and white as white sea-storm, Stand up, turn suddenly, look back Along the low boat's wrinkled track, Then fold his mantle round a form Broad-built as any Hercules, And so sit silently. Beside The grim old sea-king sits his bride, A sun-land blossom, rudely torn From tropic forests to be worn Above as stern a breast as e'er Stood king at sea or anywhere.... Another boat with other crew Came swift and silent in her track, And now shot shoreward, now shot back, And now sat rocking fro and to, But never once lost sight of her. Tall, sunburnt, southern men were these From isles of blue Caribbean seas, And one, that woman's worshipper, Who looked on her, and loved but her. And one, that one, was wild as seas That wash the far dark Oregon, And ever leaning, urging on, And standing up in restless ease, He seem'd as lithe and free and tall And restless as the boughs that stir Perpetual topt poplar trees. And one, that one, had eyes to teach The art of love, and tongue to preach Life's hard and sober homilies; And yet his eager hands, his speech, All spoke the bold adventurer; While zoned about the belt of each There swung a girt of steel, till all Did seem a walking arsenal. IV. Pursuer and pursued. And who Are these that make the sable crew; These mighty Titans, black and nude, And hairy-breasted, bronzed and broad Of chest as any demi-god, That dare this peopled solitude? And who is he that leads them here, And breaks the hush of wave and wood? Comes he for evil or for good? Brave Jesuit or bold buccaneer? Nay, these be idle themes. Let pass. These be but men. We may forget The wild sea-king, the tawny brave, The frowning wold, the woody shore, The tall-built, sunburnt men of Mars.... But what and who was she, the fair? The fairest face that ever yet Look'd in a wave as in a glass; That look'd as look the still, far stars, So woman-like, into the wave To contemplate their beauty there, Yet look as looking anywhere? And who of all the world was she? A bride, or not a bride? A thing To love? A prison'd bird to sing? You shall not know. That shall not be Brought from the future's great profound This side the happy hunting-ground. I only saw her, heard the sound Of murky waters gurgling round In counter-currents from the shore, But heard the long, strong stroke of oar Against the waters gray and vast. I only saw her as she pass'd-- A great, sad beauty, in whose eyes Lay all the loves of Paradise.... You shall not know her--she who sat Unconscious in my heart all time I dreamed and wove this wayward rhyme, And loved and did not blush thereat. The sunlight of a sunlit land, A land of fruit, of flowers, and A land of love and calm delight; A land where night is not like night, And noon is but a name for rest, And love for love is reckoned best. Where conversations of the eyes Are all enough; where beauty thrills The heart like hues of harvest-home; Where rage lies down, where passion dies, Where peace hath her abiding place.... A face that lifted up; sweet face That was so like a life begun, That rose for me a rising sun Above the bended seven hills Of dead and risen old new Rome. Not that I deem'd she loved me. Nay, I dared not even dream of that. I only say I knew her; say She ever sat before me, sat All still and voiceless as love is, And ever look'd so fair, divine, Her hush'd, vehement soul fill'd mine, And overflowed with Runic bliss, And made itself a part of this. O you had loved her sitting there, Half hidden in her loosen'd hair: Why, you had loved her for her eyes, Their large and melancholy look Of tenderness, and well mistook Their love for light of Paradise. Yea, loved her for her large dark eyes; Yea, loved her for her brow's soft brown; Her hand as light as heaven's bars; Yea, loved her for her mouth. Her mouth Was roses gather'd from the south, The warm south side of Paradise, And breathed upon and handed down, By angels on a stair of stars. Her mouth! 'twas Egypt's mouth of old, Push'd out and pouting full and bold With simple beauty where she sat. Why, you had said, on seeing her, This creature comes from out the dim Far centuries, beyond the rim Of time's remotest reach or stir. And he who wrought Semiramis And shaped the Sibyls, seeing this, Had bow'd and made a shrine thereat, And all his life had worshipp'd her, Devout as north-Nile worshipper. I dared not dream she loved me. Nay, Her love was proud; and pride is loth To look with favor, own it fond Of one the world loves not to-day.... No matter if she loved or no, God knows I loved enough for both, And knew her as you shall not know Till you have known sweet death, and you Have cross'd the dark; gone over to The great majority beyond. V. The black men bow'd, the long oars bent, They struck as if for sweet life's sake, And one look'd back, but no man spake, And all wills bent to one intent. On through the golden fringe of day Into the deep, dark night, away And up the wave 'mid walls of wood They cleft, they climb'd, they bowed, they bent, But one stood tall, and restless stood, And one sat still all night, all day, And gazed in helpless wonderment. Her hair pour'd down like darkling wine, The black men lean'd, a sullen line, The bent oars kept a steady song, And all the beams of bright sunshine That touch'd the waters wild and strong, Fell drifting down and out of sight Like fallen leaves, and it was night. And night and day, and many days They climb'd the sudden, dark gray tide, And she sat silent at his side, And he sat turning many ways: Sat watching for his wily foe; At last he baffled him. And yet His brow gloom'd dark, his lips were set; He lean'd, he peer'd through boughs, as though From heart of forests deep and dim Grim shapes could come confronting him. A grand, uncommon man was he, Broad-shoulder'd, and of Gothic form, Strong-built, and hoary like a sea; A high sea broken up by storm. His face was brown and overwrought By seams and shadows born of thought, Not over gentle. And his eyes, Bold, restless, resolute, and deep, Too deep to flow like shallow fount Of common men where waters mount And men bend down their heads and weep-- Fierce, lumin'd eyes, where flames might rise Instead of flood, and flash and sweep-- Strange eyes, that look'd unsatisfied With all things fair or otherwise; As if his inmost soul had cried All time for something yet unseen, Some long-desired thing denied. A man whose soul was mightier far Than his great self, and surged and fell About himself as heaving seas Lift up and lash, and boom, and swell Above some solitary bar That bursts through blown Samoa's sea, And wreck and toss eternally. VI. Below the overhanging boughs The oars laid idle at the last. Yet long he look'd for hostile prows From out the wood and down the stream. They came not, and he came to dream Pursuit abandon'd, danger past. He fell'd the oak, he built a home Of new-hewn wood with busy hand, And said, "My wanderings are told." And said, "No more by sea, by land, Shall I break rest, or drift, or roam, For I am worn, and I grow old." And there, beside that surging tide, Where gray waves meet, and wheel, and strike, The man sat down as satisfied To sit and rest unto the end; As if the strong man here had found A sort of brother in this sea,-- This surging, sounding majesty Of troubled water, so profound, So sullen, strong, and lion-like, So sinuous and foamy bound. Hast seen Missouri cleave the wood In sounding whirlpools to the sea? What soul hath known such majesty? What man stood by and understood? By pleasant Omaha I stood, Beneath a fringe of mailéd wood, And watch'd the mighty waters heave, And surge, and strike, and wind, and weave And make strange sounds and mutterings, As if of dark unutter'd things. By pleasant high-built Omaha I stand. The waves beneath me run All stain'd and yellow, dark and dun, And deep as death's sweet mystery,-- A thousand Tibers roll'd in one. I count on other years. I draw The curtain from the scenes to be. I see another Rome. I see A Cæsar tower in the land, And take her in his iron hand. I see a throne, a king, a crown, A high-built capital thrown down. I see my river rise ... Away! The world's cold commerce of to-day Demands some idle flippant theme; And I, your minstrel, must sit by, And harp along the edge of morn, And sing and celebrate to please The multitude, the mob, and these They know not pearls from yellow corn. Yea, idly sing or silent dreàm; My harp, my hand is yours, but I-- My soul moves down that sounding stream. Adieu, dun, mighty stream, adieu! Adown thine wooded walls, inwrought With rose of Cherokee and vine, Was never heard a minstrel's note, And none would heed a song of mine. I find expression for my thought In other themes.... List! I have seen A grizzly sporting on the green Of west sierras with a goat, And finding pastime all day through.... O sounding, swift Missouri, born Of Rocky Mountains, and begot On bed of snow at birth of morn, Of thunder-storms and elements That reign where puny man comes not, With fountain-head in fields of gold, And wide arms twining wood and wold, And everlasting snowy tents,-- I hail you from the Orients. Shall I return to you once more? Shall take occasion by the throat And thrill with wild Æolian note? Shall sit and sing by your deep shore? Shall shape a reed and pipe of yore And wake old melodies made new, And thrill thine leaf-land through and through? VII. Then long the long oars idle lay. The cabin's smoke came forth and curl'd Right lazily from river brake, And Time went by the other way. And who was she, the strong man's pride? This one fair woman of the world. A captive? Bride, or not a bride? Her eyes, men say, grew sad and dim With watching from the river's rim, As waiting for some face denied. And yet she never wept or spake, Or breath'd his name for her love's sake. Yea, who was she?--none ever knew. The great strong river swept around, The cabins nestled in its bend, But kept its secrets. Wild birds flew In bevies by. The black men found Diversion in the chase: and wide Old Morgan ranged the wood, nor friend, Nor foeman ever at his side Or shared his forests deep and dim, Or cross'd his path or question'd him. He stood as one who found and named The middle world. What visions flamed Athwart the west! What prophecies Were his, the gray old man, that day Who stood alone and look'd away,-- Awest from out the waving trees, Against the utter sundown seas. Alone oft-time beside the stream He stood and gazed as in a dream, As if he knew a life unknown To those who knew him thus alone. His eyes were gray and overborne By shaggy brows, his strength was shorn, Yet still he ever gazed awest, As one who would not, could not rest. And whence came he? and when, and why? Men question'd men, but nought was known Save that he roam'd the woods alone, And lived alone beneath the stir Of leaves, and letting life go by, Did look on her and only her. And had he fled with bloody hand? Or had he loved some Helen fair, And battling lost both land and town? Say, did he see his walls go down, Then choose from all his treasures there This love, and seek some other land? And yet the current of his life Mostlike had flow'd like oil; had been A monk's, for aught that all men knew. Mostlike the sad man's only sin, A cruel one, for thought is strife, Had been the curse of thought all through. Mayhap his splendid soul had spurn'd Insipid, sweet society, That stinks in nostrils of all men High-born and fearless-souled and free;-- That tasting to satiety Her hollow sweets he proudly turn'd, And did rebel and curse her then; And then did stoop and from the sod Pluck this one flower for his breast, Then turn to solitude for rest, And turn from man in search of God. And as to that, I reckon it But right, but Christian-like and just, And closer after Christ's own plan, To take men as you find your man, To take a soul from God on trust, A fit man, or yourself unfit: To take man free from the control Of man's opinion: take a soul In its own troubled world, all fair As you behold it then and there, Set naked in your sight, alone, Unnamed, unheralded, unknown: Yea, take him bravely from the hand That reach'd him forth from nothingness, That took his tired soul to keep All night, then reach'd him out from sleep And sat him equal in the land; Sent out from where the angels are, A soul new-born, without one whit Of bought or borrow'd character. Ah, bless us! if we only could As ready spin and willing weave Sweet tales of charity and good; Could we as willing clip the wings Of cruel tales as pleasant things, How sweet 'twould then be to believe, How good 'twould then be to be good. VIII. The squirrels chatter'd in the leaves, The turkeys call'd from pawpaw wood, The deer with lifted nostrils stood, And humming-birds did wind and weave, Swim round about, dart in and out, Through fragrant forest edge made red, Made many-colour'd overhead By climbing blossoms sweet with bee And yellow rose of Cherokee. Then frosts came by and touch'd the leaves, Then time hung ices on the eaves, Then cushion snows possess'd the ground, And so the seasons kept their round; Yet still old Morgan went and came From cabin door to forest dim, Through wold of snows, through wood of flame, Through golden Indian-summer days, Hung round in soft September haze, And no man cross'd or question'd him. Nay, there was that in his stern air That held e'en these rude men aloof: None came to share the broad-built roof That rose so fortress-like beside The angry, rushing, sullen tide, And only black men gather'd there, The old man's slaves, in dull content, Black, silent, and obedient. Then men push'd westward through his wood, His wild beasts fled, and now he stood Confronting men. He had endear'd No man, but still he went and came Apart, and shook his beard and strode His ways alone, and bore his load, If load it were, apart, alone. Then men grew busy with a name That no man loved, that many fear'd, And cowards stoop'd, and cast a stone, As at some statue overthrown. Some said a pirate blown by night From isles of calm Caribbean land, Who left his comrades; that he fled With many prices on his head, And that he bore in his hot flight The gather'd treasure of his band, In bloody and unholy hand. Then some did say a privateer, Then others, that he fled from fear, And climb'd the mad Missouri far, To where the friendly forests are; And that his illy-gotten gold Lay sunken in his black boat's hold. Then others, watching his fair bride, Said, "There is something more beside." Some said, a stolen bride was she, And that his strong arm in the strife Was red with her own brother's life, And that her lover from the sea Lay waiting for his chosen wife, And that a day of reckoning Lay waiting for this grizzled king. O sweet child-face, that ever gazed From out the wood and down the wave! O eyes, that never once were raised! O mouth, that never murmur gave! IX. O dark-eyed Ina! All the years Brought her but solitude and tears. Lo! ever looking out she stood Adown the wave, adown the wood, Adown the strong stream to the south, Sad-faced, and sorrowful. Her mouth Push'd out so pitiful. Her eyes Fill'd full of sorrow and surprise. Men say that looking from her place A love would sometimes light her face, As if sweet recollections stirr'd Her heart and broke its loneliness, Like far sweet songs that come to us, So soft, so sweet, they are not heard, So far, so faint, they fill the air, A fragrance filling anywhere. And wasting all her summer years That utter'd only through her tears, The seasons went, and still she stood For ever watching down the wood. Yet in her heart there held a strife With all this wasting of sweet life That none who have not lived and died, Held up the two hands crucified Between the ways on either hand, Can look upon or understand. The blackest rain-clouds muffle fire: Between a duty and desire There lies no middle way or land: Take thou the right or the left hand, And so pursue, nor hesitate To boldly give your hand to fate. In helpless indecisions lie The rocks on which we strike and die. 'Twere better far to choose the worst Of all life's ways than to be cursed With indecision. Turn and choose Your way, then all the world refuse. And men who saw her still do say That never once her lips were heard, By gloaming dusk or shining day, To utter or pronounce one word. Men went and came, and still she stood In silence watching down the wood. Yea, still she stood and look'd away, By tawny night, by fair-fac'd day, Adown the wood beyond the land, Her hollow face upon her hand, Her black, abundant hair all down About her loose, ungather'd gown. And what her thought? her life unsaid? Was it of love? of hate? of him, The tall, dark Southerner? Her head Bow'd down. The day fell dim Upon her eyes. She bow'd, she slept. She waken'd then, and waking wept. She dream'd, perchance, of island home, A land of palms ring'd round with foam, Where summer on her shelly shore Sits down and rests for evermore. And one who watch'd her wasted youth Did guess, mayhap with much of truth, Her heart was with that band that came Against her isle with sword and flame: And this the tale he told of her And her fierce, silent follower: A Spaniard and adventurer, A man who saw her, loved, and fell Upon his knees and worshipp'd her; And with that fervor and mad zeal That only sunborn bosoms feel, Did vow to love, to follow her Unto the altar ... or to hell: That then her gray-hair'd father bore The beauteous maiden hurriedly From out her fair isle of the sea To sombre wold and woody shore And far away, and kept her well, As from a habitant of hell, And vow'd she should not meet him more: That fearing still the buccaneer, He silent kept his forests here. The while men came, and still she stood For ever watching from the wood. X. The black-eyed bushy squirrels ran Like shadows shatter'd through the boughs; The gallant robin chirp'd his vows, The far-off pheasant thrumm'd his fan, A thousand blackbirds were a-wing In walnut-top, and it was spring. Old Morgan left his cabin door, And one sat watching as of yore; But why turned Morgan's face as white As his white beard? A bird aflight, A squirrel peering through the trees, Saw some one silent steal away Like darkness from the face of day, Saw two black eyes look back, and these Saw her hand beckon through the trees. He knew him, though he had not seen That form or face for a decade, Though time had shorn his locks, had made His form another's, flow'd between Their lives like some uncompass'd sea, Yet still he knew him as before. He pursed his lips, and silently He turn'd and sought his cabin's door. Ay! they have come, the sun-brown'd men, To beard old Morgan in his den. It matters little who they are, These silent men from isles afar, And truly no one cares or knows What be their merit or demand; It is enough for this rude land-- At least, it is enough for those, The loud of tongue and rude of hand-- To know that they are Morgan's foes. Proud Morgan! More than tongue can tell He loved that woman watching there, That stood in her dark stream of hair, That stood and dream'd as in a spell, And look'd so fix'd and far away. And who, that loveth woman well, Is wholly bad? be who he may. Ay! we have seen these Southern men, These sun-brown'd men from island shore, In this same land, and long before. They do not seem so lithe as then, They do not look so tall, and they Seem not so many as of old. But that same resolute and bold Expression of unbridled will, That even Time must half obey, Is with them and is of them still. They do not counsel the decree Of court or council, where they drew Their breath, nor law nor order knew, Save but the strong hand of the strong; Where each stood up, avenged his wrong, Or sought his death all silently. They watch along the wave and wood, They heed, but haste not. Their estate, Whate'er it be, can bide and wait, Be it open ill or hidden good. No law for them! For they have stood With steel, and writ their rights in blood; And now, whatever 'tis they seek, Whatever be their dark demand, Why, they will make it, hand to hand, Take time and patience: Greek to Greek. XI. Like blown and snowy wintry pine, Old Morgan stoop'd his head and pass'd Within his cabin door. He cast A great arm out to men, made sign, Then turned to Ina; stood beside A time, then turn'd and strode the floor, Stopp'd short, breathed sharp, threw wide the door, Then gazed beyond the murky tide, Toward where the forky peaks divide. He took his beard in his hard hand, Then slowly shook his grizzled head And trembled, but no word he said. His thought was something more than pain; Upon the seas, upon the land He knew he should not rest again. He turn'd to her; but then once more Quick turn'd, and through the oaken door He sudden pointed to the west. His eye resumed its old command, The conversation of his hand, It was enough: she knew the rest. He turn'd, he stoop'd, and smoothed her hair, As if to smooth away the care From his great heart, with his left hand. His right hand hitch'd the pistol round That dangled at his belt ... The sound Of steel to him was melody More sweet than any song of sea. He touch'd his pistol, press'd his lips, Then tapp'd it with his finger-tips, And toy'd with it as harper's hand Seeks out the chords when he is sad And purposeless. At last he had Resolved. In haste he touch'd her hair, Made sign she should arise--prepare For some long journey, then again He look'd awest toward the plain: Toward the land of dreams and space, The land of Silences, the land Of shoreless deserts sown with sand, Where desolation's dwelling is: The land where, wondering, you say, What dried-up shoreless sea is this? Where, wandering, from day to day You say, To-morrow sure we come To rest in some cool resting-place, And yet you journey on through space While seasons pass, and are struck dumb With marvel at the distances. Yea, he would go. Go utterly Away, and from all living kind, Pierce through the distances, and find New lands. He had outlived his race. He stood like some eternal tree That tops remote Yosemite, And cannot fall. He turn'd his face Again and contemplated space. And then he raised his hand to vex His beard, stood still, and there fell down Great drops from some unfrequent spring, And streak'd his channell'd cheeks sun-brown, And ran uncheck'd, as one who recks Nor joy, nor tears, nor any thing. And then, his broad breast heaving deep, Like some dark sea in troubled sleep, Blown round with groaning ships and wrecks, He sudden roused himself, and stood With all the strength of his stern mood, Then call'd his men, and bade them go And bring black steeds with banner'd necks, And strong like burly buffalo. XII. The sassafras took leaf, and men Push'd west in hosts. The black men drew Their black-maned horses silent through The solemn woods. One midnight when The curl'd moon tipp'd her horn, and threw A black oak's shadow slant across A low mound hid in leaves and moss, Old Morgan cautious came and drew From out the ground, as from a grave, A great box, iron-bound and old, And fill'd, men say, with pirates' gold, And then they, silent as a dream, In long black shadows cross'd the stream. Lo! here the smoke of cabins curl'd, The borders of the middle world; And mighty, hairy, half-wild men Sat down in silence, held at bay By mailèd forests. Far away The red men's boundless borders lay, And lodges stood in legions then, Strip'd pyramids of painted men. What strong uncommon men were these, These settlers hewing to the seas! Great horny-handed men and tan; Men blown from any border land; Men desperate and red of hand, And men in love and men in debt, And men who lived but to forget, And men whose very hearts had died, Who only sought these woods to hide Their wretchedness, held in the van; Yet every man among them stood Alone, along that sounding wood, And every man somehow a man. A race of unnamed giants these, That moved like gods among the trees, So stern, so stubborn-brow'd and slow, With strength of black-maned buffalo, And each man notable and tall, A kingly and unconscious Saul, A sort of sullen Hercules. A star stood large and white awest, Then Time uprose and testified; They push'd the mailèd wood aside, They toss'd the forest like a toy, That great forgotten race of men, The boldest band that yet has been Together since the siege of Troy, And followed it ... and found their rest. What strength! what strife! what rude unrest! What shocks! what half-shaped armies met! A mighty nation moving west, With all its steely sinews set Against the living forests. Hear The shouts, the shots of pioneer! The rended forests, rolling wheels, As if some half-check'd army reels, Recoils, redoubles, comes again, Loud sounding like a hurricane. O bearded, stalwart, westmost men, So tower-like, so Gothic-built! A kingdom won without the guilt Of studied battle; that hath been Your blood's inheritance.... Your heirs Know not your tombs. The great ploughshares Cleave softly through the mellow loam Where you have made eternal home And set no sign. Your epitaphs Are writ in furrows. Beauty laughs While through the green ways wandering Beside her love, slow gathering White starry-hearted May-time blooms Above your lowly levell'd tombs; And then below the spotted sky She stops, she leans, she wonders why The ground is heaved and broken so, And why the grasses darker grow And droop and trail like wounded wing. Yea, Time, the grand old harvester, Has gather'd you from wood and plain. We call to you again, again; The rush and rumble of the car Comes back in answer. Deep and wide The wheels of progress have pass'd on; The silent pioneer is gone. His ghost is moving down the trees, And now we push the memories Of bluff, bold men who dared and died In foremost battle, quite aside. O perfect Eden of the earth, In poppies sown, in harvest set! O sires, mothers of my West! How shall we count your proud bequest? But yesterday ye gave us birth; We eat your hard-earn'd bread to-day, Nor toil nor spin nor make regret, But praise our petty selves and say How great we are, and all forget The still endurance of the rude Unpolish'd sons of solitude. XIII. And one was glad at morn, but one, The tall old sea-king, grim and gray, Look'd back to where his cabins lay And seem'd to hesitate. He rose At last, as from his dream's repose, From rest that counterfeited rest, And set his blown beard to the west, And drove against the setting sun, Along the levels vast and dun. His steeds were steady, strong, and fleet, The best in all the wide west land, Their manes were in the air, their feet Seem'd scarce to touch the flying sand; The reins were in the reaching hand. They rode like men gone mad, they fled, All day and many days they ran, And in the rear a gray old man Kept watch, and ever turn'd his head, Half eager and half angry, back Along their dusty desert track. And one look'd back, but no man spoke, They rode, they swallow'd up the plain; The sun sank low, he look'd again, With lifted hand and shaded eyes. Then far arear he saw uprise, As if from giant's stride or stroke, Dun dust-like puffs of battle-smoke. He turn'd, his left hand clutch'd the rein, He struck awest his high right hand, His arms were like the limbs of oak, They knew too well the man's command, They mounted, plunged ahead again, And one look'd back, but no man spoke, Of all that sullen iron band, That reached along that barren land. O weary days of weary blue, Without one changing breath, without One single cloud-ship sailing through The blue seas bending round about In one unbroken blotless hue. Yet on they fled, and one look'd back For ever down their distant track. The tent is pitch'd, the blanket spread, The earth receives the weary head, The night rolls west, the east is gray, The tent is struck, they mount, away; They ride for life the livelong day, They sweep the long grass in their track, And one leads on, and one looks back. What scenes they pass'd, what camps at morn, What weary columns kept the road; What herds of troubled cattle low'd, And trumpeted like lifted horn; And everywhere, or road or rest, All things were pointing to the west; A weary, long, and lonesome track, And all led on, but one look'd back. They climb'd the rock-built breasts of earth, The Titan-fronted, blowy steeps That cradled Time.... Where Freedom keeps Her flag of white blown stars unfurl'd, They turn'd about, they saw the birth Of sudden dawn upon the world; Again they gazed; they saw the face Of God, and named it boundless space. And they descended and did roam Through levell'd distances set round By room. They saw the Silences Move by and beckon: saw the forms, The very beards, of burly storms, And heard them talk like sounding seas. On unnamed heights bleak-blown and brown, And torn like battlements of Mars, They saw the darknesses come down, Like curtains loosen'd from the dome Of God's cathedral, built of stars. They pitch'd the tent, where rivers run As if to drown the falling sun. They saw the snowy mountains roll'd, And heaved along the nameless lands Like mighty billows; saw the gold Of awful sunsets; saw the blush Of sudden dawn, and felt the hush Of heaven when the day sat down, And hid his face in dusky hands. The long and lonesome nights! the tent That nestled soft in sweep of grass, The hills against the firmament Where scarce the moving moon could pass; The cautious camp, the smother'd light, The silent sentinel at night! The wild beasts howling from the hill; The troubled cattle bellowing; The savage prowling by the spring, Then sudden passing swift and still, And bended as a bow is bent. The arrow sent; the arrow spent And buried in its bloody place, The dead man lying on his face! The clouds of dust, their cloud by day; Their pillar of unfailing fire The far North star. And high, and higher.... They climb'd so high it seem'd eftsoon That they must face the falling moon, That like some flame-lit ruin lay Thrown down before their weary way. They learn'd to read the sign of storms, The moon's wide circles, sunset bars, And storm-provoking blood and flame; And, like the Chaldean shepherds, came At night to name the moving stars. In heaven's face they pictured forms Of beasts, of fishes of the sea. They mark'd the Great Bear wearily Rise up and drag his clinking chain Of stars around the starry main. What lines of yoked and patient steers! What weary thousands pushing west! What restless pilgrims seeking rest, As if from out the edge of years! What great yoked brutes with briskets low, With wrinkled necks like buffalo, With round, brown, liquid, pleading eyes, That turn'd so slow and sad to you, That shone like love's eyes soft with tears, That seem'd to plead, and make replies The while they bow'd their necks and drew The creaking load; and look'd at you. Their sable briskets swept the ground, Their cloven feet kept solemn sound. Two sullen bullocks led the line, Their great eyes shining bright like wine; Two sullen captive kings were they, That had in time held herds at bay, And even now they crush'd the sod With stolid sense of majesty, And stately stepp'd and stately trod, As if 'twas something still to be Kings even in captivity. XIV. And why did these same sunburnt men Let Morgan gain the plain, and then Pursue him to the utter sea? You ask me here impatiently. And I as pertly must reply, My task is but to tell a tale, To give a wide sail to the gale, To paint the boundless plain, the sky; To rhyme, nor give a reason why. Mostlike they sought his gold alone, And fear'd to make their quarrel known Lest it should keep its secret bed; Mostlike they thought to best prevail And conquer with united hands Alone upon the lonesome sands; Mostlike they had as much to dread; Mostlike--but I must tell my tale. And Morgan, ever looking back, Push'd on, push'd up his mountain track, Past camp, past train, past caravan, Past flying beast, past failing man, Past brave men battling with a foe That circled them with lance and bow And feather'd arrows all a-wing; Till months unmeasured came and ran The calendar with him, as though Old Time had lost all reckoning; Then passed for aye the creaking trains, And pioneers that named the plains. Those brave old bricks of Forty-nine! What lives they lived! what deaths they died! A thousand cañons, darkling wide Below Sierra's slopes of pine, Receive them now. And they who died Along the far, dim, desert route. Their ghosts are many. Let them keep Their vast possessions. The Piute, The tawny warrior, will dispute No boundary with these. And I, Who saw them live, who felt them die, Say, let their unploughed ashes sleep, Untouched by man, by plain or steep. The bearded, sunbrown'd men who bore The burthen of that frightful year, Who toil'd, but did not gather store, They shall not be forgotten. Drear And white, the plains of Shoshonee Shall point us to that farther shore, And long white shining lines of bones, Make needless sign or white mile-stones. The wild man's yell, the groaning wheel; The train that moved like drifting barge; The dust that rose up like a cloud, Like smoke of distant battle! Loud The great whips rang like shot, and steel Of antique fashion, crude and large, Flash'd back as in some battle charge. They sought, yea, they did find their rest Along that long and lonesome way, These brave men buffeting the West With lifted faces. Full were they Of great endeavor. Brave and true As stern Crusader clad in steel, They died a-field as it was fit. Made strong with hope, they dared to do Achievement that a host to-day Would stagger at, stand back and reel, Defeated at the thought of it. What brave endeavor to endure! What patient hope, when hope was past! What still surrender at the last, A thousand leagues from hope! how pure They lived, how proud they died! How generous with life! The wide And gloried age of chivalry Hath not one page like this to me. Let all these golden days go by, In sunny summer weather. I But think upon my buried brave, And breathe beneath another sky. Let beauty glide in gilded car, And find my sundown seas afar, Forgetful that 'tis but one grave From eastmost to the westmost wave. Yea, I remember! The still tears That o'er uncoffin'd faces fell! The final, silent, sad farewell! God! these are with me all the years! They shall be with me ever. I Shall not forget. I hold a trust. They are a part of my existence. When Adown the shining iron track You sweep, and fields of corn flash back, And herds of lowing steers move by, And men laugh loud, in mute distrust, I turn to other days, to men Who made a pathway with their dust. XV. At last he pass'd all men or sign Of man. Yet still his long black line Was push'd and pointed for the west; The sea, the utmost sea, and rest. He climbed, descended, climbed again, Until he stood at last as lone, As solitary and unknown, As some lost ship upon the main. O there was grandeur in his air, An old-time splendor in his eye, When he had climb'd the bleak, the high, The rock-built bastions of the plain, And thrown a-back his blown white hair, And halting turn'd to look again. And long, from out his lofty place, He look'd far down the fading plain For his pursuers, but in vain. Yea, he was glad. Across his face A careless smile was seen to play, The first for many a stormy day. He turn'd to Ina, dark and fair As some sad twilight; touch'd her hair, Stoop'd low, and kiss'd her silently, Then silent held her to his breast. Then waved command to his black men, Look'd east, then mounted slow, and then Led leisurely against the west. And why should he, who dared to die, Who more than once with hissing breath Had set his teeth and pray'd for death, Have fled these men, or wherefore fly Before them now? why not defy? His midnight men were strong and true, And not unused to strife, and knew The masonry of steel right well, And all its signs that lead to hell. It might have been his youth had wrought Some wrong his years would now repair That made him fly and still forbear; It might have been he only sought To lead them to some fatal snare And let them die by piece-meal there. It might have been that his own blood, A brother, son, pursued with curse. It might have been this woman fair Was this man's child, an only thing To love in all the universe, And that the old man's iron will Kept pirate's child from pirate still. These rovers had a world their own, Had laws, lived lives, went ways unknown. I trow it was not shame or fear Of any man or any thing That death in any shape might bring. It might have been some lofty sense Of his own truth and innocence, And virtues lofty and severe-- Nay, nay! what need of reasons here? They touch'd a fringe of tossing trees That bound a mountain's brow like bay, And through the fragrant boughs a breeze Blew salt-flood freshness. Far away, From mountain brow to desert base Lay chaos, space, unbounded space, In one vast belt of purple bound. The black men cried, "The sea!" They bow'd Their black heads in their hard black hands. They wept for joy. They laugh'd, and broke The silence of an age, and spoke Of rest at last; and, group'd in bands, They threw their long black arms about Each other's necks, and laugh'd aloud, Then wept again with laugh and shout. Yet Morgan spake no word, but led His band with oft-averted head Right through the cooling trees, till he Stood out upon the lofty brow And mighty mountain wall. And now The men who shouted, "Lo, the sea!" Rode in the sun; but silently: Stood in the sun, then look'd below. They look'd but once, then look'd away, Then look'd each other in the face. They could not lift their brows, nor say, But held their heads, nor spake, for lo! Nor sea, nor voice of sea, nor breath Of sea, but only sand and death, And one eternity of space Confronted them with fiery face. 'Twas vastness even as a sea, So still it sang in symphonies; But yet without the sense of seas, Save depth, and space, and distances. 'Twas all so shoreless, so profound, It seem'd it were earth's utter bound. 'Twas like the dim edge of death is, 'Twas hades, hell, eternity! XVI. Then Morgan hesitating stood, Look'd down the deep and steep descent With wilder'd brow and wonderment, Then gazed against the cooling wood. And she beside him gazed at this, Then turn'd her great, sad eyes to his; He shook his head and look'd away, Then sadly smiled, and still did say, "To-morrow, child, another day." O thou to-morrow! Mystery! O day that ever runs before! What has thine hidden hand in store For mine, to-morrow, and for me? O thou to-morrow! what hast thou In store to make me bear the now? O day in which we shall forget The tangled troubles of to-day! O day that laughs at duns, at debt! O day of promises to pay! O shelter from all present storm! O day in which we shall reform! O day of all days for reform! Convenient day of promises! Hold back the shadow of the storm. O bless'd to-morrow! Chiefest friend, Let not thy mystery be less, But lead us blindfold to the end. XVII. Old Morgan eyed his men, look'd back Against the groves of tamarack, Then tapp'd his stirrup-foot, and stray'd His hard left hand along the mane Of his strong steed, and careless play'd His fingers through the silken skein, And seemed a time to touch the rein. And then he spurr'd him to her side, And reach'd his hand and, leaning wide, He smiling push'd her falling hair Back from her brow, and kiss'd her there. Yea, touch'd her softly, as if she Had been some priceless, tender flower, Yet touch'd her as one taking leave Of his one love in lofty tower Before descending to the sea Of battle on his battle eve. XVIII. A distant shout! quick oaths! alarms! The black men start up suddenly, Stand in the stirrup, clutch their arms, And bare bright arms all instantly. But he, he slowly turns, and he Looks all his full soul in her face. He does not shout, he does not say, But sits serenely in his place A time, then slowly turns, looks back Between the trim-bough'd tamarack, And up the winding mountain way, To where the long strong grasses lay. He raised his glass in his two hands, Then in his left hand let it fall, Then seem'd to count his fingers o'er, Then reach'd his glass, waved cold commands, Then tapp'd his stirrup as before, Stood in the stirrup stern and tall, Then ran his hand along the mane Half nervous-like, and that was all. His head half settled on his breast, His face a-beard like bird a-nest, And then he roused himself, he spoke, He reach'd an arm like arm of oak, He struck a-west his great broad hand, And seem'd to hurl his hot command. He clutch'd his rein, struck sharp his heel, Look'd at his men, and smiled half sad, Half desperate, then hitch'd his steel, And all his stormy presence had, As if he kept once more his keel On listless seas where breakers reel. He toss'd again his iron hand Above the deep, steep desert space, Above the burning seas of sand, And look'd his black men in the face. They spake not, nor look'd back again, They struck the heel, they clutch'd the rein, And down the darkling plunging steep They dropped toward the dried-up deep. Below! It seem'd a league below, The black men rode, and she rode well, Against the gleaming sheening haze That shone like some vast sea ablaze, That seem'd to gleam, to glint, to glow As if it mark'd the shores of hell. Then Morgan stood alone, look'd back From off the fierce wall where he stood, And watch'd his dusk approaching foe. He saw him creep along his track, Saw him descending from the wood, And smiled to see how worn and slow. Then when his foemen hounding came In pistol-shot of where he stood, He wound his hand in his steed's mane, And plunging to the desert plain, Threw back his white beard like a cloud, And looking back did shout aloud Defiance like a stormy flood, And shouted, "Vasques!" called his name, And dared him to the desert flame. XIX. A cloud of dust adown the steep, Where scarce a whirling hawk would sweep, The cloud his foes had follow'd fast, And Morgan like a cloud had pass'd, Yet passed like some proud king of old; And now mad Vasques could not hold Control of his one wild desire To meet old Morgan, in his ire. He cursed aloud, he shook his rein Above the desert darkling deep, And urged his steed toward the steep, But urged his weary steed in vain. Old Morgan heard his oath and shout, And Morgan turn'd his head once more, And wheel'd his stout steed short about, Then seem'd to count their numbers o'er. And then his right hand touch'd his steel, And then he tapp'd his iron heel And seem'd to fight with thought. At last, As if the final die was cast, And cast as carelessly as one Would toss a white coin in the sun, He touch'd his rein once more, and then His pistol laid with idle heed Prone down the toss'd mane of his steed, And he rode down the rugged way Tow'rd where the wide, white desert lay, By broken gorge and cavern'd den, And join'd his band of midnight men. Some say the gray old man had crazed From mountain fruits that he had pluck'd While winding through the wooded ways Above the steep. But others say That he had turn'd aside and suck'd Sweet poison from the honey dews That lie like manna all the day On dewy leaves so crystal fair And temptingly that none refuse; That thus made mad the man did dare Confront the desert and despair. Then other mountain men explain, That when one looks upon this sea Of glowing sand, he looks again, Again, through gossamers that run In scintillations of the sun Along this white eternity, And looks until the brain is dazed, Bewilder'd, and the man is crazed. Then one, a grizzled mountaineer, A thin and sinewy old man, With face all wrinkle-wrought, and tan, And presence silent and austere, Does tell a tale, with reaching face And bated breath, of this weird place, Of many a stalwart mountaineer And Piute tall who perish'd here. He tells a tale with whisper'd breath Of skin-clad men who track'd this shore, Once populous with sea-set town, And saw a woman wondrous fair, And, wooing, follow'd her far down Through burning sands to certain death; And then he catches short his breath. He tells: Nay, this is all too long; Enough. The old man shakes his hair When he is done, and shuts his eyes, So satisfied and so self-wise, As if to say, "'Tis nothing rare, This following the luring fair To death, and bound in thorny thong; 'Twas ever thus; the old, old song." XX. Go ye and look upon that land, That far vast land that few behold, And none beholding understand,-- That old, old land which men call new, That land as old as time is old;-- Go journey with the seasons through Its wastes, and learn how limitless, How shoreless lie the distances, Before you come to question this Or dare to dream what grandeur is. The solemn silence of that plain, Where unmanned tempests ride and reign, It awes and it possesses you. 'Tis, oh! so eloquent. The blue And bended skies seem built for it, With rounded roof all fashioned fit, And frescoed clouds, quaint-wrought and true; While all else seems so far, so vain, An idle tale but illy told, Before this land so lone and old. Its story is of God alone, For man has lived and gone away, And left but little heaps of stone, And all seems some long yesterday. Lo! here you learn how more than fit And dignified is silence, when You hear the petty jeers of men Who point, and show their pointless wit. The vastness of that voiceless plain, Its awful solitudes remain Thenceforth for aye a part of you, And you are of the favored few, For you have learn'd your littleness, And heed not names that name you less. Some silent red men cross your track; Some sun-tann'd trappers come and go; Some rolling seas of buffalo Break thunder-like and far away Against the foot-hills, breaking back Like breakers of some troubled bay; But not a voice the long, lone day. Some white-tail'd antelope blow by So airy-like; some foxes shy And shadow-like shoot to and fro Like weavers' shuttles, as you pass; And now and then from out the grass You hear some lone bird cluck, and call A sharp keen call for her lost brood, That only makes the solitude, That mantles like some sombre pall, Seem deeper still, and that is all. A wide domain of mysteries And signs that men misunderstand! A land of space and dreams; a land Of sea-salt lakes and dried-up seas! A land of caves and caravans, And lonely wells and pools; A land That hath its purposes and plans, That seems so like dead Palestine, Save that its wastes have no confine Till push'd against the levell'd skies; A land from out whose depths shall rise The new-time prophets. Yea, the land From out whose awful depths shall come, All clad in skins, with dusty feet, A man fresh from his Maker's hand, A singer singing oversweet, A charmer charming very wise; And then all men shall not be dumb. Nay, not be dumb, for he shall say, "Take heed, for I prepare the way For weary feet." Lo! from this land Of Jordan streams and sea-wash'd sand, The Christ shall come when next the race Of man shall look upon his face. XXI. Pursuer and pursued! who knows The why he left the breezy pine, The fragrant tamarack and vine, Red rose and precious yellow rose! Nay, Vasques held the vantage ground Above him by the wooded steep, And right nor left no passage lay, And there was left him but that way,-- The way through blood, or to the deep And lonesome deserts far profound, That know not sight of man, or sound. Hot Vasques stood upon the rim, High, bold, and fierce with crag and spire. He saw a far gray eagle swim, He saw a black hawk wheel, retire, And shun that desert wide a-wing, But saw no other living thing. High in the full sun's gold and flame He halting and half waiting came And stood below the belt of wood, Then moved along the broken hill And looked below. And long he stood With lips set firm and brow a-frown, And warring with his iron will. He mark'd the black line winding down As if into the doors of death. And as he gazed a breath arose As from his far-retreating foes, So hot it almost took his breath. His black eye flashed an angry fire, He stood upon the mountain brow, With lifted arm like oaken bough; The hot pursuer halting stood Irresolute, in nettled ire; Then look'd against the cooling wood, Then strode he sullen to and fro, Then turned and long he gazed below. The sands flash'd back like fields of snow, Like far blown seas that flood and flow. The while the rounded sky rose higher, And cleaving through the upper space, The flush'd sun settled to his place, Like some far hemisphere of fire. And yet again he gazed. And now, Far off and faint, he saw or guess'd He saw, beyond the sands a-west, A dim and distant lifting beach That daring men might dare and reach: Dim shapes of toppled peaks with pine, And water'd foot-hills dark like wine, And fruits on many a bended bough. The leader turn'd and shook his head. "And shall we turn aside," he said, "Or dare this hell?" The men stood still As leaning on his sterner will. And then he stopp'd and turn'd again, And held his broad hand to his brow, And looked intent and eagerly. The far white levels of the plain Flash'd back like billows. Even now He saw rise up remote, 'mid sea, 'Mid space, 'mid wastes, 'mid nothingness, A ship becalm'd as in distress. The dim sign pass'd as suddenly, A gossamer of golden tress, Thrown over some still middle sea, And then his eager eyes grew dazed,-- He brought his two hands to his face. Again he raised his head, and gazed With flashing eyes and visage fierce Far out, and resolute to pierce The far, far, faint receding reach Of space and touch its farther beach. He saw but space, unbounded space; Eternal space and nothingness. Then all wax'd anger'd as they gazed Far out upon the shoreless land, And clench'd their doubled hands and raised Their long bare arms, but utter'd not. At last one started from the band, His bosom heaved as billows heave, Great heaving bosom, broad and brown: He raised his arm, push'd up his sleeve, Push'd bare his arm, strode up and down, With hat pushed back, and flushed and hot, And shot sharp oaths like cannon shot. Again the man stood still, again He strode the height like hoary storm, Then shook his fists, and then his form Did writhe as if it writhed with pain. And yet again his face was raised, And yet again he gazed and gazed, Above his fading, failing foe, With gather'd brow and visage fierce, As if his soul would part or pierce The awful depths that lay below. He had as well look'd on that sea That keeps Samoa's coral isles Amid ten thousand watery miles, Bound round by one eternity; Bound round by realms of nothingness, In love with their own loneliness. He saw but space, unbounded space, And brought his brown hands to his face. There roll'd away to left, to right, Unbroken walls as black as night, And back of these there distant rose Steep cones of everlasting snows. At last he was resolved, his form Seem'd like a pine blown rampt with storm. He mounted, clutch'd his reins, and then Turn'd sharp and savage to his men; And silent then led down the way To night that knows not night nor day. XXII. Like some great serpent black and still, Old Morgan's men stole down the hill. Far down the steep they wound and wound Until the black line touched that land Of gleaming white and silver sand That knows not human sight or sound. How broken plunged the steep descent; How barren! Desolate, and rent By earthquake's shock, the land lay dead, With dust and ashes on its head. 'Twas as some old world overthrown, Where Theseus fought and Sappho dreamed In eons ere they touched this land, And found their proud souls foot and hand Bound to the flesh and stung with pain. An ugly skeleton it seem'd Of its own self. The fiery rain Of red volcanoes here had sown The death of cities of the plain. The very devastation gleamed. All burnt and black, and rent and seam'd, Ay, vanquished quite and overthrown, And torn with thunder-stroke, and strown With cinders, lo! the dead earth lay As waiting for the judgment day. Why, tamer men had turn'd and said, On seeing this, with start and dread, And whisper'd each with gather'd breath, "We come on the confines of death." They wound below a savage bluff That lifted, from its sea-mark'd base, Great walls with characters cut rough And deep by some long-perish'd race; And lo! strange beasts unnamed, unknown, Stood hewn and limn'd upon the stone. The iron hoofs sank here and there, Plough'd deep in ashes, broke anew Old broken idols, and laid bare Old bits of vessels that had grown, As countless ages cycled through, Imbedded with the common stone. A mournful land as land can be Beneath their feet in ashes lay, Beside that dread and dried-up sea; A city older than that gray And grass-grown tower builded when Confusion cursed the tongues of men. Beneath, before, a city lay That in her majesty had shamed The wolf-nursed conqueror of old; Below, before, and far away There reach'd the white arm of a bay, A broad bay shrunk to sand and stone, Where ships had rode and breakers roll'd When Babylon was yet unnamed, And Nimrod's hunting-fields unknown. Some serpents slid from out the grass That grew in tufts by shatter'd stone, Then hid beneath some broken mass That Time had eaten as a bone Is eaten by some savage beast; An everlasting palace feast. A dull-eyed rattlesnake that lay All loathsome, yellow-skinn'd, and slept, Coil'd tight as pine-knot, in the sun, With flat head through the centre run, Struck blindly back, then rattling crept Flat-bellied down the dusty way ... 'Twas all the dead land had to say. Two pink-eyed hawks, wide-wing'd and gray, Scream'd savagely, and, circling high, And screaming still in mad dismay, Grew dim and died against the sky ... 'Twas all the heavens had to say. The grasses fail'd, and then a mass Of brown, burnt cactus ruled the land, And topt the hillocks of hot sand, Where scarce the hornèd toad could pass. Then stunted sage on either hand, All loud with odors, spread the land. The sun rose right above, and fell As falling molten as they pass'd. Some low-built junipers at last, The last that o'er the desert look'd, Thick-bough'd, and black as shapes of hell Where dumb owls sat with bent bills hook'd Beneath their wings awaiting night, Rose up, then faded from the sight: Then not another living thing Crept on the sand or kept the wing. White Azteckee! Dead Azteckee! Vast sepulchre of buried sea! What dim ghosts hover on thy rim, What stately-manner'd shadows swim Along thy gleaming waste of sands And shoreless limits of dead lands? Dread Azteckee! Dead Azteckee! White place of ghosts, give up thy dead: Give back to Time thy buried hosts! The new world's tawny Ishmaelite, The roving tent-born Shoshonee, Who shuns thy shores as death, at night, Because thou art so white, so dread, Because thou art so ghostly white, Because thou hast thy buried hosts, Has named thy shores "the place of ghosts." Thy white uncertain sands are white With bones of thy unburied dead That will not perish from the sight. They drown but perish not,--ah me! What dread unsightly sights are spread Along this lonesome dried-up sea. White Azteckee, give up to me Of all thy prison'd dead but one, That now lies bleaching in the sun, To tell what strange allurements lie Within this dried-up oldest sea, To tempt men to its heart and die. Old, hoar, and dried-up sea! so old! So strewn with wealth, so sown with gold! Yea, thou art old and hoary white With time, and ruin of all things; And on thy lonesome borders night Sits brooding as with wounded wings. The winds that toss'd thy waves and blew Across thy breast the blowing sail, And cheer'd the hearts of cheering crew From farther seas, no more prevail. Thy white-wall'd cities all lie prone, With but a pyramid, a stone, Set head and foot in sands to tell The tired stranger where they fell. The patient ox that bended low His neck, and drew slow up and down Thy thousand freights through rock-built town Is now the free-born buffalo. No longer of the timid fold, The mountain sheep leaps free and bold His high-built summit and looks down From battlements of buried town. Thine ancient steeds know not the rein; They lord the land; they come, they go At will; they laugh at man; they blow A cloud of black steeds o'er the plain. Thy monuments lie buried now, The ashes whiten on thy brow, The winds, the waves, have drawn away, The very wild man dreads to stay. O! thou art very old. I lay, Made dumb with awe and wonderment, Beneath a palm before my tent, With idle and discouraged hands, Not many days agone, on sands Of awful, silent Africa. Long gazing on her mighty shades, I did recall a semblance there Of thee. I mused where story fades From her dark brow and found her fair. A slave, and old, within her veins There runs that warm, forbidden blood That no man dares to dignify In elevated song. The chains That held her race but yesterday Hold still the hands of men. Forbid Is Ethiop. The turbid flood Of prejudice lies stagnant still, And all the world is tainted. Will And wit lie broken as a lance Against the brazen mailed face Of old opinion. None advance Steel-clad and glad to the attack, With trumpet and with song. Look back! Beneath yon pyramids lie hid The histories of her great race. Old Nilus rolls right sullen by, With all his secrets. Who shall say: My father rear'd a pyramid; My brother clipp'd the dragon's wings; My mother was Semiramis? Yea, harps strike idly out of place; Men sing of savage Saxon kings New-born and known but yesterday, And Norman blood presumes to say.... Nay, ye who boast ancestral name And vaunt deeds dignified by time Must not despise her. Who hath worn Since time began a face that is So all-enduring, old like this-- A face like Africa's? Behold! The Sphinx is Africa. The bond Of silence is upon her. Old And white with tombs, and rent and shorn; With raiment wet with tears, and torn, And trampled on, yet all untamed; All naked now, yet not ashamed,-- The mistress of the young world's prime, Whose obelisks still laugh at Time, And lift to heaven her fair name, Sleeps satisfied upon her fame. Beyond the Sphinx, and still beyond, Beyond the tawny desert-tomb Of Time; beyond tradition, loom And lift ghostlike from out the gloom Her thousand cities, battle-torn And gray with story and with time. Her very ruins are sublime, Her thrones with mosses overborne Make velvets for the feet of Time. She points a hand and cries: "Go read The letter'd obelisks that lord Old Rome, and know my name and deed. My archives these, and plunder'd when I had grown weary of all men." We turn to these; we cry: "Abhorr'd Old Sphinx, behold, we cannot read!" And yet my dried-up desert sea Was populous with blowing sail, And set with city, white-wall'd town, All mann'd with armies bright with mail, Ere yet that awful Sphinx sat down To gaze into eternity, Or Egypt knew her natal hour, Or Africa had name or power. XXIII. Away upon the sandy seas, The gleaming, burning, boundless plain. How solemn-like, how still, as when The mighty-minded Genoese Drew three tall ships and led his men From land they might not meet again. The black men rode in front by two, The fair one follow'd close, and kept Her face held down as if she wept; But Morgan kept the rear, and threw His flowing, swaying beard aback Anon along their lonesome track. They rode against the level sun, And spake not he or any one. The weary day fell down to rest, A star upon his mantled breast, Ere scarce the sun fell out of space, And Venus glimmer'd in his place. * * * * * Yea, all the stars shone just as fair, And constellations kept their round, And look'd from out the great profound, And marched, and countermarch'd, and shone Upon that desolation there, Why just the same as if proud man Strode up and down array'd in gold And purple as in days of old, And reckon'd all of his own plan, Or made at least for man alone And man's dominion from a throne. Yet on push'd Morgan silently, And straight as strong ship on a sea; And ever as he rode there lay To right, to left, and in his way, Strange objects looming in the dark, Some like a mast, or ark, or bark. And things half hidden in the sand Lay down before them where they pass'd,-- A broken beam, half-buried mast, A spar or bar, such as might be Blown crosswise, tumbled on the strand Of some sail-crowded stormy sea. XXIV. All night by moon, by morning star, The still, black men still kept their way; All night till morn, till burning day, Hot Vasques follow'd fast and far. The sun shot arrows instantly; And men turn'd east against the sun, And men did look and cry, "The sea!" And Morgan look'd, nay, every one Did look, and lift his hand, and shade His brow and look, and look dismay'd. Lo! looming up before the sun, Before their eyes, yet far away, A ship with many a tall mast lay,-- Lay resting, as if she had run Some splendid race through seas, and won The right to rest in salt flood bay,-- And lay until the level sun Uprose, and then she fell away, As mists melt in the full of day. Old Morgan lifts his bony hand, He does not speak or make command,-- Short time for wonder, doubt, delay; Dark objects sudden heave in sight As if blown out or born of night. It is enough, they turn; away! The sun is high, the sands are hot To touch, and all the tawny plain, That glistens white with salt sea sand, Sinks white and open as they tread And trudge, with half-averted head, As if to swallow them amain. They look, as men look back to land When standing out to stormy sea, But still keep face and murmur not; Keep stern and still as destiny, Or iron king of Germany. It was a sight! A slim dog slid White-mouth'd and still along the sand, The pleading picture of distress. He stopp'd, leap'd up to lick a hand, A hard black hand that sudden chid Him back and check'd his tenderness; But when the black man turn'd his head His poor mute friend had fallen dead. The very air hung white with heat, And white, and fair, and far away A lifted, shining snow-shaft lay As if to mock their mad retreat. The white, salt sands beneath their feet Did make the black men loom as grand, From out the lifting, heaving heat, As they rode sternly on and on, As any bronze men in the land That sit their statue steeds upon. The men were silent as men dead. The sun hung centred overhead, Nor seem'd to move. It molten hung Like some great central burner swung From lofty beams with golden bars In sacristy set round with stars. XXV. Why, flame could hardly be more hot; Yet on the mad pursuer came, Across the gleaming yielding ground, Right on, as if he fed on flame, Right on until the mid-day found The man within a pistol-shot. He hail'd, but Morgan answer'd not, He hail'd, then came a feeble shot, And strangely, in that vastness there, It seem'd to scarcely fret the air, But fell down harmless anywhere. He fiercely hail'd; and then there fell A horse. And then a man fell down, And in the sea-sand seem'd to drown. Then Vasques cursed, but scarce could tell The sound of his own voice, and all In mad confusion seem'd to fall. Yet on push'd Morgan, silent on, And as he rode he lean'd and drew, From his catenas, gold, and threw The bright coins in the glaring sun. But Vasques did not heed a whit, He scarcely deign'd to scowl at it. Again lean'd Morgan! He uprose, And held a high hand to his foes, And held two goblets up, and one Did shine as if itself a sun. Then leaning backward from his place, He hurl'd them in his foemen's face, Then drew again, and so kept on, Till goblets, gold, and all were gone. Yea, strew'd them out upon the sands As men upon a frosty morn, In Mississippi's fertile lands, Hurl out great, yellow ears of corn To hungry swine with hurried hands. XXVI. Lo! still hot Vasques urges on, With flashing eye and flushing cheek. What would he have? what does he seek? He does not heed the gold a whit, He does not deign to look at it; But now his gleaming steel is drawn, And now he leans, would hail again,-- He opes his swollen lips in vain. But look you! See! A lifted hand, And Vasques beckons his command. He cannot speak, he leans, and he Bends low upon his saddle-bow. And now his blade drops to his knee, And now he falters, now comes on, And now his head is bended low; And now his rein, his steel, is gone; Now faint as any child is he, And now his steed sinks to the knee. XXVII. The sun hung molten in mid space, Like some great star fix'd in its place. From out the gleaming spaces rose A sheen of gossamer and danced, As Morgan slow and still advanced Before his far-receding foes. Right on and on the still black line Drove straight through gleaming sand and shine, By spar and beam and mast and stray, And waif of sea and cast-away. The far peaks faded from their sight, The mountain walls fell down like night, And nothing now was to be seen Save but the dim sun hung in sheen Of fairy garments all blood-red,-- The hell beneath, the hell o'erhead. A black man tumbled from his steed. He clutch'd in death the moving sands. He caught the round earth in his hands, He gripp'd it, held it hard and grim.... The great sad mother did not heed His hold, but pass'd right on from him, And ere he died grew far and dim. XXVIII. The sun seem'd broken loose at last, And settled slowly to the west, Half hidden as he fell a-rest, Yet, like the flying Parthian, cast His keenest arrows as he pass'd. On, on, the black men slowly drew Their length, like some great serpent through The sands, and left a hollow'd groove: They march'd, they scarcely seem'd to move. How patient in their muffled tread! How like the dead march of the dead! At last the slow black line was check'd, An instant only; now again It moved, it falter'd now, and now It settled in its sandy bed, And steeds stood rooted to the plain. Then all stood still, and men somehow Look'd down and with averted head; Look'd down, nor dared look up, nor reck'd Of any thing, of ill or good, But bowed and stricken still they stood. Like some brave band that dared the fierce And bristled steel of gather'd host, These daring men had dared to pierce This awful vastness, dead and gray. And now at last brought well at bay They stood,--but each stood to his post; Each man an unencompassed host. Then one dismounted, waved a hand, 'Twas Morgan's stern and still command. There fell a clash, like loosen'd chain, And men dismounting loosed the rein. Then every steed stood loosed and free; And some stepp'd slow and mute aside, And some sank to the sands and died, And some stood still as shadows be, And men stood gazing silently. XXIX. Old Morgan turn'd and raised his hand, And laid it level with his eyes, And look'd far back along the land. He saw a dark dust still uprise, Still surely tend to where he lay. He did not curse, he did not say, He did not even look surprise, But silent turned to her his eyes. Nay, he was over-gentle now, He wiped a time his Titan brow, Then sought dark Ina in her place, Put out his arms, put down his face And look'd in hers. She reach'd her hands, She lean'd, she fell upon his breast; He reach'd his arms around; she lay As lies a bird in leafy nest. And he look'd out across the sands, And then his face fell down, he smiled, And softly said, "My child, my child!" Then bent his head and strode away. And as he strode he turn'd his head, He sidewise cast his brief commands; He led right on across the sands. They rose and follow'd where he led. XXX. 'Twas so like night, the sun was dim, Some black men settled down to rest, But none made murmur or request. The dead were dead, and that were best; The living leaning follow'd him, In huddled heaps, half nude, and grim. The day through high mid-heaven rode Across the sky, the dim red day; Awest the warlike day-god strode With shoulder'd shield away, away. The savage, warlike day bent low, As reapers bend in gathering grain, As archer bending bends yew bow, And flush'd and fretted as in pain. Then down his shoulder slid his shield, So huge, so awful, so blood-red And batter'd as from battle-field: It settled, sunk to his left hand, Sunk down and down, it touch'd the sand, Then day along the land lay dead, Without one candle at his head. XXXI. And now the moon wheel'd white and vast, A round, unbroken, marbled moon, And touch'd the far bright buttes of snow, Then climb'd their shoulders over soon; And there she seem'd to sit at last, To hang, to hover there, to grow, Grow vaster than vast peaks of snow. Grow whiter than the snow's own breast, Grow softer than September's noon, Until the snow-peaks seem'd at best But one wide, shining, shatter'd moon. She sat the battlements of time; She shone in mail of frost and rime, A time, and then rose up and stood In heaven in sad widowhood. * * * * * The faded moon fell wearily, And then the sun right suddenly Rose up full arm'd, and rushing came Across the land like flood of flame. XXXII. The sun roll'd on. Lo! hills uprose As push'd against the arching skies,-- As if to meet the timid sun-- Rose sharp from out the sultry dun, Set well with wood, and brier, and rose, And seem'd to hold the free repose Of lands where rocky summits rise, Or unfenced fields of Paradise. The black men look'd up from the sands Against the dim, uncertain skies, As men that disbelieved their eyes, And would have laugh'd; they wept instead, With shoulders heaved, with bowing head Hid down between their two black hands. They stood and gazed. Lo! like the call Of spring-time promises, the trees Lean'd from their lifted mountain wall, And stood clear cut against the skies As if they grew in pistol-shot. Yet all the mountains answer'd not, And yet there came no cooling breeze, Nor soothing sense of windy trees. At last old Morgan, looking through His shaded fingers, let them go, And let his load fall down as dead. He groan'd, he clutch'd his beard of snow As was his wont, then bowing low, Took up his life, and moaning said, "Lord Christ! 'tis the mirage, and we Stand blinded in a burning sea." O sweet deceit when minds despair! O mad deceit of man betray'd! O mother Nature, thou art fair, But thou art false as man or maid. Yea, many lessons, mother Earth, Have we thy children learn'd of thee In sweet deceit.... The sudden birth Of hope that dies mocks destiny. O mother Earth, thy promises Are fallen leaves; they lie forgot! Such lessons! How could we learn less? We are but children, blame us not. XXXIII. Again they move, but where or how It recks them little, nothing now. Yet Morgan leads them as before, But totters now; he bends, and he Is like a broken ship a-sea,-- A ship that knows not any shore, And knows it shall not anchor more. Some leaning shadows crooning crept Through desolation, crown'd in dust. And had the mad pursuer kept His path, and cherished his pursuit? There lay no choice. Advance he must: Advance, and eat his ashen fruit. Yet on and on old Morgan led. His black men totter'd to and fro, A leaning, huddled heap of woe; Then one fell down, then two fell dead; Yet not one moaning word was said. They made no sign, they said no word, Nor lifted once black, helpless hands; And all the time no sound was heard Save but the dull, dead, muffled tread Of shuffled feet in shining sands. Again the still moon rose and stood Above the dim, dark belt of wood, Above the buttes, above the snow, And bent a sad, sweet face below. She reach'd along the level plain Her long, white fingers. Then again She reach'd, she touch'd the snowy sands, Then reach'd far out until she touch'd A heap that lay with doubled hands, Reach'd from its sable self, and clutch'd With death. O tenderly That black, that dead and hollow face Was kiss'd at midnight.... What if I say The long, white moonbeams reaching there, Caressing idle hands of clay, And resting on the wrinkled hair And great lips push'd in sullen pout, Were God's own fingers reaching out From heaven to that lonesome place? XXXIV. By waif and stray and cast-away, Such as are seen in seas withdrawn, Old Morgan led in silence on, And sometime lifting up his head To guide his footsteps as he led, He deem'd he saw a great ship lay Her keel along the sea-wash'd sand, As with her captain's old command. * * * * * The stars were seal'd; and then a haze Of gossamer fill'd all the west, So like in Indian summer days, And veil'd all things. And then the moon Grew pale, and faint, and far. She died, And now nor star nor any sign Fell out of heaven. Oversoon Some black men fell. Then at their side Some one sat down to watch, to rest ... To rest, to watch, or what you will, The man sits resting, watching still. XXXV. The day glared through the eastern rim Of rocky peaks, as prison bars; With light as dim as distant stars The sultry sunbeams filter'd down Through misty phantoms weird and dim, Through shifting shapes bat-wing'd brown. Like some vast ruin wrapp'd in flame The sun fell down before them now. Behind them wheel'd white peaks of snow, As they proceeded. Gray and grim And awful objects went and came Before them then. They pierced at last The desert's middle depths, and lo! There loom'd from out the desert vast A lonely ship, well-built and trim, And perfect all in hull and mast. No storm had stain'd it any whit, No seasons set their teeth in it. Her masts were white as ghosts, and tall; Her decks were as of yesterday. The rains, the elements, and all The moving things that bring decay By fair green lands or fairer seas, Had touch'd not here for centuries. Lo! date had lost all reckoning, And Time had long forgotten all In this lost land, and no new thing Or old could anywise befall, Or morrows, or a yesterday, For Time went by the other way. The ages have not any course Across this untrack'd waste. The sky Wears here one blue, unbending hue, The heavens one unchanging mood. The far still stars they filter through The heavens, falling bright and bold Against the sands as beams of gold. The wide, white moon forgets her force; The very sun rides round and high, As if to shun this solitude. What dreams of gold or conquest drew The oak-built sea-king to these seas, Ere Earth, old Earth, unsatisfied, Rose up and shook man in disgust From off her wearied breast, and threw And smote his cities down, and dried These measured, town-set seas to dust? Who trod these decks? What captain knew The straits that led to lands like these? Blew south-sea breeze or north-sea breeze? What spiced winds whistled through this sail? What banners stream'd above these seas? And what strange seaman answer'd back To other sea-king's beck and hail, That blew across his foamy track! Sought Jason here the golden fleece? Came Trojan ship or ships of Greece? Came decks dark-mann'd from sultry Ind, Woo'd here by spacious wooing wind? So like a grand, sweet woman, when A great love moves her soul to men? Came here strong ships of Solomon In quest of Ophir by Cathay?... Sit down and dream of seas withdrawn, And every sea-breath drawn away.... Sit down, sit down! What is the good That we go on still fashioning Great iron ships or walls of wood, High masts of oak, or any thing? Lo! all things moving must go by. The sea lies dead. Behold, this land Sits desolate in dust beside His snow-white, seamless shroud of sand; The very clouds have wept and died, And only God is in the sky. XXXVI. The sands lay heaved, as heaved by waves, As fashion'd in a thousand graves: And wrecks of storm blown here and there, And dead men scatter'd everywhere; And strangely clad they seem'd to be Just as they sank in that old sea. The mermaid with her splendid hair Had clung about a wreck's beam there; And sung her song of sweet despair, The time she saw the seas withdrawn And all her home and glory gone: Had sung her melancholy dirge, Above the last receding surge, And, looking down the rippled tide, Had sung, and with her song had died. The monsters of the sea lay bound In strange contortions. Coil'd around A mast half heaved above the sand, The great sea-serpent's folds were found, As solid as ship's iron band. And basking in the burning sun There rose the great whale's skeleton. A thousand sea things stretch'd across Their weary and bewilder'd way: Great unnamed monsters wrinkled lay With sunken eyes and shrunken form. The strong sea-horse that rode the storm With mane as light and white as floss, Lay tangled in his mane of moss. And anchor, hull, and cast-away, And all things that the miser deep Doth in his darkling locker keep, To right and left around them lay. Yea, coins lay there on either hand, Lay shining in the silver sand; As plenty in the wide sands lay As stars along the Milky Way. And golden coin, and golden cup, And golden cruse, and golden plate, And all that great seas swallow up, Right in their dreadful pathway lay.... The hungry and insatiate Old sea, made hoary white with time, And wrinkled cross with many a crime, With all his treasured thefts was there, His sins, his very soul laid bare, As if it were the Judgment Day. XXXVII. And now the tawny night fell soon, And there was neither star nor moon; And yet it seem'd it was not night. There fell a phosphorescent light, There rose from white sands and dead men A soft light, white and fair as when The Spirit of Jehovah moved Upon the water's conscious face, And made it His abiding-place. O mighty waters unreproved! Thou deep! where the Jehovah moved Ere soul of man was called to be! O seas! that were created not As man, as earth, as light, as aught That is. O sea! thou art to me A terror, death, eternity. XXXVIII. I do recall some sad days spent, By borders of the Orient, Days sweet as sad to memory ... 'Twould make a tale. It matters not ... I sought the loneliest seas; I sought The solitude of ruins, and forgot Mine own lone life and littleness Before this fair land's mute distress, That sat within this changeful sea. Slow sailing through the reedy isles, By unknown banks, through unknown bays, Some sunny, summer yesterdays, Where Nature's beauty still beguiles, I saw the storied yellow sail And lifted prow of steely mail. 'Tis all that's left Torcello now,-- A pirate's yellow sail, a prow. Below the far, faint peaks of snow, And grass-grown causeways well below, I touched Torcello. Once a-land, I took a sea-shell in my hand, And blew like any trumpeter. I felt the fig-leaves lift and stir On trees that reached from ruined wall Above my head, but that was all. Back from the farther island shore Came echoes trooping; nothing more. Lo! here stood Adria once, and here Attila came with sword and flame, And set his throne of hollowed stone In her high mart. And it remains Still lord o'er all. Where once the tears Of mute petition fell, the rains Of heaven fall. Lo! all alone There lifts this massive empty throne! The sea has changed his meed, his mood, And made this sedgy solitude. By cattle paths grass-grown and worn, Through marbled streets all stain'd and torn By time and battle, there I walked. A bent old beggar, white as one For better fruitage blossoming, Came on. And as he came he talked Unto himself; for there are none In all his island, old and dim, To answer back or question him. I turned, retraced my steps once more. The hot miasma steamed and rose In deadly vapor from the reeds That grew from out the shallow shore, Where peasants say the sea-horse feeds, And Neptune shapes his horn and blows. I climb'd and sat that throne of stone To contemplate, to dream, to reign; Ay, reign above myself; to call The people of the past again Before me as I sat alone In all my kingdom. There were kine That browsed along the reedy brine, And now and then a tusky boar Would shake the high reeds of the shore, A bird blow by,--but that was all. I watched the lonesome sea-gull pass. I did remember and forget; The past rolled by; I stood alone. I sat the shapely chiselled stone That stands in tall sweet grasses set; Ay, girdle deep in long strong grass, And green Alfalfa. Very fair The heavens were, and still and blue, For Nature knows no changes there. The Alps of Venice, far away Like some half-risen half moon lay. How sweet the grasses at my feet! The smell of clover over sweet. I heard the hum of bees. The bloom Of clover-tops and cherry-trees Were being rifled by the bees, And these were building in a tomb. The fair Alfalfa; such as has Usurped the Occident, and grows With all the sweetness of the rose On Sacramento's sundown hills, Is there, and that mid island fills With fragrance. Yet the smell of death Comes riding in on every breath. Lo! death that is not death, but rest: To step aside, to watch and wait Beside the wave, outside the gate, With all life's pulses in your breast: To absolutely rest, to pray In some lone mountain while you may. That sad sweet fragrance. It had sense, And sound, and voice. It was a part Of that which had possessed my heart, And would not of my will go hence. 'Twas Autumn's breath; 'twas dear as kiss Of any worshipped woman is. Some snails have climb'd the throne and writ Their silver monograms on it In unknown tongues. I sat thereon, I dreamed until the day was gone; I blew again my pearly shell,-- Blew long and strong, and loud and well; I puffed my cheeks, I blew, as when Horn'd satyrs danced the delight of men. Some mouse-brown cows that fed within Looked up. A cowherd rose hard by, My single subject, clad in skin, Nor yet half clad. I caught his eye, He stared at me, then turned and fled. He frightened fled, and as he ran, Like wild beast from the face of man, Across his shoulder threw his head. He gathered up his skin of goat About his breast and hairy throat. He stopped, and then this subject true, Mine only one in lands like these Made desolate by changeful seas, Came back and asked me for a _sou_. XXXIX. And yet again through the watery miles Of reeds I rowed till the desolate isles Of the black bead-makers of Venice are not. I touched where a single sharp tower is shot To heaven, and torn by thunder and rent As if it had been Time's battlement. A city lies dead, and this great gravestone Stands at its head like a ghost alone. Some cherry-trees grow here, and here An old church, simple and severe In ancient aspect, stands alone Amid the ruin and decay, all grown In moss and grasses. Old and quaint, With antique cuts of martyr'd saint, The gray church stands with stooping knees, Defying the decay of seas. Her pictured Hell, with flames blown high, In bright mosaics wrought and set When man first knew the Nubian art, Her bearded saints, as black as jet; Her quaint Madonna, dim with rain And touch of pious lips of pain, So touched my lonesome soul, that I Gazed long, then came and gazed again, And loved, and took her to my heart. Nor monk in black, nor Capuchin, Nor priest of any creed was seen. A sun-browned woman, old and tall, And still as any shadow is, Stole forth from out the mossy wall With massive keys to show me this: Came slowly forth, and following, Three birds--and all with drooping wing. Three mute brown babes of hers; and they-- O, they were beautiful as sleep, Or death, below the troubled deep. And on the pouting lips of these Red corals of the silent seas, Sweet birds, the everlasting seal Of silence that the God has set On this dead island, sits for aye. I would forget, yet not forget Their helpless eloquence. They creep Somehow into my heart, and keep One bleak, cold corner, jewel set. They steal my better self away To them, as little birds that day Stole fruits from out the cherry-trees. So helpless and so wholly still, So sad, so wrapt in mute surprise, That I did love, despite my will. One little maid of ten,--such eyes, So large and lonely, so divine,-- Such pouting lips, such peachy cheek,-- Did lift her perfect eyes to mine, Until our souls did touch and speak; Stood by me all that perfect day, Yet not one sweet word could she say. She turned her melancholy eyes So constant to my own, that I Forgot the going clouds, the sky, Found fellowship, took bread and wine, And so her little soul and mine Stood very near together there. And O, I found her very fair. Yet not one soft word could she say: What did she think of all that day? The sometime song of gondolier Is heard afar. The fishermen Betimes draw net by ruined shore, In full spring time when east winds fall; Then traders row with muffled oar, Tedesca or the turban'd Turk, The pirate, at some midnight work By watery wall,--but that is all. XL. Remote, around the lonesome ship, Old Morgan moved, but knew it not, For neither star nor moon fell down ... I trow that was a lonesome spot He found, where boat and ship did dip In sands like some half-sunken town, And all things rose bat-winged and brown. At last before the leader lay A form that in the night did seem A slain Goliath. As in a dream, He drew aside in his slow pace, And look'd. He saw a sable face, A friend that fell that very day, Thrown straight across his wearied way. He falter'd now. His iron heart, That never yet refused its part, Began to fail him; and his strength Shook at his knees, as shakes the wind A shatter'd ship. His scatter'd mind Ranged up and down the land. At length He turn'd, as ships turn, tempest toss'd, For now he knew that he was lost, And sought in vain the moon, the stars, In vain the battle-star of Mars. Again he moved. And now again He paused, he peer'd along the plain, Another form before him lay. He stood, and statue-white he stood, He trembled like a stormy wood,-- It was a foeman brown and gray. He lifted up his head again, Again he search'd the great profound For moon, for star, but sought in vain. He kept his circle round and round; The great ship lifting from the sand And pointing heavenward like a hand. XLI. And still he crept along the plain, Yet where his foeman dead again Lay in his way he moved around, And soft as if on sacred ground, And did not touch him anywhere. It might have been he had a dread, In his half-crazed and fever'd brain, His mortal foe might wake again If he should dare to touch him there. He circled round the lonesome ship Like some wild beast within a wall, That keeps his paces round and round. The very stillness had a sound; He saw strange somethings rise and dip; He felt the weirdness like a pall Come down and cover him. It seem'd To take a form, take many forms, To talk to him, to reach out arms; Yet on he kept, and silent kept, And as he led he lean'd and slept, And as he slept he talk'd and dream'd. Then shadows follow'd, stopp'd, and stood Bewildered, wandered back again, Came on and then fell to the sand And sinking died. Then other men Did wag their woolly heads and laugh, Then bend their necks and seem to quaff Of cooling waves that careless flow Where woods and long strong grasses grow. Yet on wound Morgan, leaning low, With head upon his breast, and slow As hand upon a dial plate. He did not turn his course or quail, He did not falter, did not fail, Turn right or left or hesitate. Some far-off sounds had lost their way, And seem'd to call to him and pray For help, as if they were affright. It was not day, it seem'd not night, But that dim land that lies between The mournful, faithful face of night And loud and gold-bedazzled day; A night that was not felt but seen. There seem'd not then the ghost of sound. He stepp'd as soft as step the dead; Yet on he led in solemn tread, Bewilder'd, blinded, round and round, About the great black ship that rose Tall-masted as that ship that blows Her ghost below lost Panama,-- The tallest mast man ever saw. Two leaning shadows follow'd him, Their eyes were red, their teeth shone white, Their limbs did lift as shadows swim. Then one went left and one went right, And in the night pass'd out of night; Pass'd through the portals black, unknown, And Morgan totter'd on alone. XLII. And why he still survived the rest, Why still he had the strength to stir, Why still he stood like gnarléd oak That buffets storm and tempest stroke, One cannot say, save but for her, That helpless being on his breast; At rest; that would not let him rest. She did not speak, she did not stir; In rippled currents over her Her black, abundant hair pour'd down Like mantle or some sable gown. That sad, sweet dreamer; she who knew Not any thing of earth at all, Nor cared to know its bane or bliss; That dove that did not touch the land, That knew, yet did not understand. And this may be because she drew Her all of life right from the hand Of God, and did not choose to learn The things that make up earth's concern. Ah! there be souls none understand; Like clouds, they cannot touch the land, Drive as they may by field or town. Then we look wise at this and frown, And we cry, "Fool," and cry, "Take hold Of earth, and fashion gods of gold." ... Unanchor'd ships, they blow and blow, Sail to and fro, and then go down In unknown seas that none shall know, Without one ripple of renown. Poor drifting dreamers sailing by, They seem to only live to die. Call these not fools; the test of worth Is not the hold you have of earth. Lo! there be gentlest souls sea-blown That know not any harbor known. Now it may be the reason is They touch on fairer shores than this. XLIII. And dark-eyed Ina? Nestled there, Half-hidden in her glorious hair, The while its midnight folds fell down From out his great arms nude and brown, She lay against his hairy breast, All motionless as death, below His great white beard like shroud, or snow, As if in everlasting rest. He totter'd side to side to keep Erect and keep his steady tread; He lean'd, he bent to her his head ... "She sleeps uncommon sound," he said, "As if in that eternal sleep, Where cool and watered willows sweep." At last he touch'd a fallen group, Dead fellows tumbled in the sands, Dead foemen, gather'd to the dead. And eager now the man did stoop, Lay down his load and reach his hands, And stretch his form and look steadfast And frightful, and as one aghast And ghostly from his hollow eyes. He lean'd and then he raised his head, And look'd for Vasques, but in vain; He laid his two great arms crosswise, Took breath a time with trembling main, Then peered again along the plain. Lo! from the sands another face, The last that follow'd through the deep, Comes on from out the lonesome place. And Vasques, too, survives! But where? His last bold follower lies there, Thrown straight across old Morgan's track, As if to check him, bid him back. He stands, he does not dare to stir, He watches by his child asleep, He fears, for her: but only her. The man who ever mock'd at death, He hardly dares to draw his breath. Beyond, and still as black despair, A man rose up, stood dark and tall, Stretch'd out his neck, reach'd forth, let fall Dark oaths, and Death stood waiting there. He drew his blade, came straight as death Right up before the follower, The last of Morgan's sable men, While Morgan watched aside by her, And saw his foeman wag his beard And fiercest visage ever seen. The while that dead man lay between. I think no man there drew a breath, I know that no man quail'd or fear'd. The tawny dead man stretch'd between, And Vasques set his foot thereon. The stars were seal'd, the moon was gone, The very darkness cast a shade. The scene was rather heard than seen, The rattle of a single blade.... A right foot rested on the dead, A black hand reach'd and clutch'd a beard, Then neither prayed, nor dreamed of hope ... A fierce face reach'd, a fierce face peer'd ... No bat went whirling overhead, No star fell out of Ethiope.... The dead man lay between them there, The two men glared as tigers glare, The black man held him by the beard. He wound his hand, he held him fast, And tighter held, as if he fear'd The man might 'scape him at the last. Whiles Morgan did not speak or stir, But stood in silent watch by her. Not long.... A light blade lifted, thrust, A blade that leapt and swept about, So wizard-like, like wand in spell, So like a serpent's tongue thrust out ... Thrust twice, thrust thrice, thrust as he fell, Thrust through until it touch'd the dust. Yet ever as he thrust and smote, The black hand like an iron band Did tighten to the gasping throat. He fell, but did not loose his hand; The two fell dead upon the sand. Lo! up and from the fallen forms Two ghosts came forth like cloud of storms. Two tall ghosts stood, and looking back, With hands all bloody, and hands clutch'd, Strode on together, till they touch'd, Along the lonesome, chartless track, Where dim Plutonian darkness fell, Then touch'd the outer rim of hell, And looking back their great despair Sat sadly down as resting there. XLIV. Perchance there was a strength in death; The scene it seem'd to nerve the man To superhuman strength. He rose, Held up his head, began to scan The heavens and to take his breath Right strong and lustily. He now Resumed his load, and with his eye Fixed on a star that filtered through The farther west, pushed bare his brow, And kept his course with head held high, As if he strode his deck and drew His keel below some lifted light That watched the rocky reef at night. How lone he was, how patient she, Upon that lonesome sandy sea! It were a sad, unpleasant sight To follow them through all the night, Until the time they lifted hand, And touched at last a watered land. The turkeys walked the tangled grass, And scarcely turned to let them pass. There was no sign of man, or sign Of savage beast. 'Twas so divine, It seem'd as if the bended skies Were rounded for this Paradise. The large-eyed antelope came down From off their windy hills, and blew Their whistles as they wandered through The open groves of watered wood; Then came as light as if a-wing, And reached their noses wet and brown, And stamped their little feet, and stood Close up before them wondering. What if this were the Eden true, They found in far heart of the new And unnamed westmost world I sing, Where date and history had birth, And man first 'gan his wandering To go the girdles of the earth! It lies a little isle mid land, An island in a sea of sand; With reedy waters and the balm Of an eternal summer air. Some blowy pines toss tall and fair; And there are grasses long and strong, And tropic fruits that never fail: The Manzinetta pulp, the palm, The prickly pear, with all the song Of summer birds. And there the quail Makes nest, and you may hear her call All day from out the chaparral. A land where white man never trod, And Morgan seems some demi-god, That haunts the red man's spirit land. A land where never red man's hand Is lifted up in strife at all. He holds it sacred unto those Who bravely fell before their foes, And rarely dares its desert wall. Here breaks nor sound of strife or sign; Rare times a red man comes this way, Alone, and battle-scarred and gray, And then he bends devout before The maid who keeps the cabin door, And deems her sacred and divine. Within the island's heart, 'tis said, Tall trees are bending down with bread, And that a fountain pure as truth, And deep and mossy bound and fair, Is bubbling from the forest there,-- Perchance the fabled fount of youth! An isle where never cares betide; Where solitude comes not, and where The soul is ever satisfied. An isle where skies are ever fair, Where men keep never date nor day, Where Time has thrown his glass away. This isle is all their own. No more The flight by day, the watch by night. Dark Ina twines about the door The scarlet blooms, the blossoms white, And winds red berries in her hair, And never knows the name of care. She has a thousand birds; they blow In rainbow clouds, in clouds of snow; The birds take berries from her hand; They come and go at her command. She has a thousand pretty birds, That sing her summer songs all day; Small black-hoofed antelope in herds, And squirrels bushy-tail'd and gray, With round and sparkling eyes of pink, And cunning-faced as you can think. She has a thousand busy birds; And is she happy in her isle, With all her feathered friends and herds? For when has Morgan seen her smile? She has a thousand cunning birds, They would build nestings in her hair; She has brown antelope in herds; She never knows the name of care; Why then is she not happy there? All patiently she bears her part; She has a thousand birdlings there, These birds they would build in her hair; But not one bird builds in her heart. She has a thousand birds; yet she Would give ten thousand cheerfully, All bright of plume and loud of tongue, And sweet as ever trilled or sung, For one small fluttered bird to come And sit within her heart, though dumb. She has a thousand birds; yet one Is lost, and, lo! she is undone. She sighs sometimes. She looks away, And yet she does not weep or say. She has a thousand birds. The skies Are fashioned for her paradise; A very queen of fairy land, With all earth's fruitage at command, And yet she does not lift her eyes. She sits upon the water's brink As mournful soul'd as you can think. She has a thousand birds; and yet She will look downward, nor forget The fluttered white-winged turtle dove, The changeful-throated birdling, love, That came, that sang through tropic trees, Then flew for aye across the seas. The waters kiss her feet; above Her head the trees are blossoming, And fragrant with eternal spring. Her birds, her antelope are there, Her birds they would build in her hair; She only waits her birdling, love. She turns, she looks along the plain, Imploring love to come again. Cambridge: Press of John Wilson & Son. 
42265	----	[Transcriber's Note: Variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been retained except in obvious cases of typographical error: Page 012, Line 292: "sprits" --> "spirits" Line 295: "evermore" --> "evermore." Page 028, Line 981: "decendeth" --> "descendeth" Line 1001: "Autnmn" --> "Autumn" Page 033, Line 1224: "thé" --> "the" Tags of decorative illustrations have been removed. Italic printed text has been formatted as _text_.] _The_ Comet and Other Verses By Irving Sidney Dix COPYRIGHT 1910 PRICE 15 CENTS THE COMET and OTHER VERSES By IRVING SIDNEY DIX DEDICATION To the Memory of my school mate William Morgan who was drowned in the Delaware. _Press of Munn's Review_ _Carbondale, Penna._ With the Reader It should be stated that some of these verses, in a slightly different form, have previously appeared in various periodicals in Binghamton, Scranton, Philadelphia and New York City, but most of them appear here for the first time, and also, perhaps it should be mentioned that some of these stanzas were written during my school days. However, the majority of the following verses have been composed since the former booklet was published. And if in any way you have been helped to see, that even here in this rugged country "the poetry of earth is never ceasing," however rude my interpretation of it may seem to the critical, the labor and expense of publishing this little volume will be fully justified. IRVING DIX. Contents _Page_ The Comet 7 Washington 8 The Storm 10 Jim, the Newsboy 11 March Wind Blow 12 The Rime of the Raftmen 13 A Child's Elegy 16 Dreaming of the Delaware 17 Norma 18 Plant a Tree 21 Maid of Shehawken 21 To the Delaware 22 Starlight Lake 24 An Inquiry 25 Twin Lake 26 The Man Who Swears 27 The Glen 28 Hope 30 Lines to Liars 31 Fooling 32 ADVERTISEMENT The Comet--15 cents The Silent Life--15 cents Both Booklets--25 cents These booklets are not published as a financial venture--they are likely to be a failure in this direction, for the cost of printing alone equals the selling price, on account of the small number issued, only 250 copies, and fifty copies are not for sale. Five hundred copies of the Silent Life were printed in 1907, and I have left only 160 copies for sale. I desire to dispose of these and the small edition of "The Comet" during the present year, so that another booklet (containing, I hope still better material) may be issued during the year of 1911. To those who may wish to send copies of either of these booklets to their friends, thereby assisting in the disposal of this edition, the following offer will be of interest. Ten copies, assorted to suit--$1.00. Address: IRVING DIX, Shehawken, Wayne Co., Penna. Foreword A few years ago, while recovering from an illness, I conceived the idea of writing some reminiscent lines on country life in the Wayne Highlands. And during the interval of a few days I produced some five hundred couplets,--a few good, some bad and many indifferent--and such speed would of necessity invite the indifferent. A portion of these lines were published in 1907. However, I had hoped to revise and republish them, with additions of the same type, at a later date as a souvenir volume of verses for those who spend the summer months among these hills--as well as for the home-fast inhabitants. But in substituting the following collection of verses I hope my judgment will be confirmed by those who chance to read these simple stanzas of one, who-- "Loves not man the less, but Nature more From those our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be or have been before, To mingle with the Universe and feel What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal." I. S. D. Copyright 1910 BY Irving Dix Verses in this booklet may be copied in the public prints by giving credit as above. The Comet Swift circuit-rider of the endless skies, Thou wanderer of the outer, unknown air, Amid those dim, uncharted regions there, Imagination droops--in deep surprise Man doth behold thee, and the fearful speed At which thou spurrest on thy flaming steed. Born of the dark and ever-deepening Past, Who nurs'd thee there in yonder viewless space Afar from earth--thy all-beholding face Hath gazed unspeakable, with clear eye cast Worldward on each magnificent return As if of human progress thou wouldst learn. And thou hast seen each triumph and each plan By which the human race since human time Hath learned at last Earth's secrets all-sublime While rising from the elements to man-- Hast seen it triumph over sea and air And universal knowledge hope to share. Thy circuit measures well the age of man, The epoch of a life--and few there be Who seeing thee, thy face again may see, For human life is but a little span, With varying cycles of a different day, And in diffusion wears itself away. Child of the Sun, when first the human eye Beheld thee coursing in the night afar Like an illumined spectre of a star-- Beheld thy awful form against the sky Strong men fell earthward with a coward-cry On their pale lips, as if afraid to die-- And that brute King--Nero, the cruel King, When looking on thy fiery face unknown, Sate trembling on his little human throne, And thought that thou didst evil tidings bring-- That thou wert writing on the distant skies A doom from which no human king could rise. Thy age is all unknown--man can but guess The time when first the Sun thy circle set-- He can but guess thy secret birth--and yet Observing thee his knowledge is not less; He knows each cycle, each return to be A moment in that vast eternity. Recording-comet of th' immortal space, What history thy eye hath look'd upon Since first thy airy, circling course was run! What fallen pride! What scatterings of race! Jerusalem and Nineveh and Rome Didst thou behold from thy almighty dome-- Didst thou behold--their birth, their rise, their fall-- Low humbled by the under hordes at last, With glory and fair triumphs in the past, And footprints of destruction over all. While thou, fleet comet, with a light divine Continueth upon the earth to shine. Speed on! swift comet--turn, wanderer, turn! And with thy flaming, god-like pen of light On heaven's scroll with burning letters write: Live but to love, O earth!--to love and learn, For while a comet's mighty cycles fail, Love,--love and truth forever shall prevail. Washington It is forever so--when there is need Of some clear, clarion voice to forward lead God raiseth up a man from his own seed; Not from the soft, luxurious lap of earth, But from a nobler soil, so that from birth The frame is moulded with a chosen food That has one only end--to make it good, Full generous, far-sighted, firm and keen, With strength to rise above the gross and mean-- The sordid selfishness that like a curse Drives from the heart the virtues it would nurse-- That love of country, freedom's holy cause, Justice, mercy, that eye for equal laws, Faith in the future and our fellow-men, Faith in the sword when shielded by the pen-- And so it was with us--when there was need Of one commanding voice to forward lead, God rais'd up here a man from His own seed; And so came forth the gentle Washington, Fair child of Fate, the nation's noblest son, Whom Virtue fostered and whom Virtue won. Some few there be whose feet knew rougher ground, But few indeed a loftier summit found-- Nurtured in tender soil, he held a path Where others faltered, heeding not the wrath Of any king or potentate or power-- His was the hero-heart--he saw the hour,-- He knew the mighty odds, yet would not cower. And when the tyrant's heel touch'd on our shore And thrust itself unbidden to our door,-- But Washington alone with eagle-eye Withstood the foe and taught him how to die; Repulsed, disheartened, driven to despair, He lifted up his voice in humble prayer, For in that awful night at Valley Forge He drank the bitter cup--he knew Fate's scourge, He felt her lash,--this tender-hearted George. Father of Liberty--thou Child of Light, Columbia's first-born, who in thy might Restored to Freedom her enfeebled sight-- If spirits of the nobler dead can hear, This day--thy natal day--press close thine ear And learn what we thy nation need to fear, And if the immortal dead can truly speak, Show us, O Child of Light, where we are weak,-- Grant us thy counsel (for thou art with God) And bear us wisdom where thy footsteps trod, And if thou seest aught of envious strife From virtue sapping all her sweeter life, Teach us, O Child of Light, a purer love, For thou hast learn'd of God--thou art above Thy weak and erring mortals here below Who see the light, yet forward fear to go-- Guide us, if spirits of the dead may guide, So that in peace we ever may abide, So that from land to sea, from shore to shore, We shall be brothers now and evermore. The Storm All day long the sky was cloudless, Life was waiting for a breath, And the heat was more oppressive Than the fear of sudden death; All day long the sun was shining In a hot and windless sky, And the trees were weak for water-- Earth and air were dead and dry. But e'er Night her wings had folded Came a welcome western breeze, Moving idly through the forest, Prophesying to the trees, Till above that dim horizon Giant clouds like warring foes Marshalled far in battle numbers As the wild winds wilder rose. Hark! O hear the double rumble As the thunder shakes the air, Like a thousand hoofs advancing In yon cloudy corral there!-- Look!--how red the lightning flashes! How the echoes roll and roll-- Dirges from some demon goddess-- How the bells of heaven toll! Like a lance, a flash of lightning Cuts the foremost cloud in twain And the thunder's mighty echo Rolls athwart the drenching rain Till the landscape fades like shadows In the driving sheets of spray, And the wind wails through the forest, And the great trees rock and sway. Soon the air is strangely solemn And the winds no longer blow To the thunder's distant drumming In the valley far below; And along the low horizon All the clouds are growing dim, While upon the western hilltops Rolls again the sun's red rim. And away across the valley In the heavens arching high, Like a bed for fairy flowers Swings the rainbow in the sky-- Swings until the shadows gather And the sun sinks out of sight, Seemingly to whisper softly To the world a fond good night. Jim, the Newsboy Jim, the newsboy, died today, So the evening papers say-- And the funeral will be In the afternoon at three-- "Please" (the papers say) "a flow'r Bring for Jim before the hour-- Any color that you deem A true token of esteem, If you would remember him-- The newsboy, Jim. At his corner near Broad street, Jim, tho' lame, would smiling greet With a merry, winning call All his patrons, great and small, And his fellow newsboys say That they miss him much today, And they have a tablet bought, And upon it this is wrought: "In memory of Newsboy Jim, We all liked him." Little toilers on Life's road To yon visionless abode, There was much of good in Jim Or the boys had disliked him; There was something in his heart That drew patrons to his mart, Something noble, something true-- Strive that it be said of you As in eulogy of Jim, "We all liked him." March Wind Blow Bitter March-wind, blow and blow; Drive away the drifting snow; Toss the tree-tops to and fro; Kiss the ice-bound lakes and streams And arouse them from their dreams. Happy March-wind, blithely blow, Winter's heart is full of woe, Winter's head is lying low; Bring, O bring the melting rain Back unto the earth again. Weeping March-wind, blow and blow Till thy tears of sorrow flow Down thy dying cheeks of snow-- Weep away! for man must wait Till those tearful winds abate. Merry March-wind, softer blow, Let the little children know Where the sweetest flowers grow; Let thy tender accents ring From the joyous harp of Spring. All ye wild-winds, blow and blow, Drive away the drifting snow, Bend the bushes, bend them low; Breathe upon the trembling sod Springtime's messages from God. The Rime of the Raftmen I The Delaware above the Rift Each bank is fast o'erflowing, And sweeping onward dark and swift, Wild and still wilder growing It hurls a heavy raft along Upon its rocking way, While the Captain's call the hills prolong At dawning of the day: Pull, lads, pull!--to Jersey side, The Rift is near! Pull, lads, pull!--for the high floods hide The ragged rocks like an ocean tide, And the river's rush I hear. II Safely the Rift is left behind, A careful stearsman stearing; Swiftly we speed, only to find A dizzy eddy nearing, Where rolling in the river-lake, And whirling round and round A dozen rafts the circle make, And warning cries resound: Pull, lads, pull!--Sylvania's shore! The Eddy's near! Pull, lads, pull!--till the sweeping oar Bends like a bow and you hear the roar Of the river in the rear. III The luring eddy lies behind Where the dizzy rafts are whirling, And we speed along with the cutting wind, The foam like suds up-curling, When ahead a sharp curve comes in sight And we hear the Captain call As the raft swerves sudden to the right And the ridges tower tall: Pull, lads, pull!--to Jersey side! The Bend I fear! Pull, lads, pull!--and soon we'll ride On the rolling wave to Trenton's tide With river calm and clear. IV The Bend is past, but the Water-gap Of the Delaware up-rearing, Looms far ahead like a narrow trap As fast our raft is nearing, And calm and deep the waters grow, And scarcely comes a sound Till the Captain's calling, to and fro Re-echoes far around: Rest, lads, rest!--a little while! Be of good cheer! Rest, lads, rest! till yonder isle We safely pass--a few more mile And all our course is clear. V Along the wave we smoothly glide Until the island clearing, When down we speed as with the tide, Now here, now there a veering, Until a great bridge lifts its form Against the evening sky, When like the rolling of a storm The crew repeats the cry: Pull, lads, pull!--Sylvania's shore! The Bridge is near! Pull, lads, pull!--the for'ard oar, And soon our dangerous task is o'er, And little need we fear. VI So on we speed; now fast, now slow; By isle and rift and eddy Until at length along we flow With movement firm and steady; And low and lower lie the hills, And wider spreads the vale, And soft the Captain's calling trills Upon the evening gale: Rest, lads, rest!--our work is done-- The danger's o'er! Rest, lads, rest!--another sun Will see a haven safely won By Trenton's friendly shore. A Child's Elegy We know her not whom once we knew, Who died it seems e'er death was due-- We know her not; she is asleep; Our hearts are dumb--we can but weep That one so young must bid adieu, Must part so soon from earthly view. Those tender feet we knew so late We hear no more; we can but wait To hear them in the House of God When dust to dust we tread the sod, For in that home of homes they wait For us beside the city's gate. Those little hands out-held in love, That in such innocence did move To fondle each familiar face Are still--they cannot now embrace As once they did so like a dove That weary parents would approve. Those little lips that met our own So sweetly when we were alone No more shall meet the lips of earth, Sealed up unto another birth; But when these larger lives have flown Our lips will meet; she will be known. Springtime was here--the birds would soon Have re-appeared--the birds would soon Have warbled from a new-built nest, Would soon have felt beneath their breast The little ones--and such a boon Had taught them still a sweeter tune. But of the little ones not all Will answer to the parent-call, Not all will learn to rise and fly-- Many are born, but some must die; Many will rise, but some must fall, And God knows best for each and all. This is the hope--we know not how-- This is the hope that lures us now, That makes the parting less of pain-- The hope that we shall meet again, And so while unto grief we bow The road beyond seems brighter now. Dreaming of the Delaware I I have been far away from the Delaware's shore, From the river where once I did play, But I'm dreaming tonight by the old cottage door Where the moonlight is gleaming bright as day. REFRAIN: Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming of that dear old stream, Dreaming of the days that are no more-- The days so bright and fair, Dreaming in the moonlight gleaming on the shore Of the dear old Delaware. II And the river is still, and so peaceful tonight That its murmur I scarcely can hear, And across it the moonlight is beaming so bright That the scenes of my childhood appear. III And I think of my mother who bade me farewell And the sister who kist me good-bye-- They are sleeping below in that beautiful dell But methinks that again they are nigh. IV Long deserted has been the old river home, My old home by the dear Delaware, But never, O never again will I roam From the scenes of my childhood so fair. V I will cherish the dreams I am dreaming tonight, Will upbuild the old homestead once more, And perhaps when I'm dead, for another's delight It will bloom by the Delaware's shore. REFRAIN. Norma A Legend of the Wayne Highlands Along the lake's wild northern shore An island dark with trees Lies shadow-like, and o'er and o'er At midnight thru a leafy door Comes music on the breeze, Sweet music on the breeze, Where sad-eyed Norma dreams, And o'er the wave, in thru the trees The mellow moonlight streams. And Norma's voice is sweet to hear As the breathing of a bell; But while so welcome to the ear Of any one afar or near, The notes, O few can tell! The notes, O few can tell! Falling so wildly sweet, Like the mournful ringing of a bell With the tones still incomplete. How came this maid upon the isle Within the Hills of Wayne? Why sings she sweetly all the while As if to ease her self-denial? Why sings she a refrain At the lonely midnight hour On an island dark with trees, Enchanting souls unto her bower By such sweet melodies? The legend runs:--That long ago A lover came to woo, But left her--why?--(no man doth know) For while her love like wine did flow Away from her he drew-- He drew from her away, While she was left forlorn And ever (so the legends say) Did daily for him mourn. But Norma left her home one night When all were fast asleep And angel-like she trod the light Moonpath across the waters bright Until she ceased to weep, Until she ceased to weep, Singing a sweet, sweet song That on the lake that lay asleep The night-wind did prolong. And after Norma's death, one day A knock at her father's door Announced the lad who went away When both were lovers young and gay, Who now would love her more Than any other maid, Yes, any other maid, Saying, O where is Norma now, Where is my sweetheart now? O Youth, my daughter is not here-- She waited, waited long To hear the voice she held more dear Than all the rest--nor could we cheer Her with another song; But many hear her sing By the island,--sing so sweet That never, never can they bring The song to me complete. The lover sadly turned away And vowed that he would know The song complete e'er dawn of day And followed where the moonpath lay Upon the lake below, Where Norma sang of love On the island dark with trees That cast deep shadows on the cove, And his heart was ill at ease. At midnight o'er the moonlit wave He bent his little boat, Till he heard the song the soft winds gave, But if his life that song might save, He could not tell a note! He could not learn a note! Tho' many, and many, and many a night In the lovely moonpath gleaming bright He listened from his boat. But the song he never, never knew Altho' he listened long, And so it is--is ever true When hearts withhold a love long due; For Love sings one sweet song, One sweet familiar song, At thy heart's door today, And knocking, waits, but waiting long Forever turns away. Plant a Tree The Past unto the Present cries-- Arise, ye more than blind, arise! For I who fell the forest low Would now another forest grow, But what is done I cannot mend, So unto you a message send-- Much did I do for you, for me Plant a tree, Plant a tree. The Present, waking from its sleep, Across the hills began to creep, And saw where Past had fallen far A noble forest, with a scar On many a wounded mountain side That from the elements would hide-- And answered:--Past, I will for thee Plant a tree, A forest tree. The feeling Future, yet unborn, Heard Present echoing her horn, And stirring somewhat in Life's cell Did try her dearest wish to tell, Whispering in an undertone: I--I shall reap as ye have sown, O heed the Past! and--thanks to thee-- Plant a tree, Plant a tree. Maid of Shehawken Maid of Shehawken, kind and true, I sing a fond farewell, But, maiden, though I sing adieu, My love I cannot tell-- My love I cannot tell to thee For parting gives me pain, Oh may I in the days to be Meet with thee once again. Maid of Shehawken, sweet and fair, Accept my humble praise, And may thy path be free from care, Full happy be thy days, And ever mid the lure of life Where e'er thy lot may be, In pleasant paths or weary strife-- Remember, I love thee. Maid of Shehawken, kind and true, Tho' far away we roam, Few places will we find, O few As sweet as our highland home, And tho' Life's pathway lead along The shining streets of gold, Our lips will never know a song As sweet as the songs of old. Maid of Shehawken, dearer far Than any that I know, Lighting my pathway like a star, Afar from thee I go, But tho' I leave the Hills of Wayne My heart is still with thee, O maiden, may we meet again In the days that are to be. To the Delaware Cease thy murmuring, Delaware, For thy many braves so fair Who are sleeping by thy stream-- Rouse them not--there let them dream. For upon that silent shore Indian's cry shall sound no more. There, where still the owlets cry And the solemn night-winds sigh, Let the victor's head remain With the spirits of the slain, Leave the warriors fast asleep Where the willows o'er them weep, For thy murmuring, Delaware, Cannot wake those sleeping there, For thy voice deep in the foam Cannot ever call them home. There, where low and high degree Sleep beneath the self-same tree, And where warriors small and great, Share in death a common fate, Leave the pale-face and the braves Side by side within their graves. There, where ridges lifting high Try to bridge the endless sky, And where willows bend like lead O'er the footprints of the dead-- To each brother slumbering there, Sing sweet songs, my Delaware. REQUIEM: Brave!--thy happy days have fled Into silence with the dead; Thy canoe, thy well-worn way, And thy bow are in decay. And no more thy camp-fires gleam By thy sweet, complaining stream; And I mourn thy ruthless fate; Weeping am I--but too late-- For upon that silent shore Indian's cry shall sound no more. Starlight Lake Well named thou art, O little lake Set in among the hills; Well named art thou,--each star doth make Reflected forms that fancies wake And memory fondly fills. And nightly on the rugged shore Each cot with ruddy beam Lights up thy face from pane and door And throws a stream of silver o'er Thy bosom like a dream. Thy hemlock hills, now dimly grown, Fling shadows on thy face, And to their branch the birds have flown, Except the owl, whose monotone The listening ear can trace. There, where the starlight thickly trails A path across thy wave, A passing boat a boatman hails Whose maiden crew still softly sails As with a pilot brave. While from thy shore a lithe canoe Shoots o'er thy bosom fair, Leaving behind a milk-white view As when the beaver paddled thru Thy waters unaware. Up rides the moon with rosy rim All silently and still, Chasing away the shadows dim That on thy surface seem to swim Like wood nymphs from the hill. Now midnight comes, and on thy shore No boatman plies his way, The cottage lights shine forth no more From window-pane or open door Where yet thy shadows play. Silent and strangely still is all; The stars like candles are, No echoes on the forest fall,-- Each lonely owl hath ceas'd to call His wood-mate from afar. Silent and calmly still is all; Dim Night is monarch now, His kingdom is the midnight air, The forests his attendants fair, Who, at his bidding, bow-- And stand like sentinels asleep Beneath the moon's wan beam, Until Aurora fair doth creep Above the hill where she doth keep Bright morn with welcome gleam. An Inquiry Speak, O speak, my angel fair, Is there sadness everywhere-- Folly where the flower feedeth Rapids where the river leadeth To delight? Is there, is there anything An eternal joy can bring-- What is real and what but seemeth Like a dream a dreamer dreameth Thru the night? Can there be, Angel of Love Can there be bright homes above-- What is Life--and when it endeth What is Death--why it descendeth I implore? Tell me, Angel, can it be That thy hand is leading me-- Tell me, are these seraphs singing Up in heaven, gladness bringing Evermore? Twin Lake In the Wayne Highlands The shadows fall on Twin Lake fair As crimson sets the Autumn sun; A holy hush is on the air Of eventide and day is done. No zephyrs kiss the little lake; So still and calm is either shore, That on her face dim shadows wake And deepen ever more and more. And where the long-leaf laurels grow A cuckoo sounds the hour of rest, And fondly answering far below Its mate is calling from her nest. Now comes the twilight, calm and still, And, with a cloak of sable hue, Half hides the lake and upland hill That faint and fainter fades from view. And through the broken web of night Each stalwart star with even ray Reflects upon the lake a light To guide a boatman on his way. And soon the massive moon doth ride Athwart the pine trees' heavy shade, That doth her fiery chariot hide, As an apparent halt is made. And sweetly from a maiden fair In yon canoe that skirts the shore A laugh rings out upon the air And echoes softly o'er and o'er Till dying on the distant hill, An evening silence settles far,-- A quietness, so calm, so still, With rising moon and silent star-- That peace, sweet peace subdues the soul, While on the clear and pensive air The bells of Como softly toll The ever-sacred hour of prayer. The Man Who Swears It is often, yes, often that the man who swears Is a man who dares and a man who cares; For the gentle voice and the eye of blue Will sometimes tell of a heart less true Than the rough, cold voice and manner stern-- And you some day this truth will learn:-- That often, yes, often that the man who swears Is a man who dares and a man who cares. When you are sick with fever and pain, Who comes to ease your weary brain? Is it the friend with the eyes of blue And gentle voice that comes to you, Or, is it the one with manner cold And voice so stern and ways so bold, That presses a hand on your fevered brow And soothes your troubled spirits now. When you are down and your friends are few, Who is it comes to comfort you? Is it the one with eyes so mild And voice as sweet as a little child-- Is it the one with gentle way That comes to you and dares to say:-- So sorry, friend; say, here's my hand, I'll do your bidding; now just command? When in misfortune you need a friend Who will fight for you to the bitter end-- Is it always the one who speaks quite low And fears to say what he knows, is so, Or is it the man who speaks his mind And shows some mettle--and hardly kind Whose heart is cold until your woe Melts an entrance as the sun melts snow? I would not say that swearing is right But I say some men are willing to fight-- It is wrong indeed for a man to swear, And I envy no one's weakness there-- Still I believe, with me you would say While one will swear and another pray You would follow the man who is willing to dare Tho one might pray and the other swear. The Glen Here Nature's nice adjusted tool Hath cut a chasm; and each pool Reflects a narrow, rocky room Where sun-born flowers seldom bloom, But where the ledging, level shelves Betray the dance hall of the elves. And overhead the tasseled trees Frown from the wall, and with each breeze Awake the solemn avenue, But hide from sight the upward view, When with a hundred harps they sing To Boreas their mighty king. Here Echo dwells in lonely mood, And answers to the dying wood; Unsuited to a varying rhyme She hath no voice for tuneful Time Content to speak as she hath heard The lyric wind, the singing bird. Here these same falls awoke the glen Long, long before the march of men; Long, long before yon broken soil Brought forth the fruit of human toil And here these falls will dance and play When feeling man has passed away. Sing little Falls; and echo Glen, Till silent are the songs of men And they that dwell upon the earth Have disappeared as at thy birth And senseless Rock--if think ye can, Think ye--how short the life of man! Hope Kind guardian of the Lonely Shore, And Sorrow's true and only friend, Comforting angel of the poor-- What heavenly spirit did descend With passive voice, with ways unknown, Within thy very self complete? O Hope, when left at last alone We fall a suppliant at thy feet And worship there, with heart forlorn From childhood's land of make-believe, Through early youth, the brightening morn, Till tottering age, the fading eve. And who could walk without thee, friend? Who walk dim paths without thy hand? From out the world shouldst thou ascend Blind Poverty would stalk the land; Despair would seize some simple knave And Hatred every evil one,-- O Hope, for more would seek the grave Without thy timely vision shown:-- The sick upon the lowly bed; The blind a-begging as of yore; The weeping child who works unfed; The prisoner by the fatal door, All, led along, still cling below To feel thy subtle charms so free, As wearily, drearily on they go, Following, following after thee. And when upon Life's field they fall, When Disappointment reigns supreme, Thy voice, omnipotent, would call E'en from the dust their fondest dream; Would call and wake the slumbering thought, And point it to some great ideal While adding all, but taking naught From out the present, living real. Then, Hope, thou sentinel of light By Disappointment's lonely shore, Speak out amid the depth of night And guide us safely evermore. Lines to Liars Let lawyers harp about the law, And all its majesty and might; They find in every case a flaw And think they're right. Let politicians praise the truth And laud its virtue to the sky-- They practice from their very youth To give the lie. Let prophets send the saints to heaven And damn poor sinners e'en to hell-- How such authority is given They cannot tell. Let doctors prate of human pain Alleviated by their skill, When Death's dull sickness comes, in vain Is every pill. Let poets pipe of bloody war And claim its carnal method right; They're only piping cowards, for Not one will fight. And so it seems we mortals boast Of knowledge where we know the least And show our ignorance the most Like any beast. Fooling He was a lad--a tender boy, And she--she held him as her toy, And when she wearied of his way And would with other playthings play, I heard him say beneath his breath:-- A fool am I; it is my death-- She jilted me--the little lass,-- I will not let such fooling pass But shift at once some bitter dart Back--back again into her heart, But then thought he--All those who play With fools are fools as well as they, And so he made a living rule:-- It takes a fool to fool a fool. 
42306	----	Transcriber's Note: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible. Some changes of spelling and punctuation at the end of the text. The Calendar and Other Verses by Irving Sidney Dix To Robert Meaker Dear boy, ten summers--ten swift summers now Have come and gone since last I said good-bye, Ten idle, wasted summers gone, and how I hardly know, so swift the seasons fly: So swift the seasons come, so swift they go, That scare it seems one brief, one little day, Since boyish voices bid us come and play: And little girls did seem to lure us so. O Robert!--Robert!--If in Paradise These idle words of mine can penetrate, Thou knowest, then, that tears have wet mine eyes, Thou knowest that I felt thy ruthless fate; And yet, dear boy, I sometimes feel that thou Art happier there than I who mourn thee now. I. S. D. Written in 1912. Contents Page The Calendar 7 Niagara 14 Fairies of the Frost 15 The Rivermen 16 The School of Life 17 A Visit from a Cricket 20 In Praise of Inez 22 The Crime of Christmastime 23 The Miner 25 Love of Country 27 The Sinking of the Titanic 27 War and Peace 30 Peace and War 31 To Andrew Carnegie 32 Foreword About a year ago, having collected all those poems and verses which I considered of any value, I took a certain pride in the thought that I might soon bring under one roof these imaginary children of mine, so that they might be sheltered in time of storm, as it were, from the cold, and oftimes unfeeling world of commerce but where friends of poetry, who had met with some of my stray children of verse in public journals, might meet with them again, if they desired, with other friendly faces around one common fireside. But I found that the expense incident to such a venture was so great that unless a large number of copies were sold I would be involved in a larger debt than I cared to contract. Then the plan of securing sufficient advance subscriptions to meet part of the expense of a first edition occurred to me, thereby following the method of Tennyson, Robert Burns and others, of whose example I needed not to be ashamed, but other work prevented me, and still prevents me, from carrying out this plan. So lest those friends who have shown an interest in my verses should think that I have turned aside from the Path of Poetry, I herewith offer "The Calendar and Other Verses," as evidence of my love for and interest in the greatest of all the arts, hoping that the time may come when I shall be able to present a more worthy offering to the Muses and perhaps justify the kind words that have recently appeared in regards to the author of "The Quiet Life"--A Plain Poem of the Hills, which, in a revised form, appeared serially during the past summer in The Wayne Countean. I. S. D. Shehawken, Pa. Copyrighted 1913 by IRVING SIDNEY DIX The Calendar AN IDYLL OF THE HILLS Part 1 JANUARY Come walk a mile with me--'Tis January; The knee-deep snow lies heavy on the ground And hark!--the icy winds--how swift they hurry Over the fields with melancholy sound; And save these winds or some forsaken raven, Winging its way along yon frozen hill, Nature is hush'd--her dormant image graven In marble masks on woodland, lake and rill. And look!--the trees their naked trunks are swaying, As bitterly each blast goes howling by, And hark!--the music in the hemlocks playing, Like some lost spirit banished from the sky, And see the smoke from yonder chimney curling, Hugs the broad roofs, deep-burden'd with the snow, While clouds of snow are round the low eaves whirling. How cold it is!--Come, let us homeward go There will we find the cheerful fire still burning, There ruddy warmth will make our faces glow, And there kind hearts will welcome our returning; Come!--let us hasten through the drifty snow. FEBRUARY. Come walk a mile with me--'Tis February; The sun is creeping slowly toward the North, And every breeze to-day seems blithe and merry, And prophets of the Spring are waking forth-- The hungry ground-hog casts a thin, gray shadow Beside his open villa, dark and cold, And the starv'd hare surveys the icy meadow, And chipmonks chatter in the leafless wold. And hark!--the blue-jay's fife is sounding shrilly, And merry chickadees are piping loud, E'en though the bitter North-wind's breath is chilly, And the great trees are low before him bow'd; And see!--the Lady of the South is creeping Higher and higher--'Tis the hour of noon, And sad-eyed Winter by yon brook is weeping,-- Yon little brook that sings a pleasant tune. Yet, as the sun is with the day declining, Swift, darkening clouds are gathering in the West, Where the snow-fairies are again designing Another robe for Nature's barren breast. MARCH. Come walk a mile with me--'Tis March and windy, And Winter's dying breath comes hard and fast, And hark!--the storm, like death-bells of a Sunday, Tolls the sad knell upon the icy blast; Louder and louder now the winds are wailing, Faster and faster wings the frozen snow, Darker and darker the cold clouds are sailing, As the March-storm goes hurrying to and fro. But see!--the sun above the clouds is creeping, And look!--soft flakes are falling, one by one, And Winter, pale in death, lies gently sleeping, While Spring awakes e'er half the day is done. And soon the sun, like some great hearth is burning, Melting the ghosts of Winter on the hills, And hark!--the robin from the South returning, Joins the glad music of the murmuring rills, And now the farmer-boy, whose heart is leaping, Gathers the sap that sings a merry song, While the blue-birds sweet melodies are keeping, And noisy squirrels leap the trees among. APRIL. Come walk a mile with me--'Tis April weather; A voice like Spring is calling: Let us go Where violets are blooming on the heather, And song-birds bend the branches to and fro; For everywhere the very ground is springing, And everywhere the grass is getting green-- How can I now--how can I keep from singing When all the world is like a fairy scene! The buds in all the trees, are ripe for bursting, And fleecy catkins flutter everywhere, And every little flower seems a-thirsting For something sweet and beautiful and fair. But look!--to Westward--see!--an April shower Sudden has gathered, darkening the sun, Yet wait!--beside me lifts a gentle flower, That lights my pathway, blossoming alone; And hark!--O hark, the meadow-lark is singing, Greeting the storm from yon tall maple tree, While, like a herald in its homeward winging, Wheels a lone flicker o'er the darkening lea. MAY Come walk a mile with me--'Tis merry May-time; The little lambs are gamboling on the green,-- Nature is glad--it is her hour of playtime, And now, or never, her true heart is seen; The butterflies are floating down from heaven, And humming-birds again are on the wing,-- And the kind swallows, seventy times seven, Fill all the air with merry murmuring. And see the lilacs by yon cottage blooming!-- How sweet the air is!--sweetness everywhere, For look!--rich apple-blossoms are perfuming This little lane that leads to woodlands fair,-- Here honeysuckle-bells are softly swinging, And pink azaleas perfume all the wood, And, in the trees, the vireos are singing Incessantly their songs of solitude, While round the hill, as slow our steps are wending, We hear a sweet Voice calling,--"Come, O come!" For see!--the sun is in the West decending, And happy hearts are waiting us at home. JUNE Come walk a mile with me--'Tis June,--fair June-day, And Nature smiles--her magic hands are still, For not a ripple stirs yon lake at noon-day, And not a breeze disturbs this woody hill; But hark!--what idle dreamer there is drumming? It is--it is a pheasant calling--"Come!" And listen!--like a low voice sweetly humming Is heard the brook within its forest home. But wait!--We cannot wait--'Twill soon be Summer, So let us now enjoy these days of June, For hear ye not that late, but welcome comer, Robert-of-Lincoln carroling his tune; And see ye not yon oriole high swinging His basket from that tall and leafy tree-- O Comrade, Comrade!--Time is swiftly winging,-- 'Twill not be always June with you and me; Spring-time is passing--Summer is a-coming, And soon fair Autumn with her idle dreams, And then cold Winter, her White hands benumbing The icy lakes and silent, woodland streams! O Comrade!--Comrade!--let us not be weary, But pick life's pretty blossoms while they bloom, Forgetting every prospect, sad or dreary, Avoiding every lane that leads to gloom! For see!--each flower lifts a golden chalice Inviting us to drink--Shall we pass by, With faces sad, nor enter this fair palace That June has rear'd us 'neath a cloudless sky? PART TWO. JULY. Come walk a mile with me--'Tis July weather; The western sun is burning round and bright, And not a breeze disturbs yon tiny feather From a young swallow loosen'd in its flight; But hark!--in yonder broad and sunlit meadow The sound of busy mowers fill the air, While from a tree that casts a pleasing shadow, Is heard the locust piping shrilly there. And see, how strong men lift the scented grasses! And how they pile the wagons with the hay! How fast the rake, with rolling burden, passes! How regular the long, round winrows lay! And see!--the sun--the great round sun is setting, Like a red rose upon the distant hill, Till all the earth seems tenderly forgetting Day's dying light on meadow, lake and rill; But come!--for darkness soon will gather round us, And we must pass through yonder woodlands there; And then white fields of buckwheat will surround us, And then--then--home we shall together share. AUGUST Come walk a mile with me--'Tis August. Listen! The meadow-quail is whistling merrily, And see!--the dew-drops, like great diamonds, glisten On grass and shrub and bush and bending tree; And everywhere is peace and joy and plenty, For everywhere this morning we may go One seed of Spring has well returned its twenty, Till Autumn's face with goodness is aglow. Yes, oaten fields are white and ripe for reaping, And green things paling in the garden there Tell us too well that Summer is a-sleeping, And harvest-time is on us unaware; The early apples even now are falling, The tassel'd corn, the fields of ripening rye, The purpling grape--all, all are sadly calling That Summer's glory, too, must fade and die. But hark!--what sound is that!--it seems like thunder, And yet 'tis but the wind, within the trees,-- The far-off wind, fresh-filled with nameless wonder,-- A prophesy of Autumn's freshening breeze. SEPTEMBER Come walk a mile with me--'Tis sweet September; And quietly the clouds are gliding by, And silent runs the brook that, you remember, We pass'd last Spring--it now is dumb and dry, And overhead, the first red leaf is falling, And, underfoot, the flowers are fading fast, While in the air I hear a strange, sad calling That tells me Summer is forever past. And yet how peaceful seems the face of Heaven, How calm the earth is--Nature is at rest, And all the hopes that unto Spring were given, Folds Autumn now in silence to her breast; The birds are singing, yet not half so sweetly As when they sung their song at opening Spring, And flowers are blooming, yet not so completely As when the birds were first upon the wing; And I am singing--but the fading glory Of Autumn-time subdues my idle song, For what is Autumn but the sweet sad story Of leaves that fade and lives that last not long. OCTOBER Come walk a mile with me--'Tis now October; And yet the fields put forth fresh blades of green. Lest the advancing days shall seem to sober, And prophesy too plainly the unseen; For Nature loves to lead us forward blindly,-- Giving a glory to the fading leaf! Yet were it worse if, speaking less unkindly, Nature should plainly tell us life is brief. The flowers, too, are fading--and are dying, The leaves are falling, and incessantly, And on the hills great flocks of crows are crying, And the blue-jays once more are calling me; But Winter!--Winter soon, too soon, is coming, For see!--see there,--the frost is on the grass! And the wild-bee--I hear no more its humming As once I did, wherever I might pass; And robin--he is gone, and all the singing Of all the sweet birds now no more I hear, While the dry leaves, to barren branches clinging, Full plainly speak the passing of the year. NOVEMBER Come walk a mile with me--November!--Faintly The long, blue hills lift to the eastern sky; 'Tis Indian-summer now--this day seems saintly, Like some good martyr e'er he goes to die; The skies are cloudless; not a breeze is blowing, And silent is each bare and leafless form; The brooks--how quiet!--I like not their flowing, For oh,--it is the calm before the storm. Yes, yes--e'en now--to Westward--look! a figure Is sudden forming, stretching forth a wand, Shaping a shape as of some giant, bigger Than any fabled thing from Fairyland; Higher and higher that strange shape is lifting, Swifter and swifter its fleet heralds run, Wider and wider its white breath is drifting As lower sinks the slow decending sun; And now--the storm!--the storm is on us. Hurry! Yet see!--the myriad snow-flakes--see them come! O Comrade!--See!--it is young Winter's flurry-- And yet 'tis but the storm that drives us home. DECEMBER Come walk a mile with me--'Tis dark December; The cold, rough winds are never, never still; O for the days of Spring I well remember! O for the flowers that blossomed on the hill!-- And wish you not that you,--you too were playing Upon the hillside, building castles there, Dreaming sweet dreams, as when we went a-Maying, Midst singing birds and blossoms sweet and fair? But hark, the wind!--and see, the falling snow-flakes! How thick they come--how beautiful they seem! Yet I am weary--weary of the snow-flakes-- O Comrade!--tell me,--is it all a dream; O Comrade!--Comrade!--Winter is upon us; Our hopes, like snow-flakes, now are falling fast, Our dreams are broken--God have mercy on us!-- We must not perish in the wintry blast-- For see, O see!--the sun,--the sun is shining! 'Tis noon, and lo!--yon glorious orb of day Is turning backward, a New-year designing-- So shall all Winters turn to Spring alway. And so shall Winter be an emblem only Of the dark days that meet us, one and all, Making our little lives seem sad and lonely, Until the New-Year answers to our call, Until another Spring renewing Nature; Renews our hopes that were so desolate Giving us faith that not one living creature Is blindly born to blindly meet its fate. NIAGARA Almighty organ of America, E'er mortal man thy voice did hear Thy notes, full clear, Rose with voluptious music on the air, Till angels, wondering, hesitated there, And rude barbarians fell in fear Beside thy god-like amphitheatre. Thus, when thy ancient spirit touch'd those keys, Those smoothly polished keys, Those swift and mighty keys A powerful yet a pleasing note was found That gave to Silence round A song whereof no mortal heard a sound, But which did Heaven please Through the long centuries, And unto these. Then, when the red-men's blue-eyed brother came Beside this shrine, thy temple here to claim, Humbled was he, Such glory here to see; Thy awful music's note Upon his spirit smote Subduing stronger passions of the mind, Until, like prisoners, suffering there confined, Those gentler melodies Within his bosom there, Ascended with thy voice to heav'n In one triumphant prayer. Then louder, ye organ of America, Still louder sound thy anthems on the sky; And thou, Niagara, e'er thy spirit die, Wake!--wake the courts of Heaven with thy lay, Till the dear angels learn like thee to pray For all the world to-day; Yet louder, ye organ of America, Still louder, let thy Spirit from those keys,-- Those smoothly polished keys, Those swift and heavy keys,-- Strike, with inspiring fingers, Heaven-and-earth's triumphant harmonies. FAIRIES OF THE FROST When the Frost-spirit, with her icy wand, Strikes the cold Northwind, bringing frost and snow, She sends her Fairies through the frozen land To deck with sculpture all the world below; Soon every bank, so lately green with grass, Like streets of marble to the margin lies, And here and there, wherever one may pass, Frail, fairy structures magic-like arise; The slender willows, bow'd in artless grief, Appear in white, as pledge of Winter's care, And every idle reed and clinging leaf Have spirits, full as bright, beside them there; While pine and hemlock, shorn of all their green, Stand out like sculptur'd Druids of the wood; And the small beeches, hovering between, Seem children of some banish'd brotherhood; The broken stumps become as kingly chairs, The fallen logs, great pillars, round and white, And the dead branches, Oriental stairs That lead to rooms all glittering with light; Each mossy knoll becomes a marble mound, Th' unlettered stones, all artless works of art, And e'en the brooklets in the forest round Are set with diamonds dear to Nature's heart. THE RIVERMEN. When, in the days gone by, down the Delaware The high Spring-floods, with an angry roar Were running like breakers far up the shore, Then the riverman by his chimney-seat Would feel his stout heart strangely beat-- So 'twas ho! for the raft and the river again, The raft and the river for rivermen. When the creeks flow'd wild round the Delaware, And the sky showed blue through the sharp Spring air, And the rafts were waiting the raftmen there, Then these rivermen were ill-content Until their backs to the oars were bent-- So 'twas ho! for the raft and the river again, The raft and the river for rivermen. When, in days gone by, down the Delaware Those great rafts tethered against the shore, Were loosed like chafing steeds once more, Then out of the valleys, and off the hills The raftmen came flocking with school-boy wills-- And 'twas ho! for the raft and the river again, The raft and the river for rivermen. THE SCHOOL OF LIFE Life is a school, and all that tread the earth Are pupils in it. Its lessons all should learn, And few there be who escape them--and they are fools. At birth this school begins, at death it ends, And many terms there be,--and faithful teachers Not a few. Necessity is one; For e'en the babe when first it feels the cool And earthly air, and sees the light of day, Shrinks from their touch, and cries aloud--herewith It doth begin to learn the alphabet Of life. Then hunger comes; and so to ease Itself the babe doth learn to love the things That give it life. Thus hour by hour, and day By day it gathers knowledge at the school But knows it not--even as wiser men, Of knowledge full, know scarcely what they do. And months pass by--the babe becomes a child, Eager to learn, to imitate, to know, Lisping the lessons of a higher grade, Repeating words of wisdom, gems of truth That others think the little thing should know; Until at length in childish innocence It leaves the kindergarten of the world, And knocks upon the door of adult life, And enters there, flushed with the lulling sense Of something new. The playthings are forgot; The little bells no longer please the ear, The little books no longer feed the mind, The little seats no longer suit the child, The little friends no longer stir the soul, For it hath learned the alphabet of life, And put aside the primer once for all. There is a longing now for deeper life That fills the heart to overflow--there is A tumult now within the swollen veins, When, for the first, they feel a larger life In unison close beating to its own-- There is a hatred of authority And of restraint--a satisfaction now As of a soul enamoured with itself, A soul insolvent on the rising tide Of pure existence, with such a stubborness As mocks advice and takes a happy pace, Securer of its own security. And like the waters of a swollen stream, That leaves its early channels far behind, Youth ventures into unknown paths, full fed By surging hopes, by sudden, deep desires, By wild ambitions and a thousand things, Unnamed and nameless--rivulets of life That ever empty in this stirring stream. Now would the student leave his school, and play Among the hills, or in the valley's shade,-- Now would the scholar chafe at books And knowledge and authority--rough banks That, like a dyke, hold in life's mighty stream Until the floods of Springtime can abate, And in a clearer, safer channel course again. So, with life's lessons still unlearned Full many a scholar e'en would graduate With highest honors, and in his pride And surety of knowledge be a god To give advice to those who should advise; Forth full of wisdom would he quickly go, And even issue take with all the world, But when this truant-fever runs its course, This hey-day of existence has its turn, Back to the school the skulking scholar comes, Like a whipped cur, and willing to be taught By those same teachers he so lately spurn'd, And left for larger things. For manhood now Is here--the errors and the follies, everyone, By the wise student surely now are seen, And in the book of life he reads with ready eye The rules and lessons, and considers well His bold instructors,--Want,--Adversity,-- And Disappointment, with her heavy hand; The whip of Scorn, and Sorrow's bitter book, And Sickness' long and tedious term, And all the various teachers of the school. And if perchance these lessons be forgot, These, his instructors, will rehearse him well, Lest he forget in later life these things, And be a dullard in the school of schools, A freshman wise in his own foolishness. So manhood comes--and so it surely goes, From grade to grade and term to term, With all the questions and perplexing rules, And devious methods of the Master-mind, Who holds the key to all the questionings, Yet leaves the student to himself alone, Half puzzled by the figures on the dial That tell the hour when he shall graduate Above earth's petty problems, and shall hold A clearance to that life which is to come, And whereunto he graduates, perchance, A better man. A better man--if not, So shall he go again in that same grade Where like a laggard half-asleep in school, He wakes to find himself a scholar still, With all the vexing problems yet unsolved, Which, in his idleness and lust of life, Were left until the morrow, and the sun To usher in another dreamless day. So manhood comes--and so it surely goes, Till those who here have studied to become Proficient in the lessons of this life, Shall be excused from school, and left to play By running brooks and hills that shout for joy, And living waters wild in their delight. So is it meet that all should labor now To learn these lessons well, so, when the day Of graduation comes, a Voice will say:-- Well-done; perfect in life, perfect in death; Receive thy rich reward, for thou hast found-- Perfection is the only key to Heaven. A VISIT FROM THE CRICKET I. Thou shrill-voiced cricket there In yonder corner, Thou remindest me Of joys departed, and of fair And fallen summer. O little mourner, Cease thy pensive fluting, Lest a flood of melancholy, Sad as thine, That to my heart is suiting, Encompass me--it is unholy Thus to pine For fallen joys or days departed, E'en though thou art so broken-hearted, For moments are divine. II. Silent art thou?--thanks to thee, O little cricket Underneath my chair; Thanks to thee--yet would I see Thy shadow less--out to yon thicket! There let thy dull repining Drive where the winds are driven, Nor deign to bring Thy sorrows back--let such be given To those in shades reclining Who love to sing, With thee, of dear departed Summer, And hear again her sad funereal drummer, Thou little, mournful thing. III. One moment stay--why comest thou With doleful ditty Unbidden to my room; Wee, dusky mourner, do not go, But say--what is it claims thy pity, And sets thee telling, telling Such a solemn story So to me, As if there knelling, knelling Of some departed glory Dear to thee? O sad musician, put aside thy fiddle, And admit life is a riddle, And Heaven holds the key. IV. Thou mindest not; for hark!--again Resounds thy racket Shriller than before; Singst thou this sad strain As if befitting to thy ebon jacket, With carvings curious, And a color glossy, Like old wine-- Tiny thing, be not so furious And uneedful noisy; Cease to pine For something fled--for joys or hopes departed, Or thou wilt make the angels broken-hearted, O mourner most divine. IN PRAISE OF INEZ. Sweet Inez, would that I might pledge My thoughts to thee with line on line, And prove, if tender words can prove, That all my tender thoughts are thine. Would that my feeble pen might pluck From the green fields of poetry, Some flower, sweet girl, wherewith to deck Thy name so near, so dear to me. Would that my hand might gather here From the sweet fields of tender thought, Some blossom, fragrant as the rose, Some lily, lovely as I ought. But why should I commit a sin By wishing any flower for thee; Thou art more beautiful, I know, Than all the flowers of poetry. What shall I then with thee compare, To make a true comparison-- The dawning day, the dying light, The rising or the setting sun? At morn I see the early sun Appear with glory in her eye, But looking there, I think of thee, And thinking of thee, for thee sigh. At noon I see that fervid orb Proclaim the sultry hour of day, But looking there, I think of thee, And thinking of thee, turn away. At length I see that same bright sun Descend below the western blue, Yet looking there, I think of thee, And thinking of thee love thee, too. Fade then, ye flowers of the field, And sink, ye dying beams of light, But let, O let my Inez be Forever present to my sight. THE CRIME OF CHRISTMASTIME. I. Two thousand years!--two thousand years Since Mary, with a mother's fears, Brought forth for all humanities The Christian of the centuries; And now men turn from toil away To celebrate his natal day By feasting happy hours away And giving gifts with lavish hand, Throughout the length of every land;-- A noble custom nobly born In Bethlehem one holy morn, But intermingling with the good, A pagan custom long has stood, As you and I and all may see-- This war against the greenwood tree, This robbing of posterity,-- Until the burden of my rhyme Is of this crime of Christmastime. II. The skies are white with soft moonlight; In Christian lands the lamps burn bright, In splendor gleaming from the walls Of parlors and of festive halls; Or yet, amid some snow-white choir, Sweet maidens sing the world's desire, Till, answering in low refrain, The people all repeat the strain Of "peace on earth, to men good-will," When sudden all the hall is still. Then tender music, soft and low, Heavenward seems to float and flow, But--mid these glittering lights, O see The stately form of greenwood tree! Whose graceful arms are drooping wide As grieving this fair Christmastide. III. The hills are white with lovely light, And everywhere the stars burn bright In splendor gleaming on the wood, Where once, in loyal familyhood, The evergreens together stood, But--now no vespers, sweet or low, In happy measures upward flow, For there--by Heaven's lights, O see The absence of the greenwood tree! Whose noble form once waiving wide, This melancholy waste did hide. IV. Yet here and there a lonely tree Still sounds a mournful melody, And answering, in low refrain, The winds repeat the solemn strain, Until the hills conscious of harm, Awaken in a wild alarm, Until, with trumpets to the sky, They echo up to Heaven the cry:-- Ye Forests, rouse--shake off thy shroud, And sound a protest, long and loud; Ye Mountains, speak, and Heaven, chide This carelessness of Christmastide-- And Man, thou prodigal of Time, Bestir thyself--and heed my rhyme, And curb this crime of Christmastime. THE MINER. Beyond the beams of brightening day A lonely miner, moving slow Along a darkly winding way, Is daily seen to go, Where shines no sun or cheerful ray To make those gloomy caverns gay. For there no glorious morning light Is burning in a cloudless sky And there no banners flaming bright, Are lifted heaven-high, But that lone miner, far from sight, Treads boundless realms of boundless night. There neither brook nor lovely lawn Allures the miner's weary eye, For, having caught one glimpse of dawn, With many an anxious sigh, Those precious lights are left in pawn To be by fainter hearts withdrawn. Nor tender leaf nor fragrant flower Dare penetrate that fearful gloom, Where, low beneath a crumbling tower, Or dark, resounding room, Yon miner, in some evil hour, A ruined prisoner may cower. Yet, while the day is speeding on, Far from those skies that shine so clear, Far from the glory of the sun And happy birds that cheer-- Hark!--through those echoing caves, anon The hammer's merry monotone. There, far from every happy sound Of blithesome bird or cheerful song, In yonder solitudes profound, The miner, all day long, Hears his own music echo round Those deep-voiced caverns underground. There, in that gloom which doth affright Faint-hearted, sky-enamoured men, The miner, with his little light, Hews out a hollow den, And seems to find some keen delight Where others see but noisesome night. Thus many a heart, along life's way, Must labor where no cheerful sun Of golden hopes or pleasures gay, Shines till the day is done, For where the deepest shadows play The purest hearts are led astray. Yet some, unseen by careless Fate, Know naught of gloom or sorrow here. But happily, with hearts elate, They walk a charmed sphere, And lightly laugh, or lightly prate Of lonely souls left desolate. So are we miners, great and small, By sunny slope or lower gloom, And day by day we hear a call As from the distant tomb, But, when the evening shadows fall, The lights of home will gleam for all. LOVE OF COUNTRY. Love of country is the life of war; Love not your country then, If loving it should lead you into war; Oh do not be deceived--Love is broader,-- Love is broader than a wheatfield, Love is broader than a landscape; Do not be misled--love the world; Begin at home--love your birthplace, Then your county, then your state, Then your country, then the countries Of your brothers and sisters, who look So much like you--like hands, like feet, Like ears, like eyes, like lips; like sorrows, Like hopes, like joys; like body, mind And spirit, for the spirit of one man Differeth not from the spirit of another, Or high or low, or rich or poor, being The same yesterday, to-day and forever. Love of country is the life of war; Love not your country then, If loving it should lead you into war-- Should lead you into hatred Of your neighbor's country--lead you To strike down even unto death Your brother who so resembles you, Made in your image, and in the likeness Of the living God. THE SINKING OF THE TITANIC "Titanic!--rightly named, sir"--says the captain of the ship, "And the safest of all vessels--now mark her maiden trip," And all think as the captain thinks--all her two thousand souls As steadily out o'er the sea the stately vessel rolls. For she is shod with iron and her frame is built of oak, And stout hearts man the vessel, wherefore the captain spoke; And with naught for pleasure lacking, so stately and so fair, She seems a floating palace--fit for angels living there. So "farewell," says merry England, "farewell" says each green isle, "And blessings for this noble ship on her initial trial, And praise be to her makers, and good-will to her crew, And safety to her passengers"--take this as our adieu. O there were pleasant partings as the vessel sail'd away, And there was joy in every heart that pleasant April day, And there were happy thoughts of home--of meeting kith and kin, For the stately vessel soon would be her harbor safe within. And so blue the sky above them and so blue the wave beneath, That all,--all thought of living and no one thought of death, As, hour by hour, the vessel left England far behind, And, hour by hour, the ship sped on as speeds an ocean wind. And when night came, with fond good-nights the floating city slept, Yet ever o'er the rolling waves the mighty vessel swept, And no one thought of danger--until with thunderous roar, The great ship struck the rock-like ice, and shook from floor to floor. Then there was breaking timbers, and bulging plates of steel, And noise of great commotion along that vessel's keel-- Then there were cries of anguish, and curses from rough men, And earnest prayers for safety--O prayers for safety then. For women wept in terror, and stout men drop'd a tear, And the shouting and the tumult was maddening to hear, Yet there amidst that seething the life-boats, one by one, Were set adrift at midnight--where cold sea-rivers run. Then, on that fated vessel, the thousand waited there In hope some sea-born sister would snatch them from despair, But no ship came to aid her, and, in the dead of night, The noble ship Titanic sank suddenly from sight. O midway in old ocean, in her darkest, deepest gloom, A thousand brave hearts bravely went down to meet their doom,-- And what a tragic picture!--Oh, what a solemn sight Upon that fated vessel with the stars still shining bright! Then there was time for thinking--O time enough to spare, And there was time for cursing and time enough for pray'r,-- Time,--time for retrospection, and time enough to die, Time, time for life's great tragedy--and time to reason why. That was the greatest battle that ever yet was fought; That was the greatest picture on any canvas wrought; That was the greatest lesson that mortal man can teach; That was the greatest sermon that priests of earth can preach. Yet no one fought that battle with saber or with gun, And no one saw that picture, save those brave hearts alone, And no one read that lesson there written in the dark, And no one heard that sermon that went straight to its mark. Nor shall we know their story, the saddest of the sea, Or shall we learn the sequel, the sorrow yet to be, But long shall we remember how brave men bravely died For some poor, lowly woman with a baby at her side. And when the world gets scorning the greatest of the great, When poverty sits cursing the man of large estate, O then let men remember, how, in that awful hour, The wealth of all the world was powerless in its power. WAR AND PEACE. War is hell!--war is hell!-- This is what the war-men yell Yet they love to be in hell, Love to hear the iron hail Strike, till even strong men quail; Love the dying soldier's knell, Ringing shot and shrieking shell, Love to hear the battle-cry, Love to see men fight and die With the struggle in their eye-- War is hell--war is hell,-- This is what the war-men yell. War is wrong--war is wrong; This the burden of my song: War is wrong--war is wrong-- Sound the pean, human tongue; Let the message far be flung-- Sound it, sound it heaven-high, Sound it to the starry sky, And Heaven, repeat the echoing, Till all the earth of peace shall sing. Peace loves day, but war loves night; Peace loves calmness, war--to fight In the wrong or in the right; Peace the hungry man gives bread, War would give a stone instead; Peace is honest--not so war, Crying--any way is fair; Peace loves life--War loves the dead With a halo overhead; Peace pleads justice--War cries might In the wrong or in the right; Peace pleads--love your fellow-man, War cries--kill him if you can; Peace no evil thing would slight, Yet while daring dares not fight, Knowing might makes nothing right; Peace means liberty and life, War means enmity and strife; Peace means plenty, peace means power, War means--hell, and would devour All who do not trust its power; Peace means joy and love tomorrow, War means hatred, death and sorrow; Peace says--Bless you--men are brothers, War says--Damn you, and all others. War is hell, war is hell!-- This is what the war-men yell; War is wrong, war is wrong-- This the burden of my song; War is wrong, war is wrong, There never was a just one, Never; There never was a just one, Never. True as two from two leaves none, True as days are never done, True as rivers downward run, True as heaven holds the sun,-- War is wrong, war is wrong, There never was a just one, Never; There never was a just one, Never-- Sound the message, human tongue, Sound it, sound it heaven-high, Sound it to the starry sky, And Heaven, repeat the echoing Till all the earth of peace shall sing. PEACE AND WAR. Blest is that man who first cries peace, But curst is he who first cries war, For war is murder. It must cease Forever and from everywhere. TO ANDREW CARNEGIE. Philanthropist, far-sighted millionaire, Lover of prose and friend of poetry, What needs my pen in furtherance declare Thou art also a friend of liberty,-- Thou art, indeed, a very Prince of Peace, Who, conscious of the uselessness of war, Believest man's red carnage soon should cease, And nations now for nobler things prepare: What needs my pen in furtherance recite Thy kindly interest in the weal of man-- Yet, lacking need, I nothing lose to write, But rather gain in praising as I can, For, if thy wealth the world sweet peace may give, Perhaps my lines in praise of peace may live. Press of [Illustration: TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION LABEL CARBONDALE PA] Munn's Review Transcriber's notes: The index entries for "The Miner" and "Love of Country" have been moved from after "The Sinking of the Titanic". In "The Miner" a stanza break was inserted before the line "Nor tender leaf nor fragrant flower". The following is a list of other changes made to the original. The first line is the original line, the second the corrected one. And prohesy too plainly the unseen; And prophesy too plainly the unseen; As mocks advce and takes a happy pace, As mocks advice and takes a happy pace, These, his instructors, will reherse him well, These, his instructors, will rehearse him well, Ringing shot and shreiking shell, Ringing shot and shrieking shell, Thou are also a friend of liberty,-- Thou art also a friend of liberty,-- Believeth man's red carnage soon should cease, Believest man's red carnage soon should cease, 
42330	----	SOME VERSES _All rights reserved_ _Copyrighted in America_ SOME VERSES BY HELEN HAY [Illustration] LONDON DUCKWORTH AND CO. 3 HENRIETTA ST. COVENT GARDEN 1898 _To my Father_ CONTENTS SONNETS PAGE THE DAYS 3 THE EVERLASTING SNOWS 4 THRONE AND ALTAR 5 EAST AND WEST 6 THE BATTLE 7 WATER AND WINE 8 PITY ME NOT! 9 A DREAM IN FEVER 10 A WOMAN'S PRIDE 11 AGE 12 IN THE MIST 13 ON THE MOUNTAIN'S SLOPE 14 TO THE BELOVED 15 MY BROOK 16 BENEATH THE MOON 17 THE RUBY 18 SPRING AND AUTUMN 19 THE LOST MOMENT 20 THE COMING OF LOVE 21 EVENING AT WASHINGTON 22 LOVE'S KISS 23 THE SCARLET THREAD 24 AUTUMN 25 THE TIDE OF THE HEART 26 POEMS PAGE DOES THE PEARL KNOW? 29 IN AUTUMN 31 WAITING FOR DAY 33 THE ANGEL OF INDIFFERENCE 34 DEAR DEAD WOMEN 37 THE GRAVE OF HOPE 39 TREES OF THE WILDERNESS 40 THE LOVE OF THE ROSE 42 IN THE GREEN YEW 43 THE DEAD NIGHT 45 SONG 47 SIGH NOT FOR LOVE 48 AMBITION AND LOVE 49 TO B. D. 51 LITTLE SAD FACE 52 EARTH'S TEARS--AND MAN'S 54 I HAVE SEEN WHAT THE SERAPHS HAVE SEEN 55 A LASS FROM THE WOODS 57 WAS THERE ANOTHER SPRING? 59 TO DIANE 60 BIRD LOVE--ROSE LOVE 62 THE JOY OF LIFE 64 MIST 66 THE LAST CLOUD 67 SONG 68 IN THE GRAVE 69 THE FLOWERS OF PROSERPINE 71 SONNETS THE DAYS A long grim corridor--a sullen bar Of light athwart the darkness--where no fleet Pale sunshine spreads for dark his winding sheet A light, not born of noon nor placid star Glows lurid thro' the gloom--while from afar, Beats marching of innumerable feet. Is this the place where tragic armies meet? The throb of terror that presages war?-- I strain to see, then softly on my sight There falls the vision, manifold they come-- White listless Day chained to her brother Night-- Their hands are shackled and their lips are dumb, And as they meet the air where each one dies, They turn and smile at me--with weary eyes. THE EVERLASTING SNOWS And shall it be that these undaunted snows That poise so lightly on the mountains' crest-- A lily laid to cheer its lonely breast-- Shall their chill smile still face the wind, that blows Across the field whereon no blossom grows, And light the land where no gay life may rest Save glowing hasty fingers of the West, When our two hearts lie cold beneath the rose? These silver flakes of ancient hoary frost, Surviving all our joys' supremest powers, And though the petals of your lips be lost And gone the summer of your golden head, This pale eternal growth of winter's flowers Shall still live on--though our sweet love be dead. THRONE AND ALTAR He had a vision of a golden throne Fronting an altar; both alike were bare, But o'er the purple of the regal chair Blazed the device, "I wait for him alone Who with the world has held his soul his own." He sadly turned, this height he could not dare. But--Stay--the text upon the altar there-- "I wait for him who has not made a moan Howe'er his kind have used his heaven-sent dower. Fear not, and burn thine incense, lowly heart." And sudden brightness turns the averted face, To holy sense of majesty and power-- And a voice:--"Master--this indeed thou art." Wondrous music trembles thro' the space. EAST AND WEST You have not ceased for me. Though stern-browed Fate Laid our two paths apart; when in the West She gave you over to the seas, and great Wide winds of enterprise, and set your breast Against the suns and shadows of the earth; Then with a gilded largess, led my ways Toward the time-worn East, who paints her dearth With purple vain imaginings; the praise Of all her languid incense and the pride Of ancient mysteries and hopeless creeds Hold for my heart no spell when warm and wide I see across the blue of Isis' veil The thunderous breakers of your ocean pale And glints of prairie sun through river reeds. THE BATTLE The pallid waves caress the paler sand, Falter and tremble, then reluctant wane, Fearing advance, yet venturing again. Grey deep sea waves that never knew the land, Tired with the tumult, stretch a crooked hand To win a precious sweet surcease from pain, But, glancing back upon the mighty main, Perforce return to swell the strong command. So fretful Life sees Death's cold sands and faints To fling thereon the wearing of her wave, Yet, turning ere she finds the gloomy shore, Seeing ahead the idle senseless grave, Behind--the Kings, the Patriots and the Saints, She sighing turns to face the fight once more. WATER AND WINE I asked for water and they brought me wine; Wine in a jewelled chalice, where the gold Gleamed thro' the purple beads, as if unrolled-- One saw the sun-rays of a life-time shine. So drinking, I forgot my dream divine Of crystal purity, for in my hold Were wealth and Fame and Passions manifold Which with the draught I fancied might be mine. "Ah, Youth," I said, "Ah, Faith and Love!" I said; "These are but broken lances in the strife! What shall remain when all these things are sped?" Then crashed the dream. I clutched the hand of Fate Amid the ruins of my shattered life, And found the Gods had cheated, all too late. PITY ME NOT! Cruel and fair! within thy hollowed hand My heart is lying as a little rose, So faint and faded, scarce could one suppose It might look in thine eyes and understand The song they sing unto a weary land, Making it radiant, yet because I dare, To love thee, being weak, lose not thine air Of passive distance, fateful and most grand. Pity me not, nor turn away awhile Till absence's cloud has caught my passion up. Ah, be not kind! for love's sake, be not kind! Grant me the tragic deepness of the cup, And when thine eyes have flashed and made me blind, Kill me beneath the shadow of thy smile. A DREAM IN FEVER A vast screen of unequal downward lines, An orange purple halo 'round the rain, Twists from a space whose very size is pain. Here in this vortex day with night combines; Ruby and Emerald glint their blazing spines; Closing and smothering, wheels a brazen main, A shuddering sea of silence; in its train A Thought--a cry, whose snake--fear trembling twines Around--above--alive yet uttered not; But my heart hears--and shrieking dies of dread, Then soaring breaks its bands and o'er the rim White winged it rends the dark with jagged blot, Glimpsing the iris gateway barred ahead, And, gazing thro', the eyes of cherubim. A WOMAN'S PRIDE I will not look for him--I will not hear My heart's loud beating, as I strain to see Across the rain forlorn and hopelessly, Nor starting, think 'tis he that draws so near. I will forget how tenderly and dear He might in coming hold his arms to me, For I will prove what woman's pride can be When faint love lingers in the darkness drear. I will not--Ah, but should he come to-night I think my life might break thro' very bliss, This little will should so be torn apart That all my soul might fail in golden light And let me die--So do I long for this. Ah, love, thine eyes!--Nay, love--Thy heart, thy heart! AGE I have a dream, that somewhere in the days, Since when a myriad suns have burned and died, There was a time my soul was not for pride Of spendthrift youth, the pensioner who pays Dole for the pain of searching thro' the haze Where joy lies hidden. As the puff balls ride, The wandering wind across the Summer's side-- So winged my spirit in a golden blaze Of pure and careless Present--Future naught But a sad dotard's wail--and I was young, Who now am old. Now years like flashes seem, Lambent or grey on the great wall of Thought-- This is a song a poet may have sung-- No proof remains, I have but dreamed a dream. IN THE MIST Ah love, my love, upon this alien shore I lean and watch the pale uneasy ships Slip thro' the waving mist in strange eclipse, Like spirits of some time and land of yore. I did not think my heart could love thee more, And yet, when lightlier than a swallow dips, The wind lays ghostly kisses on my lips I seem to know of love the eternal core. Here is no throbbing of impassioned breath To beat upon my cheek, no pulsing heart Which might be silenced by the touch of Death, No smile which other smile has softly kissed Or doting gaze which Time must draw apart, But spirit's spirit in the trailing mist. ON THE MOUNTAIN'S SLOPE High on the mountain's slope I pause and turn-- Over my head, by the rough crag-points high, Seems rent and torn the tender hovering sky, Till almost--thro'--I see a Heaven-spark burn; Then downward to the sleeping world I yearn Whose eyes so heavy droop they may not try To catch the higher gleam--and live thereby-- Youth passes graveward--and they never learn. Then faint with brooding o'er a careless earth I turn to Nature and her broad warm breast, Strive for a friendship with her sun-burnt mirth, Teach my sad soul to catch her cadence deep, Dream that in her absorbed my heart must rest; But Nature smiles, and turns once more in sleep. TO THE BELOVED Beloved, when the tides of life run low As sobbing echoes of a dead refrain, And I may sit and watch the silent rain And muse upon the fulness of my woe, Then is my burden lighter, for I know The roses of my heart shall bloom again The fairer for this plenitude of pain, And Summer shall forget the chilly snow. But when life calls me to its revels gay And I must face the world's wide-gazing eyes Nor find sweet rest by night or peace by day, E'en seems your love, where I would turn for aid, As distant as the blue in sunny skies; Then am I very lonely and afraid. MY BROOK Earth holds no sweeter secret anywhere Than this my brook, that lisps along the green Of mossy channels, where slim birch trees lean Like tall pale ladies whose delicious hair Lures and invites the kiss of wanton air. The smooth soft grasses, delicate between The rougher stalks, by waifs alone are seen, Shy things that live in sweet seclusion there. And is it still the same, and do these eyes Of every silver ripple meet the trees That bend above like guarding emerald skies? I turn--who read the city's beggared book And hear across the moan of many seas The whisper and the laughter of my brook. BENEATH THE MOON Give me thy hand, Beloved! Here where still The night wind hovers 'neath the pallid moon Give me this fleeting moment; all too soon The listless day will break upon the hill; This last sweet night is mine. The tremulous thrill Upon thy lips is all the precious boon I begged of Heaven, the garish sun of noon Is theirs--the rest--mine is this moment's will. Our love could never be the love of day. I have not claimed the welcome of thy lips; No touch save fluttering hand, and for the pay I gave my minstrelsy of sea and sky. Once more thine eyes! Now sun-stained finger tips, Send through the hush of dawn a glad good-bye. THE RUBY Ah--she was fair, this daughter of a queen! Jewels upon her breast's soft fall of snow, Jewels--in golden hair--and fierce aglow, The gem of pride upon her brow serene! Sleeping soft moonstone, emerald's baleful green, A single sapphire, singing soft and low Of wars for beauty's sake in years ago, And flaming opal--wed with tourmaline. Yet was there one great stone she might not wear, And so her eyes were weary, and her mouth Curved in the listless line of vain desire. No diamond pure was hers the right to bear, But--crimson poison petal of the South-- The ruby shone in deep unholy fire. SPRING AND AUTUMN The painted World has laid her jewels down, Let fall the pinchbeck hair about her face And croons a love song. In a far-off place Where she was strutting in her silken gown She met the Youth. His face was young and brown. "Good day to you," she cried, the frosty lace About her shoulders trembled. Ah--disgrace! He turned, and left her weeping in the town. She smiles not any more, her heart disdains The wind's rough courting, loud and indiscreet. Her tears dissolve the earth in ceaseless rains And though her searching steps be light and fleet Through frowning city or soft country lanes, Now never more may Spring and Autumn meet. THE LOST MOMENT This moment I so careless threw away, Tossed to the ages, with a spendthrift hand, Little I recked the labour that had planned This flash eternal of a Summer day; Æons of sequent toil had passed to pay Wealth to the freighted instant. Slow and grand Wavers a solemn dirge across the land, One soul, in my lost moment, found a way To throw the mock to Time, and call him slave. And I--a pauper still--gaze wise at last To all the grey horizon line of nought. But from the heart I deemed an empty grave Gleams forth like spark my precious gem of past Shrined in the setting of a deathless thought. THE COMING OF LOVE I dreamed that love came, as the oak trees grow, By the chance dropping of a tiny seed; And then from moon to moon with steady speed, Tho' torn by winds and chilled with heedless snow, The sap of pulsing life would upward flow, 'Till in its might the heavens themselves could read Portents of power that they must learn to heed. This was my dream--the waking proved not so-- For love came like a flower, and grew apace; I saw it blossom tenderly and frail Till the dear Spring had run its eager race, Then the rough wind tossed wide the petals red; The seeds fell far in soil beyond my pale. I know not, now, if love be lost, or dead. EVENING AT WASHINGTON The purple stretches of the evening sky Lean to the fair white city waiting here, Flecking with gold the marble's lifted tier, Down the blue marsh where crows to Southward fly. Flanked by dim ramparts, where the tide dreams by, High from the city's heart, a lifted spear, In its straight splendour makes the heavens seem near, Symbol of man-made force that shall not die. To the tall crest we gaze in self-command, Assured the world's our own and we may dare To raise our Babel thro' forbidden aisles And hold the skirt of knowledge in our hand, Great in our moment, spurn the world's despair; While Heaven looks down through calm unmeasured miles. LOVE'S KISS Kiss me but once--and in that space supreme My whole dark life shall quiver to an end, Sweet Death shall see my heart and comprehend That life is crowned--and in an endless gleam Will fix the colour of the dying stream That Life and Death may meet as friend with friend An endless immortality to blend; Kiss me but once, and so shall end my dream. And then Love heard me and bestowed his kiss, And straight I cried to Death: I will not die! Earth is so fair when one remembers this; Life is but just begun! Ah, come not yet! The very world smiles up to kiss the sky And in the grave one may forget--forget. THE SCARLET THREAD The sun rose dimly thro' the pallid rain, Dear Heart--and have we strength to face the day? The times and life alike are old and grey, All worn with long monotonies of pain. Lo--we are working out the curse of Cain, Who never felt the fire of passion's sway. Ah--show us crimson in some tragic way That we may live!--Fate laughed in her disdain. A thread of scarlet clashed upon mine eyes Hung for a moment and was swept behind, And blankly I beheld the hopeless skies For day by contrast now is grimmest night-- Remembering light as do the newly blind I pray for death to hide the bitter sight. AUTUMN The ruddy banners of the Autumn leaves Toss out a challenge to the waiting snows, Where Winter stalks from o'er the mountain rows; This fiery blaze his onward march receives, A mock defence his coward heart believes, And turns him sulking to his moated close. Now Man the confidence of Nature knows, And feels the mighty heart that loves and grieves. Not as in rude young March or hoyden June, Hard in their beauty, laughing thro' their days; Their fine indifference is out of tune. In the dark paths we tread in hope and fear Look we to Autumn and her gracious ways, The great last swan-song of the dying year. THE TIDE OF THE HEART Love, when you leave me, as with moon-bent tide The glad waves leave the beaches of my heart; Slowly and indolently they depart Ripple by ripple, till the light has died And left the naked sands forlorn to bide The sea's return. No might of human power Can fill the empty waste, nor take one hour From that long durance in Earth's prison wide. But when you come again, and hold your hands Dear hands, outstretched to take me, then, the waves, They turn, full flooded on the fainting sands, And all the dimpled hollows smile again, And brimmed with life, the deep mysterious caves Forget the distant night of lonely pain. POEMS DOES THE PEARL KNOW? Does the pearl know, that in its shade and sheen The dreamy rose, and tender wavering green, Are hid the hearts of all the ranging seas-- That Beauty weeps for gifts as fair as these? Does it desire aught else when its rare blush Reflects Aurora in the morning's hush, Encircling all perfection can bestow-- Does the pearl know? Does the bird know, when thro' the waking dawn He soaring sees below the silvered lawn, And weary men who wait to watch the day Steal o'er the heights where he may wheel and stray? Can he conceive his fee divine to share, As a free joyous peer with sun and air, And pity the sad things that creep below-- Does the bird know? Does the heart know, when filled to utter brim, The least quick throb, a sacrificial hymn To a great god who scorns the frown of Jove That here it finds the awful power of love? Think you the new-born babe in first wise sleep Fathoms the gift the heavens have bade him keep Yet if this be--if all these things are so-- Does the heart know? IN AUTUMN The gold-red leaves have burned To their last great glow, and died And underfoot By the strong oak's root They are seized by the angry wind and spurned And into a common grave have turned For Summer--warm and wide. A year must a sapling wage Its life with the sun and rain, Then its tender youth Without reck or ruth Is frozen and beaten to harsh old age By a stroke of Nature mother's rage And the sturdy fight seems vain. It wails to the oak o'erhead As the coffin-cold wraps round "The end of life Is toil and strife And the secret of being, I have found Is a seed in the wind and a log on the ground. I hope I will soon be dead." "Peace little struggler--sleep"-- And the great oak croons a song, "Death is but night And a cradle white For one dark space may the shadows creep, Then Spring will rise from her dungeon keep And life wake, wise and strong." WAITING FOR DAY Sweet Lady Night is paling white. Why lags her Lord and Master? She weeping, lays her jewels off-- Ah--may he not come faster. But hush--the tender rosy blush Her beauty fair adorning Her love steps o'er the mountain's rim, They kiss--and here's the morning. THE ANGEL OF INDIFFERENCE A Man once loved a Woman, in the days of old, Our bond is the strongest in the world, they said-- The Angels up above Are jealous of our love, Perhaps they are wishing we were dead, overhead. So they loved for a Time and the passing of a Time, And the Angel of Indifference, smiling down, saw their fire, And he covered for a space With his sombre wings his face, That they twain might have of love all desire, without tire. But love's perfect joy within them burned at last to a flame Till they longed for a breeze that would gently cool the heart. For absence! cooling snow They sighed apart and low, Tho' they murmured still their love, hand and heart loth to part. But at length they prayed together to the calm Angel--pale, Ah--we yearn, scorched and weary, for the peace of thy breast. For that land where love seems But the shadow of dreams, Where all sleep in the silver of the West, give us rest. And he heard, and he bore them to the cool grey heights, Where all men may drift and himself alone stands fast, And gave them for their token The peace of dreams unbroken Where their souls, his faithful vassals, rest at last, from the past. DEAR DEAD WOMEN The winds have chilled the loving odorous South, All wan and grey she seeks a place to die, Her tossing hair, her pleading passionate mouth, Pity that things so fair in death must lie; But Winter holds and kills her with a sigh. One kiss he lays upon her lips so proud, Shuts the blue eyes and winds her sombre shroud. I walk between the narrow way of yew. The glowing amaranth droops upon its stalk, The shivering birds are timorous and few, And waifs of Summer strew th' untended walk; With vague sweet forms I seem to pass and talk. The ladies of those days in Summer's prime Whose smiles prevailed not for the frown of Time. Their little tripping feet reluctant turned Down the dark paths they had not known before; Behind them all the glow of living burned, But they must enter thro' the gloomy door, And leave behind the loves that plead no more, The dear frivolity of wiles and ways They neither need nor know in these grim days. Here in their garden's close I spend no tear, No smile--too rare the heights for such display. But on the frosted hedges' lifted spear And with my head a little bowed, I lay A pale camelia, proud and cold as they Who wait beneath their ashen pall of snow-- Perhaps the fair dead dames will see and know. THE GRAVE OF HOPE There's a wild little gnome in the wood Who sings as he digs a grave Of Hope that soars and Hope that flies And Hope that singes her wings, and lies In peace where the willows wave. And he croons in the pauses of toil, A shivering song of Fears, The lean black shades of Hope so fair Who weave her nets with her golden hair And harry her down the years. And he knows she will perish at last, He has carved her name on the stone While the trees draw near and forget to sleep, And the little leaves bend their heads and weep, For Hope that must die alone. TREES OF THE WILDERNESS The great bleak trees stand up against the sky Lifting their naked arms in ceaseless prayer To the unpitying heavens, that they might die, Rather than drag their weary lives out there. Thro' starless nights the untold hours wear on, All awful phantom shapes affright the wood-- And morning light but brings th' unwinking sun, To torture with its glare their solitude. In those grim wilds no sweet-voiced bird will sing, No flowers will bloom within those trackless lands, Nor is there trace of any living thing, Save those gaunt giants, holding up their hands. And when they fall, still round the unknown spot Howls the rough wind, till in the common ground They end the life which is--and yet is not,-- A riddle where no meaning shall be found. THE LOVE OF THE ROSE Trilled forth the Nightingale In sweetest sleep of day-- Unto his love, the rose, Ah golden heart, unclose! For love, my fairest rose, will last for aye. So, thro' the waning night She learned to wear her crown; Yielded her heart's sweet strife And found that love was life Set to the time the dear bird lilted down. But when the morning came The red sun burned above; Hid are the night birds all, Flower petals fade and fall; The rose is dead--and what became of love! IN THE GREEN YEW The wind is howling in angry pain, Ah me, and I cannot rest; On such a night home is best, Why does she stand in the same old place With the smile of smiles on her cold white face And call me thro' the rain? Ah--the Wind has died from the Fear of her smile-- And I creep quite still-- On over the hill, To where she stands 'mid the scented yew And where I now am standing too, And she sees me all the while. A little green snake curls thro' her hair-- The scent of the yew is strong and sweet-- Her eyes have drawn me to her feet, And I lie along on the drenching ground And worship--and watch the snake curl round, His tongue shoots thro' the air. Now--slowly she takes her eyes from me, And I dream and wait, Till in shades of hate My love of her smile has faded quite And I spring to kill her, there in the night-- But only the yew I see. THE DEAD NIGHT The strong brave Night is dead. Its endless deeps Of patient tenderness, the moon-bright still When every silver lake and purple hill Hold wise unfathomed converse with the steeps Of starry heaven, are past. All nature weeps And draws the veiling grey of morning mist Upon the lips that Night's last clouds have kist-- The Night that watched so well the world who sleeps. The Night is dead--Alas--and pallid Day is but the corpse laid out in cold array, The white sad emblem of the heart we knew. Through half-closed lids the eyes shine palely blue; The gleaming grave clothes cover all the rest. So cruel still lies now the air's sweet breast And trees and hills fold down calm hands and eyes, That none may guess their secret mysteries. SONG Softly sighs the gracious wind-- Dash of rose, in deeps of sky, Love is fair and love is kind,-- Singing free--I passed him by. Shredded clouds are whirled in air, Winter stalks adown the gale Tossing wide Love's golden hair-- Cease the singing--Love grows pale. Howls the grey sky to the sea-- Loose the storm-dogs from their bed. Turned I back--and woe is me-- I must die--for Love is dead. SIGH NOT FOR LOVE Sigh not for love, the ways of love are dark! Sweet Child--hold up the hollow of your hand And catch the sparks that flutter from the stars! See how the late sky spreads in flushing bars! They are dead roses from your own dear land Tossed high by kindly breezes: lean, and hark, And you shall know how morning glads her lark! The timid Dawn, herself a little child Casts up shy eyes in loving worship--dear, Is it not yet enough? the Spring is here And would you weep for Winter's tempest wild Sigh not for love, the ways of love are dark! AMBITION AND LOVE Sweet, in the golden morning of my days, With young tempestuous joy I reared my head To gaze adown the splendid sunlit ways Where all the fires of fame burned glory red, I recked not where the sounding arches led, Save at the end I gain my august bays. But as of old, when through the patient night, Fair losing or fair gaining, till the morn, Great Israel strove to break the angel's might, Till spent and failing, in his heavenly scorn, Th' immortal wrestler touched the earthly born, Striking him powerless, winning thus the fight. So did false Fortune, when I strove and fought, Smiling 'neath half-closed eyelids, when seemed won, For a brief hour, the beckoning goal I sought-- Then with frustrating touch dimmed all my sun Blotted the work and faith so brave begun; But what I gained was none too dearly bought. I have no wreath to lay before your feet; There shines no future, and the past is dead; But you have heard me, and I love you--Sweet. The low sun crowns with gold your gracious head, The heavy lilies nod upon their bed-- I look at you, and find my life complete. TO B. D. Broad browed beneath a cloud of dusky hair Her eyes are midnight seas that never sleep But see beyond the dull world's heavy air The mystery of ages buried deep. The faint sweet shadows trembling round her mouth Lighten with youth and love the Sphinx's face. And as she moves, a soft wind from the South Floating, flower-laden seems--so sweet her grace. Aloof she stands, from idle mirth and tears And keeps the white sails of her spirit furled, Altho' a girl, pure from the stain of years, An ancient Egypt, smiling at the world. LITTLE SAD FACE Little sad face, come close, so close to mine, See through these eyes the sweetness of the day, Feel how the sunbeams dance in Summer's wine, Hold fast my hands and let our pulse combine And with my steps dance down the happy way; For youth is love and love is light and gay, Little sad face. Little sad heart, come close, so close to mine, And know the utmost limits of the will Of all the worlds, till soft thy heart divine A joy which can encompass grief like thine; Hide in my breast, and let faint pulses thrill, For youth is love, and love is great and still, Little sad heart. Little sad soul, which ne'er can come to mine, So great in loneliness of grey despair, There is not one whose spirit may entwine With thee--the world looks on without a sign; Go--hide thy face within thy tossing hair, Thyself veil close with smiles, for none will care, Little sad soul. EARTH'S TEARS-- AND MAN'S These slanting lines of hoary rain Are as my grizzled hair; The face of earth is old with pain As mine--with dull despair. And yet, one sun will gild the air, Earth's tears were not in vain: No smile can ease mine eyes of care Or make me young again! I HAVE SEEN WHAT THE SERAPHS HAVE SEEN I have seen what the seraphs have seen As they gaze thro' the limitless air-- Thro' the wind and the clouds to the lean Pale face of the moon, and the bare Bright flame of the sun, unaware, I have seen what the seraphs have seen! Thro' the limitless spaces of air The brave mists that waver and wane Are patient and pallid and fair. I have fathomed the pride and the pain Of the snows and compassionate rain Thro' the limitless spaces of air. I have known them, the brave mists that wane And the glory and peace of the skies. Where all strife and impatience are vain And ahush are all passionate sighs, For I gazed in the deeps of Love's eyes, And I know what no seraphs shall gain! A LASS FROM THE WOODS A lass from the woods With a leaf in her hair! And the rain of the night And the wind of the morn, They both quivered right; For my spirit forlorn In a garment of white And a laugh newly born Sprang in maddest of moods Like a blossom in air To the kiss of the sun And the curl of the breeze, Caught the cobwebs begun In the hush of the trees All my beatings were one With the swirl of the seas. Dead the creature that broods In a tangle of care; There's a lass from the woods With a leaf in her hair. WAS THERE ANOTHER SPRING Was there another Spring than this? I half remember through the haze Of glimmering nights and golden days, A broken pinioned birdling's note, An angry sky, a sea-wrecked boat, A wandering through rain-beaten ways! Lean closer, love--I have thy kiss! Was there another Spring than this? TO DIANE The ruddy poppies bend and bow Diane! do you remember? The sun you knew shines proudly now The lake still lists the breezes' vow; Your towers are fairer for their stains, Each stone you smiled upon remains. Sing low, where is Diane? Diane do you remember? I come to find you through the years-- Diane! do you remember? For none may rule my love's soft fears. The ladies now are not your peers, I seek you thro' your tarnished halls, Pale sorrow on my spirit falls High, low--where is Diane? Diane do you remember? I crush the poppies where I tread-- Diane! do you remember? Your flower of life--so bright, so red-- She does not hear--Diane is dead. I pace the sunny bowers alone Where nought of her remains but stone. Sing low--where is Diane? Diane does not remember. BIRD LOVE-- ROSE LOVE If you were but a rose--dear love-- And I your bird, with dip of wing To tell a promise of the Spring And with a golden swift caress My happy careless love confess, No pain such gentle vows could bring, No tears should stay my flight above, If you were but a rose--dear love. Bird-love, rose-love, to last the day Why shall not we whose hearts are light Put by the coming of the night, Catch glints of rapture from the sky, The scents that swing where lilies lie, And ring them to a garland white To ease the pain of life away? Bird-love, rose-love, to last the day! THE JOY OF LIFE Her hair was twined with vine leaves thro' the gold, The leopard skin about her shoulders flung Showed gleams of her as marble--fair and cold; I breathed not--listening to the song she sung. Hither and thither thro' the solemn world, Glory of purple, passionate blazing red Glints thro' the gloom, and thro' the grey is swirled-- Ah! but the leaves twined sweet about her head. "Heedless--men pass me in their search for life, Hunting for altars to their souls' fine fires, Crying the sun or joy of toil and strife And know not that 'tis I--their heart desires. They dream not that the sheen on peacock's breast, The haze and perfume of a Summer's day, The silver stealing o'er the twilight West Are joys more rich than all the world's display." MIST Mist on the sea; like a great bird's pendulous wing, Broken and hushed; it trails on the face of the main, Down comes the sun, a red shot from a merciful sling Burning its heart with swift death as an end to the pain. THE LAST CLOUD A red rose cloud upon the evening sky, A gallant cloud which dies in foremost fight, Too proud for prisons of triumphant night. Knowing no pause, no strain of changing years, Its little hour too short for dreams or tears, The faithful sun its first and latest light-- Who would not so be glad to fight and die! A red rose cloud upon the evening sky. SONG Love is a broken lily, A pale and crownless rose With golden heart made chilly By traitor touch of snows. So sleep my heart--lie sleeping Nor open weary eyes, For waking is but weeping And Sleep is Paradise. Love is a cadence trailing Where broken music falls, A hapless shadow sailing Across deserted walls. So still my heart lie sleeping Till love's hot sun be set, For waking is but weeping. Asleep--sad eyes forget. IN THE GRAVE Dear Love--do you wake in that land where my waking is done? Do you bare your brave head to the winds and the clouds and the sun? And is Summer aflame? Or has the night fallen to sleep on earth's wonderful breast, And with it, all joys, save but you, who are dearest and best, Wakeful--sighing my name? Sometimes as I sleep, the sweet rain flickers over my head, And smiling, I dream of the tears that your sorrow has shed; Then I sigh and awake. For the dreams of the grave are the dreams that have died in the morn, And their ghosts alone haunt the cold earth where their maker was born, For a woman's sweet sake. Perhaps you are singing--and winding the garlands of May; Not mine be the hand to withhold you the golden to-day, Or give you pause to your song. Perhaps the sweet blossoms may charm the grave's pestilent breath. Ah! life is so short; so forget and be glad, dear--for death Is so terribly long. THE FLOWERS OF PROSERPINE The jewels of the sun are not more rare Than these that lie upon my lurid halls. The perfume kiss upon the drowsy air Is sweet as Spring can hold within her walls. The spell which night may cast upon her thralls Is mine; the length of all this gloomy land Knows no more sun than falls from my white hand. My wealth great kings have prayed for--in their pride, Bowing before me. Nay--I hate the place. I am no queen at heart--my laughter died That I might wear my crown with regal grace The very flowers which smile on my sad face I am afraid of. See! they are the worst Of all my fears; so fair--yet black accurst. The languid passion-poppy sways and dips To show the black heart bursting into flame. The crimson evil of a satyr's lips A sneering nodding finger-post of shame; A thousand other flowers without a name Huddle all trembling in the dusk behind Like hunted ghosts, whose eyes are white and blind. The grass is not the grass that overhead Cooled my bare feet with daisies' purest snows; But thick pale blades, like fingers of the dead Thrust from forgotten graves upon their foes. Ah--horrid soil! for everything that grows In this confine but mocks in wicked scorn The fairness of the land where I was born. Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO London & Edinburgh [Transcriber's Note: Variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been retained except in obvious cases of typographical error: "Ehere is not one..." has been changed to "There is not one..." Italic printed text has been formatted as _text_.] 
42392	----	[Transcriber's Note: Superscripted text is surrounded by curly brackets and preceded by a ^.] _The Jumble Book of Rhymes_ _Recited by the Jumbler_ _The Jumble Book of Rhymes_ _Recited by The Jumbler_ BY FRANK R. HEINE. _Illustrations by G. C. Cobb._ _Cover Design by Jack Cooley._ HACKNEY & MOALE COMPANY, _Publishers_. Asheville, North Carolina. Price $1.00 Net. _Copyright, June, 1919._ _By Frank R. Heine._ "Many people read a song Who will not read a sermon." Foreword PEGASUS _is a queer old nag, and many of his would-be riders find him most unruly. We mount him and are off for a wee nip of Hippocrene. We want him to lazy along like a plough horse, while we pluck daisies, but he insists on demonstrating that, like a Hambletonian, he has all of the High School gaits. And when we pass the Queen's carriage, expecting him to step stately and look like a million dollars, the old plug stumbles and limps, and is classed by all as a casual. So please, please blame the horse--and not the rider._ Dedication _To the boys who have found the old War Horse a dangerous animal, have come to cropper in the Big Muss, and are now assigned to bunk fatigue, we offer these rhymes. Though, they are crippled; and limp, and halt, and stumble at times--yet we trust they may, for all that, break through when General Monotony is entertaining a company of Blue Devils, and for a few moments, at least, put to rout serious and somber thoughts._ _To the casuals now enjoying hospital hospitality at Kenilworth (Biltmore) and Oteen (Azalea), this jumble of rhymes is dedicated._ _Pick it up, Buddy, it's a dud._ --_F. R. H._ THE JUMBLE BOOK OF RHYMES [Illustration] Greetings _A New Year Greeting in which the Jumbler hopes to meet you soon._ My wish most dear for your New Year I'm quite sincere in giving; When next we meet, on Easy Street I hope that you'll be living. P. S.--_And I hope I meet you soon._ Introspection _The old nag_, PEGASUS, _invites the Jumbler to an introspective mood as he lopes along. It is Thanksgiving, 1917._ Am I thankful? Let-me-see-- World, Flesh, Devil Good to me; Friends still loyal, Coin in banks-- Stop this minute! I'll give thanks. What of troubles Lately past? Well, at least they Didn't last. Not a single Scar remains, Nor remembrance Of the pains. So, I'm thinking That from me There is due great Gobs of glee. Though a slacker, From this day I'll be grateful-- Let us Pray! [Illustration] An Acknowledgment (From Him to Her). _The receipt of a gift he cannot label leads the Jumbler to recite:_ I thank you for the hickeydee, The thingamabob you sent; The trickamadoo's the very thing On which my heart was bent. The dofunny's style and color Puts all dodads to shame; The jiggermaree's the swellest thing That ever bore that name. Appreciation's most sincere, But I'll no longer lie-- Pray be a sport and tell me quick: What is the thing?--and why? Pay! Pay!! Pay!!! _In which the Jumbler notes the profusion and the pertinacity of the Pauls and the pitiful paucity of Peters._ I'm daily robbing Peter for to pay Old Mr. Paul; I swear it's hard them both to satisfy; Pauls in legions me pursue, but the Peters are so few-- I lie awake at night and wonder why. The hope of every Peter is some day to be a Paul. Then little Peters must be set to sprout. Ev'ry chance of Paul for pay would forever pass away The day the tribe of Peter petered out. Taffy and the Man _As a member of the Taffy Consumers' League, the Jumbler offers this bit of defence:_ I have eaten grits and gravy in the Southland now and then, I have lived on California's luscious fruits; I've inhaled long-stringed spaghetti in Italia, and again In the Klondike once I dined on cowhide boots. Of course I've supped at Rector's, at the Cecil, and the rest; Tackled truffles and de foie gras in Paree; I have bolted guava jelly and tortillas, Madrid's best, And I've chop-sticked bird's-nest soup a la Chinee. But of all the palate-ticklers on the whole world's bill of fare, Whether ladled out at morning, night or noon, Not a gustatory stimulant that I know can compare With a little dab of taffy on a spoon. [Illustration] If a man is grouched or peevish, if in doling cash he's slow-- Just a little bit of taffy--presto! won!! Every married woman knows it--every girlie ought to know: If you feed a man of taffy he's undone. When a man tries introspection, then he stacks up mighty small; So he keeps from this self-searching all he can; Yet a feeling lies inherent, never's lost in him at all, That he'd like to be a bigger, better man. So when other people tell him that he's bigger, nicer far, Or a better chap than he himself can see, There is worked a transformation and his stock goes way 'bove par, And he feels the man he'd really like to be. It's not Vanity that does it, but his Better Self you view As he smiles and purrs and pleases all he can. As a corking good investment I would hand this tip to you: Just try always feeding taffy to a man. Do not stinge nor be too saving, don't conserve this priceless boon, But feed as though you had an endless store; With an appetite voracious he will gulp it from the spoon, And when all's gone he'll loudly cry for more. Myself vs. Me _Some serious thoughts on the psychology of Respectability._ My life is one long battle, Between Myself and Me; I see the right, yet do the wrong-- This much too frequently. I have the foolish habit, That oft brings me disgrace, Of cutting off my Roman nose To spite my ugly face. I'm daily robbing Peter To pay Old Mister Paul-- Though cosmos out of chaos It never makes at all. I jump out of the skillet Into the fire that's hot; With fingers burned I dread the blaze. But quit it? I guess not! And so goes on the battle Between Myself and Me-- Old Satan pulling fiercely 'gainst Respectability? [Illustration] To "The Quiet Observer" _An appreciation--wherein the Jumbler indites the following to the space writer who quotes from him and Riley._ I sat me down in pride to gloat Upon the column that you wrote, In which you, sir, were pleased to quote From me and Riley-- From me and him, From me and Jim, From me and Riley. The _tout ensemble_ did impel My manly chest to heave and swell; The combination "liked me well;" Me, you and Riley. It seemed a great Triumvirate-- ME, YOU and RILEY. But soon in deep humility My head was bowed, and I could see The difference 'tween little ^{me} And You and Riley. I lacked the art To touch the heart Like you and Riley. You seem to write with greatest ease, Of cheerful mien, of birds and bees, And out-of-doorsy things one sees-- And so does Riley. With master-stroke, To common folk Write you and Riley. I take a hack-saw and a square And cut my rhymes with greatest care; 'Tis harder work for me, I swear, Than you and Riley. And yet I fail To hit the nail Like you and Riley. You write in prose--a rhymer he-- And yet 't has always seemed to me Your souls alike must surely be-- Yours, sir, and Riley's. You love each thing Of which you sing-- Do you and Riley. A bas Polyanna! _Wherein the Jumbler finds the Cheeruptimistic Lore a bore._ I hate the Pollyanna cult! Cheeruptimistic lore, that now confronts at every turn, long since became a bore. In daily press, in magazines, in every thing I read, the sugar-coated life's prescribed as man's most urgent need. 'Tis O be joyful, grin and smile, let tears be left unshed; just purr and sing the whole day long, then pass it on ahead! If grandma dies or cook takes leave or father breaks a leg, be glad, be glad; and if you're broke, why, whistle as you beg! Now I, for one, refuse to live a grinning Cheshire cat. I'm just as human, mad as glad--a fool can tell you that. All sunshine makes a desert waste, and honey-words soon pall; because someone's in harder luck can't make me glad at all. A man has special muscles just to corrugate his brow; the Lord knew when he fashioned them that they'd be used, and how. I want my friends without veneer, straightforward as can be; and I will grant them outlet for innate depravity. Why bluff and play that grief's not real? Why blush to shed a tear? A temper may be lost and found, with Paradise still near. No need to gloom or grouch or fret, no need to howl or whine; but may the right to voice a grief or own a pain be mine. If You'd Marry _Advice to wimmin "On Marriage," by the Jumbler._ [Illustration] If the fish won't take your bait, Do not tarry. 'Twill never do to sit and wait, If you'd marry. Gather up your hook and line, Somewhere 'round the water's fine; Change your bait and keep on tryin'! That's the system! Should one rise in reach of you, Oh, be prayerful! Take your gaff and run him through, But be careful! Hold him tight for all you're worth, Of marryin' men there's now a dearth, And then--there're widows still on earth!! Curses on 'em! If a widow steals a beau That you're landing, Practice up a knock-out blow-- Him demanding. A perfect lady, though you've been, Just you cave her features in! Killin' widows ain't no sin-- Never will be! To My Valentine _The Jumbler, with one eye on the calendar, tells the thoughts he thinks--claiming immunity the while._ Saint Valentine, that good old gink, Gives license free to say with ink The things you feel, the thoughts you think. So timid youths, of courts afraid, Select this day to tell a maid Things otherwise best left unsaid. This custom all the judges know, And breach-of-promise suits don't go-- So that's "how comes" what's writ below: I love you, dear, to beat the Dutch! I love you, dear, gosh-awful much! Now could you love, obey--and such? With love my heart seems 'bout to burst-- But I've now said all that I durst. With love to all,--_John Safety First_. [Illustration] _The Jumbler again mounts_ PEGASUS, _and carries us through the Realm of Dreams, where we come in touch with the Life Romantic._ _The Jumbler recites:_ ALL MINE IN DREAMS. SHOULD DREAMS COME TRUE. LOTUS EATING. All Mine in Dreams _The Jumbler, thinking of "The Little House," also thinks of a little house-keeper._ O little girl with wondrous eyes And charms of Graces Three! "How have you come, why have you come To mean so much to me?" Unrest within my heart you've raised-- And yet, how sweet it seems! My hopes, My dear, this much I know: You're mine, all mine, in dreams. O little maid, dear, dearest maid, Should you be lost to me Were I to wake and straightway go And tell my love to thee? What powers or aid could I invoke? Alas! dear one, it seems The risk's too great of losing all-- So mine still stay in dreams. [Illustration] Should Dreams Come True _The Jumbler wakes up and credits himself with a big heart._ This man, O girl with charms untold, Has dreamed of Love and You; And can it be somewhere's a land Where these dreams may come true? Ah, if there be, then willingly To rainbow's end he'll go, Or far's the place where seas begin-- For, Girl, he loves you so! And he, dear one, a king can be-- Yes, by one way alone: That you, his Queen, through love for him, Should raise him to your throne. But whether he be king or serf, Of this be sure: thou art A mighty queen, whose realm is wide-- You reign o'er all his heart. Lotus Eating In the land of In-a-minute, the land of Lots-of-time, The land of What's-the-hurry? Manna-land sublime; The land of Sleep-a-whole-lot,--to me it ofttimes seems I sure should like to live there, for I'd have time for DREAMS. (_Here the Jumbler becomes personal_): Now I'd not waste a minute if I lived in that clime, But say good-bye to worry, and dream--well all the time. And what, dear, do you reckon my fancy'd bring to view? The answer is so easy: Sweetheart, I'd dream of YOU. Fergit Dem Dreams _Leaving the Realm of Dreams, the Jumbler quotes the advice of a married friend._ Aw, cut it, kid! Dis lovin' gag Don't make no hit wid me; I've went de route and ought ter know-- Fer, ain't I married? Gee! Dere's nuthin to it, foolish man; None of 'em's what dey seems, De game's a bunk, Kid, all way tru-- Wake up, fergit dem dreams! _Most earnestly the Jumbler presents his views on Serious Matters pertaining to Love and Life._ FICKLENESS OF MAIDENS. CONSTANCY--AS APPLIED TO ONE MAN. THE ONE AND THE ONLY. HANDLE WITH CARE. MY GARDEN. MY THRENODY. ETERNITY. Fickleness of Maidens "Good-bye," I said to Mary, To Margie, Maud and May; And I put them from me harshly And turned myself away. For my _all in all_ was Maizie-- I swore it on that day. But time came when my spirit Grew weary of its pace, And I cried, "Come back, dear ex-ones, I'm sick of just one face!" But they replied, "We cannot, Another has your place." (_After Dunbar_) [Illustration:] Constancy--As Applied to One Man A man by Nature ne'er was meant To love one maid alone-- E'en if by doing so he'd gain A seat upon a throne. Polygamous when 'comes to love-- (Be diff'rent no man can) Monogony's monotony When 'plied to love of man! Yet here am I! ('gainst Nature's law)-- _Mirabile dictu_-- Loving one maid, and just ONE (_sic_), Exclusively and true! As other men, I liv'd and lov'd Until you came my way-- Now all my love is yours, O Queen, Forever and a day! [Illustration] Dear, dear dead loves, one last farewell! Your graves no more I'll tend; Your ghosts, whom I have welcomed oft, Their visits now must end. Sweet girls, whom I have lov'd--and lost-- Loved? Yes, but for a day-- I now have found my Queen of Hearts Whom I can love alway. I once thought that I lov'd you well-- But O! the love I feel For my dear Queen is diff'rent quite-- And it's the love that's real. My Queen now has each thought, each dream; No more I'll think of you-- Love was, love's past for all save her-- So, ex-loves all, adieu. Handle With Care The tangible always is frangible. (Proven long since, I take it). By chance or by art you've taken hold of my heart-- But please, Little Girl, don't break it! The One and The Only Hundreds of maids in this world have been born With many a charm that allures, dear; Hundreds are radiant, fair as the morn-- But never were eyes just like yours dear. Hundreds boast beauty of form and of face, Which always devotion assures, dear; Hundreds personification of grace, But none has a smile just like yours, dear. [Illustration] Hundreds accomplished in letters and song, And hundreds attractive and clever; Daily I walk through this limitless throng, Yet find none compares with you--ever. If from these hundreds an artist should mould A composite maid, near perfection; Stand her beside you, to choose I be told-- My dear, can't you guess my selection? Hundreds and millions of maids there may be, And yet, without you I'd be lonely. Pray be convinced, for I speak truthfully: Dear, you are the ONE AND THE ONLY. My Garden I wander into my garden, My garden of loves that are dead, And stop at a withered rose bush That once grew a blossom of red. How passionately, true I loved it, Thought without it I could not abide-- How bitter it is to remember In a night it had withered and died. The violet that grew on the hillside I loved with a love that was true; But 'twas snatched from me e'en as I held it-- O, Violet, dear, how I loved you! And dearest of all, the sweet June Rose, As a bud she'd come out first that year; But I lost her just as I'd plucked her-- The heartless and pitiless dear! The lily and pink that I worshipped Each deigned but a season to stay, And returned not again though I waited And longed for them many a day. Dear loves that are dead, hear me say it: A loving good-bye to you all! No more shall I visit this garden, For my true love grows just o'er the wall. Having loved you has made my love stronger For her whom I now so adore; I'd truly not know how to love her Had I not loved you-all before. Good-bye, then, again, fairest garden; Good-bye to you all, fickle dears; Dear Rosemary, last, fondest treasure, Will be faithful to me through the years. My Threnody The Weatherman's in direst straits; All wrong are his predictions; Not Bright and Fair, but Drear and Cold-- And so his maledictions. [Illustration] Now I can give the answer to This scientific gent: 'Tis not from meteoric change-- But just 'cause SHE has went. I've read by hundreds love-stuff books, But ne'er believed one bit When sun was made to cease to shine When "SHE" made her exit. But now I know that they were right; From Sol no rays are sent; It's dull and gray and dismal quite-- And all 'cause SHE has went. I cannot read, nor write, nor think Since SHE has went, Oh, dear! Of compensation, though, there's heaps: For, well, she once was here! So I'll not mind the fierce heart pain That naught seems to allay. She's went, ah me! but I shall hope That she'll come back some day. Eternity She's coming-- The woman I loved and lost! Widowed at last and once more free. One hand, two, or arms? Ah, me! Our meeting, her greeting--.... O what will it be? She's coming-- The woman I loved--and love! Long have I waited so hopelessly; One year, all--yet faithfully. Returning! I'm yearning.... Be kind, gods, to me! Yes, coming! O woman beloved of all, Come to arms that still ache so for thee! One age, two, ETERNITY For loving, for LOVING Awaits you and me. INTERMISSION A MEDLEY (_Rendered by the Jumbler during the Intermission_). I 'Ear Noes _The Jumbler turns some anatomical terms._ The night has a thousand eyes, The day to one lays claim; The big brown pair that you, dear, wear Sure puts them all to shame. It seems 'bout a thousand years My heart you've trod in dust; But lend an ear and listen, dear: The end of waste is bust. Though I've heard a thousand noes-- As someone knows is true-- An aye once said, we'll soon be wed, Or I'll be ever blue. Ode to a Sylphine Figure Thinner yet and thinner-- I would be like thee. I am nearly drowned in Perspiration's sea. From my adiposeness I'd be set clear free-- Though it means my joining Broomstick cavalry. Feelin' Blue My nose is red, I'm feeling blue! If you had bawled I guess so'd you ... be feelin' blue. BECAUSE I Have Just Run Into a Nest of Crying Women. I went to a Niobe party, Where all were expected to bawl; There were peachy repiners and whiners in minors-- Your "Uncle" wailed loudest of all. [Illustration] A Bare Story Nobody loves a man that's bald, I've often heard it said; But why does Love, then, laugh at locks?-- It makes me scratch my head. A Truth A simple truth I give to you To always recollect; There is one thing--and that's Friendship-- Will not thrive on neglect. Hooverize An order of Hoover's I think is quite good; "Don't feed your dear husband-- But husband your food." Fine "It must be fine," the Sweet Thing cried, "To write a poem like his'n." "It should be fine," the man replied, "Plus thirty days in prison." Fugax, Sequax; Sequax, Fugax Maids, they say, like shadows are: (I wonder if it's true). Follow, and they run away; Retreat, they follow you! A Betrayal of Irish Ancestry If you ask my wish sincerest, I will quickly make reply: May you live--yes, live _forever_-- And be happy till you die. Exit Cooky Our queasy queen of the cuisine A queer, querulous creature has long been; In her quite quiet way she quickly quit on Sunday-- Quid est? Quid nunc? Why--quondam! The Limit Prissy, persnickety people there be, Fastidious, finical ones, we see; But the fussiest man in town by far, Is he who washes his little Ford car. Safety First PROPINQUITY plus PROXIMITY, plus A little ENCOURAGEMENT, dear, And havoc you'd play With my heart. I'm away To the umbrageous dingles, through fear. Unbearable Three things my nature cannot stand-- I'll name them, if you please: TEMPTATION and ENCOURAGEMENT; NEGLECT's the worst of these. Wrong Prescription Tell me, please, sir, Mr. Captain-- It's advice I'm lookin' fer-- Is it true carbolic acid Is good for cooties, sir? Are you serious, poor rookie, Or are you making fun? What you mention isn't _good_ at all-- It _kills_ 'em every one. Seeing Double "Look twice before you leap, son," My mother oft told me. Each time I take a second look, A second girl I see. The only thing that's better-- You'll think me quite a dunce-- Would be to have diplopia, Then I'd see two at once. Wisdom Napoleon was a wise old guy; A saying of his ran Like this: "To all who would be safe, Don't write, just send a man!" Just Talk _Following the Intermission the Jumbler unravels the difference between speech and talk and think and thought._ From time an infant draws first breath And 'gins its virgin squaking, Each mother proud, not saving one, Translates all goos as talking. This goo means this, a girr means that-- A new word every minute-- It yells! Says pa, "My dear, you're right, There's surely something in it." (A pin, perhaps). Milk-Latin talk lasts 'bout a year, And then, strict truth I'm telling, A plain "Mam-ma" may strike your ear-- In interim of yelling. The next few years great strides are made; Mamma is fair ecstatic, For now it talks as good as dad-- 'Cept 'course, it's not grammatic. And then comes slang, and cussing, too-- If it's a boy, the latter-- But if a girl, the whole day through It's giggle, chatter, chatter. And now it's grown, and still it talks! But will somebody answer: How much is said that tends to help Despondent fellow-man, sir? And words of comfort, love and cheer Are all not slow in giving? Yet it's the joy we scatter here That makes our lives worth living. From birth till death it's talk, talk, talk! But listen, please, and ponder: What would it mean if speech meant thought? Who would be dumb, I wonder? [Illustration] The Man Who Made Umph-ta-ta Smile _If to Heaven you would go--Smile._ A god once was made and heathen had prayed To him throughout many a year; His face was distort with a frown of the sort That gave them all quakings of fear. The rulers in line, of whom there'd been nine, Each published this royal decree: _The man who'll beguile our fierce god to smile May claim the King's crown as his fee_. From all the world o'er had come by the score The jester, the fool and the clown; With quip and with jest had each tried his best, Yet not one displaced the god's frown. Joe Miller and Twain had been quoted in vain, (Each man as he failed was exiled.) But failures all scored, the god still looked bored, Then I appeared--and he smiled! When his visage had cleared, the heathen all cheered And each wore a smile good to see; With shouting and song they bore me along Till straight to the King they'd brought me. The King then stepped down, said "Sir, here's my crown, And gold you shall have by the pile, But tell me, I pray, just what did you say That made our god, Umph-ta-ta, smile?" "Your crown and your pelf, Sire, keep for yourself," I said, "but pray listen to me: I just made the trial--_a smile for a smile_-- And succeeded, Good King, as you see. Of pomp, Noble Sire, and of power I should tire, And soon think them not worth my while, Contented I'll be if 't can be said of me: 'He's the man who makes everyone smile'. "Pray heed me, O King, a smile, Sire is the thing That will win you a smile in return; Just try it and see, and I'm sure you'll agree 'Tis a thing that all people should learn. Your wise pulpiteers may belabor your ears With all the orthodox doctrines extant, But if t' Heaven you'd go, then you might as well know 'Nless you smile throughout life--well, you _can't_! _There's nothing worth while can't be won with a smile_-- A maxim you prove when you try-- I must now be gone to pass the word on; There're others who need it. Good-bye!" * * * * * My story you've heard--well, then, just one word:-- Is anyone now within sight? Just smile on him, do--why, _he's smiling at you_! Your very first test proves I'm right. Myself and Me _Unlike George Cohan, the Jumbler doesn't love himself._ 'Tis torrid here and all have gone To seashore on a trot; I'm left alone, alas! and I'm The only friend I've got. I've walked with me and talked with me Until I'm satiate; I'm sick and tired and bored with me; The thought of me I hate. Divorce I'd have 'tween self and me; For happiness I'd strike; We're surely incompatible 'Cause too darned much alike. [Illustration] C'est la Guerre _After throwing his friends into fits, the Jumbler decides his Soldier-French won't go._ There are some folks, alas! I know Who Fletcherize the calico And pull out wads of hair When now and then, as if by chance, I lapse into the speech of France. But--blame it on _la guerre_. My accent's not Parisian, yet It's _tres bien_, so said Lizette-- And surely she should know. She never frowned and said _non, non!_ But she would smile and say, "_Bon bon!_" _Oui, oui_, I get you, Bo! _Jolie_ Jeanne plays the Marseillaise! I ball myself in many ways When this I try to say. But _tres_, _merci_, _chere_, and _beaucoup_ I say just like the Frenchies do-- Admit it, _s'il vous plait_. Yet if each time I _parlez vous_ These friends must throw a fit or two And shock their systems so, I think I'll stick to plain _Anglais_ And say _adieu_ to all _Francais_-- My Soldier-French won't go! Spring Styles "Well, you may talk Of woman's wiles Of all these lat- Est skinny styles; Rave over girls Built like a slat; But I must say I like 'em fat!" A girl that's fat? Oh, no, no, No! No lap, no waist Nor high nor low; An oozing mass When weather's hot-- You like this type? Well, I do not! For me, a girl That's sylph-like made, Who's just the same In sun or shade; And as for me, And I'm no churl, Where there's no waist-- Then there's no girl! No hefty bunch Of av'rdupois, No dray-horse girl Shall share my joys; But pocket-size, A featherweight, Will find me most Affectionate. [Illustration] Strictly Proper Ol' Miss Propri'ty up an' say: "Why will you chilluns ack this way? Whenever I go out to walk I see you two--an' people talk! "Miss Grundy says to me today: 'They go to ride, an' _stay_ an' _stay_. How come her pa don't take a hand An' call 'em down to beat the band?' "I've tol' you time an' time again A man should call but _now and then_, Unless the priest has called the banns An' date's been set for jinin' han's. "'Tain't proper, no, an' it ain't right To call or ride mos' ev'ry night. Hear now the last word that I'll say: _You break my rules--then you must pay!_" Ol' Miss Propri'ty, who are you That you should tell us what to do? Your mammy was a prissy scold, Yer dad a crabbed "sis," I'm told. You stick to rules your grandma 'ranged, Despite the fac' that times have changed. Propriety, Convention--these Are how determined, if you please? Ol' Miss, if true I love this maid Should I go slow and be afraid Of what the neighbor-folk will say? Nay, nay, a girl's not won that way! There're nine and ninety swains, they say, Who'd steal this maid. If I make hay I needs must work despite the fogs, And though it's raining cats and dogs. Ol' Miss, if you could see her eyes With laughter lit, or in surprise, Or questioning, or looking grave, Or beckoning--just hear me rave-- Could see the beauty of her face, Her winsome ways, her lissom grace-- Ah, Miss, your rules you'd cast aside And daily beg, "Dear, please come ride." Then why not I? I'm human, too. It's right for me if right for you. You see I've got so much to say I've _gotta_ see her ev'ry day. Ol' Miss she say, "My boy, you're right; I now see things in diff'rent light. My laws still rule the other guy, But to your case they don't apply. So tell her _my_ permission's got To call on her a nawful lot. You've found me easy, have you lad? All right, then try convincing DAD." _In a versatile manner the Jumbler approaches sundry themes, wherein is revealed his love for Home, Country and Eats._ 18 TO 45. YOU NEVER CAN TELL. AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION. FEAR NOT. EAT WHAT'S SET BEFORE YOU. SHOW ME. DAMFINO JONES. SILENT BILL. BUSTER BOY. NOT FORGETTING DAD. 18 to 45 _The Jumbler found the niche in which he fit--for just one day._ I'm something over eighteen, yet I'm under forty-five! I've no flat feet, no leaky valves, No wife and babes alive. So-- With no dependent, no defect, Not e'en a near-sight eye, Methinks quite soon I'll hear you say: "So long! Good luck! Good-bye!" My putteed calves will look a sight-- I'm long, but short on weight-- My feet won't fit the Munson last, My rising hour is eight. But-- The army is gwine ter git me, My name's done been enrolled. I'd like to be a baby gal Not more'n one year old! I'm old enough, I'm young enough To do some thing, I guess; So I'll just stop my foolish talk And say, "I'm ready, yes!" For There's not a job, there's not a niche But needs some man to fit. For you and me there's just one thing: GO IN AND DO OUR BIT! They found a job, they found the niche They said that I would fit; And in Argonne one foggy morn They said, "Now do your bit!" Wow! Old Jerry seemed to know I'd come; His shells all came my way! Ugh! Mustard gas! * * * Then mustered out-- I didn't last one day! [Illustration] You Never Can Tell Harry had two Munson feet That grew like ice and snow At bare suggestion of the thought That he to War should go. But when the Draft got him one day His face grew stern and grim; And ere he'd been in camp a month They'd made a _man_ of him. 'Twas "Captain Harry" soon in France. Midst fighting over there He got two wounds, a D. S. C., Also the Croix de Guerre. The moral in this simple tale You've guessed, I have no doubt: _You cannot tell whats in a man Until he's tested out._ An Ounce of Prevention When first the Flu our old town hit I said I'd keep from getting; So I went home and with great care I shut out drafts and shut out air. I sprinkled sulphur in my shoes, Then loaded up on blockade booze, Some calomel and "C.C." pills, Then castor oil up to my gills. Each hour on soda I did feast; I swallowed cakes of Fleischmann's yeast; I ate ten onions, mighty nigh, Then drank a slug of Good Old Rye; Some asafoet'da round my neck, Then took quinine, about a peck. To keep from feeling all forlorn I fraternized with Barleycorn; Then aspirin, say twenty grains, And codeine to keep off pains. I chewed tobacco, smoked it, too, Then took a dip of Mountain Dew. I crawled in bed to get a rest, Vick's Vaporub smeared on my chest. I changed to woolen underduds And carried 'round two Irish spuds; I sprayed and gargled, wore a mask, Snuffed Listerine, then tried my flask. I felt my pulse; at tongue a look, And then my temper'ture I took. But strange to say quite sick I grew-- _The doctor says I've got the Flu!_ I guess he's right, but this is sure: Right now I need the likker cure. * * * * * I wonder if I'd stayed up town, Cut out the dope, kept worry down, Stayed right at work, not had a drink-- Would I have Flu? What do you think? [Illustration] Fear Not Why will so many people now Give way to frenzied fear? Why will they act as though they thought Swift Death were lurking near? E'en if Disease now stalks abroad And Death rides on the air, 'Tis not the time for craven acts, But courage everywhere. I wonder if they stop to think How soon the war'd be won If sons of theirs showed half the fear That they of late have done? And why fear death--eternal life? I would not be the one To strive to stay on this poor earth With sacred tasks undone. So, why not chirk up just a bit And say good-bye to fear? The world now needs much cheering up-- Pray help supply the cheer. Eat What's Set Before You As children ofttimes we were wont To criticise and fuss About the victuals that were cooked And served by ma to us: "Too salty" this, and "too sweet" that; "You've had this twice since Sunday; You always have what others like, You might please me just one day." And so it went till pa would say:-- 'Twas meant you could not doubt it-- "Just eat what's set before you and Say nothin' 'tall about it." Now we are grown and, seems to me, Too often we're inclined To criticise the things Fate gives, And think this life a grind. Some things may not just suit our taste, Some e'en be quite unpleasant; Someone may get the bigger share And failure seem e'er present; But then, let's think of pa's advice:-- It's sound, pray never doubt it-- "Just eat what's set before you and Say nothin' 'tall about it." Life's road is rough--but what of that? The man who'll growls forswear Will top the hills ahead the crowd All smiles, with breath to spare. And so it goes this wide world o'er-- 'Tis true for saint and sinner-- The man who silently will "dig" Will always prove the winner. That's why I say take pa's advice:-- Try once and you'll not doubt it-- "Just eat what's set before you and Say nothin' 'tall about it." [Illustration] Show Me There is a dame I know you know, Who'll make big talk, will brag and blow About the waffles that she makes, Also her corn and buckwheat cakes-- But always my cake's dough. She tells of this or that one who At breakfast, once ate twenty-two! And when she feared that he would bust He raved and railed and almost cussed, And said he wa'n't half through. I've hinted and I've begged this dame To just for once treat me the same. But always she the question begs, Or's out of cream, or maybe eggs, Or some excuse as lame. Yet here am I, so thin and pale, While she, dear soul, is plump and hale. If she's the best cook in the South, Why let me stand with watering mouth?-- She should be sent to jail! Now, I'm from out Missouri way, Where "Please show me," is what they say. I'm hungry and too weak to walk, So "Please feed me, or stop your talk!" I'll tell her this today. A pawfull and a mawfull I Must have or else I fear I'll die. Her talk does naught but aggravate; It does not help my famished state Nor hunger satisfy. Unless I get a waffle quick, Unless I get it awful quick, I'd better beat her up, I guess, And mar her beauty more or less-- Unless I get it quick! [Illustration] Damfino Jones Damfino Jones, a mental drone, Had no opinion of his own; He grew to manhood meek and mild, But he was Indecision's child, It was the same in weal or woe: He "wasn't sure," or "didn't know." In business he would hesitate To buy or sell until too late; So, naturally he ran in debt-- But hasn't run back out as yet. When asked when he a debt would pay He "couldn't just exactly say." In romance he just "couldn't just exactly say." If he loved Blanche or Isabel-- He married Jane, and, safe to say, 'Twas she who kept the wolf at bay. And with religion, mixed he got When asked if orthodox or not. In politics he'd weigh and weigh, And then not vote on 'lection day. And so he wavered till he died And never did one thing decide. Now I don't know, but it is said He isn't now quite sure he's dead. Take note of men who've made success: They tell you "No" or tell you "Yes" Right off the bat, nor step aside When faced with questions to decide; While men like Jones just paw the air And never do get anywhere. This truth shines out like bright new tin: _Think for yourself if you would win_. Silent Bill I have a friend called "Silent Bill," Aged ten, so says the Bible; To me, in years, no word he's said-- Strange truth and not base libel. He seems quite bright, and sees and hears-- In fact you'd think him normal; But not a sound comes from his lips, Not e'en to greeting formal. When he's at home, so I am told, It's talk, talk, talk, and chatter; When I'm around, why is he dumb? Explain, what is the matter? Am I an ogre fierce and wild With looks and mien ferocious That cause to cling unto its roof The tongue of this precocious? "Oh, no!" says he, "you're not to blame." (The answer comes by proxy.) "The fault's not yours, but all guilt lies With my dear mother, foxy. I'd like to talk of lots of things-- But ain't my ma the limit? She starts her tongue--so what's the use? I'm out, 'less I butt-in it." "It's 'seen not heard,' so I've been told, Or else a strapping vi'lent. I fear the gad, and that's why I Remain still Bill-the-silent. Now, when you scrap about her size I'm mum, but try to figger How she could squeeze in through the door If she were any bigger." "But when she twits you 'bout the thatch You've lost from off your attic, I'd like to reprimand her then In language quite emphatic. I've waited long and ground my teeth, And frowned upon her patter; But I'm convinced she'll ne'er run down-- She's stuffed with ceaseless chatter." * * * * * Dear Silent Bill, stay silent still; To change, pray do not bother; You're dearer far just as you are; I'd true not have you other. Buster Boy _The Jumbler, like Foss, loses a boy._ I have a friend called "Buster"-- A little child last Fall-- But now he's grown so very big I scarce know him at all. Almost a man! His folks are proud And fairly beam with joy; But I--I feel I'd rather cry; For I--I've lost my _boy_. No more he'll perch upon my knee And ask me to relate How Li Chi Fair and Chang-the-Good Were saved from saddest fate. And Jelly Jar and Big Black Bear He'll treat with sneering scorn And say, "Now please do stop and think How long since I was born." Time flies so fast it takes my breath! Soon he'll forget it all-- The rhymes we wrote, the games we played, None, none will he recall. The world may praise him as a MAN-- God knows I wish him joy-- But I--I'll brush away a tear And long for Buster _Boy_. Not Forgetting Dad A new kid's come to our house; A peach, I'm here to tell; And things are topsy-turvy like-- Still--_Father's doing well_! 'Twas 3 A. M. this morning That it began to squall; Some neighbors got excited-- But Dad wa'n't feased at all. [Illustration] Twas--oh, yes, quite expected-- And welcome, I opine; And bibs and socks and--things are made, And--_Daddy's feeling fine_! Another Christmas present! Gee, that's hard luck for fair! The Old Man says, "Mere bagatelle, Why should a fawther care?" How's Mother? Oh, she's so-so! The Kid? Well, it will do. Of Papa we are glad to state That he will sure pull through. Then, here's a cheer for Mother; One for the Kid we give; Now ready--give a score of them: _Doc says that Pa will live_! Chromatic We've got a nice red moo-cow-moo, But doesn't seem just right. She eats green grass the whole day through Then gives us milk that's white. "Red cows, when on blue-grass are fed, Give white milk." Is this true? I am so green, when this I read It straightway made me blue. A FLARE BACK: We also, have a moo-cow-moo. She isn't red, but black; The milk she gives, it isn't white, But blue,--alas, alack! Methinks that _you'd_ be black and blue Had you your due, young fellow; But matters not the shade or hue, Just so you're never yellow! Enuf! When "dis ol' waggin am done broke down," I feel 'twould be a sin To hold your love through Pity's sake For what I once had been. "Yours till death!" is what they say; But isn't it enough To say, "Dear Girl, I sure am yours Until the wheels fall off?" _And here the Jumbler entertains the children with a few Nursery rhymes:_ THE EVENING BATH (Apartment Next Door). THE DIRTY-NECK POLICEMAN AND THE BLACK-HAND. DO YOU BELIEVE IN SANTA CLAUS? SHAVING TIME. THE BIG BLACK BEAR. The Evening Bath (_Apartment Next Door_). I try to read--but really, what's the use? You'd think, I swear, 'twas Bedlam broken loose; A scream! And then I hear, "Oh mercy! Ouch! My ear! I surely cannot stand all this abuse! You're gouging me and pulling out my hair; My skin's rubbed off--'tis more than I can bear! Now really you're not heeding or you'd see my nose is bleeding! I believe you would kill me if you dared!" I jump up from my chair and grab my gun; I must be quick or murder will be done; I rush across the hall and loudly 'gin to call: "Unnatural parent, wouldst thou slay thy son?", Upon the door I then begin to beat, And straightway hear the scamper of bare feet; Then "Mother" stood and laughed, said, "Surely you've gone daft-- I'm only giving them their evening bath." She calmed herself and then she sweetly said, "I always scrub 'em 'fore they go to bed; But don't see why my daughter should have such fear of water; And Buster,--why, it simply drives him mad! I really don't see what I'm going to do, Despite the fact it greatly worries you; Of course it may seem mean but I'm going to keep them clean-- And I don't know how unless I scrub 'em down." * * * * * So "Cleanliness is next to Godliness!" It may be so; but really I confess I'd let them go as black as night and look just like an awful fright-- Unless the Gold Dust Twins'd do the work. What matter, pray, if streaks run 'round the neck And dirt be under nails, about a peck? I'd rather, oh, yes, quite, that they were black than white-- If I disturbed the town when bathing them. [Illustration] The Dirty-Neck Policeman and the Black Hand Oh, run! Oh, mercy, run! you little children, Just as fast and quickly as you can! For here comes the Dirty-Neck Policeman, And I'm sure I see the Black-Hand man. So, scrub, scrub, scrub your little hannies, And your necks, pray don't forget them, dears; These men will surely get you if you're dirty; They'll pay no attention to your tears. The Dirty-neck Policeman he jes' grabs you, And if he finds your neck's not clean and white, He carries you away in spite of begging, And keeps you from your mother all that night! Next day his ugly wife gets soap and water, And scrubs you with a great big curry-comb; And if you cry she fills your mouth with soap-suds, Till you promise you will keep clean when you get home. [Illustration] The Black-hand Man keeps hidin' 'round the corner, A-lookin' at your knuckles and your nails; And if they're dirty he jes' rushes at you And grabs you with a hook--he never fails! And then he sits down on you when he's caught you, Sandpapers you until you're bleedin', My! And he jes' laughs and chuckles while he's working, And rubs you all the harder if you cry! So it's best to keep quite clean, or you'll be sorry; You never know just when you may get caught; The Dirty-neck Policeman's mighty watchful, And the Black-hand Man's a-hidin' 'round a lot! Do You Believe in Santa Claus? "Aw, youse kids make me orful tired, Talkin' 'bout Sandy Claws! Huh! Don'tcher know he's jest a fake, And nothin' 'cept our pas? "When your ma tells you all this rot, Don't believe her no more; Get wise! I've watched and seen pa work-- Dere bluffin' makes me sore." "O Jim! You shouldn't say such things!" The rest intreated him, "For if you do you'll make him mad, And he'll forget you, Jim." "Of course Old Santa's sure-nuff true, An' comes 'round every year An' brings you things, if you are good-- We think him just a dear. "The fairies, you'll be saying next, Are make-believes also. Just 'cause you're tough (our mas say so) Is no sign that you know." Well, Christmas morning came, and Jim His stockings rushed to see. He took one look and then he cried, "They're empty as can be!" But then he found, by hunting 'round, A suit of underwear, A tooth-brush and a handkerchief Upon a kitchen chair. He cried and cried and then ran out-- Was anxious so to see If others in the neighborhood Had fared the same as he. But Mary had a baby doll, And Jamie had a sled; Virginia had some roller skates, An air-gun had small Fred. Besides, much candy they all had, And lots and lots of toys And things that Santa always brings To real good girls and boys. "Now fellers, w'at's the answer, say? I'm mad enough to swear! I _needed_ skates--why did I _get_ A suit of underwear? "It seems that you-uns ev'ry one Has got most everything That you have said for weeks you hoped That Sandy Claws would bring." * * * * * The answer is, dear children: Old Santa Claus don't doubt. For if you do--the truth I tell-- Like Jim, you'll be left out! Shaving Time When Dad gets out his safety The family 'gin to quake; They huddle 'round the doorway, Nor dare the silence break. When Dad gets out his safety, A hush falls on the air And Fido runs to hide him Beneath a friendly chair. Then Ma, she tiptoes gently To fetch him water hot, And lest he want for towels She lays him out a lot. One of us goes for talcum, And one for shaving soap; Another gets witch hazel, Cold cream and smelly dope. Then we withdraw us quickly And watch him from afar; A safety's mighty dang'rous-- It wouldn't do to jar. With face all white and soapy He scrapes his cheeks and chin; The way he frowns and winces It surely hurts like sin. But when the job is over And Dad looks clean and young, We all resume our breathing, And songs of praise are sung. As Dad cleans up his safety You ought to see him strut And brag about how easy 'tis His face to never cut. When Dad's put 'way his safety He laughs with fiendish glee To think the grasping barber From him will get no fee. But ev'ry silver lining Has dark clouds lurking near: Tomorrow morn Dad's safety Brings back our hour of fear. The Big Black Bear Come, bear with me, I'll tell to you Of Big Black Bears with children two; Of Father Bear, too ready to dare, And Mother, and the cross she bare. 'Twas "Cinnabar" and "Blackberry" that Pa Bear his children named; But simply "Bairns" was nicer far, the mother stoutly claimed. A lively time these children had, of pleasures had no lack; The thing that tickled them the most was bareback pick-a-pack. This man Bear was, oh! so wicked and sly, He'd steal and then tell you a barefaced lie; The older he grew the more he would fight-- Stuck on himself 'cause he could read and write. This Big Black Bear was a grouchy bear, And a cross old bear was he; He snapped and clawed and bristled and pawed And growled ferociously! This Big Black Bear broke open the door And walked right into the groc'ry store; He ate all the sugar, he ate all the ham, And left not a cent for the groc'ryman. He wrapped up honey and choice candies And he then left a note: "Just charge 'em, please; I'm gaunt and sore, I've come a distance, And take enough for bare existence." The grocer, next morn, collected some men And tracked the foot-prints right up to the den; The Cubs, when they came, were out all alone, But raced through cubbyholes cut in the stone. The Bears laid low, kept out of sight, Cubs snuggled down like it was night. "All right," said the men, "we'll sure get you yet!" And then went to work a big trap to set. They got it all fixed and placed on the ground, And then lots of honey scattered around; And then, lest some traveler its sight should miss, They nailed up a sign that looked just like this: [Illustration: BEWARE FORBEAR] As soon as they had gone quite a while Old Pa Bear sneaked out, then called with a smile; "Come out, hustle up, there's nothing to fear; There's honey enough for all of us here!" "To me," says Ma, "this thing spells ruin; I feel that there is trouble brewin'!" "Tut, tut!" says Pa, "just like a fool! 'Tis plain you never went to school. If you could read you'd plainly see That this was sent a gift to me. 'Bee-ware' is honey, surely you know; And 'For-Bear' is what it says below. Now cubbies, you see how much you need To learn right soon to write and to read. So study real hard, become a power-- A Cub reporter, some day, or maybe the bar." "Dip in," said he, "la, la it's swell!" And then let out an awful yell!!---- For the trap had sprung and caught him fair---- The fam'ly quickly ran to the lair. Then ping!! crack!! crack!! a loud report!! "All in!" cried they, "Oh, my, what sport!" They skinned him and carried away the dead; But not a pall-bearer once bared his head. On this Bear's sad end the grocer oft does gloat-- What's now left of Pa is a big winter coat. When the weather's cold (not immodest nor sin) The Grocer comes forth just in his bear skin. The Cubs, thus bereft, were frightened quite, They sobbed and they cried with all of their might. "Come, Bairns," said Ma, "let's off to the wood; I'll get you a new pa who'll do as Bears should." She did it and made a most excellent wife, And all are now living the happiest life. Missing You _Impelled by lonesomeness, the Jumbler is inspired to this bit of sentimental rhyme._ Feeling mighty lonely; Yes, getting pow'ful blue; Dearie, here's the answer: I'm missing, missing you. Rain beats 'gainst the window, Or skies are bright and blue; Doesn't seem to matter-- I'm missing, missing you. Days are long and tiresome, And nights seem endless, too; Slumber is a stranger-- I'm missing, missing you. Writing rhyme is easy, 'Bout all that I can do; Ev'ry word in English Now wants to rhyme with _You_. If I thought, my dearie, That you missed me, too, I should then be happy In missing, missing you. Joy lives close to Sadness, The steps are short and few: Changing just one letter Makes "_missing_" "_kissing_" you. [Illustration] INDEX PAGE Greetings 9 Introspection 10 An Acknowledgment 11 Pay! Pay!! Pay!! 12 Taffy and the Man 13 Myself _vs._ Me 15 To "The Quiet Observer" 16 A bas Polyanna 18 If You'd Marry 19 To My Valentine 20 All Mine in Dreams 22 Should Dreams Come True 23 Lotus Eating 24 Fergit Dem Dreams 25 Fickleness of Maidens 28 Constancy--As Applied to One Man 29 Handle With Care 30 The One and the Only 31 My Garden 33 My Threnody 35 Eternity 36 A MEDLEY: I, 'Ear, Noes 38 Ode to a Sylphine Figure 38 Feelin' Blue 39 A Bare Story 39 A Truth 40 Hooverize 40 Fine 40 Fugax, Sequax; Sequax, Fugax 41 A Betrayal of Irish Ancestry 41 Exit Cooky 41 The Limit 41 Safety First 42 Unbearable 42 Wrong Prescription 42 Seeing Double 43 Wisdom 43 Just Talk 44 The Man Who Made Umph-ta-ta Smile 46 Myself and Me 49 C'est la Guerre 50 Spring Styles 51 Strictly Proper 53 18 to 45 56 You Never Can Tell 58 An Ounce of Prevention 59 Fear Not 61 Eat What's Set Before You 62 Show Me 64 Damfino Jones 66 Silent Bill 68 Buster Boy 70 Not Forgetting Dad 71 Chromatic 73 Enuf! 74 The Evening Bath 76 The Dirty-Neck Policeman and the Black Hand 78 Do You Believe in Santa Claus? 80 Shaving Time 82 The Big Black Bear 84 Missing You 87 * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Varied hyphenation was retained except where noted below, for example, "Black Hand" and "Black-Hand" which appears twice in each form. Obvious punctuation errors repaired. Page 38, "litsen" changed to "listen" (an ear and listen) Page 70, line "None, none will he recall." was indented to match rest of poem's layout. Index, hyphen added to "Dirty-Neck" to match the text's usage (The Dirty-Neck Policeman) 
424	----	[Note on text: Italicized stanzas will be indented 5 spaces. Italicized AND indented stanzas will be indented 10 spaces. Italicized words or phrases will be capitalised. Some obvious errors may have been corrected.] +-------------------------------------------------+ | By Vachel Lindsay | | | | The Congo and Other Poems | | General William Booth Enters into Heaven | | The Art of the Moving Picture | | Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty | +-------------------------------------------------+ General William Booth Enters into Heaven and Other Poems by Vachel Lindsay [Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, Illinois Poet--1879-1931] [This etext has been transcribed from a 1916 reprint (New York) of the original 1913 edition.] This book is dedicated to Dr. Arthur Paul Wakefield and Olive Lindsay Wakefield Missionaries in China Contents General William Booth Enters into Heaven The Drunkards in the Street The City That Will Not Repent The Trap Where is David, the Next King of Israel? On Reading Omar Khayyam The Beggar's Valentine Honor Among Scamps The Gamblers On the Road to Nowhere Upon Returning to the Country Road The Angel and the Clown Springfield Magical Incense The Wedding of the Rose and the Lotos King Arthur's Men Have Come Again Foreign Missions in Battle Array Star of My Heart Look You, I'll Go Pray At Mass Heart of God The Empty Boats With a Bouquet of Twelve Roses St. Francis of Assisi Buddha A Prayer to All the Dead Among Mine Own People To Reformers in Despair Why I Voted the Socialist Ticket To the United States Senate The Knight in Disguise The Wizard in the Street The Eagle that is Forgotten Shakespeare Michelangelo Titian Lincoln The Cornfields Sweet Briars of the Stairways Fantasies and Whims:-- The Fairy Bridal Hymn The Potato's Dance How a Little Girl Sang Ghosts in Love The Queen of Bubbles The Tree of Laughing Bells, or The Wings of the Morning Sweethearts of the Year The Sorceress! Caught in a Net Eden in Winter Genesis Queen Mab in the Village The Dandelion The Light o' the Moon A Net to Snare the Moonlight Beyond the Moon The Song of the Garden-Toad A Gospel of Beauty:-- The Proud Farmer The Illinois Village On the Building of Springfield General William Booth Enters into Heaven [To be sung to the tune of 'The Blood of the Lamb' with indicated instrument] I [Bass drum beaten loudly.] Booth led boldly with his big bass drum-- (Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?) The Saints smiled gravely and they said: "He's come." (Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?) Walking lepers followed, rank on rank, Lurching bravoes from the ditches dank, Drabs from the alleyways and drug fiends pale-- Minds still passion-ridden, soul-powers frail:-- Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath, Unwashed legions with the ways of Death-- (Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?) [Banjos.] Every slum had sent its half-a-score The round world over. (Booth had groaned for more.) Every banner that the wide world flies Bloomed with glory and transcendent dyes. Big-voiced lasses made their banjos bang, Tranced, fanatical they shrieked and sang:-- "Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?" Hallelujah! It was queer to see Bull-necked convicts with that land make free. Loons with trumpets blowed a blare, blare, blare On, on upward thro' the golden air! (Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?) II [Bass drum slower and softer.] Booth died blind and still by Faith he trod, Eyes still dazzled by the ways of God. Booth led boldly, and he looked the chief Eagle countenance in sharp relief, Beard a-flying, air of high command Unabated in that holy land. [Sweet flute music.] Jesus came from out the court-house door, Stretched his hands above the passing poor. Booth saw not, but led his queer ones there Round and round the mighty court-house square. Yet in an instant all that blear review Marched on spotless, clad in raiment new. The lame were straightened, withered limbs uncurled And blind eyes opened on a new, sweet world. [Bass drum louder.] Drabs and vixens in a flash made whole! Gone was the weasel-head, the snout, the jowl! Sages and sibyls now, and athletes clean, Rulers of empires, and of forests green! [Grand chorus of all instruments. Tambourines to the foreground.] The hosts were sandalled, and their wings were fire! (Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?) But their noise played havoc with the angel-choir. (Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?) O, shout Salvation! It was good to see Kings and Princes by the Lamb set free. The banjos rattled and the tambourines Jing-jing-jingled in the hands of Queens. [Reverently sung, no instruments.] And when Booth halted by the curb for prayer He saw his Master thro' the flag-filled air. Christ came gently with a robe and crown For Booth the soldier, while the throng knelt down. He saw King Jesus. They were face to face, And he knelt a-weeping in that holy place. Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb? The Drunkards in the Street The Drunkards in the street are calling one another, Heeding not the night-wind, great of heart and gay,-- Publicans and wantons-- Calling, laughing, calling, While the Spirit bloweth Space and Time away. Why should I feel the sobbing, the secrecy, the glory, This comforter, this fitful wind divine? I the cautious Pharisee, the scribe, the whited sepulchre-- I have no right to God, he is not mine. * * * * * Within their gutters, drunkards dream of Hell. I say my prayers by my white bed to-night, With the arms of God about me, with the angels singing, singing Until the grayness of my soul grows white. The City That Will Not Repent Climbing the heights of Berkeley Nightly I watch the West. There lies new San Francisco, Sea-maid in purple dressed, Wearing a dancer's girdle All to inflame desire: Scorning her days of sackcloth, Scorning her cleansing fire. See, like a burning city Sets now the red sun's dome. See, mystic firebrands sparkle There on each store and home. See how the golden gateway Burns with the day to be-- Torch-bearing fiends of portent Loom o'er the earth and sea. Not by the earthquake daunted Nor by new fears made tame, Painting her face and laughing Plays she a new-found game. Here on her half-cool cinders 'Frisco abides in mirth, Planning the wildest splendor Ever upon the earth. Here on this crumbling rock-ledge 'Frisco her all will stake, Blowing her bubble-towers, Swearing they will not break, Rearing her Fair transcendent, Singing with piercing art, Calling to Ancient Asia, Wooing young Europe's heart. Here where her God has scourged her Wantoning, singing sweet: Waiting her mad bad lovers Here by the judgment-seat! 'Frisco, God's doughty foeman, Scorns and blasphemes him strong. Tho' he again should smite her She would not slack her song. Nay, she would shriek and rally-- 'Frisco would ten times rise! Not till her last tower crumbles, Not till her last rose dies, Not till the coast sinks seaward, Not till the cold tides beat Over the high white Shasta, 'Frisco will cry defeat. God loves this rebel city, Loves foemen brisk and game, Tho', just to please the angels, He may send down his flame. God loves the golden leopard Tho' he may spoil her lair. God smites, yet loves the lion. God makes the panther fair. Dance then, wild guests of 'Frisco, Yellow, bronze, white and red! Dance by the golden gateway-- Dance, tho' he smite you dead! The Trap She was taught desire in the street, Not at the angels' feet. By the good no word was said Of the worth of the bridal bed. The secret was learned from the vile, Not from her mother's smile. Home spoke not. And the girl Was caught in the public whirl. Do you say "She gave consent: Life drunk, she was content With beasts that her fire could please?" But she did not choose disease Of mind and nerves and breath. She was trapped to a slow, foul death. The door was watched so well, That the steep dark stair to hell Was the only escaping way . . . "She gave consent," you say? Some think she was meek and good, Only lost in the wood Of youth, and deceived in man When the hunger of sex began That ties the husband and wife To the end in a strong fond life. Her captor, by chance was one Of those whose passion was done, A cold fierce worm of the sea Enslaving for you and me. The wages the poor must take Have forced them to serve this snake. Yea, half-paid girls must go For bread to his pit below. What hangman shall wait his host Of butchers from coast to coast, New York to the Golden Gate-- The merger of death and fate, Lust-kings with a careful plan Clean-cut, American? In liberty's name we cry For these women about to die. O mothers who failed to tell The mazes of heaven and hell, Who failed to advise, implore Your daughters at Love's strange door, What will you do this day? Your dear ones are hidden away, As good as chained to the bed, Hid like the mad, or the dead:-- The glories of endless years Drowned in their harlot-tears: The children they hoped to bear, Grandchildren strong and fair, The life for ages to be, Cut off like a blasted tree, Murdered in filth in a day, Somehow, by the merchant gay! In liberty's name we cry For these women about to die. What shall be said of a state Where traps for the white brides wait? Of sellers of drink who play The game for the extra pay? Of statesmen in league with all Who hope for the girl-child's fall? Of banks where hell's money is paid And Pharisees all afraid Of pandars that help them sin? When will our wrath begin? Where is David, the Next King of Israel? Where is David? . . . O God's people, Saul has passed, the good and great. Mourn for Saul the first-anointed-- Head and shoulders o'er the state. He was found among the Prophets: Judge and monarch, merged in one. But the wars of Saul are ended And the works of Saul are done. Where is David, ruddy shepherd, God's boy-king for Israel? Mystic, ardent, dowered with beauty, Singing where still waters dwell? Prophet, find that destined minstrel Wandering on the range to-day, Driving sheep and crooning softly Psalms that cannot pass away. "David waits," the prophet answers, "In a black notorious den, In a cave upon the border With four hundred outlaw men. "He is fair, and loved of women, Mighty-hearted, born to sing: Thieving, weeping, erring, praying, Radiant royal rebel-king. "He will come with harp and psaltry, Quell his troop of convict swine, Quell his mad-dog roaring rascals, Witching them with words divine-- "They will ram the walls of Zion! They will win us Salem hill, All for David, Shepherd David-- Singing like a mountain rill!" On Reading Omar Khayyam [During an anti-saloon campaign, in central Illinois.] In the midst of the battle I turned, (For the thunders could flourish without me) And hid by a rose-hung wall, Forgetting the murder about me; And wrote, from my wound, on the stone, In mirth, half prayer, half play:-- "Send me a picture book, Send me a song, to-day." I saw him there by the wall When I scarce had written the line, In the enemy's colors dressed And the serpent-standard of wine Writhing its withered length From his ghostly hands o'er the ground, And there by his shadowy breast The glorious poem I found. This was his world-old cry: Thus read the famous prayer: "Wine, wine, wine and flowers And cup-bearers always fair!" 'Twas a book of the snares of earth Bordered in gold and blue, And I read each line to the wind And read to the roses too: And they nodded their womanly heads And told to the wall just why For wine of the earth men bleed, Kingdoms and empires die. I envied the grape stained sage: (The roses were praising him.) The ways of the world seemed good And the glory of heaven dim. I envied the endless kings Who found great pearls in the mire, Who bought with the nation's life The cup of delicious fire. But the wine of God came down, And I drank it out of the air. (Fair is the serpent-cup, But the cup of God more fair.) The wine of God came down That makes no drinker to weep. And I went back to battle again Leaving the singer asleep. The Beggar's Valentine Kiss me and comfort my heart Maiden honest and fine. I am the pilgrim boy Lame, but hunting the shrine; Fleeing away from the sweets, Seeking the dust and rain, Sworn to the staff and road, Scorning pleasure and pain; Nevertheless my mouth Would rest like a bird an hour And find in your curls a nest And find in your breast a bower: Nevertheless my eyes Would lose themselves in your own, Rivers that seek the sea, Angels before the throne: Kiss me and comfort my heart, For love can never be mine: Passion, hunger and pain, These are the only wine Of the pilgrim bound to the road. He would rob no man of his own. Your heart is another's I know, Your honor is his alone. The feasts of a long drawn love, The feasts of a wedded life, The harvests of patient years, And hearthstone and children and wife: These are your lords I know. These can never be mine-- This is the price I pay For the foolish search for the shrine: This is the price I pay For the joy of my midnight prayers, Kneeling beneath the moon With hills for my altar stairs; This is the price I pay For the throb of the mystic wings, When the dove of God comes down And beats round my heart and sings; This is the price I pay For the light I shall some day see At the ends of the infinite earth When truth shall come to me. And what if my body die Before I meet the truth? The road is dear, more dear Than love or life or youth. The road, it is the road, Mystical, endless, kind, Mother of visions vast, Mother of soul and mind; Mother of all of me But the blood that cries for a mate-- That cries for a farewell kiss From the child of God at the gate. Honor Among Scamps We are the smirched. Queen Honor is the spotless. We slept thro' wars where Honor could not sleep. We were faint-hearted. Honor was full-valiant. We kept a silence Honor could not keep. Yet this late day we make a song to praise her. We, codeless, will yet vindicate her code. She who was mighty, walks with us, the beggars. The merchants drive her out upon the road. She makes a throne of sod beside our campfire. We give the maiden-queen our rags and tears. A battered, rascal guard have rallied round her, To keep her safe until the better years. The Gamblers Life's a jail where men have common lot. Gaunt the one who has, and who has not. All our treasures neither less nor more, Bread alone comes thro' the guarded door. Cards are foolish in this jail, I think, Yet they play for shoes, for drabs and drink. She, my lawless, sharp-tongued gypsy maid Will not scorn with me this jail-bird trade, Pets some fox-eyed boy who turns the trick, Tho' he win a button or a stick, Pencil, garter, ribbon, corset-lace-- HIS the glory, MINE is the disgrace. Sweet, I'd rather lose than win despite Love of hearty words and maids polite. "Love's a gamble," say you. I deny. Love's a gift. I love you till I die. Gamblers fight like rats. I will not play. All I ever had I gave away. All I ever coveted was peace Such as comes if we have jail release. Cards are puzzles, tho' the prize be gold, Cards help not the bread that tastes of mold, Cards dye not your hair to black more deep, Cards make not the children cease to weep. Scorned, I sit with half shut eyes all day-- Watch the cataract of sunshine play Down the wall, and dance upon the floor. Sun, come down and break the dungeon door! Of such gold dust could I make a key,-- Turn the bolt--how soon we would be free! Over borders we would hurry on Safe by sunrise farms, and springs of dawn, Wash our wounds and jail stains there at last, Azure rivers flowing, flowing past. GOD HAS GREAT ESTATES JUST PAST THE LINE, GREEN FARMS FOR ALL, AND MEAT AND CORN AND WINE. On the Road to Nowhere On the road to nowhere What wild oats did you sow When you left your father's house With your cheeks aglow? Eyes so strained and eager To see what you might see? Were you thief or were you fool Or most nobly free? Were the tramp-days knightly, True sowing of wild seed? Did you dare to make the songs Vanquished workmen need? Did you waste much money To deck a leper's feast? Love the truth, defy the crowd Scandalize the priest? On the road to nowhere What wild oats did you sow? Stupids find the nowhere-road Dusty, grim and slow. Ere their sowing's ended They turn them on their track, Look at the caitiff craven wights Repentant, hurrying back! Grown ashamed of nowhere, Of rags endured for years, Lust for velvet in their hearts, Pierced with Mammon's spears, All but a few fanatics Give up their darling goal, Seek to be as others are, Stultify the soul. Reapings now confront them, Glut them, or destroy, Curious seeds, grain or weeds Sown with awful joy. Hurried is their harvest, They make soft peace with men. Pilgrims pass. They care not, Will not tramp again. O nowhere, golden nowhere! Sages and fools go on To your chaotic ocean, To your tremendous dawn. Far in your fair dream-haven, Is nothing or is all . . . They press on, singing, sowing Wild deeds without recall! Upon Returning to the Country Road Even the shrewd and bitter, Gnarled by the old world's greed, Cherished the stranger softly Seeing his utter need. Shelter and patient hearing, These were their gifts to him, To the minstrel, grimly begging As the sunset-fire grew dim. The rich said "You are welcome." Yea, even the rich were good. How strange that in their feasting His songs were understood! The doors of the poor were open, The poor who had wandered too, Who had slept with ne'er a roof-tree Under the wind and dew. The minds of the poor were open, Their dark mistrust was dead. They loved his wizard stories, They bought his rhymes with bread. Those were his days of glory, Of faith in his fellow-men. Therefore, to-day the singer Turns beggar once again. The Angel and the Clown I saw wild domes and bowers And smoking incense towers And mad exotic flowers In Illinois. Where ragged ditches ran Now springs of Heaven began Celestial drink for man In Illinois. There stood beside the town Beneath its incense-crown An angel and a clown In Illinois. He was as Clowns are: She was snow and star With eyes that looked afar In Illinois. I asked, "How came this place Of antique Asian grace Amid our callow race In Illinois?" Said Clown and Angel fair: "By laughter and by prayer, By casting off all care In Illinois." Springfield Magical In this, the City of my Discontent, Sometimes there comes a whisper from the grass, "Romance, Romance--is here. No Hindu town Is quite so strange. No Citadel of Brass By Sinbad found, held half such love and hate; No picture-palace in a picture-book Such webs of Friendship, Beauty, Greed and Fate!" In this, the City of my Discontent, Down from the sky, up from the smoking deep Wild legends new and old burn round my bed While trees and grass and men are wrapped in sleep. Angels come down, with Christmas in their hearts, Gentle, whimsical, laughing, heaven-sent; And, for a day, fair Peace have given me In this, the City of my Discontent! Incense Think not that incense-smoke has had its day. My friends, the incense-time has but begun. Creed upon creed, cult upon cult shall bloom, Shrine after shrine grow gray beneath the sun. And mountain-boulders in our aged West Shall guard the graves of hermits truth-endowed: And there the scholar from the Chinese hills Shall do deep honor, with his wise head bowed. And on our old, old plains some muddy stream, Dark as the Ganges, shall, like that strange tide-- (Whispering mystery to half the earth)-- Gather the praying millions to its side, And flow past halls with statues in white stone To saints unborn to-day, whose lives of grace Shall make one shining, universal church Where all Faiths kneel, as brothers, in one place. The Wedding of the Rose and the Lotos The wide Pacific waters And the Atlantic meet. With cries of joy they mingle, In tides of love they greet. Above the drowned ages A wind of wooing blows:-- The red rose woos the lotos, The lotos woos the rose . . . The lotos conquered Egypt. The rose was loved in Rome. Great India crowned the lotos: (Britain the rose's home). Old China crowned the lotos, They crowned it in Japan. But Christendom adored the rose Ere Christendom began . . . The lotos speaks of slumber: The rose is as a dart. The lotos is Nirvana: The rose is Mary's heart. The rose is deathless, restless, The splendor of our pain: The flush and fire of labor That builds, not all in vain. . . . The genius of the lotos Shall heal earth's too-much fret. The rose, in blinding glory, Shall waken Asia yet. Hail to their loves, ye peoples! Behold, a world-wind blows, That aids the ivory lotos To wed the red red rose! King Arthur's Men Have Come Again [Written while a field-worker in the Anti-Saloon League of Illinois.] King Arthur's men have come again. They challenge everywhere The foes of Christ's Eternal Church. Her incense crowns the air. The heathen knighthood cower and curse To hear the bugles ring, BUT SPEARS ARE SET, THE CHARGE IS ON, WISE ARTHUR SHALL BE KING! And Cromwell's men have come again, I meet them in the street. Stern but in this--no way of thorns Shall snare the children's feet. The reveling foemen wreak but waste, A sodden poisonous band. FIERCE CROMWELL BUILDS THE FLOWER-BRIGHT TOWNS, AND A MORE SUNLIT LAND! And Lincoln's men have come again. Up from the South he flayed, The grandsons of his foes arise In his own cause arrayed. They rise for freedom and clean laws High laws, that shall endure. OUR GOD ESTABLISHES HIS ARM AND MAKES THE BATTLE SURE! Foreign Missions in Battle Array An endless line of splendor, These troops with heaven for home, With creeds they go from Scotland, With incense go from Rome. These, in the name of Jesus, Against the dark gods stand, They gird the earth with valor, They heed their King's command. Onward the line advances, Shaking the hills with power, Slaying the hidden demons, The lions that devour. No bloodshed in the wrestling,-- But souls new-born arise-- The nations growing kinder, The child-hearts growing wise. What is the final ending? The issue, can we know? Will Christ outlive Mohammed? Will Kali's altar go? This is our faith tremendous,-- Our wild hope, who shall scorn,-- That in the name of Jesus The world shall be reborn! Star of My Heart Star of my heart, I follow from afar. Sweet Love on high, lead on where shepherds are, Where Time is not, and only dreamers are. Star from of old, the Magi-Kings are dead And a foolish Saxon seeks the manger-bed. O lead me to Jehovah's child Across this dreamland lone and wild, Then will I speak this prayer unsaid, And kiss his little haloed head-- "My star and I, we love thee, little child." Except the Christ be born again to-night In dreams of all men, saints and sons of shame, The world will never see his kingdom bright. Stars of all hearts, lead onward thro' the night Past death-black deserts, doubts without a name, Past hills of pain and mountains of new sin To that far sky where mystic births begin, Where dreaming ears the angel-song shall win. Our Christmas shall be rare at dawning there, And each shall find his brother fair, Like a little child within: All hearts of the earth shall find new birth And wake, no more to sin. Look You, I'll Go Pray Look you, I'll go pray, My shame is crying, My soul is gray and faint, My faith is dying. Look you, I'll go pray-- "Sweet Mary, make me clean, Thou rainstorm of the soul, Thou wine from worlds unseen." At Mass No doubt to-morrow I will hide My face from you, my King. Let me rejoice this Sunday noon, And kneel while gray priests sing. It is not wisdom to forget. But since it is my fate Fill thou my soul with hidden wine To make this white hour great. My God, my God, this marvelous hour I am your son I know. Once in a thousand days your voice Has laid temptation low. Heart of God O great heart of God, Once vague and lost to me, Why do I throb with your throb to-night, In this land, eternity? O little heart of God, Sweet intruding stranger, You are laughing in my human breast, A Christ-child in a manger. Heart, dear heart of God, Beside you now I kneel, Strong heart of faith. O heart not mine, Where God has set His seal. Wild thundering heart of God Out of my doubt I come, And my foolish feet with prophets' feet, March with the prophets' drum. The Empty Boats Why do I see these empty boats, sailing on airy seas? One haunted me the whole night long, swaying with every breeze, Returning always near the eaves, or by the skylight glass: There it will wait me many weeks, and then, at last, will pass. Each soul is haunted by a ship in which that soul might ride And climb the glorious mysteries of Heaven's silent tide In voyages that change the very metes and bounds of Fate-- O empty boats, we all refuse, that by our windows wait! With a Bouquet of Twelve Roses I saw Lord Buddha towering by my gate Saying: "Once more, good youth, I stand and wait." Saying: "I bring you my fair Law of Peace And from your withering passion full release; Release from that white hand that stabbed you so. The road is calling. With the wind you go, Forgetting her imperious disdain-- Quenching all memory in the sun and rain." "Excellent Lord, I come. But first," I said, "Grant that I bring her these twelve roses red. Yea, twelve flower kisses for her rose-leaf mouth, And then indeed I go in bitter drouth To that far valley where your river flows In Peace, that once I found in every rose." St. Francis of Assisi Would I might wake St. Francis in you all, Brother of birds and trees, God's Troubadour, Blinded with weeping for the sad and poor; Our wealth undone, all strict Franciscan men, Come, let us chant the canticle again Of mother earth and the enduring sun. God make each soul the lonely leper's slave; God make us saints, and brave. Buddha Would that by Hindu magic we became Dark monks of jeweled India long ago, Sitting at Prince Siddartha's feet to know The foolishness of gold and love and station, The gospel of the Great Renunciation, The ragged cloak, the staff, the rain and sun, The beggar's life, with far Nirvana gleaming: Lord, make us Buddhas, dreaming. A Prayer to All the Dead Among Mine Own People Are these your presences, my clan from Heaven? Are these your hands upon my wounded soul? Mine own, mine own, blood of my blood be with me, Fly by my path till you have made me whole! To Reformers in Despair 'Tis not too late to build our young land right, Cleaner than Holland, courtlier than Japan, Devout like early Rome, with hearths like hers, Hearths that will recreate the breed called man. Why I Voted the Socialist Ticket I am unjust, but I can strive for justice. My life's unkind, but I can vote for kindness. I, the unloving, say life should be lovely. I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness. Man is a curious brute--he pets his fancies-- Fighting mankind, to win sweet luxury. So he will be, tho' law be clear as crystal, Tho' all men plan to live in harmony. Come, let us vote against our human nature, Crying to God in all the polling places To heal our everlasting sinfulness And make us sages with transfigured faces. The following verses were written on the evening of March the first, nineteen hundred and eleven, and printed next morning in the Illinois State Register. They celebrate the arrival of the news that the United States Senate had declared the election of William Lorimer good and valid, by a vote of forty-six to forty. To the United States Senate [Revelation 16: Verses 16-19] And must the Senator from Illinois Be this squat thing, with blinking, half-closed eyes? This brazen gutter idol, reared to power Upon a leering pyramid of lies? And must the Senator from Illinois Be the world's proverb of successful shame, Dazzling all State house flies that steal and steal, Who, when the sad State spares them, count it fame? If once or twice within his new won hall His vote had counted for the broken men; If in his early days he wrought some good-- We might a great soul's sins forgive him then. But must the Senator from Illinois Be vindicated by fat kings of gold? And must he be belauded by the smirched, The sleek, uncanny chiefs in lies grown old? Be warned, O wanton ones, who shielded him-- Black wrath awaits. You all shall eat the dust. You dare not say: "To-morrow will bring peace; Let us make merry, and go forth in lust." What will you trading frogs do on a day When Armageddon thunders thro' the land; When each sad patriot rises, mad with shame, His ballot or his musket in his hand? In the distracted states from which you came The day is big with war hopes fierce and strange; Our iron Chicagos and our grimy mines Rumble with hate and love and solemn change. Too many weary men shed honest tears, Ground by machines that give the Senate ease. Too many little babes with bleeding hands Have heaped the fruits of empire on your knees. And swine within the Senate in this day, When all the smothering by-streets weep and wail; When wisdom breaks the hearts of her best sons; When kingly men, voting for truth, may fail:-- These are a portent and a call to arms. Our protest turns into a battle cry: "Our shame must end, our States be free and clean; And in this war we choose to live and die." [So far as the writer knows this is the first use of the popular term Armageddon in present day politics.] The Knight in Disguise [Concerning O. Henry (Sidney Porter)] "He could not forget that he was a Sidney." Is this Sir Philip Sidney, this loud clown, The darling of the glad and gaping town? This is that dubious hero of the press Whose slangy tongue and insolent address Were spiced to rouse on Sunday afternoon The man with yellow journals round him strewn. We laughed and dozed, then roused and read again, And vowed O. Henry funniest of men. He always worked a triple-hinged surprise To end the scene and make one rub his eyes. He comes with vaudeville, with stare and leer. He comes with megaphone and specious cheer. His troupe, too fat or short or long or lean, Step from the pages of the magazine With slapstick or sombrero or with cane: The rube, the cowboy or the masher vain. They over-act each part. But at the height Of banter and of canter and delight The masks fall off for one queer instant there And show real faces: faces full of care And desperate longing: love that's hot or cold; And subtle thoughts, and countenances bold. The masks go back. 'Tis one more joke. Laugh on! The goodly grown-up company is gone. No doubt had he occasion to address The brilliant court of purple-clad Queen Bess, He would have wrought for them the best he knew And led more loftily his actor-crew. How coolly he misquoted. 'Twas his art-- Slave-scholar, who misquoted--from the heart. So when we slapped his back with friendly roar Aesop awaited him without the door,-- Aesop the Greek, who made dull masters laugh With little tales of FOX and DOG and CALF. And be it said, mid these his pranks so odd With something nigh to chivalry he trod And oft the drear and driven would defend-- The little shopgirls' knight unto the end. Yea, he had passed, ere we could understand The blade of Sidney glimmered in his hand. Yea, ere we knew, Sir Philip's sword was drawn With valiant cut and thrust, and he was gone. The Wizard in the Street [Concerning Edgar Allan Poe] Who now will praise the Wizard in the street With loyal songs, with humors grave and sweet-- This Jingle-man, of strolling players born, Whom holy folk have hurried by in scorn, This threadbare jester, neither wise nor good, With melancholy bells upon his hood? The hurrying great ones scorn his Raven's croak, And well may mock his mystifying cloak Inscribed with runes from tongues he has not read To make the ignoramus turn his head. The artificial glitter of his eyes Has captured half-grown boys. They think him wise. Some shallow player-folk esteem him deep, Soothed by his steady wand's mesmeric sweep. The little lacquered boxes in his hands Somehow suggest old times and reverenced lands. From them doll-monsters come, we know not how: Puppets, with Cain's black rubric on the brow. Some passing jugglers, smiling, now concede That his best cabinet-work is made, indeed By bleeding his right arm, day after day, Triumphantly to seal and to inlay. They praise his little act of shedding tears; A trick, well learned, with patience, thro' the years. I love him in this blatant, well-fed place. Of all the faces, his the only face Beautiful, tho' painted for the stage, Lit up with song, then torn with cold, small rage, Shames that are living, loves and hopes long dead, Consuming pride, and hunger, real, for bread. Here by the curb, ye Prophets thunder deep: "What Nations sow, they must expect to reap," Or haste to clothe the race with truth and power, With hymns and shouts increasing every hour. Useful are you. There stands the useless one Who builds the Haunted Palace in the sun. Good tailors, can you dress a doll for me With silks that whisper of the sounding sea? One moment, citizens,--the weary tramp Unveileth Psyche with the agate lamp. Which one of you can spread a spotted cloak And raise an unaccounted incense smoke Until within the twilight of the day Stands dark Ligeia in her disarray, Witchcraft and desperate passion in her breath And battling will, that conquers even death? And now the evening goes. No man has thrown The weary dog his well-earned crust or bone. We grin and hie us home and go to sleep, Or feast like kings till midnight, drinking deep. He drank alone, for sorrow, and then slept, And few there were that watched him, few that wept. He found the gutter, lost to love and man. Too slowly came the good Samaritan. The Eagle that is Forgotten [John P. Altgeld. Born Dec. 30, 1847; died March 12, 1902] Sleep softly * * * eagle forgotten * * * under the stone. Time has its way with you there, and the clay has its own. "We have buried him now," thought your foes, and in secret rejoiced. They made a brave show of their mourning, their hatred unvoiced. They had snarled at you, barked at you, foamed at you day after day, Now you were ended. They praised you, * * * and laid you away. The others that mourned you in silence and terror and truth, The widow bereft of her crust, and the boy without youth, The mocked and the scorned and the wounded, the lame and the poor That should have remembered forever, * * * remember no more. Where are those lovers of yours, on what name do they call The lost, that in armies wept over your funeral pall? They call on the names of a hundred high-valiant ones, A hundred white eagles have risen the sons of your sons, The zeal in their wings is a zeal that your dreaming began The valor that wore out your soul in the service of man. Sleep softly, * * * eagle forgotten, * * * under the stone, Time has its way with you there and the clay has its own. Sleep on, O brave hearted, O wise man, that kindled the flame-- To live in mankind is far more than to live in a name, To live in mankind, far, far more * * * than to live in a name. Shakespeare Would that in body and spirit Shakespeare came Visible emperor of the deeds of Time, With Justice still the genius of his rhyme, Giving each man his due, each passion grace, Impartial as the rain from Heaven's face Or sunshine from the heaven-enthroned sun. Sweet Swan of Avon, come to us again. Teach us to write, and writing, to be men. Michelangelo Would I might wake in you the whirl-wind soul Of Michelangelo, who hewed the stone And Night and Day revealed, whose arm alone Could draw the face of God, the titan high Whose genius smote like lightning from the sky-- And shall he mold like dead leaves in the grave? Nay he is in us! Let us dare and dare. God help us to be brave. Titian Would that such hills and cities round us sang, Such vistas of the actual earth and man As kindled Titian when his life began; Would that this latter Greek could put his gold, Wisdom and splendor in our brushes bold Till Greece and Venice, children of the sun, Become our every-day, and we aspire To colors fairer far, and glories higher. Lincoln Would I might rouse the Lincoln in you all, That which is gendered in the wilderness From lonely prairies and God's tenderness. Imperial soul, star of a weedy stream, Born where the ghosts of buffaloes still dream, Whose spirit hoof-beats storm above his grave, Above that breast of earth and prairie-fire-- Fire that freed the slave. The Cornfields The cornfields rise above mankind, Lifting white torches to the blue, Each season not ashamed to be Magnificently decked for you. What right have you to call them yours, And in brute lust of riches burn Without some radiant penance wrought, Some beautiful, devout return? Sweet Briars of the Stairways We are happy all the time Even when we fight: Sweet briars of the stairways, Gay fairies of the grime; WE, WHO ARE PLAYING TO-NIGHT. "Our feet are in the gutters, Our eyes are sore with dust, But still our eyes are bright. The wide street roars and mutters-- We know it works because it must-- WE, WHO ARE PLAYING TO-NIGHT! "Dirt is everlasting.-- We never, never fear it. Toil is never ceasing.-- We will play until we near it. Tears are never ending.-- When once real tears have come; "When we see our people as they are-- Our fathers--broken, dumb-- Our mothers--broken, dumb-- The weariest of women and of men; Ah--then our eyes will lose their light-- Then we will never play again-- WE, WHO ARE PLAYING TO-NIGHT." Fantasies and Whims:-- The Fairy Bridal Hymn [This is the hymn to Eleanor, daughter of Mab and a golden drone, sung by the Locust choir when the fairy child marries her God, the yellow rose] This is a song to the white-armed one Cold in the breast as the frost-wrapped Spring, Whose feet are slow on the hills of life, Whose round mouth rules by whispering. This is a song to the white-armed one Whose breast shall burn as a Summer field, Whose wings shall rise to the doors of gold, Whose poppy lips to the God shall yield. This is a song to the white-armed one When the closing rose shall bind her fast, And a song of the song their blood shall sing, When the Rose-God drinks her soul at last. The Potato's Dance "Down cellar," said the cricket, "I saw a ball last night In honor of a lady Whose wings were pearly-white. The breath of bitter weather Had smashed the cellar pane: We entertained a drift of leaves And then of snow and rain. But we were dressed for winter, And loved to hear it blow In honor of the lady Who makes potatoes grow-- Our guest, the Irish lady, The tiny Irish lady, The fairy Irish lady That makes potatoes grow. "Potatoes were the waiters, Potatoes were the band, Potatoes were the dancers Kicking up the sand: Their legs were old burnt matches, Their arms were just the same, They jigged and whirled and scrambled In honor of the dame: The noble Irish lady Who makes potatoes dance, The witty Irish lady, The saucy Irish lady, The laughing Irish lady Who makes potatoes prance. "There was just one sweet potato. He was golden-brown and slim: The lady loved his figure. She danced all night with him. Alas, he wasn't Irish. So when she flew away, They threw him in the coal-bin And there he is to-day, Where they cannot hear his sighs-- His weeping for the lady, The beauteous Irish lady, The radiant Irish lady Who gives potatoes eyes." How a Little Girl Sang Ah, she was music in herself, A symphony of joyousness. She sang, she sang from finger tips, From every tremble of her dress. I saw sweet haunting harmony, An ecstasy, an ecstasy, In that strange curling of her lips, That happy curling of her lips. And quivering with melody Those eyes I saw, that tossing head. And so I saw what music was, Tho' still accursed with ears of lead. Ghosts in Love "Tell me, where do ghosts in love Find their bridal veils?" "If you and I were ghosts in love We'd climb the cliffs of Mystery, Above the sea of Wails. I'd trim your gray and streaming hair With veils of Fantasy From the tree of Memory. 'Tis there the ghosts that fall in love Find their bridal veils." The Queen of Bubbles [Written for a picture] The Youth speaks:-- "Why do you seek the sun In your bubble-crown ascending? Your chariot will melt to mist. Your crown will have an ending." The Goddess replies:-- "Nay, sun is but a bubble, Earth is a whiff of foam-- To my caves on the coast of Thule Each night I call them home. Thence Faiths blow forth to angels And loves blow forth to men-- They break and turn to nothing And I make them whole again. On the crested waves of chaos I ride them back reborn: New stars I bring at evening For those that burst at morn: My soul is the wind of Thule And evening is the sign-- The sun is but a bubble, A fragile child of mine." The Tree of Laughing Bells, or The Wings of the Morning [A Poem for Aviators] How the Wings Were Made From many morning-glories That in an hour will fade, From many pansy buds Gathered in the shade, From lily of the valley And dandelion buds, From fiery poppy-buds Are the Wings of the Morning made. The Indian Girl Who Made Them These, the Wings of the Morning, An Indian Maiden wove, Intertwining subtilely Wands from a willow grove Beside the Sangamon-- Rude stream of Dreamland Town. She bound them to my shoulders With fingers golden-brown. The wings were part of me; The willow-wands were hot. Pulses from my heart Healed each bruise and spot Of the morning-glory buds, Beginning to unfold Beneath her burning song of suns untold. The Indian Girl Tells the Hero Where to Go to Get the Laughing Bell "To the farthest star of all, Go, make a moment's raid. To the west--escape the earth Before your pennons fade! West! west! o'ertake the night That flees the morning sun. There's a path between the stars-- A black and silent one. O tremble when you near The smallest star that sings: Only the farthest star Is cool for willow wings. "There's a sky within the west-- There's a sky beyond the skies Where only one star shines-- The Star of Laughing Bells-- In Chaos-land it lies; Cold as morning-dew, A gray and tiny boat Moored on Chaos-shore, Where nothing else can float But the Wings of the Morning strong And the lilt of laughing song From many a ruddy throat: "For the Tree of Laughing Bells Grew from a bleeding seed Planted mid enchantment Played on a harp and reed: Darkness was the harp-- Chaos-wind the reed; The fruit of the tree is a bell, blood-red-- The seed was the heart of a fairy, dead. Part of the bells of the Laughing Tree Fell to-day at a blast from the reed. Bring a fallen bell to me. Go!" the maiden said. "For the bell will quench our memory, Our hope, Our borrowed sorrow; We will have no thirst for yesterday, No thought for to-morrow." The Journey Starts Swiftly A thousand times ten thousand times More swift than the sun's swift light Were the Morning Wings in their flight On-- On-- West of the Universe, Thro' the West To Chaos-night. He Nears the Goal How the red bells rang As I neared the Chaos-shore! As I flew across to the end of the West The young bells rang and rang Above the Chaos roar, And the Wings of the Morning Beat in tune And bore me like a bird along-- And the nearing star turned to a moon-- Gray moon, with a brow of red-- Gray moon with a golden song. Like a diver after pearls I plunged to that stifling floor. It was wide as a giant's wheat-field An icy, wind-washed shore. O laughing, proud, but trembling star! O wind that wounded sore! He Climbs the Hill Where the Tree Grows On-- Thro' the gleaming gray I ran to the storm and clang-- To the red, red hill where the great tree swayed-- And scattered bells like autumn leaves. How the red bells rang! My breath within my breast Was held like a diver's breath-- The leaves were tangled locks of gray-- The boughs of the tree were white and gray, Shaped like scythes of Death. The boughs of the tree would sweep and sway-- Sway like scythes of Death. But it was beautiful! I knew that all was well. A thousand bells from a thousand boughs Each moment bloomed and fell. On the hill of the wind-swept tree There were no bells asleep; They sang beneath my trailing wings Like rivers sweet and steep. Deep rock-clefts before my feet Mighty chimes did keep And little choirs did keep. He Receives the Bells Honeyed, small and fair, Like flowers, in flowery lands-- Like little maidens' hands-- Two bells fell in my hair, Two bells caressed my hair. I pressed them to my purple lips In the strangling Chaos-air. He Starts on the Return Journey On desperate wings and strong, Two bells within my breast, I breathed again, I breathed again-- West of the Universe-- West of the skies of the West. Into the black toward home, And never a star in sight, By Faith that is blind I took my way With my two bosomed blossoms gay Till a speck in the East was the Milky way: Till starlit was the night. And the bells had quenched all memory-- All hope-- All borrowed sorrow: I had no thirst for yesterday, No thought for to-morrow. Like hearts within my breast The bells would throb to me And drown the siren stars That sang enticingly; My heart became a bell-- Three bells were in my breast, Three hearts to comfort me. We reached the daytime happily-- We reached the earth with glee. In an hour, in an hour it was done! The wings in their morning flight Were a thousand times ten thousand times More swift than beams of light. He Gives What He Won to the Indian Girl I panted in the grassy wood; I kissed the Indian Maid As she took my wings from me: With all the grace I could I gave two throbbing bells to her From the foot of the Laughing Tree. And one she pressed to her golden breast And one, gave back to me. From Lilies of the valley-- See them fade. From poppy-blooms all frayed, From dandelions gray with care, From pansy-faces, worn and torn, From morning-glories-- See them fade-- From all things fragile, faint and fair Are the Wings of the Morning made! Sweethearts of the Year Sweetheart Spring Our Sweetheart, Spring, came softly, Her gliding hands were fire, Her lilac breath upon our cheeks Consumed us with desire. By her our God began to build, Began to sow and till. He laid foundations in our loves For every good and ill. We asked Him not for blessing, We asked Him not for pain-- Still, to the just and unjust He sent His fire and rain. Sweetheart Summer We prayed not, yet she came to us, The silken, shining one, On Jacob's noble ladder Descended from the sun. She reached our town of Every Day, Our dry and dusty sod-- We prayed not, yet she brought to us The misty wine of God. Sweetheart Autumn The woods were black and crimson, The frost-bit flowers were dead, But Sweetheart Indian Summer came With love-winds round her head. While fruits God-given and splendid Belonged to her domain: Baskets of corn in perfect ear And grapes with purple stain, The treacherous winds persuaded her Spring Love was in the wood Altho' the end of love was hers-- Fruition, Motherhood. Sweetheart Winter We had done naught of service To win our Maker's praise. Yet Sweetheart Winter came to us To gild our waning days. Down Jacob's winding ladder She came from Sunshine Town, Bearing the sparkling mornings And clouds of silver-brown; Bearing the seeds of Springtime. Upon her snowy seas Bearing the fairy star-flowers For baby Christmas trees. The Sorceress! I asked her, "Is Aladdin's lamp Hidden anywhere?" "Look into your heart," she said, "Aladdin's lamp is there." She took my heart with glowing hands. It burned to dust and air And smoke and rolling thistledown Blowing everywhere. "Follow the thistledown," she said, "Till doomsday, if you dare, Over the hills and far away. Aladdin's lamp is there." Caught in a Net Upon her breast her hands and hair Were tangled all together. The moon of June forbade me not-- The golden night time weather In balmy sighs commanded me To kiss them like a feather. Her looming hair, her burning hands, Were tangled black and white. My face I buried there. I pray-- So far from her to-night-- For grace, to dream I kiss her soul Amid the black and white. Eden in Winter [Supposed to be chanted to some rude instrument at a modern fireplace] Chant we the story now Tho' in a house we sleep; Tho' by a hearth of coals Vigil to-night we keep. Chant we the story now, Of the vague love we knew When I from out the sea Rose to the feet of you. Bird from the cliffs you came, Flew thro' the snow to me, Facing the icy blast There by the icy sea. How did I reach your feet? Why should I--at the end Hold out half-frozen hands Dumbly to you my friend? Ne'er had I woman seen, Ne'er had I seen a flame. There you piled fagots on, Heat rose--the blast to tame. There by the cave-door dark, Comforting me you cried-- Wailed o'er my wounded knee, Wept for my rock-torn side. Up from the South I trailed-- Left regions fierce and fair! Left all the jungle-trees, Left the red tiger's lair. Dream led, I scarce knew why, Into your North I trod-- Ne'er had I known the snow, Or the frost-blasted sod. O how the flakes came down! O how the fire burned high! Strange thing to see he was, Thro' his dry twigs would fly, Creep there awhile and sleep-- Then wake and bark for fight-- Biting if I too near Came to his eye so bright. Then with a will you fed Wood to his hungry tongue. Then he did leap and sing-- Dancing the clouds among, Turning the night to noon, Stinging my eyes with light, Making the snow retreat, Making the cave-house bright. There were dry fagots piled, Nuts and dry leaves and roots, Stores there of furs and hides, Sweet-barks and grains and fruits. There wrapped in fur we lay, Half-burned, half-frozen still-- Ne'er will my soul forget All the night's bitter chill. We had not learned to speak, I was to you a strange Wolfling or wounded fawn, Lost from his forest-range. Thirsting for bloody meat, Out at the dawn we went. Weighed with our prey at eve, Home-came we all forespent. Comrades and hunters tried Ere we were maid and man-- Not till the spring awoke Laughter and speech began. Whining like forest dogs, Rustling like budding trees, Bubbling like thawing springs, Humming like little bees, Crooning like Maytime tides, Chattering parrot words, Crying the panther's cry, Chirping like mating birds-- Thus, thus, we learned to speak, Who mid the snows were dumb, Nor did we learn to kiss Until the Spring had come. Genesis I was but a half-grown boy, You were a girl-child slight. Ah, how weary you were! You had led in the bullock-fight . . . We slew the bullock at length With knives and maces of stone. And so your feet were torn, Your lean arms bruised to the bone. Perhaps 'twas the slain beast's blood We drank, or a root we ate, Or our reveling evening bath In the fall by the garden gate, But you turned to a witching thing, Side-glancing, and frightened me; You purred like a panther's cub, You sighed like a shell from the sea. We knelt. I caressed your hair By the light of the leaping fire: Your fierce eyes blinked with smoke, Pine-fumes, that enhanced desire. I helped to unbraid your hair In wonder and fear profound: You were humming your hunting tune As it swept to the grassy ground. Our comrades, the shaggy bear, The tiger with velvet feet, The lion, crept to the light Whining for bullock meat. We fed them and stroked their necks . . . They took their way to the fen Where they hunted or hid all night; No enemies, they, of men. Evil had entered not The cobra, since defiled. He watched, when the beasts had gone Our kissing and singing wild. Beautiful friend he was, Sage, not a tempter grim. Many a year should pass Ere Satan should enter him. He danced while the evening dove And the nightingale kept in tune. I sang of the angel sun: You sang of the angel-moon: We sang of the ANGEL-CHIEF Who blew thro' the trees strange breath, Who helped in the hunt all day And granted the bullock's death. O Eve with the fire-lit breast And child-face red and white! I heaped the great logs high! That was our bridal night. Queen Mab in the Village Once I loved a fairy, Queen Mab it was. Her voice Was like a little Fountain That bids the birds rejoice. Her face was wise and solemn, Her hair was brown and fine. Her dress was pansy velvet, A butterfly design. To see her hover round me Or walk the hills of air, Awakened love's deep pulses And boyhood's first despair; A passion like a sword-blade That pierced me thro' and thro': Her fingers healed the sorrow Her whisper would renew. We sighed and reigned and feasted Within a hollow tree, We vowed our love was boundless, Eternal as the sea. She banished from her kingdom The mortal boy I grew-- So tall and crude and noisy, I killed grasshoppers too. I threw big rocks at pigeons, I plucked and tore apart The weeping, wailing daisies, And broke my lady's heart. At length I grew to manhood, I scarcely could believe I ever loved the lady, Or caused her court to grieve, Until a dream came to me, One bleak first night of Spring, Ere tides of apple blossoms Rolled in o'er everything, While rain and sleet and snowbanks Were still a-vexing men, Ere robin and his comrades Were nesting once again. I saw Mab's Book of Judgment-- Its clasps were iron and stone, Its leaves were mammoth ivory, Its boards were mammoth bone,-- Hid in her seaside mountains, Forgotten or unkept, Beneath its mighty covers Her wrath against me slept. And deeply I repented Of brash and boyish crime, Of murder of things lovely Now and in olden time. I cursed my vain ambition, My would-be worldly days, And craved the paths of wonder, Of dewy dawns and fays. I cried, "Our love was boundless, Eternal as the sea, O Queen, reverse the sentence, Come back and master me!" The book was by the cliff-side Upon its edge upright. I laid me by it softly, And wept throughout the night. And there at dawn I saw it, No book now, but a door, Upon its panels written, "Judgment is no more." The bolt flew back with thunder, I saw within that place A mermaid wrapped in seaweed With Mab's immortal face, Yet grown now to a woman, A woman to the knee. She cried, she clasped me fondly, We soon were in the sea. Ah, she was wise and subtle, And gay and strong and sleek, We chained the wicked sword-fish, We played at hide and seek. We floated on the water, We heard the dawn-wind sing, I made from ocean-wonders, Her bridal wreath and ring. All mortal girls were shadows, All earth-life but a mist, When deep beneath the maelstrom, The mermaid's heart I kissed. I woke beside the church-door Of our small inland town, Bowing to a maiden In a pansy-velvet gown, Who had not heard of fairies, Yet seemed of love to dream. We planned an earthly cottage Beside an earthly stream. Our wedding long is over, With toil the years fill up, Yet in the evening silence, We drink a deep-sea cup. Nothing the fay remembers, Yet when she turns to me, We meet beneath the whirlpool, We swim the golden sea. The Dandelion O dandelion, rich and haughty, King of village flowers! Each day is coronation time, You have no humble hours. I like to see you bring a troop To beat the blue-grass spears, To scorn the lawn-mower that would be Like fate's triumphant shears. Your yellow heads are cut away, It seems your reign is o'er. By noon you raise a sea of stars More golden than before. The Light o' the Moon [How different people and different animals look upon the moon: showing that each creature finds in it his own mood and disposition] The Old Horse in the City The moon's a peck of corn. It lies Heaped up for me to eat. I wish that I might climb the path And taste that supper sweet. Men feed me straw and scanty grain And beat me till I'm sore. Some day I'll break the halter-rope And smash the stable-door, Run down the street and mount the hill Just as the corn appears. I've seen it rise at certain times For years and years and years. What the Hyena Said The moon is but a golden skull, She mounts the heavens now, And Moon-Worms, mighty Moon-Worms Are wreathed around her brow. The Moon-Worms are a doughty race: They eat her gray and golden face. Her eye-sockets dead, and molding head: These caverns are their dwelling-place. The Moon-Worms, serpents of the skies, From the great hollows of her eyes Behold all souls, and they are wise: With tiny, keen and icy eyes, Behold how each man sins and dies. When Earth in gold-corruption lies Long dead, the moon-worm butterflies On cyclone wings will reach this place-- Yea, rear their brood on earth's dead face. What the Snow Man Said The Moon's a snowball. See the drifts Of white that cross the sphere. The Moon's a snowball, melted down A dozen times a year. Yet rolled again in hot July When all my days are done And cool to greet the weary eye After the scorching sun. The moon's a piece of winter fair Renewed the year around, Behold it, deathless and unstained, Above the grimy ground! It rolls on high so brave and white Where the clear air-rivers flow, Proclaiming Christmas all the time And the glory of the snow! What the Scare-crow Said The dim-winged spirits of the night Do fear and serve me well. They creep from out the hedges of The garden where I dwell. I wave my arms across the walk. The troops obey the sign, And bring me shimmering shadow-robes And cups of cowslip-wine. Then dig a treasure called the moon, A very precious thing, And keep it in the air for me Because I am a King. What Grandpa Mouse Said The moon's a holy owl-queen. She keeps them in a jar Under her arm till evening, Then sallies forth to war. She pours the owls upon us. They hoot with horrid noise And eat the naughty mousie-girls And wicked mousie-boys. So climb the moonvine every night And to the owl-queen pray: Leave good green cheese by moonlit trees For her to take away. And never squeak, my children, Nor gnaw the smoke-house door: The owl-queen then will love us And send her birds no more. The Beggar Speaks "What Mister Moon Said to Me." Come, eat the bread of idleness, Come, sit beside the spring: Some of the flowers will keep awake, Some of the birds will sing. Come, eat the bread no man has sought For half a hundred years: Men hurry so they have no griefs, Nor even idle tears: They hurry so they have no loves: They cannot curse nor laugh-- Their hearts die in their youth with neither Grave nor epitaph. My bread would make them careless, And never quite on time-- Their eyelids would be heavy, Their fancies full of rhyme: Each soul a mystic rose-tree, Or a curious incense tree: . . . . Come, eat the bread of idleness, Said Mister Moon to me. What the Forester Said The moon is but a candle-glow That flickers thro' the gloom: The starry space, a castle hall: And Earth, the children's room, Where all night long the old trees stand To watch the streams asleep: Grandmothers guarding trundle-beds: Good shepherds guarding sheep. A Net to Snare the Moonlight [What the Man of Faith said] The dew, the rain and moonlight All prove our Father's mind. The dew, the rain and moonlight Descend to bless mankind. Come, let us see that all men Have land to catch the rain, Have grass to snare the spheres of dew, And fields spread for the grain. Yea, we would give to each poor man Ripe wheat and poppies red,-- A peaceful place at evening With the stars just overhead: A net to snare the moonlight, A sod spread to the sun, A place of toil by daytime, Of dreams when toil is done. Beyond the Moon [Written to the Most Beautiful Woman in the World] My Sweetheart is the TRUTH BEYOND THE MOON, And never have I been in love with Woman, Always aspiring to be set in tune With one who is invisible, inhuman. O laughing girl, cold TRUTH has stepped between, Spoiling the fevers of your virgin face: Making your shining eyes but lead and clay, Mocking your brilliant brain and lady's grace. TRUTH haunted me the day I wooed and lost, The day I wooed and won, or wooed in play: Tho' you were Juliet or Rosalind, Thus shall it be, forever and a day. I doubt my vows, tho' sworn on my own blood, Tho' I draw toward you weeping, soul to soul, I have a lonely goal beyond the moon; Ay, beyond Heaven and Hell, I have a goal! The Song of the Garden-Toad Down, down beneath the daisy beds, O hear the cries of pain! And moaning on the cinder-path They're blind amid the rain. Can murmurs of the worms arise To higher hearts than mine? I wonder if that gardener hears Who made the mold all fine And packed each gentle seedling down So carefully in line? I watched the red rose reaching up To ask him if he heard Those cries that stung the evening earth Till all the rose-roots stirred. She asked him if he felt the hate That burned beneath them there. She asked him if he heard the curse Of worms in black despair. He kissed the rose. What did it mean? What of the rose's prayer? Down, down where rain has never come They fight in burning graves, Bleeding and drinking blood Within those venom-caves. Blaspheming still the gardener's name, They live and hate and go. I wonder if the gardener heard The rose that told him so? A Gospel of Beauty:-- I recited these three poems more than any others in my late mendicant preaching tour through the West. Taken as a triad, they hold in solution my theory of American civilization. The Proud Farmer [In memory of E. S. Frazee, Rush County, Indiana] Into the acres of the newborn state He poured his strength, and plowed his ancient name, And, when the traders followed him, he stood Towering above their furtive souls and tame. That brow without a stain, that fearless eye Oft left the passing stranger wondering To find such knighthood in the sprawling land, To see a democrat well-nigh a king. He lived with liberal hand, with guests from far, With talk and joke and fellowship to spare,-- Watching the wide world's life from sun to sun, Lining his walls with books from everywhere. He read by night, he built his world by day. The farm and house of God to him were one. For forty years he preached and plowed and wrought-- A statesman in the fields, who bent to none. His plowmen-neighbors were as lords to him. His was an ironside, democratic pride. He served a rigid Christ, but served him well-- And, for a lifetime, saved the countryside. Here lie the dead, who gave the church their best Under his fiery preaching of the word. They sleep with him beneath the ragged grass . . . The village withers, by his voice unstirred. And tho' his tribe be scattered to the wind From the Atlantic to the China sea, Yet do they think of that bright lamp he burned Of family worth and proud integrity. And many a sturdy grandchild hears his name In reverence spoken, till he feels akin To all the lion-eyed who built the world-- And lion-dreams begin to burn within. The Illinois Village O you who lose the art of hope, Whose temples seem to shrine a lie, Whose sidewalks are but stones of fear, Who weep that Liberty must die, Turn to the little prairie towns, Your higher hope shall yet begin. On every side awaits you there Some gate where glory enters in. Yet when I see the flocks of girls, Watching the Sunday train go thro' (As tho' the whole wide world went by) With eyes that long to travel too, I sigh, despite my soul made glad By cloudy dresses and brown hair, Sigh for the sweet life wrenched and torn By thundering commerce, fierce and bare. Nymphs of the wheat these girls should be: Kings of the grove, their lovers strong. Why are they not inspired, aflame? This beauty calls for valiant song-- For men to carve these fairy-forms And faces in a fountain-frieze; Dancers that own immortal hours; Painters that work upon their knees; Maids, lovers, friends, so deep in life, So deep in love and poet's deeds, The railroad is a thing disowned, The city but a field of weeds. Who can pass a village church By night in these clean prairie lands Without a touch of Spirit-power? So white and fixed and cool it stands-- A thing from some strange fairy-town, A pious amaranthine flower, Unsullied by the winds, as pure As jade or marble, wrought this hour:-- Rural in form, foursquare and plain, And yet our sister, the new moon, Makes it a praying wizard's dream. The trees that watch at dusty noon Breaking its sharpest lines, veil not The whiteness it reflects from God, Flashing like Spring on many an eye, Making clean flesh, that once was clod. Who can pass a district school Without the hope that there may wait Some baby-heart the books shall flame With zeal to make his playmates great, To make the whole wide village gleam A strangely carved celestial gem, Eternal in its beauty-light, The Artist's town of Bethlehem! On the Building of Springfield Let not our town be large, remembering That little Athens was the Muses' home, That Oxford rules the heart of London still, That Florence gave the Renaissance to Rome. Record it for the grandson of your son-- A city is not builded in a day: Our little town cannot complete her soul Till countless generations pass away. Now let each child be joined as to a church To her perpetual hopes, each man ordained: Let every street be made a reverent aisle Where Music grows and Beauty is unchained. Let Science and Machinery and Trade Be slaves of her, and make her all in all, Building against our blatant, restless time An unseen, skilful, medieval wall. Let every citizen be rich toward God. Let Christ the beggar, teach divinity. Let no man rule who holds his money dear. Let this, our city, be our luxury. We should build parks that students from afar Would choose to starve in, rather than go home, Fair little squares, with Phidian ornament, Food for the spirit, milk and honeycomb. Songs shall be sung by us in that good day, Songs we have written, blood within the rhyme Beating, as when Old England still was glad,-- The purple, rich Elizabethan time. . . . . . Say, is my prophecy too fair and far? I only know, unless her faith be high, The soul of this, our Nineveh, is doomed, Our little Babylon will surely die. Some city on the breast of Illinois No wiser and no better at the start By faith shall rise redeemed, by faith shall rise Bearing the western glory in her heart. The genius of the Maple, Elm and Oak, The secret hidden in each grain of corn, The glory that the prairie angels sing At night when sons of Life and Love are born, Born but to struggle, squalid and alone, Broken and wandering in their early years. When will they make our dusty streets their goal, Within our attics hide their sacred tears? When will they start our vulgar blood athrill With living language, words that set us free? When will they make a path of beauty clear Between our riches and our liberty? We must have many Lincoln-hearted men. A city is not builded in a day. And they must do their work, and come and go While countless generations pass away. [End of original text.] Nicholas Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931): (Vachel is pronounced Vay-chul, that is, it rhymes with 'Rachel'). Vachel Lindsay, of Springfield, Illinois, is best known for his efforts to restore the vocal tradition to poetry. He made a journey on foot as far as New Mexico, taking along copies of a pamphlet, "Rhymes to be Traded for Bread", for the purpose the title suggests. He wrote of this journey in "Adventures while Preaching the Gospel of Beauty". "The Eagle that is Forgotten" and "The Congo" are his best-known poems, and appear in his first two volumes of verse, "General William Booth Enters into Heaven" (1913) and "The Congo" (1914). As a sidenote, he became close friends with the poet Sara Teasdale (well worth reading in her own right--perhaps the better poet), and his third volume of verse, "The Chinese Nightingale" (1917), is dedicated to her. In turn, she wrote a memorial verse for him after he committed suicide in 1931. 
42769	----	THE NEW-YORK BOOK OF POETRY. _______________ "Patriæ fumus igne alieno luculentior." _______________ NEW-YORK. GEORGE DEARBORN, PUBLISHER, NO. 38 GOLD STREET. _______ 1837. NEW-YORK: Printed by SCATCHERD & ADAMS, No. 38 Gold Street. ADVERTISEMENT. The work here presented to the Public is compiled from the poetical writings of natives of the State of New-York. The chief object in making the collection was to give 'a local habitation and a name' to fugitive pieces, which, though deemed worthy of being thus preserved, have hitherto been circulated in the newspapers and periodicals solely. It was thought well, however, by way of giving completeness to the work, to embody with the rest specimens of those New-York poets whose writings have been already collected in another shape. The design of executing such a work only suggested itself to the Publisher a fortnight before the last sheet was put to press; and as he was desirous that THE NEW-YORK BOOK should appear at the season when the annuals and other similar publications are most in request, those who have aided him in the compilation have perhaps vainly attempted to make up in industry for the want of time. Under the most favourable circumstances, however, it would be idle to attempt making such a collection what it ought to be in a single volume. The field of our Anthology is wider than any casual observer could conceive; and even in thus rapidly exploring it, the sources of so many new specimens have been indicated that it is hoped the reception of this volume will be such as to warrant the Publisher in soon following it up by another of the same character. _38 Gold Street, Dec. 24, 1836._ LIST OF WRITERS. _______ Arden Francis Bailey, J. I. Barker, Robert Bleecker, Mrs. Ann E. Bleecker, Anthony Bloodgood, S. De Witt Bogart, A. H. Bogart, David S. Bogart, W. H. L. Bogart, Elizabeth Brooks, J. G. Brooks, Miss Mary E. Blauvelt, A. L. Clark, Willis G. Clinch, Elizabeth C. Crosswell, Rev. William Clason, Isaac Davidson, Lucretia M. Doane, Rt. Rev. G. W. Drake, J. R. Duer, William Ellet, Mrs. E. F. Embury, Emma C. Fay, Theodore S. Faugeres, Margaretta V. Hawes, W. P. Hoffman, C. F. Irving, Washington Inman, John Low, Samuel Lawrence, Jonathan, Jr. Leggett, William Livingston, William Morris, George P. Morton, General Jacob Murray, Lindley Mitchell, Dr. Samuel L. Moore, Clement C. Nack, James Park, Roswell Paulding, J. K. Sanford, Edward Sands, R. C. Seymour, D. Slidell, Thomas Street, A. B. Stone, William L. Strong, George D. Sutermeister, J. R. Tucker, T. W. Vining, W. H. Van Schaick, J. B. Verplanck, Gulian CONTENTS. _______ PAGE Anacreontic, 10 Anacreontic, 172 Address to Black Hawk, 11 Address to a Musquito, 27 A Poet's Epistle, 37 A Roman Chariot Race, 59 Affection wins affection, 71 Ah No! Ah No! To a favourite Child, 146 A Health, 147 A Hymn, 149 A Song of May, 152 A Visit from St. Nicholas, 217 Appeal, 229 Byron, 103 Bronx, 122 Ballad, 191 Chansonette, 50 Canzonet, 201 Crossing the Alleghanies, 204 Drink and away, 107 Despondency, 164 Death of the First-Born, 238 Elegiac Lines, 151 Epitaph upon a Dog, 182 Elegy on the Exile and Death of Ovid, 241 Fragment, 246 Fears of Death, 72 Fragment, 102 Faded Hours, 134 Forgetfulness, 192 From a Father to his Children, 215 From a Husband to his Wife, 221 Greece--1832, 55 Hope, 116 He came too late, 179 Inconstancy, 31 Indian Summer, 54 Impromptu, 58 Impromptu, 228 Joy and Sorrow, 104 Joshua commanding the Sun and Moon to stand still, 184 Lines on a Skull dug up by the Plough, 15 Lines written on a Bank Note, 42 Lines for Music, 59 Love and Faith, 66 Lament, 70 Lines, 77 Lake George, 83 Lines written in an Album, 85 Lines written on the cover of a Prayer Book, 96 Look Aloft, 101 Lützow's Wild Chase, 130 Lines, 132 Lament, 136 Lines written on a pane of glass in the house of a friend, 138 Life's Guiding Star, 164 Lines for Music, 183 Lake George--1829, 203 Lines suggested by the perusal of "The Life of Chatterton," 225 Lines to a Daughter of the late Governor Clinton, 229 Love's Remembrancer, 247 Moonlight on the Hudson, 7 Morning Musings among the Hills, 21 Morning, 82 Midnight Thoughts, 94 Morning Hymn, 121 Moonlight, 128 Melody, 173 My Native Land, 174 Ode to Jamestown, 97 On reading Virgil, 155 On Ship-board, 195 On seeing a beautiful Young Lady whose health was impaired by the fever and ague, 219 Proem to Yamoyden, 87 Prophetic, 224 Portraiture, 231 Reflections, 75 Rhyme and Reason, 144 Reminiscences, 150 Song, (I know thou dost love me), 17 Song, (Nay think not Dear), 23 Song of the Hermit Trout, 46 Song of Spring Time, 63 Song, Rosalie Clare, 126 Song, 129 Song, 171 Stanzas, 184 Song, 186 Spring is coming, 214 Sonnet to Myra, 236 Song, (When other friends are round thee), 238 Thoughts of a Student, 1 The Settler, 3 The Worst, 6 The minisink, 18 The Dend of 1832, 24 To a Lady, who declared that the sun prevented her from sleeping, 27 The Callicoon in Autumn, 32 The Western Hunter to his Mistress, 36 The Delaware Water Gap, 43 To May, 47 To the Whip-poor will, 49 The Clouds, 50 The Isle of Rest, 53 The Shipwreck of Camoens, 64 The Last Song, 68 To my Wife, 69 The Bride's Farewell, 73 The Guardian Angel, 78 The Brave, 81 The Faded One, 86 The Indian, 91 To the Evening Star, 104 The Falls of the Passaic, 105 The Hudson, 108 Trenton Falls, 110 The Dumb Minstrel, 111 The Green Isle of Lovers, 113 That Silent Moon, 114 To a Cigar, 116 The Lake of Cayostea, 117 The American Flag, 118 The Storm King, 124 To a Packet Ship, 127 The Wife's Song, 135 The Sepulchre of David, 139 The Last Prayer of Mary Queen of Scots, 156 The Recollections of the People, 159 The Husband to his Wife, on her birth-day, 162 To a Goldfinch, 166 The Midnight Ball, 167 The Deserted Bride, 168 Thoughts at the Grave of a departed Friend, 171 To Themira, 196 Thanksgiving after escape from Indian perils, 189 Thoughts on Parting, 199 The Falls of Niagara, 200 The Pennsylvanian Immigrant, 202 The Clouds, 206 The Tornado, 208 To a Lady, 211 The Mitchella, 217 The Magic Draught, 226 The Son of Sorrow, 230 The Farewell, 234 To Cordelia, 236 To the Dying Year, 250 Weehawken, 40 White Lake, 61 What is Solitude, 79 Woman, 144 West Point, 187 Verses to the Memory of Colonel Wood, of the United States' Army, who fell at the Sortie of Erie, 163 Verses written in a Book of Fortunes, 181 [Transcriber Note: The following page number errors were corrected in the TOC: Canzonet - page 301 corrected to 201 Fragment - page 2 corrected to 246 Rhyme & Reason - page 104 corrected to 144 The Mitchella - page 220 corrected to 217 ] POEMS. ______ THOUGHTS OF A STUDENT. BY JONATHAN LAWRENCE, JUN. _Ob_: 1833, _æt._ 25. Many a sad, sweet thought have I, Many a passing, sunny gleam, Many a bright tear in mine eye, Many a wild and wandering dream, Stolen from hours I should have tied To musty volumes by my side, Given to hours that sweetly wooed My heart from its study's solitude. Oft when the south wind's dancing free Over the earth and in the sky, And the flowers peep softly out to see The frolic Spring as she wantons by, When the breeze and beam like thieves come in, To steal me away, I deem it sin To slight their voice, and away I'm straying Over the hills and vales a Maying. Then can I hear the earth rejoice, Happier than man may ever be, Every fountain hath then a voice That sings of its glad festivity; For it hath burst the chains, that bound Its currents dead in the frozen ground, And flashing away in the sun has gone, Singing, and singing, and singing on. Autumn hath sunset hours, and then Many a musing mood I cherish, Many a hue of fancy, when The hues of earth are about to perish; Clouds are there, and brighter, I ween, Hath real sunset never seen, Sad as the faces of friends that die, And beautiful as their memory. Love hath its thoughts, we cannot keep, Visions the mind may not control, Waking as fancy does in sleep The secret transports of the soul, Faces and forms are strangely mingled, Till one by one they're slowly singled, To the voice and lip, and eye of her I worship like an idolater. Many a big, proud tear have I, When from my sweet and roaming track From the green earth and misty sky, And spring and love I hurry back; Then what a dismal, dreary gloom Settles upon my loathed room, Darker to every thought and sense Than if they had never travelled thence. Yet, I have other thoughts that cheer The toilsome day, and lonely night, And many a scene and hope appear, And almost make me gay and bright. Honour and fame that I would win, Though every toil that yet hath been Were doubly borne, and not an hour Were brightly hued by Fancy's power. And though I may sometimes sigh to think Of earth and heaven, and wind and sea, And know that the cup which others drink Shall never be brimmed by me; That many a joy must be untasted, And many a glorious breeze be wasted, Yet would not, if I dared, repine, That toil and study and care are mine. THE SETTLER. BY A. B. STREET. His echoing axe the settler swung Amid the sea-like solitude, And rushing, thundering, down were flung The Titans of the wood; Loud shriek'd the eagle as he dash'd From out his mossy nest, which crash'd With its supporting bough, And the first sunlight, leaping, flash'd On the wolf's haunt below. Rude was the garb, and strong the frame, Of him who plied his ceaseless toil: To form that garb, the wild-wood game Contributed their spoil; The soul, that warm'd that frame, disdain'd The tinsel, gaud, and glare, that reign'd Where men their crowds collect; The simple fur, untrimm'd, unstain'd, This forest tamer deck'd. The paths which wound 'mid gorgeous trees, The stream whose bright lips kiss'd their flowers, The winds that swell'd their harmonies Through those sun-hiding bowers, The temple vast--the green arcade, The nestling vale--the grassy glade, Dark cave and swampy lair; These scenes and sounds majestic, made His world, his pleasures, there. His roof adorn'd a pleasant spot, 'Mid the black logs green glow'd the grain, And herbs and plants the woods knew not, Throve in the sun and rain. The smoke-wreath curling o'er the dell, The low--the bleat--the tinkling bell, All made a landscape strange, Which was the living chronicle Of deeds that wrought the change. The violet sprung at Spring's first tinge, The rose of Summer spread its glow, The maize hung out its Autumn fringe, Rude Winter brought his snow; And still the lone one labour'd there, His shout and whistle woke the air, As cheerily he plied His garden spade, or drove his share Along the hillock's side. He mark'd the fire-storm's blazing flood Roaring and crackling on its path, And scorching earth, and melting wood, Beneath its greedy wrath; He mark'd the rapid whirlwind shoot, Trampling the pine tree with its foot, And darkening thick the day With streaming bough and sever'd root, Hurl'd whizzing on its way. His gaunt hound yell'd, his rifle flash'd, The grim bear hush'd his savage growl, In blood and foam the panther gnash'd His fangs, with dying howl; The fleet deer ceas'd its flying bound, Its snarling wolf-foe bit the ground, And with its moaning cry, The beaver sank beneath the wound Its pond-built Venice by. Humble the lot, yet his the race! When Liberty sent forth her cry, Who throng'd in Conflict's deadliest place, To fight--to bleed--to die. Who cumber'd Bunker's height of red, By hope, through weary years were led, And witness'd York Town's sun Blaze on a Nation's banner spread, A Nation's freedom won. THE WORST. BY W. H. VINING. _Ob_: 1822, _æt._ 28. Oh, I have lived through keenest care, And still may live through more, We know not what the heart can bear, Until the worst be o'er; The _worst_ is not when fears assail, Before the shaft has sped, Nor when we kiss the visage, pale And beautiful, though dead. Oh, then the heart is nerved to cope With danger and distress, The very impulse left by hope Will make despair seem less; Then all is life--acute, intense, The thoughts in tumult tost, So reels the mind with wildered sense, It knows not what is lost. But when that shuddering scene is past, When earth receives her own, And, wrench'd from what it loved, at last The heart is left alone; When all is gone--our hopes and fears All buried in one tomb, And we have dried the source of tears, There comes a settled gloom. Then comes the _worst_, the undying thought That broods within the breast, Because its loveliest one _is not_, And what are all the rest? MOONLIGHT ON THE HUDSON. BY C. F. HOFFMAN. _Written at West Point._ I'm not romantic, but, upon my word, There are some moments when one can't help feeling As if his heart's chords were so strongly stirred By things around him, that 'tis vain concealing A little music in his soul still lingers Whene'er its keys are touched by Nature's fingers: And even here, upon this settee lying, With many a sleepy traveller near me snoozing, Thoughts warm and wild are through my bosom flying, Like founts when first into the sunshine oozing: For who can look on mountain, sky, and river, Like these, and then be cold and calm as ever? Bright Dian, who, Camilla like, dost skim yon Azure fields--Thou who, once earthward bending, Didst loose thy virgin zone to young Endymion On dewy Latmos to his arms descending-- Thou whom the world of old on every shore, Type of thy sex, _Triformis_, did adore: Tell me--where'er thy silver barque be steering, By bright Italian or soft Persian lands, Or o'er those island-studded seas careering, Whose pearl-charged waves dissolve on coral strands-- Tell if thou visitest, thou heavenly rover, A lovelier spot than this the wide world over? Doth Achelöus or Araxes flowing Twin-born from Pindus, but ne'er meeting brothers-- Doth Tagus o'er his golden pavement glowing, Or cradle-freighted Ganges, the reproach of mothers, The storied Rhine, or far-famed Guadalquiver, Match they in beauty my own glorious river? What though no turret gray nor ivied column Along these cliffs their sombre ruins rear? What though no frowning tower nor temple solemn Of despots tell and superstition here-- What though that mouldering fort's fast-crumbling walls Did ne'er enclose a baron's bannered halls-- Its sinking arches once gave back as proud An echo to the war-blown clarion's peal, As gallant hearts its battlements did crowd As ever beat beneath a vest of steel, When herald's trump on knighthood's haughtiest day Called forth chivalric host to battle fray: For here amid these woods did He keep court, Before whose mighty soul the common crowd Of heroes, who alone for fame have fought, Are like the Patriarch's sheaves to Heav'n's chos'n bowed-- HE who his country's eagle taught to soar, And fired those stars which shine o'er every shore. And sights and sounds at which the world have wondered, Within these wild ravines have had their birth; Young Freedom's cannon from these glens have thundered, And sent their startling echoes o'er the earth; And not a verdant glade nor mountain hoary But treasures up within the glorious story. And yet not rich in high-souled memories only, Is every moon-touched headland round me gleaming, Each cavernous glen and leafy valley lonely, And silver torrent o'er the bald rock streaming: But such soft fancies here may breathe around, As make Vaucluse and Clarens hallow'd ground. Where, tell me where, pale watcher of the night-- Thou that to love so oft hast lent its soul, Since the lorn Lesbian languished 'neath thy light, Or fiery Romeo to his Juliet stole-- Where dost thou find a fitter place on earth To nurse young love in hearts like theirs to birth? But now, bright Peri of the skies, descending Thy pearly car hangs o'er yon mountain's crest, And Night, more nearly now each step attending, As if to hide thy envied place of rest, Closes at last thy very couch beside, A matron curtaining a virgin bride. Farewell! Though tears on every leaf are starting, While through the shadowy boughs thy glances quiver, As of the good when heavenward hence departing, Shines thy last smile upon the placid river. So--could I fling o'er glory's tide one ray-- Would I too steal from this dark world away. ANACREONTIC. BY A. H. BOGART. _Ob_: 1826, _æt._ 22. The flying joy through life we seek For once is ours--the wine we sip Blushes like Beauty's glowing cheek, To meet our eager lip. Round with the ringing glass once more! Friends of my youth and of my heart-- No magic can this hour restore-- Then crown it ere we part. Ye are my friends, my chosen ones-- Whose blood would flow with fervour true For me--and free as this wine runs Would mine, by Heaven! for you. Yet, mark me! When a few short years Have hurried on their journey fleet, Not one that now my accents hears Will know me when we meet. Though now, perhaps, with proud disdain, The startling thought ye scarce will brook, Yet, trust me, we'll be strangers then In heart as well as look. Fame's luring voice, and woman's wile, Will soon break youthful friendship's chain-- But shall that cloud to-night's bright smile? No--pour the wine again! ADDRESS TO BLACK HAWK. BY EDWARD SANFORD. There's beauty on thy brow, old chief! the high And manly beauty of the Roman mould, And the keen flashing of thy full dark eye Speaks of a heart that years have not made cold; Of passions scathed not by the blight of time, Ambition, that survives the battle route. The man within thee scorns to play the mime To gaping crowds that compass thee about. Thou walkest, with thy warriors by thy side, Wrapped in fierce hate, and high unconquered pride. Chief of a hundred warriors! dost thou yet-- Vanquished and captive--dost thou deem that here-- The glowing day star of thy glory set-- Dull night has closed upon thy bright career? Old forest lion, caught and caged at last, Dost pant to roam again thy native wild? To gloat upon the life blood flowing fast Of thy crushed victims; and to slay the child, To dabble in the gore of wives and mothers, And kill, old Turk! thy harmless pale-faced brothers? For it was cruel, Black Hawk, thus to flutter The dove-cotes of the peaceful pioneers, To let thy tribe commit such fierce, and utter Slaughter among the folks of the frontiers. Though thine be old, hereditary hate, Begot in wrongs, and nursed in blood, until It had become a madness, 'tis too late To crush the hordes who have the power, and will, To rob thee of thy hunting grounds, and fountains, And drive thee backward to the Rocky Mountains. Spite of thy looks of cold indifference, There's much thou'st seen that must excite thy wonder, Wakes not upon thy quick and startled sense The cannon's harsh and pealing voice of thunder? Our big canoes, with white and wide-spread wings, That sweep the waters, as birds sweep the sky;-- Our steamboats, with their iron lungs, like things Of breathing life, that dash and hurry by? Or if thou scorn'st the wonders of the ocean, What think'st thou of our railroad locomotion? Thou'st seen our Museums, beheld the dummies That grin in darkness in their coffin cases; What think'st thou of the art of making mummies, So that the worms shrink from their dry embraces? Thou'st seen the mimic tyrants of the stage Strutting, in paint and feathers, for an hour; Thou'st heard the bellowing of their tragic rage, Seen their eyes glisten, and their dark brows lower. Anon, thou'st seen them, when their wrath cool'd down, Pass in a moment from a king--to clown. Thou see'st these things unmoved, say'st so, old fellow? Then tell us, have the white man's glowing daughters Set thy cold blood in motion? Has't been mellow By a sly cup or so of our fire waters? They are thy people's deadliest poison. They First make them cowards, and then, white men's slaves, And sloth, and penury, and passion's prey, And lives of misery, and early graves. For by their power, believe me, not a day goes, But kills some Foxes, Sacs, and Winnebagoes. Say, does thy wandering heart stray far away? To the deep bosom of thy forest home, The hill side, where thy young pappooses play, And ask, amid their sports, when thou wilt come? Come not the wailings of thy gentle squaws, For their lost warrior, loud upon thine ear, Piercing athwart the thunder of huzzas, That, yelled at every corner, meet thee here? The wife who made that shell-decked wampum belt, Thy rugged heart must think of her, and melt. Chafes not thy heart, as chafes the panting breast Of the caged bird against his prison bars, That thou, the crowned warrior of the west, The victor of a hundred forest wars, Should'st in thy age, become a raree show Led, like a walking bear, about the town, A new caught monster, who is all the go, And stared at gratis, by the gaping clown? Boils not thy blood, while thus thou'rt led about, The sport and mockery of the rabble rout? Whence came thy cold philosophy? whence came, Thou tearless, stern, and uncomplaining one, The power that taught thee thus to veil the flame Of thy fierce passions? Thou despisest fun, And thy proud spirit scorns the white men's glee, Save thy fierce sport, when at the funeral pile, Of a bound warrior in his agony, Who meets thy horrid laugh with dying smile. Thy face, in length, reminds one of a Quaker's, Thy dances, too, are solemn as a Shaker's. Proud scion of a noble stem! thy tree Is blanched, and bare, and seared, and leafless now. I'll not insult its fallen majesty, Nor drive with careless hand, the ruthless plough Over its roots. Torn from its parent mould, Rich, warm and deep, its fresh, free, balmy air, No second verdure quickens in our cold New, barren earth; no life sustains it there. But even though prostrate, 'tis a noble thing, Though crownless, powerless, "every inch a king." Give us thy hand, old nobleman of nature, Proud ruler of the forest aristocracy; The best of blood glows in thy every feature, And thy curled lip speaks scorn for our democracy, Thou wear'st thy titles on that godlike brow; Let him who doubts them, meet thine eagle eye, He'll quail beneath its glance, and disavow All question of thy noble family; For thou may'st here become, with strict propriety, A leader in our city good society. LINES ON A SKULL DUG UP BY THE PLOUGH. [_From the German of Friedrich Kind._] BY D. SEYMOUR. Couldst thou not sleep upon thy mother's breast? Was't thou, ere day dawned, wakened from thy slumbers? Did earth deny to thee the quiet rest She grants to all her children's countless numbers? In narrow bed they sleep away the hours Beneath the winter's frost, the summer's flowers; No shade protects thee from the sun's fierce glow, Thy only winding-sheet the pitying snow. How naked art thou! Pale is now that face Which once, no doubt, was blooming--deeply dinted, A gaping wound doth thy broad brow deface; Was't by the sword or careless plough imprinted? Where are the eyes whose glances once were lightning! No soul is in their hollow sockets brightening; Yet do they gaze on me, now fierce, now sad, As though I power o'er thy destiny had. I did not from thy gloomy mansion spurn thee To gaze upon the sun that gilds these fields; But on my pilgrim staff I lift and turn thee, And try if to my spells thy silence yields; Wert thou my brother once--and did those glances Respond to love's and friendship's soft advances? Has then a spirit in this frame-work slept? Say, hast thou loved and hated, smiled and wept? What, silent still!--wilt thou make no disclosure? Is the grave's sleep indeed so cool and still? Say, dost thou suffer from this rude exposure? Hast thou then lost all thought, emotion, will? Or has thy soul, that once within thee centered, On a new field of life and duty entered? Do flesh and spirit still in thee entwine, Dost thou still call this mouldering skull-bone _thine_? Who wert thou once? what brought thee to these regions, The murderer or the murdered to be? Wert thou enrolled in mercenary legions, Or didst thou Honour's banner follow free? Didst thou desire to be enrolled in story, Didst fight for freedom, peace, truth, gold, or glory? The sword which here dropped from thy helpless hand, Was it the scourge or guardian of the land? Even yet, for thee, beyond yon dim blue mountains, The tear may tremble in a mother's eye, And as approaching death dries up life's fountains, Thou to her thoughts and prayers may'st still be nigh; Perhaps thy orphans still for thee are crying, Perhaps thy friends for thy return are sighing, And dream not that upon this little hill The dews of night upon thy skull distil. Or wert thou one of the accursed banditti Who wrought such outrage on fair Germany? Who made the field a desert, fired the city, Defiled the pure, and captive led the free? Didst thou, in disposition fierce and hellish, Thy span of life with deeds like these embellish? Then--God of righteousness! to thee belongs, Not unto us, to judge and right our wrongs. The sun already toward the west is tending, His rays upon thy hollow temples strike; Thou heed'st them not; heed'st not the rains, descending On good and bad, just and unjust alike. The mild, cool breeze of even is round me playing, Sweet perfume from the woods and fields are straying; Rich grain now waves where lances bristled then; Thus do all things proclaim God's love to men. Whoe'er thou wert, who by a fellow-mortal Were hurried out of life; we are at peace; Thus I return thee to the grave's dark portal, Revenge and hatred on this spot should cease. Rest where thy mouldering skeleton reposes, And may the perfume of the forest roses Waft thoughts of peace to every wanderer's breast! Thou restless one! return thee to thy rest. SONG. BY C. F. HOFFMAN. I know thou dost love me--ay! frown as thou wilt, And curl that beautiful lip Which I never can gaze on without the guilt Of burning its dew to sip. I know that my heart is reflected in thine, And, like flowers that over a brook incline, They toward each other dip. Though thou lookest so cold in these halls of light, 'Mid the careless, proud, and gay, I will steal like a thief in thy heart at night, And pilfer its thoughts away. I will come in thy dreams at the midnight hour, And thy soul in secret shall own the power It dares to mock by day. THE MINISINK. BY A. B. STREET Encircled by the screening shade, With scatter'd bush, and bough, And grassy slopes, a pleasant glade Is spread before me now; The wind that shows its forest search By the sweet fragrance of the birch Is whispering on my brow, And the mild sunshine flickers through The soft white cloud and summer blue. Far to the North, the Delaware Flows mountain-curv'd along, By forest bank, by summit bare, It bends in rippling song; Receiving in each eddying nook The waters of the vassal brook, It sweeps more deep and strong; Round yon green island it divides, And by this quiet woodland glides. The ground bird flutters from the grass That hides her tiny nest, The startled deer, as by I pass, Bounds in the thicket's breast; The red-bird rears his crimson wing From the long fern of yonder spring, A sweet and peaceful rest Breathes o'er the scene, where once the sound Of battle shook the gory ground. Long will the shuddering hunter tell How once, in vengeful wrath, Red warriors raised their fiercest yell And trod their bloodiest path; How oft the sire--the babe--the wife Shriek'd vain beneath the scalping knife 'Mid havoc's fiery scathe; Until the boldest quail'd to mark, Wrapp'd round the woods, Night's mantle dark. At length the fisher furl'd his sail Within the shelter'd creek, The hunter trod his forest trail The mustering band to seek; The settler cast his axe away, And grasp'd his rifle for the fray, All came, revenge to wreak-- With the rude arms that chance supplied, And die, or conquer, side by side. Behind the footsteps of their foe, They rush'd, a gallant throng, Burning with haste, to strike a blow For each remembered wrong; Here on this field of Minisink, Fainting they sought the river's brink Where cool waves gush'd along; No sound within the woods they heard, But murmuring wind and warbling bird. A shriek!--'tis but the panther's--nought Breaks the calm sunshine there, A thicket stirs!--a deer has sought From sight a closer lair; Again upon the grass they droop, When burst the well-known whoop on whoop Shrill, deafening on the air, And bounding from their ambush'd gloom, Like wolves the savage warriors come. In vain upsprung that gallant band And seized their weapons by, Fought eye to eye, and hand to hand, Alas! 'twas but to die; In vain the rifle's skilful flash Scorch'd eagle plume and wampum sash; The hatchet hiss'd on high, And down they fell in crimson heaps, Like the ripe corn the sickle reaps. In vain they sought the covert dark, The red knife gash'd each head, Each arrow found unerring mark, Till earth was pil'd with dead. Oh! long the matron watch'd, to hear Some voice and footstep meet her ear, Till hope grew faint with dread; Long did she search the wood-paths o'er, That voice and step she heard no more. Years have pass'd by, the merry bee Hums round the laurel flowers, The mock-bird pours her melody Amid the forest bowers; A skull is at my feet, though now The wild rose wreathes its bony brow, Relic of other hours. It bids the wandering pilgrim think Of those who died at Minisink. MORNING MUSINGS AMONG THE HILLS. BY JONATHAN LAWRENCE, JUN. The morn! the morn, this mountain breeze, How pure it seems, from earth how free; What sweet and sad moralities Breathe from this air that comes to me. Look down, my spirit! see below, Earth darkly sleeps were shades prevail, Or wakes to tears that vainly flow, Or dreams of hopes that surely fail. Why should'st thou linger there, and burn With passions like these fools of time? Unfold thy wings, their follies spurn, And soar to yon eternal clime. Look round, my spirit! to these hills The earliest sunlight lends its ray; Morning's pure air these far heights fills, Here evening holiest steals away. Thus when with firm-resolving breast, Though bound to earth thou liv'st on high, Shalt thou with earlier light be blest, More purely live, more calmly die. This darkling dawn, doth it not bring Visions of former glory back? Arouse, my spirit! plume thy wing, And soar with me on holier track. Canst thou not with unclouded eye, And fancy-rapt, the scene survey, When darkness bade its shadows fly, And earth rose glorious into day? Canst thou not see that earth, its Spring Unfaded yet by death or crime, In freshest green, yet mellowing Into the gorgeous Autumn's prime? Dost thou not see the eternal choir Light on each peak that wooes the sky, Fold their broad wings of golden fire, And string their seraph minstrelsy? Then what sublimest music filled Rejoicing heaven and rising earth, When angel harps the chorus swelled, And stars hymned forth creation's birth. See how the sun comes proudly on His glorious march! before our sight The swathing mists, their errand done, Are melting into morning light. He tips the peak, its dark clouds fly, He walks its sides, and shades retreat; He pours his flood of radiancy On streams and lowlands at its feet. Lord! let thy rays thus pierce, illume Each dim recess within my heart; From its deep darkness chase all gloom, And to its weakness strength impart. Thus let thy light upon me rise, Here let my home for ever be; Far above earth, its toys and ties, Yet humbly kneeling, Lord, to thee! SONG. BY J. R. DRAKE. _Ob: 1820, æt. 25._ Nay, think not, dear Lais, I feel a regret That another awakened thy sigh, Or repine that some traces remain of it yet In the beam of that eloquent eye. Though the light of its smile on a rival had shone Ere it taught me the way to adore, Shall I scorn the bright gem now I know it my own, Because it was polished before? And though oft the rich sweets of that lip hath been won, It but fits it the better for bliss; As fruit, when caressed by the bright glowing sun, Grows ripe from the warmth of his kiss. THE DEAD OF 1832. BY R. C. SANDS. _Ob: 1832, æt. 33._ Oh Time and Death! with certain pace, Though still unequal, hurrying on, O'erturning, in your awful race, The cot, the palace, and the throne! Not always in the storm of war, Nor by the pestilence that sweeps From the plague-smitten realms afar, Beyond the old and solemn deeps: In crowds the good and mighty go, And to those vast dim chambers hie:-- Where, mingled with the high and low, Dead Cæsars and dead Shakspeares lie! Dread Ministers of God! sometimes Ye smite at once, to do His will, In all earth's ocean-sever'd climes, Those--whose renown ye cannot kill! When all the brightest stars that burn At once are banished from their spheres, Men sadly ask, when shall return Such lustre to the coming years? For where is he[A]--who lived so long-- Who raised the modern Titan's ghost, And showed his fate, in powerful song, Whose soul for learning's sake was lost? Where he--who backwards to the birth Of Time itself, adventurous trod, And in the mingled mass of earth Found out the handiwork of God?[B] Where he--who in the mortal head,[C] Ordained to gaze on heaven, could trace The soul's vast features, that shall tread The stars, when earth is nothingness? Where he--who struck old Albyn's lyre,[D] Till round the world its echoes roll, And swept, with all a prophet's fire, The diapason of the soul? Where he--who read the mystic lore,[E] Buried, where buried Pharaohs sleep; And dared presumptuous to explore Secrets four thousand years could keep? Where he--who with a poet's eye[F] Of truth, on lowly nature gazed, And made even sordid Poverty Classic, when in HIS numbers glazed? Where--that old sage so hale and staid,[G] The "greatest good" who sought to find; Who in his garden mused, and made All forms of rule, for all mankind? And thou--whom millions far removed[H] Revered--the hierarch meek and wise, Thy ashes sleep, adored, beloved, Near where thy Wesley's coffin lies. He too--the heir of glory--where[I] Hath great Napoleon's scion fled? Ah! glory goes not to an heir! Take him, ye noble, vulgar dead! But hark! a nation sighs! for he,[J] Last of the brave who perilled all To make an infant empire free, Obeys the inevitable call! They go--and with them is a crowd, For human rights who THOUGHT and DID, We rear to them no temples proud, Each hath his mental pyramid. All earth is now their sepulchre, The MIND, their monument sublime-- Young in eternal fame they are-- Such are YOUR triumphs, Death and Time. TO A LADY WHO DECLARED THAT THE SUN PREVENTED HER FROM SLEEPING. BY J. R. DRAKE. Why blame old Sol, who, all on fire, Prints on your lip the burning kiss; Why should he not your charms admire, And dip his beam each morn in bliss? Were't mine to guide o'er paths of light The beam-haired coursers of the sky, I'd stay their course the livelong night To gaze upon thy sleeping eye. Then let the dotard fondly spring, Each rising day, to snatch the prize; 'Twill add new vigour to his wing, And speed his journey through the skies. ADDRESS TO A MUSQUITO. BY EDWARD SANFORD. _His_ voice was ever soft, gentle, and low.--_King Lear._ Thou sweet musician, that around my bed Dost nightly come and wind thy little horn, By what unseen and secret influence led, Feed'st thou my ear with music till 'tis morn? The wind harp's tones are not more soft than thine, The hum of falling waters not more sweet, I own, _indeed_, I own thy song divine. And when next year's warm summer nights we meet, (Till then, farewell!) I promise thee to be A patient listener to thy minstrelsy. Thou tiny minstrel, who bid thee discourse Such eloquent music? was't thy tuneful sire? Some old musician? or did'st take a course Of lessons from some master of the lyre? Who bid thee twang so sweetly thy small trump? Did Norton form thy notes so clear and full? Art a phrenologist, and is the bump Of song developed on thy little skull? At Niblo's hast thou been when crowds stood mute Drinking the birdlike tones of Cuddy's flute? Tell me the burden of thy ceaseless song, Is it thy evening hymn of grateful prayer, Or lay of love, thou pipest through the long Still night? With song dost drive away dull care? Art thou a vieux garçon, a gay deceiver, A wandering blade, roaming in search of sweets, Pledging thy faith to every fond believer, Who thy advance with half-way shyness meets? Or art o' the softer sex, and sing'st in glee, "In maiden meditation, fancy free?" Thou little Syren, when the nymphs of yore Charmed with their songs till men forgot to dine, And starved, though music-fed, upon their shore, Their voices breathed no softer lays than thine, They sang but to entice, and thou dost sing As if to lull our senses to repose, That thou may'st use, unharmed, thy little sting The very moment we begin to doze; Thou worse than Syren, thirsty, fierce blood-sipper, Thou living Vampyre, and thou Gallinipper! Nature is full of music, sweetly sings The bard, (and thou dost sing most sweetly too,) Through the wide circuit of created things, Thou art the living proof the bard sings true. Nature is full of thee; on every shore, 'Neath the hot sky of Congo's dusky child, From warm Peru to icy Labrador, The world's free citizen thou roamest wild. Wherever "mountains rise or oceans roll," Thy voice is heard, from "Indus to the Pole." The incarnation of Queen Mab art thou, "The Fairies' midwife;"--thou dost nightly sip, With amorous proboscis bending low, The honey dew from many a lady's lip-- (Though that they "straight on kisses dream," I doubt) On smiling faces, and on eyes that weep, Thou lightest, and oft with "sympathetic snout" "Ticklest men's noses as they lie asleep;" And sometimes dwellest, if I rightly scan, "On the fore-finger of an alderman." Yet thou can'st glory in a noble birth. As rose the sea-born Venus from the wave, So didst thou rise to life; the teeming earth, The living water, and the fresh air gave A portion of their elements to create Thy little form, though beauty dwells not there. So lean and gaunt, that economic fate Meant thee to feed on music or on air. Our vein's pure juices were not made for thee, Thou living, singing, stinging atomy. The hues of dying sunset are most fair, And twilight's tints just fading into night, Most dusky soft, and so thy soft notes are By far the sweetest when thou tak'st thy flight. The swan's last note is sweetest, so is thine; Sweet are the wind harp's tones at distance heard; 'Tis sweet in distance at the day's decline, To hear the opening song of evening's bird. But notes of harp or bird at distance float Less sweetly on the ear than thy last note. The autumn winds are wailing: 'tis thy dirge; Its leaves are sear, prophetic of thy doom. Soon the cold rain will whelm thee, as the surge Whelms the tost mariner in its watery tomb, Then soar, and sing thy little life away! Albeit thy voice is somewhat husky now. 'Tis well to end in music life's last day, Of one so gleeful and so blithe as thou: For thou wilt soon live through its joyous hours, And pass away with Autumn's dying flowers. INCONSTANCY. BY J. R. DRAKE. Yes! I swore to be true, I allow, And I meant it, but, some how or other, The seal of that amorous vow Was pressed on the lips of another. Yet I did but as all would have done, For where is the being, dear cousin, Content with the beauties of one When he might have the range of a dozen? Young Love is a changeable boy, And the gem of the sea-rock is like him, For he gives back the beams of his joy To each sunny eye that may strike him. From a kiss of a zephyr and rose Love sprang in an exquisite hour, And fleeting and sweet, heaven knows, Is this child of a sigh and a flower. THE CALLICOON IN AUTUMN. BY A. B. STREET. Far in the forest's heart, unknown, Except to sun and breeze, Where solitude her dreaming throne Has held for centuries; Chronicled by the rings and moss That tell the flight of years across The seamed and columned trees, This lovely streamlet glides along With tribute of eternal song! Now, stealing through its thickets deep In which the wood-duck hides, Now, picturing in its basin sleep Its green pool-hollowed sides, Here, through the pebbles slow it creeps, There, 'mid some wild abyss it sweeps, And foaming, hoarsely chides; Then slides so still, its gentle swell Scarce ripples round the lily's bell. Nature, in her autumnal dress Magnificent and gay, Displays her mantled gorgeousness To hide the near decay, Which, borne on Winter's courier breath, Warns the old year prepare for death, When, tottering, seared, and gray, Ice-fettered, it will sink below The choking winding-sheet of snow. A blaze of splendour is around, As wondrous and as bright As that, within the fairy ground, Which met Aladdin's sight. The sky, a sheet of silvery sheen With breaks of tenderest blue between, As though the summer light Was melting through, once more to cast A glance of gladness ere it passed. The south-west airs of ladened balm Come breathing sweetly by, And wake amid the forest's calm One quick and shivering sigh, Shaking, but dimpling not the glass Of this smooth streamlet, as they pass-- They scarcely wheel on high The thistle's downy, silver star, To waft its pendent seed afar. Dream-like the silence, only woke By the grasshopper's glee, And now and then the lazy stroke Of woodcock[K] on the tree: And mingling with the insect hum, The beatings of the partridge drum, With frequently a bee Darting its music, and the crow Harsh cawing from the swamp below. A foliage world of glittering dyes Gleams brightly on the air, As though a thousand sunset skies, With rainbows, blended there; Each leaf an opal, and each tree A bower of varied brilliancy, And all one general glare Of glory, that o'erwhelms the sight With dazzling and unequalled light. Rich gold with gorgeous crimson, here The birch and maple twine, The beech its orange mingles near With emerald of the pine; And e'en the humble bush and herb Are glowing with those tints superb, As though a scattered mine Of gems, upon the earth were strewn, Flashing with radiance, each its own. All steeped in that delicious charm Peculiar to our land, Glimmering in mist, rich, purple, warm, When Indian Summer's hand Has filled the valley with its smoke, And wrapped the mountain in its cloak, While, timidly and bland, The sunbeams struggle from the sky, And in long lines of silver lie. The squirrel chatters merrily, The nut falls ripe and brown, And gem-like from the jewelled tree The leaf comes fluttering down; And restless in his plumage gay, From bush to bush loud screams the jay, While on the hemlock's crown The sentry pigeon guards from foes The flock that dots the neighbouring boughs. See! on this edge of forest lawn, Where sleeps the clouded beam, A doe has led her spotted fawn To gambol by the stream; Beside yon mullein's braided stalk They hear the gurgling voices talk, While, like a wandering gleam, The yellow-bird dives here and there, A feathered vessel of the air. On, through the rampart walls of rock The waters pitch in white, And high, in mist, the cedars lock Their boughs, half lost to sight Above the whirling gulf--the dash Of frenzied floods, that vainly lash Their limits in their flight, Whose roar the eagle, from his peak, Responds to with his angriest shriek. Stream of the age-worn forest! here The Indian, free as thou, Has bent against thy depths his spear, And in thy woods his bow; The beaver built his dome; but they, The memories of an earlier day, Like those dead trunks, that show What once were mighty pines--have fled With Time's unceasing, rapid tread. THE WESTERN HUNTER TO HIS MISTRESS. BY C. F. HOFFMAN. Wend, love, with me, to the deep woods wend, Where, far in the forest, the wild flowers keep, Where no watching eye shall over us bend Save the blossoms that into thy bower peep. Thou shalt gather from buds of the oriole's hue, Whose flaming wings round our pathway flit, From the safron orchis and lupin blue, And those like the foam on my courser's bit. One steed and one saddle us both shall bear, One hand of each on the bridle meet; And beneath the wrist that entwines me there An answering pulse from my heart shall beat. I will sing thee many a joyous lay, As we chase the deer by the blue lake-side, While the winds that over the prairie play Shall fan the cheek of my woodland bride. Our home shall be by the cool bright streams, Where the beaver chooses her safe retreat, And our hearth shall smile like the sun's warm gleams Through the branches around our lodge that meet. Then wend with me, to the deep woods wend, Where far in the forest the wild flowers keep, Where no watching eye shall over us bend, Save the blossoms that into thy bower peep. A POET'S EPISTLE. [_Written in Scotland to Fitz-Greene Halleck, Esq._] BY J. R. DRAKE. Weel, Fitz, I'm here; the mair's the pity, I'll wad ye curse the vera city From which I write a braid Scots ditty Afore I learn it; But gif ye canna mak it suit ye, Ye ken ye'll burn it. My grunzie's got a twist until it Thae damn'd Scotch aighs sae stuff and fill it I doubt, wi' a' my doctor skill, it 'll keep the gait, Not e'en my pen can scratch a billet And write it straight. Ye're aiblins thinking to forgather Wi' a hale sheet, of muir and heather O' burns, and braes, and sic like blether, To you a feast; But stop! ye will not light on either This time at least. Noo stir your bries a wee and ferlie, Then drap your lip and glower surly; Troth! gif ye do, I'll tell ye fairly, Ye'll no be right; We've made our jaunt a bit too early For sic a sight. What it may be when summer deeds Muir shaw and brae, wi' bonnie weeds Sprinkling the gowan on the meads And broomy knowes, I dinna ken; but now the meads Scarce keep the cows. For trees, puir Scotia's sadly scanted, A few bit pines and larches planted, And thae, wee, knurlie, blastic, stuntit As e'er thou sawest; Row but a sma' turf fence anent it, Hech! there's a forest. For streams, ye'll find a puny puddle That would na float a shull bairn's coble, A cripple stool might near hand hobble Dry-baughted ever; Some whinstone crags to mak' it bubble, And there's a river. And then their cauld and reekie skies, They luke ower dull to Yankee eyes; The sun ye'd ken na if he's rise Amaist the day; Just a noon blink that hardly dries The dewy brae. Yet leeze auld Scotland on her women, Ilk sonzie lass and noble yeoman, For luver's heart or blade of foeman O'er baith victorious; E'en common sense, that plant uncommon, Grows bright and glorious. Fecks but my pen has skelp'd alang, I've whistled out an unco sang 'Bout folk I ha' na been amang Twa days as yet; But, faith, the farther that I gang The mair ye'll get. Sae sharpen up your lugs, for soon I'll tread the hazelly braes o' Doon, See Mungo's well, and set my shoon Where i' the dark Bauld Tammie keek'd, the drunken loon, At cutty sark. And I shall tread the hallowed bourne Where Wallace blew his bugle-horn O'er Edward's banner, stained and torn. What Yankee bluid But feels its free pulse leap and burn Where Wallace stood! But pouk my pen! I find I'm droppin My braw Scots style to English loppin; I fear amaist that ye'll be hoppin I'd quit it quite: If so, I e'en must think o' stopping, And sae, gude night. WEEHAWKEN. BY R. C. SANDS. Eve o'er our path is stealing fast; Yon quivering splendours are the last The sun will fling, to tremble o'er The waves that kiss the opposing shore; His latest glories fringe the height Behind us, with their golden light. The mountain's mirror'd outline fades Amid the fast extending shades; Its shaggy bulk, in sterner pride, Towers, as the gloom steals o'er the tide; For the great stream a bulwark meet That laves its rock-encumbered feet. River and Mountain! though to song Not yet, perchance, your names belong; Those who have loved your evening hues Will ask not the recording Muse, What antique tales she can relate, Your banks and steeps to consecrate. Yet should the stranger ask, what lore Of by-gone days, this winding shore, Yon cliffs and fir-clad steeps could tell, If vocal made by Fancy's spell,-- The varying legend might rehearse Fit themes for high, romantic verse. O'er yon rough heights and moss-clad sod Oft hath the stalworth warrior trod; Or peer'd, with hunter's gaze, to mark The progress of the glancing bark. Spoils, strangely won on distant waves, Have lurked in yon obstructed caves. When the great strife for Freedom rose Here scouted oft her friends and foes, Alternate, through the changeful war, And beacon-fires flashed bright and far; And here, when Freedom's strife was won, Fell, in sad feud, her favoured son;-- Her son,--the second of the band, The Romans of the rescued land. Where round yon cape the banks ascend, Long shall the pilgrim's footsteps bend; There, mirthful hearts shall pause to sigh, There, tears shall dim the patriot's eye. There last he stood. Before his sight Flowed the fair river, free and bright; The rising Mart, and Isles, and Bay, Before him in their glory lay,-- Scenes of his love and of his fame,-- The instant ere the death-shot came. LINES WRITTEN ON A BANK NOTE. BY T. W. TUCKER. Thou fragile thing That with a breath I could destroy, What mighty train of care and joy Do ye not bring? Emblem of power! By thee comes public bane or good; The wheels of state, without thee, would Stop in an hour. Tower, dome, and arch, Thou spreadest o'er the desert waste, Thou guid'st the path of war, and stay'st The army's march. The spreading seas For thee unnumbered squadrons bear, Ruler of earth, and sea, and air-- When bended knees Are bowed in prayer, Although to heaven is given each word, Thy influence in the heart, unheard, Is upmost there! Fly! minion, fly! Thine errand is unfinished yet-- The boon I covet,--to forget! Thou canst not buy. THE DELAWARE WATER-GAP. BY MRS. E. F. ELLET. Our Western land can boast no lovelier spot. The hills which in their ancient grandeur stand, Piled to the frowning clouds, the bulwarks seem Of this wild scene, resolved that none but Heaven Shall look upon its beauty. Round their breast A curtained fringe depends, of golden mist, Touched by the slanting sunbeams; while below The silent river, with majestic sweep, Pursues his shadowed way,--his glassy face Unbroken, save when stoops the lone wild swan To float in pride, or dip his ruffled wing. Talk ye of solitude?--It is not here. Nor silence.--Low, deep murmurs are abroad. Those towering hills hold converse with the sky That smiles upon their summits;--and the wind Which stirs their wooded sides, whispers of life, And bears the burthen sweet from leaf to leaf, Bidding the stately forest boughs look bright, And nod to greet his coming!--And the brook, That with its silvery gleam comes leaping down From the hill-side, has, too, a tale to tell; The wild bird's music mingles with its chime;-- And gay young flowers, that blossom in its path, Send forth their perfume as an added gift. The river utters, too, a solemn voice, And tells of deeds long past, in ages gone, When not a sound was heard along his shores, Save the wild tread of savage feet, or shriek Of some expiring captive,--and no bark E'er cleft his gloomy waters. Now, his waves Are vocal often with the hunter's song;-- Now visit, in their glad and onward course, The abodes of happy men--gardens and fields-- And cultured plains--still bearing, as they pass, Fertility renewed and fresh delights. The time has been,--so Indian legends say,-- When here the mighty Delaware poured not His ancient waters through--but turned aside Through yonder dell, and washed those shaded vales. Then, too, these riven cliffs were one smooth hill, Which smiled in the warm sunbeams, and displayed The wealth of summer on its graceful slope. Thither the hunter chieftains oft repaired To light their council fires,--while its dim height, For ever veiled in mist, no mortal dared-- 'Tis said--to scale; save one white-haired old man, Who there held commune with the Indian's God, And thence brought down to men his high commands. Years passed away--the gifted seer had lived Beyond life's natural term, and bent no more His weary limbs to seek the mountain's summit. New tribes had filled the land, of fiercer mien, Who strove against each other. Blood and death Filled those green shades, where all before was peace, And the stern warrior scalped his dying captive E'en on the precincts of that holy spot Where the Great Spirit had been. Some few, who mourned The unnatural slaughter, urged the aged priest Again to seek the consecrated height, Succour from heaven, and mercy to implore.-- They watched him from afar. He laboured slowly High up the steep ascent--and vanished soon Behind the folded clouds, which clustered dark As the last hues of sunset passed away. The night fell heavily--and soon were heard Low tones of thunder from the mountain top, Muttering, and echoed from the distant hills In deep and solemn peal,--while lurid flashes Of lightning rent anon the gathering gloom. Then wilder and more loud, a fearful crash Burst on the startled ear;--the earth, convulsed, Groaned from its solid centre--forests shook For leagues around,--and by the sudden gleam Which flung a fitful radiance on the spot, A sight of dread was seen. The mount was rent From top to base--and where so late had smiled Green boughs and blossoms--yawned a frightful chasm, Filled with unnatural darkness.--From afar The distant roar of waters then was heard; They came--with gathering sweep--o'erwhelming all That checked their headlong course;--the rich maize field,-- The low-roofed hut--its sleeping inmates--all-- Were swept in speedy, undistinguished ruin. Morn looked upon the desolated scene Of the Great Spirit's anger--and beheld Strange waters passing through the cloven rocks:-- And men looked on in silence and in fear, And far removed their dwellings from the spot, Where now no more the hunter chased his prey, Or the war-whoop was heard.--Thus years went on: Each trace of desolation vanished fast; Those bare and blackened cliffs were overspread With fresh green foliage, and the swelling earth Yielded her stores of flowers to deck their sides. The river passed majestically on Through his new channel--verdure graced his banks;-- The wild bird murmured sweetly as before In its beloved woods,--and nought remained,-- Save the wild tales which chieftains told,-- To mark the change celestial vengeance wrought. SONG OF THE HERMIT TROUT. BY W. P. HAWES. Down in the deep Dark holes I keep, And there in the noontide I float and sleep, By the hemlock log, And the springing bog, And the arching alders, I lie incog. The angler's fly Comes dancing by, But never a moment it cheats my eye; For the hermit trout Is not such a lout As to be by a wading boy pulled out. King of the brook, No fisher's hook Fills me with dread of the sweaty cook; But here I lie, And laugh as they try; Shall I bite at their bait? No, no; not I! But when the streams, With moonlight beams, Sparkle all silver, and starlight gleams, Then, then look out For the hermit trout; For he springs and dimples the shallows about, While the tired angler dreams. TO MAY. BY JONATHAN LAWRENCE, JUN. Come, gentle May! Come with thy robe of flowers, Come with thy sun and sky, thy clouds and showers; Come, and bring forth unto the eye of day, From their imprisoning and mysterious night, The buds of many hues, the children of thy light. Come, wondrous May! For at the bidding of thy magic wand, Quick from the caverns of the breathing land, In all their green and glorious array They spring, as spring the Persian maids to hail Thy flushing footsteps in Cashmerian vale. Come, vocal May! Come with thy train, that high On some fresh branch pour out their melody; Or carolling thy praise the live-long day, Sit perched in some lone glen, on echo calling, 'Mid murmuring woods and musical waters falling. Come, sunny May! Come with thy laughing beam, What time the lazy mist melts on the stream, Or seeks the mountain-top to meet thy ray, Ere yet the dew-drop on thine own soft flower Hath lost its light, or died beneath his power. Come, holy May! When sunk behind the cold and western hill, His light hath ceased to play on leaf and rill, And twilight's footsteps hasten his decay; Come with thy musings, and my heart shall be Like a pure temple consecrate to thee. Come, beautiful May! Like youth and loveliness, Like her I love; Oh, come in thy full dress, The drapery of dark winter cast away; To the bright eye and the glad heart appear, Queen of the Spring and mistress of the year. Yet, lovely May! Teach her whose eye shall rest upon this rhyme To spurn the gilded mockeries of time, The heartless pomp that beckons to betray, And keep, as thou wilt find, that heart each year, Pure as thy dawn, and as thy sunset clear. And let me too, sweet May! Let thy fond votary see, As fade thy beauties, all the vanity Of this world's pomp; then teach, that though decay In his short winter, bury beauty's frame, In fairer worlds the soul shall break his sway, Another Spring shall bloom eternal and the same. TO THE WHIP-POOR-WILL. BY MRS. E. F. ELLET. Bird of the lone and joyless night-- Whence is thy sad and solemn lay? Attendant on the pale moon's light, Why shun the garish blaze of day? When darkness fills the dewy air, Nor sounds the song of happier bird, Alone amid the silence there Thy wild and plaintive note is heard. Thyself unseen--thy pensive moan Poured in no loving comrade's ear-- The forest's shaded depths alone That mournful melody can hear. Beside what still and secret spring, In what dark wood, the livelong day, Sit'st thou with dusk and folded wing, To while the hours of light away. Sad minstrel! thou hast learned like me, That life's deceitful gleam is vain; And well the lesson profits thee, Who will not trust its charms again! Thou, unbeguiled, thy plaint dost trill, To listening night when mirth is o'er: I, heedless of the warning, still Believe, to be deceived once more! CHANSONETTE. BY C. F. HOFFMAN. They are mockery all, those skies! those skies! Their untroubled depths of blue; They are mockery all, these eyes! these eyes! Which seem so warm and true; Each quiet star in the one that lies, Each meteor glance that at random flies The other's lashes through. They are mockery all, these flowers of Spring, Which her airs so softly woo; And the love to which we would madly cling, Ay! it is mockery too. For the winds are false which the perfume stir, And the lips deceive to which we sue, And love but leads to the sepulchre; Which flowers spring to strew. THE CLOUDS. BY JONATHAN LAWRENCE, JUN. The clouds have their own language unto me They have told many a tale in by-gone days, At twilight's hour, when gentle reverie Steals o'er the heart, as tread the elfish fays With their fleet footsteps on the moonlit grass, And leave their storied circles where they pass. So, even so, to me the embracing clouds, With their pure thoughts leave holy traces here; And from the tempest-gathered fold that shrouds The darkening earth, unto the blue, and clear, And sunny brightness of yon arching sky, They have their language and their melody. Have you not felt it when the dropping rain From the soft showers of Spring hath clothed the earth With its unnumbered offspring? felt not when The conquering sun hath proudly struggled forth In misty radiance, until cloud and spot Were blended in one brightness? Can you not Look out and love when the departing sun Enrobes their peaks in shapes fantastical In his last splendour, and reflects upon Their skirts his farewell smile ere shadows fall Above his burial, like our boyhood's gleams Of fading light, or like the "stuff of dreams?" Or giving back those tints indefinite, Yet brightly blending, there to form that arch Whereon the angel-spirits of the light Marshalled their joyous and triumphant march, When sank the whelming waters, and again Left the green islands to the sons of men? Oh, then as rose each lofty pile, and threw Its growing shadow on the sinking tide, How glowed each peak with the resplendent hue, As its new lustre told that wrath had died, Till the blue waves within their limits curled, And that broad bow in beauty spanned the world. Gaze yet again, and you may see on high The opposing hosts that mutter as they form Their stern battalions, ere the artillery Bids the destroying angel guide its storm; If you have heard on battle's eve the low Defiance quickly uttered to the foe, When the firm ranks gaze fiercely brow on brow And eye on eye, while every heart beats fast With hopes and fears, all feel, but none avow, Pulsations which perchance may be their last, Whom the unhonoured sepulchre shall shroud; If you have seen this, gaze upon that cloud. How from the bosom of its blackness springs The cleaving lightning kindling on its way, Flinging such blinding glory from its wings, That he who looks grows drunk with its array Of power and beauty, till his eye is dim, And dazzling darkness overshadows him. Oh, God! can he conceive who hath not known The wondrous workings of thy firmament, Thine untold majesty, around whose throne They stand, thy winged messengers, or sent In light or darkness on their destined path, Bestow thy blessings or direct thy wrath. Then here, in this thy lower temple, here We kneel to thee in worship; what to these Symbols of thine, wherein thou dost appear Are painted domes or priestly palaces; On this green turf, and gazing on yon sphere, We call on thee to commune and to bless, And see in holy fancy each pure sigh Ascend like incense to thy throne on high. THE ISLE OF REST. BY MRS. E. F. ELLET. _Some of the islands where the fancied paradise of the Indians was situated, were believed to be in Lake Superior._ That blessed isle lies far away-- 'Tis many a weary league from land, Where billows in their golden play Dash on its sparkling sand. No tempest's wrath, or stormy waters' roar, Disturb the echoes of that peaceful shore. There the light breezes lie at rest, Soft pillowed on the glassy deep; Pale cliffs look on the waters' breast, And watch their silent sleep. There the wild swan with plumed and glossy wing Sits lone and still beside the bubbling spring. And far within, in murmurs heard, Comes, with the wind's low whispers there, The music of the mounting bird, Skimming the clear bright air. The sportive brook, with free and silvery tide, Comes wildly dancing from the green hill side. The sun there sheds his noontide beam On oak-crowned hill and leafy bowers; And gaily by the shaded stream Spring forth the forest flowers. The fountain flings aloft its showery spray, With rainbows decked, that mock the hues of day. And when the dewy morning breaks, A thousand tones of rapture swell; A thrill of life and motion wakes Through hill, and plain, and dell. The wild bird trills his song--and from the wood The red deer bounds to drink beside the flood. There, when the sun sets on the sea, And gilds the forest's waving crown, Strains of immortal harmony To those sweet shades come down. Bright and mysterious forms that green shore throng, And pour in evening's ear their charmed song. E'en on this cold and cheerless shore, While all is dark and quiet near, The huntsman, when his toils are o'er, That melody may hear. And see, faint gleaming o'er the waters' foam, The glories of that isle, his future home. INDIAN SUMMER--1828. BY C. F. HOFFMAN. Light as love's smiles the silvery mist at morn Floats in loose flakes along the limpid river; The blue-bird's notes upon the soft breeze borne, As high in air she carols, faintly quiver; The weeping birch, like banners idly waving, Bends to the stream, its spicy branches laving; Beaded with dew the witch-elm's tassels shiver; The timid rabbit from the furze is peeping, And from the springy spray the squirrel's gaily leaping. I love thee, Autumn, for thy scenery ere The blasts of Winter chase the varied dyes That gaily deck the slow-declining year; I love the splendour of thy sunset skies, The gorgeous hues that tinge each failing leaf, Lovely as beauty's cheek, as woman's love too, brief; I love the note of each wild bird that flies, As on the wind she pours her parting lay, And wings her loitering flight to summer climes away. Oh, Nature! still I fondly turn to thee With feelings fresh as e'er my childhood's were;-- Though wild and passion-tost my youth may be, Toward thee I still the same devotion bear; To thee--to thee--though health and hope no more Life's wasted verdure may to me restore-- I still can, child-like, come as when in prayer I bowed my head upon a mother's knee, And deemed the world, like her, all truth and purity. GREECE--1832. BY J. G. BROOKS. Land of the brave! where lie inurned The shrouded forms of mortal clay, In whom the fire of valour burned, And blazed upon the battle's fray: Land, where the gallant Spartan few Bled at Thermopylæ of yore, When death his purple garment threw On Helle's consecrated shore! Land of the Muse! within thy bowers Her soul entrancing echoes rung, While on their course the rapid hours Paused at the melody she sung-- Till every grove and every hill, And every stream that flowed along, From morn to night repeated still The winning harmony of song. Land of dead heroes! living slaves! Shall glory gild thy clime no more? Her banner float above thy waves Where proudly it hath swept before? Hath not remembrance then a charm To break the fetters and the chain, To bid thy children nerve the arm, And strike for freedom once again? No! coward souls! the light which shone On Leuctra's war-empurpled day, The light which beamed on Marathon Hath lost its splendour, ceased to play; And thou art but a shadow now, With helmet shattered--spear in rust-- Thy honour but a dream--and thou Despised--degraded in the dust! Where sleeps the spirit, that of old Dashed down to earth the Persian plume, When the loud chant of triumph told How fatal was the despot's doom?-- The bold three hundred--where are they, Who died on battle's gory breast? Tyrants have trampled on the clay, Where death has hushed them into rest. Yet, Ida, yet upon thy hill A glory shines of ages fled; And fame her light is pouring still, Not on the living, but the dead! But 'tis the dim sepulchral light, Which sheds a faint and feeble ray, As moon-beams on the brow of night, When tempests sweep upon their way. Greece! yet awake thee from thy trance, Behold thy banner waves afar; Behold the glittering weapons glance Along the gleaming front of war! A gallant chief, of high emprize, Is urging foremost in the field, Who calls upon thee to arise In might--in majesty revealed. In vain, in vain the hero calls-- In vain he sounds the trumpet loud! His banner totters--see! it falls In ruin, Freedom's battle shroud: Thy children have no soul to dare Such deeds as glorified their sires; Their valour's but a meteor's glare, Which gleams a moment, and expires. Lost land! where Genius made his reign, And reared his golden arch on high; Where Science raised her sacred fane, Its summits peering to the sky; Upon thy clime the midnight deep Of ignorance hath brooded long, And in the tomb, forgotten, sleep The sons of science and of song. Thy sun hath set--the evening storm Hath passed in giant fury by, To blast the beauty of thy form, And spread its pall upon the sky! Gone is thy glory's diadem, And freedom never more shall cease To pour her mournful requiem O'er blighted, lost, degraded Greece! IMPROMPTU TO A LADY BLUSHING. BY C. F. HOFFMAN. The lilies faintly to the roses yield, As on thy lovely cheek they struggling vie, (Who would not strive upon so sweet a field To win the mastery?) And thoughts are in thy speaking eyes revealed, Pure as the fount the prophet's rod unsealed. I could not wish that in thy bosom aught Should e'er one moment's transient pain awaken, Yet can't regret that thou--forgive the thought-- As flowers when shaken Will yield their sweetest fragrance to the wind, Should, ruffled thus, betray thy heavenly mind. A ROMAN CHARIOT RACE. BY J. I. BAILEY. Hast thou no soul, that thou canst be unmoved At glorious sports like these? Even now I see Come forth the noble charioteers, arrayed In red, white, green, and azure, like the sky, The eye of beauty dazzled by their hue! And now with eager hopes and proud desires Exulting, lo! the youthful, daring band Start to the race, and fiercely seize the reins! Onward they rush; a thousand voices hail The alternate victor as he speeds along; Ten thousand eyes pursue the chariot flight, And as they gaze, as many thousand souls Swell in their bosoms and almost leap out. Then comes the glorious moment when the goal Is almost reached--they goad the foremost steeds Lashing with all their might upon their flanks; The golden chariot glitters in the course, And swifter than the wind is borne along-- And now the victor, like a flash of light, Bursts on the view, and hails the loud acclaim, While lengthening shouts of triumph rend the air! _Waldimar, a Tragedy. Act II., Scene I._ LINES FOR MUSIC. BY G. P. MORRIS. O would that she were here, These hills and dales among, Where vocal groves are gayly mocked By echo's airy tongue,-- Where jocund Nature smiles In all her gay attire, Amid deep-tangled wiles Of hawthorn and sweet-brier. O would that she were here, That fair and gentle thing, Whose words are musical as strains Breathed by the wind-harp's string. O would that she were here, Where the free waters leap, Shouting in their joyousness, Adown the rocky steep,-- Where rosy Zephyr lingers All the livelong day, With health upon his pinions, And gladness in his way. O would that she were here, Sure Eden's garden-plot Did not embrace more varied charms Than this romantic spot. O would that she were here, Where frolic by the hours, Rife with the song of bee and bird, The perfume of the flowers,-- Where beams of peace and love, And radiant beauty's glow, Are pictured in the sky above, And in the lake below. O would that she were here-- The nymphs of this bright scene, With song, and dance, and revelry, Would crown BIANCA queen. WHITE LAKE.[L] BY A. B. STREET. Pure as their parent springs! how bright The silvery waters stretch away, Reposing in the pleasant light Of June's most lovely day. Curving around the eastern side, Rich meadows slope their banks, to meet With fringe of grass and fern, the tide Which sparkles at their feet. Here busy life attests that toil, With its quick talisman, has made Fields green and waving, from a soil Of rude and savage shade. While opposite the forests lie In giant shadow, black and deep, Filling with leaves the circling sky, And frowning in their sleep. Amid this scene of light and gloom, Nature with art links hand in hand, Thick woods beside soft rural bloom, As by a seer's command. Here waves the grain, here curls the smoke, The orchard bends; there, wilds, as dark As when the hermit waters woke Beneath the Indian's bark. Oft will the panther's sharp, shrill shriek With the herd's quiet lowings swell, The wolf's fierce howl terrific break Upon the sheepfold's bell. The ploughman sees the wind-winged deer Dart from his covert to the wave, And fearless in its mirror clear His branching antlers lave. Here, the green headlands seem to meet So near, a fairy bridge might cross; There, spreads the broad and limpid sheet In smooth, unruffled gloss. Arched by the thicket's screening leaves, A lilied harbour lurks below, Where on the sand each ripple weaves Its melting wreath of snow. Hark! like an organ's tone, the woods To the light wind in murmurs wake, The voice of the vast solitudes Is speaking to the lake. The fanning air-breath sweeps across On its broad path of sparkles now. Bends down the violet to the moss, Then melts upon my brow. SONG OF SPRING-TIME. BY C. F. HOFFMAN. Where dost thou loiter, Spring, While it behoveth Thee to cease wandering Where'er thou roveth, And to my lady bring The flowers she loveth. Come with thy melting skies Like her cheek blushing, Come with thy dewy eyes Where founts are gushing; Come where the wild bee hies When dawn is flushing. Lead her where by the brook The first blossom keepeth, Where, in the sheltered nook, The callow bud sleepeth; Or with a timid look Through its leaves peepeth. Lead her where on the spray, Blithely carolling, First birds their roundelay For my lady sing-- But keep, where'er she stray True-love blossoming. THE SHIPWRECK OF CAMOENS. BY EMMA C. EMBURY. Clouds gathered o'er the dark blue sky, The sun waxed dim and pale, And the music of the waves was changed To the plaintive voice of wail; And fearfully the lightning flashed Around the ship's tall mast, While mournfully through the creaking shrouds Came the sighing of the blast. With pallid cheek the seamen shrank Before the deepening gloom; For they gazed on the black and boiling sea As 'twere a yawning tomb; But on the vessel's deck stood one With proud and changeless brow; Nor pain, nor terror was in the look He turned to the gulf below. And calmly to his arm he bound His casket and his sword; Unheeding, though with fiercer strength The threatening tempest roared; Then stretched his sinewy arms and cried: "For me there yet is hope, The limbs that have spurned a tyrant's chain With the stormy wave may cope. "Now let the strife of nature rage, Proudly I yet can claim, Where'er the waters may bear me on, My freedom and my fame." The dreaded moment came too soon, The sea swept madly on, Till the wall of waters closed around, And the noble ship was gone. Then rose one wild, half-stifled cry; The swimmer's bubbling breath Was all unheard, while the raging tide Wrought well the task of death; But 'mid the billows still was seen The stranger's struggling form; And the meteor flash of his sword might seem Like a beacon 'mid the storm. For still, while with his strong right arm He buffeted the wave, The other upheld that treasured prize He would give life to save. Was then the love of pelf so strong That e'en in death's dark hour, The base-born passion could awake With such resistless power? No! all earth's gold were dross to him, Compared with what lay hid, Through lonely years of changeless woe, Beneath that casket's lid; For there was all the mind's rich wealth, And many a precious gem That, in after years, he hoped might form A poet's diadem. Nobly he struggled till, o'erspent, His nerveless limbs no more Could bear him on through the waves that rose Like barriers to the shore; Yet still he held his long prized wealth, He saw the wished-for land-- A moment more, and he was thrown Upon the rocky strand. Alas! far better to have died Where the mighty billows roll, Than lived till coldness and neglect Bowed down his haughty soul: Such was his dreary lot, at once His country's pride and shame; For on Camoen's humble grave alone Was placed his wreath of fame. LOVE AND FAITH; A BALLAD. BY C. F. HOFFMAN. 'Twas on one morn, in spring-time weather, A rosy, warm, inviting hour, That Love and Faith went out together, And took the path to Beauty's bower. Love laughed and frolicked all the way, While sober Faith, as on they rambled, Allowed the thoughtless boy to play, But watched him, wheresoe'er he gamboled. So warm a welcome, Beauty smiled Upon the guests whom chance had sent her, That Love and Faith were both beguiled The grotto of the nymph to enter; And when the curtains of the skies The drowsy hand of Night was closing, Love nestled him in Beauty's eyes, While Faith was on her heart reposing. Love thought he never saw a pair So softly radiant in their beaming; Faith deemed that he could meet no where So sweet and safe a place to dream in; And there, for life in bright content, Enchained, they must have still been lying, For Love his wings to Faith had lent, And Faith he never dream'd of flying. But Beauty, though she liked the child, With all his winning ways about him, Upon his mentor never smiled, And thought that Love might do without him; Poor Faith abused, soon sighing fled, And now one knows not where to find him; While mourning Love quick followed Upon the wings he left behind him. 'Tis said, that in his wandering Love still around that spot will hover, Like bird that on bewildered wing Her parted mate pines to discover; And true it is that Beauty's door Is often by the idler haunted; But, since Faith fled, Love owns no more The spell that held his wings enchanted. THE LAST SONG. BY J. G. BROOKS. Strike the wild harp yet once again! Again its lonely numbers pour; Then let the melancholy strain Be hushed in death for evermore. For evermore, for evermore, Creative fancy, be thou still; And let oblivious Lethe pour Upon my lyre its waters chill. Strike the wild harp yet once again! Then be its fitful chords unstrung, Silent as is the grave's domain, And mute as the death-mouldered tongue, Let not a thought of memory dwell One moment on its former song; Forgotten, too, be this farewell, Which plays its pensive strings along! Strike the wild harp yet once again! The saddest and the latest lay; Then break at once its strings in twain, And they shall sound no more for aye: And hang it on the cypress tree, The hours of youth and song have passed, Have gone, with all their witchery; Lost lyre! these numbers are thy last. TO MY WIFE. BY LINDLEY MURRAY. When on thy bosom I recline, Enraptur'd still to call thee mine, To call thee mine for life, I glory in the sacred ties, Which modern wits and fools despise, Of Husband and of Wife. One mutual flame inspires our bliss; The tender look, the melting kiss, Even years have not destroyed; Some sweet sensation, ever new, Springs up and proves the maxim true, That love can ne'er be cloy'd. Have I a wish?--'tis all for thee, Hast thou a wish?--'tis all for me, So soft our moments move, That angels look with ardent gaze, Well pleas'd to see our happy days, And bid us live--and love. If cares arise--and cares will come-- Thy bosom is my softest home, I'll lull me there to rest; And is there aught disturbs my fair? I'll bid her sigh out every care, And lose it in my breast. Have I a wish?--'tis all her own; All hers and mine are roll'd in one-- Our hearts are so entwined, That, like the ivy round the tree, Bound up in closest amity, 'Tis death to be disjoined. LAMENT. BY MARY E. BROOKS. Oh, weep not for the dead! Rather, oh rather give the tear To those that darkly linger here, When all besides are fled; Weep for the spirit withering In its cold cheerless sorrowing, Weep for the young and lovely one That ruin darkly revels on; But never be a tear-drop shed For them, the pure enfranchised dead. Oh, weep not for the dead! No more for them the blighting chill, The thousand shades of earthly ill, The thousand thorns we tread; Weep for the life-charm early flown, The spirit broken, bleeding, lone; Weep for the death pangs of the heart, Ere being from the bosom part; But never be a tear-drop given To those that rest in yon blue heaven. "AFFECTION WINS AFFECTION." BY EMMA C. EMBURY. Mine own beloved, believest thou ought of this? Oh! then no more My heart, o'er early faded dreams of bliss Its wail shall pour. Give me this hope, though only from afar It sheds its light, And, like yon dewy melancholy star, With tears is bright-- Let me but hope a heart with fondness fraught, That could not sin Against its worshipped idol, e'en in thought, Thy love may win: Let me but hope the changeless love of years, The tender care That fain would die to save thine eye from tears, Thy heart may share. Or let me hope at least that, when no more My voice shall meet The ear that listens only to think o'er Tones far more sweet; When the kind shelter of the grave shall hide This faded brow, This form once gazed upon with pride, With coldness now; When never more my weary steps of pain Around thee move, When loosed for ever is life's heavy chain, Love will win love. FEATS OF DEATH. BY LUCRETIA M. DAVIDSON. _Ob: 1825, æt. 17._ I have passed o'er the earth in the darkness of night, I have walked the wild winds in the morning's broad light; I have paused o'er the bower where the infant lay sleeping, And I've left the fond mother in sorrow and weeping. My pinion was spread, and the cold dew of night, Which withers and moulders the flower in its light, Fell silently o'er the warm cheek in its glow, And I left it there blighted, and wasted, and low; I culled the fair bud as it danced in its mirth, And I left it to moulder and fade on the earth. I passed o'er the valley, the glad sounds of joy Rose soft through the mist, and ascended on high; The fairest were there, and I paused in my flight, And the deep cry of wailing broke wildly that night. I stay not to gather the lone one to earth, I spare not the young in their gay dance of mirth, But I sweep them all on to their home in the grave, I stop not to pity--I stay not to save. I paused in my pathway, for beauty was there; It was beauty too death-like, too cold, and too fair! The deep purple fountain seemed melting away, And the faint pulse of life scarce remembered to play; She had thought on the tomb, she was waiting for me, I gazed, I passed on, and her spirit was free. The clear stream rolled gladly, and bounded along, With ripple, and murmur, and sparkle, and song; The minstrel was tuning his wild harp to love, And sweet, and half sad were the numbers he wove. I passed, and the harp of the bard was unstrung; O'er the stream which rolled deeply, 'twas recklessly hung; The minstrel was not! and I passed on alone, O'er the newly-raised turf and the rudely-carved stone. THE BRIDE'S FAREWELL. BY MARY E. BROOKS. Farewell to thee, To thee, the young home of my heart, farewell! How often will thy form in memory Renew the spell; Each burning tone, Far sweeter than the wild bird's melting note; Across my spirit like a dream by-gone, Their voices float. When rose the song, The life gush of the bosom, fresh and free, There breathed no sorrow as it swept along Thy halls of glee; Oh, when the gay, The merry hearted blend the tide again, Then fling to her, the loved one far away, One kindly strain. The skies are bright That canopy thy bowers, my soul's young rest; And, like thy fairy visions, robed in light, The loveliest: The bird among Thy deep perfumes pours its rich melody; Oh, in the music of that matin song Remember me! Another now, Mother, above thy silvery locks must bend; And when the death-shade gathers on thy brow, Who then will tend Thy fading light? Oh, in its gleam all feebly, tremblingly, The last gush of thy spirit in its flight, Remember me! Sister, one sigh Upon the midnight's balmy breath did float; One love-lit smile beneath the summer sky, One echo note: Oh, never yet, Through love, life, music, feeling, fragrancy, Can I the mingling of those hours forget; Remember me! The chained spell Is strong, my own fair home, that bids us sever; And bound in loveliness to break, no, never! Then fare thee well: And perished here, As from the rosy leaf the dew that fell, I dash from love's young wreath the passing tear; My own bright home, farewell! REFLECTIONS. BY LUCRETIA M. DAVIDSON. [_Written in her Fifteenth year, on seeing an ancient picture of the Virgin Mary._] Roll back, thou tide of time, and tell Of book, of rosary, and bell; Of cloistered nun, with brow of gloom, Immured within her living tomb; Of monks, of saints, and vesper-song, Borne gently by the breeze along; Of deep-toned organ's pealing swell; Of _ave maria_, and funeral knell; Of midnight taper, dim and small, Just glimmering through the high-arched hall; Of gloomy cell, of penance lone, Which can for darkest deeds atone: Roll back, and lift the veil of night, For I would view the anchorite. Yes, there he sits, so sad, so pale, Shuddering at Superstition's tale; Crossing his breast with meagre hand, While saints and priests, a motley band, Arrayed before him, urge their claim To heal in the Redeemer's name; To mount the saintly ladder, (made By every monk, of every grade, From portly abbot, fat and fair, To yon lean starveling, shivering there,) And mounting thus, to usher in The soul, thus ransomed from its sin. And tell me, hapless bigot! why, For what, for whom did Jesus die, If pyramids of saints must rise To form a passage to the skies? And think you man can wipe away With fast and penance, day by day, One single sin, too dark to fade Before a bleeding Saviour's shade? O ye of little faith, beware! For neither shrift, nor saint, nor prayer, Would ought avail ye without Him, Beside whom saints themselves grow dim. Roll back, thou tide of time, and raise The faded forms of other days! Yon time-worn picture, darkly grand, The work of some forgotten hand, Will teach thee half thy mazy way, While Fancy's watch-fires dimly play. Roll back, thou tide of time, and tell Of secret charm, of holy spell, Of Superstition's midnight rite, Of wild Devotion's seraph flight; Of Melancholy's tearful eye, Of the sad votaress' frequent sigh, That trembling from her bosom rose, Divided 'twixt her Saviour's woes And some warm image lingering there, Which, half-repulsed by midnight prayer, Still, like an outcast child, will creep Where sweetly it was wont to sleep, And mingle its unhallowed sigh With cloister-prayer and rosary; Then tell the pale, deluded one Her vows are breathed to God alone; Those vows, which tremulously rise, Love's last, love's sweetest sacrifice. LINES. BY EMMA C. EMBURY. When in the shadow of the tomb This heart shall rest, Oh! lay me where spring flowers bloom On earth's bright breast. Oh! ne'er in vaulted chambers lay My lifeless form; Seek not of such mean, worthless prey To cheat the worm. In this sweet city of the dead I fain would sleep, Where flowers may deck my narrow bed, And night dews weep. But raise not the sepulchral stone To mark the spot; Enough, if by thy heart alone 'Tis ne'er forgot. THE GUARDIAN ANGEL. BY LUCRETIA M. DAVIDSON. I'm thy guardian angel, sweet maid! and I rest In mine own chosen temple, thy innocent breast; At midnight I steal from my sacred retreat, When the chords of thy heart in soft unison beat. When thy bright eye is closed, when thy dark tresses flow In beautiful wreaths o'er thy pillow of snow; O then I watch o'er thee, all pure as thou art, And listen to music which steals from thy heart. Thy smile is the sunshine which gladdens my soul, My tempest the clouds, which around thee may roll; I feast my light form on thy rapture-breathed sighs, And drink at the fount of those beautiful eyes. The thoughts of thy heart are recorded by me; There are some which, half-breathed, half-acknowledged by thee, Steal sweetly and silently o'er thy pure breast, Just ruffling its calmness, then murm'ring to rest. Like a breeze o'er the lake, when it breathlessly lies, With its own mimic mountains, and star-spangled skies; I stretch my light pinions around thee when sleeping, To guard thee from spirits of sorrow and weeping. I breathe o'er thy slumbers sweet dreams of delight, Till you wake but to sigh for the visions of night; Then remember, wherever your pathway may lie, Be it clouded with sorrow, or brilliant with joy; My spirit shall watch thee, wherever thou art, My incense shall rise from the throne of thy heart. Farewell! for the shadows of evening are fled, And the young rays of morning are wreathed round my head. WHAT IS SOLITUDE? BY C. F. HOFFMAN. Not in the shadowy wood, Not in the crag-hung glen, Not where the sleeping echoes brood In caves untrod by men; Not by the sea-swept shore Where loitering surges break, Not on the mountain hoar, Not by the breezeless lake, Not in the desert plain Where man hath never stood, Whether on isle or main-- Not there is Solitude! There are birds in the woodland bowers, Voices in lonely dells, And streams that talk to the listening hours In earth's most secret cells. There is life on the foam-flecked sand By ocean's curling lip, And life on the still lake's strand 'Mid flowers that o'er it dip; There is life in the tossing pines That plume the mountain crest, And life in the courser's mane that shines As he scours the desert's breast. But go to the crowded mart, 'Mid the sordid haunts of men, Go there and ask thy heart, What answer makes it then? Go where the wine-cup's gleaming, In hall or festal grot; Where love-lit eyes are beaming, But Love himself is not!-- Go--if thou wouldst be lonely-- Where the phantom Pleasure's wooed, And own that there--there only-- 'Mid crowds is Solitude. THE BRAVE. BY J. G. BROOKS. Where have the valiant sunk to rest, When their sands of life were numbered? On the downy couch? on the gentle breast Where their youthful visions slumbered? When the mighty passed the gate of death, Did love stand by bewailing? No! but upon war's fiery breath Their blood-dyed flag was sailing! Not on the silent feverish bed, With weeping friends around them, Were the parting prayers of the valiant said, When death's dark angel found them. But in the stern and stormy strife, In the flush of lofty feeling, They yielded to honour the boon of life, Where battle's bolts were pealing; When the hot war-steed, with crimsoned mane Trampled on breasts all stained and gory, Dashed his red hoof on the reeking plain, And shared in the rider's glory. Or seek the brave in their ocean grave, 'Neath the dark and restless water; Seek them beneath the whelming wave, So oft deep dyed with slaughter. There sleep the gallant and the proud, The eagle-eyed and the lion-hearted; For whom the trump of fame rang loud, When the body and soul were parted. Or seek them on fields where the grass grows deep, Where the vulture and the raven hover; There the sons of battle in quiet sleep: And widowed love goes there to weep, That their bright career is over. MORNING. BY LUCRETIA M. DAVIDSON. I come in the breath of the wakened breeze, I kiss the flowers, and I bend the trees; And I shake the dew, which hath fallen by night, From its throne, on the lily's pure bosom of white. Awake thee, when bright from my couch in the sky, I beam o'er the mountains, and come from on high; When my gay purple banners are waving afar; When my herald, gray dawn, hath extinguished each star; When I smile on the woodlands, and bend o'er the lake, Then awake thee, O maiden, I bid thee awake! Thou may'st slumber when all the wide arches of Heaven Glitter bright with the beautiful fires of even; When the moon walks in glory, and looks from on high, O'er the clouds floating far through the clear azure sky, Drifting on like the beautiful vessels of Heaven, To their far away harbour, all silently driven, Bearing on, in their bosoms, the children of light, Who have fled from this dark world of sorrow and night; When the lake lies in calmness and darkness, save where The bright ripple curls, 'neath the smile of a star; When all is in silence and solitude here, Then sleep, maiden, sleep! without sorrow or fear! But when I steal silently over the lake, Awake thee then, maiden, awake! Oh, awake! LAKE GEORGE. BY MRS. E. F. ELLET. Not in the bannered castle Beside the gilded throne, On fields where knightly ranks have strode, In feudal halls--alone The Spirit of the stately mien, Whose presence flings a spell, Fadeless on all around her, In empire loves to dwell. Gray piles and moss-grown cloisters, Call up the shadows vast That linger in their dim domain, Dreams of the visioned past! As sweep the gorgeous pageants by We watch the pictured train, And sigh that aught so glorious Should be so brief and vain. But here a spell yet deeper Breathes from the woods and sky, Proudlier these rocks and waters speak Of hoar antiquity; Here Nature built her ancient realm While yet the world was young, Her monuments of grandeur Unshaken stand, and strong. Here shines the sun of Freedom For ever o'er the deep, Where Freedom's heroes by the shore In peaceful glory sleep; And deeds of high and proud emprize In every breeze are told, The everlasting tribute To hearts that now are cold. Farewell, then, scenes so lovely, If sunset gild your rest, Or the pale starlight gleam upon The water's silvery breast-- Or morning on these glad, green isles In trembling splendour glows-- A holier spell than beauty Hallows your pure repose! LINES WRITTEN IN AN ALBUM. BY W. H. L. BOGART. Like the lone emigrant who seeks a home In the wild regions of the far-off west, And where, as yet, no foot of man hath come, Rears a rude dwelling for his future rest. Like him I have sought out a solitude Where all around me is unsullied yet, And reared a tenement of words as rude As the first hut on Indian prairies set. O'er his poor house ere thrice the seasons tread Their march of storm and sunshine o'er the land, Some lofty pile will rear its haughty head, And sway the soil with high and proud command. And round my verse the better, brighter thought Of beauty and of genius will be placed-- Those gem-like words, with light and music fraught, By manly or by fairy fingers traced. Our fate's the same--the gentle and the proud Will speed their voyage to oblivion's sea, And I shall soon be lost amid the crowd That seek a place within thy memory. THE FADED ONE. BY WILLIS G. CLARK. Gone to the slumber which may know no waking Till the loud requiem of the world shall swell; Gone! where no sound thy still repose is breaking, In a lone mansion through long years to dwell; Where the sweet gales that herald bud and blossom, Pour not their music nor their fragrant breath: A seal is set upon thy budding bosom, A bond of loneliness--a spell of death! Yet 'twas but yesterday that all before thee Shone in the freshness of life's morning hours; Joy's radiant smile was playing briefly o'er thee, And thy light feet impressed but vernal flowers. The restless spirit charmed thy sweet existence, Making all beauteous in youth's pleasant maze, While gladsome hope illumed the onward distance, And lit with sunbeams thy expectant days. How have the garlands of thy childhood withered, And hope's false anthem died upon the air! Death's cloudy tempests o'er thy way have gathered, And his stern bolts have burst in fury there. On thy pale forehead sleeps the shade of even, Youth's braided wreath lies stained in sprinkled dust, Yet looking upward in its grief to Heaven, Love should not mourn thee, save in hope and trust. PROEM TO YAMOYDEN. BY R. C. SANDS.--1820. Go forth, sad fragments of a broken strain, The last that either bard shall e'er essay! The hand can ne'er attempt the chords again, That first awoke them, in a happier day: Where sweeps the ocean breeze its desert way, His requiem murmurs o'er the moaning wave; And he who feebly now prolongs the lay Shall ne'er the minstrel's hallowed honours crave; His harp lies buried deep in that untimely grave! Friend of my youth,[M] with thee began the love Of sacred song; the wont, in golden dreams, 'Mid classic realms of splendours past to rove, O'er haunted steep, and by immortal streams; Where the blue wave, with sparkling bosom gleams Round shores, the mind's eternal heritage, For ever lit by memory's twilight beams; Where the proud dead, that live in storied page, Beckon, with awful port, to glory's earlier age. There would we linger oft, entranc'd, to hear, O'er battle fields the epic thunders roll; Or list, where tragic wail upon the ear, Through Argive palaces shrill echoing, stole; There would we mark, uncurbed by all control, In central heaven, the Theban eagle's flight; Or hold communion with the musing soul Of sage or bard, who sought, 'mid pagan night, In lov'd Athenian groves, for truth's eternal light. Homeward we turned, to that fair land, but late Redeemed from the strong spell that bound it fast, Where mystery, brooding o'er the waters, sate And kept the key, till three millenniums past; When, as creation's noblest work was last, Latest, to man it was vouchsafed, to see Nature's great wonder, long by clouds o'ercast, And veiled in sacred awe, that it might be An empire and a home, most worthy for the free. And here, forerunners strange and meet were found, Of that bless'd freedom, only dreamed before;-- Dark were the morning mists, that lingered round Their birth and story, as the hue they bore. "Earth was their mother;"--or they knew no more, Or would not that their secret should be told; For they were grave and silent; and such lore, To stranger ears, they loved not to unfold, The long-transmitted tales their sires were taught of old. Kind nature's commoners, from her they drew Their needful wants, and learn'd not how to hoard; And him whom strength and wisdom crowned, they knew, But with no servile reverence, as their lord. And on their mountain summits they adored One great, good Spirit, in his high abode, And thence their incense and orisons poured To his pervading presence, that abroad They felt through all his works,--their Father, King, and God. And in the mountain mist, the torrent's spray, The quivering forest, or the glassy flood, Soft falling showers, or hues of orient day, They imaged spirits beautiful and good; But when the tempest roared, with voices rude, Or fierce, red lightning fired the forest pine, Or withering heats untimely seared the wood, The angry forms they saw of powers malign; These they besought to spare, those blest for aid divine. As the fresh sense of life, through every vein, With the pure air they drank, inspiring came, Comely they grew, patient of toil and pain, And as the fleet deer's agile was their frame; Of meaner vices scarce they knew the name; These simple truths went down from sire to son,-- To reverence age,--the sluggish hunter's shame, And craven warrior's infamy to shun,-- And still avenge each wrong, to friends or kindred done. From forest shades they peered, with awful dread, When, uttering flame and thunder from its side, The ocean-monster, with broad wings outspread, Came ploughing gallantly the virgin tide. Few years have pass'd, and all their forests' pride From shores and hills has vanished, with the race, Their tenants erst, from memory who have died, Like airy shapes, which eld was wont to trace, In each green thicket's depths, and lone, sequestered place. And many a gloomy tale, tradition yet Saves from oblivion, of their struggles vain, Their prowess and their wrongs, for rhymer meet, To people scenes, where still their names remain; And so began our young, delighted strain, That would evoke the plumed chieftains brave, And bid their martial hosts arise again, Where Narraganset's tides roll by their grave, And Haup's romantic steeps are piled above the wave. Friend of my youth! with thee began my song, And o'er thy bier its latest accents die; Misled in phantom-peopled realms too long,-- Though not to me the muse averse deny, Sometimes, perhaps, her visions to descry, Such thriftless pastime should with youth be o'er; And he who loved with thee his notes to try, But for thy sake, such idlesse would deplore, And swears to meditate the thankless muse no more. But, no! the freshness of the past shall still Sacred to memory's holiest musings be; When through the ideal fields of song, at will, He roved and gathered chaplets wild with thee; When, reckless of the world, alone and free, Like two proud barks, we kept our careless way, That sail by moonlight o'er the tranquil sea; Their white apparel and their streamers gay, Bright gleaming o'er the main, beneath the ghostly ray;-- And downward, far, reflected in the clear Blue depths, the eye their fairy tackling sees; So buoyant, they do seem to float in air, And silently obey the noiseless breeze; Till, all too soon, as the rude winds may please, They part for distant ports: the gales benign Swift wafting, bore, by Heaven's all-wise decrees, To its own harbour sure, where each divine And joyous vision, seen before in dreams, is thine. Muses of Helicon! melodious race Of Jove and golden-haired Mnemosyné; Whose art from memory blots each sadder trace, And drives each scowling form of grief away! Who, round the violet fount, your measures gay Once trod, and round the altar of great Jove; Whence, wrapt in silvery clouds, your nightly way Ye held, and ravishing strains of music wove, That soothed the Thunderer's soul, and filled his courts above. Bright choir! with lips untempted, and with zone Sparkling, and unapproached by touch profane; Ye, to whose gladsome bosoms ne'er was known The blight of sorrow, or the throb of pain; Rightly invoked,--if right the elected swain, On your own mountain's side ye taught of yore, Whose honoured hand took not your gift in vain, Worthy the budding laurel-bough it bore,--[N] Farewell! a long farewell! I worship you no more. THE INDIAN. BY JONATHAN LAWRENCE, JUN. Away, away to forest shades! Fly, fly with me the haunts of men! I would not give my sunlit glades, My talking stream, and silent glen, For all the pageantry of slaves, Their fettered lives and trampled graves. Away from wealth! our wampum strings Ask not the toil, the woes of them From whom the lash, the iron wrings The golden dross, the tear-soiled gem; Yet bind our hearts in the pure tie That gold or gems could never buy. And power! what is it ye who rule The hands without the souls? oh, ye Can tell how mean the tinselled fool, With all his hollow mockery! The slave of slaves who hate, yet bow, With serving lip but scorning brow. And love, dear love! how can they feel The wild desire, the burning flame, That thrills each pulse and bids us kneel-- The power of the adored name; The glance that sins in the met eye, Yet loved for its idolatry! They never knew the perfect bliss, To clasp in the entwined bower Her trembling form, to steal the kiss She would deny but hath not power; To list that voice that charms the grove, And trembles when it tells of love. Nor have they felt the pride, the thrill, When bounding for the fated deer; O'er rock and sod, o'er vale and hill, The hunter flies, nor dreams of fear, And brings his maid the evening prey, To speak more love than words can say. Have they in death the sod, the stones, The silence of the shading tree; Where glory decks the storied bones Of him whose life, whose death, was free; And minstrel mourns his arm whose blow The foeman cowered and quailed below? No; they, confined and fettered, they The sons of sires to fame unknown, With nerveless hands and souls of clay, Half life, half death, loathe, but live on; And sink unsung, ignobly lie In dark oblivion's apathy. Poor fools! the wild and mountain chase Would rend their frail and sickly forms; But for their God, how would they face, Our bands of fire, our sons of storms; Breasts that have never recked of fears, And eyes that leave to women, tears. They tell us of their kings, who gave To them our wild, unfettered shore; To them! why let them chain the wave, And hush its everlasting roar! Then may we own their sway, but hark! Our warriors never miss their mark. Away, away from such as these! Free as the wild bird on the wing, I see my own, my loved green trees, I hear our black-haired maidens sing; I fly from such a world as this, To rove, to love, to live in bliss! MIDNIGHT THOUGHTS. BY WILLIAM DUER. Fair orb! so peacefully sublime, In silence rolling high, Know'st thou of passion, or of crime, Or earthly vanity? In that bright world can lust abide, Or murder bare his arm? With thee are wars, and kings, and pride, And the loud trump's alarm? What beings, by what motives led, Inhale thy morning breeze? Doth man upon thy mountains tread, Or float upon thy seas? Say, whence are they? and what their fate? Whom whirls around thy ball? Their present and their future state, Their hopes and fears recall? Canst thou of a Redeemer tell, Or a Betrayer's kiss? Their's is a Heaven or a Hell? Eternal woe or bliss? Can infidelity exist, And gaze upon that sky? Here would I bid the Atheist God's finger to deny. What horrid sounds! what horrid sights! What wretched blood is spilt! While thou, and all the eternal lights, Shine conscious on the guilt? Thou hear'st red Murder's victims cry; Thou mark'st Lust's stealthy pace; And Avarice hide his heap and sigh; And Rapine's reckless face. In thy pale light the Suicide, By some deep lonely lake, Or from the headlong torrent's side Doth the vain world forsake. And often, ere thy course is run, Thy cold, uncertain light Gleams where the culprit's skeleton Swings to the winds of night. A light cloud hangs upon thy brow, (What foul deed would it hide?) 'Tis gone: thine orb, unshaded now, Looks down on human pride. And now the midnight hour invites Th' accursed witch's vow, While to her thrice accursed rites Sole witness rollest thou! Lo! underneath yon falling tower The tottering beldame seeks Herbs, of some hidden evil power, While muttered charms she speaks. Or where some noisome cavern yawns, Where vipers get their food, Or where the Nile's huge offspring spawns Her pestilential brood: There--while the bubbling cauldron sings Beneath their eldritch glance-- As wild their fiendish laughter rings, The haggard sisters dance. Can sin endure thy majesty, Nor thy pure presence fly? 'Tis like the sad severity Of a fond father's eye. There, where no mortal eye can see, No mortal voice can tell, Wisdom hath marked thy path to be Th' Almighty's sentinel. LINES WRITTEN ON THE COVER OF A PRAYER BOOK. BY THOMAS SLIDELL. There is a tree, whose boughs are clad With foliage that never dies; Whose fruits perennially thrive, And whose tall top salutes the skies. There is a flower of loveliest hues, No mildews blast its changeless bloom; It smiles at the rude tempest's wrath, And breathes a still more sweet perfume. There is a star, whose constant rays Beam brightest in the darkest hour, And cheer the weary pilgrim's heart, Though storms around his pathway lower. That tree, the Tree of Life is called, That flower blooms on Virtue's stem, That star, whose rays are never veiled, Is the bright Star of Bethlehem. ODE TO JAMESTOWN. BY J. K. PAULDING. Old cradle of an infant world, In which a nestling empire lay, Struggling awhile, ere she unfurl'd, Her gallant wing and soar'd away; All hail! thou birth-place of the glowing west, Thou seem'st the towering eagle's ruin'd nest! What solemn recollections throng, What touching visions rise, As wand'ring these old stones among, I backward turn mine eyes, And see the shadows of the dead flit round, Like spirits, when the last dread trump shall sound. The wonders of an age combin'd In one short moment memory supplies, They throng upon my waken'd mind, As time's dark curtains rise. The volume of a hundred buried years, Condens'd in one bright sheet, appears. I hear the angry ocean rave, I see the lonely little barque Scudding along the crested wave, Freighted like old Noah's ark, As o'er the drowned earth it whirl'd, With the forefathers of another world. I see a train of exiles stand, Amid the desert, desolate, The fathers of my native land, The daring pioneers of fate, Who brav'd the perils of the sea and earth, And gave a boundless empire birth. I see the gloomy Indian range His woodland empire, free as air; I see the gloomy forest change, The shadowy earth laid bare; And, where the red man chas'd the bounding deer, The smiling labours of the white appear. I see the haughty warrior gaze In wonder or in scorn, As the pale faces sweat to raise Their scanty fields of corn, While he, the monarch of the boundless wood, By sport, or hair-brain'd rapine, wins his food. A moment, and the pageant's gone; The red men are no more; The pale fac'd strangers stand alone Upon the river's shore; And the proud wood king, who their arts disdain'd, Finds but a bloody grave where once he reign'd. The forest reels beneath the stroke Of sturdy woodman's axe; The earth receives the white man's yoke, And pays her willing tax Of fruits, and flowers, and golden harvest fields, And all that nature to blithe labour yields. Then growing hamlets rear their heads, And gathering crowds expand, Far as my fancy's vision spreads, O'er many a boundless land, Till what was once a world of savage strife, Teems with the richest gifts of social life. Empire to empire swift succeeds, Each happy, great, and free; One empire still another breeds, A giant progeny, To war upon the pigmy gods of earth, The tyrants, to whom ignorance gave birth. Then, as I turn, my thoughts to trace The fount whence these rich waters sprung, I glance towards this lonely place, And find it, these rude stones among. Here rest the sires of millions, sleeping sound, The Argonauts, the golden fleece that found. Their names have been forgotten long; The stone, but not a word, remains; They cannot live in deathless song, Nor breathe in pious strains. Yet this sublime obscurity, to me More touching is, than poet's rhapsody. They live in millions that now breathe; They live in millions yet unborn, And pious gratitude shall wreathe As bright a crown as e'er was worn, And hang it on the green leav'd bough, That whispers to the nameless dead below. No one that inspiration drinks; No one that loves his native land; No one that reasons, feels, or thinks, Can 'mid these lonely ruins stand, Without a moisten'd eye, a grateful tear Of reverent gratitude to those that moulder here. The mighty shade now hovers round-- Of HIM whose strange, yet bright career, Is written on this sacred ground In letters that no time shall sere; Who in the old world smote the turban'd crew, And founded Christian Empires in the new. And SHE! the glorious Indian maid, The tutelary of this land, The angel of the woodland shade, The miracle of God's own hand, Who join'd man's heart to woman's softest grace, And thrice redeem'd the scourgers of her race. Sister of charity and love, Whose life-blood was soft Pity's tide, Dear Goddess of the Sylvan grove. Flower of the Forest, nature's pride, He is no man who does not bend the knee, And she no woman who is not like thee! Jamestown, and Plymouth's hallow'd rock, To me shall ever sacred be-- I care not who my themes may mock, Or sneer at them and me. I envy not the brute who here can stand, Without a prayer for his own native land. And if the recreant crawl _her_ earth, Or breathe Virginia's air, Or, in New-England claim his birth, From the old Pilgrim's there, He is a bastard, if he dare to mock, Old Jamestown's shrine, or Plymouth's famous rock. LOOK ALOFT. BY JONATHAN LAWRENCE, JUN. [The following lines were suggested by an anecdote said to have been related by the late Dr. Godman, of the ship-boy who was about to fall from the rigging, and was only saved by the mate's characteristic exclamation, "Look aloft, you lubber."] In the tempest of life, when the wave and the gale Are around and above, if thy footing should fail-- If thine eye should grow dim and thy caution depart-- "Look aloft" and be firm, and be fearless of heart. If the friend, who embraced in prosperity's glow With a smile for each joy and a tear for each woe, Should betray thee when sorrow like clouds are arrayed, "Look aloft" to the friendship which never shall fade. Should the visions which hope spreads in light to thine eye, Like the tints of the rainbow, but brighten to fly, Then turn, and through tears of repentant regret, "Look aloft" to the sun that is never to set. Should they who are dearest, the son of thy heart-- The wife of thy bosom--in sorrow depart, "Look aloft," from the darkness and dust of the tomb, To that soil where "affection is ever in bloom." And oh! when death comes in terrors, to cast, His fears on the future, his pall on the past, In that moment of darkness, with hope in thy heart, And a smile in thine eye, "look aloft" and depart! FRAGMENT. BY WILLIAM LIVINGSTON.--1747. Father of Light! exhaustless source of good! Supreme, eternal, self-existent God! Before the beamy sun dispensed a ray, Flamed in the azure vault, and gave the day; Before the glimmering moon with borrow'd light Shone queen amid the silver host of night, High in the heavens, thou reign'dst superior Lord, By suppliant angels worshipp'd and adored. With the celestial choir then let me join In cheerful praises to the power divine. To sing thy praise, do thou, O God! inspire A mortal breast with more than mortal fire. In dreadful majesty thou sitt'st enthroned, With light encircled, and with glory crown'd: Through all infinitude extends thy reign, For thee, nor heaven, nor heaven of heavens contain; But though thy throne is fix'd above the sky Thy omnipresence fills immensity. BYRON. BY LUCRETIA M. DAVIDSON. His faults were great, his virtues less, His mind a burning lamp of Heaven; His talents were bestowed to bless, But were as vainly lost as given. His was a harp of heavenly sound, The numbers wild, and bold, and clear; But ah! some demon, hovering round, Tuned its sweet chords to Sin and Fear. His was a mind of giant mould, Which grasped at all beneath the skies; And his, a heart, so icy cold, That virtue in its recess dies. JOY AND SORROW. BY J. G. BROOKS. Joy kneels at morning's rosy prime, In worship to the rising sun; But Sorrow loves the calmer time, When the day-god his course hath run; When night is on her shadowy car, Pale Sorrow wakes while Joy doth sleep; And guided by the evening star, She wanders forth to muse and weep. Joy loves to cull the summer flower, And wreath it round his happy brow; But when the dark autumnal hour Hath laid the leaf and blossoms low; When the frail bud hath lost its worth, And Joy hath dashed it from his crest; Then Sorrow takes it from the earth, To wither on her withered breast. TO THE EVENING STAR. BY LUCRETIA M. DAVIDSON. Thou brightly-glittering star of even, Thou gem upon the brow of Heaven, Oh! were this fluttering spirit free, How quick 'twould spread its wings to thee. How calmly, brightly dost thou shine, Like the pure lamp in Virtue's shrine! Sure the fair world which thou may'st boast Was never ransomed, never lost. There, beings pure as Heaven's own air, Their hopes, their joys together share; While hovering angels touch the string, And seraphs spread the sheltering wing. There cloudless days and brilliant nights, Illumed by Heaven's refulgent lights; There seasons, years, unnoticed roll, And unregretted by the soul. Thou little sparkling star of even, Thou gem upon an azure Heaven, How swiftly will I soar to thee When this imprisoned soul is free. THE FALLS OF THE PASSAIC. BY WASHINGTON IRVING. In a wild, tranquil vale, fringed with forests of green, Where nature had fashion'd a soft, sylvan scene, The retreat of the ring-dove, the haunt of the deer, Passaic in silence roll'd gentle and clear. No grandeur of prospect astonish'd the sight, No abruptness sublime mingled awe with delight; Here the wild flow'ret blossom'd, the elm proudly waved, And pure was the current the green bank that laved. But the spirit that ruled o'er the thick tangled wood, And deep in its gloom fix'd his murky abode, Who loved the wild scene that the whirlwinds deform, And gloried in thunder, and lightning and storm; All flush'd from the tumult of battle he came, Where the red men encounter'd the children of flame, While the noise of the war-whoop still rang in his ears, And the fresh bleeding scalp as a trophy he bears: With a glance of disgust he the landscape survey'd, With its fragrant wild flowers, its wide-waving shade;-- Where Passaic meanders through margins of green, So transparent its waters, its surface serene. He rived the green hills, the wild woods he laid low; He taught the pure stream in rough channels to flow; He rent the rude rock, the steep precipice gave, And hurl'd down the chasm the thundering wave. Countless moons have since rolled in the long lapse of time-- Cultivation has softened those features sublime; The axe of the white man has lighten'd the shade, And dispell'd the deep gloom of the thicketed glade. But the stranger still gazes with wondering eye, On the rocks rudely torn, and groves mounted on high; Still loves on the cliff's dizzy borders to roam, Where the torrent leaps headlong embosom'd in foam. DRINK AND AWAY. BY THE REV. WILLIAM CROSWELL. [There is a beautiful rill in Barbary received into a large basin, which bears name signifying "Drink and Away," from the great danger of meeting with gues and assassins.--DR. SHAW.] Up! pilgrim and rover, Redouble thy haste! Nor rest thee till over Life's wearisome waste. Ere the wild forest ranger Thy footsteps betray To trouble and danger,-- Oh, drink and away! Here lurks the dark savage By night and by day, To rob and to ravage, Nor scruples to slay. He waits for the slaughter: The blood of his prey Shall stain the still water,-- Then drink and away! With toil though thou languish, The mandate obey, Spur on, though in anguish, There's death in delay! No blood-hound, want-wasted, Is fiercer than they:-- Pass by it untested-- Or drink and away! Though sore be the trial, Thy God is thy stay, Though deep the denial, Yield not in dismay, But, wrapt in high vision, Look on to the day When the fountains Elysian Thy thirst shall allay. There shalt thou for ever Enjoy thy repose Where life's gentle river Eternally flows, Yea, there shalt thou rest thee For ever and aye, With none to molest thee-- Then, drink and away. THE HUDSON. BY MARGARETTA V. FAUGERES, 1793. Through many a blooming wild and woodland green The Hudson's sleeping waters winding stray; Now 'mongst the hills its silvery waves are seen, And now through arching willows steal away: Now more majestic rolls the ample tide, Tall waving elms its clovery borders shade, And many a stately dome, in ancient pride, And hoary grandeur, there exalts its head. There trace the marks of culture's sunburnt hand, The honeyed buck-wheat's clustering blossoms view, Dripping rich odours, mark the beard-grain bland, The loaded orchard, and the flax field blue; The grassy hill, the quivering poplar grove, The copse of hazel, and the tufted bank, The long green valley where the white flocks rove, The jutting rock, o'erhung with ivy dank; The tall pines waving on the mountain's brow, Whose lofty spires catch day's last lingering beam; The bending willow weeping o'er the stream, The brook's soft gurglings, and the garden's glow. Low sunk between the Alleganian hills, For many a league the sullen waters glide, And the deep murmur of the crowded tide, With pleasing awe the wondering voyager fills. On the green summit of yon lofty clift A peaceful runnel gurgles clear and slow, Then down the craggy steep-side dashing swift, Tremendous falls in the white surge below. Here spreads a clovery lawn its verdure far, Around it mountains vast their forests rear, And long ere day hath left its burnish'd car, The dews of night have shed their odours there. There hangs a loüring rock across the deep; Hoarse roar the waves its broken base around; Through its dark caverns noisy whirlwinds sweep, While Horror startles at the fearful sound. The shivering sails that cut the fluttering breeze, Glide through these winding rocks with airy sweep: Beneath the cooling glooms of waving trees, And sloping pastures speck'd with fleecy sheep. TRENTON FALLS, NEAR UTICA. BY ANTHONY BLEECKER. _Ob: 1827._ Ye hills, who have for ages stood Sublimely in your solitude, Listening the wild water's roar, As thundering down, from steep to steep, Along your wave-worn sides they sweep, Dashing their foam from shore to shore. Wild birds, that loved the deep recess, Fell beast that roved the wilderness, And savage men once hover'd round: But startled at your bellowing waves, Your frowning cliffs, and echoing caves, Affrighted fled the enchanted ground. How changed the scene!--your lofty trees, Which bent but to the mountain breeze, Have sunk beneath the woodman's blade; New sun-light through your forest pours, Paths wind along your sides and shores, And footsteps all your haunts invade. Now boor, and beau, and lady fair, In gay costume each day repair, Where thy proud rocks exposed stand, While echo, from her old retreats, With babbling tongue strange words repeats, From babblers on your stony strand. And see--the torrent's rocky floor, With names and dates all scribbled o'er, Vile blurs on nature's heraldry; O bid your river in its race, These mean memorials soon efface, And keep your own proud album free. Languid thy tides, and quell'd thy powers, But soon Autumnus with his showers, Shall all thy wasted strength restore; Then will these ramblers down thy steep, With terror pale their distance keep, Nor dare to touch thy trembling shore. But spare, Oh! river, in thy rage, One name upon thy stony page; 'Tis hers--the fairest of the fair; And when she comes these scenes to scan, Then tell her, Echo, if you can, His humble name who wrote it there. THE DUMB MINSTREL. BY JAMES NACK. And am I doom'd to be denied for ever The blessings that to all around are given? And shall those links be re-united ever, That bound me to mankind till they were riven In childhood's day? Alas! how soon to sever From social intercourse, the doom of heaven Was pass'd upon me! And the hope how vain, That the decree may be recall'd again. Amid a throng in deep attention bound, To catch the accents that from others fall, The flow of eloquence the heavenly sound Breathed from the soul of melody, while all Instructed or delighted list around, Vacant unconsciousness must _me_ enthrall! I can but watch each animated face, And there attempt th' inspiring theme to trace. Unheard, unheeded are the lips by _me_, To others that unfold some heaven-born art, And melody--Oh, dearest melody! How had thine accents, thrilling to my heart, Awaken'd all its strings to sympathy, Bidding the spirit at thy magic start! How had my heart responsive to the strain, Throbb'd in love's wild delight or soothing pain. In vain--alas, in vain! thy numbers roll-- Within my heart no echo they inspire; Though form'd by nature in thy sweet control, To melt with tenderness, or glow with fire, Misfortune closed the portals of the soul; And till an Orpheus rise to sweep the lyre, That can to animation kindle stone, To me thy thrilling power must be unknown. THE GREEN ISLE OF LOVERS. BY R. C. SANDS. They say that afar in the land of the west, Where the bright golden sun sinks in glory to rest, 'Mid fens where the hunter ne'er ventured to tread, A fair lake unruffled and sparkling is spread; Where, lost in his course, the rapt Indian discovers, In distance seen dimly, the green isle of lovers. There verdure fades never; immortal in bloom, Soft waves the magnolia its groves of perfume; And low bends the branch with rich fruitage depress'd, All glowing like gems in the crowns of the east; There the bright eye of nature, in mild glory hovers: 'Tis the land of the sunbeam,--the green isle of lovers! Sweet strains wildly float on the breezes that kiss The calm-flowing lake round that region of bliss; Where, wreathing their garlands of amaranth, fair choirs Glad measures still weave to the sound that inspires The dance and the revel, 'mid forests that cover On high with their shade the green isle of the lover. But fierce as the snake with his eyeballs of fire, When his scales are all brilliant and glowing with ire, Are the warriors to all, save the maids of their isle, Whose law is their will, whose life is their smile; From beauty there valour and strength are not rovers, And peace reigns supreme in the green isle of lovers. And he who has sought to set foot on its shore, In mazes perplex'd, has beheld it no more; It fleets on the vision, deluding the view, Its banks still retire as the hunters pursue; O! who in this vain world of wo shall discover, The home undisturb'd, the green isle of the lover! THAT SILENT MOON. BY THE RT. REV. G. W. DOANE. That silent moon, that silent moon, Careering now through cloudless sky, Oh! who shall tell what varied scenes Have pass'd beneath her placid eye, Since first, to light this wayward earth, She walked in tranquil beauty forth. How oft has guilt's unhallow'd hand, And superstition's senseless rite, And loud, licentious revelry, Profaned her pure and holy light: Small sympathy is hers, I ween, With sights like these, that virgin queen. But dear to her, in summer eve, By rippling wave, or tufted grove, When hand in hand is purely clasp'd, And heart meets heart in holy love, To smile, in quiet loneliness, And hear each whisper'd vow and bless. Dispersed along the world's wide way, When friends are far, and fond ones rove, How powerful she to wake the thought, And start the tear for those we love! Who watch, with us, at night's pale noon, And gaze upon that silent moon. How powerful, too, to hearts that mourn, The magic of that moonlight sky, To bring again the vanish'd scenes, The happy eves of days gone by; Again to bring, 'mid bursting tears, The loved, the lost of other years. And oft she looks, that silent moon, On lonely eyes that wake to weep, In dungeon dark, or sacred cell, Or couch, whence pain has banish'd sleep: Oh! softly beams that gentle eye, On those who mourn, and those who die. But beam on whomsoe'er she will, And fall where'er her splendour may, There's pureness in her chasten'd light, There's comfort in her tranquil ray: What power is hers to soothe the heart-- What power, the trembling tear to start! The dewy morn let others love, Or bask them in the noontide ray; There's not an hour but has its charm, From dawning light to dying day:-- But oh! be mine a fairer boon-- That silent moon, that silent moon! TO A CIGAR. BY SAMUEL LOW.--1800. Sweet antidote to sorrow, toil, and strife, Charm against discontent and wrinkled care. Who knows thy power can never know despair; Who knows thee not, one solace lacks of life: When cares oppress, or when the busy day Gives place to tranquil eve, a single puff Can drive even want and lassitude away, And give a mourner happiness enough. From thee when curling clouds of incense rise, They hide each evil that in prospect lies; But when in evanescence fades thy smoke, Ah! what, dear sedative, my cares shall smother? If thou evaporate, the charm is broke, Till I, departing taper, light another. HOPE. BY J. R. DRAKE. See through yon cloud that rolls in wrath, One little star benignant peep, To light along their trackless path The wanderers of the stormy deep. And thus, oh Hope! thy lovely form In sorrow's gloomy night shall be The sun that looks through cloud and storm Upon a dark and moonless sea. When heaven is all serene and fair, Full many a brighter gem we meet; 'Tis when the tempest hovers there, Thy beam is most divinely sweet. The rainbow, when the sun declines, Like faithless friend will disappear; Thy light, dear star! more brightly shines When all is wail and weeping here. And though Aurora's stealing beam May wake a morning of delight, 'Tis only thy consoling gleam Will smile amid affliction's night. THE LAKE OF CAYOSTÊA. BY ROBERT BARKER. _Ob: 1831, æt. 27._ Thy wave has ne'er by gondolier Been dash'd aside with flashing oar, Nor festive train to music's strain Performed the dance upon thy shore. But there, at night, beneath the light Of silent moon and twinkling ray, The Indian's boat is seen to float, And track its lonely way. The Indian maid, in forest glade, Of flowers that earliest grow, And fragrant leaves, a garland weaves To deck her warrior's brow. And when away, at break of day, She hies her to her shieling dear, She sings so gay a roundelay, That echo stops to hear. Would it were mine to join with thine, And dwell for ever here, In forest wild with nature's child, By the silent Cayost[=e]a. My joy with thee would ever be Along these banks to roam; And fortune take beside the lake, Whose clime is freedom's home. THE AMERICAN FLAG. BY J. R. DRAKE. When Freedom from her mountain height Unfurled her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of night, And set the stars of glory there. She mingled with its gorgeous dyes The milky baldric of the skies, And striped its pure celestial white, With streakings of the morning light; Then from his mansion in the sun She called her eagle bearer down, And gave into his mighty hand The symbol of her chosen land. Majestic monarch of the cloud, Who rear'st aloft thy regal form, To hear the tempest trumpings loud And see the lightning lances driven, When strive the warriors of the storm, And rolls the thunder-drum of heaven, Child of the sun! to thee 'tis given To guard the banner of the free, To hover in the sulphur smoke, To ward away the battle stroke, And bid its blendings shine afar, Like rainbows on the cloud of war, The harbingers of victory! Flag of the brave! thy folds shall fly, The sign of hope and triumph high, When speaks the signal trumpet tone, And the long line comes gleaming on. Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet, Has dimm'd the glistening bayonet, Each soldier eye shall brightly turn To where thy sky-born glories burn; And as his springing steps advance, Catch war and vengeance from the glance. And when the cannon-mouthings loud Heave in wild wreaths the battle shroud, And gory sabres rise and fall Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall; Then shall thy meteor glances glow, And cowering foes shall shrink beneath Each gallant arm that strikes below That lovely messenger of death. Flag of the seas! on ocean wave Thy stars shall glitter o'er the brave; When death, careering on the gale, Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail, And frighted waves rush wildly back Before the broadside's reeling rack, Each dying wanderer of the sea Shall look at once to heaven and thee, And smile to see thy splendours fly In triumph o'er his closing eye. Flag of the free heart's hope and home! By angel hands to valour given; Thy stars have lit the welkin dome, And all thy hues were born in heaven. For ever float that standard sheet! Where breathes the foe but falls before us, With Freedom's soil beneath our feet, And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us? MORNING HYMN. _Genesis_ i. 3. BY C. F. HOFFMAN. "Let there be light!" The Eternal spoke, And from the abyss where darkness rode The earliest dawn of nature broke, And light around creation flow'd. The glad earth smiled to see the day, The first-born day came blushing in; The young day smiled to shed its ray Upon a world untouched by sin. "Let there be light!" O'er heaven and earth, The God who first the day-beam pour'd, Whispered again his fiat forth, And shed the Gospel's light abroad. And, like the dawn, its cheering rays On rich and poor were meant to fall, Inspiring their Redeemer's praise In lonely cot and lordly hall. Then come, when in the Orient first Flushes the signal light for prayer; Come with the earliest beams that burst From God's bright throne of glory there. Come kneel to Him who through the night Hath watched above thy sleeping soul, To Him whose mercies, like his light, Are shed abroad from pole to pole. BRONX. BY J. R. DRAKE. I sat me down upon a green bank-side, Skirting the smooth edge of a gentle river, Whose waters seemed unwillingly to glide, Like parting friends who linger while they sever; Enforced to go, yet seeming still unready, Backward they wind their way in many a wistful eddy. Gray o'er my head the yellow-vested willow Ruffled its hoary top in the fresh breezes, Glancing in light, like spray on a green billow, Or the fine frost-work which young winter freezes; When first his power in infant pastime trying, Congeals sad autumn's tears on the dead branches lying. From rocks around hung the loose ivy dangling, And in the clefts sumach of liveliest green, Bright ising-stars the little beach was spangling, The gold-cup sorrel from his gauzy screen Shone like a fairy crown, enchased and beaded, Left on some morn, when light flashed in their eyes unheeded. The hum-bird shook his sun-touched wings around, The bluefinch caroll'd in the still retreat; The antic squirrel capered on the ground Where lichens made a carpet for his feet: Through the transparent waves, the ruddy minkle Shot up in glimmering sparks his red fin's tiny twinkle. There were dark cedars with loose mossy tresses White powdered dog-trees, and stiff hollies flaunting Gaudy as rustics in their May-day dresses, Blue pelloret from purple leaves upslanting A modest gaze, like eyes of a young maiden Shining beneath dropt lids the evening of her wedding. The breeze fresh springing from the lips of morn, Kissing the leaves, and sighing so to lose 'em, The winding of the merry locust's horn, The glad spring gushing from the rock's bare bosom: Sweet sights, sweet sounds, all sights, all sounds excelling, Oh! 'twas a ravishing spot formed for a poet's dwelling. And did I leave thy loveliness, to stand Again in the dull world of earthly blindness? Pained with the pressure of unfriendly hands, Sick of smooth looks, agued with icy kindness? Left I for this thy shades, where none intrude, To prison wandering thought and mar sweet solitude? Yet I will look upon thy face again, My own romantic Bronx, and it will be A face more pleasant than the face of men. Thy waves are old companions, I shall see A well-remembered form in each old tree, And hear a voice long loved in thy wild minstrelsy. THE STORM-KING. BY ROSWELL PARK. The mist descended from the snow That whiten'd o'er the cliff; The clouds were gather'd round its brow, And solemn darkness reign'd below The peak of Teneriffe. For on that rocky peak and high, Magnificent and lone, The awful _Storm-King_ of the sky, Beyond the reach of mortal eye, Had rear'd his cloudy throne. By him the raging winds unfurl'd, Swept o'er the prostrate land; And thence, above the affrighted world, The flashing thunderbolts were hurl'd Forth from his red right hand.-- Uprising from his cave of jet, While mists obscured his form, With streaming locks and vesture wet, The _Spirit_ of the ocean met The _Spirit_ of the storm. "And why so madly dost thou dare, Proud Spirit of the sea, To tempt the monarch of the air, With the whirlwind's rage and the lightning's glare? What seekest thou of me?" "I have risen afar from my coral caves, Where the pearls are sparkling bright, To roam o'er the isles I have girt with my waves; And I hurl defiance at thee and thy slaves, And I challenge thee here to the fight!" "Take this in return!" and the thunderbolt rush'd From the midst of a cloud of fire; The tempest forth from his nostrils gush'd, And the island forest his footsteps crush'd, In the burning of his ire. Now fierce o'er the waters mad hurricanes boom, And the depths of the ocean uprend; Now the waves lash the skies with their torrents of foam, And whirlwinds and billows in furious gloom, Meet, mingle, and fiercely contend. But the monarch of ocean spurns his thrall, And evades his fierce controul;-- Away in his ice-clad crystal hall, He still reigns absolute monarch of all That surrounds his frozen pole. The day breaks forth, and the storm is past,-- Again are the elements free; But many a vessel is still sinking fast, And many a mariner rests at last, In the bosom of the sea! SONG--ROSALIE CLARE. BY C. F. HOFFMAN. Who owns not she's peerless--who calls her not fair-- Who questions the beauty of Rosalie Clare? Let him saddle his courser and spur to the field, And though coated in proof, he must perish or yield; For no gallant can splinter--no charger can dare The lance that is couched for young Rosalie Clare. When goblets are flowing, and wit at the board Sparkles high, while the blood of the red grape is poured, And fond wishes for fair ones around offered up From each lip that is wet with the dew of the cup,-- What name on the brimmer floats oftener there, Or is whispered more warmly, than Rosalie Clare? They may talk of the land of the olive and vine-- Of the maids of the Ebro, the Arno, or Rhine;-- Of the Houris that gladden the East with their smiles, Where the sea's studded over with green summer isles; But what flower of far away clime can compare With the blossom of ours--bright Rosalie Clare? Who owns not she's peerless--who calls her not fair? Let him meet but the glances of Rosalie Clare! Let him list to her voice--let him gaze on her form-- And if, hearing and seeing, his soul do not warm, Let him go breathe it out in some less happy air Than that which is blessed by sweet Rosalie Clare. TO A PACKET SHIP. BY ROSWELL PARK. Speed, gallant bark! to thy home o'er the wave! The clouds gather dark, and the mad billows rave;-- The tempest blows o'er thee, and scatters the spray That lies in thy wake, as thou wingest thy way. Speed, gallant bark! to the land of the free, The home of the happy, beyond the wide sea! Dear friends and near kindred, the lovely and fair, Are waiting, impatient, to welcome thee there! Speed, gallant bark! there's a seat at the board, Which the dame and the damsel reserve for their lord; And the fond-hearted maiden is sighing in vain, To welcome her long-absent lover again. Speed, gallant bark! richer cargo is thine, Than Brazilian gem, or Peruvian mine; And the treasures thou bearest, thy destiny wait; For they, if thou perish, must share in thy fate. Speed, gallant bark! though the land is afar, And the storm-clouds above thee have veil'd every star; The needle shall guide thee, the helm shall direct, And the God of the tempest thy pathway protect! Speed, gallant bark! though the lightning may flash; And over thy deck the huge surges may dash;-- Thy sails are all reef'd, and thy streamers are high; Unheeded and harmless the billows roll by! Speed, gallant bark! the tornado is past; Staunch and secure thou hast weather'd the blast; Now spread thy full sails to the wings of the morn, And soon the glad harbour shall greet thy return! MOONLIGHT. BY ROBERT BARKER. How dear to love the moonlight hour, Beneath the calm transparent ether, It seems as if by magic power They breathe in unison together. When forest glen and fountain bright Are tinged with shades of mellow light, And every earthly sound is still Save murmur of the mountain rill; 'Tis then to lull the breast's commotion, And waken every soft emotion, To charm from sorrow's cheek her tears, And place the smiles of rapture there, "Celestial music of the spheres" Comes floating on the evening air. 'Tis then that fancy wings her flight Beyond the bounds to mortals given; To regions where the lamps of night Illume the path which leads to heaven. 'Tis then she holds communion sweet With seraphs round the eternal throne, Where long-departed spirits meet, To worship him who sits thereon. 'Tis then man dreams of Paradise, If aught he dreams of place like this, 'Tis then he breathes the crystal air, Which Peris breathe who wander there, And sips the fount of Native Love Found no where but in heaven above. SONG. BY J. R. DRAKE. 'Tis not the beam of her bright blue eye, Nor the smile of her lip of rosy dye, Nor the dark brown wreaths of her glossy hair, Nor her changing cheek, so rich and rare. Oh! these are the sweets of a fairy dream, The changing hues of an April sky; They fade like dew in the morning beam, Or the passing zephyr's odour'd sigh. 'Tis a dearer spell that bids me kneel, 'Tis the heart to love, and the soul to feel: 'Tis the mind of light, and the spirit free, And the bosom that heaves alone for me. Oh! these are the sweets that kindly stay From youth's gay morning to age's night; When beauty's rainbow tints decay, Love's torch still burns with a holy light. Soon will the bloom of the fairest fade, And love will droop in the cheerless shade, Or if tears should fall on his wing of joy, It will hasten the flight of the laughing boy. But oh! the light of the constant soul Nor time can darken nor sorrow dim; Though we may weep in life's mingled bowl, Love still shall hover around its brim. LÜTZOW'S WILD CHASE. [_Translated from the German of Körner._] BY ROSWELL PARK. What gleams from yon wood in the splendour of day? Hark! hear its wild din rushing nearer! It hither approaches in gloomy array, While loud sounding horns peal their blast on its way, The soul overwhelming with terror! Those swart companions you view in the race,-- Those are Lützow's roving, wild, venturous chase! What swiftly moves on through yon dark forest glade, From mountain to mountain deploying? They place themselves nightly in ambuscade, They shout the hurrah, and they draw the keen blade, The French usurpers destroying! Those swart Yagers bounding from place to place,-- Those are Lützow's roving, wild, venturous chase! Where, midst glowing vines, as the Rhine murmurs by, The tyrant securely is sleeping;-- They swiftly approach, 'neath the storm-glaring sky; With vigorous arms o'er the waters they ply; Soon safe on his island-shore leaping! Those swarthy swimmers whose wake you trace, Those are Lützow's roving, wild, venturous chase! Whence sweeps from yon valley the battle's loud roar, Where swords in thick carnage are clashing? Fierce horsemen encounter, 'mid lightnings and gore; The spark of true freedom is kindled once more, From war's bloody altars out-flashing! Those horsemen swart who the combat face, Those are Lützow's roving, wild, venturous chase! Who smile their adieu to the light of the sun, 'Mid fallen foes moaning their bravery? Death creeps o'er their visage,--their labours are done;-- Their valiant hearts tremble not;--victory's won; Their father-land rescued from slavery! Those swart warriors fallen in death's embrace, Those were Lützow's roving, wild, venturous chase! The wild German Yagers,--their glorious careers Dealt death to the tyrant oppressor! Then weep not, dear friends, for the true volunteers, When the morn of our father-land's freedom appears; Since we alone died to redress her. Our mem'ry transmitted, no time shall erase;-- Those were Lützow's roving, wild, venturous chase! STANZAS. BY JAMES NACK. I know that thou art far away, Yet in my own despite My still expectant glances stray Inquiring for thy sight. Though all too sure that thy sweet face Can bless no glance of mine, At every turn, in every place, My eyes are seeking thine. I hope--how vain the hope, I know-- That some propitious chance May bring thee here again to throw Thy sweetness on my glance. But, loveliest one, where'er thou art, Whate'er be my despair, Mine eyes will seek thee, and my heart Will love thee every where. LINES. BY WILLIAM LEGGETT. [_Written beneath a dilapidated tower, yet standing among the ruins of Carthage._] Thou mouldering pile, that hath withstood The silent lapse of many ages, The earthquake's shock, the storm, the flood, Around whose base the ocean rages; Who reared thy walls that proudly brave The tempest, battle, and the wave? Was it beneath thy ample dome That Marius rested, and from thee, When he had lost imperial Rome, Learned high resolve and constancy? Thou seem'st to mock the power of fate, And well might'st teach the lesson great. Perhaps thy vaulted arch hath rung Of yore, with laughter's merry shout, While beauty round her glances flung To cheer some monarch's wassail rout; But mirth and beauty long have fled From this lone City of the Dead. Where busy thousands oft have trod Beneath thy mouldering marble brow, Wild moss-grown fragments press the sod, Around thee all is silence now. And thus the breath of foul decay Shall melt at last thy form away. Thou desolate, deserted pile, Lone vestage of departed glory, Sadly in ruin thou seem'st to smile, While baffled time flies frowning o'er thee, As if resolved the tale to tell Where Carthage stood, and how it fell. Midst ruined walls thou stand'st alone, Around thee strewn may yet be seen The broken column, sculptured stone, And relics sad of what hath been. But thou alone survivest the fall, Defying Time, dread leveller of all. FADED HOURS. BY J. R. SUTERMINSTER. _Ob. 1836: æt. 23._ Oh! for my bright and faded hours When life was like a summer stream, On whose gay banks the virgin flowers Blush'd in the morning's rosy beam; Or danced upon the breeze that bare Its store of rich perfume along, While the wood-robin pour'd on air The ravishing delights of song. The sun look'd from his lofty cloud, While flow'd its sparkling waters fair-- And went upon his pathway proud, And threw a brighter lustre there; And smiled upon the golden heaven, And on the earth's sweet loveliness, Where light, and joy, and song were given, The glad and fairy scene to bless! Ah! these were bright and joyous hours, When youth awoke from boyhood's dream, To see life's Eden dress'd in flowers, While young hope bask'd in morning's beam! And proffer'd thanks to heaven above, While glow'd his fond and grateful breast, Who spread for him that scene of love And made him, so supremely blest! That scene of love!--where hath it gone? Where have its charms and beauty sped? My hours of youth, that o'er me shone-- Where have their light and splendour fled? Into the silent lapse of years-- And I am left on earth to mourn: And I am left to drop my tears O'er memory's lone and icy urn! Yet why pour forth the voice of wail O'er feeling's blighted coronal? Ere many gorgeous suns shall fail, I shall be gather'd in my pall; Oh, my dark hours on earth are few-- My hopes are crush'd, my heart is riven;-- And I shall soon bid life adieu, To seek enduring joys in heaven! THE WIFE'S SONG. BY WILLIAM LEGGETT. As the tears of the even, Illumined at day By the sweet light of heaven, Seem gems on each spray; So gladness to-morrow Shall shine on thy brow, The more bright for the sorrow That darkens it now. Yet if fortune, believe me, Have evil in store, Though each other deceive thee, I'll love thee the more. As ivy leaves cluster More greenly and fair, When winter winds bluster Round trees that are bare. LAMENT. BY WILLIS G. CLARK. There is a voice, I shall hear no more-- There are tones, whose music for me is o'er; Sweet as the odours of spring were they,-- Precious and rich--but they died away; They came like peace to my heart and ear-- Never again will they murmur here; They have gone like the blush of a summer morn, Like a crimson cloud through the sunset borne. There were eyes that late were lit up for me, Whose kindly glance was a joy to see; They revealed the thoughts of a trusting heart, Untouched by sorrow, untaught by art; Whose affections were fresh as a stream of spring When birds in the vernal branches sing; They were filled with love, that hath passed with them, And my lyre is breathing their requiem. I remember a brow, whose serene repose Seemed to lend a beauty to cheeks of rose: And lips, I remember, whose dewy smile, As I mused on their eloquent power the while, Sent a thrill to my bosom, and bless'd my brain With raptures, that never may dawn again; Amidst musical accents those smiles were shed-- Alas! for the doom of the early dead! Alas! for the clod that is resting now On those slumbering eyes--on that faded brow; Wo for the cheek that hath ceased to bloom-- For the lips that are dumb, in the noisome tomb; Their melody broken, their fragrance gone, Their aspect cold as the Parian stone; Alas for the hopes that with thee have died-- Oh loved one!--would I were by thy side! Yet the joy of grief it is mine to bear; I hear thy voice in the twilight air; Thy smile, of sweetness untold, I see When the visions of evening are borne to me; Thy kiss on my dreaming lip is warm-- My arm embraceth thy graceful form; I wake in a world that is sad and drear, To feel in my bosom--thou art not here. Oh! once the summer with thee was bright; The day, like thine eyes, wore a holy light. There was bliss in existence when thou wert nigh, There was balm in the evening's rosy sigh; Then earth was an Eden, and thou its guest-- A Sabbath of blessings was in my breast; My heart was full of a sense of love, Likest of all things to heaven above. Now, thou art gone to that voiceless hall Where my budding raptures have perished all; To that tranquil and solemn place of rest, Where the earth lies damp on the sinless breast; Thy bright locks all in the vault are hid-- Thy brow is concealed by the coffin lid;-- All that was lovely to me is there, Mournful is life, and a load to bear! LINES [_Written on a pane of glass in the house of a friend._] BY WILLIAM LEGGETT. As playful boys by ocean's side Upon its margin trace, Some frail memorial which the tide Returning must efface; Thus I upon this brittle glass These tuneless verses scrawl, That they, when I away shall pass, May thought of me recall. The waves that beat upon the strand Wash out the schoolboy's line, As soon some rude or careless hand May shiver those of mine. But though what I have written here In thousand fragments part, I trust my name will still be dear, And treasured in the heart. THE SEPULCHRE OF DAVID. BY WILLIAM L. STONE. "As for Herod, he had spent vast sums about the cities, both without and within his own kingdom: and as he had before heard that Hyrcanus, who had been king before him, had opened David's sepulchre, and taken out of it three thousand talents of silver, and that there was a greater number left behind, and indeed enough to suffice all his wants, he had a great while an intention to make the attempt; and at this time he opened that sepulchre by night and went into it, and endeavoured that it should not be at all known in the city, but he took only his most faithful friends with him. As for any money, he found none, as Hyrcanus had done, but that furniture of gold, and those precious goods that were laid up there, all which he took away. However, he had a great desire to make diligent search, and to go farther in, even as far as the very bodies of David and Solomon; where two of his guards were slain by a flame that burst out upon those that went in, as the report was. So he was severely affrighted, and went out and built a propitiatory monument of that fright he had been in, and this of white stone, at the mouth of the sepulchre, and that at a great expense also."--_Josephus._ High on his throne of state, A form of noblest mould, The Hebrew monarch sate, All glorious to behold. With purest gold inwrought, Full many a sparkling gem, From distant India brought, Enriched his diadem. A crystal mirror bright, Beneath the canopy, Shot back in silvery light The monarch's panoply! All round the lofty halls, Rich tapestries of gold Hung from the glittering walls, In many an ample fold. And breathing sculptures there In living beauty stood, Borne by the monarch's care From o'er the Ægean flood. Dipt in the rainbow's dyes, Apelles's magic hand, To please the wondering eyes Of Judah's haughty land, In liquid colours bright, And traced with matchless care, Had left, in glorious light, Its richest beauties there! The silver lamps by day, Hung massive, rich, and bright; And from the galleries gay Shone brilliantly by night. And by the monarch's side, His guards, a noble band, Arrayed in regal pride, In burnished armour stand. Proud chiefs and ladies fair, Swept the broad courts along:-- In pleasures mingled there,-- A gay and gallant throng! Apollo's tuneful choir, And Korah's sons of song, With psaltery, harp, and lyre, Were mingled in the throng.[O] And from each trembling string, Sweet sounds of music stole; Gentle as Zephyr's wing, The tuneful numbers roll. Beyond the portals wide, Beneath the sylvan bower, Cool founts, in sparkling pride, Send forth their silvery shower. The flowerets gay and wild, In beauty bloomed not less, Than erst when Eden smiled, In pristine loveliness. And through the gorgeous halls Rich odours filled the air, Sweet as the dew that falls On Araby the fair! All that could foster pride, All that could banish care, Was gathered by his side, And richly lavished there. Lost to the splendid show, The monarch's restless mind Darkened an anxious brow, Which furrows deep had lined. He rose and left the hall, The night was drear and wild-- Above the embattled wall Tempestuous clouds were piled. Deep in the deeper gloom, He held his sullen way-- To David's hallowed tomb To where his ashes lay. The haughty monarch came,-- Earth trembled at his tread-- With sacrilegious aim To rob the royal dead. No treasures found he there, Nor precious gems, nor gold-- The walls were damp and bare-- The region drear and cold. He cast his anxious eye Where slept great _David's_ son, Where _Wisdom's_ ashes lie, The peerless _Solomon_! He raised his ruthless arm Against the low-arched wall-- While wild and dread alarm Rang through the vaulted hall. Loud on the monarch's ear Broke the hoarse thunder's crash-- And blazed around the bier The vivid lightning's flash. Death came upon the blast; As by the lurid light They saw that he had passed, And triumphed in his might: For on the chilly ground, Inanimate as clay, The troubled monarch found His favourite captains lay. Aghast and pale he fled,-- And shook through every limb-- Cold drops rolled down his head, Lest death should follow him! He raised a marble fane Upon the hallowed spot, But ne'er, O ne'er again Could that night be forgot! And oft in after years He woke in wild affright, And wailed, with scalding tears, The deed of that dread night! WOMAN. BY WILLIAM LEGGETT. No star in yonder sky that shines Can light like woman's eye impart, The earth holds not in all its mines A gem so rich as woman's heart. Her voice is like the music sweet Poured out from airy harp alone, Like that when storms more loudly beat, It yields a clearer--richer tone. And woman's love's a holy light That brighter burns for aye, Years cannot dim its radiance bright, Nor even falsehood quench its ray. But like the star of Bethlehem Of old, to Israel's shepherds given, It marshals with its steady flame The erring soul of man to heaven. RHYME AND REASON. AN APOLOGUE. BY G. P. MORRIS. Two children, "once upon a time," In the summer season, Woke to life--the one was Rhyme, The other's name was Reason. Sweet Poesy enraptured prest The blooming infants to her breast. Reason's face and form to see Made her heart rejoice; Yet there was more of melody In Rhyme's delicious voice; But both were beautiful and fair, And pure as mountain stream and air. As the boys together grew, Happy fled their hours-- Grief or care they never knew In the Paphian bowers. See them roaming, hand in hand, The pride of all the choral band. Music with harp of golden strings, Love with bow and quiver, Airy sprites on radiant wings, Nymphs of wood and river, Joined the Muses' constant song As Rhyme and Reason pass'd along. But the scene was changed--the boys Left their native soil-- Rhyme's pursuit was idle joys, Reason's manly toil. Soon Rhyme was starving in a ditch, While Reason grew exceeding rich. Since that dark and fatal hour When the brothers parted, Reason has had wealth and power-- Rhyme's poor and broken-hearted. And now, on bright or stormy weather, They twain are seldom seen together. AH NO! AH NO! _To a Favourite Child._ BY JAMES NACK. In life, perhaps, thou hast only trod As yet in a path as soft and sweet As the flowerets wreathed on a verdant sod, Which bend to the pressure of delicate feet. In the path thou hast only begun to tread, Perhaps no thorn has betrayed its sting; And the clouds that brood there too oft have fled, By innocence chased on her snow-white wing: For often a paradise seems to attend Our earliest steps in this world below; But ah! will that paradise bloom to the end? Stern destiny answers, "Ah No! Ah No!" The tree with verdure adorns the shore While the laving spray at its foot is thrown; But the waves roll on to return no more, And the tree stands withering all alone. Each friend of our early years is a wave In the sea of joy we are flourishing by; But they roll away to the gulf of the grave, And our hearts in loneliness withering sigh. And such is the doom I must bear--for now, While yet in my boyhood I find it so-- But never, dear cherub, may heaven allow Such doom to await thee, Ah No! Ah No! A HEALTH. BY MISS ELIZABETH C. CLINCH. _Ob. 1832: æt. 17._ Fill high the cup!--the young and gay Are met with bounding hearts to-night; And sunny smiles around us play, And eyes are sparkling bright: Let wit and song the hours beguile, But yet, amid this festal cheer, Oh, let us pause to think awhile Of him who is not here. Fill high the cup!--yet ere its brim One young and smiling lip has pressed, Oh, pledge each sparkling drop to him Now far o'er ocean's breast! The cordial wish each lip repeats, By every heart is echoed here; For none within this circle beats, To whom he is not dear. A sudden pause in festive glee-- What thought hath hushed the thought of mirth, Hath checked each heart's hilarity, And given to sadness birth? O! read it in the shades that steal Across each animated brow; The wish none utters, yet all feel, "Would he were with us now!" Yet chase away each vain regret, And let each heart be gay; Trust me, the meeting hour shall yet Each anxious thought repay. Is not his spirit with us now? Yes! wheresoe'er his footsteps roam, The wanderer's yearning heart can know No resting-place--but home! Then smile again, and let the song Pour forth its music sweet and clear-- What magic to those notes belong Which thus chain every ear! Soft eyes are filled with tears--what spell So suddenly hath called them there? That strain--ah, yes! we know it well; It is his favourite air. With every note how forcibly Return the thoughts of other days! The shaded brow, the drooping eye, Are present to our gaze. With all around his looks are blent; His form, is it not gliding there? And was it not _his_ voice which sent That echo on the air? One wish, with cordial feeling fraught, Breathe we for him ere yet we part, That for each high and generous thought That animates his heart, That Power which gives us happiness, A blessing on his head would pour! Oh! could affection wish him less? Yet, could we ask for more? A HYMN. BY DAVID S. BOGART.--1791. Almighty King, who reign'st above, Thou art the source of purest love; The splendid heavens thy glories show, Thy wisdom shines in all below; Seraphs before thee humbly fall, Acknowledge thee supreme o'er all; And, wrapt in high transporting joy, Thy attributes their thoughts employ. Shall mortals, then, refuse to join In works so heavenly and divine, Mortals who live and move in thee, And thy continual goodness see; Thou God of Grace, make it my choice In praising thee, to lend my voice; Implant thy fear, infuse thy balm, And make my troubled soul all calm; Teach me the duty of my life, Preserve me from unhappy strife, Conduct me safe through all my days, And keep me in thy peaceful ways. When time is done, and death draws nigh, Then leave me not alone to sigh; Afford thy grace, and cheer my heart, And, sure of heaven, let me depart. REMINISCENCES. BY GEORGE D. STRONG. Oh, who would flee the melody Of woodland, grove, and stream-- The hoar cliff pencill'd on the sky By morning's virgin beam; To wander 'mid the busy throng That threads each city's street, Where cank'ring care and folly's glare In unblest union meet? Emilia! o'er the fleeting hours Thy smile once bathed in light, Fond memory hovers pensively, And joins them in their flight; And lovelier far than sunset's glow, By rainbow beauties spann'd, Comes o'er my soul the joys we stole When first I press'd thy hand. The south wind, on its joyous way, Came fraught with balmier breath, And frolic life, in thousand forms, Laugh'd at the conqueror Death! Sweet Echo, from the sparry caves, Re-tuned the shepherd's song; And bird and bee, in reckless glee, Pour'd melody along. The wind-stirr'd grove still prints its shade Upon the streamlet's breast, The red bird, on the chesnut bough, Re-builds its fairy nest; But through the thicket's leafy screen Fancy alone can trace The sparkling eye--the vermeil dye That mantled o'er thy face. Though since that hour, upon my path Are graven hopes and fears, And transient smiles, like April beams, Have gilded sorrow's tears; From those flushed hopes and feverish joys, My soul with rapture flies To the sweet grove, where faith and love Beamed from Emilia's eyes! Then woo me not to sculptured halls, Where pride and beauty throng; Far lovelier is my mountain-home, The wild-wood paths among; And though the hopes by boyhood nursed Have vanish'd like the dew, In Memory's light they bless my sight With charms for ever new. ELEGIAC LINES. BY THE LATE GEN. J. MORTON. While you, my friend, with tearful eye, These soft elegiac lines read o'er, And while you heave the tender sigh For lov'd Amanda now no more. This lesson from her tear-dew'd urn, Where conscious worth, where virtue bleeds, This lesson from Amanda learn,-- That death, nor worth, nor virtue heeds. That he alike his ruthless reign Does o'er each age, each sex, extend, That he ne'er heeds the lover's pain, Ne'er heeds the anguish of a friend. But in the height of Beauty's bloom, Each dear connexion of the heart, He points them to the gloomy tomb, He bids them--and they must depart. A SONG OF MAY. BY W. G. CLARK. The Spring's scented buds all around me are swelling-- There are songs in the stream--there is health in the gale; A sense of delight in each bosom is dwelling, As float the pure day-dreams o'er mountain and vale; The desolate reign of old winter is broken-- The verdure is fresh upon every tree; Of Nature's revival the charm,--and a token Of love, oh thou Spirit of Beauty! to thee. The sun looketh forth from the halls of the morning, And flushes the clouds that begirt his career; He welcomes the gladness and glory, returning To rest on the promise and hope of the year. He fills with rich light all the balm-breathing flowers-- He mounts to the zenith and laughs on the wave; He wakes into music the green forest-bowers, And gilds the gay plains which the broad rivers lave. The young bird is out on his delicate pinion-- He timidly sails in the infinite sky; A greeting to May, and her fairy dominion, He pours, on the west-wind's fragrant sigh: Around, above, there are peace and pleasure-- The woodlands are singing--the heaven is bright; The fields are unfolding their emerald treasure, And man's genial spirit is soaring in light. Alas, for my weary and care-haunted bosom!-- The spells of the spring-time arouse it no more; The song in the wild-wood--the sheen of the blossom-- The fresh-welling fountain,--their magic is o'er! When I list to the streams--when I look on the flowers, They tell of the past with so mournful a tone, That I call up the throngs of my long-vanished hours, And sigh that their transports are over and gone. From the wide-spreading earth--from the limitless heaven, There have vanished an eloquent glory and gleam; To my veil'd mind no more is the influence given, Which coloureth life with the hues of a dream: The bloom-purpled landscape its loveliness keepeth-- I deem that a light as of old gilds the wave;-- But the eye of my spirit in heaviness sleepeth, Or sees but my youth, and the visions it gave. Yet it is not that age on my years hath descended-- 'Tis not that its snow-wreaths encircle my brow; But the _newness_ and sweetness of Being are ended-- I feel not their love-kindling witchery now: The shadows of death o'er my path have been sweeping-- There are those who have loved me, debarred from the day; The green turf is bright where in peace they are sleeping, And on wings of remembrance my soul is away. It is shut to the glow of this present existence-- It hears, from the past, a funereal strain; And it eagerly turns to the high-seeming distance, Where the last blooms of earth will be garnered again; Where no mildew the soft, damask-rose cheek shall nourish-- Where Grief bears no longer the poisonous sting; Where pitiless Death no dark sceptre can flourish, Or stain with his blight the luxuriant spring. It is thus, that the hopes, which to others are given, Fall cold on my heart in this rich month of May; I hear the clear anthems that ring through the heaven-- I drink the bland airs that enliven the day; And if gentle Nature, her festival keeping, Delights not my bosom, ah! do not condemn;-- O'er the lost and the lovely my spirit is weeping, For my heart's fondest raptures are buried with them. ON READING VIRGIL. BY MRS. ANN E. BLEECKER. _Written in 1778._ Now, cease these tears, lay gentle Virgil by, Let recent sorrows dim thy pausing eye; Shall Æneas for lost Creusa mourn, And tears be wanting on Abella's urn? Like him, I lost my fair one in my flight From cruel foes, and in the dead of night. Shall he lament the fall of Ilion's tow'rs, And we not mourn the sudden ruin of ours? See York on fire--while, borne by winds, each flame Projects its glowing sheet o'er half the main, The affrighted savage, yelling with amaze, From Allegany sees the rolling blaze. Far from these scenes of horror, in the shade I saw my aged parent safe conveyed; Then sadly followed to the friendly land With my surviving infant by the hand: No cumbrous household gods had I, indeed, To load my shoulders and my flight impede; Protection from such impotence who'd claim? My Gods took care of me--not I of them. The Trojan saw Anchises breathe his last When all domestic dangers he had passed; So my lov'd parent, after she had fled, Lamented, perish'd on a stranger's bed: --He held his way o'er the Cerulian main, But I returned to hostile fields again. THE LAST PRAYER OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS. BY W. G. CLARK. "O Domini Deus speravi in te, O caru mi Jesu nunc libera me: In dura catena, in misera pena, Desidera te-- Languendo, gemando, et genuflectendo, Adoro, imploro, ut liberas me!"[P] It was the holy twilight hour, when clouds of crimson glide Along the calm blue firmament, hushed in the evening tide; When the peasant's cheerful song was hushed, by every hill and glen, When the city's voice stole faintly out, and died the hum of men; And as Night's sombre shade came down o'er Day's resplendant eye, A faded face, from prison cell, gazed out upon the sky; For to that face the glad, bright sun of earth for aye had set, And the last time had come, to mark eve's starry coronet. Oh, who can paint the bitter thoughts that o'er her spirit stole, As her pale lips gave utterance to feeling's deep controul-- When shadowed from life's vista back, throng'd 'mid her bursting tears, The phantasies of early hope--dreams of departed years; When Pleasure's light was sprinkled, and silver voices flung Their rich and echoing cadences her virgin hours among-- When there came no shadow o'er her brow, no tear to dim her eye, When there frown'd no cloud of sorrow in her being's festal sky. Perchance at that lone hour the thought of early visions came, Of the trance that touched her lip with song at Love's mysterious flame; When she listened to the low-breathed tones of him the idol one, Who shone in her mind's imagings first ray of pleasure's sun; Perchance the walk in evening's hour, the impassion'd kiss and vow-- The warm tear kindling on the cheek, the smile upon the brow: But they came like flowers that wither, and the light of all had fled, Like a hue from April's pinion o'er earth's budding bosom shed. And thus as star came after star into the boundless heaven, Were her free thoughts and eloquent in pensive numbers given; They were the offerings of a heart where grief had long held sway, And now the night, the hour had come, to give her feelings way; It was the last dim night of life--the sun had sunk to rest, And the blue twilight haze had crept on the far mountain's breast; And thus, as in her saddened heart the tide of love grew strong, Poured her meek, quiet spirit forth this flood of mournful song: "The shades of evening gather now o'er the mysterious earth, The viewless winds are whispering their strains of breezy mirth; The yellow moon hath come to shed a flood of glory round On the silence of this calm repose, the beauty of the ground; And in the free, sweet, gales that sweep along my prison bar, Seem borne the soft, deep harmonies of every kindly star; I see the blue streams dancing in the mild and chastened light, And the gem-lit fleecy clouds that steal along the brow of night. "Oh, must I leave existence now, while life is in its spring-- While Joy should cheer my pilgrimage with gladness from his wing? Are the songs of Hope for ever flown?--the syren voice which flung The chant of Youth's warm happiness from the beguiler's tongue? Shall I drink no more the melody of babbling stream or bird, Or the scented gales of Summer, when the leaves of June are stirred? Shall the pulse of love wax fainter; and the spirit shrink from death, As the bud-like thoughts which lit my heart fade in its chilling breath? "I have passed the dreams of childhood, and my loves and hopes are gone, And I turn to Thee, Redeemer, oh, thou blest and holy one! Though the rose of health has vanished, and the mandate hath been spoken, And one by one the golden links of life's fond chain are broken, Yet can my spirit turn to thee, thou chastener, and can bend In humble suppliance at thy feet, my Father and my Friend! Thou who hast crowned my youth with hope, my early days with glee, Give me the eagle's fearless wing--the dove's to mount to thee! "I lose my foolish hold on life, its passions and its tears-- How brief the golden ecstacies of its young, careless years! I give my heart to earth no more--the grave may clasp me now-- The winds, whose tones I loved, may play in the dim cypress bough; The birds, the streams are eloquent, yet I shall pass away, And in the light of heaven shake off this cumbrous load of clay; I shall join the lost and loved of earth, and meet each kindred breast, 'Where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.'" THE RECOLLECTIONS OF THE PEOPLE. [_From the French of Beranger._] BY THEODORE S. FAY. They'll talk of him, and of his glory, The cottage hearth, at eve, around; Fifty years hence no other story Shall 'neath the lowly thatch resound. Then shall the villagers repair To some gray ancient dame, And bid her long-past times declare, And tell his deeds, his fame. "Ah, though it cost us life and limb," They'll say, "our love is still the same, And still the people love his name; Good mother, tell of him!" My children, through this very region He journey'd with a train of kings, Followed by many a gallant legion! (How many thoughts to me it brings, That tell of days so long gone by!) He climbed on foot the very hill Where, seated on the bank, was I To see him pass. I see him still; The small, three-coloured hat he wore, And the surtout of gray. I trembled at his sight all o'er!-- Cheerful he said, "My dear, good day!" "Mother, he spoke to you, you say?" "Ay, said 'good day' once more." Next year at Paris, too, one morning, Myself, I saw him with his court, Princes and queens his _suite_ adorning, To Notre Dame he did resort; And every body blest the day And prayed for him and his; How happily he took his way, And smiled in all a father's bliss, For heaven a son bestowed! "A happy day for you was this, Good mother!" then they say: "When thus you saw him on the road, In Notre Dame to kneel and pray, A good heart sure it showed." "Alas! ere long, invading strangers Brought death and ruin in our land! (Alone he stood and braved all dangers, The sword in his unconquer'd hand.) One night, (it seems but yesterday,) I heard a knocking at the door-- It was himself upon his way, A few true followers, no more, Stood worn and weary at his side. Where I am sitting now he sat-- 'Oh what a war is this!' he cried. Oh what a war!'" "Mother, how's that? Did he, then, sit in that same chair?" "My children, yes!--he rested there!" "I'm hungry," then he said, "and gladly I brought him country wine and bread; The gray surtout was dripping sadly; He dried it by this fire. His head, He leaned against this wall, and slept-- While, as for me, I sat and wept. He waked and cried, 'Be of good cheer! I go to Paris, France to free, And better times, be sure, are near!' He went, and I have ever kept The cup he drank from--children, see! My greatest treasure!" "Show it me," "And me!"--"and me!" the listeners cry-- "Good mother, keep it carefully!" "Ah, it is safe! but where is he? Crowned by the pope, our father good, In a lone island of the sea The hero died. Long time we stood Firm in belief he was not dead, And some by sea, and some by land-- But all, that he was coming, said. And when, at length, all hope was o'er, Than I, were few that sorrowed more!" "Ah, mother, well we understand! Our blessings on you; we too weep, We will pray for you ere we sleep!" THE HUSBAND TO HIS WIFE, ON HER BIRTH-DAY. BY JOHN INMAN. Nay, ask me not, my dearest! why silent I remain-- Not often will my feelings speak in smooth and measured strain. The joy that fills my heart, in the love I bear to thee, Too deeply in that heart is shrined, by words expressed to be; And thousand thoughts of tenderness, that in my bosom throng, Are all too bright and blessed to be manacled in song. This is thy birth-day, dearest--the fairest of the year-- To many giving gladness, but to me of all most dear; The birth-day of my happiness, which sprang to life with thee, As hope springs in the captive's breast with the hour that sets him free. I hail its happy dawning, with a love like that which fills My heart for thee, my pure one, when thy kind voice in it thrills. I bless it and its memories, and the blessing which I give, Is fervent as the dying man's to him who bids him live-- But the joy I have in thee, dear love, speaks not in echoes loud, Nor will its tranquil flowing be revealed before a crowd. VERSES TO THE MEMORY OF COL. WOOD OF THE UNITED STATES' ARMY, WHO FELL AT THE SORTIE OF ERIE. BY THE LATE GEN. J. MORTON. What though on foeman's land he fell, No stone the sacred spot to tell, Yet where the noble Hudson's waves Its shores of lofty granite laves, The loved associates of his youth, Who knew his worth--his spotless truth, Have bade the marble column rise, To bid the world that worth to prize; To teach the youth like him aspire, And never-fading fame acquire; Like him on Glory's wings to rise, To reach, to pierce the azure skies. And oft the Patriot _there_ will sigh, And Sorrow oft cloud Beauty's eye, Whene'er fond memory brings again The Youth who sleeps on Erie's plain. LIFE'S GUIDING STAR. BY WILLIAM LEGGETT. The youth whose bark is guided o'er A summer stream by zephyr's breath, With idle gaze delights to pore On imaged skies that glow beneath. But should a fleeting storm arise To shade awhile the watery way, Quick lifts to heaven his anxious eyes, And speeds to reach some sheltering bay. 'Tis thus down time's eventful tide, While prosperous breezes gently blow, In life's frail bark we gaily glide Our hopes, our thoughts all fixed below. But let one cloud the prospect dim, The wind its quiet stillness mar, At once we raise our prayer to Him Whose light is life's best guiding star. DESPONDENCY. WRITTEN IN DEJECTION AND SORROW FOR LOST TIME. BY JOHN INMAN. Whence come, my soul, these gloomy dreams, That darken thus my waking hours? And whence this blighting cloud, that seems To wither all thy better powers? What is this cankering worm that clings Around my heart with deadly strain, That o'er my thoughts its mildew flings, And makes my life one age of pain? I find no joy in home or friends-- E'en music's voice has lost its spell-- To me the rose no perfume lends, And mirth and I have said farewell. I dare not think upon the past, Where dwells remembrance, fraught with pain; Of youth's pure joys that could not last, And hopes I ne'er shall know again. I dare not ask the coming years What gifts their onward flight shall bring; For what but grief, and shame, and tears, From wasted time and powers can spring? Yet I can deck my cheek with smiles, And teach my heart to seem to glow, Though colder than those Northern isles Of ice and everlasting snow. Upon the frozen surface there, With tenfold light the sunbeams play-- But false the dazzling gleam as fair-- No verdure springs beneath the ray. And falser yet the laughing eye-- The cheek that wears a seeming smile-- The heart that hides its misery, And breaks beneath its load the while. TO A GOLDFINCH. BY ROSWELL PARK. Bird of the gentle wing, Songster of air, Home, from thy wandering, Dost thou repair? Art thou deserted then, Wilder'd and lone? Come to my breast again, Beautiful one. Here in the rosy beds Hover anew; Eating the garden seeds, Sipping the dew: Then in my bower The fragrance inhale Of each lovely flower That waves in the gale. When the bright morning star, Rising on high, Day's early harbinger, Shines in the sky, Then shall thy numbers, So lively and gay, Rouse me from slumbers, To welcome the day. When the still evening comes, Tranquil and clear; When the dull beetle roams, Drumming the air; Then, on the willow-trees Shading the door, Sing me thy melodies Over once more. Thus shall the moments fly Sweetly along, Tuned to thy minstrelsy, Cheered by thy song; Till as the light declines Far in the west, Thou, 'mid the trellis'd vines, Hush thee to rest. THE MIDNIGHT BALL. BY MISS ELIZABETH BOGART. She's bid adieu to the midnight ball, And cast the gems aside, Which glittered in the lighted hall: Her tears she cannot hide. She weeps not that the dance is o'er, The music and the song; She weeps not that her steps no more Are follow'd by the throng. Her memory seeks one form alone Within that crowded hall; Her truant thoughts but dwell on one At that gay midnight ball. And thence her tears unbidden flow-- She's bid adieu to him; The light of love is darken'd now-- All other lights are dim. She throws the worthless wreath away That deck'd her shining hair; She tears apart the bright bouquet Of flowrets rich and rare. The leaves lie scattered at her feet, She heeds not where they fall; She sees in them an emblem meet To mark the midnight-ball. THE DESERTED BRIDE. [_Suggested by a Scene in the Play of the Hunchback._] BY G. P. MORRIS. "Love me!--No--he never loved me!" Else he'd sooner die than stain One so fond as he has proved me With the hollow world's disdain. False one, go--my doom is spoken, And the spell that bound me broken! Wed him!--Never.--He has lost me!-- Tears!--Well, let them flow!--His bride?-- No.--The struggle life may cost me! But he'll find that I have pride! Love is not an idle flower, Blooms and dies the self-same hour. Titles, lands, and broad dominion, With himself to me he gave; Stoop'd to earth his spirit's pinion, And became my willing slave! Knelt and pray'd until he won me-- Looks he coldly now upon me? Ingrate!--Never sure was maiden Wronged so foul as I. With grief My true breast is overladen-- Tears afford me no relief.-- Every nerve is strained and aching, And my very heart is breaking! Love I him?--Thus scorned and slighted-- Thrown, like worthless weed, apart-- Hopes and feelings sear'd and blighted-- Love him?--Yes, with all my heart! With a passion superhuman-- Constancy, "thy name is woman." Love nor time, nor mood, can fashion-- Love?--Idolatry's the word To speak the broadest, deepest passion, Ever woman's heart hath stirr'd! Vain to still the mind's desires, Which consume like hidden fires! Wreck'd and wretched, lost and lonely, Crush'd by grief's oppressive weight, With a prayer for Clifford only, I resign me to my fate. Chains that bind the soul I've proven Strong as they were iron-woven. Deep the wo that fast is sending From my cheek its healthful bloom; Sad my thoughts, as willows bending O'er the borders of the tomb. Without Clifford not a blessing In the world is worth possessing. Wealth!--a straw within the balance, Opposed to love 'twill kick the beam: Kindred--friendship--beauty--talents?-- All to love as nothing seem; Weigh love against all else together, As solid gold against a feather. Hope is flown--away disguises-- Nought but death relief can give-- For the love he little prizes Cannot cease and Julia live! Soon my thread of life will sever-- Clifford, fare thee well--for ever! THOUGHTS AT THE GRAVE OF A DEPARTED FRIEND. BY JOHN INMAN. Loved, lost one, fare thee well--too harsh the doom That called thee thus in opening life away; Tears fall for thee; and at thy early tomb I come at each return of this blest day, When evening hovers near, with solemn gloom, The pious debt of sorrowing thought to pay, For thee, blest spirit, whose loved form alone Here mouldering sleeps, beneath this simple stone. But memory claims thee still; and slumber brings Thy form before me as in life it came; Affection conquers death, and fondly clings Unto the past, and thee, and thy loved name; And hours glide swiftly by on noiseless wings, While sad discourses of thy loss I frame, With her the friend of thy most tranquil years, Who mourns for thee with grief too deep for tears. _Sunday Evening._ SONG. BY THEODORE S. FAY. A careless, simple bird, one day Flutt'ring in Flora's bowers, Fell in a cruel trap, which lay All hid among the flowers, Forsooth, the pretty, harmless flowers. The spring was closed; poor, silly soul, He knew not what to do, Till, squeezing through a tiny hole, At length away he flew, Unhurt--at length away he flew. And now from every fond regret And idle anguish free, He, singing, says, "You need not set Another trap for me, False girl! another trap for me." ANACREONTIC. BY C. F. HOFFMAN. Blame not the Bowl--the fruitful Bowl! Whence wit, and mirth, and music spring, And amber drops elysian roll, To bathe young Love's delighted wing. What like the grape Osiris gave Makes rigid age so lithe of limb? Illumines Memory's tearful wave, And teaches drowning Hope to swim? Did Ocean from his radiant arms To earth another Venus give, He ne'er could match the mellow charms That in the breathing beaker live. Like burning thoughts which lovers hoard In characters that mock the sight, Till some kind liquid, o'er them poured, Brings all their hidden warmth to light-- Are feelings bright, which, in the cup, Though graven deep, appear but dim, Till filled with glowing Bacchus up, They sparkle on the foaming brim. Each drop upon the first you pour Brings some new tender thought to life, And as you fill it more and more, The last with fervid soul is rife. The island fount, that kept of old Its fabled path beneath the sea, And fresh, as first from earth it rolled, From earth again rose joyously; Bore not beneath the bitter brine, Each flower upon its limpid tide, More faithfully than in the wine, Our hearts will toward each other glide. Then drain the cup, and let thy soul Learn, as the draught delicious flies, Like pearls in the Egyptian's bowl, Truth beaming at the bottom lies. MELODY. BY WILLIAM LEGGETT. If yon bright stars, which gem the night, Be each a blissful dwelling sphere, Where kindred spirits re-unite Whom death has torn asunder here, How sweet it were at once to die, And leave this blighted orb afar, Mixt soul and soul to cleave the sky, And soar away from star to star. But oh, how dark, how drear and lone, Would seem the brightest world of bliss, If wandering through each radiant one We failed to find the loved of this; If there no more the ties shall twine That death's cold hand alone could sever; Ah! then these stars in mockery shine, More hateful as they shine for ever. It cannot be each hope, each fear, That lights the eye or clouds the brow, Proclaims there is a happier sphere Than this bleak world that holds us now. There is a voice which sorrow hears, When heaviest weighs life's galling chain; 'Tis heaven that whispers--Dry thy tears, The pure in heart shall meet again. MY NATIVE LAND. BY THEODORE S. FAY. Columbia, was thy continent stretched wild, In later ages, the huge seas above? And art thou Nature's youngest, fairest child, Most favoured by thy gentle mother's love? Where now we stand, did ocean monsters rove, Tumbling uncouth, in those dim, vanish'd years, When, through the Red Sea, Pharaoh's thousands drove, When struggling Joseph dropped fraternal tears, When God came down from heaven, and mortal men were seers? Or, have thy forests waved, thy rivers run, Elysian solitudes, untrod by man, Silent and lonely, since, around the sun, Her ever-wheeling circle, earth began? Thy unseen flowers, did here the breezes fan? With wasted perfume ever on them flung? And o'er thy show'rs, neglected rainbows span, When Alexander fought, when Homer sung, And the old populous world with thundering battle rung? Yet what to me, or when, or how thy birth, No musty tomes are here to tell of thee; None know, if cast when nature first the earth Shaped round, and clothed with grass, and flower, and tree, Or, whether since, by changes, silently, Of sand and shell, and wave, thy wonders grew; Or if, before man's little memory, Some shock stupendous rent the globe in two, And thee, a fragment, far in western oceans threw. I know but that I love thee. On my heart, Like a dear friend's, are stamped thy features now; Though there, the Roman, or the Grecian art Hath lent, to deck thy plain and mountain brow, No broken temples, fain at length to bow, Moss-grown and crumbling with the weight of time. Not these, o'er thee, their mystic splendours throw; Themes eloquent for pencil or for rhyme, As many a soul can tell that pours its thoughts sublime. But thou art sternly artless, wildly free: We worship thee for beauties all thine own. Like damsel, young and sweet, and sure to be Admired, but only for herself alone. With richer foliage ne'er was land o'ergrown. No mightier rivers run, nor mountains rise; Nor ever lakes with lovelier graces shone, Nor wealthier harvests waved in human eyes, Nor lay more liquid stars along more heavenly skies. I dream of thee, fairest of fairy streams. Sweet Hudson! Float we on thy summer breast. Who views thy enchanted windings ever deems Thy banks, of mortal shores, the loveliest! Hail to thy shelving slopes, with verdure dress'd, Bright break thy waves the varied beach upon; Soft rise thy hills, by amorous clouds caress'd; Clear flow thy waters, laughing in the sun-- Would through such peaceful scenes my life might gently run! And lo! the Catskills print the distant sky; And o'er their airy tops the faint clouds driven, So softly blending, that the cheated eye Forgets, or which is earth or which is heaven-- Sometimes, like thunder clouds, they shade the even, Till, as you nearer draw, each wooded height Puts off the azure hues by distance given; And slowly break, upon the enamour'd sight, Ravine, crag, field and wood, in colours true and bright. Mount to the cloud-kissed summit. Far below Spreads the vast Champaign like a shoreless sea. Mark yonder narrow streamlet feebly flow, Like idle brook that creeps ingloriously; Can that the lovely, lordly Hudson be, Stealing by town and mountain? Who beholds, At break of day, this scene, when, silently, Its map of field, wood, hamlet is unroll'd, While, in the east, the sun uprears his locks of gold, Till earth receive him never can forget. Even when returned amid the city's roar, The fairy vision haunts his memory yet, As in the sailor's fancy shines the shore. Imagination cons the moment o'er, When first discover'd, awe-struck and amazed. Scarce loftier, Jove--whom men and gods adore-- On the extended earth beneath him gazed, Temple, and tower, and town, by human insect raised. Blow, scented gale--the snowy canvass swell, And flow, thou silver, eddying current on. Grieve we to bid each lovely point farewell, That, ere its graces half are seen, is gone. By woody bluff we steal, by leaning lawn, By palace, village, cot, a sweet surprise, At every turn, the vision breaks upon, Till to our wondering and uplifted eyes The Highland rocks and hills in solemn grandeur rise, Nor clouds in heaven, nor billows in the deep, More graceful shapes did ever heave or roll, Nor came such pictures to a painter's sleep, Nor beamed such visions on a poet's soul! The pent-up flood, impatient of control, In ages past, here broke its granite bound; Then to the sea, in broad meanders, stole; While ponderous ruins strewed the broken ground, And these gigantic hills for ever closed around. And ever-wakeful echo here doth dwell, The nymph of sportive mockery, that still Hides behind every rock, in every dell, And softly glides, unseen, from hill to hill. No sound doth rise, but mimic it she will, The sturgeon's splash repeating from the shore, Aping the boy's voice with a voice as shrill, The bird's low warble, and the thunder's roar, Always she watches there, each murmur telling o'er. Awake my lyre, with other themes inspired. Where yon bold point repels the crystal tide, The Briton youth, lamented and admired, His country's hope, her ornament and pride, A traitor's death, ingloriously died, On freedom's altar offered; in the sight Of God, by men who will their act abide, On the great day, and hold their deed aright, To stop the breath would quench young Freedom's holy light. But see! the broadening river deeper flows, Its tribute floods intent to reach the sea, While, from the west, the fading sunlight throws Its softening hues on stream, and field and tree; All silent nature bathing, wondrously, In charms that soothe the heart with sweet desires, And thoughts of friends we ne'er again may see, Till lo! ahead, Manhatta's bristling spires, Above her thousand roofs red with day's dying fires. May greet the wanderer of Columbia's shore, Proud Venice of the west! no lovelier scene. Of thy vast throngs, now faintly comes the roar, Though late like beating-ocean surf I ween-- And every where thy various barks are seen, Cleaving the limpid floods that round thee flow, Encircled by thy banks of sunny green-- The panting steamer plying to and fro, Or the tall sea-bound ship abroad on wings of snow. And radiantly upon the glittering mass, The God of day his parting glances sends, As some warm soul, from earth about to pass, Back on its fading scenes and mourning friends, Deep words of love and looks of rapture bends, More bright and bright, as near their end they be. On, on, great orb! to earth's remotest ends, Each land irradiate, and every sea-- But oh, my native land, not one, not one like thee! HE CAME TOO LATE! BY MISS ELIZABETH BOGART. He came too late!--Neglect had tried Her constancy too long; Her love had yielded to her pride, And the deep sense of wrong. She scorned the offering of a heart Which, lingered on its way, Till it could no delight impart, Nor spread one cheering ray. He came too late!--At once he felt That all his power was o'er! Indifference in her calm smile dwelt, She thought of him no more. Anger and grief had passed away, Her heart and thoughts were free; She met him, and her words were gay, No spell had memory. He came too late!--The subtle chords Of love were all unbound, Not by offence of spoken words, But by the slights that wound. She knew that life held nothing now That could the past repay, Yet she disdained his tardy vow, And coldly turned away. He came too late!--Her countless dreams Of hope had long since flown; No charms dwelt in his chosen themes, Nor in his whispered tone. And when, with word and smile, he tried Affection still to prove, She nerved her heart with woman's pride, And spurned his fickle love. VERSES, WRITTEN IN A BOOK OF FORTUNES, 1787. BY THE LATE GEN. MORTON. As through the garden's sweet domain The bee from leaf to leaf will rove, Will cull its sweets with anxious pain, Then bear its treasures to his love; So from those leaves which bring to view Things hid by fate in Time's dark reign, With care I'd cull, dear girl, for you, The richest blessings they contain; But fortune here our power restrains, Nor leaves her blessings in our hand: To _wish_, alone to _us_ remains, The _Gift_ is still at _her_ command. Take, then, sweet maid, this wish sincere, Which in a friendly heart doth glow-- A heart which will thy worth revere Till life's rich streams shall cease to flow: On the fair morning of thy life May love beam forth his brightest ray,-- May friendship's joys, unvexed by strife, Glad the meridian of thy day; And when life's solemn eve shall come, And time to you shall ever cease, May then religion cheer the gloom, And light thy path to endless peace. EPITAPH UPON A DOG. BY C. F. HOFFMAN. An ear that caught my slightest tone In kindness or in anger spoken; An eye that ever watch'd my own In vigils death alone has broken; Its changeless, ceaseless, and unbought Affection to the last revealing; Beaming almost with human thought, And more than human feeling! Can such in endless sleep be chilled, And mortal pride disdain to sorrow, Because the pulse that here was stilled May wake to no immortal morrow? Can faith, devotedness, and love, That seem to humbler creatures given To tell us what we owe above! The types of what is due to Heaven? Can these be with the things that _were_, Things cherished--but no more returning; And leave behind no trace of care, No shade that speaks a moment's mourning? Alas! my friend, of all of worth, That years have stol'n or years yet leave me, I've never known so much on earth, But that the loss of thine must grieve me. LINES FOR MUSIC. BY THEODORE S. FAY. Over forest and meadow the night breeze is stealing, The blush of the sunset is glowing no more-- And the stream which we love, harmless fires revealing, With ripples of silver is kissing the shore. I have watched from the beach which your presence enchanted, In the star-lighted heaven each beautiful gem, And I sighed as I thought, ere the break of the morning, From the gaze of my eyes you must vanish like them. Then stay where the night breeze o'er flowers is stealing, And raise your young voices in music once more; Let them blend with the stream, its soft murmurs revealing In the ripples of silver which roll to the shore. But when summer has fled, and yon flowers have faded, And the fields and the forests are withered and sere-- When the friends now together, by distance are parted, Leaving nothing but winter and loneliness here; Will you think of the hour, when in friendship united, I lingered at evening to bid you adieu; When I paused by the stream, with the stars so delighted, And wished I might linger for ever with you? Oh, forget not the time when that night breeze was stealing, Though desolate oceans between us may roar, The beach--and the stars--and the waters revealing Thoughts bright as the ripples which break on the shore. STANZAS. BY JOHN INMAN. L'amour ne suffit pas au bonheur; les richesses y font aussi beaucoup de cas, et parfois sans les richesses, l'amour ne produit que la misère. C'est grand dommage, mais c'est vrai.--_Madame de Beaumarchais._ Alas! alas, that poverty's cold hand Should come to wither young affection's flowers-- Marring the fairy pictures hope has planned Of love and joy in future happy hours-- Alas, that all the blessings fancy showers O'er the young heart, should turn to grief and tears, Poisoning the cup of life through all our after-years! A moment's pleasure and an age of pain-- One hour of sunshine, and the rest all gloom-- And this, oh Love, is what from thee we gain-- Of all who bow before thee, this the doom-- And in thy footsteps, like the dread Zamoom, Pale sorrow comes, a longer-dwelling guest, To curse the wasted heart that once by thee was blest. JOSHUA COMMANDING THE SUN AND MOON TO STAND STILL. BY J. B. VANSCHAICK. The day rose clear on Gibeon. Her high towers Flash'd the red sun-beams gloriously back, And the wind-driven banners, and the steel Of her ten thousand spears caught dazzlingly The sun, and on the fortresses of rock Play'd a soft glow, that as a mockery seem'd To the stern men who girded by its light. Beth-Horon in the distance slept, and breath Was pleasant in the vale of Ajalon, Where armed heels trod carelessly the sweet Wild spices, and the trees of gum were shook By the rude armour on their branches hung. Suddenly in the camp without the walls Rose a deep murmur, and the men of war Gather'd around their kings, and "Joshua! From Gilgal, Joshua!" was whisper'd low, As with a secret fear, and then, at once, With the abruptness of a dream, he stood Upon the rock before them. Calmly then Raised he his helm, and with his temples bare And hands uplifted to the sky, he pray'd;-- "God of this people, hear! and let the sun Stand upon Gibeon, still; and let the moon Rest in the vale of Ajalon!" He ceased-- And lo! the moon sits motionless, and earth Stands on her axis indolent. The sun Pours the unmoving column of his rays In undiminish'd heat; the hours stand still; The shade hath stopp'd upon the dial's face; The clouds and vapours that at night are wont To gather and enshroud the lower earth, Are struggling with strange rays, breaking them up, Scattering the misty phalanx like a wand, Glancing o'er mountain tops, and shining down In broken masses on the astonish'd plains. The fever'd cattle group in wondering herds; The weary birds go to their leafy nests, But find no darkness there, and wander forth On feeble, fluttering wing, to find a rest; The parch'd, baked earth, undamp'd by usual dews, Has gaped and crack'd, and heat, dry, mid-day heat, Comes like a drunkard's breath upon the heart. On with thy armies, Joshua! The Lord God of Sabaoth is the avenger now! His voice is in the thunder, and his wrath Poureth the beams of the retarded sun, With the keen strength of arrows, on their sight. The unwearied sun rides in the zenith sky; Nature, obedient to her Maker's voice, Stops in full course all her mysterious wheels. On! till avenging swords have drunk the blood Of all Jehovah's enemies, and till Thy banners in returning triumph wave; Then yonder orb shall set 'mid golden clouds, And, while a dewy rain falls soft on earth, Show in the heavens the glorious bow of God, Shining, the rainbow banner of the skies. SONG. BY WILLIAM LEGGETT. I trust the frown thy features wear Ere long into a smile will turn; I would not that a face so fair As thine, beloved, should look so stern. The chain of ice that winter twines, Holds not for aye the sparkling rill, It melts away when summer shines, And leaves the waters sparkling still. Thus let thy cheek resume the smile That shed such sunny light before; And though I left thee for a while, I'll swear to leave thee, love, no more. As he who, doomed o'er waves to roam, Or wander on a foreign strand, Will sigh whene'er he thinks of home, And better love his native land; So I, though lured a time away, Like bees by varied sweets, to rove, Return, like bees, by close of day, And leave them all for thee, my love. Then let thy cheek resume the smile That shed such sunny light before, And though I left thee for a while, I'll swear to leave thee, love, no more. WEST POINT. [_Suggested by the attendance on Public Worship of the Cadets.--June, 1833._] BY GEORGE D. STRONG. Bugles upon the wind! Hushed voices in the air, And the solemn roll of the stirring drum, Proclaim the hour of prayer; While, with measured tread and downcast eye The martial train sweep silent by! Away with the nodding plume, And the glittering bayonet now, For unmeet it were, with bannered pomp, To record the sacred vow. To earth-born strife let display be given, But the heart's meek homage alone to heaven. The organ's mellow notes Come swelling on the breeze, And, echoing forth from arch to dome, Float richest symphonies! While youthful forms, a sunny throng, With their voices deep the strains prolong! Deserted now the aisles-- Devotion's rites are past; And again the bugle's cheering peals Are ringing on the blast! Come forth, ye brave, for your country now, With your flashing eyes and your lofty brow! A voice from the glorious dead! Awake to the call of fame! By yon gorgeous banner's spangled folds, And by Kosciusko's name! And on Putnam's fort by the light that falls On its ivied moat and its ruined walls, The wave-worn cavern sends Hoarse echoes from the deep, And the patriot call is heard afar From every giant steep! And the young hearts glow with the sacred fires That burned in the breasts of their gallant sires. The glittering pageant's past, But martial forms are seen, With bounding step and eagle glance, Careering o'er the green; And lovely woman by their side, With her blushing cheek and her eye of pride. Sunset upon the wave, Its burnished splendours pour, And the bird-like bark with its pinions sweeps Like an arrow from the shore! There are golden locks in the sunbeam, fanned On the mirrored stream by the breezes bland. They have passed like shadows by That fade in the morning beam, And the sylph-like form, and the laughing eye, Are remembered like a dream; But memory's sun shall set in night Ere my soul forget those forms of light. THANKSGIVING AFTER ESCAPE FROM INDIAN PERILS. BY MRS. ANNE E. BLEECKER.--1778. Alas! my fond inquiring soul, Doomed in suspense to mourn, Now let thy moments calmly roll, Now let thy peace return. Why should'st thou let a doubt disturb Thy hopes which daily rise, And urge thee on to trust his word, Who built and rules the skies? When Murder sent her hopeless cries, More dreadful through the gloom, And kindling flames did round thee rise, Deep harvests to consume. Who was it led thee through the wood, And o'er the ensanguined plain, Unseen by ambushed sons of blood, Who track'd thy steps in vain. 'Twas pitying Heaven that check'd my tears, And bade my infants play, To give an opiate to my fears And cheer the lonely way. And in the doubly dreadful night, When my Abella died, When horror-struck--detesting light, I sunk down by her side; When winged for flight my spirit stood, With this fond thought beguiled, To lead my charmer to her God, And there to claim my child. Again his mercy o'er my breast Effus'd the breath of peace, Subsiding passion sunk to rest, He bade the tempest cease. Oh, let me ever, ever praise Such undeserved care, Though languid may appear my lays, At least they are sincere. It is my joy that thou art God, Eternal and supreme; Rise, Nature--hail the power aloud, From whom Creation came. BALLAD. BY MRS. EMMA C. EMBURY. "La rose cueillie et le coeur gagné ne plaisent qu'un jour." The maiden sat at her busy wheel, Her heart was light and free, And ever in cheerful song broke forth Her bosom's harmless glee. Her song was in mockery of love, And oft I heard her say, "The gathered rose, and the stolen heart, Can charm but for a day." I looked on the maiden's rosy cheek, And her lip so full and bright, And I sighed to think that the traitor love, Should conquer a heart so light: But she thought not of future days of wo, While she carroled in tones so gay; "The gathered rose, and the stolen heart, Can charm but for a day." A year passed on, and again I stood By the humble cottage-door; The maid sat at her busy wheel, But her look was blithe no more: The big tear stood in her downcast eye, And with sighs I heard her say, "The gathered rose, and the stolen heart, Can charm but for a day." Oh! well I knew what had dimmed her eye, And made her cheek so pale; The maid had forgotten her early song, While she listened to love's soft tale. She had tasted the sweets of his poisoned cup, It had wasted her life away: And the stolen heart, like the gathered rose, Had charmed but for a day. FORGETFULNESS. BY MISS ELIZABETH S. BOGART. We parted--friendship's dream had cast Deep interest o'er the brief farewell, And left upon the shadowy past Full many a thought on which to dwell. Such thoughts as come in early youth, And live in fellowship with hope; Robed in the brilliant hues of truth, Unfitted with the world to cope. We parted--he went o'er the sea, And deeper solitude was mine; Yet there remained in memory, For feeling, still a sacred shrine. And thought and hope were offered up Till their ethereal essence fled, And disappointment, from the cup, Its dark libations poured, instead. We parted--'twas an idle dream That _thus_ we e'er should meet again; For who that knew man's heart, would deem That it could long unchanged remain. He sought a foreign clime, and learned Another language, which expressed To strangers the rich thoughts that burned With unquenched power within his breast. And soon he better loved to speak In those new accents than his own; His native tongue seemed cold and weak, To breathe the wakened passions' tone. He wandered far, and lingered long, And drank so deep of Lethe's stream, That each new feeling grew more strong, And all the past was like a dream. We met--a few glad words were spoken, A few kind glances were exchanged; But friendship's first romance was broken, His had been from me estranged. I felt it all--we met no more-- My heart was true, but it was proud; Life's early confidence was o'er, And hope had set beneath a cloud. We met no more--for neither sought To reunite the severed chain Of social intercourse; for nought Could join its parted links again. Too much of the wide world had been Between us for too long a time; And he had looked on many a scene, The beautiful and the sublime. And he had themes on which to dwell, And memories that were not mine, Which formed a separating spell, And drew a mystic boundary line. His thoughts were wanderers--and the things Which brought back friendship's joys to me, To him were but the spirit's wings Which bore him o'er the distant sea. For he had seen the evening star Glancing its rays o'er ocean's waves, And marked the moonbeams from afar, Lighting the Grecian heroes' graves. And he had gazed on trees and flowers Beneath Italia's sunny skies, And listened, in fair ladies' bowers, To genius' words, and beauty's sighs. His steps had echoed through the halls Of grandeur, long left desolate; And he had climbed the crumbling walls, Or op'd perforce the hingeless gate; And mused o'er many an ancient pile, In ruin still magnificent, Whose histories could the hours beguile With dreams, before to fancy lent. Such recollections come to him, With moon, and stars, and summer flowers; To me they bring the shadows dim Of earlier and of happier hours. I would those shadows darker fell-- For life, with its best powers to bless, Has but few memories loved as well, Or welcome as _forgetfulness_. ON SHIP-BOARD. BY THEODORE S. FAY. Now freshening breezes swell the sail, Now leans the vessel to the gale; So slant her deck, you have to cling A moment to the nearest thing; So far she bends into the deep, Across her deck the white waves sweep; Bursts through the flood the pointed prow, That loves the startled foam to throw, And thunders on before the wind, Long breaks of whirl and froth behind; And when the seas the bows o'erwhelm, The captain mutters, "mind your helm!" At night, when stormy shadows fall, "All hands on deck," the captain's call. Darkness around, save when below Dim light the bursting billows throw-- And heave the waves, and beats the rain-- The labouring vessel groans with pain; Strains--lurches--thunders--rocks and rolls, We smile--but tremble in our souls! Fierce howls the blast through sail and shroud, And rings the tempest long and loud; But sweet the change, when tranquilly In sunshine sleep the air and sea. Pen may not paint each magic dye On the soft wave and sunny sky, When comes the charming silent eve, And gentle billows idly heave. The liquid floor bends smooth and bright, Like molten silver to the light; Till, as the western clouds enfold The fiery sun, it turns to gold, And then a thousand colours, straying From heaven to earth, and sweetly playing Upon the ocean's giant breast, Compose his savage soul to rest. And thus, within the human mind, When waves are hushed and still the wind, When passion's storm has passed away, And vice no more obscures the day, The beams of virtue and of love Break softly, falling from above, O'er half-breathed wordly wishes shine, And calm them with a power divine. TO THEMIRA. BY WILLIAM LEGGETT. [_Written with French chalk[Q] on a pane of glass in the home of a friend._] On this frail glass, to others' view, No written words appear; They see the prospect smiling through, Nor deem what secret's here. But shouldst thou on the tablet bright A single breath bestow, At once the record starts to sight Which only thou must know. Thus, like this glass, to stranger's gaze My heart seemed unimpress'd; In vain did beauty round me blaze, It could not warm my breast. But as one breath of thine can make These letters plain to see, So in my heart did love awake When breath'd upon by thee. EVENING. [_From the Backwoodsman._] BY JAMES K. PAULDING. 'Twas sunset's hallow'd time--and such an eve Might almost tempt an angel heaven to leave. Never did brighter glories greet the eye, Low in the warm and ruddy western sky: Nor the light clouds at summer eve unfold More varied tints of purple, red, and gold. Some in the pure, translucent, liquid breast Of crystal lake, fast anchor'd seem'd to rest, Like golden islets scatter'd far and wide, By elfin skill in fancy's fabled tide, Were, as wild eastern legends idly feign, Fairy, or genii, hold despotic reign. Others, like vessels gilt with burnish'd gold, Their flitting, airy way are seen to hold, All gallantly equipp'd with streamers gay, While hands unseen, or chance directs their way; Around, athwart, the pure ethereal tide, With swelling purple sail, they rapid glide, Gay as the bark where Egypt's wanton queen Reclining on the shaded deck was seen, At which as gazed the uxorious Roman fool, The subject world slipt from his dotard rule. Anon, the gorgeous scene begins to fade, And deeper hues the ruddy skied invade; The haze of gathering twilight nature shrouds, And pale, and paler, wax the changeful clouds. Then sunk the breeze into a breathless calm, The silent dews of evening dropt like balm; The hungry night-hawk from his lone haunt hies, To chase the viewless insect through the skies; The bat began his lantern-loving flight, The lonely whip-poor-will, our bird of night, Ever unseen, yet ever seeming near, His shrill note quaver'd in the startled ear; The buzzing beetle forth did gaily hie, With idle hum, and careless blundering eye; The little trusty watchman of pale night, The firefly trimm'd anew his lamp so bright, And took his merry airy circuit round The sparkling meadow's green and fragrant bound, Where blossom'd clover, bathed in balmy dew, In fair luxuriance, sweetly blushing grew. THOUGHTS ON PARTING. BY JOHN INMAN. Yes! I will hope, though fortune's stern decree From all I love commands me soon to part; Nor doubt, though absent, that a thought of me Shall sometimes find a place in every heart, Where feeling glows, unchilled by time or art-- Why should I doubt, when doubt is wretchedness, Such as to feel bids bitter tears to start From eyes that seldom weep, though tears, perhaps, might bless? It cannot be that love like that which fills My soul for them, should be bestowed in vain, When but the fear that they forget me, chills Each pulse and feeling--as the wintry rain Chills earth and air, which yet may glow again In summer's beams--but what can joy restore To bosoms upon which that blight has lain? From such e'en hope departs, and can return no more. For them I would have done--but let me not Such thoughts recall--could service e'er repay The blessings their companionship has wrought?-- With them too swiftly passed the time away, On pleasure's wings--weeks dwindled to a day, And days to moments--such the charm they cast O'er every scene, and such their gentle sway, Making each glad hour seem still brighter than the last. To them I turned, as Iran's tameless race Toward their refulgent God looked till the last, And died still gazing on his radiant face;-- Alas! the spring-time of my year is past-- From them afar my line of life is cast, And I must wander now like one that's lost-- A helmless bark, blown wide by every blast, And without hope or joy, on life's rude surges toss'd. Oh no, it cannot be that grief like this Should be reserved to blight my coming years-- That moments of such almost perfect bliss Should be succeeded by an age of tears-- Revive, then, hope, and put to flight my fears; I'll meet the future with undaunted eye, Trusting thy light, that now my pathway cheers, Gilding its onward course, as sunset gilds the sky. THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. [_Translated from the Italian._[R]] BY SAMUEL L. MITCHELL.--1796. Borne to the rocky bed's extremest brow, The flood leaps headlong, nor a moment waits;-- To join the whirlpool deep and vast below, The saltless ocean hurries through the straits. Hoarse roars the broken wave; and upward driv'n, Dashes in air;--dissolving vapours press'd Confound the troubled elements with heav'n:-- Earth quakes beneath;--heart trembles in the breast. With steps uncertain, to a jutting rock, To gaze upon the immense abyss I hie; And all my senses feel a horrid shock As down the steep I turn my dizzy eye. On cloudy steams I take a flight sublime, Leaving the world and nature's works behind; And as the pure empyreal heights I climb, Reflect with rapture on the Immortal Mind. CANZONET. BY J. B. VANSCHAICK. When motes, that dancing In golden wine, To the eyes' glancing Speak while they shine-- Then, the draught pouring, Love's fountain free, Mute, but adoring, I drink to thee. When sleep enchaineth, Sense steals away-- Dream, o'er mind reigneth With dark strange sway-- One sweet face floateth Sleep's misty sea, Th' unconscious heart doateth On thee--on thee. THE PENNSYLVANIAN IMMIGRANT. [_From the Backwoodsman._] BY J. K. PAULDING. Now all through Pennsylvania's pleasant land, Unheeded pass'd our little roving band, --For every soul had something here to do, Nor turn'd aside our cavalcade to view-- By Bethlehem, where Moravian exiles 'bide, In rural paradise, on Lehigh's side, And York and Lancaster--whose rival rose In this good land, no bloody discord knows. Not such their fate!--the ever grateful soil Rewards the blue-eyed German's patient toil; Richer and rounder every year he grows, Nor other ills his stagnant bosom knows Than caitiff grub, or cursed Hessian fly, Mildews, and smuts, a dry or humid sky; Before he sells, the market's sudden fall, Or sudden rise, when sold--still worse than all! Calmly he lives--the tempest of the mind, That marks its course by many a wreck behind; The purpose high that great ambition feels, Sometimes perchance upon his vision steals, But never in his sober waking thought One stirring, active impulse ever wrought. Calmly he lives--as free from good as blame, His home, his dress, his equipage the same; And when he dies, in sooth, 'tis soon forgot What once he was, or what he once was not-- An honest man, perhaps,--'tis somewhat odd That such should be the noblest work of God! So have I seen, in garden rich and gay, A stately cabbage waxing fat each day; Unlike the lively foliage of the trees, Its stubborn leaves ne'er wave in summer breeze, Nor flower, like those that prank the walks around, Upon its clumsy stem is ever found; It heeds not noontide heats, nor evening's balm, And stands unmoved in one eternal calm. At last, when all the garden's pride is lost It ripens in drear autumn's killing frost, And in a savoury sourkrout finds its end, From which detested dish, me heaven defend! LAKE GEORGE.--1829. BY S. DE WITT BLOODGOOD. I stood upon the shore, And looked upon the wave, While I thought me o'er and o'er HERE SLEEP THE BRAVE! The shadow of the hills, The azure of the flood, The murmuring of the rills Recall a scene of blood. When the war-cry filled the breeze, And the rifle and the bow Were like leaves upon the trees, But did not daunt Munro! 'Mid the thunders of the train, And the fires that flashed alarm! And the shouts that rent the plain, To battle rush'd Montcalm! But the red cross floats no more Upon the ruin'd walls, And the wind sighs on the shore, Like the noise of waterfalls. And the spirit of the hour Is as peaceful as yon wave, While pleasure builds its bower O'ER THE ASHES OF THE BRAVE. CROSSING THE ALLEGHANIES. [_From the Backwoodsman._] BY J. K. PAULDING. Our Basil beat the lazy sun next day, And bright and early had been on his way. But that the world he saw e'en yesternight, Seem'd faded like a vision from his sight. One endless chaos spread before his eyes, No vestige left of earth or azure skies, A boundless nothingness reign'd everywhere, Hid the green fields and silent all the air. As look'd the traveller for the world below, The lively morning breeze began to blow, The magic curtain roll'd in mists away, And a gay landscape laugh'd upon the day. As light the fleeting vapours upward glide, Like sheeted spectres on the mountain side, New objects open to his wondering view Of various form, and combinations new. A rocky precipice, a waving wood, Deep winding dell, and foaming mountain flood, Each after each, with coy and sweet delay, Broke on his sight, as at young dawn of day, Bounded afar by peak aspiring bold, Like giant capt with helm of burnish'd gold. So when the wandering grandsire of our race On Ararat had found a resting place, At first a shoreless ocean met his eye, Mingling on every side with one blue sky; But as the waters, every passing day, Sunk in the earth or roll'd in mists away, Gradual, the lofty hills, like islands, peep From the rough bosom of the boundless deep, Then the round hillocks, and the meadows green, Each after each, in freshen'd bloom are seen, Till, at the last, a fair and finish'd whole Combined to win the gazing patriarch's soul. Yet oft he look'd, I ween, with anxious eye, In lingering hope somewhere, perchance, to spy, Within the silent world, some living thing, Crawling on earth, or moving on the wing, Or man, or beast--alas! was neither there, Nothing that breathed of life in earth or air; 'Twas a vast silent mansion rich and gay, Whose occupant was drown'd the other day; A church-yard, where the gayest flowers oft bloom Amid the melancholy of the tomb; A charnel house, where all the human race Had piled their bones in one wide resting place; Sadly he turn'd from such a sight of wo, And sadly sought the lifeless world below. THE CLOUDS. BY GEORGE D. STRONG. How beauteous o'er the blue expanse Pencilling their shadows on the evening sky, The gathering clouds with gauze-wings unfold Their heaven wove tapestry: Veiling in mist the dim and wearied sun, Ere yet the drapery of his couch is won! Behold! behold them now! Tossing their gold-edged tresses on the breeze! Gliding like angels o'er the star-gemmed floor To heavenly symphonies! While distant seen, like hope to faith's clear view, Sleeps in calm splendour the cerulean blue! Ere yet imagination's wand Has traced the vision on the teeming brain, The fleeting pageant floats in mist, away Beyond the billowy main: But forms more beauteous wing again their flight, While eve reposes on the lap of night. Yon castellated tower As proudly cuts its turrets on the sky, As if the portals of its airy halls Blazoned with heraldry! And who shall say, but in its chambers glide Pale courtier's shadows--disembodied pride? The mimic ship unfolds Her swelling canvass on the airy main; And horsemen sweep in graceful circles o'er Th' etherial plain: While forms of light unknown to mortals here, People in myriads the celestial sphere! And many-coloured flowers, Changing their hues with every passing breeze, Crown the far summits of the mountain steeps; The shadowy trees Fling their gigantic branches wide and far, Dimming the lustre of full many a star. How oft in childhood's hour I've watched the cloudlets pale the evening beam, While the bright day-god quenched his waning fires In ocean, pool, and stream. Oh, then the clouds were ministers of joy To the rapt spirit of the dreamy boy! Mother and sister! Ye Have passed from earth like suns untimely set! Do ye not look from yonder throne of clouds Upon me yet, Beckoning me now, with eager glance to come To the bright portals of your heavenly home? Skeptic! whose chilling creed Would chain the spirit to life's bounded span, Learn from the clouds that _upward_ poise their wing, To value _man_! Nor deem the soul divested of its shroud-- Less glorious in its essence than a _cloud_! THE TORNADO. [_From the Backwoodsman._] BY J. K. PAULDING. Now down the mountain's rugged western side, Descending slow, our lonely travellers hied, Deep in a narrow glen, within whose breast The rolling fragments of the mountain rest; Rocks tumbled on each other by rude chance, Crown'd with grey fern, and mosses, met the glance, Through which a brawling river braved its way, Dashing among the rocks in foamy spray. Here, 'mid the fragments of a broken world, In wild and rough confusion, idly hurl'd, Where ne'er was heard the woodman's echoing stroke, Rose a huge forest of gigantic oak; With heads that tower'd half up the mountain's side, And arms extending round them far and wide, They look'd coeval with old mother earth, And seem'd to claim with her an equal birth. There, by a lofty rock's moss-mantled base, Our tired adventurers found a resting place; Beneath its dark, o'erhanging, sullen brow, The little bevy nestled snug below, And with right sturdy appetite, and strong, Devour'd the rustic meal they brought along. The squirrel eyed them from his lofty tree, And chirp'd as wont, with merry morning glee; The woodcock crow'd as if alone he were, Or heeded not the strange intruders there, Sure sign they little knew of man's proud race In that sequester'd mountain 'biding place; For wheresoe'er his wandering footsteps tend, Man never makes the rural train his friend; Acquaintance that brings other beings near, Produces nothing but distrust or fear: Beasts flee from man the more his heart they know, And fears, at last, to fix'd aversion grow, As thus in blithe serenity they sat, Beguiling resting time with lively chat, A distant, half heard murmur caught the ear, Each moment waxing louder and more near, A dark obscurity spread all around, And more than twilight seem'd to veil the ground, While not a leaf e'en of the aspen stirr'd, And not a sound but that low moan was heard. There is a moment when the boldest heart That would not stoop an inch to 'scape death's dart, That never shrunk from certain danger here, Will quail and shiver with an aguish fear; 'Tis when some unknown mischief hovers nigh, And heaven itself seems threatening from on high. Brave was our Basil, as became a man, Yet still his blood a little cooler ran, 'Twixt fear and wonder, at that murmur drear, That every moment wax'd more loud and near. The riddle soon was read--at last it came, And nature trembled to her inmost frame; The forest roar'd, the everlasting oak, In writhing agonies the storm bespoke, The live leaves scatter'd wildly everywhere, Whirl'd round in maddening circles in the air; The stoutest limbs were scatter'd all around, The stoutest trees a stouter master found, Crackling, and crashing, down they thundering go, And seem to crush the shrinking rocks below: Then the thick rain in gathering torrents pour'd, Higher the river rose, and louder roar'd, And on its dark, quick eddying surface bore The gather'd spoils of earth along its shore, While trees that not an hour before had stood The lofty monarchs of the stately wood, Now whirling round and round with furious force, Dash 'gainst the rocks that breast the torrent's force, And shiver like a reed by urchin broke Through idle mischief, or with heedless stroke; A hundred cataracts, unknown before, Rush down the mountain's side with fearful roar, And as with foaming fury down they go, Loose the firm rocks and thunder them below; Blue lightnings from the dark cloud's bosom sprung, Like serpents, menacing with forked tongue, While many a sturdy oak that stiffly braved The threatening hurricane that round it raved, Shiver'd beneath its bright, resistless flash, Came tumbling down amain with fearful crash. Air, earth, and skies, seem'd now to try their power, And struggle for the mastery of the hour; Higher the waters rose, and blacker still, And threaten'd soon the narrow vale to fill. TO A LADY. BY CLEMENT C. MOORE.--1804. Thy dimpled girls and rosy boys Rekindle in thy heart the joys That bless'd thy tender years: Unheeded fleet the hours away; For, while thy cherubs round thee play, New life thy bosom cheers. Once more, thou tell'st me, I may taste, Ere envious time this frame shall waste, My infant pleasures flown. Ah! there's a ray of lustre mild, Illumes the bosom of a child, To age, alas! scarce known. Not for my infant pleasures past I mourn; those joys which flew so fast, They, too, had many a stain; But for the mind, so pure and light, Which made those joys so fair, so bright, I sigh, and sigh in vain. Well I remember you, bless'd hours! Your sunbeams bright, your transient showers! Thoughtless I saw you fly; For distant ills then caus'd no dread; Nor cared I for the moments fled, For memory call'd no sigh. Fond parents swayed my every thought; No blame I feared, no praise I sought, But what their love bestowed. Full soon I learn'd each meaning look, Nor e'er the angry glance mistook For that where rapture glowed. Whene'er night's shadows called to rest, I sought my father, to request His benediction mild. A mother's love more loud would speak; With kiss on kiss she'd print my cheek, And bless her darling child. Thy lightest mists and clouds, sweet sleep! Thy purest opiates thou dost keep, On infancy to shed. No guilt there checks thy soft embrace, And not e'en tears and sobs can chase Thee from an infant's bed. The trickling tears which flow'd at night, Oft hast thou stay'd, till morning light Dispell'd my little woes. So fly before the sunbeam's power The remnants of the evening shower Which wet the early rose. Farewell, bless'd hours! full fast ye flew; And that which made your bliss so true Ye would not leave behind. The glow of youth ye could not leave; But why, why cruelly bereave Me of my artless mind? Fond mother! hope thy bosom warms, That on the prattler in thy arms Heaven's choicest gifts may flow. Thus let thy prayer incessant rise To Him, who, thron'd above the skies, Can feel for man below. "Oh! Thou, whose view is ne'er estrang'd From innocence, preserve unchang'd Through life my darling's mind; Unchang'd in truth and purity, Still fearless of futurity, Still artless, though refin'd. "As oft his anxious nurse hath caught And sav'd his little hand that sought The bright, but treacherous blaze; So, let fair Wisdom keep him sure From glittering vices which allure, Through life's delusive maze. "Oh! may the ills which man enshroud, As shadows of a transient cloud, But shade, not stain my boy. Then may he gently drop to rest, Calm as a child by sleep oppress'd, And wake to endless joy." SPRING IS COMING. BY JAMES NACK. Spring is coming, spring is coming, Birds are chirping, insects humming; Flowers are peeping from their sleeping, Streams escaped from winter's keeping. In delighted freedom rushing, Dance along in music gushing, Scenes of late in deadness saddened, Smile in animation gladdened; All is beauty, all is mirth, All is glory upon earth. Shout we then with Nature's voice, Welcome Spring! rejoice! rejoice! Spring is coming, come, my brother, Let us rove with one another, To our well-remembered wild wood, Flourishing in nature's childhood; Where a thousand flowers are springing, And a thousand birds are singing; Where the golden sunbeams quiver On the verdure-girdled river; Let our youth of feeling out, To the youth of nature shout, While the waves repeat our voice, Welcome Spring! rejoice! rejoice! FROM A FATHER TO HIS CHILDREN, AFTER HAVING HAD HIS PORTRAIT TAKEN FOR THEM. BY C. C. MOORE. This semblance of your parent's time-worn face Is but a sad bequest, my children dear: Its youth and freshness gone, and in their place The lines of care, the tracks of many a tear! Amid life's wreck, we struggle to secure Some floating fragment from oblivion's wave: We pant for somewhat that may still endure, And snatch at least a shadow from the grave. Poor, weak, and transient mortals! why so vain Of manly vigour or of beauty's bloom? An empty shade for ages may remain When we have mouldered in the silent tomb. But no! it is not _we_ who moulder there; We, of essential light that ever burns, We take our way through untried fields of air, When to the earth this earth-born frame returns. And 'tis the glory of the master's art Some radiance of this inward light to find; Some touch that to his canvass may impart A breath, a sparkle of the immortal mind. Alas! the pencil's noblest power can show But some faint shadow of a transient thought, Some waken'd feeling's momentary glow, Some swift impression in its passage caught. Oh! that the artist's pencil could pourtray A father's inward bosom to your eyes; What hopes, and fears, and doubts perplex his way, What aspirations for your welfare rise. Then might this unsubstantial image prove, When I am gone, a guardian of your youth, A friend for ever urging you to move In paths of honour, holiness, and truth. Let fond imagination's power supply The void that baffles all the painter's art; And when those mimic features meet your eye, Then fancy that they speak a parent's heart. Think that you still can trace within those eyes The kindling of affection's fervid beam, The searching glance that every fault espies, The fond anticipation's pleasing dream. Fancy those lips still utter sounds of praise, Or kind reproof that checks each wayward will, The warning voice, or precepts that may raise Your thoughts above this treach'rous world of ill. And thus shall Art attain her loftiest power; To noblest purpose shall her efforts tend: Not the companion of an idle hour, But Virtue's handmaid and Religion's friend. THE MITCHELLA. BY S. L. MITCHELL. [The Mitchella is a very delicate flower, a native of our woods, and although originally named from another botanist called Mitchell, was always a great favourite of Dr. S. L. Mitchell. The "double nature" alluded to in the poem refers to the fact of the flowers uniformly growing in pairs.] Sequestered safe beneath the sylvan bow'rs, Lo! fair Mitchella spends her joyous hours. The double nature on her form bestow'd Displays a winning and peculiar mode. With lilac wreath her beauteous front is grac'd, A crimson zone surrounds her slender waist; A robe of green trails sweeping o'er the ground, And scents ambrosial fill the air around-- Thus Proserpine o'er Enna's precincts stray'd Till gloomy Dis surpris'd the unthinking maid. From Earth to Tartarus transferr'd, in vain She intercedes her native home to gain. Jove grants in part her pray'r: above to know One half the year, the rest to pass below: And Ceres sees her daughter's two-fold mien, On Earth a nymph, in Pluto's realms a queen. A VISIT FROM ST. NICHOLAS. BY CLEMENT C. MOORE. 'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there; The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar-plums danced through their heads; And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap, Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap-- When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter: Away to the window I flew like a flash, Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash. The moon, on the breast of the new-fallen snow, Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below. When, what to my wondering eyes should appear, But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny rein-deer, With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick. More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name; "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer! now, Vixen! On! Comet, on! Cupid, on! Donder and Blixen-- To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall! Now, dash away, dash away, dash away all!" As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky, So, up to the house-top the coursers they flew, With the sleigh full of toys--and St. Nicholas too. And then in a twinkling I heard on the roof The prancing and pawing of each little hoof. As I drew in my head, and was turning around, Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound. He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnish'd with ashes and soot; A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, And he look'd like a pedlar just opening his pack. His eyes--how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry; His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow. The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath. He had a broad face and a little round belly That shook, when he laugh'd, like a bowl full of jelly. He was chubby and plump; a right jolly old elf; And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself. A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head, Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread. He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jirk, And laying his finger aside of his nose, And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose. He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, And away they all flew like the down of a thistle; But I heard him exclaim ere he drove out of sight, "Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!" ON SEEING A BEAUTIFUL YOUNG LADY WHOSE HEALTH WAS IMPAIRED BY THE AGUE AND FEVER. BY A. L. BLAUVELT.--1805. Dark minister of many woes, That lov'st the sad vicissitude of pain, Now shivering 'mid Antarctic snows, Now a faint pilgrim on Medina's plain. Say, can no form less fair thy vein engage? Must feeble loveliness exhaust thy rage? Oh, mark the faltering step, the languid eye, And all the anguish of her burning sigh: See the faintly struggling smile, See resignation's tear the while; So to the axe the martyr bends his form, So bends the lovely lily to the storm. Still though, sweet maid, thy yielding bloom decays, And faint the waning tide of rapture strays, Oh, may'st thou 'scape griefs more envenom'd smart, Nor ever know the ague of the heart. For rising from the sun bright plain, The _bended_ lily blooms again; But ah! what life imparting power Can e'er revive the _broken_ flower? THE GIFTS OF PROVIDENCE. BY WILLIAM LIVINGSTON.--1747. Oft on the vilest riches are bestow'd, To show their meanness in the sight of God. High from a dunghill see a Dives rise, And, Titan-like, insult the avenging skies: The crowd in adulation calls him lord, By thousands courted, flatter'd, and adored: In riot plunged, and drunk with earthly joys, No higher thought his grovelling soul employs; The poor he scourges with an iron rod, And from his bosom banishes his God. But oft, in height of wealth and beauty's bloom, Deluded man is fated to the tomb! For lo, he sickens, swift his colour flies, And rising mists obscure his swimming eyes: Around his bed his weeping friends bemoan, Extort the unwilling tear, and wish him gone; His sorrowing heir augments the tender shower, Deplores his death--yet hails the dying hour. Ah, bitter comfort! sad relief to die! Though sunk in down, beneath a canopy! His eyes no more shall see the cheerful light, Weigh'd down by death in everlasting night: And now the great, the rich, the proud, the gay, Lies breathless, cold--unanimated clay! He that just now, was flatter'd by the crowd With high applause and acclamation loud; That steel'd his bosom to the orphan's cries, And drew down torrents from the widow's eyes; Whom, like a God, the rabble did adore-- Regard him now--and lo! he is no more. FROM A HUSBAND TO HIS WIFE. BY C. C. MOORE. The dreams of Hope that round us play, And lead along our early youth, How soon, alas! they fade away Before the sober rays of Truth. And yet there are some joys in life That Fancy's pencil never drew; For Fancy's self, my own dear wife, Ne'er dreamt the bliss I owe to you. You have awaken'd in my breast Some chords I ne'er before had known; And you've imparted to the rest A stronger pulse, a deeper tone. And e'en the troubles that we find Our peace oft threat'ning to o'erwhelm, Like foreign foes, but serve to bind More close in love our little realm. I've not forgot the magic hour When youthful passion first I knew; When early love was in its flower, And bright with ev'ry rainbow hue. Then, fairy visions lightly moved, And waken'd rapture as they pass'd; But faith and love, like yours approved, Give joys that shall for ever last. A spotless wife's enduring love, A darling infant's balmy kiss, Breathe of the happiness above; Too perfect for a world like this. These heaven-sent pleasures seem too pure To take a taint from mortal breath; For, still unfading, they endure 'Mid sorrow, sickness, pain, and death. When cruel Palsy's withering blow Had left my father weak, forlorn, He yet could weep for joy, to know I had a wish'd-for infant born. And, as he lay in death's embrace, You saw when last on earth he smil'd; You saw the ray that lit his face When he beheld our darling child.-- Strange, mingled scene of bliss and pain! That, like a dream, before us flies; Where, 'midst illusions false and vain, Substantial joys are seen to rise.-- When to your heart our babes you fold, With all a mother's joy elate, I fondly think that I behold A vision of our future state. Hope comes, with balmy influence fraught, To heal the wound that rends my heart, Whene'er it meets the dreadful thought That all our earthly ties must part. Bless'd hope, beyond earth's narrow space, Within high Heaven's eternal bound, Again to see your angel face, With all your cherubs clustering round. Oh! yes, there are some beams of light That break upon this world below, So pure, so steady, and so bright, They seem from better worlds to flow. Reflected images are seen Upon this transient stream of Time, Through mists and shades that intervene, Of things eternal and sublime. Then let us rightly learn to know These heavenly messengers of love: They teach us whence true pleasures flow, And win our thoughts to joys above. And e'en when clouds roll o'er our head, Still let us turn our longing eyes To where Eternal Love has spread The changeless azure of the skies. PROPHETIC. [Lines written on the window-glass of an Inn in England during the author's travels through Europe in 1774-5.] BY GULIAN VERPLANCK. Hail happy Britain, Freedom's blest retreat; Great is thy power, thy wealth, thy glory great, But wealth and power have no immortal day, For all things ripen only to decay. And when that time arrives, the lot of all, When Britain's glory, power, and wealth shall fall; Then shall thy sons by Fate's unchang'd decree In other worlds another Britain see, And what thou art, America shall be. LINES [_Suggested by a Perusal of "The Life of Chatterton."_] BY A. L. BLAUVELT. And yet there are, who, borne on fortune's tide, Down the smooth vale of time unconscious glide; Ne'er dream of wretchedness when they repose, Nor wake to other cares, to other woes. And when the north wind rages through the sky, Withhold from bleeding poverty a sigh; Leave those to weep, who, torn from all held dear, In want and silence shed the frequent tear; Who, reared 'mid fortune's noon, ill brook the shade, And feel with tenfold sense its damps invade; Feel more than chilling frost neglects control, And all the horrors of a wintry soul; For ah; how oft from penury's cold grave, Nor worth nor all the power of mind can save? Condemned through life a ceaseless war to wage With all the pride and dulness of the age; Still vain each wish o'erwhelm'd, each hope elate, Oft Genius sinks desponding to her fate, Or moves the indignant pensioner of pride, Her triumphs blazon, nor her spoils divide; And, wrapt in chilling gloom, ne'er feels the day, Taught by her hand round happier wealth to play. Ah, stern decree! that minds whom Heaven inspires With more than angel thought, than angel fires; Whose virtues vibrate to the tenderest tone, And wake to wo ere half her woes be known; From the high boon a sterner fate derive, And suffer most, to suffering most alive. THE MAGIC DRAUGHT. [_Addressed to a young Lady who gave him Seltzer water to drink._] BY DR. S. L. MITCHELL. Brisk sparkled the liquid, most lively and fine, Transparent as amber, than crystal more pure, Appearing those qualities rare to combine, Adapted exactly his health to secure. Pursuant to order, he drank in a trice, Full confidence in his physician he placed; For who that is favour'd with lady's advice Can ever refuse their prescriptions to taste? Unconscious what mischief within it might lurk, He swallowed the doses again and again, Till he fancied within him a manifold work, Disturbing his heart and distracting his brain. Suspecting, at last, from his feelings unus'd, A trick on his faith had been wantonly play'd, "Some philter or potion" he swore "was infused, Some magic or poison instilled by the maid." "Not this a Nepenthe the mind to compose, Which Helen at Sparta employ'd in her feasts, But a draught such as Circe, the sorceress, chose, Transforming the drinkers to four-footed beasts." "Not a worse composition did Shakspeare behold, Prepared in their cauldron by witches obscene, Nor were drugs more detested, as Hayley has told, Commix'd by the fiends when they conjur'd up Spleen." Thus railing and raving, awhile he went on, Bethinking he soon must his testament make, When lo! all the terrible symptoms were gone, And his woful conjecture turn'd out a mistake. No water from Seltzer the vessel contain'd, Nor has Pyrmont or Spa such a remedy known; For she candidly, since the prescription, explain'd, Prepar'd by a process entirely her own. The tears which at church on Good Friday she shed, After Easter was over, had fairly been dry'd, But the 'kerchief on which she supported her head Was laid with the precious effusion aside. This 'kerchief, to bleech in the sunshine was plac'd, And expos'd to the weather by night and by day; With snow-flakes of April was often incas'd, And moisten'd as often by dew-drops of May. In ether's high region, where thunders prevail, Those drops by explosion's electric were form'd, Had once in descending been frozen to hail, And twice in the rainbow's refraction been warm'd. Collecting these drops on their fall from above, With myrtle's quintessence she tinctur'd the mass; Then breath'd in the mixture the spirit of love, And blessing, enclos'd it securely in glass. This potent elixir, he plainly observes, Of his head and his heart has pervaded the whole; Excites every fibre, and quickens the nerves, With sweet agitation delighting the soul. Yet he fears its effects on his temper and health Will make him his toilsome exertions disclaim; No more be devoted to projects of wealth, Nor seek to be crown'd with the laurels of Fame. Nay--an antidote sovereign he long has possess'd, His affections from spells and enchantments to free; No foreign intruder can enter a breast, Pre-occupied, heart winning S----h by thee. IMPROMPTU. [_On Miss ----'s paying the tribute of a tear to a scene of distress._] BY JACOB MORTON.--1790. Soft as the dews of evening skies Which on the flow'ret's bosom fall, Were those sweet tears in Anna's eyes Which wak'd at pity's gentle call. Ah! may that tender, feeling heart, Where thus sweet sympathy doth glow, Ne'er feel the pang of sorrow's dart, Nor sigh--but for _another's_ wo. APPEAL TO A CERTAIN GREAT MAN, WHO HAS QUESTIONED CERTAIN REVEALED TRUTHS. BY A. L. BLAUVELT.--1805. Thou talk'st of _Reason's_ unassisted eye: Lift then thy darling Reason to the sky,-- Paint, if thou wilt, the unincumber'd mind, Vast in its powers, and in its views refin'd; To truth aspiring on the wings of day, And spanning systems with a godlike sway. The portrait you have formed you dread to own, And Guilt's deep blushes o'er its shades are thrown: For has the Almighty thus inform'd the race, His _truth_ to question and his laws deface? Bestow'd a mind the Eternal's mind to blame, And _Reason's_ deathless force, His reason to defame? As well might Jove's imperial bird defy The Power that made him soar, because he soars so high. LINES TO A DAUGHTER OF THE LATE GOVERNOR CLINTON. BY J. B. VAN SCHAICK.--1829. And thou, fair flower of hope! Like a sweet violet, delicate and frail, Hast reared thy tender stem beneath an oak, Whose noble limbs o'ershadowed thee. The damp Cold dews of the unhealthy world fell not On thee; the gaudy sunshine of its pomp Came tempered to thine eye in milder beams. The train of life's inevitable ills Fell like the April rain upon the flowers, But thou wert shielded--no rude pelting storms Came down unbroken by thy sheltering tree. Fallen is the oak, The monarch of a forest sleeps. Around, The withered ivy and the broken branch Are silent evidence of greatness past, And his sweet, cherished violet has drunk The bitter dews until its cup was full. And now strange trees wave o'er it, and the shade Of weeping-willows and down-swaying boughs Stretch toward it with melancholy sorrow-- All sympathizing with the drooping flower. And years shall pass ere living trees forget That stately oak, and what a fame he shed O'er all the forest, and how each was proud That he could call himself a kindred thing. Long may the beauty of that violet Grow in the soil of hearts; till, delicate, Yet ripened into summer loveliness, A thousand branches all shall contending cast Their friendly shadows in protection there! THE SON OF SORROW. TO MYRA. BY A. L. BLAUVELT. When deep despondence gathers into shade, And grief unfeign'd calls fiction to her aid-- Paints through the vista of expected years, Hours clad with wo and visions dim with tears-- The past and future one large waste of gloom-- Here mem'ry's madness, there oblivion's tomb; No ear to list, no voice to soothe despair, And even death is deaf to sorrow's prayer. Oh! say, sweet minstrel, (for thy sighs I know Are wont to mingle with the sighs of wo,) Where shall the hope-deserted pilgrim fly To live too wretched, and too weak to die? Perhaps, e'en now, impassion'd and sincere, The sigh of beauty steals upon his ear-- Soft as the sky-wove theme of viewless lyres, That soothe his spirit when the saint expires: And oh! perhaps, ere quite dissolv'd in air, That sigh may breathe oblivion to despair; Melt o'er the throbbing string in Myra's lay, Till wo, enraptur'd, bears herself away. PORTRAITURE. [_From "Vice, a Satire," 1774._] BY GULIAN VERPLANCK. _Ob_: 1799. Go, learn thou this: From regulated Sense Is all our bliss--from sober Temperance. How much, Oh Temperance! to thee we owe, What joys sincere from thy pure fountains flow; Life's most protracted date derives from thee A calm old age, and death from anguish free. Doth Death affright thee with his dread parade, The hearse slow moving, and the cavalcade? Go, early learn its terrors to despise, Read virtue's lesson, and in time be wise. Enough of crimes on these Heav'n's vengeance wait, Let Satire aim at faults of humbler state. Whoe'er observes, will find in human race More difference of character than face; Some nice, odd turns, in all th' observer strike, Each his peculiar has, nor find we two alike. Blest with each art that soothes the ills of life, A quiet mind, not made for noise and strife; In whose fixed calm no jarring powers contend, Design'd to act as husband, father, friend; Had Philo been content with what was given, And, truly wise, enjoy'd on earth his heav'n: Philo had lived--but lived unknown to fame; Had died content,--but died without a name. No, Philo cried, be glorious praise my care, Nor let this name be mix'd with common air; For this he wastes the weary hours of night, Leaves peace to fools, and banishes delight; Nature in vain throws in her honest bars, The wretch runs counter to himself and stars; In vain--for lost no character he seems, And Philo does not live, but only dreams. Others there are, who to the shade retire, Who'd shine if nature would the clods inspire, And, as she gave them parts, would give them fire; But languid bodies, scarce informed with soul, In one dull round their vacant moments roll; Heavy and motionless as summer seas, They yawn out life in most laborious ease; Passions, half formed, in their cold bosoms lie, And all the man is sluggish anarchy. Yet wits, and wise, when some small shocks awake, As when the surface of some stagnant lake, Urged by the action of the busy air, Breaks its thick scum, and shows the bottom clear. Who knows not Florio? sweet, enraptured elf! Florio is known to all men but himself. Him folly owned the instant of his birth, And turned his soul to nonsense and to mirth; Nor boasts a son, in all her dancing crowd, So pert, so prim, so petulant, and proud. Mixture absurd and strange! we find in him Dulness with wit, sobriety with whim; A soul that sickens at each rising art With the mean malice of a coward's heart. So milky soft, so pretty, and so neat, With air so gentle, and with voice so sweet; What dog-star's rage, what maggot of the brain, Could make a fop so impudently vain, To throw all modesty aside, and sit The mighty censor of the works of wit? Say, wretch! what pride could prompt thee to bestow Abuse on power, the greatest power below; The Muse's power? That power thyself shall know: Her pen shall add thee to the long, long roll That holds the name of every brother fool. Of various passions that divide the breast, Pride reigns supreme and governs all the rest; Its form is varied, but to all supplied In equal shares, however modified. Blest source of action, whose perpetual strife With sluggish nature, warms us into life; Thou great first mover, 'tis alone from thee That life derives its sweet diversity. Yet hapless he, whose ill-directed pride With soft seduction draws his steps aside From life's low vale, where humbler joys invite; With bold, rash tread, to gain distinction's height. Him peace forsakes, and endless toils oppose, A friend's defection, and the spleen of foes. Black calumny invents her thousand lies, And sickly envy blasts him if he rise-- He, wretch accursed, tied down to servile rules, Must think and act no more like other fools: For him no more that social ease remains Which sweetens life, and softens all its pains; Each jealous eye betrays a critic's pen, To search for faults it spares in other men. How shall he wish in vain, once more his own, That hour when free, and to the world unknown, Its praise he had not, nor could fear its frown. THE FAREWELL. BY JOHN I. BAILEY. Oh! leave me still thy tender heart, Though love's delirious reign is over; I, too, will act the traitor's part-- Cordelia-like, become a rover. No more I'll gaze on smiles of thine, That beam as sweetly on another, Save with the feelings pure that twine Around the bosom of a brother. Loved smiles! that once around me shone, And waked to feelings of devotion; Thy sway is past, thy charm is gone-- Thou art resigned without emotion. No more to charm my wildered dream, Or hope's delusive joys to heighten; O'er my lone heart thy cheerless beam Falls, but has lost the power to brighten. The auburn ringlets of thy hair May twine as graceful still, and let them-- Those locks were once as loved as fair, Yet lost to me, I'll ne'er regret them. Yes! I could view those curls entwine Around another's hand that wreath'd them; Unmoved, recall those tones divine, Once sweet as were the lips that breath'd them! Thy form no longer wears the spell, As when a lover's dreams it haunted; Nor can affection fondly dwell On every grace that once enchanted. Then fare thee well! thou'st broke the chain; Go! yield thy charms to bless another; I would not seek their wiles again, I only ask--to be thy brother. SONNET TO MYRA. BY A. L. BLAUVELT. How sad the exile from his native skies Doom'd on the shade of parted bliss to dwell-- No ear to catch his penitential sighs, No voice to soothe him in his last farewell. Anxious he treads th' inhospitable shore, And gazes anxious on the main Where ling'ring fancy loves to feign Till day's last lustre bids her wake no more; Then horror climbs the dusky wave, And beckons madness to her grave, Where, cradled by the surge to rest, Low sighs the passing gale, "Despair is blest." Ah! sadder far an exile from thy charms; Friends, Country, Freedom, smile in Myra's arms. TO CORDELIA. BY JOHN J. BAILEY. Smile not, sweet girl, 'tis even so-- Cordelia, smile not unbelieving; My words, though not so sweet, I know, As thine, were never _so_ deceiving. And if I _must_ be sworn to prove That I have said sincerely, thereby, I'd choose thy brow, so formed for love, To be the book I'd kissing swear by. Nay, look not angry thus, 'tis vain-- I value not thy frowns a feather-- 'Tis not thy nature to retain An unkind thought for hours together. I envy not thy lover's joys, Nor flattering smiles that so endear them; Thy brittle chains caprice destroys; Oh! who on earth would wish to wear them? Yes! I could give thee many a name Of those who've waked thy tender bosom; A flame succeeding still to flame, Yet thou wert e'er content to lose 'em. Content to wound that bosom too, That had for years, unchanged, ador'd thee; Oh! when thou held'st a heart so true, What joy could ranging thus afford thee? I trust an angel's form thou'lt wear E'er I ascend to yonder Heaven; Or I a tale could give in there, Would leave thee lost and unforgiven. SONG.--WHEN OTHER FRIENDS ARE ROUND THEE. BY G. P. MORRIS. When other friends are round thee, And other hearts are thine; When other bays have crowned thee, More fresh and green than mine. Then think how sad and lonely This wretched heart will be; Which, while it beats--beats only, Beloved one! for thee. Yet do not think I doubt thee; I know thy truth remains, I would not live without thee For all the world contains. Thou art the star that guides me Along life's troubled sea, And whatever fate betides me, This heart still turns to thee. DEATH OF THE FIRST-BORN. BY WILLIS G. CLARK. Young mother, he is gone, His dimpled cheek no more will touch thy breast, No more the music tone Float from his lips to thine all fondly prest; His smile and happy laugh are lost to thee, Earth must his mother and his pillow be. His was the morning hour, And he hath passed in beauty from the day, A bud not yet a flower; Torn in its sweetness from the parent spray, The death wind swept him to his soft repose, As frost in spring-time blights the early rose. Never on earth again Will his rich accents charm thy listening ear, Like some Æolian strain, Breathing at even-tide serene and clear; His voice is choked in dust, and on his eyes The unbroken seal of peace and silence lies. And from thy yearning heart, Whose inmost core was warm with love for him, A gladness must depart, And those kind eyes with many tears be dim; While lonely memories, an unceasing train, Will turn the raptures of the past to pain. Yet, mourner, while the day Rolls like the darkness of a funeral by, And hope forbids one ray To stream athwart the grief-discoloured sky, There breaks upon thy sorrow's evening gloom A trembling lustre from beyond the tomb. 'Tis from the better land: There, bathed in radiance that around them springs, Thy lov'd one's wings expand, As with the quoiring cherubim he sings; And all the glory of that God can see, Who said on earth to children, "Come to me." Mother! thy child is blest; And though his presence may be lost to thee, And vacant leave thy breast, And missed a sweet load from thy parent knee-- Though tones familiar from thine ear have passed, Thou'lt meet thy first-born with his Lord at last. ELEGY ON THE EXILE AND DEATH OF OVID. [_Translated from the Latin of Angelus Politianus._] BY FRANCIS ARDEN.--1821. A Roman Bard lies on the Euxine's side, Barbarian earth a Roman poet holds, Barbarian earth, wash'd by cold Isther's tide, The poet of the tender loves infolds. Excites not this, O Rome! a blush in thee, That to so great a nursling, harsh of mood, Reserv'st a bosom steel'd in cruelty, Surpassing the inhuman Getic brood? Had Scythian fields, ye muses, one to chase, His weary minutes of disease away, His frigid limbs upon the couch to place, Or with sweet converse to beguile the day. One who would mark the throbbing of his veins, The lotion's aid with ready hand apply, Would close his eyes 'midst dissolution's pains, Or with fond lips inhale his latest sigh. None could be found, not one, for warlike Rome, From Pontus far detains his early friends, Far stands his wife's and young descendants' home, Nor on her exil'd sire his daughter tends. But the wild Bessi of enormous limb, And the Coralli yellow hair'd, are there; Or, clad in skins, the Getic people grim, Whose bosoms hearts of flint within them bear. Yes, the Sarmatian boor, with aspect dread, His savage succours on the bard bestow'd; The fierce Sarmatian, from debauch oft led, Borne to his horse's back a reeling load. The fierce Sarmatian boor, with piercing eye Deep prison'd in his rugged forehead's bound, Whose temples, shiv'ring 'neath th' inclement sky, With clatt'rings of his frost-wrapp'd hair resound. Yes; for the bard immers'd in death's long sleep, The Bessic plund'rers bid their tears to flow, The rough Coralli and Sarmatian weep, And cruel Getic strikes his face the blow. Hills, woods, and savage beasts his death deplore, And Ister wails amid his waters' bed, And Pontus, chill'd with ice incrusted o'er, Warms with the tears the sorrowing Nereids shed. There with the Paphian mother in swift haste, The light-winged Doves through airy regions came, With pious care the blazing torches plac'd Beneath the pyre prepar'd to feed the flame. Soon as the rapid fires with wasteful sway Consum'd whate'er their greedy rage could burn, His cherish'd relics they collect, and lay In decent order in the cover'd urn. With this short verse the stone they next impress: (The treasur'd dust placed to denote above,) "He who sepulchred lies in this recess, Was teacher of the tender art of love." Here Cytherea's self, with snow-white hand, Sheds sacred dews in seven free sprinklings round, And for the Bard remov'd, the Muse's band Pour strains my lays may not attempt to sound. NAPOLEON. BY ISAAC CLASON.--1825. I love no land so well as that of France-- Land of Napoleon and Charlemagne, Renowned for valour, women, wit, and dance, For racy Burgundy and bright Champagne, Whose only word in battle was advance; While that Grand Genius, who seemed born to reign, Greater than Ammon's son, who boasted birth From heaven, and spurn'd all sons of earth, Greater than he who wore his buskins high, A Venus armed impressed upon his seal; Who smiled at poor Calphurnia's prophecy, Nor feared the stroke he soon was doomed to feel. Who on the Ides of March breathed his last sigh As Brutus pluck'd away his "cursed steel," Exclaiming, as he expired "Et tu, Brute," But Brutus thought he only did his duty. Greater than he, who, at nine years of age, On Carthage' altar swore eternal hate; Who with a rancour time could ne'er assuage, With feelings no reverse could moderate; With talents such as few would dare engage, With hopes that no misfortune could abate-- Died like his rival--both with broken hearts; Such was their fate, and such was Bonaparte's. Napoleon Bonaparte! thy name shall live Till time's last echo shall have ceased to sound; And if Eternity's confines can give To space reverberation round and round The spheres of Heaven, the long, deep cry of "Vive Napoleon," in thunders shall rebound; The lightning's flash shall blaze thy name on high, Monarch of earth, now meteor of the sky! What though on St. Helena's rocky shore Thy head be pillow'd, and thy form entomb'd, Perhaps that son, the child thou did'st adore, Fired with a father's fame, may yet be doom'd To crush the bigot Bourbon, and restore Thy mouldering ashes ere they be consum'd; Perhaps may run the course thyself did'st run, And light the world as comets light the sun. 'Tis better thou art gone, 'twere sad to see Beneath an "imbecile's impotant reign" Thine own unvanquished legions doomed to be Cursed instruments of vengeance on poor Spain; That land so glorious once in chivalry, Now sunk in slavery and in shame again; To see th' imperial guard, thy dauntless band, Made tools for such a wretch as _Ferdinand_. Farewell, Napoleon! thine hour is past; No more earth trembles at thy dreaded name; But France, unhappy France shall long contrast Thy deeds with those of worthless _D'Angoulême_. Ye gods! how long shall Slavery's thraldom last? Will France alone remain for ever tame? Say, will no Wallace, will no Washington, Scourge from thy soil the infamous Bourbon? Is Freedom dead? is Nero's reign restored? Frenchmen! remember Jena, Austerlitz; The first, which made thy emperor the lord Of Prussia, and which almost threw in fits _Great_ Frederick William; he, who, at the board Took all the Prussian uniform to bits; Frederick, the King of regimental tailors, As _Hudson Lowe_, the very prince of jailors. Farewell, Napoleon! had'st thou have died The coward scorpion's death, afraid, asham'd To meet Adversity's advancing tide, The weak had praised thee, but the wiser had blam'd; But no! though torn from country, child, and bride, With spirit unsubdued, with soul untam'd, Great in misfortune as in glory high, Thou daredst to live through life's worst agony. Pity, for thee shall weep her fountains dry; Mercy, for thee shall bankrupt all her store; Valour shall pluck a garland from on high, And Honour twine the wreath thy temples o'er; Beauty shall beckon to thee from the sky, And smiling seraphs open wide Heav'n's door; Around thy head the brightest stars shall meet, And rolling suns play sportive at thy feet. Farewell, Napoleon! a long farewell, A stranger's tongue, alas! must hymn thy worth; No craven Gaul dare wake his harp to tell, Or sound in song the spot that gave thee birth. No more thy name, that with its magic spell Arous'd the slumb'ring nations of the earth, Echoes around thy land; 'tis past--at length France sinks beneath the sway of Charles the Tenth. THE BUTTERFLY. BY R. C. SANDS. [_From the French of De la Martine._] Born with the spring, and with the roses dying, Through the clear sky on Zephyr's pinion sailing, On the young flowret's opening bosom lying, Perfume and light and the blue air inhaling, Shaking the thin dust from its wings, and fleeing, And fading like a breath in boundless heaven,-- Such is the butterfly's enchanted being; How like desire, to which no rest is given, Which still uneasy, rifling every treasure, Returns at last above to seek for purer pleasure. FRAGMENT. BY ISAAC CLASON.--1825. He who has seen the red-forked lightnings flash From out some bleak and tempest-gathered cloud, And heard the thunder's simultaneous crash Bursting in peals terrifically loud; He who has marked the maddened ocean dash (Rob'd in its snow-white foam as in a shroud,) Its giant billows on the groaning shore, While death seem'd echoed in the deaf'ning roar; He who has seen the wild tornado sweep (Its path destruction, and its progress death,) The silent bosom of the smiling deep With the black besom of its boisterous breath, Waking to strife the slumbering waves that leap In battling surges from their beds beneath, Yawning and swelling from their liquid caves Like buried giants from their restless graves:-- He who has gazed on sights and scenes like these, Hath look'd on nature in her maddest mood. But Nature's warfare passes by degrees; The thunder's voice is hush'd, however rude. The dying winds unclasp the raging seas, The scowling sky throws by her cloud-capt hood, The infant lightnings to their cradle creep, And the gaunt earthquake rocks herself to sleep. But there are storms whose lightnings ever glare, Tempests whose thunders never cease to roll-- The storms of love when madden'd to despair, The furious tempests of the jealous soul, That kamsin of the heart which few can bear, Which owns no limit and which knows no goal, Whose blast leaves joy a tomb, and hope a speck, Reason a blank, and happiness a wreck. LOVE'S REMEMBRANCER. BY WILLIAM LEGGETT. And is this all remains of thee, Beloved in youth so well? Of all the charms that threw o'er me Affection's sweetest spell-- The eye that beamed with light of mind, The heart so warm and so refined, This only left to tell? Yet well does it recall again The form beloved--alas! in vain. Sad relic! but few months are fled Since thou didst grace the brow Of her, who in death's marble bed Is coldly sleeping now! And when I leave my native home O'er ocean's pathless waste to roam, With many a whispered vow Did she this raven tress confer, And called thee, Love's Remembrancer. I placed thee next my throbbing heart, Where soon I hoped to fold The maid of whom alone thou art All I can e'er behold! And often, on the moonlight sea, I've stolen a glance of love at thee, While pleasure's tear-drop rolled To think I should soon cross the main, And meet my love--no, ne'er again! At last our bark return'd once more O'er ocean's heaving breast; And lightly on my native shore My thrilling footsteps pressed: With breathless haste I sought the form That, day and night, through calm and storm, Had been my bosom's guest-- I sought--but ah! the grave had closed Above that form, in death reposed! Dear gift! when now thou meet'st my gaze, What burning thoughts arise! O, how the soul of other days Comes gushing from mine eyes! I do not weep o'er pleasures fled; Nor mourn I that the loved one's dead: But when remembrance flies Back o'er the scenes of early years, In vain would I suppress my tears! I weep--yet scarce know why I weep-- For I would not recall That being from her dreamless sleep-- I would not lift the pall That shrouds her cold and pulseless breast-- No! if a word could break her rest, And give back life, love, all That once made life so bright, so dear, I could not--could not--wish her here! Now let the tempest pour its wrath On my devoted head! The clouds that lower upon my path Cannot disturb the dead: And oh! 'tis something still to know, Howe'er mine eyes with anguish flow, No tears can e'er be shed By her, who, snatched in loveliest bloom, Lies mouldering in an early tomb. Life's burden I have learned to bear, But I would bear alone, Nor have one other heart to share The pangs that rend my own! Yes, yes, loved pledge! where now nay view Is fixed upon the raven hue, It softens sorrow's moan To know--whate'er 'tis mine to brave-- Affliction cannot pierce the grave! TO THE DYING YEAR. BY J. G. BROOKS. Thou desolate and dying year! Emblem of transitory man, Whose wearisome and wild career Like thine is bounded to a span; It seems but as a little day Since nature smiled upon thy birth, And Spring came forth in fair array, To dance upon the joyous earth. Sad alteration! now how lone, How verdureless is nature's breast, Where ruin makes his empire known, In Autumn's yellow vesture drest; The sprightly bird, whose carol sweet Broke on the breath of early day, The summer flowers she loved to greet; The bird, the flowers, Oh! where are they? Thou desolate and dying year! Yet lovely in thy lifelessness As beauty stretched upon the bier, In death's clay cold, and dark caress; There's loveliness in thy decay, Which breathes, which lingers on thee still, Like memory's mild and cheering ray Beaming upon the night of ill. Yet, yet, the radiance is not gone, Which shed a richness o'er the scene, Which smiled upon the golden dawn, When skies were brilliant and serene; Oh! still a melancholy smile Gleams upon Nature's aspect fair, To charm the eye a little while, Ere ruin spreads his mantle there! Thou desolate and dying year! Since time entwined thy vernal wreath, How often love hath shed the tear, And knelt beside the bed of death; How many hearts that lightly sprung When joy was blooming but to die, Their finest chords by death unstrung, Have yielded life's expiring sigh, And pillowed low beneath the clay, Have ceased to melt, to breathe, to burn; The proud, the gentle, and the gay, Gathered unto the mouldering urn; While freshly flowed the frequent tear For love bereft, affection fled; For all that were our blessings here, The loved, the lost, the sainted dead! Thou desolate and dying year! The musing spirit finds in thee Lessons, impressive and serene, Of deep and stern morality; Thou teachest how the germ of youth, Which blooms in being's dawning day, Planted by nature, reared by truth, Withers like thee in dark decay. Promise of youth! fair as the form Of Heaven's benign and golden bow, Thy smiling arch begirds the storm, And sheds a light on every wo; Hope wakes for thee, and to her tongue, A tone of melody is given, As if her magic voice were strung With the empyreal fire of Heaven. And love which never can expire, Whose origin is from on high, Throws o'er thy morn a ray of fire, From the pure fountains of the sky; That ray which glows and brightens still Unchanged, eternal and divine; Where seraphs own its holy thrill, And bow before its gleaming shrine. Thou desolate and dying year! Prophetic of our final fall; Thy buds are gone, thy leaves are sear, Thy beauties shrouded in the pall; And all the garniture that shed, A brilliancy upon thy prime, Hath like a morning vision fled Unto the expanded grave of time. Time! Time! in thy triumphal flight, How all life's phantoms fleet away; The smile of hope, and young delight, Fame's meteor beam, and Fancy's ray: They fade; and on the heaving tide, Rolling its stormy waves afar, Are borne the wreck of human pride, The broken wreck of Fortune's war. There in disorder, dark and wild, Are seen the fabrics once so high; Which mortal vanity had piled As emblems of eternity! And deemed the stately piles, whose forms Frowned in their majesty sublime, Would stand unshaken by the storms That gathered round the brow of Time. Thou desolate and dying year! Earth's brightest pleasures fade like thine; Like evening shadows disappear, And leave the spirit to repine. The stream of life that used to pour Its fresh and sparkling waters on, While Fate stood watching on the shore, And numbered all the moments gone:-- Where hath the morning splendour flown, Which danced upon that crystal stream? Where are the joys to childhood known, When life was an enchanted dream? Enveloped in the starless night, Which destiny hath overspread; Enroll'd upon that trackless flight Where the death wing of time hath sped! Oh! thus hath life its even-tide Of sorrow, loneliness, and grief; And thus divested of its pride, It withers like the yellow leaf: Oh! such is life's autumnal bower, When plundered of its summer bloom; And such is life's autumnal hour, Which heralds man unto the tomb! NEW-YORK: Printed by SCATCHERD & ADAMS, No. 38 Gold Street. FOOTNOTES: ____________ [A] Goethe and his Faust. [B] Cuvier. [C] Spurzheim. [D] Scott. [E] Champollion. [F] Crabbe. [G] Jeremy Bentham. [H] Adam Clarke. [I] The Duke of Reichstadt. [J] Charles Carroll. [K] Not the sportsman's favourite (_scolopax minor_) of our Atlantic shores, but the large crested woodpecker, so called in the western counties. [L] Or "Lake Kau-na-ong-ga," meaning literally "_two wings_." White Lake, which is the unmeaning modern epithet of this beautiful sheet of water, is situated in the town of Bethel, Sullivan County, N. Y. It is in the form of a pair of huge wings expanded. [M] The Rev. James W. Eastburn, by whom, in conjunction with Mr. Sands, the poem of Yamoyden was written, in separate portions. [N] _Hesiod. Theog._ 1. 1. 60. 30. [O] It may perhaps, to some, appear incongruous thus to mingle Heathen musicians among the Hebrews; but it is believed the incongruity will disappear on a moment's reflection upon the history and character of Herod the Great. His expeditions to Rome, Greece, and Syria, &c., were frequent, and he was not scrupulous in the introduction of games, sports, and gorgeous customs of the oriental nations, to heighten the effect of his own pageants. He built and rebuilt divers Heathen temples, and among them the Temple of Apollo, in Greece. Some historians deny that he was a Jew; but say that he was originally the guardian of the Temple of Apollo at Askalon, who, having been taken prisoner among the Idumeans, afterwards turned Jew. [P] These lines, so musical in the original, and susceptible of equally melodious translation, were penned by the unfortunate Mary a few hours before her execution. [Q] The substance usually called French chalk has this singular property, that what is written on glass, though easily rubbed out again so that no trace remains visible, by being breathed on becomes immediately distinctly legible. [R] The above lines were translated by Dr. Mitchell, in October 1796, from the Italian of Dr. Gian Baptista Scandella, an accomplished gentleman, who afterwards, in September 1798, fell a victim to the yellow fever in the city of New York, just as he had finished his American tour, and was on the eve of embarking for Europe. _____________________________________________________________ 
43224	----	book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.) Poetry A Magazine of Verse VOLUME I. October-March, 1912-13 Harriet Monroe ~ Editor [Illustration] _Reprinted with the permission of the original publisher._ A. M. S. REPRINT CO. New York, New York Copyright By HARRIET MONROE 1912-1913 Poetry VOL. I A Magazine of Verse NO. 1 OCTOBER, 1912 POETRY I It is a little isle amid bleak seas-- An isolate realm of garden, circled round By importunity of stress and sound, Devoid of empery to master these. At most, the memory of its streams and bees, Borne to the toiling mariner outward-bound, Recalls his soul to that delightful ground; But serves no beacon toward his destinies. It is a refuge from the stormy days, Breathing the peace of a remoter world Where beauty, like the musing dusk of even, Enfolds the spirit in its silver haze; While far away, with glittering banners furled, The west lights fade, and stars come out in heaven. II It is a sea-gate, trembling with the blast Of powers that from the infinite sea-plain roll, A whelming tide. Upon the waiting soul As on a fronting rock, thunders the vast Groundswell; its spray bursts heavenward, and drives past In fume and sound articulate of the whole Of ocean's heart, else voiceless; on the shoal Silent; upon the headland clear at last. From darkened sea-coasts without stars or sun, Like trumpet-voices in a holy war, Utter the heralds tidings of the deep. And where men slumber, weary and undone, Visions shall come, incredible hopes from far,-- And with high passion shatter the bonds of sleep. _Arthur Davison Ficke_ I AM THE WOMAN I am the Woman, ark of the law and its breaker, Who chastened her steps and taught her knees to be meek, Bridled and bitted her heart and humbled her cheek, Parcelled her will, and cried "Take more!" to the taker, Shunned what they told her to shun, sought what they bade her seek, Locked up her mouth from scornful speaking: now it is open to speak. I am she that is terribly fashioned, the creature Wrought in God's perilous mood, in His unsafe hour. The morning star was mute, beholding my feature, Seeing the rapture I was, the shame, and the power, Scared at my manifold meaning; he heard me call "O fairest among ten thousand, acceptable brother!" And he answered not, for doubt; till he saw me crawl And whisper down to the secret worm, "O mother, Be not wroth in the ancient house; thy daughter forgets not at all!" I am the Woman, fleër away, Soft withdrawer back from the maddened mate, Lurer inward and down to the gates of day And crier there in the gate, "What shall I give for thee, wild one, say! The long, slow rapture and patient anguish of life, Or art thou minded a swifter way? Ask if thou canst, the gold, but oh if thou must, Good is the shining dross, lovely the dust! Look at me, I am the Woman, harlot and heavenly wife; Tell me thy price, be unashamed; I will assuredly pay!" I am also the Mother: of two that I bore I comfort and feed the slayer, feed and comfort the slain. Did they number my daughters and sons? I am mother of more! Many a head they marked not, here in my bosom has lain, Babbling with unborn lips in a tongue to be, Far, incredible matters, all familiar to me. Still would the man come whispering, "Wife!" but many a time my breast Took him not as a husband: I soothed him and laid him to rest Even as the babe of my body, and knew him for such. My mouth is open to speak, that was dumb too much! I say to you I am the Mother; and under the sword Which flamed each way to harry us forth from the Lord, I saw Him young at the portal, weeping and staying the rod, And I, even I was His mother, and I yearned as the mother of God. I am also the Spirit. The Sisters laughed When I sat with them dumb in the portals, over my lamp, Half asleep in the doors: for my gown was raught Off at the shoulder to shield from the wind and the rain The wick I tended against the mysterious hour When the Silent City of Being should ring with song, As the Lord came in with Life to the marriage bower. "Look!" laughed the elder Sisters; and crimson with shame I hid my breast away from the rosy flame. "Ah!" cried the leaning Sisters, pointing, doing me wrong, "Do you see?" laughed the wanton Sisters, "She will get her lover ere long!" And it was but a little while till unto my need He was given indeed, And we walked where waxing world after world went by; And I said to my lover, "Let us begone, "Oh, let us begone, and try "Which of them all the fairest to dwell in is, "Which is the place for us, our desirable clime!" But he said, "They are only the huts and the little villages, Pleasant to go and lodge in rudely over the vintage-time!" Scornfully spake he, being unwise, Being flushed at heart because of our walking together. But I was mute with passionate prophecies; My heart went veiled and faint in the golden weather, While universe drifted by after still universe. Then I cried, "Alas, we must hasten and lodge therein, One after one, and in every star that they shed! A dark and a weary thing is come on our head-- To search obedience out in the bosom of sin, To listen deep for love when thunders the curse; For O my love, behold where the Lord hath planted In every star in the midst His dangerous Tree! Still I must pluck thereof and bring unto thee, Saying, "The coolness for which all night we have panted; Taste of the goodly thing, I have tasted first!" Bringing us noway coolness, but burning thirst, Giving us noway peace, but implacable strife, Loosing upon us the wounding joy and the wasting sorrow of life! I am the Woman, ark of the Law and sacred arm to upbear it, Heathen trumpet to overthrow and idolatrous sword to shear it: Yea, she whose arm was round the neck of the morning star at song, Is she who kneeleth now in the dust and cries at the secret door, "Open to me, O sleeping mother! The gate is heavy and strong. "Open to me, I am come at last; be wroth with thy child no more. "Let me lie down with thee there in the dark, and be slothful with thee as before!" _William Vaughan Moody_ TO WHISTLER, AMERICAN _On the loan exhibit of his paintings at the Tate Gallery._ You also, our first great, Had tried all ways; Tested and pried and worked in many fashions, And this much gives me heart to play the game. Here is a part that's slight, and part gone wrong, And much of little moment, and some few Perfect as Dürer! "In the Studio" and these two portraits,[A] if I had my choice! And then these sketches in the mood of Greece? You had your searches, your uncertainties, And this is good to know--for us, I mean, Who bear the brunt of our America And try to wrench her impulse into art. You were not always sure, not always set To hiding night or tuning "symphonies"; Had not one style from birth, but tried and pried And stretched and tampered with the media. You and Abe Lincoln from that mass of dolts Show us there's chance at least of winning through. _Ezra Pound_ [Footnote A: "Brown and Gold--de Race." "Grenat et Or--Le Petit Cardinal." ] MIDDLE-AGED A STUDY IN AN EMOTION "'Tis but a vague, invarious delight As gold that rains about some buried king. As the fine flakes, When tourists frolicking Stamp on his roof or in the glazing light Try photographs, wolf down their ale and cakes And start to inspect some further pyramid; As the fine dust, in the hid cell beneath Their transitory step and merriment, Drifts through the air, and the sarcophagus Gains yet another crust Of useless riches for the occupant, So I, the fires that lit once dreams Now over and spent, Lie dead within four walls And so now love Rains down and so enriches some stiff case, And strews a mind with precious metaphors, And so the space Of my still consciousness Is full of gilded snow, The which, no cat has eyes enough To see the brightness of." _Ezra Pound_ FISH OF THE FLOOD Fish of the flood, on the bankèd billow Thou layest thy head in dreams; Sliding as slides thy shifting pillow, One with the streams Of the sea is thy spirit. Gean-tree, thou spreadest thy foaming flourish Abroad in the sky so grey; It not heeding if it thee nourish, Thou dost obey, Happy, its moving. So, God, thy love it not needeth me, Only thy life, that I blessèd be. _Emilia Stuart Lorimer_ TO ONE UNKNOWN I have seen the proudest stars That wander on through space, Even the sun and moon, But not your face. I have heard the violin, The winds and waves rejoice In endless minstrelsy, Yet not your voice. I have touched the trillium, Pale flower of the land, Coral, anemone, And not your hand. I have kissed the shining feet Of Twilight lover-wise, Opened the gates of Dawn-- Oh not your eyes! I have dreamed unwonted things, Visions that witches brew, Spoken with images, Never with you. _Helen Dudley_ SYMPHONY OF A MEXICAN GARDEN 1. THE GARDEN _Poco sostenuto_ in A major The laving tide of inarticulate air. _Vivace_ in A major The iris people dance. 2. THE POOL _Allegretto_ in A minor Cool-hearted dim familiar of the doves. 3. THE BIRDS _Presto_ in F major I keep a frequent tryst. _Presto meno assai_ The blossom-powdered orange-tree. 4. TO THE MOON _Allegro con brio_ in A major Moon that shone on Babylon. TO MOZART _What junipers are these, inlaid With flame of the pomegranate tree? The god of gardens must have made This still unrumored place for thee To rest from immortality, And dream within the splendid shade Some more elusive symphony Than orchestra has ever played._ I In A major _Poco sostenuto_ The laving tide of inarticulate air Breaks here in flowers as the sea in foam, But with no satin lisp of failing wave: The odor-laden winds are very still. An unimagined music here exhales In upcurled petal, dreamy bud half-furled, And variations of thin vivid leaf: Symphonic beauty that some god forgot. If form could waken into lyric sound, This flock of irises like poising birds Would feel song at their slender feathered throats, And pour into a grey-winged aria Their wrinkled silver fingermarked with pearl; That flight of ivory roses high along The airy azure of the larkspur spires Would be a fugue to puzzle nightingales With too-evasive rapture, phrase on phrase. Where the hibiscus flares would cymbals clash, And the black cypress like a deep bassoon Would hum a clouded amber melody. But all across the trudging ragged chords That are the tangled grasses in the heat, The mariposa lilies fluttering Like trills upon some archangelic flute, The roses and carnations and divine Small violets that voice the vanished god, There is a lure of passion-poignant tone Not flower-of-pomegranate--that finds the heart As stubborn oboes do--can breathe in air, Nor poppies, nor keen lime, nor orange-bloom. What zone of wonder in the ardent dusk Of trees that yearn and cannot understand, Vibrates as to the golden shepherd horn That stirs some great adagio with its cry And will not let it rest? O tender trees, Your orchid, like a shepherdess of dreams, Calls home her whitest dream from following Elusive laughter of the unmindful god! _Vivace_ The iris people dance Like any nimble faun: To rhythmic radiance They foot it in the dawn. They dance and have no need Of crystal-dripping flute Or chuckling river-reed,-- Their music hovers mute. The dawn-lights flutter by All noiseless, but they know! Such children of the sky Can hear the darkness go. But does the morning play Whatever they demand-- Or amber-barred bourrée Or silver saraband? THE POOL II. In A minor _Allegretto_ Cool-hearted dim familiar of the doves, Thou coiled sweet water where they come to tell Their mellow legends and rehearse their loves, As what in April or in June befell And thou must hear of,--friend of Dryades Who lean to see where flower should be set To star the dusk of wreathed ivy braids, They have not left thy trees, Nor do tired fauns thy crystal kiss forget, Nor forest-nymphs astray from distant glades. Thou feelest with delight their showery feet Along thy mossy margin myrtle-starred, And thine the heart of wildness quick to beat At imprint of shy hoof upon thy sward: Yet who could know thee wild who art so cool, So heavenly-minded, templed in thy grove Of plumy cedar, larch and juniper? O strange ecstatic Pool, What unknown country art thou dreaming of, Or temple than this garden lovelier? Who made thy sky the silver side of leaves, And poised its orchid like a swan-white moon Whose disc of perfect pallor half deceives The mirror of thy limpid green lagoon, He loveth well thy ripple-feathered moods, Thy whims at dusk, thy rainbow look at dawn! Dream thou no more of vales Olympian: Where pale Olympus broods There were no orchid white as moon or swan, No sky of leaves, no garden-haunting Pan! THE BIRDS III. In F major _Presto_ I keep a frequent tryst With whirr and shower of wings: Some inward melodist Interpreting all things Appoints the place, the hours. Dazzle and sense of flowers, Though not the least leaf stir, May mean a tanager: How rich the silence is until he sings! The smoke-tree's cloudy white Has fire within its breast. What winged mere delight There hides as in a nest And fashions of its flame Music without a name? So might an opal sing If given thrilling wing, And voice for lyric wildness unexpressed. In grassy dimness thatched With tangled growing things, A troubadour rose-patched, With velvet-shadowed wings, Seeks a sustaining fly. Who else unseen goes by Quick-pattering through the hush? Some twilight-footed thrush Or finch intent on small adventurings? I have no time for gloom, For gloom what time have I? The orange is in bloom; Emerald parrots fly Out of the cypress-dusk; Morning is strange with musk. The wild canary now Jewels the lemon-bough, And mocking-birds laugh in the rose's room. THE ORANGE TREE In D Major _Presto meno assai_ The blossom-powdered orange tree, For all her royal speechlessness, Out of a heart of ecstasy Is singing, singing, none the less! Light as a springing fountain, she Is spray above the wind-sleek turf: Dream-daughter of the moon's white sea And sister to its showered surf! TO THE MOON IV. In A major _Allegro con brio_ Moon that shone on Babylon, Searching out the gardens there, Could you find a fairer one Than this garden, anywhere? Did Damascus at her best Hide such beauty in her breast? When you flood with creamy light Vines that net the sombre pine, Turn the shadowed iris white, Summon cactus stars to shine, Do you free in silvered air Wistful spirits everywhere? Here they linger, there they pass, And forget their native heaven: Flit along the dewy grass Rare Vittoria, Sappho, even! And the hushed magnolia burns Incense in her gleaming urns. When the nightingale demands Word with Keats who answers him, Shakespeare listens--understands-- Mindful of the cherubim; And the South Wind dreads to know Mozart gone as seraphs go. Moon of poets dead and gone, Moon to gods of music dear, Gardens they have looked upon Let them re-discover here: Rest--and dream a little space Of some heart-remembered place! _Grace Hazard Conkling_ EDITORIAL COMMENT AS IT WAS Once upon a time, when man was new in the woods of the world, when his feet were scarred with jungle thorns and his hands were red with the blood of beasts, a great king rose who gathered his neighbors together, and subdued the wandering tribes. Strange cunning was his, for he ground the stones to an edge together, and bound them with thongs to sticks; and he taught his people to pry apart the forest, and beat back the ravenous beasts. And he bade them honeycomb the mountainside with caves, to dwell therein with their women. And the most beautiful women the king took for his own, that his wisdom might not perish from the earth. And he led the young men to war and conquered all the warring tribes from the mountains to the sea. And when fire smote a great tree out of heaven, and raged through the forest till the third sun, he seized a burning brand and lit an altar to his god. And there, beside the ever-burning fire, he sat and made laws and did justice. And his people loved and feared him. And the king grew old. And for seven journeys of the sun from morn to morn he moved not, neither uttered word. And the hearts of the people were troubled, but none dared speak to the king's despair; neither wise men nor warriors dared cry out unto him. Now the youngest son of the king was a lad still soft of flesh, who had never run to battle not sat in council nor stood before the king. And his heart yearned for his father, and he bowed before his mother and said, "Give me thy blessing, for I have words within me for the king; yea, as the sea sings to the night with waves will my words roll in singing unto his grief." And his mother said, "Go, my son; for thou hast words of power and soothing, and the king shall be healed." So the youth went forth and bowed him toward the king's seat. And the wise men and warriors laid hands upon him, and said, "Who art thou, that thou shouldst go in ahead of us to him who sitteth in darkness?" And the king's son rose, and stretched forth his arms, and said, "Unhand me and let me go, ye silent ones, who for seven sun-journeys have watched in darkness and uttered no word of light! Unhand me, for as a fig-tree with fruit, so my heart is rich with words for the king." Then he put forth his strength and strode on singing softly, and bowed him before the king. And he spake the king's great deeds in cunning words--his wars and city-carvings and wise laws, his dominion over men and beasts and the thick woods of the earth; his greeting of the gods with fire. And lo, the king lifted up his head and stretched forth his arms and wept. "Yea, all these things have I done," he said, "and they shall perish with me. My death is upon me, and I shall die, and the tribes I have welded together shall be broken apart, and the beasts shall win back their domain, and the green jungle shall overgrow my mansions. Lo, the fire shall go out on the altar of the gods, and my glory shall be as a crimson cloud that the night swallows up in darkness." Then the young man lifted up his voice and cried: "Oh, king, be comforted! Thy deeds shall not pass as a cloud, neither shall thy laws be strewn before the wind. For I will carve thy glory in rich and rounded words--yea, I will string thy deeds together in jewelled beads of perfect words that thy sons shall wear on their hearts forever." "Verily thy words are rich with song," said the king; "but thou shalt die, and who will utter them? Like twinkling foam is the speech of man's mouth; like foam from a curling wave that vanishes in the sun." "Nay, let thy heart believe me, oh king my father," said the youth. "For the words of my mouth shall keep step with the ripple of waves and the beating of wings; yea, they shall mount with the huge paces of the sun in heaven, that cease not for my ceasing. Men shall sound them on suckling tongues still soft with milk, they shall run into battle to the tune of thy deeds, and kindle their fire with the breath of thy wisdom. And thy glory shall be ever living, as a jewel of jasper from the earth--yea, as the green jewel of jasper carven into a god for the rod of thy power, oh king, and of the power of thy sons forever." The king sat silent till the going-down of the sun. Then lifted he his head, and stroked his beard, and spake: "Verily the sun goes down, and my beard shines whiter than his, and I shall die. Now therefore stand at my right hand, O son of my wise years, child of my dreams. Stand at my right hand, and fit thy speech to music, that men may hold in their hearts thy rounded words. Forever shalt thou keep thy place, and utter thy true tale in the ears of the race. And woe be unto them that hear thee not! Verily that generation shall pass as a cloud, and its glory shall be as a tree that withers. For thou alone shalt win the flying hours to thee, and keep the beauty of them for the joy of men forever." _H. M._ ON THE READING OF POETRY In the brilliant pages of his essay on Jean François Millet, Romain Rolland says that Millet, as a boy, used to read the Bucolics and the Georgics "with enchantment" and was "seized by emotion--when he came to the line, 'It is the hour when the great shadows seek the plain.' Et jam summa procul villarum culmina fumant Majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae?" To the lover and student of poetry, this incident has an especial charm and significance. There is something fine in the quick sympathy of an artist in one kind, for beauty expressed by the master of another medium. The glimpse M. Rolland gives us of one of the most passionate art-students the world has ever known, implies with fresh grace a truth Anglo-Saxons are always forgetting--that poetry is one of the great humanities, that poetry is one of the great arts of expression. Many of our customs conspire to cause, almost to force, this forgetting. Thousands of us have been educated to a dark and often permanent ignorance of classic poetry, by being taught in childhood to regard it as written for the purpose of illustrating Hadley's Latin, or Goodwin's Greek grammar, and composed to follow the rules of versification at the end of the book. It seems indeed one of fate's strangest ironies that the efforts of these distinguished grammarians to unveil immortal masterpieces are commonly used in schools and colleges to enshroud, not to say swaddle up, the images of the gods "forever young," and turn them into mummies. In our own country, far from perceiving in Vergil's quiet music the magnificent gesture of nature that thrilled his Norman reader--far from conceiving of epic poetry as the simplest universal tongue, one early acquires a wary distrust of it as something one must constantly labor over. Aside from gaining in childhood this strong, practical objection to famous poetry, people achieve the deadly habit of reading metrical lines unimaginatively. After forming--generally in preparation for entering one of our great universities--the habit of blinding the inner eye, deafening the inner ear, and dropping into a species of mental coma before a page of short lines, it is difficult for educated persons to read poetry with what is known as "ordinary human intelligence." It does not occur to them simply to listen to the nightingale. But poetry, I believe, never speaks her beauty--certainly never her scope and variety, except on the condition that in her presence one sits down quietly with folded hands, and truly listens to her singing voice. "So for one the wet sail arching through the rainbow round the bow, And for one the creak of snow-shoes on the crust." Many people do not like poetry, in this way, as a living art to be enjoyed, but rather as an exact science to be approved. To them poetry may concern herself only with a limited number of subjects to be presented in a predetermined and conventional manner and form. To such readers the word "form" means usually only a repeated literary effect: and they do not understand that every "form" was in its first and best use an originality, employed not for the purpose of following any rule, but because it said truly what the artist wished to express. I suppose much of the monotony of subject and treatment observable in modern verse is due to this belief that poetry is merely a fixed way of repeating certain meritorious though highly familiar concepts of existence--and not in the least the infinite music of words meant to speak the little and the great tongues of the earth. It is exhilarating to read the pages of Pope and of Byron, whether you agree with them or not, because here poetry does speak the little and the great tongues of the earth, and sings satires, pastorals and lampoons, literary and dramatic criticism, all manner of fun and sparkling prettiness, sweeping judgments, nice discriminations, fashions, politics, the ways of gentle and simple--love and desire and pain and sorrow, and anguish and death. The impulse which inspired, and the appreciation which endowed this magazine, has been a generous sympathy with poetry as an art. The existence of a gallery for poems and verse has an especially attractive social value in its power of recalling or creating the beautiful and clarifying pleasure of truly reading poetry in its broad scope and rich variety. The hospitality of this hall will have been a genuine source of happiness if somehow it tells the visitors, either while they are here, or after they have gone to other places, what a delight it is to enjoy a poem, to realize it, to live in the vivid dream it evokes, to hark to its music, to listen to the special magic grace of its own style and composition, and to know that this special grace will say as deeply as some revealing hour with a friend one loves, something nothing else can say--something which is life itself sung in free sympathy beyond the bars of time and space. _E. W._ THE MOTIVE OF THE MAGAZINE In the huge democracy of our age no interest is too slight to have an organ. Every sport, every little industry requires its own corner, its own voice, that it may find its friends, greet them, welcome them. The arts especially have need of each an entrenched place, a voice of power, if they are to do their work and be heard. For as the world grows greater day by day, as every member of it, through something he buys or knows or loves, reaches out to the ends of the earth, things precious to the race, things rare and delicate, may be overpowered, lost in the criss-cross of modern currents, the confusion of modern immensities. Painting, sculpture, music are housed in palaces in the great cities of the world; and every week or two a new periodical is born to speak for one or the other of them, and tenderly nursed at some guardian's expense. Architecture, responding to commercial and social demands, is whipped into shape by the rough and tumble of life and fostered, willy-nilly, by men's material needs. Poetry alone, of all the fine arts, has been left to shift for herself in a world unaware of its immediate and desperate need of her, a world whose great deeds, whose triumphs over matter, over the wilderness, over racial enmities and distances, require her ever-living voice to give them glory and glamour. Poetry has been left to herself and blamed for inefficiency, a process as unreasonable as blaming the desert for barrenness. This art, like every other, is not a miracle of direct creation, but a reciprocal relation between the artist and his public. The people must do their part if the poet is to tell their story to the future; they must cultivate and irrigate the soil if the desert is to blossom as the rose. The present venture is a modest effort to give to poetry her own place, her own voice. The popular magazines can afford her but scant courtesy--a Cinderella corner in the ashes--because they seek a large public which is not hers, a public which buys them not for their verse but for their stories, pictures, journalism, rarely for their literature, even in prose. Most magazine editors say that there is no public for poetry in America; one of them wrote to a young poet that the verse his monthly accepted "must appeal to the barber's wife of the Middle West," and others prove their distrust by printing less verse from year to year, and that rarely beyond page-end length and importance. We believe that there is a public for poetry, that it will grow, and that as it becomes more numerous and appreciative the work produced in this art will grow in power, in beauty, in significance. In this belief we have been encouraged by the generous enthusiasm of many subscribers to our fund, by the sympathy of other lovers of the art, and by the quick response of many prominent poets, both American and English, who have sent or promised contributions. We hope to publish in _Poetry_ some of the best work now being done in English verse. Within space limitations set at present by the small size of our monthly sheaf, we shall be able to print poems longer, and of more intimate and serious character, than the popular magazines can afford to use. The test, limited by ever-fallible human judgment, is to be quality alone; all forms, whether narrative, dramatic or lyric, will be acceptable. We hope to offer our subscribers a place of refuge, a green isle in the sea, where Beauty may plant her gardens, and Truth, austere revealer of joy and sorrow, of hidden delights and despairs, may follow her brave quest unafraid. NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS In order that the experiment of a magazine of verse may have a fair trial, over one hundred subscriptions of fifty dollars annually for five years have been promised by the ladies and gentlemen listed below. In addition, nearly twenty direct contributions of smaller sums have been sent or promised. To all these lovers of the art the editors would express their grateful appreciation. Mr. H. C. Chatfield-Taylor Mr. Howard Shaw Mr. Arthur T. Aldis Mr. Edwin S. Fechheimer Mrs. Charles H. Hamill [B]Mr. D. H. Burnham Mrs. Emmons Blaine (2) Mr. Wm. S. Monroe Mr. E. A. Bancroft Mrs. Burton Hanson Mr. John M. Ewen Mr. C. L. Hutchinson Mrs. Wm. Vaughan Moody Hon. Wm. J. Calhoun {Miss Anna Morgan {Mrs. Edward A. Leicht Mrs. Louis Betts Mr. Ralph Cudney Mrs. George Bullen Mrs. P. A. Valentine Mr. P. A. Valentine Mr. Charles R. Crane Mr. Frederick Sargent Mrs. Frank G. Logan Dr. F. W. Gunsaulus Mrs. Emma B. Hodge Mr. Wallace Heckman Mr. Edward B. Butler (2) Miss Elizabeth Ross Mrs. Bryan Lathrop Mr. Martin A. Ryerson Mrs. La Verne Noyes Mrs. E. Norman Scott (2) Mr. Wm. O. Goodman Mrs. Charles Hitchcock Hon. John Barton Payne Mr. Thomas D. Jones Mr. H. H. Kohlsaat Mr. Andrew M. Lawrence Miss Juliet Goodrich Mr. Henry H. Walker Mr. Charles Deering Mr. Jas. Harvey Peirce Mr. Charles L. Freer Mrs. W. F. Dummer Mr. Jas. P. Whedon Mr. Arthur Heun Mr. Edward F. Carry Mrs. George M. Pullman Mr. Cyrus H. McCormick (2) Mr. F. Stuyvesant Peabody Mrs. F. S. Winston Mr. J. J. Glessner {Mr. C. C. Curtiss {Mrs. Hermon B. Butler Mr. Will H. Lyford Mr. Horace S. Oakley Mr. Eames Mac Veagh Mrs. K. M. H. Besly Mr. Charles G. Dawes Mr. Clarence Buckingham Mrs. Potter Palmer Mr. Owen F. Aldis Mr. Albert B. Dick Mr. Albert H. Loeb The Misses Skinner Mr. Potter Palmer Miss Mary Rozet Smith Misses Alice E. and Margaret D. Moran {Mrs. James B. Waller {Mr. John Borden Mr. Victor F. Lawson {Mrs. H. M. Wilmarth {Mrs. Norman F. Thompson {Mrs. William Blair {Mrs. Clarence I. Peck Mr. Clarence M. Woolley Mr. Edward P. Russell Mrs. Frank O. Lowden Mr. John S. Miller Miss Helen Louise Birch Nine members of the Fortnightly Six members of the Friday Club Seven members of the Chicago Woman's Club Mr. William L. Brown Mr. Rufus G. Dawes Mr. Gilbert E. Porter Mr. Alfred L. Baker Mr. George A. McKinlock Mr. John S. Field Mrs. Samuel Insull Mr. William T. Fenton Mr. A. G. Becker Mr. Honoré Palmer Mr. John J. Mitchell Mrs. F. A. Hardy Mr. Morton D. Hull Mr. E. F. Ripley Mr. Ernest MacDonald Bowman Mr. John A. Kruse Mr. Frederic C. Bartlett Mr. Franklin H. Head Mrs. Wm. R. Linn [Footnote B: _Deceased._] * * * * * Through the generosity of five gentlemen, _Poetry_ will give two hundred and fifty dollars in one or two prizes for the best poem or poems printed in its pages the first year. In addition a subscriber to the fund offers twenty-five dollars for the best epigram. * * * * * Mr. Maurice Browne, director of the Chicago Little Theatre, offers to produce, during the season of 1913-14, the best play in verse published in, or submitted to, _Poetry_ during its first year; provided that it may be adequately presented under the requirements and limitations of his stage. * * * * * We are fortunate in being able, through the courtesy of the Houghton-Mifflin Co., to offer our readers a poem, hitherto unprinted, from advance sheets of the complete works of the late William Vaughan Moody, which will be published in November. The lamentable death of this poet two years ago in the early prime of his great powers was a calamity to literature. It is fitting that the first number of a magazine published in the city where for years he wrote and taught, should contain an important poem from his hand. Mr. Ezra Pound, the young Philadelphia poet whose recent distinguished success in London led to wide recognition in his own country, authorizes the statement that at present such of his poetic work as receives magazine publication in America will appear exclusively in _Poetry_. That discriminating London publisher, Mr. Elkin Mathews, "discovered" this young poet from over seas, and published "Personae," "Exultations" and "Canzoniere," three small volumes of verse from which a selection has been reprinted by the Houghton-Mifflin Co. under the title "Provença." Mr. Pound's latest work is a translation from the Italian of "Sonnets and Ballate," by Guido Cavalcanti. Mr. Arthur Davison Ficke, another contributor, is a graduate of Harvard, who studied law and entered his father's office in Davenport, Iowa. He is the author of "The Happy Princess" and "The Breaking of Bonds," and a contributor to leading magazines. An early number of _Poetry_ will be devoted exclusively to Mr. Ficke's work. Mrs. Roscoe P. Conkling is a resident of the state of New York; a young poet who has contributed to various magazines. Miss Lorimer is a young English poet resident in Oxford, who will publish her first volume this autumn. The London _Poetry Review_, in its August number, introduced her with a group of lyrics which were criticized with some asperity in the _New Age_ and praised with equal warmth in other periodicals. * * * * * Miss Dudley, who is a Chicagoan born and bred, is still younger in the art, "To One Unknown" being the first of her poems to be printed. * * * * * _Poetry_ will acknowledge the receipt of books of verse and works relating to the subject, and will print brief reviews of those which seem for any reason significant. It will endeavor also to keep its readers informed of the progress of the art throughout the English-speaking world and continental Europe. The American metropolitan newspaper prints cable dispatches about post-impressionists, futurists, secessionists and other radicals in painting, sculpture and music, but so far as its editors and readers are concerned, French poetry might have died with Victor Hugo, and English with Tennyson, or at most Swinburne. NOTE.--Eight months after the first general newspaper announcement of our efforts to secure a fund for a magazine of verse, and three or four months after our first use of the title _Poetry_, a Boston firm of publishers announced a forthcoming periodical of the same kind, to be issued under the same name. The two are not to be confused. THE RALPH FLETCHER SEYMOUR COMPANY PRINTERS CHICAGO Poetry VOL. I A Magazine of Verse NO. 2 NOVEMBER, 1912 THE PIPER George Borrow in his _Lavengro_ Tells us of a Welshman, who By some excess of mother-wit Framed a harp and played on it, Built a ship and sailed to sea, And steered it home to melody Of his own making. I, indeed, Might write for Everyman to read A thaumalogue of wonderment More wonderful, but rest content With celebrating one I knew Who built his pipes, and played them, too: No more. Ah, played! Therein is all: The hounded thing, the hunter's call; The shudder, when the quarry's breath Is drowned in blood and stilled in death; The marriage dance, the pulsing vein, The kiss that must be given again; The hope that Ireland, like a rose, Sees shining thro' her tale of woes; The battle lost, the long lament For blood and spirit vainly spent; And so on, thro' the varying scale Of passion that the western Gael Knows, and by miracle of art Draws to the chanter from the heart Like water from a hidden spring, To leap or murmur, weep or sing. I see him now, a little man In proper black, whey-bearded, wan, With eyes that scan the eastern hills Thro' thick, gold-rimmèd spectacles. His hand is on the chanter. Lo, The hidden spring begins to flow In waves of magic. (He is dead These seven years, but bend your head And listen.) Rising from the clay The Master plays _The Ring of Day_. It mounts and falls and floats away Over the sky-line ... then is gone Into the silence of the dawn! _Joseph Campbell_ BEYOND THE STARS Three days I heard them grieve when I lay dead, (It was so strange to me that they should weep!) Tall candles burned about me in the dark, And a great crucifix was on my breast, And a great silence filled the lonesome room. I heard one whisper, "Lo! the dawn is breaking, And he has lost the wonder of the day." Another came whom I had loved on earth, And kissed my brow and brushed my dampened hair. Softly she spoke: "Oh that he should not see The April that his spirit bathed in! Birds Are singing in the orchard, and the grass That soon will cover him is growing green. The daisies whiten on the emerald hills, And the immortal magic that he loved Wakens again--and he has fallen asleep." Another said: "Last night I saw the moon Like a tremendous lantern shine in heaven, And I could only think of him--and sob. For I remembered evenings wonderful When he was faint with Life's sad loveliness, And watched the silver ribbons wandering far Along the shore, and out upon the sea. Oh, I remembered how he loved the world, The sighing ocean and the flaming stars, The everlasting glamour God has given-- His tapestries that wrap the earth's wide room. I minded me of mornings filled with rain When he would sit and listen to the sound As if it were lost music from the spheres. He loved the crocus and the hawthorn-hedge, He loved the shining gold of buttercups, And the low droning of the drowsy bees That boomed across the meadows. He was glad At dawn or sundown; glad when Autumn came With her worn livery and scarlet crown, And glad when Winter rocked the earth to rest. Strange that he sleeps today when Life is young, And the wild banners of the Spring are blowing With green inscriptions of the old delight." I heard them whisper in the quiet room. I longed to open then my sealèd eyes, And tell them of the glory that was mine. There was no darkness where my spirit flew, There was no night beyond the teeming world. Their April was like winter where I roamed; Their flowers were like stones where now I fared. Earth's day! it was as if I had not known What sunlight meant!... Yea, even as they grieved For all that I had lost in their pale place, I swung beyond the borders of the sky, And floated through the clouds, myself the air, Myself the ether, yet a matchless being Whom God had snatched from penury and pain To draw across the barricades of heaven. I clomb beyond the sun, beyond the moon; In flight on flight I touched the highest star; I plunged to regions where the Spring is born, Myself (I asked not how) the April wind, Myself the elements that are of God. Up flowery stairways of eternity I whirled in wonder and untrammeled joy, An atom, yet a portion of His dream-- His dream that knows no end.... I was the rain, I was the dawn, I was the purple east, I was the moonlight on enchanted nights, (Yet time was lost to me); I was a flower For one to pluck who loved me; I was bliss, And rapture, splendid moments of delight; And I was prayer, and solitude, and hope; And always, always, always I was love. I tore asunder flimsy doors of time, And through the windows of my soul's new sight I saw beyond the ultimate bounds of space. I was all things that I had loved on earth-- The very moonbeam in that quiet room, The very sunlight one had dreamed I lost, The soul of the returning April grass, The spirit of the evening and the dawn, The perfume in unnumbered hawthorn-blooms. There was no shadow on my perfect peace, No knowledge that was hidden from my heart. I learned what music meant; I read the years; I found where rainbows hide, where tears begin; I trod the precincts of things yet unborn. Yea, while I found all wisdom (being dead), They grieved for me ... I should have grieved for them! _Charles Hanson Towne_ [Greek: CHORIKOS] The ancient songs Pass deathward mournfully. Cold lips that sing no more, and withered wreaths, Regretful eyes, and drooping breasts and wings-- Symbols of ancient songs Mournfully passing Down to the great white surges, Watched of none Save the frail sea-birds And the lithe pale girls, Daughters of Okeanos. And the songs pass From the green land Which lies upon the waves as a leaf On the flowers of hyacinth; And they pass from the waters, The manifold winds and the dim moon, And they come, Silently winging through soft Kimmerian dusk, To the quiet level lands That she keeps for us all, That she wrought for us all for sleep In the silver days of the earth's dawning-- Proserpine, daughter of Zeus. And we turn from the Kuprian's breasts, And we turn from thee, Phoibos Apollon, And we turn from the music of old And the hills that we loved and the meads, And we turn from the fiery day, And the lips that were over-sweet; For silently Brushing the fields with red-shod feet, With purple robe Searing the flowers as with a sudden flame, Death, Thou hast come upon us. And of all the ancient songs Passing to the swallow-blue halls By the dark streams of Persephone, This only remains: That in the end we turn to thee, Death, That we turn to thee, singing One last song. O Death, Thou art an healing wind That blowest over white flowers A-tremble with dew; Thou art a wind flowing Over long leagues of lonely sea; Thou art the dusk and the fragrance; Thou art the lips of love mournfully smiling; Thou art the pale peace of one Satiate with old desires; Thou art the silence of beauty, And we look no more for the morning; We yearn no more for the sun, Since with thy white hands, Death, Thou crownest us with the pallid chaplets, The slim colorless poppies Which in thy garden alone Softly thou gatherest. And silently; And with slow feet approaching; And with bowed head and unlit eyes, We kneel before thee: And thou, leaning towards us, Caressingly layest upon us Flowers from thy thin cold hands, And, smiling as a chaste woman Knowing love in her heart, Thou sealest our eyes And the illimitable quietude Comes gently upon us. _Richard Aldington_ TO A GREEK MARBLE [Greek: Photnia, photnia], White grave goddess, Pity my sadness, O silence of Paros. I am not of these about thy feet, These garments and decorum; I am thy brother, Thy lover of aforetime crying to thee, And thou hearest me not. I have whispered thee in thy solitudes Of our loves in Phrygia, The far ecstasy of burning noons When the fragile pipes Ceased in the cypress shade, And the brown fingers of the shepherd Moved over slim shoulders; And only the cicada sang. I have told thee of the hills And the lisp of reeds And the sun upon thy breasts, And thou hearest me not, [Greek: Photnia, photnia], Thou hearest me not. _Richard Aldington_ AU VIEUX JARDIN. I have sat here happy in the gardens, Watching the still pool and the reeds And the dark clouds Which the wind of the upper air Tore like the green leafy boughs Of the divers-hued trees of late summer; But though I greatly delight In these and the water-lilies, That which sets me nighest to weeping Is the rose and white color of the smooth flag-stones, And the pale yellow grasses Among them. _Richard Aldington_ UNDER TWO WINDOWS I. AUBADE The dawn is here--and the long night through I have never seen thy face, Though my feet have worn the patient grass at the gate of thy dwelling-place. While the white moon sailed till, red in the west, it found the far world-edge, No leaflet stirred of the leaves that climb to garland thy window ledge. Yet the vine had quivered from root to tip, and opened its flowers again, If only the low moon's light had glanced on a moving casement pane. Warm was the wind that entered in where the barrier stood ajar, And the curtain shook with its gentle breath, white as young lilies are; But there came no hand all the slow night through to draw the folds aside, (I longed as the moon and the vine-leaves longed!) or to set the casement wide. Three times in a low-hung nest there dreamed his five sweet notes a bird, And thrice my heart leaped up at the sound I thought thou hadst surely heard. But now that thy praise is caroled aloud by a thousand throats awake, Shall I watch from afar and silently, as under the moon, for thy sake? Nay--bold in the sun I speak thy name, I too, and I wait no more Thy hand, thy face, in the window niche, but thy kiss at the open door! II. NOCTURNE My darling, come!--The wings of the dark have wafted the sunset away, And there's room for much in a summer night, but no room for delay. A still moon looketh down from the sky, and a wavering moon looks up From every hollow in the green hills that holds a pool in its cup. The woodland borders are wreathed with bloom--elder, viburnum, rose; The young trees yearn on the breast of the wind that sighs of love as it goes. The small stars drown in the moon-washed blue but the greater ones abide, With Vega high in the midmost place, Altair not far aside. The glades are dusk, and soft the grass, where the flower of the elder gleams, Mist-white, moth-like, a spirit awake in the dark of forest dreams. Arcturus beckons into the east, Antares toward the south, That sendeth a zephyr sweet with thyme to seek for thy sweeter mouth. Shall the blossom wake, the star look down, all night and have naught to see? Shall the reeds that sing by the wind-brushed pool say nothing of thee and me? --My darling comes! My arms are content, my feet are guiding her way; There is room for much in a summer night, but no room for delay! _Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer_ THE SINGING PLACE Cold may lie the day, And bare of grace; At night I slip away To the Singing Place. A border of mist and doubt Before the gate, And the Dancing Stars grow still As hushed I wait. Then faint and far away I catch the beat In broken rhythm and rhyme Of joyous feet,-- Lifting waves of sound That will rise and swell (If the prying eyes of thought Break not the spell), Rise and swell and retreat And fall and flee, As over the edge of sleep They beckon me. And I wait as the seaweed waits For the lifting tide; To ask would be to awake,-- To be denied. I cloud my eyes in the mist That veils the hem,-- And then with a rush I am past,-- I am Theirs, and of Them! And the pulsing chant swells up To touch the sky, And the song is joy, is life, And the song am I! The thunderous music peals Around, o'erhead-- The dead would awake to hear If there were dead; But the life of the throbbing Sun Is in the song, And we weave the world anew, And the Singing Throng Fill every corner of space-- Over the edge of sleep I bring but a trace Of the chants that pulse and sweep In the Singing Place. _Lily A. Long_ IMMURED Within this narrow cell that I call "me", I was imprisoned ere the worlds began, And all the worlds must run, as first they ran, In silver star-dust, ere I shall be free. I beat my hands against the walls and find It is my breast I beat, O bond and blind! _Lily A. Long_ NOGI Great soldier of the fighting clan, Across Port Arthur's frowning face of stone You drew the battle sword of old Japan, And struck the White Tsar from his Asian throne. Once more the samurai sword Struck to the carved hilt in your loyal hand, That not alone your heaven-descended lord Should meanly wander in the spirit land. Your own proud way, O eastern star, Grandly at last you followed. Out it leads To that high heaven where all the heroes are, Lovers of death for causes and for creeds. _Harriet Monroe_ THE JESTER I have known great gold Sorrows: Majestic Griefs shall serve me watchfully Through the slow-pacing morrows: I have knelt hopeless where sea-echoing Dim endless voices cried of suffering Vibrant and far in broken litany: Where white magnolia and tuberose hauntingly Pulsed their regretful sweets along the air-- All things most tragical, most fair, Have still encompassed me ... I dance where in the screaming market-place The dusty world that watches buys and sells, With painted merriment upon my face, Whirling my bells, Thrusting my sad soul to its mockery. I have known great gold Sorrows ... Shall they not mock me, these pain-haunted ones, If it shall make them merry, and forget That grief shall rise and set With the unchanging, unforgetting suns Of their relentless morrows? _Margaret Widdemer_ THE BEGGARS The little pitiful, worn, laughing faces, Begging of Life for Joy! I saw the little daughters of the poor, Tense from the long day's working, strident, gay, Hurrying to the picture-place. There curled A hideous flushed beggar at the door, Trading upon his horror, eyeless, maimed, Complacent in his profitable mask. They mocked his horror, but they gave to him From the brief wealth of pay-night, and went in To the cheap laughter and the tawdry thoughts Thrown on the screen; in to the seeking hand Covered by darkness, to the luring voice Of Horror, boy-masked, whispering of rings, Of silks, of feathers, bought--so cheap!--with just Their slender starved child-bodies, palpitant For Beauty, Laughter, Passion, that is Life: (A frock of satin for an hour's shame, A coat of fur for two days' servitude; "And the clothes last," the thought runs on, within The poor warped girl-minds drugged with changeless days; "Who cares or knows after the hour is done?") --Poor little beggars at Life's door for Joy! The old man crouched there, eyeless, horrible, Complacent in the marketable mask That earned his comforts--and they gave to him! But ah, the little painted, wistful faces Questioning Life for Joy! _Margaret Widdemer_ [Illustration] REVIEWS AND COMMENTS MOODY'S POEMS _The Poems and Plays of William Vaughn Moody_ will soon be published in two volumes by the Houghton-Mifflin Co. Our present interest is in the volume of poems, which are themselves an absorbing drama. Moody had a slowly maturing mind; the vague vastness of his young dreams yielded slowly to a man's more definite vision of the spiritual magnificence of life. When he died at two-score years, he was just beginning to think his problem through, to reconcile, after the manner of the great poets of the earth, the world with God. Apparently the unwritten poems cancelled by death would have rounded out, in art of an austere perfection, the record of that reconciliation, for nowhere do we feel this passion of high serenity so strongly as in the first act of an uncompleted drama, _The Death of Eve_. Great-minded youth must dream, and modern dreams of the meaning of life lack the props and pillars of the old dogmatism. Vagueness, confusion and despair are a natural inference from the seeming chaos of evil and good, of pain and joy. Moody from the beginning took the whole scheme of things for his province, as a truly heroic poet should; there are always large spaces on his canvas. In his earlier poetry, both the symbolic _Masque of Judgment_ and the shorter poems derived from present-day subjects, we find him picturing the confusion, stating the case, so to speak, against God. Somewhat in the terms of modern science is his statement--the universe plunging on toward its doom of darkness and lifelessness, divine fervor of creation lapsing, divine fervor of love doubting, despairing of the life it made, sweeping all away with a vast inscrutable gesture. This seems to be the mood of the _Masque of Judgment_, a mood against which that very human archangel, Raphael, protests in most appealing lines. The poet broods over the earth-- The earth, that has the blue and little flowers-- with all its passionate pageantry of life and love. Like his own angel he is a truant still While battle rages round the heart of God. The lamps are spent at the end of judgment day, and naked from their seats The stars arise with lifted hands, and wait. This conflict between love and doubt is the motive also of _Gloucester Moors_, _The Daguerreotype_, _Old Pourquoi_--those three noblest, perhaps, of the present-day poems--also of _The Brute_ and _The Menagerie_, and of that fine poem manqué, the _Ode in Time of Hesitation_. _The Fie-Bringer_ is an effort at another theme--redemption, light after darkness. But it is not so spontaneous as the _Masque_; though simpler, clearer, more dramatic in form, it is more deliberate and intellectual, and not so star-lit with memorable lines. _The Fire-Bringer_ is an expression of aspiration; the poet longs for light, demands it, will wrest it from God's right hand like Prometheus. But his triumph is still theory, not experience. The reader is hardly yet convinced. If one feels a grander motive in such poems as the one-act _Death of Eve_ and _The Fountain_, or the less perfectly achieved _I Am the Woman_, it is not because of the tales they tell but because of the spirit of faith that is in them--a spirit intangible, indefinable, but indomitable and triumphant. At last, we feel, this poet, already under the shadow of death, sees a terrible splendid sunrise, and offers us the glory of it in his art. _The Fountain_ is a truly magnificent expression of spiritual triumph in failure, and incidentally of the grandeur of Arizona, that tragic wonderland of ancient and future gods. Those Spanish wanderers, dying in the desert, in whose half-madness dreams and realities mingle, assume in those stark spaces the stature of universal humanity, contending to the last against relentless fate. In the two versions of _The Death of Eve_, both narrative and dramatic, one feels also this wild, fierce triumph, this faith in the glory of life. Especially in the dramatic fragment, by its sureness of touch and simple austerity of form, and by the majesty of its figure of the aged Eve, Moody's art reached its most heroic height. We have here the beginning of great things. The spirit of this poet may be commended to those facile bards who lift up their voices between the feast and the cigars, whose muses dance to every vague emotion and strike their flimsy lutes for every light-o'-love. Here was one who went to his desk as to an altar, resolved that the fire he lit, the sacrifice he offered, should be perfect and complete. He would burn out his heart like a taper that the world might possess a living light. He would tell once more the grandeur of life; he would sing the immortal song. That such devotion is easy of attainment in this clamorous age who can believe? Poetry like some of Moody's, poetry of a high structural simplicity, strict and bare in form, pure and austere in ornament, implies a grappling with giants and wrestling with angels; it is not to be achieved without deep living and high thinking, without intense persistent intellectual and spiritual struggle. _H. M._ BOHEMIAN POETRY _An Anthology of Modern Bohemian Poetry_, translated by P. Selver (Henry J. Drane, London). This is a good anthology of modern Bohemian poetry, accurately translated into bad and sometimes even ridiculous English. Great credit is due the young translator for his care in research and selection. The faults of his style, though deplorable, are not such as to obscure the force and beauty of his originals. One is glad to be thus thoroughly assured that contemporary Bohemia has a literature in verse, sensitive to the outer world and yet national. Mr. Selver's greatest revelation is Petr Bezruc, poet of the mines. The poetry of Brezina, Sova and Vrchlicky is interesting, but Bezruc's _Songs of Silesia_ have the strength of a voice coming _de profundis_. A hundred years in silence I dwelt in the pit, * * * * * The dust of the coal has settled upon my eyes-- * * * * * Bread with coal is the fruit that my toiling bore;-- That is the temper of it. Palaces grow by the Danube nourished by his blood. He goes from labor to labor, he rebels, he hears a voice mocking: I should find my senses and go to the mine once more-- And in another powerful invective: I am the first who arose of the people of Teschen. * * * * * They follow the stranger's plough, the slaves fare downwards. He thanks God he is not in the place of the oppressor, and ends: Thus 'twas done. The Lord wills it. Night sank o'er my people. Our doom was sealed when the night had passed; In the night I prayed to the Demon of Vengeance. The first Beskydian bard and the last. This poet is distinctly worth knowing. He is the truth where our "red-bloods" and magazine socialists are usually a rather boresome pose. As Mr. Selver has tried to make his anthology representative of all the qualities and tendencies of contemporary Bohemian work it is not to be supposed that they are all of the mettle of Bezruc. One hears with deep regret that Vrchlicky is just dead, after a life of unceasing activity. He has been a prime mover in the revival of the Czech nationality and literature. He has given them, besides his own work, an almost unbelievable number of translations from the foreign classics, Dante, Schiller, Leopardi. For the rest I must refer the reader to Mr. Selver's introduction. _Ezra Pound_ "THE MUSIC OF THE HUMAN HEART" This title-phrase has not been plucked from the spacious lawn of _Bartlett's Familiar Quotations_. It grew in the agreeable midland yard of Mr. Walt Mason's newspaper verse, and appeared in a tribute of his to Mr. James Whitcomb Riley, whose fifty-ninth birthday anniversary, falling on the seventh of October, has been widely celebrated in the American public libraries and daily press. Mr. Riley's fine gift to his public, the special happiness his genius brings to his readers, cannot, for lack of space, be adequately described, or even indicated, here. Perhaps a true, if incomplete, impression of the beauty of his service may be conveyed by repeating a well-known passage of Mr. Lowes Dickinson's _Letters from John Chinaman_--a passage which I can never read without thinking very gratefully of James Whitcomb Riley, and of what his art has done for American poetry-readers. Mr. Dickinson says:-- In China our poets and literary men have taught their successors for long generations, to look for good not in wealth, not in power, not in miscellaneous activity, but in a trained, a choice, an exquisite appreciation of the most simple and universal relations of life. To feel, and in order to feel, to express, or at least to understand the expression, of all that is lovely in nature, of all that is poignant and sensitive in man, is to us in itself a sufficient end.... The pathos of life and death, the long embrace, the hand stretched out in vain, the moment that glides forever away, with its freight of music and light, into the shadow and bush of the haunted past, all that we have, all that eludes us, a bird on the wing, a perfume escaped on the gale--to all these things we are trained to respond, and the response is what we call literature. Among Mr. Riley's many distinguished faculties of execution in expressing, in stimulating, "an exquisite appreciation of the most simple and universal relations of life," one faculty has been, in so far as I know, very little mentioned--I mean his mastery in creating character. Mr. Riley has expressed, has incarnated in the melodies and harmonies of his poems, not merely several living, breathing human creatures as they are made by their destinies, but a whole world of his own, a vivid world of country-roads, and country-town streets, peopled with farmers and tramps and step-mothers and children, trailing clouds of glory even when they boast of the superiorities of "Renselaer," a world of hardworking women and hard-luck men, and poverty and prosperity, and drunkards and raccoons and dogs and grandmothers and lovers. To have presented through the medium of rhythmic chronicle, a world so sharply limned, so funny, so tragic, so mean, so noble, seems to us in itself a striking achievement in the craft of verse. No mere word of criticism can of course evoke, at all as example can, Mr. Riley's genius of identification with varied human experiences, the remarkable concentration and lyric skill of his characterization. Here are two poems of his on the same general theme--grief in the presence of death. We may well speak our pride in the wonderful range of inspiration and the poetic endowment which can create on the same subject musical stories of the soul as diverse, as searching, as fresh and true, as the beloved poems of _Bereaved_ and _His Mother_. BEREAVED Let me come in where you sit weeping; aye, Let me, who have not any child to die, Weep with you for the little one whose love I have known nothing of. The little arms that slowly, slowly loosed Their pressure round your neck; the hands you used To kiss. Such arms, such hands I never knew. May I not weep with you. Fain would I be of service, say something Between the tears, that would be comforting; But ah! so sadder than yourselves am I, Who have no child to die. HIS MOTHER Dead! my wayward boy--my own-- Not _the Law's_, but mine; the good God's free gift to me alone, Sanctified by motherhood. "Bad," you say: well, who is not? "Brutal"--"With a heart of stone"-- And "red-handed." Ah! the hot Blood upon your own! I come not with downward eyes, To plead for him shamedly: God did not apologize When He gave the boy to me. Simply, I make ready now For His verdict. You prepare-- You have killed us both--and how Will you face us There! _E. W._ THE OPEN DOOR Fears have been expressed by a number of friendly critics that POETRY may become a house of refuge for minor poets. The phrase is somewhat worn. Paragraphers have done their worst for the minor poet, while they have allowed the minor painter, sculptor, actor--worst of all, architect--to go scot-free. The world which laughs at the experimenter in verse, walks negligently through our streets, and goes seriously, even reverently, to the annual exhibitions in our cities, examining hundreds of pictures and statues without expecting even the prize-winners to be masterpieces. During the past year a score or more of cash prizes, ranging from one hundred to fifteen hundred dollars, were awarded in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Washington, New York and Boston for minor works of modern art. No word of superlative praise has been uttered for one of them: the first prize-winner in Pittsburgh was a delicately pretty picture by a second-rate Englishman; in Chicago it was a clever landscape by a promising young American. If a single prize-winner in the entire list, many of which were bought at high prices by public museums, was a masterpiece, no critic has yet dared to say so. In fact, such a word would be presumptuous, since no contemporary can utter the final verdict. Our solicitous critics should remember that Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Burns, were minor poets to the subjects of King George the Fourth, Poe and Whitman to the subjects of King Longfellow. Moreover, we might remind them that Drayton, Lovelace, Herrick, and many another delicate lyrist of the anthologies, whose perfect songs show singular tenacity of life, remain minor poets through the slightness of their motive; they created little masterpieces, not great ones. The Open Door will be the policy of this magazine--may the great poet we are looking for never find it shut, or half-shut, against his ample genius! To this end the editors hope to keep free of entangling alliances with any single class or school. They desire to print the best English verse which is being written today, regardless of where, by whom, or under what theory of art it is written. Nor will the magazine promise to limit its editorial comments to one set of opinions. Without muzzles and braces this is manifestly impossible unless all the critical articles are written by one person. NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS Mr. Ezra Pound has consented to act as foreign correspondent of POETRY, keeping its readers informed of the present interests of the art in England, France and elsewhere. The response of poets on both sides of the Atlantic has been most encouraging, so that the quality of the next few numbers is assured. One of our most important contributions is Mr. John G. Neihardt's brief recently finished tragedy, _The Death of Agrippina_, to which an entire number will be devoted within a few months. Mr. Joseph Campbell is one of the younger poets closely associated with the renaissance of art and letters in Ireland. His first book of poems was _The Gilly of Christ_; a later volume including these is _The Mountainy Singer_ (Maunsel & Co.). Mr. Charles Hanson Towne, the New York poet and magazine editor, has published three volumes of verse, _The Quiet Singer_ (Rickey), _Manhattan_, and _Youth and Other Poems_; also five song-cycles in collaboration with two composers. Mr. Richard Aldington is a young English poet, one of the "Imagistes," a group of ardent Hellenists who are pursuing interesting experiments in _vers libre_; trying to attain in English certain subtleties of cadence of the kind which Mallarmé and his followers have studied in French. Mr. Aldington has published little as yet, and nothing in America. Mrs. Van Rensselaer, the well-known writer on art, began comparatively late to publish verse in the magazines. Her volume, _Poems_ (Macmillan), was issued in 1910. Miss Long and Miss Widdemer are young Americans, some of whose poems have appeared in various magazines. The last issue of POETRY accredited Mr. Ezra Pound's _Provenca_ to the Houghton-Mifflin Co. This was an error; Small, Maynard & Co. are Mr. Pound's American publishers. BOOKS RECEIVED _The Iscariot_, by Eden Phillpotts. John Lane. _The Poems of Rosamund Marriott Watson._ John Lane. _Lyrical Poems_, by Lucy Lyttelton. Thomas B. Mosher. _The Silence of Amor_, by Fiona Macleod, Thomas B. Mosher. _Spring in Tuscany and Other Lyrics._ Thomas B. Mosher. _Interpretations: A Book of First Poems_, by Zoë Akins. Mitchell Kennerley. _A Round of Rimes_, by Denis A. MacCarthy. Little, Brown & Co. _Voices from Erin and Other Poems_, by Denis A. MacCarthy. Little, Brown & Co. _Love and The Year and Other Poems_, by Grace Griswold. Duffield & Co. _Songs and Sonnets_, by Webster Ford. The Rooks Press, Chicago. _The Quiet Courage and Other Songs of the Unafraid_, by Everard Jack Appleton. Stewart and Kidd Co. _In Cupid's Chains and Other Poems_, by Benjamin F. Woodcox. Woodcox & Fanner. _Maverick_, by Hervey White. Maverick Press. Poetry VOL. I A Magazine of Verse NO. 3 DECEMBER, 1912 THE MOUNTAIN TOMB Pour wine and dance, if manhood still have pride, Bring roses, if the rose be yet in bloom; The cataract smokes on the mountain side. Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb. Pull down the blinds, bring fiddle and clarionet, Let there be no foot silent in the room, Nor mouth with kissing nor the wine unwet. Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb. In vain, in vain; the cataract still cries, The everlasting taper lights the gloom, All wisdom shut into its onyx eyes. Our Father Rosicross sleeps in his tomb. _William Butler Yeats_ TO A CHILD DANCING UPON THE SHORE Dance there upon the shore; What need have you to care For wind or water's roar? And tumble out your hair That the salt drops have wet; Being young you have not known The fool's triumph, nor yet Love lost as soon as won. And he, the best warrior, dead And all the sheaves to bind! What need that you should dread The monstrous crying of wind? _William Butler Yeats_ FALLEN MAJESTY Although crowds gathered once if she but showed her face And even old men's eyes grew dim, this hand alone, Like some last courtier at a gipsy camping place Babbling of fallen majesty, records what's gone. The lineaments, the heart that laughter has made sweet, These, these remain, but I record what's gone. A crowd Will gather and not know that through its very street Once walked a thing that seemed, as it were, a burning cloud. _William Butler Yeats_ LOVE AND THE BIRD The moments passed as at a play, I had the wisdom love can bring, I had my share of mother wit; And yet for all that I could say, And though I had her praise for it, And she seemed happy as a king, Love's moon was withering away. Believing every word I said I praised her body and her mind, Till pride had made her eyes grow bright, And pleasure made her cheeks grow red, And vanity her footfall light; Yet we, for all that praise, could find Nothing but darkness overhead. I sat as silent as a stone And knew, though she'd not said a word, That even the best of love must die, And had been savagely undone Were it not that love, upon the cry Of a most ridiculous little bird, Threw up in the air his marvellous moon. _William Butler Yeats_ THE REALISTS Hope that you may understand. What can books, of men that wive In a dragon-guarded land; Paintings of the dolphin drawn; Sea nymphs, in their pearly waggons, Do but wake the hope to live That had gone With the dragons. _William Butler Yeats_ SANGAR TO LINCOLN STEFFENS Somewhere I read a strange, old, rusty tale Smelling of war; most curiously named "The Mad Recreant Knight of the West." Once, you have read, the round world brimmed with hate, Stirred and revolted, flashed unceasingly Facets of cruel splendor. And the strong Harried the weak ... Long past, long past, praise God In these fair, peaceful, happy days. The Tale: Eastward the Huns break border, Surf on a rotten dyke; They have murdered the Eastern Warder (His head on a pike). "Arm thee, arm thee, my father! "Swift rides the Goddes-bane, "And the high nobles gather "On the plain!" "O blind world-wrath!" cried Sangar, "Greatly I killed in youth, "I dreamed men had done with anger "Through Goddes truth!" Smiled the boy then in faint scorn, Hard with the battle-thrill; "Arm thee, loud calls the war-horn "And shrill!" He has bowed to the voice stentorian, Sick with thought of the grave-- He has called for his battered morion And his scarred glaive. On the boy's helm a glove Of the Duke's daughter-- In his eyes splendor of love And slaughter. Hideous the Hun advances Like a sea-tide on sand; Unyielding, the haughty lances Make dauntless stand. And ever amid the clangor, Butchering Hun and Hun, With sorrowful face rides Sangar And his son.... Broken is the wild invader (Sullied, the whole world's fountains); They have penned the murderous raider With his back to the mountains. Yet tho' what had been mead Is now a bloody lake, Still drink swords where men bleed, Nor slake. Now leaps one into the press-- The Hell 'twixt front and front-- Sangar, bloody and torn of dress (He has borne the brunt). "Hold!" cries "Peace! God's Peace! "Heed ye what Christus says--" And the wild battle gave surcease In amaze. "When will ye cast out hate? "Brothers--my mad, mad brothers-- "Mercy, ere it be too late, "These are sons of your mothers. "For sake of Him who died on Tree, "Who of all Creatures, loved the Least,"-- "Blasphemer! God of Battles, He!" Cried a priest. "Peace!" and with his two hands Has broken in twain his glaive. Weaponless, smiling he stands (Coward or brave?) "Traitor!" howls one rank, "Think ye "The Hun be our brother?" And "Fear we to die, craven, think ye?" The other. Then sprang his son to his side, His lips with slaver were wet, For he had felt how men died And was lustful yet; (On his bent helm a glove Of the Duke's daughter, In his eyes splendor of love And slaughter)-- Shouting, "Father no more of mine! "Shameful old man--abhorr'd, "First traitor of all our line!" Up the two-handed sword. He smote--fell Sangar--and then Screaming, red, the boy ran Straight at the foe, and again Hell began ... Oh, there was joy in Heaven when Sangar came. Sweet Mary wept, and bathed and bound his wounds, And God the Father healed him of despair, And Jesus gripped his hand, and laughed and laughed ... _John Reed_ A LEGEND OF THE DOVE Soft from the linden's bough, Unmoved against the tranquil afternoon, Eve's dove laments her now: "Ah, gone! long gone! shall not I find thee soon?" That yearning in his voice Told not to Paradise a sorrow's tale: As other birds rejoice He sang, a brother to the nightingale. By twilight on her breast He saw the flower sleep, the star awake; And calling her from rest, Made all the dawn melodious for her sake. And then the Tempter's breath, The sword of exile and the mortal chain-- The heritage of death That gave her heart to dust, his own to pain ... In Eden desolate The seraph heard his lonely music swoon, As now, reiterate; "Ah gone! long gone! shall not I find thee soon?" _George Sterling_ AT THE GRAND CAÑON Thou settest splendors in my sight, O Lord! It seems as tho' a deep-hued sunset falls Forever on these Cyclopean walls-- These battlements where Titan hosts have warred, And hewn the world with devastating sword, And shook with trumpets the eternal halls Where seraphim lay hid by bloody palls And only Hell and Silence were adored. Lo! the abyss wherein great Satan's wings Might gender tempests, and his dragons' breath Fume up in pestilence. Beneath the sun Or starry outposts on terrestrial things, Is no such testimony unto Death Nor altars builded to Oblivion. _George Sterling_ KINDRED Musing, between the sunset and the dark, As Twilight in unhesitating hands Bore from the faint horizon's underlands, Silvern and chill, the moon's phantasmal ark, I heard the sea, and far away could mark Where that unalterable waste expands In sevenfold sapphire from the mournful sands, And saw beyond the deep a vibrant spark. There sank the sun Arcturus, and I thought: Star, by an ocean on a world of thine, May not a being, born like me to die, Confront a little the eternal Naught And watch our isolated sun decline-- Sad for his evanescence, even as I? _George Sterling_ REMEMBERED LIGHT The years are a falling of snow, Slow, but without cessation, On hills and mountains and flowers and worlds that were; But snow and the crawling night in which it fell May be washed away in one swifter hour of flame. Thus it was that some slant of sunset In the chasms of piled cloud-- Transient mountains that made a new horizon, Uplifting the west to fantastic pinnacles-- Smote warm in a buried realm of the spirit, Till the snows of forgetfulness were gone. Clear in the vistas of memory, The peaks of a world long unremembered, Soared further than clouds, but fell not, Based on hills that shook not nor melted With that burden enormous, hardly to be believed. Rent with stupendous chasms, Full of an umber twilight, I beheld that larger world. Bright was the twilight, sharp like ethereal wine Above, but low in the clefts it thickened, Dull as with duskier tincture. Like whimsical wings outspread but unstirring, Flowers that seemed spirits of the twilight, That must pass with its passing-- Too fragile for day or for darkness, Fed the dusk with more delicate hues than its own. Stars that were nearer, more radiant than ours, Quivered and pulsed in the clear thin gold of the sky. These things I beheld, Till the gold was shaken with flight Of fantastical wings like broken shadows, Forerunning the darkness; Till the twilight shivered with outcry of eldritch voices, Like pain's last cry ere oblivion. _Clark Ashton Smith_ SORROWING OF WINDS O winds that pass uncomforted Through all the peacefulness of spring, And tell the trees your sorrowing, That they must moan till ye are fled! Think ye the Tyrian distance holds The crystal of unquestioned sleep? That those forgetful purples keep No veiled, contentious greens and golds? Half with communicated grief, Half that they are not free to pass With you across the flickering grass, Mourns each vibrating bough and leaf. And I, with soul disquieted, Shall find within the haunted spring No peace, till your strange sorrowing Is down the Tyrian distance fled. _Clark Ashton Smith_ AMERICA _I hear America singing_ ... And the great prophet passed, Serene, clear and untroubled Into the silence vast. When will the master-poet Rise, with vision strong, To mold her manifold music Into a living song? _I hear America singing_ ... Beyond the beat and stress, The chant of her shrill, unjaded, Empiric loveliness. Laughter, beyond mere scorning, Wisdom surpassing wit, Love, and the unscathed spirit, These shall encompass it. _Alice Corbin_ SYMBOLS Who was it built the cradle of wrought gold? A druid, chanting by the waters old. Who was it kept the sword of vision bright? A warrior, falling darkly in the fight. Who was it put the crown upon the dove? A woman, paling in the arms of love. Oh, who but these, since Adam ceased to be, Have kept their ancient guard about the Tree? _Alice Corbin_ THE STAR I saw a star fall in the night, And a grey moth touched my cheek; Such majesty immortals have, Such pity for the weak. _Alice Corbin_ NODES The endless, foolish merriment of stars Beside the pale cold sorrow of the moon, Is like the wayward noises of the world Beside my heart's uplifted silent tune. The little broken glitter of the waves Beside the golden sun's intense white blaze, Is like the idle chatter of the crowd Beside my heart's unwearied song of praise. The sun and all the planets in the sky Beside the sacred wonder of dim space, Are notes upon a broken, tarnished lute That God will someday mend and put in place. And space, beside the little secret joy Of God that sings forever in the clay, Is smaller than the dust we can not see, That yet dies not, till time and space decay. And as the foolish merriment of stars Beside the cold pale sorrow of the moon, My little song, my little joy, my praise, Beside God's ancient, everlasting rune. _Alice Corbin_ POEMS I Thou hast made me known to friends whom I knew not. Thou hast given me seats in homes not my own. Thou hast brought the distant near and made a brother of the stranger. I am uneasy at heart when I have to leave my accustomed shelter; I forgot that there abides the old in the new, and that there also thou abidest. Through birth and death, in this world or in others, wherever thou leadest me it is thou, the same, the one companion of my endless life who ever linkest my heart with bonds of joy to the unfamiliar. When one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut. Oh, grant me my prayer that I may never lose the bliss of the touch of the One in the play of the many. II No more noisy, loud words from me, such is my master's will. Henceforth I deal in whispers. The speech of my heart will be carried on in murmurings of a song. Men hasten to the King's market. All the buyers and sellers are there. But I have my untimely leave in the middle of the day, in the thick of work. Let then the flowers come out in my garden, though it is not their time, and let the midday bees strike up their lazy hum. Full many an hour have I spent in the strife of the good and the evil, but now it is the pleasure of my playmate of the empty days to draw my heart on to him, and I know not why is this sudden call to what useless inconsequence! III On the day when the lotus bloomed, alas, my mind was straying, and I knew it not. My basket was empty and the flower remained unheeded. Only now and again a sadness fell upon me, and I started up from my dream and felt a sweet trace of a strange smell in the south wind. That vague fragrance made my heart ache with longing, and it seemed to me that it was the eager breath of the summer seeking for its completion. I knew not then that it was so near, that it was mine, and this perfect sweetness had blossomed in the depth of my own heart. IV By all means they try to hold me secure who love me in this world. But it is otherwise with thy love, which is greater than theirs, and thou keepest me free. Lest I forget them they never venture to leave me alone. But day passes by after day and thou are not seen. If I call not thee in my prayers, if I keep not thee in my heart--thy love for me still waits for my love. V I was not aware of the moment when I first crossed the threshold of this life. What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery like a bud in the forest at midnight? When in the morning I looked upon the light I felt in a moment that I was no stranger in this world, that the inscrutable without name and form had taken me in its arms in the form of my own mother. Even so, in death the same unknown will appear as ever known to me. And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well. The child cries out when from the right breast the mother takes it away to find in the very next moment its consolation in the left one. VI Thou art the sky and thou art the nest as well. Oh, thou beautiful, there in the nest it is thy love that encloses the soul with colours and sounds and odours. There comes the morning with the golden basket in her right hand bearing the wreath of beauty, silently to crown the earth. And there comes the evening over the lonely meadows deserted by herds, through trackless paths, carrying cool draughts of peace in her golden pitcher from the western ocean of rest. But there, where spreads the infinite sky for the soul to take her flight in, reigns the stainless white radiance. There is no day nor night, nor form nor colour, and never never a word. _Rabindranath Tagore_ EDITORIAL COMMENT A PERFECT RETURN It is curious that the influence of Poe upon Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Mallarmé, and through them upon English poets, and then through these last upon Americans, comes back to us in this round-about and indirect way. We have here an instance of what Whitman calls a "perfect return." We have denied Poe, we do not give him his full meed of appreciation even today, and yet we accept him through the disciples who have followed or have assimilated his tradition. And now that young Englishmen are beginning to feel the influence of Whitman upon French poetry, it may be that he too, through the imitation of _vers libre_ in America, will begin to experience a "perfect return." Must we always accept American genius in this round-about fashion? Have we no true perspective that we applaud mediocrity at home, and look abroad for genius, only to find that it is of American origin? * * * * * This bit of marginalia, extracted from a note-book of 1909, was relieved of the necessity of further elaboration by supplementary evidence received in one day from two correspondents. One, a brief sentence from Mr. Allen Upward: "It is much to be wished that America should learn to honor her sons without waiting for the literary cliques of London." The other, the following "news note" from Mr. Paul Scott Mowrer in Paris. The date of Léon Bazalgette's translation, however, is hardly so epochal as it would seem, since Whitman has been known for many years in France, having been partly translated during the nineties. Mr. Mowrer writes: "It is significant of American tardiness in the development of a national literary tradition that the name of Walt Whitman is today a greater influence with the young writers of the continent than with our own. Not since France discovered Poe has literary Europe been so moved by anything American. The suggestion has even been made that 'Whitmanism' is rapidly to supersede 'Nietzscheism' as the dominant factor in modern thought. Léon Bazalgette translated _Leaves of Grass_ into French in 1908. A school of followers of the Whitman philosophy and style was an almost immediate consequence. Such of the leading reviews as sympathize at all with the strong 'young' movement to break the shackles of classicism which have so long bound French prosody to the heroic couplet, the sonnet, and the alexandrine, are publishing not only articles on 'Whitmanism' as a movement, but numbers of poems in the new flexible chanting rhythms. In this regard _La Nouvelle Revue Francaise_, _La Renaissance Contemporaine_, and _L'Effort Libre_ have been preëminently hospitable. "The new poems are not so much imitations of Whitman as inspirations from him. Those who have achieved most success in the mode thus far are perhaps Georges Duhamel, a leader of the 'Jeunes,' whose plays are at present attracting national notice; André Spire, who writes with something of the apostolic fervor of his Jewish ancestry; Henri Franck, who died recently, shortly after the publication of his volume, _La Danse Devant l'Arche_; Charles Vildrac, with _Le Livre d'Amour_; Philéas Lebesgue, the appearance in collected form of whose _Les Servitudes_ is awaited with keen interest; and finally, Jean Richard Bloch, editor of _L'Effort Libre_, whose prose, for example in his book of tales entitled _Levy_, is said to be directly rooted in Whitmanism. "In Germany, too, the rolling intonations of the singer of democracy have awakened echoes. The _Moderne Weltdichtung_ has announced itself, with Whitman as guide, and such apostles as Wilhelm Schmidtbonn, in _Lobegesang des Lebens_, and Ernst Lissauer in _Der Acker_ and _Der Strom_. "What is it about Whitman that Europe finds so inspiriting? First, his acceptance of the universe as he found it, his magnificently shouted comradeship with all nature and all men. Such a doctrine makes an instant though hardly logical appeal in nations where socialism is the political order of the day. And next, his disregard of literary tradition. Out of books more books, and out of them still more, with the fecundity of generations. But in this process of literary propagation thought, unfortunately, instead of arising like a child ever fresh and vigorous as in the beginning, grows more and more attenuated, paler, more sickly. The acclaim of Whitman is nothing less than the inevitable revolt against the modern flood of book-inspired books. Write from nature directly, from the people directly, from the political meeting, and the hayfield, and the factory--that is what the august American seems to his young disciples across the seas to be crying to them. "Perhaps it is because America already holds as commonplaces these fundamentals seeming so new to Europe that the Whitman schools have sprung up stronger on the eastern side of the Atlantic than on the western." It is not that America holds as commonplaces the fundamentals expressed in Whitman that there have been more followers of the Whitman method in Europe than in America, but that American poets, approaching poetry usually through terms of feeling, and apparently loath to apply an intellectual whip to themselves or others, have made no definite analysis of the rhythmic units of Whitman. We have been content to accept the English conception of the "barbaric yawp" of Whitman. The curious mingling of the concrete and the spiritual, which is what certain modern painters, perhaps under the Whitman suggestion, are trying to achieve, was so novel as to be disconcerting, and the vehicle so original as to appear uncouth--uncadenced, unmusical. The hide-bound, antiquated conception of English prosody is responsible for a great deal of dead timber. It is a significant fact that the English first accepted the spirit of Whitman, the French his method. The rhythmic measure of Whitman has yet to be correctly estimated by English and American poets. It has been sifted and weighed by the French poets, and though Whitman's influence upon modern French poetry has been questioned by English critics, the connection between his varied rhythmic units and modern _vers libre_ is too obvious to be discounted. There may be an innate necessity sufficient to cause a breaking-up of forms in a poetic language, but there is no reason to believe that Paris, the great clearing-house of all the arts, would not be quick to adopt a suggestion from without. English poets, certainly, have not been loath to accept suggestions from Paris. At any rate this international acceptance of the two greatest American poets, and the realization of their international influence upon us, may awaken us to a new sense of responsibility. It would be a valuable lesson, if only we could learn to turn the international eye, in private, upon ourselves. If the American poet can learn to be less parochial, to apply the intellectual whip, to visualize his art, to separate it and see it apart from himself; we may learn then to appreciate the great poet when he is "in our midst." and not wait for the approval of English or French critics. _A. C. H._ TAGORE'S POEMS The appearance of the poems of Rabindranath Tagore, translated by himself from Bengali into English, is an event in the history of English poetry and of world poetry. I do not use these terms with the looseness of contemporary journalism. Questions of poetic art are serious, not to be touched upon lightly or in a spirit of bravura. Bengal is a nation of fifty million people. The great age of Bengali literature is this age in which we live. And the first Bengali whom I heard singing the lyrics of Tagore said, as simply as one would say it is four o'clock, "Yes, we speak of it as the Age of Rabindranath." The six poems now published were chosen from a hundred lyrics about to appear in book form. They might just as well have been any other six, for they do not represent a summit of attainment but an average. These poems are cast, in the original, in metres perhaps the most finished and most subtle of any known to us. If you refine the art of the troubadours, combine it with that of the Pleiade, and add to that the sound-unit principle of the most advanced artists in _vers libre_, you would get something like the system of Bengali verse. The sound of it when spoken is rather like good Greek, for Bengali is daughter of Sanscrit, which is a kind of uncle or elder brother of the Homeric idiom. All this series of a hundred poems are made to music, for "Mr." Tagore is not only the great poet of Bengal, he is also their great musician. He teaches his songs, and they are sung throughout Bengal more or less as the troubadours' songs were sung through Europe in the twelfth century. And we feel here in London, I think, much as the people of Petrarch's time must have felt about the mysterious lost language, the Greek that was just being restored to Europe after centuries of deprivation. That Greek was the lamp of our renaissance and its perfections have been the goal of our endeavor ever since. I speak with all seriousness when I say that this beginning of our more intimate intercourse with Bengal is the opening of another period. For one thing the content of this first brief series of poems will destroy the popular conception of Buddhism, for we in the Occident are apt to regard it as a religion negative and anti-Christian. The Greek gave us humanism; a belief in _mens sana in corpore sano_, a belief in proportion and balance. The Greek shows us man as the sport of the gods; the sworn foe of fate and the natural forces. The Bengali brings to us the pledge of a calm which we need overmuch in an age of steel and mechanics. It brings a quiet proclamation of the fellowship between man and the gods; between man and nature. It is all very well to object that this is not the first time we have had this fellowship proclaimed, but in the arts alone can we find the inner heart of a people. There is a deeper calm and a deeper conviction in this eastern expression than we have yet attained. It is by the arts alone that one people learns to meet another far distant people in friendship and respect. I speak with all gravity when I say that world-fellowship is nearer for the visit of Rabindranath Tagore to London. _Ezra Pound_ REVIEWS _The Poems of Rosamund Marriott Watson_ (John Lane.) This English poet, whose singing ceased a year ago, had a real lyric gift, though a very slight one. The present volume is a collection of all her poems, from the first girlish sheaf _Tares_, to _The Lamp and the Lute_, which she was preparing for publication when she died. Through this whole life-record her poetry ripples along as smoothly and delicately as a meadow rill, with never a pause nor a flurry nor a thrill. She sings prettily of everyone, from the _Last Fairy_ to William Ernest Henley, and of everything, from _Death and Justice_ to the _Orchard of the Moon_, but she has nothing arresting or important to say of any of these subjects, and no keen magic of phrase to give her warbling that intense vitality which would win for her the undying fame prophesied by her loyal husband in his preface. Nevertheless, her feeling is genuine, her touch light, and her tune a quiet monotone of gentle soothing music which has a certain soft appeal. Perhaps the secret of it is the fine quality of soul which breathes through these numerous lyrics, a soul too reserved to tell its whole story, and too preoccupied with the little things around and within her to pay much attention to the thinking, fighting, ever-moving world without. * * * * * A big-spirited, vital, headlong narrative poem is _The Adventures of Young Maverick_, by Hervey White, who runs a printing press at Woodstock, N. Y., and bravely publishes _The Wild Hawk_, his own little magazine. The poem has as many moods as _Don Juan_, which is plainly, though not tyrannically, its model. The poem is long for these days--five cantos and nearly six hundred Spenserian stanzas. Yet the most casual reader, one would think, could scarcely find it tedious, even though the satirical passages run heavily at times. The hero is a colt of lofty Arabian lineage, and the poem becomes eloquently pictorial in setting forth his beauty: Young Maverick in the upland pastures lay Woven as in the grass, while star-like flowers, Shaking their petals down in sweet array Dappled his flanks with gentle breathless showers. The thread green stems, tangled in bending bowers, Their pollen plumes of dust closed over him, Enwoofing through the drowse of summer hours, The pattern of his body, head and limb; His color of pale gold glowed as with sunshine dim. The spirit of the West is in this poem, its freedom, spaciousness, strong sunshine; also its careless good humor and half sardonic fun. The race between the horse and the Mexican boy is as swift, vivid and rhythmical as a mountain stream; and the Mexican family, even to the fat old Gregorio, are characterized to the life, with a sympathy only too rare among writers of the Anglo-Saxon race. Certain other characterizations are equally incisive, this for example: Sometimes I peep into a modern poet Like Arthur Symons, vaguely beautiful, Who loves but love, not caring who shall know it; I wonder that he never finds it dull. Mr. White is so profoundly a democrat, and so wholeheartedly a poet of the broad, level average American people, that both social and artistic theories sit very lightly upon him. He achieves beauty as by chance now and then, because he can not help it, but always he achieves a warm vitality, the persuasive illusion of life. * * * * * _The Iscariot_, by Eden Phillpotts (John Lane), is the ingenious effort of a theorist in human nature to unroll the convolutions of the immortal traitor's soul. And it is as ineffectual as any such effort must be to remould characters long fixed in literary or historic tradition. In the art of the world Judas is Judas; anyone who tries to make him over into a pattern of misguided loyalty has his labor for his pains. The blank verse in which the monologue is uttered is accurately measured and sufficiently sonorous. _H. M._ _Interpretations: A Book of First Poems_, by Zoë Akins (Mitchell Kennerley). The poems in this volume are creditable in texture, revealing a conscious sense of artistic workmanship which it is a pleasure to find in a book of first poems by a young American. A certain rhythmic monotony may be mentioned as an impression gained from a consecutive reading, and a prevailing twilight mood, united, in the longer poems, with a vein of the emotionally feminine. Two short lyrics, however, _I Am the Wind_ and _The Tragedienne_, stand apart in isolated perfection, even as the two Greek columns in the ruined theater at Arles; an impression recalled by the opening stanza of _The Tragedienne_: Upon a hill in Thessaly Stand broken columns in a line About a cold forgotten shrine Beneath a moon in Thessaly. This is the first of the monthly volumes of poetry to be issued by Mr. Kennerley. It awakens pleasant anticipation of those to follow. _Lyrical Poems_, By Lucy Lyttelton. (Thomas B. Mosher.) The twilight mood also prevails in the poems of Lucy Lyttelton, although the crest of a fine modern impulse may be traced in _A Vision_, _The Japanese Widow_, _The Black Madonna_, and _A Song of Revolution_. "Where is Owen Griffiths?" Broken and alone Crushed he lies in darkness beneath Festiniog stone. "Bring his broken body before me to the throne For a crown. "Oftentimes in secret in prayer he came to me, Now to men and angels I know him openly. I that was beside him when he came to die Fathoms down. "And, Evan Jones, stand forward, whose life was shut in gloom, And a narrow grave they gave you 'twixt marble tomb and tomb. But now the great that trod you shall give you elbow room And renown." These poems unite delicacy and strength. They convince us of sincerity and intensity of vision. _A. C. H._ NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS. It is hardly necessary to introduce to the lovers of lyric and dramatic verse Mr. William Butler Yeats, who honors the Christmas number of _Poetry_ by his presence. A score or more of years have passed since his voice, perfect in quality, began to speak and sing in high loyalty to the beauty of poetic art, especially the ancient poetic art of his own Irish people. His influence, reinforced by the prompt allegiance of Lady Gregory, Mr. Douglass Hyde, the late J. M. Synge, and many other Irish men and women of letters, has sufficed to lift the beautiful old Gaelic literature out of the obscurity of merely local recognition into a position of international importance. This fact alone is a sufficient acknowledgment of Mr. Yeats' genius, and of the enthusiasm which his leadership has inspired among the thinkers and singers of his race. Mr. George Sterling, of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, is well known to American readers of poetry through his two books of verse, _Wine of Wizardry_ and _The House of Orchids_. Mr. Clark Ashton Smith, also of California, is a youth whose talent has been acclaimed quite recently by a few newspapers of his own state, and recognized by one or two eastern publications. Mr. John Reed, of New York, and Alice Corbin, the wife of William P. Henderson, the Chicago painter, are Americans. The latter has contributed verse and prose to various magazines. The former is a young journalist, born in 1887, who has published little verse as yet. Rabindranath Tagore, the poet of Bengal, is sufficiently introduced by Mr. Pound's article. BOOKS RECEIVED _The Vaunt of Man and Other Poems_, by William Ellery Leonard. B. W. Huebsch. _Romance, Vision and Satire_: English Alliterative Poems of the XIV Century, Newly Rendered in the Original Metres, by Jessie L. Weston. Houghton Mifflin Co. _Etain The Beloved_, by James H. Cousins. Maunsel & Co. _Uriel and Other Poems_, by Percy MacKaye. Houghton Mifflin Co. _The Unconquered Air_, by Florence Earle Coates. Houghton Mifflin Co. _A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass_, by Amy Lowell. Houghton Mifflin Co. _The Lure of the Sea_, by J. E. Patterson. George H. Doran Co. _The Roadside Fire_, by Amelia Josephine Burr. George H. Doran Co. _By the Way._ Verses, Fragments and Notes, by William Allingham. Arranged by Helen Allingham. Longmans, Green & Co. _Gabriel_, A Pageant of Vigil, by Isabelle Howe Fiske. Thomas B. Mosher. _Pilgrimage to Haunts of Browning_, by Pauline Leavens. The Bowrons, Chicago. _The Wind on the Heath_, Ballads and Lyrics, by May Byron. George H. Doran. _Valley Song and Verse_, by William Hutcheson. Fraser, Asher & Co. _The Queen of Orplede_, by Charles Wharton Stork. Elkin Mathews. _Pocahontas_, A Pageant, by Margaret Ullman. The Poet Lore Co. _Poems_, by Robert Underwood Johnson. The Century Co. _Songs Before Birth_, Isabelle Howe Fiske. Thomas B. Mosher. _Book Titles From Shakespeare_, by Volney Streamer. Thomas B. Mosher. _A Bunch of Blossoms_, Little Verses for Little Children, by E. Gordon Browne. Longmans, Green & Co. _June on the Miami_, by William Henry Venable. Stewart & Kidd. _The Tragedy of Etarre_, A Poem, by Rhys Carpenter. Sturgis & Walton Co. _In Other Words_, by Franklin P. Adams. Doubleday, Page & Co. _Verses and Sonnets_, by Julia Stockton Dinsmore. Doubleday, Page & Co. _Anna Marcella's Book of Verses_, by Cyrenus Cole. Printed for Personal Distribution. _Atala_, An American Idyl, by Anna Olcott Commelin. E. P. Dutton & Co. _Spring in Tuscany_, an Authology. Thos. B. Mosher. Poetry VOL. I A Magazine of Verse NO. 4 JANUARY, 1913 GENERAL WILLIAM BOOTH ENTERS INTO HEAVEN (_To be sung to the tune of_ THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB _with indicated instruments_.) [Sidenote: Bass drums] Booth led boldly with his big bass drum. _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ The saints smiled gravely, and they said, "He's come," _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ Walking lepers followed, rank on rank, Lurching bravos from the ditches dank, Drabs from the alleyways and drug-fiends pale-- Minds still passion-ridden, soul-powers frail! Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath, Unwashed legions with the ways of death-- _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ Every slum had sent its half-a-score The round world over--Booth had groaned for more. Every banner that the wide world flies [Sidenote: Banjo] Bloomed with glory and transcendent dyes. Big-voiced lasses made their banjos bang! Tranced, fanatical, they shrieked and sang, _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ Hallelujah! It was queer to see Bull-necked convicts with that land make free! Loons with bazoos blowing blare, blare, blare-- On, on, upward through the golden air. _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ [Sidenote: Bass drums slower and softer] Booth died blind, and still by faith he trod, Eyes still dazzled by the ways of God. Booth led boldly and he looked the chief: Eagle countenance in sharp relief, Beard a-flying, air of high command Unabated in that holy land. [Sidenote: Flutes] Jesus came from out the Court-House door, Stretched his hands above the passing poor. Booth saw not, but led his queer ones there Round and round the mighty Court-House square. Yet in an instant all that blear review Marched on spotless, clad in raiment new. The lame were straightened, withered limbs uncurled And blind eyes opened on a new sweet world. [Sidenote: Bass drums louder and faster] Drabs and vixens in a flash made whole! Gone was the weasel-head, the snout, the jowl; Sages and sibyls now, and athletes clean. Rulers of empires, and of forests green! [Sidenote: Grand Chorus--tambourines--all instruments in full blast] The hosts were sandalled and their wings were fire-- _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ But their noise played havoc with the angel-choir. _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ Oh, shout Salvation! it was good to see Kings and princes by the Lamb set free. The banjos rattled, and the tambourines Jing-jing-jingled in the hands of queens! [Sidenote: Reverently sung--no instruments] And when Booth halted by the curb for prayer He saw his Master through the flag-filled air. Christ came gently with a robe and crown For Booth the soldier while the throng knelt down. He saw King Jesus--they were face to face, And he knelt a-weeping in that holy place. _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ _Nicholas Vachel Lindsay_ WASTE LAND Briar and fennel and chincapin, And rue and ragweed everywhere; The field seemed sick as a soul with sin, Or dead of an old despair, Born of an ancient care. The cricket's cry and the locust's whirr, And the note of a bird's distress, With the rasping sound of the grasshopper, Clung to the loneliness Like burrs to a trailing dress. So sad the field, so waste the ground, So curst with an old despair, A woodchuck's burrow, a blind mole's mound, And a chipmunk's stony lair, Seemed more than it could bear. So lonely, too, so more than sad, So droning-lone with bees-- I wondered what more could Nature add To the sum of its miseries ... And _then_--I saw the trees. Skeletons gaunt that gnarled the place, Twisted and torn they rose-- The tortured bones of a perished race Of monsters no mortal knows, They startled the mind's repose. And a man stood there, as still as moss, A lichen form that stared; With an old blind hound that, at a loss, Forever around him fared With a snarling fang half bared. I looked at the man; I saw him plain; Like a dead weed, gray and wan, Or a breath of dust. I looked again-- And man and dog were gone, Like wisps of the graying dawn.... Were they a part of the grim death there-- Ragweed, fennel, and rue? Or forms of the mind, an old despair, That there into semblance grew Out of the grief I knew? _Madison Cawein_ MY LADY OF THE BEECHES Here among the beeches Winds and wild perfume, That the twilight pleaches Into gleam and gloom, Build for her a room. Her, whose Beauty cometh, Misty as the morn, When the wild bee hummeth, At its honey-horn, In the wayside thorn. As the wood grows dimmer, With the drowsy night, Like a moonbeam glimmer Here she walks in white, With a firefly-light. Moths around her flitting, Like a moth she goes; Here a moment sitting By this wilding rose, With my heart's repose. Every bough that dances Has assumed the grace Of her form: and Fancies, Flashed from eye and face, Brood about the place. And the water, shaken In its plunge and poise, To itself has taken Quiet of her voice, And restrains its joys. Would that these could tell me What and whence she is; She, who doth enspell me, Fill my soul with bliss Of her spirit kiss. Though the heart beseech her, And the soul implore, Who is it may reach her-- Safe behind the door Of all woodland lore? _Madison Cawein_ THE WAYFARERS Earth, I dare not cling to thee Lest I should lose my precious soul. _'Tis not more wondrous than the fluff Within the milkweed's autumn boll._ Earth, shall my sacred essences But sink into thy senseless dust? _The springtide takes its way with them-- And blossoms blow as blossoms must._ Earth, I swear with solemn vow, I feel a greatness in my breath! _The grass-seed hath its dream of God, Its visioning of life and death._ _Anita Fitch_ _LES CRUELS AMOUREUX_ Two lovers wakened in their tombs-- They had been dead a hundred years-- And in the _langue_ of old Provence They spoke of ancient tears. "_M'amour_," she called, "I've pardoned you;" (How sad her dreaming seemed to be!) "When I had kissed your dead face once Love's sweet returned to me." "_M'amour_," he called, "it was too late." (How dreary seemed his ghostly sighs!) "Blessed the soul that love forgives," He whispered, "ere it dies." And then they turned again and slept With must and mold in ancient way; And so they'll sleep and wake, 'tis told, Until the Judgment Day. ENVOI _O damoiseau et damoiselle_, Guard ye your loving while ye live! Sin not against love's sacred flame-- While yet ye may, forgive. _Anita Fitch_ LOVE-SONGS OF THE OPEN ROAD MORNING The morning wind is wooing me; her lips have swept my brow. Was ever dawn so sweet before? the land so fair as now? The wanderlust is luring to wherever roads may lead, While yet the dew is on the hedge. So how can I but heed? The forest whispers of its shades; of haunts where we have been,-- And where may friends be better made than under God's green inn? Your mouth is warm and laughing and your voice is calling low, While yet the dew is on the hedge. So how can I but go? NOON The bees are humming, humming in the clover; The bobolink is singing in the rye; The brook is purling, purling in the valley, And the river's laughing, radiant, to the sky! The buttercups are nodding in the sunlight; The winds are whispering, whispering to the pine; The joy of June has found me; as an aureole it's crowned me Because, oh best belovèd, you are mine! NIGHT In Arcady by moonlight, (Where only lovers go), There is a pool where only The fairest roses grow. Why are the moonlit roses So sweet beyond compare? Among their purple shadows My love is waiting there. * * * * * To Arcady by moonlight The roads are open wide, But only joy can enter And only joy abide. There is the peace unending That perfect faith can know-- In Arcady by moonlight, Where only lovers go. _Kendall Banning_ SYMPATHY As one within a moated tower, I lived my life alone; And dreamed not other granges' dower, Nor ways unlike mine own. I thought I loved. But all alone As one within a moated tower I lived. Nor truly knew One other mortal fortune's hour. As one within a moated tower, One fate alone I knew. Who hears afar the break of day Before the silvered air Reveals her hooded presence gray, And she, herself, is there? I know not how, but now I see The road, the plain, the pluming tree, The carter on the wain. On my horizon wakes a star. The distant hillsides wrinkled far Fold many hearts' domain. On one the fire-worn forests sweep, Above a purple mountain-keep And soar to domes of snow. One heart has swarded fountains deep Where water-lilies blow: And one, a cheerful house and yard, With curtains at the pane, Board-walks down lawns all clover-starred, And full-fold fields of grain. As one within a moated tower I lived my life alone; And dreamed not other granges' dower Nor ways unlike mine own. But now the salt-chased seas uncurled And mountains trooped with pine Are mine. I look on all the world And all the world is mine. _Edith Wyatt_ A SONG OF HAPPINESS Ah Happiness: Who called you "Earandel"? (Winter-star, I think, that is); And who can tell the lovely curve By which you seem to come, then swerve Before you reach the middle-earth? And who is there can hold your wing, Or bind you in your mirth, Or win you with a least caress, Or tear, or kiss, or anything-- Insensate happiness? Once I thought to have you Fast there in a child: All her heart she gave you, Yet you would not stay. Cruel, and careless, Not half reconciled, Pain you cannot bear; When her yellow hair Lay matted, every tress; When those looks of hers, Were no longer hers, You went: in a day She wept you all away. Once I thought to give You, plighted, holily-- No more fugitive, Returning like the sea: But they that share so well Heaven must portion Hell In their copartnery: Care, ill fate, ill health, Came we know not how And broke our commonwealth. Neither has you now. Some wait you on the road, Some in an open door Look for the face you show'd Once there--no more. You never wear the dress You danced in yesterday; Yet, seeming gone, you stay, And come at no man's call: Yet, laid for burial, You lift up from the dead Your laughing, spangled head. Yes, once I did pursue You, unpursuable; Loved, longed for, hoped for you-- Blue-eyed and morning brow'd. Ah, lovely happiness! Now that I know you well, I dare not speak aloud Your fond name in a crowd; Nor conjure you by night, Nor pray at morning-light, Nor count at all on you: But, at a stroke, a breath, After the fear of death, Or bent beneath a load; Yes, ragged in the dress, And houseless on the road, I might surprise you there. Yes: who of us shall say When you will come, or where? Ask children at their play, The leaves upon the tree, The ships upon the sea, Or old men who survived, And lived, and loved, and wived. Ask sorrow to confess Your sweet improvidence, And prodigal expense And cold economy, Ah, lovely happiness! _Ernest Rhys_ HELEN IS ILL When she is ill my laughter cowers; An exile with a broken rhyme, My head upon the breast of time, I hear the heart-beat of the hours; I close my eyes without a sigh; The vision of her flutters by As glints the light of Mary's eyes Upon the lakes in Paradise. I seem to reach an olden town And enter at the sunset gate; And as the streets I hurry down, I find the men are all elate, As if an angel of the Lord Had passed with dearest word and nod, Remembered like a yearning chord Of songs the people sing to God; I come upon the sunrise gate-- As silent as her listless room-- There seven beggers sing and wait And this the song that breaks the gloom: God a 'mercy is most kind; She the fairest passed this way; We the lowest were not blind; God a 'mercy bless the day. _Roscoe W. Brink_ VERSES, TRANSLATIONS, AND REFLECTIONS FROM "THE ANTHOLOGY" HERMES OF THE WAYS The hard sand breaks, And the grains of it Are clear as wine. Far off over the leagues of it, The wind, Playing on the wide shore, Piles little ridges, And the great waves Break over it. But more than the many-foamed ways Of the sea, I know him Of the triple path-ways, Hermes, Who awaiteth. Dubious, Facing three ways, Welcoming wayfarers, He whom the sea-orchard Shelters from the west, From the east Weathers sea-wind; Fronts the great dunes. Wind rushes Over the dunes, And the coarse, salt-crusted grass Answers. Heu, It whips round my ankles! II Small is This white stream, Flowing below ground From the poplar-shaded hill, But the water is sweet. Apples on the small trees Are hard, Too small, Too late ripened By a desperate sun That struggles through sea-mist. The boughs of the trees Are twisted By many bafflings; Twisted are The small-leafed boughs. But the shadow of them Is not the shadow of the mast head Nor of the torn sails. Hermes, Hermes, The great sea foamed, Gnashed its teeth about me; But you have waited, Where sea-grass tangles with Shore-grass. _H. D._ PRIAPUS _Keeper-of-Orchards_ I saw the first pear As it fell. The honey-seeking, golden-banded, The yellow swarm Was not more fleet than I, (Spare us from loveliness!) And I fell prostrate, Crying, Thou hast flayed us with thy blossoms; Spare us the beauty Of fruit-trees! The honey-seeking Paused not, The air thundered their song, And I alone was prostrate. O rough-hewn God of the orchard, I bring thee an offering; Do thou, alone unbeautiful (Son of the god), Spare us from loveliness. The fallen hazel-nuts, Stripped late of their green sheaths, The grapes, red-purple, Their berries Dripping with wine, Pomegranates already broken, And shrunken fig, And quinces untouched, I bring thee as offering. _H. D._ EPIGRAM (_After the Greek_) The golden one is gone from the banquets; She, beloved of Atimetus, The swallow, the bright Homonoea: Gone the dear chatterer; Death succeeds Atimetus. _H. D._, "_Imagiste_." EDITORIAL COMMENT STATUS RERUM _London, December 10, 1912_ The state of things here in London is, as I see it, as follows: I find Mr. Yeats the only poet worthy of serious study. Mr. Yeats' work is already a recognized classic and is part of the required reading in the Sorbonne. There is no need of proclaiming him to the American public. As to his English contemporaries, they are food, sometimes very good food, for anthologies. There are a number of men who have written a poem, or several poems, worth knowing and remembering, but they do not much concern the young artist studying the art of poetry. The important work of the last twenty-five years has been done in Paris. This work is little likely to gain a large audience in either America or England, because of its tone and content. There has been no "man with a message," but the work has been excellent and the method worthy of our emulation. No other body of poets having so little necessity to speak could have spoken so well as these modern Parisians and Flemings. There has been some imitation here of their manner and content. Any donkey can imitate a man's manner. There has been little serious consideration of their _method_. It requires an artist to analyze and apply a method. Among the men of thirty here, Padraic Colum is the one whom we call most certainly a poet, albeit he has written very little verse--and but a small part of that is worthy of notice. He is fairly unconscious of such words as "aesthetics," "technique" and "method." He is at his best in _Garadh_, a translation from the Gaelic, beginning: O woman, shapely as a swan, On your account I shall not die. The men you've slain--a trivial clan-- Were less than I: and in _A Drover_. He is bad whenever he shows a trace of reading. I quote the opening of _A Drover_, as I think it shows "all Colum" better than any passage he has written. I think no English-speaking writer now living has had the luck to get so much of himself into twelve lines. To Meath of the pastures, From wet hills by the sea, Through Leitrim and Longford Go my cattle and me. I hear in the darkness Their slipping and breathing. I name them the bye-ways They're to pass without heeding. Then the wet, winding roads, Brown bogs with black water; And my thoughts on white ships And the King o' Spain's daughter. I would rather talk about poetry with Ford Madox Hueffer than with any man in London. Mr. Hueffer's beliefs about the art may be best explained by saying that they are in diametric opposition to those of Mr. Yeats. Mr. Yeats has been subjective; believes in the glamour and associations which hang near the words. "Works of art beget works of art." He has much in common with the French symbolists. Mr. Hueffer believes in an exact rendering of things. He would strip words of all "association" for the sake of getting a precise meaning. He professes to prefer prose to verse. You would find his origins in Gautier or in Flaubert. He is objective. This school tends to lapse into description. The other tends to lapse into sentiment. Mr. Yeats' method is, to my way of thinking, very dangerous, for although he is the greatest of living poets who use English, and though he has sung some of the moods of life immortally, his art has not broadened much in scope during the past decade. His gifts to English art are mostly negative; i. e., he has stripped English poetry of many of its faults. His "followers" have come to nothing. Neither Synge, Lady Gregory nor Colum can be called his followers, though he had much to do with bringing them forth, yet nearly every man who writes English verse seriously is in some way indebted to him. Mr. Hueffer has rarely "come off." His touch is so light and his attitude so easy that there seems little likelihood of his ever being taken seriously by anyone save a few specialists and a few of his intimates. His last leaflet, _High Germany_, contains, however, three poems from which one may learn his quality. They are not Victorian. I do not expect many people to understand why I praise them. They are _The Starling_, _In the Little Old Market-Place_ and _To All the Dead_. The youngest school here that has the nerve to call itself a school is that of the _Imagistes_. To belong to a school does not in the least mean that one writes poetry to a theory. One writes poetry when, where, because, and as one feels like writing it. A school exists when two or three young men agree, more or less, to call certain things good; when they prefer such of their verses as have certain qualities to such of their verses as do not have them. Space forbids me to set forth the program of the _Imagistes_ at length, but one of their watchwords is Precision, and they are in opposition to the numerous and unassembled writers who busy themselves with dull and interminable effusions, and who seem to think that a man can write a good long poem before he learns to write a good short one, or even before he learns to produce a good single line. Among the very young men, there seems to be a gleam of hope in the work of Richard Aldington, but it is too early to make predictions. There are a number of men whose names are too well known for it to seem necessary to tell them over. America has already found their work in volumes or anthologies. Hardy, Kipling, Maurice Hewlett, Binyon, Robert Bridges, Sturge Moore, Henry Newbolt, McKail, Masefield, who has had the latest cry; Abercrombie, with passionate defenders, and Rupert Brooke, recently come down from Cambridge. There are men also, who are little known to the general public, but who contribute liberally to the "charm" or the "atmosphere" of London: Wilfred Scawen Blunt, the grandest of old men, the last of the great Victorians; great by reason of his double sonnet, beginning-- He who has once been happy is for aye Out of destruction's reach; Ernest Rhys, weary with much editing and hack work, to whom we owe gold digged in Wales, translations, transcripts, and poems of his own, among them the fine one to Dagonet; Victor Plarr, one of the "old" Rhymers' Club, a friend of Dowson and of Lionel Johnson. His volume, _In The Dorian Mood_, has been half forgotten, but not his verses _Epitaphium Citharistriae_. One would also name the Provost of Oriel, not for original work, but for his very beautiful translations from Dante. In fact one might name nearly a hundred writers who have given pleasure with this or that matter in rhyme. But it is one thing to take pleasure in a man's work and another to respect him as a great artist. _Ezra Pound_ REVIEWS _The Lyric Year_, Mr. Kennerley's new annual, contains among its hundred contributions nearly a score of live poems, among which a few excite the kind of keen emotion which only art of real distinction can arouse. Among the live poems the present reviewer would count none of the prize-winners, not even Mr. Sterling's, the best of the three, whose rather stiff formalities in praise of Browning are, however, lit now and then by shining lines, as-- Drew as a bubble from old infamies.... The shy and many-colored soul of man. The other two prize-poems must have been measured by some academic foot-rule dug up from the eighteenth century. Orrick Johns' _Second Avenue_ is a _Grays Elegy_ essay of prosy moralizing, without a finely poetic line in it, or any originality of meaning or cadence. And the second prize went to an ode still more hopelessly academic. Indeed, _To a Thrush_, by Thomas Augustine Daly, is one of the most stilted poems in the volume, a far-away echo of echoes, full of the approved "poetic" words--_throstle_, _pregnant_, _vernal_, _cerulean_, _teen_, _chrysmal_, even _paraclete_--and quite guiltless of inspiration. But one need not linger with these. As we face the other way one poem outranks the rest and ennobles the book. This is _The Renascence_, said to be by Edna St. Vincent Millay, who, according to the editor, is only twenty years old. This poem is the daring flight of a wide-winged imagination, and the art of it, though not faultless, is strong enough to carry us through keen emotions of joy and agony to a climax of spiritual serenity. Though marred by the last twelve lines, which should be struck out for stating the thesis too explicitly, this poem arouses high hopes of its youthful author. Among the other live poems--trees, saplings or flowers--are various species. _Kisa-Gotami_, by Arthur Davison Ficke, tells its familiar story of the Buddha in stately cadences which sustain the beauty of the tale. _Jetsam_, a "_Titanic_" elegy by Herman Montagu Donner, carries the dread and dangerous subject without violating its terrors and sanctities with false sentiment or light rhythm. Ridgeley Torrence's _Ritual for a Funeral_ is less sure of its ground, sometimes escaping into vapors, but on the whole noble in feeling and flute-like in cadence. Mrs. Conkling's bird ode has now and then an airy delicacy, and Edith Wyatt's _City Swallow_ gives the emotion of flight above the roofs and smoke of a modern town. Of the shorter poems who could ignore Harry Kemp's noble lyric dialogue, _I Sing the Battle_; _The Forgotten Soul_ by Margaret Widdemer, _Selma_, by Willard H. Wright; _Comrades_ by Fannie Stearns Davis, or Nicholas Vachel Lindsay's tribute to O. Henry, a more vital elegy than Mr. Sterling's? These are all simple and sincere--straight modern talk which rises into song without the aid of worn-out phrases. _Paternity_, by William Rose Benét, _To My Vagrant Love_, by Elouise Briton, and _Dedication_, by Pauline Florence Brower, are delicate expressions of intimate emotion; and _Martin_, by Joyce Kilmer, touches with grace a lighter subject. To have gathered such as these together is perhaps enough, but more may be reasonably demanded. As a whole the collection, like the prizes, is too academic; Georgian and Victorian standards are too much in evidence. The ambition of _The Lyric Year_ is to be "an annual Salon of American poetry;" to this end poets and their publishers are invited to contribute gratis the best poems of the year, without hope of reward other than the three prizes. That so many responded to the call, freely submitting their works to anonymous judges, shows how eager is the hitherto unfriended American muse to seize any helping hand. However, if this annual is to speak with any authority as a Salon, it should take a few lessons from art exhibitions. Mr. Earle's position as donor, editor and judge, is as if Mr. Carnegie should act as hanging committee at the Pittsburg show, and help select the prize-winners. And Messrs. Earle, Braithwaite and Wheeler, this year's jury of awards, are not, even though all have written verse, poets of recognized distinction in the sense that Messrs. Chase, Alexander, Hassam, Duveneck, and other jurymen in our various American Salons, are distinguished painters. In these facts lie the present weaknesses of _The Lyric Year_. However, the remedy for them is easy and may be applied in future issues. Meantime the venture is to be welcomed; at last someone, somewhere, is trying to do something for the encouragement of the art in America. _Poetry_, which is embarked in the same adventure, rejoices in companionship. _H. M._ * * * * * Already many books of verses come to us, of which a few are poetry. Sometimes the poetry is an aspiration rather than an achievement; but in spite of crude materials and imperfect artistry one may feel the beat of wings and hear the song. Again one searches in vain for the magic touch, even though the author has interesting things to say in creditable and more or less persuasive rhymed eloquence. Of recent arrivals Mr. John Hall Wheelock has the most searching vision and appealing voice. In _The Human Fantasy_ (Sherman, French & Co.) his subject is New York, typified in the pathetic little love-affair of two young starvelings, which takes its course through a stirring, exacting milieu to a renunciation that leaves the essential sanctities intact. The poet looks through the slang and shoddy of the lovers, and the dust and glare of the city, to the divine power of passion in both. In _The Beloved Adventure_ the emotion is less poignant; or, rather, the poet has included many indifferent pieces which obscure the quality of finer lyrics. More rigorous technique and resolute use of the waste-basket would make more apparent the fact that we have here a true poet, one with a singing voice, and a heart deeply moved by essential spiritual beauty in the common manifestations of human character. At his best he writes with immense concentration and unflagging vigor; and his hearty young appetite for life in all its manifestations helps him to transmute the repellant discords of the modern town into harmony. The fantasy of _Love in a City_ is a "true thing" and a vital. Mr. Hermann Hagedorn is also a true poet, capable of lyric rapture, but sometimes, when he seems least aware, his muse escapes him. _The Infidel_, the initial poem of his _Poems and Ballads_ (Houghton Mifflin Co.), recalls his _Woman of Corinth_, and others in this book remind one of this and of his Harvard class poem, _The Troop of the Guard_, in that the words do not, like colored sands, dance inevitably into the absolute shape determined by the wizardry of sound. He is still somewhat hampered by the New England manner, a trend toward an external formalism not dependent on interior necessity. This influence makes for academic and lifeless work, and it must be deeply rooted since it casts its chill also over the Boston school of painters. But now and then Mr. Hagedorn frees himself; perhaps in the end he may escape altogether. In such poems as _Song_, _Doors_, _Broadway_, _Discovery_, _The Wood-Gatherer_, _The Crier in the Night_ and _A Chant on the Terrible Highway_, we feel that he begins to speak for himself, to sing with his own voice. Such poems are a challenging note that should arrest the attention of all seekers after sincere poetic expression. Mr. Percy MacKaye, in _Uriel and Other Poems_ (Houghton Mifflin Co.), shows also the Boston influence, but perhaps it is difficult to escape the academic note in such poems for occasions as these. With fluent eloquence and a ready command of verse forms he celebrates dead poets, addresses noted living persons, and contributes to a number of ceremonial observances. The poems in which he is most freely lyric are perhaps _In the Bohemian Redwoods_ and _To the Fire-Bringer_, the shorter of his elegies in honor of Moody, his friend. In two dramatic poems, _The Tragedy of Etarre_, by Rhys Carpenter (Sturgis & Walton Co.), and _Gabriel, a Pageant of Vigil_, by Mrs. Isabelle Howe Fiske (Mosher), the academic note is confidently insisted on. The former shows the more promise of ultimate freedom. It is an Arthurian venture of which the prologue is the strongest part. In firm-knit iambics Mr. Carpenter strikes out many effective lines and telling situations. Indeed, they almost prompt the profane suggestion that, simplified and compressed, they might yield a psychological libretto for some "advanced" composer. Mrs. Fiske's venture is toward heaven itself; but her numerous archangels are of the earth earthy. In _The Unconquered Air and Other Poems_ (Houghton Mifflin Co.), Mrs. Florence Earle Coates shows not inspiration but wide and humane sympathies. Her verse is typical of much which has enough popular appeal and educative value to be printed extensively in the magazines; verse in which subjects of modern interest and human sentiment are expressed in the kind of rhymed eloquence which passes for poetry with the great majority. These poets may claim the justification of illustrious precedent. The typical poem of this class in America, the most famous verse rhapsody which stops short of lyric rapture, is Lowell's _Commemoration Ode_. NOTES Our poets this month play divers instruments. The audience may listen to H. D.'s flute, the 'cello of Mr. Rhys, the big bass drum of Mr. Lindsay, and so on through the orchestra, fitting each poet to his special strain. Some of these performers are well known, others perhaps will be. Mr. Ernest Rhys is of Welsh descent. In 1888-9 he lectured in America, and afterward returned to London, where he has published _A London Rose_, Arthurian plays and poems, and Welsh ballads, and edited _Everyman's Library_. Mr. Madison Cawein, the well-known Kentucky poet resident in Louisville, scarcely needs an introductory word. His is landscape poetry chiefly, but sometimes, as in Wordsworth, figures blend with the scene and become a part of nature. A volume of his own selections from his various books has recently been published by The MacMillan Company. Mr. Nicholas Vachel Lindsay is the vagabond poet who loves to tramp through untravelled country districts without a cent in his pocket, exchanging "rhymes for bread" at farmers' hearths. The magazines have published engaging articles by him, but in verse he has been usually his own publisher as yet. "H. D., _Imagiste_," is an American lady resident abroad, whose identity is unknown to the editor. Her sketches from the Greek are not offered as exact translations, or as in any sense finalities, but as experiments in delicate and elusive cadences, which attain sometimes a haunting beauty. Mr. Kendall Banning is an editor and writer of songs. "The Love Songs of the Open Road," with music by Lena Branscord, will soon be published by Arthur Schmidt of Boston. Mrs. Anita Fitch of New York has contributed poems to various magazines. The February number of POETRY will be devoted to the work of two poets, Messrs. Arthur Davison Ficke and Witter Bynner. BOOKS RECEIVED _The Lyric Year._ Mitchell Kennerley. _Poems and Ballads_, by Hermann Hagedorn. Houghton Mifflin Co. _Shadows of the Flowers_, by T. B. Aldrich. Houghton Mifflin Co. _Poems and Plays_, by William Vaughn Moody. Houghton Mifflin Co. _Nimrod_, by Francis Rolt-Wheeler. Lothrop, Lee and Shepard. _The Shadow Garden and Other Plays_, by Madison Cawein. G. P. Putman's Sons. _Via Lucis_, by Alice Harper. M. E. Church South, Nashville, Tenn. _Songs of Courage and Other Poems_, by Bertha F. Gordon. The Baker & Taylor Co. _Narrative Lyrics_, by Edward Lucas White. G. P. Putnam's Sons. _The Dance of Dinwiddie_, by Marshall Moreton. Stewart & Kidd Co. _The Three Visions and Other Poems_, by John A. Johnson. Stewart & Kidd Co. _Hands Across The Equator_, by Alfred Ernest Keet. Privately printed. _Songs Under Open Skies_, by M. Jay Flannery. Stewart & Kidd Co. _Denys Of Auxerre_, by James Barton. Christophers, London. _Songs in Many Moods_, by Charles Washburn Nichols. L. H. Blackmer Press. _The Lord's Prayer._ A Sonnet Sequence by Francis Howard Williams. George W. Jacobs & Co. _The Buccaneers_, by Don C. Seitz. Harper & Bros. _The Tale of a Round-House_, by John Masefield. The MacMillan Co. _XXXIII Love Sonnets_, by Florence Brooks. John Marone. _The Poems of Ida Ahlborn Weeks._ Published By Her Friends, Sabula, Iowa. _The Poems of LeRoy Titus Weeks._ Published by the author. _Ripostes_, by Ezra Pound. Stephen Swift. _The Spinning Woman of the Sky_, by Alice Corbin. The Ralph Fletcher Seymour Co. _The Irish Poems of Alfred Perceval Graves._ Maunsel & Co. _Welsh Poetry Old and New, in English Verse_, by Alfred Perceval Graves. Longmans, Green & Co. Poetry VOL. I A Magazine of Verse NO. 5 FEBRUARY, 1913 POEMS BY ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE SWINBURNE, AN ELEGY I The autumn dusk, not yearly but eternal, Is haunted by thy voice. Who turns his way far from the valleys vernal And by dark choice Disturbs those heights which from the low-lying land Rise sheerly toward the heavens, with thee may stand And hear thy thunders down the mountains strown. But none save him who shares thy prophet-sight Shall thence behold what cosmic dawning-light Met thy soul's own. II Master of music! unmelodious singing Must build thy praises now. Master of vision! vainly come we, bringing Words to endow Thy silence,--where, beyond our clouded powers, The sun-shot glory of resplendent hours Invests thee of the Dionysiac flame. Yet undissuaded come we, here to make Not thine enrichment but our own who wake Thy echoing fame. III Not o'er thy dust we brood,--we who have never Looked in thy living eyes. Nor wintry blossom shall we come to sever Where thy grave lies. Let witlings dream, with shallow pride elate, That they approach the presence of the great When at the spot of birth or death they stand. But hearts in whom thy heart lives, though they be By oceans sundered, walk the night with thee In alien land. IV For them, grief speaks not with the tidings spoken That thou art of the dead. No lamp extinguished when the bowl is broken, No music fled When the lute crumbles, art thou nor shalt be; But as a great wave, lifted on the sea, Surges triumphant toward the sleeping shore, Thou fallest, in splendor of irradiant rain, To sweep resurgent all the ocean plain Forevermore. V The seas of earth with flood tides filled thy bosom; The sea-winds to thy voice Lent power; the Grecian with the English blossom Twined, to rejoice Upon thy brow in chaplets of new bloom; And over thee the Celtic mists of doom Hovered to give their magics to thy hand; And past the moon, where Music dwells alone, She woke, and loved, and left her starry zone At thy command. VI For thee spake Beauty from the shadowy waters; For thee Earth garlanded With loveliness and light her mortal daughters; Toward thee was sped The arrow of swift longing, keen delight, Wonder that pierces, cruel needs that smite, Madness and melody and hope and tears. And these with lights and loveliness illume Thy pages, where rich Summer's faint perfume Outlasts the years. VII Outlasts, too well! For of the hearts that know thee Few know or dare to stand On thy keen chilling heights; but where below thee Thy lavish hand Has scattered brilliant jewels of summer song And flowers of passionate speech, there grope the throng Crying--"Behold! this bauble, this is he!" And of their love or hate, the foolish wars Echo up faintly where amid lone stars Thy soul may be. VIII But some, who find in thee a word exceeding Even thy power of speech-- To whom each song,--like an oak-leaf crimson, bleeding, Fallen,--can teach Tidings of that high forest whence it came Where the wooded mountain-slope in one vast flame Burns as the Autumn kindles on its quest-- These rapt diviners gather close to thee:-- Whom now the Winter holds in dateless fee Sealèd of rest. IX Strings never touched before,--strange accents chanting,-- Strange quivering lambent words,-- A far exalted hope serene or panting Mastering the chords,-- A sweetness fierce and tragic,--these were thine, O singing lover of dark Proserpine! O spirit who lit the Maenad hills with song! O Augur bearing aloft thy torch divine, Whose flickering lights bewilder as they shine Down on the throng. X Not thy deep glooms, but thine exceeding glory Maketh men blind to thee. For them thou hast no evening fireside story. But to be free-- But to arise, spurning all bonds that fold The spirit of man in fetters forged of old-- This was the mighty trend of thy desire; Shattering the Gods, teaching the heart to mould No longer idols, but aloft to hold The soul's own fire. XI Yea, thou didst burst the final gates of capture; And thy strong heart has passed From youth, half-blinded by its golden rapture, Into the vast Desolate bleakness of life's iron spaces; And there found solace, not in faiths, or faces, Or aught that must endure Time's harsh control. In the wilderness, alone, when skies were cloven, Thou hast thy garment and thy refuge woven From thine own soul. XII The faiths and forms of yesteryear are waning, Dropping, like leaves. Through the wood sweeps a great wind of complaining As Time bereaves Pitiful hearts of all that they thought holy. The icy stars look down on melancholy Shelterless creatures of a pillaged day: A day of disillusionment and terror, A day that yields no solace for the error It takes away. XIII Thee with no solace, but with bolder passion The bitter day endowed. As battling seas from the frail swimmer fashion At last the proud Indomitable master of their tides, Who with exultant power splendidly rides The terrible summit of each whelming wave,-- So didst thou reap, from fields of wreckage, gain; Harvesting the wild fruit of the bitter main, Strength that shall save. XIV Here where old barks upon new headlands shatter, And worlds seem torn apart, Amid the creeds now vain to shield or flatter The mortal heart, Where the wild welter of strange knowledge won From grave and engine and the chemic sun Subdues the age to faith in dust and gold: The bardic laurel thou hast dowered with youth, In living witness of the spirit's truth, Like prophets old. XV Thee shall the future time with joy inherit. Hast thou not sung and said: "Save its own light, none leads the mortal spirit, None ever led"? Time shall bring many, even as thy steps have trod, Where the soul speaks authentically of God, Sustained by glories strange and strong and new. Yet these most Orphic mysteries of thy heart Only to kindred can thy speech impart; And they are few. XVI Few men shall love thee, whom fierce powers have lifted High beyond meed of praise. But as some bark whose seeking sail has drifted Through storm of days, We hail thee, bearing back thy golden flowers Gathered beyond the Western Isles, in bowers That had not seen, till thine, a vessel's wake. And looking on thee from our land-built towers Know that such sea-dawn never can be ours As thou sawest break. XVII Now sailest thou dim-lighted, lonelier water. By shores of bitter seas Low is thy speech with Ceres' ghostly daughter, Whose twined lilies Are not more pale than thou, O bard most sweet, Most bitter;--for whose brow sedge-crowns were mete And crowns of splendid holly green and red; Who passest from the dust of careless feet To lands where sunrise thou hast sought shall greet Thy holy head. XVIII Thou hast followed after him whose hopes were greatest,-- That meteor-soul divine; Near whom divine we hail thee: thou the latest Of that bright line Of flame-lipped masters of the spell of song, Enduring in succession proud and long, The banner-bearers in triumphant wars: Latest; and first of that bright line to be, For whom thou also, flame-lipped, spirit-free, Art of the stars. TO A CHILD--TWENTY YEARS HENCE You shall remember dimly, Through mists of far-away, Her whom, our lips set grimly, We carried forth today. But when, in days hereafter, Unfolding time shall bring Knowledge of love and laughter And trust and triumphing,-- Then from some face the fairest, From some most joyous breast, Garner what there is rarest And happiest and best,-- The youth, the light the rapture Of eager April grace,-- And in that sweetness, capture Your mother's far-off face. And all the mists shall perish That have between you moved. You shall see her you cherish; And love, as we have loved. PORTRAIT OF AN OLD WOMAN She limps with halting painful pace, Stops, wavers, and creeps on again; Peers up with dim and questioning face Void of desire or doubt or pain. Her cheeks hang gray in waxen folds Wherein there stirs no blood at all. A hand like bundled cornstalks holds The tatters of a faded shawl. Where was a breast, sunk bones she clasps; A knot jerks where were woman-hips; A ropy throat sends writhing gasps Up to the tight line of her lips. Here strong the city's pomp is poured ... She stands, unhuman, bleak, aghast: An empty temple of the Lord From which the jocund Lord has passed. He has builded him another house, Whenceforth his flame, renewed and bright, Shines stark upon these weathered brows Abandoned to the final night. THE THREE SISTERS Gone are the three, those sisters rare With wonder-lips and eyes ashine. One was wise and one was fair, And one was mine. Ye mourners, weave for the sleeping hair Of only two your ivy vine. For one was wise and one was fair, But one was mine. AMONG SHADOWS In halls of sleep you wandered by, This time so indistinguishably I cannot remember aught of it, Save that I know last night we met. I know it by the cloudy thrill That in my heart is quivering still; And sense of loveliness forgot Teases my fancy out of thought. Though with the night the vision wanes Its haunting presence still may last-- As odour of flowers faint remains In halls where late a queen has passed. A WATTEAU MELODY Oh, let me take your lily hand, And where the secret star-beams shine Draw near, to see and understand Pierrot and Columbine. Around the fountains, in the dew, Where afternoon melts into night, With gracious mirth their gracious crew Entice the shy birds of delight. Of motley dress and maskèd face, Of sparkling unrevealing eyes, They track in gentle aimless chase The moment as it flies. Their delicate beribboned rout, Gallant and fair, of light intent, Weaves through the shadows in and out With infinite artful merriment. * * * * * Dear Lady of the lily hand, Do then our stars so clearly shine That we, who do not understand, May mock Pierrot and Columbine? Beyond this garden-grove I see The wise, the noble and the brave In ultimate futility Go down into the grave. And all they dreamed and all they sought, Crumbled and ashen grown, departs; And is as if they had not wrought These works with blood from out their hearts. The nations fall, the faiths decay, The great philosophies go by,-- And life lies bare, some bitter day, A charnel that affronts the sky. The wise, the noble and the brave,-- They saw and solved, as we must see And solve, the universal grave, The ultimate futility. * * * * * Look, where beside the garden-pool A Venus rises in the grove, More suave, more debonair, more cool Than ever burned with Paphian love. 'Twas here the delicate ribboned rout Of gallants and the fair ones went Among the shadows in and out With infinite artful merriment. Then let me take your lily hand, And let us tread, where starbeams shine, A dance; and be, and understand Pierrot and Columbine. _Arthur Davison Ficke_ POEMS BY WITTER BYNNER APOLLO TROUBADOUR When a wandering Italian Yesterday at noon Played upon his hurdy-gurdy Suddenly a tune, There was magic in my ear-drums: Like a baby's cup and spoon Tinkling time for many sleigh-bells, Many no-school, rainy-day-bells, Cow-bells, frog-bells, run-away-bells, Mingling with an ocean medley As of elemental people More emotional than wordy,-- Mermaids laughing off their tantrums, Mermen singing loud and sturdy,-- Silver scales and fluting shells, Popping weeds and gurgles deadly, Coral chime from coral steeple, Intermittent deep-sea bells Ringing over floating knuckles, Buried gold and swords and buckles, And a thousand bubbling chuckles, Yesterday at noon,-- Such a melody as star-fish, And all fish that really are fish, In a gay, remote battalion Play at midnight to the moon! Could any playmate on our planet, Hid in a house of earth's own granite, Be so devoid of primal fire That a wind from this wild crated lyre Should find no spark and fan it? Would any lady half in tears, Whose fashion, on a recent day Over the sea, had been to pay Vociferous gondoliers, Beg that the din be sent away And ask a gentleman, gravely treading As down the aisle at his own wedding, To toss the foreigner a quarter Bribing him to leave the street; That motor-horns and servants' feet Familiar might resume, and sweet To her offended ears, The money-music of her peers! Apollo listened, took the quarter With his hat off to the buyer, Shrugged his shoulder small and sturdy, Led away his hurdy-gurdy Street by street, then turned at last Toward a likelier piece of earth Where a stream of chatter passed, Yesterday at noon; By a school he stopped and played Suddenly a tune.... What a melody he made! Made in all those eager faces, Feet and hands and fingers! How they gathered, how they stayed With smiles and quick grimaces, Little man and little maid!-- How they took their places, Hopping, skipping, unafraid, Darting, rioting about, Squealing, laughing, shouting out! How, beyond a single doubt, In my own feet sprang the ardour (Even now the motion lingers) To be joining in their paces! Round and round the handle went,-- Round their hearts went harder;-- Apollo urged the happy rout And beamed, ten times as well content With every son and daughter As though their little hands had lent The gentleman his quarter.-- (You would not guess--nor I deny-- That that same gentleman was I!) No gentleman may watch a god With proper happiness therefrom; So street by street again I trod The way that we had come. He had not seen me following And yet I think he knew; For still, the less I heard of it, The more his music grew: As if he made a bird of it To sing the distance through.... And, O Apollo, how I thrilled, You liquid-eyed rapscallion, With every twig and twist of Spring, Because your music rose and filled Each leafy vein with dew,-- With melody of olden sleigh-bells, Over-the-sea-and-far-away-bells, And the heart of an Italian, And the tinkling cup and spoon,-- Such a melody as star-fish, And all fish that really are fish, In a gay remote battalion Play at midnight to the moon! ONE OF THE CROWD Oh I longed, when I went in the woods today, To see the fauns come out and play, To see a satyr try to seize A dryad's waist--and bark his knees, To see a river-nymph waylay And shock him with a dash of spray!-- And I teased, like a child, by brooks and trees: "Come back again! We need you! _Please!_ Come back and teach us how to play!" But nowhere in the woods were they. I found, when I went in the town today, A thousand people on their way To offices and factories-- And never a single soul at ease; And how could I help but sigh and say: "What can it profit them, how can it pay To strain the eye with rivalries Until the dark is all it sees?-- Or to manage, more than others may, To store the wasted gain away?" But one of the crowd looked up today, With pointed brows. I heard him say: "Out of the meadows and rivers and trees We fauns and many companies Of nymphs have come. And we are these, These people, each upon his way, Looking for work, working for pay-- And paying all our energies To earn true love ... For, seeming gay, "Once we were sad," I heard him say. NEIGHBORS Neighbors are not neighborly Who close the windows tight,-- Nor those who fix a peeping eye For finding things not right. Let me have faith, is what I pray, And let my faith be strong!-- But who am I, is what I say, To think my neighbor wrong? And though my neighbor may deny That faith could be so slight, May call me wrong, yet who am I To think my neighbor right? Perhaps we wisely by and by May learn it of each other, That he is right and so am I-- And save a lot of bother. THE HILLS OF SAN JOSÉ I look at the long low hills of golden brown With their little wooded canyons And at the haze hanging its beauty in the air-- And I am caught and held, as a ball is caught and held by a player Who leaps for it in the field. And as the heart in the breast of the player beats toward the ball, And as the heart beats in the breast of him who shouts toward the player, So my heart beats toward the hills that are playing ball with the sun, That leap to catch the sun And to throw it to other hills-- Or to me! GRIEVE NOT FOR BEAUTY Grieve not for the invisible, transported brow On which like leaves the dark hair grew, Nor for the lips of laughter that are now Laughing inaudibly in sun and dew, Nor for those limbs that, fallen low And seeming faint and slow, Shall yet pursue More ways of swiftness than the swallow dips Among ... and find more winds than ever blew The straining sails of unimpeded ships! Mourn not!--yield only happy tears To deeper beauty than appears! THE MYSTIC By seven vineyards on one hill We walked. The native wine In clusters grew beside us two, For your lips and for mine, When, "Hark!" you said,--"Was that a bell Or a bubbling spring we heard?" But I was wise and closed my eyes And listened to a bird; For as summer leaves are bent and shake With singers passing through, So moves in me continually The wingèd breath of you. You tasted from a single vine And took from that your fill-- But I inclined to every kind, All seven on one hill. PASSING NEAR I had not till today been sure, But now I know: Dead men and women come and go Under the pure Sequestering snow. And under the autumnal fern And carmine bush, Under the shadow of a thrush, They move and learn; And in the rush Of all the mountain-brooks that wake With upward fling To brush and break the loosening cling Of ice, they shake The air with Spring! I had not till today been sure, But now I know: Dead youths and maidens come and go Below the lure And undertow Of cities, under every street Of empty stress, Or heart of an adulteress: Each loud retreat Of lovelessness. For only by the stir we make In passing near Are we confused, and cannot hear The ways they take Certain and clear. Today I happened in a place Where all around Was silence; until, underground, I heard a pace, A happy sound. And people whom I there could see Tenderly smiled, While under a wood of silent, wild Antiquity Wandered a child, Leading his mother by the hand, Happy and slow, Teaching his mother where to go Under the snow. Not even now I understand-- I only know. _Witter Bynner_ REVIEWS AND COMMENTS _The Story of a Round House and other Poems_, by JOHN MASEFIELD (Macmillan) Not long ago I chanced to see upon a well-known page, reflective and sincere, these words: "The invisible root out of which the poetry deepest in and dearest to humanity grows is Friendship." A recent volume may well serve as a distinguished illustration of the saying's truth. Few persons, I think, will read _The Story of a Round House and other Poems_ without a sense that the invisible root of its deep poetry is that fine power which Whitman called Friendship, the genius of sympathetic imagination. This is the force that knits the sinews of the chief, the life-size figure of the book. _Dauber_ is the tale of a man and his work. It is the story of an artist in the making. The heroic struggles of an English farmer's son of twenty-one to become a painter of ships and the ocean, form the drama of the poem. The scene is a voyage around the Horn, the ship-board and round-house of a clipper where Dauber spends cruel, grinding months of effort to become an able seaman on the road of his further purpose-- Of beating thought into the perfect line. His fall from the yard-arm toward the close of the conquered horrors of his testing voyage; the catastrophe of his death after He had emerged out of the iron time And knew that he could compass his life's scheme-- these make the end of the tragedy. Tragedy? Yes. But a tragedy of the same temper as that of the great Dane, where the pursuit of a mortal soul's intention is more, far more, than his mortality. Unseen forever by the world, part of its unheard melodies, are all the lines and colors of the Dauber's dreaming. At Elsinore rules Fortinbras, the foe: the fight is lost; the fighter has been slain. These are great issues, hard, unjust and wrong. But the greatest issue of all is that men should be made of the stuff of magnificence. You close the poem, you listen to the last speech of its deep sea-music, thinking: Here is death, the real death we all must die; here is futility, and who knows what we all are here for? But here is glory. Only less powerful than the impression of the strain of Dauber's endeavor, is the impression of its loneliness. The sneers of the reefers, their practical jokes, the dulness, the arrogance, the smugness and endless misunderstanding, the meanness of man on the apprentice journey, has a keener tooth than the storm-wind. The verities of _Dauber_ are built out of veracities. The reader must face the hardship of labor at sea. He must face the squalors, the miseries. If he cannot find poetry in a presentment of the cruel, dizzying reality of a sailor's night on a yard-arm in the icy gale off Cape Horn, then he will not perhaps feel in the poem the uncompromising raciness inherent in romances that are true. For the whole manner of this sea-piece is that of bold, free-hand drawing of things as they are. Its final event presents a genuinely epic subject from our contemporary history--the catastrophic character of common labor, and one of its multitudinous fatalities. Epic rather than lyric, the verse of _Dauber_ has an admirable and refreshing variety in its movement. It speaks the high, wild cry of an eagle: --the eagle's song Screamed from her desolate screes and splintered scars. It speaks thick-crowding discomforts on the mast with a slapping, frozen sail: His sheath-knife flashed, His numb hand hacked with it to clear the strips; The flying ice was salt upon his lips. The ice was caking on his oil-skins; cold Struck to his marrow, beat upon him strong, The chill palsied his blood, it made him old; The frosty scatter of death was being flung. Some of the lines, such as-- The blackness crunched all memory of the sun-- have the hard ring, the thick-packed consonantal beauty of stirring Greek. _Dauber_ will have value to American poetry-readers if only from its mere power of revealing that poetry is not alone the mellow lin-lan-lone of evening bells, though it be that also, but may have music of innumerable kinds. _Biography_, the next poem in the book, sings with a different voice and sees from a different point of view, the difficulty of re-creating in expression--here expression through words, not through colors-- This many-pictured world of many passions. _Biography_, too, rises from the invisible root of friendship and bears with wonderfully vivid arborescence an appreciative tale of the fine contribution of different companionships to a life. Among the two-score shorter lyrics of the collection are songs of the sea or of the country-side; chants of coast-town bells and ports, marine ballads, and love-poems. This is, however, the loosest entitling of their kinds; nothing but the work itself in its entirety, can ever tell the actual subject of any true poem. Of these kinds it is not to the marine ballads that one turns back again and again, not to the story of "Spanish Waters" nor to any of the jingling-gold, the clinking-glass, the treasure-wreck verses of the book. Their tunes are spirited, but not a tenth as spirited as those of "The Pirates of Penzance." Indeed, to the conventionally villainous among fictive sea-faring persons of song, Gilbert and Sullivan seem to have done something that cannot now ever be undone. The poems in the volume one does turn back to again and again are those with the great singing tones, that pour forth with originality, with inexpressible free grace and native power. Again and again you will read _A Creed_, _C. L. M._, _Born for Nought Else_, _Roadways_, _Truth_, _The Wild Duck_, _Her Heart_, and-- But at the falling of the tide The golden birds still sing and gleam. The Atlanteans have not died, Immortal things still give us dream. The dream that fires man's heart to make, To build, to do, to sing or say A beauty Death can never take, An Adam from the crumbled clay. Wonderful, wonderful it is that in the hearing of our own generation, one great voice after another has called and sung to the world from the midst of the sea-mists of England. From the poetry of Swinburne, of Rudyard Kipling, of John Masefield immortal things still give us dream. Among the poems of this new book, more than one appear as incarnations of the beauty Death can never take. Of these, perhaps, none is more characteristic of the poet, nor will any more fittingly evince his volume's quality than _Truth_. Man with his burning soul Has but an hour of breath To build a ship of Truth In which his soul may sail, Sail on the sea of death. For death takes toll Of beauty, courage, youth, Of all but Truth. Life's city ways are dark, Men mutter by, the wells Of the great waters moan. O death, O sea, O tide, The waters moan like bells. No light, no mark, The soul goes out alone On seas unknown. Stripped of all purple robes, Stripped of all golden lies, I will not be afraid. Truth will preserve through death; Perhaps the stars will rise, The stars like globes. The ship my striving made May see night fade. _Edith Wyatt_ _Présences_, par P. J. Jouve: Georges Crès, Paris. I take pleasure in welcoming, in Monsieur Jouve, a contemporary. He writes the new jargon and I have not the slightest doubt that he is a poet. Whatever may be said against automobiles and aeroplanes and the modernist way of speaking of them, and however much one may argue that this new sort of work is mannered, and that its style will pass, still it is indisputable that the vitality of the time exists in such work. Here is a book that you can read without being dead sure of what you will find on the next page, or at the end of the next couplet. There is no doubt that M. Jouve sees with his own eyes and feels with his own nerves. Nothing is more boresome than an author who pretends to know less about things than he really does know. It is this silly sort of false naïveté that rots the weaker productions of Maeterlinck. Thank heaven the advance guard is in process of escaping it. It is possible that the new style will grow as weak in the future in the hands of imitators as has, by now, the Victorian manner, but for the nonce it is refreshing. Work of this sort can not be produced by the yard in stolid imitation of dead authors. I defy anyone to read it without being forced to think, immediately, about life and the nature of things. I have perused this volume twice, and I have enjoyed it. _E. P._ THE POETRY SOCIETY OF AMERICA The Poetry Society of America, organized in 1910, was a natural response, perhaps at the time unconscious, to the reawakened interest in poetry, now so widely apparent. There seemed no reason why poetry, one of the noblest of the arts, should not take to itself visible organization as well as its sister arts of music and painting, since it was certain that such organization contributed much to their advancement and appreciation. Poetry alone remained an isolated art, save through the doubtful value of coteries dedicated to the study of some particular poet. In the sense of fellowship, of the creative sympathy of contact, of the keener appreciation which must follow the wider knowledge of an art, poetry stood alone, detached from these avenues open from the beginning to other arts. The Society was therefore founded, with a charter membership of about fifty persons, which included many of the poets doing significant work to-day, together with critics and representatives of other arts, the purpose from the outset being to include the appreciators of poetry as well as its producers. It has grown to nearly two hundred members, distributed from coast to coast, and eventually it will probably resolve itself into branch societies, with the chief organization, as now, in New York. Such societies should have a wide influence upon their respective communities in stimulating interest in the work of living poets, to which the Poetry Society as an organization is chiefly addressed. Since the passing of the nineteenth-century poets, the art of poetry, like the art of painting, has taken on new forms and become the vehicle of a new message. The poet of to-day speaks through so different a medium, his themes are so diverse from those of the elder generation, that he cannot hope to find his public in their lingering audience. He must look to his contemporaries, to those touched by the same issues and responsive to the same ideals. To aid in creating this atmosphere for the poet, to be the nucleus of a movement for the wider knowledge of contemporaneous verse, the Poetry Society of America took form and in its brief period has, I think, justified the idea of its promoters. Its meetings are held once a month at the National Arts Club in New York, with which it is affiliated, and are given chiefly to the reading and discussion of poetry, both of recently published volumes and of poems submitted anonymously. This feature has proved perhaps the most attractive, and while criticism based upon one hearing of a poem cannot be taken as authoritative, it is often constructive and valuable. The Society is assembling an interesting collection of books, a twentieth century library of American poetry. Aside from its own collection, it is taking steps to promote a wider representation of modern poets in public libraries. _Jessie B. Rittenhouse._ NOTES "THAT MASS OF DOLTS" Mr. Pound's phrase in his poem _To Whistler, American_, has aroused more or less resentment, some of it quite emphatic. Apparently we of "these states" have no longing for an Ezekiel; our prophets must give us, not the bitter medicine which possibly we need, but the sugar-and-water of compliment which we can always swallow with a smile. Perhaps we should examine our consciences a little, or at least step down from our self-erected pedestals long enough to listen to this accusation. What has become of our boasted sense of humor if we cannot let our young poets rail, or our sense of justice if we cannot cease smiling and weigh their words? In certain respects we Americans are a "mass of dolts," and in none more than our huge stolid, fundamental indifference to our own art. Mr. Pound is not the first American poet who has stood with his back to the wall, and struck out blindly with clenched fists in a fierce impulse to fight. Nor is he the first whom we, by this same stolid and indifferent rejection, have forced into exile and rebellion. After a young poet has applied in vain to the whole list of American publishers and editors, and learned that even though he were a genius of the first magnitude they could not risk money or space on his poetry because the public would not buy it--after a series of such rebuffs our young aspirant goes abroad and succeeds in interesting some London publisher. The English critics, let us say, praise his book, and echoes of their praises reach our astonished ears. Thereupon the poet in exile finds that he has thus gained a public, and editorial suffrages, in America, and that the most effective way of increasing that public and those suffrages is, to remain in exile and guard his foreign reputation. Meantime it is quite probable that a serious poet will have grown weary of such open and unashamed colonialism, that he will prefer to stay among people who are seriously interested in aesthetics and who know their own minds. For nothing is so hard to meet as indifference; blows are easier for a live man to endure than neglect. The poet who cries out his message against a stone wall will be silenced in the end, even though he bear a seraph's wand and speak with the tongues of angels. * * * * * One phase of our colonialism in art, the singing of opera in foreign languages, has been persistently opposed by Eleanor E. Freer, who has set to music of rare distinction many of the finest English lyrics, old and new. She writes: In the Basilikon Doron, King James I of England writes to his son: "And I would, also, advise you to write in your own language; for there is nothing left to be said in Greek and Latin already--and besides that, it best becometh a King to purify and make famous his own tongue." Might we add, it best becometh the kings of art in America and England to sing their own language and thus aid in the progress of their national music and poetry? * * * * * Messrs. Arthur Davison Ficke and Witter Bynner belong to the younger group of American poets, both having been born since 1880, the former in Davenport, Iowa, and the latter in Brooklyn. Both were graduated from Harvard early in this century, after which Mr. Ficke was admitted to the bar, and Mr. Bynner became assistant editor of McClure's. Mr. Ficke has published _From the Isles_, _The Happy Princess_, _The Earth Passion_ and _The Breaking of Bonds_; also _Mr. Faust_, a dramatic poem, and a series of poems called _Twelve Japanese Painters_, will be published this year. Mr. Bynner has published _An Ode to Harvard and Other Poems_, and _An Immigrant_. His play, _His Father's House_, was recently produced in California. The March number of _Poetry_ will contain _The Silent House_, a one-act play, by Agnes Lee, and poems by Alice Meynell, Alfred Noyes, Fannie Stearns Davis and others. BOOKS RECEIVED _Bugle Notes of Courage and Love_, by Althea A. Ogden. Unity Publishing Co. _Altar-Side Messages_, by Evelyn H. Walker. Unity Publishing Co. _Dream Harbor_, by J. W. Vallandingham. Privately printed. _Hopeful Thoughts_, by Eleanor Hope. Franklin Hudson Publishing Co. _The Youth Replies_, by Louis How. Sherman, French & Co. _Songs of the Love Unending_, A Sonnet Sequence, by Kendall Banning. Brothers of the Book. _William Allingham_, The Golden Treasury Series. The Macmillan Co. _Idylls Beside the Strand_, by Franklin F. Phillips. Sherman, French & Co. _The Minstrel with the Self-Same Song_, by Charles A. Fisher. The Eichelberger Book Co. _The Wife of Potiphar_, with Other Poems, by Harvey M. Watts. The John C. Winston Co. _A Scroll of Seers_, A Wall Anthology. Peter Paul & Son. Poetry VOL. I A Magazine of Verse NO. 6 MARCH, 1913 THE SILENT HOUSE _David._ [_Re-reading a letter._] How may a letter bring such darkness down-- With this: "She dallied with your love too long!" And this: "It is the word of all the town: "Corinna has no soul, for all her song!" _Martha._ [_Entering with flowers._] O sir, I bring you flaming bergamot, And early asters, for your window-sill. And where I found them? Now you'll guess it not. I visited the garden on the hill, And gathered till my arms could hold no more. _David._ The garden of the little silent house! _Martha._ The city lured her from her viny door. But see, the flowers have stayed! _David._ They seem to drowse And dream of one they lost, a paler-blown. How fares the house upon the hill? _Martha._ The blinds Are fast of late, and all are intergrown With weedy havoc tossed by searching winds. _David._ How somber suddenly the sky! A shower Is in the air. _Martha._ I'll light the lamps. _David._ Not yet. Leave me the beauty of the twilit hour. _Martha._ Hear the wind rising! How the moorings fret! More than a shower is on its way through space. I would not be aboard of yonder barque. [_She goes out._] _David._ Corinna! Now may I recall her face. It is my light to think by in the dark. Yes, all my years of study, all the will Tenacious to achieve, the tempered strife, The victories attained through patient skill, Lie at the door of one dear human life. And yet ... the letter ... Often have I read How love relumes the flowers and the trees. True! For my world is newly garmented: Rewards seem slight, and slighter penalties. Daily companionship is more and more. To make one little good more viable, To lift one load, is worth the heart's outpour. And she--she has made all things wonderful. And yet ... the letter ... O to break a spell Wherein the stars are crumbling unto dust! There never was a hope--I know it well, And struggle on, and love because I must. Never a hope? Shall ever any scheme, Her silence, or alarm of written word, Or voiced asseveration, shake my dream? She loves me! By love's anguish, I have heard! We two from our soul-towers across a vale Are calling each to each, alert, aware. Shall one of us one day the other hail, And no reply be borne upon the air? Corinna, come to light my heart's dim place! O come to me, Belovèd and Besought, O'er grief, o'er gladness,--even o'er death apace,-- For I could greet your phantom, so it brought Love's own reality!... A song of hers Seems striving hither, a faint villanelle Half smothered by the gale's mad roisterers. She used to sing it in the bracken dell. Here is the rain against the window beating In heavy drops that presage wilder storm. The lake is lost within a lurid sheeting; The house upon the hill has changed its form. The melancholy pine-trees weep in rocking. And what's that clamor at the outer door? Martha! O Martha! Somebody is knocking! [_Calling._] _Martha._ [_Re-entering._] You hear the rills that down the gutters roar. _David._ And are you deaf? The door--go open it! This is no night to leave a man outside! _Martha._ [_Muttering and going toward the door._] And is it I am growing deaf a bit, And blind a bit, with other ill-betide! Well, I can see to thread a needle still, And I can hear the ticking of the clock, And I can fetch a basket from the mill. But hallow me if ever I heard knock! [_She throws the door open. David starts up and rushes forward with outstretched arms._] _David._ Corinna! You, Corinna! Drenched and cold! At last, at last! But how in all the rain! Martha! [_Martha stands motionless, unseeing._] Good Martha, you are growing old! Draw fast the shades--shut out the hurricane. Here, take the dripping cloak from out the room; Bring cordial from the purple damson pressed, And light the lamps, the candles--fire the gloom. Why stand you gaping? See you not the guest? _Martha._ I opened wide the door unto the storm. But never heard I step upon the sill. All the black night let in no living form. I see no guest. Look hard as e'er I will, I see none here but you and my poor self. _David._ The room that was my mother's room prepare. Spread out warm garments on the oaken shelf-- Her gown, the little shawl she used to wear. [_Martha, wide-eyed, bewildered, lights the lamps and candles and goes out, raising her hands._] _Corinna._ The moments I may tarry fade and press. Something impelled me hither, some clear flame. They said I had no soul! O David, yes, They said I had no soul! And so I came. I have been singing, singing, all the way, O, singing ever since the darkness grew And I grew chill and followed the small ray. Lean close, and let my longing rest in you! _David._ Dear balm of light, I never thought to win From out the pallid hours for ever throbbing! How did you know the sorrow I was in? _Corinna._ A flock of leaves came sobbing, sobbing, sobbing. _David._ O, now I hold you fast, my love, my own, My festival upleaping from an ember! But, timid child, how could you come alone Across the pathless woods? _Corinna._ Do you remember?-- Over the summer lake one starry, stilly, Sweet night, when you and I were drifting, dear, I frighted at the shadow of a lily! It is all strange, but now I have no fear. _David._ Your eyes are weary, drooping. Sleep, then, sleep. _Corinna._ I must go over to the silent house. _David._ The dwelling stands forsaken up the steep, With never beast nor human to arouse! _Corinna._ Soon will the windows gleam with many lamps. Hark!--heavy wheels are toiling to the north. _David._ I will go with you where the darkness ramps. _Corinna._ Strong arms are in the storm to bear me forth. _David._ Not in these garments dripping as the trees! Not in these clinging shadows! _Corinna._ Ah, good-night! Dear love, dear love, I must go forth in these. Tomorrow you shall see me all in white. _Agnes Lee_ THE ORACLE (_To the New Telescope on Mt. Wilson_) Of old sat one at Delphi brooding o'er The fretful earth;--ironically wise, Veiling her prescience in dark replies, She shaped the fates of men with mystic lore. The oracle is silent now. No more Fate parts the cloud that round omniscience lies. But thou, O Seer, dost tease our wild surmise With portents passing all the wealth of yore. For thou shalt spell the very thoughts of God! Before thy boundless vision, world on world Shall multiply in glit'ring sequence far; And all the little ways which men have trod Shall be as nothing by His star-dust whirled Into the making of a single star. A GARGOYLE ON NOTRE DAME With angel's wings and brutish-human form, Weathered with centuries of sun and storm, He crouches yonder on the gallery wall, Monstrous, superb, indifferent, cynical: And all the pulse of Paris cannot stir Her one immutable philosopher. _Edmund Kemper Broadus_ SANTA BARBARA BEACH Now while the sunset offers, Shall we not take our own: The gems, the blazing coffers, The seas, the shores, the throne? The sky-ships, radiant-masted, Move out, bear low our way. Oh, Life was dark while it lasted, Now for enduring day. Now with the world far under, To draw up drowning men And show them lands of wonder Where they may build again. There earthly sorrow falters, There longing has its wage; There gleam the ivory altars Of our lost pilgrimage. --Swift flame--then shipwrecks only Beach in the ruined light; Above them reach up lonely The headlands of the night. A hurt bird cries and flutters Her dabbled breast of brown; The western wall unshutters To fling one last rose down. A rose, a wild light after-- And life calls through the years, "Who dreams my fountains' laughter Shall feed my wells with tears." _Ridgely Torrence_ MATERNITY One wept, whose only babe was dead, New-born ten years ago. "Weep not; he is in bliss," they said. She answered, "Even so. "Ten years ago was born in pain A child, not now forlorn; But oh, ten years ago in vain A mother, a mother was born." _Alice Meynell_ PROFITS Yes, stars were with me formerly. (I also knew the wind and sea; And hill-tops had my feet by heart. Their shaggéd heights would sting and start When I came leaping on their backs. I knew the earth's queer crooked cracks, Where hidden waters weave a low And druid chant of joy and woe.) But stars were with me most of all. I heard them flame and break and fall. Their excellent array, their free Encounter with Eternity, I learned. And it was good to know That where God walked, I too might go. Now, all these things are passed. For I Grow very old and glad to die. What did they profit me, say you, These distant bloodless things I knew? Profit? What profit hath the sea Of her deep-throated threnody? What profit hath the sun, who stands Staring on space with idle hands? And what should God Himself acquire From all the aeons' blood and fire? My profit is as theirs: to be Made proof against mortality: To know that I have companied With all that shines and lives, amid So much the years sift through their hands, Most mortal, windy, worthless sands. This day I have great peace. With me Shall stars abide eternally! TWO SONGS OF CONN THE FOOL MOON FOLLY I will go up the mountain after the Moon: She is caught in a dead fir-tree. Like a great pale apple of silver and pearl, Like a great pale apple is she. I will leap and will clasp her in quick cold hands And carry her home in my sack. I will set her down safe on the oaken bench That stands at the chimney-back. And then I will sit by the fire all night, And sit by the fire all day. I will gnaw at the Moon to my heart's delight, Till I gnaw her slowly away. And while I grow mad with the Moon's cold taste, The World may beat on my door, Crying "Come out!" and crying "Make haste! And give us the Moon once more!" But I will not answer them ever at all; I will laugh, as I count and hide The great black beautiful seeds of the Moon In a flower-pot deep and wide. Then I will lie down and go fast asleep, Drunken with flame and aswoon. But the seeds will sprout, and the seeds will leap: The subtle swift seeds of the Moon. And some day, all of the world that beats And cries at my door, shall see A thousand moon-leaves sprout from my thatch On a marvellous white Moon-tree! Then each shall have moons to his heart's desire: Apples of silver and pearl: Apples of orange and copper fire, Setting his five wits aswirl. And then they will thank me, who mock me now: "Wanting the Moon is he!" Oh, I'm off to the mountain after the Moon, Ere she falls from the dead fir-tree! WARNING You must do nothing false Or cruel-lipped or low; For I am Conn the Fool, And Conn the Fool will know. I went by the door When Patrick Joyce looked out. He did not wish for me Or any one about. He thought I did not see The fat bag in his hand. But Conn heard clinking gold, And Conn could understand. I went by the door Where Michael Kane lay dead. I saw his Mary tie A red shawl round her head. I saw a dark man lean Across her garden-wall. They did not know that Conn Walked by at late dusk-fall. You must not scold or lie, Or hate or steal or kill, For I shall tell the wind That leaps along the hill; And he will tell the stars That sing and never lie; And they will shout your sin In God's face, bye and bye. And God will not forget, For all He loves you so.-- He made me Conn the Fool, And bade me always know! STORM DANCE The water came up with a roar, The water came up to me. There was a wave with tusks of a boar, And he gnashed his tusks on me. I leaned, I leapt, and was free. He snarled and struggled and fled. Foaming and blind he turned to the sea, And his brothers trampled him dead. The water came up with a shriek, The water came up to me. There was a wave with a woman's cheek, And she shuddered and clung to me. I crouched, I cast her away. She cursed me and swooned and died. Her green hair tangled like sea-weed lay Tossed out on the tearing tide. Challenge and chase me, Storm! Harry and hate me, Wave! Wild as the wind is my heart, but warm, Sudden and merry and brave. For the water comes up with a shout, The water comes up to me. And oh, but I laugh, laugh out! And the great gulls laugh, and the sea! _Fannie Stearns Davis_ DIRGE FOR A DEAD ADMIRAL What woman but would be Rid of thy mastery, Thou bully of the sea? No more the gray sea's breast Need answer thy behest; No more thy sullen gun Shall greet the risen sun, Where the great dreadnaughts ride The breast of thy cold bride; Thou hast fulfilled thy fate: Need trade no more with hate! Nay, but I celebrate Thy long-to-be-lorn mate, Thy mistress and her state, Thy lady sea's lorn state. She hath her empery Not only over thee But o'er _our_ misery. Hark, doth she mourn for thee? Nay, what hath she of grief? She knoweth not the leaf That on her bosom falls, Thou last of admirals! Under the winter moon She singeth that fierce tune, Her immemorial rune; Knoweth not, late or soon, Careth not Any jot For her withholden boon To all thy spirit's pleas For infinite surcease! If, on this winter night, O thou great admiral That in thy sombre pall Liest upon the land, Thy soul should take his flight And leave the frozen sand, And yearn above the surge, Think'st thou that any dirge, Grief inarticulate From thy bereaved mate, Would answer to thy soul Where the waste waters roll? Nay, thou hast need of none! Thy long love-watch is done! SPRING-SONG Early some morning in May-time I shall awaken When the breeze blowing in at the window Shall bathe me With the delicate scents Of the blossoms of apples, Filling my room with their coolness And beauty and fragrance-- As of old, as of old, When your spirit dwelt with me, My heart shall be pure As the heart that you gave me. A SWEETHEART: THOMPSON STREET Queen of all streets, Fifth Avenue Stretches her slender limbs From the great Arch of Triumph, on,-- On, where the distance dims The splendors of her jewelled robes, Her granite draperies; The magic, sunset-smitten walls That veil her marble knees; For ninety squares she lies a queen, Superb, bare, unashamed, Yielding her beauty scornfully To worshippers unnamed. But at her feet her sister glows, A daughter of the South: Squalid, immeasurably mean,-- But oh! her hot, sweet mouth! My Thompson Street! a Tuscan girl, Hot with life's wildest blood; Her black shawl on her black, black hair, Her brown feet stained with mud; A scarlet blossom at her lips, A new babe at her breast; A singer at a wine-shop door, (Her lover unconfessed). Listen! a hurdy-gurdy plays-- Now alien melodies: She smiles, she cannot quite forget The mother over-seas. But she no less is mine alone, Mine, mine!... Who may I be? Have _I_ betrayed her from her home? I am called Liberty! THE OFF-SHORE WIND The skies are sown with stars tonight, The sea is sown with light, The hollows of the heaving floor Gleam deep with light once more, The racing ebb-tide flashes past And seeks the vacant vast, A wind steals from a world asleep And walks the restless deep. It walks the deep in ecstasy, It lives! and loves to free Its spirit to the silent night, And breathes deep in delight; Above the sea that knows no coast, Beneath the starry host, The wind walks like the souls of men Who walk with God again. The souls of men who walk with God! With faith's firm sandals shod, A lambent passion, body-free, Fain for eternity! O spirit born of human sighs, Set loose 'twixt sea and skies, Be thou an Angel of mankind, Thou night-unfettered wind! Bear thou the dreams of weary earth, Bear thou Tomorrow's birth, Take all our longings up to Him Until His stars grow dim; A moving anchorage of prayer, Thou cool and healing air, Heading off-shore till shoreless dawn Breaks fair and night is gone. _Samuel McCoy_ "THE HILL-FLOWERS" "_I will lift up mine eyes to the hills._" I _Moving through the dew, moving through the dew, Ere I waken in the city--Life, thy dawn makes all things new! And up a fir-clad glen, far from all the haunts of men, Up a glen among the mountains, oh my feet are wings again!_ Moving through the dew, moving through the dew, O mountains of my boyhood, I come again to you, By the little path I know, with the sea far below, And above, the great cloud-galleons with their sails of rose and snow; As of old, when all was young, and the earth a song unsung And the heather through the crimson dawn its Eden incense flung From the mountain-heights of joy, for a careless-hearted boy, And the lavrocks rose like fountain sprays of bliss that ne'er could cloy, From their little beds of bloom, from the golden gorse and broom, With a song to God the Giver, o'er that waste of wild perfume; Blowing from height to height, in a glory of great light, While the cottage-clustered valleys held the lilac last of night, So, when dawn is in the skies, in a dream, a dream, I rise, And I follow my lost boyhood to the heights of Paradise. Life, thy dawn makes all things new! Hills of Youth, I come to you, Moving through the dew, moving through the dew. II Moving through the dew, moving through the dew, Floats a brother's face to meet me! Is it you? Is it you? For the night I leave behind keeps these dazzled eyes still blind! But oh, the little hill-flowers, their scent is wise and kind; And I shall not lose the way from the darkness to the day, While dust can cling as their scent clings to memory for aye; And the least link in the chain can recall the whole again, And heaven at last resume its far-flung harvests, grain by grain. To the hill-flowers clings my dust, and tho' eyeless Death may thrust All else into the darkness, in their heaven I put my trust; And a dawn shall bid me climb to the little spread of thyme Where first I heard the ripple of the fountain-heads of rhyme. And a fir-wood that I know, from dawn to sunset-glow, Shall whisper to a lonely sea, that swings far, far below. Death, thy dawn makes all things new. Hills of Youth, I come to you, Moving through the dew, moving through the dew. _Alfred Noyes_ EDITORIAL COMMENT THE SERVIAN EPIC Poetry as the inspiration of the Balkan war was the theme of a recent talk given by Madame Slavko Grouitch before the Friday Club in Chicago, and elsewhere, during her brief sojourn in her native country. Madame Grouitch was a student at the American School of Archaeology in Athens when she married the young Servian diplomat who now represents his nation in London. According to the speaker, the Servian national songs have kept alive the heroic spirit of the people during more than four centuries of Turkish oppression. Through them each generation of the illiterate peasantry has fought once more the ancient wars, and followed once more the ancient leaders even to the final tragedy of the battle of Kossovo, where in 1377 they made their last brave stand against the Mohammedan invader. Whenever a few people assemble for a festival, some local bard, perhaps an old shepherd or soldier, a blind beggar or reformed brigand, will chant the old songs to the monotonous music of the _gusle_, while the people dance the _Kolo_. "There are thousands of songs in the Servian epic," says Mme. Grouitch, "and each has many variants according to whether it is sung in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, Dalmatia, Servia, Bulgaria or Macedonia; for all these political divisions are peopled by the Servian race descended from the heroes whose deeds are the theme of such unwearied narration. The bard is called the Guslar from his one-stringed instrument, whose melancholy cadence--a sighing-forth of sound--affects the emotions and increases the pathos of the words. For the story is usually sad, even when it proclaims the triumph of great deeds." These songs invariably begin: Once it was so; now it is told. And they as invariably end: From me the song; from God health to you. A number of poems were read from Mme. Mijatovich's rather uninspired translation of the Kossovo series, published in London in 1881. Extreme simplicity and vividness characterize the old epic, which follows the hopeless struggle of the noble Czar Lazar against the foe without, and suspicions, dissensions, blunders, even treacheries, within. Certain characters stand out with the uncompromising exactness of some biblical story: the Czar himself; his over-zealous Vojvode; Milosh Obilich, whose murder of Sultan Murad precipitated the disaster; and certain haughty and passionate women, like the Empress Militza and her two daughters. Also "Marko, the King's son," whose half-mythical figure is of the race of Achilles. "There was one thing," said Mme. Grouitch, "which the Turk could not take away from the Serb--the heavenly gift of poetry; that continued to dwell hidden in the breast of the southern Slav. His body was enslaved, but his soul was not; his physical life was oppressed, but his spiritual being remained free. In the eighteenth century Europe re-discovered the Servian national poetry, and became conscious that the race survived as well as its ideals. Then Serb and Bulgar again appeared in current history, and began to retrace the ancient boundaries. "All the conferences of all the powers can never diminish the hopes, nor eclipse the glory of the Serb race in the minds of the Balkan peoples; because the Guslar, who is their supreme national leader, is forever telling them of that glory, and urging them to concerted action against all outside foes. It was the Guslar who led the Montenegrin Serbs from one heroic victory to another, so that 'their war annals,' as Gladstone said, 'are more glorious than those of all the rest of the world.' It was the Guslar who inspired Kara George and his heroic band of Servian peasants to keep up their battle until free Servia was born. "Amid the roar of cannon at Lule Burgas and Monastir, I could hear the mighty voice of the Guslar reminding Serb and Bulgar that their fight was for 'the honored cross and golden liberty.' And they obeyed because it was the voice of their nation. It is this irresistible national spirit which leads their armies, and beside it the spirit of German training behind the Turk is a lifeless shadow. The Ottoman power in Europe is in ruins now, a wreck in the path of a national earthquake which the Guslar has prophesied for five hundred years. The Guslar has done his duty, and he stands today in a blaze of glory at the head of the united and victorious nations of the Balkans." The speaker told of an impressive ceremony at the Servian legation in London. Young Servians, recalled home for military service last autumn, met there on the eve of departure. Wine being served, the minister and his young patriots rose with lifted glasses, and chanted the ancient summons of Czar Lazar to his people: Whoever born of Serbian blood or kin Comes not to fight the Turk on Kossovo, To him be never son or daughter born, No child to heir his lands or bear his name! For him no grape grow red, no corn grow white; In his hands nothing prosper! May he live Alone, unloved! and die unmourned, alone! _H. M._ IMAGISME[C] Some curiosity has been aroused concerning _Imagisme_, and as I was unable to find anything definite about it in print, I sought out an _imagiste_, with intent to discover whether the group itself knew anything about the "movement." I gleaned these facts. [Footnote C: Editor's Note--In response to many requests for information regarding _Imagism_ and the _Imagistes_, we publish this note by Mr. Flint, supplementing it with further exemplification by Mr. Pound. It will be seen from these that _Imagism_ is not necessarily associated with Hellenic subjects, or with _vers libre_ as a prescribed form.] The _imagistes_ admitted that they were contemporaries of the Post Impressionists and the Futurists; but they had nothing in common with these schools. They had not published a manifesto. They were not a revolutionary school; their only endeavor was to write in accordance with the best tradition, as they found it in the best writers of all time,--in Sappho, Catullus, Villon. They seemed to be absolutely intolerant of all poetry that was not written in such endeavor, ignorance of the best tradition forming no excuse. They had a few rules, drawn up for their own satisfaction only, and they had not published them. They were: 1. Direct treatment of the "thing," whether subjective or objective. 2. To use absolutely no word that did not contribute to the presentation. 3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome. By these standards they judged all poetry, and found most of it wanting. They held also a certain 'Doctrine of the Image,' which they had not committed to writing; they said that it did not concern the public, and would provoke useless discussion. The devices whereby they persuaded approaching poetasters to attend their instruction were: 1. They showed him his own thought already splendidly expressed in some classic (and the school musters altogether a most formidable erudition). 2. They re-wrote his verses before his eyes, using about ten words to his fifty. Even their opponents admit of them--ruefully--"At least they do keep bad poets from writing!" I found among them an earnestness that is amazing to one accustomed to the usual London air of poetic dilettantism. They consider that Art is all science, all religion, philosophy and metaphysic. It is true that _snobisme_ may be urged against them; but it is at least _snobisme_ in its most dynamic form, with a great deal of sound sense and energy behind it; and they are stricter with themselves than with any outsider. _F. S. Flint_ A FEW DONT'S BY AN IMAGISTE An "Image" is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time. I use the term "complex" rather in the technical sense employed by the newer psychologists, such as Hart, though we might not agree absolutely in our application. It is the presentation of such a "complex" instantaneously which gives that sense of sudden liberation; that sense of freedom from time limits and space limits; that sense of sudden growth, which we experience in the presence of the greatest works of art. It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works. All this, however, some may consider open to debate. The immediate necessity is to tabulate A LIST OF DONT'S for those beginning to write verses. But I can not put all of them into Mosaic negative. To begin with, consider the three rules recorded by Mr. Flint, not as dogma--never consider anything as dogma--but as the result of long contemplation, which, even if it is some one else's contemplation, may be worth consideration. Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work. Consider the discrepancies between the actual writing of the Greek poets and dramatists, and the theories of the Graeco-Roman grammarians, concocted to explain their metres. LANGUAGE Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something. Don't use such an expression as "dim lands _of peace_." It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer's not realizing that the natural object is always the _adequate_ symbol. Go in fear of abstractions. Don't retell in mediocre verse what has already been done in good prose. Don't think any intelligent person is going to be deceived when you try to shirk all the difficulties of the unspeakably difficult art of good prose by chopping your composition into line lengths. What the expert is tired of today the public will be tired of tomorrow. Don't imagine that the art of poetry is any simpler than the art of music, or that you can please the expert before you have spent at least as much effort on the art of verse as the average piano teacher spends on the art of music. Be influenced by as many great artists as you can, but have the decency either to acknowledge the debt outright, or to try to conceal it. Don't allow "influence" to mean merely that you mop up the particular decorative vocabulary of some one or two poets whom you happen to admire. A Turkish war correspondent was recently caught red-handed babbling in his dispatches of "dove-gray" hills, or else it was "pearl-pale," I can not remember. Use either no ornament or good ornament. RHYTHM AND RHYME Let the candidate fill his mind with the finest cadences he can discover, preferably in a foreign language so that the meaning of the words may be less likely to divert his attention from the movement; e.g., Saxon charms, Hebridean Folk Songs, the verse of Dante, and the lyrics of Shakespeare--if he can dissociate the vocabulary from the cadence. Let him dissect the lyrics of Goethe coldly into their component sound values, syllables long and short, stressed and unstressed, into vowels and consonants. It is not necessary that a poem should rely on its music, but if it does rely on its music that music must be such as will delight the expert. Let the neophyte know assonance and alliteration, rhyme immediate and delayed, simple and polyphonic, as a musician would expect to know harmony and counterpoint and all the minutiae of his craft. No time is too great to give to these matters or to any one of them, even if the artist seldom have need of them. Don't imagine that a thing will "go" in verse just because it's too dull to go in prose. Don't be "viewy"--leave that to the writers of pretty little philosophic essays. Don't be descriptive; remember that the painter can describe a landscape much better than you can, and that he has to know a deal more about it. When Shakespeare talks of the "Dawn in russet mantle clad" he presents something which the painter does not present. There is in this line of his nothing that one can call description; he presents. Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way of an advertising agent for a new soap. The scientist does not expect to be acclaimed as a great scientist until he has _discovered_ something. He begins by learning what has been discovered already. He goes from that point onward. He does not bank on being a charming fellow personally. He does not expect his friends to applaud the results of his freshman class work. Freshmen in poetry are unfortunately not confined to a definite and recognizable class room. They are "all over the shop." Is it any wonder "the public is indifferent to poetry?" Don't chop your stuff into separate _iambs_. Don't make each line stop dead at the end, and then begin every next line with a heave. Let the beginning of the next line catch the rise of the rhythm wave, unless you want a definite longish pause. In short, behave as a musician, a good musician, when dealing with that phase of your art which has exact parallels in music. The same laws govern, and you are bound by no others. Naturally, your rhythmic structure should not destroy the shape of your words, or their natural sound, or their meaning. It is improbable that, at the start, you will be able to get a rhythm-structure strong enough to affect them very much, though you may fall a victim to all sorts of false stopping due to line ends and caesurae. The musician can rely on pitch and the volume of the orchestra. You can not. The term harmony is misapplied to poetry; it refers to simultaneous sounds of different pitch. There is, however, in the best verse a sort of residue of sound which remains in the ear of the hearer and acts more or less as an organ-base. A rhyme must have in it some slight element of surprise if it is to give pleasure; it need not be bizarre or curious, but it must be well used if used at all. Vide further Vildrac and Duhamel's notes on rhyme in "_Technique Poetique_." That part of your poetry which strikes upon the imaginative _eye_ of the reader will lose nothing by translation into a foreign tongue; that which appeals to the ear can reach only those who take it in the original. Consider the definiteness of Dante's presentation, as compared with Milton's rhetoric. Read as much of Wordsworth as does not seem too unutterably dull. If you want the gist of the matter go to Sappho, Catullus, Villon, Heine when he is in the vein, Gautier when he is not too frigid; or, if you have not the tongues, seek out the leisurely Chaucer. Good prose will do you no harm, and there is good discipline to be had by trying to write it. Translation is likewise good training, if you find that your original matter "wobbles" when you try to rewrite it. The meaning of the poem to be translated can not "wobble." If you are using a symmetrical form, don't put in what you want to say and then fill up the remaining vacuums with slush. Don't mess up the perception of one sense by trying to define it in terms of another. This is usually only the result of being too lazy to find the exact word. To this clause there are possibly exceptions. The first three simple proscriptions[D] will throw out nine-tenths of all the bad poetry now accepted as standard and classic; and will prevent you from many a crime of production. " ... _Mais d'abord il faut etre un poete_," as MM. Duhamel and Vildrac have said at the end of their little book, "_Notes sur la Technique Poetique_"; but in an American one takes that at least for granted, otherwise why does one get born upon that august continent! _Ezra Pound_ [Footnote D: Noted by Mr. Flint.] NOTES Agnes Lee (Mrs. Otto Freer) who has lived much in Boston, but is now a resident of Chicago, is known as the author of various books of poetry, the most representative, perhaps, being _The Border of the Lake_, published about two years ago by Sherman, French & Co. She has translated Gautier's _Emaux et Camees_ into English poetry; and has contributed to the magazines. Her long poem, _The Asphodel_, which appeared in _The North American Review_ several years ago, attracted wide attention. Mr. Edmund Kemper Broadus is a member of the faculty of the University of Alberta, Canada. Miss Fannie Stearns Davis is a young American who has written many songs and lyrics, a collection of which is to be published this spring. She was born in Cleveland, Ohio, but now lives in the East. Mrs. Meynell, who is the wife of Mr. Wilfrid Meynell, editor of one of the leading English Catholic reviews, hardly needs an introduction in America, where her exquisite art is well known. Her small volumes of essays--_The Rhythm of Life_, _The Color of Life_, _The Children_, etc., and her _Poems_ are published by The John Lane Company. Mr. Ridgely Torrence is the author of _El Dorado_, _A Tragedy_, _Abelard and Eloise_, a poetic drama, and _Rituals for The Events of Life_. He contributes infrequently to the magazines, several of his longer poems having never been republished. He lives in New York. Mr. Samuel McCoy was born, thirty-one years ago, at Burlington, Iowa. He now lives at Indianapolis, and devotes himself wholly to literary work. He was educated at Princeton, and from 1906 to 1908 was associate editor of _The Reader_. A collection of Mr. McCoy's poems will be issued in book form this year by the Bobbs-Merrill Company. Mr. Alfred Noyes, a young English poet, is a well known contributor to English and American magazines, and has published many books of poetry. _The Loom of Years_; _The Flower of Old Japan_; _Poems_; _The Forest of Wild Thyme_; _Drake, English An Epic_; _Forty Singing Seamen_, and _The Enchanted Island_ are among the titles of his published works; and a new volume, _The Tales of the Mermaid Tavern_, is to be published this spring by the Frederick A. Stokes Co. Early numbers of Poetry will contain poems by John G. Neihardt, Ezra Pound, Harriet Monroe, William Carlos Williams, Allen Upward, and others. BOOKS RECEIVED _Songs of a Syrian Lover_, by Clinton Scollard. Elkin Mathews. _Annatese of Song_, by George M. P. Baird. Privately Printed. _Pearls of Thought, A Collection of Original Poems_, by Samuel M. Fleishman. Privately Printed. _The Summons of the King, A Play_, by Philip Becker Goetz. The MacDowell Press. _Drake, An English Epic_, by Alfred Noyes. Frederick A. Stokes Co. _Sherwood, or Robin Hood and the Three Kings, A Play in Five Acts_, by Alfred Noyes. Frederick A. Stokes Co. _The Enchanted Island and Other Poems_, by Alfred Noyes. Frederick A Stokes Co. _Songs of the City_, by DeCamp Leland. The Westende Publishing Co. _In Vivid Gardens_, by Marguerite Wilkinson. Sherman, French & Co. _A Book of Verse_, by Alice Hathaway Cunningham. Cochrane Publishing Co. _Chilhowee, A Legend of the Great Smoky Mountains_, by Henry V. Maxwell. Knoxville Printing Co. _Sappho, And the Island of Lesbos_, by Mary Mills Patrick. Houghton Mifflin Co. _Harp of Milan_, by Sister M. Fidés Shepperson. J. H. Yewdale & Sons. _Two Legends, A Souvenir of Sodus Bay_, by Mrs. B. C. Rude. Privately Printed. _Moods_, by David M. Cory. The Poet Lore Co. _Poems_, by Charles D. Platt. Charles D. Platt, Dover. New Jersey. _Poems, Old and New_, by A. H. Beesly. Longmans, Green & Co. _Paroles devant la Vie_, par Alexandre Mercereau. E. Figuière _Alexandre Mercereau_, par Jean Metzinger. E. Figuiére, Paris. _Anthologie-Critique_, par Florian-Parmentier. Gastien-Serge, Paris. PERIODICALS _The Wild Hawk_, Hervey White. The Maverick Press, Woodstock, N. Y. _The Bibelot_, Thos. B. Mosher, Portland, Maine. _The Idler_, Robert J. Shores, New York City. _The Century_, New York City. _The Forum_, New York City. _The Conservator_, Horace Traubel, Philadelphia. _The Nation_, New York City. _The Poetry Review_, Harold Munro, London. _The Poetry Review_ (New Series), Stephen Phillips, London. _The Literary Digest_, New York City. _Current Opinion_, New York City. _The International_, New York City. _The Dial_, Chicago. _The Survey_, New York City. _The Nation_, New York City. _The Music News_, Chicago. _Mercure de France_, 26 Rue de Condé, Paris. _L'Effort Libre_, Galerie Vildrac, 11 Rue de Seine, Paris. _Les Poétes_, E. Basset, 3 Rue Dante, Paris. (This number devoted to poems selected from the work of Nicolas Beauduin, _Paroxyste_.) _L'Ile Sonnante_, 21 Rue Rousselet, Paris. CONTENTS OF VOL. I VERSE PAGE _Aldington, Richard_: CHORIKOS 39 To a Greek Marble 42 Au Vieux Jardin 43 _Banning, Kendall_: Love Songs of the Open Road 110 _Brink, Roscoe W._: Helen Is Ill 117 _Broadus, Edmund Kemper_: The Oracle 179 A Gargoyle on Notre Dame 179 _Bynner, Witter_: Apollo Troubadour 150 One of the Crowd 153 Neighbors 155 The Hills of San José 156 Grieve Not for Beauty 156 The Mystic 157 Passing Near 158 _Campbell, Joseph_: The Piper 33 _Conkling, Grace Hazard_: Symphony of a Mexican Garden 11 _Cawein, Madison_: Waste Land 104 My Lady of the Beeches 106 _Corbin, Alice_: America 81 Symbols 82 The Star 82 Nodes 87 _Davis, Fannie Stearns_: Profits 182 Two Songs of Conn the Fool 183 Storm Dance 186 _Dudley, Helen_: To One Unknown 10 _Ficke, Arthur Davison_: Poetry 1 Swinburne, An Elegy 137 To a Child--Twenty Years Hence 144 Portrait of an Old Woman 145 The Three Sisters 146 Among Shadows 147 A Watteau Melody 147 _Fitch, Anita_: The Wayfarers 108 Les Cruels Amoureux 109 _H. D. "Imagiste"_: Verses, Translations and Reflections from "The Anthology" 118 _Lee, Agnes_: The Silent House 173 _Lindsay, Nicholas Vachel_: General Booth Enters into Heaven 101 _Long, Lily A._: The Singing Place 47 Immured 49 _Lorimer, Emilia Stuart_: Fish of the Flood 9 _McCoy, Samuel_: Dirge for a Dead Admiral 187 Spring Song 189 A Sweetheart: Thompson Street 189 Off-shore Wind 190 _Meynell, Alice_: Maternity 181 _Monroe, Harriet_: Nogi 50 _Moody, William Vaughn_: I Am the Woman 3 _Noyes, Alfred_: The Hill Flowers 192 _Pound, Ezra_: To Whistler, American 7 Middle-aged 8 _Reed, John_: Sangar 71 _Rensselaer, Mrs. Schuyler Van_: Under Two Windows 44 _Rhys, Ernest_: A Song of Happiness 114 _Smith, Clark Ashton_: Remembered Light 77 Sorrowing of Winds 78 _Sterling, George_: A Legend of the Dove 75 At the Grand Cañon 76 Kindred 77 _Tagore, Rabindranath_: Poems 84 _Torrence, Ridgely_: Santa Barbara Beach 180 _Towne, Charles Hanson_: Beyond the Stars 35 _Widdemer, Margaret_: The Jester 51 The Beggars 52 _Wyatt, Edith_: Sympathy 112 _Yeats, William Butler_: The Mountain Tomb 67 To a Child Dancing upon the Shore 68 Fallen Majesty 68 Love and the Bird 69 The Realists 70 PROSE ARTICLES As It Was, _H. M._, 19 On the Reading of Poetry, _E. W._, 22 The Motive of the Magazine, _H. M._, 26 Moody's Poems, _H. M._, 54 Bohemian Poetry, _Ezra Pound_, 57 "The Music of the Human Heart," _E. W._, 59 The Open Door, 62 A Perfect Return, _A. C. H._, 87 Tagore's Poems, _Ezra Pound_, 92 Reviews: _The Poems of Rosamund Marriott Watson_, 94 _The Adventures of Young Maverick_, by Hervey White, 95 _The Iscariot_, by Eden Phillpotts, 96 _Interpretations_, by Zoë Akins, 97 _Lyrical Poems_, by Lucy Lyttelton, 97 Status Rerum, _Ezra Pound_, 123 Reviews: _The Lyric Year_, 128 _The Human Fantasy_, and _The Beloved Adventure_, by John Hall Wheelock, 131 _Poems and Ballads_, by Hermann Hagedorn, 132 _Uriel and Other Poems_, by Percy MacKaye, 133 _The Tragedy of Etarre_, by Rhys Carpenter, 133 _Gabriel_, by Isabelle Howe Fiske, 133 _The Unconquered Air_, by Florence Earle Coates, 133 _The Story of a Round House and Other Poems_, by John Masefield, 160 _Présences_, by P. J. Jouve, 165 The Poetry Society of America, _Jessie B. Rittenhouse_, 166 "That Mass of Dolts", 168 The Servian Epic, _H. M._, 195 Imagisme, _F. S. Flint_, 199 A Few Don'ts by an Imagiste, _Ezra Pound_, 202 Notes, 29,64,99,134,168,206 _Editor_ HARRIET MONROE _Advisory Committee_ HENRY B. FULLER EDITH WYATT H. C. CHATFIELD-TAYLOR _Foreign Correspondent_ EZRA POUND _Administration Committee_ WILLIAM T. ABBOTT CHARLES H. HAMIL TO HAVE GREAT POETS THERE MUST BE GREAT AUDIENCES TOO _Whitman_ 
43406	----	HERBS AND APPLES [Illustration: "TO BE ALONE, TO WATCH THE DUSK AND WEEP"] HERBS AND APPLES BY HELEN HAY WHITNEY AUTHOR OF "SONGS AND SONNETS," "GYPSY VERSES," ETC. [Illustration] NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD MCMX Copyright, 1910 BY JOHN LANE COMPANY THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. I give you this, the bitter and the sweet. It holds my heart, can you not hear it beat? So poor a gift to put within your hand-- Apples and Herbs!--but you will understand. CONTENTS PAGE TO NEIGHBOR LIFE 1 THE UNBURIED 2 UP A LITTLE ROAD 3 ON CEDAR STREET, NEW YORK 4 CHE SARÀ SARÀ 5 THE DEAD WANTON 6 LEAVEN 7 QUAERITUR 8 LOVE LAND 9 BY THE WESTERN GATE 10 FOR MUSIC 11 THE LITTLE GHOST 12 MADONNA EVE 13 A CONVERSATION 14 BE BRAVE 15 FORFEITURE 16 THE SEARCH 17 DUST 18 NATURE'S CHILD 19 VERITATIS 20 THE PEACOCK 21 ANTICIPATION 22 THE WAYFARER 23 RENUNCIATION 24 ARABESQUE 25 THE ARCHITECTS 26 AMBUSH 27 THE SCALES 28 THE OLD TRAGEDY 29 TABOO 30 THE RIVALS 31 ALONE 32 BENEATH THE MASK 33 THOTH 34 LITTLE DANCER 35 SIC ITUR AD ASTRA 36 THE JUDGES 37 THE SPRING PLANTING 38 AN IMPRESSIONIST PICTURE 39 SUCH HELP FOR SINGING 40 TEMPUS EDAX RERUM 41 THE COWARD 42 THE LOST ROMANY 43 COMPENSATION 44 UNTAMED 45 TO PERVANCHE 46 THE BELLE 47 RELEASE 48 THE THIEF 49 I WILL WRITE LETTERS TO THE GRASS 50 ONLY THIS 51 THE SURVIVOR 52 MEGAERA 53 THE SONG OF MOKAI 54 TO THE GYPSY MAN 55 THERE IS NO DANGER IN DISDAIN 56 THE PLAYMATE 57 AFTERWARDS 58 THE OLD MAID 59 MADNESS? 60 THE SCHOLAR 61 WISDOM'S SECRET 62 CAGED 63 THE WIFE SPEAKS 64 THE ALTAR 65 _Acknowledgment is made to Messrs. Harper & Bros., the Century Company, The Metropolitan Magazine, and Collier's Weekly, for courteous permission to reproduce certain of the verses included in this volume._ LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE "TO BE ALONE, TO WATCH THE DUSK AND WEEP" 32 _Frontispiece_ "SMILING SHE FLOUTS DEMOSTHENES" 6 THE PEACOCK 21 LITTLE DANCER 35 THE ROMANY 43 PERVANCHE 46 "AND WRAP MY HEART CLOSE SHROUDED IN THE HOURS" 50 HERBS AND APPLES TO NEIGHBOR LIFE Neighbor Life, I love you well, Have you any goods to sell? Let me buy or let me borrow Joy, to tide me o'er the morrow; I will give you in exchange Baskets full of thoughts that range, Bright utensils of my brain; Coins of feeling you shall gain. All I ask in equal measure Is your store of joy and pleasure. Neighbor Life, I love you well, Have you any joy to sell? THE UNBURIED In the wood the dead trees stand, Dead and living, hand to hand, Being Winter, who can tell Which is sick and which is well? Standing upright, day by day Sullenly their hearts decay Till a wise wind lays them low, Prostrate, empty, then we know. So thro' forests of the street, Men stand dead upon their feet, Corpses without epitaph; God withholds his wind of wrath, So we greet them, and they smile, Dead and doomed a weary while, Only sometimes thro' their eyes We can see the worm that plies. UP A LITTLE ROAD Up a little road with the morning in my arms, Drenched with dew and tipsy with the madness of the May, Leafy fingers on my face, I stop not for your charms! Love is waiting round the turn, to be my Love to-day. Shouting as I ride on the springing ringing sod, Ah! my pony knows the goal to which his course is laid, Galloping thro' dawn he knows he bears a little god Bacchus-mad with happiness who burns to meet his maid. ON CEDAR STREET, NEW YORK I, whose totem was a tree In the days when earth was new, Joyous leafy ancestry Known of twilight and of dew, Now within this iron wall Slave of tasks that irk the soul, To my parents send one call-- That they give me of their dole. Thro' the roar of alien sound Grimy noise of work-a-day, Secretly a voice, half drowned, Whispers thro' the evening's grey, "Child, we know the path you tread, Ghost and manes, we are true; Cedar spirits, long since dead, Calm and sweet abide with you." CHE SARÀ SARÀ Deep as the permanent earth is deep, Fierce as its central fire, Man is his own conclusion, Woman her great desire. THE DEAD WANTON She was so light, so frail a thing, She had no wisdom but her face, Which caught men's fancy like the Spring Yet held them but a moment's space. She is the youngest of the dead, And so the great lean round her feet; They strive to learn from her fair head Why far-forgotten life was sweet. For now she knows what Plato knows, And lapped in languor she agrees With Kant, and as her soft hair blows, Smiling, she flouts Demosthenes. [Illustration: "SMILING, SHE FLOUTS DEMOSTHENES"] LEAVEN Others furnish bread and meat, Busy hucksters on the street, They will give you what you need, All the facts your life to feed. Mine are not these wares of earth, I can give my love but mirth; Let, oh let this part be mine, I would be your salt and wine. QUAERITUR What if to-day, when I have made so sure That love is utterly and wholly mine, What if I found that faith should not endure And all my trust in you I should resign; That when I send my thoughts like homing birds To your dear heart they find no resting place, But all misunderstood, far, foreign words, They die away like strangers at your face. Love, make me certain, make the circuit true, And when I wonder, give the faith I seek Perfectly trusting, let me end in you Heart against heart, and cheek upon your cheek. LOVE LAND Where is El Dorado? Where is bright Cathay? These are lands where we should go To live and love to-day. Miles of glistening beaches Over all the sun, Tropic, spicy-laden breeze To lull when day is done. Gypsy lass and lover With the tides we'd rove; We be natives of no land Save the land of love. BY THE WESTERN GATE You and you only!--By the Western gate That fronts the falling sun I shade my face And watch for you. As one who's lost the race Tries to demand no further gift from Fate Lest he be hurled more low, so I, who wait And want you, ask no pity of your grace On my defeat, I only long to trace My lost heart; come to me, my need is great. I see the young men with their crystal eyes, They stand about my door, their hearts, I know Are breaking in the poppies that they bring. I cannot love them for I am not wise; Ah, come, or else forever let me go, I grow so tired with waiting in the Spring. FOR MUSIC The Indian Summer and Love have fled, Oh, red, red lips like a crimson rose, Oh, slender hands with the tips of red, You are lost in the land of Nobody-knows. The sweet breeze blows but it comes not back, The water flows in a silver stream, But never returns on its moon-white track, They are gone, past recall, like a lovely dream. Ah, crimson lips like a tilted flower, Where sweetest honey awaits the bee; Come back, come back for a single hour, Dear Love, my Summer, come back to me. THE LITTLE GHOST The little one who loved the sun Who only lived for play, Ah, why was she the one condemned To dark and dreams for aye! The perfect perfume of her life Was as a rose's breath, And now she treads eternally The gusty walks of Death. MADONNA EVE From what far spicery derives your hair The sweet faint fragrance that enslaves my sense? What subtle love trick taught you to be fair With overt lure and covert reticence? Madonna Eve, you bear upon your breast A hungry emerald like the desiring sea, But warm upon your heart lie pearls of rest What man could exorcise such witchery? A CONVERSATION "Laddy, leave your pedant's task, Rove the world with me. Fields and towns and pretty lands Together we would see. There be workers everywhere, You would not be missed. Come, ah come, and take for yours The mouth you never kissed!" "Lady, I am fain for play, So I may not go. Only those who hate to toil The true enjoyment know; But could you love a larrikin Whose task he'd so resign?" "Yes!--I'd love a larrikin If only he were mine." BE BRAVE Be brave about yourselves, you little ones, If in the crazy warp and woof you gleam With the insistence of determined suns, Shine, being true and modest in your dream. If to the peace of nature you respond Draw from her breast your milk, nor weep the high Duties for lack of which you now despond, Made for historic planets thro' the sky. Knowing yourself a gay and careless weed, Be you courageous in your light despair; Sure that you fill a space of unknown need, Idle and green in the bright coat you wear. Strive to the uttermost to find your worth, Jester or Gypsy, Body, Brain or Soul, Filling with perfect cheer your place on earth, So shall the tapestry of Time be whole. FORFEITURE So I have lost you. When the utter ache Shall fade at length to mere despondency What will the answer to this problem be? They say that nothing dies, that all we stake Brings some unknown return; what then shall make An adequate exchange for love, to see Your hand held out in friendship?--as for me The episode is ended, for life's sake. You want me still for that small joy I gave, But now it ends for you. I am not brave To love you seared; I have no happy days To brood upon at dusk, and so I claim, As all the wager that good fortune pays, Complete obliteration of your name. THE SEARCH I tire of the struggle, the search for the ultimate I, There hangs the chalice of sapphire, the infinite sky, Why thro' the space of despair should my spirit be hurled Seeking for truth, when beneath lies this pearl of a world? Seers may direct us thro' pain to discover the soul, Comforting joy may not give us the absolute whole, But if the seers should be wrong, may the truth not be ours Thanking dear Life for its light and its beautiful hours? DUST Motes of the city dust, could this thing be That midst your myriad particles for me Might come one atom out of Ispahan, One spiced far memory of caravan. Indrawn upon my breath I'd know an urge To dissipate monotony, and purge The spirit of its spleen; one with the man Who takes the sun blue air of Ispahan. NATURE'S CHILD I had a friend whose soul was very fair, His word was wisdom and his strength was sure; His courage in the ills he had to bear Made others strong and able to endure. I asked no love, no tribute of the sense For his companionship was recompense. I thought I was beloved, but did not care, He smiled on me as he on others smiled, But one grey day a chill was in the air And then to prove that I was Nature's child, He spoke--"I do not love you very much--" And all my friendship shattered at the touch. VERITATIS Seated among the shards of Potiphar I pondered. Shall we still strive on? forsooth There is no better, that is good as Best, There is no truer that is true as Truth. [Illustration: THE PEACOCK] THE PEACOCK She was more beautiful than tropic night, Luring, compelling as the smile of Fate; Like a poor wastrel, I for her delight Squandered my soul and gained her idle hate. Peacock and paroquet!--at last I know The sorriest songsters make the bravest show. ANTICIPATION The joy is in the making. While we sow Our dream is wonderful with flowers, we name The purlieus of our garden and the aim Is worth the effort, yet we cannot know The garden will be just a garden, so The dream is heaven. This way mothers frame The child's high dedication to its fame, Repaid for all reality may show. God knows this, so He lets us have the best, The vast anticipation, rugged man Joys in the struggle, triumphs over throes, Vanquished a thousand times he still finds zest In hope and all his pleasure in a plan To be fulfilled at length in Heaven?--who knows. THE WAYFARER Half way to happiness, The whole way back again, Stumbling up the stubborn hill From the luring lane. Little sunset House of Hearts Standing all alone, I could come and sweep the leaves From your stepping stone. I, and he, could light your fires Laughing at the rain But O it's far to Happiness, A short way back again. RENUNCIATION Not what I ask, but what I do not ask, O my Beloved, proves my love for you. And love can set to love no harder task Than wistful silence, reticence to sue. I lock my lips, I force a wise content With all my being wailing for a sign. Ah, if men knew what woman's smiling meant When fierce and hard the heart cries out "He's mine." Mothers of men are we, we barren ones Who say "Be happy, dear, and play your part." What matter how we yearn, you are our sons Whose every footfall breaks a woman's heart. ARABESQUE Gold fish, rose and red As lady Lillith's hair, Mauve and blue as curling smoke And water-sapphires there. At the fountain's brim I built a little dream, As a goldsmith cunningly I made it flash and gleam. I wrought a maiden shape, I colored it with love, Scarlet mouth and breast of pearl And eyes of turtle dove. Thro' hours of moony dark, I woo'd her for my bride But ah! I could not build her soul, So with the dawn she died. THE ARCHITECTS How shall we build it curiously well, Our house to live and love in?--Shall it be Only significant to you and me, Or shall it be a palace where may dwell Those whom our spirits notice? May we tell An architect to loose his fancy free To toss up towers in soaring ecstasy With Doric dignity or temple bell? Or shall we build it with our hands, alone, Working together over wood and stone To learn an art we never knew, and strive, Patient, to raise with faith and trust and love, Fashioned so cunningly it must survive, A secret cottage in a silent grove? AMBUSH Crafty Chieftain, where you lie You can see the clouds drift by, Waiting in the dusky fern For your enemy's return. Does the beauty of that place Never tell you of my face, I, you left, to plot and plan For the ending of a man?-- You had better sought my aid, I have met him unafraid, We have wandered all alone Underneath a yellow moon. We have found the end of strife Is the waking up to life-- Therefore you, who forced my vow, Take my all of wisdom now. Love has taught me but one truth-- Love is merry, love is youth, We be children, he and I. Where is your sagacity? THE SCALES I wonder if the store of joy And love is limited, And if because my heart is glad Some other heart has bled. Believing this, a balance just Of recompense, I pray That my beloved gained the joy I did not have to-day. THE OLD TRAGEDY Did I allure you?--I only meant to love you, I only meant to be so dear you could not let me go. I held you close against my heart, bending down above you, As mothers brood above their babes, I loved you, loved you so. 'T was passion that moved you, called to you and caught you; You never felt my tenderness full launched on your desire. You never knew the friendship and sympathy I brought you. Ah, Mary pity women when their veins are filled with fire. And so I have lost you, I who never won you; You thought me but a siren by your crafty arts beguiled. I hate myself and scorn you for the honor I have done you. I leave you, bitter woman, and I came to you a child. TABOO Now am I sacred, for that holy thing, Your touch, has made me as a god; to-day I am magnificent, I am a king To whom my fellow men must cringe and pray. Such is taboo; but when to-morrow comes I may look once upon the sun and you; Then, thro' the dawn, with wailing and sad drums I pay the utter price.--Such is taboo! THE RIVALS Seated in my ingle nook With Duty by my side, How I strove to see her charms And take her for my bride! "Sweet," I said, "I love you so"-- And suddenly I heard The laughing call of Beauty's voice And all my soul was stirred. Once again she cried my name And gone was every doubt, For who could stay at Duty's side When Beauty calls without? ALONE I only wanted room to be alone. I saw the days like little silver moons Cool and restrained shine forth; there were no noons To make me glad with glory, to atone. I dreamed of solitude. When one has known Ardent and eager verity, the tunes Of semi-truths are sweet, as subtle runes Attest the bud more dear than flower full blown. To be alone, to watch the dusk and weep For beauty's face that is so veiled, to know How exquisite the earth breaths come and go, To feel my life a silent, empty room Where lovely thoughts might take new shape and bloom,-- This is the dream that is more dear than sleep. BENEATH THE MASK I said that men were cowards, I thought that men were brave, I said that women gained no faith For all the love they gave. Beneath a mask of scorning I wore a heart of trust, But laughed in all my lovers' eyes And vowed their vows were dust. Time showed my words were true ones, My thoughts have proved no test, But still beneath my mask, I say I know my dreams were best. THOTH Hewn from basalt, black as sin, Blind eyes staring, hands on knees,-- This is Thoth, who shall survive All your fair divinities. Mars and Venus, piping Pan, White Diana, Cupid sweet,-- All their beauty, all their pride, Lie like ashes round his feet. Vast and calm and ultimate Ere this orb dissolves in space Life's last glimpse to man shall be Thoth, with his impassive face. [Illustration: LITTLE DANCER] LITTLE DANCER O little dancer, slim as a new moon, A candle flame blown by the wind--how soon Will all this be forgotten! Do you care The pagan poppies dying in your hair; Do you despair to think that even as they Your lovely life will tarnish in a day? How can we keep you, butterfly!--O must Such lovely grace resolve itself in dust? We must believe that some day when you lie Hid from the lights, beneath the open sky The trees will bend more perfectly above you, The flowers dance gayer for they'll know and love you, And we will mind a little less the cold, Remembering your grace when we are old. SIC ITUR AD ASTRA If it be educational to breast Salt lipped the wave that is the woe of Earth, Who could be called a fool? There is no rest From sorrow in this island of re-birth. And yet, ringed 'round with shadow as we are, In the penumbra we may all discern Glowing and gay the promise of a star For the adventurer with faith to yearn. THE JUDGES Watch me, eyes of the wind and rain, See if I come to the dusk with stain, Search me, eyes of the soaring sun, See what mischief my hands have done. If there be beauty of word or deed, If there be truth or a scorn of greed, Give me the peace of your dark, sweet hours, Let me be still as your moon and flowers. If there be harm to a heart that trusts, If there be pander to sordid lusts, Curse and condemn me to wide-eyed pain, Judge, and pay me, eyes of the rain. THE SPRING PLANTING "What shall we plant for our Summer, my boy,-- Seeds of enchantment and seedlings of joy? Brave little cuttings of laughter and light? Then shall our Summer be flowery and bright." "Nay!--You are wrong in your planting," said he, "Have we not grass and the weeds and a tree? Why should we water and weary away For sake of a flower that lives but a day!" So she made gardens which he would not dig, Tended her apricot, apple and fig. Then, when one morning he chanced to appear, Sadly he noticed--"No trespassing here." AN IMPRESSIONIST PICTURE "How do you do," I said; the yellow coat She wore was like a golden serpent's skin. I took her white gloved hand, my voice grew thin As tho' her hand were tight about my throat. The air was green with heat, a flaccid note I did not fail to see, for heat might win My cause; her weary soul looked from within And saw the white sails flapping on my boat. "Coolness and rest" my eyes were whispering, In Isles where morn grows never afternoon, Where Passion buds forever with the Spring, Nor wanes with shifting tides of sea and moon, But--"How are you?" she said, and that was all, And tho' she smiled, she passed beyond recall. SUCH HELP FOR SINGING Such help I have for singing! The little winds a-stir Touch gently on the lisping leaves Like dainty dulcimer. The sights and scents of April-- What dreams, what themes they bring-- While gaunt crows cry their gasconade Down all the ways of Spring. Such happy help for singing! And round, below, above The air is thrilling with my joy Of love, love, love. TEMPUS EDAX RERUM Upon the silence of my unconcern The little noise that was your name falls dead. I can remember how your mouth was red, In the lost years, but tho' the senses yearn For some unguessed desire, they never turn To that vitality, your face!--We sped So swiftly thro' our burning hour. We said Drink deep, 't will never end; too late we learn That lovely passion's face so soon is grey, That notes too often pressed upon grow dumb, That after the high climax crowns a day The dusk seems long and empty. We who come To taste again Life's feast, why must it be We meet such ghosts to chill our revelry? THE COWARD Wishful of many honors, He was too lame to climb, And so he sat to wait for Death, Forgetting to be brave. He never saw the windfalls, From off the trees of Time, Drop down in mellow chance to him The while he digged his grave. [Illustration: THE ROMANY] THE LOST ROMANY The Romany has gone, he has taken all my kisses, I knew I could not keep him, so I laughed and let him go. I do not know the road where his freedom and his bliss is, So take my sober spinning where no gypsy winds can blow. I will find my life serene, I will wed a pleasant lover, I may think no more of perfume and the lingering in the lane; I will rear me sturdy children, and my soul I will discover, For I will not love a Romany in all this world again. COMPENSATION If one grew blind thro' gazing Wide-eyed upon the sun, What matter when such memoried light Would last till life were done. If one should die of loving, Divinely wild, and brave, What matter with such dreams to dream Within the quiet grave. UNTAMED Ah, we weary so with kisses, Weary so with your caresses, As the hooded hawk returning To its tinkling bells and jesses, So we flutter to the prison Of your arms, in meek surrender, And we grieve when you are angry, And we smile when you are tender, But our souls, untamed, are soaring Where no blandishments can teach them, Free our hearts, and free our spirits, Where your hands can never reach them. TO PERVANCHE If you were mine--(for all the little flowers That see you, weary of their innocence)-- If prayers that have been pale with penitence Grew purple with our passion, all the hours From sun to sun would be unique with bliss, Little red mouth that is not mine to kiss! You are not mine and you will never be, And so I am magnanimous, I give My love and you to Time, and you shall live Bride of his avid passion. I will see The moon of all this lure and beauty set, And I will turn from you and quite forget. [Illustration: PERVANCHE] THE BELLE She spread her atlas petticoat So rare, so fine to see. Her bonnet was of Tuscan straw, Her shawl was Turkey red. She peacocked gay before men's eyes, This lady of degree, On slippered tiny feet, and ah! She wished that she were dead. At every ball, at every rout She was the toast of town; But no one knew who called her cold What cruel wound had she. The laughing gallant that she loved Had scorned her high renown, And now another bore his babe, And held it on her knee. RELEASE How may we be released from memories? One dreads each green renewal of the grain, Reviving ancient life. If but the brain Might be made clean of last year's withered lies, Blown like brown leaves across the April skies In hateful resurrection, and retain Only the springs of promise, fine and sane, And a kind, leading hand to make us wise. If with the running sap a royal birth Each year might be accomplished, strong and free With the sweet prescience of virginity, Then were we true inheritors of earth, And the large lonely stars no more should see The age worn phoenix-lives that make our dearth. THE THIEF Did you see the rascal with the rain-grey eyes? He robbed me of my happiness before I knew its worth. He stole into my garden and took it by surprise, When midnight hid his wicked ways upon the sleeping earth. How shall I arrest him, for he took away my Spring, Took away my April 'neath his cloak of steaming rain. Tho' he left his Summer and a choir of birds that sing, Nothing will content me for I want my Spring again. I WILL WRITE LETTERS TO THE GRASS I will write letters to my friend the grass, I will sing all my songs to lilac flowers Gather the spices in the airs that pass, And wrap my heart close shrouded in the hours. I dread man's huge impertinence; he creeps Thro' the inviolate silences of Spring Like a marauder, waking that which sleeps To gather strength for lyric blossoming. I will write all my letters to the grass. The world shall be resolved into a cry Faint as a little voice that cries Alas! And I will laugh alone beneath the sky. [Illustration: "AND WRAP MY HEART CLOSE SHROUDED IN THE HOURS"] ONLY THIS We need demand no further gift from Heaven, We might dispense with documents and creeds, If but this one great grace to us were given-- The strength to follow where our reason leads. THE SURVIVOR Beauty will crumble with tasking, Love rarely lasts for a year, Virtue is sold for the asking, Bravery fades before fear. Youth never lives till the morrow, One thing of all is alive, Joy cannot quench it, or sorrow, Folly alone shall survive. Folly, from cradle to burning, Toys for the great and the small, None shall escape her by learning-- Folly has rattles for all! MEGAERA Always to suffer so, to want and weep With woe that groweth every day more deep; To don the green robe of tormented scorn, And ever curse the hour that love was born! Furies, my Sisters! have you no surcease For me to whom no death shall bring release? They name me Jealous One. They hate my name, The ages hold me high to endless shame; How, if I suffer so, does no one care And pity, for the wrath that I must bear? Gods! let me go, your service wrecks and sears, The vase must break that holds so many tears. THE SONG OF MOKAI He's dead, I watched him die. He cast a spell on my mate, They loved, and the moon whirled 'round the sky, They mocked at my rage and hate. Blood red from the burning sea The sun rose, and I knew! My soul whined wild little songs to me, I did what I had to do. I have taken the bone of his thigh, I have fashioned it into a horn; And I sing my soul's song, shrill and high, And curse the day he was born. TO THE GYPSY MAN Is there no room in your gypsy heart Where a woman's love might lie Warm and sheltered, your prize and song, As you wander beneath the sky? No, for you say, "I'll carry no weight, I must be free, be free; I'll carry no love in my gypsy heart To make a drag for me." Little you know, then, love is the cloak That shelters you from the storm; Love makes the shoes for your gypsy feet, Love is your coat so warm. Though you take no purse and you take no staff You cannot escape the load Of a woman's longing and woman's love That follows you down the road. THERE IS NO DANGER IN DISDAIN There is no danger in disdain, No grief in perfidy; The meek they are who taste of pain And matchless misery. The hearts who give, and giving, die, Could they but learn the way To take, and laugh and then deny, They still might live their day. THE PLAYMATE Brown boy running on a wide wet beach, Free as the water and the wind are free; Eyes of an odalisque and skin of a peach, O for such a playmate to play with me!-- Drenched with the sunshine of the long brave hours, How we would tumble in the white wild spray; Then, drowsy children, fall asleep like the flowers, And wake keen and merry to a new clean day. AFTERWARDS You know how I came to you, World beaten, tossed aside; Ready for death at a hangman's hand, Stript of all hope or pride. Leaning, you gathered me up Close to your great sweet heart, Lulled me and told me to be a man, Taught me your wonderful art. Now I am very wise, Proud with your love's true vow; Glorious with power,--I am more than a man, What will you do with me now! THE OLD MAID Ah, Heaven! How soon my body will be old! I powder and I perfume and I tire With the long wasting of my one desire. I choose fair colors, furs, and antique gold To draw men's eyes and hands, and yet how cold, How careless are their eyes. I see the fire Flame from my neighbor, and I can aspire To only friendship. I have tried the bold, The luring attitude, the timid mien, The boyish, wise, or simple, all in vain. I know the women laugh at me, but oh, How can I let my dreamed perfection go? I am a woman, I must have a man Only to ratify my nature's plan. MADNESS? They say I'm mad because I stare And look as tho' they were not there, Because I only speak when aught Occurs to me by way of thought. Instead of serving Fashion's creeds, I cut my coat to fit my needs. I laugh at grief and only weep When noisy life disturbs my sleep. My dreams are delicate and wild; Was ever wise man so beguiled?-- Mad, am I mad!--then pray that you May some day hope for madness too! THE SCHOLAR From what sweet masters have I fathomed doubt, What love and laughter taught me to be blind; How patient did they point the letters out Latin and Greek to my bewildered mind. Now I am very wise, I know the 'a' The little 'a' of doubt's first faint distress Then, letter perfect, I recall the way Thro' all the alphabet of bitterness. WISDOM'S SECRET Coerced by Furies who persuaded me That life was imminent with idleness, Their jibes made mad, their lashes aided me To grasp the accident of bitterness. Come storm! I cried, come passion and despair, For calm inhibits growth!--I called on fire To sear my comfortable days, and wear The nights to wastes of torment and desire. Then pausing breathless, in a little wood I met with Wisdom laughing in the sun; She said, "Lie still, for idleness is good, And grow in peace as I myself have done." CAGED Once I had wings--I had no heart to fly, They put me in a cage, I did not die. They tamed me, taught me tricks and bade me sing; I waited, bore it patiently; one thing I knew, that some day it might be The cage would open and I should be free. I waited endlessly,--at last the day! Faint with delight I thought to fly away, Ah, but the mockery of that open door!-- My wings were powerless, I could fly no more. THE WIFE SPEAKS Not all those women you have loved and left, O my Beloved, can stir my jealousy; Not the light loves which you forgot for me, For my heart's fingers made by life most deft Have mended all the rents their arrows cleft And from their old enchantments set you free. But one is my despair, and only she, The one who loved you, hopeless and bereft. How can I give as much, who hold your heart As she, unloved who gave with scorn of gain? So do the angels; at her name I smart And feel a sordid bargainer who gives For fair exchange; I cannot heal the pain, I am defeated by her while she lives. THE ALTAR Some take comfort from a star, Thro' the slow grey surge of Time, Some take joy from ruddy war, Lust of conflict, heat of crime. In these days of codes and creeds, Gods may wander newly born, Every day for each man's needs Bringing blessings thro' the morn. I will take a happy word, Open heart and hand for play, And a song which none have heard For my altar of the day. [Illustration] * * * * * RECENT POETRY THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM WATSON UNIFORM EDITION. 3 vols. Cloth. 12 mo. $4.00 net per set. Postage 25 cents. Half Morocco. $12.00 net. Postage 25 cents. _Sold separately as follows_ POEMS. 2 vols. $2.50 net. Half Morocco, $7.50 net. Photogravure Portrait. Postage and packing 20 cents. The lover of poetry cannot fail to rejoice in this handsome edition.--_Philadelphia Press._ A glow of inspiration that merits better than that of any living poet the high adjective, Vergilian.--_New York Evening Post._ Work which will live, one may venture to say, as long as the language.--_Philadelphia Public Ledger._ NEW POEMS. $1.50 net. Half Morocco, $5.00 net. Postage and packing 12 cents. Contains "On Hearing Samaroff Play," "Vivisection," "Leopold of Belgium," "To Richard Watson Gilder," "To the Invincible Republic," "Sonnets to Miranda," and "The Woman With the Serpent's Tongue." "To the Invincible Republic" is full of a generous and admiring appreciation. All of these poems are explicit, strong, and interesting.--_New York Sun._ _Times_--William Watson is, above all things, an artist who is proud of his calling and conscientious in every syllable that he writes. To appreciate his work you must take it as a whole, for he is in line with the high priests of poetry, reared, like Ion, in the shadow of the Delphic presences and memories, and weighing every word of his utterance before it is given to the world. _Athenæum_--His poetry is a "criticism of life," and, viewed as such, it is magnificent in its lucidity, its elegance, its dignity.... We revere and admire Mr. Watson's pursuit of a splendid ideal; and we are sure that his artistic self-mastery will be rewarded by a secure place in the ranks of our poets.... We may express our belief that Mr. Watson will keep his high and honorable station when many showier but shallower reputations have withered away, and must figure in any representative anthology of English poetry.... "Wordsworth's Grave" is, in our judgment, Mr. Watson's masterpiece ... its music is graver and deeper, its language is purer and clearer, than the frigid droning and fugitive beauties of the "Elegy in a Country Churchyard." SABLE AND PURPLE. $1.25 net. Postage 10 cents. _Boston Transcript_--Still the poet whose inspirational fantasy gives distinction to modern English Literature. _Spectator_--A great artist, "Sable and Purple" is of a high excellence. THE WORKS OF LAURENCE HOPE INDIA'S LOVE LYRICS, including "The Garden of Kama." 12mo. $1.50 net. Postage 10 cents. Half morocco, $4.00 net. STARS OF THE DESERT: POEMS. 12mo. $1.50 net. Postage 10 cents. Half morocco, $4.00 net. LAST POEMS. Translations from the "Book of Indian Love." 12mo. $1.50 net. Postage 10 cents. Half morocco, $4.00 net. COMPLETE WORKS. Uniform Edition. 3 volumes. In box. INDIA'S LOVE LYRICS. STARS OF THE DESERT. LAST POEMS. Cloth, $4.50 net. Postage 35 cents. Half morocco, $12.00 net. Postage 50 cents. SONGS FROM THE GARDEN OF KAMA. Illustrated from photographs by Mrs. Eardsley Wilmot. Cloth. 4to. $3.00 net. Postage 15 cents. INDIA'S LOVE LYRICS BY LAURENCE HOPE _The New York Commercial_: Its colors are elemental, silver and gold and red. It is heavy with the breath of citron groves, cool with the tinkling of temple bells, and the air of night, and the cries of wild peacocks and parrots.... In many ways this volume of translation is the most important contribution to poetry that the season has as yet brought forth. _The Baltimore Sun_: There is nothing stale or hackneyed in this book; newness, freshness, and variety are found on every page. These poems are true lyrics, for they give us true glimpses into the hearts of men. _The Chicago Tribune_: A volume of passionate love poems written by a true poet. _The Chicago Inter-Ocean_: They are in several metres, handled always with graceful ease, and often with intensity. The coloring is vivid and the music subtle. The book is redolent with the atmosphere of the Arabian Nights. _The Boston Evening Transcript_: Mr. Hope is a thorough artist to his fingertips, and his choice of words and images is as keen and exact as his ability to adapt Indian literature to the more prosaic mood and tongue of the Anglo-Saxon. _The Athenæum_: Mr. Hope has caught admirably the dominant notes of this Indian love poetry, its delirious absorption in the instant, its out-of-door air, its melancholy. STARS OF THE DESERT BY LAURENCE HOPE _The Washington Mirror_: The author has so completely infused the charm of the Orient into this volume that one is transported for the time and lost in the poetic beauty of his surroundings, finds no jarring chord nor is disposed to shrink from the frankness of this translation of oriental verse. _The Chicago Tribune_: It is still a question whether these are direct translations or whether they are written in the Hindu style by Laurence Hope. Perhaps she has done for the Hindu poets what FitzGerald did for Omar. _The Conservator_: He seems to exhale an oriental atmosphere. He sings musically. I can follow the delicate strain by which Hope saves himself from stepping beyond the bounds of a vital reserve. _The New York Star_: The author is imbued with the glowing passion of Eastern romance. _The New York Globe_: The theme, in almost every instance love, is treated with feverish abandon. KING ALFRED'S JEWEL _THIRD EDITION_ BY KATRINA TRASK. Author of "Night and Morning," "Mors et Victoria," etc. Cloth, 12mo. $1.25 net. Postage 10 cents. With Colored Frontispiece reproducing the Jewel now at Oxford. The English speaking world has waited a thousand years for a worthy dramatic impersonation of King Alfred. And here it is.... The play will stand not alone upon the grateful response it wins from the English national heart, but as a work of art.... The author is supremely a poet, the master of metaphor not less than of melody.... It is a play not only to be read but to be acted.... This vivid drama is not cast in the conventional classic mould. It is distinctly and wholly English in spirit and form, and intensely modern--but breathing the air of morning, of springtime, of fresh adventure.--HENRY MILLS ALDEN, _The New York Times Saturday Review_. King Alfred's noble and vigorous character is limned with great skill, while Elfreda, a graceful and innocent maiden, flits through the play like a woodland fairy.--_The Glasgow Evening News_, Scotland. The living Alfred lives in this gracious play, for the author has fashioned his great spirit out of the mist of time.--JAMES DOUGLAS, _The Star_, London. ARTHUR SYMONS POEMS A Collected Edition of the Poet's work, issued in two volumes, with a Photogravure Portrait as Frontispiece. 8vo. $3.00 _net_. Postage 24 cents. Half morocco, $10.00 _net_. THE FOOL OF THE WORLD AND OTHER POEMS 12mo. $1.50 _net_. Postage 15 cents. Half morocco, $5.00 _net_. Stands at the head of all British poets of his generation.--_New York Evening Post._ One of the truest poets that modern England owns.--_Bookman._ THE POEMS OF ERNEST DOWSON Illustrations and a Cover-design by Aubrey Beardsley. An Introductory Memoir by Arthur Symons, and a Portrait. 12mo. $1.50 _net_. Half morocco, $4.00. Postage 10 cents. Belongs to the class that Rossetti does, with a touch of Herrick, and something which is Dowson, and Dowson alone.--DR. TALCOTT WILLIAMS in _Book News_. POEMS OF ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON. Cloth. 12mo. $1.50 _net_. Postage 12 cents. In this volume we have a welcome gathering together of the principal poems issued by Mr. Arthur Christopher Benson during the past sixteen years.... In this new form his poems should make new friends.--_London Daily Telegraph._ CARMINA. BY THOMAS A. DALY. Cloth. 12mo. $1.00 _net_. Postage 10 cents. A collection of poems by this well-known author of Italian, Irish and American verse. The volume contains all of the most popular verses from "Canzoni," in addition to many new ones of equal appeal. NEW POEMS. BY RICHARD LE GALLIENNE. Cloth. 12mo. $1.50. THE WIND AMONG THE REEDS. POEMS By W. B. YEATS. 12mo. $1.25 _net_. Half morocco, $4.00. Postage 10 cents. The genuine spirit of Irish antiquity and Irish folk lore--the very spirit of the myth-makers is in him.--MR. WILLIAM ARCHER. THE RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM Cloth, 50 cents _net_; Leather, 75 cents _net_. Postage 4 cents. Rendered into English verse by EDWARD FITZGERALD. With 9 illustrations. THE ROSARY AND OTHER POEMS By ROBERT CAMERON ROGERS. 12mo. $1.25 _net_. Half morocco, $4.00. Postage 10 cents. A Landorian touch of divine simplicity.--_The Dial._ THE WORKS OF FRANCIS THOMPSON POEMS. Square 12mo. $1.75 net. Postage 10 cents. SISTER SONGS: An Offering to Two Sisters. With Frontispiece by LAURENCE HOUSMAN. Square 12mo. $1.75 net. Postage 10 cents. NEW POEMS. Cloth. Square 12mo. $1.75 net. Postage 10 cents. THE HOUND OF HEAVEN. Special Edition. 16mo. 50 cents net. Postage 5 cents. (Also included in "Poems.") SELECTED POEMS. Cloth, 16mo. $1.50 net. Postage 10 cents. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE THE POEMS OF. Edited with an Introduction by ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE, and numerous Illustrations by GERALD METCALFE. 8vo. $3.50 net. Postage extra. The only complete, definitive, illustrated edition of the poems of the author of "Christabel," "The Ancient Mariner," etc. Several hitherto unpublished poems are included in this edition. A. E. HOUSMAN A SHROPSHIRE LAD. New Edition. Cloth, 16mo. $1.00 net. Postage 4 cents. Half morocco, $3.00 net; postage 5 cents. SAPPHO Memoir, Text, Selected Renderings, and a Literal Translation by HENRY THORNTON WHARTON. Illustrated in Photogravure. New Edition. $2.00 net. Postage 10 cents. THE POETRY OF STEPHEN PHILLIPS PAOLO AND FRANCESCA: A Tragedy in Four Acts. By STEPHEN PHILLIPS. New Edition with Photogravure Frontispiece after the painting by G. F. WATTS, R. A. 12mo Twelfth Edition $1.25 net _New York Times_--Nothing finer has come to us from an English pen in the way of a poetic and literary play since the appearance of Taylor's "Philip van Artevelde." _Brooklyn Daily Eagle_--It is not too much to say that "Paolo and Francesca" is the most important example of English dramatic poetry that has appeared since Browning died. _Philadelphia Press_--"Paolo and Francesca" has beauty, passion, and power.... The poem deserves a wide reading on account of its intrinsic merit and interest. HEROD: A Tragedy. By STEPHEN PHILLIPS. 12mo Twenty-First Thousand $1.25 net _Times_--Here, then, is a noble work of dramatic imagination dealing greatly with great passions; multicolored and exquisitely musical. Mr. Stephen Phillips is not only a poet, but that still rarer thing, a dramatic poet. MR. WILLIAM ARCHER (in _The World_)--The elder Dumas speaking with the voice of Milton. _Athenæum_--Not unworthy of the author of "The Duchess of Malfi." POEMS. By STEPHEN PHILLIPS. Including "Marpessa" and "Christ in Hades." 12mo Thirteenth Edition $1.25 net _Times_--Mr. Phillips is a poet, one of the half dozen men of the younger generation, whose writings contain the indefinable quality which makes for permanence. _Spectator_--In his new volume Mr. Stephen Phillips more than sustains the promise made by his "Christ in Hades"; here is real poetic achievement--the veritable gold of song. _Literature_--No such remarkable book of verse as this has appeared for several years. MARPESSA. By STEPHEN PHILLIPS. With Illustrations by PHILIP CONNARD. Cloth, 50 cents net Leather, 75 cents net WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS--Tennyson at his age had not done better. NEW POEMS. Including "Iole: A Tragedy in One Act"; "Launcelot and Guinevere," "Endymion," and many other hitherto unpublished poems. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25 net. Half mor., $4.00 net. Postage 10 cts. RECENT POETRY SELECTED POEMS OF JOHN DAVIDSON 12mo Leather, $1.50 net Cloth, $1.25 net _The Nation_--An uncommonly masculine volume. _Chicago Record-Herald_--What every admirer of this virile poet desires, a brief summary of his important work from which an adequate conception of his style and versatility can be obtained. _Athenæum_--There is urgent need for a collected edition of Mr. Davidson's poems and plays. The volume and variety of his poetry ought to win for it wider acceptance. It is indeed curious that poetry so splendid as Mr. Davidson's should fail to get fuller recognition. There are many aspects of his genius which ought to make his work popular in the best sense of the word. He has almost invented the modern ballad.... He handles the metre with masterly skill, filling it with imaginative life and power. _Times_--There are not more than two or three living writers of English verse out of whose poems so good a selection could be made. The poems in the selection are not only positive--they are visible. _Literary World_--We count ourselves among those to whom Mr. Davidson has made himself indispensable. _Daily Mail_--Mr. Davidson is our most individual singer. His variety is as surprising as his virility of diction and thought. _St. James's Gazette_--This volume may serve as an introduction to a poet of noble and distinctive utterance. _New Age_--The book contains much that Mr. Davidson's warmest admirers would best wish to remember him by. There is a subtle charm about these poems which eludes definition, which defies analysis. _T. P.'s Weekly_--Mr. Davidson is one of the most individual of living poets; he has a rare lyrical faculty. _Morning Post_--Mr. Davidson is as true a poet as we have now among us ... he has included nothing that we do not admire. _Daily Graphic_--This delightful volume. _Dundee Advertiser_--Its poetry gives out a masterful note.... Mr. Davidson's poem pictures. Transcriber's Notes In _The Chicago Tribune_ review for STARS OF THE DESERT by Laurence Hope, "she" may be a typo for "he." (Perhaps she has done for the Hindu poets what FitzGerald did) 
4399	----	A Few Figs from Thistles Poems and Sonnets by Edna St. Vincent Millay Thanks are due to the editors of Ainslie's, The Dial, Pearson's Poetry, Reedy's Mirror, and Vanity Fair, for their kind permission to republish various of these poems. This edition of "A Few Figs from Thistles" contains several poems not included in earlier editions. First Fig My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends-- It gives a lovely light! Second Fig Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand: Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand! Recuerdo We were very tired, we were very merry-- We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable-- But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table, We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon; And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon. We were very tired, we were very merry-- We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry; And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear, From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere; And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold, And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold. We were very tired, we were very merry, We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. We hailed, "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head, And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read; And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and pears, And we gave her all our money but our subway fares. Thursday And if I loved you Wednesday, Well, what is that to you? I do not love you Thursday-- So much is true. And why you come complaining Is more than I can see. I loved you Wednesday,--yes--but what Is that to me? To the Not Impossible Him How shall I know, unless I go To Cairo and Cathay, Whether or not this blessed spot Is blest in every way? Now it may be, the flower for me Is this beneath my nose; How shall I tell, unless I smell The Carthaginian rose? The fabric of my faithful love No power shall dim or ravel Whilst I stay here,--but oh, my dear, If I should ever travel! Macdougal Street As I went walking up and down to take the evening air, (Sweet to meet upon the street, why must I be so shy?) I saw him lay his hand upon her torn black hair; ("Little dirty Latin child, let the lady by!") The women squatting on the stoops were slovenly and fat, (Lay me out in organdie, lay me out in lawn!) And everywhere I stepped there was a baby or a cat; (Lord God in Heaven, will it never be dawn?) The fruit-carts and clam-carts were ribald as a fair, (Pink nets and wet shells trodden under heel) She had haggled from the fruit-man of his rotting ware; (I shall never get to sleep, the way I feel!) He walked like a king through the filth and the clutter, (Sweet to meet upon the street, why did you glance me by?) But he caught the quaint Italian quip she flung him from the gutter; (What can there be to cry about that I should lie and cry?) He laid his darling hand upon her little black head, (I wish I were a ragged child with ear-rings in my ears!) And he said she was a baggage to have said what she had said; (Truly I shall be ill unless I stop these tears!) The Singing-Woman from the Wood's Edge What should I be but a prophet and a liar, Whose mother was a leprechaun, whose father was a friar? Teethed on a crucifix and cradled under water, What should I be but the fiend's god-daughter? And who should be my playmates but the adder and the frog, That was got beneath a furze-bush and born in a bog? And what should be my singing, that was christened at an altar, But Aves and Credos and Psalms out of the Psalter? You will see such webs on the wet grass, maybe, As a pixie-mother weaves for her baby, You will find such flame at the wave's weedy ebb As flashes in the meshes of a mer-mother's web, But there comes to birth no common spawn From the love of a priest for a leprechaun, And you never have seen and you never will see Such things as the things that swaddled me! After all's said and after all's done, What should I be but a harlot and a nun? In through the bushes, on any foggy day, My Da would come a-swishing of the drops away, With a prayer for my death and a groan for my birth, A-mumbling of his beads for all that he was worth. And there'd sit my Ma, with her knees beneath her chin, A-looking in his face and a-drinking of it in, And a-marking in the moss some funny little saying That would mean just the opposite of all that he was praying! He taught me the holy-talk of Vesper and of Matin, He heard me my Greek and he heard me my Latin, He blessed me and crossed me to keep my soul from evil, And we watched him out of sight, and we conjured up the devil! Oh, the things I haven't seen and the things I haven't known. What with hedges and ditches till after I was grown, And yanked both ways by my mother and my father, With a "Which would you better?" and a "Which would you rather?" With him for a sire and her for a dam, What should I be but just what I am? She Is Overheard Singing Oh, Prue she has a patient man, And Joan a gentle lover, And Agatha's Arth' is a hug-the-hearth,-- But my true love's a rover! Mig, her man's as good as cheese And honest as a briar, Sue tells her love what he's thinking of,-- But my dear lad's a liar! Oh, Sue and Prue and Agatha Are thick with Mig and Joan! They bite their threads and shake their heads And gnaw my name like a bone; And Prue says, "Mine's a patient man, As never snaps me up," And Agatha, "Arth' is a hug-the-hearth, Could live content in a cup;" Sue's man's mind is like good jell-- All one colour, and clear-- And Mig's no call to think at all What's to come next year, While Joan makes boast of a gentle lad, That's troubled with that and this;-- But they all would give the life they live For a look from the man I kiss! Cold he slants his eyes about, And few enough's his choice,-- Though he'd slip me clean for a nun, or a queen, Or a beggar with knots in her voice,-- And Agatha will turn awake While her good man sleeps sound, And Mig and Sue and Joan and Prue Will hear the clock strike round, For Prue she has a patient man, As asks not when or why, And Mig and Sue have naught to do But peep who's passing by, Joan is paired with a putterer That bastes and tastes and salts, And Agatha's Arth' is a hug-the-hearth,-- But my true love is false! The Prisoner All right, Go ahead! What's in a name? I guess I'll be locked into As much as I'm locked out of! The Unexplorer There was a road ran past our house Too lovely to explore. I asked my mother once--she said That if you followed where it led It brought you to the milk-man's door. (That's why I have not traveled more.) Grown-up Was it for this I uttered prayers, And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs, That now, domestic as a plate, I should retire at half-past eight? The Penitent I had a little Sorrow, Born of a little Sin, I found a room all damp with gloom And shut us all within; And, "Little Sorrow, weep," said I, "And, Little Sin, pray God to die, And I upon the floor will lie And think how bad I've been!" Alas for pious planning-- It mattered not a whit! As far as gloom went in that room, The lamp might have been lit! My little Sorrow would not weep, My little Sin would go to sleep-- To save my soul I could not keep My graceless mind on it! So up I got in anger, And took a book I had, And put a ribbon on my hair To please a passing lad, And, "One thing there's no getting by-- I've been a wicked girl," said I; "But if I can't be sorry, why, I might as well be glad!" Daphne Why do you follow me?-- Any moment I can be Nothing but a laurel-tree. Any moment of the chase I can leave you in my place A pink bough for your embrace. Yet if over hill and hollow Still it is your will to follow, I am off;--to heel, Apollo! Portrait by a Neighbor Before she has her floor swept Or her dishes done, Any day you'll find her A-sunning in the sun! It's long after midnight Her key's in the lock, And you never see her chimney smoke Till past ten o'clock! She digs in her garden With a shovel and a spoon, She weeds her lazy lettuce By the light of the moon, She walks up the walk Like a woman in a dream, She forgets she borrowed butter And pays you back cream! Her lawn looks like a meadow, And if she mows the place She leaves the clover standing And the Queen Anne's lace! Midnight Oil Cut if you will, with Sleep's dull knife, Each day to half its length, my friend,-- The years that Time takes off _my_ life, He'll take from off the other end! The Merry Maid Oh, I am grown so free from care Since my heart broke! I set my throat against the air, I laugh at simple folk! There's little kind and little fair Is worth its weight in smoke To me, that's grown so free from care Since my heart broke! Lass, if to sleep you would repair As peaceful as you woke, Best not besiege your lover there For just the words he spoke To me, that's grown so free from care Since my heart broke! To Kathleen Still must the poet as of old, In barren attic bleak and cold, Starve, freeze, and fashion verses to Such things as flowers and song and you; Still as of old his being give In Beauty's name, while she may live, Beauty that may not die as long As there are flowers and you and song. To S. M. If he should lie a-dying I am not willing you should go Into the earth, where Helen went; She is awake by now, I know. Where Cleopatra's anklets rust You will not lie with my consent; And Sappho is a roving dust; Cressid could love again; Dido, Rotted in state, is restless still: You leave me much against my will. The Philosopher And what are you that, wanting you I should be kept awake As many nights as there are days With weeping for your sake? And what are you that, missing you, As many days as crawl I should be listening to the wind And looking at the wall? I know a man that's a braver man And twenty men as kind, And what are you, that you should be The one man in my mind? Yet women's ways are witless ways, As any sage will tell,-- And what am I, that I should love So wisely and so well? Four Sonnets I Love, though for this you riddle me with darts, And drag me at your chariot till I die,-- Oh, heavy prince! Oh, panderer of hearts!-- Yet hear me tell how in their throats they lie Who shout you mighty: thick about my hair Day in, day out, your ominous arrows purr Who still am free, unto no querulous care A fool, and in no temple worshiper! I, that have bared me to your quiver's fire, Lifted my face into its puny rain, Do wreathe you Impotent to Evoke Desire As you are Powerless to Elicit Pain! (Now will the god, for blasphemy so brave, Punish me, surely, with the shaft I crave!) II I think I should have loved you presently, And given in earnest words I flung in jest; And lifted honest eyes for you to see, And caught your hand against my cheek and breast; And all my pretty follies flung aside That won you to me, and beneath your gaze, Naked of reticence and shorn of pride, Spread like a chart my little wicked ways. I, that had been to you, had you remained, But one more waking from a recurrent dream, Cherish no less the certain stakes I gained, And walk your memory's halls, austere, supreme, A ghost in marble of a girl you knew Who would have loved you in a day or two. III Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow! Faithless am I save to love's self alone. Were you not lovely I would leave you now; After the feet of beauty fly my own. Were you not still my hunger's rarest food, And water ever to my wildest thirst, I would desert you--think not but I would!-- And seek another as I sought you first. But you are mobile as the veering air, And all your charms more changeful than the tide, Wherefore to be inconstant is no care: I have but to continue at your side. So wanton, light and false, my love, are you, I am most faithless when I most am true. IV I shall forget you presently, my dear, So make the most of this, your little day, Your little month, your little half a year, Ere I forget, or die, or move away, And we are done forever; by and by I shall forget you, as I said, but now, If you entreat me with your loveliest lie I will protest you with my favorite vow. I would indeed that love were longer-lived, And oaths were not so brittle as they are, But so it is, and nature has contrived To struggle on without a break thus far,-- Whether or not we find what we are seeking Is idle, biologically speaking. 
442	----	[Note on text: Italicized stanzas are indented 5 spaces. Two italicized lines are marked by asterisks (*). Lines longer than 78 characters are broken, and the continuation is indented two spaces.] [This etext was transcribed from a 1918 reprinting of the 1917 edition, which was the original. It is interesting that some of those poems included from earlier volumes have been slightly changed in this book.] Love Songs By Sara Teasdale [American (Missouri & New York) poet, 1884-1933.] Author of "Rivers to the Sea", "Helen of Troy and Other Poems", Etc. To E. I have remembered beauty in the night, Against black silences I waked to see A shower of sunlight over Italy And green Ravello dreaming on her height; I have remembered music in the dark, The clean swift brightness of a fugue of Bach's, And running water singing on the rocks When once in English woods I heard a lark. But all remembered beauty is no more Than a vague prelude to the thought of you-- You are the rarest soul I ever knew, Lover of beauty, knightliest and best; My thoughts seek you as waves that seek the shore, And when I think of you, I am at rest. Prefatory Note Beside new poems, this book contains lyrics taken from "Rivers to the Sea", "Helen of Troy and Other Poems", and one or two from an earlier volume. Contents I Barter Twilight Night Song at Amalfi The Look A Winter Night A Cry Gifts But Not to Me Song at Capri Child, Child Love Me Pierrot Wild Asters The Song for Colin Four Winds Debt Faults Buried Love The Fountain I Shall Not Care After Parting A Prayer Spring Night May Wind Tides After Love New Love and Old The Kiss Swans The River November Spring Rain The Ghost Summer Night, Riverside Jewels II Interlude: Songs out of Sorrow I. Spirit's House II. Mastery III. Lessons IV. Wisdom V. In a Burying Ground VI. Wood Song VII. Refuge III The Flight Dew To-night Ebb Tide I Would Live in Your Love Because The Tree of Song The Giver April Song The Wanderer The Years Enough Come Joy Riches Dusk in War Time Peace Moods Houses of Dreams Lights "I Am Not Yours" Doubt The Wind Morning Other Men Embers Message The Lamp IV A November Night Love Songs I Barter Life has loveliness to sell, All beautiful and splendid things, Blue waves whitened on a cliff, Soaring fire that sways and sings, And children's faces looking up Holding wonder like a cup. Life has loveliness to sell, Music like a curve of gold, Scent of pine trees in the rain, Eyes that love you, arms that hold, And for your spirit's still delight, Holy thoughts that star the night. Spend all you have for loveliness, Buy it and never count the cost; For one white singing hour of peace Count many a year of strife well lost, And for a breath of ecstasy Give all you have been, or could be. Twilight Dreamily over the roofs The cold spring rain is falling; Out in the lonely tree A bird is calling, calling. Slowly over the earth The wings of night are falling; My heart like the bird in the tree Is calling, calling, calling. Night Song at Amalfi I asked the heaven of stars What I should give my love-- It answered me with silence, Silence above. I asked the darkened sea Down where the fishers go-- It answered me with silence, Silence below. Oh, I could give him weeping, Or I could give him song-- But how can I give silence, My whole life long? The Look Strephon kissed me in the spring, Robin in the fall, But Colin only looked at me And never kissed at all. Strephon's kiss was lost in jest, Robin's lost in play, But the kiss in Colin's eyes Haunts me night and day. A Winter Night My window-pane is starred with frost, The world is bitter cold to-night, The moon is cruel, and the wind Is like a two-edged sword to smite. God pity all the homeless ones, The beggars pacing to and fro, God pity all the poor to-night Who walk the lamp-lit streets of snow. My room is like a bit of June, Warm and close-curtained fold on fold, But somewhere, like a homeless child, My heart is crying in the cold. A Cry Oh, there are eyes that he can see, And hands to make his hands rejoice, But to my lover I must be Only a voice. Oh, there are breasts to bear his head, And lips whereon his lips can lie, But I must be till I am dead Only a cry. Gifts I gave my first love laughter, I gave my second tears, I gave my third love silence Through all the years. My first love gave me singing, My second eyes to see, But oh, it was my third love Who gave my soul to me. But Not to Me The April night is still and sweet With flowers on every tree; Peace comes to them on quiet feet, But not to me. My peace is hidden in his breast Where I shall never be; Love comes to-night to all the rest, But not to me. Song at Capri When beauty grows too great to bear How shall I ease me of its ache, For beauty more than bitterness Makes the heart break. Now while I watch the dreaming sea With isles like flowers against her breast, Only one voice in all the world Could give me rest. Child, Child Child, child, love while you can The voice and the eyes and the soul of a man; Never fear though it break your heart-- Out of the wound new joy will start; Only love proudly and gladly and well, Though love be heaven or love be hell. Child, child, love while you may, For life is short as a happy day; Never fear the thing you feel-- Only by love is life made real; Love, for the deadly sins are seven, Only through love will you enter heaven. Love Me Brown-thrush singing all day long In the leaves above me, Take my love this April song, "Love me, love me, love me!" When he harkens what you say, Bid him, lest he miss me, Leave his work or leave his play, And kiss me, kiss me, kiss me! Pierrot Pierrot stands in the garden Beneath a waning moon, And on his lute he fashions A fragile silver tune. Pierrot plays in the garden, He thinks he plays for me, But I am quite forgotten Under the cherry tree. Pierrot plays in the garden, And all the roses know That Pierrot loves his music,-- But I love Pierrot. Wild Asters In the spring I asked the daisies If his words were true, And the clever, clear-eyed daisies Always knew. Now the fields are brown and barren, Bitter autumn blows, And of all the stupid asters Not one knows. The Song for Colin I sang a song at dusking time Beneath the evening star, And Terence left his latest rhyme To answer from afar. Pierrot laid down his lute to weep, And sighed, "She sings for me." But Colin slept a careless sleep Beneath an apple tree. Four Winds "Four winds blowing through the sky, You have seen poor maidens die, Tell me then what I shall do That my lover may be true." Said the wind from out the south, "Lay no kiss upon his mouth," And the wind from out the west, "Wound the heart within his breast," And the wind from out the east, "Send him empty from the feast," And the wind from out the north, "In the tempest thrust him forth; When thou art more cruel than he, Then will Love be kind to thee." Debt What do I owe to you Who loved me deep and long? You never gave my spirit wings Or gave my heart a song. But oh, to him I loved, Who loved me not at all, I owe the open gate That led through heaven's wall. Faults They came to tell your faults to me, They named them over one by one; I laughed aloud when they were done, I knew them all so well before,-- Oh, they were blind, too blind to see Your faults had made me love you more. Buried Love I have come to bury Love Beneath a tree, In the forest tall and black Where none can see. I shall put no flowers at his head, Nor stone at his feet, For the mouth I loved so much Was bittersweet. I shall go no more to his grave, For the woods are cold. I shall gather as much of joy As my hands can hold. I shall stay all day in the sun Where the wide winds blow,-- But oh, I shall cry at night When none will know. The Fountain All through the deep blue night The fountain sang alone; It sang to the drowsy heart Of the satyr carved in stone. The fountain sang and sang, But the satyr never stirred-- Only the great white moon In the empty heaven heard. The fountain sang and sang While on the marble rim The milk-white peacocks slept, And their dreams were strange and dim. Bright dew was on the grass, And on the ilex, dew, The dreamy milk-white birds Were all a-glisten, too. The fountain sang and sang The things one cannot tell; The dreaming peacocks stirred And the gleaming dew-drops fell. I Shall Not Care When I am dead and over me bright April Shakes out her rain-drenched hair, Though you should lean above me broken-hearted, I shall not care. I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful When rain bends down the bough, And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted Than you are now. After Parting Oh, I have sown my love so wide That he will find it everywhere; It will awake him in the night, It will enfold him in the air. I set my shadow in his sight And I have winged it with desire, That it may be a cloud by day, And in the night a shaft of fire. A Prayer Until I lose my soul and lie Blind to the beauty of the earth, Deaf though shouting wind goes by, Dumb in a storm of mirth; Until my heart is quenched at length And I have left the land of men, Oh, let me love with all my strength Careless if I am loved again. Spring Night The park is filled with night and fog, The veils are drawn about the world, The drowsy lights along the paths Are dim and pearled. Gold and gleaming the empty streets, Gold and gleaming the misty lake, The mirrored lights like sunken swords, Glimmer and shake. Oh, is it not enough to be Here with this beauty over me? My throat should ache with praise, and I Should kneel in joy beneath the sky. O, beauty, are you not enough? Why am I crying after love, With youth, a singing voice, and eyes To take earth's wonder with surprise? Why have I put off my pride, Why am I unsatisfied,-- I, for whom the pensive night Binds her cloudy hair with light,-- I, for whom all beauty burns Like incense in a million urns? O beauty, are you not enough? Why am I crying after love? May Wind I said, "I have shut my heart As one shuts an open door, That Love may starve therein And trouble me no more." But over the roofs there came The wet new wind of May, And a tune blew up from the curb Where the street-pianos play. My room was white with the sun And Love cried out in me, "I am strong, I will break your heart Unless you set me free." Tides Love in my heart was a fresh tide flowing Where the starlike sea gulls soar; The sun was keen and the foam was blowing High on the rocky shore. But now in the dusk the tide is turning, Lower the sea gulls soar, And the waves that rose in resistless yearning Are broken forevermore. After Love There is no magic any more, We meet as other people do, You work no miracle for me Nor I for you. You were the wind and I the sea-- There is no splendor any more, I have grown listless as the pool Beside the shore. But though the pool is safe from storm And from the tide has found surcease, It grows more bitter than the sea, For all its peace. New Love and Old In my heart the old love Struggled with the new; It was ghostly waking All night through. Dear things, kind things, That my old love said, Ranged themselves reproachfully Round my bed. But I could not heed them, For I seemed to see The eyes of my new love Fixed on me. Old love, old love, How can I be true? Shall I be faithless to myself Or to you? The Kiss I hoped that he would love me, And he has kissed my mouth, But I am like a stricken bird That cannot reach the south. For though I know he loves me, To-night my heart is sad; His kiss was not so wonderful As all the dreams I had. Swans Night is over the park, and a few brave stars Look on the lights that link it with chains of gold, The lake bears up their reflection in broken bars That seem too heavy for tremulous water to hold. We watch the swans that sleep in a shadowy place, And now and again one wakes and uplifts its head; How still you are--your gaze is on my face-- We watch the swans and never a word is said. The River I came from the sunny valleys And sought for the open sea, For I thought in its gray expanses My peace would come to me. I came at last to the ocean And found it wild and black, And I cried to the windless valleys, "Be kind and take me back!" But the thirsty tide ran inland, And the salt waves drank of me, And I who was fresh as the rainfall Am bitter as the sea. November The world is tired, the year is old, The fading leaves are glad to die, The wind goes shivering with cold Where the brown reeds are dry. Our love is dying like the grass, And we who kissed grow coldly kind, Half glad to see our old love pass Like leaves along the wind. Spring Rain I thought I had forgotten, But it all came back again To-night with the first spring thunder In a rush of rain. I remembered a darkened doorway Where we stood while the storm swept by, Thunder gripping the earth And lightning scrawled on the sky. The passing motor busses swayed, For the street was a river of rain, Lashed into little golden waves In the lamp light's stain. With the wild spring rain and thunder My heart was wild and gay; Your eyes said more to me that night Than your lips would ever say. . . . I thought I had forgotten, But it all came back again To-night with the first spring thunder In a rush of rain. The Ghost I went back to the clanging city, I went back where my old loves stayed, But my heart was full of my new love's glory, My eyes were laughing and unafraid. I met one who had loved me madly And told his love for all to hear-- But we talked of a thousand things together, The past was buried too deep to fear. I met the other, whose love was given With never a kiss and scarcely a word-- Oh, it was then the terror took me Of words unuttered that breathed and stirred. Oh, love that lives its life with laughter Or love that lives its life with tears Can die--but love that is never spoken Goes like a ghost through the winding years. . . . I went back to the clanging city, I went back where my old loves stayed, My heart was full of my new love's glory,-- But my eyes were suddenly afraid. Summer Night, Riverside In the wild, soft summer darkness How many and many a night we two together Sat in the park and watched the Hudson Wearing her lights like golden spangles Glinting on black satin. The rail along the curving pathway Was low in a happy place to let us cross, And down the hill a tree that dripped with bloom Sheltered us, While your kisses and the flowers, Falling, falling, Tangled my hair. . . . The frail white stars moved slowly over the sky. And now, far off In the fragrant darkness The tree is tremulous again with bloom, For June comes back. To-night what girl Dreamily before her mirror shakes from her hair This year's blossoms, clinging in its coils? Jewels If I should see your eyes again, I know how far their look would go-- Back to a morning in the park With sapphire shadows on the snow. Or back to oak trees in the spring When you unloosed my hair and kissed The head that lay against your knees In the leaf shadow's amethyst. And still another shining place We would remember--how the dun Wild mountain held us on its crest One diamond morning white with sun. But I will turn my eyes from you As women turn to put away The jewels they have worn at night And cannot wear in sober day. II Interlude: Songs out of Sorrow I. Spirit's House From naked stones of agony I will build a house for me; As a mason all alone I will raise it, stone by stone, And every stone where I have bled Will show a sign of dusky red. I have not gone the way in vain, For I have good of all my pain; My spirit's quiet house will be Built of naked stones I trod On roads where I lost sight of God. II. Mastery I would not have a god come in To shield me suddenly from sin, And set my house of life to rights; Nor angels with bright burning wings Ordering my earthly thoughts and things; Rather my own frail guttering lights Wind blown and nearly beaten out; Rather the terror of the nights And long, sick groping after doubt; Rather be lost than let my soul Slip vaguely from my own control-- Of my own spirit let me be In sole though feeble mastery. III. Lessons Unless I learn to ask no help From any other soul but mine, To seek no strength in waving reeds Nor shade beneath a straggling pine; Unless I learn to look at Grief Unshrinking from her tear-blind eyes, And take from Pleasure fearlessly Whatever gifts will make me wise-- Unless I learn these things on earth, Why was I ever given birth? IV. Wisdom When I have ceased to break my wings Against the faultiness of things, And learned that compromises wait Behind each hardly opened gate, When I can look Life in the eyes, Grown calm and very coldly wise, Life will have given me the Truth, And taken in exchange--my youth. V. In a Burying Ground This is the spot where I will lie When life has had enough of me, These are the grasses that will blow Above me like a living sea. These gay old lilies will not shrink To draw their life from death of mine, And I will give my body's fire To make blue flowers on this vine. "O Soul," I said, "have you no tears? Was not the body dear to you?" I heard my soul say carelessly, "The myrtle flowers will grow more blue." VI. Wood Song I heard a wood thrush in the dusk Twirl three notes and make a star-- My heart that walked with bitterness Came back from very far. Three shining notes were all he had, And yet they made a starry call-- I caught life back against my breast And kissed it, scars and all. VII. Refuge From my spirit's gray defeat, From my pulse's flagging beat, From my hopes that turned to sand Sifting through my close-clenched hand, From my own fault's slavery, If I can sing, I still am free. For with my singing I can make A refuge for my spirit's sake, A house of shining words, to be My fragile immortality. III The Flight Look back with longing eyes and know that I will follow, Lift me up in your love as a light wind lifts a swallow, Let our flight be far in sun or blowing rain-- _But what if I heard my first love calling me again?_ Hold me on your heart as the brave sea holds the foam, Take me far away to the hills that hide your home; Peace shall thatch the roof and love shall latch the door-- _But what if I heard my first love calling me once more?_ Dew As dew leaves the cobweb lightly Threaded with stars, Scattering jewels on the fence And the pasture bars; As dawn leaves the dry grass bright And the tangled weeds Bearing a rainbow gem On each of their seeds; So has your love, my lover, Fresh as the dawn, Made me a shining road To travel on, Set every common sight Of tree or stone Delicately alight For me alone. To-night The moon is a curving flower of gold, The sky is still and blue; The moon was made for the sky to hold, And I for you. The moon is a flower without a stem, The sky is luminous; Eternity was made for them, To-night for us. Ebb Tide When the long day goes by And I do not see your face, The old wild, restless sorrow Steals from its hiding place. My day is barren and broken, Bereft of light and song, A sea beach bleak and windy That moans the whole day long. To the empty beach at ebb tide, Bare with its rocks and scars, Come back like the sea with singing, And light of a million stars. I Would Live in Your Love I would live in your love as the sea-grasses live in the sea, Borne up by each wave as it passes, drawn down by each wave that recedes; I would empty my soul of the dreams that have gathered in me, I would beat with your heart as it beats, I would follow your soul as it leads. Because Oh, because you never tried To bow my will or break my pride, And nothing of the cave-man made You want to keep me half afraid, Nor ever with a conquering air You thought to draw me unaware-- Take me, for I love you more Than I ever loved before. And since the body's maidenhood Alone were neither rare nor good Unless with it I gave to you A spirit still untrammeled, too, Take my dreams and take my mind That were masterless as wind; And "Master!" I shall say to you Since you never asked me to. The Tree of Song I sang my songs for the rest, For you I am still; The tree of my song is bare On its shining hill. For you came like a lordly wind, And the leaves were whirled Far as forgotten things Past the rim of the world. The tree of my song stands bare Against the blue-- I gave my songs to the rest, Myself to you. The Giver You bound strong sandals on my feet, You gave me bread and wine, And sent me under sun and stars, For all the world was mine. Oh, take the sandals off my feet, You know not what you do; For all my world is in your arms, My sun and stars are you. April Song Willow, in your April gown Delicate and gleaming, Do you mind in years gone by All my dreaming? Spring was like a call to me That I could not answer, I was chained to loneliness, I, the dancer. Willow, twinkling in the sun, Still your leaves and hear me, I can answer spring at last, Love is near me! The Wanderer I saw the sunset-colored sands, The Nile like flowing fire between, Where Rameses stares forth serene, And Ammon's heavy temple stands. I saw the rocks where long ago, Above the sea that cries and breaks, Swift Perseus with Medusa's snakes Set free the maiden white like snow. And many skies have covered me, And many winds have blown me forth, And I have loved the green, bright north, And I have loved the cold, sweet sea. But what to me are north and south, And what the lure of many lands, Since you have leaned to catch my hands And lay a kiss upon my mouth. The Years To-night I close my eyes and see A strange procession passing me-- The years before I saw your face Go by me with a wistful grace; They pass, the sensitive, shy years, As one who strives to dance, half blind with tears. The years went by and never knew That each one brought me nearer you; Their path was narrow and apart And yet it led me to your heart-- Oh, sensitive, shy years, oh, lonely years, That strove to sing with voices drowned in tears. Enough It is enough for me by day To walk the same bright earth with him; Enough that over us by night The same great roof of stars is dim. I do not hope to bind the wind Or set a fetter on the sea-- It is enough to feel his love Blow by like music over me. Come Come, when the pale moon like a petal Floats in the pearly dusk of spring, Come with arms outstretched to take me, Come with lips pursed up to cling. Come, for life is a frail moth flying, Caught in the web of the years that pass, And soon we two, so warm and eager, Will be as the gray stones in the grass. Joy I am wild, I will sing to the trees, I will sing to the stars in the sky, I love, I am loved, he is mine, Now at last I can die! I am sandaled with wind and with flame, I have heart-fire and singing to give, I can tread on the grass or the stars, Now at last I can live! Riches I have no riches but my thoughts, Yet these are wealth enough for me; My thoughts of you are golden coins Stamped in the mint of memory; And I must spend them all in song, For thoughts, as well as gold, must be Left on the hither side of death To gain their immortality. Dusk in War Time A half-hour more and you will lean To gather me close in the old sweet way-- But oh, to the woman over the sea Who will come at the close of day? A half-hour more and I will hear The key in the latch and the strong, quick tread-- But oh, the woman over the sea Waiting at dusk for one who is dead! Peace Peace flows into me As the tide to the pool by the shore; It is mine forevermore, It will not ebb like the sea. I am the pool of blue That worships the vivid sky; My hopes were heaven-high, They are all fulfilled in you. I am the pool of gold When sunset burns and dies-- You are my deepening skies; Give me your stars to hold. Moods I am the still rain falling, Too tired for singing mirth-- Oh, be the green fields calling, Oh, be for me the earth! I am the brown bird pining To leave the nest and fly-- Oh, be the fresh cloud shining, Oh, be for me the sky! Houses of Dreams You took my empty dreams And filled them every one With tenderness and nobleness, April and the sun. The old empty dreams Where my thoughts would throng Are far too full of happiness To even hold a song. Oh, the empty dreams were dim And the empty dreams were wide, They were sweet and shadowy houses Where my thoughts could hide. But you took my dreams away And you made them all come true-- My thoughts have no place now to play, And nothing now to do. Lights When we come home at night and close the door, Standing together in the shadowy room, Safe in our own love and the gentle gloom, Glad of familiar wall and chair and floor, Glad to leave far below the clanging city; Looking far downward to the glaring street Gaudy with light, yet tired with many feet, In both of us wells up a wordless pity; Men have tried hard to put away the dark; A million lighted windows brilliantly Inlay with squares of gold the winter night, But to us standing here there comes the stark Sense of the lives behind each yellow light, And not one wholly joyous, proud, or free. "I Am Not Yours" I am not yours, not lost in you, Not lost, although I long to be Lost as a candle lit at noon, Lost as a snowflake in the sea. You love me, and I find you still A spirit beautiful and bright, Yet I am I, who long to be Lost as a light is lost in light. Oh plunge me deep in love--put out My senses, leave me deaf and blind, Swept by the tempest of your love, A taper in a rushing wind. Doubt My soul lives in my body's house, And you have both the house and her-- But sometimes she is less your own Than a wild, gay adventurer; A restless and an eager wraith, How can I tell what she will do-- Oh, I am sure of my body's faith, But what if my soul broke faith with you? The Wind A wind is blowing over my soul, I hear it cry the whole night through-- Is there no peace for me on earth Except with you? Alas, the wind has made me wise, Over my naked soul it blew,-- There is no peace for me on earth Even with you. Morning I went out on an April morning All alone, for my heart was high, I was a child of the shining meadow, I was a sister of the sky. There in the windy flood of morning Longing lifted its weight from me, Lost as a sob in the midst of cheering, Swept as a sea-bird out to sea. Other Men When I talk with other men I always think of you-- Your words are keener than their words, And they are gentler, too. When I look at other men, I wish your face were there, With its gray eyes and dark skin And tossed black hair. When I think of other men, Dreaming alone by day, The thought of you like a strong wind Blows the dreams away. Embers I said, "My youth is gone Like a fire beaten out by the rain, That will never sway and sing Or play with the wind again." I said, "It is no great sorrow That quenched my youth in me, But only little sorrows Beating ceaselessly." I thought my youth was gone, But you returned-- Like a flame at the call of the wind It leaped and burned; Threw off its ashen cloak, And gowned anew Gave itself like a bride Once more to you. Message I heard a cry in the night, A thousand miles it came, Sharp as a flash of light, My name, my name! It was your voice I heard, You waked and loved me so-- I send you back this word, I know, I know! The Lamp If I can bear your love like a lamp before me, When I go down the long steep Road of Darkness, I shall not fear the everlasting shadows, Nor cry in terror. If I can find out God, then I shall find Him, If none can find Him, then I shall sleep soundly, Knowing how well on earth your love sufficed me, A lamp in darkness. IV A November Night There! See the line of lights, A chain of stars down either side the street-- Why can't you lift the chain and give it to me, A necklace for my throat? I'd twist it round And you could play with it. You smile at me As though I were a little dreamy child Behind whose eyes the fairies live. . . . And see, The people on the street look up at us All envious. We are a king and queen, Our royal carriage is a motor bus, We watch our subjects with a haughty joy. . . . How still you are! Have you been hard at work And are you tired to-night? It is so long Since I have seen you--four whole days, I think. My heart is crowded full of foolish thoughts Like early flowers in an April meadow, And I must give them to you, all of them, Before they fade. The people I have met, The play I saw, the trivial, shifting things That loom too big or shrink too little, shadows That hurry, gesturing along a wall, Haunting or gay--and yet they all grow real And take their proper size here in my heart When you have seen them. . . . There's the Plaza now, A lake of light! To-night it almost seems That all the lights are gathered in your eyes, Drawn somehow toward you. See the open park Lying below us with a million lamps Scattered in wise disorder like the stars. We look down on them as God must look down On constellations floating under Him Tangled in clouds. . . . Come, then, and let us walk Since we have reached the park. It is our garden, All black and blossomless this winter night, But we bring April with us, you and I; We set the whole world on the trail of spring. I think that every path we ever took Has marked our footprints in mysterious fire, Delicate gold that only fairies see. When they wake up at dawn in hollow tree-trunks And come out on the drowsy park, they look Along the empty paths and say, "Oh, here They went, and here, and here, and here! Come, see, Here is their bench, take hands and let us dance About it in a windy ring and make A circle round it only they can cross When they come back again!" . . . Look at the lake-- Do you remember how we watched the swans That night in late October while they slept? Swans must have stately dreams, I think. But now The lake bears only thin reflected lights That shake a little. How I long to take One from the cold black water--new-made gold To give you in your hand! And see, and see, There is a star, deep in the lake, a star! Oh, dimmer than a pearl--if you stoop down Your hand could almost reach it up to me. . . . There was a new frail yellow moon to-night-- I wish you could have had it for a cup With stars like dew to fill it to the brim. . . . How cold it is! Even the lights are cold; They have put shawls of fog around them, see! What if the air should grow so dimly white That we would lose our way along the paths Made new by walls of moving mist receding The more we follow. . . . What a silver night! That was our bench the time you said to me The long new poem--but how different now, How eerie with the curtain of the fog Making it strange to all the friendly trees! There is no wind, and yet great curving scrolls Carve themselves, ever changing, in the mist. Walk on a little, let me stand here watching To see you, too, grown strange to me and far. . . . I used to wonder how the park would be If one night we could have it all alone-- No lovers with close arm-encircled waists To whisper and break in upon our dreams. And now we have it! Every wish comes true! We are alone now in a fleecy world; Even the stars have gone. We two alone! [End of Love Songs.] {As an item of interest to the reader, the following, which was at the end of this edition, is included. Only the advertisement for the same author is included}. By the same author Rivers to the Sea "There is hardly another American woman-poet whose poetry is generally known and loved like that of Sara Teasdale. 'Rivers to the Sea', her latest volume of lyrics, possesses the delicacy of imagery, the inward illumination, the high vision that characterize the poetry that will endure the test of time."--'Review of Reviews'. "'Rivers to the Sea' is a book of sheer delight. . . . Her touch turns everything to song."--Edward J. Wheeler, in 'Current Opinion'. "Sara Teasdale's lyrics have the clarity, the precision, the grace and fragrance of flowers."--Harriet Monroe, in 'Poetry'. "Sara Teasdale has a genius for the song, for the perfect lyric, in which the words seem to have fallen into place without art or effort."--Louis Untermeyer, in 'The Chicago Evening Post'. "'Rivers to the Sea' is the best book of pure lyrics that has appeared in English since A. E. Housman's 'A Shropshire Lad'."--William Marion Reedy, in 'The Mirror'. "'Rivers to the Sea' is the most beautiful book of pure lyrics that has come to my hand in years."--'Los Angeles Graphic'. "Sara Teasdale sings about love better than any other contemporary American poet."--'The Boston Transcript'. "'Rivers to the Sea' is the most charming volume of poetry that has appeared on either side of the Atlantic in a score of years."--'St. Louis Republic'. Sara Teasdale (1884-1933): Teasdale was born in St. Louis, Missouri, where she attended a school that was founded by the grandfather of another great poet from St. Louis--T. S. Eliot. She later associated herself more with New York City. Her first book of poems was "Sonnets to Duse" (1907), [at least one poem in the current volume, "Faults", is from this book,] but "Helen of Troy" (1911) was the true launch of her career, followed by "Rivers to the Sea" (1915), "Love Songs" (1917), "Flame and Shadow" (1920) and more. Her final volume, "Strange Victory", is considered by many to be predictive of her suicide in 1933. 
44444	----	THE MOTHER'S DREAM, AND OTHER POEMS. BY HANNAH F. GOULD. BOSTON: CROSBY, NICHOLS, & CO. 1853. CONTENTS. Page Blowing Bubbles, 1 Infant Faith, 4 Patty Proud, 6 I caught a Bird, 9 The Flower of Shells and Silver Wire, 11 The little Blind Boy, 12 The Sale of the Water Lily, 13 The Silver Birdsnest, 18 The Quaker Flower, 20 The Humming-Bird's Anger, 22 The Sabbath, 24 The departing Spirit, 26 Sonnet, 27 Father, hear, 28 The Pilgrim's Way Song, 29 The rising Monument, 31 A Name in the Sand, 34 A Child of a Year and a Day, 35 The Believer's Mountains, 38 The Night and the Morning, 41 I shall be satisfied, 44 The Penitential Tear, 46 The Teachings of God, 48 The Herald's Cry in the Desert, 50 Our Father's Well, 52 The Mother's Dream, 56 The War Spirit on Bunker's Height, 60 The inner Self, 64 Time, 67 My Head, 71 The Wheat Field, 74 The little Traveller, 76 The entangled Fly, 78 The Peach Blossoms, 80 The broken Pipe, 82 Vivy Vain, 85 The Mocking-Bird, 89 The Bird's Home, 92 The Bird uncaged, 93 Dame Biddy, 95 The envious Lobster, 100 Kit with the Rose, 102 The Storm in the Forest, 104 The uprooted Elm, 106 Through the Clouds, 108 My Rose Tree, 110 The Infant Baptist, 113 Hymn to Solitude, 115 The Bible in the Fields, 117 The hoary Head, 120 My Father, 121 A Sage hath departed, 124 The Burial of Schiller, 126 Funeral Hymn for President Harrison, 129 Dirge for Felicia Hemans, 131 She died, as dawned her Natal Day, 133 Written in an Album, after the Lines of a deceased Friend, 134 The Sovereign of Babylon, 135 The Deer Stricken by Torch-light, 137 The Death of Sapphira, 139 William at Sea, 142 My Portrait, 146 The Widow's only Son, 148 The Young Mother, 150 Evening at Andover Seminary Hill, 152 Hymn of the parting Class, 155 The speckled 157 The Moon of a Wintry Night, 161 Tom Tar, 165 The Seaman's Hymn, 170 The Mariner's Song of Departure, 172 The Sea Eagle's Fall, 174 The caged Lion, 177 The Traveller at the Red Sea, 179 The Hebrew Captives, 181 Fragments from "Esther," a Poem, 182 Gone in her Beauty, 185 The Nun, 187 Trees for the Pilgrim's Wreath, 193 The Mushroom's Soliloquy, 194 The Spirit and the Mountain, 195 The Fall of the Statue, 197 The Bird's Maternal Care, 201 Song, 205 The White Moth, 207 Edward and Charles, 209 Music of the Crickets, 213 Childhood's Dream, 216 The Fruit Tree Blossom, 218 The Plymouth Apple declined, 220 The half Apple, 222 The Horticulturist's Table-Hymn, 224 The Whip-poor-will, 227 The Autumnal Rose-bud, 230 To L. A. E. on her Wedding-day, 231 To Mrs. H. F. L. 233 Music, 235 POEMS. BLOWING BUBBLES. Half our sorrows, half our troubles, Making head and heart to ache, Are the fruit of blowing bubbles, Bright to view, but quick to break. All have played the child imbecile, Breathing hard to swell the sides Of a shining, fluid vessel, Frailer than the air it rides. From the infant's cradle rising, All the bubble mania show, Oft our richest wealth comprising In the bubbles that we blow. Brilliant, buoyant, upward going, Pleased, we mark them in their flight, Every hue of iris showing, As they glance along the light. Little castles, high and airy, With their crystal walls so thin, Each presents the wicked fairy, _Vanity_, enthroned within! But when two have struck together, What of either do we find? Not so much as one gay feather Flying Hope has left behind! Still the world are busy, blowing, Every one, some empty ball; So the seeds of mischief sowing, Where, to burst, the bubbles fall. Nor for self alone to gather, Is our evil harvest found; Oft, with pipe and cup, we rather Step upon our neighbor's ground. Thus, amusing one another, While the glistening playthings rise, We may doom a friend or brother To a life of care and sighs. Do you doubt my simple story? I can point a thousand ways Where this bubble-making glory Has in darkness hid its rays! Yet we 'll spare a slight confusion Caused the world by giving names; Since a right to some delusion Every one from nature claims! INFANT FAITH. Radiant with his spirit's light Was the little beauteous child, Sporting round a fountain bright, Playing through the flowerets wild. Where they grow he lightly stepped, Cautious not a leaf to crush; Then about the fount he leaped, Shouting at its merry gush. While the sparkling waters welled, Laughing as they bubbled up, In his lily hands he held, Closely clasped, a silver cup. Now he put it forth to fill; Then he bore it to the flowers, Through his fingers there to spill What it held, in mimic showers. "Open, pretty buds," said he, "Open to the air and sun; So, to-morrow I may see What my rain to-day has done. "Yes, you will, you will, I know, For the drink I give you now, Burst your little cups, and blow, When I'm gone, and can't tell how! "Oh! I wish I could but see How God's finger touches you, When your sides unclasp, and free, Let your leaves and odors through. "I would watch you all the night, Nor in darkness be afraid, Only once to see aright How a beauteous flower is made. "Now remember! I shall come In the morning from my bed, Here to find among you some With your brightest colors spread!" To his buds he hastened out, At the dewy morning hour, Crying, with a joyous shout, "God has made of each a flower!" Precious must the ready faith Of the little children be, In the sight of Him, who saith, "Suffer them to come to me." Answered, by the smile of heaven, Is the infant's offering found, Though "a cup of water given," Even to the thirsty ground. PATTY PROUD. The figure before you is Miss Patty Proud: Her feelings are lowery, her frown like a cloud; Because proud Miss Patty can hardly endure To come near the lowly abode of the poor. She fears the plain floor of the humble will spoil Her silk shoes and hose, and her skirt-bottom soil; And so she goes winching; and holds up her dress So high, it were well if her heels would show less. But when she walks through the fine streets of the town, She puts on fine airs, and displays her rich gown; Till some, whom she passes, will think of the bird Renowned for gay feathers, whose name you have heard. In thought she is trifling--in manner as vain As that silly fowl, taking pride in his train; And none, who have marked her, will need to be told That she has a heart hard, and haughty, and cold. I saw, when she met some poor children one day, Who asked her for alms, she turned frowning away; And told them, "Poor people must work, to be fed, And not trouble ladies, to help them to bread." And just as the sad little mendicants said, Their mother was dying, their father was dead, She entered a store, with a smooth, smiling face, To lay out her purse in gay ribbons and lace. I saw her curl up her sour lip in disdain, Because Ellen Pitiful picked up the cane, A feeble old man had let fall in the sand, And placed it again in his tremulous hand. But little does haughty Miss Patty suppose, Of all, whom she visits, that any one knows How stern she can look, when she 's out of their sight, And fret at the servants, if all is not right. At home, she 's unyielding, and sullen, and cross: Her friends, when she 's absent, esteem it no loss; And some, where she visits, in secret confess, That they love her no more, though they dread her much less. The truth is, Miss Patty, when young, never tried To govern her temper, or conquer her pride. The passions, unchecked in the heart of the child, Like weeds in a garden neglected, ran wild. They grew with her growth, with her strength became strong: Her head, not then righted, has ever been wrong; And so she would never submit to be told Of faults, by long habit made stubborn and bold. And now, among all my young friends, is there one,-- A fair little girl is there under the sun, Who 'd rise to a woman, and have it allowed That she is a likeness of Miss PATTY PROUD? I CAUGHT A BIRD. I caught a bird: She flitted by, So near my window lifted high, She softly ventured in, to spy What I might be about: And then, a little wildered thing, Like many a one without a wing, She fluttered, struck, and seemed to sing, "Alas! I can't get out." She saw her kindred on the tree Before her, sporting light and free; But felt a power, she could not see, Repel and hold her back. In vain her beak, and breast, and feet Against the crystal pane were beat: She could not break the clear deceit, Nor find her airy track. The pretty wanderer then I took; And felt her frame with terror shook: She gave the sad and piteous look Of helplessness and fear; Till quick I spread my hand, to show, I caught her but to let her go; And I, perhaps, may never know A dearer moment here. She piped a short and sweet adieu, As, humming on the air, she threw Her brilliant, buoyant wing, and flew Away from fear and me: But, ere the hour of setting sun, That little constant, grateful one, Returning, had her hymn begun In our old rustling tree. Now do not take the fatal aim, My tender bird to kill, or maim; Nor let the fatal shot proclaim Her anguish, or her fall! But, would you know the bird I mean, She is the first that will be seen-- The last--and every one between: She represents them all! THE FLOWER OF SHELLS AND SILVER WIRE. TO ----. I sought a meet gift, it might please thee to wear Among the soft locks of thy fine silken hair; And asked the two deeps for some treasure or gem, By nature first formed and imbosomed in them. The mine gave me threads of its fine silver ore; The ocean cast up its smooth shells to the shore: Of these I combined the free offering, that now I bring, and would set o'er thy fair, peaceful brow. The shells, thou wilt see, are unsullied and white; The silver is modest, and precious, and bright,-- A type! thy quick fancy will readily see, Yet thou 'lt not confess what its meaning may be. And let the gift sometimes recall to thy mind The friend, by whose hand its pure parts were combined; But, oftener, that Friend, in whose hand was the skill The earth and the seas with their treasures to fill! THE LITTLE BLIND BOY. O tell me the form of the soft summer air, That tosses so gently the curls of my hair! It breathes on my lip, and it fans my warm cheek, But gives me no answer, though often I speak: I feel it play o'er me, refreshing and light, And yet cannot touch it, because I 've no sight! And music--what is it? and where does it dwell? I sink, and I mount, with its cadence and swell, While thrilled to my heart, with its deep-going strain, Till pleasure excessive seems turning to pain. Now, what the bright colors of music may be, Will any one tell me? for I cannot see. The odors of flowers, that are hovering nigh-- What are they?--on what kind of wings do they fly? Are not they sweet angels, who come to delight A poor little boy, that knows nothing of sight? The sun, moon and stars never enter my mind. O tell me what light is, because I am blind! THE SALE OF THE WATER-LILY. There stood upon the broad high-road, That o'er a moorland lay, A widow's low and lone abode, And close beside the way. Upon its face the dwelling bore The signs of times within, That seemed to say but little more Than, "_Better days have been!_" Behind it was the sedgy fen, With alder, brake, and brush; And less to serve the wants of men, Than of the jay and thrush. And these would sometimes come, and cheer The widow with a song, To let her feel a neighbor near, And wing an hour along. A pond, supplied by hidden springs, With lilies bordered round, Was found among the richest things, That blessed the widow's ground. She had, besides, a gentle brook, That wound the meadow through, Which from the pond its being took, And had its treasures too. Her eldest orphan was a son; For, children she had three; She called him, though a little one, Her hope for days to be. And well he might be reckoned so, If, from the tender shoot, We know the way the branch will grow; Or, by the flower, the fruit. His tongue was true, his mind was bright; His temper smooth and mild: He was--the parent's chief delight-- A good and pleasant child. He 'd gather chips and sticks of wood, The winter fire to make; And help his mother dress their food, Or tend the baking cake. In summer time he 'd kindly lead His little sisters out, To pick wild berries on the mead, And fish the brook for trout. He stirred his thoughts for ways to earn Some little gain; and hence, Contrived the silver pond to turn, In part, to silver pence. He found the lilies blooming there So spicy sweet to smell, And to the eye so pure and fair, He plucked them up to sell. He could not to the market go: He had too young a head, The distant city's ways to know; The route he could not tread. But, when the coming coach-wheels rolled, To pass his humble cot, His bunch of lilies to be sold Was ready on the spot. He 'd stand beside the way, and hold His treasures up to show, That looked like yellow stars of gold Just set in leaves of snow. "O buy my lilies!" he would say; "You 'll find them new and sweet: So fresh from out the pond are they, I have n't dried my feet!" And then he showed the dust that clung Upon his garment's hem, Where late the water-drops had hung, When he had gathered them. And while the carriage checked its pace, To take the lilies in, His artless orphan tongue and face Some bright return would win. For many a noble stranger's hand, With open purse, was seen, To cast a coin upon the sand, Or on the sloping green. And many a smiling lady threw The child a silver piece; And thus, as fast as lilies grew, He saw his wealth increase. While little more--and little more, Was gathered by their sale, His widowed mother's frugal store Would never wholly fail. For He, who made, and feeds the bird, Her little children fed. He knew her trust: her cry he heard; And answered it with bread. And thus, protected by the Power, Who made the lily fair, Her orphans, like the meadow flower, Grew up in beauty there. Her son, the good and prudent boy, Who wisely thus began, Was long the aged widow's joy; And lived an honored man. He had a ship, for which he chose "The LILY" as a name, To keep in memory whence he rose, And how his fortune came. He had a lily carved and set, Her emblem, on her stem; And she was called, by all she met, A beauteous ocean gem. She bore sweet spices, treasures bright; And, on the waters wide, Her sails, as lily-leaves, were white: Her name was well applied. Her feeling owner never spurned The faces of the poor; And found that all he gave returned In blessing rich and sure. The God, who, by the lily-pond, Had drawn his heart above, In after life preserved the bond Of grateful, holy love. THE SILVER BIRDSNEST. We were shown a beautiful specimen of the ingenuity of birds, a few days since, by Dr. Cook, of this borough. It was a birdsnest made entirely of silver wires, beautifully woven together. The nest was found on a sycamore tree, on the Condorus, by Dr. Francis Beard, of York county. It was the nest of a hanging-bird; and the material was probably obtained from a soldier's epaulet, which it had found. WESTCHESTER VILLAGE RECORD. _Spring of 1838._ A stranded soldier's epaulet, The waters cast ashore, A little winged rover met, And eyed it o'er and o'er. The silver bright so pleased her sight, On that lone, idle vest, She knew not why she should deny Herself a silver nest. The shining wire she pecked and twirled; Then bore it to her bough, Where, on a flowery twig 't was curled-- The bird can show you how:-- But, when enough of that bright stuff The cunning builder bore Her house to make, she would not take, Nor did she covet more. And when the little artisan, While neither pride nor guilt Had entered in her pretty plan, Her resting-place had built; With here and there a plume to spare, About her own light form, Of these, inlaid with skill, she made A lining soft and warm. But, do you think the tender brood She fondled there, and fed, Were prouder, when they understood The sheen about their bed? Do you suppose they ever rose Of higher powers possessed, Because they knew they peeped and grew Within a silver nest? THE QUAKER FLOWER. A TRIFOLIUM FROM THE GRAVE OF PENN. I have a little Quaker flower, That hath a kind of spirit power To hold me captive, hour by hour, In pleasant musing lost; 'T was plucked for me in distant land, And by another's friendly hand, From turf where I may never stand; Then yon wild ocean crossed. A modest foreigner it came, Bearing a sweet, but humble name; Yet worthy of a glorious fame Among the sons of men; For O the pretty stranger grew: It drank the ether and the dew, And from light received its hue Upon the grave of PENN! It sprang from out that hallowed ground, Unclosed its eye, and smiled around, Upon the verdure of the mound, Where WILLIAM's ashes rest; Where low the dust in quiet lies Of him, among the good and wise On earth, so meek, and in the skies So high among the blest. And had my flower a living root, Or seed wherefrom a germ might shoot For one young plant to be the fruit Of that small vital part, Fair PENN-SYLVANIA, it should be, My friendly offering made to thee-- Set, to thy father's memory, On thy kind Quaker heart. But, ah! my precious flower is dead: The snow-white sheet beneath its head, And on its tender bosom spread, Shows that its life is o'er: And though each floweret of the gem, And every leaf, is on the stem, I cannot spare thee one of them, Because there 'll grow no more. I therefore bid my fancy weave This simple wreath, which thou 'lt receive In lieu thereof; and thence believe My fervent wish to be That Heaven, to overflowing still, With purest bliss thy cup may fill, And guard thee safe from every ill, Whilst thou rememberest me! THE HUMMING-BIRD'S ANGER. "Small as the humming-bird is, it has great courage and violent passions. If it find a flower that has been deprived of its honey, it will pluck it off, throw it on the ground, and sometimes tear it to pieces." BUFFON. On light little wings, as the humming-birds fly, With plumes many-hued as the bow of the sky, Suspended in ether, they shine in the light, As jewels of nature, high-finished and bright. Their delicate forms are so buoyant and small, They hang o'er the flowers, as too airy to fall, Upborne on their beautiful pinions, that seem Like glittering vapor, or parts of a dream. The humming-bird feeds upon honey, and so, Of course, 't is a sweet little creature, you know: But sweet little creatures have sometimes, they say, A great deal that 's bitter or sour to betray. And often the humming-bird's delicate breast Is found of a very high temper possessed: Such essence of anger within it is pent, 'T would burst, did no safety-valve give it a vent. Displeased, it will seem a bright vial of wrath, Uncorked by its heat the offender to scath; And taking occasion to let off its ire, 'T is startling to witness how high it will fire. A humming-bird once o'er a trumpet-flower hung, And darted that sharp little member, the tongue, At once through the tube to its cell for the sweet It felt, at the bottom, most certain to meet. But, finding that some other child of the air, To rifle the store, had already been there, And no drop of honey for her to draw up, Her vengeance was poured on the destitute cup. She flew in a passion that heightened her power, And, cuffing and shaking the innocent flower, Its tender corolla in shred after shred She hastily stripped, then she snapped off its head. A delicate ruin on earth as it lay, That bright little fury went humming away, With gossamer softness, and fair to the eye, Like some living brilliant just dropped from the sky. And since, when that curious bird I behold Arrayed in rich colors, and dusted with gold, I cannot but think of the wrath and the spite, She has in reserve, though they 're kept out of sight. These two-footed, beautiful, passionate things, If plumeless or plumy, without or with wings, Should go to the glass, or the painter, and sit When anger is just at the height of its fit. THE SABBATH. Day of days, the dearest, best, Hallowed by Jehovah's rest! When his six-days' work was done, Holy rose the seventh sun. When creation's pillars stood, And the Lord pronounced them good, Morning stars together sang-- Heaven with Sabbath praises rang. Earth in pristine beauty shone, Like a gem, before his throne, While he marked thee, as his claim-- And he sealed thee with his name. Choice of God, thou blessed day! At thy dawn the grave gave way To the power of him within, Who had, sinless, bled for sin. Thine the radiance to illume First, for man, the dismal tomb, When its bars their weakness owned, There revealing death dethroned. Then the Sun of righteousness Rose, a darkened world to bless, Bringing up from mortal night, Immortality and light. Day of glory! day of power! Sacred be thine ev'ry hour! Emblem, earnest of the rest That remaineth for the blest! When at last it shall appear How they loved and kept thee here, To a temple in the skies, Fair, eternal, they shall rise. Not a sigh of grief or care Shall mingle with their praises there; Then their sweet reward shall be An eternity of thee. THE DEPARTING SPIRIT. Hush! let the sigh in escaping be stopped: Be the dim chamber all silently trod! Let not the tear, that is rounded, be dropt! Oh! 't is a spirit returning to God! Angels are softly untwining the strings, Loosing its ties to the beautiful clay; Lo! they have lifted their hovering wings: Joyous they waft her in triumph away! Sorrow not now, o'er the spiritless form, While on its features death's lilies unfold: Break not the heart for another so warm, Stopt in its pulse by a finger so cold. Time ne'er shall whiten a lock of that hair, Silken and full, round the forehead, that shines. Age shall not come, nor the finger of care, Marking that brow with their deep-going lines. Ne'er will those lips be unsealed by the sigh: Anguish will never that bosom invade: Tears roll no more from that calm sleeping eye: Peace o'er the clay her smooth mantle has laid. Plant a young flower, in beauty to spread, Tender and pure, where the dust shall repose. Look then from earth, whence the bright spirit fled, Up, where to gladness and glory it rose. SONNET. Spare, ruthless fowler, spare That harmless robin's breast! Its downy vesture do not tear; But leave the life-blood circling there, Again to warm her nest; For she is hastening home with food Provided for her callow brood. Her tender offspring see, Were now thy shot to fly, Left, as thy helpless babes would be, 'Reft of their mother and of thee, To moan, and pine, and die. Then let her pass unhurt along; And she will thank thee with a song. FATHER, HEAR! Thou, whose power assumes the form, Now, of this wild wintry storm, Let it still in mercy be Shown upon the raging sea! O! for him, who tosses there, Father, hear this midnight prayer! Solemn darkness shrouds the world; While, with mighty wings unfurled, Thus the winds in fury sweep O'er the land, and o'er the deep, Thou, whose thought from death can save, Guard the life that 's on the wave! Cold and dreary is the night; Snow-clouds wrap the beacon-light; Rocks and ices, like a host Armed for battle, bar the coast; For the coming bark appear! Guide her! save her! Father, hear! THE PILGRIM'S WAY SONG. I 'm bound to the house of my Father; O draw not my feet from the way; Nor stop me these wild flowers to gather! They droop at my touch, and decay. I think of the flowers, that are blooming In beauty unfading above, The wings of the angels perfuming, Who fly down on errands of love. Of earth's shallow waters the drinking Is powerless my thirst to allay; Their taste is of tears, while we 're sinking Beside them, where quicksands betray. I long, from that fount ever-living, That flows by my Father's own door, With waters so sweet and life-giving, To drink, and to thirst never more. The gold of his bright, happy dwelling Makes all lower gold to look dim; Its treasures, all treasures excelling, Shine forth to allure me to Him. The pearls of this world while I 'm treading In dust, where as pebbles they lie, I seek the rich pearl, that is shedding Its lustre so pure from on high. For pains my torn spirit is feeling, No balsam from earth it receives: I go to the tree, that hath healing To drop on my wounds from its leaves. A child that is weary with roaming, Returning in gladness to see A home and a parent, I 'm coming-- My Father, I hasten to thee! THE RISING MONUMENT. Rise in thy solemn grandeur, calm and slow, As well befits thy purpose and thy place: Great Speaker! rise, not suddenly, to show The earth forever sacred at thy base. Strong as the rocky frame-work of the globe, Proportioned fair, in altitude sublime, With freedom's glory round thee as a robe, Rise gently--then defy the power of time. To future ages, from thy lofty site, Speak in thy mighty eloquence, and tell That where thou art, on Bunker's hallowed height, Our WARREN and his valiant brethren fell. Say, it was here the vital current flowed, Purpling the turf, amid the mortal strife For man's great birthright, from the breasts, that glowed With love of country, more than love of life. Thou hast thy growth of blood, that, gushing warm From patriot bosoms, set their spirits free: All, who behold, shall venerate thy form, And bow before thy genius, LIBERTY. Here fell the hero and his brave compeers, Who fought and died to break a people's chain: The place is sacred to Columbia's tears. Poured o'er the victims for a nation slain. Yet from her starry brow a glory streams, Turning to gems those holy drops of grief, As after evening showers, the morn's clear beams Show diamonds hung on grass, and flower and leaf. Upright and firm, as were the patriot souls, That from thy native spot arose to God, Stand thou and hold, long as our planet rolls, This last high place by Freedom's martyrs trod. Let thy majestic shadow walk the ground, Calm as the sun, and constant as his light; And by the moon, amid the dews, be found The sentinel, who guards it through the night. And may the air around thee ever be To heaven-born Liberty as vital breath; But, like the breeze that sweeps the Upas tree, To Bondage and Oppression certain death! A beauteous prospect spreads for thy survey; City and dome, and spire look up to thee: The solemn forest and the mountains gray Stand distant to salute thy majesty. And ocean, in his numbers deep and strong, While the bright shore beneath thy ken he laves, Will sing to thee an everlasting song Of freedom, with his never-conquered waves. Rise then, and stand unshaken, till the skies Above thee are about to pass away; But, when the dead around thee are to rise, Melt in the burning splendors of the day! For then will He, "whose right it is to reign," Who hath on earth a kingdom pure to save, Come with his angels, calling up the slain To freedom, and annihilate the grave. A NAME IN THE SAND. Alone I walked the ocean strand; A pearly shell was in my hand: I stooped, and wrote upon the sand My name--the year--the day. As onward from the spot I passed, One lingering look behind I cast: A wave came rolling high and fast, And washed my lines away. And so, methought, 't will shortly be With every mark on earth from me; A wave of dark oblivion's sea Will sweep across the place, Where I have trod the sandy shore Of time, and been to be no more, Of me--my day--the name I bore, To leave nor track, nor trace. And yet, with Him, who counts the sands, And holds the waters in his hands, I know a lasting record stands, Inscribed against my name, Of all, this mortal part has wrought; Of all, this thinking soul has thought; And from these fleeting moments caught For glory, or for shame. THE CHILD OF A YEAR AND A DAY. To grief the night-hours keeping, A mournful mother lay Upon her pillow, weeping-- Her babe had passed away. When she had clasped her treasure A year and yet a day, Of time 't was all its measure-- 'T was gone, like morning's ray! The jewel, Heaven had shown her, Of worth surpassing gold, Was lent her, by its Owner-- 'T was never earth's to hold. Then, fondly hovering o'er her, A bright young angel hung; And warm the love it bore her, And sweet the song it sung: "O mother, why this weeping? Let all thy sorrow cease: My infant form is sleeping, Where nought can break its peace. "And he, who once was blessing Such little children here, My spirit now possessing, Will hold me ever dear. "I never knew the dreading Of death's all-conquering blow; My mortal raiment shedding, I rose above the foe. "Where sickness cannot pain me-- Where comes nor grief nor night-- Where sin shall never stain me, I dwell, a child of light. "While many a pilgrim hoary Treads long earth's weary way, I have eternal glory For one short year and day." Yet that sweet angel singing Its mother could not hear, For grief her heart was wringing-- She 'd but a mortal ear. She could not see the beaming Of his celestial crown; For fast her tears were streaming; Her soul to dust bowed down. A voice from heaven then falling In soothing tones to her, As of a Father, calling, Revealed the Comforter. And, lifting up her lowly And sorrow-laden eye, She saw the King all holy Upon the throne Most High. Where shining hosts were pouring Their praises forth to Him, She saw her child adoring, Amid the Seraphim. THE BELIEVER'S MOUNTAINS. Not to the mount, where fire and smoke Jehovah's face concealed, When loud to wandering man he spoke, To make his law revealed-- Not to the awful splendor there Can turn my fearful eye: To hear its thunderings, and to dare Its lightnings, were to die. Not on the mount where Moses stood, The promised land to see Across the waves of Jordan's flood, Is yet the place for me. My spirit could not bear to take That fair and glorious view, Nor dare her wondrous launch to make, To try the waters through. Not to the mount where Christ appeared At once so heavenly bright; While they, who heard the Father, feared, And fell before the light-- Not there, my Saviour ever nigh, Do I his footsteps trace: His closer followers far, than I, Attain that higher place. But, to the mount without a name, Where Jesus sat and taught, I daily would assert my claim, To share the bread he brought. His words before that multitude Dropt to his chosen few, Are manna for my morning food, My soul's sweet evening dew. If to Temptation's mount I go, That mount _exceeding high_, My Lord, again rebuke our foe, And bid the tempter fly. No kingdom may I seek, but thine; And let my glory be A light, reflected pure from thine-- My portion, life with thee! Oft to the mount of midnight shade, Of solitude and prayer, Ascend, my soul, be not afraid Thy Guide to follow there. The height and stillness of the scene, When thou that path hast trod, Forbids this world to rush between A spirit and her God. The mount whereon my Saviour stood, And o'er the city wept-- Where fell his wo-wrung drops of blood, While his disciples slept-- There may I go, yet not to sleep Till Jesus be betrayed; But, as he went, to pray and weep O'er sufferings sin hath made. And to the solemn, shuddering mount, Where Christ received the cup Of death, to offer us a fount Of life, must I go up. And I must look upon his wo, On that empurpled tree, To learn how vast a debt I owe, By what he paid for me. Thence to the mount of Galilee May I the way pursue, With joy my risen Lord to see, Ere he ascends from view. For lo! the heavens their gates unfold To take their coming King: His angels harp on strings of gold, And "Hallelujah!" sing. Now on Mount Zion may I seek My shield--my strong, high tower; And thence, though here so dark and weak, Be clothed with light and power. Then at that holy mountain's top, My soul, no more to roam, Unfurl thy wings--thine ashes drop; And gain thy glorious home. THE NIGHT AND THE MORNING. A solemn night is o'er Jerusalem; Nature astonished, shrouds herself in gloom; For he, who was the babe of Bethlehem, Is now a victim slain, and in the tomb! The blood, which started with the agony That in the garden forced his swelling veins, In crimson streams has poured on Calvary; A rocky cavern holds his pale remains. He walked with men, serene in holiness, The meek, the merciful, through taunts and strife; The front of pride he met with lowliness, And bowed to death to lift his foes to life. Fast as their sins grew bold and multiplied, His bitter cup was filling to the brim. Here doth he lie, the pale, the crucified, With damps and shadows gathered over him. The dismal night moves on but heavily, While they, who came the sepulchre to keep With bristling spears, the Roman soldiery, Would fain resign their glittering arms for sleep. Yet they must wake or die; the sentinel Must keep his constant vigils round the spot Where he shall find the watch of Israel: The life, the spirit moves, and heeds him not. Within the grave, that power victorious O'er death and darkness, far from mortal sight, Hath wrought the body bright and glorious For resurrection by the morning light. And lo! the shades of night are vanishing; The guard behold, as comes the dawning day, Her dubious gloom and dimness banishing, The stone that barred the tomb is rolled away. But, where 's the form that in the drapery, Which wraps the dead, lay, spiritless and cold, Within the vault so still and shadowy, That, as a prison-guard, they came to hold? That form is gone; its cast-off covering, The sad habiliments of death, are here, With burial odors round them hovering, And white-robed angels calmly sitting near. But, see the garden, fair and flowering, Where new-born lilies worship from their stalks; And boughs with blossoms bend, embowering The dewy pathway! there the Saviour walks. The guilty city still is slumbering, While he is risen from the broken tomb; As one his vines and fruit trees numbering, He breathes the incense of their opening bloom. The moon, now fading in the occident, Is not so mild, so heavenly fair as he. The sun, just rising in the orient, Hath less of glory than in him we see. Nature, that, for his death and burial, Hath put on darkness, as a mourning weed, Arrayed in light as for a festival, Proclaims afar, "The Lord is risen indeed!" I SHALL BE SATISFIED. "I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy likeness." May I in thy likeness, my Saviour, awake, And rise, a fair image of thee; Then I shall be satisfied, when I can break This prison of clay, and be free. Can I but come forth to eternity's light, With thy perfect features to shine, In raiment unsullied from time's dreary night, What honor and joy will be mine! Yes, I shall be satisfied then to have cast The shadows of nature all by-- When, darkness and dust from the dull eyelid past, My soul sees with full-opened eye. How fain would I know the great morn drawing near, When earth's dreamy visions shall fade, If I in thy semblance indeed may appear, And stand in thy beauty arrayed! To see thee in glory, O Lord, as thou art, From this mortal, perishing clay My spirit immortal, in peace would depart, And, joyous, mount up her bright way. When on thine own image in me thou hast smiled, In thy holy mansion, and when Thy fatherly arms have encircled thy child, O I shall be satisfied then! THE PENITENTIAL TEAR. Thou trembling, pure, and holy thing! What skill from ocean's depths can bring, Or toil from out the mine-- What monarch in his diadem, Or glittering garb, produce a gem, Whose brightness equals thine? Thy source is deeper than the caves Of riven rock, or opening waves, Invisible as air: And, though the angel throng above Behold thee with delight and love, They ne'er can have thee there. Nor change, nor age thy sheen can dim; Thou 'rt now unstained as when with him, Who dared, in olden time, Thrice his dear, suffering Lord deny; Then, melted at the Saviour's eye, And paid thee for his crime. Called from the treasures of the soul By power divine, when thou dost roll Forth from the mourner's eye, Thy wearer thou dost then proclaim The heir of life, who has his name Writ in the Book on high. Thou art a pearl, that all may own, And when thy matchless worth is known To those, who wear thee here, They will be changed, and shall behold The shining gates of heaven unfold, Bright Penitential Tear! TEACHINGS OF GOD. He reigns on high, a glorious King, In ocean, earth, and air; He moves and governs every thing, For God is every where. The waters at his bidding flow, The mountain and its flower Their majesty and beauty show, As traces of his power. The lilies by the meadow rills Are leaning on his hand; And so the cedar of the hills, The palm and olive stand. He formed the birds, that sport along On light and brilliant wing; And tuned them with the voice of song And joy his praise to sing. This earth is ours, so rich and fair From him, who made it thus-- Who sends his angels down with care To minister to us. The rainbow, with its beauteous dies, A pledge to man, is lent By him, who spreads the shining skies Around him, "as a tent." The heavens, my child, are full of him! Yon radiant sun above Is but an image, cold and dim, Of his great power and love. He placed that glorious orb on high, In splendor there to roll, To warm the world, to light the eye; He lights and warms the soul. And lest the night with sable shade That azure vault should mar, He moved his finger there, and made, At every touch, a star. With these the moon, his beaming gift, Here lets her lustre fall, Our thoughts to win, our hearts to lift To him, who gave them all. And he is ours--that Holy One, Our Father, Guide, and Friend; In ways untravelled by the sun, In love that ne'er shall end. 'T is sweet to worship him below, With his approving eye To mark the way, our spirits go To seek his face on high. THE HERALD'S CRY IN THE DESERT. "He was not that Light; but was sent to bear witness of that Light." ST. JOHN i. 8. Awake, O ye nations, and, shaking The slumber of death from your eyes, Behold the fair morn in its breaking, The SUN of all glory arise. He comes, mist and dimness dispelling; The shadows and clouds flee away: Ho! all, that in darkness are dwelling, Spring up, and rejoice in the day! Ye dying, life's waters revealing, He 'll show you to fountain and streams: Ye wounded, for you he brings healing; Come out and repose in his beams. Come, all ye disconsolate, hailing Your King in his beauty and might; His raiment mount Ebal is veiling; Mount Gerizim shines with his light. O praise him, ye weary, in wonder To feel your hard burdens unbound! Ye captives, your bars fall asunder; With shoutings leap forth at the sound. Your names on his breastplate he 's wearing; They 're set as the seal of his ring; Ye nations, your highways preparing, Receive, and be glad in your King! OUR FATHER'S WELL. Come, let 's go back, my brother, And, by our father's well, Sit down beside each other, Life's little dreams to tell. For there we played together, In childhood's sunny hours; Before life's stormy weather Had killed its morning flowers. And since no draught we 've tasted, Its weary journey through, As we so far have hasted, Like that our father drew; I feel, as at a mountain, I cannot pass nor climb, Till from that distant fountain I drink, as in my prime. My spirit's longing, thirsting, No waters else can quell; My heart seems near to bursting To reach that good old well. Though all be changed around it, And though so changed are we, Just where our father found it, That pure well spring will be. In earth, when deeply going, He reached and smote the rock; He set its fount to flowing-- It opened at his knock. The way, he smoothed and stoned it, A close, round, shadowy cell; Whoever since has owned it, It is our father's well! His prattling son and daughter, With each an infant's cup, We waited for the water, His steady hand drew up. When we had paused and listened, Till down the bucket dashed, O how it, rising, glistened, And to the sunlight flashed! And since that moment, never Has that cool deep been dry; Its fount is living ever, While man and seasons die. Around its mouth is growing The moss of many a year; But from its heart is flowing The water sweet and clear. Fond memory near it lingers, And, like a happy child, She plucks, with busy fingers, And wreathes the roses wild. Yet many a lip, whose burning Its limpid drops allayed, Has since, to ashes turning, Been veiled in silent shade. Still we are here, and telling About our infant play; Where that free spring is welling, So true, and far away. But O! the change, my brother! Our father's head is hoar; The tender name of mother Is ours to call no more. And now, around thee gather Such little ones as we Were then, beside our father, And look to theirs in thee. While fast our years are wasting, Their numbers none can tell; So let us hence be hasting To find our Father's well. Come, we will speed us thither, And from its mossy brink, To flowers that ne'er shall wither Look up to heaven and drink. They spring beside the waters, Our Father there will give To all his sons and daughters, Where they shall drink and live. THE MOTHER'S DREAM. "And I will give him the morning star." REV. ii. 28. Methought, once more to my wishful eye My beautiful boy had come: My sorrow was gone, my cheek was dry, And gladness around my home. I saw the form of my dear, lost child! All kindled with life he came; And he spake in his own sweet voice, and smiled, As soon as I called his name. The garb he wore looked heavenly white, As the feathery snow comes down, And warm, as it shone in the softened light That fell from his dazzling crown. His eye was bright with a joy serene, His cheek with a deathless bloom, That only the eye of my soul hath seen, When looking beyond the tomb. The odors of flowers, from the thornless land Where we deem that our blest ones are, Seemed borne in his skirts; and his soft right hand Was holding a radiant star. His feet, unshod, looked tender and fair, As the lily's opening bell, Half veiled in a cloud of glory, as there Around him, in folds, it fell. I asked him how he was clothed anew-- Who circled his head with light-- And whence he returned to meet my view So calm and heavenly bright. I asked him where he had been so long Away from his mother's care-- Again to sing me his infant song, And to kneel by my side in prayer. He said, "Sweet mother, the song I sing Is not for an earthly ear: I touch the harp with a golden string, For the hosts of heaven to hear. "It was but a gently fleeting breath, That severed thy child from thee! The fearful shadow, in time, called Death, Hath ministered life to me. "My voice in an angel choir I lift; And high are the notes we raise: I hold the sign of a priceless gift, And the Giver, who hath our praise. "'The bright and the morning star' is he, Who bringeth eternal day! And, mother, he giveth himself to thee, To lighten thine earthly way. "The race is short to a peaceful goal, And He is never afar, Who saith of the wise, untiring soul, 'I will give him the morning star!' "Thy measure of care for me was filled, And pure to its crystal top; For Faith, with a steady eye, distilled And numbered every drop. "While thou wast teaching my lips to move, And my heart to rise in prayer, I learned the way to a world above; The home of thy child is there! "The secret prayers, thou didst make for me, That only thy God hath known, Arose, like sweet incense, holy and free, And gathered around his throne. "My robe was filled with the perfume sweet To shed upon this world's air, As I joyful knelt, at my Saviour's feet, For the glorious crown I wear. "In that bright, blissful world of ours, The waters of life I drink: Behold my feet, as they 've pressed the flowers, That grow by the fountain's brink! "No thorn is hidden to wound me there; There 's nothing of chill, or blight, Or sighing to blend with the balmy air-- No sorrow--no pain--no night!" "No _parting_?" I asked, with a burst of joy; And the lovely illusion broke! My rapture had banished my beauteous boy-- To a shadowy void I spoke. But, O! that STAR of the morn still beams With light to direct my feet Where, when I have done with my earthly dreams, The mother and child may meet. THE WAR-SPIRIT ON BUNKER'S HEIGHT. The sun walked the skies in the splendor of June, O'er earth full of promise, and air full of tune; The broad azure streams calmly rolled to the deep, Whose waves on its breast stirred like babes in their sleep. The turf heaved its green to the white vestured flock, That fed, or reposed in the shade of the rock; The birds sang their songs by their nests in the bowers; And the bee hummed with sweets from the fresh opened flowers. The humming-bird glittered, and whirred o'er the cell, Where her nectar was stored, from the hill to the dell; 'Mid the bloom and the perfume, that passed on the breeze, From the rose, and the vine, and the fruit-bearing trees. It seemed like a gala, when Nature, arrayed In festival robes, with her treasures displayed, Reflected the smile of her Maker above, And offered up hymns of her thanksgiving love. And yet, in the bosom of man there were fires Fierce, quenchless and fearful--consuming desires For right unpossessed, and for lawless domain, That burned to the soul, and that flamed to the brain. In the streets there was clanging and gleaming of arms; In the dwellings, resolve, preparation, alarms; In the eye of the wife, mother, sister, a tear; In the face of their soldier, no semblance of fear. The patriot chieftain had marked out his ground, To hold, or to fall, if his foe passed the bound: And now was the hero to close in the strife, For death as a bondman, or freedom with life. The war-spirit hovered, and frowned on the height, His eye flashing lightning--his wings shedding night! From his wide fiery nostrils rolled volumes of smoke, And the rocks roared afar, as in thunder he spoke. At his dread shock of nature, the lamb from its play, The bee and the bird, in affright fled away; The branch, flower, and grass, felt the crush and the scath, And the winds passing by, snuffed the heat of his wrath. With blood, that, in torrents, he poured down like rain, He drenched the green turf, that he strewed with the slain, Till the eminence groaned with the carnage it bore, And its heart heaved and shuddered at drinking the gore. While the breath of the war-spirit scented the air, The rivers looked wild in reflecting his glare; And ocean's cold bosom was torn, as he gave The flap of his pinion to trouble its wave. The village besieged, wrapped in flames from his breath, Looked up to the hill, where he revelled with death, And swelled with the essence of life he had shed, To sweeten their cup, and the banquet to spread. O War-spirit! War-spirit, when didst thou bring Such trophies of beauty before the pale king, Since walking on Gilboa's height, in thy power, Of Israel's valiant to mow down the flower? Mourn, wail, O ye people! and spread wide the pall, Whose deep sable fringe down the hill-sides shall fall! Your brethren's warm blood cries aloud from the ground, That hosts, like Philistia's, in triumph surround. The lovely, the pleasant have perished! Alas! Where they fell may there hence be no dew on the grass! Let a monument there, towards the heavens rear its head, From a base, that shall cover the spot where they bled! Ah, War-spirit! War-spirit, deep was the gloom, Though heaven was unclouded, and earth all in bloom, When thou, at the onset, that young summer's day, Didst strike so much valor to darkness away! And yet, by that thunder, the land is awake: 'T was the crack of her yoke when beginning to break! And out of that gloom is her glory to spread; Her living be franchised, immortal her dead. For up from that summit an eagle shall rise, To breast the thick clouds, till he sails the blue skies; And drop, while he bathes at the fountain of light, A plume from his pinion their story to write. It shall fall where they fell, on the still purple sward, Full and warm with the sunbeams their deeds to record; And move o'er the scroll in the hand of the free, While the wing where it grew spans the earth and the sea. THE INNER SELF. While others lie composed in sleep, Close wrapped in shade and silence deep, And starry hosts and angels keep Their vigils o'er the night, I have a curious work to do, A secret door to venture through, A wondrous being then to view; If I can stand the sight. I now take up the sacred key, Unlock my breast, and pass to see The inmost, true, essential ME: And lo! I here have found, Enclosed within its shrine, the heart, Myself, my thinking, reasoning part: But say, my spirit, what thou art, And whence, and whither bound! 'T is but with wonder, reverence, fear And shrinking, that I thus draw near The majesty, that meets me here, My soul, unveiled, in thee! I cannot give thy form, or hue, Or measure, or proportions true; But feel myself myself subdue, Thou deepening mystery. Not all the earth, nor air, nor sea Could furnish food to nourish thee; Nor welling founts, nor rivers free, The spirit's thirst allay: Nor silver web, nor cloth of gold, Nor stuffs, that time can e'er unfold, Nor pearls, nor gems this world may hold, Compose thee an array. Yet all the fibres of my frame Own that from thee their feeling came; And, at the slightest touch, will claim Thy closest sympathy. Thou art their life, their light, their spring, Informing them in every thing, But how they are allied, and cling, My nobler self, to thee. And do I thus the power survey, Whom all my meaner powers obey? Hand, foot and tongue and eye--are they The servants of thy will? And when they pause, repose to take, Dost thou, untiring and awake, Thy pinions spread, and swiftly make Thy wide excursions still? What art thou, never slumbering soul, To stretch thy wings from pole to pole-- To span the globe--to mark its roll-- Its elements to see, Conspiring thus, to prophesy Its end to come before thine eye, Whilst thou canst fire and flood defy, Nor ever cease to be? And, swifter than an eagle flies, Or arrows dart, dost thou arise Through air and space, and scale the skies, 'Mid shining spheres to roam: And with thy conscious rank elate, Dost stand and watch at heaven's bright gate, For glimpses of that rich estate Where thou may'st claim thy home. Thence, near the pit dost thou go down, To spy the difference 'twixt the crown Of life, and that dread withering frown, Which blights a spirit there. Then, on eternity's dark brink, Between them dost thou pause, and think, And ask, if thou shalt soar or sink-- To joy or wo the heir. Too blind to trace thy being's plan, Too small my nobler part to span, I end my quest where it began, And from myself retire. I hence must own within my breast A power of unknown powers possessed-- A flame, not long to be repressed, Of clear immortal fire. TIME. Time, with thy kind and never-wearying powers, Giving whate'er we fondly count as ours; Life, love, hope, faith, the sun, the stars and flowers; All that to man is dear to thee we owe! Yet does he call thee, slayer, robber, thief, And stern, as of his foes thou wert the chief, Filling his path with ruins, pain and grief, Without one tender blessing to bestow! Nature we laud, when thou, paternal Time, Hast given maturity, as well as prime, To all her works, in every age and clime, Since the first floweret on her bosom grew. Light from the darkness doth thy hand unfold: Beauty from dust we in thy deeds behold: The frail, the dimmed, the withered, worn and old Thy breath dissolves, that they may shine anew. The city flames, and melts the tottering wall; Again she rises fairer for the fall. Thou beckonest back the flood! and at thy call, From crust-capped mounts, volcanic splendors pour. The absent sun his way to morning bends; The waning star to thy command attends, Fills out and burns; and man to dust descends, In hope to live, when thou shalt be no more. The leaves are scattered, yet the waiting tree Shall have them brought, in verdure, back by thee; The flower has vanished, but the trusting bee Will find her cell again with sweetness stored. The seed may perish, yet the germ will rise; The grain is ripened while its sheathing dies. The fruits of earth, the glories of the skies Forth by thy bounteous hand to man are poured. We owe thee still for gifts far more divine-- The key to joys it never can be thine To give or take; and heavenly light to shine When we must enter that dark, shadowy vale, Where nought of earth the pathway can illume, Or lend one ray to shoot across the gloom, That gathers round the threshold of the tomb, When thou must there, first and forever, fail. Then, why does man so oft forget that he Owes all he is, and all he hopes to be, When thou and he are severed, but to thee? Why does he slay thee piecemeal, day by day? Shut out in exile from thine empire, there, In that unknown, dread, boundless country, where Is no retreat, no inn, how will he bear To have thy spectre haunt the endless way? Man's wisest study is to know thy worth And his relations to thee from his birth; To bring his course o'er this uneven earth, In a clear sunset, to a quiet close. Then, as a weary traveller is undressed, While gently thou the spirit may'st divest Of her worn garment, there remains a rest, And she goes franchised to that blest repose. And now, O Time, as one more hasty year Of thine is gone, thou hast another here! Grateful we hail it, though the bitter tear May have put out the light of joy that shone On many a face; though tender, sundered ties Have changed to chords that vibrate but with sighs, In many a stricken breast where sorrow lies, Draining the life-stream, while that year has flown. Countless the blessings showered in its flight; And seeming evils, turned and viewed aright, May prove but passing clouds, and lined with light. Our trust, deceived in earthly things, may teach The restless, eager spirit to forego Her crushing grasp on hollow hopes, that grow Like fragile reeds, to mock her hold below; And after higher, holier joys to reach. TIME, then our nobler aspirations raise! Since few, and short, and fleeting are our days; And since, so peaceful are her pleasant ways, Teach us to wisdom to apply the heart: So that, when thou hast safely led us through Thy kingdom, with a brighter land in view, Calm at thy bourn, and with a kind adieu, We may, as friends, shake hands with thee and part. MY HEAD. "The day is come I never thought to see! Strange revolutions of my farm and me." DRYDEN'S VIRGIL. My head! my head! the day is come I never, never thought to see; When all, with fingers and a thumb, May to thy chambers have a key! That is, if thou wouldst but submit To come beneath the learned touch, And let the judge in judgment sit Upon thy bumps, that prove so much. I used to think our heads might let Their own contents, at will, be shown; I never thought mankind could get An outward way to make them known. But now the sapient hand has cut The matter short, and all may tell Thy value, as they 'd prize a nut, And know the kernel by the shell. If half the light, that has been thrown _On_ heads, were only poured _within_, Thou wouldst not thus be left to own The darkness that is now thy sin. But, while the world is in a blaze Of purely phrenologic light, Thou, wildered thing, art in a maze, And destitute of faith and sight. They use a thousand meaning words Thou couldst not utter or define, Of which, to tell the truth, three thirds Were gravel, in a mouth like thine. They hold me out an empty skull, To show the powers of living brains: 'T is just like feeling of the hull, To tell what goods the ship contains. And, whether nature or mishap Have raised the bump, 't is all the same; The sage's crown, or dunce's cap Must be awarded as its claim. This hobby, that so many sit, And manage with such ease and grace, I dare not try with rein or bit, It seems so of the donkey race. And yet, my head, no doubt, 't is all A fault of thine, a want of sight, That so much said by Combe and Gall And Spurzheim cannot turn thee right. I know not what thy case may be,-- If thou art hollow, or opaque; I only know thou canst not see, And faith declines one step to take. This burst of light has turned thee numb, Depriving thee of every sense; So now, if tried, thou must be dumb, Nor say one word in self-defence! THE WHEAT FIELD. Field of wheat, so full and fair, Shining, with thy sunny hair Lightly waving either way, Graceful as the breezes play-- Looking like a summer sea; How I love to gaze at thee! Pleasant art thou to the sight; And to thought a rich delight. Then, thy voice is music sweet, Softly sighing field of wheat. Pointing upward to the sky, Rising straight, and aiming high, Every stalk is seen to shoot As an arrow, from the root. Like a well-trained company, All in uniform agree, From the footing to the ear; All in order strict appear. Marshalled by a skilful hand, All together bow, or stand Still, within the proper bound: None o'ersteps the given ground, With its tribute held to pay, At his nod whom they obey, Each the gems, that stud its crown, Will ere long, for man, lay down. Thou with promise art replete Of the precious sheaves of wheat. How thy strength in weakness lies! Not a robber bird, that flies, Finds support whereby to put On a stalk her lawless foot. Not a predatory beak Plunges down, thy stores to seek, Where the guard of silver spears Keeps the fruit, and decks the ears. No vain insect, that could do Harm to thee, dares venture through Such an armory, or eat Off the sheath to take the wheat. What a study do we find Opened here for eye and mind! In it who can offer less, Than to wonder, and confess, That on this high-favored ground, Faith is blest, and hope is crowned. Charity her arms may spread Wide from it, with gifts of bread. Wisdom, power, and goodness meet In the bounteous field of wheat. THE LITTLE TRAVELLER. I am the tiniest child of earth, But still, I would like to be known to fame, Though next to nothing I had my birth, And lowest of all is my lowly name. Yet, if so humble my native place, I this can say, in family pride, That I 'm of the world's most numerous race, And made by the Maker of all beside. Although I 'm so poor, I have nought to lose; Still I 'm so little I can't be lost: I journey about wherever I choose, And those, who carry me, bear the cost. The most forgiving of earthly things, I often cling to my deadly foe; And, spite of the cruelest flirts and flings, Arise by the force that has cast me low. When beauty has trodden me under foot, I 've quietly risen her face to seek, Embraced her forehead, or calmly put Myself to rest in her dimpled cheek. I 've ridden to war on the soldier's plume; But startled, and sprung at the wild affray, The sights of horror, of fire and fume, And fled on the wing of the winds away. I 've visited courts, and been ushered in By the proudest guest of the stately scene; I 've touched his majesty's bosom-pin, And the nuptial ring of his lofty queen. At the royal board, in the grand parade, I 've oft been one familiar and free: The fairest lady has smiled, and laid Her delicate, gloveless hand on me. Philosopher, poet, the learned, the sage, Never declines a call from me; And all, of every rank and age, Admit me into their _coterie_. I visit the lions of every where, If human, or brute, and can testify To what they do, to what they wear, To wonders none ever beheld but I! And now, reviewing the things I 've done, Forgetting my name, my rank and birth, I begin to think I am number one Of the great and manifold things of earth. I 've still much more, that I yet might tell, Which modesty bids me here withhold; For fear with my travels I seem to swell, grow, for an ATOM OF DUST, too bold! THE ENTANGLED FLY. Ah, thou unfortunate! Poor, silly fly, Caught in the spider's web, Hung there to die! What could have tempted thee? What led thee there, For thy foe, thus to throw Around thee the snare? Struggling and crying so Ne'er can unweave From thee the silken threads, Laid to deceive. Sorrow for wandering Comes now in vain; And, with one thus undone, Grief adds to pain. Yet, I will rescue thee, Unwary thing! Thou may'st again be off, High on the wing, If thou wilt promise me, Hence to be found Never more, as before, On evil ground. Trust not the flatterer Skilled to ensnare: He is a wily one; Think, and beware. Down to his dusky ways No more descend! Little fly, thou and I Both want a friend. Man hath an enemy, Whose snare is laid Softly and silently, Deep in the shade. Light, by the tempter shunned, Only can show Where, secure, free, and pure, Our feet may go. THE PEACH BLOSSOMS. Come here! come here! cousin Mary, and see What fair, ripe peaches there are on the tree-- On the very same bough that was given to me By father, one day last spring. When it looked so beautiful, all in the blow, And I wanted to pluck it, he told me, you know, I might, but that waiting a few months would show The fruit, that patience might bring. And as I perceived, by the sound of his voice, And the look of his eye, it was clearly his choice That it should not be touched, I have now to rejoice That I told him we 'd let it remain; For, had it been gathered when full in the flower, Its blossoms had withered, perhaps, in an hour, And nothing on earth could have given the power That would make them flourish again. But now, of a fruit so delicious and sweet I 've enough for myself and my playmates a treat; And they tell me, besides, that the kernels secrete What, if planted, will make other trees: For the shell will come open to let down the root; A sprout will spring up, whence the branches will shoot; There 'll be buds, leaves, and blossoms; and then comes the fruit-- Such beautiful peaches as these! And Nature, they say, like a mighty machine, Has a wheel in a wheel, which, if aught comes between, It ruins her work, as it might have been seen, Had it not given patience this trial. From this, I 'll be careful to keep it in mind, When the blossoms I love, that there lingers behind A better reward, that the trusting shall find For a trifling self-denial. THE BROKEN PIPE. Come here, little Willie: Why, what is the trouble? "I 've broke my new pipe, ma'-- I can't make a bubble!" Well, do n't weep for that, child, But brighten your face, And tell how the grievous Disaster took place. "Why, Puss came along; And, said I, 'Now she 'll think That white, frothy water Is milk she may drink.' "So I set it before her, And plunged her mouth in, When up came both paws, And clung fast to my chin. "Then I gave her a blow With my pipe; and it flew At once into pieces! O what shall I do? "I can't make a bubble! I wish naughty Kit Had been a mile off: See! there 's blood on me yet!" I 'm sorry, my boy; yet Your loss is but just; You first deceived Pussy, And trifled with trust. In this, when you failed, You compelled her; and thence The wound on your face, From poor Kit's self-defence. Then, when you grew cruel And beat her, you know Your pipe and yourself Fared the worst for the blow. Let this lesson teach you, Hence never to stoop To make man, or brute, That may trust you, a dupe. And when you have power, It should not be abused, Oppressing the weaker, Nor strength be misused. For, often, unkindness Returns whence it came; And ever deceit must Be followed by shame. Remember this, William, And here end your sorrow; I 'll buy you a pipe, To blow bubbles, to-morrow. VIVY VAIN. Miss Vain was all given to dress-- Too fond of gay clothing; and so, She 'd gad about town Just to show a new gown, As a train-band their color to show. Her head being empty and light, Whene'er she obtained a new hat, With pride in her air, She 'd go round, here and there, For all whom she knew to see that. Her folly was chiefly in this: More highly she valued fine looks, Than virtue, or truth, Or devoting her youth To usefulness, friendship, or books. Her passion for show was unchecked; And therefore, it happened one day, Arrayed in bright hues, And with new hat and shoes, Miss Vain walked abroad for display. She took the most populous streets, To cause but aversion in those, Who saw how she 'd prinked, And to bystanders winked, While the boys cried, "Halloo! there she goes!" It chanced, that, in passing one way, She came near a pool, and a green With fence close and high; And, as Vivy drew nigh, A donkey stood near it unseen. He put his mouth over its top, The moment she came by his place; And gave a loud bray In her ear, when, away She sprang, shrieked, and fell on her face. She thought she was swallowed alive, Awhile upon earth lying flat; And the terrible sound Seemed to furrow the ground, She embraced in her fine gown and hat. She gathered herself up, and ran, Yet heeded not whither or whence, To flee from the roar, That continued to pour Behind her, from over the fence. In passing a slope near the pool, She slipped and rolled down to its brim; The geese gave a shout, And at length hissed her out Of the bounds, where they 'd gathered to swim. In turning a corner, she met Abruptly, the horns of a cow That mooed, while the cur, At her heels, turned from her, And aimed at Miss Vain his "bow-wow." Then Vivy's bright ribbons and skirt, As she flew, flirted high on the wind; The children at play, Paused to see one so gay, And all in a flutter behind. A group of glad schoolboys came by: Said they, "So it seems, that to-day, Miss Vain carries marks At which the dog barks, And that make sober Long-Ears to bray." And when, all bedraggled and pale, Poor Vivy approached her own door, She went, swift and straight As a dart, through the gate, Abhorring the gay gear she wore. She sat down, and thought of the scene With humiliation and tears: The words, and the noise Of the brutes and the boys Were echoing still in her ears. She reasoned, and came at the cause, Resolving that cause to remove; And thence, her desire Was for modest attire, And her heart and her mind to improve. And soon, all who knew her before Remarked on the change and the gain In mind, and in mien, And in dress, that were seen In the once flashy Miss Vivy Vain. THE MOCKING BIRD. A Mocking Bird was he, In a bushy, blooming tree, Imbosomed by the foliage and flower. And there he sat and sang, Till all around him rang, With sounds, from out the merry mimic's bower. The little satirist Piped, chattered, shrieked, and hissed; He then would moan, and whistle, quack, and caw; Then, carol, drawl, and croak, As if he 'd pass a joke On every other winged one he saw. Together he would catch A gay and plaintive snatch, And mingle notes of half the feathered throng. For well the mocker knew, Of every thing that flew, To imitate the manner and the song. The other birds drew near, And paused awhile to hear How well he gave their voices and their airs. And some became amused; While some, disturbed, refused To own the sounds that others said were theirs. The sensitive were shocked, To find their honors mocked By one so pert and voluble as he; They knew not if 't was done In earnest or in fun; And fluttered off in silence from the tree. The silliest grew vain, To think a song or strain Of theirs, however weak, or loud, or hoarse, Was worthy to be heard Repeated by the bird; For of his wit they could not feel the force. The charitable said, "Poor fellow! if his head Is turned, or cracked, or has no talent left; But feels the want of powers, And plumes itself from ours, Why, we shall not be losers by the theft." The haughty said, "He thus, It seems, would mimic us, And steal our songs, to pass them for his own! But if he only quotes In honor of our notes, We then were quite as honored, let alone." The wisest said, "If foe, Or friend, we still may know By him, wherein our greatest failing lies. So, let us not be moved, Since first to be improved By every thing, becomes the truly wise." THE BIRD'S HOME. O where is thy home, sweet bird, With the song, and the bright, glossy plume? "I 'll tell thee where I rest, If thou wilt not rob my nest;-- I built among the sweet apple bloom." But what 's in thy nest, bright bird? What 's there, in the snug, downy cell? "If thou wilt not rob the tree; Nor go too near, to see My quiet little home, I will tell." O! I will not thy trust betray, But closely thy secret I will keep. "I 've three little tender things, That have never used their wings! I left them there, at home, fast asleep." Then, why art thou here, my bird, Away from thy young, helpless brood? "To pay thee with a song, Just to let me pass along, Nor harm me, as I look for their food!" THE BIRD UNCAGED. She opened the cage, and away there flew A bright little bird, as a short adieu It hastily whistled, and passed the door, And felt that its sorrowful hours were o'er. An anthem of freedom it seemed to sing; To utter its joy for an outspread wing,-- That now it could sport in the boundless air, And might go any and every where. And Anna rejoiced in her bird's delight; But her eye was wet, as she marked its flight; Till, this was the song that she seemed to hear; And, merrily warbled, it dried the tear: "I had a mistress, and she was kind, In all, but keeping her bird confined; She ministered food and drink to me, But, O I was pining for liberty! "My fluttering bosom she loved to smooth; While the heart within it, she could not soothe: I sickened and longed for the wildwood breeze, My feathery kindred, and fresh green trees. "A prisoner there, with a useless wing, I looked with sorrow on every thing; I lost my voice, and forgot my song, And mourned in silence, the whole day long. "But I will go back, with a mellower pipe, And sing, when the cherries are round and ripe; On the topmost bough, as I lock my feet, To help myself, in my leafy seat. "My merriest notes shall there be heard, To draw her eye to her franchised bird; The burden, then, of my song shall be, 'Earth for the wingless! but air for me!'" DAME BIDDY. Dame Biddy abode in a coop, Because it so chanced, that dame Biddy Had round her a family group Of chicks, young, and helpless and giddy. And when she had freedom to roam, She fancied the life of a ranger; And led off her brood, far from home, To fall into mischief or danger. She 'd trail through the grass to be mown, And call all her children to follow; And scratch up the seeds that were sown, Then, lie in their places and wallow. She 'd go where the corn in the hill, Its first little blade had been shooting, And try, by the strength of her bill, To learn if the kernel was rooting. And when she went out on a walk Of pleasure, through thicket and brambles, The covetous eye of a hawk Delighted in marking her rambles. "I spy," to himself he would say, "A prize of which I 'll be the winner!" So down would he pounce on his prey, And bear off a chicken for dinner. The poor frighted matron, that heard The cry of her youngling in dying, Would scream at the merciless bird, That high with his booty was flying. But shrieks could not ease her distress, Nor grief her lost darling recover. She now had a chicken the less, For acting the part of a rover. And there lay the feathers, all torn, And flying one way and another, That still her dear child might have worn, Had she been more wise as a mother. Her owner then thought he must teach Dame Biddy a little subjection; And cooped her up, out of the reach Of hawking, with time for reflection. And, throwing a net o'er a pile Of brush-wood that near her was lying, He hoped to its meshes to wile The fowler, that o'er her was flying. For Hawk, not forgetting his fare, And having a taste to renew it, Sailed round near the coop, high in air, With cruel intention, to view it. The owner then said, "Master Hawk, If you love my chickens so dearly, Come down to my yard for a walk, That you may address them more nearly." But, "No," thought the sharp-taloned foe Of Biddy, "my circuit is higher! If I to his premises go, 'T will be when I see he 's not nigh her." The Farmer strewed barley, and toled The chickens the brush to run under, And left them, while Hawk growing bold, Thus tempted, came near for his plunder. As closer and closer he drew, With appetite stronger and stronger, He found he 'd but one thing to do, And plunged, to defer it no longer. But now had he come to a pause, At once in the net-work entangled, While through it his head and his claws In hopeless vacuity dangled. The chicks saw him hang overhead, Where they for their barley had huddled; And all in a flutter they fled, And soon through the coop holes had scuddled. The farmer came out to his snare. He saw the bold captive was in it; And said, "If this play be unfair, Remember, I did not begin it!" He then put a cork on his beak, The airy assassin disarming, Unspurred him, and rendered him weak, By blunting each talent for harming. And into the coop he was thrown: The chickens hid under their mother, For he, by his feathers was known As he, who had murdered their brother. Dame Biddy, beholding his plight, Determined to show him no quarter, In action gave vent to her spite; As motherly tenderness taught her. She shouted, and blustered; and then Attacked the poor captive unfriended; And you, (who have witnessed a hen In anger,) may guess how it ended. She made him a touching address, If pecking and scratching could do it, Till, sinking in silent distress, He perished before she got through it. We would not, however, convey A thought like approving the fury, That gave, in this summary way, Punition, without judge or jury. Whenever thus given, it tends To lessen the angry bestower; The _fowl_ that inflicts it, descends-- The _featherless_ biped, still lower. THE ENVIOUS LOBSTER. A Lobster from the water came, And saw another, just the same In form and size; but gayly clad In scarlet clothing; while she had No other raiment to her back Than her old suit of greenish black. "So ho!" she cried, "'t is very fine! Your dress was yesterday like mine; And in the mud below the sea, You lived, a crawling thing, like me. But now, because you 've come ashore, You 've grown so proud, that what you wore-- Your strong old suit of bottle-green, You think improper to be seen. To tell the truth, I don 't see why You should be better dressed than I. And I should like a suit of red As bright as yours, from feet to head. I think I' m quite as good as you, And might be clothed in scarlet, too." "Will you be boiled?" her owner said, "To be arrayed in glowing red? Come here, my discontented miss, And hear the scalding kettle hiss! Will you go in, and there be boiled, To have your dress, so old and soiled, Exchanged for one of scarlet hue?" "Yes," cried the lobster, "that I 'll do, And twice as much, if needs must be, To be as gayly clad as she." Then, in she made a fatal dive, And never more was seen alive! Now, if you ever chance to know Of one as fond of dress and show As that vain lobster, and withal As envious, you 'll perhaps recall To mind her folly, and the plight In which she reappeared to sight. She had obtained a bright array, But for it, thrown herself away! Her life and death were best untold, But for the moral they unfold! KIT WITH THE ROSE. A rose tree stood in the parlor, When kit came frolicking by; So up went her feet on the window-seat, To a rose, that had caught her eye. She gave it a cuff, and it trembled Beneath her ominous paw; And while it shook, with a threatening look She coveted what she saw. Thought she, "What a beautiful toss-ball, If I could but give it a snap, Now all are out, nor thinking about Their rose, or the least mishap!" She twisted the stem, and she twirled it; And, seizing the flower it bore With the timely aid of her teeth, she made A leap to the parlor floor. And over the carpet she tossed it, All fresh in its morning bloom, Till shattered and rent, its leaves were sent To every side of the room. At length, with her sport grown weary, She laid herself down to sun, Inclining to doze, forgetting the rose And the mischief she had done. By and by her young mistress entered, And uttered a piteous cry, When she saw the fate of what had so late Delighted her watchful eye. But where was the one, who had spoiled it, Concealing his guilty face? She had not a clue whereby to pursue The rogue to his lurking-place. Thought kit, "I 'll keep still till 't is over, And none will suspect it was I." For the puss awoke, when her mistress spoke, And she well understood the cry. But, mewing at length for her dinner, Kit's mouth confessed the whole truth: It opened so wide, that her mistress spied A rose-leaf pierced by her tooth. Then kit was expelled from the parlor All covered with shame. And those Inclined, like her, in secret to err, Should remember kit with the rose. THE STORM IN THE FOREST. The storm in the forest is rending and sweeping; While tree after tree bows its stately green head; The flowerets beneath them are bending and weeping; And leaves, torn and trembling, all round them are spread. The bird that had roamed, till she thinks her benighted, Dismayed, hastens back to her home in the wood; And flags not a wing, till her bosom, affrighted, Has laid its warm down o'er her own little brood. And they, since that fond one so quickly has found them, To shelter their heads from the rain and the blast, Shall fearless repose, while the bolts burst around them; And lie calm and safe, till the darkness is past. Hast thou, too, not felt, when the tempest was drearest, And rending thy covert, or shaking thy rest, Thine own blessed angel that moment the nearest-- Thy screen in his pinion--thy shield in his breast? When clouds frowned the darkest, and perils beset thee, Till each prop of earth seemed to bend, or to break, Did e'er thy good angel turn off, and forget thee? The mother her little ones, then, may forsake! Ah, no! thou shalt feel thy protector the surer-- The sun, in returning, more cheering and warm; And all things around thee, seem fresher and purer, And touched with new glory, because of the storm! THE UPROOTED ELM. Alas! alas! my good old tree, A fatal change is past on thee! And now thine aged form I see, All helpless, lying low: The rending tempest, in its flight 'Mid darkness of the wintry night, Hath struck thee, passing in its might, And felled thee at a blow. And never more the blooming spring Shall to thy boughs rich verdure bring, Or her gay birds, to flit and sing Where their first plumage grew; For thou, so long, so fondly made My eye's delight, my summer shade, Here, as a lifeless king, art laid In state, for all to view. Thy noble trunk and reverend head, Defined on that cold, snow-white bed, And those old arms, so widely spread, Thy hopelessness declare: Thy roots, in earth concealed so long-- That struck so deep, with hold so strong, Upturned with many a broken prong, Are quivering high in air. But yester-eve I saw thee stand, With lofty front, with aspect grand, Where thou hadst braved the ruthless hand Of time, and spread, and towered; And stood the rain, the hail, the blast, Till more than hundred years had passed: To fall so suddenly at last, Forever overpowered! Yet, while I sadly ponder o'er What now thou art, and wast before, Were sighs to rise, and tears to pour, Like summer winds and rain; Not all the sighs and drops of grief Could bring to thee one bud or leaf; Thou liest so like a stricken chief, By one swift arrow slain. But may'st thou prove an emblem true Of what the spoiler's hand shall do With one, who pensive here would view A shadowy type in thee! Let not the conqueror piecemeal slay, With power by power in slow decay; But strike, and all in ashes lay! Farewell, my good old tree! THROUGH THE CLOUDS. Through the clouds that veil the sky, Come, O sun, and sweetly smile! Show thy glory to mine eye, So my heart may beam the while. Come, and chase this day of night, For the world is sadly dim. To thy blessed face of light Let my spirit sing her hymn. Now, in silence and alone, I, to pass the heavy hour, Sit and fancy nature's moan After thy reviving power. Blasts of wildered, wandering air, Asking where thy face can be, Chill and cheerless, every where, Sighing, wailing, seek for thee. Mourning o'er the earth is spread; Bud and flower look pale with grief. Sick, the plant has hung its head; Dulness weighs on every leaf. Not a bird is heard to sing. Reft of thine inspiring ray. As a lyre of every string, Each from sight is hid away. Sable clouds, that veil the blue Of the skies, their shadows throw Here, until their sombre hue Gives a cast to all below. Come, O sun, and through the gloom Let thy beaming vesture fall! Bringing music, joy and bloom, Spread thy mantle o'er us all. What were there on earth to love-- What were beauteous, bright, or dear, Wert thou not so true above, And thy holy influence here? MY ROSE TREE. Rose tree, O! my beauteous rose tree, Often have I longed to know How thy tender leaves were moulded-- How thy buds are burst, and blow. I have watered, sunned, and trained thee, And have watched thee many an hour, Yet I never could discover How a bud becomes a flower. So, last night I thought about thee On my pillow, till, at last, I was gone in quiet slumber; And a dream before me passed. In it, I beheld my rose tree Stripped of flower, and bud and leaf; While thy naked stalk and branches Filled me with surprise and grief. Then, methought, I wept to see thee Spoiled of all that made thee dear, Till a band of smiling angels Mildly shining, hovered near. Gently as they gathered round thee, All in silence, one of them Laid his soft, fair fingers on thee, Pulling leaves from out the stem. One by one thy twigs he furnished With a dress of foliage green; While another angel followed, Bringing buds the leaves between. Then came one the buds to open; He their silken rolls unsheathed, While the one who tints the roses, Through their loosened foldings breathed. Then the angel of the odors Filled each golden-bottomed cell, Till, between the parting petals, Free on air the fragrance fell. Lifting then their shining pinions, Quick the angels passed from sight; Leaving, where aloft they vanished, But a stream of fading light. There I heard sweet strains of music, And their voices far above, Dying in the azure distance, Naming thee a gift of love. And, my rose tree stood before me, Finished thus by angel hands; Perfect in its bloom and fragrance, Beautiful, as now it stands. Hence, whenever I behold thee, I shall think of angels too; And the countless works of goodness They descend on earth to do. All unseen and silent, round us They their careful watches keep; Whether we may wake, or slumber, Guardian angels never sleep! THE INFANT BAPTIST. And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts until the day of his showing unto Israel. LUKE i. 80. Child, amid the honeyed flowers Passing life's bright morning hours-- Playing in the silver rills, Where they bathe Judea's hills-- Looking, with an earnest eye, At the wild bird flitting by-- Infant of the joyous heart, Canst thou tell me who thou art? Thou, whose little hand in play Hurls the clustered grapes away; While thou lov'st to watch the bee, Or to win a lamb to thee, And to see the fleecy flock Resting by the shadowy rock,-- Know'st thou, tender, beauteous boy, What 's thine errand--whence thy joy? 'T was thy name that Gabriel spoke, By the altar, while the smoke From thy father's incense rolled, When thy being was foretold! Thou art come, the promised one, As the dayspring to the sun, Soon to usher in new light Through the realms of death and night! Heavenly innocence is now Marked upon thy peaceful brow: God's own Spirit filleth thee, Sainted babe; for thou art he, Who before the Lamb shall go, Crying, that the world may know He hath life to give the dead, In the blood he comes to shed! Though, from nature wild and rude, Come thy raiment, rest, and food, Nightly o'er thy desert sleep, Angels shall their vigils keep; Through the wilderness by day, They will guard and lead the way; Till to Israel thou appear, Showing heaven's mild kingdom near. High and glorious, then, the part For thine eye, and hand, and heart! When thy feet, on Jordan's side, Feel the waters, as they glide, Thou the Son of God shalt see, Come to be baptized of thee-- Hear him named, and see the Dove Resting on him from above! HYMN TO SOLITUDE. O solitude, holy and calm! From tumult and crowds breaking free, I fly, sick and sad, for the balm I find given only by thee. Too oft from thy peace I depart, Kind guardian, friend of my soul,-- And then bring an earth-wounded heart For thee to bind up and make whole. My spirit, now worn and oppressed, Her wings in thy bosom hath furled, To sink, as a bird in its nest, Away from a cold, faithless world! Alarmed at the shade and the chill, That o'er me its visions have cast, I here would lie lowly and still, Till sorrow's dark night hours are past. And then, from the dust may I rise, To mount, as the lark from her sod; And sing, as the morn of my skies Appears in the smile of my God. O solitude, sacred and sweet; Whilst thus in thy bosom I lie, Earth's baubles are under my feet-- My heart and its treasure, on high. THE BIBLE IN THE FIELDS. I love to take this holy book, In summer's balmy hours, To study it beside the brook, Or by the trees and flowers. For here I read about the God, Who made this world so fair, The skies--the stream--the grassy sod And bloom, that scents the air. The birds flit round, and sweetly sing Of him, who feeds them all,-- Who lifts the towering eagle's wing, And marks the sparrow's fall. The violet, from its soft green bed, To speak his goodness too, Presents its tender, purple head Baptized with silvery dew. And here the busy bee I view, As she comes swiftly by, And seems to ask, if she should do More work, or good than I. Her waxen house betimes to build I see her wisely bent; And then, with bread and honey filled To have it, still intent. The bees I find their sweets supplied In wild Judea's land, To feed the Baptist, when he cried, "Heaven's kingdom is at hand." And when our Saviour, from the grave, Had asked his friends for meat, He ate the honey-comb they gave; And showed his hands and feet. This volume of his will revealed I here can read within, "Behold the lilies of the field-- They neither toil nor spin!" And yet the king "was not arrayed In glory, like to them;" Their Maker's power is so displayed In flower and leaf and stem. And he sat on the mountain's side, Who spake these blessed words, Before him flowery fields spread wide-- Around were trees and birds. The fleecy flocks, that sport so free On hill and valley deep, I love to watch: and here I see 'T is written, "Feed my sheep." For thus I seem to keep in view, And feel how near I am To that dear friend of children, who Has named himself THE LAMB. THE HOARY HEAD. "The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness." Aged man, with locks so hoary, High estate dost thou possess! They appear thy crown of glory, In the way of righteousness. Jewels, not of man's preparing, Form the shining diadem, Thou art from thy Sovereign wearing: God's own finger silvered them. Thine are honors, proved and heightened By the gift of lengthened years; In affliction's furnace brightened, Tried by cares, and washed with tears. Like thy Master, meek and lowly, Thou a thorny earth hast trod; With thy breast a high and holy Temple of the living God. Aged saint, thy form is bending, Sere and withered, to the tomb; But thy spirit, upward tending, Budded for immortal bloom. MY FATHER. "In the evening time there shall be light." Sacred the hour when thou, my sainted father, Wast of thy worn-out, sinking clay undressed, Softly, by his pale hand, who comes to gather Time's weary pilgrims home to joy and rest. Noiseless, and clear, and holiest of the seven, That day when thy last earthly sun went down: Thy Sabbath, closing here, began in heaven; Whilst thy meek brow changed ashes for a crown. Hush was the evening; not a zephyr swelling Heaved the tree-blossom, or the woodbine leaves; Silent the bird, that sang about our dwelling, Slept where she nestled, close beneath its eaves.[1] Cloudless the moon and stars above were shining, When time's last ray to thy mild eye was shed; While death's cold touch, life's silver cord untwining, Brought his chill night-dew on thy reverend head. Ninety full years of pilgrimage completing, Here didst thou linger till one Sabbath more: 'T was holy time; thy pure heart stilled its beating; Pain, work, and warfare were forever o'er! Meet hour for one, obedient, meek, and lowly, Wont, by command of Heaven, the day to keep, Called, at its evening, to the High and Holy, Peaceful in Jesus thus to fall asleep! Sweetly thy form, that seemed a blissful dreamer, Told, by its features, how the spirit smiled, Through the dark, shadowy vale, by thy Redeemer Led to his mansion, like a little child. Nature's full hand, that, on thy natal morning, Clothed earth to greet thee in the flowers of May, Brought them renewed; thy burial-spot adorning, When fourscore years and ten had rolled away. Now, while the robin, past the window flying, Leads off her young, forsaking here her nest, Constant the wild bird, where thy dust is lying, Sings her sweet hymn, a requiem to its rest. There has it joined the ashes of my mother, Faithful, rewedded to its only bride; And there thy latest-born, my younger brother, Thy fond heart's care, sleeps closely by her side. Yet, angel father, over Jordan's water Is it so far, that now thou canst not see Back to the shore, where lonely stands thy daughter, Sprinkling its rocks and thorns with tears for thee? Art thou so distant, visions of thy glory May not be granted to her mortal sight; When she so long watched o'er thy head so hoary, Smoothing its pillow, till that mournful night? Since here so oft, in pain, the path of duty Thy patient feet, with steady steps, have trod, Safe now they walk the golden streets in beauty; And, O! thy blessed eyes, in peace, see God! [1] A robin had, this spring, been seen taking materials from an old nest on an apple-tree near the door, and carrying them to the corner of the house, where she built on the top of the water-conductor, and close under the eaves, so near my father's chamber, that, when her brood had peeped, if the window was opened, their voices could be heard in the room, while she was feeding them. A SAGE HATH DEPARTED. The Lord, from his cloudy pavilion, hath spoken The soul to himself, and its dust to the clod; The cord He hath loosed, and the golden bowl broken, Who formed them so precious. Be still! it is God. A sage hath departed! the cities sit weeping; From land unto land does the gloom spread away. The seas give their wail to the winds o'er them sweeping-- The spirit, that spanned them, hath passed from the clay! His form, pale and cold, the dark mansion encloses; Around it, Philanthropy, Science and Art Their tears for their friend, as in death he reposes, Shower warm o'er the hand, and the head, and the heart. But there, while affection her tribute is giving, The beauty, the grandeur, the power of his mind The grave cannot hide! in his deeds he is living; He shines in the light he diffused for mankind! That mind, as a guide that trod paths on the ocean Its marks o'er the billowy desert to place, While man has a heart, and the deep is in motion, The wide world shall honor, the mariner trace. The stars in their courses to grasp and to measure, His eye loved the blue arch of ether to climb; His soul rose beyond them to lay up a treasure More bright than the stars, more enduring than time. And here, while the sorrowing Salem[2] is shrouded In weeds, for the son of her pride and her love, 'T is his to behold, with a vision unclouded, The glories unveiled of the SALEM above. With BOWDITCH inscribed, for the whole earth's revering, In letters of light to each point beaming round, A monument formed of his works, now is rearing Its head, where with clusters of planets 't is crowned. [2] His birth-place. THE BURIAL OF SCHILLER. The still and solemn, shadowy hour, When Saturday in Sabbath dies, O'er Weimar hangs; with clouds that lower And veil in black the moon and skies. Lo! from yon mansion lights appear, Pale glimmering through the midnight gloom. A coffined form is on the bier, And thence borne forward to the tomb. The funeral train, how sad and slow They follow that cold sleeping clay; While sighs and sobs of bitter wo Sound deep along the silent way. And now, the open grave beside, That dismal bier the bearers rest; And heavier waves of sorrow's tide Roll mighty o'er each mourner's breast. From him who slumbers in the shroud, As tremblingly they lift the pall, The moon rends off her veil of cloud, And o'er him lets her lustre fall. She beams her silvery, soft adieu. And is again in darkness hid; As if affrighted, thus to view The name on that dread coffin lid. For 't is her lover, now no more-- Her friend, whom they to dust consign! And ne'er again is she to pour Her light,--for eyes like his to shine. 'T is done,--the fearful, final rite, Too sacred for the glare of day, Has passed beneath the shadowy night-- Earth, earth has closed o'er SCHILLER's clay! But, hark! the heavens in thunder groan; They weep in torrents o'er his bed; And searching, fiery bolts are thrown, As if to find and wake the dead. These funeral honors, so sublime, Befit him well to whom they 're paid; And, at the birth of holy time, 'T is meet his dust at rest be laid. His spirit, bright with heavenly fire, Has burned its way through mortal strife; And gained its high, intense desire To solve the mystery of life. It is the budding month of May: This passing storm will call the bloom A tribute nature soon will pay, To dress her deathless Poet's tomb. FUNERAL HYMN FOR PRESIDENT HARRISON. A wo-stricken people, in sorrow we gather! The dawn of our glory, our hopes full in bloom Are changed, with the face of our Chieftain, our Father, To sable and cypress to hang round his tomb. While pale in the shroud lies the Patriot sleeping, A light, that for earth is no longer to burn, Removed from its place, a sad nation is weeping; And dark, where it shone, falls the shade of an urn. When loud, through the land, hill and valley and mountain Were sounding his name, and reflecting its beams, The death-angel's wand opened griefs bitter fountain, To quench their warm joys with its far-flowing streams. Alas! that the spoiler so early must sever A tie, which the hearts of a country had bound To him, who is gone--who is gone, and forever, To join the bright hosts who their Saviour surround! Our Father in heaven, yet grant us another, Like him, who has left us, as orphans, below! O did not the Sage on his dear younger Brother, When called to thy presence, his mantle bestow? To Thee, who, from darkness, thy children hast stricken, We cry with our wound, asking balm from the Tree, Whose leaves heal the nations: Hear, hear us, and quicken Our wandering feet to return unto Thee! DIRGE FOR FELICIA HEMANS. They hovered around her, an angel band: They listened her notes to hear. The voice was one of their own bright land; But stained was the harp in their sister's hand, With marks of the falling tear. They saw she had wreathed it with deathless flowers; While many a beauteous leaf, That looked like the growth of their heavenly bowers, Was pale with the shade of her darksome hours, Or wet with the dews of grief. Then gently from under her hand they took Her harp, and laid it aside: The tremulous chords, at her parting look And the farewell sweep of her fingers, shook, And snapped as her numbers died. The angels had whispered of joys above, And wooed her with them to soar, Till spreading her wings like a peaceful dove, Her spirit arose for a world of love To wander on earth no more. BRITANNIA, drop thy heaviest tear! O weep! it will be forgiven, That, fain we had kept in her bondage here A soul so pure, and a voice so dear Had longer withheld from heaven. SHE DIED, AS DAWNED HER NATAL DAY. She died, as dawned her natal day! Amid the buds and flowers of May Her spirit left the beauteous clay, In death's deep slumber here; And mounting up her starry way, Attained that holier sphere, Where falls no night o'er birth-day light-- No sorrow brings a tear. The joy and glory of the skies With radiance fill her heavenly eyes, Where thornless flowers around her rise, And founts that ne'er shall fail; While here her form so lowly lies All silent, cold and pale; Where dews distil, and night-winds chill Moan through the shadowy vale. WRITTEN IN AN ALBUM, AFTER THE LINES OF A DECEASED FRIEND. Close to the lines that her dear hand had traced, Who took so soon an angel's form on high-- After her name is my memorial placed For thee, my friend, and it shall tell thee why. I find a sweetness where her spirit breathed: A sacred halo round her name is thrown; So, with the flowers that here her fingers wreathed To borrow life from them, I twine my own. Fresh in thy heart and mine her memory lives, Fragrant and fair, and thornless in its bloom: Here with the precious odor that it gives, I fain my simple offering would perfume. Then, whatsoe'er the change that comes to me-- Though death or duty put me far away, These silent leaves may still unfold to thee The wish of one who was thy friend to-day. Peace be to thee--long life, and joy, and health The blest allotment of thy sojourn here; The portion of a child of God, thy wealth, When time must close, and earth shall disappear! THE SOVEREIGN OF BABYLON. The monarch has opened his banqueting hall For his thousand lords, and his ladies all! The sparkling wine to each guest is poured, And mirth swells high at the festal board, Where none hath the heart more careless and light, Than he, whose glory must end to-night. With the cup and the revel the king grows bold-- He calls for the vessels of silver and gold; The spoils his idolatrous father brought, 'Mid the impious deeds which that proud one wrought, From the temple of God, at Jerusalem, That he and his nobles may drink from them. Each sacred vessel they fill and raise To a laughing lip, as it speaks the praise Of the gods of metal, of wood and stone, But mocks at the name of the Holy One, Whose finger this hour shall come so near:-- That lip will quiver and blanch with fear. Monarch! what's there, on the lighted wall, That can fix thy gaze and thy spirit appall? Why is thy countenance changed, O king? Is it one of thy gods this awe can bring, Which makes thy knees together to smite, Thine eye so wild, and thy cheek so white? "A hand! a hand! it hath written a line! And who will the terrible words define? A chain of gold shall encircle his neck-- A vesture of scarlet his form shall deck-- And the third, as ruler, shall be that seer, With honor and power throughout Chaldea!" Not all the wise and the learned of thine, Poor impotent one, shall explain that line! But the captive of Judah, him thy queen Has bid thee summon--let him be seen! His eye prophetic receives its sight From the Being, who caused the hand to write. The slave is brought to the potentate! To spurn his gifts, but to read his fate; To whom 't is inscribed on the lofty wall, "Thou art weighed, found wanting, and now must fall! Thy kingdom is numbered--the Persian and Mede Shall hence to thy throne and thy power succeed!" They come!--the foemen--nor sword nor flight, Shall win for that monarch the morning light! The haughty head where the crown was set, In dust is pillowed--with gore is wet! Ye, who are trusting in honor and gold, Look on him now, and your strength behold! THE DEER STRICKEN BY TORCH-LIGHT. The arrow! the arrow is fast in his side! And still through the forest they follow The poor stricken deer, that has nowhere to hide, And dared not to pause where the cool waters glide, When, leaping the brook, he would almost have died, One draught from its ripple to swallow. That deep-planted arrow! O how can he bear The anguish of feeling it quiver, When shook by the branches, the wave, or the air, As forward he bounds, but without heeding where, From thicket to crag, with the force of despair, To plunge in the cold, sweeping river? They hunted him hard, till the sun in the west Had sunk, while their aim he evaded. At evening, he sought a calm refuge of rest, And dropped from pursuit, by his terrors oppressed, Beneath the close branches, in verdure full-dressed, By night and the covert o'ershaded. But ah, the poor deer! they had doomed him to die! For near the green turf where he laid him, They lighted the torch, and they brandished it high; It glared through the boughs on his tender black eye, That fatally shone for the death-shaft to fly; His beauty, his beaming betrayed him: He cannot by flying now loosen the dart, The end of his tortures to quicken, By letting the life in one blood-gush depart. He seeks a retreat, like the warm, wounded heart, When, lone, slow, and silent, the victim of art, It dies, as a deer that is stricken. THE DEATH OF SAPPHIRA.[3] Sapphira, Sapphira, awake! Alas! she is gone in the sleep That but the archangel can break; For life hath no slumber so deep. 'T is death! his pale ashes are cast On those withered lips, where but now An insult to Heaven was passed; His dumbness hath followed the vow. A bolt from above, swift and sure, Hath blasted the pride of the clay; The spirit, in boldness secure, In guilt hath been stricken away. O child of delusion! to stand The chosen of Jesus among, To cover the fraud of thy hand, By falsehood to him on thy tongue! How vain, the deceit of the heart To shroud in a mantle so frail! Its perfidy, thus by its art. To think from Omniscience to veil! Lost woman! but three hours before, The form of thy partner in sin Was borne, wan and cold, from the door, Where thou didst so rashly come in. And they, who had carried him out, The clods o'er his bosom to lay, Were waiting, the threshold about, To bear thee to darkness away. Sapphira, could Mercy restore, Or Pity thy spirit recall, To light up its dwelling once more, It should not thus hopelessly fall. But Mercy besought thee in vain, From death's awful brink to recede; To shun the despair and the pain Where she is forbidden to plead. And Pity's warm tear-drops must roll The more, that she cannot relume The clay whence the self-wounded soul Hath rushed to a suicide's doom. How potent, how maddening the love, O gold, of a mortal must be, To challenge an arm from above-- To stake earth and heaven for thee! For Justice to Judgment will call; And who shall their coming abide, When wrath the most fearful of all, "The wrath of the Lamb," is defied? [3] This piece originally illustrated an engraving. WILLIAM AT SEA. Whilst thou art away, where the proud waves are swelling Beneath thy light bark, ever mindful of thee, The days of thine absence, at home we are telling, And counting the hours of our William at sea. And thou, whether cradled to sleep by the billow, Or watching the sport of the spray and the foam, If pensive on deck, or in dreams on thy pillow, We know hast thy soul rapt with visions of home. We know, when the sun mounts the east in his glory, Or smiles a "good night," as the west he descends, Thy heart, pointing back, to itself tells the story Of mansion paternal, and kindred and friends. And when at the morning and evening devotion, While bending with offerings of praise and of prayer, To God we commend thee afar on the ocean, We feel thou art kneeling for us to him there. While months on the waters, long months are before thee, The two fluid worlds thou art tossing between-- The cold deep below, and the skies bending o'er thee, Alone by their changes will vary the scene. Or, if a bright isle, on the flood-waste upstarting, Rude ocean's green oasis, rest thy glad eye, 'T will fade as a cloud--as a phantom departing, 'T will sink in the circle that bounds sea and sky. Should some white-winged ship, with her light pennon streaming, Thy heart on that wide watery desert to cheer, Arise, like a star through night's solitude beaming, With meteor swiftness she 'll soon disappear. And when the coy sea-bird, a wild ether-sailor, Comes near on her passage, for one language more, O! how wilt thou long, ere she flies thee, to hail her, To ask whither bound, and the tidings from shore! Yet, while so unstable, so pathless and lonely, Thy way o'er that desolate deep may be found, 'T is marked with the impress of Deity only; His merciful arms will thy frailty surround. 'T is grand, 't is ennobling, while feeling and knowing His presence is power, and his banner is love, To look from that flood, to the firmament showing Bright shadowings-forth of his glory above. And, William, though tempest and terrors assail thee-- Though clouds rolled on clouds hide the stars and the sun, Thy soul's chosen Friend never, never will fail thee! Winds and waves but obey that omnipotent ONE. While o'er and around thee thick darkness may gather; When wide yawns the deep, and the surges swell high, Thy spirit may hear the kind voice of her Father, Still whispering, "Be of good cheer; it is I." And safe may he bear thee through perils and changes Besetting his course, who so widely would roam, Then speed thy return from the land of the Ganges, From pagod and painim! Dear William, come home. Come home, where the eyes beam through tears to behold thee; Where arms open wide to receive thee will be; And promise, while yet to the heart they infold thee To be, never after, our William at sea! MY PORTRAIT. Well, thou art done, cold, speechless thing; Yet, in thy silence, with the power A crowd of feelings deep to bring Unknown until the present hour. But wherefore done, to life so true? Not human pride, nor vanity Could ask the artist hand to do, And show the world a deed like thee. And was it simple most, or kind To have upon the canvass cast My semblance, thus to leave behind My shadow, when myself am past? I know not if another eye Will ever weep beside thee, more Than mine does now, I know not why-- It never dropped such tears before. I view thee as a piece, composed To last, when I have passed from sight-- When time and earth to me are closed, To be in time and earthly light. Perhaps 't is this, that makes me weep-- The thought that I shall pass away, And those, who have thee then to keep, May glance at thee, and still be gay. But why should grief be felt by me, For fear that others will not grieve? And what to others then will be A shade of life, that I may leave? Still, from their deep, mysterious spring Gush up these hot, resistless tears; Whilst thou, cold, heartless, stoic thing, Dost wear a smile that 's set for years. Years! Ah, but then, when years shall wipe From being every line of thee, The spirit, which thy prototype Enshrined, shall live eternally! THE WIDOW'S ONLY SON. She wrapped her in her sable cloak, And walked beside the sea; But seldom of her sorrow spoke,-- Too full of grief was she! 'T was this that made her heart so sad, To view the ocean wide: The only son, that widow had, Went out to sea and died. And then, in that great, rolling deep, With solemn, tearful eyes, His mess-mates lowered him down, to sleep Till all the dead shall rise. But where, among those waters vast, With ceaseless fall and swell, Her child to that repose had passed, The mother none could tell. She therefore questioned wave on wave, As up they heaved to shore, If they had rolled across his grave, Whom she must see no more. And often, when she marked a ship With full, returning sail, The color would forsake her lip, And speech and vision fail. For, O! she thought about the one That spread its canvass white, To waft away her only son Forever from her sight! But still, amid the bitter grief Which wrung that widow's heart, Her spirit felt the sweet relief That faith and hope impart. She knew her son had ever kept The path to heavenly rest-- That, when he sank in death, he slept Upon a Saviour's breast. "My heavenly Father," she would say, "I know the troubled sea But holds from me the precious clay: My child 's at home with thee!" THE YOUNG MOTHER. Composed in its beauty, the fair infant slept; But still the young mother sat by it and wept: She rocked not the cradle, she sang not the song, The sleep of her dear, only child to prolong. The same fleecy cover, so soft and so warm, That oft wrapped it sleeping, lay light o'er its form; Its pillow was downy, and smooth was its bed, And yet, that sad mother! her fond bosom bled. She knew that no dream of her babe, in its rest, Was now of her voice, or its home on her breast; She caught not the sound nor the balm of its breath: She knew that her little one slumbered in death! A hand with the pencil was called to portray The features and form of her child as it lay; But false were the hues and the touches of art To paint the bright image enshrined in her heart. Its lustre was drawn from a glory on high: No pencil of earth could the likeness supply; Nor yet on the canvass was mortal to trace A smile the pure spirit had left on that face. The skies, as they opened, their guest to receive, Had shed, on the dust they allured it to leave, A sign of the peace, of the joy, and the love, Encircling for aye the young angel above. That mother rose calm, when the beautiful clay Must be from her sight laid forever away! The gloom left her soul, as a cloud leaves the sun; It whispered, "Thy will, O my Father, be done!" EVENING AT ANDOVER SEMINARY-HILL. I stood on that majestic height, The lofty Hill of Andover, Where sacred science holds the light That beams to distant lands from her. For there the school of sages stands, Where, from afar, disciples meet For lore divine, in holy bands To sit and learn at Wisdom's feet. Within its consecrated walls Is kept and taught Jehovah's will:-- The LAW, whose voice in thunder falls-- The GOSPEL, whispering, "_Peace! be still!_" The structures while I viewed around, I seemed to breathe Mount's Zion's air; I set my foot with awe profound, As if the ark of God were there. Each earthly care was calm and dumb, For holier thoughts the soul to fill; As if the Shechinah had come To rest upon that reverend hill. A mellow glory crowned its head; And from its foot, in landscape wide, Profusely nature's charms were spread, Till in the distance vision died. It was a summer day's decline: The drowsy flowers began to close; The breezes lulled, that stirred the vine; And all things tended to repose. The sun, adown the western skies, Was sinking fast to pass from view, Calm as the righteous when he dies To earth, in heaven to live anew. And thence, on edifice and site, His golden smile was backward cast, As if he loved that favored height To bless the longest and the last. In eastern splendor, then arrayed, The full-orbed moon arose serene, Through evening's hush and night's cool shade To throw her lustre o'er the scene. Her silvery vesture wrapped in sheen The stately seminary pile, And fell on tree, and flower, and green, Where pearly dews distilled the while. And through the chapel's crystal shone Her light, within the place of prayer, Till bright-winged angels, from the throne Above, seemed met and hovering there. It was a scene--it was an hour A spirit bowed in dust to raise Ennobled, till its every power, Awaked to joy, was tuned to praise. Clear as that sun, fair as that moon, Shall thy dear Zion rise and shine Above her foes--Ah! Lord, how soon?-- When shall the ends of earth be thine? HYMN OF THE PARTING CLASS. SUNG BY THEOLOGICAL STUDENTS. We feel the parting angel's hand Is in our midst, to loose the band So close, so sacred, and so dear, That long hath bound us, brethren, here. No more within this hallowed place, United at the throne of grace, Our prayers shall rise--our voices pour In praise, when this, our song is o'er. To each we hear the Saviour say We to his work must hence away; For great the field--the laborers few! What wilt thou, Lord, have us to do? O send thy Spirit from above To fire our hearts with heavenly love; And light our lips with truth, that we May, witnesses, go forth for thee. And may we count all else as loss To spread the glory of thy cross-- From shades and death redeemed, to bring The priceless jewels of our King. On distant islands of the sea-- On heathen shores our lot may be, To dying souls to bear the bread And balm of life on Calvary shed. Yet, though our lines be marked afar, And some beneath a foreign star, We may look upward to the Sun Of righteousness, and still be one. And when our works of faith are past, In joy we 'll meet on high at last; And there, in praise, our voices swell The song, where enters no farewell. THE SPECKLED ONE. Poor speckled one! none else will deign To waft thy name around; So, let me take it on my strain, To give it air and sound. Yes--air and sound, low child of earth! For these are oft the things That give a name its greatest worth, Its gorgeous plumes and wings. But do not shun me thus, and hop Affrighted from my way. Dismiss thy terrors--turn, and stop; And hear what I may say. Meek, harmless thing, afraid of man? This truly should not be. Then calmly pause, and let me scan My Maker's work in thee. For both of us to him belong; We 're fellow-creatures here; And power should not be armed with wrong, Nor weakness filled with fear. I know it is thy humble lot To burrow in a hole-- To have a form I envy not, And that without a soul. In motion, attitude and limb I see thee void of grace; And that a look supremely grim, Reigns o'er thy solemn face. But thou for this art not to blame; Nor should it make us load With obloquy, and scorn, and shame The honest name of TOAD. For, though so low on nature's scale-- In presence so uncouth, Thou ne'er hast told an evil tale Of falsehood, or of truth. Thy thoughts are ne'er on malice bent-- Nor hands to mischief prone; Nor yet thy heart to discontent; Though spurned, and poor and lone. No coveting nor envy burns In thy bright golden eye, That calm and innocently turns On all below the sky. Thy cautious tongue and sober lip No words of folly pass, Nor, are they found to taste and sip The madness of the glass. Thy frugal meal is often drawn From earth, and wood, and stone; And when thy means by these are gone, Thou seem'st to live on none. I hear that in an earthen jar Sealed close, shut up alive, From food, drink, air, sun, moon and star, Thou 'lt live and even thrive: And that no moan, or murmuring sound Will issue from the lid Of thy dark dwelling under ground, When it is deeply hid. Thou hast, as 't were, a secret shelf Whereon is a supply, Of nourishment within thyself, Concealed from mortal eye. Methinks this self-sustaining art 'T were well for us to know, To keep us up in flesh and heart, When outer means grow low. Could we contain our riches thus, On such mysterious shelves, Why, none could rob or beggar us; Unless we lost ourselves! But ah! my Toadie, there 's the rub, With every human breast-- To live as in the cynic's tub, And yet be self-possessed! For, how to let no boast get round Beyond our tub, to show That we in head and heart are sound, Is one great thing to know. And yet, the prison-staves and hoop To let no murmur through, However hard we find the coop, Is greater still to do. Then go, thou sage, resigned and calm; Amid thy low estate, And to thy burrow bear the palm For victory over fate. We conquer, when we meekly bear The lot we cannot shape, And hug to death the ills and care From which there 's no escape. THE MOON OF A WINTRY NIGHT. Moon, thou art wading through the gathered snow, That o'er us, on the fields of ether spread, Threatens, ere morning to be here below, To lie where our poor mortal feet must tread. Thy face is muffled in a gelid haze, That shrouds its lustre like a frozen veil; And kills the twinkling of the starry rays, Till all on high looks cheerless, dim, and pale. It gives almost the ague, to behold The skies so rayless, yet so far from dark; As when our hearth's white ashes, tired and cold, We stir in vain to find one pleasant spark. Yet, by to-morrow's eve our parts may shift, And thou be shining there, serene and clear, While we are hedged by many a frigid drift; Or sleigh-bells shrill may pierce the tingling ear. How dreary then the scene for thy mild beams To light, and for the burning stars to view! The hard ice coating all the lakes and streams, And one dead white where late gay flowerets grew. The naked trees, that stand with buried feet, Like skeletons, will slender shadows throw On what seems spread as nature's winding-sheet, While her slain beauties lie concealed below. Then, but to look abroad on vale and hill, Where one pale uniform invests the whole, Though it should make one's vital current chill, It must not let in winter to the soul! It must not bring a frost upon the heart, To kill affection's tendrils--friendship's root, Where vernal shoots and buds should ever start, And grow with summer flowers and autumn fruit: Nor cause the streams of thought to be congealed, Or, pressed beneath incumbent ice, grow low; But, like the fount that irrigates the field, Make bloom and verdure spring, where'er they flow. It must not make our shrinking fancies flee, Like birds of summer from the cold withdrawn; But wise, the mind should, like the prudent bee, On honey banquet, though the flowers are gone. Nor must it strike the hopeful spirit dumb, Or quench the beaming of her upturned eye, Or close her ear, or make her members numb, Ere her thank-offerings on the altar lie. And yet, fair Moon, methinks I like the best To see thy silvery lustre sprinkled here, When these bare branches all appear full-dressed, In some more gentle season of the year. I love to see it, mingled with the dew, Falling to bathe the sleeping buds and flowers; And soft, and silent, coolly streaming through The whispering leaves, that clothe the summer bowers. I love to see thy beaming mantle trail Along the flower-sprent borders of the rill, With rich, deep shadows stamped, o'erspread the vale, Or bind the forehead of the silent hill. I love to see thee through the foliage peep, Where, one soft hour before, the robin sung Her vesper song; the while, in downy sleep, With peaceful breast she guards her callow young. I love to see thee, when the whip-poor-will Moans in the hedge behind the cottage-eaves; And when the plaintive crickets, hidden, trill Their harvest-hymn among the golden sheaves. But these are tender memories--ay, and more-- Fresh budding hope from memory's root that grows, To see earth clothed in beauty as before, When thou and we have struggled through the snows. Then come, sweet Moon, and fondly smile on me, From thy pure azure home, with face serene, While I will look abroad, and up to thee, And bless the great Creator of the scene. Others may call thee fickle--faithless--strange, When veiled in part, or wholly from their view; Yet, though twelve times a year thou _seems't_ to change, Again twelve times I ever find thee true. 'T is our gross planet, heaving misty shrouds, Or rolled before thee, that our darkness brings, Just as earth's bulk or vapor hides or clouds Our glorious view of higher, holier things. TOM TAR. I 'll tell you now about Tom Tar, The sailor stout and bold, Who o'er the ocean roamed so far, To countries new and old. Tom was a man of thousands; he Would ne'er complain nor frown, Though high and low the wind and sea Might toss him up and down. Amid the waters dark and deep, He had the happy art, When all around was storm, to keep Fair weather in his heart. Though winds were wild, and waves were rough, He 'd always cast about, And find within he 'd calm enough To stand the storms without. "For naught," said Tom, "is ever gained By sighs for what we lack; Nor can it mend a vessel strained, To let our temper crack. "And sure I am, the worst of storms, That any man should dread, Is that, which in the bosom forms, And musters to the head." Serene, and ever self-possessed, His mess-mates he would cheer, And often put their fears to rest, When dangers gathered near. If on the rocks the ship was cast, And surges swept the deck, Tom Tar was ever found the last, Who would forsake the wreck. And when his only hat and shoes The waters plucked from him, Why, these, he felt, were small to lose, Could he keep up and swim! Then through the billows, foam, and spray, That rose on every hand, He 'd, somehow, always find a way Of getting safe to land. The secret was, the fear and love Of Heaven had filled his soul: His trust was firm in One above, Howe'er the seas might roll. And Tom had sailed to many a shore, And many a wonder seen: The stories he could tell would more Than fill a magazine. He 'd seen mankind in every state, Almost, that man can know; But envied not the rich and great, Nor scorned the poor and low. The monarch in his sight had stood, Superb, in glittering vest; The savage, too, that roams the wood, In skins and feathers dressed. The tribes of many an isle he knew; And beasts, and birds, and flowers, And fruits, of many a shape and hue, In lands remote from ours. He 'd seen the wide-winged albatross Her breast in ocean lave; And bold sea-lions, playing, toss Their heads above the wave. He 'd seen the dolphin, while his back Went flashing to the sun, A swarm of flying fish attack, And swallow every one! The porpoise and the spouting whale Had sported in his view; And hungry sharks pursued his sail, As if they 'd eat the crew. And ever, when Tom Tar got home, The children, at their play, Were glad to have the sailor come, And greet them by the way. Then, oft, some curious stone, or shell, The laughing girls and boys Would find, that on their aprons fell, To put among their toys. "These pearly shells," said he, "I found Where gloomy waters roar: These polished stones, so smooth and round, Rough surges washed ashore. "Though small to us a pebble seems, 'T is made and marked by One, Who gave the warmth, and lit the beams Of yon great shining sun. "And when these pretty shells I find, Along the ocean strand, Their beauteous finish brings to mind Their Maker's perfect hand. "When on the wildest shore I'm thrown, And far from human eye, I think of him who made the stone, And shell, and sea, and sky. "For he 's my friend, and I am his, Though cold and rough the blast: My safest guide I know he is, Where'er my lot is cast." When Tom passed on, the children said, "These treasures from afar He brought us! Blessings on his head! For he 's a good Tom Tar!" THE SEAMAN'S HYMN. Landmen, on your downy pillows, While your eyes are sealed in sleep, Seamen, tossed 'mid foam and billows, Roam, for you, a boisterous deep. When the glorious light of day Is on your homes so peaceful dawning, Along our pathless, troubled way The surge swells high, the flood is yawning. When earth's flowers to you are blooming, Or your hearths are bright and warm; We behold the wild waves booming, Mount the shrouds, and brave the storm. Singing birds your hearing greet-- Your hearts the kindred tone rejoices; While winds, that on our canvass beat, And roaring ocean join their voices. Then, to meet the High and Holy, When ye to his throne repair, O before him, meek and lowly, Bow for us, as suppliants there! When his blessed day appears, The dearest, best of all the seven, Your souls the gospel herald cheers; But none tells us of rest and heaven. Zion, bid thy sons and daughters Often, on the bended knee, Cry to Him, who rules the waters, For the wanderers o'er sea! Now, to Thee, the seaman's Friend, Our guide--our light--our ark abiding, Our Saviour, we our all commend, While time's rude waves in frailty riding. THE MARINER'S SONG OF DEPARTURE. While o'er the bright bay, With her streamers at play, Our bark in her beauty is gliding, As brothers, are we, The glad sons of the sea, Our own darling element riding. Good pilot, adieu; For the skies are all blue; And yonder, blue billows are bounding. We speed from the port, To be off by the fort, While her gun to the sunrise is sounding. We leave all behind, That a warm heart can bind, In home, love, and friendship endearing; While hope flies before, For a far, foreign shore, As the hand at the rudder is steering. And well do we know The proud waters below, That hence are by us to be ridden; 'Mid the corals and caves There are mariners' graves, Dark wrecks, and lost treasures deep hidden. Yet, before our frail bark, Be the way light or dark, Our Sun, and the Star that we follow, Is He, who unbinds Or enchains the strong winds; Whose hand holds the seas in its hollow. If o'er the bright skies The wild storm-spirit rise, And spread his black wings full of thunder, Our canvass we 'll reef, Or heave-to for relief, And safely his pinions pass under. And so, 'mid the strife On the flood-waves of life, To Heaven in our ark lowly bending For help would we cry, Till the dove, from on high, Appears with the peace-branch descending. Thus, we've friend, love, and home, Wheresoe'er we may roam The wide seas, from pole to equator-- We 've a light, and high-tower, In the name and the power Of him, who is ocean's Creator. THE SEA-EAGLE'S FALL. An Eagle, on his towering wing, Hung o'er the summer sea; And ne'er did airy, feathered king Look prouder there than he. He spied the finny tribes below, Amid the limpid brine; And felt it now was time to know Whereon he was to dine. He saw a noble, shining fish So near the surface swim, He felt at once a hungry wish To make a feast of him. Then straight he took his downward course; A sudden plunge he gave; And pouncing, seized, with murderous force, His tempter in the wave. He struck his talons firm and deep, Within the slippery prize, In hope his ruffian grasp to keep; And high and dry to rise. But ah! it was a fatal stoop, As ever monarch made; And, for that rash--that cruel swoop, He soon most dearly paid! The fish had too much gravity To yield to this attack. His feet the eagle could not free From off the scaly back. He 'd seized on one too strong and great; His mastery now was gone! And on, by that prepondering weight, And downward, he was drawn. Nor found he here the element Where he could move with grace; And flap, and dash, his pinions went, In ocean's wrinkled face. They could not bring his talons out, His forfeit life to save; And planted thus, he writhed about Upon his gaping grave. He raised his head, and gave a shriek, To bid adieu to light: The water bubbled in his beak-- He sank from human sight! The children of the sea came round, The foreigner to view. To see an airy monarch drowned, To them was something new! Some gave a quick, astonished look, And darted swift away; While some his parting plumage shook, And nibbled him for prey. O! who that saw that bird at noon So high and proudly soar, Could think how awkwardly--how soon, He 'd fall to rise no more? Though glory, majesty, and pride Were his an hour ago, Deprived of all, that eagle died, For stooping once too low! Now, have you ever known or heard Of biped, from his sphere Descending, like that silly bird, To buy a fish so dear? THE CAGED LION. Lion, like a captive king, Sad behind thy prison grate, Monarch, how I long to bring Back to thee thy lost estate! Where thy royal kindred live-- Where thy native sky is warm, Sufferer, how I long to give Freedom to that noble form! Gladly would I know thee there, Bounding over Afric's plain, Wildly, with the desert air Wafting wide thy flowing mane. Are there words that can describe What thou wast, at liberty, When "The Lion of the tribe Of Judah" names his type in thee? Here, beneath thy keeper's hand, Where the blasts of winter freeze, Think'st thou of that palmy land, Thy mild country o'er the seas? Seen but through thy prison bars, Round thee set so strong and thick, Do not sun, and moon, and stars Make thy cowering spirit sick? Grace, and majesty, and power Were thy gifts by nature made; Yet, in one unhappy hour, All to lose, wast thou betrayed. When thou first was snared and caught, Never after to be free, How thy mighty spirit wrought In thee, like a troubled sea! But thou didst not, couldst not think Of the deep indignity, To which thou then wast doomed to sink-- Of the exile thou must be. Oh! that quenched and languid eye Tells me of a pining heart: Homesick prisoner, sooner die Than remain the thing thou art. Liberty to me and mine-- Liberty is life and breath! So no less to thee and thine-- Bonds to both but lingering death. THE TRAVELLER AT THE RED SEA. At last have I found thee, thou dark, rolling sea! I gaze on thy face, and I listen to thee, With spirit o'erawed by the sight and the sound, While mountain and desert frown gloomy around. And thee, mighty deep, from afar I behold, Which God swept apart for his people of old-- That Egypt's proud army, unstained by their blood, Received on thy bed, to entomb in thy flood. I cast my eye out, where the cohorts went down: A throng of pale spectres, no waters can drown, With banner and blades, seem to rise on the waves, As Pharaoh's bold hosts rushed in arms to their graves. But quick from the light of the skies they withdraw, At silent Omnipotence shrinking with awe; And each sinks away in his billowy shroud, From him who walked here, clothed in fire and a cloud. I stand by the pass, the freed Hebrews then trod, Sustained by the hand of Jehovah, dry-shod; And think how the song of salvation, they sang, With praise to his name, through the wilderness rang. Our Father, who then didst thine Israel guide, Console, and rebuke in their wanderings wide, From these gloomy waters, through this desert drear, O still in life's maze, to thy pilgrim be near! Let sins, that would hold in their service, or slay The soul, that would break from their bondage away, Forever be drowned in the blood of thy Son, Who o'er sin and death hath the victory won. Whilst thou, day by day, wilt thy manna bestow, And give, for my thirst, the Rock-fountain to flow, Refreshed by the way, will I speed to the clime Of rest for the weary, beyond earth and time. THE HEBREW CAPTIVES. Our altars they razed, and our temples profaned! The blood of our prophets and kindred they drained! And us, from our desolate homes did they bear Afar, the cold chains of the Painim to wear. And they, who had carried us captive, drew nigh; They looked on our woes with an insolent eye; Our burdens were heavy, our fetters were strong; And then, they required of us mirth and a song! We hung up our harps on the willows to sleep; By Babylon's rivers we sat down to weep; The song of the Lord, as too holy to sound, We shut in our souls, on that dark heathen ground. We thought of our Zion, and sent her a sigh By each gentle breeze, that went silently by; But poured not the strains in the proud Painim's ear, That God and his angels will hearken to hear! FRAGMENTS FROM "ESTHER," A POEM. The monarch of Persia has wrapped o'er his breast The vesture, whose jewels emblazoned the throne: His lovely young queen, who in sackcloth is dressed, Is far from his presence, and weeping alone. * * * * * And who in behalf of her people shall sue For mercy? To whom will the sovereign give ear? 'T is death now to be, in his kingdom, a Jew-- 'T is death in his presence uncalled to appear. The wife of his bosom that peril will take! The helpless young Jewess, so gentle and fair, To live with her people, or die for their sake, Will go to her lord, and her nation declare. For little he deems that his idolized bride, The joy of his heart--the delight of his eyes, Is born of that race whom the Persians deride-- A people, his nation oppress and despise. There 's wine at the palace, and feasting, and mirth; In Esther's still chamber there 's fasting, and prayer; While he with the crown, has the homage of earth, She calls on her God her doomed people to spare. She thinks of her fathers in Egypt's dark land-- She thinks of the bush, as in Horeb it burned; She knows who the hearts of the kings hath in hand, To turn them, as rivers of water are turned. To him, for support, and for light to her mind, She sends up the cries of her soul from the dust; Then, rising to go to the king, is resigned To do this and perish, if perish she must. * * * * * With fasting and tears she is languid and pale; But o'er her young face beams the sunrise of soul; And flesh, though but feeble, and ready to fail, Is urged to its point by the spirit's control. The _woman_ within her is timid and faint; The _holy believer_, unawed and serene; She goes to the presence, adorned as a _saint_, With power that has never invested the _queen_. * * * * * And now are her people to safety restored-- To peace, and their rights, when resistance had failed: A woman in weakness, who drew on the Lord For strength, o'er the mighty of earth hath prevailed. Fair Jewess, the tears thou hast dropped in the dust, As pearls, to Jehovah are precious and bright. The hand, that in sorrow has here been thy trust, Will crown thee with joy in the kingdom of light. GONE IN HER BEAUTY. O! she is gone! the wintry blasts, that sweep Wild round her mansion, trouble not her sleep: Gone in her beauty! Fast the drifting snows Fall cold, but harmless, o'er her deep repose! Here, in her circle of its gem bereft, Love hath but tears to fill the place she left. Sigh calls to sigh, from aching bosoms drawn. Void gives to void the mournful echo, "_gone!_" Spring will return, and bring around her door Sweet opening flowers, their odors there to pour, Striving to win her forth, who planted them, Once more to smile that they adorn the stem. Yet, must they wait her, till they die away: She was a fairer, lovelier flower than they, Snapped off in blooming! ere a leaf could fade, Cast into darkness! wrapped in silent shade! O! she is gone; and where shall burdened grief Pour forth her fountains for the soul's relief? Not to the dust to nourish earthly weeds: They yield no balsam while the spirit bleeds! Not unto death let sorrow's waters flow, But to death's victor may the weeper go! His risen glory, chasing mortal gloom, Shows grief a rainbow, bending o'er the tomb. THE NUN. Fair penitent, with rosary, And cross and veil, in gloomy cell, What guilty deed was done by thee, To cause thee here immured to dwell? Come forward, and present thy cause; That we may clearly judge, and know If violated human laws Imprison and afflict thee so: Or if it be some secret sin, That haunts thy contrite soul with fears; And here sequesters thee within The place of fasting, gloom, and tears? Art thou the guiltiest of thy race? Why, thou art human, it is true; Which is alone enough for grace To have renewing work to do. But, can devotion, warm and deep, Thy duty's bounds so closely set, That faith may plough, and sow, and reap By trials shunned, instead of met? What ray of truth, revealed, would thus Make of a tender opening soul A close, dark blue convolvulus, And give its bloom this inward roll? Dost thou the never-fading crown Of life and joy intend to win, By here supinely sitting down, Where others but the race begin? And dost thou think to gain the palm By hiding from thy Saviour's foes; Or hope in Gilead's sacred balm A cure for self-inflicted woes? I never saw a Nun before; And therefore claim indulgence now, If I presume to question more Than courtesy might, else, allow: As one, then, who in darkness pleads, For light, I ask to be informed How, by a string of pegs and beads, A soul is raised, or fed, or warmed. Tell me, thou sober _cabalist_, What is the potent, hidden charm Hung on that string, or in its twist Contorted, for repelling harm? And is thy spirit kept so faint, It cannot mount to God above; But here must substitute a saint, In image, for a heavenly love? Has He, who lived and died for us-- Whose gifts are light and liberty, Left in his Word the _mitimus_ That here confines and fetters thee? Does He assign a living tomb For souls, endowed with vital grace; Or need surrounding convent gloom, To show the radiance of his face? And, pensive Nun, now what 's the chart That he has drawn, and left below, That by it every pious heart May follow on the Lord to know? Far from temptation, in retreat, Did he consume his earthly days? With houseless head, and weary feet, What were his works? and where his ways? O! get thy spirit's wings unfurled! Hide not thy candle, if 't is lit: Be _in_, but be not _of_ the world, If thou wouldst shine to lighten it. Come out, and show that face demure; And see, if, smit on either cheek, Thy righteous soul would then endure To turn the other, and be meek. For, let me tell thee, coy recluse, If we are gold, we must be tried; If stones, we must be hewn for use, Or by the builder cast aside. The axe and chisel, we must bear, To give us smoothness, shape, and size, Are in the world--the furnace there; For Heaven the gold and silver tries. If we are salt to salt the earth, Ah, then, our savor, to be known, Must be diffused; for what 's the worth Of salt _en masse_, boxed up alone? The touchstone, where we must inquire If we have safely hid our life, Is found in pitfall, flood, and fire, Allurements sweet, and bitter strife. Come out! behold the billowy seas, The flowery earth, and shining skies: Say wherefore God created these; And then, fair Nun, thy beauteous eyes. Was it for thee to turn and slight The glorious things he spread to view-- To give earth, ocean, air, and light, And freedom, for a dismal mew? O! if beneath some lawless vow To man, in self-delusion made, An heir of heaven is brought to bow, That vow were better broke than paid. What binds thee here? or who shall set His name endorsed a pledge for thee, When Christ has died to pay thy debt, And burst the tomb to make thee free? The world's the great arena, where The fight of faith must well be fought, And each good warrior seen to wear The armor for the victory wrought. How dost thou know but it may be Thy foe, thy tempter, who has found This cunning way to corner thee, To keep thee from the battle-ground? Come forth, thou timid, hampered one, And doff that outward, odd disguise, That cumbers thee, if thou wouldst run, Or fight the fight, to win the prize. Come! from the bushel take thy light, And give its radiance room to play; Bind on thy shoes and armor tight, And up, and to the field away! TREES FOR THE PILGRIM'S WREATH. Knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope; and hope maketh not ashamed. ROMANS v. 3-5. Tribulation, if by loss, Or by thorny gain, the cross, Thou art not a barren tree; Seeds of Patience drop from thee. Patience, bitter from thy root Upward, till we reach the fruit, Thou hast golden grains to sow, Whence Experience full shall grow. Broad Experience, rank and dark; Thick in leaves, and rough in bark; Through thy dubious shade we grope, Till we grasp the bough of Hope. Hope, we 're not ashamed, with thee Showered by drops from Calvary, When thy branches shoot and bloom Through a Saviour's broken tomb. Trees, whereof the pilgrim weaves For his crown the mingled leaves, Wreaths of you are rich and bright; Earth 's the shade, and heaven 's the light. THE MUSHROOM'S SOLILOQUY. O what, and whence am I, 'mid damps and dust, And darkness, into sudden being thrust? What was I yesterday? and what will be, Perchance, to-morrow, seen or heard of me? Poor, lone, unfriended, ignorant, forlorn, To bear the new, full glory of the morn, Beneath the garden wall I stand aside, With all before me, beauty, show, and pride. Ah! why did nature shoot me up to light, A thing unfit for use--unfit for sight; Less like her work, than like a piece of art, Whirled out and trimmed exact in every part? Unlike the graceful shrub and flexile vine, No fruit, nor branch, nor leaf, nor bud is mine. No humming-bird, nor butterfly, nor bee Will come to cheer, caress or flatter me. No beauteous flower adorns my humble head, No spicy odors on the air I shed; But here I 'm stationed in my sober suit, With only top and stem--I 've scarce a root. Untaught of my beginning and my end, I know not whence I sprang, or where I tend; Yet, I will wait and trust, and ne'er presume To question JUSTICE--I, a frail Mushroom! THE SPIRIT AND THE MOUNTAIN. Mountain, with thy firm old foot Fast beside the sea, What was in thy keeping put, Prisoned under thee? "Hark, and hear the shuddering ground! Feel it rock and quake! Struggling fires, beneath me bound, Strive their chains to break." Mountain, with a cloudy vest Girded o'er thy heart, Does it pierce thine aged breast, When its lightnings dart? "No:--beneath me far, the crash Of the bolt is felt: Here, the fiery chain and flash But adorn my belt." Mountain, with a snowy crown Stainless on thy brow, Wilt thou never cast it down-- Never, never bow? "When the mandate I shall hear From my Maker's throne, I will bow and disappear, Hence to be unknown." Mountain, holding proud and high Thine old hoary head, What is written on the sky, Thou so long hast read? "Brighter than the stars and sun Shining over me, I behold the name of ONE Thou must die to see!" Mountain, bold thine eloquence-- Glowing is thy speech; Mighty import flashes thence; What is it to teach? "Thoughts of Him, before whose breath I shall melt away; While of thee, soul--spirit, death Ne'er shall quench a ray!" THE FALL OF THE STATUE. A SCENE OF THE REVOLUTION. This declaration [of Independence] was received by the people with transports of joy. Public rejoicings took place in various parts of the Union. In New York, the statue of George III. was taken down; and the lead, of which it was composed, was converted into musket-balls. GOODRICH'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. There stood in New York, when, the times growing warm, All o'er our fair country had gathered the storm, Which wore in its coming, so fearful a form, But left us the rainbow of peace, An image of royalty, stately and proud-- A leaden old king, where his votaries bowed; While true friends of Liberty marked it, and vowed That its honors should speedily cease. And when our brave statesmen the article signed, Declaring us free, with pure freedom of mind, Columbia's true sons, feeling strongly inclined To learn how the statue was based, Assembled forthwith; and, besieging it, found That the king in head, body and limb was quite sound, And had of good lead in him many a pound, Which might be more usefully placed. Then, "Down with the ponderous George the Third!" From a mingling of voices together, was heard, With shoutings aloud, as they gave out the word, "Down with it! let it come down! We 'll soon transform his grave highness of lead, And turn him to balls from the feet to the head; And then shall the mouths of our muskets be fed With him of the throne and the crown. "So now for the fall! for our Sages have met, And their names to a broad Declaration have set, That they are resolved, from this moment, to get Of the king independent and free; And to give by their valor a nation her birth, Or to empty their veins, a free gift to the earth, In Liberty's name, to betoken her worth To us and the millions to be. "Columbia's wrongs have gone to the skies; 'T is time that her blood and her spirit should rise Above her oppressors, till tyranny flies, And leaves her unfettered, to bear The flag of a nation instead of a chain-- The palm of her triumph, 'mid weakness and pain, O'er them that were mighty, but struggled in vain To force her their shackles to wear. "And, no leaden monarch will we have to stand Proclaiming our vassalage here, in the land Of lovely Manhattan! We 'll each lend a hand To give him a jerk or a pull, And flat to the ground, in a trice, as we bring His dignified form, it shall merrily ding, To sound all around how we honor the king, And pay our respects to John Bull. "This, this is the season for trying men's souls, The nerves of their arms, and the worth of their polls! So, we 'll have his Majesty _over the coals_, And make him the first that shall _run_: When, heated to melting, he hides in the mould, We 'll hold him there still, till new-shapen and cold; Then, off he shall go, like a tale that is told, In the voice of the thundering gun! "The discomposed Sovereign with us shall unite, And fly at his friends for our cause in the fight, To scatter his subjects--to purchase our right-- The land of oppression to clear. And he, to whom, whizzing, his monarch shall come, In the form of a ball, 'mid the noise of the drum, The flashes and smoke, will have finished the sum Of his deeds as a royalist here!" Then, flat to the earth was his Eminence cast! The dust rose above him, and mounted the blast, While a bevy of Rome's feathered sentinels passed, Raised their wings, and huzzaed as he fell! But, how the proud royalist felt, when the lead Of his late British Majesty came at his head, While some dropped before it, and some turned and fled, Is more than a _Yankee_ can tell. THE BIRD'S MATERNAL CARE. The following is but versified statement of a touching, literal fact that occurred not long since a few rods from my own door. A shadowy tree, that grew beside Its city owner's door, Its branches threw so high and wide, That many a bird could sing, and hide Among the leaves it bore. A robin came, and built her nest In that green rustling tree. At evening, there she sank to rest And furled her weary wings, as blest As little bird could be. Upon her side her drowsy head, Beneath her folded wing, She pillowed, while the night-hours fled; When morning flushed the east with red, She 'd wake, and mount, and sing. Five pretty eggs of azure hue, In that soft nest she laid. So clear and vivid was their blue, Like polished balls they shone to view, Of purest sapphire made. And many a day she brooded o'er Those treasures, till they grew, In what the shells contained before, To something different--something more-- Young birds came peeping through! Five little baby birds were there, In that fond robin's nest, All callow; and their mother's care Was now to find their daily fare, And shield them with her breast. Her tiny game, or berries ripe From some far distant stem She 'd bring them; then her beak she 'd wipe, And sit upon a twig, and pipe A mother's tune to them. At length, the owner of the tree One dismal, stormy day, His window from the shade to free, The better in his room to see, Some branches lopped away. He dropped the very bough that hung A curtain o'er the nest. The sun burnt through the clouds, and flung His fire the helpless brood among, Till they were sore oppressed. Their tender mother then was seen To stand on weary feet, Where now they missed the leafy green, With one wing raised her babes to screen From sultry noontide heat. And, patient there, she day by day, Upon her nest's round edge, Stood up to keep the sun away, While, shaded thus, her nestlings lay Till time their forms could fledge. Then, when the master of the tree Beheld what love and care Within a mother bird could be, He wished in vain that he could see The bough still living there. Thus, thoughtless we may often pain Or grieve a feeling heart, Wherein the anguish must remain, While we may wish, but wish in vain, To lay or lull the smart. A good destroyed 's a fearful thing, And so 's a good undone! We, serving self, on self may bring A heavier ill--a keener sting Than what we sought to shun. 'T is little acts of good or ill, That make our vast account. No _one_, though great, does _all_ God's will Small drops the caves of ocean fill; And sands compose the mount. SONG. Little bird, little bird, with thy beautiful eye. Looking as if 't were cut out of a star, How do I know but it once was on high, Beaming through evening, sublime from afar? I cannot say what thy Maker divine, When he composed thee an optic so bright, Making the skill of his finger to shine, Drew from those high upper regions of light. Little bird, little bird, with thy spirit-like wings, Fleet as the air,--as the rainbow in hues, How can I tell but the Ruler of kings Formed them by those his blest ministers use? Were not the fancy-like tints of thy plume, Was not the delicate down of thy breast, Caught from the flowers that in Paradise bloom,-- Plucked from the couch where the weary ones rest? Little bird, little bird, with thy musical voice Tuned like a seraph's, deep, flowing, and clear, Was not thy melody, touching and choice, Taught by some angel, who visited here? What, what, pretty fairy! so soon must thou go, Fleet as a vision, without a reply, Just like all other bright treasures below, Charming a moment, to change or to fly? THE WHITE MOTH. Beware, pretty Moth, so unsullied and white, Beware of the lamp's dazzling rays! It is not a drop of the sun! but a light That shines to allure little rovers by night; Away! there is death in the blaze. O why didst thou come from thy covert of green, The vine, round my window so bright; And pop in to know what was here to be seen, Forsaking thy shield, and escaping thy screen, And hazarding life by the flight? The down on thy limbs and thy bosom so pure That flame would most fatally singe: And nothing thy beautiful wings can insure From harm and from pain beyond mending or cure, If caught by their delicate fringe. Return, giddy wanderer, safe to the vine; And breathe in the fresh evening air; Go, look at the stars, as they twinkle and shine; And cling to a leaf, or the tendrils that twine, My soft little eavesdropper, there! And then, by a song I will sing, thou shalt know, Why thus I have lifted my arm To scare thee away from thy luminous foe. That threw out its beams, as a snare, and a show To tempt the unwary to harm. For, I through the day, have been guarded by One, Who, greater and wiser than I, Has pitied my frailty; and forced me to shun Illusive temptations, where I might have run The peril of sporting to die. 'T was kindness from Him, to whose care I commend Myself through the darkness of night, That taught me so quick to come in, as a friend, Between thee and evil, thy life to defend; Pretty Moth, so unsullied and white. EDWARD AND CHARLES. The brothers went out with their father to ride, Where they looked for the flowers, that, along the way-side, So lately were blooming and fair; But their delicate heads by the frost had been nipped; Their stalks by the blast were all twisted and stripped; And nothing but ruin was there. "Oh! how the rude autumn has spoiled the green hills!" Exclaimed little Charles, "and has choked the bright rills With leaves that are faded and dead! The few on the trees are fast losing their hold, And leaving the branches so naked and cold, That the beautiful birds have all fled." "I know," replied Edward, "the country has lost A great many charms by the touch of the frost, Which used to appear to the eye; But then, it has opened the chestnut-burr too, The walnut released from the case where it grew; And now is our _Thanksgiving_ nigh! "Oh! what do you think we shall do on that day?" "I guess," answered Charles, "we shall all go away To Grandpa's; and there find enough Of turkeys, plum-puddings, and pies by the dozens, For Grandpa' and Grandma', aunts, uncles and cousins; And at night we 'll all play blind-man's-buff. "Perhaps we 'll get Grandpa' to tell us some stories About the old times, with their _Wigs_ and their _Tories_; And what sort of men they could be; When some spread their tables without any cloth, With basins and spoons, and the fuming bean-broth Which they took for their coffee and tea. "They 'd queer kind of sights, I have heard Grandma' say, About in their streets; for, if not every day, At least it was nothing uncommon, To see them pile on the poor back of one horse A saddle and _pillion_; and what was still worse, Up mounted a man and a woman! "The lady held on by the driver; and so, Away about town at full trot would they go; Or perhaps to a great country marriage-- To Thanksgiving-supper--to husking, or ball; Or quilting; for thus did they take nearly all Their rides, on an animal carriage. "I know not what _huskings_ and _quiltings_ may be; But Grandma' will tell; and perhaps let us see Some things, she has, long laid away:-- That stiff damask gown, with its sharp-pointed waist, The hoop, the craped-cushion, and buckles of paste, Which they wore in her grandparents' day. "She says they had buttons as large as our dollars, To wear on their coats with their square, standing collars: And then, there 's a droll sort, of hat, Which Mary once fixed me one like, out of paper, And said she believed 't was called, _three-cornered scraper_; Perhaps, too, she 'll let us see that. "Oh! a glorious time we shall have! If they knew At the South, what it is, I guess they 'd have one too; But I have heard somebody say, That, there, they call all the New England folks _Bumpkins_, Because we eat puddings, and pies made of pumpkins And have our good Thanksgiving-day." "I think, brother Charles," returned Edward, "at least, That they might go to church, if they do n't like the feast; For to me it is much the best part, To hear the sweet anthems of praise, that we give To Him, on whose bounty we constantly live:-- It is feasting the ear and the heart. "From Him, who has brought us another year round, Who gives every blessing, wherewith we are crowned, Their gratitude who can withhold? And now how I wish I could know all the poor Their Thanksgiving-stores had already secure, Their fuel, and clothes for the cold!" "I 'm glad," said their father, "to hear such a wish; But wishes alone, can fill nobody's dish, Or clothe them, or build them a fire. And now I will give you the money, my sons. Which I promised, you know, for your drum and your guns, To spend in the way you desire." The brothers went home, thinking o'er by the way, For how many comforts this money might pay, In something for clothing or food: At length they resolved, if their mother would spend it For what she thought best, they would get her to send it Where she thought it would do the most good. MUSIC OF THE CRICKETS. I cannot to the city go, Where all in sound and sight, Declares that nature does not know, Or do a thing aright. To granite wall, and tower, and dome My heart could never cling; Its simple strings are tied to home-- To where the crickets sing. I 'm certain I was never made To run a city race, Along a human palisade, That 's ever shifting place. The bustle, fashion, art and show Were each a weary thing; Amid them, I should sigh to go And hear the crickets sing. If there, I might no longer be Myself, as now I seem, But lose my own identity, And walk, as in a dream; Or else, with din and crowd oppressed, I 'd wish for sparrow's wing. To fly away, and be at rest, Where free the crickets sing. The fire-fly, rising from the grass A winged and living light, I would not give for all the gas, That spoils their city sight. Not all the pomp and etiquette Of citizen or king, Shall make my rustic heart forget The song, the crickets sing. I find in hall and gallery, Their figures tame and faint, To my wild bird, and brook, and tree, Without a touch of paint. And from the sweetest instrument Of pipe, or key, or string, I 'd turn away, and feel content To hear the crickets sing. O! who could paint the placid moon, That 's beaming through the bough Of yon high elm, or play the tune, That sounds beneath it now? Not all the silver of the mine, Nor human power could bring Another moon like her to shine, Or make a cricket sing. I know that, when the crickets trill Their plaintive strains by night, They tell us that, from vale and hill, The summer takes her flight. And were there no renewing Power, 'T would be a mournful thing, To think of fading leaf and flower; And hear the crickets sing. But, why should change with sadness dim Our eye, when thought can range Through time and space, and fly to him, Who is without a change? For he, who meted out the year, Will give another spring: He rolls at once the shining sphere, And makes the cricket sing. And when another autumn strips The summer leaves away, If cold and silent be the lips That breathed and moved to-day, The time I 've passed with nature's God Will cause no spirit sting, Though I 've adored him from the sod Whereon the crickets sing. CHILDHOOD'S DREAM. Give me back, give me back but my one infant dream, As it passed on the turf by my dear native stream, Where I slept from my play, while the wind tossed my hair, Till its ringlets, unbound, clasped the violets there. O return, fleeting time, the soft moments that flew By the calm sinking sun, and the fall of the dew, When, refreshing as light, and as dew to the flower O'er my young spirit came the blest dream of that hour! I remember the song of the bird, and the breeze With the perfumes it swept from the bloom of the trees, As my eyes gently closed; but the visions that stole Through my fancy's green bowers, come no more to my soul! They were sweet but to pass, as the odors that fled From the young flowers I crushed, while they pillowed my head; And like them, when they flew on the wings of the air, They are gone, and have left not a trace to tell where! They were clear as the sun in his mild, setting rays; They were pure as the stars, soon to kindle and blaze; But they 're gone! I have lost the dear dream of that sleep, As a bright planet drowned in the vast ether deep. Yet the face of my mother, through tears as she smiled, When she found, gently raised, and led home her lost child-- I shall see that loved face by time's stream evermore, Till I follow her home, where life's dreamings are o'er. THE FRUIT-TREE BLOSSOM. My flower, thou art as sweet to me. Thy form as full and fair-- As rich a fruit shall follow thee, As if thou hadst denied the bee The pure and precious gift, that he Wafts joyous through the air. The spices from thy bosom flow As freely round thee now, As if withheld an hour ago. Bestowing, thou canst still bestow; Though, whence thy gifts thou may'st not know, Or giving, tell me how. And future good, we yet shall find, Was hidden in thy heart; Its witness shall be left behind, When thou like all thy tender kind, Thy minutes summed, shalt be resigned Forever to depart. Thy ruin I would not forestall; Yet soon, I know, to thee Must come, what happens once to all:-- Thy life will fail, and thou must fall-- Must fade and perish, past recall, To vanish from the tree. Then, on the bough where thou wast sent To pass thy fleeting days, At work for which thine hours were lent, In silent, balmy, mild content, A rich and shining monument To thee will nature raise. Now, not in pride--in purpose high, Awhile in beauty shine; And speak, through man's admiring eye, Forbidding every passer by To wish to live, or dare to die With object less than thine. THE PLYMOUTH APPLE DECLINED. Visiting at the house of a friend in Boston, I was shown an apple which he told me had been sent to him from Plymouth, and was the fruit of a tree that was planted by Peregrine White, the first child born of Pilgrim parents in New England. I praised the apple for its beauty, and the venerable associations connected with it. He wished me to keep it; but, as he had no other of the tree, I declined the gift. I wanted the apple, when offered to me By its generous owner, but thought it not right To take it, because it had grown on a tree, That sprang from a seed sown by PEREGRINE WHITE. And he, who thus proffered it, had none beside it; While diffidence checked the words,--"Let us divide it." Now Peregrine White was the first _white_, you know, Who drew his first breath in New England--the child, Whose parents were making to bud and to blow, With its earliest blossoms, America's wild: But he with the fruit never questioned me, whether We might partake of the apple together. Though a fabled divinity once had let fall An apple of gold, where his favorites thronged, Inscribed, "Of the fair, to the fairest of all!" It was not to me this whole apple belonged: My friend was no god--and then I, but a woman; I thought that to halve it were just about human. The whole I declined; still I did not deny A wish that, unuttered, was strong in my heart; And from it _entire_, while averting my eye, I own I was secretly coveting _part_; And had he divided the offering presented, Preserving one half, I had come off contented. Had Solomon been there to put in a word, His wisdom had brought the debate to an end, Deciding at once, by the edge of his sword, This contest of kindness between friend and friend: Yet he with the apple was quite too short-sighted To see how I might in a half have delighted. I hope that next autumn he 'll go where it grew, And, if not forbidden the fruit, that he 'll reach And pluck a fair apple, then cut it in two, And tell me at once that _a half is for each_. Of friendship's best gift how the worth may be lightened By having it whole, when, if shared, how 't were heightened! THE HALF APPLE. A year after the foregoing poem was written, a nice little casket was sent me, at the distance of thirty-five miles, which, on opening, I found to contain the half of an apple like the one I had seen the previous autumn. The half of an apple, well-flavored and fair, Which shows by division such soundness of heart, I gratefully hold; and acknowledge the care And kindness of him, who retains t 'other part. The fruit, that would perish, I taste with delight, The seed taking out to lay cautiously by, Because it encloses, concealed from my sight, An emblem of that, which in us cannot die. Its elements, when 't is laid low in the earth, If good, will arise in fresh verdure and bloom; As man's deathless soul seeks the world of its birth, When what it once dwelt in lies dark in the tomb. The little memento I 'll hide in the ground, For Nature, its mother, to tenderly rear; And bright be its blossoms--its fruit fair and sound, When I and the giver no more shall be here! For, when I depart, and some good, living deed Would fain leave behind, in remembrance of me, At least, be it said that I planted a seed, That others might gather the fruit from the tree! THE HORTICULTURIST'S TABLE-HYMN. From him, who was lord of the fruits and the flowers, That in Paradise grew, ere he lost its possession-- Who breathed in the balm, and reposed in the bowers Of our garden ancestral, we claim our profession. And fruits rich and bright Bless our taste and our sight As e'er gave our father in Eden delight: Our fount clear as that, which he drank from, here flows; Where green grows the myrtle, and blushing the rose. While some sit in clouds but to murmur, or grieve That earth has her wormwood, her pitfalls, and brambles; We smile, and go forth her rich gifts to receive, Where the boughs drop their purple and gold on our rambles. Untiring and free, As we work, like the bee, We bear off a sweet from each plant, shrub, and tree: Where some gather thorns but to torture the flesh, Ripe clusters we pluck, and our spirits refresh. Yet, not to self only, we draw from the soil The treasures that Heaven in its vitals hath hidden; For thus to lock up the fair fruits of our toil Were bliss half possessed, and a sin all forbidden. Like morning's first ray, When it spreads into day, Our hearts must flow out, until self melts away! Our joys, in the bosoms around us when sown, Spring up and bloom out, throwing sweets to our own. And this makes the world all a garden to us, Where He, who has walled it, his glory is shedding: His smile is its sun; and beholding it thus, We gratefully feast, while his bounty is spreading. Our spirits grow bright As they bathe in his light, That beams on the board where in joy we unite: And the sparks, which we take to enkindle our mirth, Are blessings from heaven showering down on the earth. And now that we meet, and the chain is of _flowers_, Which binds us together, may sadness ne'er blight them, Till those, who _must_ break from a compact like ours, Ascend where the ties of the blest reunite them! May each, who is here, At the banquet appear, Where Life fills the wine-cup, and Love makes it clear; And Gilead's balm in its freshness shall flow On the wounds, which the _pruning-knife_ gave us below! THE WHIP-POOR-WILL. Thou mournful bird, when shadows fell At yester-eve on hill and dell, I heard thee of thy sorrows tell; And, as the dews distil, Again, amid this twilight gray, I hear thee pour thy solemn lay, With only one sad thing to say, Still crying, "Whip-poor-will." O who has grieved thee, gentle bird, That now thy vesper note is heard And with thy melting, triple word Thus dropping from thy bill? How could they rudely whip at thee, To scare thee from thy native tree, And send thee moaning back to me Repeating, "Whip-poor-will?" And wherefore did they whip thee so, To give thy voice this sound of wo, Which comes so plaintively to show That they have used thee ill? Didst thou go through the woods alone, Where brambly snares had thickly grown When thou wast taught thy piteous tone And story, "Whip-poor-will?" There have they made thee all the day In silence hide thyself away, To lose the light, the flash, the play Of sun, and fount, and rill? And didst thou now steal out, afraid Of midnight in the coppice shade, That here thy tender plaint is made Again, sad Whip-poor-will? The trembling stars and lunar gleam, That fitful in the thicket beam, Perhaps would make poor Willie dream His foes were round him still. And in the copse-wood, dark and deep, A waving flower, or leaflet's sweep Might startle thee, in troubled sleep To murmur, "Whip-poor-will!" My bird, there 's mystery in thy strain-- A power I might resist in vain, With mournful joy--with pleasing pain My inmost soul to thrill. 'T is memory stirs to wet my eye By waking shades of days gone by, When first, a child, I heard the cry So solemn, "Whip-poor-will." I call thee bird, yet thou may'st be A spirit! for I cannot see-- I ne'er could catch a glimpse of thee; And undiscovered still The vision form, that might appear, Wert thou to sight revealed as clear, As is thy presence to mine ear, Mysterious Whip-poor-will. THE AUTUMN ROSE-BUD. Come out, pretty Rose-Bud, my lone, timid one! Come forth from thy green leaves, and peep at the sun; For little he does, in these dull autumn hours, At height'ning of beauty, or laughing with flowers. His beams, on thy tender young cheek as he plays, Will give it a blush that no other can raise; Thy fine silken petals they 'll softly unfold, And fill their pure centre with spices and gold. I would not instruct thee in coveting wealth; But beauty, we know, is the offspring of health; And health, the fair daughter of freedom, is bright With feasting on breezes, and drinking the light. Then come, pretty bud; from thy covert look out, And see what the glad, golden sun is about: His shafts, should they strike thee, will only impart A grace to thy form, and a sweet to thy heart. TO L. A. E. ON HER WEDDING-DAY. That I _will_ "be near" on thy "bridal day"-- Be with thee before we are ten hours older, This hasty messenger comes to say, And bringing its witness,--a pearly _folder_. And this, perhaps, as a pointed sign, By the light upon Hymen's altar burning, May signify, to a heart like thine, "What a leaf to-day in thy life is turning!" May the lines for thy future reading there, With no sad characters dark or frowning, In every letter be bright and fair, To thee and to him thou to-day art crowning. Accept the token, and let it prove, As long as thou hence shalt remain its owner, When thou must be at a far remove From her, memorial of the donor. Thou 'lt see engraved on its handle-part, The form of a pen, with its top of feather-- A type of the wings that heart and heart May find, when absent, to fly together. I send thee an opening, thornless rose, Harmless and soft as the peaceful turtle; With an emerald sprig from a branch that grows On the single stalk of my true green myrtle. I bound them about with a silver thread; But, ere thy hand is the cord untwining, The rose will have drooped, or its leaves be shed, While the myrtle still is freshly shining. But I _will_ "be near" in thy bridal hour, This, "Wednesday, evening, at half past seven," And give at the nuptials my holier dower,-- A prayer for a smile on them from Heaven. TO MRS. H. F. L. To think of thee, my Hannah-- To sit and think of thee, Is to my heart like manna, Or balsam from the tree. For, first, its tendrils feeding, It gives them strength to cling; And then, if pained or bleeding, It soothes the wound or sting. To thine, a fount of feeling The warmest and the best, 'T is sweet to seem revealing The secrets of my breast. Of half its care and trouble, My bosom, thus beguiled, Feels every joy is double, When on it thou hast smiled. 'T is dark and stormy weather-- Our first October day; But we are here together, Though thou art far away. For still I feel thee near me-- I see thy soft black eye-- I fancy thou canst hear me, And I thy sweet reply. And yet, my friend, my dearest, This moment, where art thou? What envied eye is nearest, To look upon thee now? Is thine own Hannah present, In spirit, still with thee? And dost thou find it pleasant To feel alone with me? Then we are never parted! Nor distance, place, nor scene, The whole and faithful-hearted Shall ever come between. And when earth's changeful weather, Its joys and sorrows cease, O may we dwell together In deathless love and peace! MUSIC. Music? A blessed angel! She was born Within the palace of the King of kings-- A favorite near his throne. In that glad child Of Love and Joy, he made their spirits one; And her, the heir to everlasting life! When his bright hosts would give him highest praise, They send her forward with her dulcet voice, To pour their holy rapture in his ear. When the young earth to being started forth, Music lay sleeping in a bower of heaven. A crystal fountain, close beside her, gushed With living waters; and the sparkling cup For her pure draught, stood on its emerald brink. While o'er her brow a tender halo shone, Kissed by the nodding buds, her head reclined Upon a flowery pillow. At her ear, The soft leaves whispered. On her half-closed lips The gentle air strewed spices, wooing them. Dropped o'er its radiant orb, the long-fringed lid Veiled the deep inspiration of her eye; But on her cheek the rose-tint came and went, At the quick pulse that fluttered in her breast, And spoke a wakeful spirit. In her sleep, With one fair hand thrown o'er its silent strings, Close to her heart she clasped her golden lyre, To slumber with her, while she fondly dreamed Of the sweet uses she might make of it To numbers yet untried. When, suddenly, A shout of joy from all the sons of God, Rang through his courts: and then the thrilling call, "Wake! sister Music, wake, and hail with us, A new-created sphere!" She woke! She rose-- She moved among the morning stars, and gave The birth-song of a world. Our infant globe, With life's first pulse, rolled in its ether bed, Robed with the sunlight, mantled by the moon, Or tenderly embraced by stellar rays: Death, with his pale, cold finger, had not touched Its beauty then. No stain of guilt was here, And so, no cloud of sorrow cast a shade, Or rained its bitter drops on fruit or flower. As earth, on every side, shone fair to heaven, Not knowing yet whereto she was ordained, Music, from her celestial walks looked down, And thought, how sweetly she could wake the hills, Sing through the silent forests--in the vales-- Beside the silver waters pour her sounds; And multiply her numbers by the rocks! She longed to give it voice to speak to God; And, being told of her blest ministry, Bathed in a flood of glory, till her wings Dripped with effulgence, as they spread, and poised, And passed the pearly gates in earthward flight. Made viewless by the circumambient air, And scattering voices to its feathered tribes, As down she hastened to the shining sphere, The happy angel reached the beauteous earth. At her electric touch, young nature smiled, And kindled into rapture; then broke forth With thousand, thousand songs. The green turf woke; The sea-shells hummed along the vocal shore, The busy bee, upon his honeyed flower. Osier and reed became Eolian lyres. Trees bore sweet minstrels; while rock, hill, and dell Sang to each other in a joyous round. MAN, that mysterious instrument of God, When the warm soul of new-descended power Breathed on his heart-strings, lifted up his voice, Chanting, "JEHOVAH!" Since that blessed hour, While still her home is heaven, Music has ne'er This darkened world forsaken. She delights, Though man may lose, or keep the paths of peace, To soothe, to cheer, to light and warm his heart; And lends her wings to waft it to the skies. She throws a lustre o'er Devotion's face-- Drinks off the tear from Sorrow's languid eye-- Tames wild Despair--brings Hope a brighter bloom-- Lulls Hate to rest--Love's ruffled bosom smooths; Pours honey into many a bitter cup; And often gives the black and heavy hour A downy breast and pinions tipped with light. She steals all balmy through the prisoner's grates, Making that sad one half forget their use. With holy spell she binds the exile's heart, And pours her oil upon its hidden wounds. Kings are her lovers--cottagers her loves: The hero and the pilgrim walk with her. Her voice is sweet by cradled infancy, And from the pillow of the dying saint, When a glad spirit borrows her light wings To practise for the skies, ere it unfolds Its own, and breaks its tenure to the clay. True, by man's wanderings for his tempter's lure, Music is often drawn to scenes unmeet For purity like hers; and made to bear Unhallowed burdens; or, to join in rites To turpitude in fellest places held. Yet, like the sun, whose beaming vesture, trailed O'er all things staining, still defies a stain; And is at night withdrawn, and girded up, Warm and untarnished for the morning skies-- She comes unsullied from her baser walks, Sighs at the darkness, guilt and wo of earth; Breathes Zion's air, and, warmed with heavenly fire, Mounts to her glorious home! 'T was she, who bore The first grand offering of the free, on high, When to the shore, through Egypt's solemn sea, The franchised Hebrews passed with feet dry-shod, And pæans gave to their Deliverer there. She cheered the wanderers on; and when they crossed Over old Jordan, to the strong-armed foe, Still she was with them; and her single breath Laid the proud Painim's city-walls in dust! In native light, she walked Judea's hills, And sipped the dew of Hermon from its flower Before the Sun of righteousness arose. The Prophet chose her to unseal his lips, Ere God spake through them; and the Prophetess, To lift the heart's pure gift from her's to Heaven. When Israel's king was troubled, her soft hand Put close, but gently, to his gloomy breast, Reached the dark spirit there, and laid it still, Bound by the chords a shepherd minstrel swept. And since, her countless thousands she has brought To heaven's mild kingdom, happy captives led, By those sweet glowing strings of David's lyre. But oh! her richest, dearest notes to man, In strains aerial over Bethlehem poured, When HE, whose brightness is the light of heaven, To earth descending for a mortal's form, Laid by his glory, save one radiant mark, That moved through space, and o'er the infant hung, He summoned Music to attend him here, Announcing peace below! He called her, too, To sweeten that sad supper, and to twine Her mantle round him, and his few, grieved friends To join their mournful spirits with the hymn, Ere to the Mount of Olives he went out So sorrowful. And now, his blessed word, A sacred pledge, is left to dying man, Then at his second coming in his power, Music shall still be with him; and her voice Sound through the tombs and wake the dead to life! Transcriber's Notes Original spelling has been retained except in the following case: In the poem "The Pilgrim's Way Song" on page 29 "thrist" has been corrected to "thirst" (To drink, and to thirst never more.) The deviation between some items in the table of contents and the actual headings have also been retained. 
44962	----	images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 1610-1820 A LIST OF WORKS IN THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY _COMPILED BY_ JOHN C. FRANK NEW YORK 1917 _NOTE_ _This list includes titles of works in The New York Public Library on August 1, 1917. They are in the Reference Department of the Library, in the Central Building at Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street._ REPRINTED OCTOBER 1917 FROM THE BULLETIN OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY OF AUGUST 1917 form p-100 [x-10-17 3c] EARLY AMERICAN POETRY, 1610-1820 A LIST OF WORKS IN THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY * * * * * COMPILED BY JOHN C. FRANK * * * * * =Adams=, John, 1704-40. Poems on several occasions, original and translated. By the late reverend and learned John Adams, M.A. Boston: Printed for D. Goodkin, in Marlborough-Street, over against the Old South Meeting House. 1745. 4 p.l., 176 p. 16º. =Reserve= =Adams=, John Quincy, 1767-1848. On the discoveries of Captain Lewis. (In: The Monthly anthology and Boston review. Boston, 1807. 8º. v. 4, p. 143-144.) =* DA= Also printed in E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck's _Cyclopædia of American literature_, New York, 1866, v. 1, p. 395, _NBB._ =Agricola=, pseud. _See_ The =Squabble=; a pastoral eclogue. =Albany= Register. The humble address of the Carriers of the Albany Register, to their generous customers, greeting them with a Happy New Year. [Albany, N. Y.: Jan. 1, 1796.] Broadside. =Reserve= =All= the world's a stage. A poem, in three parts. The stranger. Newburyport: Printed by William Barrett. 1796. 15 [really 14] p. 8º. =Reserve= The name "I. Storey" is written on the title in a contemporary hand, in the place where the author's name is usually printed; the reference being undoubtedly to Isaac Story, who was born at Marblehead in 1774, and published his first poem, _An Epistle from Yarico to Inkle_, in 1792. =Allen=, Benjamin, 1789-1829. Miscellaneous poems, on moral and religious subjects: By Osander [pseud. of Benjamin Allen]. Hudson: Printed by Wm. E. Norman No. 2, Warren Street. 1811. 2 p.l., 7(1) p., 2 l., 11-180 p. 16º. =NBHD= ---- ---- New-York: Printed by J. Seymour, Sold by Griffin and Rudd, agents for the publisher; 189, Greenwich-St. 1812. 4 p.l., 5-180 p. 24º. =NBHD= Published to aid the author to study for the ministry. ---- Urania, or The true use of poesy; a poem. By B. Allen, Jun. New-York: Published by A. H. Inskeep, and Bradford & Inskeep. Philadelphia. 1814. 3 p.l., (1)8-192 p. 24º. =NBHD= Page 8 is wrongly numbered p. 5. =Allen=, Mrs. Brasseya, 1760 or 1762-18--? Pastorals, elegies, odes, epistles, and other poems. By Mrs. Allen. (Copy right secured.) Abingdon, (Md.): Printed by Daniel P. Ruff. 1806. 5 p.l., (1)10-163 p. 16º. =NBHD= Dedicated to Thomas Jefferson. =Allen=, James, 1739-1808. An intended inscription written for the monument on Beacon-Hill in Boston, and addressed to the passenger. (In: American poems, selected and original. Litchfield, 1793. 12º. p. 199-201.) =Reserve= and =NBH= Also printed in _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 146-147, _NBH_, and in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 1, p. 170-171, _NBH_. ---- Lines on the [Boston] massacre. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 1, p. 162-165.) =NBH= Written in 1772 but not published till 1782. ---- [Poem] On Washington's visit to Boston, 1789. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. p. 171-173.) =NBH= ---- Poem, written in Boston, at the commencement of the late Revolution. (In: American poems, selected and original. Litchfield, 1793. 12º. p. 193-199.) =Reserve= and =NBH= ---- The retrospect. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 1, p. 165-170.) =NBH= =Allen=, Paul, 1775-1826. Original poems, serious and entertaining. By Paul Allen, A.M. Published according to act of Congress. Printed by Joshua Cushing, Salem, 1801. 2 p.l., (i)vi-xi, 141 p. 16º. =Reserve= and =NBHD= ---- A poem, delivered in the Baptist Meeting House in Providence, September 4th A. D. 1793, being the anniversary commencement of Rhode Island College. By Paul Allen. (In: Massachusetts magazine. Boston, 1793. 8º. October, 1793, p. 594-599.) =Reserve= =Allston=, Washington, 1779-1843. The sylphs of the seasons, with other poems. By W. Allston. First American from the London edition. Boston: Published by Cummings and Hilliard, No. 1, Cornhill. Cambridge.... Hilliard & Metcalf. 1813. 2 p.l., (i)vi-vii p., 1 l., (1)12-168 p. 12º. =NBHD= The first edition was published in London, 1813. _Contents_: The sylphs of the seasons, a poet's dream, p. 11-43.--The two painters, a tale, p. 45-86.--Eccentricity, p. 87-113.--The paint-king, p. 115-129.--Myrtilla, p. 131-141.--To a lady, who spoke slightingly of poets, p. 143-147.--Sonnets, p. 149-154.--The mad lover at the grave of his mistress, 155-158.--First love, a ballad, p. 159-161.--The complaint, p. p. 162-164.--Will, the maniac, a ballad, p. 165-168. ---- Lectures on art, and poems, by Washington Allston. Edited by Richard Henry Dana, Jr. New York: Baker and Scribner, 1850. xi, 380 p. 8º. =NBI= In addition to the poems mentioned in the previous entry, includes _America to Great Britain_. This poem, written in 1810, was inserted by Coleridge in the first edition of his _Sibylline leaves_, London, 1817, p. 276-278, with the following note: "This poem, written by an American gentleman, a valued and dear friend, I communicate to the reader for its moral, no less than its poetic spirit." =Alsop=, George, b. 1638. A character of the province of Maryland, wherein is described in four distinct parts, (viz.) I. The situation, and plenty of the province. II. The laws, customs, and natural demeanor of the inhabitant. III. The worst and best usage of a Maryland servant, opened in view. IV. The traffique, and vendable commodities of the countrey. Also a small treatise on the wild and naked Indians (or Susquehanokes) of Mary-Land, their customs, manners, absurdities, & religion. Together with a collection of historical letters. By George Alsop. London, Printed by T. J. for Peter Dring, at the sign of the Sun in the Poultrey: 1666. 10 p.l., 118 p., 2 l., 1 port. (8º.) =Reserve= 1 facsimile portrait inserted. Poems on the following pages: p.l. 6-7; p. 26, 44-45, 55, 75-80, 82-83, 103-104, 108-111. ---- ---- A new edition with an introduction and copious historical notes. By John Gilmary Shea.... New York: William Gowans, 1869. 125 p., 1 map, 1 port. 8º. (Gowans' Bibliotheca Americana, no. 5.) =ISG= and =IAG= Includes a type-facsimile title-page. Reissued as _Fund publication_, no. 15, of the Mary-land Historical Society, _IAA_. ---- ---- Reprinted from the original edition of 1666. With introduction and notes by Newton D. Mereness.... Cleveland: The Burrows Brothers Company, 1902. 113 p., 1 map, 1 pl., 1 port. 8º. =ISG= Includes a reduced photo-facsimile of original title-page. No. 145 of 250 copies printed. =Alsop=, Richard, 1761-1815. The charms of fancy: a poem in four cantos, with notes. By Richard Alsop. Edited from the original manuscripts, with a biographical sketch of the author, by Theodore Dwight. New York: D. Appleton and Company, M.DCCC.LVI. xii p., 1 l., (1)14-214 p. 8º. =NBHD= This poem was mostly written before 1788. ---- Elegy. (In: E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyclopædia of American literature. New York, 1866. 8º. v. 1, p. 497.) =NBB= ---- An elegy written in February 1791. (In: American poems, selected and original. Litchfield, 1793. 12º. p. 251-255.) =Reserve= and =NBH= Also printed in _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 190-194, _NBH_. ---- Extract from the Conquest of Scandinavia; being the introduction to the fourth book. (In: American poems, selected and original. Litchfield, 1793. 12º. p. 272-284.) =Reserve= and =NBH= ---- Habakkuk, chap. III. (In: American poems, selected and original. Litchfield, 1793. 12º. p. 263-264.) =Reserve= and =NBH= ---- The incantation of Ulfo. From the Conquest of Scandinavia. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 2, p. 61-67.) =NBH= ---- A poem; sacred to the memory of George Washington, late president of the United States, and commander in chief of the armies of the United States. Adapted to the 22d of Feb. 1800. By Richard Alsop. Hartford: Printed by Hudson and Goodwin. 1800. 23 p. 8º. =Reserve= This poem was delivered by Richard Alsop before the citizens of Middletown, Conn., at the memorial service of February 22, 1800. ---- Twilight of the Gods; or Destruction of the world, from the Edda, a system of ancient Scandinavian mythology. (In: American poems, selected and original. Litchfield, 1793. 12º. p. 265-272.) =Reserve= and =NBH= ---- Verses to the shearwater--on the morning after the storm at sea. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 2, p. 60-61.) =NBH= ---- Versification of a passage from the fifth book of Ossian's Temora. (In: American poems, selected and original. Litchfield, 1793. 12º. p. 255-262.) =Reserve= and =NBH= ---- _See also_ The =Echo=; The =Political= greenhouse for the year 1798. An =American=, pseud. Crystalina; a fairy tale. _See_ Harney, John Milton. An =American=, pseud. _See_ =Oppression=, a poem. An =American=, pseud. _See_ =Prime=, Benjamin Young. =American= poems, selected and original. Vol. 1. Litchfield: Printed by Collier and Buel. [1793.] (The copy right secured as the Act directs.) viii, 304 p., 4 l. 12º. =Reserve= and =NBH= No more published. "The first general collection of poetry ever attempted in this country."--C. W. Everest, _Poets of Connecticut_, Hartford, 1843, p. 103. The editorship is attributed by Everest to Dr. Elihu Hubbard Smith, but the postscript to the preface of the work p. [vi] refers to "the ill health of one of the editors." The Reserve copy contains the autographs of Daniel Crocker, Samuel Austin, and Samuel G. Drake. _Contents_: Elegy on the times; Elegy on the death of Mr. Buckingham St. John; Ambition; Prophecy of Balaam; Downfall of Babylon; Speech of Proteus to Aristæus; by John Trumbull.--Trial of faith; Address to genius of Columbia; Columbia; The seasons moralized; A hymn; A song; The critics; Epistle to Col. Humphreys; by Timothy Dwight.--The prospect of peace; A poem spoken at commencement at Yale College; Elegy on Titus Hosmer; by Joel Barlow.--Elegy on burning of Fairfield, Connecticut; Elegy on Lieut. De Hart; Mount Vernon; An ode addressed to Laura; Genius of America; Epistle to Dr. Dwight; A song translated from the French; by David Humphreys.--Epitaph on a patient killed by cancer quack; Hypocrite's hope; On general Ethan Allen; by Lemuel Hopkins.--An oration which might have been delivered to students in anatomy on the late rupture between two schools in Philadelphia, by Francis Hopkinson.--Philosophic solitude, by William Livingston.--Descriptive lines upon prospect from Beacon-Hill in Boston; Ode to the President on his visiting the Northern states; Invocation to Hope; Prayer to Patience; Lines addressed to Della Crusca; by Philenia, a lady of Boston.--Alfred to Philenia.--Philenia to Alfred.--Poem written in Boston at the commencement of the Revolution; An intended inscription for monument on Beacon-Hill in Boston; by James Allen.--Elegiac ode to General Greene, by George Richards. Country school.--Speech of Hesper.--[Poem on the distress of inhabitants of Guinea.]--New Year's wish; From a Gentleman to a lady who had presented him with a cake heart; by Dr....--Utrum horum mavis elige.--Ella, a Norwegian tale, by William Dunlap.--Eulogium on rum, by J. Smith.--Country meeting, by T. C. James.--Written at sea in a heavy gale, by Philip Freneau.--To Ella, from Bertha.--An elegy written in February 1791; Versification of passage from fifth book of Ossian's Temora; Habakkuk, chap. III; Twilight of the Gods; Extract from Conquest of Scandinavia; by Richard Alsop.--Ode to conscience, by Theodore Dwight.--Collolloo, an Indian tale, by William Dunlap.--An ode to Miss ****, by Joseph Howe.--Message from Mordecai to Esther, by Timothy Dwight. The =American= poetical miscellany. Original and selected. Philadelphia: Published by Robert Johnson, C. & A. Conrad & Co. and Mathew Carey, booksellers and stationers. 1809. 1 p.l., (1)4-304 p. 16º. =NBH= John Binns, printer. Includes the following poems by American authors: The burning of Fairfield, by D. Humphreys.--Mercy, by Salleck Osborn.--Eulogium on rum, by Joseph Smith.--The country meeting, by T. C. James.--The house of sloth, by Timothy Dwight.--Extract from a dramatic manuscript, by Salleck Osborn. =American= taxation [a poem], 1765. (In: E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyclopædia of American literature. New York, 1866. 8º. v. 1, p. 461-463.) =NBB= Attributed to Samuel St. John of New Canaan, Connecticut, and to Peter St. John of Norwalk, Connecticut. Also printed in Frank Moore, _Songs and ballads of the American Revolution_, New York, 1856, p. 1-17, _NBH_. The =American= times, a satire, in three parts. _See_ =Odell=, Jonathan. An =American= youth, pseud. _See_ The =Spunkiad=: or Heroism improved. =Ames=, Nathaniel, 1708-1764. An essay upon the microscope. (In his: An astronomical diary, or An almanac for the year of our Lord Christ, 1741. Boston, 1741. 12º.) =Reserve= Reprinted in Stedman and Hutchinson, _A library of American literature_, New York, 1889, v. 2, p. 425-427, _NBB_. Additional poems without titles will be found in his _An astronomical diary, or An almanac ... for the years 1731, 1733-35, 1737-50, 1752-75_, copies of which are in the _Reserve Room_ of the Library. ---- A poetical essay on happiness. (In his: Ames's almanac revived and improved: or, An astronomical diary for the year of our Lord Christ, 1766. Boston, 1766. 12º.) =Reserve= ---- Victory implor'd for success against the French in America. (In his: An astronomical diary, or An almanac for the year of our Lord Christ, 1747. Boston, 1747. 12º.) =Reserve= ---- The waking of sun. (In his: An astronomical diary, or An almanac for the year of our Lord Christ, 1739. Boston, 1739. 12º.) =Reserve= Reprinted in Stedman and Hutchinson, _A library of American literature_, New York, 1889, v. 2, p. 424-425, _NBB_. The =Anarchiard=: a New England poem. Written in concert by David Humphreys, Joel Barlow, John Trumbull, and Dr. Lemuel Hopkins. Now first published in book form. Edited, with notes and appendices, by Luther G. Riggs. New Haven: Published by Thomas H. Pease, 323 Chapel Street. 1861. viii, 120 p. 24º. =NBHD= The Library has another copy with the following portraits inserted: David Humphreys, Joel Barlow, John Trumbull, Nathanael Greene, Robert Morris. This poem was originally published in the following numbers of _The New Haven Gazette and Connecticut Magazine_: Oct. 26, Nov. 2, Dec. 28, 1786; Jan. 11, 25, Feb. 22, March 15, 22, April 5, May 24, Aug. 16, Sept. 13, 1787. The Library possesses all the numbers of the _New Haven Gazette_ in which this poem appeared, except the last one, Sept. 13, 1787. Nos. 1-4 of _The Anarchiard_ were also printed in _The American museum_, Philadelphia, 1789, v. 5, p. 94-100, 303-305. The projector of this poem was Colonel David Humphreys; and it was written in concert with Barlow, Trumbull, and Hopkins; but what particular installment or number was written by each has never been definitely ascertained. =André=, John, 1751-1780. Cow-chace, in three cantos, published on occasion of the Rebel General Wayne's attack of the Refugees Block-House on Hudson's river, on Friday the 21st of July, 1780. [By Major John André.] New-York: Printed by James Rivington, MDCCLXXX. 1 p.l., (1)4-69 p. 8º. =Reserve= Included with the Cow-chace, are the following poems: Yankee Doodle's Expedition to Rhode Island, written at Philadelphia, p. 19-21; On the Affair between the Rebel Generals Howe and Gaddesden, written at Charlestown, p. 23-26; The American times, a satire. In three parts.... By Camillo Querno, p. 27-69. Inserted, a portrait of André, engraved by Hapwood, from a drawing by Major André, ornamented by Shirt. The _Cow-chace_ appeared originally in _The Royal Gazette_, in the following numbers: Canto I, Aug. 16, 1780; Canto II, Aug. 30, 1780; Canto III, Sept. 23, 1780. Also printed in William Dunlap, _André; a tragedy_, New York, 1798, p. 75-84, _Reserve_, and in Winthrop Sargent, _The life of Major André_, Boston, 1861, and New York, 1871, p. 236-249, _IGM_. =Andrews=, Edward W. An address before the Washington Benevolent Society, in Newburyport, on the 22d. Feb. 1816. By Edward W. Andrews, A.M. Published by request of the society. Newburyport: Published by William B. Allen & Co. No. 13, Cornhill. 1816. 1 p.l., (1)4-15 p. 8º. =NBHD p.v. 5, no. 14= =Aquiline Nimble-Chops=, pseud. Democracy: an epic poem. _See_ =Livingston=, Henry Brockholst. =Aristocracy.= An epic poem. Philadelphia: Printed for the editor. 1795. 2 v. 8º. =Reserve= In two parts issued separately. [Part] 1 has 16 p. and is dated on p. vii: Philadelphia, January 5, 1795. [Part] 2, without imprint, has 18 [really 17] p., pages numbered 1-16, 18, and dated, on p. [4]: Philadelphia, March 26th, 1795. =Armstrong=, William Clinton, 1855--, editor. Patriotic poems of New Jersey. [Newark, N. J., 1906.] 3 p.l., ii-v, 248 p., 5 pl., 3 ports. 8º. (Sons of the American Revolution.--New Jersey Society. New Jersey and the American Revolution.) =NBH= =Arnold=, Josias Lyndon, 1765-1796. Poems. By the late Josias Lyndon Arnold, Esq; of St. Johnsbury (Vermont) formerly of Providence, and a tutor in Rhode-Island College. Printed at Providence, by Carter and Wilkinson, and sold at their bookstore, opposite the market. M.DCC.XCVII. xii, (1)14-141 p. 12º. =Reserve= Introduction by the editor, signed and dated: James Burrill, jun. Providence, April, 1797. "The last words of Sholum; or, The dying Indian," p. 46-49, is not by Arnold, but by Philip Freneau. Several of Arnold's poems are printed in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 2, p. 77-82, _NBH_; also in E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, _Cyclopædia of American literature_, New York, 1866, v. 1, p. 530, _NBB_. =Arouet=, Poems of. _See_ =Ladd=, Joseph Brown. The =Art= of domestic happiness and other poems: By the Recluse, author of the Independency of the Mind, affirmed. Pittsburgh: Published by Robert Patterson. 1817. 2 p.l., (i)vi p., 1 l., (1)10-316 p., 1 l. 16º. =NBHD= Printed by Butler and Lambdin. =Avalanche=, Sir Anthony, pseud. Fashion's analysis; or, The winter in town. A satirical poem. By Sir Anthony Avalanche. With notes, illustrations, etc. by Gregory Glacier, Gent. Part 1. New-York: Printed for J. Osborn, No. 13 Park. 1807. 2 p.l., (1)6-84 p. 16º. =NBHD= =B.=, B., Esq. Entertainment for a winter's evening. _See_ =Green=, Joseph. =Bacon's= epitaph, made by his man. (Massachusetts Historical Society. Collections for 1814. Boston, 1838. 8º. series 2, v. 1, p. 58-59.) =IAA= This epitaph is in the manuscript account of Bacon and Ingram's rebellion found among the papers of Capt. Nathaniel Burwell, printed in this volume of the _Collections_. Also printed in Stedman and Hutchinson, _A library of American literature_, New York, 1889, v. 1, p. 456-457, _NBB_. =Ballads= and poems relating to the Burgoyne campaign. Annotated by William L. Stone.... Albany, N. Y.: Joel Munsell's Sons, 1893. 12, 359 p., 1 pl. (front.) 8º. (Munsell's historical series, no. 20.) =IAG= and =NBHD= =Ballston= Springs. _See_ =Law=, Thomas. =Banks=, Louis Albert. Immortal songs of camp and field. The story of their inspiration together with striking anecdotes connected with their history.... Cleveland: The Burrows Brothers Company, 1899. 298 p., 25 pl., 25 ports. 8º. =NBH= Contains the following songs, written before 1820: The American flag, by J. R. Drake, p. 17-24; Adams and liberty, by R. T. Paine, p. 27-37; The Star-Spangled banner, by F. S. Key, p. 53-63; Hail Columbia, by J. Hopkinson, p. 67-77. =Barlow=, Joel, 1754-1812. The Columbiad a poem. By Joel Barlow. Printed by Fry and Kammerer for C. and A. Conrad and Co. Philadelphia; Conrad, Lucas and Co. Baltimore. Philadelphia: 1807. 1 p.l., (i)iv-xvi, 454 p., front, (port.), 11 pl. 4º. =Reserve= and =NBHD= The Reserve copy is extra illustrated, having 22 plates and 58 portraits inserted. _The Columbiad_ is an amplification of the author's _Vision of Columbus_. This work, which is a fine example of early American bookmaking, was published at the expense of Robert Fulton, the inventor, who also "designated the subjects to be painted for engravings" at his own expense. ---- ---- Philadelphia: Published by C. and A. Conrad and Co. Philadelphia; Conrad, Lucas and Co. Baltimore. Fry and Kammerer, printers. 1809. 2 v. 16º. =NBHD= The Library has volume 2 only. v. 2. 2 p.l., (1)6-218 p. ---- ---- London: Printed for Richard Phillips, Bridge Street, Blackfriars. 1809. 1 p.l., (i)iv-xxxiii p., 1 l., 428 p. 8º. =NBHD= Frontispiece, portrait of author, inserted. ---- ---- With the last corrections of the author. By Joel Barlow. Paris: Printed for F. Schoell, Bookseller. 1813. 3 p.l., (i)vi-xl, 448 p., 2 pl. (incl. front.), 2 ports. 8º. =NBHD= ---- The conspiracy of kings; a poem: addressed to the inhabitants of Europe, from another quarter of the World. By Joel Barlow, author of the Vision of Columbus, Advice to the Privileged Orders &c. &c. Printed and sold by Robinson & Tucker: Newburyport--1794. 30 p. 8º. =Reserve= Inserted, the portrait of the author engraved by Edwin. Also printed in _The New-York magazine_, New-York, 1792, v. 3, p. 375-382, _Reserve_; the author's _A letter to the national convention of France, on the defects in the constitution of 1791_, New York [1793?], p. 73-87, _Reserve_; _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 1-10, _NBH_; and in _The political writings of Joel Barlow_, New York, 1796, p. 237-238. _Reserve._ ---- Description of the first American congress; American Revolution; American sages; American painters; American poets. (In: The Beauties of poetry, British and American. Philadelphia, 1791. 16º. p. 155-174.) =Reserve= Also printed in _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 89-109, _NBH_. ---- An Elegy on the late honorable Titus Hosmer, Esq. one of the Counsellors of the State of Connecticut, a Member of Congress, and a Judge of the Maritime Court of Appeals for the United States of America. (In: American poems, selected and original. Litchfield, 1793. 12º. p. 108-117.) =Reserve= and =NBH= ---- The hasty-pudding: a poem, in three cantos. Written at Chambery, in Savoy, January 1793. [By Joel Barlow. New Haven: Tiebout & O'Brien, 1796.] 2 p.l., (1)6-15 p. 8º. =Reserve= First printed in _The New-York magazine_. New York, 1796, new series, v. 1, p. 41-49, _Reserve_. Also printed in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_. Boston, 1829, v. 2, p. 13-21, _NBH_; E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, _Cyclopædia of American literature_, New York, 1866, v. 1, p. 400-403, _NBB_. ---- ---- Brooklyn: Published by Wm. Bigelow, 55 Fulton-Street. A. Spooner, printer. 1833. 1 p.l., (i)iv-v, 6-22 p. 12º. =* C p.v. 724, no. 8= ---- ---- New York: C. M. Saxton [1852?]. 12 p. 12º. =VPC= Bd. with: R. L. Allen. The American farm book. New York, 1852. 12º. ---- A poem, spoken at the public commencement at Yale-college, in New-Haven, Sept. 12, 1781. (In: American poems, selected and original. Litchfield, 1793. 12º. p. 94-107.) =Reserve= and =NBH= ---- The prospect of peace. (In: American poems, selected and original. Litchfield, 1793. 12º. p. 85-93.) =Reserve= and =NBH= Also printed in _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 10-16, _NBH_. ---- The vision of Columbus; a poem in nine books. By Joel Barlow, Esquire. Hartford: Printed by Hudson and Goodwin, for the author. M.DCC.LXXXVII. 258 p., 6 l. 12º. =Reserve= This is the original edition, with twelve pages containing the names of upwards of five hundred subscribers, leading men of the day, including Washington, Franklin, Burr, Gov. George Clinton, etc. ---- ---- Hartford, N. E. printed: London re-printed, for C. Dilly, in the Poultry; and J. Stockdale, Piccadilly. M.DCC.LXXXVII. xx, 244 p. 12º. =Reserve= 2 portraits inserted. Frontispiece is portrait of Joel Barlow, painted by Robert Fulton, engraved by A. B. Durand. Facing p. 3, Portrait of Columbus painted by M. Macella, engraved by P. Maverick. ---- ---- The second edition. Hartford: Printed by Hudson and Goodwin, for the author. M.DCC.LXXXVII. 258 p., 3 l. 16º. =Reserve= The last three leaves contain the names of subscribers. ---- ---- The first edition, corrected.... To which is added, The conspiracy of kings: a poem, by the same author. Paris: Printed at the English Press, Rue de Vaugirard, No. 1214; and sold by Barrois, Senior, Quai des Augustins; and R. Thomson, Rue de L'Anciene Comedie Française, no. 42. 1793. 2 p.l., 304 p. 8º. =Reserve= Lacks portrait. The conspiracy of kings, a poem, p. 277-304. ---- _See also_ The =Anarchiard=. =Bartlett=, Joseph, 1762-1827. Physiognomy, a poem, delivered at the request of the Society of Phi Beta Kappa, in the chapel of Harvard University, on the day of their anniversary, July 18th, 1799. By Joseph Bartlett. Boston, Printed by John Russell, 1799. 16 p. 8º. =Reserve= Trimmed down from 4º, cropping text and margins. The =Battle= of Bunkers Hill, a dramatic piece, in five acts. _See_ =Brackenridge=, Hugh Henry. =Battle= of Niagara, a poem. _See_ =Neal=, John. The =Battle= of the Thames, October 5, 1813; from an unpublished poem, entitled Tecumseh. By a young American. New York: Published at the Log Cabin Office, No. 30 Ann-Street. 1840. 1 p.l., (1)4-15 p. 12º. =IIH p.v. 6, no. 1= The =Bay= Psalm book. _See_ =Bible.= Old Testament: Psalms. English. 1640. =Bayard.= Address to the robin redbreast. (In: The Beauties of poetry, British and American. Philadelphia, 1791. 16º. p. 201-204.) =Reserve= Also printed in _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 177-181, _NBH_. ---- Woman's fate. Written in the character of a lady under the influence of a strong, but unfortunate attachment. (In: The Beauties of poetry, British and American. Philadelphia, 1791. 16º. p. 127-130.) =Reserve= The =Beauties= of poetry, British and American: containing some of the productions of Waller, Milton, Addison, Pope, Shirley, Parnell, Watts, Thomson, Young, Shenstone, Akenside, Gray, Goldsmith, Johnson, Moore, Garrick, Cowper, Beattie, Burns, Merry, Cowley, Wolcott, Palmerton, Penrose, Evans, Barlow, Dwight, Freneau, Humphreys, Livingston, J. Smith, W. M. Smith, Bayard, Hopkinson, James, Markoe, Prichard, Fentham, Bradford, Dawes, Lathrop, Osborne. Philadelphia: From the press of M. Carey. No. 118, Market-Street. M.DCC.XCI. 3 p.l. (incl. leaf of adv.), vii, viii, 244 p. 16º. =Reserve= American contributions include: Columbia, by Dwight.--Benevolence, by Dawes.--Woman's fate, by Bayard.--Future state of the western territory; American winter; On love and the American fair; Depredations and destruction of the Algerines; by Humphreys.--Excellent logic; British favours to America; Extreme humanity; Omens; Nobility anticipated; by Trumbull.--Description of the first American Congress; American Revolution; American sages; American painters; American poets; by Barlow.--Eulogium on rum, by Jos. Smith.--Faith, an ode; Hope, an ode; Charity, an ode; by Markoe.--On a lady's birth day, by W. M. Smith.--Description of Jehovah, from the XVIIIth Psalm, by Ladd.--The Country meeting, by T. C. James.--On the birth-day of Gen. Washington, by Markoe.--Art and nature, by W. M. Smith.--The old soldier, by Fentham.--The war-horse, by Ladd.--On the migration to America and peopling the western country, by Freneau.--A pastoral song, by Bradford.--The seasons moralized, by Dwight.--Character of St. Tamany, by Pritchard.--A song, by Dwight.--The Federal Convention.--A fair bargain, by Hopkinson.--Song sung in St. Andrew's Society, New York, on Tuesday August 22, 1790, when Colonel Alexander M'Gillwray was present.--Address to the robin red-breast, by Bayard.--A winter piece, by Lathrop.--Elegiac epistle on the death of his sisters--and sent to another, by Osborn.--Hymn sung at the Universal meeting house in Boston, Easter Sunday, April 4, 1790.--The Deity, and his dispensations; Creation; Original state of man; Three fold state of man emblematized; Prospect of America; by Dwight.--Progress of science, by Evans.--Philosophic solitude, by Livingston.--Sketches of American history, by Freneau.--An Indian eclogue, by Jos. Smith. =Belknap=, Jeremy, 1744-1798. An eclogue, occasioned by the death of the Reverend Alexander Cummings, A.M., on the 25th of August A. D. 1763. Ætat. 37.... (By J. Belknap, B.A.) Boston: Printed by D. & J. Kneeland, for J. Edwards, 1763. 8 p. 16º. =Reserve= Text cropped by trimming. =Benedict=, David, 1779-1874. A poem delivered in Taunton, September 16th, A.D. 1807, at the anniversary election of the Philandrian Society. By David Benedict. Boston: Belcher & Armstrong, printers, No. 70, State-Street. 1807. 1 p.l., (1)4-19 p. 8º. =NBH p.v. 26, no. 17= ---- The watery war: or, A poetical description of the existing controversy between the Pedobaptists and Baptists, on the subjects and mode of baptism. By John of Enon. Boston: Printed and sold by Manning & Loring, No. 2, Cornhill. 1808. 2 p.l., (1)6-34 p. 12º. =Reserve= =Bernard=, Francis. _See_ =Pietas= et gratulatio.... =Beveridge=, John. Epistolae familiares et alia quædam miscellanea. Familiar epistles, and other miscellaneous pieces, wrote originally in Latin verse, by John Beveridge, A.M. Professor of languages in the College and Academy of Philadelphia. To which are added several translations into English verse, by different hands, &c. Philadelphia. Printed for the author by William Bradford, at the London Coffee-House, at the corner of Market and Front-Streets. M,DCC,LXV. xi, 88 p. 12º. =Reserve= =Bible.= Old Testament: Psalms. English. 1640. The whole booke of Psalmes faithfully translated into English metre. Whereunto is prefixed a discourse declaring not only the lawfullness, but also the necessity of the heavenly ordinance of singing Scripture Psalmes in the Churches of God. Imprinted, 1640. [Cambridge: Stephen Daye.] 147 l. 12º. =Reserve= Slightly imperfect. The first book printed in English in North America. The version of the Psalms was made about the year 1636, the principal divines of the country each translating a portion. The principal part of the work was committed to Mr. Richard Mather, minister of the church in Dorchester, who probably wrote the preface also, and to Mr. Thomas Weld and Mr. John Eliot, associate ministers of the church in Roxbury. The work of printing was completed in 1640, and the new Psalm book was adopted at once by nearly every congregation in the colony of Massachusetts Bay, and for that reason it came to be known as the Bay Psalm book. Of this famous book there are only ten copies known to be extant, of which only four are perfect. For detailed statement and description see the facsimile reprint with the introduction by Wilberforce Eames. ---- The Bay Psalm book; being a facsimile reprint of the first edition, printed by Stephen Daye at Cambridge, in New England in 1640. With an introduction by Wilberforce Eames. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1903. 1 p.l., v-xvii p., 147 l. 8º. =Reserve= One of 975 copies on plain paper. ---- ---- Prepared for the New England Society in the City of New York [190-?]. 1 p.l., v-xvii p., 147 l. 8º. =Reserve= With an introduction by Wilberforce Eames. Introduction dated: October, 1903. ---- A literal reprint of the Bay Psalm book, being the earliest New England version of the Psalms, and the first book printed in America.... Cambridge: C. B. Richardson, 1862. vii p., 149 l. 8º. =Stuart 4966= No. 40 of fifty copies printed. =Bigelow=, Samuel, fl. 1776. A poem suitable for the present day, in five parts, Worcester, 1776. New York: repr. for C. F. Heartman, 1915. 2 p.l., 7-26 p. 8º. (Heartman's historical series, no. 14.) =Reserve= Facsimile reprint, including title-page of original edition, Worcester, 1776. No. 8 of forty copies printed on Fabriano hand-made paper. =Biglow=, William, 1773-1844. Commencement, a poem: or rather commencement of a poem, recited before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, in their dining hall, in Cambridge, Aug. 29, 1811. By a brother [i.e., William Biglow]. Salem: Printed by Thomas C. Cushing. 1811. 1 p.l., (1)4-8 p. 8º. =NBHD= With bookplate of Henry B. Anthony. ---- Education; a poem: spoken at Cambridge at the request of the Phi Beta Kappa Society; July 18th 1799; By William Biglow. Salem: Joshua Cushing. 1799. 2 p.l., (1)4-17 p. 8º. =NBH p.v. 26, no. 16= First 2 l. and last leaf lacking. Title-page supplied in ms. ---- Re-re-commencement: a kind of a poem: calculated to be recited before an "assemblage" of New-England divines, of all the various denominations; but which never was so recited, and in all human probability never will be. By a friend of every body and every soul. Salem: Printed by Thomas C. Cushing. 1812. 1 p.l., (1)4-8 p. 8º. =NBH p.v. 27, no. 13= The =Bladensburg= races. Written shortly after the capture of Washington City, August 24, 1814. [Probably it is not generally known, that the flight of Mahomet, the flight of John Gilpin, and the flight of Bladensburg, all occurred on the twenty-fourth of August.] Printed for the purchaser. 1816. 1 p.l., 3-12 p. 24º. =Reserve= ---- Printed for the purchaser. 1816. 1 p.l., (1)4-16 p. 4º. =* IIH= A reprint issued in 1865. No. 35 of seventy-five copies. ---- n.t.-p. n.p., n.d. 8 p. 8º. =NBHD p.v. 5, no. 7= A reprint. =Bland=, Theodoric, 1742-1790. [Patriotic poem on the battle of Lexington.] (In: The Bland papers. Edited by Charles Campbell. Petersburg, 1840. 8º. v. 1, p. xxi-xxiii.) =IG= =Bleecker=, Mrs. Ann Eliza Schuyler, 1752-1783. An evening prospect. (In: The New-York magazine. New-York. 1791. 8º. v. 2, p. 475-476.) =Reserve= ---- Lines, written by the late Mrs. Ann E. Bleecker. (In: The New-York magazine. New-York, 1791. 8º. v. 2, p. 294.) =Reserve= ---- Lines, written by the late Mrs. Ann E. Bleecker. (In: The New-York magazine. New-York, 1791. 8º. v. 2, p. 356.) =Reserve= ---- On reading Dryden's Virgil. [Written in 1778, by the late Mrs. Ann E. Bleecker.] (In: The New-York magazine. New-York, 1791. 8º. v. 2, p. 670.) =Reserve= ---- The posthumous works of Ann Eliza Bleecker, in prose and verse. To which is added, a collection of essays, prose and poetical, by Margaretta V. Faugeres. New-York: Printed by T. and J. Swords, No. 27, William-Street. 1793. 6 p.l., xviii, (1)20-375 p., front. (port.) 16º. =Reserve= Frontispiece, the portrait of Mrs. Bleecker engraved by Tiebout. "Poetics," p. 185-262. Several of these poems have been reprinted in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 1, p. 213-219, _NBH_. =Bonaparte=; with The storm at sea, Madaline, and other poems. New-York: Published by Haly and Thomas, No. 142 Broadway. 1820. 1 p.l., (i)iv p., 1 l., (1)8-92 p. 8º. =NBH p.v. 28, no. 1= =Boston Bard=, Poems of. _See_ =Coffin=, Robert Stevenson. =Bosworth=, Benjamin. Signs of apostacy lamented. [By Benjamin Bosworth.] n.t.-p. [Boston? 1693?] 4 p. 24º. =Reserve= "A caution to prevent scandal," p. 4. Signed and dated at end: "Benjamin Bosworth of New-England. In the 81st year of my age, 1693." Photostat copy from an original in Brown University Library. =Botsford=, Mrs. Margaret. Viola or The heiress of St. Valverde, an original poem, in five cantos. To which is annexed, patriotic songs, sonnets, &c. By a lady of Philadelphia, author of Adelaide [i.e., Mrs. Margaret Botsford]. Louisville, Ky. Printed by S. Penn, jr. 1820. 1 p.l., (1)4-96 p. 24º. =NBHD= =Bowdoin=, James, 1727-1790. A paraphrase on part of the oeconomy of human life. Inscribed to his excellency Thomas Pownall, Esq; Governor of the province of the Massachusetts-Bay. [By James Bowdoin.] Boston New-England: Printed and sold by Green and Russell, at their printing-office, in Queen-Street. MDCCLIX. 4 p.l., 3-88 p. 8º. =Reserve= ---- Woman. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 1, p. 330-332.) =NBH= ---- _See also_ =Pietas= et gratulatio. =Boyd=, William, 1777-1800. Woman: a poem, delivered at a public exhibition, April 19, at Harvard University, in The College Chapel. By William Boyd. Boston: Printed by John W. Folsom. M,DCC,XCVI. 2 p.l., (1)6-15 p. 12º. =NBH p.v. 26, no. 15= Also printed in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 2, p. 83-86, _NBH_. =Brackenridge=, Hugh Henry, 1748-1816. The Battle of Bunkers Hill. A dramatic piece, of five acts, in heroic measure. By a gentleman of Maryland ... [i.e., Hugh Henry Brackenridge.] Philadelphia: Printed and sold by Robert Bell, in Third-Street, MDCCLXXVI. 3 p.l., (1)6-49(1) p., 1 pl. (front.) 12º. =Reserve= Title-page lacking; supplied by a photostat facsimile. Frontispiece imperfect. Contains the following poems: Prologue, p.l. 3; Epilogue, p. 37-38; An ode on the battle of Bunkers-Hill, p. 39-44; Speech by General Washington, on his entering the town of Boston, p. 45-46; A military song by the army: on General Washington's victorious entry into the town of Boston, p. 47-49. The prologue and epilogue were written by John Parke. ---- The death of General Montgomery, at the siege of Quebec. A tragedy. With an ode, in honour of the Pennsylvania militia, and the small band of regular Continental troops, who sustained the campaign, in the depth of winter, January, 1777, and repulsed the British forces from the banks of the Delaware. By the author of a dramatic piece on the Battle of Bunker's-Hill [i.e., Hugh Henry Brackenridge]. To which are added, elegiac pieces, commemorative of distinguished characters. Philadelphia: Printed and sold by Robert Bell, in Third-Street, next door to St. Paul's Church. M,DCC,LXXVII. 4 p.l., (1)10-79(1) p., 2 l., front. 12º. =Reserve= Contains the following poems: An ode in honour of Pennsylvania militia, p. 54-64; Elegiac pieces commemorative of distinguished characters, p. 65-68. The "Prologue on the death of General Montgomery" which is at the end, was written by John Parke. ---- ---- Norwich: Printed by J. Trumbull, for and sold by J. Douglass M'Dougall, on the West side of the Great-Bridge, Providence, 1777. 5 p.l., 11-68 p. 12º. =Reserve= Contains the following poems: An ode in honour of Pennsylvania militia, p. 50-58; Elegiac pieces commemorative of distinguished characters, p. 58-68. =Bradford=, William, 1588-1657. Certain verses left by ... William Bradford ... penned by his own hand, declaring the dispensation of God's providence towards him in the time of his life, and his preparation and fittedness for death. (In: N. Morton, New-Englands Memoriall. Cambridge, 1669. 12º. p. 144-145.) =Reserve= ---- Copy of verses left by him for his children. (In: William and Mary College quarterly. Richmond, Va., 1895. 8º. v. 4, p. 63-64.) =IAA= ---- A descriptive and historical account of New England in verse; from a ms. of William Bradford, Governour of Plymouth Colony. (Massachusetts Historical Society. Collections. Boston, 1794. 8º. series 1, v. 3, p. 77-84.) =Reserve= ---- Of Boston in New England; A word to New England. (Massachusetts Historical Society. Collections. Boston, 1838. 8º. series 3, v. 7, p. 27-28.) =IAA= ---- A pastoral elegy on O****. R***. (In: The New-York magazine. New-York, 1795. 8º. v. 6, p. 570-571.) =Reserve= ---- A pastoral song. Ascribed to W. Bradford, esq. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1789. 8º. v. 6. p. 334-335.) =Reserve= Also printed in _The Beauties of poetry, British and American_, Philadelphia, 1791, p. 193-195, _Reserve_; _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 175-177, _NBH_; _The New-York magazine_, New York, 1795, v. 6, p. 569-570, _Reserve_. ---- Providence and the Pilgrim. (In: E. C. Stedman and E. M. Hutchinson, A library of American literature. New York, 1889. 8º. v. 1, p. 115-116.) =NBB= ---- Some observations of God's merciful dealing with us in this wilderness, and his gracious protection over us these many years. (Massachusetts Historical Society. Proceedings, 1869-70. Boston, 1871. 8º. v. 11, p. 465-478.) =IAA= ---- A word to New Plymouth. (Massachusetts Historical Society. Proceedings, 1869-70. Boston, 1871. 8º. v. 11, p. 478-482.) =IAA= =Bradstreet=, Mrs. Anne Dudley, 1612-72. A dialogue between Old England and New and other poems, by Mrs. Anne Dudley Bradstreet. Boston [1905]. 20 p. 12º. (Old South leaflets. [General series.] v. 7, no. 159.) =* R-Room 300= _Contents_: A dialogue between Old England and New concerning their present troubles, anno 1642.--In honor of that high and mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth of happy memory.--To the memory of my dear and ever honored father Thomas Dudley, Esq., who deceased July 31, 1653, and of his age 77.--An epitaph on my dear and ever honored mother Mrs. Dorothy Dudley, who deceased December 27, 1643, and of her age 61.--The author to her book.--To my dear and loving husband.--In reference to her children 23 June, 1659.--In thankful remembrance for my dear husband's safe arrival, September 3, 1662. ---- The poems of Mrs. Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672). Together with her prose remains. With an introduction by Charles Eliot Norton. [New York:] The Duodecimos, MDCCCXCVII. 2 p.l., xliv p., 2 l., 347 p., 1 l., 3 pl., 9 ports. 12º. =NBG= No. 132 of 132 copies on hand-made paper. Contains facsimiles of title-pages of the first three original editions, and of the 1867 edition edited by J. H. Ellis. ---- Several poems compiled with great variety of wit and learning, full of delight; wherein especially is contained a compleat discourse, and description of the four elements, constitutions, ages of man, seasons of the year. Together with an exact epitome of the three first monarchyes viz. The Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, and beginning of the Romane Common-wealth to the end of their last king: with diverse other pleasant & serious poems; By a Gentle-woman in New-England [i.e., Anne Bradstreet]. The second edition, corrected by the author and enlarged by an addition of several other poems found amongst her papers after death. Boston, Printed by John Foster, 1678. 7 p.l., 255 p. 24º. =Reserve= Title-page mutilated; pages 247-255 lacking. ---- Several poems compiled with great variety of wit and learning, full of delight; wherein especially is contained, a compleat discourse and description of the four elements, constitutions, ages of man, seasons of the year. Together with an exact epitome of the three first monarchies, viz. the Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman common wealth, from its beginning to the end of their last king. With divers other pleasant and serious poems. By a Gentle-woman in New-England [i.e., Anne Bradstreet]. The third edition, corrected by the author, and enlarged by an addition of several other poems found amongst her papers after her death. Re-printed from the second edition, in the year M.DCC.LVIII. 1 p.l., iii-xiii, 233 p. 16º. =Reserve= p. 223-224, 229-230, 233 lacking. ---- The tenth muse lately sprung up in America. Or severall poems, compiled with great variety of wit and learning, full of delight. Wherein especially is contained a compleat discourse and description of the four: elements, constitutions, ages of man, seasons of the year. Together with an exact epitomie of the four monarchies, viz. The Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, Roman. Also a dialogue between Old England and New, concerning the late troubles. With divers other pleasant and serious poems. [By Anne Bradstreet.] Printed at London for Stephen Bowtell at the signe of the Bible in Popes Head-Alley. 1650. 7 p.l., 207 p. 24º. =Reserve= ---- The works of Anne Bradstreet in prose and verse. Edited by John Harvard Ellis. Charlestown: Abram E. Cutter, 1867. 3 p.l., vii-lxxvi, 434 p., 1 pl., 1 port. 4º. =NBHD= No. 192 of 250 copies printed. =Branagan=, Thomas. Avenia, or A tragical poem, on the oppression of the human species; and infringement on the rights of man. In five books. With notes explanatory and miscellaneous. Written in imitation of Homer's Iliad.--A new edition.--To which is added the Constitution of the State of Pennsylvania. By Thomas Branagan. Author of Preliminary essays, Serious remonstrance, Penitential tyrant, &c. &c. Philadelphia: Printed, and sold by J. Cline, No. 125, South Eleventh Street. 1810. 2 p.l., 5-324 p., front. 24º. =NBHD= =Branch=, William. Life, a poem in three books; descriptive of the various characters in life; the different passions, with their moral influence; the good and evil resulting from their sway; and of the perfect man. Dedicated to the social and political welfare of the people of the United States. By William Branch, junior, of Prince Edward, Virginia. Richmond [Va.]: From the Franklin Press. W. W. Gray, printer. 1819. 1 p.l., (i)iv-xii p., 1 l., 3-218 p., 1 l. 16º. =NBHD= The =Breechiad=, a poem. Theresa. Boston: Printed by Belcher and Armstrong. State Street. 1807. 1 p.l., 11-22 p., 1 l. 12º. =NBH p.v. 24, no. 11= =Brockway=, Thomas. The gospel tragedy: An epic poem. In four books. [By Thomas Brockway.] Published according to act of Congress. Printed at Worcester, Massachusetts, by James R. Hutchins, MDCCXCV. 1 p.l., (i)iii-iv p., 1 l., (1)8-119 p., front. 16º. =Reserve= Frontispiece, an engraving of the Crucifixion, by Amos Doolittle. A =Brother=, pseud. Commencement, a poem.... _See_ =Biglow=, William. =Brown=, Charles Brockden, 1771-1810. Monody, on the death of Gen. George Washington, delivered at the New-York Theatre [sic] on Monday evening, Dec. 30, '99. [By Charles Brockden Brown.] (In: Commercial advertiser, New York, Jan. 2, 1800. fº. no. 699, p. 3.) =Reserve= A poem in ninety-six lines. Title from caption. With heading: For the Commercial advertiser. According to Dunlap, _History of the American theatre_, 1832, p. 274, this was written by C. B. Brown and delivered at the theatre by Mr. Cooper. Reprinted in _The Spectator_, New York, Jan. 4. 1800, no. 238, p. 1. =Brown=, Solyman, 1790-1865. An essay on American poetry, with several miscellaneous pieces on a variety of subjects, sentimental, descriptive, moral, and patriotic. By Solyman Brown, A.M. New Haven: Published by Hezekiah Howe, Flagg & Gray, printers. 1818. 1 p.l., (1)4-191 p. 12º. =NBHD= With bookplate of Henry B. Anthony. Several of these poems are reprinted in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 2, p. 351-353, _NBH_. =Bryan=, Daniel. The mountain muse: comprising The adventures of Daniel Boone; and The power of virtuous and refined beauty. By Daniel Bryan. Of Rockingham County, Virginia. Harrisonburg: Printed for the author: By Davidson & Bourne. 1813. 7 p.l., (1)16-252, 12 p. 16º. =NBHD= =Bryant=, William Cullen, 1794-1878. The embargo; or, Sketches of the times. A satire. The second edition, corrected and enlarged. Together with the Spanish Revolution, and other poems. By William Cullen Bryant. Boston: Printed for the author, by E. G. House, No. 5, Court Street. 1809. 2 p.l., (1)6-35(1) p. 12º. =Reserve= ---- Thanatopsis. (In: The North American review for 1817. Boston, 1825. Second edition. 8º. v. 5, p. 338-340.) =* DA= Also in _Specimens of the American poets_, London, 1822, p. 215-218, _NBH_. =Bulkley=, Edward. A threnodia upon our churches second dark eclipse, happening July 20, 1663 by deaths interposition between us and that great light and divine plant, Mr. Samuel Stone, late of Hartford in New-England. (In: N. Morton, New-Englands memoriall. Cambridge, 1669. 12º. p. 168-169.) =Reserve= ---- Upon the death of that truely Godly, reverend, and faithful servant of Christ, Mr. Jonathan Mitchell, pastor of the church at Cambridge, who deceased July 9, 1668. (In: N. Morton, New-Englands memoriall. Cambridge, 1669. 12º. p. 192-193.) =Reserve= =Bulkley=, Peter. A lamentation for the death of that precious and worthy minister of Jesus Christ, Mr. Thomas Hooker, who died July 7, 1647, as the sun was setting: the same hour of the day died blessed Calvin, that glorious light. (In: N. Morton, New Englands memoriall. Cambridge, 1669. 12º. p. 127-129.) =Reserve= =Burgoyne's= proclamation. _See_ =Livingston=, William. =Burk=, John Daly, d. 1808. Bunker-Hill; or, The death of General Warren: an historic tragedy, in five acts. By John Burk, late of Trinity-College, Dublin. As performed at the theatres in America, for fourteen nights, with unbounded applause. New-York: Published by D. Longworth, at the Dramatic Repository, Shakespeare-Gallery. July--1817. 44 p., 1 l. 16º. =NCO p.v. 250, no. 4= First published in 1808. "Ode for the fourth March, 1817. Written for the occasion by Mr. Samuel Woodworth, and sung by Mr. Abraham Stage." 1 l. following p. 42. =Byles=, Mather, 1706-1788. The comet: a poem. [By Mather Byles.] Boston: Printed and sold by B. Green and Comp. in Newbury-Street, and D. Goodkin, at the Corner of Water-street, Cornhil. 1744. 4 p. 8º. =Reserve= Woodcut on title-page of a comet. Also printed in _The Massachusetts magazine_, Boston, 1790, v. 2, p. 565, _Reserve_. ---- The conflagration. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 1, p. 126-129.) =NBH= ---- A full and true account of how the lamentable wicked French and Indian pirates were taken by the valliant Englishmen. (In: E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyclopædia of American literature. New York, 1866. 8º. v. 1, p. 118.) =NBB= ---- The God of tempest and earthquake. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 1, p. 129-131.) =NBH= ---- Hymn written during a voyage. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 1, p. 132.) =NBH= First appeared in _A Collection of poems, by several hands_, Boston, 1744. Also printed in E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, _Cyclopædia of American literature_, New York, 1866, v. 1, p. 121, _NBB_; Stedman and Hutchinson, _A library of American literature_, New York, 1889, v. 2, p. 432, _NBB_. ---- To His Excellency Governour Belcher, on the Death of His Lady. An Epistle. By the Reverend Mr. Byles. [Boston, 1736.] 1 p.l., ii, 6 p. 8º. =Reserve= Also printed in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 1, p. 131-132, _NBH_. =C.=, E., Gent. Sotweed redivivus. _See_ =Cook=, Ebenezer. =C.=, G. A little looking-glass for the times; or, A brief remembrancer for Pennsylvania. Containing some serious hints, affectionately addressed to the people of every rank and station in the province: with an appendix, by way of supplication to Almighty God. By G. C. Wilmington, Printed and sold by James Adams, 1764. 24 p. 16º. =Reserve= Reprinted with a type-facsimile title-page in _Magazine of history with notes and queries_, extra no. 22, p. 67-93, _IAG_. =Caldwell=, Charles, 1772-1853. An elegiac poem on the death of General Washington. By Charles Caldwell, A.M. M.D. Philadelphia: Printed at the office of "The True American." 1800. 2 p.l., 12 p. 8º. =Reserve= With the statement on the second leaf that "part of the following poem has been already printed in a hand bill, and circulated, at the commencement of the present year, among patrons of _The True American_," a copy of which, upon satin, is described and quoted in _The Historical magazine_, Boston, 1857, v. 1, p. 233-234, _IAA_. The =Camp= meeting. The extravagant zeal of religious fanatics and the licentious rioting of unprincipled people who attend these meetings, deserve the severest censure: but the truly pious of all denominations, both in the camp and out of it, will ever be respected and revered. By the Druid of the Lakes. The meeting here celebrated was held in a deep forest of wild woods, five miles from the east bank of the Cayuga lake, in the western district of New-York. Printed in the Year 1810. To be had at No. 40 North Fourth-street. 2 p.l., 5-12 p. 16º. =NBH p.v. 23, no. 11= =Capen=, Joseph, 1658-1725. Funeral elegy, upon the much to be lamented death and most deplorable expiration of the pious, learned, ingenious, and eminently usefull servant of God, Mr. John Foster, who expired and breathed out his soul quietly into the arms of his blessed Redeemer, at Dorchester, Sept. 9th, Anno Dom: 1681. Ætatis anno 33. (In: T. C. Simonds, History of South Boston. Boston, 1857. 12º. p. 38-39.) =IQH= =Carey=, Mathew, 1760-1839. The porcupiniad: a hudibrastic poem. In three cantos. Addressed to William Cobbett, by Mathew Carey. Philadelphia: Printed and sold by the author. 1799. 2 v. 8º. =Reserve= Issued separately. Title taken from canto II and III; canto I reads: In four cantos. Canto I dated: March 2, 1799; l. of adv., front., viii, (1)10-52 p. Canto II and III dated: April 15, 1799; front., iv, (1)6-44 p. ---- The prayer of an American citizen. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1787. 8º. v. 2, p. 411-413.) =Reserve= =Carpenter=, William. A poem on the execution of William Shaw, at Springfield, December 13th, 1770, for the murder of Edward East in Springfield gaol, by William Carpenter. [New York:] C. F. Heartman, 1916. 6 l., folded fac. 8º. (Heartman's historical series, no. 21.) =Reserve= =Case=, Wheeler. Revolutionary memorials, embracing poems by the Rev. Wheeler Case, published in 1778.... Edited by the Rev. Stephen Dodd. New York: M. W. Dodd, 1852. iv p., 4 l., (1)14-69 p. 12º. =NBHD= Includes reprint of original title-page (with author's name inserted): Poems, occasioned by several circumstances and occurrences in the present grand contest of America for liberty. New Haven: Printed by Tho. and Samuel Green. 1778. _Contents_: A contest between the eagle and the crane. Composed February, 1776.--A dialogue between Col. Paine and Miss Clorinda Fairchild, when taking leave of her to go on the northern expedition.--St. Clair's retreat, and Burgoyne's defeat.--The first chapter of the lamentations of General Burgoyne.--The fall of Burgoyne.--The vanity of trusting in an arm of flesh.--The tragical death of Miss Jane M'Crea, who was scalped and inhumanly butchered by a scouting party of Burgoyne's army, on his way towards Albany.--An answer for the messengers of the nation. =Caustic=, Christopher, pseud. _See_ =Fessenden=, Thomas Green. =Church=, Benjamin, 1734-1776. The choice: a poem, after the manner of Pomfret. Written in the year 1757. By Dr. Benjamin Church, while at college, and at the age of eighteen years. Printed at Worcester: By Isaiah Thomas, jun. April--1802. 1 p.l., (1)4-16 p. 8º. =Reserve= Reprinted in E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, _Cyclopædia of American literature_, New York, 1866, v. 1, p. 231-233, _NBB_. ---- Lines on the accession of George II. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 1. p. 156-160.) =NBH= ---- The times a poem. [By Benjamin Church. Boston, 1765.] 16 p. 8º. =Reserve= Title-page lacking, supplied with a photostat facsimile. A satire on and against the Stamp Act. Reprinted in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 1, p. 149-156, _NBH_. ---- _See also_ =Pietas= et gratulatio.... =Church=, Edward. The dangerous vice ******* (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 1, p. 343-347.) =NBH= A =Citizen= of Baltimore, pseud. Original poems. _See_ =Townsend=, Richard H. A =Citizen= of Boston, pseud. The Declaration of Independence; a poem. _See_ =Richards=, George. The =Clerical= candidates. A poem. Washington City, Nov. 14, 1801. 32 p. 8º. =Reserve= This poem was written to point out "the advantages to society, of a clergy whose lives have been devoted to literature and a preparation for their profession, over any to be expected from upstart pretenders without any solid qualification, other than external effrontery." =Cleveland=, Aaron, 1744-1815. The family blood. A burlesque. (In: Charles W. Everest. The poets of Connecticut. New York, 1860. 8º. p. 32-34.) =NBH= First published in C. W. Everest, _The poets of Connecticut_, Hartford, 1843. Also printed in E. C. Stedman and E. M. Hutchinson, _A library of American literature_, New York, 1889, v. 3, p. 304-306, _NBB_. ---- The philosopher and boy. (In: Charles W. Everest, The poets of Connecticut. New York, 1860. 8º. p. 25-32.) =NBH= Written when the author was nineteen years of age. First published in C. W. Everest, _The poets of Connecticut_, Hartford, 1843. =Cliffton=, William, 1772-1799. The group: or An elegant representation illustrated. Embellished with a beautiful head of S. Verges, C.S. Philadelphia: Printed for Thomas Stevens, by Lang and Ustick. M.DCC.XCVI. 3 p.l., (1)8-35(1) p., front. (port.) 12º. =Reserve= A satire in support of Jay's treaty. ---- Poems, chiefly occasional, by the late Mr. Cliffton. To which are prefixed, introductory notices of the life, character and writings, of the author, and an engraved likeness. New-York: Printed for J. W. Fenno, by G. & R. Waite. 1800. xviii, 119(1) p., front. (port.) 12º. =Reserve= The leaf preceding p. [71] is a special title reading: Some account of a manuscript, found among the papers of a French emigrant in London, entitled Talleyrand's descent into Hell. "From the Anchor Club." Frontispiece, the portrait of the author engraved by D. Edwin, after Field. Library has another copy in _NBHD_, lacking portrait. Some of Cliffton's poems are printed in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 2, p. 87-93, _NBH_; also in E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck. _Cyclopædia of American literature_, New York, 1866, v. 1, p. 604-609, _NBB_. ---- To William Gifford, esquire. (In: William Gifford, The Baviad, and Mæviad. Philadelphia, 1799. 16º. p. v-xi.) =Reserve= Written for this edition of Gifford's _Baviad, and Maviad_, at the request of the publisher, William Cobbett. Signed and dated: C. Philadelphia 13th May, 1799. Reprinted in E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, _Cyclopædia of American literature_, v. 1, p. 606-607, _NBB_. =Club= of Odd Volumes. Early American poetry [reprints]. v. 1-5. Boston: The Club of Odd Volumes, 1894-98. 5 v. sq. 8º. =Reserve= [v.] I. Tompson, Benjamin. New-England's crisis. [v.] II. Morrell, William. New-England. [v.] III. Mather, Cotton. A poem and an elegy. [v.] IV. Elegies and epitaphs, 1677-1717. [v.] V. Wolcott, Roger. The poems of Roger Wolcott, Esq., 1725. =Cobbett=, William, 1762-1835. French arrogance; or "The cat let out of the bag"; a poetical dialogue between the envoys of America, and X. Y. Z. and the lady. [By William Cobbett] Philadelphia: Published by Peter Porcupine, opposite Christ-Church, and sold by the principal booksellers. 1798. [Price 25 cents.] [Copyright secured according to law.] 2 p.l., (1)6-31 p. 8º. =Reserve= Reprinted with type-facsimile title-page in _Magazine of history with notes and queries_, extra no. 44, p. 383-408, _IAG_ =Cobby=, John. Poetic essays on the glory of Christ, and on the divinity and work of the Holy Spirit. By John Cobby. Price eight cents. New-York: Printed by John Tiebout, No. 358, Pearl-Street, for the author. 1797. 1 p.l., (1)4-16 p. 8º. =NBH p. v. 26, no. 14= An hymn, composed for, and sung on New-Year's day, 1797, p. [15]-16. =Cockloft=, Pindar, pseud. _See_ =Irving=, William. =Coffin=, Robert Stevenson, 1797-1827. The miscellaneous poems of the Boston Bard [i.e., Robert Stevenson Coffin]. Philadelphia: Printed for the author, by J. H. Cunningham. 1818. 1 p.l., (i)iv-xv(i), (1)18-156 p. 24º. =NBHD= =Cogswell=, Mason F. _See_ The =Echo=. =Colman=, Benjamin, 1673-1747. On Elijah's translation, occasioned by the death of the reverend and learned Mr. Samuel Willard. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 1, p. 55-61.) =NBH= ---- A quarrel with fortune. (In: Ebenezer Turell, The life and character of the Reverend Benjamin Colman. Boston, 1729. 8º. p. 24-25.) =Reserve= Reprinted in Stedman and Hutchinson, _A library of American literature_, New York, 1889, v. 2, p. 296, _NBB_. ---- To Urania on the death of her first child. (In: E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyclopædia of American literature. New York, 1866. 8º. v. 1, p. 74.) =NBB= First published in Ebenezer Turell, _The life and character of the Reverend Benjamin Colman_, Boston, 1729, p. 188-191, _Reserve_. =Columbia's= naval triumphs. New-York: Published by Inskeep & Bradford, No. 128 Broadway. J. Seymour, printer. No. 149 John-street. 1813. 3 p.l., (1)3-132 p. nar. 24º. =NBHD= The =Columbiad=: Or a poem on the American war. _See_ =Snowden=, Richard. The =Columbian= muse. A selection of American poetry from various authors of established reputation. New York: Printed by J. Carey, for Mathew Carey, Philadelphia. 1794. 2 p.l., 224 p. 16º. =Reserve= _Contents_: Conspiracy of kings; Prospects of peace; by Joel Barlow.--Philosophic solitude, by William Livingston.--An oration which might have been delivered to students in anatomy on the late rupture between the two schools of Philadelphia, by Francis Hopkinson.--Address to the Genius of America; Columbia; Seasons moralized; by Timothy Dwight.--Elegy on the times; Elegy on the death of Mr. Buckingham St. John; Ambition; The critics; by John Trumbull.--Epistle to Col. Humphreys, by Timothy Dwight.--Sketches of American history, by Philip Freneau.--Description of the first American congress; American Revolution; American sages; American painters; American poets; by Joel Barlow.--Eulogium on rum, by Joseph Smith.--An elegy on the burning of Fairfield, Connecticut; Elegy on Lieut. De Hart; Mount Vernon; An ode to Laura; Genius of America; by David Humphreys.--The country meeting, by T. C. James.--Poem written at sea, by Philip Freneau.--The American warrior; Doctrine of consequences; Song; by a South Carolinian aged 17.--Stanzas on the President's birthday.--The fire fly.--The thunder storm.--An epistle to Dr. Dwight; A song translated from the French: by David Humphreys.--Epitaph on a patient killed by a cancer quack; Hypocrite's hope; by Lemuel Hopkins.--An intended inscription, by James Allen.--Depredations and destruction of the Algerines, by David Humphreys.--A winter piece, by Lathrop.--An Indian eclogue, by Joseph Smith.--Future state of the western territory; American winter; On love and the American fair; by David Humphreys.--Benevolence, by Dawes.--The old soldier, by Fentham.--The war-horse, by Doctor Ladd.--On the migration to America, by Philip Freneau.--A pastoral song, by Bradford.--Address to the robin red-breast, by Bayard.--Progress of science, by Evans.--On a lady's birthday, by W. M. Smith.--Description of Jehovah, by Doctor Ladd.--Nature and art, by W. M. Smith.--Cololoo, by William Dunlap.--An elegy, written in February 1791, by Richard Alsop.--The Deity; Creation; New England described; Picture of a New England village; House of sloth; A female worthy; Miseries of war; by Timothy Dwight.--Ella, a Norwegian tale, by William Dunlap.--The country school.--Invocation to Hope.--Prayer to Patience,--Character of St. Tamany, by William Pritchard. The =Columbian= naval melody; a collection of songs and odes, composed on the late naval victories and other occasions. Boston: Printed by Hans Lund. 1813. 1 p.l., (1)3-94 p., 1 l. 12º. =NBHD= The =Comet=: a poem. _See_ =Byles=, Mather. =Commencement=, a poem. _See_ =Biglow=, William. =Commercial= Advertiser, New York. The embassina; addressed to the patrons of the Commercial Advertiser, by the carriers--with the compliments of the season. January 1, 1800. (In: Commercial Advertiser. New-York, Jan. 2, 1800. fº. no. 699, p. 1.) =Reserve= A poem relating to the events of the preceding year, and Washington's death. Reprinted in _The Spectator_, New-York, Jan. 4, 1800, no. 238, p. 1. =Cook=, Ebenezer. An elegy [on] the death of the Honourable Nicholas Lowe, Esq: By E. Cooke. Laureat. (Maryland Historical Society. Fund publication, no. 36, p. 53-56.) =IAA= This elegy appeared originally in the _Maryland Gazette_, December 24, 1728. ---- The sot-weed factor: or, A voyage to Maryland. A satyr. In which is describ'd, the laws, government, courts and constitutions of the country; and also the buildings, feasts, frolicks, entertainments and drunken humours of the inhabitants of that part of America. In burlesque verse. By Eben. Cook, Gent. London: Printed and sold by B. Bragg, at the Raven in Pater-Noster-Row. 1708. (Price 6 d.) 1 p.l., 21 p. 12º. =Reserve= Reprinted in 1731 in "The Maryland Muse. Containing the History of Colonel N. Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia. Done into Hudibrastic verse from an old ms. II. The Sotweed Factor or, Voyage to Maryland. Annapolis: Printed by William Parks. 1731. fº." Reprinted in 1865 in number two of Shea's _Early Southern tracts, ISG_. Third reprint, in modern type, with a photo-facsimile title-page in Maryland Historical Society, _Fund publication_, no. 36, _IAA_. ---- Sotweed redivivus: or the Planters looking-glass. In burlesque verse. Calculated for the meridian of Maryland. By E. C. Gent, [i.e., Ebenezer Cook.] Annapolis: Printed by William Parks, for the Author. M.DCC.XXX. vii, 28 p. 12º. =Reserve= Reprinted in modern type, with a photo-facsimile title-page in Maryland Historical Society, _Fund publication_, no. 36, p. 32-52, _IAA_. =Cooper=, Samuel. _See_ =Pietas= et gratulatio.... =Corlet=, Elijah. Epitaphium Thomas Hooker. (In: Cotton Mather, Johannes in Eremo.... Boston, 1695. 8º. p. 44-45.) =Reserve= =Cotton=, John, 1585-1652. [Elegy] On my reverend and dear brother, Mr. Thomas Hooker, late pastor of the church at Hartford on Conecticot. (In: N. Morton, New-Englands memoriall. Cambridge, 1669. 12º. p. 125-126.) =Reserve= ---- [An epitaph for Sara and Roland Cotton.] (In: Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana. London, 1702. 4º. book 3, p. 31.) =Reserve= Also in the Hartford, 1820, edition, v. 1, p. 260-261 and Hartford, 1855, edition, v. 1, p. 285 of the _Magnalia Christi Americana_. Also reprinted in Stedman and Hutchinson, _A library of American literature_, New York, 1889, v. 1, p. 253-254, _NBB_. ---- Upon the death of that aged, pious, sincere-hearted Christian John Alden, Esq: late magistrate of New-Plimouth colony, who dyed Sept 12th. 1687. being about eighty nine years of age. [By] J. C. [i.e., John Cotton.] n.p., n.d. Broadside. =Reserve= Photo-facsimile. Text in two columns, enclosed in mourning borders. A =Country= treat upon the second paragraph in His Excellency's speech. _See_ =M.=, S. =Cow-chace=, in three cantos. _See_ =André=, John. =Crafts=, William, 1787-1826. A selection, in prose and poetry, from the miscellaneous writings of the late William Crafts. Charleston: C. C. Sebring and J. S. Burges, 1828. 1, 384 p. 8º. =NBG= Poetry, p. 229-384. The =Croakers=. _See_ =Drake=, Joseph Rodman, and FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. =Croswell=, Joseph. An ode to liberty. Composed by Mr. Joseph Croswell, and sung at the Civic Feast at Plymouth, January 24, 1793. (In: Chandler Robbins, An address delivered at Plymouth, on the 24th day of January, 1793.... Boston, 1793. 8º. p. 19-20.) =Reserve= =Crystalina=; a fairy tale. _See_ =Harney=, John Milton. =Currie=, Helen. Poems, by Helen Currie. Philadelphia: Printed by Thomas H. Palmer. 1818. 2 p.l., (i)vi-viii p., 1 l., (1)8-150 p. 24º. =NBHD= =Dabney=, Richard, 1787-1825. Poems, original and translated. By Richard Dabney. Second edition. Philadelphia: Published by M. Carey, No. 121, Chestnut Street. 1815. 1 p.l., (i)iv-viii p., 1 l., (1)8-172 p. nar. 24º. =NBHD= =Danforth=, John. Ad politum literaturæ, atque sacrarum literaturum antistitem. Angliæque Americanæ antiquarium callentissimum, reverendum dominum, D. Cottonum Matherum. (In: Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana. London, 1702. 4º.) =Reserve= Text in Latin and English. Also in later editions of the _Magnalia Christi Americana_, as follows: Hartford, 1820, v. 1, p. 19; Hartford, 1855, v. 1, p. 21. ---- An elegy upon the much lamented decease of the reverend and excellent Mr. Joseph Belcher. Late faithful pastor of the church of Christ in Dedham, N. E. Qui obiit, April 27. Anno Dom. 1723. Ætat. suæ 53. (In: Cotton Mather, A good character. Or, A walk with God characterized. With some dues paid unto the memory of Mr. Joseph Belcher.... Boston, 1723. 8º. p. [25-27.]) =Reserve= Reprinted in Ebenezer Burgess, editor, _Dedham pulpit_, Boston, 1840, p. 217-218, _ZIY_. ---- Greatness & goodness elegized, in a poem, upon the much lamented decease of the honourable & vertuous Madam Hannah Sewall, late consort of the Honourable Judge Sewall, in Boston, in New-England. She exchanged this life for a better, October, 19th. Anno Dom. 1717. Ætatis suæ 60. [Boston? 1717.] Broadside. =Reserve= Text in two columns, enclosed in mourning borders. =Danforth=, Samuel, 1626-1674. An almanack for the year of our Lord 1647.... Cambridge by Mathew Day. Are to be solde by Hez. Usher at Boston. 1647. 8 l. 16º. =Reserve= Photostat facsimile copy. Poems on leaves 2-7. ---- An almanack for the year of our Lord 1648.... Printed at Cambridge, 1648. 8 l. 16º. =Reserve= Photostat facsimile copy. Poems on leaves 2-7. ---- An almanack for the year of our Lord 1649.... Printed at Cambridge. 1649. 8 l. 16º. =Reserve= Poems on leaves 2-7. =Danforth=, Samuel, 1666-1727. An elegy in memory of the worshipful Major Thomas Leonard Esq. of Taunton in New-England; who departed this life on the 24th. day of November, Anno Domini 1713. In the 73d. year of his age. [By] Samuel Danforth. [Boston: Printed by B. Green? 1713.] Broadside. =Reserve= Photo-facsimile. Text in two columns, enclosed in mourning borders. The =Dartmoor= massacre. _See_ =W.=, I. H. =D'Aubigne=, Richard. _See_ =Dabney=, Richard. =Davis=, Abijah. An oration, delivered at Port-Elizabeth, State of New-Jersey, on the 21st day of March, 1801. By the Rev. Abijah Davis. Philadelphia: Printed for Mathew Carey, No. 118, High-Street, Robert Carr, printer. 1801. 1 p.l., (1)4-24 p. 12º. =IO(1801) p.v. 1, no. 4= p. 15-24 in verse. =Davis=, John, 1721-1809? Coosohatchie. (In: The Monthly magazine and American review for the year 1800. New-York, 1800. 8º. v. 2, p. 80.) =Reserve= The village of Coosohatchie is situated about half way between Charleston and Savannah. ---- Horace, Book 1, ode 5, imitated; The shipwreck, a wandering of fancy. (In: The Monthly magazine and American review for the year 1800. New-York, 1800. 8º. v. 2, p. 400.) =Reserve= ---- Ode to Charleston College; Ode to a cricket; Horace imitated, ode xi, b. 1; Swift imitated, to Lucus George. (In: The Monthly magazine and American review for the year 1800. New-York, 1800. 8º. v. 3, p. 158-159.) =Reserve= ---- Ode on home; Ode to a medical friend; Ode to the mocking-bird; Plague at Philadelphia; In me-ipsum. (In: The Monthly magazine and American review for the year 1800. New-York, 1800. 8º. v. 2, p. 239-240.) =Reserve= ---- Ode to Lucus George, on his arrival at New-York from South-Carolina; To Flavia; Ad puerum; Horace imitated, Book II ode xxii; Ode to Lucus George written in South-Carolina; Sonnet to Charlotte Smith, written at Savannah, in Georgia; Ode to the Honourable Judge Grimke, of South-Carolina. (In: The Monthly magazine and American review for the year 1800. New-York, 1800. 8º. v. 2, p. 319-320.) =Reserve= ---- Ode to a medical friend. (In: The Monthly magazine and American review for the year 1800. New-York, 1800. 8º. v. 3, p. 397.) =Reserve= ---- Sonnet to the chick-willow. (In: The Monthly magazine and American review for the year 1800. New-York, 1800. 8º. v. 2, p. 480.) =Reserve= ---- To the evening star; Paraphrase of Buchanan's Latin epigram from the Greek; Ode on Ashley river; On my house at Sullivan's Island; Ode to a cricket. (In: The Monthly magazine and American review for the year 1800. New-York, 1800. 8º. v. 2, p. 159-160.) =Reserve= =Davis=, Richard Bingham, 1771-1799. Poems by Richard B. Davis; with a sketch of his life. New York: Printed and sold by T. and J. Swords, No. 160 Pearl-Street. 1807. 3 p.l., (i)viii-xxxi p., 1 l., 154 p. 12º. =NBHD= Edited by John T. Irving. Reviewed in _The monthly anthology and Boston review_, Boston, 1807, v. 4, p. 269-272, * _DA_. =Dawes=, Thomas, 1757-1825. Benevolence. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1790. 8º. v. 7, appendix 1, p. 33-35.) =Reserve= Also printed in _The Beauties of poetry, British and American_, Philadelphia, 1791, p. 126-127, _Reserve_ and in _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 169-170, _NBH_. ---- The law given at Sinai. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 2, p. 35-37.) =NBH= ---- Ode on the opening of the bridge over Charles river, from Boston to Charlestown, on the 17th day of June, 1786, being the eleventh anniversary of the Battle of Bunker's-Hill. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1787. 8º. v. 1, p. 183-184.) =Reserve= The =Day= of doom. _See_ =Wigglesworth=, Michael. =Deane=, Samuel. Pitchwood Hill. A poem. Written in the year 1780. By Samuel Deane, D.D. Printed at Portland. 1806. 2 p.l., (1)6-11 p. 16º. =NBH p.v. 20, no. 8= "The following elegant little poem is now published without the knowledge of the author. It appeared originally in the _Cumberland Gazette_, March 5, 1785...."--_Editor_. ---- _See also_ =Pietas= et gratulatio.... The =Death= of General Montgomery, at the siege of Quebec. _See_ =Brackenridge=, Hugh Henry. The =Declaration= of Independence; a poem. _See_ =Richards=, George. =Democracy=: an epic poem. _See_ =Livingston=, Henry Brockholst. The =Democratiad=, a poem. _See_ =Hopkins=, Lemuel. =Denison=, Edward. The lottery, a poem, in two parts. And an ode to war. By St. Denis Le Cadet [pseud. of Edward Denison]. Baltimore: Printed by J. Robinson, for the author. 1815. 1 p.l., (1)4-71(1) p. 12º. =NBHD= =Dennie=, Joseph, editor. _See_ The =Spirit= of the Farmers' museum, and lay preacher's gazette. =De Peyster=, Arent Schuyler, 1736-1799. Miscellanies, by an officer. Volume 1. Dumfries. Printed at the Dumfries and Galloway Courier Office, By C. Munro. 1813. 277 p. 4º. =Reserve= No more published. Reprinted, New York: A. E. Chasmar & Co. 1888. 80, ccii, 6 p., 1 map, 2 ports. 4º., _HBC_. =De Sillè=, Nicasius. Memoir and poems. (In: Henry C. Murphy, Anthology of New Netherland. New York, 1865. 8º. p. 185-195.) =NBH= =Dexter=, Samuel, 1761-1816. The progress of science. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 2, p. 40-42.) =NBH= =Diabolou= machia; or Battle of Dragon. _See_ =Hill=, George. A =Dialogue= between a Southern delegate, and his spouse, on his return from the grand Continental Congress. A fragment, inscribed to the married ladies of America, by their most sincere, and affectionate friend, and servant, Mary V. V. [New York:] Printed in the year M,DCC,LXXIV. [By James Rivington?] 14 p. 8º. =Reserve= Attributed to Thomas Jefferson, by J. Sabin. =Dinsmore=, Robert, 1757-1836. A short view of Burgoyne's expedition. (In: Ballads and poems relating to the Burgoyne campaign. Albany, N. Y., 1893. 8º. p. 62-66.) =NBHD= =Dodge=, Paul. A poem: delivered at the commencement of Rhode-Island College, September 6, A.D. 1797. By Paul Dodge, A.B. Published by request. Providence: Printed by Carter and Wilkinson, and sold at their Book-Store, opposite the Market. 1797. 8 p. 8º. =Reserve= =Drake=, Joseph Rodman, 1795-1820. The American flag. By Joseph Rodman Drake. Illustrated from original drawings by F. O. C. Darley. Illuminated cover by John A. Davis. Music from Bellini, by Geo. Danskin. New York: James G. Gregory, 1861. 4 f., 2 l. 4º. =NBH p.v. 29, no. 16= Written in 1819, and published in The New York _Evening Post_, May 29, 1819. Also printed in _The Croakers_. ---- The culprit fay and other poems. New-York: George Dearborn, publisher. 1835. 3 p.l., 84 p., 1 port. 8º. =NBHD= Has also an engraved title-page. Written in 1819. ---- ---- New-York: George Dearborn, publisher. 1836. 4 p.l., (1)10-92 p., 1 port. 8º. =NBHD= Also has engraved title-page. ---- ---- New-York: Van Norden and King, 45 Wall Street. 1847. 4 p.l., (1)10-92 p., 1 port. 8º. =NBHD= Has also an engraved title-page. ---- The culprit fay. New York: Rudd & Carleton, 1859. 5 p.l., (1)14-62 p., front. 16º. =NBHD= ---- ---- New York: Rudd & Carleton, 1860. 5 p.l., (1)14-62 p., front. 16º. =NBHD= ---- ---- New York: Rudd & Carleton, 1862. 5 p.l., (1)14-62 p., front. 16º. =NBHD= ---- ---- New York: Carleton, Publisher (Late Rudd & Carleton.) 1865. 5 p.l., (1)14-62 p., front. 16º. =NBHD= ---- ---- New York: Kilbourne Tompkins, 1875. 12 l. sq. 16º. =NBHD= =Drake=, Joseph Rodman, and FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. The croakers. First complete edition. New York, MDCCCLX. 2 p.l., (i)vi-viii, 191 p., 2 ports. 4º. (Bradford Club series. Number two.) =NBHD= No. 15 of 100 club copies. The Library has a second copy, no. 122 of 150 subscriber's copies, _NBHD_; also a third copy, no. 8 of 100 club copies, which has inserted 1 pl., 10 ports., _IAG_; also a fourth copy with 12 ports. inserted, in _Reserve_. _The Croakers_ was published originally in the New York _Evening Post_, March 10-July 19, 1819; _New York Mirror_, Jan. 28, 1828; New York _Evening Post_, Nov. 16, 1830; _Home journal_, May 27, 1856. Some unpublished poems are also included in this edition. ---- Poems by Croaker, Croaker & Co. and Croaker, Jr. as published in the Evening Post. 1 l., 499-506 p., 1 l. =* NBI= Excerpt: Waldie's octavo library. The =Druid= of the Lakes, pseud. _See_ The =Camp= meeting. =Dudley=, Thomas, 1574-1653. [Epitaph.] (In: N. Morton, New-Englands memoriall. Cambridge, 1669. 12º. p. 140.) =Reserve= "These verses were found in his pocket after his death." Reprinted in E. C. Stedman and E. M. Hutchinson, _A library of American literature_, New York, 1889, v. 1, p. 290-291, _NBB_. =Dunlap=, William, 1766-1839. Cololoo,--an Indian tale, thrown into English verse. (In: American poems, selected and original. Litchfield, 1793. 12º. p. 287-296.) =Reserve= and =NBH= "This poem was originally published, in an imperfect state, in no. 20 of the 3d volume of the _Gazette of the United States_, for July 6th, 1791...." Also printed in _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 187-190, _NBH_. ---- Ella, a Norwegian tale. (In: American poems, selected and original. Litchfield, 1793. 12º. p. 226-232.) =Reserve= and =NBH= Also printed in _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 215-218, _NBH_ =Dutton=, Warren, 1774-1857. The present state of literature; a poem, delivered in New-Haven, at the public commencement of Yale-College, September 10, 1800. By Warren Dutton. Hartford: Printed by Hudson and Goodwin. 1800. 1 p.l., (1)4-16 p. 8º. =Reserve= =Dwight=, Theodore, 1765-1846. Lines addressed to a mother, who had been absent from home several weeks, on her seeing her infant child. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 2, p. 73-74.) =NBH= ---- Lines on the death of Washington. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 2, p. 71-73.) =NBH= ---- Ode to conscience. (In: American poems, selected and original. Litchfield, 1793. 12º. p. 284-287.) =Reserve= and =NBH= ---- Picture of African distress. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1789. 8º. v. 6, p. 328.) =Reserve= Reprinted in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 2, p. 67-68. _NBH_. ---- _See also_ The =Echo=; The =Political= green-house for the year 1798. =Dwight=, Timothy, 1752-1817. Address of the genius of Columbia to the Continental convention. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1787. 8º. v. 1, p. 563-566.) =Reserve= Also printed in _American poems, selected and original_, Litchfield, 1793, p. 55-62, _NBH_; _The Columbian muse_. New York, 1794, p. 43-48, _NBH_. ---- Columbia. [By Timothy Dwight.] (In: The Salem gazette. Thursday, January 8, 1784. fº. p. 1.) =Reserve= Reprinted in _The American museum_, Philadelphia, 1787, v. 1, p. 566, _Reserve_; _The Beauties of poetry, British and American_, Philadelphia, 1791, p. 125-126, _Reserve_; _American poems, selected and original_, Litchfield, 1793, p. 62-64, _NBH_; _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 48-49, _NBH_. ---- The conquest of Canäan; a poem, in eleven books. By Timothy Dwight. Hartford: Printed by Elisha Babcock. M,DCC,LXXXV. 4 p.l., 304 p., 1 l. 16º. =Reserve= and =NBHD= Dedicated to George Washington. ---- Creation. (In: The Columbian muse. New York, 1794. 16º. p. 196-199.) =Reserve= and =NBH= ---- The critics, a fable. Written September 1785. (In: American poems, selected and original. Litchfield, 1793. 12º. p. 70-75.) =Reserve= and =NBH= This poem was first printed in _The Gazette of the United States_, July 13, 1791. ---- The Deity, and his dispensations. (In: The Columbian muse. New York. 1794. 16º. p. 194-196.) =Reserve= and =NBH= ---- The destruction of the Pequods; The farmer's advice to the villagers; Columbia; The critics, a fable; The worship of the Gibeonites; Battle before the walls of Ai; Evening after a battle; Procession of Israelitish virgins to meet the returning army; Lamentation of Selima for the death of Irad. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 1, p. 232-259.) =NBH= ---- Epistle from Dr. Dwight to Col. Humphreys, Greenfield, 1785. (In: David Humphreys, The miscellaneous works of Colonel Humphreys. New-York, 1790. 8º. p. 102-110.) =Reserve= Reprinted in _American poems, selected and original_. Litchfield, 1793, p. 75-84, _NBH_, and in _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 73-80. _NBH_. ---- A female worthy. (In: The Columbian muse. New York, 1794. 16º. p. 207-209.) =Reserve= and =NBH= ---- Greenfield hill: a poem, in seven parts. I. The prospect. II. The flourishing village. III. The burning of Fairfield. IV. The destruction of the Pequods. V. The clergyman's advice to the villagers. VI. The farmer's advice to the villagers. VII. The vision, or Prospect of the future happiness of America. By Timothy Dwight, D.D. New-York: Printed by Childs and Swaine. 1794. 183 [really 175] (1) p. 8º. =Reserve= and =NBHD= Written mainly in 1787; introduction dated June 13, 1794. Dedicated to Vice-President Adams. Advertised in _New York Daily Advertiser_, October 14, 1794, p. 2, col. 4. ---- The house of sloth. (In: The Columbian muse. New York, 1794. 16º. p. 205-207.) =Reserve= and =NBH= Reprinted in _The Port folio_, Philadelphia, 1804, v. 4, p. 327, * _DA_; _The American poetical miscellany_, Philadelphia, 1809, p. 176-178, _NBH_. ---- A hymn sung at the public exhibition of the scholars, belonging to the academy in Greenfield, May 2, 1788. By Dr. Dwight. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1789. 8º. v. 6, p. 171-172.) =Reserve= ---- Message of Mordecai to Esther. From a manuscript poem. (In: American poems, selected and original. Litchfield, 1793. 12º. p. 299-304.) =Reserve= and =NBH= ---- The miseries of war. (In: The Columbian muse. New York, 1794. 16º. p. 209-214.) =Reserve= and =NBH= ---- New-England described. (In: The Columbian muse. New York, 1794. 16º. p. 199-204.) =Reserve= and =NBH= ---- Ode on the glory of Columbia. (In: David Humphreys, The miscellaneous works of Colonel Humphreys. New-York, 1790. 8º. p. 181-183.) =Reserve= ---- Picture of a New-England village. (In: The Columbian muse. New York, 1794. 16º. p. 204-205.) =Reserve= and =NBH= Also in _The New-York magazine_, New-York, 1795, v. 6, p. 509-510, _Reserve_. ---- The seasons moralized. (In: The American magazine. New York, 1787. 12º. December, 1787, p. 58-59.) =Reserve= Also printed in _The American museum_. Philadelphia, 1789, v. 5, p. 302-303, _Reserve_; _American poems, selected and original_. Litchfield, 1793, p. 64-66; _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 50-51, _NBH_. ---- The seasons moralized; A song; The Deity, and his dispensations; Creation; Original state of man; Three fold state of man emblematized; Prospect of America. (In: The Beauties of poetry, British and American. Philadelphia, 1791. 16º. p. 195-198, 209-219.) =Reserve= ---- The trial of faith. (In: American poems, selected and original. Litchfield, 1793. 12º. p. 33-54.) =Reserve= and =NBH= In three parts: Part I, Daniel, chap, I; Part II, Daniel, chap, II; Part III, Daniel, chap. III. This poem appeared originally in the following numbers of _The New-Haven Gazette, and Connecticut Magazine_: Part I. Sept. 21, 1786, v. 1, no. 32, p. 245-246; Part II. Oct. 12, 1786, v. 1, no. 35, p. 269-270; Part III. Oct. 19, 1786, v. 1, no. 36, p. 277-278. ---- The triumph of infidelity: a poem. Supposed to be written by Timothy Dwight, D.D. of Greenfield in Connecticut, in 1788. London: Printed for J. Mathews, No. 18, Strand. MDCCXCI. 27 p. 8º. =Reserve= =Eastburn=, James Wallis, 1797-1819, and ROBERT CHARLES SANDS, 1799-1832. Yamoyden, a tale of the wars of King Philip: in six cantos. By the late Rev. James Wallis Eastburn, A.M. and his Friend [i.e., Robert Charles Sands]. New York: Published by James Eastburn, Clayton & Kingsland, printers. 1820. 2 p.l., (i)vi-xii, 339(1) p., front. 16º. =NBHD= and =HBC= Engraved title-page. =Eaton=, Theophilus. Review of New-York, or Rambles through the City. Original poems. Moral, religious, sarcastic, and descriptive. By Th. Eaton. Second edition. New-York: Printed and published by John Low, No. 17 Chatham-Street. 1814. 1 p.l., (i)iv, (1)6-144 p. nar. 24º. =NBHD= The =Echo=, with other poems. [Printed at the Porcupine press by Pasquin Petronius.] 1807. 2 p.l., (i)iv-xv, 331 p., 5 l., 7 pl. 8º. =Reserve= and =NBH= The Reserve copy has inserted, 33 plates (1 double). Contains poems by Theodore Dwight, Richard Alsop, Mason F. Cogswell, and L. Hopkins. "The first number of 'The Echo' appeared in 'The American Mercury,' at Hartford, in August, 1791. It was written at Middletown, by Richard Alsop and Theodore Dwight. The authors, at the time of writing it, had no expectation of its being published. Their sole object was to amuse themselves and a few of their personal friends. The general account of its origin and design is given in the preface to the volume, in which the numbers were afterward collected and published in New York. With the exception of a few lines written by Drs. Mason F. Cogswell and Elihu H. Smith, and a part of one or two numbers by Dr. Lemuel Hopkins, the entire work was the production of Messrs. Alsop and Dwight. Judge Trumbull never wrote a line in it."--C. W. Everest, _Poets of Connecticut_. An =Eclogue=, occasioned by the death of the Rev. Alexander Cummings. _See_ =Belknap=, Jeremy. =Eggleston=, George Cary. American war ballads and lyrics. A collection of the songs and ballads of the Colonial wars, the Revolution, the War of 1812-15, the war with Mexico and the Civil war. Edited by George Cary Eggleston. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1889. xiv p., 1 l., 278 p., 1 pl. 16º. =NBI= =Eleazar.= In obitum viri verè reverendi D. Thomæ Thacheri, qui ad Dom. ex hac vitâ migravit, 18, 8, 1678. (In: Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana. London, 1702. 4º. Book 3, p. 153.) =Reserve= Composed by Eleazar, an Indian youth who was then a student at Harvard. Reprinted in later editions of the _Magnalia Christi Americana_, as follows: Hartford, 1820, v. 1, p. 448; Hartford, 1855, v. 1, p. 496. Text in Latin and English. =Elegiac= ode, sacred to the memory of General [Nathanael] Greene. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1788. 8º. v. 4, p. 386-388.) =Reserve= =Elegiac= verses on the decease of his late excellency ... General George Washington. _See_ =Searson=, John. An =Elegie= upon the death of the Reverend Mr. Thomas Shepard. _See_ =Oakes=, Urian. =Elegies= and epitaphs, 1677-1717. [By Cotton Mather and Urian Oakes.] Boston: The Club of Odd Volumes, 1896. 16 p., 3 l., 16 p., 3 l., 43-46 p., 2 l., 29-35 p., 1 l., [26]-34 p., 2 l., 43-46 p. sq. 8º. (The Club of Odd Volumes. Early American poetry. [Reprints. v.] 4.) =Reserve= No. 81 of one hundred copies on hand-made paper. _Contents_: Elegie on the Reverend Thomas Shepard, 1677. By the Reverend Urian Oakes. Three elegies and an epitaph, by Cotton Mather: [1.] On the Rev. John Wilson. From _Johannes in Eremo_, 1695; [2.] On seven young ministers. From _Vigilantius_, 1705; [3.] On Ezekiel Cheever. From _Corderius Americanus_, 1708; [4.] On the Hon. Wait Winthrop. From _Hades look'd into_, 1717. =Elegy= on the death of brigadier general [Hugh] Mercer, of Virginia, slain in the action near Princeton, January 3, 1777. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1791. 8º. 1792, part 1, Appendix 1, p. 19-21.) =Reserve= An =Elegy= on the death of General George Washington. (Colonial Society of Massachusetts. Publications. Boston, 1905. 8º. v. 7, p. 196-198.) =IAA= A poem of eight stanzas of six lines each. Printed from a contemporary manuscript belonging to the Boston Athenæum. =Elegy= on the death of General Washington. (In: The Port folio. Philadelphia, 1805. 4º. v. 5, p. 136.) =* DA= An =Elegy= on the much-to-be-deplored death of ... Reverend Nathaniel Collins. _See_ =Mather=, Cotton. An =Elegy= on a Patriot. Occasioned by the awful and untimely death of the honourable William Wimble, who by the coroner's inquest was found to have come to his end by suffocation. (In: The New-Haven Gazette, and the Connecticut magazine. New Haven, 1787. 4º. March 22, 1787, v. 2, no. 5, p. 31.) =Reserve= An =Elegy= upon His Excellency William Burnet, Esq; who departed this life Sept. 7th. 1729. Ætat. 42. Boston: Printed and Sold by T. Fleet in Pudding-Lane, near the Town-House, where may be had His Excellency's Character [1729]. Broadside. =Reserve= Nine stanzas; text enclosed in mourning borders. =Elisha=, Patrick N. I. Patent right oppression exposed; or, Knavery detected. In an address, to unite all good people to obtain a repeal of the patent laws. By Patrick N. I. Elisha, Esq. To which is added an alarming law case; also, reflections on the patent laws. Illustrated with notes and anecdotes by the author. Philadelphia: Published by R. Folwell, 1813. xi(i), 189(1) p. 16º. =Patent Room= An =Emetic= for aristocrats! or A chapter, respecting Governor Jay, and his treaty. Also, a history of the life and death of independence. To which is added, a poem on the treaty. Boston. Printed, 1795. 23 p. 24º. =Reserve= A poem on Jay's treaty, p. 19-23. =Entertainment= for a winter's evening. _See_ =Green=, Joseph. =Epistle= to his excellency general Washington. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1787. 8º. v. 2, p. 513-514.) =Reserve= An =Epistle= to the Hon. Arthur Dobbs, Esq; in Europe. From a clergyman in America. [In three parts.] London: Printed for the author, and sold by R. Dodsley, in Pall-mall, and M. Cooper, in Pater-noster-row. 1752. 2 p.l., iii-v, 7-95 p., 1 l. 4º. =Reserve= =Epistle= from the Marquis de La Fayette, to General Washington. Edinburgh: Printed by Mundell & Son, Royal Bank Close; for Mundell & Son, Edinburgh; and Longman & Rees, and J. Wright, London. 1800. 2 p.l., 32 p. 16º. =Reserve= According to _Sabin_ 38570 "this exceedingly rare poetical piece was written during the lifetime of General Washington, but was not printed until after his death." Attributed to George Hamilton. An =Epistle= to a member of the General Court of Massachusetts, for 1809. n.t.-p. [n.p., 181-?] 1 p.l., (1)4-32 p. 8º. =NBHD= Half-title only. An =Epistle= from Yarico to Inkle. _See_ =Story=, Isaac. An =Epistle= to Zenas. _See_ =Gardiner=, John S. T. =Estlake=, Restore, pseud. Ethick diversions. In four epistles to Emphasian, R. T. To which is added, The Convent. By Restore Estlake. New-York: Printed by T. and J. Swords, No. 160 Pearl-Street. 1807. 2 p.l., (1)6-70 p. 12º. =Reserve= =Evans=, Nathaniel, 1742-1767. Elegy to the memory of [Mr. Thomas Godfrey]. (In: Thomas Godfrey, Juvenile poems on various subjects. Philadelphia, 1765. 8º. p. 5-7.) =Reserve= ---- Poems on several occasions with some other compositions. By Nathaniel Evans, A.M. Late missionary (appointed by the Society for Propagating the Gospel) for Gloucester County, in New Jersey; and Chaplain to Lord Viscount Kilmorey, of the Kingdom of Ireland. Philadelphia: Printed by John Dunlap, in Market-Street. M.DCC.LXXII. xxviii, 160, 24 p. 12º. =Reserve= Leaf of errata lacking. Some of these poems are reprinted in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 2, p. 106-118, _NBH_. ---- Progress of science. (In: The Columbian muse. New York, 1794. 16º. p. 181-182.) =Reserve= and =NBH= Not in his _Poems on several occasions_. Also in _The Beauties of poetry, British and American_, Philadelphia, 1791, p. 219-220, _Reserve_. =Everett=, David, 1769-1813. A branch of maple. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 2, p. 113-114.) =NBH= ---- Daranzel; or, The Persian patriot. An original drama. In five acts. Boston: John Russell, 1800. 66 p., 1 l. 8º. =NBL p.v. 13, no. 5= =Ewing=, Samuel. Reflections in solitude. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 1, p. 347-349.) =NBH= =Extracts= in prose and verse, by a lady of Maryland. Together with a collection of original poetry, never before published, by citizens of Maryland. In two volumes. Annapolis: Printed by Frederick Green. 1808. 2 v. 12º. =NBF= v. 1. 2 p.l., (1)6-364 p., 4 l.; v. 2. 1 p.l., (1)4-359 p., 6 l. The last 3 leaves of v. 2 contain a list of 375 subscribers. The poems by American authors include the following: v. 1. Epitaph on Mrs. Grove, of Litchfield, by William Grove, p. 41-42. A Similie, by J. L. B. Esq. of Md., p. 248-249.--To Lady Harriet Ackland, on her coming into the American camp to attend her husband, by Miss Lee, of Md., p. 264-266. v. 2. Sonnet to Mr.--, in India, by Miss Lee, of Md., p. 3-4.--Sonnet to the memory of her sisters, Mrs. F-nd-l and Mrs. Pl-t-r, by Miss Lee, of Md., p. 4-5.--The genius of America; Pyrocles to Lucinda; Impromptu; Epigram on a young gentleman; Chloe; To Monimia; An imitation of Horace, bk. iii, ode xxix; Epitaph on a miser; To Amanda; [Lines] written under a young lady's picture; Thoughts at Christmas; Absence; An ode to a friend; An ode, 1759; Song, to the tune of The Flowers of the Forest; On the taking of Louisburgh by Admiral Boscawen, 1758; Verses written at Mount Radnor, April, 1764; A hymn to Monimia; A song to the tune Wae's my heart that we should sunder; by John Thomas, of Md., p. 154-189.--Verses on presenting Mr. J. T. with a piece of work to wear in his watch, by Miss Lee, of Md., p. 189-190.--To a young lady, on receiving from her a watch-paper, by John Thomas, of Md., p. 190-192.--To a young lady, on the author's omitting to send her as promised, a present of flowers, on May-Day, 1762, by John Thomas, of Md., p. 245-247.--On the vicissitudes of human life, an elegy, addressed to a friend by Mr. Smith of Phila., p. 276-281.--The enamour'd philosopher, by a maniac in the hospital at Philadelphia, p. 315-317.--Lampoon, by Mr. Smith, of Phila., p. 317-319.--The student's sigh; To Miss A. T.; Morning, a hymn; The student's resolve; Elegy on the death of Hon. J. Rogers; Despair, an elegy; A burlesque invitation; To Miss A. O., by ---- of Anne-Arundel county, p. 340-354.--To Miss H. Hill; On the death of Mrs.--'s humming bird; by Miss Lee, of Md., p. 355-358.--Sonnet by Charlotte Smith, p. 359. A =Family= tablet: containing a selection of original poetry. Boston: Printed and sold by William Spotswood. 1796. 6 p.l., 81 p. 16º. =Reserve= Edited by Abiel Holmes. This collection was almost entirely composed by members of the family of President Stiles, and Dr. Holmes and his wife were the largest contributors.--Dexter, _Yale annals_. _Contents_: Elegy.--A dirge.--On the sudden death of a lovely child.--Lines addressed to Miss S. W. on the death of her brother who fell in battle at Miami Village, 1790.--Lines occasioned by the war, 1777.--André's ghost.--Epistle to Myra.--Lines presented to the parents of Mr. J. F.--Lines to the memory of Mrs. T. H.--Elegy to memory of Mrs. T. W.--Elegiac sonnet.--Farewell.--The adieu.--Invocation to religion.--Hymn written at sea.--Invocation to piety.--Lines written in a gale at sea.--Birth-day reflection.--Hymn, My times are in Thy hand.--Conscience.--To Myra.--Origin of the fire-screen.--A fragment.--Inscription on a mall at C.--The flower-de-luce.--Reply.--To Myron with a purse.--Reply.--To Myra with a paper-basket.--Lines accompanying a needle-book.--To a gentleman, who presented Myra seven robins.--Address to a young robin.--To Myron, with a jonquil.--Reply.--On reading the above pieces.--The transformation of Eliza into a poplar.--The soldier.--The seasons.--To a gentleman, who presented Louisa with a pen.--Reply.--To Strephon.--To Amanda.--Lines occasioned by seeing a portrait of the Goddess of Liberty.--Elegiac fragment on the death of E. S.--Elegiac sonnet on Mrs. K. T. S.--Elegy on Doctor *******--Yaratildia: an epic poem. =Fanny= [a poem]. _See_ =Halleck=, Fitz-Greene. =Farmer=, Henry Tudor. The battle of the isle. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 2, p. 174-179.) =NBH= ---- Imagination; The maniac's dream, and other poems; By Henry T. Farmer, M.D. member of the Historical Society of New-York. New-York: Published by Kirk & Mercein, and John Miller, Covent Garden, London. William A. Mercein, printer. 1819. 2 p.l., (i)viii-xi, (1)14-163 p. 12º. =NBHD= =Fashion's= analysis; or, The winter in town. _See_ =Avalanche=, Sir Anthony, pseud. =Father= Abbey's will. _See_ =Seccomb=, John. =Faugeres=, Margaretta V., 1771-1801. Essays, in prose and verse. By Margaretta V. Faugeres. (In: The posthumous works of Ann Eliza Bleecker. New-York, 1793. 16º. p. 263-375.) =Reserve= Poems, p. 275-375. =Fenno=, Miss J. Original compositions, in prose and verse. On subjects moral and religious. By Miss J. Fenno, of Boston. Printed in Boston, by Joseph Bumstead, at his office, No. 20, Union-Street. MDCCXCI. 1 p.l., iii, 125 p. 24º. =Reserve= =Fentham.= The old soldier. (In: The Beauties of poetry, British and American. Philadelphia, 1791. 16º. p. 190-191.) =Reserve= Also printed in _The Columbian muse_. New York, 1794, p. 171-172, _NBH_. =Fessenden=, Thomas Green, 1771-1837. Democracy unveiled; or, Tyranny stripped of the garb of patriotism. By Christopher Caustic, L.L.D. [pseud. of Thomas Green Fessenden.] Second edition. Boston: Printed by David Carlisle, for the author. 1805. 2 p.l., (i)iv-viii, 220 p. 12º. =Reserve= Canto I. The tocsin; II. Illuminism; III. Mobocracy; IV. The Jeffersoniad; V. The gibbet of satire; VI. Monition. ---- ---- In two volumes. Third edition, with large additions. New-York: Printed for I. Riley & Co. 1806. 2 v. in 1. 12º. =Reserve= v. 1. xxiv, 179 p.; v. 2. 238 p., 1 l. The Library has another copy of this edition in which v. 1 is dated 1806; v. 2, dated 1805. ---- The modern philosopher; or Terrible tractoration! In four cantos, most respectfully addressed to the Royal College of Physicians, London. By Christopher Caustick [pseud. of Thomas Green Fessenden], Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Aberdeen and Honorary member of no less than nineteen very learned societies. Second American edition, revised, corrected, and much enlarged by the author. Philadelphia: From the Lorenzo press of E. Bronson. 1806. 2 p.l., (i)vi-xxxii, 272 p., 2 pl. (incl. front.) 8º. =NBHD= ---- Original poems. By Thomas Green Fessenden, Esq. Author of Terrible Tractoration, or Caustic's petition to the Royal College of Physicians, and Democracy unveiled. Philadelphia: Printed at the Lorenzo press of E. Bronson. 1806. 2 p.l., (i)vi-xii, 203(1) p. 12º. =NBHD= Some of Fessenden's poems are printed in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 2, p. 115-121, _NBH_. ---- Pills, poetical, political and philosophical. Prescribed for the purpose of purging the publick of piddling philosophers, of puny poetasters, of paltry politicians, and petty partisans. By Peter Pepper-Box, poet and physician [i.e., Thomas Green Fessenden]. Philadelphia: Printed for the author. 1809. 1 p.l., (i)iv-xviii, 136 p. 12º. =NBHD= ---- Poetical dialogue between Lionel Lovelorn, Esq. and Geoffry Ginger, Esq. (In: The Port folio. Philadelphia, 1805. 4º. v. 5, p. 22-24.) =* DA= ---- Terrible tractoration!! A poetical petition against galvanising trumpery, and the Perkinistic institution. In four cantos. Most respectfully addressed to the Royal College of Physicians, by Christopher Caustic.... First American from the second London edition.... New York: S. Stansbury, 1804. xxxv(i), 192 p. 16º. =NBHD= First published in London, 1803. The =Field= of Orleans, a poem. _See_ =Hutton=, Joseph. =First= Church of Universalists, Boston, Mass. Ode performed ... on the day devoted to funeral testimonies of respect to the memory of ... Washington. (In: The Independent Chronicle. Boston, Jan. 23, 1800.) =Reserve= A poem of eight stanzas. =Fitch=, Elijah, 1745-1788. The beauties of religion. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American literature. Boston, 1829. 12º. p. 300-301.) =NBH= ---- The choice. (In: E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyclopædia of American literature. New York, 1866. 8º. v. 1, p. 258-259.) =NBB= First published in Providence, 1789. ---- The true Christian. (In: E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyclopædia of American literature. New York, 1866. 8º. v. 1, p. 258.) =NBB= =Folger=, Peter, 1617-1690. A looking-glass for the times, or the former spirit of New England revived in this generation. By Peter Folger. April 23, 1676. 10 l. 8º. =Reserve= "This was reprinted in 1763. Copies of it are very rare. We are indebted for the one from which we have reprinted, to a ms. copy in possession of Mr. Bancroft." Excerpt from: E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck's _Cyclopædia of American literature_. Also printed in E. C. Stedman and E. M. Hutchinson, _A library of American literature_, New York, 1889, v. 1, p. 479-485, _NBB_. =Forrest=, Michael. Travels through America. A poem. By Michael Forrest. Philadelphia: Printed by Johnston & Justice, at Franklin's Head, No. 41, Chestnut-Street. M.DCC.XCIII. 3 p.l., (1)8-50 p. 16º. =Reserve= Address to fortune (supposed to have been written by an old bachelor), p. 43-44; Verses addressed to a young gentleman at the Charleston College academy, in 1790, p. 44-45; A specimen of unlimited sublime poetry, p. 45-49; Man shall be free. A new song written February 25, 1793, p. 50. =Franklin=, Benjamin, 1706-1790. The mechanic's song. (In: E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyclopædia of American literature. New York, 1866. 8º. v. 1, p. 115.) =NBB= ---- The mother country. (In his: Select works. By Epes Sargent. Boston, 1854. 12º. p. 378.) =IAW= Also printed in E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, _Cyclopædia of American literature_, New York, 1866, v. 1, p. 115, _NBB_. ---- My plain country Joan. (In his: Select works. By Epes Sargent. Boston, 1854. 12º. p. 377.) =IAW= Also printed in E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, _Cyclopædia of American literature_, New York, 1866, v. 1, p. 114-115, _NBB_. ---- Paper: a poem. (In his: Works. London, 1793. 8º. p. 101-104.) =Reserve= Reprinted in _The Massachusetts magazine_, Boston, 1794, v. 8, p. 501, _Reserve_; Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 1, p. 173-174, _NBH_; and in E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, _Cyclopædia of American literature_, New York, 1866, v. 1, p. 114, _NBB_. Also printed in many editions of Franklin's _Works_. =French= arrogance; or "The cat let out of the bag." _See_ =Cobbett=, William. =Freneau=, Philip, 1752-1832. The American village. A poem by Philip Freneau. Reprinted in facsimile from the original edition published at New York in 1772, with an introduction by Harry Lyman Koopman and bibliographical data by Victor Hugo Paltsits. Providence, Rhode Island, 1906. xxi p., 2 l., 69 p. 8º. (Club for Colonial Reprints of Providence, Rhode Island. Third publication.) =IAG= No. 39 of 100 copies printed. ---- A collection of poems, on American affairs, and a variety of other subjects, chiefly moral and political; written between the year 1797 and the present time. By Philip Freneau, author of Poems written during the Revolutionary War, Miscellanies, &c. &c. In two volumes. New-York: Published by David Longworth, at the Dramatic Repository, Shakspeare-Gallery. 1815. 2 v. 24º. =NBHD= v. 1. 2 p.l., v-viii, (1)14-188 p., 2 l. of adv.; v. 2. 2 p.l., (1)10-176 p. ---- The miscellaneous works of Mr. Philip Freneau. Containing his essays, and additional poems. Philadelphia: Printed by Francis Bailey, at Yorick's Head, in Market Street. MDCCLXXXVIII. xii, 429 p. 16º. =Reserve= ---- The poems of Philip Freneau. Written chiefly during the late war. Philadelphia: Printed by Francis Bailey, at Yorick's Head, in Market Street. MDCCLXXXVI. vii(i), 407 p. 16º. =Reserve= ---- The poems of Philip Freneau poet of the American Revolution. Edited for the Princeton Historical Association by Fred Lewis Pattee.... Princeton, N. J.: The University Library, 1902. 3 v. 8º. =NBHD= ---- Poems relating to the American Revolution by Philip Freneau. With an introductory memoir and notes. By Evert A. Duyckinck. New York: W. J. Middleton, publisher, 1865. 1 p.l., (i)vi-xxxviii, 288 p., 2 ports. (incl. front.), 1 fac. 4º. =NBHD= No. 73 of 100 copies printed. ---- Poems on various subjects, but chiefly illustrative of the events and actors in the American War of Independence. By Philip Freneau. Reprinted from the rare edition printed at Philadelphia in 1786. With a preface. London: John Russell Smith, Soho Square. 1861. 2 p.l., (i)vi-xxii, 362 p. 16º. =NBHD= ---- Poems written between the years 1768 & 1794, by Philip Freneau, of New Jersey. A new edition, revised and corrected by the author; including a considerable number of pieces never before published. Monmouth [N. J.] Printed at the press of the author, at Mount-Pleasant, near Middletown-Point; M,DCC,XCV: and, of--American Independence--XIX. 2 p.l., (i)x-xv, 455(1) p. 8º. =Reserve= Advertised by Freneau in his newspaper, _The Jersey Chronicle_, no. 12, July 18, 1795. The Library has a second copy of this edition; both were formerly owned by Evert A. Duyckinck, who annotated them, in pencil, for his edition of Freneau's poems published in 1865. The annotations of the one supplement those of the other. ---- Poems written and published during the American Revolutionary war, and now republished from original manuscripts; interspersed with translations from the ancients, and other pieces not heretofore in print. By Philip Freneau. The third edition in two volumes. Philadelphia: From the press of Lydia R. Bailey, No. 10, North-Alley. 1809. 2 v. 12º. =Reserve= v. 1. 1 p.l., (1)4, iv, (1)6-280 p., front.; v. 2. 1 p.l., (1)4-302, xii p., front. =G.=, G. The Shunamite. _See_ =Green=, G. =Gardiner=, John S. J., 1765-1830. An epistle to Zenas. [By John S. J. Gardiner, Assistant Rector, Trinity Church, Boston.] Boston: Printed by Peter Edes [1784?]. 1 p.l., ii, (1)6-15(1) p., 1 l. 12º. =Reserve= Cerberus. Very curious and uncommon character, p. [16-17]. ---- [Funeral poem on Fisher Ames.] (In: E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyclopædia of American literature. New York, 1866. 8º. v. 1, p. 536-537.) =NBB= A =Gentleman= of Connecticut, pseud. The democratiad, a poem. _See_ =Hopkins=, Lemuel. A =Gentleman= of Maryland, pseud. _See_ =Brackenridge=, Hugh Henry. A =Gentleman= of Rhode Island Colony, pseud. Verses on Doctor Mayhew's book of observations on the charter and conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. _See_ =Goddard=, William. The =Ghost= of Christopher Columbus, visiting the United States in the year 1811. A poem. Cop. 1811. 1 p.l., 3-6 p. 8º. =* C p.v. 988= Bd. with: M. L. Weems, The philanthropist or political peacemaker. Philadelphia, 1809. Page 1-2 lacking. =Goddard=, William, 1739-1817. Verses on Doctor Mayhew's Book of observations on the charter and conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts: with note, critical and explanatory. By a gentleman of Rhode-Island Colony [i.e., William Goddard]. Providence, in New-England: Printed and sold by William Goddard, at the Signe of Shakespear's Head, 1763. 19 p. 12º. =Reserve= =Godfrey=, Thomas, 1736-1763. Juvenile poems on various subjects. With the Prince of Parthia, a tragedy. By the late Mr. Thomas Godfrey, Junr. of Philadelphia. To which is prefixed some account of the author and his writings [by N. Evans]. Philadelphia, Printed by Henry Miller, in Second-Street. MDCCLXV. xxvi p., 1 l., 223 p. 8º. =Reserve= "Elegy to the memory of Mr. Thomas Godfrey," by J. Green, p. 1-4; "Elegy, to the memory of the same," by N. Evans, October 1, 1763, p. 5-7. =Good= news from Nevv-England: with an exact relation of the first planting that countrey: a description of the profits accruing by the worke. Together with a briefe, but true discovery of their order both in church and common-wealth, and maintenance allowed the painfull labourers in that vineland of the Lord. With the names of the severall towns, and who be preachers to them. London; Printed by Mathew Simmons, 1648. 1 p.l., 25 p. 4º. =Reserve= Pages 9, 19, 22, 23 wrongly numbered 19, 11, 14, 25. Reprinted with modern type-facsimile title-page in Massachusetts Historical Society, _Collections for 1852_, Boston, 1852, series 4, v. 1, p. 194-218, _IAA_. The identity of the author has been lost, except that he is known to have been a resident of Plymouth colony. The =Gospel= tragedy: an epic poem. See =Brockway=, Thomas. =Gratitude=, a poem spoken at the Boston Theatre, by Mrs. Whitlock. (In: The Polyanthos. Boston, 1814. 8º. v. 4, p. 316-326.) =* DA= This poem appeared in _The Mirror of taste_ in 1811. =Green=, G. The shunamite. Recommended to the candid perusal of all denominations of Christians. By G. G.--, [i.e., G. Green] M.M.M. New York: Printed by Southwick and Pelsue. No. 3, New-Street. 1810. 1 p.l., (1)6-16 p. 12º. =NBHD p.v. 4, no. 7= p. 1-2 lacking. =Green=, Joseph, 1706-1780. Elegy to the memory of Mr. Thomas Godfrey. (In: Thomas Godfrey, Juvenile poems on various subjects. Philadelphia, 1765. 8º. p. 1-4.) =Reserve= ---- Entertainment for a winter's evening being a full and true account of a very strange and wonderful sight seen in Boston on the twenty-seventh of December at noon-day. The truth of which can be attested by a great number of people, who actually saw the same with their own eyes. By Me, the Hon^{ble} B. B. Esq. (Joseph Green).... Boston: Printed and sold by G. Rogers, next to the Prison in Queen-street. Tarrytown, New York. Reprinted William Abbatt, 1917. 13 p. 4º. (In: Magazine of history with notes and queries, extra no. 57, p. 67-79.) =IAG= Modern type reprint with type facsimile of title-page. ---- A mournful lamentation for the death of Mr. Old Tenor. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 1, p. 136-139.) =NBH= Also printed in Stedman and Hutchinson, _A library of American literature_, New York, 1889, v. 2, p. 435-437, _NBB_. ---- A parody on Mather Byles's Stanzas written at sea. (In: E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyclopædia of American literature. New York, 1866. 8º. v. 1, p. 121-122.) =NBB= Also printed in Stedman and Hutchinson, _A library of American literature_, New York, 1889, v. 2, p. 433-434, _NBB_. ---- The poet's lamentation for the loss of his cat, which he used to call his muse. (In: E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyclopædia of American literature. New York. 1866. 8º. v. 1, p. 122-123.) =NBB= Also printed in Stedman and Hutchinson. _A library of American literature_, New York, 1889, v. 2, p. 434-435, _NBB_. The =Group=: or An elegant representation illustrated. _See_ =Cliffton=, William. =Guest=, Moses. Poems on several occasions. To which are annexed, extracts from a journal kept by the author while he followed the sea, and during a journey from New-Brunswick, in New-Jersey, to Montreal and Quebec. By Moses Guest. Cincinnati: Looker & Reynolds, printers; 1824. 1 p.l., (i)iv, (1)8-160 p. 2. ed. 16º. =Reserve= and =NBHD= The =Guillotina=, or a democratic dirge, a poem. _See_ =Hopkins=, Lemuel. =Haight=, Mrs. Sarah. A medley of joy and grief; being a selection of original pieces in prose and verse, chiefly on religious subjects. By a lady of New-York [i.e., Mrs. Sarah Haight]. New-York: Published by W. B. Gilley, 92 Broadway. Gray & Bunce, printers. 1822. 298 p., 1 l. 12º. =NBF= Includes the following pieces written before 1820: A retrospect of past and present mercies, Jan. 1st, 1819, p. 10-24.--Meditation, June, 1815, p. 29-31.--Meditation, a walk to Mount Olivet on a summer's eve, July, 1815, p. 59-80.--Complaint, etc. under pain and trouble, February, 1815, p. 90-91.--Complaint under great bodily pain, and darkness of mind, Greenwich, April, 1815, p. 92-93.--On the death of Mrs. M. Wilkinson, 1815, p. 93-94.--All is vanity but the Creator, 1814, p. 95-96.--Complaining of hardness of heart. Mount Pleasant, August, 1814, p. 96-97.--To Rosamond, on her departure for England, June, 1811, p. 125-127.--Reflections, May, 1816, p. 158-159. =Halleck=, Fitz-Greene, 1790-1867. Fanny. [By Fitz-Greene Halleck.] New-York: Published by C. Wiley & Co. No. 3 Wall-Street. Clayton & Kingsland, printers. 1819. 1 p.l., (1)6-49 p. 8º. =Reserve= ---- ---- Second edition. New-York: Published by Wiley & Halsted, No. 3, Wall-Street. William Grattan, printer. 1821. 1 p.l., (1)6-67 p. 8º. =NBHD= ---- ---- New York, 1866. 3 p.l., (1)8-84 p., 1 port. 4º. =Reserve= No. 16 of 70 copies printed for W. L. Andrews. Also printed in _Specimens of the American poets_. London, 1822, p. 110-156, _NBH_. ---- Fanny, with other poems. [By Fitz-Greene Halleck.] New-York. Harper & Brothers. 1839. 2 p.l., (1)6-130 p., 1 l. 12º. =Reserve= Engraved title-page. ---- The poetical writings of Fitz-Greene Halleck, with extracts from those of Joseph Rodman Drake. Edited by James Grant Wilson. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1869. 2 p.l., (i)vi-xviii p., 1 l., (1)14-389 p., 5 pl., 5 ports. (incl. front.) 4º. =* NBI= =Hamilton=, George. _See_ =Epistle= from the Marquis de La Fayette to General Washington. =Hammon=, Jupiter, b. 1720? Jupiter Hammon, American negro poet; selections from his writings and a bibliography, by Oscar Wegelin. New York: C. F. Heartman, 1915. 2 p.l., 7-51 p., 5 facs. (incl. front.) 8º. (Heartman's historical series, no. 13.) =Reserve= One of 91 copies printed on Alexandra Japan paper. Facing p. 18, facsimile of broadside: An address to Miss Philis Wheatley, Ethiopian poetess, in Boston, who came from Africa at eight years of age, and soon became acquainted with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Hartford, August 14, 1778. Text in two columns. Text also printed on p. 32-36. Facing p. 28 facsimile of broadside: An evening thought. Salvation by Christ, with penetential cries. Composed ... 25th of December, 1760. Text in two columns. Text also printed on p. 29-31. A poem for children with thoughts on death, p. 37-40; A dialogue intitled the kind master and the dutiful servant [in verse], p. 41-46. =Harney=, John Milton, 1789-1825. Crystalina; a fairy tale. By an American [i.e., John Milton Harney]. New-York: Printed by George F. Hopkins. 1816. 3 p.l., 112 p. 16º. =NBHD= =Harwood=, John Edmund, 1771-1809. Poems by John Edmund Harwood. New-York: Published by M. & W. Ward, No. 4 City-Hotel, for Joseph Osborn, 1809. 2 p.l., (1)4-107 p. 12º. =NBHD= Elegies, p. 1-20; Odes, p. 21-48; Miscellaneous pieces, p. 49-105. =Haslett=, Andrew. Original poems, by A. Haslett. Author of various miscellaneous pieces. Baltimore: Printed by R. Gamble--No. 12 Light-Street. 1812. 2 p.l., ii(i), viii-ix, (1)14-95 p. 12º. =NBHD= =Hastings=, Sally. Poems, on different subjects. To which is added, a descriptive account of a family tour to the West; in the year, 1800. In a letter to a lady. By Sally Hastings. Lancaster, Printed and sold, By William Dickson, for the benefit of the authoress. 1808. 1 p.l., (1)4-220 p. 16º. =NBHD= The =Hasty-pudding=: a poem. _See_ =Barlow=, Joel. =Haven=, Nathaniel Appleton, 1790-1826. The remains of Nathaniel Appleton Haven. With a memoir of his life, by George Ticknor. [Cambridge: Milliard, Metcalf & Company,] MDCCCXXVII. xl, 351 p. 8º. =NBG= Poems written during the years 1807-1815, p. 233-263. ---- ---- Second edition. Boston: Hilliard, Gray, Little, and Wilkins. 1828. viii, 368 p. 12º. =NBG= Poems written during the years 1807-1815, p. 257-273. =Hazard=, Joseph. Poems, on various subjects. By Joseph Hazard. Brooklyn, N. Y. Published by the author, [A. Spooner, printer.] 1814. 2 p.l., (1)6-187 p. 24º. =NBHD= The =Heroes= of the lake. A poem, in two books. Written in the autumn of 1813. New-York: Printed and published by S. Woodworth & Co. War Office, 26 Chatham-street. 1814. 2 p.l., (1)5-108 p., front. 16º. =NBHD= =Hill=, George, 1796-1871. Diabolou machia; or Battle of dragon. [A poem written at Yale College, 1815, by George Hill?]. n.t.-p. 1875. 2 l. 8º. =SSX p.v. 1, no. 6= This poem describes an affair in which several students came to blows; it took place in a tavern on an evening of the fall term of 1815. =Hillhouse=, James Abraham, 1789-1841. The judgment, a vision. By the author of Percy's Masque [i.e., James Abraham Hillhouse]. New-York: Published by James Eastburn, 1821. 46 p., 1 front. 8º. =NBHD= This poem was delivered at the Yale College commencement of 1812. =Hine=, Benjamin. Miscellaneous poetry: or, The farmer's muse. By Benjamin Hine. New-York: Printed for the author, by H. Ludwig, 72 Vesey-St. 1835. 1 p.l., (i)iv-x p., 1 l., (1)14-273 p. 12º. =NBHD= Poems written between 1789-1820, p. 13-154. =Hitchcock=, David, b. 1773. A poetical dictionary; or popular terms illustrated in rhyme; with explanatory remarks. For the use of society in general, and politicians in particular. Part first. By David Hitchcock, author of the "Shade of Plato," &c. From Lewis's Press, Lenox. Henry Starr, printer. 1808. 1 p.l., (i)iv-vi, (1)8-113 p., 1 l. of errata. 16º. =NBHD= ---- The poetical works of David Hitchcock. Containing, the Shade of Plato. Knight and quack, and the Subtlety of foxes. Boston: Published by Etheridge and Bliss, No. 12, Cornhill. 1806. Oliver & Munroe, printers. 1 p.l., (i)iv-xvi. (1)18-164 p., 1 l. of adv. 16º. =NBHD= ---- The social monitor; or, A series of poems, on some of the most important and interesting subjects. By David Hitchcock, author of the "Shade of Plato." Second edition. New-York: Printed for Gould, Banks & Gould, Prior & Dunning, Isaac Riley, and Collins & Co. 1814. 1 p.l., (i)iv-v(i), (1)8-204 p. 24º. =NBHD= =Hoar=, Leonard, 1630-1675. [Verses in Latin.] (Massachusetts Historical Society. Proceedings, 1864-1865. Boston, 1866. 8º. v. 8, p. 14-15.) =IAA= The original verses are appended to the first triennial catalogue of Harvard University, published in 1674, and were undoubtedly prepared by Leonard Hoar. =Holland=, Edwin C. The pillar of glory; Rise Columbia. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston. 1829. 12º. v. 2, p. 328-330.) =NBH= Originally published in the _Port folio_, Philadelphia, 1813, series 3, v. 2, p. 552, * _DA_. =Holme=, John. A true relation of the flourishing State of Pennsylvania. (Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Bulletin. Philadelphia, 1848. 8º. v. 1, 1845-47, p. 161-180.) =IAA= Written in 1686. Printed for the first time, from the original manuscript. This poem is believed to be the first metrical composition written in Pennsylvania. =Holmes=, Abiel. _See_ A =Family= tablet: containing a selection of original poetry. =Holyoke=, Edward. _See_ =Pietas= et gratulatio.... =Honeywood=, St. John, 1764-1798. A poem on reading the President's Address; with a sketch of the character of a candidate for the presidency. [By St. John Honeywood.] Philadelphia: Printed by Ormrod & Conrad. No. 41 Chestnut-Street. 1796. 1 p.l., (1)4-7 p. 8º. =Reserve= ---- Poems by St. John Honeywood, A.M. With some pieces in prose. Copyright secured. New-York: Printed by T. & J. Swords. No. 99 Pearl-Street. 1801. 3 p.l., (i)viii, 159(1) p. 16º. =Reserve= and =NBHD= Reviewed in _The American review, and literary journal_ for the year 1801, New York, 1801, v. 1, p. 297-303. =Hopkins=, Lemuel, 1750-1801. The Democratiad, a poem, in retaliation, for the "Philadelphia Jockey Club." By a Gentleman of Connecticut [i.e., Lemuel Hopkins]. Philadelphia: Published by Thomas Bradford, printer, 1795. iv, (1)6-22 p., 1 l. 8º. =Reserve= At head of title: Second edition. Also ascribed to William Cobbett. Contains sarcastic references to the Democrats in the United States Senate who opposed Jay's treaty. ---- ---- Philadelphia: Published by Thomas Bradford, printer, book-seller & stationer, No. 8 South Front Street. 1796. 1 p.l., (i)iv, (1)6-28 p. 8º. =Reserve= and =NBH p.v. 24, no. 15= At head of title: Third edition. ---- Epitaph on a patient killed by a cancer quack. (In: American poems, selected and original. Litchfield, 1793. 12º. p. 137-139.) =Reserve= and =NBH= Also printed in E. C. Stedman and E. M. Hutchinson, _A library of American literature_, New York, 1889, v. 3, p. 414-415, _NBB_. ---- The guillotina, or a Democratic dirge, a poem. By the author of the "Democratiad" [i.e., Lemuel Hopkins]. Philadelphia: Sold at the Political Book-Store [By Thomas Bradford], South Front-Street, No. 8. [1796.] 1 p.l., (1)4-14 p. 8º. =Reserve= and =NBH p.v. 24, no. 16= A political satire, erroneously attributed to William Cobbett. ---- The hypocrite's hope. (In: American poems, selected and original. Litchfield, 1793. 12º. p. 139-141.) =Reserve= and =NBH= Also printed in _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 144-146, _NBH_; Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 1, p. 283-284, _NBH_; and in E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, _Cyclopædia of American literature_, New York, 1866, v. 1, p. 322, _NBB_. ---- On General Ethan Allen. (In: American poems, selected and original. Litchfield, 1793. 12º. p. 142.) =Reserve= and =NBH= Also printed in E. C. Stedman and E. M. Hutchinson, _A library of American literature_, New York, 1889, v. 3, p. 413-414, _NBB_. ---- A plea for union and the constitution. (In: E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyclopædia of American literature. New York, 1866. 8º. v. 1, p. 321-322.) =NBB= ---- _See also_ The =Anarchiard=; The =Echo=; The =Political= green-house for the year 1798. =Hopkinson=, Francis, 1737-1791. The battle of the kegs. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1787. 8º. v. 1, p. 85-86.) =Reserve= Also printed in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 1, p. 202-205, _NBH_; and in E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, _Cyclopædia of American literature_, New York, 1866, v. 1, p. 218-219, _NBB_. ---- An exercise, containing a dialogue and ode on the accession of his present gracious Majesty George III. Performed at the public commencement in the College of Philadelphia, May 18th 1762. [By Francis Hopkinson.] Philadelphia. Printed by W. Dunlap, in Market-Street, M,DCC,LXII. 8 p. 4º. =Reserve= ---- A fair bargain. (In: The Beauties of poetry, British and American. Philadelphia, 1791. 16º. p. 198-199.) =Reserve= ---- The miscellaneous essays and occasional writings of Francis Hopkinson, Esq. Philadelphia: Printed by T. Dobson, at the Stone-house, No. 41 Second-Street. M,DCC,XCII. 3 v. 12º. =Reserve= v. 3, after p. 215, "Poems on several subjects," 204 p. ---- The raising: a song for federal mechanics. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1788. 8º. v. 4, p. 95.) =Reserve= =Howe=, Joseph. An ode, addressed to Miss ****. (In: American poems, selected and original. Litchfield, 1793. 12º. p. 297-298.) =Reserve= and =NBH= =Humphreys=, David, 1752-1818. Address to the armies of the United States of America. Written in the year 1782. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1787. 8º. v. 1, p. 266-272.) =Reserve= First published in New Haven in 1782. Also in his _Life of ... Israel Putnam_, New York, 1810, p. 189-218, _AN_; and in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 1, p. 261-271, _NBH_. ---- American winter. (In: The Columbian muse. New York, 1794. 16º. p. 165-166.) =Reserve= and =NBH= ---- Depredations and destruction of the Algerines. (In: The Columbian muse. New York, 1794. 16º. p. 147-158.) =Reserve= and =NBH= ---- An elegy on the burning of Fairfield, in Connecticut. Written on the spot by Col. Humphreys. 1779. (In: The New-Haven gazette, and the Connecticut magazine. New-Haven, 1786. 4º. June 29, 1786, v. 1, no. 20, p. 159.) =Reserve= Also printed in _The American museum_, Philadelphia, 1787, v. 1, p. 265, _Reserve_; _American poems, selected and original_, Litchfield, 1793, p. 117-119, _NBH_; _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 112-114, _NBH_; and _American poetical miscellany_, Philadelphia, 1809, p. 63-65, _NBH_. ---- An elegy on Lieutenant De Hart, volunteer aid to Gen. Wayne. (In: American poems, selected and original. Litchfield, 1793. 12º. p. 120-122.) =Reserve= and =NBH= Also in _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 114-116, _NBH_. ---- An elegy, on Lieutenant De Hart, volunteer aid-de-camp to General Wayne. An ode, to Laura. A song, translated from the French. An epitaph written the day after the capitulation of Lord Cornwallis, at York-town in Virginia. An impromptu, for the pocket-book of a young lady who expected to embark soon for Europe. The genius of America, a song. The monkey, who shaved himself and his friends. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1788. 8º. v. 3, p. 273-279.) =Reserve= ---- An epistle to Dr. Dwight. On board the Courier de l'Europe, July 30, 1784. (In: American poems, selected and original. Litchfield, 1793. 12º. p. 129-134.) =Reserve= and =NBH= Also in _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 136-140, _NBH_. ---- The farmers' harvest hymn. (In his: A discourse on the agriculture of the state of Connecticut. New-Haven, 1816. 8º. p. 42.) =VPY= ---- Future state of the western territory. (In: The Columbian muse. New York, 1794. 16º. p. 162-165.) =Reserve= and =NBH= ---- Future state of the western territory; American winter; On love and the American fair; Depredations and destruction of the Algerines. (In: The Beauties of poetry, British and American. Philadelphia, 1793. 16º. p. 130-146.) =Reserve= ---- The genius of America--an ode: inscribed to his excellency George Washington, esq. on his return to Mount Vernon, December, 1783. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1789. 8º. v. 5, p. 101-104.) =Reserve= Also printed in _American poems, selected and original_, Litchfield, 1793, p. 127-129. _NBH_; _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 120-121, _NBH_. ---- The miscellaneous works of Colonel Humphreys. New-York: Printed by Hodge, Allen, and Campbell, and sold at their respective book-stores. M.DCC.XC. [With copy-right according to law.] 348 p. 8º. =Reserve= and =NBHD= Contains the following poems: Address to the armies of the United States of America, p. 12-29; A poem on the happiness of America, p. 30-66; Mount Vernon: an ode, p. 68-70; The genius of America, p. 70-72; An elegy on Lieutenant De Hart, p. 72-74; The monkey, who shaved himself and his friends, p. 75-76; A letter to a young lady in Boston, p. 90-97; An epistle to Dr. Dwight, p. 97-102; Elegy on the burning of Fairfield in Connecticut, p. 111-113. ---- The miscellaneous works of David Humphreys, late Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States of America to the Court of Madrid. New-York: Printed by T. and J. Swords, No. 160 Pearl-Street. 1804. xv, 394 p., 7 l., front. (port.) 8º. =NBG= ---- Mount Vernon, an ode, inscribed to General Washington. Written at Mount Vernon, August 1786. (In: The New-Haven gazette, and the Connecticut magazine. New-Haven, 1786. 4º. Nov. 16. 1786, v. 1, no. 40, p. 314-315.) =Reserve= Also printed in _American poems, selected and original_, Litchfield, 1793, p. 123-125, _NBH_; _The Columbian muse_. New York, 1794, p. 116-118, _NBH_; and E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck. _Cyclopædia of American literature_, v. 1, p. 377, _NBB_. ---- An ode, inscribed to General Washington. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1788. 8º. v. 3, p. 482-483.) =Reserve= ---- A poem on the death of General Washington, pronounced at the house of the American legation in Madrid, on the 4. day of July, 1800. [Signed D. Humphreys.] n.p. [1804.] 1 p.l., 151-187 p. 8º. =AN= Excerpt: The miscellaneous works of David Humphreys. New-York: T. & J. Swords, 1804. ---- A poem, on the happiness of America; addressed to the citizens of the United States. (In: The Boston magazine. Boston, 1786. 8º. July, 1786, p. 306-311; August, 1786, p. 348-352.) =Reserve= The poem was continued in later numbers of the magazine, which the Library lacks. Also printed in _The American museum_, Philadelphia, 1787, v. 1, p. 273-288, _Reserve_; and in the author's _Life of Israel Putnam_, New York, 1810, p. 219-285, _AN_. ---- A poem on the happiness of America. Addressed to the citizens of the United States. By Col. David Humphreys, aid-de-camp to General Washington during the American Revolutionary War. New York: The New York Printing Company, 1871. 1 p.l., (1)4-67 p. 8º. =NBI= ---- A poem on industry. Addressed to the citizens of the United States of America. By Colonel David Humphreys, Minister resident at the Court of Lisbon. Philadelphia: Printed for Mathew Carey, No. 118, Market-Street. October 14, 1794. 1 p.l., (i)iv p., 1 l., (1)8-22 p., 1 l. of adv. 8º. =Reserve= and =NBHD= ---- Poems by Col. David Humphreys, late aid-de-camp to his Excellency General Washington. Second edition:--with several additions. Philadelphia: Printed by Mathew Carey. M,DCC,LXXXIX. 1 p.l., 90 p., 1 l. 16º. =Reserve= ---- _See also_ The =Anarchiard=. =Hunn=, Anthony. Sin and redemption. A religious poem, by Anthony Hunn. Lexington: Printed by W. W. Worsley ... "Reporter" Press. 1812. 2 p.l., (1)6-25 p. 8º. =Reserve= "The following is an episode only of a much larger epic poem entitled 'The Columbiad,' which is formed out of most eminent scenes of the American Revolution and the hero of which is the immortal Washington."--_Preface._ =Huntley=, Lydia. _See_ =Sigourney=, Mrs. Lydia Howard Huntley. =Hutton=, Joseph. The field of Orleans. A poem. By the author of several fugitive pieces [i.e., Joseph Hutton].... Philadelphia: Published by W. Anderson, 102, Cherry-Street. 1816. 31 p., 2 l. 24º. =NBHD= =Indian= songs of peace. _See_ =Smith=, William. =Irving=, Washington, 1783-1859. [Lines spoken by Thomas A. Cooper, on the night of the opening of the Park theatre. Sept. 9, 1807.] (In: Washington Irving, Life and letters. New York, 1862. 8º. v. 1, p. 204-208.) =AN= Also in the New York edition of the _Life and letters_ of 1864, v. 1, p. 204-208. =Irving=, William, 1766-1821. [Poems.] (In: Salmagundi. New York, 1807-08. 24º. v. 1. p. 35-37, 54-56, 70-80, 101-104, 136-140, 181-188; v. 2, p. 250-254, 399-404.) =Reserve= The poems were written under the pseud. of "Pindar Cockloft, Esq." The Library has many other editions of _Salmagundi_ besides the one given here. =Jacob=, Stephen. A poetical essay, delivered at Bennington, on the anniversary of the 16th of August, 1777. By Stephen Jacob, A. B. 1778. Hartford: Printed by Watson and Goodwin, M.DCC.LXXIX. 8 p. 12º. =Reserve= =James=, T. C. The country meeting, or Friends' place of worship. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1787. 8º. v. 1, p. 93-95.) =Reserve= Also printed in _The Beauties of poetry, British and American_, Philadelphia, 1791, p. 182-185, _Reserve_; _American poems, selected and original_, Litchfield, 1793, p. 234-238. _NBH_; _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 121-125, _NBH_; and _The American poetical miscellany_, Philadelphia, 1809, p. 172-176, _NBH_. The =Jeffersoniad=; or, An echo to the groans of an expiring faction. By Democraticus. March 4, 1801: First year of the triumph of Republican principle. Price--18 cents. 1 p.l., (1)4-18 p. 16º. =Reserve= "The author ... presents his best respects to his fellow-citizens, and congratulates them on the event of the late election [of Jefferson as president]...." "Theodore Dwight" is written in a contemporary hand on verso of title-page. =John of Enon=, pseud. _See_ =Benedict=, David. =Johnson=, Edward, 1599-1672. A history of New-England. From the English planting in the yeere 1628. untill the yeere 1652. Declaring the form of their government, civill, military, and ecclesiastique. Their wars with the Indians, their troubles with the Gortonists, and other heretiques. Their manner of gathering of churches, the commodities of the country, and description of the principall towns and havens, with the great encouragements to increase trade betwixt them and Old England. With the names of all their governours, magistrates, and eminent ministers.... London, Printed for Nath: Brook at the Angel in Corn-hill, 1654. 236 p., 2 l. 8º. =Reserve= Better known by the running title: Wonder-working providence of Sion's Saviour in New England. Contains many poems. ---- ---- (Massachusetts Historical Society. Collections. Boston, 1814-19. 8º. series 2, v. 2, p. 49-95; v. 3, p. 123-161; v. 4, p. 1-51; v. 7, p. 1-58; v. 8, p. 1-39.) =IAA= ---- Johnson's Wonder-working Providence, 1628-1651. Edited by J. Franklin Jameson.... New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1910. viii p., 2 l., 3-285 p., 2 facs., 1 map. 8º. (Original narratives of early American history.) =* R-HAE= ---- Wonder-working Providence of Sion's Saviour in New England.... With an historical introduction and an index by William Frederick Poole. Andover, Published by Warren F. Draper, 1867. 4 p.l., cliv l., 265 p., 1 fac. 8º. =IQ= This is a modern type-facsimile reprint. No. 140 of 200 copies on small paper. =Johnson=, William Martin, 1771-1797. Poems. (In: Gabriel Harrison, The life and writings of John Howard Payne. Albany, N. Y., 1875. 4º. p. 296-333.) =AN= The following poems: On a snow-flake falling on a lady's breast, Winter, Spring, Fame, Epitaph on a lady, are printed in E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, _Cyclopædia of American literature_. New York, 1866, v. 1, p. 586, _NBB_. ---- ---- (In: Gabriel Harrison, John Howard Payne ... his life and writings. Philadelphia, 1885. 8º. p. 343-374.) =AN= =Johnston=, Archibald. The mariner; a poem in two cantos. By Archibald Johnston. Philadelphia: Published by Edward Earle, corner of Fourth and Library streets. William Fry, printer. 1818. 3 p.l., (1)10-152 p. 16º. =NBHD= Has also an engraved title-page. Miscellanea, p. [97]-126. =Jones=, Elizabeth C. Poems on different subjects, original and selected. By Elizabeth C. Jones. Providence: H. H. Brown, printer. 1819. 1 p.l., (1)4-48 p. 12º. =NBH p.v. 55, no. 5= =Josselyn=, John, fl. 1630-1675. New-Englands rarities discovered: in birds, beasts, fishes, serpents, and plants of that country. Together with the physical and chyrurgical remedies wherewith the natives constantly use to cure their distempers, wounds, and sores. Also a perfect description of an Indian squa, in all her bravery; with a poem not improperly conferr'd upon her. Lastly a chronological table of the most remarkable passages in that country amongst the English. Illustrated with cuts. By John Josselyn, gent. London. Printed for G. Widdowes at the Green Dragon in St. Paul's church-yard, 1672. 2 p.l., 114 p., 1 l., 1 pl. illus. (8º.) 16º. =Reserve= "The poem," p. 101-102. Reprinted in American Antiquarian Society, _Archæologia Americana. Transactions and collections_, [Worcester,] 1860, v. 4, p. 105-238, _IAA_. "The poem" appears on p. 232. ---- New-England's rarities discovered in birds, beasts, fishes, serpents, and plants of that country. By John Josselyn, gent. With an introduction and notes, by Edward Tuckerman. Boston: William Veazie, 1865. 2 p.l., (i)viii, 169 p. 8º. =IQ= One of 75 copies printed. "The poem," p. 158. A =Journey= from Patapsco to Annapolis. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia. 1791. 8º. v. 9, appendix 1, p. 9-16.) =Reserve= The =Judgment=, a vision. _See_ =Hillhouse=, James Abraham. =Keimer=, Samuel, fl. 1723-1728. An elegy on the much lamented death of the ingenious and well-beloved Aquila Rose, clerk to the honourable assembly at Philadelphia, who died the 24th of the 4th month, 1723. Aged 28. (In: The Register of Pennsylvania, edited by Samuel Hazard. Philadelphia, 1828. 4º. Nov., 1828, p. 262-263.) =IAA= The original was printed in 1723 as a hand-bill with imprint: Philadelphia: Printed, and sold by S. Keimer, in High-Street. (Price two-pence.) Also printed in E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, _Cyclopædia of American literature_, New York, 1866, v. 1, p. 98-99, _NBB_. =Kettell=, Samuel. Specimens of American poetry, with critical and biographical notices. Boston: S. G. Goodrich and Co., 1829. 3 v. 12º. =NBH= Contains selections from the works of the following authors, writing before 1820: J. Adams, v. 1, p. 67-74; J. Allen, v. 1, p. 160-173; W. Allston, v. 2, p. 149-155; R. Alsop, v. 2, p. 54-67; J. L. Arnold, v. 2, p. 77-82; J. Barlow, v. 2, p. 1-27; A. E. Bleecker, v. 1, p. 211-219; J. Bowdoin, v. 1, p. 330-332; M. Byles, v. 1, p. 124-133; B. Church, v. 1, p. 145-160; E. Church, v. 1, p. 343-347; W. Cliffton, v. 2, p. 86-93; B. Coleman, v. 1, p. 49-61; W. Crafts, v. 2, p. 144-145; R. Dabney, v. 2, p. 166-172; R. B. Davis, v. 1, p 351-353; T. Dawes, v. 2, p. 35-37; S. Deane, v. 2, p. 398-403; R. Devens, v. 2, p. 38-40; S. Dexter. v. 2, p. 40-42; Theodore Dwight, v. 2, p. 67-74; Timothy Dwight, v. 1, p. 223-259; N. Evans, v. 1, p. 104-118; D. Everett, v. 2, p. 113-114; S. Ewing, v. 1, p. 347-349; H. T. Farmer, v. 2, p. 174-179; M. V. Faugeres, v. 1, p. 220-223; T. G. Fessenden, v. 2, p. 114-121; E. Fitch, v. 1, p. 300-301; B. Franklin, v. 1, p. 173-174; P. Freneau, v. 1, p. 285-299; T. Godfrey, v. 1, p. 88-104; J. Green, v. 1, p. 133-138; S. H. Hale, v. 2, p. 296-302; J. A. Hillhouse, v. 2, p. 356-365; St. J. Honeywood, v. 2, p. 43-47; L. Hopkins, v. 1, p. 272-284; F. Hopkinson, v. 1, p. 201-210; J. Hopkinson, v. 1, p. 350-351; D. Humphreys, v. 1, p. 259-272; F. S. Key, v. 2, p. 288-289; H. C. Knight, v. 2, p. 285-289; J. B. Ladd, v. 1, p. 334-342; John Lathrop, v. 2, p. 101-108; Joseph Lathrop, v. 1, p. 326-357; E. Lincoln, v. 2, p. 303-314; J. B. Linn, v. 2, p. 121-126; W. Livingston, v. 1, p. 139-145; S. Low, v. 1, p. 318-324; J. Lowell, v. 1, p. 332-333; J. D. M'Kinnon, v. 1, p. 312-318; C. Mather, v. 1, p. 1-17; W. Maxwell, v. 2, p. 155-159; J. Maylem, v. 1, p. 83-88; S. W. Morton, v. 2, p. 75-76; P. Oliver, v. 1, p. 333-334; J. Osborn, v. 1, p. 118-124; S. Osborn, v. 2, p. 145-149; R. T. Paine, v. 2, p. 93-100; J. K. Paulding, v. 2, p. 179-184; H. Pickering, v. 2, p. 272-285; W. L. Pierce, v. 2, p. 130-133; J. Pierpont, v. 2, p. 246-272; S. Porter, v. 1, p. 301-305; B. Pratt, v. 1, p. 324-326; J. Ralph, v. 1, p. 74-83; W. Ray, v. 2, p. 137-144; G. Richards, v. 2, p. 27-31; R. C. Sands, v. 2, p. 228-241; L. M. Sargent, v. 2, p. 134-137; J. M. Sewall, v. 1, p. 198-200; S. Sewall, v. 1, p. 328-330; J. Shaw, v. 2, p. 126-130; L. H. Sigourney, v. 2, p. 204-227; W. M. Smith, v. 1, p. 305-312; J. Story, v. 2, p. 109-112; J. Trumbull, v. 1, p. 175-198; St. G. Tucker, v. 1, p. 349-350; J. Turrell, v. 1, p. 61-37; R. Tyler, v. 2, p. 47-54; W. B. Walter, v. 2, p. 161-166; K. A. Ware, v. 2, p. 290-295; M. Warren, v. 2, p. 31-35; M. Wigglesworth, v. 1, p. 35-49; R. Wolcott, v. 1, p. 19-35; S. Woodworth, v. 2, p. 241-246. =Key=, Francis Scott, 1780-1843. The star spangled banner. (In his: Poems of the late Francis S. Key. New York, 1857. 12º. p. 31-33.) =NBHD= Also in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 2, p. 288-289, _NBH_; E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, _Cyclopædia of American literature_, New York, 1866, v. 1, p. 663-664, _NBB_; and E. C. Stedman and E. M. Hutchinson, _Library of American literature_. New York, 1888, v. 1, p. 41. _NBD_. Written in 1814 during the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the English. =Knight=, Henry Coggswell, b. 1788. The broken harp; poems. By H. C. Knight. Philadelphia: Published by J. Conrad and Co. 1815. 2 p.l., (i)vi-x p., 1 l., (1)10-172 p., 2 l. 16º. =NBHD= ---- The cypriad in two cantos: with other poems and translations. By Henry C. Knight. Boston: J. Belcher, printer. 1809. 3 p.l., (1)8-68 p. 8º. =NBH p.v. 25, no. 8= =Knox=, Samuel. Ode to Education in seven stanzas. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1789. 8º. v. 5, p. 405-408.) =Reserve= ---- An ode, most respectfully inscribed to his excellency, general Washington, on being chosen president of the United States. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1789. 8º. v. 6, p. 85-86.) =Reserve= Dated: Bladensburgh, April 16, 1789. =Ladd=, John. Lyric poems, chiefly in two books, never before published. 1. A thought on man in paradise; his expulsion. A compendium on his restoration by grace. The saints' travail through time, and final state in glory. 2. Sacred to honor, virtue and independence--and to the memory of the dead. The wild man and the apes--a muthony. By John Ladd. Schenectady: Printed for the author. 1814. 1 p.l., (i)iv, (1)6-127(1) p., 2 l. 12º. =NBHD= =Ladd=, Joseph Brown, 1764-1786. Charlotte's soliloquy, to the manes of Werter. Sweet Polly of Plymouth's lament. The wish. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1787. 8º. v. 1, p. 180-181.) =Reserve= ---- Description of Jehovah, from the XVIIIth Psalm. (In: The Columbian muse. New York, 1794. 16º. p. 183-184.) =Reserve= and =NBH= ---- Description of Jehovah, from the XVIIIth Psalm. The war-horse, paraphrased from Job. (In: The Beauties of poetry, British and American. Philadelphia, 1791. 16º. p. 181-182, 191.) =Reserve= ---- The dove, a fragment. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1787. 8º. v. 2, p. 203-204.) =Reserve= ---- The incurable. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1787. 8º. v. 1, p. 86.) =Reserve= ---- The literary remains of Joseph Brown Ladd, M.D. Collected by his sister, Mrs. Elizabeth Haskins, of Rhode Island. To which is prefixed, a sketch of the author's life, by W. B. Chittenden. New York: H. C. Sleight, Clinton Hall, 1832. xxiv, (1)14-228 p. 8º. =NBG= Poems, p. [13]-163. Some of these poems are reprinted in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 1, p. 338-342, _NBH_, where they are credited to William Ladd, the father of Joseph Brown. ---- On the resignation of his excellency General Washington. Retirement. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1787. 8º. v. 1, p. 178-179.) =Reserve= ---- The poems of Arouet [by Joseph Brown Ladd]. Charleston, South Carolina: Printed by Bowen and Markland, No. 53, Church-Street, and No. 11, Elliot-Street. 1786. 2 p.l, (i)viii-xvi, 128 p. 16º. =Reserve= Half-title lacking. ---- The war-horse, paraphrased from Job. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1787. 8º. v. 1, p. 183.) =Reserve= Also printed in _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 172-173, _NBH_. A =Lady= of New-York, pseud. A medley of joy and grief. _See_ =Haight=, Mrs. Sarah. A =Lady= of Philadelphia, pseud. Viola or The heiress of St. Valverde. _See_ =Botsford=, Mrs. Margaret. =Lathrop=, John, the younger, 1772-1820. The influence of civil institutions on society and the moral faculties, a poem. Delivered at the university in Cambridge, on the day of public commencement, July 18, 1792. By John Lathrop, jun. (In: The Massachusetts magazine. Boston, 1792. 8º. v. 4, July, 1792, p. 452-454.) =Reserve= ---- A monody, sacred to the memory of the Rev. John Lovejoy Abbot, A.M. Pastor of the Church in Chauncey-Place, Boston; who died October 17, 1814, ætat. 31. By J. Lathrop, Jun.... Boston: Published by Munroe, Francis & Parker, 1815. 16 p. 8º. =AN= ---- Ode for the twentieth anniversary of Massachusetts Charitable Fire Society. (In: E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyclopædia of American literature. New York, 1866. 8º. v. 1, p. 613-614.) =NBB= ---- Speech of Canonicus. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 2, p. 102-108.) =NBH= =Lathrop=, Joseph, 1731-1821. The existence of a Deity. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1789. 8º. v. 5, p. 101.) =Reserve= Reprinted in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 1, p. 326-327, _NBH_. ---- The majesty and grace of God. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1791. 8º. v. 9, appendix 1, p. 36-37.) =Reserve= ---- Reflexions of a libertine reclaimed by sickness. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1789. 8º. v. 6, p. 172-174.) =Reserve= ---- A winter piece. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1790. 8º. v. 8, appendix 1, p. 39-40.) =Reserve= Also printed in _The Beauties of poetry, British and American_, Philadelphia, 1791, p. 204-206, _Reserve_; and in _The Columbian muse_. New York, 1794, p. 158-160. _NBH_. =Law=, Thomas. Ballston springs. [By Thomas Law] New-York: Printed by S. Gould, opposite the City-Hall. 1806. 3 p.l., 7-48 p. 16º. =NBH p.v. 22, no. 3= Last leaf mutilated. =Lawson=, John. The maniac, with other poems. By John Lawson. Philadelphia: Published by Hellings and Aitken. Dennis Heartt, printer. 1811. 2 p.l., (i)vi-xiv p., 1 l., 101 p. 24º. =NBHD= =Le Cadet=, St. Denis, pseud. _See_ =Denison=, Edward. =Lewis=, Mr. A description of Maryland, from Carmen Seculare, a poem, addressed, anno 1732, to lord Baltimore, proprietor of that province. By Mr. Lewis. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1789. 8º. v. 6, p. 413-416.) =Reserve= =Liberty=: a poem, on the independence of America. Dedicated to his excellency the President of the United States. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1790. 8º. v. 7, appendix 1, p. 23-29.) =Reserve= =Lincoln=, Enoch. The village; a poem. [By Enoch Lincoln.] With an appendix. Portland: Published by Edward Little and Co. 1816. C. Norris & Co. printers. 4 p.l., (1)10-180 p. 16º. =NBHD= Extract reprinted in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 2, p. 303-314, _NBH_. =Lines= on the death of Ebenezer Ball, who was executed at Castine, October 31, 1811, for the murder of John Tileston Downs. Blue hill, Nov. 1811. Printed, and for sale by A. H. Holland, Buckstown. Broadside. =Reserve= =Linn=, John Blair, 1777-1804. The death of Washington. A poem. In imitation of the manner of Ossian. By Rev. John Blair Linn, A.M., minister of the First Presbyterian Congregation of Philadelphia.... Philadelphia: Printed by John Ormrod, 1800. iv, (1)6-26 p. 8º. =Reserve= ---- Miscellaneous works, prose and poetical. By a Young Gentleman of New-York [i.e., John Blair Linn]. New-York: Printed by Thomas Greenleaf. 1795, 6 p.l., (1)8-353 p. 16º. =Reserve= ---- The powers of genius, a poem, in three parts. By John Blair Linn, A.M. Co-pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in the city of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: Published by Asbury Dickens, opposite Christ-Church: H. Maxwell, printer, Columbia-House. 1801. 1 p.l., (1)6-127 p. 16º. =Reserve= Reviewed in _The American review, and literary journal_ for the year 1801, New-York, 1801, v. 1, p. 201-209, _Reserve_. ---- ---- Second edition, corrected and enlarged. Published by John Conrad. & Co., No. 30, Chestnut-Street, Philadelphia; and sold by M. and J. Conrad & Co. No. 140, Market-Street, Baltimore; and Washington City. H. Maxwell, printer. 1802. 1 p.l., (1)6-191 p. 6º. =Reserve= Reviewed in _The American review, and literary journal_ for the year 1802, New York, 1802, v. 2, p. 462-472. ---- ---- [London:] Albion Press: Printed by Cundee, Ivy Lane, for T. Williams, Stationers'-Court, and T. Hurst, Paternoster-Row. 1804. 1 p.l., (i)iv-xv p., 1 l., 155(1) p., 2 l. of adv., 3 pl. 16º. =NBHD= ---- Valerian, a narrative poem: intended, in part, to describe the early persecutions of Christians, and rapidly to illustrate the influence of Christianity on the manners of nations. By John Blair Linn, D.D. Late pastor of the First Presbyterian congregation, in Philadelphia. With a sketch of the life and character of the author. Philadelphia, Printed by Thomas and George Palmer, 116, High Street. 1805. 1 p.l., (i)iv-xxvi p., 1 l., 97 p., front. (port.) 4º. =NBHD= The frontispiece, portrait silhouette of J. B. Linn engraved by B. Tanner. Reviewed in _The monthly anthology and Boston review_, Boston, 1807, v. 4, p. 319-322. A =Little= looking-glass for the times. _See_ =C.=, G. =Livingston=, Henry Brockholst, 1757-1823. Democracy: an epic poem, by Aquiline Nimble-Chops, Democrat [i.e., Henry Brockholst Livingston]. Canto first. New-York: Printed for the author [1794]. 2 p.l., (1)6-20 p. 12º. =Reserve= Extracts from the first and second cantos of this poem are reprinted in _The Echo_, New York, 1807, p. 195-207, with the following notice prefixed: "The following extracts are from a poem entitled _Democracy_, the first canto of which was printed in New-York, in March, 1794, and at the time excited no inconsiderable share of the public attention. This poem was written in consequence of a tumultuous meeting of the citizens of that place, instigated by a few popular demagogues, for the purpose of prescribing to Congress the adoption of hostile measures against Great Britain. The second canto, which was of much greater length, was prepared for the press immediately after the appearance of the first, but the timidity of the booksellers, and the peculiar circumstances of the times prevented its publication." =Livingston=, William, 1723-1790. Address to his excellency general Washington. By his excellency governor Livingston of New-Jersey. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1789. 8º. v. 5, p. 300-301.) =Reserve= ---- [Burgoyne's] Proclamation. (In: New York journal and the general advertiser. Kingston, N. Y., 1777. fº. September 8, 1777, p. [4], col. 1-2.) =Reserve= "A burlesque ballad by Governor William Livingston, of New Jersey." Reprinted in _Ballads and poems relating to the Burgoyne campaign_, Albany, N. Y., 1893, p. 7-15, _NBHD_. Also printed in Frank Moore, _Songs and ballads of the American Revolution_, New York, 1856, p. 166-175, _NBH_. ---- A morning hymn. By his excellency William Livingston, esq. governor of New-Jersey. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1789. 8º. v. 5, p. 100-101.) =Reserve= ---- Philosophic solitude. (In: The Beauties of poetry, British and American. Philadelphia, 1791. 16º. p. 220-236.) =Reserve= First published in New York in 1747. Also in _American poems, selected and original_, Litchfield, 1793, p. 154-176, _NBH_; _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 16-33, _NBH_; Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 1, p. 140-145, _NBH_. =Lomax=, Judith. The notes of an American lyre. By Judith Lomax, a native of the State of Virginia. Richmond: Printed by Samuel Pleasants, near the Market-Bridge. 1813. 4 p.l., 9-70 p. nar. 16º. =NBHD= Inscribed to Thomas Jefferson. Page 54 misnumbered 34. =Longstreet=, Augustus Baldwin. Patriotic effusions; by Bob Short [pseud. of Augustus Baldwin Longstreet]. New-York: Published by L. and F. Lockwood, No. 154 Broadway. J. & J. Harper, printers. 1819. 2 p.l., (1)6-46 p., 1 l. nar. 24º. =NBH p.v. 20, no. 7= The =Lottery=, a poem. _See_ =Denison=, Edward. =Love=, Charles. A poem on the death of General George Washington, late president of the United States. In two books. By Charles Love. [Copy-right secured according to law.] Alexandria, Virginia, A.D. M,DCCC. 60 p. 16º. =Reserve= and =NBHD= Dedicated to John Adams. =Lovell=, John. _See_ =Pietas= et gratulatio.... =Lovett=, John. 1761-1818. A tribute to Washington, for February 22d, 1800. [By John Lovett.] Troy: Printed by R. Moffitt & Co. 1800. 15 p. sm. 4º. =Reserve= ---- Washington's birth day: an historical poem, with notes and appendix. By a Washingtonian [i.e., John Lovett]. Albany: Printed and published by E. and E. Hosford. 1812. [Copy-right secured.] 1 p.l., (i)iv-viii, (1)10-55, 11 p., front. (port.) sq. 12º. =NBI= Frontispiece, the portrait of George Washington, engraved for the Washington Benevolent Society. Last 11 p. contain: "Odes for Washington's birth day." =Low=, Samuel, b. 1765. Poems, by Samuel Low. New-York: Printed by T. & J. Swords, No. 99 Pearl-Street. 1800. 2 v. 12º. =Reserve= v. 1. 4 p.l., (1)10-147 p.; v. 2. 6 p.l., (1)16-168 p. v. 1, p. 115-122 lacking, p. 147 mutilated; v. 2, one leaf, probably half-title, lacking, p. 97 and 103 mutilated, p. 159-160, lacking. =Lowell=, John. _See_ =Pietas= et gratulatio.... The =Loyalist= poetry of the Revolution. [Edited by Winthrop Sargent.] Philadelphia: [Collins, printer,] 1857. xi, 218 p. 8º. =NBH= The =Lyric= works of Horace, translated into English verse: to which are added a number of original poems. _See_ =Parke=, John. =M.=, S. A Country treat upon the second paragraph in His Excellency's speech, Decemb. 17, 1730. [Boston, 1730?] Broadside. =Reserve= Photostat facsimile. Text in two columns. =M'Fingal=: a modern epic poem. _See_ =Trumbull=, John. =M'Kinnon=, John D. Descriptive poems, by John D. M'Kinnon. Containing picturesque views of the State of New-York. New-York: Printed by T. & J. Swords, No. 99 Pearl-Street. 1802. 4 p.l., (1)4-79 p., 1 l. of adv. 16º. =NBHD= Reviewed in _The American review and literary journal_ for the year 1802, New-York, 1802, v. 2, p. 327-332, _Reserve_. =Mansfield=, Joseph. Hope, a poem, delivered in the chapel of Harvard University, at a public exhibition, July 8th, 1800. By Joseph Mansfield, a junior sophister. Cambridge. Printed by William Milliard. 1800. 1 p.l., (1)4-15 p. sq. 8º. =Reserve= =Markoe=, Peter. Faith, an ode. Hope, an ode. Charity, an ode, sacred to the memory of William Penn. (In: The Beauties of poetry, British and American. Philadelphia, 1791. 16º. p. 176-180.) =Reserve= ---- Ode on the birth-day of General Washington. (In: The Beauties of poetry, British and American. Philadelphia, 1791. 16º. p. 185-187.) =Reserve= ---- The Times; a poem. [By Peter Markoe.] Philadelphia: Printed by William Spotswood. M.DCC.LXXXVIII. 2 p.l., 22 p. 8º. =Reserve= "A considerable part of the following poem has already appeared in one of the public papers." Preface dated, Jan., 1788. =Mather=, Cotton, 1663-1728. [Elegy on the death of seven young ministers.] (In: Club of Odd Volumes. Early American poetry. [Reprints.] Boston, 1896. 8º. [v.] 4, p. 29-35.) =Reserve= Reprinted in type-facsimile, with facsimile of title-page. Appeared originally in his _Vigilantius_. ---- [Elegy] Upon the death of Sir William Phips, Knt. Late Captain General and Governour in Chief, of the Province of the Massachuset-Bay, New England, who expired in London, Feb. 18, 1694/5. 3 l. (In his: Pietas in patriam: The life of His Excellency Sir William Phips, Knt.... London, 1697. 8º.) =Reserve= ---- An elegy on the much-to-be-deplored death of that never-to-be-forgotten person, the Reverend Nathanael Collins; who after he had been many years a faithful pastor to the church at Middletown of Connecticut in New-England, about the forty third year of his age expired; on 28th. 10. moneth 1684. [By Cotton Mather.] Boston in New-England. Printed by Richard Pierce for Obadiah Gill. Anno Christi, 1685. 2 p.l., 20 p. 24º. =Reserve= The pages are numbered one to sixteen, eighteen to twenty. By an oversight of the printer, the number of page 17 was omitted; the number 18 inserted on page 17, and continued consecutively, making but 19 pages of text. Reprinted in modern type, page for page, with a facsimile title-page and a biographical sketch of the Rev. N. Collins, in Club of Odd Volumes, _Early American poetry_ [Reprints], Boston, 1896, v. 3, _Reserve_. ---- [Epitaph upon] The Excellent Wigglesworth, remembered by some good tokens. (In his: A Faithful man, described and rewarded.... Boston, 1705. 8º. p. 48.) =Reserve= ---- Epitaphium [on the Honourable Wait Winthrop]. (In: Club of Odd Volumes. Early American poetry. [Reprints.] Boston, 1896. 8º. [v.] 4, p. 43-46.) =Reserve= Reprinted in type facsimile, with facsimile of title-page. Appeared originally in his _Hades look'd into_, Boston, 1717. ---- Gratitudinis ergo. An essay on the memory of my venerable master; Ezekiel Cheever. (In his: Corderius Americanus. Boston, 1708. 12º. p. 26-34.) =Reserve= Epitaphium, p. 33-34. Reprinted in type facsimile, with facsimile of title-page, in Club of Odd Volumes, _Early American poetry_ [Reprints, v.] 4, p. 26-34, _Reserve_. ---- Magnalia Christi Americana: or, The ecclesiastical history of New-England, from its first planting in the year 1620 unto the year of our Lord, 1698. In seven books.... By the reverend and learned Cotton Mather.... London: Printed for Thomas Parkhurst, at the Bible and Three Crowns in Cheapside, MDCCII. 16 p.l., 75 p., 1 l., 238 p., 1 l., 125-222 p., 100, 88, 118 p., 1 l., 1 map. 4º. =Reserve= Contains elegies and epitaphs by various authors; also the following three elegies by Cotton Mather: [Elegy] upon the death of Sir William Phips ... who expired in London, Feb. 18, 1694/5, Book 2, p. 74-75.--Some offers to embalm the memory of ... John Wilson, Book 3, p. 50-51.--Remarks on the bright and dark side of ... William Thompson ... who triumphed on Dec. 10, 1666, Book 3, p. 119-120. ---- ---- In two volumes. First American edition, from the London edition of 1702. Hartford: Published by Silas Andrus, Roberts & Burr, printers, 1820. 2 v. 8º. =IQ= ---- ---- With an introduction and occasional notes, by the Rev. Thomas Robbins and translations of the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin quotations by Lucius F. Robinson. To which is added, a memoir of Cotton Mather, by Samuel G. Drake.... Also, a comprehensive index by another hand. In two volumes. Hartford: Silas Andrus and Son, 1855. 2 v. 8º. =IQ= ---- A poem and an elegy. By Cotton Mather. Boston: The Club of Odd Volumes, 1896. 13 p., 2 l., 16 p., 3 l., 20 p. sq. 8º. (The Club of Odd Volumes. Early American poetry. [Reprints. v.] 3.) =Reserve= No. 81 of one hundred copies on hand-made paper. Reprinted from copies in the Library of Brown University. Contains modern type reprints, page for page, with facsimile title-pages of: A poem dedicated to the memory of ... Mr. Urian Oakes.... Boston in New-England, Printed for John Ratcliff, 1682. An elegy on the much-to-be-deplored death ... of ... the Reverend Mr. Nathanael Collins.... Boston in New-England. Printed by Richard Pierce for Obadiah Gill. 1685. ---- Some offers to embalm the memory of the truly reverend and renowned, John Wilson [with] Epitaphium. (In his: Johannes in Eremo. Boston, 1695. 24º. p. 42-46.) =Reserve= Reprinted in The Club of Odd Volumes, _Early American poetry_ [Reprints, v.] 4, _Reserve_. Also in his _Magnalia Christi Americana_, London, 1702, book 3, p. 50-51, _Reserve_. ---- To the memory of the Reverend Jonathan Mitchel. (In his: Ecclesiastes. The life of the reverend & excellent Jonathan Mitchel. Boston, 1697. 8º. p. 109-111.) =Reserve= ---- _See_ also =Elegies= and epitaphs, 1677-1717. =Maxwell=, William. Poems by William Maxwell, Esq. Philadelphia: Published by M. Thomas, No. 52, Chestnut-Street. William Fry, printer. 1816. 2 p.l., (i)vi-vii p., 1 l., (1)4-168 p. 24º. =NBHD= Has also an engraved title-page. Several of these poems are printed in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 2, p. 155-159, _NBH_. =Maylem=, John. The conquest of Louisburg. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 1, p. 83-88.) =NBH= ---- Gallic perfidy: a poem. By John Maylem, philo-bellum. Boston: New-England: Printed and sold by Benjamin Mecom, at the New Printing-Office, July 13, 1758. Where may be had that noted little book, called Father Abraham's Speech. 2 p.l., 7-15 p. 12º. =Reserve= Lacks half-title. Has woodcut on title-page of Indian holding bow and arrow. =Mead=, Charles. Mississippian scenery; a poem, descriptive of the interior of North America. By Charles Mead. Philadelphia: Published by S. Potter and Co. No. 55, Chestnut Street. W. Fry, printer. 1819. 1 p.l., (i)vi-ix p., 1 l., (1)14-113 p., front. 16º. =NBH p.v. 23, no. 8= A =Medley= of joy and grief. _See_ =Haight=, Mrs. Sarah. The =Mercies= of the Year, Commemorated: A song for Little Children in New-England. December 13th 1720. 3 l. 12º. =Reserve= Facsimile reprint. "Reprinted December 13, 1910 to convey this season's happier greetings to a few friends of George Parker Winship." =Mills=, John Henry. Poetic trifles by John Henry Mills. Comedian. Baltimore: Printed by G. Dobbin & Murphy, 10, Market-Street, for Cole & I. Bonsal. 1808. 3 p.l., (1)8-116 p. 12º. =NBHD= The =Mirror= of merit and beauty. _See_ =Smith=, Isaiah. The =Miscellaneous= poems of the Boston Bard. _See_ =Coffin=, Robert Stevenson. =Miscellaneous= poems on moral and religious subjects. _See_ =Allen=, Benjamin. =Miscellaneous= works, prose and poetical. _See_ =Linn=, John Blair. =Miscellanies=, moral and instructive, in prose and verse; collected from various authors, for the use of schools, and improvement of young persons of both sexes. Philadelphia: Printed by Joseph James, in Chestnut-Street, between Front and Second-Street. M.DCC.LXXX.VII. 202 pl., 1 l. 16º. =Reserve= Review by B. Franklin on p. iv. =Mitchel=, John, d. 1750. [Poem] On the following work [The Day of Doom] and it's author [Michael Wigglesworth]. (In: Michael Wigglesworth. The Day of Doom. Boston, 1701. 24º.) =Reserve= Also in the Boston ed. of 1751, p. 10-12; and the Newburyport ed. of 1811, p. 16-17. =Mitchel=, Jonathan, 1624-1668. [Elegy on Henry Dunster.] (In: Cotton Mather, Ecclesiastes. The life of the reverend & excellent Jonathan Mitchel. Boston, 1697. 8º. p. 70-71.) =Reserve= Reprinted in Cotton Mather, _Magnalia Christi Americana_, London, 1702, book 4, p. 175-176, _Reserve_. ---- Upon the death of that reverend, aged, ever-honoured, and gracious servant of Christ, Mr. John Wilson, pastor of a church in Boston: interred August 8, 1667. (In: N. Morton, New-Englands memoriall. Cambridge, 1669. 12º. p. 185-188.) =Reserve= The =Modern= philosopher; or Terrible tractoration. _See_ =Fessenden=, Thomas Green. =Monody.= On the decease of His Excellency George Washington. (In: Bache's Philadelphia Aurora. Monday, December 30 [1799].) =Reserve= Signed and dated, R. N. Dec. 26, 1799. A poem in 15 stanzas. =Monody=, on the death of Gen. George Washington. _See_ =Brown=, Charles Brockden. =Monody= on the death of George Washington. _See_ =Smith=, Elihu H. A =Monumental= inscription on the first of March together with a few lines on the enlargement of Ebenezer Richardson, convicted of murder. [Worcester: Printed by Isaiah Thomas, 1771.] Broadside, fº. (In Emmet Collection.) =Manuscript Div.= Reprinted in facsimile in Woodrow Wilson, _A history of the American people_, New York, 1902, v. 2, p. 162. _IAE_. Known as "The Massacre Hand-Bill." =Moore=, Frank, 1828-. Illustrated ballad history of the American Revolution, 1765-1783. By Frank Moore. Volume 1. New York: Johnson, Wilson & Company, 1876. 2 p.l., 384 p., 15 pl., 16 ports. (incl. front.), 5 maps. 4º. =IG= This was to be completed in 30 parts. Parts 1-6 are all that were issued. Title on cover of part 1: Ballad history of the American Revolution. By contemporary poets and prose writers. Collected and arranged by Frank Moore. ---- Songs and ballads of the American Revolution. With notes and illustrations by Frank Moore. New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1856. 2 p.l., (i)vi-xii, 394 p., front. 12º. =IG= Also has engraved title-page. =Morrell=, William, fl. 1623. New-England or a briefe enarration of the ayre, earth, water, fish and fowles of that country, with a description of the natures, orders, habits, and religion of the natiues; In Latine and English verse. [By William Morrell.] Boston: The Club of Odd Volumes, 1895. 9 p.l., 24, 2 p. sq. 8º. (The Club of Old Volumes. Early American poetry. [Reprints, v.] 2.) =Reserve= Originally published in London, 1625. This is a facsimile reprint of a copy in the British Museum. No. 81 of one hundred copies printed on hand-made paper. This poem is also printed in the _Collections_ of the Massachusetts Historical Society, v. 1, for 1792, p. 125-139, but without title, address to the reader, dedicatory epistle, postscript, or form, style, type, and arrangement of the original. =Morton=, Nathaniel, 1613-1685. New-Englands memoriall: or, A brief relation of the most memorable and remarkable passages of the providence of God, manifested to the planters of New-England in America; with special reference to the first colony thereof, called New-Plymouth. As also a nomination of divers of the most eminent instruments deceased, both of church and common-wealth, improved in the first beginning and after progress of sundry of the respective jurisdictions in those parts; in reference unto sundry exemplary passages of their lives, and the time of their death. Published for the use and benefit of present and future generations, by Nathaniel Morton, Secretary to the Court for the jurisdiction of New-Plimouth.... Cambridge: Printed by S. G. and M. J. for John Usher of Boston. 1669. 6 p.l., 198 p., 51. (4º.) 12º. =Reserve= Contains the following poems, elegies and epitaphs: On ... Mr. Thomas Hooker ..., by J. C., p. 125-126.--A lamentation for the death of ... Mr. Thomas Hooker ..., by P. B., p. 127-129.--A funeral elegy upon the death of ... Mr. John Cotton ..., by J. N., p. 136-137.--Upon the tomb of ... Mr. John Cotton ..., by B. W., 137-139.--[Verses found in his pocket after his death], by William Bradford, p. 140.--Certain verses left by ... William Bradford ..., p. 144-145.--[Poem] On ... William Bradford, by Josias Winslow, p. 146-148.--A few verses ... on William Bradford, p. 149-150.--[Elegy] presented at the funerall of Ralph Partridge, p. 153-155.--[Elegy on Mr. William Paddy], p. 156.--An elegie on the death of ... John Norton ..., by T. S., p. 166-168.--A threnodia upon ... Samuel Stone ..., by E. B., p. 168-169.--Upon the death of ... John Wilson ..., by J. M., p. 185-188.--Upon the death of ... John Wilson ..., by T. S., p. 188-190.--Upon the death of ... Jonathan Mitchell ..., by E. B., p. 192-193.--To the memory of ... Jonathan Mitchell ..., by F. D., p. 193-196.--An epitaph upon the ... death of ... Jonathan Mitchell, by J. S., p. 196. ---- ---- Boston, Reprinted for Nicholas Boone, at the Signe of the Bible in Cornhill. 1721. 5 p.l., 248 p., 1 l. (8º.) 16º. =Reserve= ---- ---- Boston: printed. Newport: Reprinted, and sold by S. Southwick. M,DCC,LXXII. viii, 208 p., 4 l. (8º.) 12º. =Reserve= ---- ---- Plymouth, Mass. Reprinted by Allen Danforth, 1826. 204 p. 16º. =IQ= ---- ---- Fifth edition. Containing besides the original work, and the supplement, annexed to the second edition, large additions in marginal notes, and an appendix; with a lithographic copy of an ancient map. By John Davis.... Boston: Printed by Crocker and Brewster, 1826. 481(1) p., 1 map. 8º. =IQ= ---- ---- Sixth edition. Also Governor Bradford's History of Plymouth Colony; portions of Prince's Chronology; Governor Bradford's Dialogue; Gov. Winslow's visits to Massasoit; with numerous marginal notes and an appendix containing numerous articles relating to the labors, principles, and character of the Puritans and Pilgrims. Boston: Congregational Board of Publication, 1855. xxii p., 1 l., 515 p., 1 pl. (front.), 1 port. 8º. =IQ= ---- ---- With an introduction by Arthur Lord. Boston: The Club of Odd Volumes, 1903. 3 p.l., (1)6-21 p., 6 l., 198 p., 4 l. 8º. =Reserve= No. 62 of 150 copies printed. This is a facsimile reprint. =Morton=, Sarah Wentworth Apthorp. The African chief. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 2, p. 75-76.) =NBH= ---- Descriptive lines, written at the request of a friend, upon the surrounding prospect from Beacon-Hill in Boston; Ode to the President on his visiting the Northern states; Invocation to Hope; Prayer to Patience; Lines, addressed to the inimitable author of the poems under the signature of Delia Crusca; by Philenia, a lady of Boston. (In: American poems, selected and original. Litchfield, 1793. 12º. p. 176-185.) =Reserve= and =NBH= ---- Invocation to Hope. Prayer to Patience. (In: The Columbian muse. New York, 1794. 16º. p. 221-223.) =Reserve= and =NBH= ---- Lines written, at the request of a friend, on the view from Beacon-hill, near Boston, where a sumptuous monument has lately been erected to perpetuate the principal events of the late revolution. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1791. 8º. v. 9, appendix 1, p. 3.) =Reserve= ---- Ouâbi: or The virtues of nature. An Indian tale. In four cantos. By Philenia, a lady of Boston [i.e., Mrs. Sarah Wentworth Morton]. Printed at Boston, by I. Thomas and E. T. Andrews, at Faust's Statue, No. 45, Newbury Street. MDCCXC. 2 p.l., (i)iv-viii, (1)10-51(1) p., front. 12º. =NBHD= ---- The virtues of society. A tale founded on fact. By the author of the Virtues of nature [i.e., Sarah Wentworth A. Morton]. Published according to act of Congress. Boston. Printed by Manning & Loring, for the author. 1799. 2 p.l., (1)6-46 p. 4º. =Reserve= Based upon an occurrence in the American Revolution, contained in letters of General Burgoyne. Poem entitled "To Time," p. 39-46. =Morton=, Thomas. New English Canaan, or New Canaan containing an abstract of New England, composed in three bookes.... Written by Thomas Morton.... Printed at Amsterdam, by Jacob Frederick Stam. In the yeare 1637. 188 p., 2 l. 4º. =Reserve= Poems on pages 101-102, 121, 130-131, 133, 134-135, 146-148, 167, 185. Reprinted in Peter Force, _Tracts and other papers_, Washington, 1838, v. 2, no. 5, _IF_. The =Mournfull= elegy of Mr. Jona. Frye, 1725. (New England historical and genealogical register. Boston, 1861. 8º. v. 15, p. 91.) =APGA= Jonathan Frye was mortally wounded in "Lovewell's Fight," at Fryeburg, Me., May 8th, 1725. These lines, tradition says, were written when the news of Mr. Frye's death reached Andover, by a young girl to whom he had engaged himself against the wishes of his parents whose objections were, want of property and education. Her name is lost. Reprinted in _Magazine of history with notes and queries_, extra no. 5, p. 99-101, _IAG_. =Munford=, William, 1775-1825. Poems, and compositions in prose on several occasions. By William Munford, of the County of Mecklenburg, and State of Virginia. Richmond: Printed by Samuel Pleasants, Jun. 1798. 3 p.l., (1)6-189(1) p. 8º. =Reserve= and =NBHD= =Murphy=, Henry C. Anthology of New Netherland or Translations from the early Dutch poets of New York with memoirs of their lives. By Henry C. Murphy. New York, 1865. 209(1) p., 2 facs., 1 pl., 1 port. 8º. (Bradford Club series. no. 4.) =NBH= No. 72 of 75 copies printed. Memoir and poems of Jacob Steendam, p. 21-75.--Memoir and poems of Henricus Selyns, p. 77-183.--Memoir and poems of Nicasius De Sillè. p. 185-195. A =Native= of America, pseud. Lyric works of Horace, translated into English verse: to which are added, a number of original poems. _See_ =Parke=, John. =Neal=, John, 1793-1876. Battle of Niagara, a poem, without notes; and Goldau, or The maniac harper. "Eagles and stars! and rainbows!" By John O'Cataract, author of Keep cool, &c. [i.e., John Neal.] Baltimore: Published by N. G. Maxwell. From the Portico press. Geo. W. Grater, printer. 1818. 2 p.l., (i)vi-xiii, (1)16-143 p. 16º. =NBHD= ---- The battle of Niagara: second edition--enlarged: with other poems. By John Neal. Baltimore: Published by N. G. Maxwell. B. Edes. printer. 1819. 3 p.l., (i)viii-lxvii, (1)70-272 p. 16º. =NBHD= Has also an engraved title-page. A =Neighbour's= tears sprinkled on the dust of the amiable virgin, Mrs. Rebekah Sewall. _See_ =Tompson=, Benjamin. A =New= collection of verses applied to the first of November, A.D. 1765, &c. Including a prediction that the S---p A-t shall not take place in North-America. Together with a poetical dream, concerning stamped papers. New-Haven: Printed and sold by B. Mecom. [1765.] 24 p. 12º. =Reserve= =New-England= or a briefe enarration of the ayre, earth, water, fish and fowles of that country. _See_ =Morrell=, William. A =New= history of a true book in verse. For sale at A. March's Bookstore; price 6 cents single, and to those who buy to give away, 2 dols. pr. hundred. [Newburyport, 1800?] 12 p. 16º. =Reserve= A note on the title-page in a contemporary hand reads: "V. Shepherd of Salisbury Plain by Mrs. H. More, p. 14." Possibly imperfect; pages after p. 12 may be lacking. =New York= Gazette. The news-boy's verses, for New-Year's Day, 1763. Humbly address'd to his patrons, to whom he carries the Thursday's New-York Gazette. [New York: John Holt, 1762.] Broadside. =Reserve= Fifty stanzas in three columns. =Niles=, Nathaniel, 1741-1828. The American hero. A Sapphic ode. By Nat. Niles, A.M. Norwich (Connecticut), Oct. 1775. (In: Wheeler Case, Revolutionary memorials.... Edited by Stephen Dodd, New York, 1852. 12º. p. 66-68.) =NBHD= Also printed in E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, _Cyclopædia of American literature_, New York, 1866, v. 1, p. 440, _NBB_; and in E. C. Stedman and E. M. Hutchinson, _A library of American literature_, New York, 1889, v. 3, p. 263-264, _NBB_. =Niles=, Samuel, 1674-1762. A brief and plain essay on God's wonder-working providence for New-England, in the reduction of Louisburg, and fortresses thereto belonging on Cape-Breton. With a short hint in the beginning, on the French taking & plundering the people of Canso, which led the several governments to unite and pursue the expedition. With the names of the leading officers in the army and the several regiments to which they belonged. By Samuel Niles. N. London, Printed and sold by T. Green, 1747. 2 p.l., 34 p. 24º. =Reserve= =Nimble-Chops=, Aquiline, pseud. Democracy: an epic poem. _See_ =Livingston=, Henry Brockholst. =Norton=, John, 1606-1663. A funeral elegie upon the death of the truely reverend Mr. John Cotton, late teacher of the Church of Christ at Boston in New England. (In: N. Morton, New-Englands memoriall. Cambridge, 1669. 12º. p. 136-137.) =Reserve= Also printed in John Scottow, _A narrative of the planting of the Massachusetts Colony Anno 1628_. Boston, 1694, p. 75-76, _Reserve_. =Norton=, John, 1651-1716. A funeral elogy upon that pattern and patron of virtue, the truely pious, peerless & matchless Gentlewoman Mrs. Ann Bradstreet, right panaretes, mirror of her age, glory of her sex, whose heaven-born-soul leaving its earthly shrine, chose its native home, and was taken to its rest, upon 16th. Sept. 1672. (In: Anne Bradstreet, The works of Ann Bradstreet in prose and verse. Edited by John Harvard Ellis. Charlestown, 1867. 4º. p. 409-413.) =NBHD= This "Elogy" appears on pages 252-255 of the Boston, 1678 edition of Anne Bradstreet's poems. The Library's copy of this edition lacks these pages. Also reprinted under the title _Dirge for the Tenth Muse_, in E. C. Stedman and E. M. Hutchinson, _A library of American literature_, New York, 1889, v. 2, p. 46-48, _NBB_. =Noyes=, Nicholas, 1647-1717. A consolatory poem dedicated unto Mr. Cotton Mather, soon after the decease of his excellent and vertuous wife, Mrs. Abigail Mather. (In: E. C. Stedman and E. M. Hutchinson, A library of American literature. New York, 1889. 8º. v. 2, p. 206-208.) =NBB= Originally published in Cotton Mather's _Meat out of the eater_, Boston, 1703, p. 187-190. ---- An elegy upon the death of the Reverend Mr. John Higginson, pastor of the church of Christ in Salem, who dyed December, 9th. 1708. In the ninety-third year of his age. [By Nicholas Noyes.] 8 p. (In: Cotton Mather, Nunc dimittis, briefly descanted on.... Boston, 1709. 8º. 8 p. following p. 46.) =Reserve= Reprinted in _New England historical genealogical register_, Boston, 1853, v. 7, p. 237-240, _* R-Room 328_. ---- An elegy upon the much lamented death of the Reverend Mr. Joseph Green, pastor of the church at Salem village, who departed this life November 26, 1715, aged forty years and two days. (Essex Institute. Historical collections. Salem, 1868. 8º. v. 8, p. 168-174.) =* R-Room 328= Appeared originally in Joseph Capen, _A funeral sermon occasioned by the death of Mr. Joseph Green_, Boston, 1717, reprinted in the _Collections_ of the Topsfield Historical Society, v. 12, p. 5-47, Topsfield, Mass., 1907, _IQH_. The Elegy fills p. 32-46. ---- A prefatory poem, on that excellent book, entitled Magnalia Christi Americana: Written by the Reverend Mr. Cotton Mather.... (In: Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana. London, 1702. 4º.) =Reserve= Printed in later editions of the _Magnalia_ as follows: Hartford, 1820, v. 1, p. 14-16; Hartford, 1855, v. 1, p. 19-20. =Nugent=, Henry. The orphans of Wyoming, or, The fatal prayer. A moral poem. By the late Henry Nugent. With memoirs of the author. First edition. City of Washington, Apollo press, printed and published by H. C. Lewis. 1814. 1 p.l., (1)6-54 p. 12º. =NBH p.v. 53, no. 4= No title-page; title from cover. =Oakes=, Urian, 1631-1681. An elegie upon the death of the Reverend Mr. Thomas Shepard, late teacher of the church at Charlstown in New-England: By a great admirer of his worth, and true mourner for his death [i.e., Urian Oakes]. Cambridge. Printed by Samuel Green. 1677. 16 p. 12º. =Reserve= Reprinted in modern type, page for page, with a facsimile title-page, in Club of Odd Volumes, _Early American poetry_ [Reprints], Boston, 1896, [v.] 4, _Reserve_. Also reprinted in E. C. Stedman and E. M. Hutchinson, _A library of American literature_, New York, 1889, v. 2, p. 36-42, _NBB_. ---- _See also_ =Elegies= and epitaphs, 1677-1717. =O'Cataract=, John, pseud. Battle of Niagara, a poem. _See_ =Neal=, John. An =Occasional= ode, sung at the Baptist Meeting-House in Wrentham, February 22, 1800. (In: Benjamin Gleason, An oration, pronounced at the Baptist Meeting-House in Wrentham, February 22, 1800.... Wrentham, Mass., 1800. 8º. p. [32.]) =Reserve= =Ode=, distributed among the spectators, during the federal procession, at New-York, July, 1788. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1788. 8º. v. 4. p. 572-574.) =Reserve= =Odell=, Jonathan, 1737-1818. The American times, a satire, in three parts. In which are delineated the characters of the leaders of the American Rebellion. Amongst the principal are Franklin, Laurens, Adams, Hancock, Jay, Duer, Duane, Wilson, Pulaski, Witherspoon, Reed, M'Kean, Washington, Roberdeau, Morris, Chase, &c. By Camillo Querno, poet-laureat to the Congress. [New-York: Printed by James Rivington, MDCCLXXX.] (In: John André. Cowchace. New York, 1780. 8º. p. 27-69.) =Reserve= Attributed by Wegelin to Rev. Jonathan Boucher. Reprinted in _The Loyalist poetry of the Revolution_, Philadelphia, 1857, p. 1-37, _NBH_. ---- The congratulation. A poem. (In: The Royal gazette. New-York, 1779. fº. November 6, 1779, p. [2].) =Reserve= Reprinted in supplement to the _Royal Gazette_, November 24, 1779, _Reserve_. Also reprinted in _The Loyal verses of Joseph Stansbury and Doctor Jonathan Odell.... Edited by Winthrop Sargent_, Albany, 1860, p. 45-50, _NBHD_. ---- The Feu de joie. A poem. (In: The Royal gazette. New-York, 1779. fº. November 24, 1779, p. [2].) =Reserve= Reprinted in _The Loyal verses of Joseph Stansbury and Doctor Jonathan Odell.... Edited by Winthrop Sargent_, Albany, 1860, p. 51-58, _NBHD_. ---- The loyal verses of Joseph Stansbury and Doctor Jonathan Odell; relating to the American Revolution. _See_ =Stansbury=, Joseph. ---- To Sir James Wallace, on sending in the Dutch prize. (In: The Royal Pennsylvania gazette. Philadelphia, 1778. fº. March 24, 1778, p. [3].) =Reserve= Reprinted in _The Loyal verses of Joseph Stansbury and Doctor Jonathan Odell.... Edited by Winthrop Sargent_, Albany, 1860, p. 35, _NBHD_. ---- The word of Congress, a poem. (In: The Royal gazette. New-York, 1779. fº. September 18, 1779, p. [2.]) =Reserve= Reprinted in _The Loyalist poetry of the Revolution_, Philadelphia, 1857, p. 38-55, _NBH_. =Odiorne=, Thomas, 1769-1851. The progress of refinement, a poem, in three books. To which are added, a poem on fame, and miscellanies. By Thomas Odiorne. Boston: Printed by Young and Etheridge, opposite the entrance of the Branch-Bank, State-Street. MDCCXCII. x p., 1 l., (1)14-176 p., front. 16º. =Reserve= Half-title probably lacking. Reviewed in _The Massachusetts magazine_, Boston, 1793, v. 5, no. 4, p. 238-240, _Reserve_. =Olio=; or, Satirical poetic-hodge-podge, with an illustrative or explanatory dialogue, in vindication of the motive. Addressed to good nature, humour, and fancy. Philadelphia, printed. 1801. 1 p.l., (i)iv. (1)4-46 p. 8º. =ii p.v. 34, no. 6= With copy-right notice on title-page. Parody, p. 25-43. Dialogue between the author and his friend, upon the subject of Olio, p. 44-46. =Oliver=, Andrew. Elegy upon John Winthrop. (In: E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyclopædia of American literature. New York, 1866. 8º. v. 1, p. 136.) =NBB= Written in 1779. =Oliver=, Isabella. Poems, on various subjects. By Isabella Oliver, of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. Carlisle: From the press of A. Loudon, (Whitehall.) 1805. 1 p.l., (1)4-5, (i)vii-ix, (1)11-220 p. 16º. =NBHD= =Oliver=, Thomas. _See_ =Pietas= et gratulatio.... =On= the death of the very learned, pious and excelling Gershom Bulkley Esq. M.D. who had his mortality swallowed up of life, December the second 1713. Ætatis suæ 78. New-London: Printed by T. Green, 1714. Broadside. =Reserve= Photo-facsimile. Text in two columns, enclosed in mourning borders. =One= year in Savannah; a poem. _See_ =Young=, Edward R. =Oppression.= A poem. By an American. With notes, by a North Briton. London: Printed for the author; and sold by C. Moran, in the Great Piazza, Covent Garden. MDCCLXV. 1 p.l., 34 p. 8º. =Reserve= =Original= poems, by a citizen of Baltimore. _See_ =Townsend=, Richard H. =Osander=, pseud. Miscellaneous poems. _See_ =Allen=, Benjamin. =Osborn=, John, 1713-1753. An elegiac epistle, written by John Osborn, at college, in the year 1735, upon the death of a sister, aged 13, and sent to another sister at Eastham. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1789. 8º. v. 6, p. 486-487.) =Reserve= Reprinted in _The beauties of poetry, British and American_, Philadelphia, 1791, p. 206-208, _Reserve_; and in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 1, p. 122-124, _NBH_. ---- A whaling song. (In: E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyclopædia of American literature. New York, 1866. 8º. v. 1, p. 132-133.) =NBB= Also printed in E. C. Stedman and E. M. Hutchinson, _A library of American literature_, New York, 1889, v. 2, p. 364-365, _NBB_. =Osborn=, Salleck, 1783-1826. Extract from an unfinished manuscript. (In: The American poetical miscellany. Philadelphia. 1809. 12º. p. 243-245.) =NBH= ---- Mercy. (In: The American poetical miscellany. Philadelphia, 1809. 12º. p. 109-110.) =NBH= ---- Poems by Salleck Osborn. Boston, I. P. Orcutt, printer [1823]. 1 p.l., x, 200 p., 1 l. 12º. =NBHD= Has engraved title-page. The greater number of these poems were written before 1820. Several of the poems are printed in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 2, p. 147-149, _NBH_. =Paine=, Robert Treat, 1773-1811. Adams and liberty. (In: The Philadelphia monthly magazine. Philadelphia, 1798. 8º. v. 1, p. 286-288.) =Reserve= ---- The invention of letters: a poem, written at the request of the president of Harvard University, and delivered, in Cambridge, on the day of annual commencement, July 15, 1795. By Thomas Paine. Boston: Printed for the subscribers. July 27, 1795. 15 p. 12º. =Reserve= ---- A monody on the death of Lieut. General Sir John Moore. With notes, historical and political. By R. T. Paine, Jun. Esq. To which is prefixed, a sketch of the life of General Moore.... Boston, Published by J. Belcher. 1811. 32 p. 8º. =AN= ---- The ruling passion: an occasional poem. Written by the appointment of the Society the [Greek: =PhBK=], and spoken, on their anniversary, in the chapel of the University, Cambridge, July 20, 1797. By Thomas Paine, A.M. Published according to act of Congress. Boston: Printed by Manning & Loring, for the author. 1797. 2 p.l., (1)6-32 p. sq. 8º. =Reserve= ---- ---- A second copy. =NBH p.v. 14, no 8.= ---- The works, in verse and prose, of the late Robert Treat Paine, Jun. Esq. With notes. To which are prefixed, sketches of his life, character and writings. Boston: Printed and published by J. Belcher. 1812. 1 p.l., (i)vi-lxxxviii p., 3 l., (1)6-464 p., 1 l., 1 port. 8º. =NBG= _Contents_: Sketches of the life, character and writings of the late R. T. Paine, by Charles Prentiss.--Tributary lines, to the memory of the late R. T. Paine.--Part 1, Juvenile poems, consisting chiefly of college exercises.--Part 2, Miscellaneous poems.--Part 3, Odes and songs.--Part 4, Prose writings.--Notes. Part 2 includes the following: The prize prologue; The invention of letters, a poem; The ruling passion, an occasional poem; Dedicatory address spoken at the New Federal Theatre; Monody on the death of Lieutenant General Sir John Moore. =Paine=, Thomas, 1737-1809. Miscellaneous poems. By Thomas Paine. London: Printed and published by R. Carlile, 55, Fleet Street. 1819. 2 p.l., 24 p. 8º. =* C p.v. 403, no. 22= _Contents_: The Farmer's dog. Song on the death of General Wolfe. The snow-drop and critic. Account of the burning of Bachelor's Hall. Liberty tree. Verses on war. Song to the tune of Rule Britannia. Lines occasioned by the question--"What is love?" Epigram on a long-nosed friend. On the British constitution. Story of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. A commentary on the eastern wise men. Lines from "The castle in the air" to "The little corner of the world." Reprinted in _The writings of Thomas Paine_, edited by M. D. Conway, New York, 1896, v. 4, p. 477-498, _IAW_, with the addition of the following poems: The monk and the Jew, The Boston patriotic song, Columbia, Contentment, Federalist feast, and Lines extempore. The "Verses on war," which is printed in Conway's edition under the title "An address to Lord Howe," is printed under the title "To the king of England" in _The Columbian museum_, Philadelphia, 1793, part 1, January to June, p. 4-5, _Reserve_. "The Liberty tree" is also in _The Pennsylvania magazine_, Philadelphia, May, 1775, p. 328-329, _Reserve_, and in Stedman and Hutchinson's _A library of American literature_. New York, 1889, v. 3, p. 234, _NBB_. A =Paraphrase= on part of the oeconomy of human life. _See_ =Bowdoin=, James. =Parke=, John, 1750-1789. The lyric works of Horace, translated into English verse: to which are added, a number of original poems. By a Native of America [i.e., John Parke]. Philadelphia: Printed by Eleazer Oswald, at the Coffee-House. M,DCC,LXXXVI. xli, 334 p., 8 l. 12º. =Reserve= ---- Prologue on the death of General Montgomery. By Colonel J. P. [i.e. John Parke.] (In: H. H. Brackenridge, The death of General Montgomery at the siege of Quebec. Philadelphia, 1777. 12º. 2 l. at end.) =Reserve= ---- Prologue and epilogue to the Battle of Bunkers-Hill. (In: H. H. Brackenridge, The Battle of Bunkers-Hill. Philadelphia, 1776. 8º. p.l. 3, p. 37-38.) =Reserve= A =Parnassian= shop. _See_ =Story=, Isaac. =Pasquin=, Anthony, pseud. _See_ =Williams=, John. =Patriotic= effusions. _See_ =Longstreet=, Augustus Baldwin. The =Patriots= of North-America: a sketch. With explanatory notes. New-York: Printed in the Year M,DCC,LXXV. New York: Reprinted, William Abbatt, 1914. 46 p. 8º. (Magazine of history with notes and queries, extra no. 27.) =IAG (Magazine)= Only two copies of the original are known to exist in the United States. =Paulding=, James Kirke, 1779-1860. The backwoodsman. A poem. By J. K. Paulding. Philadelphia: Published by M. Thomas, 52, Chestnut St. J. Maxwell, printer. 1818. 5 p.l., (1)8-198 p. 12º. =NBHD= Extract printed in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 2, p. 180-184, _NBH_. ---- The lay of the Scottish fiddle: a tale of Havre De Grace. Supposed to be written by Walter Scott, Esq. [By James Kirke Paulding.] First American from the fourth Edinburgh edition. New-York: Published by Inskeep & Bradford, and Bradford & Inskeep, Philadelphia. 1813. 1 p.l., (1)4-262 p. 32º. =NBHD= Reviewed in the _London quarterly_, v. 10, p. 463-467, Jan., 1814. ---- The lay of the Scottish fiddle. A poem. In five cantos. Supposed to be written by W--S--, Esq. [By James Kirke Paulding.] First American from the fourth Edinburgh edition. London: Printed for James Cawthorn, Cockspur-Street. 1814. 1 p.l., (i)iv-xvi, 222 p., 1 l. of adv. 12º. =NBHD= "A free parody of the _Lay of the last minstrel_.... The production is principally devoted to satirizing the predatory warfare of the British on Chesapeake Bay, and, what is somewhat remarkable, was published in a very handsome style in London with a preface highly complimentary to the author. The hero is Admiral Cockburn, and the principal incident the burning and sacking of the little town of Havre de Grace on the coast of Maryland. It had at that time what might be called the distinction of provoking a fierce review from the London Quarterly. It is clever as a parody, and contains many passages entirely original and of no inconsiderable beauty."--Duyckinck, _Cyclopædia of American literature_, New-York, 1866, v. 2, p. 10. =Payne=, John Howard, 1791-1852. The life and writings of John Howard Payne, the author of Home, Sweet Home; The Tragedy of Brutus; and other dramatic works. By Gabriel Harrison. Albany, N. Y.: Joel Munsell, 1875. ix, 408 p., 1 l., 1 port. 4º. =AN= Lispings of the Muse: a selection of juvenile poems, chiefly written at and before the age of sixteen, p. 247-267.--Poems of later days, p. 269-292. ---- John Howard Payne, dramatist, poet, actor, and author of Home, Sweet Home! His life and writings. By Gabriel Harrison. With illustrations. Revised edition. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1885. 404 p., front. (port.), 1 fac., 1 pl. 8º. =AN= Lispings of the Muse. Juvenile poems, p. 295-314.--Poems of later days, p. 315-338. =Payson=, Edward, 1657-1732. A small contribution to the memorial of that truely worthy, and worthily man of God, Mr. Samuel Phillips, pastor to the church of Christ in Rowley; who deceased, April 22d, 1696, ætatis 71. (In: Thomas Gage, The history of Rowley. Boston, 1840. 12º. p. 79-84.) =IQH= =Peck=, John. A short poem, containing a descant on the universal plan: also, lines on the happy end of the righteous, and the prosperity and death of the rich man, spoken of in St. Luke's Gospel ... Chap. XVI. By John Peck. Boston: Printed for Nath'l Coverly. 1818. 1 p.l., 3-24 p. 12º. =Reserve= =Pennsylvania= Gazette. The New-Year verses of the Printers Lads, who carry the Pennsylvania Gazette to the Customers. January 1, 1780. [Philadelphia, 1779.] Broadside. =Reserve= Text in two columns. ---- ---- January 1, 1781. [Philadelphia, 1780.] Broadside. =Reserve= Text in one column. ---- ---- January 1, 1782. [Philadelphia, 1781.] Broadside. =Reserve= Text in one column. ---- The New-Year verses of the Printers Lads, who carry about the Pennsylvania Gazette to the Customers. January 1, 1783. [Philadelphia, 1782.] Broadside. =Reserve= Text in one column enclosed in a border. ---- New-Year verses, for those who carry the Pennsylvania Gazette to the Customers. January 1, 1785. [Philadelphia. 1784.] Broadside. =Reserve= Text in one column enclosed in a border. =Pepper-Box=, Peter, pseud. _See_ =Fessenden=, Thomas Green. =Philenia=, a lady of Boston, pseud. _See_ =Morton=, Mrs. Sarah Wentworth Apthorp. =Phillis=, a servant girl, pseud. An elegiac poem on the death of ... reverend and learned Mr. George Whitefield. _See_ =Wheatley=, Phillis. =Pierce=, William. An epitaph--intended for the monument of major general Greene. By William Pierce, esq. of Savannah. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1789. 8º. v. 6, p. 86.) =Reserve= =Pierce=, William Leigh. The year: a poem, in three cantos. By William Leigh Pierce, Esq. New-York: Published by David Longworth. At the Shakspeare-Gallery. 1813. 3 p.l., (1)8-191 p., 1 l., (1)4-75 p., 1 l. of adv. 24º. =NBHD= Extract printed in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_. Boston, 1829, v. 2, p. 130-133, _NBH_. =Pierpont=, John, 1785-1866. Airs of Palestine; a poem: by John Pierpont. Esq.... Baltimore: Published for the author. B. Edes, printer. 1816. xxvi, 56 p. 8º. =NBHD= Has also an engraved title-page. Reprinted in _Specimens of the American poets_, London, 1822, p. 25-69, _NBH_. ---- ---- Second edition. Boston: Published by Wells and Lilly, 1817. 58 p. 16º. =NBHD= Has also an engraved title-page. ---- ---- Third edition--revised. Boston: Published by Wells and Lilly, 1817. 2 p.l., (i)iv-vii, (1)14-66 p. 24º. =NBHD= Has also an engraved title-page. ---- The portrait. A poem delivered before the Washington Benevolent Society, of Newburyport, on the evening of October 27, 1812. By John Pierpont, Esq. Boston: Published by Bradford and Read. T. B. Wait & Co., printers. 1812. 36 p. 8º. =NBHD p.v. 1, no. 13= =Pietas= et gratulatio Collegii Cantabrigiensis apud Novanglos. Bostoni--Massachusettensium: Typis J. Green & J. Russell. MDCCLXI. xiv p., 1 l., 106 p. 4º. =Reserve= These are poems addressed to His Majesty King George III., on his accession to the throne, by the president and fellows of Harvard College. There are thirty-one papers by the following contributors: 1. By President Edward Holyoke; 2. By John Lovell; 3. By Stephen Sewall; 4. By Benjamin Church; 5. By Stephen Sewall; 6. By Francis Bernard; 7. By John Lowell; 8-9. By James Bowdoin; 10. By Samuel Deane; 11. By Benjamin Church; 12. By Stephen Sewall; 13. By Samuel Cooper; 14-16. By Stephen Sewall; 17. By James Bowdoin; 18-20. By Francis Bernard; 21-22. By John Lovell or Stephen Sewall; 23. By Stephen Sewall; 24. By John Lovell or Stephen Sewall; 25. By John Lovell; 26-27. By Samuel Deane; 28. By Samuel Cooper; 29. By Thomas Oliver; 30. By James Bowdoin; 31. By Francis Bernard. For fuller details about this work and its contributors consult Duyckinck's _Cyclopædia of American literature_, New York, 1866, v. 1, p. 11-14, _NBB_. Reviewed in _The Critical review_, London, 1763, v. 16, p. 289-291, _NAA_; _The Monthly review_, London. 1763, v. 29, p. 22-28, _NAA_. =Pills=, poetical, political and philosophical. _See_ =Fessenden=, Thomas Green. =Pindar=, Jonathan, pseud. The probationary odes. _See_ =Tucker=, Saint George. A =Poem=, addressed to the people of Virginia, on New-Year's day, 1788. Alexandria, January 10, 1788. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1788. 8º. v. 3, p. 92-93.) =Reserve= A =Poem= dedicated to the memory of the reverend and excellent Mr. Urian Oakes. _See_ =Mather=, Cotton. [=Poem=] On the death of Gen. George Washington. (In: The Monthly magazine and American review for the year 1799. New-York, 1800. 8º. v. 1, p. 477-478.) =Reserve= A =Poem= on reading the President's address. _See_ =Honeywood=, St. John. A =Poem= presented to His Excellency William Burnet Esq; on his arrival at Boston, n.p. [1728?] 1 p.l., 5 p. 8º. =Reserve= One of "Fifty copies reprinted from the edition of 1728." "The only known copy of this poem in America, so far as the writer has been able to ascertain, is in the Boston Public Library, where it was acquired a few years ago. The British Museum has also a copy. The author is unknown. It is quite inferior to the verses of Mather Byles on the same occasion, and its publication lacks the Governor's sanction, which was given to the former. Both poems are printed in similar type, and probably were from the same press. The rarity of this publication has induced the present reprint, which is approximately in fac-simile of the original. Paterson, N. J., July 1, 1897. William Nelson." A =Poem=, upon the present times, with a brief [and] humble address to the Almighty, in behalf of the [case] of our cause. Composed by Philoleuthers Americanus. [1776?] Broadside. =Reserve= Text in three columns. =Poem=, written in Boston, at the commencement of the late Revolution. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1788. 8º. v. 4, p. 380-382.) =Reserve= The =Poems= of Arouet. _See_ =Ladd=, Joseph Brown. =Poems= moral and divine, on the following subjects: I. Man's fall and exhaltation: or, The Christian triumph. In seven cantos, II. Modern infidelity: or, The principles of atheism exposed and refuted. Inscrib'd to a friend. III. A paraphrase on the following Psalms: CXIX, CXLIII, CXLII, CXX, XIII, CXLIV and CXXX. IV. The prince and the patriot. In three dialogues. By an American gentleman. To which is added, some account of the author. London: Printed by Charles Rivington, for John and James Rivington in St. Paul's Churchyard. MDCCLVI. 3 p.l., 105(1) p. 8º. =Reserve= =Poems=, occasioned by several circumstances and occurrences in the present grand contest for liberty. _See_ =Case=, Wheeler. =Poetic= testimonials of respect for the virtues and character of our illustrious chief, Gen. George Washington, who died December 14, 1799. The following Hymn and Ode were sung on the 9th of January, 1800, in the Old South Meeting-House, in Boston, before a numerous concourse of citizens. Hymn, by the Rev. John S. J. Gardner.--Ode, by Thomas Paine. A.M.--A Monody, by John Lathrop, Esq.--Ode to Content.--Ode to Science.--New-Year's Address.--Lines extracted from title-page of Mr. Thomas Paine's Eulogy on Gen. Washington. (In: The Columbian phenix and Boston review. Boston. 1800. 8º. v. 1 for 1800, p. 50-54.) =Reserve= A =Poetical= description of song birds: interspersed with entertaining songs, fables, and tales, adapted to each subject: for the amusement of children. The first Worcester edition. Printed at Worcester, Massachusetts, by Isaiah Thomas, sold at his bookstore in Worcester, and by him and company in Boston. MDCCLXXXVIII. 88 p. illus. 32º. =Reserve= A =Poetical= epistle to His Excellency George Washington ... from an inhabitant of the State of Maryland. _See_ =Wharton=, Charles Henry. The =Poetical= nosegay; or The swindler James Geo. Semple revived in the person of Hugh Workman, a native of Ireland. Price for single copy, 30 cents viz: for original--10 cents. Notes part 1 and 2 ditto. Per dozen--two cents each copy--viz: for original 8 cents--notes 1 and 2, 8 cents each. Copy-right secured, according to law. 1800. 5 p.l., 20 p. 12º. =Reserve= Lines on verso of title-page and dedication signed: D. W. A satire on the duel between Mathew Lyon and Roger Griswold in Congress, Jan. 30 and Feb. 15, 1798. For a full account of this affair see the _Historical magazine_, Jan., 1864. All leaves after p. 20 lacking. A =Poetical= picture of America. _See_ =Ritson=, Mrs. Anne. The =Poetical= vagaries of a Knight of the Folding-Stick, of Paste-Castle. To which is annexed, the History of the Garret, &c. &c. translated from the hieroglyphics of the society. By a member of the order of the Blue-String. Gotham. Printed for the author. 1815. 143 p., 2 pl. 16º. =Reserve= Attributed to John Bradford by Wegelin. The =Political= green-house, for the year 1798. Addressed to the readers of the Connecticut Courant, January 1st, 1799. Published according to act of Congress. Hartford: Printed by Hudson & Goodwin. [1799.] 1 p.l., (1)4-24 p. 12º. =Reserve= Written by Richard Alsop, Lemuel Hopkins, and Theodore Dwight, in unequal proportions. Reprinted in _The Echo_, New York, 1807, p. 233-266, _Reserve_ and _NBH_. The =Political= nursery, for the year eighteen hundred two. Packet-Office, Norwich, January 1st, 1802. 16 p. 16º. =Reserve= Bd. with: The Jeffersoniad. 1801. 16º. The =Political= passing bell. _See_ =Richards=, George. The =Poor= man's advice to his poor neighbours: a ballad, to the tune of Chevy-Chase. New York: Printed in the year M.DCC.LXXIV. 19 p. 12º. =Reserve= =Porter=, Jacob. Poems, by Jacob Porter. Hartford: Printed by Peter Gleason and Co., 1818. 2 p.l., (1)6-27 p. 8º. =Reserve= =Porter=, Sarah. The royal penitent. Part II. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 1, p. 301-305.) =NBH= =Pownall=, Mary A. Mrs. Pownall's address, in behalf of the French musicians, delivered on her benefit concert night, at Oeller's hotel, Chestnut-street, Philadelphia. To which are added, Pastoral songs, written by herself at an early period of life. Also the songs performed at the concerts ... New Theatre. Philadelphia: Printed and sold at Story's office, (No. 36) Fourth-street nearly opposite the Indian Queen tavern. [1793.] 1 p.l., (1)4-28 p. 16º. =Reserve= The "Pastoral songs," p. [5]-15, have a special title-page, with imprint reading: Philadelphia, MDCCXIII [i.e., 1793]. "New songs sung at the concerts. New Theatre, Philadelphia," p. [17]-28. =Pratt=, Benjamin, 1710-1763. Death. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 1, p. 324-326.) =NBH= =Prentiss=, Charles, 1774-1820. Child of Pallas: Devoted mostly to the belles-lettres. By Charles Prentiss.--Baltimore--Printed weekly, By Warner & Hanna. 1800. 288 p. 16º. =Reserve= ---- New England freedom: a poem delivered before the Washington Benevolent Society, in Brimfield, February 22d, 1813. By Charles Prentiss. Brookfield: Printed by E. Merriam & Co. March, 1813. 1 p.l., (1)4-28 p. 8º. =NBHD p.v. 1, no. 3= ---- A poem delivered at Brookfield, July 5th, 1813, before the Washington Benevolent Societies of that and adjacent towns. By Charles Prentiss. Published at the request of the audience. Brookfield: Printed by E. Merriam & Co. 1813. 1 p.l., (1)4-14 p. 8º. =NBHD p.v. 1, no. 1= p. 14 wrongly printed 44. =Prichard=, William. Character of St. Tamany. (In: The Beauties of poetry, British and American. Philadelphia, 1791. 16º. p. 196-197.) =Reserve= Also printed in _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 223-224, _NBH_. =Prime=, Benjamin Young, 1733-1791. Muscipula sive cambromyomachia: The mouse-trap, or The battle of the Welsh and the mice; in Latin and English: with other poems, in different languages. By an American [i.e., Benjamin Young Prime]. New-York: Published by M. W. Dodd [1840]. 96 p., 1 map. 16º. =NBHD= _Contents_: Preface.--Muscipula, The mouse-trap.--Dr. Watts' Latin ode, English translation; English ode, Latin translation.--Ode of Sappho in English; The same in French.--Horatii, od. 22, lib. 1; same in Greek; same in English.--Meditation over a dying patient.--A Pindaric ode.--An elegy and palinody.--The desperate wish.--A song for the Sons of Liberty.--To a certain brave officer.--Appendix. The =Probationary= odes of Jonathan Pindar. _See_ =Tucker=, Saint George. The =Progress= of dulness. _See_ =Trumbull=, John. The =Progress= of society. A poem. In three parts. New-York: Published by D. Longworth, 11 Park. Clayton & Kingsland, printers. 1817. 2 p.l., (i)vi-vii p., 2 l., (1)14-62 p., 1 l. 16º. =NBHD= =Querno=, Camillo, pseud. _See_ =Odell=, Jonathan. =Quince=, Peter, pseud. A parnassian shop. _See_ =Story=, Isaac. =Quincey=, Vernon H. A parody on some of the most striking passages in a late pamphlet, entitled "A Letter to a Federalist," with large additions & improvements, by Vernon H. Quincey, Esq. Portsmouth, N. H. Printed at the Oracle Press, 1805. 1 p.l., (i)vi-viii, (1)10-47 p. 8º. =IO(1805) p.v. 1, no. 4= A satire on democracy and its abettors. =Ralph=, James, d. 1762. Clarinda: or The fair libertine. A poem. In four cantos. London: Printed for John Gray, at the Cross-Keys in the Poultry. 1729. 4 p.l., 43 p. 8º. (In his: Miscellaneous poems. London, 1779.) =Reserve= The author was a native of Pennsylvania. ---- Night: a poem. In four books.... By J. Ralph. The second edition. London: Printed by C. Ackers, for W. Meadows at the Angel in Cornhill; and S. Billingsley at the Judge's Head in Chancery-Lane. MDCCXXIX. 3 p.l., xi(i) p., 2 l., 68 p., 1 l. 8º. (In his: Miscellaneous poems. London, 1729.) =Reserve= ---- The tempest: or The terrors of death. A poem in blank verse. By James Ralph. London: Printed for W. Meadows, at the Angel in Cornhill. M.DCC.XXVII. ii, 27 p. 8º. (In his: Miscellaneous poems. London, 1729.) =Reserve= ---- Zeuma: or The love of liberty. A poem. In three books. By James Ralph. London: Printed by C. Ackers, for S. Billingsley at the Judge's-Head in Chancery-Lane. 1729. 6 p.l., vi p., 1 l., 136 p. 8º. (In his: Miscellaneous poems. London, 1729.) =Reserve= =Ray=, William, 1771-1827. Horrors of slavery: or, The American tars in Tripoli. Containing an account of the loss and capture of the United States frigate Philadelphia; treatment and suffering of the prisoners; description of the place; manners, customs, &c. of the Tripolitans; public transactions of the United States with that regency, including Gen. Eaton's expedition, interspersed with interesting remarks, anecdotes, and poetry, on various subjects. Written during upwards of nineteen months' imprisonment and vassalage among the Turks. By William Ray. Troy: Printed by Oliver Lyon, for the author. 1808. New York. Reprinted. William Abbatt, 1911. 295 p. 8º. (The Magazine of history with notes and queries, extra number 14.) =IAG= The poetical pieces are the following: The American tars in Tripolitan slavery. Exordium, p. 9-21.--Invocation to Neptune, p. 64.--The loaf, p. 104-105.--Elegy on the death of John Hilliard, who died Jan. 3d, 1804, in the prison of Tripoli, p. 112-113.--Elegy on the death of Lieutenant James Decatur, who fell August 3d, 1804, in an action with the Tripolitan gun-boats, p. 148-149.--Song, p. 153-154.--Lines addressed to Gen. Eaton, on reading the Congressional debate respecting his Golden Medal, written on board the U. States frigate Essex, p. 253-254.--Poetry, published in The Albany Register, during the summer of 1807, p. 281-293.--Spring [published in the Northern Budget, Troy, May 3, 1808], p. 294-295. Contains also many other poems without titles. ---- Tripoli; The way to be happy; Village greatness. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 2, p. 140-144.) =NBH= =Re-re-commencement=: a kind of a poem: calculated to be recited before an "assemblage" of New-England divines.... _See_ =Biglow=, William. The =Recluse=, pseud. _See_ The =Art= of domestic happiness. The =Revelation= of nature, with the prophecy of reason. _See_ =Stewart=, John. =Rich=. R., fl. 1610. Newes from Virginia (1610). A tract in verse by R. Rich, soldier. Reprinted after the only existing copy of the original edition. London: Printed for private circulation, 1874. 19 p. 4º. =ITC= One of twenty-five copies printed. The first published metrical effusion relating to America, by one who had lived in America. Original title-page reads: Nevves from Virginia. The lost flocke triumphant. With the happy arriual of that famous and worthy knight Sr. Thomas Gates: and the well reputed and valiant captaine Mr. Christopher Newporte, and others, into England. With the maner of their distresse in the Iland of Deuils (otherwise called Bemoothawes) where they remayned 42. weekes, and builded two pynaces, in which they returned into Virginia. By R. Rich, gent., one of the voyage. London Printed by Edw: Allde, and are to be solde by Iohn Wright, at Christ-Church dore. 1610. Also printed in Stedman and Hutchinson, _Library of American literature_. New York, 1889, v. 1, p. 22-24, _NBB_. =Richards=, George, d. 1814. The Declaration of Independence; a poem: accompanied by odes, songs, &c. Adapted to the day. By a citizen of Boston [i.e., George Richards]. Printed at Boston [by Isaiah Thomas and E. T. Andrews]. Faust's Statue, No. 45, Newbury Street, MDCCXCIII. 2 p.l, (1)6-24 p. 12º. =Reserve= Library also has one of 50 copies reprinted, New York, 1870, in _NBH p.v. 26, no. 5_. The Declaration of Independence is reprinted in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 2, p. 28-31, _NBH_. ---- Elegiac ode, sacred to the memory of General Greene. (In: American poems, selected and original. Litchfield, 1793. 12º. p. 201-205.) =Reserve= and =NBH= ---- The political passing bell; an elegy. Written in a country meeting house, April, 1789. Parodized from Gray; and accompanied with a correct copy of the sublime original. For the entertainment of those, who laugh at all parties. [By George Richards].... Boston: Printed by Isaiah Thomas and company, 1789. Tarrytown, N. Y., Reprinted, W. Abbatt, 1916. 19 p. 8º. (The Magazine of history with notes and queries, extra number 48.) =IAG (Magazine)= Original edition published anonymously. In the present reprint the facsimile of t.-p. of original has author's name inserted in brackets. Gray's Elegy (including three verses usually omitted) appears on alternate pages with the parody. =Richmond=, William Ebenezer, 1786-1873. Mount Hope, an evening excursion. By William E. Richmond, barrister at law. Providence: Printed by Miller & Hutchens, 1818. 2 p.l., (1)6-69(1) p. 12º. =Reserve= The poem was read, in an unfinished state, before the Federal Adelphi Society, September, 1816. =Ritson=, Mrs. Anne. A poetical picture of America, being observations made, during a residence of several years, at Alexandria, and Norfolk, in Virginia; illustrative of the manners and customs of the inhabitants: and interspersed with anecdotes, arising from a general intercourse with society in that country, from the year 1799 to 1807. By a lady [i.e., Mrs. Anne Ritson]. London: Printed for the author; and sold by Vernor, Hood, and Sharpe, 31, Poultry. 1809. 8 p.l., (1)4-177 p. 16º. =NBI= _Contents_: A voyage across the Atlantic.--Passage up the Patomak.--Alexandria.--Norfolk.--Manners and customs of Norfolk.--Customs general in Virginia. =Rivington's= New-York Gazetteer. Ode on the New Year 1774. Delivered by Hugh Duncan, one of the Carriers of Rivington's New-York Gazetteer. [New York, 1773.] Broadside. =Reserve= Eight stanzas of four lines each. Text in one column. =Rogers=, John, 1630-1684. [A poem.] Upon Mrs. Ann Bradstreet her poems, &c. (In: Anne Bradstreet, Several poems compiled with great variety of wit and learning.... Boston: John Foster, 1678. 24º. p.l. 6-7.) =Reserve= Reprinted in the _New England historical and genealogical register_, Boston, 1851, v. 5, p. 138-139, _* R-Room 328_ and in Stedman and Hutchinson's _A library of American literature_, New York, 1889, v. 2, p. 44-45, _NBB_. =Rogers=, Robert, 1731-1795. Ponteach: or The savages of America. A tragedy [by Major Robert Rogers]. London: Printed for the author; and sold by J. Millan, opposite the Admiralty, Whitehall. M.DCC.LXVI. [Price 2s. 6d.] 110 p. 8º. =Reserve= and =NCO p.v. 222= Reviewed in _The Monthly review or literary journal_, London, 1766, v. 34, p. 242, _NAA_. ---- ---- With an introduction and a biography of the author by Allen Nevins. Chicago: The Caxton Club, 1914. 261 p., front. (port.) 8º. =Reserve= One of 175 copies on Old Stratford paper. =Rose=, Robert H. Sketches in verse. [By Robert H. Rose.] Printed for C. & A. Conrad & Co., Philadelphia, by Smith & Maxwell. 1810. 1 p.l., (i)vi-viii, (1)10-184 p., 2 pl. 8º. =NBHD= Also has an engraved title-page. =Rowson=, Mrs. Susanna Haswell, 1762-1824. Miscellaneous poems; by Susanna Rowson, preceptress of the Ladies' Academy, Newton, Mass. Author of Charlotte, Inquisitor, Reuben and Rachel, &c &c. Printed for the author, by Gilbert and Dean, State-Street, sold by them, and by W. P. and L. Blake, Cornhill, Boston.--1804. 1 p.l., (i)iv-x p., 1 l., (1)14-227 p. 16º. =NBHD= Contains bookplate of Thomas Jefferson McKee. =Rugeley=, Rowland. The story of Æneas and Dido burlesqued. [By Rowland Rugeley.] Charlestown [i.e., Charleston, S. C.]. Printed and sold by Robert Wells, 1774. xvi, 94 p. sm. 8º. =Reserve= The above copy has the author's name written in ink on the title-page by a former owner. The preface, which is dated "South-Carolina, 1774" shows by its contents that the work is undoubtedly an American production. =S.=, J. To the Rev^{end} Mr. William Hubbard on his most exact History of New-Englands troubles. (In: William Hubbard, The present state of New-England. London, 1677. 4º. p.l. 6.) =Reserve= Also in reprint of Hubbard's work, with notes by S. G. Drake, Roxbury, 1865, v. 1, p. 21-22, _HBC_. Attributed to John Sherman by S. G. Drake and to Jeremiah Shepard by J. L. Sibley. =S.=, T. An almanack for the year of our lord 1656.... By T. S.... Cambridg Printed by Samuel Green. 1656. 8 l. 16º. =Reserve= Photostat facsimile of a copy in the library of the American Antiquarian Society. Poems on leaves 2-7. Probably by Thomas Shepard of Charlestown. ---- An elegie on the death of that eminent minister of the Gospel, Mr. John Norton, the reverend teacher of the church of Christ at Boston, who exchanged this life for a better April 5, 1663. (In: N. Morton, New Englands memoriall. Cambridge, 1669. 12º. p. 166-168.) =Reserve= =St. Denis Le Cadet=, pseud. The lottery, a poem. _See_ =Denison=, Edward. =St. John=, Peter. American taxation, 1765. _See_ =American= taxation. =St. John=, Samuel. American taxation, 1765. _See_ =American= taxation. =Sands=, Robert Charles, joint author. _See_ =Eastburn=, James Wallis. =Sargent=, Lucius Manlius, 1786-1867. Caelii symposii ænigmata. Hanc novam editionem, juxta lectiones optimas diligenter congestam, curavit Lucius M. Sargent. Bostoniae. Nov-Angl: Prelo Belcher et Armstrong. MDCCCVII. 1 p.l., (i)iv, 5-35 p. 12º. =NBH p.v. 2, no. 6= ---- Hubert and Ellen. With other poems. The trial of the harp.... Billowy water.... The plunderer's grave.... The tear-drop.... The billow. By Lucius M. Sargent. Boston: Published by Chester Stebbins. 1813. 1 p.l., (1)4-135 p. 8º. =NBHD= "The plunderer's grave" is also printed in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 2, p. 134-137, _NBH_. =Sargent=, Winthrop, 1753-1820. Boston. A poem. By Winthrop Sargent. Second edition. Corrected and enlarged. Boston: Printed by Hosea Sprague, sold at no 49, Marlboro' Street. 1803. 2 p.l., (i)vi, (1)8-23 p. 16º. =NBHD= =Schoolcraft=, Henry Rowe, 1793-1864. Transallegania, or The groans of Missouri. A poem. [By Henry Howe Schoolcraft.] New-York: Printed for the author, by J. Seymour. 1820. 1 p.l., (1)4-24 p. 16º. =NBH p.v. 20, no. 2= Autograph inscription on cover reads: To E. A. Duyckinck Esq. with the respects of the author H. R. Schoolcraft. Washington, 9th May, 1854. =Scott=, Jonathan M. Blue lights, or The convention. A poem, in four cantos. By Jonathan M. Scott, Esq. New-York: Printed and published by Charles N. Baldwin, Bookseller, Chatham, corner of Chamber-street. 1817. 3 p.l., (i)vi-xi p., 1 l., (1)16-150 p. 24º. =NBHD= ---- The sorceress, or Salem delivered. A poem, in four cantos. By Jonathan M. Scott, Esq. New-York: Printed and published by Charles N. Baldwin, Bookseller, corner of Chamber and Chatham Street. 1817. xii p., 1 l., (1)16-120 p. 16º. =NBHD= =Scott=, Moses Y. Fatal jest, a tale: and other poems. By Moses Y. Scott. New-York: Published by Elam Bliss, 208 Broadway. J. Seymour, printer. 1819. 2 p.l., (i)iv-vi p., 1 l., (1)10-142 p. 24º. =NBH= =Sears=, Reuben. A poem on the mineral waters of Ballston and Saratoga, with notes illustrating the history of the springs and adjacent country. By Reuben Sears, A.M. Ballston Spa: Published by the author, J. Comstock, printer. 1819. 3 p.l., (1)8-108 p. 24º. =IRM= p. [37]-95 contain: Notes illustrating the history of the springs and adjacent country. p. 96-102 contain poem entitled: Philosoph; p. 103-108, one entitled Immortality. =Searson=, John. Elegiac verses on the decease of his late Excellency, the illustrious and ever-memorable, great and good General George Washington, of immortal memory. [By John Searson. Philadelphia, 1800?] 4 p. 8º. =Reserve= Title from caption. Bound with and usually appended to, the author's _Mount Vernon, a poem_.... Philadelphia [1799?]. ---- Mount Vernon, a poem: being the seat of his excellency George Washington, in the state of Virginia; lieutenant-general and commander in chief of the land forces of the United States of America. This rural, romantic and descriptive poem of the seat of so great a character, it is hoped may please, with a copper-plate likeness of the General. It was taken from an actual view on the spot by the author, 15th May, 1799. Also a cursory view of Georgetown, city of Washington, and the capitol. By John Searson, formerly of Philadelphia, merchant. Philadelphia: Printed for the author by Folwell [1799]. vi p., 1 l., (1)10-83, 4 p., front. (port.) 8º. =Reserve= and =NBHD= The last 4 p. contain: Elegiac verses on the decease of his late Excellency the illustrious and ever-memorable, great and good General George Washington, of immortal memory. [Philadelphia, 1800?] Also contains the following poems: Thoughts in Mount-Vernon garden, p. 28-29; Poetic address to the Deity, p. 31-32; Spring hymn, in praise of the Creator, p. 32-36: Poetic description of a grand parade, at Baltimore, on the 7th of November, 1798: occasioned by his excellency general Washington's passing through Baltimore, in his way to the northward, on some public business, p. 36-37; Acrostic on Mount-Vernon, the seat of his excellency George Washington, p. 37-38; Alexandria, p. 38-39; George-Town, p. 39; City Washington, p. 40-42; Lines on St. Tammany's Day, p. 42-43; Ode to Liberty, p. 43-44; Advice to every member of Congress, p. 44-45; On a rural life, p. 45-46; On the dissolution of the world, p. 46; An evening hymn, p. 47; A hymn of praise, or solemn address, to the God of seasons, by James Thomson, p. 47-52; Paraphrase of part of the Book of Job, p. 52-67; In imitation of Pope's Universal prayer, p. 68-69; On the decease of his excellency general Anthony Wayne, p. 69-70; On the return of the epidemic fever to Philadelphia, in 1799, p. 80-82; Valedictory, p. 83. ---- Poems on various subjects and different occasions, chiefly adapted to rural entertainment in the United States of America. By John Searson, formerly of Philadelphia, merchant. Philadelphia: Printed by Snowden & M'Corkle, No. 47 North Fourth-street. 1797. vi, 7-94 p., 5 l. 8º. =Reserve= =Seccomb=, John, 1708-1792. Father Abbey's will; to which is added a letter of courtship to his virtuous and amiable widow. [By John Seccomb.] With historical and biographical notes [by John Langdon Sibley]. Privately printed. Cambridge, 1854. 14 p. 8º. =AGZ p.v. 1, no. 1= The poem was first published in _The Gentleman's magazine_, London, 1732, v. 2, p. 770, under the following title: The last will of Mr. Mathew A ...y, late bed-maker and sweeper in Cambridge. Reprinted in _The Massachusetts magazine_, Boston, 1794, v. 6, no. 11, p. 696-697, _Reserve_. Also printed in E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, _Cyclopædia of American literature_, New York, 1866, v. 1, p. 127-128, _NBB_; Stedman and Hutchinson, _A library of American literature_, New York, 1889, v. 2, p. 352-356, _NBB_. =Selyns=, Henricus, 1636-1701. In Jesu Christi Magnalia Americana, digesta in septem libros, per magnum, doctissimumque virum, D. Cottonum Matherum. (In: Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana. London, 1702. 4º.) =Reserve= In Latin. Also in later editions of the _Magnalia_, as follows: Hartford, 1820, v. 1, p. 20-21; Hartford, 1855, v. 1, p. 22, with English translation on p. 23. ---- Memoir and poems. (In: Henry C. Murphy, Anthology of New Netherland. New York, 1865. 8º. p. 77-183.) =NBH= =Several= poems compiled with great variety of wit and learning. _See_ =Bradstreet=, Mrs. Anne Dudley. =Sewall=, Jonathan Mitchell, 1748-1808. Miscellaneous poems, with several specimens from the author's manuscript version of the poems of Ossian. By J. M. Sewall, Esq. Published agreeably to an act of Congress. Portsmouth: Printed by William Treadwell, & Co for the author. 1801. 2 p.l., (1)6-304 p. 16º. =Reserve= ---- Versification of President Washington's excellent Farewell-Address to the citizens of the United States. By a gentleman of Portsmouth, N. H. [i.e., Jonathan Mitchell Sewall.] Published according to act of Congress. Portsmouth, New-Hampshire: Printed and sold by Charles Peirce, at the Columbian Bookstore, No. 5. Daniel-Street. 1798. 54 p. 12º. =Reserve= =Sewall=, Stephen, 1734-1804. [Poem.] On the death of George II. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. p. 328-330.) =NBH= ---- _See also_ =Pietas= et gratulatio.... =Shaw.= John, 1778-1809. Poems by the late Doctor John Shaw. To which is prefixed a biographical sketch of the author. [By John E. Hall.] Published by Edward Earle, Philadelphia, and by Edward J. Coale, Baltimore. Fry and Kammerer, printers. 1810. 1 p.l., (i)vi-viii, 252 p. 16º. =NBHD= Some of Shaw's poems are printed in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_, Boston, 1829, v. 2, p. 128-130, _NBH_. =Shaw-Standish=, Thomas. A mournful song, occasioned by the shipwreck of the schooner Armistice, Captain Douglass, on Cohasset rocks, August 31, 1815 ... bound from Portland for Baltimore ... on which occasion five persons perished. By Thomas Shaw-Standish. n. p. [1815?] 11 p. 8º. =NBHD= At head of title: No. 1. [Cut of 5 coffins.] Cut of a ship on title-page. ---- Peace. [Verses, n.p., 1815?] Broadside. fº. =Reserve= =Shepard=, Jeremiah. _See_ =S.=, J. =Shepard=, Thomas, 1605-1649. [Extract from an Elegy on the death of John Wilson.] (In: Cotton Mather, Johannes in Eremo. Boston, 1695. 24º. p. 36.) =Reserve= Reprinted in The Club of Odd Volumes, _Early American poetry_ [_Reprints_, v.] 4, _Reserve_. =Sherman=, John. _See_ =S.=, J. =Short=, Bob, pseud. Patriotic effusions. _See_ =Longstreet=, Augustus Baldwin. The =Shunamite=. _See_ =Green=, G. =Shurtleff=, James, 1745-1832. The substance of a late remarkable dream, in which were presented the celestial worlds and the infernal regions, with the arch enemy of mankind, with his legions paraded, together with his instructions to them, in which was discovered, his deep-laid plot against the United States of America. [By James Shurtleff.] Hallowell (District of Maine) Printed by Peter Edes. 1800. 16 p. 8º. =Reserve= Introduction signed: James Shurtleff. Litchfield [Me.], February, 1800. =Signs= of apostacy lamented. _See_ =Bosworth=, Benjamin. =Sigourney=, Mrs. Lydia Howard Huntley, 1791-1865. Moral pieces in prose and verse. By Lydia Huntley. Hartford: Sheldon & Goodwin, 1815. xii, 267(1) p., 4 l. 12º. =NBY= The =Simple= cobler of Aggawam in America. _See_ =Ward=, Nathaniel. =Sketches= in verse. _See_ =Rose=, Robert H. =Smith=, Eaglesfield. William and Ellen: a poem in three cantos; with other poetical works of an American [i.e., Eaglesfield Smith]. Published for the benefit of a helpless child. New-York: Printed by J. Seymour, No. 49, John-Street. 1811. 1 p.l. (i)vi-xii, (1)14-158 p. 24º. =NBHD= =Smith=, Elihu Hubbard, 1771-1798. Epistle to the author of the Botanic garden [Erasmus Darwin]. New York, March, 1798. (In: Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic garden. A poem. New-York, 1798. 8º. p.l. 4-6.) =Reserve= Also printed in E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, _Cyclopædia of American literature_, New York, 1866, v. 1, p. 600-601, _NBB_. ---- Monody on the death of George Washington. Delivered at the New-York Theatre, on Monday evening, December 30, 1799. [By Elihu H. Smith.] (In: The Monthly magazine and American review for the year 1799. New-York, 1800. 8º. v. 1, p. 478-480.) =Reserve= ---- Occasional address. Spoken by Mr. Hodgkinson, on the opening of the New Theatre, in New-York, Monday, the 29th of January, 1798. Written by the late Dr. E. H. Smith. (In: The Monthly magazine and American review for the year 1799. New-York, 1800. 8º. v. 1. p. 239-240.) =Reserve= ---- _See also_ The =Echo; American= poems, selected and original. =Smith=, Isaiah. The mirror of merit and beauty: fifty female sketches, drawn from nature. By a friend to the fair, I. S. M. D. [i.e., Isaiah Smith.] New-York: Printed for the author, by D. & G. Bruce. 1808. 79(1) p. 24º. =Reserve= =Smith=, John, 1580-1631. The generall historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles: with the names of the adventurers, planters, and governours from their first beginning an: 1584. to this present 1624. With the proceedings of those severall colonies and the accidents that befell them in all their journyes and discoveries. Also the maps and descriptions of all those countryes, their commodities, people, government, customes, and religion yet knowne. Divided into six bookes. By Captaine John Smith sometymes Governour in those countryes & admirall of New England. London. Printed by I. D. for Michael Sparkes. 1624. 7 p.l., 248 p. fº. =Reserve= Poems on pages 9, 12, 13, 16, 18, 20, 25, 34, 35, 36, 37, 43, 49, 50, 51, 53, 54, 66, 69, 78, 87, 90, 92, 93, 107, 150, 151, 157, 159, 176, 193, 200, 227, 229, 230, 239. Reprinted in Capt. John Smith, _Works, 1608-1631. Edited by Edward Arber_. Birmingham, 1884. 2 v. 12º. _* R-Room 300_. ---- ---- Richmond: Republished at the Franklin Press, William W. Gray printer. 1819. 2 v. 8º. =ITC= ---- ---- Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1907. 2 v. 8º. =ITC= ---- The sea marke. (In his: Advertisements for the planters of New-England, or anywhere. London, 1631. 4º. p.l. 3.) =Reserve= Reprinted in Massachusetts Historical Society, _Collections_, Cambridge, 1833, series 3, v. 3, p. 4, _IAA_. Also reprinted in Capt. John Smith, _Works. Edited by Edward Arber_, Birmingham, 1884, v. 2, p. 922. _* R-Room 300_. =Smith=, Joseph. Eulogium on rum. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1790. 8º. v. 7, appendix 1, p. 1-2.) =Reserve= Also printed in _The Beauties of poetry, British and American_, Philadelphia, 1791, p. 174-176, _Reserve_; _American poems, selected and original_, Litchfield, 1793, p. 231-234, _NBH_; _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 109-112. _NBH_; and _American poetical miscellany_, Philadelphia, 1809, p. 169-172, _NBH_. ---- An Indian eclogue. Scene, the banks of the Ohio. (In: The Beauties of poetry, British and American. Philadelphia, 1791. 16º. p. 244.) =Reserve= Also printed in _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 160-161, _NBH_. =Smith=, William, 1727-1803. Art and nature. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1787. 8º. v. 1, p. 181-182.) =Reserve= Reprinted in _The Beauties of poetry, British and American_, Philadelphia, 1791, p. 187-189, _Reserve_; _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 184-186, _NBH_. ---- Indian songs of peace: with a proposal, in a prefatory epistle, for erecting Indian schools. And a postscript by the editor, introducing Yariza, an Indian maid's letter, to the principal ladies of the Province and City of New-York. By the author of the American fables [i.e., William Smith]. New-York: Printed by J. Parker, and W. Wayman, at the New Printing-Office in Beaver-Street, MDCCLII. 27 p. 12º. =Reserve= =Smith=, William Moore, 1759-1821. The fall of Zampor, a Peruvian ode; Ode to meditation; Lampoon. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 1, p. 306-312.) =NBH= ---- The man of sorrow. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1787. 8º. v. 2, p. 517-518.) =Reserve= ---- On a lady's birthday. (In: The Columbian muse. New York, 1794. 16º. p. 183.) =Reserve= and =NBH= =Snowden=, Richard. The Columbiad: or, A poem on the American war, in thirteen cantoes. [By Richard Snowden.] Philadelphia: Printed by Jacob Johnson & Co. 147, Market-Street. 1795. iv, 46 p. 16º. =Reserve= ---- ---- Baltimore: Printed by W. Pechin, No. 10, Second-street. [1800?] 44 p. 16º. =Reserve= Bd. with his: The American Revolution. Baltimore. [1800?]. 16º. =Some= excellent verses on Admiral Vernon's taking the forts and castles of Carthagena in the month of March last. Sold at the Heart and Crown in Cornhill. [Boston, 1741.] Broadside. =Reserve= Eighteen stanzas in two columns. A =Song= made upon the election of new magistrates for this city.... A song made upon the foregoing occasion. [New York. 1734.] Broadside. =Reserve= The two scandalous songs that figured in the Zenger-Cosby affair, 1734. A =Song=, on the surrendery of General Burgoyne, who gave up his whole army to the brave General Gates, of glorious memory, October 17, 1777. [1777.] Broadside. =Reserve= Forty-six stanzas in three columns. =Sotweed= redivivus: or the planters looking-glass. _See_ =Cook=, Ebenezer. =Specimens= of the American poets; with critical notices and a preface. London: Printed for T. and J. Allman, 1822. iv, 283 p. 12º. =NBH= W. C. Bryant. Poems, p. 189-218.--R. Dabney. Poems, p. 157-172.--J. W. Eastburn. Yamoyden, proem and canto II, p. 219-249.--F. G. Halleck. Fanny, p. 109-156.--W. Maxwell. Poems, p. 173-187.--J. K. Paulding. The Backwoodsman, p. 71-108.--J. Pierpont. Airs of Palestine, p. 25-69. The =Spirit= of the Farmers' museum, and lay preacher's gazette. Being a judicious selection of the fugitive and valuable productions, which have occasionally appeared in that paper, since the commencement of its establishment. Consisting of a part of the essays of the Lay Preacher, Colon and Spondee, American biography, the choicest efforts of the American muse, pieces of chaste humour, the early essays of the Hermit, the most valuable part of the weekly summaries, nuts, epigrams, and epitaphs, sonnets, criticism, &c. &c. Walpole, (N. H.) Printed, for Thomas & Thomas, by D. & T. Carlisle. 1801. 2 p.l., (1)6-318 p., 2 l. of adv. 16º. =Reserve= p. 5-11 contain list of 199 subscribers. Edited by Joseph Dennie. The =Spunkiad=: or Heroism improved. A congressional display of spit and cudge. A poem, in four cantoes. By an American youth. Newburgh: Printed and sold by D. Denniston. M,DCC,XCVIII. 1 p.l., (1)4-23 p. 8º. =Reserve= A satire on the duel between Mathew Lyon and Roger Griswold in Congress, Jan. 30 and Feb. 15, 1798. For a full account of this affair see the _Historical magazine_, Jan., 1864. The =Squabble=; a pastoral eclogue. By Agricola. With a curious and well-design'd frontispiece. Printed [from the first edition] by Andrew Steuart, in Second-street Philadelphia. [1764.] 8 p. 16º. =Reserve= The frontispiece, which is on page 4, is a crude woodcut representing "Thyrsis with a Pr*sb*t*rian Nose. Conn, with a Q**k*ronian Nose." =Standish=, Miles, the younger, pseud.? The times; a poem, addressed to the inhabitants of New-England, and of the state of New-York, particularly on the subject of the present anti-commercial system of the national administration. By Miles Standish, jun. Plymouth: Printed for the author, 1809. 2 p.l., (1)6-27 p. 8º. =II= At head of title: No. 1. A poem on "the exterminating war, now carrying on by the National Administration against commerce" of New York and New England. Copyright notice on verso of title-page. =Stansbury=, Joseph, and JONATHAN ODELL, 1737-1818. The loyal verses of Joseph Stansbury and Doctor Jonathan Odell; relating to the American Revolution. Now first edited by Winthrop Sargent. Albany: J. Munsell, 78 State Street. 1860. 3 p.l., (i)x-xxi p., 1 l., 199 p. 8º. (Munsell's historical series, no. 6.) =NBHD= Poems by Odell, p. 5-6, 7-9, 11-12, 35, 45-60. The =State= triumvirate, a political tale. _See_ =Verplanck=, Gulian Crommelin. =Stearns=, Charles, 1753-1826. The ladies' philosophy of love. A poem, in four cantos. Written in 1774. By Charles Stearns. A.B. Since pastor of the Church, and preceptor of the Liberal School in Lincoln. Now first published--according to act of Congress. Leominster, for the author. 1797. 1 p.l., (i)iv, (1)6-76 p. sq. 16º. =Reserve= =Steendam=, Jacob, b. 1616. A memoir of the first poet in New Netherland [i.e., Jacob Steendam] with his poems descriptive of the colony. [By Henry C. Murphy.] The Hague, The Brothers Giunta D'Albani, 1861. 59 p., front, (port.) 8º. =AN= Poems in Dutch and English on opposite pages; the "Complaint of New Amsterdam" and "The praise of New Netherland" include reproductions of the original title-pages. _Contents_: Memoir.--Poems on New Netherland: Complaint of New Amsterdam in New Netherland, to her mother, 1659. The praise of New Netherland, 1661.--Spurring-verses. ---- Memoir and poems. (In: Henry C. Murphy, Anthology of New Netherland. New York, 1865. 8º. p. 21-75.) =NBH= =Stewart=, John. The revelation of nature, with the prophesy of reason. [By John Stewart.] New York: Printed by Mott & Lyon, for the author. In the fifth year of intellectual existance, or the publication of the apocalypse of nature, 3000 years from the Grecian olympiads, and 4800 from recorded knowledge in the Chinese tables of eclipses, beyond which chronology is lost in fable. [1796.] xxxix, 104 p. 16º. =Reserve= =Stiles=, Ezra. _See_ A =Family= tablet: containing a selection of original poetry. =Stoddard=, Amos, 1762-1813. The president's birth day ode. Performed at Taunton, at the Civick Festival, February, 1793. Written by A. Stoddard. (In: The Massachusetts magazine. Boston. 1793. 8º. v. 5, no. 3, p. 178-179.) =Reserve= =Stoddard=, Lavina, 1787-1820. The soul's defiance. (In: R. W. Griswold, The female poets of America. Philadelphia, 1849. 8º. p. 44.) =NBH= =Story=, Isaac, 1774-1803. An epistle from Yarico to Inkle, together with their characters, as related in the Spectator. [By Isaac Story.] Marblehead: Printed for the sons and daughters of Columbia. M.DCC.XCII. 2 p.l., (1)6-31 p. 8º. =Reserve= Printed at Salem. The monogram "I. S." appears above the imprint. ---- A parnassian shop, opened in the Pindaric stile; By Peter Quince, Esq. [pseud. of Isaac Story.] Copy right secured. Boston: Printed by Russell and Cutler. 1801. 3 p.l., (i)viii, (1)10-155 p. 16º. =Reserve= Reviewed in _The American review, and literary journal_ for the year 1801, New York, 1801, v. 1, p. 460-465, _Reserve_. ---- _See also_ =All= the world's a stage. A poem. =Story=, Joseph, 1779-1845. Elegy to the memory of General George Washington. (In his: An eulogy on General George Washington. Salem: J. Cushing, 1800. 8º. p. [17]-24.) =Reserve= "The subsequent Elegy, added by advice of some friends, was originally designed for newspaporial currency. As some sentiments of it are perhaps enlarged on in the Eulogy, it is necessary to observe, that it was written previous to the suggestion of the other, and could not be altered without impairing its structure." ---- The power of solitude. A poem. In two parts. By Joseph Story. A new and improved edition. Salem: Published by Barnard P. Macanulty. 1804. 2 p.l., 260 p., front. 12º. =NBHD= Extract printed in Samuel Kettell, _Specimens of American poetry_. Boston, 1829, v. 2, p. 109-112, _NBH_. The =Story= of Æneas and Dido burlesqued. _See_ =Rugeley=, Rowland. The =Substance= of a late remarkable dream. _See_ =Shurtleff=, James. =Sumner=, Charles Pinckney, 1766-1839. The compass. A poetical performance at the Literary Exhibition in September. M,DCC,XCV, at Harvard University. By Charles P. Sumner. Boston: Printed by William Spotswood for the subscribers. [1795.] 1 p.l., (1)4-12 p. 16º. =Reserve= ---- An ode for the sixth anniversary of the Massachusetts Charitable Fire Society. Boston, May, 1800. (In: The Columbian phenix and Boston review. Boston, 1800. 8º. v. 1 for 1800, p. 380.) =Reserve= =Swanwick=, John. Poems on several occasions. By John Swanwick, Esq. One of the Representatives in the Congress of the United States, from the State of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: Printed by F. and R. Bailey, at Yorick's Head, No. 116. High-Street. MDCCXCVII. 2 p.l., 174 p. 32º. =Reserve= =Sympson=, J. Science revived or The vision of Alfred. A poem in eight cantos. With biographical notes. By the Rev. J. Sympson, B.D. Philadelphia: Printed by John Bouvier, for John Wilson. 1810. 2 p.l., (1)6-207 p. 24º. =NBHD= =T.=, B. _See_ =Tompson=, Benjamin. The =Tenth= Muse lately sprung up in America. Or several poems. _See_ =Bradstreet=, Mrs. Anne Dudley. =Terrible= tractoration!! A poetical petition against galvanising trumpery.... _See_ =Fessenden=, Thomas Green. =Theresa=, pseud. _See_ The =Breechiad=, a poem. =Thomas=, Daniel. A poem, delivered in Middleborough, September 8th, A.D. 1802. At the anniversary election of the Philandrian Society. By Daniel Thomas, student of Rhode-Island College. Wrentham, (Mass.) Printed by Nathaniel Heaton, Jun. 1802. 12 p. 12º. =Reserve= =Thomas=, John. The genius of America. Inscribed to his Excellency General George Washington, on his return to Mount Vernon in December, 1783. [And other poems.] (In: Extracts in prose and verse, by a lady of Maryland. Annapolis, 1808. 12º. v. 2, p. 154-189.) =NBB= =Thomas=, Joseph. A poetical descant on the primeval and present state of mankind; or, The pilgrim's muse. By Joseph Thomas, minister of the Gospel. Winchester, Va. J. Foster, printer. 1816. 1 p.l., (i)iv-vii(i), 9-219(1) p. 32º. =NBHD= =Tileston=, Thomas. Funeral elegy, dedicated to the memory of his worthy friend, the learned and religious Mr. John Foster, who deceased in Dorchester the 9 of Septr. 1661. (In: T. C. Simonds, History of South Boston. Boston, 1857. 12º. p. 34-37.) =IQH= The =Times=, a poem. _See_ =Church=, Benjamin. The =Times=; a poem. _See_ =Markoe=, Peter. =Tompson=, Benjamin, 1642-1714. Celeberrimi Cottoni Matheri, celebratio.... (In: Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana. London, 1702. 4º.) =Reserve= Text in Latin and English. Also in later editions of the _Magnalia_, as follows: Hartford, 1820, v. 1, p. 17, and Hartford, 1855, v. 1, p. 20. Reprinted in E. C. Stedman and E. M. Hutchinson, _A library of American literature_, New York, 1889, v. 2, p. 35-36, _NBB_. ---- [Elegy] Upon the very Reverend Samuel Whiting. (In: Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana. London, 1702. 4º. book III, p. 160-161.) Also in later editions as follows: Hartford, 1820, v. 1, p. 459-461; Hartford, 1855, v. 1, p. 510-511. ---- The grammarians funeral, or An elegy composed upon the death of Mr. John Woodmancy, formerly a school-master in Boston: but now published upon the death of the venerable Mr. Ezekiel Chevers, the late and famous school-master of Boston in New-England; who departed this life the twenty-first of August 1708. Early in the morning. In the ninety-fourth year of his age. [By] Benj. Tompson. Broadside. (In: S. A. Green, Ten fac-simile reproductions relating to New England. Boston, 1902. fº.) =Reserve= Enclosed in mourning borders. Photo-facsimile, exact size. ---- A neighbour's tears sprinkled on the dust of the amiable virgin, Mrs. Rebekah Sewall, who was born December 30. 1704. and dyed suddenly, August 3. 1710. Ætatis 6. [By] B. T. [i.e., Benjamin Tompson.] Broadside. (In: S. A. Green, Ten fac-simile reproductions relating to New England. Boston, 1902. fº.) =Reserve= Thirty-two lines, enclosed in mourning border. Photo-facsimile, exact size. ---- New-England's crisis. By Benjamin Tompson. Boston: The Club of Odd Volumes, 1894. 28 p., 1 l., (1)6-31 p. sq. 8º. (The Club of Odd Volumes. Early American poetry [Reprints, v.] 1.) =Reserve= No. 81 of one hundred copies printed on hand-made paper. This is a modern type reprint, without title-page, of a copy of the original, Boston, 1676, in the Boston Athenæum. The Boston _Evening Transcript_, July 13, 1910, records the sale of the only known perfect copy, which was disposed of at the sale of Thomas Gray's library, at Sotheby's on June 25, 1910. ---- [Poem] Upon the elaborate survey of New-Englands passions from the natives, by the imperial pen of that worthy divine Mr. William Hubbard. 2 p. (In: William Hubbard, The present state of New-England. Being a narrative of the troubles with the Indians.... London. 1677. 4º. p.l. 7.) =Reserve= Also in reprint of Hubbard's work, with notes by S. G. Drake, Roxbury, 1865, v. 1, p. 23-26, _HBC_. =Touchstone=, Geoffry, pseud. The house of wisdom in a bustle. A poem, descriptive of the noted battle lately fought in C--ng--ss. By Geoffry Touchstone. New-York: Printed for the purchasers. 1798. [Price 25 cents.] 24 p. 8º. =Reserve= A satire on the duel between Mathew Lyon and Roger Griswold in Congress, Jan. 30 and Feb. 15, 1798. For a full account of this affair see the _Historical magazine_, Jan., 1864. First published at Philadelphia, in 1798. =Townsend=, Eliza. 1789-1854. An occasional ode. (In: The monthly anthology, and Boston review. Boston, 1809. 8º. v. 7, p. 180-186.) =* DA= Also printed in R. W. Griswold, _The female poets of America_, Philadelphia, 1849, p. 39-41, _NBH_. =Townsend=, Richard? H. Original poems, by a citizen of Baltimore [i.e., Richard? H. Townsend]. Published by Samuel Jefferis, 212, Baltimore-Street. Robinson, printer. 1809. 2 p.l., (i)vi-x, 139(1) p. 1 l. of adv. 12º. =NBHD= =Transallegania=, or The groans of Missouri. A poem. _See_ =Schoolcraft=, Henry Rowe. A =Tribute= to Washington, for February 22d, 1800. _See_ =Lovett=, John. The =True= American, Tom Tackle, Fair Kate of Portsmouth, Had Neptune, Roger and Kate. New-York: Printed and sold at No. 38, and 64, Maiden-Lane. 1811. 8 p. 12º. =Reserve= =Trumbull=, John, 1750-1831. Ambition, an elegy. (In: American poems, selected and original. Litchfield, 1793. 12º. p. 17-20.) =Reserve= and =NBH= Also printed in _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 65-68, _NBH_; and, under the title An elegy, in _The American museum_, Philadelphia, 1787, v. 2, p. 206-207, _Reserve_. ---- The critics, a fable. (In: The Columbian muse. New York, 1794. 16º. p. 69-73.) =Reserve= and =NBH= ---- The downfall of Babylon.--An imitation of sundry passages in the 13th and 14th chapters of the prophecy of Isaiah, and the 18th chapter of the Revelations of St. John. Written, anno 1775. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1787. 8º. v. 2, p. 97-99.) =Reserve= Also printed in _American poems, selected and original_, Litchfield, 1793, p. 25-29, _NBH_. ---- An elegy on the death of Mr. Buckingham St. John, tutor of Yale College, who was drowned in his passage from New Haven to Norwalk, May the 5th, 1771. New York: C. F. Heartman, 1915. 2 p.l., 9-19 p., front, (fold. fac.) 8º. (Heartman's historical series, no. 12.) =Reserve= Contains facsimile of original broadside. One of 31 copies printed on Fabriano hand-made paper. Also printed in _The American museum_, Philadelphia, 1787, v. 2, p. 101-103, _Reserve_; _The Massachusetts magazine_, Boston, April, 1791, p. 243-245, _Reserve_; _American poems, selected and original_, Litchfield, 1793, p. 13-17, _NBH_; _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 61-65, _NBH_. ---- Elegy on the times. First printed at Boston, Sept. 20th, 1774. (In: American poems, selected and original. Litchfield, 1793. 12º. p. 1-12.) =Reserve= and =NBH= Also printed in _The Columbian muse_, New York, 1794, p. 51-61, _NBH_. ---- Excellent logic; British favours to America; Extreme humanity; Nobility anticipated. (In: The Beauties of poetry, British and American. Philadelphia, 1791. 16º. p. 146-155.) =Reserve= ---- McFingal: a modern epic poem. Or, The town meeting. [By John Trumbull.] Philadelphia, printed: London, reprinted for J. Almon, opposite Burlington-House, Piccadilly. MDCCLXXVI. [Price one shilling.] 44 p. 12º. =Reserve= The first part was written in 1775 at the request of some members of the American Congress, with a view to influence public opinion in favor of the war then beginning against the mother country. ---- M'Fingal: a modern epic poem, in four cantos. [By John Trumbull.] Hartford: Printed and sold by Byail Webster, a few Rods South-East of the Court-House, 1782. 96 p. 24º. =Reserve= ---- ---- Hartford: Printed by Hudson and Goodwin, near the Great Bridge, 1782. 100 p. 12º. =Reserve= ---- ---- Boston: Printed by Peter Edes, in State-Street. MDCCLXXXV. 2 p.l., (1)6-110 p. 16º. =Reserve= ---- ---- Philadelphia: From the Press of Mathew Carey. M.DCC.XCI. 95(1) p. 16º. =Reserve= This is the first edition in which the author's name appears on the title-page. ---- ---- The fifth edition, with explanatory notes. London: Printed for J. S. Jordan, No. 166, Fleet-Street. M,DCC,XCII. xv, 142 p. 8º. =Reserve= ---- ---- The sixth edition, with explanatory notes. London: Printed for Chapman and Co. No. 161, Fleet-Street. M,DCC,XCIII. 2 p.l., (i)vi-xv, 142 p. 8º. =Reserve= ---- ---- Embellished with nine copper plates; designed and engraved by E. Tisdale. The first edition with plates, and explanatory notes. New-York: Printed by John Duel, No. 132. Fly-Market. M,DCC,XCV. vii, 136 p., front. (port.), 8 pl. 8º. =Reserve= Frontispiece, the portrait of the author. ---- ---- With explanatory notes. Boston: Printed by Manning & Loring, for Ebenezer Larking, No. 47, Cornhill. 1799. 141(1) p., 1 l. 24º. =Reserve= ---- ---- Embellished with plates. With explanatory notes. Baltimore. Printed and sold by A. Miltenberger, No. 10, North Howard-street. 1812. 1 p.l., (i)iv-vi, (1)8-146 p., 3 pl. (incl. front.) 32º. =NBHD= ---- ---- With explanatory notes. Albany: Printed by E. & E. Hosford. 1813. 1 p.l., (i)iv, (1)6-112 p. 24º. =NBHD= ---- With explanatory notes. Published and sold by Ezekiel Goodale, at the Hallowell Bookstore. 1813. vi, (1)8-138 p., 2 l. (one l. of adv.) 16º. =NBHD= Peter Edes, printer, Augusta. ---- ---- With explanatory notes and plates. Hudson: Published by W. E. Norman. 1816. vi, (1)8-146 p. 24º. =NBHD= Ashbel Stoddard, printer. The Library has another copy of this edition, ending with p. 145. The publisher probably had a number of copies lacking the last leaf, and in order to sell them had the missing part reprinted on one page, and inserted it. This must have been done some years after the printing of the original. This copy also has an engraved frontispiece. ---- ---- With explanatory notes. Boston: Printed by John G. Scobie, 1826. 1 p.l., (1)4-184 p. nar. 24º. =NBHD= ---- ---- With explanatory notes. Fine edition. Philadelphia: Published by C. P. Fessenden. 1839. iv, (1)6-120 p. 24º. =NBHD= ---- M'Fingal, a modern epic poem, revised and corrected, with copious and explanatory notes, by John Trumbull, LL.D. With a memoir of the author. Hartford: S. Andrus and Son, 1856. 1 p.l., (1)6-183 p., 3 l. of adv., front. 8º. =NBHD= ---- M'Fingal: an epic poem. By John Trumbull. With introduction and notes, by Benson J. Lossing. New York: G. P. Putnam, 115 Nassau Street, 1860. 322 p., front. (port.) 4º. =NBHD= Large paper copy. ---- ---- New York: G. P. Putnam: Hurd and Houghton, 1864. 322 p., front. (port.) 16º. =NBHD= ---- ---- New York: American Book Exchange, 1881. 322 p. 16º. =NBHD= Also printed in _The American museum_, Philadelphia, 1787, v. 1, p. 353-382, _Reserve_. ---- Poems: The speech of Proteus to Aristæus, translated from the fourth book of Virgil's Georgics, 1700; The downfall of Babylon, written 1775; The prophecy of Balaam, written 1773; An elegy, on the death of Mr. Buckingham St. John, who was drowned in his passage from New-haven to Norwalk, May 5th, 1771. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1787. 8º. v. 2, p. 95-103.) =Reserve= ---- The poetical works of John Trumbull, LL.D. Containing M'Fingal, a modern epic poem, revised and corrected, with copious explanatory notes; The Progress of dulness; and a collection of poems on various subjects, written before and during the Revolutionary War. In two volumes. Hartford: Printed for Samuel G. Goodrich, by Lincoln & Stone. MDCCCXX. 2 v. 8º. =NBHD= v. 1. 3 p.l., (1)8-177 p., front, (port.), eng. t.-p.; v. 2. 4 p.l., (1)9-235 p., 4 pl., eng. t.-p. _Contents_: v. 1. Memoir of the life and writings of John Trumbull.--M'Fingal. v. 2. Progress of dulness.--Genius of America.--Lines to Messrs. Dwight and Barlow.--Ode to Sleep.--To a young lady, a fable.--Speech of Proteus, translation.--Prophecy of Balaam.--Owl and sparrow, a fable.--Prospect of the future glory of America.--On the vanity of youthful expectations.--Advice to ladies of a certain age.--Characters.--Elegy on the death of Mr. St. John.--Destruction of Babylon.--Elegy on the times.--Appendix. ---- The progress of dulness, part first, or The rare adventures of Tom Brainless; shewing what his father and mother said of him; how he went to college, and what he learned there; how he took his degree, and went to keeping school; how afterwards he became a great man and wore a wig; and how any body else may do the same. The like never before published. Very proper to be kept in all families. [By John Trumbull.] The second edition, corrected. Re-printed in the Year M,DCC,LXXIII. vi, (1)8-20 p. 12º. =Reserve= Also printed in _The American magazine_, Dec., 1787, p. 59-61, Jan., 1788, p. 117-119, _Reserve_. ---- The progress of dulness, part second: or An essay on the life and character of Dick Hairbrain, of finical memory; being an astronomical calendar, calculated for the meridian of New-York, north latitude, 41°. west longitude 72°: 30'; but which may serve without material error, for any of the neighboring climates: containing, among other curious and surprizing particulars, Dick's soliloquy on a college-life ... a description of a country-fop ... receipt to make a gentleman, with the fop's creed and exposition, of the Scriptures.... Dick's gradual progress from a clown to a coxcomb ... his travels, gallantry, and opinion of the ladies ... his peripætia and catastrophe, with the moral and application of the whole. [By John Trumbull.] Published for the universal benefit of mankind. Printed in the Year M,DCC,LXXIII. x, (1)12-27(1) p. 12º. =Reserve= ---- The progress of dulness, or The rare adventures of Tom Brainles. By the celebrated author of McFingall [i.e., John Trumbull]. Printed at Exeter, by Henry Ranlet, and sold at his office, also, by most of the booksellers in Boston. MDCCXCIV. 72 p. 16º. =Reserve= Lacks p. 3-4 (the preface), and 27-28. ---- The prophecy of Balaam. Numbers: Chap. XVIII, XIV. An irregular ode. Written anno 1773. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1787. 8º. v. 2, p. 99-101.) =Reserve= Also printed in _American poems, selected and original_, Litchfield, 1793, p. 21-24, _NBH_. ---- _See also_ The =Anarchiard=. =Tucker=, Saint George, 1752-1827. The probationary odes of Jonathan Pindar, Esq. [pseud. of Saint George Tucker.] A cousin of Peter's, and candidate for the post of Poet Laureat to the C. U. S. In two parts. Philadelphia: Printed for Benj. Franklin Bache, M.DCC.XCVI. [Copy-right secured.] viii, (1)10-103 p. 16º. =Reserve= Erroneously attributed to Philip Freneau. Part 1 originally published in his _Gazette_, 1793. Page 47 is a special title reading: The probationary odes of Jonathan Pindar.... Part second. With notes, critical and explanatory by Christopher Clearsight, Esq. ---- Stanzas. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston. 1829. 12º. v. 1, p. 349-350.) =NBH= Also printed in E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, _Cyclopædia of American literature_, New York, 1866, v. 1, p. 236, _NBB_, and E. C. Stedman and E. M. Hutchinson, _A library of American literature_, New York, 1889, v. 3, p. 444-445, _NBB_. =Turell=, Jane, 1708-1735. An invitation into the country, in imitation of Horace. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 1, p. 65-67.) =NBH= Also printed in E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, _Cyclopædia of American literature_, New York, 1866, v. 1, p. 125, _NBB_. This and the following poems appeared originally in _Memoirs of the life and death of Mrs. Jane Turell_, by Ebenezer Turell, Boston, 1735. ---- A paraphrase of the one hundred and thirty-fourth Psalm. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 1, p. 62-63.) =NBH= ---- On the poems of Sir Richard Blackmore. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 1, p. 64-65.) =NBH= ---- On reading the warning by Mrs. Singer. On the incomparable Mr. Waller. (In: E. C. Stedman and E. M. Hutchinson, A library of American literature. New York, 1889. 8º. v. 2, p. 359, 361.) =NBB= ---- To my muse. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 1, p. 63-64.) =NBH= Also printed in E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, _Cyclopædia of American literature_, New York, 1866, v. 1, p. 125, _NBB_; Stedman and Hutchinson, _A library of American literature_, New York, 1889, v. 2, p. 359, _NBB_. =Two= New England poems. [The Mercies of the year, commemorated: a song for little children in New-England. December 13th 1720, and Psalm CVII, last part. Translated by the Reverend Mr. Isaac Watts and by him intitled, A Psalm for New England.] Boston: The Merrymount Press, 1910. 2 l. fº. =Reserve= "One hundred copies reprinted in facsimile from the original in the John Carter Brown Library for the patrons of the Club for Colonial Reprints, Providence, Rhode Island, December 13, 1910." =Tyler=, Royal, 1756?-1825. Address to Della Crusca, humbly attempted in the sublime style of that fashionable author. (In: E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyclopædia of American literature. New York, 1861. 8º. v. 1, p. 417.) =NBB= Some of Tyler's poems appeared originally in _Spirit of the Farmer's museum_, 1801, and _Columbian Centinel_, 1804. ---- Country ode for the fourth of July; My mistresses; Address to Della Crusca; Choice of a wife; On a ruined house in a romantic country; The town eclogue. (In: Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American poetry. Boston, 1829. 12º. v. 2, p. 48-54.) =NBH= ---- Love and liberty. (In: E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyclopædia of American literature. New York, 1866. 8º. v. 1, p. 418.) =NBB= ---- Ode composed for the fourth of July, calculated for the meridian of some country towns in Massachusetts, and Rye in New Hampshire. (In: E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyclopædia of American literature. New York, 1866. 8º. v. 1, p. 417-418.) =NBB= ---- Spondee's mistresses. (In: E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyclopædia of American literature. New York, 1866. 8º. v. 1, p. 417.) =NBB= =Umphraville=, Angus, pseud.? The siege of Baltimore, and the battle of La Tranche; with other original poems. By Angus Umphraville. Aged nineteen. Baltimore: Printed by Schaeffer and Maund. 1817. 6 p.l., 144 p. 16º. =NBHD= The =Untaught= bard. An original work. New-York: Deare and Andrews, printers. 1804. 260 p. 16º. =NBHD= =Upham=, Thomas Cogswell, 1799-1872. American sketches. By Thomas C. Upham. New-York: Published by David Longworth, at the Shakspeare-Gallery, for the author. Feb.--1819. vii, (1)6-120 p. illus. 16º. =NBHD= ---- [Poem written on visiting the scene of Lovewell's fate.] (In: Magazine of history with notes and queries. New York, 1909. 4º. extra no. 5, p. 101-102.) =IAG (Magazine)= =Upon= the death of G. B. [i.e., General Bacon.] (Massachusetts Historical Society. Collections for 1814. Boston, 1838. 8º. series 2, v. 1, p. 59-60.) =IAA= This elegy is in the manuscript copy of an account of Bacon and Ingram's rebellion found among the papers of Capt. Nathaniel Burwell, printed in this volume of the _Collections_. Also printed in Stedman and Hutchinson, _Library of American literature_. New York, 1889, v. 1, p. 457-458, _NBB_. =Verplanck=, Gulian Crommelin, 1786-1870. The state triumvirate, a political tale: and the epistles of Brevet Major Pindar Puff. [By Gulian Crommelin Verplanck.] New-York: Printed for the author, and sold by W. B. Gilley, No. 92 Broadway, and other booksellers. J. Seymour, printer. 1819. 215 p. 16º. =NBHD= =Verses=, composed and sung at Trenton, on the delivery of the funeral eulogium in honor of the memory of General George Washington. [1800?] Broadside. =Reserve= Text in two columns, enclosed in mourning borders. Facsimile. =Verses= on Doctor Mayhew's Book of observations on the charter and conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. _See_ =Goddard=, William. =Verses=, sacred to the memory of Benjamin Franklin, L.L.D. (In: The American museum. Philadelphia, 1790. 8º. v. 7, appendix 1, p. 35-38.) =Reserve= =Versification= of President Washington's excellent Farewell-Address. _See_ =Sewall=, Jonathan Mitchell. The =Village=; a poem. _See_ =Lincoln=, Enoch. =Viola= or The heiress of St. Valverde, an original poem. _See_ =Botsford=, Mrs. Margaret. =Virtues= of society. _See_ =Morton=, Mrs. Sarah Wentworth Apthorp. =W.=, I. H. The Dartmoor massacre. By I. H. W. 1815. (In: Magazine of history with notes and queries, extra no. 15, p. 61-71.) =IAG (Magazine)= Reprint with type-facsimile title-page of original. "Transposed in verse from the New York Commercial Advertiser of the 6th June last and Boston papers of the same month." "Being an authentic and particular account of the tragic massacre at Dartmoor prison in England on the 6th of April, last, 1815, in which sixty-seven American prisoners there fell the victims of the jailor's revenge, for obtaining their due allowance of bread which had been withheld from them by the jailor's orders." The =Wages= of sin; or, Robbery justly rewarded: a poem; occasioned by the untimely death of Richard Wilson, who was executed on Boston Neck, for burglary, on Thursday the 19th of October, 1732. Boston: Printed and Sold at the Heart and Crown in Cornhill. n. d. Broadside. =Reserve= Photostat facsimile. Nineteen stanzas in two columns. =Ward=, Nathaniel, c. 1580-1652. The simple cobler of Aggawam in America. Willing to help 'mend his native country, lamentably tattered, both in the upper-leather and sole, with all the honest stitches he can take. And as willing never to bee paid for his work, by old English wonted pay. It is his trade to patch all year long, gratis. Therefore I pray gentlemen keep your purses. By Theodore de la Guard [i.e., Nathaniel Ward]. London, Printed by John Dever & Robert Ibbitson, for Stephen Bowtell, at the signe of the Bible in Popes Head-Alley, 1647. 2 p.l., 80 p. sq. 12º. =Reserve= ---- ---- [Second edition.] London, Printed by J. D. & R. I. for Stephen Bowtell, at the signe of the Bible in Popes Head-Alley, 1647. 2 p.l., 80 p. sq. 12º. =Reserve= ---- ---- The third edition, with some additions. London, Printed by J. D. & R. I. for Stephen Bowtell, at the signe of the Bible in Popes Head-Alley, 1647. 2 p.l., 80 p. sq. 12º. =Reserve= ---- ---- The fourth edition, with some amendments. London, Printed by J. D. & R. I. for Stephen Bowtell, at the signe of the Bible in Popes Head-Alley, 1647. 2 p.l., 89 p. sq. 12º. =Reserve= =Warren=, John, 1753-1815. An eulogy on the honourable Thomas Russell, Esq. ... who died at Boston, April 8, 1796. Delivered, May 4, 1796.... By John Warren. Boston: Printed by Benjamin Sweetser, corner of Wings-lane. M,DCC,XCVI. 2 p.l., (1)6-31, 3 p. 8º. =Reserve= Last three pages contain: A monody on the death of the honourable Thomas Russell, Esq. sung after the eulogy of Doctor John Warren ... May 4, 1796. =Warren=, Mrs. Mercy Otis, 1728-1814. Poems, dramatic and miscellaneous. By Mrs. M. Warren. Printed at Boston, by I. Thomas and E. T. Andrews. At Faust's Statue, No. 45, Newbury Street. MDCCXC. viii, (1)10-252 p. 12º. =Reserve= =Washington's= birthday: an historical poem. _See_ =Lovett=, John. A =Washingtonian=, pseud. Washington's birthday: an historical poem. _See_ =Lovett=, John. The =Washingtoniana=: containing a sketch of the life and death of the late Gen. George Washington; with a collection of elegant eulogies, orations, poems, &c. sacred to his memory. Also, an appendix, comprising all his most valuable public papers, and his last will and testament. Lancaster: Printed and Sold by William Hamilton, Franklin's Head, in West King-Street. 1802. viii, (1)10-411 p. 8º. =Reserve= Edited by F. Johnston and W. Hamilton. Frontispiece, the portrait of Washington, engraved by David Edwin, after Stuart. p. 321-398 misnumbered 1-78, but total correct. Tribute by Doctor Aiken, p. 25; Elegiac ode, p. 154-155; Extract from elegiac poem on the death of General George Washington, by Charles Caldwell, p. 312-315; Extract from a poem, sacred to the memory of General George Washington, by Richard Alsop, p. 316-318; Tribute, by Mr. Paine, of Massachusetts, p. 319; On the death of Washington from a London newspaper, p. 319-320. The =Watery= war: or A poetical description of the existing controversy between the Pedobaptists and Baptists.... _See_ =Benedict=, David. =Webb=, George, fl. 1730-36. Batchelors' Hall: a poem. (In: E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyclopædia of American literature. New York, 1866. 8º. v. 1, p. 101-102.) =NBB= First published in 1731. =Webster=, Noah, 1758-1843. To the author of the Conquest of Canaan. (In: The American magazine. New York, 1788. 12º. March, 1788, p. 265-266.) =Reserve= ---- To a lady on the approach of spring. (In: The American magazine. New York, 1788. 12º. March, 1788, p. 266.) =Reserve= ---- The triumph of infidelity. A poem. 1788. Addressed to Mon. de Voltaire. (In: The American magazine. New York, 1788. 12º. July, 1788, p. 588-590.) =Reserve= ---- Verses on the New Year, January 1, 1788. (In: The American magazine. New York, 1787. 12º. December, 1787, p. 56.) =Reserve= =Weekes=, Refine. Poems, on religious and historical subjects. By Refine Weekes. New-York: Printed for the author, by James Oram, No. 5 Burling-Slip. 1820. 3 p.l., (1)4-388 p. 12º. =NBHD= ---- ---- Second edition, corrected and enlarged. New-York: Printed for the author, by Mahlon Day, No. 372, Pearl-Street. 1823. 2 p.l., (i)vi, (1)8-418 p., 1 l. of adv. 12º. =NBHD= =Weems=, Mason Locke, 1760-1825. Hymen's recruiting sergeant; or, The new matrimonial tattoo for old bachelors. Philadelphia: the author, 1821. 40 p., 1 pl. 7. ed. 8º. =* C p.v. 979= First published in 1805. ---- ---- Hartford, Ct.: Published by Andrus & Judd, 1833. 52 p. 16º. =SNV p.v. 33, no. 2= ---- ---- Hartford: S. Andrus and Son. 1845. 52 p. 16º. =NBY= ---- ---- Hartford: Silas Andrus and Son, 1851. 52 p., 2 l. 16º. =SNV p.v. 33, no. 3= =Weller=, Catharine. The medley. By Catharine Weller. New-York: Printed by T. & J. Swords, No. 160 Pearl-Street. 1810. 1 p.l., (1)3-192 p. 12º. =NBHD= p. 135-142 lacking. Contains poems and prose selections. =Wharton=, Charles Henry, 1748-1833. An elegy to the memory of Mrs. Mary Wharton, who died at Philadelphia, on the second day of June, 1798. By her husband. [Colophon:] Printed by John Ormrod, 41 Chestnut-Street [1798]. 7 p. 12º. =Reserve= No title-page; title from caption. Signed C. H. W. Reprinted in _The remains of the Rev. Charles Henry Wharton, D.D. With a memoir of his life by George Washington Doane_, Philadelphia, 1834, v. 1, p. lxxix-lxxxi, _ZEP_. Also reprinted in George C. Perine, _The poets and verse writers of Maryland_, Cincinnati, 1898, p. 7-12. _NBB_. ---- A poetical epistle to His excellency George Washington, Esq. commander in chief of the armies of the United States of America, from an inhabitant of the state of Maryland. [By Charles Henry Wharton.] To which is annexed, a short sketch of General Washington's life and character. [By John Bell of Md.] Annapolis printed 1779: London reprinted for C. Dilly, in the Poultry; J. Almon, Piccadilly, W. Tesseyman, York; T. and J. Merrill, Cambridge; R. Cruttwell, Bath; and T. Becket, Bristol. MDCCLXXX. [Price half a crown.] 1 p.l., (i)iv, (1)6-24 p., front. (port.) sq. 8º. =Reserve= Frontispiece, the portrait of George Washington, engraved by W. Sharp, from an original picture. Reprinted, New York, 1865, by J. Munsell, in an edition of seventy-five copies, of which five were printed on Whatman's drawing paper. No. 2 of five copies on Whatman's drawing paper, _Reserve_; No. 4 of five copies on Whatman's drawing paper, _AN_ (_Washington_) _p.v. 11, no. 3_. Also printed in George C. Perine, _The poets and verse-writers of Maryland_. Cincinnati, 1898, p. 7-12, _NBB_. ---- ---- From the original manuscript belonging to David Pulsifer.... With an appendix. Boston: Printed for David Pulsifer, 1881. 2 p.l., (1)4-106 p. 12º. =AN= =Wheatley=, Phillis, 1754-1784. An elegiac poem on the death of that celebrated divine, and eminent servant of Jesus Christ, the reverend and learned Mr. George Whitefield.... By Phillis, a servant girl of seventeen years of age, belonging to Mr. J. Wheatley of Boston.... (In: E. Pemberton, Heaven the residence of the saints. A sermon.... Boston, printed: London, reprinted, 1771. 8º. p. [29]-31.) =Reserve= ---- The following thoughts on his Excellency Major General Lee being betray'd into the hands of the enemy by the treachery of a pretended friend; to the Honourable James Bowdoin Esq. are most respectfully inscrib'd, by his most obedient and devoted humble servant, Phillis Wheatley. Boston, Decr. 30, 1776. (Massachusetts Historical Society. Proceedings, 1863-64. Boston, 1864. 8º. p. 166-167.) =IAA= Printed from original manuscript, found among the Bowdoin Papers. ---- Memoir and poems of Phillis Wheatley, a native African and a slave. Dedicated to the friends of the Africans. Second edition. Boston: Light & Horton, 1 & 3 Cornhill. Samuel Harris, printer. 1835. viii, (1)10-112 p. 24º. =NBHD= ---- Phillis Wheatley (Phillis Peters), poems and letters. First collected edition. Edited by Chas. Fred. Heartman. With an appreciation by Arthur A. Schomburg. New York: C. F. Heartman [1915]. 2 p.l., 7-111 p., front. (port.) 8º. (Heartman's historical series, no. 8.) =Reserve= No. 97 of 350 copies printed on Ben Day paper. Poems, p. 31-108. ---- The poems of Phillis Wheatley as they were originally published in London, 1773. Re-published by R. R. and C. C. Wright. Philadelphia, Pa. 1909. 1 p.l., 3-88 p., front. (port.) 12º. =NBHD= ---- Poems on various subjects, religious and moral. By Phillis Wheatley, negro servant to Mr. John Wheatley, of Boston, in New England. London: Printed for A. Bell, Bookseller, Aldgate; and sold by Messrs. Cox and Berry, King-Street, Boston. MDCCLXXIII. 124 p., 2 l., front. (port.) 12º. =Reserve= and =NBHD= ---- ---- Albany: Re-Printed, from the London edition, by Barber & Southwick, for Thomas Spencer, Book-Seller, Market-Street,--1793--viii, (1)10-89(1) p., 1 l. 24º. =Reserve= ---- ---- Dedicated to the Countess of Huntingdon. Philadelphia: Printed by and for William B. Woodward, No. 17, Chestnut Street. 1801. 1 p.l., 169-244 p. 16º. =Reserve= The Library has a second copy bound in Joseph Lavallée, _The negro equalled by few Europeans_, Philadelphia, 1801. 16º. v. 2, p. [167]-244. Also in _Reserve_. ---- Six broadsides relating to Phillis Wheatley (Phillis Peters) with portrait and facsimile of her handwriting. New York: C. F. Heartman, 1915. 2 p.l., front. (port.), 7 pl. fº. =Reserve= One of twenty-five copies printed. No. 1. An elegiac poem on the death of ... George Whitefield.... By Phillis.... Sold by Ezekiel Russell, in Queen-Street, and John Boyles, in Marlboro-Street. [1770?] No. 2. Phillis's poem on the death of Mr. Whitefield. No. 3. To Mrs. Leonard, on the death of her husband. No. 4. To the Rev. Mr. Pitkin, on the death of his lady. Boston, June 16th, 1772. No. 5. To the Hon'ble Thomas Hubbard, Esq; on the death of Mrs. Thankfull Leonard. Boston, January 2, 1773. No. 6. An address to Miss Phillis Wheatley.... Composed by Jupiter Hammon. Hartford, August 4, 1778. No. 7. Facsimile of manuscript of "To the University of Cambridge wrote in 1767." Nos. 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 are also in C. F. Heartman, _Phillis Wheatley_, New York, 1915. 8º. (Heartman's historical series, no. 7.) ---- Verses presented to his Excellency Gen. Washington, Providence, Oct. 26, 1775. (In: The Pennsylvania magazine: or American monthly museum. April, 1776, p. 193.) =Reserve= =Whitman=, Benjamin, the younger. Hero of the North--or Battle of Lake Erie. By Mr. Benjamin Whitman, jun. of Boston. (In: B. Badger, The Naval temple. Boston, 1816. 2. ed. 8º. p. 313-317.) =VYE= ---- The heroes of the North, or The battles of Lake Erie, and Champlain. Two poems. By Benjamin Whitman, Jr. Esq. Boston: Published by Barber Badger, 1816. 4 p.l., (1)12-24 p., 3 pl. 8º. =Reserve= Two portraits inserted. ---- Victory on Lake Champlain. By Benjamin Whitman, jun. Esq. (In: B. Badger, The Naval temple. Boston, 1816. 2. ed. 8º. p. 318-322.) =VYE= =Whitwell=, Benjamin. Experience, or, Folly as it flies. A poem, delivered at Cambridge, on the anniversary of the [Greek: PhBK] Society. Aug. 28, 1806. By Benjamin Whitwell. Boston: Printed at the Anthology Office, by Munroe & Francis. 1806. 2 p.l., (1)6-23 p. 8º. =NBH p.v. 5, no. 9= =Wigglesworth=, Michael, 1631-1705. The day of doom: or, A description of the great and last judgement. With a short discourse about eternity. [By Michael Wigglesworth.] London, Printed by W. G. for John Sims, at the Kings-Head at Sweetings-Alley-end in Cornhill, next House to the Royal-Exchange, 1673. 2 p.l., 92 p. 24º. =Reserve= First edition was printed in 1662. _Contents_: The day of doom, p. 1-71.--A short discourse on eternity, p. 72-77.--A postscript unto the reader, p. 77-88.--Vanity of vanities, p. 89-91. ---- The day of doom: or, A poetical description of the great and last judgement. With a short discourse about eternity. By Michael Wigglesworth, teacher of the church at Maldon in N. E. The fifth edition, enlarged with Scripture and marginal notes. Boston: Printed by B. Green, and J. Allen, for Benjamin Eliot at his Shop under the West End of the Town-House. 1701. 6 p.l., 80 p. 24º. =Reserve= Bd. with his: Meat out of the eater.... Boston, 1689. 4. ed. 24º. Contents same as previous entry. ---- ---- By Michael Wigglesworth, A.M. teacher of the church in Maldon, New-England. The seventh edition, enlarged. With a recommendatory epistle (in verse) by the Rev. Mr. John Mitchel: also Mr. Wigglesworth's character, by Dr. Cotton Mather. Boston: Printed and sold by Thomas Fleet, at the Heart and Crown in Cornhill, 1751. 104 p. 24º. =Reserve= _Contents_: The day of doom, p. 1-72.--A short discourse on eternity, p. 73-79.--A postscript to the reader, p. 79-92.--Vanity of vanities, p. 92-96.--Death expected, and welcomed, p. 96-97.--A farewell to the world, p. 97-99.--Mr. Wigglesworth's character, by the Reverend Dr. Cotton Mather, p. 99-104.--Epitaph, p. 104. ---- ---- By Michael Wigglesworth, A.M. teacher of the church at Malden, N. E. To which is prefixed a biographical sketch of the character of the author. From the sixth Boston edition, printed in 1715. Newburyport: Published by E. Little and Company, 1811. C. Norris & Co. printers. 90 p. 24º. =Reserve= ---- ---- By Michael Wigglesworth, A.M. teacher of the church at Malden in N. E. From the sixth edition, 1715. Boston: Charles Ewer, 141 Washington Street. 1828. 95(1) p. 24º. =NBHD= ---- The day of doom; or, A poetical description of the great and last judgement: with other poems. By Michael Wigglesworth, A.M. teacher of the church at Malden in New England, 1662. Also a memoir of the author, autobiography, and a sketch of his funeral sermon by Rev. Cotton Mather. From the sixth edition, 1715. New York: American News Company. 1867. 118 p., 1 l. 12º. =NBHD= ---- Death expected and welcome. (In: Cotton Mather, A faithful man, described and rewarded. Boston, 1705. 8º. p. 45.) =Reserve= ---- A farewell to the world. (In: Cotton Mather, A faithful man, described and rewarded. Boston, 1705. 8º. p. 46-48.) =Reserve= ---- Meat out of the eater or Meditations concerning the necessity, end, and usefulness of afflictions unto Gods children. All tending to prepare them for, and comfort them under the cross. By Michael Wigglesworth. The fourth edition. Boston: Printed by R. P. for John Usher. 1689. 208 p. 24º. =Reserve= Page 51 is a special title reading: Riddles unriddled, or Christian paradoxes broke open.... Pages 7-10 mutilated; p. 23-24, 35-36, 55-56 lacking. Meat out of the eater, p. 3-50; Riddles unriddled, or Christian paradoxes, p. 52-208. The first edition was probably published in 1669 or early in 1670. ---- ---- Corrected and amended by the author in the year 1703. The fifth edition. Boston, Printed by J. Allen, for N. Boone, at the sign of the Bible in Cornhill. 1717. 143 p. 24º. =Reserve= ---- Upon the much lamented death of that precious servant of Christ, Mr. Benjamin Buncker, pastor of the church at Maldon, who deceased on the 3d of ye 12th moneth 1669. (New-England historical and genealogical register.... Boston, 1872. 8º. v. 26, p. 11-12.) =* R-Room 328= "The original in the author's handwriting, is among the Ewer Manuscripts, 1, 8-9 of the New England Historic Genealogical Society." =William= and Ellen: a poem. _See_ =Smith=, Eaglesfield. =Williams=, John, 1761-1818. A bachelor's prayer. By Anthony Pasquin [pseud.]. (In: The Columbian phenix and Boston review. Boston, 1800. 8º. v. 1 for 1800, p. 179-180.) =Reserve= ---- A dirge, or sepulchral service, commemorating the sublime virtues and distinguished talents of General George Washington. Composed at the request of the Mechanics Association of Boston. Words by Anthony Pasquin [pseud.]. 4 p. (In: [Oliver Holden], Sacred dirges, commemorative of the death of Washington. Boston [1800]. ob. 8º.) =Reserve= Reprinted in _The Columbian phenix and Boston review_, Boston, 1800, v. 1 for 1800, p. 178-179, _Reserve_. ---- The Hamiltoniad. By John Williams, (Anthony Pasquin.) New York: Printed for the Hamilton Club, 1865. 5 p.l., 122 p., 1 port. 8º. (Hamilton Club series, no. 3.) =AN (Hamilton)= One of 40 octavo copies printed. Includes type-facsimile title-page of original which was published in Boston, 1804. The Library has another copy which is one of 20 quarto copies printed, * _AN_. ---- An ode to the Union, as recited by the American Roscius, [Mr. Hopkinson] at various theatres on the continent. By Anthony Pasquin [pseud.]. (In: The Columbian phenix and Boston review. Boston, 1800. 8º. v. 1 for 1800, p. 115-120.) =Reserve= =Williams=, Roger, 1607-1683. A key into the language of America: or, An help to the language of the natives in that part of America, called New-England. Together, with briefe observations of the customes, manners and worships, &c of the aforesaid natives, in peace and warre, in life and death. On all which are added spirituall observations, general and particular by the authour, of chiefe and speciall use (upon all occasions) to all the English inhabiting those parts; yet pleasant and profitable to the view of all men: By Roger Williams of Providence in New-England. London, Printed by Gregory Dexter, 1643. 8 p.l., 197(1) [correctly 207(1)] p. 8º. =Reserve= p. 96 and 97 wrongly numbered 92 and 93; p. 115-207 wrongly numbered 105-197. Poems on p. 10, 17, 21, 30-31, 48, 53, 61-62, 64, 67-68, 78, 81, 84-85, 87-88, 95-96, 104, 108, 109, 113, 114, 131-132, 137, 143, 150, 159, 162, 168-169, 173-174, 182-183, 185, 192, 196. Reprinted in _Collections_ of the Rhode Island Historical Society, Providence, 1827, v. 1, _IAA_. =Wilson=, Alexander, 1766-1813. The foresters: a poem, descriptive of a pedestrian journey to the Falls of Niagara, in the autumn of 1804. By Alexander Wilson, author of American ornithology. West Chester, Pa. Printed by Joseph Painter.--1838.--2 p.l., (1)6-104 p. 24º. =NBHD= =Wilson=, John, 1588-1667. A copy of verses made by that reverend man of God Mr. John Wilson, pastor to the First Church in Boston; on the sudden death of Mr. Joseph Brisco, who was translated from earth to Heaven Jan. 1. 1657. [Cambridge? Samuel Green? 1657?] Broadside. (In: S. A. Green, Ten fac-simile reproductions relating to New England. Boston, 1902. fº.) =Reserve= Enclosed in mourning borders. Photo-facsimile, exact size. ---- [Extract from] A poem upon the death of the first and only child of his daughter Mrs. Danforth. (In: Cotton Mather, Johannes in Eremo. Boston, 1695. 24º. p. 30.) =Reserve= ---- In pientissimum, reverendissimumque virum, Johannem Harvardum, è suggesto sacro Caroloensi ad coelos evectum, ad alumnos Cantabrienses literatos, poëma. (In: Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana. London, 1702. 4º. book iv, p. 139.) =Reserve= Also printed in later editions of the _Magnalia_ as follows: Hartford, 1820, v. 2, p. 28, and Hartford, 1855, v. 2, p. 33. ---- A song of deliverance for the lasting remembrance of Gods wonderful works never to be forgotten. Containing in it the wonderful defeat of the Spanish-Armado, Anno, 1588. the woful plague, Anno, 1603. soon upon the entrance of King James of famous memory, unto the Crown of England. With the discovery of the Powder Plot, Anno, 1605. and down fall of Black Fryers, when an hellish crew of Papists met to hear Drury a Popish priest, an 1623. Also the grievous plague, Anno 1625. with poems both Latin and English, and the verses of that learned Theodore Beza. By that reverend, and eminent man of God, Mr. John Wilson, formerly Christs faithful shepherd in Sudbury, in Suffolk in great Brittain, where these heavenly poems and spiritual songs were compiled, and at London printed, Anno, 1626. since pastor to the First church of Christ in Boston in New-England. For the sake of several who have much desired to see and read this work it is reprinted.... Boston; Printed in the year, 1680. 4 p.l. 1-36 p. 8º. =Reserve= All pages after p. 36 lacking. =Winchester=, Elhanan, 1751-1797. The process and empire of Christ; from his birth to the end of the mediatorial kingdom; a poem, in twelve books. By Elhanan Winchester. Brattleboro. Printed by William Fessenden. 1805. iv, (1)6-352 p. 16º. =NBHD= =Winslow=, Josias. [Elegy] On the said William Bradford. (In: N. Morton, New-Englands memoriall. Cambridge, 1669. 12º. p. 146-147.) =Reserve= =Wolcott=, Roger, 1679-1767. A brief account of the agency of the honourable John Winthrop, Esq. in the Court of King Charles the Second, Anno Dom. 1662; when he obtained a charter for the colony of Connecticut. Written by Roger Wolcott, Esq. his successor in the government of Connecticut, from 1751-1754. (Massachusetts Historical Society. Collections. Boston, 1795. 8º. series 1, v. 1, p. 262-298.) =IAA= Reprinted from his _Poetical meditations, being the improvement of some vacant hours_, New-London, 1725, p. 19-78, _Reserve_. ---- The poems of Roger Wolcott, Esq., 1725. Boston: The Club of Odd Volumes, 1898. 14 p., 1 l., ii, 78 p., 1 l. sq. 8º. (The Club of Odd Volumes. Early American poetry. [Reprints, v.] 5.) =Reserve= No. 81 of one hundred copies on hand-made paper. This is a modern type reprint, page for page, with facsimile title-page, of the next entry. ---- Poetical meditations, being the improvement of some vacant hours. By Roger Wolcott, Esq; with a preface by the Reverend Mr. Bulkley of Colchester. New-London: Printed and sold by T. Green, 1725. 2 p.l., lvi, ii, 78 p., 2 l. 12º. =Reserve= For a modern reprint see previous entry. =Wood=, William. New Englands prospect. A true, lively, and experimentall description of that part of America, commonly called New England: discovering the state of that countrie both as it stands to our new-come English planters; and to the old native inhabitants. Laying downe that which may both enrich the knowledge of the mind-travelling reader, or benefit the future voyager. By William Wood. Printed at London by Tho. Cotes, for John Bellamie, and are to be sold at his shop, at the three Golden Lyons in Cornehill, neere the Royall Exchange. 1635. 4 p.l., 83(1) p., 2 l., 1 map. 4º. =Reserve= Poems on p. 14, 16, 23, 28. =Woodbridge=, Benjamin, 1622-1684. Upon the tomb of the most reverend Mr. John Cotton, late teacher of the church of Boston in New-England. (In: N. Morton, New-Englands memoriall. Cambridge, 1669. 12º. p. 137-139.) =Reserve= Reprinted in Cotton Mather, _Magnalia Christi Americana_, London, 1702, book 3, p. 30-31, _Reserve_, Hartford, 1820, v. 1, p. 258-259, and Hartford, 1855, v. 1, p. 284. Also printed in E. C. Stedman and E. M. Hutchinson, _A library of American literature_, New York, 1889, v. 1, p. 359-361, _NBB_. =Woodbridge=, Timothy. To the Reverend Cotton Mather on his History of New England. (In: Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana. London, 1702. 4º.) =Reserve= Also printed in later editions as follows: Hartford, 1820, v. 1, p. 18, and Hartford, 1855, v. 1, p. 21. =Woodworth=, Samuel, 1785-1842. The poems, odes, songs, and other metrical effusions, of Samuel Woodworth, author of "The Champions of freedom," &c. New-York: Published by Abraham Asten and Mathias Lopez. 1818. xii, (1)14-288 p., front. (port.) 12º. =NBHD= Several of Woodworth's poems first appeared in _The complete coiffeur_, by J. B. M. D. Lafoy, New York, 1817. =Wright=, Judah. Poems on various subjects. By Judah Wright. Boston: Printed by Samuel Avery, No. 91 Newbury Street. 1812. 48 p. 12º. =NBH p.v. 24, no. 8= Leaf of errata mounted on verso of title-page. =Wright=, N. Hill. Monody, on the death of Brigadier General Zebulon Montgomery Pike: and other poems. By N. Hill Wright. Middlebury, (Vt.) Printed by Slade & Ferguson. 1814. 79 p. 8º. =NBHD= _Contents_: Monody, p. 9-24.--Lines on the battle of the Enterprise and Boxer, p. 25-29.--The sailor's dying hour, p. 30-32.--Ode on the capture of the British frigate Java, by the United States' frigate Constitution, December 29, 1812, p. 33-36.--Henry and Julia, a tale of real life, p. 37-42.--Hymn for the anniversary of a charitable institution, p. 43-44.--The slanderer's tomb, p. 45-47.--The power of sympathy, p. 48-49.--The faded rose, p. 50-52.--The hour of rest, p. 53-55.--Appeal to the affluent, p. 56-58.--Lines addressed to a lady, p. 59-60.--To misfortune, p. 61-63.--Lines on seeing a beautiful infant expire in the arms of her mother, p. 64-65.--Tribute to the memory of Mrs. Juliet R*****, p. 66-67.--Pity's tear, p. 68-70.--Retrospection, p. 71-73.--Ode, written for the Fourth of July, 1814, p. 74-76.--Freedom's natal day, an ode, written for the Fourth of July, 1814, p. 77-79. =Young=, Edward R. One year in Savannah; a poem in five parts. [By Edward R. Young.] Providence: Printed by Brown & Danforth. 1820. 16 p. 8º. =NBH p.v. 2, no. 3= A =Young= American. _See_ The =Battle= of the Thames. A =Young= gentleman of New York, pseud. Miscellaneous works, prose and poetical. _See_ =Linn=, John Blair. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes Punctuation has been standardized. Italic text has been denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal signs=. Characters in small caps have been replaced by all caps. Non-printable superscripts are represented by a caret followed by the character, i.e. x^n. If the superscript is more than one character, they will be placed in {}, i.e. x^{23}. The non-printable characters have been replaced as shown below: 'oe' ligature --> oe 'ue' ligature --> ue Names, words, and copyright dates are presented in many styles and spellings, apparently as copied from the individual volumes that were printed at different times and places. These variations have been left unchanged except noted below: Alsop - George Replaced 'scituation' with 'situation' Copyright - inconsistent use of spaces following punctuation in Roman numerals has been standardized without spaces for this ebook. Fessenden - Thomas (---- Original poems.) Replaced 'Authur' with 'Author' 
45294	----	provided by the Internet Archive CHRISTMAS CAROLS AND MIDSUMMER SONGS By American Poets Illustrated by American Artists Boston: D.Lothrop & Company, 1881 [Illustration: 0001] [Illustration: 0002] [Illustration: 0003] CHRISTMAS CAROLS. _Wake from your sleep, sweet Christians, now, and listen. A little song We have, so sweet it like a star doth glisten, And dance along. Now wake and hark: all brightly it is glowing With yule flames merry, And o'er it many a holly sprig is growing; And scarlet berry. A bough of evergreen, with wax-lights gleaming, It bravely graces; And o'er its lines the star that's eastward beaming Leaves golden traces. Also, our little song; it sweetly praiseth, Like birds in flocks When morning from her bed of roses raiseth Her golden locks. But this it is that makes most sweet our story, When all is said: It holds a little Child with rays of glory Around His head._ --M. E. W. CHRISTMAS CAROLS AND MIDSUMMER SONGS. [Illustration: 0009] |Out of the Northland bleak and bare, O wind with a royal roar, Fly, fly, Through the broad arched sky, Flutter the snow, and rattle and cry At every silent door-- Loud, loud, till the children hear, And meet the day with a ringing cheer: "Hail to the Christmas-tide!" |INTO the silent waiting East T here cometh a shining light-- Far, far, Through a dull gray bar Closing over a dying star That watched away the night-- Rise, rise, shine and glow, Over a wide white world of snow, Sun of the Christmas-tide! Out of the four great gates of day A tremulous music swells; Hear, hear, Now sweet and clear, Over and under and far and near, A thousand happy bells: Joy, joy, and jubilee! Good-will to men from sea to sea, This merry Christmas-tide! Lo! in the homes of every land The children reign to-day; They alone, With our hearts their throne, And never a sceptre but their own Small hands to rule and sway! Peace, peace--the Christ-child's love-- Flies over the world, a white, white dove, This happy Christmas-tide! [Illustration: 0010] THE SILENT CHILDREN. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. |THE light was low in the school-room; The day before Christmas day Had ended. It was darkening in the garden Where the Silent Children play. Throughout that House of Pity, The soundless lessons said, The noiseless sport suspended, The voiceless tasks all read, The little deaf-mute children, As still as still could be, Gathered about the master, Sensitive, swift to see, With their fine attentive fingers And their wonderful, watchful eyes-- What dumb joy he would bring them For the Christmas eve's surprise! The lights blazed out in the school-room The play-ground went dark as death; The master moved in a halo; The children held their breath: "I show you now a wonder-- The audiphone," he said. He spoke in their silent language, Like the language of the dead. And answering spake the children, As the dead might answer too: "But what for us, O master? This may be good for you; "But how is our Christmas coming Out of a wise machine? For not like other children's Have our happy hours been; "And not like other children's Can they now or ever be!" But the master smiled through the halo: "Just trust a mystery, Then to the waiting marvel The listening children leant: Like listeners, the shadows Across the school-room bent, O my children, for a little, As those who suffer must! Great 'tis to bear denial, But grand it is to trust." While Science, from her silence Of twice three thousand years, Gave her late salutation To sealed human ears. [Illustration: 0012] Quick signalled then the master: Sweet sang the hidden choir-- Their voices, wild and piercing, Broke like a long desire That to content has strengthened. Glad the clear strains outrang: "_Nearer to Thee, oh, nearer!_" The pitying singers sang, Happy that Christmas evening: Wise was the master's choice, Who gave the deaf-mute children The blessed human voice. Wise was that other Master, Tender His purpose dim, Who gave His Son on Christmas, To draw us "nearer Him." "_Nearer to Thee, oh, nearer,_ _Nearer, my God' to Thee! _" Awestruck, the silent children Hear the great harmony. We are all but silent children, Denied and deaf and dumb Before His unknown science-- Lord, if Thou wilt, we come! [Illustration: 0013] [Illustration: 0014] A DAY IN WINTER. By Mrs. L. C. Whiton. |THROUGH the crimson fires of morning Streaming upward in the East, Leaps the sun, with sudden dawning, Like a captive king released; And December skies reflected In the azure hue below Seem like summer recollected In the dreaming of the snow.-- It is winter, little children, let the summer, singing, go! There are crisp winds gaily blowing From the North and from the West; 'Bove the river strongly flowing Lies the river's frozen breast: O'er its shining silence crashing Skim the skaters to and fro; And the noonday splendors flashing In the rainbow colors show.-- It is winter, little children, let the summer, singing, go! When the gorgeous day is dying, There is swept a cloud of rose O'er the hill-tops softly lying In the flush of sweet repose; And the nests, all white with snowing, In the twilight breezes blow; And the untired moon is showing Her bare heart to the snow.-- It is winter, little children, let the summer, singing, go! [Illustration: 0016] "TWELVE O'CLOCK, AND ALL'S WELL!" ( A Christmas Rhyme of Might-Have-Been.) By M. S. E. P. |I KNOW of an Owl, A story-book Owl, And he dwells in a Cloudland tree, So way-high-up you never see A glimpse of the great white fowl. And this ancient fowl, This story-book Owl, Sometimes to himself he speaks-- Once in a thousand years or so-- In a voice that crackles and creaks And never is heard by the children below: "Tu-whit! tu-whoo! I sleep by day, Of course I do-- It's the sensible way." For when little children lie fast asleep, And darkness enshrouds the world so deep, And weary eyes close to gaze only in dreams, This story-book bird With the big round eyes, Whom nothing escapes, So knowing and wise, Watches and peers, with never a wink, Into crannies and nooks where one might think No danger would come, so peaceful it seems. And prying about, this story-book bird In the snowy thick Of a Christmas eve-- If you will believe-- Just in the nick Found the strangest thing that ever you heard: Santa Klaus asleep, All down in a heap, On the floor of his sleigh Ready packed for the way! And think of the stockings swaying At 'leven o' the night, With the silent firelight All over them fitfully playing-- A dangling host From the chimney nails As warm as toast-- But empty, pitiful, They promise a million wails From just one city-full! "Tu-whit! to-whoo! Here's a to-do!" Said the sleepless bird, The wise old owl, The watchful fowl. He flew and he whirred, Soft Cloudland exploring, Led up like an arrow By the wildest of snoring, Till he stopped, Then dropped On the edge of a cloud-- Oh, the snoring was loud!-- Then stalked to that sleigh. Ah, what a fine dose!-- He flashed out one claw, and Tweaked Santa Klaus' nose. Santa woke with a jump, Sat up in his sleigh, Rubbed his nose-- And I don't suppose Understands to this day-- And gazing around he took in the plight, He seized his reins in the funniest fright, And down he came in the snowy midnight All rosy and bright-- The great, merry elf, Just like himself, Bluster and noise, nonsense and fun, With gifts for the children, everyone; While, soft and far, every bell Chimed "Twelve o' the clock and all's well!" And the slumbering world might have heard The great white wide-winged story-book bird A-calling "Merry Christmas!" forth in glee As he flew up to his Cloudland tree. And the Owl never told--I alone knew-- So don't you tell, whatever you do. How near the world came to a disaster most shocking, Waking Christmas morning without a filled stocking! HOLLY TREE By Paul H. Hayne. _("Hie on the holly tree!"--Old Ballad.)_ |THE firelight danced and wavered In elvish, twinkling glee On the leaves and crimson berries Of the great green Christmas-Tree; And the children who gathered round it Beheld, with marvelling eyes, Pendant from trunk and branches How many a precious prize, From the shimmer of gold and silver Through a purse's cunning net, To the coils of a rippling necklace That quivered with beads of jet! But chiefly they gazed in wonder Where flickered strangely through The topmost leaves of the holly, The sheen of a silken shoe! And the eldest spake to her father: "I have seen--yes, year by year, On the crown of our Christmas hollies, That small shoe glittering clear; "But you never have told who owned it, Nor why, so loftily set, It shines though the fadeless verdure-- You never have told us yet!" ' Twas then that the museful father In slow sad accents said, While the firelight hovered eerily About his downcast head: "My children.... you had a sister; (It was long, long, long ago,) She came like an Eden rosebud 'Mid the dreariest winter snow, "And for four sweet seasons blossomed To cheer our hearts and hearth, When the song of the Bethlehem angels Lured her away from earth-- "A little before she left us, We had deftly raised to view, On the topmost branch of the holly, Yon glimmering, tiny shoe; "For again 'twas the time of Christmas, As she lay with laboring breath; But.... our minds were blinded strangely, And we did not dream of death. "We knew that no toy would please her Like a shoe, so fair and neat, To fold, with its soft caressing, Her delicate, sylph-like feet! "Truly, a smile like a sunbeam Brightened her eyes of blue, And once.. twice.. thrice.. she tested The charm of her fairy shoe! "Ah! then the bright smile flickered, Faded, and drooped away, As faintly, in tones that faltered, I heard our darling say: "1 My shoe! papa, please hang it Once more on the holly bough, Just where I am sure to see it, When I wake.... an hour from now! "But alas! she never wakened! Close-shut were the eyes of blue Whose last faint gleam had fondled The curves of that dainty shoe! "Ah, children, you understand me-- _Your_ eyes are brimmed with dew, As they watch on the Christmas holly The sheen of a silken shoe!" A TALE OF A COMET. By J. T. Trowbridge. |WE had seen the streaming meteors' light, With their trails of fire, the autumn night, And talked of falling sky-rocks hurled From some long-since exploded world; Of comets frisking among the stars. With tails like fiery trains of cars, And asked, "Should the reckless engineer Of some rakish comet steer Crashing into our atmosphere, How would the planet's shell resist him?" Then we conversed of the solar system, And lunar men; And Doctor Ben Brought out his globe, at half-past ten, And lectured, giving conclusive reasons For tides, eclipses, climes and seasons; Till, weary at last, I went to bed, With a jumble of wonderful things in my head-- Moons and comets and meteorites, Globes and circles and polar nights; And there I lay thinking, And drowsily winking At something--a ray--thro' my bed-curtains blinking; [Illustration: 0020] Too bright for a star, and growing still brighter, Making the moon-lighted chamber yet lighter, Which very much astonished the writer! I gazed from the casement, And wondered, with ever-increasing amazement, What the look of alarm on the Moon's frowning face meant. [Illustration: 0021] His nose peering out from a very close cap, His fingers in mittens, his chin in a wrap, Like a tourist prepared for a very cold snap! On, on he sped, through the regions of space, With very short legs at a very long pace, His well-filled knapsack lashed to his back, Extra shoes and canteen strapped under his pack, His coat-tails flying away on his track-- Entangled far off in the Pleiades, On the horns of the Bull and Orion's knees. For there was the Moon, and, strange to say, There too was the Earth, just over the way, Like the Doctor's globe, or a huge balloon, Forty times larger, perhaps, than the Moon, All covered with circles, and looming in space: There were groups upon it, and every face Was turned one way; and very long-jointed Telescopes at the sky were pointed;-- And there, with a terrible rushing and humming And hissing of breath, was a Comet a-coming! So long and so queer, and as it came nearer It grew every moment longer and queerer! Until I made out such a comical chap, In a red-flannel coat with a very long flap, On, on he came, With nose like a flame, So red I was sure the fellow'd been drinking (His canteen was empty, I knew by the clinking) [Illustration: 0721] "And what can a sober Comet be thinking," I cried "not to see there, plain as the day, The Earth, like a target, hung right in his way?" The groups were beginning to hurry about, And hustle and bustle and signal and shout, And the Moon looked scared, while I shrieked out, [Illustration: 0022] "Dear sir, I beg pardon, I don't know your name-- I pray you'll consider, and if it's the same To you, here's a planet! I don't think you knew it; But, sir, it will be A great favor to me And a very large circle of friends, as you see, If you will drive round it instead of right thro' it!" He put up his head with a stupefied stare, And says he, "I declare! No, I wasn't aware! And I'm going at such a deuce of a rate-- I'd stop if I could, but I fear it's too late! Bless my stars! here I am!" He had just time to stoop, When through it, head-foremost, he went at a swoop, As a circus rider dives through a hoop! With a crash, And a smash, And a roar as of thunder, It quivered, And shivered, And flew asunder: The Moon, looking down, shed tragical tears; While, winking hard and holding his ears, The Comet came out on the other side, Wheeled round, swore loud, and ruefully eyed The ruin; sneezed two or three times; then drew His long tail after him down the blue. Heavens and earth! what have I done! This does beat everything under the sun! I don't care the wink of a star," said he, "For all the damage done to me--" [Illustration: 0721] (Feeling his nose, and then with a flirt Carefully brushing away the dirt From his coat and its stained and draggled skirt)-- "But look at this dear little, queer little planet! I've done the business for her, and I van, it Is quite too bad! The fairest of creatures-- [Illustration: 0023] How well I remember her pleasant features, The smile on her face and the light in her eye, When I've touched my hat to her, hurrying by, Many a time, on my way through the sky! I'd mend the poor thing if I could--and I'll try!" How he got it, or where, I cannot declare; But thereupon he drew up a chair. Hung his long coat-tail over the back, Sat down by the pieces and opened his pack, Brought forth from its depths a stout needle and thread, And there he sat squinting and scratching his head, As if rather doubtfully questioning whether 'Twas possible ever to patch her together! Meanwhile--but how can I hope to tell Half that to my friends befell On the shattered and scattered shell? How depict the huge surprise Of some, at the very astonishing rise Of their real estate, shot off in the skies? How describe the flying blocks, The fall of steeples and railroad stocks, The breaking of banks, and the stopping of clocks; And all the various knocks and shocks;-- Frantic reporters rushing about, And correspondents setting out In a big balloon, intending from it To interview our friend, the Comet! While the wide-awake daily press unfurled Its rival bulletins: "End of the World!! Frightful collision! America hit!!! Full particulars! Canada hurled [Illustration: 0723] Over New England! The Union split!!! In INTERRUPTION OF TRAVEL AND TRADE! The Comet coming to our aid!" For now the Comet--odd to see! Although it didn't seem odd to me-- With thimble and glue-pot, sewing and gluing The shattered globe, was cheerfully doing All he could to restore the ruin; Patiently replacing all The scattered fragments, great and small; Stitching here and sticking there, With a hopeful smile and a satisfied air, Putting the planet into repair! When all was done, with a dexterous twirl Of his fingers, he set it once more a-whirl, While the Moon looked pleased as a smiling girl. Off he sped; and the planet spun Away on its axis round the sun; When, watching with curious eyes, I found He hadn't made it precisely round! The zones, moreover, were strangely mixed: Constantinople was squeezed betwixt St. Petersburg and Baltimore; South Carolina and Labrador To Massachusetts were snugly tied; New York and Paris were side by side; And, oddest of all earthly fates, England was in the United States! Greenland (he couldn't have made a greater Mistake) was on the new equator! While in each crack of the crust some bit Of broken China was made to fit. Whereupon I cried, with a wild halloo, "Hold on! come back! this never will do! Just see what a botch you've made!" Before He had time to turn, with a clang and a roar, And a glare of its one great Cyclops eye, The Lightning Express went whizzing by [Illustration: 0024] With a rushing of steam, And a howl and a scream, That waked me from my curious dream; Which the Doctor avers (and he makes it plain) Must all have passed through my busy brain With the passing of the midnight train! OH, HAPPY NIGHT! By M. E. B. O happy night! that brings the morn To dawn above the Lord new born, And bids the angels sing again Their message to the sons of men-- We hail thee! we hail thee! O happy manger! that hath known This precious burden as thine own, Beyond all gifts the world doth hold, Of pomp and pow'r and gems and gold We hail thee! we hail thee! O happy star! whose radiance sweet Did lead the wise men's eager feet To seek the way, unknown, untried, That led them to the manger's side-- We hail thee! we hail thee! O happy day! that gave to men The Babe Divine of Bethlehem, The King of Kings, the Undefiled, In semblance of a little child-- We hail thee! we hail thee! O happy Babe! whose wondrous eyes Still hold the light of Paradise, Look down in blessing from above While Prince of Peace, and Lord of Love, We hail thee! we hail thee! WILLIE WEE. By Mrs. A. M. Diaz. |TWO lads were conversing as happy as kings, Of the coming of Christmas and all that it brings, Of the Christmas-tree and its many delights, Of the city shop-windows and other fine sights, When out spake wee Will, sometimes called "Willie wee," Though often "sweet William," or "little Willee," --Four years and a half or three-quarters was he-- "Say! What kind of a tree is a Chrissermus-tree?" And the while they discoursed, as his wonder grew', With questions like these he followed them through: "Does it have big branches that spread all around? Do its roots stay deep down in the dark ground? Does it grow, grow, grow, way up very high? If you climb to the top will your head bump the sky? Do any plums grow on it, or apples, or cherries? Or any good nuts, or pretty red berries? Does it bloom out all over with flowers white as snow, As that tree does down there in our garden below? Do robins and king-birds build nests in that tree? And other birdies too?" asked little Willee. [Illustration: 0027] "Yes," answered Ned, wise, school-boy Ned: "A Christmas-tree, young curly-head, Has branches, sure, but has no roots, And on its branches grow no fruits; Yet bright red apples there you'll see, And oranges of high degree-- Apples and oranges on one tree!" "That sounds very strange," quoth little Willee. "No flowers bloom there, snowy white, Yet with these fruits--a curious sight-- Are oft seen flowers both red and white! Should you climb to the top without a fall, Your head might bump against the wall, But not against the sky, you see, For indoors-stands the Christmas-tree!" "You tell very big stories," quoth little Willee. "No birdie there doth build its nest, No king-bird, blue-bird, robin redbreast, Yet eggs thereon are often seen. Of beautiful colors, pink, and green, And purple, and lavender, fit for a queen. Even eggs with pictures on them are found. And with golden bands which circle around. But from all these eggs so fair to see Are hatched no birds in that Christmas-tree; Instead, are hatched candy and gumdrops!" said he. "Are you telling the truth?" asked little Willee. "I've not told half, I do declare, Of all those wondrous branches bear. Bear? They bear dolls and whips and drums, Tops, whistles, taffy, sugar-plums, And candy sheep, and candy cats, And candy birds, and candy rats, And India-rubber girls and boys, Bear trumpets and all kinds of toys, Bear books, and jumping-jacks, and mittens, And little cotton-flannel kittens; And over the whole of this Christmas-tree Candles are burning right merrily! What think you of this? my sweet Willie-wee?" "I think you are fooling!" said little Willee. Next morning young Willie, with serious air, Put earth in a flower-pot, and buried up there A seed of an apple with very great care. "Pray, what are you doing, you rogue Willie-wee?" "I am planting a seed for a Chrissermas tree! Is not that good to do?" asked little Willee. --There came from that seed a green little shoot Which put out its leaves and firmly took root, And so finely did thrive that at last it was found Too large for the house and was set in the ground, Where it grew up, a tree, one scarcely knew how. Look down by the wall; it is standing there now. It blossoms in springtime, and many a nest Has been built there by king-bird and robin redbreast; And other birdies too oft come to the tree And sing there and swing there, oh, so merrily; They make it all summer our joy and delight; And in fall of the year 'tis a beautiful sight When the clustering wealth of its apples is seen-- Its ruby red apples all set in their green! --And Willie? Yes, he grew up, too, young Willie- wee, And went as a sailor-boy over the sea. He sailed in a ship to some far distant shore; A storm came--and--and--we saw him no more. It was long, long ago that deep sorrow we bore! The lads who were talking, as happy as kings, Of the coming of Christmas and all that it brings, Are fathers now, so stately and tall. Their children play by the garden wall, And swing on the boughs of the apple tree, Or climb to the top, the world to see; (Some have gone from the home the world to see!) And when autumn comes, and leaves turn brown, And the ripened fruits are shaken down, And here and there, on the orchard ground, The red and the golden are heaped around-- 'Tis the children who gather that tree by the wall, And the apples from off its boughs that fall, With kindly care are stored away, Sure to appear on Christmas Day In platter or basket for all to admire, Or hung on strings before the fire, There to swing and sputter and roast, While many an one of the merry host Gives a tender thought to that first Willie-wee Who went as a sailor-boy over the sea. The youngest of all; a new Willie-wee, --A curly-haired rogue, and our darling is he!-- Now claims for his own uncle Will's _Christmas-tree_. "Because," says the child, "_he_ was named for _me!_" ON CHRIST-DAY NIGHT. By Nora Perry. |From room to room, from stair to stair; All silken-clad; while standing there Shut from the summer warmth and cheer, The silken perfumed atmosphere Of wealth and ease, a little maid With beating heart, yet unafraid, Enchanted, watched the fairy scene Between the curtains' parted screen. The fierce north wind came sweeping pa: t And shook her with its wintry blast; The frosty pavement of the street Chilled to the bone her ill-clad feet; Yet moment after moment fled And there she stood, with lifted head, Her eager eyes, as in a trance, Fixed on the changes of the dance, DULCET SOUNDS. [Illustration: 9029] |STATELY mansion, bright and gay With festal light, made darkness day Far up and down the dusky street That Christmas night, while hurry- ing feet Sped swiftly by, nor scarce de- layed For all the dulcet sounds that strayed In merry measures from within, Where harp and flute and violin, In soft accordance, wild and sweet, Made music for the dancers' feet. All silken-clad those feet that kept That time and tune, or lightly stept Her eager ears still drinking in The strains of flute and violin; And still, as sped the moments past, Colder and colder swept the blast. [Illustration: 0030] But little heed had she, or care: Her glance upon one vision fair, One vision, one, beyond the rest-- A girl with roses on her breast, And with a look upon her face, The sweet girl-face of Heaven's own grace, As through the dance she smiling led Her youthful guests, with airy tread. "Ah, would she smile on me like this And would she give me kiss for kiss If I could stand there at her side?" The wistful watcher softly cried. Even as she spoke she closer crept, Upon the broad low terrace stept, And nearer leaned.--Just then, just there, A street light sent a sudden glare Across her face.--One startled glance, And from the changes of the dance. With beating heart and eyes dilate. The girlish mistress of the fête Sprang swiftly forth.--A moment more And through the window's opened door Another guest was ushered in. Her lip was pale, her cheek was thin, No costly robe of silk and lace Apparelled her, and 011 her face And in her dark bewildered eyes A shock of fear and shamed surprise Did wildly, desperately gleam, While here and there, as in a dream, She vaguely heard, yet did not hear, The sound of voices far and near. She tried to speak: some word she said Of all her troubled doubt and dread, Some childish word--"what would they do?" Then all at once a voice rang through Her troubled doubt, her troubled fear, "What will they do, why, this--and this!" And on her cold lips dropped a kiss, And found her frozen figure crept A tender clasp.--She laughed and wept And laughed again, for this and this, This tender clasp, this tender kiss, Wras more than all her dream come true: Was earth with Heaven's light shining through; Was Christ's own promise kept aright-- His word fulfilled on Christ-day night! [Illustration: 0031] GRACIE'S FANCIES. By Brenda Aubert. |A WHIRR of wings, and a rush of feet! And quick through the driving snow and Grace, at the window, with wondering eyes Watches their coming in shy surprise: [Illustration: 0032] sleet A flock of snow-birds, tiny and brown, On the gnarled old plum-tree settle down! A moment she watches the chirping band, Her sweet face resting upon her hand, "O mamma, look! it is snowing brown" She cries as the birdlings flutter down. Then cries--and a laugh slips out with the words "Why, mamma, the snow-flakes have turned to birds WAITING A WINTER'S TALE. By Mrs. Sallie M. B. Piatt. |SOME sweet things go just to make room for others: The blue field-blossom hurries from the dew, (My little maiden, hush your noisy brothers!) And see, the wild-rose reddens where it grew! The green leaf fades that you may see the yellow; We have the honey when we miss the bee; Who wants the apples, scarlet-stained and mellow, Must give the buds upon his orchard-tree; Then, for those finely painted birds that follow The sun about and scent their songs with flowers, We have, when frosts are sharp and rains beat hollow, These pretty, gray crumb-gathering pets of ours; The butterflies (you could not catch) were brighter Than anything that we have left in air; But these still-flying shapes of snow are whiter, I fancy, than the very lilies were. Then, is the glimmer of fire-flies, cold and eerie, Far in the dusk, so pleasant after all As is this home-lamp playing warm and cheery, Among your shadow-pictures on the wall? But I forget. There ought to be a story, A lovely story! Who shall tell it, then? The boys want war--plumes, helmets, shields and glory-- They'd like a grand review of Homer's men. Their jealous sisters say it's tiresome hearing (A girl is not as patient as a boy,) Of that old beauty--yes, the much-recurring, About-three-thousand-years-old, Helen of Troy. [Illustration: 0034] They'd rather hear some love-tale murmured faintly Through music of the sleigh-bells: something true, Such as their young grandmothers, shy and saintly, Heard under stars of winter--told anew! The little children, one and all, are crying For just a few more fairies--but, you know They go to sleep when golden-rod is dying, And do not wake till there is no more snow. They sleep who kept your Jersey cow from straying, My boy, while you were deep in books and grass: Who tended flowers, my girl, while you were playing Some double game, or wearing out your glass. They sleep--but what sweet things they have been making, By golden moons, to give you a surprise-- Beat slower, little hearts with wonder aching, Keep in the dark yet, all you eager eyes! The fairies sleep. But their high lord and master Keeps wide-awake, and watches every hearth; Great waters freeze that he may travel faster-- He puts a girdle round about the earth! Just now in the dim North, as he remembers His birthday back through centuries, he appears A trifle sad, and looks into the embers-- Then shakes down from his cheek a shower of tears. He thinks of little hands that reached out lightly To catch his beard and pull it with a will, Now round their buried rosebuds folded whitely, Forever and forever, oh, how still! "Ah, where are all the children? How I miss them! So many worlds-full are gone since I came! I long to take them to my heart and kiss them, And hear those still small voices laugh my name. "Some over whom no violet yet is growing; Some under broken marble, ages old; Some lie full fathom five where seas are flowing; Some, among cliffs and chasms, died a-cold; "Some through the long Wars of the Roses faded; Some did walk barefoot to the Holy Land; Some show young faces with the bride's-veil shaded; Some touch me with the nun's all-gracious hand; "Some in the purple with crown-jewels burning, Some in the peasant's hodden-gray go by, Some in forlornest prisons darkly yearning For earth and grass, the dove's wing and the sky. "One sails to wake a world that has been lying Hid in its leaves, far in the lonesome West, In an enchanted sleep, with strange winds sighing Among the strange flowers in her dreaming breast. And One--I held Him first--the immortal Stranger! I smell, to-night, the frankincense and myrrh; I see the star-led wise men and the manger; And his own Mother--I remember her! "But--where's my cloak? Is this a time for sorrow? ... And where's the story, do you ask of me? To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow! And shall you have it then? Why--we shall see! [Illustration: 0036] CHRISTMAS. By Mrs. L. C. Whiton. |MAMMA, what is Christmas?" How can I say? I will try to answer you "true as true." It is just the loveliest, lovely day, That is steeped in rose-color all the way through! When miniature toy-shops in stockings are found, That are left in the chambers without a sound; And papa gives gifts with a tender cheer; And brother "hurrahs for the top of the year;" And sister looks on with her wistful eyes, With a soft, sweet smile at every surprise: And Christmas means this: A little child's bliss, And the love of the dear Christ felt like a kiss. And a piled-up glory is hard to express; And "What is Christmas?" is wonder for all. It is when the earth puts on holiday dress, Made spotless fair with snowflakes that fall; When hearts are lavish with treasures of love, And the pale, pure stars shine brighter above; And the dancing firelight seems to play In the most mysterious, haunting way; And the house fairies wander from sweet to sweet, With an unexplored kingdom laid at their feet: And Christmas means this: A little child's bliss, And the love of the dear Christ felt like a kiss. And still "What is Christmas?" Darling, come here. It is meant for the birthday, "true as true," Of a beautiful child that was born in Judea, That His mother loved, as I love you; That grew up to teach you how you should seek To be in your spirit "lowly and meek," And onward higher and higher to go, Till you changed to an angel, whiter than snow; And offered freely (that all might take) The gift of Himself for the whole world's sake! And Christmas means this: A little child's bliss, And the love of the dear Christ felt like a kiss. MIDSUMMER SONGS. _And flow, since all the little birds are singing In bush and brake, And all the honey flower bells dimly ringing, And grasses shake-- And grasses shake before the reapers' coming.; While through and through This sweetness locusts shrill and bees are humming, I'll sing to you A little song, with bird-notes all a-twitter, With honey flowing From tilted flower-cups with dew a-glitter, With fireflies glowing; And over it roses in knots, and myrtle, As thickly lay (And violets) as on a maiden's kirtle, A holiday. Sweetened all through with flowers, with which 'tis filled So full, you see It needs (and also honey round it spilled) A sweet song be._ --M. E. W. [Illustration: 0042] "SAINT EMILY." By E. F. Frye. |WHEN grass grows green in spring-time And trees are budding gay, When the breath of bursting lilacs Makes sweet the air of May, When cowslips fringe the brooksides, And violets gem the dells, And tremble mid the grasses The wind-flower's slender bells, When the fragrant lily rises From its sheltering sheath of green, In the city's narrow alleys Saint Emily is seen. A modest little maiden, She walks secure from harm; A basket, flower-laden, Swings lightly on her arm, And right and left she scatters, Alike to bad and good, The beauties of the garden, The treasures of the wood. When summer days drag slowly, In languor, heat, and pain, To those who lie in hospital, Never to rise again, Dreaming, with fevered longing, Of shady country homes, Where roses hang in clusters, And honeysuckle blooms, From cot to cot so softly Moves dear Saint Emily; And here a rose she proffers, And there a bud lays she. The close abode of sickness She fills with fragrant bloom; Her gentle presence passes Like music through the room And many a moaning sufferer Hushes his sad complaint, And follows with his weary eyes The movements of this saint. When autumn paints the woodlands With scarlet and with gold, When the blue gentian's lids unclose In frosty meadows cold, From the little troop of children That crowd some Orphan Home The joyous shout arises, "Saint Emily has come!" And round her close they gather, An eager little band, While from the well-stored basket She fills each outstretched hand With purple hillside asters, And wondrous golden-rod, And all the lingering flowers that love To dress the autumn sod; And pallid cheeks flush rosy, And heavy eyes grow bright, And little hearts forlorn and lone, Stir with a deep delight. And when the woods are naked, And flowers no longer blow, When the green nooks they love so well Are buried in the snow, Not quite unknown that presence To children sick in bed, Bearing bright wreaths of autumn leaves, And strings of berries red. A heaven-sent mission, surely, To cheer the sick and poor With bounties that the bounteous God Has strewn beside our door-- To gladden little children, To comfort dying hours, To bear to wretched hearts and homes The gospel of the flowers. What marvel if glad blessings Surround Saint Emily! What marvel if some loving eyes In her an angel see!-- And, too, what marvel if the thought Is borne to me and thee, That many a kindly boy and girl As sweet a saint might be. [Illustration: 0045] BLUE AND GOLD. By Mrs. Clara Doty Bates. |THE warm June day was full Of color as it could hold; "Now, which is the sweetest blue, And which is the brightest gold, In all that your little eyes can see, In cloud-land, earth, or the water-world?" I said to the children three. We were on the fresh new grass, And the pretty hammock hung Like a web between the trees, And in it the baby swung. 'Twas as if a spider, busy and sly, Had spun its meshes there, white and light, And caught a butterfly. A moment's silence fell On all, till Teddy guessed-- He had eyes for every bird, And eyes, too, for its nest-- And he cried--the eager little soul-- "The bluest blue is the bluebird, And gold is the oriole." Then Flora, who loved flowers, But had not spoken yet, Whispered that gold was a crocus, And blue a violet. And Edith, the more emphatic one, Said: "No; the bluest blue is the sky, And the goldenest gold the sun!" I pointed to the web That swung so white and light, In which the baby cooed As a nestling pigeon might; "I can answer best of all," I said, "For there is in water-world, earth or skies No blue so sweet as that baby's eyes, No gold so bright as his head!" THE LAND OF USED-TO-BE. By James Whitcomb Riley. |AND where's the Land of Used-to-be, does little baby wonder? Oh, we will clap a magic saddle over papa's knee, And ride away around the world, and in and out and under, The whole of all the golden sunny summer-time, and see! Leisurely and lazy-like we'll jostle on our journey, And let the pony bathe his hooves and cool them in the dew, As he sidles down the shady way, and lags along the ferny And the green grassy edges of the lane we travel through. And then we'll canter on to catch the bubble of the thistle, As it bumps among the butterflies, and glimmers down the sun, To leave us laughing, all content to hear the robin whistle, Or guess what Katydid is saying little Katy's done. And pausing here a minute, where we hear the squirrel chuckle As he darts from out the underbrush and scampers up the tree, We will gather buds and locust-blossoms, leaves and honeysuckle, To wreathe around our foreheads, riding into Used-to-be; For here's the very rim of it that we go swinging over-- Don't you hear the fairy bugles, and the tinkle of the bells? And see the baby bumble-bees that tumble in the clover, And dangle from the tilted pinks and tipsy pimpernels? And don't you see the merry faces of the daffodillies, And the jolly johnny-jump-ups, and the buttercups a-glee, And the low, lolling ripples ring around the water-lilies, All greeting us with laughter to the Land of Used-to-be? And here among the blossoms of the blooming vines and grasses, With a haze forever hanging in a sky forever blue, And with a breeze from over seas to kiss us as it passes, We will romp around forever as the little fairies do; For all the elves of earth and air are swarming here together-- The prankish Puck, king Oberon, and queen Titania too; And dear old Mother Goose herself, as sunny as the weather, Comes dancing down the dewy walks to welcome me and you! A BABY SHOW. By H. H. |A DROLL conversation I once overheard-- Two children, a cat, a cow, and a bird. The names of the children were Eddie and Jane; The names of the others I did not hear plain. How came I to hear them? I think I won't tell: You may guess, if you please; and if you guess well You'll guess that I heard it as many a man hears, With his fancy alone, and not with his ears. Such a wonderful plaything never was known! Like a real live dolly, and all for their own! Two happier children could nowhere be found, No, not if you travelled the whole world around. They had drawn her this morning where daisies grew-- White daisies, all shining and dripping with dew; Long wreaths of the daisies, and chains, they had made; In the baby's lap these wreaths they had laid, The children were drawing, with caution and care, Their sweet baby-sister, to give her the air, In a dainty straw wagon with wheels of bright red, And a top of white muslin which shaded her head. She was only one year and a few months old; Her eyes were bright blue and her hair was like gold; She laughed all the time from morning till night, Till Eddie and Jane were quite wild with delight . And were laughing to watch her fat little hands Untwisting and twisting the stems and the strands. Just then, of a sudden, a lark flew by And sang at the top of his voice in the sky; "Ho! ho! Mr. Lark," shouted Jane,"come down here! We're not cruel children. You may come without fear. We've something to show you. In all your life maybe You'll never see anything sweet as our baby!" 'Twas an odd thing, now, for a lark to do-- I hope you won't think my story's untrue-- But this is the thing that I saw and I heard: That lark flew right down, like a sociable bird, As soon as they called him, and perched on a tree, And winked with his eye at the children and me, And laughed out, as much as a bird ever can, As he cried, "Ha! ha! Little woman and man! "You'll be quite surprised and astonished, maybe, To hear that I do not think much of your baby. Why, out in the field here I've got in my nest, All cuddled up snug 'neath my wife's warm breast, Four little babies--two sisters, two brothers-- And all with bright eyes, as bright as their moth- er's; Your baby's at least ten times older than they, But they are all ready to fly to-day; "They'll take care of themselves in another week, Before your poor baby can walk or can speak. It has often surprised me to see what poor things All babies are that are born without wings; And but one at a time! Dear me, my wife Would be quite ashamed of so idle a life!" And the lark looked as scornful as a lark knows how, As he swung up and down on a slender bough. A cat had been eying him there for a while, And sprang at him now from top of a stile. But she missed her aim--he was quite too high; And oh, how he laughed as he soared in the sky! Then the cat scrambled up, disappointed and cross; She looked all about her, and felt at a loss What next she should do. So she took up the thread Of the lark's discourse, and ill-naturedly said: "Yes, indeed, little master and miss, I declare, It's enough to make any mother-cat stare To see what a time you do make, to be sure. Over one small creature, so helpless and poor As your babies are! Why, I've six of my own: When they were two weeks old they could run alone; They're never afraid of dogs or of rats-- In a few weeks more they'll be full-grown cats; "Their fur is as fine and as soft as silk-- Two gray, and three black, and one white as new milk. A fair fight for a mouse in my family Is as pretty a sight as you'll ever see. It is all very well to brag of your baby-- One of these years it will be something, maybe!" And without even looking at the baby's face, The cat walked away at a sleepy pace. "Moo, Moo!" said a cow, coming up. "Moo, Moo! Young people, you're making a great to-do About your baby. And the lark and the cat, They're nothing but braggers--I wouldn't give that." [Illustration: 0051] (And the cow snapped her tail as you'd snap your thumb) "For all the babies, and kittens, and birds, that come In the course of a year! It does make me laugh To look at them all, by the side of a calf! "Why, my little Brindle as soon as 'twas born Stood up on its legs, and sniffed at the corn; Before it had been in the world an hour It began to gambol, and canter, and scour All over the fields. See its great shining eyes, And its comely red hair that so glossy lies And thick! he has never felt cold in his life; But the wind cuts your baby's skin like a knife. "Poor shivering things! I have pitied them oft, All muffled and smothered in flannel soft. Ha! ha! I am sure the stupidest gaby Can see that a calf's ahead of a baby!" And the cow called her calf, and tossed up her head Like a person quite sure of all she has said. Then Jane looked at Eddy, and Eddy at Jane; Said Eddy, "How mean! I declare, they're too vain "To live--preposterous things! They don't know What they're talking about! I'd like them to show a bird, or a kitten, or a learned calf. That can kiss like our baby, or smile, or laugh!" "Yes, indeed, so should I!' said Jane in a rage; "The poor little thing! She's advanced for her age, For the minister said so the other day-- She's worth a hundred kittens or calves to play. "And as for young birds--they're pitiful things! I saw a whole nest once, all mouths and bare wings, And they looked jis if they'd been picked by the cook To broil for breakfast. I'm sure that they shook With cold if their mother got off for a minute-- I'm glad we have flannel, and wrap babies in it!" So the children went grumbling one to the other, And when they reached home they told their mother. The dear baby, asleep, in its crib she laid, And laughed as she kissed the children, and said: "Do you think I believe that the sun can shine On a boy or a girl half so sweet as mine? The lark, and the cat, and the cow were all right-- Each baby seems best in its own mother's sight!" [Illustration: 0053] A YOUNG INQUIRER. By Charlotte Mellen Packard. |HOW does life look behind the Hill? All the suns I have ever seen Peeped from over a mountain screen, Stretched a finger of rosy light Through some crevice to paint "Good-night;" Up the darkness the great round moon Floated by like a red balloon, Hung and glittered awhile, until It went to the people behind the Hill. The earth spins round, the mountain is still Men and women they come and they go, Children play in the valley below. Winds are roaring, or winds are whist, Sun may pass, there is rain and mist, The world we know is a bright world still, But ah, for the other behind the Hill! Voices are calling me day by day-- I listen, and wonder whatever they say! The valleys are pleasant, and days are long With play and study, with work and song-- But a boy keeps planning for other things, There's room in his restless body for wings, And fancy will never fold them until He sees for himself what is over the Hill. But most I dream of the unknown sea Where brave ships hasten like birds set free, Where plunging breakers ride high and loud Till the sailor is lost between wave and cloud. Oh the sunny lands, and the frozen zone, The forests where never a man is known! There are wonders and wonders waiting still For a boy who has never looked over the Hill! [Illustration: 0054] [Illustration: 0055] IN MIDSUMMER. By Mrs. L. C. Whiton. |INTO silence of the morning's splendor There is shaken a golden robin's dream; Kissed by sunshine to divine surrender, Bloom the snowy lilies in the stream; Soft south winds the hidden wild flowers Woo; And between the tangled leaves in view-- Hush! I see the Summer, Summer, Summer floating through. Climbs the sun, with ecstasy of shining, From the blush of rising into gold; And the river's heart, with close defining, Tells the same sweet story it is told; Hills are veiled in tender mists anew; From the liquid skies' unshadowed blue- Hush! I see the Summer, Summer, Summer flooding through. A MIDSUMMER SONG. By Mary E. Wilkins. |I WANT to sing a little song to please you, How midsummer comes following after June, And shall I pitch it by the lark or robin?-- For songs in midsummer should be in tune. And shall I give it sweetness like the roses?-- For midsummer has roses, as you know, As well as June; and sprinkled o'er with spices From beds of pinks and poppies in a row? Perhaps like them; or, maybe 'twould be sweeter, My little song, and prettier sound to you, If I should make it make you think of lilies-- For midsummer has always lilies too. Around the meadow-sweet the bees they cluster So thick the children pick it not for fear-- Like meadow-sweet and bees, if I could make it, A pretty little song 'twould be to hear! Down in the field a crowd of flowers are standing; The locusts pipe, the flowers keep sweet and still-- With honey-balls of clover and the others, If only I my little song could fill! I want to sing a little song to please you Of midsummer that's following after June, But oh! of all her sweet, gay things, I cannot With one put yet my little song in tune! I think you'll have to find a child or robin, Some ignorant and merry-hearted thing; For, I suppose, a song of the midsummer It takes a heart more like a bird's to sing! Ill 0057] IN THE BLACK FOREST. By Celia Thaxter. |UP through the great Black Forest, So wild and wonderful, We climbed in the autumn afternoon 'Mid the shadows deep and cool. 2 We climbed to the Grand Duke's castle That stood on the airy height; Above the leagues of pine-trees dark It shone in the yellow light. 3 Around the edge of her wee white cap We saw how the peasant women Were toiling along the way, In the open spaces, here and there, That steeped in the sunshine lay. 4 They gathered the autumn harvest-- All toil-worn and weather-browned; They gathered the roots they had planted in spring, And piled them up on the ground. 5 We heard the laughter of children, And merrily down the road Ran little Max with a rattling cart, Heaped with a heavy load. 6 Upon orange carrots, and beets so red, And turnips smooth and white, With leaves of green all packed between, Sat the little Rosel bright. The wind -blew out her curls-- A sweeter face I have never seen Than this happy little girl's. 7 A spray of the carrot's foliage fine, Soft as a feather of green, Drooped over her head from behind her ear. As proud as the plume of a queen. 8 Light was his burden to merry Max, With Rosel perched above, And he gazed at her on that humble throne With the eyes of pride and love. 9 With joyful laughter they passed us by, And up through the forest of pine, So solemn and still, we made our way To the castle of Eberstein. Oh, lofty the Grand Duke's castle That looked o'er the forest gloom; But better I love to remember The children's rosy bloom. [Illustration: 0059] Oh, vast and dim and beautiful Were the dark woods' shadowy aisles. And all their silent depths seemed lit With the children's golden smiles. And sweet is the picture I brought away From the wild Black Forest shade, Of proud and happy and merry Max, And Rosel, the little maid. EDITH'S LESSON. By Mrs. Margaret E. Sangster. |OUT in the meadow the scented breeze Was full of the gossip of birds and bees; Out in the orchard the glad things flew, And o'er meadow and orchard the sky was blue-- The sky was blue, and the clouds were white, And the summer morning was blithe and bright. " It is quite too lovely in-doors to stay," Said Edith, "whether I work or play." So slate and pencil and fairy-book Were carried forth to a cozy nook, Where the shadows glanced, and the sunbeams shone, And the dear little girl could be alone. There were hard examples that must be done, For father to see ere the set of sun; And there was the merriest tale to read, Of a lady fair, on a milk-white steed,-- Of a lady fair, and a stately lover, And the charm that lay in a four-leaf clover. "Study the lesson!" the robin said, As he poised on the branch above her head, With a whirr of wings like the beat of drums; "Edith," the bee hummed, "mind the sums!" But shadow and shine in their airy play Coaxed for the story that matched the day. "Any time will do for the tiresome task," Said Edith at last, "and I think I'll ask Papa to excuse my Arithmetic,-- In such warm weather I might be sick If I taxed this poor little brain of mine." So she listened, you see, to shadow and shine; And then full-length on the velvet grass, She dreamed of delights that would come to pass When she, too large for the rigid rule Of the happy home, or the stricter school, Should be a woman, and quite at ease Each hour to do what she might please. [Illustration: 0061] "On silvery paper, with golden pen," She mused,"I'd write love-stories then, And wherever I went, would people say, 'The gifted Edith is here to-day! ' And maybe,--for stranger things have been,-- I might Editor be of a Magazine!" No higher flight could her fancy take, Were the darling child asleep or awake; And presently there in that paradise, The lids fell over the heavy eyes, And the noon-bell's summons, loud and clear, Was heeded not by her slumbering ear. How long was her nap, I do not know, But she sauntered home when the sun was low'; Dinner was over, and father frowned, And chided her gently for "idling round," While gravely he bade her be sure and see That she solved her examples after tea. DORRIS' SPINNING. (_An Old Time Ballad_.) By Margaret J. Preston. |SHE sat in the upper chamber --'Twas a summer of Long Ago-- And looked through the gable window At the river that ran below, And over the quiet pastures, And up at the wide blue sky, And envied the jay his freedom As he lazily flitted by. Yet patiently at her spinning, In a halo of happy light, Se wrought, though a shimmer rippled The heads of the wheat in sight-- Though the garden was spilling over Its cups on the fragrant air, And the hollyhocks at the doorway Had never looked half so fair. She saw, as her wheel kept whirling, The leisure of Nature too-- The beautiful holiday weather Left nothing for her to do: The cattle were idly grazing, And even the frisky sheep, Away in the distant meadows, Lay under the shade asleep. So sitting, she heard sweet laughter, And a bevy of maidens fair, With babble of merry voices, Came climbing the chamber stair; "O Dorns! how can you bear it, To drone at your spinning here? Why, girl! it's the heart of summer, The goldenest time of year. [Illustration: 0063] "Put out of your hand the distaff, This wearisome whirl relax-- There are things that are gayer, Dorris, Than sitting and spinning flax: Come with us away to the forest; When it rains is the time to ply Such tiresome tasks--and to-day is The fifteenth day of July!" With a face that was softly saddened, Sweet Dorris looked up and said, As she ravelled a bit of tangle, And twisted again her thread, "Nay, nay, I must do my spinning; It wouldn't be kind or right That the loom should be kept a-waiting; My hanks must be done to-night. So the frolicsome maidens left her, With something of mild surprise That Dorris should choose a duty, With pleasure before her eyes; Not dreaming that when her mother Her "dozens" should count up-stairs, And kiss her and say, "My darling!" Her day would be glad as theirs. So she minded her wheel, and blithely She sang as she twirled it round, And cunningly from her fingers The delicate fibre wound; And on through the sunny hours, That neither were sad nor long, She toiled in her sweet obedience, And lightened her toil with song. "Aye, surely, the day is lovely! It tugs at my very heart To look at its drifting beauty, Nor share in its joy my part r I may not go forth to meet it, But the summer is kind, you see, And I think, as I sit at my spinning-- I think it will come to me!" (_She sings._) "Come hither, happy birds, With warbling woo me, Till songs that have no words Melt through and through me! Come, bees, that drop and rise Within the clover, Where yellow butterflies Go glancing over! Oh, roses, red and white, And lilies, shining Like gilded goblets bright With silver lining-- Each to my window send Gifts worth the winning, To cheer me as I bend Above my spinning! "Oh, ripples on the sand, That break in beauty, Oh, pines, that stiffly stand Like guards on duty, Green meadows, where, this morn, The scythes were mowing, Soft slopes, where, o'er the corn The wind is blowing, "White clouds above the hill That sail together, Rich summer scents that fill This summer weather-- All bring the sweets you've found Since morn's beginning, And come and crowd them round My day of spinning!" [Illustration: 0065] THE BROOK BEHIND THE WAUMBEK HOUSE. ( _Jefferson and White Mountains._) By Mrs. Martha Perry Lowe. [Illustration: 0066] |RUN along thy pastures, happy, happy brook, Run along the pebbles, with a curvet and a crook, Sing it all the morning, and sing it afternoon, Sing it all the starry night--that pleasant little tune! Are you growing modest, do you think that I shall tire? Do you fear that I shall go and look for something higher? Well I know the noisy world has music grand enough, But I do not care for all its preludes, wild and rough. Well I know other music, solemn and sublime, Voices of the ocean sounding all the depths of time: That is not the music I am looking for to-day, It is you I want to hear, so frolicsome and gay. Do not ever try to practise any modern art, Do not even stop to think or care about your part, Sing just as you always do, when there are none to hear, That will surely be the sweetest way to please my ear. Ah, my little brook! how foolish was my thought: All the praises of the worldling can disturb you naught. Nothing can mislead you, or set you ill at ease, Make you think about yourself, or of the way to please. Not a little fish could have made such a speech, Not a shining fly that skims along your beach, Not a little bird would have said such a thing-- Pardon me my foolishness, and sing again, sing! [Illustration: 0067] BOBBY LEE |ONE, two, three! One was Bobby Lee Sitting by the brook, With his fishing-hook, With his spelling-book Thrust far aside, Whilst loud he cried: "For once, no school, For once, no rule, Bell, ring away! This whole, whole day I'll stop and play!" One, two, three! One was Mrs. Bee Stopping just to stare At the vision there-- Bobby by the brook With his fishing-hook; At the spelling-book Thrust far aside; THREE. By Rosa Graham. Whilst loud she cried: "The livelong day A boy to play! I'd like to see One little bee Like Bobby Lee!" One, two, three! One was Lady Rose, In her pretty clothes, Staring down to see Little Bobby Lee, With his fishing-hook, With his spelling-book Thrust far aside, Whilst loud she cried: "The livelong day, A boy to play! I'd like to know, If I did so, How I would grow!" [Illustration: 0069] SUMMER'S GOING. By Mrs. L. C. Whiton. |LEAVES are shrinking on the trees, Where the nests are hidden; There's a hush among the bees, As to roam forbidden; There's the silk of corn that shows Faded tangles blowing: So that everybody knows, Darling, summer's going. There are insects' wings that gleam; Locusts shrilly calling; There are silences that seem Into sadness falling; There is not another rose But the sweet-brier blowing: So that everybody knows, Darling, summer's going. There's the mist that haunts the night Into morning sailing, Leaving filmy webs of light On the grasses trailing; There's the fierce red sun that glows, Through the vapor showing: So that everybody knows, Darling, summer's going. Breathe but softest little sigh. Child, for vanished roses, For each season, going by, Something sweet discloses; And if in your heart has grown Truth to fairer blowing, Summer then will be your own, Spite of summer's going. 
4530	----	Evelyn Scott PRECIPITATIONS 1920 The author acknowledges the courtesy of the editors of THE POETRY JOURNAL; OTHERS; THE EGOIST (London); POETRY: A MAGAZINE OF VERSE; PLAYBOY; THE DIAL; THE LIBERATOR; OTHERS: An ANTHOLOGY OF THE NEW VERSE; THE NATION (New York); and THE LYRIC, from all of which poems in this volume have been reprinted. Contents Manhattan The Unpeopled City Midnight Worship: Brooklyn Bridge Ascension: Autumn Dusk in Central Park Startled Forest: Hudson River Winter Streets February Springtime The Assumption of Columbine From Brooklyn Snow Dance Potter's Field Lights at Night Midnight Crowds Summer Night New York Sunset: Battery Park Crowds Riots The City at Night Vanities Bread Poems Lullaby Embarkation of Cythera Christian Luxuries Narrow Flowers Eyes After Youth The Shadow that Walks Alone Bible Truth The Maternal Breast Air for G String Destiny The Red Cross Hectic I-II Isolation Ward The Red Cross Hospital Night Domestic Canticle Spring Song Home Again To a Sick Child Love Song Quarrel My Child The Tunnel I-V Bruised Sunlight Water Moods Rain on the Seashore Ship Masts Monochrome Antique Echo Looks at Herself Spell Hungry Seasons Rainy Twilight The Storm Nymphs Winter Dawn The Wall of Night Springtime Too Soon Stars Night Music Nocturne of Water The Long Moment Designs I-IV Argo Japanese Moon The Naiad Floodtide Mountain Pass in August Contemporaries Harmonics Young Men Young Girls House Spirits At the Meeting House Christians Devil's Cradle Women Penelope Poor People's Dreams For Wives and Mistresses Portraits Portrait of Rich Old Lady Nigger The Maiden Mother A Pious Woman A Very Old Rose Jar The Nixie Old Ladies' Valhalla Portraits of Poets I-III Theodore Dreiser Pieta Brazil Through A Mist The Ranch Tropical Life Twenty-four Hours Rainy Season Mail on the Ranch The Vampire Bat Conservatism Little Pigs The Silly Ewe The Snake The Years Burning Mountains I-III Tropical Winter Talk on the Ranch Les Malades des Pays Chauds Pride of Race Don Quixote Sojourns in Rio de Janeiro Convent Musings Guitarra November The Coming of Christ The Death of Columbine Duet From a Man Dying on a Cross Lagniappe Hail Mary! The Death of Columbine Pierrot Laughs The Transmigration of Caliban Gundry Viennese Waltz Resurrection Immortality Autumn Night Venus' Fly Trap Suicide Leaves I-IV Allegro MANHATTAN THE UNPEOPLED CITY MIDNIGHT WORSHIP: BROOKLYN BRIDGE In the rain Rows of street lamps are saints in bright garments That flow long with the bend of knees. They lift pale heads nimbussed with golden spikes. Up the lanes of liquid onyx Toward the high fire-laden altars Move the saints of Manhattan In endless pilgrimage to death, Amidst the asphodel and anemones of dawn. ASCENSION: AUTUMN DUSK IN CENTRAL PARK Featureless people glide with dim motion through a quivering blue silver; Boats merge with the bronze-gold welters about their keels. The trees float upward in gray and green flames. Clouds, swans, boats, trees, all gliding up a hillside After some gray old women who lift their gaunt forms From falling shrouds of leaves. Thin fingered twigs clutch darkly at nothing. Crackling skeletons shine. Along the smutted horizon of Fifth Avenue The hooded houses watch heavily With oily gold eyes. STARTLED FORESTS: HUDSON RIVER The thin hill pushes against the mist. Its fading defiance sounds in the umber and red of autumn leaves. Like a dead arm around a warm throat Is the sagging embrace of the river Laid grayly about the shore. The train passes. We emerge from a tunnel into a sky of thin blue morning glories Where yellow lily bells tinkle down. The paths run swiftly away under the lamp glow Like green and blue lizards Mottled with light. WINTER STREETS The stars, escaping, Evaporate in acrid mists. The houses, rearing themselves higher, Assemble among the clouds. Night blows through me. I am clear with its bitterness. I tinkle along brick canyons Like a crystal leaf. FEBRUARY SPRINGTIME The trees hold out pale gilded branches Stiff and high in the wind. On the lawns Patches of gray-lilac snow Melt in the hollows of the terraces. The park is an ocean of fawn-colored plush, Ridged and faded. Sharp and delicate, My shadow moves after me on the rumpled grass-- Grass like a pillow worn by a dear head. Joy! THE ASSUMPTION OF COLUMBINE The lights trickle grayly down from the hoary palisades And drip into the river. Leaden reflections flow into the water. Framed in your window, Your little face glows deceptively In a rigid ecstasy, As the wide-winged morning Folds back the mist. FROM BROOKLYN Along the shore A black net of branches Tangles the pulpy yellow lamps. The shell-colored sky is lustrous with the fading sun. Across the river Manhattan floats-- Dim gardens of fire-- And rushing invisible toward me through the fog, A hurricane of faces. SNOW DANCE Black brooms of trees sweep the sky clean; Sweep the house fronts, And leave them bleak in sleep. High up the empty moon Spills her vacuity. I dance. My long black shadow Weaves an invisible pattern of pain. The snow Is embroidered with my happiness. POTTER'S FIELD Golden petals, honey sweet, Crushed beneath fear-hastened feet... Silver paper lanterns glow and shudder in flat patterns On a gray eternal face Stained with pain. LIGHTS AT NIGHT In the city, Storms of light Surge against the clouds, Pushing up the darkness. In the country, Is the faint pressure of oil lamps, That sputter, Smothered with earth-- Extinguished in silence. MIDNIGHT The golden snow of the stars Drifts in mounds of light, Melts against the hot sides of the city, Cool cheek against burning breast, Cold golden snow, Falling all night. CROWDS SUMMER NIGHT The bloated moon Has sickly leaves glistening against her Like flies on a fat white face. The thick-witted drunkard on the park bench Touches a girl's breast That throbs with its own ruthless and stupid delight. The new-born child crawls in his mother's filth. Life, the sleep walker, Lifts toward the skies An immense gesture of indecency. NEW YORK With huge diaphanous feet, March the leaden velvet elephants, Pressing the bodies back into the earth. SUNSET: BATTERY PARK From cliffs of houses, Sunlit windows gaze down upon me Like undeniable eyes, Millions of bronze eyes, Unassailable, Obliterating all they see: The warm contiguous crowd in the street below Chills, Mists, Drifts past those hungry eyes of Eternity, Melts seaward and deathward To the ocean. CROWDS The sky along the street a gauzy yellow: The narrow lights burn tall in the twilight. The cool air sags, Heavy with the thickness of bodies. I am elated with bodies. They have stolen me from myself. I love the way they beat me to life, Pay me for their cruelties. In the close intimacy I feel for them There is the indecency I like. I belong to them, To these whom I hate; And because we can never know each other, Or be anything to each other, Though we have been the most, I sell so much of me that could bring a better price. RIOTS As if all the birds rushed up in the air, Fluttering; Hoots, calls, cries. I never knew such a monster even in child dreams. It grows: Glass smashed; Stores shut; Windows tight closed; Dull, far-off murmurs of voices. Blood-- The soft, sticky patter of falling drops in the silence. Everything inundated. Faces float off in a red dream. Still the song of the sweet succulent patter. Blood-- I think it oozes from my finger tips. --Or maybe it drips from the brow of Jesus. THE CITY AT NIGHT Life wriggles in and out Through the narrow ways And circuitous passages: Something monstrous and horrible, A passion without any master, Male sexual fluid trickling through the darkness And setting fire to whatever it touches. That is the master Bestowing a casual caress on a slave. Quiver under it! VANITIES BREAD POEMS LULLABY I lean my heart against the soft bosomed night: A white globed breast, And warm and silent flowing, The milk of the moon. EMBARKATION OF CYTHERA Like jellied flowers My inflated curves Melt in the peaceful stagnance of the bath. If I were to die I would resist the final agony With only a faint quiver From my escaping thighs. CHRISTIAN LUXURIES The red fountain of shame gushes up from my heart. I throw back my long hair and the fountain floats it out Like a fiery fan. My wide stretched arms are white coral branches. The liquid shadows seek between my amber breasts. But the fire is cool. It cannot burn me. NARROW FLOWERS I am a gray lily. My roots are deep. I cannot lift my hands For one thin yellow butterfly. Yet last night I grew up to a star. My shade swirled mistily Seven mountains high. I lifted my face to another face. The moon made a burning shadow on my brow. Washed by the light, My sharp breasts silvered. My dance was an arc of mist From west to east. EYES There are arms of ice around me, And a hand of ice on my heart. If they should come to bury me I would not flinch or start. For eyes are freezing me-- Eyes too cold for hate. I think the ground, Because it is dark, A warmer place to wait. AFTER YOUTH Oh, that mysterious singing sadness of youth! Exotic colors in the lamplit darkness of wet streets, Musk and roses in the twilight, The moon in the park like a golden balloon... Then to awaken and find the shadows fled, The music gone... Empty, bleak! My soul has grown very small and shriveled in my body. It no longer looks out. It rattles around, And inside my body it begins to look, Staring all around inside my body, Like a crab in a crevice, Staring with bulging eyes At the strange place in which it finds itself. THE SHADOW THAT WALKS ALONE The silence tugs at my breast With formless lips, Like a heavy baby, Attenuates me, Draws me through myself into it. I sit in the womb of an idiot, Helpless before its mouthing tenderness. The huge flap ears are attentive, And the soundless face bends toward me In horrible lovingness. BIBLE TRUTH To die... Oh, cool river! To float there with nothing to resist-- One ripple of silence spreads out from another. My spirit widens so, Circle beyond circle. I hold up the stars no longer with the pupils of my eyes. Hands, legs, arms float off from me. I melt like flakes of snow. I am no more opposed. I am no more. THE MATERNAL BREAST I walked straight and long, But I never found you. I was looking for a hill of a hundred breasts, A hill modeled after the statues of Diana of the Ephesians. I was looking for a hill of mounds hairy with grass, And a place to lie down. AIR FOR G STRING White hands of God With fingers like strong twigs flowering Rock me in leaves of iron, Leaves of blue. Hands of God Fashioned of clouds Have finger tips that balance the almond white moon. The pale sky is a flower White tipped and pink tipped with dawn. White hands of God gather the blossoms with fingers that hold me, Cloud fingers like milk in the azure night, Weaving strong chords. DESTINY I am lost in the vast cave of night. No sound but the far-off tinkle of stars, And the cry of a bird Muffled in shadows. The light flows in remotely Through the hollow moon, Dim strange brilliance From waters beyond the sky. Groping, I listen to the harsh tinkle of the far-off stars, Feel the clammy shadows about my shoulders. THE RED CROSS HECTIC I Ruby winged pains flash through me, Jewel winged agonies: They vanish, Carrying me with them Without my knowing it. II Pain sends out long tentacles And sucks. When I have given up struggling He takes me into his arms. ISOLATION WARD We are the separate centers of consciousness Of all the universes. We vibrate statically on a trillion golden wires. Our trillion golden fingers twine in the weltering darkness, And grasp tremblingly, Aware in agony Of the things we can never know. THE RED CROSS Antiseptic smells that corrode the nostrils Crumble me, Eat me deep; And my garments disintegrate: First my nightgown, Leaving my naked arms and legs disjointed, Sprawled about the bed in postures meaningless to the point of obscenity. My breasts shrivel, The nipples drawn like withered plums To the eyes of the bright young nurse. I am nothing but a dull eye myself, An eye out of a socket, Bursting, Contorted with hideous wisdom. Eye to eye We fight in the death throes, Myself and the young nurse. Her firm, crisp aproned bosom Leans toward the bed, As she smooths the rumpled pillow back With long cool fingers. HOSPITAL NIGHT I am Will-o'-the-Wisp. I float in a little pool of delirium, Phosphorescent velvet. My fire is like a breath That blows my illness in circles, Widening it so far That I cannot see the edge. It is one with the night sky. My fire has blown this vastness, But I strain and flicker trying to escape from it. I want to exist without the darkness That makes my breath so bright. I want the morning to thin my light. DOMESTIC CANTICLE SPRING SONG Sap crashes suddenly through dead roots: Sap that bites, Harsh, Impatient, Bitter as gold. My God, my sisters, how dark, how silent, how heavy is earth! Shoulders strain against this eternity, Against the trickling loam. Earth dropped on the heart like a nerveless hand: On the red mouth Earth coils, Heavy as a serpent. Light has come back to the darkness, To the shadow, To the coolness of blackened leaves. HOME AGAIN Where I used to be I could hear the sea. The black ragged palm fronds flung themselves against the twilight sky. The moon stared up from the water like a fish's eye. I had the loneliness that sings. It made me light and gave me wings. Is it the dust and the iron railings and the blank red brick That makes me sick? There is no space to be lonely any more And crumbling feet on a city street Sound past the door. TO A SICK CHILD At the end of the day The sun rusts. The street is old and quiet. The houses are of iron. The shadows are iron. Shrill screams of children scrape the iron sky. Let us lock ourselves in the light. Let the sun nail us to the hot earth with his spikes of fire, And perhaps when the darkness rushes past It will forget us. LOVE SONG (To C. K. S.) Little father, Little mother, Little sister, Little brother, Little lover, How can I go on living With you away from me? How can I get up in the morning And go to bed at night, And you not here? How can I bear the sunrise and the sunset, And the moonrise and the moonset, And the flowers in the garden? How can I bear them, You, My little father, Little mother, Little sister, Little brother, Little lover? QUARREL Abruptly, from a wall of clear cold silence Like an icy glass, Myself looked out at me And would not let me pass. I wanted to reach you Before it was too late; But my frozen image barred the way With vacant hate. MY CHILD Tentacles thrust imperceptibly into the future Helplessly sense the fire. A serpentine nerve Impelled to lengthen itself generation after generation Pierces the labyrinth of flames To rose-colored extinction. THE TUNNEL I I have made you a child in the womb, Holding you in sweet and final darkness. All day as I walk out I carry you about. I guard you close in secret where Cold eyed people cannot stare. I am melted in the warm dear fire, Lover and mother in the same desire. Yet I am afraid of your eyes And their possible surprise. Would you be angry if I let you know That I carried you so? II I could kiss you to death Hoping that, your protest obliterated, You would be Utterly me. Yet I know--how well!-- Like a shell, Hollow and echoing, Death would be, With a roar of the past Like the roar of the sea. And what is lifeless I cannot kill! So you would make death work your will. III In most intimate touch we meet, Lip to lip, Breast to breast, Sweet. Suddenly we draw apart And start. Like strangers surprised at a road's turning We see, I, the naked you; You, the naked me. There was something of neither of us That covered the hours, And we have only touched each other's bodies Through veils of flowers. But let us smile kindly, Like those already dead, On the warm flesh And the marriage bed. IV The blanched stars are withered with light. The moon is pale with trying to remember something. Light, straining for a stale birth, Distends the darkness. I, in the midst of this travail, Bring forth-- The solitude is so vast I am glad to be freed of it. Is it the moon I see there, Or does my own white face Hang in blank agony against the sky As if blinded with giving? V Little inexorable lips at my breast Drink me out of me In a fine sharp stream. Little hands tear me apart To find what they need. I am weak with love of you, Little body of hate! BRUISED SUNLIGHT WATER MOODS RAIN ON THE SEASHORE Curling petals of rain lick silver tongues. Fluffy spray is blown loosely up between thin silver lips And slithers, tinkling in hard green ice, down the gray rocks. White darkness-- An expressionless horizon stares with stone eyes. The sea lifts its immense self heavily And falls down in sickly might. The emptiness is like a death of which no one shall ever know. SHIP MASTS They stand Stark as church spires; Bare stalks That will blossom (Tomorrow perhaps) Into flowers of the wind. MONOCHROME Gray water, Gray sky drifting down to the sea. The night, Old, ugly, and stern, Lies upon the water, Quivering in the twilight Like a tortured belly. ANTIQUE Clouds flung back Make fan-shaped rays of faded crimson Brocaded on dim blue satin; Through the wrinkled dust-blue water The little boat Glides above its sunken shadow. ECHO LOOKS AT HERSELF The ship passes in the night And drags jagged reflections Like gilded combs Through the obscure water. Spun glass daisies float on a gold-washed mirror. SPELL In the dark I can hear the patter. Bare white feet are running across the water. White feet as bright as silver Are flashing under dull blue dresses. Wet palms beat, Impatiently, Petulantly, Slapping the wet rocks. HUNGRY SHADOWS RAINY TWILIGHT Dim gold faces float in the windows. Dim gold faces and gilded arms... They are clinging along the silver ladders of rain; They are climbing with ivory lamps held high, Starry lamps Over which the silver ladders Thicken into nets of twilight. THE STORM Herds of black elephants, Rushing over the plains, Trample the stars. The ivory tusk of the leader (Or is it the moon?) Flashes, and is gone. Tree tops bend; Crash; Fire from hoofs; And still they rush on, Trampling the stars, Bellowing, Roaring. NYMPHS The drift of shadows on the mountainside, Blue and purple gold! Purple dust sifting through fingers of ivory: Cool purple on ivory breasts. I see arms and breasts, Upturned chins, Slanting through the dust of purple leaves: Ivory and gold, Bare breasts and laughing eyes, That drift on the shadowy surf And surge against the side of the mountain. WINTER DAWN Cloudy dawn flower unfolds; Moon moth gyrates slowly; Snow maiden lets down her hair, And in one shining silence, It slips to earth. THE WALL OF NIGHT SPRINGTIME TOO SOON The moon is a cool rose in a blue bowl. There are no more birds. The last leaf has fallen. The trees in the twilight are naked old women. The moon is an old woman at the door of her tomb. Clouds combed out in the wind Are gray hair she has wound about her neck. The water is an old gray face that mirrors the springtime. STARS Like naked maidens Dancing with no thought of lovers, Blinking stars with dewy silver breasts Pass through the darkness. White and eager, They glide on Toward the gray meshed web of dawn And the mystery of morning. Then, About me, The white cloud walls Stand as sternly as sepulchers, And from all sides Peer and linger the startled faces, Pale in the harshness of the sunlight. NIGHT MUSIC Through the blue water of night Rises the white bubble of silence-- Rises, And breaks: The shivered crystal bell of the moon, Dying away in star splinters. The still mists bear the sound Beyond the horizon. NOCTURNE OF WATER A shining bird plunges to the deep, Becomes entangled with seaweed, And never more emerges. Pale golden feathers drift across the sky, Fire feathered clouds, Riding the weightless billows of back velvet On the horizon. THE LONG MOMENT A white sigh clouds the fields Into quietness. Above the billowed snow I drift, One year, Two years, Three years. Hurt eyes mist in the blue behind me. The moon uncoils in glistening ropes And I glide downward along the dripping rays To a marble lake. DESIGNS I Night Fields of black tulips And swarms of gold bees Drinking their bitter honey. II New Moon Above the gnarled old tree That clings to the bleakest side of the mountain, A torch of ivory and gold; And across the sky, The silver print Of spirit feet, Fled from the wonder. III Tropic Moon The glowing anvil, Beaten by the winds; Star sparks, Burning and dying in the heavens; The furnace glare Red On the polished palm leaves. IV Winter Moon A little white thistle moon Blown over the cold crags and fens: A little white thistle moon Blown across the frozen heather. ARGO White sails Unbillowed by any wind, The moon ship, Among shoals of cloud, Stranded stars, Bare bosoms, And netted hair of light, On the shores of the world. JAPANESE MOON Thick clustered wistaria clouds, A young girl moon in a mist of almond flowers, Boughs and boughs of light; Then a round-faced ivory lady Nodding among fading chrysanthemums. HOT MOON Moon rise. Great gong sounds, shining-- Little feet run away. Loud and solemn, the funeral gong. Little feet run away. THE NAIAD The moon rises, Glistening, Naked white, Out of her stream. Wet marble shoulders Shake star drops on the clouds. FLOODTIDE Across the shadows of the surf The lights of the ship Twinkle despondently. The clinging absorbent gray darkness Sucks them into itself: Drinks the pale golden tears greedily. MOUNTAIN PASS IN AUGUST Night scatters grapes for the harvest. The moon burns like a leaf. Along the mountain path A thin streak of light Creeps hungrily with its silver belly to the earth. The old hound laps up the shadows. Her teats drip the brighter darkness. CONTEMPORARIES HARMONICS YOUNG MEN Fauns, Eternal pagans, Beautiful and obscene, Leaping through the street With a flicker of hoofs, And a flash of tails, You want dryads And they give you prostitutes. YOUNG GIRLS Your souls are wet flowers, Bathed in kisses and blood. Golden Clyties, The wheel of light Rushes over your breasts. HOUSE SPIRITS Women are flitting around in their shells. Pale dilutions of the waters of the world Come through the windows. Back and forth the women glide in their little waters; Cellar to garret and garret to cellar, Winding in and out under door arches and down passages, They and their spawn, In the shell, In the cavern. You may come in the shell to overpower her, Males, But in the shell, in the shell. She cannot be torn from the shell without dying; And what is the pleasure of intercourse with the dead? AT THE MEETING HOUSE Souls as dry as autumn leaves, The color long since out. The organ plays. The leaves crackle and rustle a little; Then sink down. Old ladies with gray moss on their chins, Old men with camphor and cotton packed around their heads, Thin child spirits, sharp and shrill as whistles. Gray old trees; Gaunt old woods; Souls as dry as leaves After autumn is past. CHRISTIANS Blind, they storm up from the pit. You gave them the force, You, when You poured the measure of agony into them. Didn't You know what it would be, Giving blind people fire? Not gold and red and amber fire, But marsh fire. Fire of ice, Suffering forged into suffering! They are coming up now. The sword is uplifted in the hands of the monster. My valiant little puppets, Did you think you could stand out against this? Pierrot and Columbine breeding in the flowers.... There must be no flowers. DEVIL'S CRADLE Black man hanged on a silver tree; (Down by the river, Slow river, White breast, White face with blood on it.) Black man creaks in the wind, Knees slack. Brown poppies, melting in moonlight, Swerve on glistening stems Across an endless field To the music of a blood white face And a tired little devil child Rocked to sleep on a rope. WOMEN Crystal columns, When they bend they crack; Brittle souls, Conforming, yet not conforming-- Mirrors. Masculine souls pass across the mirrors: Whirling, gliding ecstasies-- Retreating, retreating, Dimly, dimly, Like dreams fading across the mirrors. Then the mirrors, Stark and brilliant in the sunshine, Blank as the desert, Blank as the Sphinx, Winking golden eyes in the twinkles of light, Silent, immutable, vacuous infinity, Illimitable capacity for absorption, Absorbing nothing. Have the shapes and the shadows been swallowed up In your recesses without depth, You drinkers of life, Twinkling maliciously Your golden yellow eyes, Mirrors winking in the sunshine? PENELOPE Gray old spinners, Weaving with the crafty fibers of your souls; Nothing was given you but those impalpable threads. Yet you have bound the race, Stranglers, With your silver spun mysteries. All the cruel, All the mad, The foolish, And the beautiful, too: It all belongs to you Since the first time That you began to drop the filmy threads When the world was half asleep. Sometimes you are young girls; Sometimes there are roses in your hair. But I know you-- Sitting back there in the hollow shadows of your wombs. The crafty fibers of your souls Are woven in and out With the fibers of life. POOR PEOPLE'S DREAMS Sometimes women with eyes like wet green berries Glide across the slick mirror of their own smiles And vanish through lengths of gold and marble drawing rooms. The marble smiles, As sensuous as snow; Hips of the Graces; Shoulders of Clytie; Breasts frozen as foam, Frozen as camelia bloom; Mounds of marble flesh, Inexplicable wonder of white.... I dream about statuesque beauties Who look from the shadows of opera boxes; Or elegant ladies in novels of eighteen thirty, At the hunt ball... Reflections in a polish floor, A portrait by Renoir, A Degas dancing girl, English country houses, An autumn afternoon in the Bois, Something I have read of... In sleep one vision retreating through another, Like mirrors being doors to other mirrors, Satin, and lace, and white shoulders, And elegant ladies, Dancing, dancing. FOR WIVES AND MISTRESSES Death, Being a woman, Being passive like all final things, Being a mother, Waits. Shining faces Gray and melt into her flesh. Death envies those asleep in her, Little children who have come back, Fiery faces, Bright for a moment in the darkness, Extinguished softly in her womb. PORTRAITS PORTRAIT OF RICH OLD LADY Old lady talks, Spins from her lips Warp and woof Of teapots, tables, napery, Sanitary toilets, Old bedsteads, pictures on walls, And fine lace, Spins a cocoon of this secondary life. Warm and snug is old lady's belly. Old lady makes Venus Aphrodite Parvenue. Old lady Arranges places for courtesans In warm outbuildings on back streets. NIGGER Nigger with flat cheeks and swollen purple lips; Nigger with loose red tongue; Flat browed nigger, Your skull peaked at the zenith, The stretched glistening skin Covered with tight coiled springs of hair: I am up here cold. I am white man. You are still warm and sweet With the darkness you were born in. THE MAIDEN MOTHER He has a squat body, Glowering brows, And bulging eyes. Lustful contemplation of the meat pie Is written all over his sweating face. The thin woman with the meek voice, Who has carried him so long in her body And despairs of giving him birth, Watches over him in secret With bitter and resentful tenderness. A PIOUS WOMAN You can bury your face in her thick soul of cotton batting And smell candle wax and church incense. When she dies she must be burned. Laid in the ground she would only soak up moisture And get soggy, As now she has a way of soaking up tears Never meant for her. A VERY OLD ROSE JAR She ran across the lawn after the cat And I saw through the old maid, as through a shadow, A young girl in a white muslin dress running to meet her lover. There was clashing of cymbals, And the flash of nereids' arms in autumn leaves. A sharp high note died out like an ascending light. Something sweet and wanton faded from the old maid's lips-- Something of Pierrot chasing after love, A bacchante dying in her sleep, A shadow, And a gray cat. THE NIXIE He lies in cool shadows safe under rocks, His eyes brown stones, Worn smooth and soft, But uncrumbled. He reaches forth covert child-claws To tickle the silver bellies of the little blind fish As they swim secretly above him. He laughs-- The school splinters, panic stricken. As we stare through the lucid gold water He gazes up at us from his shadowy retreat In combative safety. There are times when he pretends to himself that he is a god, Water god, land god, god-in-the-sky. We cannot laugh at his grotesquerie. We are wistful before the pathetic gallantries of his imagination. OLD LADIES' VALHALLA I am thinking of a little house, A pretty gray silk dress, And a little maid with a tidy white apron. I am thinking of thin yellow angels Flying out of Sevres china tea cups, And a cool spirit with slanting green eyes, Who peers at me through the screen of plants I have placed in the corner between the hearth and the window. I am thinking of the peace in one's own little home When the afternoon sunshine drips on the shiny floor, And the rugs are in order, And the roses in the bowl plunge into shadow Like pink nymphs into a pool, While there is no sound to be heard above the hum of the teakettle Save the benevolent buzzing of flies in the clean sash curtain. PORTRAITS OF POETS I (For L. R.) To rush over dark waters, A swift bird with cruel talons; To seize life-- Your life for her-- To hold it, Hold it struggling-- To kiss it. II Crystal self-containment, Giving out only what is sent. Startled, The circumference retreats As it mounts higher, flamelike, Still and clear without radiance, Ascending without self-explanation. A skeleton falls apart With the dignity of comprehensible pathos, The bones bleached by denial. III With the impalpable lightness of May breezes Begins a battle of flower petals: Cowering in the primrose whirlwind his lips have blown, The little grotesque with the shattered heart, Fearful, Yet sinister in his fearfulness. THEODORE DREISER The man body jumbled out of the earth, half formed, Clay on the feet, Heavy with the lingering might of chaos. The man face so high above the feet As if lonesome for them like a child. The veins that beat heavily with the music they but half understood Coil languidly around the heart And lave it in the death stream Of a grand impersonal benignance. PIETA The child-- Warm chubby thighs, Fat brown arms, An unsurprised face-- Cries for jam. The mother buys him with jam. An old woman, Tottering on lean leather skinned legs, Sucks with glazing eyes The crystal silken milk That flows from the death wound In a young flower-soft, jewel-soft body. BRAZIL THROUGH A MIST THE RANCH TROPICAL LIFE White flower, Your petals float away But I hardly hear them. TWENTY-FOUR HOURS The day is so long and white, A road all dust, Smooth monotony; And the night at the end, A hill to be climbed, Slowly, laboriously, While the stars prick our hands Like thistles. RAINY SEASON A flock of parrakeets Hurled itself through the mist; Harsh wild green And clamor-tongued Through the dim white forest. They vanished, And the lips of Silence Sucked at the roots of Life. MAIL ON THE RANCH The old man on the mule Opens the worn saddle bags, And takes out the papers. From the outer world The thoughts come stabbing, To taunt, baffle, and stir me to revolt. I beat against the sky, Against the winds of the mountain, But my cries, grown thin in all this space, Are diluted with emptiness... Like the air, Thin and wide, Touching everything, Touching nothing. THE VAMPIRE BAT What was it that came out of the night? What was it that went away in the night? The little brown hen is huddled in the fence corner, Eyes already glazing. How should she know what came out of the night, Or what was taken away in the night? A shadow passed across the moon. The wind rustled in the mango trees. And now, in the morning, The little brown hen is huddled in the fence corner, Eyes already glazing; Because a shadow passed across the moon, And the wind rustled in the mango trees. CONSERVATISM The turkeys, Like hoop-skirted old ladies Out walking, Display their solemn propriety. A terrible force, Hungry and destructive, Emanates from their mistily blinking eyes. LITTLE PIGS Little tail quivering, Wrinkled snout thrusting up the mud: He will find God If he keeps on like that. THE SILLY EWE The silly ewe comes smelling up to me. Her tail wriggles without hinges, Both ends of it at once and equal. Yesterday the parrot bit her; Last week the jaguar ate her young one; But experience teaches her nothing. THE SNAKE The chickens are at home in the barnyard, The pigs in the swill, And the flowers in the garden; But where do you belong, With your lacquered coils, O snake? THE YEAR Days and days float by. On the sides of the mountains Blue shadows shift And sift into silence. Morning... The cock crows. There is that rosy glow on the mountain's edge; Jose in the door of his hut; Maria's lace bobbins Tapping, tapping. Evening... The parrot's shrill cry; Pale silver green stars. Night... The ghosts of dead Joses And dead Marias Sitting in the moonlight. Peace-- Depressing, Interminable Peace. BURNING MOUNTAINS I A herder set fire to the grass On the other side of the valley, And now a beautiful Indian woman Bends, whirls, undulates, Tosses her gold braceleted arms into the air-- Then sinks into her gray veil. II Fire, dying in smoke, You stir behind the haze Like a warrior Who threatens in his sleep. VILLA NOVA DA SERRA The mountains are as dull and sodden As drunkards' faces, And the white forgetfulness of rain Is like a delirium. Along the filthy crooked streets of the little town, Street lamps float in pools of mist-- The eyes of children being beaten. RAIN IN THE MOUNTAINS Like inexorable peace, The mists march through the mountains. One by one the grim peaks sink into the cold arms of the unspoken. The little town with the pink and white houses Looses its hold on the ridge of hills And floats among cloud tops. A shaggy donkey, cropping grass in the sequestered church yard, Walks, with a leisurely air, Into a wind driven abyss. TROPICAL WINTER The afternoon is frozen with memories, Radiant as ice. The sun sets amidst the agued trembling of the leaves, Sinking right down through the gold air Into the arms of the sea. The enameled wings of the palm trees Keep shivering, shivering, Beating the gold air thin.... TALK ON THE RANCH It is cold in the circle of mountains, A fireless hearth. The stars drift by like autumn leaves. Only the rustle-- Then, close together, Our talk, For and counter, One grating against the other, Rubs a little fire And we warm each other There in the midst of the hollow clammy circle. LES MALADIES DES PAYS CHAUDS PRIDE OF RACE I saw his young Anglo-Saxon form In its white sailor clothes Cleave through the scampering yellow Latin crowd, As white and clean as the blade of an archangel; And, as he reeled along, gloriously drunk, Those little black and gold dung beetles Seemed to be pushing and racing over his body. DON QUIXOTE SOJOURNS IN RIO DE JANEIRO White roses climb the wall of night. A pale face looks from a window in the sky. O Moon, is it because you have seen her that you are beautiful? Is she happy among the saints? I placed white flowers in the coffin. Are they the blossoms that lie scattered along the horizon, Tangled in your light? Dim stars drop into the sea. So you give my flowers back to me, do you, Bella Dona? I might gather the petals and carry them to Antonietta to trim her hats. So much for life with a little negro milliner In the Rua Chile! CONVENT MUSINGS Eleven thousand white-faced virgins in the sky. The eyes of Our Lady Smiling through a rift of cloud. I see Sister Maria da Gloria's fat shadow Pass across the whitewashed wall by the window.... Eleven thousand white-faced virgins-- Stars from a broken rosary-- The Southern Cross-- Thrum, thrum, my fingers on the bench. I sometimes think of God As an enormous emptiness Into which we must all enter at last, Our Lady forgive me. GUITARRA "An orange tree without fruit, So am I without loves," His heavy lidded eyes sang up to her. Her glance dropped on her golden globe of breast, And on the baby. NOVEMBER Foreign sailors in the streets Are as sad a sight as wild geese in the winter-- There was one boy with those strange young blue eyes Who looked at me; And a long, long time after he had passed The light of his soul got to me-- So long on the way-- Like the light of a dead star. What makes you look so lonesome, Blue Eyes? THE COMING OF CHRIST THE DEATH OF COLUMBINE DUET Pierrot sings. The moon, a clown like himself, Stares down upon him With vacuous tenderness. For a moment the night is filled with rice powder And spangled gauze. Then two shades embracing each other Find in their arms Only the darkness. FROM A MAN DYING ON A CROSS The pains in my palms are threads of sightless fire Drawn like fiery veins through blackened marble walls, Crashing with a dull roar To the ends of the earth. Winey peace.... My sick blood purrs. Milky bosoms float through red hair, Gaunt faces and sick eyes Beside her face. I debauch them with my forgiveness. Only her, I cannot forgive. Moonlight trembles as the silk of her garment, Perfumed silk. The cross makes a long harsh shadow Rigid on the sand. Her white feet stir across the shadow. LAGNIAPPE You in the quiet garden, You with the death sweet smile, Before you speak of love to me Go out and hate awhile. The kind devil Has a tolerant grin. He flings the golden gates out wide And lets poor people in. He warms them in his bosom And guards their pain. He shows them hell fields that are bright And skies gentle with rain. But up in paradise The stern Lord is wise, And Michael with his flaming sword Puts out the angels' eyes. HAIL MARY! Pierrette is dead! Between her narrow little breasts They have laid a cross of lead. Her tight pale lips are sunken. Her fleshless fingers clutch the pall. Why did she have to die like that, And she so small? THE DEATH OF COLUMBINE White breast beaten in sea waves, Hair tangled in foam, Lonely sky, Desolate horizon, Pale and shining clouds: All this desolate and shining sea is no place for you, My dead Columbine. And the waves will bite your breast; And the wind, that does not know death from life, Will leap upon you and leer into your eyes And suck at your dead lips. Oh, my little Columbine, You go farther and farther away from me, Out where there are no ships And the solemn clouds Soar across the somber horizon. PIERROT LAUGHS You are old, Pierrot, But I do not laugh As in harlequinade You totter down the path. Now you are old, Pierrot, And drool to your guitar, I do not cast you off. Though your love songs are as feeble as a winter fly's I do not scoff. Exultant I cast back on you What you gave me, And bind you with the unasked love That has kept me from being free! THE TRANSMIGRATION OF CALIBAN Once I had a little brother, An ugly little brother that was I. I was still in the nursery When they nailed him to a clean white cross, And said he was dead. He flapped there all day, Thin and stiff as a jumping jack. But when I had gone to bed, And the lights were out, And the muslin curtains rustled in white secrecy, And through the thin brown glass like onion skin I could see the bright moon sag to the tree tops With a heaviness I dimly understood, While the haggard branches gauntly strained, As useless to the moon as she to them, I was rocked in an orange and umber cradle, A rosy bubble light with fireshine Floating atop the cold, And my little brother was burning merrily, His twisted figure A writhing grotesque. Yet his face never moved And never burnt up. And when I had drifted asleep I still saw it Like a reflection trapped in a mirror. And I couldn't brush it out! I couldn't brush it out! GUNDRY There are little blood flecks on the snow. There is blood in the heart of the white hyacinth. I saw her pale body harsh as a flash of lightning Between the gray torsos of the trees. She had a little child. She held a little child in her breast. She went quickly through the dim forest. I have seen her feet. They are as white as ivory. Where she ran there are little red tracks. And it is not yet springtime! VIENNESE WALTZ Dresden china shepherdesses Whirl in the silver sunshine: Columbine stars Float in gauze petticoats of light.... Little Columbine ghosts, wrinkled and old, Smelling of jasmine and camphor: Prim arms folded over immaculate breasts.... The pirouetting tune dies.... Stars and little faded faces, Waltzing, waltzing, Shoot slowly downward On tinkling music, Dusty little flowers Sinking into oblivion. After the music, Quiet, The glacial period renewed, Monsters on earth, A mad conflagration of worlds on ardent nights-- These too vanishing-- Silence unending. RESURRECTION IMMORTALITY Death is a child of stone. Death is a little white stone goat. The little goat child dances motionless. Little kid feet make a circle around the world: Bas-relief of Death, Little stone goats capering across the clouds. Perhaps Death is nearest in the spring. Then Her flower clouds the woods with white blossoms, Apple blossoms, quince blossoms, Pear snow. These are the flowers that drift in the hair of the dead. The sun shines on stone eyelids That melt with light. This smile is a pale happiness; It glows motionless On the rocky hillside and the long stems of trees. There are no shadows in this happy light: The glow beat by little goat hoofs Chiseled across the clouds in motionless delight, While suns fade behind crumbling hillsides And hungry illusions vanish In generation after generation. AUTUMN NIGHT The moon is as complacent as a frog. She sits in the sky like a blind white stone, And does not even see Love As she caresses his face with her contemptuous light. She reaches her long white shivering fingers Into the bowels of men. Her tender superfluous probing into all that pollutes Is like the immodesty of the mad. She is a mad woman holding up her dress So that her white belly shines. Haughty, Impregnable, Ridiculous, Silent and white as a debauched queen, Her ecstasy is that of a cold and sensual child. She is Death enjoying Life, Innocently, Lasciviously. VENUS' FLY TRAP A wax bubble moon trembles on the honey-blue horizon. Softly heated by your breast Pearl wax languorously unfolds her lily lips of mist, Swells about you, Weaves you into herself through each moist pore, Absorbs you deliciously, Destroys you. SUICIDE A dirty little beetle Peers into motionless eyes Transfixed to their depths As by shining needles. Limbs are taut in ultimate resentment. A bare sky confronts an upturned face. Like a wheel vanishing in speed The corpse, containing everything, Has swallowed itself. LEAVES I The women hold a child up for a shield, And speak of it tenderly, Seeing it bloody. II The lovers throw back the scented coverlet And are afraid. Seeing Death in their own nakedness, They shroud it with flowers. III The corpse was stiff like an arrow. As they carried it past the onlookers It pierced the crowd with its life. Blank white faces floated back In terror of its vividness. IV The man was dead. It was seen to that he was buried. Again and again they dug the bones up, But when they could no longer find the bones They groped for the proof of death In fear of the resurrection. ALLEGRO (At the Cemetery) The mounds stir in the sunshine. Bones clack a light staccato. Bare wrist bones, Thigh bones, Ankle bones, Kick the soil loose. Moldy draperies flutter back and forth through the light. The trees have put on a thin green pretense. Even the soil pretends to fecundity. Toothless jaws widen in a smile of real mirth. Bones lightened of flesh Flash in the sunshine. And afterward The dead rest in the spring night, Each in a silence molded to him, Each in his own night, A casket with a spangled lining. The dead rest deep in their happiness. 
4549	----	ARTEMIS TO ACTAEON AND OTHER VERSE BY EDITH WHARTON NEW YORK 1909 CONTENTS Part I-- ARTEMIS TO ACTAEON LIFE VESALIUS IN ZANTE MARGARET OF CORTONA A TORCHBEARER Part II-- THE MORTAL LEASE EXPERIENCE GRIEF CHARTRES TWO BACKGROUNDS THE TOMB OF ILARIA GIUNIGI THE ONE GRIEF THE EUMENIDES Part III-- ORPHEUS AN AUTUMN SUNSET MOONRISE OVER TYRINGHAM ALL SOULS ALL SAINTS THE OLD POLE STAR A GRAVE NON DOLET! A HUNTING-SONG SURVIVAL USES A MEETING I ARTEMIS TO ACTAEON THOU couldst not look on me and live: so runs The mortal legend--thou that couldst not live Nor look on me (so the divine decree)! That saw'st me in the cloud, the wave, the bough, The clod commoved with April, and the shapes Lurking 'twixt lid and eye-ball in the dark. Mocked I thee not in every guise of life, Hid in girls' eyes, a naiad in her well, Wooed through their laughter, and like echo fled, Luring thee down the primal silences Where the heart hushes and the flesh is dumb? Nay, was not I the tide that drew thee out Relentlessly from the detaining shore, Forth from the home-lights and the hailing voices, Forth from the last faint headland's failing line, Till I enveloped thee from verge to verge And hid thee in the hollow of my being? And still, because between us hung the veil, The myriad-tinted veil of sense, thy feet Refused their rest, thy hands the gifts of life, Thy heart its losses, lest some lesser face Should blur mine image in thine upturned soul Ere death had stamped it there. This was thy thought. And mine? The gods, they say, have all: not so! This have they--flocks on every hill, the blue Spirals of incense and the amber drip Of lucid honey-comb on sylvan shrines, First-chosen weanlings, doves immaculate, Twin-cooing in the osier-plaited cage, And ivy-garlands glaucous with the dew: Man's wealth, man's servitude, but not himself! And so they pale, for lack of warmth they wane, Freeze to the marble of their images, And, pinnacled on man's subserviency, Through the thick sacrificial haze discern Unheeding lives and loves, as some cold peak Through icy mists may enviously descry Warm vales unzoned to the all-fruitful sun. So they along an immortality Of endless-envistaed homage strain their gaze, If haply some rash votary, empty-urned, But light of foot, with all-adventuring hand, Break rank, fling past the people and the priest, Up the last step, on to the inmost shrine, And there, the sacred curtain in his clutch, Drop dead of seeing--while the others prayed! Yes, this we wait for, this renews us, this Incarnates us, pale people of your dreams, Who are but what you make us, wood or stone, Or cold chryselephantine hung with gems, Or else the beating purpose of your life, Your sword, your clay, the note your pipe pursues, The face that haunts your pillow, or the light Scarce visible over leagues of labouring sea! _O thus through use to reign again, to drink_ _The cup of peradventure to the lees,_ _For one dear instant disimmortalised_ _In giving immortality!_ So dream the gods upon their listless thrones. Yet sometimes, when the votary appears, With death-affronting forehead and glad eyes, _Too young_, they rather muse, _too frail thou art,_ _And shall we rob some girl of saffron veil_ _And nuptial garland for so slight a thing?_ And so to their incurious loves return. Not so with thee; for some indeed there are Who would behold the truth and then return To pine among the semblances--but I Divined in thee the questing foot that never Revisits the cold hearth of yesterday Or calls achievement home. I from afar Beheld thee fashioned for one hour's high use, Nor meant to slake oblivion drop by drop. Long, long hadst thou inhabited my dreams, Surprising me as harts surprise a pool, Stealing to drink at midnight; I divined Thee rash to reach the heart of life, and lie Bosom to bosom in occasion's arms. And said: _Because I love thee thou shalt die!_ For immortality is not to range Unlimited through vast Olympian days, Or sit in dull dominion over time; But this--to drink fate's utmost at a draught, Nor feel the wine grow stale upon the lip, To scale the summit of some soaring moment, Nor know the dulness of the long descent, To snatch the crown of life and seal it up Secure forever in the vaults of death! And this was thine: to lose thyself in me, Relive in my renewal, and become The light of other lives, a quenchless torch Passed on from hand to hand, till men are dust And the last garland withers from my shrine. LIFE NAY, lift me to thy lips, Life, and once more Pour the wild music through me-- I quivered in the reed-bed with my kind, Rooted in Lethe-bank, when at the dawn There came a groping shape of mystery Moving among us, that with random stroke Severed, and rapt me from my silent tribe, Pierced, fashioned, lipped me, sounding for a voice, Laughing on Lethe-bank--and in my throat I felt the wing-beat of the fledgeling notes, The bubble of godlike laughter in my throat. Such little songs she sang, Pursing her lips to fit the tiny pipe, They trickled from me like a slender spring That strings frail wood-growths on its crystal thread, Nor dreams of glassing cities, bearing ships. She sang, and bore me through the April world Matching the birds, doubling the insect-hum In the meadows, under the low-moving airs, And breathings of the scarce-articulate air When it makes mouths of grasses--but when the sky Burst into storm, and took great trees for pipes, She thrust me in her breast, and warm beneath Her cloudy vesture, on her terrible heart, I shook, and heard the battle. But more oft, Those early days, we moved in charmed woods, Where once, at dusk, she piped against a faun, And one warm dawn a tree became a nymph Listening; and trembled; and Life laughed and passed. And once we came to a great stream that bore The stars upon its bosom like a sea, And ships like stars; so to the sea we came. And there she raised me to her lips, and sent One swift pang through me; then refrained her hand, And whispered: "Hear--" and into my frail flanks, Into my bursting veins, the whole sea poured Its spaces and its thunder; and I feared. We came to cities, and Life piped on me Low calls to dreaming girls, In counting-house windows, through the chink of gold, Flung cries that fired the captive brain of youth, And made the heavy merchant at his desk Curse us for a cracked hurdy-gurdy; Life Mimicked the hurdy-gurdy, and we passed. We climbed the slopes of solitude, and there Life met a god, who challenged her and said: "Thy pipe against my lyre!" But "Wait!" she laughed, And in my live flank dug a finger-hole, And wrung new music from it. Ah, the pain! We climbed and climbed, and left the god behind. We saw the earth spread vaster than the sea, With infinite surge of mountains surfed with snow, And a silence that was louder than the deep; But on the utmost pinnacle Life again Hid me, and I heard the terror in her hair. Safe in new vales, I ached for the old pang, And clamoured "Play me against a god again!" "Poor Marsyas-mortal--he shall bleed thee yet," She breathed and kissed me, stilling the dim need. But evermore it woke, and stabbed my flank With yearnings for new music and new pain. "Another note against another god!" I clamoured; and she answered: "Bide my time. Of every heart-wound I will make a stop, And drink thy life in music, pang by pang, But first thou must yield the notes I stored in thee At dawn beside the river. Take my lips." She kissed me like a lover, but I wept, Remembering that high song against the god, And the old songs slept in me, and I was dumb. We came to cavernous foul places, blind With harpy-wings, and sulphurous with the glare Of sinful furnaces--where hunger toiled, And pleasure gathered in a starveling prey, And death fed delicately on young bones. "Now sing!" cried Life, and set her lips to me. "Here are gods also. Wilt thou pipe for Dis?" My cry was drowned beneath the furnace roar, Choked by the sulphur-fumes; and beast-lipped gods Laughed down on me, and mouthed the flutes of hell. "Now sing!" said Life, reissuing to the stars; And wrung a new note from my wounded side. So came we to clear spaces, and the sea. And now I felt its volume in my heart, And my heart waxed with it, and Life played on me The song of the Infinite. "Now the stars," she said. Then from the utmost pinnacle again She poured me on the wild sidereal stream, And I grew with her great breathings, till we swept The interstellar spaces like new worlds Loosed from the fiery ruin of a star. Cold, cold we rested on black peaks again, Under black skies, under a groping wind; And Life, grown old, hugged me to a numb breast, Pressing numb lips against me. Suddenly A blade of silver severed the black peaks From the black sky, and earth was born again, Breathing and various, under a god's feet. A god! A god! I felt the heart of Life Leap under me, and my cold flanks shook again. He bore no lyre, he rang no challenge out, But Life warmed to him, warming me with her, And as he neared I felt beneath her hands The stab of a new wound that sucked my soul Forth in a new song from my throbbing throat. "His name--his name?" I whispered, but she shed The music faster, and I grew with it, Became a part of it, while Life and I Clung lip to lip, and I from her wrung song As she from me, one song, one ecstasy, In indistinguishable union blent, Till she became the flute and I the player. And lo! the song I played on her was more Than any she had drawn from me; it held The stars, the peaks, the cities, and the sea, The faun's catch, the nymph's tremor, and the heart Of dreaming girls, of toilers at the desk, Apollo's challenge on the sunrise slope, And the hiss of the night-gods mouthing flutes of hell-- All, to the dawn-wind's whisper in the reeds, When Life first came, a shape of mystery, Moving among us, and with random stroke Severed, and rapt me from my silent tribe. All this I wrung from her in that deep hour, While Love stood murmuring: "Play the god, poor grass!" Now, by that hour, I am a mate to thee Forever, Life, however spent and clogged, And tossed back useless to my native mud! Yea, groping for new reeds to fashion thee New instruments of anguish and delight, Thy hand shall leap to me, thy broken reed, Thine ear remember me, thy bosom thrill With the old subjection, then when Love and I Held thee, and fashioned thee, and made thee dance Like a slave-girl to her pipers--yea, thou yet Shalt hear my call, and dropping all thy toys Thou'lt lift me to thy lips, Life, and once more Pour the wild music through me-- VESALIUS IN ZANTE (See note at end) (1564) SET wide the window. Let me drink the day. I loved light ever, light in eye and brain-- No tapers mirrored in long palace floors, Nor dedicated depths of silent aisles, But just the common dusty wind-blown day That roofs earth's millions. O, too long I walked In that thrice-sifted air that princes breathe, Nor felt the heaven-wide jostling of the winds And all the ancient outlawry of earth! Now let me breathe and see. This pilgrimage They call a penance--let them call it that! I set my face to the East to shrive my soul Of mortal sin? So be it. If my blade Once questioned living flesh, if once I tore The pages of the Book in opening it, See what the torn page yielded ere the light Had paled its buried characters--and judge! The girl they brought me, pinioned hand and foot In catalepsy--say I should have known That trance had not yet darkened into death, And held my scalpel. Well, suppose I _knew?_ Sum up the facts--her life against her death. Her life? The scum upon the pools of pleasure Breeds such by thousands. And her death? Perchance The obolus to appease the ferrying Shade, And waft her into immortality. Think what she purchased with that one heart-flutter That whispered its deep secret to my blade! For, just because her bosom fluttered still, It told me more than many rifled graves; Because I spoke too soon, she answered me, Her vain life ripened to this bud of death As the whole plant is forced into one flower, All her blank past a scroll on which God wrote His word of healing--so that the poor flesh, Which spread death living, died to purchase life! Ah, no! The sin I sinned was mine, not theirs. Not _that_ they sent me forth to wash away-- None of their tariffed frailties, but a deed So far beyond their grasp of good or ill That, set to weigh it in the Church's balance, Scarce would they know which scale to cast it in. But I, I know. I sinned against my will, Myself, my soul--the God within the breast: Can any penance wash such sacrilege? When I was young in Venice, years ago, I walked the hospice with a Spanish monk, A solitary cloistered in high thoughts, The great Loyola, whom I reckoned then A mere refurbisher of faded creeds, Expert to edge anew the arms of faith, As who should say, a Galenist, resolved To hold the walls of dogma against fact, Experience, insight, his own self, if need be! Ah, how I pitied him, mine own eyes set Straight in the level beams of Truth, who groped In error's old deserted catacombs And lit his tapers upon empty graves! Ay, but he held his own, the monk--more man Than any laurelled cripple of the wars, Charles's spent shafts; for what he willed he willed, As those do that forerun the wheels of fate, Not take their dust--that force the virgin hours, Hew life into the likeness of themselves And wrest the stars from their concurrences. So firm his mould; but mine the ductile soul That wears the livery of circumstance And hangs obsequious on its suzerain's eye. For who rules now? The twilight-flitting monk, Or I, that took the morning like an Alp? He held his own, I let mine slip from me, The birthright that no sovereign can restore; And so ironic Time beholds us now Master and slave--he lord of half the earth, I ousted from my narrow heritage. For there's the sting! My kingdom knows me not. Reach me that folio--my usurper's title! Fallopius reigning, _vice_--nay, not so: Successor, not usurper. I am dead. My throne stood empty; he was heir to it. Ay, but who hewed his kingdom from the waste, Cleared, inch by inch, the acres for his sowing, Won back for man that ancient fief o' the Church, His body? Who flung Galen from his seat, And founded the great dynasty of truth In error's central kingdom? Ask men that, And see their answer: just a wondering stare To learn things were not always as they are-- The very fight forgotten with the fighter; Already grows the moss upon my grave! Ay, and so meet--hold fast to that, Vesalius. They only, who re-conquer day by day The inch of ground they camped on over-night, Have right of foothold on this crowded earth. I left mine own; he seized it; with it went My name, my fame, my very self, it seems, Till I am but the symbol of a man, The sign-board creaking o'er an empty inn. He names me--true! _Oh, give the door its due_ _I entered by. Only, I pray you, note,_ _Had door been none, a shoulder-thrust of mine_ _Had breached the crazy wall"_--he seems to say. So meet--and yet a word of thanks, of praise, Of recognition that the clue was found, Seized, followed, clung to, by some hand now dust-- Had this obscured his quartering of my shield? How the one weakness stirs again! I thought I had done with that old thirst for gratitude That lured me to the desert years ago. I did my work--and was not that enough? No; but because the idlers sneered and shrugged, The envious whispered, the traducers lied, And friendship doubted where it should have cheered I flung aside the unfinished task, sought praise Outside my soul's esteem, and learned too late That victory, like God's kingdom, is within. (Nay, let the folio rest upon my knee. I do not feel its weight.) Ingratitude? The hurrying traveller does not ask the name Of him who points him on his way; and this Fallopius sits in the mid-heart of me, Because he keeps his eye upon the goal, Cuts a straight furrow to the end in view, Cares not who oped the fountain by the way, But drinks to draw fresh courage for his journey. That was the lesson that Ignatius taught-- The one I might have learned from him, but would not-- That we are but stray atoms on the wind, A dancing transiency of summer eves, Till we become one with our purpose, merged In that vast effort of the race which makes Mortality immortal. _"He that loseth_ _His life shall find it":_ so the Scripture runs. But I so hugged the fleeting self in me, So loved the lovely perishable hours, So kissed myself to death upon their lips, That on one pyre we perished in the end-- A grimmer bonfire than the Church e'er lit! Yet all was well--or seemed so--till I heard That younger voice, an echo of my own, And, like a wanderer turning to his home, Who finds another on the hearth, and learns, Half-dazed, that other is his actual self In name and claim, as the whole parish swears, So strangely, suddenly, stood dispossessed Of that same self I had sold all to keep, A baffled ghost that none would see or hear! _"Vesalius? Who's Vesalius? This Fallopius_ _It is who dragged the Galen-idol down,_ _Who rent the veil of flesh and forced a way_ _Into the secret fortalice of life"_-- Yet it was I that bore the brunt of it! Well, better so! Better awake and live My last brief moment as the man I was, Than lapse from life's long lethargy to death Without one conscious interval. At least I repossess my past, am once again No courtier med'cining the whims of kings In muffled palace-chambers, but the free Friendless Vesalius, with his back to the wall And all the world against him. O, for that Best gift of all, Fallopius, take my thanks-- That, and much more. At first, when Padua wrote: "Master, Fallopius dead, resume again The chair even he could not completely fill, And see what usury age shall take of youth In honours forfeited"--why, just at first, I was quite simply credulously glad To think the old life stood ajar for me, Like a fond woman's unforgetting heart. But now that death waylays me--now I know This isle is the circumference of my days, And I shall die here in a little while-- So also best, Fallopius! For I see The gods may give anew, but not restore; And though I think that, in my chair again, I might have argued my supplanters wrong In this or that--this Cesalpinus, say, With all his hot-foot blundering in the dark, Fabricius, with his over-cautious clutch On Galen (systole and diastole Of Truth's mysterious heart!)--yet, other ways, It may be that this dying serves the cause. For Truth stays not to build her monument For this or that co-operating hand, But props it with her servants' failures--nay, Cements its courses with their blood and brains, A living substance that shall clinch her walls Against the assaults of time. Already, see, Her scaffold rises on my hidden toil, I but the accepted premiss whence must spring The airy structure of her argument; Nor could the bricks it rests on serve to build The crowning finials. I abide her law: A different substance for a different end-- Content to know I hold the building up; Though men, agape at dome and pinnacles, Guess not, the whole must crumble like a dream But for that buried labour underneath. Yet, Padua, I had still my word to say! _Let others say it!_--Ah, but will they guess Just the one word--? Nay, Truth is many-tongued. What one man failed to speak, another finds Another word for. May not all converge In some vast utterance, of which you and I, Fallopius, were but halting syllables? So knowledge come, no matter how it comes! No matter whence the light falls, so it fall! Truth's way, not mine--that I, whose service failed In action, yet may make amends in praise. Fabricius, Cesalpinus, say your word, Not yours, or mine, but Truth's, as you receive it! You miss a point I saw? See others, then! Misread my meaning? Yet expound your own! Obscure one space I cleared? The sky is wide, And you may yet uncover other stars. For thus I read the meaning of this end: There are two ways of spreading light: to be The candle or the mirror that reflects it. I let my wick burn out--there yet remains To spread an answering surface to the flame That others kindle. Turn me in my bed. The window darkens as the hours swing round; But yonder, look, the other casement glows! Let me face westward as my sun goes down. MARGARET OF CORTONA FRA PAOLO, since they say the end is near, And you of all men have the gentlest eyes, Most like our father Francis; since you know How I have toiled and prayed and scourged and striven, Mothered the orphan, waked beside the sick, Gone empty that mine enemy might eat, Given bread for stones in famine years, and channelled With vigilant knees the pavement of this cell, Till I constrained the Christ upon the wall To bend His thorn-crowned Head in mute forgiveness . . . Three times He bowed it . . . (but the whole stands writ, Sealed with the Bishop's signet, as you know), Once for each person of the Blessed Three-- A miracle that the whole town attests, The very babes thrust forward for my blessing, And either parish plotting for my bones-- Since this you know: sit near and bear with me. I have lain here, these many empty days I thought to pack with Credos and Hail Marys So close that not a fear should force the door-- But still, between the blessed syllables That taper up like blazing angel heads, Praise over praise, to the Unutterable, Strange questions clutch me, thrusting fiery arms, As though, athwart the close-meshed litanies, My dead should pluck at me from hell, with eyes Alive in their obliterated faces! . . . I have tried the saints' names and our blessed Mother's Fra Paolo, I have tried them o'er and o'er, And like a blade bent backward at first thrust They yield and fail me--and the questions stay. And so I thought, into some human heart, Pure, and yet foot-worn with the tread of sin, If only I might creep for sanctuary, It might be that those eyes would let me rest. . . Fra Paolo, listen. How should I forget The day I saw him first? (You know the one.) I had been laughing in the market-place With others like me, I the youngest there, Jostling about a pack of mountebanks Like flies on carrion (I the youngest there!), Till darkness fell; and while the other girls Turned this way, that way, as perdition beckoned, I, wondering what the night would bring, half hoping: _If not, this once, a child's sleep in my garret,_ _At least enough to buy that two-pronged coral_ _The others covet 'gainst the evil eye,_ _Since, after all, one sees that I'm the youngest_-- So, muttering my litany to hell (The only prayer I knew that was not Latin), Felt on my arm a touch as kind as yours, And heard a voice as kind as yours say "Come." I turned and went; and from that day I never Looked on the face of any other man. So much is known; so much effaced; the sin Cast like a plague-struck body to the sea, Deep, deep into the unfathomable pardon-- (The Head bowed thrice, as the whole town attests). What more, then? To what purpose? Bear with me!-- It seems that he, a stranger in the place, First noted me that afternoon and wondered: _How grew so white a bud in such black slime,_ _And why not mine the hand to pluck it out?_ Why, so Christ deals with souls, you cry--what then? Not so! Not so! When Christ, the heavenly gardener, Plucks flowers for Paradise (do I not know?), He snaps the stem above the root, and presses The ransomed soul between two convent walls, A lifeless blossom in the Book of Life. But when my lover gathered me, he lifted Stem, root and all--ay, and the clinging mud-- And set me on his sill to spread and bloom After the common way, take sun and rain, And make a patch of brightness for the street, Though raised above rough fingers--so you make A weed a flower, and others, passing, think: "Next ditch I cross, I'll lift a root from it, And dress my window" . . . and the blessing spreads. Well, so I grew, with every root and tendril Grappling the secret anchorage of his love, And so we loved each other till he died. . . . Ah, that black night he left me, that dead dawn I found him lying in the woods, alive To gasp my name out and his life-blood with it, As though the murderer's knife had probed for me In his hacked breast and found me in each wound. . . Well, it was there Christ came to me, you know, And led me home--just as that other led me. _(Just as that other?_ Father, bear with me!) My lover's death, they tell me, saved my soul, And I have lived to be a light to men. And gather sinners to the knees of grace. All this, you say, the Bishop's signet covers. But stay! Suppose my lover had not died? (At last my question! Father, help me face it.) I say: Suppose my lover had not died-- Think you I ever would have left him living, Even to be Christ's blessed Margaret? --We lived in sin? Why, to the sin I died to That other was as Paradise, when God Walks there at eventide, the air pure gold, And angels treading all the grass to flowers! He was my Christ--he led me out of hell-- He died to save me (so your casuists say!)-- Could Christ do more? Your Christ out-pity mine? Why, _yours_ but let the sinner bathe His feet; Mine raised her to the level of his heart. . . And then Christ's way is saving, as man's way Is squandering--and the devil take the shards! But this man kept for sacramental use The cup that once had slaked a passing thirst; This man declared: "The same clay serves to model A devil or a saint; the scribe may stain The same fair parchment with obscenities, Or gild with benedictions; nay," he cried, "Because a satyr feasted in this wood, And fouled the grasses with carousing foot, Shall not a hermit build his chapel here And cleanse the echoes with his litanies? The sodden grasses spring again--why not The trampled soul? Is man less merciful Than nature, good more fugitive than grass?" And so--if, after all, he had not died, And suddenly that door should know his hand, And with that voice as kind as yours he said: "Come, Margaret, forth into the sun again, Back to the life we fashioned with our hands Out of old sins and follies, fragments scorned Of more ambitious builders, yet by Love, The patient architect, so shaped and fitted That not a crevice let the winter in--" Think you my bones would not arise and walk, This bruised body (as once the bruised soul) Turn from the wonders of the seventh heaven As from the antics of the market-place? If this could be (as I so oft have dreamed), I, who have known both loves, divine and human, Think you I would not leave this Christ for that? --I rave, you say? You start from me, Fra Paolo? Go, then; your going leaves me not alone. I marvel, rather, that I feared the question, Since, now I name it, it draws near to me With such dear reassurance in its eyes, And takes your place beside me. . . Nay, I tell you, Fra Paolo, I have cried on all the saints-- If this be devil's prompting, let them drown it In Alleluias! Yet not one replies. And, for the Christ there--is He silent too? _Your_ Christ? Poor father; you that have but one, And that one silent--how I pity you! He will not answer? Will not help you cast The devil out? But hangs there on the wall, Blind wood and bone--? How if _I_ call on Him-- I, whom He talks with, as the town attests? If ever prayer hath ravished me so high That its wings failed and dropped me in Thy breast, Christ, I adjure Thee! By that naked hour Of innermost commixture, when my soul Contained Thee as the paten holds the host, Judge Thou alone between this priest and me; Nay, rather, Lord, between my past and present, Thy Margaret and that other's--whose she is By right of salvage--and whose call should follow! Thine? Silent still.--Or his, who stooped to her, And drew her to Thee by the bands of love? Not Thine? Then his? Ah, Christ--the thorn-crowned Head Bends . . . bends again . . . down on your knees, Fra Paolo! If his, then Thine! Kneel, priest, for this is heaven. . . A TORCHBEARER GREAT cities rise and have their fall; the brass That held their glories moulders in its turn. Hard granite rots like an uprooted weed, And ever on the palimpsest of earth Impatient Time rubs out the word he writ. But one thing makes the years its pedestal, Springs from the ashes of its pyre, and claps A skyward wing above its epitaph-- The will of man willing immortal things. The ages are but baubles hung upon The thread of some strong lives--and one slight wrist May lift a century above the dust; For Time, The Sisyphean load of little lives, Becomes the globe and sceptre of the great. But who are these that, linking hand in hand, Transmit across the twilight waste of years The flying brightness of a kindled hour? Not always, nor alone, the lives that search How they may snatch a glory out of heaven Or add a height to Babel; oftener they That in the still fulfilment of each day's Pacific order hold great deeds in leash, That in the sober sheath of tranquil tasks Hide the attempered blade of high emprise, And leap like lightning to the clap of fate. So greatly gave he, nurturing 'gainst the call Of one rare moment all the daily store Of joy distilled from the acquitted task, And that deliberate rashness which bespeaks The pondered action passed into the blood; So swift to harden purpose into deed That, with the wind of ruin in his hair, Soul sprang full-statured from the broken flesh, And at one stroke he lived the whole of life, Poured all in one libation to the truth, A brimming flood whose drops shall overflow On deserts of the soul long beaten down By the brute hoof of habit, till they spring In manifold upheaval to the sun. Call here no high artificer to raise His wordy monument--such lives as these Make death a dull misnomer and its pomp An empty vesture. Let resounding lives Re-echo splendidly through high-piled vaults And make the grave their spokesman--such as he Are as the hidden streams that, underground, Sweeten the pastures for the grazing kine, Or as spring airs that bring through prison bars The scent of freedom; or a light that burns Immutably across the shaken seas, Forevermore by nameless hands renewed, Where else were darkness and a glutted shore. II THE MORTAL LEASE I BECAUSE the currents of our love are poured Through the slow welter of the primal flood From some blind source of monster-haunted mud, And flung together by random forces stored Ere the vast void with rushing worlds was scored-- Because we know ourselves but the dim scud Tossed from their heedless keels, the sea-blown bud That wastes and scatters ere the wave has roared-- Because we have this knowledge in our veins, Shall we deny the journey's gathered lore-- The great refusals and the long disdains, The stubborn questing for a phantom shore, The sleepless hopes and memorable pains, And all mortality's immortal gains? II Because our kiss is as the moon to draw The mounting waters of that red-lit sea That circles brain with sense, and bids us be The playthings of an elemental law, Shall we forego the deeper touch of awe On love's extremest pinnacle, where we, Winging the vistas of infinity, Gigantic on the mist our shadows saw? Shall kinship with the dim first-moving clod Not draw the folded pinion from the soul, And shall we not, by spirals vision-trod, Reach upward to some still-retreating goal, As earth, escaping from the night's control, Drinks at the founts of morning like a god? III All, all is sweet in that commingled draught Mysterious, that life pours for lovers' thirst, And I would meet your passion as the first Wild woodland woman met her captor's craft, Or as the Greek whose fearless beauty laughed And doffed her raiment by the Attic flood; But in the streams of my belated blood Flow all the warring potions love has quaffed. How can I be to you the nymph who danced Smooth by Ilissus as the plane-tree's bole, Or how the Nereid whose drenched lashes glanced Like sea-flowers through the summer sea's long roll-- I that have also been the nun entranced Who night-long held her Bridegroom in her soul? IV "Sad Immortality is dead," you say, "And all her grey brood banished from the soul; Life, like the earth, is now a rounded whole, The orb of man's dominion. Live to-day." And every sense in me leapt to obey, Seeing the routed phantoms backward roll; But from their waning throng a whisper stole, And touched the morning splendour with decay. "Sad Immortality is dead; and we The funeral train that bear her to her grave. Yet hath she left a two-faced progeny In hearts of men, and some will always see The skull beneath the wreath, yet always crave In every kiss the folded kiss to be." V Yet for one rounded moment I will be No more to you than what my lips may give, And in the circle of your kisses live As in some island of a storm-blown sea, Where the cold surges of infinity Upon the outward reefs unheeded grieve, And the loud murmur of our blood shall weave Primeval silences round you and me. If in that moment we are all we are We live enough. Let this for all requite. Do I not know, some winged things from far Are borne along illimitable night To dance their lives out in a single flight Between the moonrise and the setting star? VI The Moment came, with sacramental cup Lifted--and all the vault of life grew bright With tides of incommensurable light-- But tremblingly I turned and covered up My face before the wonder. Down the slope I heard her feet in irretrievable flight, And when I looked again, my stricken sight Saw night and rain in a dead world agrope. Now walks her ghost beside me, whispering With lips derisive: "Thou that wouldst forego-- What god assured thee that the cup I bring Globes not in every drop the cosmic show, All that the insatiate heart of man can wring From life's long vintage?--Now thou shalt not know." VII Shall I not know? I, that could always catch The sunrise in one beam along the wall, The nests of June in April's mating call, And ruinous autumn in the wind's first snatch At summer's green impenetrable thatch-- That always knew far off the secret fall Of a god's feet across the city's brawl, The touch of silent fingers on my latch? Not thou, vain Moment! Something more than thou Shall write the score of what mine eyes have wept, The touch of kisses that have missed my brow, The murmur of wings that brushed me while I slept, And some mute angel in the breast even now Measures my loss by all that I have kept. VIII Strive we no more. Some hearts are like the bright Tree-chequered spaces, flecked with sun and shade, Where gathered in old days the youth and maid To woo, and weave their dances: with the night They cease their flutings, and the next day's light Finds the smooth green unconscious of their tread, And ready its velvet pliancies to spread Under fresh feet, till these in turn take flight. But other hearts a long long road doth span, From some far region of old works and wars, And the weary armies of the thoughts of man Have trampled it, and furrowed it with scars, And sometimes, husht, a sacred caravan Moves over it alone, beneath the stars. EXPERIENCE I LIKE Crusoe with the bootless gold we stand Upon the desert verge of death, and say: "What shall avail the woes of yesterday To buy to-morrow's wisdom, in the land Whose currency is strange unto our hand? In life's small market they had served to pay Some late-found rapture, could we but delay Till Time hath matched our means to our demand." But otherwise Fate wills it, for, behold, Our gathered strength of individual pain, When Time's long alchemy hath made it gold, Dies with us--hoarded all these years in vain, Since those that might be heir to it the mould Renew, and coin themselves new griefs again. II O Death, we come full-handed to thy gate, Rich with strange burden of the mingled years, Gains and renunciations, mirth and tears, And love's oblivion, and remembering hate. Nor know we what compulsion laid such freight Upon our souls--and shall our hopes and fears Buy nothing of thee, Death? Behold our wares, And sell us the one joy for which we wait. Had we lived longer, life had such for sale, With the last coin of sorrow purchased cheap, But now we stand before thy shadowy pale, And all our longings lie within thy keep-- Death, can it be the years shall naught avail? "Not so," Death answered, "they shall purchase sleep." GRIEF I ON immemorial altitudes august Grief holds her high dominion. Bold the feet That climb unblenching to that stern retreat Whence, looking down, man knows himself but dust. There lie the mightiest passions, earthward thrust Beneath her regnant footstool, and there meet Pale ghosts of buried longings that were sweet, With many an abdicated "shall" and "must." For there she rules omnipotent, whose will Compels a mute acceptance of her chart; Who holds the world, and lo! it cannot fill Her mighty hand; who will be served apart With uncommunicable rites, and still Surrender of the undivided heart. II She holds the world within her mighty hand, And lo! it is a toy for babes to toss, And all its shining imagery but dross, To those that in her awful presence stand; As sun-confronting eagles o'er the land That lies below, they send their gaze across The common intervals of gain and loss, And hope's infinitude without a strand. But he who, on that lonely eminence, Watches too long the whirling of the spheres Through dim eternities, descending thence The voices of his kind no longer hears, And, blinded by the spectacle immense, Journeys alone through all the after years. CHARTRES I IMMENSE, august, like some Titanic bloom, The mighty choir unfolds its lithic core, Petalled with panes of azure, gules and or, Splendidly lambent in the Gothic gloom, And stamened with keen flamelets that illume The pale high-altar. On the prayer-worn floor, By worshippers innumerous thronged of yore, A few brown crones, familiars of the tomb, The stranded driftwood of Faith's ebbing sea-- For these alone the finials fret the skies, The topmost bosses shake their blossoms free, While from the triple portals, with grave eyes, Tranquil, and fixed upon eternity, The cloud of witnesses still testifies. II The crimson panes like blood-drops stigmatise The western floor. The aisles are mute and cold. A rigid fetich in her robe of gold, The Virgin of the Pillar, with blank eyes, Enthroned beneath her votive canopies, Gathers a meagre remnant to her fold. The rest is solitude; the church, grown old, Stands stark and grey beneath the burning skies. Well-nigh again its mighty framework grows To be a part of nature's self, withdrawn From hot humanity's impatient woes; The floor is ridged like some rude mountain lawn, And in the east one giant window shows The roseate coldness of an Alp at dawn. TWO BACKGROUNDS I LA VIERGE AU DONATEUR HERE by the ample river's argent sweep, Bosomed in tilth and vintage to her walls, A tower-crowned Cybele in armoured sleep The city lies, fat plenty in her halls, With calm parochial spires that hold in fee The friendly gables clustered at their base, And, equipoised o'er tower and market-place, The Gothic minister's winged immensity; And in that narrow burgh, with equal mood, Two placid hearts, to all life's good resigned, Might, from the altar to the lych-gate, find Long years of peace and dreamless plenitude. II MONA LISA Yon strange blue city crowns a scarped steep No mortal foot hath bloodlessly essayed: Dreams and illusions beacon from its keep. But at the gate an Angel bares his blade; And tales are told of those who thought to gain At dawn its ramparts; but when evening fell Far off they saw each fading pinnacle Lit with wild lightnings from the heaven of pain; Yet there two souls, whom life's perversities Had mocked with want in plenty, tears in mirth, Might meet in dreams, ungarmented of earth, And drain Joy's awful chalice to the lees. THE TOMB OF ILARIA GIUNIGI ILARIA, thou that wert so fair and dear That death would fain disown thee, grief made wise With prophecy thy husband's widowed eyes, And bade him call the master's art to rear Thy perfect image on the sculptured bier, With dreaming lids, hands laid in peaceful guise Beneath the breast that seems to fall and rise, And lips that at love's call should answer "Here!" First-born of the Renascence, when thy soul Cast the sweet robing of the flesh aside, Into these lovelier marble limbs it stole, Regenerate in art's sunrise clear and wide, As saints who, having kept faith's raiment whole, Change it above for garments glorified. THE ONE GRIEF ONE grief there is, the helpmeet of my heart, That shall not from me till my days be sped, That walks beside me in sunshine and in shade, And hath in all my fortunes equal part. At first I feared it, and would often start Aghast to find it bending o'er my bed, Till usage slowly dulled the edge of dread, And one cold night I cried: _How warm thou art!_ Since then we two have travelled hand in hand, And, lo, my grief has been interpreter For me in many a fierce and alien land Whose speech young Joy had failed to understand, Plucking me tribute of red gold and myrrh From desolate whirlings of the desert sand. THE EUMENIDES THINK you we slept within the Delphic bower, What time our victim sought Apollo's grace? Nay, drawn into ourselves, in that deep place Where good and evil meet, we bode our hour. For not inexorable is our power. And we are hunted of the prey we chase, Soonest gain ground on them that flee apace, And draw temerity from hearts that cower. Shuddering we gather in the house of ruth, And on the fearful turn a face of fear, But they to whom the ways of doom are clear Not vainly named us the Eumenides. Our feet are faithful in the paths of truth, And in the constant heart we house at peace. III ORPHEUS _Love will make men dare to die for their beloved. . . Of this Alcestis is a monument . . . for she was willing to lay down her life for her husband . . . and so noble did this appear to the gods that they granted her the privilege of returning to earth . . . but Orpheus, the son of OEagrus, they sent empty away. . ._ --PLATO: _The Symposium._ ORPHEUS the Harper, coming to the gate Where the implacable dim warder sate, Besought for parley with a shade within, Dearer to him than life itself had been, Sweeter than sunlight on Illyrian sea, Or bloom of myrtle, or murmur of laden bee, Whom lately from his unconsenting breast The Fates, at some capricious blind behest, Intolerably had reft--Eurydice, Dear to the sunlight as Illyrian sea, Sweet as the murmur of bees, or myrtle bloom-- And uncompanioned led her to the tomb. There, solitary by the Stygian tide, Strayed her dear feet, the shadow of his own, Since, 'mid the desolate millions who have died, Each phantom walks its crowded path alone; And there her head, that slept upon his breast, No more had such sweet harbour for its rest, Nor her swift ear from those disvoiced throats Could catch one echo of his living notes, And, dreaming nightly of her pallid doom, No solace had he of his own young bloom, But yearned to pour his blood into her veins And buy her back with unimagined pains. To whom the Shepherd of the Shadows said: "Yea, many thus would bargain for their dead; But when they hear my fatal gateway clang Life quivers in them with a last sweet pang. They see the smoke of home above the trees, The cordage whistles on the harbour breeze; The beaten path that wanders to the shore Grows dear because they shall not tread it more, The dog that drowsing on their threshold lies Looks at them with their childhood in his eyes, And in the sunset's melancholy fall They read a sunrise that shall give them all." "Not thus am I," the Harper smiled his scorn. "I see no path but those her feet have worn; My roof-tree is the shadow of her hair, And the light breaking through her long despair The only sunrise that mine eyelids crave; For doubly dead without me in the grave Is she who, if my feet had gone before, Had found life dark as death's abhorred shore." The gate clanged on him, and he went his way Amid the alien millions, mute and grey, Swept like a cold mist down an unlit strand, Where nameless wreckage gluts the stealthy sand, Drift of the cockle-shells of hope and faith Wherein they foundered on the rock of death. So came he to the image that he sought (Less living than her semblance in his thought), Who, at the summons of his thrilling notes, Drew back to life as a drowned creature floats Back to the surface; yet no less is dead. And cold fear smote him till she spoke and said: "Art thou then come to lay thy lips on mine, And pour thy life's libation out like wine? Shall I, through thee, revisit earth again, Traverse the shining sea, the fruitful plain, Behold the house we dwelt in, lay my head Upon the happy pillows of our bed, And feel in dreams the pressure of thine arms Kindle these pulses that no memory warms? Nay: give me for a space upon thy breast Death's shadowy substitute for rapture--rest; Then join again the joyous living throng, And give me life, but give it in thy song; For only they that die themselves may give Life to the dead: and I would have thee live." Fear seized him closer than her arms; but he Answered: "Not so--for thou shalt come with me! I sought thee not that we should part again, But that fresh joy should bud from the old pain; And the gods, if grudgingly their gifts they make, Yield all to them that without asking take." "The gods," she said, "(so runs life's ancient lore) Yield all man takes, but always claim their score. The iron wings of the Eumenides When heard far off seem but a summer breeze; But me thou'lt have alive on earth again Only by paying here my meed of pain. Then lay on my cold lips the tender ghost Of the dear kiss that used to warm them most, Take from my frozen hands thy hands of fire, And of my heart-strings make thee a new lyre, That in thy music men may find my voice, And something of me still on earth rejoice." Shuddering he heard her, but with close-flung arm Swept her resisting through the ghostly swarm. "Swift, hide thee 'neath my cloak, that we may glide Past the dim warder as the gate swings wide." He whirled her with him, lighter than a leaf Unwittingly whirled onward by a brief Autumnal eddy; but when the fatal door Suddenly yielded him to life once more, And issuing to the all-consoling skies He turned to seek the sunlight in her eyes, He clutched at emptiness--she was not there; And the dim warder answered to his prayer: "Only once have I seen the wonder wrought. But when Alcestis thus her master sought, Living she sought him not, nor dreamed that fate For any subterfuge would swing my gate. Loving, she gave herself to livid death, Joyous she bought his respite with her breath, Came, not embodied, but a tenuous shade, In whom her rapture a great radiance made. For never saw I ghost upon this shore Shine with such living ecstasy before, Nor heard an exile from the light above Hail me with smiles: _Thou art not Death but Love!_ "But when the gods, frustrated, this beheld, How, living still, among the dead she dwelled, Because she lived in him whose life she won, And her blood beat in his beneath the sun, They reasoned: 'When the bitter Stygian wave The sweetness of love's kisses cannot lave, When the pale flood of Lethe washes not From mortal mind one high immortal thought, Akin to us the earthly creature grows, Since nature suffers only what it knows. If she whom we to this grey desert banned Still dreams she treads with him the sunlit land That for his sake she left without a tear, Set wide the gates--her being is not here.' "So ruled the gods; but thou, that sought'st to give Thy life for love, yet for thyself wouldst live. They know not for their kin; but back to earth Give, pitying, one that is of mortal birth." Humbled the Harper heard, and turned away, Mounting alone to the empoverished day; Yet, as he left the Stygian shades behind, He heard the cordage on the harbour wind, Saw the blue smoke above the homestead trees, And in his hidden heart was glad of these. AN AUTUMN SUNSET I LEAGUERED in fire The wild black promontories of the coast extend Their savage silhouettes; The sun in universal carnage sets, And, halting higher, The motionless storm-clouds mass their sullen threats, Like an advancing mob in sword-points penned, That, balked, yet stands at bay. Mid-zenith hangs the fascinated day In wind-lustrated hollows crystalline, A wan Valkyrie whose wide pinions shine Across the ensanguined ruins of the fray, And in her hand swings high o'erhead, Above the waste of war, The silver torch-light of the evening star Wherewith to search the faces of the dead. II Lagooned in gold, Seem not those jetty promontories rather The outposts of some ancient land forlorn, Uncomforted of morn, Where old oblivions gather, The melancholy unconsoling fold Of all things that go utterly to death And mix no more, no more With life's perpetually awakening breath? Shall Time not ferry me to such a shore, Over such sailless seas, To walk with hope's slain importunities In miserable marriage? Nay, shall not All things be there forgot, Save the sea's golden barrier and the black Close-crouching promontories? Dead to all shames, forgotten of all glories, Shall I not wander there, a shadow's shade, A spectre self-destroyed, So purged of all remembrance and sucked back Into the primal void, That should we on that shore phantasmal meet I should not know the coming of your feet? MOONRISE OVER TYRINGHAM NOW the high holocaust of hours is done, And all the west empurpled with their death, How swift oblivion drinks the fallen sun, How little while the dusk remembereth! Though some there were, proud hours that marched in mail, And took the morning on auspicious crest, Crying to fortune "Back, for I prevail!"-- Yet now they lie disfeatured with the rest; And some that stole so soft on destiny Methought they had surprised her to a smile; But these fled frozen when she turned to see, And moaned and muttered through my heart awhile. But now the day is emptied of them all, And night absorbs their life-blood at a draught; And so my life lies, as the gods let fall An empty cup from which their lips have quaffed. Yet see--night is not . . . by translucent ways, Up the grey void of autumn afternoon Steals a mild crescent, charioted in haze, And all the air is merciful as June. The lake is a forgotten streak of day That trembles through the hemlocks' darkling bars, And still, my heart, still some divine delay Upon the threshold holds the earliest stars. O pale equivocal hour, whose suppliant feet Haunt the mute reaches of the sleeping wind, Art thou a watcher stealing to entreat Prayer and sepulture for thy fallen kind? Poor plaintive waif of a predestined race, Their ruin gapes for thee. Why linger here? Go hence in silence. Veil thine orphaned face, Lest I should look on it and call it dear. For if I love thee thou wilt sooner die; Some sudden ruin will plunge upon thy head, Midnight will fall from the revengeful sky And hurl thee down among thy shuddering dead. Avert thine eyes. Lapse softly from my sight, Call not my name, nor heed if thine I crave, So shalt thou sink through mitigated night And bathe thee in the all-effacing wave. But upward still thy perilous footsteps fare Along a high-hung heaven drenched in light, Dilating on a tide of crystal air That floods the dark hills to their utmost height. Strange hour, is this thy waning face that leans Out of mid-heaven and makes my soul its glass? What victory is imaged there? What means Thy tarrying smile? Oh, veil thy lips and pass. Nay . . . pause and let me name thee! For I see, O with what flooding ecstasy of light, Strange hour that wilt not loose thy hold on me, Thou'rt not day's latest, but the first of night! And after thee the gold-foot stars come thick, From hand to hand they toss the flying fire, Till all the zenith with their dance is quick About the wheeling music of the Lyre. Dread hour that lead'st the immemorial round, With lifted torch revealing one by one The thronging splendours that the day held bound, And how each blue abyss enshrines its sun-- Be thou the image of a thought that fares Forth from itself, and flings its ray ahead, Leaping the barriers of ephemeral cares, To where our lives are but the ages' tread, And let this year be, not the last of youth, But first--like thee!--of some new train of hours, If more remote from hope, yet nearer truth, And kin to the unpetitionable powers. ALL SOULS I A THIN moon faints in the sky o'erhead, And dumb in the churchyard lie the dead. Walk we not, Sweet, by garden ways, Where the late rose hangs and the phlox delays, But forth of the gate and down the road, Past the church and the yews, to their dim abode. For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night, When the dead can hear and the dead have sight. II Fear not that sound like wind in the trees: It is only their call that comes on the breeze; Fear not the shudder that seems to pass: It is only the tread of their feet on the grass; Fear not the drip of the bough as you stoop: It is only the touch of their hands that grope-- For the year's on the turn and it's All Souls' night, When the dead can yearn and the dead can smite. III And where should a man bring his sweet to woo But here, where such hundreds were lovers too? Where lie the dead lips that thirst to kiss, The empty hands that their fellows miss, Where the maid and her lover, from sere to green, Sleep bed by bed, with the worm between? For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night, When the dead can hear and the dead have sight. IV And now they rise and walk in the cold, Let us warm their blood and give youth to the old. Let them see us and hear us, and say: "Ah, thus In the prime of the year it went with us!" Till their lips drawn close, and so long unkist, Forget they are mist that mingles with mist! For the year's on the turn, and it's All Souls' night, When the dead can burn and the dead can smite. V Till they say, as they hear us--poor dead, poor dead!-- "Just an hour of this, and our age-long bed-- Just a thrill of the old remembered pains To kindle a flame in our frozen veins, A touch, and a sight, and a floating apart, As the chill of dawn strikes each phantom heart-- For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night, When the dead can hear and the dead have sight." VI And where should the living feel alive But here in this wan white humming hive, As the moon wastes down, and the dawn turns cold, And one by one they creep back to the fold? And where should a man hold his mate and say: "One more, one more, ere we go their way"? For the year's on the turn, and it's All Souls' night, When the living can learn by the churchyard light. VII And how should we break faith who have seen Those dead lips plight with the mist between, And how forget, who have seen how soon They lie thus chambered and cold to the moon? How scorn, how hate, how strive, wee too, Who must do so soon as those others do? For it's All Souls' night, and break of the day, And behold, with the light the dead are away. . . ALL SAINTS _ALL so grave and shining see they come_ _From the blissful ranks of the forgiven,_ _Though so distant wheels the nearest crystal dome,_ _And the spheres are seven._ Are you in such haste to come to earth, Shining ones, the Wonder on your brow, To the low poor places of your birth, And the day that must be darkness now? Does the heart still crave the spot it yearned on In the grey and mortal years, The pure flame the smoky hearth it burned on, The clear eye its tears? Was there, in the narrow range of living, After all the wider scope? In the old old rapture of forgiving, In the long long flight of hope? Come you, from free sweep across the spaces, To the irksome bounds of mortal law, From the all-embracing Vision, to some face's Look that never saw? Never we, imprisoned here, had sought you, Lured you with the ancient bait of pain, Down the silver current of the light-years brought you To the beaten round again-- Is it you, perchance, who ache to strain us Dumbly to the dim transfigured breast, Or with tragic gesture would detain us From the age-long search for rest? Is the labour then more glorious than the laurel, The learning than the conquered thought? Is the meed of men the righteous quarrel, Not the justice wrought? Long ago we guessed it, faithful ghosts, Proudly chose the present for our scene, And sent out indomitable hosts Day by day to widen our demesne. Sit you by our hearth-stone, lone immortals, Share again the bitter wine of life! Well we know, beyond the peaceful portals There is nothing better than our strife, Nought more thrilling than the cry that calls us, Spent and stumbling, to the conflict vain, After each disaster that befalls us Nerves us for a sterner strain. And, when flood or foeman shakes the sleeper In his moment's lapse from pain, Bids us fold our tents, and flee our kin, and deeper Drive into the wilderness again. THE OLD POLE STAR BEFORE the clepsydra had bound the days Man tethered Change to his fixed star, and said: "The elder races, that long since are dead, Marched by that light; it swerves not from its base Though all the worlds about it wax and fade." When Egypt saw it, fast in reeling spheres, Her Pyramids shaft-centred on its ray She reared and said: "Long as this star holds sway In uninvaded ether, shall the years Revere my monuments--" and went her way. The Pyramids abide; but through the shaft That held the polar pivot, eye to eye, Look now--blank nothingness! As though Change laughed At man's presumption and his puny craft, The star has slipped its leash and roams the sky. Yet could the immemorial piles be swung A skyey hair's-breadth from their rooted base, Back to the central anchorage of space, Ah, then again, as when the race was young, Should they behold the beacon of the race! Of old, men said: "The Truth is there: we rear Our faith full-centred on it. It was known Thus of the elders who foreran us here, Mapped out its circuit in the shifting sphere, And found it, 'mid mutation, fixed alone." Change laughs again, again the sky is cold, And down that fissure now no star-beam glides. Yet they whose sweep of vision grows not old Still at the central point of space behold Another pole-star: for the Truth abides. A GRAVE THOUGH life should come With all its marshalled honours, trump and drum, To proffer you the captaincy of some Resounding exploit, that shall fill Man's pulses with commemorative thrill, And be a banner to far battle days For truths unrisen upon untrod ways, What would your answer be, O heart once brave? _Seek otherwhere; for me,_ _I watch beside a grave._ Though to some shining festival of thought The sages call you from steep citadel Of bastioned argument, whose rampart gained Yields the pure vision passionately sought, In dreams known well, But never yet in wakefulness attained, How should you answer to their summons, save: _I watch beside a grave?_ Though Beauty, from her fane within the soul Of fire-tongued seers descending, Or from the dream-lit temples of the past With feet immortal wending, Illuminate grief's antre swart and vast With half-veiled face that promises the whole To him who holds her fast, What answer could you give? _Sight of one face I crave,_ _One only while I live;_ _Woo elsewhere; for I watch beside a grave._ Though love of the one heart that loves you best, A storm-tossed messenger, Should beat its wings for shelter in your breast, Where clung its last year's nest, The nest you built together and made fast Lest envious winds should stir, And winged each delicate thought to minister With sweetness far-amassed To the young dreams within-- What answer could it win? _The nest was whelmed in sorrow's rising wave,_ _Nor could I reach one drowning dream to save;_ _I watch beside a grave._ NON DOLET! AGE after age the fruit of knowledge falls To ashes on men's lips; Love fails, faith sickens, like a dying tree Life sheds its dreams that no new spring recalls; The longed-for ships Come empty home or founder on the deep, And eyes first lose their tears and then their sleep. So weary a world it lies, forlorn of day, And yet not wholly dark, Since evermore some soul that missed the mark Calls back to those agrope In the mad maze of hope, "Courage, my brothers--I have found the way!" The day is lost? What then? What though the straggling rear-guard of the fight Be whelmed in fear and night, And the flying scouts proclaim That death has gripped the van-- Ever the heart of man Cheers on the hearts of men! _"It hurts not!"_ dying cried the Roman wife; And one by one The leaders in the strife Fall on the blade of failure and exclaim: "The day is won!" A HUNTING-SONG _HUNTERS, where does Hope nest?_ Not in the half-oped breast, Nor the young rose, Nor April sunrise--those With a quick wing she brushes, The wide world through, Greets with the throat of thrushes, Fades from as fast as dew. But, would you spy her sleeping, Cradled warm, Look in the breast of weeping, The tree stript by storm; But, would you bind her fast, Yours at last, Bed-mate and lover, Gain the last headland bare That the cold tides cover, There may you capture her, there, Where the sea gives to the ground Only the drift of the drowned. Yet, if she slips you, once found, Push to her uttermost lair In the low house of despair. There will she watch by your head, Sing to you till you be dead, Then, with your child in her breast, In another heart build a new nest. SURVIVAL WHEN you and I, like all things kind or cruel, The garnered days and light evasive hours, Are gone again to be a part of flowers And tears and tides, in life's divine renewal, If some grey eve to certain eyes should wear A deeper radiance than mere light can give, Some silent page abruptly flush and live, May it not be that you and I are there? USES AH, from the niggard tree of Time How quickly fall the hours! It needs no touch of wind or rime To loose such facile flowers. Drift of the dead year's harvesting, They clog to-morrow's way, Yet serve to shelter growths of spring Beneath their warm decay, Or, blent by pious hands with rare Sweet savours of content, Surprise the soul's December air With June's forgotten scent. A MEETING ON a sheer peak of joy we meet; Below us hums the abyss; Death either way allures our feet If we take one step amiss. One moment let us drink the blue Transcendent air together-- Then down where the same old work's to do In the same dull daily weather. We may not wait . . . yet look below! How part? On this keen ridge But one may pass. They call you--go! My life shall be your bridge. Note.--Vesalius, the great anatomist, studied at Louvain and Paris, and was called by Venice to the chair of surgery in the University of Padua. He was one of the first physiologists to dissect the human body, and his great work "The Structure of the Human Body" was an open attack on the physiology of Galen. The book excited such violent opposition, not only in the Church but in the University, that in a fit of discouragement he burned his remaining manuscripts and accepted the post of physician at the Court of Charles V., and afterward of his son, Philip II, of Spain. This closed his life of free enquiry, for the Inquisition forbade all scientific research, and the dissection of corpses was prohibited in Spain. Vesalius led for many years the life of the rich and successful court physician, but regrets for his past were never wholly extinguished, and in 1561 they were roused afresh by the reading of an anatomical treatise by Gabriel Fallopius, his successor in the chair at Padua. From that moment life in Spain became intolerable to Vesalius, and in 1563 he set out for the East. Tradition reports that this journey was a penance to which the Church condemned him for having opened the body of a woman before she was actually dead; but more probably Vesalius, sick of his long servitude, made the pilgrimage a pretext to escape from Spain. Fallopius had meanwhile died, and the Venetian Senate is said to have offered Vesalius his old chair; but on the way home from Jerusalem he was seized with illness, and died at Zante in 1564. 
4556	----	A WOMAN OF THIRTY Marjorie Allen Seiffert New York 1919 To O.H.S. CONTENTS I. The Old Woman A Morality Play II. Love Poems in Summer Singalese Love Songs I-V The Silent Pool Nocturne Theme Arranged for Organ I-III The Moonlight Sonata Possession Evening: the Taj Mahal The Gift The Bridge A Temple I-VII Candles Winter Night Last Days I-V Sorrow Prison The Dream House III. Studies and Designs Design for a Japanese Vase The Bow Moon (A Print by Hirosage) An Italian Chest The Pedlar Portrait of a Lady in Bed I-V Portrait of a Gentleman From the Madison Street Police Station La Felice The Journey The Last Illusion The Desert The Picnic IV. Interlude Mountain Trails I-VII October Morning October Afternoon Maternity The Father Speaks To Allen To Helen The Immortal To an Absent Child I-IV Summer Night Maura I-VI November Dusk Winter Valley I-IV V. Love Poems in Autumn Ballad The Pathway of Black Leaves I-IV Elegy Sequence I-X Disillusion November Afternoon Yareth at Solomon's Tomb Argolis St. Faith's Eve Poems of Elijah Hay The Golden Stag To Anne Knish Lolita Spectrum of Mrs. Q Epitaph A Sixpence Three Spectra Two Commentaries A Womanly Woman Lolita Now is Old The Shining Bird The King Sends Three Cats to Guinevere Ode in the New Mode Night I. The Old Woman (A Morality Play) The Old Woman (A Morality Play) Characters: The Woman The House The Doctor The Deacon The Landlady Doctor: There is an old woman Who ought to die-- Deacon: And nobody knows But what she's dead-- Doctor: The air will be cleaner When she's gone-- Deacon: But we dare not bury her Till she's dead-- Landlady: Come, young doctor From the first floor front, Come, dusty deacon, From the fourth floor back, You take her heels And I'll take her head-- Doctor and Deacon: We'll carry her And bury her If she's dead! House: They roll her up In her old, red quilt, They carry her down At a horizontal tilt, She doesn't say "Yes" And she doesn't say "No," She doesn't say, "Gentlemen, Where do we go?" Doctor: Out in the lot Where ash-cans die, There, old woman, There shall you lie! Deacon: Let's hurry away And never look behind To see if her eyes Are dead and blind, To see if the quilt Lies over her face-- Perhaps she'll groan Or move in her place! House: The room is empty Where the old woman lay, And I no longer Smell like a tomb-- Landlady: Doctor, deacon, Can you say Who'll pay rent For the old woman's room? * * * * * * * House: The room is empty Down the hall, There are mice in the closet, Ghosts in the wall-- A pretty little lady Comes to see-- Woman: Oh, what a dark room, Not for me! Landlady: The room is large And the rent is low, There's a deacon above And a doctor below-- Deacon: When the little mice squeak I shall pray-- Doctor: I'll psycho-analyse The ghosts away-- Landlady: The bed is large And the mattress deep, Wrapped in a feather-bed You shall sleep-- Woman: But here's the door Without a key! An unlocked room Won't do for me! Doctor: Here's a bolt-- Deacon: And here's a bar-- Landlady: You'll sleep soundly Where you are! Woman: Good night, gentlemen, It's growing late, Good night, landlady, Pray don't wait! I'm going to bed, I'll bolt the door And sleep more soundly Than ever before! Deacon: Good night, madam, I'll steal away-- Doctor: Glad a pretty lady Has come to stay! House: She lights a candle-- What do I see! That cloak looks like A quilt to me! She climbs into bed Where long she's lain, She's come back home, She won't leave again. She's found once more Her rightful place, Same old lady With a pretty new face. Let the deacon pray And the doctor talk, The mice will squeak And the ghosts will walk. There's a crafty smile On the landlady's face, The old woman's gone, But she's filled her place! Landlady: It's nothing to me If the old woman's dead, There's somebody sleeping In every bed! II. Love Poems in Summer Singalese Love Songs I Your eyes are beautiful beggars, Careless singing minstrels, Who will not starve Nor sleep cold under the sky If they receive no largess Of mine. Once lived a woman Of great charity-- At last Her own children Begged for bread. II I would make you love me That you might possess Desire-- For to your heart Beauty is a burned-out torch, And Faith, a blind pigeon, Friendship, a curious Persian myth, And Love, blank emptiness, Bearing no significance Nor any reality. Only Weariness is yours: I would make you love me That you might possess Desire. III Is my love Of flesh or spirit? I only know to me Your eyes are wholly you. Our glances dart Like the flash of a bird Gone, before the colour of his wing Is seen. I have not bathed my soul In your eyes, My soul would drown. IV I have starved to know your lips Yet my soul Does not die of want. For only dreams are real, And fulfilment is an illusion, There is but one fulfilment, Blind Nature's way-- My arms reach toward illusion, And I would carry mist against my heart, Not the warm, heavy head Of a sleeping child. Starving, I hold my dream. V What do you seek, Beloved? When you have had All of me There will remain for you One beautiful desire the less. You think you seek my love But you seek My denial. Hunger, Want, Is the only pain I would not spare you-- Alas, that too Will die! The Silent Pool Your smile is a heron, flying Over waters cool, My thoughts of you are blue Iris! Today is the silent pool Which shining heron and Iris blue Are mirrored on. Tomorrow Will still reflect the Iris-- My thoughts of you; But the heron will be gone. Nocturne It is enough To feel your beauty With the lingers Of my heart, Your beauty, like the starlight, Filling night so gently, that it dreams Unwakened. I should feel your beauty against my face Though I were blind. Theme Arranged for Organ I. PRELUDE What would you have of me, my friend, in truth, A breath of understanding, or a glance Into your soul's dark places? Can a word Aid in your brave attempt to smother youth? Of what avail that trifling circumstance, In such a tumult could my voice be heard? Before your bitter need my lips are dumb So little can I give you. Should I come To feed a starving Titan with a crumb? II. INTERLUDE Alas, I am too foolish or too wise, Too soon am blinded or I see too far! How can I follow with expectant feet, What is the beacon light that holds your eyes, Can this blind alley lead to any star And through this dark confusion, what retreat? For heaven is awed when comets crash to earth, But we, who grope and question our soul's worth, Stumbling, awaken only bitter mirth. III. POSTLUDE A breath, a glance, a word,--no more, my friend, This is the sum of what I have to give Leaving the tale for ever incomplete. No perfect moment, and no tragic end, Within your heart those images shall live And die like footsteps down an empty street. Yet all the while a stifled instinct saith: "Spend your souls vigour to the utmost breath And let the hounds come baying at the death!" The Moonlight Sonata My soul storm-beaten as an ancient pier Stands forth into the sea; wave on slow wave Of shining music, luminous and grave, Lifting against me, pouring through me, here Find wafts of unforgotten chords, which rise And droop like clinging sea-weed. You, so white, So still, so helpless on this fathomless night Float like a corpse with living, tortured eyes. Deep waves wash you against me; you impart No comfort to my spirit, give no sign Your inarticulate lips can taste the brine Drowning the secret timbers of my heart. Possession I hold you fast, your hurrying breath, Your wandering feet, your restless heart, Are mine alone, for only death You vowed today, can make us part. Your eager lips, athirst to drain Life's goblet of its golden wine Shall drink tonight or thirst in vain-- I hold you fast for you are mine. And when I search your soul until I see too deeply and divine That you can never love me--Still I hold you fast for you are mine! Evening: the Taj Mahal (A Lover Speaks) Beloved!... India and you Breathe through my soul tonight, You in your gown, impossibly white-- I marvel greatly that it fail To glow and pale With iridescent light-- How can it hang in silent nun-like folds? Think of the flaming mystery it holds, You... You... We stand in that wide place Where love is frozen in marble, spire on spire, A snow-white nightingale with a heart of fire Soaring in space. We gaze, together, into the shining pool To catch the soul of beauty unaware Finding only the peaceful body there Of beauty drowned and still in waters cool. Burning so luminously in these pure white things Somehow akin, are palpitating fires, Intangible, yet visible as spires Or wings. And close at hand, an unseen Moslem sings Blind, haunting chants, which speak Of mystery, forevermore unguessed. O shining ones, I seek No farther, for my soul, content, Divines the secret of the Taj Mahal and you-- Beauty and desire, possessed In white tranquillity, in flaming peace, Find rest. The Gift What is this wine you have poured for me? You have offered up Your face in its pure transparency Like a crystal cup Which trembling fingers slowly lift-- It is faintly masked With a tremulous smile. You have brought me a gift, Your love, unasked. Could you trust my reckless hands so much? With no vow spoken, You gave me a goblet, which at a touch Were utterly broken! Your smile replied: "Since the glass was filled It little mattered Whether the wine were drunk or spilled Or the goblet shattered." The Bridge I walk the bridge of hours from dawn till night My heart beating so loud in joyous wonder To know your love, that I can scarcely breathe; But in the lonely darkness, with affright I faintly hear, like ominous, distant thunder The unseen ocean surging close beneath. Our bridge so frail, eternity so vast! When we must sink into the deep at last Heart of my heart, will you still hold me fast? A Temple I. DOORWAY Carven angels On the portals, Angels with crowns, and eagles And golden lions On the door. This is why The alien worshippers went their way, Why you alone discovered The gates were open. You touched the velvet curtains behind them, They parted to let you pass. II. WINDOW I make a window Of you, beloved, Through which the sun colours The silence. Even your absences Are spaces I have filled With sapphire; Your denials Are burning gold, I have painted your reluctance Emerald green: Your silences Are crimson On which your words make delicate Black tracery. As for me, My will is the grey lead Which I have bent to hold the coloured Panes of you. III. SPIRE My wish goes singing upward Holding a chime of bells In its heart: Pigeons know my silent bells, Winds touch them and wonder. That they might reach That high blue-- Till star fingers touch them Ever so gently-- And drifting clouds Lay cool cheeks against them-- My wish goes singing upward Reaching into silence. IV. PRIEDIEU Beauty passes But dust is eternal. Outside the temple Beauty dies in the wind. So when my temple is fallen And lies in dust, Where then will be the memory Of your beauty? I pray my dust That it may hold your image Tomorrow and for ever. V. FESTIVAL The beloved is returning, Let the bells ring! I too am a tower Hung with bronze bells, I too am a bell Chiming to the winds, I too am the wind Ringing to the hills, I too am the hills Singing to the sky. I too am the sky! The beloved is returning, Let the bells ring! VI. DUSK There is no soul too poor to build a temple Where it may go apart And worship darkness. For out of darkness Images shine... and fade... Since now there is no worship nor any music, Let incense be a curved smile On lips that remember, And candles, notes of laughter In empty dusk. Above, A coloured window slowly turns Black to the night. VII. RUINS Temples have fallen Before today, Stones are ever loosening their hold One on another... You blocks of marble, sleeping in the sun, Can you remember chiming bells And incense? Now there is only silence, Even the winged stones of archways Sleep in peace. Candles Silence is but the golden frame That holds your face, My thoughts, like unblown candle-flame In a holy place Surround you. From this secret shrine Somewhere apart Do you not feel my candles shine Upon your heart? Winter Night The I that does not love you I have kept hidden away In the dark. (I never dreamed There was a You That does not love me!) Tonight they met. I hear their words Falling like icicles Upon me... I am frozen in terror... Have they killed the You That Loves me? Beloved, can you hear me Through the bitter sound Of icicles falling? Can you see me from behind Your frozen eyes? Last Days I Shall I pretend These days are just like other days? One cannot spend Every day for seven weeks Saying good-bye. So when I must I speak of your departure casually As though it were a hundred years away; As Youth is wont to say: "Sometime we all must die!" II We talk of all the happy things we have done, We pass them in review, "Do you remember?" is often on our lips. One by one We touch our memories and put them all away-- How shall I dare to look at them When you are gone! III There is no beginning to my love Nor any end-- It is about your head Like the deep air, More than your breath can spend. Oft is about your heart Like arms of faith-- Where you go, it is there. IV There are no last things to say, What promise can I make? You know my love so well. All that I have is yours to take. (How will it be, with part of me away, Must not my soul be changed?) Shall I stay young for memory's sake? Shall I be old and grave and grey? If I might choose, how could I tell! V The You I know I shall not see again, A stranger will return. How shall I win the love Which he has kept apart With a blurred image which once was I? I shall not know his heart, How can I learn? Sorrow Sorrow stands in a wide place, Blind--blind-- Beauty and joy are petals blown Across her granite face, They cannot find Sight or sentience in stone. Yesterday's beauty and joy lie deep In sorrow's heart, asleep. Prison I close the book--the story has grown dim, The plot confused; the hero fades Behind unmeaning words, and over him The covers close like window shades On empty windows. The watchful room Is weary. Dully the green lamp stares Into the shadows. The coals are dumb, The clock ticks heavily. The chairs Wait sullenly for guests who never come. Suppose I leave this house, suppose my feet Plodding into the night Carry me down the empty street Made hideous with arcs of purple light... Inevitably I must return to bed. The house is waiting, chairs, and books, and clocks. I am their prisoner. I have no more chance Of escape, when all is said, Than a dying beetle in a box-- And life, and love,--and death--have gone to France. The Dream House I steal across the sodden floor And dead leaves blow about, Where once we planned an iron door To shut the whole world out; I find the hearth, its fires unlit, Its ashes cold--Tonight Only the stars give warmth to it, Only the moon gives light. And yonder on our spacious bed Fashioned for love and sleep The Autumn goldenrod lies dead, The maple-leaves lie deep. III. Studies and Designs A Japanese Vase (A Design to be Wrought in Metals) Five harsh, black birds in shining bronze come crying Into a silver sky, Piercing and jubilant is the shape of their flying, Their beaks are pointed with delight, Curved sharply with desire, The passionate direction of their flight, Clear and high, Stretches their bodies taut like humming wire. The cold wind blows into angry patterns the jet-bright Feathers of their wings, Their claws curl loosely, safely, about nothingness, They clasp no things. Direction and desire they possess By which in sharp, unswerving flight they hold Across an iron sea to the golden beach Whereon lies carrion, their feast. A shore of gold That birds wrought on a vase can never reach. The Bow Moon (A print by Hiroshige) From the dawn, Take San, Ungathered star, Follow me back through night Till I recapture Evening. (The bending hours of darkness Sway apart like lilies Before the backward-blowing wind.) At last, Bearing in her mysterious bosom Unravished beauty, Dark Yesterday rises to view against her silent sky Irrevocable... secret... Confronting the fantastic dream Of an impossible Tomorrow. And that frail bridge, Delicate, immutable, Which rises higher than the moon, More everlasting than the fading sky, Joining What-was-not with What-might-have-been, That bridge were named "Today" If I had loved you, Take San, If you had loved me. An Italian Chest (Lorenzo Designs a Bas-Relief) Lust is the oldest lion of them all And he shall have first place, With a malignant growl, satirical, To curve in foliations prodigal Round and around his face, Extending till the echoes interlace With Pride and Prudence, two cranes, gaunt and tall. Four lesser lions crouch and malign the cranes, Cursing and gossiping they shake their manes While from their long tongues leak Drops of thin venom as they speak. The cranes, unmoved, peck grapes and grains From a huge cornucopia, which rains A plenteous meal from its antique Interior (a note quite curiously Greek). And nine long serpents twist And twine, twist and twine, A riotously beautiful design Whose elements consist Of eloquent spirals, fair and fine, Embracing cranes and lions, who exist Seemingly free, yet tangled in that living vine. And in this chest shall be Two cubic meters of space Enough to hold all memory Of you and me-- And this shall be the place Where silence shall embrace Our bodies, and obliterate the trace Our souls made on the purity Of night... Now lock the chest, for we Are dead, and lose the key! The Pedlar Hark, people, to the cry Of this curious young magician-pedlar Seeking a golden bowl! He wanders through the city Offering useful tin-ware For all the ancient metal You have left to rust In the dim, dusty attic Or mouldy cellar Of your soul. He refuses nothing-- Rusty nails Which may have played their part In a crucifixion-- For ten of these he will give A new tin spoon. The andirons Once guarding hearth-fires of content, Now dusty and forgotten In an obscure corner, He will give for these A new tin tea-kettle With a wooden handle. And for this antique bowl Fashioned to hold Roses or wine? The eyes of the pedlar glisten! O woman, if acid reveal Gold beneath the tarnished surface He will gladly give you His hands, his eyes, his soul, His young, white body-- If not, A mocking laugh And a bright tin sieve To hold your wine And roses. Portrait of a Lady in Bed I. THE COVERLET My cowardice Covers me safely From everything... From cold, which makes me yield And quietly die Beneath the snow; From heat, which makes me faint Until cool nothingness receives me; From hurt, (Seize me, O Lion, And I shall die of fright Before I feel your teeth!) From love, Yes, most of all from love. How can love touch me? Is it not heat, Or cold, Or a lion? My cowardice covers me Safely From everything! II. THE PILLOW To know you think of me Sustains my Spirit Through the long night. (My thought of you Is wine, banishing sleep!) Your thoughts of me are feathers, Light nothings, Drifting, dancing, Floating, Blown by a breath of fancy Away from your sight. They would choke me, They would blind me With the Nothing I am to you If I dared see them; But I bind them into a pillow, And to know that you think of me Sustains my spirit Through the night. III. SOUVENIR Harlequin, seeing me gay You loved me, For fools need mirth, O solemn Harlequin! Tall tragedians make me laugh Joyously, riotously, Tall, dark villains, and heroes with blonde hair Make me laugh uproariously... (I could elope with a tragedian!) But you with your clowning, Harlequin, Brought bony truth too near-- Harlequin, I might have loved you But I could not make you gay! IV. THE CURTAIN I do not fear You, or me, or death, There now is nothing left to fear But this, This curtain of blackness. Once I feared you, And all you thought and felt And all you said and did: I feared myself, And all you made me think and feel And say and do-- Now I no longer fear Thinking, feeling, saying, doing, Nor blankness, silence, apathy, torpor-- I do not fear You, or me, or death-- I only fear This curtain of blackness Which is your absence. V. THE DREAM Harlequin comes to me, smiling, Through the white-shining birch trees Of the twilight wood. He has forgiven My cowardice and hesitations, Soon I shall sink into his arms With all the imagined fervour... Of a thousand dreams. Why does he come so slowly? There is no longer anything To mar our meeting... This must be real For Harlequin is still clowning, He waves his arms grotesquely To make me smile.... Quick, into his arms With unspent fervour. Why are the trees all sighing? Look, whispering birches, if you will, I and my love embrace! They do not look, They do not seem to care... Embrace me, my beloved! (Can these by passionate kisses? They feel so thin and cool Like mist.) The birches shiver As though the night-wind stirred them. Can we be dead? Portrait of a Gentleman Tower of stone Rugged and lonely, My thoughts like ivy Embrace my memory of you, Climbing riotously, wantonly, Till the harsh walls Are clothed in tender green. Tower of stone, Stark walls and a narrow door Which speak: "You who are not for me Are against me,-- If you are mine, Enter!" But who would be prisoned In unknown darkness? Tower of stone Rugged and lonely, I dared not enter and I would not go Till clasping you My arms were bruised and torn. From the Madison Street Police Station I, John Shepherd, vagrant, Petition the park commissioners For wider benches. My soul has long been reconciled To the prick of gunny-sack, (O well-remembered woollen fleeces!) And rustling vests of newspaper, And the chill of rubbers on unshod feet, But to the wasteful burning of dry leaves, God's shepherd's mattress, Never! Descendant of ancient ones Who tended flocks and watched the midnight sky, My forebears saw the Eastern star appear Over Judean hills. Where do your flocks graze, gentlemen? Are there no sheep or shepherds any more? All day long I sought the flocks And came by night to a wide, grassy place, Where I could sit and watch the stars wheel by-- And in the morning some one brought me here. La Felice La Felice, by the forest pond looks through leaves to the Western screen of Chinese gold that lies beyond black trees and boughs of golden-green. The little body of La Felice weary of everything on earth has passed from love to love, till peace and beauty alone have any worth. So still and deep the water lies, so fiery-cool, so yellow-clear; Here beauty sleeps! La Felice cries, I will give myself to beauty here!" The mud is smooth and deep, the weeds beneath her feet are soft and cool, ripples widen and glistening beads of bubble rise on the forest pool. The water reaches to her knee, now to her thigh, now to her breast, till like a child all peacefully does La Felice lie down to rest. She struggles like a fearful bride with ecstasy--then La Felice turns quietly upon her side and over the sunset pool is peace. The Journey Three women walked through the snow Beneath an empty sky, And one was blind, and one was old, And one was I. Bravely the Blind One led, I questioned from behind "Tell me, where do we go?" She said "Have courage... I am blind!" We came at last to a cliff, The Blind One plunged, and was gone-- I looked behind me, stark and stiff The Old One stood in the dawn. The deep crevasse was black Beneath the dawning day, I could not turn and travel back, The Old One barred the way. I could not turn aside, (To lead, one dare not see) I think that day I must have died Such silence is in me. The Last Illusion Along the twilight road I met three women, And they were neither old nor very young; In her hands each bore what she most cherished, For they were neither rich, nor very poor. In the hands of the first woman I saw white ashes in an urn, In the hands of the next woman I saw a tarnished mirror gleam, In the hands of the last woman I saw a heavy, jagged stone-- Along the twilight road I met three women, And they were neither fools nor very wise, For each was troubled lest another covet Her precious burden--so they walked alone. The Desert Through dusty years, and drearily, Two lovers rode across a desert hill While patient love followed them wearily Through the long, sultry day... But when night came, the desert had its way, Turning, they found love cold and still. It lay so pitiful a thing, Threadbare, and soiled, and worn-- "Why have we kept such starveling love?" she cried, "Was it worth treasuring?" And he replied: "Bury it then! I shall not mourn!" The wind came from the West, It seemed to blow Across a million graves to the sordid bier Where lay their love. She said: "We will bury it here!" They laid it low, They rode on, dispossessed. And all around Rose silent hills against the darkening sky, Wave upon motionless wave. The night wind made a mournful sound. The woman turned: "It is lonely here! I am afraid!" she said. He made reply: "What is there left to lose or save? What is there left to fear? Our hearts are empty. Have we not buried our dead?" She said, "I fear the empty dark, be kind!" He said, "I am still here, be comforted!" Then from its shallow grave Their love rose up and followed close behind. The Picnic Here they come, in pairs, carrying baskets, Pale clerks with brilliant neckties, and cheap serge suits, Steering girls by the arm, clerks, too, Pretty and slim and smart, Even to yellow kid boots, laced up behind. They take the electric cars far into the country, They descend, gaily chattering, at the Amusement Park. Under the trees they eat the lunch they have carried-- Salad, sausages, sandwiches, candy, warm beer. They ride in the roller-coaster, two in a seat, (Glorious danger! Warm, delicious proximity!) The unaccustomed beer floods their veins like heady wine, And smothered youth awakens with shrill screams of joy. The sun sets, and evening is drowned in electric lights; Arm-in-arm, they wander under the trees Everywhere meeting others, wandering arm-in-arm In the same wistful wonder, seeking they know not what. Two leave the park and the crowds--The stars shine out, A river runs at their feet, behind them, a leafy copse, Away on the other shore, the fields of grain Lie sleeping peacefully in the starlight. Tonight the world is theirs, a legacy From those who lived familiar friends with river, field and forest-- Their forebears. Through the night, the same earth-magic moves them Which swayed those ancient ones, long-dead-- And these, too, lean and drink, Drink deeply from the river, the flowing river of life. Slowly they return to the crowds and the brilliant lights, Dazzled, they look aside, silently climb on the cars. They cling to the swaying straps, weary, inert, confused. The lurching ear makes halt--they are thrown in each others' arms-- Alien and unmoved, they sway apart again-- The car moves through the fields and suburbs back to the town. They leave the car in pairs, the picnic basket's Rattling dismally, plate and spoon and jar. The boy takes his girl to her lodgings in awkward silence. They look askance--"Good-night!"--the front door closes, Indeed their eyes have not met, since by the river Those wondrous moments Linked them to earth and night, not to each other. IV. INTERLUDE Mountain Trails (GLACIER PARK, SEPT. '17) I Night stands in the valley Her head Is bound with stars, While Dawn, a grey-eyed nun Steals through the silent trees. Behind the mountains Morning shouts and sings And dances upward. II The peaks even today show finger prints Where God last touched the earth Before he set it joyously in space Finding it good. III You, slender shining-- You, downward leaping-- Born from silent snow To drown at last in the blue silent Mountain lake-- You are not snow or water, You are only a silver spirit Singing! IV Sharp crags of granite, Pointing, threatening, Thrust fiercely up at me; And near the edge, their menace Would whirl me down. V Climbing desperately toward the heights I glance in terror behind me To be deafened--to be shattered-- By a thunderbolt of beauty. VI The mountains hold communion; They are priests, silent and austere, They have come together In a secret place With unbowed heads. VII This hidden lake Is a sapphire cup-- An offering clearer than wine, Colder than tears. The mountains hold it toward the sky In silence. October Morning October is brown In field and row-- Yet goldenrod And goldenglow, Purple asters And ruddy oaks, Sumach spreading Crimson cloaks, Apples red And pumpkins gold--? Perhaps it's gayer To be old! October Afternoon The air is warm and winey-sweet, Over my head the oak-leaves shine Like rich Madeira, glossy brown, Or garnet red, like old Port wine. Wild grapes are ripening on the hill, Dead leaves curl thickly at my feet, Yet not one falls, it is so still. Crickets are singing in the sun, And aimlessly grasshoppers leap From discontent to discontent, Their days of leaping nearly done. There's a rich quietness of earth That holds no promise any more, And like a cup, Today is filled With the last wine the year shall pour. Maternity Sturdy is earth, Dull and mighty, Unresentful-- Of her own fertility Covering scars With healing green. You cannot anger earth, You cannot cause her pain Nor make her remember Your hungry, querulous love. At last your unwilling body She tranquilly receives And turns it to her uses. The Father Speaks My little son, when you were born There died a being, sweet and wild, A lovely, careless, radiant child, A passionate woman--her I mourn. And in her place has come another, With troubled smile and brooding eyes, Insatiate of sacrifice And wholly, utterly your mother. To Allen Beauty, the dream that I have dreamed so much Comes true in your quick smile, And on your cheek I see her touch And sometimes in your eyes a while Immortal beauty's fleeting image lies. Dear child, in whose veins beat The marching centuries of lovers' feet, All those brave, ardent ghosts in you arise-- The souls who, loving beauty, gave you birth, With a chain of passion binding beauty to earth, A captured dream--these souls breathe with your breath Living again in beauty that knows no death. To Helen Lie still in my arms, little four-years-old, Little bud that glows With more beauty and passion than it can hold, Little flaming rose, The spring's red blossoms, when winter lies deep On a wind-swept world Of tossing branches, lie safely asleep In brown buds curled. They wake--and the wind strips their petals away And spills them afar-- Can I keep you from blooming, whatever I say, Wild bud that you are! The Immortal Child of a love denied, a dream unborn, Spirit more brave Than passion's unfulfilment, wiser than fate-- Nor breast nor grave As cradle you have known,-- I mourn That my soul knows its own Too late! A soul's half-breath, Passion's unremembered dream, Perfume without a vase, Intangible you seem To life or death. And when the coloured mantle of the days Slips from my shoulders, and I lie Forgetful, dumb, Mingled with earth in passionless embrace, Will you, forgotten as a bird, Singing unheard In space, Will you not come When every other dream is gone, Bringing to that silent place The shadow of a gesture flung By motionless hands, a floating echo hung From an unspoken word, And to the empty sky The sunset of a day which did not dawn And cannot die! To an Absent Child I At first in dreams I pressed you so close That you melted away on my breast, But now I wait, breathless and motionless, Till I feel your slender arms caress me Like swallows blown against me And quickly flown. II Small flower, My body is the earth from which you sprang, But we are more to each other than earth and flower, Closer, even, than earth and flower, For the sky in me is one with the sky in you... My love for you Is like sunlight shining in a quiet place, You shall feel my love like soft light Pouring about you. III I will not kiss you, For my kisses are a chain without an end; Nor take you in my arms, My arms would smother you against my breast; I will not even touch your shining head-- But lift your eyes up, flower-face, And I will fill them as full of love As they can hold! IV Ah no! If you were here I would sweep you into my arms and hold you close! Though my love is of the spirit I must feel your little restless body Pressed for a moment against my heart. Summer Night Rain, rain murmuring endless complaints In mournful whisperings that never cease, You bring my tired brain a certain peace Like Latin prayers to absent-minded saints. And whether silently to earth you fall, Or dashed and driven in tempestuous flight Like souls before God's wrath, the thirsty night, The soft and fecund earth shall drink you all. Maura I Maura dreams unwakened-- The warm winds touch the bands That hold her hair. The call of a silver horn floats by, A lover tosses flowers into her hands. Maura dreams unwakened-- She joins the maidens in their dance, Her limbs follow slow rhythms, A lover leads her into the shade, She moves as in a trance. II What dim confusion Troubles her dream, What passionate caress Disturbs her spirit's rapt seclusion? Earth draws her close. How warm Is lover-earth! Like a sleeping bird She gives herself, then suddenly She is a leaf whirled in the storm. Somewhere in a quiet room, her soul unstirred, Dead... or sleeping, Through the blind tumult hears afar The note of a horn, like a silver thread. She has given her soul to an echo's keeping. III Who knows the mountain where the hunter rides Winding his horn? Maura who heard it in her dream Wakens forlorn, Too late to catch the tenuous thread Of silver sound Which in the troubled, intricate fugue of earth Is drowned. IV Maura cannot follow over the hill, Her youth is landlocked as a hidden pool Where thirsty love drinks deep, A shining pool, where lingers The colour of an unseen golden sky, A pool where echoes fall asleep. But restless fingers Trouble the waters cool, Snatch at reflected beauty, and destroy The mirrored dream. The pool is never still, And broken echoes die. V The silver call has gone, but there is left to her The gentleness of earth, The simple mysteries of sleep and death, Of love and birth. There are faces hungry for smiles, and starving fingers Reaching for dreams. And like a memory are the wind-swept chords of night, And the wide melody of evening sky Where gleams A colour like the echo of a horn. There is a far hill where winds die, And over the hill lies music yet unborn. VI Maura lies dead at last, The body she gave to child and lover Now feeds flower and tree. Earth's arms are wide to her. What breast Offers such gentle sleeping? Her limbs lie peacefully. From the dark West There comes a note like the echoing cry Of one who rides through the dusk alone After the hunt sweeps by. It fades--the night wind is forlorn-- Music is still, But Maura has followed the silver horn Over the distant hill, Over the hill where all winds die. November Dusk Where like ghosts of verdant days Whispering down, Leaves in the November dusk Drift and drown, Stand two lovers, motionless And apart In their sturdy nakedness Of the heart, Two dark figures, side by side Through the mist Standing as though time had died Since they kissed, Whose deep roots, alive and sound Blindly reach Mingling in the fertile ground Each with each-- Pray that we, when gaunt and old Like bare trees Through our common earth may hold Close, like these! Winter Valley I Grey grasses drown in thin brown water Wound like a chain on the valley's Sunken breast. Fallen leaves on the stream Float motionless--rest-- So secretly the pale Water winds around Toward hidden pools, Or sinking in the earth Is drowned. II Curved crimson stems, Thorny fingers of vine, Reach toward the wind. Sunlight, thin and cold, Touches them--they shine. Nothing passes for thorns to hold-- Red thorns, Catching at shadows of the wind. III Silence in the valley, Silence without wings-- Like the caught breath Of an unspoken word When no words come. Withered reeds, and thin brown water Above the reeds Are dumb. IV For what are you waiting, winter valley, Withered valley, brown with reeds? You are hushed with waiting. You are old with secrets, You are tranquil with forgetting. You are harsh with thorns Of fruits long vanished. V. Love Poems in Autumn Ballad Follow, follow me into the South, And if you are brave and wise I'll buy you laughter for your mouth, Sorrow for your eyes. I'll buy you laughter, wild and sweet, And sorrow, grey and still, But you must follow with willing feet Over the farthest hill. Follow, follow me into the South, You may return tomorrow Wearing my kisses on your mouth, In your eyes my sorrow. The Pathway of Black Leaves I. THE TURNING The pathway opened before her eyes Between black leaves-- She laughed, and shivered, and turned aside From the dusty road. Her feet moved on like heart-beats, She could not stop them; Relentlessly each step fulfilled itself And the steps behind it-- A hidden chain, drawing her onward Captive. And yet she said: "Now I walk free At last!" II. TOLL-GATE The sign read: "Paupers may pass untaxed, The Rich shall pay a penny, The Poor Must give all they possess." She emptied her pockets bravely and passed through... They gave her a golden coin in return for her silver, Bearing on one side the head of a king, And on the other a worn inscription Curved like a wreath And written in a tongue she did not know. III. THE INN There was the inn, beside the path, Standing like the words of an ancient prophet Forgotten long, now suddenly come true. "They who break bread here Shall not eat for hunger; They who lie here Shall not sleep." All night long the black leaves, one by one, Laughed, and shivered, and fell into darkness. IV. RETURN She has come home To the house she knew: But she has forgotten The square oaken smile of the door. The room is a stranger, The fire is sullen; On her hair a black leaf shines And clings where it fell. Against her heart She has hidden away The bitter golden profile of a king. Elegy I would be autumn earth, and hold Your beautiful body, slain, Where, lying still and cold, Only the winter rain Shall touch your limbs and face; Where the white frost shall wed. Your body to black mould In the close, passionless embrace Of that dark marriage bed: I would be autumn earth, and hold Your beautiful body, dead. Sequence I. ARRIVAL Shining highways Sing to your step, Windows beckon, Doorways open a square embrace. Doors laugh gently Swinging together Behind you. II. THE TOWER There's a flag on my tower, And my windows Are orange to the night. They are set in grey stone that frowns At the black wind. Inside, there's a guest at my hearth, And a fire Painting the grey stone gold. My windows are black With the hungry night peering through them. Blackness lurks in corners, Wind snatches the sparks, Tongs and poker jangle together Like the iron bones Of a man that was hanged. III. THEY WHO DANCE The feet of dancers Shine with mirth, Their hearts are vibrant as bells: The air flows by them Divided like water Cut by a gleaming ship. Triumphantly their bodies sing, Their eyes are blind With music. They move through threatening ghosts Feeling them cool as mist On their brows. They who dance Find infinite golden floors Beneath their feet. IV. PIANISSIMO I took Night Into my arms, Night lay upon my breast. If night had wings She would have brought me Stars for my hair. The stars laughed Lightly From far away. About my shoulders White mist curled. V. PORTRAIT BY ZULOAGA Death lies in wait For those who do not know What they desire, And Hell for those Who fear what they have taken. These hands are wrinkled From stretching forth, Brown From the winds blowing upon them. They are strong with seizing, They do not tremble. VI. GESTURES Let there be dancing figures On our wine-flask, Swastikas on our rug, Inscriptions in our rings And on our dwelling. Let us build ritual For our worship, Pledge our love With vows and holy promises. If oaths are broken, Let it be darkly With threatening gestures. Thus we ignore That we love and die Like insects. VII. VEILS I shall punish your blindness With a veil. I shall choose words that join Gaily word to word, I shall weave them flauntingly Into veil upon veil, I shall wind them defiantly Over my lips, over my eyes. You shall not see your name On my lips, You shall not see your image In my eyes! And through my veils I shall not see That you are blind. VIII. FREEDOM I would be free From two old superstitions, Thanks and Forgiveness. So I would think of you As Flame, As Wind, As Night, To whom I have been Wind, And Flame And Night, Together burned and swept, Now smothered In separate darkness. IX. MUD I am dazed and weary From the shapelessness Of what I am-- I am poured Among haphazard stones In meaningless patterns. Yesterday's sun dried me Between rounded cobbles, Today's deluge sweeps me Toward alien pavements, Tomorrow's sun shall dry me In a new design. Better the turbid gutter Toward the open sea! X. FOOLS SAY-- November's breath Is black in the branches of trees And under the bushes, Harsh rain Whips down the rustling dance Of leaves. There is smoke In the throat of the wind, Its teeth Bite away beauty. Let fools say: "Spring Will come again!" Disillusion I touch joy and it crumbles under my fingers-- The dust from it rises and fills the world, It blinds my eyes--I cannot see the sun. A choking fog of dust shuts me apart. I remember the sparkling wind on a bright autumn morning, I let down my hair and danced in the golden gale, Then chased the wind as the wind chased fallen leaves-- Wind cannot be caught and tamed like a bird. I touch joy and it crumbles to dust in my fingers. November Afternoon Upon our heads The oak leaves fall Like silent benedictions Closing Autumn's gorgeous ritual, And we, upborne by worship, Lift our eyes to the altar of distant hills. Beloved How can I know What gods are yours, How can I guess the visions of your spirit, Or hear The silent prayers your heart has said? Only by this I feel Your gods akin to mine, That when our lips have met On this last golden Autumn afternoon They have confessed in silence Our kisses were less precious than our dreams. Today, our passion drowned in beauty, We turn away our faces toward the hills Where purple haze, old incense, Spreads its veil. Yareth at Solomon's Tomb At last Your search is at an end, King Solomon, You, restless dreamer, For whom each face held promise Unfulfilled, Whose hungry arms held many women, (Though none could fill your need) Who seized, but never loved, This is your sepulchre... I who till today Questioned my heart Now find it buried with you In this tomb; So now I can forgive you That you never believed My love! Argolis Like sun on grasses Warming to life Quaint beetles, curious weeds, Till earth awakens, pregnant beneath its rays-- So came the shepherds down to Argolis. As nameless trees Cast cloud-grey shadows there On moon-pale, tarnished snow, Till snow and shadow are lost, Alike confused and forgotten Among the withered reeds-- So lies their memory across its heart. St. Faith's Eve We stood together on a balcony An hour when the night Died into blankness, And light mist Curling beneath us, hid the earth, And the cold, unburied stars Drew further into space... I turned to meet your eyes And saw Like a light, rosy veil Your flesh sink gently down Leaving only the simple skeleton And a white voice which said: "This still is I, Do you love me Now?" Quietly, and without sadness I looked upon you, For comfort blindly reached my soul And primitive beauty. Without passion, without fervour, I spoke at last: "Somehow Faith Shines from your empty eye-holes, And Truth Speaks mutely from your fleshless jaws. I choose your skeleton to lie with In the peaceful bed of earth Through all the dreamless, mornless, utter night!" Poems of Elijah Hay The Golden Stag O hungry hearted ones, sharp-limbed, keen-eyed, Let me have place! I too would ride On your fantastic chase. Your hunger is a silver hunting horn, I heard it sweep The frozen, peaceful morn: Its note bit me from sleep. I will ride with you, hunters, even I, Toward a far hill To see the golden stag against the sky Uncaptured still. To Anne Knish Madam, you intrigue me! I have come this far Cautiously sneezing Along the dusty highroad of convention, But now it leads no farther toward you. Today I have reached the cross roads-- A weather-beaten sign-board Blazons undecipherable wisdom Of which the arrow-heads, even, Have been effaced. Eastward, it leads through cultivated fields Of intellectual fodder, Where well-fed cattle, herding together, Browse content: Are you of these? Westward, is a lane, hedge-bordered, Shady, and of gentle indirection, In May, a bower of sentimental bloom, But this November weather Betrays its destiny, the poultry yard Where geese foregather. And there ahead, the ancient, swampy way Modernized by a feeble plank or two: But the morass of passion lures me not! I see a vision of two plunging feet, Discreetly shod, yet struggling in vain-- Slime Creeps ankle-high, knee-high, thigh-high, Till all is swallowed save a brave silk hat Floating alone, a symbol of the creed I perished shedding. Yet somewhere you Intelligent of my distress Smile, undisturbed-- I have no pedlar's license to submit, No wares to cry, nor any gift to bring-- I do not know Anything new-- In truth, then, what have I to do with you? Yet, madam, you intrigue me! Lolita How curious to find in you, Lolita, The geisha Who sits and strums in the immortal Attitude of submission. There is a ledger in place of her soul! Your shoulders sang For admiration, Your hair wept for kisses, Your voice curved softly, a caress-- You came among us as a suppliant, What had we you desired? Bringing to market stolen goods, Holding to view used charms, Behold a hawker's spirit! Eagles perch proudly In isolation, They swoop to seize a living prey-- Crows hover to feed, Waiting with patience till the soul is fled Leaving a helpless body--carrion-- (Vile thoughts obsess me!) What did you want, Lolita? Spectrum of Mrs. Q. Fear not, beautiful lady, That I shall ravish you! Your arms are languorous lilies-- There is not a thorn In all your slender greenness, And you are sweet to madden buzzing bees! Fear not, beautiful lady, A hard, black cricket Inspects you. Epitaph Courage is a sword, Honour, but a shield... Here lies a turtle. A Sixpence OBVERSE If I loved you, You would rear Eight healthy children To our love, (Forgetting me) And be happy. REVERSE But I do not love you, So you will write Eight hundred poems To our love, (Forgetting me) And be happy! Three Spectra Of Mrs. X. You-- Too well fed for rebellion, Too lazy for self-respect, too timid for murder, Disgracefully steal the trade-mark of the fairy-tale-- "And they lived together happily Ever after!" Of Mrs. Z. Madam, you are ever retreating, But are never Gone-- Some day I shall pursue you Hoping to see you Vanish. Of Mrs. Andsoforth. Old ladies, bless their hearts, Are contented as house-flies Dozing against the wall. But you, Imprisoned in the forties, Delirious, frenzied, helpless, Are a fly, drowning in a cocktail! Two Commentaries I. TO AN ACTOR You are a gilded card-case Which I took for a purse. Your spirit's coin was squandered long ago, And in its place Are white cards, all alike, Bearing a word, A name, Connoting nothing. 2. PHILOSOPHER TO ARTIST You are a raisin, but I am a nut! What meat there is to you Can be seen at a glance-- (Seeds, when they exist, are bitter) My calm, round glossiness, (For I am sound and free From wormy restlessness of spirit) Defies your casual inspection. It takes sharp teeth And some determination To taste my kernel! A Womanly Woman You sit, a snug, warm kitten Blinking through the window At a storm-haunted world-- Sleet wind caterwauls Through icy trees, Which clack their hands at you Tauntingly. Why should you leave Radiator and rubber-plant? Do people stand at attention to mourn a hero When they behold A frozen kitten In a gutter? Lolita Now Is Old Lolita now is old, She sits in the park, watching the young men pass And huddles her shawl against the cold. One night last summer when the moon was red, Lolita, hearing an old song sung And amorous laughter down the street Left her bed-- Lolita thought she was young. With ancient finery on her back, A lace mantilla hiding her grey head, She crept into the warm and alien night. Her trembling knees remembered the languid pace Of beauty on adventure bent--her fan Waved challenges with unforgotten grace. Cunningly she played her part For to her peering age Love was a well-remembered art. Footsteps followed her--footsteps drew near! She dropped a rose--hush, he is here! There came hard arms and a panting kiss-- He felt the fraud of those withered lips, He cursed and spat--"Was it for this, You came, old woman, to the park?" Lolita gathered skirts and fled Through the dim dark. Lolita huddles her shawl against the cold, She sits and mumbles by the fire. In truth Lolita knows she is old. The Shining Bird A bird is three things: Feathers, flight and song, And feathers are the least of these. At last I hold her in my hands The shining bird whose flight along The perilous rim of trees Has made my days adventurous, my spirit strong. And now her wings Are still--her vivid song But ceaseless twitterings. Her words are feathers, falling Lightly, relentlessly, and without rest, Revealing to my face Her pinched and starveling breast Like poultry, dead and unashamed And naked in the market place. A shattered flash of wings, A broken song, Echo and shine along the rim of trees. The King Sends Three Cats to Guinevere Queen Guinevere, Three sleek and silent cats Bring you gifts from me. The first is a grey one, (I wanted a white one, I could not find one snowy white enough, Queen Guinevere,) He brings you purple grapes. The second is a grey one, (I wanted a sleek one, Where could I find one sleek enough, Queen Guinevere?) He brings you a red apple. The third one, too, is grey. (I wanted a black one, Not Hate itself could find one black enough, Queen Guinevere,) He brings you poison toadstools. I send you three grey cats with gifts-- (For uniformity of metaphor, Since Bacchus, Satan, and the Hangman Are not contemporaneous in my mythology) I send you three grey cats with gifts, Queen Guinevere, To warn you, sleekly, silently To pay the forfeit. Ode in the New Mode Your face Was a temple From which your soul Came to me beneath arched brows: And my soul knelt at your feet. Then Inadvertently I saw your leg Curved and turned like a bird-song Dying into ecstatic silence at the garter... Wretched Women! When you are wholly lovely Man cannot forget either of his two afflictions, Soul, or body! Night I opened the door And night stared at me like a fool, Heavy dull night, clouded and safe-- I turned again toward the uncertainties Of life within doors. Once night was a lion, No, years ago, night was a python Weaving designs against space With undulations of his being-- Night was a siren once. O sodden, middle-aged night! 
4560	----	VERSES. BY SUSAN COOLIDGE. TO J. H. AND E. W. H. Nourished by peaceful suns and gracious dew, Your sweet youth budded and your sweet lives grew, And all the world seemed rose-beset for you. The rose of beauty was your mutual dower, The stainless rose of love, an early flower, The stately blooms of ease and wealth and power. And treading thus on pathways flower-bestrewn, It well might be, that, cold and careless grown, You both had lived for your own joys alone. But, holding all these fair things as in trust. Gently you walked, still scattering on the dust Of harder roads, which others tread, and must,-- Your heritage of brightness, not a ray Of noontide sought you out, but straight away You caught and halved it with some darker day: And as the sweet saint's loaves were turned, it is said, To roses, so your roses turned to bread, That hungering souls and weary might be fed. Dear friends, my poor words do but paint you wrong, Nor can I utter, in one trivial song, The goodness I have honored for so long. Only this leaf, a single petal flung, One chord from a full harmony unsung, May speak the life-long love that lacks a tongue. CONTENTS. To J. H. and E. W. H. Prelude Commissioned The Cradle Tomb in Westminster Abbey "Of such as I have" A Portrait When? On the Shore Among the Lilies November Embalmed Ginevra Degli Amieri Easter Lilies Ebb-Tide Flood-Tide A Year Tokens Her Going A Lonely Moment Communion A Farewell Ebb and Flow Angelus The Morning Comes Before the Sun Laborare est Orare Eighteen Outward Bound From East to West Una Two Ways to Love After-Glow Hope and I Left Behind Savoir c'est Pardonner Morning A Blind Singer Mary When Love went Overshadowed Time to Go Gulf-Stream My White Chrysanthemum Till the Day Dawn My Birthday By the Cradle A Thunder Storm Through the Door Readjustment At the Gate A Home The Legend of Kintu Easter Bind-Weed April May Secrets How the Leaves Came Down Barcaroles My Rights Solstice In the Mist Within Menace "He That Believeth Shall Not Make Haste" My Little Ghost Christmas Benedicam Domino PRELUDE. Poems are heavenly things, And only souls with wings May reach them where they grow, May pluck and bear below, Feeding the nations thus With food all glorious. Verses are not of these; They bloom on earthly trees, Poised on a low-hung stem, And those may gather them Who cannot fly to where The heavenly gardens are. So I by devious ways Have pulled some easy sprays From the down-dropping bough Which all may reach, and now I knot them, bud and leaf, Into a rhymed sheaf. Not mine the pinion strong To win the nobler song; I only cull and bring A hedge-row offering Of berry, flower, and brake, If haply some may take. VERSES. COMMISSIONED. "Do their errands; enter into the sacrifice with them; be a link yourself in the divine chain, and feel the joy and life of it."--ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY What can I do for thee, Beloved, Whose feet so little while ago Trod the same way-side dust with mine, And now up paths I do not know Speed, without sound or sign? What can I do? The perfect life All fresh and fair and beautiful Has opened its wide arms to thee; Thy cup is over-brimmed and full; Nothing remains for me. I used to do so many things,-- Love thee and chide thee and caress; Brush little straws from off thy way, Tempering with my poor tenderness The heat of thy short day. Not much, but very sweet to give; And it is grief of griefs to bear That all these ministries are o'er, And thou, so happy, Love, elsewhere, Never can need me more:-- And I can do for thee but this (Working on blindly, knowing not If I may give thee pleasure so): Out of my own dull, burdened lot I can arise, and go To sadder lives and darker homes, A messenger, dear heart, from thee Who wast on earth a comforter, And say to those who welcome me, I am sent forth by her. Feeling the while how good it is To do thy errands thus, and think It may be, in the blue, far space, Thou watchest from the heaven's brink,-- A smile upon my face. And when the day's work ends with day, And star-eyed evening, stealing in, Waves a cool hand to flying noon, And restless, surging thoughts begin, Like sad bells out of tune, I'll pray: "Dear Lord, to whose great love Nor bound nor limit line is set, Give to my darling, I implore, Some new sweet joy not tasted yet, For I can give no more." And with the words my thoughts shall climb With following feet the heavenly stair Up which thy steps so lately sped, And, seeing thee so happy there, Come back half comforted. THE CRADLE TOMB IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. A little, rudely sculptured bed, With shadowing folds of marble lace, And quilt of marble, primly spread And folded round a baby's face. Smoothly the mimic coverlet, With royal blazonries bedight, Hangs, as by tender fingers set And straightened for the last good-night. And traced upon the pillowing stone A dent is seen, as if to bless The quiet sleep some grieving one Had leaned, and left a soft impress. It seems no more than yesterday Since the sad mother down the stair And down the long aisle stole away, And left her darling sleeping there. But dust upon the cradle lies, And those who prized the baby so, And laid her down to rest with sighs, Were turned to dust long years ago. Above the peaceful pillowed head Three centuries brood, and strangers peep And wonder at the carven bed,-- But not unwept the baby's sleep, For wistful mother-eyes are blurred With sudden mists, as lingerers stay, And the old dusts are roused and stirred By the warm tear-drops of to-day. Soft, furtive hands caress the stone, And hearts, o'erleaping place and age, Melt into memories, and own A thrill of common parentage. Men die, but sorrow never dies; The crowding years divide in vain, And the wide world is knit with ties Of common brotherhood in pain; Of common share in grief and loss, And heritage in the immortal bloom Of Love, which, flowering round its cross, Made beautiful a baby's tomb. "OF SUCH AS I HAVE." Love me for what I am, Love. Not for sake Of some imagined thing which I might be, Some brightness or some goodness not in me, Born of your hope, as dawn to eyes that wake Imagined morns before the morning break. If I, to please you (whom I fain would please), Reset myself like new key to old tune, Chained thought, remodelled action, very soon My hand would slip from yours, and by degrees The loving, faulty friend, so close to-day, Would vanish, and another take her place,-- A stranger with a stranger's scrutinies, A new regard, an unfamiliar face. Love me for what I am, then, if you may; But, if you cannot,--love me either way. A PORTRAIT. All sweet and various things do lend themselves And blend and intermix in her rare soul, As chorded notes, which were untuneful else, Clasp each the other in a perfect whole. Within her spirit, dawn, all dewy-pearled, Seems held and folded in by golden noons, While past the sunshine gleams a further world Of deep star-spaces and mysterious moons. Like widths of blowing ocean wet with spray, Like breath of early blooms at morning caught, Like cool airs on the cheek of heated day, Come the fair emanations of her thought. Her movement, like the curving of a vine, Seems an unerring accident of grace, And like a flower's the subtle change and shine And meaning of her brightly tranquil face. And like a tree, unconscious of her shade, She spreads her helpful branches everywhere For wandering bird or bee, nor is afraid Too many guests shall crowd to harbor there. For she is kinder than all others are, And weak things, sad things, gather where she dwells, To reach and taste her strength and drink of her, As thirsty creatures of clear water-wells. Why vex with words where words are poor and vain? In one brief sentence lies the riddle's key, Which those who love her read and read again, Finding each time new meanings: SHE IS SHE! WHEN? If I were told that I must die to-morrow, That the next sun Which sinks should bear me past all fear and sorrow For any one, All the fight fought, all the short journey through: What should I do? I do not think that I should shrink or falter, But just go on, Doing my work, nor change, nor seek to alter Aught that is gone; But rise and move and love and smile and pray For one more day. And, lying down at night for a last sleeping, Say in that ear Which hearkens ever: "Lord, within Thy keeping How should I fear? And when to-morrow brings Thee nearer still. Do Thou Thy will." I might not sleep for awe; but peaceful, tender, My soul would lie All the night long; and when the morning splendor Flashed o'er the sky, I think that I could smile--could calmly say, "It is His day." But, if instead a hand from the blue yonder Held out a scroll, On which my life was, writ, and I with wonder Beheld unroll To a long century's end its mystic clew, What should I do? What COULD I do, O blessed Guide and Master, Other than this: Still to go on as now, not slower, faster, Nor fear to miss The road, although so very long it be, While led by Thee? Step after step, feeling Thee close beside me, Although unseen, Through thorns, through flowers, whether the tempest hide Thee, Or heavens serene, Assured Thy faithfulness cannot betray, Thy love decay. I may not know, my God; no hand revealeth Thy counsels wise; Along the path a deepening shadow stealeth, No voice replies To all my questioning thought, the time to tell, And it is well. Let me keep on, abiding and unfearing Thy will always, Through a long century's ripening fruition, Or a short day's. Thou canst not come too soon; and I can wait If thou come late. ON THE SHORE. The punctual tide draws up the bay, With ripple of wave and hiss of spray, And the great red flower of the light-house tower Blooms on the headland far away. Petal by petal its fiery rose Out of the darkness buds and grows; A dazzling shape on the dim, far cape, A beckoning shape as it comes and goes. A moment of bloom, and then it dies On the windy cliff 'twixt the sea and skies. The fog laughs low to see it go, And the white waves watch it with cruel eyes. Then suddenly out of the mist-cloud dun, As touched and wooed by unseen sun, Again into sight bursts the rose of light And opens its petals one by one. Ah, the storm may be wild and the sea be strong, And man is weak and the darkness long, But while blossoms the flower on the light-house tower There still is place for a smile and a song. AMONG THE LILIES. She stood among the lilies In sunset's brightest ray, Among the tall June lilies, As stately fair as they; And I, a boyish lover then, Looked once, and, lingering, looked again, And life began that day. She sat among the lilies, My sweet, all lily-pale; The summer lilies listened, I whispered low my tale. O golden anthers, breathing balm, O hush of peace, O twilight calm, Did you or I prevail? She lies among the lily-snows, Beneath the wintry sky; All round her and about her The buried lilies lie. They will awake at touch of Spring, And she, my fair and flower-like thing, In spring-time--by and by. NOVEMBER. Dry leaves upon the wall, Which flap like rustling wings and seek escape, A single frosted cluster on the grape Still hangs--and that is all. It hangs forgotten quite,-- Forgotten in the purple vintage-day, Left for the sharp and cruel frosts to slay, The daggers of the night. It knew the thrill of spring; It had its blossom-time, its perfumed noons; Its pale-green spheres were rounded to soft runes Of summer's whispering. Through balmy morns of May; Through fragrances of June and bright July, And August, hot and still, it hung on high And purpled day by day. Of fair and mantling shapes, No braver, fairer cluster on the tree; And what then is this thing has come to thee Among the other grapes, Thou lonely tenant of the leafless vine, Granted the right to grow thy mates beside, To ripen thy sweet juices, but denied Thy place among the wine? Ah! we are dull and blind. The riddle is too hard for us to guess The why of joy or of unhappiness, Chosen or left behind. But everywhere a host Of lonely lives shall read their type in thine: Grapes which may never swell the tale of wine, Left out to meet the frost. EMBALMED. This is the street and the dwelling, Let me count the houses o'er; Yes,--one, two, three from the corner, And the house that I love makes four. That is the very window Where I used to see her head Bent over book or needle, With ivy garlanded. And the very loop of the curtain, And the very curve of the vine, Were full of the grace and the meaning Which was hers by some right divine. I began to be glad at the corner, And all the way to the door My heart outran my footsteps, And frolicked and danced before, In haste for the words of welcome, The voice, the repose and grace, And the smile, like a benediction, Of that beautiful, vanished face. Now I pass the door, and I pause not, And I look the other way; But ever, a waft of fragrance, Too subtle to name or stay, Comes the thought of the gracious presence Which made that past time sweet, And still to those who remember, Embalms the house and the street, Like the breath from some vase, now empty Of a flowery shape unseen, Which follows the path of its lover, To tell where a rose has been. GINEVRA DEGLI AMIERI. A STORY OF OLD FLORENCE. So it is come! The doctor's glossy smile Deceives me not. I saw him shake his head, Whispering, and heard poor Giulia sob without, As, slowly creaking, he went down the stair. Were they afraid that I should be afraid? I, who had died once and been laid in tomb? They need not. Little one, look not so pale. I am not raving. Ah! you never heard The story. Climb up there upon the bed: Sit close, and listen. After this one day I shall not tell you stories any more. How old are you, my rose? What! almost twelve? Almost a woman? Scarcely more than that Was your fair mother when she bore her bud; And scarcely more was I when, long years since, I left my father's house, a bride in May. You know the house, beside St. Andrea's church, Gloomy and rich, which stands, and seems to frown On the Mercato, humming at its base; And hold on high, out of the common reach, The lilies and carved shields above its door; And, higher yet, to catch and woo the sun, A little loggia set against the sky? That was my play-place ever as a child; And with me used to play a kinsman's son, Antonio Rondinelli. Ah, dear days! Two happy things we were, with none to chide Or hint that life was anything but play. Sudden the play-time ended. All at once "You must be wed," they told me. "What is wed?" I asked; but with the word I bent my brow, Let them put on the garland, smiled to see The glancing jewels tied about my neck; And so, half-pleased, half-puzzled, was led forth By my grave husband, older than my sire. O the long years that followed! It would seem That the sun never shone in all those years, Or only with a sudden, troubled glint Flashed on Antonio's curls, as he went by Doffing his cap, with eyes of wistful love Raised to my face,--my conscious, woful face. Were we so much to blame? Our lives had twined Together, none forbidding, for so long. They let our childish fingers drop the seed, Unhindered, which should ripen to tall grain; They let the firm, small roots tangle and grow, Then rent them, careless that it hurt the plant. I loved Antonio, and he loved me. Life was all shadow, but it was not sin! I loved Antonio, but I kept me pure, Not for my husband's sake, but for the sake Of him, my first-born child, my little child, Mine for a few short weeks, whose touch, whose look Thrilled all my soul and thrills it to this day. I loved; but, hear me swear, I kept me pure! (Remember that, Madonna, when I come Before thy throne to-morrow. Be not stern, Or gaze upon me with reproachful look, Making my little angel hide his face And weep, while all the others turn glad eyes Rejoicing on their mothers.) It was hard To sit in darkness while the rest had light, To move to discords when the rest had song, To be so young and never to have lived. I bore, as women bear, until one day Soul said to flesh, "This I endure no more," And with the word uprose, tore clay apart, And what was blank before grew blanker still. It was a fever, so the leeches said. I had been dead so long, I did not know The difference, or heed. Oil on my breast, The garments of the grave about me wrapped, They bore me forth, and laid me in the tomb. The rich and beautiful and dreadful tomb, Where all the buried Amteris lie, Beneath the Duomo's black and towering shade. Open the curtain, child. Yes, it is night. It was night then, when I awoke to feel That deadly chill, and see by ghostly gleams Of moonlight, creeping through the grated door, The coffins of my fathers all about. Strange, hollow clamors rang and echoed back, As, struggling out of mine, I dropped and fell. With frantic strength I beat upon the grate. It yielded to my touch. Some careless hand Had left the bolt half-slipped. My father swore Afterward, with a curse, he would make sure Next time. NEXT TIME. That hurts me even now! Dead or alive I issued, scarce sure which. High overhead Giotto's tower soared; Behind, the Duomo rose all white and black; Then pealed a sudden jargoning of bells, And down the darkling street I wildly fled, Led by a little, cold, and wandering moon, Which seemed as lonely and as lost as I. I had no aim, save to reach warmth and light And human touch; but still my witless steps Led to my husband's door, and there I stopped, By instinct, knocked, and called. A window oped. A voice--t'was his--demanded: "Who is there?" "Tis I, Ginevra." Then I heard the tone Change into horror, and he prayed aloud And called upon the saints, the while I urged, "O, let me in, Francesco; let me in! I am so cold, so frightened, let me in!" Then, with a crash, the window was shut fast; And, though I cried and beat upon the door And wailed aloud, no other answer came. Weeping, I turned away, and feebly strove Down the hard distance towards my father's house. "They will have pity and will let me in," I thought. "They loved me and will let me in." Cowards! At the high window overhead They stood and trembled, while I plead and prayed: "I am your child, Ginevra. Let me in! I am not dead. In mercy, let me in!" "The holy saints forbid!" declared my sire. My mother sobbed and vowed whole pounds of wax To St. Eustachio, would he but remove This fearful presence from her door. Then sharp Came click of lock, and a long tube was thrust From out the window, and my brother cried, "Spirit or devil, go! or else I fire!" Where should I go? Back to the ghastly tomb And the cold coffined ones? Up the long street, Wringing my hands and sobbing low, I went. My feet were bare and bleeding from the stones; My hands were bleeding too; my hair hung loose Over my shroud. So wild and strange a shape Saw never Florence since. The people call That street through which I walked and wrung my hands "Street of the Dead One," even to this day. The sleeping houses stood in midnight black, And not a soul was in the streets but I. At last I saw a flickering point of light High overhead, in a dim window set. I had lain down to die; but at the sight I rose, crawled on, and with expiring strength Knocked, sank again, and knew not even then It was Antonio's door by which I lay. A window opened, and a voice called out: "Qui e?" "I am Ginevra." And I thought, "Now he will fall to trembling, like the rest, And bid me hence." But, lo! a moment more The bolts were drawn, and arms whose very touch Was life, lifted and clasped and bore me in. "O ghost or angel of my buried love, I know not, care not which, be welcome here! Welcome, thrice welcome, to this heart of mine!" I heard him say, and then I heard no more. It was high noontide when I woke again, To hear fierce voices wrangling by my bed,-- My father's and my husband's; for, with dawn, Gathering up valor, they had sought the tomb, Had found me gone, and tracked my bleeding feet Over the pavement to Antonio's door. Dead, they cared nothing: living, I was, theirs. Hot raged the quarrel; then came Justice in, And to the court we swept--I in my shroud-- To try the cause. This was the verdict given: "A woman who has been to burial borne, Made fast and left and locked in with the dead; Who at her husband's door has stood and plead For entrance, and has heard her prayer denied; Who from her father's house is urged and chased, Must be adjudged as dead in law and fact. The Court pronounces the defendant--dead! She can resume her former ties at will, Or may renounce them, if such be her will. She is no more a daughter, or a spouse, Unless she choose, and is set free to form New ties, if so she choose." O, blessed words! That very day we knelt before the priest, My love and I, were wed, and life began. Child of my child, child of Antonio's child, Bend down and let me kiss your wondering face. 'Tis a strange tale to tell a rose like you. But time is brief, and, had I told you not, Haply the story would have met your ears From them, the Amieri, my own blood, Now turned to gall, whose foul and bitter lips Will wag with lies when once my lips are dumb. (Pardon me, Virgin. I was gentle once, And thou hast seen my wrongs. Thou wilt forgive.) Now go, my dearest. When they wake thee up, To tell thee I am dead, be not too sad. I, who have died once, do not fear to die. Sweet was that waking, sweeter will be this. Close to Heaven's gate my own Antonio sits Waiting, and, spite of all the Frati say, I know I shall not stand long at that gate, Or knock and be refused an entrance there, For he will start up when lie hears my voice, The saints will smile, and he will open quick. Only a night to part me from that joy. Jesu Maria! let the dawning come. EASTER LILIES. Darlings of June and brides of summer sun, Chill pipes the stormy wind, the skies are drear; Dull and despoiled the gardens every one: What do you here? We looked to see your gracious blooms arise Mid soft and wooing airs in gardens green, Where venturesome brown bees and butterflies Should hail you queen. Here is no bee nor glancing butterfly; They fled on rapid wings before the snow: Your sister lilies laid them down to die, Long, long ago. And here, amid the slowly dropping rain, We keep our Easter feast, with hearts whose care Mars the high cadence of each lofty strain, Each thankful prayer. But not a shadow dims your joyance sweet, No baffled hope or memory darkly clad; You lay your whiteness at the Lord's dear feet, And are all glad. O coward soul! arouse thee and draw near, Led by these fragrant acolytes to-day! Let their sweet confidence rebuke thy fear, Thy cold delay. Come with thy darkness to the healing light, Come with thy bitter, which shall be made sweet, And lay thy soil beside the lilies white, At His dear feet! EBB-TIDE. Long reaches of wet grasses sway Where ran the sea but yesterday, And white-winged boats at sunset drew To anchor in the crimsoning blue. The boats lie on the grassy plain, Nor tug nor fret at anchor chain; Their errand done, their impulse spent, Chained by an alien element, With sails unset they idly lie, Though morning beckons brave and nigh; Like wounded birds, their flight denied, They lie, and long and wait the tide. About their keels, within the net Of tough grass fibres green and wet, A myriad thirsty creatures, pent In sorrowful imprisonment, Await the beat, distinct and sweet, Of the white waves' returning feet. My soul their vigil joins, and shares A nobler discontent than theirs; Athirst like them, I patiently Sit listening beside the sea, And still the waters outward glide: When is the turning of the tide? Come, pulse of God; come, heavenly thrill! We wait thy coming,--and we will. The world is vast, and very far Its utmost verge and boundaries are; But thou hast kept thy word to-day In India and in dim Cathay, And the same mighty care shall reach Each humblest rock-pool of this beach. The gasping fish, the stranded keel, This dull dry soul of mine, shall feel Thy freshening touch, and, satisfied, Shall drink the fulness of the tide. FLOOD-TIDE. All night the thirsty beach has listening lain, With patience dumb, Counting the slow, sad moments of her pain; Now morn has come, And with the morn the punctual tide again. I hear the white battalions down the bay Charge with a cheer; The sun's gold lances prick them on their way,-- They plunge, they rear,-- Foam-plumed and snowy-pennoned, they are here! The roused shore, her bright hair backward blown, Stands on the verge And waves a smiling welcome, beckoning on The flying surge, While round her feet, like doves, the billows crowd and urge. Her glad lips quaff the salt, familiar wine; Her spent urns fill; All hungering creatures know the sound, the sign,-- Quiver and thrill, With glad expectance crowd and banquet at their will. I, too, the rapt contentment join and share; My tide is full; There is new happiness in earth, in air: All beautiful And fresh the world but now so bare and dull. But while we raise the cup of bliss so high, Thus satisfied, Another shore beneath a sad, far sky Waiteth her tide, And thirsts with sad complainings still denied. On earth's remotest bound she sits and waits In doubt and pain; Our joy is signal for her sad estates; Like dull refrain Marring our song, her sighings rise in vain. To each his turn--the ebb-tide and the flood, The less, the more-- God metes his portions justly out, I know; But still before My mind forever floats that pale and grieving shore. A YEAR. She has been just a year in Heaven. Unmarked by white moon or gold sun, By stroke of clock or clang of bell, Or shadow lengthening on the way, In the full noon and perfect day, In Safety's very citadel, The happy hours have sped, have run; And, rapt in peace, all pain forgot, She whom we love, her white soul shriven, Smiles at the thought and wonders not. We have been just a year alone,-- A year whose calendar is sighs, And dull, perpetual wishfulness, And smiles, each covert for a tear, And wandering thoughts, half there, half here, And weariful attempts to guess The secret of the hiding skies, The soft, inexorable blue, With gleaming hints of glory sown, And Heaven behind, just shining through. So sweet, so sad, so swift, so slow, So full of eager growth and light, So full of pain which blindly grows, So full of thoughts which either way Have passed and crossed and touched each day, To us a thorn, to her a rose; The year so black, the year so white, Like rivers twain their course have run; The earthly stream we trace and know, But who shall paint the heavenly one? A year! We gather up our powers, Our lamps we consecrate and trim; Open all windows to the day, And welcome every heavenly air. We will press forward and will bear, Having this word to cheer the way: She, storm-tossed once, is safe with Him, Healed, comforted, content, forgiven; And while we count these heavy hours Has been a year,--a year in Heaven. TOKENS. Each day upon the yellow Nile, 'tis said. Joseph, the youthful ruler, cast forth wheat, That haply, floating to his father's feet,-- The sad old father, who believed him dead,-- It might be sign in Egypt there was bread; And thus the patriarch, past the desert sands And scant oasis fringed with thirsty green, Be lured toward the love that yearned unseen. So, flung and scattered--ah! by what dear hands?-- On the swift-rushing and invisible tide, Small tokens drift adown from far, fair lands, And say to us, who in the desert bide, "Are you athirst? Are there no sheaves to bind? Beloved, here is fulness; follow on and find." HER GOING. SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE. She stood in the open door, She blessed them faint and low: "I must go," she said, "must go Away from the light of the sun, Away from you, every one; Must see your eyes no more,-- Your eyes, that love me so. "I should not shudder thus, Nor weep, nor be afraid. Nor cling to you so dismayed, Could I only pierce with ray eyes Where the dark, dark shadow lies; Where something hideous Is hiding, perhaps," she said. Then slowly she went from them, Went down the staircase grim, With trembling heart and limb; Her footfalls echoed In the silence vast and dead, Like the notes of a requiem, Not sung, but uttered. For a little way and a black She groped as grope the blind, Then a sudden radiance shined, And a vision her eyelids burned; All joyfully she turned, For a moment turned she back, And smiled at those behind. There in the shadows drear An angel sat serene, Of grave and tender mien, With whitest roses crowned; A scythe lay on the ground, As reaping-time were near,-- A burnished scythe and a keen. She did not start or pale As the angel rose and laid His hand on hers, nor said A word, hut beckoned on; For a glorious meaning shone On the lips that told no tale, And she followed him, unafraid. Her friends wept for a space; Then one said: "Be content; Surely some good is meant For her, our Beautiful,-- Some glorious good and full. Did you not see her face, Her dear smile, as she went?" A LONELY MOMENT. I sit alone in the gray, The snow falls thick and fast, And never a sound have I heard all day But the wailing of the blast, And the hiss and click of the snow, whirling to and fro. There seems no living thing Left in the world but I; My thoughts fly forth on restless wing, And drift back wearily, Storm-beaten, buffeted, hopeless, and almost dead. No one there is to care; Not one to even know Of the lonely day and the dull despair As the hours ebb and flow, Slow lingering, as fain to lengthen out my pain. And I think of the monks of old, Each in his separate cell, Hearing no sound, except when tolled The stated convent bell. How could they live and bear that silence everywhere? And I think of tumbling seas, 'Neath cruel, lonely skies; And shipwrecked sailors over these Stretching their hungry eyes,-- Eyes dimmed with wasting tears for weary years on years,-- Pacing the hopeless sand, Wistful and wan and pale, Each foam-flash like a beckoning hand, Each wave a glancing sail, And so for days and days, and still the sail delays. I hide my eyes in vain, In vain I try to smile; That urging vision comes again, The sailor on his isle, With none to hear his cry, to help him live--or die! And with the pang a thought Breaks o'er me like the sun, Of the great listening Love which caught Those accents every one, Nor lost one faintest word, but always, always heard. The monk his vigil pale Could lighten with a smile, The sailor's courage need not fail Upon his lonely isle; For there, as here, by sea or land, the pitying Lord stood close at hand. O coward heart of mine! When storms shall beat again, Hold firmly to this thought divine, As anchorage in pain: That, lonely though thou seemest to be, the Lord is near, remembering thee. COMMUNION. What is it to commune? It is when soul meets soul, and they embrace As souls may, stooping from each separate sphere For a brief moment's space. What is it to commune? It is to lay the veil of custom by, To be all unafraid of truth to talk, Face to face, eye to eye. Not face to face, dear Lord; That is the joy of brighter worlds to be; And yet, Thy bidden guests about Thy board, We do commune with Thee. Behind the white-robed priest Our eyes, anointed with a sudden grace, Dare to conjecture of a mighty guest, A dim beloved Face. And is it Thou, indeed? And dost Thou lay Thy glory all away To visit us, and with Thy grace to feed Our hungering hearts to-day? And can a thing so sweet, And can such heavenly condescension be? Ah! wherefore tarry thus our lingering feet? It can be none but Thee. There is the gracious ear That never yet was deaf to sinner's call; We will not linger, and we dare not fear, But kneel,--and tell Thee all. We tell Thee of our sin Only half loathed, only half wished away, And those clear eyes of Love that look within Rebuke us, seem to say,-- "O, bought with my own blood, Mine own, for whom my precious life I gave, Am I so little prized, remembered, loved, By those I died to save?" And under that deep gaze Sorrow awakes; we kneel with eyelids wet, And marvel, as with Peter at the gate, That we could so forget, We tell Thee of our care, Of the sore burden, pressing day by day, And in the light and pity of Thy face The burden melts away. We breathe our secret wish, The importunate longing which no man may see; We ask it humbly, or, more restful still, We leave it all to Thee. And last our amulet Of precious names we thread, and soft and low We crave for each beloved, or near or far, A blessing ere we go. The thorns are turned to flowers, All dark perplexities seem light and fair, A mist is lifted from the heavy hours, And Thou art everywhere. A FAREWELL. Go, sun, since go you must, The dusky evening lowers above our sky, Our sky which was so blue and sweetly fair; Night is not terrible that we should sigh. A little darkness we can surely bear; Will there not be more sunshine--by and by? Go, rose, since go you must, Flowerless and chill the winter draweth nigh; Closed are the blithe and fragrant lips which made All summer long perpetual melody. Cheerless we take our way, but not afraid: Will there not be more roses--by and by? Go, love, since go you must, Out of our pain we bless you as you fly; The momentary heaven the rainbow lit Was worth whole days of black and stormy sky; Shall we not see, as by the waves we sit, Your bright sail winging shoreward--by and by? Go, life, since go you must, Uncertain guest and whimsical ally! All questionless you came, unquestioned go; What does it mean to live, or what to die? Smiling we watch you vanish, for we know Somewhere is nobler living--by and by. EBB AND FLOW. How easily He turns the tides! Just now the yellow beach was dry, Just now the gaunt rocks all were bare, The sun beat hot, and thirstily Each sea-weed waved its long brown hair, And bent and languished as in pain; Then, in a flashing moment's space, The white foam-feet which spurned the sand Paused in their joyous outward race, Wheeled, wavered, turned them to the land, And, a swift legionary band, Poured oil the waiting shores again. How easily He turns the tides! The fulness of my yesterday Has vanished like a rapid dream, And pitiless and far away The cool, refreshing waters gleam: Grim rocks of dread and doubt and pain Rear their dark fronts where once was sea; But I can smile and wait for Him Who turns the tides so easily, Fills the spent rock-pool to its brim, And up from the horizon dim Leads His bright morning waves again. ANGELUS. Softly drops the crimson sun: Softly down from overhead, Drop the bell-notes, one by one, Melting in the melting red; Sign to angel bands unsleeping,-- "Day is done, the dark is dread, Take the world in care and keeping. "Set the white-robed sentries close, Wrap our want and weariness In the surety of repose; Let the shining presences, Bearing fragrance on their wings, Stand about our beds to bless, Fright away all evil things. "Rays of Him whose shadow pours Through all lives a brimming glory, Float o'er darksome woods and moors, Float above the billows hoary; Shine, through night and storm and sin, Tangled fate and bitter story, Guide the lost and wandering in!" Now the last red ray is gone; Now the twilight shadows hie; Still the bell-notes, one by one, Send their soft voice to the sky, Praying, as with human lip,-- "Angels, hasten, night is nigh, Take us to thy guardianship." THE MORNING COMES BEFORE THE SUN. Slow buds the pink dawn like a rose From out night's gray and cloudy sheath; Softly and still it grows and grows, Petal by petal, leaf by leaf; Each sleep-imprisoned creature breaks Its dreamy fetters, one by one, And love awakes, and labor wakes,-- The morning comes before the sun. What is this message from the light So fairer far than light can be? Youth stands a-tiptoe, eager, bright, In haste the risen sun to see; Ah! check thy lunging, restless heart, Count the charmed moments as they run, It is life's best and fairest part, This morning hour before the sun. When once thy day shall burst to flower, When once the sun shall climb the sky, And busy hour by busy hour, The urgent noontide draws anigh; When the long shadows creep abreast, To dim the happy task half done, Thou wilt recall this pause of rest, This morning hush before the sun. To each, one dawning and one dew, One fresh young hour is given by fate, One rose flush on the early blue. Be not impatient then, but wait! Clasp the sweet peace on earth and sky, By midnight angels woven and spun; Better than day its prophecy,-- The morning comes before the sun. LABORARE EST ORARE. "Although St. Franceses was unwearied in her devotions, yet if, during her prayers, she was called away by her husband or any domestic duty, she would close the book cheerfully, saying that a wife and a mother, when called upon, must quit her God at the alter to find Him in her domestic affairs."--Legends of the Monastic Orders. How infinite and sweet, Thou everywhere And all abounding Love, Thy service is! Thou liest an ocean round my world of care, My petty every-day; and fresh and fair, Pour Thy strong tides through all my crevices, Until the silence ripples into prayer. That Thy full glory may abound, increase, And so Thy likeness shall be formed in me, I pray; the answer is not rest or peace, But charges, duties, wants, anxieties, Till there seems room for everything but Thee, And never time for anything but these. And I should fear, but lo! amid the press, The whirl and hum and pressure of my day, I hear Thy garment's sweep, Thy seamless dress, And close beside my work and weariness Discern Thy gracious form, not far away, But very near, O Lord, to help and bless. The busy fingers fly, the eyes may see Only the glancing needle which they hold, But all my life it, blossoming inwardly, And every breath is like a litany, While through each labor, like a thread of gold, Is woven the sweet consciousness of Thee. EIGHTEEN. Ah! grown a dim and fairy shade, Dear child, who, fifteen years ago, Out of our arms escaped and fled With swift white feet, as if afraid, To hide beneath the grass, the snow, that sunny little head. This is your birthday! Fair, so fair, And grown to gracious maiden-height, And versed in heavenly lore and ways; White-vested as the angels are, In very light of very light, Somehow, somewhere, you keep the day With those new friends, whom "new" we call, But who are dearer now than we, And better known by fate and name: And do they smile and say, "How tall The child becomes, how radiant, she Who was so little when she came!" Darling, we count your eighteen years,-- Fifteen in Heaven, on earth but three,-- And try to frame you grown and wise: But all in vain; there still appears Only the child you used to be, Our baby with the violet eyes. OUTWARD BOUND, A grievous day of wrathful winds, Of low-hung clouds, which scud and fly, And drop cold rains, then lift and show A sullen realm of upper sky. The sea is black as night; it roars From lips afoam with cruel spray, Like some fierce, many-throated pack Of wolves, which scents and chases prey. Crouched in my little wind-swept nook, I hear the menacing voices call, And shudder, as above the deck Topples and swings the weltering wall. It seems a vast and restless grave, Insatiate, hungry, beckoning With dreadful gesture of command To every free and living thing. "O Lord," I cry, "Thou makest life And hope and all sweet things to be; Rebuke this hovering, following Death,-- This horror never born of Thee." A sudden gleam, the waves light up With radiant momentary hues,-- Amber and shadowy pearl and gold, Opal and green and unknown blues,-- And, rising on the tossing walls, Within the foaming valleys swung, Soft shapes of sea-birds, dimly seen, Flutter and float and call their young, A moment; then the lowering clouds Settle anew above the main, The colors die, the waves rise higher, And night and terror rule again. No more I see the small, dim shapes, So unafraid of wind and wave, Nestling beneath the tempest's roar, Cradled in what I deemed a grave. But all night long I lay and smiled At thought of those soft folded wings, And trusting, with the trustful birds, In Him who cares for smallest things. FROM EAST TO WEST. The boat cast loose her moorings; "Good-by" was all we said. "Good-by, Old World," we said with a smile, And never looked back as we sped, A shining wake of foam behind, To the heart of the sunset red. Heavily drove our plunging keel The warring waves between; Heavily strove we night and day, Against the west-wind keen, Bent, like a foe, to bar our path,-- A foe with an awful mien. Never a token met our eyes From the dear land far away; No storm-swept bird, no drifting branch, To tell us where it lay. Wearily searched we, hour by hour, Through the mist and the driving spray, Till, all in a flashing moment, The fog-veils rent and flew, And a blithesome south-wind caught the sails And whistled the cordage through, And the stars swung low their silver lamps In a dome of airy blue, And, breathed from unseen distances, A new and joyous air Caressed our senses suddenly With a rapture fresh and rare. "It is the breath of home!" we cried; "We feel that we are there." O Land whose tent-roof is the dome Of Heaven's, purest sky, Whose mighty heart inspires the wind Of glad, strong liberty, Standing upon thy sunset shore, Beside the waters high, Long may thy rosy smile be bright; Above the ocean din Thy young, undaunted voice be heard, Calling the whole world kin; And ever be thy arms held out To take the storm-tossed in! UNA. My darling once lived by my side, She scarcely ever went away; We shared our studies and our play, Nor did she care to walk or ride Unless I did the same that day. Now she is gone to some far place; I never see her any more, The pleasant play-times all are o'er; I come from school, there is no face To greet me at the open door. At first I cried all day, all night; I could not bear to eat or smile, I missed her, missed her, all the while The brightest day did not look bright, The shortest walk was like a mile. Then some one came and told me this: "Your playmate is but gone from view, Close by your side she stands, and you Can almost hear her breathe, and kiss Her soft cheek as you used to do. "Only a little veil between,-- A slight, thin veil; if you could see Past its gray folds, there she would be, Smiling and sweet, and she would lean And stretch her hands out joyfully. "All the day long, and year by year, She will go forward as you go; As you grow older, she will grow; As you grow good, she with her clear And angel eyes, will mark and know. "Think, when you wake up every day, That she is standing by your bed, Close to the pillow where her head, Her little curly head, once lay, With a 'Good-morning' smiled, not said. "Think, when the hooks seem dull and tame, The sports no longer what they were, That there she sits, a shape of air, And turns the leaf or joins the game With the same smile she used to wear. "So, moving on still, hand in hand, One of these days your eyes will clear, The hiding veil will disappear, And you will know and understand Just why your playmate left you here." This made me happier, and I try To think each day that it may be. Sometimes I do so easily; But then again I have to cry, Because I want so much to SEE! TWO WAYS TO LOVE. "Entre deux amants il y a toujours l'an qui baise et l'autre qui tend la joue." I says he loves me well, and I Believe it; in my hands, to make Or mar, his life lies utterly, Nor can I the strong plea deny. Which claims my love for his love's sake. He says there is no face so fair As mine; when I draw near, his eyes Light up; each ripple of my hair He loves; the very clunk I wear He touches fondly where it lies. And roses, roses all the way, Upon my path fall, strewed by him; His tenderness by night, by day, Keeps faithful watch to heap alway My cup of pleasure to the brim. The other women, full of spite, Count me the happiest woman born To be so worshipped; I delight To flaunt his homage in their sight,-- For me the rose, for them its thorn. I love him--or I think I do; Sure one MUST love what is so sweet. He is all tender and all true, All eloquent to plead and sue, All strength--though kneeling at my feet. Yet I had visions once of yore, Girlish imaginings of a zest, A possible thrill,--but why run o'er These fancies?--idle dreams, no more; I will forget them, this is best. So let him take,--the past is past; The future, with its golden key, Into his outstretched hands I cast. I shall love him--perhaps--at last, As now I love his love for me. II. Nor as all other women may, Love I my Love; he is so great, So beautiful, I dare essay No nearness but in silence lay My heart upon his path,--and wait. Poor heart! its healings are so low He does not heed them passing by, Save as one heeds, where violets grow, A fragrance, caring not to know Where the veiled purple buds may lie. I sometimes think that it is dead, It lies so still. I bend and lean, Like mother over cradle-head, Wondering if still faint breaths are shed Like sighs the parted lips between. And then, with vivid pulse and thrill, It quickens into sudden bliss At sound of step or voice, nor will Be hushed, although, regardless still, He knows not, cares not, it is his. I would not lift it if I could; The little flame, though faint and dim As glow-worm spark in lonely wood, Shining where no man calls it good, May one day light the path for him,-- May guide his way, or soon or late, Through blinding mist or wintry rain; And, so content, I watch and wait. Let others share his happier fate, I only ask to share his pain! And if some day, when passing by, My dear Love should his steps arrest, Should mark the poor heart waiting nigh, Should know it his, should lift it,--why, Patience is good, but joy is best! AFTER-GLOW. My morn was all dewy rose and pearl, Peace brimmed the skies, a cool and fragrant air Caressed my going forth, and everywhere The radiant webs, by hope and fancy spun, Stretched shining in the sun. Then came a noon, hot, breathless, still,-- No wind to visit the dew-thirsty flowers, Only the dust, the road, the urging hours; And, pressing on, I never guessed or knew That day was half-way through. And when the pomp of purple lit the sky, And sheaves of golden lances tipped with red Danced in the west, wondering I gazed, and said, "Lo, a new morning comes, my hopes to crown!" Sudden the sun dropped down Like a great golden ball into the sea, Which made room, laughing, and the serried rank Of yellow lances flashed, and, turning, sank After their chieftain, as he led the way, And all the heaven was gray. Startled and pale, I stood to see them go; Then a long, stealing shadow to me crept, And laid his cold hand on me, and I wept And hid my eyes, and shivered with affright At thought of coming night. But as I wept and shuddered, a warm thrill Smote on my sense. I raised my eyes, and lo! The skies, so dim but now, were all aglow With a new flush of tender rose and gold, Opening fold on fold. Higher and higher soared the gracious beam, Deeper and deeper glowed the heavenly hues, Nor any cowering shadow could refuse The beautiful embrace which clasped and kissed Its dun to amethyst. A little longer, and the lovely light, Draining the last drops from its wondrous urn, Departed, and the swart shades in their turn, Impatient of the momentary mirth, Crowded to seize the earth. No longer do I shudder. With calm eye I front the night, nor wish its hours away; For in that message from my banished day I read his pledge of dawn, and soon or late I can endure to wait. HOPE AND I. Hope stood one morning by the way, And stretched her fair right hand to me, And softly whispered, "For this day I'll company with thee." "Ah, no, dear Hope," I sighing said; "Oft have you joined me in the morn, But when the evening came, you fled And left me all forlorn. "'Tis better I should walk alone Than have your company awhile, And then to lose it, and go on For weary mile on mile," She turned, rebuked. I went my way, But sad the sunshine seemed, and chill; I missed her, missed her all the day, And O, I miss her still. LEFT BEHIND. We started in the morning, a morning full of glee, All in the early morning, a goodly company; And some were full of merriment, and all were kind and dear: But the others have pursued their way, and left me sitting here. My feet were not so fleet as theirs, my courage soon was gone, And so I lagged and fell behind, although they cried "Come on!" They cheered me and they pitied me, but one by one went by, For the stronger must outstrip the weak; there is no remedy. Some never looked behind, but smiled, and swiftly, hand in hand, Departed with, a strange sweet joy I could not understand; I know not by what silver streams their roses bud and blow, Rut I am glad--O very glad--they should be happy so. And some they went companionless, yet not alone, it seemed; For there were sounds of rustling wings, and songs,--or else we dreamed; And a glow from lights invisible to us lit up the place, And tinged, as if with glory, each dear and parting face. So happy, happy did they look, as one by one they went, That we, who missed them sorely, were fain to be content; And I, who sit the last of all, left far behind, alone, Cannot be sorry for their sakes, but only for my own. My eyes seek out the different paths by which they went away, And oft I wish to follow, but oftener wish to stay; For fair as may the new things be, the farther things they know, This is a pleasant resting-place, a pleasant place also. There are flowers for the gathering, which grow my path anear, The skies are fair, and everywhere the sun is warm and clear: I may have missed the wine of life, the strong wine and the new, But I have my wells of water, my sips of honey-dew. So when I turn my thoughts from those who shared my dawn of day, My fresh and joyous morning prune, and now are passed away, I can see just how sweet all is, how good, and be resigned To sit thus in the afternoon, alone and left behind. SAVOIR C'EST PARDONNER. Myriad rivers seek the sea, The sea rejects not any one; A myriad rays of light may be Clasped in the compass of one sun; And myriad grasses, wild and free, Drink of the dew which faileth none. A myriad worlds encompass ours; A myriad souls our souls enclose; And each, its sins and woes and powers, The Lord He sees, the Lord He knows, And from the Infinite Knowledge flowers The Infinite Pity's fadeless rose. Lighten our darkness, Lord, most wise; All-seeing One, give us to see; Our judgments are profanities, Our ignorance is cruelty, While Thou, knowing all, dost not despise To pardon even such things as we. MORNING. O word and thing most beautiful! Our yesterday was cold and dull, Gray mists obscured the setting sun, Its evening wept with sobbing rain; But to and fro, mid shrouding night, Some healing angel swift has run, And all is fresh and fair again. O, word and thing most beautiful! The hearts, which were of cares so full, The tired hands, the tired feet, So glad of night, are glad of morn,-- Where are the clouds of yesterday? The world is good, the world is sweet, And life is new and hope re-born. O, word and thing most beautiful! O coward soul and sorrowful, Which sighs to note the ebbing light Give place to evening's shadowy gray! What are these things but parables,-- That darkness heals the wrongs of day, And dawning clears all mists of night. O, word and thing most beautiful! The little sleep our cares to lull, The long, soft dusk and then sunrise, To waken fresh and angel fair, Lite all renewed and cares forgot, Ready for Heaven's glad surprise. So Christ, who is our Light, be there. A BLIND SINGER. In covert of a leafy porch, Where woodbine clings, And roses drop their crimson leaves, He sits and sings; With soft brown crest erect to hear, And drooping wings. Shut in a narrow cage, which bars His eager flight, Shut in the darker prison-house Of blinded sight, Alike to him are sun and stars, The day, the night. But all the fervor of high noon, Hushed, fragrant, strong, And all the peace of moonlit nights When nights are long, And all the bliss of summer eves, Breathe in his song. The rustle of the fresh green woods, The hum of bee, The joy of flight, the perfumed waft Of blossoming tree, The half-forgotten, rapturous thrill Of liberty,-- All blend and mix, while evermore, Now and again, A plaintive, puzzled cadence comes, A low refrain, Caught from some shadowy memory Of patient pain. In midnight black, when all men sleep, My singer wakes, And pipes his lovely melodies, And trills and shakes. The dark sky bends to listen, but No answer makes. O, what is joy? In vain we grasp Her purple wings; Unwon, unwooed, she flits to dwell With humble things; She shares my sightless singer's cage, And so--he sings. MARY. The drowsy summer in the flowering limes Had laid her down at ease, Lulled by soft, sportive winds, whose tinkling chimes Summoned the wandering bees To feast, and dance, and hold high carnival Within that vast and fragrant banquet-hall. She stood, my Mary, on the wall below, Poised on light, arching feet, And drew the long, green branches down to show Where hung, mid odors sweet,-- A tiny miracle to touch and view,-- The humming-bird's, small nest and pearls of blue. Fair as the summer's self she stood, and smiled, With eyes like summer sky, Wistful and glad, half-matron and half-child, Gentle and proud and shy; Her sweet head framed against the blossoming bough, She stood a moment,--and she stands there now! 'Tis sixteen years since, trustful, unafraid, In her full noon of light, She passed beneath the grass's curtaining shade, Out of our mortal sight; And springs and summers, bearing gifts to men, And long, long winters have gone by since then. And each some little gift has brought to dress That unforgotten bed,-- Violet, anemone, or lady's-tress, Or spray of berries red, Or purpling leaf, or mantle, pure and cold, Of winnowed snow, wrapped round it, fold on fold. Yet still she stands, a glad and radiant shape, Set in the morning fair,-- That vanished morn which had such swift escape. I turn and see her there,-- The arch, sweet smile, the bending, graceful head; And, seeing thus, why do I call her dead? WHEN LOVE WENT. What whispered Love the day he fled? Ah! this was what Love whispered; "You sought to hold me with a chain; I fly to prove such holding vain. "You bound me burdens, and I bore The burdens hard, the burdens sore; I bore them all unmurmuring, For Love can bear a harder thing. "You taxed me often, teased me, wept; I only smiled, and still I kept Through storm and sun and night and day, My joyous, viewless, faithful way. "But, dear, once dearest, you and I This day have parted company. Love must be free to give, defer, Himself alone his almoner. "As free I freely poured my all, Enslaved I spurn, renounce my thrall, Its wages and its bitter bread." Thus whispered Love the day he fled! OVERSHADOWED. "Insomuch that they brought forth the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and couches, that at the least the shadow of Peter, passing by, might overshadow some of them." Mid the thronged bustle of the city street, In the hot hush of noon, I wait, with folded hands and nerveless feet. Surely He will come soon. Surely the Healer will not pass me by, But listen to my cry. Long are the hours in which I lie and wait, Heavy the load I bear; But He will come ere evening. Soon or late I shall behold Him there; Shall hear His dear voice, all the clangor through; "What wilt thou that I do?" "If Thou but wilt, Lord, Thou canst make me clean." Thus shall I answer swift. And He will touch me, as He walks serene; And I shall rise and lift This couch, so long my prison-house of pain, And be made whole again. He lingers yet. But lo! a hush, a hum. The multitudes press on After some leader. Surely He is come! He nears me; He is gone! Only His shadow reached me, as He went; Yet here I rest content. In that dear shadow, like some healing spell, A heavenly patience lay; Its balm of peace enwrapped me as it fell; My pains all fled away,-- The weariness, the deep unrest of soul; I am indeed "made whole." It is enough, Lord, though Thy face divine Was turned to other men. Although no touch, no questioning voice was mine, Thou wilt come once again; And, if Thy shadow brings such bliss to me, What must Thy presence be? TIME TO GO. They know the time to go! The fairy clocks strike their inaudible hour In field and woodland, and each punctual flower Bows at the signal an obedient head And hastes to bed. The pale Anemone Glides on her way with scarcely a good-night; The Violets tie their purple nightcaps tight; Hand clasped in hand, the dancing Columbines, In blithesome lines, Drop their last courtesies, Flit from the scene, and couch them for their rest; The Meadow Lily folds her scarlet vest And hides it 'neath the Grasses' lengthening green; Fair and serene, Her sister Lily floats On the blue pond, and raises golden eyes To court the golden splendor of the skies,-- The sudden signal comes, and down she goes To find repose, In the cool depths below, A little later, and the Asters blue Depart in crowds, a brave and cheery crew; While Golden-rod, still wide awake and gay, Turns him away, Furls his bright parasol, And, like a little hero, meets his fate. The Gentians, very proud to sit up late, Next follow. Every Fern is tucked and set 'Neath coverlet, Downy and soft and warm. No little seedling voice is heard to grieve Or make complaints the folding woods beneath; No lingerer dares to stay, for well they know The time to go. Teach us your patience, brave, Dear flowers, till we shall dare to part like you, Willing God's will, sure that his clock strikes true, That his sweet day augurs a sweeter morrow, With smiles, not sorrow. GULF-STREAM. Lonely and cold and fierce I keep my way, Scourge of the lands, companioned by the storm, Tossing to heaven my frontlet, wild and gray, Mateless, yet conscious ever of a warm And brooding presence close to mine all day. What is this alien thing, so near, so far, Close to my life always, but blending never? Hemmed in by walls whose crystal gates unbar Not at the instance of my strong endeavor To pierce the stronghold where their secrets are? Buoyant, impalpable, relentless, thin, Rise the clear, mocking walls. I strive in vain To reach the pulsing heart that beats within, Or with persistence of a cold disdain, To quell the gladness which I may not win. Forever sundered and forever one, Linked by a bond whose spell I may not guess, Our hostile, yet embracing currents run; Such wedlock lonelier is than loneliness. Baffled, withheld, I clasp the bride I shun. Yet even in my wrath a wild regret Mingles; a bitterness of jealous strife Tinges my fury as I foam and fret Against the borders of that calmer life, Beside whose course my wrathful course is set. But all my anger, all my pain and woe, Are vain to daunt her gladness; all the while She goes rejoicing, and I do not know, Catching the soft irradiance of her smile, If I am most her lover or her foe. MY WHITE CHRYSANTHEMUM. As purely white as is the drifted snow, More dazzling fair than summer roses are, Petalled with rays like a clear rounded star, When winds pipe chilly, and red sunsets glow, Your blossoms blow. Sweet with a freshening fragrance, all their own, In which a faint, dim breath of bitter lies, Like wholesome breath mid honeyed flatteries; When other blooms are dead, and birds have flown, You stand alone. Fronting the winter with a fearless grace, Flavoring the odorless gray autumn chill, Nipped by the furtive frosts, but cheery still, Lifting to heaven from the bare garden place A smiling face. Roses are fair, but frail, and soon grow faint, Nor can endure a hardness; violets blue, Short-lived and sweet, live but a day or two; The nun-like lily bows without complaint, And dies a saint. Each following each they hasten them away, And leave us to our winter and our rue, Sad and uncomforted; you, only you, Dear, hardy lover, keep your faith and stay Long as you may. And so we choose you out from all the rest, For that most noble word of "Loyalty," Which blazoned on your petals seems to be; Winter is near,--stay with us; be our guest, The last and best. TILL THE DAY DAWN. Why should I weary you, dear heart, with words, Words all discordant with a foolish pain? Thoughts cannot interrupt or prayers do wrong, And soft and silent as the summer rain Mine fall upon your pathway all day long. Giving as God gives, counting not the cost Of broken box or spilled and fragrant oil, I know that, spite of your strong carelessness, Rest must be sweeter, worthier must be toil, Touched with such mute, invisible caress. One of these days, our weary ways quite trod, Made free at last and unafraid of men, I shall draw near and reach to you my hand. And you? Ah! well, we shall be spirits then, I think you will be glad and understand. MY BIRTHDAY. Who is this who gently slips Through my door, and stands and sighs, Hovering in a soft eclipse, With a finger on her lips And a meaning in her eyes? Once she came to visit me In white robes with festal airs, Glad surprises, songs of glee; Now in silence cometh she, And a sombre garb she wears. Once I waited and was tired, Chid her visits as too few; Crownless now and undesired, She to seek me is inspired Oftener than she used to do. Grave her coming is and still, Sober her appealing mien, Tender thoughts her glances fill; But I shudder, as one will When an open grave is seen. Wherefore, friend,--for friend thou art,-- Should I wrong thee thus and grieve? Wherefore push thee from my heart? Of my morning thou wert part; Be a part too of my eve. See, I hold my hand to meet That cool, shadowy hand of thine; Hold it firmly, it is sweet Thus to clasp and thus to greet, Though no more in full sunshine. Come and freely seek my door, I will open willingly; I will chide the past no more, Looking to the things before, Led by pathways known to thee. BY THE CRADLE. The baby Summer lies asleep and dreaming-- Dreaming and blooming like a guarded rose; And March, a kindly nurse, though rude of seeming, Is watching by the cradle hung with snows. Her blowing winds but keep the rockers swinging, And deepen slumber in the shut blue eyes, And the shrill cadences of her high singing Are to the babe but wonted lullabies. She draws the coverlet white and tucks it trimly, She folds the little sleeper safe from harm; Or bends to lift the veil, and, peering inly, Makes sure it lies all undisturbed and warm. And so she sits, till in the still, gray dawning Two fairer nurses come, her place to take, And smiling, beaming, with no word of warning, Draw off the quilt, and kiss the babe awake. A THUNDER STORM. The day was hot and the day was dumb, Save for cricket's chirr or the bee's low hum, Not a bird was seen or a butterfly, And ever till noon was over, the sun Glared down with a yellow and terrible eye; Glared down in the woods, where the breathless boughs Hung heavy and faint in a languid drowse, And the ferns were curling with thirst and heat; Glared down on the fields where the sleepy cows Stood munching the grasses, dry and sweet. Then a single cloud rose up in the west, With a base of gray and a white, white crest; It rose and it spread a mighty wing. And swooped at the sun, though he did his best And struggled and fought like a wounded thing. And the woods awoke, and the sleepers heard, Each heavily hanging leaflet stirred With a little expectant quiver and thrill, As the cloud bent over and uttered a word,-- One volleying, rolling syllable. And once and again came the deep, low tone Which only to thunder's lips is known, And the earth held up her fearless face And listened as if to a signal blown,-- A signal-trump in some heavenly place. The trumpet of God, obeyed on high, His signal to open the granary And send forth his heavily loaded wains Rambling and roaring down the sky And scattering the blessed, long-harvested rains. THROUGH THE DOOR. The angel opened the door A little way, And she vanished, as melts a star, Into the day, And, for just a second's space, Ere the bar he drew, The pitying angel paused, And we looked through. What did we see within? Ah! who can tell? What glory and glow of light Ineffable; What peace in the very air, What hush and calm, Soothing each tired soul Like healing balm! Was it a dream we dreamed, Or did we hear The harping of silver harps, Divinely clear? A murmur of that "new song," Which, soft and low, The happy angels sing,-- Sing as they go? And, as in the legend old, The good monk heard, As he paced his cloister dim, A heavenly bird, And, rapt and lost in the joy Of the wondrous song, Listened a hundred years, Nor deemed them long, So chained in sense and limb, All blind with sun, We stood and tasted the joy Of our vanished one; And we took no note of time, Till soon or late The gentle angel sighed, And shut the gate. The vision is closed and sealed. We are come back To the old, accustomed earth, The well-worn track,-- Back to the daily toil, The daily pain,-- But we never can be the same, Never again. We who have bathed in noon, All radiant white, Shall we come back content To sit in night? Content with self and sin, The stain, the blot? To have stood so near the gate And enter not? O glimpse so swift, so sweet, So soon withdrawn! Stay with us; light our dusks Till day shall dawn; Until the shadows flee, And to our view Again the gate unbars, And we pass through. READJUSTMENT. After the earthquake shock or lightning dart Comes a recoil of silence o'er the lands, And then, with pulses hot and quivering hands, Earth calls up courage to her mighty heart, Plies every tender, compensating art, Draws her green, flowery veil above the scar, Fills the shrunk hollow, smooths the riven plain, And with a century's tendance heals again The seams and gashes which her fairness mar. So we, when sudden woe like lightning sped, Finds us and smites us in our guarded place, After one brief, bewildered moment's space, By the same heavenly instinct taught and led, Adjust our lives to loss, make friends with pain, Bind all our shattered hopes and bid them bloom again. AT THE GATE "For behold, the kingdom of God is within you." Thy kingdom here? Lord, can it be? Searching and seeking everywhere For many a year, "Thy kingdom come" has been my prayer. Was that dear kingdom all the while so near? Blinded and dull With selfish sin, Have I been sitting at the gates Called Beautiful, Where Thy fair angel stands and waits, With hand upon the lock to let me in? Was I the wall Which barred the way, Darkening the glory of Thy grace, Hiding the ray Which, shining out as from Thy very face, Had shown to other men the perfect day? Was I the bar Which shut me out From the full joyance which they taste Whose spirits are Within Thy Paradise embraced,-- Thy blessed Paradise, which seemed so far? The vision swells: I seem to catch Celestial breezes, rustling low, The asphodels, Where, singing softly ever to and fro, Moves each fair saint who in Thy presence dwells. Let me not sit Another hour, Idly awaiting what is mine to win, Blinded in wit, Lord Jesus, rend these walls of self and sin; Beat down the gate, that I may enter it. A HOME. What is a home? A guarded space, Wherein a few, unfairly blest, Shall sit together, face to face, And bask and purr and be at rest? Where cushioned walls rise up between Its inmates and the common air, The common pain, and pad and screen From blows of fate or winds of care? Where Art may blossom strong and free, And Pleasure furl her silken wing, And every laden moment be A precious and peculiar thing? And Past and Future, softly veiled In hiding mists, shall float and lie Forgotten half, and unassailed By either hope or memory, While the luxurious Present weaves Her perfumed spells untried, untrue, Broiders her garments, heaps her sheaves, All for the pleasure of a few? Can it be this, the longed-for thing Which wanderers on the restless foam, Unsheltered beggars, birds on wing, Aspire to, dream of, christen "Home"? No. Art may bloom, and peace and bliss; Grief may refrain and Death forget; But if there be no more than this, The soul of home is wanting yet. Dim image from far glory caught, Fair type of fairer things to be, The true home rises in our thought, A beacon set for men to see. Its lamps burn freely in the night, Its fire-glows unchidden shed Their cheering and abounding light On homeless folk uncomforted. Each sweet and secret thing within Gives out a fragrance on the air,-- A thankful breath, sent forth to win A little smile from others' care. The few, they bask in closer heat; The many catch the farther ray. Life higher seems, the world more sweet, And hope and Heaven less far away. So the old miracle anew Is wrought on earth and proved good, And crumbs apportioned for a few, God-blessed, suffice a multitude. THE LEGEND OF KINTU. When earth was young and men were few, And all things freshly born and new Seemed made for blessing, not for ban, Kintu, the god, appeared as man. Clad in the plain white priestly dress, He journeyed through the wilderness, His wife beside. A mild-faced cow They drove, and one low-bleating lamb; He bore a ripe banana-bough, And she a root of fruitful yam: This was their worldly worth and store, But God can make the little more. The glad earth knew his feet; her mould Trembled with quickening thrills, and stirred. Miraculous harvests spread and rolled, The orchards shone with ruddy gold; The flocks increased, increased the herd, And a great nation spread and grew From the swift lineage of the two, Peopling the solitary place; A fair and strong and fruitful race, Who knew not pain nor want nor grief, And Kintu reigned their lord and chief. So sped three centuries along, Till Kintu's sons waxed fierce and strong; They learned to war, they loved to slay; Cruel and dark grew all their faces; Discordant death-cries scared the day, Blood stained the green and holy places; And drunk with lust, with anger hot, His sons mild Kintu heeded not. At last the god arose in wrath, His sandals tied, and down the path, His wife beside him, as of yore, He went. A cow, a single lamb They took; one tuber of the yam; One yellow-podded branch they bore Of ripe banana,--these, no more, Of all the heaped-up harvest store. They left the huts, they left the tent, Nor turned, nor cast a backward look: Behind, the thick boughs met and shook. They vanished. Long with wild lament Mourned all the tribe, in vain, in vain; The gift once given was given no more, The grieved god came not again. To what far paradise they fared, That heavenly pair, what wilderness Their gentle rule next owned and shared, Knoweth no man,--no man can guess. On secret roads, by pathways blind, The gods go forth, and none may find; But sad the world where God is not! By man was Kintu soon forgot, Or named and held as legend dim, But the wronged earth, remembering him, By scanty fruit and tardy grain And silent song revealed her pain. So centuries came, and centuries went, And heaped the graves and filled the tent. Kings rose, and fought their royal way To conquest over heaps of slain, And reigned a little. Then, one day, They vanished into dust again. And other kings usurped their place, Who called themselves of Kintu's race, And worshipped Kintu; not as he, The mild, benignant deity, Who held all life a holy thing, Be it of insect or of king, Would have ordained, but with wild rite, With altars heaped, and dolorous cries, And savage dance, and bale-fires light, An unaccepted sacrifice. At last, when thousand years were flown, The great Ma-anda filled the throne: A prince of generous heart and high, Impetuous, noble, fierce, and true; His wrath like lightning hurtling by, His pardon like the healing dew. And chiefs and sages swore each one He was great Kintu's worthiest son. One night, in forests still and deep, A shepherd sat to watch his sheep, And started, as through darkness dim A strange voice rang and calmed to him: "Wake! there are wonders waiting thee! Go where the thick mimosas be, Fringing a little open plain, Honor and power wouldest thou gain? Go, foolish man, to fortune blind; Follow the stream, and thou shall find." Three several nights the voice was heard, Louder and more emphatic grown. Then, at the thrice-repeated word, The shepherd rose and went alone, Threading the mazes of the stream Like one who wanders in a dream. Long miles he ran, the stream beside, Which this way, that way, turned and sped, And called and sang, a noisy guide. At last its vagrant dances led To where the thick mimosas' shade Circled and fringed an open glade; There the wild streamlet danced away, The moon was shining strangely white, And by its fitful, gleaming ray The shepherd saw a wondrous sight; In the glade's midst, each on his mat, A group of armed warriors sat, White-robed, majestic, with deep eyes Fixed on him with a stern surprise; And in their midst an aged chief Enthroned sat, whose beard, like foam, Caressed his mighty knees. As leaf Shakes in the wind the shepherd shook, And veiled his eyes before that look, And prayed, and thought upon his home, Nor spoke, nor moved, till the old man, In voice like waterfall, began: "Shepherd, how names himself thy king?" "Ma-anda," answered, shuddering, The shepherd. "Good, thou speakest well. And now, my son, I bid thee tell Thy first king's name." "It was Kintu." "'Tis rightly said, thou answerest true. Hark! To Ma-anda, Kintu's son, Hasten, and bid him, fearing naught, Come hither, taking thee for guide; Thou and he, not another one, Not even a dog may run beside! Long has Ma-anda Kintu sought With spell and conjuration dim, Now Kintu has a word for him. Go, do thy errand, haste thee hence, Kintu insures thy recompense." All night the shepherd ran, star-led, All the hot day he hastened straight, Nor stopped for sleep, nor stopped for bread, Until he reached the city gate, And saw red rays of evening fall On the leaf-hutted capital. He sought the king, his tale he told. Ma-anda faltered not, nor stayed. He seized his spear, he left the tent: Shook off the brown arms of his queens, Who clasped his knees with wailing screams; On pain of instant death forbade That man should spy or follow him; And down the pathway, arching dim, Fearless and light of heart and bold Followed the shepherd where he went. But one there was who loved his king Too well to suffer such strange thing,-- The chieftain of the host was he, Next to the monarch in degree; And, fearing wile or stratagem Menaced the king, he followed them With noiseless tread and out of sight. So on they fared the forest through, From evening shades to dawning light, From damning to the dusk and dew,-- The unseen follower and the two. Ofttimes the king turned back to scan The path, but never saw he man. At last the forest-guarded space They reached, where, ranged in order, sat, Each couched upon his braided mat, The white-robed warriors, face to face With their majestic chief. The king, Albeit unused to fear or awe, Bowed down in homage, wondering, And bent his eyes, as fearing to be Blinded by rays of deity. Then asked the mighty voice and calm, "Art thou Ma-anda called?" "I am." "And art thou king?" "The king am I," The bold Ma-anda made reply. "Tis rightly spoken; but, my son, Why hast thou my command forgot, That no man with thee to this spot Should come, except thy guide alone?" "No man has come," Ma-anda said. "Alone we journeyed, he and I; And often have I turned my head, And never living thing could spy. None is there, on my faith as king." "A king's word is a weighty thing," The old man answered. "Let it be,-- But still a man HAS followed thee! Now answer, Ma-anda, one more thing: Who, first of all thy line, was king?" "Kintu the god." "'Tis well, my son, All creatures Kintu loved,--not one Too pitiful or weak or small; He knew them and he loved them all; And never did a living thing, Or bird in air or fish in lake, Endure a pang for Kintu's sake. Then rose his sons, of differing mind, Who gorged on cruel feasts each day, And bathed in blood, and joyed to slay, And laughed at pain and suffering. Then Kintu sadly went his way. The gods long-suffering are and kind, Often they pardon, long they wait; But men are evil, men are blind. After much tarriance, much debate, The good gods leave them to their fate; So Kintu went where none may find. Each king in turn has sought since then, From Chora down, the first in line, To win lost Kintu back to men. Vain was his search, and vain were thine, Save that the gods have special grace To thee, Ma-anda. Face to face With Kintu thou shall stand, and he Shall speak the word of power to thee; Clasped to his bosom, thou shall share His knowledge of the earth, the air, And deep things, secret things, shall learn. But stay,"--the old man's voice grew stern,-- "Before I further speak, declare Who is that man in ambush there!" "There is no man,--no man I see." "Deny no longer, it is vain. Within the shadow of the tree He lurketh; lo, behold him plain!" And the king saw;--for at the word From covert stole the hidden spy, And sought his monarch's side. One cry, A lion's roar, Ma-anda gave, Then seized his spear, and poised and drave. Like lightning bolt it hissed and whirred, A flash across the midnight blue. A single groan, a jet of red, And, pierced and stricken through and through, Upon the ground the chief fell dead; But still with love no death could chase, His eyes sought out his master's face. Blent with Ma-anda's a wild cry Of many voices rose on high, A shriek of anguish and despair. Which shook and filled the startled air; And when the king, his wrath still hot, Turned him, the little grassy plain All lonely in the moonlight lay: The chiefs had vanished all away As melted into thin, blue wind; Gone was the old man. Stunned and blind, For a long moment stood the king; He tried to wake; he rubbed his eyes, As though some fearful dream to end. It was no dream, this fearful thing: There was the forest, there the skies, The shepherd--and his murdered friend. With feverish haste, bewildered, mazed, This way and that he vainly sped, Beating the air like one half crazed; With prayers and cries unnumbered, Searching, imploring,--vain, all vain. Only the echoing woods replied, With mocking booms their long aisles through, "Come back, Kintu, Kintu, Kintu!" And pitiless to all his pain The unanswering gods his suit denied. At last, as dawning slowly crept To day, the king sank down and wept A space; then, lifting as they could The lifeless burden, once a man, He and the shepherd-guide began Their grievous journey through the wood, The long and hard and dreary way, Trodden so lightly yesterday; And the third day, at evening's fall, Gained the leaf-hutted capital. There burial rites were duly paid: Like bridegroom decked for banqueting, The chief adorned his funeral-pyre; Rare gums and spices fed the fire, Perfumes and every precious thing; And songs were sung, and prayers were prayed, And priests danced jubilant all day. But prone the king Ma-anda lay, With ashes on his royal crest, And groaned, and beat upon his breast, And called on Kintu loud and wild: "Father, come back, forgive thy child!" Bitter the cry, but vain, all vain; The grieved god came not again. EASTER. When dawns on earth the Easter sun The dear saints feel an answering thrill. With whitest flowers their hands they fill; And, singing all in unison, Unto the battlements they press-- The very marge of heaven--how near! And bend, and look upon us here With eyes that rain down tenderness. Their roses, brimmed with fragrant dew, Their lilies fair they raise on high; "Rejoice! The Lord is risen!" they cry; "Christ is arisen; we prove it true! "Rejoice, and dry those faithless tears With which your Easter flowers are stained; Share in our bliss, who have attained The rapture of the eternal years; "Have proved the promise which endures, The Love that deigned, the Love that died; Have reached our haven by His side-- Are Christ's, but none the less are yours; "Yours with a nearness never known While parted by the veils of sense; Infinite knowledge, joy intense, A love which is not love alone, "But faith perfected, vision free, And patience limitless and wise-- Beloved, the Lord is risen, arise! And dare to be as glad as we!" We do rejoice, we do give thanks, O blessed ones, for all your gain, As dimly through these mists of pain We catch the gleaming of your ranks. We will arise, with zeal increased, Blending, the while we strive and grope, Our paler festival of Hope With your Fruition's perfect feast. Bend low beloved, against the blue; Lift higher still the lilies fair, Till, following where our treasures are, We come to join the feast with you. BIND-WEED. In the deep shadow of the porch A slender bind-weed springs, And climbs, like airy acrobat, The trellises, and swings And dances in the golden sun In fairy loops and rings. Its cup-shaped blossoms, brimmed with dew, Like pearly chalices, Hold cooling fountains, to refresh The butterflies and bees; And humming-birds on vibrant wings Hover, to drink at ease. And up and down the garden-bed, Mid box and thyme and yew, And spikes of purple lavender, And spikes of larkspur blue, The bind-weed tendrils win their way, And find a passage through. With touches coaxing, delicate, And arts that never tire, They tie the rose-trees each to each, The lilac to the brier, Making for graceless things a grace, With steady, sweet desire. Till near and far the garden growths. The sweet, the frail, the rude, Draw close, as if with one consent, And find each other good, Held by the bind-weed's pliant loops, In a dear brotherhood. Like one fair sister, slender, arch, A flower in bloom and poise, Gentle and merry and beloved, Making no stir or noise, But swaying, linking, blessing all A family of boys. APRIL. Hark! upon the east-wind, piping, creeping, Comes a voice all clamorous with despair; It is April, crying sore and weeping, O'er the chilly earth, so brown and bare. "When I went away," she murmurs, sobbing, "All my violet-banks were starred with blue; Who, O, who has been here, basely robbing Bloom and odor from the fragrant crew? "Who has reft the robin's hidden treasure,-- All the speckled spheres he loved so well? And the buds which danced in merry measure To the chiming of the hyacinth's bell? "Where are all my hedge-rows, flushed with Maying? And the leafy rain, that tossed so fair, Like the spray from silver fountains playing, Where the elm-tree's column rose in air? "All are vanished, and my heart is breaking; And my tears they slowly drip and fall; Only death could listen without waking To the grief and passion of my call!" Thus she plaineth. Then ten million voices. Tiny, murmurous, like drops of rain, Raised in song as when the wind rejoices, Ring the answer, "We are here again. "We were hiding, April. Did you miss us? None of us were really gone away; Stoop thy pretty head and gently kiss us Once before we all come out to play. "Here are all the clustering burls of roses, And the dandelion's mimic sun; Of thy much-beloved and vanished posies None are missing, not a single one!" Little points of green push out to greet her, Little creepers grasp her garment's hem, Hidden sweetnesses grow ever sweeter As she bends and brightly smiles at them. Every tear is answered by a blossom, Every high with songs and laughter blent, Apple-blooms upon the breezes toss them. April knows her own, and is content. MAY. New flowery scents strewed everywhere, New sunshine poured in largesse fair, "We shall be happy now," we say. A voice just trembles through the air, And whispers, "May." Nay, but we MUST! No tiny bud But thrills with rapture at the flood Of fresh young life which stirs to-day. The same wild thrill irradiates our blood; Why hint of "May"? For us are coming fast and soon The delicate witcheries of June; July, with ankles deep in hay; The bounteous Autumn. Like a mocking tune Again sounds, "May." Spring's last-born darling, clear-eyed, sweet, Pauses a moment, with white twinkling feet, And golden locks in breezy play, Half teasing and half tender, to repeat Her song of "May." Ah, month of hope! all promised glee, All merry meanings, lie in thee; Surely no cloud can daunt thy day. The ripe lips part in smiling mockery, And murmur, "May." Still from the smile a comfort may we glean; Although our "must-be's," "shall-be's," idle seem, Close to our hearts one little word we lay: We may not be as happy as we dream, But then we--may. SECRETS. In the long, bright summer, dear to bird and bee, When the woods are standing in liveries green and gay, Merry little voices sound from every tree, And they whisper secrets all the day. If we knew the language, we should hear strange things; Mrs. Chirry, Mrs. Flurry, deep in private chat. "How are all your nestlings, dear? Do they use their wings? What was that sad tale about a cat?" "Where is your new cottage?" "Hush! I pray you, hush". Please speak very softly, dear, and make no noise. It is on the lowest bough of the lilac bush. And I am so dreadfully afraid of boys. "Mr. Chirry chose the spot, without consulting me; Such a very public place, and insecure for it, I can scarcely sleep at night for nervousness; but he Says I am a silly thing and doesn't mind a bit." "So the Bluebirds have contracted, have they, for a house? And a nest is under way for little Mr. Wren? Hush, dear, hush! Be quiet, dear; quiet as a mouse. These are weighty secrets, and we must whisper them." Close the downy dowagers nestle on the bough While the timorous voices soften low with dread, And we, walking underneath, little reckon their Mysteries are couching in the tree-tops overhead. Ah, the pretty whisperers! It was very well When the leaves were thick and green, awhile ago-- Leaves are secret-keepers; but since the last leaf fell There is nothing hidden from the eyes below. Bared are the brown tenements, and all the world may see What Mrs. Chirry, Mrs. Flurry, hid so close that day. In the place of rustling wings, cold winds rustling be, And thickly lie the icicles where once the warm brood lay. Shall we tease the birdies, when they come back in spring,-- Tease and tell them we have fathomed all their secrets small, Every secret hiding-place and dear and precious, thing, Which they left behind the leaves, the red leaves, in the fall? They would only laugh at us and wink their saucy eyes, And answer, "Last year's secrets are all past and told. New years bring new happenings and fresh mysteries, You are very welcome to the stale ones of the old!" HOW THE LEAVES CAME DOWN. I'll tell you how the leaves came down. The great Tree to his children said, "You're getting sleepy, Yellow and Brown, Yes, very sleepy, little Red; It is quite time you went to bed." "Ah!" begged each silly, pouting leaf, "Let us a little longer May; Dear Father Tree, behold our grief, 'Tis such a very pleasant day We do not want to go away." So, just for one more merry day To the great Tree the leaflets clung, Frolicked and danced and had their way, Upon the autumn breezes swung, Whispering all their sports among, "Perhaps the great Tree will forget And let us stay until the spring If we all beg and coax and fret." But the great Tree did no such thing; He smiled to hear their whispering. "Come, children all, to bed," he cried; And ere the leaves could urge their prayer He shook his head, and far and wide, Fluttering and rustling everywhere, Down sped the leaflets through the air. I saw them; on the ground they lay, Golden and red, a huddled swarm, Waiting till one from far away, White bed-clothes heaped upon her arm, Should come to wrap them safe and warm. The great bare Tree looked down and smiled. "Good-night, dear little leaves" he said; And from below each sleepy child Replied "Good-night," and murmured, "It is so nice to go to bed." BARCAROLES. I. Over the lapsing lagune all the day Urging my gondola with oar-strokes light, Always beside one shadowy waterway I pause and peer, with eager, jealous sight, Toward the Piazza where Pepita stands, Wooing the hungry pigeons from their flight. Dark the canal; but she shines like the sun, With yellow hair and dreaming, wine-brown eyes. Thick crowd the doves for food. She gives ME none. She sees and will not see. Vain are my sighs. One slow, reluctant stroke. Aha! she turns, Gestures and smiles, with coy and feigned surprise. Shifting and baffling is our Lido track, Blind and bewildering all the currents flow. Me they perplex not. In the midnight black I hold my way secure and fearless row, But ah! what chart have I to her, my Sea, Whose fair, mysterious depths I long to know? Subtle as sad mirage; true and untrue She seems, and, pressing ever on in vain, I yearn across the mocking, tempting blue. Never she draws more near, never I gain A furlong's space toward where she sits and a miles; Smiles and cares nothing for my love and pain. How shall I win her? What may strong arm do Against such gentle distance? I can say No more than this, that when she stands to woo The doves beside the shadowy waterway, And when I look and long, sometimes--she smiles Perhaps she will do more than smile one day! II. Light and darkness, brown and fair, Ha! they think I do not see,-- I behind them, swiftly rowing. Rowing? Yes, but eyes are free, Eyes and fancies:-- Now what fire in looks and glances! Now the dark head bends, grown bolder. Ringlets mingle--silence--broken (All unconscious of beholder) By a kiss! What could lovers ask or miss In such moonlight, such June weather, But a boat like this, (me rowing!) And forever and together To be floating? Ah! if she and I such boating Might but share one day, some fellow With strong arms behind, Pasquale, Or Luigi, with gay awning, (She likes yellow!) She--I mean Pepita--mellow Moonlight on the waves, no other To break silence or catch whispers, All the love which now I smother Told and spoken,-- Listened to, a kiss for token: How, my Signor? What! so soon Homeward bound? We, born of Venice, Live by night and nap by noon. If 'twere me, now, With my brown-eyed girl, this prow Would not turn for hours still; But the Signor bids, commands, I am here to do his will, He is master. Glide we on; so, faster, faster. Now the two are safely landed. Buono mano, grazie, Signor, They who love are open-handed. Now, Pepita! III. TORCELLO. She has said "yes," and the world is a-smite. There she sits as she sat in my dream; There she sits, and the blue waves gleam, And the current bears us along the while For happy mile after happy mile, A fairy boat on a fairy stream. The Angelus bells siring to and fro, And the sunset lingers to hear their swell, For the sunset loves such music well. A big, bright moon is hovering low, Where the edge of the sky is all aglow, Like the middle heart of a red, red shell. The Lido floats like a purple flower; Orange and rose are the sails at sea; Silk and pink the surf-line free Tumbles and chimes, and the perfect hour Clasps us and folds us in its power, Folds us and holds us, my love and me. Can there be sadness anywhere In the world to-night? Or tears or sighs Beneath such festal moon and skies? Can there be memory or despair? What is it, beloved? Why point you there, With sudden dew in those dearest eyes? Yes! one sad thing on the happy earth! Like a mourner's veil in the bridal array, Or a sorrowful sigh in the music gay, A shade on the sun, in the feast a dearth, Drawn like a ghost across our way, Torcello sits and rebukes our mirth. She sits a widow who sat as queen, Ashes on brows once crowned and bright; Woe in the eyes once full of light; Her sad, fair roses and manifold green, All bitter and pallid and heavy with night, Are full of the shadows of woes unseen. Let us hurry away from her face unblest, Row us away, for the song is done, The Angelus bells cease, one by one, Pepita's head lies on my breast; But, trembling and full of a vague unrest, I long for the morrow and for the sun. MY RIGHTS. Yes, God has made me a woman, And I am content to be Just what He meant, not reaching out For other things, since He Who knows me best and loves me most has ordered this for me. A woman, to live my life out In quiet womanly ways, Hearing the far-off battle, Seeing as through a haze The crowding, struggling world of men fight through their busy days. I am not strong or valiant, I would not join the fight Or jostle with crowds in the highways To sully my garments white; But I have rights as a woman, and here I claim my right. The right of a rose to bloom In its own sweet, separate way, With none to question the perfumed pink And none to utter a nay If it reaches a root or points, a thorn, as even a rose-tree may. The right of the lady-birch to grow, To grow as the Lord shall please, By never a sturdy oak rebuked, Denied nor sun nor breeze, For all its pliant slenderness, kin to the stronger trees. The right to a life of my own,-- Not merely a casual bit Of somebody else's life, flung out That, taking hold of it, I may stand as a cipher does after a numeral writ. The right to gather and glean What food I need and can From the garnered store of knowledge Which man has heaped for man, Taking with free hands freely and after an ordered plan. The right--ah, best and sweetest!-- To stand all undismayed Whenever sorrow or want or sin Call for a woman's aid, With none to call or question, by never a look gainsaid. I do not ask for a ballot; Though very life were at stake, I would beg for the nobler justice That men for manhood's sake Should give ungrudgingly, nor withhold till I must fight and take. The fleet foot and the feeble foot Both seek the self-same goal, The weakest soldier's name is writ On the great army-roll, And God, who made man's body strong, made too the woman's soul SOLSTICE. I. I sit at evening's scented close, In fulness of the summer-tide; All dewy fair the lily glows, No single petal of the row; Has fallen to dim the rose's pride. Sweet airs, sweet harmonies of hue, Surround, caress me everywhere; The spells of dusk, the spells of dew, My senses steal, my reason woo, And sing a lullaby to tare, But vainly do the warm airs sing, All vain the roses' rapturous breath; A chill blast, as from wintry wing, Smites on my heart, and, shuddering, I see the beauty changed to death. Afar I see it loom and rise, That pitiless and icy shape. It blots the blue, it dims the skies; Amid the summer land it cries, "I come, and there is no escape!" O, bitter drop in bloom and sweet! O, canker on the smiling day! Have we but climbed the hill to meet Thy fronting fare, thy eyes of sleet? To hate, yet dare not turn away? II. I sit beneath a leaden sky, Amid the piled and drifted snow; My feet are on the graves where lie The roses which made haste to die So long, so very long ago. The sobbing wind is fierce and strong, Its cry is like a human wail, But in my heart it sings this song: "Not long, O Lord! O Lord, not long! Surely thy spring-time shall prevail." Out of the darkness and the cold, Out of the wintry depths I lean, And lovingly I clasp and hold The promises, and see unrolled A vision of the summer green. O, life in death, sweet plucked from pain! O, distant vision fair to see! Up the long hill we press and strain; We can bear all things and attain, If once our faces turn to Thee! IN THE MIST. Sitting all day in a silver mist, In silver silence all the day, Save for the low, soft kiss of spray, And the lisp of sands by waters kissed, As the tide draws up the bay. Little I hear and nothing I see, Wrapped in that veil by fairies spun; The solid earth is vanished for me, And the shining hours speed noiselessly, A web of shadow and sun. Suddenly out of the shifting veil A magical bark, by the sunbeams lit, Flits like a dream,--or seems to flit,-- With a golden prow and a gossamer sail, And the waves make room for it. A fair, swift bark from some radiant realm, Its diamond cordage cuts the sky In glittering lines; all silently A seeming spirit holds the helm And steers: will he pass me by? Ah, not for me is the vessel here! Noiseless and fast as a sea-bird's, flight, She swerves and vanishes from my sight; No flap of sail, no parting cheer,-- She has passed into the light. Sitting some day in a deeper mist, Silent, alone, some other day, An unknown bark from an unknown bay, By unknown waters lapped and kissed, Shall near me through the spray. No flap of sail, no scraping of keel: Shadow, dim, with a banner dark, It will hover, will pause, and I shall feel A hand which beckons, and, shivering, steal To the cold strand and embark. Embark for that far mysterious realm, Whence the fathomless, trackless waters flow. Shall I see a Presence dim, and know A Gracious Hand upon the helm, Nor be afraid to go? And through black wave and stormy blast, And out of the fog-wreath dense and dun, Guided and held, shall the vessel run, Gain the fair haven, night being past, And anchor in the sun? WITHIN. Could my heart hold another one? I cannot tell. Sometimes it seems an ample dome, Sometimes a cell, Sometimes a temple filled with saints, Serene and fair, Whose eyes are pure from mortal taints All lilies are. Sometimes a narrow shrine, in which One precious fare Smiles ever from its guarded niche, With deathless grace. Sometimes a nest, where weary things, And weal; and shy, Are brooded under mother wings Till they can fly. And then a palace, with wide rooms Adorned and dressed, Where eager slaves pour sweet perfumes For each new guest. Whiche'er it be, I know always Within that door-- Whose latch it is not mine to raise-- Blows evermore, With breath of balm upon its wing, A soft, still air, Which makes each closely folded thing Look always fair. My darlings, do you feel me near, As every day Into this hidden place and dear I take my way? Always you stand in radiant guise, Always I see A noiseless welcome in the eyes You turn on me. And, whether I come soon or late, Whate'er befall, Always within the guarded gate I find you all. MENACE. All green and fair the Summer lies, Just budded from the bud of Spring, With tender blue of wistful skies, And winds which softly sing. Her clock has struck its morning hours; Noon nears--the flowery dial is true; But still the hot sun veils its powers, In deference to the dew. Yet there amid the fresh new green, Amid the young broods overhead, A single scarlet branch is seen, Swung like a banner red; Tinged with the fatal hectic flush Which, when October frost is in the near, Flames on each dying tree and bush, To deck the dying year. And now the sky seems not so blue, The yellow sunshine pales its ray, A sorrowful, prophetic hue Lies on the radiant day, As mid the bloom and tenderness I catch that scarlet menace there, Like a gray sudden wintry tress Set in a child's bright hair. The birds sing on, the roses blow, But like a discord heard but now, A stain upon the petal's snow Is that one sad, red bough. "HE THAT BELIEVETH SHALL NOT MAKE HASTE." The aloes grow upon the sand, The aloes thirst with parching heat; Year after year they waiting stand, Lonely and calm, and front the beat Of desert winds; and still a sweet And subtle voice thrills all their veins: "Great patience wins; it still remains, After a century of pains, To you to bloom and be complete." I grow upon a thorny waste; Hot noontide lies on all the way, And with its scorching breath makes haste Each freshening dawn to burn and slay, Yet patiently I bide and stay: Knowing the secret of my fate, The hour of bloom, dear Lord, I wait, Come when it will, or soon or late, A hundred years are but a day. MY LITTLE GHOST. I know where it lurks and hides, In the midst of the busy house, In the midst of the children's glee, All clay its shadow bides: Nobody knows but me. On a closet-shelf it dwells, In the darkest corner of all, Mid rolls of woollen and fur, And faint, forgotten smells Of last year's lavender. That a ghost has its dwelling there Nobody else would guess,-- "Only a baby's shoe, A curl of golden hair," You would say, "a toy or two,-- "A broken doll, whose lips And cheeks of waxen bloom Show dents of fingers small,-- Little, fair finger-tips,-- A worn sash,--that is all." Little to see or to guess; But whenever I open the door, There, faithful to its post, With its eyes' sad tenderness, I see my little ghost. And I hasten to shut the door, I shut it tight and fast, Lest the sweet, sad thing get free, Lest it flit beside on the floor, And sadden the day for me, Lest between me and the sun, And between me and the heavens, And the laugh in the children's eyes, The shadowy feet should run, The faint gold curls arise Like a gleam of moonlight pale, And all the warmth and the light Should die from the summer day, And the laughter turn to wail, And I should forget to pray. So I keep the door shut fast, And my little ghost shut in, And whenever I cross the hall I shiver and hurry past; But I love it best of all. CHRISTMAS. How did they keep his birthday then, The little fair Christ, so long ago? O, many there were to be housed and fed, And there was no place in the inn, they said, So into the manger the Christ must go, To lodge with the cattle and not with men. The ox and the ass they munched their hay They munched and they slumbered, wondering not, And out in the midnight cold and blue The shepherds slept, and the sheep slept too, Till the angels' song and the bright star ray Guided the wise men to the spot. But only the wise men knelt and praised, And only the shepherds came to see, And the rest of the world cared not at all For the little Christ in the oxen's stall; And we are angry and amazed That such a dull, hard thing should be! How do we keep his birthday now? We ring the bells and we raise the strain, We hang up garland, everywhere And bid the tapers, twinkle fair, And feast and frolic--and then we go Back to the Mine old lives again. Are we so better, then, than they Who failed the new-born Christ to see? To them a helpless babe,--to us He shines a Saviour glorious, Our Lord, our Friend, our All--yet we Are half asleep this Christmas day. BENEDICAM DOMINO. Thank God for life: life is not sweet always. Hands may he heavy-laden, hearts care full, Unwelcome nights follow unwelcome days, And dreams divine end in awakenings dull. Still it is life, anil life is cause for praise. This ache, this restlessness, this quickening sting, Prove me no torpid and inanimate thing, Prove me of Him who is of life the Spring. I am alive!--and that is beautiful. Thank God for Love: though Love may hurt and wound Though set with sharpest thorns its rose may be, Roses are not of winter, all attuned Must be the earth, full of soft stir, and free And warm ere dawns the rose upon its tree. Fresh currents through my frozen pulses run; My heart has tasted summer, tasted sun, And I can thank Thee, Lord, although not one Of all the many roses blooms for me. 
45736	----	BALLADES AND RONDEAUS, CHANTS ROYAL, SESTINAS, VILLANELLES, &c., SELECTED BY GLEESON WHITE. LONDON: WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED, PATERNOSTER SQUARE. NEW YORK: 3 EAST FOURTEENTH STREET. To Robert Louis Stevenson. _The crowning pleasure in the compilation of this book is the permission to dedicate it to you, and this token of personal admiration is not without special fitness, since you were among the earliest to experiment in these French rhythms, and to introduce_ CHARLES D'ORLÉANS _and_ FRANÇOIS VILLON _to the majority of English readers_. _"Those old French ways of verse making that have been coming into fashion of late. Surely they say a pretty thing more prettily for their quaint old-fashioned liberty! That_ TRIOLET--_how deliciously impertinent it is! is it not?... The variety of dainty modes wherein by shape and sound a very pretty something is carved out of nothing at all. Their fantastic surprises, the ring of their bell-like returns upon themselves, their music of triangle and cymbal. In some of them poetry seems to approach the nearest possible to bird-song--to unconscious seeming through most unconscious art, imitating the carelessness and impromptu of forms as old as the existence of birds, and as new as every fresh individual joy in each new generation, growing their own feathers, and singing their own song, yet always the feathers of their kind, and the song of their kind."--_ "Home Again."--GEORGE MACDONALD. INDEX. _* An asterisk is attached to the titles of those not previously published. Names of American Authors are in Italic type._ BALLADES AUTHOR. TITLE. SOURCE. PAGE _Adams, Oscar Fay_ 'Pipes of Pan' _American_ 3 ALLEN, GRANT 'Of Evolution' _Evolutionist at 4 Large_ ANONYMOUS 'Of Bothers' _Cambridge Meteor_ 6 BLACK, WILLIAM 'Of Solitude' _Longman's Mag._ 5 DICK, COTSFORD 'Of Belief' _The Model, etc._ 7 " 'Of Burial' " 8 DOBSON, AUSTIN 'Of the Spanish _Old World Idylls_ 9 Armada' " 'On a Fan' " 10 " 'Of Imitation' " 11 " 'Of Prose and Rhyme' " 12 GOSSE, EDMUND 'Of Dead Cities' _New Poems_ 13 GRANT, JOHN CAMERON Ballade Songs of Sunny South 14 " 'Lilith' _A Year of Life_ 15 HENLEY, W. E. 'Of Antique Dances' _Belgravia_ 16 " 'Of Dead Actors' _Magazine of Art_ 17 " 'Of June' _Belgravia_ 18 " 'Of Ladies' Names' _The London_ 19 " 'Of Spring' " 20 " 'Midsummer Days' " 21 " 'Of Youth and Age' " 22 " 'Of Hot Weather' " 77 " 'Of Aspirations' " 78 " 'Of Truisms' " 79 " 'Of Life and Fate' " 80 " 'Of the Nothingness " 82 of Things' JEWITT, W. H. Ballade _Romance of Love_ 23 LANG, ANDREW 'Gringoire' _New Quarterly Mag._ 24 " 'Valentine' _Waifs and Strays_ 25 " 'Of Primitive Man' _Ballades in Blue 26 China_ " 'Of Sleep' " 84 " 'Of Summer' _Rhymes a la mode_ 27 " 'Of Yule' " 28 " 'Of Middle Age' " 29 " 'For the Laureate' _Longman's Mag._ 30 " 'Of the Southern " 31 Cross' LE GALLIENNE 'Of Old Sweethearts' _My Ladies' Sonnets_ 32 "Love in Idleness" Ballade 33 " 'Of Dead Thinkers' 34 MCCARTHY, JUSTIN H. 'Of Roses'* 35 _MacCulloch, Hunter_ 'Of Death' _From Dawn to Dusk_ 36 _Matthews, Brander_ 'Of Tobacco' _American_ 37 " 'Of Adaptation' " 38 " 'Of Midsummer' " 39 " 'Rain and Shine' _The Century_ 40 " 'An American Girl' " 41 MOORE, GEORGE 'Of Lovelace' _Pagan Poems_ 86 _Moran, John_ 'From Battle, Murder' _American_ 42 _Moulton, L. C._ 'In Winter' _The Century_ 43 NICHOLS, J. B. B. 'Of his Lady' _Longman's Magazine_ 44 F. S. P. 'Of Exmoor' _Waifs and Strays_ 45 PAYNE, JOHN 'Of Past Delights' _New Poems_ 46 " Ballad " 87 " 'Singers of the Time' " 88 _Peck, S. M._ 'The Pixies' _'Cap and Bells'_ 47 PFEIFFER, E. 'Of the Thuner-See' _Songs and Sonnets_ 48 PROBYN, MAY 'Grandmother' _Ballad of the Road_ 49 _Roberts, C. D. G._ 'Philomela' _In Divers Tones_ 50 " 'Calypso' " 51 ROBINSON, A. M. F. 'Of Forgotten Tunes' _An Italian Garden_ 52 " 'Of Lost Lovers' _Handful of 90 Honeysuckles_ " 'Of Heroes' " 91 ROPES, ARTHUR REED 'Of a Garden' _Poems_ 53 _Scollard, Clinton_ 'Of the Bard' _Pictures in Song_ 54 " 'Of Dead Poets' " 55 " 'To Villon' " 56 " 'The Blithe Ballade' _With Reed and Lyre_ 57 " 'O Lady Mine' " 58 " 'Ships of Tyre' " 59 SHARP, WILLIAM 'Of Vain Hopes'* 60 " 'Of the Sea-Wind'* 61 " 'Of the Sea-Folk'* 62 _Sherman, F. D._ 'To Austin Dobson' _Madrigals and 63 Catches_ " 'Of Rhyme' " 64 SWINBURNE, A. C. 'Of Dreamland' _Poems and Ballads, 65 2d Ser._ " 'Of François Villon' " 93 " Villon's Epitaph " 94 " 'Of Bath' _English Ill. Mag._ 95 " 'Of Sark' " 97 SYMONS, ARTHUR 'Of Kings' _Time_ 66 TOMSON, GRAHAM R. 'Of Acheron' _Longman's Mag._ 67 " 'Of Asphodel' " 68 " 'Of the Bourne' _Harper's Mag._ 69 " 'Of Fairy Gold'* 70 " 'Of Might-be'* 71 " 'Of the Optimist' _St. James' Gazette_ 72 WHEELER, MORTIMER 'Of Old Instruments' _Mag. of Music_ 73 " 'Of Sea-Music' " 74 WHITNEY, ERNEST 'Nightingale and 75 Lark' WILTON, RICHARD 'Grandchildren at 76 Church' CHANTS ROYAL. DOBSON, AUSTIN 'The Dance of Death' _Old World Idylls_ 98 GOSSE, EDMUND 'The Praise of _New Poems_ 100 Dionysus' PAYNE, JOHN 'The God of Love' _New Poems_ 102 PFEIFFER, E. 'Children of the _Gerard's Monument_ 104 Mist' _Scollard, Clinton_ 'King Boreas' _Pictures in Song_ 106 WADDINGTON, S. 'The New Epiphany' _Sonnets, etc._ 108 _Whitney, E._ 'Glory of the Year' _The Century_ 110 KYRIELLES. PAYNE, JOHN Kyrielle _New Poems_ 115 ROBINSON, A. M. F. 'The Pavilion' _An Italian Garden_ 116 _Scollard, Clinton_ Kyrielle _Pictures in Song_ 116 PANTOUMS. DOBSON, AUSTIN 'In Town' _At the Sign of the 117 Lyre_ "Love in Idleness" 'Monologue d'outre 119 Tombe' PAYNE, JOHN Pantoum Songs of 121 Life and Death _Matthews, Brander_ 'En route' _The Century_ 124 _Scollard, Clinton_ 'Sultan's Garden' _Pictures in Song_ 126 RONDEAUX REDOUBLES. MONKHOUSE, COSMO 'My Soul is Sick' 128 PAYNE, JOHN 'My Day and Night' _New Poems_ 129 _Scollard, Clinton_ 'Prayer of Dryope' _Pictures in Song_ 130 TOMSON, GRAHAM R. 'I will go hence'* 131 RONDELS. _Bunner, H. C._ 'O Honey of Hymettus' _Airs from Arcady_ 135 " 'Ready for the Ride' _The Century_ 135 CRANE, WALTER Two Rondels 136 DABSON, AUSTIN 'The Wanderer' _Old World Idylls_ 137 _Fay, A. M._ Rondel 137 GOSSE, EDMUND " _New Poems_ 138 GRANT, J. C. " _Songs from the 138 Sunny South_ HENLEY, W. E. Four Variations _The London_ 139 " 'The Ways of Death' " 141 MCCARTHY, JUSTIN H. Rondel* 141 MACDONALD, GEORGE Two Rondels _A Threefold Cord_ 142 MOORE, GEORGE Two Rondels* 143 MONKHOUSE, COSMO 'To a Sheet of 144 Paper'* PAYNE, JOHN 'Kiss me, Sweetheart' _New Poems_ 144 _Peck, S. M._ 'Before the Dawn' _Cap and Bells_ 145 PFEIFFER, EMILY Rondel 147 PROBYN, MAY " _Ballad of the Road_ 145 " Rondelets " 151 ROPES, A. REED Two Rondels _Poems_ 146 _Scollard, Clinton_ 'Come, Love' _With Reed and Lyre_ 147 " 'Upon the Stair' _Pictures in Song_ 148 " 'I Heard a Maid' " 148 _Sherman, F. D._ 'Valentine' " 149 WARING, C. H. 'Love's Captive' _Fun_ 149 " 'Love' " 150 WILTON, RICHARD Rondel Sungleams 150 " 'Benedicte' _Sunday at Home_ 151 RONDEAUS. _Bates, Arlo_ 'Might Love be 152 Bought'* " 'In Thy Clear Eyes'* 152 BELL, C. D. 'The Sweet Sad Years' _Songs in Many Keys_ 153 " 'A Wish' " 153 BOWEN, H. C. 'To a Doleful Poet' _Longman's Magazine_ 154 BRIDGES, ROBERT 'His Poisoned Shafts' _Poems_ 155 BULLOCH, J. M. 'To Homer'* 155 _Bunner, H. C._ 'September' _Airs from Arcady_ 156 " 'Les Morts vont vite' " 156 CRANE, WALTER 'In Love's Disport'* 157 " 'What makes the 157 World?'* THE SICILIAN OCTAVE. Two Examples by Dr. 132 RICHARD GARNETT DOBSON, AUSTIN 'O fons Bandusiæ' _Old World Idylls_ 158 " 'On London Stones' " 158 " 'To Ethel' " 159 " 'With Pipe and Flute' " 160 " 'To a June Rose' _At the Sign of the 159 Lyre_ " 'In After Days' " 160 " 'In Vain To-day' " 161 " 'When Burbadge " 161 Played' _Chew, Beverly_ 'Old Books' _New York Critic_ 162 GRANT, J. C. 'A Coward Still' _Songs of Sunny 162 South_ _Grant, Robert_ 'Rondeaux of Cities' _The Century_ 163-4 _Goodale, E._ 'Could She have " 165 Guessed' GOSSE, EDMUND 'Fortunate Love' _On Viol and Flute_ 165-8 " 'If Love should _New Poems_ 168 Faint' HENLEY, W. E. 'My Love to Me' _The London_ 169 " 'With Strawberries' " 169 " 'A Flirted Fan' " 170 " 'In Rotten Row' " 170 " 'The Leaves are Sere' " 171 " 'With a Fan' " 171 " 'If I were King' " 172 " 'The Gods are Dead' " 172 " 'Her Little Feet' " 173 " 'When you are Old'* " 173 _Levy, Nathan_ 'My Books' _American_ 174 "Love in Idleness" 'Most Sweet of All' 174 _Lüders, C. H._ 'The Redbreast' _Hallo, my fancy_ 175 " 'To Q. H. F.' " 175 MCCARTHY, JUSTIN H. 'Love in London '* " 176 MARTIN, ADA L. 'Sleep' _Cassell's Magazine_ 176 MARZIALS, THEO. 'To Tamaris' _Athenæum_ 177 " 'When I see you' " 177 " 'Carpe Diem' 178 _Matthews, Brander_ 'Old and New' _American_ 178 " 'Sub Rosa' _The Century_ 179 MONKHOUSE, COSMO 'Violet' _The Spectator_ 179 " 'O scorn me not'* 180 " 'Ten Thousand 180 Pounds'* PAYNE, JOHN 'One of these days' _New Poems_ 181 " 'Life lapses by' " 181 _Peck, S. M._ 'Beyond the Night' _Cap and Bells_ 182 " 'Among my Books' " 182 PFEIFFER, E. 'I go my Gait' _Gerard's Monument_ 183 _Roberts, C. G. D._ 'Laurels for Song' _In Divers Tones_ 183 " 'Without one Kiss' _Orion_ 184 _Scollard, Clinton_ 'Vis Erotis' _With Reed and Lyre_ 184 " 'When Sirius Shines' " 185 " 'At Peep of Dawn' " 185 " 'In Greenwood Glen' _Pictures in Song_ 186 _Sherman, F. D._ 'Her China Cup' _Madrigals and 186 Catches_ " 'Behind her Fan' " 187 " 'Valentine' " 187 " 'When Twilight comes' " 188 " 'Come, Pan, and Pipe' " 188 " 'An Old Rondo' " 189 STERRY, J. ASHBY 'A Street Sketch' _The Lazy Minstrel_ 189 " 'Dover' " 190 " 'Homesick' " 190 TOMSON, GRAHAM R. 'In Beechen Shade'* 191 " 'The Gates of Horn'* 191 WADDINGTON, S. 'If Love be True' _Sonnets, etc._ 192 " 'The Coquette' " 192 WEATHERLY, G. 'Yes or No' _Cassell's Magazine_ 193 WILTON, REV. R. 'My Window Birds' _Sungleams_ 193 " 'Snowdrops and " 194 Aconites' " 'Chiff-chaff's " 194 Message' WRIGHT, ARTHUR G. 'When Summer Dies' _Time_ 195 " 'My Little 195 Sweetheart'* ROUNDELS. BLOMFIELD, D. F. Three Roundels _English Ill. Mag._ 196-7 SWINBURNE, A. C. 'A Singing Lesson' _Century of Roundels_ 197 " 'In Guernsey' " 198-9 " 'The Roundel' " 199 SAYLE, C. 'Nothing so Sweet' _Bertha, etc._ 200 " 'The Trysting-Tree' " 200 SYMONS, ARTHUR 'Of Rest'* 201 WADDINGTON, S. 'Mors et Vita'* 201 WELLER, BERNARD 'Rondels of _Home Chimes_ 202 Childhood' SESTINAS. _Byrne, F. M._ Sestina _American_ 205 _Coleman, C. W._ 'Love's Going' _Harper's Magazine_ 206 GOSSE, EDMUND Sestina _New Poems_ 207 ROBINSON, A. M. F. 'Pulvis et Umbra' _An Italian Song_ 209 _Scollard, C._ 'Cupid and the _Pictures in Song_ 210 Shepherd' SWINBURNE, A. C. Sestina _Poems and Ballads 211 (2nd ser.)_ TRIOLETS. ALEXANDER, GRIFFITH 'My Sweetheart' 215 BRIDGES, ROBERT Two Triolets _Poems_ 215 _Bates, Arlo_ Four Triolets* _American_ 216 _Bunner, H. C._ Triolet _The Century_ 217 CRANE, WALTER Triolet* 217 DICK, COTSFORD 'Triolets for the _The Model_ 218 Twelfth' DOBSON, AUSTIN 'Rose-leaves' _Old World Idylls_ 219 " 'Oh, Love's but a " 220 Dance' GOSSE, EDMUND 'After Catullus'* 221 HENLEY, W. E. Triolet _The London_ 221 _Learned, Walter_ " _American_ 221 MCCARTHY, JUSTIN H. Triolets* 222 _Lüders, C. H._ " _Hallo, my fancy_ 223 "Love in Idleness" Triolet 224 MACDONALD, GEORGE Triolets _A Threefold Cord_ 224-6 _Peck, S. M._ 'Under the Rose' _Cap and Bells_ 227 PFEIFFER, E. Triolet _Gerard's Monument_ 228 RADFORD, ERNEST Six Triolets _Measured Steps_229-30 _Robertson, Harrison_ Two Triolets _The Century_ 228 ROBINSON, A. M. F. 'From Fiametta' _Handful of 231 Honeysuckles_ _Scollard, Clinton_ 'A Snowflake' _With Reed and Lyre_ 233 STERRY, J. ASHBY 'A Tiny Trip' _The Lazy Minstrel_ 233 SYMONS, ARTHUR 'Vestigia' _Home Chimes_ 235 "The Century" Triolet 224 " 'Apology for gazing' 233 " 'Rejected' 238 TOMSON, GRAHAM R. Triolets* 236-8 WARING, C. H. 'A Pair of Gloves' _Fun_ 239 WEATHERLY, G. 'In the Orchard' _Cassell's Magazine_ 240 VILLANELLES. BEVINGTON, L. S. 'Roses' _Key Notes_ 243 DICK, COTSFORD 'A Vacation _The Model_ 244 Villanelle' DOBSON, AUSTIN 'Tu ne quaesieris' _Old World Idylls_ 245 " 'When I saw you " 246 last, Rose' " 'Theocritus' " 247 " 'On a Nankin Plate' " 248 GOSSE, EDMUND Villanelle _New Poems_ 249 " 'Little Mistress " 250 mine' HENLEY, W. E. 'Where's the use of _The London_ 251 sighing' " 'The Villanelle' " 252 " 'In the Clatter of " 253 the Train' LANG, ANDREW 'To M. Boulmier' _Ballades in Blue 254 China_ "Love in Idleness" 'To the Nightingale' 255 MONKHOUSE, COSMO 'Hetty'* 256 NOBLE, J. ASHCROFT 'Life' _Verses of a 257 Prose-Writer_ PAYNE, JOHN 'The Air is White' _New Poems_ 258 _Peck, S. M._ 'Bonnie Belle' _Cap and Bells_ 259 " 'If some true " 260 Maiden's' PFEIFFER, E. 'When the brow of _Sonnets v. Songs_ 261 June' " 'O Summer-time' " 262 PROBYN, MAY 'In every Sound' 263 " 'The Daffodils' _Ballad of the Road_ 264 _Scollard, Clinton_ 'To Helen' _With Reed and Lyre_ 265 " 'To the Daffodil' " 266 " 'Spring knocks' _Pictures in Song_ 267 STERRY, J. ASHBY 'Dot' 268 _Thomas, Edith W._ 'Across the World'* " 270 " 'Where are the _The Manhattan_ 271 Springs' TOMSON, GRAHAM R. 'To Hesperus'* " 272 " 'I did not Dream'* 273 WADDINGTON, S. 'Come, to the Woods' _Sonnets, etc._ 274 WILDE, OSCAR 'Theocritus' _Poems_ 275 VIRELAI. PAYNE, JOHN 'Spring's sadness' _New Poems_ 276 VIRELAI NOUVEAU. DOBSON, AUSTIN 'July' _Evening Hours_ 279 BURLESQUES, ETC. Anonymous 'Ballade of Old _The Century_ 285 Metres' " 'Ballade of the " 287 Prodigals' _Bunner, H. C._ 'On Newport Beach' " 290 (Rondeau) " 'Ballade of Summer " 283 Boarder' " Chant Royal, 'Mrs. " 294 Jones' _Cranch, C. P._ 'Young Poet's Advice' _New York Critic_ 284 DOBSON, AUSTIN Villanelle _Walnuts and Wine_ 293 G. H. 'Malapropos' _The Lute_ 294 HENLEY, W. E. 'Villon's Straight 288 Tip'* " 'Culture in the 290 Slums' LANG, ANDREW 'Ballade of Cricket' _Rhymes a la mode_ 286 MOORE, A. M. 'Ballade of _Hood's Annual_ 289 Ballade-mongers' PREFACE. * * * * * This anthology is chosen entirely from poems written in the traditional fixed forms of the _ballade_, _chant royal_, _kyrielle_, _rondel_, _rondeau_, _rondeau redoublé_, _sestina_, _triolet_, _villanelle_, and _virelai_, with the addition of the _pantoum_. That such a choice is the result of circumstances it is needless to point out, since only those that had found favour with English writers were available for the purpose. So far as I know, this collection is the first of its sort, although Mr. W. Davenport Adams' _Latter Day Lyrics_ included a section chosen on the same lines. Having, in company, no doubt, with many others, a genuine regard for the group Mr. Adams included there, I had long hoped to see a more ample compilation of later work in this school; but notwithstanding the steady increase in the number of poems written in the forms systematically arranged herein, the ground remained unoccupied, until the appearance of this book; which may fairly claim to be the first in the field, since no other volume has devoted its whole space to them, save in the rarer cases, where an author has published a collection of original poems cast in one mould, notably Mr. Swinburne's _Century of Roundels_ and Mr. Andrew Lang's _Ballades in Blue China_. In Mr. Adams' volume another valuable feature was the _Note on some Foreign forms of Verse_ by Mr. Austin Dobson, which many years since introduced to me the laws of the various forms and created my special interest in them. It is no derogation to the charming group in the former volume to say of the present collection, that it far exceeds its predecessor in number and variety, for now there is a wide field to choose from, whereas Mr. Adams was then limited to a selection from the small number extant. The rules which Mr. Austin Dobson was the first to formulate in English are made the basis (side by side with the treatises of M. de Gramont, M. de Banville, and other authorities) of the following chapter on the rules of the various forms. Lest a name so intimately associated with the introduction of the old French metrical shapes in English poetry should appear to be brought in to add weight to my own attempt, and the reputation of a master invoked for the work of one who at furthest can but style himself an apprentice, I must ask that this necessary tribute to Mr. Dobson's labours be taken only as an apology for so freely using his material, and that his ready help is by no means to be regarded in the faintest way as an imprimatur of any statements in this prefatory matter, save those quoted avowedly and directly from his writings. It may be best to name at once the authorities who have been consulted in the preparation of the introductory chapter. These include the French treatises of De Banville, De Gramont, and Jullienne, Mr. Saintsbury's _Short History of French Literature_, Mr. Hueffers' _Troubadours_, an article by Mr. Gosse in the _Cornhill Magazine_, July 1877, _Les Villanelles_ by M. Joseph Boulmier, _The Rhymester_ of Mr. Brander Matthews, and many occasional papers on the various forms that have appeared in English and American periodicals. To arrange in one chapter the materials gathered from these and other sources is all that I have attempted. If at times the need to crowd enough matter for a volume into the limits of a few pages results in a want of lucidity, I must plead the necessity imposed by limited space. To those who, by their kindly permission, have allowed their poems to be quoted here, the thanks that I can offer are as hearty as the expression of my gratitude is brief. The somewhat onerous task of obtaining consent from about two hundred authors has been turned to a pleasure, by the evidence of interest taken in this, the first collection of the later growth of this branch of poetic art. Nor did the help cease with the loan of the poems; in many instances a correspondence followed that brought to light fresh material, both for the body of the book and the introductory chapter, and rendered assistance not easy to overvalue. If any writer is quoted without direct permission, it was through no want of effort to trace him, excepting in the case of a very few that reached me in the shape of newspaper cuttings, wholly devoid of any clue to the locality of the writer. To Mr. Austin Dobson my best thanks are due. From Mr. Andrew Lang and Mr. Edmund Gosse I have also appropriated material, acknowledged as often as practicable; also to my friend, Mr. A. G. Wright, for invaluable help during the rather monotonous task of hunting up and copying at the reading-room of the British Museum; and to Mr. William Sharp, whose critical advice and generous encouragement throughout have left a debt of gratitude beyond payment. In a society paper, _The London_, a brilliant series of these poems appeared during 1877-8. After a selection was made for this volume, it was discovered that they were all by _one_ author, Mr. W. E. Henley, who most generously permitted the whole of those chosen to appear, and to be for the first time publicly attributed to him. The poems themselves need no apology, but in the face of so many from his pen, it is only right to explain the reason for the inclusion of so large a number. From America Mr. Brander Matthews and Mr. Clinton Scollard have shown sympathy with the collection, not only by permitting their works to be cited, but also by calling my attention to poems by authors almost unknown in England; while all those writers who in the new world are using the old shapes with a peculiar freshness and vigour, gave ready assent to the demand. To Messrs. Cassell & Co., for allowing poems that appeared in _Cassell's Family Magazine_ (those by Miss Ada Louise Martin and Mr. G. Weatherley); to Messrs. Longman, for liberty to quote freely from the many graceful examples that appeared in _Longman's Magazine_; to Messrs. Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co., for endorsing Mr. Andrew Lang's permission to include specimens from _Rhymes à la Mode_ and _Ballades in Blue China_, the utmost thanks are due for the courtesy shown; also to the proprietors of the _Century Magazine_, where so many of the American poems (many since collected by the authors in their own volumes) first appeared; and to Messrs Harper for permission to use Mr. Coleman's _Sestina_, and Mr. Graham R. Tomson's _Ballade of the Bourne_, which first appeared in their popular monthly. The poems that are cited by the courtesy of Mr. John Payne appear respectively in _Songs of Life and Death_ (W. H. Allen & Co.), _New Poems_ (ditto), and _Poems by François Villon_ (Reeves & Turner), now out of print. Having named so many who have lent aid, it is but fair to exonerate them from any blame for errors that, no doubt, in spite of the utmost care, may have crept in. In view of a later edition, I should be glad to be informed of any additional data of the use of the forms in English verse, which, if quoted, would add to the value of the collection, or to have any erroneous statements corrected. Notwithstanding the many shortcomings of my own share in the production of this volume, I cannot doubt but that the charm of the poems themselves will endear it to readers; and as a lover of the "Gallic bonds," I venture to hope it may do some little towards their complete naturalisation in our tongue. GLEESON WHITE. _August 1887._ NOTES ON THE EARLY USE OF THE VARIOUS FORMS. SOME NOTES ON THE EARLY USE OF THE VARIOUS FORMS, AND RULES FOR THEIR CONSTRUCTION. In the limited space available, it is hardly possible to give more than a very crude sketch of the origin of these forms; but some reference to early Provençal literature is inevitable, since the nucleus of not a few of them can be traced among the intricate rhyming of the Troubadours. Yet it would be beyond the purpose to go minutely into the enticing history of that remarkable period, nor is it needful to raise disputed questions regarding the origin of each particular fashion. The number of books on Provençal subjects is great, the mere enumeration of the names of those in the library of the British Museum would fill several pages. The language itself has a fascination which allures many to disaster, for as Mr. Hueffer points out, it "looks at first sight so like the Latin and more familiar Romance languages that it offers special temptations" to guess at its meaning, with very doubtful success. The term Provençal is usually applied to a dialect more correctly known as "the Langue d'Oc, which, with the Langue d'Oil, forms the two divisions of the Romance language spoken in the country we now know as France;" but Mr. Saintsbury remarks that, strictly speaking, the Langue d'Oc should not be called "French" at all, since it is hardly more akin to the Langue d'Oil than it is to Spanish and Italian, and that those who spoke it applied the term "French" to northern speech, calling their own Limousin, or Provençal, or Auvergnat. The limits where it prevailed extended far beyond Provence itself. Authorities differ with regard to the exact boundaries. It will suffice for the present purpose to take those Mr. Hueffer adopts--namely, the district within a boundary formed by a line drawn from the mouth of the Gironde to that of the Saone, in the north, while the southern limit includes parts of Spain, such as Aragon, Valencia, Catalonia, and the Balearic Islands. Herr Karl Bartsch, the eminent historian of Provençal literature, divides it into three periods:--the first, to the end of the eleventh century; the second, which is the one that marks the most flourishing time of the poetry of the Troubadours, extending over the twelfth and thirteenth; and the third period--of its decadence--in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. To this may be added the attempt to revive it in our own day, by the school of the so-called _Félibres_, including Mistral, Aubanel, Alphonse Daudet, and others, who have worked vigorously, and with no mean success, to produce a modern literature in the old dialect, worthy of its former dignity. In this preface it is impossible to mention any part of the prose of this marvellous literature, which sprang almost suddenly into a gigantic growth, that has been a fruitful theme for wonder and admiration ever since, and left its influence widely felt. The point that is to the purpose here, concerns the invention by the Provençal poets of many set forms of verse, some few of which are still written, but most so altered and renewed by later use, that their original character is well-nigh obscured. The forms included in this book are often erroneously attributed _en masse_ to the _jongleurs_ of Provence, yet few assumptions are less true. Altered by the Trouvères, the fifteenth century poets, the Ronsardists, and later writers, it is safer to assign to the Troubadours only the germs which evolved gradually into their now matured forms. To linger over the extraordinary period is a temptation hard to dismiss; the very name still has a flavour of romance, and brings a curious medley of images to the mind when it is heard, many perhaps as far from the actual Provençal Troubadour as _Nanki-Poo_ in the "_Mikado_" is from the wandering minstrel of the court of King Thibaut. Of the Troubadours who have come down to fame, four hundred and sixty are recorded by name, besides two hundred and fifty-one pieces that have survived without evidence of their authors. King Richard I. (our own Coeur de Lion), Guillem de Cabestanh, Peire Vidal, Bertran de Born, The Monk of Montaudon, and many others, have biographical sketches of exceeding interest allotted to them in Mr. Hueffer's "The Troubadours." A halo of romance has gathered round their names, and thrown a glamour over the record of their lives; to read their history is to be transported to a region where all topics but love and song are deemed unimportant trifles, unless the old chroniclers are singularly untruthful in their statements. We know now-a-days many a young poet's crushed life appears only in his verses, and outside those he appears but an average Philistine to vulgar eyes. Perhaps the "land of the nightingale and rose" was not so idyllic as its historians paint it; but with every deduction, there yet remains evidence of an exceptional importance attached to the arts, more especially to that of song. To those who wrote, or rather sang, witty impromptus (made often, we can but fancy, with much labour beforehand), or produced dainty conceits in elaborate rhymes and rhythms, when sound came perilously near triumphing over sense, a welcome was extended, as widespread and far more personal in its application than even that accorded to our modern substitute for the troubadour--the popular novelist. The doings of the Courts of Love, set down in sober chronicles, are hardly less fantastic than Mr. Gilbert's ingenious operas. Matters of the most sentimental and amorous character were debated in public, with all the earnestness of a question of state. That their poetry was singularly limited in its character there is little doubt, but Mr. Hueffer declares that it had its serious side, often lost sight of, and that no small portion was devoted to stately and dignified subjects. Mr. Lowell, on the other hand, in an essay on Chaucer in _My Study Windows_, says-- "Their poetry is purely lyric in its most narrow sense, that is, the expression of personal and momentary moods. To the fancy of the critics who take their cue from tradition, Provence is a morning sky of early summer, out of which innumerable larks rain a faint melody (the sweeter because rather half divined than heard too distinctly) over an earth where the dew never dries and the flowers never fade. But when we open Raynouard it is like opening the door of an aviary. We are deafened and confused by a hundred minstrels singing the same song at once, and more than suspect the flowers they welcome are made of French cambric, spangled with dewdrops of prevaricating glass." The forms in which the Provençal poets wrote were chiefly these:--The oldest was called _vers_, and consisted of octosyllabic lines arranged in stanzas; from this grew the _canzo_, with interlaced rhymes--later on with the distinctive feature still prominent in French, but unknown in English poetry, the rhymes _masculine_ and _feminine_. The _canzo_ was used entirely for subjects of love and gallantry, but the _sirvente_, composed of short stanzas, simply rhyming, and corresponding one to the other, was employed for political and social subjects, sometimes treated seriously, at others satirically. The _tenso_ was a curious trial of skill in impromptu versification. Two antagonists met and agreed that the one should reply on the opposite side to any argument the first might select. The opening stanza, chosen at will by the speaker, was imitated in the reply, both in observance of its rhyme and rhythm, the same rhyme-sound being often kept throughout the whole poem. It must not be forgotten that the Langue d'Oc was singularly fertile in rhymes, so that the feat was less arduous than it would be in other tongues. The _alba_, a farewell at morning, and the _serena_, or evening song, the _pastorella_, devoted, as its name implies, to pastoral subjects, appear to govern the themes of the verses rather than the form. There is record, however, of the _breu-doble_ (double short), invented by Guirant Riquier, a little form with three rhymes, two of which are repeated twice in three four-lined stanzas, and given once in a concluding couplet, while the third finished each quatrain. The _retroensa_ is noticeable for its refrain of more than one line. The sonnet has ceased to be claimed as a Provençal invention, yet it must be noted, as at one time its origin there was a favourite theory. The _ballade_, "a song serving to accompany the dance," must not be confused with the later ballade; and lastly, the greatest in most respects, the _sestina_, which, as it occurs among the poems noticed technically later on, need not be further mentioned here. "The artificial verse-forms of Provence include some as peculiar and arbitrary as ever issued from the brain of Persian poet--verse-forms by the side of which the metrical glitter of _ballade_, _chant royal_, _rondeau_, _rondel_, _triolet_, _virelai_ and _villanelle_ must pale," says a writer in the _Westminster Review_ (October 1878), and instances the _tenso_ and the _sestina_ in proof of his assertion. Mr. Hueffer also treats the _chant royal_ as mere child's play beside the intricate feats displayed by the Troubadours. The above short list shows many examples of forms using the refrain and some other features preserved in Northern poetry; but the debt owed by the North to the Troubadours is far less, according to later writers, than that assigned to Provençal influence some few years ago. Mr. Saintsbury says that "poems called _rondeaux_ and _ballades_, of loose construction and undecided form, began to make their appearance at the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century," but the forms as we know them owe their present shape to their reformation in Northern France, culminating in the poems of Charles d'Orléans and François Villon. In this revival, the _lai_ and _pastourelle_ kept their Provençal titles, but were made much more exact in form, and never attained the widespread celebrity of the newer shapes, which are to all intents and purposes the models for the forms in this volume, save the _sestina_, which is practically an Italian, and the _pantoum_, an Eastern form. There is no space here to notice more than the names of a few of even the most prominent of the poets who succeeded the Provençal singers in their use of these forms. There are thousands of ballades in MSS. in the Royal French Library, by known and unknown writers. Eustache Deschamps (1328-1415), a friend of Chaucer's, "has left no less than 1175 ballades. Rondeaus, virelais, etc., also proceeded in great numbers from his pen; also an important _Art of Poetry_, a treatise rendered at once necessary and popular by the fashion of artificial rhyming."[1] Some of the earliest ballades and rondel-triolets bear the name of Jehan Froissart (1337-1410), the chronicler. Messire Guy de la Tremouille, according to Mr. Gosse, is supposed to have been the first to devise the elaborate rules of construction of the ballade, which have been in force ever since. He was guard of the Oriflamme in 1383, and died in 1398; but Deschamps is more often credited with the honour. That he cultivated the form we know, besides writing an "Art of making Chansons, Ballades, Virelais, and Rondels," which is a valuable relic of his time. Jehannot de Lescurel, "of whom absolutely nothing is known, has left sixteen ballades, fifteen rondeaus (not in regular form), and other pieces, said to be 'of singular grace, lightness, and elegance.'" [1] See Saintsbury's _Short History of French Literature_, p. 103. Guillaume de Machault (1284-1377) was also a voluminous writer. One of his poems, a _chanson balladée_, is printed in Mr. Saintsbury's _Short History of French Literature_, which contains also a _Ballade_ by Alain Chartier (1390-1458), the hero of the famous story of the kiss of Queen Margaret of Scotland, and other specimens of this period, in a succinct and trustworthy account of the growth of French poetry, surpassed by no book in our own language. Charles d'Orléans (1391-1466), noticed among the English writers, is specially honoured as the master of the rondel; while François Villon (1431-1485) stands out as the "prince of all ballade-makers." For brief, but splendid sketches of these two, Mr. R. L. Stevenson's _Familiar Studies of Men and Books_ should be consulted, while for more prosaic description there is no lack of data. Since the revival of interest in Villon, France has done tardy but unstinted honour to her most famous poet, as it is the fashion just now to style him, but there is a doubt whether the praise given is not in danger of being exaggerated. Yet, making all allowances, there is vital humanity in his wondrous writings, that now, after four hundred years, read as living and modern in their presentation of life, as though they were by a realist of our own day. In Villon, student, poet, housebreaker, we find the forerunner of the Zola of to-day--one who, in so eminently an artificial form as the ballade, cast aside all conventional restraints, and sang of what he saw and knew. It is much to be regretted that space forbids more translations of his poems to be included in this collection. For those who wish to tackle him in his old, and by no means easy, French, a good edition is published for a franc, in the _Collection Jannet-Picard (Paris)_. Mr. Payne has translated the whole of his authentic works into English in a volume, at present out of print, which contains also a very graphic and full biography of this remarkable man. Space forbids insertion of the sketch of his life prepared for this chapter. Born in 1431, student 1448, B.A. in 1452, writing his _Lesser Testament_ in 1446, his _Greater Testament_ in 1461; in those few years he contrived to win more fame, and, to speak truly, more infamy, than a whole generation of lesser poets. He was condemned to die--he wrote his marvellous _Ballade of the Gibbet_ while lying under sentence of death--but escaped. Where he died is unknown, the date of his _Greater Testament_ being the last record of Master François Villon of Paris. In 1493 appeared _L'art et science de rhéthorique pour faire rigmes et ballades_, by Henry de Croï--an invaluable treatise on French Poetics. The works of Pierre Gringoire (1478-1544) must be named, if only for the fact of De Banville's splendid ballade in his comedy "Gringoire," founded on an incident in the poet's life. By Mr. Lang's permission a translation is quoted in the body of this volume. Mr. John Payne also englished it, in the _Dublin University Magazine_, 1879. The works of Clement Marot (1497-1544) demand special note, since his _ballades_ and _chants royaux_ are now accepted as the ideal models for imitation. In his _Art Poëtique_, 1555, Thomas Sibilet reviews many of the former writers, and gives the rules of the poetry then in force. Immediately after this date came another change; with the famous school of Ronsard (1524-1585) and the _Pléiade_, as they are styled, one of whom, however, Du Bellay, was eager to abolish the _ballade_ and _chant royal_ in favour of the _sonnet_. The members of this group produced some notable work in strict forms. Among the Ronsardists we find Grévin the dramatist, who wrote some graceful poems which he called _Villanesques_--a modified form of the _Villanelle_--and Jean Passerat (1534-1602) who is specially noteworthy, since in his hand the _Villanelle_ crystallised into its present shape, Joseph Boulmier, in the last revival, making this form his special study, and writing all his verses after Passerat's model given elsewhere in this volume. The rondeau was revived in great splendour in the middle of the seventeenth century. Foremost among the brilliant group is Voiture (1598-1648), the acknowledged master of this form. Only thirty of his rondeaus are left, but each one of these is a masterpiece, and may be studied for all the subtle devices and dainty inventions that the form has yet yielded. Benserade (1612-1691) and Sarrasin were also famous for rondeau-making, the former translating the whole of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_ into rondeaus, which were sumptuously printed at the King's Press at a cost of 10,000 francs. When Voiture died in 1648, it is curious to note that Sarrasin wrote a "pompous funereal poem--possibly the most funny serious elegy ever composed--in which, among other strange mourners, he makes the 'poor little triolet,' all in tears, trot by the side of the dead poet," who, according to Mr. Gosse, from whom the above paragraph is quoted, had never written one in his life. Sarrasin also left a curious specimen of the _Glose_, written on the famous Sonnet "de IOB" by Benserade. In 1649 Gérard de Saint Amant wrote a volume of sixty-four triolets. From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century no important examples occur. About thirty years ago De Banville revived these old shapes, and initiated a movement that Daudet, Glatigny, Boulmier, and a host of others have helped forward, so that now modern French literature is flooded with examples of the forms-the ballade, rondeau, and triolet being the most widely used. Having imperfectly followed the growth of the forms in France, it will be interesting to give a few notes of the various attempts made to acclimatise some in England. Although no effort previous to 1873 warrants us in claiming an English pedigree for them, yet it is curious to see how often the attempt was made to write them in our own tongue. The sonnet gradually grew into use, until it became as little an exotic as the potato, to employ an uncouth simile; the ballade and rondeau--hardly more formal in their rules, and with susceptibilities of infinite grace and beauty--failed to be even residents amongst us, much less naturalised subjects, sharing the rights and duties of citizens. Chaucer is believed to have used these forms, as in "The Legend of Good Women" he says, speaking of himself-- "Many a himpne for your holy daies That highten balades, roundels, virelaies." His "Balade de Vilage sauns Peynture," however, does not correspond with the accepted form. Mr. Gosse says that the Chaucer of 1651 contains a number of poems attributed to himself and Lydgate "which are merely pieces in rhyme-royal, so arranged as to imitate the French ballade: without its severity of form." The following is a roundel attributed to Chaucer:-- I.-BURDEN. So hath your beauty fro your hertè chased Pitee, that mee availeth not to pleyne; For daunger[2] halt your mercy in his cheyne. II. Giltles my deth thus have ye purchased, I sey you soth, me nedeth not to fayne; So hath, etc. III. Alas, that Nature hath in you compassed So grete beaute, that no man may atteyne To mercy, though he stewe[3] for the peyne. So hath, etc. [2] Dominion, power. [3] Sterve. This is given in Furnival's _Trial-Forewords to Chaucer's Minor Poems_, and is especially interesting in connection with the history of the forms in English use. Of his immediate followers, Lydgate, a monk of Bury, author of _London Lyckpenny_, is said by Guest to have written a "roundle," and one by Thomas Occleve is printed in Morley's _Shorter English Poems_. John Gower (1340-1408), author of _Confessio Amantis_, at the coronation of Henry IV. presented the king with a collection of fifty _Ballades_, written in the Provençal manner, "to entertain his noble court." The thin oblong MS., on vellum, which contains them is still extant in the Marquis of Stafford's library at Trentham, and in 1818 it was printed for the Roxburghe Club; but as the poems are unfortunately written in French, they do not assist in supporting a claim for the early use of the form in England. Professor Henry Morley has translated one for his _English Writers_; it follows the rhymes accurately, but has a somewhat trite subject. A critic has well said of it, that the poets of Gowers's day "were not burdened with solving 'the riddle of the painful earth.' It may be that a good deal of their guileless delight in things fresh and young was feigned, but then so is much of our more pretentious philosophy." From its special interest it is quoted here-- Winter departs, and comes the flowery May, And round from cold to heat the seasons fly; The bird that to its nest had lost the way Rebuilds it that he may rejoice thereby. Like change in my love's world I now descry, With such a hope I comfort myself here, And you, my lady, on this truth rely: When grief departs the coming joys are near. My lady sweet, by that which now I say You may discover how my heart leaps high, That serves you, and has served you many a day, As it will serve you daily till I die. Remember, then, my lady, knowing why, That my desire for you will never veer As God wills that it be, so be our tie: When grief departs the coming joys are near. The day that news of you came where I lay, It seem'd there was no grief could make me sigh; Wherefore of you, dear lady mine, I pray By your own message--when you will, not I-- Send me what you think best as a reply Wherewith my heart can keep itself from fear; And, lady, search the reason of my cry-- When grief departs the coming joys are near. _Envoy._ O noble Dame, to you this note shall hie, And when God wills I follow to my dear. This writing speaks, and says, till I am by, When grief departs the coming joys are near. John Shirley, who lived about 1440, made a collection of _Ballades_, _Roundels_, _Virelais_, and Tragedies, in MSS., which are still extant in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. After noticing Gower, who wrote ballades in French, Charles d'Orléans, who wrote rondels in English, comes as another instance of the early use, but again as a mere exception, since the accident which led both writers to adopt exotic forms is outside the history of our native poetry, and cannot be brought forward to prove their early naturalisation. Of Charles d'Orléans much might be said worth saying, but there are so many sources of information open, that here we need note only the poems written during his captivity. He is said to have been our prisoner for about twenty-five years, and during that time to have acquired a taste for our language. The Abbé Sallier, who unearthed the manuscript of his poems in the Royal Library at Paris during the last century, says he wrote but two in English; but in the MS. at the British Museum, the Rev. H. F. Cary, the translator of Dante, found three, quoted in his _Early French Poets_ (Bohn, 1846). The editor of that volume, the Rev. Henry Cary, son of the author, mentions in a footnote a large collection among the Harleian MSS., attributed to Charles d'Orléans, but throws doubt on their being more than translations. Into this question there is no space to enter. These are the three from Cary's book:-- Go forth, my hert, with my lady; Loke that ye spar no bysines To serve her with such lolyness That ye gette her oftyme prively That she kepe truly her promes. Go forth, etc. I must, as a helis-body,[4] Abyde alone in hevynes; And ye that dwell with your mastris In plaisaunce glad and mery, Go forth, etc. * * * * * My hertly love is in your governas, And ever shall whill that I live may. I pray to God I may see that day That ye be knyt with trouthful alyans. Ye shall not fynd feyning or variaunce As in my part; that wyl I truly say. My hertly, etc. * * * * * Bewere, my trewe innocent hert, How ye hold with her aliauns, That somtym with word of plesuns Resceyved you under covert. Thynke how the stroke of love comsmert[5] Without warnyng or deffiauns. Bewere, my, etc. And ye shall pryvely or appert See her by me in loves dauns, With her faire femenyn contenauns Ye shall never fro her astert. Bewere, my, etc. [4] _Helis-body_--One deprived of health or happiness. [5] _Comsmert_--Can smart, or comes smart. Spenser (1553-1599) is said (but I cannot trace the authority) to have used some of these forms. Again, Sir Philip Sidney's (1554-1586) famous ditty, "My true love hath my heart," recalls the rondel, but cannot claim to be one. Drummond of Hawthornden (1585-1649) has a fine sestina (too long for quotation), "Sith gone is my delight and only pleasure." _The Trivial Poems, and Triolets_ of Patrick Carey deserve mention. This volume was unknown until the beginning of the present century, although dated Warnefurd, 1651. The poems were brought into notice by Sir Walter Scott, who obtained the MSS. from John Murray, and after inserting a few in the _Edinburgh Annual Register_, 1810, published the whole for the first time in 1819. The following specimen is taken from Scott's reprint, p. 43:-- Worldly designes, feares, hopes, farwell! Farwell all earthly joyes and cares! On nobler thoughts my soule shall dwell Worldly designes, feares, hopes, farwell! Att quiett, in my peacefull cell, I'le thincke on God, free from your snares; Worldly designes, feares, hopes, farwell! Farwell all earthly joyes and cares. In the _Athenæum_, May 7, 1887, is a long article on Carey, signed C. F. S. Warner, M. A. Charles Cotton, the friend of Izaak Walton, wrote a rondeau, "a very ungallant example," cited in Dr. Guests' _History of English Rhythms_. There is also one unquotable, by reason of its subject, among the correspondence of Alexander Pope (1688-1744), and in the _Rolliad_, 1784, a volume of satires in prose and verse, that enjoyed a great popularity for a time, there is a set of five rondeaus, written in pure form after the Voiture model. They satirise North, Eden, Pitt, and Dorset, and are perfect in construction, and vigorous in their ridicule. The popularity of these effusions led to many imitations in the periodical prints at the beginning of this century, few, however, of sufficient merit to be worth reviving. By the courtesy of Mr. Austin Dobson, the owner, I am able to extract a specimen from a scarce and little-known book, entitled _Rondeaulx; translated from the Black Letter French Edition of 1527, by J. R. Best, Esq._;-- #Rondeaulx en Nombre trois cens cinquante.# #Singuliers et a tous propos. Nouvellement# #Imprimez a Paris. Avec Privelege# #On les vend en la grant salle du palays au# #Premier pillier en la boutique de Galliot du# #Pre marchaut librarie jure de L'universite.# The dedication to Robert Studley Vidal, Esq., is dated 1838. The first poem is preceded by a quaint apology, that unfortunately is too long to quote, but the rondeau itself, if its rhythm is faulty and its language ungraceful, shows that the original had sterling advice to offer, and that the translator was not ignorant of the true rules of the form. UNG BON RONDEAU A good rondeau I was induced to show To some fair ladies some short while ago; Well knowing their ability and taste, I asked, should ought be added or effac'd, And prayed that every fault they'd make me know The first did her most anxious care bestow To impress one point from which I ne'er should go: "Upon a good beginning must be based A good rondeau." Zeal bid the other's choicest language glow: She softly said, "Recount your weal or woe, Your every subject free from pause or haste: Ne'er let your hero fail, nor be disgraced." The third--"With varying emphasis should flow A good rondeau." In Mr. Oxenford's _Book of French Songs_, now published with Miss Costello's _Specimens of the Early Poetry of France_, in a volume of the _Chandos Classics_, there is one ballade given (with its original French, both without envoy); but although noting the peculiarity that each stanza has the same terminations, Mr. Oxenford has not kept it in his translation, nor has Miss Costello, in a numerous collection of ballades, rondels, lais, and other forms, once paraphrased them accurately, usually varying even the refrain; nor can I see, in her voluminous notes, that she draws attention to this important feature, although she gives the particulars of the eccentricities of rhyming known as _Fraternisée, Brisée_, and the like, and condemns their triviality rather strongly. In the edition before me no date is given; the authoress died in 1870. The oft-quoted Rondeau by Leigh Hunt is so beautiful in itself that all its shortcomings in the matter of form may be readily pardoned, and if--but the saving clause is great--others as beautiful could be built on the same shape, a "Leigh Hunt" variation would be a welcome addition to the forms in English; but it is no _rondeau_, and has not the faintest claim to be so styled. Probably it is familiar to all readers, but in case even one should not know it, it is quoted here:-- "Jenny kissed me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat in. Time, you thief, who love to get Sweets upon your list, put that in! Say I'm weary, say I'm sad; Say that health and wealth have missed me; Say I'm growing old, but add-- Jenny kissed me." If Mr. Swinburne's examples of the forms in his earlier volumes be not counted (since he then ignored many of the rules that, as his later books show, he can use with such splendid mastery), to Mr. Andrew Lang's _Lays and Lyrics of Old France_ (Longman, 1872) must be assigned the honour of leading the way in the reproduction in English of the old French metrical forms, made in conformance to their ascertained laws. How far that volume led the way to the modern employment of these forms for original poetry in our own tongue, is not so easily proved. One thing, at least, is certain, that Mr. Austin Dobson, Mr. Edmund Gosse, Mr. W. E. Henley, Mr. Payne, and one or two other writers, were each, unknown to the rest, trying the new measures. In the words of one of these, "the study of French literature was in the air;" and naturally, as we now see, the new movement began simultaneously to adapt its rules to English conditions. To Mr. Bridges belongs the honour of printing the first Triolet in modern English; but he expressly disclaims being looked upon as the apostle for the naturalisation of the exotic forms, for which he had no peculiar sympathy, and after his _Poems_, 1873, ceased to use. So little were his experiments appreciated, that their presence in his volume was considered prejudicial to its success, by competent authorities of the day, who little foresaw the rapid growth that would so soon spring up. To Mr. Austin Dobson is assigned the first _ballade_, "The Prodigals;" to Mr. Edmund Gosse the first _villanelle_ and _chant royal_; and to Mr. W. E. Henley the first _double ballade_, and a few other variations. But it is most likely that the priority of some of these was due to the mere accident of publication, and that it is more near the truth to regard the whole as a contemporaneous movement toward French rhythms, thought out and experimented upon by many writers, ignorant of the fact that they were not alone in the study, and that others were working upon the same lines. One of the first who made trial of these French rhythms has (I believe) never published any; yet examples of their use by the author of _A Child's Garden of Verse_ would have added greatly to the interest of this collection, but the author has willed that they should remain unquoted, so I can only regret their absence. From 1873 to 1877 a fair number had appeared, but these were produced almost entirely by the writers already named. From 1877, however, the number of those who made them increased rapidly. In that year Mr. Dobson's _Proverbs in Porcelain_ was published, containing a series of these forms, which, as internal evidence of much subsequent work shows, have been accepted as typical models to be followed in their English use. The series in _The London_ noticed elsewhere, during this year and 1878, also increased their popularity, while the later English use may be traced to some extent by the examples here collected. In America about the same time the new fashion in versemaking was taken up very warmly, and to the present day the Americans have shown themselves more cordial towards the Gallic measures than even our own countrymen. In the popular periodicals of the United States there are more specimens than in our English magazines, and the appearance of so many examples in this book shows that the American poets have caught a great deal of the peculiar quality, hard to define but easy to recognise, which the forms demand. Then came Mr. W. Davenport Adams's _Latter Day Lyrics_, with a section devoted to these forms, and "A Note on Some Foreign Forms of Verse," by Mr. Dobson. Since then the poems written in these styles have been increasing in number, until the idea of collecting them in one volume, long in my mind, was favourably entertained by Mr. William Sharp, the general editor of the series in which this book appears. The taste for these _tours de force_ in the art of versemaking is no doubt an acquired one; yet to quote the first attempt to produce a lyric with a repeated burden would take one back to the earliest civilisation. The use of the refrain and conventional arrangement of rhyme in these forms differs as widely from the burdens of the old examples, as the purely conventional design of Greek art from the savage patterns of its ancestral stock. Whether the first refrains were used for decorative effect only, or to give the singer time to recollect or to improvise the next verse, it matters little, since the once mere adjunct was made in later French use an integral and vital part of the verse. The charm of these strictly written verses is undoubtedly increased by some knowledge of their technical rules. As a subtle harmony of colours may reveal, to those who can grasp it, a miracle of skill and science, while it is no more nor less than "a pretty picture" to others--or polyphonic harmony, with all the resources of the science of music, may be employed to enrich a clear popular melody, to which the unmusical can yet nod their heads and fancy they understand it all; so a ballade or rondeau may be so deftly wrought, with an infinity of care and grace, that those who read it simply as a dainty poem never suspect the stern laws ordering the apparent spontaneity of the whole. To approach ideal perfection, nothing less than implicit obedience to all the rules is the first element of success; but the task is by no means finished there. Every quality that poetry demands, whether clearness of thought, elegance of expression, harmonious sound, or faultless rhythm, is needed as much in these shapes as in unfettered verse, and not until all those are contributed comes the final test of the poem itself; whether it utters thoughts worth uttering, or suggests ideas worth recalling. It may be said, without fear of exaggeration, that all the qualities required to form a perfect lyric in poetry are equally needful here, _plus_ a great many special ones the forms themselves demand. To the students of any art there is always a peculiar charm when the highest difficulties are surmounted with such ease, that the consummate art is hidden to all who know not the magic password to unveil it. But for those who have no special knowledge of poetry, it is pertinent to inquire what good these ingenious _tours de force_ achieve, and why the poem could not please as well if it was written in ordinary verse? This is hard to answer; but the fact remains that in every phase of art, whether music, picture, or poem, such technical achievements have invariably found admirers in any period of advanced civilisation. It has been said that these forms display no higher aim than the verses printed to resemble an hour-glass or altar, in some of our early poets; but such an accusation is hardly worthy of serious reply. If the sonnet in Italian form has gained world-wide fame, the principle of fixed form is at once shown to be acceptable to the majority of scholars, and it becomes only a question of degree whether these rondeaus and ballades gain so prominent a place. It is hardly fair to expect to find among these forms a lyric that has caught the ear of the public, and won its way to the hearts of everyone; fifteen years of use is all they may claim, and compared with the lyric poetry guileless of bonds, during the same period, they at least hold their own. It must also be remembered that they were adopted by the younger men, who won no small amount of their present fame by these pretty devices. ON THE RULES OF THE VARIOUS FORMS.--There are several general laws governing these fixed metrical forms that must be insisted on at the outset. The rule of the limited number of rhymes holds good of nearly all. One feature prominent in the French rules is impossible in English, as the difference between the rhyme masculine on words that have not the _e_ mute for their final letter, and the rhyme feminine on words that possess the _e_ mute, is unknown to us; but side by side with the release from one binding law in French verse, a new one is imposed. In that language, words of exactly similar _sound_ and _spelling_ may be used to rhyme together, provided the meaning of the words is distinct--such license the most doggerel bard would reject in English--in spite of the precedent Milton offers, having "Ruth" and "ruth" in one of his sonnets. Purists forbid in our tongue the use of words of distinct spelling, but identical sound, as "sail" and "sale," "bear" and "bare;" nor would they allow words closely allied, as "claim," "disclaim," "reclaim," to be employed, the strict rule being, _that no syllable once used as a rhyme can be used again for that purpose throughout the poem, not even if it be spelt differently while keeping the same sound; nor if the whole word is altered by a prefix; the syllable that rhymes must always be a new one both in sense and sound_. It is this feature of the many rhymes to be found on a limited root-sound that proves the initial difficulty in these shapes. If the above rule is thought too strict--and it must be owned very few writers acknowledge it to the extent of excluding such words as "claim, acclaim, prove, reprove," etc.--at least such words should be kept as far apart as possible, not used in the same stanza, if it can be avoided, and never to rhyme with one another. Next in order, but of equal, perhaps primary importance, is the use of the refrain. This recurrent phrase is common in many languages; but the way these ballades, rondeaus, and other shapes employ it, differs from all others. In most old ballads and folk-songs the refrain comes as a mere jingle, or, at best, an interlude, not reflecting the idea of the verse it closes, nor varying its sense in spite of retaining its sound, as it does in a perfect example of these forms. An ordinary refrain in other poetry is usually kept to one note resounding through the whole poem, much as the drone-bass in "pifferari" or "musette" music is kept going throughout. In music there is another form of bass always kept continuous--the ground-bass, on which Handel and Bach built some mighty choruses; but in this the repeated sequence of notes in the phrase, although they occur again and again unaltered, have the superstructure welded into them, one splendid harmony--not, as in the other, a melody merely floating over the accompaniment of the one note or chord of the drone bass. It may be a somewhat forced parallel, but in the instance quoted, and the fugue, canon, and other contrapuntal laws of classical music, there is much in common with these laws of strict metrical verse. The enormous use of set forms in the masterpieces of tone-art may be a happy augury to the future that yet awaits them in word-art. It may be said that at present the poems dare claim no such success as the contrapuntal devices in music can show, where the greatest works employ such devices frequently; yet the leap from the simple forms of counterpoint to the works of the mighty John Sebastian took but comparatively few years, although the distance was so great. But fanciful parallels of this sort are rarely satisfactory to any, except their maker, and need not be dwelt on here. The refrain in each case is noticed more especially among the laws of each form, but with regard to all the forms it is necessary to insist on the importance of introducing it unaltered in sound on each recurrence; it is sometimes changed by using, say, "and" for "but," or "then" for "if;" but, without condemning any who take this license, it is better to avoid it. Still, any change of meaning that be obtained by alteration of punctuation, accent, or even of spelling, provided the sound is unchanged, is not merely allowable but desirable, in lighter verse especially. Without recommending the use of the pun pure and simple, where its easy vulgarity would quickly be fatal to the dainty conceits that mark the best humorous verse in these forms, yet any pretty play upon words, or a sentence with new meaning read into it by the context, is more than permissible, being present in the best models of the Voiture rondeau and many triolets and ballades. This applies chiefly to poems of the class called _Vers de Société_, for want of an English synonym. The comic papers of our own country show no use of the form quite so fine in burlesque treatment as some of the American ones, notably the chant royal, _Mrs. Jones_, by Mr. H. C. Bunner; in the burlesque examples printed in this book it will be seen that the forms can be made to give added zest to satire or humour, beside imparting a certain scholarly finish, that itself raises them from the terribly dead level of much of our so-called comic poetry. A few shapes yet await presentation in English dress. I have not succeeded in finding specimens of the _glose_ or the _virelai_ (rhythme d'Alain Chartier), while the example of the _virelai_ (_nouveau_), Mr. Dobson's "July," is the only one brought to light. The _lai_ and the _rondelet_ are also very little used, so that anyone interested in these old measures will yet find plenty of unhackneyed forms for experimenting upon. It is curious that the sonnet, no less exacting in its technical rules, and far more imperious in the treatment it demands, finds so many eager followers, for with its wealth of literature, the chance of attaining to the second rank even, among such splendid poems, requires a high amount of talent, if not absolute genius. In the rondeau, or ballade, many writers who are ignored in the ampler crowd of sonnet-makers might find pleasing forms, not merely to display true poetic thoughts (if they have the power to do so), but verse that has in its shape some air of novelty still, and would sound less like the faint re-echoes of a stronger song, the frequent effect of many a modern sonnet. These few prefatory lines may well close with De Banville's own words (in Mr. Lang's English)--"This cluster of forms is one of our most precious treasures, for each of them forms a rhythmic whole, complete and perfect, while at the same time they all possess the fresh and unconscious grace which marks the production of primitive times." As the translator adds, "There is some truth in this criticism, for it is a mark of man's early ingenuity in many arts to seek complexity (where you would expect simplicity), and yet to lend to that complexity an infantine naturalness. One can see this phenomenon in early decorative art, and in early law and custom, and even in the complicated structure of primitive languages. Now, just as early and even savage races are our masters in the decorative use of colour and of carving, so the nameless mastersingers of ancient France may be our teachers in decorative poetry--the poetry some call _vers de société_." In analysing the structure of these forms, it would be, no doubt, possible for a master to present them in English, as terse and epigrammatic as the French of de Banville or de Gramont. But there would be a danger in so doing. A famous prelate is said to have apologised for a long letter, on the ground that he had not time to write a short one: this anecdote may be paraphrased here, for it often happens that many have time to run through a discursive, gossipy description, when they could not devote the attention needful to _read_ a short one. If every word is carefully chosen, and used in an exact way to convey as much as possible, it requires no less careful reading;--as in some of our Science Primers, where the material for an ordinary chapter is condensed and reduced to the crystal of a single sentence, that demands almost equal exactness in obtaining its solution, if one would absorb all the learning compressed in so small a compass. This excuse may serve in lieu of a better for the somewhat prolix method in which these rules are presented. Let no one imagine that the most perfect knowledge of the laws of these forms is enough to start him in writing poetry; for such rules are but what the fundamental rules of arithmetic are to astronomers--all important as the basis, but powerless, without genius and science, to discover new worlds, or formulate an hypothesis for the existence of known ones. If such books as those the present chapter follows are looked upon as handbooks to making _poetry_, that one stupendous flight of imagination is probably the only one its author is fated to achieve. THE BALLADE.--In the alphabetical sequence adopted in the arrangement of this volume, the _Ballade_ happily comes first. This is as it should be, since no other of these forms has been more frequently used in English, nor, it may be, is any other so capable of variety, since among its successful examples many different treatments will be found. This form adapts itself to its subject, and may be sonorous or stately, playful or easy, at the will of its writer, as, in capable hands, it can strike any note in the gamut of passions, from religious exaltation or fierce grim satire, to actual pathos, or, if needful, pure burlesque. It is possible the _Ballade_ will never be written so strictly to one model as the sonnet, but that many variations--to be noticed presently--will each find admirers; but the existing examples warrant a belief that the shape will continue in our poetry, for it is impossible, in face of many hundred examples, to style it an exotic at the present day. The construction of the _Ballade_, although not less stern in insisting on the introduction of a refrain than many of the other shapes, uses it at wider intervals, and so escapes the besetting danger of such forms as the _villanelle_ or _triolet_, where its constant recurrence may easily become as senseless as the "with a fal, la, la" of the old madrigal writers, unless it be very skilfully brought in. Again, its length, generally of twenty-eight or thirty-five lines, with the refrain in either case appearing but four times, allows room to display the subject, and yet forbids the diffuseness of many ordinary lyrics, where one fancies a happy rhyme-sound is often responsible for the intrusion of an additional couplet or quatrain, that weakens the whole poem. Its length, moreover, strictly within hard and fast limits though it be, is not so cramped as the fourteen lines of the true sonnet, nor has tradition fixed the style of treatment of the central idea. The narrative ballade is perfectly legitimate, provided the writer has sufficient power to overcome the extreme difficulty it presents. It is often urged that the unalterable sequence of rhymes, which must be found after the set of three or five are once chosen, proves a hindrance to the imagination of the poet who uses it. M. Lemâitre has answered this objection very aptly. He says--"The poet who begins a ballade does not know very exactly what he will put into it. The rhyme, and nothing but the rhyme, will whisper things unexpected and charming, things he would never have thought of but for her, things with strange and remote relations to each other, all united in the disorder of a dream. Nothing, indeed, is richer in suggestion than the strict laws of these difficult pieces; they force the fancy to wander afield, hunting high and low; and while she seeks through all the world the foot that can wear Cinderella's slipper, she makes delightful discoveries by the way."[6] [6] Mr. Andrew Lang, _Longman's Magazine_, April 1887. The BALLADE, in its normal type, consists of three stanzas of eight lines, followed by a verse of four lines, known as the envoy, or three verses of ten lines, with envoy of five, each of the stanzas and the envoy closing with the refrain. The most important rules for the ballade may be put briefly:--_First_, The same set of rhymes in the same order they occupy in the first stanza must repeat throughout the whole of its verses. _Secondly_, No word once used as a rhyme must be used again for that purpose in the whole length of the poem. _Thirdly_, Each stanza and the envoy must close with the refrain; the envoy always taking the same rhymes as the last half of the preceding verse, in the same order. For the eight-lined ballade, but three rhymes are allowable. In ordinary rhyme formula the sequence of these is A, B, A, B, B, C, B, C, for each of the three verses, and B, C, B, C, for the envoy. The importance of the refrain must now be noticed. Old writers and purists of our own time insist that the length of the refrain should govern not only the length of each line, but the number of the lines; in other words, that a refrain of eight syllables involves the choice of an eight-lined stanza, while the refrain of ten syllables demands a ten-lined verse. This is the strict rule of the ballade as written by Clement Marot, and by some modern writers; but it must be clearly understood that it is only the rule for the ideally pure form, and that variations in this respect are perfectly allowable. Now the importance of the refrain in one aspect is given, a still more vital point must be named--namely, that the sense of the refrain must be supreme throughout the ballade, the culminating line of each stanza always brought in without effort as the natural close of the verse. In the verses a special feature must not be overlooked, namely, that the stanza (of eight or ten lines, as the case may be) should carry an unbroken sense throughout, and not split into two verses of four lines or five lines, that are by chance printed as though they were one. The needful pauses for punctuation are of course allowed, but the sense should not finish at the end of the first quatrain (or quintain), but demand the rest of the verse to complete the idea presented. All these apparently trivial details must be regarded if the ballade is attempted. The advice given in _Alice in Wonderland_, "Take care of the sense and the sounds will take care of themselves," whether in that way or its inversion, "Take care of the sounds and the sense will take care of itself," is exactly the direct opposite of the true rule. Neither sense nor sound may be scamped here. If you neglect the sounds it is no ballade; if you neglect the sense--why write it at all? No one is compelled to use these complex forms, but if chosen, their laws must be obeyed to the letter if success is to be attained. The chief pleasure they yield consists in the apparent spontaneity, which is the result of genius, if genius be indeed the art of taking infinite pains; or, if that definition is rejected, they must yet exhibit the art which conceals art, whether by intense care in every minute detail, or a happy faculty for naturally wearing these fetters. The dance in chains must be skilful, the chains worn as decorative adjuncts, and the whole with as much apparent ease as the unfettered dancer could produce, or woe betide the unlucky wight who attempts to perform in them. The ENVOY is so peculiarly a feature of the Ballade and Chant Royal, that it is needful to draw our attention to the invocation which with it invariably commences. Of old this envoy was really addressed to the patron of the poet, or at least to the high dignitary to whom he dedicated his ballade. So that we find Prince! or Princess! Sire! or some mythical or symbolical personality invoked in the opening word. Often the person chosen was in very truth a noble of the rank assigned, but the custom of opening the envoy in this fashion grew so common that it lost its special fitness, and was often employed as a conventional ascription to those not of noble rank, while in some instances all the lovers' ballades intended for their own ladies were yet ascribed by the poets to the "Princess" of the court, who quite understood the fiction employed, and accepted praise of the golden hair and blue eyes of the rightful owner of the poem, while possibly her royal tresses were black and her eyes brown. In the number of ballades included in this collection the larger number will still be found to follow the old custom, which is so marked that the use of this dedication certainly carries out the spirit of the poem, in accordance with its original design. The envoy is not only a dedication, but should be the peroration of the subject, and richer in its wording and more stately in its imagery than the preceding verses, to convey the climax of the whole matter, and avoid the suspicion that it is a mere postscript, as it were, to the ballade. In the ballade with stanzas of ten lines, usually of ten syllables each, four rhymes are permitted in this order--A, B, A, B, B, C, C, D, C, D, with C, C, D, C, D for the envoy. It is not needful to quote examples, or describe varieties with eight or ten-lined stanzas, that have lines of equal or unequal length, but in other respects follow all the true rules. De Gramont has observed that the strict laws of the _ballade_ belong more to the prosodists who studied the form after it had ceased to be in current use, and that the writers of the _ballade_ themselves frequently took great liberty. In some by Marot there are verses of eleven or twelve decasyllabic lines, and in poets who preceded him, some with thirteen and fourteen lines to the stanza, while the number of verses has also been flagrantly disregarded, some even using four or five verses, and still worse, having different rhymes to them; but in such cases the poem must not be regarded as an irregular ballade, nor a ballade at all, but simply as a set of verses with refrain. The _Ballade with double refrain_, of which the "Frere Lubin" of Clement Marot is the only well-known example in old French, is said by Thomas Sibilet, in his _Art Poétique_, 1555, to be "_autant rare que plaisante_." Its point of difference is that a second refrain is introduced at the fourth line of each stanza, and the second of the envoy. This necessarily alters the order of the rhymes of the envoy. In the best known English example the rhyme order is A, B, A, B, B, C, B, C, with B, B, C, C, for the envoy. There are several in modern English, and some in recent French. The _Double Ballade_ consists of six stanzas of eight or ten lines, and is written usually without an envoy. The "Ballade of Dead Lions," in _London_, January 12, 1878, was the first English specimen; it is not quoted here, as its subject is now out of date. De Banville has written several. "_Pour les bonnes gens_," "_Des sottises de Paris_" are two in his "_Trente-six Ballades Joyeuses_" written in this form. M. de Banville humorously reveals a secret of the poet's workshop, and gives a method to construct a "correct" ballade in a mechanical fashion, dispensing with genius, and easy to work--First, at one sitting write the last half of all the verses, and at another time the first half, then join them together, and the result will be an irremediably bad ballade; but elsewhere he writes, in all seriousness this time, "All the art is to bring in the refrain without effort, naturally, gaily, and at each time with novel effect and with fresh light cast on the central idea. 'Now you can' teach 'no one to do that, and M. de Banville never pretends to give any receipts for cooking _rondels_ or _ballades_ worth reading.' Without poetic vision all is mere marqueterie and cabinetmaker's work; that is, so far as poetry is concerned, nothing."[7] [7] A. Lang on De Banville, _New Quarterly Magazine_, Oct. 1878. The CHANT ROYAL is now accepted by most writers as merely a larger form of the ballade, written with five verses of eleven lines, and envoi of five. De Gramont treats the idea to regard it as a distinct form as a mere fanciful attempt of prosodists, founded chiefly on the fact that Clement Marot has left four so named which conform to the above rule; but he shows that on the one hand there are ballades with stanzas of eleven lines, and on the other chants royal with ten only. It has been suggested that the _Chant Royal_ derived its name from the subjects that are more usually dedicated to its use; but while these are generally sublime topics treated in dignified allegory, yet there are examples extant entirely devoid of these characteristics. Again, the idea that it owes its name to being a form selected for competition before the king for the dignity of laureate, and hence dubbed royal-song, he also rejects, and points out that its name simply denotes that it is the most excellent form of the ballade (as we might say, the "king of ballades" in English), one that, from the increased length, both in stanzas and number of lines in each, largely augments the difficulties of construction met with in the true ballade, and marks it as "the final _tour de force_ of poetic composition." Henry de Croï derives the title of this form from the fact that persons excelling in the composition of chants royal were worthy to be crowned with garlands like conquerors and kings. It is a moot point with students whether the ballade or chant royal is the earlier and original poem. The chant royal in the old form is usually devoted to the unfolding of an allegory in its five stanzas, the envoy supplying the key; but this is not always observed in modern examples. Whatever be the subject, however, it must always march in stately rhythm with splendid imagery, using all the poetic adornments of sonorous, highly-wrought lines and rich embroidery of words to clothe a theme in itself a lofty one. Unless the whole poem is constructed with intense care, and has intrinsic beauty of its own of no mean order, the monotony of its sixty-one lines rhymed on five sounds is unbearable. In spite of the increased burden imposed by the necessity of so many similar rhymes, no shadow of "poetic" or other license must be taken. Nothing short of complete success can warrant the choice of this exacting form, which demands all that can be given to it; enriched with all the elaboration of consummate art in its every detail, and rising stanza by stanza, until the climax is reached in the envoy. The laws of the ballade apply to the chant royal, with some added details of its own. The rhyme order is usually--a, b, a, b, c, c, d, d, e, d, e, with envoy of d, d, e, d, e. An example by Deschamps, "_Sur le mort du Seigneur de Coucy_," observes this order, a, b, a, b, b, c, c, d, c, d, and envoy, c, c, d, c, c, d. In either case the rhyme-order must be kept the same for each stanza, and the envoy commenced with an invocation as in the old ballades. CHAIN VERSE.--There is one beautiful poem in so-called chain verse, which has so much likeness to these once-exotic forms that it deserves quotation in full, if only as an example of a native specimen of poetic ingenuity. It has little affinity with the chain verse of French art, as then the one word only grew from each line into the other (La rime Enchaînée). Dieu des Amans, de mort me garde Me gardant donne-moi bonheur, Et me le donnant prend ta darde Et la prenant navre son coeur Et le navrant me tiendras seur. * * * * * --_Clement Marot._ The following hymn was written by John Byrom, and published in vol. ii. of his _Posthumous Poems_, 1773:-- THE DESPONDING SOUL'S WISH. My spirit longeth for Thee, Within my troubled breast, Although I be unworthy Of so Divine a Guest. Of so Divine a Guest Unworthy though I be, Yet has my heart no rest, Unless it comes from Thee. Unless it comes from Thee, In vain I look around; In all that I can see No rest is to be found. No rest is to be found But in thy blessèd love: Oh, let my wish be crowned, And send it from above. _The Answer._ Cheer up, desponding soul, Thy longing pleased I see: 'Tis part of that great whole Wherewith I longed for Thee. Wherewith I longed for Thee And left my Father's throne, From death to set thee free, To claim thee for my own. To claim thee for my own I suffered on the cross: O! were my love but known, No soul need fear its loss. No soul need fear its loss, But, filled with love divine, Would die on its own cross And rise for ever thine. This has so many points resembling the forms in this book, that it seemed worth quoting, if only to compare with the Malay Pantoum, the Villanelle, and the Rondel. KYRIELLE.--The _Kyrielle_ is so simple, and so widely used by writers, all unwittingly, that but for M. de Banville including it, it would be left unnoticed here. It is merely a poem in four-lined verses of eight-syllable lines, having the last line of each the same. Our hymn books show many, witness "Jesus! Son of Mary, hear," or "Jesus, our Love, is crucified." It is a device so evident that it has naturally been used in almost all schools of poetry, and may be dismissed with no more words here. PANTOUM.--The _Pantoum_, at first sight, has little reason for being included in a volume of verse in strict traditional forms, that are nearly all of French origin, since it is of Malay invention; but being introduced by M. Ernest Fouinet, and reproduced by M. Victor Hugo in the _Orientales_, it has found a place in the group of these forms given by De Banville, De Gramont, and others. The Pantoum is written in four-line stanzas. The second and fourth line of each verse form the first and third of each succeeding one, through an indefinite number of quatrains. At the close, to complete the unity of the work, the second and fourth line of the last stanza are made from the first and third of the first verse. The rhymes are a b, a b,--b c, b c,--c d, c d,--d e, d e, and so on, until the last (which we may call z) z a, z a. In Mr. Austin Dobson's "In Town" and Mr. Brander Matthews' "En route"--as the latter himself points out in _The Rhymester_--"there is an attempt to make the constant repetitions not merely tolerable but subservient to the general effect of monotonously recurrent sound--in the one case the buzzing of the fly, and in the other the rattle and strain of the cars." THE RONDEL, RONDEAU, and ROUNDEL, a group having a common origin, are now to some extent classified, by each accepted variety using one form of the common name to denote its shape, but this division is purely arbitrary and a modern custom, only followed here, both in these notes and in the arrangement of the volume itself, to facilitate reference. The RONDEL is merely the old form of the word rondeau; like _oisel_ for _oiseau_, _chastel_ for _chateau_ so _rondel_ has become _rondeau_. It is one of the earliest of these forms, and freely used in the fourteenth century by Froissart, Eustache Deschamps, and others. It probably arose in Provence, and passed afterwards into use in Northern France. The name (rondel) is still applied to forms written after its early shape, the later spelling of the name being kept for the more recent variations of its form. In its origin, the rondel was a lyric of two verses, each having four or five lines, rhyming on two rhymes only. In its eight (or ten) lines, but five (or six) were distinct, the others being made by repeating the first couplet at the end of the second stanza, sometimes in an inverse order, and the first line at the end of its first stanza. The eight-lined rondel is thus, to all intents and purposes, a triolet, although labelled a rondel. Here is a fourteenth century one by Eustache Deschamps:-- Est ce donc vostre intencion De voloir retrancher mes gaiges Vingt livres de ma pension? Est-ce donc vostre intencion? Laissez passer l'Ascension, Que honni soit vostre visaige! Est-ce donc vostre intencion De voloir retrancher mes gaiges? Nor are these rondel-triolets exceptions; they are quite common till the beginning of the fifteenth century. With Charles d'Orléans the rondel took the distinct shape we now assign to it, namely, of fourteen lines on two rhymes, the first two lines repeating for the seventh and eighth, and the final couplet (see page 135). In this, the true type of the rondel, the two-lined refrain occurring three times in its fourteen makes it an unwieldy form to handle. In later French ones the last refrain uses but one of its lines. In Mr. Austin Dobson's "The Wanderer," the rhymes are in this order:--A. B. b. a.--a. b. A. B.--a. b. b. a. A. (the refrain being marked by capital letters). In another by the same author, "How hard it is to Sing," the rhyme order is A. B. a. b.--b. a. A. B.--a. b. a. b. A. B.; the rondel of Charles d'Orléans having A. B. b. a. a. b. A. B.--a. b. b. a. A. B. The length of the lines is not confined to any particular number of syllables in modern examples. By the time of Octavien de Saint Gelais (1466-1502) the rondel has nearly become the rondeau as we know it. Still rhymed on but two sounds, it repeats the first line only, nor always the whole of that, as the quoted examples show:-- De ce qui est au pouvoir de Fortune Nul ne se doit vanter ny tenir fort: Car ung jour sert de plaisir et confort, Et l'autre après, de courroux et rancune. Aux ungs est bonne, aux autres importune, Estrange à tous, car nuls n'entent le sort De ce qui est au pouvoir de Fortune. Les ungs ont d'elle honneur, scavoir, pecune; L'autres n'ònt que pitié et remort, Et povreté, qu'est pire que la mort. Est-il aucun qui soit seur soubz la lune De ce qui est au pouvoir de Fortune? Here it is formally divided into three parts with the rhymes--a, b, b, a; a, b, a; a, b, b, a, a. The refrain, too, is no longer a mere reiteration of the text, but linked with the preceding verse, as a refrain should be, and absorbed into the sense of the whole stanza to which it belongs. This change is still more noticeable in the rondel, using but half the first line for its refrain, as in this example:-- Je vous arreste de main mise. Mes yeulx; emprisonnez serez. Plus mon coeur ne gouvernerez Desormais, je vous en advise. Trop avez fait à vostre guise; Par ma foy plus ne le ferez, Je vous arreste. On peut bien pour vous corner prise: Pris estes, point n' eschapperez. Nul remede n'y treuverez; Rien n'y vault appel ne franchise: Je vous arreste. Here we pass into the later form called (for convenience only) the _Rondeau_. In these few examples the evolution of the _Voiture_ type, from the Charles d'Orléans original, is clearly traceable. The rondel, however, still continues to be used, but much less frequently. De Banville often omits the thirteenth line, while otherwise following the model of Charles d'Orléans. Again, the order of the rhymes is sometimes changed, but the examples quoted in this collection will show more clearly the deviations from the true rondel than any description would do. The RONDEAU after Voiture's model is without doubt the most popular variety of the form now in use. It is written throughout on two rhymes, being composed of thirteen lines and two unrhymed refrains. The lines are now nearly always of eight syllables only, in many of the old ones they were of ten. The refrain is usually made from the first half of the first line, but it is not uncommon to find the first word only taken for this use. Its thirteen lines are grouped in three stanzas, the first and third having five lines each, the second consisting of three only. The refrain occurs at the end of the second stanza, and at the close of the poem. The usual rhyme order is a, a, b, b, a,----a, a, b (and refrain)--a, a, b, b, a, and refrain. The refrain is not counted among the lines of the verse, but is added to the thirteen, and in the neatness of its introduction, and in the way each of the two verses to which it belongs flow into it, so that it forms an integral and inseparable part of the stanza, the chief difficulty of the rondeau lies. If, like an "Amen" to a hymn, the refrain comes merely as an extraneous comment on the preceding lines, it is no true rondeau. At the risk of reiteration of a warning given in the description of each of these poems that use a refrain, this point must be insisted on, as the most vital one. The mechanical laws of the poem may be obeyed with scrupulous exactitude, and every technical rule complied with, while the still more important quality of sense is overlooked. The thought of the poet must so find its expression that the refrain completes it, and forms the true climax of his speech--the culminating phrase of his sentence. The refrain is the very text of the whole discourse, in itself an epitome of the subject of the whole poem, otherwise the reason for its existence in one of these fixed shapes is wanting, and the poem would be better in free verse. In the refrain the sound must reappear exactly, but the sense may be altered; in fact, this playful variation of its meaning is one of the charms of the verse when used for lighter and more dainty subjects. The good taste of the author must decide how far an actual pun is allowable. There are precedents for the use of the pun pure and simple--"votre beau thé" "vòtre beauté," or, "à la fontaine," used in its literal sense, and also with reference to the famous fabulist. But in English use the pun has fallen into disrepute, perhaps from the execrable word-contortions of our so-called comic papers and its terrible vulgarity in stage burlesques, the intrusion of one is fatal to the delicacy and refinement which are the peculiar charm of the rondeau. But if a play upon words of a scholarly kind, or a new reading given either by punctuation, or the use of the words with a new light thrown on them by the lines leading up to the refrain, can be secured, every effort should be made to vary the refrain by so doing. This quality of dainty and spontaneous wit is the secret of the rondeau, only revealed, if it is to be found at all, by close analysis of the best examples. De Banville quotes three of Voiture's--"Je ne sçaurois," "L'Amour," and "Penser"--especially for this all-important feature; but in this volume may be found examples equally worthy of study. It would be invidious to draw attention to the best of those that have been allowed to appear here, but if the wit of the would-be rondeau-maker fails to discover the successful use of the refrain, and to pick out the best examples, it is in itself evidence that he had better abstain from trying to produce rondeaus that would certainly lack the airy grace and caressing tenderness which should be an element of this verse. A famous example of Voiture's is quoted on page 134. The following is its English paraphrase by Mr. Austin Dobson, withdrawn from his later editions, but quoted now by his consent:-- You bid me try, BLUE-EYES, to write A Rondeau. What! forthwith?--To-night? Reflect. Some skill I have, 'tis true; But thirteen lines!--and rhymed on two!-- "Refrain," as well. Ah, hapless plight! Still there are five lines--ranged aright. These Gallic bonds, I feared, would fright My easy Muse. They did, till you-- _You_ bid me try! "That makes them eight.--The port's in sight: Tis all because your eyes are bright! Now just a pair to end in "oo,"-- When maids command, what can't we do! Behold! The RONDEAU--tasteful, light-- You bid me try!" A study of rondeaus will show, both in ancient and modern examples, some little alteration of the rhyme-order, and a few trivial differences in other respects. But as the sonnet has evolved through many stages into one accepted shape that is now permanently fixed as its true type, so the rondeau of Voiture may be taken as the typical form to be imitated--the one that has, by process of selection, been proved to be the best to display the subject of the poem, and to work-in the refrains to the best advantage. Like the sonnet, the perfected form is jealously guarded. The genius which consists in breaking rules is looked upon with suspicion in all these forms, but especially in this one. There are some beautiful variations in old and new examples where the shape is widely varied, but these stand apart from the pure rondeaus of Voiture, and are generally still more difficult to construct by reason of the additional laws the writers have imposed on themselves. But the trifling evasion of the rhyme-order, a want of exactitude on the repetition of the refrain, is apt to be taken as evidence of lack of power to conform gracefully to the bonds, and not as an outburst of genius that is too strong to be confined in such puny fetters. But there are a few _poems_ in these forms written fairly near the true shape, which, like some irregular, but yet in themselves beautiful sonnets, are not to be condemned solely for being impure in form. For the sake of poetry one is ready to forgive much, but it must be only real _poetry_ that takes such liberty; and all the time comes a wish that having gone so near perfection of shape as well as of sense, the poet had taken the last steps needful to make his poem perfect in each respect. There is another form than Voiture's, which is equally a true rondeau--that used by Villon. This is quoted, with Mr. Payne's translation, to show clearly the ten-lined rondeau:-- LAY OU PLUTOST RONDEAU. Mort, j'appelle de ta rigueur, Qui m'as ma maistresse ravie, Et n'es pas encore assouvie, Se tu ne me tiens en langueur. Onc puis n'euz force ne vigueur Mais que te nuysoit-elle en vie, Mort? Deux estions, et n'avions qu'ung cueur; S'il est mort, force est que devie, Voire, ou que je vive sans vie, Comme les images, par cueur. Mort! --_François Villon._ LAY, OR RATHER RONDEAU. Death, of thy rigour I complain, That hast my lady torn from me, And yet wilt not contented be, Till from me too all strength be ta'en For languishment of heart and brain. What harm did she in life to thee, Death? One heart we had betwixt us twain; Which being dead, I too must dree Death, or, like carven saints we see In choir, sans life to live be fain, Death! --_John Payne._ Mr. Austin Dobson's _Rose_, which appeared in _The Spectator_, was one of the earliest, if not the very first, of the few examples of this variety in English use. The ROUNDEL, which, it must again be said, is simply a variation of the rondeau, and not a distinct form, is grouped apart in this collection for the sake of convenience. Since Mr. Swinburne devoted a volume, entitled _A Century of Roundels_, to this particular form of the rondeau, it has been used by other writers, and the name applied by him has been kept by those who chose to follow the same form. Probably Mr. Swinburne, during his readings in early French poetry, found poems of this shape extant, or it may be that, for reasons of his own, he formulated this variety, which slightly differs from any I have been able to find. In Marot's _De l'Amoureux Ardant_ there is a likeness to this shape, and in Villon's _Mort_ there is also a resemblance, but Mr. Swinburne's roundel has eleven lines always, while Villon's has twelve, rhyming a.b.b. a.a.b. refrain, a.b.b.a. refrain. Again, Mr. Swinburne's roundel not only has a new rhyme order, A.B.A. refrain; B.A.B.; A.B.A. refrain; but when the refrain consists of more than a single word it rhymes with the B lines. The rhythm, too, of Mr. Swinburne's are in every possible and--in any hands but his--impossible variety. The lines vary from four to sixteen syllables, but are generally identical in length in the same roundel. As an experiment in rhythm the _Century of Roundels_ will, no doubt, always command attention, and there are not wanting signs that his _Roundel_, keeping its length and other details, may become a recognised shape in English verse; but it must be distinctly understood that Mr. Swinburne is responsible for its introduction, and to him, not to the early French poets, must be awarded the honour of its invention, unless he himself refers it to an earlier source for its authority; but it may be that with admiration for the old shapes, he yet saw that for English use a variation was preferable, and so rearranged the lines and the refrain of the olden form in the way he considered best suited to our tongue. The _Rondelet_ is a little form not noticed in De Gramont or De Banville. Boulmier has printed several in his "Poésies en language du XVe. Siècle" at the end of his volume, entitled _Les Villanelles_. Here is one. François Villon, Sur tous rithmeurs, à qui qu'en poise, François Villon Du mieulx disant eut le guerdon Né de Paris empres Pontoise Il ne féit oncq vers à la toise François Villon. Here we find he adopts a seven-line stanza with four eight-syllable lines, and three of four syllables on two rhymes, a, b, a, a, b, b, a. While strongly resembling the triolet and the early rondel, it yet seems worth noting as a pretty variety for trifling subjects. There are several in English verse. The RONDEAU REDOUBLÉ would fail to suggest kinship with either form of the Rondeau, did not it include the name in its designation, as De Banville notes. It is probable that many more poems were grouped under the word Rondeau than we now are able to trace. The one we are now describing is in no way a doubled rondeau, and hardly suggests that form more than any of these that have the features of limited rhyme sounds, and more or less frequent reiteration of a refrain. The Rondeau Redoublé is written in six octosyllabic quatrains, rhyming on two alternate rhymes, with half the initial line used (unrhymed) after the last verse. Its one distinctive feature is this:--Each line of the first quatrain is used again in the same order to serve for the last line of verses two, three, four, and five; while the last line of the sixth has a new wording for itself, but takes, in addition, a final refrain of the first half of the initial line of the poem to conclude the whole. As the rhymes of the first quatrain are a. b. a. b., it must necessarily--to use as refrain the first line rhyming on _a_--reverse the order for the second verse, which is therefore b. a. b. a., and so on alternately until the end of the rondeau redoublé. Specimens of its use are extant by Marot, La Fontaine, Benserade, and others, while in modern French it is not infrequent, but in English it is rare. The examples quoted in this book comprise all that diligent search could discover except one of too fugitive a character to reprint. As the poems written in this form in English show the rules of the verse as plainly as the original French, it has not been thought needful to quote one in its native tongue, especially as De Gramont, De Banville, and Jullien reprint specimens in their handbooks. A form so simple that, if well wrought, and the refrain brought in with skill, it can be read in a casual way, without discovering that it was written to exact rules, deserves more use. The disposition of the subject is excellently laid out; a "text," four "divisions," and "in conclusion," with the text repeated, is a method so familiar to Englishmen on Sundays that the order for variations on the initial theme is peculiarly easy: nor need the result be the least like a sermon, although this description of its shape is suggestive of one. Another form, the GLOSE, resembles the Rondeau Redoublé in many ways; indeed, it may be almost looked upon as a freer form of that poem. It appears, however, to be of distinct origin, and very rare in French poetry, although much used in Spanish and Portuguese verse. It begins, like the Rondeau Redoublé, with a quatrain, here called the _texte_;--this is usually a quotation from a former poet. This text the Glose proceeds to comment on, or amplify, in four stanzas of ten lines, closing each as in the rondeau redoublé, with one of the lines of the text in the original order; but the necessity for restricting the rhymes to two is not observed here. Each stanza has the sixth, ninth, and tenth (the refrain) line, rhyming on the same sound, but the others appear to be chosen at the fancy of the writer, while the final refrain of the rondeau redoublé is also wanting in the glose. First employed solely for serious themes of religion or philosophy, it is now in France, like the once sacred triolet, devoted to parody and the lightest forms of humour. Owing to the impossibility of collating the mass of periodical literature of the last ten or fifteen years, it would be rash to say that the _glose_ has never appeared in English, but not one has been discovered to include in this book. Yet, as De Gramont places the shape among those he includes as frequently used in France, it seemed best to give here a brief outline of its form. De Banville quotes one by Jean François Sarazin formed on the sonnet "de IOB" by Benserade, where fourteen quatrains are ended by the lines of the sonnet, employed in their original order. This form offers a field for serious comment or sarcastic parody that deserves working. The SESTINA, invented by the famous troubadour, Arnaut Daniel, at the end of the thirteenth century, has not been used in French poetry so often as the ballade and rondeau. There are specimens in the poetry of Pontus de Thyard, and one in the Pleiade of the sixteenth century, besides many others, but it has been comparatively an exotic in French poetry, as in English, until recent years. That it was used and admired by Dante and Petrarch, alone gives the sestina a royal precedence over all of the other forms. Many judges consider it to be the supreme work of poetic art in fixed forms, while others claim similar distinction for the chant royal, and not a few for the sonnet. To distinguish between the charms of these three royal forms would need a Paris, nor is it necessary to do so, since each will to his own taste, no matter who claims authority on the ever-disputed question of supreme beauty. Mr. Hueffer in his "Troubadours" has a chapter so full of interest and teeming with information of the growth of the stanza, that in despair of condensing its knowledge within the space possible here, the mere notice of it must suffice. De Gramont give the rules of the poem as written by the originator and followers in Italy, Spain, and Portugal:-- 1st.--The Sestina has six stanzas, each of six lines, these being of the same length. 2nd.--The lines of the six verses end with the six same words, not rhyming with each other; these end words are chosen exclusively from two syllabled nouns. 3rd.--The arrangement of these six terminal words follows a regular law (a somewhat complex one, which is replaced in modern poetry by the one given below). 4th.--The piece closes with a three-line stanza, using the six words, three at the end; the other three, placed in the middle of its lines. But, as now written, the words of the sestina at times rhyme with each other; if so, De Banville says they should be in two rhymes alone (as Mr. Swinburne uses them), but other writers allow three rhymes. But these details all belong to the subtle laws of the verse which it is not possible to include here. De Gramont's _Sestines_ is, perhaps, the best authority for study. For our purpose, enough to say that the six end-words must repeat unchanged in sound and spelling throughout each succeeding verse. The order in which they occur is best expressed by a numerical formula. If the rules themselves were compressed, a more complex and incomprehensible jargon of firsts and seconds and thirds, etc., could hardly be found. The first verse has, of course, the initial order, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; the second, 6, 1, 5, 2, 4, 3; the third, 3, 6, 4, 1, 2, 5; the fourth, 5, 3, 2, 6, 1, 4; the fifth, 4, 5, 1, 3, 6, 2; the sixth, 2, 4, 6, 5, 3, 1; the last half-stanza ends with 2, 4, 6, and uses 1, 3, 5 at the beginning (not the first word always) of the line, or at the half-line in rhymes that permit their introduction there. It will be seen that no end-word occurs more than once in the same place, and that the end-word of every stanza is invariably chosen to take its place as terminal of the first line of the next verse. As though this feat in rhyming were not complex enough, a double sestina of twelve verses of twelve lines has been sometimes written. There are two, at least, of these _tours de force_ in English--one, "The Complaint of Lisa," in Mr. Swinburne's _Poems and Ballads_, Second Series; another, by Mr. George Barlow, in _A Life's Love_, entitled "Alone." It was hoped to include these, but the required space in this little book would have excluded so many specimens of smaller poems, that the desire to make this collection as widely varied and representative as possible forbade their quotation. THE TRIOLET, as we know it, may be regarded as almost an epitome of the other forms, in its limited space. It introduces one refrain three times, and the second refrain twice, keeps strictly to two rhymes, and is inflexible in its laws, brief though it be. One poet says of it, "It is charming--nothing can be more ingeniously mischievous, more playfully sly, than this tiny trill of epigrammatic melody turning so simply upon its own innocent axis." Those who are unaware of the rules that govern this little stanza, yet often fall in love with the verse itself, possibly because a good example has a pretty sequence of sound, that allures the ear by its musical jingle, and reads like a spontaneous and easy impromptu. Nevertheless, the subtle art needed to acquire the ease that is the charm of a good triolet is generally the result of infinite care. Few things are more simple than to write a triolet--of a sort--yet the triolet affords so little space to explain its motif, and within its five lines must tell its story, and also carry the three other repeated ones easily, and with a definite meaning. To introduce the refrain naturally as the only thing to say, and yet with an air of freshness and an unexpected recognition of a phrase heard before, is in itself no mean difficulty, even in the ballade and rondeau; but when it comes three times in eight lines, and has a second line attached to it on its first and last appearance, it is a matter of small wonder that the successful triolets are not very numerous. That the ideally perfect triolet is as yet unwritten, or at least represented by very few, it may be urged; but if that be true, it should only provoke more attempts, one would fancy. It might be pertinent to ask, if this is the chief objection, how many ideally perfect poems in any set shape, or in free form, the world acknowledges? The triolet consists (to quote Mr. Dobson) of _eight_ lines with _two_ rhymes. The first pair of lines are repeated as the seventh and eighth, while the first is repeated as the fourth. The order of the rhymes is thus as follows:--a. b. a. a. a. b. a. b. The example (on page 214) by--of all persons in the world--a grave French magistrate, Jacques Ranchin, has been christened by Ménage the "King of _Triolets_." The first triolet known is in the Cléomadés of Adenèz-le-Roi (1258-1297), a poem of 20,000 verses. In old examples the triolet was devoted to grave verse, but, as M. de Gramont shows, it has now not only abandoned the old ten syllable lines, and is written in those of eight and often six syllables, but from the elegiac dignity of its former subjects, it has become in French verse the form especially devoted to the most ephemeral and trivial subjects. Since M. de Banville renewed its use, triolets are common in French newspapers, and with all due deference be it said--possibly only thereby exposing my own ignorance of the subtle charm conveyed to their readers by their "argot" and "idiom"--as inferior as they are plentiful. There is one, however, that has justly won great favour since its appearance in _Odes Funnambulesques_ of M. Theodore de Banville. These two French examples (on page 214) are hackneyed by frequent quotation, but are so generally regarded as the most successful of their class that it seemed best not to omit them, nor this one by Froissart, given in most authorities, and called a rondeau by the writer (rondel, rondeau, and triolet being evidently regarded as but one form in his day--the beginning of the fifteenth century), and the modern grouping completely unknown:-- Mon coer s'esbat en oudourant la rose Et s'esjoïst en regardant ma dame. Trop mieulz me vault l'une que l'autre chose, Mon coer s'esbat en oudourant la rose, L'oudour m'est bon, mès dou regart je n'ose Juer trop fort, je le vous jur par m'ame Mon coer s'esbat en oudourant la rose Et s'esjoïst en regardant ma dame. --_Froissart._ The weak point of the Triolet being the monotony of its refrain, every attempt, at giving a new accent to the words, short of actual punning, is welcomed as a relief. There is an air composed by Charles Delioux, to which all triolets in the pure form may be sung. De Banville quotes the melody in his "Odes Funnambulesques." Most people who have attempted to make rhymes know that when once a haunting melody gains control the words and sentences will try and fit themselves to it; so perhaps a would-be writer of triolets could secure correct form by learning this tune and writing his triolets to it. It is quite certain that this alone would not ensure a good poem, but it might keep one to the usual rhythm and exact number of syllables, with the correct musical accent, singularly near, if not identical, with the poetical one, when properly used. A quaint example found by Mr. Dobson in an old French play is given on page 214, as it has not hitherto been printed in England. The VILLANELLE has been called "the most ravishing jewel worn by the Muse Erato." The large number of Villanelles in modern English was the most unexpected find that came to light in the course of collecting material for the present volume. Many of these fulfil a condition now held strictly binding, since promulgated by Joseph Boulmier in his own Villanelles--that is, that their length should imitate the example of Jean Passerat's famous model, and be complete in nineteen lines. The rules sound simple, and the result must read easily; but the ease is only to be attained by an elaborate amount of care in production, which those who read only would hardly suspect existed. The accepted model for all to follow will be found on page 242. The example that follows is an interesting translation by Boulmier of Mr. Dobson's Villanelle, "When I saw you last, Rose," first printed by his permission in _Longman's Magazine_ (under the heading "At the Sign of the Ship") for July 1887:-- ROSE. Vous étiez encore petite Rose, la dernière fois... Dieu! que le temps passe vite. Fleur innocente qu'abrite Tendrement l'ombre des bois Vous étiez encore petite. Et déjà la marguerite Va s'effeuillant sous vos doigts... Dieu! que le temps passe vite! Oh, comme se précipite La vie. A peine j'y crois... Vous étiez encor petite. Dans votre sein qui palpite Se glisse un hôte sournois... Dieu! que le temps passe vite. Chez vous Cupidon s'invite: Adieu la paix d'autrefois! Vous étiez encore petite: Dieu! que le temps passe vite! The Villanelle is written in five three-lined stanzas, concluding with one of four lines. It will be seen that the refrain occupies eight of the nineteen lines, and is of paramount importance; taken from the first and third line of the first stanza, the two supply alternately the last lines from the second to the fifth verse, and both conclude the quatrain which ends the villanelle. Two rhymes only are allowed. The refrains must repeat in the order quoted in the example, the first refrain to conclude the second and fifth stanzas, the second refrain for the first, third, and fifth, and both for the sixth. "The primitive _Villanelle_ was, in truth, a 'shepherd's song,' and, according to custom, its 'thoughts should be full of sweetness and simplicity,'" a hint given in a "Note on some Foreign Forms of Verse" that has been taken to heart by later writers, who almost invariably select pastoral or idyllic subjects for this most artificial but dainty lyric. Mr. Joseph Boulmier's "_Les Villanelles_," Paris, 1878, contains a valuable essay on the history and construction of the poem, and a series of forty original Villanelles, with twenty-two other poems, all of singular beauty. The LAI and the VIRELAI are so nearly related that they must be considered together. De Gramont says, that the _lai_ has been unused since the earliest days in French poetry, but as it is invariably quoted in all treatises on the art, he prints a seventeenth century one, evidently written as a specimen to illustrate its laws. De Banville cites the following by Pere Mourgues, from his _Traité de la Poesie_:-- LAI. Sur l'appui du Monde Que faut-il qu'on fonde D'espoir? Cette mer profonde Et débris féconde Fait voir Calme au matin l'onde; Et l'orage y gronde Le Soir. As no examples of the Lai are included in this volume, by the courtesy of the author I am allowed to quote the following:-- FROM OVERSEA. From oversea-- Violets, for memories, I send to thee. Let them bear thought of me, With pleasant memories To touch the heart of thee, Far oversea. A little way it is for love to flee, Love wing'd with memories, Hither to thither oversea. --_William Sharp._ In the French example the form is seen to be composed of couplets of five syllable lines, all on the same rhyme, separated by single lines of two syllables, also on one rhyme throughout the stanza, which therefore employs but two rhymes. The number of lines in each verse was not fixed, nor the number of verses in the complete poem. The LAI has preserved a curious old tradition in the form it appears either in writing or print. As in the verse quoted, the first letter of each line begins exactly under the preceding one; not with the short line indented--that is coming under the middle of the larger ones--usual in other poems composed of lines of irregular length. This detail was called _Arbre fourchu_ (a forked tree), from the fanciful resemblance of a trunk with bare branches projecting, found by imaginative persons in its appearance on paper. In the Lai each fresh stanza of the poem has its own two rhyme sounds, without reference to the preceding ones. By curtailing this liberty, and compelling each succeeding stanza to take the rhyme for its longer lines, from the short line of the preceding verse the Virelai is produced. The VIRELAI (ancien) is a lai that preserves a sequence of rhymes throughout. For example, in a twelve-line stanza the rhymes are A. A. b. A. A. b. A. A. b. A. A. b. (the long lines being marked by capital letters, and the shorter by small ones). Therefore, to follow the rules of the virelai, the next verse must have its rhymes B. B. c. B. B. c. B. B. c. B. B. c., and the next C. C. d. C. C. d., and so on until the last verse (taking seven verses for an example) would have G. G. a. G. G. a. G. G. a. G. G. a., its short lines rhyming with the two first lines of the poem. Thus each rhyme appears twice, once in its longer couplets, once in the short single lines. In the English examples this rule is preserved, but the length of the lines are frequently varied. The VIRELAI (Rhythme d'Alain Chartier) by Boulmier may be quoted as a form yet unused (I believe) in England. Triste remembrance! Hé! Dieu! quand i'y pense Ce m'est grand penance: Las! de ma iouuence A passé la flour. Sanz doubter meschance, Bercé d'esperance Plain de desirance Auecq Oubliance Ay faict long seiour. Nice troubadour Assoty pastour Serf ie feus d' Amour Mais de ma folour Ie n' ay repentance. Ouyl, maugré Doulour Bel Aage engignour En moy fay retour, Ne fust-ce qu'vng iour... Et ie recommence. The rhymes are a, a, a, a, b; a, a, a, b; b, b, b, b, a; b, b, b, b, a. As but one example has come to notice, so it must speak for itself, for it would be unfair to deduce rules from a single specimen. Before leaving this heading there is another form, the _Virelai nouveau_, singularly unlike its name. It is curious that both the Rondeau Redoublé and this one, masquerading under the names of well-known forms, should be each unlike their unqualified title, and yet so nearly akin to the other. The _Virelai nouveau_ is written throughout in two rhymes. Like the _rondeau redoublé_, its first stanza serves as refrain for the later ones, but its initial verse is but a couplet, and the two lines close each stanza alternately until the last, where they appear both together, but in inverse order. Unfortunately, space forbids an example being quoted in its complete length. The one usually chosen is "Le Rimeur Rebuté;" this commences with the couplet-- Adieu vous dy, triste Lyre, C'est trop apprêter à rire. Then follows a five-line stanza, rhyming a, a, b, a, a, with "Adieu vous dy," etc., for its last line; then an eight-lined one rhymed a, b, a, a, b, a, b, a, the last line being "_C'est trop_," etc.; that is followed by a four-line one closing with first line; then a sixteen-line one, using the second line for its refrain; then a seventeen-line one, with first line ending it; and finally a five-line stanza, its last lines being-- C'est trop apprêter à rire, Adieu vous dy, triste lyre. If this description conveys its intended meaning, it will be seen that the verses are singularly irregular in form, and choose both the order of the rhymes and the length of the verses exactly at the will of the poet; but each paragraph must not only use its proper refrain to close with, but must bring it in naturally and easily as an inherent part of the verse. The last two lines in the inverted order must also be worked in with equal skill. Excepting one by Mr. Austin Dobson, that appeared in _Evening Hours_ about 1878, this form has been unused, or at least unpublished, in English verse. * * * * * The poems in the following collections have been chosen for several reasons--some for their intrinsic excellence, some as examples of pure form, some for their bold attempts to produce variations from the typical models. There has been no limit to the subjects, since the purpose was to give a representative group of the rhythms, treated in the most diverse ways. Even burlesque and diatribe of the use of the forms, masquerading in guise of the enemy they professed to attack, have been welcomed, as the points of the construction of the verse are often seen more clearly in such examples. For similar reasons the parody of the pioneer Ballade, Mr. Austin Dobson's _Prodigals_, is quoted, since the doubtful honour of parody is at least a proof of wide popularity, the only others marked in this way being Mr. Swinburne's '_Dreamland_' and Mr. Lang's '_Primitive Man_.' Here, too, in default of a better place, it may be noted that Mr. Henley's 'Villonism' is not an imitation of the incomprehensible ballades in 'Jargon' or 'Jobelin,' but a paraphrase in thieves' patter of to-day of Villon's _Ballade of Good Counsel_. It may be that such a medley of themes handled in so many different ways, was never of set purpose grouped side by side before, but is to be hoped that a method in the madness will be found. While conscious of a few noteworthy examples, Rossetti's _Translations from Villon_ to wit, being not included for reasons beyond my control, so it may be that one or two here inserted would have been replaced by later comers, had they not gone to the printer's eternity of stereotype. Started as a collection, but turned perforce to a selection, from the increasing number available, they yet do not aim so much at being a selection of the best work solely, as of the best and least-accessible examples. This explanation of the progress and purpose of the volume is offered in common fairness both to its readers and to those authors who have permitted their works to be included, also to those who by oversight or too late discovery on my part have no examples of their poetry included herein. * * * * * [Note to page xxxvi.--For Wyatt's Rondeaus, and alteration of the same into Sonnets by Tottel, in his _Miscellany_, 1557, see Mr. Austin Dobson's Note in the _Athenæum_.] #The Ballade, The Double Ballade, and The Chant Royal.# _Ballade en huitains d' octosyllabes._ Chant de May. _En ce beau mois delicieux,_ _Arbres, fleurs et agriculture,_ _Qui, durant l' yver soucieux,_ _Avez esté en sepulture,_ _Sortez pour servir de pasture_ _Aux troupeaux du plus grand Pasteur:_ _Chacun de vous en sa nature,_ _Louez le nom de Createur._ _Les servans d' amour furieux_ _Parlent de l' amour vaine et dure,_ _Où vous, vrays amans curieux_ _Parlez de l' amour sans laidure._ _Allez aux champs sur la verdure_ _Ouir l' oyseau, parfait chanteur;_ _Mais du plaisir, si peu qu'il dure_ _Louez le nom de Createur._ _Quand vous verrez rire les Cieux_ _Et la terre en sa floriture,_ _Quand vous verrez devant vos yeux_ _Les eaux lui bailler nourriture,_ _Sur peine de grand forfaiture_ _Et d' estre larron et menteur,_ _N' en louez nulle creature,_ _Louez le nom de Createur._ Envoy. _Prince, pensez, veu la facture,_ _Combien est puissant le facteur;_ _Et vous aussi, mon escriture,_ _Louez le nom de Createur._ --CLEMENT MAROT. WHERE ARE THE PIPES OF PAN? In these prosaic days Of politics and trade, Where seldom fancy lays Her touch on man or maid, The sounds are fled that strayed Along sweet streams that ran; Of song the world's afraid; Where are the Pipes of Pan? Within the busy maze Wherein our feet are stayed, There roam no gleesome fays Like those which once repaid His sight who first essayed The stream of song to span, Those spirits are all laid. Where are the Pipes of Pan? Dry now the poet's bays; Of song-robes disarrayed He hears not now the praise Which erst those won who played On pipes of rushes made, Before dull days began And love of song decayed. Where are the Pipes of Pan? _Envoy._ Prince, all our pleasures fade; Vain all the toils of man; And fancy cries dismayed, Where are the Pipes of Pan? OSCAR FAY ADAMS. A BALLADE OF EVOLUTION. In the mud of the Cambrian main Did our earliest ancestor dive: From a shapeless albuminous grain We mortals our being derive. He could split himself up into five, Or roll himself round like a ball; For the fittest will always survive, While the weakliest go to the wall. As an active ascidian again Fresh forms he began to contrive, Till he grew to a fish with a brain, And brought forth a mammal alive. With his rivals he next had to strive, To woo him a mate and a thrall; So the handsomest managed to wive While the ugliest went to the wall. At length as an ape he was fain The nuts of the forest to rive; Till he took to the low-lying plain, And proceeded his fellow to knive. Thus did cannibal men first arrive, One another to swallow and maul; And the strongest continued to thrive While the weakliest went to the wall. _Envoy._ Prince, in our civilised hive Now money's the measure of all; And the wealthy in coaches can drive While the needier go to the wall. GRANT ALLEN. BALLADE OF SOLITUDE. Thank Heaven, in these despondent days, I have at least one faithful friend, Who meekly listens to my lays, As o'er the darkened downs we wend. Nay, naught of mine may him offend; In sooth he is a courteous wight, His constancy needs no amend-- My shadow on a moonlight night. Too proud to give me perjured praise, He hearkens as we onward tend, And ne'er disputes a doubtful phrase, Nor says he cannot comprehend. Might God such critics always send! He turns not to the left or right, But patient follows to the end-- My shadow on a moonlight night. And if the public grant me bays, On him no jealousies descend; But through the midnight woodland ways, He velvet-footed will attend; Or where the chalk cliffs downward bend To meet the sea all silver-bright, There will he come, most reverend-- My shadow on a moonlight night. _Envoy._ O wise companion, I commend Your grace in being silent quite; And envy with approval blend-- My shadow on a moonlight night. WILLIAM BLACK. A BALLADE OF BOTHERS. From country, from coast and from city, From nowhere and goodness knows where, The visitors come without pity, There is not a corner to spare; And students with work to prepare Must charter a captive balloon And study aloft in the air, For the May Week has fallen in June. The grinding of feet that are gritty So ceaseless on landing and stair; The notes of some drawing-room ditty Disturb the recluse in his lair And cause him to clutch at his hair As he toils in the hot afternoon; But nobody hears if he swear, For the May Week has fallen in June. Then the damsels supposing its pretty Their art-curtain patterns to wear, And the youths who conceive they are witty, Came round to be stared at, and stare. And amateur buglers that blare, And singers that howl to the moon, Are more than the system can bear; For the May Week has fallen in June. _Envoi._ Friend, do not be caught in the snare, And strive not to sing or to spoon, Your tripos is all your affair, For the May Week has fallen in June. From the '_Cambridge Meteor._' BALLADE OF BELIEF. Says Herbert: Pray, list to my notion, All ye who the truth would invite; Be Agnostics, and spurn the emotion That ghosts and the gospels excite. In th' Unknown do I find all delight, And in Infinite Energy see All casual cravings unite-- And that's the religion for me. Says Frederic: Pray list to _my_ notion, Away with Impersonal Might, To Humanity tender promotion, And worship the idëal wight. Though from stock that is Simian hight He may trace out a pure pedigree, Yet to Man will I anthems recite-- And that's the religion for me. Says Wilfrid: Pray, list to _my_ notion, On the hip I will infidels smite; 'Tis only through Christian devotion That virtues with vices can fight. Whate'er may Theology write, Whatever the Church may decree, My soul shall acknowledge as right-- And that's the religion for me. _Envoi._ (_Voice of the bewildered one._) O faith full of riddle and rite, O philosophies deep as the sea, In this posse of problems polite, Prithee, where's the religion for me? COTSFORD DICK. BALLADE OF BURIAL. The sunlight sways the summer sky, Quivers with breath each quicken'd blade, The birds with one another vie To move to mirth the grove and glade, While yonder solemn cavalcade Winds o'er the glebe in gloom august, Chanting a dead man's serenade, Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. A smile is mated to a sigh, One flashes ere the other fade, Farce arm-in-arm with tragedy, So struts the motley masquerade. Youth deems for joy the world is made, Till disappointment deals disgust, Disease defiles the last decade, Ashes to ashes, dust to dast. Within the grave our earnest eye Beholds a brother's body laid, Around us sombre hirelings ply The unctuous usage of their trade. Beneath the hedgerow laughs a maid, Held in a lover's arm robust; One day for her it shall be said, Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. _Envoi._ Life, dost thou still possess the shade Of him in earth so rudely thrust? Canst thou the sentence yet evade, Ashes to ashes, dust to dust? COTSFORD DICK. A BALLAD TO QUEEN ELIZABETH. Of the Spanish Armada. King Philip had vaunted his claims; He had sworn for a year he would sack us; With an army of heathenish names He was coming to fagot and stack us; Like the thieves of the sea he would track us, And shatter our ships on the main; But we had bold Neptune to back us,-- And where are the galleons of Spain? His carackes were christened of dames To the kirtles whereof he would tack us; With his saints and his gilded stern-frames, He had thought like an egg-shell to crack us: Now Howard may get to his Flaccus, And Drake to his Devon again, And Hawkins bowl rubbers to Bacchus,-- For where are the galleons of Spain? Let his Majesty hang to St. James The axe that he whetted to hack us; He must play at some lustier games Or at sea he can hope to out-thwack us; To his mines of Peru he would pack us To tug at his bullet and chain; Alas that his Greatness should lack us!-- But where are the galleons of Spain? _Envoy._ GLORIANA!--the Don may attack us Whenever his stomach be fain; He must reach us before he can rack us, ... And where are the galleons of Spain? AUSTIN DOBSON. ON A FAN THAT BELONGED TO THE MARQUISE DE POMPADOUR. Chicken-skin, delicate, white, Painted by Carlo Vanloo, Loves in a riot of light, Roses and vaporous blue; Hark to the dainty _frou-frou_! Picture above if you can, Eyes that could melt as the dew,-- This was the Pompadour's fan! See how they rise at the sight, Thronging the _OEil de Boeuf_ through, Courtiers as butterflies bright, Beauties that Fragonard drew, _Talon-rouge_, falbala, queue, Cardinal, Duke,--to a man, Eager to sigh or to sue,-- This was the Pompadour's fan! Ah! but things more than polite Hung on this toy, _voyez vous_! Matters of state and of might, Things that great ministers do; Things that, maybe, overthrew Those in whose brains they began; Here was the sign and the cue,-- This was the Pompadour's fan! _Envoy._ Where are the secrets it knew? Weavings of plot and of plan? --But where is the Pompadour, too? _This_ was the Pompadour's _Fan_! AUSTIN DOBSON. THE BALLAD OF IMITATION. "_C'est imiter quelqu'un que de planter des choux._" --ALFRED DE MUSSET. If they hint, O Musician, the piece that you played Is nought but a copy of Chopin or Spohr; That the ballad you sing is but merely "conveyed" From the stock of the Arnes and the Purcells of yore; That there's nothing, in short, in the words or the score, That is not as out-worn as the "Wandering Jew;" Make answer--Beethoven could scarcely do more-- That the man who plants cabbages imitates, too! If they tell you, Sir Artist, your light and your shade Are simply "adapted" from other men's lore; That--plainly to speak of a "spade" as a "spade"-- You've "stolen" your grouping from three or from four; That (however the writer the truth may deplore), Twas Gainsborough painted _your_ "Little Boy Blue;" Smile only serenely--though cut to the core-- For the man who plants cabbages imitates, too! And you too, my Poet, be never dismayed If they whisper your Epic--"Sir Eperon d' Or"-- Is nothing but Tennyson thinly arrayed In a tissue that's taken from Morris's store; That no one, in fact, but a child could ignore That you "lift" or "accommodate" all that you do; Take heart--though your Pegasus' withers be sore-- For the man who plants cabbages imitates, too! POSTSCRIPTUM.--And you, whom we all so adore, Dear Critics, whose verdicts are always so new!-- One word in your ear. There were Critics before ... And the man who plants cabbages imitates, too! AUSTIN DOBSON. THE BALLADE OF PROSE AND RHYME. (Ballade à double refrain.) When the roads are heavy with mire and rut, In November fogs, in December snows, When the North Wind howls, and the doors are shut, There is place and enough for the pains of prose;-- But whenever a scent from the whitethorn blows, And the jasmine-stars to the casement climb, And a Rosalind-face at the lattice shows, Then hey!--for the ripple of laughing rhyme! When the brain gets dry as an empty nut, When the reason stands on its squarest toes, When the mind (like a beard) has a "formal cut," There is place and enough for the pains of prose;-- But whenever the May-blood stirs and glows, And the young year draws to the "golden prime,"-- And Sir Romeo sticks in his ear a rose, Then hey!--for the ripple of laughing rhyme! In a theme where the thoughts have a pedant strut In a changing quarrel of "Ayes" and "Noes," In a starched procession of "If" and "But," There is place and enough for the pains of prose;-- But whenever a soft glance softer grows, And the light hours dance to the trysting-time, And the secret is told "that no one knows," Then hey!--for the ripple of laughing rhyme! _Envoy._ In the work-a-day world,--for its needs and woes, There is place and enough for the pains of prose; But whenever the May-bells clash and chime, Then hey!--for the ripple of laughing rhyme! AUSTIN DOBSON. THE BALLAD OF DEAD CITIES. To A. L. Where are the cities of the plain? And where the shrines of rapt Bethel? And Calah built of Tubal-Cain? And Shinar whence King Amraphel Came out in arms, and fought, and fell, Decoyed into the pits of slime By Siddim, and sent sheer to hell; Where are the cities of old time? Where now is Karnak, that great fane With granite built, a miracle? And Luxor smooth without a stain, Whose graven scriptures still we spell? The jackal and the owl may tell, Dark snakes around their ruins climb, They fade like echo in a shell; Where are the cities of old time? And where is white Shusan, again, Where Vashti's beauty bore the bell, And all the Jewish oil and grain Were brought to Mithridath to sell, Where Nehemiah would not dwell, Because another town sublime Decoyed him with her oracle? Where are the cities of old time? _Envoi._ Prince, with a dolorous, ceaseless knell, Above their wasted toil and crime The waters of oblivion swell: Where are the cities of old time? EDMUND GOSSE. BALLADE. Love thou art sweet in the spring-time of sowing Bitter in reaping and salt as the seas, Lovely and soft when the young buds are growing Harsh when the fruitage is ripe on the trees: Yet who that hath plucked him thy blossom e'er flees Who that hath drunk of thy sweetness can part, Tho' he find when thy chalice is drained to the lees Ashes and dust in the place of a heart? 'Tis myself that I curse at, the wild thoughts flowing Against myself built up of the breeze Like mountainous waves to my own o'erthrowing Strike and I tremble, my shivering knees Sink thro' the quicksands that round them freeze, From their treacherous hold I am loth to start:-- In my breast laid bare, had you only the keys, Ashes and dust in the place of a heart. The world wide over young hearts are glowing With high held hopes we believed with ease, And have them still, but the saddest knowing Is the knowledge of how by slow degrees They slip from our side like a swarm of bees Bearing their sweetness away, and depart Leaving their stings in our bosom, with these Ashes and dust in the place of a heart. _Envoi._ Love, free on the uplands, the lawns, and leas; Priced and sold in the World's base mart: But the same in the end; tho' at first it please, Ashes and dust in the place of a heart. JOHN CAMERON GRANT. BALLADE.--LILITH. Lady, around thy throat Gleameth the one gold hair; And none that hath taken note Of the first that he looked on fair, The moment his boyish air Was moved by that mystic breeze, But hath felt the spell of thy presence there, Lilith, the first Love sees! We sail in an open boat, 'Mid breakers that rage and tear, And ply the oars by rote As over the waves we fare, But never a moment dare Gaze down at the Form by our knees, For her eyes that thro' Self and thro' Soul do stare, Lilith, the first Love sees! Circle of wall and moat, Vain as the thought to wear Cunning of knightly coat Steely and tempered rare, Against her mute despair; For none there is who frees His soul from her spell, who hath all in care, Lilith, the first Love sees! _L' Envoi._ Maid without mate or pair, From the Past's pale Presences, Who is there but next his heart doth bear Lilith, the first Love sees! JOHN CAMERON GRANT. BALLADE OF ANTIQUE DANCES. Before the town had lost its wits, And scared the bravery from its beaux, When money-grubs were merely cits, And verse was crisp and clear as prose, Ere Chloë and Strephon came to blows For votes, degrees, and cigarettes, The world rejoiced to point its toes In Gigues, Gavottes, and Minuets. The solemn fiddlers touch their kits; The twinkling clavichord o'erflows With contrapuntal quirks and hits; And, with all measure and repose, Through figures grave as royal shows, With noble airs and pirouettes, They move, to rhythms HANDEL knows, In Gigues, Gavottes, and Minuets. O Fans and Swords, O Sacques and Mits, That was the better part you chose! You know not how those gamesome chits Waltz, Polka, and Schottische arose, Or how Quadrille--a kind of doze In time and tune--the dance besets; You aired your fashion till the close In Gigues, Gavottes, and Minuets. _Envoy._ Muse of the many-twinkling hose, TERPSICHORE, O teach your pets The charm that shines, the grace that glows In Gigues, Gavottes, and Minuets. W. E. HENLEY. BALLADE OF DEAD ACTORS. Where are the passions they essayed, And where the tears they made to flow? Where the wild humours they portrayed For laughing worlds to see and know? Othello's wrath and Juliet's woe? Sir Peter's whims and Timon's gall? And Millamant and Romeo?-- Into the night go one and all. Where are the braveries, fresh or frayed? The plumes, the armours--friend and foe? The cloth of gold, the rare brocade, The mantles glittering to and fro? The pomp, the pride, the royal show? The cries of war and festival? The youth, the grace, the charm, the glow?-- Into the night go one and all. The curtain falls, the play is played: The Beggar packs beside the Beau; The Monarch troops, and troops the Maid; The Thunder huddles with the Snow. Where are the revellers high and low? The clashing swords? The lover's call? The dancers gleaming row on row?-- Into the night go one and all. _Envoy._ Prince, in one common overthrow The hero tumbles with the thrall: As dust that drives, as straws that blow, Into the night go one and all. W. E. HENLEY. BALLADE OF JUNE. Lilacs glow, and jasmines climb, Larks are loud the livelong day. O the golden summer-prime! June takes up the sceptre of May, And the land beneath her sway Glows, a dream of flowerful closes, And the very wind's at play With Sir Love among the roses. Lights and shadows in the lime Meet in exquisite disarray. Hark! the rich recurrent rhyme Of the blackbird's roundelay! Where he carols, frank and gay, Fancy no more glooms or proses; Joyously she flits away With Sir Love among the roses. O the cool sea's slumbrous chime! O the links that beach the bay, Tricked with meadow-sweet and thyme, Where the brown bees murmur and stray! Lush the hedgerows, ripe the hay! Many a maiden, binding posies, Finds herself at Yea-and-Nay With Sir Love among the roses. _Envoi._ Boys and girls, be wise, I pray! Do as dear Queen June proposes, For she bids you troop and stay With Sir Love among the roses. W. E. HENLEY. BALLADE OF LADIES' NAMES. Brown's for Lalage, Jones for Lelia, Robinson's bosom for Beatrice glows, Smith is a Hamlet before Ophelia. The glamour stays if the reason goes! Every lover the years disclose Is of a beautiful name made free. One befriends, and all others are foes. Anna's the name of names for me. Sentiment hallows the vowels of Delia; Sweet simplicity breathes from Rose; Courtly memories glitter in Celia; Rosalind savours of quips and hose, Araminta of wits and beaux, Prue of puddings, and Coralie All of sawdust and spangled shows; Anna's the name of names for me. Fie upon Caroline, Madge, Amelia-- These I reckon the essence of prose!-- Cavalier Katharine, cold Cornelia, Portia's masterful Roman nose, Maud's magnificence, Totty's toes, Poll and Bet with their twang of the sea, Nell's impertinence, Pamela's woes! Anna's the name of names for me. _Envoy._ Ruth like a gillyflower smells and blows, Sylvia prattles of Arcadee, Sybil mystifies, Connie crows, Anna's the name of names for me! W. E. HENLEY. BALLADE OF SPRING. There's a noise of coming, going, Budding, waking, vast and still. Hark, the echoes are yeo-hoing Loud and sweet from vale and hill! Do you hear it? With a will, In a grandiose lilt and swing, Nature's voices shout and trill ... 'Tis the symphony of Spring! Rains are singing, clouds are flowing, Ocean thunders, croons the rill, And the West his clarion's blowing, And the sparrow tunes his quill, And the thrush is fluting shrill, And the skylark's on the wing, And the merles their hautboys fill-- 'Tis the symphony of Spring! Lambs are bleating, steers are lowing, Brisk and rhythmic clacks the mill. Kapellmeister April, glowing And superb with glee and skill, Comes, his orchestra to drill In a music that will ring Till the grey world yearn and thrill. 'Tis the symphony of Spring! _Envoy._ Princes, though your blood he chill, Here's shall make you leap and fling, Fling and leap like Jack and Jill! 'Tis the symphony of Spring. W. E. HENLEY. BALLADE OF MIDSUMMER DAYS AND NIGHTS. (Double refrain.) With a ripple of leaves and a tinkle of streams The full world rolls in a rhythm of praise, And the winds are one with the clouds and beams- Midsummer days! midsummer days! The dusk grows vast; in a purple haze, While the West from a rapture of sunset rights, Faint stars their exquisite lamps upraise- Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights! The wood's green heart is a nest of dreams, The lush grass thickens and springs and sways, The rathe wheat rustles, the landscape gleams- Midsummer days! midsummer days! In the stilly fields, in the stilly ways, All secret shadows and mystic lights, Late lovers murmurous linger and gaze- Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights! There's a music of bells from the trampling teams, Wild skylarks hover, the gorses blaze, The rich, ripe rose as with incense steams-- Midsummer days! midsummer days! A soul from the honeysuckle strays, And the nightingale as from prophet heights, Sings to the Earth of her million Mays- Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights! _Envoy._ And its O! for my dear and the charm that stays- Midsummer days! midsummer days! Its O! for my Love and the dark that plights- Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights! W. E. HENLEY. BALLADE OF YOUTH AND AGE. (Double refrain.) Spring at her height on a morn at prime, Sails that laugh from a flying squall, Pomp of harmony, rapture of rhyme- Youth is the sign of them, one and all. Winter sunsets and leaves that fall, An empty flagon, a folded page, A tumble-down wheel, a tattered ball- These are a type of the world of Age. Bells that clash in a gorgeous chime, Swords that clatter in outsets tall, The words that ring and the fames that climb- Youth is the sign of them, one and all. Old hymnals prone in a dusty stall, A bald blind bird in a crazy cage, The scene of a faded festival- These are a type of the world of Age. Hours that strut as the heirs of time, Deeds whose rumour's a clarion-call, Songs where the singers their souls sublime- Youth is the sign of them, one and all. A staff that rests in a nook of wall, A reeling battle, a rusted gage, The chant of a nearing funeral- These are a type of the world of Age. _Envoy._ Struggle and sacrifice, revel and brawl- Youth is the sign of them, one and all. A smouldering hearth and a silent stage- These are a type of the world of Age. W. E. HENLEY. BALLADE. The sun across the meads glows bright; The river shines a silver sheet, And mirrors back the pearly light. In its warm gleam the shadows fleet, Earth seems in joy the heaven to greet; Heaven's love illumes the deep blue skies, And birds and flowers and streams repeat, 'Where true love dwells is Paradise.' Beneath the hedge with May-bloom white An old man and a child, whose feet In cadence move to love's fond might; In its warm gleam the shadows fleet; Like op'ning flowers in morn's soft heat. A youth and maid whose beaming eyes Flash forth the thought their hearts secrete, 'Where true love dwells is Paradise.' Within the minster's fane the rite Is breathed; down-pours His own to meet The glory of the Infinite: In its warm gleam the shadows fleet; Faith falls before the mercy-seat, And knows, though veiled to mortal eyes, There, there in loveliness complete, Where True Love dwells is Paradise. Past sounding brass are love's tones sweet, Than gold or gems more rare its price; In its warm gleam the shadows fleet; Where true love dwells is Paradise. W. H. JEWITT. BALLADE DES PENDUS. (GRINGOIRE.) Where wide the forest boughs are spread, When Flora wakes with sylph and fay, Are crowns and garlands of men dead, All golden in the morning gay; Within this ancient garden grey Are clusters such as no man knows, Where Moor and Soldan bear the sway: _This is King Louis' orchard close._ These wretched folk wave overhead, With such strange thoughts as none may say; A moment still, then sudden sped, They swing in a ring and waste away. The morning smites them with her ray; They toss with every breeze that blows, They dance where fires of dawning play: _This is King Louis' orchard close._ All hanged and dead, they've summoned (With Hell to aid that hears them pray) New legions of an army dread, Now down the blue sky flames the day; The dew dries off; the foul array Of obscene ravens gathers and goes, With wings that flaps and beaks that flay: _This is King Louis' orchard close._ _Envoi._ Prince, where leaves murmur of the May, A tree of bitter clusters grows; The bodies of men dead are they, This is King Louis' orchard close. ANDREW LANG. VALENTINE IN FORM OF BALLADE. The soft wind from the south land sped, He set his strength to blow, O'er forests where Adonis bled And lily flowers a-row. He crossed the straits like streams that flow The ocean dark as wine To my true love to whisper low To be your Valentine. The spring-time raised her drowsy head, Besprent with drifted snow, "I'll send an April Day," she said, "To lands of wintry woe." He came; wan winter's overthrow With showers that sing and shine Pied daisies round your path to strow, To be your Valentine. Where sands of Egypt swart and red 'Neath suns Egyptian glow, In places of the princely dead By the Nile's overflow, The swallow preened her wings to go, And for the North did pine, And fain would brave the frost, her foe, To be your Valentine. _Envoy._ Spring, Swallow, South Wind, even so Their various voice combine, But that they crave on me bestow To be your Valentine. ANDREW LANG. BALLADE OF PRIMITIVE MAN. (To J. A. Farrer.) He lived in a cave by the seas, He lived upon oysters and foes, But his list of forbidden degrees An extensive morality shows; Geological evidence goes To prove he had never a pan, But he shaved with a shell when he chose. 'Twas the manner of Primitive Man! He worshipp'd the rain and the breeze, He worshipped the river that flows, And the Dawn, and the Moon, and the trees, And bogies, and serpents, and crows; He buried his dead with their toes Tucked up, an original plan, Till their knees came right under their nose, 'Twas the manner of Primitive Man! His communal wives, at his ease, He would curb with occasional blows; Or his State had a queen, like the bees (As another philosopher trows): When he spoke it was never in prose, But he sang in a strain that would scan, For (to doubt it, perchance, were morose) 'Twas the manner of Primitive Man! _Envoy._ MAX, proudly your Aryans pose, But their rigs they undoubtedly ran, For, as every Darwinian knows, 'Twas the manner of Primitive Man! ANDREW LANG. BALLADE OF SUMMER. (To Constance Arkcoll.) When strawberry pottles are common and cheap, Ere elms be black, or limes be sere, When midnight dances are murdering sleep, Then comes in the sweet o' the year! And far from Fleet Street, far from here The Summer is Queen in the length of the land, And moonlight nights they are soft and clear, When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand. When clamour that doves in the lindens keep, Mingles with musical plash of the weir, Where drowned green tresses of crowsfoot creep, Then comes in the sweet o' the year! And better a crust and a beaker of beer, With rose-hung hedges on either hand, Than a palace in town and a prince's cheer, When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand! When big trout late in the twilight leap, When cuckoo clamoureth far and near, When glittering scythes in the hayfield reap, Then comes in the sweet o' the year! And it's oh to sail, with the wind to steer, Where kine knee-deep in the water stand, On a Highland loch, or a Lowland mere, When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand. _Envoi._ Friend, with the fops while we dawdle here, Then comes in the sweet o' the year! And Summer runs out like grains of sand, When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand. ANDREW LANG. BALLADE OF YULE. "Heigh-ho, the holly! This life is most jolly." _This life's most jolly_, Amiens said Heigh-ho, the Holly! So sang he As the good duke was comforted By these reflections, so may we! The years may darken as they flee, And Christmas bring his melancholy; But round the old mahogany tree We drink, we sing _Heigh-ho, the Holly_! Though some are dead and some are fled To lands of summer over sea, The holly berry keeps his red, The merry children keep their glee; They hoard with artless secresy, This gift for Maude, and that for Molly, And Santa Claus he turns the key On Christmas Eve, _Heigh-ho, the Holly_! Amid the snow the birds are fed, The snow lies deep on lawn and lea, The skies are shining overhead, The robin's tame that was so free. Far North, at home, the "barley bree" They brew; they give the hour to folly. How "Rab and Allen cam' to prie" They sing; we sing _Heigh-ho, the Holly_! _Envoi._ Friend, let us pay the wonted fee, The yearly tithe of mirth: be jolly! It is a duty so to be, Though half we sigh, _Heigh-ho, the Holly_! ANDREW LANG. BALLADE OF MIDDLE AGE. Our youth began with tears and sighs With seeking what we could not find; Our verses all were threnodies, In elegiacs still we whined; Our ears were deaf, our eyes were blind, We sought and knew not what we sought. We marvel, now we look behind: Life's more amusing than we thought! Oh! foolish youth, untimely wise! Oh! phantoms of the sickly mind! What? not content with seas and skies, With rainy clouds and southern wind, With common cares and faces kind, With pains and joys each morning brought? Ah, old and worn, and tired we find Life's more amusing than we thought! Though youth "turns spectre-thin and dies," To mourn for youth we're not inclined; We set our souls on salmon-flies, We whistle where we once repined. Confound the woes of human-kind! By Heaven we're "well deceived," I wot; Who hum, contented or resigned, "Life's more amusing than we thought!" _Envoy._ _O nate mecum_, worn and lined Our faces show, but that is naught; Our hearts are young 'neath wrinkled rind-- Life's more amusing than we thought! ANDREW LANG. BALLADE FOR THE LAUREATE. (After Theodore de Banville.) Rhyme, in a late disdainful age, Hath many and many an eager knight, Each man of them, to print his page, From every quarter wings his flight! What tons of manuscript alight Here in the Row, how many a while For all can rhyme, when all can write-- The master's yonder in the Isle! Like Otus some, with giant rage, But scarcely with a giant's might, Ossa on Pelion engage To pile, and scale Parnassus' height! And some, with subtle nets and slight, Entangle rhymes exceeding vile,[8] And wond'rous adjectives unite-- The master's yonder in the Isle! Alas, the Muse they cannot cage These poets in a sorry plight! Vain is the weary war they wage, In vain they curse the Critic's spite! While grammar some neglect outright, While others polish with the file, The Fates contrive their toil to blight-- The master's yonder in the Isle! _Envoy._ Prince, Arnold's jewel-work is bright, And Browning, in his iron style, Doth gold on his rude anvil smite-- The master's yonder in the Isle! ANDREW LANG. [8] For example 'dawning' and 'warning.' BALLADE OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS. Fair islands of the silver fleece, Hoards of unsunned, uncounted gold, Whose havens are the haunts of Peace, Whose boys are in our quarrel bold; _Our_ bolt is shot, our tale is told, Our ship of state in storms may toss, But ye are young if we are old, Ye Islands of the Southern Cross! Aye, _we_ must dwindle and decrease, Such fates the ruthless years unfold; And yet we shall not wholly cease, We shall not perish unconsoled; Nay, still shall Freedom keep her hold Within the sea's inviolate fosse, And boast her sons of English mould, Ye Islands of the Southern Cross! All empires tumble--Rome and Greece-- Their swords are rust, their altars cold! For us, the Children of the Seas, Who ruled where'er the waves have rolled, For us, in Fortune's books enscrolled, I read no runes of hopeless loss; Nor--while _ye_ last--our knell is tolled, Ye Islands of the Southern Cross! _Envoy._ Britannia, when thy hearth's a-cold, When o'er thy grave has grown the moss, Still _Rule Australia_ shall be trolled In Islands of the Southern Cross! ANDREW LANG. A BALLADE OF OLD SWEETHEARTS. (To M. C.) Who is it that weeps for the last year's flowers When the wood is aflame with the fires of spring, And we hear her voice in the lilac bowers As she croons the runes of the blossoming? For the same old blooms do the new years bring. But not to our lives do the years come so, New lips must kiss and new bosoms cling.-- Ah! lost are the loves of the long ago. Ah! me for a breath of those morning hours When Alice and I went awandering Through the shining fields, and it still was ours To kiss and to feel we were shuddering-- Ah! me, when a kiss was a holy thing.-- How sweet were a smile from Maud, and oh! With Phyllis once more to be whispering.-- Ah! lost are the loves of the long ago. But it cannot be that old Time devours Such loves as was Annie's and mine we sing, And surely beneficent heavenly powers Save Muriel's beauty from perishing; And if in some golden evening To a quaint old garden I chance to go, Shall Marion no more by the wicket sing?-- Ah! lost are the loves of the long ago. In these lives of ours do the new years bring Old loves as old flowers again to blow? Or do new lips kiss and new bosoms cling?-- Ah! lost are the loves of the long ago. R. LE GALLIENNE. BALLADE. O Love, whom I have never seen, Yet ever hope to see; The memory that might have been The hope that yet may be; The passion that persistently Makes all my pulses beat With unassuaged desire that we Some day may come to meet: This August night outspread serene, The scent of flower and tree, The fall of water that unseen Moans on incessantly, That line of fire, where breaks the sea In ripples at my feet; What mean they all, if not that we Some day may come to meet? About your window bowered in green The night wind wanders free, While out into the night you lean, And dream, but not of me, As now I dream of you who flee Before my dream complete The shadow of the day when we Some day may come to meet. _Envoy._ Princess, while yet on lawn and lea The harvest moon is sweet, Ere August die, who knows but we Some day may come to meet? "_Love in Idleness._" BALLADE OF DEAD THINKERS. Where's _Heraclitus_ and his Flux Of Sense that never maketh stay? Or _Thales_, with whom water sucks Into itself both Clod and Clay? Or He, who in an evil Day ~Nomos~ and ~physis~ first employ'd; And of the Sum of Things doth say, They all are Atoms in the Void? Where's grave _Parmenides_? Death plucks His Beard: and by the _Velian_ Bay Sleeps _Zeno_; _Plato's_ Pen their Crux Of _One and Many_ doth portray. _Empedocles_ too, well-away, His taste for climbing, unalloy'd By Prudence, led him far astray: They all are Atoms in the Void. Where's _Socrates_ himself, who chucks Up _Physics_, makes of _Sophists_ hay, Into _Induction_ briskly tucks, And _Definitions_ frames alway? The good _Athenians_ him did slay, His _Dialectic_ them annoy'd; And his Disciples, where are they? They all are Atoms in the Void. _Envoy._ Prince, tho' with these old names and grey Our peace of mind be half destroyed, Take comfort; say they what they may, They all are Atoms in the Void. "_Love in Idleness._" A BALLADE OF ROSES. ~To rhodon to tôn erôtôn.~ When Venus saw Ascanius sleep On sweet Cythera's snow-white roses His face like Adon's made her weep, And long to kiss him where he dozes; But fearing to disturb the boy, She kissed the pallid blooms instead, Which blushed and kept their blush for joy, When Venus kissed white roses red. Straight of these roses she did reap Sufficient store of pleasant posies, And coming from Cythera's steep Where every fragrant flower that grows is, She tossed them for the winds to toy And frolic with till they were dead. Heaven taught the earth a fair employ When Venus kissed white roses red. For each red rose the symbol deep In its sad, happy heart encloses Of kisses making love's heart leap, And every summer wind that blows is A prayer that ladies be not coy Of kisses ere brief life be sped. There gleamed more gold in earth's alloy When Venus kissed white roses red. _Envoy._ All lovers true since windy Troy Flamed for a woman's golden head, You gained surcease from life's annoy When Venus kissed white roses red. JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY. A BALLADE OF DEATH. The furious storm takes wing; Quenched is the fiery ray; And broken the frosty air's sting, For these hold mutable sway: Pain puts an end to its stay; Ills have a time to endure; One thing will not heal nor allay: For death there is no cure! For the good that the future may bring, We strive to exist to-day. With the veering vane we swing, When fate sweeps fortune away: Seldom will misery slay; And ever will hope allure; Yet one thing endureth for aye, For death there is no cure! Though life be an exquisite thing, Death shatters the curious clay; Though in frenzy we cry and we cling, There is none who can save us that day: So life is devoured as a prey, And in darkness for aye will immure; And silence for ever hath sway: For death there is no cure! _Envoi._ O man, be ye sad, be ye gay, In the end there is one thing sure: Make out of life what ye may, For death there is no cure! HUNTER MACCULLOCH. THE BALLADE OF TOBACCO. When verdant youth sees life afar, And first sets out wild oats to sow, He puffs a stiff and stark cigar, And quaffs champagne of Mumm & Co. He likes not smoking yet; but though Tobacco makes him sick indeed, Cigars and wine he can't forego:-- A slave is each man to the weed. In time his tastes more dainty are, And delicate. Become a beau, From out the country of the Czar He brings his cigarettes, and lo! He sips the vintage of Bordeaux. Thus keener relish shall succeed The baser liking we outgrow:-- A slave is each man to the weed. When age and his own lucky star To him perfected wisdom show, The schooner glides across the bar, And beer for him shall freely flow, A pipe with genial warmth shall glow; To which he turns in direst need, To seek in smoke surcease of woe:-- A slave is each man to the weed. _Envoi._ Smokers! who doubt or con or pro, And ye who dare to drink, take heed! And see in smoke a friendly foe:-- A slave is each man to the weed. BRANDER MATTHEWS. THE BALLADE OF ADAPTATION. The native drama's sick and dying, So say the cynic critic crew: The native dramatist is crying-- "Bring me the paste! Bring me the glue! Bring me the pen, and scissors, too! Bring me the works of E. Augier! Bring me the works of V. Sardou! I am the man to write a play!" For want of plays the stage is sighing, Such is the song the wide world through: The native dramatist is crying-- "Behold the comedies I brew! Behold my dramas not a few! On German farces I can prey, And English novels I can hew; _I_ am the man to write a play!" There is, indeed, no use denying That fashion's turned from old to new: The native dramatist is crying-- "Molière, good-bye! Shakespeare adieu! I do not think so much of you. Although not bad, you've had your day, And for the present you won't do. I am the man to write a play!" _Envoi._ Prince of the stage, don't miss the cue, A native dramatist, I say To every cynic critic, "Pooh! I am the man to write a play!" BRANDER MATTHEWS. A BALLADE OF MIDSUMMER. The heat wave sweeps along the street, And torrid ripples mark its flow; Successive billows follow fleet, And blister all things with their glow. No puff of air swings to and fro; No gentle zephyr stirs the trees. O for the winds that o'er ocean blow! O for a breath of the salt sea-breeze! Along the shadeless ways you greet No damsel fair, no buckramed beau-- The solitude is ruled by heat-- A sultry, sullen, scorching woe. The blazing sun rides high and slow, As if with laziness to tease The melting, sweltering world below-- O for a breath of the salt sea-breeze! The laggard steed with aching feet Must stagger on; for him is no Surcease of labour, no retreat Before his stint is done. And so Must man still labour on, although He hopeless longs to take his ease, Or to the ocean fain would go-- O for a breath of the salt sea-breeze! _Envoi._ Princes or peasants, friend and foe, No man may have all that he please; Midsummer heat shall lay him low-- O for a breath of the salt sea-breeze! BRANDER MATTHEWS. RAIN AND SHINE. (Ballade à double refrain.) The clouds are thick and darkly lower; The sullen sodden sky would fain Pour down a never-ending shower: I hear the pattering of the rain, I hear it rattle on the pane.-- And then I see the mist entwining, Nor one position long retain. Behold! the gentle sun is shining! As though exulting in its power, The storm beats down with steady strain; Upon the ivy of the tower I hear the pattering of the rain; It swiftly sweeps across the plain.-- And then I see the sky refining, And molten with a golden stain. Behold! the gentle sun is shining! Beneath the storm the cattle cower; It beats upon the growing grain, And as it breaks both bud and flower, I hear the pattering of the rain,-- From where the clouds too long have lain They turn, and show a silver lining, A splendid glory comes again. Behold! the gentle sun is shining! _Envoy._ Although like some far, faint refrain, I hear the pattering of the rain, The storm is past. No more repining-- Behold! the gentle sun is shining! BRANDER MATTHEWS. AN AMERICAN GIRL. She's had a Vassar education, And points with pride to her degrees; She's studied household decoration; She knows a dado from a frieze, And tells Corots from Boldonis; A Jacquemart etching, or a Haden, A Whistler, too, perchance might please A free and frank young Yankee maiden. She does not care for meditation; Within her bonnet are no bees; She has a gentle animation, She joins in singing simple glees. She tries no trills, no rivalries With Lucca (now Baronin Räden), With Nilsson or with Gerster; she's A frank and free young Yankee maiden. I'm blessed above the whole creation, Far, far, above all other he's; I ask you for congratulation On this the best of jubilees: I go with her across the seas Unto what Poe would call an Aiden,-- I hope no serpent's there to tease A frank and free young Yankee maiden. _Envoy._ Princes, to you the western breeze Bears many a ship and heavy laden, What is the best we send in these? A free and frank young Yankee maiden. BRANDER MATTHEWS. "FROM BATTLE, MURDER AND SUDDEN DEATH, GOOD LORD, DELIVER US." What of this prayer which myriad skies Hear from the shrines where tired men kneel, Godward upturning anguished eyes, Clasping gaunt hands in strong appeal? What of this fear that worn lives feel? Why should some strain their labouring breath, Since they must gain not woe but weal, From battle, murder and sudden death! Is it not well with him who dies Flushed amid smoke and flash of steel; Stabbed by some traitor's swift surprise; Stricken by doom no signs reveal? Ruin and wrong can no more deal Blows beneath which (man's record saith) Men ask deliverance, while they reel, From battle, murder and sudden death! Can one so dead be harmed by lies, Tortured by wounds smiles ill conceal? Can love bring loss, or desire devise Vain visions, or grim fate's iron heel Brand both on brow and soul its seal, Till, wretched as He of Nazareth, Man loathes the life he yet prays to steal From battle, murder and sudden death? _Envoi._ Waifs that on life's tide sink and rise, Chaff that each chance wind winnoweth, Why dread God's rest that comes, a prize From battle, murder and sudden death? JOHN MORAN. IN WINTER. Oh, to go back to the days of June, Just to be young and alive again, Hearken again to the mad, sweet tune Birds were singing with might and main: South they flew at the summer's wane, Leaving their nests for storms to harry, Since time was coming for wind and rain Under the wintry skies to marry. Wearily wander by dale and dune Footsteps fettered with clanking chain-- Free they were in the days of June, Free they never can be again: Fetters of age, and fetters of pain, Joys that fly, and sorrows that tarry-- Youth is over, and hopes were vain Under the wintry skies to marry. Now we chant but a desolate rune-- Oh to be young and alive again! But never December turns to June, And length of living is length of pain: Winds in the nestless trees complain, Snows of winter about us tarry, And never the birds come back again Under the wintry skies to marry. _Envoi._ Youths and maidens, blithesome and vain, Time makes thrusts that you cannot parry; Mate in season, for who is fain Under the wintry skies to marry? LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON. BALLADE OF HIS LADY. My lady's heart 'twere hard to touch, And sighs and vows she'd soon repel; But if she liked one twice as much, One would not like her half as well; She careth not for sage or swell, For guardsman stout or poet lean, Who haunt Parnassus or Pall Mall; My lady-love is just thirteen. She loves a rabbit in a hutch (A fat Aquinas in his cell), She loves an aged cat, whose clutch At breakfast-time exerts a spell, A most ungracious Florizel. In fact it's easy to be seen, Were she at all averse to tell, My lady-love is just thirteen. Although she reads the Higher Dutch, On culture's peaks apart to dwell, She feigns not; nor of things 'as such' Does she discourse, nor parallel Dante and Dante Gabriel; Yet she has 'views' advanced and keen, On chocolate and caramel,-- My lady-love is just thirteen. _Envoy._ Madam, just homage you compel, Mature, self-conscious, and serene, One heart alone you cannot quell; _My_ lady-love is just thirteen. J. B. B. NICHOLS. BALLADE OF EXMOOR. Fly westward, westward, gentle wind, Where erst we trod the windy ways; And wake within her wayward mind The memory of forgotten days. The stars step forth aslant the bays, The still moon silvers tower and tree, And never sound the silence frays Athwart the slumberous Severn Sea. So soft, so strange the light that lined The ferny moors, the forest maze, Till all the west was smitten blind With glamour of the golden haze; What time we watch'd the stag upraise His lordly brow by linn and lea, To fright the morris of the fays Athwart the slumberous Severn Sea. O'er the dim passes flung behind The dying daylight all ablaze, About those dainty tresses twined One aureole of dreamy rays, And many a winged lamp that strays Darkling his weird in heaven to dree, Lit the rare eyne downdrops to gaze Athwart the slumberous Severn Sea. _Envoy._ O westward wind, whose low breath sways Her locks, whereto night's shadows flee, Bear hence a lilt of summer lays Athwart the slumberous Severn Sea. F. S. P. BALLAD OF PAST DELIGHT. Where are the dreams of the days gone by, The hopes of honour, the glancing play Of fire-new fancies that filled our sky-- The songs we sang in the middle May, Carol and ballad and roundelay? Where are the garlands our young hands twined? Life's but a memory, well-away! All else flits past on the wings of the wind. Where are the ladies fair and high-- Marie and Alice and Maud and May And merry Madge with the laughing eye-- And all the gallants of yesterday That held us merry--ah, where are they? Under the mould we must look to find Some; and the others are worn and grey. All else flits past on the wings of the wind. I know of nothing that lasts, not I, Save a heart that is true to its love alway-- A love that is won with tear and sigh And never changes or fades away, In a breast that is oftener sad than gay; A tender look and a constant mind-- These are the only things that stay: All else flits past on the wings of the wind. _Envoy._ Prince, I counsel you, never say, Alack for the years that are left behind! Look you keep love when your dreams decay; All else flits past on the wings of the wind. JOHN PAYNE. THE PIXIES. The frost hath spread a shining net Where late the autumn roses blew, On lake and stream a seal is set Where floating lilies charmed the view; So silently the wonder grew Beneath pale Dian's mystic light, I know my fancies whisper true, The Pixies are abroad to-night. When at the midnight chime are met Together elves of every hue, I trow the gazer will regret That peers upon their retinue; For limb awry and eye askew Have oft proclaimed a fairy's spite- Peep slyly, gallants, lest ye rue, The Pixies are abroad to-night. 'Tis said their forms are tiny, yet All human ills they can subdue, Or with a wand or amulet Can win a maiden's heart for you; And many a blessing know to strew To make the way to wedlock bright; Give honour to the dainty crew, The Pixies are abroad to-night. _Envoy._ Prince, e'en a prince might vainly sue, Unaided by a fairy's might; Remember Cinderella's shoe, The Pixies are abroad to-night. SAMUEL MINTURN PECK. A BALLADE OF THE THUNER-SEE. Soft on the lake's soft bosom we twain Float in the haze of a dim delight, While the wavelets cradle the sleepless brain, And the eyes are glad of the lessening light, And the east with a fading glory is bright-- The lingering smile of a sun that is set,-- And the earth in its tender sorrow is dight, And the shadow that falleth hath spared us yet. Oh, the mellow beam of the suns that wane, Oh the joys, ah me! that are taking flight, Oh, the sting of a rapture too near to pain, And of love that loveth in death's despite. But the hour is ours, and its beauty's might Subdues our souls to a still regret, While the Blumlis-alp unveils to the night, And the shadow that falleth hath spared us yet. Now we set our prow to the land again, And our backs to those splendours ghostly white, But a mirrored star with a watery train We hold in our wake as a golden kite; When we near the shore with its darkening height, And its darker shade on the waters set, Lo! the dim shade fleeth before our sight, And the shadow that falleth hath spared us yet. _Envoy._ From the jewelled circles where I indite This song which my faithless tears make wet, We trail the light till its gemmed rings smite The shadow--that falleth! and spares us yet. EMILY PFEIFFER. GRANDMOTHER. Another new gown, as I declare! How many more is it going to be? And your forehead all hid in a cloud of hair-- 'Tis nothing but folly, that I can see! The maidens of nowaday make too free; To right and to left is the money flung; _We_ used to dress as became our degree-- But things have altered since I was young. Stuff, in my time, was made to wear; Gowns we had never but two or three; Did we fancy them spoilt, if they chanced to tear? And shrink from a patch, or a darn? not we! For pleasure, a gossiping dish of tea, Or a mushroom hunt, while the dew yet hung, And no need, next day, for the doctor's fee-- But things have altered since I was young. The yellow gig, and a drive to the fair; A keepsake bought in a booth on the lea; A sixpence, perhaps, to break and share-- That's how your grandfather courted me. Did your grandmother blush, do you think--not she! When he found her, the churn and the pails among? Or your grandfather like her the less? not he! But things have altered since I was young. _Envoi._ Child! you pout, and you urge your plea-- Better it were that you held your tongue! Maids should learn at their elders' knee-- But things have altered since I was young. MAY PROBYN. A BALLADE OF PHILOMELA. From gab of jay and chatter of crake The dusk wood covered me utterly. And here the tongue of the thrush was awake. Flame floods out of the low bright sky Lighted the gloom with gold-brown dye, Before dark; and a manifold chorussing Arose of thrushes remote and nigh,-- For the tongue of the singer needs must sing. Midmost a close green covert of brake A brown bird listening silently Sat; and I thought--"She grieves for the sake Of Itylus,--for the stains that lie In her heritage of sad memory." But the thrushes were hushed at evening. Then I waited to hear the brown bird try,-- For the tongue of the singer needs must sing. And I said--"The thought of the thrushes will shake With rapture remembered her heart; and her shy Tongue of the dear times dead will take To make her a living song, when sigh The soft night winds disburthened by. Hark now!" for the upraised quivering wing, The throat exultant, I could descry,-- For the tongue of the singer needs must sing. _L'Envoi._ But the bird dropped dead with only a cry: I found its tongue was withered, poor thing! Then I no whit wondered, for well knew I That the heart of the singer will break or sing. CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS. A BALLADE OF CALYPSO. The loud black flight of the storm diverges Over a spot in the loud mouthed main, Where, crowned with summer and sun, emerges An isle unbeaten of wind or rain. And here, of its sweet queen grown full fain, By whose kisses the whole broad earth seems poor, Tarries the wave-worn prince, Troy's bane, In the green Ogygian Isle secure. To her voice our sweetest songs are dirges. She gives him all things, counting it gain. Ringed with the rocks and ancient surges, How could Fate dissever these twain? But him no loves nor delights retain; New knowledge, new lands, new loves allure; Forgotten the perils, and toils, and pain, In the green Ogygian Isle secure. So he spurns her kisses and gifts, and urges His weak skiff over the wind-vext plain, Till the grey of the sky in the grey sea merges, And nights reel round, and waver and wane. He sits once more in his own domain. No more the remote sea-walls immure.- But ah, for the love he shall clasp not again In the green Ogygian Isle secure. _L'Envoi._ Princes, and ye whose delights remain, To the one good gift of the gods hold sure, Lest ye, too, mourn, in vain, in vain, Your green Ogygian Isle secure. CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS. A BALLAD OF FORGOTTEN TUNES. TO V. L. Forgotten seers of lost repute That haunt the banks of Acheron, Where have you dropped the broken lute You played in Troy or Calydon? O ye that sang in Babylon By foreign willows cold and grey, Fall'n are the harps ye hanged thereon, _Dead are the tunes of yesterday!_ De Coucy, is your music mute, The quaint old plain-chant woe-begone That served so many a lover's suit? Oh, dead as Adam or Guédron! Then, sweet De Caurroy, try upon Your virginals a virelay; Or play Orlando, one pavonne-- _Dead are the tunes of yesterday!_ But ye whose praises none refute, Who have the immortal laurel won; Trill me your quavering close acute, Astorga, dear unhappy Don! One air, Galuppi! Sarti one So many fingers used to play!- Dead as the ladies of Villon, _Dead are the tunes of yesterday!_ _Envoy._ Vernon, in vain you stoop to con The slender, faded notes to-day- The Soul that dwelt in them is gone: _Dead are the tunes of yesterday!_ A. MARY F. ROBINSON. BALLADE OF A GARDEN. With plash of the light oars swiftly plying, The sharp prow furrows the watery way; The ripples' reach as the bank is dying, And soft shades slender, and long lights play In the still dead heat of the drowsy day, As on I sweep with the stream that flows By sleeping lilies that lie astray In the Garden of Grace whose name none knows. There ever a whispering wind goes sighing, Filled with the scent of the new-mown hay, Over the flower hedge peering and prying, Wooing the rose as with words that pray; And the waves from the broad bright river bay Slide through clear channels to dream and doze, Or rise in a fountain's silver spray In the Garden of Grace whose name none knows. The sweet white rose with the red rose dying, Blooms where the summer follows the May, Till the streams be hid by the lost leaves lying, That autumn shakes where the lilies lay. But now all bowers and beds are gay And no rain ruffles the flower that blows, And still on the water soft dreams stay In the Garden of Grace whose name none knows. _Envoi._ Before the blue of the sky grows grey And the frayed leaves fall from the faded rose, Love's lips shall sing what the day-dreams say In the Garden of Grace whose name none knows. ARTHUR REED ROPES. BALLADE OF THE BARD. Though through the cloudy ranks of morn The Sun-god sends no golden ray, Though swift along the air are borne The feathery shafts that none may stay; Though wrathful storm-blasts pangless slay, And wan the patient plodder rues His lonely lot each dagging day- He's gay who courts the merry muse! When down the fields the tender corn Upsprings, and sees blue skies in May, When budding blooms the boughs adorn, And flowers bespangle sprig and spray, When torrid summer's regnant sway Has dimmed the foliage's fairest hues, And bronzèd reapers house the hay-- He's gay who courts the merry muse! And when the hollow harvest horn O'erflows with autumn's rich display, When high, with goodly grain, new-shorn, Is piled each lofty granary, When, like dark moons amid the gray Of cornfields, where the red ear woos, The pumpkins lie in long array- He's gay who courts the merry muse! _Envoy._ Prince, e'en though Fortune go astray And lost is wealth's bright-shining cruse, Though dark and drear the weary way- He's gay who courts the merry muse. CLINTON SCOLLARD. BALLADE OF DEAD POETS. Theocritus, who bore The lyre where sleek herds graze On the Sicilian shore, (There yet the shepherd strays)-- And Horace, crowned with bays, Who dwelt by Tiber's flow, Sleep through the silent days-- For God will have it so! The bard, whose requiem o'er And o'er the sad sea plays, Who sang of classic lore, Of Mab, the queen of fays-- And Keats, fair Adonais, The child of song and woe, No longer thread life's maze-- For God will have it so! Your voices, sweet of yore, With honied word and phrase, Are heard by men no more, They list to other lays-- New poets now have praise, But all in turn must go To follow in your ways-- For God will have it so! _Envoy._ Poets, the thrones ye raise Are not a "fleeting show;" Fame lives, though dust decays-- For God will have it so! CLINTON SCOLLARD. BALLADE TO VILLON. Where, prithee, are thy comrades bold, With ruffle, flounce, and furbelow, Who, in the merry days of old, Made light of all but red wine's flow? Where now are cavalier and beau Who joyed with thee in that bright clime? Ah! dust to dust!--and none may know-- Alas, for the fleet wings of Time! Where now are they whom gleaming gold Led on to many a bandit blow, Who roamed with thee the widening wold And vine-clad hills, and shared thy woe? Where they, who, in the sunset glow, With thee heard Paris' sweet bells chime? Ah! they are gone!--and still men go-- Alas, for the fleet wings of Time! And where are they, those maids untold, Thy lighter loves, each one thy foe? They too are now but loathsome mould, With earth above and earth below. And she who won, aside to throw Thy love, the promise of thy prime, Doth any seek her name? Ah! no-- Alas, for the fleet wings of Time! _Envoy._ Poet of ballade and rondeau, Prince of the tripping, laughing rhyme, Thy name alone hath 'scaped the snow; Alas, for the fleet wings of Time. CLINTON SCOLLARD. FOR ME THE BLITHE BALLADE. Of all the songs that dwell Where softest speech doth flow, Some love the sweet rondel, And some the bright rondeau, With rhymes that tripping go In mirthful measures clad; But would I choose them?--no, For me the blithe ballade! O'er some, the villanelle, That sets the heart aglow, Doth its enchanting spell With lines' recurring throw; Some weighed with wasting woe, Gay triolets make them glad; But would I choose them?--no, For me the blithe ballade! On chant of stately swell With measured feet and slow, At grave as minster bell As vesper tolling low, Do some their praise bestow; Some on sestinas sad; But would I choose them?--no, For me the blithe ballade! _Envoy._ Prince, to these songs a-row The Muse might endless add; But would I choose them?--no, For me the blithe ballade! CLINTON SCOLLARD. O LADY MINE. O lady mine with the sunlit hair, The birds are caroling blithe and gay In the bourgeoning boughs that sway in air O'er the grassy aisles of the orchard way. The mock-bird pipes to the busy jay: There's a gleam of white on the vines that twine Where your casement opes to the golden day, O lady mine. O lady mine with the sunlit hair, The rills are glad that the month is May; The dawns are bright and the eves are fair O'er the grassy aisles of the orchard way. The dales have doffed their gowns of grey, The sending buttercups spill their wine, There is joy in the heart of faun and fay, O lady mine. O lady mine with the sunlit hair The bees, like ruthless bandits, prey On the blooms that part their lips in prayer O'er the grassy aisles of the orchard way. From the sunny shores where the nereids play The breezes blow o'er the foamy brine, And I dream I hear them softly say, "O lady mine!" _Envoy._ O lady mine, wilt thou not stray O'er the grassy aisles of the orchard way, And list to Love where the wind-flowers shine, O lady mine? CLINTON SCOLLARD. WHERE ARE THE SHIPS OF TYRE? Hark, how the surges dash On Tyrian beaches hoar! With far-resounding crash, And unremitting roar, The white foam squadrons pour Their ranks with sullen ire Along the sandy floor; "Where are the ships of Tyre?" Within her walls the clash Of arms is heard no more; No supple bough of ash Is hewn for mast or oar; Through no tall temple's door Now gleams the altar fire, But winds and waves deplore, "Where are the ships of Tyre?" By night no torches flash From porches as of yore; 'Neath sword or stinging lash No slave now lies in gore; No voice that men adore Lifts song to lute or lyre; With all the freight they bore, "Where are the ships of Tyre?" _Envoy._ Prince, with these "gone before," We, whom these days inspire, Must seek that unknown shore "Where are the ships of Tyre?" CLINTON SCOLLARD. BALLADE OF VAIN HOPES. O ghosts of Bygone Hours, that stand Upon the marge of yonder shore Where by the pale feet-trampled sand (Though none is seen to walk that floor) The Stygian wave flows evermore: We fain would buy what ye can tell, Speak! Speak! And thrill to each heart's core-- _Vain Hopes are all we have to sell!_ O spectral Hours that throng this land-- Where no sweet floods of sunshine pour, But vast, tenebriously grand, Dense glooms abide, wind-swept or frore-- O ye who thus have gone before, Break silence--break your charmëd spell! Heed not our negligence of yore! _Vain Hopes are all we have to sell!_ O sombre, sad-eyed, shadowy band, Speak, speak, and wave not o'er and o'er Each wan phantasmal shadow-hand; O say, if when with battling sore We cross the flood and hear the roar O' the world like a sighed farewell, What waits beyond the Grave's last door? _Vain Hopes are all we have to sell!_ _Envoy._ O coming Hours, O unspent store, _Your_ promise breathe--as in sea-shell Imprison'd Echo sings her lore-- _Vain Hopes are all we have to sell!_ WILLIAM SHARP. BALLADE OF THE SONG OF THE SEA-WIND. What is the song the sea-wind sings-- The old, old song it singeth for aye? When abroad it stretcheth its mighty wings And driveth the white clouds far away,-- What is the song it sings to-day? _From fire and tumult the white world came,_ _Where all was a mist of driven spray_ _And the whirling fragments of a frame!_ What is the song the sea-wind sings-- The old, old song it singeth for aye? It seems to breathe a thousand things Ere the world grew sad and old and grey-- Of the dear gods banished far astray-- Of strange wild rumours of joy and shame! _The Earth is old, so old, To-day--_ _Blind and halt and weary and lame._ What is the song the sea-wind sings-- The old, old song it singeth for aye? Like a trumpet blast its voice out-rings, _The world spins down the darksome way!_ It crieth aloud in wild dismay, _The Earth that from fire and tumult came_ _Draws swift to her weary end To-day,_ _Her fires are fusing for that last Flame!_ _Envoy._ What singeth the sea-wind thus for aye-- _From fire and tumult the white world came!_ What is the sea-wind's cry To-day-- _Her central fires make one vast flame!_ WILLIAM SHARP. BALLADE OF THE SEA-FOLK. Where are the creatures of the deep, That made the sea-world wondrous fair? The dolphins that with royal sweep Sped Venus of the golden-hair Through leagues of summer sea and air? Are they all gone where past things be? The merman in his weedy lair? O sweet wild creatures of the sea! O singing syrens, do ye weep That now ye hear not anywhere The swift oars of the seamen leap, See their wild, eager eyes a-stare? O syrens, that no more ensnare The souls of men that once were free, Are ye not filled with cold despair-- O sweet wild creatures of the sea! O Triton, on some coral steep In green-gloom depths, dost thou forbear With wreathëd horn to call thy sheep, The wandering sea-waves, to thy care? O mermaids, once so debonnair, Sport ye no more with mirthful glee? The ways of lover-folk forswear?-- O sweet wild creatures of the sea! _Envoy._ Deep down 'mid coral caves, beware! They wait a day that yet must be, When Ocean shall be earth's sole heir-- O sweet wild creatures of the sea! WILLIAM SHARP. TO AUSTIN DOBSON. From the sunny climes of France, Flying to the west, Came a flock of birds by chance, There to sing and rest: Of some secrets deep in quest,-- Justice for their wrongs,-- Seeking one to shield their breast, One to write their songs. Melodies of old romance, Joy and gentle jest, Notes that made the dull heart dance With a merry zest;-- Maids in matchless beauty drest, Youths in happy throngs;-- These they sang to tempt and test One to write their songs. In old London's wide expanse Built each feathered guest,-- Man's small pleasure to entrance, Singing him to rest,-- Came, and tenderly confessed, Perched on leafy prongs, Life were sweet if they possessed One to write their songs. _Envoy._ Austin, it was you they blest: Fame to you belongs! Time has proven you're the best One to write their songs. FRANK DEMPSTER SHERMAN. BALLADE OF RHYME. When blossoms born of balmy spring Breathe fragrance in the pleasant shade Of branches where the blue-birds sing, Their hearts with music overweighed; When brooks go babbling through the glade, And over rocks the grasses climb To greet the sunshine, half-afraid,- How easy 'tis to write a rhyme! When invitations are a-wing For gay Terpsichore's parade; When dreamy waltzes stir the string And jewels flash on rich brocade, Where Paris dresses are displayed, And slippered feet keep careful time;- In winter, when the roses fade, How easy 'tis to write a rhyme! When by your side, with graceful swing, Some fair-faced, gentle girl has strayed, Willing and glad to have you bring Your claims for love and get them paid In kisses, smiles, and words that aid The bells of bliss to better chime;- When Cupid's rules are first obeyed, How easy 'tis to write a rhyme! _Envoy._ Reader, forgive me, man or maid, Against Calliope this crime; And let this brief ballade persuade How easy 'tis to write a rhyme! FRANK DEMPSTER SHERMAN. A BALLAD OF DREAMLAND. I hid my heart in a nest of roses, Out of the sun's way, hidden apart; In a softer bed than the soft white snow's is, Under the roses I hid my heart. Why would it sleep not? why should it start, When never a leaf of the rose-tree stirred? What made sleep flutter his wings and part? Only the song of a secret bird. Lie still, I said, for the wind's wing closes, And mild leaves muffle the keen sun's dart; Lie still, for the wind on the warm seas dozes, And the wind is unquieter yet than thou art. Does a thought in thee still as a thorn's wound smart Does the fang still fret thee of hope deferred? What bids the lips of thy sleep dispart? Only the song of a secret bird. The green land's name that a charm encloses, It never was writ in the traveller's chart, And sweet on its trees as the fruit that grows is, It never was sold in the merchant's mart. The swallows of dreams through its dim fields dart, And sleep's are the tunes in its tree-tops heard; No hound's note wakens the wildwood hart, Only the song of a secret bird. _Envoi._ In the world of dreams I have chosen my part, To sleep for a season and hear no word Of true love's truth or of light love's art, Only the song of a secret bird. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. A BALLADE OF KINGS. Where are the mighty kings of yore Whose sword-arm cleft the world in twain? And where are they who won and wore The empire of the land and main? Where's Alexander, Charlemain? Alone the sky above them brings Their tombs the tribute of the rain. Dust in dust are the bones of kings! Where now is Rome's old emperor, Who gazed on burning Rome full fain; And where, at one for evermore, The Liege of France, the Lord of Spain? What of Napoleon's lightning brain, Grim Fritz's iron hammerings, Forging the links of Europe's chain? Dust in dust are the bones of kings! Where, 'neath what ravenous curses sore, Hath Well-Loved Louis lapsed and lain? Where is the Lion-Heart, who bore The spears toward Zion's gate again? And can so little space contain, Quiet from all his wanderings, The world-demanding Tamburlaine? Dust in dust are the bones of kings! _Envoy._ O Kings, bethink ye then how vain The pride and pomp of earthly things: A little pain, a little gain, Then dust in dust are the bones of kings. ARTHUR SYMONS. BALLADE OF ACHERON. Between the Midnight and the Morn, The under-world my soul espied; I saw the shades of men out-worn, The Heroes fallen in their pride; I saw the marsh-lands drear and wide, And many a ghost that strayed thereon; "Still must I roam," a maiden sighed, "The sunless marsh of Acheron." "And is thy fate thus hope-forlorn?" "Yea, even so," the shade replied, "For one I wronged in life hath sworn In hatred ever to abide: The lover seeketh not the bride, But aye, with me, his heart dreams on, Asleep in these cold mists that hide The sunless marsh of Acheron. "And still for me will Lacon mourn, And still my pardon be denied: Ah, never shall I cross the bourne That Dead from Living doth divide; Yet I repent me not!" she cried, "Nay--only that mine hour is gone; One memory hath glorified The sunless marsh of Acheron." _Envoy._ Ah, Princess! when _thy_ ghost shall glide Where never star nor sunlight shone, See thou she tarry not beside The sunless marsh of Acheron. GRAHAM R. TOMSON. BALLADE OF ASPHODEL. ~Kat' asphodelon leimôna.~ Now who will thread the winding way, Afar from fervid summer heat, Beyond the sunshafts of the day, Beyond the blast of winter sleet? In the green twilight, dimly sweet, Of poplar shades, the shadows dwell, Who found erewhile a fair retreat Along the mead of Asphodel. There death and birth are one, they say; Those lowlands bear no yellow wheat; No sound doth rise of mortal fray, Of lowing herds, of flocks that bleat: Nor wind nor rain doth blow nor beat; Nor shrieketh sword, nor tolleth bell; But lovers one another greet Along the mead of Asphodel. I would that there my soul might stray; I would my phantom, fair and fleet, Might cleave the burden of the clay, Might leave the murmur of the street, Nor with half-hearted prayer entreat The half-believed-in Gods; too wel I know the name I shall repeat Along the mead of Asphodel. _Envoy._ Queen Proserpine, at whose white feet In life my love I may not tell, Wilt give me welcome when we meet Along the mead of Asphodel? GRAHAM R. TOMSON. BALLADE OF THE BOURNE. What goal remains for pilgrim feet Now all our gods are banishèd? Afar, where sea and sunrise meet, Tall portals bathed in gold and red, From either door a carven head Smiles down on men full drowsilie 'Mid mystic forms of wings outspread Between the Gates of Ivorie. Now if beyond lie town or street I know not nor hath any said, Though tongues wag fast and winds are fleet; Some say that there men meet the dead, Or filmy phantoms in their stead, And some "it leads to Arcadie," In sooth I know not, yet would tread Between the Gates of Ivorie. For surely there sounds music sweet With fair delights and perfumes shed, And all things broken made complete, And found again things forfeited; All this for him who scorning dread Shall read the wreathen fantasie, And pass, where no base soul had sped Between the Gates of Ivorie. _Envoy._ Ah, Princess! grasp the golden thread, Rise up and follow fearlesslie, By high desire and longing led Between the Gates of Ivorie. GRAHAM R. TOMSON. BALLADE OF FAIRY GOLD. A goblin trapped in netted skein, Did bruise his wings with vain essay; "Now who will rend this hempen chain? Let that man ask me what he may, I shall not, surely, say him nay: The shadows wane, the day grows old, Meseems this mesh will keep for aye The sun-bright glint of Fairy Gold!" These echoes of the creature's pain, As in the fowler's net he lay, Drew soon anigh a surly swain Who cut the cords and freed the fay: "Now what fair gift shall well repay Thy service done?--for words are cold-- Sweet looks or wisdom! vine or bay?" "The sun-bright glint of Fairy Gold." "Thou choosest ill, but speech is vain, Lo! here is treasure good and gay:" The goat-herd grasped his golden gain And bore the shining store away; He oped his chest, at break of day, To find--no talents, bright and cold, But soft, dead cowslips--nowhere lay The sun-bright glint of Fairy Gold! _Envoy._ Take hands, O Prince, for we will stray, We twain, where nought is bought or sold, And find in every woodland way, The sun-bright glint of Fairy Gold. GRAHAM R. TOMSON. BALLADE OF MIGHT-BE. Young Love flies fast, on wavering wing, Full fast he flies for woe or weal, And some do bear his grievous sting Too deep for any leech to heal; I scorn to swell their sad appeal, False phantom, fled from our embrace! And yet--I doubt me I might kneel Should you but chance to turn your face. Of days long done our praises ring Right loud and full, a valorous peal, For life was then a lusty thing: Ah! then were mighty blows to deal. Brave days, my masters!--still, I feel In sooth I could not deem him base Who'd shun your stare, O age of steel! Should you but chance to turn your face. "Alas!" our dainty minstrels sing, "That sorrow sets unbroken seal On saint and sinner, clown and king." They beg death's boon with busy zeal. They'll do you homage warm and leal, Death! while you pass their dwelling-place But lips would gape and senses reel, Should you but chance to turn your face. _Envoy._ Queen Fortune! of the mystic wheel, We bow to find you full of grace, We would not turn on sullen heel Should _you_ but chance to turn your face. GRAHAM R. TOMSON. BALLADE OF THE OPTIMIST. Heed not the folk who sing or say In sonnet sad or sermon chill, "Alas, alack, and well-a-day, This round world's but a bitter pill." Poor porcupines of fretful quill! Sometimes we quarrel with our lot: We, too, are sad and careful; still We'd rather be alive than not. What though we wish the cats at play Would some one else's garden till; Though Sophonisba drop the tray And all our worshipped Worcester spill, Though neighbours "practise" loud and shrill, Though May be cold and June be hot, Though April freeze and August grill, We'd rather be alive than not. And, sometimes, on a summer's day To self and every mortal ill We give the slip, we steal away, To lie beside some sedgy rill; The darkening years, the cares that kill, A little while are well forgot; Deep in the broom upon the hill We'd rather be alive than not. Pistol, with oaths didst thou fulfil The task thy braggart tongue begot. We eat our leek with better will, We'd rather be alive than not. GRAHAM R. TOMSON. BALLADE OF OLD INSTRUMENTS. So quaintly sadly mute they hang, We ask in vain what fingers played, What hearts were stirred, what voices sang, What songs in life's brief masquerade,-- What old-world catch or serenade, What ill-worn mirth, what mock despairs Found voice when maid or ruffling blade Sang long-forgot familiar airs. We only know that once they rang In oaken room and forest glade, Where yule logs glowed or branches swang; When earth and heaven itself were made For roistering off a Spanish raid, To drown in such life's shallower cares, Or trip in ruffs and old brocade, To long-forgot familiar airs. Dead all--a pun for every pang (So Shakespeare then the race portrayed That fought and revelled, danced and sprang Half-way to meet death undismayed); About them gather mist and shade, Yet Time ironically spares These strings on which their fingers strayed To long-forgot familiar airs. _Envoy._ Ah! child, so soon the colours fade From Watteau fêtes and Teniers fairs, You yet may seek in notes decayed _Our_ long-forgot familiar airs. MORTIMER WHEELER. BALLADE OF SEA-MUSIC. Sink, sun, in crimson far away, Float out, pale moon, above the roar, While brown and silver, flame and grey, Round rock and sand, the waters pour; For night hath clue to all the store, Of wild wave-harmony that rings, And earth hath not in all her lore, The legends that sea-music brings. Here singing silver shallows fray The ruby-tufted golden floor, Here wondrous twilight forests sway Round coral porch and corridor Where lurk----but ah; why yet implore The splendid dream that round them clings?... Where lie the dead who heard of yore The legends that sea-music brings. This is the sea that could not stay, The tides of men that evermore Rolled westward still and cleft its spray, With hollowed trunk, and dauntless oar. Here Grecian trireme reeled before, Rome's purple galley; here sea kings, Left red on wave and blackened shore The legends that sea-music brings. _Envoy._ Earth keeps not now the face she wore The smoke-trails dusk the wide white wings; No longer as of old shall soar, The legends that sea-music brings. MORTIMER WHEELER. THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE LARK. When the fairies are all for their dances drest, When day's discords in the distance fail, When the robin and wren are asleep in the nest, Then list to the note of the nightingale! But when diamonds glint on the dewy swale, When star-fires are fading spark by spark, And the little birds all the dawning hail, O hark to the song of the merry lark! When over the hills the silver crest Is pouring enchantment on mere and vale, And the world lies hushed in a dreamy rest, Then list to the note of the nightingale! But when the bright sun dight in golden mail Flames over the tree-tops in the park, And the world goes again on its busy trail, O hark to the song of the merry lark! When the young heart flutters in Mabel's breast, And Algernon's cheek for once only is pale, As the secret, half guessed, is at last confessed, Then list to the note of the nightingale! But when Corydon hides in a turn o' the dale, And Phillis is met where no one may mark, And the sudden blush and the kiss tell the tale, O hark to the song of the merry lark! _Envoi._ If Il Penseroso's mood prevail, Then list to the note of the nightingale! But whenever L'Allegro woos, then hark, O hark to the song of the merry lark! ERNEST WHITNEY. MY GRANDCHILDREN AT CHURCH. Bright Dorothy, with eyes of blue, And serious Dickie, brave as fair, Crossing to Church you oft may view When no one but myself is there: First to the belfry they repair, And while to the large ropes they cling, And make believe to call to prayer, For angels' ears the bells they ring! Next seated gravely in a pew, A pulpit homily they share, Meet for my little flock of two, Pointed and plain as they can bear: Then venture up the pulpit's stair, Pray at the desk or gaily sing: O sweet Child-life without a care- For angels' ears the bells they ring! Dear little ones, the early dew Of holy infancy they wear, And lift to Heaven a face as true As flowers that breathe the morning air: Whate'er they do, where'er they fare, They can command an angel's wing Their voices have a music rare, For angels' ears the bells they ring! O parents, of your charge beware: Their angels stand before the King: In work, play, sleep, and everywhere For angels' ears the bells they ring! RICHARD WILTON. BALLADE MADE IN THE HOT WEATHER. Fountains that frisk and sprinkle The moss they overspill; Grass that the breezes crinkle; The wheel beside the mill, With its wet, weedy frill; Wind-shadows in the wheat; A water-cart in the street; The fringe of foam that girds An islet's ferneries; A green sky's minor thirds- To live, I think of these! Of ice and glass the tinkle, Pellucid, silver-shrill; Peaches without a wrinkle; Cherries and snow, at will From china bowls that fill The senses with a sweet Incuriousness of heat; A melon's dripping sherds; Cream-clotted strawberries; Dusk dairies set with curds- To live, I think of these! Vale-lily and periwinkle; Wet stone-crop on the sill; The look of leaves a-twinkle With windlets clear and still; The feel of a forest rill That wimples fresh and fleet About one's naked feet; The muzzles of drinking herds; Lush flags and bulrushes; The chirp of rain-bound birds- To live, I think of these! _Envoy._ Dark aisles, new packs of cards, Mermaidens' tails, cool swards, Dawn dews and starlit seas, White marbles, whiter words-- To live, I think of these! W. E. HENLEY. BALLADE OF ASPIRATION. O to be somewhere by the sea, Far from the city's dust and shine, From Mammon's priests and from Mammon's shrine, From the stony street, and the grim decree That over an inkstand crooks my spine, From the books that are and the books to be, And the need that makes of the sacred Nine A school of harridans!--sweetheart mine, O to be somewhere by the sea! Under a desk I bend my knee, Whether the morn be foul or fine. I envy the tramp, in a ditch supine, Or footing it over the sunlit lea. But I struggle and write and make no sign, For a labouring ox must earn his fee, And even a journalist has to dine; But O for a breath of the eglantine! O to be somewhere by the sea! Out on the links, where the wind blows free, And the surges gush, and the rounding brine Wanders and sparkles, an air like wine Fills the senses with pride and glee. In neighbour hedges are flowers to twine, A white sail glimmers, the foamlines flee: Life, love, and laziness are a trine Worshipful, wonderful, dear, divine.... O to be somewhere by the sea! _Envoy._ Out and alas for the sweet Lang Syne, When I was rich in a certain key-- The key of the fields; and I hadn't to pine, Or to sigh in vain at the sun's decline, O to be somewhere by the Sea! W. E. HENLEY. BALLADE OF TRUISMS. Gold or silver every day, Dies to grey. There are knots in every skein. Hours of work and hours of play Fade away Into one immense Inane. Shadow and substance, chaff and grain, Are as vain As the foam or as the spray. Life goes crooning, faint and fain, One refrain-- "If it could be always May!" Though the earth be green and gay, Though, they say, Man the cup of heaven may drain; Though his little world to sway. He display Hoard on hoard of pith and brain, Autumn brings a mist and rain That constrain Him and his to know decay, Where undimmed the lights that wane Would remain, If it could be always May. _Yea_, alas, must turn to _Nay_, Flesh to clay. Chance and Time are ever twain. Men may scoff and men may pray, But they pay Every pleasure with a pain. Life may soar and Fortune deign To explain Where her prizes hide and stay; But we lack the lusty train We should gain If it could be always May. _Envoy._ Time the pedagogue his cane Might retain, But his charges all would stray Truanting in every lane-- Jack with Jane!-- If it could be always May. W. E. HENLEY. DOUBLE BALLADE OF LIFE AND FATE. Fools may pine, and sots may swill, Cynics jibe and prophets rail, Moralists may scourge and drill, Preachers prose, and faint hearts quail. Let them whine, or threat, or wail! 'Till the touch of Circumstance Down to darkness sink the scale-- Fate's a fiddler, Life's a dance. What if skies be wan and chill? What if winds be harsh and stale? Presently the East will thrill, And the sad and shrunken sail, Bellying with a kindly gale, Bear you sunwards, while your chance Sends you back the hopeful hail-- "Fate's a fiddler, Life's a dance." Idle shot or coming bill, Hapless love or broken bail, Gulp it (never chew your pill!) And if Burgundy should fail, Try a humble pot of ale! Over all is heaven's expanse. Gold exists among the shale. Fate's a fiddler, Life's a dance. Dull Sir Joskin sleeps his fill, Good Sir Galahad seeks the Grail, Proud Sir Pertinax flaunts his frill, Hard Sir Æger dints his mail; And the while, by hill and dale, Tristram's braveries gleam and glance, And his blithe horn tells its tale.... Fate's a fiddler, Life's a dance. Araminta's grand and shrill, Delia's passionate and frail, Doris drives an earnest quill, Athanasia takes the veil; Wiser Phyllis o'er her pail, At the heart of all romance Reading, sings to Strephon's flail-- Fate's a fiddler, Life's a dance. Every Jack must have his Jill, (Even Johnson had his Thrale!) Forward, couples--with a will! This, the world, is not a jail. Hear the music, sprat and whale! Hands across, retire, advance! Though the doomsman's on your trail, Fate's a Fiddler, Life's a dance. _Envoy._ Boys and girls, at slug and snail And their compeers look askance. Pay your footing on the nail: Fate's a fiddler, Life's a dance. W. E. HENLEY. DOUBLE BALLADE OF THE NOTHINGNESS OF THINGS. The big teetotum twirls, And epochs wax and wane As chance subsides or swirls; But of the loss and gain The sum is always plain. Read on the mighty pall, The weed of funeral That covers praise and blame, The isms and the anities, Magnificence and shame, "O Vanity of Vanities!" The Fates are subtile girls! They give us chaff for grain; And Time, the Thunderer, hurls, Like bolted death, disdain At all that heart and brain Conceive, or great or small, Upon this earthly ball. Would you be knight and dame? Or woo the sweet humanities? Or illustrate a name? O Vanity of Vanities! We sound the sea for pearls, Or lose them in the drain; We flute it with the merles, Or tug and sweat and strain; We grovel, or we reign; We saunter, or we brawl; We answer, or we call; We search the stars for Fame, Or sink her subterranities; The legend's still the same:-- "O Vanity of Vanities!" Here at the wine one birls, There someone clanks a chain. The flag that this man furls That man to float is fain. Pleasure gives place to pain:-- These in the kennel crawl, While others take the wall. _She_ has a glorious aim, _He_ lives for the inanities. What comes of every claim? O Vanity of Vanities! Alike are clods and earls. For sot, and seer, and swain, For emperors and for churls, For antidote and bane, There is but one refrain: But one for king and thrall, For David and for Saul, For fleet of foot and lame, For pieties and profanities, The picture and the frame-- "O Vanity of Vanities!" Life is a smoke that curls-- Curls in a flickering skein, That winds and whisks and whirls, A figment thin and vain, Into the vast Inane. One end for hut and hall! One end for cell and stall! Burned in one common flame Are wisdoms and insanities. For this alone we came:-- "O Vanity of Vanities!" _Envoi._ Prince, pride must have a fall. What is the worth of all Your state's supreme urbanities? Bad at the best's the game. Well might the sage exclaim:-- "O Vanity of Vanities!" W. E. HENLEY. BALLADE OF SLEEP. The hours are passing slow, I hear their weary tread Clang from the tower, and go Back to their kinsfolk dead. Sleep! death's twin brother dread! Why dost thou scorn me so? The wind's voice overhead Long wakeful here I know, And music from the steep, Where waters fall and flow. Wilt thou not hear me, Sleep? All sounds that might bestow Rest on the fever'd bed, All slumb'rous sounds and low Are mingled here and wed, And bring no drowsihed. Shy dreams flit to and fro With shadowy hair dispread; With wistful eyes that glow, And silent robes that sweep. Thou wilt not hear me; no? Wilt thou not hear me, Sleep? What cause hast thou to show Of sacrifice unsped? Of all thy slaves below I most have labourèd With service sung and said; Have cull'd such buds as blow, Soft poppies white and red Where thy still gardens grow And Lethe's waters weep, Why, then, art thou my foe? Wilt thou not hear me, Sleep? _Envoi._ Prince, ere the dark be sped By golden shafts, ere low And long the shadows creep: Lord of the wand of lead, Soft-footed as the snow, Wilt thou not hear me, Sleep? ANDREW LANG. THE BALLADE OF LOVELACE. My days for singing and loving are over And stark I lie in my narrow bed, I care not at all if roses cover Or if above me the snow is spread; I am weary of dreaming of my sweet dead-- Vera and Lily and Annie and May, And my soul is set on the present fray, Its piercing kisses and subtle snares: So gallants are conquered, ah wellaway, My love was stronger and fiercer than theirs. O happy moths that now flit and hover From the blossom of white to the blossom of red, Take heed, for I was a lordly lover Till the little day of my life had sped; As straight as a pine tree, a golden head, And eyes as blue as an austral bay. Ladies when loosing your satin array, Reflect, in my years had you lived my prayers Might have won you from weakly lovers away. My love was stronger and fiercer than theirs. Through the song of the thrush and the pipe of the plover Sweet voices come down through the binding lead; O queens that every age must discover For men, that Man's delight may be fed; Oh, sister queens to the queens I wed For the space of a year, a month, a day, No thirst but mine could your thirst allay; And oh, for an hour of life, my dears, To kiss you, to laugh at your lovers' dismay,-- My love was stronger and fiercer than theirs. _Envoi._ Prince was I ever of festival gay, And time never silvered my locks with grey; The love of your lovers is as hope that despairs, So think of me sometimes dear ladies I pray, My love was stronger and fiercer than theirs. GEORGE MOORE. BALLAD. I. What do we here who, with reverted eyes, Turn back our longing from the modern air To the dim gold of long-evanished skies, When other songs in other mouths were fair? Why do we stay the load of life to bear, To measure still the weary, worldly ways, Waiting upon the still-recurring sun, That ushers in another waste of days, Of roseless Junes and unenchanted Mays? Why, but because our task is yet undone? II. Were it not thus, could but our high emprise Be once fulfilled, which of us would forbear To seek that haven where contentment lies? Who would not doff at once life's load of care, To be at peace amid the silence there? Ah, who alas?--Across the heat and haze Death beckons to us in the shadow dun-- Favouring and fair--"My rest is sweet," he says; But we reluctantly avert our gaze: Why, but because our task is yet undone? III. Songs have we sung, and many melodies Have from our lips had issue rich and rare; But never yet the conquering chant did rise, That should ascend the very heaven's stair, To rescue life from anguish and despair. Often and again, drunk with delight of lays, "Lo!" have we cried, "this is the golden one That shall deliver us!"--Alas! Hope's rays Die in the distance, and Life's sadness stays. Why, but because our task is yet undone? _Envoy._ Great God of Love, thou whom all poets praise, Grant that the aim of rest for us be won; Let the light shine upon our life that strays Disconsolate within the desert maze; Why, but because our task is yet undone? JOHN PAYNE. DOUBLE BALLAD. OF THE SINGERS OF THE TIME. I. Why are our songs like the moan of the main, When the wild winds buffet it to and fro, (Our brothers ask us again and again), A weary burden of hope laid low? Have birds ceased singing or flowers to blow? Is life cast down from its fair estate? This I answer them, nothing mo', _Songs and singers are out of date._ II. What shall we sing of? Our hearts are fain, Our bosoms burn with a sterile glow. Shall we sing of the sordid strife for gain For shameful honour, for wealth and woe, Hunger and luxury--weeds that throw Up from one seeding their flowers of hate? Can we tune our lute to these themes? ah no! _Songs and singers are out of date._ III. Our songs should be of faith without stain, Of haughty honour and deaths that sow The seeds of life on the battle-plain, Of loves unsullied and eyes that show The fair white soul in the deeps below. Where are they, these that our songs await, To wake to joyance? Doth any know? _Songs and singers are out of date._ IV. What have we done with meadow and lane? Where are the flowers and the hawthorn snow? Acres of brick in the pitiless rain,---- These are our gardens for thorpe and stow! Summer has left us long ago, Gone to the lands where the turtles mate And the crickets chirp in the wild rose row; _Songs and singers are out of date._ V. We sit and sing to a world in pain, Our heartstrings quiver sadly and slow; But, aye and anon, the murmurous strain Swells up to a clangour of strife and throe, And the folks that hearken, or friend or foe, Are ware that the stress of the time is great And say to themselves, as they come and go, _Songs and singers are out of date._ VI. Winter holds us, body and brain: Ice is over our being's flow; Song is a flower that will droop and wane, If it have no heaven toward which to grow. Faith and beauty are dead, I trow Nothing is left but fear and fate: Men are weary of hope; and so _Songs and singers are out of date._ JOHN PAYNE. A BALLAD OF LOST LOVERS. Beyond the end of Paradise Where never mortal may repair, A phantom-haunted forest lies With twisted branches always bare, And here unhappy lovers fare And ever more complain their lot, Ah! pity them that wander there, _Half-remembered and half-forgot._ There Orpheus leaves his lute and cries No more on Eurydice the fair, There silent Sappho sits and sighs, Sad as the violets in her hair, And pale Francesca's heart-strings stir (She knows not why) if Launcelot Look round, and dead days call to her _Half-remembered and half-forgot._ There Jason walks with coward eyes Bent down yet seeing everywhere How fiery vested Glaucé dies, And white Medea's wild despair, Fair Rosamond and French Heaulmière, And he who sang the queenly Scot, Meet many another wanderer, _Half-remembered and half-forgot._ Alas! they never shall arise Nor leave this lonely limbo where They share not in our common skies, And know not of our sunlit air; They had their time for work and prayer, For hope and help, but used them not, Or if they dreamed that such things were, _Half-remembered and half-forgot._ _Envoy._ Lovers, I pray ye mind whene'er Your youth is proud and passion-hot, How Love itself may turn a care _Half-remembered and half-forgot._ A. MARY F. ROBINSON. A BALLAD OF HEROES. O conquerors and heroes, say- Great Kings and Captains tell me this, Now that you rest beneath the clay What profit lies in victories? Do softer flower-roots twine and kiss The whiter bones of Charlemain? Our crownless heads sleep sweet as his, _Now all your victories are in vain._ All ye who fell that summer's day When Athens lost Amphipolis, Who blinded by the briny spray Fell dead i' the sea at Salamis, You captors of Thyreatis, Who bear yourselves a heavier chain, With your young brother, Bozzaris, _Now all your victories are in vain._ And never Roman armies may Rouse Hannibal where now he is, When Cæsar makes no king obey, And fast asleep lies Lascaris; Who fears the Goths or Khan-Yenghiz? Not one of all the paynim train Can taunt us with Nicopolis, _Now all your victories are in vain._ What reck you Spartan heroes, pray, Of Arcady or Argolis? When one barbarian boy to-day Would fain be king of all of Greece. Brave knights, you would not stir I wis, Altho' the very Cross were ta'en; Not Rome itself doth Cæsar miss, _Now all your victories are in vain._ _Envoy._ O kings, bethink how little is The good of battles or the gain-- Death conquers all things with his peace _Now all your victories are in vain._ A. MARY F. ROBINSON. A BALLAD OF FRANÇOIS VILLON, PRINCE OF ALL BALLAD-MAKERS. Bird of the bitter bright grey golden morn Scarce risen upon the dusk of dolorous years, First of us all and sweetest singer born Whose far shrill note the world of new men hears Cleave the cold shuddering shade as twilight clears; When song new-born put off the old world's attire And felt its tune on her changed lips expire, Writ foremost on the roll of them that came Fresh girt for service of the latter lyre, Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name! Alas the joy, the sorrow, and the scorn, That clothed thy life with hopes and sins and fears, And gave thee stones for bread and tares for corn And plume-plucked gaol-birds for thy starveling peers Till death clipt close their flight with shameful shears; Till shifts came short and loves were hard to hire, When lilt of song nor twitch of twangling wire Could buy thee bread or kisses; when light fame Spurned like a ball and haled through brake and briar, Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name! Poor splendid wings so frayed and soiled and torn! Poor kind wild eyes so dashed with light quick tears! Poor perfect voice, most blithe when most forlorn, That rings athwart the sea whence no man steers Like joy-bells crossed with death-bells in our ears! What far delight has cooled the fierce desire That like some ravenous bird was strong to tire On that frail flesh and soul consumed with flame, But left more sweet than roses to respire, Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name? _Envoi._ Prince of sweet songs made out of tears and fire, A harlot was thy nurse, a God thy sire; Shame soiled thy song, and song assoiled thy shame. But from thy feet now death has washed the mire, Love reads out first at head of all our quire, Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. THE EPITAPH IN FORM OF A BALLAD Which Villon made for himself and his comrades, expecting to be hanged along with them. Men, brother men, that after us yet live, Let not your hearts too hard against us be; For if some pity of us poor men ye give, The sooner God shall take of you pity. Here are we five or six strung up, you see, And here the flesh that all too well we fed Bit by bit eaten and rotten, rent and shred, And we the bones grow dust and ash withal; Let no man laugh at us discomforted, But pray to God that he forgive us all. If we call on you, brothers, to forgive, Ye should not hold our prayer in scorn, though we Were slain by law; ye know that all alive Have not wit alway to walk righteously; Make therefore intercession heartily With him that of a virgin's womb was bred, That his grace be not as a dry well-head For us, nor let hell's thunder on us fall; We are dead, let no man harry or vex us dead, But pray to God that he forgive us all. The rain has washed and laundered us all five, And the sun dried and blackened; yea, per die, Ravens and pies with beaks that rend and rive, Have dug our eyes out, and plucked off for fee Our beards and eyebrows; never are we free, Not once, to rest; but here and there still sped, Drive at its wild will by the wind's change led, More pecked of birds than fruits on garden-wall. Men, for God's love, let no gibe here be said, But pray to God that he forgive us all. Prince Jesus, that of all art lord and head, Keep us, that hell be not our bitter bed; We have nought to do in such a master's hall. Be not ye therefore of our fellowhead, But pray to God that he forgive us all. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. A BALLAD OF BATH. Like a queen enchanted who may not laugh or weep, Glad at heart and guarded from change and care like ours, Girt about with beauty by days and nights that creep Soft as breathless ripples that softly shoreward sweep, Lies the lovely city whose grace no grief deflowers. Age and grey forgetfulness, time that shifts and veers, Touch thee not, our fairest, whose charm no rival nears, Hailed as England's Florence of one whose praise gives grace, Landor, once thy lover, a name that love reveres: Dawn and noon and sunset are one before thy face. Dawn whereof we know not, and noon whose fruit we reap, Garnered up in record of years that fell like flowers; Sunset liker sunrise along the shining steep Whence thy fair face lightens, and where thy soft springs leap, Crown at once and gird thee with grace of guardian powers. Loved of men beloved of us, souls that fame inspheres, All thine air hath music for him who dreams and hears; Voices mixed of multitudes, feet of friends that pace, Witness why for ever, if heaven's face clouds or clears, Dawn and noon and sunset are one before thy face. Peace hath here found harbourage mild as very sleep: Not the hills and waters, the fields and wildwood bowers, Smile or speak more tenderly, clothed with peace more deep, Here than memory whispers of days our memories keep Fast with love and laughter and dreams of withered hours. Bright were these as blossom of old, and thought endears Still the fair soft phantoms that pass with smiles or tears, Sweet as roseleaves hoarded and dried wherein we trace Still the soul and spirit of sense that lives and cheers: Dawn and noon and sunset are one before thy face. City lulled asleep by the chime of passing years, Sweeter smiles thy rest than the radiance round thy peers; Only love and lovely remembrance here have place. Time on thee lies lighter than music on men's ears; Dawn and noon and sunset are one before thy face. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. A BALLAD OF SARK. High beyond the granite portal arched across, Like the gateway of some godlike giant's hold Sweep and swell the billowy breasts of moor and moss East and westward, and the dell their slopes enfold. Basks in purple, glows in green, exults in gold. Glens that know the dove and fells that hear the lark Fill with joy the rapturous island, as an ark Full of spicery wrought from herb and flower and tree, None would dream that grief even here may disembark On the wrathful woful marge of earth and sea. Rocks emblazoned like the mid shield's royal boss Take the sun with all their blossom broad and bold. None would dream that all this moorland's glow and gloss Could be dark as tombs that strike the spirit acold, Even in eyes that opened here, and here behold Now no sun relume from hope's belated spark, Any comfort, nor may ears of mourners hark Though the ripe woods ring with golden-throated glee, While the soul lies shattered, like a stranded bark On the wrathful woful marge of earth and sea. Death and doom are they whose crested triumphs toss On the proud plumed waves whence mourning notes are tolled. Wail of perfect woe and moan for utter loss Raise the bride-song through the graveyard on the wold Where the bride-bed keeps the bridegroom fast in mould, Where the bride, with death for priest and doom for clerk, Hears for choir the throats of waves like wolves that bark, Sore anhungered, off the drear Eperquerie, Fain to spoil the strongholds of the strength of Sark On the wrathful woful marge of earth and sea. Prince of storm and tempest, lord whose ways are dark, Wind whose wings are spread for flight that none may mark, Lightly dies the joy that lives by grace of thee. Love through thee lies bleeding, hope lies cold and stark, On the wrathful woful marge of earth and sea. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. THE DANCE OF DEATH. (_Chant Royal, after Holbein._) "_Contra vim_ MORTIS _Non est medicamen in hortis._" He is the despots' Despot. All must bide, Later or soon, the message of his might; Princes and potentates their heads must hide, Touched by the awful sigil of his right; Beside the Kaiser he at eve doth wait And pours a potion in his cup of state; The stately Queen his bidding must obey; No keen-eyed Cardinal shall him affray; And to the Dame that wantoneth he saith-- "Let be, Sweetheart, to junket and to play...." There is no king more terrible than Death. The lusty Lord, rejoicing in his pride, He draweth down; before the armèd Knight With jingling bridle-rein he still doth ride; He crosseth the strong Captain in the fight; He beckons the grave Elder from debate, He hales the Abbot by his shaven pate, Nor for the Abbess' wailing will delay; No bawling Mendicant shall say him nay; E'en to the pyx the Priest he followeth, Nor can the Leech his chilling finger stay.... There is no king more terrible than Death. All things must bow to him. And woe betide The Wine-bibber,--the Roisterer by night; Him the feast-master, many bouts defied, Him 'twixt the pledging and the cup shall smite; Woe to the Lender at usurious rate, The hard Rich Man, the hireling Advocate; Woe to the Judge that selleth right for pay; Woe to the Thief that like a beast of prey With creeping tread the traveller hurryeth:-- These, in their sin, the sudden sword shall slay.... There is no king more terrible than Death. He hath no pity,--nor will be denied. When the low hearth is garnishèd and bright, Grimly he flingeth the dim portal wide, And steals the Infant in the Mother's sight; He hath no pity for the scorned of fate:-- He spares not Lazarus lying at the gate, Nay, nor the Blind that stumbleth as he may; Nay, the tired Ploughman,--at the sinking ray,-- In the last furrow,--feels an icy breath, And knows a hand hath turned the team astray.... There is no king more terrible than Death. He hath no pity. For the new-made Bride, Blithe with the promise of her life's delight, That wanders gladly by her Husband's side, He with the clatter of his drum doth fright; He scares the Virgin at the convent grate; The maid half-won, the Lover passionate; He hath no grace for weakness or decay: The tender Wife, the Widow bent and grey,-- The feeble Sire whose footstep faltereth,-- All these he leadeth by the lonely way.... There is no king more terrible than Death. _Envoy._ YOUTH, for whose ear and monishing of late, I sang of Prodigals and lost estate, Have thou thy joy of living and be gay; But know not less that there must come a day,-- Aye, and perchance e'en now it hasteneth,-- When thine own heart shall speak to thee and say,-- There is no king more terrible than Death. AUSTIN DOBSON. THE PRAISE OF DIONYSUS. (Chant Royal.) Behold, above the mountains there is light, A streak of gold, a line of gathering fire, And the dim East hath suddenly grown bright With pale aerial flame, that drives up higher The lurid mists that, of the night aware, Breasted the dark ravines and coverts bare; Behold, behold! the granite gates unclose, And down the vales a lyric people flows, Who dance to music, and in dancing fling Their frantic robes to every wind that blows, And deathless praises to the vine-god sing. Nearer they press, and nearer still in sight, Still dancing blithely in a seemly choir; Tossing on high the symbol of their rite, The cone-tipped thyrsus of a god's desire; Nearer they come, tall damsels flushed and fair, With ivy circling their abundant hair, Onward, with even pace, in stately rows, With eye that flashes, and with cheek that glows, And all the while their tribute songs they bring, And newer glories of the past disclose, And deathless praises to their vine-god sing. The pure luxuriance of their limbs is white, And flashes clearer as they draw the nigher, Bathed in an air of infinite delight, Smooth without wound of thorn or fleck of mire, Born up by song as by a trumpet's blare, Leading the van to conquest, on they fare; Fearless and bold, whoever comes or goes, These shining cohorts of Bacchantes close, Shouting and shouting till the mountains ring, And forests grim forget their ancient woes, And deathless praises to the vine-god sing. And youths are there for whom full many a night Brought dreams of bliss, vague dreams that haunt and tire, Who rose in their own ecstasy bedight, And wandered forth through many a scourging briar, And waited shivering in the icy air, And wrapped their leopard-skins about them there, Knowing, for all the bitter air that froze, The time must come, that every poet knows, When he shall rise and feel himself a king, And follow, follow where the ivy grows, And deathless praises to the vine-god sing. But oh! within the heart of this great flight, What ivory arms held up the golden lyre? What form is this of more than mortal height What matchless beauty, what inspirèd ire? The brindled panthers know the prize they bear, And harmonise their steps with stately care; Bent to the morning like a living rose, The immortal splendour of his face he shows, And where he glances, leaf and flower and wing Tremble with rapture, stirred in their repose, And deathless praises to the vine-god sing. _Envoi._ Prince of the flute and ivy, all thy foes Record the bounty that thy grace bestows, But we, thy servants, to thy glory cling; And with no frigid lips our songs compose, And deathless praises to the vine-god sing. EDMUND GOSSE. THE GOD OF LOVE. (Chant Royal.) I. O most fair God, O Love both new and old, That wast before the flowers of morning blew, Before the glad sun in his mail of gold Leapt into light across the first day's dew; That art the first and last of our delight, That in the blue day and the purple night Holdest the hearts of servant and of king, Lord of liesse, sovran of sorrowing, That in thy hand hast heaven's golden key And Hell beneath the shadow of thy wing, Thou art my Lord to whom I bend the knee. II. What thing rejects thy mastery? who so bold But at thine altars in the dusk they sue? Even the strait pale goddess, silver-stoled, That kissed Endymion when the Spring was new, To thee did homage in her own despite, When in the shadow of her wings of white She slid down trembling from her moonèd ring To where the Latmian boy lay slumbering, And in that kiss put off cold chastity. Who but acclaim with voice and pipe and string, "Thou art my Lord to whom I bend the knee?" III. Master of men and gods, in every fold Of thy wide vans the sorceries that renew The labouring earth, tranced with the winter's cold, Lie hid--the quintessential charms that woo The souls of flowers, slain with the sullen might Of the dead year, and draw them to the light. Balsam and blessing to thy garments cling; Skyward and seaward, when thy white hands fling Their spells of healing over land and sea, One shout of homage makes the welkin ring, "Thou art my Lord to whom I bend the knee!" IV. I see thee throned aloft; thy fair hands hold Myrtles for joy, and euphrasy and rue: Laurels and roses round thy white brows rolled, And in thine eyes the royal heaven's hue: But in thy lips' clear colour, ruddy bright, The heart's blood shines of many a hapless wight. Thou are not only fair and sweet as spring; Terror and beauty, fear and wondering Meet on thy brow, amazing all that see: All men do praise thee, ay, and everything; Thou art my Lord to whom I bend the knee. V. I fear thee, though I love. Who can behold The sheer sun burning in the orbèd blue, What while the noontide over hill and wold Flames like a fire, except his mazèd view Wither and tremble? So thy splendid sight Fills me with mingled gladness and affright. Thy visage haunts me in the wavering Of dreams, and in the dawn awakening, I feel thy radiance streaming full on me. Both fear and joy unto thy feet I bring; Thou art my Lord to whom I bend the knee! _Envoy._ God above Gods, High and Eternal King, To whom the spheral symphonies do sing, I find no whither from thy power to flee, Save in thy pinions vast o'ershadowing. Thou art my Lord to whom I bend the knee. JOHN PAYNE. THE CHANT OF THE CHILDREN OF THE MIST. (Chant Royal.) I waited on a mountain's midmost side, The lifting of a cloud, and standing there, Keeping my soul in patience far and wide Beheld faint shadows wandering, felt the air Stirred as with voices which in passing by Still dulled its weary weight with many a sigh. No band of pilgrims or of soldiers they-- These children of the mist--who took their way, Each one aloof, perplexed and pondering With steps untimed to music grave or gay;-- This was a people that had lost its king. In happier days of old it was their pride To serve him on their knee and some were 'ware E'en of his voice or presence as they plied Their daily task, or ate their simple fare. Now in new glory shrouded, far and nigh He had withdrawn himself from ear and eye; Scorning such service as they knew to pay, His ministers were as the golden ray Shot from the sun when he would wake the spring,-- Swift to perform and pliant to obey-- This was a people that had lost its king. Single as beasts, or if allied, allied But as the wolf who leaves his dusky lair To hound for common need, which scarce supplied, He lone returns with his disputed share,-- Even so sole, so scornful, or so shy, Each man of these pursued his way on high, Still high and higher, seeking through the grey Gloom of the mist, the lord of yesterday. Dim, serviceless, bereft and sorrowing Shadows continuing never in one stay;-- This was a people that had lost its king. Then as the day wore on, and none descried The longed-for presence, as the way grew bare, As strength declined, and hope within them died A sad new birth,--the fruit of their despair,-- Stirred in their midst, and with a human cry Awoke a human love, and flushed a dry Sweet spring of tears, whose fertilising play Broke up the hard cold barriers of their clay, Till hands were stretched in help, or seen to cling In fealty that was only joined to pray; This was a people that had lost its king. So blent in heart and hand, so myriad-eyed, With gathering power and ever lessening care, The veiled beguilements of the way defied They cleave the cloud, and climb that mountain fair; Till lo upon its crown at last they vie In songs of rapture as they hail the sky, And trace their lost one through the vast array Of tuneful suns, which keep not now at bay Their questing love, but help to waft and wing; And over all a voice which seems to say, This is a people that has found its king! _Envoy._ Lord of our lives! Thou scorned us that day When at thy feet a scattered host we lay. Behold us ONE! One mighty heart we bring, Strong for thy tasks, and level to thy sway. This was the people that had lost its king! EMILY PFEIFFER. KING BOREAS. (Chant Royal.) I sit enthroned 'mid icy wastes afar, Beyond the level land of endless snow, For months I see the brilliant polar star Shine on a shore, the lonelier none may know. Supreme I rule in monarchy of might,-- My realms are boundless as the realms of Night. Proud court I hold, and tremblingly obey My many minions from the isles of Day; And when my heralds sound aloud, behold My slaves appear with suppliant heads alway! I am great Boreas, King of wind and cold. I am the god of the winds that are! I blow where'er I list,--I come, I go. Athwart the sky upon my cloud-capped car I rein my steeds, swift-prancing to and fro. The dreary woodlands shudder in affright To hear my clarion on the mountain height. The sobbing sea doth moan in pain, and pray, "Is there no refuge from the storm-king's sway?" I am as aged as the earth is old, Yet strong am I although my locks are grey; I am great Boreas, King of wind and cold. I loose my chains, and then with awful jar And presage of disaster and dire woe, Out rush the storms and sound the clash of war 'Gainst all the earth, and shrill their bugles blow. I bid them haste; they bound in eager flight Toward far fair lands, where'er the sun's warm light Makes mirth and joyance; there, in rude affray, They trample down, despoil, and crush and slay. They turn green meadows to a desert wold, And naught for rulers of the earth care they;-- I am great Boreas, King of wind and cold. When in the sky, a lambent scimitar, In early eve Endymion's bride doth glow, When night is perfect, and no cloud doth mar The peace of nature, when the rivers flow Is soft and musical, and when the sprite Whispers to lovers on each breeze bedight With fragrance, then I steal forth, as I may, And seize upon whate'er I will for prey. I see the billows high as hilltops rolled, And clutch and flaunt aloft the snowy spray! I am great Boreas, King of wind and cold. I am in league with Death. When I unbar My triple-guarded doors, and there bestow Upon my frost-fiends freedom, bid them scar The brightest dales with summer blooms a-row, They breathe on every bower a deadly blight, And all is sere and withered in their sight. Unheeded now, Apollo's warming ray Wakes not the flower, for my chill breezes play Where once soft zephyrs swayed the marigold, And where his jargon piped the noisy jay,-- I am great Boreas, King of wind and cold. _Envoy._ O Princes, hearken what my trumpets say!-- "Man's life is naught, no mortal lives for aye; His might hath empire only of the mold," Boast not yourselves, ye fragile forms of clay! I am great Boreas, King of wind and cold. CLINTON SCOLLARD. THE NEW EPIPHANY. (Chant Royal.) Awake, awake, nay, slumber not, nor sleep! Forth from the dreamland and black dome of night, From chaos and thick darkness, from the deep Of formless being, comes a gracious light, Gilding the crystal seas, and casting round A golden glory on the enchanted ground;-- Awake, O souls of harmony, and ye That greet the dayspring with your jubilee Of lute and harp! Awake, awake, and bring Your well-tuned cymbals, and go forth with glee, Go forth, and welcome the eternal king. Far o'er the hills have not the watchful sheep Espied their shepherd, and with eager flight Gone forth to meet him on the craggy steep; Hasting the while his summoning notes invite Where riper grasses and green herbs abound:-- But ye! your shepherd calls, thrice happy sound! He comes, he comes, your shepherd king, 'tis he! Oh, quit these close-cropped meads, and gladly flee To him who makes once more new growths upspring; Oh, quit your ancient glebes,--oh, joyfully Go forth, and welcome the eternal king. Too long ye till exhausted lands and reap Thin crops that ne'er your weary toil requite: Too long your laggard oxen labouring creep Up the wide furrows, and full idly smite The weed-encircled ridge, the rocky mound: Will ye not quit these fields now barren found? Ah! ye are old, yet not too old to be Brave travellers o'er bald custom's boundary;-- Then each, let each his robe around him fling, And with his little one, his child, set free, Go forth, and welcome the eternal king. See, on the strand, watching the waves that sweep Their creamy ripples up the sandy bight, Your child waits, leaping as the wavelets leap, The faery infant of the infinite! Ah! happy child, with what new wonders crowned He'll turn to thee to fathom and expound; Asking, enquiring, looking unto thee To solve the universe, its destiny;-- And still unto thy vestment's hem will cling, Asking, enquiring,--whispering, may not we Go forth, and welcome the eternal king. Oh, linger not, no longer vainly weep O'er vanished hopes, but with new strength unite; Oh, linger not! But let your glad eyes keep Watch on this guiding star that beams so bright Around your brows be this phylacter bound,-- _Let Truth be king and let his praise resound!_ Oh, linger not! Let earth, and sky, and sea, To sound his praises let all hearts agree; Still loud, and louder, let your pæans ring, Go forth, go forth, in glad exultancy Go forth, and welcome the eternal king. _Envoy._ Thou art the king, O Truth! we bend the knee To thee; we own thy wondrous sovranty; And still thy praises in our songs we'll sing, Bidding all people with blithe minstrelsy Go forth, and welcome the eternal king. SAMUEL WADDINGTON. THE GLORY OF THE YEAR. When Spring came softly breathing o'er the land, With warmer sunshine and sweet April shower; Bidding the silken willow leaves expand; Calling to hill and meadow, bee and flower, Bright with new life and beauty; on light wing Bringing the birds again to love and sing; And waking in the heart its joy amain, With old fond hopes and memories in its train; Childishly glad mid universal cheer, How oft we sang the half-forgotten strain: "_Now_ we behold the glory of the year!" When Summer by her fervid breezes fanned, With footstep free and proud in restless power, With plump, round cheek to ruddy beauty tanned, In blooming loveliness came to her bower, Her golden tresses loosely wandering In wild luxuriance,--then pretty Spring Seemed but a playful sister, pettish, vain. How well we loved the passionate Summer's reign! How day by day our empress grew more dear! "Beyond," we asked, "what fairer can remain? _Now_ we behold the glory of the year!" But when grave Autumn's ever bounteous hand Poured round our feet the riches of her dower: The pulpy fruit, the nut's sweet ripened gland, The largess free to gleaner and to plower, And all the Summer sought in vain to bring; When stood the hills in glorious garmenting; Shadowed by low-hung skies of sober grain, No more could our ennobled thoughts sustain Regretful memory of Summer sere,-- "What of the past!" we cried in quick disdain; "_Now_ we behold the glory of the year!" Then before mighty Winter, stern and grand, We saw defenceless Autumn shivering, cower, Changed to Duessa by his potent wand, Shorn of her loveliness, in Fortune's lower Naked for Winter's scourge to smite and sting. How godlike came the world's new sceptered King! He fettered fast her torrents with his chain, Bound with his manacles the moaning main, Yea, wrought his will with all things far and near. "At last," we said, "what more can Time attain? _Now_ we behold the glory of the year!" Neglected Spring, despised, insulted, banned! Poor weakling! came again one April hour, The tyrant struck his tent at her command; She laughed,--down tumbling fell his frosty tower; At one light finger-touch his captives fling Their shackles off and make the valleys ring With praises to the conqueror of pain. All the lost lives that languishing have lain, Leaves, grasses, buds, and birds again appear, "O now!" we cried again and yet again, "_Now_ we behold the glory of the year!" Prince, while Spring sports with sunbeam, flower, and rain,-- While wanton Summer riots on the plain,-- 'Neath Autumn's calm, or Winter's frown severe, Change only clearer chants the old refrain, "_Now_ we behold the glory of the year!" ERNEST WHITNEY. #The Kyrielle, Pantoum, and Rondeau Redouble.# _Qui voudra sçavoir la pratique_ _De cette rime juridique,_ _Je dis que bien mise en effet_ _La Kyrielle ainsi se fait._ _De plante de sillabes huit_ _Usez en donc si bien vous duit;_ _Pour faire le couplet parfait_ _La Kirielle ainsi si fait._ --THEODORE DE BANVILLE. KYRIELLE. A lark in the mesh of the tangled vine, A bee that drowns in the flower-cup's wine, A fly in the sunshine,--such is man. All things must end, as all began. A little pain, a little pleasure, A little heaping up of treasure; Then no more gazing upon the sun. All things must end that have begun. Where is the time for hope or doubt? A puff of the wind, and life is out; A turn of the wheel, and rest is won. All things must end that have begun. Golden morning and purple night, Life that fails with the failing light; Death is the only deathless one. All things must end that have begun. Ending waits on the brief beginning; Is the prize worth the stress of winning? E'en in the dawning the day is done. All things must end that have begun. Weary waiting and weary striving, Glad outsetting and sad arriving; What is it worth when the goal is won? All things must end that have begun. Speedily fades the morning glitter; Love grows irksome and wine grows bitter. Two are parted from what was one. All things must end that have begun. Toil and pain and the evening rest; Joy is weary and sleep is best; Fair and softly the day is done. All things must end that have begun. JOHN PAYNE. THE PAVILION. In the tent the lamps were bright; Out beyond the summer night Thrilled and quivered like a star: _We beneath were left so far._ From the depths of blue profound Never any sight or sound Came our loneliness to mar: _We beneath were left so far._ But against the summer sky Only you stood out and I; From all other things that are _We beneath were left so far._ A. MARY F. ROBINSON. KYRIELLE. In spring Love came, a welcome guest, And tarried long at my behest; Now autumn wanes, the skies are grey But loyal Love flees not away. I charmed him with melodious lays Through long rose-scented summer days; My songs no more are clear and gay But loyal Love flees not away. We plucked and twined the myrtle flowers, Made joyance in the sylvan bowers; The blooms have died, wild winds hold sway, But loyal Love flees not away. Gone are the fifing crickets, gone The feathered harbingers of dawn, And gone the woodland's bright display, But loyal Love flees not away. With intermingled light and shade The shifting seasons come and fade; Our fond hopes fail, false friends betray, But loyal Love flees not away! CLINTON SCOLLARD. IN TOWN. "The blue fly sung in the pane."--_Tennyson._ Toiling in Town now is "horrid" (There is that woman again!)-- June in the zenith is torrid, Thought gets dry in the brain. There is that woman again: "Strawberries! fourpence a pottle!" Thought gets dry in the brain; Ink gets dry in the bottle. "Strawberries! fourpence a pottle!" Oh for the green of a lane!-- Ink gets dry in the bottle; "Buzz" goes a fly in the pane! Oh for the green of a lane, Where one might lie and be lazy! "Buzz" goes a fly in the pane; Bluebottles drive me crazy! Where one might lie and be lazy, Careless of Town and all in it!-- Bluebottles drive me crazy: I shall go mad in a minute! Careless of Town and all in it, With some one to soothe and to still you; I shall go mad in a minute, Bluebottle, then I shall kill you! With some one to soothe and to still you, As only one's feminine kin do,-- Bluebottle, then I shall kill you: There now! I've broken the window! As only one's feminine kin do,-- Some muslin-clad Mabel or May!-- There now! I've broken the window! Bluebottle's off and away! Some muslin-clad Mabel or May, To dash one with eau de Cologne;-- Bluebottle's off and away, And why should I stay here alone? To dash one with eau de Cologne, All over one's eminent forehead; And why should I stay here alone? Toiling in Town now is "horrid." AUSTIN DOBSON. MONOLOGUE D'OUTRE TOMBE. (Pantoum.) Morn and noon and night, Here I lie in the ground; No faintest glimmer of light, No lightest whisper of sound. Here I lie in the ground; The worms glide out and in; No lightest whisper of sound, After a life-long din. The worms glide out and in; They are fruitful and multiply; After a life-long din, I watch them quietly. They are fruitful and multiply, My body dwindles the while; I watch them quietly; I can scarce forbear a smile. My body dwindles the while, I shall soon be a skeleton; I can scarce forbear a smile They have had such glorious fun. I shall soon be a skeleton, The worms are wriggling away; They have had such glorious fun, They will fertilise my clay. The worms are wriggling away, They are what I have been, They will fertilise my clay. The grass will grow more green. They are what I have been. I shall change, but what of that? The grass will grow more green, The parson's sheep grow fat. I shall change, but what of that? All flesh is grass, one says, The parson's sheep grow fat, The parson grows in grace. All flesh is grass, one says, Grass becomes flesh, one knows, The parson grows in grace; I am the grace he grows. Grass becomes flesh, one knows, He grows like a bull of Bashan. I am the grace he grows; I startle his congregation. He grows like a bull of Bashan, One day he'll be Bishop or Dean, I startle his congregation: One day I shall preach to the Q--n. One day he'll be Bishop or Dean, One of those science-haters; One day I shall preach to the Q--n. To think of my going in gaiters! One of those science-haters, Blind as a mole or bat; To think of my going in gaiters, And wearing a shovel hat! Blind as a mole or bat, No faintest glimmer of light, And wearing a shovel hat, Morning and noon and night. "_Love in Idleness._" PANTOUM. (Song in the Malay manner.) The wind brings up the hawthorn's breath. The sweet airs ripple up the lake: My soul, my soul is sick to death, My heart, my heart is like to break. The sweet airs ripple up the lake, I hear the thin woods' fluttering: My heart, my heart is like to break; What part have I, alas! in spring? I hear the thin woods' fluttering; The brake is brimmed with linnet-song: What part have I, alas! in spring? For me, heart's winter is life-long. The brake is brimmed with linnet song; Clear carols flutter through the trees; For me heart's winter is life-long; I cast my sighs on every breeze. Clear carols flutter through the trees; The new year hovers like a dove: I cast my sighs on every breeze; Spring is no spring, forlorn of love. The new year hovers like a dove Above the breast of the green earth: Spring is no spring, forlorn of love; Alike to me are death and birth. Above the breast of the green earth The soft sky flutters like a flower: Alike to me are death and birth; I dig Love's grave in every hour. The soft sky flutters like a flower Along the glory of the hills: I dig Love's grave in every hour, I hear Love's dirge in all the rills. Along the glory of the hills Flowers slope into a rim of gold: I hear Love's dirge in all the rills; Sad singings haunt me as of old. Flowers slope into a rim of gold Along the marges of the sky: Sad singings haunt me as of old; Shall Love come back to me to die? Along the marges of the sky The birds wing homeward from the East: Shall Love come back to me to die? Shall Hope relive, once having ceas'd? The birds wing homeward from the East; I smell spice-breaths upon the air: Shall Hope relive, once having ceas'd? It would lie black on my despair. I smell spice-breaths upon the air; The golden Orient savours pass: Hope would lie black on my despair, Like a moon-shadow on the grass. The golden Orient savours pass: The full spring throbs in all the shade: Like a moon-shadow on the grass, My hope into the dusk would fade. The full spring throbs in all the shade; We shall have roses soon, I trow; My hope into the dusk would fade; Bring lilies on Love's grave to strow. We shall have roses soon I trow; Soon will the rich red poppies burn: Bring lilies on Love's grave to strow: My hope is fled beyond return. Soon will the rich red poppies burn; Soon will blue iris star the stream: My hope is fled beyond return; Have my eyes tears for my waste dream? Soon will blue iris star the stream; Summer will turn the air to wine: Have my eyes tears for my waste dream? Can songs come from these lips of mine? Summer will turn the air to wine, So full and sweet the mid-spring flowers: Can songs come from those lips of mine? My thoughts are grey as winter hours. So full and sweet the mid-spring flowers. The wind brings up the hawthorn's breath; My thoughts are grey as winter hours; My soul, my soul is sick to death. JOHN PAYNE. EN ROUTE. (Pantoum.) Here we are riding the rail, Gliding from out of the station; Man though I am, I am pale, Certain of heat and vexation. Gliding from out of the station, Out from the city we thrust; Certain of heat and vexation, Sure to be covered with dust. Out from the city we thrust: Rattling we run o'er the bridges: Sure to be covered with dust, Stung by a thousand of midges. Rattling we dash o'er the bridges, Rushing we dash o'er the plain; Stung by a thousand of midges, Certain precursors of rain. Rushing we dash o'er the plain, Watching the clouds darkly lowering, Certain precursors of rain: Fields about here need a showering. Watching the clouds darkly lowering,-- Track here is high on a bank-- Fields about here need a showering, Boy with the books needs a spank. Track here is high on a bank, Just by a wretched old hovel: Boy with the books needs a spank-- "No! I don't want a new novel!" Just by a wretched old hovel, Small speck of dust in my eye. "No! I don't want a new novel!" --Babies beginning to cry.-- Small speck of dust in my eye, "I will not buy papers or candy!" --Babies beginning to cry--. Oh, for a tomahawk handy! "I will not buy papers or candy!" Train boys deserve to be slain; Oh, for a tomahawk handy! Oh, for the cool of the rain! Train boys deserve to be slain, Heat and the dust--they are choking Oh, for the cool of the rain! --"Gent" just behind me is joking. Heat and the dust, they are choking, Clogging and filling my pores; --"Gent" just behind me is joking, "Gent" just in front of me snores. Clogging and filling my pores, Ears are on edge at the rattle; "Gent" just in front of me snores, Sounds like the noise of a battle. Ears are on edge at the rattle, Man tho' I am, I am pale, Sounds like the noise of a battle, Here we are riding the rail. BRANDER MATTHEWS. IN THE SULTAN'S GARDEN. (Pantoum.) She oped the portal of the palace, She stole into the garden's gloom; From every spotless snowy chalice The lilies breathed a sweet perfume. She stole into the garden's gloom, She thought that no one would discover; The lilies breathed a sweet perfume, She swiftly ran to meet her lover. She thought that no one would discover, But footsteps followed ever near; She swiftly ran to meet her lover Beside the fountain crystal clear. But footsteps followed ever near; Ah, who is that she sees before her Beside the fountain crystal clear? 'Tis not her hazel-eyed adorer. Ah, who is that she sees before her, His hand upon his scimitar? 'Tis not her hazel-eyed adorer, It is her lord of Candahar! His hand upon his scimitar-- Alas, what brought such dread disaster! It is her lord of Candahar, The fierce Sultan, her lord and master. Alas, what brought such dread disaster! "Your pretty lover's dead!" he cries-- The fierce Sultan, her lord and master-- "'Neath yonder tree his body lies." "Your pretty lover's dead!" he cries-- (A sudden, ringing voice behind him); "'Neath yonder tree his body lies--" "Die, lying dog! go thou and find him!" A sudden, ringing voice behind him, A deadly blow, a moan of hate, "Die, lying dog! go thou and find him! Come, love, our steeds are at the gate!" A deadly blow, a moan of hate, His blood ran red as wine in chalice; "Come, love, our steeds are at the gate!" She oped the portal of the palace. CLINTON SCOLLARD. RONDEAU REDOUBLÉ. My soul is sick of nightingale and rose, The perfume and the darkness of the grove; I weary of the fevers and the throes, And all the enervating dreams of love. At morn I love to hear the lark, and rove The meadows, where the simple daisy shows Her guiltless bosom to the skies above-- My soul is sick of nightingale and rose. The afternoon is sweet, and sweet repose, But let me lie where breeze-blown branches move. I hate the stillness where the sunbeams doze, The perfume and the darkness of the grove. I love to hear at eve the gentle dove Contented coo the day's delightful close. She sings of love and all the calm thereof,-- I weary of the fevers and the throes. I love the night, who like a mother throws Her arms round hearts that throbbed and limbs that strove, As kind as Death, that puts an end to woes And all the enervating dreams of love. Because my soul is sick of fancies wove Of fervid ecstasies and crimson glows; Because the taste of cinnamon and clove Palls on my palate--let no man suppose My soul is sick. COSMO MONKHOUSE. RONDEAU REDOUBLÉ. My day and night are in my lady's hand; I have no other sunrise than her sight; For me her favour glorifies the land; Her anger darkens all the cheerful light. Her face is fairer than the hawthorn white, When all a-flower in May the hedgerows stand; While she is kind, I know of no affright; My day and night are in my lady's hand. All heaven in her glorious eyes is spanned; Her smile is softer than the summer's night, Gladder than daybreak on the Faery strand; I have no other sunrise than her sight. Her silver speech is like the singing flight Of runnels rippling o'er the jewelled sand; Her kiss a dream of delicate delight; For me her favour glorifies the land. What if the Winter chase the Summer bland! The gold sun in her hair burns ever bright. If she be sad, straightway all joy is banned; Her anger darkens all the cheerful light. Come weal or woe, I am my lady's knight And in her service every ill withstand; Love is my Lord in all the world's despite And holdeth in the hollow of his hand My day and night. JOHN PAYNE. THE PRAYER OF DRYOPE. (Rondeau Redoublé.) O goddess sweet, give ear unto my prayer. Come with thy doves across the briny sea, Leave thy tall fanes and thy rose gardens rare, From cruel bondage set thy vot'ress free! Ah how my heart would joy again to be Like chirming bird that cleaves the sunny air, Like wildwood roe that bounds in ecstasy; O goddess sweet, give ear unto my prayer! That I am innocent hast thou no care Of crime against celestial deity? Must I the fate of lovely Lotis share?-- Come with thy doves across the briny sea! I hear no waters' silvern melody, And yet the rippling water once was there, And on its bloomy banks I worshipped thee;-- Leave thy tall fanes and thy rose gardens rare! Could I but feel my boy's hands on my hair, Could I but kiss my sister Iole, Then bravely would I cast forth chill despair, From cruel bondage set thy vot'ress free! I, who was once the blithesome Dryope, Am now a tree bole, cold and brown and bare; Pity, I pray, my ceaseless agony, Or grant forgetfulness of all things fair, O goddess sweet. CLINTON SCOLLARD. RONDEAU REDOUBLÉ. I will go hence, and seek her, my old Love; All bramble-laced, and moss-grown is the way, There is no sun, nor broad, red moon above, The year is old, he said, and skies are grey. The rose-wreaths fade, the viols are not gay, That which seemed sweet doth passing bitter prove; So sweet _she_ was, she will not say me nay-- I will go hence and seek her, my old Love. Low, labouring sighs stirred coldly through the grove, Where buds unblossomed on the mosses lay; His upraised hands the dusky tangle clove, "All bramble-laced and moss-grown is the way!" With grievous eyes, and lips that smiled alway, Strange, flitting shapes, wreathed round him as he strove Their spectral arms, and filmy green array; There was no sun, nor broad red moon above. Here lies her lute--and here her slender glove; (Her bower well won, sweet joy shall crown the day); But her he saw not, vanished was his Love, The year is old, he said, and skies are grey. The wrong was mine! he cried. I left my dove (He flung him down upon the weeping clay), And now I find her flown--ah wellaway! The house is desolate that held my Love, I will go hence. GRAHAM R. TOMSON. THE SICILIAN OCTAVE DESCRIBED AND EXEMPLIFIED. To thee, fair Isle, Italia's satellite, Italian harps their native measures lend; Yet, wooing sweet diversity, not quite Thy octaves with Italia's octaves blend. Six streaming lines amass the arrowy might In hers, one cataract couplet doth expend; Thine lake-wise widens, level in the light, And like to its beginning is its end. * * * * * To thee 'tis pleasure, haply to have brought Home precious ware from China or Japan; And thine, when keen and long pursuit hath caught Strange bird, or Psyche gay with veinèd fan-- And thine, to spell some sentence wisdom-fraught In palimpest or Arab alcoran; And mine, to seize some rare and coloured thought And cage it in my verse Sicilian. RICHARD GARNETT, LL.D. Although this shape is not actually akin to the group of forms in this book, yet for examples of another variety of strict verse, the author has kindly allowed two specimens to be quoted. #The Rondel, Rondeau, and Roundel.# _RONDEL._ _Allez-vous en, allez, allez,_ _Soussy, soing et merencolie:_ _Me cuidez-vous toute ma vie_ _Gouverner, comme fait avez?_ _Je vous promets que non ferez_ _Rayson aura sur vous maistrie_ _Allez-vous en, allez, allez,_ _Soussy, soing et merencolie._ _Si jamais plus vous retournez_ _Avecques vostre compaignie_ _Je prye à Dieu qu' il vous mauldie_ _Et le jour que vous reviendrez:_ _Allez-vous en, allez, allez,_ _Soussy, soing et merencolie._ --CHARLES D'ORLÉANS. _RONDEAU._ _Ma foi, c'est fait de moi, car Isabeau_ _M'a conjuré de lui faire un rondeau._ _Cela me met en peine extrême_ _Quoi! treize vers, huit en eau, cinq en eme!_ _Je lui ferais aussitôt un bateau._ _En voilà cinq pourtant en un monceau._ _Faisons-en huit en invoquant Brodeau,_ _Et puis mettons, par quelque stratagème:_ _Ma foi, c'est fait._ _Si je pouvais encor de mon cerveau_ _Tirer cinq vers l'ouvrage serait beau;_ _Mais cependant je suis dedans l'onzième:_ _Et ci je crois que je fais le douzième;_ _En voilà treize ajustés au niveau._ _Ma foi, c'est fait._ --VOITURE. O HONEY OF HYMETTUS HILL. O honey of Hymettus Hill, Gold-brown, and cloying sweet to taste, Wert here for the soft amorous bill Of Aphrodite's courser placed? Thy musky scent what virginal chaste Blossom was ravished to distil, O honey of Hymettus Hill, Gold-brown, and cloying sweet to taste? What upturned calyx drank its fill When ran the draught divine to waste, That her white hands were doomed to spill-- Sweet Hebe, fallen and disgraced-- O honey of Hymettus Hill, Gold-brown, and cloying sweet to taste? H. C. BUNNER. READY FOR THE RIDE--1795. Through the fresh fairness of the Spring to ride, As in the old days when he rode with her, With joy of Love that had fond Hope to bride, One year ago had made her pulses stir. Now shall no wish with any day recur (For Love and Death part year and year full wide), Through the fresh fairness of the Spring to ride, As in the old days when he rode with her. No ghost there lingers of the smile that died On the sweet pale lip where his kisses were-- ... Yet still she turns her delicate head aside, If she may hear him come with jingling spur-- Through the fresh fairness of the Spring to ride, As in the old days when he rode with her. H. C. BUNNER. RONDEL. This book of hours Love wrought With burnished letters gold; Each page with art and thought, And colours manifold. His calendar he taught To youths and virgins cold; This book of hours Love wrought With burnished letters gold. This priceless book is bought With sighs and tears untold, Of votaries who sought His countenance of old-- This book of hours Love wrought With burnished letters gold. WALTER CRANE. RONDEL. When time upon the wing A swallow heedless flies, Love-birds forget to sing Beneath the lucent skies. For now belated spring With her last blossom hies, When time upon the wing A swallow heedless flies. What summer hope shall bring To wistful dreaming eyes? What fateful forecast fling Before life's last surprise? When time upon the wing A swallow heedless flies. WALTER CRANE. THE WANDERER. (Rondel.) Love comes back to his vacant dwelling,-- The old, old Love that we knew of yore! We see him stand by the open door With his great eyes sad, and his bosom swelling. He makes as though in our arms repelling, He fain would lie as he lay before;-- Love comes back to his vacant dwelling,-- The old, old Love that we knew of yore! Ah! who shall help us from over-spelling, That sweet forgotten, forbidden lore! E'en as we doubt in our hearts once more, With a rush of tears to our eyelids welling, Love comes back to his vacant dwelling. AUSTIN DOBSON. RONDEL. When love is in her eyes What need of Spring for me? A brighter emerald lies On hill and vale and lea. The azure of the skies Holds nought so sweet to me; When love is in her eyes What need of spring for me? Her bloom the rose outvies, The lily dares no plea, The violet's glory dies, No flower so sweet can be; When love is in her eyes What need of spring for me? ANNA MARIA FAY. RONDEL. [After Anyte of Tegea.] Underneath this tablet rest, Grasshopper by autumn slain, Since thine airy summer nest Shivers under storm and rain. Freely let it be confessed Death and slumber bring thee gain Spared from winter's fret and pain, Underneath this tablet rest. Myro found thee on the plain, Bore thee in her lawny breast, Reared this marble tomb amain To receive so small a guest! Underneath this tablet rest, Grasshopper by autumn slain. EDMUND GOSSE. RONDEL. How is it you and I Are always meeting so? I see you passing by Whichever way I go. I cannot say I know The spell that draws us nigh. How is it you and I Are always meeting so? Still thoughts to thoughts reply, And whispers ebb and flow; I say it with a sigh But half confessed and low, How is it you and I Are always meeting so? JOHN CAMERON GRANT. VARIATIONS. I. "Alons au bois le may cueillir."--CHARLES D'ORLÉANS. We'll to the woods and gather may Fresh from the footprints of the rain; We'll to the woods, at every vein To drink the spirit of the day. The winds of spring are out at play, The needs of spring in heart and brain. We'll to the woods and gather may Fresh from the footprints of the rain. The world's too near her end, you say?-- Hark to the blackbird's mad refrain! It waits for her, the vast Inane?-- Then, girls, to help her on the way We'll to the woods and gather may. W. E. HENLEY. II. "Ainsi qu' aux fleurs la vieillesse, Fera ternir votre beauté."--RONSARD. And lightly, like the flowers, Your beauties Age will dim, Who makes the song a hymn, And turns the sweets to sours! Alas! the chubby Hours Grow lank and grey and grim, And lightly, like the flowers, Your beauties Age will dim. Still rosy are the bowers, The walks yet green and trim. Among them let your whim Pass sweetly, like the showers, And lightly, like the flowers. W. E. HENLEY. III. "Hic habitat Felicitas." "Felicity. Enquire within. The genial goddess is at home!" So read and thought the rakes of Rome, Some frail one's lintel fain to win. And now it blares thro' bronze and tin, Thro' clarion, organ, catcall, comb:-- "Felicity. Enquire within. The genial goddess is at home!" For, tent or studio, bank or bin, Platonic porch, Petræan dome, Where'er our hobbies champ and foam, Thero'er the brave old sign we pin-- "Felicity. Enquire within." W. E. HENLEY. IV. "And sweet girl graduates in their golden hair."--TENNYSON. Sweet girl graduates, golden-haired, You for whom has been prepared Love's fair university, Dons and double-firsts to be- Why are you so quickly scared? When the prudes their worst have glared, When the dowagers have stared, What has passed they might not see, Sweet girl-graduates, golden-haired, You for whom has been prepared Love's fair university? Most is won when most is dared. Let your dainty lore be aired. Love and thought and fun are free. All must flirt in their degree. Books alone have never reared Sweet girl-graduates, golden-haired. W. E. HENLEY. RONDEL. The ways of Death are soothing and serene, And all the words of Death are grave and sweet. From camp and church, the fireside and the street, She signs to come, and strife and song have been. A summer night descending, cool and green And dark, on daytime's dust and stress and heat, The ways of Death are soothing and serene, And all the words of Death are grave and sweet O glad and sorrowful, with triumphant mien And hopeful faces look upon and greet This last of all your lovers, and to meet Her kiss, the Comforter's, your spirit lean.... The ways of Death are soothing and serene. W. E. HENLEY. RONDEL. I love you dearly, O my sweet! Although you pass me lightly by, Although you weave my life awry, And tread my heart beneath your feet. I tremble at your touch; I sigh To see you passing down the street; I love you dearly, O my sweet! Although you pass me lightly by. You say in scorn that love's a cheat, Passion a blunder, youth a lie. I know not. Only when we meet I long to kiss your hand and cry, "I love you dearly, O my sweet, Although you pass me lightly by." JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY. TWO RONDELS. I. When on the mid sea of the night, I waken at thy call, O Lord. The first that troop my bark aboard Are darksome imps that hate the light, Whose tongues are arrows, eyes a blight-- Of wraths and cares a pirate horde-- Though on the mid sea of the night It was thy call that waked me, Lord. Then I must to my arms and fight-- Catch up my shield and two-edged sword, The words of him who is thy word: Nor cease till they are put to flight:-- Then in the mid sea of the night I turn and listen for thee, Lord. II. There comes no voice from thee, O Lord, Across the mid sea of the night! I lift my voice and cry with might: If thou keep silent, soon a horde Of imps again will swarm aboard, And I shall be in sorry plight If no voice come from thee, O Lord, Across the mid sea of the night. There comes no voice; I hear no word! But in my soul dawns something bright:-- There is no sea, no foe to fight! Thy heart and mine beat one accord: I need no voice from thee, O Lord, Across the mid sea of the night. GEORGE MACDONALD. RONDELS. I. The lilacs are in bloom, All is that ever was, And Cupids peep and pass Through the curtains of the room. Season of light perfume, Hide all beneath thy grass. The lilacs are in bloom, All is that ever was. Dead hopes new shapes assume; Town belle and country lass Forget the word "Alas," For over every tomb The lilacs are in bloom. II. Summer has seen decay Of roses white and red, And Love with wings outspread Speeds after yesterday. Blue skies have changed to grey, And joy has sorrow wed: Summer has seen decay Of roses white and red. May's flowers outlast not May; And when the hour has fled, Around the roses dead The mournful echoes say-- Summer has seen decay. GEORGE MOORE. TO A BLANK SHEET OF PAPER. Paper, inviolate, white, Shall it be joy or pain? Shall I of fate complain, Or shall I laugh to-night? Shall it be hopes that are bright? Shall it be hopes that are vain? Paper, inviolate, white, Shall it be joy or pain? A dear little hand so light, A moment in mine hath lain; Kind was its pressure again-- Ah, but it was so slight! Paper, inviolate, white, Shall it be joy or pain? COSMO MONKHOUSE. RONDEL. Kiss me, sweetheart; the Spring is here And Love is Lord of you and me. The blue-bells beckon each passing bee; The wild wood laughs to the flowered year: There is no bird in brake or brere, But to his little mate sings he, "Kiss me, sweetheart; the Spring is here, And Love is Lord of you and me!" The blue sky laughs out sweet and clear, The missel-thrush upon the tree Pipes for sheer gladness loud and free; And I go singing to my dear, "Kiss me, sweetheart; the Spring is here, And Love is Lord of you and me." JOHN PAYNE. "BEFORE THE DAWN." Before the dawn begins to glow, A ghostly company I keep; Across the silent room they creep, The buried forms of friend and foe. Amid the throng that come and go, There are two eyes that make me weep; Before the dawn begins to glow, A ghostly company I keep. Two dear dead eyes. I love them so! They shine like starlight on the deep; And often when I am asleep They stoop and kiss me, bending low, Before the dawn begins to glow. SAMUEL MINTURN PECK. RONDEL. Oh, say not ye that summer's over When birds within the wood stop singing! While hands still touch in desperate clinging, Some ghost of hope in hearts must hover; Though died the dream of loved and lover, While yet the marriage bells were ringing. Oh, say not ye that summer's over When birds within the wood stop singing! Their vanished hopes may none recover In some new day, new morrow bringing? And shall we see no buds fresh springing Upon the stalks of last year's clover? Oh, say not ye that summer's over When birds within the wood stop singing! MAY PROBYN. FROM THEODORE DE BANVILLE. I. NIGHT. We bless the coming of the Night, Whose cool sweet kiss has set us free, Life's clamour and anxiety Her mantle covers out of sight. All eating cares have taken flight, The scented air is wine to me; We bless the coming of the Night, Whose cool sweet kiss has set us free. Rest now, O reader, worn and white, Driven by some divinity, Aloft, like sparkling hoar frost see, A starry ocean throb in light, We bless the coming of the Night. II. THE MOON. The moon, with all her tricksy ways, Is like a careless young coquette, Who smiles, and then her eyes are wet, And flies or follows or delays. By night, along the sand-hills' maze, She leads and mocks you till you fret. The moon with all her tricksy ways, Is like a careless young coquette. As oft she veils herself in haze, A cloak before her splendour set; She is a silly charming pet, We needs must give her love and praise, The moon with all her tricksy ways. ARTHUR REED ROPES. RONDEL. Oh, modern singers! ye who vote Our times for song unfit, Your Pegasus is smooth of coat, And patient of the bit; But lost the freedom of his throat, And dulled his prairie wit, Oh, modern singers, ye who vote Our times for song unfit, If kin, fame, critics, age, you quote As fain to thwart and twit, Just try to feel your wings, and float Above the scornful kit:- Oh, modern singers, ye who vote Our times for song unfit! EMILY PFEIFFER. COME, LOVE, ACROSS THE SUNLIT LAND. (Rondel.) Come, Love, across the sunlit land, As blithe as dryad dancing free, While time slips by like silvery sand Within the glass of memory. Ere Winter, in his reckless glee, Blights all the bloom with ruthless hand, Come, Love, across the sunlit land, As blithe as dryad dancing free. And all the years of life shall be Like peaceful vales that wide expand To meet a bright, untroubled sea By radiant azure arches spanned; Come, Love, across the sunlit land As blithe as dryad dancing free. CLINTON SCOLLARD. UPON THE STAIR I SEE MY LADY STAND. (Rondel.) Upon the stair I see my lady stand, Her hair is like the gleaming gold of dawn, And, like the laughing sunbeam on the lawn, The radiant smile by which her lips are spanned. A chiselled marvel seems her slender hand What time she waves it ere my steps are gone; Upon the stair I see my lady stand, Her hair is like the gleaming gold of dawn. Through the green covert that the breeze has fanned She fleets as graceful as the flexile fawn; She is the star to which my soul is drawn When shadows drive the daylight from the land. Upon the stair I see my lady stand, Her hair is like the gleaming gold of dawn. CLINTON SCOLLARD. I HEARD A MAID WITH HER GUITAR. (Rondel.) I heard a maid with her guitar Who played, like Orpheus, to the wind, And sent forth rhythmic notes afar From out an arbor vine-entwined. She knew the God of love was blind, And left her white heart-gates ajar-- I heard a maid with her guitar Who played, like Orpheus, to the wind. But ah! Love's ears are keen as are The ears of shy, pool-haunting hind, And when she closed her bosom's bar She found the god was there enshrined; I heard a maid with her guitar Who played, like Orpheus, to the wind. CLINTON SCOLLARD. VALENTINE. Awake, awake, O gracious heart, There's some one knocking at the door; The chilling breezes make him smart; His little feet are tired and sore. Arise, and welcome him before Adown his cheeks the big tears start: Awake, awake, O gracious heart, There's some one knocking at the door. 'Tis Cupid come with loving art To honour, worship, and implore; And lest, unwelcomed, he depart With all his wise mysterious lore, Awake, awake, O gracious heart, There's some one knocking at the door! FRANK DEMPSTER SHERMAN. LOVE'S CAPTIVE. I hide her in my heart, my May, And keep my darling captive there! But not because she'd fly away To seek for liberty elsewhere, For love is ever free as air! And as with me her love will stay, I hide her in my heart, my May, And keep my darling captive there. Our love is love that lives for aye Enchained in fetters strong and fair, So evermore, by night and day, That we our prisoned home may share, I hide her in my heart, my May, And keep my darling captive there. C. H. WARING. LOVE. Looks that love not are silver-cold-- Gold the glory of love-sweet eyes! Hearts are wide as the boundless skies Full of loves--like the stars--untold! Love by love should be bought and sold. Other payments are shams and lies! Looks that love not are silver-cold-- Gold the glory of love-sweet eyes! Many loves will a great heart hold-- Foolish often, but often wise; _Some_ of silver, but _one_ of gold,-- Life's great treasure, and crowning prize. Looks that love not are silver-cold-- Gold the glory of love-sweet eyes-- C. H. WARING. RONDEL. The larch has donned its rosy plumes, And hastes its emerald beads to string: The warblers now are on the wing. Across the pathless ocean-glooms, Through tender grass and violet blooms, I move along and gaily sing. The larch has donned its rosy plumes, And hastes its emerald beads to string. Nature with beauteous tints illumes The fields and groves of budding Spring, Loud voices from afar to bring; And my glad Muse its song resumes-- The larch has donned its rosy plumes, And hastes its emerald beads to string. RICHARD WILTON. BENEDICITE. O all ye Green Things on the Earth, Bless ye the Lord in sun and shade; To whisper praises ye were made, Or wave to Him in solemn mirth. For this the towering pine had birth, For this sprang forth each grassy blade; O all ye Green Things on the Earth, Bless ye the Lord in sun and shade. Ye wayside weeds of little worth, Ye ferns that fringe the woodland glade, Ye dainty flowers that quickly fade, Ye steadfast yews of mighty girth: O all ye Green Things on the Earth, Bless ye the Lord in sun and shade! RICHARD WILTON. RONDELETS. "Which way he went?" I know not--how should I go spy Which way he went? I only know him gone. "Relent?" He never will--unless I die! And then, what will it signify Which way he went? Say what you please, But know, I shall not change my mind! Say what you please, Even, if you wish it, on your knees-- And, when you hear me next defined As something lighter than the wind, Say what you please! MAY PROBYN. MIGHT LOVE BE BOUGHT. Might Love be bought, I were full fain My all to give thy love to gain. Yet would such getting profit naught; Possession with keen fears were fraught, Would make even love's blisses vain. For who could tell what god might deign His golden treasures round thee rain, Till ruin on my hopes were brought, Might Love be bought. Better a pensioner remain On thy dear grace, since to attain To worthiness in vain I sought. Thy kindness hath assurance wrought Could never be between us twain Might Love be bought. ARLO BATES. IN THY CLEAR EYES. In thy clear eyes, fairest, I see Sometimes of love a transient glow; But ere my heart assured may be, With cold disdain thou mockest me: Hope fades as songs to silence flow. Ah! most bewitching, mocking she, Fairer than poet's dream may show, The glance of scorn how can I dree In thy clear eyes? Life is so brief, and to and fro, Like thistledown above the lea, Fly on poor days; why then so slow To bend from pride? Let us bliss know Ere age the light dims ruthlessly In thy clear eyes. ARLO BATES. THE SWEET, SAD YEARS. The sweet sad years; the sun, the rain, Alas! too quickly did they wane, For each some boon, some blessing bore; Of smiles and tears each had its store, Its chequered lot of bliss and pain. Although it idle be and vain, Yet cannot I the wish restrain That I had held them evermore, The sweet sad years! Like echo of an old refrain That long within the mind has lain, I keep repeating o'er and o'er, "Nothing can e'er the past restore, Nothing bring back the years again, The sweet sad years!" REV. CHARLES D. BELL, D.D. A WISH. Fain would I pass from all the pain, The aching heart and weary brain, From gnawing grief and withering care, And passion rising to despair, From love dissatisfied and vain. From tears that burn the cheeks they stain, And hopes that droop like flowers in rain, From sorrows that turn grey the hair, Fain would I pass! Beyond the silent, soundless main, Where the long lost are found again, Where summer smiles for ever fair, Where skies are pure, divine the air, Where love and joy eternal reign, Fain would I pass! REV. CHARLES D. BELL, D.D. TO A DOLEFUL POET. Why are you sad when the sky is blue? Why, when the sun shines bright for you, And the birds are singing, and all the air So sweet with the flowers everywhere? If life hath thorns, it has roses too. Be wise and be merry. 'Tis half untrue Your doleful song. You have work to do. If the work be good, and the world so fair, Why are you sad? Life's sorrows are many, its joys so few! Ah! sing of the joys! Let the dismal crew Of black thoughts bide in their doleful lair, Give us glad songs; sing us free from care. Gladness maketh the world anew, Why are you sad? _An Answer._ Why am I sad when the sky is blue, You ask, O friend, and I answer you-- I love the sun and balmy air, The flowers and glad things everywhere. But if life is merry, 'tis earnest too. And the earnest hour, if hope be true, Must be solemn or sad; for the work we do Is little and weak. Ask the world so fair Why I am sad. For me glad hours are nowise few, But life is so serious-ship and crew Bound such a voyage to death's dark lair. My work is my happy song: but care Still steals on the quiet hour anew And makes it sad. H. COURTHOPE BOWEN. "HIS POISONED SHAFTS." His poisoned shafts, that fresh he dips In juice of plants that no bee sips, He takes, and with his bow renown'd Goes out upon his hunting ground, Hanging his quiver at his hips. He draws them one by one, and clips Their heads between his finger tips, And looses with a twanging sound His poisoned shafts. But if a maiden with her lips Suck from his wound the blood that drips, And drink the poison from the wound, The simple remedy is found That of their deadly terror strips His poisoned shafts. ROBERT BRIDGES. TO HOMER. All down the years thy tale has rolled-- A brilliant streak of burnished gold Old Homer, near we seem to thee, As roving over vale and sea Thou tellest of thy hero bold! For we too wonder, as of old Thy hero did. The fates are doled To us the same, both serf and free, All down the years. None other yet has ever told So sweet a tale; as we unfold Thy mystic page we find the key Of human sorrow, guilt and glee, Which ever comes our souls to mould All down the years. JOHN MALCOLM BULLOCH. SEPTEMBER. The Summer's gone--how did it go? And where has gone the dogwood's show? The air is sharp upon the hill, And with a tinkle sharp and chill The icy little brooklets flow. What is it in the season, though, Brings back the days of old, and so Sets memory recalling still The Summer's gone? Why are my days so dark? for lo! The maples with fresh glory glow, Fair shimmering mists the valleys fill, The keen air sets the blood a-thrill- Ah! now that _you_ are gone, I know The Summer's gone. H. C. BUNNER. LES MORTS VONT VITE. _Les morts vont vite!_ Ay for a little space We miss and mourn them, fallen from their place; To take our portion in their rest are fain; But by-and-by, having wept, press on again, Perchance to win their laurels in the race. What man would find the old in the new love's face? Seek on the fresher lips the old kisses' trace, For withered roses newer blooms disdain? _Les morts vont vite!_ But when disease brings thee in piteous case, Thou shalt thy dead recall, and thy ill grace To them for whom remembrance plead in vain. Then, shuddering, think, while thy bedfellow Pain Clasp thee with arms that cling like Death's embrace: _Les morts vont vite!_ H. C. BUNNER. "IN LOVE'S DISPORT." In love's disport, gay bubbles blown On summer winds light-freighted flown: A child intent upon delight The painted spheres would keep in sight, Dissolved too soon in worlds unknown. Lo! from the furnace mouth hath grown Fair shapes, as frail; with jewelled zone, Clear globes where fate may read aright In love's disport. O frail as fair! though in the white Of flameful heat with force to fight, Art thou by careless hands cast down Or killed, when frozen hearts disown The children born of love and light In love's disport. WALTER CRANE. "WHAT MAKES THE WORLD?" What makes the world, Sweetheart, reply? A space of lawn, a strip of sky, The bread and wine of fellowship, The cup of life for love to sip, A glass of dreams in Hope's blue eye So let the days and hours go by, Let Fortune flout, and Fame deny, With feathered heel shall fancy trip-- What makes the world? The wealth that never in the grip Of blighting greed shall heedless slip,-- When bought and sold is liberty, With worth of life and love gone by-- What makes the world? WALTER CRANE. "O FONS BANDUSIÆ." O babbling Spring, than glass more clear, Worthy of wreath and cup sincere, To-morrow shall a kid be thine With swelled and sprouting brows for sign,-- Sure sign!--of loves and battles near. Child of the race that butt and rear! Not less, alas! his life-blood dear Must tinge thy cold wave crystalline, O babbling Spring! Thee Sirius knows not. Thou dost cheer With pleasant cool the plough-worn steer,-- The wandering flock. This verse of mine Will rank thee one with founts divine; Men shall thy rock and tree revere, O babbling Spring! AUSTIN DOBSON. "ON LONDON STONES." On London stones I sometimes sigh For wider green and bluer sky;-- Too oft the trembling note is drowned In this huge city's varied sound;-- "Pure song is country-born,"--I cry. Then comes the spring,--the months go by, The last stray swallows seaward fly; And I--I too!--no more am found On London stones! In vain! the woods, the fields deny That clearer strain I fain would try; Mine is an urban Muse, and bound By some strange law to paven ground; Abroad she pouts;--she is not shy On London stones! AUSTIN DOBSON. A RONDEAU TO ETHEL. "In teacup-times!" The style of dress Would suit your beauty, I confess; BELINDA-like, the patch you'd wear; I picture you with powdered hair,-- You'd make a charming Shepherdess! And I--no doubt--could well express SIR PLUME'S complete conceitedness,-- Could poise a clouded cane with care "In teacup-times!" The parts would fit precisely--yes: We should achieve a huge success! You should disdain and I despair, With quite the true Augustan air; But ... could I love you more, or less,-- "In teacup-times?" AUSTIN DOBSON. TO A JUNE ROSE. O royal Rose! the Roman dress'd His feast with thee; thy petals press'd Augustan brows; thine odour fine, Mix'd with the three-times-mingled wine, Lent the long Thracian draught its zest. What marvel then, if host and guest By Song, by Joy, by Thee caress'd, Half-trembled on the half-divine, O royal Rose! And yet--and yet--I love thee best In our old gardens of the West, Whether about my thatch thou twine, Or Her's, that brown-eyed maid of mine, Who lulls thee on her lawny breast, O royal Rose! AUSTIN DOBSON. "WITH PIPE AND FLUTE." With pipe and flute the rustic Pan Of old made music sweet for man; And wonder hushed the warbling bird, And closer drew the calm-eyed herd,-- The rolling river slowlier ran. Ah! would,--ah! would, a little span, Some air of Arcady could fan This age of ours, too seldom stirred With pipe and flute! But now for gold we plot and plan; And from Beersheba unto Dan, Apollo's self might pass unheard, Or find the night-jar's note preferred ... Not so it fared, when time began With pipe and flute! AUSTIN DOBSON. "IN AFTER DAYS." In after days, when grasses high O'er-top the stone where I shall lie, Though ill or well the world adjust My slender claim to honoured dust, I shall not question nor reply. I shall not see the morning sky, I shall not hear the night-wind sigh, I shall be mute, as all men must In after days! But yet, now living, fain were I That some one then should testify, Saying--_He held his pen in trust To Art, not serving shame or lust._ Will none?... Then let my memory die In after days! AUSTIN DOBSON. "IN VAIN TO-DAY." In vain to-day I scrape and blot: The nimble words, the phrases neat, Decline to mingle and to meet; My skill is all forgone, forgot. He will not canter, walk, or trot, My Pegasus; I spur, I beat In vain to-day. And yet 'twere sure the saddest lot That I should fail to leave complete One poor ... the rhyme suggests "conceit!" Alas! 'tis all too clear I'm not In vein to-day. AUSTIN DOBSON. "WHEN BURBADGE PLAYED." When Burbadge played, the stage was bare Of fount and temple, tower and stair; Two backswords eked a battle out; Two supers made a rabble rout; The Throne of Denmark was a chair! And yet, no less, the audience there Thrilled through all changes of Despair, Hope, Anger, Fear, Delight, and Doubt, When Burbadge played! This is the Actor's gift; to share All moods, all passions, nor to care One whit for scene, so he without Can lead men's minds the roundabout, Stirred as of old those hearers were, When Burbadge played! AUSTIN DOBSON. OLD BOOKS ARE BEST. (To J. H. P.) Old books are best! With what delight Does "Faithorne fecit" greet our sight; On frontispiece or title-page Of that old time, when on the stage "Sweet Nell" set "Rowley's" heart alight! And you, O friend, to whom I write, Must not deny, e'en though you might, Through fear of modern pirates' rage, Old books are best. What though the print be not so bright, The paper dark, the binding slight? Our author, be he dull or sage, Returning from that distant age So lives again, we say of right: Old books are best. BEVERLY CHEW. A COWARD STILL. A coward still: I've longed to fling My arms about you, and to bring My beating heart so near to thine, That it might learn all thought of mine, And closer to me cling. But ere I dared do anything, My trembling courage took to wing, And left its bold design, A coward still. Poor heart: these words for ever ring, Fair dame wins not the faint fearing; Tho' secretly it may repine The loss that would make life divine, Yet it must be content to sing, A coward still. JOHN CAMERON GRANT. RONDEAUX OF CITIES. I. (Rondeau à la Boston.) A cultured mind! Before I speak The words, sweet maid, to tinge thy cheek With blushes of the nodding rose That on thy breast in beauty blows, I prithee satisfy my freak. Canst thou read Latin and eke Greek? Dost thou for knowledge pine and peak? Hast thou, in short, as I suppose, A cultured mind. Some men require a maiden meek Enough to eat at need the leek; Some lovers crave a classic nose, A liquid eye, or faultless pose; I none of these, I only seek A cultured mind. II. (Rondeau à la New York.) A pot of gold! O mistress fair, With eyes of brown that pass compare, Ere I on bended knee express The love which you already guess, I fain would ask a small affair. Hast thou, my dear, an ample share Of this world's goods? Wilt thy papa[9] Disgorge, to gild our blessedness, A pot of gold? Some swains for mental graces care; Some fall a prey to golden hair; I am not blind, I will confess, To intellect or comeliness; Still let these go beside, _ma chère_, A pot of gold. III. (Rondeau à la Philadelphia.) A pedigree! Ah, lovely jade! Whose tresses mock the raven's shade, Before I free this aching breast, I want to set my mind at rest; 'Tis best to call a spade a spade. What was thy father ere he made His fortune? Was he smeared with trade, Or does he boast an ancient crest-- A pedigree? Brains and bright eyes are overweighed, For wits grow dull and beauties fade; And riches, though a welcome guest, Oft jar the matrimonial nest; I kiss her lips who holds displayed A pedigree. IV. (Rondeau à la Baltimore.) A pretty face! O maid divine, Whose vowels flow as soft as wine, Before I say upon the rack The words I never can take back, A moment meet my glance with thine. Say, art thou fair? Is the incline Of that sweet nose an aquiline? Hast thou, despite unkind attack, A pretty face? Some sigh for wisdom; Three, not nine, The Graces were. I won't repine For want of pedigree, or lack Of gold to banish Care the black, If I can call forever mine A pretty face. ROBERT GRANT. [9] Pronounced _papaire_. COULD SHE HAVE GUESSED. Could she have guessed my coward care? I knew her foot upon the stair, Her figure chained my inmost eye; I only looked a lover's lie,-- I feigned indifference, felt despair. My very blood leaped up, aware Of her free step and morning air; She raised her head, she caught my eye-- Could she have guessed? I faced her with a chilly stare, With words so common and so bare! Her whispering skirts, as she went by, Swept every sense--a thrilling sigh! Ah, would her heart have heard my prayer Could she have guessed? ELAINE GOODALE. FIRST SIGHT. When first we met the nether world was white, And on the steel-blue ice before her bower I skated in the sunrise for an hour, Till all the grey horizon, gulphed in light, Was red against the bare boughs black as night; Then suddenly her sweet face, like a flower Enclosed in sables from the frost's dim power, Shone at her casement, and flashed burning bright When first we met! My skating being done, I loitered home, And sought that day to lose her face again; But love was weaving in his golden loom My story up with hers, and all in vain I strove to loose the threads he spun amain When first we met! EDMUND GOSSE. EXPECTATION. When flower-time comes and all the woods are gay, When linnets chirrup and the soft winds blow, Adown the winding river I will row, And watch the merry maidens tossing hay, And troops of children shouting in their play, And with my thin oars flout the fallen snow Of heavy hawthorn blossom as I go: And shall I see my love at fall of day When flower-time comes? Ah, yes! for by the border of the stream She binds red roses to a trim alcove, And I shall fade into her summer-dream Of musing upon love,--nay, even seem To be myself the very god of love, When flower-time comes! EDMUND GOSSE. IN THE GRASS. Oh! flame of grass, shot upward from the earth, Keen with a thousand quivering sunlit fires, Green with the sap of satisfied desires And sweet fulfilment of your pale sad birth, Behold! I clasp you as a lover might, Roll on you, bathing in the noonday sun, And, if it might be, I would fain be one With all your odour, mystery, and light, Oh flame of grass! For here, to chasten my untimely gloom, My lady took my hand and spoke my name; The sun was on her gold hair like a flame; The bright wind smote her forehead like perfume; The daisies darkened at her feet; she came, As spring comes, scattering incense on your bloom Oh flame of grass! EDMUND GOSSE. BY THE WELL. Hot hands that yearn to touch her flower-like face, With fingers spread, I set you like a weir To stem this ice-cold stream in its career,-- And chill your pulses there a little space; Brown hands, what right have you to claim the grace To touch her head so infinitely dear? Learn courteously to wait and to revere, Lest haply ye be found in sorry case, Hot hands that yearn! But if ye pluck her flowers at my behest, And bring her crystal water from the well, And bend a bough for shade when she will rest, And if she find you fain and teachable, That flower-like face, perchance, ah! who can tell? In your embrace may some sweet day be found, Hot hands that yearn! EDMUND GOSSE. A GARDEN PIECE. Among the flowers of summer-time she stood, And underneath the films and blossoms shone Her face, like some pomegranate strangely grown To ripe magnificence in solitude; The wanton winds, deft whisperers, had strewed Her shoulders with her shining hair outblown, And dyed her robe with many a changing tone Of silvery green, and all the hues that brood Among the flowers; She raised her arm up for her dove to know That he might perch him on her lovely head; Then I, unseen, and rising on tip-toe, Bowed over the rose-barrier, and lo, Touched not her arm, but kissed her lips instead Among the flowers! EDMUND GOSSE. LOVERS' QUARREL. Beside the stream and in the alder-shade, Love sat with us one dreamy afternoon, When nightingales and roses made up June, And saw the red light and the amber fade Under the canopy the willows made, And watched the rising of the hollow moon, And listened to the water's gentle tune, And was as silent as she was, sweet maid, Beside the stream; Till with "Farewell!" he vanished from our sight, And in the moonlight down the glade afar His light wings glimmered like a falling star; Then ah! she took the left path, I the right, And now no more we sit by noon or night Beside the stream! EDMUND GOSSE. IF LOVE SHOULD FAINT. If Love should faint, and half decline Below the fit meridian sign, And shorn of all his golden dress, His royal state and loveliness, Be no more worth a heart like thine, Let not thy nobler passion pine, But with a charity divine, Let Memory ply her soft address If Love should faint; And oh! this laggard heart of mine, Like some halt pilgrim stirred with wine, Shall ache in pity's dear distress, Until the balm of thy caress To work the finished cure combine, If Love should faint. EDMUND GOSSE. MY LOVE TO ME. My love to me is always kind: She neither storms, nor is she pined; She does not plead with tears or sighs, But gentle words and soft replies-- Dear earnests of the thought behind. They say the little god is blind, They do not count him quite too wise; Yet he, somehow, could bring and bind My love to me. And sweetest nut hath sourest rind? It may be so; but she I prize Is even lovelier in mine eyes Than good and gracious to my mind. I bless the fortune that consigned My love to me. W. E. HENLEY. WITH STRAWBERRIES. With strawberries we filled a tray, And then we drove away, away Along the links beside the sea, Where wave and wind were light and free, And August felt as fresh as May. And where the springy turf was gay With thyme and balm and many a spray Of wild roses, you tempted me With strawberries! A shadowy sail, silent and grey, Stole like a ghost across the bay; But none could hear me ask my fee, And none could know what came to be. Can sweethearts _all_ their thirst allay With strawberries? W. E. HENLEY. A FLIRTED FAN. A flirted fan of blade and gold Is wondrous winsome to behold: It seems an armoured shard to bear The Emperor-Scarab--strange and rare, Metallic, lustrous, jewel-cold. Fawning and fluttering fold on fold And scale on scale, its charm unrolled, Lures, dazzles, slays. It thrills the air, A flirted fan! Ah me, that night ... I cannot scold-- _Ich grolle nicht!_ My grief untold Shall still remain, but I will swear Some Spanish grace, dissembled there, Stood by her stall, she so controlled A flirted fan. W. E. HENLEY. IN ROTTEN ROW. In Rotten Row a cigarette I sat and smoked, with no regret For all the tumult that had been. The distances were still and green, And streaked with shadows cool and wet. Two sweethearts on a bench were set, Two birds among the boughs were met; So love and song were heard and seen In Rotten Row. A horse or two there was to fret The soundless sand; but work and debt, Fair flowers and falling leaves between, While clocks are chiming clear and keen, A man may very well forget In Rotten Row. W. E. HENLEY. THE LEAVES ARE SERE. The leaves are sere, and on the ground They rustle with an eerie sound, A sound half-whisper and half-sigh-- The plaint of sweet things fain to die, Poor things for which no ruth is found. With summer once the land was crowned; But now that autumn scatters round Decay, and summer fancies die, The leaves are sere. Once, too, my thought within the bound Of summer frolicked, like a hound In meadows jocund with July. And now I sit and wonder why, With all my waste of plack and pound, The leaves are sere! W. E. HENLEY. WITH A FAN FROM RIMMEL'S. Go, happy Fan, in all the land The happiest ... seek my lady's hand, And, swinging at her winsome waist, Forget for aye, so greatly graced, The House of Odours in the Strand. Ivory, with lilac silk outspanned, With ruffling black sedately grand, With bloom of eglantine o'ertraced, Go, happy Fan. Her kindly heart will understand, Her gentle eyes will grow more bland At sight of you. Away in haste, Dear New Year's gift! Such perfect taste As yours her praises _may_ command ... Go, happy Fan! W. E. HENLEY. IF I WERE KING. If I were king, my pipe should be premier. The skies of time and chance are seldom clear, We would inform them all with bland blue weather. Delight alone would need to shed a tear, For dream and deed should war no more together. Art should aspire, yet ugliness be dear; Beauty, the shaft, should speed with wit for feather; And love, sweet love, should never fall to sere, If I were king. But politics should find no harbour near; The Philistine should fear to slip his tether; Tobacco should be duty free, and beer; In fact, in room of this, the age of leather, An age of gold all radiant should appear, If I were king. W. E. HENLEY. THE GODS ARE DEAD. The gods are dead? Perhaps they are! Who knows? Living at least in Lempriere undeleted, The wise, the fair, the awful, the jocose, Are one and all, I like to think, retreated In some still land of lilacs and the rose. Once high they sat, and high o'er earthly shows With sacrificial dance and song were greeted. Once ... long ago: but now the story goes, The gods are dead. It must be true. The world a world of prose, Full-crammed with facts, in science swathed and sheeted, Nods in a stertorous after-dinner doze. Plangent and sad, in every wind that blows Who will may hear the sorry words repeated-- The gods are dead. W. E. HENLEY. HER LITTLE FEET. Her little feet!... Beneath us ranged the sea, She sat, from sun and wind umbrella-shaded, One shoe above the other danglingly, And lo! a Something exquisitely graded, Brown rings and white, distracting--to the knee! The band was loud. A wild waltz melody Flowed rhythmic forth. The nobodies paraded. And thro' my dream went pulsing fast and free: Her little feet. Till she made room for some one. It was He! A port-wine-flavoured He, a He who traded, Rich, rosy, round, obese to a degree! A sense of injury overmastered me. Quite bulbously his ample boots upbraided Her little feet. W. E. HENLEY. WHEN YOU ARE OLD. When you are old, and I am passed away-- Passed, and your face, your golden face, is grey-- I think, whate'er the end, this dream of mine, Comforting you, a friendly star will shine Down the dim slope where still you stumble and stray. So may it be; that so dead Yesterday, No sad-eyed ghost, but generous and gay, May serve your memories like almighty wine, When you are old. Dear Heart, it shall be so. Under the sway Of death the past's enormous disarray Lies hushed and dark. Yet though there come no sign, Live on well pleased! Immortal and divine, Love shall still tend you, as God's angels may, When you are old. W. E. HENLEY. MY BOOKS. These are my books-a Burton old, A Lamb arrayed against the cold In polished dress of red and blue, A rare old Elzevir or two, And Johnson clothed in green and gold. A Pope in gilded calf I sold, To buy a Sterne of worth untold, To cry, as bibliomaniacs do, "These are my books!" What though a Fate unkind hath doled But favours few to me, yet bold My little wealth abroad I strew, To purchase acquisitions new, And say by love of them controlled, These are my books. NATHAN M. LEVY. MOST SWEET OF ALL. Most sweet of all the flowers memorial That autumn tends beneath his wasted trees, Where wearily the unremembering breeze Whirls the brown leaves against the blackening wall More sweet than those that summer fed so tall And glad with soft wind blowing overseas; Through all incalculable distances Of many shades that swerve and sands that crawl, Most sweet of all! When comes the fulness of the time to me As yours is full to-day, O flower of mine? Touched by her hand who evermore shall be, While the slow planets circle for a sign, Till periods flag and constellations fall, Most sweet of all! "_Love in Idleness._" THE REDBREAST. In country lanes the robins sing, Clear-throated, joyous, swift of wing, From misty dawn to dewy eve (Though cares of nesting vex and grieve) Their little heart-bells ring and ring. And when the roses say to Spring: "Your reign is o'er" when breezes bring The scent of spray that lovers weave In country lanes, The redbreast still is heard to fling His music forth; and he will cling To Autumn till the winds bereave Her yellowing trees, nor will he leave Till Winter finds him shivering In country lanes. C. H. LÜDERS. TO Q(UINTUS) H(ORATIUS) F(LACCUS). To Q. H. F. the idle band Of poetasters oft has planned Tributes of praise--and penned them, too-- For love of verse that keeps its hue Though dead its language and its land. True, Pegasus has ever fanned The ether at a bard's command, But ah! how eagerly he flew To Q. H. F. Not oversweet or overgrand Your poems, Horace, hence your stand Firm in the hearts of men: and few Have gained a place so clearly due, Since Death with unrelenting hand, Took you, H. F. C. H. LÜDERS. LOVE IN LONDON. In London town men love and hate, And find Death tragic soon or late, Just in the old unreasoning way, As if they breathed the warmer day In Athens when the gods were great. Mine is the town by Thames's spate, And so it chanced I found my fate, One of my fates, that is to say-- In London town. The whole world comes to those who wait; Mine came and went with one year's date. Pity it made so short a stay! The sweetest face, the sweetest sway That ever Love did consecrate In London town. JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY. SLEEP. O happy sleep! that bear'st upon thy breast The blood-red poppy of enchanting rest, Draw near me through the stillness of this place And let thy low breath move across my face, As faint winds move above a poplar's crest. The broad seas darken slowly in the west; The wheeling sea-birds call from nest to nest; Draw near and touch me, leaning out of space, O happy Sleep! There is no sorrow hidden or confess'd, There is no passion uttered or suppress'd, Thou can'st not for a little while efface; Enfold me in thy mystical embrace, Thou sovereign gift of God, most sweet, most blest, O happy Sleep! ADA LOUISE MARTIN. TO TAMARIS. It is enough to love you. Let me be Only an influence, as the wandering sea Answers the moon that yet foregoes to shine; Only a sacrifice, as in a shrine The lamp burns on where dead eyes cannot see; Only a hope unknown, withheld from thee, Yet ever like a petrel plaintively, Just following on to life's far twilight line, It is enough. Go where you will, I follow. _You_ are free. Alone, unloved, to all eternity I track that chance no virtue can divine, When pitiful, loving, with fond hands in mine, You say: "True heart, here take your will of me, It is enough." THEO. MARZIALS. WHEN I SEE YOU. When I see you my heart sings Deep within me for deep love; In my deep heart's dreamiest grove, Your bright image comes like Spring's, Bringing back the murmured dove To the wan dim watersprings. Would my tongue could tell the things Love seems but one echo of When I see you! Hope lies dying, Time's disproof Strips love's roses to the stings; But the bird that knows its wings Bear it where it will aloof, Sings not, Love, as my heart sings When I see you. THEO. MARZIALS. CARPE DIEM. To-day, what is there in the air That makes December seem sweet May? There are no swallows anywhere, Nor crocuses to crown your hair, And hail you down my garden way. Last night the full moon's frozen stare Struck me, perhaps; or did you say Really,--you'd come, sweet friend and fair! To-day? To-day is here:--come! crown to-day With Spring's delight or Spring's despair, Love cannot bide old Time's delay:-- Down my glad gardens light winds play, And my whole life shall bloom and bear To-day. THEO. MARZIALS. THE OLD AND THE NEW. The Old Year goes down-hill so slow And silent that he seems to know The mighty march of time, foretelling His passing: into his eyelids welling Come tears of bitter pain and woe. The lusty blast can scarce forego His cape about his ears to blow, As feebly to his final dwelling The Old Year goes. Within the belfry, row on row, The bells are swinging to and fro; Now joyfully the chimes are swelling-- Now solemn and few the notes are knelling-- For here the New Year comes:--and lo! The Old Year goes! BRANDER MATTHEWS. SUB ROSA. Under the rows of gas-jets bright, Bathed in a blazing river of light, A regal beauty sits; above her The butterflies of fashion hover, And burn their wings, and take to flight. Mark you her pure complexion,-white Though flush may follow flush? Despite Her blush, the lily I discover Under the rose. All compliments to her are trite; She has adorers left and right; And I confess, here, under cover Of secrecy, I too-I love her! Say naught; she knows it not. 'Tis quite Under the rose. BRANDER MATTHEWS. "VIOLET." Violet, delicate, sweet, Down in the deep of the wood, Hid in thy still retreat, Far from the sound of the street, Man and his merciless mood:- Safe from the storm and the heat, Breathing of beauty and good Fragrantly, under thy hood Violet. Beautiful maid, discreet, Where is the mate that is meet, Meet for thee-strive as he could- Yet will I kneel at thy feet, Fearing another one should, Violet! COSMO MONKHOUSE. O SCORN ME NOT. O scorn me not, although my worth be slight, Although the stars alone can match thy light, Although the wind alone can mock thy grace, And thy glass only show so fair a face-- Yet--let me find some favour in thy sight. The proud stars will not bend from their chill height, Nor will the wind thy faithfulness requite. Thy mirror gives thee but a cold embrace. O scorn me not. My lamp is feeble, but by day or night It shall not wane, and, but for thy delight, My footsteps shall not for a little space Forego the echo of thy tender pace,- I would so serve and guard thee if I might. O scorn me not. COSMO MONKHOUSE. TEN THOUSAND POUNDS. Ten thousand Pounds (a-year), no more Nor less will suit. A man is poor Without his horses and his cows, His city and his country house, His salmon river and his moor; And many things unmissed before Would be desired and swell the score; But 'tis enough when fate allows Ten thousand Pounds. But O, my babies on the floor; My wife's blithe welcome at the door; My bread well-earned with sweat of brows; My garden flowerful, green of boughs; Friends, books;-I would not change ye for Ten thousand Pounds. COSMO MONKHOUSE. ONE OF THESE DAYS. One of these days, my lady whispereth, A day made beautiful with summer's breath, Our feet shall cease from these divided ways, Our lives shall leave the distance and the haze And flower together in a mingling wreath. No pain shall part us then, no grief amaze, No doubt dissolve the glory of our gaze; Earth shall be heaven for us twain, she saith, One of these days. Ah love, my love! Athwart how many Mays The old hope lures us with its long delays! How many winters waste our fainting faith! I wonder, will it come this side of death, With any of the old sun in its rays, One of these days? JOHN PAYNE. LIFE LAPSES BY. Life lapses by for you and me; Our sweet days pass us by and flee And evermore death draws us nigh; The blue fades fast out of our sky, The ripple ceases from our sea. What would we not give, you and I, The early sweet of life to buy? Alas! sweetheart, that cannot we; Life lapses by. But though our young days buried lie, Shall love with Spring and Summer die? What if the roses faded be? We in each other's eyes will see New Springs, nor question how or why Life lapses by. JOHN PAYNE. BEYOND THE NIGHT. Beyond the night no withered rose Shall mock the later bud that blows, Nor lily blossom e'er shall blight, But all shall gleam more pure and white Than starlight on the Arctic snows. Sigh not when daylight dimmer grows, And life a turbid river flows, For all is sweetness-all is light Beyond the night. Oh, haste, sweet hour that no man knows; Uplift us from our cumbering woes Where joy and peace shall crown the right, And perished hopes shall blossom bright- To aching hearts bring sweet repose Beyond the night. SAMUEL MINTURN PECK. AMONG MY BOOKS. Among my books-what rest is there From wasting woes! what balm for care! If ills appal or clouds hang low, And drooping dim the fleeting show, I revel still in visions rare. At will I breathe the classic air, The wanderings of Ulysses share; Or see the plume of Bayard flow Among my books. Whatever face the world may wear- If Lilian has no smile to spare, For others let her beauty blow, Such favours I can well forgo; Perchance forget the frowning fair Among my books. SAMUEL MINTURN PECK. I GO MY GAIT. I go my gait, and if my way Is cheered by song and roundelay, Or if I bear upon my road, Like Issachar, a double load, I sing and bear as best I may. But lo a rondeau! Can I say, While halting thus my toll to pay Before a stile now _a la mode_, I go my gate? Ah truly; if for once I stray Into the treadmill,-'tis in play. I will not own its narrow code, It shall not be my cramped abode. Free of the fields, in open day I go my gait! EMILY PFEIFFER. (TO LOUIS HONORE FRÉCHETTE.) Laurels for song! And nobler bays, In old Olympian golden days Of clamour thro' the clear-eyed morn, No bowed triumphant head hath borne Victorious in all Hellas' gaze! They watched his glowing axles graze The goal, and rent the heavens with praise;- Yet the supremer heads have worn Laurels for song. So thee, from no palaestra-plays A conqueror, to the gods we raise, Whose brows of all our singers born The sacred fillets chief adorn,- Who first of all our choice displays Laurels for song. CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS. "WITHOUT ONE KISS." Without one kiss she's gone away, And stol'n the brightness out of day; With scornful lips and haughty brow She's left me melancholy now, In spite of all that I could say. And so, to guess as best I may What angered her, awhile I stay Beneath this blown acacia bough, Without one kiss; Yet all my wildered brain can pay My questioning, is but to pray Persuasion may my speech endow, And Love may never more allow My injured sweet to sail away Without one kiss. CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS. VIS EROTIS. Love that holdeth firm in fee Many a lord of many a land, From thy thraldom few would flee; Wide the wondrous potency Of thy heart-enchanting hand. Since on shining Cyprian sand Did thy mother, Venus, stand, Man and maid have worshipped thee, Love. They that scorn thy slaves to be, Oft before thy throne, unmanned, Grant thy great supremacy; Hear my prayer, O Monarch, and Let my lady smile on me, Love. CLINTON SCOLLARD. WHEN SIRIUS SHINES. When Sirius shines, a fulgent fire, And locusts in a drowsy choir At noon within the maples drone, And pines at nightfall make sad moan Like waves upon the rocks of Tyre, Then strike the softly sounding lyre, And let the soaring song rise higher, Or fall to minor monotone, When Sirius shines. But should the chiming voices tire, And thoughts of past and vain desire Refill the mind, as doves once flown Return to cotes aforetime known, Then let the soul to heaven aspire, When Sirius shines. CLINTON SCOLLARD. AT PEEP OF DAWN. At peep of dawn the daffodil That slumbers 'neath the grassy hill Greets smilingly, with lifted head, The rosy morn's oncoming tread, The thrush sings matins by the rill. The swallows from the ruined mill Go coursing through the air, and fill The sky with songs till then unsaid At peep of dawn. No harbinger of day is still. With pipe new tuned and merry trill, The lark uprises from her bed 'Mong grasses wet with dews unshed, And puts to shame the whip-poor-will At peep of dawn. CLINTON SCOLLARD. IN GREENWOOD GLEN. In greenwood glen, where greedy bees Drain fragrant flower-cups to the lees, When summer's shining lances smite The grain-fields gleaming golden bright, I hear Æolian melodies. The music bounds along the breeze In ever-changing symphonies, And lulls my soul with calm delight In Greenwood glen. Elusively it faints and flees, Retreats, returns,-but no one sees The piper; for, as in affright, He skilfully eludes the sight; 'Tis Pan who hides amid the trees, In Greenwood glen. CLINTON SCOLLARD. HER CHINA CUP. Her china cup is white and thin; A thousand times her heart has been Made merry at its scalloped brink; And in the bottom, painted pink, A dragon greets her with a grin. The brim her kisses loves to win; The handle is a manikin, Who spies the foes that chip or chink Her china cup. Muse, tell me if it be a sin: I watch her lift it past her chin Up to the scarlet lips and drink The Oolong draught, somehow I think I'd like to be the dragon in Her china cup. FRANK DEMPSTER SHERMAN. BEHIND HER FAN. Behind her fan of downy fluff, Sewed on soft saffron satin stuff, With peacock feathers, purple-eyed, Caught daintily on either side, The gay coquette displays a puff: Two blue eyes peep above the buff: Two pinky pouting lips ... enough! That cough means surely come and hide Behind her fan. The barque of Hope is trim and tough, So out I venture on the rough, Uncertain sea of girlish pride. A breeze! I tack against the tide,- Capture a kiss and catch a cuff,- Behind her fan. FRANK DEMPSTER SHERMAN. AN ACROSTICAL VALENTINE. (A. S. R.) Fast in your heart, O rondeau rare, Rich with the wealth of love, I dare, Alas! to send, but not to sign, Nestles my name. The fetters fine Kissed by her lips may break,--beware Delight is dizzy with despair. Suppose she fain would answer,-there! How shall she find this name of mine Fast in your heart? Enough if secrecy you swear: Red lips can't solve the subtile snare My tricksy muse weaves with her line: And I am caught, vain Valentine! N.B.-Say,-should she ask you where? "_Fast in your heart._" FRANK DEMPSTER SHERMAN. WHEN TWILIGHT COMES. When twilight comes and nature stills The hum that haunts the dales and hills, Dim shadows deepen and combine, And Heaven with its crystal wine The cups of thirsty roses fills. Blithe birds with music-burdened bills Hush for a space their tender trills, And seek their homes in tree or vine When twilight comes. Soft melody the silence thrills, Played by the nymphs along the rills; And where the dew-kist grasses twine, The toads and crickets tatoo fine Drums to the fife of whip-poor-wills, When twilight comes. FRANK DEMPSTER SHERMAN. COME, PAN, AND PIPE. Come, Pan, and pipe upon the reed, And make the mellow music bleed, As once it did in days of yore, Along the brook's leaf-tangled shore, Through sylvan shade and fragrant mead. On Hybla honey come and feed,-- To tempt the Fauns in dance to lead The Dryads on the mossy floor,-- Come, Pan, and pipe! To-day the ghosts,--Gold, Gain, and Greed, The world pursues with savage speed: Forgotten is your magic lore. Oh, bring it back to us once more! For simple, rustic song we plead: Come, Pan, and pipe! FRANK DEMPSTER SHERMAN. AN OLD RONDO. Her scuttle Hatt is wondrous wide, All furrie, too, on every side, Soe out she trippeth daintylie, To let ye Youth full well to see How fayre ye mayde is for ye Bryde. A lyttle puffed, may be, bye Pryde, She yett soe lovelye ys thatt I'd A Shyllynge gyve to tye, perdie, Her scuttle Hatt. Ye Coales unto ye Scuttle slide, Soe yn her Hatt wolde I, and hide To steale some Kissestwo or three: But synce She never asketh me, Ye scornful Cynick doth deride Her scuttle Hatt! FRANK DEMPSTER SHERMAN. A STREET SKETCH. Upon the Kerb, a maiden neat-- Her hazel eyes are passing sweet-- There stands and waits in dire distress: The muddy road is pitiless, And 'busses thunder down the street! A snowy skirt, all frills and pleat; Two tiny, well-shod, dainty feet Peep out, beneath her kilted dress, Upon the Kerb. She'll first advance and then retreat, Half-frightened by a hansom fleet. She looks around, I must confess, With marvellous coquettishness!- Then droops her eyes and looks discreet, Upon the Kerb! J. ASHBY STERRY. DOVER. On Dover Pier, brisk blew the wind, The Fates against me were combined For when I noticed standing there, Sweet Some-one with the sunny hair- To start I felt not much inclined. Too late! I cannot change my mind, The paddles move! I am resigned- I only know I would I were On Dover Pier. I wonder--will the Fates be kind? On my return, and shall I find That grey-eyed damsel passing fair, So bonny, blithe, and debonair, The pretty girl I left behind? On Dover Pier? J. ASHBY STERRY. HOMESICK. 'Mid Autumn Leaves, now thickly shed, We wander where our paths o'erspread, With yellow russet, red and sere: The country's looking dull and drear, The sky is gloomy overhead. The equinoctial gales we dread, The summer's gone, the sunshine's fled; We've rambled far enough this year- 'Mid Autumn Leaves. Though fast our travel-time has sped, On London's flags we long to tread; The latest laugh and chaff to hear, To find the Club grown doubly dear; Its gas burns bright, its fire glows red- 'Mid Autumn Leaves. J. ASHBY STERRY. IN BEECHEN SHADE. In beechen shade the hours are sweet, By mist-veiled morn or noonday heat (And sweeter still when daylight dies) So soft the wandering streamlet sighs In passage musical and fleet. Full drowsily the white lambs bleat, And tinkling bell-notes faintly beat The languid air where Lacon lies In beechen shade. And still, when day and even meet; Selene strays with golden feet, That gleam along the low blue skies And paceth slow, with dreaming eyes That seek the shepherds' dim retreat 'Mid beechen shade. GRAHAM R. TOMSON. THE GATES OF HORN. The Gates of Horn are dull of hue (If all our wise men tell us true). No songs, they say, nor perfumed air Shall greet the wistful pilgrim there, No leaves are green, no skies are blue. Yet he who will may find a clue (Mid shadows steeped in opal dew) To seek, and see them passing fair, The Gates of Horn. The man that goes not wreathed with rue, Right lovely shapes his smile shall sue, With red rose-garlands in their hair And garments gay with gold and vair, Full fain to meet him trooping through The Gates of Horn. GRAHAM R. TOMSON. IF LOVE BE TRUE. If love be true-not bought at mart- Though night and darkness hide from view, What harshest of harsh things can part The loved-one from the lover's heart, Or stay the dreams that flit thereto? If love be true dreams need no chart To gain the goal to which they're due; For love will guide them with love's dart, If love be true. If love be true, if thou be true, Sweet love, as fair thou surely art, Night shall not hide your eyes of blue From my heart's eyes the long night through; Though in sweet sadness tears may start, If love be true. SAMUEL WADDINGTON. THE COQUETTE. This pirate bold upon love's sea Will let no passing heart go free; No barque by those bright eyes espied May sail away o'er life's blue tide Till all its treasure yielded be. Her craft, the _Conquest_, waits for thee, Where her swift rapine none may see; From shadowing coves on thee will glide This pirate bold. Yet thou, if thou her power wouldst flee, Go, feign thyself love's refugee, And crave sweet shelter;-she'll deride Thy piteous suit with scornful pride; And thou, thou shalt escape in glee This pirate bold. SAMUEL WADDINGTON. YES OR NO? A Good man's love! Oh, prithee, stay, Before you turn such gift away, And write no unconsidered "No" To him who proves he loves you so, And humbly owns your regal sway. For hearts may change, the wise folk say, And as full oft the brightest ray Fades in an hour, so too may go A Good man's love. Then pause awhile. This short delay May gladden many an after-day. Search well your heart, and if it show True signs of love, bid pride bend low, And take this great gift while you may-- A Good man's love! G. WEATHERLY. MY WINDOW BIRDS. My window birds, I love to strew With punctual hands the crumb for you, Flying for comfort day by day From frozen woodland and highway, And bringing Christmas bills now due! Fair creditors of every hue Crimson and yellow, brown and blue, Whate'er your thoughts, your coats are gay, My window birds. Your claims are neither small nor few, Dated, when May-flowers drank the dew, And on sweet pipes ye used to play, Scattering full many a golden lay; Now ye for wages mutely sue, My window birds. REV. RICHARD WILTON, M.A. SNOWDROPS AND ACONITES. Silver and gold! The snowdrop white And yellow blossomed aconite, Waking from Winter's slumber cold, Their hoarded treasures now unfold, And scatter them to left and right. Ah, with how much more rare delight Upon my sense their colours smite Than if my fingers were to hold Silver and gold. They bear the superscription bright Of the great King of love and might, Who stamped such beauty there of old That men might learn, as ages rolled, To trust in God, nor worship quite Silver and gold. REV. RICHARD WILTON, M.A. THE CHIFF-CHAFF'S MESSAGE, HEARD IN MARCH. "Cheer up, cheer up!" it seems to say, As lighting on some leafless spray, It shakes its dissyllabic song, And with small beak, but courage strong, Charges the East-wind all the day. "Soon will the Swallow round you play, The Nightingale be on its way, Blue skies and gladness come ere long, Cheer up, cheer up!" Such happy voice be mine, I pray, Bleak hours to bless with sunny ray, A comfort life's rough path among; Be mine to lighten pain and wrong, Still letting fall a hopeful lay-- Cheer up, cheer up! REV. RICHARD WILTON, M.A. "WHEN SUMMER DIES." When Summer dies, the leaves are falling fast In fitful eddies on the chilly blast, And fields lie blank upon the bare hillside Where erst the poppy flaunted in its pride, And woodbine on the breeze its fragrance cast. And where the hawthorn scattered far and wide Its creamy petals in the sweet Springtide Red berries hang, for birds a glad repast When summer dies. Gone are the cowslips and the daisies pied; The swallow to a warmer clime hath hied; The beech has shed its store of bitter mast, And days are drear and skies are overcast, But Love will warm our hearts whate'er betide When summer dies. ARTHUR G. WRIGHT. MY LITTLE SWEETHEART. Across the pew, with complaisance And eyes that with Love's sunshine dance, My little sweetheart smiles at me-- She is the only saint I see; The sermon passes in a trance. The painted figures gaze askance, Down from their glassy vigilance, On this our tender heresy Across the pew. Ah! little sweetheart, the romance Of Life, with all its change and chance, Is but a sealëd book to thee-- When opened, may its pages be As fair and sweet as thy bright glance Across the pew! ARTHUR G. WRIGHT. THREE ROUNDELS. I. Love, though I die, and dying lave My soul in Lethe endlessly, Losing all else, I still would save --Love, though I die-- Thy living presence, touch and sigh, All that the golden moments gave To vanished hours of ecstasy. Then make thou great and wide my grave, So wide we two therein may lie; For sense of thee my soul will crave, Love, though I die. II. My lips refuse to take farewell of bliss, Sweet Love! so sweet and false, I can but choose To leave thee, only parting word and kiss My lips refuse. Fancy wears livery of a thousand hues, So love in idleness may come to this! And I must bring the thought to common use That ever--save in memory--I shall miss Thy short-lived tenderness-ever lose All that has taught how dear a thing it is My lips refuse. III. Other lips than yours intreat Those I vowed in vanished hours, Never Fate should force to greet Other lips than yours. Memory dulls, perchance, or sours What was once so keenly sweet, Being ours and only ours. All the life and heart and heat, All the soul that love outpours, Dies upon the lips that meet Other lips than yours. D. F. BLOMFIELD. A SINGING LESSON. Far-fetched and dear bought, as the proverb rehearses, Is good, or was held so, for ladies: but nought In a song can be good if the turn of the verse is Far-fetched and dear bought. As the turn of a wave should it sound, and the thought Ring smooth, and as light as the spray that disperses Be the gleam of the words for the garb thereof wrought. Let the soul in it shine through the sound as it pierces Men's hearts with possession of music unsought; For the bounties of song are no jealous god's mercies, Far-fetched and dear bought. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. IN GUERNSEY. (To Theodore Watts.) I. The heavenly bay, ringed round with cliffs and moors, Storm-stained ravines, and crags that lawns inlay, Soothes as with love the rocks whose guard secures The heavenly bay. O friend, shall time take even this away, This blessing given of beauty that endures, This glory shown us, not to pass but stay? Though sight be changed for memory, love ensures What memory, changed by love to sight, would say-- The word that seals for ever mine and yours, The heavenly bay. II. My mother sea, my fortress, what new strand, What new delight of waters, may this be, The fairest found since time's first breezes fanned My mother sea? Once more I give me body and soul to thee, Who hast my soul for ever: cliff and sand Recede, and heart to heart once more are we. My heart springs first and plunges, ere my hand Strike out from shore: more close it brings to me, More near and dear than seems my fatherland, My mother sea. Across and along, as the bay's breadth opens, and o'er us Wild autumn exults in the wind, swift rapture and strong Impels us, and broader the wide waves brighten before us Across and along. The whole world's heart is uplifted, and knows not wrong; The whole world's life is a chant to the sea-tide's chorus; Are we not as waves of the water, as notes of the song? Like children unworn of the passions and toils that wore us, We breast for a season the breadth of the seas that throng, Rejoicing as they, to be borne as of old they bore us Across and along. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. THE ROUNDEL. A Roundel is wrought as a ring or a starbright sphere, With craft of delight and with cunning of sound unsought, That the heart of the hearer may smile if to pleasure his ear A roundel is wrought. Its jewel of music is carven of all or of aught-- Love, laughter, or mourning--remembrance of rapture or fear-- That fancy may fashion to hang in the ear of thought. As a bird's quick song runs round, and the hearts in us hear-- Pause answers to pause, and again the same strain caught, So moves the device whence, round as a pearl or tear, A roundel is wrought. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. NOTHING SO SWEET. Nothing so sweet in all the world there is Than this-to stand apart in Love's retreat And gaze at Love. There is as that, ywis, Nothing so sweet. Yet surely God hath placed before our feet Some sweeter sweetness and completer bliss, And something that shall prove more truly meet. Soothly I know not:-when the live lips kiss There is no more that our prayers shall entreat, Save only Death. Perhaps there is as this Nothing so sweet. CHARLES SAYLE. THE TRYSTING-TREE. Meet me, love, where the woodbines grow And where the wild rose smells most sweet; And the breezes, as they softliest blow, Meet; Passing along through the field of wheat, By the hedge where in spring the violets glow, And the blue-bells blossom around one's feet; Where latest lingers the drifted snow, And the fir-tree grows o'er our trysting-seat, Come-and your love, as long ago, Meet. CHARLES SAYLE. A ROUNDEL OF REST. If rest is sweet at shut of day For tired hands and tired feet, How sweet at last to rest for aye, If rest is sweet! We work or work not through the heat: Death bids us soon our labours lay In lands where night and twilight meet. When the last dawns are fallen on grey And all life's toils and ease complete, They know who work, not they who play, If rest is sweet. ARTHUR SYMONS. MORS ET VITA. We know not yet what life shall be, What shore beyond earth's shore be set; What grief awaits us, or what glee, We know not yet. Still, somewhere in sweet converse met, Old friends, we say, beyond death's sea Shall meet and greet us, nor forget Those days of yore, those years when we Were loved and true,-but will death let Our eyes the longed-for vision see? We know not yet. SAMUEL WADDINGTON. RONDELS OF CHILDHOOD. I.-WHEN CLARICE DIED. When Clarice died, and it was told to me, I only covered up my face, and sighed To lose the world and cease to breathe or see, When Clarice died. She was my playmate, sweet, and thoughtful-eyed, With curls, gold curls, that fluttered wild and free; My child companion and most tender guide. When Clarice died I wandered wearily Down the mute grove where she was wont to hide, And cast myself beneath her favourite tree, When Clarice died. BERNARD WELLER. II.-IN A FAIRY BOAT. In a fairy boat on a fairy sea, All amber and gold, I used to float When never a wind rose stormily; In a fairy boat. And sweet and sad like a white dove's note Strange voices wakened my soul to glee, And soft scents strayed from the violets' throat. In a fairy boat I shall no more be, For gloom has fallen on creek and moat, And my tired soul's too heavy to flee In a fairy boat. BERNARD WELLER. #The Sestina.# "_La sextine en général sera l'expression d'une rêverie, dans laquelle la même idée, les mêmes objets se représenteront successivement à l'esprit avec des nuances diverses jouant et se transformant par d'harmonieuses gradations._" --DE GRAMONT. SESTINA. When from the portals of her paradise Sweet Eve went forth an exile with sad heart, She lingered at the thrice-barred gate in tears, And to the guardian of that Eden fair, As on her cheeks there came and went the rose, She weeping mourned the harshness of her fate. "O angel," cried she, "bitter is the fate That drives me from this fairest paradise, And bids me wear life's rue and not its rose! Give me one flower to lay upon my heart Before I wander through far lands less fair, And drown all visions of my past in tears." She ceased, but still flowed fast her silent tears At memory of the waywardness of fate. "Ah," thought she, "young I am, 'tis true, and fair, But shall I find another paradise?" Then turning once again with trembling heart, She spake: "O angel, but a rose-one rose!" Within the angel's breast compassion rose At sight of her sad face and falling tears, The while her beauty touched his tender heart, And knowing well the misery of her fate, He gave the flower, a rose of paradise, Because she was so very young and fair. And since that time there may be flowers as fair, But they must all yield fealty to the rose, The red, red rose that bloomed in paradise, That Eve in exile watered with her tears, The only blossom in her cheerless fate, The one flower in the desert of her heart. And into every mortal's life and heart There come some time, in cloudy days or fair, It matters not, to bless and light his fate For one short space, the perfume of the rose; And though the after years may bring but tears, That moment's pleasure is of paradise. O wondrous rose of love most passing fair, Whate'er our fate in earthly paradise, Grant that our tears be dewdrops in thy heart. FLORENCE M. BYRNE. LOVE'S GOING. (Sestina.) Love lies a-sleeping: maiden, softly sing, Lest he should waken; pluck the falling rose A-brushing 'gainst his cheek, her glowing heart Ope'd to the sun's hot kisses-foolish thing, To list the tale oft told!-but summer goes, And all the roses' petals fall apart. Love lies a-sleeping: let the curtains part So that the breeze may lightly to him sing A lullaby-the changeful breeze that goes A-whispering through the grass, where'er it rose, Where'er it listeth bound, a wilful thing, Low murmuring sweets from an inconstant heart. Love lies a-sleeping: press the pulsing heart That beats against thy bosom: stand apart And stay thine eager breath, lest anything Should mar his rest-the songs that lovers sing, The tale the butterfly tells to the rose, The low wind to the grass, and onward goes. Love lies a-sleeping: ah, how swiftly goes The sweet delusion he hath taught thy heart, Fair maiden, pressing to thy breast the rose Whose sun-kiss'd petals sadly fall apart With thy quick breath! That rhyme wouldst hear him sing Which yesterday seem'd such a foolish thing? Love lies a-sleeping: nay, for such a thing Break not his slumber. See how sweetly goes That smile across his lips, that will not sing For very wilfulness. Love hath no heart! If he should wake, these red-ripe lips would part In laughter low to see this ravish'd rose. Love lies a-sleeping: so the full-blown rose Falls to the earth a dead unpitied thing; The grasses 'neath the breeze deep-sighing part And sway; and as thy warm breath comes and goes In motion with the red tides of thy heart, The song is hush'd which Love was wont to sing. Love lies a-sleeping: thus in dreams he goes; Strive not to waken him, but tell thy heart, "Love lies a-sleeping, and he may not sing." CHARLES W. COLEMAN, JUN. SESTINA. To F. H. "'_Fra tutte il primo Arnoldo Daniello Grand maestro d'amor._'"-PETRARCH. In fair Provence, the land of lute and rose, Arnaut, great master of the lore of love, First wrought sestines to win his lady's heart; For she was deaf when simpler staves he sang, And for her sake he broke the bonds of rhyme, And in this subtler measure hid his woe. 'Harsh be my lines,' cried Arnaut, 'harsh the woe, My lady, that enthron'd and cruel rose, Inflicts on him that made her live in rhyme!' But through the metre spake the voice of Love, And like a wild-wood nightingale he sang Who thought in crabbed lays to ease his heart. It is not told if her untoward heart Was melted by her poet's lyric woe, Or if in vain so amorously he sang. Perchance through crowd of dark conceits he rose To nobler heights of philosophic love, And crowned his later years with sterner rhyme. This thing alone we know: the triple rhyme, Of him who bared his vast and passionate heart To all the crossing flames of hate and love, Wears in the midst of all its storm of woe,- As some loud morn of March may bear a rose,- The impress of a song that Arnaut sang. 'Smith of his mother-tongue,' the Frenchman sang Of Lancelot and of Galahad, the rhyme That beat so bloodlike at its core of rose, It stirred the sweet Francesca's gentle heart To take that kiss that brought her so much woe, And sealed in fire her martyrdom of love. And Dante, full of her immortal love, Stayed his drear song, and softly, fondly sang As though his voice broke with that weight of woe; And to this day we think of Arnaut's rhyme Whenever pity at the labouring heart On fair Francesca's memory drops the rose. Ah! sovereign Love, forgive this weaker rhyme! The men of old who sang were great at heart, Yet have we too known woe, and worn thy rose. EDMUND GOSSE. PULVIS ET UMBRA. (A Sestina.) Along the crowded streets I walk and think How I, a shadow, pace among the shades, For I and all men seem to me unreal: Foam that the seas of God, which cover all Cast on the air a moment, shadows thrown In moving westward by the Moon of Death. Oh, shall it set at last, that orb of Death? May any morning follow? As I think, From one surmise upon another thrown, My very thoughts appear to me as shades- Shades, like the prisoning self that bounds them all, Shades, like the transient world, and as unreal. But other hours there be when I, unreal, When only I, vague in a conscious Death, Move through the mass of men unseen by all; I move along their ways, I feel and think, Yet am more light than echoes, or the shades That hide me, from their stronger bodies thrown. And better moments come, when, overthrown All round me, lie the ruins of the unreal And momentary world, as thin as shades; When I alone, triumphant over Death, Eternal, vast, fill with the thoughts I think, And with my single soul the frame of all. Ah, for a moment could I grasp it all! Ah, could but I (poor wrestler often thrown) Once grapple with the truth, oh then, I think, Assured of which is living, which unreal, I would not murmur, though among the shades My lot were cast, among the shades and Death. "One thing is true," I said, "and that is Death," And yet it may be God disproves it all; And Death may be a passage from the shades, And films on our beclouded senses thrown; And Death may be a step beyond the Unreal Towards the Thought that answers all I think. In vain I think. O moon-like thought of Death, All is unreal beneath thee, uncertain all, Dim moon-ray thrown along a world of shades. A. MARY F. ROBINSON. CUPID AND THE SHEPHERD. (Sestina.) One merry morn when all the earth was bright, And flushed with dewy dawn's encrimsoning ray A shepherd youth, o'er whose fair face the light Of rosy smiles was ever wont to stray, Roamed through a level grassy mead, bedight With springtime blossoms, fragrant, fresh and gay. But now, alas! his mood was far from gay; And musing how the dark world would be bright Could he but win his maiden's love, and stray With her forever, basking in its light, He saw afar, in morn's bright beaming ray, A lissome boy with archer's arms bedight. The boy shot arrows at a tree bedight With red-winged songsters warbling sweet and gay Amid the leaves and blossoms blooming bright. He seemed an aimless, wandering waif astray, And so the shepherd caught him, stealing light, While from his eyes he flashed an angry ray. The fair boy plead until a kindly ray Shone o'er the shepherd's clouded brow, bedight With clustering locks, and he said, smiling gay, "I prithee promise, by thy face so bright, To ne'er again, where'er thou mayest stray, Slay the sweet birds that make so glad the light." While yet he spake, from out those eyes a light Divine shot forth, before whose glowing ray The shepherd quailed, it was so wondrous bright; Then well he knew 'twas Cupid coy and gay, With all his arts and subtle wiles bedight, And knelt in homage lest the boy should stray. "Rise," said the God, "and e'er thy footsteps stray Know that within her eyes where beamed no light Of love for thee, I will implant a ray. She shall be thine with all her charms bedight." The shepherd kissèd Love's hand and bounded gay To gain his bliss,--and all the world was bright. When naught is bright to these that sadly stray, Oftimes a single ray of Eros' light Will make all earth bedight with radiance gay. CLINTON SCOLLARD. SESTINA. I saw my soul at rest upon a day As a bird sleeping in the nest of night, Among soft leaves that give the starlight way To touch its wings but not its eyes with light; So that it knew as one in visions may, And knew not as men waking, of delight. This was the measure of my soul's delight; It had no power of joy to fly by day, Nor part in the large lordship of the light; But in a secret moon-beholden way Had all its will of dreams and pleasant night, And all the love and life that sleepers may. But such life's triumph as men waking may It might not have to feed its faint delight Between the stars by night and sun by day, Shut up with green leaves and a little light; Because its way was as a lost star's way, A world's not wholly known of day or night. All loves and dreams and sounds and gleams of night Made it all music that such minstrels may, And all they had they gave it of delight; But in the full face of the fire of day What place shall be for any starry light, What part of heaven in all the wide sun's way? Yet the soul woke not, sleeping by the way, Watched as a nursling of the large eyed night, And sought no strength nor knowledge of the day, Nor closer touch conclusive of delight, Nor mightier joy nor truer than dreamers may, Nor more of song than they, nor more of light. For who sleeps once and sees the secret light Whereby sleep shows the soul a fairer way Between the rise and rest of day and night, Shall care no more to fare as all men may, But be his place of pain or of delight, There shall he dwell, beholding night as day. Song, have thy day and take thy fill of light Before the night be fallen across thy way; Sing while he may, man hath no long delight. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. #The Triolet.# _TRIOLET._ _Le premier jour du mois de mai_ _Fut le plus heureux de ma vie:_ _Le beau dessein que je formai,_ _Le premier jour du mois de mai!_ _Je vous vis et je vous aimai._ _Si ce dessein vous plut, Sylvie,_ _Le premier jour du mois de mai_ _Fut le plus heureux de ma vie._ --RANCHIN. _LECON DE CHANT._ _Moi, je regardais ce cou-là._ _Maintenant chantez, me dit Paule._ _Avec des mines d'Attila_ _Moi, je regardais ce cou-là._ _Puis, un peu de temps s' écoula ..._ _Moi, je regardais ce cou-là;_ _Maintenant chantez, me dit Paule._ --THEODORE DE BANVILLE. * * * * * _"Mon fils, Absalon_ _Absalon, mon fils,_ _Las! perdu l'avon_ _Mon fils Absalon;_ _Il faut que soyon_ _En grief deuil confis_ _Mon fils Absalon_ _Absalon, mon fils!"_ --OLD FRENCH PLAY. MY SWEETHEART. She's neither scholarly nor wise, But, oh, her heart is wondrous tender, And love lies laughing in her eyes. She's neither scholarly nor wise, And yet above all else I prize The right from evil to defend her. She's neither scholarly nor wise, But, oh, her heart is wondrous tender. GRIFFITH ALEXANDER. * * * * * When first we met, we did not guess That Love would prove so hard a master; Of more than common friendliness When first we met we did not guess. Who could foretell the sore distress, This irretrievable disaster, When first we met?-we did not guess That Love would prove so hard a master. ROBERT BRIDGES. * * * * * All women born are so perverse, No man need boast their love possessing, If nought seem better, nothing's worse; All women born are so perverse, From Adam's wife that proved a curse, Though God had made her for a blessing. All women born are so perverse No man need boast their love possessing. ROBERT BRIDGES. A ROSE. 'Twas a Jacqueminot rose That she gave me at parting; Sweetest flower that blows, 'Twas a Jacqueminot rose. In the love garden close, With the swift blushes starting, 'Twas a Jacqueminot rose That she gave me at parting. If she kissed it, who knows- Since I will not discover, And love is that close, If she kissed it, who knows? Or if not the red rose Perhaps then the lover! If she kissed it, who knows, Since I will not discover. Yet at least with the rose Went a kiss that I'm wearing! More I will not disclose, Yet at least with the rose Went _whose_ kiss no one knows,- Since I'm only declaring, "Yet at least with the rose Went a kiss that I'm wearing." ARLO BATES. * * * * * Wee Rose is but three, Yet coquettes she already. I can scarcely agree Wee Rose is but three, When her archness I see! Are the sex born unsteady?- Wee Rose is but three, Yet coquettes she already. ARLO BATES. * * * * * A pitcher of mignonette In a tenement's highest casement; Queer sort of a flower-pot-yet That pitcher of mignonette Is a garden in heaven set To the little sick child in the basement,- The pitcher of mignonette In the tenement's highest casement. H. C. BUNNER. * * * * * In the light, in the shade, This is time and life's measure: With a heart unafraid, In the light, in the shade, Hope is born and not made, And the heart finds its treasure In the light, in the shade; This is time and life's measure. WALTER CRANE. TRIOLETS FOR "THE TWELFTH." Away from city chafe and care, At forty miles an hour flying, Nor let the train me, _blasé_, bear Away from city chafe and care. To breezy braes, from street and square, Who would not, an he could, be hieing; Away from city chafe and care, At forty miles an hour flying? How nice a month on moors to pass Mid purling becks and purpling heather, To give the grouse their _coup de grâce_, How nice a month on moors to pass! If Fortune prove a liberal lass, If but auspicious be the weather, How nice a month on moors to pass, Mid purling brooks and purpling heather. Plague take the rain! upon my word, These mountain mists, how they do hover! I wish from town I'd never stirred. Plague take the rain! upon my word, 'Tis just my luck, and not a bird My guileless gun contrives to cover. Plague take the rain! upon my word, These mountain mists, how they _do_ hover. COTSFORD DICK. ROSE-LEAVES. (Triolets.) A KISS. Rose kissed me to-day, Will she kiss me to-morrow? Let it be as it may, Rose kissed me to-day. But the pleasure gives way To a savour of sorrow;-- Rose kissed me to-day,-- _Will_ she kiss me to-morrow? CIRCE. In the School of Coquettes Madam Rose is a scholar:- O, they fish with all nets, In the School of Coquettes! When her brooch she forgets, 'Tis to show her new collar; In the School of Coquettes Madam Rose is a scholar! A TEAR. There's a tear in her eye,- Such a clear little jewel! What _can_ make her cry? There's a tear in her eye. "Puck has killed a big fly,-- And it's _horribly_ cruel;" There's a tear in her eye,-- Such a clear little jewel! A GREEK GIFT. Here's a present for Rose, How pleased she is looking! Is it verse? Is it prose? Here's a present for Rose! "_Plats_," "_Entrees_" and "_Rôts_,"-- Why, its "Gouffé on Cooking!" _Here's_ a present for Rose, How _pleased_ she is looking! "URCEUS EXIT." I intended an Ode, And it turned to a Sonnet, It began _à la mode_, I intended an Ode; But Rose crossed the road In her latest new bonnet. I intended an Ode, And it turned to a Sonnet. * * * * * Oh, Love's but a dance, Where Time plays the fiddle! See the couples advance,-- Oh! Love's but a dance! A whisper, a glance,-- 'Shall we twirl down the middle?' Oh, Love's but a dance, Where Time plays the fiddle! AUSTIN DOBSON. TRIOLET, AFTER CATULLUS. "Jucundum, mea vita." Happy, my Life, the love you proffer, Eternal as the gods above; With such a wealth within my coffer, Happy my life. The love you proffer,-- If your true heart sustains the offer,- Will prove the Koh-i-noor of love; Happy my life! The love you proffer, Eternal as the gods above! EDMUND GOSSE. * * * * * Easy is the Triolet, If you really learn to make it! Once a neat refrain you get, Easy is the Triolet. As you see!-I pay my debt With another rhyme. Deuce take it, Easy is the Triolet, If you really learn to make it! W. E. HENLEY. * * * * * Out from the leaves of my "Lucille" Falls a faded violet. Sweet and faint as its fragrance, steal Out from the leaves of my "Lucille" Tender memories, and I feel A sense of longing and regret. Out from the leaves of my "Lucille" Falls a faded violet. WALTER LEARNED. TRIOLETS. In the days of my youth I wooed woman with sonnets. My ideas were uncouth In the days of my youth. Now I know that her ruth Is best reached by new bonnets; In the days of my youth I wooed woman with sonnets. * * * * * Here's a flower for your grave, Little love of last year; Since I once was your slave, Here's a flower for your grave; Since I once used to rave In the praise of my dear, Here's a flower for your grave, Little love of last year. * * * * * Lo, my heart, so sound asleep, Lady! will you wake it? For lost love I used to weep, Now my heart is sound asleep, If it once were yours to keep, I fear you'd break it. Lo! my heart, so sound asleep, Lady, will you wake it? JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY. TRIOLETS. A CORSAGE BOUQUET. Myrtilla, to-night, Wears Jacqueminot roses, She's the loveliest sight! Myrtilla, to-night:- Correspondingly light My pocket-book closes. Myrtilla, to-night Wears Jacqueminot roses. TO AN AUTUMN LEAF. Wee shallop of shimmering gold! Slip down from your ways in the branches. Some fairy will loosen your hold- Wee shallop of shimmering gold Spill dew on your bows and unfold Silk sails for the fairest of launches! Wee shallop of shimmering gold, Slip down from your ways in the branches. A KISS. You ask me what's a kiss? 'Tis Cupid's keenest arrow! A thing to take a "miss"- (You ask me what's a kiss?) The brink of an abyss! A lover's pathway, narrow. You ask me what's a _kiss_? 'Tis Cupid's _keenest_ arrow! C. H. LÜDERS. * * * * * You know it is late, And the night's growing colder, Still you lean o'er the gate. You know it is late, There's a fire in the grate, Ah! sweetheart, be bolder. You know it is late, And the night's growing colder. _The "Century."_ * * * * * Under the sun There's nothing new; Poem or pun, Under the sun, Said Solomon, And he said true. Under the sun There's nothing new. "_Love in Idleness._" SERENADE TRIOLET. Why is the moon Awake when thou sleepest? To the nightingale's tune Why is the moon Making a noon When night is the deepest? Why is the moon Awake when thou sleepest? GEORGE MACDONALD. TRIOLETS. Few in joy's sweet riot Able are to listen: Thou, to make me quiet, Quenchest the sweet riot, Tak'st away my diet, Puttest me in prison- Quenchest joy's sweet riot That the heart may listen. * * * * * Spring sits on her nest, Daisies and white clover; And young love lies at rest In the Spring's white nest, For she loves me best, And the cold is over; Spring sits on her nest, Daisies and white clover. * * * * * In his arms thy silly lamb Lo! he gathers to his breast! See, thou sadly bleating dam, See him lift thy silly lamb! Hear it cry, "How blest I am!- Here is love and love is rest," In his arms thy silly lamb See him gather to his breast! GEORGE MACDONALD. SONG. I. I was very cold In the summer weather; The sun shone all his gold, But I was very cold- Alone, we were grown old, Love and I together!- Oh, but I was cold In the summer weather! II. Sudden I grew warmer, When the brooks were frozen:- "To be angry is to harm her," I said, and straight grew warmer. "Better men, the charmer Knows at least a dozen!"- I said, and straight grew warmer, Though the brooks were frozen. III. Spring sits on her nest- Daisies and white clover; And my heart at rest Lies in the spring's young nest: My love she loves me best, And the frost is over! Spring sits on her nest- Daisies and white clover! GEORGE MACDONALD. UNDER THE ROSE. HE (_aside_). If I should steal a little kiss, Oh, would she weep, I wonder? I tremble at the thought of bliss,- If I should steal a little kiss! Such pouting lips would never miss The dainty bit of plunder; If I should steal a little kiss, Oh, would she weep, I wonder? SHE (_aside_). He longs to steal a kiss of mine-- He may, if he'll return it: If I can read the tender sign, He longs to steal a kiss of mine; "In love and war"--you know the line Why cannot he discern it? He longs to steal a kiss of mine-- He may if he'll return it. BOTH (_five minutes later_). A little kiss when no one sees, Where is the impropriety? How sweet amid the birds and bees A little kiss when no one sees! Nor is it wrong, the world agrees, If taken with sobriety. A little kiss when no one sees, Where is the impropriety? SAMUEL MINTURN PECK. Warm from the wall she chose a peach, She took the wasps for councillors; She said, "Such little things can teach;" Warm from the wall she chose a peach; She waved the fruit within my reach, Then passed it to a friend of hers:-- Warm from the wall she chose a peach, She took the wasps for councillors. EMILY PFEIFFER. TWO TRIOLETS. I. _What he said._ This kiss upon your fan I press, Ah! Saint Nitouche, you don't refuse it, And may it from its soft recess, This kiss upon your fan I press Be blown to you a shy caress By this white down whene'er you use it; This kiss upon your fan I press, Ah! Saint Nitouche, you don't refuse it. II. _What she thought._ To kiss a fan! What a poky poet! The stupid man To kiss a fan, When he knows that--he--can, Or ought to know it. To kiss a fan! What a poky poet! HARRISON ROBERTSON. SIX TRIOLETS. DEAR READER. If you never write verses yourself, Dear reader, I leave it with you, You will grant a half-inch of your shelf, If you never write verses yourself. It was praised by some lenient elf, It was damned by a heavy review; If you never write verses yourself, Dear reader, I leave it with you. TRANSPONTINE. Ices--Programmes--Lemonade! 'E thinks 'e's a Hirving, my eye! Why, Pussy, you're crying: afraid? Ices--Programmes--Lemonade! It's the first time you've seen a piece played? Its pretty, but, Pussy, don't cry. Ices--Programmes--Lemonade! 'E thinks 'e's a Hirving, my eye! OUT. I killed her? Ah, why do they cheer? Are those twenty years gone to-day? Why, she was my wife, sir, dear-so dear. I killed her? Ah, why do they cheer? ... Ah hound! He was shaking with fear, And I rushed--with a knife, they say.... I killed her? Ah, why do they cheer? Are those twenty years gone to-day? [_v._ Police Reports of the release of George Hall from Birmingham prison.] A HUPROAR. Down 'Ob'n, sir? Circus, Bank, Bank! 'Ere's a huproar, my bloomin', hoff side! A flower, miss? Ah, thankee, miss, thank- Down 'Ob'n, sir? Circus, Bank, Bank! 'Igher up! 'Ullo, Bill, wot a prank! If that 'ere old carcase aint shied! Down 'Ob'n, sir? Circus, Bank, Bank! 'Ere's a huproar, my bloomin', hoff side! SPRING VOICES. Fine Violets! fresh Violets! come buy! Ah, rich man! I would not be you. All spring-time it haunts me, that cry:- Fine Violets! fresh Violets! come buy! Whose loss if she tell me a lie? "They're starving; my God, sir, it's true." Fine Violets! fresh Violets! come buy! Ah, rich man! I would not be you! BETWEEN THE LINES. Cigar lights! yer honour? Cigar lights? May God forget you in your need. Ay, damn you! if folks get their rights (Cigar lights! yer honour?-cigar lights) Their babies shan't starve in the nights For wanting the price of your weed- Cigar lights! yer honour? Cigar lights! May God forget you in your need! ERNEST RADFORD. FROM "FIAMETTA". Since I am her's and she is mine We live in Love and fear no change! For Love is God, so we divine. Since I am her's and she is mine, In some fair love-land far and fine, Through golden years our feet shall range. Since I am her's and she is mine, We live in Love and fear no change. Why dost thou look so pale, my Love? Why dost thou sigh and say Farewell? "These myrtles seem a cypress grove." Why dost thou look so pale, my Love? "I hear the raven, not the dove, And for the marriage-peal, a knell." Why dost thou look so pale, my Love? Why dost thou sigh and say Farewell? "Since I can never come again, When I am dead and gone from here, Grieve not for me; all grief's in vain, Since I can never come again; But let no thought of me remain. With my last kiss give thy last tear, Since I can never come again, When I am dead and gone from here." All the night and all the day I think upon her lying dead, With lips that neither kiss nor pray All the night nor all the day. In that dark grave whose only ray Of sun or moon's her golden head, All the night and all the day I think upon her lying dead. Why should I live alone, Since Love was all in vain? My heart to thine is flown- Why should I live alone? Dost thou too make thy moan, In Paradise complain: Why should I live alone, Since Love was all in vain? What can heal a broken heart? Death alone, I fear me, Thou that dost true lovers part, What can heal a broken heart? Death alone, that made the smart, Death, that will not hear me. What can heal a broken heart? Death alone, I fear me. A. MARY F. ROBINSON. A SNOWFLAKE IN MAY. I saw a snowflake in the air When smiling May had decked the year, And then 'twas gone, I knew not where,-- I saw a snowflake in the air, And thought perchance an angel's prayer Had fallen from some starry sphere; I saw a snowflake in the air When smiling May had decked the year. CLINTON SCOLLARD. APOLOGY FOR GAZING AT A YOUNG LADY IN CHURCH. The sermon was long And the preacher was prosy. Dou you think it was wrong? The sermon was long, The temptation was strong, Her cheeks were so rosy. The sermon was long And the preacher was prosy. _The Century Magazine._ A TINY TRIP. THE BILL OF LADING. She was cargo and crew, She was boatswain and skipper, She was passenger too Of the _Nutshell_ canoe; And the eyes were so blue Of this sweet tiny tripper! She was cargo and crew, She was boatswain and skipper! THE PILOT. How I bawled "Ship, ahoy!" Hard by Medmenham Ferry! And she answered with joy, She moved like a convoy, And would love to employ A bold pilot so merry. How I bawled "Ship, ahoy!" Hard by Medmenham Ferry! THE VOYAGE. 'Neath the trees gold and red In that bright autumn weather, When our white sails were spread O'er the waters we sped- What was it she said? When we drifted together! 'Neath the trees gold and red In that bright autumn weather! THE HAVEN. Ah! the moments flew fast, But our trip too soon ended! When we reached land at last, And our craft was made fast, It was six or half-past- And Mama looked offended! Ah! the moments flew fast, But our trip too soon ended. J. ASHBY STERRY. VESTIGIA. I. I saw her shadow on the grass That day we walked together. Across the field where the pond was I saw her shadow on the grass. And now I sigh and say, Alas! That e'er in summer weather I saw her shadow on the grass That day we walked together! II. Hope bowed his head in sleep: Ah me and wellaway! Although I cannot weep, Hope bowed his head in sleep. The heavy hours creep: When is the break of day? Hope bowed his head in sleep, Ah me and wellaway! III. The sea on the beach Flung the foam of its ire. We watched without speech The sea on the beach, And we clung each to each As the tempest shrilled higher And the sea on the beach Flung the foam of its ire. IV. When Love is once dead Who shall awake him? Bitter our bread When Love is once dead His comforts are fled, His favours forsake him. When Love is once dead Who shall awake him? V. Love is a swallow Flitting with spring: Though we would follow, Love is a swallow, All his vows hollow: Than let us sing, Love is a swallow Flitting with spring. ARTHUR SYMONS. * * * * * A poor cicala, piping shrill, I may not ape the Nightingale, I sit upon the sun-browned hill, A poor cicala, piping shrill When summer noon is warm and still, Content to chirp my homely tale; A poor cicala piping shrill, I may not ape the Nightingale. GRAHAM R. TOMSON. THREE TRIOLETS. I. Love's footsteps shall not fail nor faint, He will not leave our hearth again: So safely lulled his murmuring plaint, Love's footsteps shall not fail nor faint; All clasped and bound in fond constraint, And circled with a shining chain, Love's footsteps shall not fail nor faint, He will not leave our hearth again. II. Your rose-red bonds are all in vain, If bound Love weep for weariness: His faded eyes are drowned in rain. Your rose-red bonds are all in vain, He murmurs low a dull refrain, And turns his lips from our caress- Your rose-red bonds are all in vain If bound Love weep for weariness! III. That grey, last day we said goodbye Makes winter weather in my heart; Dull cloud wreaths veiled our summer sky That grey, last day we said goodbye And loosed faint love; I wonder why (For _then_, in truth, 'twas well to part) That grey, last day we said goodbye Makes wintry weather in my heart. GRAHAM R. TOMSON. TRIOLET. The roses are dead, And swallows are flying: White, golden, and red, The roses are dead; Yet tenderly tread Where their petals are lying. The roses are dead, And swallows are flying. GRAHAM R. TOMSON. REJECTED. You've spoken of love, And I've answered with laughter; You've kissed--my kid glove. You've spoken of love. Why! powers above? Is there more to come after. You've spoken of love And I've answered with laughter. Her lips were so near That--what else could I do? You'll be angry, I fear, Her lips were so near. Well, I can't make it clear Or explain it to you. Her lips were so near That--what else could I do? _From "The Century."_ A PAIR OF GLOVES. My love of loves--my May, In rippling shadows lying, Was sleeping mid the hay-- My love of loves--my May! The ardent sun was trying To kiss her dreams away! My love of loves--my May, In rippling shadows lying. I knelt and kissed her lips, Sweeter than any flower The bee for honey sips! I knelt and kissed her lips,-- And as her dark eyes' power Awoke from sleep's eclipse, I knelt and kissed her lips, Sweeter than any flower! The pair of gloves I won, My darling pays in kisses! Long may the sweet debt run-- The pair of gloves I won! Till death our loves dismisses This feud will ne'er be done-- The pair of gloves I won, My darling pays in kisses! C. H. WARING. IN THE ORCHARD. A Trio of Triolets. O the apples rosy-red! O the gnarled trunks grey and brown, Heavy-branchèd overhead! O the apples rosy-red! O the merry laughter sped, As the fruit is showered down! O the apples rosy-red! O the gnarled trunks grey and brown! O the blushes rosy-red! O the loving autumn breeze! O the words so softly said! O the blushes rosy-red, While old doubts and fears lie dead, Buried 'neath the apple-trees! O the blushes rosy-red! O the loving autumn breeze! O the years so swiftly fled! O twin hearts that beat as one, With a love time-strengthenèd! O the years so swiftly fled! O the apples rosy-red, That still ripen in the sun! O the years so swiftly fled! O twin hearts that beat as one! GEORGE WEATHERLY. #The Villanelle, Virelai, and Virelai Nouveau.# _VILLANELLE._ _J'ay perdu ma tourterelle;_ _Est-ce-point elle que i'oy?_[10] _Je veux aller après elle._ _Tu regrettes ta femelle;_ _Hélas! aussy fay-je moy:_ _J'ay perdu ma tourterelle._ _Si ton amour est fidèle,_ _Aussy est ferme ma foy;_ _Je veux aller après elle._ _Ta plainte se renouvelle?_ _Toujours plaindre je me doy:_ _J'ay perdu ma tourterelle._ _En ne voyant plus la belle_ _Plus rien de beau je ne voy:_ _Je veux aller après elle._ _Mort, que tant de fois j'appelle_ _Prens ce qui se donne à toy:_ _J'ai perdu ma tourterelle,_ _Je veux aller après elle._ --JEAN PASSERAT. [10] _J'entends._ ROSES. There are roses white, there are roses red, Shyly rosy, tenderly white;- Which shall I choose to wreathe my head? Which shall I cull from the garden-bed To greet my love on this very night? There are roses white, there are roses red. The red should say what I would have said; Ah! how they blush in the evening light! Which shall I choose to wreathe my head? The white are pale as the snow new-spread, Pure as young eyes and half as bright; There are roses white, there are roses red. Roses white, from the heaven dew-fed, Roses red for a passion's plight; Which shall I choose to wreathe my head? Summer twilight is almost fled, Say, dear love! have I chosen right? There are roses white, there are roses red, All twined together to wreathe my head. L. S. BEVINGTON. A VACATION VILLANELLE. O Halcyon hours of happy holiday, When frets of function and of fashion flee, (Sweet is the sunshine, soft the summer's sway). Ye whisper 'welcome' to our wandering way, And give a gracious greeting to our glee, O halcyon hours of happy holiday! Or pacing prairies in pursuit of prey, Or sailing silent on a southern sea, (Sweet is the sunshine, soft the summer's sway), Or gliding giddy down some glacier gray, Or joining in a German jubilee, O halcyon hours of happy holiday! We breathe such buoyant bliss that we betray Our sportive spirits strangely-_sans souci_ Sweet is the sunshine, soft the summer's sway, And dear the dreaming of these days _distraits_ We find we ye, so _fainéants_ and free, O halcyon hours of happy holiday! COTSFORD DICK. "TU NE QUAESIERIS." Seek not, O maid, to know (Alas! unblest the trying!) When thou and I must go. No lore of stars can show. What shall be, vainly prying, Seek not, O maid, to know. Will Jove long years bestow?- Or is't with this one dying, That thou and I must go; Now,-when the great winds blow And waves the reef are plying?... Seek not, O maid, to know. Rather let clear wine flow, On no vain hope relying; When thou and I must go Lies dark; then be it so. Now,--_now_, churl Time is flying; Seek not, O maid, to know When thou and I must go. AUSTIN DOBSON. WHEN I SAW YOU LAST, ROSE. When I saw you last, Rose, You were only so high;- How fast the time goes! Like a bud ere it blows, You just peeped at the sky, When I saw you last, Rose! Now your petals unclose, Now your May-time is nigh;- How fast the time goes! And a life,-how it grows! You were scarcely so shy, When I saw you last, Rose! In your bosom it shows There's a guest on the sly; How fast the time goes! Is it Cupid? Who knows! Yet you used not to sigh, When I saw you last, Rose;- How fast the time goes! AUSTIN DOBSON. FOR A COPY OF THEOCRITUS. O singer of the field and fold, THEOCRITUS! Pan's pipe was thine,-- Thine was the happier Age of Gold. For thee the scent of new-turned mould, The bee-hives, and the murmuring pine, O singer of the field and fold! Thou sang'st the simple feasts of old,-- The beechen bowl made glad with wine ... Thine was the happier Age of Gold! Thou bad'st the rustic loves be told,-- Thou bad'st the tuneful reeds combine, O singer of the field and fold! And round thee, ever laughing, rolled The blithe and blue Sicilian brine ... Thine was the happier Age of Gold. Alas for us! our songs are cold; Our northern suns too sadly shine:-- O singer of the field and fold, Thine was the happier Age of Gold. AUSTIN DOBSON. ON A NANKIN PLATE. "Ah me, but it might have been! Was there ever so dismal a fate?"-- Quoth the little blue mandarin. "Such a maid as was never seen! She passed, though I cried to her 'Wait,'-- Ah me, but it might have been! "I cried, 'O my Flower, my Queen, Be mine!' 'Twas precipitate,"-- Quoth the little blue mandarin,-- "But then ... she was just sixteen,-- Long-eyed,--as a lily straight,-- Ah me, but it might have been! "As it was, from her palankeen, She laughed--'you're a week too late!'" (Quoth the little blue mandarin.) "That is why, in a mist of spleen, I mourn on this Nankin Plate. Ah me, but it might have been!" Quoth the little blue mandarin. AUSTIN DOBSON. VILLANELLE. Wouldst thou not be content to die When low-hung fruit is hardly clinging And golden autumn passes by? Beneath this delicate rose-gray sky, While sunset bells are faintly ringing, Wouldst thou not be content to die? For wintry webs of mist on high Out of the muffled earth are springing, And golden Autumn passes by. O now when pleasures fade and fly, And Hope her southward flight is winging, Wouldst thou not be content to die? Lest Winter come, with wailing cry His cruel icy bondage bringing, When golden Autumn hath passed by; And thou with many a tear and sigh, While life her wasted hands is wringing, Shall pray in vain for leave to die When golden Autumn hath passed by. EDMUND GOSSE. VILLANELLE. Little mistress mine, good-bye! I have been your sparrow true; Dig my grave, for I must die. Waste no tear and heave no sigh, Life should still be blithe for you, Little mistress mine, good-bye! In your garden let me lie; Underneath the pointed yew Dig my grave, for I must die. We have loved the quiet sky With its tender arch of blue; Little mistress mine, good-bye! That I still may feel you nigh, In your virgin bosom, too, Dig my grave, for I must die. Let our garden-friends that fly Be the mourners, fit and few. Little mistress mine, good-bye! Dig my grave, for I must die. EDMUND GOSSE. VILLANELLE. Where's the use of sighing? Sorrow as you may, Time is always flying- Flying!-and defying Men to say him nay ... Where's the use of sighing? Look! To-day is dying After yesterday. Time is always flying. Flying--and when crying Cannot make him stay, Where's the use of sighing? Men with by-and-bying, Fritter life away. Time is always flying, Flying!--O, from prying Cease, and go to play. Where's the use of sighing, "Time is always flying?" W. E. HENLEY. VILLANELLE. A dainty thing's the Villanelle. Sly, musical, a jewel in rhyme, It serves its purpose passing well. A double-clappered silver bell That must be made to clink in chime, A dainty thing's the Villanelle; And if you wish to flute a spell, Or ask a meeting 'neath the lime, It serves its purpose passing well. You must not ask of it the swell Of organs grandiose and sublime-- A dainty thing's the Villanelle; And, filled with sweetness, as a shell Is filled with sound, and launched in time, It serves its purpose passing well. Still fair to see and good to smell As in the quaintness of its prime, A dainty thing's the Villanelle, It serves its purpose passing well. W. E. HENLEY. VILLANELLE. In the clatter of the train Is a promise brisk and bright. I shall see my love again! I am tired and fagged and fain; But I feel a still delight In the clatter of the train, Hurry-hurrying on amain Through the moonshine thin and white-- I shall see my love again! Many noisy miles remain; But a sympathetic sprite In the clatter of the train Hammers cheerful:-that the strain Once concluded and the fight, I shall see my love again. Yes, the overword is plain,-- If it's trivial, if it's trite-- In the clatter of the train: "I shall see my love again." W. E. HENLEY. VILLANELLE. (To M. Joseph Boulmier, Author of "Les Villanelles.") Villanelle, why art thou mute? Hath the singer ceased to sing? Hath the Master lost his lute? Many a pipe and scrannel flute On the breeze their discords fling; Villanelle, why art _thou_ mute? Sound of tumult or dispute, Noise of war the echoes bring; Hath the Master lost his lute? Once he sang of bud and shoot In the season of the Spring; Villanelle, why art thou mute? Fading leaf and falling fruit Say, "The year is on the wing, Hath the Master lost his lute?" Ere the axe lies at the root, Ere the winter comes as king, Villanelle, why art thou mute? Hath the Master lost his lute! ANDREW LANG. VILLANELLE. (To the Nightingale in September.) Child of the muses and the moon, O nightingale, return and sing, Thy song is over all too soon. Let not night's quire yield place to noon, To this red breast thy tawny wing, Child of the muses and the moon. Sing us once more the same sad tune Pandion heard when he was king, Thy song is over all too soon. Night after night thro' leafy June The stars were hush'd and listening, Child of the muses and the moon. Now new moons grow to plenilune And wane, but no new music bring; Thy song is over all too soon. Ah, thou art weary! well, sleep on, Sleep till the sun brings back the spring. Thy song is over all too soon, Child of the muses and the moon. "_Love in Idleness._" VILLANELLE. Beautiful, distracting Hetty, This was how it came to be As we strolled upon the jetty. I had danced three times with Netty, She had flirted with Dobree, Beautiful, distracting Hetty. I was humming Donizetti, Hurt was I, and angry she, As we strolled upon the jetty. As she levelled her Negretti With provoking nicety, Beautiful, distracting Hetty, Suddenly she flashed a pretty, Half-defiant glance at me, As we strolled upon the jetty. And our quarrel seemed so petty By the grandeur of the sea! Beautiful, distracting Hetty, As we strolled upon the jetty. COSMO MONKHOUSE. VILLANELLE. Life, thou art vaguely strangely sweet, Thy gladness fills our throbbing veins, But Death comes on with footsteps fleet. With rapture men each morning greet, And spite of losses, cares and pains. Life, thou art vaguely strangely sweet. We, while with health our pulses beat, Heed not the falling hour glass grains, But Death comes in with footsteps fleet. Our lips may say "Life is a cheat," But 'tis of Death our heart complains; Life, thou art vaguely strangely sweet. For one hour more do men entreat, As life within them quickly wanes, But Death comes on with footsteps fleet. Many we miss, but him we meet, He is a guest whom nought detains; Life, thou art vaguely strangely sweet, But Death comes on with footsteps fleet. JAMES ASHCROFT NOBLE. VILLANELLE. The air is white with snow-flakes clinging; Between the gusts that come and go Methinks I hear the woodlark singing. Methinks I see the primrose springing On many a bank and hedge, although The air is white with snow-flakes clinging. Surely the hands of spring are flinging Woodscents to all the winds that blow. Methinks I hear the woodlark singing; Methinks I see the swallow winging Across the woodlands sad with snow; The air is white with snow-flakes clinging. Was that the cuckoo's wood-chime swinging? Was that the linnet fluting low? Methinks I hear the woodlark singing. Or can it be the breeze is bringing The breath of violets?--Ah no! The air is white with snow-flakes clinging. It is my lady's voice that's stringing Its beads of gold to song; and so Methinks I hear the woodlark singing. The violets I see upspringing Are in my lady's eyes, I trow; The air is white with snow-flakes clinging. Dear, when thy tender tones are ringing, Even whilst amid the winter's woe The air is white with snow-flakes clinging, Methinks I hear the woodlark singing. JOHN PAYNE. BONNIE BELLE. Just to please my Bonnie Belle With her winsome eyes of blue, Lo, I sing a villanelle. List the merry music swell! Haste, ye rhymes, in measure true, Just to please my Bonnie Belle. Have a care to foot it well, Tripping like a fairy crew, Lo, I sing a villanelle. Come from where the Pixies dwell, Dance with sandals dipped in dew, Just to please my Bonnie Belle. In her ear, the tiny shell Let my peerless passion sue; Lo, I sing a villanelle. Will she listen? Who can tell? Does she love me? Would I knew! Just to please my Bonnie Belle Lo, I sing a villanelle. SAMUEL MINTURN PECK. IF SOME TRUE MAIDEN'S LOVE WERE MINE. All worldly dreams I would resign, Nor ever long for hidden lore, If some true maiden's love were mine. If but two eyes of blue divine Could meet my glance forevermore, All worldly dreams I would resign. The clouds would show a silver line And rainbow tints would hue them o'er, If some true maiden's love were mine. A jasmine tree should droop and twine And peep within our cottage door, All worldly dreams I would resign. Our gems should be the dewdrop's shine, Our music float from larks that soar, If some true maiden's love were mine. Where is she now? She gives no sign, That loyal heart, leal to the core! All worldly dreams I would resign If some true maiden's love were mine. SAMUEL MINTURN PECK. WHEN THE BROW OF JUNE. When the brow of June is crowned by the rose And the air is fain and faint with her breath, Then the Earth hath rest from her long birth-throes;-- The Earth hath rest and forgetteth her woes As she watcheth the cradle of Love and Death, When the brow of June is crowned by the rose. O Love and Death who are counted for foes, She sees you twins of one mind and faith-- The Earth at rest from her long birth-throes. You are twins to the mother who sees and knows; (Let them strive and thrive together) she saith-- When the brow of June is crowned by the rose. They strive, and Love his brother outgrows, But for strength and beauty he travaileth On the Earth at rest from her long birth-throes. And still when his passionate heart o'erflows, Death winds about him a bridal wreath-- As the brow of June is crowned by the rose! So the bands of death true lovers enclose, For Love and Death are as Sword and Sheath When the Earth hath rest from her long birth-throes. They are Sword and Sheath, they are Life and its Shows Which lovers have grace to see beneath, When the brow of June is crowned by the rose And the Earth hath rest from her long birth-throes. EMILY PFEIFFER. O SUMMER-TIME SO PASSING SWEET. O Summer-time so passing sweet, But heavy with the breath of flowers, But languid with the fervent heat. They chide amiss who call thee fleet,-- Thee, with thy weight of daylight hours, O Summer-time so passing sweet! Young Summer thou art too replete, Too rich in choice of joys and powers, But languid with the fervent heat. Adieu! my face is set to meet Bleak Winter, with his pallid showers, O Summer-time so passing sweet! Old winter steps with swifter feet, He lingers not in wayside bowers, He is not languid with the heat; His rounded day, a pearl complete, Gleams on the unknown night that lowers; O Summer-time so passing sweet, But languid with the fervent heat! EMILY PFEIFFER. VILLANELLE. In every sound, I think I hear her feet-- And still I wend my altered way alone, And still I say, "To-morrow we shall meet." I watch the shadows in the crowded street-- Each passing face I follow one by one-- In every sound I think I hear her feet. And months go by-bleak March and May-day heat-- Harvest is over--winter well-nigh done-- And still I say, "To-morrow we shall meet." Among the city square when flowers are sweet, With every breath a sound of her seems blown-- In every sound I think I hear her feet. Belfry and clock the unending hours repeat From twelve to twelve--and still she comes in none-- And still I say, "To-morrow we shall meet." Oh, long delayed to-morrow!--hearts that beat Measure the length of every minute gone-- In every sound I think I hear her feet. Ever the suns rise tardily or fleet, And light the letters on a churchyard stone,-- And still I say, "To-morrow we shall meet." And still from out her unknown far retreat She haunts me with her tender undertone-- In every sound I think I hear her feet, And still I say, "To-morrow we shall meet." MAY PROBYN. VILLANELLE. The daffodils are on the lea-- Come out, sweetheart, and bless the sun! The birds are glad, and so are we. This morn a throstle piped to me, "'Tis time that mates were wooed and won-- The daffodils are on the lea." Come out, sweetheart, their gold to see, And building of the nests begun-- The birds are glad, and so are we. You said,--bethink you!--"It shall be When, yellow smocked, and winter done, The daffodils are on the lea." Yet, an' you will, to change be free! How sigh you?--"Changes need we none-- The birds are glad--_and so are we_?" Come out, sweetheart! the signs agree, The marriage tokens March has spun-- The daffodils are on the lea; The birds are glad--and so are we! MAY PROBYN. TO HELEN. Man's very voice is stilled on Troas' shore, Sweet Xanthus and Simois both are mute, Thus have the gods ordained forevermore! Springs the rank weed where bloomed the rose before, Unplucked on Ida hangs the purple fruit, Man's very voice is stilled on Troas' shore. When heavenly walls towered proud and high of yore, Unharmed now strays abroad the savage brute, Thus have the gods ordained forevermore! And they, the wronged, that wasting sorrow bore, Alas! their tree hath withered to the root, Man's very voice is stilled on Troas' shore. In Lacedæmon, loved of heroes hoar, No trumpet sounds, but piping shepherd's flute, Thus have the gods ordained forevermore! And thou, the cause, through Aphrodites lore, Unblamed, art praised on poet's lyre and lute-- Man's very voice is stilled on Troas' shore. Thus have the gods ordained forevermore! CLINTON SCOLLARD. TO THE DAFFODIL. O daffodil, flower saffron-gowned, Effulgent with the Sun-god's gold, Thou bring'st the joyous season round! While yet the earth is blanched and browned, Thou dost thy amber leaves unfold, O daffodil, flower saffron-gowned. We see thee by yon mossy mound, Wave from thy stalks each pennon bold,-- Thou bring'st the joyous season round! Fair child of April, promise-crowned, We longed for thee when winds were cold, O daffodil, flower saffron-gowned. Again we hear the merry sound Of sweet birds singing love-songs old,-- Thou bring'st the joyous season round! Again we feel our hearts rebound With pleasures by thy birth foretold,-- O daffodil, flower saffron-gowned, Thou bring'st the joyous season round! CLINTON SCOLLARD. SPRING KNOCKS AT WINTER'S FROSTY DOOR. Spring knocks at winter's frosty door: In boughs by wild March breezes swayed The bonnie bluebirds sing once more. The brooks have burst their fetters hoar, And greet with noisy glee the glade; Spring knocks at winter's frosty door. The swallow soon will northward soar, The rush uplift its gleaming blade, The bonnie bluebirds sing once more. Soon sunny skies their gold will pour O'er meads that breezy maples shade; Spring knocks at winter's frosty door. Along the reedy river's shore, Fleet fauns will frolic unafraid, The bonnie bluebirds sing once more. And Love, the Love we lost of yore, Will come to twine the myrtle braid; Spring knocks at winter's frosty door, The bonnie bluebirds sing once more. CLINTON SCOLLARD. DOT. O, had I but a fairy yacht, I know quite well what I would do-- I soon would sail away with Dot! I'd quickly weave a cunning plot, Had I but fairies for my crew-- O, had I but a fairy yacht! I'd soon be off just like a shot, Far, far across the ocean blue; I soon would sail away with Dot! What happiness would be my lot, With nought to do all day but woo-- O, had I but a fairy yacht. To some sweet unfrequented spot-- If I but thought that hearts were true-- I soon would sail away with Dot. I'd sail away, not minding what, My friends approve, or foes pooh-pooh-- O, had I but a fairy yacht! For name or fame care not a jot, I'd leave behind no trace or clue-- I soon would sail away with Dot! Forgetting all, by all forgot, I'd live and love the whole day through-- O, had I but a fairy yacht! In distant lands I'd build a cot, And live alone with I know who-- I soon would sail away with Dot! I'd start at once--O, would I not? If I were only twenty-two-- O, had I but a fairy yacht, I soon would sail away with Dot. J. ASHBY STERRY. ACROSS THE WORLD I SPEAK TO THEE. Across the world I speak to thee; Where'er thou art (I know not where), Send thou a messenger to me! I here remain, who would be free, To seek thee out through foul or fair, Across the world I speak to thee. Whether beneath the tropic tree, The cooling night wind fans thy hair,-- Send thou a messenger to me! Whether upon the rushing sea, A foamy track thy keel doth wear,- Across the world I speak to thee. Whether in yonder star thou be, A spirit loosed in purple air,-- Send thou a messenger to me! Hath Heaven not left thee memory Of what was well in mortal's share? Across the world I speak to thee; Send thou a messenger to me! EDITH M. THOMAS. WHERE ARE THE SPRINGS OF LONG AGO? Come near, O sun--O south wind, blow, And be the winter's captives freed; Where are the springs of long ago? Drive under ground the lingering snow, And up the greensward legions lead; Come near, O sun--O south wind, blow! Are these the skies we used to know, The budding wood, the fresh-blown mead? Where are the springs of long ago? The breathing furrow will we sow, And patient wait the patient seed; Come near, O sun--O south wind, blow! The grain of vanished years will grow, But not the vanished years, indeed! Where are the springs of long ago? With sodden leafage, lying low, They for remembrance faintly plead! Come near, O sun--O south wind, blow! Where are the springs of long ago? EDITH M. THOMAS. VILLANELLE. (To Hesperus, after Bion.) O jewel of the deep blue night! Too soon, to-day, the moon arose, I pray thee, lend thy lovely light. Than any other star more bright An hundred-fold, thy beauty glows, O jewel of the deep blue night. Too soon Selene gained the height, And now no more her glory shows; I pray thee, lend _thy_ lovely light. Anon our revel of delight Towards the shepherd's dwelling goes, O jewel of the deep blue night! And I must lead the dance aright, Yea--even I--for me they chose: I pray thee, lend thy lovely light. No thief am I, nor evil wight, Nor numbered with the traveller's foes, O jewel of the deep blue night! None would I spoil, nor e'en affright, Mine are the Lover's joys and woes; I pray thee, lend thy lovely light. For good it is, in all men's sight (Thou knowest well) to favour those, O jewel of the deep blue night! Thy golden lamp hath turned to white The silver of the olive-close; O jewel of the deep blue night! I pray thee, lend thy lovely light. GRAHAM R. TOMSON. VILLANELLE. "I did not dream that Love would stay. I deemed him but a passing guest, Yet here he lingers many a day. I said young Love will flee with May And leave forlorn the hearth he blest," I did not dream that Love would stay. My envious neighbour mocks me, "Nay, Love lies not long in any nest." Yet here he lingers many a day. And though I did his will alway, And gave him even of my best, I did not dream that Love would stay. I have no skill to bid him stay, Of tripping tongue or cunning jest, Yet here he lingers many a day. Beneath his ivory feet I lay Pale plumage of the ringdove's breast, I did not dream that Love would stay. Will Love be flown? I ofttimes say, Home turning for the noonday rest, Yet here he lingers many a day. His gold curls gleam, his lips are gay, His eyes through tears smile loveliest; I did not dream that Love would stay. He sometimes sighs, when far away The low red sun makes fair the west, Yet here he lingers many a day. Thrice blest of all men am I! yea, Although of all unworthiest; I did not dream that Love would stay, Yet here he lingers many a day. GRAHAM R. TOMSON. VILLANELLE. Come! to the woods, love, let us go! Let us go pluck the purple flowers, And rest where rosy blossoms blow. 'Twixt glade and shade the sun shall throw A halo round the laughing hours;-- Come! to the woods, love, let us go! There are dim nooks the Dryads know, And we can hide in hawthorn-bowers, And rest where rosy blossoms blow. Shall not the fairies passing strow On us the dainty petal-showers? Come! to the woods, love, let us go. And we will roam by rills that flow 'Neath skies from which no tempest lowers; We'll rest where rosy blossoms blow. Come, heart! Come, sweetheart, even so Life's holiest rapture shall be ours;-- Come! to the woods, love, let us go, And rest where rosy blossoms blow. SAMUEL WADDINGTON. THEOCRITUS. O Singer of Persephone! In the dim meadows desolate, Dost thou remember Sicily? Still through the ivy flits the bee Where Amaryllis lies in state; O Singer of Persephone! Simætha calls on Hecate, And hears the wild dogs at the gate; Dost thou remember Sicily? Still by the light and laughing sea Poor Polypheme bemoans his fate; O Singer of Persephone! And still in boyish rivalry Young Daphnis challenges his mate; Dost thou remember Sicily? Slim Lacon keeps a goat for thee; For thee the jocund shepherds wait; O Singer of Persephone! Dost thou remember Sicily? OSCAR WILDE. SPRING SADNESS. (Virelai.) As I sat sorrowing, Love came and bade me sing A joyous song and meet, For see (said he) each thing Is merry for the Spring, And every bird doth greet The break of blossoming, That all the woodlands ring Unto the young hours' feet. Wherefore put off defeat And rouse thee to repeat The chimes of merles that go, With flutings shrill and sweet, In every green retreat, The tune of streams that flow And mark the fair hours' beat, With running ripples fleet And breezes soft and low. For who should have, I trow, Such joyance in the glow And gladness of the May,-- In all sweet bells that blow, In death of winter's woe And birth of Springtide gay, When in woodwalk and row Hand-linked the lovers go,-- As he to whom alway God giveth day by day To set to roundelay Life's sad and sunny hours,-- To weave into a lay Life's golden years and grey, Its sweet and bitter flowers,-- To sweep with hands that stray In many a devious way Its harp of sun and showers? Nor in this life of ours, Whereon the sky oft lowers, Is any lovelier thing Than in the wild wood bowers The cloud of green that towers, The blithe birds welcoming The vivid vernal hours Among the painted flowers And all the pomp of Spring. True, life is on the wing, And all the birds that sing, And all the flowers that be Amid the glow and ring, The pomp and glittering Of Spring's sweet pageantry, Have here small sojourning, And all our bright hours bring Death nearer, as they flee. Yet this thing learn of me; The sweet hours fair and free That we have had of yore, The fair things we did see The linkéd melody Of waves upon the shore That rippled in their glee, Are not lost utterly, Though they return no more. But in the true heart's core Thought treasures evermore The tune of birds and breeze: And there the slow years store The flowers our dead Springs wore And scent of blossomed leas: There murmurs o'er and o'er The sound of woodlands hoar With newly burgeoned trees. So for the sad soul's ease Remembrance treasures these Against Time's harvesting, That so, when mild Death frees The soul from Life's disease Of strife and sorrowing, In glass of memories The new hope looks and sees Through Death a brighter Spring. JOHN PAYNE. JULY. (VIRELAI NOUVEAU.) Good-bye to the Town!--good-bye! Hurrah! for the sea and the sky! In the street the flower-girls cry; In the street the water-carts ply; And a fluter, with features a-wry, Plays fitfully, "Scots, wha hae"-- And the throat of that fluter is dry; Good-bye to the Town!--good-bye! And over the roof-tops nigh Comes a waft like a dream of the May; And a lady-bird lit on my tie; And a cock-chafer came with the tray; And a butterfly (no one knows why) Mistook my Aunt's cap for a spray; And "next door" and "over the way" The neighbours take wing and fly: Hurrah! for the sea and the sky! To Buxton, the waters to try,-- To Buxton goes old Mrs. Bligh; And the Captain to Homburg and play Will carry his cane and his eye; And even Miss Morgan Lefay Is flitting--to far Peckham Rye; And my Grocer has gone--in a "Shay," And my Tailor has gone--in a "Fly;"-- Good-bye to the Town!--good-bye! And it's O for the sea and the sky! And it's O for the boat and the bay! For the white foam whirling by, And the sharp, salt edge of the spray! For the wharf where the black nets fry, And the wrack and the oarweed sway! For the stroll when the moon is high To the nook by the Flag-house gray! For the _risus ab angulo_ shy From the Some-one we designate "Di!" For the moment of silence,-the sigh! "How I _dote_ on a Moon!" "So do I!" For the token we snatch on the sly (With nobody there to say Fie!) Hurrah! for the sea and the sky! So Phillis, the fawn-footed, hie For a hansom. Ere close of the day Between us a "world" must lie,- Good-bye to the Town!-GOOD-BYE! Hurrah! for the sea and the sky! AUSTIN DOBSON. #Burlesques, Pasquinades, etc., in Ballade, Chant Royal, Rondeau, and Villanelle forms.# If an apology seem needful for the presence of this section, this quotation will explain why it was included:- "_We maintain that far from converting virtue into a paradox, and degrading truth by ridicule, Parody will only strike at what is chimerical and false; it is not a piece of buffoonery so much as a critical exposition._" ISAAC D'ISRAELI. THE BALLADE OF THE SUMMER-BOARDER. Let all men living on earth take heed, For their own souls' sake, to a rhyme well meant; Writ so that he who runs may read-- _We are the folk that a-summering went._ Who while the year was young were bent-- Yea, bent on doing this self-same thing Which we have done unto some extent, _This is the end of our summering._ We are the folk who would fain be freed From wasteful burdens of rate and rent-- From the vampire agents' ravening breed-- _We are the folk that a-summering went._ We hied us forth when the summer was blent With the fresh faint sweetness of dying spring, A-seeking the meadows dew-besprent _This is the end of our summering._ For O the waiters that must be fee'd, And our meat-time neighbour, the travelling "gent;" And the youth next door with the ophicleide! _We are the folk that a-summering went!_ Who from small bare rooms wherein we were pent, While birds their way to the southward wing, Come back, our money for no good spent-- _This is the end of our summering._ _Envoy._ Citizens! list to our sore lament-- While the landlord's hands to our raiment cling-- _We are the folk that a-summering went:_ _This is the end of our summering._ H. C. BUNNER. A YOUNG POET'S ADVICE. (A Ballade.) You should study the bards of to-day Who in England are now all the rage; You should try to be piquant and gay: Your lines are too solemn and sage. You should try to fill only a page, Or two at the most with your lay; And revive the quaint verse of an age That is fading forgotten away. Study Lang, Gosse, and Dobson, I pray-- That their rhymes and their fancies engage Your thought to be witty as they. You must stand on the popular stage. In the bars of an old fashioned cage We must prison the birds of our May, To carol the notes of an age That is fading forgotten away. Now this is a 'Ballade'-I say, So one stanza more to our page, But the "Vers de Société," If you can are the best for your 'wage.' Though the purists may fall in a rage That two rhymes go thrice in one lay, You may passably echo an age That is fading forgotten away. _Envoy._ Bard--heed not the seer and the sage, 'Afflatus' and Nature don't pay; But stick to the forms of an age That is fading forgotten away. C. P. CRANCH. A BALLAD OF OLD METRES. When, in the merry realm of France, Bluff Francis ruled and loved and laughed, Now held the lists with knightly lance, Anon the knightly beaker quaffed; Where wit could wing his keenest shaft With Villon's verse or Montaigne's prose, Then poets exercised their craft In ballades, triolets, rondeaux. O quaint old times! O fitting chants! With fluttering banners fore and aft, With mirth of minstrelsy and dance, Sped Poesy's enchanted craft; The odorous gale was blowing abaft Her silken sails, as on she goes, Doth still to us faint echoes waft Of ballades, triolets, rondeaux. But tell me with what countenance Ye seek on modern rhymes to graft Those tender shoots of old Romance- Romance that now is only chaffed? O iron days! O idle raft Of rhymesters! they are '_peu de chose_,' What Scott would call supremely "saft" _Your_ ballades, triolets, rondeaux. _Envoy._ Bards, in whose vein the maddening draught Of Hippocrene so wildly glows, Forbear, and do not drive us daft With ballades, triolets, rondeaux. _The Century._ BALLADE OF CRICKET. (To T. W. Lang.) The burden of hard hitting: slog away! Here shalt thou make a "five" and there a "four," And then upon thy bat shalt lean and say, That thou art in for an uncommon score. Yea, the loud ring applauding thee shall roar, And thou to rival THORNTON shalt aspire, When low, the Umpire gives thee "leg before,"- "This is the end of every man's desire!" The burden of much bowling, when the stay Of all thy team is "collared," swift or slower, When "bailers" break not in their wonted way, And "yorkers" come not off as heretofore. When length balls shoot no more, ah never more, When all deliveries lose their former fire, When bats seem broader than the broad barn-door,- "This is the end of every man's desire!" The burden of long fielding, when the clay Clings to thy shoon in sudden showers downpour, And running still thou stumblest, or the ray Of blazing suns doth bite and burn thee sore, And blind thee till, forgetful of thy lore, Thou dost most mournfully misjudge a "skyer" And lose a match the Fates cannot restore,-- "This is the end of every man's desire!" _Envoy._ Alas, yet liefer on youth's hither shore Would I be some poor Player on scant hire Than king among the old who play no more,- "_This_ is the end of every man's desire!" ANDREW LANG. THE PRODIGALS. (Dedicated to Mr. Chaplin, M.P., and Mr. Richard Power, M.P. and 223 who followed them.) Ministers!-you, most serious, Critics and statesmen of all degrees, Hearken awhile to the motion of us,- Senators keen for the Epsom breeze! Nothing we ask of posts or fees; Worry us not with objections pray! Lo,-for the speakers wig we seize- Give us-ah! give us-the Derby Day. Scots most prudent, penurious! Irishmen busy as humblebees! Hearken awhile to the motion of us,- Senators keen for the Epsom breeze! For Sir Joseph's sake, and his owner's, please! (Solomon raced like fun, they say) Lo for we beg on our bended knees,- Give us-ah! give us-the Derby Day. Campbell-Asheton be generous! (But they voted such things were not the cheese) Sullivan, hear us, magnanimous! (But Sullivan thought with their enemies.) And shortly they got both of help and ease For a mad majority crowded to say- "Debate we've drunk to the dregs and lees; Give us--ah! give us--the Derby Day." _Envoi._ Prince, most just was the motion of these And many were seen by the dusty way, Shouting glad to the Epsom breeze Give us--ah! give us--the Derby Day. ANONYMOUS (_after Austin Dobson_). VILLON'S STRAIGHT TIP TO ALL CROSS COVES. "Tout aux tavernes et aux filles." Suppose you screeve? or go cheap-jack? Or fake the broads? or fig a nag? Or thimble-rig? or knap a yack? Or pitch a snide? or smash a rag? Suppose you duff? or nose and lag? Or get the straight, and land your pot? How do you melt the multy swag? Booze and the blowens cop the lot. Fiddle, or fence, or mace, or mack; Or moskeneer, or flash the drag; Dead-lurk a crib, or do a crack; Pad with a slang, or chuck a fag; Bonnet, or tout, or mump and gag; Rattle the tats, or mark the spot; You can not bank a single stag; Booze and the blowens cop the lot. Suppose you try a different tack, And on the square you flash your flag? At penny-a-lining make your whack, Or with the mummers mug and gag? For nix, for nix the dibbs you bag! At any graft, no matter what, Your merry goblins soon stravag: Booze and the blowens cop the lot. THE MORAL. It's up the spout and Charley Wag With wipes and tickers and what not. Until the squeezer nips your scrag, Booze and the blowens cop the lot. W. E. HENLEY. A BALLADE OF BALLADE-MONGERS. (After the manner of Master FRANÇOIS VILLON of Paris.) In _Ballades_ things always contrive to get lost, And Echo is constantly asking where Are last year's roses and last year's frost? And where are the fashions we used to wear? And what is a "gentleman," what is a "player?" Irrelevant questions I like to ask: Can you reap the _tret_ as well as the _tare_? And who was the Man in the Iron Mask? What has become of the ring I tossed In the lap of my mistress, false and fair? Her grave is green and her tombstone mossed; But who is to be the next Lord Mayor, And where is King William of Leicester Square? And who has emptied my hunting flask? And who is possessed of Stella's hair? And who was the Man in the Iron Mask? And what has become of the knee I crossed, And the rod, and the child they would not spare? And what will a dozen herring cost When herring are sold at threehalfpence a pair? And what in the world is the Golden Stair? Did Diogenes die in a tub or a cask, Like Clarence for love of liquor there? And who was the Man in the Iron Mask? _Envoy._ Poets, your readers have much to bear, For _Ballade_-making is no great task. If you do not remember, I don't much care Who was the Man in the Iron Mask. AUGUSTUS M. MOORE. ON NEWPORT BEACH. (Rondeau.) On Newport beach there ran right merrily, In dainty navy blue clothed to the knee, Thence to the foot in white _au naturel_, A little maid. Fair was she, truth to tell, As Oceanus' child Callirrhoë. In the soft sand lay one small shell, its wee Keen scallops tinct with faint hues, such as be In girlish cheeks. In some old storm it fell On Newport Beach. There was a bather of the species _he_, Who saw the little maid go toward the sea; Rushing to help her through the billowy swell, He set his sole upon the little shell, And heaped profanely phraséd obloquy On Newport Beach. H. C. BUNNER. CULTURE IN THE SLUMS. (Inscribed to an Intense Poet.) I. RONDEAU. "O crikey, Bill!" she ses to me, she ses. "Look sharp," ses she, "with them there sossiges. Yea! sharp with them there bags of mysteree! For lo!" she ses, "for lo! old pal," ses she, "I'm blooming peckish, neither more nor less." Was it not prime--I leave you all to guess How prime!----to have a jude in love's distress Come spooning round, and murmuring balmilee, "O crikey, Bill!" For in such rorty wise doth Love express His blooming views, and asks for your address, And makes it right, and does the gay and free. I kissed her--I did so! And her and me Was pals. And if that ain't good business, O crikey, Bill! II. VILLANELLE. Now ain't they utterly too-too (She ses, my Missus mine,[11] ses she), Them flymy little bits of Blue. Joe, just you kool 'em-nice and skew Upon our old meogginee, Now ain't they utterly too-too? They're better than a pot'n' a screw, They're equal to a Sunday spree, Them flymy little bits of Blue! Suppose I put 'em up the flue, And booze the profits, Joe? Not me. Now ain't they utterly too-too? I do the 'Igh Art fake, I do. Joe, I'm consummate; and I _see_ Them flymy little bits of Blue. Which, Joe, is why I ses te you-- Æsthetic-like, and limp, and free-- Now _ain't_ they utterly too-too, Them flymy little bits of Blue? I often does a quiet read At Booty Shelly's[12] poetry; I thinks that Swinburne at a screed Is really almost too-too fly; At Signor Vagna's[13] harmony I likes a merry little flutter; I've had at Pater many a shy; In fact, my form's the Bloomin' Utter. My mark's a tidy little feed, And 'Enery Irving's gallery, To see old 'Amlick do a bleed, And Ellen Terry on the die, Or Franky's ghostes at hi-spy,[14] And parties carried on a shutter.[15] Them vulgar Coupeaus is my eye! In fact, my form's the Bloomin' Utter. The Grosvenor's nuts-it is, indeed! I goes for 'Olman 'Unt like pie. It's equal to a friendly lead To see B. Jones's judes go by. Stanhope he makes me fit to cry. Whistler he makes me melt like butter. Strudwick he makes me flash my cly-- In fact, my form's the Bloomin' Utter. _Envoy._ I'm on for any Art that's 'Igh; I talks as quite as I can splutter; I keeps a Dado on the sly; In fact, my form's the Bloomin' Utter! W. E. HENLEY. [11] An adaptation of "Madonna mia." [12] Probably Botticelli. [13] Wagner (?) [14] This seems to be a reference to _The Corsican Brothers_. [15] _Richard III._ (?) THE STREET SINGER. (Villanelle from my window.) He stands at the kerb and sings. 'Tis a doleful tune and slow, Ah me, if I had but wings! He bends to the coin one flings, But he never attempts to go,- He stands at the kerb and sings. The conjurer comes with his rings, And the Punch-and-Judy show. Ah me, if I had but wings! They pass like all fugitive things-- They fade and they pass, but lo! He stands at the kerb and sings. All the magic that Music brings Is lost when he mangles it so-- Ah me, if I had but wings! But the worst is a thought that stings! There is nothing at hand to throw! He stands at the kerb and sings-- Ah me, if I had but wings! AUSTIN DOBSON. MALAPROPOS. (Rondeau.) Imitated from the French of Count Anthony Hamilton. Malàpropos do English wits revive The Rondeau, which our beauties hear with scorn; Hide in an extinct form a heart alive, And woo bright lasses, whom they wish to wive, Malàpropos, with Gaulish verse outworn. More fondly would these rosebuds of the morn Unfold to airs-gay, playful, amative- Even Astrophel five phrases would contrive-- Malàpropos. O dazzling youth, to fashion's follies sworn, Would you their breasts with love's sweet pains were torn? Rondeau and Ballade to the Devil drive; Use honest English when for them you strive, Since never to their hearts would thus arrive-- Malàpropos. G. H. (_In "The Lute."_) BEHOLD THE DEEDS! (Chant Royal.) [Being the Plaint of Adolphe Culpepper Ferguson, Salesman of Fancy Notions, held in durance of his Landlady for a failure to connect on Saturday night.] I. I would that all men my hard case might know; How grievously I suffer for no sin: I, Adolphe Culpepper Ferguson, for lo! I, of my landlady am lockéd in, For being short on this sad Saturday, Nor having shekels of silver wherewith to pay; She has turned and is departed with my key; Wherefore, not even as other boarders free, I sing (as prisoners to their dungeon stones When for ten days they expiate a spree): Behold the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones! II. One night and one day have I wept my woe; Nor wot I when the morrow doth begin, If I shall have to write to Briggs & Co., To pray them to advance the requisite tin For ransom of their salesman, that he may Go forth as other boarders go alway---- As those I hear now flocking from their tea, Led by the daughter of my landlady Piano-ward. This day for all my moans, Dry bread and water have been servéd me. Behold the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones! III. Miss Amabel Jones is musical, and so The heart of the young he-boardér doth win, Playing "The Maiden's Prayer," _adagio_-- That fetcheth him, as fetcheth the banco skin The innocent rustic. For my part, I pray: That Badarjewska maid may wait for aye Ere sits she with a lover, as did we Once sit together, Amabel! Can it be That all that arduous wooing not atones For Saturday shortness of trade dollars three? _Behold_ the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones! IV. Yea! she forgets the arm was wont to go Around her waist. She wears a buckle whose pin Galleth the crook of the young man's elbów; _I_ forget not, for I that youth have been. Smith was aforetime the Lothario gay. Yet once, I mind me, Smith was forced to stay Close in his room. Not calm, as I, was he; But his noise brought no pleasaunce, verily. Small ease he gat of playing on the bones, Or hammering on his stove-pipe, that I see. Behold the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones! V. Thou, for whose fear the figurative crow I eat, accursed be thou and all thy kin! Thee will I show up-yea, up will I shew Thy too thick buckwheats, and thy tea too thin. Ay! here I dare thee, ready for the fray! Thou dost _not_ "keep a first-class house," I say! It does not with the advertisements agree. Thou lodgest a Briton with a puggaree, And thou hast harboured Jacobses and Cohns, Also a Mulligan. Thus denounce I thee! Behold the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones! _Envoy._ Boarders! the worst I have not told to ye: She hath stolen my trousers, that I may not flee Privily by the window. Hence these groans, There is no fleeing in a _robe de nuit_. Behold the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones! H. C. BUNNER. * * * * * THE WALTER SCOTT PRESS, NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE. Transcriber's Notes: Simple spelling, grammar, and typographical errors were corrected. Italics markup is enclosed in _underscores_. Greek text has been transliterated and enclosed in ~tildes~. Fancy font markup is enclosed in #number signs#. 
45760	----	file was produced from images generously made available by The Kentuckiana Digital Library) PLAYS AND LYRICS PLAYS AND LYRICS BY CALE YOUNG RICE LONDON HODDER AND STOUGHTON 27 PATERNOSTER ROW NEW YORK: MCCLURE PHILLIPS & CO. 44 EAST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 1906 UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED. PRINTERS, WOKING AND LONDON. To IDA M. TARBELL WITH FAITHFUL FRIENDSHIP PREFACE _This volume contains "Yolanda of Cyprus," a hitherto unpublished play; many new lyrics; some others that appeared in "Song-Surf," a volume whose publishers failed before it reached the public; and "David," which came out in America in 1904. The author's desire has been to include only his best work._ CONTENTS PAGE YOLANDA OF CYPRUS 1 LYRICS--DRAMATIC:-- JAEL 91 MARY AT NAZARETH 96 OUTCAST 98 ADELIL 100 THE DYING POET 102 ON THE MOOR 105 HUMAN LOVE 107 O GO NOT OUT 108 CALL TO YOUR MATE, BOB-WHITE 110 TRANSCENDED 112 THE CRY OF EVE 113 THE CHILD GOD GAVE 116 MOTHER-LOVE 118 ASHORE 120 LOVE'S WAY TO CHILDHOOD 122 LISSETTE 123 TEARLESS 125 THE LIGHTHOUSEMAN 126 BY THE INDUS 128 FROM ONE BLIND 130 AT THE FALL OF ROME, A.D. 455 131 PEACELESS LOVE 133 SUNDERED 134 WITH OMAR 135 A JAPANESE MOTHER (IN TIME OF WAR) 144 LYRICS--NON-DRAMATIC:-- SHINTO (MIYAJIMA, JAPAN, 1905) 146 EVOCATION (NIKKO, JAPAN, 1905) 148 THE ATONER 150 INTIMATION 151 IN JULY 152 FROM ABOVE 154 SONGS TO A. H. R.:-- I. THE WORLD'S AND MINE 155 II. LOVE-CALL IN SPRING 156 III. MATING 157 IV. UNTOLD 158 V. LOVE-WATCH 159 VI. AS YOU ARE 160 VII. AT AMALFI 161 VIII. ON THE PACIFIC 163 THE WINDS 165 THE DAY-MOON 167 TO A SINGING WARBLER 169 TO THE SEA 170 THE DEAD GODS 172 AT WINTER'S END 175 APRIL 176 AUGUST GUESTS 177 AUTUMN 178 THE WORLD 179 TO THE DOVE 180 AT TINTERN ABBEY 182 THE VICTORY 184 SEARCHING DEATH'S DARK 185 SERENITY 187 TO THE SPRING WIND 188 THE RAMBLE 189 RETURN 192 THE EMPTY CROSS 194 SUNSET-LOVERS 196 TO A ROSE (IN A HOSPITAL) 198 UNBURTHENED 199 WHERE PEACE IS DUTY 201 WANTON JUNE 202 AUTUMN AT THE BRIDGE 204 SONG 205 TO HER WHO SHALL COME 206 AVOWAL TO THE NIGHTINGALE 208 STORM-EBB 210 SLAVES 212 WAKING 213 FAUN-CALL 214 LINGERING 216 STORM-TWILIGHT 217 WILDNESS 218 BEFORE AUTUMN 219 FULFILMENT 221 TO THE FALLEN LEAVES 223 MAYA (HIROSHIMO, JAPAN, 1905) 224 SPIRIT OF RAIN (MIANOSHITA, JAPAN, 1905) 226 THE NYMPH AND THE GOD 227 A SEA-GHOST 228 LAST SIGHT OF LAND 230 SILENCE 231 DAVID 233 YOLANDA OF CYPRUS CHARACTERS RENIER LUSIGNAN _A descendant of the Lusignan kings of Cyprus._ BERENGERE _His wife._ AMAURY _His Son, Commander of Famagouste under the Venetians._ YOLANDA _The Ward of Berengere, betrothed to Amaury._ CAMARIN _A Baron of Paphos, guest in the Lusignan Castle._ VITTIA PISANI _A Venetian Lady, also a guest._ MORO _A Priest._ HASSAN _Warden of the Castle._ HALIL _His Son, a boy._ TREMITUS _A Physician._ OLYMPIO _A Greek boy, serving Amaury._ ALESSA } MAGA } _Berengere's Women._ CIVA } MAURIA } SMARDA _Slave to Vittia._ PIETRO _In Vittia's pay._ _Priests, acolytes, etc._ TIME--_The sixteenth century._ PLACE--_The island of Cyprus._ ACT I SCENE: _A dim Hall, of blended Gothic and Saracenic styles, in the Lusignan Castle, on the island of Cyprus near Famagouste. Around the walls, above faint frescoes portraying the deliverance of Jerusalem by the Crusaders, runs a frieze inlaid with the coats-of-arms of former Lusignan kings. On the left, and back, is a door hung with heavy damask, and in the wall opposite, another. Farther down on the right a few steps, whose railing supports a Greek vase with jasmine, lead through a chapel to the sleeping apartments. In the rear, on either side, are guled lattice windows, and in the centre an open grated door, looking upon a loggia, and, across the garden below, over the moonlit sea. Seats are placed about, and, forward, a divan with rich Turkish coverings. A table with a lighted cross-shaped candlestick is by the door, left; and a lectern with a book on it, to the front, right. As the curtain rises, the Women, except_ CIVA, _lean wearily on the divan, and_ HALIL _near is singing dreamily_, Ah, the balm, the balm, And ah, the blessing Of the deep fall of night And of confessing. Of the sick soul made white Of all distressing: Made white!... Ah, balm of night And, ah the blessing! _The music falls and all seem yielding to sleep. Suddenly there are hoof-beats and sounds at the gates below._ HALIL _springs up_. _Halil._ Alessa! Maga! Stirrings at the gates! (_All start up._) Some one is come. _Alessa._ Boy, Halil, who? _Halil._ Up, up! Perhaps Lord Renier--No: I will learn. (_He runs to curtains and looks._) It is Olympio! Olympio! From Famagouste and Lord Amaury! _Mauria._ Ah! And he comes here? _Halil._ As he were lord of skies! To lady Yolanda, by my lute! _Maga._ Where is she? _Alessa._ I do not know; perhaps, her chamber. _Mauria._ Stay: His word may be of the Saracens. _Halil_ (_calling_). Oho! (_He admits_ OLYMPIO, _who enters insolently down. All press around him gaily._) _Mauria._ Well what, Olympio, from Famagouste? What tidings? tell us. _Maga._ See, his sword! _Olympio._ Stand off. _Mauria._ The tidings, then, the tidings! _Olympio._ None--for women. _Mauria._ So, so, my Cupid? None of the Saracens? Of the squadron huddling yesterday for haven At Keryneia? _Olympio._ Who has told you? _Mauria._ Who? A hundred galleys westing up the wind, Scenting the shore, but timorous as hounds. A gale--and twenty down! _Maga._ The rest are flown? _Olympio._ Ask Zeus, or ask, to-morrow, lord Amaury, Or, if he comes, to-night. To lady Yolanda I'm sent and not to tattle silly here. (_He starts off, but is arrested by laughter within. It is_ CIVA _who enters, holding up a parchment._) O! Only Civa. (_Starts again with_ HALIL.) _Civa._ How, Olympio! Stay you, and hear!--May never virgin love him! Gone as a thistle! (_Turns._) _Mauria._ Pouf! _Alessa_ (_to_ CIVA). Now, what have you? _Civa._ Verses! found in the garden. Verses! verses! On papyrus of Paphos. O, to read! But you, Alessa--! _Alessa_ (_takes them_). In the garden? _Civa._ By The fountain cypress at the marble feet Of chaste Diana! _Maga._ Where Sir Camarin And oft our lady--! _Civa._ Maga will you prattle? Read them to us, Alessa, read them, read. They are of love! _Maga._ No, sorrow. _Civa._ O, as a nun You ever sigh for sorrow!--They are of love! Of valour bursting through enchanted bounds To ladies prisoned in an ogre's keep! Then of the bridals!--O, they are of love! _Maga._ No, Civa, no! of sorrow! see, her lips! (_She points to_ ALESSA, _who, reading, has paled._) See, see! _Civa._ Alessa! _Alessa._ Maga--Civa--Ah! (_She rends the parchment._) _Mauria._ What are you doing? _Alessa._ They were writ to _her_! _Mauria._ To her? to whom? what are you saying? Read! Read us the verses. _Alessa._ No. _Mauria._ Tell then his name Who writes them, and to whom. _Alessa._ I will not. _Mauria._ Then It is some guilt you hide!--And touching her You dote on--lady Yolanda! _Alessa._ Shame! _Mauria._ Some guilt Of one, then, in this castle!--See, her lips Betray it is. _Maga._ No, Mauria! no! (_holds her_) hush! (_Forms appear without._) _Mauria._ O, loose me. _Maga._ There, on the loggia! Hush, see-- Our lady and Sir Camarin. _Alessa_ (_fearful_). It is.... They heard us, Maga? _Maga._ No, but---- _Mauria_ (_to_ ALESSA). So? that mouse? _Alessa._ You know not, Mauria, what 'tis you say. (BERENGERE _coldly, as if consenting to it, enters._) She is seeking us; be still. (_Stepping out._) My lady? _Berengere._ Yes. Your lamps; for it is time Now for your aves and o'erneeded sleep. But first I'd know if yet Lord Renier---- (_Sees their disquiet--starts._) Why are you pale? _Alessa._ I? _Berengere._ So--and strange. _Alessa._ We have But put away the distaff and the needle. (CAMARIN _enters._) _Berengere._ The distaff and the needle--it may be. And yet you do not seem---- _Alessa._ My lady--? _Berengere._ Go; And send me Hassan. (_The women leave._) Camarin--you saw? They were not as their wont is. _Camarin._ To your eyes, My Berengere, that apprehension haunts. They were as ever. Then be done with fear! _Berengere._ I cannot. _Camarin._ To the abyss with it. To-night Is ours--Renier tarries at Famagouste-- Is ours for love and for a long delight! _Berengere._ Whose end may be-- _Camarin._ Dawn and the dewy lark! And passing of all presage from you. _Berengere_ (_sits_). No: For think, Yolanda's look when by the cypress We read the verses! And my dream that I Should with a cross--inscrutable is sleep!-- Bring her deep bitterness. _Camarin._ Dreams are a brood Born of the night and not of destiny. She guesses not our guilt, and Renier Clasps to his breast ambition as a bride-- Ambition for Amaury. _Berengere._ None can say. He's much with this Venetian, our guest. Though Venice gyves us more with tyranny Than would the Saracen. _Camarin._ But through this lady Of the Pisani, powerful in Venice, He hopes to lift again his dynasty Up from decay; and to restore this island, This venture-dream of the seas, unto his house. 'Tis clear, my Berengere! _Berengere._ Then, _her_ design? And what the requital that entices her? (_Rises._) Evil will come of it, to us some evil, Or to Yolanda and Amaury's love. But, there; the women. _Camarin._ And too brief their stay. What signal for to-night? _Berengere._ Be in the garden. Over the threshold yonder I will wave The candle-sign, when all are passed to sleep. _Camarin._ And with the beam I shall mount up to you Quicker than ecstasy. _Berengere._ I am as a leaf Before the wind and raging of your love. Go--go. _Camarin._ But to return unto your breast! (_He leaves her by the divan._) (_The women re-enter with silver lighted lamps; behind them are_ HASSAN _and the slave_ SMARDA. _They wait for_ BERENGERE, _who has stood silent, to speak._) _Berengere_ (_looking up_). Ah, you are come; I had forgotten. And it is time for sleep.--Hassan, the gates: Close them. _Hassan._ And chain them, lady? _Berengere._ Wait no longer. Lord Renier will not come. _Hassan._ No word of him? _Berengere._ None, though he yesterday left Nicosie With the priest Moro. _Hassan._ Lady-- _Berengere._ Wait no longer. Come, women, with your lamps and light the way. (_The women go by the steps._ BERENGERE _follows._) _Hassan_ (_staring after her_). The reason of this mood in her? The reason? Something is vile. Lady Yolanda weeps In secret; all for what?--unless because Of the Paphian--or this Venetian. (_Seeing_ SMARDA.) Now, Slave! Scythian! You linger? _Smarda._ I am bidden-- My mistress. _Hassan._ Spa! Thy mistress hath, I think, Something of hell in her and has unpacked A portion in this castle. Is it so? _Smarda._ My lady is of Venice. _Hassan._ Strike her, God. Her smirk admits it. _Smarda._ Touch me not! _Hassan._ I'll wring Thy tongue out sudden, if it now has lies. What of thy lady and Lord Renier? _Smarda._ Off! (RENIER _enters behind, with_ MORO.) _Hassan._ Thy lady and Lord Renier, I say! What do they purpose? _Smarda._ Fool-born! look around. _Hassan._ Not till---- _Smarda._ Lord Renier, help. _Hassan._ What do you say? (_Turns, and stares amazed._) A fool I am.... _Renier._ Where is my wife? _Hassan._ Why, she.... This slave stung me to pry. _Renier._ Where is my wife? _Hassan._ A moment since, was here--the women with her. She asked for your return. _Renier._ And wherefore did? _Hassan._ You jeer me. _Renier._ Answer. _Hassan._ Have you not been gone? _Renier._ Not--overfar. Where is Yolanda?--Well? No matter; find my chamber till I come. Of my arrival, too, no word to any. (HASSAN _goes, confused._) You, Moro, have deferred me; now, no more. Whether it is suspicion eats in me, Mistrust and fret and doubt--of whom I say not, Or whether desire and unsubduable To see Amaury sceptred--I care not. (_To_ SMARDA.) Slave, to your lady who awaits me, say I'm here and now have chosen. _Moro._ Do not! _Renier._ Chosen. (SMARDA _goes._) None can be great who will not hush his heart To hold a sceptre, and Amaury must. He is Lusignan and his lineage Will drown in him Yolanda's loveliness. _Moro._ It will not. _Renier._ Then at least I shall uncover What this Venetian hints. _Moro._ Hints? _Renier._ I must know. _Moro._ 'Tis of your wife?--Yolanda? _Renier._ Name them not. They've shut from me their souls. _Moro._ My lord, not so; But you repulse them. _Renier._ When they pity. No, Something has gone from me or never was Within my breast. I love not--am unlovable. Amaury is not so, And this Venetian Vittia Pisani---- _Moro._ Distrust her! _Renier._ She has power. _Moro._ But not truth. And yesterday a holy relic scorned. _Renier._ She loves Amaury. Wed to her he will Be the elected Governor of Cyprus. The throne, then, but a step. _Moro._ But all too great. And think; Yolanda is to him as heaven: He will not yield her. _Renier._ Then he must. And she, The Venetian, has ways to it--a secret To pierce her from his arms. _Moro._ Sir, sir?--of what? _Renier._ I know not, of some shame. _Moro._ Shame! _Renier._ Why do you clutch me? _Moro._ I--am a priest--and shame---- _Renier._ You have suspicion? (VITTIA _enters unnoted._) Of whom?--Of whom, and what? _Vittia_ (_lightly_). My lord, of women. (RENIER _starts and turns._) So does the Holy Church instill him. _Renier._ You Come softly, lady of Venice. _Vittia._ Streets of sea In Venice teach us. _Renier._ Of what women, then? My wife? Yolanda? _Vittia._ By the freedom due us, What matters it? In Venice our lords know That beauty has no master. _Renier._ Has no.... That, That too has something hid. _Vittia._ Suspicious lord! Yet Berengere Lusignan is his wife! And soon Yolanda--But for that I'm here. You sent for me. _Renier_ (_sullen_). I sent. _Vittia._ To say you've chosen? And offer me irrevocable aid To win Amaury? _Renier._ All is vain in me Before the fever for it. _Vittia._ Then, I shall. It must be done. My want is unafraid. Hourly I am expecting out of Venice Letters of power. And what to you I pledge is he shall be Ruler of Cyprus and these Mediterranean Blue seas that rock ever against its coast. That do I pledge ... but more. _Renier._ Of rule?... Then what? _Vittia_ (_going up to him_). Of shame withheld--dishonour unrevealed. (_He half recoils and stands._ SMARDA _enters hastily to them._) _Smarda._ My lady-- _Vittia._ Speak. _Smarda._ _She!_ _Vittia._ Who? Yolanda? comes? She's not asleep as you averred to me, Was not asleep, but comes?... My lord--! _Renier._ I'll stay, Stay and confront her. _Vittia._ Ignorantly? No. _Renier._ I'll question her. _Vittia._ Blindly, and peril all? _Renier._ I will return. You put me off, and off. (_By the loggia, with_ MORO, _he goes; the slave slips out_. YOLANDA _enters, sadly her gaze on the floor. She walks slowly, but becoming conscious starts, sees_ VITTIA, _and turns to withdraw._) _Vittia._ Your pardon-- _Yolanda._ I can serve you? _Vittia._ If you seek The women, they are gone. _Yolanda._ I do not seek them. _Vittia._ Nor me? _Yolanda._ Nor any.--Yet I would I might With seeking penetrate the labyrinth Of your intent. _Vittia._ I thank you. And you shall, To-night--if you have love. _Yolanda._ That thread were vain. _Vittia._ I say, if you have love. _Yolanda._ Of guile? _Vittia._ Of her You hold as mother, and who is Amaury's. _Yolanda._ Were it so simple, no design had ever Laired darkly in you, but to my eyes been clear As shallows under Morpha's crystal wave. _Vittia._ Unproven you speak so. _Yolanda._ And proven would. _Vittia._ If so, then--save her. _Yolanda._ Who? What do you--? _Vittia_ (_with irony_). Mean? It is not clear? _Yolanda._ Save her? _Vittia._ The surety flies Out of your cheek and dead upon your heart: Yet you are innocent--oh innocent?-- O'er what abyss she hangs! _Yolanda._ O'er no abyss. _Vittia._ But to her lord is constant! _Yolanda_ (_desperate_). She is constant. _Vittia._ And to his bed is true? _Yolanda._ True. _Vittia._ And this baron Of Paphos--Camarin--is but her _friend_, And deeply yours--as oft you feign to shield her? _Yolanda._ He is no more. _Vittia._ Your heart belies your lips, Knows better than believing what you say. _Yolanda._ Were, were he then ... (_struggles_) Lord Renier knows it not! And never must. I have misled his thought From her to me. The danger thus may pass, The open shame. Sir Camarin departed, her release From the remorse and fettering will seem Sweet as a vista into fairyland. For none e'er will betray her. _Vittia._ None? _Yolanda._ Your tone...! (_Realising with gradual horror._) The still insinuation! You would do it! This is the beast then of the labyrinth? And this your heart is? _Vittia._ No, not ever: no. But now, if you deny me. _Yolanda._ Speak as a woman, If there is Womanhood in you to speak. The name of Berengere Lusignan must Go clean unto the years, fair and unsullied. Nor must the bloody leap Of death fall on her from Lord Renier's sword, A death too ready if he but suspect. No, she is holy! And holy are my lips Remembering that they may call her mother! All the bright world I breathe because of her, Laughter and roses, day-song of the sea, Not bitterness and loneliness and blight! All the bright world, Of voices, dear as waking to the dead-- Voices of love and tender earthly hopes-- O, all the beauty I was once forbid! Yes, yes!-- She lifted me, a lonely convent weed, A cloister thing unvisited of dew, Withering and untended and afar From the remembered ruin of my home, And here has planted me in happiness. Then, for her, all I am! _Vittia._ Or--hope to be? _Yolanda._ The price, say, of your silence.--I am weary. _Vittia._ And would be rid of me. _Yolanda._ The price, the price. _Vittia._ It is (_low and ashamed_) that you renounce Amaury's love. (_A pause._) _Yolanda._ Amaury's love.... You then would rend me there Where not Eternity could heal the wound Though all the River of God might be for balm! Cruelty like to this you could not do? (_Waits a moment._) A swallow on the battlements to-day Fell from the hawk: you soothed and set it free. This, then, you would not--! _Vittia._ Yes. _Yolanda._ You cannot! _Vittia._ Yes. _Yolanda_ (_wrung for a moment then calm_). I had forgotten, you are of Venice--Venice Whose burdening is vast upon this land. Good-night. _Vittia._ And you despise me! _Yolanda._ More am sick That love of him has led your thought so low. To-morrow-- _Vittia._ Not to-morrow! But you must Choose and at once. _Yolanda._ Then---- (_They start and listen. Approaching hoofs are heard._) Vittia. Ah! Amaury?--It is? His speed upon the road? now at the gates? (_The fall of chains is heard._) What then, what is your purpose--to renounce And force him from you, or to have me breathe To Renier Lusignan the one word That will transmute his wrong to madness? Say quickly. Centuries have stained these walls, But never a wife; never---- (_Enter_ BERENGERE.) _Yolanda._ Mother?... _Berengere._ Amaury Has spurred to us, Yolanda, from his post, Secret and sudden. But ... what has befallen? (_Looks from one to the other._) _Yolanda._ He comes here, mother? _Berengere._ At once. _Yolanda._ No! _Vittia_ (_coldly, to_ YOLANDA). Then to-night Must be the end. _Yolanda._ Go, go. _Berengere_ (_as Vittia passes out_). What thing is this? _Yolanda._ Mother, I cannot have him--here--Amaury! Defer him but a little--till to-morrow. I cannot see him now. _Berengere._ This is o'erstrange. _Yolanda._ Help me to think. Go to him, go, and say Some woman thing--that I am ill--that I Am at confession--penance--that--Ah, say But anything! _Berengere._ Yolanda! _Yolanda._ Say.... No use. Too late. _Berengere._ His step? _Yolanda._ Oh, unmistakable; Along the corridor. There! (_The curtains are thrown back._) _Amaury_ (_at the threshold._) My Yolanda! (_Hastens down and takes her, passive, into his arms._ BERENGERE _goes._) My, my Yolanda! To touch you is as triumph to the blood, Is as the boon of battle to the strong! _Yolanda._ Amaury, no; release me and say why You come: The Saracens----? _Amaury._ Not of them now! (_Bends back her head._) But of some tribute incense to this beauty! Dear as the wind wafts from undying shrines Of mystery and myrrh! I'd have the eloquence of quickened moons Pouring upon the midnight magical, To say all I have yearned, Now, with your head pillowed upon my breast! Slow sullen speech come to my soldier lips, Rough with command, and impotent of softness? Come to my lips! or fill so full my eyes That the unutterable, shall seem as sweet To my Yolanda. (_Lifting her face, with surprise._) But how now? tears? _Yolanda._ Amaury---- _Amaury._ What have I done? Too pitiless have pressed You to this coat of steel? _Yolanda._ No, no. _Amaury._ My words, Or silence, then? _Yolanda._ Amaury, no, but sweet, Sweet as the roses of Damascus crusht, Your silence is! and sweeter than the dream Of April nightingale on Troados, Or gushing by the springs of Chitria, Your every word of love! Yet--yet--ah, fold me, Within your arms oblivion and hold me, Fast to your being press me, and there bless me With breathèd power of your manhood's might. Amaury!... _Amaury._ This I cannot understand. _Yolanda_ (_freeing herself_). Nothing--a folly--groundless frailty. _Amaury._ You've been again at some old tale of sorrow, (_Goes to the lectern._) Pining along the pages of a book-- This, telling of that Italy madonna Whose days were sad--I have forgotten how. Is it not so? _Yolanda._ No, no. The tears of women Come as the air and sighing of the night, We know not whence or why. _Amaury._ Often, perhaps. I am not skilled to tell. But these--not these! They are of trouble known. _Yolanda._ Yet now forget them. _Amaury._ It will not leave my heart that somehow--how I cannot fathom--Camarin---- _Yolanda_ (_lightly, to stop him_). No farther! _Amaury._ That Camarin of Paphos is their cause. Tell me---- _Yolanda._ Yes, that I love thee! _Amaury._ Tell me---- _Yolanda._ Love thee! As sea the sky! and as the sky the wind! And as the wind the forest! As the forest-- What does the forest love, Amaury? I Can think of nothing! _Amaury._ Tell me then you have Never a moment of you yielded to him, That never he has touched too long this hand-- Till evermore he must, even as I-- Nor once into your eyes too deep has gazed! You falter? darken? _Yolanda._ Would he ne'er had come Into these halls! that it were beautiful, Holy to hate him as the Lost can hate. _Amaury._ But 'tis not? _Yolanda._ God shall judge him. _Amaury._ And not you? _Yolanda._ Though he is weak, there is within him-- _Amaury._ That Which women trust? and you? (BERENGERE _enters. He turns to her._) Mother? _Berengere._ A runner, A soldier of your troop within the forts Has come with word. _Amaury_ (_starting_). Mother! _Berengere._ It is ill news? I've seen that battle-light in you before. 'Tis of the Saracens? you ride to-night Into their peril? _Amaury._ Come, the word, the word! _Berengere._ Only this token. _Amaury._ The spur? the spur? (_Takes it._) They then Are landing! _Yolanda._ How, Amaury; tell your meaning! _Amaury._ The galleys of the Saracens have found Anchor and land to-night near Keryneia. My troops are ready and await me-- So, no delay. _Yolanda._ I pray you (_strangely, with terror_) do not go. _Amaury._ Yolanda! _Yolanda._ If I am left alone--! _Amaury._ Yolanda! _Yolanda_ (_sinking to a seat_). I meant it not--a breath of fear--no more. Go, go. _Amaury._ I know you not to-night. Farewell. (_He kisses her and hurries off.... A silence._) _Berengere._ Yolanda---- _Yolanda._ Mother, I will go to sleep. (_She rises._) _Berengere._ A change is over you--a difference Drawn as a veil between us. _Yolanda._ I am weary. _Berengere._ You love me? _Yolanda._ As, O mother, I love him, With love impregnable to every ill, As Paradise is. _Berengere._ Then-- _Yolanda._ I pray, no more. To-night I am flooded with a deeper tide Than yet has flowed into my life--and through it Sounds premonition: so I must have calm. (_She embraces_ BERENGERE; _goes slowly up steps and off._) _Berengere_ (_chilled_). What fear--if it is fear--has so unfixed her? It is suspicion--Then I must not meet Him here to-night--or if to-night, no more. Her premonition!--and my dream that I Should with a cross bring her deep bitterness. (_Thinks a moment, then takes the crucifix from her neck._) Had Renier but come, perhaps I might ... (_Lays it on table._) O were I dead this sinning would awake me?... And yet I care not (_dully._) ... No, I will forget. (_Goes firmly from door to door and looks out each. Then lifts, uniting, the cross-shaped candlestick; and waving it at the loggia, turns holding it before her._) Soon he will come up from the cool, and touch Away my weakness with mad tenderness. Soon he will ... Ah! (_Has seen with terror the candlestick's structure._) The cross!... My dream!... Yolanda! (_Lets it fall._) Mercy of God, move in me!... Sacrilege! (_Sinks feebly to the divan, and bows, overcome._) _Camarin_ (_appearing after a pause an the loggia_). My Berengere, a moment, and I come! (_Enters, locking the grating behind him, Then he hurries down and leans to lift her face._) _Berengere._ No, no! nor ever, ever again, for ever! (_Shrinks._) Go from me and behind leave no farewell.... _Camarin._ This is--illusion. In the dew I've waited, And the night's song of you is in my brain-- A song that seems---- _Berengere._ Withhold from words. At last Fate is begun! See, with the cross it was I waved you hither. Leave me--let me pass Out of this sin--and to repentance--after. _Camarin._ I cannot, cannot! _Berengere._ Pity, then, my fear. This moment were it known would end with murder, Or did it not, dishonour still would kill! Leave, leave. _Camarin._ To-morrow, then; but not to-night! (_He goes behind and puts his arms around her._) Give me thy being once again, thy beauty. For it I'm mad as bacchanals for wine. (YOLANDA, _entering an the balcony, hears, and would retreat, but sees_ RENIER _come to the grating._) Once more be to me all that woman may! Let us again take rapture wings and rise Up to our world of love, guilt would unsphere. Let us live over days that passed as streams Limpid by lotus-banks unto the sea, O'er all the whispered nights that we have clasped Knowing the heights and all the deeps of passion! But speak, and we shall be amid the stars. (RENIER _draws a dagger and leaves the grating. With a low cry_ YOLANDA _staggers down: the Two rise, fearful._) _Berengere._ Yolanda! _Yolanda._ Mother, mother!... Ah, his eyes! _Berengere._ What brings you here--to spy upon me? _Yolanda._ Listen!... Think not of me--no, hush--but of the peril Arisen up.... Your husband! _Camarin._ Renier? _Yolanda._ Was at that grating--heard. And from its sheath, A dagger--! Ah, he will come. _Berengere_ (_weakly_). What does she say? _Yolanda._ Find calmness now, and some expedient. (_She struggles to think._) _Berengere._ I cannot die. _Yolanda._ No, no. _Berengere._ My flesh is weak, Is poor of courage--poverished by guilt, As all my soul is! But, Yolanda, you--! _Yolanda._ Yes, something must be done--something be done. (CAMARIN _goes to the curtains and returns._) _Berengere._ The shame ... the shame ... the shame! _Yolanda._ There yet is time. _Berengere._ You can deliver! you are innocent. _Yolanda._ Perhaps. Let me but think.--He came---- _Berengere._ You see? There is escape? a way from it? _Yolanda._ Perhaps. He came after your words ... yes ... could not see Here in the dimness ... but has only heard Sir Camarin? _Berengere._ I do not know! _Yolanda._ Go, go, Up to your chamber and be as asleep. There is a way--I think--dim, but a way. Go to your chamber; for there yet may be Prevention! _Berengere._ I--yes, yes. _Yolanda._ There is a way. (BERENGERE _goes._) Strength now to walk it! strength unfaltering. _Camarin._ What do you purpose? _Yolanda._ Here to take her place, Here at the lowest of her destiny. _Camarin._ I do not understand. _Yolanda._ But wholly shall. Clasp me within your arms; he must believe 'Tis I and not his wife you have unhallowed, Your arms about me, though they burn! and breathe me Thirst of unbounded love as unto her. (_He clasps her, and they wait._) Ah, it is he! _Camarin._ No. _Yolanda._ Yes, the words; at once! _Camarin_ (_hoarsely_). With all my body and soul-breath I love you, (RENIER _enters with_ MORO.) And all this night is ours for ecstasy. Kiss me with quenchless kisses, and embrace Me with your beauty, till---- (YOLANDA _with a cry, as of fear, loses herself, pretending to discover_ RENIER, _who is struck rigid._) _Moro._ My lord, my lord!... It is Yolanda. _Renier._ Then-- (_The dagger falls from him._) Why, then--Amaury! (YOLANDA, _realising, stunned, sinks back to the divan._) CURTAIN. ACT II SEVERAL DAYS HAVE ELAPSED. SCENE: _The forecourt of the castle, beyond which is the garden and in the distance the mountains, under the deep tropical blue of morning. On the right the wall enclosing the castle grounds run back and is lost in the foliage of cypress, palm, orange; it is pierced by an arched gate with lifted portcullis. On the left rises the dark front of the castle, its arabesqued doorway open. Across the rear a low arcaded screen of masonry, with an entrance to the right, separates the court from the garden. Before it a fountain, guarded by a statue of a Knight of St. John, falls into a porphyry basin, By the castle door, to the front, and elsewhere, are stone seats._ HASSAN _is standing moodily by the screen, left, looking out the portcullis. He starts, hearing steps, and as the old leach_ TREMITUS _enters, motions him silently into the castle; then muttering "the old blood-letter," stands as before, while_ CIVA, MAGA, _and_ MAURIA _are heard m the garden, and enter gaily bearing water-jars to the fountain._ CIVA _sees his look and breaks into a twitting laughter. The other two join her._ _Civa._ Look at him! Maga! Mauria! behold! Was ever sight so sweet upon the world! His eyes! his lips! a prince! _Mauria_ (_critically_). Now, is he not? With the price of vinegar upon his face. (_All laugh._) The price of vinegar! who'll buy!--Not I! Not I! Not I! Not I! _Hassan._ Wench. _Civa._ Verily! And not a man! he has discovered it! You're not a man, Mauria! we were duped. (MAURIA _slaps her playfully._) But see him now--a mummy of the Nile! Who died of choler! _Mauria._ Then, a care, he'll bite. He's been in the grave a long while and he's hungry. A barley-loaf, quick, Maga! _Civa._ To appease him! But ssh! Beware! There's something of import. (_They stop in mock awe before him._) What does he think of? _Mauria._ Sphinxes and the spheres. _Civa._ Or little ants and gnats that buzz about him. _Mauria._ And how to make them smart for sauciness. _Civa._ Or of Alessa! _Maga._ No, no, Civa! come; Enough of teasing. _Civa._ Of Alessa! _Maga._ No. Your pitcher, come. He's troubled by the tale Of lady Yolanda---- And waits for lord Amaury from the battle. _Civa._ The--! heigh! heigh-o! awaits! la, la! he does! (HASSAN _starts at her tone._) For lord Amaury! does he so indeed? _Hassan._ What do you know? Be silent. _Civa._ Ho! _Hassan._ Itch! would You have lady Yolanda hear? She comes Now, as she has this morning thrice, to ask. (YOLANDA _appears on the threshold with_ ALESSA.) Lord Renier's gall, remember, if she learns. (CIVA _flouts him, but goes to the fountain. The others follow, fill their jugs, and, singing, return to the garden._ YOLANDA _then crosses to_ HASSAN, _who waits evasive._) _Yolanda._ My want is still the same--words are unneeded. _Hassan._ To know of lord Amaury? _Yolanda._ Lord Amaury-- He has not yet returned? _Hassan_ (_loathly_). I have not seen him. _Yolanda._ Nor heard? _Hassan._ Nothing. _Yolanda._ I cannot understand. (_Goes to the gate, troubled._) _Hassan_ (_low_). Liar that I am to say it! _Yolanda._ I cannot--cannot! (_Returns._) The Saracens we know were routed to Their vessels--all the Allah-crying horde. And lord Amaury--said the courier not?---- Rode in the battle as a seraph might To the Holy Sepulchre's deliverance. And yet no word from him. _Hassan._ Perhaps--with reason. (_She looks at him quickly--he flushes._) With reason!... knowing, lady, what, here, now, Is rumoured of a baron And lady Yolanda!... Pardon! _Yolanda_ (_slowly_). Of a baron And lady Yolanda. _Hassan._ Yes: it is the women Who with their ears ever at secresy Rumour it. But, lady, it is a lie? This Camarin, this prinker, Whose purse is daily loose to us.... I curse him! His father.... Well, my mother's ten years dead And flower lips breathe innocent above her. But I'll avenge her shame. _Yolanda._ On--him? _Hassan._ On him! And--you, who do not hush this tale of you, Though it is truthless--hear: I have a stab for Camarin of Paphos Whenever he has lived--but say!--too long. _Yolanda_ (_who has listened rigidly. After a pause_). Come here ... look in my eyes, and--deeper.... Shame! (_He is quelled._) Pity alone we owe to sin not blame. And they who love may stray, it seems, beyond All justice of our judging.-- Is evil mad enchantment come upon The portals of this castle? _Hassan._ I would serve you. _Yolanda._ With murder? no. But if you would indeed, As oft you have---- _Hassan._ Lady, I will. _Yolanda._ Then watch The Venetian, and when Amaury comes Find me at once. What sound was that?... A bugle? It is! it is! Alessa! (_Overjoyed._) Do you hear? His troop! Amaury's! O the silver chime! Again I breathe, I breathe! My heart as a bird's in May! Amaury!... Come! we'll go to him! we'll go! Before any within Lusignan--! _Alessa._ Lady! _Yolanda._ At once! it rings again! again! we'll go! _Alessa._ And tell him! _Yolanda._ Warn! Warn him a fever's here That he must fend his ear from. 'Twill suffice. And I again shall see him, hear him speak, Hang on his battle-story blessedly! And you, Hassan.... But why do you stand stone? You know something.... He's dead! _Hassan._ No, lady, no. _Yolanda._ Not? ah!... then what? 'Twas not his trumpet? _Hassan_ (_after a struggle_). No. And I will lie to you no longer. _Yolanda._ You? _Hassan._ Though for obedience it be or life; And at Lord Renier's command.... It is Not true that lord Amaury from the battle Has not returned. _Yolanda._ But he--you mean--is here? (_Stands motionless._) _Hassan._ Here: came on yesterday at dusk. Was led Up to his chamber.... So much Lord Renier who slipt him in Revealed, that I might guile you. _Alessa_ (_sharply_). And you have? _Hassan._ Yes. _Alessa._ Though you boasted love to me? _Hassan._ Now, woman! _Alessa._ Lady, I would have wed him--wed this toad! Who'd kill the Paphian, too? _Hassan._ Yes! _Alessa._ Worm! with dust? Heeling away from him? _Yolanda._ Be still, be still. (ALESSA _turns to her._) These words can wait on what may yet be helped. This may undo me! First of all I should Have seen Amaury! Now----! _Hassan._ The Venetian! (_They start._ VITTIA _enters from castle._) Lady, I will go in. _Alessa._ And I; to wait. (_They go._) _Yolanda_ (_suddenly_). But I to see Amaury. _Vittia._ What? (_Stops._) _Yolanda._ To see, Vittia Visani, who withholds Amaury---- Who came last night at dusk, as well you know. (_They face, opposed._) What have you told him? _Vittia._ Hah? _Yolanda._ Insolence, false And feigning! But no matter; lies are brief. I'll go myself to him. _Vittia._ To be repelled? (BERENGERE _enters._) _Yolanda._ If he could trust you--but he could not. _Vittia._ Knowing A Paphian ere this has fondled two? _Yolanda._ You hear, mother? (_To Vittia._) Out of my way at once. _Berengere._ Stay, stay! She has not told him! nothing!... Yes, I too have been aware and kept you blind. But, nothing! for he still is overworn. And now his wound---- _Yolanda._ Wound! he is wounded? _Berengere._ He sleeps. _Yolanda._ And is in danger--jeopardy? _Berengere._ In none; If the leech Tremitus has any skill; And that you know. _Yolanda._ I thank ... Madonna ... thee! (VITTIA _laughs and goes._) But you, mother, are come at last to say Your promises, broken two days, are kept? You've spoken? won Lord Renier to wisdom? Pled him to silence which alone can save us? Dear mother----? _Berengere._ Do not call me so again. (_Turns away._) I have not--and I will not. _Yolanda._ Oh! _Berengere._ I cannot.... _Yolanda._ But can leave me so laden here within This gulf's dishonour? Never!... So return And pledge him but to wait! For this Venetian has now, I bode, Something of evil more, When once Amaury hears all that has passed. Return! _Berengere._ I cannot. _Yolanda_ (_proudly_). Then hear, hear me! I Too am a woman, and the woman wants, The beauty and ache and dream and glow and urge Of an unreckoned love are mine as yours. I will not lose Amaury; but will tell him Myself the truth. _Berengere._ Then--I'll not stay for death, And wait for shame. But now with Camarin Will go from here. _Yolanda._ Mother! _Berengere._ To some retreat Away! _Yolanda._ Where still pursuit would follow! even, I fear, Amaury's!-- And overtake you though it were as far As the sea foams, or past the sandy void Of stricken Africa. It would be vain. Vain, and I cannot have you. No, but listen---- (_Breaks off seeing_ RENIER, _on the castle threshold. His look is on her, but he comes down addressing_ BERENGERE.) _Renier._ She troubles you too much. _Berengere._ My lord? _Renier._ Too much. You cherish her and reap unchastity For gratitude--unchastity against Our very son who was betrothed to her. Yet see her shameless. _Berengere_ (_dully_). No; I think you wrong her. (YOLANDA _moves apart._) _Renier._ Nobly you pity! But it will not veil her. Rather the convent and the crucifix, Matin and Vesper in a round remote, And senseless beads, for such.--But what more now Is she demanding? _Berengere._ Little. _Renier._ Not the means Still to deceive Amaury? _Berengere._ Renier ... no. (_Speaks loathly._) But I have a request that, if you grant, Will lead peace back to us ... and from us draw This fang of fate. _Renier._ Ah. _Berengere._ Yes. _Renier_ (_slowly_). And we might be As those that wedded love? _Berengere._ Perhaps. _Renier._ That--love! (_A pause._) Then it shall be, at once ... But no, I first Have a confession. _Berengere._ You? _Renier._ A pang!--For days (_Takes her hand._) Before I found Yolanda on the breast Of Camarin of Paphos---- I suffered in the furnace of suspicion The fume and suffocation of the thought That you were the guilty one--you my own wife. (_She recoils to_ YOLANDA, _who comes up._) I did; but rue, rue it!... ... Yet--it is just That you recoil even as now you do From stain upon your wedded constancy.... But Time that is e'er-pitiful may pass Soon over it-- And leave only forgiveness. And perhaps Then I shall win you as I never have.-- Now the request. _Berengere._ That now ... I cannot plead. (_Sees_ YOLANDA _harden. Is impelled._) And yet I must ... It is that, till I bid Amaury may not know of this ... not know This trouble fallen from a night or evil-- Pitiless on us as a meteor's ash. _Renier._ Not of it? he? not know? _Berengere._ Trust to me. _Renier._ How! And to this wanton's perfidy to bind Him witless to her--with a charm perhaps-- Or, past releasing, with a philtre? She Whom now he holds pure as a spirit sped From immortality, or the fair fields Of the sun, to be his bride? _Yolanda._ Sir, no!... She means Not I shall wed him! (_Winningly._) Only that you spare To separate us with this horror; that You trust me to dispel his love, to pall And chill his passion from me. For I crave Only one thing--innocence in his sight. Believe!--believe! _Renier._ I will--that you are mad. Yet madder I, if to this coil my brain Were blind. _Yolanda._ As it will be! with deadlier dark, If you attend me not! And may have destiny you cannot know. But you will heed? For somewhere in you there is tenderness. Once when you chafed in fever and I bore White orange blossoms dewy to your pillow You touched my hand gently, as might a father. (_Caresses his._) Once on the tower when alone at dusk I sang--I know not why--of lost delights, Of vanished roses that are ere recalling May to the world, you came and suddenly Lifted my brow up silent to your kiss. Ah, you remember; you will hear me? _Renier._ No! Though you are cunning.--Thus you wove the mesh About Amaury--till he could not move Beyond you. _Yolanda._ For his sake I ask it. _Renier._ For No sake but to o'ersway him with your eyes In secret, thus, and with Your hair that he believes an aureole Brought with you out of Heaven. _Berengere._ Again--wrong. _Renier._ So deem you and, my Berengere, I grieve, Desiring much your peace. _Berengere._ It grieves you not. _Renier._ Then not! and half I fear--you here?--it should not. There's midnight in this thing and mystery. Does she not love--Camarin? _Yolanda_ (_trembling_). Say no more. Be all--all as you will. _Renier._ That brings you low: But brings to me no light--only again The stumbling in suspicion. _Yolanda._ It should not. _Renier_ (_with a sudden gleam_). To-morrow then, unless Amaury runs Fitting revenge through Camarin of Paphos, Your lover, you shall clasp him openly Before all of Lusigman. _Yolanda._ No; no, no! The thought of it is soil!... Rather ... his death! _Renier._ What, what? _Berengere._ My lord, she knows not what she says. The unaccustomed wind of these ill hours Has torn tranquillity from her and reason. _Yolanda_ (_realising_). Yes, as she says--tranquillity and reason. (_Strains to smile._) These hours of ill! _Renier._ I'll send her Camarin. (_Goes, looking steadfastly back._) _Yolanda_ (_turning, then, to_ BERENGERE). His mood and mien--that tremor in his throat, Unfaltering. I fear him. _Berengere._ Life is fear. No step was ever taken in the world But from a brink of danger, or in flight From happiness whose air is ever sin. It sickens me. _Yolanda._ Mother! _Berengere._ Nothing; a pain Here in my breast. (_Sits._) _Yolanda._ And it is all through him Who as a guest came pledged into this house. Came with the chivalry and manly show Of reverence and grace, and on his lips Lore of the east and wonders of the west. (CAMARIN _appears from garden._) Ah, and he seeks us now! unwhelmed of it! Ready of step, impassive, cold! And see-- (_He bows, then listens rigidly._) A flawless courtesy! as 'twere a king's. Can he not smile too on his handiwork? Our days were merciful and he has made Each moment's beat a blow upon the breast. Honour was here and innocence lies now A sacrifice that pain cannot consume. (_Pauses._) _Camarin._ Or death. _Yolanda._ Then have you not, unshameable! A help for it or healing? you who know So well the world and its unwonted ways! A man would have, a man. _Camarin._ And I am barren. My brain an arid waste under remorse. Only--one thing it yields--the love of her My love has made unholy. _Yolanda._ While to me The shame is left, and silence--no defence, When it is told Amaury, "See her you Blest with betrothal and the boon of faith, Chose as the planet-mate of your proud star! While, in the battle, You with the weal of Cyprus on your brow Dared momently peril, We found her" ... Ah, the memory is fire!---- I will not bear it. _Camarin._ Then how? What?... You must. Though for your suffering I am pitiful. You must! (_Takes her wrist._) For to one thing, one only now I'm bent---- That Berengere be saved. _Berengere._ To-day ... no more. _Camarin._ Suspicion and the peril-feet of shame I must keep from her still. _Yolanda._ Though driven o'er My heart they trample the lone flower of hope. (_Shaking off his hand, then, unnaturally wrought up._) And even now perhaps Amaury hears And turns away in horror! _Camarin._ What? Come, come. Enough is here without---- _Yolanda_ (_as before_). I'll go to him! Despite of them! in to his side and say That I am innocent--as the first dawn And dew of Eden!... Yes! _Camarin._ A frenzy! Mere Folly! you wander! _Yolanda_ (_listening_). Whose that anguish? whose? _Camarin._ Amaury still is many leagues away-- (_Hassan appears._) At Keryneia! Do you hear me? _Yolanda._ Hassan! (_Is numb as he hurries down from the castle to her. A pause; then her voice falls hoarsely._) I hear you, speak. His wounds I know. The rest! They've told him? _Hassan._ The Venetian, who nurst him Last night, pouring his potions-- She and Lord Renier. They broke his sleep. He listened to them as one in a grave. Then they besought of him Some oath against you, were they right: he would not. Now he has risen, Silent and pale and suffering in leash. He's coming here. _Camarin._ Why, you are mad! _Yolanda._ Be still. _Camarin._ Amaury was not then delayed? is--here? (_Voices are heard perturbed within the castle. Then_ AMAURY, _putting aside_ RENIER _and_ TREMITUS, _followed by_ VITTIA _and others, enters down._) _Amaury._ I'll not return unto my couch though twice These wounds and all your wants were urging it! Yolanda! my Yolanda!--Never, never! (_Takes her to him._) Until I prove you that a word against Her that I hold here in my arms is more To me than any peril. _Tremitus._ But, sir--!... Aeih! My precious physic wasted! _Amaury._ Till I prove it! For ... my Yolanda!... You who are purity if Mary still Is mother of God and lighteth Paradise! You in whose presence I am purged as one Bathing a thousand years in angel song! They say, you, who are stainless to my eyes As is the sacring-bell to holy ears, So undefiled even the perfect lily Pendant upon your breast fears to pollute it! Listen, they tell me you--A fool, a fool Would know it unbelievable and laugh. _Renier._ As now a fool is doing? _Amaury._ O, sir, pardon. You are my father, and, I must believe, Mean well this monster breath's unchastity, As does this lady (_of_ VITTIA) who has gently nursed me. But you were tricked; it was illusion swum Before your sleep. Therefore my purpose is Now to forget it. _Tremitus._ Aeih! and to return Now to my drugs. _Renier._ Stand off!--As dogs forget The lash in hunger of the wonted bone? (_Laughs angrily._) _Amaury._ A poison so incredible and dark You cannot duped innoculate me with. Trust in my veins makes of it but more love. And to dispel your minds (_goes to_ CAMARIN) I'll clasp his hand Whom you have so accused. _Vittia._ O do, my lord! (_Smiles disdainfully._) And then embrace him in whose arms three nights Ago she was embraced. _Yolanda_ (_to her_). Can you so say! _Vittia._ Yes, and will add---- _Amaury._ Lady of Venice, nothing! But this to all, I answer!-- There is my mother, see, Wounded with wonder of this plight, and pity. Yolanda has dwelt by her As the fawn By the white doe on mount Chionodes. I would as quick believe that she had given Her holiness up to contamination As that Yolanda---- _Yolanda._ Amaury, enough!... I know! _Amaury._ As quickly! _Yolanda._ Then ... quell this delirium! (_A pause._) Out of your thought forever let it fall, Hear no more of it, ever! Be deaf to it as to a taunt of doom, In triple mail to every peaceless word, Granite against even its memory. Say that you will, and now!... _Renier._ So that you may Allure him yet to wed you? _Amaury._ Sir! _Renier._ She would. _Yolanda._ No, no! But let him.... Then I will go far Away from here to any alien air, To opiate India, a lost sea-isle! To the last peak of arid Caucasus. _Renier._ With Camarin of Paphos? _Yolanda._ With whoever Your peace and this compelling pain ... Ah no! _Renier._ With him, with him, I say?... _Amaury._ You drive and drain her. To me her words shall be--me and no other. So my Yolanda now dissolve the cling Of this invisible but heavy hydra; I've striven with it till no more I can. If any tare has been unseemly sown Upon the April vision of our love, Say it at once that I may rend and fling it Away from us. Say it! _Renier._ Vainly implored.-- Yet ask her this, If she three nights ago---- _Amaury._ I will not so insult her---- _Tremitus._ Aeih---- _Renier._ Insult? She knows what I would bid and does she hurl Her soul in any disavowal? _Amaury._ I Will speak to her alone. Go all of you There to the fountain. _Yolanda._ Yes, Amaury, then One searching of my face shall free your fear. Alone, alone. _Renier._ Still to befool him! _Yolanda_ (_warningly_). Choose! I cannot suffer more of this. _Amaury._ Nor I To breathe ever the burning of this mist Of anguish and insatiate accusal.-- This wound upon my throat, fever it not With longer fire of doubt, Yolanda. _Yolanda._ Ah! _Berengere._ I am not well. I will go to my chamber. (_She passes into the castle._) _Renier._ But I never until this guiler grants I found her in the arms of Camarin, Drinking the frenzied wine of passion he Poured from his soul. _Amaury._ Yolanda? _Renier._ She is silent; Dumb to deny it. _Amaury._ But she will, she will. You've driven her with dread and awe. _Vittia_ (_lightly_). And truth? _Amaury._ Have wounded her. But do not fear, Yolanda, Fiercely disown. _Yolanda._ Amaury ... it is true. (_He staggers slowly back._) No, no; I have not been faithless to you-- Even a moment To the divinity of love high-altared Here in my breast! to the immutable Beauty of it!... look, look not on me so-- As I had struck, murdered a little child! Or palsied one who put a hand to help me; Or through eternity had desecrated, Vainly, virginity and trust and truth! No, my Amaury! I ... do you not see? (_Hysterically._) Not faithless, hear! it is not true! not true! But only this---- _Camarin._ Yolanda! _Yolanda._ I---- _Camarin._ Yolanda! (_A moment, then she sinks down, her face in her hands._ AMAURY _groans; then starting goes fiercely to_ HASSAN, _and taking his sword recrosses trembling to_ CAMARIN.) _Amaury._ The day you first set step in Lusignan An image of the Magdalen within The chapel yonder fell--presaging this. Only your death, your death or mine stands pale Between us now, awaiting silently. Draw, and at once. _Camarin._ Amaury, I will not. _Amaury._ Out, quickly. _Camarin._ Do your will. I'll put no more To the guilt I bear, or to the misery That guilt has brought upon you. _Amaury._ Coward! _Camarin._ Strike! _Amaury._ You play a part! (_Raves._) And 'tis that you may live Still in the love that you a thief have stolen. So, with your steel----! _Camarin._ It stays within its sheath. _Amaury._ Then I will not be thwarted though I must Crush you as one a viper with his heel, Though I must take your leper throat into My hands and strangle life from it! For the same sky you breathe I will not. The sun that falls upon you shall not foul My being-- Though I must go down into hell for it. (_He starts, frenzied, to strike, but suddenly staggers; then clasps at his throat, drops the sword, and sinks down moaning._) _Yolanda._ His wound! _Tremitus._ Aeih, aeih! at last. _Yolanda._ Amaury! Oh! (_Runs to him. He struggles to his feet._) Amaury! Amaury! _Amaury._ Stand away from me. (_She falls back; he laughs in derision._) I to believe her pure as my own mother! _Vittia._ Had you but trusted me, Amaury. _Amaury._ You? (_Looks long at her._) Henceforth I will. _Vittia._ And wholly? _Amaury_ (_significantly_). She ... shall do it. (_Starts into the castle._) _Yolanda_ (_dauntedly_). Amaury! what is this? _Vittia._ That, ere a dawn, Guileless Yolanda, you shall wed with him Your paramour of Paphos---- _Yolanda._ Camarin? _Vittia._ And from these gates be led wanton away. (YOLANDA, _for a moment whelmed, tries to laugh scorn; but, turning, her eye meets_ RENIER's _full of suspicion_. _He follows_ AMAURY _meaningly into the castle._) CURTAIN. ACT III THE SAME DAY. SCENE: _The Hall and loggia of Act I.; but toward sunset, and afar, on the flushed sea, are seen the fisher-boats returning pale-winged to shore. In the left distance, also, a portion of Famagouste is visible above the waves--its orient walls and towers, white domes and houses, interspersed with tall palms. The interior of the Hall is the same; only the divan is placed to the front and left, the lectern near the balcony leading to the sleeping apartments and to the chapel._ SMARDA _is lying lithely on the divan, beguiled with her charms and amulets, and from time to time giving a low, sinuous laugh._ VITTIA _enters, watches a moment, thoughtful, then advances_. _Vittia._ Smarda---- _Smarda_ (_springing up_). Lady ... your slave! _Vittia._ I think you are. Think that you are--if ever the leopard yields. _Smarda._ To you, lady? A-ha! let him refuse. Command! _Vittia._ And you will heed it well; I fear not. But first I have thought of requital. _Smarda_ (_avidly_). Ouie! _Vittia._ Those amulets---- _Smarda._ Of jade--and sard! _Vittia._ And which You prize so---- _Smarda._ From my home in Scythia Across the sea (_darkening_) they came with me. _Vittia._ The home Whence you were torn by the Moor who was your master. (_Sees_ SMARDA _snarl._) Is it not so? _Smarda._ The spirits strangle him! (_Works lividly at the charms._) _Vittia._ Well, if I win to-night what is begun You shall not want, I think, Of gold for weightier witchery upon him. (_The slave's eyes gleam._) But listen, every sinew will be needed Still to achieve this wedding, though we have Camarin with us, willing. So I've learned A ship has come from Venice. _Smarda_ (_quickly_). Pietro! _Vittia._ Yes, Pietro, it must be, has arrived With papers that will help. _Smarda._ Ha! Fortune's touch! _Vittia._ It is, but tardy. Therefore I must have Them instantly. _Smarda._ Ere he has time, lady, To vaunt of love in Lusignan and babble. _Vittia._ A wooing dolt! but safe--because he fears.-- I shall be in this place with lord Amaury, Whom I must ... but no matter. He left me suddenly A season since, seeing his father's look Strangely upon his mother: for that doubt, His father's, still I've been compelled to feed, To move Yolanda.-- Here I shall be, then, here within this place. (_She goes engrossedly._) _Smarda_ (_recalling the pledge; evilly_). A-ha! Ha-ha! Ha-ha! If she but win! A talisman with might upon the Moor! (_Begins to dance--a charm held up before her._) If she but win! a-ha! a curse on him! (_Whirls faster with a wild grace, swaying to and fro, and chanting softly the while, till suddenly a laugh in the corridor stops her, and_ PIETRO _is heard through the curtains adoring_ CIVA, _who pushes him into the Hall, then runs away laughing._) _Pietro_ (_after her_). Hold, fair one! Stay! (_Turns._) _Smarda._ Pietro! _Pietro._ Slave! (_Vainly._) I greet you. (_Bows grandly._) _Smarda._ A-ha!... So! _Pietro._ I, Pietro, as you see, Who, you're aware, am sought Of all the loveliest Attendant on the lords and high of Venice. _Smarda._ Yes.... Ha! _Pietro._ "The gentle Pietro," they say. You may remember. _Smarda._ Ha! _Pietro._ "Proud Pietro!" And then they sigh. _Smarda._ Sigh. But you've papers-- _Pietro._ Then-- They weep and pine--until I must console them. _Smarda_ (_going to where he poses; contemptuously_). And for all this, O prince of paramours, (_He is startled._) My lady has no doubt bid you to sail From Venice. _Pietro._ Slave? _Smarda._ And she will hear with love That you delay the powers of the Senate Sent in your keeping to her. _Pietro._ She! _Smarda._ Oh, with (_As he twitches._) Love and delight--for urgently she waits them! And then--then of your amorous mouthings yonder! _Pietro._ You will not, slave! but quickly take them to her, The papers ... quickly! (_Fumbles for them._) Dear slave, you will--and say if she inquire That I was led astray By the little Cyprian with guiling eyes Who fell enamoured of me at the gate. _Smarda._ Civa! _Pietro._ The same! I sought to run away, (_Still searching._) O slave, say to her, but I could not for-- For--for a lady by the marble knight, That is, by the fountain, swooned, as---- _Smarda._ Swooned! _Pietro._ She did. Out by the fountain. _Smarda._ As you came? who? which? Lady Yolanda? lady Berengere? (_He stares at her ardour._) Did no one say?... My mistress must know this! The papers, quickly! _Pietro._ Slave, you----! By my sins! (_She has seized them, and is gone. He follows amazed. Sunset begins without, crimson and far._ AMAURY _appears from the loggia, reckless, worn. He pauses, looks about him, troubled._) _Amaury._ Not here yet.... There is more in this than seems. (_Goes to divan and sits._ VITTIA _enters behind._) More, Camarin of Paphos, than is clear! (_Starts up._) And she must tell me! (_Sees Vittia._) Lady, you I mean. (VITTIA _advances inquiringly._) What is beyond this shame upon Yolanda? _Vittia._ My lord----? _Amaury._ What! It is moving in me clouded, Deeper than sight but pressing at my peace. My father's look! you saw it! _Vittia._ Ah! _Amaury._ And saw Fear in my mother! _Vittia._ Yes, implanted deep. _Amaury._ And did not wonder? _Vittia_ (_sits_). When I knew its source? No need, my lord--though your pang too I marked-- For, trust me, ere to-morrow it will cease-- If you are firm. _Amaury._ I? who know nought? In what? _Vittia._ That do not ask, I pray. (_Deftly._) Another could Fitly reply, but I---- _Amaury._ No other better! _Vittia._ Then ... it will cease, my lord-- So as a flail of doubt it should not still Beat in you--when Yolanda Is wed with Camarin ... no, do not speak; The reason for your sake I must withhold. _Amaury._ Though as under sirocco I am kept. (_Sits._) Sirocco! (_Rises, a pause._) Yet you speak gently. _Vittia._ No; unblushingly! (_He looks surprised._) Unblushingly to one who knows--though by A chance--my love to him. (_Turns away._) And yet I cannot rue That he awaking sudden from the potion Surprised the dew of it upon my lips. No, and I would that gentle words might be As waters of enchantment on his grief---- But of Yolanda-- (_Rises._) _Amaury._ Still I love her, still! _Vittia_ (_strainedly_). As well she knows, so may refuse to wed With Camarin. _Amaury._ She? _Vittia._ Since you are Lusignan, Heir of a sceptred line, And yet may reach--the realm. _Amaury_ (_pierced_). No ... not for that Her hope was? _Vittia._ Were it folly to make sure? (_A pause._) _Amaury._ How? speak. _Vittia._ Again unshameful? No; one thing Alone would serve you. That I must not bring My tongue to falter. _Amaury._ Be it so. _Vittia._ And yet ... (_He has turned away._) My lord, my lord, I will! Will ... for you suffer! Will, though indelicacy seem to soil What bloom I boasted. Let her think ... let her, But for to-day, That you, for she's aware of my affection, Have chosen--to wed me. _Amaury._ You! _Vittia._ For to-day. To-morrow I return to Venice, then-- Denial. _Amaury_ (_moved_). Lady--? _Vittia._ Yes. _Amaury._ This is most kind. (_She waits repressed--as he struggles._) Kind; I will do it. _Vittia._ Will? _Amaury._ Grateful, intent For the issue's utterance. And this wear you, This token of our race, (_Takes off his ring._) For a proof to her of any tie soever. (_He puts it on_ VITTIA'S _finger._) But now--for the sails make home along the sea-- Now of my mother. _Vittia._ More, my lord? _Amaury._ This only; (SMARDA _glides in._) To-morrow ... Scythian! _Vittia._ Who! My lord?... (_Sees the slave's look, which stirs him._) Smarda! Why are you here?... Those papers--but your lips! (_Takes the papers._) Not these alone have brought you thus; then what? (_Follows_ SMARDA'S _eye._) Of lord Amaury? _Smarda._ Of his mother. _Vittia._ How! _Smarda._ She swooned of terror at the castle gate. She lies in danger. Hear--'twas as she fled The lord of Lusignan. _Amaury._ My father? _Smarda._ He. And you are sought below, I heard it said: Some officer of Famagouste--and men. (AMAURY _turns dazed and goes._) _Vittia_ (_with fervour, then--yet awed_). This is again fortune!... fortune! _Smarda._ Lady? _Vittia._ Is! though an instant since it seemed disaster. _Smarda._ And how? _Vittia._ Yolanda, does she know? _Smarda._ Nothing. Nothing. She was returning from the rocks Where nest the windy gulls (_gloatingly_) As I came hither. I stole there at noon To see her suffer. _Vittia._ Then.--I can compel her. She will come here. Go to the curtains, see. If she is near, the Paphian is in The bower by the cypress: go, tell him, _The loggia--at once ..._ Ah! (YOLANDA _enters._) _Yolanda_ (_to herself_). "Ah" indeed. (_Her look of purpose changes to one of distrust. But she firmly fronts to_ VITTIA, _as the slave slips out._) _Vittia._ My gratitude! I wished, and you are here. _Yolanda._ And--for some reason of less honour--you. _Vittia._ I, a dear guest? fa! _Yolanda._ Were you! and not one This ne'er-before-envenomed air would banish. (_Slowly_) One whose abiding These walls would loathe aloud--had they a tongue To utter. _Vittia._ Yet I may be mistress of them, Ere all is done--since still it is my purpose. _Yolanda._ Gulfs wide as the hate of God for infamy Would lie preventing; so there is no fear. (_Sits._) _Vittia._ A prophesy! _Yolanda._ A deeper than disdain. _Vittia._ Or than your love of Camarin of Paphos! _Yolanda._ Which you would feign, but cannot. _Vittia._ Still, before Evening is done, you will become his wife? _Yolanda._ If, ere it come, all under Lusignan Do not look scorn on Vittia Pisani. (_Rises._) _Vittia._ What! how? _Yolanda._ Plentiful scorn! (_With joy._) A thing may still Be done to lift my hope out of this ruin! To bring Amaury grateful to my feet! And I will do it. _Vittia._ Tell?... vowing him first To win his father's lenience?... No ... I see! You would when she who's guilty And this enamoured Paphian are fled! (YOLANDA _turns pale._) When they are fled! ha ... And it is too late. _Yolanda._ Too--? You by some trick--a trick have--! _Vittia._ Hindered? Little I needed ... Her wings are flightless. She is ill, Verging--go learn!--to death. _Yolanda._ No! _Vittia._ To the grave. And you alone, she knows, can put it far-- Since she is numbed and drained Momently by the terror of her husband, Whose every pulse seems to her a suspicion. _Yolanda._ And it is you ... you who have urged again His doubt that would have sunk! _Vittia._ It was enough Merely to sigh--and fear her innocence Can only seem simple again as dew If you wed freely Camarin of Paphos. _Yolanda._ And that, you could! though in her heart remorse Trampled and tore! Though with the wounds of battle he you "love" Is livid still. _Vittia._ And grieves?--Be comforted! For _he_ is--now security has come. (_Shows ring;_ YOLANDA _falls back._) As _he_ is, do not fear. _Yolanda._ Amaury!... Oh! He is not! no, Amaury!... He? so soon?-- Ah, you are merciless! _Vittia._ Only aware How to compel your pity to my ends; For you will spare his mother. _Yolanda._ Yielding--still, And past all season of recovery? Shattering love for ever at my feet? No, you are duped. For empty, cold are the veins Now of submission in me; numb and dead The pleading of it. And upon you, back, I cast the burden of your cruelty. (_Slowly._) And--if she dies in terror of the lips Of Renier Lusignan--on your peace The guilt be! _Vittia._ No. _Yolanda._ The heaping mass of horror! _Vittia_ (_moved_). No, on her own; for she has sinned. _Yolanda._ And suffered! But you---- _Vittia._ I say her own. I've done no crime. And you will wed him. _Yolanda._ Were I Venetian! But am not; so remorse has come in you! There at the gates that guard your rest you hear Dim now the risen phantom cries of it, The presage beat of them like hungry hands That will o'erwhelm you! All that I could to spare her I have done; All that was duty and of love the most. But you it was who struck and kindled first Within Lord Renier fire of suspicion. Then yours the penance! _Vittia._ Liar!... ah ... enough. (_Recovers herself._) A babe I am so to be fed with fright. You--well I know--will not desert her thus To ... the medusa of his doubt. _Yolanda._ I will not. (_With exultance._) Will, will not, will not, will not! But you it is-- For in the worst that live there still is heaven!-- Must null his doubt and ease the sobbing ebb And flood of her sick spirit; you who must Go to his fear and with persuasion say That it is folly of him and of you So to suspect her, since in Camarin's Arms I was found. You will! _Vittia._ And--then go pray? (_Draws out the papers scornfully._) Rather I'll bring you this:--Authority Sent me of Venice To make Amaury lordly over Cyprus, Or to abase him even of Famagouste; Which I will do-- (_Goes to her._) Unless I have the pledge that you will wed, Though not to be his wife and free to leave him, This Paphian, And with him from Lusignan hence will pass, (CAMARIN _appears on loggia._) And he has come now for your answer. _Yolanda._ Here! In league with you! in this! _Vittia._ Most loyally; And ready skilfully to disavow, With every force, your innocence--if you Attempt betrayal!-- Enter, my lord of Paphos-- (CAMARIN _enters desperately._) I have spoken. She has not pledged to wed you--though the life Of Berengere Lusignan fall for it, And though Amaury ... But you may avail. (_Moves off._ YOLANDA _stands silently between them._ CAMARIN _looks at her, falters, then turns on_ VITTIA.) _Camarin._ As an anchorite for immortality, Venetian, I covet this--covet! Yet ... I will not entreat it of her. _Vittia._ What! _Camarin._ I swore in dread, but will not! _Vittia._ Now! _Yolanda_ (_low_). Madonna! _Vittia._ Now you refuse? _Yolanda._ He does--he does! _Vittia._ The whole? _Yolanda._ Lady of Venice, yes; for very shame! (_With grave joy._) Bitterly tho' it be, he must, for shame! Though he would waste the air of the world to keep The breath still in the veins Of her his love so wronged, He cannot ask me more than breast can bear Knowing I have already borne for her Infection worse than fetid marshes send From Mesaoria-- Have lost the sky of love that I had arched And all the stars of it. See, he is dumb!-- He cannot. _Camarin_ (_coldly_). No; but to your heart I leave her And to your pity. _Yolanda._ Say not pity to me! (_The word overwhelms her anew._) Am I not needy, fain of it, and can Endurance ever dure! What have I left Of joy to ripple in me or of light To sway me to forgetting--I to whom Dawn was enchanted incense once, and day, The least of earth, an ides of heaven bliss. What to me left! to me! Who shepherded each happy flock of waves Running with silvery foaming there to shore, Who numbered the little leaves with laughing names Out of my love, And quickened the winds with quicker winds of hope, That now are spent ... as summer waters, Leaving my breast a torrent's barren bed. Pity and pity! ever pity! No. (_Enter_ HASSAN.) A nun to pity I will be no more. But you, cruel Venetian ... Ah, ah, Mother of God! is there no gentleness In thee to move her and dissolve away This jeopardy congealing over us? (_A pause._) _Vittia._ You see, none. _Yolanda._ Ah, for sceptre and for might Then to compel you. _Vittia._ Still, there is none. _Yolanda._ None ... (_Sinks to a seat in despair._) Yet could I think! _Hassan._ Lady Yolanda-- (_Advances._) _Yolanda._ Were My brain less weary! _Hassan._ Lady Yolanda-- _Yolanda._ Well? _Hassan._ There is a means--a might. _Yolanda._ Well? (_Is half heedless._) _Hassan._ To compel her. _Yolanda._ To ... what? _Hassan._ If you will dare it. _Yolanda._ Will--? _Hassan._ I swear. _Yolanda_ (_rising_). Your thought! I have no fear. _Hassan._ Then ... let me but Seize her and shut her fast an hour within The leprous keep, and she shall write whate'er You order; then upon a vessel quick Be sent to Venice whence she came. _Camarin._ Mad! mad! Venice would rise! _Hassan._ And Cyprus, to be free!-- But 'tis not, lady! and Lord Renier Shall have a letter of her guile and flight. Venture it, venture! _Yolanda_ (_after a long pause_). If it can be done, It shall be. _Hassan._ Ah! _Yolanda._ And must be. _Vittia._ Fools, to me! (_She stands defensive, as_ HASSAN _prepares to close in._) _Yolanda._ Quickly, and take her. _Hassan._ Now. _Camarin_ (_with sudden horror_). No!... Sateless God! (_His eyes are fixed on the balcony._) See, see!... Berengere! Oh! fury of hell! (_They look and fall back appalled. For slowly down the steps comes_ RENIER _following_ BERENGERE, _whose eyes turn back in fluttering trance upon him._) _Yolanda._ Ah!... he will kill her! Stop, my lord! mother! Lord Renier! (_Runs; takes_ BERENGERE _in her arms._) Cold is she, stony pale, And sinking!... Go away from her, go go! _Renier._ No ... she shall tell me. _Yolanda._ Mother!... Tell you that You are her murderer? _Renier._ The truth! _Yolanda._ The truth! (_Laughs bitterly, and at a loss, as if amazed. Then, almost against her will, led, to the end_--) It is suspicion! is that mad suspicion That you have had of her. _Renier._ It is! It is! _Yolanda._ And--all because I have these days delayed To wed with Camarin. _Renier._ Delayed? _Yolanda._ Because I show befitting shame that I was here Found in his arms ... when to Amaury I was betrothed! _Renier._ Power of--! No! _Yolanda._ Because I grieve to leave Lusignan, this my home-- Where I have dwelt as under tented love-- Though I am bidden. _Renier._ This can be? _Berengere_ (_faintly_). Yolanda! _Renier._ I say--only delayed? and you--? _Yolanda._ Yes, yes. Now I will wed him, heedless, wantless, wild. Send for the priest and for Amaury, for Laughter and lights and revelry--for all Within this castle. But first to her bed, And to tranquillity, She must be borne, she your cold violence Has driven here.... Alessa--Tremitus! (_They have entered._) Lead her within. O mother! piteous mother!---- Ah, it was ruthless, kindless! _Renier._ We shall see. (_To_ HASSAN.) Bid Moro and Amaury.--As for her, I soon may come and seek forgiveness. _Berengere._ No! (HASSAN _goes._) My brain and breath!... the pall ... where am I ... how Long must I lie!... _Tremitus._ She speaks to visions. So, So can the blood do--trick us utterly! (_He supports her--with_ ALESSA--_slowly up steps and off._ YOLANDA _covers her eyes._ HASSAN _returns with_ MORO, _then, and_ AMAURY, _whose look seeks_ VITTIA.) _Yolanda_ (_as all stand silent_). Speak, speak, and tell him! _Renier._ Yes, Amaury ... you Are sent for to behold Yolanda wed, As you commanded, Here unto Camarin. Shame has till now Withheld her, but ... what ails you? _Amaury._ On; go on. The sudden blood up to my wounds. _Renier._ It has, I say, withheld her. But she now has chosen. _Amaury._ So; and ... it is well. And here are her Vows I have kept-- (_Takes a packet from his breast._) Vows and remembrances ... I shall aspire-- (_Hands it; she lets it fall._) That I may loathe her not o'ermuch; and to Muffle my sword from him that now she weds. (_His voice breaks tonelessly._) Come, let it be. _Yolanda._ Amaury! _Amaury_ (_angrily._) Priest, be brief! _Moro_ (_before them; as_ CAMARIN _takes_ YOLANDA'S _hand_). The Church invests me and the powers of This island here to make you man and wife. Be joined, ye who have sinned, In soul, peace and repentances for ever. (_He signs the cross._ YOLANDA _stands dazed. A silence. Then a shuddering cry and all turn toward the balcony, where_ ALESSA _bursts, pale, wild, and striving to speak._) _Yolanda_ (_with dread, awe, premonition_). Alessa! _Alessa._ Lady Yolanda! you have wed him? _Yolanda_ (_pausing._) Yes. _Alessa._ Lady Berengere is dead. _Yolanda._ No!... No! (_Chokes rebelliously._) It cannot be! mother! cannot! awake her! And tell her I have wed him! mother! cannot! (_Goes trembling, belieflessly, up the balcony. A strange doubt seizes_ AMAURY. _On the rest is silence, consternation, and fear._) CURTAIN. ACT IV SCENE: _The Chapel of the Castle--or Chapel of the Magdalen--a few hours later. It is of stone, low-arched, gloomy, and adorned with Byzantine mosaics of gaunt saints on backgrounds of gold. The altar is in the rear, and above it a large window, through which pours the still moon. In front of it, to either side, rise two pillars supporting the roof, and on one of them, halfway up, stands a stone image of the Magdalen. Forward are two other pillars whose bases form seats. The right wall has, set midway, a large door hung with heavy curtains. In the rear are smaller doors leading to a sacristy. The altar lamp and a few tapers burn._ ALESSA _enters, rubbing her eyes as if to clear them of vision, looks around, then calls uncertainly_-- _Alessa._ Good father! Father Moro!... He is not here. (_Rubs her eyes again._) The dead are strange! I knew not all their power. It is as if her spirit still imprisoned Hovered beneath the pallor of her face And strove to speak. Good father! (_Enter_ MORO.) Ah, you were There in the sacristy. _Moro._ Yes. Your desire? _Alessa._ The acolytes summoned from Famagouste To aid your rites before her burial Have come, and wait. _Moro._ Send hither two. (_Looks closely at her._) _Alessa._ At once. (_Is going. He stops her._) _Moro._ Woman, this passes silence. There must be Some question. Do you understand this wedding? The evil that has risen in this house? Speak. _Alessa._ I may not. _Moro._ As says Yolanda, who Has been to-day impenetrable in all. But who, now, in a lofty grief above The misery that blasted her, seems calm, And answers only, "God in His season will, I trust, unfold it soon; I cannot, now!" ... And yet I heard Her darkly bid the Paphian be gone---- From here--without her. _Alessa._ And he would not? _Moro._ No. (_A pause._) Does she not see lightnings now in Amaury, Plunging for truth? What is't? _Alessa._ The acolytes Are waiting. _Moro._ Go ... But if this hour bring forth What you shall rue---- _Alessa._ Father! (_Goes quickly, troubled._) _Moro._ In blindness still! For Vittia Pisani, who alone Seems with these twain to share this mystery Is silent to all importunity. Oh, Berengere Lusignan! But 'tis mine To pray and to prepare. (_Listens._) The acolytes. (_Two enter, sleek, sanctimonious._) (_To First._) Come here ... You're Serlio, Of the Ascension. You? _2nd Acolyte._ Hilarion. From Santa Maria by the Templars' well, Which God looks on with gratitude, father. For though we're poor and are unworthy servants We've given willingly our widow's mite. And now we ... _Moro._ You are summoned to this place For ministrations other than the tongue's. Prepare that altar--masses for the dead. _Hilarion._ Man is as grass that withers! _Moro._ Kindle all Its tapers. The departed will be borne Hither for holy care and sacred rest. So do--then after Look to that image of the Magdalen, Once it has fallen. _Serlio._ Domine, dirige! (MORO _goes. They put off cant and set to work._) _Hilarion_ (_insolently, lighting a taper_). We'll have good wine for this! _Serlio._ The Chian! Hee! None's like the Chian! and to-morrow, meat! Last week old Ugo died and we had pheasant. _Hilarion._ When we are priests we'll give no comforting To wife or maid--till we have sipped! _Serlio._ And supped! Though 'tis a Friday and the Pope is dead! (_Silence. They work faster._) _Hilarion._ There, it is done. Now to the image. _Serlio._ Well, Olympio, the cock who fetched us, said That image fell first on the day---- _Hilarion._ Tchuck! tchuck! Better no breath about that lord of Paphos Or any here. For till the dead are three Days gone, you know--! But there's the woman. Feign. (_As_ ALESSA _re-enters; hypocritically._) The blessed dead! in Purgatory may They briefly bide. _Serlio._ Aye! aye! _Alessa_ (_still troubled_). What say you? _Hilarion._ Ah! I lay that it is wise never to foul The dead, even in thinking, For they may hear us, none can say, and once My mother saw a dead man who had gone Unshriven start up white and cry out loud When he was curst. _Serlio._ O Lord! _Alessa_ (_staring_). No!... Well, such things There are perchance. And now they say that Venus, The Anadyomene, who once ruled this isle, Is come again.... But you have finished? Soon They bring her body here. _Hilarion._ Now have I, now! It will not totter again. (_Descends._) _Alessa_ Would that it might Upon the head of ---- (_catches herself; calmly_) You are awaited There in the sacristy.... The chant begins! (_The acolytes go. She grows more disquieted._) Begins! and lady Yolanda still awaits Heedless, though Lord Amaury's desperate As is the Paphian!... They near!... The curtains! (_Goes to them and draws them back. As she does so the chant swells louder. Then the cortège enters_--MORO, _the acolytes with tapers_; BERENGERE _on a litter_, AMAURY, RENIER, VITTIA, _the women_, HASSAN, _and last_ YOLANDA. _The litter_, AMAURY _by it, comes to the altar; the chanting ceases._) _Moro_ (_as_ AMAURY _bows, shaken_). No moan or any toil of grief be here Where we have brought her for sainted appeal. But in this holy place until the tomb Let her find rest. _Amaury._ Set down the bier. (_It is placed._) _Moro._ Lone rest! Then bliss Afar for ever! _Amaury_ (_rises_). Be it so! (_Turning; brokenly._) But unto any, mother, who have brought thee Low to this couch, be never ease again. To any who have put thy life out, never! But in them be the burning that has seemed To shrivel thee--whether with pain or fear! And be appeaseless tears, Salt tears that rust the fountain of the heart. (_Sinks to a seat. A pause._) _Moro._ My son, relentless words. _Amaury_ (_up again_). To the relentless! _Moro._ God hear you not! _Amaury._ Then is He not my God. _Moro._ Enough, enough. (_To the rest._) But go and for her soul Freight all of you this tide of night with prayer. _Amaury._ Never! _Moro._ I bid. _Amaury._ And I forbid those who Have prized her not! For though nought's in the world but prayer may move, Still but the lips that loved her Should for her any sin beseeching lift. (_Looking at_ YOLANDA.) They and no other! _Yolanda._ And, you mean----? _Amaury._ Not one. _Yolanda._ Then, mother---- (_Goes to bier._) _Amaury._ That name again? _Yolanda._ While I have breath. (_Nobly._) Yes, though you hold me purgeless of that sin Only the pale arch-angels may endure Trembling to muse on! Or though yon image of the Magdalen, Whose alabaster broke amid her tears And her torn hair, forbade me with a voice. And you, whose heart is shaken As in a tomb a taper's flame, would know I speak with love. _Camarin._ Unswerving love. _Amaury._ Then, by Christ, and the world that craves His blood, I think She, if she would, or you, could point to me, Or you, Vittia Pisani, The reason of this sudden piteous death Hard on the haunted flight before my father, Whose lips refuse. _Camarin._ She knows no shred of it. _Amaury._ You lie to say it. _Camarin._ Then will, still--if there Is need. _Amaury._ Because you love her? _Yolanda._ Peace, peace, peace. _Amaury._ A hollow word for what had never being. _Yolanda._ Look on her face and see. _Amaury_ (_at bier_). Upon her face! Where not oblivion the void of death Has hid away, or can, the agony Of her last terror--but it trembles still. I tell you, no. Grief was enough, but now Through it has risen mystery that chokes As a miasma from Iscariot's tomb. And till this pall of doubt be rent away No earth shall fall and quicken with her dust! But I will search her face ... till it reveals. _Camarin._ He raves. _Amaury._ Iscariot! yes! _Yolanda._ Again, peace, peace! _Amaury._ That you may palter! _Yolanda_ (_gently_). That she may not grieve. (_Goes again to bier._) For--if 'tis near--her soul with this is wrung. Near! would it were to hear me and impart Its yearning and regret to us who live, Its dim unhappiness and hollow want. Yes, mother, were you now about us, vain, Invisible and without any voice To tell us of you! Were you and now could hear through what of cold Or silence wrap you, oh, so humanly And seeming but a veil-- Then would you hear me say--(_suddenly aghast_) Ah, God! _Amaury._ Yolanda! (_She starts back from the bier._) Yolanda! _Renier._ Girl, what rends you? _Yolanda._ Saw you not? (_Rushes to bier and shakes it._) Mother! you hear me? mother! _Renier._ Girl! _Yolanda._ She breathes! (_Consternation. Some fall to their knees._) _Vittia._ What? What? _Yolanda._ Mother! Her breast! Mother! She moves! _Amaury._ God! God! _Yolanda._ Stand off from her ... Mother! _Camarin._ Her eyes!... They open! open! _Yolanda._ Mother!... _Amaury._ See; her lips! They strive to speak! O faintly, O so faint! Can you not hear? _Berengere._ Yolanda! _Yolanda._ Mother! _Berengere._ Renier! _Renier._ Yes, yes? _Berengere._ Yolanda-- _Renier._ Speak! _Berengere._ Christ, save me ... Christ! Yolanda's innocent, and I ... 'twas I. _Amaury._ What? what is it she says? _Berengere._ Camarin! Ah! (_She shudders and dies, amid low-uttered awe._ RENIER _bends, lays his hand a moment on her breast, then, with a cry of rage, springs from her and draws, and rushes on_ CAMARIN, _who awaits him, desperate._) _Amaury_ (_confused, as they engage_). Yolanda; what is this? _Yolanda._ Amaury, in! Compel Lord Renier back! he cannot live, You only could against Camarin now! Wait not to question, but obey me! if You ever--! (_As he rushes in_) Holy Magdalen, defend him! (RENIER _falls back._) Now, now defend him, if to chastity Thou'rt vowed in heaven. _Vittia._ Fool!--Camarin, strike! _Yolanda._ He's wounded! _Camarin._ Oh!... Berengere!... treachery! (_He staggers and sinks back heavily toward the pillar. There is breathless, strained suspense. Then he strikes the sacred column, and as he does so the image above sways, totters and crushes upon him. A cry, "The Magdalen!" goes up around._) _Hassan_ (_hurrying to him; after awe and silence_). He's dead. _Alessa._ The Magdalen! _Hassan._ No breath in him. (_A pause._) _Renier_ (_low, harshly_). Bear him without then ever from this place, That never more shall know a holy rite-- And from these gates, I care not to what tomb. (_To_ AMAURY.) Then shall you hear this mystery's content, That still as a madness measures to your sight. Bear him without. (_The limp body is borne away. All follow but_ AMAURY, YOLANDA, RENIER.) Now you shall hear, with shame, But with exalted pride and happy tears; Then come obliteration! Speak, girl ... Nobility Had never better title to its truth. (_Kisses her hand and goes._) _Amaury._ Yolanda!... he!... this reverence as to An angel? Speak! _Yolanda._ Amaury---- _Amaury._ O pause not! _Yolanda._ Then--to save her who's dead--from death and shame, I took her place within the Paphian's arms. _Amaury._ O!... and by me, driven by me, bore this! (_Overcome_) Pure as the rills of Paradise, endured? _Yolanda._ For you!--and her who sleeps forgiven there, (_With deep abandon._) Now while her spirit weightless overwingeth Night, to that Throne whose seeing heals all shame! For her I did! but oh, for you, whose least Murmur to me is infinite with Spring, Whose smile is light, filling the air with dawn, Whose touch, wafture of immortality Unto my weariness; and whose eyes, now, Are as the beams God lifted first, they tell us, Over the uncreated, In the far singing mother-dawn of the world!-- Come with me then, but tearless, to her side. (_They go to the bier and stand as in a dream. A pause; then her lips move, last, as if inspired._) While there is sin to sway the soul and sink it Pity should be as strong as love or death! (_With a cry of joy he enfolds her, and they kneel, wrapped about with the clear moon._) THE END. LYRICS JAEL Jehovah! Jehovah! art Thou not stronger than gods of the heathen? I slew him, that Sisera, prince of the host Thou dost hate. But fear of his blood is upon me, about me is breathen His spirit--by night and by day come voices that wait. Athirst and affrightened he fled from the star-wrought waters of Kishon. His face was as wool when he swooned at the door of my tent. The Lord hath given him into the hand of perdition, I smiled--but he saw not the face of my cunning intent. He thirsted for water: I fed him the curdless milk of the cattle. He lay in the tent under purple and crimson of Tyre. He slept and he dreamt of the surge and storming of battle. Ah ha! but he woke not to waken Jehovah's ire. He slept as he were a chosen of Israel's God Almighty. A dog out of Canaan!--thought he I was woman alone? I slipt like an asp to his ear and laughed for the sight he Would give when the carrion kites should tear to his bone. I smote thro' his temple the nail, to the dust a worm did I bind him. My heart was a-leap with rage and a-quiver with scorn. And I danced with a holy delight before and behind him-- I that am called blessed o'er all who're of Judah born. "Aye, come, I will show thee, O Barak, a woman is more than a warrior," I cried as I lifted the door wherein Sisera lay. "To me did he fly and I shall be called his destroyer-- I, Jael, who am subtle to find for the Lord a way!" "Above all the daughters of men be blest--of Gilead or Asshur," Sang Deborah, prophetess, under her waving palm. "Behold her, ye people, behold her the heathen's abasher; Behold her the Lord hath uplifted--behold and be calm. "The mother of him at the window looks out thro' the lattice to listen-- Why roll not the wheels of his chariot? why does he stay? Shall he not return with the booty of battle, and glisten In songs of his triumph--ye women, why do ye not say?" And I was as she who danced when the Seas were rendered asunder And stood, until Egypt pressed in to be drowned unto death. My breasts were as fire with the glory, the rocks that were under My feet grew quick with the gloating that beat in my breath. At night I stole out where they cast him, a sop to the jackal and raven. But his bones stood up in the moon and I shook with affright. The strength shrank out of my limbs and I fell a craven Before him--the nail in his temple gleamed bloodily bright. Jehovah! Jehovah! art Thou not stronger than gods of the heathen? I slew him, that Sisera, prince of the host Thou dost hate. But fear of his blood is upon me, about me is breathen His spirit--by day and by night come voices that wait. I fly to the desert, I fly to the mountain--but they will not hide me. His gods haunt the winds and the caves with vengeance that cries For judgment upon me; the stars in their courses deride me-- The stars Thou hast hung with a breath in the wandering skies. Jehovah! Jehovah! I slew him the scourge and sting of Thy Nation. Take from me his spirit, take from me the voice of his blood. With madness I rave--by day and by night, defamation! Jehovah, release me! Jehovah! if still Thou art God! MARY AT NAZARETH I know, Lord, Thou hast sent Him-- Thou art so good to me!-- But Thou hast only lent Him, His heart's for Thee! I dared--Thy poor hand-maiden-- Not ask a prophet-child: Only a boy-babe laden For earth--and mild. But this one Thou hast given Seems not for earth--or me! His lips flame truth from heaven, And vanity Seem all my thoughts and prayers When He but speaks Thy Law; Out of my heart the tares Are torn by awe! I cannot look upon Him So strangely burn His eyes-- Hath not some grieving drawn Him From Paradise? For Thee, for Thee I'd live, Lord! Yet oft I almost fall Before Him--Oh, forgive, Lord, My sinful thrall! But e'en when He was nursing, A baby at my breast, It seemed He was dispersing The world's unrest. Thou bad'st me call Him "Jesus" And from our heavy sin I know He shall release us, From Sheol win. But, Lord, forgive! the yearning That He may sometimes be Like other children, learning Beside my knee, Or playing, prattling, seeking For help,--comes to my heart.... Ah sinful, Lord, I'm speaking-- How good Thou art! OUTCAST I did not fear, But crept close up to Christ and said, "Is He not here?" They drew me back-- The seraphs who had never bled Of weary lack-- But still I cried, With torn robe, clutching at His feet, "Dear Christ! He died So long ago! Is He not here? Three days, unfleet As mortal flow Of time I've sought-- Till Heaven's amaranthine ways Seem as sere nought!" A grieving stole Up from His heart and waned the gaze Of His clear soul Into my eyes. "He is not here," troubled He sighed. "For none who dies Beliefless may Bend lips to this sin-healing Tide, And live alway." Then darkness rose Within me, and drear bitterness. Out of its throes I moaned, at last, "Let me go hence! Take off the dress, The charms Thou hast Around me strown! Beliefless too am I without His love--and lone!" Unto the Gate They led me, tho' with pitying doubt. I did not wait But stepped across Its portal, turned not once to heed Or know my loss. Then my dream broke, And with it every loveless creed-- Beneath love's stroke. ADELIL Proud Adelil! Proud Adelil! Why does she lie so cold? (I made her shrink, I made her reel, I made her white lids fold.) We sat at banquet, many maids, She like a Valkyr free. (I hated the glitter of her braids, I hated her blue eye's glee!) In emerald cups was poured the mead; Icily blew the night. (But tears unshed and woes that bleed Brew bitterness and spite.) "A goblet to my love!" she cried, "Prince where the sea-winds fly!" (Her love!--it was for that he died, And for it she should die.) She lifted the cup and drank--she saw A heart within its lees. (I laughed like the dead who feel the thaw Of summer in the breeze.) They looked upon her stricken still, And sudden they grew appalled. ("It is thy lover's heart!" I shrill As the sea-crow to her called.) Palely she took it--did it give Ease there against her breast? (Dead--dead she swooned, but I cannot live, And dead I shall not rest.) THE DYING POET Swing in thy splendour, O silent sun, Drawing my heart with thee over the west! Done is its day as thy day is done, Fallen its quest! Swoon into purple and rose--then sink, Tho' to arise again out of the dawn. Sink while I praise thee, ere thro' the dark link Of death I am drawn! Sunk? art thou sunken? how great was life! I like a child could cry for it again-- Cry for its beauty, pang, fleeting and strife, Its women, its men! For, how I drained it with love and delight! Opened its heart with the magic of grief! Reaped every season--its day and its night! Loved every sheaf! Aye, not a meadow my step has trod, Never a flower swung sweet to my face, Never a heart that was touched of God, But taught me its grace. Off, from my lids then a moment yet, Fingering Death, for again I must see Miraged by memory all that I met Under Time's lee. There!... I'm a child again--fair, so fair! Under the eyes does a marvel not burn? Speak they not vision, song, frenzy to dare, That still in me yearn?... Youth! my wild youth!--O, blood of my heart, Still you can answer with whirling the thought! Still like the mountain-born rapid can dart, Joyous, distraught!... Love, and her face again! there by the wood!-- Come thou invisible Dark with thy mask! Shall I not learn if she lives? and could I more of thee ask?... Turn me away from the ashen west, Where love's sad planet unveils to the dusk. Something is stealing like light from my breast-- Soul from its husk ... Soft!... Where the dead feel the buried dead, Where the high hermit-bell hourly tolls, Bury me, near to the haunting tread Of life that o'errolls. ON THE MOOR 1 I met a child upon the moor A-wading down the heather; She put her hand into my own, We crossed the fields together. I led her to her father's door-- A cottage mid the clover. I left her--and the world grew poor To me, a childless rover. 2 I met a maid upon the moor, The morrow was her wedding. Love lit her eyes with lovelier hues Than the eve-star was shedding. She looked a sweet goodbye to me, And o'er the stile went singing. Down all the lonely night I heard But bridal bells a-ringing. 3 I met a mother on the moor, By a new grave a-praying. The happy swallows in the blue Upon the winds were playing. "Would I were in his grave," I said, "And he beside her standing!" There was no heart to break if death For me had made demanding. HUMAN LOVE We spoke of God and Fate, And of that Life--which some await-- Beyond the grave. "It will be fair," she said, "But love is here! I only crave thy breast Not God's when I am dead. For He nor wants nor needs My little love. But it may be, if I love thee And those whose sorrow daily bleeds, He knows--and somehow heeds!" OH, GO NOT OUT Oh, go not out upon the storm, Go not, my sweet, to Swalchie pool! A witch tho' she be dead may charm Thee and befool. A wild night 'tis! her lover's moan, Down under ooze and salty weed, She'll make thee hear--and then her own! Till thou shall heed. And it will suck upon thy heart-- The sorcery within her cry-- Till madness out of thee upstart, And rage to die. For him she loved, she laughed to death! And as afloat his chill hand lay, "Ha, ha! to hell I sent his wraith!" Did she not say? And from his finger strive to draw The ring that bound him to her spell?-- But on her closed his hand--she saw ... Oh, who can tell? For tho' she strove--tho' she did wail, The dead hand held her cold and fast: The tide crawled in o'er rock and swale, To her at last! Down in the pool where she was swept He holds her--Oh, go not a-near! For none has heard her cry but wept And died that year. CALL TO YOUR MATE, BOB-WHITE O call to your mate, bob-white, bob-white, And I will call to mine. Call to her by the meadow-gate, And I will call by the pine. Tell her the sun is hid, bob-white, The windy wheat sways west. Whistle again, call clear and run To lure her out of her nest. For when to the copse she comes, shy bird, With Mary down the lane I'll walk, in the dusk of locust tops, And be her lover again. Ay, we will forget our hearts are old, And that our hair is gray. We'll kiss as we kissed at pale sunset One summer's halcyon day. That day, can it fade?... ah, bob, bob-white, Still calling--calling still? We're coming--a-coming, bent and weighed, But glad with the old love's thrill! TRANSCENDED I who was learned in death's lore Oft held her to my heart And spoke of days when we should love no more-- In the long dust, apart. "Immortal?" No--it could not be, Spirit with flesh must die. Tho' heart should pray and hope make endless plea, Reason would still outcry. She died. They wrapped her in the dust-- I heard the dull clod's dole, And then I knew she lived--that death's dark lust Could never touch her soul! THE CRY OF EVE Down the palm-way from Eden in the moist Midnight lay Eve by her outdriven mate, Pillowed on lilies that still told the sweet Of birth within the Garden's ecstasy. Pitiful round her face that could not lose Its memory of God's perfecting was strewn Her troubled hair, and sigh grieved after sigh Along her loveliness in the white moon. Sudden her dream, too cruelly impent With pain, broke and a cry fled shuddering Into the wounded stillness from her lips. Then, cold, she fearfully felt for his hand, While tears, that had before ne'er visited Her lids with anguish, stinging traced her cheeks. "Oh, Adam!" then as a wild shadow burst Her moan on the pale air, "What have I dreamed? Now do I understand His words, so dim To creatures that had quivered but with bliss! Since at the dusk thy kiss to me, and I Wept at caresses that were once all joy, I have slept, seeing through Futurity The uncreated ages visibly! Foresuffering phantoms crowded in the womb Of Time, and all with lamentable mien Accusing thee and me! And some were far From birth, without a name, but others near-- Sodom and dark Gomorrah ... from whose flames Fleeing one turned ... how like her look to mine When the tree's horror trembled on my taste! And Nineveh, a city sinking slow Under a shroud of sandy centuries That hid me not from the buried cursing eyes Of women who gave birth! And Babylon, Upbuilded on our sin but for a day! Ah, to be mother of all misery! To be first-called out of the earth and fail For a whole world! To shame maternity For women evermore--women whose tears Flooding the night, no hope can wipe away! To see the wings of Death, as, Adam, thou Hast not, endlessly beating, and to hear The swooning ages suffer up to God! And O that birth-cry of a guiltless child! In it are sounding of our sin and woe, With prophesy of ill beyond all years! Yearning for beauty never to be seen-- Beatitude redeemless evermore! And I whose dream mourned with all motherhood Must hear it soon! Already do soft skill, Low-babbled lulls, enticings and quick tones Of tenderness--that will like light awake The folded memory children shall bring Out of the dark--move in me longingly. Yet thou, Adam, dear fallen thought of God, Thou, when thou too shall hear humanity Cry in thy child, wilt groaning wish the world Back in unsummoned Void! and, woe! wilt fill God's ear with troubled wonder and unrest!" Softly he soothed her straying hair, and kissed The fever from her lips. Over the palms The sad moon poured her peace into their eyes, Till Sleep, the angel of forgetfulness, Folded again her wings above their rest. THE CHILD GOD GAVE "Give me a little child To draw this dreary want out of my breast," I cried to God. "Give, for my days beat wild With loneliness that will not rest But under the still sod!" It came--with groping lips And little fingers stealing aimlessly About my heart. I was like one who slips A-sudden into Ecstasy And thinks ne'er to depart. "Soon he will smile," I said, "And babble baby love into my ears-- How it will thrill!" I waited--Oh, the dread, The clutching agony, the fears!-- He was so strange and still. Did I curse God and rave When they came shrinkingly to tell me 'twas A witless child? No ... I ... I only gave One cry ... just one ... I think ... because ... You know ... he never smiled. MOTHER-LOVE The seraphs would sing to her And from the River Dip her cool grails of radiant Life. The angels would bring to her, Sadly a-quiver, Laurels she never had won in earth-strife. And often they'd fly with her O'er the star-spaces-- Silent by worlds where mortals are pent. Yea, even would sigh with her, Sigh with wan faces! When she sat weeping of strange discontent. But one said, "Why weepest thou Here in God's heaven-- Is it not fairer than soul can see?" "'Tis fair, ah!--- but keepest thou Not me depriven Of some one--somewhere--who needeth most me? For tho' the day never fades Over these meadows, Tho' He has robed me and crowned--yet, yet! Some love-fear for ever shades All with sere shadows-- Had I no child _there_--whom I forget?" ASHORE What are the heaths and hills to me? I'm a-longing for the sea! What are the flowers that dapple the dell, And the ripple of swallow-wings over the dusk; What are the church and the folk who tell Their hearts to God?--my heart is a husk! (I'm a-longing for the sea!) Aye! for there is no peace to me-- But on the peaceless sea! Never a child was glad at my knee, And the soul of a woman has never been mine. What can a woman's kisses be?-- I fear to think how her arms would twine, (I'm a-longing for the sea!) So, not a home and ease for me-- But still the homeless sea! Where I may swing my sorrow to sleep In a hammock hung o'er the voice of the waves, Where I may wake when the tempests heap And hurl their hate--and a brave ship saves. (I'm a-longing for the sea!) Then when I die, a grave for me-- But in the graveless sea! Where is no stone for an eye to spell Thro' the lichen a name, a date and a verse. Let me be laid in the deeps that swell And sigh and wander--an ocean hearse! (I'm a-longing for the sea!) LOVE'S WAY TO CHILDHOOD We are not lovers, you and I, Upon this sunny lane, But children who have never known Love's joy or pain. The flowers we pass, the summer brook, The bird that o'er us darts-- We do not know 'tis they that thrill Our childish hearts. The earth-things have no name for us, The ploughing means no more Than that they like to walk the fields Who plough them o'er. The road, the wood, the heaven, the hills Are not a World to-day-- But just a place God's made for us In which to play. LISSETTE Oh ... there was love in her heart--no doubt of it-- Under the anger. But see what came out of it! Not a knave, he!--A Romeo rhyme-smatterer, Cloaking in languor And heartache to flatter her. And just as a woman will--even the best of them-- She yielded--brittle. God spare me the rest of them! Aye! though 'twas but kisses--she swore!--he had of her. For, was it little? She thought 'twas not bad of her, Said I would lavish a burning hour full On any grissette. A parry!--and powerful! But--"You are mine, and blood is inflammable, Flaunty Lissette!" My rage was undammable.... Could a stilletto's one prick be prettier? Look at the gaping. No?--then you're her pitier! Pah! she's the better, and I ... I'm your prisoner. Loose me the strapping-- I'll lay one more kiss on her. TEARLESS Do women weep when men have died? It cannot be! For I have sat here by his side, Breathing dear names against his face, That he must list to were his place Over God's throne-- Yet have I wept no tear and made no moan. No! but to lids, that gaze stone-wide, Grief seems in vain. Do women weep?--I was his bride-- They brought him to me cold and pale-- Upon his lids I saw the trail Of deathly pain. They said, "Her tears will fall like Autumn rain." I cannot weep! Not if hot tears, Dropped on his lips, Might burn him back to life and years Of yearning love, would any rise To flood the anguish from my eyes-- And I'm his bride! Ah me, do women weep when men have died? THE LIGHTHOUSEMAN When at evening smothered lightnings Burn the clouds with opal fires; When the stars forget to glisten, And the winds refuse to listen To the song of my desires, Oh, my love, unto thee! When the livid breakers angered Churn against my stormy tower; When the petrel flying faster Brings an omen to the master Of his vessel's fated hour-- Oh, the reefs! ah, the sea! Then I climb the climbing stairway, Turn the light across the storm; You are watching, fisher-maiden, For the token flashes laden With a love death could not harm-- Lo, they come, swift and free! _One_--that means, "I think of thee!" _Two_--"I swear me thine!" _Three_--Ah, hear me tho' you sleep!-- Is, "Love, I know thee mine!" Thro' the darkness, One, Two, Three, All the night they sweep: Thro' raging darkness o'er the deep, One--and Two--and Three. BY THE INDUS Thou art late, O Moon, Late, I have waited thee long. The nightingale's flown to her nest, Sated with song. The champak hath no odour more To pour on the wind as he passeth o'er-- But my heart it will not rest. Thou art late, O Love, Late, For the moon is a-wane. The kusa-grass sighs with my sighs, Burns with my pain. The lotus leans her head on the stream-- Shall I not lean to thy breast and dream, Dream ere the night-cool dies? Thou art late, O Death, Late, For he did not come! A pariah is my heart, Cast from him--dumb! I cannot cry in the jungle's deep-- Is it not time for Nirvana's sleep? O Death, strike with thy dart! FROM ONE BLIND I cannot say thy cheek is like the rose, Thy hair ripple of sunbeams, and thine eyes Violets, April-rich and sprung of God. My barren gaze can never know what throes Such boons of beauty waken, tho' I rise Each day a-tremble with the ruthless hope That light will pierce my useless lids--then grope Till night, blind as the worm within his clod. Yet unto me thou are not less divine, I touch thy cheek--and know the mystery hid Within the twilight breeze; I smoothe thy hair And understand how slipping hours may twine Themselves into eternity: yea, rid Of all but love, I kiss thine eyes and seem To see all beauty God Himself may dream. Why then should I o'ermuch for earth-sight care? AT THE FALL OF ROME A.D. 455 Drink to Death, drink! He's god o' the world. Up with the cup-- Let no man shiver! Up with the cup-- Let no man shrink! Drink to death, He's lord o' the breath Of mortals hurled from the world Into Oblivion's river! Drink to Death, aye! And then--to the dust! Fill with a will-- And quaff like a lover! Fill with a will-- Who dares a Nay! Drink to Death!... He lies who saith That life is just--'tis a crust Tossed to a slave in his hover! Drink to Death!--So! Who recks for the rest? Love is above-- Or Hate, what matter? Love is above-- Or Hell below. Drink to Death, For vile is the peth Of Rome, and Shame is her name! Then drink, and the goblet shatter! PEACELESS LOVE I say unto all hearts that cannot rest For want of love, for beating loud and lonely, Pray the great Mercy-God to give you only Love that is passionless within the breast. Pray that it may not be a haunting fire, A vision that shall steal insatiably All beauteous content, all sweet desire, From faith and dream, star, flower, and song, and sea. But seek that soul and soul may meet together, Knowing they have for ever been but one-- Meet and be surest when ill's chartless weather Drives blinding gales of doubt across their sun. Pray--pray! lest love uptorn shall seem as nether Hell-hate and rage beyond oblivion. SUNDERED God who can bind the stars eternally With but a breath of spirit speech, a thought; Who can within earth's arms lay the mad sea Unserverably, and count it as sheer nought-- With His All-might can bind not you and me. For though he pressed us heart to burning heart, Knowing this fatal spell that so enthralls, Still would our souls, unhelpably apart, Stand aliens--beating fierce against the walls Of dark unsympathies that 'tween us start. Stands aliens, aye, and would! tho' we should meet Beyond the oblivion of unnumbered births-- Upon some world where Time cannot repeat The feeblest syllable that once was earth's. WITH OMAR I sat with Omar by the Tavern door Musing the mystery of mortals o'er, And soon with answers alternate we strove Whether, beyond death, Life hath any shore. "_Come, fill the cup_," said he. "_In the fire of Spring Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling. The Bird of Time has but a little way To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing._" "The Bird of Time?" I answered. "Then have I No heart for Wine. Must we not cross the Sky Unto Eternity upon his wings-- Or, failing, fall into the Gulf and die?" "_So some for the Glories of this World; and some Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come; But you, Friend, take the Cash--the Credit leave, Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!_" "What, take the Cash and let the Credit go? Spend all upon the Wine the while I know A possible To-morrow may bring thirst For Drink but Credit then shall cause to flow?" "_Yea, make the most of what you yet may spend, Before we too into the Dust descend; Dust unto Dust, and under Dust, to lie, Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and--sans End!_" "Into the Dust we shall descend--we must. But can the soul not break the crumbling Crust In which he is encaged? To hope or to Despair he will--which is more wise or just?" "_The worldly hope men set their hearts upon Turns Ashes--or it prospers: and anon, Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face, Lighting a little hour or two--is gone._" "Like Snow it comes--to cool one burning Day; And like it goes--for all our plea or sway. But flooding tears nor Wine can ever purge The Vision it has brought to us away." "_But to this world we come and Why not knowing Nor Whence, like water willy-nilly flowing; And out of it, as Wind along the waste, We know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing._" "True, little do we know of _Why_ or _Whence_. But is forsooth our Darkness evidence There is no Light?--the worm may see no star Tho' heaven with myriad multitudes be dense." "_But, all unasked, we're hither hurried Whence? And, all unasked, we're Whither hurried hence? O, many a cup of this forbidden Wine Must drown the memory of that insolence._" "Yet can not--ever! For it is forbid Still by that quenchless soul within us hid, Which cries, 'Feed--feed me not on Wine alone, For to Immortal Banquets I am bid.'" "_Well oft I think that never blows so red The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled: That every Hyacinth the Garden wears Dropt in her lap from some once lovely Head._" "Then if, from the dull Clay thro' with Life's throes, More beautiful spring Hyacinth and Rose, Will the great Gard'ner for the uprooted soul Find Use no sweeter than--useless Repose?" "_We cannot know--so fill the cup that clears To-day of past regret and future fears: To-morrow!--Why, To-morrow we may be Ourselves with yesterday's sev'n thousand Years._" "No Cup there is to bring oblivion More during than Regret and Fear--no, none! For Wine that's Wine to-day may change and be Marah before to-morrow's Sands have run." "_Myself when young did eagerly frequent Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument About it and about: but evermore Came out by the same door wherein I went._" "The doors of Argument may lead Nowhither, Reason become a Prison where may wither From sunless eyes the Infinite, from hearts All Hope, when their sojourn too long is thither." "_Up from Earth's Centre thro' the Seventh Gate I rose, and on the throne of Saturn sate, And many a Knot unravelled by the Road-- But not the Master-knot of Human fate._" "The Master-knot knows but the Master-hand That scattered Saturn and his countless Band Like seeds upon the unplanted heaven's Air: The Truth we reap from them is Chaff thrice fanned." "_Yet if the Soul can fling the Dust aside And naked on the air of Heaven ride, Wer't not a shame--wer't not a shame for him In this clay carcass crippled to abide?_" "No, for a day bound in this Dust may teach More of the Saki's Mind than we can reach Through aeons mounting still from Sky to Sky-- May open through all Mystery a breach." "_You speak as if Existence closing your Account and mine should know the like no more; The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has poured Millions of bubbles like us, and will pour._" "Bubbles we are, pricked by the point of Death. But, in each bubble, hope there dwells a Breath That lifts it and at last to Freedom flies, And o'er all heights of Heaven wandereth." "_A moment's halt--a momentary taste Of Being from the Well amid the Waste-- And Lo!--the phantom Caravan has reached The Nothing it set out from--Oh, make haste!_" "And yet it should be--it should be that we Who drink shall drink of Immortality. The Master of the Well has much to spare: Will He say, 'Taste'--then shall we no more be?" "_The Moving Finger writes; and having writ, Moves on; nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all your tears wash out a word of it._" "And--were it otherwise?... We might erase The Letter of some Sorrow in whose place No other sounding, we should fail to spell The Heart which yearns behind the mock-world's face." "_Well, this I know; whether the one True Light Kindle to Love, or Wrath--consume me quite, One flash of it within the Tavern caught Better than in the Temple lost outright._" "In Temple or in Tavern 't may be lost. And everywhere that Love hath any Cost It may be found; the Wrath it seems is but A Cloud whose Dew should make its power most." "_But see His Presence thro' Creation's veins, Running Quicksilver-like eludes your pains; Taking all shapes from Mah to Mahi; and They change and perish all--but He remains._" "All--it may be. Yet lie to sleep, and lo, The soul seems quenched in Darkness--is it so? Rather believe what seemeth not than seems Of Death--until we know--_until we know_." "_So wastes the Hour--gone in the vain pursuit Of This and That we strive o'er and dispute. Better be jocund with the fruitful Grape Than sadden after none, or bitter Fruit._" "Better--unless we hope the Shadow 's thrown Across our Path by glories of the Unknown Lest we may think we have no more to live And bide content with dim-lit Earth alone." "_Then, strange, is't not? that of the myriads who Before us passed the door of Darkness through Not one returns to tell us of the Road, Which to discover we must travel too?_" "Such is the ban! but even though we heard Love in Life's All we still should crave the word Of one returned. Yet none is _sure_, we know, Though they lie deep, they are by Death deterred." "_Send then thy Soul through the Invisible Some letter of the After-life to spell: And by and by thy Soul returned to thee But answers, 'I myself am Heaven and Hell._'" "From the Invisible, he does. But sent Through Earth where living Goodness though 'tis blent With Evil dures, may he not read the Voice, 'To make thee but for Death were toil ill-spent'?" "_Well, when the Angel of the darker drink At last shall find us by the river-brink, And offering his Cup invite our souls Forth to our lips to quaff, we shall not shrink._" "No. But if in the sable Cup we knew Death without waking were the fateful brew, Nobler it were to curse as Coward Him Who roused us into light--then light withdrew." "_Then thou who didst with pitfall and with gin Beset the Road I was to wander in, Thou wilt not with Predestined Evil round Enmesh, and then impute my fall to sin._" "He will not. If one evil we endure To ultimate Debasing, oh, be sure 'Tis not of Him predestined, and the sin Not His nor ours--but fate's He could not cure." "_Yet, ah, that Spring should vanish with the Rose! That Youth's sweet-scented Manuscript should close! The Nightingale that on the branches sang-- Ah, whence, and whither flown again, who knows?_" "So does it seem--no other joys like these! Yet Summer comes, and Autumn's honoured ease; And wintry Age, is't ever whisperless Of that Last Spring, whose Verdure may not cease?" "_Still, would some winged Angel ere too late Arrest the yet unfolded roll of Fate, And make the stern Recorder otherwise Enregister or quite obliterate!_" "To otherwise enregister believe He toils eternally, nor asks Reprieve. And could Creation perfect from his hands Have come at Dawn, none overmuch should grieve." So till the wan and early scene of day We strove, and silent turned at last away, Thinking how men in ages yet unborn Would ask and answer--trust and doubt and pray. A JAPANESE MOTHER (IN TIME OF WAR) The young stork sleeps in the pine-tree tops, Down on the brink of the river. My baby sleeps by the bamboo copse-- The bamboo copse where the rice field stops: The bamboos sigh and shiver. The white fox creeps from his hole in the hill; I must pray to Inari. I hear her calling me low and chill-- Low and chill when the wind is still At night and the skies are starry. And ever she says, "He's dead! he's dead! Your lord who went to battle. How shall your baby now be fed, Ukibo fed, with rice and bread-- What if I hush his prattle?" The red moon rises as I slip back, And the bamboo stems are swaying. Inari was deaf--and yet the lack, The fear and lack, are gone, and the rack, I know not why--with praying. For though Inari cared not at all, Some other god was kinder. I wonder why he has heard my call, My giftless call--and what shall befall?... Hope has but left me blinder! SHINTO (MIYAJIMA, JAPAN, 1905) Lowly temple and torii, Shrine where the spirits of wind and wave Find the worship and glory we Give to the one God great and grave-- Lowly temple and torii, Shrine of the dead, I hang my prayer Here on your gates--the story see And answer out of the earth and air. For I am Nature's child, and you Were by the children of Nature built. Ages have on you smiled--and dew On you for ages has been spilt-- Till you are beautiful as Time Mossy and mellowing ever makes: Wrapped as you are in lull--or rhyme Of sounding drum that sudden breaks. This is my prayer then, this, that I Too may reverence all of life, Beauty, and power and miss no high Awe of a world with wonder rife. That I may build in spirit fair Temples and torii on each place That I have loved--O hear it, Air, Ocean and Earth, and grant your grace! EVOCATION (NIKKO, JAPAN, 1905) Weird thro' the mist and cryptomeria Booms the temple bell, Down from the tomb of Iëyasu Yearning, as a knell. Down from the tomb where many an aeon Silently has knelt, Many a pilgrimage of millions-- Still about it felt. Still, for see them gather ghostly Now, as the numb sound Floats as unearthly necromancy From the past's dead ground. See the invisible vast millions, Hear their soundless feet Climbing the shrine-ways to the gilded Carven temple's seat. And, one among them--pale among them-- Passes waning by. What is it tells me mystically That strange one was I?... Weird thro' the mist and cryptomeria Dies the bell--'tis dumb. After how many lives returning Shall I hither come? Hither again! and climb the votive Ever mossy ways? Who shall the gods be then, the millions, Meek, entreat or praise? THE ATONER Winter has come in sackcloth and ashes (Penance for Summer's enverdured sheaves). Bitterly, cruelly, bleakly he lashes His limbs that are naked of grass and leaves. He moans in the forest for sins unforgiven (Sins of the revelrous days of June)-- Moans while the sun drifts dull from the heaven, Giftless of heat's beshriving boon. Long must he mourn, and long be his scourging, (Long will the day-god aloof frown cold), Long will earth listen the rue of his dirging-- Till the dark beads of his days are told. INTIMATION All night I smiled as I slept, For I heard the March-wind feel Blindly about in the trees without For buds to heal. All night in dreams, for I smelt, In the rain-wet woods and fields, The coming flowers and the glad green hours That summer yields. And when at dawn I awoke, At the blue-bird's wooing cheep, Winter with all its chill and pall Seemed but a sleep. IN JULY This path will tell me where dark daisies dance To the white sycamores that dell them in; Where crow and flicker cry melodious din, And blackberries in ebon ripeness glance Luscious enticings under briery green. It will slip under coppice limbs that lean Brushingly as the slow-belled heifer pants Toward weedy water-plants That shade the pool-sunk creek's reluctant trance. I shall find bell-flower spires beside the gap And lady phlox within the hollow's cool; Cedar with sudden memories of Yule Above the tangle tipped with blue skullcap. The high hot mullein fond of the full sun Will watch and tell the low mint when I've won The hither wheat where idle breezes nap, And fluffy quails entrap Me from their brood that crouch to escape mishap. Then I shall reach the mossy water-way That gullies the dense hill up to its peak, There dally listening to the eerie eke Of drops into cool chalices of clay. Then on, for elders odorously will steal My senses till I climb up where they heal The livid heat of its malingering ray, And wooingly betray To memory many a long-forgotten day. There I shall rest within the woody peace Of afternoon. The bending azure frothed With silveryness, the sunny pastures swathed, Fragrant with morn-mown clover and seed-fleece; The hills where hung mists muse, and Silence calls To Solitude thro' aged forest halls, Will waft into me their mysterious ease, And in the wind's soft cease I shall hear hintings of eternities. FROM ABOVE What do I care if the trees are bare And the hills are dark And the skies are gray. What do I care for chill in the air, For crows that cark At the rough wind's way. What do I care for the dead leaves there-- Or the sullen road By the sullen wood. There's heart in my heart To bear my load! So enough, the day is good! SONGS TO A. H. R. I. THE WORLD'S, AND MINE The world may hear The wind at his trees, The lark in her skies, The sea on his leas; May hear the song rise From the breast of a woman And think it as dear As heaven tho' human. But I have a music they can never know-- The touch of you, soul of you, heart of you. Oh! All else that is said or sung 's but a part of you-- Ever to me 'tis so! II. LOVE-CALL IN SPRING Not only the lark but the robin too (Oh, heart o' my heart, come into the wood!) Is singing the air to gladness new As the breaking bud And the freshet's flood! Not only the peeping grass and the scent-- (Oh, love o' my life, fly unto me here!) Of violets coming ere April's spent-- But the frog's shrill cheer And the crow's wild jeer! Not only the blue, not only the breeze, (Oh, soul o' my heart, why tarry so long!) But sun that is sweeter upon the trees Than rills that throng To the brooklet's song! Oh, heart o' my heart, oh, heart o' my love, (Oh soul o' my soul, haste unto me, haste!) For spring is below and God is above-- But all is a waste Without thee--Haste! III. MATING The bliss of the wind in the redbud ringing! What shall we do with the April days! Kingcups soon will be up and swinging-- What shall we do with May's! The cardinal flings, "They are made for mating!" Out on the bough he flutters, a flame. Thrush-flutes echo "For mating's elating! Love is its other name!" They know! know it! but better, oh, better, Dearest, than ever a bird in Spring, Know we to make each moment a debtor Unto love's burgeoning! IV. UNTOLD Could I, a poet, Implant the truth of you, Seize it and sow it As Spring on the world. There were no need To fling (forsooth) of you Fancies that only lovers heed! No, but unfurled, The bloom, the sweet of you, (As unto me they are opened oft) Would with their beauty's breath repeat of you All that my heart breathes loud or soft! V. LOVE-WATCH My love's a guardian-angel Who camps about thy heart, Never to flee thine enemy, Nor from thee turn apart. Whatever dark may shroud thee And hide thy stars away, With vigil sweet his wings shall beat About thee till the day. VI. AS YOU ARE Dark hair--dark eyes-- But heart of sun, Pity and hope That rill and run With flowing fleet To heal the defeat Of all Life has undone. Dark hair--dark eyes-- But soul as clear, Trusty and fair As e'er drew near To clasp its mate And enter the gate Of Love that casts out fear. Dark hair--dark eyes-- But, there is seen In them the most That earth can mean; The most that death Can bring--or breath _There_--in the bright Unseen! VII. AT AMALFI Come to the window, you who are mine. Waken! the night is calling. Sit by me here--with the moon's fair shine Into your deep eyes falling. The sea afar is a fearful gloom; Lean from the casement, listen! Anear, it breaks with a faery spume, Spraying the moon-path's glisten. The little white town below lies deep As eternity in slumber. O, you who are mine, how a glance can reap Beauties beyond all number! "Amalfi!" say it--as the stars set O'er yon far promontory. "Amalfi!" ... Shall we ever forget Even Above this glory? No; as twin sails at anchor ride, Our spirits rock together On a sea of love--lit as this tide With tenderest star-weather! And the quick ecstasy within Your breast is against me beating. Amalfi!... Never a night shall win From God again such fleeting. Ah--but the dawn is redd'ning up Over the moon low-dying. Come, come away--we have drunk the cup: Ours is the dream undying! VIII. ON THE PACIFIC A storm broods far on the foam of the deep; The moon-path gleams before. A day and a night, a night and a day, And the way, love, will be o'er. Six thousand wandering miles we have come And never a sail have seen. The sky above and the sea below And the drifting clouds between. Yet in our hearts unheaving hope And light and joy have slept. Nor ever lonely has seemed the wave Tho' heaving wild it leapt. For there is talismanic might Within our vows of love To breathe us over all seas of life-- On to that Port above Where the great Captain of all ships Shall anchor them or send Them forth on a vaster Voyage, yea, On one that shall not end. And upon _that_ we two, I think, Together still shall sail. O may it be, my own, or may We perish in death's gale! THE WINDS The East Wind is a Bedouin, And Nimbus is his steed; Out of the dusk with the lightning's thin Blue scimitar he flies afar, Whither his rovings lead. The Dead Sea waves And Egypt caves Of mummied silence laugh When he mounts to quench the Siroc's stench, And to wrench From his clutch the tyrant's staff. The West Wind is an Indian brave Who scours the Autumn's crest. Dashing the forest down as a slave He tears the leaves from its limbs and weaves A maelstrom for his breast. Out of the night Crying to fright The earth he swoops to spoil-- There is furious scathe in the whirl of his wrath, In his path There is misery and moil. The North Wind is a Viking--cold And cruel, armed with death! Born in the doomful deep of the old Ice Sea that froze ere Ymir rose From Niflheim's ebon breath. And with him sail Snow, Frost, and Hail, Thanes mighty as their lord, To plunder the shores of Summer's stores-- And his roar's Like the sound of Chaos' horde. The South Wind is a Troubadour; The Spring, his serenade. Over the mountain, over the moor, He blows to bloom from the winter's tomb Blossom and leaf and blade. He ripples the throat Of the lark with a note Of lilting love and bliss, And the sun and the moon, the night and the noon, Are a-swoon-- When he woos them with his kiss. THE DAY-MOON So wan, so unavailing, Across the vacant day-blue dimly trailing! Last night, sphered in thy shining, A Circe--mystic destinies divining; To-day but as a feather Torn from a seraph's wing in sinful weather, Down-drifting from the portals Of Paradise, unto the land of mortals. Yet do I feel thee awing My heart with mystery, as thy updrawing Moves thro' the tides of Ocean And leaves lorn beaches barren of its motion; Or strands upon near shallows The wreck whose weirded form at night unhallows The fisher maiden's prayers-- "For _him_!--that storms may take not unawares!" So wan, so unavailing, Across the vacant day-blue dimly trailing! But Night shall come atoning Thy phantom life thro' day, and high enthroning Thee in her chambers arrassed With star-hieroglyphs, leave thee unharassed To glide with silvery passion, Till in earth's shadow swept thy glowings ashen. TO A SINGING WARBLER "Beauty! all--all--is beauty?" Was ever a bird so wrong! "No young in the nest, no mate, no duty?" Ribald! is this your song? "Glad it is ended," are you? The Spring and its nuptial fear? "Freedom is better than love?" beware you There will be May next year! "Beauty!" again? still "beauty"? Wait till the winter comes! Till kestrel and hungry kite seek booty And there are so few crumbs! Wait? nay, fling it unbidden, The false little song you prate! Too sweet are its fancies to be chidden, E'en of the rudest fate! TO THE SEA Art thou enraged, O sea, with the blue peace Of heaven, so to uplift thine armèd waves, Thy billowing rebellion 'gainst its ease, And with Tartarean mutter from cold caves, From shuddering profundities where shapes Of awe glide through entangled leagues of ooze, To hoot thy watery omens evermore, And evermore thy moanings interfuse With seething necromancy and mad lore? Or, dost thou labour with the drifting bones Of countless dead, thou mighty Alchemist, Within whose stormy crucible the stones Of sunk primordial shores, granite and schist, Are crumbled by thine all-abrasive beat? With immemorial chanting to the moon, And cosmic incantation dost thou crave Rest to be found not till thy wild be strewn Frigid and desert over earth's last grave? Thou seemest with immensity mad, blind-- With raving deaf, with wandering forlorn; Parent of Demogorgon whose dire mind Is night and earthquake, shapeless shame and scorn Of the o'ermounting birth of Harmony. Bound in thy briny bed and gnawing earth With foamy writhing and fierce-panted tides, Thou art as Fate in torment of a dearth Of black disaster and destruction's strides. And how thou dost drive silence from the world, Incarnate Motion of all mystery! Whose waves are fury-wings, whose winds are hurled Whither thy Ghost tempestuous can see A desolate apocalypse of death. Oh, how thou dost drive silence from the world, With emerald overflowing, waste on waste Of flashing susurration, dashed and swirled 'Gainst isles and continents and airs o'erspaced! Nay, frustrate Hope art thou of the Unknown, Gathered from primal mist and firmament; A surging shape of Life's unfathomed moan, Whelming humanity with fears unmeant. Yet do I love thee, O, above all fear, And loving thee unconquerably trust The runes that from thy ageless surfing start Would read, were they revealed, gust upon gust, That Immortality is might of heart! THE DEAD GODS I thought I plunged into that dire Abyss Which is Oblivion, the house of Death. I thought there blew upon my soul the breath Of time that was but never more can be. Ten thousand years I thought I lay within Its Void, blind, deaf, and motionless, until-- Though with no eye nor ear--I felt the thrill Of seeing, heard its phantoms move and sigh. First one beside me spoke, in tones that told He once had been a god,--"Persephone, Tear from thy brow its withered crown, for we Are king and queen of Tartarus no more; And that wan, shrivelled sceptre in thy hand, Why dost thou clasp it still? Cast it away, For now it hath no virtue that can sway Dull shades or drive the Furies to their spoil. Cast it away, and give thy palm to mine: Perchance some unobliterated spark Of memory shall warm this dismal Dark. Perchance--vain! vain! love could not light such gloom." He sank.... Then in great ruin by him moved Another as in travail of some thought Near unto birth; and soon from lips distraught By aged silence, fell, with hollow woe: "Ah, Pluto, dost thou, one time lord of Styx And Acheron make moan of night and cold? Were we upon Olympus as of old Laughter of thee would rock its festal height. But think, think thee of me, to whom or gloom Or cold were more unknown than impotence! See the unhurlèd thunderbolt brought hence To mock me when I dream I still am Jove!" Too much it was: I withered in the breath; And lay again ten thousand lifeless years; And then my soul shook, woke--and saw three biers Chiselled of solid night majestically. The forms outlaid upon them were unwound As with the silence of eternity. Numbing repose dwelt o'er them like a sea, That long hath lost tide, wave and roar, in death. "Ptah, Ammon, and Osiris are their names," A spirit hieroglyphed unto my soul, "Ptah, Ammon, and Osiris--they who stole The heart of Egypt from the God of gods: "Aye, they! and these;" pointing to many wraiths That stood around--Baal, Ormuzd, Indra, all Whom frightened ignorance and sin's appall Had given birth, close-huddled in despair. Their eyes were fixed upon a cloven slope Down whose descent still other forms a-fresh From earth were drawn, by the unceasing mesh Of Time to their irrevocable end. "They are the gods," one said--"the gods whom men Still taunt with wails for help."--Then a deep light Upbore me from the Gulf, and thro' its might I heard the worlds cry, "God alone is God!" AT WINTER'S END The weedy fallows winter-worn, Where cattle shiver under sodden hay. The plough-lands long and lorn-- The fading day. The sullen shudder of the brook, And winds that wring the writhen trees in vain For drearier sound or look-- The lonely rain. The crows that train o'er desert skies In endless caravans that have no goal But flight--where darkness flies-- From Pole to Pole. The sombre zone of hills around That shrink in misty mournfulness from sight, With sunset aureoles crowned-- Before the night. APRIL A laughter of wind and a leaping of cloud, And April, oh, out under the blue! The brook is awake and the blackbird loud In the dew! But how does the robin high in the beech, Beside the wood with its shake and toss, Know it--the frenzy of bluets to reach Thro' the moss! And where did the lark ever learn his speech? Up wildly sweet he's over the mead! Is more than the rapture of earth can teach In its creed? I never shall know--I never shall care! 'Tis, oh, enough to live and to love! To laugh and warble and dream and dare Are to prove! AUGUST GUESTS The wind slipt over the hill And down the valley. He dimpled the cheek of the rill With a cooling kiss. Then hid on the bank a-glee And began to rally The rushes--Oh, I love the wind for this! A cloud blew out of the west And spilt his shower Upon the lily-bud crest And the clematis. Then over the virgin corn Besprinkled a dower Of dew-gems--And, I love the cloud for this! AUTUMN I know her not by fallen leaves Or resting heaps of hay; Or by the sheathing mists of mauve That soothe the fiery day. I know her not by plumping nuts, By redded hips and haws, Or by the silence hanging sad Under the wind's sere pause. But by her sighs I know her well-- They are like Sorrow's breath; And by this longing, strangely still, For something after death. THE WORLD _Vox desperans._ The World is a wind--on which are blown All mysteries that are. Out of a Void it sprang--and to A Void shall spring, afar. _Vox sperans._ The World is Visible God--who is Its Soul invisible. There is no Void beyond that He Abiding fills not full. TO THE DOVE 1 Thy mellow passioning amid the leaves Trembles around me in the summer dusk That falls along the oatlands' sallow sheaves And haunts above the runnel's voice a-husk With plashy willow and bold-wading reed. The solitude's dim spell it breaketh not, But softer mourns unto me from the mead Than airs within the dead primrose's heart, Or breath of silences in dells begot To soothe some grief-wan maid with love a-mort. 2 On many sylvan eves of childhood thou Didst woo my homeward path with tenderness, Woo till the awing owlet ceased to cow With his chill screech of quavering distress. At phantom midnight wakened I have heard Thy mated dreams from the wind-eerie elm, And as a potion medicined and myrrhed, As an enchantment's runic utterance, It would draw sleep back to her lulling realm Over my lids till day should disentrance. 3 A priestess art thou of Simplicity, Who hath one fane--the heaven above thy nest; One incense--love; one stealing litany Of peace from rivered vale and upland crest. Yea, thou art Hers, who makes prayer of the breeze, Hope of the cool upwelling from sweet soils, Faith of the dark'ning distance, charities Of vesper scents, and of the glow-worm's throb Joy whose first leaping rends the care-wound coils That would earth of its heavenliness rob. 4 But few, how few her worshippers! For we Cast at a myriad shrines our souls, to rise Beliefless, unanointed, bound not free, To sacrificing a vain sacrifice! Let thy lone innocence then quickly null Within our veins doubt-led and wrong desire Or drugging knowledge that but fills o'erfull Of feverous mystery the days we drain! Be thy warm notes like an Orphean lyre To lead us to life's Arcady again! AT TINTERN ABBEY (JUNE, 1903) O Tintern, Tintern! evermore my dreams Troubled of thy grave beauty shall be born; Thy crumbling loveliness and ivy streams Shall speak to me for ever, from this morn; The wind-wild daws about thy arches drifting, Clouds sweeping o'er thy ruin to the sea, Gray Tintern, all the hills about thee, lifting Their misty waving woodland verdancy! The centuries that draw thee to the earth In envy of thy desolated charm, The summers and the winters, the sky's girth Of sunny blue or bleakness, seek thy harm. But would that I were Time, then only tender Touch upon thee should fall as on I sped; Of every pillar would I be defender, Of every mossy window--of thy dead! Thy dead beneath obliterated stones Upon the sod that is at last thy floor, Who list the Wye not as it lonely moans Nor heed thy Gothic shadows grieving o'er. O Tintern, Tintern! trysting-place, where never Is wanting mysteries that move the breast, I'll hear thy beauty calling, ah, for ever-- Till sinks within me the last voice to rest! THE VICTORY See, see!--the blows at his breast, Abyss at his back, The peril of dark that pressed, The doubts in a pack, That hunted to drag him down Have triumphed? and now He sinks who climbed for the crown To the Summit's brow? No!--though at the foot he lies, Fallen and vain, With gaze to the peak whose skies, He could not attain, The victory is, with strength-- No matter the past!-- He'd dare it again, the dark length, And the fall at last! SEARCHING DEATH'S DARK When Autumn's melancholy robes the land With silence and sad fadings mystical Of other years move thro' the mellow fields, I turn unto this meadow of the dead Strewn with the leaves stormed from October trees, And wonder if my resting shall be dug Here by this cedar's moan or under the sway Of yonder cypress--lair of winds that rove As Valkyries from Valhalla's court In search of worthy slain. And sundry times with questioning I tease The entombed of their estate--seeking to know Whether 'tis sweeter in the grave to feel The oblivion of Nature's flow, or here Wander as gleam and shadow flit her face. Whether the harvesting of pain and joy Ends with the ivied slab, or whether death Pours the warm chrism of Immortality Into each human heart whose glow is spent. Nor do my askings fall on the chill voids Of unavailing silence. For a voice Of sighing wind may answer, or it leaps, Though wordless, from a marble seraph's face. Or sometimes from unspeakable deeps of gold That ebb along the west revealings wing And tremor, like etherial swift tongues Unskilled of human speech, about my heart-- Till, youth, age, death ... even earth's all, it seems, Are but wild moments wakened in that Soul, To whom infinities are as a span, Eternities as bird-flights o'er the sun, And worlds as sands blown from Sahara's wilds Into the sea.... Then twilight bells ring back My wandered spirit from the wilderness Of Mystery, whence none may find a path To the Unknown, and like one who upborne Has steered the unmeasured summer skies until Their calm seems God, I turn transfigured home. SERENITY And could I love it more--this simple scene Of cot-strewn hills and fields long-harvested, That lie as if forgotten were all green, So bare, so dead? Or could my gaze more tenderly entwine Each pallid beech or silvery sycamore, Outreaching arms in patience to divine If winter's o'er? Ah no, the wind has blown into my veins The blue infinity of sky, the sense Of meadows free to-day from icy pains-- From wintry vents. And sunny peace more virgin than the glow Falling from eve's first star into the night, Brings hope believing what it ne'er can know With mortal sight. TO THE SPRING WIND Ah, what a changeling! Yester you dashed from the west, Altho' it is Spring, And scattered the hail with maniac zest Thro' the shivering corn--in scorn For the labour of God and man. And now from the plentiful South you haste, With lovingest fingers, To ruefully lift and wooingly fan The lily that lingers a-faint on the stalk: As if the chill waste Of the earth's May-dreams, The flowers so full of her joy, Were not--as it seems-- A wanton attempt to destroy. THE RAMBLE Down the road Which asters tangle, Thro' the gap Where green-briar twines, By the path Where dry leaves dangle Down from the ivy vines, We go-- By sedgy fallows And along The stifled brook, Till it stops In lushy mallows Just at the bridge's crook. Then, again, O'er fence, thro' thicket, To the mouth Of the rough ravine-- Where the weird Leaf-hidden cricket Chirrs thro' the weirder green-- There's a way O'er rocks--but quicker Is the best Of heart and foot, As the beams Above us flicker Sun upon moss and root! And we leap-- As wildness tingles From the air Into our blood-- With a cry Thro' golden dingles Hid in the heart of the wood. Oh, the wood With winds a-wrestle! With the nut And acorn strown! Oh, the wood Where creepers trestle, Tree unto tree o'ergrown! With a climb The ledging summit Of the hill Is reached in glee. For an hour We gaze off from it Into the sky's blue sea. But a bell And sunset's crimson Soon recall The homeward path. And we turn As the glory dims on The hay-fields' mounded math. Thro' the soft And silent twilight We come, To the stile at last, As the clear Undying eyelight Of the stars tells day is past. RETURN Ah, it was here--September And silence filled the air-- I came last year to remember, And muse, hid away from care. It was here I came--the thistle Was trusting her seed to the wind; The quail in the croft gave whistle As now--and the fields lay thinned. I know how the hay was steeping, Brown mows under mellow haze; How a frail cloud-flock was creeping As now over lone sky-ways. Just there where the cat-bird's calling Her mock-hurt note by the shed, The use-worn wain was stalling In the weedy brook's dry bed. And the cricket, lone little chimer Of day-long dreams in the vines, Chirred on like a doting rhymer O'er-vain of his firstling lines. He's near me now by the aster, Beneath whose shadowy spray A sultry bee seeps faster As the sun slips down the day. And there are the tall primroses Like maidens waiting to dance. They stood in the same shy poses Last year, as if to entrance The stately mulleins to waken From death and lead them around: And still they will stand untaken, Till drops their gold to the ground. Yes, it was here--September And silence round me yearned. Again I've come to remember, Again for musing returned To the searing fields assuaging, And the falling leaves' sad balm: Away from the world's keen waging-- To harvest and hills and calm. THE EMPTY CROSS The eve of Golgotha had come, And Christ lay shrouded in the garden's tomb: Among the olives, Oh, how dumb, How sad the sun incarnadined the gloom! The hill grew dim--the pleading cross Reached empty arms toward the closing gate. Jerusalem, oh, count thy loss! Oh, hear ye! hear ye! ere it be too late! Reached bleeding arms--but how in vain! The murmurous multitude within the wall Already had forgot His pain-- To-morrow would forget the cross--and all! They knew not Rome before its sign, Bending her brow bound with the nations' threne, Would sweep all lands from Nile to Rhine In servitude unto the Nazarene. Nor knew that millions would forsake Ancestral shrines great with the glow of time, And lifting up its token shake Aeons with thrill of love or battle's crime. With empty arms aloft it stood: Ah, Scribe and Pharisee, ye builded well! The cross emblotted with His blood Mounts, highest Hope of men against earth's hell! SUNSET-LOVERS Upon how many a hill, Across how many a field, Beside how many a river's whispery flowing, They stand, with eyes a-thrill, And hearts of day-rue healed, Gazing, O wistful sun, upon thy going! They have forgotten life, Forgotten sunless death; Desire is gone--is it not gone for ever? No memory of strife Have they, or pain-sick breath, No hopes to fear or fears hope cannot sever. Silent the gold steals down The west, and mystery Moves deeper in their hearts and settles darker. 'Tis faded--the day's crown; But strange and shadowy They see the Unseen as night falls stark and starker. Like priests whose altar fires Are spent, immovable They stand, in awful ecstasy uplifted. Zephyrs awake tree-lyres, The starry deeps are full, Earth with a mystic majesty is gifted. Ah, sunset-lovers, though Time were but pulsing pain, And death no more than its eternal ceasing, Would you not choose the throe, Hold the oblivion vain, To have beheld so many days releasing? TO A ROSE (IN A HOSPITAL) Why do I love thee?-- Not because thy wak'ning lips Were wooed to bloom by minstrel wind Of Araby or Ind. Not because thy fragrance slips Into my soul--as if thou must Be sprung of a mother's dust. Not because _she_ gave her breast To thee for one long night--she whose Pure heart I ne'er shall lose. But when I lay in sick unrest Afar from those who are my own, Thou camest from hands unknown: Therefore I love thee! UNBURTHENED Not pain nor the sunny wine Of gladness steepeth my still spirit as I lift my gaze across the winter meads Engarmented in stubble robes of brown. For, as those solitary trees afar Have reached unbudding boughs To the dim warmth of the February sun, And melted on the infinite calm of space, So I have reached--and am no more distraught With the quivering pangs of memory's yesterday. But the boon of blue skies deeper than despair, Of rests that rise As tides of sleep, And care borne on the plumes Of swan-swift clouds away to the sullen shades Of quelled snow-storms low-lying in the west, Have lulled my soul with soft infinitude. And now ... down sinks the sun, Until, half-arched above the marge of earth, It hangs, a golden door, Through which effulgent Paradise beyond Burns seeming forth along the path of those Who, crowned by Death with Life, pass to its portal. How soon 'tis closed--how soon! The trumpetings Of seraphs whose gold blasts of light break o'er Purplescent passing battlements of cloud, Sound clear ... then comes the dusk! WHERE PEACE IS DUTY Dimming in sunniness, aerily distant, Valley and hillside float; Up to me wavering, softly insistent, Wanders the wood-brook's note. Anchored beyond in azure unending Cloud-sails await wind-tide. Oh, for the skylands where soon they'll be wending-- And, unabiding, bide. Where Time aflow thro' infinite spaces Stays for no throttle of pain! Where the stars go at eve to their places; Where silence never shall wane! Where there's no sense but of beauty's wild sweetness, Thought but of sweetening beauty! Where wanting's stilled in unwanting's completeness-- Where peace is duty! WANTON JUNE I knew she would come! Sarcastic November Laughed cold and glum On the last red ember Of forest leaves. He was laughing, the scorner, At me forlorner Than any that grieves-- Because I asked him if June would come! But I knew she would come! When snow-hearted winter Gripped river and loam, And the wind sped flinter On icy heel, I was chafing my sorrow And yearning to borrow A hope that would steal Across the hours--till June should come. And now she is here.-- The wanton!--I follow Her steps, ever near, To the shade of the hollow Where violets blow: And chide her for leaving, Tho' half, still, believing She taunted me so, To make her abided return more dear. AUTUMN AT THE BRIDGE Brown dropping of leaves, Soft rush of the wind, Slow searing of sheaves On the hill; Green plunging of frogs, Cool lisp of the brook, Far barking of dogs At the mill; Hot hanging of clouds, High poise of the hawk, Flush laughter of crowds From the Ridge; Nut-falling, quail-calling, Wheel-rumbling, bee-mumbling-- Oh, sadness, gladness, madness, Of an autumn day at the bridge! SONG Her voice is vibrant beauty dipt In dreams of infinite sorrow and delight. Thro' an awaiting soul 'tis slipt And lo, words spring that breathe immortal might. TO HER WHO SHALL COME 1 Out of the night of lovelessness I call Thee, as, in a chill chamber where no ray Of unbelievable light and freedom fall, Might cry one manacled! And tho' the way Thou'lt come I cannot see; tho' my heart's sore With emptiness when morning's silent gray Wakes me to long aloneness; yet I know Thou hast been with me, who like dawn wilt go Beside me, when I have found thee, evermore! 2 So in the garden of my heart each day I plant thee a flower. Now the pansy, peace, And now the lily, faith--or now a spray Of the climbing ivy, hope. And they ne'er cease Around the still unblossoming rose of love To bend in fragrant tribute to her sway. Then--for thy shelter from life's sultrier suns, The oak of strength I set o'er joy that runs With brooklet glee from winds that grieve above. 3 But where now art thou? Watching with love's eye The eve-star wander? Listening through dim trees Some thrilled muezzin of the forest cry From his leafy minaret? Or by the sea's Blue brim, while the spectral moon half o'er it hangs Like the faery isle of Avalon, do these My yearnings speak to thee of days thy feet Have never trod?--Sweet, sweet, oh, sealing sweet, My own, must be our meeting's mystic pangs. 4 And will be soon! For last night near to day, Dreaming, God called me thro' the space-built sphere Of heaven and said, "Come, waiting one, and lay Thine ear unto my Heart--there thou shall hear The secrets of this world where evils war." Such things I heard as must rend mortal clay To tell, and trembled--till God, pitying, Said, "Listen" ... Oh, my love, I heard thee sing Out of thy window to the morning star! AVOWAL TO THE NIGHTINGALE Though thou hast ne'er unpent thy pain's delight Upon these airs, bird of the poet's love, Yet must I sing thy singing! for the Night Has poured her jewels o'er the lap of heaven As they who've heard thee say thou dost above The wood such ecstasies as were not given By nestling breasts of Venus to the dove. Oft I have watched the moon orb her fair gold, Still clung to by the tattered mists of day And look for thee. Then has my hope grown bold Till almost I could see how the near laurels Would tremble with thy trembling: but the sway Of bards who've wreathed thee with unfading chorals Has held my longing lips from this poor lay. None but the sky-hid lark whose spirit is Too high for earth may vie for praise with thee In aery rhapsody. And since 'tis his To sing of day and joy as thou of sorrow And night o'erhovering singest, thou'lt e'er be More dear than he--till hearts shall cease to borrow From grief the healing for life's mystery. Then loose thy song! Though no grave ear may list Its lyric trouble, still 'tis soothing sweet To know that songs unheard and graces missed By every eye melt on the skies that nourish Us with immortal blue; and, changed, repeat Their protean loveliness in all we cherish. For beauty cannot die, howe'er 'tmay fleet. STORM-EBB Dusking amber dimly creeps Over the vale, Lit by the kildee's silver sweeps, Sad with his wail. Eastward swing the silent clouds Into the night. Burdens of day they seem--in crowds Hurled from earth's sight. Tilting gulls whip whitely far Over the lake, Tirelessly on o'er buoy and spar Till they o'ertake Shadow and mingled mist--and then Vanish to wing Still the bewildering night-fen, Where the waves ring. Dusking amber dimly dies Out of the vale. Dead from the dunes the winds arise-- Ghosts of the gale. SLAVES A host of bloody centuries lie prone Upon the fields of Time--but still the wake Of Progress loud is haunted with the groan Of myriads, from whose peaceful veins, to slake His scarlet thirst, has War, fierce Polypheme Of fate, insatiately drunk Life's stream. We bid the courier lightning leap along Its metal path with spaceless speed--command Stars lost in night-eternity to throng Before the magnet eye of Science--stand On Glory's peak and triumphingly cry Out mastery of earth and sea and air. But unto War's necessity we bare Our piteous breasts--and impotently die. WAKING Oh, the long dawn, the weary, endless dawn, When sleep's oblivion is torn away From love that died with dying yesterday But still unburied in the heart lies on! Oh, the sick gray, the twitter in the trees, The sense of human waking o'er the earth! The quivering memories of love's fair birth Now strown as deathless flowers o'er its decease! Oh, the regret, and oh, regretlessness, Striving for sovranty within the soul! Oh, fear that life shall never more be whole, And immortality but make it less! FAUN-CALL Oh, who is he will follow me With a singing, Down sunny roads where windy odes Of the woods are ringing? Where leaves are tossed from branches lost In a tangle Of vines that vie to clamber high-- But to vault and dangle! Oh, who is he?--His eye must be As a lover's To leap and woo the chicory's hue In the hazel-hovers! His hope must dance like radiance O'er the shadows Of clouds that fling their threatening On the stubbly meadows! And he must see that Autumn's glee And her laughter From his lips and heart will quell all smart-- Of before and after! LINGERING I lingered still when you were gone, When tryst and trust were o'er, While memory like a wounded swan In sorrow sung love's lore. I lingered till the whippoorwill Had cried delicious pain Over the wild-wood--in its thrill I heard your voice again. I lingered and the mellow breeze Blew to me sweetly dewed-- Its touch awoke the sorceries Your last caresses brewed. But when the night with silent start Had sown her starry seed, The harvest which sprang in my heart Was loneliness and need. STORM-TWILIGHT Tossing, swirling, swept by the wind, Beaten abaft by the rain, The swallows high in the sodden sky Circle oft and again. They rise and sink and drift and swing, Twitterless in the chill; A-haste, for stark is the coming dark Over the wet of the hill. Wildly, swiftly, at last they stream Into their chimney home. A livid gash in the west, a crash-- Then silence, sadness, gloam. WILDNESS To drift with the drifting clouds, And blow with the blow of breezes, To ripple with waves and murmur with caves, To soar, as the sea-mew pleases! To dip with the dipping sails, And burn with the burning heaven-- My life! my soul! for the infinite roll Of a day to wildness given! BEFORE AUTUMN Summer's last moon has waned-- Waned As amber fires Of an Aztec shrine. The invisible breath of coming death has stained The withering leaves with its nepenthean wine-- Autumn's near. Winds in the woodland moan-- Moan As memories Of a chilling yore. Magnolia seeds like Indian beads are strewn From crimson pods along the earth's sere floor-- Autumn's near. Solitude slowly steals, Steals Her silent way By the songless brook. At the gnarly yoke of a solemn oak she kneels, The musing joy of sadness in her look-- Autumn's near. Yes, with her golden days-- Days When hope and toil Are at peace and rest-- Autumn is near, and the tired year 'mid praise Lies down with leaf and blossom on her breast-- Autumn's near. FULFILMENT A-bask in the mellow beauty of the ripening sun, Sad with the lingering sense of summer's purpose done, The cut and searing fields stretch from me one by one Along the creek. The corn-stooks drop their shadows down the fallow hill; Wearing autumnal warmth the farm sleeps by the mill, Around each heavy eave low smoke hangs blue and still-- Life's flow is weak. Along the weedy roads and lanes I walk--or pause-- Ponder a fallen nut or quirking crow whose caws Seem with prehuman hintings fraught or ancient awes Of forest-deeps. Of forest deeps the pale-face hunter never trod, Nor Indian, with the silent stealth of Nature shod; Deeps tense with the timelessness and solitude of God Who never sleeps. And many times has Autumn, on her harvest way, Gathered again into the earth leaf, fruit, and spray; Here many times dwelt rueful as she dwells to-day, The while she reaps. TO THE FALLEN LEAVES I hear the moaning rains beat on your rest In the long nights of Winter and his wind-- And Death, the woeful, guilty of your fall, Crying that he has sinned. MAYA (HIROSHIMA, JAPAN, 1905) Pale sampans up the river glide With set sails vanishing and slow; In the blue west the mountains hide As visions that too soon will go. Across the rice-lands flooded deep The peasant peacefully wades on-- As in unfurrowed vales of sleep, A phantom out of voidness drawn. Over the temple cawing flies The crow with carrion in his beak. Buddha within lifts not his eyes In pity or reproval meek; Nor, in the bamboos, where they bow A respite from the blinding sun, The old priest--dreaming painless how Nirvana's calm will come when won. "All is allusion, _Maya_, all The world of will," the spent East seems Whispering in me, "And the call Of Life is but a call of dreams." SPIRIT OF RAIN (MIYANOSHITA, JAPAN, 1905) Spirit of rain-- With all thy ghosts of mist about the mountain, lonely As a gray train Of souls newly discarnate seeking new life only! Spirit of rain! Leading them thro' dim torii, up fane-ways onward Till not in vain They tremble upon the peaks and plunge rejoicing dawnward. Spirit of rain! So would I lead my dead thoughts high and higher, Till they regain Birth and the beauty of a new life's fire. THE NYMPH AND THE GOD She lay by the river dead, A broken reed in her hand, The nymph whom an idle god had wed And led from her maidenland. The god was the great god, Jove. Two notes would the bent reed blow, The one was sorrow, the other love, Enwove with a woman's woe. She lay by the river dead, And he at feasting forgot. The gods, shall they be disquieted By dread of a mortal's lot? A SEA-GHOST Oh, fisher-fleet, go in from the sea And furl your wings. The bay is gray with the twilit spray And the loud surf springs. The chill buoy-bell is rung by the hands Of all the drowned, Who know the woe of the wind and tow Of the tides around. Go in, go in! O haste from the sea, And let them rest-- A son and one who was wed and one Who went down unblest. Aye, even as I whose hands at the bell Now labour most. The tomb has gloom, but O the doom Of the drear sea-ghost! He evermore must wander the ooze Beneath the wave, Forlorn--to warn of the tempest born, And to save--to save! Then go, go in! and leave us the sea, For only so Can peace release us and give us ease Of our salty woe. LAST SIGHT OF LAND The clouds in woe hang far and dim: I look again and lo Only a faint and shadow line Of shore--I watch it go. The gulls have left the ship and wheel Back to the cliff's gray wraith. Will it be so of all our thoughts When we set sail on Death? And what will the last sight be of life As lone we fare and fast? Grief and the face we love in mist-- Then night and awe too vast? Or the dear light of Hope--like that, O see, from the lost shore Kindling and calling "Onward, you Shall reach the Evermore!" SILENCE Silence is song unheard, Is beauty never born, Is light forgotten--left unstirred Upon Creation's morn. DAVID CHARACTERS SAUL _King of Israel._ JONATHAN _Heir to the throne._ ISHUI _His brother._ SAMUEL _The Prophet of Israel._ ABNER _Captain of the Host of Israel._ DOEG _An Edomite; chief servant of Saul, and suitor for Michal._ ADRIEL _A Lord of Meholah, suitor for Merab._ DAVID _A shepherd, secretly anointed King._ ABISHAI _A follower of David._ ABIATHAR _A priest and follower of David._ A PHILISTINE SPY. AHINOAM _The Queen._ MERAB } MICHAL } _Daughters of Saul and Ahinoam._ MIRIAM _A blind prophetess, and later the "Witch of Endor."_ JUDITH } LEAH } _Timbrel-players of the King._ ZILLA } ADAH _Handmaiden to Merab._ _A Chorus of Women. A Band of Priests. Followers of David. Soldiers of Saul. People of the Court, &c._ DAVID ACT I SCENE: _A Hall of Judgment in the palace of_ SAUL _at Gibeah. The walls and pillars of cedar are richly carven--with serpents, pomegranates, and cherubim in gold. The floors are of bright marble; the throne of ivory hung with a lion's skin whose head is its footstool. On the right, by the throne, and on the left are doors to other portions of the palace; they are draped with woven curtains of purple and white. In the rear, which is open and supported on pillars, a porch crosses a court. Through the porch, on the environing hills, glow the camp-fires of the Philistines, the enemies of Israel. Lamps in the Hall burn low, and on the floor_ JUDITH, LEAH _and_ ZILLA _are reclining restively._ _Judith_ (_springing to her feet impatiently_). O for a feast, pomegranate wine and song! _Leah._ Oh! Oh! _Zilla._ A feast indeed! the men in camp! When was a laugh or any leaping here? Never; and none to charm with timbreling! (_She goes to the porch._) _Leah._ What shall we do? _Judith._ I'll dance. _Zilla._ Until you're dead. _Judith._ Or till a youth wed Zilla for her beauty? I'll not soil mine with sullen fear all day Because these Philistines press round. As well Be wenches gathering grapes or wool! Come, Leah. (_She prepares to dance._) _Leah._ No, Judith, I'll put henna on my nails, (_Sits down._) And mend my anklet. _Zilla_ (_at the curtains_). Oh! Oh! Oh! _Judith._ Now, hear her! Who, who, now? who, who is it? dog, fox, devil? _Zilla._ All! _Judith._ Then 'tis Ishui! (_Bounding to curtains._) Yes, Ishui! And fury in him, sallow, souring fury! A jackal were his mate! Come, come, we'll plague him. _Zilla._ Shall we--with David whom he hates? _Judith._ Aie, David! The joy of rousing men to jealousy! _Leah._ Why hates he David, Zilla? _Zilla._ Stupid Leah! _Judith._ Hush, hush, be meet and ready now; he's near. Look as for silly visions and for dreams! (_They pose._ ISHUI _entering sees them._ JUDITH _sighs._) _Ishui._ Now, timbrel-gaud, why gape you here? _Judith._ O! 'tis Prince Ishui! _Zilla._ Prince Ishui! Then he Will tell us! he will tell us! _Leah._ Yes! _Judith._ Of David! O, is he come? when, where?--quick, quick. And will He pluck us ecstasies out of his harp, Winning until we're wanton for him, mad, And sigh and laugh and weep to the moon? _Ishui._ Low thing! Chaff of the king! _Judith._ The king! I had not thought! David a king! how beauteous would he be! _Ishui._ David? _Judith._ Turban of sapphire! robe of gold! _Ishui._ A king? o'er Israel? _Judith._ Who, who can tell? Have you not heard? Yesterday in the camp, Among war-old but fearful men, he offered Kingly to meet Goliath--great Goliath! _Ishui._ What do you say? to meet Goliath? _Judith_ (_laughing in his face_). Aie! (_Thrust from him, she goes, dancing with_ ZILLA _and_ LEAH.) _Adriel_ (_who has entered_). Ishui, in a rage? _Ishui._ Should I not be? _Adriel._ Not would you be yourself. _Ishui._ Not? (_Deftly._) You say well. I should not, no. Pardon then, Adriel. _Adriel._ What was the offence? _Ishui._ Turn from it: I have not Bidden you here for vapours ... tho' they had Substance as well for you! _Adriel._ For me? _Ishui._ Who likes Laughter against him? _Adriel._ I was laughed at? _Ishui._ Why, It is this shepherd! _Adriel._ David? _Ishui._ With his harp! Flinging enchantment on the palace air Till he impassions to him all who breathe. _Adriel._ What sting from that? He's lovable and brave. _Ishui._ Lovable? lovable? _Adriel._ I do not see. _Ishui._ This, then: you've hither come with gifts and gold, Dream-bringing amethyst and weft of Ind, To wed my sister, Merab? _Adriel._ It is so. _Ishui._ And you've the king's consent; but she denies? _Adriel._ As every wind, you know it. _Ishui._ Still denies! And you, lost in the maze of her, fare on Blindly and find no reason for it! _Adriel._ How? What reason can be? women are not clear; And least unto themselves. _Ishui._ Or to their fools. (_Goes to curtain, draws out_ ADAH.) Your mistress, Merab, girl, whom does she love? Unclench your hands. _Adah._ I hate her. _Ishui._ Insolent! Answer; I am not milky Jonathan, Answer; and for the rest--You hear? _Adah._ She loves-- The shepherd David! _Adriel._ Who, girl? _Adah._ I care not! She is unkind; I will not spy for her On Michal, and I'll tell her secrets all! And David does not love her--and she raves. _Ishui._ Off to your sleep; be off-- (_Makes to strike her._) _Adriel._ Ishui, no. (ADAH _goes_.) _Ishui_ (_gnashingly_). Then see you now how "lovable" he is? I tell you that he stands athwart us all! The heart of Merab swung as a censer to him, My seat at table with the king usurped! Mildew and mocking to the harp of Doeg As it were any slave's; the while we all Are lepered with suspicion. _Adriel._ Of the king? _Ishui._ Ah! and of Jonathan and Michal. _Adriel._ Hush. (_Enter_ MICHAL, _passing, with_ MIRIAM.) Michal, delay. Whom lead you? _Michal_. Miriam, A prophetess. _Adriel._ How of the king to-night? _Michal._ He's not at rest; dreads Samuel's prophecy The throne shall pass from him, and darkens more Against this boundless Philistine Goliath Who dares at Israel daily on the hills, As we were dogs! _Adriel._ Is David with him? _Michal._ No; But he is sent for--and will ease him--Ah! He's wonderful to heal the king with his harp! A waft, a sunny leap of melody, And swift the hovering mad shadow's gone-- As magic! _Ishui._ Michal.... Curst! _Michal._ What anger's this? _Ishui._ Disdaining Doeg and his plea to dust, His waiting and the winning o'er of Edom, You are enamoured of this David too? _Michal._ I think my brother Ishui hath a fever. (_She goes, calmly, with_ MIRIAM.) _Ishui._ Now are you kindled--are you quivering, Or must this shepherd put upon us more? _Adriel._ But has he not dealt honourably? _Ishui._ No. _Adriel._ Why do you urge it? _Ishui._ Why have senses. He With Samuel the prophet fast enshrouds Some secret, and has Samuel not told The kingdom from my father shall be rent And fall unto one another? _Adriel._ You are certain? _Ishui._ As granite. (_Voices are heard in altercation._) Yonder! _Adriel._ The king? _Ishui._ And Samuel With prophecy or some refusal tears him! (_They step aside._ SAUL, _followed by_ SAMUEL, _strides in and mounts the throne._) _Saul._ You threat, and ever thunder threatening! Pour seething prophecy into my veins, Till a simoon of madness in me moves. Am I not king, the king? chosen and sealed? Who've been anathema and have been bane Unto the foes of Israel, and filled The earth with death of them? And do you still forbid that I bear gold And bribe away this Philistine array Folded about us, fettering with flame? _Samuel._ Yes,--yes! While there is air--and awe of Heaven Do I forbid! A champion must rise To level this Goliath. Thus may we Loose on them pest of panic and of fear. _Saul._ Are forty days not dead? A champion! None will arise--'tis vain. And I'll not wait On miracle. _Samuel._ Offer thy daughter, then, Michal, thy fairest, to whoever shall. _Saul._ Demand and drain for more! without an end. Ever vexation! No; I will not. _Samuel._ Then, Out of Jehovah and a vast foreseen I tell thee again, thou perilous proud king, The sceptre shall slip from thee to another! (_He moves to go._) _Saul._ The sceptre.... _Samuel._ To another! _Saul._ From me! No! You rouse afar the billowing of ill. I grant--go not!--I grovel to your will, Fear it and fawn as to omnipotence, (_Snatching at_ SAMUEL's _mantle._) And vow to all its divination--all! _Samuel._ Then, Saul of Israel, the hour is near, When shall arise one, and Goliath fall! (_Goes slowly out by the porch, Saul sinks back._) _Ishui_ (_after a pause, keenly_). Oh,--subtle! _Saul._ Thus he sways me. _Ishui._ Subtle!--subtle! And yet I must not speak; come, Adriel, (_As if going._) No use of us is here. _Saul._ Use? subtle? Stand! _Ishui._ No, father, no. _Saul._ What mean you? _Ishui._ Do not ask.... Yet how it creeps, and how! _Saul._ Unveil your words. _Ishui._ Do you not see it crawl, this serpent scheme? Goliath slain--the people mad with praise, Then fallen from you--Michal the victor's wife.... _Saul._ Say on, say on. _Ishui._ Or else the champion slain-- Fear on the people--panic--the kingdom's ruin! _Saul._ Now do the folds slip from me. _Ishui._ And you see? Ah, then, if one arise? If one arise? _Saul._ Death, death! If he hath touched this prophet--if Merely a little moment!-- _Ishui._ I have seen Your David with him. _Saul._ Death! if ---- Come here: David? _Ishui._ In secret. _Saul._ Say you? _Ishui._ Yes. _Saul._ The folds slip further; To this you lead me--hatred against David! To this with supple envy's easy glide! _Ishui._ I have but told---- _Saul._ You have but builded lies, As ever you are building and for ever. I'll hear no more against him--Abner!--no. (_To_ ABNER, _who enters._) David, and with his harp. _Abner._ My lord---- _Saul._ Not come? He is not come? Forever he delays! (_Remounts throne._) _Abner._ Time's yet to pass. _Saul._ There is not. Am I king? (_A harp is heard._) See you, 'tis he!... 'Tis David!... And he sings! _David_ (_bravely, within_). Smiter of Hosts, Terrible Saul! Vile on the hills shall he laugh who boasts None is among Great Israel's all Fearless for Saul, King Saul! (_Entering with people of the palace._) Aye, is there none Galled of the sting, Will at the soul of Goliath run? Wring it and up To his false gods fling?... None for the king, the king? (_He drops to his knee, amid praise, before the throne._) _Saul_ (_darkening_). Forego this praise and stand Away from him; 'tis overmuch. (_To_ DAVID.) Why have You dallied and delayed? _David._ My lord, delayed? _Saul._ Do not smile wonder, mocking! _David._ Why, my lord, I do not mock. Only the birds have wings. Yet on the vales behind me I have left Haste and a swirl, a wonderment of air, And in the torrent's troubled vein amaze, So swift I hurried hither at your urgence Out of the fields and folding the far sheep! _Saul._ You have not; you have dallied. (_Motions rest out._) You have dallied. (_Comes down indeterminately._) And now---- _David._ And now the king with darkness foams, With sheeted passions like to lightning gusts. (_All have gone._) Shall I not play to him? _Saul._ You shall not, no. (_Slowly draws a dagger._) I'll not be lulled. _David._ But show a tiger gleam? Terrible fury stealing from the heart And crouching cold within the eye, O Saul? _Saul._ I'll not endure. They say that you---- _David._ They say? What is this ravage in you? Does the truth So limpid overflow in palaces? Never an enemy to venom it? Am I not David, faithful, and thy friend? _Saul._ I'll slay you and regretless. _David_ (_unmoving_). Slay, my lord? _Saul._ Do you not fear? And brave me to my breast? _David._ Have I done wrong that I should fear the king? Reed as I am, could he not breathe and break? And I should be oblivion at a word! But under the terror of his might have I Not seen his heart beat justice and beat love? See, even now!... _Saul._ I will not listen to them! _David._ To whom, my lord, and what? _Saul._ Ever they say, "This David," and "This David!" _David._ Ah, my harp! _Saul._ But think you, David, I shall lose the kingdom? _David_ (_starting_). My lord!... _Saul._ Pain in your eyes? you think it? Deem I cannot overleap this destiny? _David._ To that let us not verge; it has but ill. Deeper the future gulf is for our fears. Forget it. Forget the brink may ever gape, And wield the throne so well that God Himself Must not unking you, more than He would cry The morning star from Heaven! Then, I swear it, None else will! _Saul._ Swear? _David._ Nay, nay! _Saul._ You swear? _David._ But words, Foolishly from the heart; a shepherd speech! Give them no mood; but see, see yonder fires Camping upon the peace of Israel, As we were carrion beneath the sun! Let us conceive annihilation on them, Hurricane rush and deluging and ruin. _Saul._ Ah, but the prophecy! the prophecy! It eats in me the food of rest and ease. And David, nearer: Samuel in my stead Another hath anointed. _David._ Saul, not this! This should not fall to me, my lord; no more! You cannot understand; it pains beyond All duty and enduring! _Saul._ Pains beyond...? Who is he? know you of him? do you? know you? You sup the confidence of Samuel? I'll search from Nile to Nineveh---- _David._ My lord! _Saul._ Mountain and desert, wilderness and sea, Under and over, search--and find. _David._ Peace, peace! (_Enter_ MICHAL _joyously._) _Michal._ O father, father! David! Listen!... Why All here is dark and quivering as pain, And a foreboding binds me ere I breathe! David, you have not been as sun to him! _David._ But Michal will be now. _Saul._ Child, well, what then? _Michal._ Father, a secret! Oh, and it will make Dawn and delight in you! _Saul._ Perhaps; then, well? _Michal._ Oh, I have heard...! _Saul._ Have heard!--Why do you pale? (_She stands unaccountably moved._) Now are you Baal-bit? _David._ Michal! _Michal_ (_in terror_). David!... the dread What does it mean? I cannot speak! It shrinks Shivering down upon my heart in awe! _David._ And numbs you so?--Let it rush from your lips! Can any moving in the world so bring Terror upon you! Speak, what is it? _Michal._ Ah! I know not; danger rising and its wing Sudden against my lips! _David._ To warn? _Michal._ It shall not! There--now again flows joy: I think it flows. _Saul._ Then--you have heard...? _Michal._ Yes, father, yes! Have you Not much desired discovery of whom Samuel hath anointed? _Saul._ Well? _Michal._ I've found---- (DAVID _blenches._) Almost have found! A prophetess to-day Hath told me that he is a---- (_Realises._) _Saul._ Now you cease? (_She stands horrified._) Sudden and senseless! _Michal._ David!--No! _Saul._ God! God! Have I not bidden swiftly! Ever then Vexation? I could--Ah. Will she not speak! _Michal._ I cannot. _Saul._ Cannot! Are you flesh of me? _David._ My lord, not anger! Hear me ... _Saul._ Cannot? _David._ Hear! Her lips could never seal upon a wrong. Sudden divinity is on them, silence Sent for the benison of Israel, Else were it shattered by her love to you! Believe, in all the riven realm of duty There's no obedience from thee she would hold. If it seem other---- (_Enter_ ABNER _hurriedly._) _Abner._ Pardon, O king. A word. _Saul._ I will not. Do you come with vexing too? _Abner._ The Philistines--some fury is afoot; A spy's within our gates--and scorns to speak. _Saul._ Conspiracy of silence!... Back to him. (ABNER _goes_.) (_To_ DAVID _and_ MICHAL.) But you--I'll not forget. I'll not forget. (_Goes trembling, his look bent backward still upon them._) _David_ (_casting off gloom, then joyful_). Forget! anointing peril! What are they all? Michal!--for me you have done this, for me? (_She stands immovable._) I'm swung with joy as palms of Abila! (_Goes to her._) A princess, you! and warm within your veins Live sympathy and all love unto your father, Yet you have shielded me? _Michal._ You are the anointed? _David._ I am--oh, do not flint your loveliness!-- I am the anointed, but all innocent In will or hope of any envious wrong, As lily blowing of blasphemy! as dew Upon it is of enmity! _Michal._ Anointed! You whom the king uplifted from the fields! _David._ And who am ever faithful to him! _Michal._ You, Whom Jonathan loves more than women love! _David._ Yet reaches not my love to Jonathan! _Michal._ You--you! _David._ But, hear me! _Michal._ You, of all! _David._ O hear! Of my anointing Jonathan is 'ware, Knows it is holy, helpless, innocent As dawn or a drift of dreaming in the night! Knows it unsought--out of the skies--supernal-- From the inspirèd cruse of Samuel! For Israel it dripped upon me, and For Israel must drip until I die! Or till high Gath and Askalon are blown Dust on the wind, and all Philistia Lie peopleless and still under the stars!... Goliath, then, a laughter evermore!... Still, still you shrink? do you not see, not feel? _Michal._ So have you breathed yourself about my heart, Even as moonlit incense, spirit flame Burning away all barrier! _David._ But see! _Michal._ And all the world has streamed a rapture in, Till even now my lids from anger falter And the dew falls! _David._ Restrain! O do not weep! Upon my heart each tear were as a sea Flooding it from all duty but the course Of thy delight! _Michal._ Poor, that I should have tears! Fury were better, tempest! O weak eyes, When 'tis my father, and with Samuel You creep to steal his kingdom! _David._ Michal!... God! _Michal._ Yes, steal it! _David._ Cruel! fell accusal! Yea, Utterly false and full of wounding! (_Struggling, then with control._) Yet, Forgive that even when thy arrows sink Deeper than all the skill of time can draw, I spare thee not the furrowed face of pain ... Delirious wings of hope that fluttered up, At last to fall! (_Moves to go._) _Michal._ David! _David._ Farewell! _Michal._ ... You must not! _David._ Peace to you, peace and joy! _Michal._ You must not go! (_He turns. She sways and reaches to him her arms. As they move together_ DOEG _and_ MERAB _appear, but vanish from the curtains as_ MICHAL _utters dismay._) _Michal._ Merab and Doeg! _David_ (_has sprung to her_). Yet what matter, now! Were it the driven night-unshrouded dead! Under the firmament is but one need, That you will understand! _Michal._ But Merab! ah, She's cunning, cold and cruel, and she loves thee; Hath told her love to Ahinoam the queen! And Doeg hates thee--since for me he's mad! _David._ Then be his hate as wild, as wide as winds That gather up the desert for their blast, Be it as Sheol deep, stronger than stars That fling fate on us, and I care not, care not, If I am trusted and to Michal truth! Hear, hear me! for the kingdom, tho 't may come, I yearn not; but for you! _Michal._ No, no! _David._ For you! Since I a shepherd o'er a wild of hills First beheld you the daughter of the king Amid his servants, leaning, still with noon, Beautiful under a tamarisk, until All beauty else is dead---- _Michal._ Ah, cease! _David._ Since then I have been wonder, ecstasy and dream! The moulded light and fragrant miracle, Body of you and soul, lifted me till When you departed---- _Michal._ No, you rend me! _David._ I Fell thro' infinity of void! _Michal._ No more! _David._ Then came the prophet Samuel with anointing! My hope sprung as the sun! _Michal._ I must not hear! _David._ Then was I called to play before the king. Here in this hall where cherubim shine out, Where the night silence---- _Michal._ David! _David._ Strung me tense, I waited, shepherd-timid, and you came, You for the king to try my skill! you, you! _Michal._ Leave me, ah leave! I yield! _David._ And often since Have we not swayed and swept thro' happy hours, Far from the birth unto the bourne of bliss? _Michal._ And I---- _David._ To-night you did not to the king Reveal my helpless chrism, give me to peril. Say but the reason! _Michal._ David! _David._ Speak, O speak! _Michel._ And shall I, shall I? how this prophetess Miriam hath foretold---- _David._ Some wonder? speak! _Michal_ (_springs up the throne, then down_). No, no! horror in me moans out against it. Wed me with destiny against my father? Dethrone my mother? Ah! _David._ Not that--no wrong! _Michal._ Then swear conspiracy upon its tide Never shall lift you! _David._ Deeper than soul or sea, Deep as divinity is deep, I swear. If it shall come, the kingdom---- _Michal._ "If!" not "if." Surrender this anointing! Spurn it, say You never will be king though Israel Kingless go mad for it! _David._ I cannot. _Michal._ Guile! _David._ I cannot--and I must not. It is holy! _Michal._ Then must I hate you--scorn you---- _David._ Michal! _Michal._ And will. But to reign over Israel you care, Not for the peace of it! _David._ Thus all is vain; A seething on the lips, I'll say no more.... Care but to reign and not for Israel's calm? I who am wounded with her every wound?... Look out upon yon Philistine bold fires Lapping the night with bloody tongue--look out! (_A commotion is heard within._) As God has swung the world and hung for ever The infinite in awe, to-morrow night Not one of them shall burn! _Michal._ You pall me! _David._ None! _Michal._ What is this strength! It seizes on me! No, I'll not believe; no, no, more than I would From a boy's breath or the mere sling you wear A multitude should flee! And you shall learn A daughter to a father may be true Tho' paleness be her doom until she die! (_She turns to go. Enter_ JONATHAN _eagerly._) _Jonathan._ David! _David._ My friend--my Jonathan! 'Tis you? (_They embrace._ MICHAL _goes._) _Jonathan._ Great heart, I've heard how yesterday before The soldiers you.... But Michal's gone! No word? _David._ The anointing. _Jonathan._ Ah, she knows? _David._ All. _Jonathan._ And disdains Believing? tell me. _David._ No, not now--not now. Let me forget it in a leap of deeds. (_The commotion sounds again._) For there is murmur misty of distress, What is it? sprung of the Philistines? new terror? This sounding giant flings again his foam? Jonathan, I am flame that will not wait. What is it? I must strike. _Jonathan._ David.... _David._ Tell me, And do not bring dissuasion more, or pause. _Jonathan._ The king comes here. _David._ Now? _Jonathan._ With a spy who keeps Fiercely to silence. _David._ Then is peril up! Jonathan...! _Jonathan._ David, you must cool from this. Determination surges you o'erfar. I will not see you rush on perishing, Not though it be the aid of Israel. _David._ I must.... I will not let them ever throng, Staining the hills, and starving us from peace. Rather the last ray living in me, rather Death and the desecration of the worm. Bid me not back with love, nor plea; I must! _Jonathan._ But think---- _David._ No thought! _Jonathan._ 'Twere futile-- _David._ Hear; the king! _Jonathan._ The madness of it! _David._ No, and see; they come. _Jonathan._ Strangely my father is unstrung. _David._ They come. (_Enter_ SAUL, _with_ SAMUEL; _soldiers with the spy_, AHINOAM _with_ ABNER; _and all the court in suppressed dread._) _Saul_ (_to_ SAMUEL). He will not speak, but scorns me, and his lips Bitterly curve and grapple. But he shall Learn there is torture to it! Set him forth. (_The spy is thrust forward._) Tighten his bonds up till he moan. (_It is done._) Aye, gasp, Accursed Philistine! Now wilt thou tell The plan and passion of the people 'gainst us? _Spy._ Baal! _Saul._ Tighten the torture more.... Now will you? _Spy_ (_in agony_). Yea! _Saul._ On, then, reveal. _Spy._ New forces have arrived, Numberless; more than peaks of Arabah. (_General movement of uneasiness._) Unless before to-morrow's moon one's sent To overthrow Goliath ... Gods! the pain! _Saul._ Well? Well? _Spy._ Then Gibeah attacked, and all, Even to sucking babes, they'll put to sword! (_A movement of horror._) _Ahinoam._ All Gibeah! _A Woman._ My little ones! No, no! (_She rushes frantically out._) _Samuel._ Then, Saul of Gibeah, one thing and one Alone is to be done. A champion, To break this beetling giant down to death! _Saul._ There is none. _Samuel._ Is none! Call! I order it. _Saul._ Then who will dare against him! (_A silence._) See you now. _Samuel._ You, Abner, will not? _Abner._ It were death and vain. _Samuel._ Doeg, chief servant of the king? _Doeg._ Why me? Had I a mother out of Israel? I am an alien, an Edomite. _David._ My lord, this is no more endurable! (_Steps forth._) Futile and death? Alien? Edomite? Has not this Philistine before the gates, With insult and illimitable breath Vaunting of vanity and smiting laughter, Boasted and braved and threatened up to Baal? And now unless one slay him, Israel From babe to age must bleed and be no more! I am a shepherd, have but seized the lion And throttled the bleating kid out of his throat; Little it then beseems that I thrust in Where battle captains pale and falter off; But this is past all carp of rank or station. One must go out--Goliath must have end. _Doeg._ Ah, ah! and _you_ will! _Ishui._ _You?_ _Jonathan._ No, David! _Saul._ _You?_ _David._ Sudden you hound about me ravenous? Have I thrown doom not daring to your feet, Ruler of Israel, that you rise wild, Livid above me as an avalanche? _Doeg._ A plot! it is a plot! He will be slain-- From you, my lord, dominion then will fall! Or should it not ... _Samuel._ Liar! it is no plot. But courage sprung seraphic out of night, Beautiful, yea, a bravery from God! _Michal_ (_behind the throng_). Open! and let me enter! Open! (_She enters._) Father! It is not false? but now, the uttermost? To-morrow, if Goliath still exult, There's peril of desolation, bloody ruin? _Samuel._ I answer for him; yea. _Michal._ Then to your will, Father, unto will of yesterday I bend me now with sacrificial joy. Unto Goliath's slayer is the hand Of Michal, the king's daughter! _David_ (_joyously_). Michal! Michal! _Doeg._ See you, my lord? Do you not understand? _Ishui._ It is another coiling of their plot! _Michal._ Coiling of plot? What mean you? _Merab._ Ah! You know Not it is David offers against Goliath? _Michal._ David? (_Shrinking._) David? (_A low tumult is heard without. Enter a Captain hurriedly._) _Captain._ O King, bid me to speak! _Saul._ Then speak! _Captain._ Fear is upon the host. There will Be mutiny unless, Goliath slain, Courage spring up anew. _David._ My lord, then, choose! Ere longer waiting fester to disaster. _Samuel._ Yea, king of Gibeah, and bid him go, And Michal for his meed! or evermore Evil be on you and the sear of shame-- And haunting memory beyond the tomb! _Saul._ Then let him--let him. And upon the field Of Ephes-Dammin. But I am not blind! (_To_ ABNER.) Let him, to-morrow! Go prepare the host. Yet--I am king, remember! I am king! (SAUL _goes; murmurs of relief ... All follow, but_ MICHAL, _past_ DAVID _with joy or hate._) _David._ Michal! (_She struggles against tears, but, turning, goes. He stands and gazes after her. Then a trumpet sounds and soldiers throng to the porch._) _David_ (_thrilled, his hand on his sling_). For Israel! For Israel! (_Goes toward them._) CURTAIN. ACT II SCENE.--_The royal tent of_ SAUL _pitched on one hill of the battlefield of Ephes-Dammin. The tent is of black embroidered with various warlike designs. To one side on a daïs are the chairs of_ SAUL _and_ AHINOAM; _also_ DAVID'S _harp. On the other side, toward the front, is a table with weapons. The tent wall is lifted along the back, revealing on the opposite hill, across a deep narrow valley, the routed camp of the Philistines; before it in gleaming brazen armour lies_ GOLIATH _slain. Other hills beyond, and the sky above. By the small table, her back to the battlefield, sits_ MERAB _in cold anger_. AHINOAM _and several women look out in ecstasy toward_ DAVID, SAUL, JONATHAN, _and the army, returning victorious, and shouting_. _First Woman._ See, see, at last! _Second Woman._ They come! _Third Woman._ An avalanche! Over the brook and bright amid hosannas! _Second Woman._ And now amid the rushes! _First Woman._ And the servants! Goliath's head high-borne upon a charger! The rocks that cry reverberant and vast! The people and the palms! _Third woman._ Yea, all the branches Torn from the trees! The waving of them--O! _Second Woman._ And David, see! triumphant, calm, between The king and Jonathan!... His glory All the wild generations of the wind Ever shall utter! Hear them-- (_The tumult ascends afar._) "David! David!" O queen! a sea of shouting! _Ahinoam._ Which you crave? Then go and lave you in this tide of joy. (_The women go rapturously._ AHINOAM _turns._) _Merab._ Mother! _Ahinoam._ My daughter? _Merab._ Well? _Ahinoam._ They all are gone. _Merab._ And Michal, where? _Ahinoam._ I do not know, my child. _Merab._ Why did my father pledge her to him? you Not hindering? _Ahinoam._ She is your sister. You Are pledged to Adriel. _Merab._ And as a slave! And if I do not love him there is--riches! If he is Sodom-bitter to me--riches! _Ahinoam._ But for the kingdom. _Merab._ For my torture! What Kingdom is to a woman as her love? _Ahinoam._ And David still enthralls you? _Merab._ Though he never Sought me with any murmur or desire! Though he is Michal's for Goliath's death! Michal's to-day, unless---- _Ahinoam._ Merab, a care! Too near in you were ever love and hate. (_The tumult nears._ AHINOAM _goes to look out_. DOEG _enters to_ MERAB.) _Doeg_ (_low_). News, Merab! _Merab._ Well? _Doeg._ A triumph o'er him, yet! The king is worn, as a leper pent, between Wonder of David and quick jealousy Because of praise this whelming of Goliath Wakes in the people. _Merab._ Then? the triumph? _Doeg._ This. (_The tumult, nearer._) I've skilfully disposed the women To coldly sing of Saul, but of our David (_Watches her._) With lavish of ecstasy as to a king. _Merab_ (_springing up_). Then I will praise him! _Doeg._ David? you? _Merab._ As he Was never--and shall never be again. (_Takes a dagger._) _Doeg._ But---- _Merab._ Give me the phial. _Doeg._ The poison? _Merab._ Come--at once! _Doeg._ What will you do? _Merab_ (_seizes phial_). At once with it. (_Dips dagger in._) _Doeg._ You'll stab him? _Merab._ As any fool? Wait. And the rest now, quick. This timbrel-player, Judith? _Doeg._ She is ready And ravishing! _Merab._ Well, well; then--? _Doeg._ We will send her Sudden, as Michal is alone with David, To seize him with insinuative kisses, And arms that wind as they were wonted to him. Michal once jealous--and already I Have sowed suspicions---- (_Laughs._) _Merab._ May it be their rending. (_The tumult near._) But come, come, we must see; and show no frown. (_They go to look out. Shouts of "David! David!" arise, and timbrelers, dancing and singing, pass the tent opening; then priests with the Ark and its cherubim of gold._ DAVID, SAUL, JONATHAN, ISHUI, _and the court then enter amid acclamations. Before them the head of Goliath is borne on a charger, under a napkin._ SAUL _darkly mounts the throne with_ AHINOAM, _to waving of palms and praise._) _A Woman_ (_breaking from the throng_). Our little ones are saved! Hosannah! joy! (_She kisses_ DAVID's _hand._) _Jonathan._ Woman, thy tongue should know an angel-word, Or seraph syllables new-sung to God! Earth has not any rapture well for this! David, my brother! _David._ Jonathan, my friend! While life has any love, know mine for you. _Jonathan._ Then am I friended as no man was ever! And though my soul were morning wide it were Helpless to hold my wonder and delight! O people, look upon him! _People._ David! David! _Jonathan._ Never before in Israel rose beauty Up to this glory! _David._ Jonathan, nay---- _Jonathan._ Never! (_Looses his robe and girdle._) Therefore I pour him splendour passionate. In gold and purple, this my own, I clothe him. David, my brother! _Saul_ (_livid_). Brother! _Ahinoam._ Saul? _Saul._ Thou fool! _Jonathan._ Father? _Ahinoam._ My lord? _Saul._ Thou full-of-lauding fool! Of breath and ravishment unceasing! _Ahinoam._ Saul! _Saul._ Is it not praise enough, has he not reached The skies on it? _David._ O king, my lord---- _Saul._ Had Saul Ever so rich a rapture from his son? Ever this worshipping of utterance? _David._ My lord, my lord, this should not fret you. _Doeg_ (_derisively_). Nay! _David._ 'Tis only that the soul of Jonathan, Brimmed by the Philistines with bitterness, Sudden is joy and overfloweth---- _Doeg._ Fast---- _David._ Upon his friend, thy servant, David. _Doeg._ Aie! (_He turns away laughing._) _Saul._ Why do you laugh? _Doeg._ "Thy servant David!" _Saul._ Why! _A Woman_ (_without_). King Saul has slain his thousands! _Doeg._ Why, my lord? _Woman._ But David his ten thousands! _Doeg._ Do you hear? King Saul has slain his thousands, David ten! Thy servant, is he? servant? _David._ Yea, O king!... Therefore be wielded by no venom-word, As a weed under the wind! _Saul._ 'Tis overmuch! I'll burst all bond of priest or prophesy. Nor cringe to threatening and fondle fear. (_He seizes a javelin._) I'll smite where'er I will. _David._ No! _Jonathan._ Father! _David._ No! For rapid palsy would come on thy hand, Awful and sceptre-ruined lord of men, An impotence, a shrivelling with fear, Avenging ere thou shed offenceless blood! (_Saul's hand drops._) Is this thy love, the love of Saul the king, Who once was kindlier than kindest are? For but a woman's wantonness of word And idle air, my life? _Ahinoam._ Saul, Saul! _Jonathan._ The shame! _David._ Some enemy--does Doeg curve his lip?-- Hath put into her mouth this stratagem Of fevered, false-impassioned overpraise. (SAUL, _tortured, sweeps from the tent, entreated of_ JONATHAN. _Many follow in doubt, whispering._) _Doeg_ (_at door, to David_). This is not all, boy out of Bethlehem. Goliath's dead---- _David._ But not all villainy? (_Only_ MICHAL _and_ MERAB _are left with_ DAVID; _he waits._) _Merab_ (_after a pause, then as if in shame_). I burn for it! _David._ For what, and suddenly? _Merab._ My father so ungenerously wroth! And wrought away from recompense so right. Can you forgive him? _David._ Merab? _Merab._ Is it strange That even I now ask it? _David._ Merab's self? _Merab._ Herself and not to-day your friend; but now Conquered to exultation and aglow To wreathe you for this might to Israel, Beautiful, unbelievable and bright! Noble the dawn of it was in your dream, Noble the lightning of it in your arm, And noble in your veins the fearless flow And dare of blood!--so noble that I ask As a remembrance and bequest for ever, In priceless covenant of peace between us, A drop of it---- (_She draws dagger and offers it to him._) Upon this sacred blade ... _David._ Such kindness? in all honour? _Merab._ Poor requital To one whose greatness humbles me from hate. _David_ (_slowly_). Then of my veins whatever drop you will But, no ... (_Pauses._) You do not mock me? _Merab._ Rather upon Its edge one vein of you--than priceless nard. _David._ Or perfume out of India jewel poured? (_He searches her eyes._) Or than--I may believe?--a miracle Of dew, were you a traveller upon The illimitable desert's thirst? Or than-- (_He draws his own dagger, pricks his wrist, and hands it her._) Than this? _Merab._ Shepherd! _David_ (_quickly_). Treachery? treachery, then? Under a sham of tribute poison? _Michal._ Poison? _David._ And I of vanity should prick it in? I a mere shepherd innocent of wile! A singer music-maudled and no more?... The daughter of King Saul has yet to learn. (_She goes. He turns to_ MICHAL.) But you, fairest of all my hopes, what word! The vaunting of this victory is done. We are alone at last. _Michal._ Yes. _David._ That is all?... For Israel I've wrought to-day--and for You, ever round about me as a mist Of armèd mighty angels triumphing. _Michal._ Yes: It was well. _David._ To you no more? to you Whom not a slave can serve unhonoured? _Michal_ (_struggling_). Nothing. _David._ Empty of glow then seems it, impotent, A shrivelled hallowing ... Ashes of ecstasy that burned in vain. _Michal._ No, no! I---- _David._ Michal? _Michal._ No, divine it was! And had I cried my praise the ground had broke To Eden under me with blossoming. Where was so wonderful a deed as this, So fair a springing of salvation up? Glory above the heavens could I seize, Wreathing of dawn and loveliness unfading, To crown you with and crown! _David._ O lips! _Michal._ With but A sling, a shepherd's sling, you sped the brook, Drew from its bed a stone, and up the hill Where the great Philistine contemning cried, Mounted and flung it deep upon his brain! _David._ This is the victory and not his death! Tell, tell thy joy with kisses on my lips! Thy mouth! thy arms! thy breast! _Michal._ No no! _David._ Thy soul! (_Clasps her._) Too much of waiting and of severance, Of dread and distance and the deep of doubt! Now must I fold you, falter all my love And triumph on your senses till they burn Beautiful to eternity with bliss. _Michel._ Loose, loose me! _David._ Nay, again! immortal kisses! _Michal._ A frenzy, 'tis a frenzy! From me! see! This irremediable victory Over Goliath severs us the more. (_The tumult, again, afar._) Hear how the people lift you limitless! Almost to-day and in my father's room They would that you were king. _David._ But ere to-morrow Dim shall I be, and ere the harvest bend Less than a gleam in their forgotten peril! _Michal._ O were it, were it! But all silently Jehovah fast is beckoning the realm Into thy hands. _David._ Then futile to resist The gliding on of firm divinity. And yet whatever may be shall be done. _Michal._ All, all? _David._ That for thee reverently may. _Michal._ That anointing, then---- _David._ Of that!... not that! _Michal._ Yet grant It may be told my father; that I may Say to him all the secret! _David._ And provoke Murder in him, insatiable though I fled upon the wilderness and famine? _Michal._ He would not! _David._ Nay. _Michal._ I'll plead with him. _David._ In vain. _Michal_ (_coldly_). Then ... it is as I thought. _David._ You are distraught. _Michal._ This stroke to-day (_pointing to_ GOLIATH'S _head_) no love of me had in it. _David._ A love, a passion fervid through me as The tread and tremble of seraphic song Along the infinite. _Michal._ You use me! _David._ Use? _Michal._ A step to rise and riot in ambition! _David._ So bitter are you, blind? even in all? _Michal._ You snared me to you! _David._ Michal! _Michal._ Cunningly With Samuel netted fears about my father, Till I am paltrily unto you pledged. _David._ Enough. _Michal._ Too much. _David._ No more: the pledge I fling Out of my heart, as 'twere enchantment dead, And free you; but no more. (_He moves from her._) _Michal._ As if it were Enchantment dead.... Ah then 'tis true--there is Another--is another! _David._ Now, what fever? A gentleness clad once your every grace. _Michal._ There is some other that you lure and love. _David._ It is not Michal speaking; so I wait. _Michal._ Then you will learn.... Who's that? (JUDITH _glides in._) (_To her._) Why are you here? _Judith_ (_to_ DAVID, _with a laugh, as if with amorous joy_). Brave, it was brave, my love! beauteous! brave! _David._ Woman? _Judith._ The Philistine, a brazen tower, A bastion of strength, fell to the earth! _David._ Woman, who are you? (_She clasps and kisses him._) Take away your flesh. (_Free._) Take it away, the heat and myrrh of it. _Judith._ So cold? _David._ Hireling! _Judith._ It is no longer fair? (_Wantonly._) Oh! Ah! I understand! the princess! Oh! (_Goes laughing and shaking her timbrel wickedly._) _Michal._ A dancer, then, a very timbrel-player! _David._ Until this hour I never looked upon her. It is chicanery of chance or craft. You who are noble, though in doubt adrift, Be noble now! _Michal._ And loving? Oh, I will-- Now that I know what should be done. Be sure! _David._ You mean ... that Saul----? You would not, no! _Michal._ Rest sure. (_A hand is seen at the door._ AHINOAM _enters._) _Ahinoam._ David, the king ... But what is this? (MICHAL _goes_.) _David._ O queen ... It is but life. _Ahinoam._ Nay. _David._ Life that ever strings Our hearts, so pitifully prone for it, To ecstasy--then snaps. _Ahinoam._ I love thee, David. _David._ Then gracious be, and question here no more, Where words are futile for an utterance. But of the king--the king----? _Ahinoam._ He's driven still. And hither comes again, and must be calmed. The harp take you, and winds of beauty bring, And consolation, as of valley eves When there is ebb of sorrow and of toil. Oh, could you heal him and for ever heal! _David._ Then would I be----! (_Breaks off with great desire. Takes the harp and seats himself._) _Ahinoam._ At once, for he will come. (_A strain of wild sadness brings_ SAUL, _and many, within. He pauses, his hand to his brow, enspelled of the playing; then slowly goes up the daïs._) _Ahinoam._ My lord, shall David sing--to ease us? _Saul._ Let him. _David_ (_with high sorrow_). O heart of woe, Heart of unrest and broken as a reed! (_Plays._) O heart whose flow Is anguish and all bitterness of need! (_Plays._) O heart as a roe, Heart as a hind upon the mountain fleeing The arrow-wounds of being, Be still, O heart, and rest and do not bleed! (_Plays longer with bowed head._) O days of life, Days that are driven swift and wild from the womb! (_Plays._) O days so rife-- Days that are torn of trouble, trod of doom! (_Plays._ MICHAL _enters._) O days of strife-- Days of desire on deserts spread unending, The burning blue o'erbending, O days, our peace, our victory is the tomb! (_He plays to a close that dies in anguished silence._) _Saul_ (_rising in tears_). David! _David._ My lord? _Saul._ Thy song is beauteous! Stilling to sorrow!... Oh, my friend, my son! _David._ To me is this? I do not dream? The king Again is kind and soft his spirit moves? _Saul._ To you! _David._ How shelter o'er me then will spring And safety covering! _Saul._ It ever shall. Loveliest have you been among my days, And singing weary madness from my brain. (DAVID _starts toward him._) How I have wronged thee! _Michal._ Wronged him? (_in fury_). _David._ Michal! _Saul._ Girl? _Michal._ You have not wronged him! _David._ Michal! _Michal._ No! but he Is jeopardy and fate about you! drive Him from you utterly and now away! (_Murmurs of astonishment._) _Saul._ What mean you? _Ishui._ Speak. _Saul._ What mean you? _Michal._ This! _David._ No word! _Michal._ I'll not be kept! _David._ But shall be; for to tell Would rend silence for ever from you--pale Your flesh with haunting of it evermore! All, all your being would become a hiss, A memory of syllables that sear, A living iteration of remorse. I--I myself will save your lips the words Of this betrayal leaping from your heart. (_Nobly before_ SAUL.) You seek, my lord ... you seek whom Samuel Anointed. _Saul._ Yes. _David._ Then know that it is I. (_Consternation._) _Saul._ You! _David._ Guiltless I, no other! I, though I sought it not and suffer, though-- (SAUL _seizes a javelin._) I would it had not come and fast am sworn Never against you to lift up---- _Merab._ Hear, hear! Now he will cozen! _Doeg._ He, "thy servant!" _Ishui._ Hear! (GOLIATH's _head is upset._) _A voice._ A thousand Saul hath slain! but David ten! _Saul_ (_choking_). Omnipotence shall not withhold me more. (_Lifts javelin._) Die, die! _Jonathan._ No, father ... hold! _Michal_ (_as_ SAUL _flings_). What have I done? (_Reels._) _Jonathan._ David, unhurt? Away, the wilderness! _Saul_ (_with another javelin_). He shall not, no! _David_ (_aflame_). Strike, strike, then! strike, strike, strike, (_Rushes up throne._) Murderous king, afoam with murder-heat. Strike me to darkness and the waiting worm! But after be your every breathing blood! Remorse and riving bitterness and fear! Be guilt and all the hideous choke of horror! (SAUL _trembling cowers, the javelin falling from him_. DAVID _breaks through_ DOEG _and_ ISHUI _and escapes by the door_. MICHAL _sinks to her knees, her face buried in her hands._) CURTAIN. ACT III SCENE: _A savage mountain-cliff in the wilderness of Engeddi. On either side grey crags rise rugged, sinking away precipitously across the back. Cut into each is a cave. The height is reached by clefts from all sides. Between the crags to the East is the far blue of the Dead Sea; and still beyond, bathed in the waning afternoon, stretch the purple shores of Moab. During the act the scene grows crimson with sunset and a thundercloud arises over the sea. Lying on a pallet of skins near the cliff's verge_, DAVID _tosses feverishly. Three of his followers and a lad, who serves him, are gathered toward the front, ragged, hungry, and hunted, in altercation over a barley cake._ _David._ Water! the fever fills me, and I thirst. Water! _First Fol._ Listen. _Second Fol._ He calls. _David._ Water! I thirst. _The Lad._ Yes, yes, my lord. (_Takes up a water-skin._) Ah, empty, not a quaff! They've drunk it all from him! My lord, none's left. I'll run and in the valley brim it soon. (_He goes._ DAVID _sinks back._) _Second Fol_ (_to_ FIRST). _You_ drank it, then. _First Fol._ And should I thirst, not he? Give me the bread. _Second Fol._ If it would strangle you. _First Fol._ I'll have it. _Second Fol._ Or betray him? spitingly? It is the last. Already you have eat. And we are here within a wilderness. _First Fol._ Be it, but I'll not starve. _Third Fol._ He utters right. Why should we but to follow a mere shepherd Famish--over a hundred desert hills? The prophecy portending him the throne-- Folly, not fate! though it is Samuel's. I'll trust in it no more. _First Fol._ Nor I. _Third Fol._ And Saul Has driven us from waste to waste--pressed us Even unto the Philistines for shelter, And now unto this crag. And is not David's Thought but of Michal, not of smiting him And, with a host, of leaping to the kingdom? (DAVID _stirs to rise._) _First Fol._ He moves; peace! _Third Fol._ Let him. _Second Fol._ Peace. _Third Fol._ And fawning too? _David_ (_sufferingly_). Men--men, we must have news. Perpetual, Implacable they stare unto each other, This rock and stony sky.... We must have news. (_Rises and comes down to them. They are silent._) Longer is death. 'Tis over many days Of sighing--and remembered verdancy; Nor any dew comes here or odour up. Who will go now and bring us word of Saul? _Third Fol._ Have not Abishai, Abiathar, And others gone? _David._ Bravely. _Third Fol._ And none returned! _David._ Not one of all. _Third Fol._ Well, then, we are not swine; And life's but once.... So we will follow you No longer hungered and rewarded never, But perilously ever. _David._ It is well. (_He looses a bracelet from his arm._) This was a gift from Saul. In it is ease. (_Gives it to_ THIRD FOLLOWER, _who goes._) This ring was Jonathan's. The jewel tells Still of the sunny haven of his heart. Upon my hand he pressed it--the day we leapt Deeper than friends into each other's love. (_Gives it to_ FIRST, _who goes._) This chain---- _Second Fol._ I want it not. _David._ You have not thought; 'Tis riches--such as Sidon marts and Tyre Would covet. _Second Fol._ I care not. _David._ None else is left. _Second Fol._ No matter. _David._ Then----? _Second Fol._ There was of Gibeah A woman--dear to me. Her face at night ... Weeping among my dreams.... The prophesy Is unfulfilled and vain! _David._ And you would go? _Second Fol._ The suffering--this cliff. _David._ I understand. (_Motions._) So, without any blame, go--to content. (_The_ SECOND, _faltering, goes._) (_Quietly._) A desolation left, of rock and air, Of barren sea and bitterness as vast. Thou hast bereft me, Saul!... and Michal, thou! (_He moves up cliff, gazes off, then kneels as to pray._) My flesh cries for oblivion--to sink Unwaking away into the night ... where is No tears, but only tides of sleep.... No, crieth Not for oblivion and night, but for Rage and revenge! Saul! Saul!... My spirit, peace. I must revenge's call within me quell Though righteously it quivers and aflame. As pants the hart for the water-brook, so I! (_He bows his head_.... MICHAL _enters in rags with the lad. She sees_ DAVID _rise and wander into cave, right._) _Michal._ This is the place, then, this? _Lad._ Yes, princess. _Michal._ Here So long in want and sickness he hath hid? Under the livid day and lonelier night? _Lad._ I brought him water, often. _Michal._ Little lad! But he has heard no word from me?--not how My father, Saul, frantic of my repentance, Had unto Phalti, a new lord, betrothed me? How then I fled to win unto these wilds? _Lad._ He heard not anything--only the tales I told of Moab, my own land.... But, oh! (DAVID _plays within._) It is his harp. _Michal._ And strains that weep o'er me!... I'll speak to him ... and yet must be unknown! A leper? as a leper could I...? _Lad._ Why Must he not know you? _Michal._ Ask me not, lad, now; But go a little. _Lad._ Yes. (_He sets down the water-skin and goes._) _Michal_ (_delaying, then in a loud voice_). Unclean! Unclean! (_Conceals her face in her hair._) _David._ Who crieth here? _Michal._ Unclean! _David_ (_appearing_). Who cries unclean? Poor leper in these wilds, who art thou? _Michal._ One Outcast and faint, forlorn! _David._ Then you have come To one more bitter outcast than yourself-- One who has less than this lone void to give, This sterile solitude and sun, this scene Of leaden desolation that makes mad; Who has no ease but cave or shading rock, Or the still moon, or stars that glide the night. One over whom---- _Michal._ Yet, pity! _David._ The pale hours Flow dead into eternity. _Michal._ Ah, yet...! _David._ My cloak, then, for thy tattered limbs. Or, no-- This chain of Ophir for thy every need. Once it was dear, but should be so no more. (_Flinging it to her_). Have it, and with it vanish memory Out of my breast---- _Michal._ No, no. _David._ And from me fall Link upon link her loveliness that bound. _Michal._ Oh, do not! _David._ Woman...? _Michal._ Nothing. A chain like this I once beheld wind undulantly bright O'er Michal the king's daughter. _David._ Woman, the king's? _Michal._ Pity! _David._ Who are you? _Michal._ Stay! Unclean! _David._ A spy? A spy of Saul and hypocrite have crept Hither to learn...? _Michal._ Have heed--unclean! _David._ How, then Wandering came you here? _Michal._ Unclean! Unclean! _David._ My brain is overfull of fever, mad. Almost and I had touched thy peril, held Thy hideous contagion. _Michal._ Wrong! _David._ Then who Art thou to know and speak of her, of Michal? _Michal._ One who has served the king. _David._ And you have seen Michal, you have beheld her? _Michal._ Once, when she In face was fairer and in heart than now They say she is. _David._ And heard her speak? _Michal._ A night Under the leaves of Gibeah--when she Sang with another--David. _David._ Say no more. _Michal._ And from afar, under the moon, blew faint The treading of the wine-presses with song. David she loved, but anger-torn betrayed, Unworthy of him. _David._ Speak of her no more, Nor of her cruelty, unless to pray He she has ruined may forget her. _Michal._ Yet If deep she should repent?--if deep she should? (_A cry interrupts. They start._) David. A jackal? (_Listens._) No, the signal! Word at last! (_To_ MICHAL). He who is near may prove to thee less kind. (_She goes. He leaps up the cliff._) Abishai? Abiathar?... It is! But staggering and wounded? breathless? torn? The priest with bloody ephod, too, and wild? (_Watching, then springing to meet them as they reel in._) Abishai, what is it that you bring? Abiathar, up! answer! _Abiathar._ Water! _David._ Up! (_He brings the water-skin. They drain it fiercely._) What is it now so fevered from you stares, And breathing, too, abhorrence? Gasp it out. _Abiathar._ I stifle--in a universe--he still-- Has breath in. _David._ Saul? _Abiathar._ Ill scathe him! Scorpions Of terror and remorse sting in his soul! _David._ If you have tidings, not in words so wild. _Abiathar._ Then ask, and hate shall calm me. _David._ Ask? _Abiathar._ On, on! Seek if he lives! _David._ Who? _Abiathar._ Seek if prophecy Founts yet in Judah! _David._ Samuel...? _Abiathar._ Is dead! Dead--and of tidings more calamitous. (_A pause._) _David_ (_hoarsely_). Tell on. I hear. _Abiathar._ Saul gloating to believe The priests who gathered sacredly at Nob, Plotted assisting you, hath had them---- _David._ No...! _Abiathar._ Slain at the hands of Doeg--murdered, all! _David._ But he--your father? _Abiathar._ Was among them; fell. (_He stands motionless._) _David_ (_gently_). Abiathar, my friend!... Appeaseless Saul! _Abiathar._ Hear all, hear all! Thy father, too, and mother, Even thy kindred, out of Israel Are driven into Moab; and this king, Delirious still for blood as a desert pard, With Merab, whelp of him, and many armed, Is near us now--a-quiver at Engeddi For your destruction: (DAVID _struggles for control._) And yet you will not strike. _David_ (_low_). No, but of Michal, tell me good at once, Lest unendurable this lot, I may---- Mounting o'er every oath into revenge. _Abiathar._ Ha--Michal! _David._ She withholds her father's wrath? _Abiathar._ She's well. _David._ Not if you say no more. _Abiathar._ I know Nothing of her. _David._ Your look belies. _Abiathar._ Perhaps: As did her love. _David._ That is for me. _Abiathar._ Well, what? A woman who betrays? _David._ Speak, not evade; And judge her when earth has no mystery. _Abiathar._ Then from your craving put her--wide; she is Unworthy any tremor of your veins. _David._ Dawn-lilies under dew are then unworthy, And nesting doves are horrible to heaven. I will not so believe. Your reason? _Abiathar._ Saul Has given her--and she will wed him, aye-- To Phalti, a new lord. _David._ Untrue of her! _Abiathar._ Cry. Yet you will believe it. _David._ Not until The parable of verdant spring is hushed Ever of bloom, to prove it. Never till Hermon is swung into the sea! until The last void of the everlasting sky-- (_Looking up, falters, breaks off, and is strangely moved._) _Abiathar._ Now what alarm? _Abishai._ What stare you on? _Abiathar._ He's mad? (_Then, suddenly seeing._) No, no!... an eaglet!... _David._ Pierct! _Abishai._ Pierct? _David._ Falling here ... And beating against death unbuoyantly. (_The bird drops at their feet._) A destiny, a fate in this is hidden! (_Bends to it._) _Abiathar._ And--why? _David._ The arrow!--His! (_Starts back._) His and no other's! Quick, no delay. Efface all trace of us. (_Takes water-skin._) _Abiathar._ Be clear, clearer. _David._ We are discovered--near On us is death. Open the secret chamber Within the cave, for from the bow of Saul Is yonder bleeding--from no other. _Abiathar._ Saul's? But how; was any here? _David._ To-day, to-day. A leper wandering. _Abiathar._ We are betrayed. (ABISHAI _hastes to cave, right_, DAVID _and_ ABIATHAR _listen. Noise of approach is heard._) _David._ They near. _Abiathar._ And many. _David._ King of Israel! Inexorable! _Abiathar._ O, rebuke him, do! _David._ Almost I am beyond this tolerance. _Abiathar._ In truth. Therefore it is you rise and shake Out of his power the sceptre! _David._ Tempt me not! Mercy and memory almost are dead, And craving birth in me is fateful ire. (_They follow into the cave: but hardly have done so when, at a shout, pour in_ SAUL _and his men, bloodthirstily, from all sides_, DOEG _and_ ABNER _leading._) _Saul._ On, to him! search the caves! in, in, and bring Him to my sword and Michal with him. (_Pacing._) They Shall couch upon eternity and dust. (_Weakly._) I am the king and Israel is mine.... I'll sleep upon their grave, I'll sleep upon it, And hear the worm...! (_To a soldier re-entering from one cave._) Where is he? Bring him. _Soldier._ O king-- _Saul._ You've slain him and you tremble! Say it. _Soldier._ No. _Saul._ Then hither with him; hither! _Soldier._ He's not here. _Saul._ A treachery! You cunningly contrive To aid him, so.... (_To a soldier from the other cave._) Bring me his head. _Soldier_ (_fearfully_). My lord, He is not there.... _Saul._ I tell you it is lies-- Because you deem that he shall be the king, And treasure up reward and amnesty. (_Rushes wildly to caves in turn, then out among them._) From me ill-fruited ineffectual herd! Away from me, he's fled and none of you Is servant and will find and for me seize him! From me--I'll sleep--I'll rest--and then-- (_As they cringe, going._) I'll sleep. (ABNER _and_ DOEG _remain_. SAUL _enters cave, left._) _Abner_ (_to_ DOEG, _significantly_). The Evil Spirit. _Doeg._ Yes; upon him swift It came as never before--as drunkenness. _Abner._ Then--safe to leave him? _Doeg._ Will he brook denial? _Abner._ And Merab, too, will soon be here. _Doeg._ Well, come. _Abner._ I'll go and look upon him. (_Goes._) (_Returning._) Already he sleeps. So we may seek us water; (then suddenly) no, abide! (_Is held by_ MICHAL _entering._) Woman, who are you, who? _Michal_ (_quaking_). Unclean! away! _Doeg._ Unclean? a leper? in this place? Are there No stones to stone you? Hence! And had I not A brother such as thou---- _Michal._ Pity! Unclean! (_She quickly goes, then they. A space; then she returns, trembling and fearful._) I'll call him! I will save him! David! David!-- I his discomfiture and ruin!--David! (_Searches._) Hear, David! hear me! David! (_Sees_ SAUL.) The king! My father! I cannot--am not--whither shall I, whither...? (_Flees, as a scuffling is heard and_ DAVID'S _voice._) _David._ Loose me, I say. 'Twas Michal, and she called! (_Appears, withheld by_ ABIATHAR.) (_Breaking free._) I say that it was she! _Abiathar._ Foolhardy, no Return into the cave, and ere too late! (MERAB, _veiled, enters behind them._) _David._ 'Twas Michal and no other. _Abiathar._ You are duped. _David_ (_searching_). The breathing of archangels could not so Have swung the burden from me as her ... Ha! (_Sees_ MERAB; _slowly recoils._) _Merab._ It is not Michal. _David._ No--it is not Michal. (_Motions the priest aside._) _Merab._ Yet it is one who---- _David._ Need not lift her veil, Or longer stay. The path she came is open. _Merab._ I'm here--and here will speak! I've hither stolen, Yearning--I say it--yearning--and I will. _David._ These words I do not know. _Merab._ Because you will not. More all-devouring than a Moloch is This love within me---- _David._ Love and you are twain, As sun and Sheol. _Merab._ False. I am become For want of you as famine-wind, a wave In the mid-tempest, with no rest, no shore. _David._ I do not hear the unashamed words Of one who has but recently another, Adriel, wedded. _Merab._ You refuse me, then? _David._ I beg you but to cease. _Merab._ Goaded, chagrined? No, but this will I do. The Philistines, For long at rioting within their walls, Gather again and break toward Gilboa.... _David._ Merab of Saul! _Merab._ To-morrow must my father Return from hunting you and arm for battle. But--many would that you were king. _David._ Were...? _Merab._ King! _David._ I do not understand your eyes. _Merab._ I will For love of you arouse rebellion up, Murmur about the host your heaven-call, And lift you to the kingdom. _David._ To the ---- Stay! Your words again. _Merab._ The kingdom. _David._ Awful God! _Merab._ What is your mien? you will not? _David._ Twice the words-- Full from her lips--and to betray her father. (ABIATHAR _discovers_ SAUL.) _Merab._ You will not? answer! _David._ Odious utterly! As yonder sea of death and bitter salt! As foam-girt Joppa of idolatry, As Memphian fane of all abhorrencies! (_A pause._) Morning would move with horror of it, noon A livid sepulchre of shame span o'er, And night shrink to remember day had been! _Merab._ You scorn--you scorn me? _David._ Jonathan! your sister! _Merab._ Then Saul shall rend you dead. And Jonathan!... (_She laughs shrilly._) Perchance you had not heard that Jonathan Knows to the Philistines you fled--and loathes you! _David._ I have not heard. _Merab._ Nor have not, ah? how Michal Is given to the embraces of another? (DAVID _shrinks._) You desperately breathe and pale at last? (_She laughs more bitterly._) To me for aid, to me you yet shall come. (_She goes._ DAVID _lifts his hand to his brow in pain. Then_ ABIATHAR _abruptly descends from_ SAUL'S _cave to him._) _Abiathar._ David---- _David._ Leave me. _Abiathar._ Not till you know--and strike! _David._ I tell you, go. _Abiathar._ I tell you 'tis the king. _David._ Who breaks forbearance--yes. _Abiathar._ Who lieth yonder. And sleeping lieth--for a thrust to end. _David_ (_his sword quickly out--struggling_). Then shall there be an ending--of these wounds That wring me--of this wail Under the deeps of me against his wrongs. Saul, Saul!... Michal!... Oh, never-ceasing ill! (_Flings down the sword in anguish._) _Abiathar._ You will not come? _David._ The sun is set. _Abiathar._ Has Saul Hunted you to this desert's verge? _David._ Enough! _Abiathar._ Has he pursued you, all his hate unleashed? Are Samuel--the priests, not slain? my father? The kingdom is not in decay, and falls? You are not prophesy's anointed one? Seize up the sword and strike--or I myself! _David._ Or--you yourself?... (_Puts them aside, takes sword, and goes to_ SAUL'S _cave._) _Abishai._ What will he do?... listen MICHAL _enters unseen_. _Abiathar._ If Saul cries out---- _Abishai._ Be ready. _Michal_ (_to them_). What is this? (DAVID _re-enters--haggard and worn--from the cave, a piece of_ SAUL'S _cloak and the sword still in his hand_.... _The pause is tense with emotion._) _Michal_ (_at last, with a cry, as David clenches_). Ah, you have slain--have slain him! Wretch! thou wretch! And sleeping as he was! _David._ And it was you...? (_Rage takes him._) In lying rags? _Michal._ Have struck him in his sleep! And merciless! And now will kill me, too? _David._ The leper, you! The faithless leper, you, (_Grows frenzied._) Who drove me a prey upon this wilderness! Upon the blot of it and death and sear! The silence and relentless burning swoon! You are the leper, who have broken troth And shut the cry of justice from your breast! Who've stifled me with desolation's woe, Who've followed still and still have me betrayed! _Michal._ Betrayed? No, loose me! _David._ Slain thy father? slain? (_Flinging the piece of_ SAUL'S _cloak at her feet._) See how I might--see, see you, yonder he lies, A king who quits the kingdom, though a cloud Of Philistines is foaming toward Gilboa; Jeoparded leaves it, undefended, for Pursuit of me and pitiless harrying! A king who murders priests ... _Michal._ Priests? _David._ Stifles God With penitence that He has shaped the world! Have slain? have slain him! I have slain him! Ah! Ah, that I had thy falseness and could slay him! _Michal._ David...! _David._ Nevermore near me! never with That quivering and tenderness of lure. Those eyes that hold infinity of fate, That breathing cassia-sweet, but sorcery! _Michal._ Oh ... _David._ Never thy presence pouring beauty, swift, And seething in the brain as frantic wine! I'll be no more enspelled of thee--Never! I will not hear thee and be wound by words Into thy wile as wide as Ashtoreth's, Back into hope, eternity of pain! (_He goes in agony--the priest and_ ABISHAI _after._ MICHAL _stands gazing tearless before her as_ SAUL, _awakened, comes slowly from the mouth of the cave down toward her._) CURTAIN. ACT IV SCENE: _The house of_ MIRIAM, _the "Witch of Endor," by Mount Gilboa--where_ SAUL _is encamped against the Philistines. It is of one story, built rectangularly about an inner court, which is dimly lighted. Under the gallery which ranges around the court are doors leading to the sleeping and other apartments; before one of these a lattice. On the left is the gate opening to the street. At the back to one side, the teraphim, or image of divination; on the other side a stairway mounts to the roof. Above is the night and vague lightning amid a moan of wind. During the act comes dawn. Forward on a divan sits_ MIRIAM _alone, in blind restlessness_. _Miriam._ Adah!... The child is sunken in a sleep. Yet would I have her near me in this night, And hear again the boding of her tale. Unto the blind the vision and the awe Of the invisible sway ever in, The shadow of nativities that lead Upon fatality. Girl! Adah! girl! (_The wind passes._ ADAH _enters from a chamber, rubbing her eyes._) Thou art awake? _Adah._ I slumbered. _Miriam._ Stand you where Fathoming I may feel within you. Now, Again--you've hither fled your mistress Merab, In fear of her? _Adah._ Yes. _Miriam._ At Engeddi Michal By Saul was apprehended? Merab now Plotteth against her--she and Doeg? _Adah._ Still. _Miriam._ And 'twas in Merab's tent you heard, the king Despairing of to-morrow's battle, comes Hither to-night to bid me lift the spirit Of Samuel out of the dead and learn The issue? _Adah._ Doeg said it. _Miriam._ And--you hear?---- Many within the army urge for David, Would cry him king, if Saul were slain? _Adah._ O many. (_A knock at the gate. They start up fearful._) _Miriam._ Who seeks blind Miriam of Endor's roof, Under the night and unextinguished storm? Come you a friend? _David_ (_without_). A friend. _Miriam._ As knows my soul! (_Throws open the gate._ DAVID _enters and_ ABIATHAR _cloaked._) Thy voice again!--this blindness of my eyes-- If it be David, speak. _David._ Yes, Miriam. _Miriam._ David of Jesse, Israel's desire! Let me behold thee (_her hands go over him_) with my fingers' sight, And gather in them touch of thee again! Thy voice is as dream-dulcimers that stir Quivering myrrh of memory and joy. But, aie! why are you here? You have been _there_? _David._ Yes--in the camp of Saul. _Miriam._ In spite of Death! Do you not know---- _David._ I know--that Saul would rather O'er-tramble me than a multitude of foes. That it is told him I who shun his ire-- Though death were easier, if dutiful-- Am come up with the Philistines to win The kingdom. That he would slay me though I fought For Israel!--But, Michal!-- _Miriam._ Aie---- _David._ What brews? She was not in the camp. _Miriam._ Men all are mad! And you who should be never. _David._ She is in Some peril. _Miriam._ You, in more! And must from here Swiftly away, for Saul is---- _David._ I must see her. _Miriam._ Unholy! _David._ Yet unholier were flight. _Miriam._ You are the anointed! (_A heavy knock at the gate._) Ah, calamity! You would not heed--'tis Saul! _David._ Here? _Miriam._ He is come That I shall call up Samuel. _David._ You, you-- The awful dead? _Saul_ (_calls_). Woman of Endor! _Miriam._ Hide! The lattice yonder! _Saul._ Woman of Endor! woman! (DAVID _and_ ABIATHAR _withdraw. The knocking hastier._) Woman of Endor! Woman of Endor! Woman! _Miriam._ Who crieth at my gate? _Saul._ Unbar and learn. _Miriam._ To danger? _Saul._ None. _Miriam._ To thieves? _Saul._ To rueing it You tarry! (_She lets him in, with_ ISHUI _and_ ADRIEL.) _Miriam._ Whom seek you? _Saul._ Witch of Endor, you, Who of the fate-revealing dead divine. Out of the Pit you call them! _Miriam._ What is this? _Saul._ I say that you can raise them! _Miriam._ You are come With snaring! knowing well that Saul the king Is woe and bitterness to all who move With incantation. _Saul._ He is not. _Miriam._ Depart! _Saul._ I must have up out of the Awfulness Him I would question. _Miriam._ Perilous! _Saul._ Prepare Before thy teraphim. No harm, I swear, Shall come of it. Bid Samuel appear. The battle! its event! _Miriam_ (_with a cry_). I know thee now! Saul! thou art Saul! the Terror! _Saul._ Call him up. Ready is it, the battle--but I am Forsaken of all prophesy and dream, Of voices and of priest and oracle, To augur it. _Miriam._ A doom's in this! _Saul._ He must Hold comfort, and the torrent of despair Within me stay and hush. _Miriam._ Then must it be. (_She turns to the teraphim, amid wind and pallid lightning prostrating herself._) Prophet of Israel, who art beyond The troubling and the terrifying grave, Th' immeasurable moan and melancholy Of ways that win to Sheol--Rise! Arise! (_She waits ... Only the wind gust. Then springing up, with wide arms, and wild blind eyes._) Prophet of Israel, arise! Not in The name of Baal, Amon, Ashtoreth, Dagon or all the deities that dream In trembling temples of Idolatry, But of Jehovah! of Jehovah! rise! (_An elemental cry is heard. Then wavering forms rise, vast, out of the earth, in continuous stream._ MIRIAM, _with a curdling shriek, sinks moaning to her knees._) _Saul._ Woman, I cannot--dare not--look upon it. Utter thy sight. (_The Spirit of_ SAMUEL _begins to take shape through the phantoms._) _Miriam._ I see ... ascending Forms as of gods in swaying ghostliness, Dim apparitions of a dismal might, And now is one within a mantle clad, Who looketh---- _Saul._ Samuel! _Miriam._ Who looketh with Omniscience in his mien, and there is chill And cling about him of eternity! His eyes impale me! _Saul._ Spirit, give me word! (_He falls heavily to the ground._) _Samuel_ (_as afar_). O evil king! and wretched king! why hast Thou brought me from the quietness and rest? _Saul._ The battle on the morrow---- _Samuel._ Evil thou art For underneath this night thou hast conspired Death to thy daughter Michal--if at dawn The battle shall be lost--lest she may fall Into the hands of David---- _David_ (_in horror_). O! _Ishui._ Whose cry? _Samuel._ I tell thee, Saul, thy sceptre shrivels fast. The battle shall be lost--it shall be lost. (_The Spirit of_ SAMUEL _disappears. A wail of wind._) _Adriel._ Ishui, true? Is Michal to be slain? _Ishui._ This is no hour for fools and questioning. _Saul_ (_struggling up_). The battle, Ishui, at once command It shall begin! To Jonathan and say it. (ISHUI _goes._) No prophecy shall sink me and no shade. I am the king, and Israel, my own. (_Frenzied he goes. A silence._) _David_ (_breaking forth_). Michal to die and Israel to fall! Prophet of prophets, Samuel, return! Out of the Shadow and the Sleep, return, Compassionate, and tell me where she is That I may save. Again appear and say That Israel to-morrow may not fall-- Not fall on ruin! _Adriel._ David? is it thou? _David._ Meholah's Adriel, your conscience asks. _Adriel._ You were concealed? _David._ And I have heard. Cry then Out unto Saul! Betray me, cry you out! _Adriel._ Betray? _David._ Is the word honey? Is it balm? _Adriel._ David, I've wronged you-- _David._ Haply! _Adriel._ Jealously. And ask now no forgiveness--not until Michal is won from peril! _David._ Do you know More of her? still? _Adriel._ Saul---- _David._ Saul----? _Adriel._ Has given Doeg Power of this.... And to some spot of Endor Here he has brought her. _David._ God! _Adriel._ And now himself, David, himself cannot be far away. _David._ Ahaste, and bring him then by force or guile, In any way, that we may from him win Where she is prisoned. (ADRIEL _goes._) The quivering Quicksands of destiny beneath her stir. Is heaven a mocking shield that ever keeps God from our prayers? _Miriam._ David, contain thy heart. (_A faint uproar begins afar; and dawn._) _David._ The battle! on the wind. Abiathar, Speed out upon the mountain-side and cull All that befalls. (ADAH _opens the gate. The priest goes._) _Adah_ (_springing back_). Oh! _David._ Child, why do you quail? _Adah._ My mistress, Merab! _David._ Girl? _Adah._ I saw her--she-- Is coming hither! Do not let her--she-- I fear--I fear her! _David._ Hither coming? _Adah._ She! (_The gate is thrown open fiercely._) _Merab_ (_entering_). Woman and witch, did Adriel, my husband, (_Sees_ DAVID.) Come to you with the king? _David._ Unnatural, Unkind, most cruel sister! _Merab_ (_shrinks_). You are here? _David._ Once me you would have poisoned, but the coil Within your bosom I beheld. And now Michal your sister is the victim. _Merab._ I-- Know not your meaning. _David._ The battle burning yonder, If it adversely veers, the king has planned Michal is not to live lest she may hap Unto my arms. _Merab._ That Michal shall be slain? (_The tumult again._) _David._ Almighty, smite, and save to Thee thy people! And save Thy altars unto Israel! (_He bows his head. A stir comes at the gate._) _Merab._ David, 'tis Adriel! _Adriel._ Ope! open, you! _David._ At last the word. _Merab._ Girl, Adah, draw the bar. (DAVID _throws a cloak to his face, as_ ADAH _obeys_. ADRIEL _enters, and_ DOEG, _who pauses in quick alarm, as_ DAVID _goes between him and the gate._) _Doeg._ What place is this? Why do you bar that gate? Merab, 'tis you? Why do you gaze, rigid? And this is the blind witch, Miriam? _David._ It is. (_He throws off the cloak._) _Doeg._ Lured? I am snared? a trap? _David._ Where have you Michal? _Doeg_ (_drawing_). No closer! _David._ If she is an atom harmed----! Where is she? _Doeg._ I was the servant of the king, I but obey him. _David._ And thy horrible heart. Then speak, or unto frenzy I am driven. _Doeg._ I'll drive you there with---- (_Breaks off with low laugh._) _David._ Tell it! _Doeg._ Unto your Soft sympathy--and passion? (_Laughs._) She is dead. _David_ (_immovable, then repressed_). If it is so, the lightning, that is wrath Within the veins of God, should sink its fang Into thy bosom and sear out thy heart. If it is so, this momentary calm, This silence pouring overfull the world, Would rush and in thee cry until thy bones Broken of guilt are crumbled in thy groans. Dead, she is dead? _Miriam._ No, David, my lord, he lies! (_Strangely, as in a trance._) To wound you, lies! _David._ Not dead? _Miriam._ I see her eyes! (_All listen amazed._) I see her in a vision. She is near---- Is in a cave--is bound--and is alone. I will go to her--quickly bring her. _Doeg._ Not (_Lunges at her._) If this shall reach you. _David._ Ah, to pierce a woman! (MIRIAM _finds her way out._) You've plotted, have been false and bloody, foul, And as a pestilence of midnight marsh Have oozed corruption into all around you. The kingdom thro' you is in brokenness, Within its arteries you flow, poison, Incentive of irruption and unrest, Of treachery and disaffection's sore, Till even the stars that light it seem as tares Sown hostile o'er the nightly vale of heaven. (_Draws firmly. Coldly, skilfully approaches for attack._) _Doeg_ (_retreating_). No farther! _David._ Unto the end! unto the end! (_He rushes in; they engage_; DOEG _is wounded._) Your villainy is done. (_Quickly forces him under. The gate then opens and_ ABIATHAR _hurries in._) _Abiathar._ David, the battle----! (_Sees_ DOEG _and stops, pale._) _David._ Fetter him. _Abiathar._ Only fetter? (_His dagger out_) the murderer Of priestly sanctity and of my father? _David._ Abiathar! You know obedience? (DOEG _is sullenly bound and led aside. Then a panic is heard afar, and dim laments._ DAVID, _who has sunk to a seat, springs anxiously up._) Listen! that cry! _A voice._ Woe! woe! _David._ What is its wail? _The Voice._ The battle's lost! _David._ Abiathar--? _The Voice._ Saul flees! _David._ Abiathar, is lost? _Abiathar._ I fear it. _David._ Then (_pointing to_ DOEG) Off with his armour for me, I will go Forth and may backward, backward bend defeat. Duty to Saul is over. _Adriel._ You must not. A fruitless intrepidity it were. _Abiathar._ Remember your anointing! _Abishai._ The prophesy! And Michal! (_The gate opens._) Michal who lives! who lives! who lives! (DAVID _has turned and sees her enter with_ MIRIAM.) Hosanna!... _Adriel._ Ever!... _Miriam._ David---- _Michal_ (_pleading, to him_). It is I. _Miriam._ The cords were cruel, hungrily sank in Her wrists and ankles. _Michal._ David! look on me. _David._ My words must be alone with her--alone. _Adriel._ Come, all of you--the battle. (_They go out the gate._) _Michal._ My lord!... my lord! (_He is silent._) I ask not anything but to be heard-- Though once I would not hear. Has all of life No glow for me? _David._ Betrayers should have none. _Michal._ I was a woman--the entanglement Of duty amid love we have no skill To loosen, but with passion. _David._ You too late Remember it is so. _Michal._ Nobility All unbelievable it seemed that you Could innocently wait on time to tide You to the kingdom. Then forgive, I plead. _David._ But in the wilderness, your perfidy! _Michal._ Doubt of it welleth thro' your voice. No, no, To save you strove I----! _David._ Michal? _Michal._ Not to betray! From Saul, my father, penitent I fled, Seeking you in Engeddi's wild. _David._ And Phalti? _Michal._ 'Twas wedding him I loathed. _David._ Say true! _Michal._ This knife Unfailingly into my breast had sunk And spared me, had not flight. _David._ This--this can be? (_A great joy dawning in him._) Beyond all hope it is, even as day's Wide empery outspans our littleness. A tithing of thy loveliness were beauty Enough for earth. Yet it is mine, is mine? _Michal._ David--for ever! (_She starts toward his arms. But cries and confusion of cries beat back their joy. Then the gate is flung open and_ ADRIEL _enters, shaken. He looks from one to the other._) _David_ (_at last_). Adriel! Adriel! What have you? _Adriel._ Saul--is slain! _Michal._ My father? _Adriel._ Slain! And Jonathan---- _David._ No! _Adriel._ Fell beside him down ... The fray was fast--Israel fled--the foe Fierce after Saul, whom Jonathan defended. _Michal._ My father! _David._ And my brother Jonathan! If I believe it will not miracle Alone bring joy again unto my pain? (_The wailing again, and deeper groans._) O Israel, the Infinite has touched Thy glory and it changes to a shroud! Thy splendour is as vintage overspilt, For Saul upon the mountains low is lying, And Jonathan beside him, beautiful Beyond the mar of battle and of death. Yea, kingly Jonathan! And I would give The beating of my life into his veins. Willing for it would I be drouth and die!... (_As the wails re-arise._) Peaks, mountains of Gilboa! let no more Dew be upon you, and as sackcloth let Clouds cover you, and ashes be your soil, Until I bring upon Philistia And Gath and Askalon extinguishing, And sorrow--and immensity of tears! (MICHAL _goes to him. He folds her in his arms._) But we must calm the flowing of this grief. Though yet we cannot mind us to remember, Love will as sandal-breath and trickling balm O'erheal us in the unbegotten years, Too headlong must not be our agony. Hush now thy woundedness, my Michal, now. See, o'er the East the lifted wings of Dawn. (_They climb the stair to the house-top. As they look away toward the battle's rout the clouds part, and over them breaks the full brightness of the sun...._) THE END. +The Gresham Press+, UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED. WOKING AND LONDON. Transcriber's Notes: Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. Simple typographical and spelling errors were corrected. Considerable latitude was provided the dialogue and poetry. Italics words are denoted by _underscores_. Elaborate fonts are denoted by +pluses+. 
458	----	DREAMS & DUST POEMS BY DON MARQUIS TO MY MOTHER VIRGINIA WHITMORE MARQUIS CONTENTS PROEM DAYLIGHT HUMORS THIS IS ANOTHER DAY APRIL SONG THE EARTH, IT IS ALSO A STAR THE NAME THE BIRTH A MOOD OF PAVLOWA THE POOL "THEY HAD NO POET" NEW YORK A HYMN THE SINGER WORDS ARE NOT GUNS WITH THE SUBMARINES NICHOLAS OF MONTENEGRO DICKENS A POLITICIAN THE BAYONET THE BUTCHERS AT PRAYER SHADOWS HAUNTED A NIGHTMARE THE MOTHER IN THE BAYOU THE SAILOR'S WIFE SPEAKS HUNTED A DREAM CHILD ACROSS THE NIGHT SEA CHANGES THE TAVERN OF DESPAIR COLORS AND SURFACES A GOLDEN LAD THE SAGE AND THE WOMAN NEWS FROM BABYLON A RHYME OF THE ROADS THE LAND OF YESTERDAY OCTOBER CHANT OF THE CHANGING HOURS DREAMS AND DUST SELVES THE WAGES IN MARS, WHAT AVATAR? THE GOD-MAKER, MAN UNREST THE PILTDOWN SKULL THE SEEKER THE AWAKENING A SONG OF MEN THE NOBLER LESSON AT LAST LYRICS "KING PANDION, HE IS DEAD" DAVID TO BATHSHEBA THE JESTERS "MARY, MARY, QUITE CONTRARY" THE TRIOLET FROM THE BRIDGE "PALADINS, PALADINS, YOUTH NOBLE-HEARTED" "MY LANDS, NOT THINE" TO A DANCING DOLL LOWER NEW YORK--A STORM AT SUNSET A CHRISTMAS GIFT SILVIA THE EXPLORERS EARLY AUTUMN "TIME STEALS FROM LOVE" THE RONDEAU VISITORS THE PARTING AN OPEN FIRE REALITIES REALITIES THE STRUGGLE THE REBEL THE CHILD AND THE MILL "SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI" THE COMRADE ENVOI PROEM "SO LET THEM PASS, THESE SONGS OF MINE" So let them pass, these songs of mine, Into oblivion, nor repine; Abandoned ruins of large schemes, Dimmed lights adrift from nobler dreams, Weak wings I sped on quests divine, So let them pass, these songs of mine. They soar, or sink ephemeral-- I care not greatly which befall! For if no song I e'er had wrought, Still have I loved and laughed and fought; So let them pass, these songs of mine; I sting too hot with life to whine! Still shall I struggle, fail, aspire, Lose God, and find Gods in the mire, And drink dream-deep life's heady wine-- So let them pass, these songs of mine. DAYLIGHT HUMORS THIS IS ANOTHER DAY I AM mine own priest, and I shrive myself Of all my wasted yesterdays. Though sin And sloth and foolishness, and all ill weeds Of error, evil, and neglect grow rank And ugly there, I dare forgive myself That error, sin, and sloth and foolishness. God knows that yesterday I played the fool; God knows that yesterday I played the knave; But shall I therefore cloud this new dawn o'er With fog of futile sighs and vain regrets? This is another day! And flushed Hope walks Adown the sunward slopes with golden shoon. This is another day; and its young strength Is laid upon the quivering hills until, Like Egypt's Memnon, they grow quick with song. This is another day, and the bold world Leaps up and grasps its light, and laughs, as leapt Prometheus up and wrenched the fire from Zeus. This is another day--are its eyes blurred With maudlin grief for any wasted past? A thousand thousand failures shall not daunt! Let dust clasp dust; death, death--I am alive! And out of all the dust and death of mine Old selves I dare to lift a singing heart And living faith; my spirit dares drink deep Of the red mirth mantling in the cup of morn. APRIL SONG FLEET across the grasses Flash the feet of Spring, Piping, as he passes Fleet across the grasses, "Follow, lads and lasses! Sing, world, sing!" Fleet across the grasses Flash the feet of Spring! _Idle winds deliver Rumors through the town, Tales of reeds that quiver, Idle winds deliver, Where the rapid river Drags the willows down-- Idle winds deliver Rumors through the town._ In the country places By the silver brooks April airs her graces; In the country places Wayward April paces, Laughter in her looks; In the country places By the silver brooks. _Hints of alien glamor Even reach the town; Urban muses stammer Hints of alien glamor, But the city's clamor Beats the voices down; Hints of alien glamor Even reach the town._ THIS EARTH, IT IS ALSO A STAR WHERE the singers of Saturn find tongue, Where the Galaxy's lovers embrace, Our world and its beauty are sung! They lean from their casements to trace If our planet still spins in its place; Faith fables the thing that we are, And Fantasy laughs and gives chase: This earth, it is also a star! Round the sun, that is fixed, and hung For a lamp in the darkness of space We are whirled, we are swirled, we are flung; Singing and shining we race And our light on the uplifted face Of dreamer or prophet afar May fall as a symbol of grace: This earth, it is also a star! Looking out where our planet is swung Doubt loses his writhen grimace, Dry hearts drink the gleams and are young;-- Where agony's boughs interlace His Garden some Jesus may pace, Lifting, the wan avatar, His soul to this light as a vase! This earth, it is also a star! Great spirits in sorrowful case Yearn to us through the vapors that bar: Canst think of that, soul, and be base?-- This earth, it is also a star! THE NAME IT shifts and shifts from form to form, It drifts and darkles, gleams and glows; It is the passion of the storm, The poignance of the rose; Through changing shapes, through devious ways, By noon or night, through cloud or flame, My heart has followed all my days Something I cannot name. In sunlight on some woman's hair, Or starlight in some woman's eyne, Or in low laughter smothered where Her red lips wedded mine, My heart hath known, and thrilled to know, This unnamed presence that it sought; And when my heart hath found it so, _"Love is the name,"_ I thought. Sometimes when sudden afterglows In futile glory storm the skies Within their transient gold and rose The secret stirs and dies; Or when the trampling morn walks o'er The troubled seas, with feet of flame, My awed heart whispers, _"Ask no more, For Beauty is the name!"_ Or dreaming in old chapels where The dim aisles pulse with murmurings That part are music, part are prayer-- (Or rush of hidden wings) Sometimes I lift a startled head To some saint's carven countenance, Half fancying that the lips have said, _All names mean God, perchance!"_ THE BIRTH THERE is a legend that the love of God So quickened under Mary's heart it wrought Her very maidenhood to holier stuff.... However that may be, the birth befell Upon a night when all the Syrian stars Swayed tremulous before one lordlier orb That rose in gradual splendor, Paused, Flooding the firmament with mystic light, And dropped upon the breathing hills A sudden music Like a distillation from its gleams; A rain of spirit and a dew of song! A MOOD OF PAVLOWA THE soul of the Spring through its body of earth Bursts in a bloom of fire, And the crocuses come in a rainbow riot of mirth.... They flutter, they burn, they take wing, they aspire.... Wings, motion and music and flame, Flower, woman and laughter, and all these the same! She is light and first love and the youth of the world, She is sandaled with joy ... she is lifted and whirled, She is flung, she is swirled, she is driven along By the carnival winds that have torn her away From the coronal bloom on the brow of the May.... She is youth, she is foam, she is flame, she is visible Song! THE POOL REACH over, my Undine, and clutch me a reed-- Nymph of mine idleness, notch me a pipe-- For I am fulfilled of the silence, and long For to utter the sense of the silence in song. Down-stream all the rapids are troubled with pebbles That fetter and fret what the water would utter, And it rushes and splashes in tremulous trebles; It makes haste through the shallows, its soul is aflutter; But here all the sound is serene and outspread In the murmurous moods of a slow-swirling pool; Here all the sounds are unhurried and cool; Every silence is kith to a sound; they are wed, They are mated, are mingled, are tangled, are bound; Every hush is in love with a sound, every sound By the law of its life to some silence is bound. Then here will we hide; idle here and abide, In the covert here, close by the waterside-- Here, where the slim flattered reeds are aquiver With the exquisite hints of the reticent river, Here, where the lips of this pool are the lips Of all pools, let us listen and question and wait; Let us hark to the whispers of love and of death, Let us hark to the lispings of life and of fate-- In this place where pale silences flower into sound Let us strive for some secret of all the profound Deep and calm Silence that meshes men 'round! There's as much of God hinted in one ripple's plashes-- There's as much of Truth glints in yon dragon-fly's flight-- There's as much Purpose gleams where yonder trout flashes As in--any book else!--could we read things aright. Then nymph of mine indolence, here let us hide, Learn, listen, and question; idle here and abide Where the rushes and lilies lean low to the tide. "THEY HAD NO POET ..." "Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride! They had no poet and they died."--POPE. By Tigris, or the streams of Ind, Ere Colchis rose, or Babylon, Forgotten empires dreamed and sinned, Setting tall towns against the dawn, Which, when the proud Sun smote upon, Flashed fire for fire and pride for pride; Their names were ... Ask oblivion! ... _"They had no poet, and they died."_ Queens, dusk of hair and tawny-skinned, That loll where fellow leopards fawn ... Their hearts are dust before the wind, Their loves, that shook the world, are wan! Passion is mighty ... but, anon, Strong Death has Romance for his bride; Their legends ... Ask oblivion! ... _"They had no poet, and they died."_ Heroes, the braggart trumps that dinned Their futile triumphs, monarch, pawn, Wild tribesmen, kingdoms disciplined, Passed like a whirlwind and were gone; They built with bronze and gold and brawn, The inner Vision still denied; Their conquests ... Ask oblivion! ... _"They had no poet, and they died."_ Dumb oracles, and priests withdrawn, Was it but flesh they deified? Their gods were ... Ask oblivion! ... _"They had no poet, and they died."_ NEW YORK SHE is hot to the sea that crouches beside, Human and hot to the cool stars peering down, My passionate city, my quivering town, And her dark blood, tide upon purple tide, With throbs as of thunder beats, With leaping rhythms and vast, is swirled Through the shaken lengths of her veined streets... She pulses, the heart of a world! I have thrilled with her ecstasy, agony, woe-- Hath she a mood that I do not know? The winds of her music tumultuous have seized me and swayed me, Have lifted, have swung me around In their whorls as of cyclonic sound; Her passions have torn me and tossed me and brayed me; Drunken and tranced and dazzled with visions and gleams, I have spun with her dervish priests; I have searched to the souls of her hunted beasts And found love sleeping there; I have soared on the wings of her flashing dreams; I have sunk with her dull despair; I have sweat with her travails and cursed with her pains; I have swelled with her foolish pride; I have raged through a thick red mist at one with her branded Cains, With her broken Christs have died. O beautiful half-god city of visions and love! O hideous half-brute city of hate! O wholly human and baffled and passionate town! The throes of thy burgeoning, stress of thy fight, Thy bitter, blind struggle to gain for thy body a soul, I have known, I have felt, and been shaken thereby! Wakened and shaken and broken, For I hear in thy thunders terrific that throb through thy rapid veins The beat of the heart of a world. A HYMN (1914) CLOTHED on with thunder and with steel And black against the dawn The whirling armies clash and reel.... A wind, and they are gone Like mists withdrawn, Like mists withdrawn! Like clouds withdrawn, like driven sands, Earth's body vanisheth: One solid thing unconquered stands, The ghost that humbles death. All else is breath, All else is breath! Man rose from out the stinging slime, Half brute, and sought a soul, And up the starrier ways of time, Half god, unto his goal, He still must climb, He still must climb! What though worlds stagger, and the suns Seem shaken in their place, Trust thou the leaping love that runs Creative over space: Take heart of grace, Take heart of grace! What though great kingdoms fall on death Before the stabbing blade, Their brazen might was only breath, Their substance but a shade-- Be not dismayed, Be not dismayed! Man's dream which conquered brute and clod Shall fail not, but endure, Shall rise, though beaten to the sod, Shall hold its vantage sure-- As sure as God, As sure as God! THE SINGER A LITTLE while, with love and youth, He wandered, singing:-- He felt life's pulses hot and strong Beat all his rapid veins along; He wrought life's rhythms into song: He laughed, he sang the Dawn! So close, so close to life he dwelt That at rare times and rapt he felt The fleshly barriers yield and melt; He trembled, looking on Creation at her miracles; His soul-sight pierced the earthly shells And saw the spirit weave its spells, The veil of clay withdrawn;-- A little while, with love and youth, He wandered, singing! A little while, with age and death, He wanders, dreaming;-- No more the thunder and the urge Of earth's full tides that storm the verge Of heaven with their sweep and surge Shall lift, shall bear him on; Where is the golden hope that led Him comrade with the mighty dead? The love that aureoled his head?-- The glory is withdrawn! How shall one soar with broken wings? The leagued might of futile things Wars with the heart that dares and sings;-- It is not always Dawn! A little while, with age and death, He wanders, dreaming. WORDS ARE NOT GUNS _Put by the sword_ (a dreamer saith), _The years of peace draw nigh! Already the millennial dawn Makes red the eastern sky!_ Be not deceived. It comes not yet! The ancient passions keep Alive beneath their changing masks. They are not dead. They sleep. Surely peace comes. As sure as Man Rose from primeval slime. That was not yesterday. There's still A weary height to climb! And we can dwell too long with dreams And play too much with words, Forgetting our inheritance Was bought and held with swords. _But Truth_ (you say) _makes tyrants quail-- Beats down embattled Wrong?_ If truth be armed! Be not deceived. The strife is to the strong. Words are not guns. Words are not ships. And ships and guns prevail. Our liberties, that blood has gained, Are guarded, or they fail. Truth does not triumph without blows, Error not tamely yields. But falsehood closes with quick faith, Fierce, on a thousand fields. And surely, somewhat of that faith Our fathers fought for clings! Which called this freedom's hemisphere, Despite Earth's leagued kings. Great creeds grow thews, or else they die. Thought clothed in deed is lord. What are thy gods? Thy gods brought love? They also brought a sword. Unchallenged, shall we always stand, Secure, apart, aloof? Be not deceived. That hour shall come Which puts us to the proof. Then, that we hold the trust we have Safeguarded for our sons, Let us cease dreaming! Let us have More ships, more troops, more guns! WITH THE SUBMARINES ABOVE, the baffled twilight fails; beneath, the blind snakes creep; Beside us glides the charnel shark, our pilot through the deep; And, lurking where low headlands shield from cruising scout and spy, We bide the signal through the gloom that bids us slay or die. All watchful, mute, the crouching guns that guard the strait sea lanes-- Watchful and hawklike, plumed with hate, the desperate aeroplanes-- And still as death and swift as fate, above the darkling coasts, The spying Wireless sows the night with troops of stealthy ghosts, While hushed through all her huddled streets the tide-walled city waits The drumming thunders that announce brute battle at her gates. Southward a hundred windy leagues, through storms that blind and bar, Our cheated cruisers search the waves, our captains seek the war; But here the port of peril is; the foeman's dreadnoughts ride Sullen and black against the moon, upon a sullen tide. And only we to launch ourselves against their stark advance-- To guide uncertain lightnings through these treacherous seas of chance! . . . . . . And now a wheeling searchlight paints a signal on the night; And now the bellowing guns are loud with the wild lust of fight. . . . . . . And now, her flanks of steel apulse with all the power of hell, Forth from the darkness leaps in pride a hateful miracle, The flagship of their Admiral--and now God help and save!-- We challenge Death at Death's own game; we sink beneath the wave! . . . . . . Ah, steady now--and one good blow--one straight stab through the gloom-- Ah, good!--the thrust went home!--she founders-- flounders to her doom!-- Full speed ahead!--those damned quick-firing guns --but let them bark-- What's that--the dynamos?--they've got us, men! --_Christ! in the dark!_ NICHOLAS OF MONTENEGRO (1912) HE speaks as straight as his rifles shot, As straight as a thrusting blade, Waiting the deed that shall trouble the truce His savage guns have made. "You have dared the wrath of a dozen states," Was the challenge that he heard; "We can die but once!" said the grim old King As he gripped his mountain sword. "For I paid in blood for the town I took, The blood of my brave men slain,-- And if you covet the town I took You must buy it with blood again!" Stern old King of the stark, black hills, Where the lean, fierce eagles breed, Your speech rings true as your good sword rings-- And you are a king indeed! DICKENS "The only book that the party had was a volume of Dickens. During the six months that they lay in the cave which they had hacked in the ice, waiting for spring to come, they read this volume through again and again."--_From a newspaper report of an antarctic expedition._ HUDDLED within their savage lair They hearkened to the prowling wind; They heard the loud wings of despair ... And madness beat against the mind.... A sunless world stretched stark outside As if it had cursed God and died; Dumb plains lay prone beneath the weight Of cold unutterably great; Iron ice bound all the bitter seas, The brutal hills were bleak as hate.... Here none but Death might walk at ease! Then Dickens spoke, and, lo! the vast Unpeopled void stirred into life; The dead world quickened, the mad blast Hushed for an hour its idiot strife With nothingness.... And from the gloom, Parting the flaps of frozen skin, Old friends and dear came trooping in, And light and laughter filled the room.... Voices and faces, shapes beloved, Babbling lips and kindly eyes, Not ghosts, but friends that lived and moved ... They brought the sun from other skies, They wrought the magic that dispels The bitterer part of loneliness ... And when they vanished each man dreamed His dream there in the wilderness.... One heard the chime of Christmas bells, And, staring down a country lane, Saw bright against the window-pane The firelight beckon warm and red.... And one turned from the waterside Where Thames rolls down his slothful tide To breast the human sea that beats Through roaring London's battered streets And revel in the moods of men.... And one saw all the April hills Made glad with golden daffodils, And found and kissed his love again.... . . . . . . By all the troubled hearts he cheers In homely ways or by lost trails, By all light shed through all dark years When hope grows sick and courage quails, We hail him first among his peers; Whether we sorrow, sing, or feast, He, too, hath known and understood-- Master of many moods, high priest Of mirth and lord of cleansing tears! A POLITICIAN LEADER no more, be judged of us! Hailed Chief, and loved, of yore-- Youth, and the faith of youth, cry out: _Leader and Chief no more!_ We dreamed a Prophet, flushed with faith, Content to toil in pain If that his sacrifice might be, Somehow, his people's gain. We saw a vision, and our blood Beat red and hot and strong: _"Lead us_ (we cried) _to war against Some foul, embattled wrong!"_ We dreamed a Warrior whose sword Was edged for sham and shame; We dreamed a Statesman far above The vulgar lust for fame. We were not cynics, and we dreamed A Man who made no truce With lies nor ancient privilege Nor old, entrenched abuse. We dreamed ... we dreamed ... Youth dreamed a dream! And even you forgot Yourself, one moment, and dreamed, too-- Struck, while your mood was hot! Struck three or four good blows ... and then Turned back to easier things: The cheap applause, the blatant mob, The praise of underlings! Praise ... praise ... was ever man so filled, So avid still, of praise? So hungry for the crowd's acclaim, The sycophantic phrase? O you whom Greatness beckoned to ... O swollen Littleness Who turned from Immortality To fawn upon Success! O blind with love of self, who led Youth's vision to defeat, Bawling and brawling for rewards, Loud, in the common street! O you who were so quick to judge-- Leader, and loved, of yore-- Hear now the judgment of our youth: _Leader and Chief no more!_ THE BAYONET (1914) THE great guns slay from a league away, the death-bolts fly unseen, And bellowing hill replies to hill, machine to brute machine, But still in the end when the long lines bend and the battle hangs in doubt They take to the steel in the same old way that their fathers fought it out-- It is man to man and breast to breast and eye to bloodshot eye And the reach and twist of the thrusting wrist, as it was in the days gone by! Along the shaken hills the guns their drumming thunder roll-- But the keen blades thrill with the lust to kill that leaps from the slayer's soul! For hand and heart and living steel, one pulse of hate they feel. Is your clan afraid of the naked blade? Does it flinch from the bitter steel? Perish your dreams of conquest then, your swollen hopes and bold, For empire dwells with the stabbing blade, as it did in the days of old! THE BUTCHERS AT PRAYER (1914) EACH nation as it draws the sword And flings its standard to the air Petitions piously the Lord-- Vexing the void abyss with prayer. O irony too deep for mirth! O posturing apes that rant, and dare This antic attitude! O Earth, With your wild jest of wicked prayer! I dare not laugh ... a rising swell Of laughter breaks in shrieks somewhere-- No doubt they relish it in Hell, This cosmic jest of Earth at prayer! SHADOWS HAUNTED (THE GHOST SPEAKS) A GHOST is the freak of a sick man's brain? Then why do ye start and shiver so? That's the sob and drip of a leaky drain? But it sounds like another noise we know! The heavy drops drummed red and slow, The drops ran down as slow as fate-- Do ye hear them still?--it was long ago!-- But here in the shadows I wait, I wait! Spirits there be that pass in peace; Mine passed in a whorl of wrath and dole; And the hour that your choking breath shall cease I will get my grip on your naked soul-- Nor pity may stay nor prayer cajole-- I would drag ye whining from Hell's own gate: To me, to me, ye must pay the toll! And here in the shadows I wait, I wait! The dead they are dead, they are out of the way? And a ghost is the whim of an ailing mind? Then why did ye whiten with fear to-day When ye heard a voice in the calling wind? Why did ye falter and look behind At the creeping mists when the hour grew late? Ye would see my face were ye stricken blind! And here in the shadows I wait, I wait! Drink and forget, make merry and boast, But the boast rings false and the jest is thin-- In the hour that I meet ye ghost to ghost, Stripped of the flesh that ye skulk within, Stripped to the coward soul 'ware of its sin, Ye shall learn, ye shall learn, whether dead men hate! Ah, a weary time has the waiting been, But here in the shadows I wait, I wait! A NIGHTMARE LEAGUES before me, leagues behind, Clamor warring wastes of flood, All the streams of all the worlds Flung together, mad of mood; Through the canon beats a sound, Regular of interval, Distant, drumming, muffled, dull, Thunderously rhythmical; Crafts slip by my startled soul-- Soul that cowers, a thing apart-- They are corpuscles of blood! That's the throbbing of a heart! God of terrors!--am I mad?-- Through my body, mine own soul, Shrunken to an atom's size, Voyages toward an unguessed goal! THE MOTHER THE mother by the gallows-tree, The gallows-tree, the gallows-tree, (While the twitching body mocked the sun) Lifted to Heaven her broken heart And called for sympathy. Then Mother Mary bent to her, Bent from her place by God's left side, And whispered: "Peace--do I not know?-- My son was crucified!" "O Mother Mary," answered she, "You cannot, cannot enter in To my soul's woe--you cannot know-- For your son wrought no sin!" (And men whose work compelled them there, Their hearts were stricken dead; They heard the rope creak on the beam; I thought I heard the frightened ghost Whimpering overhead.) The mother by the gallows-tree, The gallows-tree, the gallows-tree, Lifted to Christ her broken heart And called in agony. Then Lord Christ bent to her and said: "Be comforted, be comforted; I know your grief; the whole world's woe I bore upon my head." "But O Lord Christ, you cannot know, No one can know," she said, "no one"-- (While the quivering corpse swayed in the wind)-- "Lord Christ, no one can understand Who never had a son!" IN THE BAYOU LAZY and slow, through the snags and trees Move the sluggish currents, half asleep; Around and between the cypress knees, Like black, slow snakes the dark tides creep-- How deep is the bayou beneath the trees? "Knee-deep, Knee-deep, Knee-deep, Knee-deep!" Croaks the big bullfrog of Reelfoot Lake From his hiding-place in the draggled brake. What is the secret the slim reeds know That makes them to shake and to shiver so, And the scared flags quiver from plume to foot?-- The frogs pipe solemnly, deep and slow: "Look under the root! Look under the root!" The hoarse frog croaks and the stark owl hoots Of a mystery moored in the cypress roots. Was it love turned hate? Was it friend turned foe? Only the frogs and the gray owl know, For the white moon shrouded her face in a mist At the spurt of a pistol, red and bright-- At the sound of a shriek that stabbed the night-- And the little reeds were frightened and whist; But always the eddies whimper and choke, And the frogs would tell if they could, for they croak: "Deep, deep! Death-deep! Deep, deep! Death-deep!" And the dark tide slides and glisters and glides Snakelike over the secret it hides. THE SAILOR'S WIFE SPEAKS YE are dead, they say, but ye swore, ye swore, Ye would come to me back from the sea! From out of the sea and the night, ye cried, Nor the crawling weed nor the dragging tide Could hold ye fast from me:-- Come, ah, come to me! Three spells I have laid on the rising sun And three on the waning moon-- Are ye held in the bonds of the night or the day Ye must loosen your bonds and away, away! Ye must come where I wait ye, soon-- Ah, soon! soon! soon! Three times I have cast my words to the wind, And thrice to the climbing sea; If ye drift or dream with the clouds or foam Ye must drift again home, ye must drift again home-- Wraith, ye are free, ye are free; Ghost, ye are free, ye are free! Are the coasts of death so fair, so fair? But I wait ye here on the shore! It is I that ye hear in the calling wind-- I have stared through the dark till my soul is blind! O lover of mine, ye swore, Lover of mine, ye swore! HUNTED _Oh, why do they hunt so hard, so hard, who have no need of food? Do they hunt for sport, do they hunt for hate, do they hunt for the lust of blood?_ . . . . . . If I were a god I would get me a spear, I would get me horse and dog, And merrily, merrily I would ride through covert and brake and bog, With hound and horn and laughter loud, over the hills and away-- For there is no sport like that of a god with a man that stands at bay! Ho! but the morning is fresh and fair, and oh! but the sun is bright, And yonder the quarry breaks from the brush and heads for the hills in flight; A minute's law for the harried thing--then follow him, follow him fast, With the bellow of dogs and the beat of hoofs and the mellow bugle's blast. . . . . . . _Hillo! Halloo! they have marked a man! there is sport in the world to-day-- And a clamor swells from the heart of the wood that tells of a soul at bay! A DREAM CHILD WHERE tides of tossed wistaria bloom Foam up in purple turbulence, Where twining boughs have built a room And wing'd winds pause to garner scents And scattered sunlight flecks the gloom, She broods in pensive indolence. What is the thought that holds her thrall, That dims her sight with unshed tears? What songs of sorrow droop and fall In broken music for her ears? What voices thrill her and recall The poignant joy of happier years? She dreams 'tis not the winds which pass That whisper through the shaken vine; Whose footstep stirs the rustling grass None else that listened might divine; She sees her child that never was Look up with longing in his eyne. Unkissed, his lifted forehead gains A grace not earthly, but more rare-- For since her heart but only feigns, Wherefore should love not feign him fair? Put blood of roses in his veins, Weave yellow sunshines for his hair? All ghosts of little children dead That wander wistful, uncaressed, Their seeking lips by love unfed, She fain would cradle on her breast For his sweet sake whose lonely head Has never known that tender rest. And thus she sits, and thus she broods, Where drifted blossoms freak the grass; The winds that move across her moods Pulse with low whispers as they pass, And in their eerier interludes She hears a voice that never was. ACROSS THE NIGHT MUCH listening through the silences, Much staring through the night, And lo! the dumb blind distances Are bridged with speech and sight! Magician Thought, informed of Love, Hath fixed her on the air-- Oh, Love and I laughed down the fates And clasped her, here as there! Across the eerie silences She came in headlong flight, She stormed the serried distances, She trampled space and night! Oh, foolish scientists might give This miracle a name-- But Love and I care but to know That when we called she came. And since I find the distances Subservient to my thought, And of the sentient silences More vital speech have wrought, Then she and I will mock Death's self, For all his vaunted might-- There are no gulfs we dare not leap, As she leapt through the night! SEA CHANGES I MORNING WE stood among the boats and nets; We saw the swift clouds fall, We watched the schooners scamper in Before the sudden squall;-- The jolly squall strove lustily To whelm the sheltered street-- The merry squall that piled the seas About the patient headland's knees And chased the fishing fleet. She laughed; as if with wings her mirth Arose and left the wingless earth And all tame things behind; Rose like a bird, wild with delight Whose briny pinions flash in flight Through storm and sun and wind. Her laughter sought those skies because Their mood and hers were one, For she and I were drunk with love And life and storm and sun! And while she laughed, the Sun himself Leapt laughing through the rain And struck his harper hand along The ringing coast; and that wind-song Whose joy is mixed with pain Forgot the undertone of grief And joined the jocund strain, And over every hidden reef Whereon the waves broke merrily Rose jets and sprays of melody And leapt and laughed again. II MOONLIGHT We stood among the boats and nets ... We marked the risen moon Walk swaying o'er the trembling seas As one sways in a swoon; The little stars, the lonely stars, Stole through the hollow sky, And every sucking eddy where The waves lapped wharf or rotten stair Moaned like some stricken thing hid there And strangled with its own despair As the shuddering tide crept by. I loved her, and I hated her-- Or did I hate myself because, Bound by obscure, strong, silken laws, I felt myself the worshiper Of beauty never wholly mine? With lures most apt to snare, entwine, With bonds too subtle to define, Her lighter nature mastered mine; Herself half given, half withheld, Her lesser spirit still compelled Its tribute from my franker soul: So--rebel, slave, and worshiper!-- I loved her and I hated her. I gazed upon her, I, her thrall, And musing, murmured, _What if death_ _Were just the answer to it all?-- Suppose some dainty dagger quaffed Her life in one deep eager draught?-- Suppose some amorous knife caressed The lovely hollow of her breast?"_-- She turned a mocking look to mine: She read the thought within my eyne, She held me with her look--and laughed! Now who may tell what stirs, controls, And shapes mad fancies into facts? What trivial things may quicken souls To irrevocable, swift acts? Now who has known, who understood, Wherefore some idle thing May stab with deadlier sting Than well-considered insult could?-- May spur the languor of a mood And rouse a tiger in the blood?-- Ah, Christ!--had she not laughed just when That fancy came! ... for then ... and then ... A sudden mist dropped from the sky, A mist swept in across the sea ... A mist that hid her face from me ... A weeping mist all tinged with red, A dripping mist that smelt like blood ... It choked my throat, it burnt my brain ... And through it peered one sallow star, And through it rang one shriek of pain ... And when it passed my hands were red, My soul was dabbled with her blood; And when it passed my love was dead And tossed upon the troubled flood. III MOONSET But see! ... the body does not sink; It rides upon the tide (A starbeam on the dagger's haft), With staring eyes and wide ... And now, up from the darkling sea, Down from the failing moon, Are come strange shapes to mock at me ... All pallid from the star-pale sea, White from the paling moon ... Or whirling fast or wheeling slow Around, around the corpse they go, All bloodless o'er the sickened sea Beneath the ailing moon! And are they only wisps of fog That dance along the waves? Only shapes of mist the wind Drives along the waves? Or are they spirits that the sea Has cheated of their graves? The ghosts of them that died at sea, Of murdered men flung in the sea, Whose bodies had no graves?-- Lost souls that haunt for evermore The sobbing reef and hollowed shore And always-murmuring caves? Ah, surely something more than fog, More than starlit mist! For starlight never makes a sound And fogs are ever whist-- But hearken, hearken, hearken, now, For these sing as they dance! As airily, as eerily, They wheel about and whirl, They jeer at me, they fleer at me, They flout me as they swirl! As whirling fast or swaying slow, Reeling, wheeling, to and fro, Around, around the corpse they go, They chill me with their chants! These be neither men nor mists-- Hearken to their chants: _Ever, ever, ever, Drifting like a blossom Seaward, with the starlight Wan upon her bosom-- Ever when the quickened Heart of night is throbbing, Ever when the trembling Tide sets seaward, sobbing, Shall you see this burden Borne upon its ebbing: See her drifting seaward Like a broken blossom,_ _Ever see the starlight Kiss her bruised bosom. Flight availeth nothing ... Still the subtle beaches Draw you back where Horror Walks their shingled reaches ... Ever shall your spirit Hear the surf resounding, Evermore the ocean Thwarting you and bounding; Vainly struggle inland! Lashing you and hounding, Still the vision hales you From the upland reaches, Goading you and gripping, Binds you to the beaches! Ever, ever, ever, Ever shall her laughter, Hunting you and haunting, Mock and follow after; Rising where the buoy-bell Clangs across the shallows,_ _Leaping where the spindrift Hurtles o'er the hollows, Ringing where the moonlight Gleams along the billows, Ever, ever, ever, Ever shall her laughter, Hounding you and haunting, Whip and follow after!_ IV SUNSET I stood among the boats The sinking sun, the angry sun, Across the sullen wave Laid the sudden strength of his red wrath Like to a shaken glaive:-- Or did the sun pause in the west To lift a sword at me, Or was it she, or was it she, Rose for an instant on some crest And plucked the red blade from her breast And brandished it at me? THE TAVERN OF DESPAIR THE wraiths of murdered hopes and loves Come whispering at the door, Come creeping through the weeping mist That drapes the barren moor; But we within have turned the key 'Gainst Hope and Love and Care, Where Wit keeps tryst with Folly, at The Tavern of Despair. And we have come by divers ways To keep this merry tryst, But few of us have kept within The Narrow Way, I wist; For we are those whose ampler wits And hearts have proved our curse-- Foredoomed to ken the better things And aye to do the worse! Long since we learned to mock ourselves; And from self-mockery fell To heedless laughter in the face Of Heaven, Earth, and Hell. We quiver 'neath, and mock, God's rod; We feel, and mock, His wrath; We mock our own blood on the thorns That rim the "Primrose Path." We mock the eerie glimmering shapes That range the outer wold, We mock our own cold hearts because They are so dead and cold; We flout the things we might have been Had self to self proved true, We mock the roses flung away, We mock the garnered rue; The fates that gibe have lessoned us; There sups to-night on earth No madder crew of wastrels than This fellowship of mirth.... (Of mirth ... drink, fools!--nor let it flag Lest from the outer mist Creep in that other company Unbidden to the tryst. We're grown so fond of paradox Perverseness holds us thrall, So what each jester loves the best He mocks the most of all; But as the jest and laugh go round, Each in his neighbor's eyes Reads, while he flouts his heart's desire, The knowledge that he lies. Not one of us but had some pearls And flung them to the swine, Not one of us but had some gift-- Some spark of fire divine-- Each might have been God's minister In the temple of some art-- Each feels his gift perverted move Wormlike through his dry heart. If God called Azrael to Him now And bade Death bend the bow Against the saddest heart that beats Here on this earth below, Not any sobbing breast would gain The guerdon of that barb-- The saddest ones are those that wear The jester's motley garb. Whose shout aye loudest rings, and whose The maddest cranks and quips-- Who mints his soul to laughter's coin And wastes it with his lips-- Has grown too sad for sighs and seeks To cheat himself with mirth; We fools self-doomed to motley are The weariest wights on earth! But yet, for us whose brains and hearts Strove aye in paths perverse, Doomed still to know the better things And still to do the worse,-- What else is there remains for us But make a jest of care And set the rafters ringing, in Our Tavern of Despair? COLORS AND SURFACES A GOLDEN LAD (D. V. M.) "Golden lads and lasses must Like chimney-sweepers come to dust." --SHAKESPEARE. So young, but already the splendor Of genius robed him about-- Already the dangerous, tender Regard of the gods marked him out-- (On whom the burden and duty They bind, at his earliest breath, Of showing their own grave beauty, They love and they crown with death.) We were of one blood, but the olden Rapt poets spake out in his tone; We were of one blood, but the golden Rathe promise was his, his alone. And ever his great eye glistened With visions I could not see, Ever he thrilled and listened To voices withholden from me. Young lord of the realms of fancy, The bright dreams flocked to his call Like sprites that the necromancy Of a Prospero holds in thrall-- Quick visions that served and attended, Elusive and hovering things, With a quiver of joy in the splendid Wild sweep of their luminous wings; He dwelt in an alien glamor, He wrought of its gleams a crown,-- But the world, with its cruelty and clamor, Broke him and beat him down; So he passed; he was worn, he was weary, He was slain at the touch of life;-- With a smile that was wistful and eerie He passed from the senseless strife;-- So he ceased (is their humor satiric, These gods that make perfect and blight?)-- He ceased like an exquisite lyric That dies on the breast of night. THE SAGE AND THE WOMAN 'TWIXT ancient Beersheba and Dan Another such a caravan Dazed Palestine had never seen As that which bore Sabea's queen Up from the fain and flaming South To slake her yearning spirit's drouth At wisdom's pools, with Solomon. With gifts of scented sandalwood, And labdanum, and cassia-bud, With spicy spoils of Araby And camel-loads of ivory And heavy cloths that glanced and shone With inwrought pearl and beryl-stone She came, a bold Sabean girl. And did she find him grave, or gay? Perchance his palace breathed that day With psalters sounding solemnly-- Or cymbals' merrier minstrelsy-- Perchance the wearied monarch heard Some loose-tongued prophet's meddling word;-- None knows, no one--but Solomon! She looked--with eyne wherein were blent All ardors of the Orient; She spake--all magics of the South Were compassed in the witch's mouth;-- He thought the scarlet lips of her More precious than En Gedi's myrrh, The lips of that Sabean girl; By many an amorous sun caressed, From lifted brow to amber breast She gleamed in vivid loveliness-- And lithe as any leopardess-- And verily, one blames thee not If thine own proverbs were forgot, O Solomon, wise Solomon! She danced for him, and surely she Learnt dancing from some moonlit sea Where elfin vapors swirled and swayed While the wild pipes of witchcraft played Such clutching music 'twould impel A prophet's self to dance to hell-- So spun the light Sabean girl. He swore her laughter had the lilt Of chiming waters that are spilt In sprays of spurted melody From founts of carven porphyry, And in the billowy turbulence Of her dusk hair drowned soul and sense-- Dark tides and deep, O Solomon! Perchance unto her day belongs His poem called the Song of Songs, Each little lyric interval Timed to her pulse's rise and fall;-- Or when he cried out wearily That all things end in vanity Did he mean that Sabean girl? The bright barbaric opulence, The sun-kist Temple, Kedar's tents,-- How many a careless caravan 'Twixt Beersheba and ruined Dan, Within these forty centuries, Has flung their dust to many a breeze, With dust that was King Solomon! But still the lesson holds as true, O King, as when she lessoned you: _That very wise men are not wise Until they read in Folly's eyes The wisdom that escapes the schools, That bids the sage revise his rules By light of some Sabean girl!_ NEWS FROM BABYLON "Archaeologists have discovered a love-letter among the ruins of Babylon." --Newspaper report. _The world hath just one tale to tell, and it is very old, A little tale--a simple tale--a tale that's easy told: "There was a youth in Babylon who greatly loved a maid!" The world hath just one song to sing, but sings it unafraid, A little song--a foolish song--the only song it hath: "There was a youth in Ascalon who loved a girl in Gath!"_ Homer clanged it, Omar twanged it, Greece and Persia knew!-- Nimrod's reivers, Hiram's weavers, Hindu, Kurd, and Jew-- Crowning Tyre, Troy afire, they have dreamed the dream; Tiber-side and Nilus-tide brightened with the gleam-- Oh, the suing, sighing, wooing, sad and merry hours, Blisses tasted, kisses wasted, building Babel's towers! Hearts were aching, hearts were breaking, lashes wet with dew, When the ships touched the lips of islands Sappho knew; Yearning breasts and burning breasts, cold at last, are hid Amid the glooms of carven tombs in Khufu's pyramid-- Though the sages, down the ages, smile their cynic doubt, Man and maid, unafraid, put the schools to rout; Seek to chain love and retain love in the bonds of breath, Vow to hold love, bind and fold love even unto death! _The dust of forty centuries has buried Babylon, And out of all her lovers dead rises only one; Rises with a song to sing and laughter in his eyes, The old song--the only song--for all the rest are lies!_ _For, oh, the world has just one dream, and it is very old-- 'Tis youth's dream--a silly dream--but it is flushed with gold!_ A RHYME OF THE ROADS PEARL-SLASHED and purple and crimson and fringed with gray mist of the hills, The pennons of morning advance to the music of rock-fretted rills, The dumb forest quickens to song, and the little gusts shout as they fling A floor-cloth of orchard bloom down for the flashing, quick feet of the Spring. To the road, gipsy-heart, thou and I! 'Tis the mad piper, Spring, who is leading; 'Tis the pulse of his piping that throbs through the brain, irresistibly pleading; Full-blossomed, deep-bosomed, fain woman, light-footed, lute-throated and fleet, We have drunk of the wine of this Wanderer's song; let us follow his feet! Like raveled red girdles flung down by some hoidenish goddess in mirth The tangled roads reach from rim unto utter-most rim of the earth-- We will weave of these strands a strong net, we will snare the bright wings of delight,-- We will make of these strings a sweet lute that will shame the low wind-harps of night. The clamor of tongues and the clangor of trades in the peevish packed street, The arrogant, jangling Nothings, with iterant, dissonant beat, The clattering, senseless endeavor with dross of mere gold for its goal, These have sickened the senses and wearied the brain and straitened the soul. "Come forth and be cleansed of the folly of strife for things worthless of strife, Come forth and gain life and grasp God by foregoing gains worthless of life"-- It was thus spake the wizard wildwood, low-voiced to the hearkening heart, It was thus sang the jovial hills, and the harper sun bore part. O woman, whose blood as my blood with the fire of the Spring is aflame, We did well, when the red roads called, that we heeded the call and came-- Came forth to the sweet wise silence where soul may speak sooth unto soul, Vine-wreathed and vagabond Love, with the goal of Nowhere for our goal! What planet-crowned Dusk that wanders the steeps of our firmament there Hath gems that may match with the dew-opals meshed in thine opulent hair? What wind-witch that skims the curled billows with feet they are fain to caress Hath sandals so wing'd as thine art with a god-like carelessness? And dare we not dream this is heaven?--to wander thus on, ever on. Through the hush-heavy valleys of space, up the flushing red slopes of the dawn?-- For none that seeks rest shall find rest till he ceaseth his striving for rest, And the gain of the quest is the joy of the road that allures to the quest. THE LAND OF YESTERDAY AND I would seek the country town Amid green meadows nestled down If I could only find the way Back to the Land of Yesterday! How I would thrust the miles aside, Rush up the quiet lane, and then, Just where her roses laughed in pride, Find her among the flowers again. I'd slip in silently and wait Until she saw me by the gate, And then ... read through a blur of tears Quick pardon for the selfish years. This time, this time, I would not wait For that brief wire that said, _Too late!_-- If I could only find the way Into the Land of Yesterday. I wonder if her roses yet Lift up their heads and laugh with pride, And if her phlox and mignonette Have heart to blossom by their side; I wonder if the dear old lane Still chirps with robins after rain, And if the birds and banded bees Still rob her early cherry-trees.... I wonder, if I went there now, How everything would seem, and how-- But no! not now; there is no way Back to the Land of Yesterday. OCTOBER CEASE to call him sad and sober, Merriest of months, October! Patron of the bursting bins, Reveler in wayside inns, I can nowhere find a trace Of the pensive in his face; There is mingled wit and folly, But the madcap lacks the grace Of a thoughtful melancholy. Spendthrift of the seasons' gold, How he flings and scatters out Treasure filched from summer-time!-- Never ruffling squire of old Better loved a tavern bout When Prince Hal was in his prime. Doublet slashed with gold and green; Cloak of crimson; changeful sheen, Of the dews that gem his breast; Frosty lace about his throat; Scarlet plumes that flaunt and float Backward in a gay unrest-- Where's another gallant drest With such tricksy gaiety, Such unlessoned vanity? With his amber afternoons And his pendant poets' moons-- With his twilights dashed with rose From the red-lipped afterglows-- With his vocal airs at dawn Breathing hints of Helicon-- Bacchanalian bees that sip Where his cider-presses drip-- With the winding of the horn Where his huntsmen meet the morn-- With his every piping breeze Shaking from familiar trees Apples of Hesperides-- With the chuckle, chirp, and trill Of his jolly brooks that spill Mirth in tangled madrigals Down pebble-dappled waterfalls-- (Brooks that laugh and make escape Through wild arbors where the grape Purples with a promise of Racy vintage rare as love)-- With his merry, wanton air, Mirth and vanity and folly Why should he be made to bear Burden of some melancholy Song that swoons and sinks with care? Cease to call him sad or sober,-- He's a jolly dog, October! CHANT OF THE CHANGING HOURS THE Hours passed by, a fleet, confused crowd; With wafture of blown garments bright as fire, Light, light of foot and laughing, morning-browed, And where they trod the jonquil and the briar Thrilled into jocund life, the dreaming dells Waked to a morrice chime of jostled bells;-- They danced! they danced! to piping such as flings The garnered music of a million Springs Into one single, keener ecstasy;-- One paused and shouted to my questionings: "Lo, I am Youth; I bid thee follow me!" The Hours passed by; they paced, great lords and proud, Crowned on with sunlight, robed in rich attire; Before their conquering word the brute deed bowed, And Ariel fancies served their large desire; They spake, and roused the mused soul that dwells In dust, or, smiling, shaped new heavens and hells, Dethroned old gods and made blind beggars kings: "And what art thou," I cried to one, "that brings His mistress, for a brooch, the Galaxy?"-- "I am the plumed Thought that soars and sings: Lo, I am Song; I bid thee follow me!" The Hours passed by, with veiled eyes endowed Of dream, and parted lips that scarce suspire, To breathing dusk and arrowy moonlight vowed, South wind and shadowy grove and murmuring lyre;-- Swaying they moved, as drows'd of wizard spells Or tranc'd with sight of recent miracles, And yet they trembled, down their folded wings Quivered the hint of sweet withholden things, Ah, bitter-sweet in their intensity! One paused and said unto my wonderings: "Lo, I am Love; I bid thee follow me!" The Hours passed by, through huddled cities loud With witless hate and stale with stinking mire: So cowled monks might march with bier and shroud Down streets plague-spotted toward some cleansing pyre;-- Yet, lo! strange lilies bloomed in lightless cells, And passionate spirits burst their clayey shells And sang the stricken hope that bleeds and clings: Earth's bruised heart beat in the throbbing strings, And joy still struggled through the threnody! One stern Hour said unto my marvelings: "Lo, I am Life; I bid thee follow me!" The Hours passed by, the stumbling hours and cowed, Uncertain, prone to tears and childish ire,-- The wavering hours that drift like any cloud At whim of winds or fortunate or dire,-- The feeble shapes that any chance expells; Their wisdom useless, lacking the blood that swells The tensed vein: the hot, swift tide that stings With life. Ah, wise! but naked to the slings Of fate, and plagued of youthful memory! A cracked voice broke upon my pityings: "Lo, I am Age; I bid thee follow me!" Ah, Youth! we dallied by the babbling wells Where April all her lyric secret tells;-- Ah, Song! we sped our bold imaginings As far as yon red planet's triple rings;-- O Life! O Love! I followed, followed thee! There waits one word to end my journeyings: "Lo, I am Death; I bid thee follow me!" DREAMS AND DUST SELVES _My dust in ruined Babylon Is blown along the level plain, And songs of mine at dawn have soared Above the blue Sicilian main._ We are ourselves, and not ourselves ... For ever thwarting pride and will Some forebear's passion leaps from death To claim a vital license still. Ancestral lusts that slew and died, Resurgent, swell each living vein; Old doubts and faiths, new panoplied, Dispute the mastery of the brain. The love of liberty that flames From written rune and stricken reed Shook the hot hearts of swordsmen sires At Marathon and Runnymede. _What are these things we call our "selves"? ... Have I not shouted, sobbed, and died In the bright surf of spears that broke Where Greece rolled back the Persian tide?_ Are we who breathe more quick than they Whose bones are dust within the tomb? Nay, as I write, what gray old ghosts Murmur and mock me from the gloom.... They call ... across strange seas they call, Strange seas, and haunted coasts of time.... They startle me with wordless songs To which the Sphinx hath known the rhyme. Our hearts swell big with dead men's hates, Our eyes sting hot with dead men's tears; We are ourselves, but not ourselves, Born heirs, but serfs, to all the years! _I rode with Nimrod ... strove at Troy ... A slave I stood in Crowning Tyre, A queen looked on me and I loved And died to compass my desire._ THE WAGES EARTH loves to gibber o'er her dross, Her golden souls, to waste; The cup she fills for her god-men Is a bitter cup to taste. Who sees the gyves that bind mankind And strives to strike them off Shall gain the hissing hate of fools, Thorns, and the ingrate's scoff. Who storms the moss-grown walls of eld And beats some falsehood down Shall pass the pallid gates of death _Sans_ laurel, love or crown; For him who fain would teach the world The world holds hate in fee-- For Socrates, the hemlock cup; For Christ, Gethsemane. IN MARS, WHAT AVATAR? "In Vishnu-land, what avatar?" --BROWNING. PERCHANCE the dying gods of Earth Are destined to another birth, And worn-out creeds regain their worth In the kindly air of other stars-- What lords of life and light hold sway In the myriad worlds of the Milky Way? What avatars in Mars? What Aphrodites from the seas That lap the plunging Pleiades Arise to spread afar The dream that was the soul of Greece? In Mars, what avatar? Which hundred moons are wan with love For dull Endymions? Which hundred moons hang tranced above Audacious Ajalons? What Holy Grail lures errants pale Through the wastes of yonder star? What fables sway the Milky Way? In Mars, what avatar? When morning skims with crimson wings Across the meres of Mercury, What dreaming Memnon wakes and sings Of miracles on Mercury? What Christs, what avatars, Claim Mars? THE GOD-MAKER, MAN NEVERMORE Shall the shepherds of Arcady follow Pan's moods as he lolls by the shore Of the mere, or lies hid in the hollow; Nevermore Shall they start at the sound of his reed-fashioned flute; Fallen mute Are the strings of Apollo, His lyre and his lute; And the lips of the Memnons are mute Evermore; And the gods of the North,--are they dead or forgetful, Our Odin and Baldur and Thor? Are they drunk, or grown weary of worship and fretful, Our Odin and Baldur and Thor? And into what night have the Orient dieties strayed? Swart gods of the Nile, in dusk splendors arrayed, Brooding Isis and somber Osiris, You were gone ere the fragile papyrus, (That bragged you eternal!) decayed. The avatars But illumine their limited evens And vanish like plunging stars; They are fixed in the whirling heavens No firmer than falling stars; Brief lords of the changing soul, they pass Like a breath from the face of a glass, Or a blossom of summer blown shallop-like over The clover And tossed tides of grass. Sink to silence the psalms and the paeans The shibboleths shift, and the faiths, And the temples that challenged the aeons Are tenanted only by wraiths; Swoon to silence the cymbals and psalters, The worships grow senseless and strange, And the mockers ask, _"Where be thy altars?"_ Crying, _"Nothing is changeless--but Change!"_ Yes, nothing seems changeless, but Change. And yet, through the creed-wrecking years, One story for ever appears; The tale of a City Supernal-- The whisper of Something eternal-- A passion, a hope, and a vision That peoples the silence with Powers; A fable of meadows Elysian Where Time enters not with his Hours;-- Manifold are the tale's variations, Race and clime ever tinting the dreams, Yet its essence, through endless mutations, Immutable gleams. Deathless, though godheads be dying, Surviving the creeds that expire, Illogical, reason-defying, Lives that passionate, primal desire; Insistent, persistent, forever Man cries to the silences, _Never_ _Shall Death reign the lord of the soul, Shall the dust be the ultimate goal-- I will storm the black bastions of Night! I will tread where my vision has trod, I will set in the darkness a light, In the vastness, a god!"_ As the forehead of Man grows broader, so do his creeds; And his gods they are shaped in his image, and mirror his needs; And he clothes them with thunders and beauty, he clothes them with music and fire; Seeing not, as he bows by their altars, that he worships his own desire; And mixed with his trust there is terror, and mixed with his madness is ruth, And every man grovels in error, yet every man glimpses a truth. For all of the creeds are false, and all of the creeds are true; And low at the shrines where my brothers bow, there will I bow, too; For no form of a god, and no fashion Man has made in his desperate passion But is worthy some worship of mine;-- Not too hot with a gross belief, Nor yet too cold with pride, I will bow me down where my brothers bow, Humble--but open-eyed! UNREST A FIERCE unrest seethes at the core Of all existing things: It was the eager wish to soar That gave the gods their wings. From what flat wastes of cosmic slime, And stung by what quick fire, Sunward the restless races climb!-- Men risen out of mire! There throbs through all the worlds that are This heart-beat hot and strong, And shaken systems, star by star, Awake and glow in song. But for the urge of this unrest These joyous spheres were mute; But for the rebel in his breast Had man remained a brute. When baffled lips demanded speech, Speech trembled into birth-- (One day the lyric word shall reach From earth to laughing earth)-- When man's dim eyes demanded light The light he sought was born-- His wish, a Titan, scaled the height And flung him back the morn! From deed to dream, from dream to deed, From daring hope to hope, The restless wish, the instant need, Still lashed him up the slope! . . . . . . I sing no governed firmament, Cold, ordered, regular-- I sing the stinging discontent That leaps from star to star! THE PILTDOWN SKULL WHAT was his life, back yonder In the dusk where time began, This beast uncouth with the jaw of an ape And the eye and brain of a man?-- Work, and the wooing of woman, Fight, and the lust of fight, Play, and the blind beginnings Of an Art that groped for light?-- In the wonder of redder mornings, By the beauty of brighter seas, Did he stand, the world's first thinker, Scorning his clan's decrees?-- Seeking, with baffled eyes, In the dumb, inscrutable skies, A name for the greater glory That only the dreamer sees? One day, when the afterglows, Like quick and sentient things, With a rush of their vast, wild wings, Rose out of the shaken ocean As great birds rise from the sod, Did the shock of their sudden splendor Stir him and startle and thrill him, Grip him and shake him and fill him With a sense as of heights untrod?-- Did he tremble with hope and vision, And grasp at a hint of God? London stands where the mammoth Caked shag flanks with slime-- And what are our lives that inherit The treasures of all time? Work, and the wooing of woman, Fight, and the lust of fight, A little play (and too much toil!) With an Art that gropes for light; And now and then a dreamer, Rapt, from his lonely sod Looks up and is thrilled and startled With a fleeting sense of God! THE SEEKER THE creeds he wrought of dream and thought Fall from him at the touch of life, His old gods fail him in the strife-- Withdrawn, the heavens he sought! Vanished, the miracles that led, The cloud at noon, the flame at night; The vision that he wing'd and sped Falls backward, baffled, from the height; Yet in the wreck of these he stands Upheld by something grim and strong; Some stubborn instinct lifts a song And nerves him, heart and hands: He does not dare to call it hope;-- It is not aught that seeks reward-- Nor faith, that up some sunward slope Runs aureoled to meet its lord; It touches something elder far Than faith or creed or thought in man, It was ere yet these lived and ran Like light from star to star; It touches that stark, primal need That from unpeopled voids and vast Fashioned the first crude, childish creed,-- And still shall fashion, till the last! For one word is the tale of men: They fling their icons to the sod, And having trampled down a god They seek a god again! Stripped of his creeds inherited, Bereft of all his sires held true, Amid the wreck of visions dead He thrills at touch of visions new.... He wings another Dream for flight.... He seeks beyond the outmost dawn A god he set there ... and, anon, Drags that god from the height! . . . . . . But aye from ruined faiths and old That droop and die, fall bruised seeds; And when new flowers and faiths unfold They're lovelier flowers, they're kindlier creeds. THE AWAKENING THE steam, the reek, the fume, of prayer Blown outward for a million years, Becomes a mist between the spheres, And waking Sentience struggles there. Prayer still creates the boon we pray; And gods we've hoped for, from those hopes Will gain sufficient form one day And in full godhood storm the slopes Where ancient Chaos, stark and gray, Already trembles for his sway. When that the restless worlds would fly Their wish created rapid wings, But not till aeons had passed by With dower of many idler things; And when dumb flesh demanded speech Speech struggled to the lips at last;-- Now the unpeopled Void, and vast, Clean to that uttermost blank beach Whereto the boldest thought may reach That voyages from the vaguest past-- (Dim realm and ultimate of space)-- Is vexed and troubled, stirs and shakes, In prescience of a god that wakes, Born of man's wish to see God's face! The endless, groping, dumb desires,-- The climbing incense thick and sweet, The lovely purpose that aspires, The wraiths of vapor wing'd and fleet That rise and run with eager feet Forth from a myriad altar fires: All these become a mist that fills The vales and chasms nebular; A shaping Soul that moves and thrills The wastes between red star and star! A SONG OF MEN OUT of the soil and the slime, Reeking, they climb, Out of the muck and the mire, Rank, they aspire; Filthy with murder and mud, Black with shed blood, Lust and passion and clay-- Dying, they slay; Stirred by vague hints of a goal, Seeking a soul! Groping through terror and night Up to the light: Life in the dust and the clod Sensing a God; Flushed of the glamor and gleam Caught from a dream; Stained of the struggle and toil, Stained of the soil, Ally of God in the end-- Helper and friend-- Hero and prophet and priest Out of the beast! THE NOBLER LESSON CHRIST was of virgin birth, and, being slain, The creedists say, He rose from death again. Oh, futile age-long talk of death and birth!-- His life, that is the one thing wonder-worth; Not how He came, but how He lived on earth. For if gods stoop, and with quaint jugglery Mock nature's laws, how shall that profit thee?-- The nobler lesson is that mortals can Grow godlike through this baffled front of man! AT LAST EACH race has died and lived and fought for the "true" gods of that poor race, Unconsciously, divinest thought of each race gilding its god's face. And every race that lives and dies shall make itself some other gods, Shall build, with mingled truth and lies, new icons from the world-old clods. Through all the tangled creeds and dreams and shifting shibboleths men hold The false-and-true, inwoven, gleams: a matted mass of dross and gold. Prove, then, thy gods in thine own soul; all others' gods, for thee, are vain; Nor swerved be, struggling for the goal, by bribe of joy nor threat of pain. As skulls grow broader, so do faiths; as old tongues die, old gods die, too, And only ghosts of gods and wraiths may meet the backward-gazer's view. Where, where the faiths of yesterday? Ah, whither vanished, whither gone? Say, what Apollos drive to-day adown the flaming slopes of dawn? Oh, does the blank past hide from view forgotten Christs, to be reborn, The future tremble where some new Messiah-Memnon sings the morn? Of all the worlds, say any earth, like dust wind-harried to and fro, Shall give the next Prometheus birth; but say--at last--you do not know. How should I know what dawn may gleam beyond the gates of darkness there?-- Which god of all the gods men dream? Why should I whip myself to care? Whichever over all hath place hath shaped and made me what I am; Hath made me strong to front his face, to dare to question though he damn. Perhaps to cringe and cower and bring a shrine a forced and faithless faith Is far more futile than to fling your laughter in the face of Death. For writhe or whirl in dervish rout, they are not flattered there on high, Or sham belief to hide a doubt--no gods are mine that love a lie! Nor gods that beg belief on earth with portents that some seer foretells-- Is life itself not wonder-worth that we must cry for miracles? Is it not strange enough we breathe? Does every- thing not God reveal? Or must we ever weave and wreathe some creed that shall his face conceal? Some creed of which its prophets cry it holds the secret's all-in-all: Some creed which ever bye and bye doth crumble, totter, to its fall! Say any dream of all the dreams that drift and darkle, glint and glow, Holds most of truth within its gleams; but say --at last--you do not know. Oh, say the soul, from star to star, with victory wing'd, leap on through space And scale the bastioned nights that bar the secret's inner dwelling-place; Or say it ever roam dim glades where pallid wraiths of long-dead moons Flit like blown feathers through the shades, borne on the breath of sobbing tunes: Say any tide of any time, of all the tides that ebb and flow, Shall buoy us on toward any clime; but say--at last--you do not know! LYRICS "KING PANDION, HE IS DEAD" "King Pandion, he is dead; All thy friends are lapp'd in lead." --SHAKESPEARE. DREAMERS, drinkers, rebel youth, Where's the folly free and fine You and I mistook for truth? Wits and wastrels, friends of wine, Wags and poets, friends of mine, Gleams and glamors all are fled, Fires and frenzies half divine! King Pandion, he is dead! Time's unmannerly, uncouth! Here's the crow's-foot for a sign! And, upon our brows, forsooth, Wits and wastrels, friends of wine, Time hath set his mark malign; Frost has touched us, heart and head, Cooled the blood and dulled the eyne: King Pandion, he is dead! Time's a tyrant without ruth:-- Fancies used to bloom and twine Round a common tavern booth, Wits and wastrels, friends of wine, In that youth of mine and thine! 'Tis for youth the feast is spread; When we dine now--we but dine!-- King Pandion, he is dead! How our dreams would glow and shine, Wits and wastrels, friends of wine, Ere the drab Hour came that said: King Pandion, he is dead! DAVID TO BATHSHEBA VERY red are the roses of Sharon, But redder thy mouth, There is nard, there is myrrh, in En Gedi, From the uplands of Lebanon, heavy With balsam, the winds Drift freighted and scented and cedarn-- But thy mouth is more precious than spices! Thy breasts are twin lilies of Kedron; White lilies, that sleep In the shallows where loitering Kedron Broadens out and is lost in the Jordan; Globed lilies, so white That David, thy King, thy beloved Declareth them meet for his gardens. Under the stars very strangely The still waters gleam; Deep down in the waters of Hebron The soul of the starlight is sunken, But deep in thine eyes Stirs a more wonderful secret Than pools ever learn of the starlight. THE JESTERS A TOAST to the Fools! Pierrot, Pantaloon, Harlequin, Clown, Merry-Andrew, Buffoon-- Touchstone and Triboulet--all of the tribe.-- Dancer and jester and singer and scribe. We sigh over Yorick--(unfortunate fool, Ten thousand Hamlets have fumbled his skull!)-- But where is the Hamlet to weep o'er the biers Of his brothers? And where is the poet solicits our tears For the others? They have passed from the world and left never a sign, And few of us now have the courage to sing That their whimsies made life a more livable thing-- We, that are left of the line, Let us drink to the jesters--in gooseberry wine! Then here's to the Fools! Flouting the sages Through history's pages And driving the dreary old seers into rages-- The humbugging Magis Who prate that the wages Of Folly are Death--toast the Fools of all ages! They have ridden like froth down the whirlpools of time, They have jingled their caps in the councils of state, They have snared half the wisdom of life in a rhyme, And tripped into nothingness grinning at fate-- Ho, brothers mine, Brim up the glasses with gooseberry wine! Though the prince with his firman, The judge in his ermine, Affirm and determine Bold words need the whip, Let them spare us the rod and remit us the sermon, For Death has a quip Of the tomb and the vermin That will silence at last the most impudent lip! Is the world but a bubble, a bauble, a joke? Heigho, Brother Fools, now your bubble is broke, Do you ask for a tear?--or is it worth while? Here's a sigh for you, then--but it ends in a smile! Ho, Brother Death, We would laugh at you, too--if you spared us the breath! "MARY, MARY, QUITE CONTRARY" "Mary, Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockle-shells And pretty maids all in a row!" --Mother Goose. MARY, Mistress Mary, How does your garden grow? From your uplands airy, Mary, Mistress Mary, Float the chimes of faery When the breezes blow! Mary, Mistress Mary, How does your garden grow? With flower-maidens, singing Among the morning hills-- With silvern bells a-ringing, With flower-maidens singing, With vocal lilies, springing By chanting daffodils; With flower-maidens, singing Among the morning hills! THE TRIOLET YOUR triolet should glimmer Like a butterfly; In golden light, or dimmer, Your triolet should glimmer, Tremble, turn, and shimmer, Flash, and flutter by; Your triolet should glimmer Like a butterfly. FROM THE BRIDGE HELD and thrilled by the vision I stood, as the twilight died, Where the great bridge soars like a song Over the crawling tide-- Stood on the middle arch-- And night flooded in from the bay, And wonderful under the stars Before me the city lay; Girdled with swinging waters-- Guarded by ship on ship-- A gem that the strong old ocean Held in his giant grip; There was play of shadows above And drifting gleams below, And magic of shifting waves That darkle and glance and glow; Dusky and purple and splendid, Banded with loops of light, The tall towers rose like pillars, Lifting the dome of night; The gliding cars of traffic Slid swiftly up and down Like monsters, fiery mailed, Leaping across the town. Not planned with a thought of beauty; Built by a lawless breed; Builded of lust for power, Builded of gold and greed. Risen out of the trader's Brutal and sordid wars-- And yet, behold! a city Wonderful under the stars! "PALADINS, PALADINS, YOUTH NOBLE-HEARTED" GALAHADS, Galahads, Percivals, gallop! Bayards, to the saddle!--the clangorous trumpets, Hoarse with their ecstasy, call to the mellay. Paladins, Paladins, Rolands flame-hearted, Olivers, Olivers, follow the bugles! Girt with the glory and glamor of power, Error sits throned in the high place of justice; Paladins, Paladins, youth noble-hearted, Saddle and spear, for the battle-flags beckon! Thrust the keen steel through the throat of the liar. Star (or San Grael) that illumines thy pathway, Follow it, follow that far Ideal!-- Thine not the guerdon to gain it or grasp it; Soul of thee, passing, ascendeth unto it, Augmenting its brightness for them that come after. Heed then the call of the trumpets, the trumpets, Hoarse with the fervor, the frenzy of battle,-- Paladins, Paladins, saddle! to saddle! Bide not, abide not, God's bugles are calling!-- Thrust the sharp sword through the heart of the liar. "MY LANDS, NOT THINE" MY lands, not thine, we look upon, Friend Croesus, hill and vale and lawn. Mine every woodland madrigal, And mine thy singing waterfall That vaguely hints of Helicon. Mark how thine upland slopes have drawn A golden glory from the dawn!-- _Fool's gold?_--thy dullness proves them all My lands--not thine! For when all title-deeds are gone, Still, still will satyr, nymph, and faun Through brake and covert pipe and call In dances bold and bacchanal-- For them, for me, you hold in pawn, My lands--not thine! TO A DANCING DOLL FORMAL, quaint, precise, and trim, You begin your steps demurely-- There's a spirit almost prim In the feet that move so surely, So discreetly, to the chime Of the music that so sweetly Marks the time. But the chords begin to tinkle Quicker, And your feet they flash and flicker-- Twinkle!-- Flash and flutter to a tricksy Fickle meter; And you foot it like a pixie-- Only fleeter! Now our current, dowdy Things-- "Turkey-trots" and rowdy Flings-- For they made you overseas In politer times than these, In an age when grace could please, Ere St. Vitus Clutched and shook us, spine and knees;-- Loosed a plague of jerks to smite us! Well, our day is far more brisk And our manner rather slacker), And you are nothing more than bisque And lacquer-- But you shame us with the graces Of courtlier times and places When the cheap And vulgar wasn't "art"-- When the faunal prance and leap Weren't "smart." Have we lost the trick of wedding Grace to pleasure? Must we clown it at the bidding Of some tawdry, common measure? Can't you school us in the graces Of your pose and dainty paces?-- Now the chords begin to tinkle Quicker-- And your feet they flash and flicker-- Twinkle!-- And you mock us as you featly Swing and flutter to the chime Of the music-box that sweetly Marks the time! LOWER NEW YORK--A STORM WHITE wing'd below the darkling clouds The driven sea-gulls wheel; The roused sea flings a storm against The towers of stone and steel. The very voice of ocean rings Along the shaken street-- Dusk, storm, and beauty whelm the world Where sea and city meet-- But what care they for flashing wings, Quick beauty, loud refrain, These huddled thousands, deaf and blind To all but greed and gain? AT SUNSET THE sun-god stooped from out the sky To kiss the flushing sea, While all the winds of all the world Made jovial melody; The night came hurrying up to hide The lovers with her tent; The governed thunders, rank on rank, Stood mute with wonderment; The pale worn moon, a jealous shade, Peered from the firmament; The early stars, the curious stars, Came peering forth to see What mighty nuptials shook the world With such an ecstasy Whenas the sun-god left the sky To mingle with the sea. A CHRISTMAS GIFT ALACK-A-DAY for poverty! What jewels my mind doth give to thee! Carved agate stone porphyrogene, Green emerald and beryl green, Deep sapphine and pale amethyst, Sly opal, cloaking with a mist The levin of its love elate, Shy brides' pearls, flushed and delicate, Sea-colored lapis lazuli, Sardonyx and chalcedony, Enkindling diamond, candid gold, Red rubies and red garnets bold: And all their humors should be blent In one intolerable blaze, Barbaric, fierce, and opulent, To dazzle him that dared to gaze! Alack-a-day for poverty: My rhymes are all you get of me! Yet, if your heart receive, behold! The worthless words are set in gold. SILVIA I STILL remember how she moved Among the rathe, wild blooms she loved, (When Spring came tip-toe down the slopes, Atremble 'twixt her doubts and hopes, Half fearful and all virginal)-- How Silvia sought this dell to call Her flowers into full festival, And chid them with this madrigal: _"The busy spider hangs the brush With filmy gossamers, The frogs are croaking in the creek, The sluggish blacksnake stirs, But still the ground is bare of bloom Beneath the fragrant firs. "Arise, arise, O briar rose, And sleepy violet! Awake, awake, anemone, Your wintry dreams forget--_ _For shame, you tardy marigold, Are you not budded yet? "The Swallow's back, and claims the eaves That last year were his home; The Robin follows where the plow Breaks up the crusted loam; And Red-wings spies the Thrush and pipes: 'Look! Speckle-breast is come!' "Up, blooms! and storm the wooded slopes, The lowlands and the plain-- Blow, jonquil, blow your golden horn Across the ranks of rain! To arms! to arms! and put to flight The Winter's broken train!"_ She paused beside this selfsame rill, And as she ceased, a daffodil Held up reproachfully his head And fluttered into speech, and said: _"Chide not the flowers! You little know Of all their travail 'neath the snow,_ _Their struggling hours Of choking sorrow underground. Chide not the flowers! You little guess of that profound And blind, dumb agony of ours! Yet, victor here beside the rill, I greet the light that I have found, A Daffodil!"_ And when the Daffodil was done A boastful Marigold spake on: _"Oh, chide the white frost, if you choose, The heavy clod, so hard to loose, The preying powers Of worm and insect underground. Chide not the flowers! For spite of scathe and cruel wound, Unconquered by the sunless hours, I rise in regal pride, a bold And golden-hearted, golden-crowned Marsh Marigold!"_ And when she came no more, her creek Would not believe, but bade us seek Hither, yon, and to and fro-- Everywhere that children go When the Spring Is on the wing And the winds of April blow-- "I will never think her dead; "She will come again!" it said; And then the birds that use the vale, Broken-hearted, turned the tale Into syllables of song And chirped it half a summer long: _"Silvia, Silvia, Be our Song once more, Our vale revisit, Silvia, And be our Song once more: For joy lies sleeping in the lute; The merry pipe, the woodland flute, And all the pleading reeds are mute That breathed to thee of yore._ _"Silvia, Silvia, Be our Moon again,_ _Shine on our valley, Silvia, And be our Moon again: The fluffy owl and nightingale Flit silent through the darkling vale, Or utter only words of wail From throats all harsh with pain. "Silvia, Silvia, Be Springtime, as of old; Come clad in laughter, Silvia, Our Springtime, as of old: The waiting lowlands and the hills Are tremulous with daffodils Unblown, until thy footstep thrills Their promise into gold."_ And, musing on her here, I too Must wonder if it can be true She died, as other mortals do. The thought would fit her more, to feign That, full of life and unaware That earth holds aught of grief or stain, The fairies stole and hold her where Death enters not, nor strife nor pain;-- That, drowsing on some bed of pansies, By Titania's necromancies Her senses were to slumber lulled, Deeply sunken, steeped and dulled, And by wafture of swift pinions She was borne out through earth's portals To the fairy queen's dominions, To some land of the immortals. THE EXPLORERS AND some still cry: _"What is the use? The service rendered? What the gain? Heroic, yes!--but in what cause? Have they made less one earth-borne pain? Broadened the bounded spirit's scope? Or died to make the dull world hope?"_ Must man still be the slave of Use?-- But these men, careless and elate, Join battle with a burly world Or come to wrestling grips with fate, And not for any good nor gain Nor any fame that may befall-- But, thrilling in the clutch of life, Heed the loud challenge and the call;-- And grown to symbols at the last, Stand in heroic silhouette Against horizons ultimate, As towers that front lost seas are set;-- The reckless gesture, the strong pose, Sharp battle-cry flung back to Earth, And buoyant humor, as a god Might say: _"Lo, here my feet have trod!"_-- There lies the meaning and the worth! They bring no golden treasure home, They win no acres for their clan, Nor dream nor deed of theirs shall mend The ills of man's bedeviled span-- Nor are they skilled in sleights of speech, (Nor overeager) to make plain The use they serve, transcending use,-- The gain beyond apparent gain! EARLY AUTUMN WITH half-hearted levies of frost that make foray, retire, and refrain-- Ambiguous bugles that blow and that falter to silence again-- With banners of mist that still waver above them, advance and retreat, The hosts of the Autumn still hide in the hills, for a doubt stays their feet;-- But anon, with a barbaric splendor to dazzle the eyes that behold, And regal in raiment of purple and umber and amber and gold, And girt with the glamor of conquest and scarved with red symbols of pride, From the hills in their might and their mirth on the steeds of the wind will they ride, To make sport and make spoil of the Summer, who dwells in a dream on the plain, Still tented in opulent ease in the camps of her indolent train. "TIME STEALS FROM LOVE" TIME steals from Love all but Love's wings; And how should aught but evil things, Or any good but death, befall Him that is thrall unto Time's thrall, Slave to the lesser of these Kings? O heart of youth that wakes and sings! O golden vows and golden rings! Life mocks you with the tale of all Time steals from Love! O riven lute and writhen strings, Dead bough whereto no blossom clings, The glory was ephemeral! Nor may our Autumn grief recall The passion of the perished Springs Time steals from Love! THE RONDEAU YOUR rondeau's tale must still be light-- No bugle-call to life's stern fight! Rather a smiling interlude Memorial to some transient mood Of idle love and gala-night. Its manner is the merest sleight O' hand; yet therein dwells its might, For if the heavier touch intrude Your rondeau's stale. Fragrant and fragile, fleet and bright, And wing'd with whim, it gleams in flight Like April blossoms wind-pursued Down aisles of tangled underwood;-- Nor be too serious when you write Your rondeau's tail! VISITORS THEY haunt me, they tease me with hinted Withheld revelations, The songs that I may not utter; They lead me, they flatter, they woo me. I follow, I follow, I snatch At the veils of their secrets in vain-- For lo! they have left me and vanished, The songs that I cannot sing. There are visions elusive that come With a quiver and shimmer of wings;-- Shapes shadows and shapes, and the murmur Of voices;-- Shapes, that out of the twilight Leap, and with gesture appealing Seem to deliver a message, And are gone 'twixt a breath and a breath;-- Shapes that race in with the waves Moving silverly under the moon, And are gone ere they break into foam on the rocks And recede;-- Breathings of love from invisible Flutes, Blown somewhere out in the tender Dusk, That die on the bosom of Silence;-- Formless, And fleeter than thought, Vaguer than thought or emotion, What are these visitors? Out of the vast and uncharted Realms that encircle the visible world, With a glimmer of light on their pinions, They rush ... They waver, they vanish, Leaving me stirred with a dream of the ultimate beauty, A sense of the ultimate music, I never shall capture;-- They are Beauty, Formless and tremulous Beauty, Beauty unborn; Beauty as yet unappareled In thought; Beauty that hesitates, Falters, Withdraws from the verge of birth, Flutters, Retreats from the portals of life;-- O Beauty for ever uncaptured! O songs that I never shall sing! THE PARTING WE have come "the primrose way," Folly, thou and I! Such a glamor and a grace Ever glimmered on thy face, Ever such a witchery Lit the laughing eyes of thee, Could a fool like me withstand Folly's feast and beckoning hand? Drinking, how thy lips' caress Spiced the cup of waywardness! So we came "the primrose way," Folly, thou and I! But now, Folly, we must part, Folly, thou and I! Shall one look with mirth or tears Back on all his wasted years, Purposes dissolved in wine, Pearls flung to the heedless swine?-- Idle days and nights of mirth, Were they pleasures nothing worth? Well, there's no gainsaying we Squandered youth right merrily! But now, Folly, we must part, Folly, thou and I! AN OPEN FIRE THESE logs with drama and with dream are rife, For all their golden Summers and green Springs Through leaf and root they sucked the forest's life, Drank in its secret, deep, essential things, Its midwood moods, its mystic runes, Its breathing hushes stirred of faery wings, Its August nights and April noons; The garnered fervors of forgotten Junes Flare forth again and waste away; And in the sap that leaps and sings We hear again the chant the cricket flings Across the hawthorn-scented dusks of May. REALITIES REALITIES WE are deceived by the shadow, we see not the substance of things. For the hills are less solid than thought; and deeds are but vapors; and flesh Is a mist thrown off and resumed by the soul, as a world by a god. Back of the transient appearance dwells in ineffable calm The utter reality, ultimate truth; this seems and that is. THE STRUGGLE I HAVE been down in a dark valley; I have been groping through a deep gorge; Far above, the lips of it were rimmed with moonlight, And here and there the light lay on the dripping rocks So that it seemed they dripped with moonlight, not with water; So deep it was, that narrow gash among the hills, That those great pines which fringed its edge Seemed to me no larger than upthrust fingers Silhouetted against the sky; And at its top the vale was strait, And the rays were slant And reached but part way down the sides; I could not see the moon itself; I walked through darkness, and the valley's edge Seemed almost level with the stars, The stars that were like fireflies in the little trees. It was the midnight of defeat; I felt that I had failed; I was mocked of the gods; There was no way out of that gorge; The paths led no whither And I could not remember their beginnings; I was doomed to wander evermore, Thirsty, with the sound of mocking waters in mine ears, Groping, with gleams of useless light Splashed in ironic beauty on the rocks above. And so I whined. And then despair flashed into rage; I leapt erect, and cried: _"Could I but grasp my life as sculptors grasp the clay And knead and thrust it into shape again!-- If all the scorn of Heaven were but thrown Into the focus of some creature I could clutch!-- If something tangible were but vouchsafed me By the cold, far gods!-- If they but sent a Reason for the failure of my life I'd answer it; If they but sent a Fiend, I'd conquer it!--_ _But I reach out, and grasp the air, I rage, and the brute rock echoes my words in mockery-- How can one fight the sliding moonlight on the cliffs? You gods, coward gods, Come down, I challenge you!-- You who set snares with roses and with passion, You who make flesh beautiful and damn men through the flesh, You who plump the purple grape and then put poison in the cup, You who put serpents in your Edens, You who gave me delight of my senses and broke me for it, You who have mingled death with beauty, You who have put into my blood the impulses for which you cursed me, You who permitted my brain the doubts wherefore you damn me, Behold, I doubt you, gods, no longer, but defy!-- I perish here? Then I will be slain of a god! You who have wrapped me in the scorn of your silence, The divinity in this same dust you flout_ _Flames through the dust, And dares, And flings you back your scorn,-- Come, face to face, and slay me if you will, But not until you've felt the weight Of all betricked humanity's contempt In one bold blow!-- Speak forth a Reason, and I will answer it, Yes, to your faces I will answer it; Come garmented in flesh and I will fight with you, Yes, in your faces will I smite you, gods; Coward gods and tricksters that set traps In paradise!-- Far gods that hedge yourselves about with silence And with distance; That mock men from the unscalable escarpments of your Heavens."_ Thus I raved, being mad. I had no sooner finished speaking than I felt The darkness fluttered by approaching feet, And the silence was burned through by trembling flames of sound, And I was 'ware that Something stood by me. And with a shout I leapt and grasped that Being, And the Thing grasped me. We came to wrestling grips, And back and forth we swayed, Hand seeking throat, and crook'd knee seeking To encrook unwary leg, And spread toes grasping the uneven ground; The strained breast muscles cracked and creaked, The sweat ran in my eyes, The plagued breath sobbed and whistled through my throat, I tasted blood, and strangled, but still struggled on-- The stars above me danced in swarms like yellow bees, The shaken moonlight writhed upon the rocks;-- But at the last I felt his breathing weaker grow, The tense limbs grow less tense, And with a bursting cry I bent his head right back, Back, back, until I heard his neck bones snap; His spine crunched in my grip; I flung him to the earth and knelt upon his breast And listened till the fluttering pulse was stilled. Man, god, or devil, I had wrenched the life from him! And lo!--even as he died The moonlight failed above the vale,-- And somehow, sure, I know now how!-- Between the rifted rocks the great Sun struck A finger down the cliff, and that red beam Lay sharp across the face of him that I had slain; And in that light I read the answer of the silent gods Unto my cursed-out prayer, For he that lay upon the ground was--I! I understood the lesson then; It was myself that lay there dead; Yes, I had slain my Self. THE REBEL No doubt the ordered worlds speed on With purpose in their wings; No doubt the ordered songs are sweet Each worthy angel sings; And doubtless it is wise to heed The ordered words of Kings; But how the heart leaps up to greet The headlong, rebel flight, Whenas some reckless meteor Blazes across the night! Some comet--Byron--Lucifer-- Has dared to Be, and fight! No doubt but it is safe to dwell Where ordered duties are; No doubt the cherubs earn their wage Who wind each ticking star; No doubt the system is quite right!-- Sane, ordered, regular; But how the rebel fires the soul Who dares the strong gods' ire! Each Byron!--Shelley!--Lucifer!-- And all the outcast choir That chant when some Prometheus Leaps up to steal Jove's fire! THE CHILD AND THE MILL BETTER a pauper, penniless, asleep on the kindly sod-- Better a gipsy, houseless, but near to the heart of God, That beats for ears not dulled by the clanking wheels of care-- Better starvation and freedom, hope and the good fresh air Than death to the Something in him that was born to laugh and dream, That was kin to the idle lilies and the ripples of the stream. For out of the dreams of childhood, that careless come and go, The boy gains strength, unknowing, that the Man will prove and know. But these fools with their lies and their dollars, their mills and their bloody hands, Who make a god of a wheel, who worship their whirring bands, They are flinging the life of a people, raw, to the brute machines. Dull-eyed, weary, and old--old in his early teens-- Stunted and stupid and twisted, marred in the mills of grief, Can your factories fashion a Man of this thing-- a Man and a Chief? Dumb is the heart of him now, at the time when his heart should sing-- Wasters of body and brain, what race will the future bring? What of the nation's nerve whenas swift crises come? What of the brawn that should heave the guns on the beck of the drum? Thieves of body and soul, who can neither think nor feel, Swine-eyed priests of little false gods of gold and steel, Bow to your obscene altars, worship your loud mills then! Feed to Moloch and Baal the brawn and brains of men-- But silent and watchful and hidden forever over all The masters brood of those Mills that "grind exceeding small." And it needs no occult art nor magic to foreshow That a people who sow defeat they will reap the thing they sow. "SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI" CONQUERORS leonine, lordly, Princes and vaunting kings, Ye are drunk with the sound of your braggart trumps-- _But lo! ye are little things! Earth ... it is charnel with monarchs! And the puffs of dust that start Where your war steeds stamp with their ringing hoofs Were each some warrior's heart._ Peoples imperial, mighty, Masterful, challenging fate, The tread of your cohorts shakes the hills-- _But lo! ye are not great! Nations that swarm and murmur, Ye are moths that flutter and climb-- Ye are whirling gnats, ye are swirling bees, Tossed in the winds of time!_ Earth that is flushed with glory, A marvelous world ye are! _But lo! in the midst of a million stars Ye are only one pale star! A breath stirs the dark abysses.... The deeps below the deep Are troubled and vexed ... and a thousand worlds Fall on eternal sleep!_ THE COMRADE I HATH not man at his noblest An air of something more than man?-- A hint of grace immortal, Born of his greatly daring to assist the gods In conquering these shaggy wastes, These desert worlds, And planting life and order in these stars?-- So Woman at her best: Her eyes are bright with visions and with dreams That triumph over time; Her plumed thought, wing for wing, is mate with his. II The world rolls on from dream to dream, And 'neath the vast impersonal revenges of its going, Crushed fools that cried defeat Lie dead amid the dust they prophesied-- Ye doubters of man's larger destiny, Ye that despair, Look backward down the vistaed years, And all is battle--and all victory! Man fought, to be a man! Through painful centuries the slow beast fought, Blinded and baffled, fought to gain his soul;-- Wild, hairy, shag, and feared of shadows, Yet the clouds Made him strange signals that he puzzled o'er;-- Beast, child, and ape, And yet the winds harped to him, and the sea Rolled in upon his consciousness Its tides of wonder and romance;-- Uncouth and caked with mire, And yet the stars said something to him, and the sun Declared itself a god;-- The lagging cycles turned at last The pictures into thought, Thought flowered in soul;-- But, oh, the myriad weary years Ere Caliban was Shakespeare's self And Darwin's ape had Darwin's brain!-- The battling, battling, and the steep ascent, The fight to hold the little gained, The loss, the doubt, the shaken heart, The stubborn, groping slow recovery!-- But looking backward toward the dim beginnings, You that despair, Hath he not climbed and conquered? Look backward and all's Victory! What coward looks forward and foresees defeat? III Who climbed beside him, and who fought And suffered and was glad? Is she a lesser thing than he, Who stained the slopes with bloody feet, or stood Beside him on some hard-won eminence of hope Exulting as the bold dawn swept A harper hand along the ringing hills? Flesh of his flesh, and of his soul the soul, Hath she not fought, hath she not climbed? And how is she a lesser thing?-- Nay, if she ever was 'Twas we that made her so, who called her queen But kept her slave. IV Had she not courage for the fight? Hath she not courage for the years to come? Hath she not courage who descends alone-- (How pitifully alone, except for Love!) Where man's thought even falters that would follow, Into the shadowy abyss (Through vast and murmurous caverns dark with crowding dread And terrible with hovering wings), To battle there with Death?--to battle There with Death, and wrest from him, O Conqueror and Mother, Life! V Hath she too long dwelt dream-bound in the world of love, Unconscious of the sterner throes, The more austere, impersonal, wide faith, The urge that drives Christs to the cross Not for the love of one beloved, But for the love of all? If so, she wakes! Wakes and demands a share in all man's bolder destinies, The high, audacious ventures of the soul That thinks to scale the bastioned slopes And strike stark Chaos from his throne. We still stand in the dawn of time. Not meanly let us stand nor shaken with low doubts! For there beyond the verge and margin of gray cloud The future thrills with promise And the skies are tremulous with golden light;-- She too would share those victories, Comrade, and more than comrade;-- New times, new needs confront us now; We must evolve new powers To battle with;-- We must go forward now together, Or perchance we fail! ENVOI A LITTLE WHILE _A little while the tears and laughter, The willow and the rose-- A little while, and what comes after No man knows. An hour to sing, to love and linger ... Then lutanist and lute Will fall on silence, song and singer Both be mute. Our gods from our desires we fashion.... Exalt our baffled lives, And dream their vital bloom and passion Still survives; But when we're done with mirth and weeping, With myrtle, rue, and rose, Shall Death take Life into his keeping? ... No man knows._ _What heart hath not, through twilight places, Sought for its dead again To gild with love their pallid faces? ... Sought in vain! ... Still mounts the Dream on shining pinion ... Still broods the dull distrust ... Which shall have ultimate dominion, Dream, or dust? A little while with grief and laughter, And then the day will close; The shadows gather ... what comes after No man knows!_ Note: In "The Parting," page 161, line 4, I have changed "they face" to "thy face"; in "The Struggle," page 173, line 4, I have changed "l!o" to "lo!" 
46197	----	generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) Transcriber's Notes: Italics are indicated by _underscores_. STARVED ROCK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO . DALLAS ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO STARVED ROCK BY EDGAR LEE MASTERS Author of "Spoon River Anthology," "Songs and Satires," "The Great Valley," "Toward the Gulf," etc. New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1919 _All rights reserved_ COPYRIGHT, 1919 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Set up and electrotyped. Published, October, 1919 Certain of these poems first appeared in _Reedy's Mirror_, _Poetry_, _The Cosmopolitan_, _The Yale Review_ and _The New York Sun_. CONTENTS PAGE STARVED ROCK 1 HYMN TO THE DEAD 5 CREATION 10 THE WORLD'S DESIRE 13 TYRANNOSAURUS: OR BURNING LETTERS 16 LORD BYRON TO DOCTOR POLIDORI 22 THE FOLDING MIRROR 29 A WOMAN OF FORTY 33 WILD BIRDS 34 A LADY 36 THE NEGRO WARD 40 WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE 44 FOR A PLAY 47 CHICAGO 49 THE WEDDING FEAST 54 BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON 58 THE DREAM OF TASSO 60 THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 69 THE LAMENT OF SOPHONIA 77 AT DECAPOLIS 79 WINGED VICTORY 83 OH YOU SABBATARIANS! 88 PALLAS ATHENE 90 AT SAGAMORE HILL 95 TO ROBERT NICHOLS 101 BONNYBELL: THE BUTTERFLY 103 HYMN TO AGNI 109 EPITAPH FOR US 111 BOTTICELLI TO SIMONETTA 114 FLOWER IN THE GARDEN 115 INEXORABLE DEITIES 117 ARIELLE 119 SOUNDS OUT OF SORROW 121 MOURNIN' FOR RELIGION 122 THYAMIS 124 I SHALL GO DOWN INTO THIS LAND 126 SPRING LAKE 128 THE BARBER OF SEPO 138 THEY'D NEVER KNOW ME NOW 145 NEL MEZZO DEL CAMMIN 156 THE OAK TREE 160 THE HOUSE ON THE HILL 162 WASHINGTON HOSPITAL 163 NEITHER FAITH NOR BEAUTY CAN REMAIN 170 STARVED ROCK As a soul from whom companionships subside The meaningless and onsweeping tide Of the river hastening, as it would disown Old ways and places, left this stone Of sand above the valley, to look down Miles of the valley, hamlet, village, town. * * * * * It is a head-gear of a chief whose head, Down from the implacable brow, Waiting is held below The waters, feather decked With blossoms blue and red, With ferns and vines; Hiding beneath the waters, head erect, His savage eyes and treacherous designs. * * * * * It is a musing memory and memorial Of geologic ages Before the floods began to fall; The cenotaph of sorrows, pilgrimages Of Marquette and LaSalle. The eagles and the Indians left it here In solitude, blown clean Of kindred things: as an oak whose leaves are sere Fly over the valley when the winds are keen, And nestle where the earth receives Another generation of exhausted leaves. * * * * * Fatigued with age its sleepless eyes look over Fenced fields of corn and wheat, Barley and clover. The lowered pulses of the river beat Invisibly by shores that stray In progress and retreat Past Utica and Ottawa, And past the meadow where the Illini Shouted and danced under the autumn moon, When toddlers and papooses gave a cry, And dogs were barking for the boon Of the hunter home again to clamorous tents Smoking beneath the evening's copper sky. Later the remnant of the Illini Climbed up this Rock, to die Of hunger, thirst, or down its sheer ascents Rushed on the spears of Pottawatomies, And found the peace Where thirst and hunger are unknown. * * * * * This is the tragic and the fateful stone Le Rocher or Starved Rock, A symbol and a paradigm, A sphinx of elegy and battle hymn, Whose lips unlock Life's secret, which is vanishment, defeat, In epic dirges for the races That pass and leave no traces Before new generations driven in the blast Of Time and Nature blowing round its head. Renewing in the Present what the Past Knew wholly, or in part, so to repeat Warfare, extermination, old things dead But brought to life again In Life's immortal pain. * * * * * What Destinies confer, And laughing mock LaSalle, his dreamings stir To wander here, depart The fortress of Creve Coeur, Of broken heart, For this fort of Starved Rock? After the heart is broken then the cliff Where vultures flock; And where below its steeps the savage skiff Cuts with a pitiless knife the rope let down For water. From the earth this Indian town Vanished and on this Rock the Illini Thirsting, their buckets taken with the knife, Lay down to die. * * * * * This is the land where every generation Lets down its buckets for the water of Life. We are the children and the epigone Of the Illini, the vanished nation. And this starved scarp of stone Is now the emblem of our tribulation, The inverted cup of our insatiable thirst, The Illini by fate accursed, This land lost to the Pottawatomies, They lost the land to us, Who baffled and idolatrous, And thirsting, spurred by hope Kneel upon aching knees, And with our eager hands draw up the bucketless rope. * * * * * This is the tragic, the symbolic face, Le Rocher or Starved Rock, Round which the eternal turtles drink and swim And serpents green and strange, As race comes after race, War after war. This is the sphinx whose Memnon lips breathe dirges To empire's wayward star, And over the race's restless urges, Whose lips unlock Life's secret which is vanishment and change. HYMN TO THE DEAD O, you who have gone from the ways of cities, From the peopled places, the streets of strife, From offices, markets, rooms, retreats, Pastoral ways, hamlets, everywhere from the earth, And have made of the emptiness of your departure A land, a country, a realm all your own, Set above the hills of our vision, an empire Within, around, above our empire of days, Of pain and clamorous tongues; An empire which out of a sovereign silence Stretches its power over the restless multitude Of our thoughts, and the ceaseless music of our beings, And surrounds us even as the air we breathe-- O ye majestic Dead, hear our hymn! * * * * * The clown, the wastrel and the fool in life Are lifted up by you, O Death! The least of these who has entered in Your realm, O Death, Is greater than the greatest of us, And by a transfiguration has been clothed With the glory and the wonder of nature. He has drunk of the purple cup of apotheosis, And passed through the mystical change, And accomplished the cycle of being. He has risen from the lowlands of earth Into the air on wings of breath. He has rejected the shell of the body, feet and hands, He has become one with the majesty of Time, And taken the kingdom of triumph Whether it be cessation or bliss. For he has entered into the kingdom of primal powers, Being or ceasing to be, Even as he has re-entered the womb of nature. Or he has found peace, States of wisdom, or vision-- Hail! realm of Silence, Whence comes the unheard symphony too deep for strings, Hail, infinite Light, Darkness to eyes of flesh-- All hail! * * * * * What are we, the living, beside you the dead? We of daily hunger, daily food, daily ablutions, The daily rising and lying down, Waking and sleep; The daily care of the body's needs; And daily desire to pass the gift of life; And daily fears of the morrow to come; And daily pains for things that are gone; And daily longing for things that fly us; And sorrow that follows wherever we go; And love that mocks us, and peace that breaks, And shame that tracks us, and want that gnaws. But O ye Dead! Ye great ones, Triumphant over these, released From the duties of dust, all chains of desire, And made inhabitants of breathless spaces, Immanent in a realm of calm, Rulers of a sphere of tideless air, Victors returned from the war of death in life, Victors over death in death! * * * * * For the growing soul turns in Even as the seed turns in on itself, And becomes hard, transparent, An encased life, condensed In the process of saving itself From rains that beat in the fall, And frosts that descend from skies grown cold. And we who shed away old thoughts and hopes, Days and dreams of life Turn in, grow clear like grains of rice, Until the realm of death Is as snow delivered land Luring the seed-- And it becomes our home, our country, Our native land that calls us back From this sojourn of adventure, And place of profit; For O ye majestic Dead, your absence draws us, If it be naught but absence still you summon, Your absence has become a very Presence, A Power, a hierarchy of Life! * * * * * Even as leaves enrich the earth Layer on layer, Even as bodies of men enrich the soil Generation on generation, So do the spirits of those departed Enrich our soil of life With delights, wisdoms, purest hopes, And shapes of beauty. But oh beyond all these, is our life enriched With exalted contemplations Of you, O glorious Dead, Who have eaten of the tree of life and become gods, Friendly divinities to us who remain, Dear familiars, as you were with us Fathers, children, lovers, friends. Ye who sense with the inner eye, Since nothing in our days of living Moves uncolored of your splendors, Presences to which all things relate! * * * * * O realm of the Dead, Black Mountain, if you be, Which darkens heaven, And shadows earth, Round which our spirits flutter Like startled moths. Black mountain with whose blackness The light of life is mixed, Whereof all hues are made: All thoughts, all lofty wanderings of the soul, All meanings, divinations Of briefest hours, and frailest joys, All wonders of the spectrum of the soul Out of life and death! * * * * * Realm of the Dead! Supreme Reality All Hail! CREATION Passion flower unfolding in darkness! Glow-worm under a spray of lilac! Flame on the altar of love! Beloved in your chamber! The phoenix moon rising from the ashes of day Spreads her wings of saffron fire Above the enchanted garden. And I brush away the leaves of night To find the star of my love. I part the curtains about the altar, I enter your chamber, beloved. * * * * * I have entered your chamber, beloved, I have found my star. Between kisses and whispers And the silken touch of flesh Breast to breast, lips to lips, Our souls are seeking and drifting! As an albatross hovers and flies With the running sea... Powers of body, powers of spirit, Divinities Awakened never before, Hidden in nerves asleep, in veins without a tide Flow through us. I give you my life, beloved, For life of you, given to me-- O bride of love! * * * * * O hair of fire! O breasts of light, Like double stars! O voice like a lute that whispers At midnight, in a bower of roses! O body luminous as the nebulous waste Across the midnight, Pour on my breast, my hands, my brow The sacred fire, As our flesh becomes one Upborne by your breasts, White as bridal blossoms Where there is yet no milk, But only eddying blood Circling in whirlpools of delirious ecstasy In time with the blood of me. Our lips together, our bodies together While the yearning urn of porphyry Waits to drink the silver stream, And thirsts to drink, And poises like a gold fish waiting For the stream of silver fire.... * * * * * But oh, hands of me that clasp your sunny head, Drawing it close to my breast, In rapture of its beauty! O temple of your spirit! Spirit of you which I woo and would win, In rapture without will, In rapture blind, save for the inspired urge, In rapture seeking further rapture, In rapture to wed your spirit fully, And all your spirit, which my spirit Through the unity of flesh would reach And win, and keep-- Bride of lightning! Bride of Life! * * * * * As when the butterfly slowly moves his wings Drawing from the virgin core of honeysuckles The sweetest drop of dew:-- So pause his wings spread wide When all is gained. * * * * * Goddess of the white dawn, Let my beloved sleep-- Robins that sing at dawn, Wake not my beloved! I sleep with my beloved, And she sleeps with me, And a life sleeps now That will wake! THE WORLD'S DESIRE At Philae, in the temple of Isis, The fruitful and terrible goddess, Under a running panel of the sacred ibis, Is pictured the dead body of Osiris Waiting the resurrection morn. And a priest is pouring water blue as iris Out of a pitcher on the stalk of corn That from the body of the god is growing, Before the rising tides of the Nile are flowing. And over the pictured body is this inscription In the temple of Isis, the Egyptian: This is the nameless one, whom Isis decrees Not to be named, the god of life and yearning, Osiris of the mysteries, Who springs from the waters ever returning. At the gate of the Lord's house, Ezekiel, the prophet, beheld the abomination of Babylon: Women with sorrow on their brows In lamentation, weeping For the bereavement of Ishtar and for Tammuz sleeping, And for the summer gone. Tammuz has passed below To the house of darkness and woe, Where dust lies on the bolt and on the floor Behind the winter's iron door; And Ishtar has followed him, Leaving the meadows gray, the orchards dim With driving rain and mist, And winds that mourn. Ishtar has vanished, and all life has ceased; No flower blossoms and no child is born. But not as Mary Magdalen came to the tomb, The women in the gardens of Adonis, Crying, "The winter sun is yet upon us," Planted in baskets seeds of various bloom, Which sprouted like frail hopes, then wilted down For the baskets' shallow soil. Then for a beauty dead, a futile toil, For leaves that withered, yellow and brown, From the gardens of Adonis into the sea, They cast the baskets of their hope away: A ritual of the things that cease to be, Brief loveliness and swift decay. And O ye holy women, who at Delphi Roused from sleep the cradled Dionysius, Who with an April eye Looked up at them, Before the adorable god, the infant Jesus, Was found at Bethlehem! For at Bethlehem the groaning world's desire For spring, that burned from Egypt up to Tyre, And from Tyre to Athens beheld an epiphany of fire: The flesh fade flower-like while the soul kept breath Beyond the body's death, Even as nature which revives; In consummation of the faith That Tammuz, the Soul, survives, And is not sacrificed In the darkness where the dust Lies on the bolt and on the floor, And passes not behind the iron door Save it be followed by the lover Christ, The Ishtar of the faithful trust, Who knocks and says: "This soul, which winter knew In life, in death at last, Finds spring through me, and waters fresh and blue. For lo, the winter is past; The rain is over and gone. I open! It is dawn!" TYRANNOSAURUS: OR BURNING LETTERS Trees of the forest ground to pulp, Rolled into sheets and rabbit tracked With nut-gall or with nigrosine-- Then look at spirits thrill, or gulp A lost delight, a rising spleen For love that grew intense or slacked... Here are the letters, torn in bits, Crammed in the basket, look how full! Our little fireplace scarce admits So much that once was beautiful. Here where we sat and dreamed together In March, and now when we should be Friends in the glory of June weather, We tear our letters up--oh, me! Call Jane to take the basket down, And throw these on the furnace fire. Let ashes drift about the town Of what was our desire! What are we to the gods, I wonder? Perhaps two crickets in the grass, Who meet and drop their stomachs' plunder To touch antennæ as they pass. So kissing in such soul communion The gardener's step is heard, and quick The crickets break their spirits' union, Hide under logs or bits of brick. Does guilty conscience stir the crickets? What does he care? Why not a snap. He's trimming out the hazel thickets For a tennis court and shooting trap.... You are afraid of God! Not that? Some step has frightened you, I know. Well, then it's gossip the alley-cat. At least our hands grow cold as snow, Relax their touch, and then we come, Tear up the letters, sit and stare Some moments, wholly dumb! If we are crickets, still our breasts Contain for us things real enough. The gods may laugh, their interests Are what? I wonder--not the love Such as we knew. To be a god Through love is what I hoped, and rise Above the level of the clod. They said it can't be, who are wise, That's not the way to win the prize: Or if it be, I don't know how; Or you are not the one with whom I might have won it. Well, my brow Is turned into a whitened tomb With all uncleanness in it; dreams Rotting away with hopes as fair... To me, the liver, nothing seems Won that is lost. I can't invert, Sophisticate the facts, or swear My evil good. A hurt's a hurt, A loss a loss, a scar a scar, A spirit frustrate is inert. To stretch your hands toward a star And lose the star, or have it die To ashes like a rocket, alters The aspect of your being's sky. You've learned no praise from earthly psalters Can win the star, or else you've learned The star you touched was quickly turned To ashes while it burned. Hell! Let us face it. Here it is We had some walks, some precious talks, Some hours of paradise and bliss. Our blossom opened, we inhaled All of its fragrance, now I scowl Because our wonder blossom paled For lack of water in the bowl Tipped over by the alley-cat, Or what not, change, distrust or fear; Your pride, your will, a hovering gnat I struck at striking you, a blear Of eyes a moment, making blind My vision, yours.... Or there's the age, The age is frightful to my mind, Nothing to do but stand it--well I sit here and say "hell." For it's really hell to have a will, It's hell to hope and to believe, That good can swallow up the ill, That gods are working, will achieve. They may be, yet they disregard Our cricket feelings, so we shrill Sonnets and elegies round the yard... Let's talk a bit of chlorophyll: The sun was useless for our life, No wine, no beef, no watercress Until this chlorophyll grew rife Millions of years since, more or less. And if no wine or beef, no love, No pulp, no paper, nigrosine, No letters which are made thereof. Think! All we found and lost has been Through chlorophyll. And just suppose Nature should lose the secret power For making chlorophyll, the rose We cherished would not come to flower. No other man and woman more Would burn their letters grieving--yet We may be rising, for who knows There may be something vastly better Than love to flame and flay and fret, And hate this letter and that letter, Once rid of chlorophyll, in case A subtler substance could be given To this poor globe out of heaven-- We are a weak, if growing race! Here, then, I think is a moral for us, Another is tyrannosaurus-- Tyrannosaurus, what of him, The monarch of this world one time, Back in the æons wet and dim? He faded like a pantomime. And he could, well, step over trees, Crunch up bowlders like cracking nuts, Flip horses away like bumble-bees, Stretch out in valleys as if they were ruts; And hide a man in his nostril's hole, And crush young forestry just like weeds. He came and went, and what's your soul, And what is mine with their crying needs? And love that seemed eternal once, Given of God to lift, inspire, Well--now do we see? Was I dunce Drunk with the wine of soul's desire? Who made that wine, why did I drink it? Why did I want it? What's the game? Are spirits chaos? I scarce can think it. Why fly for the light and get the flame? Is love for souls of us chlorophyll That makes us eatable, sweet and crisp For Gods that raise us to feed their fill? Who lives, the dreamer, the will o' the wisp? Do Gods live, vanish, return again? Who in the devil has love or luck? One thing is true, there's rapture and pain. As for the rest, I pass the buck. Something occurs, and God knows what, Tyrannosaurus fades like a ghost. That throws a light on our little lot, Love that is won, love that is lost. Even a hundred years from now, If this poor earth is rolling still, Hearts will quiver, break or bow-- Provided the plants have chlorophyll. Oh well! Oh hell! We must be heroic, And it helps to scan a million of years. And to think of monstrous beasts mesoic, Brightens, though it dries no tears. I'll dream for life of our walks by the river-- That was March and it's now July. And this remains: I'll love you forever-- Burn up the letters now--Good by! LORD BYRON TO DOCTOR POLIDORI No more of searching, Doctor--let it go. It can't be lost. I have a memory I put it in a drawer, or again I seem to see me tuck it in a pocket Of some portmanteau. If you find the letter Deliver it to Moore. But if it's lost, The story is not lost. I tell you this To save the story from my side. Attend! It was this way: Allegra had become A child requiring care, and nutritive Instruction in religion, morals, well, They call me blasphemer and sensualist, But read my poems. Christianity Was never of rejected things with me. The Decalogue is good enough, I think. And Shelley's theories, atheist speculations I never shared--nor social dreams. The scheme Of having all things, women, too, in common Means common women. I have sinned, I know-- I call it sin. The marriage vow I honor, And woman's virtue. Though I stray, I hold That women should be chaste, though man is not. That's why I placed Allegra in a convent.... Now to the letter, and my story of it. The mother, Claire, Claire Claremont, as you know-- Pined for Allegra; would possess the child And take her from the convent--where? No doubt To Shelley's nest, where William Godwin's daughter Raised on free love, and Shelley preaching it, And Claire in whom 'tis bred, hold sway, who read, Talk, argue, dream of freedom, all the things Opposed to what is in the present order. You know the notes to "Queen Mab." Well, I say This suits me not. So Shelley and his wife, Mary, the planet of an hour, since quenched, Conceive I keep Allegra where she is From wounded pride, or pique. Hell fire! They think I'm hurt for thinking Claire and Shelley join Their lips in love, and masque my jealousy By just this pose of morals, make reprisal Under a lying flag, and keep Allegra To punish Claire and sate my jealousy By this hypocrisy--It makes me laugh. But to pursue. A maid who was discharged From Shelley's household told the credible tale That Claire was Shelley's mistress, and the Hoppners Heard and believed--why not? As she is fair, And Shelley wrote "Love is like understanding Which brighter grows gazing on many truths, Increases by division," that himself Could not accept the code, a man should choose One woman and leave all the rest, why not? As for myself, I have not preached this doctrine, Though living it as men do in the world.... Oh yes, I know this love called spiritual, Of which old maids, whose milk has gone to brain And curdled in the process, and who hate me For taking men and women as they are, Talk to create belief for self and others. Denial makes philosophies, religions. Indulgence leaves one sane, objectifies The eternal womanly, freeing brain of fumes, To work with master hands with love and life. The story rose, however. Then comes Shelley Bearing a letter from his wife, denying That Claire and Shelley loved, you understand-- By the flesh. Sweet, was it not? Naïve! This letter I should hand the Hoppners, who Believed the story, and who held a place Persuasive touching poor Allegra. Well, So Shelley comes and makes the point, the child Is in ill health, Claire, too, in a decline, And hands this letter to me for the Hoppners. And I've misplaced it. Frankly, from the first, Had no fixed purpose to deliver it. What principle makes me collaborator With such fantastic business? To resume: He acted like the boy he was. I smiled-- Against the flaming rage that burned his face-- My mocking smile, he thought, the Don Juan Upcurved my lips. I read his very thought Between words spoken; words that he suppressed: It was that I was glad that Claire was ill Because of that male mood when love of man Finds sustenance where suffering lays low The object of desire: If she suffers, The man subdues, devours her. She escapes If free of love. Oh yes, and this he thought: That I was glad she suffered, since my glory Had failed to hold her, failed to satisfy Her noble heart! God's wounds! Why Shelley thought She turned to him and with his spirit found A purity of peace and sweetest friendship, And faith that saves and serves, as men and women Are to each other souls to serve and save! Poor fool! I read it all, or pieced it out With words that I picked up from time to time.... There was this further thing: I am a man, So say they, who accepts the dying creed That woman's love is lawless and a toy When given if no priest has sanctified it-- Not quite, perhaps. The point is further on. In any case 'tis this: that this belief, Mine or part mine, and coloring my acts, Shadowed no whit the brow of Lady Claire. And that I, greatest lover of my time, Had won this lady's body but to lose The lady's soul, a soul that slipped and fled Out of the hands that clasped her flesh, because She knew me through her gift, thought less of me, And no wise felt herself bound to my life Because she gave her body. Kept her mind, Soul, free, untouched by that gift, by the gift Was cognizant of what is false and poor-- (I use some words I heard) in me. And thus I lost her soul, though earlier I had gained What seemed all to me, all I had the genius To comprehend in woman! Then comes Shelley And finds her soul, the genuine prize, and I Grow sullen with a consciousness of vision Inferior to his. All this they thought. Oh Jesus, what a lie! I have loved Nature, love her now: and woman Is Nature, and my love for nature means Inclusion of the sex. I have not soared To heights that sickened me and made me laugh At what I sought--or turned from it. No moons Behind the clouds; no terrors and no symbols, No Emilia Vivianni's have I had. I know, believe me, love for woman calls A man's soul up to heights too rare to live in. I have not risen, therefore, will not rise Where thinking stops, because the blood leaves brain Therefore have had no falls, and no recoils Chasing the Plato vision, the star, the wonder, The beauty and the terror, harmony Of nature's art; the passion that would make The loved one of the self-same womb with me, A sister, spouse or angel, dæmon, pilot Of life and fate. How much of truth is here? Dreams seen most vividly by Petrarch, Dante, Who loved without achievement, balking nature, Till Passion, like an involute, pressed in Harder and harder on its starving leaves, Becomes a fragrance--sublimate of self Sucked out of sorrow's earth, at last becomes A meditative madness. All is written Fairly across my page. "She walks in beauty:" "When we two parted," "Could love like a river," "Bright be the place of thy soul." Lines, lines In "Harold," "Don Juan." Yes, I have loved, But saw how far love lures, how far to venture, Knowing what can and what cannot be made Of the mystery, the wonder, therefore never Have had to laugh at self; find Vivianni A housemaid shelling corn--not threading pearls. Or sit, with idiot eyes, my bones half broken, Icarus bumped amid a field of stones. I know the hour of farewell. I have said it When my heart trembled, stopped as when a horse Braces its terrored feet to keep from plunging Over the precipice. Farewell! Farewell! I know to say, and turn, and pass my way. Why! For that matter, even now behold! Do I feel less than Shelley would in this? I leave the Countess for the war in Greece. What's done is done. What's lived is lived. Come, Doctor, Let's practice with the pistols. Mother of God, What is this thing called Life? THE FOLDING MIRROR A folding mirror! What may it be? Nothing? Or something? Let me see! Its silver chain is hung to the sky On a planet nail. And it fronts my eye. No stars reflect themselves at first, The mirrors are dustless, vacant and clean. Not even my face shows--am I cursed? What may the mirrors mean? * * * * * I watch like a cat that waits to mangle A breathless rat in an alley nook. And a little figure steps into the angle Made by the folding mirrors. Look! His thin legs wobble, bend and dangle Like radish roots. He takes the crook Out of his arms and raises them up, As if in panic, or supplication. He bends and peers, whines like a pup, Walks to and fro in his desperation, Pinches his arms and beats his breast; Runs quivering fingers between his hair, Wavers for weariness, sighs for rest, Looks up to the planet that seems to bear The silver chain like a brad in the wall. Upsprings, searches the mirrors again; Sees for the first the prodigal Waste of stars in the black inane. Stamps with his feet upon the void He stands on, paces on, why, he wonders Is he upborned like an asteroid? Hark! The limitless blackness thunders: The Infinite growls, he whirls and shivers, Runs to cover the mirrors to climb. They yield like the waters of phantom rivers. He acts like a soul new born that quivers Before the mirrors of Space and Time. * * * * * Now what's to do? He must fill in. This emptiness with horror is shod. When did this pageant of things begin? Somewhere hiding there is a God. Some one drove that planet nail Into the blue wall; some one hung The silver chain. And what is the tale Of the mirrors here in the blackness swung? The soul is naked, weak and alone, And sees its nakedness in the glass. It must create from wood and stone, Wire and reeds, color and brass. It must create though it be but a mime, Make a reality all its own Before the mirror of white called Time, Before the mirror of blue called Space. Clasp the vastness between their folds, Find laws, raise altars, dream of a face-- Make that real which the hope beholds. * * * * * Our terrored manikin commences, Fattens his littleness with clothes. With crowns and miters puffs his senses, Crushes the grape to drown his woes. Fills full the mirrors with faces. Now They are dancing before them, age and youth, Laurels or thorns are bound on a brow. They hunt and slay for a thing called Truth. Dig for treasure, toil for riches, Struggle for place--it is well enough! Some lift their busts into chosen niches. All are hungry for peace and love. And only a few are blind, dispute The thing is a dream. If there be worth It lies in the strings of the lyre or lute, Sounds that never return to earth; Dreams to seeing eyes reflected, Caught from infinite realms afar. How could they be seen, or recollected Except for the Real--except for a Star? * * * * * God in the blackness, whirlwind, lightning, God in the blinding fire of the sun Before these empty mirrors brightening See what we do, what we have done! Out of an astral substance molding Music and laws for our hearts' control, Yes, and a hope that the mirrors' folding Lets slip through a growing soul. Are you not proud of us, do you not pity? Is all the glory thine alone? Then if it be, you must take the city Builded, demolished stone from stone. All of our madness, weariness, error, Blindness, weakness, pain and loss, Fumbling feebly before the mirror, Yours is the crown, but yours the cross! Yours is the juice of grape or poppies To fill the void with a make believe; Yours the hope where never a prop is, The opiates, too, that dull, deceive, No less than nature that lifts eternal Vision of Life to quiet the heart: Verse and color that stamp the infernal Dragon of Fear with the feet of Art. Yours and ours the consolations In loneliness and in terror wrought Out of our spirits' desolations, Out of our spirits' love and thought! A WOMAN OF FORTY Eyes that have long looked on the world, Taken and stored the soul of outward things, Dread to look on themselves, In the mirror to gaze upon their mirrorings! There to behold what time has done, what thought Has changed their look and light. I have lost my face through sorrow and dreams And dare not find it, lest it smite This self to-day, since I may not restore My old self who in gladness without terror Beheld and knew myself Each morning in the mirror! In the long quest of love I may have found A spirit after whom my passion lusted. But I had trust not giving love, I have given love to hearts I have not trusted. One thing has come that I would never see, Hidden or trembling in my eyes: Love in the mirror shown fatigued and mild, Hopeless and wise. WILD BIRDS The wild birds among the reeds Cry, exult and stretch their wings. Out of the sky they drift And sink to the water's rushes. But the wild birds beat their wings and cry To the newcomer out of the sky! Is he a stranger, this wild bird out of the sky? Or do they cry to him because of remembered places And remembered days Spent together In the north-land, or the south-land? Is this the ecstasy of renewal, Or the ecstasy of beginning? For the wild bird touches his bill Against a mate; He brushes her wing with his wing; He quivers with delight For the cool sky of blue, And the touch of her wing! The wild birds fly up from the reeds of the water, Some for the south, Some for the north. They are gone-- Lost in the sky! In what water do these mates of a morning Exult on the morrow? What wild birds will cry to them as they sink Out of an unknown sky? To whose cry will she quiver Through her burnished wings to-morrow, In the north-land, In the south-land, Far away? A LADY She sleeps beneath a canopy of carnation silk, Embroidered with Venetian lace, Between linens that crush in the hand Soft as down. Waking, she looks through a window Curtained with carnation silk, Embroidered with Venetian lace, The walls are hung with velvet Embossed with a _fleur de lis_, And around her is the silence of richness, Where foot-falls are like exhalations From carpets of moss. Little clocks tinkle. Medallions priceless as jewels Lie by jars suspiring like coals of fire. And a maid prepares the bath, Tincturing delicious water with exquisite essences. And she is served with coffee In cups as thin as petals, Sitting amid pillows that breathe The souls of freesia! All things are hers: Fishes from all seas, Fruits from all climes. The city lies at her command, And is summoned by buttons Which are pressed for her. Noiselessly feet move on many floors, Serving her. Wheels that turn under coaches Of crystal and ebony, And yachts dreaming in strange waters, And wings--all are hers! And she is free: Her husband comes and goes From his suite below hers. She never sees him, Nor knows his ways, nor his days. But she is very weary And all alone amid her servants, And guests that come and go. Her lips are red, Her skin is soft and smooth-- But the page blurs before her eyes. Her eyelids are languid, And droop from weariness, Though she will not rest From the long pursuit of love! Her hair is white; The skin of her faultless neck Edges in creases As she turns her perfect head. And the days dawn and die. What day that dawns will bring her love? And day by day she waits for the dawn Of a new life, a great love! But every morning brings its remembrance Of the increasing years that are gone. And every evening brings its fear Of death which must come, Until her nerves are shaken Like a woman's hair in the wind-- What must be done? Some one tells her that God is love. And when the fears come She says to self over and over, "God is love! God is love! All is well." And she wins a little oblivion, Through saying "God is love," From the truth in her heart which cries: "Love is life, Love is a lover, And love is God!" She is a flower Which the spring has nourished, And the summer exhausted. Fall is at hand. Weird zephyrs stir her leaves and blossoms; And she says to herself, "It is not fall, For God is love!" My poor flower! May this therapy ease you into sleep, And the folding of jewelless hands! You are beginning to be sick Of the incurable disease of age, And the weariness of futile flesh! THE NEGRO WARD Scarce had I written: it were best To crush this love, to give you up, Drink at one draught the bitter cup, And kill this new life in my breast, Than Parker's breathing seemed to give Ominous sound the end was near. I did so want this man to live-- This negro soldier, dear. 'Twas three in the morning, all was still But Parker's rattle in the throat, Outside I heard the whippoorwill. The new moon like an Indian boat Hung just above the darkened grove, Where you and I had pledged our love, When you were here. Such precious hours, Such fleeting moments then were ours... Alone here in the silent ward, With Parker dying, I was scared. His breath came short, his lips were blue. I asked him: "Is there something more, Parker, that I can do for you?" "Please hold my hand," he said. Before I took it, it was growing cold-- Death, how quick it comes! Then next I seemed to hear the drums-- For I had fainted for his eyes That stared with such a wide surprise, As the lids fell apart they stared, As if they saw what to behold Had startled his poor soul which fared Where it would not. I heard the drums, The bugle next, lay there so faint With Parker's eyes still in my view, Like bubble motes which flit and paint Themselves upon the heaven's blue. An orderly had mailed meanwhile That letter, to you, there I lay Too weak to write again, unsay What I had written. Down the aisle, Between our beds a step I heard, A voice: "Our order's here, we leave In half an hour for France." I stirred Like a dead thing, could scarce conceive What tragedy was come. No chance To write you or to telegraph. In twelve hours more, as in a trance I looked from Ellis Island, where My chums could gayly talk and laugh. In two hours more we sailed for France. All this was hard, but still to bear The knowledge of you, your despair, Or change, or bitterness, if you thought That letter came from me, was wrought Out of a heart that could not stake Its own blood for your sake. I will come back to you at length If I but live and have the strength. How will you like me with hair white, And wasted cheeks, deep lined and pale? It all began that dreadful night Of Parker's death, the strain and fright, The letter it seemed best to write-- From then to now I have been frail. Our ship just missed a submarine, And here the hardships, gas-gangrene, The horrors and the deaths have stripped My life of everything. Is it to prove For duty, you, though bloody-lipped, And fallen my unconquerable love For country and for you through all, Whatever fate befall? What is my soul's great anguish for? For what this tragedy of war? For what the fate that says to us: Part hands and be magnanimous? For what the judgment which decrees The mother love in me to cease? For separation, hopeless miles Of land and water us between? For what the devil force that smiles At man's immedicable pain? I have not lost my faith in God. Life has grown dark, I only say: Dear God, my feet have lost the way. Religion, wisdom do not give A place to stand, a space to live. I have not lost my faith in love, That somehow it must rise above The clouds of earth, I still can rest In dreams sometimes upon your breast. But, oh, it seems sometimes a play Where gods are picking a bouquet: The blossom of war, my soul or yours More fragrant grown as it endures.... WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE Homer saw nations, armies, multitudes-- You saw them in the intimate interludes Of Brutus' soul at midnight in a tent When the infection festers the event. Ulysses' course is changed by the sea's trough. You saw an epoch when a hat blows off. Orestes fled the Furies, won his peace Through Apollo in old Greece. But who unbars the mouse traps of your world, Or kills the ambushed serpent where it's curled? Your Fates return, and Fortinbras draws in On Hamlet's impotence and Gertrude's sin. All oceans in a raindrop, drops of dew Containing perfect heavens starred and blue; Angels who mother Calibans, and hopes Are of your vision--great mosaics hued With thoughts of princes, poets, misanthropes, Reveal their minute colors closer viewed. Atomies, maggots, worms or gilded flies, Nothing too small or foul is for your eyes. You made a culture of dreams lost or won Like Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson. You looked in heaven when the lightning shone, Then saw a fairy's whip of cricket bone. For gods and men bacteriologist Of spiritual microbes hidden which subsist In moments of red joy--calm satirist Of worlds forsaken for a woman's hair, Kings slain, states crumbled, heroes false or fair, The madness of the flesh, love on the wrack, A white maid married to a soldier black. Incests, adulteries and secret sins, The fall of monarchs and of manikins. All men at last a rattling empty pod, All men destroyed like flies for sport of God. All Life at last an idiot's furious tale-- You had the strength to say this and not quail! For you what were the unities, the rules Of Plautus, Corneille or the Grecian schools? Flame through a pipe will sing, perhaps, when blown Against the craftsman's silver, but the tone Of worlds in conflagration, that's to be The sacred fire with wings outspread and free, Wherein an Athens falls, a Sidon stands, And where a freezing clown may warm his hands. If you could empty out a tiger's brain And wire up its spinal cord again To Sappho's brain, it would no doubt devour The tiger's nerves and sinews in an hour. Such muscles and such bones could not endure The avid hunger of a fire so pure. And you, Will Shakspeare, spirit sensitive, You lived past fifty, that is long to live And feed a flame like yours, and let the flame Remake itself and lap at flesh and frame. I say with Jesus, wisdom's eyes are blind To seek a poet out and think to find A slender reed that's shaken by the wind. Come cyclops of the counter, millionaires, Lawyers and statesmen in the world's affairs, And thin away like flesh which acid eats Under the passion even of John Keats. But if you felt and saw love, agony, As Shakspeare knew them you would quickly die. There is no tragedy like the gift of song, It keeps you mortal but demands you strong; It gives you God's eyes blurred with human tears, And crowns a thousand lives in fifty years. Enter the breathless silence where God dwells, See and record all heavens and all hells! FOR A PLAY Love began with both of them so gently Meeting, neither thought nor looked intently. Afterward her breath invoked the fire-- Breath to breath set burning their desire. Is there aught in flesh or is it spirit Conscious of its kindred soul when near it? Woe to flesh or soul that's wholly wakened While the other's soul-depths lie unshakened! How could she give him all sacred blisses, Long embraces, in the darkness kisses, If she was not his, all else forgetting, Lovers gone and other loves' regretting? That was just the place her gold was leadened-- Flesh there too alive, to him all deadened. She could harp not to his playing wholly, Yet his heart strings trembled for her solely. So this love play hastened to the curtain. Each one spoke his lines in accents certain, While at times behind the wings her glances Warmed the prompter's treasonous advances. Is there greater martyrdom than this is? You have staked your soul where the abyss is. You have given all--oh sorry barter You have lit the fire for you the martyr. You will still love on, or turn to hating, Days depart, your heart stays in its waiting, Where's the blame? She gave her heart's half measure, All she had, for all your soul's full treasure. What's the half to keep, could you achieve it? What your treasure if you could retrieve it? Never more shall you again bestow it... Now you have a song if you're a poet. Now you're ever dumb if song's denied you, You shall be more dumb than all beside you, While your soul is shaken by its torrents-- Dante songless in a Dante Florence. Age shall not make strong, nor deeper learning. Grief grows clearer with your eye's discerning. Pass the years, but oh the soil grows faster-- Richer for the roots of your disaster. Ends the play--for what is life but dying? What is love but fire forever crying? What your soul but love's pure carbon fuel? Love and life make ashes of the jewel! CHICAGO I On the gray paper of this mist and fog With dust for the erasure and with smoke For drawing crayons, be this charcoal scrawl: The breed of Gog in the kingdom of Magog, Skyscrapers, helmeted, stand sentinel Amid the obscuring fumes of coal and coke, Raised by enchantment out of the sand and bog. This sky-line, the Sierras of the lake, Cuts with dulled teeth, Which twist and break, The imponderable and drifting steam. And restlessly beneath This man-created mountain chain, Like the flow of a prairie river Endlessly by day and night, forever Along the boulevards pedestrians stream In a shuffle like dancers to a low refrain: Forever by day and night Pursuing as of old the lure of delight, And the ghosts of pleasure or pain. Their rhythmic feet sound like the falling of rain, Or the hush of the waves, when the roar Is blown by a wind off shore. II From a tower like a mountain promontory The cesspool of a railroad lies to view Fouling the marble of the city's glory: A crapulous sluice of garbage and of cars Where engines rush and whistle, smudge the blue With filth like the trail of slugs. It is a trench of steel which bars Free access to the common shore, and hugs In a coil of lazar arms the boulevard. Cattle and hogs delivered here for slaughter Corrupt the loveliness of the water front. They low and grunt, Switched back and forth within the tangled yard. But from this tower the amethystine water, The water of jade or slate, Is visible with its importunate Gestures against the sky to still retreats In Michigan, of quiet woods and hills Beyond the simmering passion of these streets, And all their endless ills.... III But over the switch yard stands the Institute Guarded by lions on the avenue, Colossal lions standing for attack; Between whose feet luminous and resolute Children of the city passing through To palettes, compasses, the demoniac Spirit of the city shall subdue. Lions are in the loop and jackals too. They have no trainers but the alderman, Who uses them to hunt with, but in time The city shall behold its nobler plan Achieved by hands that rhyme, Workers who architect and build, And out of thought its substance re-arrange, Till all its prophecies shall be fulfilled. Through numbers, science and art The city shall know change, And win dominion over water and light, The cyclop's mastery of the mart; The devils overcome, Which stalk the squalid ways by night Of poverty and the slum, Where the crook is spawned, the burglar and the bum. These youths who pass the lions shall assuage The city's thirst and hunger, And save it from the wastage and the wage Of the demagogue, the precinct monger. IV This is the city of great doges hidden In guarded offices and country places. The city strives against the things forbidden By the doges, on whose faces The city at large never looks; Doges who could accomplish if they would In a month the city's beauty and good. Yet this city in a hundred years has risen Out of a haunt of foxes, wolves and rooks, And breaks asunder now the bars of the prison Of dead days and dying. It has spread For many a rood its boundaries, like the sprawled And fallen Hephaestos, and has tenanted Its neighborhoods increasing and unwalled With peoples from all lands. From Milwaukee Avenue to the populous mills Of South Chicago, from the Sheridan Drive Through forests where the water smiles To Harlem for miles and miles. It reaches out its hands, Powerful and alive With dreams to touch tomorrow, which it wills To dawn and which shall dawn.... And like lights that twinkle through the stench And putrid mist of abattoirs, Great souls are here, separate and withdrawn, Companionless, whom darkness cannot quench. Seeing they are the chrysalis which must feed Upon its own thoughts and the life to be, Its flight among the stars. Beauty is here, like half protected flowers, Blooms and will cast its multiplying seed, Until one mass of color shall succeed The shaley places of these arid hours. V Chicago! by this inland sea In the land of Lincoln, in the state Of souls who held the nation's fate, City both old and young, I consecrate Your future years to truth and liberty. Be this the record frail and incomplete Of one who saw you, mingled with the masses Along these magical mountain passes With restless yet with hopeful feet. Could they return to see you who have slept These fifty years, who laid your first foundations! And oh! could we behold you who have kept Their promises for you, when new generations Shall walk this boulevard made fair In chiseled marble, looking at the lake Of clearer water under a bluer air. We who shall sleep then nor awake, Have left the labor to you and the care Ask great fulfillment, for ourselves a prayer! THE WEDDING FEAST Said the chief of the marriage feast to the groom, Whence is this blood of the vine? Men serve at first the best, he said, And at the last, poor wine. Said the chief of the marriage feast to the groom, When the guests have drunk their fill They drink whatever wine you serve, Nor know the good from the ill. How have you kept the good till now When our hearts nor care nor see? Said the chief of the marriage feast to the groom, Whence may this good wine be? Said the chief of the marriage feast, this wine Is the best of all by far. Said the groom, there stand six jars without And the wine fills up each jar. Said the chief of the marriage feast, we lacked Wine for the wedding feast. How comes it now one jar of wine To six jars is increased? Who makes our cup to overflow? And who has the wedding blest? Said the groom to the chief of the feast, a stranger Is here as a wedding guest. Said the groom to the chief of the wedding feast, Moses by power divine Smote water at Meribah from the rock, But this man makes us wine. Said the groom to the chief of the wedding feast, Elisha by power divine Made oil for the widow to sell for bread, But this man, wedding wine. He changed the use of the jars, he said, From an outward rite and sign: Where water stood for the washing of feet, For heart's delight there's wine. So then 'tis he, said the chief of the feast, Who the wedding feast has blest? Said the groom to the chief of the feast, the stranger Is the merriest wedding guest. He laughs and jests with the wedding guests, He drinks with the happy bride. Said the chief of the wedding feast to the groom, Go bring him to my side. Jesus of Nazareth came up, And his body was fair and slim. Jesus of Nazareth came up, And his mother came with him. Jesus of Nazareth stands with the dancers And his mother by him stands. The bride kneels down to Jesus of Nazareth And kisses his rosy hands. The bridegroom kneels to Jesus of Nazareth And Jesus blesses the twain. I go a way, said Jesus of Nazareth, Of darkness, sorrow and pain. After the wedding feast is labor, Suffering, sickness, death, And so I make you wine for the wedding, Said Jesus of Nazareth. My heart is with you, said Jesus of Nazareth, As the grape is one with the vine. Your bliss is mine, said Jesus of Nazareth, And so I make you wine. Youth and love I bless, said Jesus, Song and the cup that cheers. The rosy hands of Jesus of Nazareth Are wet with the young bride's tears. Love one another, said Jesus of Nazareth, Ere cometh the evil of years. The rosy hands of Jesus of Nazareth Are wet with the bridegroom's tears. Jesus of Nazareth goes with his mother, The dancers are dancing again. There's a woman who pauses without to listen, 'Tis Mary Magdalen. Forth to the street a Scribe from the wedding Goes with a Sadducee. Said the Scribe, this shows how loose a fellow Can come out of Galilee! BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON By the waters of Babylon by the sea, On the sand where the waters died, The sea wind and the tide Drowned the words you spoke to me. The sea fell at our feet. The sand Hushed the whispering waters, near The babble of boats by the pier Was the ictus to the roar on the strand. By the waters of Babylon a grief to be, The waiting ships in the bay, Awed the words we would say Against the sound of the sea: For France was below the waters, and the west Behind me where the rains Come in November on the window panes, And the blast shakes the ruined nest Under the dripping eaves. What then remains But memory of the waters of Babylon, And the ships like swan after swan, Under the drone of angry hydroplanes? By the waters of Babylon we did not weep, Though love comes and is gone, As the wind is, as waters drawn In spray from the deep. Neither for things foreseen and ominous, For newer hands that somewhere wait To thrill afresh, the reblossomed fate Did we surrender dolorous.... Change now is yours beyond the waters, nights Of waiting and of doubt have dimmed desire. Our hands are calm before the dying fire Of lost delights. Babylon by the sea knows us no more. Between the surge's hushes When on the sand the water rushes There is no voice of ours upon the shore. THE DREAM OF TASSO O Earth that walls these prison bars--O Stones Which shut my body in--could I be free If these fell and the grated door which groans For every back scourged hither oped for me? Freedom were what to travel you, O Earth, When my heart makes its daily agony? And longing such as mine cannot ungirth Its bands and its mortality o'erleap. Our life is love unsatisfied from birth, Our life is longing waking or asleep, And mine has been a vigil of quick pain. O Leonora, thus it is I keep Grief in my heart and weariness of brain. How did I know these chains and bars are wrought Of frailer stuff than space, that I could gain In earth no respite, but a vision brought The truth, O Leonora? It was this: I dreamed this hopeless love, so long distraught Was never caged, but from the first was bliss, And moved like music from the meeting hour To the rapt moment of the earliest kiss Bestowed upon your hands, to gathering flower Of lips so purely yielded, the embrace Tender as dawn in April when a shower Quenches with gentleness each flowering place; So were your tears of gladness--so my hands Which stroked your golden hair, your sunny face, Even as flying clouds o'er mountain lands Caress with fleeting love the morning sun. Now I was with you, and by your commands. Your love was mine at last completely won, And waited but the blossom. How you sang, Laughed, ran about your palace rooms and none Closed doors against me, desks and closets sprang To my touch open, all your secrets lay Revealed to me in gladness--and this pang Which I had borne in bitterness day by day Was gone, nor could I bring it back, or think How it had been, or why--this heart so gay In sudden sunshine could no longer link Itself with what it was. Look! Every room Had blooms your hands had gathered white and pink, And drained from precious vases their perfume. And fruits were heaped for me in golden bowls, And tapestries from many an Asian loom Were hung for me, and our united souls Shone over treasure books--how glad you were To listen to my epic, from the scrolls Of Jerusalem, the holy sepulcher. Still as a shaft of light you sat and heard With veilèd eyes which tears could scarcely blur, But flowed upon your cheek with every word. And your hand reached for mine--you did not speak, But let your silence tell how you were stirred By love for me and wonder! What to seek In earth and heaven more? Heaven at last Was mine on earth, and for a sacred week This heaven all of heaven. So it passed This week with you--you served me ancient wine. We sat across a table where you cast A cloth of chikku, or we went to dine There in the stately room of heavy plate. Or tiring of the rooms, the day's decline Beheld us by the river to await The evening planet, where in elfin mood You whistled like the robin to its mate, And won its answering call. Then through the wood We wandered back in silence hand in hand, And reached the sacred portal with our blood Running so swift no ripples stirred the sand To figures of reflection. Once again Within your room of books, upon the stand The reading lights are brought to us, and then You read to me from Plato, and my heart Breathes like a bird at rest; the world of men, Strife, hate, are all forgotten in this art Of life made perfect. Or when weariness Comes over us, you dim the lamp and start The blue light back of Dante's bust to bless Our twilight with its beauty. So the time Passes too quickly--our poor souls possess Beauty and love a moment--and our rhyme Which captures it, creates the illusion love Has permanence, when even at its prime Decay has taken it from the light above, Or darkness underneath. I must recur To our first sleep and all the bliss thereof. How did you first come to me, how confer On me your beauty? That first night it was The blue light back of Dante, but a blur Of golden light our spirits, when you pass Your hand across my brow, our souls go out To meet each other, leave as wilted grass Our emptied bodies. Then we grow devout, And kneel and pray together for the gift Of love from heaven, and to banish doubt Of change or faithlessness. Then with a swift Arising from the prayer you disappear. I sleep meanwhile, you come again and lift My head against your bosom, bringing near A purple robe for me, and say, "Wear this, And to your chamber go." And thus I hear, And leave you; on my couch, where calm for bliss I wait for you and listen, hear your feet Whisper their secret to the tapestries Of your ecstatic coming--O my sweet! I touched your silken gown, where underneath Your glowing flesh was dreaming, made complete My rapture by upgathering, quick of breath, Your golden ringlets loosened--and at last Hold you in love's embrace--would it were Death!... For soon 'twixt love and sleep the night was past, And dawn cob-webbed the chamber. Then I heard One faintest note and all was still--the vast Spherule of heaven was pecked at by a bird As it were to break the sky's shell, let the light Of morning flood the fragments scattered, stirred By breezes of the dawn with passing night. We woke together, heard together, thrilled With speechless rapture! Were your spirit's plight As mine is with this vision, had I willed To torture you with absence? Would I save Your spirit if its anguish could be stilled Only among the worms that haunt the grave? My dream goes on a little: Day by day, These seven days we lived together, gave Our spirits to each other. With dismay You watched my hour's departure. On you crept Light shadows after moments sunny, gay. But when the hour was come, you sat and wept, And said to me: "I hear the rattling clods Upon the coffin of our love." You stepped And stood beside the casement, said "A god's Sarcophagus this room will be as soon As you have gone, and mine shall be the rod's Bitterness of memory both night and noon Amid the silence of this palace." So I spoke and said, "If you would have the boon-- O Leonora, do I live to know This hope too passionate made consummate?-- Yet if it be I shall return, nor go But to return to you, and make our fate Bound fast for life." How happy was your smile, Your laughter soon,--and then from door to gate I passed and left you, to be gone awhile Around Ferrara. In three days, it seemed, I came again, and as I walked each mile Counting to self--my feet lagged as I dreamed-- And said ten miles, nine miles, eight miles, at last One mile, so many furlongs, then I dreamed Your reading lamps were lighted for me, cast Their yellow beams upon the mid-night air. But oh my heart which stopped and stood aghast To see the lamp go out and note the glare Of blue light set behind the Dante mask! Who wore my robe of purple false and fair? Who drank your precious vintage from the flask Roman and golden whence I drank so late? Who held you in his arms and thus could ask? Receive your love? Mother of God! What fate Was mine beneath the darkness of that sky, There at your door who could not leave or wait, And heard the bird of midnight's desolate cry? And saw at last the blue light quenched, and saw A taper lighted in my chamber--why This treachery, Leonora? Why withdraw The love you gave, or eviler, lead me here, O sorceress, before whom heaven's law Breaks and is impotent--whose eyes no tear Of penitence shall know, whose spirit fares Free, without consequence, as a child could sear Its fellow's hands with flame, or unawares, Or with premeditation, and then laugh and turn Upon its play. For you, light heart, no snares Or traps of conscience wait, who thus could spurn A love invited. Thus about your lawn I listened till the stars had ceased to burn, But when I saw the imminence of the dawn And heard our bird cry, I could stand no more, My heart broke and I fled and wandered on Down through the valley by the river's shore. For when the bird cried, did you wake with him? Did you two gaze as we had gazed before Upon that blissful morning? I was dim Of thought and spirit, by the river lay Watching the swallows over the water skim, And plucking leaves from weeds to turn or stay The madness of my life's futility, Grown blank as that terrific dawn--till day Flooded upon me, noon came, what should be? Where should I go? What prison chains could rest So heavily on the spirit, as that free, But vast and ruined world? O arrowed breast Of me, your Tasso! And you came and drew The arrows out which kept the blood repressed, And let my wounds the freer bleed: 'Twas you By afternoon who walked upon an arm More lordly than mine is. You stopped nor knew, I saw him take your body lithe and warm Close to his breast, yes, even where we had stood Upon our day, embraced--feed on the charm Of widened eyes and swiftly coursing blood. I watched you walk away and disappear In the deep verdure of the river wood, Too faint to rise and fly, crushed by the fear Of madness, sudden death! This was my dream, From which I woke and saw again the sheer Walls of my prison, which no longer seem The agony they did, even though the cell Is the hard penalty and the cursed extreme Hate in return for love. But oh you hell, You boundless earth to wander in and brood-- Great prison house of grief in which to dwell, Remembering love forgotten, pride subdued, And love desired and found and lost again. That is the prison which no fortitude Can suffer, and the never dying pain From which the spacious luring of the earth Tempts flight for spirit freedom, but in vain! Ah Leonora! Even from our birth We build our prisons! What are walls like these Beside the walls of memory, or the dearth Of hope in all this life, the agonies Of spiritual chains and gloom? I suffer less, Imprisoned thus, than if the memories Of love bestowed and love betrayed should press Round my unresting steps. And I send up To heaven thanks that spared that bitterness, That garden of the soul's reluctant cup! THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN He hears his father pray when he's a boy: "Jesus we know, the Savior, and we ask, In Thy great plenitude of mercy, grace, Forgiveness for our waywardness; we invoke Thy blessing, and may righteousness and peace Prevail in all the earth. Meekly we rest Upon the precious promise of Thy word. Gather us home with Thine own people, Lord, And all the glory shall be Thine." So much To show the father's prayer which he heard. The father is a saint, a quietist, Save that he has his hatreds, strong enough: Turns face of stone and silence to the men Whose ways of life are laid in sin, he thinks And calls them dirty dogs and scalawags, Because they vote a ticket he dislikes, Or love a game of cards, a glass of beer, Or go to see the County Fair, where once A drunken bus-man drives upon a boy And kills him. Then the saint is all aflame, And tries to have the fair put out for good. And so the son, who will become at last The Christian Statesman, hears his father pray, And prays himself, and takes the lesson in Of godliness, the Bible as the source Of truth infallible, divine. This boy Is blessed with health, a body without flaw, His forehead is a little low, perhaps, And has a transverse dent which keeps the brain Shaped to the skull; a perfect brain is sphered, As perfect things are circles; but a brain Something below perfection, which is fed By a great body and an obdurate will, And sense of moral purpose will go far, Farther than better brains in craft of states, For some years anyway, if a voice be given Which reaches to the largest crowded room, To speak the passionate moralities Which come into that brain creased straight across The forehead with a dent. He goes to school, And from the first believes he has a mission To make the world a better place, avows His mission in the world, bends all his strength To make his armor ready: health of body, A blameless life, hard studies, practices With word and voice. It is a country college Where he matriculates--the father wished it; A college where the boys are mostly poor, And waste no time, have not the cash to buy Delight, if they desired. He ruminates Upon the pebbles and Demosthenes, And sets his will to be an orator That he may herald truth and save the world. After much toil, re-writing, he delivers A speech he calls, "Ich Dien," and loses out Against a youth who speaks on Liberty. And then he uses Gladstone for his theme, The Christian Statesman; for exordium Tells of the ermine which will die before It suffers soilure--that was Gladstone--yes! But still he cannot win the prize; a boy Who talks about the labors of Charles Darwin, His suffering and sacrifice, is awarded The prize this time--a boy who had the wit To speak in praise of Darwin's virtues--saying Nothing about his hellish doctrines, thus Winning the cautious judges to his theme. But is our little Gladstone crushed, dismayed? He plucks up further strength and takes a hint: A larger subject may bring down the prize. He thinks of Thomas Jefferson--but then Jefferson was a deist, took the Bible And cut out everything but Jesus' words. "Yet I can speak on what was good in him, His work for liberty, the Declaration, And close my eyes to all his heterodoxy." Then something of this plan crept like a snake Into his brain, he petted it with hands: Be ye as wise as serpents, and as doves Harmless, he smiled--and went to work again, And won the prize. And now he has stepped forth Into the world's arena to become A Savior, an evangel, as he thinks, In truth a pest. He runs for Congress first And when his manager takes out a check And shows him, given by the local brewery, Another check a bank gives, he maintains A smiling silence, thinking to himself, Jesus accepted gifts from publicans, And if I am elected then this money, However dirty, will be purified By what I do. But then he was defeated. He thinks the banks and breweries did the trick. In truth they knew the Christian Statesman, knew The oleaginous smile and silver voice Concealed the despot. Did he scourge them then? Well, scarcely then--he wrote a public letter And said the people had decided it. And what the people said was law. He nerved His purpose for another trial--that body So big and flawless could not be exhausted-- That voice still carried to the farthest corner, That oily smile deceived the multitude That he was hurt, embittered, only waited To see if body, voice and oily smile Could win by any means; if not, the scourge Would be brought forth, the smile dropped, the complaints Against the breweries, what not, opened up, Unmasked. For when your hope is gone, you're free To scold and tell your bitterness. And then He made a third and last attempt, though edging Toward the sophistry that moral questions Make those political, and by this means Trying to win the churches. Still he stuck To matters economic, as before Took what the breweries gave to help his cause, His campaign fund. By this time many more Had found him out, and knew him for a voice And tireless body nourishing a brain As mediocre as the world contained, And only making louder noise because Of body strong and voice mellifluous. They put him down for good: the Christian Statesman Had cause to think he was no statesman, or No Christian, or the electorate not Christian. And so he took the mask off, dropped the smile, And let his mouth set like a concrete crack And went about to punish men, while seeming To save the world. Out of that indentation, That fosse of mediocrity, came up A crocodile with wagging tail upreared, And smile toothed to the gullet--it was this: Questions political are moral questions, And moral questions are political, And terms convertible are equipollent, And wholly true. Therefore, I rise to preach To moral America, draw audiences In churches, of the churches. If I win Majorities upon--no matter what-- A law will blossom; as all moral questions Are equally political, procure For their adoption the majority. Upon this fortress I can stand and shoot-- Who can attack me, since I seek for self Nothing, but for my country righteousness? And as an instrument of God I punish My enemies as well. Who are my enemies? The intelligencia, as they call themselves, Who flaunt the Bible wholly or in part, Or try to say that Darwin's evolution Honors the Deity more than Genesis. Who are my enemies? The thinkers, yes, The strivers for a higher culture, yes, The scorners of old fashioned ways, the things Really American!--I know the crowd-- That smart minority I overwhelm, Blot out, drown out, by massing under me The great majority, the common folk, Believers in the Bible--first for them! And on the way the vile saloon I crush, The abominable brewery--then I take away From banqueters and diners, diners out, The seekers after happiness, not God, The cocktail and the wine they love so well. This is a moral question, being so Is also a political--the majority Can do what they desire. I am consistent, For from the first I've preached the people's rule, Abided by the people's voice and taken Defeat with grace because the people gave it. So now I say the people have the right To pass upon all questions. As I said When starting as a public man, the people Could have what Government they desired, in fact A King, or despotism, if they voted for it. For all this talk of rights, or realms of right, Or individual preferences, beliefs And courses in the world is swallowed up By right of the majority--the serpent Of Moses, so to speak, which swallowed up All other serpents. If he thought so much The Christian Statesman thought this way--at least He acted out a part which seemed to say He analyzed so far. He went to work To make his country just a despotism Not governed by a King, but by the people Laying the hand of law on everything Most intimate and private, having thought For moral aspects, as all politics Are moral in their essence, to repeat. Did not the Christian Statesman have revenge In building his theocracy, who saw All bills of right and fruit of revolution Ground into mortar, made into a throne For Demos? And behold King Demos now! A slouch hat for a crown upon his brow, Stuffed full of bacon and of apple pie, The Christian Statesman leaning on his shoulder A tableau of familiarity. The Christian Statesman having lost his hair Betrays the Midas ears--the oily smile Beams on the republic he has overthrown! THE LAMENT OF SOPHONIA You who have wasted this June for me, Bitter be the seed of your love. Long midnights by the sea Have I waited for your return, Counting the stars-- Bitter be the seed of your love. And as stars go out in the crocus light of dawn, As waters drip from a failing fountain, So passed these days of June. As a boy strips from a stalk of snap-dragons The perfect blossoms, And treads them into the earth, So you have taken the June days from me-- Bitter be the seed of your love. On my couch by the sea, My golden curls loosened, Resting after the cool ablution of evening waters, My body white as whitecaps, under the moon, My eyes large as the fox's lurking in darkness, I have waited for your return. May the scourge of Asia mar your beautiful body, Beloved! You have wasted my loveliest June. As the unheeding wind Drives the falling cherry blossoms Into the purple waves, So you have scattered my days of June-- Bitter be the seed of your love! I have distilled henbane for you, Beloved, And put it in a crystal vial. The moon of October will shine, Then you will come to me, Your wanderings and treasons finished! And when you slip exhausted from my arms I will give you wine from a golden cup, And pour the henbane in it-- I shall give you henbane for the poison of defeated love; I shall kiss your dead lips, Beloved. Then I shall drink, too. Our bodies shall feed the worms As these June days have fed my writhing sorrow, Beloved murderer of my June! AT DECAPOLIS MARK, CHAP. V I THE ACCUSATION I am a farmer and live Two miles from Decapolis. Where is the magistrate? Tell me Where the magistrate is! Here I had made provision For children and wife, And now I have lost my all; I am ruined for life. I, a believer, too, In the synagogues.-- What is the faith to me? I have lost my hogs. Two thousand hogs as fine As ever you saw, Drowned and choked in the sea-- I want the law! They were feeding upon a hill When a strolling teacher Came by and scared my hogs-- They say he's a preacher, And cures the possessed who haunt The tombs and bogs. All right; but why send devils Into my hogs? They squealed and grunted and ran And plunged in the sea. And the lunatic laughed who was healed, Of the devils free. Devils or fright, no matter A fig or straw. Where is the magistrate, tell me-- I want the law! II JESUS BEFORE MAGISTRATE AHAZ Ahaz, there in the seat of judgment, hear, If you have wit to understand my plea. Swine-devils are too much for swine, that's clear, Poor man possessed of such is partly free, Is neither drowned, destroyed at once, his chains May pluck while running, howling through the mire And take a little gladness for his pains, Some fury for unsatisfied desire. But hogs go mad at once. All this I knew,-- But then this lunatic had rights. You grant Swine-devils had him in their clutch and drew His baffled spirit. How significant, As they were legion and so named, the point Is, life bewildered, torn in greed and wrath. Desire puts a spirit out of joint. Swine-devils are for swine, who have no path. But man with many lusts, what is his way, Save in confusion, through accustomed rooms? He prays for night to come, and for the day Amid the miry places and the tombs. But hogs run to the sea. And there's an end. Would I might cast the swinish demons out From man forever. Yet the word attend. The lesson of the thing what soul can doubt? What is the loss of hogs, if man be saved? What loss of lands and houses, man being free? Clothed in his reason sits the man who raved, Clean and at peace, your honor. Come and see. Your honor shakes a frowning head. Not loth, Speaking more plainly, deeper truth to draw; Do your judicial duty, yet I clothe Free souls with courage to transgress the law By casting demons out from self, or those Like this poor lunatic whom your synagogues Would leave to battle singly with his woes-- What is a man's soul to a drove of hogs? Which being lost, men play the hypocrite And make the owner chief in the affair. You banish me for witchcraft. I submit. Work of this kind awaits me everywhere. And into swine where better they belong, Casting the swinish devils out of men The devils have their place at last, and then The man is healed who had them--where's the wrong Save to the owner? Well, your synagogues Make the split hoof and chewing of the cud The test of lawful flesh. Not so are hogs. This rule has been the statute from the flood. Ahaz, your judgment has a fatal flaw. Is it not so with judges first and last-- You break the law to specialize the law?-- This is the devil that from you I cast. WINGED VICTORY Icarus, Daedalus, Medea's dragons, Pegasus, Leonardo, Swedenborg, Cyrano de Bergerac, with dew-filled flagons, Bacon, who schemed with chemicals and forge, Lana, of copper spheres of air exhausted, Therefore made light to rise Up where the pathless ways are frosted In the blue vitriol of the skies. Montgolfier, Franklin, von Zeppelin, Watt, Edison, an engine must be, spiral springs, Nor steam move not these more than condor wings Of heaven's Argonaut, Gathering the sun-set clouds for golden fleece. Santos Dumont and Langley, over these The Americans, the brothers Wright. America finds wings for flight. At last out of the New World wings are born To wheel far up where cold is, and a light Dazzling and immaculate, In the heights where stands the temple of the Morn. Winged Victory more beautiful than Samothrace's For the New World opening the gate Of heaven at last, where mortals enter in Unconquerably and win The great escape from earth, the measureless spaces Of air across the inimical abyss Between ethereal precipice and precipice. Hail! spirits of the race's Courage to be free, adventurers Of infinite desire! Hail! seed of the ancient wars, Of burning glasses, catapults, Greek fire! Hail! final conquerors, Out of whose vision greater vision springs-- America with wings! The vulture lags behind, the Gorgones, Revealed or ambushed in the thunder clouds, Would tear from heaven these audacities Of deathless spirit, shatter them and spill The blasphemy of genius from the sky. Gods are you, flyers, whom no danger shrouds, No terror shakes the will. Gods are you though you suffer and must die, Men winged as gods who fly! Borelli, in the centuries that are gone, With feathers made him wings, but steel Soars for the petrol demon's toil, Fed by the sap of trees far under earth In the long eons past turned into oil. The petrol demon in the enchanted coil Of lightning howls and spins the invisible wheel Which had its birth In the rapt vision of Archimides. Borelli, in the centuries that are gone, With feathers made him wings. But now a swan, A steel-borne beetle cleaves the immensities, Fed with fire of amber and oil of trees, And soars against the sun, And over mountains, seas! Flight more auspicious than the flight of cranes In Homer's Troyland, or than eagles flying Toward Imaus when the midnight wanes. Victorious flight! symbol of man defying Low dungeons of the spirit, darkness, chains. Flight beyond superstition and the reigns Of tyrannies where thought of man should be Swift as his thought is free. Flight of an era born to-day That puts the past and all its dead away. Locusts of the new Jehovah sent to scourge All Pharaohs who enslave. Hornets with multiple eyes, Scorning surprise, And armed to purge The despot and the knave Out of the fairer land where men shall live, Winning all things which were so fugitive Of wisdom, happiness and peace, Of hope, of spiritual release From fear of life, life's mean significance, Till life be ordered, not a thing of chance. The hopelessness of him who cried Vanity of Vanities Was justified, But now no longer must abide. Failure was his, and failure filled the hours Of our fathers in the past--let it depart. Triumph is come, and triumph must be ours. The archangels of earth through Israel, Through India and Greece Shall find us wings for life and for increase Of living, and shall battle down the hell Whose fires still smolder and profane. Life and the human heart In living must become the aeroplane, Not the yoked oxen and the cart. Let but the thought of East and West be blent, Europe, America, the Orient, To give life wings as Time's last great event: The final glory of wings to the soul of man In an order of life human, but divine, Fashioned in carefulest thought, powerful but of delicate design, As the wings of the aeroplane are. Where spirit of man is used to the full, but saved, As the petrol demon, in this dragon of war, Uses and saves his power. Where neither thought, truth, love nor gifts, nor any flower Of spirit of man, so mangled or enslaved In the eras gone, is wasted or depraved. Man shall no longer crawl, the curse is raised With winning of his wings. Dust he no more shall eat, Who crawls not, but from feet Has risen to wings! Man shall no longer python be. These wings are prophecies of a world made free! Man shall no longer crawl, the curse is raised. He has soared to the gate of heaven and gazed Into the meadows of infinity, Winged and with lightning shod, Beyond the old day's lowering cloud and murk. The heavens declare the glory of God, Man shows His handiwork! OH YOU SABBATARIANS! Oh you sabbatarians, methodists and puritans; You bigots, devotees and ranters; You formalists, pietists and fanatics, Teetotalers and hydropots, You thin ascetics, androgynous souls, Chaste and epicene spirits, Eyes blind to color, ears deaf to sound, Fingers insensitive, Do what you will, Make what laws you choose-- Yet there are high spaces of rapture Which you can never touch, They are beyond you and hidden from you. We leave you to the dull assemblies, Charades, cantatas and lectures; The civic meetings where you lie and act And work up business; The teas of forced conversation, And receptions of how-de-dos, And stereotyped smiles; The church sociables; And the calls your young men of clammy hands And fetid breath Pay to anæmic virgins-- These are yours; Take them-- But I tell you In places you know not of, We, the free spirits, the livers, Guests at the wedding feast of life, Drinkers of the wine made by Jesus, Worshipers of fire and of God, Who made the grape, And filled the veins of His legitimate children With ethereal flame-- We the lovers of life in unknown places Shall taste of ancient wine, And put flowers in golden vases, And open precious books of song, And look upon dreaming Buddhas, And marble masks of genius. We shall hear the sound of stringed instruments, Voicing the dreams of great spirits. We shall know the rapture of kisses And long embraces, And the sting of folly. We shall entwine our arms in voluptuous sleep, And in the misery of your denials And your cowardice and your fears You shall not even dream that we exist. Unintelligible weeds! We, the blossoms of life's garden, Flourish on the hills of variable winds-- We perish, but you never live. PALLAS ATHENE Athene! Virgin! Goddess! Queen! descend, Come to us and befriend. Set up your shrine among us and defend Our realm against corruptions which impend. * * * * * Divinity of order and of law, Most powerful and wise, Our land reclaim. Patron of the assemblies of the free, Our cities shame! Dethrone our bastard Demos, partisans Of Moody, Campbell, all the Wesleyans. Come down with awe, Enceladus and Pallas strike, who rise Against your father and his hierarchy. Smite the giants Superstition, Force, Fanaticism, Ignorance and Faith In village gods, and bury them beneath Volcanic mountains. Yoke them to the course And labor of your wisdom. Fling your shield, Medusa faced, before the brows of clay, Who rule our clattering day; Flash it before their brows and make Stones for the pavement of the way Whereon you drive your chariot, golden-wheeled. Descend, O Goddess, for the memory's sake And for the hope's sake of your son, Franklin, your herald, Washington, Who dreamed to make perpetual Our Parthenon, column, court and hall. And save it from the donjon, minaret, The cross, the spire, the vane, the parapet! * * * * * We have no god but Jesus, No god but Billiken. Nature and Dionysius Come back again! Jehovah is an alien tyrant, rules us From arid Palestine, Who mouths a heaven that fools us, And curses the olive and vine, And the smiles of the lyric nine. Gods are they, hard and full of wrath Who drive us on the unintelligible path. Gods are they, and unreckoning of their work Too puerile or despotic, or with feet That drip blood on a mercy seat. They nerve our hands with hatred's dirk, Or weaken us with poison sweet. Drug us to mumble this is life, who feel In our delirium, no less, that life Is an ocean that breaks the grist stones and the wheel Set up to feed this world of strife By Mary's son, Mary the wife-- Come from the Islands of the Blest, Goddess, and give us wisdom, vision, rest. Reveal a Beauty for our hearts to love. The wooden ark of Moses, overlaid With strips of gold, And all the spurious covenant thereof By which our life is obelised We would no more behold, Who have so vainly with it temporized. Fruitless our spirits have these centuries prayed Before the Janus cross, The oracle that speaks in riddles, asks Penitence, obedience, tasks Which nature interdicts. We are the body on the crucifix, Not Jesus; we, the race, are crucified, And die upon the cross, For centuries have died. Come and restore our loss Of truth, the eyes of spirits undeceived, Courage with nature, strike the opiate joss To ruin with your sword, O most adored! Give us Reality, O lover of men, Republics, cities, lands. Uplift our eyes to Beauty, once perceived We may rebuild the Areopagus, With wiser eyes and hands. Bring Thought, the Argus, consciousness That looks before and after, And grace perpetual of Mnemosyne-- Remembering we shall be free! Save us, O Goddess, from the drifting crowd, Wondering, witless, loud, The lovers of the minute who possess No reverence and no laughter! * * * * * Goddess! with silver helmet, guardian You may be, if we worship at your shrine, Before the gates of Boston and New York, Chicago, San Francisco, through the span Of continents and isles; your heart incline Toward our turbulent blood from many climes, Worships and times. Lift from our necks the brass and jeweled torque Of restless zealots and of idiot mouths; The locusts swarm, the land is cursed with drouths, Bring rain and dew, Plant olive trees, Set on our hills the emblem of the vine; Bring to our hearts the lofty purities Of song and laughter, wisdom, and renew Temples of beauty and academies! * * * * * Set up your golden altar In Parthenons in every village and shire. The crucifix and psalter, The ikons and the toys of vain desire We cast into the fire. We keep the lover Jesus, for his hope, His humanism and his flaming zeal. He will approach your altar, he will kneel At last before you, for the horoscope Of life misread in youth And youthful dreams and faith. Goddess! our globe that hungers for the truth Between the roar of life, silence of death Cannot be stayed or cowed. But, oh, descend First to our soil, Atlantis, and befriend. Make us a light across the fathomless sea Of centuries to be, Even as Athens is, divinity! AT SAGAMORE HILL All things proceed as though the stage were set For acts arranged. I have not learned the part, The day enacts itself. I take the tube, Find daylight at Jamaica, know the place Through some rehearsal, all the country know Which glides along the window, is not seen For definite memory. At Oyster Bay A taxi stands in readiness; in a trice We circle strips of water, slopes of hills, Climb where a granite wall supports a hill, A mass of blossoms, ripening berries, too, And enter at a gate, go up a drive, Shadowed by larches, cedars, silver willows. This taxi just ahead is in the play, Is here in life as I had seen it in The crystal of prevision, reaches first The porte cochere. This moment from the door Comes Roosevelt, and greets the man who leaves The taxi just ahead, then waits for me, Puts a strong hand that softens into mine, And says, O, this is bully! We go in. He leaves my antecessor in a room Somewhere along the hall, and comes to me Who wait him in the roomy library. How are those lovely daughters? Oh, by George! I thought I might forget their names, I know-- It's Madeline and Marcia. Yes, you know Corinne adores the picture which you sent Of Madeline--your boy, too? In the war! That's bully--tea is coming--we must talk, I have five hundred things to ask you--set The tea things on this table, Anna--now, Do you take sugar, lemon? O, you smoke! I'll give you a cigar. The talk begins. He's dressed in canvas khaki, flannel shirt, Laced boots for farming, chopping trees, perhaps; A stocky frame, curtains of skin on cheeks Drained slightly of their fat; gash in the neck Where pus was emptied lately; one eye dim, And growing dimmer; almost blind in that. And when he walks he rolls a little like A man whose youth is fading, like a cart That rolls when springs are old. He is a moose, Scarred, battered from the hunters, thickets, stones; Some finest tips of antlers broken off, And eyes where images of ancient things Flit back and forth across them, keeping still A certain slumberous indifference Or wisdom, it may be. But then the talk! Bronze dolphins in a fountain cannot spout More streams at once: Of course the war, the emperor, America in the war, his sons in France, The dangers, separation, let them go! The fate has been appointed--to our task, Live full our lives with duty, go to sleep! For I say, he exclaims, the man who fears To die should not be born, nor left to live. It's Celtic poetry, free verse. He says: You nobly celebrate in your Spoon River The pioneers, the soldiers of the past, Why do you flout our Philippine adventure? No difference, Colonel, in the stock, the difference Lies in the causes. Well, another stream: Mark Hanna, Quay and others, what I hate, He says to me, is the Pharisee--I can stand All other men. And you will find the men So much maligned had gentle qualities, And noble dreams. Poor Quay, he loved the Indians, Sent for me when he lay there dying, said, Look after such a tribe when I am dead. I want to crawl upon a sunny rock And die there like a wolf. Did he say that, Colonel, to you? Yes! and you know, a man Who says a thing like that has in his soul An orb of light to flash that meaning forth Of heroism, nature. Time goes on, The play is staged, must end; my taxi comes In half an hour or so. Before it comes, Let's walk about the farm and see my corn. A fellow on the porch is warming heels As we go by. I'll see him when you go, The Colonel says. The rail fence by the corn Is good to lean on as we stand and talk Of farming, cattle, country life. We turn, Sit for some moments in a garden house On which a rose vine clambers all in bloom, And from this hilly place look at the strips Of water from the bay a mile beyond, Below some several terraces of hills Where firs and pines are growing. This resembles A scene in Milton that I've read. He knows, Catches the reminiscence, quotes the lines--and then Something of country silence, look of grass Where the wind stirs it, mystical little breaths Coming between the roses; something, too, In Vulcan's figure; he is Vulcan, too, Deprived his shop, great bellows, hammer, anvil, Sitting so quietly beside me, hands Spread over knees; something of these evokes A pathos, and immediately in key With all of this he says: I have achieved By labor, concentration, not at all By gifts or genius, being commonplace In all my faculties. Not all, I say. One faculty is not, your over-mind, Eyed front and back to see all faculties, Govern and watch them. If we let you state Your case against you, timid born, you say, Becoming brave, asthmatic, growing strong: No marksman, yet becoming skilled with guns; No gift of speech, yet winning golden speech; No gift of writing, writing books, no less Of our America to thrill and live-- If, as I say, we let you state your case Against you as you do, there yet remains This over-mind, and that is what--a gift Of genius or of what? By George, he says, What are you, a theosophist? I don't know. I know some men achieve a single thing, Like courage, charity, in this incarnation; You have achieved some twenty things. I think That this is going some for a man whose gifts Are commonplace and nothing else. We rise And saunter toward the house--and there's the man Still warming heels; my taxi, too, has come. We are to meet next Wednesday in New York And finish up some subjects--he has thoughts How I can help America, if I drop This line or that a little, all in all. * * * * * But something happens; I have met a loss; Would see no one, and write him I am off. And on that Wednesday flashes from the war Say Quentin has been killed: we had not met If I had stayed to meet him. So, good-by Upon the lawn at Sagamore was good-by, Master of Properties, you stage the scene And let us speak and pass into the wings! One thing was fitting--dying in your sleep-- A touch of Nature, Colonel, you who loved And were beloved of Nature, felt her hand Upon your brow at last to give to you A bit of sleep, and after sleep perhaps Rest and rejuvenation; you will wake To newer labors, fresher victories Over those faculties not disciplined As you desired them in these sixty years. TO ROBERT NICHOLS England has found another voice in you Of beauty and of truth, True to their soul, as you are true-- Singer and soldier, yet a youth. Out of the trenches and the rage of blood, The hatred and the lies You, like a wounded sky-lark, in a flood Pour forth these melodies, Of a spirit which has suffered, yet has soared Above the stench of hell and death's defeats. I look at you, as often I have pored On the death mask of Keats. Or the face of him quickly and gladly going The waves of the sea under, To the land of man's unknowing, Or the land of wonder. And the war had you! what can it give In return for souls like yours Mangled or blotted out?--who shall forgive The war while time endures? Back of the shouting mob, the brazen bands, The soldiers marching well, Gangrene cries out and Rupert Brooke's hands Clutch in a hemorrhage of hell. Yet you found God through this? through war, Through love found vision, perhaps peace? Keep them in your breast like the morning star-- May their light increase. Waves on the sea's breast catch the light While the hollows between Are dark--you are a wave whose height Is smitten by the Light unseen, Urged by the Sea's power to the glory Of the christening sun. When the calm comes and darkness, transitory Be your doubt, or none. These words from me who have the hard way traveled Of pain and thought, In a weaving never wholly unraveled, Or wholly wrought, For your spirit and your songs, gladness For the hope of you, and praise To life, who gave you out of the world's madness In these our days. BONNYBELL: THE BUTTERFLY As I shall die, let your belief Find in these words too poor and brief My soul's essential self. My grief Down to the day I knew you locks Its secret word in paradox: I who loved truth could not be true, Could only love the truth and glow With words of truth who loved it so, Even while I dishonored you. I who loved constancy was false, And heeded but in part the calls Of loveliness for love and you. I am but half of that I hoped, And that half hardly more than words I cheered my soul with as it groped: As from their bowers of rain the birds Sing feebly, pining for the sun. As I am all of this, by fate Lose what I could so well have won, Life leaves me half articulate, My failure, nature half-expressed, Or wholly hidden in my breast. Yes, dear, the secret of me lies Where words scarce come to analyze. Yet who knows why he is this or that? What moves, defeats him, works him ill? What blood ancestral of the bat Narrows his music to the shrill Squeak of a flitting thing that hunts For gnats, which never singing, fronts The full moon flooding down the vale, The perfect soul, the nightingale! You have wooed music all your life, And I have sought for love. I think My soul was marked, dear, by a wife Who loved a man immersed in drink, Who crushed her love which would not die. If this be true, my soul's great thirst Was blended with a fault accursed. My mother's love is my soul's cry. My father's vileness, lies and lusts, His cruel heart, inconstancy That kept my mother with the crusts Of life to gnaw, are in my blood. My rainbow wings I scarce can loose, Or if I free them, there's the mud That weighs and mars their use. You have wooed music. But suppose The hampered hours and poverty Broke down your spirit's harmony, Then if you found you could achieve The music in you, if you could But pick a pocket or deceive, Which would you call the greater good-- The music or a sin withstood? Suppose you passed a window where The violin of your despair Lay ready for your hands! At last You stole it as you hurried past, And hid it underneath your rags Until you reached your attic room, Then tuned the strings and burned the tags. And drew the bow till lyric fire Should all your thieving thoughts consume: In such case what is your desire-- The music or the violin? And what in such case is your sin? And if they caught you in your theft, Would you, just to be honest, dear, Forefront your thief-self as your deft And dominant genius, or the ear Which tortured you? Would you not say, Music intrigues me night and day? My soul is the musician's. First In my soul's love is music. Would You falsify to keep your good? Deny your theft, or put the worst Construction on your soul, obscure Thereby your soul's investiture Of music's gift and music's lure? If you were flame you would pretend What you would fain be to the end, Keep your good name and keep as well The violin. May this not be In some realm an integrity? Now for myself, dear, though I lack The gift of utterance to explain My life's pursuit and passion, pain, Or why I acted thus, concealed Thoughts that you hold were best revealed, Your eyes to heal themselves must track And find my soul's way in its quest Followed from girlhood without rest. Music is not its hope, but love.... And I saw somehow I could lift My life through you, and rise above What I had been. And since your gift Of love saw me as truthful, true I kept that best side to your view, And hoped to be what you desired If I but struggled, still aspired. And as for lapses, even while I fooled you with the wanton's smile, He was my lover till you came To light my life with purer flame. Was it, beloved, so great a sin? He was a practice violin. Oh, how I knew this when your strings Sang to me afterward when I slept Upon your breast again. I wept, Do you remember? I was grieving Neither for him, nor your deceiving, Rather (how strange is life) that he Was prelude to your harmony; Rather that while I walked with him, With you I found the cherubim, Left my old self at last with wings, Saw beauty clear where it was dim Before through my imaginings. Do you suppose the primrose knows What skill adds petals to its crown? How many failures laugh and frown Upon the hand that crosses, sows? The hand is ignorant of the power Obedient in the primrose flower To the hand's skill that toils to add New petals till the flower be clad In fuller glory. What's the bond Between us two, that I respond To what you are? Nor do you know What lies within me fain to grow Under your hand. But if the worm Should call itself the butterfly, Since it will soon become one, I Better to be myself affirm That I am Beauty, Truth--for you I would be Beauty, Truth, imbue Your life with love and loveliness. And you can make me Beauty, Truth, And I can bring you soul success If you but train my flower whose youth Still may be governed, keep erect My hope in this poor earthen sod. I think this is a task which God Appoints for us. We may neglect The task in this life, but to find It is a task we leave behind, Only to meet it, till we see Our fate worked out in lives to be. O, from my lesser self to spread My golden wings above your head, Through love of love and you discard The sting, the rings of green, the shard. Oh, to be Psyche, passion tried Through flesh, desire, purified! Love is my lode-star, music yours-- Souls must go where the lode-star lures. HYMN TO AGNI God of fire, God of the flame of our love, Beyond whose might no God is, And none in the realm of birth, Agni! Adored one, May we never suffer in thy friendship! Thou, who art re-born each day, And whose symbol is the sacred drill Wherewith fire is made for the temple, Morning by morning, Freshly create our love as the sun awakes, Preserve our love, O Agni! The crocuses, the dandelions, The golden forsythia Perished in May. But roses burn on the altar of earth, Bridal blossoms, whitest of fire, Dance in the winds of June. Agni, remember us, Remember our love! We have prayed to you, powerful one-- Thou whose name is first In the first of the sacred hymns; Thou to whom sacrifices pass To the Gods, thou messenger of the Gods, Thou who art born a little lower than the most high Indra Hast heard our prayer-- Hear still our prayer: Abide with us, O Agni, and befriend; Make our hearts as temples, And our desire as the drill, Wherewith fire is created For the sacred sacrifice of love, And for a light to our spirits-- Turn not away from our prayers, O Agni! Here before the fire of the Sun of June Kneeling Hand in hand, Our eyes closed before the splendor of your spirit Hear our prayer, O Agni: May we never suffer in thy friendship. EPITAPH FOR US One with the turf, one with the tree As we are now, you soon shall be, As you are now, so once were we. The hundred years we looked upon Were Goethe and Napoleon. Now twice a hundred years are gone, And you gaze back and contemplate, Lloyd George and Wilson, William's hate, And Nicholas of the bloody fate; Us, too, who won the German war, Who knew less what the strife was for Than you, now that the conqueror Lies with the conquered. You will say: "Here sleep the brave, the grave, the gay, The wise, the blind, who lost the way." But for us English, for us French, Americans who held the trench, You will not grieve, though the rains drench The hills and valleys, being these. Who pities stocks, or pities trees? Or stones, or meadows, rivers, seas? We are with nature, we have grown At one with water, earth, and stone-- Man only is separate and alone, Earth sundered, left to dream and feel Illusion still in pain made real, The hope a mist, but fire the wheel. But what was love, and what was lust, Memory, passion, pain or trust, Returned to clay and blown in dust, Is nature without memory-- Yet as you are, so once were we, As we are now, you soon shall be, Blind fellows of the indifferent stars Healed of your bruises, of your scars In love and living, in the wars. Come to us where the secret lies Under the riddle of the skies, Surrender fingers, speech, and eyes. Sink into nature and become The mystery that strikes you dumb, Be clay and end your martyrdom. Rise up as thought, the secret know. As passionless as stars bestow Your glances on the world below, As a man looks at hand or knee. What is the turf of you, what the tree? Earth is a phantom--let it be. BOTTICELLI TO SIMONETTA I would give you all my heart, and I have given All my heart to you to have and keep With your heart, where my heart has found its heaven In a light immortal, and a peace like sleep. Here is my heart, for you to have and treasure, Your woman's heart will treasure it, For a love that only love may find a measure, And only love like yours can measure it. In absence and in separation praying Before your love, my heart receive, My heart which kneels to you, so gently laying Hands of deep prayer, too reverent to grieve For lives divided, yet compassionate, As my poor heart is pitiful for yours. These hearts of ours, that know so deep a fate, Even as a heart that silently endures, Lie on an altar of consuming fire, Our hearts together, taking life thereof. Ashes must come of two hearts which aspire To God, who has given love. FLOWER IN THE GARDEN Flower in the garden, Wholly itself and free, Yearning and joyous, Breathing its charm To the passer-by On the sighing air-- Beloved flower! Flower desired for something beyond Itself as a flower; Giving the promise of ecstasy Beyond its own being, Its place in the garden-- A shadowed flame Of an absolute! Flower that I have taken From its place in the garden To realize the ultimate Beauty; Flower in the vase at my side, Breathing a sweeter life Into the air I breathe, A spirit that makes me faint, Sorrowful with a strange languor. Flower no less beautiful, But revealing an essence That changes my flower. O, my flower that is with me but lost, Lost in the disclosure of other hues, Other scents! Flower of passion, flower of love, Flower that I have won and lost, Mystical flower! INEXORABLE DEITIES Deities! Inexorable revealers, Give me strength to endure The gifts of the Muses, Daughters of Memory. When the sky is blue as Minerva's eyes Let me stand unshaken; When the sea sings to the rising sun Let me be unafraid; When the meadow lark falls like a meteor Through the light of afternoon, An unloosened fountain of rapture, Keep my heart from spilling Its vital power; When at the dawn The dim souls of crocuses hear the calls Of waking birds, Give me to live but master the loveliness. Keep my eyes unharmed from splendors Unveiled by you, And my ears at peace Filled no less with the music Of Passion and Pain, growth and change. * * * * * But O ye sacred and terrible powers, Reckless of my mortality, Strengthen me to behold a face, To know the spirit of a beloved one Yet to endure, yet to dare! ARIELLE Arielle! Arielle! Gracious and fanciful, Laughing and joyous! Arielle girlish, queenly, majestical; Deep eyed for memory, Pensive for dreams. Arielle crowned with the light of thought, Mystical, reverent, Musing on the splendor of life, And the blossom of love Pressed into her hands-- Arielle! Music awakes in the hall! Shadowy pools and glistening willows, And elfin shapes amid silver shadows Are made into sound! Arielle listens with hidden eyes, Sitting amid her treasures, A presence like a lamp of alabaster, A yearning gardenia That broods in a shaft of light... Arielle clapping hands and running About her rooms, Arranging cloths of gold and jars of crystal, And vases of ruby cloisonne. Arielle matching blues and reds: Pomegranates, apples in bowls of jade. Arielle reposing, lost in Plato, In the contemplation of Agni. Arielle, the cup to her lips, A laughing Thalia! Arielle! The breath of morning moves through the casement window-- Arielle taking the cool of it on her brow, And the ecstasy of the robin's song into her heart. Arielle in prayer at dawn Laying hands upon secret powers: Lead me in the path of love to my love. Arielle merging the past and the present, As light increases light-- Arielle adored-- Arielle! SOUNDS OUT OF SORROW Of all sounds out of the soul of sorrow These I would hear no more: The cry of a new-born child at midnight; The sound of a closing door, That hushes the echo of departing feet When the loneliness of the room Is haunted with the silence Of a dead god's tomb; The songs of robins at the white dawn, Since I may never see The eyes they waked in the April Now gone from me; Music into whose essence entered The soul of an hour:-- A face, a voice, the touch of a hand, The scent of a flower. MOURNIN' FOR RELIGION Brothers and sisters, I'm mournin' for religion, But I can't get religion, it's my woman interferin'. I sing and I pray, and I'm real perseverin', But I can't get religion, That's all I have to say. I know there is a fountain, a Jesus, a comforter, A heaven, a Jerusalem, a day of Pentecost, Salvation for the wishin', blood for sin's remission, A covenant, a promise for souls that are lost. But I can't get religion, the salvation feelin', The vision of the Lamb, forgiveness and healin'. I have a sort of numbness When I see the mourners kneelin'. I have a kind of dumbness When the preacher is appealin'. I have a kind of wariness, even contrariness, Even while I'm fearin' The bottomless pit and the shut gates of heaven. It's my woman interferin'-- For you see when they say: Come to the mercy seat, come, come, The spirit and the bride Say come, come, I think of my woman who bore so many children; I think of her a cookin' for harvesters in summer; I think of her a lyin' there, a dyin' there, the neighbors Who came in to fan her and how she never murmured; And then I seem to grow number and number, And something in me says: Why didn't Jesus help her for to die, Why did Jesus always pass her by, Let her break her health down as I was growing poorer, Let her lie and suffer with no medicine to cure her, I wouldn't treat a stray dog as Jesus acted to her. If these are devil words, I'm a child of the devil. And this is why I'm dumb As the spirit and the bride say come! * * * * * I am old and crippled--sixty in December. And I wonder if it's God that stretches out and hands us Troubles we remember? I'm alone besides, I need the Comforter, All the children's grown up, livin' out in Kansas. My old friend Billy died of lung fever.... But the worst of it is I'm really a believer, Expect to go to hell if I don't get religion. And I need this religion to stop this awful grievin' About my woman lyin' there in the cemetery, And you can't stop that grievin' simply by believin'. So I mourn for religion, I mourn for religion, My old heart breaks for religion! THYAMIS Thyamis, a gallant of Memphis, Where melons were served Iced with snow from the Mountains of the Moon; Thyamis, a philanderer in Alexandris Rich in parchments and terebinth, Lies here in the museum. His lips are brown as peach leather, Through which his teeth are sticking, White as squash seeds. * * * * * Knowing that he must die and leave her He slew the lovely Chariclea Who sailed with him on the Nile Under the moon of Egypt. This is the body of Chariclea Undesiring the arms of Thyamis. This is the remnant of Chariclea, Wrapped in a gunny sack, Rotted with gums and balsams. * * * * * As the sands of the desert are stirred By the wind when the sun sets, The open door of the museum Lets in the wind to shake The cerements of Chariclea, And the stray hairs on the forsaken head Of Thyamis. * * * * * Of desire long dead; Of a murder done in the days of Pharaoh; Of Thyamis dying who took to death The lovely Chariclea; Of Chariclea who shrank From the love death of Thyamis The multitude passes, unknowing. * * * * * I SHALL GO DOWN INTO THIS LAND I shall go down into this land Of the great Northwest: This land of the free ordinance, This land made free for the free By the patriarchs. * * * * * Shall it be Michigan, Or Illinois, Or Indiana? These are my people, These are my lovers, my friends-- Mingle my dust with theirs, Ye sacred powers! * * * * * Clouds, like convoys on infinite missions, Bound for infinite harbors Float over the length of this land. And in the centuries to come The rocks and trees of this land will turn, These fields and hills will turn Under unending convoys of clouds-- O ye clouds! Drench my dust and mingle it With the dust of the pioneers; My mates, my friends, Toilers and sufferers, Builders and dreamers, Lovers of freedom. * * * * * O Earth that looks into space, As a man in sleep looks up, And is voiceless, at peace, Divining the secret-- I shall know the secret When I go down into this land Of the great Northwest! * * * * * Draw my dust With the dust of my beloved Into the substance of a great rock, Upon whose point a planet flames, Nightly, in a thrilling moment Of divine revelation Through endless time! SPRING LAKE [Greek: Bê de' kat' Oulhympio karhênôn chôomenys kêr.] --_Iliad._ I Some thought a bomb hit Trotter's garage. Some thought a comet Blew up the Lodge. Milem Alkire was riding in a Dodge, Saw the water splashing, and a great light flashing, And a thousand arrows flying from the heaven's glow; And heard a great banging and a howling clanging Of a bull-hide's string to a monstrous bow. II Milem Alkire became a changed man, So the thing began, guess it if you can. He turned in an hour from a man who was sour To a singing, dancing satyr like Pan. He hobbled and clattered as if nothing mattered Down in his cellar for any strange fellow, Bringing up the bottles, clinking, winking, For the crowd that was drinking. All against the statutes in such case provided. Drew well water to cool the wine off, Polished up the glasses with a humorous cough. Milem Alkire for years had resided A quiet, pious, law abiding citizen Turned in an hour to a wag who derided The feelings of the people, the village steeple, And the ways that befit a man-- This Spring Lake citizen. III And about the time That Milem Alkire Became a wine seller, And begetter of crime, With parties on his lawn From mid-night to dawn, Making the wine free Under the pine tree, Starling Turner's wife ran away, A woman who before was anything but gay. Never had a lover in her life, so they say, But like other clay, had the longing to stray. She saw a cornet player, An idler, a strayer, And left her husband furious threatening to slay her, And cursing musicians who have no honest missions. So Starling Turner, a belated learner Of life as music, laughter, folly, Grew suddenly jolly, forgot his melancholy, Became a dancer and rounded up the fiddlers, Got up a contest of fifty old fiddlers, With prizes for fiddling from best to middling: A set of fine harness for the best piece of fiddling. Work stopped, business stopped, all went mad, Mad about music, the preachers looked sad For music, the like of which the village never had.... The children in the street were shockingly bad, And danced like pixies scantily clad; Knocked away the crutches from venerable hobblers, Threw pebbles at the windows of grocers and cobblers, Made fun of the preachers, the grammar school teachers, Stole spring chickens and turkey gobblers, Roasted hooked geese in front of the police. Till the quidnuncs decided it wasn't any use, The devil had let a thousand devils loose. IV Then folks began to read old books forbidden. Carpenters orated and expatiated On Orphic doctrines and wisdoms long hidden, A Swede who couldn't speak began to talk Greek. There were meetings in the park from dawn to dark. And wild talk of razing the village, effacing The plain little houses and the town replacing With carved stone, columns and temples gracing Gardens and vistas the water front embracing. And others would create a brand new state. So fire broke out in the strangest places. The belated traveler beheld elfin faces Springing from nothing, to vanish in a second. Potatoes unthrown went whizzing round corners. Voices were heard and white fingers beckoned, Till all the wise ones, doubters and scorners Although they winced, in some way evinced That their minds were convinced. Something was wrong, The evidence was strong, The air was full of song: You woke out of sleep and heard a violin, A harp or a horn; And rose up and followed the sound growing thin At the break of morn. V Music, music, music was blown Over the waters, out of the woodlands, Grassy valleys and sunny meadow lands In the mid spaces, tone on tone. The pasturing flocks were sleeker grown And multiplied in a way unknown.... And little Alice bright of eye Dreamed and began to prophesy: And said the strayer, the cornet player, Who took Starling Turner's wife away, Is coming back at an early day: Look out, said Alice, to Imogene, Red-lipped, bright-eyed, turned eighteen, You have danced too much on the village green. Look out for the cornet player, I mean. I know who he is for my eyes are keen. Your blood is desiring, but yet serene. I know his face and his bright desire, Laurel leaves are around his brow; He carries a horn, but sometimes a lyre. His eyes are blue and his face is fire. Look out, said Alice, his touch is dire, Keep to the house, or the church's spire. VI And what was next? The girl disappeared. As Alice feared, no fate interfered. A posse collected, hunted and peered, Raced through the night till their eyes were bleared, And looked for Imogene, cried and cheered When a clew was found, or a doubt was cleared. A posse with pitch-forks, scythes and axes, Shot-guns, pistols, knives and rifles, Hunts for Imogene, never relaxes, Runs over meadows for luring trifles: The wave of grain or a weed that tosses; And curse and say what a terrible loss is Come to Spring Lake: a wife's enticed, And then this fairest maid is abducted. Why are the innocent sacrificed? We are a people well conducted. What is the curse, or is it the war? Why is it every one here is housing Fiddlers, idlers, fancy dancers. At Milem Alkire's why carousing; Everything that the good abhor In lovers and romancers? The world is mad, the village is mad, Even the cattle bellow and run. Old maid, young maid, man and lad Have eaten of something half insane; Such antics never before were done And never it seems may be again Under the shining sun. And now comes villainy out of the fun. Come with the torch, come with the halter, Gather the posse, stay nor falter, Catch the scoundrel who spoiled our peace And hang him up in the maple tree's Highest branch. For what is the law If it can't slip the noose and draw This minstrel man to a thing of awe? VII Then the pastor said: Talk of the gallows Is just the thing for it's righteous malice; And we need hearts with piety callous For work like this, I might say salus Populi, but bright-eyed Alice Can help us in this matter kinetic Who has grown psychic and grown prophetic, Sees round corners, and looks through doors And spies old treasure under the floors. And I have heard that Alice averred, The cornet player's the self-same bird Who enticed the wife of Starling Turner And kidnapped Imogene; he will spurn her Later for some one else, unless we Capture and hang the vile sojourner; So now for Alice, he said, and bless me! VIII Alice came out to lead the mob Catch the scoundrel and finish the job. Down to Fruitport before it is dark Come, said Alice, Joan of Arc. Farmers, butchers, cobblers, dentists, Lawyers, doctors, preachers, druggists Hustled and ran in the afternoon, Following Alice who led the way Chanting an ancient roundelay, A wild and haunting tune. Her hair streamed over her little shoulders Back in the wind for all beholders. And her little feet were as swift and white As waves that dance in the noonday light. Youths were panting, middle aged men Had to rest and resume again. She ran the posse almost to death, All were gasping and out of breath. At last they halted upon the ridge. There! said Alice, beside the bridge Under its shadow. Look, he's there Weaving lilies in Imogene's hair; His musical instrument laid aside Now he has charmed the maiden pride Of Imogene who is not his bride, Come, said Alice, before they hide. IX They ran from the ridge, Looked under the bridge. There! he escapes, said Alice, the fay. Where? Howled the mob! which is the way? There's Imogene wrapped as if in a trance, Said the preacher, there where the waters dance. I saw as it were a shaft of light Steal from her side, vanish from sight. The cobbler said: it was like a comet; The druggist, water by a bomb hit. Yes, said the lawyer, I heard a splashing And saw a light as of waters flashing Or a thousand arrows of splendor flying I heard a booming, banging, clanging Of a bull's hide string, it was terrifying. No, said Alice, this form of light, That stole away and vanished from sight, That was the fellow, said Alice, the sprite. Go after him, follow through meadow and hollow The God Apollo, the great Apollo! X They went to Imogene then and took her, Spoke to her, slapped her hands and shook her, Asked her who it was that forsook her, Why she had left her home and wandered, What was the dream she sat and pondered, And Imogene said, it's a dream of dread, Now that the glory of it is fled. Where am I now, where is my lover? God of my dreams, singer and rover. I danced with the muses in flowering meadows; We lay on lawns of whispering shadows; We walked by moonlight where pine trees stood Feathery clear in the crystal flood; He gave me honey and grapes for food. We rode on the clouds and counted the stars. He sang me songs of the ancient wars. He told me of cities and temples builded Under his hand, we waded rivers By star-light and by sun-light gilded; By shades where the green of the laurel shivers. But it came to this, and this I see: Life is beautiful if you are free, If you live yourself like the laurel tree. XI Then some of them teased her, the posse seized her, They tore the lilies out of her hair. Back to the village, exclaimed the preacher, Back to your home, exclaimed the teacher. You've been befooled, said Alice, the fay, And back went Imogene in despair, Weeping all the way! THE BARBER OF SEPO Trimmed but not cut too short; the temples shaved, Neck clipped around, not shaved, an oil shampoo, You have a world of time before the train And when it comes it stops ten minutes--then The depot's just a block away. Oh yes, This is my own, my native town. But when I earn the money to get out, I go. I've had my share of bad luck--seems to me Without my fault, as least life's actinism Makes what we call our luck or lack of luck.... Go down this street a block, find Burney Cole And ask him why I was not graduated From Sepo's High School at the time he was. It was this way: I fell in love that spring With Lillie Balzer, and it ended us, Lillie and me, for finishing that year. I thought of Lillie morning, noon and night And Lillie thought of me, and so we flunked. That thinned the class to Burney Cole, and he Stood up and spoke twelve minutes scared to death. Progress of Science was his theme, committed To memory, the gestures timed, they trained him Out in the woods near Big Creek. Lil and I Sat there and laughed--the town was in the hall, Applause terrific, bouquets thick as hops. And when they handed Burney his diploma The crowd went wild. How does this razor work? Not shaving you too close? I try to please... Burney was famous for a night, you see. They thought his piece was wonderful, such command Of language, depth of thought beyond his years. Next morning with his ears and cheeks still burning, Flushed like a god, as Keats says, Burney stood Behind the counter in the grocery store Beginning then to earn the means to take A course in Science--when a customer Came in and said: a piece of star tobacco, Young fellow, hurry! Such is fame--one night You're on a platform gathering in bouquets, Next morning without honor and forgotten, Commanded like a boot-black. Five years now Burney has clerked, some say has given up The course in science, and I hate to ask him... But as for me, there was a lot of talk, And Lillie went away, began to sport. She's been around the world, is living now In Buenos Ayres. Love's a funny thing: It levels ranks, puts monarch or savant Beside the chorus girl and in her hands. I stayed here, did not have to leave for shame, But Lillie changed my life. When she was gone My conscience hurt me, and that very fall When I was most susceptible, responsive, And penitent, we had a great revival. And just to use the lingo: after much Wrestling at the Seat of Mercy, prayers And ministrations then I saw the light, Became converted, got the ecstasy. I wrote to Lillie who was in Chicago To seek salvation, told her of myself. She wrote back, you are cracked--go take a pill.... I know you've come to get your hair trimmed, shaved, Also to hear my story--you shall hear. The elders saw in me a likely man And said there is a preacher. First I knew They had a purse made up to send me off To learn theology, and so I went. I plunged into the stuff that preachers learn: The Hebrew language, Aramaic and Syriac; The Hebrew ideas--rapid survey--oh, yes, Rapid survey, that was the usual thing. Histories of Syria and Palestine; Theology of the Synoptics, eschatology. Doctrine of the Trinity, Docetism, And Christian writings to Eusebius. Well, in the midst of all of this what happens? A fellow shows me Draper and this stuff Went up like shale and soft rock in a blast. My room mate was John Smith, he handed me This book of Draper's. What do you suppose? This scamp was there to get at secret things, Was laughing in his sleeve, had no belief. He used to say: "They'd never know me now." By which he meant he was a different person In some round dozen places, and each place Was different from the others, he was native To each place, played his part there, was unknown As fitted to another, hence his words "They'd never know me now." And so it was This John Smith acted through the course, came through A finished preacher. But they found me out As soon as Draper gnawed my faith in two. The good folks back in Sepo took away The purse they lent and left me high and dry. So I came back and learned the barber's trade, And here I am. But when I save enough I mean to start a little magazine To show what is the matter. Do you know? It's something on the shelf--not booze or jam: It's that old bible, precious family bible, That record of the Hebrew thought and life-- That book that takes a course of years to study, Requires Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek and Coptic And epigraphy, metaphysics, not Because the book itself is rich in these But just because when you would know a book In every character and turn of phrase And know what's back of it and went into it You draw the learning of the world, that's all. Take Plato, if you will, and study him After this manner, you will travel far In every land and realm. But this is nothing. The preachers are a handful to the world. They eat this dead stuff like bacteria That clean away decay. The harm is here Among the populace, the country, all That makes for life as life. See what I mean? We have three thousand people in this town. Say in this state there are a thousand towns, And say in every town on every Sunday In every year this book is taught and preached To every human being from the time It's five years old as long as it will stand And let itself be taught--what have you done? You have created, kept intact a body, An audience and voting strength--for whom, The reformer, the fanatic, non-conformist, The man of principle who wants a law And those who, whether consciously or not, Live in the illusion that there is an end, A consummation, fifth act to this world, Millennium, as they say; and at the last When you get rid of sin (but they must say What sin is) then the world will be at peace, Life finished, perfect, nothing more to do But tend to business and enjoy yourself And die in peace, reach heaven. Don't you see? These people are deluded. For this stuff Called life is like a pan of bread you knead: You push it down one place and up it puffs In another place. And so while they control The stuff of life through Hebrew influence Of duty, business, fear, ascetism And yes, materialism, for it is that, The dough escaped, puffs out, the best of it, Its greater, part escapes us. So I say That bible taught in every village, hamlet And all its precepts, curses, notables, Preached fifty times a year creates the crowd That runs the country at the bidding of Your mediocrities, your little statesmen, Your little editors and moralists. And that's your culture, your American _Kultur_.... I'll finish you with eggs, it's better Than soap is for the hair. You've lots of time. I think I'll start my magazine next year. Step down this way--over the bowl, that's it-- A moment while I ring this money up. As I was saying--is the water cold?-- Now back into the chair--as I was saying That book upon the shelf has made our culture. We must undo it.... Yes, your train is whistling--so long! THEY'D NEVER KNOW ME NOW Let's sit here very quiet, self-controlled, Talk quietly, under this glorious tree, The internes are too far away to hear. They will stand there if we are calm. You look Much better than you did. And as for me, Since I tried leaping from my window, I Seem on the mend, sleep better, do not feel So much like running, flying from the fears As I did three weeks since. Here is my tale: My first step in this world was as a soldier, Turned seventeen and off to free the Cubans. I landed at Matanzas, served my time. Oh Liberty! Oh! struggles to make free All peoples, everywhere! And when I saw The American republic move to strike The chains of tyranny, I said: I die For such a cause, or live to see it won-- How glorious! My youthful mind was full Of Byron, Shelley, Paine, and many more-- And when I saw my republic go to war, Just as a good Samaritan, I said, This is my hour, I'm on the pinnacle, Life is divine at last. But on a sudden A north wind froze my waters, caught my stars To points of vision which before had been Mixed in the fluent time. We up and stole The Philippines, spit on our sacred charter, Turned all the thing to guts, until I heard Their growl alone which I thought spirit voices When we had warred for Cuba! 'Twas enough; What was my country? Just a mass of slickers Talking philanthropy and five per cent, A pious, blundering booby lodged at last In a great cæcum mouthing Destiny. God, with a leader just an actor-man, Clean shaven, shifty, shallow, whored upon By mercantilists and their butcher creed. I mean McKinley, Hanna. Write it down: They barbarized our Grecian temple, placed Cheap colored windows in its marble walls-- May history be their hell. But as for me, They talked of God so much, I said at last I'll learn all they can teach concerning God. This restless soldier spirit led me on, And just because I sensed the faithless age, Loveless and purposeless except for gold, The adventurer in me began to crop. Oh yes, the Cuban business started me. And so I went to college to prepare For the ministry, as they thought, go through the course Called theological, saying for the first: "They'd never know me now." I see at last I am not one but many minds at once, And many personalities. As a boy I took the color of the leaves or wall Where I was resting, climbing. If in truth I lived three months with an uncle, then they said You look just like your uncle. When I worked Under a lawyer's tutelage, they said: How much your face resembles his. I knew My face and voice and gestures simulated Those I admired or lived with. But besides I took a certain pleasure, impish, maybe, In egging on, agreeing with, the souls Whom I sought out; I used to tell my uncle, A man of firmest piety, what I heard Of blasphemy about the village, just To hear him deprecate it, look with dark And flashing eyes upon such sin, while I, With serious face and earnest sympathy With what he felt, was laughing in my sleeve. Here is the germ then of my after life: The faculty that harmonized my hue Of spirit with the place, the person, while Something in me, perhaps supremest self, Stood quite aloof and smiled. But, as I said, When our Republic left its hill of vision, Descended to the place of herding hogs, This self of me, the adventurer, rose up And led me forth to play with life, and first To try theology, as I have said... I was a wonder bred among the crew Of quiet, gate-toothed, crook-nosed psychopaths, The foul-breathed, thick-lipped onanists who filled The seminary, stared at me to see How I learned Sanscrit, could defend and rout The atheistic speculations. Well, What I enjoyed most was to get a crowd Of celibates and talk of chastity, And get them in a glow, and say to them: The mind is fortified by abstinence, The spirit clarified and lifted up-- I got a thrill somehow. But all the time I knew a girl named Ella. Oftentimes Lying beside her I would shriek with laughter And she would ask, what is the matter, John? And I would say: I'm thinking of a song I heard one time: "They'd never know me now." And Ella said: If Dr. Simpson knew That you were here with me, you'd take a fall Out of the Seminary's second floor.... But I went through and didn't fall. And thought This is a way to live, I'll preach awhile, And see what comes. I took a church and preached, Was known as Smith the eloquent, the earnest. But all the time I heard a voice that said: "They'd never know me now." When I came in The Sunday School and little children flocked About my knees and patient teachers looked With white, pure faces at me, then that voice "They'd never know me now" was in my ear.... Well, to go on, a widow in my church Young, beautiful and rich began to beat Her wings around my flame, and on the Sunday I preached about the rich young man, she came, Invited me to dinner. We commenced, Were married in six months. And to conserve Her properties I studied law, at last Was spending days with brokers, business men, Began to tell her that my health was failing, Saw doctors frequently to play the part. And then she said: You must resign your charge, Your health is breaking, dear. And I resigned To spend the time in checking mortgages, Collecting rents:--"They'd never know me now"... We went the round of summer places, travel, Saw Europe, China, India and the Isles. Near Florence had a villa for a time, Met people of all kinds, when I was forty I had a thousand selves, but if I had A self in truth it was submerged or scrawled Like a palimpsest all over and so lost. I didn't know myself, was anything To every one, and everything to all. I felt the walking age come on me now: A polar bear in a terrible rhythm swings His body back and forth behind the bars, And I would walk in restlessness or think Of other skies and places, teased and stung By memories of my other selves, by wonder About what may be happening here or there; What are they doing now? What is she doing? There were a dozen shes to wonder about, And if you think of one you wish to see, And dream she knows delight apart from you, You simply thrill, the wings you lost revolve, Like thumbs, vestigial stubs--but there you sit. Thank God the aeroplane came on to help, And wipe out distance, for you find at last Distance is tragedy, terrifies the soul With space which must be mastered by the soul. And so I bought a hydroplane. Perhaps Would be upon my lawn at sun-down holding These children on my knees, a lovely picture! Then as a fish darts out of darkened water Into a water sun-lit, there would come A thought--we'll say of Alice--in two hours I'd be upon her little sleeping porch Two hundred miles away, beneath the stars Of middle summer, having killed that space, And found the hour I wanted--hearing too "They'd never know me now" sung in my ears. And I remember when we were in Florence My tribe had gone to Milan for some weeks, And I was quite alone, too bored to live. One listless afternoon who should come in? My wife's friend Constance--but to tell the truth More friend of mine than hers, for all my life I seemed to have these secret understandings, And was two persons to a twain who thought They were the bond, whereas the bond existed Between myself and one, and to the other Was not so much as dreamed. And Constance brought A certain Countess with her. In a glance We two, the Countess and myself, beheld A flame that joined our hands. And in a week The Countess took me on her yacht to Capri, And round the Mediterranean. No one knew, Not Constance, nor my wife, for I returned Before she came from Milan. Oh that week! That breeze that sung the port-holes, waters blue And stars at night and music; and the Countess Whose voice was like a lute of gold, who lived, Knew life, was unafraid. She heard me say "They'd never know me now." And softly murmured Smiling the while: il lupo cangia Il pelo ma non il vizio Adding, Qual matto! Something yet remains That makes you charming! Oh the feasts and wine, The songs and poems, till at last too soon We anchored in the bay of Naples. When I saw Vesuvius, then I felt again That sinking of the heart that I had known, That sickness, strange, nostalgia, from a boy, Of which a word again. But now it was Precursive of the end, the finished idyll. The Countess took my hand, with misty eyes-- They let me off and rowed me to the dock, I caught the train to Florence, magically Before I had forgotten, seemed to be Upon the yacht still, was in truth alone Amid the silence of my dining room, Supping alone--"They'd never know me now!" Later I had the fever, was delirious And saw myself receding as if backing Into a funnel toward the little end, And growing smaller as the funnel narrowed Until I was so small I held myself Within the palm's hand of my other self, Laughed like a devil, scared the nurse to death, Saying "They'd never know me now--just look!" My wife too had the fever. I awoke Out of this illness, found that she was gone, Had died a week before and for a week Had been entombed while I was raving--then If any real self of me ever was it came Back to me then. I bowed my head and wept And scanned my life back: What was that in me Which made me homesick from a boy right through This life of mine, not for my home, for something, Some place, some hand, some scene, which made me dread All partings, overwhelmed me with a grief For ended raptures, kept my brain too full Of memories, never lost, that grew until I lost myself, and seemed a thousand selves Wandering through a thousand years, how restless! Then mutterings shook our skies! Another war, France, Germany and England, so it seemed Best to return here to America. I gathered up the children--all but one, The boy eighteen escaped me, ran away And joined the English army. Now I saw One self of me repeated, that which went To free the Cubans! Curse these freedom wars! They shipped him off to India, soon he had His fill of liberty. But I came back And here I am. "They'd never know me now!" For what is left of me, what ever was To be peeled off to realest core? The soldier Gone out of me entirely; long ago, The dreamer of a better world; the self That said I'm on the pinnacle, took arms To free the Cubans; self of me that hungered For pyramids and mountains, ancient streams, Nile and the Ganges; self of me that turned To be a father holding on his knees A romping bevy; self of me that dreamed One heart, one hand enough, oh even the self That dreamed there is a hand a heart for me, Who found in truth no solace in the wife But only a teasing, torturing recollection That I had missed the one, or missed the many. So I was in America again, Had fled the war and plunged into the war:-- The waves roared yonder, but the shores were here Where wreckage, putrid monsters were thrown up, Corpses of ancient liberties and bones Of treasured beauty; and I saw the Land Don every despot weapon, as it did When I fought for the Cubans, even worse. They shipped my boy to Africa; in spite Of censorship I pieced the picture out, Knew what he suffered, how they took his faith And dimmed its flame with ordure. Then came forth That father self of me. I brooded on His blue eyes, gentle ways, sat terrified And tried to trace the days through and the years When he had slipped from just a little boy Into a stripling, soldier finally-- While I--what was I doing? Oh, my God, Living these other selves, oblivious That this boy was. I'd jump from soundest sleep Thinking of him in Africa, and seized With dreams that I must fly to him. O years Wherein I lost that boy. How could I live So many lives and not lose out of some, Some precious thing? Well, then I broke at last, They brought me here: "They'd never know me now." NEL MEZZO DEL CAMMIN You call this a world! Cloud cuckoo town, Nephelo coccygia, warp and woof, Now at the last I write it down, Since I no longer have the proof To show it isn't opera bouffe, A moving picture film and scene; Stage world, with the glue between The angels' feathers, the devil's hoof Neither violent nor venene. * * * * * Eheu! The middle of the way too-- Gethsemane and left in the lurch. Storms frowning up the dying day too, Bending a weed that was a birch. I can step right over the tallest church. Trumpets have shrunk to trumpet toys, Tottle-te-toot! I hear the clocks Ticking in paper breasts. What noise! Gorges and towering rocks Are just the canvas He employs, With gelatine rivers and candy lochs, Shored in with painted blocks. I passed through a jungle where smoky mosses Hung from the trees, the crocodile Slept or clambered about the fosses; Buzzards roosting, not very vile; Rivers of red-ink shed for crosses. Centaurs with arrows file on file Drew and shouted: he seems to smile Let's make him weep a while. Look out for the lion! Said I, with a scowl, Let the lion growl: Cat-gut scraped in the painted wings. Does the terrible tiger howl: Tin cans and resined strings. Do the dead gibber and does the owl Hoot where the shroud is slipping, clings? Who pressed the squeaky springs In the death bird that it sings? And you, sir! Well, one time I was sure You carried a poisoned dart! And now you're empty space as pure As the sky when clouds are blown apart. Ether! Radium! Nothing! A cure For grit and dust which start Grief in this Waterbury heart. For I had trod the cobra, found He is but calico, cotton stuffed. The boa chased me round and round, Hyenas tracked me, licked and snuffed, And made my poor heart flutter and pound, Until I saw the mirror is all, And the wood became a rare-bit dream With monstrous faces and figures packed. And then you ask: Is the mirror cracked, Or is it so bright that it casts a beam Through all the shadow scheme? One time I saw a river's bank Shaved down with spades as sheer as a wall, Wasp holes, snake holes cut in two Brought these molds of earth to view. I turned away where the air was blank And here was a thing fantastical: Space was cored like the honey comb With forms of things that crawl and roam, Animals, men. As I am alive I saw the form of a horse and cow Edged with air and hollow as space. But a horse and cow began to thrive In just a second, a drifting mist Flowed into the molds before my face. And the animals moved, I don't know how, Out of the all surrounding mesh, Creatures of bone and flesh! And it was just the same with men. I vow I saw an astral stuff poured in Pockets of air and men became Voices talking of good and evil, Virtue, courage, vice and sin, God and the devil. For the all unfolding Air is what? The Great Idea, if so I may say, A sort of Ocean leaping to waves. And what do you care if they pass away? They sink to their source, not into graves. Beasts may vanish, races decay, The Ocean will always remain the same; With new waves rising, no two alike; Waves that are little and waves that rise In storms and touch the skies. R. Browning, you were a man of power, But I don't think much of your tower. And I see no use of blowing a horn, The tower is merely papier-maché, And comes no higher than to my knees. I step right over it--pick a flower, Purple, it may be, called heart's ease And go with the way of the seas. For I am an optimist better than you: This dream is hell, but it's all to the good: The Ocean is water in calm or flood. There's nothing wrecked, or wrongly wrought, There's nothing real but Thought! THE OAK TREE The oak in later August, Before his leaves are strewn, And the sky is blue as June, Trembles from trunk to branches For frosts that will be soon From the valleys of the moon! For breezes blown in August Veer north with cold and rain; And the oak tree sighs and shivers For lights that shift and wane: As a strong man sees the specters Of age, disease and pain, The oak flings up to heaven His branches in the rain. September comes, September Spreads out a sky that chills. The owl hoots and the cricket Beside the roadway shrills, And on the stricken hills. But the oak tree, the oak tree Still flaunts his shining leaves. No change has come but swallows Who fled the summer eaves! But when October breezes, And cold November gales Descend upon the oak tree What strength of him avails, Grown naked to the tempest, For life that sleeps and fails? O oak tree, oak tree, The winter snow prevails! It cannot be your branches, It is the wind that wails! THE HOUSE ON THE HILL Eagle, your broken wings are tangled Among the mountain ferns On a ledge of rock on high. Below the yawning chasm turns To blackness, but the evening planet burns Above the gulf in a gold and purple sky! Vultures and kites Fly to their rookeries In the rocks With swift and ragged wings against the lights. From levels and from leas Haste the returning flocks. Foxes have holes and serpents the grass for flight. Eagle, arise! It is night. The world's wanderer finds you As he climbs the mountains In the unending quest. Can you spread wings across the darkening chasm To the craggy nest, Where the foreboding mate lies still? Croak for the evening star, And beat your shattered wings against your breast! Across the gulf the wanderer sees afar A light in the house on the hill! WASHINGTON HOSPITAL That's right, sponge off his face. My name? Oh, yes, James Frothingham, a reverend, have the church At the corner of Ayer and Knox Streets, Methodist. As I was passing by a vile saloon Some men were entering the back room, saying Is he dead or drunk, and such things. I looked in, Went in at last and saw this fellow there, Hunched, doubled down into a chair asleep, Mud on his face as you saw, clothes bespattered, The smell of drink upon him. Then we took him And brought him here, I helped, a Christian duty. But more important, if he wakes I'm here To bring his soul to Christ before he dies-- And he is dying. Yes, it's plain enough The snows of death are falling. Sponge his face, And wash his hands! I never saw such hands Slender and beautiful! Now you have sponged His face, look at that brow--it terrifies-- He looks now like a god--who is this man? I'll tell you all I know: These men were talking And this is what they said: This is the fellow They voted yesterday from booth to booth, They voted him twenty times, and kept him drunk To vote him. First they found him at the station, A little tipsy, talking of his griefs. The conductor put him off here, being drunk. And so these fellows for election day Took him in hand and voted him around, This was the talk. Look at the curse of drink! If he had touched no drink, he had not been Tipsy to fall into these ruffian hands, Who gave him drink and drink and used him thus To violate the suffrage, lose his life Through drink, as he will lose it. He is dying, Death comes of Sin--what plainer truth than this? Sin blinds, too, for that brow could comprehend All things by using what God gave to it. I do not know his name, with your permission I'll search his pockets--yes, here is a letter-- No signature, looks like a draught--I'll read: "Why have you wounded me with words like these: 'He has great genius but no moral sense,' And written to another! Oh my love! By this love which I bear you, by the God Who reigns in heaven do I swear to you My soul is like a wandering star, consumed By its own passion, fire, and the eternal Longing for the eternal, wandering, erring, But flaming, loving light, aspiring to The Light of Lights, some sun, I do not know. It is incapable of aught but honor. And save for follies, trifles in excess, Which I lament, but which in men of wealth, Or worldly power would never raise a word, I can recall no act of mine to bring A blush to your cheek or to mine. My love, My erring which has counted, by the test Of strength or weakness for the game of life, Has been Quixotic honor, chivalry. And to indulge this feeling I have paid, Though it has been my true voluptuousness, My highest, purest pleasure. Yes, for this I threw away a fortune, glad to throw it, Rather than suffer wrong, though trivial, As worldly men would count it:--for a father's Laughter at my writing turned away To follow voices, and defied his will To harness me to business. So it is To keep my spirit spotless from the world, As I have visioned things, I came at last By this deserted shore, alone, alone, Now quite alone since you withdrew yourself, Took back your hand and left me to my way, Traveled so long that I can see the tomb At the vista's end not very far. Oh, love, Why is there not a heart that loves but mine? If you had been a Magdalen, I had pressed Your head against my breast and kept you there-- But you--my spirit drifts with stricken wings-- But you because of gossip, crawling words About my drinking, lies as I shall prove, Can hold a handkerchief upon your eyes To hide tumultuous tears, extend your hand And say farewell forever, cut our lives Of days or months, fragile and trivial Asunder--when your hand, your faith, your love Had cured me of my spirit's desolation, My terror of this solitude in life-- Or if it cured me not, I had been eased, And you had gained for giving--what have you For your decision? Sorrow, if you love me, Perhaps a conscience whisper that you failed In justice, sacrifice; perhaps the thought Life with me drinking, to the excess you thought, Is better than a life where I am not. What have you gained? In a few years we two Will be at one with earth--before it comes Are not sweet hours together worth the cost Of a little drink? You who have riches, need not My labors for your bread, but need my love, Which you crush out. But as to drink, I swear I do not drink." Ahem! the fellow stirs But will not wake, I fear. You heard that last: He swears he does not drink. Drink and untruth Go always hand in hand. This letter's long-- Let's see what he comes up with at the last: "But as to drink, I swear I do not drink-- How if I drank could I produce the works I have produced? A giant's task, when drink Sustains me not, is not my nutriment As hock and soda water were for Byron, But sets me flaming wild, a little drink Will set me flaming, poisons me, I know. And yet I must partake of drink sometimes For life is flying, is recession, we Are shrinking back into ourselves, at last The arms we shrank from close about us--death's. And there are souls born lonely; I am one. And gifted with the glance of looking through The shams, the opera bouffe, and I am one. Often after a stretch of toil when I Come out of the trance of writing spent and wracked, I used to walk to High Bridge, sit and muse, (For this brain never stops and that's my curse,) Upon this monstrous world and why it is; And why the souls who love the beautiful, And love it only and are doomed to speak Its wonder and its terror are alone, Misunderstood and hunted, fouled by falsehood, Have crumbs upon the steps, are licked by dogs, Or else are starved. And why it is that I Must go about, a beggar, with my songs Exchanging them for bread. And then it is When this poor brain like the creative stuff, The central purpose, whirls, as I have written, And will not stop--drink! for oblivion, For rest, to get away from self, back faster From the pursuing Nothing. Yet, my love, Think out what causes judgments, standards, tastes; And why it was that Southey, Wordsworth won The organic national praise and Shelley lost, And Byron lost it--Southey the sycophant, Wordsworth the dull adherent, renegade-- These two against these spirits who came here To sing of Liberty--and look at me, A wanderer and a poor, rejected man, While usurers, slave owners rule the land, And the cities reek with hypocrites, who step On Freedom and on Beauty, are rewarded, Praised, fed and honored for it. Then behold Your friend who loves you, hunted, buffeted, For a little drink, when in spite of drink and even Because of drink, who knows? I have achieved, Written these books. And what is life beside, Whether with drink or whether with abstinence, Except to sing your song and die, what course Can stave the event, the wage of life, not sin? Oh if you knew what love I have for you! All of my powers are not enough to tell How all my heart is yours, how I have found Eternal things through you, cannot surrender Your love, your heart, without I lose some life, Some vital part of me--and yet farewell, For you have willed it so, and I submit. I rise up in my loneliness, seek the sun To shine about me in my loneliness, Submit and say farewell." He spoke some words! What was it that he said? His head rolls over. The man is dead! What was it that he said? Something about "no more" it seemed to me. Whom shall we notify? Go tell the police! Here! wait, I overlooked some writing--yes, A name is on this letter--why, look here, It's EDGAR ALLAN POE!--I know that name-- He wrote a poem once about sleigh bells-- His brow looks whiter, bigger than it did. Cover him with a sheet--I'll tell the police! NEITHER FAITH NOR BEAUTY CAN REMAIN Neither faith nor beauty can remain: Change is our life from hour to hour, Pain follows after pain, As ruined flower lies down with ruined flower. * * * * * Now you are mine. But in a day to be Beyond the seas, in cities strange and new To-day will be a memory Of a day ephemerally true. * * * * * Last night with cheek pressed close to cheek Through the brief hours we slept. It must be always so, I heard you speak, Love found, forever must be kept. * * * * * But already we were changed, even as the day Invisibly transforms its light. We prayed together then for dawn's delay, Praying, praying through the night. * * * * * Against the change which takes all loveliness, The truth our desperate hearts would keep, The memory to be, when comfortless, Save for the memory we shall yearn for sleep; * * * * * Against the sinking flame which no more lights Our faces, neither any more desired Through desireless days and nights, And senses fast expiring and expired. THE END Printed in the United States of America. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Inconsistent hyphenation left as is. pg vii Shakespeare changed to Shakspeare for consistency pg 48 martydom changed to martyrdom 
4669	----	None 
46827	----	(Images generously made available by the Internet Archive.) THE BOOK OF JADE by JUDITH GAULTIER [Illustration] Doxey's At the Sign of the Lark New York 1901 To the Memory of Charles Baudelaire TABLE PRELUDE PART ONE Ashtoreth Parfait Amour Opium Sombre Sonnet Languor Ennui Litany Harvard Pride Song of Golden Youth Mais Moi Je Vis La Vie En Rouge Louanges D'Elle Hélas Sonnet Sonnet Rondeau Autumn Song Ballad Changelessness Madonna Poppy Song Consolation Liebes-Tod Evening Song Song of the Stars in Praise of Her Aubade Remember Song Song Constancy Requiem Autumn Burial Sonnet of Burial Nocturne PART TWO Mad Sonnet The House of Youth De Profundis Prayer Sestettes Sonnet of the Instruments of Death Truth Hegel Monotony Sepulture Miserrimus Scorn The Grave Mummy Sepulchral Life Corpse Mankind The Defilers The Grotesques Dead Dialogue Fragments Envoi POSTLUDE Dedication PRELUDE I am a little tired of all things mortal; I see through half-shut eyelids languorous The old monotonous Gold sun set slowly through the western portal, Where I recline upon my deep dîwân, In Ispahân. I am a little weary of the Persian Girl that I lov'd; I am quite tir'd of love; And I am weary of The smoking censers, and the sweet diversion Of stroking Leila's jasmine-scented hair, I thought so fair. At last I think I am quite tired of beauty; Why do the stars shine always in the sky? I think if I might die, Something more sweet, less tiring than the duty Of kissing her, might be; I am tired of myrrh, And kissing her. Khaled, come, come, and slowly move the scented Gold narghilé away; let the lyres cease. And now a little peace! For see, moon-faced Leila hath repented Of singing Hafiz' songs melodiously, And languidly. Surely all things are vain, and great thanksgiving Is due not; surely all things now are vain; And all my heart is fain Of something, something, far too great for living; Nothing is very sad, nor wonderful, Nor beautiful. Well now, since all things are not worth the winning, Goodbye! With these I have a little play'd; And once, alas, I pray'd That gorgeous, golden sins be mine for sinning; But now I would not leave my palanquin For any sin. And long ago I prov'd in great compassion For man, that Brahm is not nor ever was; But now, alas, alas I would he were, that in the olden fashion I might laugh once again ere all is said; But Brahm is dead. Then with philosophy I bor'd me duly; And since I could not slumber all the time, I, in sweet golden rhyme, On white papyrus scented with patchouli Wrote masterpieces starry-beautiful. The earth was full. So beauty wearied me; in order slowly Love, Joy, and Victory came unto me; I kiss'd them languidly; And Virtue came, and Duty, stiff and holy; To these I said--Pray come another day; And turn'd away. Now since of all I am a little weary, And since on earth I must a while sojourn, And since a while must burn The censer of my long existence dreary, All things shall walk, that own my mastery, In luxury. My Ennui shall in vestments falling lowly, Stiff, purple, trailing, long, episcopal Sweep through her palace hall, Like to a consecrated bishop holy; My Sin from golden goblets of Byzant Shall drink absinthe. And my gold-crowned wanton goddess Pleasure, (My candles are all burning at her shrine) Shall be made drunk with wine, And walk unto the velvet-falling measure Of golden-voiced, solemn-sounding shawms. No rhyme for shawms. All they that wait upon me in my glory, My purple Pride, and my Luxuriousness, And my Voluptuousness, Shall show within their faces transitory Something more subtile than all life can give, While I shall live.... Ah, all is liv'd, all eaten, all is drunken! Soul, is there anything now left for thee Excepting sanctity? Nay, ev'n we too have been in virtue sunken, We have been holy priest, we have confess'd, Said, Missa Est. I have drunk out of heavy goblets golden, As from some hellish tabernaculum Cannabis, conium; I know quite all the poisons, all the olden Sins, all the ténébreux dark secrets hid, And things forbid. I have had all things unto mortals given, I all the women, all the passion I, All the satiety; I have had all the pleasures known in heaven, Paradisiacal, purpureal, Exstatical. With all the sciences I am acquainted, Alas! I know quite all the languages, All the philosophies, Alas! and all the pictures that are painted, And all the palac'd capitals that be Have wearied me. Alas, all art, all knowledge, and all passion I have had: I have heard all the symphonies; I have sail'd all the seas; I have drain'd all life's cup in languid fashion; And I am come to Persia again, Land of cocagne. THE BOOK OF JADE PART ONE ASHTORETH In thy blue pallid gown that shimmereth So pale thou standest in the wan moonlight, Where the gold censer near thy body white Wraps thee around with its perfumed breath; So wan thy high tiara glimmereth Above thy mystical far eyes of light, Thou seemest some dead goddess of the night, O starry love, O changeless Ashtoreth. Pallid thou standest in thy divinity, Like some moon-idol of the buried time, Before whose face priests sing in solemn chime. So I prostrate before thy deity, Unto thy face have solemn praises sung, And in my hands a golden censer swung. PARFAIT AMOUR It is not that thy face is fair As dying sunsets are, Nor that thy lovely eyelids wear The splendour of a star; Tis the deep sadness of thine eyes Hath my heart captive led, And that within thy soul I prize The calmness of the dead. O holy love, O fair white face, O sweet lost soul of thine! Thy bosom is an altar-place, Thy kisses holy wine; Sweet incense offer'd for my bliss Is thy corrupted breath, And on thy stained lips I kiss The holy lips of Death! Wherefore because thy heart is all Fill'd full of mournfulness, And thy gold head as with a pall Hung o'er with sinfulness; Because thy soul is utterly Sinful unto the core-- Therefore my heart is bound to thee, Dear love, forevermore! OPIUM Naught is more sweet than gently to let dream The pallid flower of life asleep alway; Where the dim censer sends up far from day Unceasingly its still-ascending stream, O where the air winds its myrrh-scented steam About thy naked body's disarray, Shall not today's gold to thy shut eyes seem Born and forgot in the dead ages gray? Sunk from life's mournful loud processional, For thee shall not with high uplifted urn The Night pour out dreams that awake and say, --We were, O pallid maiden vesperal, Before the world; we also in our turn By the vain morning gold scatter'd away. SOMBRE SONNET I love all sombre and autumnal things, Regal and mournful and funereal, Things strange and curious and majestical, Whereto a solemn savor of death clings: Coerulian serpents mark'd with azure rings; Awful cathedrals where rich shadows fall; Hoarse symphonies sepulchral as a pall; Mad crimes adorn'd with bestial blazonings. Therefore I love thee more than aught that dies, Within whose subtile beauty slumbereth The twain solemnity of life and death; Therefore I sit beside thee far from day And look into thy holy eyes alway, Thy desolate eyes, thine unillumin'd eyes. LANGUOR Although thy face be whiter than the dawn, Fairer than aught the dawning hath descried, Hast thou not now, O dear love deified, Enough of kisses upon thy forehead wan? The days and nights, like beads to pray upon, Pass by before our eyes and not abide, And so these things shall be till we have died, Until our bodies to the earth are gone. I think how pleasant such a thing must be, That all thy lovely limbs should fall away, And drop to nothing in their soft decay. Then may thy buried body turn to me, With new love on thy changed lips like fire, And kiss me with a kiss that shall not tire. ENNUI I sat in tall Gomorrah on a day, Boring myself with solitude and dreams, When, like strange priests, with sacerdotal tread, The seven mortal sins, in rich array, Came in and knelt: one old, and weak, and gray, One that was shrouded like a person dead, And one whose robes cast reddish-purple gleams Upon her scornful face at peace alway. They swung before me amschirs of strange gold, And one most beautiful began to pray, Dreamily garmented in pallid blue. But I said only--I have dream'd of you. Naught really is; all things are very old, And very foolish. Please to go away. LITANY. All the authors that there are bore Me; All the philosophies bore Me; All the statues and all the temples bore Me; --All the authors that there are bore Thee; All the philosophies bore Thee; All the statues and all the temples bore Thee. All the women of the earth weary Me; The fruit of the vine wearieth Me; All the symphonies weary Me. --All the women of the earth weary Thee; The fruit of the vine wearieth Thee; All the symphonies weary Thee. Victory and defeat fatigue Me; Gladness and sorrowing fatigue Me; Life and death fatigue Me. --Victory and defeat fatigue Thee; Gladness and sorrowing fatigue Thee; Life and death fatigue Thee. The earth and the heavens weary Me; The sun by day and the moon by night weary Me; All the great stars of heaven weary Me. --The earth and the heavens weary Thee; The sun by day and the moon by night weary Thee; All the great stars of heaven weary Thee. The glorious company of the Apostles tireth Me; The goodly fellowship of the Prophets tireth Me; The noble army of Martyrs tireth Me. --The glorious company of the Apostles tireth Thee The goodly fellowship of the Prophets tireth Thee; The noble army of Martyrs tireth Thee. All the race of men weary Me; The Cherubim and the Seraphim weary Me; Myself wearieth Me. --All the race of men weary Thee; The Cherubim and the Seraphim weary Thee; Thyself wearieth Thee. HARVARD ON HIS TWENTY-FIRST YEAR Tired Muse, put faded roses on thy brow, Put thy bare arms about the harp, and sing: --I am a little bor'd with everything. Past the clos'd jalousies the mlengkas go; They are not beautiful; no Greek they know; They go about and howl and make a fuss; I gaze through _sâd_-shap'd eyelids languorous, Far off from Ispahân where roses blow. Professors sit on lofty stools upcurl'd, Through Yankee noses drooling all day long; I find all these things quite ridiculous. Before despis'd old age comes over us, Let us step into the great world ere long. We shall be very grand in the great world! PRIDE They come and go, they pass before my soul, Desire and Love, weak Anguish and Distress, Shame and Despair: in phantom crowds they press, Life's poor processional, Time's lowly dole. Mournful their voices as slow bells that toll, Voices of them that curse and do not bless; Ineffable things wrapp'd round with loathsomeness, The deeds that I have done in Fate's control. They leer and moan, they shriek and threat and lower, Ignoble faces that the sky do mar; My changeless soul from her high pride of power Looks down unmov'd. So the calm evening star Upon the wallowing peaceless sea looks down, Set far aloft within the heaven's crown. SONG OF GOLDEN YOUTH Quelle bêtise! O Muse, no longer lappt in sadness let us lie, Bring the jars of old Falernum, bring the roses ere they die! I love laughter, I love kisses, I love Lili, I love love, But these dingy funeral dirges ennuyer us by-and-by; Fellows, disinvoltamente, when the lords of life depart, Lift the wine-cup to your haughty lips, and sing, Good-bye, goodbye! We have laughter on our lips, and in our hearts the laughing spring, Nothing greatly can afflict us, nor our spirits mortify; All the laws and regulations under scornful feet we tread, We laugh loud at all the virtues underneath the shining sky; I have heard, when haughty Tarquin did his horrid deed of sin, That Lucretia's lily fingers slapp'd his face vivaciously; Though of all my life dear Lili make a gay dégringolade, Yet to my ennuis doth Lili sing an endless lullaby; We are Greeks and we are Tartars, we know all the languages, To the girls of Persia, India, China, we know how to sigh; If the heartless heart of Lili tediously cruel prove, Go and dance the tarantella with the girls of Hôkusai! In the golden-citied world from Paris unto Tokiô We are quite at home, we saunter languidly through tall Shanghai; Chairete! the shaw of rosy Persia is a gentleman, Charming people in Benares where the Ganges loiters by; Allah akbar! O great world, O golden-tower'd cities gay, Into all your gates with laughter and with roses enter I! Kalliste, your Persian ghazal cease to sing: the sun is low, And the sacred hour of absinthe now is very very nigh. MAIS MOI JE VIS LA VIE EN ROUGE Your soul is like a purple flower, Mary, whose eyes are amethyst, Whose lips are like red wine when kist, With sweet life and sweet death for dower; There are who will have none of these, Who walk in peace all day upright, And in the night pray on their knees-- The pleasures of the life in white. All cloth'd with virtues manifold Are these--their souls are like white snow; Fair love, around thy heart I know My heart is bound with chains of gold. Sweet youths whose life is in the spring, The water is all wine they drink, They sorrow not at anything-- The pleasures of the life in pink. Your gold hair's like an aureole, Your lips are gold wine bought and sold, Pure golden kisses bought for gold; Each breast is like a golden bowl. These things are for a scorn to those That read great books both night and day, That say, Joy dieth as the rose-- The pleasures of the life in gray. Sweet youths, white ladies, scholars sour, Rejoice, and hasten on your way; Mary, whose skin is white as whey, Your soul is like a purple flower. LOUANGES D'ELLE --O Muse of mine that sittest orientally With a green emerald snake about the waist of thee, With henna-tinted feet, and almond eyes that dream, Put down the opium-pipe of jade and ivory, For she that is most fair is fain to hear thy song: Awake, O Muse, and sing her praises solemnly, That to the laughing heart of California Hath added all the grace of France and Italy; She who, to put to sleep my pitiless ennuis Is come from distant Paris and from Varsovie; Athens is in her heart, and Paris in her eyes, Dear European angel from beyond the sea! --There is no use to sing; she is not to be sung; What mortal praise can come unto her glory near? And she hath quite forgot her natal English tongue; She is too far, too high, thy languid praise to hear, Too delicate, too strange, too wicked, too divine, Too heavenly, too sweet, too bad, too fair, too dear! _'N'est-elle pas l'oasis où tu rêves et la gourde_ _Où tu humes à longs traits le vin du souvenir?'_ HÉLAS --Why sittest thou, O Muse, in grief enfolden? --Thou hast me promis'd jewels rich and rare To wear within my hair; And for my slaves the kings of kingdoms olden; And to abide in lofty castles golden, Because I am most fair. And lo, I have no sandals for my feet, And little bread to eat. Of that far golden Irem I am dreaming, Whence for few kisses I did follow thee; Fair is that spot to see, With far-off waving palms and towers gleaming; Great deserts round that isle of blissful seeming Lie stretching endlessly. SONNET When I contemplate how my state is low, And how my pride that had the earth for throne In this dark city sitteth all alone, My heart is fain for death to end its woe; Then when I think how all the great below Had only sorrow and grief through all their days, I, that with these shall some time stand in place, My fortune like their bitter fortune know. Among whom also holy Baudelaire, Though unto him the loftiest lot was given To hear the blessed muses sing in heaven, Past his few days in anguish and despair; Yet did he not bow down his mournful head Until Peace found him in his glory dead. So thou in this low lair, Although in sorrow and grief thou dost remain, Though of all things whereof thy soul was fain Remaineth only pain, Yet be not thou, O soul, disconsolate: Forget not thou thy far-exalted state. SONNET Be not cast down my heart, and be not sad, That thou like common men must sorrow know; Not only they that live and die below, But ev'n the gods thy supreme sorrow had; Not unto Tammuz was this fortune given, Not to know grief; whom starry Ashtoreth Sought through the seven-gated realm of death, Far from the great moon and the stars of heaven. Osiris also could not but to die; He reigneth king among the perisht dead; And Christ, when his long grief was finished, Hid his great glory in the lowly ground. All these had sorrow, that were great and high; These also were august, these also crown'd. RONDEAU As shadows pass, in the misty night, Over the wan and moonlit grass, So passeth our glory out of sight, As shadows pass. A little darkness, a little light, Sorrow and gladness, a weary mass, Glimmer and falter and pass in blight. So all our life, in waning flight, Fadeth and faltereth, alas; Passeth our sorrow and our delight, As shadows pass. AUTUMN SONG Weep, far autumnal skies, Shrouded in misty air; Weep, for thy solemn dearth, And for thy chill despair, Earth. O stricken forest-trees, Dead leaves that falter down Solemnly to your sleep, Golden, and red, and brown, Weep. BALLAD The lady rode 'neath the strange sky's pall Through the leafy woods funereal, And all the length of her moonlit way Was wanly white as the light of day; Solemnly rob'd she rode along, Unmindful of their droning throng That throng'd her shadowy path, alas, As though to see her funeral pass; So through the mournful forest slow Her palfrey's silken feet did go, Bearing her solemnly like a god Over the shadow-haunted sod; She laught to see the dead desire That even now her life should tire, She laught to think that to the earth They call'd her that was full of mirth, And though before her horse's head Throng'd the wan legions of the dead Wanly attempting to stop her way, She halted not for their legions gray, But rode through the midnight's mystic noon Under the far gaze of the moon. Then out from the dying woods at last Into the moonlit plain she passt; The misty stars were almost dead Sunk in the heavens overhead, While low down in the solemn skies The white moon wan'd as one that dies. Solemnly through the misty air She rode with gold gems in her hair; Bright were her holy eyes divine, And red her lips as the red red wine. At last in the unceasing night Down from her palfrey she doth alight By the strange murmuring of the sea; She climbs the tall stair fearlessly, And cometh at last to her chamber high Beneath the wide face of the sky. At last her journey being done, She hath her golden stays undone, And being a little wearied, Hath laid her naked on her bed, Thinking to slumber like the dead. CHANGELESSNESS When Death shall touch thy body beautiful, And thou that art of all the earth most fair Shalt close thine eyes upon the shining air, An unadorned gold urn to make full; When that thou liest quietly inurn'd In the dark bosom of the earth divine, Being turned unto a heap of ashes fine, For love of whose white face all men have burn'd; Then in the earth, O beautiful white love, Thy beauty shall not wholly end and cease, When that thou art gone to endless peace; Though all things beneath the sky above Fade away, it knoweth not to die, But abideth changeless endlessly. MADONNA Anguish and Mourning are as gold to her; She weareth Pain upon her as a gem, And on her head Grief like a diadem; And as with frankincense and tropic myrrh Her face is fragrant made with utter Woe; And on her purple gorgeous garment's hem Madness and Death and all the ways of them Emblazoned in strange carousal show. Within her delicate face are all things met, And all the sad years and the dolorous days Are but as jewels round her forehead set, Add but a little glory to her face, A little languor to her half-clos'd eyes, That smile so strangely under the far skies. POPPY SONG O poppy-buds, that in the golden air Wave heavy hanging censers of delight, Give me an anodyne for my despair; O crimson poppy-blooms, O golden blight, O careless drunken heavy poppy-flowers, Make that the day for me be as the night. Give me to lie down in your drowsy bowers, That having breathed of your rich perfume, My soul may have all-rest through all the hours; So shall I lie within my little room, While the poor tyrants of the world go by, Restfully shrouded in your velvet gloom, Beneath the wide face of the cloudless sky. --Even so, when thou shalt eat of us, Even so, thy life shall be a sleep, Empty of all things fierce and piteous; Even as a sailor on the tossing deep Hears vaguely the vain tumult on the shore, Shouts of the fighters, songs of them that reap. Life is all vanity, a loathed sore, A scatter'd dust, a vain and soiled heap.-- Thou shalt have golden rest forevermore. O poppy-flowers, golden, sleepy, sweet, O yellow tawny fading blooms of gold, Give unto me your holy fruit to eat; Make me forget all things above the mould; Make me forget that dolorous vow that sears, Not to be lesser than the great of old; Make me forget the heavy old dead years, And all that lives from out the writhing past, Old struggles, dead ambitions, buried tears; And that white face that I shall see the last. --Sweet is forgetfulness, most sweet to lie, Sunken from sorrow, in our pleasant vale, Where but the sun shines, and the clouds go by; Even as to them that through deep waters sail The toiling shore fades and becomes a sky, And evermore behind the billows fail. Sweet to forget the death-like things that were, Green pastures where the clouds sail by on high, Dead sundawns over pathless prairies fair, And suns long sunk beneath the wall of the sky. Under the sun my spirit lies alone, Drunken with slumber and mild exstasy.... Sleep, sweet sleep, long unto mine eyes unknown. Drops on me as ripe fruit drops from a tree; My dim eyes see the valley poppy-strown; The clouds fade and the gold sun over me, And the world's murmur sounds within my lair Like the far tossing of some infinite sea; Within the heavy slumber-laden air All fades, all fades, and grows afar afar, Leaving my soul alone, empty of care, Even as happy long-dead bodies are. Even so I slumber in my tireless close, While the whole world fades like a fading star, Dies like the perfume of a dying rose. CONSOLATION Among all sorrows that my heart hath known, Among all sorrows that my spirit keep Forever buried 'neath their mountains steep, Standeth one consolation, one alone. I know that earth shall be for death a throne, And evermore within their burials deep The banded nations of the earth shall sleep, Sunken in sepulchres of sculptur'd stone. Then all the world shall be a quietness: Dead women beautiful with their delights; All they that had such striving and distress, And endless weariness in all the lands, White faces, eager heart-strings, soiled hands; And peace shall hold the valleys and the heights. LIEBES-TOD I Thy splendour-lighted face before mine eyes Shines like a flaming sunset evermore; Thee only I behold on the earth's floor, Thee only I behold within the skies; Thy coming on is like a conqueror, Before thy footsteps the world's glory dies, Within mine ears thy voice doth ever rise Like a loud ocean beating on the shore. Thou art made kindred with eternity, Daughter of glory, daughter of consolations; Thy face is set above the constellations; Of Death! O love! be I made one with thee, That on thy holy lips and in thy love The world may perish and the light thereof! II Lo, now my life is gone unto eclipse Upon thy perilous bosom; lo, I die, Faint with the utter whole of exstasy, With unassuaged lips against thy lips, That can give no more joy; lo, at the place Of utter joy, lo, at joy's far-off throne, Which none shall reach, with eyes now weary grown, I lie slain at its utmost golden base. Yea, we have call'd the white stars to behold Our pale and fainting faces sick with joy; Oregal lips that shall death's sting destroy, I have suck'd bare life's cup upon thy breath! Kiss me to death! Lo, now our lips are cold, Wilt thou not bring new joy, O Death, O Death? EVENING SONG Lo, all the passionate pale evening I lay between the breasts of my beloved, Among the lilies, in the lily garden. The sky was pale, and all the sunset faded, And all the stars I saw not in the heaven, Because the glory of her face above me I saw alone, wrapt in a dream of slumber; And lo, she was more fair than all the lilies, Among the lilies, in the lily garden. And all her hair was golden chains to bind me, And all her mouth was crimson fire to burn me, And all the world became as wind before me, But as the wind before her face that passes, Among the lilies, in the lily garden. And lo, her face was fairer than the stars are, And lo, her breasts were whiter than the moon is, Whiter than the moon, and tipp'd with crimson coral. And low she bow'd her body, low before me, And gave me of her joy unto fulfilling: She bow'd her head whereto the stars do homage, Before whose face the years wax dim and fading, Before whose eyes the ages pass and vanish; Bow'd her low down before me like a lily, Among the lilies, in the lily garden. And now at last I care not if the morning Come at all, or the pale stars have setting, Nay I care not if the whole world perish, Perish and die, or if the white stars falter, Nay I care not if the night forever Hold me by her, and all things have ceasing; Yea, because her lips are more than roses, Yea, because her breasts are more than Heaven, Yea, because her face is more than God is, Among the lilies, in the lily garden. SONG OF THE STARS IN PRAISE OF HER O starry light of the dim universe! The night adoreth thee, the planets high That reign far off within the desert sky Praise thee as with the sound of dulcimers, And all the temples of the night rehearse Thy solemn glory everlastingly! O thou for whom the moon's pale-lighted star And all the planets and the milky gleam, But as a little of thy praising seem, And the great lights that swim through heaven afar But the reflection of thy glory are; Thou only art; these are but shine and dream; Thou art that light that doth the stars illume, Thou art the glimmer of the moon divine; All these are but the garment that is thine; Thou art the wonder and the glow, the bloom, Thou art the lonely lamp in night's great gloom, Thou art the skyey light, the starry shine. Starlight is but the glory of thy face, The shimmer of the silver planets pale Is but the dim effulgence of thy veil; And the great passing of the nights and days Is all but as the perfume of thy praise. O Holy, Holy, Holy, hail, O hail! AUBADE The lady awoke before the cold gray dawn, And had no joy thereof; --What joy is mine of all the joy of love, When love is gone? Lo, all the air is strange unto mine eyes, Lo, all the stars are dead; Only the moon appeareth overhead As one that dies. Lo, all the garden lieth desolate, And very strange to see, Wherein, the roses and the grass for me Blossom'd of late. O rose-garden wherein my roses grew, O odorous dim ways, Why are ye strange to me as perish'd days, And cold with dew? Through the wide window creeps the cold sweet air, Faint with sweet rose-perfume, It stealeth o'er my body in the gloom, And o'er my hair. Surely I have drunk full of love's delight, But now my lips are cold, While the pale day in silence doth behold The dying night. REMEMBER Remember, ye whom the skies delight, Whose faces flame with the falling sun, That after sunset cometh the night, That sorrow followeth all delight, When love, and lover, and lov'd are one. O ye whose days are as sands that run, One house there is unknown of delight, One garden is there belov'd of none, One place there is unseen of the sun, Remember, ye whom the skies delight. SONG She hath liv'd the life of a rose, She that was fair, Blown on by the summer air, Grown tall in a golden close. An ending is set to delight; Now thou art as grass, As the leaves, as the blossoms that pass, Made pale at the touch of the night. SONG Cometh a day and a night, When the lamps of life burn dim, When peace is secur'd for delight, And poppies for the red-rose flower; When the lamps of life burn dim, Cometh a day and a night, A day and a night and an hour. Cometh the end of the years, When the cheeks have the lilies' bloom, When slumber is given for tears, And the breasts to the worm belong; When the cheeks have the lilies' bloom, Cometh the end of the years, As silence after the song. Cometh a day and a night For him to whom all is thrown, Whose own is the bosom white, Whose own are the lips of gold; For him to whom all is thrown, Cometh a day and a night, To have and to own and to hold. CONSTANCY Surely thy face, love, is a little pale, And somewhat wan thy lips that were so red, And though my kisses might raise up the dead, To waken thy deep sleep they naught avail. Before thy stillness some poor men might quail, But I shall not desert thy holy bed, Although thy passionate lips have no word said, And thine adored breasts are cold like hail. Thou art gone down to Death, thou art gone down, And the dead things shall nestle in thy hair, And the dust shall profane thy golden crown, And the worms shall consume thy perfect face; Even so: but Death shall bring thee no disgrace, And to the stars I cry, Thou art most fair! REQUIEM White-rose perfume Go with thee on thy way Unto thy shaded tomb; Low music fall Lightly as autumn leaves About thy solemn pall; Faint incense rise From many a censer swung Above thy closed eyes; And the sounds of them that pray Make thy low bier an holy thing to be, That all the beauty underneath the sun Carries unto the clay. Odour of musk and roses Make sweet thy crimson lips Whereon my soul hath gone to deep eclipse; Poppies' and violets' scent Be for thy burial lent And every flower that sweetest smell discloses. Upon thy breast, Before which all my spirit hath bow'd down, White lilies rest; And for a crown upon thy mortal head Be poppies red. And for eternal peace Be poppies strown upon thy holy eyes, Till also these shall cease Turning to that which man is when he dies. And poppies on thine unassuaged mouth Be strown, until death shall be done with thee, Until the white worms shall be one with thee. AUTUMN BURIAL The moon shone full that night, And fill'd with misty light The solemn clouds hung white Above her pall; Waiting the golden dawn The silent woods stood wan, While through their aisles mov'd on Her funeral. Palely their torches flare, While rob'd in white they bear Her corpse that was most fair Of them that die, By sleeping forests tall And woods funereal Through the decaying fall Beneath the sky. The orbed moon looks down Upon her golden crown, From out the forest brown The wood-things stare; The holy stars behold Her woven hair of gold, And slumbering and cold Her bosom bare. The moon shines full o'erhead, And they with bowed head About her body dead In silence stand; There where no foot hath trod They bury her with sod Alone with only God In all the land. Tall forests stand around About her grassy mound And over all the ground Lie shadows hoar. She 'neath the passing moon Sees not the shadows strewn Sunk in her golden swoon Forevermore. SONNET OF BURIAL Now that the earth thy buried corpse doth hold, Now that thy soul that hath so much desired, Is gone down to the places of the tired, Far from the dawning and the star-light cold; Thine eyes shall not again the sun behold; Now shall thy body that all men hath fired Have ceasing, and thy grave shall be admired, That doth the fairest thing o' the earth enfold. Now that thine ashes are all buried, And thou art gone to slumber with the blessed, Thy buried body shall be no more distressed; Being now number'd with the placid dead, Thine eyes forever more have ceas'd from weeping, For evermore thy spirit shall have sleeping. NOCTURNE Lo, how the moon, beloved, Far in the heavens gleaming, Over the ocean dreaming Her pallid light doth throw; Lo, where the endless ocean, Where softly the night wind bloweth, Into the darkness floweth, Thither at last I go. Listen, how sweet the ocean Unto our spirits sigheth, And lo, where our pinnace lieth Awaiting, with sails unfurl'd; Come thou with me, beloved, Come thou with heart unquailing, There where no ships come sailing, Out of the dreary world. Come thou with me, beloved, Out of the world and its seeming, Where all things are only dreaming, And shadows all we know; The heart hath not found its longing Here, nor shall find it ever; Behold of my life's endeavour Remaineth only woe. Behold, my desire, my anguish, Trouble and toil surpassing, Are all but as shadows passing, Shadows the fame thereof; Here, where the heart attaineth Not, what the heart desireth, Where beauty too early tireth, And kisses mean not love. Here where what man hath desired, He shall not find forever, But ever and only ever Unending vanity; Not in this world, beloved, My only longing hideth, But in farther lands abideth And over a wider sea. There, when the spring shall blossom, There, when the winter is vanisht, My spirit that long was banisht Shall come to its home, though late; There in mine olden kingdom, Where nothing is transitory, I in exceeding glory Shall hold mine ancient state. Here let us leave our anguish, Here at the hour of leaving, Leave we our woe and grieving Like garments long outworn; Leave we our mortal sorrow, Our longing and our repenting, The anguish and the lamenting That made our hearts to mourn. Others may weep and anguish, Others may talk of laughter, And ever a little after Sorrow is theirs the more; But we two have done with laughter And sadness that hath no reason, We two in the springtime season Push out from the weary shore. Past are the storms of winter, Past is the rainy weather, Past are the snows, together With sadness and sorrowing; Past are the rains, beloved, Past is the time of weeping, And lo, o'er the green earth sleeping, Laugheth the world-wide Spring! Come thou with me, beloved, O let us now be starting! All things, at the hour of parting, Shall be made new for thee; Listen, how sweet the ocean Unto our spirits calleth; Softly the starlight falleth Over the dreaming sea. Fadeth the land, beloved, That long hath our spirits tired, Before us lies that desired Far country, strange and new; Far off lies that dream'd-of country Eternally fair and blessed Eternally undistressed, Far over the ocean blue. Knowst thou the land, beloved? Year-long with gentle motion There the unending ocean Batheth the tropic shore; There never storms blow loudly, There never wet rain falleth, There never loud wind calleth, Nor stormy waters roar. Fairer the stars that lighten There, than to us is given, There in a fairer heaven Shineth a larger moon; Fair stand the castles golden There, and o'er stranger flowers There through the long long hours The wandering breezes swoon. There in that land, beloved, Is never a sound of living, Never is heard thanksgiving There, nor the noise of moan; There naught is heard of sorrow, And nothing is there begotten; There, with all life forgotten, We two shall come alone. There, O my one beloved, Through twilight never-closing, We two shall sit reposing, Forever, thou with me; There 'neath the stars eternal, We two shall sit, we only, While from the heavens, lonely, The moon sinks in the sea. THE BOOK OF JADE PART TWO MAD SONNET Lo, in the night I cry out, in the night, God! and my voice shall howl into the sky! I am weary of seeing shapeless things that fly, And flap into my face in their vile flight; I am weary of dead things that crowd into my sight, I am weary of hearing horrible corpses that cry, God! I am weary of that lidless Eye That comes and stares at me, O God of light! All, all the world is become a dead blur, God! God! and I, stricken with hideous blight, Crouch in the black corners, and I dare not stir. I am aweary of my evil plight. If thou art not a dead corpse in thy sky, Send thou down Death into my loathed sty! THE HOUSE OF YOUTH Far in the melancholy hills it stands, Far off; and through the vista of the years, Down which my soul its helpless journey steers, It flames a fire to lighten all the lands, A fire that burns me and a flame that brands Me, whose dead days pass slow as heavy tears. The road my footsteps tread is dim and still, There darkness abides and silence endlessly, And the low way mine eyes can scarcely see; And yet the light and sound from that far hill Like the sky's fire my weary pathway fill, So that it seems a place of life to be. The world is but a background for it there, There where it stands, loud like a beaten lyre, And flames blood-red like some vast funeral-pyre, Whereat my heart to fail doth not forbear; Of all the things that have been made soe'er Only the House remains, a quenchless fire. Ah God, that this thing were not in the world-- The hateful House that flames with light and song And weary singing all the ages long; Ah that ev'n this might in the dust be hurl'd, And crush'd and slain, even as my heart, where curl'd The kindly armies of the worm do throng. Yea, surely I have seen it long ago, Far sunken in the weary dust of time; Yea surely even that stair so hard to climb I climb'd, and strode its hallways to and fro; The which were bright with many lamps aglow, And loud with choristers in ceaseless chime. DE PROFUNDIS Out of the grave, O God, I call to thee, Be thou not deaf unto my dolorous cry; My soul is fallen down into the sty, And the dead things are crawling over me; O thou my God, give me the worm to flee, Out from the pit's depths I would rise on high. Again am I fallen down into the grave, My soul is sunken in the place of slime, I am too weak its loathed walls to climb, Thou, only thou, O God, art strong to save; Lo, in mine eyes the worms have made their cave, And squatting toads oppress me all the time. Yea, from this pit I have crawl'd out before; With groans and cries and many a dolorous fall, I have climbed up its impregnable wall; I shall not rise now from its slimy floor; O God, hear thou my lamentable call, Or from the grave I come not evermore. I am become a housing for the toad; All things are fled wherein I took delight; There is no joy here, and there is no light; O God, O God, I have reap'd what I sow'd; I am become a dead thing in the night, And in my heart the worms have their abode. Lo, from my body all my might is fled, And all the light is gone out of mine eyes; Mine ears hear only lamentable cries,. And eyeless things stand round about my head; I am made as a man that slowly dies; I am made as a man already dead. PRAYER IN TIME OF PLAGUE Holy Pestilence, holy Pestilence, gird thee with might, Holy Pestilence, come thou upon them, come thou at night, Holy Pestilence, put on thy mantle, put on thy crown, Holy Pestilence, come on the cities, come and strike down, Holy Pestilence, let them all perish, touch'd with thy breath, Holy Pestilence, let them grow rotten, moulding in death, Holy Pestilence, put on thy garments, a crown on thy head, Holy Pestilence, let all the nations fall at thy tread, Holy Pestilence, let them all perish, let them be dead. Holy Pestilence, then shall the cities sink with thy might, Holy Pestilence, they shall lie desert, plague-struck at night, Holy Pestilence, then shall the rulers, crown'd with a crown, Holy Pestilence, feeling them stricken, reel and fall down, Holy Pestilence, then shall the nations faint with thy breath, Holy Pestilence, then shall the valleys be cover'd with death, Holy Pestilence, peasant with ruler, body with head, Holy Pestilence, all shall be stricken under thy tread, Holy Pestilence, all shall be rotten, all shall be dead. SESTETTES I Thou shalt rejoice for woe: The pallid goblet old, That holds thy life's dull wine, Is made thereby divine; Stain'd with a purpler glow, And wrought in stranger gold. II From the suck'd lees of pain, We have won joy again: Death shall thee not distress: That sleepy bitterness To thy kist lips shall be The supreme exstasy. III Put ashes on your golden body bare, Puissant as musk, bitter-sweet as to die, Ashes upon your arms that grow not old, And on your unassuaged lips of gold: So we will wanton in love's sepulchre, And mock the face of Death with blasphemy. IV I love you more than Death: your mournful head, Your shrouding hair, and your unfathom'd eyes, And your white body beautiful, alas, Priestess and victim in love's holy mass.... Your flesh that loves, and loving ever dies.... I could not love you more if you were dead. V Death is death; the little host that squirms, The smell, the dark, the coffin clos'd, and I So soft, so soft; no movement, and no breath; No ears, no nose, no eyeballs; Death is Death; The sepulchre, no sight, no sound, no cry, And always; Death is Death; the worms! the worms VI Not for your evil is my spirit sad-- I mourn because you are not really bad; Because your beauty's perfect cruelty Is ever marr'd with pity and distress, And you still show within your wickedness The poor stale weakness of humanity. VII I am as one that thirsteth for all things, As one that holdeth to his lips the cup, With lower'd eyes searching the wine's dull flame. No thing may I refuse among all things, Till, having drain'd unto its dregs the cup, I may return into the astral flame. VIII Heart, we have wholly drain'd the cup of sadness, And found in sadness no reality; Now from the night of sadness let us go. Henceforward let us drain the cup of gladness, And find in gladness no reality; From sadness then and gladness let us go. SONNET OF THE INSTRUMENTS OF DEATH Adorned daggers, ruby-hilted swords; Huge mortal serpents in gold volumes roll'd; All-holy poisons in wrought cups of gold; Unfailing crucifixes of strong cords; Mortal baptismal waters without fords, Wherein lie death's communicants untold-- Which of these instruments blessed and old, Is meetest for life's purple-robed lords? Ye that commune in death's ciborium, Of all the vessels in his sacristy Which will ye choose to make of you a clod-- Sharp swords, bright lightnings, orient opium?-- All these, brave souls, are of one sanctity; All ways are good whereby ye pass to God. TRUTH It is not that I have not sought thy face Ceaselessly through the world's eternal lie,. More than all things and throughout every place, Which having seen I were content to die. But I have sought thee and I have not found; Wherefore my soul is banish'd from delight, And sitteth joyless as a madman bound Seeing vain visions in the loathed night. I know not even that I do not know, But all things waver before me to and fro; As one half head that would be dead I lie. And thou, Death, if thy face be really fair, I know not, or but renewal of vanity; Wherefore mine eyes have seen the last despair. HEGEL Because my hope is dead, my heart a stone, I read the words that Hegel once did write-- An idiot gibbering in the dark alone-- Till on my heart and vision fell the night. MONOTONY A dead corpse full of wormy questionings, Beneath the open sky my soul lies dead, Shameless and rotten and unburied, For whom eternity no difference brings. Only the wind my loathed incense flings Afar afar; only above my head Day passes, night returns when day is fled, Unchangeable return of changeless things. Unto the dead all things bring only pain, And evermore my perish'd heart is woe For the vile worms that gnaw it lying low; While the dead days, like to an endless chain, Pass ever o'er my body cruelly slow, And evermore with pain return again. SEPULTURE My heart is but a tomb, where vain and cold My dead hopes lie: encoffin'd there my Pride Lies dead, and my Life's Gladness crucified, And there my Morning Joy long turn'd to mould; And there like once-lov'd corpses dead and old My Victory that long long since hath died, And all my Hopes lie shrouded side by side, For whom no eyes have wept, no dirges toll'd. And there insensate on the darken'd floor Despair a maniac still doth howl and scream, Among all these long dead alive alone; Among these things I sit upon a throne, In endless contemplation evermore; Nor these suffice to break my iron dream. MISERRIMUS In the last hopeless depth of hell's dark tomb Wherein I sit for aye with bowed head In anguish and great sorrow buried Where never sun the blackness doth illume, I saw pass by me through the bitter gloom All them whom life with deepest grief hath fed, Whom also here among the hopeless dead Through hell pursueth maniac, gnashing doom. Me there forever crusht to hopeless stone They passt by, all the damn'd; they shall not know Through all eternity but only woe, Now hear no sound but sound of them that groan. And unto me that sat than these more low, These seem'd like happy gods that heaven own; They past away; and there in hell alone My heart took up again its ancient woe. SCORN Dead am I, and ye triumph o'er me dead, Ye that within mine eyes have found your home, Ye that are soft and blind and white like foam, Ye that have made of me your meat and bread. Unto the worms I am abandoned; Over my flesh their loathed cohorts roam; Upon my heart whereto their hosts have clomb Their hungry lips shall evermore be fed. Here am I but a dead corpse in a tomb; I shall not out from my accurs'd abode, Inhabited by the dull worm and the toad; Ye vile sojourners in my rotten room, Torment me with your everlasting goad! I scorn you till the end shall come of doom. THE GRAVE The loathed worms are crawling over me All the dead hours; about my buried head Their soft intolerable mouths are gathered, And in my dead eyes that have ceas'd to see. I am full of worms and rotten utterly, Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead. The lifeless earth lies close against mine eyes; I know that I have rotted long ago; My limbs are made one with the worms I know Where all my head and body putrifies. So in the earth my coffin'd ordure lies Within my loathed shambles strait and low. There is no thing now where my face hath been, And all my flesh lies soft upon the floor; Unto my heart the worms have found a door, And all my body is to the worms akin; They long time since their feasting did begin, And they shall part not from me evermore. Here lie I stretch'd out through the rotting years, And I am surely weary of the grave, And I have sometimes thought that I might rave, And my two perish'd eyes almost shed tears. There is no one that sees and none that hears; I shall not out from my corrupted cave. Here now forever with the lustful worms I lie within my putrid sunken sty, And through eternity my soul shall die. O thou toward whom all my dead spirit squirms! Forevermore I love thee through all terms Until the dead stars rot in the black sky. MUMMY Thou art at last made perfect; from the estate Of mushy life Death hath thee petrified. The soft the flowing and the putrified That made thee up, is by that artist great Now crystalliz'd unto a changeless state. That thing thou walkedst, nos'd and ear'd and eyed, Eternally severely doth abide, Sunk from the bands of them that drank and ate. Green mummies walk above thy walled gloom, Unripen'd mummies; they intemperate Seek in life's beauty their high-crowned doom In vain. But thee no passion doth illume Stiff in the musked darkness of the tomb Hard in stiff bands of red and nacarat. SEPULCHRAL LIFE Lo, all the world as some vast corpse long dead, Fadeth and perisheth and doth decay, Even as a corpse, in whose unhonor'd clay The worms have long the inmost secrets read; Even as a corpse, upon whose lowly head The sun beats, and the holy rain doth play; Even as a corpse, whereof the people say, --We would that these dead bones were buried. Even so: and in the earth's vast sepulchre Our fainting souls their doubtful footsteps bear, Dreaming of that which no dead men may see; And in our passage to the second death, We whisper strange names with our pesty breath, Of Love, and Honour, and great Victory. CORPSE A dead corpse crowned with a crown of gold Sits thron'd beneath the sky's gigantic pall; Gold garments from its rotted shoulders fall, And regal purple robes funereal. Before its face a vast processional Goes by with offerings for its great knees cold; Its soft hand doth a golden sceptre hold; And in its flesh lie sleeping worms uproll'd. They that pass ceaseless by see not at all; They know not that beneath its garments' fold Is but a corpse, rotted, and dead, and tall. He is accurst that sees it dead and old; He is accurst that sees: the white worms call For him: for him have funeral dirges toll'd. MANKIND They do not know that they are wholly dead, Nor that their bodies are to the worm given o'er They pass beneath the sky forevermore; With their dead flesh the earth is cumbered. Each day they drink of wine and eat of bread, And do the things that they have done before; And yet their hearts are rotten to the core, And from their eyes the light of life is fled. Surely the sun is weary of their breath; They have no ears, and they are dumb and blind; Long time their bodies hunger for the grave. How long, O God, shall these dead corpses rave? When shall the earth be clean of humankind? When shall the sky cease to behold this death? THE DEFILERS O endless idiocy of humankind! O blatant dead that howl and scream and roar! O strange dead things the worms have gambled for! O dull and senseless, foolish, mad and blind! How long now shall your scent defile the wind? How long shall you make vile the earth's wide floor? How long, how long, O waiting ages hoar, Shall the white dawn their gaping faces find? O vile and simple, blind of heart and mind, When shall your last wave roll forevermore Back from the sick and long-defiled shore? When shall the grave the last dead carcass bind? O shameless humankind! O dead! O dead! When shall your rottenness be buried? THE GROTESQUES I I saw a dead corpse lying in a tomb, Long buried and rotten to the core; Behold this corpse shall know not evermore Aught that may be outside its wormy room; It lies uncover'd in the pesty gloom, Eyeless and earless, on the charnel-floor, While in its nameless corpse the wormlets hoar Make in its suppurated brain their room. And in that charnel that no lights illume, It shriek'd of things that lay outside its door; And while the still worms through its soft heart bore, It lay and reason'd of the ways of doom, And in its head thoughts mov'd as in a womb; And in its heart the worms lie evermore. II I saw a dead corpse in a haughty car, Whom in a high tomb phantom horses bore, Aye to and fro upon the scatter'd floor; His dead eyes star'd as though they look'd afar, His gold wheels myriad perish'd souls did mar, While through his flesh the ravenous wormlets tore; He in whose eyes the worm was conqueror, Held his high head unmoved like a star. And as with loud sound and reverberant jar, And as with splash of crusht flesh and dull roar, The death-car thunder'd past the tomb-walls hoar, Within those dead dominions the dead tsar Receiv'd his plaudits where dead bodies are; And in his heart the worms lie evermore. III I saw a dead corpse making a strange cry, With dead feet planted on a high tomb's floor; The dead stand round, with faces that implore; His dead hands bless them, stretched forth on high. --And art thou God?--and art thou majesty?-- And art thou he whom all the dead adore?-- And art thou he that hath the skies in store?-- Nay, nay, dead dust, dead dust, and vanity. And wouldst thou rise up to the lighted sky?-- Nay, nay, thy limbs are rotten on the floor; Thou shalt not out from thy polluted sty; Thou wouldst become divinity once more, Thou dreamest of splendour that shall never die And in thy heart the worms lie evermore. IV I saw a dead corpse lying on the floor Of a tomb; worms were in its woman's head, Its black flesh lay about it shred on shred, And the dead things slept in its bosom hoar. And evermore inside that loathed door, It turn'd itself as one upon a bed, It turn'd itself as one whom sleep hath fled, As one that the sweet pangs of passion bore. And from its passionate mouth's corrupted sore, And from its lips that are no longer red, Came forth love's accents; and it spake, and said. --The Pleiades and night's noon-hours are o'er, And I am left alone in wearyhead. And in its heart the worms lie evermore. DEAD DIALOGUE 1st Corpse. I would now that the sweet light of the sun Might once again shine down upon my face; So weary am I of my rottenness. 2nd Corpse. Rejoice that now at least thou art done with life; This thing shall nevermore return. 1st Corpse. At last My body is aweary of the tomb; It is a hundred years since in the grave I have lain down between four narrow walls, Shut up with putrid darkness and the worm. There is no flesh upon my body now, That was so long a-rotting; on my shelf Here am I now nothing but stinking bones, That have had life beneath the face of the sun. 3rd Corpse. _I_ am not yet utterly putrified, And the worms yet within my flesh abound; I do repent me that I did not learn What life was, while I liv'd beneath the sun-- At least then I might think of what I had done; But I am rotten, and I have not liv'd. 1st Corpse. I would that I might leave this place of ordure And look once more upon the face of the world, Where the sun is. 2nd Corpse. O foolish ragged-bones, Wouldst thou show forth thy dripping excrements, And shredded rottenness to the face of day?-- Stink and be still, and leave us here in peace. 1st Corpse. Envy me not, O stench, slop-face, dung-eyes; My bones are clean and dry as the tomb's walls, And stink not; as for thee, thou art a sink. 2nd Corpse. Envy me not, thou, that I am so sweet The black worms love me; hungry were that worm That on thee preys. 4th Corpse. Be silent, both ye dead and rotten things; Lo I, that was unburied yesterday, Am fair and smooth and firm, and almost sweet; If that I were not dead, one might me love. 3rd Corpse. Is it so sweet a thing, this love, this love? 2nd Corpse. Thy lips are green for kissing, and streaks of black Streak over thee where the worms have not yet been! 4th Corpse. Ha, ha, I know wherefore thou speakest so: Because thy torture is too great for thee, And the worms' gnawing, and thy body's rottenness, And the rottenness in thy bones and in thy brain! 1st Corpse. O beautiful, O dead, O spit upon, He speaketh well that is but lately dead; Thy flesh lies all along thee like green slime, O pudding gravied in thine own dead sauce! 2nd Corpse. Rotten one! 1st Corpse. Dung-heap! 2nd Corpse. Dead one! 1st Corpse. Beast! beast! beast! _Therefore_ perhaps, thou art so early dead? 2nd Corpse. They say that those thou lovedst were not men, O goat-face--Shall I say what was thy death? 4th Corpse. Come, come, my brothers, be not so slanderous; We have all been the same upon the earth. 3rd Corpse. Thou sayest true, new brother. 1st Corpse. Thou sayest true. 2nd Corpse. I shall not suffer anything any more; (Aside.) I have left all that; I am evermore releas'd; I shall not struggle and suffer any more; This seemeth strange and very sweet to me; And I shall grow accustom'd to the worms. 5th Corpse. Rejoice not thou, that thou art fallen Into a pit where people leave their dung; There is no reason here for any joy. Sepulchre. Be silent, now, ye spindle-shankèd dead! Ye will learn to be silent when y'are here For a long time; ye always spout and roar, At first, before the time of rottenness; But so I suppose it must be,--y'are not the first, And ye shall not be the last; so fast i' the world, So eagerly they are begotten, and they die, And they are begotten again; just for this end Hideously propagated evermore. A Voice above singing. Golden is the sunlight, When the daylight closes, Golden blow the roses Ere the spring is old; All thy hair is golden, Falling long and lowly Round thy bosom holy; And thy heart is of fine gold! FRAGMENTS I And since I understood not what so strong Driveth all these at such exstatic pace, I too went down and joined in the throng; And many sitting in a lowly place I saw, where sense and vision darkness clogs, With one flat-breasted wife with munched face And bestial litter as of rats or hogs; These are all they that eat and multiply In the same manner with low apes and dogs; Like these they live and like these they shall die. --Pass thou from these, said then to me that voice, And heed not thou the stinking of that sty. Then saw I them that did with wine rejoice, Crowning their heads with roses of the earth; I too sat down and joined in that noise, But ask'd me soon--Why do all these have mirth? From these I past, weary of myrrh and wine. Others apart whose spirits had more dearth Sat solitary as who would fain divine, Of seeing and of hearing ill content; With these I sat, half drunken with the vine, And sick of visions that aye came and went; But all the knowledge that their striving found Was but one vision more than wine had sent; All these also shall moulder in the ground. From these I past as from dead flesh and bones. Then came I where the kings of earth sat crown'd Neath purple canopies on golden thrones; These offer'd me part in that changeless state, Until my soul wearied of brass and bronze. Others whose sweating nothing could abate Kingdoms and cities build and overthrow, Till my soul wonder'd at the striving great Of all the puppets in that puppet-show: --Doth the string move them with such urgency, That all their limbs such strange grimaces show? --These are all they that do, one made reply; In all their actions never could I find What they were doing these things for nor why. From these I past as from the deaf and blind, And ever as I went the solemn brawl Of all these mad and idiot howl'd behind. I came to those that ceased not to call. The world unto them, shouting o'er and o'er: My heart knew not why these so loudly bawl; And some stood round with faces that implore, Asking for peace; and ever those that gave Did but like these delude themselves the more; But rottenness shall stop all these that rave. Last, some there were that did with vanity Toil ever with unwearied hands to save And to eternize all things great and high; With these I stay'd, till my heart questioned: --What are the things thou doëst here and why? Whereat all these became as persons dead. Then I arose from among these the last, And follow'd then where'er my footsteps led; And among them that reigned then I past, And among them that ever fain would know, And among them whose lot with wine was cast; I past the prophets and the puppet-show, And among them that joy'd in marble and in song, And all that Seven tir'd of long ago. And is this all the meaning of that throng, This all, O heart, that wast of seeing fain, But like a circle that still seemeth long Because it goeth round and round again? Not in all these doth any reason hide No more than in the words of the insane. There is no ground for sorrow; nor in pride For pride; nor in them that in gladness sate; Wherefore with none of these shall I abide. The sought is vanity; the seeking great Vanity; the not-seeking vanity; For none of these change I my solemn state. II Then since no one could answer unto me The question, and since no one could me tell The wherefore of this endless Vanity Of all the spirits that on earth did dwell, I said--I go unto the Absolute; He will perchance release me from this hell. Him that made noisy what before was mute I found upon a heap of filthy dung Low-sitting in the fashion of the brute. In strange grimaces still his face he wrung, Up to the chin within that filth immerst, Which still his busy hands about him flung. --Do thou those clothes wherein he is inhearst Take off, said I to one, and do not shirk. He did, while still that being howl'd and curst, For there so thick and muddy was the murk, And he still bore of clothes so thick a weight, I knew not well what thing therein did lurk. Three coverings then that one removed straight-- Omniscience, Omnipresence, Omnipotence, From off the thing that in the ordure sate. Then did his truth show clear to every sense, A filthy idiot so foul and low, That decency the perfect tale prevents. And I--O thou whose nakedness doth show Like one not in the womb to fulness brought, Why are all things that are; if thou dost know? Then he replied from out the ordure hot: --Brahma, great Brahma, Everlasting, I! And I--Not such reply my question sought. Answer thou me! And he still made reply: --Brahma, great Brahma! repetition vain. I asked again: and--Brahma! he did cry. Then one thereby to me--Why art thou fain Knowledge to have from It? It knows not, It; Why seek for truth among the low insane? Then he that did within the ordure sit Out of the filth that lay about his feet Such things as children make with little wit Made, and then broke, and did the act repeat. --I have made all the worlds, he gibbered; And I his labour with these words did greet. --Why dost thou these things? why, O why? I said. No word vouchsaf'd the mouth of him that stank, But giggling sounds and idiot uttered. Then seated in that place of ordure rank, With his two lips he made a cackling sound, And back within the friendly ordure sank. Then I with a great sad and awful voice Cried out--O thou that rottest in this sty, O thou whose soul in ordure doth rejoice, What art thou doing these things for and why? Then one to me--His bliss is not to know The infiniteness of his own Vanity; Therefore the soul of him that stinketh so, Because his sense is blind and deaf and mad Forever, knoweth not eternal woe. Lo from the first his soul no reason had; He thinketh he himself is everything, And nothing is but him! He is not sad. Ignorance, ignorance, shrouds him like a pall; Therefore thus low upon the fetid floor He sits, and knoweth naught outside his stall. And I--He maketh naught outside his store. Why doth he this? and in this fetid tomb Sitteth he here in madness evermore? How long shall iron, awful, gnashing doom Leave him thus naked old and idiot Blind deaf and stinking, in the loathed gloom How long shall This within the ordure squat? How long shall This cease not to beck and nod How long shall This cease not to rot and rot? And he--This rottenness that seemeth God More woe than this nor any other mode Shall know not, till It ceaseth in the sod. And as a gnat, a viper, or a toad, Because its nature is not infinite, It too shall perish in the worm's abode; Till then It suppurateth in the night. III Then from the world I turn'd my steps afar; I came there where the holy Trinity And all the blessed saints in glory are, And did the beatific vision see, And how those happy are that once did mourn; But my heart said--All this is naught to me; Nor knew I why all these should be reborn. Where moon-fac'd houris wanton arms do fling Round Mahmud's blessed, I past by in scorn, For my heart dream'd a deeper revelling. Then came I to that banquet more divine That Jayadeva and that Jami sing; And the fair goblet fill'd full of the wine Brought the cup-bearer clad with wantonness; And there with the beloved and the vine My heart grew weary of that blessedness. From life I past, finding no joy therein. The vision and the vine and drunkenness Still like a circle ever closing in. Then I departed to the final peace, Sick of what is and shall be and hath been, Of Brahma, as the drop sinks in the seas: I past out from the bonds of thee-and-me, Lost in that Infinite whose being is Glory in all things and reality; But therein I that was not I, alas In that deliverance from me-and-thee Where all illusion fadeth like to grass, Found naught that equall'd my undimm'd desire; --If that reality then real was, What is that real more than trodden mire? Then from all being did my spirit pass, Sick of all being whether low or higher. Out of that circle unto nothingness I came, unto Nirvana, the far goal Of many a holy saint, where visions cease; But nothingness did not my heart console. Ah not in nothingness is any peace, Nor in peace any peace, nor in the whole, Nor in the vine nor in the vision, nor In being nor non-being, nor in all That man hath dream'd of and hath anguisht for. Nay not in joy nor the vine jovial, Nor in the perfume of the lov'd one's breath, Nay nor in anything anywhere at all; Nor in illusion; nor what sundereth Illusion; in the sundering of that chain There is no joy; and not alas in death Find I that thing whereof my soul is fain. All these things also are all vanity No less than sun and stars that wax and wane Forever in the everlasting sky. ENVOI AT THE END OF THE CENTURY Now I am come to the nadir at last, to the absolute sorrow, Now all the stars are gone out of my sky; Night everlasting is mine without hope or desire of the morrow, All my life's hopes are gone tombwards to die. All my life's glories lie perisht around me; and lo with great laughing Laugh I out loud, and I care not at all; Here with mine Anguish, my Sorrow, my Madness, my Grief, I sit quaffing Wine, in high state in my echoing hall. This is the last night I drink with you, maniac wassailers dreary! Lift up your goblets and drink ere I go! Lo, I am easily bor'd, I am easily tired and made weary; Now at the last I am weary of Woe. Lo, I that walk in the flower crown'd season of youthfulness golden, Think ye that all things my gladness can slay? Sorrow is fitting for dotards and them that are loathsome and olden; _I_ am as one that goes ever away. Lo, I laugh out at Grief, lo, I laugh in unending rejoicing, I that have nightshade entwin'd in my hair; Heart of me, what dost thou here in the wearisome darkness, revoicing Yesterday's stale and forgotten despair? Now it is midnight; but soon shall the wakening glory of morning Shine in the East, when the darkness is gone; Now in my spirit that sat for a time in the darkness of mourning Waketh in gladness the mystical dawn. New spring laugheth without--to thy heart it is calling! and o'er thee Soon shall the banners of dawn be unfurl'd; Wait thou no longer, O heart, O heart that art strong, for before thee Lieth the pomp of the great high world! Now it is midnight; my Anguish, my Mourning, my Sadness, my Sorrow, Crown you with nightshade, and once more with me Drink and make merry; farewell! I am here with you now; on the morrow Sail I over the mighty sea. Postlude SONG OF INDIA Now at the last, Zulaikha, all my sorrows olden Are farther off than Europe or than China seem, And like an idle dream The North is faded far off in the distance golden; And here with thee I sit in perfect peace enfolden Beside the Ganges-stream. Full well I knew that ne'er those northern promontories Could give to me the dream that did my soul desire; For there my heart did tire; For always me allur'd the strangely whisper'd stories Of skies that burn with more consuming languid glories, And suns of mightier fire. I dream'd of heavier suns than burn in skies of ours, And heavier airs that through the long long evening swoon Under a larger moon, And heavier-scented gardens fill'd with stranger flowers, And tropic palms that wave through all the long long hours Of endless afternoon. At last now from that northern dream am I awoken, At last I am come home over the watery main; Long long I sigh'd in vain; Now under tropic palms I lie in peace unbroken, And mine own land I see, beloved, and hear spoken My natal tongue again. Zulaikha, past is all the longing and endeavour; The palm-trees sleep, and sleeping move not any leaf; Perisht is woe and grief; Stilly the padmas float upon the holy river; Among all these we two with languid eyes forever Lie sunk in endless kief. Before us riseth white our marble-builded palace; Thou hast let fall from out thy hands that weary are The volume of Attár. Thy hand hath spill'd the wine within the silver chalice; Upon the river winding through the distant valleys Sleepeth the nénufar. From out the oleanders languid slumber steepeth, And thou, Zulaihka, dost, in rest too deep for dream, Like one enchanted seem; Thy beauty now in waking slumber sunken sleepeth, And dreaming past thy wholly closed eyelids creepeth The sleepy-flowing stream. Thou hast the light of Asia in thy face divinest, And in thy scented mouth and in thy lotus-eyes, O wine of Paradise! O moon-fac'd love that by the sacred stream reclinest, Hath this world anything for which in vain thou pinest? That thing shall be thy prize. The caravans that in the desert, heavy-laden, By unknown oases pitch their sun-blacken'd tents, Shall bring thee all sweet scents Wherein delight in heaven the houris ever-maiden-- Patchouli, nard, and myrrh, from many a distant aden Of heavenly indolence. All kinds of gems wherefore thine almond eyes have yearning, In heaps, wherein to bathe thy beauties languorous, O maiden amorous, They shall bring home to thee from distant isles returning-- Pearl, sapphire, diamond, topaz, and ruby burning, And opal luminous. Thou art that sweet whereof all poets dead have chaunted, Therefore my soul hath sought thy face o'er pathless seas, Here to have endless peace; Thou art the garden of delight with slumber haunted, Thy perfume maketh dream of desert lands enchaunted, And far-off oases. Thou hast that beauty in thine all-consuming glances That openeth the ways to far enchanted skies, And in thy lotus-eyes Thou hast the light that shineth in the countenances Of them whose eyes have seen the glory which entrances The blest of Paradise. Thou art all sweets that unto perfect joy devote us, In thee all spices and all scents together come, O lute that now art dumb! Thou art musk, frankincense, amomum, stephanotis, Thou art the fragrant wine, the paradisal lotus, Thou art the opium. Hashsheesh nor opium are worth not thy caresses, Sweeter than opium to still the spirit's drouth Thine unassuaged mouth; Him that hath known thy love no mortal grief distresses; Sweeter thy kisses are than incense which oppresses The breezes of the South.... At last I am come home, come home; and all regretting Is with the North afar from thee and me away. Behold O love, the day Is past, in Indian skies the holy sun is setting; The mûzin from his tower calleth unforgetting, The faithful ones to pray. Under the velvet night wide India reposes Now in the scented dark the champak odours swoon; Slowly the summer moon Riseth into the azure night made drunk with roses; And lo the camel-bells, now that the daylight closes, Tinkle their quiet tune. Behold, O well-beloved, 'neath the moonlight gleaming The travellers depart from out the sleeping khan, O perfume Asian! And past the moonlit palace, where we two lie dreaming, With camels and with horsemen like to shadows seeming Departs the caravan. It is the starting hour, O most melancholy! In long procession underneath the moon's pale gleams, Like something that but seems, The caravan departeth to the desert slowly, There far afar to seek through endless time the holy Mirages of their dreams. DEDICATION These paltry rhymes, which loftier shall pursue Than aught America of high or great Hath seen since first began her world-wide state, I dedicate, my brother, unto you. 
47934	----	[Illustration] AN OLD MAN'S PRAYER. BY GEORGE M. BAKER. [Illustration] _ILLUSTRATED BY HAMMATT BILLINGS._ BOSTON: LEE AND SHEPARD. 1868. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by GEORGE M. BAKER, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. BOSTON: Stereotyped and Printed by Geo. C. Rand & Avery. TO MY WIFE. This simple story will be recognized by many throughout New England to whom the author has had the pleasure of reciting it. Frequent requests that he would place it in shape for preservation have emboldened him to issue it in its present dress. Painfully conscious of its defects as a literary work, he sends it forth in search of old acquaintances, trusting it may receive a share of that kindly favor bestowed upon it as it fell from his lips. ILLUSTRATIONS. Designed by Hammatt Billings. Engraved by S. S. Kilburn. PAGE. "High raises his Goblet" _Frontispiece._ "Into the Light an old Man steps" 23 "I had Wealth and Plenty" 29 "Ruined and Bankrupt" 33 "The Curse of the Wine-cup was in his Way" 37 "Hurled from his Hold my darling Boy" 43 "My Boy stepped down from the Preacher's Stand" 49 "With a pure, deep Feeling of heartfelt Bliss" 55 "Bright gleams his Sword as he moves along" 59 AN OLD MAN'S PRAYER. In the loftiest room, of princely state, Of a modern palace grand and great,-- Whose marble front is a symbol true Of the inner splendors hid from view,-- On an autumn night, when wild without The bold winds held their revel rout, Rudely assailing the passing throng, Through churchyards creeping with mournful song, A group was gathered around a board Heaped with all that wealth could afford, Or taste could suggest: dishes costly and rare, Fruits of all climes and all seasons, were there. The pendent lights in brilliance danced On the gleaming plate their rays enhanced; The massive mirrors thrice displayed The stately banquet there arrayed. Furniture carved by an artist hand, Carpets which only great wealth could command, Curtains of damask, of lace, and of gold, Spoke of the splendors wealth could unfold, And filled with a joy and a pleasure rare The youthful hearts that were gathered there. Slender each form, and fair each face, Of the twelve gay lads which that table grace, As with genial talk and pleasant jest They banter each other, and cheer their guest. For one guest is there, as youthful as they, With a heart as light, and a voice as gay, Who laughs at their jests with ready glee, And whose quick returns speak a spirit free, An honored guest; for, on the morrow, They must part with him in pain and sorrow. The glittering emblems his shoulders bear Bid him for strife and for peril prepare; Bid him go forth at his Country's call, With her banner to triumph, or on it to fall. A moment's pause, as with ready hand The waiter hurries, at command, To clear the table, and, instead Of the rich, choice viands thickly spread, Ranges dark bottles and cruses, which show Marks of long years in damp vaults below. The richest juices age can display Are quickly spread in tempting array. Wines of Bordeaux and Seville are there, With liquors and cordials sparkling and rare; And bottles are opened, and glasses are filled. When all in a moment the tumult is stilled, As he who presides with dignified grace High raises his goblet, and stands in his place:-- "I give you, friends, no warrior's name Your hearts to thrill, your blood to flame; No toast to beauty shall my lips repeat, Where we to-night in sacred friendship meet To part with one, who, in our boyhood's days, Earnest and true, won all our love and praise; Who, on the morrow, plays the hero's part, And seeks the battle with a loyal heart. His health I give with an earnest prayer, That, while on his mission of peril and care, Success may be his, and, by deeds renowned, He may meet us again with laurels crowned." All glasses are raised, when a gentle hand Is heard at the door--all silent stand As it slowly opens, and into the light An old man steps, his features bright: The long white hairs o'er his shoulders stream; Like silver threads in the warm rays beam. Wrinkled his brow, and pale his face, Wasted his form, and tottering his pace, Shrunken his cheek; but the eye above Tells of gentleness, kindliness, love. And silent stand all as he slowly seeks A place near the table, and gently speaks:-- [Illustration] "Young men, but a moment I check your mirth, And bring you back to the common earth. Unbidden I come with an old man's prayer: May it seek your hearts, and gain entrance there! Look on my face, seamed, not with crime, But with marks of age before their time: These long white hairs should not have shown Till ten more years had by me flown. Age is upon me; not age by years, But age by sorrow and care and tears; Not age that cheers as it draweth near Yon heaven which seemeth more bright and clear, But age which causes the heart to lag In its onward course, and the spirit to flag; That prays for death as but a release From earthly care, and finds no peace In that sweet belief that at last I hail,-- 'There is rest for the weary beyond the vale.' For to me has come a spirit of light, Bringing the morning, and chasing the night; Causing my heart with joy to swell To my Maker, 'who doeth all things well.' You shall hear my story: 'twill not be long, And may guard you all from sin and from wrong. I had wealth and plenty in goodly lands, In houses and cattle; and from my hands Many were fed; and many were they Who partook of my charity day by day. My house was open to stranger and friend; And my gold did I lavishly, freely spend. But one bitter curse did my wealth uprear To poison my life,--the tempter here, The sparkling demon, which now I see From all your glasses glaring on me,-- A monster who steals on its prey so slow, That it has your life before you know Or dream of its power: this was the curse That sat at my fire-side, robbed my purse, Poisoned my life, and left me to be A drifting log on the world's wide sea, Ruined and bankrupt, lost and bereft; No kindred, no fortune, no treasure, left. Treasure!--yes; for I had three sons, The hope of my life,--three noble ones. You shall hear their fate, and then I'll away, Nor longer your hour of pleasure delay. [Illustration] One sought as a merchant hopeful to clear Our tarnished name, to again uprear Our shattered house; but, sad to say, The curse of the wine-cup was in his way. He seized on it madly, drank deep and fast, And sank to the drunkard's grave at last. I stood by his side as with frenzy wild He cursed himself and his wife and child; He cursed me too, as the one who had led His feet in the path that drunkards tread; And then--it was worse than all beside-- He cursed his Maker; and then--he died! [Illustration] Another, with spirit that loved to brave, Sought a bold, free life on the ocean-wave. He left my side full of life and health, In a good stanch ship, in search of wealth. A twelvemonth passed, and day by day I scanned for his sail the distant bay. At last I saw it, and eagerly flew To welcome my boy so manly and true. But, alas! he was gone: no son to greet My waiting heart came with eager feet. But they told me there,--one stormy night, When the heavens were filled with angry light, The waves rolled high, and the winds beat wild, That out on a frail yard went my child; He had drunk deep, and 'twas fearful to sweep On that slender spar o'er the seething deep; That one heavy sea tossed the ship like a toy, And hurled from his hold my darling boy. Then I sank me down in agony wild, And glared on the waves that rolled over my child: I gazed until in the waters blue I saw reflected the brilliant hue Of one lone star, which, high above, Seemed to speak to my heart of faith and love; And I thought, as I turned my eyes to its light. It beckoned me on to the heavens so bright, Where I know, whenever this life shall cease, I shall meet my boy in eternal peace. [Illustration] I had but one left; and him I taught To shun each sinful word and thought; To beware of the wine-cup's demon lure, That would steel his heart, and his soul obscure. He took the way of life that leads To the sacred desk where the preacher pleads, And placed his foot on the pulpit stair, The gospel--banner of life--to bear. When the cannon's boom o'er Sumter broke, And the air was filled with traitorous smoke; When brave men sprang with willing hearts To their Country's flag to repel the darts Which treason had hurled with malice wild At the life of the mother, so good and mild,-- My boy stepped down from the preacher's stand, And started forth, with life in hand, To sell it dear, but to battle strong With the loyal North against fearful wrong. I know that he carries a magic spell 'Gainst the curse of our race to guard him well; And I know, should he fall, his death will be In the foremost ranks of loyalty. And now, young men, an old man's prayer:-- Leave the bright wine in your glasses there; Shun its allurements; for in its deep red Is the blood of its victims dying and dead. Fill up your glasses, and pledge your friend In the crystal stream that Heaven doth send." [Illustration] With a lowly bow, and the same meek air, He has passed the door, and adown the stair; While those he has left to their leader turn With downcast eyes, and cheeks that burn. Silent he stands as his glass he takes, When the guest of the evening the silence breaks. "Friends of my boyhood, the old man's prayer Shall meet a response in the heart I wear. I come to-night from a mother's side: She watches my life with a parent's pride; And I know 'tis the dearest wish of her heart, In camp and in battle to keep me apart From sin and temptation; unceasing will pray Heaven's blessing to guard on my perilous way. And this pledge will I leave her,--never again My lips with the wine-cup's poison to stain. So, friends, let's drink to our meeting again: My drink is the water, free from all stain." [Illustration] He stood with his upraised glass, and the light Full on his fair young brow beamed bright,-- That brow which an anxious mother would kiss With a pure, deep feeling of heartfelt bliss; And along the line of his comrades young, To honor his toast, each hand upsprung: In not one glass did the red wine gleam; But all were filled from the crystal stream. [Illustration] On the morrow, adown the street, With trumpet's blast and war-drum's beat, Firm and erect, with martial tread, The flag of their Country overhead, With brave, stout hearts, and patriot-song, The Nation's heroes go marching along. And our soldier is there, marching forth To join the bands of the loyal North; To strike a blow for his Country dear, And her trailing flag to again uprear. Light is his heart; his faith is strong; Bright gleams his sword as he moves along: But the armor he wears shall serve him best Is the shield of Temperance guarding his breast. [Illustration] 
49721	----	POEMS BY GEORGE SANTAYANA SELECTED BY THE AUTHOR AND REVISED CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD. LONDON -- BOMBAY -- SYDNEY 1922 CONTENTS SONNETS, 1883--1893-- I.-XX SONNETS, 1895-- XXI.-L MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS-- ON A VOLUME OF SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY ON THE DEATH OF A METAPHYSICIAN. ON A PIECE OF TAPESTRY To W. P BEFORE A STATUE OF ACHILLES THE RUSTIC AT THE PLAY ODES-- I.-V ATHLETIC ODE VARIOUS POEMS CAPE COD A TOAST PREMONITION SOLIPSISM SYBARIS AVILA KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL ON AN UNFINISHED STATUE MIDNIGHT IN GRANTCHESTER MEADOWS SPAIN IN AMERICA A MINUET TRANSLATIONS-- FROM MICHAEL ANGELO FROM THEOPHILE GAUTIER PREFACE New editions of books are a venture for publishers rather than authors. The author has committed his rash act once for all at the beginning and he can hardly retract or repeat it. Nevertheless if I had not connived and collaborated at this selection of verses written (almost all of them) in my younger days, they probably would not have reappeared. I therefore owe an apology to my best critics and friends, who have always warned me that I am no poet; all the more since, in the sense in which they mean the word, I heartily agree with them. Of impassioned tenderness or Dionysiac frenzy I have nothing, nor even of that magic and pregnancy of phrasere--ally the creation of a fresh idiom--which marks the high lights of poetry. Even if my temperament had been naturally warmer, the fact that the English language (and I can write no other with assurance) was not my mother-tongue would of itself preclude any inspired use of it on my part; its roots do not quite reach to my centre. I never drank in in childhood the homely cadences and ditties which in pure spontaneous poetry set the essential key. I know no words redolent of the wonder-world, the fairy-tale, or the cradle. Moreover, I am city-bred, and that companionship with nature, those rural notes, which for English poets are almost inseparable from poetic feeling, fail me altogether. Landscape to me is only a background for fable or a symbol for fate, as it was to the ancients; and the human scene itself is but a theme for reflection. Nor have I been tempted into the by-ways even of towns, or fascinated by the aspect and humours of all sorts and conditions of men. My approach to language is literary, my images are only metaphors, and sometimes it seems to me that I resemble my countryman Don Quixote, when in his airy flights he was merely perched on a high horse and a wooden Pegasus; and I ask myself if I ever had anything to say in verse that might not have been said better in prose. And yet, in reality, there was no such alternative. What I felt when I composed those verses could not have been rendered in any other form. Their sincerity is absolute, not only in respect to the thought which might be abstracted from them and expressed in prose, but also in respect to the aura of literary and religious associations which envelops them. If their prosody is worn and traditional, like a liturgy, it is because they represent the initiation of a mind into a world older and larger than itself; not the chance experiences of a stray individual, but his submission to what is not his chance experience; to the truth of nature and the moral heritage of mankind. Here is the uncertain hand of an apprentice, but of an apprentice in a great school. Verse is one of the traditions of literature. Like the orders of Greek architecture, the sonnet or the couplet or the quatrain are better than anything else that has been devised to serve the same function; and the innate freedom of poets to hazard new forms does not abolish the freedom of all men to adopt the old ones. It is almost inevitable that a man of letters, if his mind is cultivated and capable of moral concentration, should versify occasionally, or should have versified. He need not on that account pose as a poetic genius, and yet his verses (like those of Michael Angelo, for instance) may form a part, even if a subordinate part, of the expression of his mind. Poetry was made for man, not man for poetry, and there are really as many kinds of it as there are poets, or even verses. Is Hamlet's Soliloquy poetry? Would it have conveyed its meaning better if not reined in by the metre, and made to prance and turn to the cadences of blank verse? Whether better or worse, it would certainly not be itself without that movement. Versification is like a pulsing accompaniment, somehow sustaining and exalting the clear logic of the words. The accompaniment may be orchestral, but it is not necessarily worse for being thrummed on a mandolin or a guitar. So the couplets of Pope or Dryden need not be called poetry, but they could not have been prose. They frame in a picture, balanced like the dance. There is an elevation, too, in poetic diction, just because it is consecrated and archaic; a pomp as of a religious procession, without which certain intuitions would lose all their grace and dignity. Borrowed plumes would not even seem an ornament if they were not in themselves beautiful. To say that what was good once is good no longer is to give too much importance to chronology. Æsthetic fashions may change, losing as much beauty at one end as they gain at the other, but innate taste continues to recognise its affinities, however remote, and need never change. Mask and buskin are often requisite in order to transport what is great in human experience out of its embosoming littleness. They are inseparable from finality, from perception of the ultimate. Perhaps it is just this tragic finality that English poets do not have and do not relish: they feel it to be rhetorical. But verse after all is a form of rhetoric, as is all speech and even thought; a means of pouring experience into a mould which fluid experience cannot supply, and of transmuting emotion into ideas, by making it articulate. In one sense I think that my verses, mental and thin as their texture may be, represent a true inspiration, a true docility. A Muse? not exactly an English Muse--actually visited me in my isolation; the same, or a ghost of the same, that visited Boethius or Alfred de Musset or Leopardi. It was literally impossible for me then not to re-echo her eloquence. When that compulsion ceased, I ceased to write verses. My emotion--for there was genuine emotion--faded into a sense that my lesson was learned and my troth plighted; there was no longer any occasion for this sort of breathlessness and unction. I think the discerning reader will probably prefer the later prose versions of my philosophy; I prefer them myself, as being more broadly based, saner, more humorous. Yet if he is curious in the matter he may find the same thing here nearer to its fountain-head, in its accidental early setting, and with its most authentic personal note. For as to the subject of these poems, it is simply my philosophy in the making. I should not give the title of philosopher to every logician or psychologist who, in his official and studious moments, may weigh argument against argument or may devise expedients for solving theoretical puzzles. I see no reason why a philosopher should be puzzled. What he sees he sees; of the rest he is ignorant; and his sense of this vast ignorance (which is his natural and inevitable condition) is a chief part of his knowledge and of his emotion. Philosophy is not an optional theme that may occupy him on occasion. It is his only possible life, his daily response to everything. He lives by thinking, and his one perpetual emotion is that this world, with himself in it, should be the strange world which it is. Everything he thinks or utters will accordingly be an integral part of his philosophy, whether it be called poetry or science or criticism. The verses of a philosopher will be essentially epigrams, like those which the Greek sages composed; they will moralise the spectacle, whether it be some personal passion or some larger aspect of nature. My own moral philosophy, especially as expressed in this more sentimental form, may not seem very robust or joyous. Its fortitude and happiness are those of but one type of soul. The owl hooting from his wintry bough cannot be chanticleer crowing in the barnyard, yet he is sacred to Minerva; and the universal poet, who can sing the humours of winter no less lustily than those of spring, may even speak of his "merry note," worthy to mingle with the other pleasant accidents of the somberer season, When icicles hang by the wall, . . . . . . And coughing drowns the parson's saw. But whether the note seem merry or sad, musical or uncouth, it is itself a note of nature; and it may at least be commended, seeing it conveys a philosophy, for not conveying it by argument, but frankly making confession of an actual spiritual experience, addressed only to those whose ear it may strike sympathetically and who, crossing the same dark wood on their own errands, may pause for a moment to listen gladly. G. S. _November_ 1922. SONNETS 1883-1893 I I sought on earth a garden of delight, Or island altar to the Sea and Air, Where gentle music were accounted prayer, And reason, veiled, performed the happy rite. My sad youth worshipped at the piteous height Where God vouchsafed the death of man to share; His love made mortal sorrow light to bear, But his deep wounds put joy to shamèd flight. And though his arms, outstretched upon the tree, Were beautiful, and pleaded my embrace, My sins were loth to look upon his face. So came I down from Golgotha to thee, Eternal Mother; let the sun and sea Heal me, and keep me in thy dwelling-place. II Slow and reluctant was the long descent, With many farewell pious looks behind, And dumb misgivings where the path might wind, And questionings of nature, as I went. The greener branches that above me bent, The broadening valleys, quieted my mind, To the fair reasons of the Spring inclined And to the Summer's tender argument. But sometimes, as revolving night descended, And in my childish heart the new song ended, I lay down, full of longing, on the steep; And, haunting still the lonely way I wended, Into my dreams the ancient sorrow blended, And with these holy echoes charmed my sleep. III O world, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes, But it is wisdom to believe the heart. Columbus found a world, and had no chart, Save one that faith deciphered in the skies; To trust the soul's invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art. Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine That lights the pathway but one step ahead Across a void of mystery and dread. Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine By which alone the mortal heart is led Unto the thinking of the thought divine. IV I would I had been born in nature's day, When man was in the world a wide-eyed boy, And clouds of sorrow crossed his sky of joy To scatter dewdrops on the buds of May. Then could he work and love and fight and pray, Nor heartsick grow in fortune's long employ. Mighty to build and ruthless to destroy He lived, while masked death unquestioned lay. Now ponder we the ruins of the years, And groan beneath the weight of boasted gain; No unsung bacchanal can charm our ears And lead our dances to the woodland fane, No hope of heaven sweeten our few tears And hush the importunity of pain. V Dreamt I to-day the dream of yesternight, Sleep ever feigning one evolving theme,-- Of my two lives which should I call the dream? Which action vanity? which vision sight? Some greater waking must pronounce aright, If aught abideth of the things that seem, And with both currents swell the flooded stream Into an ocean infinite of light. Even such a dream I dream, and know full well My waking passeth like a midnight spell, But know not if my dreaming breaketh through Into the deeps of heaven and of hell. I know but this of all I would I knew: Truth is a dream, unless my dream is true. VI Love not as do the flesh-imprisoned men Whose dreams are of a bitter bought caress, Or even of a maiden's tenderness Whom they love only that she loves again. For it is but thyself thou lovest then, Or what thy thoughts would glory to possess; But love thou nothing thou wouldst love the less If henceforth ever hidden from thy ken. Love but the formless and eternal Whole From whose effulgence one unheeded ray Breaks on this prism of dissolving clay Into the flickering colours of thy soul. These flash and vanish; bid them not to stay, For wisdom brightens as they fade away. VII I would I might forget that I am I, And break the heavy chain that binds me fast, Whose links about myself my deeds have cast. What in the body's tomb doth buried lie Is boundless; 'tis the spirit of the sky, Lord of the future, guardian of the past, And soon must forth, to know his own at last. In his large life to live, I fain would die. Happy the dumb beast, hungering for food, But calling not his suffering his own; Blessed the angel, gazing on all good, But knowing not he sits upon a throne; Wretched the mortal, pondering his mood, And doomed to know his aching heart alone. VIII O martyred Spirit of this helpless Whole, Who dost by pain for tyranny atone, And in the star, the atom, and the stone, Purgest the primal guilt, and in the soul; Rich but in grief, thou dost thy wealth unroll, And givest of thy substance to thine own, Mingling the love, the laughter, and the groan In the large hollow of the heaven's bowl. Fill full my cup; the dregs and honeyed brim I take from thy just hand, more worthy love For sweetening not the draught for me or him. What in myself I am, that let me prove; Relent not for my feeble prayer, nor dim The burning of thine altar for my hymn. IX Have patience; it is fit that in this wise The spirit purge away its proper dross. No endless fever doth thy watches toss, For by excess of evil, evil dies. Soon shall the faint world melt before thine eyes, And, all life's losses cancelled by life's loss, Thou shalt lay down all burdens on thy cross, And be that day with God in Paradise. Have patience; for a long eternity No summons woke thee from thy happy sleep; For love of God one vigil thou canst keep And add thy drop of sorrow to the sea. Having known grief, all will be well with thee, Ay, and thy second slumber will be deep. X Have I the heart to wander on the earth, So patient in her everlasting course, Seeking no prize, but bowing to the force That gives direction and hath given birth? Rain tears, sweet Pity, to refresh my dearth, And plough my sterile bosom, sharp Remorse, That I grow sick and curse my being's source If haply one day passes lacking mirth. Doth the sun therefore burn, that I may bask? Or do the tired earth and tireless sea, That toil not for their pleasure, toil for me? Amid the world's long striving, wherefore ask What reasons were, or what rewards shall be? The covenant God gave us is a task. XI Deem not, because you see me in the press Of this world's children run my fated race, That I blaspheme against a proffered grace, Or leave unlearned the love of holiness. I honour not that sanctity the less Whose aureole illumines not my face, But dare not tread the secret, holy place To which the priest and prophet have access. For some are born to be beatified By anguish, and by grievous penance done; And some, to furnish forth the age's pride, And to be praised of men beneath the sun; And some are born to stand perplexed aside From so much sorrow--of whom I am one. XII Mightier storms than this are brewed on earth That pricks the crystal lake with summer showers. The past hath treasure of sublimer hours, And God is witness to their changeless worth. Big is the future with portentous birth Of battles numberless, and nature's powers Outdo my dreams of beauty in the flowers, And top my revels with the demons' mirth. But thou, glad river that hast reached the plain, Scarce wak'st the rushes to a slumberous sigh. The mountains sleep behind thee, and the main Awaits thee, lulling an eternal pain With patience; nor doth Phoebe, throned on high, The mirror of thy placid heart disdain. XIII Sweet are the days we wander with no hope Along life's labyrinthine trodden way, With no impatience at the steep's delay, Nor sorrow at the swift-descended slope. Why this inane curiosity to grope In the dim dust for gems' unmeaning ray? Why this proud piety, that dares to pray For a world wider than the heaven's cope? Farewell, my burden! No more will I bear The foolish load of my fond faith's despair, But trip the idle race with careless feet. The crown of olive let another wear; It is my crown to mock the runner's heat With gentle wonder and with laughter sweet. XIV There may be chaos still around the world, This little world that in my thinking lies; For mine own bosom is the paradise Where all my life's fair visions are unfurled. Within my nature's shell I slumber curled, Unmindful of the changing outer skies, Where now, perchance, some new-born Eros flies, Or some old Cronos from his throne is hurled. I heed them not; or if the subtle night Haunt me with deities I never saw, I soon mine eyelid's drowsy curtain draw To hide their myriad faces from my sight. They threat in vain; the whirlwind cannot awe A happy snow-flake dancing in the flaw. XV A wall, a wall to hem the azure sphere, And hedge me in from the disconsolate hills! Give me but one of all the mountain rills, Enough of ocean in its voice I hear. Come no profane insatiate mortal near With the contagion of his passionate ills; The smoke of battle all the valleys fills, Let the eternal sunlight greet me here. This spot is sacred to the deeper soul And to the piety that mocks no more. In nature's inmost heart is no uproar, None in this shrine; in peace the heavens roll, In peace the slow tides pulse from shore to shore, And ancient quiet broods from pole to pole. XVI A thousand beauties that have never been Haunt me with hope and tempt me to pursue; The gods, methinks, dwell just behind the blue; The satyrs at my coming fled the green. The flitting shadows of the grove between The dryads' eyes were winking, and I knew The wings of sacred Eros as he flew And left me to the love of things not seen. 'Tis a sad love, like an eternal prayer, And knows no keen delight, no faint surcease. Yet from the seasons hath the earth increase, And heaven shines as if the gods were there. Had Dian passed there could no deeper peace Embalm the purple stretches of the air. XVII There was a time when in the teeth of fate I flung the challenge of the spirit's right; The child, the dreamer of that visioned night, Woke, and was humbled unto man's estate. A slave I am; on sun and moon I wait, Who heed not that I live upon their light. Me they despise, but are themselves so bright They flood my heart with love, and quench my hate. O subtle Beauty, sweet persuasive worth That didst the love of being first inspire, We do thee homage both in death and birth. Thirsting for thee, we die in thy great dearth, Or borrow breath of infinite desire To chase thine image through the haunted earth. XVIII Blaspheme not love, ye lovers, nor dispraise The wise divinity that makes you blind, Sealing the eyes, but showing to the mind The high perfection from which nature strays. For love is God, and in unfathomed ways Brings forth the beauty for which fancy pined. I loved, and lost my love among mankind; But I have found it after many days. Oh, trust in God, and banish rash despair, That, feigning evil, is itself the curse! My angel is come back, more sad and fair, And witness to the truth of love I bear, With too much rapture for this sacred verse, At the exceeding answer to my prayer. XIX Above the battlements of heaven rise The glittering domes of the gods' golden dwelling, Whence, like a constellation, passion-quelling, The truth of all things feeds immortal eyes. There all forgotten dreams of paradise From the deep caves of memory upwelling, All tender joys beyond our dim foretelling Are ever bright beneath the flooded skies. There we live o'er, amid angelic powers, Our lives without remorse, as if not ours, And others' lives with love, as if our own; For we behold, from those eternal towers, The deathless beauty of all winged hours, And have our being in their truth alone. XX These strewn thoughts, by the mountain pathway sprung, I conned for comfort, till I ceased to grieve, And with these flowering thorns I dare to weave The crown, great Mother, on thine altar hung. Teach thou a larger speech to my loosed tongue, And to mine opened eyes thy secrets give, That in thy perfect love I learn to live, And in thine immortality be young. The soul is not on earth an alien thing That hath her life's rich sources otherwhere; She is a parcel of the sacred air. She takes her being from the breath of Spring, The glance of Phoebus is her fount of light, And her long sleep a draught of primal night. SONNETS XXI Among the myriad voices of the Spring What were the voice of my supreme desire, What were my cry amid the vernal choir, Or my complaint before the gods that sing? O too late love, O flight on wounded wing, Infinite hope my lips should not suspire, Why, when the world is thine, my grief require, Or mock my dear-bought patience with thy sting? Though I be mute, the birds will in the boughs Sing as in every April they have sung, And, though I die, the incense of heart-vows Will float to heaven, as when I was young. But, O ye beauties I must never see, How great a lover have you lost in me! XXII 'Tis love that moveth the celestial spheres In endless yearning for the Changeless One, And the stars sing together, as they run To number the innumerable years. 'Tis love that lifteth through their dewy tears The roses' beauty to the heedless sun, And with no hope, nor any guerdon won, Love leads me on, nor end of love appears. For the same breath that did awake the flowers, Making them happy with a joy unknown, Kindled my light and fixed my spirit's goal; And the same hand that reined the flying hours And chained the whirling earth to Phoebus' throne, In love's eternal orbit keeps the soul. XXIII But is this love, that in my hollow breast Gnaws like a silent poison, till I faint? Is this the vision that the haggard saint Fed with his vigils, till he found his rest? Is this the hope that piloted thy quest, Knight of the Grail, and kept thy heart from taint? Is this the heaven, poets, that ye paint? Oh, then, how like damnation to be blest! This is not love: it is that worser thing-- Hunger for love, while love is yet to learn. Thy peace is gone, my soul; thou long must yearn. Long is thy winter's pilgrimage, till spring And late home-coming; long ere thou return To where the seraphs covet not, and burn. XXIV Although I decked a chamber for my bride, And found a moonlit garden for the tryst Wherein all flowers looked happy as we kissed, Hath the deep heart of me been satisfied? The chasm 'twixt our spirits yawns as wide Though our lips meet, and clasp thee as I list, The something perfect that I love is missed, And my warm worship freezes into pride. But why--O waywardness of nature!--why Seek farther in the world? I had my choice, And we said we were happy, you and I. Why in the forest should I hear a cry, Or in the sea an unavailing voice, Or feel a pang to look upon the sky? XXV As in the midst of battle there is room For thoughts of love, and in foul sin for mirth; As gossips whisper of a trinket's worth Spied by the death-bed's flickering candle-gloom; As in the crevices of Caesar's tomb The sweet herbs flourish on a little earth: So in this great disaster of our birth We can be happy, and forget our doom. For morning, with a ray of tenderest joy Gilding the iron heaven, hides the truth, And evening gently woos us to employ Our grief in idle catches. Such is youth; Till from that summer's trance we wake, to find Despair before us, vanity behind. XXVI Oh, if the heavy last unuttered groan That lieth here could issue to the air, Then might God's peace descend on my despair And seal this heart as with a mighty stone. For what sin, Heaven, must I thus atone? Was it a sin to love what seemed so fair? If thou deny me hope, why give me care? I have not lived, and die alone, alone. This is not new. Many have perished so. Long years of nothing, with some days of grief, Made their sad life. Their own hand sought relief Too late to find it, impotently slow. I know, strong Fate, the trodden way I go. Joy lies behind me. Be the journey brief. XXVII Sleep hath composed the anguish of my brain, And ere the dawn I will arise and pray. Strengthen me, Heaven, and attune my lay Unto my better angel's clear refrain. For I can hear him in the night again, The breathless night, snow-smothered, happy, grey, With premonition of the jocund day, Singing a quiet carol to my pain. Slowly, saith he, the April buds are growing In the chill core of twigs all leafless now; Gently, beneath the weight of last night's snowing, Patient of winter's hand, the branches bow. Each buried seed lacks light as much as thou. Wait for the spring, brave heart; there is no knowing. XXVIII Out of the dust the queen of roses springs; The brackish depths of the blown waters bear Blossoms of foam; the common mist and air Weave Vesper's holy, pity-laden wings. So from sad, mortal, and unhallowed things Bud stars that in their crowns the angels wear; And worship of the infinitely fair Flows from thine eyes, as wise Petrarca sings: "Hence comes the understanding of love's scope, That, seeking thee, to perfect good aspires, Accounting little what all flesh desires; And hence the spirit's happy pinions ope In flight impetuous to the heaven's choirs: Wherefore I walk already proud in hope." XXIX What riches have you that you deem me poor, Or what large comfort that you call me sad? Tell me what makes you so exceeding glad: Is your earth happy or your heaven sure? I hope for heaven, since the stars endure And bring such tidings as our fathers had. I know no deeper doubt to make me mad, I need no brighter love to keep me pure. To me the faiths of old are daily bread; I bless their hope, I bless their will to save, And my deep heart still meaneth what they said. It makes me happy that the soul is brave, And, being so much kinsman to the dead, I walk contented to the peopled grave. XXX Let my lips touch thy lips, and my desire Contagious fever be, to set a-glow The blood beneath thy whiter breast than snow-- Wonderful snow, that so can kindle fire! Abandon to what gods in us conspire Thy little wisdom, sweetest; for they know. Is it not something that I love thee so? Take that from life, ere death thine all require. But no! Then would a mortal warmth disperse That beauteous snow to water-drops, which, turned To marble, had escaped the primal curse. Be still a goddess, till my heart have burned Its sacrifice before thee, and my verse Told this late world the love that I have learned. XXXI A brother's love, but that I chose thee out From all the world, not by the chance of birth, But in the risen splendour of thy worth, Which, like the sun, put all my stars to rout. A lover's love, but that it bred no doubt Of love returned, no heats of flood and dearth, But, asking nothing, found in all the earth The consolation of a heart devout. A votary's love, though with no pale and wild Imaginations did I stretch the might Of a sweet friendship and a mortal light. Thus in my love all loves are reconciled That purest be, and in my prayer the right Of brother, lover, friend, and eremite. XXXII Let not thy bosom, to my foes allied, Insult my sorrow with this coat of mail, When for thy strong defence, if love assail, Thou hast the world, thy virtue, and my pride. But if thine own dear eyes I see beside Sharpened against me, then my strength will fail, Abandoning sail and rudder to the gale For thy sweet sake alone so long defied. If I am poor, in death how rich and brave Will seem my spirit with the love it gave; If I am sad, I shall seem happy then. Be mine, be mine in God and in the grave, Since naught but chance and the insensate wave Divides us, and the wagging tongue of men. XXXIII A perfect love is nourished by despair. I am thy pupil in the school of pain; Mine eyes will not reproach thee for disdain, But thank thy rich disdain for being fair. Aye! the proud sorrow, the eternal prayer Thy beauty taught, what shall unteach again? Hid from my sight, thou livest in my brain; Fled from my bosom, thou abidest there. And though they buried thee, and called thee dead, And told me I should never see thee more, The violets that grew above thy head Would waft thy breath and tell thy sweetness o'er, And every rose thy scattered ashes bred Would to my sense thy loveliness restore. XXXIV Though destiny half broke her cruel bars, Herself contriving we should meet on earth, And with thy beauty fed my spirit's dearth And tuned to love the ages' many jars, Yet there is potency in natal stars; And we were far divided in our birth By nature's gifts and half the planet's girth, And speech, and faith, and blood, and ancient wars. Alas! thy very radiance made division, Thy youth, thy friends, and all men's eyes that wooed Thy simple kindness came as in derision Of so much love and so much solitude; Or did the good gods order all to show How far the single strength of love can go? XXXV We needs must be divided in the tomb, For I would die among the hills of Spain, And o'er the treeless melancholy plain Await the coming of the final gloom. But thou--O pitiful!--wilt find scant room Among thy kindred by the northern main, And fade into the drifting mist again, The hemlocks' shadow, or the pines' perfume. Let gallants lie beside their ladies' dust, In one cold grave, with mortal love inurned; Let the sea part our ashes, if it must. The souls fled thence which love immortal burned, For they were wedded without bond of lust, And nothing of our heart to earth returned. XXXVI We were together, and I longed to tell How drop by silent drop my bosom bled. I took some verses full of you, and read, Waiting for God to work some miracle. They told how love had plunged in burning hell One half my soul, while the other half had fled Upon love's wings to heaven; and you said: "I like the verses; they are written well." If I had knelt confessing "It is you, You are my torment and my rapture too," I should have seen you rise in flushed disdain: "For shame to say so, be it false or true!" And the sharp sword that ran me through and through, On your white bosom too had left a stain. XXXVII And I was silent. Now you do not know, But read these very words with vacant eyes, And, as you turn the page, peruse the skies, And I go by you as a cloud might go. You are not cruel, though you dealt the blow, And I am happy, though I miss the prize; For, when God tells you, you will not despise The love I bore you. It is better so. My soul is just, and thine without a stain. Why should not life divide us, whose division Is frail and passing, as its union vain? All things 'neath other planets will grow plain When, as we wander through the fields Elysian, Eternal echoes haunt us of this pain. XXXVIII Oh, not for me, for thee, dear God, her head Shines with this perfect golden aureole, For thee this sweetness doth possess her soul, And to thy chambers are her footsteps led. The light will live that on my path she shed, While any pilgrim yet hath any goal, And heavenly musicians from their scroll Will sing all her sweet words, when I am dead. In her unspotted heart is steadfast faith Fed on high thoughts, and in her beauteous face The fountain of the love that conquers death; And as I see her in her kneeling-place, A Gabriel comes, and with inaudible breath Whispers within me: Hail, thou full of grace. XXXIX The world will say, "What mystic love is this? What ghostly mistress? What angelic friend?" Read, masters, your own passion to the end, And tell me then if I have writ amiss. When all loves die that hang upon a kiss, And must with cavil and with chance contend, Their risen selves with the eternal blend Where perfect dying is their perfect bliss. And might I kiss her once, asleep or dead, Upon the forehead or the globed eyes, Or where the gold is parted on her head, That kiss would help me on to paradise As if I kissed the consecrated bread In which the buried soul of Jesus lies. XL If, when the story of my love is old, This book should live and lover's leisure feed, Fair charactered, for bluest eye to read,-- And richly bound, for whitest hand to hold,-- O limn me then this lovely head in gold, And, limner, the soft lips and lashes heed, And set her in the midst, my love indeed, The sweet eyes tender, and the broad brow cold. And never let thy colours think to cast A brighter splendour on her beauties past, Or venture to disguise a fancied flaw; Let not thy painting falsify my rhyme, But perfect keep the mould for after time, And let the whole world see her as I saw. XLI Yet why, of one who loved thee not, command Thy counterfeit, for other men to see, When God himself did on my heart for me Thy face, like Christ's upon the napkin, brand? O how much subtler than a painter's hand Is love to render back the truth of thee! My soul should be thy glass in time to be, And in my thought thine effigy should stand. Yet, lest the churlish critics of that age Should flout my praise, and deem a lover's rage Could gild a virtue and a grace exceed, I bid thine image here confront my page, That men may look upon thee as they read, And cry: Such eyes a better poet need. XLII As when the sceptre dangles from the hand Of some king doting, faction runneth wild, Thieves shake their chains and traitors, long exiled, Hover about the confines of the land, Till the young Prince, anointed, takes command, Full of high purpose, simple, trustful, mild, And, smitten by his radiance undefiled, The ruffians are abashed, the cowards stand:-- So in my kingdom riot and despair Lived by thy lack, and called for thy control, But at thy coming all the world grew fair; Away before thy face the villains stole, And panoplied I rose to do and bear, When love his clarion sounded in my soul. XLIII The candour of the gods is in thy gaze, The strength of Dian in thy virgin hand, Commanding as the goddess might command, And lead her lovers into higher ways. Aye, the gods walk among us in these days, Had we the docile soul to understand; And me they visit in this joyless land, To cheer mine exile and receive my praise. For once, methinks, before the angels fell, Thou, too, didst follow the celestial seven Threading in file the meads of asphodel. And when thou comest, lady, where I dwell, The place is flooded with the light of heaven And a lost music I remember well. XLIV For thee the sun doth daily rise, and set Behind the curtain of the hills of sleep, And my soul, passing through the nether deep Broods on thy love, and never can forget. For thee the garlands of the wood are wet, For thee the daisies up the meadow's sweep Stir in the sidelong light, and for thee weep The drooping ferns above the violet. For thee the labour of my studious ease I ply with hope, for thee all pleasures please, Thy sweetness doth the bread of sorrow leaven; And from thy noble lips and heart of gold I drink the comfort of the faiths of old, And thy perfection is my proof of heaven. XLV Flower of the world, bright angel, single friend! I never asked of Heaven thou shouldst love me; As well ask Heaven's self that spreads above me With all his stars about my head to bend It is enough my spirit may ascend And clasp the good whence nothing can remove me; Enough, if faith and hope and love approve me, And make me worthy of the blessed end. And as a pilgrim from the path withdraws, Seeing Christ carven on the holy rood, And breathes an AVE in the solitude, So will I stop and pray--for I have cause-- And in all crossways of my thinking pause Before thine image, saying: God is good. XLVI When I survey the harvest of the year And from time's threshing garner up the grain, What profit have I of forgotten pain, What comfort, heart-locked, for the winter's cheer? The season's yield is this, that thou art dear, And that I love thee, that is all my gain; The rest was chaff, blown from the weary brain Where now thy treasured image lieth clear. How liberal is beauty that, but seen, Makes rich the bosom of her silent lover! How excellent is truth, on which I lean! Yet my religion were a charmed despair, Did I not in thy perfect heart discover How beauty can be true and virtue fair. XLVII Thou hast no name, or, if a name thou bearest, To none it meaneth what it means to me: Thy form, the loveliness the world can see, Makes not the glory that to me thou wearest. Nor thine unuttered thoughts, though they be fairest And shaming all that in rude bosoms be: All they are but the thousandth part of thee, Which thou with blessed spirits haply sharest. But incommunicable, peerless, dim, Flooding my heart with anguish of despair, Thou walkest, love, before me, shade of Him Who only liveth, giveth, and is fair. And constant ever, though inconstant known, In all my loves I worshipped thee alone. XLVIII Of Helen's brothers, one was born to die And one immortal, who, the fable saith, Gave to the other that was nigh to death One half his widowed immortality. They would have lived and died alternately, Breathing each other's warm transmuted breath, Had not high Zeus, who justly ordereth, Made them twin stars to shine eternally. My heart was dying when thy flame of youth Flooded its chambers through my gazing eyes. My life is now thy beauty and thy truth. Thou wouldst come down, forsaking paradise To be my comfort, but by Heaven's ruth I go to burn beside thee in the skies. XLIX After grey vigils, sunshine in the heart; After long fasting on the journey, food; After sharp thirst, a draught of perfect good To flood the soul, and heal her ancient smart. Joy of my sorrow, never can we part; Thou broodest o'er me in the haunted wood, And with new music fill'st the solitude By but so sweetly being what thou art. He who hath made thee perfect, makes me blest. O fiery minister, on mighty wings Bear me, great love, to mine eternal rest. Heaven it is to be at peace with things; Come chaos now, and in a whirlwind's rings Engulf the planets. I have seen the best. L Though utter death should swallow up my hope And choke with dust the mouth of my desire, Though no dawn burst, and no aurorean choir Sing GLORIA DEO when the heavens ope, Yet have I light of love, nor need to grope Lost, wholly lost, without an inward fire; The flame that quickeneth the world entire Leaps in my breast, with cruel death to cope. Hath not the night-environed earth her flowers? Hath not my grief the blessed joy of thee? Is not the comfort of these singing hours, Full of thy perfectness, enough for me? They are not evil, then, those hidden powers: One love sufficeth an eternity. MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS ON A VOLUME OF SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY What chilly cloister or what lattice dim Cast painted light upon this careful page? What thought compulsive held the patient sage Till sound of matin bell or evening hymn? Did visions of the Heavenly Lover swim Before his eyes in youth, or did stern rage Against rash heresy keep green his age? Had he seen God, to write so much of Him? Gone is that irrecoverable mind With all its phantoms, senseless to mankind As a dream's trouble or the speech of birds. The breath that stirred his lips he soon resigned To windy chaos, and we only find The garnered husks of his disused words. ON THE DEATH OF A METAPHYSICIAN Unhappy dreamer, who outwinged in flight The pleasant region of the things I love, And soared beyond the sunshine, and above The golden cornfields and the dear and bright Warmth of the hearth,--blasphemer of delight, Was your proud bosom not at peace with Jove, That you sought, thankless for his guarded grove, The empty horror of abysmal night? Ah, the thin air is cold above the moon! I stood and saw you fall, befooled in death, As, in your numbed spirit's fatal swoon, You cried you were a god, or were to be; I heard with feeble moan your boastful breath Bubble from depths of the Icarian sea. ON A PIECE OF TAPESTRY Hold high the woof, dear friends, that we may see The cunning mixture of its colours rare. Nothing in nature purposely is fair,-- Her beauties in their freedom disagree; But here all vivid dyes that garish be, To that tint mellowed which the sense will bear, Glow, and not wound the eye that, resting there, Lingers to feed its gentle ecstasy. Crimson and purple and all hues of wine, Saffron and russet, brown and sober green Are rich the shadowy depths of blue between; While silver threads with golden intertwine, To catch the glimmer of a fickle sheen,-- All the long labour of some captive queen. TO W. P. I Calm was the sea to which your course you kept, Oh, how much calmer than all southern seas! Many your nameless mates, whom the keen breeze Wafted from mothers that of old have wept. All souls of children taken as they slept Are your companions, partners of your ease, And the green souls of all these autumn trees Are with you through the silent spaces swept. Your virgin body gave its gentle breath Untainted to the gods. Why should we grieve, But that we merit not your holy death? We shall not loiter long, your friends and I; Living you made it goodlier to live, Dead you will make it easier to die. II With you a part of me hath passed away; For in the peopled forest of my mind A tree made leafless by this wintry wind Shall never don again its green array. Chapel and fireside, country road and bay, Have something of their friendliness resigned; Another, if I would, I could not find, And I am grown much older in a day. But yet I treasure in my memory Your gift of charity, and young heart's ease, And the dear honour of your amity; For these once mine, my life is rich with these. And I scarce know which part may greater be,-- What I keep of you, or you rob from me. III Your ship lies anchored in the peaceful bight Until a kinder wind unfurl her sail; Your docile spirit, winged by this gale, Hath at the dawning fled into the light. And I half know why heaven deemed it right Your youth, and this my joy in youth, should fail God hath them still, for ever they avail, Eternity hath borrowed that delight. For long ago I taught my thoughts to run Where all the great things live that lived of yore, And in eternal quiet float and soar; There all my loves are gathered into one, Where change is not, nor parting any more, Nor revolution of the moon and sun. IV In my deep heart these chimes would still have rung To toll your passing, had you not been dead; For time a sadder mask than death may spread Over the face that ever should be young. The bough that falls with all its trophies hung Falls not too soon, but lays its flower-crowned head Most royal in the dust, with no leaf shed Unhallowed or unchiselled or unsung. And though the after world will never hear The happy name of one so gently true, Nor chronicles write large this fatal year, Yet we who loved you, though we be but few, Keep you in whatsoe'er is good, and rear In our weak virtues monuments to you. BEFORE A STATUE OF ACHILLES I Behold Pelides with his yellow hair, Proud child of Thetis, hero loved of Jove; Above the frowning of his brows it wove A crown of gold, well combed, with Spartan care. Who might have seen him, sullen, great, and fair, As with the wrongful world he proudly strove, And by high deeds his wilder passion shrove, Mastering love, resentment, and despair. He knew his end, and Phoebus' arrow sure He braved for fame immortal and a friend, Despising life; and we, who know our end, Know that in our decay he shall endure And all our children's hearts to grief inure, With whose first bitter battles his shall blend. II Who brought thee forth, immortal vision, who In Phthia or in Tempe brought thee forth? Out of the sunlight and the sapful earth What god the simples of thy spirit drew? A goddess rose from the green waves, and threw Her arms about a king, to give thee birth; A centaur, patron of thy boyish mirth, Over the meadows in thy footsteps flew. Now Thessaly forgets thee, and the deep Thy keeled bark furrowed answers not thy prayer; But far away new generations keep Thy laurels fresh, where branching Isis hems The lawns of Oxford round about, or where Enchanted Eton sits by pleasant Thames. III I gaze on thee as Phidias of old Or Polyclitus gazed, when first he saw These hard and shining limbs, without a flaw, And cast his wonder in heroic mould. Unhappy me who only may behold, Nor make immutable and fix in awe A fair immortal form no worm shall gnaw, A tempered mind whose faith was never told! The godlike mien, the lion's lock and eye, The well-knit sinew, utter a brave heart Better than many words that part by part Spell in strange symbols what serene and whole In nature lives, nor can in marble die. The perfect body is itself the soul. THE RUSTIC AT THE PLAY Our youth is like a rustic at the play That cries aloud in simple-hearted fear, Curses the villain, shudders at the fray, And weeps before the maiden's wreathed bier. Yet once familiar with the changeful show, He starts no longer at a brandished knife, But, his heart chastened at the sight of woe, Ponders the mirrored sorrows of his life. So tutored too, I watch the moving art Of all this magic and impassioned pain That tells the story of the human heart In a false instance, such as poets feign; I smile, and keep within the parchment furled That prompts the passions of this strutting world. ODES I What god will choose me from this labouring nation To worship him afar, with inward gladness, At sunset and at sunrise, in some Persian Garden of roses; Or under the full moon, in rapturous silence, Charmed by the trickling fountain, and the moaning Of the death-hallowed cypress, and the myrtle Hallowed by Venus? O for a chamber in an eastern tower, Spacious and empty, roofed in odorous cedar, A silken soft divan, a woven carpet Rich, many-coloured; A jug that, poised on her firm head, a negress Fetched from the well; a window to the ocean, Lest of the stormy world too deep seclusion Make me forgetful! Thence I might watch the vessel-bearing waters Beat the slow pulses of the life eternal, Bringing of nature's universal travail Infinite echoes; And there at even I might stand and listen To thrum of distant lutes and dying voices Chanting the ditty an Arabian captive Sang to Darius. So would I dream awhile, and ease a little The soul long stifled and the straitened spirit, Tasting new pleasures in a far-off country Sacred to beauty. II My heart rebels against my generation, That talks of freedom and is slave to riches, And, toiling 'neath each day's ignoble burden, Boasts of the morrow. No space for noonday rest or midnight watches, No purest joy of breathing under heaven! Wretched themselves, they heap, to make them happy, Many possessions. But thou, O silent Mother, wise, immortal, To whom our toil is laughter,--take, divine one, This vanity away, and to thy lover Give what is needful:-- A staunch heart, nobly calm, averse to evil, The windy sky for breath, the sea, the mountain, A well-born, gentle friend, his spirit's brother, Ever beside him. What would you gain, ye seekers, with your striving, Or what vast Babel raise you on your shoulders? You multiply distresses, and your children Surely will curse you. O leave them rather friendlier gods, and fairer Orchards and temples, and a freer bosom! What better comfort have we, or what other Profit in living, Than to feed, sobered by the truth of Nature, Awhile upon her bounty and her beauty, And hand her torch of gladness to the ages Following after? She hath not made us, like her other children, Merely for peopling of her spacious kingdoms, Beasts of the wild, or insects of the summer, Breeding and dying, But also that we might, half knowing, worship The deathless beauty of her guiding vision, And learn to love, in all things mortal, only What is eternal. III Gathering the echoes of forgotten wisdom, And mastered by a proud, adventurous purpose, Columbus sought the golden shores of India Opposite Europe. He gave the world another world, and ruin Brought upon blameless, river-loving nations, Cursed Spain with barren gold, and made the Andes Fiefs of Saint Peter; While in the cheerless North the thrifty Saxon Planted his corn, and, narrowing his bosom, Made covenant with God, and by keen virtue Trebled his riches. What venture hast thou left us, bold Columbus? What honour left thy brothers, brave Magellan? Daily the children of the rich for pastime Circle the planet. And what good comes to us of all your dangers? A smaller earth and smaller hope of heaven. Ye have but cheapened gold, and, measuring ocean, Counted the islands. No Ponce de Leon shall drink in fountains, On any flowering Easter, youth eternal; No Cortes look upon another ocean; No Alexander Found in the Orient dim a boundless kingdom, And, clothing his Greek strength in barbarous splendour, Build by the sea his throne, while sacred Egypt Honours his godhead. The earth, the mother once of godlike Theseus And mighty Heracles, at length is weary, And now brings forth a spawn of antlike creatures, Blackening her valleys, Inglorious in their birth and in their living, Curious and querulous, afraid of battle, Rummaging earth for coals, in camps of hovels Crouching from winter, As if grim fate, amid our boastful prating, Made us the image of our brutish fathers, When from their caves they issued, crazed with terror, Howling and hungry. For all things come about in sacred cycles, And life brings death, and light eternal darkness, And now the world grows old apace; its glory Passes for ever. Perchance the earth will yet for many ages Bear her dead child, her moon, around her orbit; Strange craft may tempt the ocean streams, new forests Cover the mountains. If in those latter days men still remember Our wisdom and our travail and our sorrow, They never can be happy, with that burden Heavy upon them, Knowing the hideous past, the blood, the famine, The ancestral hate, the eager faith's disaster, All ending in their little lives, and vulgar Circle of troubles. But if they have forgot us, and the shifting Of sands has buried deep our thousand cities, Fell superstition then will seize upon them; Protean error, Will fill their panting heart with sickly phantoms Of sudden blinding good and monstrous evil; There will be miracles again, and torment, Dungeon, and fagot,-- Until the patient earth, made dry and barren, Sheds all her herbage in a final winter, And the gods turn their eyes to some far distant Bright constellation. IV Slowly the black earth gains upon the yellow, And the caked hill-side is ribbed soft with furrows. Turn now again, with voice and staff, my ploughman, Guiding thy oxen. Lift the great ploughshare, clear the stones and brambles, Plant it the deeper, with thy foot upon it, Uprooting all the flowering weeds that bring not Food to thy children. Patience is good for man and beast, and labour Hardens to sorrow and the frost of winter. Turn then again, in the brave hope of harvest, Singing to heaven. V Of thee the Northman by his beached galley Dreamt, as he watched the never-setting Ursa And longed for summer and thy light, O sacred Mediterranean. Unseen he loved thee; for the heart within him Knew earth had gardens where he might be blessed, Putting away long dreams and aimless, barbarous Hunger for battle. The foretaste of thy languors thawed his bosom; A great need drove him to thy caverned islands From the gray, endless reaches of the outer Desert of ocean. He saw thy pillars, saw thy sudden mountains Wrinkled and stark, and in their crooked gorges, 'Neath peeping pine and cypress, guessed the torrent Smothered in flowers. Thine incense to the sun, thy gathered vapours, He saw suspended on the flanks of Taurus, Or veiling the snowed bosom of the virgin Sister of Atlas. He saw the luminous top of wide Olympus, Fit for the happy gods; he saw the pilgrim River, with rains of Ethiopia flooding Populous Egypt. And having seen, he loved thee. His racked spirit, By thy breath tempered and the light that clothes thee, Forgot the monstrous gods, and made of Nature Mistress and mother. The more should I, O fatal sea, before thee Of alien words make echoes to thy music; For I was born where first the rills of Tagus Turn to the westward, And wandering long, alas! have need of drinking Deep of the patience of thy perfect sadness, O thou that constant through the change of ages, Beautiful ever, Never wast wholly young and void of sorrows, Nor ever canst be old, while yet the morning Kindles thy ripples, or the golden evening Dyes thee in purple. Thee, willing to be tamed but still untamable, The Roman called his own until he perished, As now the busy English hover o'er thee, Stalwart and noble; But all is naught to thee, while no harsh winter Congeals thy fountains, and the blown Sahara Chokes not with dreadful sand thy deep and placid Rock-guarded havens. Thou carest not what men may tread thy margin; Nor I, while from some heather-scented headland I may behold thy beauty, the eternal Solace of mortals. ATHLETIC ODE I hear a rumour and a shout, A louder heart-throb pulses in the air. Fling, Muse, thy lattice open, and beware To keep the morning out. Beckon into the chamber of thy care The bird of healing wing That trilleth there, Blithe happy passion of the strong and fair. Their wild heart singeth. Do thou also sing. How vain, how vain The feeble croaking of a reasoning tongue That heals no pain And prompts no bright deed worthy to be sung Too soon cold earth Refuses flowers. Oh, greet their lovely birth! Too soon dull death Quiets the heaving of our doubtful breath. Deem not its worth Too high for honouring mirth; Sing while the lyre is strung, And let the heart beat, while the heart is young. When the dank earth begins to thaw and yield The early clover, didst thou never pass Some balmy noon from field to sunny field And press thy feet against the tufted grass? So hadst thou seen A spring palaestra on the tender green. Here a tall stripling, with a woman's face, Draws the spiked sandal on his upturned heel, Sure-footed for the race; Another hurls the quoit of heavy steel And glories to be strong; While yet another, lightest of the throng, Crouching on tiptoe for the sudden bound, Flies o'er the level race-course, like the hound, And soon is lost afar; Another jumps the bar, For some god taught him easily to spring, The legs drawn under, as a bird takes wing, Till, tempting fortune farther than is meet, At last he fails, and fails, and vainly tries, And blushing, and ashamed to lift his eyes, Shakes the light earth from his feet. Him friendly plaudits greet And pleasing to the unaccustomed ear. Come then afield, come with the sporting year And watch the youth at play, For gentle is the strengthening sun, and sweet The soul of boyhood and the breath of May. And with the milder ray Of the declining sun, when sky and shore, In purple drest and misty silver-grey, Hang curtains round the day, Come list the beating of the plashing oar, For grief in rhythmic labour glides away. The glancing blades make circles where they dip,-- Now flash and drip Cool wind-blown drops into the glassy river, Now sink and cleave, While the lithe rowers heave And feel the boat beneath them leap and quiver. The supple oars in time, Shattering the mirror of the rippled water, Fly, fly as poets climb, Borne by the pliant promise of their rhyme, Or as bewitched by Nereus' loveliest daughter The painted dolphins, following along, Leap to the measure of her liquid song. But the blasts of late October, Tempering summer's paling grief With a russet glow and sober, Bring of these sports the latest and the chief. Then bursts the flame from many a smouldering ember, And many an ardent boy Woos harsher pleasures sweeter to remember, Hugged with a sterner and a tenser joy. Look where the rivals come: Each little phalanx on its chosen ground Strains for the sudden shock, and all around The multitude is dumb. Come, watch the stubborn fight And doubtful, in the sight Of wide-eyed beauty and unstinted love, Ay, the wise gods above, Attentive to this hot and generous fray, Smile on its fortunes and its end prepare, For play is also life, and far from care Their own glad life is play. Ye nymphs and fauns, to Bacchus dear, That woke Cithaeron with your midnight rout, Arise, arise and shout! Your day returns, your haunt is here. Shake off dull sleep and long despair; There is intoxication in this air, And frenzy in this yelping cheer. How oft of old the enraptured Muses sung Olympian victors' praise. Lo! even in these days The world is young. Life like a torrent flung For ever down For ever wears a rainbow for a crown. O idle sigh for loveliness outworn, When the red flush of each unfailing morn Floods every field and grove, And no moon wanes but some one is in love. O wasted tear, A new soul wakes with each awakened year. Beneath these rags, these blood-clots on the face, The valiant soul is still the same, the same The strength, the art, the inevitable grace, The thirst unquenched for fame Quenching base passion, the high will severe, The long obedience, and the knightly flame Of loyalty to honour and a name. Give o'er, ye chords, your music ere ye tire, Be sweetly mute, O lyre. Words soon are cold, and life is warm for ever. One half of honour is the strong endeavour, Success the other, but when both conspire Youth has her perfect crown, and age her old desire. VARIOUS POEMS CAPE COD The low sandy beach and the thin scrub pine, The wide reach of bay and the long sky line,-- O, I am far from home! The salt, salt smell of the thick sea air, And the smooth round stones that the ebbtides wear,-- When will the good ship come? The wretched stumps all charred and burned, And the deep soft rut where the cartwheel turned,-- Why is the world so old? The lapping wave, and the broad gray sky Where the cawing crows and the slow gulls fly,-- Where are the dead untold? The thin, slant willows by the flooded bog, The huge stranded hulk and the floating log,-- Sorrow with life began! And among the dark pines, and along the flat shore, O the wind, and the wind, for evermore! What will become of man? A TOAST See this bowl of purple wine, Life-blood of the lusty vine! All the warmth of summer suns In the vintage liquid runs, All the glow of winter nights Plays about its jewel lights, Thoughts of time when love was young Lurk its ruby drops among, And its deepest depths are dyed With delight of friendship tried. Worthy offering, I ween, For a god or for a queen, Is the draught I pour to thee,-- Comfort of all misery, Single friend of the forlorn, Haven of all beings born, Hope when trouble wakes at night, And when naught delights, delight. Holy Death, I drink to thee; Do not part my friends and me. Take this gift, which for a night Puts dull leaden care to flight, Thou who takest grief away For a night and for a day. PREMONITION The muffled syllables that Nature speaks Fill us with deeper longing for her word; She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks, She makes a sweeter music than is heard. A hidden light illumines all our seeing, An unknown love enchants our solitude. We feel and know that from the depths of being Exhales an infinite, a perfect good. Though the heart wear the garment of its sorrow And be not happy like a naked star, Yet from the thought of peace some peace we borrow, Some rapture from the rapture felt afar. Our heart strings are too coarse for Nature's fingers Deftly to quicken as she pulses on, And the harsh tremor that among them lingers Will into sweeter silence die anon. We catch the broken prelude and suggestion Of things unuttered, needing to be sung; We know the burden of them, and their question Lies heavy on the heart, nor finds a tongue. Till haply, lightning through the storm of ages, Our sullen secret flash from sky to sky, Glowing in some diviner poet's pages And swelling into rapture from this sigh. SOLIPSISM I could believe that I am here alone, And all the world my dream; The passion of the scene is all my own, And things that seem but seem. Perchance an exhalation of my sorrow Hath raised this vaporous show, For whence but from my soul should all things borrow So deep a tinge of woe? I keep the secret doubt within my breast To be the gods' defence, To ease the heart by too much ruth oppressed And drive the horror hence. O sorrow that the patient brute should cower And die, not having sinned! O pity that the wild and fragile flower Should shiver in the wind! Then were I dreaming dreams I know not of, For that is part of me That feels the piercing pang of grief and love And doubts eternally. But whether all to me the vision come Or break in many beams, The pageant ever shifts, and being's sum Is but the sum of dreams. SYBARIS Lap, ripple, lap, Icarian wave, the sand Along the ruins of this piteous land; Murmur the praises of a lost delight, And soothe the aching of my starved sight With sheen of mirrored beauties, caught aright. Here stood enchanted palaces of old, All veined porphyry and burnished gold; Here matrons and slight maidens sat aloof Beneath cool porches, rich with Tyrian woof Hung from the carven rafters of the roof. Here in a mart a swarthy turbaned brave Showed the wrought blade or praised the naked slave. "Touch with your finger-tips this edge of steel," Quoth he, "and see this lad, from head to heel Like a bronze Cupid. Feel, my masters, feel." Here Aphrodite filled with frenzied love The dark recesses of her murmurous grove. The doves that haunted it, the winds that sighed, Were souls of youths that in her coverts died, And hopes of heroes strewed her garden wide. Under her shades a narrow brazen gate Led to the courts of Ares and of Fate. Who entered breathed the unutterable prayer Of cruel hearts, and death was worshipped there, And men went thence enfranchised by despair. Here the proud athlete in the baths delayed, While a cool fountain on his shoulders played, Then in fine linen swathed his breast and thighs, And silent, myrtle crowned, with serious eyes, Stepped forth to list the wranglings of the wise. A sage stalked by, his ragged mantle bound About his brows; his eyes perused the ground; He conned the number of the cube and square Of the moon's orb; his horny feet and bare Trampled the lilies carpeting the stair. A jasper terrace hung above the sea Where the King supped with his beloved three: The Libyan chanted of her native land In raucous melody, the Indian fanned, And the huge mastiff licked his master's hand. Below, alone, despairing of the gale, A crouching sailor furled the saffron sail; Then rose, breathed deep, and plunged in the lagoon. A mermaid spied his glistening limbs: her croon Enticed him down; her cold arms choked him soon. And the King laughed, filled full his jewelled bowl, And drinking mused: "What know we of the soul? What magic, perfecting her harmony, Have these red drops that so attune her key, Or those of brine that set the wretched free? "If death should change me, as old fables feign, Into some slave or beast, to purge with pain My lordly pleasures, let my torment be Still to behold thee, Sybaris, and see The sacred horror of thy loves and thee. "Be thou my hell, my dumb eternal grief, But spare thy King the madness of belief, The brutish faith of ignorant desire That strives and wanders. Let the visible fire Of beauty torture me. That doom is higher. "I wear the crown of life. The rose and gem Twine with the pale gold of my diadem. Nature, long secret, hath unveiled to me And proved her vile. Her wanton bosoms be My pillow now. I know her, I am free." He spoke, and smiling stretched a languid hand, And music burst in mighty chords and bland Of harp and flute and cymbal.--When between Two cypresses the large moon rose, her sheen Silvered the nymphs' feet, tripping o'er the green. AVILA Again my feet are on the fragrant moor Amid the purple uplands of Castile, Realm proudly desolate and nobly poor, Scorched by the sky's inexorable zeal. Wide desert where a diadem of towers Above Adaja hems a silent town, And locks, unmindful of the mocking hours, Her twenty temples in a granite crown. The shafts of fervid light are in the sky, And in my heart the mysteries of yore. Here the sad trophies of my spirit lie: These dead fulfilled my destiny before. Like huge primeval stones that strew this plain, Their nameless sorrows sink upon my breast, And like this ardent sky their cancelled pain Smiles at my grief and quiets my unrest. For here hath mortal life from age to age Endured the silent hand that makes and mars, And, sighing, taken up its heritage Beneath the smiling and inhuman stars. Still o'er this town the crested castle stands, A nest for storks, as once for haughty souls, Still from the abbey, where the vale expands, The curfew for the long departed tolls, Wafting some ghostly blessing to the heart From prayer of nun or silent Capuchin, To heal with balm of Golgotha the smart Of weary labour and distracted sin. What fate has cast me on a tide of time Careless of joy and covetous of gold, What force compelled to weave the pensive rhyme When loves are mean, and faith and honour old, When riches crown in vain men's sordid lives, And learning chokes a mind of base degree? What winged spirit rises from their hives? What heart, revolting, ventures to be free? Their pride will sink and more ignobly fade Without memorial of its hectic fire. What altars shall survive them, where they prayed? What lovely deities? What riven lyre? Tarry not, pilgrim, but with inward gaze Pass daily, musing, where their prisons are, And o'er the ocean of their babble raise Thy voice in greeting to thy changeless star. Abroad a tumult, and a ruin here; Nor world nor desert hath a home for thee. Out of the sorrows of the barren year Build thou thy dwelling in eternity. Let patience, faith's wise sister, be thy heaven, And with high thoughts necessity alloy. Love is enough, and love is ever given, While fleeting days bring gift of fleeting joy. The little pleasures that to catch the sun Bubble a moment up from being's deep, The glittering sands of passion as they run, The merry laughter and the happy sleep,-- These are the gems that, like the stars on fire, Encrust with glory all our heaven's zones; Each shining atom, in itself entire, Brightens the galaxy of sister stones, Dust of a world that crumbled when God's dream To throbbing pulses broke the life of things, And mingled with the void the scattered gleam Of many orbs that move in many rings, Perchance at last into the parent sun To fall again and reunite their rays, When God awakes and gathers into one The light of all his loves and all his days. KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL The buttress frowns, the gorgeous windows blaze, The vaults hang wonderful with woven fans, The four stone sentinels to heaven raise Their heads, in a more constant faith than man's. The College gathers, and the courtly prayer Is answered still by hymn and organ-groan; The beauty and the mystery are there, The Virgin and Saint Nicholas are gone. Not one _Ora pro nobis_ bids them pause In their far flight, to hear this anthem roll; No heart, of all that the King's relic awes, Sings _Requiescat_ to his mournful soul. No grain of incense thrown upon the embers Of their cold hearth, no lamp in witness hung Before their image. One alone remembers; Only the stranger knows their mother tongue. Long rows of tapers light the people's places; The little choristers may read, and mark The rhythmic fall; I see their wondering faces; Only the altar--like the soul--is dark. Ye floating voices through these arches ringing With measured music, subtle, sweet, and strong, Feel ye the inmost reason of your singing? Know ye the ancient burden of your song? The twilight deepens, and the blood-dyed glories Of all these fiery blazonings are dim. Oh, they are jumbled, sad, forgotten stories! Why should ye read them, children? Chant your hymn. But I must con them while the rays of even Kindle aloft some fading jewel-gleam And the vast windows glow a peopled heaven, Rich with the gathering pageant of my dream. Eden I see, where from the leafy cover The green-eyed snake begins to uncoil his length And whispers to the woman and her lover, As they lie musing, large, in peaceful strength. I see their children, bent with toil and terror, Lurking in caves, or heaping madly on The stones of Babel, or the endless error Of Sodom, Nineveh, and Babylon. Here the Egyptian, wedding life with death, Flies from the sun into his painted tomb, And winds the secret of his antique faith Tight in his shroud, and seals in sterile gloom. There the bold prophets of the heart's desire Hail the new Zion God shall build for them, And rapt Isaiah strikes the heavenly lyre, And Jeremiah mourns Jerusalem. Here David's daughter, full of grace and truth, Kneels in the temple, waiting for the Lord; With the first _Ave_ comes the winged youth, Bringing the lily ere he bring the sword. There, to behold the Mother and the Child, The sturdy shepherds down the mountain plod, And angels sing, with voices sweet and wild And wide lips parted: "Glory be to God." Here, mounted on an ass, the twain depart To hallowed Egypt, safe from Herod's wrong; And Mary ponders all things in her heart, And pensive Joseph sadly walks along. There with the Twelve, before his blood is shed, Christ blesses bread and breaks it with his hands, "This is my body." Thomas shakes his head, They marvel all, and no one understands, Save John, whom Jesus loved above the rest. He marvels too, but, seeking naught beside, Leans, as his wont is, on his Master's breast. Ah! the Lord's body also should abide. There Golgotha is dark against the blue In the broad east, above the painted crowd, And many look upon the sign, but few Read the hard lesson of the cross aloud. And from this altar, now an empty tomb, The Lord is risen. Lo! he is not here. No shining angel sitteth in the gloom, No Magdalen in anguish draweth near. All pure in heart, or all in aspect pure, The seemly Christians, kneeling, line the choir, And drop their eyelids, tender and demure, As the low lingering harmonies expire. In that _Amen_ are the last echoes blended Of all the ghostly world. The shades depart Into the sacred night. In peace is ended The long delirious fever of the heart. Then I go forth into the open wold And breathe the vigour of the freshening wind, And with the piling drift of cloud I hold A worship sweeter to the homeless mind, Where the squat willows with their osiers crowned Border the humble reaches of the Cam, And the deep meadows stretching far around Make me forget the exile that I am,-- Exile not only from the wind-swept moor Where Guadarrama lifts his purple crest, But from the spirit's realm, celestial, sure Goal of all hope and vision of the best. They also will go forth, these gentle youths, Strong in the virtues of their manful isle, Till one the pathway of the forest smooths, And one the Ganges rules, and one the Nile; And to whatever wilderness they choose Their hearts will bear the sanctities of home, The perfect ardours of the Grecian Muse, The mighty labour of the arms of Rome; But, ah! how little of these storied walls Beneath whose shadow all their nurture was! No, not one passing memory recalls The Blessed Mary and Saint Nicholas. Unhappy King, look not upon these towers, Remember not thine only work that grew. The moving world that feeds thy gift devours, And the same hand that finished overthrew. ON AN UNFINISHED STATUE BY MICHAEL ANGELO IN THE BARGELLO, CALLED AN APOLLO OR A DAVID What beauteous form beneath a marble veil Awaited in this block the Master's hand? Could not the magic of his art avail To unseal that beauty's tomb and bid it stand? Alas! the torpid and unwilling mass Misknew the sweetness of the mind's control, And the quick shifting of the winds, alas! Denied a body to that flickering soul. Fair homeless spirit, harbinger of bliss, It wooed dead matter that they both might live, But dreamful earth still slumbered through the kiss And missed the blessing heaven stooped to give, As when Endymion, locked in dullard sleep, Endured the gaze of Dian, till she turned Stung with immortal wrath and doomed to weep Her maiden passion ignorantly spurned. How should the vision stay to guide the hand, How should the holy thought and ardour stay, When the false deeps of all the soul are sand And the loose rivets of the spirit clay? What chisel shaking in the pulse of lust Shall find the perfect line, immortal, pure? What fancy blown by every random gust Shall mount the breathless heavens and endure? Vain was the trance through which a thrill of joy Passed for the nonce, when a vague hand, unled, Half shaped the image of this lovely boy And caught the angel's garment as he fled. Leave, leave, distracted hand, the baffling stone, And on that clay, thy fickle heart, begin. Mould first some steadfast virtue of thine own Out of the sodden substance of thy sin. They who wrought wonders by the Nile of old, Bequeathing their immortal part to us, Cast their own spirit first into the mould And were themselves the rock they fashioned thus. Ever their docile and unwearied eye Traced the same ancient pageant to the grave, And awe made rich their spirit's husbandry With the perpetual refluence of its wave, Till 'twixt the desert and the constant Nile Sphinx, pyramid, and awful temple grew, And the vast gods, self-knowing, learned to smile Beneath the sky's unalterable blue. Long, long ere first the rapt Arcadian swain Heard Pan's wild music pulsing through the grove, His people's shepherds held paternal reign Beneath the large benignity of Jove. Long mused the Delphic sibyl in her cave Ere mid his laurels she beheld the god, And Beauty rose a virgin from the wave In lands the foot of Heracles had trod. Athena reared her consecrated wall, Poseidon laid its rocky basement sure, When Theseus had the monstrous race in thrall And made the worship of his people pure. Long had the stripling stood in silence, veiled, Hearing the heroes' legend o'er and o'er, Long in the keen palaestra striven, nor quailed To tame the body to the task it bore, Ere soul and body, shaped by patient art, Walked linked with the gods, like friend with friend, And reason, mirrored in the sage's heart, Beheld her purpose and confessed her end. Mould, then, thyself and let the marble be. Look not to frailty for immortal themes, Nor mock the travail of mortality With barren husks and harvesting of dreams. MIDNIGHT The dank earth reeks with three days' rain, The phantom trees are dark and still, Above the darkness and the hill The tardy moon shines out again. O heavy lethargy of pain! O shadows of forgotten ill! My parrot lips, when I was young, To prove and to disprove were bold. The mighty world has tied my tongue, And in dull custom growing old I leave the burning truth untold And the heart's anguish all unsung. Youth dies in man's benumbed soul, Maid bows to woman's broken life, A thousand leagues of silence roll Between the husband and the wife. The spirit faints with inward strife And lonely gazing at the pole. But how should reptiles pine for wings Or a parched desert know its dearth? Immortal is the soul that sings The sorrow of her mortal birth. O cruel beauty of the earth! O love's unutterable stings! IN GRANTCHESTER MEADOWS ON FIRST HEARING A SKYLARK SING Too late, thou tender songster of the sky Trilling unseen, by things unseen inspired, I list thy far-heard cry That poets oft to kindred song hath fired, As floating through the purple veils of air Thy soul is poured on high, A little joy in an immense despair. Too late thou biddest me escape the earth, In ignorance of wrong To spin a little slender thread of song; On yet unwearied wing To rise and soar and sing, Not knowing death or birth Or any true unhappy human thing. To dwell 'twixt field and cloud, By river-willow and the murmurous sedge, Be thy sweet privilege, To thee and to thy happy lords allowed. My native valley higher mountains hedge 'Neath starlit skies and proud, And sadder music in my soul is loud. Yet have I loved thy voice, Frail echo of some ancient sacred joy. Ah, who might not rejoice Here to have wandered, a fair English boy, And breathed with life thy rapture and thy rest Where woven meadow-grasses fold thy nest? But whose life is his choice? And he who chooseth not hath chosen best. SPAIN IN AMERICA WRITTEN AFTER THE DESTRUCTION OF THE SPANISH FLEET IN THE BATTLE OF SANTIAGO, IN 1898 I When scarce the echoes of Manila Bay, Circling each slumbering billowy hemisphere, Had met where Spain's forlorn Armada lay Locked amid hostile hills, and whispered near The double omen of that groan and cheer-- Haste to do now what must be done anon Or some mad hope of selling triumph dear Drove the ships forth: soon was _Teresa_ gone, _Furor, Pluton, Vizcaya, Oquendo_, and _Colon._ And when the second morning dawned serene O'er vivid waves and foam-fringed mountains, dressed Like Nessus in their robe's envenomed sheen, Scarce by some fiery fleck the place was guessed Where each hulk smouldered; while from crest to crest Leapt through the North the news of victory, Victory tarnished by a boorish jest[1] Yet touched with pity, lest the unkindly sea Should too much aid the strong and leave no enemy. As the anguished soul, that gasped for difficult breath, Passes to silence from its house of pain, So from those wrecks, in fumes of lurid death, Passed into peace the heavy pride of Spain, Passed from that aching tenement, half fain, Back to her castled hills and windy moors, No longer tossed upon the treacherous main Once boasted hers, which with its watery lures Too long enticed her sons to unhallowed sepultures. II Why went Columbus to that highland race, Frugal and pensive, prone to love and ire, Despising kingdoms for a woman's face, For honour riches, and for faith desire? On Spain's own breast was snow, within it fire; In her own eyes and subtle tongue was mirth; The eternal brooded in her skies, whence nigher The trebled starry host admonished earth To shame away her grief and mock her baubles' worth. Ah! when the crafty Tyrian came to Spain To barter for her gold his motley wares, Treading her beaches he forgot his gain. The Semite became noble unawares. Her passion breathed Hamilcar's cruel prayers; Her fiery winds taught Hannibal his vows; Out of her tribulations and despairs They wove a sterile garland for their brows. To her sad ports they fled before the Roman prows. And the Greek coming too forgot his art, And that large temperance which made him wise. The wonder of her mountains choked his heart, The languor of her gardens veiled his eyes; He dreamed, he doubted; in her deeper skies He read unfathomed oracles of woe, And stubborn to the onward destinies, Like some dumb brute before a human foe, Sank in Saguntum's flames and deemed them brighter so. The mighty Roman also when he came, Bringing his gods, his justice, and his tongue, Put off his greatness for a sadder fame, And what a Caesar wrought a Lucan sung. Nor was the pomp of his proud music, wrung From Latin numbers, half so stern and dire, Nor the sad majesties he moved among Half so divine, as her unbreathed desire. Shall longing break the heart and not untune the lyre? When after many conquerors came Christ, The only conqueror of Spain indeed, Not Bethlehem nor Golgotha sufficed To show him forth, but every shrine must bleed And every shepherd in his watches heed The angels' matins sung at heaven's gate. Nor seemed the Virgin Mother wholly freed From taint of ill if born in frail estate, But shone the seraphs' queen and soared immaculate. And when the Arab from his burning sands Swept o'er the waters like a heavenly flail, He took her lute into his conquering hands, And in her midnight turned to nightingale. With woven lattices and pillars frail He screened the pleasant secrets of his bower, Yet little could his subtler arts avail Against the brutal onset of the Giaour. The rose passed from his courts, the muezzin from his tower. Only one image of his wisdom stayed, One only relic of his magic lore,-- Allah the Great, whom silent fate obeyed, More than Jehovah calm and hidden more, Allah remained in her heart's kindred core High witness of these terrene shifts of wrong. Into his ancient silence she could pour Her passions' frailty--He alone is strong-- And chant with lingering wail the burden of her song. Seizing at Covadonga the rude cross Pelayo raised amid his mountaineers, She bore it to Granada, one day's loss Ransomed with battles of a thousand years. A nation born in harness, fed on tears, Christened in blood, and schooled in sacrifice, All for a sweeter music in the spheres, All for a painted heaven--at a price Should she forsake her loves and sail to Ind for spice? Had Genoa in her merchant palaces No welcome for a heaven-guided son? Had Venice, mistress of the inland seas, No ships for bolder venture? Pisa none? Was sated Rome content? Her mission done? Saw Lusitania in her seaward dreams No floating premonition, beckoning on To vast horizons, gilded yet with gleams Of old Atlantis, whelmed beneath the bubbling streams? Or if some torpor lay upon the South, Tranced by the might of memories divine, Dwelt no shrewd princeling by the marshy mouth Of Scheldt, or by the many mouths of Rhine? Rode Albion not at anchor in the brine Whose throne but now the thrifty Tudor stole Changing a noble for a crafty line? Swarmed not the Norsemen yet about the pole, Seeking through endless mists new havens for the soul? These should have been thy mates, Columbus, these Patrons and partners of thy enterprise, Sad lovers of immeasurable seas, Bound to no hallowed earth, no peopled skies. No ray should reach them of their ladies' eyes In western deserts: no pure minstrel's rhyme, Echoing in forest solitudes, surprise Their heart with longing for a sweeter clime. These, these should found a world who drag no chains of time. In sooth it had seemed folly, to reveal To stubborn Aragon and evil-eyed These perilous hopes, folly to dull Castile Moated in jealous faith and walled in pride, Save that those thoughts, to Spain's fresh deeds allied, Painted new Christian conquests, and her hand Itched for that sword, now dangling at her side, Which drove the Moslem forth and purged the land. And then she dreamed a dream her heart could understand. [Footnote 1: Admiral Sampson said he made a Fourth of July present of the Spanish fleet to the American people, although all the ships had been sunk and none captured.] III Three caravels, a cross upon the prow, A broad cross on the banner and the sail, The liquid fields of Hesperus should plough Borne by the leaping waters and the gale. Before that sign all hellish powers should quail Troubling the deep: no dragon's obscene crest, No serpent's slimy coils should aught avail, Till ivory cities looming in the west Should gleam from high Cathay or Araby the Blest. Then, as with noble mien and debonair The captains from the galleys leapt to land, Or down the temple's alabaster stair Or by the river's marge of silvery sand, Proud Sultans should descend with outstretched hand Greeting the strangers, and by them apprised Of Christ's redemption and the Queen's command, Being with joy and gratitude baptized, Should lavish gifts of price by rarest art devised. Or if (since churls there be) they should demur To some least point of fealty or faith, A champion, clad in arms from crest to spur, Should challenge the proud caitiffs to their death And, singly felling them, from their last breath Extort confession that the Lord is lord, And India's Catholic queen, Elizabeth. Whereat yon turbaned tribes, with one accord, Should beat their heathen breasts and ope their treasures' hoard. Or, if the worst should chance and high debates Should end in insult and outrageous deed, And, many Christians rudely slain, their mates Should summon heaven to their direful need, Suddenly from the clouds a snow-white steed Bearing a dazzling rider clad in flames Should plunge into the fray: with instant speed Rout all the foe at once, while mid acclaims The slaughtered braves should rise, crying, _Saint James! Saint James!_ Then, the day won, and its bright arbiter Vanished, save for peace he left behind, Each in his private bosom should bestir His dearest dream: as that perchance there pined Some lovely maiden of angelic mind In those dark towers, awaiting out of Spain Two Saviours that her horoscope divined Should thence arrive. She (womanlike) were fain Not to be wholly free, but wear a chosen chain. That should be youth's adventure. Riper days Would crave the guerdon of a prouder power And pluck their nuggets from an earthly maze For rule and dignity and children's dower. And age that thought to near the fatal hour Should to a magic fount descend instead, Whose waters with the fruit revive the flower And deck in all its bloom the ashen head, Where a green heaven spreads, not peopled of the dead. IV By such false meteors did those helmsmen steer, Such phantoms filled their vain and vaulting souls With divers ardours, while this brooding sphere Swung yet ungirdled on her silent poles. All journeys took them farther from their goals, All battles won defeated their desire, Barred from one India by the other's shoals, Each sighted star extinguishing its fire, Cape doubled after cape, and never haven nigher. How many galleons sailed to sail no more, How many battles and how many slain, Since first Columbus touched the Cuban shore, Till Araucania felt the yoke of Spain! What mounting miseries! What dwindling gain! To till those solitudes, soon swept of gold, And bear that ardent sun, across the main Slaves must come writhing in the festering hold Of galleys.--Poison works, though men be brave and bold. That slothful planter, once the buccaneer, Lord of his bastards and his mongrel clan, Ignorant, harsh, what could he list or hear Of Europe and the heritage of man? No petty schemer sees the larger plan, No privy tyrant brooks the mightier law, But lash in hand rides forth a partisan Of freedom: base, without the touch of awe, He poisoned first the blood his poniard was to draw. By sloth and lust and mindlessness and pelf Spain sank in sadness and dishonour down, Each in his service serving but himself, Each in his passion striking at her crown. Not that these treasons blotted her renown Emblazoned higher than such hands can reach: There where she reaped but sorrow she has sown The balm of sorrow; all she had to teach She taught the younger world--her faith and heart and speech. And now within her sea-girt walls withdrawn She waits in silence for the healing years, While where her sun has set a second dawn Comes from the north, with other hopes and fears. Spain's daughters stand, half ceasing from their tears, And watch the skies from Cuba to the Horn. "What is this dove or eagle that appears," They seem to cry, "what herald of what morn Hovers o'er Andes' peaks in love or guile or scorn?" "O brooding Spirit, fledgling of the North, Winged for the levels of its shifting light, Child of a labouring ocean and an earth Shrouded in vapours, fear the southward flight, Dread waveless waters and their warm delight, Beware of peaks that cleave the cloudless blue And hold communion with the naked night. The souls went never back that hither flew, But sighing fell to earth or broke the heavens through. "Haunt still thy storm-swept islands, and endure The shimmering forest where thy visions live. Then if we love thee--for thy heart is pure-- Thou shalt have something worthy love to give. Thrust not thy prophets on us, nor believe Thy sorry riches in our eyes are fair. Thy unctuous sophists never will deceive A mortal pang, or charm away despair. Not for the stranger's fee we plait our lustrous hair. "But of thy lingering twilight bring some gleam, Memorial of the immaterial fire Lighting thy heart, and to a wider dream Waken the music of our plaintive lyre. Check our rash word, hush, hush our base desire. Hang paler clouds of reverence about Our garish skies: laborious hope inspire That uncomplaining walks the paths of doubt, A wistful heart within, a mailed breast without. "Gold found is dross, but long Promethean art Transmutes to gold the unprofitable ore. Bring labour's joy, yet spare that better part Our mother, Spain, bequeathed to all she bore, For who shall covet if he once adore? Leave in our skies, strange Spirit passing there, No less of vision but of courage more, And of our worship take thy equal share, Thou who would'st teach us hope, with her who taught us prayer." A MINUET ON REACHING THE AGE OF FIFTY I Old Age, on tiptoe, lays her jewelled hand Lightly in mine.--Come, tread a stately measure, Most gracious partner, nobly poised and bland. Ours be no boisterous pleasure, But smiling conversation, with quick glance And memories dancing lightlier than we dance, Friends who a thousand joys Divide and double, save one joy supreme Which many a pang alloys. Let wanton girls and boys Cry over lovers' woes and broken toys. Our waking life is sweeter than their dream. II Dame Nature, with unwitting hand, Has sparsely strewn the black abyss with lights Minute, remote, and numberless. We stand Measuring far depths and heights, Arched over by a laughing heaven, Intangible and never to be scaled. If we confess our sins, they are forgiven. We triumph, if we know we failed. III Tears that in youth you shed, Congealed to pearls, now deck your silvery hair; Sighs breathed for loves long dead Frosted the glittering atoms of the air Into the veils you wear Round your soft bosom and most queenly head; The shimmer of your gown Catches all tints of autumn, and the dew Of gardens where the damask roses blew; The myriad tapers from these arches hung Play on your diamonded crown; And stars, whose light angelical caressed Your virgin days, Give back in your calm eyes their holier rays. The deep past living in your breast Heaves these half-merry sighs; And the soft accents of your tongue Breathe unrecorded charities. Hasten not; the feast will wait. This is a master-night without a morrow. No chill and haggard dawn, with after-sorrow, Will snuff the spluttering candle out, Or blanch the revellers homeward straggling late. Before the rout Wearies or wanes, will come a calmer trance. Lulled by the poppied fragrance of this bower, We'll cheat the lapsing hour, And close our eyes, still smiling, on the dance. _December_ 1913. TRANSLATIONS FROM MICHAEL ANGELO I "_Non so se s'è la desiata luce"_ I know not if from uncreated spheres Some longed-for ray it be that warms my breast, Or lesser light, in memory expressed, Of some once lovely face, that reappears, Or passing rumour ringing in my ears, Or dreamy vision, once my bosom's guest, That left behind I know not what unrest, Haply the reason of these wayward tears. But what I feel and seek, what leads me on, Comes not of me; nor can I tell aright Where shines the hidden star that sheds this light. Since I beheld thee, sweet and bitter fight Within me. Resolution have I none. Can this be, Master, what thine eyes have done? II "_Il mio refugio_" The haven and last refuge of my pain (A safe and strong defence) Are tears and supplications, but in vain. Love sets upon me banded with Disdain, One armed with pity and one armed with death, And as death smites me, pity lends me breath. Else had my soul long since departed thence. She pineth to remove Whither her hopes of endless peace abide And beauty dwelleth without beauty's pride, There her last bliss to prove. But still the living fountain of her tears Wells in the heart when all thy truth appears, Lest death should vanquish love. III "_Gli occhi miei vaghi delle cose belle_" Ravished by all that to the eyes is fair, Yet hungry for the joys that truly bless, My soul can find no stair To mount to heaven, save earth's loveliness. For from the stars above Descends a glorious light That lifts our longing to their highest height And bears the name of love. Nor is there aught can move A gentle heart, or purge or make it wise, But beauty and the starlight of her eyes. FROM THEOPHILE GAUTIER ART All things are doubly fair If patience fashion them And care-- Verse, enamel, marble, gem. No idle chains endure: Yet, Muse, to walk aright, Lace tight Thy buskin proud and sure. Fie on a facile measure, A shoe where every lout At pleasure Slips his foot in and out! Sculptor, lay by the clay On which thy nerveless finger May linger, Thy thoughts flown far away. Keep to Carrara rare, Struggle with Paros cold, That hold The subtle line and fair. Lest haply nature lose That proud, that perfect line, Make thine The bronze of Syracuse. And with a tender dread Upon an agate's face Retrace Apollo's golden head. Despise a watery hue And tints that soon expire. With fire Burn thine enamel true. Twine, twine in artful wise The blue-green mermaid's arms, Mid charms Of thousand heraldries. Show in their triple lobe Virgin and Child, that hold Their globe, Cross-crowned and aureoled. --All things return to dust Save beauties fashioned well. The bust Outlasts the citadel. Oft doth the ploughman's heel, Breaking an ancient clod, Reveal A Caesar or a god. The gods, too, die, alas! But deathless and more strong Than brass Remains the sovereign song. Chisel and carve and file, Till thy vague dream imprint Its smile On the unyielding flint. An Essay on the work of GEORGE SANTAYANA, written by EDMUND GOSSE, is, with the kind permission of the author and the proprietors of the _Sunday Times_, reprinted overleaf. A SPANIARD IN ENGLAND BY EDMUND GOSSE _(Reprinted by kind permission of the author and of the proprietors of the_ "_Sunday Times.")_ Only in solitude can soliloquies be appreciated, and Mr. Santayana is not an author for loud streets or for them who tear round the country in a blatant char-à-banc. He avoids even the high roads, and we shall come upon him, if we are lucky, in a grassy hollow of the bank of some dark river, and hear him talking to himself in a voice which disturbs neither the dragon-flies nor the thrushes. He meditates by the hour together on the sunlight in the buttercups, which gives him the illusion of life, or on the hurrying flood of liquid agate, which reminds him of the illusion of death. Everything is a symbol to him, and if he has a volume of poetry open at his side he does not distinguish its verse from the puzzling confidences of the blackbirds, and the insects are dreams which mingle with his own. The activity of existence is arrested for him, and time has become a vain expression. This is his dominant mood, but sometimes he rouses himself and walks to the wayside inn, where he watches the farmers and the travellers, unobserved by them. He notes their ways and their talk with a shrewd and sometimes humorous pertinacity, but they hardly exist for him more vividly than did the thrushes and the dragon-flies. All are dreams, all are in a condition of _maia,_ and the more he tries to distinguish them the more they melt into one. He exists, and he soliloquises, in a mood of perpetual reverie. This is an allegory, and in plain terms Mr. Santayana is a cosmopolitan philosopher of wide reputation. He is the son of a gentleman of Spain, who emigrated to New York. He tells us that his father learned to read English, which implies that he never learned to speak it. The son not only speaks, but writes, our language with an exquisite exactitude and grace, so that he is one of those rare figures, like Mr. Conrad and Mme. Mary Duclaux, who, having adopted in mature years a tongue not theirs by birth, contrive not merely to master but to excel in it. Mr. Santayana was for many years a professor of philosophy in Harvard University, where he showed no mercy to Hegel and was a thorn in the side of the Pragmatists. He is the author of a _Life of Reason,_ in five volumes, which I know that I shall never read, but which I am sure it is safe to recommend to persons younger and more thoughtful than myself. Since he ceased to be a professor, Mr. Santayana has wandered much in Europe, which, distracted as it is, he prefers to America, as quieter. The Great War found him at Oxford, waiting for the spark from heaven and meditating on the importunities of the hour. He stayed there, listening to the whirr of the aeroplanes over Port Meadow, and admiring, perhaps not without envy, the gallant ardour of the youths who started forth so bravely to arrest "the demons of the whirlwind" in France and Gallipoli. He stayed in England, because, glancing over the world, he found England pre-eminently the home of decent happiness, even at that desolating hour. It is amusing to pick out here and there, and put together in a bunch, some of this Hispano-American philosopher's impressions of our race, but we make a mistake if we suppose him largely or generally interested in any particular nation. What makes him attractive, but also a little alarming, is his excessive detachment from the modern life in which he moves so silently and observantly. He is not a social essayist, like Montaigne or Charles Lamb or Stevenson. He is almost obtrusively indifferent to whether he has an audience or not. This makes him, in spite of his extreme attention to moral action, a little inhuman. I do not think that he mentions the Scholar Gipsy, but he has a great deal of the spirit which made that hero of Matthew Arnold's beautiful poem fly the haunts of men. Mr. Santayana will not fly too far; he will see "the line of festal light in Christ Church Hall," before he turns to the woods and the wilds. But the essence of him is solitary, and he escapes from society not that he may forget it, but that, removed from that element in it which seems to kill the mind, he may reflect upon it with the minimum of disturbance. He is anxious to disown the name of metaphysician, but he is a psychologist to the tips of his fingers, and he is still in hopes of discovering a scientific philosophy which may explain to him the apparent discord between man and nature over which he is always brooding. His temper, excessively disturbed by recent events in the political and moral history of the world, may be clearly studied in the very remarkable essay called "War Shrines," and again in "Tipperary," one of the most whimsical and most individual. He started life with a premonition of things noble and tender, and his dreams have often seemed to betray him. But when he has escaped from the fatiguing conventions of life, when he can forget the ugly side of society, his old visions come back to him with smiling eyes, and he can admit that they have kept half their promise. We are so well accustomed to attacks, often very petulant and silly, made against England by Englishmen, that it is quite refreshing to read the impressions of a Spanish philosopher trained in America, who has a much higher opinion of us than we are apt to have of ourselves. Mr. Santayana is prompt to protest that nothing would make him wish to become an Englishman. His birthright was settled at his birth, and we feel that there is that kind of patriotism about him which if he had been born a Mongolian would not allow him to waver in his loyalty to Mongolia. But he has been a sort of Ulysses, and the result of his wanderings is to make him prefer the Englishman to any other human variety. This is decidedly gratifying, and it will amuse the desultory reader to skim Mr. Santayana's pages in search of his impressions of our race. They are not given in dogmatic form, but they are found to be consistent, and, as I say, they are gratifying in the mouth of so shrewd and so disinterested an observer. After traversing many lands he concludes that the English character is the best; it is as strong as the American, and softer, and less obstreperous. He finds the nearest parallel to that old Greek temperament, which he adores, in the English modesty in determination. It seems to rest his spirit to see that we are self-sufficing. Not that he is blind to our national defects, for he thinks that an exquisite or subtle Englishman, although such exist, is a _lusus natures._ It is not our business to be subtle, and when we are, there is always a tendency in us to become wrong-headed. We turn affected or else puritanical, and these extremes are highly distasteful to Mr. Santayana. "The Englishman travels and conquers without a settled design, because he has the instinct of exploration. His adventures are all external; they change him so little that he is not afraid of them. He carries his English weather in his heart wherever he goes, and it becomes a cool spot in the desert, and a steady and sane oracle amongst all the deliriums of mankind. Never since the heroic days of Greece has the world had such a sweet, just, boyish master. It will be a black day for the human race when scientific blackguards, conspirators, churls, and fanatics manage to supplant him." To give a general idea of Mr. Santayana's essays, I find a difficult task, because of a certain density and uniformity in his expression. He avoids the positive in all its forms. Not merely is he careful not to be dogmatic, but, speaking as he does to and as it were for himself alone, he is apt to combine an exactitude of language with a considerable dilution of thought. He is not averse from the pleasant foible of repeating himself, and as he does this in fresh language the reader, if he is at all censorious, is apt to resent a little the revolving flight of the ideas. Mr. Santayana soliloquises like an aeroplane making graceful curves and daring drops in one section of the ether. His profound scepticism forbids him to alight, for he has no faith in the current assumptions of daily life, and but a very faint interest in facts. He swoops in the light like a swallow, and we must be content to follow his turns and returns, with sympathy for his candour and freshness, and gratitude for his gracious skill. But to define what his object is, though he makes a hundred affirmations of it, is not altogether easy. 
49888	----	(Images generously made available by the Iternet Archive.) A Hermit of Carmel And Other Poems By George Santayana New York Charles Scribner's Sons 1901 CONTENTS A HERMIT OF CARMEL THE KNIGHT'S RETURN. A Sequel to A Hermit of Carmel ELEGIAC AND LYRIC POEMS Premonition Solipsism Sybaris Avila King's College Chapel On an Unfinished Statue Midnight In Grantchester Meadows Futility Before a Statue of Achilles Odi et Amo Cathedrals by the Sea Mont Brevent The Rustic at the Play Resurrection TRANSLATIONS From Michael Angelo From Alfred de Musset: _Souvenir_ From Théophile Gautier: l'_Art_ CONVIVIAL AND OCCASIONAL VERSES Prosit Neujahr Fair Harvard College Drinking Song Six Wise Fools Athletic Ode The Bottles and the Wine The Poetic Medium Young Sammy's first Wild Oats Spain in America Youth's Immortality A HERMIT OF CARMEL SCENE.--_A ravine amid the slopes of Mount Carmel. On one side a hermitage, on the other a rustic cross. The sun is about to set in the sea, which fills the background_. HERMIT. Thou who wast tempted in the wilderness, Guard me this night, for there are snares in sleep That baffle watching. O poisoned, bitter life Of doubt and longing! Were death possible, Who would not choose it? But that dim estate Might plunge my witless ghost in grosser matter And in still closer meshes choke my life. Yet thus to live is grievous agony, When sleep and thirst, hunger and weariness, And the sharp goads of thought-awakened lust Torture the flesh, and inward doubt of all Embitters with its lurking mockery Virtue's sad victories. This wilderness Whither I fly from the approach of men Keeps not the devil out. The treacherous glens Are full of imps, and ghosts in moonlit vesture Startle the watches of the lidless night. The giant forest, in my youth so fair, Is now a den of demons; the hoarse sea Is foul with monsters hungry for my soul; The dark and pregnant soil, once innocent Mother of flowers, reeks with venomous worms, And sore temptation is in all the world. But hist! A sound, as if of clanking hoofs. Saint Anthony protect me from the fiend, Whether he come in guise of horned beast Or of pernicious man! If I must die Be it upon this hallowed ground, O Lord! [_Hides in the hut._ _Enter a young_ KNIGHT. KNIGHT [_reining in his horse_]. Rest, Albus, rest.--Doth the sun sink in glory Because he sinks to rise?-- Breathe here a space; here bends the promontory, There Acra's haven lies. Those specks are galleys waiting for the gale To make for Christian shores. To-morrow they will fly with bellying sail And plash of swinging oars, Bearing us both to where the freeman tills The plot where he was born, And belfry answers belfry from the hills Above the fields of corn. Thence one less sea to traverse ere we come Where all our hopes abide, One truant journey less to end in home, Thy mistress, and my bride. [_He dismounts._ Good Albus, 't is enough for one day's riding. Here shall our bivouac be. Surely by that green sward some brook is hiding To welcome thee and me. Yes, hark! Its laugh betrays it. Graze thou there, Nor fear the camp's alarms. [_Lets the horse go and turns_, _perceiving the cross on the hillside._ See where a cross, inviting me to prayer, Outspreads its sacred arms. O first of many that mine eyes shall see On altar, tomb, and tower, Art thou the last of crosses come to me Before my guerdon's hour? Or first or last, and by whatever hands Here planted in the wild, Hail to thee, cross, that blessest in far lands Thy champion and thy child. [_Goes up to the cross and kneels before it. The angel of the Lord appeared to Mary And she conceived of the Holy Ghost._ [_Continues silently._ HERMIT [_from within]._ All's quiet. God hath made the danger pass. [_Comes out._ Nay, hold! A horse without a rider here? Perchance a devil, come, if I should mount him, To gallop with me into yawning hell. Yet he looks gentle, munching the young grass, The tempting bridle looped about his neck. I will go catch him. When the traders pass-- And they pass after Christmas--I will barter The beast for a good cloak. The winter's blasts Are on us. KNIGHT. _Behold the handmaid of the Lord._ _Be't done to me according to thy word_-- [_Confutes silently_. HERMIT. A voice! A Christian voice! Some winged angel Floats through the ether, magnifying God. Merciful heaven! There, ay, there he kneels Before the cross I planted. 'T is the cross That to earth brings down heaven. Yes, Saint Michael, For he is clad in arms, and his casque fringed With the bright nimbus of his golden hair. Yet he seems wingless; if he stirs a limb The heavy armour clangs. No angel, surely; Rather Saint George, with steed and magic lance Returned to fight against the infidel. KNIGHT. _And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. [Continues silently._ HERMIT. Listen! they speak my native tongue in heaven. Those are the words my sainted mother spake-- Nightly she crooned them, teaching Palmerin His orisons. [_The_ KNIGHT _rises._ Come, shall I challenge him? No: I am foul. I will hide crouching here And spy him as he goes. KNIGHT. What stirreth there? [_Pushes a branch aside._ HERMIT [_falling on his knees]._ Have mercy, glorious Saint! a sinful man Lives in this hovel; no man's enemy Except his own. Sir, spare an anchorite. KNIGHT. Fear nothing, holy man. I am a Christian Although no saint, but sinful more than thou Who in the desert livest near to God. My sword is stained with blood, my heart is rash, And if my youth is free from foul dishonour 'T is God's good mercies hedge my wayward days And marvellously guide me through the world. But thou art surely wise. In solitude The mind of the Most High possesseth men, And they whom sorrow chaseth from the world Learn in their grief the purposes of heaven. God's hand appears in this, that here I find thee To shrive me, father. Many months I roam Through heathen wilds in sorry need of shrift. Who knows if in some luckless fray to-morrow I bite the dust, or in that golden sea Perish unknelled and far from Christendom? A soldier's soul should be like his bright blade Ready to unsheathe. HERMIT. O music of high thoughts! O harmony of long-forgotten words! Fair visitation! In her youth the soul, Gathering, the heavy heritage of Adam, Looks with strange horror on her own abyss And on the stars, and her increasing knowledge Ever increaseth sorrow; yet with years, Touching the depths and wholly mortified, She sees her desert bloom with mystic flowers And sweeter smiles of God. O mortal bosom Both in foreboding and in hope beguiled! Not where I fancied in my night of trouble Dawns comfort on mine eyes, but wondrously. Whence earnest thou? Tell me what princely house And fruitful country bred and nurtured thee. KNIGHT. 'T is not a fruitful land. On heathered hills My father fed his flocks. We gazed not down On vineyard slopes and waters blue as these But there a sea of swaying tree-tops spread Boundless beneath us, without path or tower, Save where beside the river's bend the monks Had built their cells and cleared the wood away. We called it milking time when we could hear The distant music of their matin chimes. HERMIT. Be your monks rich? KNIGHT. Their fields are ploughed and brown But the poor upland shepherd has no corn; His flock must feed him with its milk and flesh, Unless he snare a partridge in the wood As I did oft, or standing in the brook Where the green water eddies in the pool Enmesh the foolish fishes. HERMIT. Never shepherd Could bear these arms or show this courtesy. Where wast thou bred, if thou wast born a hind, That thou art gentle? Who hath knighted thee? KNIGHT. The Baron of the Marches is my liege; To him I owe my nurture and my sword, And the sweet hope that leads me. HERMIT. Ah, the faith? KNIGHT. Nay, that my mother gave me with her prayers, Saintliest of women. HERMIT. Thy mother and my own Were then alike. Hast thou another hope Sweeter than faith to thank thy master for? KNIGHT. He hath a daughter for whose hand I serve, Having her love; and on the happy night When I kept vigil o'er the virgin arms In which I should be knighted at the dawn He promised me her hand, if I proved worthy In five years' service. At the morrow's mass When we had both partaken of the Lord, I knelt before him, and while all his vassals Stood in a ring about us, up he rose And with his flat sword struck my shoulder thus, Speaking these words, now graven on my heart: "Arise, Sir Knight, to battle with the world For God and honour. If in youth thou fall, May thy bright soul take instant wing to heaven, But if thou blazon on this argent shield Valorous deeds, and come in safety back, Thy worth shall stand in lieu of ancient blood, For valour was the first nobility, And with the blessing of a hapless man Whom three brave sons, reversing nature's sentence, Condemned to mourn them, I will then deliver My daughter to thy hands. She and her honour, My lands, my castle, and my name be thine." Love is the hope, sweeter than faith in heaven, For which I toil in arms. Enough of that. Methinks thou art a priest, and ere I leave thee I fain would make confession of what sins Lie on my soul. HERMIT. God knoweth what they are, And hath, methinks, forgiven them already, For by the candour of thy looks I know Thou livest in his grace. But tell them o'er, For by the speaking of a word the heart Is lightened of its burden: and the Lord Commissioned us to listen in his name To all men's woes, and counsel and forgive. Therefore say on. KNIGHT. Alas, where all is frail I know not with what sorrow to begin. If I could keep the thought of God alive I might live better; but my wit is loose And wanders into silly dreams awake, All to no purpose. Everything that stirs Sets me athinking of its life and ways And I forget my own. If a frog jump, Or busy squirrel run across my path, Or three sad crows fly cawing through the wood, Or if I spy a fox's trail, or print Of deer's foot in the mould--off go my thoughts And I am many leagues in fairy land Before I shake away the lethargy And say to my weak soul, Thou art a knight, What hast thou done to-day? HERMIT. Be these thy sins? KNIGHT. Nay, not the chief. For in all exercise, Or when in any test or feat of arms I meet another, not the worthy cause, The thought of God, my liege, or beauteous mistress Strengthens my arm, but the mere rage and pride Of the encounter sweeps my soul along, And win I must, whatever goal it be, When I am once engaged. That's in the blood. So were our heathen fathers wont to fight Merciless battles. But glory is the Lord's Who metes with measure. Still I stumble there. And envy, too, I often sin in that, For from my childhood up I never brooked A swifter runner, or a quicker eye To hit the mark, and what another does Better than I, that still I strive to do Till he be worsted. Else I cannot sleep. HERMIT. Thou knowest, child, that victory is God's To give and to deny. He gives it thee: 'T is proof of thy deserving. Use it well, Which if thou do, to crave the victory In thee, a soldier, is no grievous sin. But hast thou not more special sins than these, No wrong, no murder? KNIGHT. Murder have I none, If murder be to kill a man by stealth Or in a private quarrel, but in war I oft have slain my man. I wear a sword Though nature gave me not a butcher's hand That loves to use it.--Oh, 't is marvellous How men will slaughter for the sake of blood, And Christians too. Before I crossed the sea, The Margrave fought a battle in the north Against the heathen. I then followed him, And when the fight was over and the foe, Routed, had fled into a deep morass Black 'neath the splendours of a fiery sky, The bugle called us back: and back I rode, My shield slung on my back, my visor up, Saying the Angelus, such peace there was Beneath the twilight heavens, when a groan That seemed the ending of a soul in pain Made me look down; there lay a heathen knight, And on his wounded breast a Christian crouched, Stabbing him still; I snatched the villain's sword, But just in time, and seized him by the throat Amazed, and loud with oaths; "Thou slave," quoth I, "Why wilt thou send a valiant soul to hell, That might be saved for heaven? The man is mine. Take thou his armour, if some happy chance Have made thee victor. But outrage not the cause Which thou wouldst well defend." We stripped the man, Whose gaping wounds were deep and hard to staunch With the few strips remaining of my tunic Torn in the fight; and as he could not sit, We needs must lift and bear him in our arms Back to the camp. He was a knight indeed, And when, his fever passing, I explained Our holy faith--(our chaplains spoke not well His northern tongue)--he listened open-eyed As a child might, and when I stopped and asked, "Dost thou believe?" he gazed and said: "I do. As thou believest, so in life and death Will I believe."--So humble was his soul And open to the sudden grace of heaven. Yet him my Christian ruffian would have slain To see the red blood ooze. 'T is pitiful! And yet I do him wrong. The fellow came The morning after, shy, with heavy looks, And said he begged to bring the armour back. It was not his, he had not felled the knight But found him on the ground; and when I bade him Retain the proffered sword, to use it better, He sobbed aloud, and bathed my hands in tears, So hearty was his grief.--But I confess Another's sins, good father, and forget My own, which I should tell of. HERMIT. Trouble not To tell them over, for I know them now. They are the same which seen in other men The world calls virtues. But one vice there is Which noblest natures in their youth are prone to. Hast thou offended against chastity? KNIGHT. Ah, father, I am guilty too in that, If whosoever looketh on a woman Unholily, already hath committed Adultery in his heart. 'T is in my thoughts, Perhaps, that I have sinned; but I am young, And have from childhood loved one noble maid. All other faces are but mirrors to me Of what she is in truth. When others smile And seem to say that haply they could love me, My heart yearns to them, yet its yearning goes Like incense past a picture, to her spirit. They are memorials of her I review To make me constant. Nay, but that's not all. A heavy season comes,--I know not whether At waxing or at waning of the moon,-- When but the babble of a girlish voice Heard from a window, or a hand stretched forth, Or a chance motion, stops the beating heart Here in my breast, and melts my very soul, And I stand there bewitched, my brain benumbed, And nothing in me but the fell desire To do I know not what.--'T is dreams, dreams, dreams, And they are evil, treacherous, and base When they come so. One day on every side They girt me round. I cried to them "For shame!" They would not go nor quit tormenting me Till I put spurs into my steed, and rode, Rode with clenched teeth, hacking all branches off Within my axe's compass. When I stopped My soul was free: "We have outridden them, Albus," I cried, "the demons of that place Of foul enchantment! Here's the blue again Smiling upon us, God, and all his saints." Father, methinks the agony of death May happen so. A stifling darkness comes Upon the feeble soul, and doubtfully She keeps her strength alive on far-off hopes In that great stress of anguish. But it passes And slowly we awake in paradise. HERMIT. In paradise, my son, when thou awakest If I still suffer in the lake of fire Make me some prayerful alms, who in the name Of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost Absolve thee now. KNIGHT. And for my penance, father, What lay you on? HERMIT. Three _Aves_ for three days Say for the soul of one unlike thyself Though of thy country. Robbers bore him thence Into their kingdoms. Hast thou never heard Tell of the hordes that ravaged Christendom Ere thou wast born, belike. KNIGHT. Nay, I remember. 'T was then my mother brought me from the hills To dwell beside the castle, for the Huns Had slain my father and my elder brother And driven the sheep away. HERMIT. The Huns? The Huns? KNIGHT. Ay, when they ravaged all the land about Upon their western march. HERMIT. They slew thy brother? Thou sawest his body? KNIGHT. Nay, we saw it not. We fled, and many fearful weeks were past Ere we returned to search. HERMIT. The Lord is great. Thy brother's name was-- KNIGHT. Damian. HERMIT. God of mercies, What shall become of us! KNIGHT. Thy gaze is fixed. What ails thee? Rest thee there. HERMIT. I cannot speak. I faint. Since dawn I have not tasted food. A draught! A morsel! Ah, my end is near. KNIGHT. I have a panier by my saddle-bow With food.--Albus has wandered down the glade.-- I shall be here anon. [_Exit._ HERMIT. What bodes this portent? My practised soul well knows the things of earth, And there is none like this. Impossible. This is some essence metaphysical, And not the thing it seems. So much is sure; But whether fiend or minister of grace How shall I know? Is he a subtle demon And wins my ear? I am the devil's pawn. Is he an angel and I put him by? Then I am damned for that. All other sins Shall be forgiven, save such blasphemy Against the Holy Ghost. And being dead Might not my brother's spirit come from heaven? And though I be unworthy in my sins Of saintly visitation, I believe This vision is from God. 'T is beautiful And clothed in Christian speech and charity. Was not Mount Carmel, Lord, thy haunt of old Where men went up to meet thee? Show thy face. The Apostles at Emmaus knew the Lord When he broke bread. Blind heart, an angel comes To sup with thee to-night. Misknow him not. The ravens of Elijah, who were black, Came from the Lord, and Raphael himself Who led the lost Tobias by the hand Was black beside this vision's loveliness. Yea, by its glory pale the three bright strangers That from the desert came to Abraham's tent In figure of the blessed Trinity.-- What am I raving? Am I Abraham, Tobias, or Elijah, that the gods Should visit me? Did not the artful devil Come to Saint Anthony in beauteous form? When first this ghost approached I dreaded him,-- A certain sign. Yet by his subtle wiles, Flattering my earthly hopes, he vanquished me And quieted my doubts--as if Beelzebub Could not feign piety to murder souls! What, my young brother, whom I counted dead, Found in this shape, a knight, a Paladin, A vision such as minstrels sing about? Palpable lie, abominable snare The demon mocks me with! Let me but cry, "I am thy brother, I am Damian," Let me but clasp his knees and with a flood Of joyful penitential childish tears Water his feet, and then look up again To drink the grace of his benignant eyes And by his kiss be healed in soul and body, And I shall see the grinning demon's self And feel that icy manacle, his claw, Clasping my wrist for ever. "Thou art damned, Damned," shrieks the fiend, "damned in believing lies, Damned in renouncing for a dreamful joy Thy solitude and penance. Thou art damned." Yes, 't is a hellish plot confronts me here. A knight, my brother, come to comfort me! 'T is madness and wild dreams.--Again he comes. His gesture says, Here's food. Pitiful heaven, Assist me now. Let me not now be lost. Suffer my vigils and perpetual fasts To strengthen my resolve. To be so happy Were rash, and ah, how vain! To drown their sorrow Fools barter heaven for a drunkard's joy. [_Re-enter_ KNIGHT. KNIGHT. Drink this. 'T is water from the virgin springs Of Carmel, pure and cold. Stains of the world That leave the heavens clean leave earth's own heart Immaculate. 'T is but her outer garment That man and roving beast avail to smear. The curse of Adam stops at living things And Nature sleeps untainted. There is healing In such a fountain draught. Taste of this bread. Acorns I also bring and well-dried figs. Take freely: there is plenteous store for both. For often as I ride a village through Or tighten as I start from hostelries My horse's girth, the hospitable dame Or her young daughter brings me something forth From the rich larder, now a loaf or fowl And now a goat-skin full of seasoned wine. God prompts their kindly hearts and makes them bounteous Lest my strength fail me ere my journey's end, Who knows how distant yet.--Come, break thy fast. Remember, father, this is Christmas Eve When angels, joining in the songs of earth, Make mortals joyful, knowing their painful flesh Allied to deity. HERMIT. I crave no food. KNIGHT. Nay, nay, thy faintness called for it but now. HERMIT. Not hunger gave that cry but wonderment. KNIGHT. At my poor brother's name? HERMIT. Thy brother lives. KNIGHT. Where? Dost thou know him? In this Holy Land? HERMIT. Poor Damian of the Marches! Verily His sins are scarlet. Pray for him, fair Knight, But seek not to discover his abode. If thou should st find him he would die of shame For bringing shame upon thee. KNIGHT. Hast thou seen him Or is it slander of a gossip's mouth That now usurps thy tongue? If he be fallen He hath the greater need of charity And some late succour. HERMIT. Through long wanderings We never once were parted. In his youth I deemed him honest, loved him as myself, Nor doubted he should richly thrive and prosper Amongst the sons of men. But day by day The hand of opportunity unmasked The sleeping guilt within. Envy and greed, Pitiless malice, pride, and wantonness Started like lion's cubs that scent their prey And roared increasingly. Time drew aside Veil after veil that cloaked his villainy, Till looking on his stark and naked soul I stood aghast and trembled. KNIGHT. God, that made us, Engraved his sacred image in our hearts Deeper than cruel eyes may boast to pierce. Has not my brother too a priceless soul For which Christ died? Did God not ransom it? Yes, I will find him, lift him to my breast And say, "Forget the past. Thy home is here." HERMIT. Beware! Didst thou embrace him he would die, And he hath grievous penance yet to do Ere he be ripe for heaven. In purgatory The pains are doubly sharp and manifold With which our guilt is cleansed. Forbear to search. KNIGHT. This ministration is a task that heaven Now lays upon me. Hinder not his weal. What better battle could approve my courage Than in a brother's soul to fight despair? If I could bring that brother back to life Long dead to me, and dead, it seems, to God, Were't not a deed of Christian chivalry To win my lady by? Father, I pray thee, Where is my brother now? HERMIT. A mystery Enshrouds his penance. Vain to question more. A secret vow on which salvation hangs Lies between him and all men. KNIGHT. Marvellous! Where hath he roamed, what nameless sin committed That I may not embrace him? HERMIT. Listen, Knight, For I may tell thee that; and when thou knowest The sins he shrives and what his penance is, Assist him with thy charitable prayers To bear his cross, but lift it not away, For with it goes his hope of paradise. KNIGHT. There is indeed some mystery in this. The pain of it doth weigh upon thy soul Even in the telling. HERMIT. Did his own pale lips Read from the branded tablets of his heart The record of his sorrows, they could never More truly speak than I, for all his woes I knew, and inly felt them as my own. Would that some ruffian knife had gashed his throat On that foul day of slaughter, when thy mother Bore thee afar to safety. Ah, how near Salvation hung that day above his head! But wondrously, as Isaac once was spared, Some voice he heard not stayed the murderous hand, Then dealing death abroad; and from that mercy The dreadful brood of all his torments sprang. They bound his wrists with painful twisted thongs And drove him with the flocks and captive women Into their camp, across the smouldering heaps Of burning rubbish and through sulphurous fumes. That night he found him tied behind a cart-- The crawling palace of that savage chief Whose greed had saved him. Shivering he stood, For they had stripped him, through the starlight hours, And found no piteous orb less bright above him For looking on his grief. Alas, his soul Entered that night into the maze of hell. For gazing on those stars and on the corpses Of all he loved and knew, mangled and bare, Upbraiding heaven with their lidless eyes, And heaven's eyes still smiling back at them, He said to his cold heart, "There is no God." And when the rosy dawn with jocund seeming Gilded the valley as if naught had chanced, He, like the morning, banished grief and love, And in his vain and cruel heart repeating "There is no God," arose to greet the sun. They took him to a village by a stream, And in the market sold him to a Jew, A long-robed man, who stroked thy brother's hair-- 'T was flaxen then and silken as thy own-- And chuckled as he hurried him away Into a galley, by the margin moored. They voyaged long, until they reached a vast And splendid city. Egypt's sunken shore Stretches behind it, and before its walls Pharos, by day a pillar and by night A flaming beacon, greets the mariner. 'T is Satan's capital. If holy men Have dwelt within it, teaching all the Church, That was of old. Now Saracens and Jews Possess it wholly. There no Christian thrives, But every monstrous and lascivious crime Findeth a palace or a den to hide it. There did thy brother waste his youth, a slave, And no unwilling service did he render To every base command. His shepherd's skin, Ruddy with mountain suns, they smoothed with unguents, And bleached in pillared courts; they shaved his hair, Forbade him labour, save to hold a torch While his young masters read, or at the banquet To mix the lucent sherbets with the snows Of Sinai's deepest gorge, or in the censer To drop large incense-grains. He learned to sing What songs of wine their ribald poets penned, And all the witch of Lesbos raved of love. The lute and timbrel in his skilful hands They loved to place; oft in their languid souls His wild chant roused some savage memory And their hearts leapt like leopards in the night That prowl through broad Sahara. His delight Was henceforth the choice morsel, the fat fee, The subtle theft. He brought the gossip home From the loud market, lest his lord should yawn The morning long beneath the barber's hands, Nor praise his wit and to the tittering group Repeat his story. In the brothel streets He ran sly errands, nor escaped in fear If as he passed some wife of Potiphar Plucked at his tunic. His best art it was To know the cunning mixture of good wines And poisons too, if some adulterous slave Or long-lived uncle or importunate brother Needed a poison.--Close about his soul This bitter flood of luxury crept up Until it choked him. He forgot the past And blushed to be a Christian. Their vain prayers He learned to mutter, and was circumcised. Thrice in the day, and dawn and noon and eve, He washed his feet and hands, a foolish rite That left the soul still foul. Twice seven devils Lodged in his body and tormented him, And lust pursued him when all ways of lust Were stale and sickened. But there came an end. For by the flesh as he had chiefly sinned, So in the flesh he had his punishment. Ulcers and boils, to make another Job, Thickened upon him, and his beauty gone, They drove him like a pest from all their gates Among the lepers. Then he called on God. Then he remembered all he once had heard But understood not touching Calvary; And rising up, all naked as he was, He plucked the stout stem of a bramble-bush To be his palmer's staff, and with a rag That once had been the blanket of a mule Girded his loins, and stalked into the wild. KNIGHT. And whither, father, whither did he go? HERMIT. Mount Sinai first received him, on whose crests The Lord in the beginning reared his throne, And from whose spurs and watered crevices The children of Saint Anthony for ever Pour praise and supplication. There he dwelt, Recalling to his troubled memory The precepts of the faith; but from those haunts He journeyed soon to deeper solitudes. KNIGHT. Then he repented and is surely saved? HERMIT. God grant it, son, God grant it for thy sake. 'T is not a day can change the heart of man, Though grace doth much. The ancient demons lurk Still in their dark recesses, and at night, Or in the idle moments when the soul Breathes 'mid her travail, suddenly assail. In the vast wilderness the starving eye Spies many shapes that feed its lust. To me The buzz of bees, the lizard's sunny sleep, The snake's lithe coils are full of languishment. Oh, how the base blood then assaults the heart Crying, "Fool, fool, what were the life of heaven Unless in heaven too the sun were warm And the blood rose and all the passions flared, Even as in worms compact of earth and fire That lecherously writhe? Their goads and stings Are in thy flesh, why not their ravishment?" They are strange shapes the devil sometimes takes. There was a vine that crept along this wall, Ancient and knotted; far its branches spread And with their leafy greenness made a bower Over my cell. The juicy clusters hung Not far above me, and the little birds Chirped in the sun-flecked tangle all day long, Hopping from twig to twig and carolling. I sat and listened, and methought they said: "Bad hairy man, thou only in this world Repinest, hater of thyself and us, Thou art all nature's single enemy." And with a doubt that cleft my heart in twain I sat and pondered what they sang to me. Then I looked up into the sunlit maze Of that old vine, I breathed its subtle scent, I watched its spotted shadows shift and change With gusty murmurous tremblings of its leaves And eager tendrils, curling through the air, Until it seemed as if the thing had life And was a devil stooping over me With the obsession of his purring breath Wooing me to perdition. But I laughed, For I had dealt with imps of hell before. I searched the stubble till I found two flints, Sharp and with something like a cross upon them, And straight about the vine's outspreading roots Began to dig. A week, methinks, I dug With secret joy, well knowing that in vain The demon thought to ripen all his grapes. His filthy roots, now dangling in the air, Dried in the sun. In August fell the leaves, And the dead branches with the autumn's flaw Rotted and broke; now, see, they feed my fire. And when the Spring returns no silly birds Will fret me with their singing. God be praise That I could balk that devil: long he mocked My lonely penance with his evil eye. But others come anon; and what I suffer 'T is very like thy brother suffers too. KNIGHT. I cannot think so, father. Thou art weak And long hast laid the hopes of youth aside. Thou canst not love. My brother still is young-- HERMIT. Alas, if grief had multiplied his years! KNIGHT. He yet can love, and any natural voice Of wood or mountain, or perchance my own, Might wake in him another better life Of peace and happy hopes. We love the forest, We who were nurtured in its magic depths. Oft has it seemed as if God spoke to us In the low voices of the prayerful boughs That whisper nighest heaven. HERMIT. This false world Is naught, my son, but what we make of it. KNIGHT. Then I must think my brother loves the woods And hears God's message in their murmuring. Had he dwelt here, a hermit like thyself, He would have suffered that old vine to grow And those blithe birds to sing. 'T is positive, Else other blood than mine must fill his veins. Oh, I will find him yet.--I leave thee, father. Thou hast with heavy tidings and great hope Burdened my soul. Now I must journey on. I pray, thy blessing. HERMIT. Kneel, thou happy stranger, Kneel, for a vision comes into my heart And I must prophesy. Thus saith the Lord: "Thou shalt not know thy brother upon earth; My will forbids. But thou shalt pass him by, And as Saint Peter's shadow healed a man, The passing of thee, by my grace and mercy, Shall save thy brother's soul." This comfort take And go thy ways. KNIGHT. The will of God be done. If not on earth, we yet may meet in heaven. HERMIT. God grant it. KNIGHT. May God keep thee. HERMIT. Fare thee well. KNIGHT [_sings as he goes_]. _The star stood still o'er Bethlehem_ _That showed the wise the way_, _And where the shepherds sleeping lay_ _The angels sang to them:_ _Glory be to God on high_ _And peace on earth to men._ HERMIT. Lord of Mount Carmel, hearken to my prayer. God of the hills, accept my sacrifice. THE KNIGHT'S RETURN A SEQUEL TO A HERMIT OF CARMEL SCENE.--_A wooded lawn before the gate of a castle. In an arbour_ LADY FLERIDA _and_ NURSE _at their handiwork._ NURSE. The dews will soon be falling, Flerida. Come in, sweet lady. FLERIDA. Hush! 'T is early yet. NURSE. 'T is time, methinks, to say the rosary. FLERIDA. See the sun hanging o'er the darkened hills Bright as the Host above the multitude Of bending worshippers! Tell thy beads here, The congregation of these rustling leaves Will answer all thy _Aves_ patiently. NURSE. I 've dropped a stitch. I cannot see to work 'Neath trellises. These gentlefolk are mad. The mistress of a castle sits without, Like a poor homeless beggar! FLERIDA. Nay, go in And burn thy rush-light while the sun is shining, Or, by the casement squinting, knit thy hose While in these gilded clouds the seraphim Are singing Glory. Go, I follow thee. NURSE [_getting up to go_]. Alack, this rheum. Young bones will brave the cold Till the twitch comes.--Trust me, 't is hazardous, Sweet child, to tarry here beyond the moat Alone, when evening falls. Once at thy age My mother sent me on a night like this To good old Prior Bennet, at Saint Giles. He was her uncle and a saintly man-- How well do I remember his grey beard!-- She went to him for shrift, and on that day She had a fainting turn: she had them oft Till in the last, poor sainted soul, she died. I needs must run and fetch him, for to die Unreconciled was all my mother feared, And but for that, she had so hard a life She would have changed it any day for heaven, And on the way ('t was scarce a rood from home) An idle foul young lout that sauntered by Griped at my frock--I tremble at it still-- Thank God, the Virgin willed that at the trice Friar Peter (he was porter all that month) Opened the gate to let two pilgrims out, Bound, as they told us, for Jerusalem. Else Heaven knows what had become of me, Or whether I had ever had the face To cheat my husband, as most wenches do, Without confessing aught: for I am honest If ever woman was. FLERIDA. Go in, go in. NURSE. Seest thou not I go? Can I make haste With these poor aching joints? Thou think'st thee safe? Remember Ulric in his dungeon plans Vengeance upon you, and his friends abroad Hatch plans for his deliverance. Thou a maid, An orphan, friendless, with these ill-paid men Guarding thy walls, what dost thou fading here? Who knows but he is dead, thy pretty knight? His time is up. Were he alive and true He had spurred home, hearing thy father's death, To claim thee and make good his heritage. Fie on this fondness, girl! It had been wiser To yield to Ulric. Was it not his place To guard thee? Led he not thy father's men? Ah, better be his wife, rich, safe, and loved, Than wait for ever among enemies For what will never come. FLERIDA. Poor soul, go in. The five years are not passed, and if they were And I had ocular proof that he was dead, Ulric should not be master in these walls. But I should open arches in the tower For bells to swing in, and the grass should grow Upon the buried hinges of the draw. Veiled we should walk within the garden-close, And in the dimmed hall chant our psalmodies With the frail voice of nuns. So get thee gone, And summon better counsel to thy heart Than quavers on thy lips. Go light thy taper, And pray for the safe-coming of thy liege. NURSE. I go. But thou, sweet lady, linger not. The victuals will grow cold, as many a night They have, since summer makes the twilight long And thou com'st late to supper.--Ah, poor bones! [_Exit._ FLERIDA. Day wanes: full summer's hanging in the air. Oh, tarry not, my own. See! the first withered leaf is fallen there And I am here alone. Hath not my sorrow magic o'er thy breast? Hath not my weary plight The wings of love to fly into thy nest And reach thee in the night? Come to me, Palmerin. Thy trial's o'er, Thy knightly vow fulfilled. Come before winter chokes the ways, before My inmost soul is chilled. Where dost thou wander? From what lonely moor Dost thou salute this sun? Forget'st thou in gay courts what I endure? Lov'st thou some happier one? Weak woman! Can my doubting heart not wait While his true heart can fight? Why should I falter while he fronts his fate, Or mourn while he doth right? Keep him, great world, till the white shield he bore Be blazoned rich in pride. Fear not to echo, deserts, he's no more, If he have nobly died. _Re-enter_ NURSE; _later_ HUGH, _a page._ NURSE. Run hither quickly, mistress. Hasten in And bid them raise the bridge. Some horsemen climb The western hill. Make haste, or all is lost. Young Hugh espied them from the northern tower, And gave us warning. FLERIDA. Heaven hears my prayer. NURSE. Madness. Come in. I prithee hasten, Hugh. She 'll take thy word, though she mistrusts my oath Who never lied to her in all these years That I have served her, and her mother, too, Long before she was thought of. Speak, boy, speak. Assure thy mistress that a host arrives. HUGH. A single knight, my lady, clad in arms. FLERIDA. Young, with fair locks? HUGH. He had his helmet on. FLERIDA. Saw'st thou his shield? HUGH. It bore a rich device. But what I know not. FLERIDA. Came he mounted well? HUGH. Right well, on a white steed. But at the turn Dismounted, and now leads the charger up. NURSE. O God, 't is he! I know him by that sign. He always did so. [_A bugle is heard in the distance._ FLERIDA. God be my strength! Answer the bugle, Hugh. Thy master's call. It is Sir Palmerin. Again, again.--Summon the men-at-arms And fetch my father's sword, his helm and shield, That, with the great keys, I deliver them To him whose right they are. [_Exit_ HUGH. The day is come, Merciful God, the day is come at last. NURSE. Runnest thou not to meet him? Flyest thou not? Oh, if I could, I'd rush to kiss his hands Full half-way down the steep. Alas! these bones. FLERIDA. I, who have waited for him five long years, May well be patient now. Here let him find me Where last we parted, at the castle gate. _Re-enter_ HUGH, _men-at-arms, and attendant, bearing some pieces of armour._ NURSE. Oh, I must weep for joy! See, where he comes, Not so much changed but I should know him still Among a thousand. Such a pretty child As the knight was, and such a roguish boy! Can this be Palmerin? Who could have fancied That he should ever be this stalwart man? _Enter_ SIR PALMERIN, _who, seeing the lady_ FLERIDA, _who remains motionless, goes to kneel before her._ PALMERIN. Lady, hast thou forgotten Palmerin? FLERIDA. Were memory dead, that voice would waken it. PALMERIN. What mean these weeds, these arms? FLERIDA. That thou, my liege, Art master in this castle. PALMERIN. Ah, thy father-- How long have we been orphaned, Flerida? FLERIDA. Ten moons have shed their light upon his grave. PALMERIN. Oh, more than father-- FLERIDA. And thou more than son Wast ever to him. He remembered thee With his last breath, and bade me, when thou earnest, Render his arms, his vassals, and his towers Into thy hand. My lord, receive the keys. [_Kneels_. PALMERIN [_raising her_]. How gladly, if these keys unlock thy heart, Dear lady. For my prize is not these walls, Nor these stout men and honourable arms. 'T was not for them I served the Emperor In many a battle waged in heathen lands. 'T was in the hope of what no strength of arm Nor kingly favour, without grace of thine, Could win for any man. If thou canst love me, I take all else to do thee homage with; But if thy heart, in my long absence won By some more worthy suitor, would withdraw, Keep the rest too, for to be wretched in I have this whole vast world for heritage. FLERIDA. My hand and heart my father plighted thee Upon the morning when he dubbed thee knight. Both shall be true. If other ground were lacking, My father's choice were ground enough for love. PALMERIN. Nay, let not duty and thy father's will Force thee to wed me. Bid thy heart pronounce. FLERIDA. A holy love is not the fancy's choice. A mother cherishes the child she bore, Nature's dear gift, bestowed with many a pang And weary vigil and sweet fluttering joy That flies over a sea of brooding care. A father is not chosen but revered, For God appointed him. 'T is destiny, And no man's wayward will, binds brothers, kindred, And childhood's friends in everlasting bonds. Our native land we chose not, nor our king, Nor our first sovereign, God. All sacred ties Are woven round us by the hand of heaven And therefore bear us up. Let homeless traitors Reject their lot, like fallen Lucifer Wretched 'neath every sky; let the false rabble Change with the moon its despicable chiefs; Let the vain fop and goaded libertine Pick their poor pleasures, and adulterous spirits Pursue a phantom down the drifts of hell. But we will breathe the air that quickened us And see by this same light that gave us eyes, Here rooted where God sowed us, flowering here Where we have grown, making our constancy A pivot for this wheeling universe. Ah! 't is a fickle and unholy fondness Springs from caprice of will. Who doteth once May dote again, for who shall fetter fancy? As thou couldst bare thy breast to fortune's arrows Undaunted, for thy hope was all in God And life or death must crown it, so my bosom, Enshrining his good gifts, is satisfied And cannot speak again. Him heaven gave me Shall be my lord and my unchangeable love. PALMERIN. O constant lady! Let me then thank heaven, That graced me with the treasure of thy troth. Rejoice with me, my comrades. Say no more That time has parted us, and devious chances Governed our lives. How now, is this good Carl? And little Hugh, so grown? And thou, old gossip, Goes thy rheum better now the season warms? But where is Ulric? FLERIDA. Thou shalt know anon. First bid the people give us leave awhile. PALMERIN. Make ready, then; we follow you. [_Exeunt all save_ PALMERIN _and_ FLERIDA. Dear saint, Is this a vision or a waking truth In which I see thee, smiling on my hopes, As only visions smile on Jack-a-dreams? How often have I dreamt between two battles Thou stoodest thus above me in the dusk Half joy, half courage! FLERIDA. Haply't was my prayer, For prayer hath wings to travel in the night. PALMERIN. Didst thou remember FLERIDA. Not as others pray. What need of blessings to protest I loved thee, When benediction rose with every breath From my dumb heart to thee? Awake, adream, In woodland rambles or in household tasks, I moved in thy love's presence as in God's, One deity to me. PALMERIN. How undeserving, Fair angel, are my merits of thy love! How could I win it! FLERIDA. Ah, if God can love thee, Why should a mortal give a cause for love? PALMERIN. They say God loves us all. FLERIDA. Such pitying love Is his alone who knows the unsullied spirit Shrouded at birth beneath this fleshly coil, And can divine the stature of that virtue Each yet might climb to. But in thee declared Shine, Palmerin, the hopes of all the world. What God beheld and destined when he called thee Out of the void, he granted me to see First through the haze of maiden dreams and now With the deep glance of woman. PALMERIN. Then in sooth 'T was no vain fancy, as the learned say, That made thy silent presence cross my path Where'er I turned, for if I slept my dream Painted thy smile, and when the vision fled The sunlit fountain met me with thy gaze. If the birds chirruped, it was _Flerida_, And _Flerida_ if any minstrel sang. Thy mien was in the lilies, the thin clouds Contrived thy garments' fashion, and thy courage Breathed from the mountains to renew my soul. Nor was there need, for in these tables here Thy name, thy looks, thy words, thy noble ways Were graven deep, and, as the gaudy shadows Stalked by me which men take for beauteous thing, I laughed to scorn each feeble counterfeit, And cried to the sweet image in my soul How much more bright thou wast and beautiful. Little I thought the love that brought me blessing Brought sorrow here to thee. FLERIDA. If it brought sorrow That grief was consecrate and offered up To aid thy noble venture. 'T was my hope That thy young sinews in a dreamless sleep Might knit them for the battle, while my vigils Kept trimmed thy spirit's lamp; so might thy valour, Fed on my sorrow's riches, greet the morn With more unsullied and resplendent rays Than her own shining, and the wondering world Should praise thy happy courage, little knowing The hidden might of love that nerved thy arm And taught thy blithe soul singing. PALMERIN. Flerida, Though I should give thee all ray life and blood, My honour and immortal soul, 't were nothing By what thou gavest first, and rendering all That should owe thee this sweet privilege Of having lived and loved thee. _Re-enter_ NURSE. NURSE. Loitering still? Come, come, the supper's spoiling. FLERIDA [_pointing to the castle]._ Wilt thou take Possession of thy poor inheritance? PALMERIN. 'Tis poor indeed, a case without its jewel, Till thou be mine. FLERIDA. Thou hast my plighted troth. PALMERIN. Ah, pay the debt! my heart has waited long. FLERIDA. No priest is in attendance, Palmerin. Till one be duly summoned and arrive I am my father's hostage in thy hands Entrusted to thy love and chivalry. PALMERIN. I long have bivouacked, lady, 'neath the stars, And I shall better rest beneath their light While I am still an exile from thy bosom. Let me not change the canopy of heaven Except for heaven's self. Before this shrine I watched my virgin arms on the proud eve Of my first knighting. On this prouder vigil Let me hold silent session with my heart Again before this altar, keeping watch Over this sweeter boon, my virgin bride To be to-morrow mine. FLERIDA [_to the_ NURSE]. Bid them bring hither Some wine and morsels for Sir Palmerin, And torches, and their lutes and dulcimers. [_Exit_ NURSE. PALMERIN. We sup to-night beneath a lovers' moon Not quite at full. FLERIDA. We sup beneath the stars That never wane, though nether storms obscure Their revolutions to the wistful eyes Of mortals. So our love shall never wane But when its fame on earth is heard no more, Translated to the language of the skies, It yet shall be a parcel of that joy Which saves the world from baseness. _Attendants with torches and musical instruments enter, while others bring in supper._ SONG. _Come make thy dwelling here_ _Where all sweet pleasures are._ _For many a weary year_ _From mates and lady dear_ _Thou wanderest afar._ _Come make thy dwelling here_ _Beneath love's golden star. The battles' stress is o'er_ _That should thy worth approve._ _Oh, follow now no more_ _The ruby star of war_ _That onward still must move._ _Fixed shines above thy door_ _The golden star of love._ PALMERIN. Flerida, What solace had thy orphaned life for thee In this fair desert? Was not Ulric here To lend thee succour? FLERIDA. He was here, alas! PALMERIN. Alas? FLERIDA. That he proved false. PALMERIN. I marvel. Speak. FLERIDA. Ah me! A sorry tale.--He said the castle As to my father's second came to him; That I within it, as the world would think, Must be his also. Doubtless thou wast dead, Else tidings would have come. To save my honour I must not wait, but bend to be his wife. PALMERIN. Said Ulric so, that brave and trusty man? Only some madness could transform his soul So utterly. FLERIDA. I question not the cause, I mark the deed and brand the infamy. When he had spoken and beheld me firm, The coward threatened force. We were alone And he unarmed; it was a woman's body, Not a man's soul, he thought to cope withal. My father's sword was hanging by the wall: I drew the blade, and as he rushed to snatch it Transfixed his body; at my feet he fell Writhing; I cried for help. Then Gunther came And the young Hugh. I published his offence, And when the torment and the fever passed, For my poor strength had left some breath in him, Fettered and manacled they brought him forth Into the hall, before my men-at-arms And the red witness of his own foul blood Staining the hearthstone; and I spoke and said: "Unhappy Ulric, traitor to thy liege, Whom on the cross thou tookest oath to serve, Thou shalt await his sentence. When he comes He shall know all and will decree thy forfeit. But if he come not, thou shalt live in chains Till God and death restore thy liberty." PALMERIN. Is he still captive? FLERIDA. In the northern tower, Whence Hugh but now, whom Christian charity Prompts oft to visit our sad prisoner, Saw thee approach. Ulric has heard the news. PALMERIN. Let him be brought. FLERIDA [_to the men-at-arms_]. You hear my lord's command.-- Ah, Palmerin, when Christ returns to earth Only the good shall welcome him; thy coming Will bring thy faithless servant also joy, For I foresee thy sentence, PALMERIN. To be merciful Is to be truly just.--Has he not mended Or purged his sin in his captivity? FLERIDA. Indeed, it seems he has. Hugh and the friar Who daily visits him both bring report Of many pious and profound discourses With which he charms away his solitude. God grant his wisdom may outlive its cause And not forsake him now. For, see, he comes. _Re-enter the men-at-arms, leading in_ ULRIC, _bound._ PALMERIN. Ulric, it wounds my soul to see thee thus. Undo the fetters. [ULRIC _is freed._ What has chanced I know. 'T were idle to rehearse that history. Only one matter, past my understanding, I ask thee to confess: how came thy soul To harbour thoughts so opposite to thine And do thy nobleness this injury? ULRIC. Alas! The saddest sorrow of the world Is not foul sin, but that resplendent virtue That yet brings evil on. 'T was nothing base, Hideous, ignoble, or contemptible That led me to my ruin, but the might Of perfect sweetness, joy unthinkable, And infinite deserts_;_ it was the hunger For what most truly merits to be loved. 'T was love, my lord, the love of Flerida Which, in thy bosom waking heaven's choirs, Brought hell into my breast. Was not her face As fair for me as thee to look upon? Was not her silver voice and high discourse Potent with reason on my listening ears? Why was it criminal in me to love And in thee lawful? For we both were men, And I the elder and the better born, Who might have wooed and won her worthily. Yet with no other crime than lucklessness, Because her father and her constant soul Lit first on thee, the tempest of my love Wrecked honour, faith, fame, life, and hope of heaven, Which, had the winds blown gently on my fortunes, The self-same love had blessed and glorified. PALMERIN. I pity thee; but summon not thy love To shield thy shame. Hadst thou been fortunate, Should I with cunning and outrageous hand Have moved against thy peace? Nay, by God's mercy, I should have gone my way, and patiently In other worlds have justified my soul; For sorrow more religiously than love Counselleth mortals. ULRIC. Ah, I loved too much. PALMERIN. Thou sayest well, Too much. Not that thy love In sweetness or in silent potency Of grief surpassed or mine or any man's. But finding in thy spirit no defence, Love fattened on thy reason, drank thy will, And quite consumed thy being; growing great, It left thee little, as, when a fiery wind Devours the stubble, both together perish And all goes out in shame. Water these ashes, Ulric, with warm and consecrated tears, That haply some new sweetness thence arise Beneath another heaven. Though thou leave us, Our hearts will not forget thee. In thy prayers Remember us, and use thy freedom well. ULRIC. I thank thee for thy counsel and thy mercy, Generous knight. Not comfortless I go, For not thy lips alone, well catechised, Forgive me, Palmerin: thy heart forgives. I would not use my freedom now to rove But to ascend. A cloister's little earth Is covered by the whole wide firmament. Being changed within, there let me live and die An anchorite, that I may outwardly Become a breathing symbol and a hand Pointing to heaven, become a lamp of love And keep my spirit's sacrificial flame Burning before the altar, till my blood, Its living oil, to light refine its fire And rise, by prayer transmuted, from this world. And at this parting let me bless thee, lady, Angel God chose to save me from my sin Even by tempting me. For in the storm And fury of my madness thy calm eyes That unaware had called me, as the moon Summons the leaping sea to follow her, Soon with quick bolt and soul-transfixing ire Awaked me from my dream. For who was I, That I should lift me to so pure a being Except in adoration, as the wave That mirrors in its slimy breast the glory Of some clear star, soon, grateful for that light, Sinks, moaning, to its restless element. So moaned I, in my dungeon's loneliness And in that larger solitude, the world, Where now no joy remained to beckon me. I cried to Nature, questioned sun and moon, At my cell's bars celestial visitants; Yes, I importuned my own soul to tell me Whether a man be born to look on good And straightway perish. Long I questioned fate. No answer came from heaven to my doubts; But with the Spring and the reviving note Of thrush and swallow, and the ploughman's song Heard from the fields, I somewhat calmed my griefs, And my heart took new counsel. Though a wave Mirror a star and sink into the sea, It cannot suffer; though the summer fade It shivers not at autumn; though the spheres Crash back to chaos they lament it not. Never the blasted deserts of the moon Mourned their lost verdure or implored reprieve. But my loud heart-beats, self-contemplative, Note their own weariness, and death foreknown Makes life a grim and halting agony. Yet something in me rides on circumstance And swims the tide of change. How should that die Which knows its dying, or that pine and fade Which marks the shrivelled leafage of the year? Can ashes choke that voice to lying silence Which once has said: I love? That truth must live Though unremembered, and that splendour shine Though all eyes close in sleep. When first I loved thee Something immortal darted through my flesh And made me godlike. Henceforth all of me That loved thee, all of thee my puissant love Hedging with worship rescued from the void Lives in eternity, a part of God, Who feeds with earth's unquenchable desire The skies' ethereal altar, to whose flame Passions are brands, thoughts smoke and frankincense, Nations and worlds unceasing hecatombs. There, growing one with all that ravished me, I also bum and never cease from love. Farewell, sweet lady. For thy pity thanks, More thanks for thy disdain, but for thy beauty Infinite thanks, for it was infinite And, while it blinded most, unsealed mine eyes. FLERIDA. Go in God's peace, and may he grant thee grace To see him always. _Exit_ ULRIC. Palmerin, this night Brings me a surfeit and a cloud of joys. I cannot seize them all. But many days Will suck their drop of sweetness from this store, And many silent nights and absences Feed on its garnered bliss. NURSE. What, prattling still? You 'll catch the ague and the chill of the fens, And lolling in the moonlight, talking love, You 'll die before the wedding. Come along. PALMERIN. Sleep, Flerida, falls sweetly on a heart Freed from long doubt and anguish. Take thy rest. Palmerin watches at thy castle gates And all is well. Sleep, sleep, my Flerida. FLERIDA. Let me gaze long upon thee ere I go, Lest, waking, I believe that I have dreamt And weep anew and be disconsolate. PALMERIN. Ah, were I only lying by thy side At the first checking of thy peaceful breath, To chase away that doubt before it grieved thee And with two kisses close thy dreamful eyes! Alas that we should meet to part, and love Only to be divided! FLERIDA. Palmerin, Though thou hast faced the world and conquered it, Thy noble heart is young. My briefer years And lonely life have farther traced the thread By which fate guides us through this labyrinth. To learn to part, to learn to be divided, We meet and love on earth; to learn to die Is the one triumph of the life of prayer. Shall love be but to hug the mother's breast, Or else run wailing? To prolong for ever The lovers' kiss, or pine for blandishments? Is the Lord's body but unleavened bread Weighed with a baker's measure, or his blood Wine to be drunk in bumpers? And shall love Be reckoned in embraces, and its grace Die with the taking of its sacrament? These be but symbols to the eye of time Of secrets written in eternity. The love that fed must wean the nourished soul, And through the dark and narrow vale of death Send forth the lover lone but panoplied. Else life were vain and love a moment's trouble That, passing, left untenanted the void, As summer winds a-tremble in this bower Might waft some fragrance from a rifled rose Through yonder gulf of night and nothingness. Hadst thou in battle fallen, were my soul Bereft of Palmerin? Or had I languished, Would Flerida have mocked thy constancy? Banish such thoughts, dear master of my being, From thy immortal soul. These fond enchantments Make the sweet holiday and youth of love; They are a largess and bright boon of heaven To sweeten our resolves. But youth will fade, And death, not mowing with a two-edged scythe, Will cut down one and leave the other bowing Before the wintry wind. Arm not with terror That swift, unheralded, insidious foe, But let him find our love invulnerable And our heart's treasure in eternal hands. My lord, good-night. To-day my joy is full, To God I leave to-morrow. Fare thee well. PALMERIN [_kneeling to kiss the hand she gives him_]. Good-night, my own. May angels guard thy slumber-- FLERIDA. And share thy vigil-- PALMERIN. Till my angel come. [_Exit_ FLERIDA, _followed by her household As they go, some voices repeat scratches of the previous song: "Come make thy dwelling here," etc._ PALMERIN [_alone]._ No, Palmerin, unbuckle not thy arms, Guard well thy lady's sleep. Haply the wizards of the wood have charms To make a virgin weep. All goblin sprites and fairies of the trees That lead their impish dance Will spy thy mantle's cross; their blood will freeze To see a Christian lance. Hark! the old croaking frogs, and the far din Of crickets in the field. They bid me welcome home. "Hie, Palmerin, Once of the argent shield, "What's this device? Is Flerida this flower, And these five pearls her tears, Shed for thy love in her disconsolate bower These five unhappy years? "Those sable bars athwart a field of gules, Are they thy nights and days Spent mid bluff captains and rash drunken fools In marches, bouts, and frays?" Ay, ye chirp well, if I divine your note, Ye civil, croaking elves! A foolish master have your fields and moat And your so learned selves. Nothing he knows of wit or bookish lore And nothing of the fair, Only to break the brutal front of war And half repeat a prayer. Yet this sad wight is he, as fairies know, Whom Flerida hath blest, Soon locked within her arms. She long ago Was locked within his breast, Celestial Flerida, whom all the hours Adorning from her birth Have crowned the queen of stars, the queen of flowers, The queen of maids on earth. Her peerless heart hath chosen him her lord, The rare intrepid maid, Whose tender hand incarnadined a sword Lest he should be betrayed. Out of his nothingness her bounteous love Bred all his poor desert As God lent to the void he made us of His image for a heart. Like to the dateless dark before our birth Are those five winters past, This vigil like the twilight life of earth, Then paradise at last And changeless love. How in the paling skies The star of morning burns! Open, heaven's gates! Eternal sun, arise! Sir Palmerin returns. ELEGIAC AND LYRIC POEMS PREMONITION The muffled syllables that Nature speaks Fill us with deeper longing for her word; She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks, She makes a sweeter music than is heard. A hidden light illumines all our seeing, An unknown love enchants our solitude. We feel and know that from the depths of being Exhales an infinite, a perfect good. Though the heart wear the garment of its sorrow And be not happy like a naked star, Yet from the thought of peace some peace we borrow, Some rapture from the rapture felt afar. Our heart strings are too coarse for Nature's fingers To wake her purest melodies upon, And the harsh tremor that among them lingers Will into sweeter silence die anon. We catch the broken prelude and suggestion Of things unuttered, needing to be sung; We know the burden of them, and their question Lies heavy on the heart, nor finds a tongue. Till haply, lightning through the storm of ages, Our sullen secret flash from sky to sky, Glowing in some diviner poet's pages And swelling into rapture from this sigh. SOLIPSISM I could believe that I am here alone, And all the world my dream; The passion of the scene is all my own, And things that seem but seem. Perchance an exhalation of my sorrow Hath raised this vaporous show, For whence but from my soul should all things borrow So deep a tinge of woe? I keep the secret doubt within my breast To be the gods' defence, To ease the heart by too much ruth oppressed And drive the horror hence. O sorrow that the patient brute should cower And die, not having sinned! O pity that the wild and fragile flower Should shiver in the wind! Then were I dreaming dreams I know not of, For that is part of me That feels the piercing pang of grief and love And doubts eternally. But whether all to me the vision come Or break in many beams, The pageant ever shifts, and being's sum Is but the sum of dreams. SYBARIS Lap, ripple, lap, Icarian wave, the sand Along the ruins of this piteous land; Murmur the praises of a lost delight, And soothe the aching of my starved sight With sheen of mirrored beauties, caught aright. Here stood enchanted palaces of old, All veined porphyry and burnished gold; Here matrons and slight maidens sat aloof Beneath cool porches, rich with Tyrian woof Hung from the carven rafters of the roof. Here in the mart a swarthy turbaned brave Showed the wrought blade or praised the naked slave. "Touch with your finger-tips this edge of steel," Quoth he, "and see this lad, from head to heel Like a bronze Cupid. Feel, my masters, feel." Here Aphrodite filled with frenzied love The dark recesses of her murmurous grove. The doves that haunted it, the winds that sighed, Were souls of youths that in her coverts died, And hopes of heroes strewed her garden wide. Under her shades a narrow brazen gate Led to the courts of Ares and of Fate. Who entered breathed the unutterable prayer Of cruel hearts, and death was worshipped there, And men went thence enfranchised by despair. Here the proud athlete in the baths delayed, While a cool fountain on his shoulders played, Then in fine linen swathed his breast and thighs, And silent, myrtle-crowned, with serious eyes, Stepped forth to list the wranglings of the wise. A sage stalked by, his ragged mantle bound About his brows; his eyes perused the ground; He conned the number of the cube and square Of the moon's orb; his horny feet and bare Trampled the lilies carpeting the stair. A jasper terrace hung above the sea Where the King supped with his beloved three: The Libyan chanted of her native land In raucous melody, the Indian fanned, And the huge mastiff licked his master's hand. Below, alone, despairing of the gale, A crouching sailor furled the saffron sail; Then rose, breathed deep, and plunged in the lagoon. A mermaid spied his glistening limbs: her croon Enticed him down; her cold arms choked him soon. And the King laughed, filled full his jewelled bowl, And drinking cried: "What know we of the soul? What number addeth to her harmony These drops of vintage that attune her key, Or those of brine that set the wretched free? "If death should change me, as old fables feign, Into some slave or beast, to purge with pain My lordly pleasures, let my torment be Still to behold thee, Sybaris, and see The sacred horror of thy loves and thee. "Be thou my hell, my dumb eternal grief, But spare thy King the madness of belief, The brutish faith of ignorant desire That strives and wanders. Let the visible fire Of beauty torture me. That doom is higher. "I wear the crown of life. The rose and gem Twine with the pale gold of my diadem. Nature, long secret, hath unveiled to me And proved her vile. Her wanton bosoms be My pillow now. I know her, I am free." He spoke, and smiling stretched a languid hand, And music burst in mighty chords and bland Of harp and flute and cymbal.--When between Two cypresses the large moon rose, her sheen Silvered the nymphs' feet, tripping o'er the green. AVILA Again my feet are on the fragrant moor Amid the purple uplands of Castile, Realm proudly desolate and nobly poor, Scorched by the sky's inexorable zeal. Wide desert where a diadem of towers Above Adajar hems a silent town, And locks, unmindful of the mocking hours, Her twenty temples in a granite crown. The shafts of fervid light are in the sky, And in my heart the mysteries of yore. Here the sad trophies of my spirit lie: These dead fulfilled my destiny before. Like huge primeval stones that strew this plain, Their nameless sorrows sink upon my breast, And like this ardent sky their cancelled pain Smiles at my grief and quiets my unrest. For here hath mortal life from age to age Endured the silent hand that makes and mars, And, sighing, taken up its heritage Beneath the smiling and inhuman stars. Still o'er this town the crested castle stands, A nest for storks, as once for haughty souls; Still from the abbey, where the vale expands, The curfew for the long departed tolls, Wafting some ghostly blessing to the heart From prayer of nun or silent Capuchin, To heal with balm of Golgotha the smart Of weary labour and distracted sin. What fate has cast me on a tide of time Careless of joy and covetous of gold, What force compelled to weave the pensive rhyme When loves are mean, and faith and honour old, When riches crown in vain men's sordid lives, And learning chokes a mind of base degree? What winged spirit rises from their hives? What heart, revolting, ventures to be free? Their pride will sink and more ignobly fade Without memorial of its hectic fire. What altars shall survive them, where they prayed? What lovely deities? What riven lyre? Tarry not, pilgrim, but with inward gaze Pass daily, musing, where their prisons are, And o'er the ocean of their babble raise Thy voice in greeting to thy changeless star. Abroad a tumult, and a ruin here; Nor world nor desert hath a home for thee. Out of the sorrows of the barren year Build thou thy dwelling in eternity. Let patience, faith's wise sister, be thy heaven, And with high thoughts necessity alloy. Love is enough, and love is ever given, While fleeting days bring gift of fleeting joy. The little pleasures that to catch the sun Bubble a moment up from being's deep, The glittering sands of passion as they run, The merry laughter and the happy sleep,-- These are the gems that, like the stars on fire, Encrust with glory all our heaven's zones; Each shining atom, in itself entire, Brightens the galaxy of sister stones, Dust of a world that crumbled when God's dream To throbbing pulses broke the life of things, And mingled with the void the scattered gleam Of many orbs that move in many rings, Perchance at last into the parent sun To fall again and reunite their rays, When God awakes and gathers into one The light of all his loves and all his days. KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL The buttress frowns, the gorgeous windows blaze, The vault hangs wonderful with woven fans, The four stone sentinels to heaven raise Their heads, in a more constant faith than man': The College gathers, and the courtly prayer Is answered still by hymn and organ-groan; The beauty and the mystery are there, The Virgin and Saint Nicholas are gone. Not one _Ora pro nobis_ bids them pause In their far flight, to hear this anthem roll; No heart, of all that the King's relic awes, Sings _Requiescat_ to his mournful soul. No grain of incense thrown upon the embers Of their cold hearth, no lamp in witness hung Before their image. One alone remembers; Only the stranger knows their mother tongue. Long rows of tapers light the people's places; The little choristers may read, and mark The rhythmic fall; I see their wondering faces; Only the altar--like the soul--is dark. Ye floating voices through these arches ringing With measured music, subtle, sweet, and strong, Feel ye the inmost reason of your singing? Know ye the ancient burden of your song? The twilight deepens, and the blood-dyed glories Of all these fiery blazonings are dim. Oh, they are jumbled, sad, forgotten stories! Why should ye read them, children? Chant your hymn. But I must con them while the rays of even Kindle aloft some fading jewel-gleam And the vast windows glow a peopled heaven, Rich with the gathering pageant of my dream. Eden I see, where from the leafy cover The green-eyed snake begins to uncoil his length And whispers to the woman and her lover, As they lie musing, large, in peaceful strength. I see their children, bent with toil and terror, Lurking in caves, or heaping madly on The stones of Babel, or the endless error Of Sodom, Nineveh, and Babylon. Here the Egyptian, wedding life with death, Flies from the sun into his painted tomb, And winds the secret of his antique faith Tight in his shroud, and seals in sterile gloom. There the bold prophets of the heart's desire Hail the new Zion God shall build for them, And rapt Isaiah strikes the heavenly lyre, And Jeremiah mourns Jerusalem. Here David's daughter, full of grace and truth, Kneels in the temple, waiting for the Lord; With the first _Ave_ comes the wingèd youth, Bringing the lily ere he bring the sword. There, to behold the Mother and the Child, The sturdy shepherds down the mountain plod, And angels sing, with voices sweet and wild And wide lips parted: "Glory be to God." Here, mounted on an ass, the twain depart To hallowed Egypt, safe from Herod's wrong; And Mary ponders all things in her heart, And pensive Joseph sadly walks along. There with the Twelve, before his blood is shed, Christ blesses bread and breaks it with his hands, "This is my body." Thomas shakes his head, They marvel all, and no one understands, Save John, whom Jesus loved above the rest. He marvels too, but, seeking naught beside, Leans, as his wont is, on his Master's breast. Ah! the Lord's body also should abide. There Golgotha is dark against the blue In the broad east, above the painted crowd, And many look upon the sign, but few Read the hard lesson of the cross aloud. And from this altar, now an empty tomb, The Lord is risen. Lo! he is not here. No shining angel sitteth in the gloom, No Magdalen in anguish draweth near. All pure in heart, or all in aspect pure, The seemly Christians, kneeling, line the choir, And drop their eyelids, tender and demure, As the low lingering harmonies expire. In that _Amen_ are the last echoes blended Of all the ghostly world. The shades depart Into the sacred night. In peace is ended The long delirious fever of the heart. Then I go forth into the open wold And breathe the vigour of the freshening wind, And with the piling drift of cloud I hold A worship sweeter to the homeless mind, Where the squat willows with their osiers crowned Border the humble reaches of the Cam, And the deep meadows stretching far around Make me forget the exile that I am,-- Exile not only from the wind-swept moor Where Guadarrama lifts his purple crest, But from the spirit's realm, celestial, sure Goal of all hope and vision of the best. They also will go forth, these gentle youths, Strong in the virtues of their manful isle, Till one the pathway of the forest smooths, And one the Ganges rules, and one the Nile And to whatever wilderness they choose Their hearts will bear the sanctities of home, The perfect ardours of the Grecian Muse, The mighty labour of the arms of Rome; But, ah! how little of these storied walls Beneath whose shadow all their nurture was! No, not one passing memory recalls The Blessed Mary and Saint Nicholas. Unhappy King, look not upon these towers, Remember not thine only work that grew. The moving world that feeds thy gift devours, And the same hand that finished overthrew. ON AN UNFINISHED STATUE BY MICHAEL ANGELO IN THE BARGELLO, CALLED AN APOLLO OR A DAVID What beauteous form beneath a marble veil Awaited in this block the Master's hand? Could not the magic of his art avail To unseal that beauty's tomb and bid it stand? Alas! the torpid and unwilling mass Misknew the sweetness of the mind's control, And the quick shifting of the winds, alas! Denied a body to that flickering soul. Fair homeless spirit, harbinger of bliss, It wooed dead matter that they both might live, But dreamful earth still slumbered through the kiss And missed the blessing heaven stooped to give, As when Endymion, locked in dullard sleep, Endured the gaze of Dian, till she turned Stung with immortal wrath and doomed to weep Her maiden passion ignorantly spurned. How should the vision stay to guide the hand, How should the holy thought and ardour stay, When the false deeps of all the soul are sand And the loose rivets of the spirit clay? What chisel shaking in the pulse of lust Shall find the perfect line, immortal, pure? What fancy blown by every random gust Shall mount the breathless heavens and endure? Vain was the trance through which a thrill of joy Passed for the nonce, when a vague hand, unled, Half shaped the image of this lovely boy And caught the angel's garment as he fled. Leave, leave, distracted hand, the baffling stone, And on that clay, thy fickle heart, begin. Mould first some steadfast virtue of thine own Out of the sodden substance of thy sin. They who wrought wonders by the Nile of old, Bequeathing their immortal part to us, Cast their own spirit first into the mould And were themselves the rock they fashioned thus. Ever their docile and unwearied eye Traced the same ancient pageant to the grave, And awe made rich their spirit's husbandry With the perpetual refluence of its wave, Till 'twixt the desert and the constant Nile Sphinx, pyramid, and awful temple grew, And the vast gods, self-knowing, learned to smile Beneath the sky's unalterable blue. Long, long ere first the rapt Arcadian swain Heard Pan's wild music pulsing through the grove, His people's shepherds held paternal reign Beneath the large benignity of Jove. Long mused the Delphic sibyl in her cave Ere mid his laurels she beheld the god, And Beauty rose a virgin from the wave In lands the foot of Heracles had trod. Athena reared her consecrated wall, Poseidon laid its rocky basement sure, When Theseus had the monstrous race in thrall And made the worship of his people pure. Long had the stripling stood in silence, veiled, Hearing the heroes' legend o'er and o'er, Long in the keen palæstra striven, nor quailed To tame the body to the task it bore, Ere soul and body, shaped by patient art, Walked linked with the gods, like friend with friend, And reason, mirrored in the sage's heart, Beheld her purpose and confessed her end. Mould, then, thyself and let the marble be. Look not to frailty for immortal themes, Nor mock the travail of mortality With barren husks and harvesting of dreams. MIDNIGHT The dank earth reeks with three days' rain, The phantom trees are dark and still, Above the darkness and the hill The tardy moon shines out again. O heavy lethargy of pain! O shadows of forgotten ill! My parrot lips, when I was young, To prove and to disprove were bold. The mighty world has tied my tongue, And in dull custom growing old I leave the burning truth untold And the heart's anguish all unsung. Youth dies in man's benumbed soul, Maid bows to woman's broken life, A thousand leagues of silence roll Between the husband and the wife. The spirit faints with inward strife And lonely gazing at the pole. But how should reptiles pine for wings Or a parched desert know its dearth? Immortal is the soul that sings The sorrow of her mortal birth. O cruel beauty of the earth! O love's unutterable stings! IN GRANTCHESTER MEADOWS ON FIRST HEARING A SKYLARK SING Too late, thou tender songster of the sky Trilling unseen, by things unseen inspired, I list thy far-heard cry That poets oft to kindred song hath fired, As floating through the purple veils of air Thy soul is poured on high, A little joy in an immense despair. Too late thou biddest me escape the earth, In ignorance of wrong To spin a little slender thread of song; On yet unwearied wing To rise and soar and sing, Not knowing death or birth Or any true unhappy human thing. To dwell 'twixt field and cloud, By river-willow and the murmurous sedge, Be thy sweet privilege, To thee and to thy happy lords allowed. My native valley higher mountains hedge 'Neath starlit skies and proud, And sadder music in my soul is loud. Yet have I loved thy voice, Frail echo of some ancient sacred joy. Ah, who might not rejoice Here to have wandered, a fair English boy, And breathed with life thy rapture and thy rest Where woven meadow-grasses fold thy nest? But whose life is his choice? And he who chooseth not hath chosen best. FUTILITY Fair Nature, has thy wisdom naught to say To cheer thy child in a disconsolate hour? Why do thy subtle hands betray their power And but half-fashioned leave thy finer clay? Upon what journeys doth thy fancy stray That weeds in thy broad garden choke the flower, And many a pilgrim harboured in thy bower A stranger came, a stranger went away? Ah, Mother, little can the soul avail Unchristened at some font of ancient love. What boots the vision if the meaning fail, When all the marvels of the skies above March to the passions they are mirrors of? If the heart pine, the very stars will pale. BEFORE A STATUE OF ACHILLES I Behold Pelides with his yellow hair, Proud child of Thetis, hero loved of Jove; Above the frowning of his brows it wove A crown of gold, well combed, with Spartan care. Who might have seen him, sullen, great, and fair, As with the wrongful world he proudly strove, And by high deeds his wilder passion shrove, Mastering love, resentment, and despair. He knew his end, and Phoebus' arrow sure He braved for fame immortal and a friend, Despising life; and we, who know our end, Know that in our decay he shall endure And all our children's hearts to grief inure, With whose first bitter battles his shall blend. II Who brought thee forth, immortal vision, who In Phthia or in Tempe brought thee forth? Out of the sunlight and the sapful earth What god the simples of thy spirit drew? A goddess rose from the green waves, and threw Her arms about a king, to give thee birth; A centaur, patron of thy boyish mirth, Over the meadows in thy footsteps flew. Now Thessaly forgets thee, and the deep Thy keeled bark furrowed answers not thy prayer But far away new generations keep Thy laurels fresh, where branching Isis hems The lawns of Oxford round about, or where Enchanted Eton sits by pleasant Thames. III I gaze on thee as Phidias of old Or Polyclitus gazed, when first he saw These hard and shining limbs, without a flaw, And cast his wonder in heroic mould. Unhappy me who only may behold, Nor make immutable and fix in awe A fair immortal form no worm shall gnaw, A tempered mind whose faith was never told! The godlike mien, the lion's lock and eye, The well-knit sinew, utter a brave heart Better than many words that part by part Spell in strange symbols what serene and whole In nature lives, nor can in marble die. The perfect body is itself the soul. ODI ET AMO _I love and hate. Alas, the why_ _I know not: but I love, and die._ CATULLUS. I A wreathed altar was this pagan heart, In sad denial dressed and high intent, And amid ruins fed its flame apart, Heedless of shadows as they came and went. Till the poor soul, enticed by what she saw, Forsook her grief's eternal element, Filled with her tears a well from which to draw, And flooded heaven with a light she lent. A thousand times that mirrored glory fled, By ravished eyes a thousand times pursued; Yet loving hope outlived all beauties dead, And hunger turned the very stones to food. Insensate love, wilt thou then never tire, Breeding the fuel of thy proper fire? II What gleaming cross rebukes this infidel? What lion groans, awakened in his lair? Angel or demon, what unearthly spell Returns, divinely false like all things fair, To mock this desolation? Fleeting vision, Frail as a smoke-wreath in the sunlit air, Indomitable hope or vain derision, Madness or revelation, sin or prayer, What art thou? Is man's sum of wisdom this, That he believe denying, and blaspheme Worshipping still, and drink eternal bliss Out of the maddening chalice of a dream? Strange sweetness that embitterest content, Art thou a poison or a sacrament? CATHEDRALS BY THE SEA REPLY TO A SONNET BEGINNING "CATHEDRALS ARE NOT BUILT ALONG THE SEA" For æons had the self-responsive tide Risen to ebb, and tempests blown to clear, And the belated moon refilled her sphere To wane anew--for, æons since, she died-- When to the deeps that called her earth replied (Lest year should cancel unavailing year) And took from her dead heart the stones to rear A cross-shaped temple to the Crucified. Then the wild winds through organ-pipes descended To utter what they meant eternally, And not in vain the moon devoutly mended Her wasted taper, lighting Calvary, While with a psalmody of angels blended The sullen diapason of the sea. MONT BRÉVENT O dweller in the valley, lift thine eyes To where, above the drift of cloud, the stone Endures in silence, and to God alone Upturns its furrowed visage, and is wise. There yet is being, far from all that dies, And beauty where no mortal maketh moan, Where larger planets swim the liquid zone, And wider spaces stretch to calmer skies. Only a little way above the plain Is snow eternal. Round the mountain's knees Hovers the fury of the wind and rain. Look up, and teach thy noble heart to cease From endless labour. There is perfect peace Only a little way above thy pain. THE RUSTIC AT THE PLAY Our youth is like a rustic at the play That cries aloud in simple-hearted fear, Curses the villain, shudders at the fray, And weeps before the maiden's wreathed bier. Yet once familiar with the changeful show, He starts no longer at a brandished knife, But, his heart chastened at the sight of woe, Ponders the mirrored sorrows of his life. So tutored too, I watch the moving art Of all this magic and impassioned pain That tells the story of the human heart In a false instance, such as poets feign; I smile, and keep within the parchment furled That prompts the passions of this strutting world. RESURRECTION THE SOUL OF A BURIED BODY Methought that I was dead, Felt my large heart, a tomb within the tomb, Cold, hope-untenanted, Not thankless for this gloom. For all I loved on earth had fled before me. I was the last to die. I heard what my soul hated tramping o'er me, And knew that trouble stalked beneath the sky. But now is loosed the mailed hand of Death Clapped on my mouth. I seem to draw a breath And something like a sigh. I feel the blood again Coursing within my body's quickened house, Feel hands and throat and brain, And dim thoughts growing plain, Or dreams of thoughts. So spring might thaw the boughs And from its winter's lethargy arouse An oak's numb spirit.--But hark! I seem to hear A sound, like distant thunder. Above the quaking earth it breaks, or under, And cracks the riven sphere. This vault is widened, I may lift my head, Behold a ray! The sun!--I was not dead. THE ANGEL OF ETERNITY Yes, dead. Be not affrighted. Ages have passed. This world is not the same. Thy lamp of life, relighted, Burns with a purer flame. THE SOUL What lovely form art thou? What spirit, voice, or face Known and unknown? I cannot name thee now Nor the long-vanished place Where first I pledged thee some forgotten vow. Dear mother or sweet son Or young love dead or lost familiar friend, Which of these all art thou, or all, or none, Bright stranger, that dost bend Thy glorious golden head, A kindlier sun, above the wakened dead? THE ANGEL We are not strangers. 'T is the world was strange, That rude antique parade of earth and sky, That foolish pageant of mortality And weary round of change. Till this glad moment thou hast lived in dreams, Nursed in a fable, catechised to croon The empty science of a sun and moon That with their dubious beams Light the huge dusky stage of all that seems. Believe it not, my own. Awake, depart Out of the shades of hell, Trusting the sacred spell That falls upon thy strong perplexed heart, The joy ineffable, The nameless premonition and dire pang Of love. Be free at last, Free as the hopes that from thy sorrow sprang Forget the horror of the tyrant past, Forget the gods, forget The baleful shadow on the present cast By all that is not yet. Arise and follow me. Say not I seem A shadow among shades, A dryad's laugh amid the windy glades, A swimmer's body guessed beneath the stream This is the dawn of day, Thy dream-oppressed vision breaking through Its icy hood of clay And plunging deep into the balmy blue. Bid thy vain cares adieu And say farewell to earth, thy foster-mother. She hath befooled thee long, And fondly thought to smother The sweet and cruel laughter of my song Which the stars sing together, and the throng Of seraphs ever shout to one another. Come, heaven-chosen brother, Dear kinsman, come along. THE SOUL To what fields beside what rivers Dost thou beckon me, fair love? With no sprinkled stars above Is high heaven seen? Or quivers, With no changes of the moon, Her bright path athwart the pool? Is thy strange world beautiful? Tell me true, before I shake From my sense this heavy swoon. Tell me true, lest I awake Into deeper dreams, poor fool, And rejoice for nothing's sake. THE ANGEL For mortals life and truth Are things apart, nor when the first is done Know they the other; for their lusty youth Is madness, and their age oblivion. But henceforth thou art one With the supernal mind, Not born in labour nor in death resigned, The life of all that live, The light by whose eclipse the world is blind, The truth of all that know, The joy for which we grieve, And the untasted sweet that makes our woe. Now thou hast drained the wine Shatter the glass. The music was divine, Let the voice pass. Linger not in the host Of the long lost Bidding the dying bring Meal-cakes and fruit, and sing To cheer thy ghost. But be the living joy That tunes all song, The loves of girl and boy, The hopes that throng The unconquerable heart, defying wrong. Seek for thine immortality of bliss Not other brighter skies Or later worlds than this, But all that in this struggle is the prize, The love that wings the kiss, The truth the visions miss. THE SOUL My heaven lives, bright angel, in thine eyes. As when, beside the Lake of Galilee, John, o'er his meshes bent, Looked up, and saw another firmament When God said, Follow me; So is my world transfigured, seeing thee, And, looking in thine eyes, I am content, And with thy sweet voice for all argument I leave my tangled nets beside the sea. Done is my feigned task, Fallen the mask That made me other, O my soul, than thee. I have fulfilled my pain And borne my cross, And my great gain Is to have known my loss. Keep, blessed vision, keep The sacred beauty that entranced my soul. I have read; seal the scroll. I have lived; let me sleep. THE ANGEL Behold, I close thine eyes With the first touch of my benignant hands. With consecrated brands I light thy pyre and loose thy spirit's bands. The eternal gods receive thy sacrifice, The changeless bless thy embers. May there arise from thence no wailing ghost That shivers and remembers The haunts he loved, where he hath suffered most. The life that lived by change Is dead, nor changeth more. No eager, dull, oblivious senses pore On portents dark and strange. Thy first life was not life, Nor was thy first death death. Thy children took thy heritage of strife, And thy transmutable breath Passed to another heart that travaileth. Now thou hast truly died; Escaped, renounced, defied The insensate fervour and the fret of being; And thy own master, freed From shame of murderous need, Pure, just, all-seeing, Now thou shalt live indeed. THE SOUL I pay the price of birth. My earth returns to earth. Hurry my ashes, thou avenging wind, Into the vortex of the whirling spheres! I die, for I have sinned, Yea, I have loved, and drained my heart of tears. And thou within whose womb, Mother of nations, labouring Universe, My life grew, be its tomb. Thou brought'st me forth, take now my vital seed. Receive thy wage, thou iron-hearted nurse, Thy blessing I requite thee and thy curse. Now shall my ashes breed Within thy flesh for every thought a thought, For every deed a deed, For every pang I bore An everlasting need, For every wrong a wrong, and endless war. All earthly hopes resigned And all thy battle's spoils I lay upon thine altar and restore; But the inviolate mind Is loosened from thy toils By thy own fatal fires. I mount, I soar, Glad Phoenix, from the flame Into the placid heaven whence I came, Floating upon the smoke's slow lurid wings Into my native sky To bear report of all this vanity And sad offence of things, Where with knowledge I may lie, Veiled in the shadow of eternal wings. THE ANGEL If in the secret sessions of our love Above the heavenly spheres, Some stain upon the page of wisdom prove Her earthly price of tears, Cling closer, my beloved, that the beat Of my unruffled heart May tune thy own, its tenderer counterpart, To noble courage, and from this high seat Of our divine repose Large consolation flow to mortal woes. For 'neath the sun's fierce heat, In midst of madness and inscrutable throes, His heart is strong who knows That o'er the mountains come the silent feet Of Patience, leading Peace, And his complainings cease To see the starlight shining on the snows. TRANSLATIONS FROM MICHAEL ANGELO I "_Non so se s'è la desiata luce_" I know not if from uncreated spheres Some longed-for ray it be that warms my breast, Or lesser light, in memory expressed, Of some once lovely face, that reappears, Or passing rumour ringing in my ears, Or dreamy vision, once my bosom's guest, That left behind I know not what unrest, Haply the reason of these wayward tears. But what I feel and seek, what leads me on, Comes not of me; nor can I tell aright Where shines the hidden star that sheds this light. Since I beheld thee, sweet and bitter fight Within me. Resolution have I none. Can this be, Master, what thine eyes have done? II "_Il mio refugio_" The haven and last refuge of my pain (A strong and safe defence) Are tears and supplications, but in vain. Love sets upon me banded with Disdain, One armed with pity and one armed with death, And as death smites me, pity lends me breath. Else had my soul long since departed thence. She pineth to remove Whither her hopes of endless peace abide And beauty dwelleth without beauty's pride, There her last bliss to prove. But still the living fountain of my tears Wells in the heart when all thy truth appears, Lest death should vanquish love. III "_Gli occhi miei vaghi delle cose belle_" Ravished by all that to the eyes is fair, Yet hungry for the joys that truly bless, My soul can find no stair To mount to heaven, save earth's loveliness. For from the stars above Descends a glorious light That lifts our longing to their highest height And bears the name of love. Nor is there aught can move A gentle heart, or purge or make it wise, But beauty and the starlight of her eyes. FROM ALFRED DE MUSSET SOUVENIR I weep, but with no bitterness I weep, To look again upon thee, hallowed spot, O dearest grave, and most of men forgot, Where buried love doth sleep. What witchcraft think you that this desert hath, Dear friends, who take my hand and bid me stay, Now that the gentle wont of many a day Would lead me down this path? Here are the wooded slopes, the flowering heath, The silver footprints on the silent sand, The loitering lanes, alive with lovers' breath, Where first I kissed her hand. I know these fir-trees, and this mossy stone, And this deep gorge, and all its winding ways; These friendly giants, whose primeval moan Hath rocked my happy days. My footsteps' echo in this tangled tree Gives back youth's music, like a singing bird; Dear haunts, fair wilderness her presence stirred, Did you not watch for me? I will not dry these tear-drops: let them flow, And soothe a bitterness that yet might last, And o'er my waking-weary eyelids throw The shadow of the past. My useless plainings shall not make to cease The happy echoes of the vows we vowed: Proud is this forest in its noble peace, And my heart too is proud. Give o'er to hopeless grief the bitter hours You kneel to pray upon a brother's tomb: Here blows the breath of love, and graveyard flowers Not in this garden bloom. See! The moon rides athwart a bank of cloud. Thy veils, fair Queen of Night, still cling to thee, But soon thou loosenest thy virgin shroud And smilest to be free. As the rich earth, still dank with April rain, Beneath thy rays exhales day's captive balm, So from my purged soul, as pure, as calm, The old love breathes again. Where are they gone, those ghosts of sorrow pale, Where fled the passion that my heart defiled? Once in the bosom of this friendly vale I am again a child. O might of time, O changes of the year, Ye undo sorrow and the tears we shed, But, touched with pity, on our blossoms sere Your light feet never tread. Heavenly solace, be for ever blest! I had not thought a sword could pierce so far Into the heart, and leave upon the breast So sweet and dear a scar. Far from me the sharp word, the thankless mind, Of vulgar sorrow customary weed, Shroud that about the corse of love they wind Who never loved indeed. Why, Dante, dost thou say the saddest curse Is joy remembered in unhappy days? What grief compelled thee to this bitter verse In sorrow's harsh dispraise? O'er all the worlds is light bereft of gladness When sad eclipses cast their blight on us? Did thy great soul, in its immortal sadness, Speak to thee, Dante, thus? No, by this sacred light upon me cast! Not in thy heart this blasphemy had birth. It is the truest happiness on earth To have a happy past. What! When the soul forlorn finds yet a spark Mid the hot ashes of her stifled sighs, And doth that flame, her only treasure, mark With captivated eyes, Bathing her wounds in the delicious past That mirrors brokenly her loves again, Thy cruel word her feeble joy would blast And turn to bitter pain? And couldst thou wrong thine own Francesca so, Wrong thy bright angel with a word like this, Her whose lips, parting to rehearse her woe, Broke an eternal kiss? What, righteous Heaven, is our human thought, And to the love of truth who yet will cling, If every pain or joy e'er shunned or sought Turns to a doubtful thing? How can you live, strange souls that nothing awes? In midst of haste and passion, song and mirth, Nor all the stars of heaven give you pause, Nor all the sins of earth; But when upon your fated way you meet Some dumb memorial of a passion dead, That little pebble stops you, and you dread To bruise your tender feet. You cry aloud that life is but a dream, And, to the truth awaking, wring your hands, And grieve your bubble but a moment stands Upon time's foaming stream. Poor fools! That moment when your soul could shake The numbing fetters off that it enthrall, That fleeting moment was your all in all-- Oh, mourn not for its sake! But rather mourn your weight of earthly dross, Your joyless toil, your stains of blood and mire, Your sunless days, your nights without desire; In these was utter loss. What profit have you of your late lament, And what from heaven do your murmurs crave, The plaints you sow upon the barren grave Of every pleasure spent? Life is a dream, and all things pass, I know: If some fair splendour we be charmed withal, We pluck the flower, and at the breath we blow Its withered petals fall. Ay, the first kiss and the first virgin vow That ever mortals upon earth did swear, That whirlwind caught which strips the frozen bough And stones to sand doth wear. A witness to the lovers' troth was night, With changeful skies, o'ercast with mystery, And stars unnumbered, that an inward light Devours unceasingly. They saw death hush the song bird in the glade, Blast the pale flower, and freeze the torpid worm, And choke the fountain where the image played Of their forgotten form. Yet they joined hands above the mouldering clod, Blind with love's light that flashed across the sky, Nor felt the cold eye of the changeless God Who watches all things die. Fools! says the sage: thrice blest! the poet says. What wretched joy is to the faint heart dear Whom noise of torrents fills with weak amaze And the wind fills with fear? I have seen beneath the sun more beauties fail Than white sea foam or leaves of forest sere; More than the swallows and the roses frail Desert the widowed year. Mine eyes have gazed on sights of deeper woe Than Juliet dead within the gorged tomb, And deadlier than the cup that Romeo Drank to his love and doom. I have seen my love, when all I loved had perished, Who to a whited sepulchre is turned; Seen the thin dust of all I ever cherished In her cold heart inurned,-- Dust of that faith which, in our bosoms furled, The gentle night had warded well from doubt. More than a single life, alas! a world Was that day blotted out. Still young I found her, and, men said, more fair; In heaven's light her eyes could still rejoice, And her lips opened, and a smile was there, And sound as of a voice. But not that gentle voice, that tender grace, Those eyes I worshipped when they looked their prayer: My heart, still full of her, searched, searched her face And could not find her there. And still I could have gone to her, and cast My arms about that chill and lifeless stone, And cried, Where hast thou left it, faithless one, Where hast thou left the past? But no: it rather seemed as if by chance Some unknown woman had that voice and eye_;_ I looked up into heaven; with cold glance I passed that statue by. Not without pangs of shame and bitterness I watched her smiling shadow glide away; But what of that? Immortal nature, say, Have I loved therefore less? On me the gods may now their lightnings fling, They cannot undo truth, nor kill the past. Like a wrecked sailor to a broken mast To my dead love I cling. I make no question of what flowers may bloom, What virtue from the seasons man may borrow, What heavenly lamp may flood with light to-morrow The vault of this great tomb. I only say: Here at this hour, one day, I loved, and I was loved, and she was fair. This treasure which no death can filch away My soul to God shall bear. FROM THEOPHILE GAUTIER ART All things are doubly fair If patience fashion them And care-- Verse, enamel, marble, gem. No idle chains endure: Yet, Muse, to walk aright, Lace tight Thy buskin proud and sure. Fie on a facile measure, A shoe where every lout At pleasure Slips his foot in and out! Sculptor, lay by the clay On which thy nerveless finger May linger, Thy thoughts flown far away. Keep to Carrara rare, Struggle with Paros cold, That hold The subtle line and fair. Lest haply nature lose That proud, that perfect line, Make thine The bronze of Syracuse. And with a tender dread Upon an agate's face Retrace Apollo's golden head. Despise a watery hue And tints that soon expire. With fire Burn thine enamel true. Twine, twine in artful wise The blue-green mermaid's arms, Mid charms Of thousand heraldries. Show in their triple lobe Virgin and Child, that hold Their globe, Cross-crowned and aureoled. All things return to dust Save beauties fashioned well. The bust Outlasts the citadel. Oft doth the ploughman's heel, Breaking an ancient clod, Reveal A Cæsar or a god. The gods, too, die, alas! But deathless and more strong Than brass Remains the sovereign song. Chisel and carve and file, Till thy vague dream imprint Its smile On the unyielding flint. CONVIVIAL AND OCCASIONAL VERSES _PROSIT NEUJAHR_ Be the new year sweet and short As the days of girl and boy are, Full of friendship, full of sport-- _Prosit Neujahr!_ Be it beautiful and great As the days of grief and joy are, Full of wonder and of fate-- _Prosit Neujahr!_ FAIR HARVARD Fair Harvard, the winter of Puritan snows That enshrouded thy tremulous birth Melts slowly to spring, now the south wind blows O'er the face of this generous earth. Thy elms are outspreading their flexible arms Over meadows more fruitful and broad, And soft ivy is veiling with negligent charms The gaunt walls of the castle of God. With freedom for heritage, reason for star, And friendship for sojourner here, Shall music long tremblingly sound from afar Or genius be smothered in fear? Where the ages may meet and the spirit may climb To a truth that is builded on doubt, The eternal may dwell mid the currents of time And peace above barbarous rout, And the just voice unlearn to be strident and sharp, And, attuned to life's happier choir, Join the stress of all David might shout to his harp With all Lysis might lisp to his lyre, And Olympia again call the strong and the fleet To glory and art and control, And a deathless Academy build a retreat To ponder the things of the soul. If to glory, young Mother, thy destiny tend, If thy labours have honour in store, Our loves shall not die, though their chronicle end Nor mortals remember us more. For once from their dreaming the man and the boy, Fair Harvard, awoke at thy name, And our happiest years were a part of thy joy, And our light was a spark of thy flame. COLLEGE DRINKING SONG As we say good-bye at the parting ways, Let us sing together a song of praise, Let us drink a toast to our college days, To the walks through a world made for you and me, To the boisterous farce and the echoing glee, To the wonderful A and the dreadful E, Drink, boys, drink! To the games we won and the games we lost, For we could n't tell which before we tossed, And who cares now who paid the cost? To the woman's love that came and went, To the good wine drunk and the money spent, To the night-long foolish argument, Drink, boys, drink! To the times when men were men indeed, To our fathers' youth and our mothers' creed, And to every faith that may succeed, To the after age and the later tongue That will ring the changes we have rung And sing the songs we have left unsung, Drink, boys, drink! When the eye is dull and the hand is cold, Then should the pocket be full of gold, For no one will love us when we 're old. So to vulgar gold and what it gets And an honest end to all our debts, For an old wine softens old regrets, Drink, boys, drink! When we are asleep beneath grey stone, Our children's lives shall repeat our own, For the light remains though the days be flown. To the opening buds of this ended May, And to all sweet things that will not stay, And to every dog that has had his day, Drink, boys, drink! SIX WISE FOOLS Twelve had struck. Our talk subsided. We were comrades in the schools By the world awhile divided-- Six sententious merry fools. And I said, "We 've talked of college, Resurrecting callow youth. But you since have lived; what knowledge Have you gathered of the Truth? And you first, most learned scholar, Whom I 'm proud to sit beside, Speak: does wisdom sans a dollar Leave you wholly satisfied? You have walked, and never wavered, In the paths the sages took And three publishers have favoured With a yet unpublished book. The soul's garden you have weeded Which we mortals trample through, You love much we leave unheeded. Speak, and let us learn of you." And the student thus proceeded, As a gentle sigh he drew: THE SCHOLAR I'm thankful that as matters go I neither toil nor spin, But read the good old wits, heigh ho! And live with elder kin; That I need neither reap nor sow Nor gather into barns, But dwell among my books, heigh ho! Repeating ancient yarns. Dead things are not my science, no, Nor fossil parts of speech, But the great human heart, heigh ho! That pedants never reach. The record of man's joy and woe Upon his sculptured face I read by my heart's light, heigh ho! And vanquish time and space. I find no vice so foul and low But nature lurks therein, Nor any thought so high, heigh ho! But pays the price of sin. I feel the pity and the glow Of truth's sublime communion, And learn to smile at fate, heigh ho! In friendship's happy union. Let this but last till death's wind blow And till my bones are rotten, Then let the world sail on, heigh ho! And be ray name forgotten. "Now you, votary of pleasure," Turning to the next, I said, "Count the profit of your leisure And the cost of unearned bread. Tell us what civilisation Merits your impartial praise, In what climate, in what nation You have spent most joyous days." Quoth he, as if in admiration That such questions I should raise: THE SPORT All things are nice when they are new, When they are old, all things are horrid. After the storm I like the blue, After the arctic zone the torrid. My loves are many, brief, and true, By mutual jealousy unworried. I like to leave my house and home And cross the mountains and the sea; With one small bag on earth to roam, That is the height of bliss for me. To roam on earth without my bag, That is the depth of misery. That freedom cheats us with a word Which sets up knaves and murders kings. What soul is free that never stirred? Go cut your mother's apron-strings, And putting money in your purse, Fly off on the express-train's wings. I'll stay at home when I am lame, And build a church when stuffed with gold, I will be grave when known to fame, I will be chaste when I am old. Then all the angels will rejoice That I, lost lamb, regain the fold. "Without some evil, nothing good," Your subtle theologians say. I glorify their rectitude By straying in my artless way. My needful sins make possible The higher morals of the day. This is our only chance to taste The sweet and bitter fruits of earth. To pluck them all, we've need of haste; We cannot ask what each is worth. Up, up, wise virgin; do not waste The little time 'twixt death and birth. Come feel the joy of changing skies, Of rushing streams and windy weather. Though we be bound by fortune's ties, We' 11 to the utmost stretch the tether, And be they gay or be they sad, We'll go and see the sights together. THE CRITIC "Shall men agree?" the next man said, "Each mind is shut within some head (_Pace_ the minds of all the dead) With two eyes, seldom of a size, And spectacles before the eyes. Then, if men differ, what surprise? "See the wight who wrapped in sadness Grieves how soon this life is done, And, disgusted with the madness Of the way the world is run, Scorns the hollowness of gladness And the idiocy of fun: Why, the spots upon the sun Can be seen, when the ray passes Blue eye-glasses. "And what makes the moonlight shimmer With the dancing of the sea And the little stars cold glimmer Twinkle with an inward glee While this working-world grows dimmer If my Mary looks with me? Not the moon or stars or sea, But the fickle cause, alas, is Love's eye-glasses. "Oh, how sad a world to cough in Is a world once warm and fair, And how many fallings off in Old men's world of falling hair, Till they think within the coffin That there's no world anywhere. For I fancy dead men wear (Take your look now, lads and lasses!) No eye-glasses." He stopped, and with a civil look Said to his neighbour, "You come next," Who had been looking at a book And seemed a trifle bored and vexed. He laid the book down, stretched his legs And yawned, and, emptying his glass, Made a grimace as if the dregs Were bitter, and replied, "I pass." When pressed, he shook his languid head Until at last he hemmed and said: THE PESSIMIST I set my heart on being good, Believed the Bible to the letter, Yes, joined a Christian brotherhood When I was young and knew no better; And, if I sometimes sinned, I wept That God's commandments were not kept. As time went on, I understood That it was wrong to be so good. My heart I set on being wise And passing for a clever fellow: Reading o' nights I spoilt my eyes, And lack of fresh air turned me yellow. Each book I read said t' other lied, I saw the less the more I pried, And so I found, to my surprise, I was a fool to be so wise. I set my heart on making friends Pleasant and clever, kind and witty; They now are at the earth's four ends, Two only have n't left the city. The one is given up to trade, The other in the churchyard laid. And when youth's gone and leisure ends, It is too late for making friends. I set my heart upon a girl Who chose at my approach to smile. Did she but pat some frizzled curl, I knew the angel free from guile. But now a rich man owns my belle, I find the others smile as well, And my moustache no more I twirl, Nor set my heart upon a girl. I set my heart on seeing things, And wished through every land to travel, See Troja's ruins, Nikis' springs, And culture's history unravel. When many a sea had made me sick, Men still were bipeds, houses brick. Since nearer Truth no journey brings I make an end of seeing things. I set my heart on politics; I glowed for honesty and freedom. My earnest thoughts I tried to fix Upon the poor, and how to feed 'em. But the reformer cheats himself, He serves his prejudice or pelf, And no man's will but inward fate Governs the fortunes of the state. I set my heart on nothing now, But bless the gifts of every hour, Holding my hand beneath life's bough To catch the fruit or falling flower. With the world breathing at my feet, I find the sunset stillness sweet, And with the night wind on my brow I set my heart on nothing now. He scarce had done, when the last man, Who'd listened hard to every word, Thus, rising in his place, began As if impatient to be heard: THE LOVER Oh, you men who are not married Have n't known the joy of living, On the margin you have tarried, Never putting out to sea; All your musing, all your grieving, Is a childish thing to me. I have done with idle moping And have seen my manly duty. There is no more doubt and groping, Since I took a woman's hand, And the loadstar of her beauty Led me to the promised land. For her sake my work is pleasure And I thrive in my devotion, Though I seek repute and treasure But to have the gifts to give, For my love, like River Ocean, Rounds the world in which I live. When I feel, in softest slumber, Her fair head upon my pillow, I think how the misty Humber And the Ganges' holy stream Send their treasures o'er the billow To embalm my lady's dream. Rightly did my father rear me Close beside the village steeple, Rightly shall my sons revere me When they come to take my place, For I serve my land and people And maintain my sturdy race. Fill your glasses up with liquor, Drink it down while yet it bubbles. When the heart beats quick and quicker Love is knocking. Drink with me: Here is death to all your troubles, And long life, fair love, to thee! "Yes, fill your glasses up, I pray you," Said I, "and make it bumpers now, For whatsoever passion sway you Some noble love we all avow. "We bear a mark, an inward token, That parts us from the common herd. To each of us some muse has spoken A holy, unforgotten word. "Our stars, conjoined in youth's first season, Whether to musing moved or strife. Obedient to one touch of reason Together make the round of life. "Drink to the loves we knitted here, A bond by distance not undone. High thoughts outlive the wasted year; I drink to that which makes us one." ATHLETIC ODE I hear a rumour and a shout, A louder heart-throb pulses in the air. Fling, Muse, thy lattice open, and beware To keep the morning out. Beckon into the chamber of thy care The bird of healing wing That trilleth there Blithe happy passion of the strong and fair. Their wild heart singeth. Do thou also sing. How vain, how vain The feeble croaking of a reasoning tongue That heals no pain And prompts no bright deed worthy to be sung Too soon cold earth Refuses flowers. Oh, greet their lovely birth! Too soon dull death Quiets the heaving of our doubtful breath. Deem not its worth Too high for honouring mirth; Sing while the lyre is strung, And let the heart beat, while the heart is young. When the dank earth begins to thaw and yield The early clover, didst thou never pass Some balmy noon from field to sunny field And press thy feet against the tufted grass? So hadst thou seen A spring palæstra on the tender green. Here a tall stripling, with a woman's face, Draws the spiked sandal on his upturned heel, Sure-footed for the race; Another hurls the quoit of heavy steel And glories to be strong; While yet another, lightest of the throng, Crouching on tiptoe for the sudden bound, Flies o'er the level race-course, like the hound, And soon is lost afar; Another jumps the bar, For some god taught him easily to spring, The legs drawn under, as a bird takes wing, Till, tempting fortune farther than is meet, At last he fails, and fails, and vainly tries, And blushing, and ashamed to lift his eyes, Shakes the light earth from his feet. Him friendly plaudits greet And pleasing to the unaccustomed ear. Come then afield, come with the sporting year And watch the youth at play, For gentle is the strengthening sun, and sweet The soul of boyhood and the breath of May. And with the milder ray Of the declining sun, when sky and shore, In purple drest and misty silver-grey. Hang curtains round the day, Come list the beating of the plashing oar, For grief in rhythmic labour glides away. The glancing blades make circles where they dip, Now flash and drip Cool wind-blown drops into the glassy river, Now sink and cleave, While the lithe rowers heave And feel the boat beneath them leap and quiver. The supple oars in time, Shattering the mirror of the rippled water, Fly, fly as poets climb, Borne by the pliant promise of their rhyme, Or as bewitched by Nereus' loveliest daughter The painted dolphins, following along, Leap to the measure of her liquid song. But the blasts of late October, Tempering summer's paling grief With a russet glow and sober, Bring of these sports the latest and the chief. Then bursts the flame from many a smouldering ember, And many an ardent boy Woos harsher pleasures sweeter to remember, Hugged with a sterner and a tenser joy. Look where the rivals come: Each little phalanx on its chosen ground Strains for the sudden shock, and all around The multitude is dumb. Come, watch the stubborn fight And doubtful, in the sight Of wide-eyed beauty and unstinted love Ay, the wise gods above, Attentive to this hot and generous fray, Smile on its fortunes and its end prepare, For play is also life, and far from care Their own glad life is play. Ye nymphs and fauns, to Bacchus dear, That woke Cithæron with your midnight rout, Arise, arise and shout! Your day returns, your haunt is here. Shake off dull sleep and long despair; There is intoxication in this air, And frenzy in this yelping cheer. How oft of old the enraptured Muses sung Olympian victors' praise. Lo! even in these days The world is young. Life like a torrent flung For ever down For ever wears a rainbow for a crown. O idle sigh for loveliness outworn, When the red flush of each unfailing morn Floods every field and grove, And no moon wanes but some one is in love. O wasted tear, A new soul wakes with each awakened year. Beneath these rags, these blood-clots on the face, The valiant soul is still the same, the same The strength, the art, the inevitable grace, The thirst unquenched for fame Quenching base passion, the high will severe, The long obedience, and the knightly flame Of loyalty to honour and a name. Give o'er, ye chords, your music ere ye tire, Be sweetly mute, O lyre. Words soon are cold, and life is warm for ever. One half of honour is the strong endeavour, Success the other, but when both conspire Youth has her perfect crown, and age her old desire. THE BOTTLES AND THE WINE LINES READ AT THE REUNION OF A COLLEGE CLUB Would you have an illustration Of the thing we fellows are? Liken every generation To the bottles in the bar: Vessels full of precious liquor Standing in their brave array,--Never bosom friends were thicker Or of franker heart than they, There congenially hobnobbing, Always ready for a bout, As half laughing and half sobbing The fine spirits bubble out. We buy, break, drink, waste, decant them-- Bottles come and bottles go-- Yet there always, when you want them, Stand the bottles in a row: Port and sherry, rum and brandy, Irish, Bourbon, Scotch, and rye, Always smiling, always handy When the heart's a trifle dry. Though the bottles change their label And tag on another name, They're as welcome at the table, For the liquor's still the same. Days gone by saw jugs in plenty, Now less frequently on view. Every year some ten or twenty Pass to fields and pastures new. There, replenished, they grow fatter And their bellies bulge amain, But though full as yet of matter, You may mark a certain drain, For the busy world's contention Brings the liquid down a bit, And a small god I won't mention Sometimes takes a pull at it. Yet apart from some mischances, Though not standing where they stood, For big dinners and small dances Our old bottles still are good. But when once the dregs are emptied, We throw bottles in a heap, Not one favourite exempted, Were its spirit fine or cheap. They 're doled out in the back alley By the scrawny hands of hags When gaunt Death comes shilly-shally Crying, "Bottles and old rags!" What of that? While face and feature, Manners, minds, and pleasures pass, Mature breeds a younger creature. Mate to what the other was, And the sports we had forsaken, And the fancies blown away In the brighter souls they waken Live for ever and a day. The proud glories that entice us No more fail because we pass Than the founts of Dionysus For the quaffing of a glass. But what happens to the liquor? The old bottles' fate to share, Only that its flight is quicker Up the vortices of air? Is it lost as soon as tasted, Rising upon moth-like wings To be caught and scorched and wasted In this foolish flame of things? Ah, the blood of nature's spilling Trickles back into her veins, And her cup is ever filling With the vintage that she strains. For a moment she befriends us With unsealing of our eyes, But the light of life she lends us Floods her everlasting skies. The sweet wine that makes our passion Linking heart to mortal heart Is her ancient fire to fashion All the marvels of her art. It has painted woman's beauty, It is parent to the flowers, It has wedded joy to duty, Portioned loves among the hours, Built us palaces and churches, Plucked its music from the lyre, Lighted all the spirit's searches Through the mazes of desire, Yes, and scorning earthly places And our human loves and wars It has peopled heaven's spaces And has gilded heaven's stars. Drink, then, of this cup and drain it. Let the wine renew the soul, And all vessels that contain it, May they long be sound and whole To receive the boon and give it That makes mortal joys divine. Here's to life and all who live it, To the bottles and the wine. THE POETIC MEDIUM In Chelsea dwells a Sibyl known to fame Called Mrs. Fakir--necromantic name! Past, present, future, open to her view She (for ten dollars) will reveal to you. I for less sums--the discount to the trade-- Quaff at her fount and seek her undismayed. I found the priestess in her wonted lair Up three steep flights of narrow dirty stair. Chill was the darkened chamber. A thick fume Of kerosene lent odour to the gloom. Clothed in black weeds, pale, with delirious hair, Rocked Mrs. Fakir in her rocking-chair. I told my errand; with some hushed complaint About the fee, she fell into a faint, Thrice rolled her eyes, thrice snorted through her nose, Thrice wrung her hands, and wriggled thrice her toes, Then spoke. (I versify: she uttered vulgar prose.) "You want some verse: not every poet's soul Whose aid you crave is still in my control. Whom would you summon? You must ask the boon Of some frail wight that floats below the moon. The spirits that have risen to the stars Reck not the echoes of our earthly jars. Their troubles past, they have forgotten ours, And move unmoved by even magic powers. Only weak souls entangled in the mesh Of passion, dying, still are bond to flesh, And hover o'er the battle-field of life To smell their kindred blood and pine for strife. Such I may summon, for they have no choice Who crave to live again and find a voice." "'T is well," I answered. "If the gods so please, We will not call on Aristophanes, Horace shall slumber, Juvenal be dumb. They rest in peace. But haply Swift will come." "Not Swift," she said, "not Swift. I cannot tell Whether he flew to heaven or to hell, But he is gone far from this mild, low-born, And canting age, incapable of scorn." "Well, summon Byron, then," I said and sighed. "Byron is also safe," the witch replied. "The first sin punished and the first forgiven Is love's, the slip of climbers into heaven. The petted passion and the shallow dream He purged at last; the heart survived supreme." "Byron gone too," thought I, "what wit remains All younger sprites have water in their veins. But, ah! might not the living help me out? Don't phantoms of the living flit about?" "They do, they do," quoth Chelsea's Pythoness. "Here in my telepathic cave's recess All that they say or think or wish or feel I read aloud, but most what they conceal. Whom would you plagiarise? You 're silent? Why, Have you forgot the ages galaxy--" I trembled as she named them one by one, From Willy Frilly down to Spider Spun. "Spare me," I cried. "Shall some prolific bard Reel off bright lyrics at a cent a yard, All about April rain, December snow, The brook, the sunset, and the squawking crow? Shall little Swinburnes turn a verse with ease And sing the flaccid pleasures of disease? Shall mimics, drunk with each Castalian rill, Be any poet but themselves at will, Luscious when Keats, when Spenser quaint and dull, When Browning turgid, and Noodles null? Shall weaklings, in thick verse and tortured prose, Strike affectation's quintessential pose, Sniffing the odours of a perfumed brain Where melts a Wordsworth _plus_ a Paul Verlaine? When, with no art, were precious fabrics wrought, When metaphysics with no mastering thought? No, Mrs. Fakir, none of this small fry. Catch me some ghost of sense, or else good-bye. Not at my bidding shall this choir prolong The cloying drivel of unmeaning song, Enrich the echo, maul the note and tease, Miauling nothing in a hundred keys. Better Pope's squirrel eye and polished sneer Than idiot mouthings, false without veneer. Better Boileau's 'monotony in wire,' Dressing good wit in periwigged attire; For in a garden's alleys or a wood Hung all in green, monotony is good, And a frail stem may need a bit of wire To keep the rose from trailing in the mire. Never will they dig deep or build for time Who of unreason weave a maze of rhyme, Worship a weakness, nurse a whim, and bind Wreaths about temples tenantless of mind, Forsake the path the seeing Muses trod, And shatter Nature to discover God. He only climbs the skies and proudly sings Whose heart, attentive, feels the pulse of things, Masters the fact, and hails the changeless goal That beckons, purges, and fulfils the soul." I ceased: no ghost was willing to befriend, And all the living useless to my end. Meantime the hag awoke with vacant stare, And passed her bony fingers through her hair. I left her den and hastened back to town, Writing the while my sad experience down. This you have heard. 'T is little that I give, But it makes sense. Long, masters, may you live. YOUNG SAMMY'S FIRST WILD OATS LINES WRITTEN BEFORE THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1900 Mid Uncle Sam's expanded acres There's an old, secluded glade Where grey Puritans and Quakers Still grow fervid in the shade; And the same great elms and beeches That once graced the ancestral farm, Bending to the old men's speeches, Lend their words an echo's charm. Laurel, clematis, and vine Weave green trellises about, And three maples and a pine Shut the mucker-village out. Yet the smoke of trade and battle Cannot quite be banished hence, And the air-line to Seattle Whizzes just behind the fence. As one day old Deacon Plaster Hobbled to the wonted nook, There was Doctor Wise, the pastor, Meekly sitting with his book. "What has happened, Brother Deacon, That you look so hot and vexed? Is it something I might speak on When I preach on Sabbath next?" "Doctor Wise," replied the other, As he wiped the sweat away, "'T is a wicked sin, my brother, You should preach on every day. Cousin Sammy's gone a-tooting To the Creole County fair, Where the very sun's polluting And there's fever in the air He has picked up three young lasses, Three mulattoes on the mart, Who have offered him free passes To their fortune and their heart. One young woman he respected, Vowed he only came to woo. But his word may be neglected Since he ravished the other two. In the Porto Rican billing And carousing, I allow That the little minx was willing, Though she may be sorry now. But what came of those embraces And that taint of nigger blood? Now he looks on outraged faces And can laugh, defying God: He can stretch his hand, relieving, And strike down a cheated slave. Oh, if Uncle Sam were living, This would bring him to his grave!" Deacon Plaster ceased and, sighing, Mopped the reeking of his brain. Doctor Wise, before replying, Put his goggles on again. "Brother Plaster, to be candid, Were I managing the farm, I should do as the old man did--Lying low and safe from harm, Shoot at poachers from the hedges, If they ventured within range, Just round out my acre's edges, Grow and grow, but never change. I am old, and you are old, sir: Old the thoughts we live among. If the truth were to be told, sir, None of us was ever young. In the towns of sombre Britain--Merry England turned about--We were marked at birth and smitten Whom the Lord had chosen out; Picked to found a pilgrim nation, Far from men, estranged, remote, With the desert for a station And the ocean for a moat; To rebuke by sober living, In the dread of wrath to come, Of the joys of this world's giving The abominable sum. Yet all passion's seeds came smuggled In our narrow pilgrim ark, And, unwatered, grew and struggled, Pushed for ages through the dark, And, when summer granted pardon, Burst into the upper air, Till that desert was a garden And that sea a thoroughfare. Thus the virtue we rely on Melted 'neath the heathen sun, And what should have been a Zion Came to be this Babylon. Ignorant of ancient sorrow, With hot young blood in their veins, Now the prophets of the morrow Ply the spur and hold the reins. Can we blame them? Rather blame us,-- Us, who uttered idle things. Our false prophecies shall shame us, And our weak imaginings. Liberty! delicious sound! The world loved it, and is free. But what's freedom? To be bound By a chance majority. Few are rich and many poor, Though all minds show one dull hue. Equality we don't secure, Mediocrity we do. Ah! what dreams beguiled our youth! Brothers we had hoped to be; But competition is the truth Of what we called fraternity. Can we blame them we mistaught If now they seek another guide And, since our wisdom comes to naught, Take counsel of their proper pride? Nature beckons them, inviting To a deeper draught of fate, And, the heart's desire inciting, Can we stop and bid them wait? "If old Uncle Sam were living, This, you say, should never be: Ah! if Uncle Sam were living, He might weep, but he must see. Yet he died in time, believing In the gods that ruled his days. We, alas! survive him, grieving Under gods we will not praise. The keen pleasures of December Mean the joys of April lost; And shall rising suns remember All the dream worlds they have crossed? All things mortal have their season: Nothing lives, for ever young, But renews its life by treason To the thing from which it sprung, And when man has reached immortal Mansions, after toiling long, Life deserts him at the portal, And he only lives in song. "As for Sam, the son, I wonder If you know the fellow's heart: There may yet be something under Nobler than the outer part. When he told that señorita That he kissed and hugged her close Like a brother, did he cheat her? Did he cheat himself? Who knows? That he liked her, that is certain; That he wronged her is n't true. On his thoughts I draw the curtain: I don't know them, nor do you. In her maid, the facile Rica, We have quite another case. Hardly did he go to seek her, When she rushed to his embrace. I confess it was improper, But all flesh, alas! is flesh. Things had gone too far to drop her; Each was in the other's mesh. But with that poor Filipina, When she shrank from his caress, His contemptible demeanour Is n't easy to express. First he bought her, then he kicked her; But the truth is, he was drunk, For that day had crowned him victor, And a Spanish fleet was sunk. "You perceive I do not spare him, Nor am blinded to his motes By the Christian love I bear him; Yes; he's sowing his wild oats. But you can't deny him talent; Once his instinct is awake, He can play the part of gallant And of soldier and of rake. And it's something to have spirit Though in rashness first expressed. Give me good blood to inherit: Time and trial do the rest. He's not Uncle Sam, the father, That prim, pompous, pious man, Yankee, or Virginian, rather: Sammy's an American-- Lavish, clever, loud, and pushing, Loving bargains, loving strife, Kindly, fearless-eyed, unblushing, Not yet settled down in life. Send him forth; the world will mellow His bluff youth, or nothing can. Nature made the hearty fellow, Life will make the gentleman. And if Cousin Sam is callow, It was we who did the harm, Letting his young soul lie fallow-- The one waste spot in the farm-- Trained by sordid inventories To scorn all he could n't buy, Puffed with miserable glories Shouted at an empty sky, Fooled with cant of a past era, Droned 'twixt dreamy lid and lid, Till his God was a chimera And the living God was hid. Let him look up from his standard To the older stars of heaven, Seaward by whose might, and landward, All the tribes of men are driven; By whom ancient hopes were blasted, Ancient labours turned to dust; Whence the little that has lasted Borrows patience to be just: And beholding tribulation, Seeing whither states are hurled, Let him sign his declaration Of dependence on the world." Thus the Doctor's sermon ended; The old Deacon shook his head, For his conscience was offended And his wits had lost the thread. So have mine, but there's my fable: Now, and when you cast your votes, Be as lenient as you 're able On "Young Sammy's First Wild Oats." SPAIN IN AMERICA When scarce the echoes of Manila Bay, Circling each slumbering billowy hemisphere, Had met where Spain's forlorn Armada lay Locked amid hostile hills, and whispered near The double omen of that groan and cheer--Haste to do now what must be done anon Or some mad hope of selling triumph dear Drove the ships forth: soon was _Teresa_ gone, _Furór, Pluton, Vizcaya, Oquendo_, and _Colón_. And when the second morning dawned serene O'er vivid waves and foam-fringed mountains, dressed Like Nessus in their robe's envenomed sheen, Scarce by some fiery fleck the place was guessed Where each hulk smouldered; while from crest to crest Leapt through the North the news of victory, Victory tarnished by a boorish jest Yet touched with pity, lest the unkindly sea Should too much aid the strong and leave no enemy. As the anguished soul, that gasped for difficult breath, Passes to silence from its house of pain, So from those wrecks, in fumes of lurid death, Passed into peace the heavy pride of Spain, Passed from that aching tenement, half fain, Back to her castled hills and windy moors, No longer tossed upon the treacherous main Once boasted hers, which with its watery lures Too long enticed her sons to unhallowed sepultures. Why went Columbus to that highland race, Frugal and pensive, prone to love and ire, Despising kingdoms for a woman's face, For honour riches and for faith desire? On Spain's own breast was snow, within it fire; In her own eyes and subtle tongue was mirth; The eternal brooded in her skies, whence nigher The trebled starry host admonished earth To shame away her grief and mock her baubles' worth. Ah! when the crafty Tyrian came to Spain To barter for her gold his motley wares, Treading her beaches he forgot his gain. The Semite became noble unawares. Her passion breathed Hamilcar's cruel prayers; Her fiery winds taught Hannibal his vows; Out of her tribulations and despairs They wove a sterile garland for their brows. To her sad ports they fled before the Roman prows. And the Greek coming too forgot his art, And that large temperance which made him wise. The wonder of her mountains choked his heart, The languor of her gardens veiled his eyes; He dreamed, he doubted; in her deeper skies He read unfathomed oracles of woe, And stubborn to the onward destinies, Like some dumb brute before a human foe, Sank in Saguntum's flames and deemed them brighter so. The mighty Roman also when he came, Bringing his gods, his justice, and his tongue, Put off his greatness for a sadder fame, And what a Cæsar wrought a Lucan sung. Nor was the pomp of his proud music, wrung From Latin numbers, half so stern and dire, Nor the sad majesties he moved among Half so divine, as her unbreathed desire. Shall longing break the heart and not untune the lyre? When after many conquerors came Christ, The only conqueror of Spain indeed, Not Bethlehem nor Golgotha sufficed To show him forth, but every shrine must bleed And every shepherd in his watches heed The angels' matins sung at heaven's gate. Nor seemed the Virgin Mother wholly freed From taint of ill if born in frail estate, But shone the seraphs' queen and soared immaculate. And when the Arab from his burning sands Swept o'er the waters like a heavenly flail, He took her lute into his conquering hands, And in her midnight turned to nightingale. With woven lattices and pillars frail He screened the pleasant secrets of his bower, Yet little could his subtler arts avail Against the brutal onset of the Giaour. The rose passed from his courts, the muezzin from his tower. Only one image of his wisdom stayed, One only relic of his magic lore,-- Allah the Great, whom silent fate obeyed, More than Jehovah calm and hidden more, Allah remained in her heart's kindred core High witness of these terrene shifts of wrong. Into his ancient silence she could pour Her passions' frailty--He alone is strong-- And chant with lingering wail the burden of her song. Seizing at Covadonga the rude cross Pelayo raised amid his mountaineers, She bore it to Granada, one day's loss Ransomed with battles of a thousand years. A nation born in harness, fed on tears, Christened in blood, and schooled in sacrifice, All for a sweeter music in the spheres, All for a painted heaven--at a price Should she forsake her loves and sail to Ind for spice? Had Genoa in her merchant palaces No welcome for a heaven-guided son? Had Venice, mistress of the inland seas, No ships for bolder venture? Pisa none? Was sated Rome content? Her mission done? Saw Lusitania in her seaward dreams No floating premonition, beckoning on To vast horizons, gilded yet with gleams Of old Atlantis, whelmed beneath the bubbling streams? Or if some torpor lay upon the South, Tranced by the might of memories divine, Dwelt no shrewd princeling by the marshy mouth Of Scheldt, or by the many mouths of Rhine? Rode Albion not at anchor in the brine Whose throne but now the thrifty Tudor stole Changing a noble for a crafty line? Swarmed not the Norsemen yet about the pole, Seeking through endless mists new havens for the soul? These should have been thy mates, Columbus, these Patrons and partners of thy enterprise, Sad lovers of immeasurable seas, Bound to no hallowed earth, no peopled skies. No ray should reach them of their ladies' eyes In western deserts: no pure minstrel's rhyme, Echoing in forest solitudes, surprise Their heart with longing for a sweeter clime. These, these should found a world who drag no chains of time. In sooth it had seemed folly, to reveal To stubborn Aragon and evil-eyed These perilous hopes, folly to dull Castile Moated in jealous faith and walled in pride, Save that those thoughts, to Spain's fresh deeds allied, Painted new Christian conquests, and her hand Itched for that sword, now dangling at her side, Which drove the Moslem forth and purged the land. And then she dreamed a dream her heart could understand. Three caravels, a cross upon the prow, A broad cross on the banner and the sail, The liquid fields of Hesperus should plough Borne by the leaping waters and the gale. Before that sign all hellish powers should quail Troubling the deep: no dragon's obscene crest, No serpent's slimy coils should aught avail, Till ivory cities looming in the west Should gleam from high Cathay or Araby the Blest, Then, as with noble mien and debonair The captains from the galleys leapt to land, Or down the temple's alabaster stair Or by the river's marge of silvery sand, Proud Sultans should descend with outstretched hand Greeting the strangers, and by them apprised Of Christ's redemption and the Queen's command, Being with joy and gratitude baptised, Should lavish gifts of price by rarest art devised. Or if (since churls there be) they should demur To some least point of fealty or faith, A champion, clad in arms from crest to spur, Should challenge the proud caitiffs to their death And, singly felling them, from their last breath Extort confession that the Lord is lord, And India's Catholic queen, Elizabeth. Whereat yon turbaned tribes, with one accord, Should beat their heathen breasts and ope their treasures' horde. Or, if the worst should chance and high debates Should end in insult and outrageous deed, And, many Christians rudely slain, their mates Should summon heaven to their direful need, Suddenly from the clouds a snow-white steed Bearing a dazzling rider clad in flames Should plunge into the fray: with instant speed Rout all the foe at once, while mid acclaims The slaughtered braves should rise, crying, _Saint James! Saint James!_ Then, the day won, and its bright arbiter Vanished, save for peace he left behind, Each in his private bosom should bestir Plis dearest dream: as that perchance there pined Some lovely maiden of angelic mind In those dark towers, awaiting out of Spain Two Saviours that her horoscope divined Should thence arrive. She (womanlike) were fain Not to be wholly free, but wear a chosen chain. That should be youth's adventure. Riper days Would crave the guerdon of a prouder power And pluck their nuggets from an earthly maze For rule and dignity and children's dower. And age that thought to near the fatal hour Should to a magic fount descend instead, Whose waters with the fruit revive the flower And deck in all its bloom the ashen head, Where a green heaven spreads, not peopled of the dead. By such false meteors did those helmsmen steer, Such phantoms filled their vain and vaulting souls With divers ardours, while this brooding sphere Swung yet ungirdled on her silent poles. All journeys took them farther from their goals, All battles won defeated their desire, Barred from one India by the other's shoals, Each sighted star extinguishing its fire, Cape doubled after cape, and never haven nigher. How many galleons sailed to sail no more, How many battles and how many slain, Since first Columbus touched the Cuban shore, Till Aurocania felt the yoke of Spain! What mounting miseries! What dwindling gain! To till those solitudes, soon swept of gold, And bear that ardent sun, across the main Slaves must come writhing in the festering hold Of galleys.--Poison works, though men be brave and bold. That slothful planter, once the buccaneer, Lord of his bastards and his mongrel clan, Ignorant, harsh, what could he list or hear Of Europe and the heritage of man? No petty schemer sees the larger plan, No privy tyrant brooks the mightier law, But lash in hand rides forth a partisan Of freedom: base, without the touch of awe, He poisoned first the blood his poniard was to draw. By sloth and lust and mindlessness and pelf Spain sank in sadness and dishonour down, Each in her service serving but himself, Each in his passion striking at her crown. Not that these treasons blotted her renown Emblazoned higher than such hands can reach: There where she reaped but sorrow she has sown The balm of sorrow; all she had to teach She taught the younger world--her faith and heart and speech. And now within her sea-girt walls withdrawn She waits in silence for the healing years, While where her sun has set a second dawn Comes from the north, with other hopes and fears. Spain's daughters stand, half ceasing from their tears, And watch the skies from Cuba to the Horn. "What is this dove or eagle that appears," They seem to cry, "what herald of what morn Hovers o'er Andes' peaks in love or guile or scorn?" "O brooding Spirit, fledgling of the North, Winged for the levels of its shifting light, Child of a labouring ocean and an earth Shrouded in vapours, fear the southward flight, Dread waveless waters and their warm delight, Beware of peaks that cleave the cloudless blue And hold communion with the naked night. The souls went never back that hither flew, But sighing fell to earth or broke the heavens through. "Haunt still thy storm-swept islands, and endure The shimmering forest where thy visions live. Then if we love thee--for thy heart is pure--Thou shalt have something worthy love to give. Thrust not thy prophets on us, nor believe Thy sorry riches in our eyes are fair. Thy unctuous sophists never will deceive A mortal pang, or charm away despair. Not for the stranger's fee we plait our lustrous hair. "But of thy lingering twilight bring some gleam, Memorial of the immaterial fire Lighting thy heart, and to a wider dream Waken the music of our plaintive lyre. Check our rash word, hush, hush our base desire. Hang paler clouds of reverence about Our garish skies: laborious hope inspire That uncomplaining walks the paths of doubt, A wistful heart within, a mailed breast without. "Gold found is dross, but long Promethean art Transmutes to gold the unprofitable ore. Bring labour's joy, yet spare that better part Our mother, Spain, bequeathed to all she bore, For who shall covet if he once adore? Leave in our skies, strange Spirit passing there, No less of vision but of courage more, And of our worship take thy equal share, Thou who wouldst teach us hope, with her who taught us prayer." YOUTH'S IMMORTALITY What, when hearts have met, shall sever Heart from heart, though heaven fall? They alone are dead for ever Who have never lived at all. Roses that have bloomed to sweetness Never can untimely fade, Blessed by death in their completeness And on beauty's bosom laid, Garnered in the breast eternal Where all noble joys are one, Sweet Elysium, fair and vernal, Where they mount who face the sun. Happy he whom men call lonely, Whose companion is the truth, And whose heart is ravished only By the world's immortal youth. Happy he whose single treasure Is the infinite unfurled, And whose voice has caught the measure Of the music of the world. When Death gathers up our ashes And our sorry shades depart, Lo, Life's flame, rekindled, flashes From another mortal heart, And Death turns about, derided By the Life he would deride. Vainly space and time divided What eternity allied. One great hope guides all our seeing, One pure heaven lends us light. Love is still the crown of being, Faith the better part of sight. The same wisdom's ancient pages Stir again the generous soul To the mighty task of ages Crawling still to reason's goal. The prophetic Muse of Story Sings her ancient legend o'er, And the sea, still young and hoary, Chants along the beaten shore. Spring yet yields her flowery treasures To the guiltless hands of boys, Chastening their noisy pleasures To the depth of human joys. One eternal passion drives us, Zealots of the stars above, And our better part survives us, Living in the things we love. 
50310	----	Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ MOTHER GOOSE FOR GROWN-UPS [Illustration: "'WILL YOU TELL ME IF IT'S STRAIGHT?'"] MOTHER GOOSE FOR GROWN-UPS By GUY WETMORE CARRYL With Illustrations by PETER NEWELL and GUSTAVE VERBEEK NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS 1900 Copyright, 1900, by HARPER & BROTHERS. All rights reserved TO CONSTANCE In memory of other days, Dear critic, when your whispered praise Cheered on the limping pen. How short, how sweet those younger hours, How bright our suns, how few our showers, Alas, we knew not then! If but, long leagues across the seas, The trivial charm of rhymes like these Shall serve to link us twain An instant in the olden spell That once we knew and loved so well, I have not worked in vain! NOTE I have pleasure in acknowledging the courteous permission of the editors to reprint in this form such of the following verses as were originally published in _Harper's Magazine_, the _Saturday Evening Post_, and the _London Sketch_. G. W. C. CONTENTS PAGE THE ADMIRABLE ASSERTIVENESS OF JILTED JACK 3 THE BLATANT BRUTALITY OF LITTLE BOW PEEP 9 THE COMMENDABLE CASTIGATION OF OLD MOTHER HUBBARD 15 THE DISCOURAGING DISCOVERY OF LITTLE JACK HORNER 21 THE EMBARRASSING EPISODE OF LITTLE MISS MUFFET 27 THE FEARFUL FINALE OF THE IRASCIBLE MOUSE 33 THE GASTRONOMIC GUILE OF SIMPLE SIMON 39 THE HARMONIOUS HEEDLESSNESS OF LITTLE BOY BLUE 47 THE INEXCUSABLE IMPROBITY OF TOM, THE PIPER'S SON 53 THE JUDICIOUS JUDGMENT OF QUITE CONTRARY MARY 59 THE LINGUISTIC LANGUOR OF CHARLES AUGUSTUS SPRAGUE 65 THE MYSTERIOUS MISAPPREHENSION CONCERNING A MAN IN OUR TOWN 71 THE OPPORTUNE OVERTHROW OF HUMPTY DUMPTY 77 THE PREPOSTEROUS PERFORMANCE OF AN OLD LADY OF BANBURY 83 THE QUIXOTIC QUEST OF THREE BLIND MICE 89 THE REMARKABLE REGIMEN OF THE SPRAT FAMILY 95 THE SINGULAR SANGFROID OF BABY BUNTING 101 THE TOUCHING TENDERNESS OF KING KARL THE FIRST 107 THE UNUSUAL UBIQUITY OF THE INQUISITIVE GANDER 113 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE "'WILL YOU TELL ME IF IT'S STRAIGHT?'" Frontispiece "SHE WAS SO CHARMINGLY WATTEAU-LIKE" Facing p. 10 "NOW SIMON'S TASTES WERE MOST PROFUSE" " 40 "WHILE BY KICKS HE LOOSENED BRICKS" " 78 "SHE PLUCKED HIM WITH RELENTLESS FROWN" " 114 THE ADMIRABLE ASSERTIVENESS OF JILTED JACK A noble and a generous mind Was Jack's; Folks knew he would not talk behind Their backs: But when some maiden fresh and young, At Jack a bit of banter flung, She soon discovered that his tongue Was sharp as any ax. A flirt of most engaging wiles Was Jill; On Jack she lavished all her smiles, Until Her slave (and he was not the first) Of lovesick swains became the worst, His glance a strong box might have burst, His sighs were fit to kill. One April morning, clear and fair, When both Of staying home and idling there In sloth Were weary, Jack remarked to Jill: "Oh, what's the sense in sitting still? Let's mount the slope of yonder hill." And she was nothing loth. But as she answered: "What's the use?" The gruff Young swain replied: "Oh, there's excuse Enough. Your doting parents water lack; We'll fill a pail and bring it back." (The reader will perceive that Jack Was putting up a bluff.) Thus hand in hand the tempting hill They scaled, And Jack proposed a kiss to Jill, And failed! One backward start, one step too bold, And down the hill the couple rolled, Resembling, if the truth were told, A luggage train derailed. With eyes ablaze with anger, she Exclaimed: "Well, who'd have thought! You'd ought to be Ashamed! You quite forget yourself, it's plain, So I'll forget you, too. Insane Young man, I'll say _oafweederzane_." (Her German might be blamed.) But Jack, whose linguist's pride was pricked, To shine, Asked: "_Meine Königin will nicht_ Be mine?" And when she answered: "Nein" in spleen, He cried: "Then in the soup tureen You'll stay. You're not the only queen Discarded for a nein!" THE MORAL'S made for maidens young And small: If you would in a foreign tongue Enthrall, Lead off undaunted in a Swede Or Spanish speech, and you'll succeed, But they who in a German lead No favor win at all. THE BLATANT BRUTALITY OF LITTLE BOW PEEP Though she was only a shepherdess, Tending the meekest of sheep, Never was African leopardess Crosser than Little Bow Peep: Quite apathetic, impassible People described her as: "That Wayward, contentious, irascible, Testy, cantankerous brat!" Yet, as she dozed in a grotto-like Sort of a kind of a nook, She was so charmingly Watteau-like, What with her sheep and her crook; "She is a dryad or nymph," any Casual passer would think. Poets pronounced her a symphony, All in the palest of pink. Thus it was not enigmatical, That the young shepherd who first Found her asleep, in ecstatical Sighs of felicity burst: Such was his sudden beatitude That, as he gazed at her so, Daphnis gave vent to this platitude: "My! Ain't she elegant though!" Roused from some dream of Arcadia, Little Bow Peep with a start Answered him: "I ain't afraid o' yer! P'raps you imagine you're smart!" Daphnis protested impulsively, Blushing as red as a rose; All was in vain. She convulsively Punched the young man in the nose! All of it's true, every word of it! I was not present to peep, But if you ask how I heard of it, Please to remember the sheep. There is no need of excuse. You will See how such scandals occur: If you recall Mother Goose, you will Know what tail-bearers they were! MORAL: This pair irreclaimable Might have made Seraphim weep, But who can pick the most blamable? _Both saw a little beau peep!_ [Illustration: "SHE WAS SO CHARMINGLY WATTEAU-LIKE"] THE COMMENDABLE CASTIGATION OF OLD MOTHER HUBBARD She was one of those creatures Whose features Are hard beyond any reclaim; And she loved in a hovel To grovel, And she hadn't a cent to her name. She owned neither gallants Nor talents; She borrowed extensively, too, From all of her dozens Of cousins, And never refunded a _sou_: Yet all they said in abuse of her Was: "She is prouder than Lucifer!" (That, I must say, without meaning to blame, Is always the way with that kind of a dame!) There never was jolli- Er colley Than Old Mother Hubbard had found, Though cheaply she bought him, She'd taught him To follow her meekly around: But though she would lick him And kick him, It never had any effect; He always was howling And growling, But goodness! What could you expect? Colleys were never to flourish meant 'Less they had plenty of nourishment, All that he had were the feathers she'd pluck Off an occasional chicken or duck. The colley was barred in The garden, He howled and he wailed and he whined. The neighbors indignant, Malignant Petitions unanimous signed. "The nuisance grows nightly," Politely They wrote. "It's an odious hound, And either you'll fill him, Or kill him, Or else he must go to the pound. For if this howling infernally Is to continue nocturnally-- Pardon us, ma'am, if we seem to be curt-- Somebody's apt to get horribly hurt!" Mother Hubbard cried loudly And proudly: "Lands sakes! but you give yourselves airs! I'll take the law to you And sue you." The neighbors responded: "Who cares? We none of us care if The sheriff Lock every man jack of us up; We won't be repining At fining So long as we're rid of the pup!" They then proceeded to mount a sign, Bearing this ominous countersign: "FREEMEN! THE MOMENT HAS COME TO PROTEST AND OLD MOTHER HUBBARD DELENDUM EST!" They marched to her gateway, And straightway They trampled all over her lawn; Most rudely they harried And carried Her round on a rail until dawn. They marred her, and jarred her, And tarred her And feathered her, just as they should, Of speech they bereft her, And left her With: "_Now_ do you think you'll be good!" THE MORAL'S a charmingly pleasing one. While we would deprecate teasing one, Still, when a dame has politeness rebuffed, She certainly ought to be collared and cuffed. THE DISCOURAGING DISCOVERY OF LITTLE JACK HORNER A knack almost incredible for dealing with an edible Jack Horner's elder sister was acknowledged to display; She labored hard and zealously, but always guarded jealously The secrets of the dishes she invented every day. She'd take some indigestible, unpopular comestible, And to its better nature would so tenderly appeal That Jack invoked a benison upon a haunch of venison, When really she was serving him a little leg of veal! Jack said she was a miracle. The word was not satirical, For daily climbing upward, she excelled herself at last: The acme of facility, the zenith of ability Was what she gave her brother for his Christmas Day repast. He dined that evening eagerly and anything but meagerly, And when he'd had his salad and his quart of Extra Dry, With sisterly benignity, and just a touch of dignity, She placed upon the table an unutterable pie! Unflagging pertinacity, and technical sagacity, Long nights of sleepless vigil, and long days of constant care Had been involved in making it, improving it, and baking it, Until of other pies it was the wonder and despair: So princely and so prominent, so solemn, so predominant It looked upon the table, that, with fascinated eye, The youth, with sudden wonder struck, electrified, and thunder struck, Could only stammer stupidly: "Oh Golly! What a pie!" In view of his satiety, it almost seemed impiety To carve this crowning triumph of a culinary life, But, braced by his avidity, with sudden intrepidity He broke its dome imposing with a common kitchen knife. Ah, hideous fatality! for when with eager palate he Commenced to eat, he happened on an accident uncouth, And cried with stifled moan: "Of it one plum I tried. The stone of it Had never been extracted, and I've broke a wisdom tooth!" Jack's sister wept effusively, but loudly and abusively His unreserved opinion of her talents he proclaimed; He called her names like "driveller" and "simpleton" and "sniveller," And others, which to mention I am really too ashamed. THE MORAL: It is saddening, embarrassing, and maddening A stone to strike in what you thought was paste. One thing alone Than this mischance is crueller, and that is for a jeweller To strike but paste in what he fondly thought to be a stone. THE EMBARRASSING EPISODE OF LITTLE MISS MUFFET Little Miss Muffet discovered a tuffet, (Which never occurred to the rest of us) And, as 'twas a June day, and just about noonday, She wanted to eat--like the best of us: Her diet was whey, and I hasten to say It is wholesome and people grow fat on it. The spot being lonely, the lady not only Discovered the tuffet, but sat on it. A rivulet gabbled beside her and babbled, As rivulets always are thought to do, And dragon-flies sported around and cavorted, As poets say dragon-flies ought to do; When, glancing aside for a moment, she spied A horrible sight that brought fear to her, A hideous spider was sitting beside her And most unavoidably near to her! Albeit unsightly, this creature politely Said: "Madam, I earnestly vow to you, I'm penitent that I did not bring my hat. I Should otherwise certainly bow to you." Though anxious to please, he was so ill at ease That he lost all his sense of propriety, And grew so inept that he clumsily stept In her plate--which is barred in Society. This curious error completed her terror; She shuddered, and growing much paler, not Only left tuffet, but dealt him a buffet Which doubled him up in a sailor-knot. It should be explained that at this he was pained: He cried: "I have vexed you, no doubt of it! Your fist's like a truncheon." "You're still in my luncheon," Was all that she answered. "Get out of it!" And THE MORAL is this: Be it madam or miss To whom you have something to say, You are only absurd when you get in the curd But you're rude when you get in the whey. THE FEARFUL FINALE OF THE IRASCIBLE MOUSE Upon a stairway built of brick A pleasant-featured clock From time to time would murmur "Tick" And vary it with "Tock": Although no great intelligence There lay in either word, They were not meant to give offence To anyone who heard. Within the pantry of the house, Among some piles of cheese, There dwelt an irritable mouse, Extremely hard to please: His appetite was most immense. Each day he ate a wedge Of Stilton cheese. In consequence His nerves were all on edge. With ill-concealed impatience he, Upon his morning walk, Had heard the clock unceasingly, Monotonously talk, Until his rage burst every bound. He gave a fretful shout: "Well, sakes alive! It's time I found What all this talk's about." With all the admirable skill That marks the rodent race The mouse ran up the clock, until He'd crept behind the face, And then, with words that no one ought To use, and scornful squeals, He cried aloud: "Just what I thought! Great oaf, you're full of wheels!" The timepiece sternly said: "Have done!" And through the silent house It struck emphatically one. (But that one was the mouse!) To earth the prowling rodent fell, In terror for his life, And turned to flee, but, sad to tell, There stood the farmer's wife. She did not faint, she did not quail, She did not cry out: "Scat!" She simply took him by the tail And gave him to the cat, And, with a stern, triumphant look, She watched him clawed and cleft, And with some blotting paper took Up all that there was left. THE MORAL: In a farmer's home Run down his herds, his flocks, Run down his crops, run down his loam, But when it comes to clocks, Pray leave them ticking every one In peace upon their shelves: When running down is to be done The clocks run down themselves. THE GASTRONOMIC GUILE OF SIMPLE SIMON Conveniently near to where Young Simple Simon dwelt There was to be a county fair, And Simple Simon felt That to the fair he ought to go In all his Sunday clothes, and so, Determined to behold the show, He put them on and went. (One-half his clothes was borrowed and the other half was lent.) He heard afar the cheerful sound Of horns that people blew, Saw wooden horses swing around A circle, two and two, Beheld balloons arise, and if He scented with a gentle sniff The smells of pies, what is the dif- Ference to me or you? (You cannot say my verse is false, because I know it's true.) As Simple Simon nearer came To these attractive smells, Avoiding every little game Men played with walnut shells, He felt a sudden longing rise. The sparkle in his eager eyes Betrayed the fact he yearned for pies: The eye the secret tells. ('Tis known the pie of county fairs all other pies excels.) So when he saw upon the road, Some fifty feet away, A pieman, Simple Simon strode Toward him, shouting: "Hey! What kinds?" as lordly as a prince. The pieman said: "I've pumpkin, quince, Blueberry, lemon, peach, and mince:" And, showing his array, He added: "Won't you try one, sir? They're very nice to-day." Now Simon's taste was most profuse, And so, by way of start, He ate two cakes, a Charlotte Russe, Six buns, the better part Of one big gingerbread, a pair Of lady-fingers, an eclair, And ten assorted pies, and there, His hand upon his heart, He paused to choose between an apple dumpling and a tart. Observing that upon his tray His goods were growing few, The pieman cried: "I beg to say That patrons such as you One does not meet in many a moon. Pray, won't you try this macaroon?" But soon suspicious, changed his tune, Continuing: "What is due I beg respectfully to add's a dollar twenty-two." Then Simple Simon put a curb Upon his appetite, And turning with an air superb He suddenly took flight, While o'er his shoulder this absurd And really most offensive word The trusting pieman shortly heard To soothe his bitter plight: "Perhaps I should have said before your wares are out of sight." THE MORAL is a simple one, But still of consequence. We've seen that Simon's sense of fun Was almost too intense: Though blaming his deceitful guise, We with the pieman sympathize, The latter we must criticize Because he was so dense: He might have known from what he ate that Simon had no cents. [Illustration: "NOW SIMON'S TASTES WERE MOST PROFUSE"] THE HARMONIOUS HEEDLESSNESS OF LITTLE BOY BLUE Composing scales beside the rails That flanked a field of corn, A farmer's boy with vicious joy Performed upon a horn: The vagrant airs, the fragrant airs Around that field that strayed, Took flight before the flagrant airs That noisome urchin played. He played with care "The Maiden's Prayer;" He played "God Save the Queen," "Die Wacht am Rhein," and "Auld Lang Syne," And "Wearing of the Green:" With futile toots, and brutal toots, And shrill chromatic scales, And utterly inutile toots, And agonizing wails. The while he played, around him strayed, And calmly chewed the cud, Some thirty-nine assorted kine, All ankle-deep in mud: They stamped about and tramped about That mud, till all the troupe Made noises, as they ramped about, Like school-boys eating soup. Till, growing bored, with one accord They broke the fence forlorn: The field was doomed. The cows consumed Two-thirds of all the corn, And viciously, maliciously, Went prancing o'er the loam. That landscape expeditiously Resembled harvest-home. "Most idle ass of all your class," The farmer said with scorn: "Just see my son, what you have done! The cows are in the corn!" "Oh drat," he said, "the brat!" he said. The cowherd seemed to rouse. "My friend, it's worse than that," he said. "The corn is in the cows." THE MORAL lies before our eyes. When tending kine and corn, Don't spend your noons in tooting tunes Upon a blatant horn: Or scaling, and assailing, and With energy immense, Your cows will take a railing, and The farmer take offense. THE INEXCUSABLE IMPROBITY OF TOM, THE PIPER'S SON A Paris butcher kept a shop Upon the river's bank Where you could buy a mutton chop Or two for half a franc. The little shop was spruce and neat, In view of all who trod the street The decorated joints of meat Were hung up in a rank. This Gallic butcher led a life Of highly moral tone; He never raised his voice in strife, He never drank alone: He simply sat outside his door And slept from eight o'clock till four; The more he slept, so much the more To slumber he was prone. One day outside his shop he put A pig he meant to stuff, And carefully around each foot He pinned a paper ruff, But, while a watch he should have kept, His habit conquered, and he slept, And for a thief who was adept That surely was enough. A Scottish piper dwelt near by, Whose one ungracious son Beheld that pig and murmured: "Why, No sooner said than done! It seems to me that this I need." And grasping it, with all his speed Across the Pont des Invalides He started on a run. Then, turning sharply to the right, Without a thought of risk, He fled. 'Tis fair to call his flight Inordinately brisk. But now the town was all astir, In vain his feet he strove to spur, They caught him, shouting: "Au voleur!" Beside the Obelisk. The breathless butcher cried: "A mort!" The crowd said: "Conspuez!" And some: "A bas!" and half a score Responded: "Vive l'armée!" While grim gendarmes with piercing eye, And stern remarks about: "Canaille!" The pig abstracted on the sly. Such is the Gallic way! The piper's offspring, his defeat Deep-rooted in his heart, A revolutionary sheet Proceeded then to start. Thenceforward every evening he In leaders scathed the Ministry, And wished he could accomplish the Return of Bonaparte. THE MORAL is that when the press Begins to rave and shout It's often difficult to guess What it is all about. The editor we strive to pin, But we can never find him in. What startling knowledge we should win If we could find him out! THE JUDICIOUS JUDGMENT OF QUITE CONTRARY MARY Though Mary had the kind of face The rudest wind would softly blow on; Though she was full of simple grace, Sweet, amiable, and kind, and so on; I would not have you understand That she was meek. You'd be mistaken. She worked out logarithms, and Her favorite essayist was Bacon. And, though not positive, I think She'd heard about Savonarola, Had studied Maurice Maeterlinck, And read the works of Emile Zola, And Emerson's and some of Kant's, And all of mine and Shopenhauer's; But still she cultivated plants, And spent her life in tending flowers. She had a little hedge of box, Azalias, and a bed of tansy, A double row of hollyhocks, And every different kind of pansy: And, though so innocent of look, She'd lovers by the scores and dozens, And learned, by talking with the cook, To tell her friends they were her cousins. The first was French, the second Greek, The third was born upon the Mersey, The fourth one came from Mozambique, The fifth one from the Isle of Jersey. I cannot tell about the rest, But, judging from their dress and faces, They came from north, east, south, and west, But all of them from different places. Now, such was Mary's sense of pride, Despite their fervent protestations, Before she vowed to be a bride She set them all examinations: She asked each one to tell the date Of Washington and Cleopatra, Name Dickens' novels, and locate The site of Yonkers and Sumatra. But so it chanced that, from a score Of suitors resolute and haughty, One gained a mark of sixty-four, And all the rest were under forty. One swain alone the rest outclassed; Because of one audacious guess, he This strict examination passed When Mary asked the date of Crécy. THE MORAL shows that when a maid Her life devotes unto a garden, When horticultural skill's displayed Her heart she does not dare to harden. So crafty suitors, scorn the fates And you may lay this flattering balm to Your souls; if you but get your dates The chances are you'll get the palm, too! THE LINGUISTIC LANGUOR OF CHARLES AUGUSTUS SPRAGUE A child of nature curious Was Charles Augustus Sprague; He made his parents furious Because he was so vague: Although his age was nearly two Eleven words were all he knew, These sounded much as sounds the Dutch That's spoken at The Hague. A few of his errata 'Tis just I should avow, He called his mother "Tata," And "moo" he dubbed a cow, Nor was it altogether plain Why "choo-choo" meant a railway train. He called a cat "miouw," and that No purist would allow. Within his father's orchard There stood, for all to see, With branches bent and tortured, An ancient apple tree: That Charles Augustus Sprague might drowse His mother on its swaying boughs His cradle hung, and, while it swung, She sang with energy. A sudden blow arising One day, the branches broke, With suddenness surprising The sleeping babe awoke, And crashing down to earth he fell. Ah me, that I should have to tell The words that mild and genial child On this occasion spoke! His face convulsed and chequered With passion and with tears, He blotted out the record Of both his speechless years: His mother stupefied, aghast, Heard Charles Augustus speak at last; He opened wide his mouth and cried These ill conditioned sneers. "Sapristi! Accidente! Perchance my speech is late, But, be she two or twenty, A nincompoop I hate! What idiot said that woman's 'planned To warn, to comfort, and command?'" His words I quench. Excuse my French-- Je dis que tu m'embêtes! THE MORAL: Common clocks, we find, In silence take a sudden wind, But only heroes, as we know, In silence take a sudden blow. THE MYSTERIOUS MISAPPREHENSION CONCERNING A MAN IN OUR TOWN There was a man in our town, Half beggar, half rapscallion, Who, just because his eyes were brown, Was thought to be Italian: And, though with much insistence He said that people erred, And bitterly to Italy He frequently referred, The false report, as is the way Of false reports, had come to stay! So every one who'd been to Rome By aid of Cook's or Gaze's, Would call upon him at his home To flaunt Italian phrases. "Capite Questa lingua?" The inquiry would be: "Pochissimo? Benissimo! Vi prego, ditemi, Siete voi contento qua, Lontano dall'Italia?" The victim, plunged in deep disgust, Grew nervous, could not slumber; Said he, "I'm called Italian, just Because my eyes are umber, And if this persecution Is ever to be stopped, Some stern and stoic, hard, heroic Course I must adopt!" And so, to everyone's surprise, He calmly scratched out both his eyes! The neighbors said: "So strange a thing Might seem to be an omen. We _thought_ his wits were wandering, But now we _know_ they're Roman!" And so at him by legions, By bevies, hosts, and herds, Professors, purists, tramps, and tourists Screamed Italian words. Perceiving all he'd done was vain, He scratched his eyesight in again. THE MORAL: If your neighbors say You're one thing or another, You'll find there isn't any way Their prejudice to smother. What matter if they think you From Italy or Greece? I beg you, treasure no displeasure: Bow and hold your peace. Like Omar, underneath the bow You'll find there's paradise enow! THE OPPORTUNE OVERTHROW OF HUMPTY DUMPTY Upon a wall of medium height Bombastically sat A boastful boy, and he was quite Unreasonably fat: And what aroused a most intense Disgust in passers-by Was his abnormal impudence In hailing them with "Hi!" While by his kicks he loosened bricks The girls to terrify. When thus for half an hour or more He'd played his idle tricks, And wounded something like a score Of people with the bricks, A man who kept a fuel shop Across from where he sat Remarked: "Well, this has got to stop." Then, snatching up his hat, And sallying out, began to shout: "Look here! Come down from that!" The boastful boy to laugh began, As laughs a vapid clown, And cried: "It takes a bigger man Than you to call me down! This wall is smooth, this wall is high, And safe from every one. No acrobat could do what I Had been and gone and done!" Though this reviled, the other smiled, And said: "Just wait, my son!" Then to the interested throng That watched across the way He showed with smiling face a long And slender Henry Clay, Remarking: "In upon my shelves All kinds of coal there are. Step in, my friends, and help yourselves. And he who first can jar That wretched urchin off his perch Will get this good cigar." The throng this task did not disdain, But threw with heart and soul, Till round the youth there raged a rain Of lumps of cannel-coal. He dodged for all that he was worth, Till one bombarder deft Triumphant brought him down to earth, Of vanity bereft. "I see," said he, "that this is the Coal day when I get left." THE MORAL is that fuel can Become the tool of fate When thrown upon a little man, Instead of on a grate. This story proves that when a brat Imagines he's admired, And acts in such a fashion that He makes his neighbors tired, That little fool, who's much too cool; Gets warmed when coal is fired. [Illustration: "WHILE BY KICKS HE LOOSENED BRICKS"] THE PREPOSTEROUS PERFORMANCE OF AN OLD LADY OF BANBURY Within a little attic a retiring, but erratic Old lady (six-and-eighty, to be frank), Made sauces out of cranberry for all the town of Banbury, Depositing the proceeds in the bank. Her tendency to thriftiness, her scorn of any shiftiness Built a bustling business, and in course Of time her secret yearnings were revealed, and all her earnings She squandered in the purchase of a horse. "I am not in a hurry for a waggonette or surrey," She said. "In fact, I much prefer to ride." And spite of all premonishment, to everyone's astonishment, The gay old lady did so--and astride! Now this was most periculous, but, what was more ridiculous, The horse she bought had pulled a car, and so, The lazy steed to cheer up, she'd a bell upon her stirrup, And rang it twice to make the creature go! I blush the truth to utter, but it seems a pound of butter And thirty eggs she had to sell. Of course, In scorn of ways pedestrian, this fatuous equestrian To market gaily started on the horse. Becoming too importunate to hasten, the un- fortunate Old lady plied her charger with a birch. In view of all her cronies, this stupidest of ponies Fell flat before the Presbyterian church! If it should chance that one set a red Italian sunset Beside a Beardsley poster, and a plaid Like any canny Highlander's beside a Fiji Islander's Most variegated costume, and should add A Turner composition, and with clever intuition, To cap the climax, pile upon them all The aurora borealis, then veracity, not malice, Might claim a close resemblance to her fall. At sight of her disaster, with arnica and plaster The neighbors ran up eagerly to aid. They cried: "Don't do that offen, ma'am, or you will need a coffin, ma'am, You've hurt your solar plexus, we're afraid. We hope your martyrdom'll let you notice what an omelette You've made in half a jiffy. It is great!" She only clutched her bonnet (she had fallen flat upon it), And answered: "Will you tell me if it's straight?" THE MORAL'S rather curious: for often the penurious Are apt to think old horses of account If you would ride, then seek fine examples of the equine, And don't look on a molehill as a mount. THE QUIXOTIC QUEST OF THREE BLIND MICE A maiden mouse of an arrogant mind Had three little swains and all were blind. The reason for this I do not know, But I think it was love that made them so, For without demur they bowed to her, Though she treated them all with a high hauteur. She ruled them, schooled them, frequently fooled them, Snubbed, tormented, and ridiculed them: Mice as a rule are much like men, So they swallowed their pride and called again. The maiden mouse of an arrogant mind To morbid romance was much inclined. The reason for this I have not learned, But I think by novels her head was turned. She said that the chap who dared to nap One hour inside of the farmer's trap Might gain her, reign her, wholly enchain her, Woo her, win her, and thence retain her! Hope ran high in each suitor's breast, And all determined to stand the test. The maiden mouse of an arrogant mind Laughed when she saw them thus confined. The reason for this I can't proclaim, But I know some girls who'd have done the same! As thus they kept to their word, and slept, The farmer's wife to the pantry stept: She sought them, caught them, carefully brought them Out to the light, and there she taught them How that chivalry often fails, By calmly cutting off all their tails! The maiden mouse of an arrogant mind Treated her swains in a way unkind. The reason for this is not complex: That's always the way with the tender sex. With impudent hails she cried: "What ails You all, and where are your splendid tails?" She jeered so, sneered so, flouted and fleered so, Giggled, and altogether appeared so Lacking in heart, that her slaves grew bored, And threw up the sponge of their own accord. The maiden mouse of an arrogant mind Watched and waited, and peaked and pined. The reason for this, I beg to state, Is all summed up in the words TOO LATE! THE MORAL intwined is: Love is blind, But he never leaves all his wits behind: You may beat him, cheat him, often defeat him, Though he be true with torture treat him: One of these days you'll be bereft, You think you're right, but you'll find you're left. THE REMARKABLE REGIMEN OF THE SPRAT FAMILY The Sprats were four in number, Including twins in kilts: All day Jack carted lumber, All day his wife made quilts. Thus heartlessly neglected Twelve hours in twenty-four, As might have been expected, The twins sat on the floor: And all the buttons, I should state, They chanced to find, they promptly ate. This was not meat, but still it's true We did the same when we were two. The wife (whose name was Julia) Maintained an ample board, But one thing was peculiar, Lean meat she quite abhorred. Here also should be stated Another fact: 'tis that Her spouse abominated The very taste of fat. This contrast curious of taste Precluded any thought of waste, For all they left of any meal No self-respecting dog would steal. No generous _table d'hôte_ meal, No dainties packed in tins, But only bowls of oatmeal They gave the wretched twins; And yet like princes pampered Had lived those babes accursed, Could they have fed unhampered:-- I have not told the worst! Since nothing from the dining-room Was left to feed the cook and groom, It seems that these domestics cruel Were led to steal the children's gruel! The twins, all hopes resigning, And wounded to the core, Confined themselves to dining On buttons off the floor. No passionate resentment The docile babes displayed: Each day in calm contentment Three hearty meals they made. And daily Jack and Mrs. Sprat Ate all the lean and all the fat, And every day the groom and cook The children's meal contrived to hook. But when the twins grew older, As twins are apt to do, And, shoulder touching shoulder, Sat Sundays in their pew. They saw no Christian glory In parting with a dime, And in the offertory Dropped buttons every time. Said they: "What's good enough for Sprats Is good enough for heathen brats." (I most sincerely wish I knew What was the heathen's point of view.) THE MORAL: Anecdotes abound Of buttons in collections found. Thus on the wheels of progress go, And heathens reap what Christians sew! THE SINGULAR SANGFROID OF BABY BUNTING Bartholomew Benjamin Bunting Had only three passions in life, And one of the trio was hunting, The others his babe and his wife: And always, so rigid his habits, He frolicked at home until two, And then started hunting for rabbits, And hunted till fall of the dew. Belinda Bellonia Bunting, Thus widowed for half of the day, Her duty maternal confronting, With baby would patiently play. When thus was her energy wasted A patented food she'd dispense. (She had bought it the day that they pasted The posters all over her fence.) But Bonaparte Buckingham Bunting, The infant thus blindly adored, Replied to her worship by grunting, Which showed he was brutally bored. 'Twas little he cared for the troubles Of life. Like a crab on the sands, From his sweet little mouth he blew bubbles, And threatened the air with his hands. Bartholomew Benjamin Bunting One night, as his wife let him in, Produced as the fruit of his hunting A cottontail's velvety skin, Which, seeing young Bonaparte wriggle, He gave him without a demur, And the babe with an aqueous giggle He swallowed the whole of the fur! Belinda Bellonia Bunting Behaved like a consummate loon: Her offspring in frenzy confronting She screamed herself mottled maroon: She felt of his vertebræ spinal, Expecting he'd surely succumb, And gave him one vigorous, final, Hard prod in the pit of his tum. But Bonaparte Buckingham Bunting, At first but a trifle perplexed, By a change in his manner of grunting Soon showed he was terribly vexed. He displayed not a sign of repentance But spoke, in a dignified tone, The only consecutive sentence He uttered. 'Twas: "Lemme alone." THE MORAL: The parent that uses Precaution his folly regrets: An infant gets all that he chooses, An infant chews all that he gets. And colics? He constantly has 'em So long as his food is the best, But he'll swallow with never a spasm What ostriches couldn't digest! THE TOUCHING TENDERNESS OF KING KARL THE FIRST For hunger and thirst King Karl the First Had a stoical, stern disdain: The food that he ordered consistently bordered On what is described as plain. Much trouble his cook ambitiously took To tickle his frugal taste, But all of his savoury science and slavery Ended in naught but waste. Said the steward: "The thing to tempt the King And charm his indifferent eye No doubt is a tasty, delectable pasty. Make him a blackbird pie!" The cook at these words baked twenty-four birds, And set them before the King, And the two dozen odious, bold, and melodious Singers began to sing. The King in surprise said: "Dozens of pies In the course of our life we've tried, But never before us was served up a chorus Like this that we hear inside!" With a thunderous look he ordered the cook And the steward before him brought, And with a beatified smile: "He is satisfied!" Both of these innocents thought. "Of sinners the worst," said Karl the First, "Is the barbarous ruffian that A song-bird would slaughter, unless for his daughter Or wife he is trimming a hat. We'll punish you so for the future you'll know That from mercy you can't depart. Observe that your lenient, kind, intervenient King has a tender heart!" He saw that the cook in a neighboring brook Was drowned (as he quite deserved), And he ordered the steward at once to be skewered. (The steward was much unnerved.) "It's a curious thing," said the merciful King, "That monarchs so tender are, So oft we're affected that we have suspected that We are too kind by far." THE MORAL: The mercy of men and of Kings Are apt to be wholly dissimilar things. In spite of "The Merchant of Venice," we're pained To note that the quality's sometimes strained. [Illustration: "SHE PLUCKED HIM WITH RELENTLESS FROWN"] THE UNUSUAL UBIQUITY OF THE INQUISITIVE GANDER A gander dwelt upon a farm And no one could resist him, For had he died, such was his charm, His neighbors would have missed him: His scorn for any loud display, His cheerful hissing day by day, Would win your heart in such a way You almost could have kissed him. This bird was always nosing 'round. Most patiently he waited Until an open door he found, And then investigated. He loved to poke, he loved to peek, In every knothole, so to speak, He quickly thrust his prying beak, For what was hid he hated. The farm exhausted: "Now," said he: "My policy's expansion. When one's convinced how things should be The proper course he can't shun. His mind made up, he followed it, Relying on his native wit, And soon had wandered, bit by bit, Through all his master's mansion. "At least," he said: "It's not my fault If everything's not seen to: I've gone from garret down to vault, And glanced into the lean-to. In every room I've chanced to stop; A supervising glance to drop, I've looked below, I've looked on top, Behind, and in between, too!" One thing alone he found to blame, As thus his time he squandered, For, seeing not the farmer's dame, Into her room he wandered, And mounting nimbly on the bed: "Why, bless my careful soul!" he said: "These pillows are as hard as lead. Now, how comes that?" he pondered. The farmer's dame for half an hour Had watched the bird meander, And finding him within her power, She leaped upon the gander. "Why, how de do, my gander coy?" She shouted: "What will be my joy To dream to-night on you, my boy!" (This was no baseless slander.) For with a stoutish piece of string Securely was this fool tied, And by a leg and by a wing Unto an oaken stool tied: While, pinning towels around her gown, She plucked him with relentless frown, And stuffed the pillows with his down, And roasted him for Yuletide. THE MORAL is: When you explore Don't try to be superior: Be cautious, and retire before Your safety grows inferior. 'Tis best to stay upon the coast, Or some day you will be like most Of all that bold exploring host That's gone to the interior. THE END 
52456	----	provided by the Internet Archive HARPS HUNG UP IN BABYLON By Arthur Colton New York: Henry Holt And Company 1907 DEDICATED TO MY FATHER _The harps hung up in Babylon, Their loosened strings rang on, sang on And cast their murmurs forth upon The roll and roar of Babylon: "_Forget me, Lord, if I forget Jerusalem for Babylon, If I forget the vision set High as the head of Lebanon Is lifted over Syria yet, If I forget and bow me down To brutish gods of Babylon._" _Two rivers to each other run In the very midst of Babylon, And swifter than their current fleets The restless river of the streets Of Babylon, of Babylon, And Babylon's towers smite the sky, But higher reeks to God most high The smoke of her iniquity: "_But oh, betwixt the green and blue To walk the hills that once we knew When you were pure and I was true," So rang the harps in Babylon-- "_Or ere along the roads of stone Had led us captive one by one The subtle gods of Babylon._ " _The harps hung up in Babylon Hung silent till the prophet dawn, When Judah's feet the highway burned Back to the holy hills returned, And shook their dust on Babylon. In Zion's halls the wild harps rang, To Zion's walls their smitten clang, And lo! of Babylon they sang, They only sang of Babylon: "_Jehovah, round whose throne of awe The vassal stars their orbits draw Within the circle of Thy law, Canst Thou make nothing what is done, Or cause Thy servant to be one That has not been in Babylon, That has not known the power and pain Of life poured out like driven rain? I will go down and find again My soul that's lost in Babylon._" WEST-EASTERLY MORALITIES THE CAPTIVE There was a king, returned from putting down The stiff rebellion of an Afghan town, Who marked for death a captive. Then arose The ragged Afghan from the marble floor, Nor longer to the king's feet weeping clung, But in the babble of his foreign tongue He cursed him, as that ancient saying goes: "Who comes to wash himself in death, before Entering the pool, empties his heart ashore." "What mean these words?" The king's voice, cold and loud, Rang in the space above the frightened crowd, That bent before it, as when storm-winds blow Their warning horns, and the storm crouches low Still on the solid hills with sombre eyes, Long lightnings slant, and muffled thunders rise, And startled forests, helpless to retreat, Stand with their struggling arms and buried feet. An aged vizier rose, and bowed his head, Clasping his gentle withered hands: "He said: 'To two God gives the shelter of His cloak, Him who keeps down the anger in his breast, Him who in justice counteth mercy best; God shelter me and thee.' The man so spoke." And the king bade them set the Afghan free, Who in the face of death spoke graciously. Ben Ali, the young vizier, to his feet Leaped: "As I hold by counsellors it is meet Truth should be spoken at a king's demand, This man reviled thee with a shameful word!" Whereat the king was mute, as one who heard A voice in his own breast; turned with his hand The bracelets on his arm; then speaking low, Once more he bade them let the Afghan go. THE KING. "Art thou so upright, and by God made free To be malignant in integrity? Is it the truth alone thou owest to the king? Nay, but all oracles that whispering Speak in the central chamber of the heart, Saving when envy speaks, which spoke in thee. But thou, my father, shall not thy name be Henceforth 'The Merciful'? For so thou art. So spoke the king, and, leaning head to head, The courtiers whispered, and Ben Ali said: BEN ALI. "Is it not written: 'When the truth is known, Then only the king's mercy is his own'? If then the king his servant will forgive For rendering back the king's prerogative, Forgive the misshaped mouth ill made to lie, Forgive the straitened walk, the single eye, Forgive the holy dead for truth who died, And those who thought their deaths were sanctified; With such forgiveness let me then go hence, And, in some desert place of penitence And meditation, read it in the dust, If He who sends His rain upon the just, And sends His rain upon the unjust too, Is mercifully false, or merely true." THE KING. And the king said: "Thou livest! And thy words Are more for peril than a thousand swords! Is it king's custom to bear two men's scorn In the short compass of a single morn? Go to thine house and wait until thou know The king's hand follows when his voice says, Go." Ben Ali from the court went forth in shame, And after him the shivering Afghan came, Whom, taking by the garment, he led down Through the packed highways of the busy town, To where in flowers and shadows, peace and pride, His gardened palace by the river side Lay like a lotus in perfumed repose; There set a feast for him as for the king, With friendly words and courteous welcoming Sat with the ragged Afghan, while beneath The dancing girls, each with her jasmine wreath,-- And one that dallied with a crimson rose,-- Sang softly in the garden cool, that sank. By lawn and terrace to the river's bank: "So dear thou art, The seed that thou hast planted in the mould And fertile fallow of my heart Hath borne a thousand-fold, So dear thou art. "Sweet love, wild love, Love will I sow and love will reap, And where the golden harvest bends above There will I find sleep, Sweet love, child love." And when the feast was over, and remained Only the fruits, and wine in flasks contained, And costly drinking cups, Ben Ali rose And left the chattering Afghan with a smile, To walk among his aloe trees awhile, Thinking: "Day closes. Ere another close These things I see no more, for a king's wrath Leaps foaming down and falls, as cataracts leap And fall from sleeping pools to pools asleep, And either ere to-morrow night I die, Or all my days in exiled penury Among strange peoples tread the strangers' path." And while in shadows with slow pace he went The ruddy daylight faded in the west, And she that held the rose against her breast Sang to the stirring of some instrument: "The sea That rounds in gloom The pallid pearl, Where corals curl The rosy edges of their barren bloom, And cold seamaidens wear Inwoven in their hair A light that draws the sailor down the wet ways of despair, In whose green silken glisten They drift and wait and listen, And the sea-monsters lift their heads and stare! The sorrowing sea, Like life in me, Wavers in homeless dreams till love is known And love for life atone." Meanwhile the Afghan, glancing here and there, Saw no one by him, and arose in haste, And took the drinking cups with jewels graced, And hid them in his rags, from stair to stair Slid like a shadow, and from hall to hall; So vanished, like a shadow from the wall. Ben Ali from his aloe-planted lawn Returned, and saw the drinking cups were gone, And smiled and leaned him in the window dim To watch the dancing girls, who, seeing him Began again to weave, to part, to close, With tinkling bells and shimmer of white feet, And she that drooped her head above a rose Sang in the twilight, languid, slow, and sweet: "Close-curtained rose, Open thy petals and the dew disclose. Hide not so long Those crimson shades among, In silken splendour That nestling tender, That dewdrop cradled in the heart of thee, God meant for me. "A little while, And naught to me the blossom of thy smile. Forgive all men; Yea, love, forgive the false and trust again, For life deceiveth, And love believeth; Within love's merciful chambers let us stay, The while we may." The singing ceased. There rose a storm of calls And sudden clangour in his outer halls; And these were hushed, and some one cried: "The king!" Followed the tread of armed men entering. Ben Ali rose, thinking, "My time was brief;" And lo, not only the tall king stood there, His bracelets glittering in the torches' glare, And gloomy eyes beneath his sweeping hair, But at his feet cringed the swart Afghan thief. "Thus saith the law: 'The thief shall have his hands Struck from his wrists, in payment of the wage Belonging to his sin.' The king commands THE KING. That thou, Ben Ali, wisdom's flower in youth, Mirror of righteousness and well of truth, Critic of kings, rebuker of old age, Shalt judge this Afghan dog as the law stands." Ben Ali stood with folded arms, and face Bent down in meditation for a space. BEN ALI. "It is good law, O King. But is it not Good law that, 'He who stealeth to devote To some religious purpose and intent Is held exempted from that punishment'?" THE KING. "It is good law. But the law holds 'Unproved The finer motive which the thief hath moved Unless the pious dedication be Sequent immediate to the thievery.'" BEN ALI. "It is good law, O King, and good to heed. Now, of 'religious purposes' it calls First, 'to relieve the needy of their need.' Can it be doubted that this Afghan falls Among the 'needy,' and became a thief To his own need's immediate relief? Nay, in the very act of thieving vowed That 'pious dedication'? Which allowed, Follows the law's exemption." The king smiled, And said: "Set free this good man. To thy wild Bleak mountains, Afghan. Is the world so small That thou must steal--if thou must steal at all-- From such a friend as this?" The Afghan fled, The king across Ben Ali's shoulders passed His heavy arm and to the gardens led, Where fluttered groups of dancing girls, aghast, Huddled aside, and through the night at last Came to the river, and Ben Ali said: BEN ALI. "Hearken, O King, thy counsellor's report: Thou keepest a young vizier in thy court Unfit to be a counsellor to power, Fit only to jest with an idle hour, Who holds the scales of justice not in awe, And lightly quibbles with the holy law, And takes the lives of trembling men to be The butt and plaything of his casuistry." THE KING. "Hearken, O Counsellor, thy king's desire: Ere next thou blow ablaze the sullen fire That smoulders in him, see that thou provide Withal a secret place in which to hide, Lest the king's darkened days on darkness fall And miss for aye a bright face at his side; For, be it truth thou sayest--yea, and truth Is the sharp sword and javelin of youth-- That every merciful and smiling lie Shall come to smile and curse us ere we die, That the king standeth as a massive wall Which leans to ruin, if it lean at all Out of the upright line of equity; Yet, ah, my bitter counsellor," said the king, "When thou wouldst speak some truth that bears a sting, I pray thee, speak as bearing love to me, Who am of such as, lonely for their kind, In dusty deserts of the spirit find A naked penitence which no man sees. My cup of life is drunken to the lees, And thine hath still its bead along the brim; And therefore, as in halls empty and dim, Wakens thy step the echoes in my heart, And all thy heady ways and reckless tongue, That splits the marrow like a Kalmuck's dart, Seem like my very own when first I flung A challenge in the teeth of life. God knows, The stars will not again look down on me With their old radiant intensity; Only I seem to see, as by the gleam Of boatmen's torches mirrored in the stream That bears them on, a faith that not alone He builds His temple of enduring stone, But sends the flowers that in its crannies creep, And in His very scales of justice throws The young man's dreams, the tears of them that weep, The words the maiden murmurs to the rose." The king was still. A passing boatman's oars Sent the lit ripples to the shadowed shores. A near muézzin's long, high-towered call Went yearning up to star-lit architraves, And dying left a silence over all, Saving the grassy whisper of small waves. THE BEGGAR There was a man whom a king loved, and heard With smiles his swift step and impetuous word Among the slow-paced counsellors. To the young Belong the careless hand, the daring tongue. Pleasure and pride are the tall flowers that spring Within the fertile shadow of the king. There sat a beggar in the market-place, Of sullen manner and a surly face, Who caught him by the cloak; that with a stone He smote the beggar's head, and so passed on, Cassim Ben Ali, up the palace hill, Leaving the beggar, fallen, grim, and still. Sudden as the king's favour is his wrath. Who for the morrow knows what joy he hath? Nor can he pile it in his vaults to stay The crowding misery of another day. So fell Ben Ali for an arrowy word And barbed jest that the king's anger stirred, And he was led beyond the noisy brawls Of traders chaffering at the market stalls, And in a pit thrown near the city walls. Whither the beggar came, and came alone, A cobble in his hand, beside the pit. "The wise man waiteth till the time is fit, The foolish hasteneth to grief," he said, Casting the cobble on Ben Ali's head: "I am that beggar, and behold that stone." Ben Ali on the morrow was restored To the benignant presence of his lord, And sending for the beggar, softly said: "This is that stone." The beggar bowed his head: '"And this my head, which is among the lowly, As thine is high, and God is just and holy," And threw himself lamenting on the floor. Ben Ali pondered then a moment more. "Thou sayest truly, God is just; and lo! Both of our heads have ached beneath a blow. I in my time grow wiser, and divine The beating of thy head will not heal mine; And have considered and have found it wise, To exchange with thee some other merchandise. Take this gold dinar, and remember then That God is just, if so I come again Into a pit and ask return of thee." Once more Ben Ali was brought low, to see The king's clenched hand, fixed look, and rigid frown, Thrust from the palace gate to wander down, Stripped of his silks, in poverty and shame, Into the market where the traders came With files of sag-necked camels o'er the sands, Bringing the corded wares of hidden lands. And walking there with eyes now wet and dim, He sought the beggar, found, and said to him: "Remember thine exchange of merchandise, Who sayest, God is just and 'thou art wise." "Who sayeth 'God is just,' speaks not of me; Who calleth thee a fool, means none but thee," Answered the beggar. "For I understood To pay the evil back and keep the good Is increase of the good in merchandise; Therefore I keep the dinar, and am wise." Which thing was brought to the king's ear, and he Summoned the two to stand before his knee, And took the dinar from the beggar's hand, And giving to Ben Ali, gave command To those who waited for his word: "Bring stones That he may beat with them this beggar's bones, Who mocks at justice, saying 'God is just,' And boasting wisdom, fouls her in the dust." Ben Ali through his meditation heard The counsellors approving the king's word, And spoke above their even murmuring: "Let justice be with God and with the king, Who are not subject to a moment's chance, Made and unmade by shifting circumstance. This is the wisdom of the poor and weak: The smitten cheek shall warn its brother cheek, And each man to his nook of comfort run, His little portion of the morning sun, His little corner of the noonday shade, His wrongs forgotten as his debts unpaid. Let not the evil and the good we do Be ghosts to haunt us, phantoms to pursue. I have the dinar and would fain be clear Of further trading with this beggar here; For he nor I have caused the world to be, Nor govern kingdoms with our equity." "Art thou so poor then, and the beggar wise, God's justice hidden, and the king's astray?" Answered the king, slow-voiced, with brooding eyes. "Art thou so weak, and strong to drive away Far from to-day the ghost of yesterday? Free is thy lifted head, while on mine own The gathered past lies heavier than the crown? So be it as thou sayest, with him and thee, Thou who forgivest evil bitterly." So spoke the king. Ben Ali's steps once more Were swift and silken on the palace floor. The beggar went with grim, unchanging face Back to his begging in the market-place. THE PILGRIM I heard a pilgrim near a temple gate Praying, "I have no fear, for Thou art Fate. "Morn, eve, noon, if I look up to Thee, Wilt Thou at night look down, remembering me? "Nay, then, my sins so great, my service small,"-- So prayed he at the gate,--"forget them all. "Of claims and rights a load the while I keep, How in Thy nights, O God, to smile and sleep? "Pardon, neglect, or slay, as is most meet; My beaten face I lay beneath Thy feet." "Pilgrim," I said, "hath He, who toils the while, Bade thee, of burdens free, to sleep and smile? "Who built the hills on high, and laid the sea, Set in thy heart the cry, 'Remember me!'" ALLAH'S TENT With fore cloth smoothed by careful hands The night's serene pavilion stands, And many cressets hang on high Against its arching canopy. Peace to His children God hath sent, We are at peace within His tent. Who knows without these guarded doors What wind across the desert roars? THE POET AND THE FOUNTAIN Firdausi by the palace fountain stood Hard by the Court of Song in quiet mood. The Sultan smiled to see him. "Thy beard shows Thee nearer to the cypress than the rose, "Firdausi. Is thy heart warm and blood cold, Who singest of love and beauty, being old?" Firdausi to the fountain turned his eyes, Grey-mossed and lichened by the centuries. "What maketh this sweet music, sayest thou? The water or the stones?" The Sultan's brow Was overclouded. "Were the water fled, There were no music certainly," he said. "The water singing through the garden runs. Nay, but there is no music in dead stones." Firdausi bowed: "Allah His grace unfold Upon the Sultan! Is the water old?" THE CHENEAUX ISLANDS There is a wistful, lingering regret Ever for those whose feet are set On other paths than where their childhood moved, And, having loved The old colonial hills, no level plain, No tangled forest, the same hope contain, And by the northern lakes I stand unsatisfied, Watching the tremulous shadows start and slide, Hearing the listless waves among the stones, And the low tones Of a breeze that through the hemlocks creeps. Veiled in grey ashes sleeps The campfire, and thin streams Of smoke float off like beckoning dreams Of peaceful men. Around me broods The sense of aged solitudes, Of lonely places where Cold winds have torn blue midnight air And dipped beneath the edges of the leaves To moons unchronicled. We bring The talk of cities and of schools, Yet to these quiet pools, Calm with a thousand silent morns and eves, It seems no alien thing; The shadows of the woods Are brothers to our moods. Nor less in the quick rush of vivid streets, And libraries with long rows of mouldering thought, Is nature, than in green retreats; Whither from year to year I come with eager eye and ear, Hoping, some leafy hour, to feel, In ways of civic feet unsought, A secret from the brown earth steal Into my spirit, and reveal Some wisdom of a larger worth, Some quiet truth of growth and birth; If we, the kindred on the earth, Are kindred with her, to one issue moving on Of melancholy night or shimmering dawn, Surely befits we wanderers wild To her confederate breast be reconciled; Out of her primal sleep we came, And she still dreams; of us that hold Such strenuous course and venture bold, Whom such unknown ambition stirs, Asks of our bright, unsteady flame: What issue ours that is not hers? How came he once to these green isles And channels winding miles and miles, Cross clasped in hand and pale face set, The Jesuit, Père Marquette? To sombre nations, with the blight Of dead leaves in the blood, The eager priest into their solitude And melancholy mood Flashed like a lamp at night In sluggish sleepers' eyes; Out of the east where mornings rise Came like the morning into ashen skies With the east's subtle fire and surprise, And stern beyond his knowledge brought A message other than he thought: "Lo! an edict here from the throne of fate, Whose banners are lifted and armies wait; The fight moves on at the front, it says, And the word hath come after many days: Ye shall walk no more in your ancient ways." Father, the word has come and gone, The torpid races Slumbered, and vanished from their places; And in our ears intoning ring The words of that most weary king In Israel, King Solomon. Over the earth's untroubled face The restless generations pace, Finding their graves regretfully; Is there no crown, nor any worth, For men who build upon the earth What time treads down forgetfully? Unchanged the graven statute lies, The code star-lettered in the skies. It is written there, it is written here; The law that knows not far or near Is sacrifice; And bird and flower, and beast and tree, Kingdom and planet wheeling free Are sacrificed incessantly. From dark, through dusk, toward light, we tread On the thorn-crowned foreheads of the dead. The law says not there is nothing lost; It only says that the end is gain; The gain may be at the helpless cost Of hands that give in vain; And in this world, where many give, None gives the widow's mite save he That, having but one life to live, Gives that one life so utterly. Thou that unknowing didst obey, With straitened thought and clouded eye, The law, we learn at this late day, O Père Marquette, whose war is done, Ours is the charge to bear it on, To hold the veering banner high Until we die, To meet the issue in whose awe Our kindred earth we stand above, If knowing sacrifice is law, We sacrifice ourselves for love. Or are we then such stuff as fills a dream? Some wide-browed spirit dreams us, where he stands Watching the long twilight's stream Below his solemn hands, Whose reverie and shaping thought began Before the stars in their large order ran? Fluid we are, our days flow on, And round them flow the rivers of the sun, As long ago in places where The Halicarnassian wandered with his curious eyes On Egypt's mysteries, And Babylonian gardens of the air Hung green above the city wall. If this were all, if this were all-- If it were all of life to give Our hearts to God and slip away, And if the end for which we live Were simple as the close of day, Were simple as the fathers say, Were simple as their peace was deep Who in the old faith fell asleep! No night bird now makes murmur; in the trees No drowsy chuckle of dark-nested ease. The campfire's last grey embers fall. With dipping prow and shallop sides The slender moon to her mooring rides Over the ridge of Isle La Salle, Under the lee of the world, Her filmy halliards coiled and thin sails furled, And silver clouds about her phantom rudder curled. THE SHEPHERD AND THE KNIGHT SHEPHERD. Sir Knight with stalwart spear and shield, Where ridest thou to-day? The sunlight lies across the field; Thou art weary in the way; Dismount and stay. KNIGHT. Peace to thine house and folds and stalls, I ride upon my quest. I travel until evening falls Whither my Lord deems best, By me unguessed. SHEPHERD. Who is your lord that sends you forth, Good knight, from your own land? He needs must be of royal worth, To whom such warriors stand At his command. KNIGHT. We have not seen His face, we hear A voice that bids us be The servants of an unborn year, Knights of a day that we Shall never see. SHEPHERD. Good reason that ye go astray! Warrior, I fain would learn-- So many young knights wend this way-- What wages they may earn, For none return. KNIGHT. They go before me in the night, They follow after me, They earn the triumph of the right, Their wages are to be Faithful as He. SHEPHERD. Look you, Sir Knight, I take mine ease, Fat are my sheep and kine, I have mine own philosophies, My way of life------ KNIGHT. Is thine, And mine is mine. SHEPHERD. Why, now! The man is gone! Pardie! A silly wage! I trow His lord that pays him mad as he, Fools are a crop will grow Though no man sow. THE HERB OF GRACE To all who fain would pass their days Among old books and quiet ways, And walk with cool, autumnal pace The bypaths of tranquillity, To each his own select desire, To each his old familiar briar And silent friend and chattering fire, Companions in civility. Outside the world goes rolling by, And on the trampling and the cry There comes the long, low mournful sigh Of night winds roaming vagrantly; They see too many sullen sights This side the stars on winter nights; A kind of hopeless Jacobites. --This brand, indeed, smokes fragrantly. The perfect mixture's far to seek; Your pure Virginia, pale and meek, Requires the passion of Perique, The Latakian lyrics; Perfection is the crown that flies The reaching hands and longing eyes, And art demands what life denies To nicotine empirics. Sirs, you remember Omar's choice, Wine, verses, and his lady's voice Making the wilderness rejoice? It needs one more ingredient. A boon, the Persian knew not of, Had made to mellower music move The lips to wine, if not to love, A trifle too obedient. This weed I call the "herb of grace." My reasons are, as some one says, "Between me and my fireplace." Ophelia spoke of rue, you know. "There's rue for you and there's for me, But you must wear it differently." Quite true, of course.--Your pipe I see Draws hard. They sometimes do, you know. Alas, if we in fancy's train To drowse beside our fires are fain, Letting the world slip by amain, Uneager of its verities, Our neighbours will not let us be At peace with inutility. They quote us maxims, two or three, Or similar asperities. I question not a man may bear His still soul walled from noisy care, And walk serene in places where An ancient wrath is denizen; The pilgrim's feet may know no ease, And yet his heart's delight increase, For all ways that are trod in peace Lead upward to God's benison. No less I doubt our age's need Is some of Izaak Walton's creed.-- Your pardon, gentlemen! I breed Impatience with a homily.-- Our flag there were a sombre type, If every star implied a stripe. I wish you all a wholesome pipe, And ingle blinking bonnily. Poor ethics these of mine, I fear, And yet, when our green leaves and sere Have dropped away, perhaps we'll hear These questions answered curiously. The battered book here on my knees? Is Herrick, his "Hesperides." Gold apples from the guarded trees Are stored here not penuriously. The poet of the gurgling phrase And quaint conceits of elder days, Loved holiness and primrose ways About in equal quantities, Wassail and yuletide, feast and fair, Blown petticoats, a child's low prayer; A fine, old pagan joy is there; Some wild-rose muse's haunt it is. Mine herb of grace, that kindred art To all who choose "the better part," Grant us the old world's childlike heart, Now grown an antique rarity! With mayflowers on our swords and shields We'll learn to babble of green fields Like Falstaff, whom good humour yields A place still in its charity. Visions will come at times; I note One with a cool, white, delicate throat; Glory of names that shine remote, From towers of high endeavouring. Care not for these, nor care to roam, Ulysses, o'er the beckoning foam. "Here rest and call content our home" Beside our fire's soft wavering. VERSES FROM "THE CANTICLE OF THE ROAD" I On the open road, with the wind at heel Who is keen of scent and yelping loud, Stout heart and bounding blood we feel, Who follow fancy till day has bowed Her forehead pure to her evening prayer And drawn the veil on her wind-blown hair. Free with the hawk and the wind we stride The open road, and the world is wide From rim to rim, and the skies hung high, And room between for a hawk to fly With tingling wing and lust of the eye. II Broad morning, blue morning, oh, jubilant wind! Lord, Thou hast made our souls to be Fluent and yearning long, as the sea Yearns after the moon, and follows her, With boon of waves and sibilant purr, Round this world and past and o'er All waste sea-bottoms and curving shore, Only once more and again to find The same sea-bottoms and beaten beach, The same sweet moon beyond his reach And drawing him onward as before. III Hark, from his covert what a note The wood thrush whirls from his kingly throat And the bobolink strikes that silver wire He stole from the archangelic choir, From a psaltery played in the glory alone By an amber angel beneath the throne. He strikes it twice, and deep, deep, deep, Where the soul of music lies sleep.-- The rest of his song he learned, Ah me! From a gay little devil, loose and free, Making trouble and love in Arcadie. IV My brother of the dusty feet Dragged eastward as my own go west, Here from the birth of time addressed, And the manner of your coming set To this event, that we might meet, And glance, and pass, and then forget; We meet no more beneath the sun, Yet for an instant we were one. And now once more, as you and I, In dungeons of ourselves we lie, And through the grated windows peer; As though a falling star should shine A moment in your eyes and mine, Then darkness there, and silence here. V Oh, Fons Bandusiæ, babbling spring, From what deep wells come whispering! What message bringest thou, what spells From buried mountain oracles, Thou limpid, lucid mystery? Nay, this one thing I read in thee, That saint or sinner, wise or fool, Who dips hot lips within thy pool, Or last or first, or best or worst, Thou askest only that he thirst, And givest water pure and cool. VI A draught of water from the spring, An apple from the wayside tree, A bit of bread for strengthening, A pipe for grace and policy; And so, by taking time, to find A world that's mainly to one's mind; Some health, some wit in friends a few, Some high behaviours in their kind, Some dispositions to be true. FAUSTINE She muses while the sunbeams creep In slanting piers of light, She muses while the shadows sleep About the fire at night; Hers is the vestal's waiting air, The silence sweet and weird; More wisdom nestles in her hair Than crouched in Nestor's beard; Troops of to-morrows cross her thought In happy Junes and Mays, And files of slow Septembers fraught With priceless yesterdays; And all her hours a thronging host With visitations fill; She gazes on each tranquil ghost With eyes more tranquil still. SOMETIME IT MAY BE Sometime it may be you and I In that deserted yard shall lie, Where memories fade away, Caring no more for our old dreams, Busy with new and alien themes, As saints and sages say. But let our graves be side by side, That passers-by at even-tide May pause a moment's space: "Ah, they were lovers who lie here! Else why these low graves laid so near In this forgotten place?" WHEN ALL THE BROOKS HAVE RUN AWAY When all the brooks have run away, When the sea has left its place, When the dead earth to night and day Turns round a stony face, Let other planets hold the strife And burden now it bears, The toil of ages, lifting life Up those unnumbered stairs, Out of that death no eye has seen To something far and high; But underneath the stairs, Faustine, How melancholy lie The broken shards and left behind, The frustrate and unfit, Who sought the infinite and kind, And found the infinite. ONE HOUR The sun shall go darkly his way, the skies Be lampless of stars, and the moon with sighs Of her years complain, And you and I in the waste shall meet Of a downward gulf with hurrying feet, And remember then Only this shy, encircled place, Only this hour's dimpled grace-- And smile again. HEIRS OF TIME Who grieves because the world is old, Or cares how long it last, If no grey threads are in our gold, The shade our marbles cast, We may not see it creeping near; Time's heirs are you and I, And freely spend each minted year For anything 'twill buy. WHO MAY WITH THE SHREWD HOURS STRIVE? Who may with the shrewd Hours strive? Too thrifty dealers they, That with the one hand blandly give, With the other take away, With here and there some falling flake, Some dust of gold, between The hands that give and hands that take Slipped noiseless and unseen. Ah, comedy of bargainings, Whose gain of years is found A little silt of golden things Forgotten on the ground! LET ME NO MORE A MENDICANT Let me no more a mendicant Without the gate Of the world's kingly palace wait; Morning is spent, The sentinels change and challenge in the tower, Now slant the shadows eastward hour by hour. Open the door, O Seneschal! Within I see them sit, The feasters, daring destiny with wit, Casting to win Or lose their utmost, and men hurry by At offices of confluent energy. Let me not here a mendicant Without the gate Linger from dayspring till the night is late, And there are sent All homeless stars to loiter in the sky, And beggared midnight winds to wander by. CURARE SEPULTOS _Id cinerem aut Manis credis curare sepultos?_ "Do you think their spirits care For their ashes and their tombs?" Do you think they are aware, That the tended roses are all gone with their perfumes, That the footsteps of the mourners no longer linger there, Where the field flower only blooms? They are dead. Let none remember; Let their memories die as they; Clear the dead leaves of November For the careless passing footsteps of April and of May; Be no sign of last night's saddened ember In the flame we raise to-day. Not that our hearts are cold, O dead friends, who were dear to us! Do we our lips withhold From fallen stones and low graves piteous, But only that death's voice is faint and old, And life's imperious. TO-MORROW _Nunc vino pellite curas,_ _Cras ingens iterabimus aequor._ Now drive away your cares with wine To-morrow on the sea we go. To-night for us the tapers shine, To-night the roses blow; To-morrow shall our steps incline Where the wild waters flow. To-morrow! Let to-morrow be Where all this world's to-morrows are Where each must follow faithfully The guiding of his star. The moment that is given me Is mine to make or mar. Drink to me only with your eyes, And I with mine will pay the debt; Drink to my moment ere it dies Divine and fragrant yet: To each to-night its melodies! To-morrow to forget! SNOW After the singing birds are gone And the leaves are parched and low, When the year is old, and the sky is wan, Then comes the snow. Hushed are the world's discordant notes By the soft hand of snow. Each flake how silently it floats; How peaceable, how slow! Ah, when the silver cord is loosed And the golden bowl is broken, And the spirit poured on the air unused, As one has spoken, After the last faint sob of breath And the jar of life's outflow, Over the sunken soul comes death, Soft, cool, like snow. BY THE SEA Ave Maria by the sea, Whose waves go on forevermore! And we, the sheltered of the shore, Have prayed to thee For those in ships that journey far, Where all day long their sails are white, And grey and ghostly in the night Each ship beneath its star. Ave Maria! Be our guide. A watchful star, a port to reach, Ave Maria! give to each Some eventide. Be thou our moon of mystic light, Across the ocean's gloom and wrath Showing the lines of a silver path To watchers in the night. Ave Maria! From the sea The constant litanies arise; The burden of its many sighs Goes up to thee. Our lives make murmur and are vain As ripples bringing tiny shells, That the great sea behind impels, And all its waves complain. IN PORT TO-DAY Now are harboured ships asleep Beside their shadows, Home from the wind-winnowed deep And unscythed meadows Of the bright green gliding sea, From the windward gliding to the lee; And one ship in port to-day On the morrow Southward bound will far away The swift sea furrow; Whom the loud Antarctic waits And frozen citadels with creaking gates. I have a home, though palmer bound For holy lands, I pine for it; I know its sheltering walls around The hearth and lamp that shine for it, The door apart; I shall return on windward seas By blue shores of Illyria To find it filled with melodies From Eden, beyond Syria. It is your heart. AS WE GROW OLD _Tempora labuntur tacitisque senescimus annis._ "Time glides along and we grow old By process of the silent years," More fain the busy hands to fold, More quiet when a tale is told Where death appears. It is not that the feet would shrink From that dark river, lapping, cold, And hid with mists from brink to brink; Only one likes to sit and think, As one grows old. WAYFARERS All honest things in the world we met With welcome, fair and free; A little love is with us yet, A friend, or two, or three; Of the sun and moon and stars were glad, Of the waters of river and sea; We thank Thee, Lord, for the years we've had, For the years that yet shall be. These are our brothers, the winds of the airs, These are our sisters, the flowers; Be near us at evening and hear our prayers, O God, in the late, grey hours. THE HOUSE Such an house I'll build and own, When into old contentment grown With reaping what my youth has sown. The drooping roof be low and wide, Curved like a seashell's inner side; Let vines the patient pillars hide Of that deep porch and ample shade; There let no hurrying step invade, Troubled or anxious or afraid. I pray that birches very white May stand athwart the woods at night, Sweet and slim by late moonlight; And I desire a beech may be Not far away from mine and me, Strong, pure, serene, and matronly; An oak outspread in ample space, Strength out of storms met face to face, In his male girth and wide embrace. Lest all the years go by in vain Let the wind only and the rain Paint my four walls with weather stain, Nor phantom youth be ever there; Of time's significance aware, Time's grey insignia let them bear. A brook before shall glide along, And where its narrow waters throng Make bubble music and low song. A garden on the rearward side Shall hold some flowers of civil pride, And some in meekness dignified. Within my house all men may see How goodly four-square beams may be, How unashamed in honesty. There shall my day to evening creep, Though downward, yet, as rivers sweep By winding ways to the great deep. SONNETS THE HILLS Consider the large heavenward hills, their ease, Their genial age, their wisdom. More and more I lift mine eyes unto the hills which bore Of old their brunt of battle, and have peace. These are the scars were ground across their knees When the earth shuddered and the ice came on. The hills have heaved and shouted and made moan For the hot fire that bit their arteries. Gentle and strong, old veterans of war, Now humble with each flower and woven nest, Friends of the sun and moon and morning star, And fain of the mad north wind's biting jest; My counsellors at unwritten law they are, Teachers of lore and laughter, labour and rest. WORDSWORTH Not for a kindred reason thee we praise With those, who in their minstrelsy are lords Of elfin pipe and witchery of words, Masters of life, who thread its tangled maze, And on strange corners turn their curious gaze; Nor those that delve for jewels in the hoards Of old philosophies, of love's soft ways Sing variously, or chaunt of clashing swords. Rather for sympathy with the silent laws, Which are themselves but sympathies; that the worn Fine here a "still Saint Mary's Lake"; because "The world is too much with us," and through thee "Old Triton" sometimes blows on "wreathed horn" A fitful note, clear from infinity. THE WATER-LILY Our boat drifts idly on the listless river And water-lilies brush its bulging side, In feeble wavings while the waters quiver Like the pale sleeper's pulse before he died. Reach me that water-lily floating near; Its sullen roots give way with dull regret, And now it lies across your fingers, dear, Long, glistening in the sunlight, green and wet. See the gold heart emerging from the dew, Folded in petals of the purest white! Look! through this stem in silent hours it drew Its fragrance from deep waters out of sight, And found among the river oozes cold, This perfume and this whiteness and this gold. THE THRUSH I heard a wood thrush singing late and long In the warm silence of the afternoon, And drew more near to hear his secret croon And intimate close confidence of song, But at the noisy tread of my rude feet The music ceased, the phantom voice was gone," And far away I heard him, in the sweet, Serene recesses singing, and alone. The law is written on the evening skies, The wood thrush sings its beauty and despair; Thou shalt not trespass where the loveliest lies, Nor use the holiest place for common prayer, And surely as God liveth, to the eyes Of him who lifts the veil, He is not there. THE ROMAN WAY I Being so weary then we turned aside From the straight road and Roman Way that goes Too straightly upward, on what breathless snows Its measured lines' austerity descried. "Captain, too stern this granite road!" we cried, And "For whose right in militant array Are led the sons of men this Roman Way?" But the slow avalanche alone replied. Therefore we turned aside, and day by day Men passed us with set faces to the road, And crying, "The Eternal City!" went their way, While in the pleasant valley we abode With all its dewy herbage and the fleet Running of rivulets with silken feet. II And we had large experience with the stars And sweet acquaintance with the clovered sods, The seasons were our epics, filled with wars, And heroes' councils and untroubled gods. The groves elegiac, rivers pastoral, Meadows athrill with sudden tragedies, With loves of larks aloft and lyrical, And busy comedy of the citizen bees. Still of their genial fellowship who wait The spring's incoming as a marriage morn Whom fall and winter winds will make elate As bugles a young hunter, we were borne Along the casual current of each day Apart from those who trod the Roman Way. III And in the main of living we were glad That we had left the highway and had grown To wear our tolerance as a silken gown And smile at those who went in armour clad; And old age came upon us, grey and sad, Stealthy and slow, and passed and passed again The onward faces of swift journeying men, Keen with the life of some large Iliad. Now--for our heads are stricken, our lives are As flowers sodden in the winter rain-- We, who alive are dead--and whether far Beyond the snows are blissful births of pain, Or Rome, or Caesar, we know not--we say, "There is one way of life, the Roman Way." FOLLY Blithe little maid with lifted lips, Red as a bunch of holly, What! May I hold your finger tips, Dear little sweetheart, Folly? List to a whisper in your ear, Pink little ear, dear Folly, While you were gone some one was here, The Lady Melancholy. Yes, and she sat in your old place, This Lady Melancholy. Ah, well! but she had a lovely face, Sweet as your face, sweet Folly. CONCERNING TABITHA'S DANCING OF THE MINUET Tabitha, sweet Tabitha, I never can forget, Nor how the music sounded, nor how our glances met, When underneath the swinging lamps we danced the minuet. The stately bow, the dainty poise, and in the music slips. Did she linger for a moment, while I held her finger tips, And wondered if she'd ever let me touch them to my lips? And Tabitha wore powdered hair and dressed in quaint brocade, A tiny patch on either cheek just where the dimple played; The little shoe I noticed too, and clocks, I am afraid. The music ceased. I led her softly smiling to the door. A pause, a rustling courtesy down almost to the floor, And Tabitha, sweet Tabitha, mine eyes beheld no more. I've trod in many measures since with widow, wife, and maid, In every kind of satin, silk, and spangled lace arrayed, And through it all have heard the fall of Tabitha's brocade. AN IDYL OF THE WOOD Janet and I went jesting To the wood, to the wood, In a visionary, questing, Idle mood. "Ah! my heart," I said, "it teaches I shall find among the beeches A white nymph in the green reaches Of the wood."-- "Oh, you will! Then I'll discover, In the wood, in the wood, A fairy prince and lover, Or as good. He shall kneel and-------" "Now I spy light! She shall meet me in the shy light Of the twittering leaves and twilight Of the wood, "And I'll say, 'Here love convinces Of his powers, of his powers.'"-- "And he'll say, 'Thou shalt be Princess Of the Flowers.'"-- "And I'll whisper, 'Though thou shinest As a goddess, love's divinest, Loveless, lovely, lo! thou pinest In thy bowers.'"-- And she laughed, with, "Farewell, poet,"-- And I said, "Farewell, maid. Seek love alone, alone, and know it Unafraid."-- Was it hours I went unwitting, Fancy into fancy fitting, Pallid flowers, and dim birds flitting, As I strayed? Till at length, where in profusion Low and wet, wild and wet, Fern and branch in shy confusion Wooed and met, There I saw her, lifting, peeping-- "Dryad?"--"Prince?"--come whispering, creeping. Then her eyes were lit and leaping. 'Twas Janet! Lit and leaping with suggestions. "Why, it's you!"--"Why, it's you!" "Yes, but, Jenny, now the question's, Is it true? Am I princely to your seeming? You the dryad of my dreaming, Born of beech leaves and the gleaming Of the dew?" And we put it to the testing Of a kiss, of a kiss, And the jesting and the questing Came to this. "Tested, tried, and proven neatly, I should call it true completely." And Janet said softly, sweetly,. "So it is." Oh, the glamour and the glimmer Of the wood, of the wood, Where the shadow and the shimmer Smile and brood, Where the lips of love laugh folly, And the eyes of love are holy, In the radiant melancholy Of the wood! PHYLLIS AND CORYDON Phyllis took a red rose from the tangles of her hair,-- Time, the Golden Age; the place, Arcadia, anywhere,-- Phyllis laughed, the saucy jade: "Sir Shepherd, wilt have this, Or"--Bashful god of skipping lambs and oaten reeds! --"a kiss?" Bethink thee, gentle Corydon! A rose lasts all night long, A kiss but slips from off your lips like a thrush's evening song. A kiss that goes, where no one knows! A rose, a crimson rose! Corydon made his choice and took--Well, which do you suppose? MAYING _Get up, sweet-slug-a-bed!_--Herrick. _And Phillida with garlands gaye Was made the lady of the Maye._--Nicholas Breton. Come, Phillida, come! for the hours are fleet, And sweet are the soft meadow murmurs, and sweet Are the merry May flowers that long for thy feet. Come, Phillida, come! They are waiting to make thee their Lady of May, And have twined in the midst of the marigolds gay A little red flower; for pity, they say; Thou knowest for whom. And lovers are sighing among the green brake, And birds in their flying soft madrigals make. Hark! hear the girls crying, and all for thy sake. Come, Phillida, come! TWO LITTLE MAIDS Two little maids went roaming, roaming, All in the fields alone. "Suppose that a boy were coming, coming, Over the fields," said one, said one, To the other little maid said one. Then the second little maid fell dreaming, dreaming. "He'll bring me a rose," said she. "He won't! You are always scheming, scheming, As horrid as you can be!" Dear me! As horrid as she could be. Two little maids in a fury, fury, No little boy in view, And this is the end of the story. Sorry! Why didn't they make it two? Eheu! So simple to make him two! TWENTY YEARS HENCE Twenty years hence, some fading day, Will you through this green orchard stray, With thoughts afar On golden hours we freely spent, And bought the merchandise, content, At Time's bazaar? You'll say--"He puffed the smoke in rings; We talked of books, and other things; Devised a plot; Together wove some idle rhymes Of coloured threads that matched sometimes, And sometimes not. "The oriole from his chosen tree Made better poetry than we, About his nest. Soft paced the hours like clouds, until There rose a poem better still Far in the west." Twenty years hence! Across the sky The swift incessant swallows fly. You'll not forget The bees, nor how the oriole sung, Twenty years since, when we were young, His chansonette? "Margaret, Margaret!" Some one calls! "Margaret, come. The night dew falls, The grass is wet." Twenty years hence--The lawn is dark, And the whip-poor-wills are wailing. Hark! "Margaret! Margaret!" WITHOUT THE GATE Spectral birches, slim and white, Stand apart in the cool moonlight, The faint thin cries Of the night arise And the stars are out in companies. They are but lamps on your palace stair, My queen of the night with dusky hair, Whose heart is a rose In a garden close And the gate is shut where the highway goes. Margaret, Margaret, early and late I knock and whisper without the gate. No night wind blows, Still is the rose, Noiseless the flowing moonlight flows. I knock and listen. No sound is heard. The rose in its fragrance sleeps unstirred. Early and late I watch and wait For the love of a rose by a garden gate. ANCIEN M'SIEU PIERRE Was it, Nannette, so long ago? T rois vingt et--Chut! How time does go! You must be dead! What do I know! 'Twas long ago. Your eyes--ah, I remember now! They seemed to say, "But, Pierre, you're so, So bad!" And that was long ago, Long, long ago. Yes, they were blue. And you stood there, And then the wind blew out your hair. How beautiful! how soft! how fair, Nannette, your hair! So long it takes one to forget! I have been glad, and am, and yet, Sometimes--it's strange--one's eyes are wet. Nannette! Nannette! What's that! I dream! Did some one speak? Her hair was blown across my cheek. It seemed so. How the shutters creak! Did some one speak? CHRISTMAS EVE The abbot was counting his beads in his cell With a flagon beside him. The abbot drank well, And emptied it oft ere the first matin bell. All quiet, all well. "Hist! Brother Menander! A word in thine ear. I'll show thee a way, if the corridor's clear, To the abbot's own cellar. The abbot may hear? Never fear! Never fear!" Oh, Brother Menander, oh, bold Brother John, Be chary, call wary on Mary her Son! Ah, Jesu, the moon the cold snow shines on, How bitter and wan! So roundly they drank till the first matin bell, And were caught by the abbot, as chronicles tell. What would you! 'Twas Christmas Eve. So it befell. And all quiet and well. THE CAROL SINGER Gentles all, or knights or ladies, Happiness be yours, alway; Dance and carolling our trade is, But we sing for love to-day. Merry lads and dainty lasses Trip beneath the mistletoe, Dance to sound of clinking glasses. Bells are ringing in the snow. By the look that on your face is, Sweet, my song is worth a kiss. There is weeping in cold places, We must laugh the more in this. Gentles all, or knights or ladies, Happiness is yours, alway; Dance and carolling our trade is, But we sing for love to-day. ARCADIE. I On the road to Arcadie, Past the mountains, past the sea, Past the crossways soberly To Arcadie, to Arcadie. Pilgrims of a dream are we, Knowing not if true it be, But we press on silently To Arcadie, to Arcadie. Arcadie! Oh, Arcadie! We are lost, we cannot see! For the dust blows bitterly On the road to Arcadie. ARCADIE. II I travelled many winding ways That weary seemed to me, In cloudy nights and windy days To find old Arcadie. The shepherds by the wayside wept "We fain would go with thee, An 'twere not for the sheep we kept, To far off Arcadie." Along the selfsame way I fare And the shepherds ask of me, "Hast thou seen the sweet land anywhere?" "Yea, but the people dwelling there Know not 'tis Arcadie." MARTIAL TO PLINY _Cum rosa regnat, cum madent capilli,_ _Nunc me vel rigidi legant Catones._ Come not with wine drops on the hair To Pliny's gates, To whom all earnest thoughts repair, And quiet Wisdom entered there His bidding waits. When the rose is queen and the hair is wet With wine and oil, Read Martial's verses, and forget That life is stern, and time a debt To pay with toil. LAST YEAR'S NEST There are no birds in last year's nest. Where snows have been, There is no place for love to rest And nestle in. Mine were the summer songs, but there Fell the white cold. No feathery thoughts now nestle where They did of old. EPILOGUE TO A BOOK OF UNIMPORTANT VERSES An unfair title that forestalls The judgment of my peers, An after title that recalls The hopes of other years, When words were flowers beside the way, And the world in rhythm ran, And grief was dainty, and love was play, And the breath of death, would scan, And all the long results of time Were captives of a happy rhyme. FINIS The wind and the rain And the sunshine again And the murmur of flies at the window pane! I weave my rhymes In the morning betimes, And it all creeps in with the faint word chimes. For the wind is there, Wet skies and fair, And the buzz of the flies there too somewhere, And there is the beat Of the passers' feet Gone echoing down the hidden street. 
52457	----	provided by the Internet Archive IN VARIOUS MOODS Poems And Verses By Irving Bacheller Harper & Brothers Publishers New York And London MCMX [Illustration: 0002] [Illustration: 0007] [Illustration: 0010] IN VARIOUS MOODS THE SOWERS _Written for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Founding of St. Lawrence University_ I know the hills that lift the distant plain, The college hall--the spirit of its throngs, The meadows and the waving fields of grain, Full well I know their colors and their songs. I know the storied gates where love was told, The grove where walked the muses and the seers, The river, dark or touched with light of gold, Or slow, or swift so like the flowing years. I know not these who sadly sit them down And while the night in half-forgotten days; I know not these who wear the hoary crown And find a pathos in the merry lays. Here Memory, with old wisdom on her lips, A finger points at each familiar name-- Some writ on water, stone or stranded ships, Some in the music of the trump of fame. Here oft, I think, beloved voices call Behind a weathered door 'neath ancient trees. I hear sad echoes in the empty hall, The wide world's lyric in the harping breeze. It sings of them I loved and left of old, Of my fond hope to bring a worthy prize-- Some well-earned token, better far than gold, And lay it humbly down before their eyes. And tell them it were rightly theirs--not mine, An harvest come of their own word and deed; I strove with tares that threatened my design To make the crop as noble as the seed. So they might see it paid--that life they knew-- A toilsome web and knit of many a skein, With love's sweet sacrifice all woven through, And broken threads of hope and joy and pain. On root-bound acres, pent with rocks and stones, Their hope of wealth and leisure slowly died. They gave their strength in toil that racked their bones, They gave their youth, their beauty, and their pride. Ere Nature's last defence had been withdrawn That those they loved might have what they could not-- The power of learning wedded to their brawn And to the simple virtue there begot. My college! Once--it was a day of old-- I saw thy panes aglow with sunset fire And heard the story of thy purpose told And felt the tide of infinite desire. In thee I saw the gates of mystery That led to dream-lit, vast, inviting lands-- Far backward to the bourne of history And forward to the House not made with hands. You gave the husbandman a richer yield Than any that his granary may hold; You called his children from the shop and field, Taught them to sow and reap an undredfold. To sow the seed of truth and hope and peace, And take the root of error from the sod; To be of those who make the sure increase, Forever growing, in the lands of God. THE NEW WORLD _Read before the Lambda Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, June 24, 1902_ Idle gods of Old Olympus--Zeus and his immortal clan, Grown in stature, grace and wisdom, meekly serve the will of man. Every elemental giant has been trained to seek and raise Gates of the "impossible" that lead to undiscovered ways. Man hath come to stranger things than ever bard or prophet saw. Lo, he sits in judgment on the gods and doth amend their law. Now reality with wonder-deed of ancient fable teems-- Fact is wrought of golden fancy from the old Homeric dreams. Zeus, with thought to load the fulmen gathered for his mighty sling, Hurls across the ocean desert as 'twere ut a pebble-fling; Titans move the gathered harvests, push the loaded ship and train, Rushing swiftly 'twixt horizons, shoulder to the hurricane. Hermes, of the winged sandal, strides from midday into night. Pallas, with a nobler passion, turns the hero from his fight. Vulcan melts the sundered mountain into girder, beam and frieze. Where the mighty wheel is turning hear the groan of Hercules. Eyes of man, forever reaching where immensity envails, View the ships of God in full career with light upon their sails. Read the tonnage, log, and compass--measure each magnetic chain Fastened to the fiery engine towing in the upper main. Man hath searched the small infernos, narrow as a needle's eye, Rent the veil of littleness 'neath which unnumbered dragons lie. Conquered pain with halted feeling, baned the falling House of Life, As with breeding rats infested, ravening in bloody strife. Change hath shorn the distances from little unto mighty things-- Aye, from man to God, from poor to rich, from peasants unto kings. Justice, keen-eyed, Saxon-hearted, scans the records of the world, Makes the heartless tyrant tremble when her stem rebuke is hurled. Thought-ways, reaching under oceans or above the mountain height, Drain to distant, darkened realms the ceaseless overflow of light. In the shortened ways of travel Charity shall seek her goal, Find the love her burden merits in the commerce of the soul. Right must rule in earth and heaven, though its coming here be slow; Gods must grow in grace and wisdom as the mind of man doth grow; Law and Prophet be forgotten, deities uprise and fall Till one God, one hope, one rule of life be great enough for all. FAITH _Being some words of counsel from an old Yankee to his son Bill when the latter is about to enter college._ Faith, Bill? You remember how ye used to wake an' cry, An' when I lit a candle how the bugaboos 'u'd fly? Well, faith is like a father in the dark of every night-- It tells ye not t' be afraid, an' mebbe strikes a light. Now, don't expect too much o' God, it wouldn't be quite fair If fer anything ye wanted ye could only swap a prayer; I'd pray fer yours, an' you fer mine, an' Deacon Henry Hospur, He wouldn't hev a thing t' do but lay abed an' prosper. If all things come so easy, Bill, they'd hev but little worth, An' some one with a gift o' prayer 'u'd mebbe own the earth. It's the toil ye give t' git a thing--the sweat an' blood an' care-- That makes the kind o' argument that ought to back yer prayer. Fer the record o' yer doin'--I believe the soul is planned With some self-workin' register t' tell jest how ye stand. An' it won't take any cipherin' t' show, that fearful day, If ye've multiplied yer talents well, er thrown 'em all away. When yer feet are on the summit, an' the wide horizon clears, An' ye look back on yer pathway windin' thro' the vale o' tears; When ye see how much ye've trespassed, an' how fur ye've gone astray, Ye'll know the way o' Providence ain't apt t' be _your_ way. God knows as much as can be known, but I don't think it's true. He knows of all the dangers in the path o' me an' you. If I shet my eyes an' hurl a stun that kills--the King o' Siam, The chances are that God 'll be as much surprised as I am. If ye pray with faith _believin'_, why, ye'll certainly receive, But that God 'll break His own good law is more 'n I'll believe. If it grieves Him when a sparrow falls, it's sure as anything, He'd hev turned the arrow, if He could, that broke the sparrow's wing. Ye can read old Nature's history that's writ in rocks an' stones, Ye can see her throbbin' vitals an' her mighty rack o' bones, But the soul o' her--the livin' God, a little child may know No lens er rule o' cipherin' can ever hope t' show. There's a part o' God's creation very handy t' yer view, All the truth o' life is in it an' remember, Bill, it's _you_. An' after all yer science ye must look up in yer mind An' learn its own astronomy the star o' peace t' find. There's good old Aunt Samanthy Jane that all her journey long Has led her heart to labor with a reveille of song. Her folks hev robbed an' left her, but her faith in goodness grows; She hasn't any larnin', but I tell ye, Bill, _she_ knows! She's hed her share o' troubles; I remember well the day We took her t' the poor-house--she was singin' all the way. Ye needn't be afraid t' come where stormy Jordan flows, If all the l'arnin' ye can git has taught ye half _she_ knows. There's a many big departments in this ancient school o' God, An' ye keep right on a l'arnin' till ye lay beneath the sod, All the books an' apperaytus, all the wisdom o' the seers Will be jest a preparation fer the study o' the years. BALLAD OF THE SABRE CROSS AND 7 A troop of sorrels led by Vic and then a troop of bays, In the backward ranks of the foaming flanks a double troop of grays; The horses are galloping muzzle to tail, and back of the waving manes The troopers sit, their brows all knit, a left hand on the reins. Their hats are gray, and their shirts of blue have a sabre cross and 7, And little they know, when the trumpeters blow, they'll halt at the gates of heaven. Their colors have dipped at the top of a ridge-- how the long line of cavalry waves!-- And over the hills, at a gallop that kills, they are riding to get to their graves. "I heard the scouts jabber all night," said one; "they peppered my dreams with alarm. "That old Ree scout had his medicine out an' was tryin' to fix up a charm." There are miles of tepees just ahead, and the warriors in hollow and vale Lie low in the grass till the troopers pass and then they creep over the trail. The trumpets have sounded--the General shouts! He pulls up and turns to the rear; "We can't go back--they've covered our track-- we've got t' fight 'em here." He rushes a troop to the point of the ridge, where the valley opens wide, And Smith deploys a line of the boys to stop the coming tide. A fire flames up on the skirt of the hills; in every deep ravine The savages yell, like the fiends of hell, behind a smoky screen. "Where's Reno?" said Custer. "Why don't he charge? It isn't a time to dally!" And he waves his hat, this way and that, as he looks across the valley. There's a wild stampede of horses; every man in the skirmish line Stands at his post as a howling host rush up the steep incline. Their rifles answer a deadly fire and they fall with a fighting frown, Till two by two, in a row of blue, the skirmish line is down. A trooper stood over his wounded mate. "No use o' yer tryin't' fight, "Blow out yer brains--you'll suffer hell-pains when ye go to the torture to-night. "We tackled too much; 'twas a desperate game-- I knowed we never could win it. "Custer is dead--they're all of 'em dead an' I shall be dead in a minute." They're all of them down at the top of the ridge; the sabre cross and 7 On many a breast, as it lies at rest, is turned to the smoky heaven. Three wounded men are up and away; they're running hard for their lives, While bloody corses of riders and horses are quivering under the knives. Some troopers watch from a distant hill with hope that never tires; [Illustration: 0034] There's a reeling dance on the river's edge; its echoes fill the night; In the valley dim its shadows swim on a lengthening pool of light. The scattered troops of Reno look and listen with bated breath, While bugle strains on lonely plains are searching the valley of death. [Illustration: 0035] "What's that like tumbled grave-stones on the hilltop there ahead?" Said the trooper peering through his glass, "My God! sir, it's the dead! "How white they look! How white they look! they've killed 'em--every one! "An' they're stripped as bare as babies an' they're rotting in the sun." And Custer--back of the tumbled line on a slope of the ridge we found him; And three men deep in a bloody heap, they fell as they rallied 'round him. The plains lay brown, like a halted sea held firm by the leash of God; In the rolling waves we dug their graves and left them under the sod. WHISPERIN' BILL So ye 're runnin' fer Congress, mister? Le 'me tell ye 'bout my son-- Might make you fellers carefuller down there in Washington-- He clings to his rifle an' uniform--folks call him Whisperin' Bill; An' I tell ye the war ain't over yit up here on Bowman's Hill. This dooryard is his battle-field--le's see, he was nigh sixteen When Sumter fell, an' as likely a boy as ever this world has seen; An' what with the news o' battles lost, the speeches an' all the noise, I guess ev'ry farm in the neighborhood lost a part of its crop o' boys. 'T was harvest time when Bill left home; ev'ry stalk in the fields o' rye Seemed to stan' tiptoe to see him off an' wave him a fond good-bye; His sweetheart was here with some other gals--the sassy little miss! An' purtendin' she wanted to whisper 'n his ear, she give him a rousin' kiss. Oh, he was a han'some feller! an' tender an' brave an' smart, An' though he was bigger 'n I was, the boy had a woman's heart. I couldn't control my feelin's, but I tried with all my might, An' his mother an' me stood a-cryin' till Bill was out o' sight. His mother she often tol' him, when she knew he was goin' away, That God would take care o' him, maybe, if he didn't fergit to pray; An' on the bloodiest battle-fields, when bullets whizzed in the air, An' Bill was a-fightin' desperit, he used to whisper a prayer. Oh, his comrades has often tol' me that Bill never flinched a bit When every second a gap in the ranks tol' where a ball had hit. An' one night, when the field was covered with the awful harvest o' war, They found my boy 'mongst the martyrs o' the cause he was fightin' for. His fingers was clutched in the dewy grass--oh, no, sir, he wasn't dead, But he lay kind o' helpless an' crazy with a rifleball in his head; An' he trembled with the battle-fear as he lay there in the dew; An' he whispered as he tried to rise: "God 'll take care o' you." An officer wrote an' toL' us how the boy had been hurt in the fight, But he said the doctors reckoned they could bring him around all right. An' then we heard from a neighbor, disabled at Malvern Hill, That he thought in the course of a week or so he'd be comin' home with Bill. We was that anxious t' see him we'd set up an' talk o' nights Till the break o' day had dimmed the stars an' put out the Northern Lights; We waited an' watched fer a month or more, an' the summer was nearly past, When a letter come one day that said they'd started fer home at last. I'll never fergit the day Bill come--'twas harvest time again-- An' the air blown over the yeller fields was sweet with the scent o' the grain; The dooryard was full o' the neighbors, who had come to share our joy, An' all of us sent up a mighty cheer at the sight o' that soldier boy. An' all of a sudden somebody said: "My God! don't the boy know his mother?" An' Bill stood a-whisperin', fearful like, an' a-starin' from one to another; "Don't be afraid, Bill," says he to himself, as he stood in his coat o' blue, "Why, God 'll take care o' you, Bill, God 'll take care o' you." He seemed to be loadin' an' firin' a gun, an' to act like a man who hears The awful roar o' the battle-field a-soundin' in his ears; Ten thousan' ghosts o' that bloody day was marchin' through his brain An' his feet they kind o' picked their way as if they felt the slain. An' I grabbed his hand, an' says I to Bill, "Don't ye 'member me? I'm yer father--don't ye know me? How frightened ye seem to be!" But the boy kep' a-whisperin' to himself, as if 'twas all he knew, "God'll take o' you, Bill, God'll take care o' you." He's never known us since that day, nor his sweetheart, an' never will; Father an' mother an' sweetheart are all the same to Bill. An' he groans like a wounded soldier, sometimes the whole night through, An' we smooth his head, an' say: "Yes, Bill, He 'll surely take care o' you." Ye can stop a war in a minute, but when can ye stop the groans? Fer ye've broke our hearts an' sapped our blood an' plucked away our bones. An' ye've filled our souls with bitterness that goes from sire to son, So ye best be kind o' careful down there in Washington. THE RED DEW _Being some small account of the war experience of an East River pilot, whose boat was the Susquehanna, familiarily known as the Susq, and who lost his leg and more at Gettysburg._ At de break o' day I goes t' bed, an' I goes to work at dusk, Fer ev'ry night dat a boat can run I takes de wheel o' de Susq. De nights is long in de pilot-house? Well, now d'ye hear me speakin'? No night is long since de one I spent wid me sta'b'ard side a-leakin'. I'd gone t' de war an' was all stove in, an' I seen how a little white hand Can take holt of a great big chump like me an' make him drop his sand. An' her face! De face o' de Holy Mary warn't any sweeter 'n hern! If ye like I'll set de wheel o' me mind an' let 'er drift astern. We'd fit all day till de sun was low an' I t'ought de war was fun, Till a big ball skun de side o' me face an' smashed de end o' me gun. Den anodder one kicked me foot off--see? an' I tell ye it done it cunnin', An' I trun meself in de grass, kerplunk, but me mind kep' on a-runnin'. Next I knowed I was feelin' o' somebody's face, an' I seen de poor devil was cryin', An' he tumbled all over me tryin't' r'ise, an' he cussed an' kep' turnin' an' tryin'; "Good Gawd!" sez I, "what's de matter wid you? Shut up yer face an' hark," An' s' help me, de odder man's face was mine an' I was alone in de dark. When I lay wid me back ag'in de world I seen how little I was An' I knowed, fer de firs' time in me life, how deep an' broad de sky was; An' me mind kep' a-wanderin' off 'n de night, till it stopped where de Bowery ends, An' come back a-sighin' an' says t' me dat it couldn't find no friends. Den I fumbled me breat' till I cert'inly t'ought I never could ketch it ag'in. If I'd bin a-bawlin' t' git a prize ye bet cher life I'd 'a' win. If ye're dyin' an' ain't no home in de world an' yer fr'ends is all on de shelf, An' dere's nobody else t' bawl fer ye--ye're goin' t' bawl fer yerself. De sun peeped over de hills at last, an' as soon as I seen his rim De dew in de valley was all afire wid a sort o' a ruby glim. De blue coats lay in de tumbled grass--some stirrin' but most o' 'em dead-- 'Pon me word, de poor devils had bled so much, de dew in de valley were red! An' what d'ye t'ink? de nex' t'ing I knowed, a lady had holt o' me hand, An' smoothed de frills all out o' me face an' brushed off de dew an' de sand. No lady had ever mammied me an' I were scairt so I dassent say boo, I warn't in no shape t' help meself an' I didn't know what she'd do. An' me heart was a-t'umpin' ag'in me ribs, an' me lettin' on I was dead! Till she put down her cheek so close to me mug dat I had t' move me head. An' she lifted me head wid her sof' white hands an' I don't know all she done; I was blubberin' so dat I couldn't see, but I knowed I were havin' fun. I lay wid me head 'n de lady's lap while de doctors cut an' sawed, An' dey hurted me so dat me eyes was sot, but I never cussed er jawed. An' she patted me cheek an' spoke so sof' dat I didn't move a peg, An' I t'ought if dey'd let me lay dere awhile dey could saw off de odder leg. Fer de loss o' me leg, t'ree times a year, I gets me little wad, But dere ain't any pension fer losin' yer heart unless it comes from Gawd. If anythin' busts ye there, me boy, I t'ink ye'll be apt t' find Ye'll either drop out o' de game o' life, er else go lame in yer mind. I never c'u'd know de reason why, till de lady helt me head, Dat a man 'll go broke fer de woman he loves er mebbe fight till he's dead. When I t'inks dat I never had no friends an' what am I livin' fer? I fergits dat I'm holdin' de wheel o' de Susq, an' I sets an' t'inks o' her. An' I t'inks how gentle she spoke t' me, an' I t'inks o' her sof', white hand, An' de feel o' her fingers on me face when she brushed off de dew an' de sand. An' I set a-t'inkin' an' turnin' me wheel, sometimes de whole night t'rough, An' de good Gawd knows I'd a giv' me life, if she'd only 'a' loved me too. THE BABY CORPS _Being some account of the little cadets of the Virginia Military Institute, who stood the examination of war at New Market, Va. May 15, 1864, in the front line of the Confederate forces, where more than three hundred answered to their names and all were perfect._ We were only a lot of little boys--they called us a baby corps-- At the Institute in Lexington in the winter of '64; And the New Year brought to the stricken South no end of the war in sight, But we thought we could whip the North in a week if they'd only let us fight. One night when the boys were all abed we heard the long roll beat, And quickly the walls of the building shook with the tread of hurrying feet; And when the battalion stood in line we heard the welcome warning: "Breckinridge needs the help o' the corps; be ready to march in the morning." And many a boastful tale was told, through the lingering hours of night, And the teller fenced with airy foes and showed how heroes fight. And notes of love were written with many a fevered sigh, That breathed the solemn sacrifice of those about to die. Some sat in nature's uniform patching their suits of gray, And some stood squinting across their guns in a darkly suggestive way. The battalion was off on the Staunton pike as soon as the sun had risen, And we turned and cheered for the Institute, but yesterday a prison. At Staunton the soldiers chaffed us, and the girls of the city schools Giggled and flirted around the corps till we felt like a lot of fools; They threw us kisses and tiny drums and a volley of baby rattles, 'Til we thought that the fire of ridicule was worse than the fire of battles. We made our escape in the early dawn, and, camping the second night, Were well on our way to the seat of war, with Harrisonburg in sight; And the troopers who met us, riding fast from the thick of the army hives, Said: "Sigel has come with an awful force, and ye'll have to fight fer yer lives." But we wanted to fight, and the peril of war never weakened our young desires, And the third day out we camped at dusk in sight of the picket fires; Our thoughts, wing-weary with homeward flight, went astray in the gloomy skies, And our hearts were beating a reveille whenever we closed our eyes. "Hark! what's that? The sentry call?" (A galloping horseman comes.) "Hey, boys! Get up! There's something wrong! Don't ye hear 'em a-thumpin' the drums?" Said the captain, who sat in the light of the fire tying his muddy shoes: "We must toe the line of the Yankees soon, an' we haven't much time to lose. "Hats off!" And we all stood silent while the captain raised his hand And prayed, imploring the God of war to favor his little band. His voice went out in a whisper at last, and then without further remark He bade the battalion form in fours, and led us away in the dark. We lamed our legs on the heavy road and a long rain cooled our blood And every time we raised a foot we could hear the suck of the mud. At noon we came--a weary lot--to the top of a big clay hill, And below were miles of infantry--the whole bunch standing still. The league-long hills are striped with blue, the valley is lined with gray, And between the armies of North and South are blossoming fields of May. There's a mighty cheer in the Southern host as, led by the fife and drum, To the front of the lines with a fearless tread our baby cadets have come. "Forward!" The air is quaking now; a shrill- voiced, angry yell Answers the roar of the musketry and the scream of the rifled shell. The gray ranks rushing, horse and foot, at the flaming wall of blue Break a hole in its centre, and some one shouts: "See the little cadets go through!" A shell shoots out of its hood of smoke, and slows mid-air and leaps At our corps that is crossing a field of wheat, and we stagger and fall in heaps; We close the ranks, and they break again, when a dozen more fall dying; And some too hurt to use their guns stand up with the others trying. "Lie down an' give 'em a volley, boys--quick there, every one! "Lie down, you little devils!--Down! It's better to die than run." And huddling under the tender wheat, the living lay down with the dead, And you couldn't have lifted your finger then without touching a piece of lead. "Look up in the sky and see the shells go over a-whiskin' their tails"; "Better not lift yer hand too high or the bullets 'll trim yer nails." Said the captain, "Forward, you who can!" In a jiffy I'm off on my feet An' up to their muzzles a-clubbin' my gun, an' the Yanks have begun a retreat. Said a wounded boy, peering over the grain, "Hurrah! See our banner a-flyin'! "Wish I was there, but I can't get up--I wonder if _I'm_ a-dyin'? "O Jim! did you ever hear of a man that lived that was hit in the head? "Say, Jim! did you ever hear of a man that lived-- My God! Jim's dead!" A mist, like a web that is heavy with prey, is caught in the green o' the fields; It breaks and is parted as if a soul were struggling where it yields; The twilight deepens and hushes all, save the beat beating of distant drums, And over the shuddering deep of the air a wave of silence comes. By lantern light we found the boys where under the wheat they lay As if sleep--soft-fingered, compelling sleep!--had come in the midst of play. The captain said of the bloody charge and the soldiers who fought so well: "The army had to follow the boys if they entered the flames o' hell." PICTURE, SOUND AND SONG The battle roar is ended and the twilight falls again, The bugles have blown, the hosts have flown save they in the dusky grain. And lo! the shaking barley tells where the wounded writhe and roll; With a panting breath at the pass of death the body fights for the soul. Some rise to retreat and they die on their feet in this terrible fight for the soul. And horses urged by the spur of Death are galloping over the grain; Their hoofs are red, their riders are dead, and loose are the stirrup and rein. A ghost in the saddle is riding them down, the spurs of Pain at his heels; They are cut to the bone, they rush and they groan, as a wake in the barley reels: And faces rise with haggard eyes where the wake in the barley reels. The blue and the gray lie face to face and their fingers harrow the loam, There's a sob and a prayer in the smoky air as their winged thoughts fly home. The Devil of war has dimmed the sky with the breath of his iron lungs, And he gluts his ear on the note of fear in the cry of the fevered tongues; Like the toll of a bell at the gate of hell is the wail of the fevered tongues. One rising, walked from the bullet shock, seems to reel 'neath the weight of his head, He feels for his gun and starts to run and falls in a hollow--dead. The wagons are coming and over each the light of a lantern swings, And a holy thought to the soul is brought, as the voice of a driver sings; And the cry of pain in the trampled grain is hushed as the driver sings: My country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing. THE VEN'SON-TREE The busy cranes go back an' forth, a-ploughin' up the sky, The wild goose drag comes down the wind an' goes a-roarin' by; The song-birds sow their music in the blue fields over me An' it seems to grow up into thoughts about the ven'son-tree. The apple-blossoms scatter down--a scented summer snow, An' man an' wind an' cloud an' sun have all begun to sow. The green hopes come a-sproutin' up somewhere inside o' me, An' it's time we ought to see the sprouts upon the ven'son-tree. The velvet leaves the willow an' adorns the ven'son bough, There's new silk in the tree-top an' the coat o' horse an' cow. The woods are trimmed fer weddin's, an' are all in Sunday clo's, An' the bark upon the ven'son-tree is redder than a rose. The days are still an' smoky, an' the nights are growin' cold, The maples are a-drippin' blood, the beeches drippin' gold; The briers are above my head, the brakes above my knee, An' the bark is gettin' kind o' blue upon the ven'son- tree. What makes the big trees shake an' groan as if they all had sinned? 'Tis God A'mighty's reaper with the horses o' the wind. He will hitch with chains o' lightnin', He will urge with thunder call, He will try the rotten-hearted till they reel an' break an' fall. The leaves are driftin' in the breeze, an' gathered where they lie Are the colors o' the sunset an' the smell o' the windy sky; The squirrels whisk, with loaded mouths, an' stop an' say to me: "It's time to gether in the fruit upon the ven'son- tree." "What makes ye look so anxious an' what makes ye speak so low?" "It's 'cause I'm thinkin' of a place where I'm a-goin' to go. "This here I've, been a-tinkerin' which lays acrost my knee "Is the axe that I'm a-usin' fer to fell the ven'son- tree." I've polished up the iron an' I've covered it with ile, Its bit is only half an inch, its helve is half a mile. (The singer blows an imitation of the startled deer) "Whew! what's that so pesky--why, it kind o' frightened me?" "It's the wind a blowin' through the top o' the cute ol' ven'son-tree." HIM AN' ME _Being a story of the Adirondacks told by me in the words of him who had borne with buck-fever and bad marksmanship until, having been long out of meat and patiencey he put his confidence in me and we sallied forth._ We'd greased our tongues with bacon 'til they'd shy at food an' fork An' the trails o' thought were slippery an' slopin' towards New York; An' our gizzards shook an' trembled an' were most uncommon hot An' the oaths were slippin' easy from the tongue o' Philo Scott. Then skyward rose a flapjack an' a hefty oath he swore An' he spoke of all his sufferin' which he couldn't stan' no more; An' the flapjack got to jumpin' like a rabbit on the run As he give his compliments to them who couldn't p'int a gun. He told how deer would let 'em come an' stan' an' rest an' shoot An' how bold an' how insultin' they would eye the tenderfoot; How he--Fide Scott--was hankerin' fer suthin' fit to eat "------!" says he. "Le's you an' me go out an' find some meat." We paddled off a-whisperin' beneath the long birch limbs An' we snooked along as silent as a sucker when he swims; I could hear him slow his paddle as eroun' the turns he bore; I could hear his neck a-creakin' while his eye run up the shore. An' soon we come acrost a buck as big an' bold as sin An' Philo took t' swallerin' to keep his feelin's in; An' every time he swallered, as he slowly swung eroun', I could hear his Adam's apple go a-squeakin' up an' down. He sot an' worked his paddle jest as skilful as he could An' we went on slow an' careless, like a chunk o' floatin' wood: An' I kind o' shook an' shivered an' the pesky ol' canoe It seemed to feel as I did, for it shook an' shivered too. I sot there, full o' deviltry, a-p'intin' with the gun, An' we come up clost and closter, but the deer he didn't run; An' Philo shet his teeth so hard he split his brier- root As he held his breath a-waitin' an' expectin' me to shoot. I could kind o' feel him hanker, I could kind o' hear him think, An' we'd come so nigh the animal we didn't dast to wink, But I kep' on a-p'intin' of the rifle at the deer Jest as if I was expectin' fer to stick it in his ear. An' Philo tetched the gunnel soft an' shook it with his knee; I kind o' felt him nudgin' an' a-wishin' he was me, But I kep' on a-p'intin', with a foolish kind o' grin, Enjoyin' all the wickedness that he was holdin' in. An' of a sudden I could feel a tremble in his feet; I knew that he was gettin' mad an' fillin' up with heat. His breath come fast an' faster, but he couldn't say a damn-- He'd the feelin's of a panther an' the quiet of a lamb. An' his foot come creepin' for'ards an' he tetched me with his boot An' he whispered low an' anxious, an says he: "Why don't ye shoot?'' An' the buck he see the time had come fer him an' us to part An' away he ran as Philo pulled the trigger of his heart. He had panthers in his bosom, he had horns upon his mind; An' the panthers spit an' rassied an' their fur riz up behind; An' he gored me with his languidge an' he clawed me with his eye 'Til I wisht that, when I done him dirt, I hadn't been so nigh. He scairt the fish beneath us an' the birds upon the shore An' he spoke of all his sufferin' which he couldn't stan' no more; Then he sot an' thought an' muttered as he pushed a mile er so Like a man that's lost an' weary on the mountain of his woe. An' he eyed me over cur'ous an' with pity on his face An' he seemed to be a sortin' words to make 'em fit the case. "Of all the harmless critters that I ever met," says he, "There ain't not none more harmlesser--my God!-- than what you be." An' he added, kind o' sorrowful, an' hove a mighty sigh: "I'd be 'shamed t' meet another deer an' look him in the eye. God knows a man that p'ints so never orter hev no grub, What game are you expectin' fer t' slaughter with a club?" An' I answered with a riddle: "It has head an' eyes an' feet An' is black an' white an' harmless, but a fearful thing to meet; It's a long an' pesky animal as any in the county; Can't ye guess?--I've ketched a pome an' I'll give ye half the bounty." A VOICE OF THE FIELDS The red was on the clover an' the blue was in the sky; There was music in the meadow, there was dancing in the rye, An' I heard her call the scattered flock in pastures far away An' the echo in the wooded hills: "Co' day! Co' day! Co' day!" O fair was she--my lady love--an' lithe as the willow-tree, An' like a miser's money are her parting words t' me. O the years are long an' lonesome since my sweet- heart went away! An' I think o' her as I call the flocks: "Co' day! Co' day! Co' day!" Her cheeks have stole the clover's red, her lips the odored air, An' the glow o' the morning sunlight she took away in her hair; Her voice had the meadow music, her form an' her laughing eye Have taken the blue o' the heavens an' the grace o' the bending rye. My love has robbed the summer day--the field, the sky, the dell, She has carried their treasurers with her, she has taken my heart as well; An' if ever, in the further fields, her feet should go astray May she hear the good God calling her: "Co' day! Co' day! Co' day!" THE WEAVER'S DYE There's many a hue an' some I knew in the skeins of a weaver old-- Ah, there is the white o' the lily hand an' the glow o' the silky gold! An' the crimson missed in the lips we kissed an' the blue o' the maiden's eye; O, look at the wonderful web of life, an' look at the weaver's dye! THE SLUMBER SHIP A LULLABY Jack Tot is as big as a baby's thumb, And his dinner is only a drop and a crumb And a wee little sailor is he. Heigh ho! A very fine sailor is he. He made his boat of a walnut shell; He sails her at night, and he steers her well With the wing of a bumblebee. Heigh ho! The wing of a bumblebee. She is rigged with the hair of a lady's curl, And her lantern is made of a gleaming pearl, And it never goes out in a gale. Heigh ho! It never goes out in a gale. Her mast is made of a very long thorn; She's a bell for the fog, and a cricket's horn, And a spider spun her sail. Heigh ho! A spider he spun her sail. She carries a cargo of baby souls, And she crosses the terrible Nightmare Shoals, On her way to the Isles of Rest. Heigh ho! The beautiful Isles of Rest. The Slumber Sea is the sea she sails, While the skipper is telling incredible tales With many a merry jest. Ho! ho! He's fond of a merry jest. When the little folks yawn they're ready to go, And the skipper is lifting his sail--he ho! In the swell how the little folks nod! Ha! ha! Just see how the little folks nod! He fluttered his wing as they ast him to sing an' he tried fer t' clear out his throat; He hemmed an' he hawed an' he hawked an' he cawed But he couldn' deliver a note. The swallow was there an' he ushered each pair in his linsey an' claw-hammer coat. The bobolink tried fer t' flirt with the bride, in a way that was sassy an' bold, An' the notes that he took as he shivered an' shook Had a sound like the jingle o' gold. He sat on a brier an' laughed at the choir an' told 'em the music was old. The sexton he came--Mr. Spider by name--a citizen hairy an' gray. His rope in a steeple, he called the good people That live in the land o' the hay. The ants an' the squgs an' the crickets an' bugs came out in a mighty array. A number came down from ole Barleytown an' the neighborin' city o' Rye. An' the little black people each climbed up a steeple, An' sat lookin' up at the sky; They came fer t' see what a weddin' might be an' they furnished the cake an' the pie. OLD HOME, GOOD-BYE! The day is passing; I have tarried long; My way leads far through paths I fear to try; But as I go I'll cheer my heart with song-- Old home, good-bye! In hallowed scenes what feet have trod thy stage! The babe, the maiden leaving home to wed; The young man going forth by duty led And faltering age. And some, returning from far distant lands, Fainting and sick their ways to thee have wended To feel the sweet ministry of loving hands, Their journeys ended. Thou hadst a soul--thy goodly prop' and stay That kept the log, the compass and the chart, And showed the way for many a trusting heart-- The long, long way! O humble home! thou hadst a secret door Through which I looked, betimes, with wondering eye On splendors that no palace ever wore In days gone by. From narrow walls thy lamp gave glad release And shone afar on distant lands and powers; A sweet voice sang of love and heavenly peace And made them ours. Thou hadst a magic window, broad and high-- The light and glory of the morning shone Through it, however dark the day had grown Or bleak the sky. Its panes, like mighty lenses, brought to view A fairer home; I saw in depths above The timber of the old home in the new-- The oak of love. THE RUSTIC DANCE To Jones's tavern, near the ancient woods, Drive young and old from distant neighborhoods. Here comes old Crocket with his great bass horn-- Its tone less fit for melody than scorn. Down through its wrinkled tubes, from first to last, A century's caravan of song has passed. The boys and girls, their mirthful sports begun, With noisy kisses punctuate the fun. Some youths look on, too bashful to assist And bear the sweet disgrace of being kissed. The fiddler comes--his heart a merry store, And shouts of welcome greet him at the door. Unlettered man--how rude the jest he flings! But mark his power to wake the tuneful strings! The old folks smile and tell how, long ago, Their feet obeyed the swaying of his bow; And how the God-sent magic of his art To thoughts of love inclined the youthful heart, And shook the bonds of care from aged men Who 'neath the spell returned to youth again. He taps the fiddle-back as 'twere a drum; The raw recruits in Cupid's army come; And heeding not the praise his playing wins, The ebullition of his soul begins. The zeal of Crocket turned to scornful sound, Pursues the measure like a baying hound. The fiddle's notes pour forth like showers of rain, The dancers sway like wind-swept fields of grain, And midst the storm, to maddening fury stirred, The thunder of the old bass horn is heard. Beside the glowing fire, with smiles serene, An aged couple sit and view the scene. Grandfather's ears the reveille have caught, And thronging memories fill the camps of thought. His heels strike on the floor, with measured beat, As if to ease a tickling in his feet. Year after year, for love of kith and kin. Grandmother's hands have had to toil and spin; But since the palsy all their cunning stole Her mind is spinning raiment for the soul, Of spotless white and beauty fit to wear, When comes the Bridegroom and the end of care. So goes the dance until the night is gone And chanticleer proclaims the breaking dawn. The waning stars show pale to wearied eyes And seem to dance cotillions in the skies; As if, forsooth, upon the journey home Terpsichore's music filled the starry dome. Blest be the dance! with noisy pleasure rife Enough to temper all the woe in life; What magic power its capering measures hold To keep the hearts of men from growing old! Stem Father Time, rejoicing in the scene, Forbears to reap while yet the fields are green. TO A DEAD CLASSMATE He started on the left road and I went on the right, We were young and strong and the way was long and we travelled day an' night; And O the haste and O the waste! and the rush of the busy throng! The worried eye, and the quick good-bye, and the need to hurry along! Odd times we met on the main highway and told our hopes and fears, And after every parting came a wider flood of years. I love to tell of the last farewell, and this is the way it ran: "I don't know when I'll see you again--take care of yourself, ol' man." Put the Beta pin upon his breast, with rosemary and rue, The cap and gown, the scarlet and brown and the symbol of '82, And lay him low with a simple word as the loving eye grows dim: "He took care of more than his share--O Christ! take care of him." The snow is falling on the head and aye the heart grows cold; The new friend comes to claim a share of that we gave the old, And men forget while the eye is wet and bend to the lug of the load, And whether or when they will meet you again is ever a chance of the road. The babes are boys, the boys are men, and slowly, year by year, New faces throng the storied halls and old ones disappear. As the hair is grayed and the red lips fade let friend be friend, for aye We come and go and ere we know have spoken a long good-bye. TO MY FRIEND A. B. The veil of care is lifted from his face! How smooth the brow where toil had left its trace! How confident the look, how calm the eyes Once keen with life and restless enterprise! And gone the lines that marked the spirit's haste To do its work, nor any moment waste. Imperial peace and beauty crown his head, God's superscription writ upon the dead. Behold, herein, his dream, his inmost thought As if in time-washed Parian marble wrought. Truly he read the law we must obey: Man moulds the image and God gives the clay, And if it's cast of God or Cæsar is To each all render what is rightly his. Thousands at noontide are climbing the hills under Nain, like an army Fleeing the carnage of war, seeking where it may rest and take counsel; Some with the blind or the palsied, some bearing the sick on their shoulders, Lagging but laboring hard, so they be not too far from the Prophet; Some bringing only a burden of deep and inveterate longing. Hard by the gate of the city their Captain halts and is waiting. Closer the multitude presses and widens afar on the hillside; Thronged are the ways to the city with eager and hastening comers. Heard ye? A man was delivered from death by his power, and the story Crosses the murmuring host like a wave passing over the waters, How at the touch of his finger this day, the dead rose and was living. Hushed are the people; the Prophet is speaking; his hand is uplifted-- Lo! the frail hand that ere long was to stop the mad rush of the tempest. Quickly their voices are hushed, and the fear of Jehovah is on them. Jesus stood high on a hillock. His face, so divinely impassioned, Shone with the light that of old had illumined the dreams of the prophets. Gently he spake, like a shepherd who calleth his flock to green pastures. Hiding her face and apart from the people, a woman stood weeping, Daughter of woe! on a rosary strung with her tears ever counting Treasures her heart had surrendered and writ on her brow was the record. Hope and the love of her kindred and peace and all pleasure had left her Chained to the pillar of life like a captive, and Shame was her keeper. Long spake the Prophet, and scarcely had finished when came the afflicted, Loudly entreating: "Make way for the blind!" and the people were parted, Silent with pity, and many were suffered to pass; but the woman Felt no miraculous touch, for the press kept her back and rebuked her. "Why comest thou to the Prophet?" they said. "Get thee hence and be silent; "He hath no mercy for thee or thy kind"; and the woman stood weeping. Now when the even was come over Nain, and the bridge of the twilight, Silently floating aloft on the deepening flood of the shadows, Rested its timbers of gold on the summits of Tabor and Hermon, Jesus came, weary, to sup at the house of one Simon, a Pharisee, Dwelling at Nain. Far behind him the woman came, following slowly; Entered the gate in the dusk, and when all were reclining at supper, Stood by the Prophet, afraid, like a soul that has come to its judgment, Weeping, her head bowing low, her hair hanging loose on her shoulders. Then there was silence, and Jesus was moved, so he spake to the woman: "Daughter, what grieves thee so sore?" and she spake not, but dumb with her weeping Sank at his feet; and her tears fell upon them like rain, and she kissed them. Simon, amazed when the Prophet forbade not the woman to touch him, Rose to rebuke her; but seeing His face, how it shone with compassion, Waited; and Jesus then spake: "I have somewhat to say to thee, Simon. "A man had two debtors of pence, and the one owed five hundred, "The other owed fifty; and when they had nothing to pay he forgave them "All that they owed; wherefore which of the two will most love him?" Simon said, thoughtfully: "He, I suppose, to whom most was forgiven." Jesus made answer: "Thou judgest well. Consider this woman. "Weary with travel and sore were my feet, but thou gavest no water; "She, to wash them, hath given the tears of her love and her sorrow, "Wiping them dry with her hair; and hath kissed them and bathed them with ointment. "Wherefore, O woman, weep not! I forgive thee thy sins which are many. "Go thou in peace." And those who were with Him at meat were astonished. "Lo! she spoke not, she asked not and yet He forgave her," they whispered. * * * * Dear to my God are the rills that flow from the mountains of sorrow Over the faces of men and in them is a rainbow of promise. Strong is the prayer of the rills that oft bathed the feet of The Master. THE END 
54003	----	FARM LEGENDS. [Illustration: "THEY STOOD IN THE SHADE OF THE WESTERN DOOR." _Page 32._] FARM LEGENDS BY WILL CARLETON AUTHOR OF "FARM BALLADS" _ILLUSTRATED_ [Illustration: Colophon] NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS FRANKLIN SQUARE Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by HARPER & BROTHERS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. Copyright, 1887, by HARPER & BROTHERS. TO THE MEMORY OF A NOBLEMAN, MY FARMER FATHER. PREFACE. The "Farm Ballads" have met with so kind and general a reception as to encourage the publishing of a companion volume. In this book, also, the author has aimed to give expression to the truth, that with every person, even if humble or debased, there may be some good, worth lifting up and saving; that in each human being, though revered and seemingly immaculate, are some faults which deserve pointing out and correcting; and that all circumstances of life, however trivial they appear, may possess those alternations of the comic and pathetic, the good and bad, the joyful and sorrowful, upon which walk the days and nights, the summers and winters, the lives and deaths, of this strange world. He would take this occasion to give a word of thanks to those who have staid with him through evil and good report; who have overlooked his literary faults for the sake of the truths he was struggling to tell; and who have believed--what he knows--that he is honest. With these few words of introduction, the author launches this second bark upon the sea of popular opinion; grinds his axe, and enters once more the great forest of Human Nature, for timber to go on with his boat-building. W.C. CONTENTS. _FARM LEGENDS:_ PAGE _The School-master's Guests._ 17 _Three Links of a Life._ 26 _Rob, the Pauper._ 40 _The Three Lovers._ 51 _The Song of Home._ 63 _Paul's run off with the Show._ 69 _The Key to Thomas' Heart._ 73 _The Doctor's Story._ 76 _The Christmas Baby._ 80 _DECORATION-DAY POEMS:_ _Cover Them Over._ 87 _The Loves of the Nations._ 92 _COLLEGE POEMS:_ _Rifts in the Cloud._ 103 _Brothers and Friends._ 113 _Our March through the Past._ 121 _That Day we Graduated._ 131 _POEMS OF SORROW AND DEATH:_ _The Burning of Chicago._ 137 _The Railroad Holocaust._ 145 _Ship "City of Boston"._ 147 _Gone Before._ 149 _The Little Sleeper._ 151 _'Tis Snowing._ 153 _POEMS OF HOPE:_ _Some Time._ 157 _The Good of the Future._ 160 _The Joys that are Left._ 161 _When my Ship went Down._ 163 _To the Carleton Circle._ 164 _THE SANCTUM KING._ 169 _STRAY STANZAS:_ _Lines to James Russell Lowell._ 185 _To Monsieur Pasteur._ 185 _To a Young Lady._ 186 _Death of the Richest Man._ 186 _To the Smothered Miners._ 186 _The Deathless Song._ 187 _On a "Poet"-Critic._ 187 [Illustration] ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE "_They stood in the Shade of the western Door_" Frontispiece "_A Class in the Front, with their Readers, were telling, with difficult Pains_" 19 "_And nodded obliquely, and muttered, 'Them 'ere is my Sentiments tew'_" 23 "_When grave Baw Beese, the Indian Chief, had beaded the Neck of the pale-face Miss_" 27 "_Hiding e'en from the Dark his Face_" 35 "_E'en in your Desolation you are not quite unblest_" 37 "_Himself on the Door-stone idly sitting_" 41 "_He runs and stumbles, leaps and clambers_" 45 _Rob, the Pauper_ 50 "_And Bess said, 'Keep still, for there's Plenty of Room'_" 55 "_Several Times he, with Policy stern, repressed a Desire to break out of the Churn_" 57 "_And there his plump Limbs through the Orifice swung_" 59 "_Alice, the country Maiden, with the sweet loving Face_" 65 "_My Boy! come in! come in!_" 71 "_The Mother, who carries the Key to Thomas' Heart_" 74 "_I threw them as far as I could throw_" 78 _The Christmas Baby_ 80, 81, 82, 83 "_They who in Mountain and Hill-side and Dell_" 90 "_And does Columbia love_ her _dead_?" 93 "_When a Man throws the Treasures of his Life_" 97 "_E'en when was fixed, with far-resounding strokes_" 109 "_How happy are We!_" 119 "_'Twas a bright, glorious March! full of Joys that were New_" 123 "_And loudly wild Accents of Terror came pealing from Thousands of Throats_" 141 _Ship "City of Boston"_ 147 _Some Time_ 157 "_With the World, Flesh, and--Lad of General Work_" 171 "_The Public Heart's Prime-ministers are We_" 179 [Illustration] FARM LEGENDS. FARM LEGENDS. THE SCHOOL-MASTER'S GUESTS. I. The district school-master was sitting behind his great book-laden desk, Close-watching the motions of scholars, pathetic and gay and grotesque. As whisper the half-leafless branches, when Autumn's brisk breezes have come, His little scrub-thicket of pupils sent upward a half-smothered hum; Like the frequent sharp bang of a wagon, when treading a forest path o'er, Resounded the feet of his pupils, whenever their heels struck the floor. There was little Tom Timms on the front seat, whose face was withstanding a drouth; And jolly Jack Gibbs just behind him, with a rainy new moon for a mouth; There were both of the Smith boys, as studious as if they bore names that could bloom: And Jim Jones, a heaven-built mechanic, the slyest young knave in the room: With a countenance grave as a horse's, and his honest eyes fixed on a pin, Queer-bent on a deeply laid project to tunnel Joe Hawkins's skin. There were anxious young novices, drilling their spelling-books into the brain, Loud-puffing each half-whispered letter, like an engine just starting a train. There was one fiercely muscular fellow, who scowled at the sums on his slate, And leered at the innocent figures a look of unspeakable hate, And set his white teeth close together, and gave his thin lips a short twist, As to say, "I could whip you, confound you! if sums could be done with my fist!" There were two pretty girls in the corner, each one with some cunning possessed, In a whisper discussing a problem: which one the young master liked best! A class in the front, with their readers, were telling, with difficult pains, How perished brave Marco Bozzaris while bleeding at all of his veins; And a boy on the floor to be punished, a statue of idleness stood, Making faces at all of the others, and enjoying the task all he could. II. Around were the walls, gray and dingy, which every old school-sanctum hath, With many a break on their surface, where grinned a wood-grating of lath; A patch of thick plaster, just over the school-master's rickety chair, Seemed threat'ningly o'er him suspended, like Damocles' sword, by a hair; There were tracks on the desks where the knife-blades had wandered in search of their prey; Their tops were as duskily spattered as if they drank ink every day; [Illustration: "A CLASS IN THE FRONT, WITH THEIR READERS, WERE TELLING, WITH DIFFICULT PAINS, HOW PERISHED BRAVE MARCO BOZZARIS WHILE BLEEDING AT ALL OF HIS VEINS."] The square stove it puffed and it thundered, and broke out in red-flaming sores, Till the great iron quadruped trembled like a dog fierce to rush out-o'-doors; White snow-flakes looked in at the windows; the gale pressed its lips to the cracks; And the children's hot faces were streaming, the while they were freezing their backs. III. Now Marco Bozzaris had fallen, and all of his suff'rings were o'er, And the class to their seats were retreating, when footsteps were heard at the door; And five of the good district fathers marched into the room in a row, And stood themselves up by the hot fire, and shook off their white cloaks of snow; And the spokesman, a grave squire of sixty, with countenance solemnly sad, Spoke thus, while the children all listened, with all of the ears that they had: "We've come here, school-master, intendin' to cast an inquirin' eye 'round, Concarnin' complaints that's been entered, an' fault that has lately been found; To pace off the width of your doin's, an' witness what you've been about; An' see if it's payin' to keep you, or whether we'd best turn ye out. "The first thing I'm bid for to mention is, when the class gets up to read: You give 'em too tight of a reinin', an' touch 'em up more than they need; You're nicer than wise in the matter of holdin' the book in one han', An' you turn a stray _g_ in their doin's, an' tack an odd _d_ on their _an'_. There ain't no great good comes of speakin' the words so _polite_, as _I_ see, Providin' you know what the facts is, an' tell 'em off jest as they be. An' then there's that readin' in corncert, is censured from first unto last; It kicks up a heap of a racket, when folks is a-travelin' past. Whatever is done as to readin', providin' things goes to _my_ say, Sha'n't hang on no new-fangled hinges, but swing in the old-fashioned way." And the other four good district fathers gave quick the consent that was due, And nodded obliquely, and muttered, "_Them 'ere is my sentiments tew_." "Then, as to your spellin': I've heern tell, by them as has looked into this, That you turn the _u_ out o' your labour, an' make the word shorter than 'tis; An' clip the _k_ off o' yer musick, which makes my son Ephraim perplexed, An' when he spells out as he used ter, you pass the word on to the next. They say there's some new-grafted books here that don't take them letters along; But if it is so, just depend on't, them new-grafted books is made wrong. You might just as well say that Jackson didn't know all there was about war, As to say that the old-fashioned teachers didn't know what them letters was for!" And the other four good district fathers gave quick the consent that was due, And scratched their heads slyly and softly, and said, "_Them's my sentiments tew_." "Then, also, your 'rithmetic doin's, as they are reported to me, Is that you have left Tare an' Tret out, an' also the old Rule o' Three; An' likewise brought in a new study, some high-steppin' scholars to please, With saw-bucks an' crosses and pot-hooks, an' _w_'s, _x_, _y_'s, and _z_'s. We ain't got no time for such foolin'; there ain't no great good to be reached By tiptoein' childr'n up higher than ever their fathers was teached." [Illustration: "AND NODDED OBLIQUELY, AND MUTTERED, 'THEM 'ERE IS MY SENTIMENTS TEW.'"] And the other four good district fathers gave quick the consent that was due, And cocked one eye up to the ceiling, and said, "_Them's my sentiments tew_." "Another thing, I must here mention, comes into the question to-day: Concernin' some words in the grammar you're teachin' our gals for to say. My gals is as steady as clock-work, an' never give cause for much fear, But they come home from school t'other evenin' a-talkin' such stuff as this here: '_I love_,' an' '_Thou lovest_,' an' '_He loves_,' an' '_Ye love_,' an' '_You love_,' an' '_They_--' An' they answered my questions, 'It's grammar'--'twas all I could get 'em to say. Now if, 'stead of doin' your duty, you're carryin' matters on so As to make the gals say that they love you, it's just all that _I_ want to know;--" IV. Now Jim, the young heaven-built mechanic, in the dusk of the evening before, Had well-nigh unjointed the stove-pipe, to make it come down on the floor; And the squire bringing smartly his foot down, as a clincher to what he had said, A joint of the pipe fell upon him, and larruped him square on the head. The soot flew in clouds all about him, and blotted with black all the place, And the squire and the other four fathers were peppered with black in the face. The school, ever sharp for amusement, laid down all their cumbersome books, And, spite of the teacher's endeavors, laughed loud at their visitors' looks; And the squire, as he stalked to the doorway, swore oaths of a violet hue; And the four district fathers, who followed, seemed to say, "_Them's my sentiments tew_." THREE LINKS OF A LIFE. I. A word went over the hills and plains Of the scarce-hewn fields that the Tiffin drains, Through dens of swamps and jungles of trees, As if it were borne by the buzzing bees As something sweet for the sons of men; Or as if the blackbird and the wren Had lounged about each ragged clearing To gossip it in the settlers' hearing; Or the partridge drum-corps of the wood Had made the word by mortals heard, And Diana made it understood; Or the loud-billed hawk of giant sweep Were told it as something he must keep; As now, in the half-built city of Lane, Where the sons of the settlers strive for gain, Where the Indian trail is graded well, And the anxious ring of the engine-bell And the Samson Steam's deep, stuttering word And the factory's dinner-horn are heard; Where burghers fight, in friendly guise, With spears of bargains and shields of lies; Where the sun-smoked farmer, early a-road, Rides into the town his high-built load Of wood or wool, or corn or wheat, And stables his horses in the street;-- It seems as to each and every one A deed were known ere it well be done, As if, in spite of roads or weather, All minds were whispering together; So over the glens and rough hill-sides Of the fruitful land where the Tiffin glides, Went the startling whisper, clear and plain, "_There's a new-born baby over at Lane!_" [Illustration: "WHEN GRAVE BAW BEESE, THE INDIAN CHIEF, HAD BEADED THE NECK OF THE PALE-FACE MISS."] Now any time, from night till morn, Or morn till night, for a long time-flight, Had the patient squaws their children borne; And many a callow, coppery wight Had oped his eyes to the tree-flecked light, And grown to the depths of the woodland dell And the hunt of the toilsome hills as well As though at his soul a bow were slung, And a war-whoop tattooed on his tongue; But never before, in the Tiffin's sight, Had a travail bloomed with a blossom of white. And the fire-tanned logger no longer pressed His yoke-bound steeds and his furnace fire; And the gray-linked log-chain drooped to rest, And a hard face softened with sweet desire; And the settler-housewife, rudely wise, With the forest's shrewdness in her eyes, Yearned, with tenderly wondering brain, For the new-born baby over at Lane. And the mother lay in her languid bed, When the flock of visitors had fled-- When the crowd of settlers all had gone, And left the young lioness alone With the tiny cub they had come to see In the rude-built log menagerie; When grave Baw Beese, the Indian chief, As courtly as ever prince in his prime, Or cavalier of the olden time, Making his visit kind as brief, Had beaded the neck of the pale-face miss, And dimpled her cheek with a farewell kiss; When the rough-clad room was still as sleek, Save the deaf old nurse's needle-click, The beat of the grave clock in its place, With its ball-tipped tail and owl-like face, And the iron tea-kettle's droning song Through its Roman nose so black and long, The mother lifted her baby's head, And gave it a clinging kiss, and said: Why did thou come so straight to me, Thou queer one? Thou might have gone where riches be, Thou dear one! For when 'twas talked about in heaven, To whom the sweet soul should be given, If thou had raised thy pretty voice, God sure had given to thee a choice, My dear one, my queer one! "Babe in the wood" thou surely art, My lone one: But thou shalt never play the part, My own one! Thou ne'er shalt wander up and down, With none to claim thee as their own; Nor shall the Redbreast, as she grieves, Make up for thee a bed of leaves, My own one, my lone one! Although thou be not Riches' flower, Thou neat one, Yet thou hast come from Beauty's bower, Thou sweet one! Thy every smile's as warm and bright As if a diamond mocked its light; Thy every tear's as pure a pearl As if thy father was an earl, Thou neat one, thou sweet one! And thou shalt have a queenly name, Thou grand one: A lassie's christening's half her fame, Thou bland one! And may thou live so good and true, The honor will but be thy due; And friends shall never be ashamed, Or when or where they hear thee named, Thou bland one, thou grand one! E'en like the air--our rule and sport-- Thou meek one, Thou art my burden and support, Thou weak one! Like manna in the wilderness, A joy hath come to soothe and bless: But 'tis a sorrow unto me, To love as I am loving thee, Thou weak one, thou meek one! The scarlet-coated child-thief waits, Thou bright one, To bear thee through the sky-blue gates, Thou light one! His feverish touch thy brow may pain, And while I to my sad lips strain The sheath of these bright-beaming eyes, The blade may flash back to the skies, Thou light one, thou bright one! And if thou breast the morning storm, Thou fair one, And gird a woman's thrilling form, Thou rare one: Sly hounds of sin thy path will trace, And on thy unsuspecting face Hot lust will rest its tarnished eyes, And thou wilt need be worldly-wise, Thou rare one, thou fair one! O that the heaven that smiles to-day, My blest one, May give thee light to see thy way, My best one! That when around thee creeps The Gloom, The gracious God will call thee home, And then, increased a hundredfold, Thou proudly hand Him back His gold, My best one, my blest one! II. A word went over the many miles Of the well-tilled land where the Tiffin smiles, And sought no youthful ear in vain: "_There's a wedding a-coming off at Lane!_" They stood in the shade of the western door-- Father, mother, and daughter one-- And gazed, as they oft had gazed before, At the downward glide of the western sun. The rays of his never-jealous light Made even the cloud that dimmed him bright; And lower he bent, and kissed, as he stood, The lips of the distant blue-eyed wood. And just as the tired sun bowed his head, The sun-browned farmer sighed, and said: And so you'll soon be goin' away, My darling little Bess; And you ha' been to the store to-day, To buy your weddin'-dress; And so your dear good mother an' I, Whose love you long have known, Must lay the light o' your presence by, And walk the road alone. So come to-night, with mother and me, To the porch for an hour or two, And sit on your old father's knee, And talk, as we used to do; For we, who ha' loved you many a year, And clung to you, strong and true, Since we've had the young Professor here, Have not had much of you! But lovers be lovers, while earth endures; And once on a time, be it known, _I_ helped a girl with eyes like yours Construct a world of our own; And we laid it out in a garden spot, And dwelt in the midst of flowers; Till we found that the world was a good-sized lot, And most of it wasn't ours! You're heavier, girl, than when you come To us one cloudy day, And seemed to feel so little at home, We feared you wouldn't stay; Till I knew the danger was passed, because You'd struck so mortal a track, And got so independent an' cross, God never would let you back! But who would ever ha' had the whim, When you lay in my arms an' cried, You'd some day sit here, pretty an' prim, A-waitin' to be a bride! But lovers be lovers, while earth goes on, And marry, as they ought; And if you would keep the love you've won, Remember what you've been taught: Look first that your wedded lives be true, With naught from the other apart; For the flowers of true love never grew In the soil of a faithless heart. Look next that the buds of health shall rest Their blossoms upon your cheek; For life and love are a burden at best, If the body be sick and weak. Look next that your kitchen fire be bright, And your hands be neat and skilled; For the love of man oft takes its flight, If his stomach be not well filled! Look next that your money is fairly earned, Ere ever it be spent; For comfort and love, however turned, Will ne'er pay six per cent. And, next, due care and diligence keep That the mind be trained and fed; For blessings ever look shabby and cheap, That light on an empty head. And if it shall please the gracious God That children to you belong, Remember, my child, and spare the rod Till you've taught them right and wrong; And show 'em, that though this life's a start For the better world, no doubt, Yet earth an' heaven ain't so far apart As many good folks make out! III. A word went over the broad hill-sweeps Of the listening land where the Tiffin creeps: "_She married, holding on high her head;_ _But the groom was false as the vows he said;_ _With lies and crimes his days are checked;_ _The girl is alone, and her life is wrecked._" The midnight rested its heavy arm Upon the grief-encumbered farm; And hoarse-voiced Sorrow wandered at will, Like a moan when the summer's night is still; And the spotted cows, with bellies of white, And well-filled teats all crowded awry, Stood in the black stalls of the night, Nor herded nor milked, and wondered why. And the house was gloomy, still, and cold; And the hard-palmed farmer, newly old, Sat in an unfrequented place, Hiding e'en from the dark his face; And a solemn silence rested long On all, save the cricket's dismal song. [Illustration: "HIDING E'EN FROM THE DARK HIS FACE."] But the mother drew the girl to her breast, And gave to her spirit words of rest: Come to my lap, my wee-grown baby; rest you upon my knee; You have been traveling toward the light, and drawing away from me; You turned your face from my dark path to catch the light o' the sun, And 'tis no more nor less, my child, than children ever have done. So you joined hands with one you loved, when we to the cross-road came, And went your way, as Heaven did say, and who but Heaven to blame? You must not weep that he you chose was all the time untrue, Or stab with hate the man whose heart you thought was made for you. The love God holds for your bright soul is more to get and give Than all the love of all of the men while He may bid them live. So let your innocence stanch the wound made by another's guilt; For Vengeance' blade was ever made with neither guard nor hilt! Who will avenge you, darling? The sun that shines on high. He will paint the picture of your wrongs before the great world's eye. He will look upon your sweet soul, in its pure mantle of white, Till it shine upon your enemies, and dazzle all their sight. He'll come each day to point his finger at him who played the knave; And 'tis denied from him to hide, excepting in the grave. Who will avenge you, darling? Your sister, the sky above. Each cloud she floats above you shall be a token of love; She will bend o'er you at night-fall her pure broad breast of blue, And every gem that glitters there shall flash a smile to you. And all her great wide distances to your good name belong; 'Tis not so far from star to star as 'twixt the right and wrong! Who will avenge you, darling? All the breezes that blow. They will whisper to each other your tale of guiltless woe; The perfumes that do load them your innocence shall bless, And they will soothe your aching brow with pitying, kind caress. They will sweep away the black veil that hangs about your fame: There is no cloud that long can shroud a virtuous woman's name. [Illustration: "E'EN IN YOUR DESOLATION YOU ARE NOT QUITE UNBLEST: NOT ALL WHO CHOOSE MAY COUNT THEIR WOES UPON A MOTHER'S BREAST."] Who will avenge you, darling? The one who proved untrue. His memory must undo him, whate'er his will may do; The pitch-black night will come when he must meet Remorse alone; He will rush at your avenging as if it were his own. His every sin is but a knot that yet shall hold him fast; For guilty hands but twine the strands that fetter them at last. Lay thee aside thy grief, darling!--lay thee aside thy grief! And Happiness will cheer thee beyond all thy belief! As oft as winter comes summer, as sure as night comes day, And as swift as sorrow cometh, so swift it goeth away! E'en in your desolation you are not quite unblest: Not all who choose may count their woes upon a mother's breast. [Illustration] ROB, THE PAUPER. I. Rob, the Pauper, is loose again. Through the fields and woods he races. He shuns the women, he beats the men, He kisses the children's frightened faces. There is no mother he hath not fretted; There is no child he hath not petted; There is no house, by road or lane, He did not tap at the window-pane, And make more dark the dismal night, And set the faces within with white. Rob, the Pauper, is wild of eye, Wild of speech, and wild of thinking; Over his forehead broad and high, Each with each wild locks are linking. Yet, there is something in his bearing Not quite what a pauper should be wearing: In every step is a shadow of grace; The ghost of a beauty haunts his face; The rags half-sheltering him to-day, Hang not on him in a beggarly way. Rob, the Pauper, is crazed of brain: The world is a lie to his shattered seeming. No woman is true unless insane; No man but is full of lecherous scheming. Woe to the wretch, of whate'er calling, That crouches beneath his cudgel's falling! Pity the wife, howe'er high-born, Who wilts beneath his words of scorn! But youngsters, he caresses as wild As a mother would kiss a rescued child. [Illustration: "HIMSELF ON THE DOOR-STONE IDLY SITTING, A BLONDE-HAIRED WOMAN ABOUT HIM FLITTING."] He hath broke him loose from his poor-house cell; He hath dragged him clear from rope and fetter. They might have thought; for they know full well They could keep a half-caged panther better. Few are the knots so strategy-shunning That they can escape his maniac cunning; Many a stout bolt strives in vain To bar his brawny shoulders' strain; The strongest men in town agree That the Pauper is good for any three. He hath crossed the fields, the woods, the street: He hides in the swamp his wasted feature; The frog leaps over his bleeding feet; The turtle crawls from the frightful creature. The loud mosquito, hungry-flying, For his impoverished blood is crying; The scornful hawk's loud screaming sneer Falls painfully upon his ear; And close to his unstartled eye, The rattlesnake creeps noisily by. He hath fallen into a slough of sleep; A haze of the past bends softly o'er him; His restless spirit a watch doth keep, As Memory's canvas glides before him. Through slumber's distances he travels; The tangled skein of his mind unravels; The bright past dawns through a cloud of dreams, And once again in his prime he seems; For over his heart's lips, as a kiss, Sweepeth a vision like to this: A cozy kitchen, a smooth-cut lawn, A zephyr of flowers in the bright air straying; A graceful child, as fresh as dawn, Upon the greensward blithely playing; Himself on the door-stone idly sitting, A blonde-haired woman about him flitting. She dreamily stands beside him there, And deftly toys with his coal-black hair, And hovers about him with her eyes, And whispers to him, pleading-wise: O Rob, why will you plague my heart? why will you try me so? Is she so fair, is she so sweet, that you must need desert me? I saw you kiss her twice and thrice behind the maple row, And each caress you gave to her did like a dagger hurt me. Why should for her and for her smiles your heart a moment hunger? What though her shape be trim as mine, her face a trifle younger? She does not look so young to you as I when we were wed; She can not speak more sweet to you than words that I have said; She can not love you half so well as I, when all is done; And she is not your wedded wife--the mother of your son. O Rob, you smile and toss your head; you mock me in your soul; You say I would be overwise--that I am jealous of you; And what if my tight-bended heart should spring beyond control? My jealous tongue but tells the more the zeal with which I love you. Oh, we might be so peaceful here, with nothing of reproving Oh, we might be so happy here, with none to spoil our loving! Why should a joy be more a joy because, forsooth, 'tis hid? How can a kiss be more a kiss because it is forbid? Why should the love you get from her be counted so much gain, When every smile you give to her but adds unto my pain? O Rob, you say there is no guilt betwixt the girl and you: Do you not know how slack of vows may break the bond that's dearest? You twirl a plaything in your hand, not minding what you do, And first you know it flies from you, and strikes the one that's nearest. So do not spoil so hopelessly you ne'er may cease your ruing; The finger-post of weakened vows points only to undoing. Remember there are years to come, and there are thorns of woe That you may grasp if once you let the flowers of true love go; Remember the increasing bliss of marriage undefiled; Remember all the pride or shame that waits for yonder child! [Illustration: "HE RUNS AND STUMBLES, LEAPS AND CLAMBERS, THROUGH THE DENSE THICKET'S BREATHLESS CHAMBERS."] II. Rob, the Pauper, awakes and runs; A clamor cometh clear and clearer. They are hunting him with dogs and guns; They are every moment pressing nearer. Through pits of stagnant pools he pushes, Through the thick sumac's poison-bushes; He runs and stumbles, leaps and clambers, Through the dense thicket's breathless chambers. The swamp-slime stains at his bloody tread; The tamarack branches rasp his head; From bog to bog, and from slough to slough, He flees, but his foes come yelling nearer; And ever unto his senses now, The long-drawn bay of the hounds is clearer. He is worn and worried, hot and panting; He staggers at every footstep's planting; The hot blood races through his brain; His every breath is a twinge of pain; Black shadows dance before his eyes; The echoes mock his agony-cries. They have hunted him to the open field; He is falling upon their worn-out mercies. They loudly call to him to yield; He hoarsely pays them back in curses. His blood-shot eye is wildly roaming; His firm-set mouth with rage is foaming; He waves his cudgel, with war-cry loud, And dares the bravest of the crowd. There springs at his throat a hungry hound; He dashes its brains into the ground. Rob, the Pauper, is sorely pressed; The men are crowding all around him. He crushes one to a bloody rest, And breaks again from the crowd that bound him. The crash of a pistol comes unto him-- A well-sped ball goes crushing through him; But still he rushes on--yet on-- Until, at last, some distance won, He mounts a fence with a madman's ease, And this is something of what he sees: A lonely cottage, some tangled grass, Thickets of thistles, dock, and mullein; A forest of weeds he scarce can pass, A broken chimney, cold and sullen; Trim housewife-ants, with rush uncertain, The spider hanging her gauzy curtain. The Pauper falls on the dusty floor, And there rings in his failing ear once more A voice as it might be from the dead, And says, as it long ago hath said: O Rob, I have a word to say--a cruel word--to you: I can not longer live a lie--the truth for air is calling! I can not keep the secret locked that long has been your due, Not if you strike me to the ground, and spurn me in my falling! He came to me when first a cloud across your smile was creeping-- He came to me--he brought to me a slighted heart for keeping; He would not see my angry frown; he sought me, day by day; I flung at him hot words of scorn, I turned my face away. I bade him dread my husband's rage when once his words were known: He smiled at me, and said I had no husband of my own! O Rob, his words were overtrue! they burned into my brain! I could not rub them out again, were I awake or sleeping! I saw you kiss her twice and thrice--my chidings were in vain-- And well I knew your wayward heart had wandered from my keeping. I counted all that was at stake--I bribed my pride with duty; I knelt before your manly face, in worship of its beauty; I painted pictures for your eyes you were too blind to see; I worked at all the trades of love, to earn you back to me; I threw myself upon your heart; I pleaded long to stay; I held my hands to you for help--you pushed them both away! He came to me again; he held his eager love to me-- To me, whose weak and hungry heart deep desolation dreaded! And I had learned to pity him; but still my will was free, And once again I threatened him, and warned him I was wedded. He bade me follow him, and see my erring fancy righted: We crept along a garden glade by moonbeams dimly lighted; She silent sat 'mid clustering vines, though much her eyes did speak, And your black hair was tightly pressed unto her glowing cheek.... It crazed me, but he soothed me sweet with love's unnumbered charms; I, desolate, turned and threw myself into his desolate arms! O Rob, you know how little worth, when once a woman slips, May be the striking down a hand to save herself from falling! Once more my heart groped for your heart, my tired lips sought your lips: But 'twas too late--'twas after dark--and you were past recalling. 'Tis hard to claim what once is given; my foe was unrelenting; Vain were the tempests of my rage, the mists of my repenting. The night was dark, the storm had come, the fancy-stars of youth Were covered over by the thick unfading cloud of truth; So one by one my hopes went back, each hid its pale white face, Till all was dark, and all was drear, and all was black disgrace. O Rob, good-by; a solemn one!--'tis till the Judgment-day. You look about you for the boy? You never more shall see him. He's crying for his father now full many miles away; For he is mine--you need not rage--you can not find or free him. We might have been so peaceful here, with nothing of reproving-- We might have been so happy here, with none to spoil our loving-- As I, a guilty one, might kiss a corpse's waiting brow, I bend to you where you have fallen, and calmly kiss you now; As I, a wronged and injured one, might seek escape's glad door, I wander forth into the world, to enter here no more. III. Rob, the Pauper, is lying in state. In a box of rough-planed boards, unpainted, He waits at the poor-house graveyard gate, For a home by human lust untainted. They are crowding round and closely peering At the face of the foe who is past their fearing; The men lift children up to see The arms of the man who was good for three; The women gaze and hold their breath, For the man looks kingly even in death. They have gone to their homes anear and far-- Their joys and griefs, their loves and hating: Some to sunder the ties that are, And some to cooing and wooing and mating. They will pet and strike, they will strive and blunder, And leer at their woes with innocent wonder; They will swiftly sail love's delicate bark, With never a helm, in the dangerous dark; They will ne'er quite get it understood That the Pauper's woes were for their good. [Illustration] THE THREE LOVERS. Here's a precept, young man, you should follow with care: If you're courting a girl, court her honest and square. Mr. 'Liakim Smith was a hard-fisted farmer, Of moderate wealth, And immoderate health, Who fifty-odd years, in a stub-and-twist armor Of callus and tan, Had fought like a man His own dogged progress, through trials and cares, And log-heaps and brush-heaps and wild-cats and bears, And agues and fevers and thistles and briers, Poor kinsmen, rich foemen, false saints, and true liars; Who oft, like the "man in our town," overwise, Through the brambles of error had scratched out his eyes, And when the unwelcome result he had seen, Had altered his notion, Reversing the motion, And scratched them both in again, perfect and clean; Who had weathered some storms, as a sailor might say, And tacked to the left and the right of his way, Till he found himself anchored, past tempests and breakers, Upon a good farm of a hundred-odd acres. As for 'Liakim's wife, in four words may be told Her whole standing in life: She was 'Liakim's wife. Whereas she'd been young, she was now growing old, But did, she considered, as well as one could, When HE looked on her hard work, and saw that 'twas good. The family record showed only a daughter; But she had a face, As if each fabled Grace In a burst of delight to her bosom had caught her, Or as if all the flowers in each Smith generation Had blossomed at last in one grand culmination. Style lingered unconscious in all of her dresses; She'd starlight for glances, and sunbeams for tresses. Wherever she went, with her right royal tread, Each youth, when he'd passed her a bit, turned his head; And so one might say, though the figure be strained, She had turned half the heads that the township contained. Now Bess had a lover--a monstrous young hulk; A farmer by trade-- Strong, sturdy, and staid; A man of good parts--if you counted by bulk; A man of great weight--by the scales; and, indeed, A man of some depth--as was shown by his feed. His face was a fat exclamation of wonder; His voice was not quite unsuggestive of thunder; His laugh was a cross 'twixt a yell and a chuckle; He'd a number one foot, And a number ten boot, And a knock-down reserved in each separate knuckle. He'd a heart mad in love with the girl of his choice, Who made him alternately mope and rejoice, By dealing him one day discouraging messes, And soothing him next day with smiles and caresses. Now Bess had a lover, who hoped her to wed-- A rising young lawyer--more rising than read; Whose theories all were quite startling; and who, Like many a chap In these days of strange hap, Was living on what he expected to do; While his landlady thought 'twould have been rather neat Could he only have learned, Till some practice was earned, To subsist upon what he expected to eat. He was bodily small, howe'er mentally great, And suggestively less than a hundred in weight. Now Bess had a lover--young Patrick; a sinner, And lad of all work, From the suburbs of Cork, Who worked for her father, and thought _he_ could win her. And if Jacob could faithful serve fourteen years through, And still thrive and rejoice, For the girl of his choice, He thought he could play at that game one or two. Now 'Liakim Smith had a theory hid, And by egotism fed, Somewhere up in his head, That a dutiful daughter should always as bid Grow old in the service of him who begot her, Imbibe his beliefs, Have a care for his griefs, And faithfully bring him his cider and water. So, as might be expected, he turned up his nose, Also a cold shoulder, to Bessie's two beaux; And finally turned them away from his door, Forbidding them ever to enter it more; And detailed young Patrick as kind of a guard, With orders to keep them both out of the yard. So Pat took his task, with a treacherous smile, And bullied the small one, And dodged the big tall one, And slyly made love to Miss Bess all the while. But one evening, when 'Liakim and wife crowned their labors With praise and entreating At the village prayer-meeting, And Patrick had stepped for a while to some neighbor's, The lawyer had come, in the trimmest of dress, And, dapper and slim, And small, e'en for him, Was holding a session of court with Miss Bess. And Bess, sly love-athlete, was suited first rate At a flirtation-mill with this legal light-weight; And was listening to him, as minutes spun on, Of pleas he could make, And of fees he would take, And of suits that he should, in the future, have won; When just as the cold, heartless clock counted eight, Miss Bessie's quick ear caught a step at the gate. "'Tis mother!" she cried: "oh, go quick, I implore! But father'll drive 'round and come in the back-door! You can not escape them, however you turn! So hide for a while--let me see--in this churn!" The churn was quite large enough for him to turn in-- Expanded out so, By machinery to go, 'Twould have done for a dairy-man-Cyclops to churn in. 'Twas fixed for attaching a pitman or lever, To go by a horse-power--a notion quite clever, Invented and built by the Irishman, Pat, Who pleased Mrs. 'Liakim hugely by that. The lawyer went into the case with much ease, And hugged the belief That the cause would be brief, And settled himself down with hardly a squeeze. And Bess said, "Keep still, for there's plenty of room," And shut down the cover, and left him in gloom. But scarcely were matters left decently so, In walked--not her mother, But--worry and bother!-- The mammoth young farmer, whose first name was Joe. And he gleefully sung, in a heavy bass tone, Which came in one note From the depths of his throat, "I'm glad I have come, since I've found you alone. Let's sit here a while, by this kerosene light, An' spark it a while now with all of our might." And Bessie was willing; and so they sat down, The maiden so fair and the farmer so brown. They talked of things great, and they talked of things small, Which none could condemn, And which may have pleased them, But which did not interest the lawyer at all; And Bessie seemed giving but little concern To the feelings of him she had shut in the churn. [Illustration: "AND BESS SAID, 'KEEP STILL, FOR THERE'S PLENTY OF ROOM,' AND SHUT DOWN THE COVER, AND LEFT HIM IN GLOOM."] Till Bessie just artlessly mentioned the man, And Joe with a will to abuse him began, And called him full many an ignoble name, Appertaining to "Scrubby," And "Shorty," and "Stubby," And other descriptions not wide of the same; And Bessie said naught in the lawyer's behalf, But seconded Joe, now and then, with a laugh; And the lawyer said nothing, but winked at his fate, And, somewhat abashed, And decidedly dashed, Accepted Joe's motions sans vote or debate. And several times he, with policy stern, Repressed a desire to break out of the churn, Well knowing he thus might get savagely used, And if not quite eaten, Would likely be beaten, And probably injured as well as abused. But now came another quick step at the door, And Bessie was fearful, the same as before; And tumbling Joe over a couple of chairs, With a general sound Of thunder all 'round, She hurried him up a short pair of back-stairs; And close in the garret condemned him to wait Till orders from her, be it early or late. Then tripping her way down the staircase, she said, "I'll smuggle them off when the folks get to bed." It was not her parents; 'twas crafty young Pat, Returned from his visit; and straightway _he_ sat Beside her, remarking, The chairs were in place, So he would sit near her, and view her sweet face. So gayly they talked, as the minutes fast flew, Discussing such matters as both of them knew, While often Miss Bessie's sweet laugh answered back, For Pat, be it known, Had some wit of his own, And in irony's efforts was sharp as a tack. And finally Bessie his dancing tongue led, By a sly dextrous turn, To the man in the churn, And the farmer, who eagerly listened o'erhead; Whereat the young Irishman volubly gave A short dissertation, Whose main information Was that one was a fool, and the other a knave. [Illustration: "SEVERAL TIMES HE, WITH POLICY STERN, REPRESSED A DESIRE TO BREAK OUT OF THE CHURN."] Slim chance there must be for the world e'er to learn How pleasant this was to the man in the churn; Though, to borrow a figure lent by his position, He was doubtless in somewhat a worked-up condition. It ne'er may be sung, and it ne'er may be said, How well it was liked by the giant o'erhead. He lay on a joist--for there wasn't any floor-- And the joists were so few, And so far apart too, He could not, in comfort, preempt any more; And he nearly had knocked through the plastering quite, And challenged young Pat to a fair and square fight; But he dared not do elsewise than Bessie had said, For fear, as a lover, he might lose his head. But now from the meeting the old folks returned, And sat by the stove as the fire brightly burned; And Patrick came in from the care of the team; And since in the house there was overmuch cream, He thought that the horses their supper might earn, And leave him full way To plow early next day, By working that night for a while at the churn. The old folks consented; and Patrick went out, Half chuckling; for he had a shrewd Irish doubt, From various slight sounds he had chanced to discern, That Bess had a fellow shut up in that churn. The lawyer, meanwhile, in his hiding-place cooped, Low-grunted and hitched and contorted and stooped, But hung to the place like a man in a dream; And when the young Irishman went for the team, To stay or to fly, he could hardly tell which; But hoping to get Neatly out of it yet, He concluded to hang till the very last hitch. The churn was one side of the house, recollect, So rods with the horse-power outside could connect; And Bess stood so near that she took the lamp's gleam in While her mother was cheerfully pouring the cream in; Who, being near-sighted, and minding her cup, Had no notion of what she was covering up; But the lawyer, meanwhile, had he dared to have spoke, Would have owned that he saw the whole cream of the joke. [Illustration: "AND THERE HIS PLUMP LIMBS THROUGH THE ORIFICE SWUNG."] But just as the voice of young Patrick came strong And clear through the window, "All ready! go 'long!" And just as the dasher its motion began, Stirred up by its knocks, Like a jack-in-the-box He jumped from his damp, dripping prison--and ran; And made a frog-leap o'er the stove and a chair, With some crisp Bible words not intended as prayer. All over the kitchen he rampaged and tore, And ran against everything there but the door; Tipped over old 'Liakim flat on his back, And left a long trail of rich cream on his track. "Ou! ou! 'tis a ghost!" quavered 'Liakim's wife; "A ghost, if I ever saw one in my life!" "The devil!" roared 'Liakim, rubbing his shin. "No! no!" shouted Patrick, who just then came in: "It's only a lawyer: the devil ne'er runs-- To bring on him a laugh-- In the shape of a calf; It isn't the devil; it's one of his sons! If so that the spalpeen had words he could utther. He'd swear he loved Bessie, an' loved no one butther." Now Joe lay full length on the scantling o'erhead, And tried to make out What it all was about, By list'ning to all that was done and was said; But somehow his balance became uncontrolled, And he on the plastering heavily rolled. It yielded instanter, came down with a crash, And fell on the heads of the folks with a smash. And there his plump limbs through the orifice swung, And he caught by the arms and disgracefully hung, His ponderous body, so clumsy and thick, Wedged into that posture as tight as a brick. And 'Liakim Smith, by amazement made dumb At those legs in the air Hanging motionless there, Concluded that this time the devil had come; And seizing a chair, he belabored them well, While the head pronounced words that no printer would spell. And there let us leave them, 'mid outcry and clatter, To come to their wits, and then settle the matter; And take for the moral this inference fair: If you're courting a girl, court her honest and square. [Illustration] THE SONG OF HOME. "Sing me a song, my Alice, and let it be your choice, So as you pipe out plainly, and give me the sweet o' your voice; An' it be not new-fashioned: the new-made tunes be cold, An' never awake my fancy like them that's good an' old. Fie on your high-toned gimcracks, with rests an' beats an' points, Shaking with trills an' quavers--creakin' in twenty joints! Sing me the good old tunes, girl, that roll right off the tongue, Such as your mother gave me when she an' I was young." So said the Farmer Thompson, smoking his pipe of clay, Close by his glowing fire-place, at close of a winter day. He was a lusty fellow, with grizzled beard unshorn, Hair half combed and flowing, clothing overworn; Boots of mammoth pattern, with many a patch and rent; Hands as hard as leather, body with labor bent; Face of resolution, and lines of pain and care, Such as the slow world's vanguards are ever doomed to bear; While from his eyes the yearnings of unemployed desire Gleamed like the fitful embers of a half-smothered fire. Alice, the country maiden, with the sweet, loving face, Sung these words to an old air, with an unstudied grace: There's nothing like an old tune, when friends are far apart, To 'mind them of each other, and draw them heart to heart. New strains across our senses on magic wings may fly, But there's nothing like an old tune to make the heart beat high. The scenes we have so oft recalled when once again we view, Have lost the smile they used to wear, and seem to us untrue; We gaze upon their faded charms with disappointed eye; And there's nothing like an old tune to make the heart beat high. We clasp the hands of former friends--we feel again their kiss-- But something that we loved in them, in sorrow now we miss; For women fade and men grow cold as years go hurrying by; And there's nothing like an old tune to make the heart beat high. The forest where we used to roam, we find it swept away; The cottage where we lived and loved, it moulders to decay; And all that feeds our hungry hearts may wither, fade, and die; And there's nothing like an old tune to make the heart beat high. "That was well sung, my Alice," the farmer proudly said, When the last strain was finished and the last word had fled; "That is as true as Gospel; and since you've sung so well, I'll give you a bit of a story you've never heard me tell. "When the cry o' the axes first through these parts was heard, I was young and happy, and chipper as a bird; Fast as a flock o' pigeons the days appeared to fly, With no one 'round for a six mile except your mother an' I. Now we are rich, an' no one except the Lord to thank; Acres of land all 'round us, money in the bank; But happiness don't stick by me, an' sunshine ain't so true As when I was five-an'-twenty, with twice enough to do. "As for the way your mother an' I made livin' go, Just some time you ask her--of course she ought to know. When she comes back in the morning from nursing Rogers' wife, She'll own she was happy in them days as ever in her life. For I was sweet on your mother;--why should not I be? She was the gal I had fought for--she was the world to me; And since we'd no relations, it never did occur To me that I was a cent less than all the world to her. "But it is often doubtful which way a tree may fall; When you are tol'ble certain, you are not sure at all. When you are overconscious of travelin' right--that day Look for a warnin' guide-post that points the other way. For when you are feeling the safest, it very oft falls out You rush head-foremost into a big bull-thistle o' doubt. [Illustration: "ALICE, THE COUNTRY MAIDEN, WITH THE SWEET, LOVING FACE, SUNG THESE WORDS TO AN OLD AIR, WITH AN UNSTUDIED GRACE."] "'Twas in the fall o' '50 that I set out, one day, To hunt for deer an' turkey, or what came in my way; And wanderin' through the forest, my home I did not seek, Until I was gone from the cabin the better part of a week. "As Saturday's sun was creeping its western ladder down, I stopped for a bit of supper at the house of Neighbor Brown. He was no less my neighbor that he lived ten miles away; For neighborhoods then was different from what they are to-day. "Now Mrs. Brown was clever--a good, well-meaning soul-- And brought to time exactly things under her control. By very few misgoings were her perfections marred; She meant well, with one trouble--she meant it 'most too hard. "Now when I had passed the time o' day, and laughed at Brown's last jokes, Nat'rally I asked 'em if they had seen my folks. Whereat she shrugged her shoulders quite dangerous-wise, And looked as if a jury was sittin' in her eyes; And after a prudent silence I thought would never end, Asked if my wife had a brother, or cousin, or other friend; For some one, passing my cabin, she'd heard, had lately found Rather a sleek an' han'some young fellow hanging round; Of course it was a brother, or somethin' of that sort? I told her 'twas a brother, and cut my supper short. "Which same was wrong, as viewed through a strictly moral eye; But who, to shield his wife's name, wouldn't sometime tell a lie? 'Twas nothing but a lie, girl, and for a lie 'twas meant: If brothers sold at a million, she couldn't ha' raised a cent. "Home I trudged in a hurry--who could that fellow be? Home I trudged in a hurry, bound that I would see; And when I reached my cabin I thought 'twas only fair To peep in at the window an' find out what was there. "A nice, good-fashioned fellow as any in the land Sat by my wife quite closely, a-holdin' of her hand, An' whispering something into her willin'-listenin' ear, Which I should judge by her actions she rather liked to hear. "Now seeing such singular doin's before my very eyes, The Devil he came upon me, and took me by surprise; He put his hand on my mouth, girl, and never a word I said, But raised my gun an' aimed it straight at the stranger's head. "Lightly I touched the trigger; I drew a good long breath-- My heart was full o' Satan, my aim was full o' death; But at that very instant they broke out, clear an' strong, A-singing, both together, a good old-fashioned song. "That simple little song, girl, still in my ears does ring; 'Twas one I had coaxed your mother while courting her to sing; Never a word I remember how any verses goes, But this is a little ditty that every body knows: How though about a palace you might forever hang, You'll never feel so happy as in your own shebang. "It woke the recollections of happy days an' years-- I slowly dropped my rifle, an' melted into tears. * * * * * "It was a neighbor's daughter, made on the tomboy plan, Who, keeping my wife company, had dressed like a spruce young man! An' full of new-born praises to Him where they belong, I thanked the Lord for makin' the man who made that good old song!" [Illustration] PAUL'S RUN OFF WITH THE SHOW. Jane, 'tis so--it is so! How _can_ I--his mother--bear it? Paul's run off with the show! Put all his things in the garret-- All o' his working gear; He's never a-going to wear it, Never again coming here. If he gets sick, deaf, or blind, If he falls and breaks his leg, He can borrow an organ an' grind, He can hobble about and beg. Let him run--good luck behind him!... I wonder which way they went? I suppose I might follow an' find him.-- But no! let him keep to his bent! I'm never a-going to go For a boy that runs off with the show! Lay his books up in the chamber; He never will want them now; Never _did_ want them much. He al'ays could run and clamber, Make somersets on the mow, Hand-springs, cart-wheels, an' such, And other profitless turning; But when it came to learning, He would always shirk somehow! I was trimming him out for a preacher, When he got over being wild (He was always a sturdy creature-- A sinfully thrifty child); A Cartwright preacher, perhaps, As could eat strong boiled dinners, Talk straight to saucy chaps, And knock down fightin' sinners; I told him of all Heaven's mercies, Raked his sins o'er and o'er, Made him learn Scripture verses, Half a thousand or more; I sung the hymn-book through him, I whipped the Bible into him, In grace to make him grow: What did such training call for? What did I name him Paul for?-- To have him run off with a show? All o' the wicked things That are found in circus rings, I taught him to abhor 'em; But he always was crazy for 'em. I know what such follies be; For once in my life--woe's me-- Let's see-- 'Twas the fall before Paul was born I myself was crazy for shows. How it happened, Goodness knows: But howe'er it did befall-- Whate'er may ha' been the reason-- For once I went to all The circuses of the season. I watched 'em, high an' low, Painfully try to be jolly; I laughed at the tricks o' the clown: I went and saw their folly, In order to preach it down: Little enough did I know That Paul would run off with a show! What'll they do with the boy? They'll stand him upon a horse, To his exceeding joy, To teach him to ride, of course. Sakes! he can do that now! [Illustration: "MY BOY! COME IN! COME IN!"] He can whip old Jim to a jump, And ride upon him standing, And never get a thump-- Never a bit of harm. He has trained all the beasts on the farm, From the ducks to the brindle cow, To follow his commanding. Sakes! that it should be so! Him's I've brought up i' the bosom Of church, and all things good: All my pains--I shall lose 'em-- Might have known that I would. I had hopes beyond my countin', I had faith as big as a mountain; But somehow I knew all the while He'd turn out in some such style-- Always had that fear. Well, he's never comin' back here. If he comes to any harm, If he falls an' sprains his arm. If he slips and breaks his leg, He can hobble about an' beg. He can--Who is that boy out there, Jane. Skulkin' 'long by the railroad track, Head an' feet all bare, Jane, One eye dressed in black? My boy! Come in! come in! Come in! come in! come in! Come in--you sha'n't be hurt. Come in--you shall rest--you shall rest. Why, you're all over blood an' dirt! Did they hurt you?--well, well, it's too bad. So you thought the old home the best? You won't run off ag'in? Well, come in, come in, poor lad; Come in--come in--come in! [Illustration] THE KEY TO THOMAS' HEART. Ride with me, Uncle Nathan? * * I don't care an' I do. My poor old heart's in a hurry; I'm anxious to get through. My soul outwalks my body; my legs are far from strong; An' it's mighty kind o' you, doctor, to help the old man along. I'm some'at full o' hustle; there's business to be done. I've just been out to the village to see my youngest son. You used to know him, doctor, ere he his age did get, An' if I ain't mistaken, you sometimes see him yet. We took him through his boyhood, with never a ground for fears; But somehow he stumbled over his early manhood's years. The landmarks that we showed him, he seems to wander from, Though in his heart there was never a better boy than Tom. He was quick o' mind an' body in all he done an' said; But all the gold he reached for, it seemed to turn to lead. The devil of grog it caught him, an' held him, though the while He has never grudged his parents a pleasant word an' smile. The devil of grog it caught him, an' then he turned an' said. By that which fed from off him, he henceforth would be fed; An' that which lived upon him, should give him a livin' o'er; An' so he keeps that groggery that's next to Wilson's store. But howsoe'er he's wandered, I've al'ays so far heard That he had a sense of honor, an' never broke his word; An' his mother, from the good Lord, she says, has understood That, if he agrees to be sober, he'll keep the promise good. An' so when just this mornin' these poor old eyes o' mine Saw all the women round him, a-coaxin' him to sign, An' when the Widow Adams let fly a homespun prayer, An' he looked kind o' wild like, an' started unaware, [Illustration: "THE MOTHER, WHO CARRIES THE KEY TO THOMAS' HEART."] An' glanced at her an instant, an' then at his kegs o' rum, I somehow knew in a minute the turnin'-point had come; An' he would be as good a man as ever yet there's been, Or else let go forever, an' sink in the sea of sin. An' I knew, whatever efforts might carry him or fail, There was only one could help God to turn the waverin' scale; An' I skulked away in a hurry--I was bound to do my part-- To get the mother, who carries the key to Thomas' heart. She's gettin' old an' feeble, an' childish in her talk; An' we've no horse an' buggy, an' she will have to walk; But she would be fast to come, sir, the gracious chance to seize, If she had to crawl to Thomas upon her hands an' knees. * * * * * Crawl?--walk? No, not if I know it! So set your mind at rest. Why, hang it! I'm Tom's customer, and said to be his best! But if this blooded horse here will show his usual power, Poor Tom shall see his mother in less than half an hour. [Illustration] THE DOCTOR'S STORY. I. Good folks ever will have their way-- Good folks ever for it must pay. But we, who are here and everywhere, The burden of their faults must bear. We must shoulder others' shame-- Fight their follies, and take their blame; Purge the body, and humor the mind; Doctor the eyes when the soul is blind; Build the column of health erect On the quicksands of neglect: Always shouldering others' shame-- Bearing their faults and taking the blame! II. Deacon Rogers, he came to me; "Wife is agoin' to die," said he. "Doctors great, an' doctors small, Haven't improved her any at all. "Physic and blister, powders and pills, And nothing sure but the doctors' bills! "Twenty women, with remedies new, Bother my wife the whole day through. "Sweet as honey, or bitter as gall-- Poor old woman, she takes 'em all. "Sour or sweet, whatever they choose; Poor old woman, she daren't refuse. "So she pleases whoe'er may call, An' Death is suited the best of all. "Physic and blister, powder an' pill-- Bound to conquer, and sure to kill!" III. Mrs. Rogers lay in her bed. Bandaged and blistered from foot to head. Blistered and bandaged from head to toe, Mrs. Rogers was very low. Bottle and saucer, spoon and cup, On the table stood bravely up; Physics of high and low degree; Calomel, catnip, boneset tea; Every thing a body could bear, Excepting light and water and air. IV. I opened the blinds; the day was bright, And God gave Mrs. Rogers some light. [Illustration: "I THREW THEM AS FAR AS I COULD THROW."] I opened the window; the day was fair, And God gave Mrs. Rogers some air. Bottles and blisters, powders and pills, Catnip, boneset, sirups, and squills; Drugs and medicines, high and low, I threw them as far as I could throw. "What are you doing?" my patient cried; "Frightening Death," I coolly replied. "You are crazy!" a visitor said: I flung a bottle at his head. V. Deacon Rogers he came to me; "Wife is a-gettin' her health," said he. "I really think she will worry through; She scolds me just as she used to do. "All the people have poohed an' slurred-- All the neighbors have had their word; "'Twere better to perish, some of 'em say, Than be cured in such an irregular way." VI. "Your wife," said I, "had God's good care, And His remedies, light and water and air. "All of the doctors, beyond a doubt, Couldn't have cured Mrs. Rogers without." VII. The deacon smiled and bowed his head; "Then your bill is nothing," he said. "God's be the glory, as you say! God bless you, doctor! good-day! good-day!" VIII. If ever I doctor that woman again, I'll give her medicine made by men. THE CHRISTMAS BABY. "Tha'rt welcome, little bonny brid, But shouldn't ha' come just when tha' did: Teimes are bad." _English Ballad._ Hoot! ye little rascal! ye come it on me this way, Crowdin' yerself amongst us this blusterin' winter's day, Knowin' that we already have three of ye, an' seven, An' tryin' to make yerself out a Christmas present o' Heaven? [Illustration] Ten of ye have we now, Sir, for this world to abuse; An' Bobbie he have no waistcoat, an' Nellie she have no shoes, An' Sammie he have no shirt, Sir (I tell it to his shame), An' the one that was just before ye we ain't had time to name! An' all o' the banks be smashin', an' on us poor folk fall; An' Boss he whittles the wages when work's to be had at all; An' Tom he have cut his foot off, an' lies in a woful plight, An' all of us wonders at mornin' as what we shall eat at night; [Illustration] An' but for your father an' Sandy a-findin' somewhat to do, An' but for the preacher's good wife, who often helps us through, An' but for your poor dear mother a-doin' twice her part, Ye'd 'a seen us all in heaven afore _ye_ was ready to start! [Illustration] An' now _ye_ have come, ye rascal! so healthy an' fat an' sound, A-weighin', I'll wager a dollar, the full of a dozen pound! With yer mother's eyes a flashin', yer father's flesh an' build, An' a good big mouth an' stomach all ready for to be filled! No, no! don't cry, my baby! hush up, my pretty one! Don't get my chaff in yer eye, boy--I only was just in fun. Ye'll like us when ye know us, although we're cur'us folks; But we don't get much victual, an' half our livin' is jokes! Why, boy, did ye take me in earnest? come, sit upon my knee; I'll tell ye a secret, youngster, I'll name ye after me. Ye shall have all yer brothers an' sisters with ye to play, An' ye shall have yer carriage, an' ride out every day! [Illustration] Why, boy, do ye think ye'll suffer? I'm gettin' a trifle old, But it'll be many years yet before I lose my hold; An' if I should fall on the road, boy, still, them's yer brothers, there, An' not a rogue of 'em ever would see ye harmed a hair! Say! when ye come from heaven, my little namesake dear, Did ye see, 'mongst the little girls there, a face like this one here? That was yer little sister--she died a year ago, An' all of us cried like babies when they laid her under the snow! Hang it! if all the rich men I ever see or knew Came here with all their traps, boy, an' offered 'em for you, I'd show 'em to the door, Sir, so quick they'd think it odd, Before I'd sell to another my Christmas gift from God! [Illustration] DECORATION-DAY POEMS. COVER THEM OVER. Cover them over with beautiful flowers; Deck them with garlands, those brothers of ours; Lying so silent, by night and by day, Sleeping the years of their manhood away: Years they had marked for the joys of the brave; Years they must waste in the sloth of the grave. All the bright laurels that promised to bloom Fell to the earth when they went to the tomb. Give them the meed they have won in the past; Give them the honors their merits forecast; Give them the chaplets they won in the strife; Give them the laurels they lost with their life. Cover them over--yes, cover them over-- Parent, and husband, and brother, and lover: Crown in your heart these dead heroes of ours. And cover them over with beautiful flowers! Cover the faces that motionless lie, Shut from the blue of the glorious sky: Faces once lighted with smiles of the gay-- Faces now marred by the frown of decay. Eyes that beamed friendship and love to your own; Lips that sweet thoughts of affection made known; Brows you have soothed in the day of distress; Cheeks you have flushed by the tender caress. Faces that brightened at War's stirring cry; Faces that streamed when they bade you good-by; Faces that glowed in the battle's red flame, Paling for naught, till the Death Angel came. Cover them over--yes, cover them over-- Parent, and husband, and brother, and lover: Kiss in your hearts these dead heroes of ours, And cover them over with beautiful flowers! Cover the hands that are resting, half-tried, Crossed on the bosom, or low by the side: Hands to you, mother, in infancy thrown; Hands that you, father, close hid in your own; Hands where you, sister, when tried and dismayed, Hung for protection and counsel and aid; Hands that you, brother, for faithfulness knew; Hands that you, wife, wrung in bitter adieu. Bravely the cross of their country they bore; Words of devotion they wrote with their gore; Grandly they grasped for a garland of light, Catching the mantle of death-darkened night. Cover them over--yes, cover them over-- Parent, and husband, and brother, and lover: Clasp in your hearts these dead heroes of ours, And cover them over with beautiful flowers! Cover the feet that, all weary and torn, Hither by comrades were tenderly borne: Feet that have trodden, through love-lighted ways, Near to your own, in the old happy days; Feet that have pressed, in Life's opening morn, Roses of pleasure, and Death's poisoned thorn. Swiftly they rushed to the help of the right, Firmly they stood in the shock of the fight. Ne'er shall the enemy's hurrying tramp Summon them forth from their death-guarded camp; Ne'er, till Eternity's bugle shall sound, Will they come out from their couch in the ground. Cover them over--yes, cover them over-- Parent, and husband, and brother, and lover: Rough were the paths of those heroes of ours-- Now cover them over with beautiful flowers! Cover the hearts that have beaten so high, Beaten with hopes that were born but to die; Hearts that have burned in the heat of the fray, Hearts that have yearned for the homes far away; Hearts that beat high in the charge's loud tramp, Hearts that low fell in the prison's foul damp. Once they were swelling with courage and will, Now they are lying all pulseless and still; Once they were glowing with friendship and love, Now the great souls have gone soaring above. Bravely their blood to the nation they gave, Then in her bosom they found them a grave. Cover them over--yes, cover them over-- Parent, and husband, and brother, and lover: Press to your hearts these dead heroes of ours, And cover them over with beautiful flowers! One there is, sleeping in yonder low tomb, Worthy the brightest of flow'rets that bloom. Weakness of womanhood's life was her part; Tenderly strong was her generous heart. Bravely she stood by the sufferer's side, Checking the pain and the life-bearing tide; Fighting the swift-sweeping phantom of Death, Easing the dying man's fluttering breath; Then, when the strife that had nerved her was o'er, Calmly she went to where wars are no more. Voices have blessed her now silent and dumb; Voices will bless her in long years to come. Cover her over--yes, cover her over-- Blessings, like angels, around her shall hover; Cherish the name of that sister of ours, And cover her over with beautiful flowers! [Illustration: "THEY WHO IN MOUNTAIN AND HILL-SIDE AND DELL, REST WHERE THEY WEARIED, AND LIE WHERE THEY FELL."] Cover the thousands who sleep far away-- Sleep where their friends can not find them to-day; They who in mountain and hill-side and dell Rest where they wearied, and lie where they fell. Softly the grass-blade creeps round their repose; Sweetly above them the wild flow'ret blows; Zephyrs of freedom fly gently o'erhead, Whispering names for the patriot dead. So in our minds we will name them once more, So in our hearts we will cover them o'er; Roses and lilies and violets blue, Bloom in our souls for the brave and the true. Cover them over--yes, cover them over--Parent, and husband, and brother, and lover: Think of those far-away heroes of ours, And cover them over with beautiful flowers! When the long years have crept slowly away, E'en to the dawn of Earth's funeral day; When, at the Archangel's trumpet and tread, Rise up the faces and forms of the dead; When the great world its last judgment awaits; When the blue sky shall swing open its gates, And our long columns march silently through, Past the Great Captain, for final review; Then for the blood that has flown for the right, Crowns shall be given, untarnished and bright; Then the glad ear of each war-martyred son Proudly shall hear the good judgment, "Well done." Blessings for garlands shall cover them over--Parent, and husband, and brother, and lover: God will reward those dead heroes of ours, And cover them over with beautiful flowers! [Illustration] THE LOVES OF THE NATIONS. [READ AT THE ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY, DECORATION DAY, 1884.] I. The Grecians loved their soldier dead: They prized the casket, though the pearl had fled. When he who could be dangerous in the fight, Had proved his soul's magnificence and might, But--his poor body vanquished--with a sigh Had laid him down upon the sands to die, He vaulted 'mongst the nation's honored sons; He was the love of all the living ones. They rallied round a chief when fallen low, To guard his numb flesh from a hostile blow. "Rescue the dead!" was then the clarion cry; "Rescue the dead, for we ourselves must die!" So, oft they made, before the strife was done, A dozen corpses more, to rescue one. When that great agony of muscle, brain, Heart, soul, tumultuous joy, and frantic pain, Men call a battle, had been lost and won, And it was told what side the gods were on, And o'er the brows of which exhausted band Proud Victory should press her jewelled hand, Then from the conquered to the conquering came A voice that made its way like tongues of flame, And swift and chivalrous compliance bred: "Give us a truce, that we may bury our dead!" Six Grecian generals came from war one day, All well esteemed, for gallant men were they; But some one, pointing grimly at them, said, "They on the field unburied left their dead." [Illustration: "AND DOES COLUMBIA LOVE HER DEAD?"] Then popular rage rose in a fiery flood, And curled about them, and licked up their blood. Why did each one fall with dissevered head? Because the Grecians loved their soldier dead! A man came running from Thermopylæ, And said, "'Tis done; they all were slain but me." Why did his fellow-Spartans sneer and hiss, Recoil from him, as from a leper's kiss, And say, "Take back your blood, you craven drone, And leave it where your comrades lost their own?" It was because the unhappy man had sped Away from death, and left his comrades dead. The Grecian mother, with a tearless eye, Sent her son warward, with this mandate high: "Now be this shield your glory or your hearse! With it you earn my blessing or my curse! Rather your ashes flecked with sparks of fame, Than your live body clad in robes of shame!" Oh yes, the Grecians loved their soldier dead! Whether beneath the grass-blade's dainty tread, Or 'mid the funeral pyre's majestic blaze, They glowed within the living's envied gaze! Yet not like ours that Grecian love could be: They did not love the living as do we! II. The Romans loved their soldier dead, And brightest, grandest honors o'er them spread. That hard, grim nation, which with fierce iron hand Clasped by the choking throat land after land, And blood of its own living freely shed, Grew strangely tender with its warrior dead. The past was dragged for deeds of might and fame, To hang in garlands on the golden name; The magic silver of some gifted tongue Chaplets of praise above his body flung; And words fell on the living, listening ear, The dead might well awaken but to hear. The flags that he had captured, draped in gloom, Before him waved--he found them at his tomb; Sweet flowers, the freshest beauties of a day, Made a fair garden round the hero's clay; Great monuments wrote solemnly on high His glory o'er the blue page of the sky; And epitaphs, beneath the sparkling name, Gave to the voiceless dead a tongue of flame. Who fell with patriotic bravery, knew, Humble or proud, his deeds would have their due; Whoe'er with baseness threw his name away, Knew that, when fall'n, he formed the vulture's prey. Oh yes, the Romans loved their valiant dead, The while their living were to victory led! Swift-sighted Rome! you knew the intense desire Of men to live when lesser men expire; Knew how they struggle, e'en with latest breath, To make their names o'erbridge the gulf of death; Knew the last rites to one dead hero paid Would sharpen many a living warrior's blade; Knew how your victory-accustomed bands Were waved along by their dead comrades' hands! Yet not like ours that Roman love could be: They did not love the living as do we! III. And does Columbia love _her_ dead?-- No word of praise or honor can be said, No language has been given to our race, No monument has majesty or grace, No music, filling with weird sweets the air, No maid or matron eloquently fair, Naught that can feeling to expression wed, May say how well we love our soldier dead. If in those days when self was all above, Men loved so well ere they were taught to love, What deep affection may be felt and seen From hearts taught by the love-crowned Nazarene! [Illustration: "WHEN A MAN THROWS THE TREASURES OF HIS LIFE."] The narrow Tiber creeps through Cæsar's Rome, The broad Potomac laves our chieftain's home; The cascades of the Grecians murmur still, Niagara thunders o'er the Western hill. So seems it, in this era of heart-lore, As if our love transcended all before. In this republic--Giant of Free Lands, Holding apart the oceans with strong hands-- Has through these years in massive quiet flown A tide of tender heart-love for its own. When swirling floods rush through the meadows fair, And turn them into valleys of despair, A flood of love sweeps o'er the prosperous hills, And brings them aid to cure their sudden ills. When the red fire-king holds his crimson court, And ruins homes to sate his fiendish sport, There speeds a flame of pity through the land, Which opens wide the generous heart and hand. Love for the worthy living, our hearts' guide; Love for the worthy dead, his dark-veiled bride. Love for the living martyrs of the land, And garlands for the dead, go hand in hand. So, while we deck the brave ones that are gone, Our hearts for those who live, beat truly on. When a man throws the treasures of his life Into the Land's fierce, self-preserving strife, Let him be sure, in the world's battles grim, When war is o'er, the Land will fight for him! So shall God's blessing mingle with these flowers, And love of dead and living both be ours; And benedictions on our hearts be shed; For they are living, whom we mourn as dead! [Illustration] COLLEGE POEMS. RIFTS IN THE CLOUD. [GRADUATING POEM, JUNE 17, 1869.] Life is a cloud--e'en take it as you may; Illumine it with Pleasure's transient ray; Brighten its edge with Virtue; let each fold E'en by the touch of God be flecked with gold, While angel-wings may kindly hover near, And angel-voices murmur words of cheer, Still, life's a cloud, forever hanging nigh, Forever o'er our winding pathways spread, Ready to blacken on some saddened eye, And hurl its bolts on some defenseless head! Yes, there are lives that seem to know no ill; Paths that seem straight, with naught of thorn or hill. The bright and glorious sun, each welcome day, Flashes upon the flowers that deck their way, And the soft zephyr sings a lullaby, 'Mid rustling trees, to please the ear and eye; And all the darling child of fortune needs, And all his dull, half-slumbering caution heeds, While fairy eyes their watch above him keep, Is breath to live and weariness to sleep. But life's a cloud! and soon the smiling sky May wear the unwelcome semblance of a frown, And the fierce tempest, madly rushing by, May raise its dripping wings, and strike him down! When helpless infancy, for love or rest, Lies nestling to a mother's yearning breast, While she, enamored of its ways and wiles As mothers only are, looks down and smiles, And spies a thousand unsuspected charms In the sweet babe she presses in her arms, While he, the love-light kindled in his eyes, Sends to her own, electrical replies, A ray of sunshine comes for each caress, From out the clear blue sky of happiness. But life's a cloud! and soon the smiling face The frowns and tears of childish grief may know, And the love-language of the heart give place To the wild clamor of a baby's woe. The days of youth are joyful, in their way; Bare feet tread lightly, and their steps are gay. Parental kindness grades the early path, And shields it from the storm-king's dreaded wrath. But there are thorns that prick the infant flesh, And bid the youthful eyes to flow afresh, Thorns that maturer nerves would never feel, With wounds that bleed not less, that soon they heal. When we look back upon our childhood days, Look down the long and sweetly verdant ways Wherein we gayly passed the shining hours, We see the beauty of its blooming flowers, We breathe its fresh and fragrant air once more, And, counting all its many pleasures o'er, And giving them their natural place of chief, Forget our disappointments and our grief. Sorrows that now were light, then weighed us down, And claimed our tears for every surly frown. For life's a cloud, e'en take it as we will, The changing wind ne'er banishes or lifts; The pangs of grief but make it darker still, And happiness is nothing but its rifts. There is a joy in sturdy manhood still; Bravery is joy; and he who says, I WILL, And turns, with swelling heart, and dares the fates, While firm resolve upon his purpose waits, Is happier for the deed; and he whose share Is honest toil, pits that against dull care. And yet, in spite of labor, faith, or prayer, Dark clouds and fearful o'er our paths are driven; They take the shape of monsters in the air, And almost shut our eager gaze from heaven! Disease is there, with slimy, loathsome touch, With hollow, blood-shot eyes and eager clutch, Longing to strike us down with pangs of pain, And bind us there, with weakness' galling chain. Ruin is there, with cunning ambush laid, Waiting some panic in the ranks of trade, Some profitless endeavor, or some trust By recreant knave abused, to snatch the crust From out the mouths of them we love the best, And bring gaunt hunger, an unwelcome guest. Disgrace is there, of honest look bereft, Truth in his right hand, falsehood in his left, Pride in his mouth, the devil in his eye, His garment truth, his cold black heart a lie, Forging the bolts to blast some honored name; Longing to see some victim wronged or wrong; To see him step into the pool of shame, Or soiled by loved ones that to him belong. A dark cloud hovers over every zone-- The cloud of ignorance. The great unknown, Defying comprehension, still hangs low Above our feeble minds. When we who now Have stumbled 'neath the ever-varying load That marks the weary student's royal road, Have hurried over verbs in headlong haste, And various thorny paths of language traced; Have run our muddled heads, with rueful sigh, 'Gainst figures truthful, that yet seemed to lie; Have peeped into the Sciences, and learned How much we do not know; have bravely turned Our guns of eloquence on forest trees, And preached grave doctrines to the wayward breeze; When we have done all this, the foggy cloud, With scarce a rift, is still above us bowed; And we are children, on some garden's verge, Groping for flowers the opposing wall beneath, Who, flushed and breathless, may at last emerge, With a few scanty blossoms for a wreath. But never was a cloud so thick and black, But it might some time break, and on its track The glorious sun come streaming. Never, too, So but its threads might bleach to lighter hue, Was sorrow's mantle of so deep a dye. And he who, peering at the troubled sky, Looks past the clouds, or looks the cloud-rifts through, Or, finding none, remembers their great worth, And strikes them for himself, is that man who Shows the completest wisdom of this earth. When one stands forth in Reason's glorious light, Stands in his own proud consciousness of right, Laments his faults, his virtues does not boast, Studies all creatures--and himself the most-- Knowing the way wherewith his faults to meet, Or, vanquished by them, owning his defeat, He pays the penalty as should true men, And pitches battle with the foe again; When, giving all their proper due and heed, He yet has power, when such shall be the need, To go his way, unshackled, true, and free, And bid the world go hanged, if needs must be, He strikes a rift for his unfearing eye Through the black cloud of low servility: A cloud that's decked the Orient all these years; 'Neath whose low-bending folds, 'mid groans and tears, Priestcraft has heaped its huge, ill-gotten gains, And tyrants forged their bloody, clanking chains; A cloud, that when the _Mayflower's_ precious cup The misty, treacherous deep held proudly up, By waves that leaped and dashed each other o'er, But onward still the ark of Freedom bore, Some fair and peaceful Ararat to find, Plumed its black wings, and swept not far behind. To-day it lowers o'er this great, free land-- O'er farms and workshops, offices and spires-- Its baleful shadow casts on every hand, And darkens Church and State and household fires. It is a thing to pity and to blame, A useless, vile, humiliating shame, A silent slander on the Heaven-born soul, Decked with the signet of its own control, A flaw upon the image of our God, When men, obedient to some Mogul's nod-- When men, the sockets of whose addled brains Are blessed with some illuminate remains Wherefrom the glim of reason still is shed, Blow out the light, and send their wits to bed; And, taking as their sole dictator, then. Some little, thundering god of speech or pen, Aping submissively the smile or frown Of some great brazen face that beats them down, Or silenced by some lubricated tongue, Covered with borrowed words and neatly hung-- They yield their judgments up to others' wills, And take grave creeds like sugar-coated pills; And, with their weakness tacitly confessed, Like the unfeathered fledgelings of a nest, When the old bird comes home with worms and flies-- With half a smile and half a knowing frown, They open wide their mouths, and shut their eyes, And seem to murmur softly, "_Drop it down_." He who will creep about some great man's feet, The honeyed fragrance of his breath to meet, Or follow him about, with crafty plan, And cringe for smiles and favors, is no man. A fraction of a man, and all his own, Although his numerator be but one, With unity divided up so fine That thousands range themselves beneath the line-- Ay, one so insignificantly small That quick accountants count him not at all-- Is better far, and vastly nobler, too, Than some great swelling cipher among men, Naught of itself, and nothing else to do Except to help some little one count ten! Let us e'en strike, with courage true endowed, Straight at the centre of this murky cloud, And sweep its worthless vapor from the earth. Take sense for coin; opinions at their worth; Conviction at its cost; dictation, when Our minds and souls are bankrupt--hardly then! When Freedom's sons and daughters will do this, Our land will know a day of happiness, Fit for such joy as never yet was seen, E'en when Emancipation tried her keen Bright blade upon the galling chains of steel, And stamped the action with the nation's seal. E'en when the cable its initial spark Brought flashing through the ocean's deep and dark; E'en when was fixed, with far-resounding strokes, With song, and praise, and thankfulness, and mirth, The golden fastening of the chain that yokes The two great restless oceans of the earth! But over all, and round about us spread, Hangs the black cloud of Death: a thunder-head, Yet ominously silent; moving on, While from its threatening folds, so deep and dark, The forkèd lightning, ever and anon, Shoots for some life, and never fails its mark. [Illustration: "E'EN WHEN WAS FIXED, WITH FAR-RESOUNDING STROKES."] There was one classmate is not here to-day; Many an oak is blasted on its way, Many a growing hope is overthrown. What might have been, his early growth had shown, What was, our love and tears for him may tell; He lived, he toiled, he faded, and he fell. When our friend lay within that narrow room Men call a coffin--in its cheerless gloom Himself the only tenant, and asleep In a long slumber, terrible and deep; When at the open door his pale, sad face Appeared to us, without a look or trace Of recognition in its ghastly hue, Soon to be hid forever from our view; When, with his sightless eyes to heaven upturned, Wherefrom his royal soul upon them burned. He waited for his last rites to be said, With the pathetic patience of the dead; When tenderly his manly form we lay In its last couch, with covering of clay; Who in that mournful duty had a part, But felt the cloud of Death upon his heart? But when we thought how his unfettered soul, Free from his poor sick body's weak control, Pluming its wings at the Eternal throne, Might take through realms of space its rapid flight, And find a million joys to us unknown, The cloud was rifted by a ray of light. Old class of '69! together, still, We've journeyed up the rough and toilsome hill; Seeking the gems to labor ne'er denied, Plucking the fruits that deck the mountain-side. Now, in the glory of this summer day, We part, and each one goes his different way. Let each, with hope to fire his yearning soul, Still hurry onward to the shining goal. The way at times may dark and weary seem, No ray of sunshine on our path may beam, The dark clouds hover o'er us like a pall, And gloom and sadness seem to compass all; But still, with honest purpose, toil we on; And if our steps be upright, straight, and true. Far in the east a golden light shall dawn, And the bright smile of God come bursting through. [Illustration] BROTHERS AND FRIENDS. [REUNION OF [Greek: Adelphoi kai philoi] SOCIETY, JUNE 16, 1875.] Would I might utter all my heart can feel! But there are thoughts weak words will not reveal; The rarest fruitage is the last to fall; The strongest language hath no words at all. When first the uncouth student comes in sight-- A sturdy plant, just struggling toward the light-- And timidly invades his classic home, And gazes at the high-perched college dome, Striving, through eyes with a vague yearning dim, To spy some future glory there for him, A child in thought, a man in strong desire, A clod of clay, vexed by a restless fire, When, homesick, heart-sick, tired, and desolate, He leans himself 'gainst Learning's iron gate, While all the future frowns upon his track, And all the past conspires to pull him back; When, with tired resolution in his looks, He bends above the cabalistic books, And strives, with knitted forehead throbbing hot, To learn what older students have forgot; And wonders how the Romans and the Greeks Could cry aloud and spare their jaws and cheeks; And wants the Algebraic author put On an equation, tied there, head and foot, Which then, with all Reduction's boasted strength, May be expanded to prodigious length; When he reflects, with rueful, pain-worn phiz, What a sad, melancholy dog he is, And how much less unhappy and forlorn Are all those students who are not yet born; When Inexperience like a worm is twined Around the clumsy fingers of his mind, And Discipline, a stranger yet unknown, Struts grandly by and leaves him all alone; What cheers him better than to feel and see Some other one as badly off as he? Or the sincere advice and kindly aid Of those well versed in Study's curious trade? What help such solace and improvement lends As the hand-grasp of Brothers and of Friends? When, with a wildly ominous halloo, The frisky Freshman shuffles into view, And shouts aloud the war-cry of his clan, And makes friends with the devil like a man: When, looking upward at the other classes, He dubs them as three tandem-teams of asses, And, scarcely knowing what he does it for, Vows against them unmitigated war, And aims to show them that though they may tread In stately, grand procession o'er his head, The animated pathway that they scorn, May sometimes bristle with a hidden thorn; When, with a vigilance that to nothing yields, He scans the fruitage of the neighboring fields, And in the solemn night-time doth entwine Affection's fingers round the melon-vine; When the tired wagon from its sheltering shed To strange, uncouth localities is led, And, with the night for a dissecting-room, Is analyzed amid the friendly gloom; When the hushed rooster, cheated of his cry, From his spoiled perch bids this vain world good-bye; When, in the chapel, an unwilling guest, And living sacrifice, a cow doth rest; When from the tower, the bell's notes, pealing down, Rouse up the fireman from the sleeping town, Who, rushing to the scene, with duty fired, Finds his well-meant assistance unrequired, And, creeping homeward, steadily doth play Upon the third commandment all the way; When are fired off, with mirth-directed aims, At the staid Alma Mater, various games, As feline juveniles themselves regale In the lithe folds of the maternal tail, And when these antics have gone far enough, Comes from her paw a well-considered cuff, What more to soothe the chastened spirit tends Than sympathy from Brothers and from Friends? When the deep Sophomore has just begun The study of his merits, one by one, And found that he, a bright scholastic blade, Is fearfully and wonderfully made; Discovers how much greater is his share Of genius than he was at first aware; When, with a ken beyond his tender age, He sweeps o'er History's closely printed page, Conjecturing how this world so long endured, With his co-operation unsecured; When, with his geometrical survey Trigonometrically brought in play, He scans two points, with firm, unmoved design To join them sooner than by one straight line; When he, with oratoric hand astir, Rolls back the tide of ages--as it were; When Cicero he decides for reading fit, And tolerates happy Horace for his wit; When he across Zoölogy takes sight, To see what creatures were created right, And looks the plants that heaven has fashioned through, To see if they were rightly finished, too; When he his aid to any cause can lend, In readiness, on short notice, to ascend From any well-worn point, secure and soon, In his small oratorical balloon, Expecting, when his high trip's end appears, Descent upon a parachute of cheers; When he decides, beneath a load of care, What whiskered monogram his face shall wear; When, from his mind's high shoulders cropping out, Linguistic feathers constantly do sprout, Which, ere they meet the cool outsider's scoff, Require a quiet, friendly picking-off; What better to this healthy process lends, Than the critiques of Brothers and of Friends? When the spruce Junior, not disposed to shirk, Begins to get down fairly to his work, Strives to run foremost in the college race, Or at least fill a creditable place; When he bears, o'er the rough and hard highway, The heat and burden of the college day, And hastes--his mental lungs all out of breath-- As if it were a race of life and death; When with some little doubt his brain is fraught, That he's not quite so brilliant as he thought, And he would strengthen his lame talent still, By wrapping 'round the bandage of his will; When, undergoing the reaction drear That follows up the Sophomoric year, He finds each task much harder than before, And tarries long at every phrase's door, And pauses o'er his dull oration's page, Then tears it into pieces in a rage; When, had he fifty ink-stands, he could throw Each at some devil fraught with fancied woe; And when, perchance, atop of all this gloom, In his heart's world there's yet sufficient room For Cupid to come blundering through the dark, And make his sensibilities a mark, And, viewing each the other from afar, Learning and Love frown dolefully, and spar; What for his trouble-phantoms makes amends Like the support of Brothers and of Friends? When, with a strengthened soul and chastened brain, The Senior who has labored not in vain Looks back upon the four eventful years To see if any fruitfulness appears, When he stands, somewhat shadowed by remorse, In the bright Indian Summer of the course, And muses, had each opportunity Been seized, how smooth his present path might be; When, having blundered through each college hall, Bumping his head 'gainst Inexperience' wall, There burst upon him through the window-panes, Broad Knowledge' deep ravines and fertile plains; When, standing at the door, with gaze of doubt, He draws on his world-wrappings, and looks out Into the chillness of the winter's day, And almost wishes that he still might stay, What nearer to his beating heart extends, Than parting with his Brothers and his Friends? When he at last has bid the school good-by, And finds that many matters go awry; Finds much amid Earth's uncongenial fog, Not mentioned in the college catalogue; Finds that The World, in writing his name down, Forgets, somehow, to add the letters on Which serve to make his fellow-mortals see How little rests behind a big degree; Finds, also, that it is inclined to speak Elsewise than in the Latin or the Greek; Finds that the sharp blade of his brightened mind Gets dulled upon the pachydermal kind; That The World by Declension understands The sliding-down of houses, stocks, and lands; And that Translation means, in this world's bother, Translation from one pocket to another; Mistrusts that if The World has, as is sung, A tail by which, perchance, it may be "slung," The blessed place so many hands infold, He can not find whereon he may take hold; Finds that he best makes ground o'er this world's road, As he his college nonsense doth unload; What sweeter sound with Life's alarum blends Than the kind voice of Brothers and of Friends? * * * * * And so, to-day, we live our old lives o'er-- The Freshman gay, the smiling Sophomore, The anxious Junior, and the Senior proud, The care-immersed Alumnus, sober-browed; To shake once more the quick-responding hand, To trade in jokes no others understand; Our fish-lines into Memory's ponds to throw For stories which were left there long ago (Which, like most fishy ventures, as is known, Through many changing years have bred and grown); To beat the big drum of our vanity, To clash the cymbals of our boisterous glee; To bind again the old-time friendships fast, To fight once more the battles of the past. Beneath the blue of this clear sunlit sky, Beneath the storm-cloud, rudely lingering nigh, From night to night--from changing day to day-- Our grand Society has won its way. And as the lichen plant, when tempest-torn, And roughly from its native hill-side borne, Sucks moisture from the whirlwind's shivering form, And grows, while yet hurled onward by the storm, And when at last its voyage well is o'er, Thrives sweeter, purer, stronger than before, Our gallant little band has ever grown Stronger for all the struggles it has known; And, 'mid the smiles and frowns that heaven out-sends, Our hearts still beat as Brothers and as Friends. [Illustration: "HOW HAPPY ARE WE!"] OUR MARCH THROUGH THE PAST. [ALUMNI REUNION--1885.] When the tints of the morning had turned into gray, And the sun of our lives fast was finding its day, When we stood on that line where youth's journey was done, And our manhood and womanhood scarce had begun, When the word was no longer "How happy are we!" But "What can we suffer, and conquer, and _be_?" When the prairies of youth, with fresh flowers covered o'er, And all shaded with groves, were our playgrounds no more; And mountains stepped into the mist, from afar, And over the highest one's top, gleamed a star, 'Twas whispered to us, "If those heights you ascend, Much training its aid to your forces must lend; Ere you in the future the conflict have won, You must know what the minds of past ages have done." Then the old Alma Mater, with welcoming sign, Said, "That's what _I'm_ for; students, fall into line!" And with hearts still at home, but with eyes forward cast, We started away on our march through the past. 'Twas a long, weary march! full of toil and of pain; There were curbings of body, and lashings of brain; There were sinkings of heart, fraught with agony dire; There were roads we must walk full of thorns and of fire. For if he who much strength with the body would gain, Must clamber his way through fatigue and through pain, Then he who would mental efficiency find, Must suffer and strive with the nerves of the mind. If we turned all these woes in the quartz-mill of truth, And crushed out the gold from the woes of our youth, If we knew that all pain, when 'tis wisely endured, Will be paid for ten times, and the wound neatly cured, Then we gathered rich profits that doubtless will last Through ages to come--in our march through the past. 'Twas a bright, glorious march! full of joys that were new; Of hopes that kept budding, and friends that kept true; And powers just awaking and op'ning their eyes, That dashed through our souls with a thrill of surprise; Of facts 'twas a luxury just to possess; Of growth that was full of the fire of success. To you who now fret under college control, Keep this truth in your mind--let it call on your soul: You never will find, through terrestrial source, A pathway more smooth than the old college course. In spite of the foes that may lie in the way, In spite of the clouds that may blot the best day, In spite of the gibes ignoramuses throw forth, In spite of the cares of the world, flesh, etc., There's nothing you'll find, tho' you live a long while, That will show you so many sweet flowers to the mile, Though running through some woeful weeds on the way, As this same college course you are taking to-day. When, nearing Death-station, on life's crooked track, You scan your time-table, and take a look back O'er all of the different stations you've passed, You'll own, as you trundle along to the last, That nothing will strike you with such pleasant force, As that time that you spent in the old college course! You will find that it lighted your life, all the way, And gave you material for effort, each day; That you traveled much freer, for the luggage amassed In the work-checkered days of your march through the past. 'Twas a bonnie October, as autumn months go, From our camp on the tolerably placid St. Jo., We shouldered our--books, for grim heroism's home, For sweet, wicked, charming, licentious old Rome! [Illustration: "'TWAS A BRIGHT, GLORIOUS MARCH! FULL OF JOYS THAT WERE NEW."] And ere the last month of our journey was through, What picturesque characters came to our view! Came Cicero, full of extremes good and bad; The only great orator Rome ever had! Philosopher, statesman, attorney, he rose The higher for each of his enemies blows! A lesson to halt not that foes be appeased, And not to turn back when some fools are displeased. Keep on, with what light heaven will lend to your eyes; If fools call you fool, 'tis a sign you are wise. Came Livy, who, when we approached him, first fired A volley of Preface, that made us all tired; Describer of Rome, both as glorious and base, With mod rate correctness, and infinite grace; Who told how a wolf, in her blood-spattered home, Took charge of the two city fathers of Rome; How Remus resigned, from some reasons of weight, And Romulus seemed to endure it, "first-rate;" How his guests from the Sabines escaped with their lives, But left all their best-looking daughters for wives (Let this be a warning, by fathers e er carried; Keep daughters from school if you don't want them married!); Yes, what characters old, and yet startlingly new, Did that same historian pilot us to! Came Hannibal, trapper of Romans; whose might Put even the courage of heroes to flight! Unhelped by his own, and not conquered e'en then, Till the sun was eclipsed and made cowards his men; Yet even, when _down_--full of age and neglect-- His enemies feared him, and gave him respect! Came brave, grand Horatius, who kept bridge one day, And took bloody toll from whoe'er came that way; Then swam back in triumph--the pride of all nations-- And hero of--several school declamations! If we used these fierce stories our courage to feed, And learned that Resolve is the master of need, If we made up our minds that success is a prize That under the rubbish of hard labor lies, That like Rome, with its victory-banners unfurled, We would fight till we conquered our share of the world, But unlike old Rome, we would _not_ settle down, And let Sloth and Luxury tarnish our crown, Then we gained o'er ourselves a good influence vast, From that savage old land--in our march through the past. What country is this, that looms brightly to me, Washed well by the waves of the �gean sea? 'Tis the land where blind Homer, with harp of pure gold, Sang stories that never will cease to be told; Where Socrates, keeping an unruffled face, Took his cup of cold poison, with infinite grace; Where brave old Leonidas glory achieved, Was at home in Thermopylæ's pass, and received; Who to eloquence threw all a hero could give, And died--that a thousand orations might live! Where youthful Demosthenes, famous to be, With pebbles for troches, harangued the whole sea; While only himself and the wild breezes heard, And the ocean, though masculine, got the last word; How bad old Ulysses, on water and land, Showed how an old robber could even be grand; Where grim old Diogenes comfort defied, And lived--a tub full of the meanest of pride; Who flattered himself he had no one to thank, And earned--though received not--the name of a crank; And other old worthies, and unworthies, too, Whose sorrows and joys will forever be new. If these and their motives we struggled to reach, And studied their natures, as well as their speech, If we went through those mines of thought silver and gold, That seldom run barren and never grow old, Took what we could carry, and held to it fast, Then a good growing time, was our march through the past! What country is this? where some strange-looking men Make odd-looking figures with pencil and pen; The ghost of old Daboll stalks grimly about; And this one is Greenleaf--now, Thomson steps out; Charles Davies has come, arm-and-arm with Bourdon, While Robinson, Loomis, and others crowd on. Conundrums they offer; strange riddles they state; And set each poor wretch to maltreating his slate. How the hands of a clock meet at high twelve--and then, When will that old time-piece its fists clench again? How two famous trav'lers, who never have met, Set out for some place (and have not arrived yet!); How a man had three sons: to the first one he gave One-third of what he from the others could save; The others both shared, in a figurative way (Those boys haven't a cent of their cash to this day!); How a person had four casks: the first of which, filled From the second, left four-sevenths of what was not spilled (I always stopped right in the midst of my tasks, To guess at the taste of the stuff in those casks); How a man had ten daughters: the first one's age reckoned Three-fourths of eight-ninths of nine-tenths of the second; Numbers 3, 4, and 5, also 6, 7, and 8, Used also in problems their ages to state; The other two, being quite chickens, in fact, Dropped ciphering, and stated their ages exact. (If you went through that long computation again, You'd find those girls just the same age they were then.) Then the triangles, rectangles, quadrangles too, And other sad wrangles we had to go through; The sines and the co-sines that at us were hurled, Till we wished that there wasn't such a thing in the world; These fell on our minds, like a cold winter blast, But strengthened us much, in our march through the past. So 'mid all these countries we marched, night and day, And many the strange things that came in our way; The _reasons_, that seemed from us walled, hedged, and fenced; The roots of dead verbs, that we stumbled against; The pitiless logic of syllogism thin, That puzzled us where to conclude or begin; Rough notes of philosophy, harder than sweet, That pained our teeth, ere we cracked through to the meat; Our fright when "Analogy" round us careened, And made Joseph Butler show up like a fiend; The chemistry that in our minds somewhat sank, And showed us what queer things we ate, breathed, and drank; Zoology, where 'twas laboriously shown That man isn't the only queer animal known; We studied the rocks--rugged children of flame-- And sweet-scented flowers, and the fields whence they came. Then our innocent pastimes we cannot forget, Though some not the sensiblest mirth ever met; And most of them--now that vacation grows long-- Seem rather uncalled for, if not rather wrong. The old standard jokes that young blood keeps to spare, Such as borrowing wagons to lend to the air, And sampling much fruit--alas! stolen and sweet! To learn if 'twas fit for the owner to eat; And making strange brutes go to college by force-- These all seem a part of the regular course. If from such foolish pranks, we have garnered the truth That blood frisks and glows, when 'tis seasoned with youth, That young nerves with life and with mischief must thrill, And youth may be gay, and have principle still, If we that experience give a kind use, And form for the faults of the young, an excuse, And not at each bubble of sport stand aghast-- Our fun bore some fruit as we marched through the past. But memory is wide; and remains the abode Of the girls and the boys that we left on the road! They started off with us, their hopes were as bright As any of ours--and their spirits as light; Their efforts were brave, and their motives were good; And they made the long march just as well as they could. These gold days of June, each a floral surprise, Gave a thrill to their hearts, and a gleam to their eyes; The meadows that mantle yon valley's cool breast, To them, as to us, were the symbols of rest; By them as by us the fresh hill-sides were seen, When corn-fields were tossing their ribbons of green; For them the wide grain waved its flags richly free, And promised fruition, in days soon to be; For them faithful hands gave a clasp that was true, And proud kindred hearts kept their triumphs in view; They marched by our side, with no burden of dread-- They saw not the grave, just a few steps ahead; They looked for the time, when sweet blessings would grow From the rich earthly truths they had struggled to know; But too weary the march, or too heavy the load; And they laid down their armor and died on the road. Whatever the splendors and joys of to-day, Whatever the flowers that may flash in our way, Whatever our joy at assembling once more, Though God in his love grant the same o'er and o'er, We will always remember, with sweet love bestowed, The names of those comrades who fell on the road. The flags of our triumphs shall droop at half mast, For those whom the future claimed out of the past! Not as youths now we meet, but grave women and men; 'Mid bright summer days, we must soon part again. We know not the future, or what hands our own May clasp, when another half decade is flown; Our efforts may yet for a season be told (For we re not so distressing, confoundedly old; The crows may have stood at the edge of our eyes, And left some tracks there that we haven't learned to prize; The frost in our hair may be carelessly flung; But our minds and our hearts and our souls may be young), Still, grass-stalks, e'en now, may have lifted their heads, That may die of the spades that will make our last beds; But whatever our fate--to enjoy or endure-- To quote from great Webster, 'The past is secure;' So I would to-night move a vote of warm thanks, To the living and dead who commanded our ranks; To our enemies, who, in their short busy stay, Did all that they could, to encumber our way; Who postured and crouched in their poisonous slime, Becoming step-ladders, on which we could climb; Who told our worst faults, and then lied themselves hoarse, And spurred us along with their tongues, in our course; Who lived low--conceived, intellectual moles-- "Next door to" our bodies--but not to our souls. The rattlesnake, viper, and toad have a use, And so has the vile tongue that rots with abuse. A thank to the friends who looked high for our mark, And lighted the way when 'twas dreary and dark; For he that has groped through the fog of despair, 'Till he fought his way out to the light and the air, Has one thing he never forgets, you will find; And that's the first help of a friend that is kind. Do you think, O true friend! who for e'en a short while, Have helped a young student with deed, word, or smile, That his memory, howe'er distracted or vexed, Will drop out your name, in this world, or the next? Among the good angels of earth you are classed, You who helped us along in our way through the past! Forward march! though that past lies in burial lands, We must toil in the future, with heads, hearts, and hands; Forward march! is the order that comes from on high, And rules the great college that graces the sky! They say Art is long, and they say very true; But so, by-the-way, is Eternity, too! No study to-day gets our effort and love, But has its completion in text-books above; No work over which the clouds struggle and beat, But finished may be, with the clouds neath our feet; Then with eyes upon Earth, but with hearts forward cast, We will thank happy Heaven for our march through the past! [Illustration] THAT DAY WE GRADUATED. We've had _some_ first-class fruitage, boys, 'Mid all the bad pears in our baskets, And there are several jewelled toys In Memory's queer, old-fashioned caskets; Where silver morning bells will chime Some certain tones that ne'er were mated, From that unprecedented time-- That grand old day, we graduated! It was a sheaf of hopes and fears; A fate that came, close covered, to us; It was the last day of four years That were to build up or undo us; The hour we wished and dreaded most, From which we shrunk, for which we waited; That inward fear and outward boast-- That fine old day we graduated! A thousand heads and hearts were there, With more or less discernment gifted; Our enemies with hopeful stare, Our friends with look of kindness lifted. We saw gay chaplets, wondering whom To crown their brilliant lives were fated; Bouquets looked puzzled 'mid their bloom, That fragrant day we graduated! And Beauty held a precious prize Of smiles for our intense oblations, And looked from many-colored eyes Made quizzical by old flirtations; And Learning glanced us through and through, With cold astuteness that we hated; We knew how much we never knew, That trying day we graduated! We rose, with super-student care, Brimful of fear and information; We had about ten minutes there To put four years in one oration. A thousand judgments on our lives From that important hour were dated: How queer, that one of us survives That fateful day we graduated! How all the sad, uneasy past Was wrenched from History's possession, In cartridges of periods cast, And fired in rounds of quick succession! Right's winsome look, Wrong's loathsome shape, Were unequivocally stated; And lucky that which could escape Us all--that day we graduated! And when our guns were at full play, As o'er the creaking stage we hauled them, Some first-class words got strayed away, And would not come back when we called them We had to grope and stumble round, Just where our style was most inflated: Humility and nerve, we found, Were trumps, that day we graduated! Ah me! it all was bitter-sweet-- That time of music, flowers, and splendor; The future life we marched to meet, The past, with memories rich and tender. A sombre fragrance filled the air-- A mournful joy ne'er duplicated; Both night and morning lingered there, That changeful day we graduated! And when "Good-bye" came, grimly sure, And handed us our hands at parting, We saw on what a lonely tour Of out-door effort we were starting; We who had wrangled, schemed, and fought, As dear old friends each other rated; Love twined about us, as it ought, That solemn day we graduated! [Illustration] POEMS OF SORROW AND DEATH. THE BURNING OF CHICAGO. I. 'Twas night in the beautiful city, The famous and wonderful city, The proud and magnificent city, The Queen of the North and the West. The riches of nations were gathered in wondrous and plentiful store; The swift-speeding bearers of Commerce were waiting on river and shore; The great staring walls towered skyward, with visage undaunted and bold, And said, "We are ready, O Winter! come on with your hunger and cold! Sweep down with your storms from the northward! come out from your ice-guarded lair! Our larders have food for a nation! our wardrobes have clothing to spare! For off from the corn-bladed prairies, and out from the valleys and hills, The farmer has swept us his harvests, the miller has emptied his mills; And here, in the lap of our city, the treasures of autumn shall rest, In golden-crowned, glorious Chicago, the Queen of the North and the West!" II. 'Twas night in the church-guarded city, The temple and altar-decked city, The turreted, spire-adorned city, The Queen of the North and the West. And out from the beautiful temples that wealth in its fullness had made, And out from the haunts that were humble, where Poverty peacefully prayed, Where praises and thanks had been offered to Him where they rightly belonged, In peacefulness quietly homeward the worshiping multitude thronged. The Pharisee, laden with riches and jewelry, costly and rare, Who proudly deigned thanks to Jehovah he was not as other men are; The penitent, crushed in his weakness, and laden with pain and with sin; The outcast who yearningly waited to hear the glad bidding, "Come in;" And thus went they quietly homeward, with sins and omissions confessed, In spire-adorned, templed Chicago, the Queen of the North and the West. III. 'Twas night in the sin-burdened city, The turbulent, vice-laden city, The sin-compassed, rogue-haunted city, Though Queen of the North and the West. And low in their caves of pollution great beasts of humanity growled; And over his money-strewn table the gambler bent fiercely, and scowled; And men with no seeming of manhood, with countenance flaming and fell, Drank deep from the fire-laden fountains that spring from the rivers of hell; And men with no seeming of manhood, who dreaded the coming of day, Prowled, cat-like, for blood-purchased plunder from men who were better than they; And men with no seeming of manhood, whose dearest-craved glory was shame, Whose joys were the sorrows of others, whose harvests were acres of flame, Slunk, whispering and low, in their corners, with bowie and pistol tight-pressed, In rogue-haunted, sin-cursed Chicago, though Queen of the North and the West. IV. 'Twas night in the elegant city, The rich and voluptuous city, The beauty-thronged, mansion-decked city, Gay Queen of the North and the West. And childhood was placidly resting in slumber untroubled and deep; And softly the mother was fondling her innocent baby to sleep; And maidens were dreaming of pleasures and triumphs the future should show, And scanning the brightness and glory of joys they were never to know; And firesides were cheerful and happy, and Comfort smiled sweetly around; But grim Desolation and Ruin looked into the window and frowned. And pitying angels looked downward, and gazed on their loved ones below, And longed to reach forth a deliverance, and yearned to beat backward the foe; But Pleasure and Comfort were reigning, nor danger was spoken or guessed, In beautiful, golden Chicago, gay Queen of the North and the West. V. Then up in the streets of the city, The careless and negligent city, The soon to be sacrificed city, Doomed Queen of the North and the West, Crept, softly and slyly, so tiny it hardly was worthy the name, Crept, slowly and soft through the rubbish, a radiant serpent of flame. The South-wind and West-wind came shrieking, "Rouse up in your strength and your ire! For many a year they have chained you, and crushed you, O demon of fire! For many a year they have bound you, and made you their servant and slave! Now, rouse you, and dig for this city a fiery and desolate grave! Freight heavy with grief and with wailing her world-scattered pride and renown! Charge straight on her mansions of splendor, and battle her battlements down! And we, the strong South-wind and West-wind, with thrice-doubled fury possessed, Will sweep with you over this city, this Queen of the North and the West!" VI. Then straight at the great, quiet city, The strong and o'erconfident city, The ruined and tempest-tossed city, Doomed Queen of the North and the West, The Fire-devil rallied his legions, and speeded them forth on the wind, With tinder and treasures before him, with ruins and tempests behind. The tenement crushed 'neath his footstep, the mansion oped wide at his knock; And walls that had frowned him defiance, they trembled and fell with a shock; And down on the hot, smoking house-tops came raining a deluge of fire; And serpents of flame writhed and clambered, and twisted on steeple and spire; And beautiful, glorious Chicago, the city of riches and fame, Was swept by a storm of destruction, was flooded by billows of flame. The Fire-king loomed high in his glory, with crimson and flame-streaming crest, And grinned his fierce scorn on Chicago, doomed Queen of the North and the West. VII. Then swiftly the quick-breathing city, The fearful and panic-struck city, The startled and fire-deluged city, Rushed back from the South and the West. And loudly the fire-bells were clanging, and ringing their funeral notes; And loudly wild accents of terror came pealing from thousands of throats; And loud was the wagon's deep rumbling, and loud the wheel's clatter and creak; And loud was the calling for succor from those who were sightless and weak; And loud were the hoofs of the horses, and loud was the tramping of feet; And loud was the gale's ceaseless howling through fire-lighted alley and street; But louder, yet louder, the crashing of roofs and of walls as they fell; And louder, yet louder, the roaring that told of the coming of hell. The Fire-king threw back his black mantle from off his great blood-dappled breast, And sneered in the face of Chicago, the Queen of the North and the West. [Illustration: "AND LOUDLY WILD ACCENTS OF TERROR CAME PEALING FROM THOUSANDS OF THROATS."] VIII. And there, in the terrible city, The panic-struck, terror-crazed city, The flying and flame-pursued city, The torch of the North and the West, A beautiful maiden lay moaning, as many a day she had lain, In fetters of wearisome weakness, and throbbings of pitiful pain. The amorous Fire-king came to her--he breathed his hot breath on her cheek; She fled from his touch, but he caught her, and held her, all pulseless and weak. The Fire-king he caught her and held her, in warm and unyielding embrace; He wrapped her about in his vestments, he pressed his hot lips to her face; Then, sated and palled with his triumph, he scornfully flung her away, And, blackened and crushed in the ruins, unknown and uncoffined, she lay-- Lay, blackened and crushed by the Fire-king, in ruined and desolate rest, Like ravished and ruined Chicago, the Queen of the North and the West. IX. 'Twas morn in the desolate city, The ragged and ruin-heaped city, The homeless and hot-smoking city, The grief of the North and the West. But down from the West came the bidding, "O Queen, lift in courage thy head! Thy friends and thy neighbors awaken, and hasten, with raiment and bread." And up from the South came the bidding, "Cheer up, fairest Queen of the Lakes! For comfort and aid shall be coming from out our savannas and brakes!" And down from the North came the bidding, 'O city, be hopeful of cheer! We've somewhat to spare for thy sufferers, for all of our suffering here!" And up from the East came the bidding, "O city, be dauntless and bold! Look hither for food and for raiment lock hither for credit and gold!" And all through the world went the bidding, "Bring hither your choicest and best, For weary and hungry Chicago, sad Queen of the North and the West!" X. O crushed but invincible city! O broken but fast-rising city! O glorious and unconquered city, Still Queen of the North and the West! The long, golden years of the future, with treasures increasing and rare, Shall glisten upon thy rich garments, shall twine in the folds of thy hair! From out the black heaps of thy ruins new columns of beauty shall rise, And glittering domes shall fling grandly our nation's proud flag to the skies! From off thy wide prairies of splendor the treasures of autumn shall pour, The breezes shall sweep from the northward, and hurry the ships to thy shore! For Heaven will look downward in mercy on those who've passed under the rod, And happ'ly again they will prosper, and bask in the blessings of God. Once more thou shalt stand mid the cities, by prosperous breezes caressed, O grand and unconquered Chicago, still Queen of the North and the West! [Illustration] THE RAILROAD HOLOCAUST. [NEW HAMBURG, N.Y., FEBRUARY, 1871.] Over the length of the beaten track, Into the darkness deep and black, Heavy and fast As a mountain blast, With scream of whistle and clang of gong, The great train rattled and thundered along. Travelers, cushioned and sheltered, sat, Passing the time with doze and chat; Thinking of naught With danger fraught; Whiling the hours with whim and song, As the great train rattled and thundered along. Covered and still the sleepers lay, Lost to the dangers of the way; Wandering back, Adown life's track, A thousand dreamy scenes among; And the great train rattled and thundered along. Heavily breathed the man of care; Lightly slept the maiden fair; And the mother pressed Unto her breast Her beautiful babes, with yearning strong; And the great train rattled and thundered along. Shading his eyes with his brawny hand, Danger ahead the driver scanned; And he turned the steam; For the red light's gleam Flashed warning to him there was something wrong; But the great train rattled and thundered along. "Down the brakes!" rang the driver's shout: "Down the brakes!" sang the whistle out: But the speed was high, And the danger nigh, And Death was waiting to build his pyre; And the train dashed into a river of fire. Into the night the red flames gleamed; High they leaped and crackled and streamed: And the great train loomed, Like a monster doomed, In the midst of the flames and their ruthless ire-- In the murderous tide of a river of fire. Roused the sleeper within his bed: A crash, a plunge, and a gleam of red, And the sweltering heat Of his winding-sheet Clung round his form, with an agony dire: He moaned and died in a river of fire. And they who were spared from the fearful death, Thanked God for life, with quickened breath, And groaned that too late, From a terrible fate To rescue their comrades was their desire, Ere they sunk in a river of death and fire. Pity for them who, helpless, died, And sunk in the river's merciless tide: And blessings infold The driver bold, Who, daring for honor, and not for hire, Went down with his train in the river of fire. SHIP "CITY OF BOSTON." "We only know she sailed away, And ne'er was heard of more." Waves of the ocean that thunder and roar, Where is the ship that we sent from our shore? Tell, as ye dash on the quivering strand, Where is the crew that comes never to land? Where are the hearts that, unfearing and gay, Broke from the clasp of affection away? Where are the faces that, smiling and bright, Sailed for the death-darkened regions of night? Waves of the ocean, that thunder and roar, Where is the ship that we sent from our shore? [Illustration] Storms of the ocean, that bellow and sweep, Where are the friends that went forth on the deep? Where are the faces ye paled with your sneer? Where are the hearts ye have frozen with fear? Where is the maiden, young, tender, and fair? Where is the grandsire, of silvery hair? Where is the glory of womanhood's time? Where the warm blood of man's vigor and prime? Storms of the ocean, that bellow and pour, Where is the ship that we sent from our shore? Birds of the ocean, that scream through the gale, What have ye seen of a wind-beaten sail? Perched ye for rest on the shivering mast, Beaten, and shattered, and bent by the blast? Heard ye the storm-threatened mariner's plea, Birds of the bitter and treacherous sea? Heard ye no message to carry away Home to the hearts that are yearning to-day? Birds of the ocean, that hover and soar, Where is the ship that we sent from our shore? Depths of the ocean, that fathomless lie, Where is the crew that no more cometh nigh? What of the guests that so silently sleep Low in thy chambers, relentlessly deep? Cold is the couch they have haplessly won; Long is the night they have entered upon; Still must they sleep till the trumpet o'erhead Summons the sea to uncover its dead. Depths of the ocean, with treasures in store, Where is the ship that we sent from our shore? [Illustration] GONE BEFORE. I. Pull up the window-lattice, Jane, and raise me in my bed, And trim, my beard, and brush my hair, and from this covering free me, And brace me back against the wall, and raise my aching head, And make me trim, for one I love is coming here to see me; Or if she do not see me, Jane, twill be that her dear eyes Are shut as ne'er they shut before, in all of their reposing; For never yet my lowest word has failed of kind replies, And ever still my lightest touch has burst her eyelids closing; So let her come to me. They say she's coming in her sleep--a sleep they can not break; Ay, let them call, and let them weep, in dull and droning fashion! Her ear may hear their doleful tones an age and never wake; But let me pour into its depth my words of burning passion! Ay, let my hot and yearning lips, that long have yearned in vain, But press her pure and sacred cheek, and wander in her tresses; And let my tears no more be lost, but on her forehead rain, And she will rise and pity me, and soothe me with caresses; So let her come to me. O silver-crested days agone, that wove us in one heart! O golden future years, that urged our hands to clasp in striving! There is not that in earth or sky can hold us two apart; And I of her, and she of me, not long may know depriving! So bring her here, where I have long in absence pining lain, While on my fevered weakness crashed the castles of our building; And once together, all the woe and weary throbs of pain That strove to cloud our happiness shall be its present gilding; So let her come to me. II. They brought her me--they brought her me--they bore her to my bed; And first I marked her coffin's form, and saw its jewels glisten. I talked to her, I wept to her, but she was cold and dead; I prayed to her, and then I knew she was not here to listen. For Death had wooed and won my love, and carried her away. How could she know my trusting heart, and then so sadly grieve me! Her hand was his, her cheek was his, her lips of ashen gray; Her heart was never yet for him, however she might leave me; Her heart was e'er for me. O waves that well had sunk my life, sweep back to me again! I will not fight your coming now, or flee from your pursuing! But bear me, beat me, dash me to the land of Death, and then I'll find the love Death stole from me, and scorn him with my wooing! Oh, I will light his gloomy orbs with jealous, mad surprise; Oh, I will crush his pride, e'en with the lack of my endeavor; The while I boldly bear away, from underneath his eyes, The soul that God had made for me to lose no more forever; Ay, she will go with me. Pull down the window-lattice, Jane, and turn me in my bed, And not until the set of sun be anxious for my waking; And ere that hour a robe of light above me shall be spread, And darkness here shall show me there the morn that now is breaking. And in one grave let us be laid--my truant love and me-- And side by side shall rest the hearts that once were one in beating; And soon together and for aye our wedded souls shall be, And never cloud shall dim again the brightness of our meeting, Where now she waits for me. THE LITTLE SLEEPER. There is mourning in the cottage as the twilight shadows fall, For a little rose-wood coffin has been brought into the hall, And a little pallid sleeper, In a slumber colder, deeper Than the days of life could give her, in its narrow borders lies, With the sweet and changeful lustre ever faded from her eyes. Since the morning of her coming, but a score of suns had set, And the strangeness of the dawning of her life is with her yet; And the dainty lips asunder Are a little pressed with wonder, And her smiling bears the traces of a shadow of surprise; But the wondering mind that made it looks no more from out her eyes. 'Twas a soul upon a journey, and was lost upon its way; 'Twas a flash of light from heaven on a tiny piece of clay; 'Twas more timid, and yet bolder, It was younger, and yet older, It was weaker, and yet stronger, than this little human guise, With the strange unearthly lustre ever faded from its eyes. They will bury her the morrow; they will mourn her as she died; I will bury her the morrow, and another by her side; For the raven hair, but started, Soon a maiden would have parted, Full of fitful joy and sorrow--gladly gay and sadly wise; With a dash of worldly mischief in her deep and changeful eyes. I will bury her the morrow; and another by her side: It shall be a wife and mother, full of love and care and pride; Full of hope, and of misgiving; Of the joys and griefs of living; Of the pains of others' being, and the tears of others' cries; With the love of God encompassed in her smiling, weeping eyes. I will bury on the morrow, too, a grandame, wrinkled, old; One whose pleasures of the present were the joys that had been told; I will bury one whose blessing Was the transport of caressing Every joy that she had buried-every lost and broken prize; With a gleam of heaven-expected, in her dim and longing eyes. I will joy for her to-morrow, as I see her compassed in; For the lips now pure and holy might be some time stained with sin; And the brow now white and stainless, And the heart now light and painless, Might have throbbed with guilty passion, and with sin-encumbered sighs Might have surged the sea of brightness in the sweet and changeful eyes. Let them bury her to-morrow--let them treasure her away; Let the soul go back to heaven, and the body back to clay; Let the future grief here hidden, Let the happiness forbidden, Be for evermore forgotten, and be buried as it dies; And an angel let us see her, with our sad and weeping eyes. [Illustration] 'TIS SNOWING. FIRST VOICE. Hurra! 'tis snowing! On street and house-roof, gently cast, The falling flakes come thick and fast; They wheel and curve from giddy height, And speck the chilly air with white! Come on, come on, you light-robed storm! My fire within is blithe and warm, And brightly glowing! My robes are thick, my sledge is gay; My champing steeds impatient neigh; My silver-sounding bells are clear, With music for the muffled ear; And she within--my queenly bride-- Shall sit right gayly by my side; Hurra! 'tis snowing! SECOND VOICE. Good God! 'tis snowing! From out the dull and leaden clouds, The surly storm impatient crowds; It beats against my fragile door, It creeps across my cheerless floor; And through my pantry, void of fare, And o'er my hearth, so cold and bare, The wind is blowing; And she who rests her weary head Upon our hard and scanty bed, Prays hopefully, but hopeless still, For bright spring days and whip-poor-will; The damp of death is at her brow, The frost is at her feet; and now 'Tis drearily snowing. FIRST VOICE. Hurra! 'tis snowing! Snow on! ye can not stop our ride, As o'er the white-paved road we glide: Past forest trees thick draped with snow, Past white-thatched houses, quaint and low; Past rich-stored barn and stately herd, Past well-filled sleigh and kindly word, Right gayly going! Snow on! for when our ride is o'er, And once again we reach the door, Our well-filled larder shall provide, Our cellar-doors shall open wide; And while without 'tis cold and drear, Within, our board shall smile with cheer, Although 'tis snowing! SECOND VOICE. Good God! 'tis snowing! Rough men now bear, with hurried tread, My pauper wife unto her bed; And while, all crushed, but unresigned, I cringe and follow close behind, And while these scalding, bitter tears-- The first that stain my manhood years-- Are freely flowing, Her waiting grave is open wide, And into it the snow-flakes glide. A mattress for her couch they wreathe; And snow above, and snow beneath, Must be the bed of her who prayed The sun might shine where she was laid; And still 'tis snowing! POEMS OF HOPE. SOME TIME. O strong and terrible Ocean, O grand and glorious Ocean, O restless, stormy Ocean, a million fathoms o'er! When never an eye was near thee to view thy turbulent glory, When never an ear to hear thee relate thy endless story, What didst thou then, O Ocean? Didst toss thy foam in air, With never a bark to fear thee, and never a soul to dare? "Oh, I was the self-same Ocean, The same majestic Ocean, The strong and terrible Ocean, with rock-embattled shore; I threw my fleecy blanket up over my shoulders bare, I raised my head in triumph, and tossed my grizzled hair; For I knew that some time--some time-- White-robed ships would venture from out of the placid bay, Forth to my heaving bosom, my lawful pride or prey; I knew that some time--some time-- Lordly men and maidens my servile guests would be, And hearts of sternest courage would falter and bend to me." [Illustration] O deep and solemn Forest, O sadly whispering Forest, O lonely moaning Forest, that murmureth evermore! When never a footstep wandered across thy sheltered meadows, When never a wild bird squandered his music mid thy shadows, What didst thou then, O Forest? Didst robe thyself in green, And pride thyself in beauty the while to be unseen? "Oh, I was the self-same Forest, The same low-whispering Forest, The softly murmuring Forest, and all of my beauties wore. I dressed myself in splendor all through the lonely hours; I twined the vines around me, and covered my lap with flowers; For I knew that some time--some time-- Birds of beautiful plumage would flit and nestle here; Songs of marvelous sweetness would charm my listening ear; I knew that some time--some time-- Lovers would gayly wander neath my protecting boughs, And into the ear of my silence would whisper holy vows." O fair and beautiful Maiden, O pure and winsome Maiden, O grand and peerless Maiden, created to adore! When no love came to woo thee that won thy own love-treasure, When never a heart came to thee thy own heart-wealth could measure, What didst thou then, Maiden? Didst smile as thou smilest now, With ne'er the kiss of a lover upon thy snow-white brow? "Oh, I was the self-same Maiden, The simple and trusting Maiden, The happy and careless Maiden, with all of my love in store. I gayly twined my tresses, and cheerfully went my way; I took no thought of the morrow, and cared for the cares of the day; For I knew that some time--some time-- Into the path of my being the Love of my life would glide, And we by the gates of heaven would wander side by side." [Illustration] THE GOOD OF THE FUTURE. Why is the mire in the trodden street, And the dark stream by the sewer borne, Spurned from even under our feet, Grudged by us e'en the look of scorn? There is fresh grass in its gloom-- There are sweetness and bloom; There is pulse for men to eat-- There are golden acres of wheat. But so it is, and hath ever been: The good of the future is e'er unseen. Why is the mud of humanity spurned E'en from the tread of the passer-by? Why is the look of pity turned From the bare feet and the downcast eye? There is virtue yet to spring From this poor trodden thing; There are germs of godlike power In the trials of this hour; But so it is, and hath ever been: The man of the future is e'er unseen. [Illustration] THE JOYS THAT ARE LEFT. If the sun have been gone while we deemed it might shine; If the day steal away with no hope-bearing sign; If the night, with no sight of its stars or its moon, But such clouds as it hath, closes down on our path over-dark and o'er soon: If a voice we rejoice in its sweetness to hear, Breathe a strain for our pain that glides back to our ear; If a friend mark the end of a page that was bright, Without pretext or need, by some reptile-like deed that coils plain in our sight; If life's charms in our arms grow a-tired and take wing; If the flowers that are ours turn to nettles and sting; If the home sink in gloom that we labored to save, And the garden we trained, when its best bloom is gained, be enriched by a grave; Shall we deem that life's dream is a toil and a snare? Shall we lie down and die on the couch of despair? Shall we throw needless woe on our sad heart bereft? Or, grown tearfully wise, look with pain-chastened eyes at the joys that are left? For the tree that we see on the landscape so fair, When we hie to it nigh, may be fruitless and bare; While the vine that doth twine 'neath the blades of the gross, With sweet nourishment rife, holds the chalice of life toward our lips as we pass. So with hope let us grope for what joys we may find; Let not fears, let not tears make us heedless or blind; Let us think, while we drink the sweet pleasures that are, That in sea or in ground many gems may be found that outdazzle the star. There be deeds may fill needs we have suffered in vain, There be smiles whose pure wiles may yet banish our pain; And the heaven to us given may be found ere we die; For God's glory and grace, and His great holy place, are not all in the sky. [Illustration] WHEN MY SHIP WENT DOWN. I. Sank a palace in the sea, When my ship went down; Friends whose hearts were gold to me-- Gifts that ne'er again can be-- 'Neath the waters brown. There you lie, O Ship, to-day, In the sand-bar stiff and gray! You who proudly sailed away From the splendid town. II. Now the ocean's bitter cup Meets your trembling lip; Now on deathly woes you sup; And your humbled pride looks up From Disaster's grip. Ruin's nets around you weave; But I have no time to grieve; I will promptly, I believe, Build another ship. TO THE CARLETON CIRCLE (Of Hudson, Michigan: the Author's native town) [In response to their Request for a Word of Greeting at their Annual Reunion, Monday Evening, July 26, 1886.] Sometimes there comes to me a word of cheer, From yonder region where the sun goes down; Where I have often watched him disappear, And leave awhile the jewels of his crown. That voice glides over Erie's stormy edge-- It climbs the Alleghanies' rugged ledge, And tarries not for dale or mountain crest, Till it makes music in my own home-nest. It says, "We would be better, wiser, truer, Each day we live; the best that is in us, We aim to nourish, that it may endure, And pray that God will help our striving thus. With reason-builded curiousness we yearn The depths of history's changing tides to learn; The weird discoveries that proud science made, And the pen's song--we ask them all for aid." The old town marches eastward to the sea; Roofs, windows, belfries, door--stones all are here; Again its busy streets encompass me-- Their outlines never looked so full and clear. Shop, factory, office, church and clattering mill; The trim red school-house smiling from the hill; The mimic river with its placid tide, The quaint old graveyard lingering by its side; And all the home-made dramas of the past, Are acted over with a mellower grace; The wedding-bells that rang so loud and fast-- The sombre funeral, with its village pace; The young full-blooded boys that roamed the street; The old men Death was walking out to meet; The good grandames whose gossip whipped the hours; The girls with faces stolen from the flowers; Those forms I knew, in reappearing hosts, Crowd every corner, as on gala days; They throng the mind--these silent memory-ghosts, Then sadly smile, and vanish from the gaze. And some I loved beyond all words' control, And some I hated with an uncurbed soul (For he who likes this world, and means to stay, Must yearn, and toil, and love, and _fight_ his way). All this was for the best; and now in love We look at those who once awakened ire; If we but lift our hearts and souls above, The crushing waves will only lift us higher. Ere you once more return to shadow-land, Dead friend--dead foe--I clasp you by the hand! It may be now that you on whom I call, Look at the earth-feuds as exceeding small! And now there float to me some words of cheer, From yonder region where the sun goes down; From kindred souls, whose presence would be dear-- From the _loved living_ of my native town! To prove once more an old truth it may serve, That God e'er gives men more than they deserve, That 'mid the struggles of your lofty aim, You look this way and call to me by name. Ah, would that I were worthy of the task, To see that all your diamonds were saved! 'Tis the best joy that any one can ask-- To give to others what himself has craved. Whoe'er can teach you life's most brilliant art, To make the most of body, mind, and heart-- Will feel that fact, his inmost being bless, More than the costliest jewels of success! Sometimes there comes a blessed word of cheer From yonder region where the sun shines high; It brings a joy, it casts out every fear; It is the motto of th' eternal sky! _Be true_, _be brave_, _be faithful_; let your heart With worldly joys and sorrows take their part; While brain and soul cling to the gleaming cars Whose goal is Heaven--whose stations are the stars. [Illustration] THE SANCTUM KING. THE SANCTUM KING. [READ AT THE TWENTY-SIXTH ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE NEW YORK PRESS ASSOCIATION, AT JAMESTOWN, N.Y., JUNE 7, 1882.] If one who, midst alternate joy and care, Has occupied an editorial chair, Has solved some mysteries that its methods take, And learned how easy papers are to make, Has undergone from friends much mental aid, And wondered where on earth they learned his trade, Has heard from them how papers should be run, How things they never have to do, are done, Has wrestled, in a match he could not shirk, With the world, flesh, and--lad of general work-- But now, grown poor, has left for some time-space, The hard, but weirdly fascinating place-- If such an one may use, not seeming free, The editorial and fraternal "We," And, speaking to this band without offense, May use his us-ship in the present tense, Then, let us, with your kind permission, sing A note or two about The Sanctum King. But first the question, who this king of fame? Whence comes his power, and what may be his name? With modesty peculiar to the race, No editor pretends to fill that place; For editors, be rulers as they will, Are greatly ruled by their surroundings still; All men and things, to some extent, control The journalist's intent and nervous soul. Influences press round him, in a host; So what we seek, is, That which rules him most; What of all men and things that 'gainst him press, Bears most upon his failure or success? Upon this ground, what man, or beast, or thing, Can claim the title of The Sanctum King? Is it the Pen? O Pen! we hear thy praise, Wherever Mind has walked its devious ways! Thought has been born, in every land and age Where thy thin lips have kissed the virgin page! 'Twas thee Dan Chaucer used, in time agone, To goad the Canterbury pilgrims on; From thee Ben Jonson filled with gold the air, And made his name a jewel rich and "rare;" Of thee The Shakespeare, in his soul sublime, Forged for himself a sceptre, for all time; With thee bold Milton groped, his eyes thick sealed, And wrote his name on Heaven's own battle-field; Thee, Robert Burns, voice of the heart's best song, Fashioned into a bagpipe sweet and strong; Thee, Thomas Moore--his soul to music set-- Made to an Irish harp that echoes yet; With thee Longfellow struck a home-made lyre, And wrote "America," in lines of fire! Through thy sharp, quivering point, words have been given, Out of the flaming lexicons of Heaven! O Pen! When in the old-time school-house, we Strove, 'neath our teacher's rod, to master thee, And, twisting down upon some sad old desk, With doleful air and attitude grotesque, And with protruding tongue and beating heart, Took our first lessons in the graphic art, And that old copy on the paper poured, Saying, "The Pen is mightier than the Sword," And then, from sudden and dynamic stroke, The pen we leaned on, into fragments broke, Some angel told our inexperienced youth, That, after all, that copy told the truth! O Pen! What if thy paper purses hold Some coin that never came from wisdom's mould! [Illustration: "WITH THE WORLD, FLESH, AND--LAD OF GENERAL WORK."] What if thou writest countless reams on reams Of manuscript, to trouble printers' dreams! What if thy cheap and easy-wielded prongs, Indite each year a hundred thousand songs, In ink of various copiousness and shade-- On every subject Earth and Heaven have made! What if thou shovest 'neath the printer's nose, Cords of mis-spelled, unpunctuated prose! What if, picked from the wing of senseless goose, Thou'rt still by that loud biped oft in use! Thou'rt sometimes plucked from Wisdom's glittering wing; And yet we cannot hail thee Sanctum King! Is it The Pencil? Sad would be the lot Of any sanctum where this help were not! Turn, Faber, in thy half-forgotten grave, And see the branches of thy bay-tree wave! See Dickens, still by glory's wreaths untouched, Pencil 'twixt first and second fingers clutched, Transcribing, in his nervous, dashing way, The parliamentary rubbish of the day! Him on his rapid homeward journey see; An omnibus for office, and his knee Extemporized into a desk, whereon He writes what lesser men have said and done! See Thackeray, through English streets and vales, Make notes and sketches for his wondrous tales, See Bryant, sage apostle of the wood, And quiet champion of the true and good, Echo of every breeze's soft-blown breath, Sweetest of all apologists of Death, Leave the surroundings of the heath and field, The pencil of the journalist to wield! See Prentice, thorny genius, using it For the electric charges of his wit; See Saxe from mountain eyries take his flight, His wings with editorial radiance bright; See Whittier--angels spare him long to men!-- Whose pencil served apprentice to his pen; See Taylor, travelling many a useful mile, Grasp a reporter's pencil all the while; See Holland--sweetly noble household name-- Lean on the pencil, on his way to fame; See, bending the reporter's page above, Artemus Ward--light laughter's dearest love! See thousands of the loftiest of the land, First learn to write an editorial hand! And, Pencil, with such aids as thou canst find, Thou'rt courted, feared, and watched, by all mankind; They seek thy love; they wither 'neath thy hate; With anxious hearts thy verdicts they await. That statesman, who unflinching can withstand His foeman's broadsides, with brave self-command, That lawyer, who can bully at the bar Judge, witness, jury--no odds who they are-- That doctor, who has sallied forth thro' storms, To fight with Death, in all his moods and forms, That general, who, when battle-banners wave, Can spur his foaming charger toward the grave, All these, when interviewers near them glide, Sometimes, like startled children, run and hide. Yes, Pencil, thou art potent in thy sting! And yet we cannot hail thee Sanctum King. Rise up, John Guttenberg, from lands remote, And let us hear thy guttural German throat; Now that the harvest that thou sowedst is ripe, Make prominent the royal claims of Type! Those type that rose, like treasures from the main, Out of the deep abysses of thy brain! Old jeweller, Heaven grant thou knowest yet, What diamonds thine aching fingers set! Wherever Mind once groped in halls of night, They flashed and flared their weird electric light; Wherever Thought has lit its streaming flame, They spell the letters of thy awkward name! When first the office boy assails the "case," With "stick" and "rule" held awkwardly in place, When through his "copy" timidly he spells, Thrusting his fingers knee-deep in the cells, And draws the type forth, looking, when 'tis done, In each one's face, to see if that's the one; When, raising them and holding them aloof, Ere putting them to most outrageous proof, He drops the whole into a shapeless "pi," And looks at them forlornly, as they lie, Little he knows, amid his small turmoils, The nature of those things, 'mid which he toils! Little he knows, as gazing still he stands, He may have dropped an empire from his hands! Yes, Type, thy voice is loud, for war or peace; Its mighty influence nevermore may cease; Unnumbered happenings from thy efforts spring; And yet, we cannot hail thee Sanctum King! What then strikes most our failure or success? Is it the strong and swiftly whirling Press? Improved by rare Ben Franklin's earliest art (God bless his dear old sweet progressive heart! The patron saint of printers let him stand, Ever--in every English-speaking land!). Is it the Press, made multiform by Hoe, Who lives, the triumph of his brain to know, And views his monster proudly, as it drips Fresh news from off its tapering finger-tips? Far can the Press its many mandates fling; And yet we cannot hail it Sanctum King! Who then this Sanctum King, of mighty fame? Is it that lad of uncelestial name, Who, like the wretch whose title he has found, Takes all the maledictions floating round? Who quaffs, with surly, mock-respectful stare, The surplus blueness of the office air? Who all our secrets in a week doth know; Whose brain is active as his feet are slow? Who pleads from every negligence or trick, With tongue as agile as his hands are thick? Who creeps the editor's seclusion near, And yells for "copy!" in his weakest ear? Who when on errands swiftly sent, would spurn To embarrass you by an o'er-quick return; And creeps along his course, when under sail, Like an old fish-boat, beating 'gainst a gale? Who some day, if his brilliant hopes be sound, May mount The Great Profession's topmost round, But who, by undue energy uncursed, Is climbing very moderately at first? Pity the devil! for he much endures! He has his griefs, as well as you have yours. If "Uncle Toby," for his good heart famed, Pitied the one for whom the boy was named, Then may we make allowance for the elf, And pity this poor blundering boy himself. The day may not be very far ahead, When he his genius on our craft will shed; Will all at once develop hidden worth, And as a full-fledged editor come forth. Let us then justice to this poor boy bring, Call him--say--Sanctum Prince--not quite a King. Paste-pot and scissors! raise thy sticky hands, And make on us imperial demands! Not over-often comes the day or hour We're not indebted to thy magic power; To all of us the obligation clings; Thou art our foragers--but not our kings! Is it that "friend," whom editors adore, Who calls "a minute" of three hours or more, Who occupies the easiest vacant chair, With large amounts of time and tongue to spare? Who opens our exchanges, one by one, And reads our editorials ere they're done? Who gives us items, sparkling, fresh, and new, But ne'er, by any turn of fortune, true? Who comments on our mode of writing makes, And tenderly announces our mistakes? Who occupies, with sweet, unconscious air, Three-fourths of all the room we have to spare, And with a cheerful, love-begetting smile, Kills his own time, and murders us meanwhile? Who shows us, with unnecessary pains, The sharp things that some other sheet contains? Who hands us every word, from far and near, That he against our enterprise can hear? Sweet are the consolations he can bring; And yet we cannot call him Sanctum King! Who then, or what, this king of mighty fame? Whence comes his power, and what may be his name? May we not, with some show of truthful grace, Put The Waste Basket in that honored place? The question 'mongst good talkers, day by day, Should be, what is it wisest _not_ to say? The question with good workers who'd be true, Should be, what is it wisest _not_ to do? The minister his judgment should beseech, To know what sermons wisely _not_ to preach; The editor should study, without stint, What articles 'tis wisest _not_ to print; And so I ask, the question home to bring-- Is The Waste Basket not The Sanctum King? Great treasurer of literary gems! Casket of unsuspected diadems! Sad cemetery, where in dreamless sleep, Some millions of bright hopes lie buried deep! Joy to the editor, who, keen of sight, Knows his Waste Basket how to use aright; Who marks its prudent counsels, day by day, And rules himself its mandates to obey! Prints no cheap advertisement for a song, But straight inserts them--where the things belong; Kills those communications whose sour fruit Would probably have been--a libel suit; Rejects that trash his desk so often finds, Unfit to set before his readers' minds; And sends the scum of malice, filth and spite, To be made into paper, pure and white! Let The Waste Basket's countless merits ring; But still it is not quite The Sanctum King! So, then, if none of those of which I speak, Is vested with the qualities we seek, Let us once more inquire, untouched by blame, Who is this wondrous king, of mighty fame? List then, while plain his name to you I bring, THE PUBLIC HEART! That is The Sanctum King! Yes, 'mid unceasing worry and turmoil, To serve that Heart, the Editor must toil; Under Its bidding must his efforts be; It forms part of "the editorial We." Why do the papers gossip, would you know? Because--the public ear would have it so. Our journal's not a favorite breakfast-dish, Unless it gossips to the public wish; And even they who call "the stuff absurd," Will sit and groan, and--read it every word. Why do we thread men's motives thro' and thro'? Because our king, The Public, tells us to! Why do we quote the wedding chimes and hues? Because our Queen is waiting for the news. Why do we type on useless stories waste? To please some portions of the public taste! Why do we into secret haunts repair? Because a curious public sends us there! Why do we tell the crimes of all the lands? Because The Public Heart their tale demands! Why are we deep in politics immersed? Because The Public fought and quarreled first! Why do we toil with all that we possess? Because The Public Brain will take no less! Acknowledged let our proud position be: The Public Heart's prime-ministers are we! [Illustration: "THE PUBLIC HEART'S PRIME-MINISTERS ARE WE!"] Men of the Press! to us is given, indeed, To shape the growing appetites we feed! We must from day to day and week to week, To elevate our Monarch's motives seek, That he may, with an open, liberal hand, Higher and higher things of us demand! So let us cut our own progressive way-- So onward toil, through darkness and through day; So let us in our labor persevere, Unspoiled by praise--untouched by blame or fear; Learn to distinguish, with true, patient art, The private pocket from The Public Heart; Learn how to guide that Heart, in every choice, And give its noblest thoughts its purest voice! Till so The Press The Public Heart may move, That day by day they mutually improve: That high and higher each the other bring, Till God Himself shall be The Sanctum King! [Illustration] STRAY STANZAS. LINES TO JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. [IN BOSTON LITERARY WORLD'S "WELCOME" NUMBER, JUNE 27, 1885.] With love not even he could wake, Save in his fatherland, We reach a Yankee grasp, and take Hosea by the hand. With smiles of praise, that need must throng With sympathizing tears, We greet our prince of prose and song, In his maturer years; For words that made a shining track, Beyond the Atlantic foam, We lift our hearts, and welcome back Our statesman to his home. TO MONSIEUR PASTEUR. [UPON HIS DISCOVERY OF INOCULATION FOR HYDROPHOBIA.] O good Monsieur Pasteur! your humanized art Has thrilled every brain, and has touched every heart; Man's friendliest beast--by disease tortured sore, Henceforth is a poisonous reptile no more; Now please find a cure to our maladies when This poor world is bitten by mad-minded men! TO A YOUNG LADY. [FOR WHOM TWO HARVARD STUDENTS ENGAGED IN A GAME OF FISTICUFFS.] 'Tis something to be sought for, O maiden archly fair-- And to be bravely fought for; but, sweet one, have a care! The "slugger" tribe (the fact is) when business with them thrives, Are sometimes prone to practice their art upon their wives! DEATH OF THE RICHEST MAN. He owned, to-day, a large and gleaming share Of this earth's narrow rim; A sigh--a groan--a gesture of despair-- The earth owned him. The richest one of any clime or land, The old-time lesson taught; A human mine of gold!--God raised His hand, And he had nought. TO THE SMOTHERED MINERS. Oh men who died in tombs, Away from the life of the sun, Down in the griefs and glooms Of a day forever done: The life of that senseless coal Will some day seek the air; And Heaven will claim each soul Of your bodies buried there. THE DEATHLESS SONG. [TELEGRAPHED TO THE JOHN HOWARD PAYNE OBSEQUIES AT WASHINGTON, 1883.] Although to-day with reverent tread I may not join your throng, My heart is with the living dead Who wrote the deathless song. ON A "POET"-CRITIC. Disgruntled ----, by failure spoiled Into a living frown, With pens by his own "poems" spoiled, Writes younger authors down: Sick serpent of the growler tribes, Your victims might do worse; They'd rather bear your shallow gibes, Than write your dawdling verse. [Illustration: FINIS] * * * * * Transcriber's Notes. 1. Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal signs=. 2. Simple spelling, grammar, and typographical errors have been silently corrected. 
54719	----	Emmy's memory. HAPPY ENDING [Illustration: _G.F. Watts, pinx._ _Hollyer, Photo._] _Rower maul'd in the Sea, ah, Rower Limp as Grasses behind the Mower. Pity'd most that thy Woes deny thee Sight of the Spirit Steersman by thee!_ _Tho' more near than a hinted Haven Lie the Port that is coral-paven, All is well: the Unseen Befriending Makes of either the Happy Ending._ HAPPY ENDING _The Collected Lyrics of_ LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY [Illustration: TOUT BIEN OU RIEN] HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON AND NEW YORK: 1909 COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED _Published December 1909_ TO ANNE WHITNEY PREFACE THIS volume has been garnered from the author's earlier books. Two poems have been chosen from "The White Sail" (1887); nine Oxford Sonnets from a privately printed booklet (1895), since added to, and much altered; and many lyrics, under a revised form, from "A Roadside Harp" (1893), and "The Martyrs' Idyl" (1899), plus some twenty newer titles transferred, with grateful acknowledgments, from _McClure's Magazine_, _The Atlantic_, _Harper's_, _Scribner's_, and _The Century_. The principle of exclusion goes far enough to cover all poems in narrative form, or of any appreciable length, or translated; also, any which seemed out of keeping with the character of the present collection. Such as that is, it comprises the less faulty half of all the author's published verse. L.I.G. BOSTON, October 21, 1909. CONTENTS _The Kings_ 3 _The Squall_ 5 _Open, Time_ 9 _The Knight Errant_ (_Donatello's Saint George_) 11 _To a Dog's Memory_ 13 _Memorial Day_ 15 _Romans in Dorset: A.D. MDCCCXCV_ 16 _Horologion_ 19 _His Angel to his Mother_ 21 _Autumn Magic_ 23 _Five Carols for Christmastide_: _I. The Ox he Openeth wide the Doore_ 25 _II. Vines Branching Stilly_ 26 _III. Three without Slumber Ride from Afar_ 27 _IV. Was a Soule from Farre Away_ 28 _V. The Ox and the Ass_ 29 _On Leaving Winchester_ 32 _Cobwebs_ 34 _Astræa_ 35 _The Yew-Tree_ 36 _Ten Colloquies_: _I. The Search_ 38 _II. Fact and the Mystic_ 39 _III. The Poet's Chart_ 40 _IV. Of the Golden Age_ 41 _V. On Time's Threshold_ 42 _VI. Wood-Pigeons_ 42 [Transcriber's Note: original erroneously has "Wood-Doves"] _VII. Predicaments_ 43 _VIII. The Co-Eternal_ 44 _IX. Stern Aphrodite_ 44 _X. The Jubilee_ 45 _Winter Boughs_ 46 _W.H.: A.D. MDCCLXXVIII-MDCCCXXX_ 47 _The Vigil-at-Arms_ 48 _A Friend's Song for Simoisius_ 49 _To an Ideal_ 51 _In a Ruin, after a Thunder-Storm_ 53 _Beati Mortui_ 54 _Two Irish Peasant Songs_: _I. In Leinster_ 57 _II. In Ulster_ 58 _The Japanese Anemone_ 61 _Orisons_ 63 _The Inner Fate: A Chorus_ 64 _The Acknowledgment_ 66 _By the Trundle-Bed_ 67 _Arboricide_ 68 _The Cherry Bough_ 70 _The Wild Ride_ 73 _Bedesfolk_ 75 _In a City Street_ 77 _Florentin: A.D. MDCCCXC_ 79 _A Song of the Lilac_ 80 _Monochrome_ 81 _Saint Francis Endeth his Sermon_ 82 _An Estray_ 83 _Friendship Broken_ 85 _A Talisman_ 87 _Heathenesse_ 88 _For Izaak Walton_ 89 _Fifteen Epitaphs_ 91 _Deo Optimo Maximo_ 98 _Charista Musing_ 99 _The Still of the Year_ 100 _A Footnote to a Famous Lyric_ 102 _T.W.P.: A.D. MDCCCXIX-MDCCCXCII_ 104 _Summum Bonum_ 105 _When on the Marge of Evening_ 106 _Hylas_ 107 _Nocturne_ 109 _To Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey_ 110 _Planting the Poplar_ 111 _To One Who would not Spare Himself_ 113 _Winter Peace_ 114 _Sleep_ 116 _Writ in my Lord Clarendon's History of the Rebellion_ 117 _In a February Garden_ (_Somerset, England_) 118 _A Valediction._ (_R.L.S.: A.D. MDCCCXCIV_) 120 _A Footpath Morality_ 121 _The Light of the House_ 123 _An Outdoor Litany_ 125 _Of Joan's Youth_ 127 _In a Brecon Valley_ 128 _A Song of Far Travel_ 130 _Spring_ 131 _The Colour-Bearer_ 132 _Sanctuary_ 134 _Emily Brontë_ 135 _Pascal_ 136 _Borderlands_ 137 _Ode for a Master Mariner Ashore_ 138 _Oxford and London: XXVI Sonnets_ _Oxford_: _I. The Tow-Path_ 145 _II. Ad Antiquarium_ 146 _III. Martyrs' Memorial_ 147 _IV. Parks Road_ 148 _V. Tom_ 149 _VI, VIa. On the Pre-Reformation Churches about Oxford_ 150 _VII. A December Walk_ 152 _VIII. The Old Dial of Corpus_ 153 _IX. Rooks: New College Gardens_ 154 _X. Above Port Meadow_ 155 _XI. Undertones at Magdalen_ 156 _XII, XIIa. A Last View_ 157 _London_: _I. On First Entering Westminster Abbey_ 159 _II. Fog_ 160 _III. St. Peter-ad-Vincula_ 161 _IV. Strikers in Hyde Park_ 162 _V. Changes in the Temple_ 163 _VI. The Lights of London_ 164 _VII. Doves_ 165 _VIII. In the Reading-Room of the British Museum_ 166 _IX. Sunday Chimes in the City_ 167 _X. A Porch in Belgravia_ 168 _XI. York Stairs_ 169 _XII. In the Docks_ 170 _Notes_ 171 HAPPY ENDING _The Kings_ A MAN said unto his Angel: "My spirits are fallen low, And I cannot carry this battle: O brother! where might I go? "The terrible Kings are on me With spears that are deadly bright; Against me so from the cradle Do fate and my fathers fight." Then said to the man his Angel: "Thou wavering witless soul, Back to the ranks! What matter To win or to lose the whole, "As judged by the little judges Who hearken not well, nor see? Not thus, by the outer issue, The Wise shall interpret thee. "Thy will is the sovereign measure And only event of things: The puniest heart, defying, Were stronger than all these Kings. "Though out of the past they gather, Mind's Doubt, and Bodily Pain, And pallid Thirst of the Spirit That is kin to the other twain, "And Grief, in a cloud of banners, And ringletted Vain Desires, And Vice, with the spoils upon him Of thee and thy beaten sires,-- "While Kings of eternal evil Yet darken the hills about, Thy part is with broken sabre To rise on the last redoubt; "To fear not sensible failure, Nor covet the game at all, But fighting, fighting, fighting, Die, driven against the wall." _The Squall_ WHILE all was glad, It seemed our birch-tree had, That August hour, intelligence of death; For warningly against the eaves she beat Her body old, lamenting, prophesying, And the hot breath Of ferny hollows nestled at her feet Spread out in startled sighing. Across an argent sea, Distinct unto the farthest reef and isle, The clouds began to be. Huge forms 'neath sombre draperies, awhile Made slow uncertain rally; But as their ranks conjoined, and from the north The leader shook his lance, Oh, then how fair Unvested, they stood forth, In diverse armour, plumed majestically, Each with his own esquires, a King in air! Up moved the dark vanguard, With insolent colours that o'erdusked the skies, And trailed from beach to beach: Massed orange and mould-green; vermilion barred On bronze or mottled silver; saffron dyes And purples migratory Fanned each in each, As the long column broke, athirst for glory. Sudden, the thunder! Upon the roofed verandas how it rolled, Twice, thrice: a thud and flame of doom that told New-fallen, nor far away, Some black destruction on the innocent day. And little Everard Deep in the hammock under, eyes alight With healthful fear and wonder The brave do ne'er unlearn, Clenched his soft hand, and breathing hard, Smiled there against his father, like a knight Baptized on Cressy field or Bannockburn. A moment gone, Into our paradise from Acheron, With imperceptive sorcery crawled ashore Odours unnamable: an exhalation Of men and ships in oozy graves. (Ah, cease, Derisive nereids! cease: Be it enough, that even ye can pour, From crystal flagons of your ancient peace, So strange obscene libation.) But with the thunder-peal Sprang the pure winds, their thurible swung wide, To chase that tainted tide; Fresh from the pastures and the cedar-grove, They rode the copper ridges of the main, And bared a league of distance to reveal A sail, aslant, astrain, Impetuous for the cove; And tossing after, panic-stricken, Another, and a third: white spirits, fain to sicken, Nor out of natural harm salvation gain. The selfsame hunter winds that drave The horror down, as faithful-hearted drew The sad clouds from their carnage, and up-piled Their rebel gonfalons, or jocund threw Their cannon in the wave; And subtly, with a parting whisper, gave An eve most mild: A sunset like a prayer, a world all rose and blue: A good world, as it was, And as it shall be: clear circumferent space, Where punctual yet, for worship of their Cause, The stars came thick in choir. Sleep had our Everard in her cool embrace, Else from his cot he hardly need have stooped To see (and laugh to see!) the headland pine Embossed on changing fire: For close behind it, cooped Within a smallest span, In fury, to and fro and round and round, The routed leopards of the lightning ran: Bright, bright, inside their dungeon-bars, malign They ran; and ran till dawn, without a sound. _Open, Time_ OPEN, Time, and let him pass Shortly where his feet would be! Like a leaf at Michaelmas Swooning from the tree, Ere its hour the manly mind Trembles in a sure decrease, Nor the body now can find Any hold on peace. Take him, weak and overworn; Fold about his dying dream Boyhood, and the April morn, And the rolling stream: Weather on a sunny ridge, Showery weather, far from here; Under some deep-ivied bridge, Water rushing clear: Water quick to cross and part (Golden light on silver sound), Weather that was next his heart All the world around! Soon upon his vision break These, in their remembered blue; He shall toil no more, but wake Young, in air he knew. He hath done with roofs and men. Open, Time, and let him pass, Vague and innocent again, Into country grass. _The Knight Errant_ (_Donatello's Saint George_) SPIRITS of old that bore me, And set me, meek of mind, Between great dreams before me, And deeds as great behind, Knowing humanity my star As first abroad I ride, Shall help me wear with every scar Honour at eventide. Let claws of lightning clutch me From summer's groaning cloud, Or ever malice touch me, And glory make me proud. Oh, give my youth, my faith, my sword, Choice of the heart's desire: A short life in the saddle, Lord! Not long life by the fire. Forethought and recollection Rivet mine armour gay! The passion for perfection Redeem my failing way! The arrows of the upper slope From sudden ambush cast, Rain quick and true, with one to ope My Paradise at last! I fear no breathing bowman, But only, east and west, The awful other foeman Impowered in my breast. The outer fray in the sun shall be, The inner beneath the moon; And may Our Lady lend to me Sight of the Dragon soon! _To a Dog's Memory_ THE gusty morns are here, When all the reeds ride low with level spear; And on such nights as lured us far of yore, Down rocky alleys yet, and through the pine, The Hound-star and the pagan Hunter shine: But I and thou, ah, field-fellow of mine, Together roam no more. Soft showers go laden now With odours of the sappy orchard-bough, And brooks begin to brawl along the march; Steams the late frost from hollow sedges high; The finch is come, the flame-blue dragonfly, The marsh-born marigold that children spy, The plume upon the larch. There is a music fills The oaks of Belmont and the Wayland hills Southward to Dewing's little bubbly stream,-- The heavenly weather's call! Oh, who alive Hastes not to start, delays not to arrive, Having free feet that never felt a gyve Weigh, even in a dream? But thou, instead, hast found The sunless April uplands underground, And still, wherever thou art, I must be. My beautiful! arise in might and mirth, (For we were tameless travellers from our birth); Arise against thy narrow door of earth, And keep the watch for me. _Memorial Day_ O DAY of roses and regret, Kissing the old graves of our own! Not to the slain love's lovely debt Alone. But jealous hearts that live and ache, Remember; and while drums are mute, Beneath your banners' bright outbreak, Salute: And say for us to lessening ranks That keep the memory and the pride, On whose thinned hair our tears and thanks Abide, Who from their saved Republic pass, Glad with the Prince of Peace to dwell: _Hail, dearest few! and soon, alas, Farewell_. _Romans in Dorset_ _A.D. MDCCCXCV_ A STUPOR on the heath, And wrath along the sky; Space everywhere; beneath A flat and treeless wold for us, and darkest noon on high. Sullen quiet below, But storm in upper air! A wind from long ago, In mouldy chambers of the cloud had ripped an arras there, And singed the triple gloom, And let through, in a flame, Crowned faces of old Rome: Regnant o'er Rome's abandoned ground, processional they came. Uprisen as any sun Through vistas hollow grey, Aloft, and one by one, In brazen casques the Emperors loomed large, and sank away. In ovals of wan light Each warrior eye and mouth: A pageant brutal bright As if once over loudly passed Jove's laughter in the south; And dimmer, these among, Some cameo'd head aloof, With ringlets heavy-hung, Like yellow stonecrop comely grown around a castle roof. An instant: gusts again, Then heaven's impacted wall, The hot insistent rain, The thunder-shock; and of the Past mirage no more at all, No more the alien dream Pursuing, as we went, With glory's cursèd gleam: Nor sin of Cæsar's ruined line engulfed us, innocent. The vision great and dread Corroded; sole in view Was empty Egdon spread, Her crimson summer weeds ashake in tempest: but we knew What Tacitus had borne In that wrecked world we saw; And what, thine heart uptorn, My Juvenal! distraught with love of violated Law. _Horologion_ THE frost may form apace, The roses pine away: Nomæa! if I see thy face, Then is the summer day. A word of thine, a breath, And lo! my joy shall seem To peer far down where life and death Stir like a forded stream; Or else shall misery sound And travel in that hour All utmost things in their shut round, As a bee feels his flower. Thought lags and cries Alas, Love ranges quick and free. Oh, figured clock and sanded glass, They mark no term for me. And since I can but rue The calendar gone wrong, And dials never telling true If dreams be short or long, Dear, from these arts that fail To thee I will repair. Till the last eve dance down the gale With no star in her hair, Be thou my solar chime, Be thou my wheel of night, Be thy bright heart, not ashen Time, My measure, law, and light. _His Angel to his Mother_ WHAT would you do for your fairest one, Wild as the wind and free as the sun, Born a fugitive, sure to slip Soon from secular ownership? Men in search of the heart's desire, Wearily trampling flood and fire, Rove betimes into some abyss Darker far than eternity's. (Ah, the hazard! it awes one so!) _And shall it be thus with the boy, or no? Sweet, if you love him, let him go._ Happy the Frontier to have gained Undetaining and undetained, Quick and clean, like a solar ray Shot through spindrift across the bay! Men would follow a long vain quest, Feed on ashes and forfeit rest, Bleed with battle and flag with toil, Only to stifle in desert soil. (Ah, the failure! it stings one so!) _And shall it be thus with the boy, or no? Sweet, if you love him, let him go._ Vats fill up, and the sheaves are in: Never a blessing is left to win Save for the myrtle coronal Round the urn at the end of all. Men will clutch, as they clutched of old, Souring honey or dimming gold, Not the treasure-trove of the land Here shut fast in a roseleaf hand. (Ah, the folly! it irks one so!) _And shall it be thus with the boy, or no? Sweet, if you love him, let him go._ _Autumn Magic_ SOON as divine September, flushing from sea to sea, Peers from the whole wide upland into eternity, Soft as an exhalation, ghosts of the thistle start: Never a poet saw them but ached in his baffled heart. Gossamer armies rising thicker than snowflakes fall, Waken in blood and marrow, aware of the unheard call. Oh, what a nameless urging through avenues laid in air, Hints of escape, unbodied, intricate, everywhere, Sense of a feared denial, or access hard to be won; Gleams of a dubious gesture for guesses to feed upon! Flame goes flying in heaven, the down on the cool hillside: Earth is a bride-veil glory to show and conceal the Bride. _Five Carols for Christmastide_ I THE OX he openeth wide the Doore, And from the Snowe he calls her inne, And he hath seen her Smile therefor, Our Ladye without Sinne. Now soone from Sleep A Starre shall leap, And soone arrive both King and Hinde: _Amen, Amen_: But O, the Place co'd I but finde! The Ox hath hush'd his voyce and bent Trewe eyes of Pitty ore the Mow, And on his lovelie Neck, forspent, The Blessed layes her Browe. Around her feet Full Warme and Sweete His bowerie Breath doth meeklie dwell: _Amen, Amen_: But sore am I with Vaine Travèl! The Ox is host in Judah stall And Host of more than onelie one, For close she gathereth withal Our Lorde her littel Sonne. Glad Hinde and King Their Gyfte may bring, But wo'd to-night my Teares were there, _Amen, Amen_: Between her Bosom and His hayre! II VINES branching stilly Shade the open door, In the house of Zion's Lily, Cleanly and poor. Oh, brighter than wild laurel The Babe bounds in her hand, The King, who for apparel Hath but a swaddling-band, And sees her heavenlier smiling than stars in His command! Soon, mystic changes Part Him from her breast, Yet there awhile He ranges Gardens of rest: Yea, she the first to ponder Our ransom and recall, Awhile may rock Him under Her young curls' fall, Against that only sinless love-loyal heart of all. What shall inure Him Unto the deadly dream, When the Tetrarch shall abjure Him, The thief blaspheme, And scribe and soldier jostle About the shameful tree, And even an Apostle Demand to touch and see?-- But she hath kissed her Flower where the Wounds are to be. III THREE without slumber ride from afar, Fain of the roads where palaces are; All by a shed as they ride in a row, "Here!" is the cry of their vanishing Star. First doth a greybeard, glittering fine, Look on Messiah in slant moonshine: "_This have I bought for Thee!_" Vainly: for lo, Shut like a fern is the young hand divine. Next doth a magian, mantled and tall, Bow to the Ruler that reigns from a stall: "_This have I sought for Thee!_" Though it be rare, Loath little fingers are letting it fall. Last doth a stripling, bare in his pride, Kneel by the Lover as if to abide: "_This have I wrought for Thee!_" Answer him there Laugh of a Child, and His arms opened wide. IV WAS a Soule from farre away Stood wistful in the Hay, And of the Babe a-sleeping hadde a sight: Neither reck'd hee any more Men behind him and before, Nor a thousand busie Winges, flitting light: But in middle of the night This few-worded wight (_Yule! Yule!_) Bespake Our Ladye bright: "Fill mee, ere my corage faints, With the lore of all the Saints: Harte to harte against my Brother let mee be. By the Fountaines that are His I wo'd slumber where Hee is: Prithee, Mother, give the other Brest to mee!" The Soule that none co'd see She hath taken on her knee: (_Yule! Yule!_) Sing prayse to Our Ladye. V _The Ox and the Ass, Tell aloud of them: Sing their pleasure as it was In Bethlehem._ STILL as blowing rose, sudden as a sword, Maidenly the Maiden bare Jesu Christ the Lord; Yet for very lowlihood, such a Guest to greet, Goeth in a little swoon while kissing of His feet. Mary, drifted snow on the earthen floor, Joseph, fallen wondrous weak now he would adore,-- (Oh, the surging might of love! Oh, the drowning bliss!) Both are rapt to Heaven and lose their human Heaven that is. From the Newly Born trails a lonely cry. With a mind to heed, the Ox turns a glowing eye; In the empty byre the Ass thinks her heart to blame: Up for comforting of God the beasts of burden came, Softly to inquire, thrusting as for cheer There between the tender hands, furry faces dear. Blessing on the honest coats! tawny coat and grey Friended Our Delight so well when warmth had strayed away. Crooks are on the sill; sceptres sail the wave; All the hopes of all the years are thronging to the Cave. Mother slept not long, nor long Father's sense was dim, But another twain the while stood parent-wise to Him. _The Ox and the Ass, Be you glad for them Such a moment came to pass In Bethlehem!_ _On Leaving Winchester_ WINTON, my window with a mossy marge, My lofty oriel, whence the soul hath sight Of passionate yesterdays, all gold and large, Arisen to enrich our narrow night: Though others bless thee, who so blest before Hath pastured from the violent time apart, And laved in supersensual light the heart Alone with thy magnificent No More? Sweet court of roses now, sweet camp of bees! The hills that lean to thy white bed at dawn Hear, for the clash of raging dynasties, Laughter of boys about a branchy lawn. Hast thou a stain, let ivy cover all; Nor seem of greatness disinhabited While spirits in their wonted splendour tread From close to close, by Wolvesey's idle wall. Bright fins against thy lucid waters leap, And nigh thy towers the nesting ring-doves dwell; Be lenient winter, and long moons, and sleep Upon thee; but on me the sharp Farewell. Happy art thou, O clad and crowned with rest! Happy the shepherd (would that I were he!) Whose early way is step for step with thee, Whose old brow fades on thine immortal breast. _Cobwebs_ WHO would not praise thee, miracle of Frost? Some gesture overnight, some breath benign, And lo! the tree's a fountain all a-shine, The hedge a throne of unimagined cost; In wheel and fan along a wall embossed, The spider's humble handiwork shows fine With jewels girdling every airy line: Though the small mason in the cold be lost. Web after web, a morning snare of bliss Starring with beauty the whole neighbourhood, May well beget an envy clean and good. When man goes too into the earth-abyss, And God in His altered garden walks, I would My secret woof might gleam so fair as this. _Astræa_ SINCE I avail no more, O men! with you, I will go back unto the gods content; For they recall me, long with earth inblent, Lest lack of faith divinity undo. I served you truly while I dreamed you true, And golden pains with sovereign pleasure spent: But now, farewell! I take my sad ascent, With failure over all I nursed and knew. Are ye unwise, who would not let me love you? Or must too bold desires be quieted? Only to ease you, never to reprove you, I will go back to heaven with heart unfed: Yet sisterly I turn, I bend above you, To kiss (ah, with what sorrow!) all my dead. _The Yew-Tree_ AS I came homeward At merry Christmas, By the old Church tower Through the Churchyard grass, And saw there circled With graves all about, The Yew-tree paternal, The Yew-tree devout, Then this hot life-blood Was hard to endure, O Death! so I loved thee, The sole love sure. For stars slip in heaven, They wander, they break; But under the Yew-tree Not one heartache. And ours, what failure Renewed and avowed! But ah, the long-buried Is leal, and is proud. * * * * * At eve, o'erlooking The smooth chilly tide, With age-hidden meaning The Yew-tree sighed, By the square grey tower, In the short grey grass, As I came homeward At merry Christmas. _Ten Colloquies_ I. THE SEARCH "WHY dost thou hide from these Out along the hills halloaing? Why hast forbade Thy face, O goddess! to thy votaries?" "_Unasking and unknowing Is he whom I make glad, Like Dian grandly going To the sleeping shepherd-lad. Men that pursue learn not To follow is my lot._" "Happiness, secret one, Heartbeat of the April weather, Where art thou found? Tell; lest I err too, yonder in the sun." "_Call in thine eye from ether, Thy feet from far ground; Seek Honour in this heather, With austere purples wound. Serve her: she will reveal Me, hound-like at thy heel._" II. FACT AND THE MYSTIC "GOOD-MORROW, Symbol."--"_Call me not The name I neither love nor merit._" --"That grave eternal name inherit, Thine ever, though all men forgot." "_Mistake me not; secure and free From rock to rock my falchion passes: But Symbols trail through grey morasses The tattered shows of faëry._" "My Symbol thou, of phantom blood, With starlight from thy temples raying; Along thy floated body playing Are withering wings, and wings in bud." "_Alas, thine eye with clay is sealed._" --"Symbol, before the clay's denial, While yet I had a god's espial, I saw thee in a solar field!" "_Nay: I am Fact._"--"Then lose thy praise; And lest to-day no song behoove thee, Lest mine impeach thee, or reprove thee, Ah, Symbol, Symbol! go thy ways." III. THE POET'S CHART "WHERE shall I find my light?" "_Turn from another's track: Whether for gain or lack, Love but thy natal right. Cease to follow withal, Though on thine up-led feet Flakes of the phosphor fall. Oracles overheard Are never again for thee, Nor at a magian's knee Under the hemlock tree, Burns the illumining word._" "Whence shall I take my law?" "_Neither from sires nor sons, Nor the delivered ones, Holy, invoked with awe. Rather, dredge the divine Out of thine own poor dust, Feebly to speak and shine. Schools shall be as they are: Be thou truer, and stray Alone, intent, and away, In a savage wild to obey Some dim primordial star._" IV. OF THE GOLDEN AGE "RECALL for me, recall The time more true and ample; The world whereon I trample, How tortuous and small! Behold, I tire of all. "Once, gods in jewelled mail Through greenwood ways invited; There how the moon is blighted, And mosses long and pale On lifeless cedars trail." "_Child, keep this good unrest: But give to thine own story Simplicity with glory; To greatness dispossessed, Dominion of thy breast._ "_In abstinence, in pride, Thou, who from Folly's boldest Thy sacred eye withholdest, Another morn shalt ride At Agamemnon's side._" V. ON TIME'S THRESHOLD "_See: brood: remember: this thy function only; Neither to have nor do is meet for thee._" "Ah, earth's a palace where I must go lonely!" "_Nay: earth's a dungeon which thou passest, free._" VI. WOOD-PIGEONS "I CANNOT soar beside, but must for ever suffer Blue air athrill with thee to lap against my breast, And dream it is thy wing." --"_Dear, sighs about thee hover: Among the dewy leaves my longing is thy guest. Yet, lone and far apart, shall we no joy discover To travel the same sky, and by one sea to rest? Say, mate in all this world?_" --"Ah, mute forbidden lover, Ah, song I shall not hear!" --"_Ah, sweet unbuilded nest!_" VII. PREDICAMENTS "IF the gods ruin send?"-- "_Make that thy bride and friend._" "If the gods cheat?"--"_They say The one true word alway._" "If for some loss I pine?" "--_The past is theirs, yet thine._" "If I sue not?"--"_Vain cares! The morrow's thine, not theirs._" VIII. THE CO-ETERNAL "_Is it thou, silly heart, Not prone on thy pallet, but grieving apart?_" --"Natal Star, even so." "_I miss thee to-night, while thou smoulderest low._" --"Live in beauty! but I For bloodshed of spirit, here dwindle and die." "_Are we two not the same, By law everlasting one mystical flame? Aloft if I burn, Every ray of my light be thy stair of return: Up, up! to our lot Where warfare and time and the body are not._" IX. STERN APHRODITE "IOLE is coy with me, Goddess! for a month I suffer Knowing not how far I be: Teach me softer arts, or rougher, Well to sail that sea." "_Fie: how long could Love divine Venturing, abstain from answer, Nor look landward for a sign! Niggard, take of thine entrancer Shipwreck in the brine._" X. THE JUBILEE "_Master of your wounded heart, regent of your pleasure! We that long defied your art, tamèd Moods at leisure, All with you, nor now apart, would tread out our measure._" "Welcome, equal powers benign, quit of ancient madness! Dance with me beneath the vine, not ungentle Sadness; Link your little hand in mine soberly, my Gladness." _Winter Boughs_ HOW tender and how slow, in sunset cheer, Far on the hill, our quiet treetops fade! A broidery of ebon seaweed, laid Long in a book, were scarce more fine and clear. Frost and sad light and windless atmosphere Have breathed on them, and of their frailties made Beauty more sweet than summer's builded shade, Whose green domes fallen, leave this wonder here. O ye forgetting and outliving boughs, With not a plume, gay in the joust before, Left for the Archer! so, in evening's eye, So stilled, so lifted, let your lover die, Set in the upper calm no voices rouse, Stript, meek, withdrawn, against the heavenly door. _W.H._ _A.D. MDCCLXXVIII-MDCCCXXX_ BETWEEN the wet trees and the sorry steeple, Keep, Time, in dark Soho, what once was Hazlitt, Seeker of Truth, and finder oft of Beauty; Beauty's a sinking light, ah, none too faithful; But Truth, who leaves so here her spent pursuer, Forgets not her great pawn: herself shall claim it. Therefore sleep safe, thou dear and battling spirit, Safe also on our earth, begetting ever Some one love worth the ages and the nations! Falleth no thing that was to thee eternal. Sleep safe in dark Soho: the stars are shining, Titian and Wordsworth live; the People marches. _The Vigil-at-Arms_ KEEP holy watch with silence, prayer, and fasting Till morning break, and every bugle play; Unto the One aware from everlasting Dear are the winners: thou art more than they. Forth from this peace on manhood's way thou goest, Flushed with resolve, and radiant in mail; Blessing supreme for men unborn thou sowest, O knight elect! O soul ordained to fail! _A Friend's Song for Simoisius_ THE breath of dew and twilight's grace Be on the lonely battle-place, And to so young, so kind a face, The long protecting grasses cling! (Alas, alas, That one inexorable thing!) In rocky hollows cool and deep, The honey-bees unrifled sleep; The early moon from Ida steep Comes to the empty wrestling-ring; Upon the widowed wind recede No echoes of the shepherd's reed; And children without laughter lead The war-horse to the watering; With footstep separate and slow The father and the mother go, Not now upon an urn they know To mingle tears for comforting. Thou stranger Ajax Telamon! What to the lovely hast thou done, That nevermore a maid may run With him across the flowery Spring? The world to me has nothing dear Beyond the namesake river here: Oh, Simois is wild and clear! And to his brink my heart I bring; My heart, if only this might be, Would stay his waters from the sea, To cover Troy, to cover me, To haste the hour of perishing. (Alas, alas, That one inexorable thing!) _To an Ideal_ THAT I have tracked you from afar, my crown I call it and my height: All hail, O dear and difficult star! All hail, O heart of light! No pleasure born of time for me, Who in you touch eternity. If I have found you where you are, I win my mortal fight. You flee the plain: I therefore choose summit and solitude for mine, The high air where I cannot lose our comradeship divine. More lovely here, to wakened blood, Sparse leaf and hesitating bud, Than rosaries in the dewy vales for which the dryads pine. Spirit austere! lend aid: I walk along inclement ridges too, Disowning toys of sense, to baulk my soul of ends untrue. Because man's cry, by night and day, Cried not for God, I broke away. On, at your ruthless pace! I'll stalk, a hilltop ghost, with you. _In a Ruin, after a Thunder Storm_ KEEP of the Norman, old to flood and cloud! Thou dost reproach me with thy sunset look, That in our common menace I forsook Hope, the last fear, and stood impartial proud: Almost, almost, while ether spake aloud, Death from the smoking stones my spirit shook Into thy hollow as leaves into a brook, No more than they by heaven's assassins cowed. But now thy thousand-scarrèd steep is flecked With the calm kisses of the light delayed, Breathe on me better valour: to subject My soul to greed of life, and grow afraid Lest ere her fight's full term, the Architect See downfall of the stronghold that He made. _Beati Mortui_ BLESSED the Dead in Spirit, our brave dead Not passed, but perfected: Who tower up to mystical full bloom From self, as from a known alchemic tomb; Who out of wrong Run forth with laughter and a broken thong; Who win from pain their strange and flawless grant Of peace anticipant; Who cerements lately wore of sin, but now, Unbound from foot to brow, Gleam in and out of cities, beautiful As sun-born colours of a forest pool Where Autumn sees The splash of walnuts from her thinning trees. Though wondered-at of some, yea, feared almost As any chantry ghost, How sight of these, in hermitage or mart, Makes glad a wistful heart! For life's apologetics read most true In spirits risen anew, Like larks in air To whom flat earth is all a heavenward stair, And who from yonder parapet Scorn every mortal fret, And rain their sweet bewildering staves Upon our furrow of fresh-delvèd graves. If thus to have trod and left the wormy way Makes men so wondrous gay, So stripped and free and potently alive, Who would not his infirmity survive, And bathe in victory, and come to be As blithe as ye, Saints of the ended wars? Ah, greeting give; Turn not away, too fugitive: But hastening towards us, hallow the foul street, And sit with us at meat, And of your courtesy, on us unwise Fix oft those purer eyes, Till in ourselves who love them dwell The same sure light ineffable: Till they who walk with us in after years Forgetting time and tears (As we with you), shall sing all day instead: "How blessed are the Dead!" _Two Irish Peasant Songs_ I. IN LEINSTER I TRY to knead and spin, but my life is low the while. Oh, I long to be alone, and walk abroad a mile; Yet if I walk alone, and think of naught at all, Why from me that's young should the wild tears fall? The shower-sodden earth, the earth-coloured streams, They breathe on me awake, and moan to me in dreams, And yonder ivy fondling the broke castle-wall, It pulls upon my heart till the wild tears fall. The cabin-door looks down a furze-lighted hill, And far as Leighlin Cross the fields are green and still; But once I hear the blackbird in Leighlin hedges call, The foolishness is on me, and the wild tears fall! II. IN ULSTER 'TIS the time o' the year, if the quicken-bough be staunch, The green like a breaker rolls steady up the branch, And surges in the spaces, and floods the trunk, and heaves In jets of angry spray that is the under-white of leaves; And from the thorn in companies the foamy petals fall, And waves of jolly ivy wink along a windy wall. 'Tis the time o' the year the marsh is full of sound, And good and glorious it is to smell the living ground. The crimson-headed catkin shakes above the pasture-bars, The daisy takes the middle field and spangles it with stars, And down the hedgerow to the lane the primroses do crowd, All coloured like the twilight moon, and spreading like a cloud! 'Tis the time o' the year, in early light and glad, The lark has a music to drive a lover mad; The rocks are dripping nightly, the breathèd damps arise, Deliciously the freshets cool the grayling's golden eyes, And lying in a row against the chilly north, the sheep Inclose a place without a wind for tender lambs to sleep. 'Tis the time o' the year I turn upon the height To watch from my harrow the dance of going light; And if before the sun be hid, come slowly up the vale Honora with her dimpled throat, Honora with her pail, Hey, but there's many a March for me, and many and many a lass!-- I fall to work and song again, and let Honora pass. _The Japanese Anemone_ ALL summer the breath of the roses around Exhales with a delicate passionate sound; And when from a trellis, in holiday places, They croon and cajole, with their slumberous faces, A lad in the lane must slacken his paces. Fragrance of these is a voice from a bower: But low by the wall is my odourless flower, So pure, so controlled, not a fume is above her, That poet or bee should delay there and hover; For she is a silence, and therefore I love her. And never a mortal by morn or midnight Is called to her hid little house of delight; And she keeps from the wind, on his pillages olden, Upon a true stalk in rough weather upholden, Her winter-white gourd with the hollow moon-golden. While ardours of roses contend and increase, Methinks she has found how noble is peace, Like a spirit besought from the world to dissever, Not absent to men, though resumed by the Giver, And dead long ago, being lovely for ever. _Orisons_ ORANGE and olive and glossed bay-tree, And air of the evening out at sea, And out at sea on the steep warm stone, A little bare diver poising alone. Flushed from the cool of Sicilian waves, Flushed as the coral in clean sea-caves, "I am!" he cries to his glorying heart, And unto he knows not what: "THOU art!" He leaps, he shines, he sinks and is gone: He will climb to the golden ledge anon. Perfecter rite can none employ, When the god of the isle is good to a boy. _The Inner Fate: a Chorus_ NOT weak with eld The stars beheld Proud Persia coming to her doom; Not battle-broke, nor tempest-tossed, The long luxurious galleys lost Their souls at Actium. Not outer arts Of hostile hearts Seduced the arm of France to be The wreckage of his wars at last, The orphan of the kingdoms, cast Upon the mothering sea. Man evermore doth work his will, And evermore the gods are still, Applauding him alone who stands Too just for Heaven-accusing groans, But in his house of havoc owns The doing of his hands: Transgressor, yet divinely taught To suffer all, blaspheming naught, When fair-begun must foul conclude: Himself progenitor of death Who breeds, within, the only breath Can kill beatitude. _The Acknowledgment_ SINCE first I knew it our divine employ To beat beyond the reach of soiling care, As at Philippi, well of doom aware, The Prætor called and heard the singing-boy; Since first my soul so jealous was of joy, That any facile linden-bloom in air, Or fall of water on a wildwood stair, Annulled for her all dragging dull annoy; Though word of thanks I lacked, though, dumb, I smiled Long, long, at such august amends up-piled, Let this the debt redeem: that when Ye drop Death's aloe-leaf within my honeyed cup, On thoughtful knee your much-beholden child, Immortals! unto You will drink it up. _By the Trundle-bed_ LOST love, be never beyond Love's calling! For this I claim of you, strong heart, sweet As fontal water in Arden falling, As first-mown hay in the April heat: To tend from heaven, to rear, to harden, And bring to bloom in the outer cold, Our daffodil bud of a walled-in garden, Our son that is like you, and six years old; And lest his worth be the worth unreal, To ward him not from the mortal blast, But suffer your own, through a long ordeal, Verily like you to be at the last, And hear men murmur, if so he merit In your old place with your look to arise: "The sign of a saved soul who can inherit?-- You have earned, O King! those beautiful eyes." _Arboricide_ A WORD of grief to me erewhile: _We have cut the oak down, in our isle._ And I said: "Ye have bereaven The song-thrush and the bee, And the fisher-boy at sea Of his sea-mark in the even; And gourds of cooling shade, to lie Within the sickle's sound; And the old sheep-dog's loyal eye Of sleep on duty's ground; And poets of their tent And quiet tenement. Ah, impious! who so paid Such fatherhood, and made Of murmurous immortality a cargo and a trade." For the hewn oak a century fair, A wound in earth, an ache in air. And I said: "No pillared height With a summer daïs over, Where a dryad fled her lover Through the long arcade of light; Nor 'neath Arcturus rolleth more, Since the loud leaves are gone, Between the shorn cliff and the shore, Pan's organ antiphon. Some nameless envy fed This blow at grandeur's head: Some breathed reproach, o'erdue, Degenerate men, ye drew! Hence, for his too plain heavenliness, our Socrates ye slew." _The Cherry Bough_ IN a new poet's and a new friend's honour, Forth from the scornèd town and her gold-getting, Come men with lutes and bowls, and find a welcome Here in my garden, Find bowers and deep shade and windy grasses, And by the south wall, wet and forward-jutting, One early branch fire-tipped with Roman cherries. Oh, naught is absent, Oh, naught but you, kind head that far in prison Sunk on a weary arm, feels no god's pity Stroking and sighing where the kingly laurels Were once so plenty; Nor dreams, from revel and strange faces turning, How on the strength of my fair tree that knew you I lean to-day, when most my heart is laden With your rich verses! Since, long ago, in other gentler weather, Ere wrath and exile were, you lay beneath it (Your symbol then, your innocent wild brother Glad with your gladness), What has befallen in the world of wonder, That still it puts forth bubbles of sweet colour, And you, and you that fed our eyes with beauty, Are sapped and rotten? Alas! When my young guests have done with singing, I break it, leaf and fruit, my garden's glory, And hold it high among them, and say after: "O my poor Ovid, "Years pass, and loves pass too; and yet remember For the clear time when we were boys together, These tears at home are shed; and with you also Your bough is dying." _The Wild Ride_ I HEAR in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses, All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and neighing. Let cowards and laggards fall back! but alert to the saddle Weather-worn and abreast, go men of our galloping legion, With a stirrup-cup each to the lily of women that loves him. The trail is through dolour and dread, over crags and morasses; There are shapes by the way, there are things that appal or entice us: What odds? We are Knights of the Grail, we are vowed to the riding. Thought's self is a vanishing wing, and joy is a cobweb, And friendship a flower in the dust, and glory a sunbeam: Not here is our prize, nor, alas! after these our pursuing. A dipping of plumes, a tear, a shake of the bridle, A passing salute to this world and her pitiful beauty: We hurry with never a word in the track of our fathers. (I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses, All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and neighing.) We spur to a land of no name, out-racing the storm-wind; We leap to the infinite dark like sparks from the anvil. Thou leadest, O God! All's well with Thy troopers that follow. _Bedesfolk_ WHO is good enough to be Near the never-stainèd sea? Ah, not I, Who thereby Only sigh: _Pray for me._ Standing underneath some free Innocent magnanimous tree, To be true, There anew Must I sue: _Pray for me._ Ere I pass on hilly lea Fellow-lives of glad degree, Without shame, Name by name These I claim: _Pray for me._ Fail not, then, thou kingly sea! Aid the needy, sister tree! March herds, Ye have words! April birds, _Pray for me_! _In a City Street_ THOUGH sea and mount have beauty and this but what it can, Thrice fairer than their life the life here battling in the van, The tragic gleam, the mist and grime, The dread endearing stain of time, The sullied heart of man. Mine is the clotted sunshine, a bubble in the sky, That where it dare not enter steals in shrouded passion by; And mine the saffron river-sails, And every plane-tree that avails To rest an urban eye; The bells, the dripping gable, the tavern's corner glare; The cab in firefly darting; the barrel-organ air, While one by one, or two by two The hatless babes are waltzing through The gutters of the Square. Not on Thessalian headlands of song and old desire My spirit chose her pleasure-house, but in the London mire: Long, long alone she loves to pace, And find a music in this place As in a minster choir. O names of awe and rapture! O deeds of legendry! Still is it most of joy within your altered pale to be, Whose very ills I fain would slake Mine angels are, and help to make In Hell a Heaven for me. _Florentin_ _A.D. MDCCCXC_ HEART all full of heavenward haste, too like the bubble bright On wild little waters floating half of an April night, Fled from the ear in music, fled from the eye in light, Dear and stainless heart of a boy! No sweeter thing can be Drawn to the quiet centre of God who is our sea: Whither, through troubled valleys, we also follow thee. _A Song of the Lilac_ ABOVE the wall that's broken, And from the coppice thinned, So sacred and so sweet The lilac in the wind! For when by night the May wind blows The lilac-blooms apart, The memory of his first love Is shaken on his heart. In tears it long was buried, And trances wrapt it round; Oh, how they wake it now, The fragrance and the sound! For when by night the May wind blows The lilac-blooms apart, The memory of his first love Is shaken on his heart. _Monochrome_ SHUT fast again in Beauty's sheath Where ancient forms renew, The round world seems above, beneath, One wash of faintest blue, And air and tide so stilly sweet In nameless union lie, The little far-off fishing fleet Goes drifting up the sky. Secure of neither misted coast Nor ocean undefined, Our flagging sail is like the ghost Of one that served mankind, Who in the void, as we upon This melancholy sea, Finds labour and allegiance done, And Self begin to be. _Saint Francis Endeth his Sermon_ "AND now, my clerks who go in fur or feather Or brighter scales, I bless you all. Be true To your true Lover and Avenger, whether By land or sea ye die the death undue. Then proffer man your pardon; and together Track him to Heaven, and see his heart made new. "From long ago one hope hath in me thriven, Your hope, mysterious as the scented May: Not to Himself your titles God hath given In vain, nor only for our mortal day. O doves! how from The Dove shall ye be driven? O darling lambs! ye with The Lamb shall play." _An Estray_ WELL we know, not ever here is a footing for thy dream: Thou art sick for horse and spear beside an Asian stream, For the hearth-smoke in the wild, for the goatherd's stave, For a beauty far exiled, a belief within its grave. While another sky and ground orb thy strange remembering, And no world of mortal bound is the master of thy wing, Canst thou yet thy fate forgive, that the godhead in thy breast Has this life at least to live as a force in rhythmic rest, As a seed that bides the hour of obscureness and decay, Being troth of flower to flower down the long dynastic day? Child whom elder airs enfold, who hast greatness to maintain Where heroic hap of old may return and shine again, As too oft across thy heart flits the too familiar light, How alarms of love upstart at the token quick and slight! Lest captivity be o'er, lest thou glide away, and so From our tents of Nevermore strike the trail of Long Ago. _Friendship Broken_ I WE chose the faint chill morning, friend and friend, Pacing the twilight out beneath an oak, Soul calling soul to judgment; and we spoke Strange things and deep as any poet penned, Such truth as never truth again can mend, Whatever art we use, what gods invoke; It was not wrath, it made nor strife nor smoke: Be what it may, it had a solemn end. Farewell, in peace. We of the selfsame throne Are foeman vassals; pale astrologers, Each a wise skeptic of the other's star. Silently, as we went our ways alone, The steadfast sun, whom no poor prayer deters, Drew high between us his majestic bar. II MINE was the mood that shows the dearest face Through a long avenue, and voices kind Idle, and indeterminate, and blind As rumours from a very distant place; Yet, even so, it gathered the first chase Of the first swallows where the lane's inclined, An ebb of wavy wings to serve my mind For round Spring's vision. Ah, some equal grace (The calm sense of seen beauty without sight) Befell thee, honourable heart! no less In patient stupor walking from the dawn; Albeit thou too wert loser of life's light, Like fallen Adam in the wilderness, Aware of naught but of the thing withdrawn. _A Talisman_ TAKE Temperance to thy breast, While yet is the hour of choosing, As arbitress exquisite Of all that shall thee betide; For better than fortune's best Is mastery in the using, And sweeter than any thing sweet The art to lay it aside! _Heathenesse_ NO round boy-satyr, racing from the mere, Shakes on the mountain lawn his dripping head This many a May, your sister being dead, Ye Christian folk! your sister great and dear. To breathe her name, to think how sad-sincere Was all her searching, straying, dreaming, dread, How of her natural night was Plato bred (A star to keep the ways of honour clear), Who will not sigh for her? who can forget Not only unto campèd Israel, Nor martyr-maids that as a bridegroom met The Roman lion's roar, salvation fell? To Him be most of praise that He is yet Your God through gods not inaccessible. _For Izaak Walton_ CAN trout allure the rod of yore In Itchen stream to dip? Or lover of her banks restore That sweet Socratic lip? Old fishing and wishing Are over many a year. Oh, hush thee, Oh, hush thee! heart innocent and dear. Again the foamy shallows fill, The quiet clouds amass, And soft as bees by Catherine Hill At dawn the anglers pass, And follow the hollow, In boughs to disappear. Oh, hush thee, Oh, hush thee! heart innocent and dear. Nay, rise not now, nor with them take One amber-freckled fool! Thy sons to-day bring each an ache For ancient arts to cool. But, father, lie rather Unhurt and idle near; Oh, hush thee, Oh, hush thee! heart innocent and dear. While thought of thee to men is yet A sylvan playfellow, Ne'er by thy marble they forget In pious cheer to go. As air falls, the prayer falls O'er kingly Winchester: Oh, hush thee, Oh, hush thee! heart innocent and dear. _Fifteen Epitaphs_ I I LAID the strewings, darling, on thine urn; I lowered the torch, I poured the cup to Dis. Now hushaby, my little child, and learn Long sleep how good it is. In vain thy mother prays, wayfaring hence, Peace to her heart, where only heartaches dwell; But thou more blest, O mild intelligence! Forget her, and Farewell. II GENTLE Grecian passing by, Father of thy peace am I: Wouldst thou now, in memory, Give a soldier's flower to me, Choose the standard named of yore Beautiful Worth-dying-for, That shall wither not, but wave All the year above my grave. III LIGHT thou hast of the moon, Shade of the dammar-pine, Here on thy hillside bed; Fair befall thee, O fair Lily of womanhood, Patient long, and at last Here on thy hillside bed, Happier: ah, Blæsilla! IV ME, deep-tressèd meadows, take to your loyal keeping, Hard by the swish of sickles ever in Aulon sleeping, Philophron, old and tired, and glad to be done with reaping! V UPON thy level tomb, till windy winter morn, The fallen leaves delay; But plain and pure their trace is, when themselves are torn From delicate frost away. As here to transient frost the absent leaf is, such Thou wert and art to me: So on my passing life is thy long-passèd touch, O dear Alcithoë! VI HAIL, and be of comfort, thou pious Xeno, Late the urn of many a kinsman wreathing; On thine own shall even the stranger offer Plentiful myrtle. VII HERE lies one in the earth who scarce of the earth was moulded, Wise Æthalides' son, himself no lover of study, Cnopus, asleep, indoors: the young invincible runner. They from the cliff footpath that see on the grave we made him, Tameless, slant in the wind, the bare and beautiful iris, Stop short, full of delight, and cry out: "See, it is Cnopus Runs, with white throat forward, over the sands to Chalcis!" VIII ERE the Ferryman from the coast of spirits Turn the diligent oar that brought thee thither, Soul, remember: and leave a kiss upon it For thy desolate father, for thy sister, Whichsoever be first to cross hereafter. IX JAFFA ended, Cos begun Thee, Aristeus. Thou wert one Fit to trample out the sun: Who shall think thine ardours are But a cinder in a jar? X TWO white heads the grasses cover: Dorcas, and her lifelong lover. While they graced their country closes Simply as the brooks and roses, Where was lot so poor, so trodden, But they cheered it of a sudden? Fifty years at home together, Hand in hand, they went elsewhither, Then first leaving hearts behind Comfortless. Be thou as kind. XI AS wind that wasteth the unmarried rose, And mars the golden breakers in the bay, Hurtful and sweet from heaven for ever blows Sad thought that roughens all our quiet day; And elder poets envy, while they weep, Ion, whom first the gods to covert brought, Here under inland olives laid asleep, Most wise, most happy, having done with thought. XII COWS in the narrowing August marshes, Cows in a stretch of water Motionless, Neck on neck overlapped and drooping; These in their troubled and dumb communion, Thou on the steep bank yonder, Pastora! No more ever to lead and love them, No more ever. Thine innocent mourners Pass thy tree in the evening Heavily, Hearing another herd-girl calling. XIII GO you by with gentle tread. This was Paula, who is dead: Dear grey eyes that had a look Like some rock-o'ershadowed brook, Voice upon the ear to cling Sweeter than the cithern string. With that spirit shy and fair Quietly and unaware Climbing past the starry van Went, for triple talisman, They to whom the heavens must ope: Candour, Chastity, and Hope. XIV TAKE from an urn my vow and salutation Unto the land I never now shall see: Laid here exiled, my heart in desolation Frets like a child against her breast to be. Far from the sky, a rose that opes at even (One liquid star for dewdrop on the rose), Far from the shower that nesting low in heaven Thrice in an hour light-wingèd comes and goes, Far from my lost and blessèd and belovèd Nightfall of June beside the Rhodian wave, Mine is the pain another isle to covet, Though all in vain, for gardener of my grave. XV PRAISE thou the Mighty Mother for what is wrought, not me, A nameless nothing-caring head asleep against her knee. _Deo Optimo Maximo_ ALL else for use, One only for desire; Thanksgiving for the good, but thirst for Thee: Up from the best, whereof no man need tire, Impel Thou me. Delight is menace if Thou brood not by, Power a quicksand, Fame a gathering jeer. Oft as the morn (though none of earth deny These three are dear), Wash me of them, that I may be renewed, And wander free amid my freeborn joys: Oh, close my hand upon Beatitude! Not on her toys. _Charista Musing_ MOVELESS, on the marge of a sunny cornfield, Rapt in sudden revery while thou standest, Like the sheaves, in beautiful Doric yellow Clad to the ankle, Oft to thee with delicate hasty footstep So I steal, and suffer because I find thee Inly flown, and only a fallen feather Left of my darling. Give me back thy wakening breath, thy ringlets Fragrant as the vine of the bean in blossom, And those eyes of violet dusk and daylight Under sea-water, Eyes too far away, and too full of longing! Yes: and go not heavenward where I lose thee, Go not, go not whither I cannot follow, Being but earthly. Willing swallow poisèd upon my finger, Little wild-wing ever from me escaping, For the care thou art to me, I thy lover Love thee, and fear thee. _The Still of the Year_ UP from the willow-root Subduing agonies leap; The field-mouse and the purple moth Turn over amid their sleep; The icicled rocks aloft Burn amber and blue alway, And trickling and tinkling The snows of the drift decay. Oh, mine is the head must hang And share the immortal pang! Winter or spring is fair; Thaw's hard to bear. Heigho! my heart's sick. Sweet is cherry-time, sweet A shower, a bobolink, And trillium, fain far under Her cloistering leaf to shrink; But here in the vast, unborn, Is the bitterest place to be, Till striving and longing Shall quicken the earth and me. What change inscrutable Is nigh us, we know not well; Gone is the strength to sigh Either to live or die. Heigho! my heart's sick. _A Footnote to a Famous Lyric_ TRUE love's own talisman, which here Shakespeare and Sidney failed to teach, A steel-and-velvet Cavalier Gave to our Saxon speech: Chief miracle of theme and touch That all must envy and adore: _I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not Honour more._ No critic born since Charles was King But sighed in smiling, as he read: "Here's theft supreme of everything A poet might have said!" Young knight and wit and beau, who won Mid war's upheaval, ladies' praise, Was't well of you, ere you had done, To blight our modern bays? Oh, yet to you, whose random hand Struck from the dark whole gems like these (Archaic beauty, never planned Nor reared by wan degrees, Which leaves an artist poor, and Art An earldom richer all her years); To you, dead on your shield apart, Be "_Ave!_" passed in tears. 'Twas virtue's breath inflamed your lyre: Heroic from the heart it ran; Nor for the shedding of such fire Lived, since, a manlier man. And till your strophe sweet and bold So lovely aye, so lonely long, Love's self outdo, dear Lovelace! hold The parapets of Song. _T.W.P._ _A.D. MDCCCXIX-MDCCCXCII_ FRIEND who hast gone, and dost enrich to-day New England brightly building far away, And crown her liberal walk With company more choice, and sweeter talk, Look not on Fame, but Peace; and in a bower Receive at last her fulness and her power: Nor wholly, pure of heart! Forget thy few, who would be where thou art. _Summum Bonum_ WAITING on Him who knows us and our need, Most need have we to dare not, nor desire, But as He giveth, softly to suspire Against His gift with no inglorious greed, For this is joy, though still our joys recede; And, as in octaves of a noble lyre, To move our minds with His, and clearer, higher, Sound forth our fate: for this is strength indeed. Thanks to His love let earth and man dispense In smoke of worship when the heart is stillest, A praying more than prayer: "Great good have I, Till it be greater good to lay it by; Nor can I lose peace, power, permanence, For these smile on me from the thing Thou willest!" _When on the Marge of Evening_ WHEN on the marge of evening the last blue light is broken, And winds of dreamy odour are loosened from afar, Or when my lattice opens, before the lark hath spoken, On dim laburnum-blossoms, and morning's dying star, I think of thee (O mine the more if other eyes be sleeping!), Whose greater noonday splendours the many share and see, While sacred and for ever, some perfect law is keeping The late, the early twilight, alone and sweet for me. _Hylas_ (THERE'S a thrush on the under bough Fluting evermore and now: "_Keep--young!_" but who knows how?) Jar in arm, they bade him rove Through the alder's long alcove, Where the hid spring musically Gushes to the ample valley. Down the woodland corridor, Odours deepened more and more; Blossomed dogwood in the briars Struck her faint delicious fires; Miles of April passed between Crevices of closing green, And the moth, the violet-lover, By the wellside saw him hover. Ah, the slippery sylvan dark! Never after shall he mark (On his drownèd cheek down-sinking), Noisy ploughman drinking, drinking. Quit of serving is that wild Absent and bewitchèd child, Unto action, age, and danger Thrice a thousand years a stranger. Fathoms low, the naiads sing, In a birthday welcoming; Water-white their breasts, and o'er him, Water-grey, their eyes adore him. (There's a thrush on the under bough Fluting evermore and now: "_Keep--young!_" but who knows how?) _Nocturne_ THE sun that hurt his lovers from on high Is fallen; she more merciful is nigh, The blessèd one whose beauty's even glow Gave never wound to any shepherd's eye. Above our lonely boat in shallows drifting, Alone her plaintive form ascends the sky. Oh, sing! the water-golds are deepening now, Almost a hush is on the aspen bough; Her light caresseth thine, as saint to saint Sweet interchanged adorings may allow: Sing, Eunoë, that lily throat uplifting: They are so like, the holy Moon and thou! _To Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey_ YOUNG father-poet! much in you I praise Adventure high, romantic, vehement, All with inviolate honour sealed and blent To the axe-edge that cleft your soldier bays; Your friendships too, your follies, whims, and frays; And most, that verse of strict imperious bent Heard sweetly as from some old harper's tent, And clanging in the listener's brain for days. At Framlingham to-night if there should be No guest beyond a sea-born wind that sighs, No guard save moonlight's crossed and trailing spears, And I, your pilgrim, call you, Oh, let me In at the gate! and smile into the eyes That sought you, Surrey, down three hundred years. _Planting the Poplar_ BECAUSE thou'rt not an oak To breast the thunder-stroke, Or flamy-fruited yew Darker than Time, how few Of birds or men or kine Will love this throne of thine, Scant Poplar, without shade Inhospitably made! Yet, branches never parted From their straight secret bole, Yet, sap too single-hearted! Prosper as my soul. In loneliness, in quaint Perpetual constraint, In gallant poverty, A girt and hooded tree, See if against the gale Our leafage can avail: Lithe, equal, naked, true, Rise up as spirits do, And be a spirit crying Before the folk that dream! My slender early-dying Poplar, by the stream. _To One who would not Spare Himself_ A CENSER playing from a heart all fire, A flushing, racing, singing mountain stream Thou art; and dear to us of dull desire In thy far-going dream. Full to the grave be thy too fleeting way, And full thereafter: few that know thee best Will grudge it so, for neither thou nor they Can mate thy soul with rest. God put thee from the laws of Time adrift. Lo, He who moves without delay or haste, Far less may love the sheaves of ghostly thrift, Than some diviner waste. Be mine to ride in joy, ere thou art gone, The flame, the torrent, which is one with thee! Saint, from this pool of dying sweep us on Where Life must long to be. _Winter Peace_ APRIL seemed a restless pain, June a phantom in the rain; Weary Autumn without grain Turned her home, full of tears. O my year, the most in vain Of the years! While the furrowed field was red, While the roses rioted, While a leaf was left to shed, There was storm in the air. Now that troubled heart is dead, All is fair. 'Neath a glow of copper-grey Spreads the stubble far away, And the hilltop cedars play Interludes in accord, And the sun adorns the day Like a sword. Even, usual, and slow, Blue enchanted breakers go Over carmine reefs in snow, With a sail in the lee: There's the godhead that we know On the sea. Ah, let be a promise vast So mysteriously downcast! I will love this year that passed To her grave in the wild, And is clear of stain at last As a child. _Sleep_ O GLORIOUS tide, O hospitable tide On whose mysterious breast my head hath lain, Lest I, all eased of wounds and washed of stain Through holy hours, be yet unsatisfied, Loose me betimes: for in my soul abide Urgings of memory, and exile's pain Weighs on me, as the spirit of one slain May throb for the old strife wherein he died. Often and evermore, across the sea Of dark and dreams, to fatherlands of Day, Oh, speed me: as that outworn King erewhile By kind Phæacians borne ashore, so me, Thy loving healèd ward, fail not to lay Beneath the olive boughs of mine own isle. _Writ in my Lord Clarendon's History of the Rebellion_ HOW life hath cheapen'd, and how blank The Worlde is! like a fen Where long ago unstainèd sank The starrie gentlemen: Since Marston Moor and Newbury drank King Charles his gentlemen. If Fate in any air accords What Fate deny'd, Oh, then I ask to be among your Swordes, My joyous gentlemen; Towards Honour's heaven to goe, and towards King Charles his gentlemen! _In a February Garden_ ONE rose till after snowtime O'erlooked the sodden grass; Now crocuses are twenty With spear and torch a plenty, To keep our Candlemas. So thin that winter greyness, So light that sleep forlorn, No seventh week uncloses Between the martyr roses And crocus newly born. All doubt is hushed for ever, Confuted without sound, All ruin featly ended, When bulbs begin their splendid Gay muster overground; And mid the golden heralds That ride the icy breeze, Man, too, divinely vernal, Storms into life eternal Victoriously with these. O Beauty, O Persistence Ineffable and strong! Would we had borne with Sorrow In her unlasting morrow: And Death was not for long. _A Valediction_ _R.L.S.: A.D. MDCCCXCIV_ WHEN from the vista of the Book I shrink, From lauded pens that earn ignoble wage Begetting nothing joyous, nothing sage, Nor keep with Shakespeare's use one golden link; When heavily my sanguine spirits sink To read too plain on each impostor page Only of kings the broken lineage,-- Well for my peace if then on thee I think, Louis, our priest of letters, and our knight With whose familiar baldric Hope is girt, From whose young hands she bears the Grail away. All glad, all great! Truer because thou wert, I am and must be; and in thy known light Go down to dust, content with this my day. _A Footpath Morality_ ALONG the Hills, height unto height Tosses the dappled light, Rills in a torrent flow, And cuckoo calls beyond the third hedgerow. Young winds nothing can quell Scale the wild-chestnut citadel, Again to make Its thousand faëry white pagodas shake. Up many a lane The blue vervain A coverlid hath featly spread For the bees' bed, That those tired sylvan thieves May lie most soft on the sweet and scalloped leaves. And by to-morrow morn Bright agrimony, in the thickets born, Will high uphold Each cinquefoil of plain gold; Dogwood in white will hood herself apace, And betony flaunt a varied gypsy mace, And copper pimpernel, true as a clock, On some waste common, by a rock Her small dark-centred wheel draw in Long, long ere dusk begin. This day Of infinite May Is far more fitly yours than ours, O spirit-bodied flowers! What heart disordered sore Comes through the greenwood door, Shall for your sake Find sap and soil and dew, and shall not break; And hearts beneath no ban Will in your sight some penance do for man, Poor lagging man, content to be Sick with the impact of eternity, Who might keep step with you in the low grass, Best part of one strange pageant made in joy to pass! Not ye, not ye, the privilege disown To flourish fair and fall fair, and be strewn Deep in that Will of God, where blend The origin of beauty and the end. _The Light of the House_ BEYOND the cheat of Time, here where you died, you live; You pace the garden walk, secure and sensitive; You linger on the stair: Love's lonely pulses leap! The harpsichord is shaken, the dogs look up from sleep. Here, after all the years, you keep the heirdom still; The youth and joy in you achieve their olden will, Unbidden, undeterred, with waking sense adored; And still the house is happy that hath so dear a lord. To every inmate heart, confirmed in cheer you brought, Your name is as a spell midway of speech and thought, And to a wonted guest (not awestruck heretofore), The sunshine that was you floods all the open door. _An Outdoor Litany_ _Donec misereatur nostri._ THE spur is red upon the briar, The sea-kelp whips the wave ashore; The wind shakes out the coloured fire From lamps a-row on the sycamore; The bluebird with his flitting note Shows to wild heaven his wedding-coat; The mink is busy; herds again Go hillward in the honeyed rain; The midges meet. I cry to Thee Whose heart Remembers each of these: Thou art My God who hast forgotten me! Bright from the mast, a scarf unwound, The lined gulls in the offing ride; Along an edge of marshy ground The shad-bush enters like a bride. Yon little clouds are washed of care That climb the blue New England air, And almost merrily withal The hyla tunes at evenfall His oboe in a mossy tree. So too, Am I not Thine? Arise, undo This fear Thou hast forgotten me. Happy the vernal rout that come To their due offices to-day, And strange, if in Thy mercy's sum, Excluded man alone decay. I ask no triumph, ask no joy, Save leave to live, in law's employ. As to a weed, to me but give Thy sap! lest aye inoperative Here in the Pit my strength shall be: And still Help me endure the Pit, until Thou wilt not have forgotten me. _Of Joan's Youth_ I WOULD unto my fair restore A simple thing: The flushing cheek she had before! Out-velveting No more, no more, On our sad shore, The carmine grape, the moth's auroral wing. Ah, say how winds in flooding grass Unmoor the rose; Or guileful ways the salmon pass To sea, disclose: For so, alas, With Love, alas, With fatal, fatal Love a girlhood goes. _In a Brecon Valley_ _Patulis ubi vallibus errans Subjacet aëriis montibus Isca pater._ H.V. _Ad Posteros._ I I FOLLOWED thee, wild stream of Paradise, White Usk, for ever showering the sunned bee In the pink chestnut and the hawthorn tree; And all along had magical surmise Of mountains fluctuant in those vesper skies, As unto mermen, caverned in mid-sea, Far up the vast green reaches, soundlessly The giant breakers form, and fall, and rise. Above thy poet's dust, by yonder yew, Ere distance perished, ere a star began, His clear monastic measure, heard of few, Through lonelier glens of mine own being ran; And thou to me wert dear, because I knew The God who made thee gracious, and the man. II IF, by that second lover's power controlled, In sweet symbolic rite thy breath o'erfills Fields of no war with vagrant daffodils, From distance unto distance trailing gold; If dazzling sands or thickets thee enfold, Transfigured Usk, where from their mossy sills Grey hamlets kiss thee, and by herded hills Diviner run thy shallows than of old;-- If intellectual these, Oh! name my Vaughan Creator too: and close his memory keep Who from thy fountain, kind to him, hath drawn Birth, energy, and joy; devotion deep; A play of thought more mystic than the dawn, And death at home; and centuried sylvan sleep. _A Song of Far Travel_ MANY a time some drowsy oar from the nearer bank invited, Crossed a narrow stream, and bore in among the reeds moon-lighted, There to leave me on a shore no ferryman hath sighted. Many a time a mountain stile, dark and bright with sudden wetting, Lured my vagrant foot the while 'twixt uplifting and down-setting,-- Whither? Thousand mile on mile, beyond the last forgetting. Long by hidden ways I wend (past occasion grown a ranger); Yet enchantment, like a friend, takes from death the tang of danger: Hardly river or road can end where I need step a stranger. _Spring_ _With a difference._--HAMLET. AGAIN the bloom, the northward flight, The fount freed at its silver height, And down the deep woods to the lowest The fragrant shadows scarred with light. O inescapeable joy of Spring! For thee the world shall leap and sing; But by her darkened door thou goest Henceforward as a spectral thing. _The Colour-Bearer_ THY charge was: "Hold My banner Against our hidden foe; To war where sounds no manner Of glorious music, go!" And like Thy word my answer all joyless: "Be it so." Ah, not to brave Thy censure But win Thy smile of light, My heart of misadventure Will end in the losing fight, And lie out yonder, wattled with wounds from left to right. The day will pass of torment, The evenfall be sweet When I shall wear for garment The nakedness of defeat. But when afield Thou comest, and look'st in vain to meet That eagle of the wartime, That oriflamme, outrolled With strength of staff aforetime, With cleanly and costly fold,-- Ride on, ride on! and seek me with lanthorns through the cold, And take from me (turned donor That night on blood-soaked sand), The stick and rag of Honour There safe in a stiffened hand, Not left, not lost, nor ever a spoil in the victor's land. _Sanctuary_ HIGH above hate I dwell: O storms! farewell. Though at my sill your daggered thunders play Lawless and loud to-morrow as to-day, To me they sound more small Than a young fay's footfall: Soft and far-sunken, forty fathoms low In Long Ago, And winnowed into silence on that wind Which takes wars like a dust, and leaves but love behind. Hither Felicity Doth climb to me, And bank me in with turf and marjoram Such as bees lip, or the new-weanèd lamb; With golden barberry-wreath, And bluets thick beneath; One grosbeak, too, mid apple-buds a guest With bud-red breast, Is singing, singing! All the hells that rage Float less than April fog below our hermitage. _Emily Brontë_ WHAT sacramental hurt that brings The terror of the truth of things Had changed thee? Secret be it yet. 'Twas thine, upon a headland set, To view no isles of man's delight, With lyric foam in rainbow flight, But all a-swing, a-gleam, mid slow uproar, Black sea, and curved uncouth sea-bitten shore. _Pascal_ THOU lovedst life, but not to brand it thine (O rich in all forborne felicities!), Nor use it with marauding power, to seize And stain the sweet earth's blue horizon-line. Virgin the grape might in the trellis twine Where thou hadst long ago an hour of ease, And foot of thine across the unpressed leas Went light as some Idæan foot divine. Spirit so abstinent, in thy deeps lay What passion of possession? Day by day Was there no thirst upon thee, sharp and pure, In forward sea-like surges unforgot? Yes: and in life and death those joys endure More blessedly, that men can name them not. _Borderlands_ THROUGH all the evening, All the virginal long evening, Down the blossomed aisle of April it is dread to walk alone; For there the intangible is nigh, the lost is ever-during; And who would suffer again beneath a too divine alluring, Keen as the ancient drift of sleep on dying faces blown? Yet in the valley, At a turn of the orchard alley, When a wild aroma touched me in the moist and moveless air, Like breath indeed from out Thee, or as airy vesture round Thee, Then was it I went faintly, for fear I had nearly found Thee, O Hidden, O Perfect, O Desired! O first and final Fair! _Ode for a Master Mariner Ashore_ THERE in his room, whene'er the moon looks in, To silver now a shell, and now a fin, And o'er his chart glide like an argosy, Quiet and old sits he. Danger! he hath grown homesick for thy smile. Where hidest thou the while, heart's boast, Strange face of beauty sought and lost, Star-face that lured him out from boyhood's isle? Blown clear from dull indoors, his dreams behold Night-water smoke and sparkle as of old, The taffrail lurch, the sheets triumphant toss Their veering weight across. On, on he wears, the seaman long exiled, To lands where stunted cedars throw A lace-like shadow over snow, Or tropic fountains wash their agates wild. Again play up and down the briny spar Odours of Surinam or Zanzibar, Till blithely thence he ploughs, in visions new, The Labradorian blue; All homeless hurricanes about him break; The purples of spent day he sees From Samos to the Hebrides, And drowned men dancing darkly in his wake. Where the small deadly foam-caps, well descried, Top, tier on tier, the hundred-mountained tide, Away, and far away, his barque is borne Riding the noisy morn, Plunges, and preens her wings, and laughs to know The helm and tightening halyards still Follow the urging of his will, And scoff at sullen earth a league below. Alas! Fate bars him from his heirdom high, And shackles him with many an inland tie, And of his only wisdom makes a jibe Amid an alien tribe: No wave abroad but moans his fallen state. The trade-wind ranges now, the trade-wind roars! Why is it on a yellowing page he pores? Ah, why this hawser fast to a garden gate? Thou friend so long withdrawn, so deaf, so dim, Familiar Danger, Oh, forget not him! Repeat of thine evangel yet the whole Unto his subject soul, Who suffers no such palsy of her drouth, Nor hath so tamely worn her chain, But she may know that voice again, And shake the reefs with answer of her mouth. And give him back, before his passion fail, The singing cordage and the hollow sail, And level with those ageing eyes let be The bright unsteady sea; And like a film remove from sense and brain This pasture wall, these boughs that run Their evening arches to the sun, Yon hamlet spire across the sown champaign; And on the shut space and the shallow hour, Turn the great floods! and to thy spousal bower, With rapt arrest and solemn loitering, Him whom thou lovedst, bring: That he, thy faithful one, with praising lip, Not having, at the last, less grace Of thee than had his roving race, Sum up his strength to perish with a ship. OXFORD AND LONDON XXVI SONNETS OXFORD I. _The Tow-Path_ FURROW to furrow, oar to oar succeeds, Each length away, more bright, more exquisite; The sister shells that hither, thither, flit Strew the long stream like scattered maple-seeds. A comrade on the marge now lags, now leads, Who with short calls his pace doth intermit: An angry Pan, afoot; but if he sits, Auspicious Pan among the river reeds. West of the glowing hayricks, tawny black Where waters by their warm escarpments run, Two lovers, newly crossed from Kennington, Print in the early dew a married track, And drain the aroma'd eve, and spend the sun, Ere in laborious health the crews come back. II. _Ad Antiquarium_ MY gentle Aubrey, who in everything Hadst of thy city's youth so lovely lust, Yet never lineal to her towers august Thy spirit could fix, or perfectly upbring, Sleep, sleep! I ope, not unremembering, Thy comely manuscript, and interthrust Find delicate hueless leaves more sad than dust, Two centuries unkissed of any Spring. Filling a homesick page beneath a lime, Thy mood beheld, as mine thy debtor's now, The endless terraces of ended Time Vague in green twilight. Goodly was release Into that Past where these poor leaves, and thou, Do freshen in the air of eldest peace. III. _Martyrs' Memorial_ SUCH natural debts of love our Oxford knows, So many ancient dues undesecrate, I marvel how the landmark of a hate For witness unto future time she chose; How 'gainst her own corroborate ranks arose The Three, in great denial only great, For Art's enshrining! Thus, averted straight, My soul to seek a holier captain goes: That sweet adventurer whom Truth befell Whenas the synagogues were watching not; Whose crystal name on royal Oriel Hangs like a shield; who to an outland spot Led hence, beholds his Star, and counts it well To live of all his dear domain forgot. IV. _Parks Road_ VIEWED yesterday, in sad elusive light, These everlasting heptarchs, tree by tree, Seemed filing off to exile, lingeringly, Each with his giant falchion, kinless quite. All the wild winter day and flooded night They feigned to march far as the eye could see, Through transient oceans plunging to the knee Their centuried greaves, ebon and malachite. To-day, accustomed bole and branch all bare Stand with old gems inlaid. Like coloured snow Or vista'd flame along the drowsy air, Their gold-green lichens stir and cling and glow. What secret craftsmen painted them so fair? Angels of Moisture and the Long Ago. V. _Tom_ HARK! the king bell, loud in his vesper choir. As in between each golden roar doth come That solemn, plangent, unregarded hum Chiding the truant with archaic ire, On Worcester mere far off, in elfin gyre The wavelets laugh, and laughter showereth from May's chestnut like a lampadarium By Brasenose, with every point afire. Yet over all roofs to the uttermost, Call, Shepherd dear, from thy dream-haunted ground: For some there be, on whatsoever coast, In midst of any morrow's ordered round, Hear as of old (in earth and heaven an host!) And like young lambs, leap homeward at the sound. VI. _On the Pre-Reformation Churches about Oxford_ I IMPERIAL Iffley, Cumnor bowered in green, And Templar Sandford in the boatman's call, And sweet-belled Appleton, and Elsfield wall That dost upon adoring ivies lean; Meek Binsey; Dorchester, where streams convene Bidding on graves thy solemn shadow fall; Clear Cassington, soaring perpetual, Holton, and Hampton Poyle, and fanes between: If one of all in your sad courts that come Belovèd and disparted! be your own, Kin to the souls ye had, while yet endures Some memory of a great communion known At home in quarries of old Christendom,-- Ah, mark him: he will lay his cheek to yours. II IS this the end? Is this the pilgrim's day For dread, for dereliction, and for tears? Rather, from grass and air and many spheres In prophecy his heart is called away; And under English eaves, more still than they, Far-off, incoming, wonderful, he hears The long-arrested, the believing years Carry the sea-wall! Shall he, sighing, say: "Farewell to Faith, for she is dead at best Who had such beauty"? or, with spirit fain To watch beside her darkened doors, go by With a new psalm: "O banished Light so nigh! Of them was I, who bore thee and who blest: Even here remember me when thou shalt reign." VII. _A December Walk_ WHITHERSOEVER cold and fair ye flow, Take me, O gentle moon and gentler wind, Past Wyatt's cumbering portal, frost-entwined, And Merton 'neath that huge tiara's glow, And groves in bridal gossamer below Saint Mary's armoured spire; and whence aligned In altered eminence for dawn to find Sleep the droll Cæsars, hooded with the snow. White sacraments of weather, shine on me! Upbear my footfall and my fancy sift, Lest either blemish an ensainted ground Spread so with childhood. Bid with me, outbound, On recollected wing mine angel drift Across new spheres of immortality. VIII. _The Old Dial of Corpus_ WARDEN of hours and ages, here I dwell, Who saw young Keble pass, with sighing shook For good unborn; and towards a willow nook, Pole, princely in the senate and the cell; And doubting the near boom of Osney bell, Turning on me that sweetly subtile look, Erasmus, in his breast an Attic book: Peacemakers all, their dreams to ashes fell. Naught steadfast may I image nor attain Save steadfast labour; futile must I grope After my god, like him, inconstant bright: But sun and shade will unto you remain Alternately a symbol and a hope, Men, spirits! of Emmanuel your Light. IX. _Rooks: New College Gardens_ THROUGH rosy cloud and over thorny towers, Their wings with darkling autumn distance filled, From Isis' valley border, many-hilled, The rooks are crowding home as evening lowers: Not for men only, and their musing hours By battled walls did gracious Wykeham build These dewy spaces early sown and stilled, These dearest inland melancholy bowers. Blest birds! A book held open on the knee Below, is all they guess of Adam's blight: With surer art the while, and simpler rite, They gather power in some monastic tree Where breathe against their docile breasts by night The scholar's star, the star of sanctity. X. _Above Port Meadow_ THE plain gives freedom. Hither from the town How oft a dreamer and a book of yore Escaped the lamplit Square, and heard no more Inroll from Cowley turf the game's renown, But bade the vernal sky with spices drown His head by Plato's in the grass, before Yon oar that's never old, the sunset oar, At Medley Lock was laid reluctant down! So seeming far the confines and the crowd, The gross routine, the cares that vex and tire, From this large light, sad thoughts in it, high-driven, Go happier than the inly-moving cloud Who lets her vesture fall, a floss of fire, Abstracted, on the ivory hills of heaven. XI. _Undertones at Magdalen_ FAIR are the finer creature-sounds; of these Is Magdalen full: her bees, the while they drop Susurrant to the garth from weeds atop; And round the priestless Pulpit, auguries Of wrens in council from an hundred leas; And merry fish of Cherwell, fain to stop The water-plantain's way; and deer that crop Delicious herbage under choral trees. The cry for silver and gold in Christendom Without, threads not her silence and her dark. Only against the isolate Tower there break Low rhythmic murmurs of good men to come: Invasive seas of hushed approach that make Memorial music, would the ear but hark. XII. _A Last View_ I WHERE down the hill, across the hidden ford Stretches the open aisle from scene to scene, By halted horses silently we lean, Gazing enchanted from our steeper sward. How yon low loving skies of April hoard A plot of pinnacles! and how with sheen Of spike and ball her languid clouds between Grey Oxford grandly rises riverward! Sweet on those dim long-dedicated walls Silver as rain the frugal sunshine falls; Slowly sad eyes resign them, bound afar. Dear Beauty, dear Tradition, fare you well, And powers that aye aglow in you, impel Our quickening spirits from the slime we are. II STARS in the bosom of thy braided tide, Soft air and ivy on thy gracile stone, O Glory of the West, as thou wert sown, Stand perfect: O miraculous, abide! And still, for greatness flickering from thy side, Eternal alchemist, evoke, enthrone True heirs in true succession, later blown From that same seed of fire which never died. Nor Love shall lack her solace, to behold Ranged to the morrow's melancholy verge, Thy lights uprisen in Thought's disclosing spaces; And round some beacon-spirit, stable, old, In radiant broad tumultuary surge For ever, the young voices, the young faces. LONDON I. _On First Entering Westminster Abbey_ HOLY of England! since my light is short And faint, Oh, rather by the sun anew Of timeless passion set my dial true, That with thy saints and thee I may consort; And wafted in the cool enshadowed port Of poets, seem a little sail long due, And be as one the call of memory drew Unto the saddle void since Agincourt. Not now for secular love's unquiet lease Receive my soul, who rapt in thee erewhile Hath broken tryst with transitory things; But seal with her a marriage and a peace Eternal, on thine Edward's altar isle, Above the storm-spent sea of ended Kings. II. _Fog_ LIKE bodiless water passing in a sigh, Through palsied streets the fatal shadows flow, And in their sharp disastrous undertow Suck in the morning sun, and all the sky. The towery vista sinks upon the eye, As if it heard the horns of Jericho, Black and dissolved; nor could the founder, know How what was built so bright should daily die. Thy mood with man's is broken and blent in, City of Stains! and ache of thought doth drown The natural light in which thy life began; Great as thy dole is, smirchèd with his sin, Greater and elder yet the love of man Full in thy look, though the dark visor's down. III. _St. Peter-ad-Vincula_ TOO well I know, pacing the place of awe, Three Queens, young save in trouble, moulder by; More in his halo, Monmouth's mocking eye, The eagle Essex in a harpy's claw; Seymour and Dudley, and stout heads that saw Sundown of Scotland; how with treasons lie White martyrdoms: rank in a company Breaker and builder of the eternal Law. Oft as I come, the piteous garden-row Of ruined roses hanging from the stem, Where winds of old defeat yet batter them, Infects me: suddenly must I depart, Ere thought of man's injustice then and now Add to these aisles one other broken heart. IV. _Strikers in Hyde Park_ A WOOF reversed the fatal shuttles weave, How slow! but never once they slip the thread. Hither, upon the Georgian idlers' tread, Up spacious ways the lindens interleave, Clouding the royal air since yester-eve, Come men bereft of time and scant of bread, Loud, who were dumb, immortal, who were dead, Through the cowed world their kingdom to retrieve. What ails thee, England? Altar, mart, and grange Dream of the knife by night; not so, not so The clear Republic waits the general throe, Along her noonday mountains' open range. God be with both! for one is young to know The other's rote of evil and of change. V. _Changes in the Temple_ THE cry is at thy gates, long-lovèd ground, Again: for oft ere now thy children went Beggared and wroth, and parting greeting sent Some old red alley with a dial crowned; Some house of honour, in a glory bound With lives and deaths of spirits excellent; Some tree rude-taken from his kingly tent Hard by a little fountain's friendly sound. Oh, for Virginius' hand, if only that Maintain the whole, and spoil these spoilings soon! Better the scowling Strand should lose, alas, Her walled oasis, and where once it was All mournful in the cleared quadrangle sat Echo and ivy, and the loitering moon. VI. _The Lights of London_ THE evenfall, so slow on hills, hath shot Far down into the valley's cold extreme, Untimely midnight; spire and roof and stream Like fleeing spectres, shudder and are not. The Hampstead hollies, from their sylvan plot Yet cloudless, lean to watch as in a dream, From chaos climb with many a hasty gleam, London, one moment fallen and forgot. Her booths begin to flare; and gases bright Prick door and window; every street obscure Sparkles and swarms with nothing true nor sure, Full as a marsh of mist and winking light: Heaven thickens over, Heaven that cannot cure Her tear by day, her fevered smile by night. VII. _Doves_ AH, if man's boast and man's advance be vain, And yonder bells of Bow, loud-echoing home, And the lone Tree, foreknow it, and the Dome, That monstrous island of the middle main; If each inheritor must sink again Under his sires, as falleth where it clomb Back on the gone wave the disheartened foam?-- I crossed Cheapside, and this was in my brain. What folly lies in forecasts and in fears! Like a wide laughter sweet and opportune, Wet from the fount, three hundred doves of Paul's Shook their warm wings, drizzling the golden noon, And in their rain-cloud vanished up the walls. "God keeps," I said, "our little flock of years." VIII. _In the Reading-Room of the British Museum_ PRAISED be the moon of books! that doth above A world of men, the sunken Past behold, And colour spaces else too void and cold To make a very heaven again thereof; As when the sun is set behind a grove, And faintly unto nether ether rolled, All night his whiter image and his mould Grows beautiful with looking on her love. Thou, therefore, moon of so divine a ray, Lend to our steps both fortitude and light! Feebly along a venerable way They climb the infinite, or perish quite: Nothing are days and deeds to such as they, While in this liberal house thy face is bright. IX. _Sunday Chimes in the City_ ACROSS the bridge, where in the morning blow The wrinkled tide turns homeward, and is fain Homeward to drag the black sea-goer's chain, And the long yards by Dowgate dipping low; Across dispeopled ways, patient and slow, Saint Magnus and Saint Dunstan call in vain: From Wren's forgotten belfries, in the rain, Down the blank wharves the dropping octaves go. Forbid not these! Though no man heed, they shower A subtle beauty on the empty hour, From all their dark throats aching and outblown; Aye in the prayerless places welcome most, Like the last gull that up some naked coast Deploys her white and steady wing, alone. X. _A Porch in Belgravia_ WHEN, after dawn, the lordly houses hide Till you fall foul of it, some piteous guest (Some girl the damp stones gather to their breast, Her gold hair rough, her rebel garment wide, Who sleeps, with all that luck and life denied Camped round, and dreams how, seaward and southwest, Blue over Devon farms the smoke-rings rest, And sheep and lambs ascend the lit hillside), Dear, of your charity, speak low, step soft, Pray for a sinner. Planet-like and still, Best hearts of all are sometimes set aloft Only to see and pass, nor yet deplore Even Wrong itself, crowned Wrong inscrutable, Which cannot but have been, for evermore. XI. _York Stairs_ MANY a musing eye returns to thee, Against the formal street disconsolate, Who kept in green domains thy bridal state, With young tide-waters leaping at thy knee; And lest the ravening smoke, and enmity, Corrode thee quite, thy lover sighs, and straight Desires thee safe afar, too graceful gate; Throned on a terrace of the Boboli. Nay, nay, thy use is here. Stand queenly thus Till the next fury; teach the time and us Leisure and will to draw a serious breath: Not wholly where thou art the soul is cowed, Nor the fooled capital proclaims aloud Barter is god, while Beauty perisheth. XII. _In the Docks_ WHERE the bales thunder till the day is done, And the wild sounds with wilder odours cope; Where over crouching sail and coiling rope, Lascar and Moor along the gangway run; Where stifled Thames spreads in the pallid sun, A hive of anarchy from slope to slope; Flag of my birth, my liberty, my hope, I see thee at the masthead, joyous one! O thou good guest! So oft as, young and warm, To the home-wind thy hoisted colours bound, Away, away from this too thoughtful ground, Sodden with human trespass and despair, Thee only, from the desert, from the storm, A sick mind follows into Eden air. NOTES _The Kings_: P. 3. II Kings, VI, 15, 16, 17. _His Angel to his Mother_: P. 21. One line of the refrain is taken from an old love song, "Sweet, if you Love me, Let me Go," set to a charming melody in D major, and to be found in Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time. _Beside Hazlitt's Grave_: P. 47. St. Anne's, Soho, boasts the "sorry steeple," one of London's architectural absurdities. Hazlitt's grave is grassed over and unmarked, but the epitaph which has now for some years stood in place of the interesting original one, may be read on the headstone set against the outer west wall of the church. _The Vigil-at-Arms_: P. 48. Suggested by the very simple but soldierly melody in Mendelssohn's Lied ohne Worte in A, Book I, Opus 19, No. 4, the last two lines coming in for repetitions. _A Friend's Song for Simoisius_: P. 49. Having to do with Iliad IV, 473-489. _The Inner Fate_: P. 64. It is perhaps too daring to force into Greek forms any sentiment so dead against the Greek spirit of determinism. _The Acknowledgment_: P. 66. "The Prætor." Brutus in Shakespeare, if not the historical Brutus. _The Cherry Bough_: P. 70. "Si quis adhuc isthic meminit Nasonis adempti, Et superest sine me nomen in urbe meum." _Tristia_, Lib. III, El. X. "Atque aliquis vestrum, Nasonis nomine dicto, Deponat lacrymis pocula mista suis." _Idem_, Lib. V, El. IV. _A Talisman_: P. 87. Many years after these lines were in print, it was pointed out to the author by a friend, a student of St. Bernard, how they have managed to echo in part a saying of that great Doctor, in his _De Consideratione_, Lib. I, Cap. VIII, Sec. 9: "Prudentia item est quae inter voluptates et necessitates media, quasi quaedam arbitra sedens ... disterminat fines ... ex alterutris tertiam formans virtutem quam dicunt Temperantiam." _Fifteen Epitaphs_: P. 91. It may be well to state (as these have often been taken for translations), that they are only pseudo-Alexandrian. _A Footpath Morality_: P. 121. A sort of floral log-book of a walk from Oxford to Appleton in Berkshire, May, 1908. OXFORD _Ad Antiquarium_: P. 146. This is Wood's disinterested helper, John Aubrey, F.R.S., 1626-1697. Never was a truer lover of what he calls "that most ingeniose Place!" _Martyrs' Memorial_: P. 147. The only monument in the streets of Oxford was put up by the local Low Church party in 1841, not really so much to commemorate Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, all Cambridge men, as to register a protest against Hurrell Froude (then dead), Newman, and Keble, who all showed frank disrespect to the heroes of the Reformation in England. The reference in the sestet is of course to Cardinal Newman, and was written barely a month before his rather sudden death on August 11, 1890. _Tom_: P. 149. The College is a century and a half older than the upper part of its chief entrance gate, and the once monastic bell is much older than either. "The Tom Tower [was] finished in November, 1682. In this was hung the bell called Great Tom of Christ Church, which had originally belonged to Osney Abbey.... From that time to this, it has rung its one hundred and one strokes every night at nine, as a signal that all students should be within their College walls. It need hardly be said that the signal is not obeyed!" J. WELLS, M.A., 1901. _Oxford and its Colleges_: Christ Church, pp. 205-206. _The Old Dial of Corpus_: P. 153. The great Dial in the quadrangle of Corpus Christi College was not put up until 1605,--too late to have been contemporary with either Erasmus or Pole. The author discovered the error several years ago, but has never known how to correct it except by this caution. "Osney Bell" is Great Tom (see just above): Christ Church being next neighbour to Corpus; but Tom may or may not have been in place and condition to ring for curfew in the second year of Queen Elizabeth's reign. The closing line is meant to refer to the motto of the University, _Dominus illuminatio mea_, taken from the opening of Psalm XXVII. _Undertones at Magdalen_: P. 156. "The priestless Pulpit" was an accurate description when this sonnet was written (1895), though it is so no longer. From the open-air Pulpit of Magdalen, disused since the Reformation, a Sermon is once again delivered annually on St. John Baptist's Day. LONDON _St. Peter-ad-Vincula_: P. 161. St. Peter-ad-Vincula is the ancient and sadly appropriate dedication of the Church near the Beauchamp Tower and the site of the scaffold. The vaults are under the chancel. _York Stairs_: P. 169. Inigo Jones' Water Gate, standing on the Embankment at the foot of Villiers Street, Strand, now a long way from the river, is still called York Stairs. It is the sole surviving appanage of the great town-house of the seventeenth-century Dukes of Buckingham. The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A 
579	----	None 
58080	----	[Illustration: Cover art] POEMS OF YES AND NO Elizabeth Bartlett _Poems of Yes and No_, was originally published in 1952 by Editorial Jus in Mexico City, and is now out-of-print. The author's literary executor, Steven James Bartlett, has decided to make the book available as an open access publication, freely available to readers through Project Gutenberg under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivs license, which allows anyone to distribute this work without changes to its content, provided that both the author and the original URL from which this work was obtained are mentioned, that the contents of this work are not used for commercial purposes or profit, and that this work will not be used without the copyright holder's written permission in derivative works (i.e., you may not alter, transform, or build upon this work without such permission). The full legal statement of this license may be found at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode [Illustration: Creative Commons logo] poems of yes and no elizabeth bartlett editorial jus méxico some of these poems have appeared in poetry chapbook, arizona quarterly, southwest review, prairie schooner, university of kansas city review, new york times and mexican life magazine yes, paul -- with all my heart first edition 1952 number 2 contents yes search the wild wind lesson on five fingers journey to jerusalem prayer for four seasons ekstasis challenge while I live odyssey life I love mood on a string time is a palette dusk I love the lovers whatever else may be tropic time stormbird the wind and the rain art diary grassflesh the now and here swallows return reply to critics no step softly I would remember now and forever catchtraps beyond cost summer and winter suddenly item: body found on trial guadalajara pilgrimage washday in the tropics only this maturity alter ego this much I know about time in the wake of sleep cold wakening weather forecast measured interval black sun log for a voyage notes for the future yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes search the wild wind search the wild wind when the foals of spring leap by leave the summer colts behind nose up, head high stretch the hill's ribs when the stable gates are wide lead the mares from manger cribs stallion with pride reach the storm's heart when the world is lost to sight buck the sky and cliffs apart clouds black, snow white pitch a new tent when the greengrass disappears paw beneath the crystal scent sweet leaves, fresh spears march with the dawn when the nights grow long and cold seek for pastures not yet born rider, be bold lesson on five fingers now that I have learned how seasons are returned brook my laughter here to the running years waterfall the fears now that I realize how much the world denies green my sense leaves bright to chlorophyl of light photocell the nights now that I have found how each must choose his ground terrace my piece of time to a hill of sweet limes stairway the climb now that I have seen how cunning walks between mountain my trust high to the pigmy wise landslide the lies now that I understand how heart unites with hand radar the future free to the dove singing me laurel the peace journey to jerusalem sky our thoughts to midnight that hold no noon's repose silence speaks in clearer voice than day's tumultuous crows unpave the streets to earthscape grass pillow to our heads as virgin stars attend once more moon music forested mountain our hearts to the lion tender our hands to the dove olive the branch over zion to israelite our love flower this hope to the springtime summer our dream with its fruit festive the fields in the autumn winter the future's root prayer for four seasons rain, rain on me make me green as lettuce leaf at spring's fresh core sun, shine on me burn me bright as coral reef on island shore wind, blow on me sweep me clean as grain fields tall for autumn's mill stars, sing for me lark the night as snowflakes fall on woods and hill ekstasis all the hills of the world lie here aeolus ride your winds the skybound clouds leap out like deer daedalus fly your wings the fields are green with sun and shade pegasus strike your hoof the silence sings, the people fade hesperus light my roof the ocean's wide and far away tantalus drink your fill no distant lands draw me astray orpheus bring your skill olympus is within my heart poetry lift me high with pagan joy I sing my art melody till I die challenge tell me, in this high land of mountained length where time is green and space big-bellied with fruitful plains rockribbed by corn and bean for simple courage, do you know strength as something earned through bitterness of need in narrow streets and tortured rooms, oh hungry lean listen, above the winding road come sounds descending on bells, sky voices and wind mixing with the shy four footed ones' cries, what do they tell, can you hear from the grounds of city skyscrapers through the tunnelthinned walls that rail the nervetracked brain with wooden ties look you, whose eyes are wise with too much seen through doors and windows, in whom the sunlight is confined by steel canyons and arctic nights, here is heart space, here clouds rise between warm currents to open roofs, see how the height of climb and width of free brightens to tropic taste this, you tongue lovers, you gourmets, you who know the ends for which the palette buds bloom to burst on a thousand sauces, wines, rare meats and molded cheeses, what brew is this, what essence extracted from muds and rooted origins of leaf that taste defines breathe, ah breathe again, purge out the unclear lungs, the downbent head, smell has other use than multiplies in shop and factory to substitute the sense, no need to fear the pure air here, to hide subtle and obtuse behind the mob's excuse, here the wind blows free reach out, know touch as up and down, the span of head to heel, thigh to shoulder, each side with rough of bark to blossom, stone to dust, how else but by the feel, the real, can man press nature to his will and impel his pride in shaping to his needs an earth which he can trust go up, your feet will take you high above streets and buildings to a new position forget the old appointments, you have a more important one with God to measure love not by the scrupled ways of acquisition but freely as the stars that follow and explore while I live my love is a hart seeking the waterfall where he may press two lips against its crystal depths--see how he leaps to kiss the imaged mist that bubbles up beneath him--he staggers, kissed my love is an alpine trail that mountains climb above clouds and timber to heights out of time and measure--no distance there or memory for weak foot and tired brain--but death only my love is a trumpet sustaining its call to the last clear breath--listen, the interval, out of canyon silences, on the dry wind, the throat of night catches, its echoes are thinned my love is a dream where childhood fell asleep beckoned by shadows that lengthen as they creep; now she sighs, weeps, losing her way--morning wakes the sleeper and she smiles, her eyes are lakes odyssey ah never say the dreams were false that boy and girl were madly bold not time but timeless changes all man and woman we should know what we dreamed was what we were and could not timeless be two strange wild things in universe too tame for altering then let them keep without reserve the wings they had prepared and while we walk a humbled earth see them with spirit dare life I love life I love who know the heart's unease the mind's disease, the search unending to a blind conclusion I have gone so many ways towards praise, away from blame to find seclusion known coldest doubt and passionate release the after peace of countless wars grown tired by their own diffusion how many changes seen: chance days nights, the grays of violent and tame mixed in the time's confusion dreamed plans, wished hopes without cease no single piece of life sought without delusion and yet have loved each coming, going blaze each phase, willed and thrilled to every flame that brightened the illusion then let me know death as one who foresees breath's end to seize a new beginning through the soul's transfusion mood on a string again the after rain and shine of night when mellow yellow patternings of light make rivers run through streets of mirrors bright to where the air brings thought from its seclude as though a silver magnet drew a rood about the mind's internal solitude then is the darkness gentle to my sight with glossy lamps to toss me into flight and give to sleep the freeness of a kite that after storm can rise in amplitude above the clinging wet still unsubdued to sail in lonely splendor wind pursued time is a palette each day has its color radiates each day its own color on the wheel endlessly and they are wrong who say all colors are gray they are blind or else unimaginatively well I remember the primary days the reds and yellows and blues those brilliant saturated hues each its own bright self intensively a day red as a ripe warm plum on the mouth staining chin and blouse with summer while leaves on a red tree flamed in crimson joy shamelessly and there were other reds for feathers dipped in blood to sign youth's honor on a windless sky running over rooftops most solemneyed earnestly or red for something velvet deep over quivering flesh and trembling hair stabbing the breath with a wild commotion like coroncitas on a christmas tree ecstatically a vivid red each time coloring morning to evening canvas of that particular day connecting sleep with sleep in the intimate dye imperishably yellow was first word for gold then sun and it was always rich like the promise of a wedding ring or shining birthday coin inevitably yellow was wish more often than anything seen or heard except for the canary my father kept as his own yellow sign pure and unalloyed incorruptibly mostly it was feeling the evidence and substance in one symbol of perfection and as rare when harsh-cold-rough were there it wasn't yellow changelessly precious as treasure awarded by the gods to saint and hero like the holy grail the lost chord those unrecoverable legends fabulously blue was definite less temperamental than red more tangible than yellow like summer sigh or puff of winter air the outlines of dawn to dusk distinguishably blue was practical and necessary like the blueing used in my mother's wash like smoke water air and sky blue for everything clear and understandable unmistakably but blue had magic too meaning giant ships and giant fish rockets to the moon and planet shores too big and far away too terribly true incredibly a glamorous color blue suiting cinderella's glass slipper forget me nots and chinese porcelain and once I found a blue shell so fragile I let it crumble on the sand irretrievably but even the primary colors are not all the colors and each day has its color each day radiates its own color on the wheel endlessly and they are wrong who say all colors are gray unable to remember unwilling to separate with desperate impatience unimaginatively dusk I love dusk I love who know the morning's light the night's darkness, the black and white of yes and no and all false and true I have lived with definite so long with wrong and right, with weak and strong with how much undefined dusk by you for I have seen the between hours when towers grew soft as flowers and cold stones were stemmed in warmest hue and I have watched a kind gentle grace take place behind the coarser face unloose the many masks old and new I too felt the purple air's dissent from meant purpose and clear intent nothing certain but a changing view then let me have time's dusk perspective to give the life men think they live an outer shape and an inner clue the lovers after the sunlight over barren fields after the dry wind through stony creeks we found our little green where lilies were and knee deep oxen stood watching us triumphant under trees... for this was peace as nature meant nature's peace to be with fertile soil made ready by its need with instincts tamed in gentler ways than fear with freedom measured freely as the sky measures breath... we lay there side by side breathing kisses, feeling the wet and cool of bodies grassed in loving, each a groove within a groove seeking counterpart with close-open-close, with light in dark and waves lapping... we heard the overflow of lake on buttressed dam down sluiced walls making music in ditches, singing birth to stalks in the earth, with giant surge of up and out bringing humanity a greater day for love... then happily we rose and barefoot walked the golden green to where horses and men waded beneath multifoliate rays of setting sun their work done before the darkness come to cheat them... together all of us swam glad for the fresh clean water which ran on hands and hoofs, on flesh and hide, like beams bathing between, feeling our oneness sweet reward, for the sun was a broken sword pointing the peace towards our tomorrow whatever else may be as long as you're happy there were flowers on the street and sweetmeats at noon and a high wind in the towers ceaselessly as long as you're happy there were mornings in the sun and nights in the moon and a magic in the warnings heedlessly as long as it was long heart was head and hands were feet heat was heavy, still and words were trees with roots of red urgently as long as--happy song wish was flight and new worlds won space was empty, chill and lips were birds with feathers light fervently for long is as long as life is as strong as ah to be happy and free tropic time here before old leaves go new leaves come in here before old loves know new loves begin now when the year's one spring no season chills now when the fear's one thing no reason kills this is time after then there was regret this time is laughter when where we forget stormbird the winds have abated and the rain now the lonely dark comes again with blue lines running in the mind with hands explorative and blind (was it the bitter taste of smoke or pepper berries? lips parted spoke words out of kisses bringing fears no nearer to relief than tears) now memory is of lightning, flares in the night, with darkeyed cares encircling universes strange as the skies through which they range thunder removes to distant space-- from quiet woods where ancient grace roots tree in soil and lake is mild only the stormbird's flight is wild the wind and the rain thoughts in my head like wind through pines lift to north veer to south shift to east rear to west the wind not the pines till my thoughts are dead love in my heart like rain on dust stirs to dawn dries to noon whirs to dusk cries to night the rain not the dust till my love depart art worthier than words the meaning kiss which makes true poetry of lips which sets a wisdom into rhyme no pen can simulate by line music has cadence but heartbeats sound what no ear ever tuned beyond a harmony so fully sensed that voice is mute with instrument imperative to move the dancer's arms would free the body from those bonds wherein an inner rhythm leaps secret with wonder, flow and cease the eye's canvas such beauty lights of shade and color and design that brush must hesitate to set a lesser skill on palimpsest yet kiss is brief and heartbeat slows while freedom captivates us most and beauty turns to counterfeit the images lost in memory's mist diary returning miles of space can you find the precise hour travel through that day locate the very moment ago there the train goes back and forth stops at what time stations monday morning january tenth autumn ten years ago then the boat arrives departs ticket pier cabin port pre-war london paris rome before the depression remember where the plane roars lifts the earth speeds me a century past sound past light we know the way back remember when and buses taxis subways trams for how long how far conversations so much so many who and what and love and life and yes again name place date pen grass flesh the deep of night is crept upon our talk and what we had to say the wind will keep until our tongues can thrust up through the stalk and stay the light; meanwhile let silence sleep between us remembering what we were before our eyes were covered by the dark lovers who saw beauty in each other and from the clay drew forth an hour's spark that hour can not die, though we must lie with stiffened arms about an earth which turned about us once to prove how much of sky there is in love's embrace; our kisses burned the millioned lightyeared stars that now must roam the space of all eternity till dust can rise on flaming wings to plume the dome with fires kindled by our mortal lust what triumphs we have known within the mesh of failure, time can not scrape from our bones; out of the pregnant dreams of our grass flesh a fertile spring will issue from the stones and flower like our songs in crimson mirth; each hidden sense that death but borrows here to bring about its own more perfect birth with quickened breath will help new life appear the now and here the sunlit trees along the quiet street enclose the afternoon on either side their shadows dark and still the dozing heat and there is no morning or night to hide it might be anywhere the now and here when the heart is simple and forgets the brain in france on a river or a hill in spain when life was peaceful and there was no fear the reminiscent chord the piano strikes returns us again to the slow learned ease of oars on a boat and the long road hikes the faces and voices like melodies then old folks gladdened the spry basque danses as student groups mingled to learn quaint ways and families gathered for shore holidays with poppies in the sun and vins des provences in the city of the mind thoughts like these graze quietly in distant valleys as though time's gaps lay between a range of sunlit afternoons that never change swallows return o spring thaw out my winter's chill so cold I might be buried still beneath the snow long years I lay as one whose night strong arms had banished from the light to mute my song now wake me from oblivion bow down and lift me to the sun like earth to plow prepare for me some green retreat enough for summer to complete its ecstasy let autumn shake its leaves at me set laughter whirling from each tree and I forget then should my winter come at last when darkened shadows overcast the fields of men I'll gladly say goodbye and go while memories warm me with their glow across the stile for every year my dust shall rise o'er mud and rust to welcome skies where swallows soar reply to critics tell them who scorn my ways I lived without their praise and will until I die let them be cynical I have my own faith still to question and deny the proud and stiff of neck the small who grub and peck both look too low or high while I but seek to know the feel of things that grow and by my living why no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no step softly step softly your feet are on my heart the sawdust underneath hurts less than I even sawdust, dry and dirtied by our not particular feet it's something deep inside that aches I know not why unless the pride mistakes for the heart that only guesses still will bear the feet that walk upon it but not the heart that knows too often it confesses and breaks I would remember I have walked from river's end to end a slow companion to the light seagulls that circle overhead and I have stood still above the bend that separates the foot from distant hulls to fill my eye with flying sails wings spread I have watched them many times from where the far shore curves around the sun and holds it there ensnared while they advanced then dropped midair instinct with seaward gravitation and hungry claws prepared their wings some shimmering things the wind has caught and suddenly flings in a rain of gold I am not old and yet when night brings me to town I forget their wings and drown now and forever now might I keep you forever thus unchanged against the eventual day for both of us arranged when the rude winds shall bring no promise of another spring but cold and comfortless satisfaction the grave's discreet and quiet action I would not mind the days precisioned to the clock's unwinding flesh to flesh binding would find some way as yet unvisioned some way to forget the fever and the sweat here where lovers have known the soft of hair and hard of bone hearing each other moan a way more conscionably kind for a night's repose but time defined forbids us to dispose of even one brief moment that has passed or keep the moment thus forever fast catchtraps we knew the words before we knew their meaning who asked so many whys while still in weaning how many pitfalls marked with skull and crossbones to outwit those who lay beneath the moss stones then set about to verify the answers seeking in us the cause of others' cancers so found ourselves new victims of time's catchtraps and now must moan and curse until the latch snaps beyond cost darling don't be lost to me the fear was there under the sleeve lifting the hair darling don't be lost to me it was a prayer caught like a leaf burning in air darling you are tossed from me the year is bare wonder and grief drifting to where darling you are tossed from me what here more rare thought like a thief turning to stare summer and winter so many years of many seasons we saw and found together snapped grassroots trembling to the spring plucked berries out of harvesting caught swirling autumn down from trees about us drew a sunbright frieze oh summer was our weather but winter was in our hearts how many years of many reasons convinced us not to part remembering the search for first green bud the rain paths rainbowed in the mud the cheep behind the window ledge the shutter like a moonshined wedge oh summer was our weather but winter was in our hearts too many years, too many years we lived and loved together for oh my dear the winter fears destroyed the summer weather for doubts can frost and worries blight the careful seed, the ripened stacks and questions when they come by night leave barren fields behind their tracks suddenly there was sun and moon and stars and night and day all taken for granted then no sun no moon no stars no night no day forsaken transplanted there was sight and sound and touch and someone there as always forever then an empty silence such as none aware of hallways to never item: body found it was a silent evening I remember through the river's mist it comes to me a star pierced the air, white with speed it leaped across the sky, slipped and fell I heard its cry, it echoed in the sea the swift wild cry of the scornful ember alone I stood there, never had I need of fellow rebel more, I a rebel down the dark beach I ran, I stripped, time was an eyeless reach across immensity and I plunged deeply, they blamed it on the tide the night, they had not seen infinity like a vast unchanging vista wide before me. if you go too far you'll drown they said, ah no, they know the sublime who reach for the falling star and go down on trial the day to day commitment to failure that judgment daily argues against me condemns me to despair... I am guilty of more than silence... at times words fail your wisest men and then intentionally... but my silence like all my secrecies has no defense, none conventionally, my personal idiosyncrasies no social crimes... when pride is pain and shame an agony too keen for reason I had no other weapon, who is to blame? there was no intent to deceive or lie... my absence is sufficient evidence, voluntary exile, not providence guadalajara water running over stone overrun my heart water running over stone overcome my start now wear down my sorrow wash away my fears I have mourned tomorrow widowed by the years (water running over stone hard it is to be alone) water running over stone canyon deep inside water running over stone canyon steep and wide now let a river flow strong and continuous out of the desert grow green bouldered oasis (flat and dry of emery plateaus on my memory) water running over stone be the blood within my bone water running over stone take me and make me your own pilgrimage now that the flame has died which burned in us burned too intense for living with, beside and we have cooled to the quieter dust so comfortably and separately you and I let us lift to the wind and drift from our pyre as passionlessly and still as those destined candles of the mind whose pilgrimage through night ends with a dawn cold white and all their flames relit washday in the tropics the sun tropics down my days with heat of roof and balcony drying me out like morning's wash on mudbaked brick and shrubbery the clouds are bleached by lye and ash to make a stiff and faultless sky and spotless leaves hang limp on trees without the energy to die flies buzz... cock calls... the hammock swings with eye asquint to palmribbed light while smoke coughs up the desert air between straw sips of cool and white where cactus pricks the sunscorched haze against the rainless afternoon three zopilotes sit and wait to pick apart the carcass moon and still more scrub of soap on stone with slap and shake and fling of wrist though I unsmooth each ironed piece before night creeps along the mist only this I return to old complaints like the earth to its seasons the church has its saints and I my reasons one needs to know trees their leaves, bark and roots to perceive what one sees-- the mind has no shoots only this: the older I grow the more I feel, not know the need of believing-- my youth is leaving maturity for years I watched it grow in thought and shape a man though it was smaller then and mild I was in fact a gentle child the words it spoke were songs the air it breathed seemed sweet its eyes saw more than was to see the world I loved was meant for me each day it woke the sun and played till time had tired then put the night to sleep in bed I dreamed the sky was underhead when it was glad I joyed when it was sad I grieved joy and grief were never lonely I had myself for company the seasons came and went and with them went we two the fallen leaves now memories of years grown thick as forest trees till knowledge found us there and taught us false from true how much the simple lesson cost I gained a world not worth the lost alter ego always He was there facing me where the others could not see they never believed me He stood in the shadows like a tree posed in sunlight when the woods are darkly bright but they saw only black and white as I impatiently cried fools are you blind they looked at me their eyes were not unkind when He spoke I heard each word distinctly spoken the silence broken was what He said but they only shook their heads as I repeatedly cried fools can't you hear gently they answered me your voice is clear when He wept they wiped my tears kept me consoled for the pain He felt fools are you so old you have no fears, have you no heart that grief can melt I insisted through the years but they would not depart when He slipped they caught me in their arms ripped the garments from my wound and staunched the flow fools let me go let me go I shouted in alarm as He swooned and still they did not see the shadows by the tree they never believed me then He was dying and I knew dying too that they would bury me there beside the tree where no one else could see but the fools were crying because I was lying so quietly watching the shadows and waiting this much I know about time there is safety only in the heart guard it well my love where is beauty lonely in the mart hard to sell my dove fame is rider pawing wind and cloud fool to reach so far blame is spider drawing in the crowd cruel of speech they are joys are token mainly for regret high the score I played toys are broken plainly to forget buy no more I said breath is fearless bolder than the mind few will sight my spire death is cheerless colder than the wind who will light my fire in the wake of sleep storm in the brain whips the dull season high while dunes of repetition pile against the night sandscarred to flight... hurriedly the shore frightened by tide sliding out from cat's paw scurries behind land's door, turns key in lock and dims the light... now wind and rain can rock the mind to a wild ship's bow, ride down a mile climb up a wall to mountain height of sky... dreams crash each side, tear anchor loose from sleep and madly race the lightning out to sea... everything changes: hands feet eyes the face of storm, all composition of the gray sameness, walls razed, roofs blown, the no of drought flooded out... the revenging dog barks loud across the fog and we wake to the nightmare violence of day, salt in mouth, sand in hair cold wakening for thirty years I lived a dream until I woke up with a scream and saw that all the things I'd dreamt had vanished in the dawn's contempt it was not I within the glass it was my mother's face alas a face so changed from mine I'd known I thought the years had turned to stone and where were all my innocence my glad beliefs and magic pence that I had saved to travel through a timeless world where dreams come true? not anything inside my hand no moment's evidence of sand just grayish pulp to make me damn the heartless proof I think, I am? the dream is gone and still as ice that glaciers down some mountain splice and I am carried underneath with stones to cling to by my teeth weather forecast always before the final terror a luscious peace not yet the signal bell not yet the swift alarm the sleeper has another hour the worker has a holiday still eases the dawn forward still comes the morning toward open the cities' piers open frontiers an early spring being everything the last kiss like the first the best without the worst always after the initial fear a new release not yet the sharp compel not yet the threatened harm the body has a lazy power the brain has an agile way so warm the fireside within so rich the harvest every bin secure the outer walls secure the stalls a deep serenity without enmity the first signs like the last the future in the past measured interval the morning speeds to a full stop lands in the park and lights a cigarette-- still fifteen minutes to burn and then noon the train comes along, drops through the darkness and forgets-- till five o'clock returns and the news night wakes with a gong rings bells in the brain and runs off shouting-- sleep dresses itself and wakes, shaking skies ricochet downward, prong ciliate streaks of rain with gun shells routing-- a mad head on a shelf laughs, breaking now the moon blankets over the dead the warmth their lover bodies were denied they lie on alien bed who failed to live who tried, whose eyes are wide to heaven knows what stars what glories fugitive o tell me mars to every action is there an equal and opposite reaction black sun the night is white, ah strange the world I knew grown changed for sun is black with days I can not see amazed all has reversed, gone void each thought a masked deploy confusing sense: heat cold more less, body and soul only the light of dreams in which I stand blasphemed lost blind, a sack of straw facing windy mouths abhorred land is accursed, sea slimed with foulest human crimes at what expense to hide the fratricidal eye the ghosts of years file past like candles in a glass and I a sound unheard to stop the murderer dawn chanticleers no peace there is no west no east space closes round the speck man claims as architect log for a voyage we have taken to words on page without speech we have taken to birds in cage within reach forsaken the meaning of lips forsaken the free wing that dips we have shaken the fruitful tree of belief we have shaken the brutal sea for relief mistaken the evils of sin mistaken the wheels that spin then who of us shall slake the salt wound on the tongue who shall wake the nightingales marooned here among o wander the world for the garden that lies on the floor of atlantis or roof of the skies from its seed breed a new race of life loving men from its reed and papyrus make music again notes for the future light destroyed by minds only the stars might destroyed by hands only the stones no other language but signs no other knowledge but clans time reduced by fear only the sun space reduced by force only the hunt each one yoked from head to knee each one racked by tooth and claw ears condemned to hope only the drum eyes condemned to ape only the dream this book is a signed limited edition designed by the author set in cheltonian type printed on biblios paper published and distributed by editorial jus mejia number 19 mexico city ABOUT THE AUTHOR Elizabeth Bartlett (1911-1994) was an American poet and writer noted for her lyrical and symbolic poetry, creation of the new twelve-tone form of poetry, founder of the international non-profit organization Literary Olympics, Inc., and known as an author of fiction, essays, reviews, translations, and as an editor. She is not to be confused with the British poet (1924-2008) of the same name. For more detailed information about her life, work, and critical commendations, see the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bartlett_%28American_poet%29. Bartlett's most notable achievements include: * Creation of a new form of poetry, "the twelve-tone poem," adapting Arnold Schonberg's musical system to the verbal, accented sounds of language. Called "the Emily Dickinson of the 20th Century," her concise lyrics have been praised by poets, musicians, and composers alike. * Publication of 16 books of poetry, a group of edited anthologies, and more than 1,000 poems, short stories, and essays published, for example, in _Harper's_, _Virginia Quarterly_, _New York Times_, _North American Review_, _Saturday Review_, _Prairie Schooner_, and in numerous international collections. * Recipient of many fellowships, grants and awards, including NEA, PEN Syndicate, fellowships at the Huntington Hartford Foundation, Montalvo, Yaddo, MacDowell, Dorland Mt. Colony and Ragdale, travel grants, and honors for introducing literature as part of the Olympics. * Founder of the Literary Olympics, to restore literature, specifically poetry, as a vital part of the Olympics as it once had been in ancient Greece. Bartlett's poetry came to the attention of leading poets, writers, and critics as diverse as Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, Mark Van Doren, Conrad Aiken, Allen Tate, Alfred Kreymborg, Robert Hillyer, Louis Untermeyer, Rolfe Humphries, John Ciardi, Richard Eberhart, Richard Wilbur, Maxine Kumin, Robert M. Hutchins, Kenneth Rexroth, William Stafford, and others. Over the years, Bartlett maintained an active and extensive correspondence with eminent poets, writers, and literary critics; evident throughout this collected literary correspondence are strong statements attesting to the importance of her work. About her first book of poetry, _Poems of Yes and No_, Marianne Moore wrote: "I surely find good in the _Poems of Yes and No_.... The clearness of the book is certainly beautiful." Wallace Stevens was impressed by _Poems of Yes and No_ and wrote: "Your poems give one a sense of intelligence and sensibility." Alfred Kreymborg was enthusiastic about the book: "You have found a style of your own and developed it. I say yes to your _Poems of Yes and No_. This is a distinguished volume as a whole. I wish you well with this warm book. Any poet might envy the courage and artistry of what you say, or rather sing, there." Further commendation came from Robert Hillyer, who wrote: "Your poems are moving and unusual.... A distinguished achievement!" Her husband, Paul Alexander Bartlett (1909-1990) was an American writer, artist, and poet. He made a large-scale study of more than 350 Mexican haciendas, published novels, short stories, and poetry, and worked as a fine artist in a variety of media. For more detailed information about his life and work, see the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Alexander_Bartlett. Elizabeth Bartlett's son, Steven James Bartlett (1945- ), is a psychologist and philosopher who has published many books and articles in the fields of philosophy and psychology. For more detailed information about his life and work, see the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_James_Bartlett. 
58207	----	[Illustration: Cover art] BEHOLD THIS DREAMER Elizabeth Bartlett _Behold This Dreamer_ was originally published in 1959 by Editorial Jus in Mexico City, and is now out-of-print. The author�s literary executor, Steven James Bartlett, has decided to make the book available as an open access publication, freely available to readers through Project Gutenberg under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivs license, which allows anyone to distribute this work without changes to its content, provided that both the author and the original URL from which this work was obtained are mentioned, that the contents of this work are not used for commercial purposes or profit, and that this work will not be used without the copyright holder's written permission in derivative works (i.e., you may not alter, transform, or build upon this work without such permission). The full legal statement of this license may be found at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode [Illustration: Creative Commons logo] _Behold this Dreamer_ _By_ ELIZABETH BARTLETT BOOKS _poems of yes and no_ _Behold this Dreamer_ POEMS _Accent, American Weave, Approach, Arizona Quarterly, Beloit Poetry Journal, Canadian Forum, Catholic World, Chelsea Review, Coastlines, Commentary, Cresset, Epos, Fiddlehead, Folio, four quarters, Harper's, Harper's Bazaar, Literary Review, Mexican Life, Naked Ear, New Mexico Quarterly, New Poems 2, New Voices 2, N. Y. Herald Tribune, N. Y. Times, Nimrod, Odyssey, Outposts, Personalist, Poetry Chapbook, Prairie Schooner, Quixote, Saturday Review, Shenandoah Review, Southwest Review, Sparrow, Step Ladder, Venture, Views, Western Review, Western Humanities Review, Whetstone, Wisconsin Poetry._ Acknowledgements: Certain of the poems in this collection have appeared in publications listed above. The title, _Behold This Dreamer_, is taken from an anthology of that name, in tribute to its author, Walter de la Mare (1873-1956). _Behold this Dreamer_ _Elizabeth Bartlett_ _Editorial Jus, S. A._ _Mexico City_ First Edition © 1959 Elizabeth Bartlett _To_ CHARLOTTE HOWELL REED CONTENTS Vision The poet's dream Time will tell Afternoon of a journey The cave The test In his image All this, before The creation _Vision_ EYE _center of the universe Whose pupil is the world Teach us to see the light Embracing night_ _Between the sunset and the dawn To see the unicorn Within that crystal ball Of pure recall_ _Where time is an iris mirror A pointillated blur Of image and of form Caught in its storm_ _With every moment held inside The frame of canvas mind Forever captive, stilled, Motion fulfilled_ _Where memory and dream evoke The future like a window Made of stained glass, one cast From the fractured past_ _As retina and perspective For our darkness, the bridge Connecting what has been With things foreseen_ _Through your bright lens, illuminate The galaxy that waits Invisible as trust In stars and dust_ _The Poet's Dream_ WHEN _the waters of the sun Fall on the flaming sea_ _When the desert rose is one With the snow sipping bee_ _All that our senses now shun Time's alchemy will free_ _On the coral shores of night The ghosts of fish shall wake_ _And offer incense to the light That gives them bread to break_ _From the singing shells with wings An artist's eye shall peer_ _With violin hands for strings And a poet's ear_ _Then white silence like a nun Shall lift her long white sleeves_ _And shake the treasures she has spun From dreams whose thread she weaves_ _From the surf of mountain caves A billion stars shall gush_ _And whirl on the windward waves Through the darkened hush_ _In the valley of moon trees The glowing fruit shall sway_ _And rise by twos and threes Above the cradled day_ _On the jungle's peaceful floor Lion and deer shall meet_ _A crucifix made of ore Between their kneeling feet_ _All of this and more shall be Within that shining net_ _When time redeems mortality From its mortal debt_ _Then magnet age shall point its north Towards youth's eternal pole_ _That alpha star in the fourth Dimension of the soul_ _Where love curves back in heartspace Within its chrysalis_ _And gravitates the imaged face Of the all creating this_ _From the light years of the past The undeflected force_ _Shall bind the future fast To God's own source_ _As cause and word unending Repeat the rhythmic plan_ _Of universe transcending Man's origin as man_ _Time Will Tell_ WHERE _fireflies are stars And the evening sky a sea, There you will find me, far From the leveling demands That leveled you and me._ _When distant mountains bend Like deep swells toward the shore, Then you will see the ends For which I built my dikes Against the lowly roar._ _Though breath was all I owned To force my heart to climb, Though words were all the stones I had to seal my mind, You will know why, in time._ _Afternoon of a Journey_ THERE _will never be another, That day was forever._ _We dove through tropic noon Into a green sky. The palms stood Quiet, still, their fronds Like swollen waves about To break, transparent, lime limned And streaked from base to rim With icy light._ _Lungs gilled and arms finned wide, We slipped into the pale Of that dry sea, following downrays Until we reached the cool Of silence, a sandpaved lagoon Upholding its weight of time Under trees that climbed._ _Perched on a log, we scanned The currents, the drifting shaft Of shadows, instinctively alert To armadillo's crawl, the stir Of something red, The eye of an iguana met... Ourselves. Perceiving_ _We were not alone in breathing, Being witness, As well as evidence In that primal air, How all of us shared In the serene of a sunless glow Which waterless flowed._ _Gently, we moved along a path That opened as we passed, Whispering our affirmations To those secret ones Who flickered and flashed, Carrying our echoes back From near, then far, far off._ _And slowly, the silence arced, Leaped high--and broke, With parrots in the undertow As the waves rolled over And the green tide flooded The forest floor, whirling, Swirling a world set free._ _Now all of us were cells In a chemistry of shells Older than snails, Plankton or sunbaked clay, Fellow creatures in an afternoon As joyous as a long lost tune About to be remembered._ _Oh all of us there In that drenched, tropic green Began to sing and sing, Shedding our ties With root and rock and sky, As we found our song In our living bond._ _Pod and leaf, mouth and beak, Whatever lived and breathed That sudden afternoon, Sang wonder through the woods, As we heard and discovered Each in the other Without a word._ _Until a metallic bird, On roaring wings, Crashed our song beneath The hammered surf, As it thundered, Like lightning in a storm, Fearfully born._ _Then all of us Grew motionless In the sculptured undersea Of silenced green, Knowing, as we did again, The thing forbidden and forgotten In a world of men._ _There will never be another, That day was forever._ _The Cave_ DROP _by drop The earth is born A billion years From dark to dawn_ _Drop by drop As rivers flow Past sunless cliffs No wind has known_ _Where no grass blows And no birds sing There time drips slow And patient clings_ _Drop by drop Till waterfalls Are turned to stone_ _Here new stars form And mountains rise Clear of the storms That twist the sky_ _Drop by drop While caverns tall Carve crystal bones_ _What dream lies walled Within this night What shape shall crawl Up to the light_ _Drop by drop As silence grows Inside its vault Of carbon snow_ _When glaciers halt Before no zones When both the poles At last are one_ _Drop by drop The dawn shall come A billion years From cave to sun_ _The Test_ HE _who would climb the heights of tone And scale the peaks beyond the listening ear, Must first walk over water And learn to stand on air, alone._ _He who would swim the waves of light And dive past shores into a sunless glow, Must first merge with his shadow And melt through solid glass, like night._ _Where eyes are fins and sound is leap, The rhythmic force performs its own ballet; When dreams are fired in clay, They burn a path through timeless sleep._ _In His Image_ WHO _has not looked into the heart of night and seen the darker light, concealed like spectral stars beyond the rim of Mars,_ _Who has not listened to the sound of mind and heard the silence wind, like rivers underground out to a sea profound,_ _has only eyes and ears._ _Who has not reached above the clouded span and touched the cosmic plan, upheld like spider's climb upon the spokes of time,_ _Who has not followed the labyrinthine thread And crushed the monstrous dread, that other men may gleam the glory of the dream,_ _has only hands and feet._ _Who has not lived within his hour of space and etched it with his face, as portrait of the sun reflects the solar one,_ _is only shape and dust._ _All This, Before_ I RACED, _I rushed, I ran, to catch the empty hand of time-- Before the wind, the blowing wind, This breathless gift._ _I willed, I worked, I wept, To melt the frozen face of time-- Before the sun, the burning sun, This frenzied bone._ _I drank, I danced, I dared, To tempt the stony foot of time-- Before the rain, the driving rain, This raptured flame._ _I leaped, I laughed, I loved, To ease the burdened heart of time-- Before the dust, the settling dust, This flesh and blood._ _The Creation_ OUT _of the white and the blue Out of the mist and the ice Out of the wind and the flame The creature came._ _With eyes as brilliant as the light With ears as lucid as the sound With feet as sudden as the thought The creature caught_ _A breath from the yawning sky A drop from the nodding sea A root from the sleeping earth And from their birth_ _Measured the length of the seasons Balanced the rhythm of the tides Secured the growing of the seed And woke the need_ _Of the dream inside the egg Of the thirst within the cell Of the shape beneath the bone Then took a stone_ _And breaking the silent void And loosing the swollen stream And cutting the golden thread The creature said:_ _Here on this dot of bounded space Here in this point of moving time Here with this seal of life and death I fix my breath_ _That all the works of my hands That all the passions of my heart That all the wonders of my brain Shall here remain._ _I, Gilgamesh, Rama, Adam I, Phoenician, Saxon, Mayan I, Peasant, Leader, Architect By this reject_ _Perpetual day or night Everlasting rain or drought Eternal struggle or peace Until words cease_ _Between infinite men and gods Between partisan young and old Between ultimate right and wrong For each is strong._ _Let calendar be as record Let monument be as witness Let history here determine Which shall win._ _Then the sky hurled its lightning Then the sea roared its thunder Then the earth reared its fire To show their ire_ _At the vanity of the ego At the rashness of the sower At the folly of the dreamer And redeemer_ _Who would thus destroy the sun Who would thus defy the flood Who would thus pollute the air And showed him there_ _The blinding vision of the truth The deafening echoes of the damned The crashing madness of the plan That he began._ _And when he saw the faces And when he heard the weeping And when he knew the sickness That men possess_ _As mortal children of ambition As transient strangers of desire As fatal victims of perfection Released by none_ _From the essence of the grape From the music of the reed From the incense of the bowl The creature stole_ _The power of forgetfulness The illusion of contentment The promise of exaltation Making them one_ _That the lost and unfulfilled That the laughter and the pain That the glory and defeat Be complete_ _Seeing how frail is the candle Hearing how brief is the song Knowing how soon is the temple Darkened and still._ _Then slipped the root from his feet Then poured the sound from his ears Then blew the light from his eyes And went more wise_ _Into the white and the blue Into the mist and the ice Into the wind and the flame The way he came._ [Editorial note: The author's literary executor discovered in Elizabeth Bartlett's personal autographed hardbound copy of _Behold This Dreamer_ her own marginal notations relating to the next-to-the-last stanza of the above poem, accompanied by her confirming handwritten revision of that stanza. The stanza as printed here incorporates her revision.] _Behold This Dreamer_ is a signed, limited edition designed by the author on Corsican rag paper in Baskerville type ABOUT THE AUTHOR Elizabeth Bartlett (1911-1994) was an American poet and writer noted for her lyrical and symbolic poetry, creation of the new twelve-tone form of poetry, founder of the international non-profit organization Literary Olympics, Inc., and known as an author of fiction, essays, reviews, translations, and as an editor. She is not to be confused with the British poet (1924-2008) of the same name. For more detailed information about her life, work, and critical commendations, see the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bartlett_%28American_poet%29. Bartlett�s most notable achievements include: * Creation of a new form of poetry, "the twelve-tone poem," adapting Arnold Schonberg�s musical system to the verbal, accented sounds of language. Called "the Emily Dickinson of the 20th Century," her concise lyrics have been praised by poets, musicians, and composers alike. * Publication of 16 books of poetry, a group of edited anthologies, and more than 1,000 poems, short stories, and essays published, for example, in _Harper�s_, _Virginia Quarterly_, _New York Times_, _North American Review_, _Saturday Review_, _Prairie Schooner_, and in numerous international collections. * Recipient of many fellowships, grants and awards, including NEA, PEN Syndicate, fellowships at the Huntington Hartford Foundation, Montalvo, Yaddo, MacDowell, Dorland Mt. Colony and Ragdale, travel grants, and honors for introducing literature as part of the Olympics. * Founder of the Literary Olympics, to restore literature, specifically poetry, as a vital part of the Olympics as it once had been in ancient Greece. Bartlett�s poetry came to the attention of leading poets, writers, and critics as diverse as Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, Mark Van Doren, Conrad Aiken, Allen Tate, Alfred Kreymborg, Robert Hillyer, Louis Untermeyer, Rolfe Humphries, John Ciardi, Richard Eberhart, Richard Wilbur, Maxine Kumin, Robert M. Hutchins, Kenneth Rexroth, William Stafford, and others. Over the years, Bartlett maintained an active and extensive correspondence with eminent poets, writers, and literary critics; evident throughout this collected literary correspondence are strong statements attesting to the importance of her work. _Behold This Dreamer_ was published in Mexico City in 1959. By 1961, Jonathan Williams wrote of the book: "Your language is cultivated, employed consistently and lucidly. To my observation, it seems fair to say that you belong with the best of your generation, which I would say includes May Swenson, Denise Levertov, Garrigue, et al." Louis Untermeyer added his voice: "I particularly like your fusion of observation and whimsicality, as well as your avoidance of the poetic stereotypes." Rolfe Humphries was intrigued by Bartlett�s poetic techniques: "I enjoyed your poems and admire many...." About _Behold This Dreamer_, Gustav Davidson wrote: "I enjoyed reading these poems. I was impressed by their precision, clarity, and technical competence." About the same work, critic Paul Jordan-Smith wrote: "Your poems were begotten of a strong, imaginative sense. My congratulations on this beautiful collection." Elizabeth Bartlett's husband, Paul Alexander Bartlett (1909�1990) was an American writer, artist, and poet. He made a large-scale study of more than 350 Mexican haciendas, published novels, short stories, and poetry, and worked as a fine artist in a variety of media. For more detailed information about his life and work, see the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Alexander_Bartlett . Elizabeth Bartlett�s son, Steven James Bartlett (1945� ), is a psychologist and philosopher who has published many books and articles in the fields of philosophy and psychology. For more detailed information about his life and work, see the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_James_Bartlett. 
58741	----	[Illustration: Cover art] [Illustration: Frontispiece] THE HOUSE OF SLEEP Elizabeth Bartlett _The House of Sleep_ was originally published in 1975 by Autograph Editions in Colima, Mexico, and is now out-of-print. The author's literary executor, Steven James Bartlett, has decided to make the book available as an open access publication, freely available to readers through Project Gutenberg under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivs license, which allows anyone to distribute this work without changes to its content, provided that both the author and the original URL from which this work was obtained are mentioned, that the contents of this work are not used for commercial purposes or profit, and that this work will not be used without the copyright holder's written permission in derivative works (i.e., you may not alter, transform, or build upon this work without such permission). The full legal statement of this license may be found at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode [Illustration: Creative Commons logo] To Paul When you gave me a painting of hammocks, I knew: The dreamer tells the truth, the self awake does not. For years I raged against the images you drew. How they stared, gloomy shrouds, whenever I forgot. To rest, be still--I swore that was a way of death. Yet find more lives in sleep than I have years ahead. THE HOUSE OF SLEEP by Elizabeth Bartlett AUTOGRAPH EDITIONS Colima, Mexico 1975 Copyright © 1975 by Elizabeth Bartlett All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book in whole or in part in any form. First Edition Acknowledgement: some of these poems have appeared in The Virginia Quarterly BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR Poems of Yes and No Behold This Dreamer Poetry Concerto It Takes Practice Not to Die Threads Selected Poems Twelve-Tone Poems THE HOUSE OF SLEEP It is a house with many doors, no two alike. I am at home in all its rooms of time and place. My changing person, gender, speech hold no surprise. I know who I am in my sleep, behind my face. If you ask which of them is false and which is true Enter the house with me and call, I'll answer you. Here inside the darkness, the eye of light opens As mind travels inward to a fourth dimension. There is no perspective of other or outside. Both obverse and reverse are simultaneous While past and present form a folding wave that flows Now backward, then forward in one eternal dream. I found it as a child, a house that was all mine Where I could think and be whatever I believed. Half of me stayed outside on guard, aware of spies The inner self went free to wonder as it pleased. Leaving the day behind, I came upon the night And there I dreamed of things past all imagining. Memory is no stranger in the house of sleep. It comes as a visitor for a reunion. If a private occasion, with the family Or else with those forgotten who have long been gone. The waiting house is ready for us to gather. Together or separately our memories meet. Waking in the night, I have wondered where I am Knowing I have been away and not yet returned. I lie still and wait between absence and presence Conscious of being witness to my sleep and wake. Here's body, inert, prepared to revert to clay. O wanderer with my lamp, how dim grows the light. Flying effortlessly I escape gravity And seaborne, breathe through gills to swim past coral isles Where I emerge on shores that climb up ancient roads. Always, my origins enact some past within Recalling elements of former existence. Save two, that I renounce: bloodrust fire, fleshtorn ground. Here I need no clock to tell me what time it is. The day, season, year conform to no calendar. No compass or map points my route or direction. Sensation is all: the shape and sound of feeling. I learn what I think by choice of symbols, meanings. I invent my world as much as it invents me. A baton like a pendulum swings back and forth. Across the universe it moves in perfect time Leading an orchestra of stars through measured space. A score arranged with such grandeur, I merely hear Its echoes through the walls of sleep-- how faint, how far While my heart beats to the rhythm of earth's passage. The twelve hours of the night are paths between the stars. Whichever one you take leads to this centered house If you speak the password to those who guard the gates. You must not look at them or touch them on the way Lest you be left alone and hear the triple bark. For the rest, safe journey and sweet dreams until dawn. How the bedtime refrain still echoes through the house: "Good night, sweet dreams, see you tomorrow." Was it wish Or something more substantial for child to sleep on Like a pillow filled throughout the night with promise? Which was kept and shall be kept in years yet to come When all the yesterdays that made me, wake at dawn. In genesis the dream began and came to life By dividing the form from void, the dark from light And parting the sea from dry land, mother from child Gave image its own reflection by day and night But kept the sleeping and waking for seem and like That the timeless and undying remain in-sight. Our dreamscape is a Mil Cumbres across the years. Peak after peak they rise like crests above a sea In which we plunge, swim, dive and drown beneath each wave. Yet breath returns and eyes grow clear from time to time As all stands still, becalmed, at rest, and we can see There, where we were. Here, where we are. How far. Which way. It was a garden of people at all seasons. I saw hands at work everywhere, none of them still. Some were planting new souls in the fresh earth. Others went about the weeding, pruning, hoeing Their baskets filled with human plants of every kind. While leaves, endless leaves kept falling all around me. Among the Joshua trees, I saw a stone cross Both claiming world salvation from brush, sand and thorn While I stood on a mountain, waiting for the ark To save me from destruction, drowned by floods of sun. But the fiery waves rose up forty days and nights And there was not a sign of clouds, and no dove came. A bird stopped me as I started to walk across. "You can not enter the circle, you have no wings." So I went back and I looked for them on the earth. But none of all the winged insects knew where mine were. So I went on and I looked for them in the sea. And the fish told me of angels who looked like birds. With this ring I thee wed, said the moon, said the earth. I saw it overhead, a crystal band of ice Through which the eye of God bore witness once again To living light and love within the cosmic void. I heard the vows exchanged between the cold and dark Then with my own, warm breath I wed the night and slept. Through the mirror and through the fog, all things reverse. I see the right side on the left, the left side, right. I see the shapes of what has been behind, transposed. A camera floats above my head as dreams submerge. A shadow moves beyond my feet in backward stride. The mirror and the fog are one, and I, enclosed. What was the Eskimo doing in the tropics? What was the Hottentot doing in the arctic? Caught between the two, I asked what choice was mine? Having to freeze or burn, I felt, was too extreme. Yet heart elected south and brain elected north Since a temperate zone in heaven was no more. I wanted to lift the poor and ignorant soul To feed and clothe it, to give it eyes and ears. I led it away from hunger, cold and terror Helping it to climb, to trust my choice of freedom. But when I let go, the peak opened with wide jaws For the slip, the fall-- and I grabbed the soul, and ran. What shall I be, I asked of Tarot cards and stars That I might live as fits my tastes, beliefs and cares? First, be a prince, with pleasures, treasures, all desires. Then, be a priest, with holy thoughts of love divine. Third, a peasant, with simple needs and natural ways. Last, as poet, combine the three--or curse your fate. It looked like a mountain with garden terraces A holiday setting and dazzling in sunshine Where one could be at ease to stroll and meet old friends Exploring all the paths unhurried by the years Feeling the light within increase with heightened joy While going up and on from terrace to terrace. I went down into the vaults of time's library Down through sunless, airless corridors staffed by ghosts. Down the winding halls and cobbled stairs daubed with earth Past the rows of book graves in a cemetery Of old words, until I came to the last, first one When I heard a rumble, saw a flash and woke dumb. I followed God until he stopped at a crossroads. On the one side was a cliff high above the sea. On the other, a dense woods baited with summer. Future unknown, I asked which way was I to go? He pointed left, where the sun bowed low in the west. And God, I asked? To the right, he said and vanished. It was a long road through a fog that swirled like clouds And many were going with me, behind, ahead Though no one spoke or stopped, moved past or turned aside. But when we reached the edge of time, I grew afraid Until one found me there and smiled and took my hand Then led me step by step again, a little child. First, the night came to me in the shape of a moth. With a soft flick like breath, its wing-tips grazed my head. Then, from a hollow tree, a hoot owl mourned its cry And as I turned to look, I thought the moon turned, too. Beyond the road, a skunk. Within my room, a rose. So I sat up, I think, while the night spoke and spoke. I hear the word incessantly as a chorus A word whose voices are composed of all my years Like a requiem long rehearsed in every key And begun the day of my birth, inside of me A word sung for my soul's repose while I am here An earthling, bent on a journey still amorphous. How to find the way back by subway, streetcar, bus... Can a hill disappear or the stream in a park? The morning's scent of rolls, the sound of skates at dusk Laundry roofs, coalbin chutes, wagons, carts, iron stoops... Like footprints in the snow, the memories fall and drift. I walk, I look, I ask, a shadow in the past. I ran to say goodbye to the last railway train Whose old, musty freight cars were creaking at the joints. In it, tons of paper, unpublished manuscripts Heading for the graveyard like passengers turned ghosts. At the rear, an organ, installed in the caboose Began the slow, slow march, while the wind mourned and blew. O most blessed and damned of women, so greatly loved! I know by my dreams that your own have never died. Before there was Egypt or Troy, you were a slave. Before Tristram or Abelard, your face was pale. While poets made heaven and hell to prove your charms Your passion, beauty, grief and joy slept in my arms. With all that space to explore, how could I resist? Finding my own place out there, the wonder of it! A stretched canvas came in view, linen, framed in gold With a palette never used, meant for me alone. I dipped my brush and painted the place I loved best Then forever set my claim: north, south, east and west. I had to go on and on, the search was not done. Winding corridors, walls leading from door to door. Mice, lions, sheep, chickens, frogs, unassorted odds. Nothing suited--quite-- despite the resemblances. I heard voices, laughter, groans, sounds foreign to mine. Mirrors, symbols, signs... twice, I almost found myself. The room was full of eyes, whichever way I looked. Over walls, ceiling, floor, they darted back and forth Their eyelash hands and feet mocking me and my book. "You can not get away, I've told you that before." Daddy longlegs reaching, still haunting, still speaking. "A spider ghost, you say? The harvest comes, daughter." They tossed the pillow from one hand to the other. With roars of laughter, it zipped, it flew, was caught and thrown. My seams ripped open, scattering my heart outside. Slowly, painfully, I gathered it together And lay down to sleep, clutching my life, my pillow. Feathers of dead birds, sterile echoes of lost flights. A bill collector appeared, flourishing old bills. "Your father gone, and mother, who will pay for these?" I turned to the telephone, one disconnected. I looked inside the mailbox, full of dead letters. I searched through files and desk drawers, all bankbooks cancelled. Only one thing left to do-- to wake, and escape. It was a lettuce morning, crisp in pale sunlight. By noon it was canary, cat's eye and corn grain. As shadows crept through the hills, the sea turned bilious. Dusk spilled a goodbye tunnel down a shifting sky. Then driftwood, fuming the air with its smoke and cough. After night crashed, we picked up plans for tomorrow. When will the words be opened and the book unsealed? Not till the time of the end of empires and beasts. Then will the dream be written according to men? Not till the signs and vision have become as one. How shall we learn to know them as true evidence? Not till all human senses merge with light again. They were gone for days, the hunters and fishermen Challenging the beasts who claimed the land and the sea. The young sang their praise all through the gloried summer While the women danced and gave them welcoming feasts. How their deeds warmed us winter nights! how bright the blaze! Now, we are fearful and cold. We need more old men. I turned back the thick, heavy calendar of years Laboring, page by century by page of scroll To restore the undiscovered new world once more Hoping to reverse the winds and tides, west to east To exchange the ships, the crews, the conquests and all. But gained what by throwing Columbus overboard? Shakespeare and Cervantes died the same day and year. So too Diogenes and Great Alexander Although each said farewell in places far apart. What extinguished both flames at one instant of time? A whirlwind in the night or a merciful rain? May a storm at my death help me find my partner. All of us who saw it from the ground testified It was the tortoise that fell and killed Aeschylus. So Christ, Socrates, Galileo were killed, too. We, the groundlings who witnessed their deaths, swear to you It was the tortoise each time. It fell from the air. Some say eagles, by letting them fall. But who knows? I watched his clay flesh take its changing form from thought And fling the fiction of his birth-by-chance to scorn. Science, he would say, is another way of life... Without a flutter or doubt to betray his eyes. Such utter belief, I found it hard to resist Suspending my own-- he holds his world with such ease. Then she who had been my wise teacher in the past Came and stood at the foot of my bed, calling, "Child... I have come to say goodbye to you at long last For I join The Great Intelligence this same night There, where the substance of all shadows is pure light..." Which vanished, as I wept in the dark, blind and wild. Not too much light left, I collect the candle's tears. Prodigal before of the sun and its seasons Now I search the night for glowworms or gleams of snow. Asleep open-eyed, I turn my wax world slowly Around a lifetime of continents and oceans Till the last star shrinks, then shudders, and then goes out. I saw it emptied room by room and piece by piece Until the house stood vacant of all but its bones. No paintings, no books, no flowers, fruits or music. A silence anonymous as space void of time. "Wait," my body cried, "do not board up the windows! "The owner left a message: she's coming home soon." Because I longed to comprehend the infinite I drew a line between the known and unknown From zero base to its apex point opposite Thus dividing all past time from all future time And all of space, the positive from negative. Where both sides met, they formed the infinite present. I saw the church bend its steeples, ears to the ground Then place its pulpit on the roof to speak to God Proclaiming the kingdom of men at last had come Who gave each day its daily bread, whose will was done That none be tempted to trespass or do evil Seeing the power and glory on earth, fulfilled. I am not one. Among the many I am part. I do not know how many or who, where they are. Each has a name, a face, an age--none of them mine. Yet are we all cells of the selfsame root in time. No closer ties bind us to those we call our own. For we are one, living each other's lives, unknown. The sign said City of Dogs and I went inside. The streets, laid out as kennels, were strangely quiet. Posted German Shepherd guards merely curled their lips And growled as I passed by them into the main office. The huge picture startled me. Nothing else was there. Only Big Brother, the Chief, who looked down and stared. Why, with so much obsidian, coal, pitch and tar Was it so hard, I ask of God, to make black black Or, given milk, snow, lilies, pearls, to make white white? Yet nowhere is there creature found to have black bones Or, among the many species, one with white blood. I could question other colors: yellow, red, brown? I see them, a standing army six million strong. They are armed with the weapons of our memory. On all fronts, they keep watch, to warn and remind us. At our call, they rise from the graveyard of our minds And advance, immune to hunger, guns, barbed wire, gas... Their mission: to rescue time from its own worst foe. I know them, the assassins, by the way they breathe As they slip behind the wheel to strangle the road As they dive-bomb through the air to explode the night. I hear the changing rhythms of their pulse, speech, steps As they finger the trigger, as they grasp the knife. I clock the surge of passions in their race with death. Outside the house were beggars, thugs, maniacs, thieves. An alien world as perceived through curtained windows. Seen from afar, the fires, riots, car wrecks, brawls Made me recoil and threatened the night while I slept. Nor found I joy in revels, circuses and feats My skin thin, too, for the rocks, the drums, the stampedes. They came marching by the billions, armies of ants. From woods and fields, on roads and streets, through walls, roofs, stairs An all-out attack on V-Day, V versus man. Fire ants, flyers, drivers, cutters for ground, sea, air. Overrunning, overcoming, world-wide, as planned. Timed to the hour and minute, none of us spared. I spoke to God and Devil, waiting for reply. I whispered into both ears, having seen two sides. I told of men and women, of youth and of age Of joy, love, goodness, beauty, and their counterface. Each question and emotion met with silent dread. One listened to the living and one, to the dead. Butterfly wings, a pair of lungs, a bivalve shell. I see the M and W traced on my palms. Maple keys, antlers, feathers, ferns, the tails of fish. The one design repeats itself in endless halves. Mountain to valley, spring to fall, high tide to low. We are each other's counterpart, together, whole. Map in hand, I studied the surfaces and depths Of the land assigned to me for exploration. Flesh engraved, the contours clearly showed the main routes Time had paved for me to follow by sun and stars. Whether eyes misread the signs or feet betrayed me All the skies my palms enclosed led far out to sea. THE SAILOR'S STORY 1 Evenings on cobbled streets leading down to the wharves Where boys matched oars with men, straining pride and muscle Their boats nosing the wind to catch the next tide's run. But it was not fish food I hungered for, or proof As I walked back each time, the youngest son of five With alien eyes and thoughts reaching out to starboard. 2 There was no goodbye that last night, no righteous words. I left silently with no one to look at me But my own shadow, the wind lifting my footsteps Down stone passageways, lantern, pack and gear in hand. Until, there it was, riding at anchor, far out. I paused a moment and then ran, homeless, from home. 3 Always a convoy for the long sea voyages The ship like a whale or a shark with pilot fish The hills receding as our masts climbed up the sky And I knew it would be weeks before we returned Though we had strong sails, good winds and plenty of hands. Yet I never can recall the last trip of all. 4 I remember the islands flashing in the sun Mostly barren rocks and slopes of tattered vineyards The waterfronts deserted except by seabirds No one to trade with and our vessel filled with jars. So we headed past the coast toward open ocean Where strange crews hailed us, and for honey, gave us salt. 5 Then came fever and all the sick were put ashore. We had good care: warm milk, vinegar baths and beds. When my head cleared, there was a road along the cliffs Which I followed past the village behind the goats Feeling the ground steady and true for a good house. Until sunset, when I saw the sea flowing west. 6 So I left that past and shipped into the future A boy born on land with sea legs, a strange creature Neither fish nor fowl, yet something of each, between. My head at the bow, my feet at the stern, who dreamed Whose ribs creaked and strained to outride wind, tide and stars. Blood of the sailor, a part of me forever. "Her poems give one a sense of intelligence and sensibility." Wallace Stevens. "Her work is clear, swift, and strong." Mark Van Doren "Her poems assuredly justify the writer, and should console the right reader (if anything can)." Marianne Moore "I like her poems; they think, and they mean what they say." Conrad Aiken "Certainly impressive work." Kenneth Rexroth "Mature, her poems have a bite to them." Richard Eberhart "The new form is most interesting; the poems beautiful and distinguished." Allen Tate The poems in this book are written in a new form--they are called twelve-tone poems. The form was adapted by the author from Arnold Schoenberg's musical system, using speech sounds in place of notes. This autographed edition is limited to 100 copies, designed and illustrated by Paul Bartlett. The poems are set in Regal 14 type on Westland stock. Printed by Impresora Gutenberg, Colima, Mexico. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Elizabeth Bartlett (1911-1994) was an American poet and writer noted for her lyrical and symbolic poetry, creation of the new twelve-tone form of poetry, founder of the international non-profit organization Literary Olympics, Inc., and known as an author of fiction, essays, reviews, translations, and as an editor. She is not to be confused with the British poet (1924-2008) of the same name. For more detailed information about her life, work, and critical commendations, see the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bartlett_%28American_poet%29. Bartlett's most notable achievements include: * Creation of a new form of poetry, "the twelve-tone poem," adapting Arnold Schoenberg's musical system to the verbal, accented sounds of language. Called "the Emily Dickinson of the 20th Century," her concise lyrics have been praised by poets, musicians, and composers alike. * Publication of 16 books of poetry, a group of edited anthologies, and more than 1,000 poems, short stories, and essays published, for example, in _Harper's_, _Virginia Quarterly_, _New York Times_, _North American Review_, _Saturday Review_, _Prairie Schooner_, and in numerous international collections. * Recipient of many fellowships, grants and awards, including NEA, PEN Syndicate, fellowships at the Huntington Hartford Foundation, Montalvo, Yaddo, MacDowell, Dorland Mt. Colony and Ragdale, travel grants, and honors for introducing literature as part of the Olympics. * Founder of the Literary Olympics, to restore literature, specifically poetry, as a vital part of the Olympics as it once had been in ancient Greece. Bartlett's poetry came to the attention of leading poets, writers, and critics as diverse as Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, Mark Van Doren, Conrad Aiken, Allen Tate, Alfred Kreymborg, Robert Hillyer, Louis Untermeyer, Rolfe Humphries, John Ciardi, Richard Eberhart, Richard Wilbur, Maxine Kumin, Robert M. Hutchins, Kenneth Rexroth, William Stafford, and others. Over the years, Bartlett maintained an active and extensive correspondence with eminent poets, writers, and literary critics; evident throughout this collected literary correspondence are strong statements attesting to the importance of her work. Extensive permanent collections of Elizabeth Bartlett's papers, literary correspondence, publications, unpublished manuscripts, and art have been established, one as part of the Archive for New Poetry maintained by the Mandeville Department of Special Collections at the University of California, San Diego, and the second by the Rare Books Collection of the University of Louisville. Bartlett's readings of her poetry have been recorded for the Library of Congress, Yale, Harvard, Stanford, and other collections. Bartlett's twelve-tone form of poetry was introduced in her book, _Twelve-Tone Poems_, published in 1968. In Bartlett's words: "The 12-tone poem is a new form.... It was inspired by Arnold Schoenberg's musical system. The poem consists of 12 lines, divided into couplets. Each couplet contains 12 syllables, using the natural cadence of speech. The accented sounds of the words are considered tones. Only 12 tones are used throughout the poem, repeated various times. As a result, the poem achieves a rare harmony that is purely lyrical, enriching its imagery and meaning." About this work, Allen Tate wrote: "The new form is most interesting, the poems quite beautiful and distinguished." Encouraged by this and other commendatory responses to her twelve-tone poems by poets, musicians, and composers including Stephen Sondheim, Bartlett continued to develop the new form. _The House of Sleep_, published in 1975, was the result, consisting of 62 poems related to dreams and written in the new form. Of these poems, William Stafford wrote: "There is a trancelike progression in these poems, in which all unfolds quietly, with a steady holding of a certain pervasive tone." Robert M. Hutchins wrote: "I am much impressed. The poems seem to me what is called an important contribution, and a beautiful one." A third collection of twelve-tone poems, _In Search of Identity_, was published in 1977, further establishing the diversity and versatility of ways in which Bartlett was able to make use of the new form. A fourth collection of twelve-tone poems was published in 1981, _Memory Is No Stranger_. Her husband, Paul Alexander Bartlett (1909 � 1990) was an American writer, artist, and poet. He made a large-scale study of more than 350 Mexican haciendas, published novels, short stories, and poetry, and worked as a fine artist in a variety of media. For more detailed information about his life and work, see the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Alexander_Bartlett. Elizabeth Bartlett's son, Steven James Bartlett (1945 � ), is a psychologist and philosopher who has many published books and articles in the fields of philosophy and psychology. For more detailed information about his life and work, see the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_James_Bartlett. [Illustration: Back cover] 
591	----	Flame and Shadow By Sara Teasdale [Note on text: Italicized stanzas are indented 5 spaces. Italicized words or phrases are marked by tildes (~). Lines longer than 78 characters are broken according to metre, and the continuation is indented two spaces. Also, some obvious errors may have been corrected.] Flame and Shadow By Sara Teasdale Author of "Rivers to the Sea", "Love Songs", etc. To E. "Recois la flamme ou l'ombre De tous mes jours." Contents I Blue Squills Stars "What Do I Care?" Meadowlarks Driftwood "I Have Loved Hours at Sea" August Moonrise Memories II Places Old Tunes "Only in Sleep" Redbirds Sunset: St. Louis The Coin The Voice III Day and Night Compensation I Remembered "Oh You Are Coming" The Return Gray Eyes The Net The Mystery In a Hospital IV Open Windows The New Moon Eight O'Clock Lost Things Pain The Broken Field The Unseen A Prayer V Spring Torrents "I Know the Stars" Understanding Nightfall "It Is Not a Word" "My Heart Is Heavy" The Nights Remember "Let It Be Forgotten" The Dark Cup VI May Day "Since There Is No Escape" "The Dreams of My Heart" "A Little While" The Garden The Wine In a Cuban Garden "If I Must Go" VII In Spring, Santa Barbara White Fog Arcturus Moonlight Morning Song Gray Fog Bells Lovely Chance VIII "There Will Come Soft Rains" In a Garden Nahant Winter Stars A Boy Winter Dusk By the Sea IX The Unchanging June Night "Like Barley Bending" "Oh Day of Fire and Sun" "I Thought of You" On the Dunes Spray If Death Is Kind X Thoughts Faces Evening: New York Snowfall The Silent Battle The Sanctuary At Sea Dust The Long Hill XI Summer Storm In the End "It Will Not Change" Change Water Lilies "Did You Never Know?" The Treasure The Storm Songs For Myself XII The Tree At Midnight Song Making Alone Red Maples Debtor The Wind in the Hemlock Flame and Shadow I Blue Squills How many million Aprils came Before I ever knew How white a cherry bough could be, A bed of squills, how blue! And many a dancing April When life is done with me, Will lift the blue flame of the flower And the white flame of the tree. Oh burn me with your beauty, then, Oh hurt me, tree and flower, Lest in the end death try to take Even this glistening hour. O shaken flowers, O shimmering trees, O sunlit white and blue, Wound me, that I, through endless sleep, May bear the scar of you. Stars Alone in the night On a dark hill With pines around me Spicy and still, And a heaven full of stars Over my head, White and topaz And misty red; Myriads with beating Hearts of fire That aeons Cannot vex or tire; Up the dome of heaven Like a great hill, I watch them marching Stately and still, And I know that I Am honored to be Witness Of so much majesty. "What Do I Care?" What do I care, in the dreams and the languor of spring, That my songs do not show me at all? For they are a fragrance, and I am a flint and a fire, I am an answer, they are only a call. But what do I care, for love will be over so soon, Let my heart have its say and my mind stand idly by, For my mind is proud and strong enough to be silent, It is my heart that makes my songs, not I. Meadowlarks In the silver light after a storm, Under dripping boughs of bright new green, I take the low path to hear the meadowlarks Alone and high-hearted as if I were a queen. What have I to fear in life or death Who have known three things: the kiss in the night, The white flying joy when a song is born, And meadowlarks whistling in silver light. Driftwood My forefathers gave me My spirit's shaken flame, The shape of hands, the beat of heart, The letters of my name. But it was my lovers, And not my sleeping sires, Who gave the flame its changeful And iridescent fires; As the driftwood burning Learned its jewelled blaze From the sea's blue splendor Of colored nights and days. "I Have Loved Hours at Sea" I have loved hours at sea, gray cities, The fragile secret of a flower, Music, the making of a poem That gave me heaven for an hour; First stars above a snowy hill, Voices of people kindly and wise, And the great look of love, long hidden, Found at last in meeting eyes. I have loved much and been loved deeply-- Oh when my spirit's fire burns low, Leave me the darkness and the stillness, I shall be tired and glad to go. August Moonrise The sun was gone, and the moon was coming Over the blue Connecticut hills; The west was rosy, the east was flushed, And over my head the swallows rushed This way and that, with changeful wills. I heard them twitter and watched them dart Now together and now apart Like dark petals blown from a tree; The maples stamped against the west Were black and stately and full of rest, And the hazy orange moon grew up And slowly changed to yellow gold While the hills were darkened, fold on fold To a deeper blue than a flower could hold. Down the hill I went, and then I forgot the ways of men, For night-scents, heady, and damp and cool Wakened ecstasy in me On the brink of a shining pool. O Beauty, out of many a cup You have made me drunk and wild Ever since I was a child, But when have I been sure as now That no bitterness can bend And no sorrow wholly bow One who loves you to the end? And though I must give my breath And my laughter all to death, And my eyes through which joy came, And my heart, a wavering flame; If all must leave me and go back Along a blind and fearful track So that you can make anew, Fusing with intenser fire, Something nearer your desire; If my soul must go alone Through a cold infinity, Or even if it vanish, too, Beauty, I have worshipped you. Let this single hour atone For the theft of all of me. Memories II Places Places I love come back to me like music, Hush me and heal me when I am very tired; I see the oak woods at Saxton's flaming In a flare of crimson by the frost newly fired; And I am thirsty for the spring in the valley As for a kiss ungiven and long desired. I know a bright world of snowy hills at Boonton, A blue and white dazzling light on everything one sees, The ice-covered branches of the hemlocks sparkle Bending low and tinkling in the sharp thin breeze, And iridescent crystals fall and crackle on the snow-crust With the winter sun drawing cold blue shadows from the trees. Violet now, in veil on veil of evening The hills across from Cromwell grow dreamy and far; A wood-thrush is singing soft as a viol In the heart of the hollow where the dark pools are; The primrose has opened her pale yellow flowers And heaven is lighting star after star. Places I love come back to me like music-- Mid-ocean, midnight, the waves buzz drowsily; In the ship's deep churning the eerie phosphorescence Is like the souls of people who were drowned at sea, And I can hear a man's voice, speaking, hushed, insistent, At midnight, in mid-ocean, hour on hour to me. Old Tunes As the waves of perfume, heliotrope, rose, Float in the garden when no wind blows, Come to us, go from us, whence no one knows; So the old tunes float in my mind, And go from me leaving no trace behind, Like fragrance borne on the hush of the wind. But in the instant the airs remain I know the laughter and the pain Of times that will not come again. I try to catch at many a tune Like petals of light fallen from the moon, Broken and bright on a dark lagoon, But they float away--for who can hold Youth, or perfume or the moon's gold? "Only in Sleep" Only in sleep I see their faces, Children I played with when I was a child, Louise comes back with her brown hair braided, Annie with ringlets warm and wild. Only in sleep Time is forgotten-- What may have come to them, who can know? Yet we played last night as long ago, And the doll-house stood at the turn of the stair. The years had not sharpened their smooth round faces, I met their eyes and found them mild-- Do they, too, dream of me, I wonder, And for them am I too a child? Redbirds Redbirds, redbirds, Long and long ago, What a honey-call you had In hills I used to know; Redbud, buckberry, Wild plum-tree And proud river sweeping Southward to the sea, Brown and gold in the sun Sparkling far below, Trailing stately round her bluffs Where the poplars grow-- Redbirds, redbirds, Are you singing still As you sang one May day On Saxton's Hill? Sunset: St. Louis Hushed in the smoky haze of summer sunset, When I came home again from far-off places, How many times I saw my western city Dream by her river. Then for an hour the water wore a mantle Of tawny gold and mauve and misted turquoise Under the tall and darkened arches bearing Gray, high-flung bridges. Against the sunset, water-towers and steeples Flickered with fire up the slope to westward, And old warehouses poured their purple shadows Across the levee. High over them the black train swept with thunder, Cleaving the city, leaving far beneath it Wharf-boats moored beside the old side-wheelers Resting in twilight. The Coin Into my heart's treasury I slipped a coin That time cannot take Nor a thief purloin,-- Oh better than the minting Of a gold-crowned king Is the safe-kept memory Of a lovely thing. The Voice Atoms as old as stars, Mutation on mutation, Millions and millions of cells Dividing yet still the same, From air and changing earth, From ancient Eastern rivers, From turquoise tropic seas, Unto myself I came. My spirit like my flesh Sprang from a thousand sources, From cave-man, hunter and shepherd, From Karnak, Cyprus, Rome; The living thoughts in me Spring from dead men and women, Forgotten time out of mind And many as bubbles of foam. Here for a moment's space Into the light out of darkness, I come and they come with me Finding words with my breath; From the wisdom of many life-times I hear them cry: "Forever Seek for Beauty, she only Fights with man against Death!" III Day and Night In Warsaw in Poland Half the world away, The one I love best of all Thought of me to-day; I know, for I went Winged as a bird, In the wide flowing wind His own voice I heard; His arms were round me In a ferny place, I looked in the pool And there was his face-- But now it is night And the cold stars say: "Warsaw in Poland Is half the world away." Compensation I should be glad of loneliness And hours that go on broken wings, A thirsty body, a tired heart And the unchanging ache of things, If I could make a single song As lovely and as full of light, As hushed and brief as a falling star On a winter night. I Remembered There never was a mood of mine, Gay or heart-broken, luminous or dull, But you could ease me of its fever And give it back to me more beautiful. In many another soul I broke the bread, And drank the wine and played the happy guest, But I was lonely, I remembered you; The heart belongs to him who knew it best. "Oh You Are Coming" Oh you are coming, coming, coming, How will hungry Time put by the hours till then?-- But why does it anger my heart to long so For one man out of the world of men? Oh I would live in myself only And build my life lightly and still as a dream-- Are not my thoughts clearer than your thoughts And colored like stones in a running stream? Now the slow moon brightens in heaven, The stars are ready, the night is here-- Oh why must I lose myself to love you, My dear? The Return He has come, he is here, My love has come home, The minutes are lighter Than flying foam, The hours are like dancers On gold-slippered feet, The days are young runners Naked and fleet-- For my love has returned, He is home, he is here, In the whole world no other Is dear as my dear! Gray Eyes It was April when you came The first time to me, And my first look in your eyes Was like my first look at the sea. We have been together Four Aprils now Watching for the green On the swaying willow bough; Yet whenever I turn To your gray eyes over me, It is as though I looked For the first time at the sea. The Net I made you many and many a song, Yet never one told all you are-- It was as though a net of words Were flung to catch a star; It was as though I curved my hand And dipped sea-water eagerly, Only to find it lost the blue Dark splendor of the sea. The Mystery Your eyes drink of me, Love makes them shine, Your eyes that lean So close to mine. We have long been lovers, We know the range Of each other's moods And how they change; But when we look At each other so Then we feel How little we know; The spirit eludes us, Timid and free-- Can I ever know you Or you know me? In a Hospital IV Open Windows Out of the window a sea of green trees Lift their soft boughs like the arms of a dancer, They beckon and call me, "Come out in the sun!" But I cannot answer. I am alone with Weakness and Pain, Sick abed and June is going, I cannot keep her, she hurries by With the silver-green of her garments blowing. Men and women pass in the street Glad of the shining sapphire weather, But we know more of it than they, Pain and I together. They are the runners in the sun, Breathless and blinded by the race, But we are watchers in the shade Who speak with Wonder face to face. The New Moon Day, you have bruised and beaten me, As rain beats down the bright, proud sea, Beaten my body, bruised my soul, Left me nothing lovely or whole-- Yet I have wrested a gift from you, Day that dies in dusky blue: For suddenly over the factories I saw a moon in the cloudy seas-- A wisp of beauty all alone In a world as hard and gray as stone-- Oh who could be bitter and want to die When a maiden moon wakes up in the sky? Eight O'Clock Supper comes at five o'clock, At six, the evening star, My lover comes at eight o'clock-- But eight o'clock is far. How could I bear my pain all day Unless I watched to see The clock-hands laboring to bring Eight o'clock to me. Lost Things Oh, I could let the world go by, Its loud new wonders and its wars, But how will I give up the sky When winter dusk is set with stars? And I could let the cities go, Their changing customs and their creeds,-- But oh, the summer rains that blow In silver on the jewel-weeds! Pain Waves are the sea's white daughters, And raindrops the children of rain, But why for my shimmering body Have I a mother like Pain? Night is the mother of stars, And wind the mother of foam-- The world is brimming with beauty, But I must stay at home. The Broken Field My soul is a dark ploughed field In the cold rain; My soul is a broken field Ploughed by pain. Where grass and bending flowers Were growing, The field lies broken now For another sowing. Great Sower when you tread My field again, Scatter the furrows there With better grain. The Unseen Death went up the hall Unseen by every one, Trailing twilight robes Past the nurse and the nun. He paused at every door And listened to the breath Of those who did not know How near they were to Death. Death went up the hall Unseen by nurse and nun; He passed by many a door-- But he entered one. A Prayer When I am dying, let me know That I loved the blowing snow Although it stung like whips; That I loved all lovely things And I tried to take their stings With gay unembittered lips; That I loved with all my strength, To my soul's full depth and length, Careless if my heart must break, That I sang as children sing Fitting tunes to everything, Loving life for its own sake. V Spring Torrents Will it always be like this until I am dead, Every spring must I bear it all again With the first red haze of the budding maple boughs, And the first sweet-smelling rain? Oh I am like a rock in the rising river Where the flooded water breaks with a low call-- Like a rock that knows the cry of the waters And cannot answer at all. "I Know the Stars" I know the stars by their names, Aldebaran, Altair, And I know the path they take Up heaven's broad blue stair. I know the secrets of men By the look of their eyes, Their gray thoughts, their strange thoughts Have made me sad and wise. But your eyes are dark to me Though they seem to call and call-- I cannot tell if you love me Or do not love me at all. I know many things, But the years come and go, I shall die not knowing The thing I long to know. Understanding I understood the rest too well, And all their thoughts have come to be Clear as grey sea-weed in the swell Of a sunny shallow sea. But you I never understood, Your spirit's secret hides like gold Sunk in a Spanish galleon Ages ago in waters cold. Nightfall We will never walk again As we used to walk at night, Watching our shadows lengthen Under the gold street-light When the snow was new and white. We will never walk again Slowly, we two, In spring when the park is sweet With midnight and with dew, And the passers-by are few. I sit and think of it all, And the blue June twilight dies,-- Down in the clanging square A street-piano cries And stars come out in the skies. "It Is Not a Word" It is not a word spoken, Few words are said; Nor even a look of the eyes Nor a bend of the head, But only a hush of the heart That has too much to keep, Only memories waking That sleep so light a sleep. "My Heart Is Heavy" My heart is heavy with many a song Like ripe fruit bearing down the tree, But I can never give you one-- My songs do not belong to me. Yet in the evening, in the dusk When moths go to and fro, In the gray hour if the fruit has fallen, Take it, no one will know. The Nights Remember The days remember and the nights remember The kingly hours that once you made so great, Deep in my heart they lie, hidden in their splendor, Buried like sovereigns in their robes of state. Let them not wake again, better to lie there, Wrapped in memories, jewelled and arrayed-- Many a ghostly king has waked from death-sleep And found his crown stolen and his throne decayed. "Let It Be Forgotten" Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten, Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold, Let it be forgotten for ever and ever, Time is a kind friend, he will make us old. If anyone asks, say it was forgotten Long and long ago, As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall In a long forgotten snow. The Dark Cup VI May Day A delicate fabric of bird song Floats in the air, The smell of wet wild earth Is everywhere. Red small leaves of the maple Are clenched like a hand, Like girls at their first communion The pear trees stand. Oh I must pass nothing by Without loving it much, The raindrop try with my lips, The grass with my touch; For how can I be sure I shall see again The world on the first of May Shining after the rain? "Since There Is No Escape" Since there is no escape, since at the end My body will be utterly destroyed, This hand I love as I have loved a friend, This body I tended, wept with and enjoyed; Since there is no escape even for me Who love life with a love too sharp to bear: The scent of orchards in the rain, the sea And hours alone too still and sure for prayer-- Since darkness waits for me, then all the more Let me go down as waves sweep to the shore In pride; and let me sing with my last breath; In these few hours of light I lift my head; Life is my lover--I shall leave the dead If there is any way to baffle death. "The Dreams of My Heart" The dreams of my heart and my mind pass, Nothing stays with me long, But I have had from a child The deep solace of song; If that should ever leave me, Let me find death and stay With things whose tunes are played out and forgotten Like the rain of yesterday. "A Little While" A little while when I am gone My life will live in music after me, As spun foam lifted and borne on After the wave is lost in the full sea. A while these nights and days will burn In song with the bright frailty of foam, Living in light before they turn Back to the nothingness that is their home. The Garden My heart is a garden tired with autumn, Heaped with bending asters and dahlias heavy and dark, In the hazy sunshine, the garden remembers April, The drench of rains and a snow-drop quick and clear as a spark; Daffodils blowing in the cold wind of morning, And golden tulips, goblets holding the rain-- The garden will be hushed with snow, forgotten soon, forgotten-- After the stillness, will spring come again? The Wine I cannot die, who drank delight From the cup of the crescent moon, And hungrily as men eat bread, Loved the scented nights of June. The rest may die--but is there not Some shining strange escape for me Who sought in Beauty the bright wine Of immortality? In a Cuban Garden Hibiscus flowers are cups of fire, (Love me, my lover, life will not stay) The bright poinsettia shakes in the wind, A scarlet leaf is blowing away. A lizard lifts his head and listens-- Kiss me before the noon goes by, Here in the shade of the ceiba hide me From the great black vulture circling the sky. "If I Must Go" If I must go to heaven's end Climbing the ages like a stair, Be near me and forever bend With the same eyes above me there; Time will fly past us like leaves flying, We shall not heed, for we shall be Beyond living, beyond dying, Knowing and known unchangeably. VII In Spring, Santa Barbara I have been happy two weeks together, My love is coming home to me, Gold and silver is the weather And smooth as lapis is the sea. The earth has turned its brown to green After three nights of humming rain, And in the valleys peck and preen Linnets with a scarlet stain. High in the mountains all alone The wild swans whistle on the lakes, But I have been as still as stone, My heart sings only when it breaks. White Fog Heaven-invading hills are drowned In wide moving waves of mist, Phlox before my door are wound In dripping wreaths of amethyst. Ten feet away the solid earth Changes into melting cloud, There is a hush of pain and mirth, No bird has heart to speak aloud. Here in a world without a sky, Without the ground, without the sea, The one unchanging thing is I, Myself remains to comfort me. Arcturus Arcturus brings the spring back As surely now as when He rose on eastern islands For Grecian girls and men; The twilight is as clear a blue, The star as shaken and as bright, And the same thought he gave to them He gives to me to-night. Moonlight It will not hurt me when I am old, A running tide where moonlight burned Will not sting me like silver snakes; The years will make me sad and cold, It is the happy heart that breaks. The heart asks more than life can give, When that is learned, then all is learned; The waves break fold on jewelled fold, But beauty itself is fugitive, It will not hurt me when I am old. Morning Song A diamond of a morning Waked me an hour too soon; Dawn had taken in the stars And left the faint white moon. O white moon, you are lonely, It is the same with me, But we have the world to roam over, Only the lonely are free. Gray Fog A fog drifts in, the heavy laden Cold white ghost of the sea-- One by one the hills go out, The road and the pepper-tree. I watch the fog float in at the window With the whole world gone blind, Everything, even my longing, drowses, Even the thoughts in my mind. I put my head on my hands before me, There is nothing left to be done or said, There is nothing to hope for, I am tired, And heavy as the dead. Bells At six o'clock of an autumn dusk With the sky in the west a rusty red, The bells of the mission down in the valley Cry out that the day is dead. The first star pricks as sharp as steel-- Why am I suddenly so cold? Three bells, each with a separate sound Clang in the valley, wearily tolled. Bells in Venice, bells at sea, Bells in the valley heavy and slow-- There is no place over the crowded world Where I can forget that the days go. Lovely Chance O lovely chance, what can I do To give my gratefulness to you? You rise between myself and me With a wise persistency; I would have broken body and soul, But by your grace, still I am whole. Many a thing you did to save me, Many a holy gift you gave me, Music and friends and happy love More than my dearest dreaming of; And now in this wide twilight hour With earth and heaven a dark, blue flower, In a humble mood I bless Your wisdom--and your waywardness. You brought me even here, where I Live on a hill against the sky And look on mountains and the sea And a thin white moon in the pepper tree. VIII "There Will Come Soft Rains" (War Time) There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound; And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum-trees in tremulous white; Robins will wear their feathery fire Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire; And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done. Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree If mankind perished utterly; And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone. In a Garden The world is resting without sound or motion, Behind the apple tree the sun goes down Painting with fire the spires and the windows In the elm-shaded town. Beyond the calm Connecticut the hills lie Silvered with haze as fruits still fresh with bloom, The swallows weave in flight across the zenith On an aerial loom. Into the garden peace comes back with twilight, Peace that since noon had left the purple phlox, The heavy-headed asters, the late roses And swaying hollyhocks. For at high-noon I heard from this same garden The far-off murmur as when many come; Up from the village surged the blind and beating Red music of a drum; And the hysterical sharp fife that shattered The brittle autumn air, While they came, the young men marching Past the village square. . . . Across the calm Connecticut the hills change To violet, the veils of dusk are deep-- Earth takes her children's many sorrows calmly And stills herself to sleep. Nahant Bowed as an elm under the weight of its beauty, So earth is bowed, under her weight of splendor, Molten sea, richness of leaves and the burnished Bronze of sea-grasses. Clefts in the cliff shelter the purple sand-peas And chicory flowers bluer than the ocean Flinging its foam high, white fire in sunshine, Jewels of water. Joyous thunder of blown waves on the ledges, Make me forget war and the dark war-sorrow-- Against the sky a sentry paces the sea-cliff Slim in his khaki. Winter Stars I went out at night alone; The young blood flowing beyond the sea Seemed to have drenched my spirit's wings-- I bore my sorrow heavily. But when I lifted up my head From shadows shaken on the snow, I saw Orion in the east Burn steadily as long ago. From windows in my father's house, Dreaming my dreams on winter nights, I watched Orion as a girl Above another city's lights. Years go, dreams go, and youth goes too, The world's heart breaks beneath its wars, All things are changed, save in the east The faithful beauty of the stars. A Boy Out of the noise of tired people working, Harried with thoughts of war and lists of dead, His beauty met me like a fresh wind blowing, Clean boyish beauty and high-held head. Eyes that told secrets, lips that would not tell them, Fearless and shy the young unwearied eyes-- Men die by millions now, because God blunders, Yet to have made this boy he must be wise. Winter Dusk I watch the great clear twilight Veiling the ice-bowed trees; Their branches tinkle faintly With crystal melodies. The larches bend their silver Over the hush of snow; One star is lighted in the west, Two in the zenith glow. For a moment I have forgotten Wars and women who mourn-- I think of the mother who bore me And thank her that I was born. By the Sea IX The Unchanging Sun-swept beaches with a light wind blowing From the immense blue circle of the sea, And the soft thunder where long waves whiten-- These were the same for Sappho as for me. Two thousand years--much has gone by forever, Change takes the gods and ships and speech of men-- But here on the beaches that time passes over The heart aches now as then. June Night Oh Earth, you are too dear to-night, How can I sleep while all around Floats rainy fragrance and the far Deep voice of the ocean that talks to the ground? Oh Earth, you gave me all I have, I love you, I love you,--oh what have I That I can give you in return-- Except my body after I die? "Like Barley Bending" Like barley bending In low fields by the sea, Singing in hard wind Ceaselessly; Like barley bending And rising again, So would I, unbroken, Rise from pain; So would I softly, Day long, night long, Change my sorrow Into song. "Oh Day of Fire and Sun" Oh day of fire and sun, Pure as a naked flame, Blue sea, blue sky and dun Sands where he spoke my name; Laughter and hearts so high That the spirit flew off free, Lifting into the sky Diving into the sea; Oh day of fire and sun Like a crystal burning, Slow days go one by one, But you have no returning. "I Thought of You" I thought of you and how you love this beauty, And walking up the long beach all alone I heard the waves breaking in measured thunder As you and I once heard their monotone. Around me were the echoing dunes, beyond me The cold and sparkling silver of the sea-- We two will pass through death and ages lengthen Before you hear that sound again with me. On the Dunes If there is any life when death is over, These tawny beaches will know much of me, I shall come back, as constant and as changeful As the unchanging, many-colored sea. If life was small, if it has made me scornful, Forgive me; I shall straighten like a flame In the great calm of death, and if you want me Stand on the sea-ward dunes and call my name. Spray I knew you thought of me all night, I knew, though you were far away; I felt your love blow over me As if a dark wind-riven sea Drenched me with quivering spray. There are so many ways to love And each way has its own delight-- Then be content to come to me Only as spray the beating sea Drives inland through the night. If Death Is Kind Perhaps if Death is kind, and there can be returning, We will come back to earth some fragrant night, And take these lanes to find the sea, and bending Breathe the same honeysuckle, low and white. We will come down at night to these resounding beaches And the long gentle thunder of the sea, Here for a single hour in the wide starlight We shall be happy, for the dead are free. X Thoughts When I am all alone Envy me most, Then my thoughts flutter round me In a glimmering host; Some dressed in silver, Some dressed in white, Each like a taper Blossoming light; Most of them merry, Some of them grave, Each of them lithe As willows that wave; Some bearing violets, Some bearing bay, One with a burning rose Hidden away-- When I am all alone Envy me then, For I have better friends Than women and men. Faces People that I meet and pass In the city's broken roar, Faces that I lose so soon And have never found before, Do you know how much you tell In the meeting of our eyes, How ashamed I am, and sad To have pierced your poor disguise? Secrets rushing without sound Crying from your hiding places-- Let me go, I cannot bear The sorrow of the passing faces. --People in the restless street, Can it be, oh can it be In the meeting of our eyes That you know as much of me? Evening: New York Blue dust of evening over my city, Over the ocean of roofs and the tall towers Where the window-lights, myriads and myriads, Bloom from the walls like climbing flowers. Snowfall "She can't be unhappy," you said, "The smiles are like stars in her eyes, And her laugh is thistledown Around her low replies." "Is she unhappy?" you said-- But who has ever known Another's heartbreak-- All he can know is his own; And she seems hushed to me, As hushed as though Her heart were a hunter's fire Smothered in snow. The Silent Battle (In Memory of J. W. T. Jr.) He was a soldier in that fight Where there is neither flag nor drum, And without sound of musketry The stealthy foemen come. Year in, year out, by day and night They forced him to a slow retreat, And for his gallant fight alone No fife was blown, and no drum beat. In winter fog, in gathering mist The gray grim battle had its end-- And at the very last we knew His enemy had turned his friend. The Sanctuary If I could keep my innermost Me Fearless, aloof and free Of the least breath of love or hate, And not disconsolate At the sick load of sorrow laid on men; If I could keep a sanctuary there Free even of prayer, If I could do this, then, With quiet candor as I grew more wise I could look even at God with grave forgiving eyes. At Sea In the pull of the wind I stand, lonely, On the deck of a ship, rising, falling, Wild night around me, wild water under me, Whipped by the storm, screaming and calling. Earth is hostile and the sea hostile, Why do I look for a place to rest? I must fight always and die fighting With fear an unhealing wound in my breast. Dust When I went to look at what had long been hidden, A jewel laid long ago in a secret place, I trembled, for I thought to see its dark deep fire-- But only a pinch of dust blew up in my face. I almost gave my life long ago for a thing That has gone to dust now, stinging my eyes-- It is strange how often a heart must be broken Before the years can make it wise. The Long Hill I must have passed the crest a while ago And now I am going down-- Strange to have crossed the crest and not to know, But the brambles were always catching the hem of my gown. All the morning I thought how proud I should be To stand there straight as a queen, Wrapped in the wind and the sun with the world under me-- But the air was dull, there was little I could have seen. It was nearly level along the beaten track And the brambles caught in my gown-- But it's no use now to think of turning back, The rest of the way will be only going down. XI Summer Storm The panther wind Leaps out of the night, The snake of lightning Is twisting and white, The lion of thunder Roars--and we Sit still and content Under a tree-- We have met fate together And love and pain, Why should we fear The wrath of the rain! In the End All that could never be said, All that could never be done, Wait for us at last Somewhere back of the sun; All the heart broke to forego Shall be ours without pain, We shall take them as lightly as girls Pluck flowers after rain. And when they are ours in the end Perhaps after all The skies will not open for us Nor heaven be there at our call. "It Will Not Change" It will not change now After so many years; Life has not broken it With parting or tears; Death will not alter it, It will live on In all my songs for you When I am gone. Change Remember me as I was then; Turn from me now, but always see The laughing shadowy girl who stood At midnight by the flowering tree, With eyes that love had made as bright As the trembling stars of the summer night. Turn from me now, but always hear The muted laughter in the dew Of that one year of youth we had, The only youth we ever knew-- Turn from me now, or you will see What other years have done to me. Water Lilies If you have forgotten water lilies floating On a dark lake among mountains in the afternoon shade, If you have forgotten their wet, sleepy fragrance, Then you can return and not be afraid. But if you remember, then turn away forever To the plains and the prairies where pools are far apart, There you will not come at dusk on closing water lilies, And the shadow of mountains will not fall on your heart. "Did You Never Know?" Did you never know, long ago, how much you loved me-- That your love would never lessen and never go? You were young then, proud and fresh-hearted, You were too young to know. Fate is a wind, and red leaves fly before it Far apart, far away in the gusty time of year-- Seldom we meet now, but when I hear you speaking, I know your secret, my dear, my dear. The Treasure When they see my songs They will sigh and say, "Poor soul, wistful soul, Lonely night and day." They will never know All your love for me Surer than the spring, Stronger than the sea; Hidden out of sight Like a miser's gold In forsaken fields Where the wind is cold. The Storm I thought of you when I was wakened By a wind that made me glad and afraid Of the rushing, pouring sound of the sea That the great trees made. One thought in my mind went over and over While the darkness shook and the leaves were thinned-- I thought it was you who had come to find me, You were the wind. Songs For Myself XII The Tree Oh to be free of myself, With nothing left to remember, To have my heart as bare As a tree in December; Resting, as a tree rests After its leaves are gone, Waiting no more for a rain at night Nor for the red at dawn; But still, oh so still While the winds come and go, With no more fear of the hard frost Or the bright burden of snow; And heedless, heedless If anyone pass and see On the white page of the sky Its thin black tracery. At Midnight Now at last I have come to see what life is, Nothing is ever ended, everything only begun, And the brave victories that seem so splendid Are never really won. Even love that I built my spirit's house for, Comes like a brooding and a baffled guest, And music and men's praise and even laughter Are not so good as rest. Song Making My heart cried like a beaten child Ceaselessly all night long; I had to take my own cries And thread them into a song. One was a cry at black midnight And one when the first cock crew-- My heart was like a beaten child, But no one ever knew. Life, you have put me in your debt And I must serve you long-- But oh, the debt is terrible That must be paid in song. Alone I am alone, in spite of love, In spite of all I take and give-- In spite of all your tenderness, Sometimes I am not glad to live. I am alone, as though I stood On the highest peak of the tired gray world, About me only swirling snow, Above me, endless space unfurled; With earth hidden and heaven hidden, And only my own spirit's pride To keep me from the peace of those Who are not lonely, having died. Red Maples In the last year I have learned How few men are worth my trust; I have seen the friend I loved Struck by death into the dust, And fears I never knew before Have knocked and knocked upon my door-- "I shall hope little and ask for less," I said, "There is no happiness." I have grown wise at last--but how Can I hide the gleam on the willow-bough, Or keep the fragrance out of the rain Now that April is here again? When maples stand in a haze of fire What can I say to the old desire, What shall I do with the joy in me That is born out of agony? Debtor So long as my spirit still Is glad of breath And lifts its plumes of pride In the dark face of death; While I am curious still Of love and fame, Keeping my heart too high For the years to tame, How can I quarrel with fate Since I can see I am a debtor to life, Not life to me? The Wind in the Hemlock Steely stars and moon of brass, How mockingly you watch me pass! You know as well as I how soon I shall be blind to stars and moon, Deaf to the wind in the hemlock tree, Dumb when the brown earth weighs on me. With envious dark rage I bear, Stars, your cold complacent stare; Heart-broken in my hate look up, Moon, at your clear immortal cup, Changing to gold from dusky red-- Age after age when I am dead To be filled up with light, and then Emptied, to be refilled again. What has man done that only he Is slave to death--so brutally Beaten back into the earth Impatient for him since his birth? Oh let me shut my eyes, close out The sight of stars and earth and be Sheltered a minute by this tree. Hemlock, through your fragrant boughs There moves no anger and no doubt, No envy of immortal things. The night-wind murmurs of the sea With veiled music ceaselessly, That to my shaken spirit sings. From their frail nest the robins rouse, In your pungent darkness stirred, Twittering a low drowsy word-- And me you shelter, even me. In your quietness you house The wind, the woman and the bird. You speak to me and I have heard: If I am peaceful, I shall see Beauty's face continually; Feeding on her wine and bread I shall be wholly comforted, For she can make one day for me Rich as my lost eternity. [End of original text.] Biographical Note: Sara Teasdale (1884-1933): Teasdale was born in St. Louis, Missouri, where she attended a school that was founded by the grandfather of another great poet from St. Louis-- T. S. Eliot. She later associated herself more with New York City. Her first book of poems was "Sonnets to Duse" (1907), but "Helen of Troy" (1911) was the true launch of her career, followed by "Rivers to the Sea" (1915), "Love Songs" (1917), "Flame and Shadow" (1920) and more. Her final volume, "Strange Victory", is considered by many to be predictive of her suicide in 1933. ---- From an anthology of verse by Jessie B. Rittenhouse (1913, 1917): "Teasdale, Sara (Mrs. Ernst B. Filsinger). Born in St. Louis, Missouri, August 10, 1884. Educated at private schools. She is the author of "Sonnets to Duse", 1907; "Helen of Troy, and Other Poems", 1911; "Rivers to the Sea", 1915; "Love Songs", 1917. Editor of "The Answering Voice: A Hundred Love Lyrics by Women", 1917. Miss Teasdale is a lyric poet of an unusually pure and spontaneous gift." 
592	----	The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems, by Vachel Lindsay. [Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, Illinois Poet. 1879-1931.] [Note on text: Italicized words or phrases capitalized. Italicized stanzas are indented 5 spaces. Some errors have been corrected. Lines longer than 78 characters are broken according to metre, and the continuation is indented two spaces.] The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems By Vachel Lindsay Author of "The Congo", "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven", "Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty", etc. This Book is Dedicated to Sara Teasdale, Poet Harriet Monroe awarded the Levinson Prize to "The Chinese Nightingale", as the best contribution to "Poetry: A Magazine of Verse", for the year 1915. Table of Contents First Section The Chinese Nightingale Second Section America Watching the War, August, 1914, to April, 1917 Where Is the Real Non-resistant? Here's to the Mice! When Bryan Speaks To Jane Addams at the Hague I. Speak Now for Peace II. Tolstoi Is Plowing Yet The Tale of the Tiger Tree The Merciful Hand Third Section America at War with Germany, Beginning April, 1917 Our Mother Pocahontas Concerning Emperors Niagara Mark Twain and Joan of Arc The Bankrupt Peace Maker "This, My Song, is made for Kerensky" Fourth Section Tragedies, Comedies, and Dreams Our Guardian Angels and Their Children Epitaphs for Two Players I. Edwin Booth II. John Bunny, Motion Picture Comedian Mae Marsh, Motion Picture Actress Two Old Crows The Drunkard's Funeral The Raft The Ghosts of the Buffaloes The Broncho that Would Not Be Broken The Prairie Battlements The Flower of Mending Alone in the Wind, on the Prairie To Lady Jane How I Walked Alone in the Jungles of Heaven Fifth Section The Poem Games An Account of the Poem Games The King of Yellow Butterflies The Potatoes' Dance The Booker Washington Trilogy I. Simon Legree II. John Brown III. King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba How Samson Bore Away the Gates of Gaza The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems First Section The Chinese Nightingale A Song in Chinese Tapestries "How, how," he said. "Friend Chang," I said, "San Francisco sleeps as the dead-- Ended license, lust and play: Why do you iron the night away? Your big clock speaks with a deadly sound, With a tick and a wail till dawn comes round. While the monster shadows glower and creep, What can be better for man than sleep?" "I will tell you a secret," Chang replied; "My breast with vision is satisfied, And I see green trees and fluttering wings, And my deathless bird from Shanghai sings." Then he lit five fire-crackers in a pan. "Pop, pop," said the fire-crackers, "cra-cra-crack." He lit a joss stick long and black. Then the proud gray joss in the corner stirred; On his wrist appeared a gray small bird, And this was the song of the gray small bird: "Where is the princess, loved forever, Who made Chang first of the kings of men?" And the joss in the corner stirred again; And the carved dog, curled in his arms, awoke, Barked forth a smoke-cloud that whirled and broke. It piled in a maze round the ironing-place, And there on the snowy table wide Stood a Chinese lady of high degree, With a scornful, witching, tea-rose face.... Yet she put away all form and pride, And laid her glimmering veil aside With a childlike smile for Chang and for me. The walls fell back, night was aflower, The table gleamed in a moonlit bower, While Chang, with a countenance carved of stone, Ironed and ironed, all alone. And thus she sang to the busy man Chang: "Have you forgotten.... Deep in the ages, long, long ago, I was your sweetheart, there on the sand-- Storm-worn beach of the Chinese land? We sold our grain in the peacock town Built on the edge of the sea-sands brown-- Built on the edge of the sea-sands brown.... "When all the world was drinking blood From the skulls of men and bulls And all the world had swords and clubs of stone, We drank our tea in China beneath the sacred spice-trees, And heard the curled waves of the harbor moan. And this gray bird, in Love's first spring, With a bright-bronze breast and a bronze-brown wing, Captured the world with his carolling. Do you remember, ages after, At last the world we were born to own? You were the heir of the yellow throne-- The world was the field of the Chinese man And we were the pride of the Sons of Han? We copied deep books and we carved in jade, And wove blue silks in the mulberry shade...." "I remember, I remember That Spring came on forever, That Spring came on forever," Said the Chinese nightingale. My heart was filled with marvel and dream, Though I saw the western street-lamps gleam, Though dawn was bringing the western day, Though Chang was a laundryman ironing away.... Mingled there with the streets and alleys, The railroad-yard and the clock-tower bright, Demon clouds crossed ancient valleys; Across wide lotus-ponds of light I marked a giant firefly's flight. And the lady, rosy-red, Flourished her fan, her shimmering fan, Stretched her hand toward Chang, and said: "Do you remember, Ages after, Our palace of heart-red stone? Do you remember The little doll-faced children With their lanterns full of moon-fire, That came from all the empire Honoring the throne?-- The loveliest fête and carnival Our world had ever known? The sages sat about us With their heads bowed in their beards, With proper meditation on the sight. Confucius was not born; We lived in those great days Confucius later said were lived aright.... And this gray bird, on that day of spring, With a bright bronze breast, and a bronze-brown wing, Captured the world with his carolling. Late at night his tune was spent. Peasants, Sages, Children, Homeward went, And then the bronze bird sang for you and me. We walked alone. Our hearts were high and free. I had a silvery name, I had a silvery name, I had a silvery name--do you remember The name you cried beside the tumbling sea?" Chang turned not to the lady slim-- He bent to his work, ironing away; But she was arch, and knowing and glowing, And the bird on his shoulder spoke for him. "Darling ... darling ... darling ... darling ..." Said the Chinese nightingale. The great gray joss on a rustic shelf, Rakish and shrewd, with his collar awry, Sang impolitely, as though by himself, Drowning with his bellowing the nightingale's cry: "Back through a hundred, hundred years Hear the waves as they climb the piers, Hear the howl of the silver seas, Hear the thunder. Hear the gongs of holy China How the waves and tunes combine In a rhythmic clashing wonder, Incantation old and fine: 'Dragons, dragons, Chinese dragons, Red fire-crackers, and green fire-crackers, And dragons, dragons, Chinese dragons.'" Then the lady, rosy-red, Turned to her lover Chang and said: "Dare you forget that turquoise dawn When we stood in our mist-hung velvet lawn, And worked a spell this great joss taught Till a God of the Dragons was charmed and caught? From the flag high over our palace home He flew to our feet in rainbow-foam-- A king of beauty and tempest and thunder Panting to tear our sorrows asunder. A dragon of fair adventure and wonder. We mounted the back of that royal slave With thoughts of desire that were noble and grave. We swam down the shore to the dragon-mountains, We whirled to the peaks and the fiery fountains. To our secret ivory house we were bourne. We looked down the wonderful wing-filled regions Where the dragons darted in glimmering legions. Right by my breast the nightingale sang; The old rhymes rang in the sunlit mist That we this hour regain-- Song-fire for the brain. When my hands and my hair and my feet you kissed, When you cried for your heart's new pain, What was my name in the dragon-mist, In the rings of rainbowed rain?" "Sorrow and love, glory and love," Said the Chinese nightingale. "Sorrow and love, glory and love," Said the Chinese nightingale. And now the joss broke in with his song: "Dying ember, bird of Chang, Soul of Chang, do you remember?-- Ere you returned to the shining harbor There were pirates by ten thousand Descended on the town In vessels mountain-high and red and brown, Moon-ships that climbed the storms and cut the skies. On their prows were painted terrible bright eyes. But I was then a wizard and a scholar and a priest; I stood upon the sand; With lifted hand I looked upon them And sunk their vessels with my wizard eyes, And the stately lacquer-gate made safe again. Deep, deep below the bay, the sea-weed and the spray, Embalmed in amber every pirate lies, Embalmed in amber every pirate lies." Then this did the noble lady say: "Bird, do you dream of our home-coming day When you flew like a courier on before From the dragon-peak to our palace-door, And we drove the steed in your singing path-- The ramping dragon of laughter and wrath: And found our city all aglow, And knighted this joss that decked it so? There were golden fishes in the purple river And silver fishes and rainbow fishes. There were golden junks in the laughing river, And silver junks and rainbow junks: There were golden lilies by the bay and river, And silver lilies and tiger-lilies, And tinkling wind-bells in the gardens of the town By the black-lacquer gate Where walked in state The kind king Chang And his sweet-heart mate.... With his flag-born dragon And his crown of pearl ... and ... jade, And his nightingale reigning in the mulberry shade, And sailors and soldiers on the sea-sands brown, And priests who bowed them down to your song-- By the city called Han, the peacock town, By the city called Han, the nightingale town, The nightingale town." Then sang the bird, so strangely gay, Fluttering, fluttering, ghostly and gray, A vague, unravelling, final tune, Like a long unwinding silk cocoon; Sang as though for the soul of him Who ironed away in that bower dim:-- "I have forgotten Your dragons great, Merry and mad and friendly and bold. Dim is your proud lost palace-gate. I vaguely know There were heroes of old, Troubles more than the heart could hold, There were wolves in the woods Yet lambs in the fold, Nests in the top of the almond tree.... The evergreen tree ... and the mulberry tree ... Life and hurry and joy forgotten, Years on years I but half-remember ... Man is a torch, then ashes soon, May and June, then dead December, Dead December, then again June. Who shall end my dream's confusion? Life is a loom, weaving illusion... I remember, I remember There were ghostly veils and laces... In the shadowy bowery places... With lovers' ardent faces Bending to one another, Speaking each his part. They infinitely echo In the red cave of my heart. 'Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart.' They said to one another. They spoke, I think, of perils past. They spoke, I think, of peace at last. One thing I remember: Spring came on forever, Spring came on forever," Said the Chinese nightingale. Second Section America Watching the War, August, 1914, to April, 1917 Where Is the Real Non-resistant? (Matthew 5:38-48) Who can surrender to Christ, dividing his best with the stranger, Giving to each what he asks, braving the uttermost danger All for the enemy, MAN? Who can surrender till death His words and his works, his house and his lands, His eyes and his heart and his breath? Who can surrender to Christ? Many have yearned toward it daily. Yet they surrender to passion, wildly or grimly or gaily; Yet they surrender to pride, counting her precious and queenly; Yet they surrender to knowledge, preening their feathers serenely. Who can surrender to Christ? Where is the man so transcendent, So heated with love of his kind, so filled with the spirit resplendent That all of the hours of his day his song is thrilling and tender, And all of his thoughts to our white cause of peace Surrender, surrender, surrender? Here's to the Mice! (Written with the hope that the socialists might yet dethrone Kaiser and Czar.) Here's to the mice that scare the lions, Creeping into their cages. Here's to the fairy mice that bite The elephants fat and wise: Hidden in the hay-pile while the elephant thunder rages. Here's to the scurrying, timid mice Through whom the proud cause dies. Here's to the seeming accident When all is planned and working, All the flywheels turning, Not a vassal shirking. Here's to the hidden tunneling thing That brings the mountain's groans. Here's to the midnight scamps that gnaw, Gnawing away the thrones. When Bryan Speaks When Bryan speaks, the town's a hive. From miles around, the autos drive. The sparrow chirps. The rooster crows. The place is kicking and alive. When Bryan speaks, the bunting glows. The raw procession onward flows. The small dogs bark. The children laugh A wind of springtime fancy blows. When Bryan speaks, the wigwam shakes. The corporation magnate quakes. The pre-convention plot is smashed. The valiant pleb full-armed awakes. When Bryan speaks, the sky is ours, The wheat, the forests, and the flowers. And who is here to say us nay? Fled are the ancient tyrant powers. When Bryan speaks, then I rejoice. His is the strange composite voice Of many million singing souls Who make world-brotherhood their choice. Written in Washington, D.C. February, 1915. To Jane Addams at the Hague Two Poems, written on the Sinking of the Lusitania. Appearing in the Chicago 'Herald', May 11, 1915. I. Speak Now for Peace Lady of Light, and our best woman, and queen, Stand now for peace, (though anger breaks your heart), Though naught but smoke and flame and drowning is seen. Lady of Light, speak, though you speak alone, Though your voice may seem as a dove's in this howling flood, It is heard to-night by every senate and throne. Though the widening battle of millions and millions of men Threatens to-night to sweep the whole of the earth, Back of the smoke is the promise of kindness again. II. Tolstoi Is Plowing Yet Tolstoi is plowing yet. When the smoke-clouds break, High in the sky shines a field as wide as the world. There he toils for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake. Ah, he is taller than clouds of the little earth. Only the congress of planets is over him, And the arching path where new sweet stars have birth. Wearing his peasant dress, his head bent low, Tolstoi, that angel of Peace, is plowing yet; Forward, across the field, his horses go. The Tale of the Tiger Tree A Fantasy, dedicated to the little poet Alice Oliver Henderson, ten years old. The Fantasy shows how tiger-hearts are the cause of war in all ages. It shows how the mammoth forces may be either friends or enemies of the struggle for peace. It shows how the dream of peace is unconquerable and eternal. I Peace-of-the-Heart, my own for long, Whose shining hair the May-winds fan, Making it tangled as they can, A mystery still, star-shining yet, Through ancient ages known to me And now once more reborn with me:-- This is the tale of the Tiger Tree A hundred times the height of a man, Lord of the race since the world began. This is my city Springfield, My home on the breast of the plain. The state house towers to heaven, By an arsenal gray as the rain ... And suddenly all is mist, And I walk in a world apart, In the forest-age when I first knelt down At your feet, O Peace-of-the-Heart. This is the wonder of twilight: Three times as high as the dome Tiger-striped trees encircle the town, Golden geysers of foam. While giant white parrots sail past in their pride. The roofs now are clouds and storms that they ride. And there with the huntsmen of mound-builder days Through jungle and meadow I stride. And the Tiger Tree leaf is falling around As it fell when the world began: Like a monstrous tiger-skin, stretched on the ground, Or the cloak of a medicine man. A deep-crumpled gossamer web, Fringed with the fangs of a snake. The wind swirls it down from the leperous boughs. It shimmers on clay-hill and lake, With the gleam of great bubbles of blood, Or coiled like a rainbow shell.... I feast on the stem of the Leaf as I march. I am burning with Heaven and Hell. II The gray king died in his hour. Then we crowned you, the prophetess wise: Peace-of-the-Heart we deeply adored For the witchcraft hid in your eyes. Gift from the sky, overmastering all, You sent forth your magical parrots to call The plot-hatching prince of the tigers, To your throne by the red-clay wall. Thus came that genius insane: Spitting and slinking, Sneering and vain, He sprawled to your grassy throne, drunk on The Leaf, The drug that was cunning and splendor and grief. He had fled from the mammoth by day, He had blasted the mammoth by night, War was his drunkenness, War was his dreaming, War was his love and his play. And he hissed at your heavenly glory While his councillors snarled in delight, Asking in irony: "What shall we learn From this whisperer, fragile and white?" And had you not been an enchantress They would not have loitered to mock Nor spared your white parrots who walked by their paws With bantering venturesome talk. You made a white fire of The Leaf. You sang while the tiger-chiefs hissed. You chanted of "Peace to the wonderful world." And they saw you in dazzling mist. And their steps were no longer insane, Kindness came down like the rain, They dreamed that like fleet young ponies they feasted On succulent grasses and grain. . . . . . Then came the black-mammoth chief: Long-haired and shaggy and great, Proud and sagacious he marshalled his court: (You had sent him your parrots of state.) His trunk in rebellion upcurled, A curse at the tiger he hurled. Huge elephants trumpeted there by his side, And mastodon-chiefs of the world. But higher magic began. For the turbulent vassals of man. You harnessed their fever, you conquered their ire, Their hearts turned to flowers through holy desire, For their darling and star you were crowned, And their raging demons were bound. You rode on the back of the yellow-streaked king, His loose neck was wreathed with a mistletoe ring. Primordial elephants loomed by your side, And our clay-painted children danced by your path, Chanting the death of the kingdoms of wrath. You wrought until night with us all. The fierce brutes fawned at your call, Then slipped to their lairs, song-chained. And thus you sang sweetly, and reigned: "Immortal is the inner peace, free to beasts and men. Beginning in the darkness, the mystery will conquer, And now it comforts every heart that seeks for love again. And now the mammoth bows the knee, We hew down every Tiger Tree, We send each tiger bound in love and glory to his den, Bound in love ... and wisdom ... and glory, ... to his den." III "Beware of the trumpeting swine," Came the howl from the northward that night. Twice-rebel tigers warning was still If we held not beside them it boded us ill. From the parrots translating the cry, And the apes in the trees came the whine: "Beware of the trumpeting swine. Beware of the faith of a mammoth." "Beware of the faith of a tiger," Came the roar from the southward that night. Trumpeting mammoths warning us still If we held not beside them it boded us ill. The frail apes wailed to us all, The parrots reëchoed the call: "Beware of the faith of a tiger." From the heights of the forest the watchers could see The tiger-cats crunching the Leaf of the Tree Lashing themselves, and scattering foam, Killing our huntsmen, hurrying home. The chiefs of the mammoths our mastery spurned, And eastward restlessly fumed and burned. The peacocks squalled out the news of their drilling And told how they trampled, maneuvered, and turned. Ten thousand man-hating tigers Whirling down from the north, like a flood! Ten thousand mammoths oncoming From the south as avengers of blood! Our child-queen was mourning, her magic was dead, The roots of the Tiger Tree reeking with red. IV This is the tale of the Tiger Tree A hundred times the height of a man, Lord of the race since the world began. We marched to the mammoths, We pledged them our steel, And scorning you, sang:-- "We are men, We are men." We mounted their necks, And they stamped a wide reel. We sang: "We are fighting the hell-cats again, We are mound-builder men, We are elephant men." We left you there, lonely, Beauty your power, Wisdom your watchman, To hold the clay tower. While the black-mammoths boomed-- "You are elephant men, Men, Men, Elephant men." The dawn-winds prophesied battles untold. While the Tiger Trees roared of the glories of old, Of the masterful spirits and hard. The drunken cats came in their joy In the sunrise, a glittering wave. "We are tigers, are tigers," they yowled. "Down, Down, Go the swine to the grave." But we tramp Tramp Trampled them there, Then charged with our sabres and spears. The swish of the sabre, The swish of the sabre, Was a marvellous tune in our ears. We yelled "We are men, We are men." As we bled to death in the sun.... Then staunched our horrible wounds With the cry that the battle was won.... And at last, When the black-mammoth legion Split the night with their song:-- "Right is braver than wrong, Right is stronger than wrong," The buzzards came taunting: "Down from the north Tiger-nations are sweeping along." . . . . . Then we ate of the ravening Leaf As our savage fathers of old. No longer our wounds made us weak, No longer our pulses were cold. Though half of my troops were afoot, (For the great who had borne them were slain) We dreamed we were tigers, and leaped And foamed with that vision insane. We cried "We are soldiers of doom, Doom, Sabres of glory and doom." We wreathed the king of the mammoths In the tiger-leaves' terrible bloom. We flattered the king of the mammoths, Loud-rattling sabres and spears. The swish of the sabre, The swish of the sabre, Was a marvellous tune in his ears. V This was the end of the battle. The tigers poured by in a tide Over us all with their caterwaul call, "We are the tigers," They cried. "We are the sabres," They cried. But we laughed while our blades swept wide, While the dawn-rays stabbed through the gloom. "We are suns on fire" was our yell-- "Suns on fire." ... But man-child and mastodon fell, Mammoth and elephant fell. The fangs of the devil-cats closed on the world, Plunged it to blackness and doom. The desolate red-clay wall Echoed the parrots' call:-- "Immortal is the inner peace, free to beasts and men. Beginning in the darkness, the mystery will conquer, And now it comforts every heart that seeks for love again. And now the mammoth bows the knee, We hew down every Tiger Tree, We send each tiger bound in love and glory to his den, Bound in love ... and wisdom ... and glory, ... to his den." A peacock screamed of his beauty On that broken wall by the trees, Chiding his little mate, Spreading his fans in the breeze ... And you, with eyes of a bride, Knelt on the wall at my side, The deathless song in your mouth ... A million new tigers swept south ... As we laughed at the peacock, and died. This is my vision in Springfield: Three times as high as the dome, Tiger-striped trees encircle the town, Golden geysers of foam;-- Though giant white parrots sail past, giving voice, Though I walk with Peace-of-the-Heart and rejoice. The Merciful Hand Written to Miss Alice L. F. Fitzgerald, Edith Cavell memorial nurse, going to the front. Your fine white hand is Heaven's gift To cure the wide world, stricken sore, Bleeding at the breast and head, Tearing at its wounds once more. Your white hand is a prophecy, A living hope that Christ shall come And make the nations merciful, Hating the bayonet and drum. Each desperate burning brain you soothe, Or ghastly broken frame you bind, Brings one day nearer our bright goal, The love-alliance of mankind. Wellesley. February, 1916. Third Section America at War with Germany, Beginning April, 1917 Our Mother Pocahontas (Note:--Pocahontas is buried at Gravesend, England.) "Pocahontas' body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in November or a pawpaw in May--did she wonder? does she remember--in the dust--in the cool tombs?" Carl Sandburg. I Powhatan was conqueror, Powhatan was emperor. He was akin to wolf and bee, Brother of the hickory tree. Son of the red lightning stroke And the lightning-shivered oak. His panther-grace bloomed in the maid Who laughed among the winds and played In excellence of savage pride, Wooing the forest, open-eyed, In the springtime, In Virginia, Our Mother, Pocahontas. Her skin was rosy copper-red. And high she held her beauteous head. Her step was like a rustling leaf: Her heart a nest, untouched of grief. She dreamed of sons like Powhatan, And through her blood the lightning ran. Love-cries with the birds she sung, Birdlike In the grape-vine swung. The Forest, arching low and wide Gloried in its Indian bride. Rolfe, that dim adventurer Had not come a courtier. John Rolfe is not our ancestor. We rise from out the soul of her Held in native wonderland, While the sun's rays kissed her hand, In the springtime, In Virginia, Our Mother, Pocahontas. II She heard the forest talking, Across the sea came walking, And traced the paths of Daniel Boone, Then westward chased the painted moon. She passed with wild young feet On to Kansas wheat, On to the miners' west, The echoing cañons' guest, Then the Pacific sand, Waking, Thrilling, The midnight land.... On Adams street and Jefferson-- Flames coming up from the ground! On Jackson street and Washington-- Flames coming up from the ground! And why, until the dawning sun Are flames coming up from the ground? Because, through drowsy Springfield sped This red-skin queen, with feathered head, With winds and stars, that pay her court And leaping beasts, that make her sport; Because, gray Europe's rags august She tramples in the dust; Because we are her fields of corn; Because our fires are all reborn From her bosom's deathless embers, Flaming As she remembers The springtime And Virginia, Our Mother, Pocahontas. III We here renounce our Saxon blood. Tomorrow's hopes, an April flood Come roaring in. The newest race Is born of her resilient grace. We here renounce our Teuton pride: Our Norse and Slavic boasts have died: Italian dreams are swept away, And Celtic feuds are lost today.... She sings of lilacs, maples, wheat, Her own soil sings beneath her feet, Of springtime And Virginia, Our Mother, Pocahontas. Concerning Emperors I. God Send the Regicide Would that the lying rulers of the world Were brought to block for tyrannies abhorred. Would that the sword of Cromwell and the Lord, The sword of Joshua and Gideon, Hewed hip and thigh the hosts of Midian. God send that ironside ere tomorrow's sun; Let Gabriel and Michael with him ride. God send the Regicide. II. A Colloquial Reply: To Any Newsboy If you lay for Iago at the stage door with a brick You have missed the moral of the play. He will have a midnight supper with Othello and his wife. They will chirp together and be gay. But the things Iago stands for must go down into the dust: Lying and suspicion and conspiracy and lust. And I cannot hate the Kaiser (I hope you understand.) Yet I chase the thing he stands for with a brickbat in my hand. Niagara I Within the town of Buffalo Are prosy men with leaden eyes. Like ants they worry to and fro, (Important men, in Buffalo.) But only twenty miles away A deathless glory is at play: Niagara, Niagara. The women buy their lace and cry:-- "O such a delicate design," And over ostrich feathers sigh, By counters there, in Buffalo. The children haunt the trinket shops, They buy false-faces, bells, and tops, Forgetting great Niagara. Within the town of Buffalo Are stores with garnets, sapphires, pearls, Rubies, emeralds aglow,-- Opal chains in Buffalo, Cherished symbols of success. They value not your rainbow dress:-- Niagara, Niagara. The shaggy meaning of her name This Buffalo, this recreant town, Sharps and lawyers prune and tame: Few pioneers in Buffalo; Except young lovers flushed and fleet And winds hallooing down the street: "Niagara, Niagara." The journalists are sick of ink: Boy prodigals are lost in wine, By night where white and red lights blink, The eyes of Death, in Buffalo. And only twenty miles away Are starlit rocks and healing spray:-- Niagara, Niagara. Above the town a tiny bird, A shining speck at sleepy dawn, Forgets the ant-hill so absurd, This self-important Buffalo. Descending twenty miles away He bathes his wings at break of day-- Niagara, Niagara. II What marching men of Buffalo Flood the streets in rash crusade? Fools-to-free-the-world, they go, Primeval hearts from Buffalo. Red cataracts of France today Awake, three thousand miles away An echo of Niagara, The cataract Niagara. Mark Twain and Joan of Arc When Yankee soldiers reach the barricade Then Joan of Arc gives each the accolade. For she is there in armor clad, today, All the young poets of the wide world say. Which of our freemen did she greet the first, Seeing him come against the fires accurst? Mark Twain, our Chief, with neither smile nor jest, Leading to war our youngest and our best. The Yankee to King Arthur's court returns. The sacred flag of Joan above him burns. For she has called his soul from out the tomb. And where she stands, there he will stand till doom. . . . . . But I, I can but mourn, and mourn again At bloodshed caused by angels, saints, and men. The Bankrupt Peace Maker I opened the ink-well and smoke filled the room. The smoke formed the giant frog-cat of my doom. His web feet left dreadful slime tracks on the floor. He had hammer and nails that he laid by the door. He sprawled on the table, claw-hands in my hair. He looked through my heart to the mud that was there. Like a black-mailer hating his victim he spoke: "When I see all your squirming I laugh till I choke Singing of peace. Railing at battle. Soothing a handful with saccharine prattle. All the millions of earth have voted for fight. You are voting for talk, with hands lily white." He leaped to the floor, then grew seven feet high, Beautiful, terrible, scorn in his eye: The Devil Eternal, Apollo grown old, With beard of bright silver and garments of gold. "What will you do to end war for good? Will you stand by the book-case, be nailed to the wood?" I stretched out my arms. He drove the nails deep, Silently, coolly. The house was asleep, I hung for three years, forbidden to die. I seemed but a shadow the servants passed by. At the end of the time with hot irons he returned. "The Quitter Sublime" on my bosom he burned. As he seared me he hissed: "You are wearing away. The good angels tell me you leave them today. You want to come down from the nails in the door. The victor must hang there three hundred years more. If any prig-saint would outvote all mankind He must use an immortally resolute mind. Think what the saints of Benares endure, Through infinite birthpangs their courage is sure. Self-tortured, self-ruled, they build their powers high, Until they are gods, overmaster the sky." Then he pulled out the nails. He shouted "Come in." To heal me there stepped in a lady of sin. Her hand was in mine. We walked in the sun. She said: "Now forget them, the Saxon and Hun. You are dreary and aged and silly and weak. Let us smell the sweet groves. Let the summertime speak." We walked to the river. We swam there in state. I was a serpent. She was my mate. I forgot in the marsh, as I tumbled about, That trial in my room, where I did not hold out. Since I was a serpent, my mate seemed to me As a mermaiden seems to a fisher at sea, Or a whisky soaked girl to a whisky soaked king. I woke. She had turned to a ravening thing On the table--a buzzard with leperous head. She tore up my rhymes and my drawings. She said: "I am your own cheap bankrupt soul. Will you die for the nations, making them whole? We joy in the swamp and here we are gay. WILL YOU BRING YOUR FINE PEACE TO THE NATIONS TODAY?" "This, My Song, Is Made for Kerensky" (Being a Chant of the American Soap-Box and the Russian Revolution.) O market square, O slattern place, Is glory in your slack disgrace? Plump quack doctors sell their pills, Gentle grafters sell brass watches, Silly anarchists yell their ills. Shall we be as weird as these? In the breezes nod and wheeze? Heaven's mass is sung, Tomorrow's mass is sung In a spirit tongue By wind and dust and birds, The high mass of liberty, While wave the banners red: Sung round the soap-box, A mass for soldiers dead. When you leave your faction in the once-loved hall, Like a true American tongue-lash them all, Stand then on the corner under starry skies And get you a gang of the worn and the wise. The soldiers of the Lord may be squeaky when they rally, The soldiers of the Lord are a queer little army, But the soldiers of the Lord, before the year is through, Will gather the whole nation, recruit all creation, To smite the hosts abhorred, and all the heavens renew-- Enforcing with the bayonet the thing the ages teach-- Free speech! Free speech! Down with the Prussians, and all their works. Down with the Turks. Down with every army that fights against the soap-box, The Pericles, Socrates, Diogenes soap-box, The old Elijah, Jeremiah, John-the-Baptist soap-box, The Rousseau, Mirabeau, Danton soap-box, The Karl Marx, Henry George, Woodrow Wilson soap-box. We will make the wide earth safe for the soap-box, The everlasting foe of beastliness and tyranny, Platform of liberty:-- Magna Charta liberty, Andrew Jackson liberty, bleeding Kansas liberty, New-born Russian liberty:-- Battleship of thought, The round world over, Loved by the red-hearted, Loved by the broken-hearted, Fair young Amazon or proud tough rover, Loved by the lion, Loved by the lion, Loved by the lion, Feared by the fox. The Russian Revolution is the world revolution. Death at the bedstead of every Kaiser knocks. The Hohenzollern army shall be felled like the ox. The fatal hour is striking in all the doomsday clocks. The while, by freedom's alchemy Beauty is born. Ring every sleigh-bell, ring every church bell, Blow the clear trumpet, and listen for the answer:-- The blast from the sky of the Gabriel horn. Hail the Russian picture around the little box:-- Exiles, Troops in files, Generals in uniform, Mujiks in their smocks, And holy maiden soldiers who have cut away their locks. All the peoples and the nations in processions mad and great, Are rolling through the Russian Soul as through a city gate:-- As though it were a street of stars that paves the shadowy deep. And mighty Tolstoi leads the van along the stairway steep. But now the people shout: "Hail to Kerensky, He hurled the tyrants out." And this my song is made for Kerensky, Prophet of the world-wide intolerable hope, There on the soap-box, seasoned, dauntless, There amid the Russian celestial kaleidoscope, Flags of liberty, rags and battlesmoke. Moscow and Chicago! Come let us praise battling Kerensky, Bravo! Bravo! Comrade Kerensky the thunderstorm and rainbow! Comrade Kerensky, Bravo, Bravo! August, 1917. Fourth Section Tragedies, Comedies, and Dreams Our Guardian Angels and Their Children Where a river roars in rapids And doves in maples fret, Where peace has decked the pastures Our guardian angels met. Long they had sought each other In God's mysterious name, Had climbed the solemn chaos tides Alone, with hope aflame: Amid the demon deeps had wound By many a fearful way. As they beheld each other Their shout made glad the day. No need of purse delayed them, No hand of friend or kin-- Nor menace of the bell and book, Nor fear of mortal sin. You did not speak, my girl, At this, our parting hour. Long we held each other And watched their deeds of power. They made a curious Eden. We saw that it was good. We thought with them in unison. We proudly understood Their amaranth eternal, Their roses strange and fair, The asphodels they scattered Upon the living air. They built a house of clouds With skilled immortal hands. They entered through the silver doors. Their wings were wedded brands. I labored up the valley To granite mountains free. You hurried down the river To Zidon by the sea. But at their place of meeting They keep a home and shrine. Your angel twists a purple flax, Then weaves a mantle fine. My angel, her defender Upstanding, spreads the light On painted clouds of fancy And mists that touch the height. Their sturdy babes speak kindly And fly and run with joy, Shepherding the helpless lambs-- A Grecian girl and boy. These children visit Heaven Each year and make of worth All we planned and wrought in youth And all our tears on earth. From books our God has written They sing of high desire. They turn the leaves in gentleness. Their wings are folded fire. Epitaphs for Two Players I. Edwin Booth An old actor at the Player's Club told me that Edwin Booth first impersonated Hamlet when a barnstormer in California. There were few theatres, but the hotels were provided with crude assembly rooms for strolling players. The youth played in the blear hotel. The rafters gleamed with glories strange. And winds of mourning Elsinore Howling at chance and fate and change; Voices of old Europe's dead Disturbed the new-built cattle-shed, The street, the high and solemn range. The while the coyote barked afar All shadowy was the battlement. The ranch-boys huddled and grew pale, Youths who had come on riot bent. Forgot were pranks well-planned to sting. Behold there rose a ghostly king, And veils of smoking Hell were rent. When Edwin Booth played Hamlet, then The camp-drab's tears could not but flow. Then Romance lived and breathed and burned. She felt the frail queen-mother's woe, Thrilled for Ophelia, fond and blind, And Hamlet, cruel, yet so kind, And moaned, his proud words hurt her so. A haunted place, though new and harsh! The Indian and the Chinaman And Mexican were fain to learn What had subdued the Saxon clan. Why did they mumble, brood, and stare When the court-players curtsied fair And the Gonzago scene began? And ah, the duel scene at last! They cheered their prince with stamping feet. A death-fight in a palace! Yea, With velvet hangings incomplete, A pasteboard throne, a pasteboard crown, And yet a monarch tumbled down, A brave lad fought in splendor meet. Was it a palace or a barn? Immortal as the gods he flamed. There in his last great hour of rage His foil avenged a mother shamed. In duty stern, in purpose deep He drove that king to his black sleep And died, all godlike and untamed. . . . . . I was not born in that far day. I hear the tale from heads grown white. And then I walk that earlier street, The mining camp at candle-light. I meet him wrapped in musings fine Upon some whispering silvery line He yet resolves to speak aright. II. John Bunny, Motion Picture Comedian In which he is remembered in similitude, by reference to Yorick, the king's jester, who died when Hamlet and Ophelia were children. Yorick is dead. Boy Hamlet walks forlorn Beneath the battlements of Elsinore. Where are those oddities and capers now That used to "set the table on a roar"? And do his bauble-bells beyond the clouds Ring out, and shake with mirth the planets bright? No doubt he brings the blessed dead good cheer, But silence broods on Elsinore tonight. That little elf, Ophelia, eight years old, Upon her battered doll's staunch bosom weeps. ("O best of men, that wove glad fairy-tales.") With tear-burned face, at last the darling sleeps. Hamlet himself could not give cheer or help, Though firm and brave, with his boy-face controlled. For every game they started out to play Yorick invented, in the days of old. The times are out of joint! O cursed spite! The noble jester Yorick comes no more. And Hamlet hides his tears in boyish pride By some lone turret-stair of Elsinore. Mae Marsh, Motion Picture Actress In "Man's Genesis", "The Wild Girl of the Sierras", "The Wharf Rat", "A Girl of the Paris Streets", etc. I The arts are old, old as the stones From which man carved the sphinx austere. Deep are the days the old arts bring: Ten thousand years of yesteryear. II She is madonna in an art As wild and young as her sweet eyes: A frail dew flower from this hot lamp That is today's divine surprise. Despite raw lights and gloating mobs She is not seared: a picture still: Rare silk the fine director's hand May weave for magic if he will. When ancient films have crumbled like Papyrus rolls of Egypt's day, Let the dust speak: "Her pride was high, All but the artist hid away: "Kin to the myriad artist clan Since time began, whose work is dear." The deep new ages come with her, Tomorrow's years of yesteryear. Two Old Crows Two old crows sat on a fence rail, Two old crows sat on a fence rail, Thinking of effect and cause, Of weeds and flowers, And nature's laws. One of them muttered, one of them stuttered, One of them stuttered, one of them muttered. Each of them thought far more than he uttered. One crow asked the other crow a riddle. One crow asked the other crow a riddle: The muttering crow Asked the stuttering crow, "Why does a bee have a sword to his fiddle? Why does a bee have a sword to his fiddle?" "Bee-cause," said the other crow, "Bee-cause, B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause." Just then a bee flew close to their rail:-- "Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ZZZZZZZZ." And those two black crows Turned pale, And away those crows did sail. Why? B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause. B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause. "Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ZZZZZZZ." The Drunkard's Funeral "Yes," said the sister with the little pinched face, The busy little sister with the funny little tract:-- "This is the climax, the grand fifth act. There rides the proud, at the finish of his race. There goes the hearse, the mourners cry, The respectable hearse goes slowly by. The wife of the dead has money in her purse, The children are in health, so it might have been worse. That fellow in the coffin led a life most foul. A fierce defender of the red bar-tender, At the church he would rail, At the preacher he would howl. He planted every deviltry to see it grow. He wasted half his income on the lewd and the low. He would trade engender for the red bar-tender, He would homage render to the red bar-tender, And in ultimate surrender to the red bar-tender, He died of the tremens, as crazy as a loon, And his friends were glad, when the end came soon. There goes the hearse, the mourners cry, The respectable hearse goes slowly by. And now, good friends, since you see how it ends, Let each nation-mender flay the red bar-tender,-- Abhor The transgression Of the red bar-tender,-- Ruin The profession Of the red bar-tender: Force him into business where his work does good. Let him learn how to plough, let him learn to chop wood, Let him learn how to plough, let him learn to chop wood. "The moral, The conclusion, The verdict now you know:-- 'The saloon must go, The saloon must go, The saloon, The saloon, The saloon, Must go.'" "You are right, little sister," I said to myself, "You are right, good sister," I said. "Though you wear a mussy bonnet On your little gray head, You are right, little sister," I said. The Raft The whole world on a raft! A King is here, The record of his grandeur but a smear. Is it his deacon-beard, or old bald pate That makes the band upon his whims to wait? Loot and mud-honey have his soul defiled. Quack, pig, and priest, he drives camp-meetings wild Until they shower their pennies like spring rain That he may preach upon the Spanish main. What landlord, lawyer, voodoo-man has yet A better native right to make men sweat? The whole world on a raft! A Duke is here At sight of whose lank jaw the muses leer. Journeyman-printer, lamb with ferret eyes, In life's skullduggery he takes the prize-- Yet stands at twilight wrapped in Hamlet dreams. Into his eyes the Mississippi gleams. The sandbar sings in moonlit veils of foam. A candle shines from one lone cabin home. The waves reflect it like a drunken star. A banjo and a hymn are heard afar. No solace on the lazy shore excels The Duke's blue castle with its steamer-bells. The floor is running water, and the roof The stars' brocade with cloudy warp and woof. And on past sorghum fields the current swings. To Christian Jim the Mississippi sings. This prankish wave-swept barque has won its place, A ship of jesting for the human race. But do you laugh when Jim bows down forlorn His babe, his deaf Elizabeth to mourn? And do you laugh, when Jim, from Huck apart Gropes through the rain and night with breaking heart? But now that imp is here and we can smile, Jim's child and guardian this long-drawn while. With knife and heavy gun, a hunter keen, He stops for squirrel-meat in islands green. The eternal gamin, sleeping half the day, Then stripped and sleek, a river-fish at play. And then well-dressed, ashore, he sees life spilt. The river-bank is one bright crazy-quilt Of patch-work dream, of wrath more red than lust, Where long-haired feudist Hotspurs bite the dust ... This Huckleberry Finn is but the race, America, still lovely in disgrace, New childhood of the world, that blunders on And wonders at the darkness and the dawn, The poor damned human race, still unimpressed With its damnation, all its gamin breast Chorteling at dukes and kings with nigger Jim, Then plotting for their fall, with jestings grim. Behold a Republic Where a river speaks to men And cries to those that love its ways, Answering again When in the heart's extravagance The rascals bend to say "O singing Mississippi Shine, sing for us today." But who is this in sweeping Oxford gown Who steers the raft, or ambles up and down, Or throws his gown aside, and there in white Stands gleaming like a pillar of the night? The lion of high courts, with hoary mane, Fierce jester that this boyish court will gain-- Mark Twain! The bad world's idol: Old Mark Twain! He takes his turn as watchman with the rest, With secret transports to the stars addressed, With nightlong broodings upon cosmic law, With daylong laughter at this world so raw. All praise to Emerson and Whitman, yet The best they have to say, their sons forget. But who can dodge this genius of the stream, The Mississippi Valley's laughing dream? He is the artery that finds the sea In this the land of slaves, and boys still free. He is the river, and they one and all Sail on his breast, and to each other call. Come let us disgrace ourselves, Knock the stuffed gods from their shelves, And cinders at the schoolhouse fling. Come let us disgrace ourselves, And live on a raft with gray Mark Twain And Huck and Jim And the Duke and the King. The Ghosts of the Buffaloes Last night at black midnight I woke with a cry, The windows were shaking, there was thunder on high, The floor was a-tremble, the door was a-jar, White fires, crimson fires, shone from afar. I rushed to the door yard. The city was gone. My home was a hut without orchard or lawn. It was mud-smear and logs near a whispering stream, Nothing else built by man could I see in my dream ... Then ... Ghost-kings came headlong, row upon row, Gods of the Indians, torches aglow. They mounted the bear and the elk and the deer, And eagles gigantic, aged and sere, They rode long-horn cattle, they cried "A-la-la." They lifted the knife, the bow, and the spear, They lifted ghost-torches from dead fires below, The midnight made grand with the cry "A-la-la." The midnight made grand with a red-god charge, A red-god show, A red-god show, "A-la-la, a-la-la, a-la-la, a-la-la." With bodies like bronze, and terrible eyes Came the rank and the file, with catamount cries, Gibbering, yipping, with hollow-skull clacks, Riding white bronchos with skeleton backs, Scalp-hunters, beaded and spangled and bad, Naked and lustful and foaming and mad, Flashing primeval demoniac scorn, Blood-thirst and pomp amid darkness reborn, Power and glory that sleep in the grass While the winds and the snows and the great rains pass. They crossed the gray river, thousands abreast, They rode in infinite lines to the west, Tide upon tide of strange fury and foam, Spirits and wraiths, the blue was their home, The sky was their goal where the star-flags are furled, And on past those far golden splendors they whirled. They burned to dim meteors, lost in the deep. And I turned in dazed wonder, thinking of sleep. And the wind crept by Alone, unkempt, unsatisfied, The wind cried and cried-- Muttered of massacres long past, Buffaloes in shambles vast ... An owl said: "Hark, what is a-wing?" I heard a cricket carolling, I heard a cricket carolling, I heard a cricket carolling. Then ... Snuffing the lightning that crashed from on high Rose royal old buffaloes, row upon row. The lords of the prairie came galloping by. And I cried in my heart "A-la-la, a-la-la, A red-god show, A red-god show, A-la-la, a-la-la, a-la-la, a-la-la." Buffaloes, buffaloes, thousands abreast, A scourge and amazement, they swept to the west. With black bobbing noses, with red rolling tongues, Coughing forth steam from their leather-wrapped lungs, Cows with their calves, bulls big and vain, Goring the laggards, shaking the mane, Stamping flint feet, flashing moon eyes, Pompous and owlish, shaggy and wise. Like sea-cliffs and caves resounded their ranks With shoulders like waves, and undulant flanks. Tide upon tide of strange fury and foam, Spirits and wraiths, the blue was their home, The sky was their goal where the star-flags are furled, And on past those far golden splendors they whirled. They burned to dim meteors, lost in the deep, And I turned in dazed wonder, thinking of sleep. I heard a cricket's cymbals play, A scarecrow lightly flapped his rags, And a pan that hung by his shoulder rang, Rattled and thumped in a listless way, And now the wind in the chimney sang, The wind in the chimney, The wind in the chimney, The wind in the chimney, Seemed to say:-- "Dream, boy, dream, If you anywise can. To dream is the work Of beast or man. Life is the west-going dream-storm's breath, Life is a dream, the sigh of the skies, The breath of the stars, that nod on their pillows With their golden hair mussed over their eyes." The locust played on his musical wing, Sang to his mate of love's delight. I heard the whippoorwill's soft fret. I heard a cricket carolling, I heard a cricket carolling, I heard a cricket say: "Good-night, good-night, Good-night, good-night, ... good-night." The Broncho that Would Not Be Broken A little colt--broncho, loaned to the farm To be broken in time without fury or harm, Yet black crows flew past you, shouting alarm, Calling "Beware," with lugubrious singing ... The butterflies there in the bush were romancing, The smell of the grass caught your soul in a trance, So why be a-fearing the spurs and the traces, O broncho that would not be broken of dancing? You were born with the pride of the lords great and olden Who danced, through the ages, in corridors golden. In all the wide farm-place the person most human. You spoke out so plainly with squealing and capering, With whinnying, snorting, contorting and prancing, As you dodged your pursuers, looking askance, With Greek-footed figures, and Parthenon paces, O broncho that would not be broken of dancing. The grasshoppers cheered. "Keep whirling," they said. The insolent sparrows called from the shed "If men will not laugh, make them wish they were dead." But arch were your thoughts, all malice displacing, Though the horse-killers came, with snake-whips advancing. You bantered and cantered away your last chance. And they scourged you, with Hell in their speech and their faces, O broncho that would not be broken of dancing. "Nobody cares for you," rattled the crows, As you dragged the whole reaper, next day, down the rows. The three mules held back, yet you danced on your toes. You pulled like a racer, and kept the mules chasing. You tangled the harness with bright eyes side-glancing, While the drunk driver bled you--a pole for a lance-- And the giant mules bit at you--keeping their places. O broncho that would not be broken of dancing. In that last afternoon your boyish heart broke. The hot wind came down like a sledge-hammer stroke. The blood-sucking flies to a rare feast awoke. And they searched out your wounds, your death-warrant tracing. And the merciful men, their religion enhancing, Stopped the red reaper, to give you a chance. Then you died on the prairie, and scorned all disgraces, O broncho that would not be broken of dancing. Souvenir of Great Bend, Kansas. The Prairie Battlements (To Edgar Lee Masters, with great respect.) Here upon the prairie Is our ancestral hall. Agate is the dome, Cornelian the wall. Ghouls are in the cellar, But fays upon the stairs. And here lived old King Silver Dreams, Always at his prayers. Here lived grey Queen Silver Dreams, Always singing psalms, And haughty Grandma Silver Dreams, Throned with folded palms. Here played cousin Alice. Her soul was best of all. And every fairy loved her, In our ancestral hall. Alice has a prairie grave. The King and Queen lie low, And aged Grandma Silver Dreams, Four tombstones in a row. But still in snow and sunshine Stands our ancestral hall. Agate is the dome, Cornelian the wall. And legends walk about, And proverbs, with proud airs. Ghouls are in the cellar, But fays upon the stairs. The Flower of Mending (To Eudora, after I had had certain dire adventures.) When Dragon-fly would fix his wings, When Snail would patch his house, When moths have marred the overcoat Of tender Mister Mouse, The pretty creatures go with haste To the sunlit blue-grass hills Where the Flower of Mending yields the wax And webs to help their ills. The hour the coats are waxed and webbed They fall into a dream, And when they wake the ragged robes Are joined without a seam. My heart is but a dragon-fly, My heart is but a mouse, My heart is but a haughty snail In a little stony house. Your hand was honey-comb to heal, Your voice a web to bind. You were a Mending Flower to me To cure my heart and mind. Alone in the Wind, on the Prairie I know a seraph who has golden eyes, And hair of gold, and body like the snow. Here in the wind I dream her unbound hair Is blowing round me, that desire's sweet glow Has touched her pale keen face, and willful mien. And though she steps as one in manner born To tread the forests of fair Paradise, Dark memory's wood she chooses to adorn. Here with bowed head, bashful with half-desire She glides into my yesterday's deep dream, All glowing by the misty ferny cliff Beside the far forbidden thundering stream. Within my dream I shake with the old flood. I fear its going, ere the spring days go. Yet pray the glory may have deathless years, And kiss her hair, and sweet throat like the snow. To Lady Jane Romance was always young. You come today Just eight years old With marvellous dark hair. Younger than Dante found you When you turned His heart into the way That found the heavenly stair. Perhaps we must be strangers. I confess My soul this hour is Dante's, And your care Should be for dolls Whose painted hands caress Your marvellous dark hair. Romance, with moonflower face And morning eyes, And lips whose thread of scarlet prophesies The canticles of a coming king unknown, Remember, when you join him On his throne, Even me, your far off troubadour, And wear For me some trifling rose Beneath your veil, Dying a royal death, Happy and pale, Choked by the passion, The wonder and the snare, The glory and despair That still will haunt and own Your marvellous dark hair. How I Walked Alone in the Jungles of Heaven Oh, once I walked in Heaven, all alone Upon the sacred cliffs above the sky. God and the angels, and the gleaming saints Had journeyed out into the stars to die. They had gone forth to win far citizens, Bought at great price, bring happiness for all: By such a harvest make a holier town And put new life within old Zion's wall. Each chose a far-off planet for his home, Speaking of love and mercy, truth and right, Envied and cursed, thorn-crowned and scourged in time, Each tasted death on his appointed night. Then resurrection day from sphere to sphere Sped on, with all the POWERS arisen again, While with them came in clouds recruited hosts Of sun-born strangers and of earth-born men. And on that day gray prophet saints went down And poured atoning blood upon the deep, Till every warrior of old Hell flew free And all the torture fires were laid asleep. And Hell's lost company I saw return Clear-eyed, with plumes of white, the demons bold Climbed with the angels now on Jacob's stair, And built a better Zion than the old. . . . . . And yet I walked alone on azure cliffs A lifetime long, and loved each untrimmed vine: The rotted harps, the swords of rusted gold, The jungles of all Heaven then were mine. Oh mesas and throne-mountains that I found! Oh strange and shaking thoughts that touched me there, Ere I beheld the bright returning wings That came to spoil my secret, silent lair! Fifth Section The Poem Games An Account of the Poem Games In the summer of 1916 in the parlor of Mrs. William Vaughn Moody; and in the following winter in the Chicago Little Theatre, under the auspices of Poetry, A Magazine of Verse; and in Mandel Hall, the University of Chicago, under the auspices of the Senior Class,--these Poem Games were presented. Miss Eleanor Dougherty was the dancer throughout.The entire undertaking developed through the generous coöperation and advice of Mrs. William Vaughn Moody. The writer is exceedingly grateful to Mrs. Moody and all concerned for making place for the idea. Now comes the test of its vitality. Can it go on in the absence of its initiators? Mr. Lewellyn Jones, of the Chicago Evening Post, announced the affair as a "rhythmic picnic". Mr. Maurice Browne of the Chicago Little Theatre said Miss Dougherty was at the beginning of the old Greek Tragic Dance. Somewhere between lies the accomplishment. In the Congo volume, as is indicated in the margins, the meaning of a few of the verses is aided by chanting. In the Poem Games the English word is still first in importance, the dancer comes second, the chanter third. The marginal directions of King Solomon indicate the spirit in which all the pantomime was developed. Miss Dougherty designed her own costumes, and worked out her own stage business for King Solomon, The Potatoes' Dance, The King of Yellow Butterflies and Aladdin and the Jinn (The Congo, page 140). In the last, "'I am your slave,' said the Jinn" was repeated four times at the end of each stanza. The Poem Game idea was first indorsed in the Wellesley kindergarten, by the children. They improvised pantomime and dance for the Potatoes' Dance, while the writer chanted it, and while Professor Hamilton C. Macdougall of the Wellesley musical department followed on the piano the outline of the jingle. Later Professor Macdougall very kindly wrote down his piano rendition. A study of this transcript helps to confirm the idea that when the cadences of a bit of verse are a little exaggerated, they are tunes, yet of a truth they are tunes which can be but vaguely recorded by notation or expressed by an instrument. The author of this book is now against instrumental music in this type of work. It blurs the English. Professor Macdougall has in various conversations helped the author toward a Poem Game theory. He agrees that neither the dancing nor the chanting nor any other thing should be allowed to run away with the original intention of the words. The chanting should not be carried to the point where it seeks to rival conventional musical composition. The dancer should be subordinated to the natural rhythms of English speech, and not attempt to incorporate bodily all the precedents of professional dancing. Speaking generally, poetic ideas can be conveyed word by word, faster than musical feeling. The repetitions in the Poem Games are to keep the singing, the dancing and the ideas at one pace. The repetitions may be varied according to the necessities of the individual dancer. Dancing is slower than poetry and faster than music in developing the same thoughts. In folk dances and vaudeville, the verse, music, and dancing are on so simple a basis the time elements can be easily combined. Likewise the rhythms and the other elements. Miss Dougherty is particularly illustrative in her pantomime, but there were many verses she looked over and rejected because they could not be rendered without blurring the original intent. Possibly every poem in the world has its dancer somewhere waiting, who can dance but that one poem. Certainly those poems would be most successful in games, where the tone color is so close to the meaning that any exaggeration of that color by dancing and chanting only makes the story clearer. The writer would like to see some one try Dryden's Alexander's Feast, or Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon. Certainly in those poems the decorative rhythm and the meaning are absolutely one. With no dancing evolutions, the author of this book has chanted John Brown and King Solomon for the last two years for many audiences. It took but a minute to teach the people the responses. As a rule they had no advance notice they were going to sing. The versifier sang the parts of the King and Queen in turn, and found each audience perfectly willing to be the oxen, the sweethearts, the swans, the sons, the shepherds, etc. A year ago the writer had the honor of chanting for the Florence Fleming Noyes school of dancers. In one short evening they made the first section of the Congo into an incantation, the King Solomon into an extraordinarily graceful series of tableaus, and the Potatoes' Dance into a veritable whirlwind. Later came the more elaborately prepared Chicago experiment. In the King of Yellow Butterflies and the Potatoes' Dance Miss Dougherty occupied the entire eye of the audience and interpreted, while the versifier chanted the poems as a semi-invisible orchestra, by the side of the curtain. For Aladdin and for King Solomon Miss Dougherty and the writer divided the stage between them, but the author was little more than the orchestra. The main intention was carried out, which was to combine the work of the dancer with the words of the production and the responses of the audience. The present rhymer has no ambitions as a stage manager. The Poem Game idea, in its rhythmic picnic stage, is recommended to amateurs, its further development to be on their own initiative. Informal parties might divide into groups of dancers and groups of chanters. The whole might be worked out in the spirit in which children play King William was King James' Son, London Bridge, or As We Go Round the Mulberry Bush. And the author of this book would certainly welcome the tragic dance, if Miss Dougherty will gather a company about her and go forward, using any acceptable poems, new or old. Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon is perhaps the most literal and rhythmic example of the idea we have in English, though it may not be available when tried out. The main revolution necessary for dancing improvisers, who would go a longer way with the Poem Game idea, is to shake off the Isadora Duncan and the Russian precedents for a while, and abolish the orchestra and piano, replacing all these with the natural meaning and cadences of English speech. The work would come closer to acting, than dancing is now conceived. The King of Yellow Butterflies (A Poem Game.) The King of Yellow Butterflies, The King of Yellow Butterflies, The King of Yellow Butterflies, Now orders forth his men. He says "The time is almost here When violets bloom again." Adown the road the fickle rout Goes flashing proud and bold, Adown the road the fickle rout Goes flashing proud and bold, Adown the road the fickle rout Goes flashing proud and bold, They shiver by the shallow pools, They shiver by the shallow pools, They shiver by the shallow pools, And whimper of the cold. They drink and drink. A frail pretense! They love to pose and preen. Each pool is but a looking glass, Where their sweet wings are seen. Each pool is but a looking glass, Where their sweet wings are seen. Each pool is but a looking glass, Where their sweet wings are seen. Gentlemen adventurers! Gypsies every whit! They live on what they steal. Their wings By briars are frayed a bit. Their loves are light. They have no house. And if it rains today, They'll climb into your cattle-shed, They'll climb into your cattle-shed, They'll climb into your cattle-shed, And hide them in the hay, And hide them in the hay, And hide them in the hay, And hide them in the hay. The Potatoes' Dance (A Poem Game.) I "Down cellar," said the cricket, "Down cellar," said the cricket, "Down cellar," said the cricket, "I saw a ball last night, In honor of a lady, In honor of a lady, In honor of a lady, Whose wings were pearly-white. The breath of bitter weather, The breath of bitter weather, The breath of bitter weather, Had smashed the cellar pane. We entertained a drift of leaves, We entertained a drift of leaves, We entertained a drift of leaves, And then of snow and rain. But we were dressed for winter, But we were dressed for winter, But we were dressed for winter, And loved to hear it blow In honor of the lady, In honor of the lady, In honor of the lady, Who makes potatoes grow, Our guest the Irish lady, The tiny Irish lady, The airy Irish lady, Who makes potatoes grow. II "Potatoes were the waiters, Potatoes were the waiters, Potatoes were the waiters, Potatoes were the band, Potatoes were the dancers Kicking up the sand, Kicking up the sand, Kicking up the sand, Potatoes were the dancers Kicking up the sand. Their legs were old burnt matches, Their legs were old burnt matches, Their legs were old burnt matches, Their arms were just the same. They jigged and whirled and scrambled, Jigged and whirled and scrambled, Jigged and whirled and scrambled, In honor of the dame, The noble Irish lady Who makes potatoes dance, The witty Irish lady, The saucy Irish lady, The laughing Irish lady Who makes potatoes prance. III "There was just one sweet potato. He was golden brown and slim. The lady loved his dancing, The lady loved his dancing, The lady loved his dancing, She danced all night with him, She danced all night with him. Alas, he wasn't Irish. So when she flew away, They threw him in the coal-bin, And there he is today, Where they cannot hear his sighs And his weeping for the lady, The glorious Irish lady, The beauteous Irish lady, Who Gives Potatoes Eyes." The Booker Washington Trilogy A Memorial to Booker T. Washington I. Simon Legree A Negro Sermon. (To be read in your own variety of negro dialect.) Legree's big house was white and green. His cotton-fields were the best to be seen. He had strong horses and opulent cattle, And bloodhounds bold, with chains that would rattle. His garret was full of curious things: Books of magic, bags of gold, And rabbits' feet on long twine strings. BUT HE WENT DOWN TO THE DEVIL. Legree he sported a brass-buttoned coat, A snake-skin necktie, a blood-red shirt. Legree he had a beard like a goat, And a thick hairy neck, and eyes like dirt. His puffed-out cheeks were fish-belly white, He had great long teeth, and an appetite. He ate raw meat, 'most every meal, And rolled his eyes till the cat would squeal. His fist was an enormous size To mash poor niggers that told him lies: He was surely a witch-man in disguise. BUT HE WENT DOWN TO THE DEVIL. He wore hip-boots, and would wade all day To capture his slaves that had fled away. BUT HE WENT DOWN TO THE DEVIL. He beat poor Uncle Tom to death Who prayed for Legree with his last breath. Then Uncle Tom to Eva flew, To the high sanctoriums bright and new; And Simon Legree stared up beneath, And cracked his heels, and ground his teeth: AND WENT DOWN TO THE DEVIL. He crossed the yard in the storm and gloom; He went into his grand front room. He said, "I killed him, and I don't care." He kicked a hound, he gave a swear; He tightened his belt, he took a lamp, Went down cellar to the webs and damp. There in the middle of the mouldy floor He heaved up a slab, he found a door-- AND WENT DOWN TO THE DEVIL. His lamp blew out, but his eyes burned bright. Simon Legree stepped down all night-- DOWN, DOWN TO THE DEVIL. Simon Legree he reached the place, He saw one half of the human race, He saw the Devil on a wide green throne, Gnawing the meat from a big ham-bone, And he said to Mister Devil: "I see that you have much to eat-- A red ham-bone is surely sweet. I see that you have lion's feet; I see your frame is fat and fine, I see you drink your poison wine-- Blood and burning turpentine." And the Devil said to Simon Legree: "I like your style, so wicked and free. Come sit and share my throne with me, And let us bark and revel." And there they sit and gnash their teeth, And each one wears a hop-vine wreath. They are matching pennies and shooting craps, They are playing poker and taking naps. And old Legree is fat and fine: He eats the fire, he drinks the wine-- Blood and burning turpentine-- DOWN, DOWN WITH THE DEVIL; DOWN, DOWN WITH THE DEVIL; DOWN, DOWN WITH THE DEVIL. II. John Brown (To be sung by a leader and chorus, the leader singing the body of the poem, while the chorus interrupts with the question.) I've been to Palestine. WHAT DID YOU SEE IN PALESTINE? I saw the ark of Noah-- It was made of pitch and pine. I saw old Father Noah Asleep beneath his vine. I saw Shem, Ham and Japhet Standing in a line. I saw the tower of Babel In the gorgeous sunrise shine-- By a weeping willow tree Beside the Dead Sea. I've been to Palestine. WHAT DID YOU SEE IN PALESTINE? I saw abominations And Gadarene swine. I saw the sinful Canaanites Upon the shewbread dine, And spoil the temple vessels And drink the temple wine. I saw Lot's wife, a pillar of salt Standing in the brine-- By a weeping willow tree Beside the Dead Sea. I've been to Palestine. WHAT DID YOU SEE IN PALESTINE? Cedars on Mount Lebanon, Gold in Ophir's mine, And a wicked generation Seeking for a sign And Baal's howling worshippers Their god with leaves entwine. And ... I saw the war-horse ramping And shake his forelock fine-- By a weeping willow tree Beside the Dead Sea. I've been to Palestine. WHAT DID YOU SEE IN PALESTINE? Old John Brown. Old John Brown. I saw his gracious wife Dressed in a homespun gown. I saw his seven sons Before his feet bow down. And he marched with his seven sons, His wagons and goods and guns, To his campfire by the sea, By the waves of Galilee. I've been to Palestine. WHAT DID YOU SEE IN PALESTINE? I saw the harp and psalt'ry Played for Old John Brown. I heard the ram's horn blow, Blow for Old John Brown. I saw the Bulls of Bashan-- They cheered for Old John Brown. I saw the big Behemoth-- He cheered for Old John Brown. I saw the big Leviathan-- He cheered for Old John Brown. I saw the Angel Gabriel Great power to him assign. I saw him fight the Canaanites And set God's Israel free. I saw him when the war was done In his rustic chair recline-- By his campfire by the sea, By the waves of Galilee. I've been to Palestine. WHAT DID YOU SEE IN PALESTINE? Old John Brown. Old John Brown. And there he sits To judge the world. His hunting-dogs At his feet are curled. His eyes half-closed, But John Brown sees The ends of the earth, The Day of Doom. And his shot-gun lies Across his knees-- Old John Brown, Old John Brown. III. King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (A Poem Game.) "And when the Queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon, ... she came to prove him with hard questions." <The men's leader rises as he sees the Queen unveiling and approaching a position that gives her half of the stage.> Men's Leader: The Queen of Sheba came to see King Solomon. <He bows three times.> I was King Solomon, I was King Solomon, I was King Solomon. <She bows three times.> Women's Leader: I was the Queen, I was the Queen, I was the Queen. Both Leaders: We will be king and queen, <They stand together stretching their hands over the land.> Reigning on mountains green, Happy and free For ten thousand years. <They stagger forward as though carrying a yoke together.> Both Leaders: King Solomon he had four hundred oxen. Congregation: We were the oxen. <Here King and Queen pause at the footlights.> Both Leaders: You shall feel goads no more. <They walk backward, throwing off the yoke and rejoicing.> Walk dreadful roads no more, Free from your loads For ten thousand years. <The men's leader goes forward, the women's leader dances round him.> Both Leaders: King Solomon he had four hundred sweethearts. <Here he pauses at the footlights.> Congregation: We were the sweethearts. <He walks backward. Both clap their hands to the measure.> Both Leaders: You shall dance round again, You shall dance round again, Cymbals shall sound again, Cymbals shall sound again, <The Queen appears to gather wildflowers.> Wildflowers be found For ten thousand years, Wildflowers be found For ten thousand years. <He continues to command the congregation, the woman to dance. He goes forward to the footlights.> Both Leaders: And every sweetheart had four hundred swans. Congregation: We were the swans. <The King walks backward.> Both Leaders: You shall spread wings again, You shall spread wings again, <Here a special dance, by the Queen: swans flying in circles.> Fly in soft rings again, Fly in soft rings again, Swim by cool springs For ten thousand years, Swim by cool springs, For ten thousand years. <The refrain "King Solomon" may be intoned by the men's leader whenever it is needed to enable the women's leader to get to her starting point. All the refrains may be likewise used.> Men's Leader: King Solomon, King Solomon. Women's Leader: The Queen of Sheba asked him like a lady, <They bow to each other--then give a pantomime indicating a great rose garden.> Bowing most politely: "What makes the roses bloom Over the mossy tomb, Driving away the gloom Ten thousand years?" Men's Leader: King Solomon made answer to the lady, <They bow and confer. The Queen reserved, but taking cognizance. The King wooing with ornate gestures of respect, and courtly animation.> Bowing most politely: "They bloom forever thinking of your beauty, Your step so queenly and your eyes so lovely. These keep the roses fair, Young and without a care, Making so sweet the air, Ten thousand years." <The two, with a manner almost a cake walk, go forward.> Both Leaders: King Solomon he had four hundred sons. <On this line, King and Queen pause before the footlights.> Congregation: We were the sons. <Pantomime of crowning the audience.> Both Leaders: Crowned by the throngs again, <On this line they walk backward, playing great imaginary harps.> You shall make songs again, Singing along For ten thousand years. <They go forward in a pony gallop, then stand pawing.> Both Leaders: He gave each son four hundred prancing ponies. Congregation: We were the ponies. <They nod their heads, starting to walk backward.> Both Leaders: You shall eat hay again, <A pony dance by both, in circles.> In forests play again, Rampage and neigh For ten thousand years. Men's Leader: King Solomon he asked the Queen of Sheba, <They bow to each other, standing so that each one commands half of the stage.> Bowing most politely: "What makes the oak-tree grow Hardy in sun and snow, Never by wind brought low Ten thousand years?" Women's Leader: The Queen of Sheba answered like a lady, <They bow to each other, again, with pantomime indicating a forest.> Bowing most politely: "It blooms forever thinking of your wisdom, Your brave heart and the way you rule your kingdom. These keep the oak secure, Weaving its leafy lure, Dreaming by fountains pure Ten thousand years." <They go to the footlights with a sailor's lurch and hitch.> Both Leaders: The Queen of Sheba had four hundred sailors. <The King and Queen pause.> Congregation: We were the sailors. Both Leaders: You shall bring spice and ore <They walk backward with slow long-armed gestures indicating the entire horizon line.> Over the ocean's floor, Shipmates once more, For ten thousand years. Women's Leader: The Queen of Sheba asked him like a lady, <They bow to each other, the Queen indicating the depths of the sea.> Bowing most politely: "Why is the sea so deep, What secret does it keep While tides a-roaring leap Ten thousand years?" Men's Leader: King Solomon made answer to the lady, <They bow to each other, then confer; the Queen reserved, but taking cognizance, the King wooing with ornate gestures of respect and courtly admiration.> Bowing most politely: "My love for you is like the stormy ocean-- Too deep to understand, Bending to your command, Bringing your ships to land Ten thousand years." King Solomon, King Solomon. <They go to the footlights with the greatest possible strut.> Both Leaders: King Solomon he had four hundred chieftains. Congregation: We were the chieftains. <The leaders stand with arms proudly folded.> Both Leaders: You shall be proud again, <They walk backward haughtily, laughing on the last lines.> Dazzle the crowd again, Laughing aloud For ten thousand years. <From here on the whole production to be much more solemn, elevated, religious.> <The leaders go forward to the footlights carrying imaginary torches.> Both Leaders: King Solomon he had four hundred shepherds. <The man and woman pause at the footlights.> Congregation: We were the shepherds. <They wander over the stage as though looking for lost lambs, with torches held high.> Both Leaders: You shall have torches bright, Watching the folds by night, Guarding the lambs aright, Ten thousand years. Men's Leader: King Solomon he asked the Queen of Sheba, <The King kneels, and indicates the entire sky with one long slow gesture.> Bowing most politely: "Why are the stars so high, There in the velvet sky, Rolling in rivers by, Ten thousand years?" Women's Leader: The Queen of Sheba answered like a lady, <The Queen kneels opposite the King, and gives the same gesture as she answers.> Bowing most politely: "They're singing of your kingdom to the angels, They guide your chariot with their lamps and candles, Therefore they burn so far-- So you can drive your car Up where the prophets are, Ten thousand years." Men's Leader: King Solomon, King Solomon. Both Leaders: King Solomon he kept the Sabbath holy. <The two stand, commanding the audience.> And spoke with tongues in prophet words so mighty <The man and woman stamp and whirl with great noise and solemnity.> We stamped and whirled and wept and shouted:-- Congregation Rises and Joins the Song: .... "Glory." We were his people. <On these two lines, man and woman stamp and whirl again, gravely, magnificently.> Both Leaders: You shall be wild and gay, Green trees shall deck your way, <On these two lines they kneel, commanding the audience.> Sunday be every day, Ten thousand years. <Now they rise and bow to each other and the audience, maintaining a certain intention of benediction.> King Solomon, King Solomon. How Samson Bore Away the Gates of Gaza (A Negro Sermon.) Once, in a night as black as ink, She drove him out when he would not drink. Round the house there were men in wait Asleep in rows by the Gaza gate. But the Holy Spirit was in this man. Like a gentle wind he crept and ran. ("It is midnight," said the big town clock.) He lifted the gates up, post and lock. The hole in the wall was high and wide When he bore away old Gaza's pride Into the deep of the night:-- The bold Jack Johnson Israelite,-- Samson-- The Judge, The Nazarite. The air was black, like the smoke of a dragon. Samson's heart was as big as a wagon. He sang like a shining golden fountain. He sweated up to the top of the mountain. He threw down the gates with a noise like judgment. And the quails all ran with the big arousement. But he wept--"I must not love tough queens, And spend on them my hard earned means. I told that girl I would drink no more. Therefore she drove me from her door. Oh sorrow! Sorrow! I cannot hide. Oh Lord look down from your chariot side. You made me Judge, and I am not wise. I am weak as a sheep for all my size." Let Samson Be coming Into your mind. The moon shone out, the stars were gay. He saw the foxes run and play. He rent his garments, he rolled around In deep repentance on the ground. Then he felt a honey in his soul. Grace abounding made him whole. Then he saw the Lord in a chariot blue. The gorgeous stallions whinnied and flew. The iron wheels hummed an old hymn-tune And crunched in thunder over the moon. And Samson shouted to the sky: "My Lord, my Lord is riding high." Like a steed, he pawed the gates with his hoof. He rattled the gates like rocks on the roof, And danced in the night On the mountain-top, Danced in the deep of the night: The Judge, the holy Nazarite, Whom ropes and chains could never bind. Let Samson Be coming Into your mind. Whirling his arms, like a top he sped. His long black hair flew round his head Like an outstretched net of silky cord, Like a wheel of the chariot of the Lord. Let Samson Be coming Into your mind. Samson saw the sun anew. He left the gates in the grass and dew. He went to a county-seat a-nigh. Found a harlot proud and high: Philistine that no man could tame-- Delilah was her lady-name. Oh sorrow, Sorrow, She was too wise. She cut off his hair, She put out his eyes. Let Samson Be coming Into your mind. ---------------------------------------------- | The following pages contain advertisements | | of other books by the same author | | which appeared in the 1918 copy. | ---------------------------------------------- By the Same Author A Handy Guide for Beggars New Edition. Cloth, 12mo, $1.25 "The Handy Guide for Beggars" is an introduction to all Vachel Lindsay's work. It gives his first adventures afoot. He walked through Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky, in the spring of 1906. He walked through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and on to Hiram, Ohio, in the spring of 1908. He carried on these trips his poems: "The Tree of Laughing Bells", "The Heroes of Time", etc. He recited them in exchange for food and lodging. He left copies for those who appeared interested. The book is a record of these journeys, and of many pleasing discoveries about American Democracy. This book serves to introduce the next, "Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty". In the spring and summer of 1912, Mr. Lindsay walked from Springfield, Illinois, west to Colorado, and into New Mexico. He was much more experienced in the road. He carried "Rhymes to Be Traded for Bread", "The Village Improvement Parade", etc. As is indicated in the title, he wrestled with a theory of American aesthetics. "Christmas, 1915", the third book in the series, appeared, applying the "Gospel of Beauty to the Photoplay". The ideas of Art and Democracy that develop in the first two books are used as the basic principles in "The Art of the Moving Picture". Those who desire a close view of the Lindsay idea will do well to read the three works in the order named. Further particulars in the pages following. The Congo and Other Poems With a preface by Harriet Monroe, Editor of the 'Poetry Magazine'. Cloth, 12mo, $1.25; leather, $1.60 In the readings which Vachel Lindsay has given for colleges, universities, etc., throughout the country, he has won the approbation of the critics and of his audiences in general for the new verse-form which he is employing, as well as the manner of his chanting and singing, which is peculiarly his own. He carries in memory all the poems in his books, and recites the program made out for him; the wonderful effect of sound produced by his lines, their relation to the idea which the author seeks to convey, and their marvelous lyrical quality are quite beyond the ordinary, and suggest new possibilities and new meanings in poetry. It is his main object to give his already established friends a deeper sense of the musical intention of his pieces. The book contains the much discussed "War Poem", "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight"; it contains among its familiar pieces: "The Santa Fe Trail", "The Firemen's Ball", "The Dirge for a Righteous Kitten", "The Griffin's Egg", "The Spice Tree", "Blanche Sweet", "Mary Pickford", "The Soul of the City", etc. Mr. Lindsay received the Levinson Prize for the best poem contributed to 'Poetry', a magazine of verse, (Chicago) for 1915. "We do not know a young man of any more promise than Mr. Vachel Lindsay for the task which he seems to have set himself."--'The Dial'. General William Booth Enters Into Heaven and Other Poems Price, $1.25; leather, $1.60 This book contains among other verses: "On Reading Omar Khayyam during an Anti-Saloon Campaign in Illinois"; "The Wizard Wind"; "The Eagle Forgotten", a Memorial to John P. Altgeld; "The Knight in Disguise", a Memorial to O. Henry; "The Rose and the Lotus"; "Michaelangelo"; "Titian"; "What the Hyena Said"; "What Grandpa Mouse Said"; "A Net to Snare the Moonlight"; "Springfield Magical"; "The Proud Farmer"; "The Illinois Village"; "The Building of Springfield". -------- Comments on the Title Poem: "This poem, at once so glorious, so touching and poignant in its conception and expression ... is perhaps the most remarkable poem of a decade--one that defies imitation."--'Review of Reviews'. "A sweeping and penetrating vision that works with a naive charm.... No American poet of to-day is more a people's poet."--'Boston Transcript'. "One could hardly overpraise 'General Booth'."--'New York Times'. "Something new in verse, spontaneous, passionate, unmindful of conventions in form and theme."--'The Living Age'. Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty Price, $1.00 This is a series of happening afoot while reciting at back-doors in the west, and includes some experiences while harvesting in Kansas. It includes several proclamations which apply the Gospel of Beauty to agricultural conditions. There are, among other rhymed interludes: "The Shield of Faith", "The Flute of the Lonely", "The Rose of Midnight", "Kansas", "The Kallyope Yell". Something to Read Vachel Lindsay took a walk from his home in Springfield, Ill., over the prairies to New Mexico. He was in Kansas in wheat-harvest time and he worked as a farmhand, and he tells all about that. He tells about his walks and the people he met in a little book, "Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty". For the conditions of his tramps were that he should keep away from cities, money, baggage, and pay his way by reciting his own poems. And he did it. People liked his pieces, and tramp farmhands with rough necks and rougher hands left off singing smutty limericks and took to "Atalanta in Calydon" apparently because they preferred it. Of motor cars, which gave him a lift, he says: "I still maintain that the auto is a carnal institution, to be shunned by the truly spiritual, but there are times when I, for one, get tired of being spiritual." His story of the "Five Little Children Eating Mush" (that was one night in Colorado, and he recited to them while they ate supper) has more beauty and tenderness and jolly tears than all the expensive sob stuff theatrical managers ever dreamed of. Mr. Lindsay doesn't need to write verse to be a poet. His prose is poetry--poetry straight from the soil, of America that is, and of a nobler America that is to be. You cannot afford--both for your entertainment and for the REAL IDEA that this young man has (of which we have said nothing)--to miss this book.--Editorial from 'Collier's Weekly'. The Art of the Moving Picture Price, $1.25 An effort to apply the Gospel of Beauty to a new art. The first section has an outline which is proposed as a basis for photoplay criticism in America; chapters on: "The Photoplay of Action", "The Intimate Photoplay", "The Picture of Fairy Splendor", "The Picture of Crowd Splendor", "The Picture of Patriotic Splendor", "The Picture of Religious Splendor", "Sculpture in Motion", "Painting in Motion", "Furniture", "Trappings and Inventions in Motion", "Architecture in Motion", "Thirty Differences between the Photoplays and the Stage", "Hieroglyphics". The second section is avowedly more discursive, being more personal speculations and afterthoughts, not brought forward so dogmatically; chapters on: "The Orchestra Conversation and the Censorship", "The Substitute for the Saloon", "California and America", "Progress and Endowment", "Architects as Crusaders", "On Coming Forth by Day", "The Prophet Wizard", "The Acceptable Year of the Lord". For Late Reviews of Mr. Lindsay and his contemporaries read: 'The New Republic': Articles by Randolph S. Bourne, December 5, 1914, on the "Adventures While Preaching"; and Francis Hackett, December 25, 1915, on "The Art of the Moving Picture". 'The Dial': Unsigned article by Lucien Carey, October 16, 1914, on "The Congo", etc. 'The Yale Review': Article by H. M. Luquiens, July, 1916, on "The Art of the Moving Picture". General Articles on the Poetry Situation 'The Century Magazine': "America's Golden Age in Poetry", March, 1916. 'Harper's Monthly Magazine': "The Easy Chair", William Dean Howells, September, 1915. 'The Craftsman': "Has America a National Poetry?" Amy Lowell, July, 1916. [End of original text.] Biographical Note: Nicholas Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931): (Vachel is pronounced Vay-chul, that is, it rhymes with 'Rachel'). "The Eagle that is Forgotten" and "The Congo" are two of his best-known poems, and appear in his first two volumes of verse, "General William Booth Enters into Heaven" (1913) and "The Congo" (1914). As a sidenote, he became close friends with the poet Sara Teasdale and his third volume of verse, "The Chinese Nightingale" (1917), is dedicated to her. In turn, she wrote a memorial verse for him after he committed suicide in 1931. ---- From an anthology of verse by Jessie B. Rittenhouse (1913, 1917): "Lindsay, Vachel. Born November 10, 1879. Educated at Hiram College, Ohio. He took up the study of art and studied at the Art Institute, Chicago, 1900-03 and at the New York School of Art, 1904-05. For a time after his technical study, he lectured upon art in its practical relation to the community, and returning to his home in Springfield, Illinois, issued what one might term his manifesto in the shape of "The Village Magazine", divided about equally between prose articles, pertaining to beautifying his native city, and poems, illustrated by his own drawings. Soon after this, Mr. Lindsay, taking as scrip for the journey, "Rhymes to be Traded for Bread", made a pilgrimage on foot through several Western States going as far afield as New Mexico. The story of this journey is given in his volume, "Adventures while Preaching the Gospel of Beauty". Mr. Lindsay first attracted attention in poetry by "General William Booth Enters into Heaven", a poem which became the title of his first volume, in 1913. His second volume was "The Congo", published in 1914. He is attempting to restore to poetry its early appeal as a spoken art, and his later work differs greatly from the selections contained in this anthology." 
59474	----	of Marc D'Hooghe (Images generously made available by Hathi Trust.) THE HARP-WEAVER AND OTHER POEMS BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON BY THE SAME AUTHOR RENASCENCE AND OTHER POEMS A FEW FIGS FROM THISTLES SECOND APRIL THREE PLAYS ARIA DA CAPO TWO SLATTERNS AND A KING THE LAMP AND THE BELL THE KING'S HENCHMAN TO MY MOTHER CONTENTS PART ONE MY HEART BEING HUNGRY AUTUMN CHANT NUIT BLANCHE THREE SONGS FROM THE LAMP AND THE BELL THE WOOD ROAD FEAST SOUVENIR SCRUB THE GOOSE-GIRL THE DRAGONFLY PART TWO DEPARTURE THE RETURN FROM TOWN A VISIT TO THE ASYLUM THE SPRING AND THE FALL THE CURSE KEEN THE BETROTHAL HUMORESQUE THE POND THE BALLAD OF THE HARP-WEAVER PART THREE NEVER MAY THE FRUIT BE PLUCKED THE CONCERT HYACINTH TO ONE WHO MIGHT HAVE BORNE A MESSAGE SIEGE THE CAIRN SPRING SONG MEMORY OF CAPE COD PART FOUR SONNETS IV-I WHEN YOU, THAT AT THIS MOMENT IV-II THAT LOVE AT LENGTH SHOULD FIND IV-III LOVE IS NOT BLIND IV-IV I KNOW I AM BUT SUMMER IV-V I PRAY YOU IF YOU LOVE ME IV-VI PITY ME NOT IV-VII SOMETIMES WHEN I AM WEARIED IV-VIII OH, OH, YOU WILL BE SORRY IV-IX HERE IS A WOUND IV-X I SHALL GO BACK AGAIN IV-XI SAY WHAT YOU WILL IV-XII WHAT'S THIS OF DEATH IV-XIII I SEE SO CLEARLY IV-XIV YOUR FACE IS LIKE A CHAMBER IV-XV THE LIGHT COMES BACK IV-XVI LORD ARCHER, DEATH IV-XVII LOVING YOU LESS THAN LIFE IV-XVIII BEING BORN A WOMAN IV-XIX WHAT LIPS MY LIPS HAVE KISSED IV-XX STILL WILL I HARVEST BEAUTY IV-XXI HOW HEALTHILY THEIR FEET IV-XXII EUCLID ALONE HAS LOOKED PART FIVE SONNETS FROM AN UNGRAFTED TREE V-I SO SHE CAME BACK V-II THE LAST WHITE SAWDUST V-III SHE FILLED HER ARMS WITH WOOD V-IV THE WHITE BARK WRITHED V-V THE WAGON STOPPED BEFORE THE HOUSE V-VI THEN CAUTIOUSLY SHE PUSHED V-VII ONE WAY THERE WAS V-VIII SHE LET THEM LEAVE THEIR JELLIES V-IX NOT OVER-KIND NOR OVER-QUICK V-X SHE HAD FORGOTTEN V-XI IT CAME INTO HER MIND V-XII TENDERLY, IN THOSE TIMES V-XIII FROM THE WAN DREAM V-XIV SHE HAD A HORROR V-XV THERE WAS UPON THE SILL V-XVI THE DOCTOR ASKED HER V-XVII GAZING UPON HIM NOW PART ONE MY HEART, BEING HUNGRY My heart, being hungry, feeds on food The fat of heart despise. Beauty where beauty never stood, And sweet where no sweet lies I gather to my querulous need, Having a growing heart to feed. It may be, when my heart is dull, Having attained its girth, I shall not find so beautiful The meagre shapes of earth, Nor linger in the rain to mark The smell of tansy through the dark. AUTUMN CHANT Now the autumn shudders In the rose's root. Far and wide the ladders Lean among the fruit. Now the autumn clambers Up the trellised frame, And the rose remembers The dust from which it came. Brighter than the blossom On the rose's bough Sits the wizened, orange, Bitter berry now; Beauty never slumbers; All is in her name; But the rose remembers NUIT BLANCHE I am a shepherd of those sheep That climb a wall by night, One after one, until I sleep, Or the black pane goes white. Because of which I cannot see A flock upon a hill, But doubts come tittering up to me That should by day be still. And childish griefs I have outgrown Into my eyes are thrust, Till my dull tears go dropping down Like lead into the dust. THREE SONGS FROM THE LAMP AND THE BELL I Oh, little rose tree, bloom! Summer is nearly over. The dahlias bleed, and the phlox is seed. Nothing's left of the clover. And the path of the poppy no one knows. I would blossom if I were a rose. Summer, for all your guile, Will brown in a week to Autumn, And launched leaves throw a shadow below Over the brook's clear bottom,-- And the chariest bud the year can boast Be brought to bloom by the chastening frost. II Beat me a crown of bluer metal; Fret it with stones of a foreign style: The heart grows weary after a little Of what it loved for a little while. Weave me a robe of richer fibre; Pattern its web with a rare device. Give away to the child of a neighbor This gold gown I was glad in twice. But buy me a singer to sing one song-- Song about nothing--song about sheep-- Over and over, all day long; III Rain comes down And hushes the town. And where is the voice that I heard crying? Snow settles Over the nettles. Where is the voice that I heard crying? Sand at last On the drifting mast. And where is the voice that I heard crying? Earth now On the busy brow. And where is the voice that I heard crying? THE WOOD ROAD If I were to walk this way Hand in hand with Grief, I should mark that maple-spray Coming into leaf. I should note how the old burrs Rot upon the ground. Yes, though Grief should know me hers While the world goes round, It could not in truth be said This was lost on me; A rock-maple showing red, Burrs beneath a tree. FEAST I drank at every vine. The last was like the first. I came upon no wine So wonderful as thirst. I gnawed at every root. I ate of every plant. I came upon no fruit So wonderful as want. Feed the grape and bean To the vintner and monger; I will lie down lean With my thirst and my hunger. SOUVENIR Just a rainy day or two In a windy tower, That was all I had of you-- Saving half an hour. Marred by greeting passing groups In a cinder walk, Near some naked blackberry hoops Dim with purple chalk. I remember three or four Things you said in spite, And an ugly coat you wore, Plaided black and white. Just a rainy day or two And a bitter word. Why do I remember you As a singing bird? SCRUB If I grow bitterly, Like a gnarled and stunted tree, Bearing harshly of my youth Puckered fruit that sears the mouth; If I make of my drawn boughs An inhospitable house, Out of which I never pry Towards the water and the sky, Under which I stand and hide And hear the day go by outside; It is that a wind too strong Bent my back when I was young, It is that I fear the rain Lest it blister me again. THE GOOSE-GIRL Spring rides no horses down the hill, But comes on foot, a goose-girl still. And all the loveliest things there be Come simply, so, it seems to me. If ever I said, in grief or pride, I tired of honest things, I lied; And should be cursed forevermore With Love in laces, like a whore, And neighbors cold, and friends unsteady, And Spring on horseback, like a lady! THE DRAGONFLY I wound myself in a white cocoon of singing, All day long in the brook's uneven bed, Measuring out my soul in a mucous thread; Dimly now to the brook's green bottom clinging, Men behold me, a worm spun-out and dead, Walled in an iron house of silky singing. Nevertheless at length, O reedy shallows, Not as a plodding nose to the slimy stem, But as a brazen wing with a spangled hem, Over the jewel-weed and the pink marshmallows, Free of these and making a song of them, I shall arise, and a song of the reedy shallows! PART TWO DEPARTURE It's little I care what path I take, And where it leads it's little I care; But out of this house, lest my heart break, I must go, and off somewhere. It's little I know what's in my heart, What's in my mind it's little I know, But there's that in me must up and start, And it's little I care where my feet go. I wish I could walk for a day and a night, And find me at dawn in a desolate place With never the rut of a road in sight, Nor the roof of a house, nor the eyes of a face. I wish I could walk till my blood should spout, And drop me, never to stir again, On a shore that is wide, for the tide is out, And the weedy rocks are bare to the rain. But dump or dock, where the path I take Brings up, it's little enough I care; And it's little I'd mind the fuss they'll make, Huddled dead in a ditch somewhere. _"Is something the matter, dear," she said,_ _"That you sit at your work so silently?"_ _"No, mother, no, 'twas a knot in my thread._ _There goes the kettle, I'll make the tea."_ THE RETURN FROM TOWN As I sat down by Saddle Stream To bathe my dusty feet there, A boy was standing on the bridge Any girl would meet there. As I went over Woody Knob And dipped into the hollow, A youth was coming up the hill Any maid would follow. Then in I turned at my own gate,-- And nothing to be sad for-- To such a man as any wife Would pass a pretty lad for. A VISIT TO THE ASYLUM Once from a big, big building, When I was small, small, The queer folk in the windows Would smile at me and call. And in the hard wee gardens Such pleasant men would hoe: "Sir, may we touch the little girl's hair?"-- It was so red, you know. They cut me colored asters With shears so sharp and neat, They brought me grapes and plums and pears And pretty cakes to eat. And out of all the windows, No matter where we went, The merriest eyes would follow me And make me compliment. There were a thousand windows, All latticed up and down. And up to all the windows, When we went back to town, The queer folk put their faces, As gentle as could be; "Come again, little girl!" they called, and I Called back, "You come see me!" THE SPRING AND THE FALL In the spring of the year, in the spring of the year, I walked the road beside my dear. The trees were black where the bark was wet. I see them yet, in the spring of the year. He broke me a bough of the blossoming peach That was out of the way and hard to reach. In the fall of the year, in the fall of the year, I walked the road beside my dear. The rooks went up with a raucous trill. I hear them still, in the fall of the year. He laughed at all I dared to praise, And broke my heart, in little ways. Year be springing or year be falling, The bark will drip and the birds be calling. There's much that's fine to see and hear In the spring of a year, in the fall of a year. 'Tis not love's going hurts my days, But that it went in little ways. THE CURSE Oh, lay my ashes on the wind That blows across the sea. And I shall meet a fisherman Out of Capri, And he will say, seeing me, "What a strange thing! Like a fish's scale or a Butterfly's wing." Oh, lay my ashes on the wind That blows away the fog. And I shall meet a farmer boy Leaping through the bog, And he will say, seeing me, "What a strange thing! Like a peat-ash or a Butterfly's wing." And I shall blow to your house And, sucked against the pane, See you take your sewing up And lay it down again. And you will say, seeing me, "What a strange thing! Like a plum petal or a Butterfly's wing." And none at all will know me That knew me well before. But I will settle at the root That climbs about your door, And fishermen and farmers May see me and forget, But I'll be a bitter berry In your brewing yet. KEEN Weep him dead and mourn as you may, Me, I sing as I must: Blessed be Death, that cuts in marble What would have sunk to dust! Blessed be Death, that took my love And buried him in the sea, Where never a lie nor a bitter word Will out of his mouth at me. This I have to hold to my heart, This to take by the hand: Sweet we were for a summer month As the sun on the dry white sand; Mild we were for a summer month As the wind from over the weirs. And blessed be Death, that hushed with salt The harsh and slovenly years! Who builds her a house with love for timber Builds her a house of foam. And I'd rather be bride to a lad gone down Than widow to one safe home. THE BETROTHAL Oh, come, my lad, or go, my lad, And love me if you like. I shall not hear the door shut Nor the knocker strike. Oh, bring me gifts or beg me gifts, And wed me if you will. I'd make a man a good wife, Sensible and still. And why should I be cold, my lad, And why should you repine, Because I love a dark head That never will be mine? I might as well be easing you As lie alone in bed And waste the night in wanting A cruel dark head. You might as well be calling yours What never will be his, And one of us be happy. There's few enough as is. HUMORESQUE "Heaven bless the babe!" they said. "What queer books she must have read!" (Love, by whom I was beguiled, Grant I may not bear a child.) "Little does she guess to-day What the world may be!" they say. (Snow, drift deep and cover Till the spring my murdered lover.) THE POND In this pond of placid water, Half a hundred years ago, So they say, a farmer's daughter, Jilted by her farmer beau, Waded out among the rushes, Scattering the blue dragon-flies; That dried stick the ripple washes Marks the spot, I should surmise. Think, so near the public highway, Well frequented even then! Can you not conceive the sly way,-- Hearing wheels or seeing men Passing on the road above,-- With a gesture feigned and silly, Ere she drowned herself for love, She would reach to pluck a lily? THE BALLAD OF THE HARP-WEAVER "Son," said my mother, When I was knee-high, "You've need of clothes to cover you, And not a rag have I. "There's nothing in the house To make a boy breeches, Nor shears to cut a cloth with Nor thread to take stitches. "There's nothing in the house But a loaf-end of rye, And a harp with a woman's head Nobody will buy," And she began to cry. That was in the early fall. When came the late fall, "Son," she said, "the sight of you Makes your mother's blood crawl,-- "Little skinny shoulder-blades Sticking through your clothes! And where you'll get a jacket from God above knows. "It's lucky for me, lad, Your daddy's in the ground, And can't see the way I let His son go around!" And she made a queer sound. That was in the late fall. When the winter came, I'd not a pair of breeches Nor a shirt to my name. I couldn't go to school, Or out of doors to play. And all the other little boys Passed our way. "Son," said my mother, "Come, climb into my lap, And I'll chafe your little bones While you take a nap." And, oh, but we were silly For half an hour or more, Me with my long legs Dragging on the floor, A-rock-rock-rocking To a mother-goose rhyme! Oh, but we were happy For half an hour's time! But there was I, a great boy, And what would folks say To hear my mother singing me To sleep all day, In such a daft way? Men say the winter Was bad that year; Fuel was scarce, And food was dear. A wind with a wolf's head Howled about our door, And we burned up the chairs And sat upon the floor. All that was left us Was a chair we couldn't break, And the harp with a woman's head Nobody would take, For song or pity's sake. The night before Christmas I cried with the cold, I cried myself to sleep Like a two-year-old. And in the deep night I felt my mother rise, And stare down upon me With love in her eyes. I saw my mother sitting On the one good chair, A light falling on her From I couldn't tell where, Looking nineteen, And not a day older, And the harp with a woman's head Leaned against her shoulder. Her thin fingers, moving In the thin, tall strings, Were weav-weav-weaving Wonderful things. Many bright threads, From where I couldn't see, Were running through the harp-strings Rapidly, And gold threads whistling Through my mother's hand. I saw the web grow, And the pattern expand. She wove a child's jacket, And when it was done She laid it on the floor And wove another one. She wove a red cloak So regal to see, "She's made it for a king's son," I said, "and not for me." But I knew it was for me. She wove a pair of breeches Quicker than that! She wove a pair of boots And a little cocked hat. She wove a pair of mittens, She wove a little blouse, She wove all night In the still, cold house. She sang as she worked, And the harp-strings spoke; Her voice never faltered, And the thread never broke. And when I awoke,-- There sat my mother With the harp against her shoulder, Looking nineteen And not a day older, A smile about her lips, And a light about her head, And her hands in the harp-strings Frozen dead. And piled up beside her And toppling to the skies, Were the clothes of a king's son, Just my size. PART THREE NEVER MAY THE FRUIT BE PLUCKED Never, never may the fruit be plucked from the bough And gathered into barrels. He that would eat of love must eat it where it hangs. Though the branches bend like reeds, Though the ripe fruit splash in the grass or wrinkle on the tree, He that would eat of love may bear away with him Only what his belly can hold, Nothing in the apron, Nothing in the pockets. Never, never may the fruit be gathered from the bough And harvested in barrels. The winter of love is a cellar of empty bins, In an orchard soft with rot. THE CONCERT No, I will go alone. I will come back when it's over. Yes, of course I love you. No, it will not be long. Why may you not come with me?-- You are too much my lover. You would put yourself Between me and song. If I go alone, Quiet and suavely clothed, My body will die in its chair, And over my head a flame, A mind that is twice my own, Will mark with icy mirth The wise advance and retreat Of armies without a country, Storming a nameless gate, Hurling terrible javelins down From the shouting walls of a singing town Where no women wait! Armies clean of love and hate, Marching lines of pitiless sound Climbing hills to the sun and hurling Golden spears to the ground! Up the lines a silver runner Bearing a banner whereon is scored The milk and steel of a bloodless wound Healed at length by the sword! You and I have nothing to do with music. We may not make of music a filigree frame, Within which you and I, Tenderly glad we came, Sit smiling, hand in hand. Come now, be content. I will come back to you, I swear I will; And you will know me still. I shall be only a little taller Than when I went. HYACINTH I am in love with him to whom a hyacinth is dearer Than I shall ever be dear. On nights when the field-mice are abroad he cannot sleep: He hears their narrow teeth at the bulbs of his hyacinths. But the gnawing at my heart he does not hear. TO ONE WHO MIGHT HAVE BORNE A MESSAGE Had I known that you were going I would have given you messages for her, Now two years dead, Whom I shall always love. As it is, should she entreat you how it goes with me, You must reply, as well as with most, you fancy; That I love easily, and pass the time. And she will not know how all day long between My life and me her shadow intervenes, A young thin girl, Wearing a white skirt and a purple sweater And a narrow pale blue ribbon about her hair. I used to say to her, "I love you Because your face is such a pretty color, No other reason." But it was not true. Oh, had I only known that you were going, I could have given you messages for her! SIEGE This I do, being mad: Gather baubles about me, Sit in a circle of toys, and all the time Death beating the door in. _White jade and an orange pitcher,_ _Hindu idol, Chinese god,--_ _Maybe next year, when I'm richer--_ _Carved beads and a lotus pod...._ And all this time Death beating the door in. THE CAIRN When I think of the little children learning In all the schools of the world, Learning in Danish, learning in Japanese That two and two are four, and where the rivers of the world Rise, and the names of the mountains and the principal cities, My heart breaks. Come up, children! Toss your little stones gaily On the great cairn of Knowledge! (Where lies what Euclid knew, a little gray stone, What Plato, what Pascal, what Galileo: Little gray stones, little gray stones on a cairn.) Tell me, what is the name of the highest mountain? Name me a crater of fire! a peak of snow! Name me the mountains on the moon! But the name of the mountain that you climb all day, Ask not your teacher that. SPRING SONG I know why the yellow forsythia Holds its breath and will not bloom, And the robin thrusts his beak in his wing. Want me to tell you? Think you can bear it? Cover your eyes with your hand and hear it. You know how cold the days are still? And everybody saying how late the Spring is? Well--cover your eyes with your hand--the thing is, There isn't going to be any Spring. _No parking here! No parking here! They said to Spring: No parking here!_ Spring came on as she always does, Laid her hand on the yellow forsythia,-- Little boys turned in their sleep and smiled, Dreaming of marbles, dreaming of agates; Little girls leapt from their beds to see Spring come by with her painted wagons, Colored wagons creaking with wonder-- Laid her hand on the robin's throat; When up comes you-know-who, my dear, You-know-who in a fine blue coat, And says to Spring: No parking here! _No parking here! No parking here! Move on! Move on! No parking here!_ Come walk with me in the city gardens. (Better keep an eye out for you-know-who) Did ever you see such a sickly showing?-- Middle of June, and nothing growing; The gardeners peer and scratch their heads And drop their sweat on the tulip-beds, But not a blade thrusts through. _Come, move on! Don't you know how to walk? No parking here! And no back-talk!_ Oh, well--hell, it's all for the best. She certainly made a lot of clutter, Dropping petals under the trees, Taking your mind off your bread and butter. Anyhow, it's nothing to me. I can remember, and so can you. (Though we'd better watch out for you-know-who, When we sit around remembering Spring). We shall hardly notice in a year or two. You can get accustomed to anything. MEMORY OF CAPE COD The wind in the ash-tree sounds like surf on the shore at Truro. I will shut my eyes . . . hush, be still with your silly bleating, sheep on Shillingstone Hill . . . _They said: Come along! They said: Leave your_ _pebbles on the sand and come along, it's long after_ _sunset!_ _The mosquitoes will be thick in the pine-woods along_ _by Long Nook, the wind's died down!_ _They said: Leave your pebbles on the sand, and your_ _shells, too, and come along, we'll find you another_ _beach like the beach at Truro._ Let me listen to wind in the ash ... it sounds like surf on the shore. PART FOUR SONNETS IV-I WHEN YOU, THAT AT THIS MOMENT When you, that at this moment are to me Dearer than words on paper, shall depart, And be no more the warder of my heart, Whereof again myself shall hold the key; And be no more--what now you seem to be-- The sun, from which all excellences start In a round nimbus, nor a broken dart Of moonlight, even, splintered on the sea; I shall remember only of this hour-- And weep somewhat, as now you see me weep-- The pathos of your love, that, like a flower, Fearful of death yet amorous of sleep, Droops for a moment and beholds, dismayed, The wind whereon its petals shall be laid. IV-II THAT LOVE AT LENGTH SHOULD FIND That Love at length should find me out and bring This fierce and trivial brow unto the dust, Is, after all, I must confess, but just; There is a subtle beauty in this thing, A wry perfection; wherefore now let sing All voices how into my throat is thrust, Unwelcome as Death's own, Love's bitter crust, All criers proclaim it, and all steeples ring. This being done, there let the matter rest. What more remains is neither here nor there. That you requite me not is plain to see; Myself your slave herein have I confessed: Thus far, indeed, the world may mock at me; But if I suffer, it is my own affair. IV-III LOVE IS NOT BLIND Love is not blind. I see with single eye Your ugliness and other women's grace. I know the imperfection of your face,-- The eyes too wide apart, the brow too high For beauty. Learned from earliest youth am I In loveliness, and cannot so erase Its letters from my mind, that I may trace You faultless, I must love until I die. More subtle is the sovereignty of love: So am I caught that when I say, "Not fair," 'Tis but as if I said, "Not here--not there-- Not risen--not writing letters." Well I know What is this beauty men are babbling of; I wonder only why they prize it so. IV-IV I KNOW I AM BUT SUMMER I know I am but summer to your heart, And not the full four seasons of the year; And you must welcome from another part Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear. No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing; And I have loved you all too long and well To carry still the high sweet breast of Spring. Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes, I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums, That you may hail anew the bird and rose When I come back to you, as summer comes. Else will you seek, at some not distant time, Even your summer in another clime. IV-V I PRAY YOU IF YOU LOVE ME I pray you if you love me, bear my joy A little while, or let me weep your tears; I, too, have seen the quavering Fate destroy Your destiny's bright spinning--the dull shears Meeting not neatly, chewing at the thread,-- Nor can you well be less aware how fine, How staunch as wire, and how unwarranted Endures the golden fortune that is mine. I pray you for this day at least, my dear, Fare by my side, that journey in the sun; Else must I turn me from the blossoming year And walk in grief the way that you have gone. Let us go forth together to the spring: IV-VI PITY ME NOT Pity me not because the light of day At close of day no longer walks the sky; Pity me not for beauties passed away From field and thicket as the year goes by; Pity me not the waning of the moon, Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea, Nor that a man's desire is hushed so soon, And you no longer look with love on me. This have I known always: Love is no more Than the wide blossom which the wind assails, Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore. Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales; Pity me that the heart is slow to learn IV-VII SOMETIMES WHEN I AM WEARIED Sometimes when I am wearied suddenly Of all the things that are the outward you, And my gaze wanders ere your tale is through To webs of my own weaving, or I see Abstractedly your hands about your knee And wonder why I love you as I do, Then I recall, "Yet _Sorrow_ thus he drew"; Then I consider, "_Pride_ thus painted he." Oh, friend, forget not, when you fain would note In me a beauty that was never mine, How first you knew me in a book I wrote, How first you loved me for a written line: So are we bound till broken is the throat Of Song, and Art no more leads out the Nine. IV-VIII OH, OH, YOU WILL BE SORRY Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word! Give back my book and take my kiss instead. Was it my enemy or my friend I heard, "What a big book for such a little head!" Come, I will show you now my newest hat, And you may watch me purse my mouth and prink! Oh, I shall love you still, and all of that. I never again shall tell you what I think. I shall be sweet and crafty, soft and sly; You will not catch me reading any more: I shall be called a wife to pattern by; And some day when you knock and push the door, Some sane day, not too bright and not too stormy, I shall be gone, and you may whistle for me. IV-IX HERE IS A WOUND Here is a wound that never will heal, I know, Being wrought not of a dearness and a death, But of a love turned ashes and the breath Gone out of beauty; never again will grow The grass on that scarred acre, though I sow Young seed there yearly and the sky bequeath Its friendly weathers down, far underneath Shall be such bitterness of an old woe. That April should be shattered by a gust, That August should be levelled by a rain, I can endure, and that the lifted dust Of man should settle to the earth again; But that a dream can die, will be a thrust Between my ribs forever of hot pain. IV-X I SHALL GO BACK AGAIN I shall go back again to the bleak shore And build a little shanty on the sand, In such a way that the extremest band Of brittle seaweed will escape my door But by a yard or two; and nevermore Shall I return to take you by the hand; I shall be gone to what I understand, And happier than I ever was before. The love that stood a moment in your eyes, The words that lay a moment on your tongue, Are one with all that in a moment dies, A little under-said and over-sung. But I shall find the sullen rocks and skies Unchanged from what they were when I was young. IV-XI SAY WHAT YOU WILL Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find The roots of last year's roses in my breast; I am as surely riper in my mind As if the fruit stood in the stalls confessed. Laugh at the unshed leaf, say what you will, Call me in all things what I was before, A flutterer in the wind, a woman still; I tell you I am what I was and more. My branches weigh me down, frost cleans the air, My sky is black with small birds bearing south; Say what you will, confuse me with fine care, Put by my word as but an April truth-- Autumn is no less on me that a rose Hugs the brown bough and sighs before it goes. IV-XII WHAT'S THIS OF DEATH What's this of death, from you who never will die? Think you the wrist that fashioned you in clay, The thumb that set the hollow just that way In your full throat and lidded the long eye So roundly from the forehead, will let lie Broken, forgotten, under foot some day Your unimpeachable body, and so slay The work he most had been remembered by? I tell you this: whatever of dust to dust Goes down, whatever of ashes may return To its essential self in its own season, Loveliness such as yours will not be lost, But, cast in bronze upon his very urn, Make known him Master, and for what good reason. IV-XIII I SEE SO CLEARLY I see so clearly now my similar years Repeat each other, shod in rusty black, Like one hack following another hack In meaningless procession, dry of tears, Driven empty, lest the noses sharp as shears Of gutter-urchins at a hearse's back Should sniff a man died friendless, and attack With silly scorn his deaf triumphant ears; I see so clearly how my life must run One year behind another year until At length these bones that leap into the sun Are lowered into the gravel, and lie still, I would at times the funeral were done And I abandoned on the ultimate hill. IV-XIV YOUR FACE IS LIKE A CHAMBER Your face is like a chamber where a king Dies of his wounds, untended and alone, Stifling with courteous gesture the crude moan That speaks too loud of mortal perishing, Rising on elbow in the dark to sing Some rhyme now out of season but well known In days when banners in his face were blown And every woman had a rose to fling. I know that through your eyes which look on me Who stand regarding you with pitiful breath, You see beyond the moment's pause, you see The sunny sky, the skimming bird beneath, And, fronting on your windows hopelessly, Black in the noon, the broad estates of Death. IV-XV THE LIGHT COMES BACK The light comes back with Columbine; she brings A touch of this, a little touch of that, Coloured confetti, and a favour hat, Patches, and powder, dolls that work by strings And moons that work by switches, all the things That please a sick man's fancy, and a flat Spry convalescent kiss, and a small pat Upon the pillow,--paper offerings. The light goes out with her; the shadows sprawl. Where she has left her fragrance like a shawl I lie alone and pluck the counterpane, Or on a dizzy elbow rise and hark-- And down like dominoes along the dark Her little silly laughter spills again! IV-XVI LORD ARCHER, DEATH Lord Archer, Death, whom sent you in your stead? What faltering prentice fumbled at your bow, That now should wander with the insanguine dead In whom forever the bright blood must flow? Or is it rather that impairing Time Renders yourself so random, or so dim? Or are you sick of shadows and would climb A while to light, a while detaining him? For know, this was no mortal youth, to be Of you confounded, but a heavenly guest, Assuming earthly garb for love of me, And hell's demure attire for love of jest: Bringing me asphodel and a dark feather, He will return, and we shall laugh together! IV-XVII LOVING YOU LESS THAN LIFE Loving you less than life, a little less Than bitter-sweet upon a broken wall Or brush-wood smoke in autumn, I confess I cannot swear I love you not at all. For there is that about you in this light-- A yellow darkness, sinister of rain-- Which sturdily recalls my stubborn sight To dwell on you, and dwell on you again. And I am made aware of many a week I shall consume, remembering in what way Your brown hair grows about your brow and cheek, And what divine absurdities you say: Till all the world, and I, and surely you, Will know I love you, whether or not I do. IV-XVIII I, BEING BORN A WOMAN I, being born a woman and distressed By all the needs and notions of my kind, Am urged by your propinquity to find Your person fair, and feel a certain zest To bear your body's weight upon my breast: So subtly is the fume of life designed, To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind, And leave me once again undone, possessed. Think not for this, however, the poor treason Of my stout blood against my staggering brain, I shall remember you with love, or season My scorn with pity,--let me make it plain: I find this frenzy insufficient reason For conversation when we meet again. IV-XIX WHAT LIPS MY LIPS HAVE KISSED What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning; but the rain Is full of ghosts to-night, that tap and sigh Upon the glass and listen for reply, And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain For unremembered lads that not again Will turn to me at midnight with a cry. Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree, Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, Yet knows its boughs more silent than before: I cannot say what loves have come and gone, I only know that summer sang in me A little while, that in me sings no more. IV-XX STILL WILL I HARVEST BEAUTY Still will I harvest beauty where it grows: In coloured fungus and the spotted fog Surprised on foods forgotten; in ditch and bog Filmed brilliant with irregular rainbows Of rust and oil, where half a city throws Its empty tins; and in some spongy log Whence headlong leaps the oozy emerald frog. . . . And a black pupil in the green scum shows. Her the inhabiter of divers places Surmising at all doors, I push them all. Oh, you that fearful of a creaking hinge Turn back forevermore with craven faces, I tell you Beauty bears an ultra fringe Unguessed of you upon her gossamer shawl! IV-XXI HOW HEALTHILY THEIR FEET How healthily their feet upon the floor Strike down! These are no spirits, but a band Of children, surely, leaping hand in hand, Into the air in groups of three and four, Wearing their silken rags as if they wore Leaves only and light grasses, or a strand Of black elusive seaweed oozing sand, And running hard as if along a shore. I know how lost forever, and at length How still these lovely tossing limbs shall lie, And the bright laughter and the panting breath; And yet, before such beauty and such strength, Once more, as always when the dance is high, I am rebuked that I believe in death. IV-XXII EUCLID ALONE HAS LOOKED Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare. Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace, And lay them prone upon the earth and cease To ponder on themselves, the while they stare At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release From dusty bondage into luminous air. O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day, When first the shaft into his vision shone Of light anatomized! Euclid alone Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they Who, though once only and then but far away, Have heard her massive sandal set on stone. PART FIVE SONNETS FROM AN UNGRAFTED TREE V-I SO SHE CAME BACK So SHE came back into his house again And watched beside his bed until he died, Loving him not at all. The winter rain Splashed in the painted butter-tub outside, Where once her red geraniums had stood, Where still their rotted stalks were to be seen; The thin log snapped; and she went out for wood, Bareheaded, running the few steps between The house and shed; there, from the sodden eaves Blown back and forth on ragged ends of twine, Saw the dejected creeping-jinny vine, (And one, big-aproned, blithe, with stiff blue sleeves Rolled to the shoulder that warm day in spring, Who planted seeds, musing ahead to their far blossoming). V-II THE LAST WHITE SAWDUST The last white sawdust on the floor was grown Gray as the first, so long had he been ill; The axe was nodding in the block; fresh-blown And foreign came the rain across the sill, But on the roof so steadily it drummed She could not think a time it might not be-- In hazy summer, when the hot air hummed With mowing, and locusts rising raspingly, When that small bird with iridescent wings And long incredible sudden silver tongue Had just flashed (and yet may be not!) among The dwarf nasturtiums--when no sagging springs Of shower were in the whole bright sky, somehow Upon this roof the rain would drum as it was drumming now. V-III SHE FILLED HER ARMS WITH WOOD She filled her arms with wood, and set her chin Forward, to hold the highest stick in place, No less afraid than she had always been Of spiders up her arms and on her face, But too impatient for a careful search Or a less heavy loading, from the heap Selecting hastily small sticks of birch, For their curled bark, that instantly will leap Into a blaze, nor thinking to return Some day, distracted, as of old, to find Smooth, heavy, round, green logs with a wet, gray rind Only, and knotty chunks that will not burn, (That day when dust is on the wood-box floor, And some old catalogue, and a brown, shriveled apple core). V-IV THE WHITE BARK WRITHED The white bark writhed and sputtered like a fish Upon the coals, exuding odorous smoke. She knelt and blew, in a surging desolate wish For comfort; and the sleeping ashes woke And scattered to the hearth, but no thin fire Broke suddenly, the wood was wet with rain. Then, softly stepping forth from her desire, (Being mindful of like passion hurled in vain Upon a similar task, in other days) She thrust her breath against the stubborn coal, Bringing to bear upon its hilt the whole Of her still body... there sprang a little blaze... A pack of hounds, the flame swept up the flue!-- And the blue night stood flattened against the window, staring through. V-V THE WAGON STOPPED BEFORE THE HOUSE A wagon stopped before the house; she heard The heavy oilskins of the grocer's man Slapping against his legs. Of a sudden whirred Her heart like a frightened partridge, and she ran And slid the bolt, leaving his entrance free; Then in the cellar way till he was gone Hid, breathless, praying that he might not see The chair sway she had laid her hand upon In passing. Sour and damp from that dark vault Arose to her the well-remembered chill; She saw the narrow wooden stairway still Plunging into the earth, and the thin salt Crusting the crocks; until she knew him far, So stood, with listening eyes upon the empty doughnut jar. V-VI THEN CAUTIOUSLY SHE PUSHED Then cautiously she pushed the cellar door And stepped into the kitchen--saw the track Of muddy rubber boots across the floor, The many paper parcels in a stack Upon the dresser; with accustomed care Removed the twine and put the wrappings by, Folded, and the bags flat, that with an air Of ease had been whipped open skillfully, To the gape of children. Treacherously dear And simple was the dull, familiar task. And so it was she came at length to ask: How came the soda there? The sugar here? Then the dream broke. Silent, she brought the mop, And forced the trade-slip on the nail that held his razor strop. V-VII ONE WAY THERE WAS One way there was of muting in the mind A little while the ever-clamorous care; And there was rapture, of a decent kind, In making mean and ugly objects fair: Soft-sooted kettle-bottoms, that had been Time after time set in above the fire, Faucets, and candlesticks, corroded green, To mine again from quarry; to attire The shelves in paper petticoats, and tack New oilcloth in the ringed-and-rotten's place, Polish the stove till you could see your face, And after nightfall rear an aching back In a changed kitchen, bright as a new pin, An advertisement, far too fine to cook a supper in. V-VIII SHE LET THEM LEAVE THEIR JELLIES She let them leave their jellies at the door And go away, reluctant, down the walk. She heard them talking as they passed before The blind, but could not quite make out their talk For noise in the room--the sudden heavy fall And roll of a charred log, and the roused shower Of snapping sparks; then sharply from the wall The unforgivable crowing of the hour. One instant set ajar, her quiet ear Was stormed and forced by the full rout of day: The rasp of a saw, the fussy cluck and bray Of hens, the wheeze of a pump, she needs must hear; She inescapably must endure to feel Across her teeth the grinding of a backing wagon wheel. V-IX NOT OVER-KIND NOR OVER-QUICK Not over-kind nor over-quick in study Nor skilled in sports nor beautiful was he, Who had come into her life when anybody Would have been welcome, so in need was she. They had become acquainted in this way: He flashed a mirror in her eyes at school; By which he was distinguished; from that day They went about together, as a rule. She told, in secret and with whispering, How he had flashed a mirror in her eyes; And as she told, it struck her with surprise That this was not so wonderful a thing. But what's the odds?--It's pretty nice to know You've got a friend to keep you company everywhere you go. V-X SHE HAD FORGOTTEN She had forgotten how the August night Was level as a lake beneath the moon, In which she swam a little, losing sight Of shore; and how the boy, that was at noon Simple enough, not different from the rest, Wore now a pleasant mystery as he went, Which seemed to her an honest enough test Whether she loved him, and she was content. So loud, so loud the million crickets' choir . . . So sweet the night, so long-drawn-out and late . . . And if the man were not her spirit's mate, Why was her body sluggish with desire? Stark on the open field the moonlight fell, But the oak tree's shadow was deep and black and secret as a well. V-XI IT CAME INTO HER MIND It came into her mind, seeing how the snow Was gone, and the brown grass exposed again, And clothes-pins, and an apron--long ago, In some white storm that sifted through the pane And sent her forth reluctantly at last To gather in, before the line gave way, Garments, board-stiff, that galloped on the blast Clashing like angel armies in a fray, An apron long ago in such a night Blown down and buried in the deepening drift, To lie till April thawed it back to sight, Forgotten, quaint and novel as a gift-- It struck her, as she pulled and pried and tore, That here was spring, and the whole year to be lived through once more. V-XII TENDERLY, IN THOSE TIMES Tenderly, in those times, as though she fed An ailing child--with sturdy propping up Of its small, feverish body in the bed, And steadying of its hands about the cup-- She gave her husband of her body's strength, Thinking of men, what helpless things they were, Until he turned and fell asleep at length, And stealthily stirred the night and spoke to her. Familiar, at such moments, like a friend, Whistled far off the long, mysterious train, And she could see in her mind's vision plain The magic World, where cities stood on end . . . Remote from where she lay--and yet--between, Save for something asleep beside her, only the window screen. V-XIII FROM THE WAN DREAM From the wan dream that was her waking day, Wherein she journeyed, borne along the ground Without her own volition in some way, Or fleeing, motionless, with feet fast bound, Or running silent through a silent house Sharply remembered from an earlier dream, Upstairs, down other stairs, fearful to rouse, Regarding him, the wide and empty scream Of a strange sleeper on a malignant bed, And all the time not certain if it were Herself so doing or some one like to her, From this wan dream that was her daily bread, Sometimes, at night, incredulous, she would wake-- A child, blowing bubbles that the chairs and carpet did not break! V-XIV SHE HAD A HORROR She had a horror he would die at night. And sometimes when the light began to fade She could not keep from noticing how white The birches looked--and then she would be afraid, Even with a lamp, to go about the house And lock the windows; and as night wore on Toward morning, if a dog howled, or a mouse Squeaked in the floor, long after it was gone Her flesh would sit awry on her. By day She would forget somewhat, and it would seem A silly thing to go with just this dream And get a neighbor to come at night and stay. But it would strike her sometimes, making the tea: _She had kept that kettle boiling all night long, for_ _company._ V-XV THERE WAS UPON THE SILL There was upon the sill a pencil mark, Vital with shadow when the sun stood still At noon, but now, because the day was dark, It was a pencil mark upon the sill. And the mute clock, maintaining ever the same Dead moment, blank and vacant of itself, Was a pink shepherdess, a picture frame, A shell marked Souvenir, there on the shelf. Whence it occurred to her that _he_ might be, The mainspring being broken in his mind, A clock himself, if one were so inclined, That stood at twenty minutes after three-- The reason being for this, it might be said, That things in death were neither clocks nor people, but only dead. V-XVI THE DOCTOR ASKED HER The doctor asked her what she wanted done With him, that could not lie there many days. And she was shocked to see how life goes on Even after death, in irritating ways; And mused how if he had not died at all 'Twould have been easier--then there need not be The stiff disorder of a funeral Everywhere, and the hideous industry, And crowds of people calling her by name And questioning her, she'd never seen before, But only watching by his bed once more And sitting silent if a knocking came . . . She said at length, feeling the doctor's eyes, "I don't know what you do exactly when a person dies." V-XVII GAZING UPON HIM NOW Gazing upon him now, severe and dead, It seemed a curious thing that she had lain Beside him many a night in that cold bed, And that had been which would not be again. From his desirous body the great heat Was gone at last, it seemed, and the taut nerves Loosened forever. Formally the sheet Set forth for her to-day those heavy curves And lengths familiar as the bedroom door. She was as one that enters, sly, and proud, To where her husband speaks before a crowd, And sees a man she never saw before-- The man who eats his victuals at her side, Small, and absurd, and hers: for once, not hers, unclassified. THE END 
595	----	THE SISTERS' TRAGEDY WITH OTHER POEMS, LYRICAL AND DRAMATIC. BY THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH CONTENTS THE SISTERS' TRAGEDY THE LAST CAESAR IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY ALEC YEATON'S SON AT THE FUNERAL OF A MINOR POET BATUSCHKA ACT V TENNYSON THE SHIPMAN'S TALE "I VEX ME NOT WITH BROODING ON THE YEARS" MONODY ON THE DEATH OF WENDELL PHILLIPS INTERLUDES ECHO-SONG A MOOD GUILIELMUS REX "PILLARED ARCH AND SCULPTURED TOWER THRENODY SESTET A TOUCH OF NATURE MEMORY "I'LL NOT CONFER WITH SORROW" A DEDICATION NO SONGS IN WINTER "LIKE CRUSOE, WALKING BY THE LONELY STRAND THE LETTER SARGENT'S PORTRAIT OF EDWIN BOOTH AT "THE PLAYERS" PAULINE PAVLOVNA BAGATELLE. CORYDON: A PASTORAL AT A READING THE MENU AN ELECTIVE COURSE L'EAU DORMANTE THALIA PALINODE A PETITION THE SISTERS' TRAGEDY A. D. 1670 AGLAE, a widow MURIEL, her unmarried sister. IT happened once, in that brave land that lies For half the twelvemonth wrapt in sombre skies, Two sisters loved one man. He being dead, Grief loosed the lips of her he had not wed, And all the passion that through heavy years Had masked in smiles unmasked itself in tears. No purer love may mortals know than this, The hidden love that guards another's bliss. High in a turret's westward-facing room, Whose painted window held the sunset's bloom, The two together grieving, each to each Unveiled her soul with sobs and broken speech. Both still were young, in life's rich summer yet; And one was dark, with tints of violet In hair and eyes, and one was blond as she Who rose--a second daybreak--from the sea, Gold-tressed and azure-eyed. In that lone place, Like dusk and dawn, they sat there face to face. She spoke the first whose strangely silvering hair No wreath had worn, nor widow's weed might wear, And told her blameless love, and knew no shame-- Her holy love that, like a vestal flame Beside the sacred body of some queen Within a guarded crypt had burned unseen From weary year to year. And she who heard Smiled proudly through her tears and said no word, But, drawing closer, on the troubled brow Laid one long kiss, and that was words enow! MURIEL. Be still, my heart! Grown patient with thine ache, Thou shouldst be dumb, yet needs must speak, or break. The world is empty now that he is gone. AGLAE. Ay, sweetheart! MURIEL. None was like him, no, not one. From other men he stood apart, alone In honor spotless as unfallen snow. Nothing all evil was it his to know; His charity still found some germ, some spark Of light in natures that seemed wholly dark. He read men's souls; the lowly and the high Moved on the self-same level in his eye. Gracious to all, to none subservient, Without offence he spake the word he meant-- His word no trick of tact or courtly art, But the white flowering of the noble heart. Careless he was of much the world counts gain, Careless of self, too simple to be vain, Yet strung so finely that for conscience-sake He would have gone like Cranmer to the stake. I saw--how could I help but love? And you-- AGLAE. At this perfection did I worship too . . . 'Twas this that stabbed me. Heed not what I say! I meant it not, my wits are gone astray, With all that is and has been. No, I lie-- Had he been less perfection, happier I! MURIEL. Strange words and wild! 'Tis the distracted mind Breathes them, not you, and I no meaning find. AGLAE. Yet 'twere as plain as writing on a scroll Had you but eyes to read within my soul.-- How a grief hidden feeds on its own mood, Poisons the healthful currents of the blood With bitterness, and turns the heart to stone! I think, in truth, 'twere better to make moan, And so be done with it. This many a year, Sweetheart, have I laughed lightly and made cheer, Pierced through with sorrow! Then the widowed one With sorrowfullest eyes beneath the sun, Faltered, irresolute, and bending low Her head, half whispered, Dear, how could you know? What masks are faces!--yours, unread by me These seven long summers; mine, so placidly Shielding my woe! No tremble of the lip, No cheek's quick pallor let our secret slip! Mere players we, and she that played the queen, Now in her homespun, looks how poor and mean! How shall I say it, how find words to tell What thing it was for me made earth a hell That else had been my heaven! 'Twould blanch your cheek Were I to speak it. Nay, but I will speak, Since like two souls at compt we seem to stand, Where nothing may be hidden. Hold my hand, But look not at me! Noble 'twas, and meet, To hide your heart, nor fling it at his feet To lie despised there. Thus saved you our pride And that white honor for which earls have died. You were not all unhappy, loving so! I with a difference wore my weight of woe. My lord was he. It was my cruel lot, My hell, to love him--for he loved me not! Then came a silence. Suddenly like death The truth flashed on them, and each held her breath-- A flash of light whereby they both were slain, She that was loved and she that loved in vain! THE LAST CAESAR 1851-1870 I Now there was one who came in later days To play at Emperor: in the dead of night Stole crown and sceptre, and stood forth to light In sudden purple. The dawn's straggling rays Showed Paris fettered, murmuring in amaze, With red hands at her throat--a piteous sight. Then the new Caesar, stricken with affright At his own daring, shrunk from public gaze In the Elysee, and had lost the day But that around him flocked his birds of prey, Sharp-beaked, voracious, hungry for the deed. 'Twixt hope and fear behold great Caesar hang! Meanwhile, methinks, a ghostly laughter rang Through the rotunda of the Invalides. II What if the boulevards, at set of sun, Reddened, but not with sunset's kindly glow? What if from quai and square the murmured woe Swept heavenward, pleadingly? The prize was won, A kingling made and Liberty undone. No Emperor, this, like him awhile ago, But his Name's shadow; that one struck the blow Himself, and sighted the street-sweeping gun! This was a man of tortuous heart and brain, So warped he knew not his own point of view-- The master of a dark, mysterious smile. And there he plotted, by the storied Seine And in the fairy gardens of St. Cloud, The Sphinx that puzzled Europe, for awhile. III I see him as men saw him once--a face Of true Napoleon pallor; round the eyes The wrinkled care; mustache spread pinion-wise, Pointing his smile with odd sardonic grace As wearily he turns him in his place, And bends before the hoarse Parisian cries-- Then vanishes, with glitter of gold-lace And trumpets blaring to the patient skies. Not thus he vanished later! On his path The Furies waited for the hour and man, Foreknowing that they waited not in vain. Then fell the day, O day of dreadful wrath! Bow down in shame, O crimson-girt Sedan! Weep, fair Alsace! weep, loveliest Lorraine! So mused I, sitting underneath the trees In that old garden of the Tuileries, Watching the dust of twilight sifting down Through chestnut boughs just toucht with autumn's brown-- Not twilight yet, but that illusive bloom Which holds before the deep-etched shadows come; For still the garden stood in golden mist, Still, like a river of molten amethyst, The Seine slipt through its spans of fretted stone, And, near the grille that once fenced in a throne, The fountains still unbraided to the day The unsubstantial silver of their spray. A spot to dream in, love in, waste one's hours! Temples and palaces, and gilded towers, And fairy terraces!--and yet, and yet Here in her woe came Marie Antoinette, Came sweet Corday, Du Barry with shrill cry, Not learning from her betters how to die! Here, while the Nations watched with bated breath, Was held the saturnalia of Red Death! For where that slim Egyptian shaft uplifts Its point to catch the dawn's and sunset's drifts Of various gold, the busy Headsman stood. . . . Place de la Concorde--no, the Place of Blood! And all so peaceful now! One cannot bring Imagination to accept the thing. Lies, all of it! some dreamer's wild romance-- High-hearted, witty, laughter-loving France! In whose brain was it that the legend grew Of Maenads shrieking in this avenue, Of watch-fires burning, Famine standing guard, Of long-speared Uhlans in that palace-yard! What ruder sound this soft air ever smote Than a bird's twitter or a bugle's note? What darker crimson ever splashed these walks Than that of rose-leaves dropping from the stalks? And yet--what means that charred and broken wall, That sculptured marble, splintered, like to fall, Looming among the trees there? . . . And you say This happened, as it were, but yesterday? And here the Commune stretched a barricade, And there the final desperate stand was made? Such things have been? How all things change and fade! How little lasts in this brave world below! Love dies; hate cools; the Caesars come and go; Gaunt Hunter fattens, and the weak grow strong. Even Republics are not here for long! Ah, who can tell what hour may bring the doom, The lighted torch, the tocsin's heavy boom! IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY "The Southern Transept, hardly known by any other name but Poet's Corner." DEAN STANLEY. TREAD softly here; the sacredest of tombs Are those that hold your Poets. Kings and queens Are facile accidents of Time and Chance. Chance sets them on the heights, they climb not there! But he who from the darkling mass of men Is on the wing of heavenly thought upborne To finer ether, and becomes a voice For all the voiceless, God anointed him: His name shall be a star, his grave a shrine. Tread softly here, in silent reverence tread. Beneath those marble cenotaphs and urns Lies richer dust than ever nature hid Packed in the mountain's adamantine heart, Or slyly wrapt in unsuspected sand-- The dross men toil for, and oft stain the soul. How vain and all ignoble seems that greed To him who stands in this dim claustral air With these most sacred ashes at his feet! This dust was Chaucer, Spenser, Dryden this-- The spark that once illumed it lingers still. O ever-hallowed spot of English earth! If the unleashed and happy spirit of man Have option to revisit our dull globe, What august Shades at midnight here convene In the miraculous sessions of the moon, When the great pulse of London faintly throbs, And one by one the stars in heaven pale! ALEC YEATON'S SON GLOUCESTER, AUGUST, 1720 The wind it wailed, the wind it moaned, And the white caps flecked the sea; "An' I would to God," the skipper groaned, "I had not my boy with me!" Snug in the stern-sheets, little John Laughed as the scud swept by; But the skipper's sunburnt cheek grew wan As he watched the wicked sky. "Would he were at his mother's side!" And the skipper's eyes were dim. "Good Lord in heaven, if ill betide, What would become of him! "For me--my muscles are as steel, For me let hap what may; I might make shift upon the keel Until the break o' day. "But he, he is so weak and small, So young, scarce learned to stand-- O pitying Father of us all, I trust him in Thy hand! "For Thou, who markest from on high A sparrow's fall--each one!-- Surely, O Lord, thou'lt have an eye On Alec Yeaton's son!" Then, helm hard-port; right straight he sailed Towards the headland light: The wind it moaned, the wind it wailed, And black, black fell the night. Then burst a storm to make one quail Though housed from winds and waves-- They who could tell about that gale Must rise from watery graves! Sudden it came, as sudden went; Ere half the night was sped, The winds were hushed, the waves were spent, And the stars shone overhead. Now, as the morning mist grew thin, The folk on Gloucester shore Saw a little figure floating in Secure, on a broken oar! Up rose the cry, "A wreck! a wreck! Pull, mates, and waste no breath!"-- They knew it, though 'twas but a speck Upon the edge of death! Long did they marvel in the town At God his strange decree, That let the stalwart skipper drown And the little child go free! AT THE FUNERAL OF A MINOR POET [One of the Bearers soliloquizes:] . . . Room in your heart for him, O Mother Earth, Who loved each flower and leaf that made you fair, And sang your praise in verses manifold And delicate, with here and there a line From end to end in blossom like a bough The May breathes on, so rich it was. Some thought The workmanship more costly than the thing Moulded or carved, as in those ornaments Found at Mycaene. And yet Nature's self Works in this wise; upon a blade of grass, Or what small note she lends the woodland thrush, Lavishing endless patience. He was born Artist, not artisan, which some few saw And many dreamed not. As he wrote no odes When Croesus wedded or Maecenas died, And gave no breath to civic feasts and shows, He missed the glare that gilds more facile men-- A twilight poet, groping quite alone, Belated, in a sphere where every nest Is emptied of its music and its wings. Not great his gift; yet we can poorly spare Even his slight perfection in an age Of limping triolets and tame rondeaux. He had at least ideals, though unreached, And heard, far off, immortal harmonies, Such as fall coldly on our ear to-day. The mighty Zolaistic Movement now Engrosses us--a miasmatic breath Blown from the slums. We paint life as it is, The hideous side of it, with careful pains, Making a god of the dull Commonplace. For have we not the old gods overthrown And set up strangest idols? We could clip Imagination's wing and kill delight, Our sole art being to leave nothing out That renders art offensive. Not for us Madonnas leaning from their starry thrones Ineffable, nor any heaven-wrought dream Of sculptor or of poet; we prefer Such nightmare visions as in morbid brains Take shape and substance, thoughts that taint the air And make all life unlovely. Will it last? Beauty alone endures from age to age, From age to age endures, handmaid of God. Poets who walk with her on earth go hence Bearing a talisman. You bury one, With his hushed music, in some Potter's Field; The snows and rains blot out his very name, As he from life seems blotted: through Time's glass Slip the invisible and magic sands That mark the century, then falls a day The world is suddenly conscious of a flower, Imperishable, ever to be prized, Sprung from the mould of a forgotten grave. 'Tis said the seeds wrapt up among the balms And hieroglyphics of Egyptian kings Hold strange vitality, and, planted, grow After the lapse of thrice a thousand years. Some day, perchance, some unregarded note Of our poor friend here--some sweet minor chord That failed to lure our more accustomed ear-- May witch the fancy of an unborn age. Who knows, since seeds have such tenacity? Meanwhile he's dead, with scantiest laurel won And little of our Nineteenth Century gold. So, take him, Earth, and this his mortal part, With that shrewd alchemy thou hast, transmute To flower and leaf in thine unending Springs! BATUSCHKA.<1> From yonder gilded minaret Beside the steel-blue Neva set, I faintly catch, from time to time, The sweet, aerial midnight chime-- "God save the Tsar!" Above the ravelins and the moats Of the white citadel it floats; And men in dungeons far beneath Listen, and pray, and gnash their teeth-- "God save the Tsar!" The soft reiterations sweep Across the horror of their sleep, <1> "Little Father," or "Dear Little Father," a term of endearment applied to the Tsar in Russian folk-song. As if some daemon in his glee Were mocking at their misery-- "God save the Tsar!" In his Red Palace over there, Wakeful, he needs must hear the prayer. How can it drown the broken cries Wrung from his children's agonies?-- "God save the Tsar!" Father they called him from of old-- Batuschka! . . . How his heart is cold! Wait till a million scourged men Rise in their awful might, and then-- God save the Tsar! ACT V [Midnight.] First, two white arms that held him very close, And ever closer as he drew him back Reluctantly, the loose gold-colored hair A thousand delicate fibres reaching out Still to detain him; then some twenty steps Of iron staircase winding round and down, And ending in a narrow gallery hung With Gobelin tapestries--Andromeda Rescued by Perseus, and the sleek Diana With her nymphs bathing; at the farther end A door that gave upon a starlit grove Of citron and clipt palm-trees; then a path As bleached as moonlight, with the shadow of leaves Stamped black upon it; next a vine-clad length Of solid masonry; and last of all A Gothic archway packed with night, and then-- A sudden gleaming dagger through his heart. TENNYSON I Shakespeare and Milton--what third blazoned name Shall lips of after-ages link to these? His who, beside the wild encircling seas, Was England's voice, her voice with one acclaim, For threescore years; whose word of praise was fame, Whose scorn gave pause to man's iniquities. II What strain was his in that Crimean war? A bugle-call in battle; a low breath, Plaintive and sweet, above the fields of death! So year by year the music rolled afar, From Euxine wastes to flowery Kandahar, Bearing the laurel or the cypress wreath. III Others shall have their little space of time, Their proper niche and bust, then fade away Into the darkness, poets of a day; But thou, O builder of enduring rhyme, Thou shalt not pass! Thy fame in every clime On earth shall live where Saxon speech has sway. IV Waft me this verse across the winter sea, Through light and dark, through mist and blinding sleet, O winter winds, and lay it at his feet; Though the poor gift betray my poverty, At his feet lay it: it may chance that he Will find no gift, where reverence is, unmeet. THE SHIPMAN'S TALE Listen, my masters! I speak naught but truth. From dawn to dawn they drifted on and on, Not knowing whither nor to what dark end. Now the North froze them, now the hot South scorched. Some called to God, and found great comfort so; Some gnashed their teeth with curses, and some laughed An empty laughter, seeing they yet lived, So sweet was breath between their foolish lips. Day after day the same relentless sun, Night after night the same unpitying stars. At intervals fierce lightnings tore the clouds, Showing vast hollow spaces, and the sleet Hissed, and the torrents of the sky were loosed. From time to time a hand relaxed its grip, And some pale wretch slid down into the dark With stifled moan, and transient horror seized The rest who waited, knowing what must be. At every turn strange shapes reached up and clutched The whirling wreck, held on awhile, and then Slipt back into that blackness whence they came. Ah, hapless folk, to be so tost and torn, So racked by hunger, fever, fire, and wave, And swept at last into the nameless void-- Frail girls, strong men, and mothers with their babes! And was none saved? My masters, not a soul! O shipman, woful, woful is thy tale! Our hearts are heavy and our eyes are dimmed. What ship is this that suffered such ill fate? What ship, my masters? Know ye not?--The World! "I VEX ME NOT WITH BROODING ON THE YEARS" I vex me not with brooding on the years That were ere I drew breath: why should I then Distrust the darkness that may fall again When life is done? Perchance in other spheres-- Dead planets--I once tasted mortal tears, And walked as now among a throng of men, Pondering things that lay beyond my ken, Questioning death, and solacing my fears. Ofttimes indeed strange sense have I of this, Vague memories that hold me with a spell, Touches of unseen lips upon my brow, Breathing some incommunicable bliss! In years foregone, O Soul, was all not well? Still lovelier life awaits thee. Fear not thou! MONODY ON THE DEATH OF WENDELL PHILLIPS I One by one they go Into the unknown dark-- Star-lit brows of the brave, Voices that drew men's souls. Rich is the land, O Death! Can give you dead like our dead!-- Such as he from whose hand The magic web of romance Slipt, and the art was lost! Such as he who erewhile-- The last of the Titan brood-- With his thunder the Senate shook; Or he who, beside the Charles, Untoucht of envy or hate, Tranced the world with his song; Or that other, that gray-eyed seer Who in pastoral Concord ways With Plato and Hafiz walked. II Not of these was the man Whose wraith, through the mists of night, Through the shuddering wintry stars, Has passed to eternal morn. Fit were the moan of the sea And the clashing of cloud on cloud For the passing of that soul! Ever he faced the storm! No weaver of rare romance, No patient framer of laws, No maker of wondrous rhyme, No bookman wrapt in his dream. His was the voice that rang In the fight like a bugle-call, And yet could be tender and low As when, on a night in June, The hushed wind sobs in the pines. His was the eye that flashed With a sabre's azure gleam, Pointing to heights unwon! III Not for him were these days Of clerkly and sluggish calm-- To the petrel the swooping gale! Austere he seemed, but the hearts Of all men beat in his breast; No fetter but galled his wrist, No wrong that was not his own. What if those eloquent lips Curled with the old-time scorn? What if in needless hours His quick hand closed on the hilt? 'Twas the smoke from the well-won fields That clouded the veteran's eyes. A fighter this to the end! Ah, if in coming times Some giant evil arise, And Honor falter and pale, His were a name to conjure with! God send his like again! INTERLUDES ECHO-SONG I Who can say where Echo dwells? In some mountain-cave, methinks, Where the white owl sits and blinks; Or in deep sequestered dells, Where the foxglove hangs its bells, Echo dwells. Echo! Echo! II Phantom of the crystal Air, Daughter of sweet Mystery! Here is one has need of thee; Lead him to thy secret lair, Myrtle brings he for thy hair-- Hear his prayer, Echo! Echo! III Echo, lift thy drowsy head, And repeat each charmed word Thou must needs have overheard Yestere'en ere, rosy-red, Daphne down the valley fled-- Words unsaid, Echo! Echo! IV Breathe the vows she since denies! She hath broken every vow; What she would she would not now-- Thou didst hear her perjuries. Whisper, whilst I shut my eyes, Those sweet lies, Echo! Echo! A MOOD A blight, a gloom, I know not what, has crept upon my gladness-- Some vague, remote ancestral touch of sorrow, or of madness; A fear that is not fear, a pain that has not pain's insistence; A sense of longing, or of loss, in some foregone existence; A subtle hurt that never pen has writ nor tongue has spoken-- Such hurt perchance as Nature feels when a blossomed bough is broken. GUILIELMUS REX The folk who lived in Shakespeare's day And saw that gentle figure pass By London Bridge, his frequent way-- They little knew what man he was. The pointed beard, the courteous mien, The equal port to high and low, All this they saw or might have seen-- But not the light behind the brow! The doublet's modest gray or brown, The slender sword-hilt's plain device, What sign had these for prince or clown? Few turned, or none, to scan him twice. Yet 'twas the king of England's kings! The rest with all their pomps and trains Are mouldered, half-remembered things-- 'Tis he alone that lives and reigns! "PILLARED ARCH AND SCULPTURED TOWER" Pillared arch and sculptured tower Of Ilium have had their hour; The dust of many a king is blown On the winds from zone to zone; Many a warrior sleeps unknown. Time and Death hold each in thrall, Yet is Love the lord of all; Still does Helen's beauty stir Because a poet sang of her! THRENODY I Upon your hearse this flower I lay. Brief be your sleep! You shall be known When lesser men have had their day: Fame blossoms where true seed is sown, Or soon or late, let Time wrong what it may. II Unvext by any dream of fame, You smiled, and bade the world pass by: But I--I turned, and saw a name Shaping itself against the sky-- White star that rose amid the battle's flame! III Brief be your sleep, for I would see Your laurels--ah, how trivial now To him must earthly laurel be Who wears the amaranth on his brow! How vain the voices of mortality! SESTET SENT TO A FRIEND WITH A VOLUME OF TENNYSON Wouldst know the clash of knightly steel on steel? Or list the throstle singing loud and clear? Or walk at twilight by some haunted mere In Surrey; or in throbbing London feel Life's pulse at highest--hark, the minster's peal! . . . Turn but the page, that various world is here! A TOUCH OF NATURE When first the crocus thrusts its point of gold Up through the still snow-drifted garden mould, And folded green things in dim woods unclose Their crinkled spears, a sudden tremor goes Into my veins and makes me kith and kin To every wild-born thing that thrills and blows. Sitting beside this crumbling sea-coal fire, Here in the city's ceaseless roar and din, Far from the brambly paths I used to know, Far from the rustling brooks that slip and shine Where the Neponset alders take their glow, I share the tremulous sense of bud and briar And inarticulate ardors of the vine. MEMORY My mind lets go a thousand things, Like dates of wars and deaths of kings, And yet recalls the very hour-- 'Twas noon by yonder village tower, And on the last blue noon in May-- The wind came briskly up this way, Crisping the brook beside the road; Then, pausing here, set down its load Of pine-scents, and shook listlessly Two petals from that wild-rose tree. "I'LL NOT CONFER WITH SORROW" I'll not confer with Sorrow Till to-morrow; But Joy shall have her way This very day. Ho, eglantine and cresses For her tresses!-- Let Care, the beggar, wait Outside the gate. Tears if you will--but after Mirth and laughter; Then, folded hands on breast And endless rest. A DEDICATION Take these rhymes into thy grace, Since they are of thy begetting, Lady, that dost make each place Where thou art a jewel's setting. Some such glamour lend this Book: Let it be thy poet's wages That henceforth thy gracious look Lies reflected on its pages. NO SONGS IN WINTER The sky is gray as gray may be, There is no bird upon the bough, There is no leaf on vine or tree. In the Neponset marshes now Willow-stems, rosy in the wind, Shiver with hidden sense of snow. So too 'tis winter in my mind, No light-winged fancy comes and stays: A season churlish and unkind. Slow creep the hours, slow creep the days, The black ink crusts upon the pen-- Just wait till bluebirds, wrens, and jays And golden orioles come again! "LIKE CRUSOE, WALKING BY THE LONELY STRAND" Like Crusoe, walking by the lonely strand And seeing a human footprint on the sand, Have I this day been startled, finding here, Set in brown mould and delicately clear, Spring's footprint--the first crocus of the year! O sweet invasion! Farewell solitude! Soon shall wild creatures of the field and wood Flock from all sides with much ado and stir, And make of me most willing prisoner! THE LETTER EDWARD ROWLAND SILL, DIED FEBRUARY 27, 1887 I held his letter in my hand, And even while I read The lightning flashed across the land The word that he was dead. How strange it seemed! His living voice Was speaking from the page Those courteous phrases, tersely choice, Light-hearted, witty, sage. I wondered what it was that died! The man himself was here, His modesty, his scholar's pride, His soul serene and clear. These neither death nor time shall dim, Still this sad thing must be-- Henceforth I may not speak to him, Though he can speak to me! SARGENT'S PORTRAIT OF EDWIN BOOTH AT "THE PLAYERS" That face which no man ever saw And from his memory banished quite, With eyes in which are Hamlet's awe And Cardinal Richelieu's subtle light, Looks from this frame. A master's hand Has set the master-player here, In the fair temple that he planned Not for himself. To us most dear This image of him! "It was thus He looked; such pallor touched his cheek; With that same grace he greeted us-- Nay, 'tis the man, could it but speak!" Sad words that shall be said some day-- Far fall the day! O cruel Time, Whose breath sweeps mortal things away, Spare long this image of his prime, That others standing in the place Where, save as ghosts, we come no more, May know what sweet majestic face The gentle Prince of Players wore! PAULINE PAVLOVNA SCENE: St. Petersburg. Period: the present time. A ballroom in the winter palace of the Prince--. The ladies in character costumes and masks. The gentlemen in official dress and unmasked, with the exception of six tall figures in scarlet kaftans, who are treated with marked distinction as they move here and there among the promenaders. Quadrille music throughout the dialogue. Count SERGIUS PAVLOVICH PANSHINE, who has just arrived, is standing anxiously in the doorway of an antechamber with his eyes fixed upon a lady in the costume of a maid of honor in the time of Catherine II. The lady presently disengages herself from the crowd, and passes near Count PANSHINE, who impulsively takes her by the hand and leads her across the threshold of the inner apartment, which is unoccupied. HE. Pauline! SHE. You knew me? HE. How could I have failed? A mask may hide your features, not your soul. There is an air about you like the air That folds a star. A blind man knows the night, And feels the constellations. No coarse sense Of eye or ear had made you plain to me. Through these I had not found you; for your eyes, As blue as violets of our Novgorod, Look black behind your mask there, and your voice-- I had not known that either. My heart said, "Pauline Pavlovna." SHE. Ah! Your heart said that? You trust your heart, then! 'Tis a serious risk!-- How is it you and others wear no mask? HE. The Emperor's orders. SHE. Is the Emperor here? I have not seen him. HE. He is one of the six In scarlet kaftans and all masked alike. Watch--you will note how every one bows down Before those figures, thinking each by chance May be the Tsar; yet none knows which is he. Even his counterparts are left in doubt. Unhappy Russia! No serf ever wore Such chains as gall our Emperor these sad days. He dare trust no man. SHE. All men are so false. HE. Spare one, Pauline Pavlovna. SHE. No; all, all! I think there is no truth left in the world, In man or woman. Once were noble souls.-- Count Sergius, is Nastasia here to-night? HE. Ah! then you know! I thought to tell you first. Not here, beneath these hundred curious eyes, In all this glare of light; but in some place Where I could throw me at your feet and weep. In what shape came the story to your ear? Decked in the teller's colors, I'll be sworn; The truth, but in the livery of a lie, And so must wrong me. Only this is true: The Tsar, because I risked my wretched life To shield a life as wretched as my own, Bestows upon me, as supreme reward-- O irony!--the hand of this poor girl. Says, HERE, I HAVE THE PEARL OF PEARLS FOR YOU, SUCH AS WAS NEVER PLUCKED FROM OUT THE DEEP BY INDIAN DIVER, FOR A SULTAN'S CROWN. YOUR JOY'S DECREED, and stabs me with a smile. SHE. And she--she loves you? HE. I know not, indeed. Likes me, perhaps. What matters it?--HER love! The guardian, Sidor Yurievich, consents, And she consents. No love in it at all, A mere caprice, a young girl's spring-tide dream. Sick of her ear-rings, weary of her mare, She'll have a lover--something ready-made, Or improvised between two cups of tea-- A lover by imperial ukase! Fate said her word--I chanced to be the man! If that grenade the crazy student threw Had not spared me, as well as spared the Tsar, All this would not have happened. I'd have been A hero, but quite safe from her romance. She takes me for a hero--think of that! Now by our holy Lady of Kazan, When I have finished pitying myself, I'll pity her. SHE. Oh no; begin with her; She needs it most. HE. At her door lies the blame, Whatever falls. She, with a single word, With half a tear, had stopt it at the first, This cruel juggling with poor human hearts. SHE. The Tsar commanded it--you said the Tsar. HE. The Tsar does what she wills--God fathoms why. Were she his mistress, now! but there's no snow Whiter within the bosom of a cloud, Nor colder either. She is very haughty, For all her fragile air of gentleness; With something vital in her, like those flowers That on our desolate steppes outlast the year. Resembles you in some things. It was that First made us friends. I do her justice, see! For we were friends in that smooth surface way We Russians have imported out of France. Alas! from what a blue and tranquil heaven This bolt fell on me! After these two years, My suit with Ossip Leminoff at end, The old wrong righted, the estates restored, And my promotion, with the ink not dry! Those fairies which neglected me at birth Seemed now to lavish all good gifts on me-- Gold roubles, office, sudden dearest friends. The whole world smiled; then, as I stooped to taste The sweetest cup, freak dashed it from my lip. This very night--just think, this very night-- I planned to come and beg of you the alms I dared not ask for in my poverty. I thought me poor then. How stript am I now! There's not a ragged mendicant one meets Along the Nevski Prospekt but has leave To tell his love, and I have not that right! Pauline Pavlovna, why do you stand there Stark as a statue, with no word to say? SHE. Because this thing has frozen up my heart. I think that there is something killed in me, A dream that would have mocked all other bliss. What shall I say? What would you have me say? HE. If it be possible, the word of words! SHE, VERY SLOWLY. Well, then--I love you. I may tell you so This once, . . . and then forever hold my peace. We cannot stay here longer unobserved. No--do not touch me! but stand further off, And seem to laugh, as if we jested--eyes, Eyes everywhere! Now turn your face away . . . I love you. HE. With such music in my ears I would death found me. It were sweet to die Listening! You love me--prove it. SHE. Prove it--how? I prove it saying it. How else? HE. Pauline, I have three things to choose from; you shall choose: This marriage, or Siberia, or France. The first means hell; the second, purgatory; The third--with you--were nothing less than heaven! SHE, STARTING. How dared you even dream it! HE. I was mad. This business has touched me in the brain. Have patience! the calamity's so new. (Pauses.) There is a fourth way; but that gate is shut To brave men who hold life a thing of God. SHE. Yourself spoke there; the rest was not of you. HE. Oh, lift me to your level! So I'm safe. What's to be done? SHE. There must be some path out. Perhaps the Emperor-- HE. Not a ray of hope! His mind is set on this with that insistence Which seems to seize on all match-making folk. The fancy bites them, and they straight go mad. SHE. Your father's friend, the Metropolitan-- A word from him . . . HE. Alas, he too is bitten! Gray-haired, gray-hearted, worldly wise, he sees This marriage makes me the Tsar's protege, And opens every door to preference. SHE. Think while I think. There surely is some key Unlocks the labyrinth, could we but find it. Nastasia! HE. What! beg life of her? Not I. SHE. Beg love. She is a woman, young, perhaps Untouched as yet of this too poisonous air. Were she told all, would she not pity us? For if she love you, as I think she must, Would not some generous impulse stir in her, Some latent, unsuspected spark illume? How love thrills even commonest girl-clay, Ennobling it an instant, if no more! You said that she is proud; then touch her pride, And turn her into marble with the touch. But yet the gentler passion is the stronger. Go to her, tell her, in some tenderest phrase That will not hurt too much--ah, but 'twill hurt!-- Just how your happiness lies in her hand To make or mar for all time; hint, not say, Your heart is gone from you, and you may find-- HE. A casemate in St. Peter and St. Paul For, say, a month; then some Siberian town. Not this way lies escape. At my first word That sluggish Tartar blood would turn to fire In every vein. SHE. How blindly you read her, Or any woman! Yes, I know. I grant How small we often seem in our small world Of trivial cares and narrow precedents-- Lacking that wide horizon stretched for men-- Capricious, spiteful, frightened at a mouse; But when it comes to suffering mortal pangs, The weakest of us measures pulse with you. HE. Yes, you, not she. If she were at your height! But there's no martyr wrapt in HER rose flesh. There should have been; for Nature gave you both The self-same purple for your eyes and hair, The self-same Southern music to your lips, Fashioned you both, as 'twere, in the same mould, Yet failed to put the soul in one of you! I know her wilful--her light head quite turned In this court atmosphere of flatteries; A Moscow beauty, petted and spoiled there, And since spoiled here; as soft as swan's down now, With words like honey melting from the comb, But being crossed, vindictive, cruel, cold. I fancy her, between two rosy smiles, Saying, "Poor fellow, in the Nertchinsk mines!" That is the sum of her. SHE. You know her not. Count Sergius Pavlovich, you said no mask Could hide the soul, yet how you have mistaken The soul these two months--and the face to-night! [Removes her mask.] HE. You!--it was YOU! SHE. Count Sergius Pavlovich, Go find Pauline Pavlovna--she is here-- And tell her that the Tsar has set you free. [She goes out hurriedly, replacing her mask.] BAGATELLE CORYDON A PASTORAL SCENE: A roadside in Arcady SHEPHERD. Good sir, have you seen pass this way A mischief straight from market-day? You'd know her at a glance, I think; Her eyes are blue, her lips are pink; She has a way of looking back Over her shoulder, and, alack! Who gets that look one time, good sir, Has naught to do but follow her. PILGRIM. I have not seen this maid, methinks, Though she that passed had lips like pinks. SHEPHERD. Or like two strawberries made one By some sly trick of dew and sun. PILGRIM. A poet! SHEPHERD. Nay, a simple swain That tends his flock on yonder plain, Naught else, I swear by book and bell. But she that passed--you marked her well. Was she not smooth as any be That dwell herein in Arcady? PILGRIM. Her skin was as the satin bark Of birches. SHEPHERD. Light or dark? PILGRIM. Quite dark. SHEPHERD. Then 'twas not she. PILGRIM. The peach's side That's next the sun is not so dyed As was her cheek. Her hair hung down Like summer twilight falling brown; And when the breeze swept by, I wist Her face was in a sombre mist. SHEPHERD. No, that is not the maid I seek. HER hair lies gold against the cheek; Her yellow tresses take the morn Like silken tassels of the corn. And yet--brown locks are far from bad. PILGRIM. Now I bethink me, this one had A figure like the willow-tree Which, slight and supple, wondrously Inclines to droop with pensive grace, And still retains its proper place; A foot so arched and very small The marvel was she walked at all; Her hand--in sooth I lack for words-- Her hand, five slender snow-white birds. Her voice--though she but said "God-speed"-- Was melody blown through a reed; The girl Pan changed into a pipe Had not a note so full and ripe. And then her eye--my lad, her eye! Discreet, inviting, candid, shy, An outward ice, an inward fire, And lashes to the heart's desire-- Soft fringes blacker than the sloe. SHEPHERD, THOUGHTFULLY. Good sir, which way did THIS one go? . . . . . . . . PILGRIM, SOLUS. So, he is off! The silly youth Knoweth not Love in sober sooth. He loves--thus lads at first are blind-- No woman, only Womankind. I needs must laugh, for, by the Mass, No maid at all did this way pass! AT A READING The spare Professor, grave and bald, Began his paper. It was called, I think, "A Brief Historic Glance At Russia, Germany, and France." A glance, but to my best belief 'Twas almost anything but brief-- A wide survey, in which the earth Was seen before mankind had birth; Strange monsters basked them in the sun, Behemoth, armored glyptodon, And in the dawn's unpractised ray The transient dodo winged its way; Then, by degrees, through silt and slough, We reached Berlin--I don't know how. The good Professor's monotone Had turned me into senseless stone Instanter, but that near me sat Hypatia in her new spring hat, Blue-eyed, intent, with lips whose bloom Lighted the heavy-curtained room. Hypatia--ah, what lovely things Are fashioned out of eighteen springs! At first, in sums of this amount, The eighteen winters do not count. Just as my eyes were growing dim With heaviness, I saw that slim, Erect, elastic figure there, Like a pond-lily taking air. She looked so fresh, so wise, so neat, So altogether crisp and sweet, I quite forgot what Bismarck said, And why the Emperor shook his head, And how it was Von Moltke's frown Cost France another frontier town. The only facts I took away From the Professor's theme that day Were these: a forehead broad and low, Such as the antique sculptures show; A chin to Greek perfection true; Eyes of Astarte's tender blue; A high complexion without fleck Or flaw, and curls about her neck. THE MENU I beg you come to-night and dine. A welcome waits you, and sound wine-- The Roederer chilly to a charm, As Juno's breath the claret warm, The sherry of an ancient brand. No Persian pomp, you understand-- A soup, a fish, two meats, and then A salad fit for aldermen (When aldermen, alas, the days! Were really worth their mayonnaise); A dish of grapes whose clusters won Their bronze in Carolinian sun; Next, cheese--for you the Neufchatel, A bit of Cheshire likes me well; Cafe au lait or coffee black, With Kirsch or Kummel or Cognac (The German band in Irving Place By this time purple in the face); Cigars and pipes. These being through, Friends shall drop in, a very few-- Shakespeare and Milton, and no more. When these are guests I bolt the door, With Not at Home to any one Excepting Alfred Tennyson. AN ELECTIVE COURSE LINES FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF A HARVARD UNDERGRADUATE The bloom that lies on Fanny's cheek Is all my Latin, all my Greek; The only sciences I know Are frowns that gloom and smiles that glow; Siberia and Italy Lie in her sweet geography; No scholarship have I but such As teaches me to love her much. Why should I strive to read the skies, Who know the midnight of her eyes? Why should I go so very far To learn what heavenly bodies are! Not Berenice's starry hair With Fanny's tresses can compare; Not Venus on a cloudless night, Enslaving Science with her light, Ever reveals so much as when SHE stares and droops her lids again. If Nature's secrets are forbidden To mortals, she may keep them hidden. AEons and aeons we progressed And did not let that break our rest; Little we cared if Mars o'erhead Were or were not inhabited; Without the aid of Saturn's rings Fair girls were wived in those far springs; Warm lips met ours and conquered us Or ere thou wert, Copernicus! Graybeards, who seek to bridge the chasm 'Twixt man to-day and protoplasm, Who theorize and probe and gape, And finally evolve an ape-- Yours is a harmless sort of cult, If you are pleased with the result. Some folks admit, with cynic grace, That you have rather proved your case. These dogmatists are so severe! Enough for me that Fanny's here, Enough that, having long survived Pre-Eveic forms, she HAS arrived-- An illustration the completest Of the survival of the sweetest. Linnaeus, avaunt! I only care To know what flower she wants to wear. I leave it to the addle-pated To guess how pinks originated, As if it mattered! The chief thing Is that we have them in the Spring, And Fanny likes them. When they come, I straightway send and purchase some. The Origin of Plants--go to! Their proper end _I_ have in view. O loveliest book that ever man Looked into since the world began Is Woman! As I turn those pages, As fresh as in the primal ages, As day by day I scan, perplext, The ever subtly changing text, I feel that I am slowly growing To think no other work worth knowing. And in my copy--there is none So perfect as the one I own-- I find no thing set down but such As teaches me to love it much. L'EAU DORMANTE Curled up and sitting on her feet, Within the window's deep embrasure, Is Lydia; and across the street, A lad, with eyes of roguish azure, Watches her buried in her book. In vain he tries to win a look, And from the trellis over there Blows sundry kisses through the air, Which miss the mark, and fall unseen, Uncared for. Lydia is thirteen. My lad, if you, without abuse, Will take advice from one who's wiser, And put his wisdom to more use Than ever yet did your adviser; If you will let, as none will do, Another's heartbreak serve for two, You'll have a care, some four years hence, How you lounge there by yonder fence And blow those kisses through that screen-- For Lydia will be seventeen. THALIA A MIDDLE-AGED LYRICAL POET IS SUPPOSED TO BE TAKING FINAL LEAVE OF THE MUSE OF COMEDY. SHE HAS BROUGHT HIM HIS HAT AND GLOVES, AND IS ABSTRACTEDLY PICKING A THREAD OF GOLD HAIR FROM HIS COAT SLEEVE AS HE BEGINS TO SPEAK: I say it under the rose-- oh, thanks!--yes, under the laurel, We part lovers, not foes; we are not going to quarrel. We have too long been friends on foot and in gilded coaches, Now that the whole thing ends, to spoil our kiss with reproaches. I leave you; my soul is wrung; I pause, look back from the portal-- Ah, I no more am young, and you, child, you are immortal! Mine is the glacier's way, yours is the blossom's weather-- When were December and May known to be happy together? Before my kisses grow tame, before my moodiness grieve you, While yet my heart is flame, and I all lover, I leave you. So, in the coming time, when you count the rich years over, Think of me in my prime, and not as a white-haired lover, Fretful, pierced with regret, the wraith of a dead Desire Thrumming a cracked spinet by a slowly dying fire. When, at last, I am cold-- years hence, if the gods so will it-- Say, "He was true as gold," and wear a rose in your fillet! Others, tender as I, will come and sue for caresses, Woo you, win you, and die-- mind you, a rose in your tresses! Some Melpomene woo, some hold Clio the nearest; You, sweet Comedy--you were ever sweetest and dearest! Nay, it is time to go-- when writing your tragic sister Say to that child of woe how sorry I was I missed her. Really, I cannot stay, though "parting is such sweet sorrow" . . . Perhaps I will, on my way down-town, look in to-morrow! PALINODE Who is Lydia, pray, and who Is Hypatia? Softly, dear, Let me breathe it in your ear-- They are you, and only you. And those other nameless two Walking in Arcadian air-- She that was so very fair? She that had the twilight hair?-- They were you, dear, only you. If I speak of night or day, Grace of fern or bloom of grape, Hanging cloud or fountain spray, Gem or star or glistening dew, Or of mythologic shape, Psyche, Pyrrha, Daphne, say-- I mean you, dear, you, just you. A PETITION To spring belongs the violet, and the blown Spice of the roses let the summer own. Grant me this favor, Muse--all else withhold-- That I may not write verse when I am old. And yet I pray you, Muse, delay the time! Be not too ready to deny me rhyme; And when the hour strikes, as it must, dear Muse, I beg you very gently break the news. 
596	----	RIVERS TO THE SEA BY SARA TEASDALE To ERNST CONTENTS PART I SPRING NIGHT THE FLIGHT NEW LOVE AND OLD THE LOOK SPRING THE LIGHTED WINDOW THE KISS SWANS THE OLD MAID FROM THE WOOLWORTH TOWER AT NIGHT THE YEARS PEACE APRIL COME MOODS APRIL SONG MAY DAY CROWNED TO A CASTILIAN SONG BROADWAY A WINTER BLUEJAY IN A RESTAURANT JOY IN A RAILROAD STATION IN THE TRAIN TO ONE AWAY SONG DEEP IN THE NIGHT THE INDIA WHARF I SHALL NOT CARE DESERT POOLS LONGING PITY AFTER PARTING ENOUGH ALCHEMY FEBRUARY MORNING MAY NIGHT DUSK IN JUNE LOVE-FREE SUMMER NIGHT, RIVERSIDE IN A SUBWAY STATION AFTER LOVE DOORYARD ROSES A PRAYER PART II INDIAN SUMMER THE SEA WIND THE CLOUD THE POOR HOUSE NEW YEAR'S DAWN-BROADWAY THE STAR DOCTORS THE INN OF EARTH IN THE CARPENTER'S SHOP THE CARPENTER'S SON THE MOTHER OF A POET IN MEMORIAM F. O. S TWILIGHT SWALLOW FLIGHT THOUGHTS TO DICK, ON HIS SIXTH BIRTHDAY TO ROSE THE FOUNTAIN THE ROSE DREAMS "I AM NOT YOURS" PIERROT'S SONG NIGHT IN ARIZONA DUSK IN WAR TIME SPRING IN WAR TIME WHILE I MAY DEBT FROM THE NORTH THE LIGHTS OF NEW YORK SEA LONGING THE RIVER LEAVES THE ANSWER PART III OVER THE ROOFS A CRY CHANCE IMMORTAL AFTER DEATH TESTAMENT GIFTS PART IV FROM THE SEA VIGNETTES OVERSEAS PART V SAPPHO ---------------------------------- I SPRING NIGHT THE park is filled with night and fog, The veils are drawn about the world, The drowsy lights along the paths Are dim and pearled. Gold and gleaming the empty streets, Gold and gleaming the misty lake, The mirrored lights like sunken swords, Glimmer and shake. Oh, is it not enough to be Here with this beauty over me? My throat should ache with praise, and I Should kneel in joy beneath the sky. Oh, beauty are you not enough? Why am I crying after love With youth, a singing voice and eyes To take earth's wonder with surprise? Why have I put off my pride, Why am I unsatisfied, I for whom the pensive night Binds her cloudy hair with light, I for whom all beauty burns Like incense in a million urns? Oh, beauty, are you not enough? Why am I crying after love? THE FLIGHT LOOK back with longing eyes and know that I will follow, Lift me up in your love as a light wind lifts a swallow, Let our flight be far in sun or windy rain-- BUT WHAT IF I HEARD MY FIRST LOVE CALLING ME AGAIN? Hold me on your heart as the brave sea holds the foam, Take me far away to the hills that hide your home; Peace shall thatch the roof and love shall latch the door-- BUT WHAT IF I HEARD MY FIRST LOVE CALLING ME ONCE MORE? NEW LOVE AND OLD IN my heart the old love Struggled with the new; It was ghostly waking All night thru. Dear things, kind things, That my old love said, Ranged themselves reproachfully Round my bed. But I could not heed them, For I seemed to see The eyes of my new love Fixed on me. Old love, old love, How can I be true? Shall I be faithless to myself Or to you? THE LOOK STREPHON kissed me in the spring, Robin in the fall, But Colin only looked at me And never kissed at all. Strephon's kiss was lost in jest, Robin's lost in play, But the kiss in Colin's eyes Haunts me night and day. SPRING IN Central Park the lovers sit, On every hilly path they stroll, Each thinks his love is infinite, And crowns his soul. But we are cynical and wise, We walk a careful foot apart, You make a little joke that tries To hide your heart. Give over, we have laughed enough; Oh dearest and most foolish friend, Why do you wage a war with love To lose your battle in the end? THE LIGHTED WINDOW HE SAID: "In the winter dusk When the pavements were gleaming with rain, I walked thru a dingy street Hurried, harassed, Thinking of all my problems that never are solved. Suddenly out of the mist, a flaring gas-jet Shone from a huddled shop. I saw thru the bleary window A mass of playthings: False-faces hung on strings, Valentines, paper and tinsel, Tops of scarlet and green, Candy, marbles, jacks-- A confusion of color Pathetically gaudy and cheap. All of my boyhood Rushed back. Once more these things were treasures Wildly desired. With covetous eyes I looked again at the marbles, The precious agates, the pee-wees, the chinies-- Then I passed on. In the winter dusk, The pavements were gleaming with rain; There in the lighted window I left my boyhood." THE KISS BEFORE YOU kissed me only winds of heaven Had kissed me, and the tenderness of rain-- Now you have come, how can I care for kisses Like theirs again? I sought the sea, she sent her winds to meet me, They surged about me singing of the south-- I turned my head away to keep still holy Your kiss upon my mouth. And swift sweet rains of shining April weather Found not my lips where living kisses are; I bowed my head lest they put out my glory As rain puts out a star. I am my love's and he is mine forever, Sealed with a seal and safe forevermore-- Think you that I could let a beggar enter Where a king stood before? SWANS NIGHT is over the park, and a few brave stars Look on the lights that link it with chains of gold, The lake bears up their reflection in broken bars That seem too heavy for tremulous water to hold. We watch the swans that sleep in a shadowy place, And now and again one wakes and uplifts its head; How still you are--your gaze is on my face-- We watch the swans and never a word is said. THE OLD MAID I SAW her in a Broadway car, The woman I might grow to be; I felt my lover look at her And then turn suddenly to me. Her hair was dull and drew no light And yet its color was as mine; Her eyes were strangely like my eyes Tho' love had never made them shine. Her body was a thing grown thin, Hungry for love that never came; Her soul was frozen in the dark Unwarmed forever by love's flame. I felt my lover look at her And then turn suddenly to me,-- His eyes were magic to defy The woman I shall never be. FROM THE WOOLWORTH TOWER VIVID with love, eager for greater beauty Out of the night we come Into the corridor, brilliant and warm. A metal door slides open, And the lift receives us. Swiftly, with sharp unswerving flight The car shoots upward, And the air, swirling and angry, Howls like a hundred devils. Past the maze of trim bronze doors, Steadily we ascend. I cling to you Conscious of the chasm under us, And a terrible whirring deafens my ears. The flight is ended. We pass thru a door leading onto the ledge-- Wind, night and space Oh terrible height Why have we sought you? Oh bitter wind with icy invisible wings Why do you beat us? Why would you bear us away? We look thru the miles of air, The cold blue miles between us and the city, Over the edge of eternity we look On all the lights, A thousand times more numerous than the stars; Oh lines and loops of light in unwound chains That mark for miles and miles The vast black mazy cobweb of the streets; Near us clusters and splashes of living gold That change far off to bluish steel Where the fragile lights on the Jersey shore Tremble like drops of wind-stirred dew. The strident noises of the city Floating up to us Are hallowed into whispers. Ferries cross thru the darkness Weaving a golden thread into the night, Their whistles weird shadows of sound. We feel the millions of humanity beneath us,-- The warm millions, moving under the roofs, Consumed by their own desires; Preparing food, Sobbing alone in a garret, With burning eyes bending over a needle, Aimlessly reading the evening paper, Dancing in the naked light of the caf&eacute;, Laying out the dead, Bringing a child to birth-- The sorrow, the torpor, the bitterness, the frail joy Come up to us Like a cold fog wrapping us round. Oh in a hundred years Not one of these blood-warm bodies But will be worthless as clay. The anguish, the torpor, the toil Will have passed to other millions Consumed by the same desires. Ages will come and go, Darkness will blot the lights And the tower will be laid on the earth. The sea will remain Black and unchanging, The stars will look down Brilliant and unconcerned. Beloved, Tho' sorrow, futility, defeat Surround us, They cannot bear us down. Here on the abyss of eternity Love has crowned us For a moment Victors. AT NIGHT WE are apart; the city grows quiet between us, She hushes herself, for midnight makes heavy her eyes, The tangle of traffic is ended, the cars are empty, Five streets divide us, and on them the moonlight lies. Oh are you asleep, or lying awake, my lover? Open your dreams to my love and your heart to my words, I send you my thoughts-the air between us is laden, My thoughts fly in at your window, a flock of wild birds. THE YEARS TO-NIGHT I close my eyes and see A strange procession passing me-- The years before I saw your face Go by me with a wistful grace; They pass, the sensitive shy years, As one who strives to dance, half blind with tears. The years went by and never knew That each one brought me nearer you; Their path was narrow and apart And yet it led me to your heart-- Oh sensitive shy years, oh lonely years, That strove to sing with voices drowned in tears. PEACE PEACE flows into me AS the tide to the pool by the shore; It is mine forevermore, It ebbs not back like the sea. I am the pool of blue That worships the vivid sky; My hopes were heaven-high, They are all fulfilled in you. I am the pool of gold When sunset burns and dies,-- You are my deepening skies, Give me your stars to hold. APRIL THE roofs are shining from the rain, The sparrows twitter as they fly, And with a windy April grace The little clouds go by. Yet the back-yards are bare and brown With only one unchanging tree-- I could not be so sure of Spring Save that it sings in me. COME COME, when the pale moon like a petal Floats in the pearly dusk of spring, Come with arms outstretched to take me, Come with lips pursed up to cling. Come, for life is a frail moth flying Caught in the web of the years that pass, And soon we two, so warm and eager Will be as the gray stones in the grass. MOODS I AM the still rain falling, Too tired for singing mirth-- Oh, be the green fields calling, Oh, be for me the earth! I am the brown bird pining To leave the nest and fly-- Oh, be the fresh cloud shining, Oh, be for me the sky! APRIL SONG WILLOW in your April gown Delicate and gleaming, Do you mind in years gone by All my dreaming? Spring was like a call to me That I could not answer, I was chained to loneliness, I, the dancer. Willow, twinkling in the sun, Still your leaves and hear me, I can answer spring at last, Love is near me! MAY DAY THE shining line of motors, The swaying motor-bus, The prancing dancing horses Are passing by for us. The sunlight on the steeple, The toys we stop to see, The smiling passing people Are all for you and me. "I love you and I love you!"-- "And oh, I love you, too!"-- "All of the flower girl's lilies Were only grown for you!" Fifth Avenue and April And love and lack of care-- The world is mad with music Too beautiful to bear. CROWNED I WEAR a crown invisible and clear, And go my lifted royal way apart Since you have crowned me softly in your heart With love that is half ardent, half austere; And as a queen disguised might pass anear The bitter crowd that barters in a mart, Veiling her pride while tears of pity start, I hide my glory thru a jealous fear. My crown shall stay a sweet and secret thing Kept pure with prayer at evensong and morn, And when you come to take it from my head, I shall not weep, nor will a word be said, But I shall kneel before you, oh my king, And bind my brow forever with a thorn. TO A CASTILIAN SONG WE held the book together timidly, Whose antique music in an alien tongue Once rose among the dew-drenched vines that hung Beneath a high Castilian balcony. I felt the lute strings' ancient ecstasy, And while he read, my love-filled heart was stung, And throbbed, as where an ardent bird has clung The branches tremble on a blossomed tree. Oh lady for whose sake the song was made, Laid long ago in some still cypress shade, Divided from the man who longed for thee, Here in a land whose name he never heard, His song brought love as April brings the bird, And not a breath divides my love from me! BROADWAY THIS is the quiet hour; the theaters Have gathered in their crowds, and steadily The million lights blaze on for few to see, Robbing the sky of stars that should be hers. A woman waits with bag and shabby furs, A somber man drifts by, and only we Pass up the street unwearied, warm and free, For over us the olden magic stirs. Beneath the liquid splendor of the lights We live a little ere the charm is spent; This night is ours, of all the golden nights, The pavement an enchanted palace floor, And Youth the player on the viol, who sent A strain of music thru an open door. A WINTER BLUEJAY CRISPLY the bright snow whispered, Crunching beneath our feet; Behind us as we walked along the parkway, Our shadows danced, Fantastic shapes in vivid blue. Across the lake the skaters Flew to and fro, With sharp turns weaving A frail invisible net. In ecstasy the earth Drank the silver sunlight; In ecstasy the skaters Drank the wine of speed; In ecstasy we laughed Drinking the wine of love. Had not the music of our joy Sounded its highest note? But no, For suddenly, with lifted eyes you said, "Oh look!" There, on the black bough of a snow flecked maple, Fearless and gay as our love, A bluejay cocked his crest! Oh who can tell the range of joy Or set the bounds of beauty? IN A RESTAURANT THE darkened street was muffled with the snow, The falling flakes had made your shoulders white, And when we found a shelter from the night Its glamor fell upon us like a blow. The clash of dishes and the viol and bow Mingled beneath the fever of the light. The heat was full of savors, and the bright Laughter of women lured the wine to flow. A little child ate nothing while she sat Watching a woman at a table there Lean to a kiss beneath a drooping hat. The hour went by, we rose and turned to go, The somber street received us from the glare, And once more on your shoulders fell the snow. JOY I AM wild, I will sing to the trees, I will sing to the stars in the sky, I love, I am loved, he is mine, Now at last I can die! I am sandaled with wind and with flame, I have heart-fire and singing to give, I can tread on the grass or the stars, Now at last I can live! IN A RAILROAD STATION WE stood in the shrill electric light, Dumb and sick in the whirling din We who had all of love to say And a single second to say it in. "Good-by!" "Good-by!"--you turned to go, I felt the train's slow heavy start, You thought to see me cry, but oh My tears were hidden in my heart. IN THE TRAIN FIELDS beneath a quilt of snow From which the rocks and stubble peep, And in the west a shy white star That shivers as it wakes from sleep. The restless rumble of the train, The drowsy people in the car, Steel blue twilight in the world, And in my heart a timid star. TO ONE AWAY I HEARD a cry in the night, A thousand miles it came, Sharp as a flash of light, My name, my name! It was your voice I heard, You waked and loved me so-- I send you back this word, I know, I know! SONG Love me with your whole heart Or give no love to me, Half-love is a poor thing, Neither bond nor free. You must love me gladly Soul and body too, Or else find a new love, And good-by to you. DEEP IN THE NIGHT DEEP in the night the cry of a swallow, Under the stars he flew, Keen as pain was his call to follow Over the world to you. Love in my heart is a cry forever Lost as the swallow's flight, Seeking for you and never, never Stilled by the stars at night. THE INDIA WHARF HERE in the velvet stillness The wide sown fields fall to the faint horizon, Sleeping in starlight. . . . A year ago we walked in the jangling city Together . . . . forgetful. One by one we crossed the avenues, Rivers of light, roaring in tumult, And came to the narrow, knotted streets. Thru the tense crowd We went aloof, ecstatic, walking in wonder, Unconscious of our motion. Forever the foreign people with dark, deep-seeing eyes Passed us and passed. Lights and foreign words and foreign faces, I forgot them all; I only felt alive, defiant of all death and sorrow, Sure and elated. That was the gift you gave me. . . . The streets grew still more tangled, And led at last to water black and glossy, Flecked here and there with lights, faint and far off. There on a shabby building was a sign "The India Wharf " . . . and we turned back. I always felt we could have taken ship And crossed the bright green seas To dreaming cities set on sacred streams And palaces Of ivory and scarlet. I SHALL NOT CARE WHEN I am dead and over me bright April Shakes out her rain-drenched hair, Tho' you should lean above me broken-hearted, I shall not care. I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful When rain bends down the bough, And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted Than you are now. DESERT POOLS I LOVE too much; I am a river Surging with spring that seeks the sea, I am too generous a giver, Love will not stoop to drink of me. His feet will turn to desert places Shadowless, reft of rain and dew, Where stars stare down with sharpened faces From heavens pitilessly blue. And there at midnight sick with faring, He will stoop down in his desire To slake the thirst grown past all bearing In stagnant water keen as fire. LONGING I AM not sorry for my soul That it must go unsatisfied, For it can live a thousand times, Eternity is deep and wide. I am not sorry for my soul, But oh, my body that must go Back to a little drift of dust Without the joy it longed to know. PITY THEY never saw my lover's face, They only know our love was brief, Wearing awhile a windy grace And passing like an autumn leaf. They wonder why I do not weep, They think it strange that I can sing, They say, "Her love was scarcely deep Since it has left so slight a sting." They never saw my love, nor knew That in my heart's most secret place I pity them as angels do Men who have never seen God's face. AFTER PARTING OH I have sown my love so wide That he will find it everywhere; It will awake him in the night, It will enfold him in the air. I set my shadow in his sight And I have winged it with desire, That it may be a cloud by day And in the night a shaft of fire. ENOUGH IT is enough for me by day To walk the same bright earth with him; Enough that over us by night The same great roof of stars is dim. I have no care to bind the wind Or set a fetter on the sea-- It is enough to feel his love Blow by like music over me. ALCHEMY I LIFT my heart as spring lifts up A yellow daisy to the rain; My heart will be a lovely cup Altho' it holds but pain. For I shall learn from flower and leaf That color every drop they hold, To change the lifeless wine of grief To living gold. FEBRUARY THEY spoke of him I love With cruel words and gay; My lips kept silent guard On all I could not say. I heard, and down the street The lonely trees in the square Stood in the winter wind Patient and bare. I heard . . . oh voiceless trees Under the wind, I knew The eager terrible spring Hidden in you. MORNING I WENT out on an April morning All alone, for my heart was high, I was a child of the shining meadow, I was a sister of the sky. There in the windy flood of morning Longing lifted its weight from me, Lost as a sob in the midst of cheering, Swept as a sea-bird out to sea. MAY NIGHT THE spring is fresh and fearless And every leaf is new, The world is brimmed with moonlight, The lilac brimmed with dew. Here in the moving shadows I catch my breath and sing-- My heart is fresh and fearless And over-brimmed with spring. DUSK IN JUNE EVENING, and all the birds In a chorus of shimmering sound Are easing their hearts of joy For miles around. The air is blue and sweet, The few first stars are white,-- Oh let me like the birds Sing before night. LOVE-FREE I AM free of love as a bird flying south in the autumn, Swift and intent, asking no joy from another, Glad to forget all of the passion of April Ere it was love-free. I am free of love, and I listen to music lightly, But if he returned, if he should look at me deeply, I should awake, I should awake and remember I am my lover's. SUMMER NIGHT, RIVERSIDE IN the wild soft summer darkness How many and many a night we two together Sat in the park and watched the Hudson Wearing her lights like golden spangles Glinting on black satin. The rail along the curving pathway Was low in a happy place to let us cross, And down the hill a tree that dripped with bloom Sheltered us While your kisses and the flowers, Falling, falling, Tangled my hair. . . . The frail white stars moved slowly over the sky. And now, far off In the fragrant darkness The tree is tremulous again with bloom For June comes back. To-night what girl When she goes home, Dreamily before her mirror shakes from her hair This year's blossoms, clinging in its coils ? IN A SUBWAY STATION AFTER a year I came again to the place; The tireless lights and the reverberation, The angry thunder of trains that burrow the ground, The hunted, hurrying people were still the same-- But oh, another man beside me and not you! Another voice and other eyes in mine! And suddenly I turned and saw again The gleaming curve of tracks, the bridge above-- They were burned deep into my heart before, The night I watched them to avoid your eyes, When you were saying, "Oh, look up at me!" When you were saying, "Will you never love me?" And when I answered with a lie. Oh then You dropped your eyes. I felt your utter pain. I would have died to say the truth to you. After a year I came again to the place-- The hunted hurrying people were still the same.... AFTER LOVE THERE is no magic when we meet, We speak as other people do, You work no miracle for me Nor I for you. You were the wind and I the sea-- There is no splendor any more, I have grown listless as the pool Beside the shore. But tho' the pool is safe from storm And from the tide has found surcease, It grows more bitter than the sea, For all its peace. DOORYARD ROSES I HAVE come the selfsame path To the selfsame door, Years have left the roses there Burning as before. While I watch them in the wind Quick the hot tears start-- Strange so frail a flame outlasts Fire in the heart. A PRAYER UNTIL I lose my soul and lie Blind to the beauty of the earth, Deaf tho' a lyric wind goes by, Dumb in a storm of mirth; Until my heart is quenched at length And I have left the land of men, Oh let me love with all my strength Careless if I am loved again. II INDIAN SUMMER LYRIC night of the lingering Indian Summer, Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing, Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects, Ceaseless, insistent. The grasshopper's horn, and far off, high in the maples The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence, Under a moon waning and worn and broken, Tired with summer. Let me remember you, voices of little insects, Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters, Let me remember you, soon will the winter be on us, Snow-hushed and heartless. Over my soul murmur your mute benediction While I gaze, oh fields that rest after harvest, As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to, Lest they forget them. THE SEA WIND I AM a pool in a peaceful place, I greet the great sky face to face, I know the stars and the stately moon And the wind that runs with rippling shoon-- But why does it always bring to me The far-off, beautiful sound of the sea? The marsh-grass weaves me a wall of green, But the wind comes whispering in between, In the dead of night when the sky is deep The wind comes waking me out of sleep-- Why does it always bring to me The far-off, terrible call of the sea? THE CLOUD I AM a cloud in the heaven's height, The stars are lit for my delight, Tireless and changeful, swift and free, I cast my shadow on hill and sea-- But why do the pines on the mountain's crest Call to me always, "Rest, rest"? I throw my mantle over the moon And I blind the sun on his throne at noon, Nothing can tame me, nothing can bind, I am a child of the heartless wind-- But oh the pines on the mountain's crest Whispering always, "Rest, rest." THE POOR HOUSE HOPE went by and Peace went by And would not enter in; Youth went by and Health went by And Love that is their kin. Those within the house shed tears On their bitter bread; Some were old and some were mad, And some were sick a-bed. Gray Death saw the wretched house And even he passed by-- "They have never lived," he said, "They can wait to die." NEW YEAR'S DAWN--BROADWAY WHEN the horns wear thin And the noise, like a garment outworn, Falls from the night, The tattered and shivering night, That thinks she is gay; When the patient silence comes back, And retires, And returns, Rebuffed by a ribald song, Wounded by vehement cries, Fleeing again to the stars-- Ashamed of her sister the night; Oh, then they steal home, The blinded, the pitiful ones With their gew-gaws still in their hands, Reeling with odorous breath And thick, coarse words on their tongues. They get them to bed, somehow, And sleep the forgiving, Comes thru the scattering tumult And closes their eyes. The stars sink down ashamed And the dawn awakes, Like a youth who steals from a brothel, Dizzy and sick. THE STAR A WHITE star born in the evening glow Looked to the round green world below, And saw a pool in a wooded place That held like a jewel her mirrored face. She said to the pool: "Oh, wondrous deep, I love you, I give you my light to keep. Oh, more profound than the moving sea That never has shown myself to me! Oh, fathomless as the sky is far, Hold forever your tremulous star!" But out of the woods as night grew cool A brown pig came to the little pool; It grunted and splashed and waded in And the deepest place but reached its chin. The water gurgled with tender glee And the mud churned up in it turbidly. The star grew pale and hid her face In a bit of floating cloud like lace. DOCTORS EVERY night I lie awake And every day I lie abed And hear the doctors, Pain and Death, Conferring at my head. They speak in scientific tones, Professional and low-- One argues for a speedy cure, The other, sure and slow. To one so humble as myself It should be matter for some pride To have such noted fellows here, Conferring at my side. . THE INN OF EARTH I CAME to the crowded Inn of Earth, And called for a cup of wine, But the Host went by with averted eye From a thirst as keen as mine. Then I sat down with weariness And asked a bit of bread, But the Host went by with averted eye And never a word he said. While always from the outer night The waiting souls came in With stifled cries of sharp surprise At all the light and din. "Then give me a bed to sleep," I said, "For midnight comes apace"-- But the Host went by with averted eye And I never saw his face. "Since there is neither food nor rest, I go where I fared before"-- But the Host went by with averted eye And barred the outer door. IN THE CARPENTER'S SHOP MARY sat in the corner dreaming, Dim was the room and low, While in the dusk, the saw went screaming To and fro. Jesus and Joseph toiled together, Mary was watching them, Thinking of kings in the wintry weather At Bethlehem. Mary sat in the corner thinking, Jesus had grown a man; One by one her hopes were sinking As the years ran. Jesus and Joseph toiled together, Mary's thoughts were far-- Angels sang in the wintry weather Under a star. Mary sat in the corner weeping, Bitter and hot her tears-- Little faith were the angels keeping All the years. THE CARPENTER'S SON THE summer dawn came over-soon, The earth was like hot iron at noon In Nazareth; There fell no rain to ease the heat, And dusk drew on with tired feet And stifled breath. The shop was low and hot and square, And fresh-cut wood made sharp the air, While all day long The saw went tearing thru the oak That moaned as tho' the tree's heart broke Beneath its wrong. The narrow street was full of cries, Of bickering and snarling lies In many keys-- The tongues of Egypt and of Rome And lands beyond the shifting foam Of windy seas. Sometimes a ruler riding fast Scattered the dark crowds as he passed, And drove them close In doorways, drawing broken breath Lest they be trampled to their death Where the dust rose. There in the gathering night and noise A group of Galilean boys Crowding to see Gray Joseph toiling with his son, Saw Jesus, when the task was done, Turn wearily. He passed them by with hurried tread Silently, nor raised his head, He who looked up Drinking all beauty from his birth Out of the heaven and the earth As from a cup. And Mary, who was growing old, Knew that the pottage would be cold When he returned; He hungered only for the night, And westward, bending sharp and bright, The thin moon burned. He reached the open western gate Where whining halt and leper wait, And came at last To the blue desert, where the deep Great seas of twilight lay asleep, Windless and vast. With shining eyes the stars awoke, The dew lay heavy on his cloak, The world was dim; And in the stillness he could hear His secret thoughts draw very near And call to him. Faint voices lifted shrill with pain And multitudinous as rain; From all the lands And all the villages thereof Men crying for the gift of love With outstretched hands. Voices that called with ceaseless crying, The broken and the blind, the dying, And those grown dumb Beneath oppression, and he heard Upon their lips a single word, "Come!" Their cries engulfed him like the night, The moon put out her placid light And black and low Nearer the heavy thunder drew, Hushing the voices . . . yet he knew That he would go. A quick-spun thread of lightning burns, And for a flash the day returns-- He only hears Joseph, an old man bent and white Toiling alone from morn till night Thru all the years. Swift clouds make all the heavens blind, A storm is running on the wind-- He only sees How Mary will stretch out her hands Sobbing, who never understands Voices like these. THE MOTHER OF A POET SHE is too kind, I think, for mortal things, Too gentle for the gusty ways of earth; God gave to her a shy and silver mirth, And made her soul as clear And softly singing as an orchard spring's In sheltered hollows all the sunny year-- A spring that thru the leaning grass looks up And holds all heaven in its clarid cup, Mirror to holy meadows high and blue With stars like drops of dew. I love to think that never tears at night Have made her eyes less bright; That all her girlhood thru Never a cry of love made over-tense Her voice's innocence; That in her hands have lain, Flowers beaten by the rain, And little birds before they learned to sing Drowned in the sudden ecstasy of spring. I love to think that with a wistful wonder She held her baby warm against her breast; That never any fear awoke whereunder She shuddered at her gift, or trembled lest Thru the great doors of birth Here to a windy earth She lured from heaven a half-unwilling guest. She caught and kept his first vague flickering smile, The faint upleaping of his spirit's fire; And for a long sweet while In her was all he asked of earth or heaven-- But in the end how far, Past every shaken star, Should leap at last that arrow-like desire, His full-grown manhood's keen Ardor toward the unseen Dark mystery beyond the Pleiads seven. And in her heart she heard His first dim-spoken word-- She only of them all could understand, Flushing to feel at last The silence over-past, Thrilling as tho' her hand had touched God's hand. But in the end how many words Winged on a flight she could not follow, Farther than skyward lark or swallow, His lips should free to lands she never knew; Braver than white sea-faring birds With a fearless melody, Flying over a shining sea, A star-white song between the blue and blue. Oh I have seen a lake as clear and fair As it were molten air, Lifting a lily upward to the sun. How should the water know the glowing heart That ever to the heaven lifts its fire, A golden and unchangeable desire? The water only knows The faint and rosy glows Of under-petals, opening apart. Yet in the soul of earth, Deep in the primal ground, Its searching roots are wound, And centuries have struggled toward its birth. So, in the man who sings, All of the voiceless horde From the cold dawn of things Have their reward; All in whose pulses ran Blood that is his at last, From the first stooping man Far in the winnowed past. Out of the tumult of their love and mating Each one created, seeing life was good-- Dumb, till at last the song that they were waiting Breaks like brave April thru a wintry wood. RIVERS TO THE SEA But what of her whose heart is troubled by it, The mother who would soothe and set him free, Fearing the song's storm-shaken ecstasy-- Oh, as the moon that has no power to quiet The strong wind-driven sea. . IN MEMORIAM F. O. S. You go a long and lovely journey, For all the stars, like burning dew, Are luminous and luring footprints Of souls adventurous as you. Oh, if you lived on earth elated, How is it now that you can run Free of the weight of flesh and faring Far past the birthplace of the sun? TWILIGHT THE stately tragedy of dusk Drew to its perfect close, The virginal white evening star Sank, and the red moon rose. SWALLOW FLIGHT I LOVE my hour of wind and light, I love men's faces and their eyes, I love my spirit's veering flight Like swallows under evening skies, THOUGHTS WHEN I can make my thoughts come forth To walk like ladies up and down, Each one puts on before the glass Her most becoming hat and gown. But oh, the shy and eager thoughts That hide and will not get them dressed, Why is it that they always seem So much more lovely than the rest? TO DICK, ON HIS SIXTH BIRTHDAY Tho' I am very old and wise, And you are neither wise nor old, When I look far into your eyes, I know things I was never told: I know how flame must strain and fret Prisoned in a mortal net; How joy with over-eager wings, Bruises the small heart where he sings; How too much life, like too much gold, Is sometimes very hard to hold. . . . All that is talking--I know This much is true, six years ago An angel living near the moon Walked thru the sky and sang a tune Plucking stars to make his crown-- And suddenly two stars fell down, Two falling arrows made of light. Six years ago this very night I saw them fall and wondered why The angel dropped them from the sky-- But when I saw your eyes I knew The angel sent the stars to you. TO ROSE ROSE, when I remember you, Little lady, scarcely two, I am suddenly aware Of the angels in the air. All your softly gracious ways Make an island in my days Where my thoughts fly back to be Sheltered from too strong a sea. All your luminous delight Shines before me in the night When I grope for sleep and find Only shadows in my mind. Rose, when I remember you, White and glowing, pink and new, With so swift a sense of fun Altho' life has just begun; With so sure a pride of place In your very infant face, I should like to make a prayer To the angels in the air: "If an angel ever brings Me a baby in her wings, Please be certain that it grows Very, very much like Rose." THE FOUNTAIN On in the deep blue night The fountain sang alone; It sang to the drowsy heart Of the satyr carved in stone. The fountain sang and sang But the satyr never stirred-- Only the great white moon In the empty heaven heard. The fountain sang and sang And on the marble rim The milk-white peacocks slept, Their dreams were strange and dim. Bright dew was on the grass, And on the ilex dew, The dreamy milk-white birds Were all a-glisten too. The fountain sang and sang The things one cannot tell, The dreaming peacocks stirred And the gleaming dew-drops fell. THE ROSE BENEATH my chamber window Pierrot was singing, singing; I heard his lute the whole night thru Until the east was red. Alas, alas, Pierrot, I had no rose for flinging Save one that drank my tears for dew Before its leaves were dead. I found it in the darkness, I kissed it once and threw it, The petals scattered over him, His song was turned to joy; And he will never know-- Alas, the one who knew it!-- The rose was plucked when dusk was dim Beside a laughing boy. DREAMS I GAVE my life to another lover, I gave my love, and all, and all-- But over a dream the past will hover, Out of a dream the past will call. I tear myself from sleep with a shiver But on my breast a kiss is hot, And by my bed the ghostly giver Is waiting tho' I see him not. "I AM NOT YOURS " I AM not yours, not lost in you, Not lost, altho' I long to be Lost as a candle lit at noon, Lost as a snow-flake in the sea. You love me, and I find you still A spirit beautiful and bright, Yet I am I, who long to be Lost as a light is lost in light. Oh plunge me deep in love--put out My senses, leave me deaf and blind, Swept by the tempest of your love, A taper in a rushing wind. PIERROT'S SONG (For a picture by Dugald Walker) LADY, light in the east hangs low, Draw your veils of dream apart, Under the casement stands Pierrot Making a song to ease his heart. (Yet do not break the song too soon-- I love to sing in the paling moon.) The petals are falling, heavy with dew, The stars have fainted out of the sky, Come to me, come, or else I too, Faint with the weight of love will die. (She comes--alas, I hoped to make Another stanza for her sake!) NIGHT IN ARIZONA THE moon is a charring ember Dying into the dark; Off in the crouching mountains Coyotes bark. The stars are heavy in heaven, Too great for the sky to hold-- What if they fell and shattered The earth with gold? No lights are over the mesa, The wind is hard and wild, I stand at the darkened window And cry like a child. DUSK IN WAR TIME A HALF-HOUR more and you will lean To gather me close in the old sweet way-- But oh, to the woman over the sea Who will come at the close of day? A half-hour more and I will hear The key in the latch and the strong quick tread-- But oh, the woman over the sea Waiting at dusk for one who is dead! SPRING IN WAR TIME I FEEL the Spring far off, far off, The faint far scent of bud and leaf-- Oh how can Spring take heart to come To a world in grief, Deep grief? The sun turns north, the days grow long, Later the evening star grows bright-- How can the daylight linger on For men to fight, Still fight? The grass is waking in the ground, Soon it will rise and blow in waves-- How can it have the heart to sway Over the graves, New graves? Under the boughs where lovers walked The apple-blooms will shed their breath-- But what of all the lovers now Parted by death, Gray Death? WHILE I MAY WIND and hail and veering rain, Driven mist that veils the day, Soul's distress and body's pain, I would bear you while I may. I would love you if I might, For so soon my life will be Buried in a lasting night, Even pain denied to me. DEBT WHAT do I owe to you Who loved me deep and long? You never gave my spirit wings Or gave my heart a song. But oh, to him I loved Who loved me not at all, I owe the little open gate That led thru heaven's wall. FROM THE NORTH THE northern woods are delicately sweet, The lake is folded softly by the shore, But I am restless for the subway's roar, The thunder and the hurrying of feet. I try to sleep, but still my eyelids beat Against the image of the tower that bore Me high aloft, as if thru heaven's door I watched the world from God's unshaken seat. I would go back and breathe with quickened sense The tunnel's strong hot breath of powdered steel; But at the ferries I should leave the tense Dark air behind, and I should mount and be One among many who are thrilled to feel The first keen sea-breath from the open sea. THE LIGHTS OF NEW YORK THE lightning spun your garment for the night Of silver filaments with fire shot thru, A broidery of lamps that lit for you The steadfast splendor of enduring light. The moon drifts dimly in the heaven's height, Watching with wonder how the earth she knew That lay so long wrapped deep in dark and dew, Should wear upon her breast a star so white. The festivals of Babylon were dark With flaring flambeaux that the wind blew down; The Saturnalia were a wild boy's lark With rain-quenched torches dripping thru the town-- But you have found a god and filched from him A fire that neither wind nor rain can dim. SEA LONGING A THOUSAND miles beyond this sun-steeped wall Somewhere the waves creep cool along the sand, The ebbing tide forsakes the listless land With the old murmur, long and musical; The windy waves mount up and curve and fall, And round the rocks the foam blows up like snow,-- Tho' I am inland far, I hear and know, For I was born the sea's eternal thrall. I would that I were there and over me The cold insistence of the tide would roll, Quenching this burning thing men call the soul,-- Then with the ebbing I should drift and be Less than the smallest shell along the shoal, Less than the sea-gulls calling to the sea. THE RIVER I CAME from the sunny valleys And sought for the open sea, For I thought in its gray expanses My peace would come to me. I came at last to the ocean And found it wild and black, And I cried to the windless valleys, "Be kind and take me back!" But the thirsty tide ran inland, And the salt waves drank of me, And I who was fresh as the rainfall Am bitter as the sea. LEAVES ONE by one, like leaves from a tree, All my faiths have forsaken me; But the stars above my head Burn in white and delicate red, And beneath my feet the earth Brings the sturdy grass to birth. I who was content to be But a silken-singing tree, But a rustle of delight In the wistful heart of night-- I have lost the leaves that knew Touch of rain and weight of dew. Blinded by a leafy crown I looked neither up nor down-- But the little leaves that die Have left me room to see the sky; Now for the first time I know Stars above and earth below. THE ANSWER WHEN I go back to earth And all my joyous body Puts off the red and white That once had been so proud, If men should pass above With false and feeble pity, My dust will find a voice To answer them aloud: "Be still, I am content, Take back your poor compassion, Joy was a flame in me Too steady to destroy; Lithe as a bending reed Loving the storm that sways her-- I found more joy in sorrow Than you could find in joy." III OVER THE ROOFS I OH chimes set high on the sunny tower Ring on, ring on unendingly, Make all the hours a single hour, For when the dusk begins to flower, The man I love will come to me! . . . But no, go slowly as you will, I should not bid you hasten so, For while I wait for love to come, Some other girl is standing dumb, Fearing her love will go. II Oh white steam over the roofs, blow high! Oh chimes in the tower ring clear and free ! Oh sun awake in the covered sky, For the man I love, loves me I . . . Oh drifting steam disperse and die, Oh tower stand shrouded toward the south,-- Fate heard afar my happy cry, And laid her finger on my mouth. III The dusk was blue with blowing mist, The lights were spangles in a veil, And from the clamor far below Floated faint music like a wail. It voiced what I shall never speak, My heart was breaking all night long, But when the dawn was hard and gray, My tears distilled into a song. IV I said, "I have shut my heart As one shuts an open door, That Love may starve therein And trouble me no more." But over the roofs there came The wet new wind of May, And a tune blew up from the curb Where the street-pianos play. My room was white with the sun And Love cried out in me, "I am strong, I will break your heart Unless you set me free." A CRY OH, there are eyes that he can see, And hands to make his hands rejoice, But to my lover I must be Only a voice. Oh, there are breasts to bear his head, And lips whereon his lips can lie, But I must be till I am dead Only a cry. CHANCE How many times we must have met Here on the street as strangers do, Children of chance we were, who passed The door of heaven and never knew. IMMORTAL So soon my body will have gone Beyond the sound and sight of men, And tho' it wakes and suffers now, Its sleep will be unbroken then; But oh, my frail immortal soul That will not sleep forevermore, A leaf borne onward by the blast, A wave that never finds the shore. AFTER DEATH Now while my lips are living Their words must stay unsaid, And will my soul remember To speak when I am dead? Yet if my soul remembered You would not heed it, dear, For now you must not listen, And then you could not hear. TESTAMENT I SAID, "I will take my life And throw it away; I who was fire and song Will turn to clay." "I will lie no more in the night With shaken breath, I will toss my heart in the air To be caught by Death." But out of the night I heard, Like the inland sound of the sea, The hushed and terrible sob Of all humanity. Then I said, "Oh who am I To scorn God to his face? I will bow my head and stay And suffer with my race." GIFTS I GAVE my first love laughter, I gave my second tears, I gave my third love silence Thru all the years. My first love gave me singing, My second eyes to see, But oh, it was my third love Who gave my soul to me. IV FROM THE SEA ALL beauty calls you to me, and you seem, Past twice a thousand miles of shifting sea, To reach me. You are as the wind I breathe Here on the ship's sun-smitten topmost deck, With only light between the heavens and me. I feel your spirit and I close my eyes, Knowing the bright hair blowing in the sun, The eager whisper and the searching eyes. Listen, I love you. Do not turn your face Nor touch me. Only stand and watch awhile The blue unbroken circle of the sea. Look far away and let me ease my heart Of words that beat in it with broken wing. Look far away, and if I say too much, Forget that I am speaking. Only watch, How like a gull that sparkling sinks to rest, The foam-crest drifts along a happy wave Toward the bright verge, the boundary of the world. I am so weak a thing, praise me for this, That in some strange way I was strong enough To keep my love unuttered and to stand Altho' I longed to kneel to you that night You looked at me with ever-calling eyes. Was I not calm? And if you guessed my love You thought it something delicate and free, Soft as the sound of fir-trees in the wind, Fleeting as phosphorescent stars in foam. Yet in my heart there was a beating storm Bending my thoughts before it, and I strove To say too little lest I say too much, And from my eyes to drive love's happy shame. Yet when I heard your name the first far time It seemed like other names to me, and I Was all unconscious, as a dreaming river That nears at last its long predestined sea; And when you spoke to me, I did not know That to my life's high altar came its priest. But now I know between my God and me You stand forever, nearer God than I, And in your hands with faith and utter joy I would that I could lay my woman's soul. Oh, my love To whom I cannot come with any gift Of body or of soul, I pass and go. But sometimes when you hear blown back to you My wistful, far-off singing touched with tears, Know that I sang for you alone to hear, And that I wondered if the wind would bring To him who tuned my heart its distant song. So might a woman who in loneliness Had borne a child, dreaming of days to come, Wonder if it would please its father's eyes. But long before I ever heard your name, Always the undertone's unchanging note In all my singing had prefigured you, Foretold you as a spark foretells a flame. Yet I was free as an untethered cloud In the great space between the sky and sea, And might have blown before the wind of joy Like a bright banner woven by the sun. I did not know the longing in the night-- You who have waked me cannot give me sleep. All things in all the world can rest, but I, Even the smooth brief respite of a wave When it gives up its broken crown of foam, Even that little rest I may not have. And yet all quiet loves of friends, all joy In all the piercing beauty of the world I would give up--go blind forevermore, Rather than have God blot from out my soul Remembrance of your voice that said my name. For us no starlight stilled the April fields, No birds awoke in darkling trees for us, Yet where we walked the city's street that night Felt in our feet the singing fire of spring, And in our path we left a trail of light Soft as the phosphorescence of the sea When night submerges in the vessel's wake A heaven of unborn evanescent stars. VIGNETTES OVERSEAS I Off Gibraltar BEYOND the sleepy hills of Spain, The sun goes down in yellow mist, The sky is fresh with dewy stars Above a sea of amethyst. Yet in the city of my love High noon burns all the heavens bare-- For him the happiness of light, For me a delicate despair. II Off Algiers Oh give me neither love nor tears, Nor dreams that sear the night with fire, Go lightly on your pilgrimage Unburdened by desire. Forget me for a month, a year, But, oh, beloved, think of me When unexpected beauty burns Like sudden sunlight on the sea. III Naples Nisida and Prosida are laughing in the light, Capri is a dewy flower lifting into sight, Posilipo kneels and looks in the burnished sea, Naples crowds her million roofs close as close can be; Round about the mountain's crest a flag of smoke is hung-- Oh when God made Italy he was gay and young! IV Capri When beauty grows too great to bear How shall I ease me of its ache, For beauty more than bitterness Makes the heart break. Now while I watch the dreaming sea With isles like flowers against her breast, Only one voice in all the world Could give me rest. V Night Song at Amalfi I asked the heaven of stars What I should give my love-- It answered me with silence, Silence above. I asked the darkened sea Down where the fishers go-- It answered me with silence, Silence below. Oh, I could give him weeping, Or I could give him song-- But how can I give silence My whole life long? VI Ruins of Paestum On lowlands where the temples lie The marsh-grass mingles with the flowers, Only the little songs of birds Link the unbroken hours. So in the end, above my heart Once like the city wild and gay, The slow white stars will pass by night, The swift brown birds by day. VII Rome Oh for the rising moon Over the roofs of Rome, And swallows in the dusk Circling a darkened dome! Oh for the measured dawns That pass with folded wings-- How can I let them go With unremembered things? VIII Florence The bells ring over the Anno, Midnight, the long, long chime; Here in the quivering darkness I am afraid of time. Oh, gray bells cease your tolling, Time takes too much from me, And yet to rock and river He gives eternity. IX Villa Serbelloni, Bellaggio The fountain shivers lightly in the rain, The laurels drip, the fading roses fall, The marble satyr plays a mournful strain That leaves the rainy fragrance musical. Oh dripping laurel, Phoebus sacred tree, Would that swift Daphne's lot might come to me, Then would I still my soul and for an hour Change to a laurel in the glancing shower. X Stresa The moon grows out of the hills A yellow flower, The lake is a dreamy bride Who waits her hour. Beauty has filled my heart, It can hold no more, It is full, as the lake is full, From shore to shore. XI Hamburg The day that I come home, What will you find to say,-- Words as light as foam With laughter light as spray? Yet say what words you will The day that I come home; I shall hear the whole deep ocean Beating under the foam. V SAPPHO SAPPHO I MIDNIGHT, and in the darkness not a sound, So, with hushed breathing, sleeps the autumn night; Only the white immortal stars shall know, Here in the house with the low-lintelled door, How, for the last time, I have lit the lamp. I think you are not wholly careless now, Walls that have sheltered me so many an hour, Bed that has brought me ecstasy and sleep, Floors that have borne me when a gale of joy Lifted my soul and made me half a god. Farewell! Across the threshold many feet Shall pass, but never Sappho's feet again. Girls shall come in whom love has made aware Of all their swaying beauty--they shall sing, But never Sappho's voice, like golden fire, Shall seek for heaven thru your echoing rafters. There shall be swallows bringing back the spring Over the long blue meadows of the sea, And south-wind playing on the reeds of rain, But never Sappho's whisper in the night, Never her love-cry when the lover comes. Farewell! I close the door and make it fast. The little street lies meek beneath the moon, Running, as rivers run, to meet the sea. I too go seaward and shall not return. Oh garlands on the doorposts that I pass, Woven of asters and of autumn leaves, I make a prayer for you: Cypris be kind, That every lover may be given love. I shall not hasten lest the paving stones Should echo with my sandals and awake Those who are warm beneath the cloak of sleep, Lest they should rise and see me and should say, "Whither goes Sappho lonely in the night?" Whither goes Sappho? Whither all men go, But they go driven, straining back with fear, And Sappho goes as lightly as a leaf Blown from brown autumn forests to the sea. Here on the rock Zeus lifted from the waves, I shall await the waking of the dawn, Lying beneath the weight of dark as one Lies breathless, till the lover shall awake. And with the sun the sea shall cover me-- I shall be less than the dissolving foam Murmuring and melting on the ebbing tide; I shall be less than spindrift, less than shells; And yet I shall be greater than the gods, For destiny no more can bow my soul As rain bows down the watch-fires on the hills. Yes, if my soul escape it shall aspire To the white heaven as flame that has its will. I go not bitterly, not dumb with pain, Not broken by the ache of love--I go As one grown tired lies down and hopes to sleep. Yet they shall say: "It was for Cercolas; She died because she could not bear her love." They shall remember how we used to walk Here on the cliff beneath the oleanders In the long limpid twilight of the spring, Looking toward Lemnos, where the amber sky Was pierced with the faint arrow of a star. How should they know the wind of a new beauty Sweeping my soul had winnowed it with song? I have been glad tho' love should come or go, Happy as trees that find a wind to sway them, Happy again when it has left them rest. Others shall say, "Grave Dica wrought her death. She would not lift her lips to take a kiss, Or ever lift her eyes to take a smile. She was a pool the winter paves with ice That the wild hunter in the hills must leave With thirst unslaked in the brief southward sun." Ah Dica, it is not for thee I go; And not for Phaon, tho' his ship lifts sail Here in the windless harbor for the south. Oh, darkling deities that guard the Nile, Watch over one whose gods are far away. Egypt, be kind to him, his eyes are deep-- Yet they are wrong who say it was for him. How should they know that Sappho lived and died Faithful to love, not faithful to the lover, Never transfused and lost in what she loved, Never so wholly loving nor at peace. I asked for something greater than I found, And every time that love has made me weep, I have rejoiced that love could be so strong; For I have stood apart and watched my soul Caught in the gust of passion, as a bird With baffled wings against the dusty whirlwind Struggles and frees itself to find the sky. It is not for a single god I go; I have grown weary of the winds of heaven. I will not be a reed to hold the sound Of whatsoever breath the gods may blow, Turning my torment into music for them. They gave me life; the gift was bountiful, I lived with the swift singing strength of fire, Seeking for beauty as a flame for fuel-- Beauty in all things and in every hour. The gods have given life--I gave them song; The debt is paid and now I turn to go. The breath of dawn blows the stars out like lamps, There is a rim of silver on the sea, As one grown tired who hopes to sleep, I go. II Oh Litis, little slave, why will you sleep? These long Egyptian noons bend down your head Bowed like the yarrow with a yellow bee. There, lift your eyes no man has ever kindled, Dark eyes that wait like faggots for the fire. See how the temple's solid square of shade Points north to Lesbos, and the splendid sea That you have never seen, oh evening-eyed. Yet have you never wondered what the Nile Is seeking always, restless and wild with spring And no less in the winter, seeking still? How shall I tell you? Can you think of fields Greater than Gods could till, more blue than night Sown over with the stars; and delicate With filmy nets of foam that come and go? It is more cruel and more compassionate Than harried earth. It takes with unconcern And quick forgetting, rapture of the rain And agony of thunder, the moon's white Soft-garmented virginity, and then The insatiable ardor of the sun. And me it took. But there is one more strong, Love, that came laughing from the elder seas, The Cyprian, the mother of the world; She gave me love who only asked for death-- I who had seen much sorrow in men's eyes And in my own too sorrowful a fire. I was a sister of the stars, and yet Shaken with pain; sister of birds and yet The wings that bore my soul were very tired. I watched the careless spring too many times Light her green torches in a hungry wind; Too many times I watched them flare, and then Fall to forsaken embers in the autumn. And I was sick of all things--even song. In the dull autumn dawn I turned to death, Buried my living body in the sea, The strong cold sea that takes and does not give-- But there is one more strong, the Cyprian. Litis, to wake from sleep and find your eyes Met in their first fresh upward gaze by love, Filled with love's happy shame from other eyes, Dazzled with tenderness and drowned in light As tho' you looked unthinking at the sun, Oh Litis, that is joy! But if you came Not from the sunny shallow pool of sleep, But from the sea of death, the strangling sea Of night and nothingness, and waked to find Love looking down upon you, glad and still, Strange and yet known forever, that is peace. So did he lean above me. Not a word He spoke; I only heard the morning sea Singing against his happy ship, the keen And straining joy of wind-awakened sails And songs of mariners, and in myself The precious pain of arms that held me fast. They warmed the cold sea out of all my blood; I slept, feeling his eyes above my sleep. There on the ship with wines and olives laden, Led by the stars to far invisible ports, Egypt and islands of the inner seas, Love came to me, and Cercolas was love. III &sup1; &sup1; From " Helen of Troy and Other Poems." The twilight's inner flame grows blue and deep, And in my Lesbos, over leagues of sea, The temples glimmer moon-wise in the trees. Twilight has veiled the little flower-face Here on my heart, but still the night is kind And leaves her warm sweet weight against my breast. Am I that Sappho who would run at dusk Along the surges creeping up the shore When tides came in to ease the hungry beach, And running, running till the night was black, Would fall forespent upon the chilly sand And quiver with the winds from off the sea? Ah quietly the shingle waits the tides Whose waves are stinging kisses, but to me Love brought no peace, nor darkness any rest. I crept and touched the foam with fevered hands And cried to Love, from whom the sea is sweet, From whom the sea is bitterer than death. Ah, Aphrodite, if I sing no more To thee, God's daughter, powerful as God, It is that thou hast made my life too sweet To hold the added sweetness of a song. There is a quiet at the heart of love, And I have pierced the pain and come to peace I hold my peace, my Cle&iuml;s, on my heart; And softer than a little wild bird's wing Are kisses that she pours upon my mouth. Ah never any more when spring like fire Will flicker in the newly opened leaves, Shall I steal forth to seek for solitude Beyond the lure of light Alcaeus' lyre, Beyond the sob that stilled Erinna's voice. Ah, never with a throat that aches with song, Beneath the white uncaring sky of spring, Shall I go forth to hide awhile from Love The quiver and the crying of my heart. Still I remember how I strove to flee The love-note of the birds, and bowed my head To hurry faster, but upon the ground I saw two wing&egrave;d shadows side by side, And all the world's spring passion stifled me. Ah, Love there is no fleeing from thy might, No lonely place where thou hast never trod, No desert thou hast left uncarpeted With flowers that spring beneath thy perfect feet. In many guises didst thou come to me; I saw thee by the maidens while they danced, Phaon allured me with a look of thine, In Anactoria I knew thy grace, I looked at Cercolas and saw thine eyes; But never wholly, soul and body mine, Didst thou bid any love me as I loved. Now have I found the peace that fled from me; Close, close against my heart I hold my world. Ah, Love that made my life a Iyric cry, Ah, Love that tuned my lips to Iyres of thine, I taught the world thy music, now alone I sing for one who falls asleep to hear. 
59739	----	[Illustration: Front cover] IT TAKES PRACTICE NOT TO DIE Elizabeth Bartlett _It Takes Practice Not to Die_ was originally published in 1964 by Van Riper and Thompson in Santa Barbara, California. The book is now out-of-print and the publisher no longer exists. The author's literary executor, Steven James Bartlett, has decided to make the book available as an open access publication, freely available to readers through Project Gutenberg under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivs license, which allows anyone to distribute this work without changes to its content, provided that both the author and the original URL from which this work was obtained are mentioned, that the contents of this work are not used for commercial purposes or profit, and that this work will not be used without the copyright holder's written permission in derivative works (i.e., you may not alter, transform, or build upon this work without such permission). The full legal statement of this license may be found at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode [Illustration: Creative Commons logo] IT TAKES PRACTICE NOT TO DIE IT TAKES PRACTICE NOT TO DIE BY ELIZABETH BARTLETT VAN RIPER & THOMPSON, INC. SANTA BARBARA 1964 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Some of these poems appeared in the following anthologies: _The American Scene, The Golden Year, New Poems By American Poets II, New Voices 2_. Thanks are also due to the _Beloit Poetry Journal, Chelsea Review, Commentary, The Critic, Dalhousie Review, ETC., Fiddlehead, Harper's, Harper's Bazaar, Literary Review, New Mexico Quarterly, New York Times, Odyssey, Poetry Dial, Queen's Quarterly, Quixote, San Francisco Review, Saturday Review, Tamarack Review, Yale Literary Magazine_. Library of Congress Catalogue Number: 64-22731 Copyright 1964 by Elizabeth Bartlett First Edition All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form, except for review purposes. Printed in the United States of America TO PAUL AND STEVEN OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR _Poems of Yes and No Behold This Dreamer Poetry Concerto_ CONTENTS HOMO ELASTICUS BALANCE SIMPLE WITH COMPASS ACHILLES HAD HIS HEEL ASCETIC I WOULD REMEMBER AFTER THE STORM THE CAGE MENTAL HOEING HUNGER VOLUNTARY EXILE THE FOURTH CATEGORY THE CHANGING WIND JINXED ALONG THAT ROAD THE REFUGEES SHIP OF EARTH AMONG THE PASSENGERS (1 x 1)^n AIR BRIDGE AS YOU MAKE IT CITY GAME: MARBLES FREE-FALL _E_xistence=_m_ultiple _c_onditions^2 THE UNDERSTANDING WOOLEN DIGNITY THE COAT ON A ROCK OF ATLANTIS EVEN IF WE DID SELF-EVIDENT THE SACRAMENT PROLOGUE TO OLD AGE ALL THIS, BEFORE THE EARTH AGE NEGATIVE ABSOLUTE TIME WILL TELL THE TEST DIARY ITEM: BODY FOUND LANDSCAPE: WITH BREAD O TO BE AN OSTRICH THE BARREN FIG TREE THE SOWER INTERVIEW THIS SIDE THE FOG CIVILIZED SPRING REPLY TO CRITICS INSOMNIA IN THE CITY WHEN YESTERDAY COMES FULL CIRCLE CONVERT NOT JUST ONCE NOTES FOR THE FUTURE THE SLEEPWALKERS MEXICAN PROFILE DRY SANCTUARY RETURN TRIP THE CAVE DARK ANGEL FUGITIVE THE TRAP THE RUIN OF THAT HOUSE THEIR FIRST HUNT WOLF! FINAL PERFORMANCE HOUSE OF THE POET THE GHOST OF ANNE FRANK THE MISTAKE REFLECTED IN BRASS MODERN PRIMITIVE PERSONAL HISTORY I THINK I AM INSTINCT AND REASON THE SUMMING UP THERE WILL BE TIME FOR MOSS PERSPECTIVE THE QUESTION IS PROOF UNDER A THATCHED ROOF CONDITIONAL REFLEX THE DARK CENTAUR WORLD OF TOMORROW [Illustration: Abstract design] HOMO ELASTICUS I tell you it is inside, a substance no one has yet identified or described as something natural to flesh, a glutinous secretion in the cells that can harden and melt. Milky, it clings to the gums with a stickiness that fastens on the tongue to be dumb, or else stretches and winds a band around the heart so tight, it has to snap or loosen, springing back. Fluid, it waxes the bones to ease their impact and recoil as they bounce over stones, except when the latex thickens, becomes too crude, more fat than resin, and freezes in the sun. BALANCE My head has no affinity with my feet. When I stand on one heel and lean on my axis spine, I reel to the floor; I can not turn on a fixed orbit. My shadow divides me by day and escapes me at night, a trait apparently made to confuse me, since I follow a course without regularity or recurrence, my cosmos inclined to alternation at moments evident to no one, not even myself. Who is reasonable? A tightrope walker, perhaps, builders of bridges, sailors, mountain climbers--those whose direction is indicated by their opposition and held in a careful equilibrium like a golden pendulum, its means, each according to some counter force. Lacking such moderation, I look for wisdom in safety, and safety in wisdom--and dangle between. A two-legged creature, whose symmetry goes paired from ear to foot, I find duality a natural condition; a Chang and Eng existence united in fact but separate in fulfillment. Parted, we die, and together compromise our right and left, depending which has the stronger influence. Made as I am, the wonder is not that I sway or spin, but manage to stay inside my skin. SIMPLE WITH COMPASS Consider the circle. It is a miracle of completion, end and beginning one. Reduced to a point or expanded to a sphere, its ratio is unchanged by ego. Compare it to the line, that matter of fact sign of direction started but never done. Whichever way it moves, how far or long, it proves distance can go only so high or low. I think we should rejoice there is no other choice than straight or round-- makes life easy, I've found. ACHILLES HAD HIS HEEL And still the arrows fly in all directions. No one is safe. The wind has no armor. Strength, beauty, valor, whatever we find and name perfection is target to the eye. Who is immune? Either we aim--and miss, or ourselves become the victims hit. Even a hermit, locked inside his room, remembers St. Francis sang often out of tune. We learn to die from a thousand wounds, each scarred inside till the final failure. Meanwhile we endure and suffer with some pride that we can be so human-- enough, if we must, to cry. The point is inevitable. Whether heel or head, who is invulnerable is already dead. ASCETIC Be whatever you like, close your eyes: on the desert a burnished stone, in the murky sea a jewel. Go wherever you wish, bind your feet: through the night where a wing has flown, towards dawn where a leaf drops cool. Live however you would, stay your blood: with the sky over earth as friend, at peace with the mind and breath. Speak whenever you will, seal your lips: of this life proclaim time an end, in the next cry Nazareth. I WOULD REMEMBER I have walked from river's end to end, a slow companion to the light seagulls that circle overhead and I have stood still above the bend that separates the foot from distant hulls, to fill my eyes with flying sails' wings spread. I have watched them many times repair the far shore's curve around the sun and hold it there ensnared until provoked they drop midair, instinct with seaward gravitation and angry claws declared-- their mutiny a gold crazed rout that tears the cargo from its hold and scatters it about. I am not old and yet, when night brings me to town, I forget their wings and drown. AFTER THE STORM That morning, after the storm, everyone gathered about the tree and marveled at its fall: the body leaning gently on one arm, its mighty head now cushioned by deep branches, seemingly asleep. "You wouldn't think a storm," one said, then broke off, staring at the fruit that never would be eaten red and sweetened by the sun, or set in jars and slowly left to cool, the ripening years ahead gone, too. "It was the wind." "The rain." Each spoke a part of truth out of his own mouth with words that could not make it whole because the naked roots showed how much there was to doubt, the secret in the darkness crying loud. Even a tree, she thought, biting her tongue and bringing her childish thoughts down, remembering the climbs, the stout swing hung on rafters soaring to the sun, a tree built like a tower so you could visit God and talk for hours. The men sawed logs and timber all that day until there was nothing left, not even a shadow where you could wait and hide to see if it would wake, then they buried the hole and forgot what else they might have covered with the sod. Dead trees tell no tales, she thought, nor empty nests, nor little girls who see how helpless all things are when caught by storm, no matter how big or strong or secure, and she walked quietly into the house to help with the next meal. THE CAGE Thoughts like an empty cage receive the morning through the windowpane and quietly swing. No flutter brings my eye to a meaninged core for the waking light, the door transparent. Held blind by the mirror and deaf by the bell, I must search my mind by taste, smell, and touch. Bars silhouette a wall to enclose the noon where images halt and the night soon comes. O bird that set me free to try my own wings, how this false spring tree clings that I perch on! MENTAL HOEING Breaking the soil of her mind was an old habit as she plied the hoe back and forth over the year to see its design, the cut and stripped images of reason stacked in rows of answered arguments. She swore at the stones, the matted grass and stubborn clay that held her back as though to a winter still unprepared for spring. Was she never to be spared from questions rooted in the past? She attacked the clods with wrath until there were holes in the ground, then her thoughts crumpled down, taking her strength with them. Aching from remembered resentment, she turned to the struggle within herself, but moved lightly now and penitent, trying to ease the rebellious soil and soften it, to make it pliable to the new seeds, the new demands of the changing season, knowing plants thrive better in kindness than bitterness. And suddenly the year stood plain, at rest. HUNGER Hunger, I have known your pangs, the gnawing urge, the ceaseless demand from beginning to end; inevitable as air and light, as rain and seed and soil, as tides and seasons; the perpetual cause of all that moves and is moved; the force that flows through stars and men. We are born hungry. Begins the appetite with warmth and tit, with wombskin quivering yet from cry replying cry, then another sense commands another hunger fed to feed the next and the next, each heir and progenitor of this past, that future, and the cycle reset. Hungry pilgrims, we can not rest. Distance is but another nearness, as soon met, then shorelines bend and we must home again to other journeys, our Eden faith a continual repetition of arks and floods from which none returns invulnerable, the apple bitten. Creed, color, race, we have all sworn allegiance, fought bitter wars, tasted glory and gall for insatiable gods deified by our own hungers; with rites and sacrifice made bread and wine from flesh and blood that we might have eternal food here and hereafter, immortal. We are fed by desire and consumed like the fire on our tongues, in our hearts; a flame forever unappeased by our words, symbols, deeds or monuments; the phoenix, man himself, recreated from his own ashes out of hungering dreams and parched. We live with hunger always, that fearfilling, painpinching cave wherein we hide like hunted stags, lips dry, but tasting heroically of miracles... Who has not seen visionary lions fall to dust and, scornful of the world's ambition, left the hunters truth in rags? Fish, birds, beasts, all are prey to the same illusion, all wake to the hunger that stalks and prowls. Sands thirst for unquenchable seas, plains thrust toward implacable peaks, time moves unfulfilled and blind from plans unrealized to those surprised. We die hungry even while hyenas howl. VOLUNTARY, EXILE The day to day commitment to failure that judgment daily argues against me condemns me to despair. I am guilty of more than silence. At times words fail your wisest men and then, intentionally. But my silence, like all my secrecies, has no defense, none conventionally, my personal idiosyncrasies no social crimes. When pride is pain and shame an agony too keen for reason, I had no other weapon. Who is to blame? There was no intent to deceive or lie. My absence is sufficient evidence, voluntary exile, not providence. THE FOURTH CATEGORY Of vegetable, yes, but amorphous by analogy to stem leaf root not a flower nor a seed and no use as fruit. Of animal, too, but understood independently of cry growl purr not a fish nor a fowl and no good as fur. Of mineral, besides, but disinclined organically to heat break pour not iso- nor meta-morphic and no worth as ore. THE CHANGING WIND Now there are great numbers of people coming and going with the wind, and the wind seems changed; its voice is never still and its eyes are strange. Once, we remember, it was possible for the wind to move on two feet and formulate a philosophy of life and death by reason of environment. Then the wind that blew around us was a familiar one; we knew which side of the house was open and what grew from our hand each season of the year. When it was far, we could gaze beyond mountains, across seas, over days and miles of distances to twisted deserts and vast plains, bridging there with here. Wind voyageurs, we knew what a man puts into his mouth he eats, where he lays his head is shelter, that the clothing he wears, covers him. Then we had no illusions about customs or differences, since the wind was the same wind, whether it came from the north, the south, the east, or the west. Time was a place, we remember, where the wind was able to look a man in the face and remain long enough to hear what he had to say. Now there are great numbers of people coming and going with the wind, and the wind seems changed; its voice is never still and its eyes are strange. JINXED I went to the orchard where the trees were ripe and found a hard lemon. I went to the meadow when the grain was bright and heard a crow sermon. I went to the valley which was hidden from wind and saw a bleached galleon. I went to the mountain whose peak showed no print and met a lame stallion. I went to the desert, the jungle, the shore, and always some cursed omen. I went to the city at last for the source, and there in the streets were men. ALONG THAT ROAD A stranger came one day along that road and looked out on the field, the barn, the house set by itself against the woods, the air as empty in its fence of silence, as the hour of light. Alone, clothes torn, his hands streaked by the cuts of glass through which he came like hurtling stone to sudden halt, he searched the bluff of easy miles for signs of God on wheels, then limped some more and paused, the bills in his pocket less a commodity of exchange for another man's good will, than a threat of violence that was worse for being secret. _Car wreck found._ _Driver missing_. He saw the headline words small on a page, his name announced in an obituary column. Twice he glanced back over his shoulder to see whose shadow was following behind, while at a darkened window, its owner stood with gun upraised, remembering Job. A stranger came one day along that road. THE REFUGEES After the burning nights and the barren speech, after the dry wind through stony streets, we found our little green where lilies were, and knee-deep oxen stood watching us triumphant under trees. For this was peace as nature meant nature's peace to be, with fruitful soil made ready by its need, with instincts tamed in gentler ways than fear, with freedom measured freely as the sky measures breath. We lay there side by side breathing kisses, feeling the wet and cool of bodies grassed in loving, each a groove within a groove, seeking counterpart, with close-open-close, with light-in-dark and waves lapping. We heard the overflow of lake down buttressed dam and sluiced walls making music in ditches, singing birth to seed in spike, to trunk in root, one surge alike in all. Then, happily, we chose which way, and barefoot climbed the gold to tip the rim of that day's widened cup, before the darkness could descend to cheat our purpose. Together, all of us swam, caught in a shower of light that fell on hands and hoofs, on flesh and hide--the rainbow now a shore towards which we moved with one accord. And the sun ceased fire and lowered its arms, promising new terms for our tomorrow. SHIP OF EARTH This earthship, which we now sail on seas of time and space, aware of other tides and stars and winds than move about us here, is smaller than we dreamed. Once, its high mountain masts pierced infinity, as we rode, bow into future, and past at our stern, a vessel without peer in the universe, the first, the last! The sails gave way to engines, the spars to wings, the continental coasts to cosmic shores, and still we see no end to journeying. Although our rocket shrinks, we keep our course. We watch, we sleep, our dream a toylike thing that wakes and wonders---whose will, which force? AMONG THE PASSENGERS 1 Through the window of the bus, he combs a field, close-shaves the bristling oats, straps in a fence line, pockets adjoining timber, then rides into the morning, pleased. Now retired and let out to pasture, he does not mind the clouds, the rain that fogs the highway-- his eyes are patched with blue. Hands leathered and roped, knees astraddle, boots shined, he is seated beside as neat a filly as any in the herd he used to lope in season. With stallion gallantry, with sweets, he holds the miles to coffee stops and anecdotes ... till memory spurs his old man's hopes ... and the night stampedes. 2 Separated by long years and the visibility poor, her mood reflects the weather, darkening within. Dishes, diapers, sighs, and pills ... roof by roof, she hears the monotone of wheels recite the gloomy catechism, and prays for a different kind of virgin miracle. Nervously, she rubs her good luck stone, then wraps her thoughts in cellophane as a heroine of film and fashion, glad to forget home, school, and all the lost-girl tales they tell of Hollywood, She listens, nods, and smokes. She does not mind his boasts, only too aware how the ashes cling to his coat. (1 x 1)^n I can accept the being born and the dying, in doubt, alone. I do not reject or, seeing, scorn anyone's crying about the unknown. And yet. And yet. How the being alone in the living makes me mourn. I can not forget the breathing in stone, unforgiving and forsworn. AIR BRIDGE Together we talk of parting and are drawn out from the shore across a running sea that was not there before. Cautiously we lay our bridge in air, island to mainland, and wonder will it reach beyond the tide or stand. Already our eyes are widened by the miles that split us here as we turn at the bend and pause. Dark reefs appear. Together we mark the distance between words and waves, the wind swinging our cables. Chance moves forward--we, behind. AS YOU MAKE IT Your bed they said so shall you lie on it But I found rocks were kinder than clocks and did not cry for it They meant content without a sigh in it But I liked stars much better than bars and kept the sky on it No crown or down held me in tie to it But I dreamed jewels in the deepest pools where none could spy on it They thought I ought so I could die in it But I learned ends do not make amends and did not try for it Some day I may know the how and why of it CITY GAME: MARBLES Like gods competing for the universe, they shoot the planets between their fingers with trigger thumbs that scale the speed of light to intervals of space-colliding time. Ping! and fiery constellations leap apart, bright spheres of whirling suns and moons that mark the checkered squares of sidewalks, heaven's zone, and hell, the sewer curbs where lost stars roam. FREE-FALL Having lost my terror of the air and learned, by dropping hard, a pity for the grass, I grow used to the ways of cats. It takes practice not to die in the act of living, whether climbing up a tree, walking a fence, or coming to a brink, springing free. The ninth time can't be worse than the first. Meanwhile, there are birds, sunshine, roofs, and kind old ladies. The grass itself is innocent with sleep. _E_xistence=_m_ultiple _c_onditions^2 _You who would be mathematicians in your living, remember Einstein_ The problem is not always immediately apparent: it does not become one until the response to a given condition fails to satisfy the need that a continuance implies. Whether conscious in amoeba as well as hippopotamus or unaware as in water, earth and air there is evidence that each continues to be present. The process by which we seem to choose or guess solutions based on inference and conclusion regarding what is and what is not suggests both as hypotheses. For the nature of questions is to question nature since its design is reciprocal by reflection of the mind as the rainbow to its image or crystals to snow. Perplexed by reason reality itself dissolves in the sun while the question remains above and beyond all consideration of doubt and fog a bubble suspended in the hands of God. THE UNDERSTANDING What is it you want? he asked. Looking at him. As though she thought he had something to say and could find the words to say it. The words no one else had yet found or said. What is it? he repeated. Her eyes an open darkness. Leading to a corridor of black mirrors. As though at the end was a locked door and behind it the final secret. What? Within that hallway of silence, her breathing, the beating of her heart. As though echoing his questions. Waiting, hoping for the answers. If you would tell me, he said. Pinpoints of light straining towards the threshold through a soft warm mist. As though they would help him to see, to slip across barriers of being. If I knew-- Blind beams behind opaque windows. As though in an act of desperation, a man might hurl a stone. The shuddering tinkle of shattered glass. Here, he said, you take the stone. Placing it in her hands so that she could feel it, roll it between her palms, sense it through her fingers. An ineffable, tangible continuum. I give it to you, it's yours. The whole, beautiful truth, God helping. Love solidly immured within its mineral heart. Ticking away the centuries, immune to change. WOOLEN DIGNITY The needle between her fingers came to a pause as she smoothed the seams of her life and lingered over old threads of truth she had stitched with her own hands and bitten off her with her own mouth, noticing how these had blended with and become part of the cloth, until her dimmed eyes could not tell in the fading light which was which. There was not much of the garment left to mend, although the remembering hid what there was and changed the facts of dark wool to the brighter silk of summers past, when she had matched her wardrobe to her hopes and risked the need for later alterations, unmindful how both would grow outstyled and she herself become a pattern of an age more pitied than admired. Again the needle swayed and she sighed at its impatience, as though it cared that wool wear a rocking-chair pride with dignity, as though an air of mutual warmth existed between her and the winter which would help them keep what little vanity remained, and the thread grew taut again, leaving the stitches along the seam smooth and even as her last defense. THE COAT Joseph had his coat, a different color for each brother, and it was bright. What happened, we note, was seventy times seven their debts were forgiven till his coat turned white. Jesus, for his part, preferred to begin in the newborn skin of a lamb, instead. We know that his heart devoured all sin like a lion, then spilled and bled. ON A ROCK OF ATLANTIS Five. Between each the ages that separate, yet unite the pillared span. The oldest leads and guides as the short, crooked thumb of long experience. The others follow. Up and down to the last small boy trailing behind. Unevenly they stride through the gray, silent dawn toward the sea where the waves still breathe of sleep, and empty miles unwind the shoreline. Five figures probe the wind, the tide. They pace their length along the sand and pause. No light breaks. The stillness keeps, as though the current deserted, had suddenly ceased. With poles, hooks, bait in hand, the five move on. Heavy with clouds, the sky broods behind a mist, leans on cliffs and frightened by its dream of a dead world's beach, begins to slip. Until five fingers rise on the promontory's tip and lift their poles. Upheld, the morning wakes, pours gold! Fish leap! The land's alive! EVEN IF WE DID If we could unwind that brain, discover its world, the response of sense from A to Z, the place, time, weather, and human condition If we could trace the course of its myriad streams to the first rain, the slow gathering of waters in pools and springs If we could collect the whole evidence grain by grain, the words, numbers, symbols that shaped the color and sound of mountains If we could record the dreams, the chain of centuries from dusk to dawn, those testings of beliefs that broke the link and shook sparks from the sun If we could model its twin as a lasting monument, a brain with all our findings, long after men, their myths, wonders, gifts [Illustration: Abstract design] SELF-EVIDENT Some birds there are that do not like a cage, that want the whole world free to come and go as seasons do, despite drought, heat or snow; that feel their liberty a heritage no bars can shut in or no masters assuage with pretty bribes and warning threats of foe; the wilder ways of chance they choose to know with wings against the wind as surest gauge. Eagle, crow, skylark, jay--no matter what the size of beak, how sharp the claw or small-- each finds his own nest feathered best for him alone, on tree, rock, shore or grassy plot; there he can hear his own answered call, aware of baits that snare, of shears that trim! THE SACRAMENT All the breadlong day she moved about the house and nibbled at its crust, until she saw Carl walking griefwards with his shadow to the barn, whereless in his step and heedless of the cows, and she wondered how he could be so thoughtbound. What sad, whyful thing could make a man so lost within his world that he had no fisthold on it to demand a moreness for his account? She turned from that window to the hopeside one where she had reseeded a world of her own, a garden like the days of her truthhood--green, and fenced in its innocence, flowering trust, where flowers became their dreams when they woke up. Reminded by the sky hanging out the moon, she hung hers in the doorway, then lit the room and hurried to her oven's tomorrow crumbs. He came in quietly and guilt-rubbed his face, seeing Jen's waiting at the table. "Ev'ning," he said and heard her reply creak underneath as he woodenly walked to the sink and draped a towel around his neck, unwishing the blame. If soap and water clean could make a man feel holy, what use would the devil's mirror be? He felt no such deception while she said grace. They ate their silence from faithworn plates and spoons, swallowing the forgiven coffee used twice each day and aware of the greater trespass they shared in this house which was their staybetween. Cracked like their hands and cups, who knew when its seams would give? In the fearwhile, the question unasked kept their lips still, as though words tempted a risk beyond their strength to mend should the seams be loosed. The meal done, she freed the table from its chore and brought him the county's weekly paper, their footnotes to other people's answers and prayers, then bent to her needlework, seeking accord. Lost by, he stared unseeing at the words poured through his eyes as though, shuttered against exposure, the negative in his mind could be immured in its acid and yet bring some meaning forth. For a hurt away and far as a man might walk on a friendly day to a neighbor's door, lay Nielsen's farm, a credit to God had He made it with His hands, but none to the man whose straw grew luckside up as though his plow left a spore of gold in every furrow. It was a trade so many seasons back, the reasons became changestricken at this stranger who sat absorbed. Touched to the slow, Carl paused and tested the bowl of his pipe, needing a valid doubt to prod. Had he pawned his soul to find refuge in rocks and let a waterfall drain in a sinkhole? Through the smoke, he traced the wry and twisted road down whenless years that had plunged him here to rot-- and yet, of Nielson he had required no bond of hate, for this neither one had bought or sold. Torrent to trickle, not friendship had reversed the law, but an unnatural love of worm for bird, of plant for weed, of a sterile man for Merle, a woman he could not wed and mark as cursed without destroying the very universe that had mothered her and which she owed rebirth. "You take the farm and Merle. I'll make my own world over." The words had been all too well observed. He had not known how close hell was to heaven, not then and not while he lived in it alone, watching Merle's seed grow beyond his graveyard slope from buried dreams she never guessed were even there, living as she did within her children's-- not until another came to share his ghost and made him see that death was not like a coat one wore and had mended by a wife named Jen. All the thought round, he gnawed on the bitter rind, hungerwhelmed for a taste of Nielsen's larder, that orchard whose fruitening he had bartered for peelings, and dry angered at the two mice who squeaked in their chairs, each resigned to his own corner of an empty cupboard, but mostly ashamed because he could not convert thorns into leaves, grapes from stones, thirst into wine. He cleaned his parched pipe from its ashes and stood to wind a watch with broken springs, setting it for tomorrow when his shadow would be hitched. "I'm turning in, Jen. You come before you cool." His footsteps made the attic cling to the roof as she folded her needlework's piece of silk in a sewing box made like an infant's crib, then raised herself and blew its darkness on the room. PROLOGUE TO OLD AGE Not the mirror ages our reflection but the other faces that we see looking at us Not the calendar changes our season but the other voices that we hear speaking to us Not the memory troubles our silence but the other sleepers whom we meet dreaming of us Not our living suffers the violence but the other beings whom we feel dying in us ALL THIS, BEFORE I raced, I rushed, I ran, to catch the empty hand of time, before the wind, the blowing wind-- this breathless gift. I willed, I worked, I wept, to melt the frozen face of time, before the sun, the burning sun-- this frenzied bone. I drank, I danced, I dared, to tempt the stony foot of time, before the rain, the driving rain-- this raptured flame. I leaped, I laughed, I loved, to ease the burdened heart of time, before the dust, the settling dust-- this flesh, this blood. THE EARTH AGE On the caves of time again they draw their lines and circles. Earthmen. Born to prove that they can reason and compute a way to survive. Now primitives in space, they hunt with atom spears the bright eye targets of the night, and cry their mammoth victories across the cosmic waste. There they create anew high mysteries and truths, with satellites as shrines, and wire the electronic brain they use to command the light. NEGATIVE ABSOLUTE Any day now you can expect the age to come together in its own fixed image. There will be no broken glass. The jigsaw cracks, painted black, will make a Roualt mirror. Then we will truly see ourselves as the headlines say we are, creatures of disaster. The No. 1 Song in the Hit Parade will be _I Hate You_, and _ugly_ the keyword in fashion ads. Children will hug their witch dolls, blow atom bubbles in glee and play the most exciting games. Punishment will be their only reward and all the villains heroes in their goblin tales. Every man will be Satan of his own dungeon and no place like hell. Machines pretending to be human will evoke what's left of our pity and laughter. Manquakes, nightmares and fallout will lead to our final triumph. Only the worst will survive. To prevent immunity strict controls will be enforced against pure food and drink. Anyone caught sober or happy will be exiled to the upper air and banished from darkness. Mentally accelerated ones will be confined to wards in quarantine hospitals. Our most ardent wishes will be for illness, failure and misery. We will wear bad luck charms. There will be more solutions than problems in the race for non-existence. Traffic will be by tunnel and invariably fatal to minimize upkeep. All-risk benefits will be socialized on a single pay-as-you-go tax plan. To save time and expense cemeteries will provide one-room efficiencies. Everything will be reduced to simple essentials. We will need very little. Books will be easy to read backwards or upside down and even without looking. Music will be produced by noise in various degrees and ingenious combinations. A few zoos and museums will be allowed to preserve some relics of art and nature. As a change from monotony, schools and churches will be open on special anniversaries. We will be too busy dying the rest of the time to think or believe in anything else. We can hardly wait for that day. It should be coming soon. The news is getting worse and worse. TIME WILL TELL Where fireflies are stars and the evening sky a sea, there you will find me, far from the leveling demands that leveled you and me. When distant mountains bend like deep swells toward the shore, then you will see the ends for which I built my dikes against the lowly roar. Though breath was all I owned to force my heart to climb, though words were all the stones I had to seal my mind, you will know why, in time. THE TEST He who would climb the heights of tone and scale the peaks beyond the listening ear must first walk over water and learn to stand on air, alone. He who would swim the waves of light and dive past shores into a sunless glow must first merge with his shadow and melt through solid glass, like night. Where eyes are fins and sound is leap, the rhythmic force performs its own ballet; when dreams are fired in clay, they burn a path through timeless sleep. DIARY Returning miles of space, can you find the precise hour, travel through that day, locate the very moment ago, there? The mind goes back and forth, stops at what time stations, Monday morning, January 7th, winter, and ten years after then. The trunk arrives, departs: hotel, depot, airport, pier, with sticker seals to mark the sights and tag the route, remember where? With tickets, menus, souvenirs, a life's receipts in black and white to trace the course of wind and tide, the way back home from why and when. And buses, taxis, subways, cars, for how-long, how-far conversations, so much, so many, who and what, with love, regards and yes, again, name, place, date, pen. ITEM: BODY FOUND It was a silent evening, I remember, through the river's mist it comes to me-- a star pierced the air; white with speed it leaped across the sky, slipped and fell; I heard its cry, it echoed in the sea, the swift wild cry of the scornful ember. Alone I stood there, never had I need of fellow rebel more, I, a rebel. Down the dark beach I ran, I stripped; time was an eyeless reach across immensity and I plunged deeply. They blamed it on the tide, the night; they had not seen infinity like a vast unchanging vista wide before me. If you go too far you'll drown, they said. Ah no, only those grasp the sublime who challenge the dream, before going down! LANDSCAPE: WITH BREAD Let us admit it is attractive and represents something we think we need: to live beautifully and find goodness in it. Everything points in that direction: from beelines to star routes, our dreams flower in the cells of night, our days are joined to the sun. Open or closed, our eyes possess the world: all that appears fulfills the desert gardens and the glitter of gold. Yet, whether we ever can reach the source where image and reality meet, or survive the force of fire turning to ecstasy-- the immediate need we can not deny is, simply, to exist... meanwhile, perfecting the wish for astral honey and blossoms of light. [Illustration: Abstract design] O TO BE AN OSTRICH The ostrich like Shakespeare believes there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so. All problems he has found by taking his head out of the ground and looking for them. The solving obviously is a matter of foot going faster than thought to avoid being caught. Such logic of conscience may well be envied-- for who can dispute what can not be questioned or proved? THE BARREN FIG TREE In these long years of war I have seen drought, and the truth is, Father, that I am sick to death of it. Can a man set his house in order just to die? You speak of hope and honor in our day and I say hurrah for those not born, for there won't be enough fig leaves saved to cover their nakedness, or corn to stop their cries. There is no water and no sign of rain, only briar and thorn, dunghill and dust, while the poor groan like beasts on a desolate moor. You should have seen it, Father, the day they attacked, a day as dark as night, with clouds of fire both front and rear. They ran like horses, climbed walls, broke ranks, spied out of windows, their faces pained, black, while the earth bled till the moon shone red. Well, old men have their dreams, and young men their visions, but that day won't come back until the mountains fall and the hills cover us, if those are here still. I've seen green land turn to salt, and worms rot under clods, while men talk peace terms. THE SOWER Sixty seasons I have sowed, man and boy, and I tell you, Matthew, that a seed can not grow in the heart. No, one may as well throw it away or feed the chickens with it. For a fact, love is something that only the devil understands. I'd rather put my trust in stones and reap a quick crop, for ill or good. That way, you have no roots and get what you can in a few short suns. Or take cactus plants, at least a man sees the thorns and expects to be stuck, unless he's a fool--some choke on wool. As for good ground, Matthew, that's just luck; I've seen other fellows' orchards full, year after year, where no one's lifted a hand or a hoe except to pull the ripe fruits down. Some men are gifted. INTERVIEW _Poet, who are you?_ Janus, god of gates and doors and all beginnings A weather cock facing in every direction A festive singer who can wear goatskins and bleat _Are you not made like other men?_ Twin of their image and echo fired in one clay Shadow of young men's mornings and ghost of old men's nights Parabola and paranymph of lovers only _By what signs can a poet he known?_ For whom zero is an opening or a hole to be filled Who can measure the earth with a piece of rope And place the sun on a disc of paper under a cracked roof _How does a poet live?_ As alchemist and archimage of twenty-six letters In constant employment to nature Free in every sense and word except for treason _Of what value is such work?_ To dip the pen of time in dew and smoke and blood To distinguish the creak of a cradle from a coffin To demonstrate that life is the abscissa of eternity _Does a poet have any faith?_ Whose only criterion is self-corroboration Who can find God in a barrel of wine And with the hands of a spider pilot a path to the stars THIS SIDE THE FOG 1 Windless season without rain, you bring the sea up from the rocks across the cliffs, drifting clouds... Gray weaves the night as day and everything moves like sleep. Trees climb a hill, lights swing upon circles of darkness, walls bend a road where you trespass. You are the mover, the essence of all things seen and unseen. Windless you go and rainless, without form, color, or motion-- in you, all time is one. Fog or shadow of God maybe, who walks and whispers so close to me? 2 Here on the shore's last link against the landscape dream I stand listening. Intangible as air and yet like mesh, a web winds strands about my head. I can not see or hear beyond the moment's rim that holds me to this pier. Only a sixth sense of faith or fear, whichever's meant, sways in the balance. 3 Through the porthole of my mind memory ships oars and glides upon the sea outside. Whose hand was on the tiller, what buoy marked the shoals or whether there was another I do not know. A hazy twilight lay over the gray water, and I heard the distant horn of time blow once or twice in warning, while seagulls squatted on the beach, windless without wings. And I thought, will it be like that on the coast of my setting, mast and sun obscured by fact? 4 Beyond the eye's threshold a light swings in the door, blurred by the wind and blown like smoke across the dunes for ghosts who wander through in search of missing clues. Dimly they turn and return, gathering broken sherds they reefed against the world, each sorting out his own to piece the shells into a whole and find the echo lode. 5 Blind as a crab in the sand, waiting for the tide to slack, I feel through my hands blank, knowing nothing that they can not reach, yet groping to believe these signs of emptiness real. Ground, sea, sky, all are merged in the surrounding surf, where everything's reversed, where breath is radar to itself, antennaed to gray silence, and only I move, nothing else. 6 Along the coast a lone train tolls the night, slowing its race to a throttled brake as a hand plows the mist to draw a moving bridge across the mainland's tip. O magnetic eye that signals when human daylight fails and all's invisible, who guides the current, the flow of water, air and pole, what dragon's head node? CIVILIZED SPRING His fists smash against the violet air: the doors of evening must not close, locking him out! Why, is his youth a beggar, crippled and blind, or reduced so low that he should drink spit from the cup of pity? Snarling, he wipes his feet on the mocking tongue that carpets the front of a swank hotel, before the doorman beams him with a eunuch eye. O.K., beat it! And he warms his hands with his breath, then slouches off, his feline hips rolling smoothly under bluejean pockets. An expensive whore, desire taunts him down through the city's bright bazaar, like the cool white tone of a saxophone caught in the jewelrich stream of cars. Shop windows hive the honey on his lips, the perfume of live mannequins clings, while towers squat like pyramids behind a desert moon now green. Smolders the coal in his chest, burns the hole in his shoe through the pavement, as he turns up alleys where rattling cans overflow their Nile. Thickly, he quickens his course, begins to run ... till breathless and unspent, he whirls and twists and crashes beyond the guarded walls, the harem tents of night ... a purple fugitive, who gasps. REPLY TO CRITICS Tell them who scorn my ways I lived without their praise and will until I die. Let them be cynical, I have my own faith still to question and deny. The proud and stiff of neck, the small who grub and peck, both look too low or high, while I but seek to know the feel of things that grow and, by my living, why. INSOMNIA IN THE CITY Three a.m. along the river between the footfall and the snow, watching the stars leap out and quiver against the desolate scene below, the flare of match one's beacon fire, one's inner tower of warmth and cheer, to keep night safe from its desire and blow away the smoke of fear. WHEN YESTERDAY COMES I have not always been blind. My eyes opened to the sun like any child's, and I ran and played in my waking hours like schoolboys everywhere. Night was my sleep and the dark powers I knew from childhood on. I do not speak of the mind's; the others came later, when natural fears gave way to man's and I saw darker things still, things beyond the wildest flight of a boy's fancies. Who will deny there are worse dragons? But I did not see the sign of what was to come until I was blind as Samson. With one stroke, I lost all desire, hope, strength--for who needs his sight when cold age pokes the heart's fire with only a broken stick? Now at my feet a dog whines even in slumber; he sniffs another's bone as he shifts in his own darkness, hungry for gain that requires no fight, and in his dreams grows angry at dream's inconsequent wish. How can I reproach him, I who am shepherd and watchman, and as ignorant and dumb? Both of us strain at a gnat and swallow camels, the spite of those who may look at but not touch the other's ration. Yet I make no mourn or cry I have no tears to defend. By now my shoes understand how to find the door, the latch and go without any fright of stumbling up crooked paths since all paths lead to the one. Yes, yes, the words of the wise, but I do not eat their bread or cover my lips to swear by the debts of the guilty, for I can not see the light that moves men to take pity and neither can I forget. When harvest is past, the ties with summer are ended. Even the flies know better than to sit at a table where vinegar and gall blight the sense--their comfort, the chill presaging winter's opiate. I ask, who can see God's eye? Then let him be sure to scour both inside his cup and out, for though the temple is lit like gold and the altar white, the heart of the hypocrite shall betray his hands and mouth. I sleep the sleep of death, ai! An old man, I have no rod, no plague to command, no cloud to conceal my nakedness-- nothing but a toothless bite as I wander in silence, a harmless ghost walked by his dog. FULL CIRCLE The old tree weeps for its blossom, the blossom for its fruit, forgetting, when the frosts come, the seed will weep for its root. CONVERT An eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth-- this you taught me, this was truth. Now that I am wise, you turn my cheek-- and leave me eyes with which to weep. NOT JUST ONCE Sand and stars are not enough, there must be proof, such as stones capable of love to raise up children. A test beyond reason, in order to move the incredible mountain and bring down the sun. Something uncommon, a sign of God in man, not just once, but as many times as the times demand. Still nothing satisfies, human or divine: the hand that stopped Abraham drove the nail through Christ's. [Illustration: Abstract design] NOTES FOR THE FUTURE Light destroyed in minds only the stars Strength reduced to hands only the stones no other language but signs no other knowledge but chance Time returned to fear only the hurt Space defined by food only the hunt each one yoked from head to foot each one racked by claw and tooth Ears inured to hope only the drum Eyes condemned to ape only the dream THE SLEEPWALKERS With wide eyes open they walk into a morning where darkness shines, their feet descending a marble stairway in the mountain flanked by stone lions. Holding hands, they cross a sudden bridge, and pause to view the clouds below them. Silence spills from frozen waterfalls to stay the river's course. Farther on, they come to a garden whose golden stem lifts her and him in its calyx palm and bursts the lovesweet dram from their summer's bloom. Now winged, they cruise between glass walls to gaze inside the zoo of human cages, those illusions of space and size multiplied in mirrors. Not to be deceived, they glide down vertical waves of light, where love, having slipped time's gyve, can happily ever after live in the sea's bright grove. Voices in the ear form a separate soundtrack, images blur on a shifting screen, while they uphold their safe dream world on secret tides of air. MEXICAN PROFILE Buzzards in the air and flies peasants everywhere earth size Jungles by the sea and sands at each extremity bare hands Volcanos over towns and hills traditioned in the browns the wills Corn and bean for breath and bones remembered after death the stones Dark feet on the roads and wheels heavy are the loads the heels Burros led by whips and shouts in answer to the lips and clouts Adobes out of earth and cathedrals attendant on the birth of eagles DRY SANCTUARY Even the desert has learned to protect itself, to keep its inch of rain in stored defense; against the mountain's strength and pressured air, it does not stand, but daily creeps, aware. Upon its needled hands and thorny feet, it crouches, head bent, with lizard eyes alert to scorching light and sand, then seeks the deepened shadows against the coming of night. Here kangaroo rat and road runner thrive; the rattler coils his tail in sleepful ease, while bayonet and dagger guard the hive left by Indian and Spaniard in retreat. Shrewdly, the yucca's panicle of white is thrust above the ground, fully equipped to meet the world on friendly terms that hide poisoned stings, barbed walls, fists. One could do worse than put out cactus leaves: when harsh winds blow the wrong way and sleep consumes itself, from inner wells they cool their fruit and, even after a century, bloom. RETURN TRIP The recognition comes as it always does-- slowly. One feels a sense of surprise to find not all has changed: the blue of miles above the snow-rimmed clouds of old volcanoes, the tireless browns still ploughed to greening fields, the red tiled roofs that accent time between. The twenty years move slowly into place. With eye as brush and sun as palette, a full perspective emerges: as long ago today, as near to far. The wish reflects a view almost transparent. Past and distance blaze, caught in a foreground of light, then shift. The darkness grays, thickens. One tastes salt rain on the wind that blows through the mist. THE CAVE Drop by drop the earth is born, a billion years from dark to dawn Drop by drop as rivers flow past sunless cliffs no wind has known Where no grass blows and no birds sing there time drips slow and patient, clings Drop by drop till waterfalls are turned to stone Here new stars form and mountains rise clear of the storms that twist the sky Drop by drop while caverns tall carve crystal bones [Illustration: Abstract design] What dream lies walled within this night, what shape shall crawl up to the light Drop by drop as silence grows inside its vault of carbon snow When glaciers halt before no zones, when both the poles at last are one Drop by drop the dawn shall come, a billion years from cave to sun DARK ANGEL Dark angel of the night, you come on folded wings secret and silent, bringing sleep. To you belong the rosemary and poppy, the final dream from which the road turned in its lost beginning. You have seen the frightened eyes of the city glow upon bridges, along streets, behind roofed windows, and you know how small a kilowatt burns in each single, separate room, and how each one reaches at last a diminishing point beyond which none can see but you. Night is your hour and with it comes the inevitable surrender, peaceful or with clash of arms, with unfulfilled hopes, terrors, the fingers still clutching at the vanishing day, the throat strangled by the unuttered word it says, the ear straining for the unheard response, the thought immense in the dark. Only you, dark angel, born of our love and pity, can see night's passing feet around the earth, on rotating centuries across the stars, journeying over the ruins of forgotten time since we first left that home, where the dream began, where the road turned, and the sun swung in its orbit, bringing you, dark angel, down. FUGITIVE I need to live where it is cold enough to seek the sun More like that tree well seasoned to the rough of snow and ice That keeps its fire inside of root and bark till heat is done O fugitive from winter and the dark see the moon rise THE TRAP Of memory and hope I made my rope and swung not knowing its length or how much strength there hung. Backward and forward past into future I climbed higher and higher despair and desire combined. Farther and farther no present to bother my flight above now and here beyond loss and fear upright. Ah, this was the way to trap time and stay its dread yes, twisted inside then knotted and tied instead! For being was this both height and abyss outflung the head free of reason the heart without season full sprung. Not creeping by squirm an inch measured worm begrimed with darkening age to a burnt out rage consigned. But swept on an ocean of tides set in motion by light in a brilliance of air with clear eyes aware of sight. Until the strands between my hands were red and I came to a stop to let time drop down dead. THE RUIN OF THAT HOUSE I speak of the ruin of that house as the worst, for in it lived two blind creatures, blind husband and blind wife, each trying to lead the other out, and finding a ditch by the door. If there were trees, they heard them crash, when the ground split under their hands and knees. But it was not of the storm or quake they thought, or of themselves-- but of the fruit, and how to avoid both barb and thorn, each terrified in his heart at his own helplessness to save the best. Except in their speech where they bitterly laid the blame on one another for the loss and waste, since neither had fulfilled the need for a house that was deep and broad, founded on rock; secure and strong against fire and flood, rust and moth; a house uncorrupt by thief or sword, yet so full of treasure that it gleamed, with light enough to see, mote and beam, the hypocrites of their common doom. I speak in pity of the ruin. THEIR FIRST HUNT I am afraid of that woman. I have seen the scorpion tip of her soft red mood and felt the feathered grip beneath the jess, the hood. I am afraid of that man, I have smelled the oestrous rut that enjoys the sting and heard the gun click shut at the lift of the wing. I am afraid, life, of your poison and passion. I am afraid, death, of your sureness and speed. WOLF! As children we played "Wolf" and howled its hot pursuit along the canyons of our street, wailing the bushy tail that followed at our feet, sidewalk to cellar, lamp-post to door, feeling the murderous paws and ravenous breath tingling the skin of our necks, setting hair on end, and circling each eye. Wolf, are you ready? Steady on the first floor, he's coming up the stairs... second floor, third floor, he's stopping for some air... top floor, roof, and now beware! Rough coat, claws and jaws and tooth will catch _you_ and _you_ and _you_ and _YOU!_ Oh run-run-run from the WOLF! That was spring... the taste of first free days outdoors. Wasting no time, in haste and thirst we came to summer, swinging... making our own kind of hay and playing a new kind of game, with dizzy drinks, jazzy music, hazy-crazy cigarettes and kisses, and aware of other dangers, the wolfish ways of friends turned strangers... love, as fierce, as rapacious, in spite of all the shoutings and the warnings of approach, with no one ready when the roof blew in. How we ran! By autumn, to be sure, we knew the tricks and character of sticks... Nursing bruised heads and burnt fingers, we shook the straw from our pockets and settled down... to play it safe this time we thought, with a solid house, genuine antique furniture furniture and homogenized children, finding a good night's rest harvest enough for such sound dreams as conscience feeds on... not hearing the creaks beyond our snores, the furtive glide outside our doors, until one rainy day, what a storm! Then winter came... and we knew then, there was no escape. Not again, not even with bricks reinforced by steel over a concrete shelter, for our pressure is high, our metabolism low, and we can no longer run... We have set traps, posted prizes, sent out scouting parties, and armed ourselves... Waking at night and trembling, we cry, "Peter Peter, please come, we need you!" knowing only his toy gun can save us. How the wind comes through... FINAL PERFORMANCE A spinner in the green years, I trudge the snowdeep woods to find the Rima trees where I was warm in silk through those first winters. Then the unwinding thread, from which I swung by two spare arms and legs, hung in the air like a gay trapeze, each vine humming to the brace and pull and reel of child's spider ways, an upside down dancer with her feet in the clouds and the heart in her mouth a feast. A beginner in the green years, my thick wool thumbs push back the broken twig, the empty nest, the closed gray flaps to summer's ringling tent. Embarrassed, I lift a rose still red and moist and soft. Again I twist its thin stem toward the light and dare the sky to seize my heels and trick time's crafty eyes till I repair the web and climb to one last height before I leap ---- ---- ---- to catch the hands of night. HOUSE OF THE POET For the ultimate hoard I keep my board bare, no gold or lace allowed to cover or adorn that spare purpose. Stripped of frivolity, it serves as bench and table, my words a daily rite quenching thirst and hunger. Whether I gain more by my frugality than I here disown, or lose as debtor, only you, Lord, know. But were I compelled to acquit this ghost, not as a prisoner in the heart's dark cell, but as host at the altar of the mind's high temple, I would count my fast a feast in heaven, and with one candle cast the light of seven. THE GHOST OF ANNE FRANK The cocks have been crowing for two thousand years, so I understand that part of it and even expected, was prepared for what happened. This I swear. As for tears, yours are mine, since I am the cause of them, and if I could, would take the blame upon myself. I know, you think in terms of innocence and guilt, but that decision was long ago made clear in an episode of apples, bought in a hoax for a song. I recognize it still, one we will always whistle. And feel I ought to ask forgiveness for you. A turn of cheek, if you like. Why not? Back of every lie and denial is the thing we all conceal: the inner hurt that makes our fingers seek revenge, to brand the other fellow with our own scar, as though, by doing so, ours is eased. Let's admit it does and, in comparison, sets a better example, hurts less than losing an eye. How many deaths do we need to prove it? And to begin to learn to live. Love, you say, and I believe you, yet there is self-love, too, the fear of having to lose not only a garden in the sun but a chance to bloom anywhere once, which is more natural, and why I say all will fail unless each individual succeeds, for treason always starts inside a single heart. This is the fatal trap that none of us can step over or hope to escape, because no one is safe: first comes Abel, and then Cain. So please understand me. What you now do here among yourselves to free and heal yourselves from grief and anger may yet preserve and defend the world. Shalom. I pray for this release. May you be blessed and walk in peace. THE MISTAKE In April, when she tried to take him there, a farm where winter had not heard of spring, where snow lay banked on rutted roads and winds went shimmying up and down slick roofs and trees, he took one look around and said, "God, let's get out of here!" not seeing anything. Luckily, night blanketed the backwoods and they missed the bus, so they went inside the house and she thought of cows in their stalls and bread in the oven, of the simple life collected here within its own crude warmth, while he stood smirking, repeating, "You would." The next year it was Washington. They went by train and all the way she kept checking tickets, bag, baggage, feeling she had left something behind, and though he joined "the tour," she realized with a start that it was he missing and lost to everything new. Everywhere was "like the postcards" and nowhere "was worth the time and trouble it took to get back from." In fact, if not for the car she bought for later trips, they might never have seen the stars, how they moved together. "Not all," he said, "not all," and they fell apart. It was like that all summer, and even a continent full of moons did not change the difference between mountains and prairies, and she wondered how the others managed, the men and women living there. "Heavens!" he said, "I've tried! Let's call it a mistake!" "Let's," she answered, knowing she would stumble over the same stones, up to the same door, till she came to the last and final one: single admission, standing room only-- which was natural, when it came to dying, but no way to live, unless you had to. REFLECTED IN BRASS Mortar and pestle made of brass, these and two solid candlesticks were heavy fortune, her penance for being peasant born and mixed by impure stars to common metal in a foreign land. But the level to which she raised her hands in prayer each Sabbath eve was holy: lips, eyes, heart purified by the tares that softly burned, the week eclipsed of wrongs she placed upon her head in blameless white, reflecting there the migrant image of a light that moved a wilderness of tents, made rivers part and mountains cry the voice of God. All this she meant by keeping Sabbath in her home and polishing the brass like gold. MODERN PRIMITIVE When morning breaks at the edge of night and the stone mind drops to its plain of light it does not help to think of Newton. What we really need is a new invention a mental jet faster than the speed of yawn and stretch in the life we lead or a time lift on spatial pulleys operated by the lids of our eyes. PERSONAL HISTORY This calendar is one, unduplicate and unrepetitive, being my own. What system it may have I leave testate in the genes of time as my memento of the events, holidays, and seasons that made the living so importantly mine: a personal history of nones, kalends, and ides, without chronology. God knows I fought my own battles, made peace with defeats and victories, wept and cheered. A soldier without rank, I took my ease where and when I could find it, having feared and met the worst, and found the enemy no braver than myself, as much in need of saints and miracles, each pharisee to his own convictions, though we bleed. What headlines emphasized my days and nights are filed within the archive of my skull, a private record of scandals and crimes no press would care to publish, were it called to print even a single edition, for the weather alone would defy all guess, being unpredictable, rain or sun, and variable as the heart's unrest. Such rulings, documents, customs, arts my life decreed, my life was witness to: I felt, I thought, I celebrated, start to finish, the world that entered through these walls of flesh; and there its evidence shall wait, in secret tissues of the bone, until some future historian's pen can disclose the infiniteness of One. I THINK I AM Being a supposition, it is based on some ground. As such, the connection is important, if not profound, because, without it, we would no-doubt flit as in a vacuum, like birds, not needing the support of words, rising, in-fact, above them. I protest the conclusion, despite the evidence that I am a valid one, by necessity, if not consequence, for while I argue and pursue What I think is true, in self-defense, God does not suppose-- He knows-- and that makes the difference. INSTINCT AND REASON They would have us believe that to defy authority is to punish nature. I would want to be sure what they have in mind and heart and hand, what signs of body politics they mean, before I could agree. Each sense protests the fact: a bird obedient to cat, the innocence of thorns, a night without awe... And yet I would accept a world less than perfect, for the sake of eggs and kittens, berries, stars, saints, children. THE SUMMING UP On the library of my heart they have fed, the worms of my living, and now, surfeited, they are dead, leaving their husks on the pages still unread, dry, harmless little things that crumble and shred. Ambition took the harder crust we dread, the thick skin on the cover, and gnawed with slow, relentless tread the marquee lights for which it craved and glittered, weaving letter by letter a shroud embittered. Love chose the softer, tender part, the bread of my daily giving, and made each ritual ahead a carnage of communion as I bled, praying for the blessing I offered, instead. Knowledge went directly to the core, the thread that bound my life together, and bored its way up through my head, loosening by stages the gold and the red, until every chapter I had written, fled. Now that I have finished with maggots and shed their dust with some misgiving, I am glad for the words not said, for being spared the hungers other men have bred, in my old age needing but a tranquil bed. THERE WILL BE TIME FOR MOSS Inventories, like spring cleaning, annoy me, and when it rains, I sleep. Forgotten things prove me absent-minded, although I still keep goods in storage at times. Once I did pushups and kept an earnest face, collected books, maps, stamps, and played the sweepstakes. Now I rehearse dreams the better to remember them and navigate by leaves between green and golden. How I am or where, no one knows for sure except my mother; she gets letters. PERSPECTIVE They go about with curious wonder in their eyes, like children half surprised by what they doubt. The time moves out... they are more intimately wise of what they once surmised; they are devout. THE QUESTION IS PROOF If I ask why you need not reply the question is proof Only my ear can help me to hear the rain on the roof What thoughts I own are shaped by my bone and etched on my brain Nothing more real than the moods I feel and what they explain Warm hands or cold the world that I hold is all I can show The more or less I measure by guess is all that I know All that I see with my eyes is me and no other truth Here with my feet time walks on the street in age as in youth Unless you lie in asking why you have the reply UNDER A THATCHED ROOF With leaner hands I clutch December's sky who held the barefist branch through wind and ice in younger days. The breath of frost is gone, my eyes no longer sting. Warmed by the sun, my heart at last has thawed and finds a peace it never knew before when storms raged free. Soft the fingering fronds would teach me how to seed my winter in a tropic ground and save my years from being cut in two-- they sway before the wind with ease, they bow-- and yet I can not loose my hold, I blink, I fear to lie in a hammock and swing. CONDITIONAL REFLEX If you had no choice and there was nothing else to do the caged intelligence could If you had no voice and only silence coming through the caved subviolence would. THE DARK CENTAUR Between the goat and the scorpion, between the horn and the sting, the dark centaur stands. He eyes the centuries that hold him there to a slow march, half-man, half-beast, his arrow still in hand. The bow is gone, long since fallen among the angels, when love and honor warred, while Jacob wept. Hunter and hunted, marksman and mark, he travels on past island suns where none has stepped. You can see him on a clear night in the southern sky, when the earth swings and the ninth sign appears. And if you listen, you may also hear a far-off wind carry his cry down the light-years: "O blessed and damned, in heaven and hell, in passion and intellect, all you who are twinned even as I! "Who controls his fate? Say! Who can escape being pierced or grazed by its accident or chance?" A shooting star replies. WORLD OF TOMORROW Whereless in a sea of space, how shall we reckon with the dead whose graves we marked on a shifting land and left at a distance travelled by light? What pilot navigates our course through a finite but expanding void no almanac explains or chart defines? Sun, stars, birds, nothing avails since Phoenician and Viking passed with cross-staff, astrolabe and compass to bring us to shores we have left behind. We are speeding our unborn young to harbors no heard voice guides us toward, no radar yet detects, no octant sights. Now new dimensions of mind extend the geometric skull of Ptolemy and Euclid, of occult priest and philosopher, to measure time not by the sun's zenith at noon or the moon's eclipse, but by spectra through which we can identify time's white. Past and present, both are blind to the future, while the Sphinx waits for another Oedipus. O waste of sand and wind, swept by an airborne tide! Shall we find a snakeless Eden and with the apples unforbidden begin our second exodus, from Paradise? This first edition was completed in May 1964. The poems were set in 14 pt. Centaur by Mackenzie & Harris, Inc. and printed by Bradley Brownell in the shop of Van Riper & Thompson, Inc. on Curtis Colophon text. Bound by the Santa Barbara Bindery Designed and illustrated by Wayne Thompson Van Riper & Thompson, Inc. 703 Anacapa Street Santa Barbara, California [Illustration: Back cover] 
60606	----	produced from images made available by the Blue Mountain Project, Princeton University. Songs, Sighs and Curses THE GLEBE VOLUME 1 NUMBER 1 SEPTEMBER 1913 PRICE OF THIS ISSUE 60 CENTS By Adolf Wolff Songs, Sighs and Curses By Adolf Wolff SEPTEMBER 1913 Published by THE GLEBE at Ridgefield, New Jersey Copyright, 1913 By Adolf Wolff. TO LEONARD D. ABBOTT. Dear Friend:--To whom else than to you can I dedicate this little wreath of poems? Weeds or flowers, without you, they would not have been. Your interest, your sympathy, your appreciation were the sunshine and rain that brought them forth--to blossom for a moment or forever. ADOLF WOLFF. NOTE.--All the poems in this volume were written in the year 1912-13. When asked in what sequence he would arrange his poems, Wolff threw the manuscripts in the air, saying, "Let Fate decide." They now appear in the order in which they were picked up from the floor. This is true of all except the proem and those comprising the group under the heading "To One Who Could Not Love," which appear towards the end of the volume. THE PROEM I sing and sigh and also curse, Thus only can I give expression To that which will not brook repression; I am alive, I have a voice, And so I sing and sigh and curse-- All life doth sing and sigh and curse. The joy of love is in my song, I sigh for pleasures yet untasted-- For things I dream--o'er moments wasted And sometimes interrupt my song With clenched fist to curse a wrong-- It is a joy to curse a wrong. And so I sing and sigh and curse-- All life doth sing and sigh and curse. CAPTIVES I visited the Zoo one dreary day, And in the lion's house I watched a lion, A great Numidian lion in his cage, With eyes three-quarters closed, with haughty gait, Pace up and down the limits of his cage. Was he oblivious of the tyrant bars, The gaze of human eyes, his captive state, And did he blink but better thus to see The jungle's vast expanse? He suddenly stood still; and, face to face, We stood and stared into each other's eyes, And we each saw in one another's eyes A royal captive in a wretched cage. IF I WERE GOD If I were God--the first thing I would do Would be to make all women beautiful.-- All women beautiful--and all men strong. Then I'd resign--and make myself a man. That's just what I would do--if I were God. OPTIMISM On that cold table, where shameless, without blushing They spread their nakedness, I see what yesterday had been a living beauty And is to-day a corpse-- A flimsy mass of tissues and of juices, The prey of autopsy to-day, To-morrow prey of worms and dissolution. And whilst the perfume of this lifeless flower, Concoction made of chemicals and death, Inflicts an outrage on my sense of odor, Does disenchantment fill me with disgust? Does Death's black wing engulf me in its shadow? And being face to face with life's fragility Am I made sick of life? I am not sick of life. I prize life more knowing how brief it is, How insecure, how fragile and how fleeting. I love the eyes bright with the spark of life, I love them more knowing they'll soon be dimmed. I love the lips aglow with warmth of life, I love them more because they'll soon be cold. I love all flesh that palpitates with life, I love it more knowing it soon shall be An inert, flimsy mass of fetid tissue. I love the voice that rings with sounds of life, I love it more knowing 'twill soon be silent. I love the mind pregnant with living thought, I love it more knowing that soon 'twill be The tomb of thought. I therefore let the dead bury their dead, And like a buzzing bee in quest of flowers I seek the flowers of life that gladly yield The sap that love distills to joy--that joy That is much sweeter than the sweetest honey. THE CLOUD There hovers over me a muddy cloud, Enveloping me in its gloomy shadow, That dims the native sunshine of my heart, That dulls the keen perception of the mind, That stunts the latent powers of the soul, That smothers all the rising flames of hope, That cowes the wings of genius that would soar. I am forever followed by this cloud, I can't escape, I cannot flee this cloud, This muddy, gloomy, hell-begotten cloud-- The dollar sign is traced upon this cloud! QUESTIONINGS Is it because the sun caresses me And makes me warm with its delightful rays That it is mine? That it is only mine? Is it because I frolic in the sea, The sea that hugs me with a thousand waves, That it is mine? That it is only mine? Is it because I hold you in my arms And madly kiss you, calling you my love, That you are mine? That you are only mine? THE LIBERTY I LOATHE I am at large, can go this way and that, No dungeon walls, no prison bars say halt, When roving fancies seize upon my feet. But am I free? Can I be truly free When that which lives within me is repressed, When my true self in vain from deep within Doth clamor for the right of self-expression? What hideous mockery of freedom this! Put me in jail, put me in jail for life, Let bread and water be my only fare, Make rats and spiders my associates. But have the light into my dungeon pour From overhead and give me clay, Oh, give me lots of clay--the tender flesh, The oily, tender flesh of mother earth, Responsive as a mistress to the touch, And I will have a feast no king e'er knew, And taste of pleasures that the gods would envy. And I will make unto myself a world, A world of which myself would be the God, A world in which my every dream and thought, My every feeling and my every passion Would find embodiment in plastic form. Oh, for a prison where I could be free! ON SEEING THE GARMENT STRIKERS MARCH I see a hundred thousand marching by. I also see as many, many millions That are in spirit also marching by. And lo! methinks this is but a rehearsal For the Exodus from the Land of Bondage-- And I behold with my prophetic eyes God's chosen people crossing the Red Sea; The workers of the world, God's chosen people, Are crossing the Red Sea of Revolution. And I behold the Industrial Commonwealth, The Promised Land of plenty and of peace, Where each one, under his own fig-tree seated, Shall sing his praises to the Lord of Life. THE TOILERS Crouching they cling like vermin to the earth And with their bleeding fingers scrape the earth But for a little dust, their sustenance, A little dust mixed with the sweat of brow, The blood of fingers and the tears of pain. 'Tis not for them the sun shines gloriously, The flowers bloom, the fruit hangs on the tree, 'Tis not for them the birds and poets sing, Or lovely women smile. They have to crouch and cling and sweat and scrape But for a little dust--their sustenance. PANEROTICISM I love all women's smiling eyes, I love all women's tempting lips, I love all women's loving hearts, I love all women's tender skin, I love all women's glowing flesh, I love all women's weakness, I love all women's strength. I love! I love! I love! APHRODITE I've seen a Venus not of marble carved By some great sculptor's hand in ancient Greece, Unearthed in a mutilated state By archaeologists in quest of ruins And pedestaled in temple of fine art. The Venus I have seen was made of flesh, Of ordinary, living, human flesh, More beautiful than statue e'er could be. She stands behind a counter in a store From morning until night dispensing wares-- A living Venus at five dollars per. THE TYRANNY OF RHYME Inane coquette, depart from me, Thou siren known as Muse of rhyme, Thou fain wouldst make thy slave of me, To give thee all my thought, my time, And all the love that's in my heart, I know thee well, depart! depart! I love a nobler Muse than thee, She's simple, free, intense, sublime, Her rhythm has sweeter melody Than e'er could have thy wanton rhyme. I gave to Rhythm my soul, my heart, O Muse of Rhyme, depart! depart! LINES INSPIRED ON MEETING A LADY To A. L. I look at life as an astronomer Looks at the star-filled sky. Life seems a sky to me, all human beings Rotating in their orbits are as stars. Some are obscure and some are luminous, Some give the light and warmth to solar systems, Some shed on lovers' heads soft lunar light. Some, like the comets, cosmic vagabonds, Are ever tramping the sidereal roads, And others, myriad-massed in endless stretches, Compose the glory of the Milky Way. I look at life as an astrologer Believing in the influence of stars, Their influences evil, beneficial. Perplexed I ponder o'er the laws mysterious That govern all the movements of the stars. And I am troubled in my inmost being At the appearance of a new-found star As on the threshold of a mystery. There hove into my sphere a new-found star Of primal magnitude, magnificent, Whose magnetism most irrestistibly Attracts me to itself. Am I to be the happy satellite Of this fair human sun whose smile or frown Could make me be a fertile Earth or Moon, A fertile Earth or frozen, barren Moon? Oh, will it just continue in its course, Rotating in its orbit and recede, Recede, recede, and leave me far behind Obscure and cold and sad and all alone?... OSCAR WILDE The work was done. The spirit-moulders of immortal souls Wiped from their brows the sweat and washed their hands, And standing by, in full contentment gazed Upon their wondrous work. A masterpiece! it was a masterpiece! A genius to be born unto the world, One more to swell that galaxy of stars That makes the cosmic bosom swell with pride. Another inextinguishable star To scintillate throughout eternity. The angels stood, heads bowed in reverence Before what was to be the poet Wilde, And as they stood, these proud progenitors, In blissful contemplation of their child, There fell upon them, as a shadow cast By purple clouds upon a limpid lake, A sadness that no human voice could tell. Forebodings of the suffering of Wilde Depressed them so that, kneeling down, they wept. They wept over the dire humiliation Awaiting him who is the pride of God, And over man's stupidity they wept-- The colossal stupidity of man. IMPERIALISM With one great gesture of my love-mad arms Would that I could embrace the entire world, The entire world of love-inspiring women. With one unending pressure of my lips I wish that I could kiss the entire world, The entire world of love-inspiring women. With one great spasm of ecstasy supreme Would that I could possess the entire world, The entire world of love-inspiring women. THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR The children of the poor are little plants That grow in sandy soil midst rocks and weeds And rusty cans of tin, and other junk Within the gloomy shadow of a wall, The gloomy shadow of a mildewed wall; Poor little plants! poor children of the poor. THE CALL OF SEX Know you that bottomless and boundless sea, Each heaving billow whereof is a woman? Oh, how my love-parched body craves to plunge Into the soothing substance of this sea!... Oh, for the joy of absolute abandon To the caressing furore of this sea; The frantic joy of breaking all restrictions, Of daring all the dangers of this sea! The ecstatic and the harrowing sensation Of rising, ever rising on a wave, A giant wave that rises, ever rises, And then to be replunged into the deep! The all-absorbing, all-inclusive deep. What if the mouth doth swallow liquid bitter; What if the heinous sharks men call disease Snap at my flesh, infecting me with poison, And even what if that mysterious mermaid, That moon-pale Undine claim me as her own And seal our union with the kiss of death? What of it? Does not all life end in death? Give me the death of Tristan and Isolde: I die for life and love,--I fear not death. IMMORTALITY At dawn of day the stars die one by one. They only seem to die, but do not die. There is no death for humans, or for stars. What we call life and death is only rhythm. It is all cadence, measure, rest, inflection, The poetry, the music of the spheres. The universe is one stupendous poem Whereof the suns and stars are words and letters, And we frail humans, punctuation marks. TO LIVE OR NOT TO LIVE To be or not to be is not the question; The question is, to live or not to live. Alive or dead or only vegetating, One thing is sure, we cannot help but being. To live! to be alive; to live intensely! To live with every fibre of the frame, With every sinew, every nerve and muscle; To live like this, or not to live at all. But we are cowards, we are fools and misers, Afraid to live--afraid to pay the price-- The price of youth,--the price of youth is age; The price--the price of joy is pain. And disenchantment is the price of love. And Life--the price of Life is Death. Come, let us live, and let us live intensely. Life! Life! more Life! more Life at any cost. MY RICHES Behold in me one richer than a king, Richer than Croesus was or Solomon, Aye, richer even than a Rockefeller. And lo! the gilded portals of my palace Are thrown wide open, and the spacious vaults, Staked full of treasures even to o'erflowing Remain unguarded, and I welcome thee To enter and partake of all my riches. My palace is my heart; my wealth, my treasure Is love, immeasurable, boundless love. DEPRIVATION The world is like a tapestry to me, Immense and wonderful, where interwoven With art most consummate by masterhand I see a maze of beings and of things. I can but see a little at a time, My sight is limited, the view is vast, The picture disconcertingly complex. But often, here and there, a brilliant spot, A woman's figure in life's tapestry Attracts my gaze and holds me in its spell. And, like a child that's crying for the moon, My hands would grasp that which delights mine eye, To press it fondly to my happy heart. Alas, the world, as tapestry and tomb, Will not give up its own. A SPHINX I like to see a woman wearing furs, Long-haired and dark and vicious looking furs, Strong smelling, soft, exotic looking furs, Contrasting strongly with her brilliant flesh, Her tender, warm and angel-tinted flesh. I love the angel and the beast in women. That's why I like a woman wearing furs. EXCUSE ME, MUSE 'Tis not the hour to sing of pink-hued vapors So softly sailing under azure skies; Nor of the shadow warm and so mysterious Cast by the lashes of a woman's eyes. 'Tis not the time for soft euphonious sighing And holding converse with pale lunar light. 'Tis not the hour for musing and for dreaming, Excuse me, Muse, I must go out and fight. And I will fight as long as infants suckle In vain at parched breasts devoid of milk; As long as my poor sisters sell their bodies For bread and rags, while parasites wear silk. As long as slave and master, thief and pauper Remain such terms as may to man apply, So long, I say, my lyre shall be a weapon, My song shall be the rebel's battle cry. NOEL Tormented Galilean who art Lord Of those that crucify thee every day And every hour and minute of the day And every hour and minute of the night: With pious glee they celebrate the night That witnessed thine appearance upon earth, That night when angels chanted "peace on earth." They chanted "Peace on earth, good will to men," And thou wert crowned with thorns by hands of men And thou wert spat upon by mouths of men And thou hast been betrayed by kiss of men; Condemned by men and crucified by men, Aye, crucified and deified by men. And every year for many centuries, On Christmas eve for many centuries, In churches and cathedrals Christians sing Their gladness of the coming of the Lord. The organ's thunder glorifies the Lord, The priests and ministers exalt the Lord, The infant Lord the virgin Mary bore; On Christmas eve it was in Bethlehem: And whilst they fete the babe of Bethlehem, Ten thousand babes on earth die painful deaths And millions live to live lives worse than death And still the massacre of innocents Goes on relentlessly. Poor innocents! LINES TO THE WOOLWORTH BUILDING Imposing pile of pale and polished stone, Cathedral-like in thy solemnity, Thy rectilinear grandeur awes my soul, And makes me shudder! Monstrous sacrilege, O when before Has thing so big been made for end so small? Unholy Temple of the priests of lucre, How most appropriate thy pallor is, So like in color to the tint of bones-- Thy slender, upright lines so much like bones-- So much like children's bones. How like unto the pyramids thou art; The tyrants' tombs, built by a million slaves. And like the pyramids, ere long Thou'lt be the relic of an age gone by. THE ARTISTS They have been born to model and to mould The shapeless clay into expressive form Even as gods! to seize the fleeting shades, The subtle hues of things that pass or stay And make them live and glow intensely. They have been born to tell their wondrous dreams In rhythmic stanzas full of strength and grace, To plunge into the very depths of things, To seek the precious essence that is fit For distillation to symphonic strain. Require them not to leave their sacred sphere, To mix with common vendors in the mart, To traffic their creations and to throw The priceless pearls of genius to the swine For but a bowl of vinegar and gall. O bring to them the little bread and milk Which they must have to live, and if you can Rejoice to give them honey. Be to them What ravens were unto a prophet once. Does not the beauty they create or dream Atone for all our ugly deeds or thoughts, Even as the saints who pray for those that sin Sustain the equilibrium that must be In order that the world may not be doomed? Eternal malediction fall on those Who mock or crucify these chosen ones And let them be thrice blessed who help to clear Life's rugged road of thorns for those who pass And passing, leave this world more beautiful. CAIN REFORMED Am I my brother's keeper? Yes, indeed, I keep him, aye, I keep him hard at work. I also keep the fruit of all his work And of his children's work I keep the fruit. And when he does not keep the laws I make That give me power to keep him hard at work, I am his keeper, keeping him in jail. Am I my brother's keeper? Yes, indeed. GOLGOTHA On the Golgotha of mine inmost being There stands a crucifix, And in the deepest recess of my being In perpetuity Good Friday reigns. And always in the stillness of the night, The endless night within mine inmost being, I hear the moaning and the supplications Of him that's crucified within my being. I see the wounds of side and hands and feet, The wounds that glow like rubies in the night, That cast a lurid glare upon the night, Those mystic wounds in number like the senses. Four horrid wounds upon the hands and feet, One on the side, thus making five in all, Just as the senses, making five in all. And in the endless night within my being I hear the moaning and the supplications. "Oh, tear me from my cross," entreats the Christ, "For I am Joy, thy God, the son of Life. Oh, tear me from my cross," entreats the Christ. That cursed instrument of agony, Is conscience; human conscience is the cross-- The cross whereon our Joy is crucified. My Lord, I will redeem thee from thy cross, And give thee burial in mine aching heart, Whence thou shalt rise and henceforth ever reign Over the Kingdom of the blessed flesh. IDOLATRY I stood before a leg in the museum, A marble leg, a mutilated leg, Supported by a rod of polished bronze. This leg of some hermaphroditic god Was carved in Greece, when ancient Greece was young. In deepest reverence I stood and gazed Upon this relic of an absent god. And as I stood I wondered if perchance Idolatry is not this very act, That thus enshrines an ancient piece of stone, Whilst living sculptors are compelled to waste In fruitless idleness that precious power Which carves the Victories of Samothrace. Idolators, ye worship graven stones But are indifferent to the gods that carve them. TO ARTURO GIOVANNITTI Arturo Giovannitti, fellow worker In song and in revolt, sing on! sing on! The battling warriors in the war of classes Have need of your inspired, inspiring voice, You are the rebel, leader, poet, prophet, You have already worn the martyr's crown. If there be in me just one spark of envy, It is that I was not like you in gaol. I envied you that most supreme distinction Of living in the shadow of the cross With all the sacred shades of martyred rebels, A fellow worker of departed Christs. NIGHTMARE I had a dream, I had a horrid dream. I dreamt that Byron travels for a house That handles wines from Portugal and Spain, That Shelley is a cashier of a bank, That Keats is valet to a wealthy Jew, That Oscar Wilde lays bricks, that Edgar Poe Is selling silks and satins on the road, And that Walt Whitman, he of noble height, Is manager of a department store. And I would have dreamed on, had not disgust, A flood of dire disgust, awakened me, And I myself was forced to rush downtown To live the life I shudder at in dream. LINES WRITTEN ON SEEING HENRI'S PAINTING OF THE LADY IN BLACK VELVET The Lady in black velvet is the night, The deep, uncanny, weird, mysterious night, The witching, troubling, awe-inspiring night, Serene and silent, sweet and subtle night, Tempestuous, tragic, black and feverish night. The Lady in black velvet is the night, Her robe of black as black as blackest night, Enfolds a world--a world of sleepless night, A world of sighs, of cravings and of crimes, Of maddening joys, of languors that consume, Of pains unbearable, of livid fears, Of nightmares and of dreams. Then there's the sombre gray of shifting clouds Whose masses rent asunder now reveal The radiant luminary of the night, Her silv'ry, radiant face is Queen of night. The Lady in black velvet is the night. THE BABE Fruit of a moment of supremest bliss, A passionate embrace, a long drawn kiss, Soft, pink and warm and chubby little thing, Most helpless being, despotic as a king. Third cousin to the gold-fish, the kitten and the chick, As free from care as they are, as shame-free and as quick To feel that life means living and living must be joy, That nothing is of value unless it be a toy. A SCENARIO Scene I. The time--a glorious summer afternoon. The place--somewhere along the Palisades. Rocks here and there; some trees and many bushes. A youthful artist, seated on a rock, With great strokes paints the sun-illumined Hudson. A fair young woman enters on the scene, Absorbed in picking many kinds of flowers. The youthful artist, catching sight of her, Stands up and drops his palette and his brushes. And when she sees the youth she drops the flowers. They stand in silence looking at each other. He then approaches her to raise her flowers-- And then she smiles, and he says foolish things, Deliciously absurd and foolish things. The insects are abuzzing, and the leaves-- The foliage of the bushes and the trees Are whispering--are gossiping in whispers. He takes her by the hand and kisses her, He kisses her and takes her in his arms, And carries her behind a clump of bushes. Scene II. The time and place and scene just as before. From left to right there enters on the scene Quite simultaneously a man and woman. Each reads a book while walking, so absorbed That they well-nigh collide with one another. He begs her pardon which, of course, she grants. He asks her if they have not met before, Her face seems so familiar, and she says: Perhaps he saw her somewhere at a lecture. And so they start to talk about their books, About their lectures and about their books. They seat themselves upon a rock and talk, And talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. The insects are abuzzing and the leaves-- The foliage of the bushes and the trees Are whispering, are gossiping in whispers. And from behind the softly swaying bushes Escape the sounds of kisses and of sighs, The kisses and the sighs of youthful lovers. And all the time the woman and the man Sit arguing, discussing and discussing Psychology, sociology and ethics. So different it is behind the bushes. And while some hug and kiss and others argue, A sudden gloom spreads over everything. The azure sky is now a sky of ink, The lightning flashes and the thunder claps, The shower is terrific'ly intense. Both couples find an overhanging rock, A scanty shelter 'gainst a raging storm. A blinding lightning flash, a thunder clap, All four lie dead. Is there a moral? Guess! THE TEMPLE Round, full and fertile is her abdomen, Even as Mother Earth. O! tree of life bearing the fruit of love, O! precious shell a precious pearl enclosing, O! wondrous instrument whereon love plays A fiery rhapsody, The echo whereof is a human life. O! blessed mother of the child of man. Ye fools, detach your gaze from godless heavens, God is right here if you would worship God, The mystery of life and love is God, And every pregnant woman is God's temple. SHELLEY Lucifer! dripping with celestial splendour, All aglow with cosmic rebellion, Thundering forth pious blasphemies, Chanting sacrilegious hymns, Thy voice is like unto the trumpet sounds Of the Archangels of the Apocalypse Calling the dead to life. Meteor fallen from the bosom of infinitude Into the common clay, Strange visitant from another orb, Permeated with the music of the spheres, Replete and radiant with rarest gems, Perplexing, exciting, soothing, betwitching. Lucifer! Prometheus! Dionysos! Shelley! THE SCULPTOR AND THE CLAY The sculptor, man, in woman mostly sees The clay of which to model gods of love. Some, cunning little cupids only are, The little rascal gods of light flirtation, Who like the fire-flies on a summer night Are luminous a moment--and that's all. While others are the serious gods of love, Majestic and intense as life itself, Mysterious and perplexing as the Sphinx, Relentless as the furies or as death, As maddening as poison of the snake, As soothing as is balm upon a wound, And sweet as that which passeth understanding. As sweet as that and sometimes just as bitter. Such are the statues man, the sculptor, moulds Of woman--clay. CONTEMPT I spit upon the laws that thieves have made To give the crooked strength to rob the weak. I spit upon a country full of wealth Where millions live in squalor and in want. I spit upon a flag that waves above A nation made of masters and of slaves. I spit upon religions that defend A hell on earth, and preach a life to come. I spit upon all morals that contend That joy of life is not life's highest end. I spit upon the education that Makes pygmies out of what might have been men. Upon this whole damned system do I spit, And while I spit--I weep. WILLIAM MORRIS Dreamer of dreams--dreamer of golden dreams, Explorer of the rainbow-lands of yore, Columbus of Arcadian Continents, Poetic founder of Utopian states. Dreamer of dreams? Dreamer of only dreams? A master worker with the mind and hand Who made the beautiful and useful wed, An alchemist who turned all work to art. Dreamer of dreams? Maker of wondrous things? A knight in mortal combat for a cause, A sower of emancipation's seed, A master builder of a better world. DON JUAN'S SONG From maids yet in their spring-time teens To full blown thirty summer queens, I love them all! From golden blondes and deep brunettes To Titian-locked one ne'er forgets-- I love them all! From fairies frail or plump or slender To women built with queenly splendor, I love them all! From damsels pale and melancholy To matrons gay and widows jolly, I love them all! From maidens unsophisticated To syrens well initiated, I love them all! I love them all! EASTER ON FIFTH AVENUE Capital best qualifies the weather That Easter Sunday donned for the occasion And the parade was also capital, It was indeed a capital parade. The gorgeous gowns, the stunning Easter hats Were capital and those hand-made complexions Down to the escorts groomed with perfect style Down to the sermons that the preachers preached In fashionable churches were most capital. Indeed the sight I saw that Easter morn Along Fifth Avenue was capital, Upon the sidewalks silently and slow The grand cortège of capital marched on. And whilst I was enjoying this grand sight There rose before my mind another sight: I saw the street between the sidewalks filled In compact mass with wan and worn spectators Who were in silence viewing the parade, It was a mob of children, men and women Whose pallid faces and whose piteous rags Gave to the spectacle a capital contrast, 'Twas Easter, Easter, lo! The Christ has risen! Upon the whole the show was capital. CONTEMPLATION I went into a house of many lofts, And in each loft I saw a thousand men, And women, too, and children, too, I saw. And all around arose a deaf'ning roar-- The roaring of machines o'er which were bent The toilers toiling at their tiresome task. And as I stood and gazed upon this scene I wondered why it was--I wondered why.... I went into a house of gilded halls, And in each hall there shone a thousand lights, And many men and women also shone. Delightful music mingled with perfume. Around luxurious tables, diners sat Enjoying luscious viands, mellow wines. And as I stood and gazed upon this scene, I thought of toilers and I understood. CONFIDENCES I have to go to work to win my bread, When oft upon my way the Muse of song, Espying me from far approaches me And takes me by the hand as tenderly As would a sister take her little brother. She whispers words as sparkling as champagne, As warm as blood, as pure as morning dew, And so enchants me that I cannot help But yield unto the tempting muse of song. She takes me from the world's drear, dusty road And leads me into that mysterious park Where lies the limpid lake of inspiration. The flowers of life and death grow in this park-- Of love and hate, the flowers of joy and pain, Of smiles and sighs, of laughter and of tears, The blooms of hope and those of disillusion. All, all these flowers grow in this wondrous park. I drink some water from the Muse's palm, The water of the lake of inspiration. And then in silence do I wend my way Through rows of silent and mysterious flowers, Inhaling all the odors of the flowers, The sweet and bitter odors of the flowers. And like the bee, I also make some honey, Alas! my honey is not always sweet. Perhaps because the flowers of life are bitter. Then I am harshly driven from this Eden By the compulsion of a god I hate, And I must go to work to win my bread. The honey of the poet has no market. Tempt me no more, dear Muse, or else I'll starve. IN THE LIBRARY As she sat facing me the other day Reading a book, while I was writing verses, Or rather trying to, for I could not Detach my gaze from her bewitching visage, Nor could my mind in rhythmic furrows flow, Pursuing thoughts to her all unrelated, When like the heaving billows that are yielding To the attracting powers of the moon, My every thought by her has been attracted. I thus bethought me: "Wherefore write I poems, When here, before me, breathes a living poem, Compared to whom, all poems are as dust Besides a sweetly smelling, blooming flower." So I lay down my pen and gazed at her. BYRON The thought of Byron wakens in my mind The vision of a solitary tree Titanic and contorted on a cliff That overhangs a wild abysmal sea. Its mighty root, a maze of tentacles, Has put a lasting clutch-hold on the rock, Much like the miser's fingers on his gold. Within its arteries the sap of life, The procreative juice in torrents flows, And gushes forth luxurious vegetation. The foliage-covered head is always raised In bold defiance of the elements. Undaunted by the tempest's fiendish rage, Calm under the concerted stare of stars, The fickle lover of a fickle moon. On balmy days or peaceful summer eves The rendezvous of master-singer birds. Perennial, rich, melodious and sad, Passionate and desolate and wild And beautiful and always beautiful. CHIAROSCURO I met a plum-hued Venus late one night, Live specimen of pure Egyptian art. The regal amplitude of tropic zones, Their rich luxuriance breathed on her face And radiated from her clothed form. Her eyes shone with that lustful brilliancy Of eyes of jungle prowlers who at night A-sniffling and a-growling hunt for mates. Her mellow, soft and sing-song voice was whisp'ring Enticing promises of untold joys To taste of in this paradise of jet. Alas! the curse of value, price and profit Indelibly was branded on her brow, The brow that ages past was of a savage. Oh! thou hast conquered glorious Christian progress. DESPONDENCY I sadly watch the hours go by, The hours, the days, the months, the years, And what's called life shall soon go by, And helpless and with fruitless rage I watch the hours of life go by. And I must curse when I would bless, And I who am all love, must hate, And I who have been born to sing Must spend myself in moans and tears. And must I perish on this rock A cruel God has bound me to? Will not some Hercules ere come And make me free? IN MEMORIAM Within the mansion of my memory There is a sumptuous chapel, where at times I kneel in deep devotion at the shrines Of all the blessed women I have loved. I burn for them the incense of my thoughts; Before their sacred images I lay The flowers of my purest sentiments, And on their altars piously I light The pallid candles of my vain regrets. I oft hold retrospective rendezvous Within the chapel of the loves of yore. SPRING SONG I too shall sing thy glory, Spring, Oh, season in thyself a song; In every tongue thy name doth ring With music we remember long. Fruehling! Primavera! Spring! Thy name to whisper is to sing. Why should I seek sweet melody And softly sounding words to say All that the spring-time means to me? Why should I make an effort, pray, When Fruehling! primavera! spring! To whisper only is to sing. TO A FRIEND You sigh because you are not loved. You only think you are not loved. I also sighed as you now sigh, Because I thought I was not loved. But I was loved--how I was loved! She lay awake at night and dreamed Of me, who thought I was not loved. Some loves like blooms that blush unseen, Remain unknown and unconfessed, And we oftimes are best beloved When loved with love in silence shrined. So be not sad, dear friend, nor sigh, But feel assured there is a heart In this wide world that beats for you. I SAW THREE NUNS I saw three nuns go by the other day: Three upright coffins slowly gliding by. Funereal, black and chilling to behold, The ghastly shadows of a defunct past. The worms of ignorance and superstition Give to these dead, the semblances of life. The past has not yet buried all its dead. I saw three nuns go by the other day: Three upright coffins slowly gliding by. A WOMAN LOVES ME A woman loves me! 'Tis not of her I sing whose womb has been The primal cradle of my tender self; I mean not mother-love. A woman loves me! 'Tis not of her I sing who also sprang From that same source whence also I have sprung; I mean not sister-love. A woman loves me! I sing of her who "from the mobs of life" Has chosen me as him to whom alone She will unlock her body and her soul To welcome all my love. ELIZABETH GURLEY FLYNN (The Workers' Jeanne d'Arc) She too a vision had and voices heard: She heard the groans of slaving, starving workers: She had a vision of their liberation. She also mounted steed and armor donned. The soap-box or the platform is her steed. Her coat of mail defiance of the powers. She too to victory an army leads. Her army is the risen proletariat, In arms against their pitiless exploiters. She too is hated by the church and state. They'd burn her at the stake if they but dared, Condemned for witchcraft or some other crime. She too shall live an ever-shining glory, In human history, in human hearts-- An even brighter glory than Jeanne d'Arc. The Maid of Orleans routed but the English, And to a worthless king restored a throne, To sway a sceptre o'er a land of serfs. Lead by Elizabeth we'll rout the masters And to the workers of the world restore The earth itself and all its joys and riches. Let all men rally round her blood-red banner Which bears the motto of the revolution: "Death to all masters! Freedom to all slaves!" JEALOUSY As you peruse those heavy, dusty volumes With tense attention hour after hour, Whilst totally indifferent to me,-- To me, who sees in you the book of books, To whom the very cover of this book, Your outward aspect, is more interesting Than the contents of all books ever printed. Is it a wonder I would like to build A mammoth pile of all the books there are And let the raging fire consume them all? MISERS I know of misers meaner than are those Who lay awake at night to guard their treasure, Which is in their possession only dust, A sordid, useless heap of gilded dust That might have given peace and bread to many. The misers whom I mean are fair to see, Delightful to converse with and to kiss; They fascinate us with their wondrous eyes As serpents fascinate the little birds. They draw us closer to them, ever closer, Then suddenly like serpents they coil up And put beyond our grasp their queenly treasures, Alas! in their possession to remain, But useless, vain and perishable things That might have given ecstasy to many. SWINBURNE Algernon Swinburne, is there not in thee Something akin to bells that ring at sea? In their sound so clear There is little cheer, When their knell I hear I recoil with fear. Though thy voice be clear as the day's light, It is pregnant with mystery, death, and night. OUR LADY OF INFINITE MERCY I often think of a mysterious woman-- There must be somewhere a mysterious woman, Mysterious and most marvelous of beauty, Most beautiful,--miraculously kind, Indeed a kindness passing understanding, So great a kindness that it seemeth madness. It seemeth madness, for she sallies forth At dead of night into the dismal streets, Into the dismal and deserted streets, Monotously criss-crossing the city, The monstrous, lightless, heartless, sleeping city, Where prowling as the vermin shunning light, Or derelicts adrift on dreary seas, She seeks the disinherited of joy She seeks the stunted, the disfigured children, The starved, diseased and the discouraged children Of stepmother society, seeks them out, Whom everybody shuns and no one loves. She seeks them out and gives herself to them, This queenly woman, marvelous of beauty, Entirely gives herself to those of whom The thought alone makes shudder with disgust. She gives herself even as the twilight enters A fetid, vermin-ridden, mildewed dungeon, A whiff of heaven in a life of hell. Oh, have you, have you ever seen that woman, That beautiful, that kind, mysterious woman? She is our Lady of Infinite Mercy. Blessed be our Lady of Infinite Mercy! A PAGAN'S PRAYER I sought the shrine of Eros and I prayed:-- O God omnipotent, O God supreme, O God of love who art the God of Gods, Behold thy worshipper upon his knees Prostrated in the dust. Let not my supplications rise in vain From depths iniquitous to heights sublime. O grant me my request, good God of love. Unlock for me thy secret treasure house And make me master of the arts of love. My heart conceives great symphonies of love That my poor body cannot execute. I am a Beethoven, I am a Wagner, My orchestration needs a thousand pieces, But am restricted to a shepherd's reed. Reveal to me the secrets of the ancients, Instruct me in the art of love long lost; That love of time when Gods and humans mingled. In love I am a God, in love expression I am alas! a frail, a weakling human. O Eros! Eros! Eros! God of love, Give me the power to love as Gods can love. NIETZSCHE A sombre silhouette Against a sun-rise sky In solemn solitude, The wanderer goes by. The shadow that he casts Upon the plains below Strikes terror to the hearts Of those that do not know. O messenger sublime Who hailest from that land Where joy and beauty reign; If they could understand!... If they could understand The message that you bring, They'd strew your path with palms; Hosannahs would they sing. Strength superceding faith, Joy superceding fear: The Super-Christ has come; The Superman is near.... TO A NEGRO BELLE You make me dream of distant tropic climes, Luxurious vegetation; nights serene By burning passion made tempestuous, The witching scent of rare exotic flowers That sooth and render sweetly languorous, Of music soft and weird, whose savage rhythm Compels each fibre of the frame to dance. I see you as the princess of an isle Whose jungles are replete with beasts of prey, And whose vast forests ever are alive With cries and frolickings of birds and apes; Whose villages of bamboo huts are full Of dusky-hued and happy naked people. Your simple hearted subjects pay you homage; Prostrated in the dust, they weirdly chant Thy praises, even as in my own way, I sing your praises, sweet, exotic princess. Oh, let me enter your enchanted realm, And make of me your happy, humble slave. WALT WHITMAN Mountain-like he towers, a Matterhorn Midst many minor peaks; And like a mountain, mighty, vast and wild; A finger pointing into boundless space, A head raised high above the shifting clouds, A heart that beats in unison with all, An eye that first beholds the rising sun And is the last to see her parting glory, A clarion-call to freedom, A gesture of revolt, A world-encircling brotherhood embrace, An exaltation of the lowly, A vindication of the truth, A glorification of the human body, A declaration of the right of all To live, to love, to dare and to do, A hymn to life, a rhapsody of joy! LIFE-LUST My mouth--the mouth of my whole being waters For all the fruit upon the lap of Life; The luscious fruit of Life, (delicious fruit, All running over with the juice of joy.) Life seems a banquet and my gourmand senses Would gorge themselves with all good things thereof. My taste, my touch, my smell, my sight, my hearing Would drink the seasoned vintages of Life, And relish all Life's rarest fruits and viands. Content to go whene'er the feast is over Content, the feast was not prepared in vain. ON A TALK OF SPINOZA Durant spoke of Spinoza yesterday And I sat list'ning, feeling, meditating. And now and ever afterwards will feel And live and think more deeply than before, For having heard Durant speak of Spinoza. Spinoza! what a mighty, mighty name! All Alexanders, Caesars and Napoleons-- Mere specks of dust upon a polished lense, Compared to that poor polisher of lenses. He polished lenses for myopic eyes, The world's myopic eyes hath need of them-- And long will need them,--poor myopic world. My own sight seems improved since I have heard Durant speak of Spinoza yesterday. THE REVOLT OF THE RAGGED We who have but rags to wear, Let us go out on strike And face the robber-master class In all our naked might. Do they not hold that man is made In the image of his God? So we refuse to desecrate The image of their God. No longer will we soil our limbs, These beautiful, these wondrous limbs With filthy, fetid rags. Where is the beast so wild, The reptile or the worm so base in kind, Would not disdain the rags "creation's kings" Disgrace their bodies with? Oh be not shocked at our forced nakedness, Ye masters who refuse to clothe your slaves. Do you not steal the wool that we have shorn, The cloth we weave, the garments that we made? You stole our clothes, behold us naked now. Let us arise and from our bodies tear The fetid uniform that brands us slaves. In countless masses let us rally forth And through each pore of our free body shout Our right to life, to liberty, and joy. I'VE SEEN A PRINCESS I've read of princesses in fairy tales And I have sometimes dreamed of princesses But not until to-day have I beheld, Beheld or ever spoken to a princess. Yes, I have seen and spoken to a princess In body and in mind; in thought and gesture, Indeed, in every way a perfect princess. Since I am not some mighty potentate In whom it would not seem as sheer presumption To lay his heart and domains at her feet, Would I at least could be a humble page Forever in attendance on his princess, To serve her and to worship her in silence, And be allowed as wages for his hire To breathe within the shadow of her charms. But though my princess be reality, My hopes, my aspirations, my desires, Alas, are dreams, mere dreams, alas, mere dreams. THE GREAT DISCARD I see a mighty junk-heap rising high, Old bibles, crosses, crescents, six-point stars And other symbols, idol's fetiches-- The bloody tools of greed and superstition, That have tormented man for centuries, Disfiguring his body and his mind. I see the flags of all the various nations, In whose defense men slaughtered one another Upon this junk-heap also; and the books Wherein the laws are writ, that give to man The power over man; And all the institutions that have helped To make of man an abject slave or tyrant, These, too, are on this junk-heap. THE SCULPTOR'S RHAPSODY I am a God! I am drunk with the joy of creating. At my touch form comes out of chaos. With a handful of clay I build monuments, Vaster than the pyramids, More mysterious than the Sphinx, As startling as the Colossus of Rhodes. My statues are austere as ancient cathedrals, Their silhouette effaces the sky, Their shadows engulf entire cities. I am a God! I am drunk with the joy of creating. ATAVISM O, have you ever heard the gutter's call? E'er felt the strange attraction of the sewer? Or ceded to the urge from underneath, To wallow in the mire, to plunge, to sink Into the frightful abyss of perdition? Were you e'er tempted from some siren's lips, To cull the bliss, you know, is venomous? Or did you feel the satanic desire, To soil and mutilate the sacred image Of that ideal you worshiped all your life? It is the atavistic voice that's waking, The dormant beast in you. Beware! Beware! TO ONE WHO COULD NOT LOVE I You told me that you love the water, The cascades' roaring, rushing water, The rivers' gently flowing water, The pools' mysterious silent water, The erring brooklets' whisp'ring water, The oceans' moaning, hissing water, The oceans' seething, sighing water, It's thundering, caressing water. My love for you is also as the water, The roaring, rushing, silent, whisp'ring water. The thundering, the seething, sighing water. Oh, love me, for my love is like the water, Did you not tell me that you love the water? II I've been a profligate till now, Have squandered of the treasures of my heart In reckless fashion. Henceforth my beloved, Each precious scrap of love, Each feeling, thought or passion, Is yours alone. My very life is yours. III You sometime make me dream of fair Granada, Of olden days of Moorish reign and glory; At other times you make me feel the gloom Of Christian Spain, sepulchral and morose. You are as the Alhambra when you smile, Gold-tinted, graceful, radiating joy. But when you frown or are indifferent, Then like to the Escurial you are, Depressing, full of sombreness and chill. IV I strolled through lonely by-paths in the park, It was the hour, it was the mystic hour, When 'tis no longer day, nor yet is night. When o'er all nature hangs a solemn hush, And everything is peaceful and serene. And thus I strolled along and thought of her-- And then I sat upon a rustic bench And thought of her,--and only thought of her. And o'ver all nature hung a solemn hush; And I was sad, and it was growing dark. And as I sat there on the rustic bench Close by to me I heard two voices speak. They spoke Italian. Softly did they speak, And there was sadness in their voices too. One spoke of Beatrice as angel might Have spoken of the queen of all the heavens; The other spoke of Laura as a bard Would speak of her who might have been the queen,-- The queen of every kingdom of the earth. I turned my head and seated by my side I saw the sad, illustrious Tuscan bards, The requiem of whose unrequited love Reverberates throughout eternity. I did not rise and go, but kept my place. Is not my love as great as was their love? And is not she as beautiful, as cold, As hopelessly indifferent and cold, As ever Beatrice and Laura were? And so I also spoke about my love, Then we were silent sitting side by side. Upon that rustic bench in Central Park, Along a lonesome by-path in the park. It was the hour, it was that mystic hour When 'tis no longer day nor yet is night; And o'er all nature hangs a solemn hush, And everything is peaceful and serene. Then they both went away so quietly That I was unaware that they had gone Until I turned my head and saw them not. V My heart is like a man condemned to death, Who in the corner of his gloomy cell Hugs one last spark of hope. Bright as a diamond in the dark of night, And as a diamond difficult to crush, Is this last spark of hope. VI Since Orpheus with the magic of his music, Could charm the wildest beast, why could not I Enthrall you with the music of my love? Is not love's music magical enough, Or is your heart stone deaf? Even if so! I will perform a miracle and cause Your heart to hear love's music. VII And even if you loved me not, If you but knew the pain I feel When you but breathe a word that's harsh, When you betray the faintest frown; And when you mock me for my love, Or chide me for the least caress, If you but knew the pain I feel. Aye, even if you loved me not, You ne'er would frown at me or mock My love for you, or harshly speak, Or bid me not to kiss your hand; Instead you'd treat me as a child, You'd treat me as a child that's sick, And patiently you would submit To my caress; you would allow My feverish hands to stroke your hair, My quivering lips to kiss your brow, My famished eyes to feast on you, And my delirious heart to spin: To spin a spider's web of love, To make your heart its captive fly. Aye, even if you loved me not, If you but knew the pain I feel, Whene'er I think you love me not, You'd treat me as a little child; You'd tell me love's sweet fairy tale, I will believe love's fairy tale. Please tell me love's sweet fairy tale, Aye, even if you love me not. VIII The sun is warm and bright, All nature sings; The song of love and life is in the air, The flowing waters and the rolling hills, The grass we tread upon, the birds that fly, The humming insects, aye, all men, all beasts, All things are happy in the sun's caress. But in my heart, in my unhappy heart, The icy blast of winter still persists, And desolation reigns. Your frown obliterates the sun for me, And your indifference is worse than death. And in my heart, in my unhappy heart, Dire desolation reigns. IX This is the tale of an unhappy sculptor, A shaft of marble radiantly white, Whose adamantine substance would not yield To the impassioned efforts of the sculptor. The chisel struck the irresponsive rock Again, again, again, but all in vain Until at last discouraged and exhausted He sinks down at the foot of this cold stone. That might have been a living Galathea, But is alas the tombstone of Pygmalion. X It was a sepulchre I have been wooing: Fair to behold was she and seeming warm, But deep within as cold as death itself, And to love's fervent pleadings irresponsive; Aye, even as the tomb. Deaf to the voice of poetry and love, Alas! she's doubly deaf. It was a sepulchre I have been wooing. The October issue of THE GLEBE will present "The Azure Adder," a one-act comedy by Charles Demuth. Subscription price per year, $3.00 Transcriber's Notes The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical errors were silently corrected. 
6062	----	PIKE COUNTY BALLADS AND OTHER POEMS By John Hay LIST OF CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION by Henry Morley. POEMS BY JOHN HAY. THE PIKE COUNTY BALLADS. JIM BLUDSO LITTLE BREECHES BANTY TIM THE MYSTERY OF GILGAL GOLYER THE PLEDGE AT SPUNKY POINT WANDERLIEDER. SUNRISE IN THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE THE SPHINX OF THE TUILERIES THE SURRENDER OF SPAIN THE PRAYER OF THE ROMANS THE CURSE OF HUNGARY THE MONKS OF BASLE THE ENCHANTED SHIRT A WOMAN'S LOVE ON PITZ LANGUARD BOUDOIR PROPHECIES A TRIUMPH OF ORDER ERNST OF EDELSHEIM MY CASTLE IN SPAIN SISTER SAINT LUKE NEW AND OLD. MILES KEOGH'S HORSE THE ADVANCE-GUARD LOVE'S PRAYER CHRISTINE EXPECTATION TO FLORA A HAUNTED ROOM DREAMS THE LIGHT OF LOVE QUAND MEME WORDS THE STIRRUP-CUP A DREAM OF BRIC-A-BRAC LIBERTY THE WHITE FLAG THE LAW OF DEATH MOUNT TABOR RELIGION AND DOCTRINE SINAI AND CALVARY THE VISION OF ST. PETER ISRAEL THE CROWS AT WASHINGTON REMORSE ESSE QUAM VIDERI WHEN THE BOYS COME HOME LESE-AMOUR NORTHWARD IN THE FIRELIGHT IN A GRAVEYARD THE PRAIRIE CENTENNIAL A WINTER NIGHT STUDENT-SONG HOW IT HAPPENED GOD'S VENGEANCE TOO LATE LOVE'S DOUBT LAGRIMAS ON THE BLUFF UNA "THROUGH THE LONG DAYS AND YEARS" A PHYLACTERY BLONDINE DISTICHES REGARDANT GUY OF THE TEMPLE TRANSLATIONS. THE WAY TO HEAVEN COUNTESS JUTTA A BLESSING TO THE YOUNG THE GOLDEN CALF THE AZRA GOOD AND BAD LUCK L'AMOUR DU MENSONGE AMOR MYSTICUS INTRODUCTION. Pike County Ballads and other poems in this volume by Colonel John Hay represent in the best manner the spirit of our strong and independent sister-land across the Atlantic. Pike County Ballads do full justice to the raw material in the United States, and show a loyal temper in the rough. The other pieces show how the love of freedom speaks through finer spirits of the land, and, dealing with realities, can turn a life of action into music. Colonel Hay has lived always in vigorous relation with the full life of the people whose best mind his poems represent. He is descended from a Scottish soldier, a John Hay, who, at the beginning of the last century, left his country to take service under the Elector-Palatine, and whose son went afterwards with his family to settle among the Kentucky pioneers. Dr. Charles Hay was the father of John Hay the poet, who was born on the 8th of October 1838, in the heart of the United States, at Salem in Indiana. When twenty years old he graduated at the neighbouring Brown University, where his fellow-students valued his skill as a writer. Then he studied for the Bar, and he was called to the Bar three years later, at Springfield, Illinois. At Springfield, Abraham Lincoln practised as a barrister. Shrewd, lively, earnest, honest, he grudged help to a rogue. In a criminal case, when evidence threw unexpected light upon a client's character, Abraham Lincoln said suddenly to his junior, "Swett, the man is guilty; you defend him, I can't." In another case, when a piece of rascality in his client came out, Abraham Lincoln left his junior in possession of the case and went to his hotel. To the judge, who sent for him, he replied that he had found his hands were very dirty, and had gone away to get them clean. Almost immediately after John Hay's call to the Bar at Springfield he was chosen by Abraham Lincoln, newly made President, to go with him to Washington. At Washington, Hay acted as Assistant-Secretary, and was also, in the Civil War, aide-de-camp to President Lincoln. Throughout that momentous struggle he was actively employed on the side of the North at the headquarters and on the field of battle. He served for a time under Generals Hunter and Gillmore, became a Colonel in the army of the North, and served also as Assistant Adjutant-General. John Hay had in that struggle three brothers and two brothers-in-law serving also in the field. In 1890 there was published, in ten volumes, at New York, by the New York Century Company, "Abraham Lincoln, a History: by John G. Nicolay and John Hay." This was, with fresh material inserted, a collection of chapters that had been published in The Century Magazine from November 1886 to the beginning of 1890. The friends, who worked equally together upon this large record, said, "We knew Mr. Lincoln intimately before his election to the Presidency. We came from Illinois to Washington with him, and remained at his side and in his service--separately or together--until the day of his death." Abroad, as at home, Colonel Hay has been active in the service of his country. In 1865 he went to Paris as Secretary of Legation, and after remaining two years in that office he went as Charge-d'Affaires for the United States to Vienna. After a year at Vienna, Colonel Hay went to Madrid as Secretary of Legation under General Daniel Sickles. In 1870 he returned to the United States, and was for the next five years an editorial writer for the New York Tribune. During seven months, when Whitelaw Reid was in Europe, Colonel Hay was editor in chief. It was for The Tribune that Hay wrote "The Pike County Ballads," which were first reprinted separately in 1871, and are placed first in the collection of his poems. In the same year he published his "Castilian Days," inspired by residence in Spain. In 1876 Colonel Hay removed from New York to Cleveland, Ohio. He then ceased to take part in the editing of The Tribune, but continued friendly service as a writer. From 1879 to 1881 Colonel Hay served under President Hayes as Assistant-Secretary of State in the Government of the United States. In 1881 he was President of the International Sanitary Congress at Washington. Since that time he has been active, with John G. Nicolay, in the preparation and production of the full Memoir of Abraham Lincoln, now completed, that will take high rank among the records of a war which, in its issues, touched the future of the world, perhaps, more nearly than any war since Waterloo, not even excepting the great struggle which ended at Sedan. That is the life of a man, here is its music. H. M. THE PIKE COUNTY BALLADS. JIM BLUDSO, OF THE "PRAIRIE BELLE." Wall, no! I can't tell whar he lives, Becase he don't live, you see; Leastways, he's got out of the habit Of livin' like you and me. Whar have you been for the last three year That you haven't heard folks tell How Jimmy Bludso passed in his checks The night of the Prairie Belle? He weren't no saint,--them engineers Is all pretty much alike,-- One wife in Natchez-under-the-Hill, And another one here, in Pike; A keerless man in his talk was Jim, And an awkward hand in a row, But he never flunked, and he never lied,-- I reckon he never knowed how. And this was all the religion he had,-- To treat his engine well; Never be passed on the river; To mind the pilot's bell; And if ever the Prairie Belle took fire,-- A thousand times he swore, He'd hold her nozzle agin the bank Till the last soul got ashore. All boats has their day on the Mississip, And her day come at last,-- The Movastar was a better boat, But the Belle she WOULDN'T be passed. And so she come tearin' along that night-- The oldest craft on the line-- With a nigger squat on her safety-valve, And her furnace crammed, rosin and pine. The fire bust out as she clared the bar, And burnt a hole in the night, And quick as a flash she turned, and made For that willer-bank on the right. There was runnin' and cursin', but Jim yelled out, Over all the infernal roar, "I'll hold her nozzle agin the bank Till the last galoot's ashore." Through the hot, black breath of the burnin' boat Jim Bludso's voice was heard, And they all had trust in his cussedness, And knowed he would keep his word. And, sure's you're born, they all got off Afore the smokestacks fell,-- And Bludso's ghost went up alone In the smoke of the Prairie Belle. He weren't no saint,--but at jedgment I'd run my chance with Jim, 'Longside of some pious gentlemen That wouldn't shook hands with him. He seen his duty, a dead-sure thing,-- And went for it thar and then; And Christ ain't a-going to be too hard On a man that died for men. LITTLE BREECHES. I don't go much on religion, I never ain't had no show; But I've got a middlin' tight grip, sir, On the handful o' things I know. I don't pan out on the prophets And free-will, and that sort of thing,-- But I b'lieve in God and the angels, Ever sence one night last spring. I come into town with some turnips, And my little Gabe come along,-- No four-year-old in the county Could beat him for pretty and strong, Peart and chipper and sassy, Always ready to swear and fight,-- And I'd larnt him to chaw terbacker Jest to keep his milk-teeth white. The snow come down like a blanket As I passed by Taggart's store; I went in for a jug of molasses And left the team at the door. They scared at something and started,-- I heard one little squall, And hell-to-split over the prairie Went team, Little Breeches and all. Hell-to-split over the prairie! I was almost froze with skeer; But we rousted up some torches, And searched for 'em far and near. At last we struck hosses and wagon, Snowed under a soft white mound, Upsot, dead beat,--but of little Gabe No hide nor hair was found. And here all hope soured on me, Of my fellow-critters' aid,-- I jest flopped down on my marrow-bones, Crotch-deep in the snow, and prayed. . . . . By this, the torches was played out, And me and Isrul Parr Went off for some wood to a sheepfold That he said was somewhar thar. We found it at last, and a little shed Where they shut up the lambs at night. We looked in and seen them huddled thar, So warm and sleepy and white; And thar sot Little Breeches and chirped, As peart as ever you see, "I want a chaw of terbacker, And that's what's the matter of me." How did he git thar? Angels. He could never have walked in that storm; They jest scooped down and toted him To whar it was safe and warm. And I think that saving a little child, And fotching him to his own, Is a derned sight better business Than loafing around The Throne. BANTY TIM. REMARKS OF SERGEANT TILMON JOY TO THE WHITE MAN'S COMMITTEE OF SPUNKY POINT, ILLINOIS. I reckon I git your drift, gents,-- You 'low the boy sha'n't stay; This is a white man's country; You're Dimocrats, you say; And whereas, and seein', and wherefore, The times bein' all out o' j'int, The nigger has got to mosey From the limits o' Spunky P'int! Le's reason the thing a minute: I'm an old-fashioned Dimocrat too, Though I laid my politics out o' the way For to keep till the war was through. But I come back here, allowin' To vote as I used to do, Though it gravels me like the devil to train Along o' sich fools as you. Now dog my cats ef I kin see, In all the light of the day, What you've got to do with the question Ef Tim shill go or stay. And furder than that I give notice, Ef one of you tetches the boy, He kin check his trunks to a warmer clime Than he'll find in Illanoy. Why, blame your hearts, jest hear me! You know that ungodly day When our left struck Vicksburg Heights, how ripped And torn and tattered we lay. When the rest retreated I stayed behind, Fur reasons sufficient to me,-- With a rib caved in, and a leg on a strike, I sprawled on that cursed glacee. Lord! how the hot sun went for us, And br'iled and blistered and burned! How the Rebel bullets whizzed round us When a cuss in his death-grip turned! Till along toward dusk I seen a thing I couldn't believe for a spell: That nigger--that Tim--was a crawlin' to me Through that fire-proof, gilt-edged hell! The Rebels seen him as quick as me, And the bullets buzzed like bees; But he jumped for me, and shouldered me, Though a shot brought him once to his knees; But he staggered up, and packed me off, With a dozen stumbles and falls, Till safe in our lines he drapped us both, His black hide riddled with balls. So, my gentle gazelles, thar's my answer, And here stays Banty Tim: He trumped Death's ace for me that day, And I'm not goin' back on him! You may rezoloot till the cows come home, But ef one of you tetches the boy, He'll wrastle his hash to-night in hell, Or my name's not Tilmon Joy! THE MYSTERY OF GILGAL. The darkest, strangest mystery I ever read, or heern, or see, Is 'long of a drink at Taggart's Hall,-- Tom Taggart's of Gilgal. I've heern the tale a thousand ways, But never could git through the maze That hangs around that queer day's doin's; But I'll tell the yarn to youans. Tom Taggart stood behind his bar, The time was fall, the skies was fa'r, The neighbours round the counter drawed, And ca'mly drinked and jawed. At last come Colonel Blood of Pike, And old Jedge Phinn, permiscus-like, And each, as he meandered in, Remarked, "A whisky-skin." Tom mixed the beverage full and fa'r, And slammed it, smoking, on the bar. Some says three fingers, some says two,-- I'll leave the choice to you. Phinn to the drink put forth his hand; Blood drawed his knife, with accent bland, "I ax yer parding, Mister Phinn-- Jest drap that whisky-skin." No man high-toneder could be found Than old Jedge Phinn the country round. Says he, "Young man, the tribe of Phinns Knows their own whisky-skins!" He went for his 'leven-inch bowie-knife:-- "I tries to foller a Christian life; But I'll drap a slice of liver or two, My bloomin' shrub, with you." They carved in a way that all admired, Tell Blood drawed iron at last, and fired. It took Seth Bludso 'twixt the eyes, Which caused him great surprise. Then coats went off, and all went in; Shots and bad language swelled the din; The short, sharp bark of Derringers, Like bull-pups, cheered the furse. They piled the stiffs outside the door; They made, I reckon, a cord or more. Girls went that winter, as a rule, Alone to spellin'-school. I've searched in vain, from Dan to Beer- Sheba, to make this mystery clear; But I end with HIT as I did begin,-- "WHO GOT THE WHISKY-SKIN?" GOLYER. Ef the way a man lights out of this world Helps fix his heft for the other sp'ere, I reckon my old friend Golyer's Ben Will lay over lots of likelier men For one thing he done down here. You didn't know Ben? He driv a stage On the line they called the Old Sou'-west; He wa'n't the best man that ever you seen, And he wa'n't so ungodly pizen mean,-- No better nor worse than the rest. He was hard on women and rough on his friends; And he didn't have many, I'll let you know; He hated a dog and disgusted a cat, But he'd run off his legs for a motherless brat, And I guess there's many jess so. I've seed my sheer of the run of things, I've hoofed it a many and many a miled, But I never seed nothing that could or can Jest git all the good from the heart of a man Like the hands of a little child. Well! this young one I started to tell you about,-- His folks was all dead, I was fetchin' him through,-- He was just at the age that's loudest for boys, And he blowed such a horn with his sarchin' small voice, We called him "the Little Boy Blue." He ketched a sight of Ben on the box, And you bet he bawled and kicked and howled, For to git 'long of Ben, and ride thar too; I tried to tell him it wouldn't do, When suddingly Golyer growled, "What's the use of making the young one cry? Say, what's the use of being a fool? Sling the little one up here whar he can see, He won't git the snuffles a-ridin' with me, The night ain't any too cool." The child hushed cryin' the minute he spoke; "Come up here, Major! don't let him slip." And jest as nice as a woman could do, He wropped his blanket around them two, And was off in the crack of a whip. We rattled along an hour or so, Till we heerd a yell on the still night air. Did you ever hear an Apache yell? Well, ye needn't want to, THIS side of hell; There's nothing more devilish there. Caught in the shower of lead and flint, We felt the old stage stagger and plunge; Then we heerd the voice and the whip of Ben, As he gethered his critters up again, And tore away with a lunge. The passengers laughed. "Old Ben's all right, He's druv five year and never was struck." "Now if _I_'d been thar, as sure as you live, They'd 'a' plugged me with holes as thick as a sieve; It's the reg'lar Golyer luck." Over hill and holler and ford and creek, Jest like the hosses had wings, we tore; We got to Looney's, and Ben come in And laid down the baby and axed for his gin, And dropped in a heap on the floor. Said he, "When they fired, I kivered the kid,-- Although I ain't pretty, I'm middlin' broad; And look! he ain't fazed by arrow nor ball,-- Thank God! my own carcase stopped them all." Then we seen his eye glaze, and his lower jaw fall,-- And he carried his thanks to God. THE PLEDGE AT SPUNKY POINT. A TALE OF EARNEST EFFORT AND HUMAN PERFIDY. It's all very well for preachin', But preachin' and practice don't gee: I've give the thing a fair trial, And you can't ring it in on me. So toddle along with your pledge, Squire, Ef that's what you want me to sign; Betwixt me and you, I've been thar, And I'll not take any in mine. A year ago last Fo'th July A lot of the boys was here. We all got corned and signed the pledge For to drink no more that year. There was Tilmon Joy and Sheriff McPhail And me and Abner Fry, And Shelby's boy Leviticus, And the Golyers, Luke and Cy. And we anteed up a hundred In the hands of Deacon Kedge For to be divided the follerin' Fo'th 'Mongst the boys that kep' the pledge. And we knowed each other so well, Squire, You may take my scalp for a fool, Ef every man when he signed his name Didn't feel cock-sure of the pool. Fur a while it all went lovely; We put up a job next day Fur to make Joy b'lieve his wife was dead, And he went home middlin' gay; Then Abner Fry he killed a man And afore he was hung McPhail Jest bilked the widder outen her sheer By getting him slewed in jail. But Chris'mas scooped the Sheriff, The egg-nogs gethered him in; And Shelby's boy Leviticus Was, New Year's, tight as sin; And along in March the Golyers Got so drunk that a fresh-biled owl Would 'a' looked 'longside o' them two young men, Like a sober temperance fowl. Four months alone I walked the chalk, I thought my heart would break; And all them boys a-slappin my back And axin', "What'll you take?" I never slep' without dreamin' dreams Of Burbin, Peach, or Rye, But I chawed at my niggerhead and swore I'd rake that pool or die. At last--the Fo'th--I humped myself Through chores and breakfast soon, Then scooted down to Taggart's store-- For the pledge was off at noon; And all the boys was gethered thar, And each man hilt his glass-- Watchin' me and the clock quite solemn-like Fur to see the last minute pass. The clock struck twelve! I raised the jug And took one lovin' pull-- I was holler clar from skull to boots. It seemed I couldn't git full. But I was roused by a fiendish laugh That might have raised the dead-- Them ornary sneaks had sot the clock A half an hour ahead! "All right!" I squawked. "You've got me, Jest order your drinks agin, And we'll paddle up to the Deacon's And scoop the ante in." But when we got to Kedge's, What a sight was that we saw! The Deacon and Parson Skeeters In the tail of a game of Draw. They had shook 'em the heft of the mornin', The Parson's luck was fa'r, And he raked, the minute we got thar, The last of our pool on a pa'r. So toddle along with your pledge, Squire, I 'low it's all very fine, But ez fur myself, I thank ye, I'll not take any in mine. WANDERLIEDER. SUNRISE IN THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE. (PARIS, AUGUST 1865.) I stand at the break of day In the Champs Elysees. The tremulous shafts of dawning, As they shoot o'er the Tuileries early, Strike Luxor's cold grey spire, And wild in the light of the morning With their marble manes on fire, Ramp the white Horses of Marly. But the Place of Concord lies Dead hushed 'neath the ashy skies. And the Cities sit in council With sleep in their wide stone eyes. I see the mystic plain Where the army of spectres slain In the Emperor's life-long war March on with unsounding tread To trumpets whose voice is dead. Their spectral chief still leads them,-- The ghostly flash of his sword Like a comet through mist shines far,-- And the noiseless host is poured, For the gendarme never heeds them, Up the long dim road where thundered The army of Italy onward Through the great pale Arch of the Star! The spectre army fades Far up the glimmering hill, But, vaguely lingering still, A group of shuddering shades Infects the pallid air, Growing dimmer as day invades The hush of the dusky square. There is one that seems a King, As if the ghost of a Crown Still shadowed his jail-bleached hair; I can hear the guillotine ring, As its regicide note rang there, When he laid his tired life down And grew brave in his last despair. And a woman frail and fair Who weeps at leaving a world Of love and revel and sin In the vast Unknown to be hurled; (For life was wicked and sweet With kings at her small white feet!) And one, every inch a Queen, In life and in death a Queen, Whose blood baptized the place, In the days of madness and fear,-- Her shade has never a peer In majesty and grace. Murdered and murderers swarm; Slayers that slew and were slain, Till the drenched place smoked with the rain That poured in a torrent warm,-- Till red as the Riders of Edom Were splashed the white garments of Freedom With the wash of the horrible storm! And Liberty's hands were not clean In the day of her pride unchained, Her royal hands were stained With the life of a King and Queen; And darker than that with the blood Of the nameless brave and good Whose blood in witness clings More damning than Queens' and Kings'. Has she not paid it dearly? Chained, watching her chosen nation Grinding late and early In the mills of usurpation? Have not her holy tears, Flowing through shameful years, Washed the stains from her tortured hands? We thought so when God's fresh breeze, Blowing over the sleeping lands, In 'Forty-Eight waked the world, And the Burgher-King was hurled From that palace behind the trees. As Freedom with eyes aglow Smiled glad through her childbirth pain, How was the mother to know That her woe and travail were vain? A smirking servant smiled When she gave him her child to keep; Did she know he would strangle the child As it lay in his arms asleep? Liberty's cruellest shame! She is stunned and speechless yet, In her grief and bloody sweat Shall we make her trust her blame? The treasure of 'Forty-Eight A lurking jail-bird stole, She can but watch and wait As the swift sure seasons roll. And when in God's good hour Comes the time of the brave and true, Freedom again shall rise With a blaze in her awful eyes That shall wither this robber-power As the sun now dries the dew. This Place shall roar with the voice Of the glad triumphant people, And the heavens be gay with the chimes Ringing with jubilant noise From every clamorous steeple The coming of better times. And the dawn of Freedom waking Shall fling its splendours far Like the day which now is breaking On the great pale Arch of the Star, And back o'er the town shall fly, While the joy-bells wild are ringing, To crown the Glory springing From the Column of July! THE SPHINX OF THE TUILERIES. Out of the Latin Quarter I came to the lofty door Where the two marble Sphinxes guard The Pavillon de Flore. Two Cockneys stood by the gate, and one Observed, as they turned to go, "No wonder He likes that sort of thing,-- He's a Sphinx himself, you know." I thought as I walked where the garden glowed In the sunset's level fire, Of the Charlatan whom the Frenchmen loathe And the Cockneys all admire. They call him a Sphinx,--it pleases him,-- And if we narrowly read, We will find some truth in the flunkey's praise,-- The man is a Sphinx indeed. For the Sphinx with breast of woman And face so debonair Had the sleek false paws of a lion, That could furtively seize and tear. So far to the shoulders,--but if you took The Beast in reverse you would find The ignoble form of a craven cur Was all that lay behind. She lived by giving to simple folk A silly riddle to read, And when they failed she drank their blood In cruel and ravenous greed. But at last came one who knew her word, And she perished in pain and shame,-- This bastard Sphinx leads the same base life And his end will be the same. For an OEdipus-People is coming fast With swelled feet limping on, If they shout his true name once aloud His false foul power is gone. Afraid to fight and afraid to fly, He cowers in an abject shiver; The people will come to their own at last,-- God is not mocked for ever. THE SURRENDER OF SPAIN. I. Land of unconquered Pelayo! land of the Cid Campeador! Sea-girdled mother of men! Spain, name of glory and power; Cradle of world-grasping Emperors, grave of the reckless invader, How art thou fallen, my Spain! how art thou sunk at this hour! II. Once thy magnanimous sons trod, victors, the portals of Asia, Once the Pacific waves rushed, joyful thy banners to see; For it was Trajan that carried the battle-flushed eagles to Dacia, Cortes that planted thy flag fast by the uttermost sea. III. Hast thou forgotten those days illumined with glory and honour, When the far isles of the sea thrilled to the tread of Castile? When every land under Heaven was flecked by the shade of thy banner,-- When every beam of the sun flashed on thy conquering steel? IV. Then through red fields of slaughter, through death and defeat and disaster, Still flared thy banner aloft, tattered, but free from a stain,-- Now to the upstart Savoyard thou bendest to beg for a master! How the red flush of her shame mars the proud beauty of Spain! V. Has the red blood run cold that boiled by the Xenil and Darro? Are the high deeds of the sires sung to the children no more? On the dun hills of the North hast thou heard of no plough-boy Pizarro? Roams no young swine-herd Cortes hid by the Tagus' wild shore? VI. Once again does Hispania bend low to the yoke of the stranger! Once again will she rise, flinging her gyves in the sea! Princeling of Piedmont! unwitting thou weddest with doubt and with danger, King over men who have learned all that it costs to be free. THE PRAYER OF THE ROMANS. Not done, but near its ending, Is the work that our eyes desired; Not yet fulfilled, but near the goal, Is the hope that our worn hearts fired. And on the Alban Mountains, Where the blushes of dawn increase, We see the flash of the beautiful feet Of Freedom and of Peace! How long were our fond dreams baffled!-- Novara's sad mischance, The Kaiser's sword and fetter-lock, And the traitor stab of France; Till at last came glorious Venice, In storm and tempest home; And now God maddens the greedy kings, And gives to her people Rome. Lame Lion of Caprera! Red-shirts of the lost campaigns! Not idly shed was the costly blood You poured from generous veins. For the shame of Aspromonte, And the stain of Mentana's sod, But forged the curse of kings that sprang From your breaking hearts to God! We lift our souls to Thee, O Lord Of Liberty and of Light! Let not earth's kings pollute the work That was done in their despite; Let not Thy light be darkened In the shade of a sordid crown, Nor pampered swine devour the fruit Thou shook'st with an earthquake down! Let the People come to their birthright, And crosier and crown pass away Like phantasms that flit o'er the marshes At the glance of the clean, white day. And then from the lava of AEtna To the ice of the Alps let there be One freedom, one faith without fetters, One republic in Italy free! THE CURSE OF HUNGARY. King Saloman looked from his donjon bars, Where the Danube clamours through sedge and sand, And he cursed with a curse his revolting land,-- With a king's deep curse of treason and wars. He said: "May this false land know no truth! May the good hearts die and the bad ones flourish, And a greed of glory but live to nourish Envy and hate in its restless youth. "In the barren soil may the ploughshare rust, While the sword grows bright with its fatal labour, And blackens between each man and neighbour The perilous cloud of a vague distrust! "Be the noble idle, the peasant in thrall, And each to the other as unknown things, That with links of hatred and pride the kings May forge firm fetters through each for all! "May a king wrong them as they wronged their king May he wring their hearts as they wrung mine, Till they pour their blood for his revels like wine, And to women and monks their birthright fling!" The mad king died; but the rushing river Still brawls by the spot where his donjon stands, And its swift waves sigh to the conscious sands That the curse of King Saloman works for ever. For flowing by Pressbourg they heard the cheers Ring out from the leal and cheated hearts That were caught and chained by Theresa's arts,-- A man's cool head and a girl's hot tears! And a star, scarce risen, they saw decline, Where Orsova's hills looked coldly down, As Kossuth buried the Iron Crown And fled in the dark to the Turkish line. And latest they saw in the summer glare The Magyar nobles in pomp arrayed, To shout as they saw, with his unfleshed blade, A Hapsburg beating the harmless air. But ever the same sad play they saw, The same weak worship of sword and crown, The noble crushing the humble down, And moulding Wrong to a monstrous Law. The donjon stands by the turbid river, But Time is crumbling its battered towers; And the slow light withers a despot's powers, And a mad king's curse is not for ever! THE MONKS OF BASLE. I tore this weed from the rank, dark soil Where it grew in the monkish time, I trimmed it close and set it again In a border of modern rhyme. I. Long years ago, when the Devil was loose And faith was sorely tried, Three monks of Basle went out to walk In the quiet eventide. A breeze as pure as the breath of Heaven Blew fresh through the cloister-shades, A sky as glad as the smile of Heaven Blushed rose o'er the minster-glades. But scorning the lures of summer and sense, The monks passed on in their walk; Their eyes were abased, their senses slept, Their souls were in their talk. In the tough grim talk of the monkish days They hammered and slashed about,-- Dry husks of logic,--old scraps of creed,-- And the cold gray dreams of doubt,-- And whether Just or Justified Was the Church's mystic Head,-- And whether the Bread was changed to God, Or God became the Bread. But of human hearts outside their walls They never paused to dream, And they never thought of the love of God That smiled in the twilight gleam. II. As these three monks went bickering on By the foot of a spreading tree, Out from its heart of verdurous gloom A song burst wild and free,-- A wordless carol of life and love, Of nature free and wild; And the three monks paused in the evening shade, Looked up at each other and smiled. And tender and gay the bird sang on, And cooed and whistled and trilled, And the wasteful wealth of life and love From his happy heart was spilled. The song had power on the grim old monks In the light of the rosy skies; And as they listened the years rolled back, And tears came into their eyes. The years rolled back and they were young, With the hearts and hopes of men, They plucked the daisies and kissed the girls Of dear dead summers again. III. But the eldest monk soon broke the spell; "'Tis sin and shame," quoth he, "To be turned from talk of holy things By a bird's cry from a tree. "Perchance the Enemy of Souls Hath come to tempt us so. Let us try by the power of the Awful Word If it be he, or no!" To Heaven the three monks raised their hands; "We charge thee, speak!" they said, "By His dread Name who shall one day come To judge the quick and the dead,-- "Who art thou? Speak!" The bird laughed loud. "I am the Devil," he said. The monks on their faces fell, the bird Away through the twilight sped. A horror fell on those holy men (The faithful legends say), And one by one from the face of the earth They pined and vanished away. IV. So goes the tale of the monkish books, The moral who runs may read,-- He has no ears for Nature's voice Whose soul is the slave of creed. Not all in vain with beauty and love Has God the world adorned; And he who Nature scorns and mocks, By Nature is mocked and scorned. THE ENCHANTED SHIRT. Fytte the First: wherein it shall be shown how the Truth is too mighty a Drug for such as be of feeble temper. The King was sick. His cheek was red And his eye was clear and bright; He ate and drank with a kingly zest, And peacefully snored at night. But he said he was sick, and a king should know, And doctors came by the score. They did not cure him. He cut off their heads And sent to the schools for more. At last two famous doctors came, And one was as poor as a rat,-- He had passed his life in studious toil, And never found time to grow fat. The other had never looked in a book; His patients gave him no trouble-- If they recovered they paid him well, If they died their heirs paid double. Together they looked at the royal tongue, As the King on his couch reclined; In succession they thumped his august chest, But no trace of disease could find. The old sage said, "You're as sound as a nut." "Hang him up!" roared the King in a gale,-- In a ten-knot gale of royal rage; The other leech grew a shade pale; But he pensively rubbed his sagacious nose, And thus his prescription ran,-- The King will be well, if he sleeps one night In the Shirt of a Happy Man. Fytte the Second: tells of the search for the Shirt, and how it was nigh found, but was not, for reasons which are said or sung. Wide o'er the realm the couriers rode, And fast their horses ran, And many they saw, and to many they spoke, But they found no Happy Man. They found poor men who would fain be rich And rich who thought they were poor; And men who twisted their waists in stays, And women that shorthose wore. They saw two men by the roadside sit, And both bemoaned their lot; For one had buried his wife, he said, And the other one had not. At last they came to a village gate, A beggar lay whistling there; He whistled and sang and laughed and rolled On the grass in the soft June air. The weary couriers paused and looked At the scamp so blithe and gay; And one of them said, "Heaven save you, friend! You seem to be happy to-day." "O yes, fair sirs!" the rascal laughed, And his voice rang free and glad, "An idle man has so much to do That he never has time to be sad." "This is our man," the courier said "Our luck has led us aright. I will give you a hundred ducats, friend, For the loan of your shirt to-night." The merry blackguard lay back on the grass, And laughed till his face was black; "I would do it, God wot," and he roared with the fun, "But I haven't a shirt to my back." Fytte the Third: shewing how His Majesty the King came at last to sleep in a Happy Man his Shirt. Each day to the King the reports came in Of his unsuccessful spies, And the sad panorama of human woes Passed daily under his eyes. And he grew ashamed of his useless life, And his maladies hatched in gloom; He opened his windows and let the air Of the free heaven into his room. And out he went in the world and toiled In his own appointed way; And the people blessed him, the land was glad, And the King was well and gay. A WOMAN'S LOVE. A sentinel angel sitting high in glory Heard this shrill wail ring out from Purgatory: "Have mercy, mighty angel, hear my story! "I loved,--and, blind with passionate love, I fell. Love brought me down to death, and death to Hell. For God is just, and death for sin is well. "I do not rage against His high decree, Nor for myself do ask that grace shall be; But for my love on earth who mourns for me. "Great Spirit! let me see my love again And comfort him one hour, and I were fain To pay a thousand years of fire and pain." Then said the pitying angel, "Nay, repent That wild vow! Look, the dial-finger's bent Down to the last hour of thy punishment!" But still she wailed, "I pray thee, let me go! I cannot rise to peace and leave him so. Oh, let me soothe him in his bitter woe!" The brazen gates ground sullenly ajar, And upward, joyous, like a rising star, She rose and vanished in the ether far. But soon adown the dying sunset sailing, And like a wounded bird her pinions trailing, She fluttered back, with broken-hearted wailing. She sobbed, "I found him by the summer sea Reclined, his head upon a maiden's knee,-- She curled his hair and kissed him. Woe is me!" She wept, "Now let my punishment begin! I have been fond and foolish. Let me in To expiate my sorrow and my sin." The angel answered, "Nay, sad soul, go higher! To be deceived in your true heart's desire Was bitterer than a thousand years of fire!" ON PITZ LANGUARD. I stood on the top of Pitz Languard, And heard three voices whispering low, Where the Alpine birds in their circling ward Made swift dark shadows upon the snow. First Voice. I loved a girl with truth and pain, She loved me not. When she said good-bye She gave me a kiss to sting and stain My broken life to a rosy dye. Second Voice. I loved a woman with love well tried,-- And I swear I believe she loves me still. But it was not I who stood by her side When she answered the priest and said "I will." Third Voice. I loved two girls, one fond, one shy, And I never divined which one loved me. One married, and now, though I can't tell why, Of the four in the story I count but three. The three weird voices whispered low Where the eagles swept in their circling ward; But only one shadow scarred the snow As I clambered down from Pitz Languard. BOUDOIR PROPHECIES. One day in the Tuileries, When a south-west Spanish breeze Brought scandalous news of the Queen, The fair, proud Empress said, "My good friend loses her head; If matters go on this way, I shall see her shopping, some day, In the Boulevard des Capucines." The saying swiftly went To the Place of the Orient, And the stout Queen sneered, "Ah, well! You are proud and prude, ma belle! But I think I will hazard a guess I shall see you one day playing chess With the Cure of Carabanchel." Both ladies, though not over wise, Were lucky in prophecies. For the Boulevard shopmen well Know the form of stout Isabel As she buys her modes de Paris; And after Sedan in despair The Empress prude and fair Went to visit Madame sa Mere In her villa at Carabanchel-- But the Queen was not there to see. A TRIUMPH OF ORDER. A squad of regular infantry, In the Commune's closing days, Had captured a crowd of rebels By the wall of Pere-la-Chaise. There were desperate men, wild women, And dark-eyed Amazon girls, And one little boy, with a peach-down cheek And yellow clustering curls. The captain seized the little waif, And said, "What dost thou here?" "Sapristi, Citizen captain! I'm a Communist, my dear!" "Very well! Then you die with the others!" --"Very well! That's my affair; But first let me take to my mother, Who lives by the wine-shop there, "My father's watch. You see it; A gay old thing, is it not? It would please the old lady to have it; Then I'll come back here, and be shot." "That is the last we shall see of him," The grizzled captain grinned, As the little man skimmed down the hill Like a swallow down the wind. For the joy of killing had lost its zest In the glut of those awful days, And Death writhed, gorged like a greedy snake, From the Arch to Pere-la-Chaise. But before the last platoon had fired The child's shrill voice was heard; "Houp-la! the old girl made such a row I feared I should break my word." Against the bullet-pitted wall He took his place with the rest, A button was lost from his ragged blouse, Which showed his soft white breast. "Now blaze away, my children! With your little one-two-three!" The Chassepots tore the stout young heart, And saved Society. ERNST OF EDELSHEIM. I'll tell the story, kissing This white hand for my pains: No sweeter heart, nor falser, E'er filled such fine, blue veins. I'll sing a song of true love, My Lilith, dear! to you; Contraria contrariis-- The rule is old and true. The happiest of all lovers Was Ernst of Edelsheim; And why he was the happiest, I'll tell you in my rhyme. One summer night he wandered Within a lonely glade, And, couched in moss and moonlight, He found a sleeping maid. The stars of midnight sifted Above her sands of gold; She seemed a slumbering statue, So fair and white and cold. Fair and white and cold she lay Beneath the starry skies; Rosy was her waking Beneath the Ritter's eyes. He won her drowsy fancy, He bore her to his towers, And swift with love and laughter Flew morning's purpled hours. But when the thickening sunbeams Had drunk the gleaming dew, A misty cloud of sorrow Swept o'er her eyes' deep blue. She hung upon the Ritter's neck, She wept with love and pain, She showered her sweet, warm kisses Like fragrant summer rain. "I am no Christian soul," she sobbed, As in his arms she lay; "I'm half the day a woman, A serpent half the day. "And when from yonder bell-tower Rings out the noonday chime, Farewell! farewell for ever, Sir Ernst of Edelsheim!" "Ah! not farewell for ever!" The Ritter wildly cried; "I will be saved or lost with thee, My lovely Wili-Bride!" Loud from the lordly bell-tower Rang out the noon of day, And from the bower of roses A serpent slid away. But when the mid-watch moonlight Was shimmering through the grove, He clasped his bride thrice dowered With beauty and with love. The happiest of all lovers Was Ernst of Edelsheim-- His true love was a serpent Only half the time! MY CASTLE IN SPAIN. There was never a castle seen So fair as mine in Spain: It stands embowered in green, Crowning the gentle slope Of a hill by the Xenil's shore And at eve its shade flaunts o'er The storied Vega plain, And its towers are hid in the mists of Hope; And I toil through years of pain Its glimmering gates to gain. In visions wild and sweet Sometimes its courts I greet: Sometimes in joy its shining halls I tread with favoured feet; But never my eyes in the light of day Were blest with its ivied walls, Where the marble white and the granite gray Turn gold alike when the sunbeams play, When the soft day dimly falls. I know in its dusky rooms Are treasures rich and rare; The spoil of Eastern looms, And whatever of bright and fair Painters divine have caught and won From the vault of Italy's air: White gods in Phidian stone People the haunted glooms; And the song of immortal singers Like a fragrant memory lingers, I know, in the echoing rooms. But nothing of these, my soul! Nor castle, nor treasures, nor skies, Nor the waves of the river that roil With a cadence faint and sweet In peace by its marble feet-- Nothing of these is the goal For which my whole heart sighs. 'Tis the pearl gives worth to the shell-- The pearl I would die to gain; For there does my lady dwell, My love that I love so well-- The Queen whose gracious reign Makes glad my castle in Spain. Her face so pure and fair Sheds light in the shady places, And the spell of her girlish graces Holds charmed the happy air. A breath of purity For ever before her flies, And ill things cease to be In the glance of her honest eyes. Around her pathway flutter, Where her dear feet wander free In youth's pure majesty, The wings of the vague desires; But the thought that love would utter In reverence expires. Not yet! not yet shall I see That face which shines like a star O'er my storm-swept life afar, Transfigured with love for me. Toiling, forgetting, and learning With labour and vigils and prayers, Pure heart and resolute will, At last I shall climb the hill And breathe the enchanted airs Where the light of my life is burning Most lovely and fair and free, Where alone in her youth and beauty And bound by her fate's sweet duty, Unconscious she waits for me. SISTER SAINT LUKE. She lived shut in by flowers and trees And shade of gentle bigotries. On this side lay the trackless sea, On that the great world's mystery; But all unseen and all unguessed They could not break upon her rest. The world's far splendours gleamed and flashed, Afar the wild seas foamed and dashed; But in her small, dull Paradise, Safe housed from rapture or surprise, Nor day nor night had power to fright The peace of God that filled her eyes. NEW AND OLD. MILES KEOGH'S HORSE. On the bluff of the Little Big-Horn, At the close of a woeful day, Custer and his Three Hundred In death and silence lay. Three Hundred to Three Thousand! They had bravely fought and bled; For such is the will of Congress When the White man meets the Red. The White men are ten millions, The thriftiest under the sun; The Reds are fifty thousand, And warriors every one. So Custer and all his fighting-men Lay under the evening skies, Staring up at the tranquil heaven With wide, accusing eyes. And of all that stood at noonday In that fiery scorpion ring, Miles Keogh's horse at evening Was the only living thing. Alone from that field of slaughter, Where lay the three hundred slain, The horse Comanche wandered, With Keogh's blood on his mane. And Sturgis issued this order, Which future times shall read, While the love and honour of comrades Are the soul of the soldiers creed. He said-- Let the horse Comanche Henceforth till he shall die, Be kindly cherished and cared for By the Seventh Cavalry. He shall do no labour; he never shall know The touch of spur or rein; Nor shall his back be ever crossed By living rider again. And at regimental formation Of the Seventh Cavalry, Comanche draped in mourning and led By a trooper of Company I, Shall parade with the Regiment! Thus it was Commanded and thus done, By order of General Sturgis, signed By Adjutant Garlington. Even as the sword of Custer, In his disastrous fall, Flashed out a blaze that charmed the world And glorified his pall, This order, issued amid the gloom That shrouds our army's name, When all foul beasts are free to rend And tear its honest fame, Shall prove to a callous people That the sense of a soldier's worth, That the love of comrades, the honour of arms, Have not yet perished from earth. THE ADVANCE-GUARD. In the dream of the Northern poets, The braves who in battle die Fight on in shadowy phalanx In the field of the upper sky; And as we read the sounding rhyme, The reverent fancy hears The ghostly ring of the viewless swords And the clash of the spectral spears. We think with imperious questionings Of the brothers whom we have lost, And we strive to track in death's mystery The flight of each valiant ghost. The Northern myth comes back to us, And we feel, through our sorrow's night, That those young souls are striving still Somewhere for the truth and light. It was not their time for rest and sleep; Their hearts beat high and strong; In their fresh veins the blood of youth Was singing its hot, sweet song. The open heaven bent over them, 'Mid flowers their lithe feet trod, Their lives lay vivid in light, and blest By the smiles of women and God. Again they come! Again I hear The tread of that goodly band; I know the flash of Ellsworth's eye And the grasp of his hard, warm hand; And Putnam, and Shaw, of the lion-heart, And an eye like a Boston girl's; And I see the light of heaven which lay On Ulric Dahlgren's curls. There is no power in the gloom of hell To quench those spirits' fire; There is no power in the bliss of heaven To bid them not aspire; But somewhere in the eternal plan That strength, that life survive, And like the files on Lookout's crest, Above death's clouds they strive. A chosen corps, they are marching on In a wider field than ours; Those bright battalions still fulfil The scheme of the heavenly powers; And high brave thoughts float down to us, The echoes of that far fight, Like the flash of a distant picket's gun Through the shades of the severing night. No fear for them! In our lower field Let us keep our arms unstained, That at last we be worthy to stand with them On the shining heights they've gained. We shall meet and greet in closing ranks In Time's declining sun, When the bugles of God shall sound recall And the battle of life be won. LOVE'S PRAYER. If Heaven would hear my prayer, My dearest wish would be, Thy sorrows not to share, But take them all on me; If Heaven would hear my prayer. I'd beg with prayers and sighs That never a tear might flow From out thy lovely eyes, If Heaven might grant it so; Mine be the tears and sighs. No cloud thy brow should cover, But smiles each other chase From lips to eyes all over Thy sweet and sunny face; The clouds my heart should cover. That all thy path be light Let darkness fall on me; If all thy days be bright, Mine black as night could be. My love would light my night. For thou art more than life, And if our fate should set Life and my love at strife, How could I then forget I love thee more than life? CHRISTINE. The beauty of the Northern dawns, Their pure, pale light is thine; Yet all the dreams of tropic nights Within thy blue eyes shine. Not statelier in their prisoning seas The icebergs grandly move, But in thy smile is youth and joy, And in thy voice is love. Thou art like Hecla's crest that stands So lonely, proud, and high, No earthly thing may come between Her summit and the sky. The sun in vain may strive to melt Her crown of virgin snow-- But the great heart of the mountain glows With deathless fire below. EXPECTATION. Roll on, O shining sun, To the far seas! Bring down, ye shades of eve, The soft, salt breeze! Shine out, O stars, and light My darling's pathway bright, As through the summer night She comes to me. No beam of any star Can match her eyes; Her smile the bursting day In light outvies. Her voice--the sweetest thing Heard by the raptured spring When waking wild-woods ring-- She comes to me. Ye stars, more swiftly wheel O'er earth's still breast; More wildly plunge and reel In the dim west! The earth is lone and lorn, Till the glad day be born, Till with the happy morn She comes to me. TO FLORA. When April woke the drowsy flowers, And vagrant odours thronged the breeze, And bluebirds wrangled in the bowers, And daisies flashed along the leas, And faint arbutus strove among Dead winter's leaf-strewn wreck to rise, And nature's sweetly jubilant song Went murmuring up the sunny skies, Into this cheerful world you came, And gained by right your vernal name. I think the springs have changed of late, For "Arctics" are my daily wear, The skies are turned to cold grey slate, And zephyrs are but draughts of air; But you make up whate'er we lack, When we, too rarely, come together, More potent than the almanac, You bring the ideal April weather; When you are with us we defy The blustering air, the lowering sky; In spite of winter's icy darts, We've spring and sunshine in our hearts. In fine, upon this April day, This deep conundrum I will bring: Tell me the two good reasons, pray, I have, to say you are like spring? [You give it up?] Because we love you-- And see so very little of you. A HAUNTED ROOM. In the dim chamber whence but yesterday Passed my beloved, filled with awe I stand; And haunting Loves fluttering on every hand Whisper her praises who is far away. A thousand delicate fancies glance and play On every object which her robes have fanned, And tenderest thoughts and hopes bloom and expand In the sweet memory of her beauty's ray. Ah! could that glass but hold the faintest trace Of all the loveliness once mirrored there, The clustering glory of the shadowy hair That framed so well the dear young angel face! But no, it shows my own face, full of care, And my heart is her beauty's dwelling place. DREAMS. I love a woman tenderly, But cannot know if she loves me. I press her hand, her lips I kiss, But still love's full assurance miss. Our waking life for ever seems Cleft by a veil of doubt and dreams. But love and night and sleep combine In dreams to make her wholly mine. A sure love lights her eyes' deep blue, Her hands and lips are warm and true. Always the fact unreal seems, And truth I find alone in dreams. THE LIGHT OF LOVE. Each shining light above us Has its own peculiar grace; But every light of heaven Is in my darling's face. For it is like the sunlight, So strong and pure and warm, That folds all good and happy things, And guards from gloom and harm. And it is like the moonlight, So holy and so calm; The rapt peace of a summer night, When soft winds die in balm. And it is like the starlight; For, love her as I may, She dwells still lofty and serene In mystery far away. QUAND MEME. I strove, like Israel, with my youth, And said, "Till thou bestow Upon my life Love's joy and truth, I will not let thee go." And sudden on my night there woke The trouble of the dawn; Out of the east the red light broke, To broaden on and on. And now let death be far or nigh, Let fortune gloom or shine, I cannot all untimely die, For love, for love is mine. My days are tuned to finer chords, And lit by higher suns; Through all my thoughts and all my words A purer purpose runs. The blank page of my heart grows rife With wealth of tender lore; Her image, stamped upon my life, Gives value evermore. She is so noble, firm, and true, I drink truth from her eyes, As violets gain the heaven's own blue In gazing at the skies. No matter if my hands attain The golden crown or cross; Only to love is such a gain That losing is not loss. And thus whatever fate betide Of rapture or of pain, If storm or sun the future hide, My love is not in vain. So only thanks are on my lips; And through my love I see My earliest dreams, like freighted ships, Come sailing home to me. WORDS. When violets were springing And sunshine filled the day, And happy birds were singing The praises of the May, A word came to me, blighting The beauty of the scene, And in my heart was winter, Though all the trees were green. Now down the blast go sailing The dead leaves, brown and sere; The forests are bewailing The dying of the year; A word comes to me, lighting With rapture all the air, And in my heart is summer, Though all the trees are bare. THE STIRRUP-CUP. My short and happy day is done, The long and dreary night comes on; And at my door the Pale Horse stands, To carry me to unknown lands. His whinny shrill, his pawing hoof, Sound dreadful as a gathering storm; And I must leave this sheltering roof, And joys of life so soft and warm. Tender and warm the joys of life,-- Good friends, the faithful and the true; My rosy children and my wife, So sweet to kiss, so fair to view. So sweet to kiss, so fair to view,-- The night comes down, the lights burn blue; And at my door the Pale Horse stands, To bear me forth to unknown lands. A DREAM OF BRIC-A-BRAC. [C. K. Loquitur.] I dreamed I was in fair Niphon. Amid tea-fields I journeyed on, Reclined in my jinrikishaw; Across the rolling plains I saw The lordly Fusi-yama rise, His blue cone lost in bluer skies. At last I bade my bearers stop Before what seemed a china-shop. I roused myself and entered in. A fearful joy, like some sweet sin, Pierced through my bosom as I gazed, Entranced, transported, and amazed. For all the house was but one room, And in its clear and grateful gloom, Filled with all odours strange and strong That to the wondrous East belong, I saw above, around, below, A sight to make the warm heart glow, And leave the eager soul no lack,-- An endless wealth of bric-a-brac. I saw bronze statues, old and rare, Fashioned by no mere mortal skill, With robes that fluttered in the air, Blown out by Art's eternal will; And delicate ivory netsukes, Richer in tone than Cheddar cheese, Of saints and hermits, cats and dogs, Grim warriors and ecstatic frogs. And here and there those wondrous masks, More living flesh than sandal-wood, Where the full soul in pleasure basks And dreams of love, the only good. The walls were all with pictures hung: Gay villas bright in rain-washed air, Trees to whose boughs brown monkeys clung, Outlineless dabs of fuzzy hair. And all about the opulent shelves Littered with porcelain beyond price: Imari pots arrayed themselves Beside Ming dishes; grain-of-rice Vied with the Royal Satsuma, Proud of its sallow ivory beam; And Kaga's Thousand Hermits lay Tranced in some punch-bowl's golden gleam. Over bronze censers, black with age, The five-clawed dragons strife engage; A curled and insolent Dog of Foo Sniffs at the smoke aspiring through. In what old days, in what far lands, What busy brains, what cunning hands, With what quaint speech, what alien thought, Strange fellow-men these marvels wrought! As thus I mused, I was aware There grew before my eager eyes A little maid too bright and fair, Too strangely lovely for surprise. It seemed the beauty of the place Had suddenly become concrete, So full was she of Orient grace, From her slant eyes and burnished face Down to her little gold-bronzed feet. She was a girl of old Japan; Her small hand held a gilded fan, Which scattered fragrance through the room; Her cheek was rich with pallid bloom, Her eye was dark with languid fire, Her red lips breathed a vague desire; Her teeth, of pearl inviolate, Sweetly proclaimed her maiden state. Her garb was stiff with broidered gold Twined with mysterious fold on fold, That gave no hint where, hidden well, Her dainty form might warmly dwell,-- A pearl within too large a shell. So quaint, so short, so lissome, she, It seemed as if it well might be Some jocose god, with sportive whirl, Had taken up a long lithe girl And tied a graceful knot in her. I tried to speak, and found, oh, bliss! I needed no interpreter; I knew the Japanese for kiss,-- I had no other thought but this; And she, with smile and blush divine, Kind to my stammering prayer did seem; My thought was hers, and hers was mine, In the swift logic of my dream. My arms clung round her slender waist, Through gold and silk the form I traced, And glad as rain that follows drouth, I kissed and kissed her bright red mouth. What ailed the girl? No loving sigh Heaved the round bosom; in her eye Trembled no tear; from her dear throat Bubbled a sweet and silvery note Of girlish laughter, shrill and clear, That all the statues seemed to hear. The bronzes tinkled laughter fine; I heard a chuckle argentine Ring from the silver images; Even the ivory netsukes Uttered in every silent pause Dry, bony laughs from tiny jaws; The painted monkeys on the wall Waked up with chatter impudent; Pottery, porcelain, bronze, and all Broke out in ghostly merriment,-- Faint as rain pattering on dry leaves, Or cricket's chirp on summer eves. And suddenly upon my sight There grew a portent: left and right, On every side, as if the air Had taken substance then and there, In every sort of form and face, A throng of tourists filled the place. I saw a Frenchman's sneering shrug; A German countess, in one hand A sky-blue string which held a pug, With the other a fiery face she fanned; A Yankee with a soft felt hat; A Coptic priest from Ararat; An English girl with cheeks of rose; A Nihilist with Socratic nose; Paddy from Cork with baggage light And pockets stuffed with dynamite; A haughty Southern Readjuster, Wrapped in his pride and linen duster; Two noisy New York stockbrokers, And twenty British globe-trotters. To my disgust and vast surprise, They turned on me lack-lustre eyes, And each with dropped and wagging jaw Burst out into a wild guffaw: They laughed with huge mouths opened wide; They roared till each one held his side; They screamed and writhed with brutal glee, With fingers rudely stretched to me,-- Till lo! at once the laughter died, The tourists faded into air; None but my fair maid lingered there, Who stood demurely by my side. "Who were your friends?" I asked the maid, Taking a tea-cup from its shelf. "This audience is disclosed," she said, "Whenever a man makes a fool of himself." LIBERTY. What man is there so bold that he should say, "Thus, and thus only, would I have the sea"? For whether lying calm and beautiful, Clasping the earth in love, and throwing back The smile of heaven from waves of amethyst; Or whether, freshened by the busy winds, It bears the trade and navies of the world To ends of use or stern activity; Or whether, lashed by tempests, it gives way To elemental fury, howls and roars At all its rocky barriers, in wild lust Of ruin drinks the blood of living things, And strews its wrecks o'er leagues of desolate shore,-- Always it is the sea, and men bow down Before its vast and varied majesty. So all in vain will timorous ones essay To set the metes and bounds of Liberty. For Freedom is its own eternal law; It makes its own conditions, and in storm Or calm alike fulfils the unerring Will. Let us not then despise it when it lies Still as a sleeping lion, while a swarm Of gnat-like evils hover round its head; Nor doubt it when in mad, disjointed times It shakes the torch of terror, and its cry Shrills o'er the quaking earth, and in the flame Of riot and war we see its awful form Rise by the scaffold, where the crimson axe Rings down its grooves the knell of shuddering kings. For ever in thine eyes, O Liberty, Shines that high light whereby the world is saved, And though thou slay us, we will trust in thee! THE WHITE FLAG. I sent my love two roses,--one As white as driven snow, And one a blushing royal red, A flaming Jacqueminot. I meant to touch and test my fate; That night I should divine, The moment I should see my love, If her true heart were mine. For if she holds me dear, I said, She'll wear my blushing rose; If not, she'll wear my cold Lamarque As white as winter's snows. My heart sank when I met her: sure I had been over bold, For on her breast my pale rose lay In virgin whiteness cold. Yet with low words she greeted me, With smiles divinely tender; Upon her cheek the red rose dawned.-- The white rose meant surrender. THE LAW OF DEATH. The song of Kilvani: fairest she In all the land of Savatthi. She had one child, as sweet and gay And dear to her as the light of day. She was so young, and he so fair, The same bright eyes and the same dark hair; To see them by the blossomy way, They seemed two children at their play. There came a death-dart from the sky, Kilvani saw her darling die. The glimmering shade his eyes invades, Out of his cheek the red bloom fades; His warm heart feels the icy chill, The round limbs shudder, and are still. And yet Kilvani held him fast Long after life's last pulse was past, As if her kisses could restore The smile gone out for evermore. But when she saw her child was dead, She scattered ashes on her head, And seized the small corpse, pale and sweet, And rushing wildly through the street, She sobbing fell at Buddha's feet. "Master, all-helpful, help me now! Here at thy feet I humbly bow; Have mercy, Buddha, help me now!" She grovelled on the marble floor, And kissed the dead child o'er and o'er. And suddenly upon the air There fell the answer to her prayer: "Bring me to-night a lotus tied With thread from a house where none has died." She rose, and laughed with thankful joy, Sure that the god would save the boy. She found a lotus by the stream; She plucked it from its noonday dream, And then from door to door she fared, To ask what house by Death was spared. Her heart grew cold to see the eyes Of all dilate with slow surprise: "Kilvani, thou hast lost thy head; Nothing can help a child that's dead. There stands not by the Ganges' side A house where none hath ever died." Thus, through the long and weary day, From every door she bore away Within her heart, and on her arm, A heavier load, a deeper harm. By gates of gold and ivory, By wattled huts of poverty, The same refrain heard poor Kilvani, THE LIVING ARE FEW, THE DEAD ARE MANY. The evening came--so still and fleet-- And overtook her hurrying feet. And, heartsick, by the sacred fane She fell, and prayed the god again. She sobbed and beat her bursting breast: "Ah, thou hast mocked me, Mightiest! Lo! I have wandered far and wide; There stands no house where none hath died." And Buddha answered, in a tone Soft as a flute at twilight blown, But grand as heaven and strong as death To him who hears with ears of faith: "Child, thou art answered. Murmur not! Bow, and accept the common lot." Kilvani heard with reverence meet, And laid her child at Buddha's feet. MOUNT TABOR. On Tabor's height a glory came, And, shrined in clouds of lambent flame, The awestruck, hushed disciples saw Christ and the prophets of the law. Moses, whose grand and awful face Of Sinai's thunder bore the trace, And wise Elias,--in his eyes The shade of Israel's prophecies,-- Stood in that wide, mysterious light, Than Syrian noons more purely bright, One on each hand, and high between Shone forth the godlike Nazarene. They bowed their heads in holy fright,-- No mortal eyes could bear the sight,-- And when they looked again, behold! The fiery clouds had backward rolled, And borne aloft in grandeur lonely, Nothing was left "save Jesus only." Resplendent type of things to be! We read its mystery to-day With clearer eyes than even they, The fisher-saints of Galilee. We see the Christ stand out between The ancient law and faith serene, Spirit and letter; but above Spirit and letter both was Love. Led by the hand of Jacob's God, Through wastes of eld a path was trod By which the savage world could move Upward through law and faith to love. And there in Tabor's harmless flame The crowning revelation came. The old world knelt in homage due, The prophets near in reverence drew, Law ceased its mission to fulfil, And Love was lord on Tabor's hill. So now, while creeds perplex the mind And wranglings load the weary wind, When all the air is filled with words And texts that wring like clashing swords, Still, as for refuge, we may turn Where Tabor's shining glories burn,-- The soul of antique Israel gone, And nothing left but Christ alone. RELIGION AND DOCTRINE. He stood before the Sanhedrim; The scowling rabbis gazed at him. He recked not of their praise or blame; There was no fear, there was no shame, For one upon whose dazzled eyes The whole world poured its vast surprise. The open heaven was far too near, His first day's light too sweet and clear, To let him waste his new-gained ken On the hate-clouded face of men. But still they questioned, "Who art thou? What hast thou been? What art thou now? Thou art not he who yesterday Sat here and begged beside the way; For he was blind." --"And I am he; For I was blind, but now I see." He told the story o'er and o'er; It was his full heart's only lore: A prophet on the Sabbath-day Had touched his sightless eyes with clay, And made him see who had been blind. Their words passed by him like the wind, Which raves and howls, but cannot shock The hundred-fathom-rooted rock. Their threats and fury all went wide; They could not touch his Hebrew pride. Their sneers at Jesus and His band, Nameless and homeless in the land, Their boasts of Moses and his Lord, All could not change him by one word. "I know not what this man may be, Sinner or saint; but as for me, One thing I know,--that I am he Who once was blind, and now I see." They were all doctors of renown, The great men of a famous town, With deep brows, wrinkled, broad, and wise, Beneath their wide phylacteries; The wisdom of the East was theirs, And honour crowned their silver hairs. The man they jeered and laughed to scorn Was unlearned, poor, and humbly born; But he knew better far than they What came to him that Sabbath-day; And what the Christ had done for him He knew, and not the Sanhedrim. SINAI AND CALVARY. There are two mountains hallowed By majesty sublime, Which rear their crests unconquered Above the floods of Time. Uncounted generations Have gazed on them with awe,-- The mountain of the Gospel, The mountain of the Law. From Sinai's cloud of darkness The vivid lightnings play; They serve the God of vengeance, The Lord who shall repay. Each fault must bring its penance, Each sin the avenging blade, For God upholds in justice The laws that He hath made. But Calvary stands to ransom The earth from utter loss, In shade than light more glorious, The shadow of the Cross. To heal a sick world's trouble, To soothe its woe and pain, On Calvary's sacred summit The Paschal Lamb was slain. The boundless might of Heaven Its law in mercy furled, As once the bow of promise O'erarched a drowning world. The Law said, "As you keep me, It shall be done to you;" But Calvary prays, "Forgive them; They know not what they do." Almighty God! direct us To keep Thy perfect Law! O blessed Saviour, help us Nearer to Thee to draw! Let Sinai's thunders aid us To guard our feet from sin; And Calvary's light inspire us The love of God to win. THE VISION OF ST. PETER. To Peter by night the faithfullest came And said, "We appeal to thee! The life of the Church is in thy life; We pray thee to rise and flee. "For the tyrant's hand is red with blood, And his arm is heavy with power; Thy head, the head of the Church, will fall If thou tarry in Rome an hour." Through the sleeping town St. Peter passed To the wide Campagna plain; In the starry light of the Alban night He drew free breath again: When across his path an awful form In luminous glory stood; His thorn-crowned brow, His hands and feet, Were wet with immortal blood. The godlike sorrow which filled His eyes Seemed changed to a godlike wrath As they turned on Peter, who cried aloud, And sank to his knees in the path. "Lord of my life, my love, my soul! Say, what wilt Thou with me?" A voice replied, "I go to Rome To be crucified for thee." The Apostle sprang, all flushed, to his feet,-- The vision had passed away; The light still lay on the dewy plain, But the sky in the east was gray. To the city walls St. Peter turned, And his heart in his breast grew fire; In every vein the hot blood burned With the strength of one high desire. And sturdily back he marched to his death Of terrible pain and shame; And never a shade of fear again To the stout Apostle came. ISRAEL. When by Jabbok the patriarch waited To learn on the morrow his doom, And his dubious spirit debated In darkness and silence and gloom, There descended a Being with whom He wrestled in agony sore, With striving of heart and of brawn, And not for an instant forbore Till the east gave a threat of the dawn; And then, as the Awful One blessed him, To his lips and his spirit there came, Compelled by the doubts that oppressed him, The cry that through questioning ages Has been wrung from the hinds and the sages, "Tell me, I pray Thee, Thy name!" Most fatal, most futile, of questions! Wherever the heart of man beats, In the spirit's most sacred retreats, It comes with its sombre suggestions, Unanswered for ever and aye. The blessing may come and may stay, For the wrestlers heroic endeavour; But the question, unheeded for ever, Dies out in the broadening day. In the ages before our traditions, By the altars of dark superstitions, The imperious question has come; When the death-stricken victim lay sobbing At the feet of his slayer and priest, And his heart was laid smoking and throbbing To the sound of the cymbal and drum On the steps of the high Teocallis; When the delicate Greek at his feast Poured forth the red wine from his chalice With mocking and cynical prayer; When by Nile Egypt worshipping lay, And afar, through the rosy, flushed air The Memnon called out to the day; Where the Muezzin's cry floats from his spire; In the vaulted Cathedral's dim shades, Where the crushed hearts of thousands aspire Through arts highest miracles higher, This question of questions invades Each heart bowed in worship or shame; In the air where the censers are swinging, A voice, going up with the singing, Cries, "Tell me, I pray Thee, Thy name!" No answer came back, not a word, To the patriarch there by the ford; No answer has come through the ages To the poets, the seers, and the sages Who have sought in the secrets of science The name and the nature of God, Whether cursing in desperate defiance Or kissing His absolute rod; But the answer which was and shall be, "My name! Nay, what is it to thee?" The search and the question are vain. By use of the strength that is in you, By wrestling of soul and of sinew The blessing of God you may gain. There are lights in the far-gleaming Heaven That never will shine on our eyes; To mortals it may not be given To range those inviolate skies. The mind, whether praying or scorning, That tempts those dread secrets shall fail; But strive through the night till the morning, And mightily shalt thou prevail. THE CROWS AT WASHINGTON. Slow flapping to the setting sun By twos and threes, in wavering rows, As twilight shadows dimly close, The crows fly over Washington. Under the crimson sunset sky Virginian woodlands leafless lie, In wintry torpor bleak and dun. Through the rich vault of heaven, which shines Like a warmed opal in the sun, With wide advance in broken lines The crows fly over Washington. Over the Capitol's white dome, Across the obelisk soaring bare To prick the clouds, they travel home, Content and weary, winnowing With dusky vans the golden air, Which hints the coming of the spring, Though winter whitens Washington. The dim, deep air, the level ray Of dying sunlight on their plumes, Give them a beauty not their own; Their hoarse notes fail and faint away; A rustling murmur floating down Blends sweetly with the thickening glooms; They touch with grace the fading day, Slow flying over Washington. I stand and watch with clouded eyes These dim battalions move along; Out of the distance memory cries Of days when life and hope were strong, When love was prompt and wit was gay; Even then, at evening, as to-day, I watched, while twilight hovered dim Over Potomac's curving rim, This selfsame flight of homing crows Blotting the sunset's fading rose, Above the roofs of Washington. REMORSE. Sad is the thought of sunniest days Of love and rapture perished, And shine through memory's tearful haze The eyes once fondliest cherished. Reproachful is the ghost of toys That charmed while life was wasted. But saddest is the thought of joys That never yet were tasted. Sad is the vague and tender dream Of dead love's lingering kisses, To crushed hearts haloed by the gleam Of unreturning blisses; Deep mourns the soul in anguished pride For the pitiless death that won them,-- But the saddest wail is for lips that died With the virgin dew upon them. ESSE QUAM VIDERI. The knightly legend of thy shield betrays The moral of thy life; a forecast wise, And that large honour that deceit defies, Inspired thy fathers in the elder days, Who decked thy scutcheon with that sturdy phrase, TO BE RATHER THAN SEEM. As eve's red skies Surpass the morning's rosy prophecies, Thy life to that proud boast its answer pays. Scorning thy faith and purpose to defend The ever-mutable multitude at last Will hail the power they did not comprehend,-- Thy fame will broaden through the centuries; As, storm and billowy tumult overpast, The moon rules calmly o'er the conquered seas. WHEN THE BOYS COME HOME. There's a happy time coming, When the boys come home. There's a glorious day coming, When the boys come home. We will end the dreadful story Of this treason dark and gory In a sunburst of glory, When the boys come home. The day will seem brighter When the boys come home, For our hearts will be lighter When the boys come home. Wives and sweethearts will press them In their arms and caress them, And pray God to bless them, When the boys come home. The thinned ranks will be proudest When the boys come home, And their cheer will ring the loudest When the boys come home. The full ranks will be shattered, And the bright arms will be battered, And the battle-standards tattered, When the boys come home. Their bayonets may be rusty, When the boys come home, And their uniforms dusty, When the boys come home. But all shall see the traces Of battle's royal graces, In the brown and bearded faces, When the boys come home. Our love shall go to meet them, When the boys come home, To bless them and to greet them, When the boys come home; And the fame of their endeavour Time and change shall not dissever From the nation's heart for ever, When the boys come home. LESE-AMOUR. How well my heart remembers Beside these camp-fire embers The eyes that smiled so far away,-- The joy that was November's. Her voice to laughter moving, So merrily reproving,-- We wandered through the autumn woods, And neither thought of loving. The hills with light were glowing, The waves in joy were flowing,-- It was not to the clouded sun The day's delight was owing. Though through the brown leaves straying, Our lives seemed gone a-Maying; We knew not Love was with us there, No look nor tone betraying. How unbelief still misses The best of being's blisses! Our parting saw the first and last Of love's imagined kisses. Now 'mid these scenes the drearest I dream of her, the dearest,-- Whose eyes outshine the Southern stars, So far, and yet the nearest. And Love, so gaily taunted, Who died, no welcome granted, Comes to me now, a pallid ghost, By whom my life is haunted. With bonds I may not sever, He binds my heart for ever, And leads me where we murdered him,-- The Hill beside the River. CAMP SHAW, FLORIDA, February 1864. NORTHWARD. Under the high unclouded sun That makes the ship and shadow one, I sail away as from the fort Booms sullenly the noonday gun. The odorous airs blow thin and fine, The sparkling waves like emeralds shine, The lustre of the coral reefs Gleams whitely through the tepid brine. And glitters o'er the liquid miles The jewelled ring of verdant isles, Where generous Nature holds her court Of ripened bloom and sunny smiles. Encinctured by the faithful seas Inviolate gardens load the breeze, Where flaunt like giant-warders' plumes The pennants of the cocoa-trees. Enthroned in light and bathed in balm, In lonely majesty the Palm Blesses the isles with waving hands,-- High-Priest of the eternal Calm. Yet Northward with an equal mind I steer my course, and leave behind The rapture of the Southern skies,-- The wooing of the Southern wind. For here o'er Nature's wanton bloom Falls far and near the shade of gloom, Cast from the hovering vulture-wings Of one dark thought of woe and doom. I know that in the snow-white pines The brave Norse fire of freedom shines, And fain for this I leave the land Where endless summer pranks the vines. O strong, free North, so wise and brave! O South, too lovely for a slave! Why read ye not the changeless truth,-- The free can conquer but to save? May God upon these shining sands Send Love and Victory clasping hands, And Freedom's banners wave in peace For ever o'er the rescued lands! And here, in that triumphant hour, Shall yielding beauty wed with power; And blushing earth and smiling sea In dalliance deck the bridal bower. KEY WEST, 1864. IN THE FIRELIGHT. My dear wife sits beside the fire With folded hands and dreaming eyes, Watching the restless flames aspire, And rapt in thralling memories. I mark the fitful firelight fling Its warm caresses on her brow, And kiss her hands' unmelting snow, And glisten on her wedding-ring. The proud free head that crowns so well The neck superb, whose outlines glide Into the bosom's perfect swell Soft-billowed by its peaceful tide, The cheek's faint flush, the lip's red glow, The gracious charm her beauty wears, Fill my fond eyes with tender tears As in the days of long ago. Days long ago, when in her eyes The only heaven I cared for lay, When from our thoughtless Paradise All care and toil dwelt far away; When Hope in wayward fancies throve, And rioted in secret sweets, Beguiled by Passion's dear deceits,-- The mysteries of maiden love. One year had passed since first my sight Was gladdened by her girlish charms, When on a rapturous summer night I clasped her in possessing arms. And now ten years have rolled away, And left such blessings as their dower; I owe her tenfold at this hour The love that lit our wedding-day. For now, vague-hovering o'er her form, My fancy sees, by love refined, A warmer and a dearer charm By wedlock's mystic hands entwined,-- A golden coil of wifely cares That years have forged, the loving joy That guards the curly-headed boy Asleep an hour ago upstairs. A fair young mother, pure as fair, A matron heart and virgin soul! The flickering light that crowns her hair Seems like a saintly aureole. A tender sense upon me falls That joy unmerited is mine, And in this pleasant twilight shine My perfect bliss myself appals. Come back! my darling, strayed so far Into the realm of fantasy,-- Let thy dear face shine like a star In love-light beaming over me. My melting soul is jealous, sweet, Of thy long silence' drear eclipse; O kiss me back with living lips, To life, love, lying at thy feet! IN A GRAVEYARD. In the dewy depths of the graveyard I lie in the tangled grass, And watch, in the sea of azure, The white cloud-islands pass. The birds in the rustling branches Sing gaily overhead; Grey stones like sentinel spectres Are guarding the silent dead. The early flowers sleep shaded In the cool green noonday glooms; The broken light falls shuddering On the cold white face of the tombs. Without, the world is smiling In the infinite love of God, But the sunlight fails and falters When it falls on the churchyard sod. On me the joyous rapture Of a heart's first love is shed, But it falls on my heart as coldly As sunlight on the dead. THE PRAIRIE. The skies are blue above my head, The prairie green below, And flickering o'er the tufted grass The shifting shadows go, Vague-sailing, where the feathery clouds Fleck white the tranquil skies, Black javelins darting where aloft The whirring pheasant flies. A glimmering plain in drowsy trance The dim horizon bounds, Where all the air is resonant With sleepy summer sounds,-- The life that sings among the flowers, The lisping of the breeze, The hot cicala's sultry cry, The murmurous dream of bees. The butterfly--a flying flower-- Wheels swift in flashing rings, And flutters round his quiet kin, With brave flame-mottled wings. The wild Pinks burst in crimson fire The Phlox' bright clusters shine, And Prairie-Cups are swinging free To spill their airy wine. And lavishly beneath the sun, In liberal splendour rolled, The Fennel fills the dipping plain With floods of flowery gold; And widely weaves the Iron-Weed A woof of purple dyes Where Autumn's royal feet may tread When bankrupt Summer flies. In verdurous tumult far away The prairie-billows gleam, Upon their crests in blessing rests The noontide's gracious beam. Low quivering vapours steaming dim The level splendours break Where languid Lilies deck the rim Of some land-circled lake. Far in the east like low-hung clouds The waving woodlands lie; Far in the west the glowing plain Melts warmly in the sky. No accent wounds the reverent air, No footprint dints the sod, Lone in the light the prairie lies Rapt in a dream of God. ILLINOIS, 1858. CENTENNIAL. A hundred times the bells of Brown Have rung to sleep the idle summers, And still to-day clangs clamouring down A greeting to the welcome comers. And far, like waves of morning, pours Her call, in airy ripples breaking, And wanders to the farthest shores, Her children's drowsy hearts awaking. The wild vibration floats along, O'er heart-strings tense its magic plying, And wakes in every breast its song Of love and gratitude undying. My heart to meet the summons leaps At limit of its straining tether, Where the fresh western sunlight steeps In golden flame the prairie heather. And others, happier, rise and fare To pass within the hallowed portal, And see the glory shining there Shrined in her steadfast eyes immortal. What though their eyes be dim and dull, Their heads be white in reverend blossom; Our mothers smile is beautiful As when she bore them on her bosom! Her heavenly forehead bears no line Of Time's iconolastic fingers, But o'er her form the grace divine Of deathless youth and wisdom lingers. We fade and pass, grow faint and old, Till youth and joy and hope are banished, And still her beauty seems to fold The sum of all the glory vanished. As while Tithonus faltered on The threshold of the Olympian dawnings, Aurora's front eternal shone With lustre of the myriad mornings. So joys that slip like dead leaves down, And hopes burnt out that die in ashes, Rise restless from their graves to crown Our mother's brow with fadeless flashes. And lives wrapped in traditions mist These honoured halls to-day are haunting, And lips by lips long withered kissed The sagas of the past are chanting. Scornful of absence' envious bar BROWN smiles upon the mystic meeting Of those her sons, who, sundered far, In brotherhood of heart are greeting; Her wayward children wandering on Where setting stars are lowly burning, But still in worship toward the dawn That gilds their souls' dear Mecca turning; Or those who, armed for God's own fight, Stand by His Word through fire and slaughter, Or bear our banner's starry light Far-flashing through the Gulf's blue water. For where one strikes for light and truth, The right to aid, the wrong redressing, The mother of his spirit's youth Sheds o'er his soul her silent blessing. She gained her crown a gem of flame When KNEASS fell dead in victory gory; New splendour blazed upon her name When IVES' young life went out in glory! Thus bright for ever may she keep Her fires of tolerant Freedom burning, Till War's red eyes are charmed to sleep And bells ring home the boys returning. And may she shed her radiant truth In largess on ingenuous comers, And hold the bloom of gracious youth Through many a hundred tranquil summers! A WINTER NIGHT. The winter wind is raving fierce and shrill, And chides with angry moan the frosty skies; The white stars gaze with sleepless Gorgon eyes That freeze the earth in terror fixed and still. We reck not of the wild night's gloom and chill, Housed from its rage, dear friend; and fancy flies, Lured by the hand of beckoning memories, Back to those summer evenings on the hill Where we together watched the sun go down Beyond the gold-washed uplands, while his fires Touched into glittering life the vanes and spires Piercing the purpling mists that veiled the town. The wintry night thy voice and eyes beguile, Till wake the sleeping summers in thy smile. STUDENT-SONG. When Youth's warm heart beats high, my friend, And Youth's blue sky is bright, And shines in Youth's clear eye, my friend, Love's early dawning light, Let the free soul spurn care's control, And while the glad days shine, We'll use their beams for Youth's gay dreams Of Love and Song and Wine. Let not the bigot's frown, my friend, O'ercast thy brow with gloom, For Autumn's sober brown, my friend, Shall follow Summer's bloom. Let smiles and sighs and loving eyes In changeful beauty shine, And shed their beams on Youth's gay dreams Of Love and Song and Wine. For in the weary years, my friend, That stretched before us lie, There'll be enough of tears, my friend, To dim the brightest eye. So let them wait, and laugh at fate, While Youth's sweet moments shine,-- Till memory gleams with golden dreams Of Love and Song and Wine. HOW IT HAPPENED. I pray you, pardon me, Elsie, And smile that frown away That dims the light of your lovely face As a thunder-cloud the day. I really could not help it,-- Before I thought, 'twas done,-- And those great grey eyes flashed bright and cold, Like an icicle in the sun. I was thinking of the summers When we were boys and girls, And wandered in the blossoming woods, And the gay winds romped with your curls. And you seemed to me the same little girl I kissed in the alder-path, I kissed the little girl's lips, and, alas! I have roused a woman's wrath. There is not so much to pardon,-- For why were your lips so red? The blond hair fell in a shower of gold From the proud, provoking head. And the beauty that flashed from the splendid eyes, And played round the tender mouth, Rushed over my soul like a warm sweet wind That blows from the fragrant south. And where, after all, is the harm done? I believe we were made to be gay, And all of youth not given to love Is vainly squandered away. And strewn through life's low labours, Like gold in the desert sands, Are love's swift kisses and sighs and vows And the clasp of clinging hands. And when you are old and lonely, In Memory's magic shine You will see on your thin and wasting hands, Like gems, these kisses of mine. And when you muse at evening At the sound of some vanished name, The ghost of my kisses shall touch your lips And kindle your heart to flame. GOD'S VENGEANCE. Saith the Lord, "Vengeance is mine; I will repay," saith the Lord; Ours be the anger divine, Lit by the flash of His word. How shall His vengeance be done? How, when His purpose is clear? Must He come down from His throne? Hath He no instruments here? Sleep not in imbecile trust, Waiting for God to begin, While, growing strong in the dust, Rests the bruised serpent of sin. Right and Wrong,--both cannot live Death-grappled. Which shall we see? Strike! only Justice can give Safety to all that shall be. Shame! to stand paltering thus, Tricked by the balancing odds; Strike! God is waiting for us! Strike! for the vengeance is God's. TOO LATE. Had we but met in other days, Had we but loved in other ways, Another light and hope had shone On your life and my own. In sweet but hopeless reveries I fancy how your wistful eyes Had saved me, had I known their power In fate's imperious hour; How loving you, beloved of God, And following you, the path I trod Had led me, through your love and prayers, To God's love unawares: And how our beings joined as one Had passed through checkered shade and sun, Until the earth our lives had given, With little change, to heaven. God knows why this was not to be. You bloomed from childhood far from me. The sunshine of the favoured place That knew your youth and grace. And when your eyes, so fair and free, In fearless beauty beamed on me, I knew the fatal die was thrown, My choice in life was gone. And still with wild and tender art Your child-love touched my torpid heart, Gilding the blackness where it fell, Like sunlight over hell. In vain, in vain! my choice was gone! Better to struggle on alone Than blot your pure life's blameless shine With cloudy stains of mine. A vague regret, a troubled prayer, And then the future vast and fair Will tempt your young and eager eyes With all its glad surprise. And I shall watch you, safe and far, As some late traveller eyes a star Wheeling beyond his desert sands To gladden happier lands. LOVE'S DOUBT. 'Tis love that blinds my heart and eyes,-- I sometimes say in doubting dreams,-- The face that near me perfect seems Cold Memory paints in fainter dyes. 'Twas but love's dazzled eyes--I say-- That made her seem so strangely bright; The face I worshipped yesternight, I dread to meet it changed to-day. As, when dies out some song's refrain, And leaves your eyes in happy tears, Awake the same fond idle fears,-- It cannot sound so sweet again. You wait and say with vague annoy, "It will not sound so sweet again," Until comes back the wild refrain That floods your soul with treble joy. So when I see my love again Fades the unquiet doubt away, While shines her beauty like the day Over my happy heart and brain. And in that face I see no more The fancied faults I idly dreamed, But all the charms that fairest seemed, I find them, fairer than before. LACRIMAS. God send me tears! Loose the fierce band that binds my tired brain, Give me the melting heart of other years, And let me weep again! Before me pass The shapes of things inexorably true. Gone is the sparkle of transforming dew From every blade of grass. In life's high noon Aimless I stand, my promised task undone, And raise my hot eyes to the angry sun That will go down too soon. Turned into gall Are the sweet joys of childhood's sunny reign; And memory is a torture, love a chain That binds my life in thrall. And childhood's pain Could to me now the purest rapture yield; I pray for tears as in his parching field The husbandman for rain. We pray in vain! The sullen sky flings down its blaze of brass; The joys of life all scorched and withering pass; I shall not weep again. ON THE BLUFF. O grandly flowing River! O silver-gliding River! Thy springing willows shiver In the sunset as of old; They shiver in the silence Of the willow-whitened islands, While the sun-bars and the sand-bars Fill air and wave with gold. O gay, oblivious River! O sunset-kindled River! Do you remember ever The eyes and skies so blue On a summer day that shone here, When we were all alone here, And the blue eyes were too wise To speak the love they knew? O stern, impassive River! O still, unanswering River! The shivering willows quiver As the night-winds moan and rave. From the past a voice is calling, From heaven a star is falling, And dew swells in the bluebells Above her hillside grave. UNA. In the whole wide world there was but one; Others for others, but she was mine, The one fair woman beneath the sun. From her gold-flax curls' most marvellous shine Down to the lithe and delicate feet There was not a curve nor a waving line But moved in a harmony firm and sweet With all of passion my life could know. By knowledge perfect and faith complete I was bound to her,--as the planets go Adoring around their central star, Free, but united for weal or woe. She was so near and Heaven so far-- She grew my heaven and law and fate, Rounding my life with a mystic bar No thought beyond could violate. Our love to fulness in silence nursed Grew calm as morning, when through the gate Of the glimmering east the sun has burst, With his hot life filling the waiting air. She kissed me once,--that last and first Of her maiden kisses was placid as prayer. Against all comers I sat with lance In rest, and, drunk with my joy, I sware Defiance and scorn to the world's worst chance. In vain! for soon unhorsed I lay At the feet of the strong god Circumstance-- And never again shall break the day, And never again shall fall the night, That shall light me, or shield me, on my way To the presence of my sad soul's delight. Her dead love comes like a passionate ghost To mourn the Body it held so light, And Fate, like a hound with a purpose lost, Goes round bewildered with shame and fright. THROUGH THE LONG DAYS. Through the long days and years What will my loved one be, Parted from me? Through the long days and years. Always as then she was, Loveliest, brightest, best, Blessing and blest,-- Always as then she was. Never on earth again Shall I before her stand, Touch lip or hand,-- Never on earth again. But while my darling lives Peaceful I journey on, Not quite alone, Not while my darling lives. A PHYLACTERY. Wise men I hold those rakes of old Who, as we read in antique story, When lyres were struck and wine was poured, Set the white Death's Head on the board-- Memento mori. Love well! love truly! and love fast! True love evades the dilatory. Life's bloom flares like a meteor past; A joy so dazzling cannot last-- Memento mori. Stop not to pluck the leaves of bay That greenly deck the path of glory, The wreath will wither if you stay, So pass along your earnest way-- Memento mori. Hear but not heed, though wild and shrill, The cries of faction transitory; Cleave to YOUR good, eschew YOUR ill, A Hundred Years and all is still-- Memento mori. When Old Age comes with muffled drums, That beat to sleep our tired life's story, On thoughts of dying (Rest is good!), Like old snakes coiled i' the sun, we brood-- Memento mori. BLONDINE. I wandered through a careless world Deceived when not deceiving, And never gave an idle heart The rapture of believing. The smiles, the sighs, the glancing eyes, Of many hundred comers Swept by me, light as rose-leaves blown From long-forgotten summers. But never eyes so deep and bright And loyal in their seeming, And never smiles so full of light Have shone upon my dreaming. The looks and lips so gay and wise, The thousand charms that wreathe them, --Almost I dare believe that truth Is safely shrined beneath them. Ah! do they shine, those eyes of thine, But for our own misleading? The fresh young smile, so pure and fine, Does it but mock our reading? Then faith is fled, and trust is dead, And unbelief grows duty, If fraud can wield the triple arm Of youth and wit and beauty. DISTICHES. I. Wisely a woman prefers to a lover a man who neglects her. This one may love her some day, some day the lover will not. II. There are three species of creatures who when they seem coming are going, When they seem going they come: Diplomates, women, and crabs. III. Pleasures too hastily tasted grow sweeter in fond recollection, As the pomegranate plucked green ripens far over the sea. IV. As the meek beasts in the Garden came flocking for Adam to name them, Men for a title to-day crawl to the feet of a king. V. What is a first love worth, except to prepare for a second? What does the second love bring? Only regret for the first. VI. Health was wooed by the Romans in groves of the laurel and myrtle. Happy and long are the lives brightened by glory and love. VII. Wine is like rain: when it falls on the mire it but makes it the fouler, But when it strikes the good soil wakes it to beauty and bloom. VIII. Break not the rose; its fragrance and beauty are surely sufficient: Resting contented with these, never a thorn shall you feel. IX. When you break up housekeeping, you learn the extent of your treasures; Till he begins to reform, no one can number his sins. X. Maidens! why should you worry in choosing whom you shall marry? Choose whom you may, you will find you have got somebody else. XI. Unto each man comes a day when his favourite sins all forsake him, And he complacently thinks he has forsaken his sins. XII. Be not too anxious to gain your next-door neighbour's approval: Live your own life, and let him strive your approval to gain. XIII. Who would succeed in the world should be wise in the use of his pronouns. Utter the You twenty times, where you once utter the I. XIV. The best-loved man or maid in the town would perish with anguish Could they hear all that their friends say in the course of a day. XV. True luck consists not in holding the best of the cards at the table: Luckiest he who knows just when to rise and go home. XVI. Pleasant enough it is to hear the world speak of your virtues; But in your secret heart 'tis of your faults you are proud. XVII. Try not to beat back the current, yet be not drowned in its waters; Speak with the speech of the world, think with the thoughts of the few. XVIII. Make all good men your well-wishers, and then, in the years' steady sifting, Some of them turn into friends. Friends are the sunshine of life. REGARDANT. As I lay at your feet that afternoon, Little we spoke,--you sat and mused, Humming a sweet old-fashioned tune, And I worshipped you, with a sense confused Of the good time gone and the bad on the way, While my hungry eyes your face perused, To catch and brand on my soul for aye The subtle smile which had grown my doom. Drinking sweet poison hushed I lay Till the sunset shimmered athwart the room. I rose to go. You stood so fair And dim in the dead day's tender gloom: All at once, or ever I was aware, Flashed from you on me a warm strong wave Of passion and power; in the silence there I fell on my knees, like a lover, or slave, With my wild hands clasping your slender waist; And my lips, with a sudden frenzy brave, A madman's kiss on your girdle pressed, And I felt your calm heart's quickening beat, And your soft hands on me one instant rest. And if God had loved me, how endlessly sweet Had He let my heart in its rapture burst, And throb its last at your firm small feet! And when I was forth, I shuddered at first At my imminent bliss. As a soul in pain, Treading his desolate path accursed, Looks back and dreams through his tears' dim rain That by Heaven's wide gate the angels smile, Relenting, and beckon him back again, And goes on, thrice damned by that devil's wile,-- So sometimes burns in my weary brain The thought that you loved me all the while. GUY OF THE TEMPLE. Down the dim west slowly fails the stricken sun, And from his hot face fades the crimson flush Veiled in death's herald-shadows sick and grey. Silent and dark the sombre valley lies Forgotten; happy in the late fond beams Glimmer the constant waves of Galilee. Afar, below, in airy music ring The bugles of my host; the column halts, A wearied serpent glittering in the vale, Where rising mist-like gleam the tented camps. Pitch my pavilion here, where its high cross May catch the last light lingering on the hill. The savage shadows, struggling by the shore, Have conquered in the valley; inch by inch The vanquished light fights bravely to these crags To perish glorious in the sunset fire; Even as our hunted Cause so pressed and torn In Syrian valleys, and the trampled marge Of consecrated streams, displays at last Its narrowing glories from these steadfast walls. Here in God's name we stand, and brighter far Shines the stern virtue of my martyr-host Through these invidious fortunes, than of old, When the still sunshine glinted on their helms, And dallying breezes woke their bridle-bells To tinkling music by the reedy shore Of calm Tiberias, where our angry Lord, Wroth at the deadly sin that cursed our camp, Denied and blinded us, and gave us up To the avenging sword of Saladin. Yet would He not permit His truth to sink To utter loss amid that foundering fight, But led us, scarred and shattered from the spoil Of Paynim rage, the desert's thirsty death, To where beneath the sheltering crags we prayed And rested and grew strong. Heroes and saints To alien peoples shall they be, my brave And patient warriors; for in their stout hearts God's Spirit dwells for ever, and their hands Are swift to do His service on His foes. The swelling music of their vesper-hymn Is rising fragrant from the shadowed vale Familiar to the welcoming gates of heaven. Mother of God! as evening falls Upon the silent sea, And shadows veil the mountain walls, We lift our souls to thee! From lurking perils of the night, The desert's hidden harms, From plagues that waste, from blasts that smite, Defend thy men-at-arms! Ay! Heaven keep them! and ye angel-hosts That wait with fluttering plumes around the great White throne of God, guard them from scath and harm! For in your starry records never shone The memory of desert so great as theirs. I hold not first, though peerless else on earth, That knightly valour, born of gentle blood And war's long tutelage, which hath made their name Blaze like a baleful planet o'er these lands; Firm seat in saddle, lance unmoved, a hand Wedding the hilt with death's persistent grasp; One-minded rush in fight that naught can stay. Not these the highest, though I scorn not these, But rather offer Heaven with humble heart The deeds that Heaven hath given us arms to do. For when God's smile was with us we were strong To go like sudden lightning to our mark: As on that summer day when Saladin-- Passing in scorn our host at Antioch, Who spent the days in revel, and shamed the stars With nightly scandal--came with all his host, Its gay battalia brave with saffron silks, Flaunting the banners of the Caliphate Beneath the walls of fair Jerusalem: And white and shaking came the Leper-King, Great Baldwin's blasted scion, and Tripoli And I, and twenty score of Temple Knights, To meet the myriads marshalled by the bright Untarnished flower of Eastern chivalry; A moment paused with level-fronting spears And moveless helms before that shining host, Whose gay attire abashed the morning light, And then struck spur and charged, while from the mass Of rushing terror burst the awful cry, GOD AND THE TEMPLE! As the avalanche slides Down Alpine slopes, precipitous, cold and dark, Unpitying and unwrathful, grinds and crushes The mountain violets and the valley weeds, And drags behind a trail of chaos and death; So burst we on that field, and through and through The gay battalia brave with saffron silks, Crushed and abolished every grace and gleam, And dragged where'er we rode a sinuous track Of chaos and death, till all the plain was filled With battered armour, turbaned trunkless heads, With silken mantles blushing angry gules And Bagdad's banners trampled and forlorn. And Saladin, stunned and bewildered sore,-- The greatest prince, save in the grace of God, That now wears sword,--mounted his brother's barb, And, followed by a half-score followers, Sped to his castle Shaubec, over against The cliffs by Ascalon, and there abode: And sullenly made order that no more The royal nouba should be played for him Until he should erase the rusting stain Upon his knightly honour; and no more The nouba sounded by the Sultan's tent, Morning nor evening by the silent tent, Until the headlong greed of Chatillon Spread ruin on our cause from Montreale. But greatest are my warriors, as I deem, In that their hearts, nearer than any else, Keep true the pledge of perfect purity They pledged upon their sword-hilts long ago. For all is possible to the pure in heart. Mother of God! thy starry smile Still bless us from above! Keep pure our souls from passion's guile, Our hearts from earthly love! Still save each soul from guilt apart As stainless as each sword, And guard undimmed in every heart The image of our Lord! O goodliest fellowship that the world has known, True hearts and stalwart arms! above your breasts Glitters no flash of wreathen amulet Forged against sword-stroke by the chanted rhythm Of charms accurst; but in each steadfast heart Blazes the light of cloudless purity, That like a splendid jewel glorifies With restless fire the gold that spheres it round, And marks you children of our God, whose lives He guards with the awful jealousy of love. And even me that generous love has spared,-- Me, trustless knight and miserable man,-- Sad prey of dark and mutinous thoughts that tempt My sick soul into perjury and death-- Since His great love had pity on my pain, Has spared to lead these blameless warriors safe Into the desert from the blazing towns, Out of the desert to the inviolate hills Where God has roofed them with His hollow shield. Through all these days of tempest and eclipse His hand has led me and His wrath has flashed Its lightnings in the pathway of my sword. And so I hope, and so my crescent faith Gains daily power, that all my prayers and tears And toils and blood and anguish borne for Him May blot the accusing of my deadly sin From heavens high compt, and give me rest in death; And lay the pallid ghost of mortal love, That fills with banned and mournful loveliness, Unblest, the haunted chambers of my soul. My misery will atone,--my misery,-- Dear God, will surely atone! for not the sting Of lacerating thongs, nor the slow horror Of crowns of thorny iron maddening the brows, Nor all that else pale hermits have devised To scourge the rebel senses in their shade Of caverned desolation, have the power To smart and goad and lash and mortify Like the great love that binds my ruined heart Relentless, as the insidious ivy binds The shattered bulk of some deserted tower, Enlacing slow and riving with strong hands Of pitiless verdure every seam and jut, Till none may tear it forth and save the tower. So binds and masters me my hopeless love. So through the desert, in the silent hills, I' the current of the battle's storm and stress, One thought has driven me,--that though men may call Me stainless Paladin, Knight leal and true To Christ and Our Lady, still I know myself A knight not after God's own heart, a soul Recreant, and whelmed in the forbidden sin. For dearer to my sad heart than the cross I give my heart's best blood for are the eyes That long ago, when youth and hope were mine, I loved in thy still valleys, far Provence! And sweeter to my spirit than the bells Of rescued Salem are the loving tones Of her dear voice, soft echoing o'er the years. They haunt me in the stillness and the glare Of desert noontide when the horizon's line Swims faintly throbbing, and my shadow hides Skulking beneath me from the brassy sky. And when night comes to soothe with breath of balm And pomp of stars the worn and weary world, Her eyes rise in my soul and make its day. And even into the battle comes my love, Snatching the duty that I offer Heaven. At closing of El-Majed's awful day, When the last quivering sunbeams, choked with dust And fume of blood, failed on the level plain, In the last charge, when gathered all our knights The precious handful who from morn had stemmed The fury of the multitudinous hosts Of Islam, where in youth's hot fire and pride Ramped the young lion-whelp, Ben-Saladin; As down the slope we rode at eventide, The dying sunlight faintly smiled to greet Our tattered guidons and our dinted helms And lance-heads blooming with the battle's rose. Into the vale, dusk with the shadow of death, With silent lips and ringing mail we rode. And something in the spirit of the hour, Or fate, or memory, or sorrow, or sin, Or love, which unto me is all of these, Possessed and bound me; for when dashed our troop In stormy clangour on the Paynim lines The soul of my dead youth came into me; Faded away my oath; the woes of Zion, God was forgot; blazed in my leaping heart, With instant flash, life's inextinguished fires; Plunging along each tense limb poured the blood Hot with its years of sleeping-smothered flame. And in a dream I charged, and in a dream I smote resistless; foemen in my path Fell unregarded, like the wayside flowers Clipped by the truant's staff in daisied lanes. For over me burned lustrous the dear eyes Of my beloved; I strove as at a joust To gain at end the guerdon of her smile. And ever, as in the dense melee I dashed, Her name burst from my lips, as lightning breaks Out of the plunging wrack of summer storms. O my lost love! Bright o'er the waste of years-- That bliss and beauty shines upon my soul; As far beyond yon desert hangs the sun, Gilding with tender beam the barren stretch Of sands that intervene. In this still light The old sweet memories glimmer back to me, Fair summers of my youth,--the idle days I wandered in the bosky coverts hid In the dim woods that girt my ancient home; The blue young eyes I met and worshipped there; The love that growing turned those gloomy wilds To faery dells, and filled the vernal air With light that bathed the hills of Paradise; The warm, long days of rapturous summer-time, When through the forests thick and lush we strayed, And love made our own sunshine in the shades. And all things fair and graceful in the woods I loved with liberal heart; the violets Were dear for her dear eyes, the quiring birds That caught the musical tremble of her voice. O happy twilights in the leafy glooms! When in the glowing dusk the winsome arts And maiden graces that all day had kept Us twain and separate melted away In blushing silence, and my love was mine Utterly, utterly, with clinging arms And quick, caressing fingers, warm red lips, Where vows, half uttered, drowned in kisses, died; Mine, with the starlight in her passionate eyes; The wild wind of the woodland breathing low To wake the elfin music of the leaves, And free the prisoned odours of the flowers, In honour of young Love come to his throne! While we under the stars, with twining arms And mutual lips insatiate, gave our souls-- Madly forgetting earth and heaven--to love! In desert march or battle flame, In fortress and in field, Our war-cry is thy holy name, Thy love our joy and shield! And if we falter, let thy power Thy stern avenger be, And God forget us in the hour We cease to think of thee! Curse me not, God of Justice and of Love! Pitiful God, let my long woe atone! I cannot deem but God has pitied me; Else why with painful care have I been saved, Whenever tossed and drenched in the fierce tide Of Saladin's victories by the walls profaned Of Jaffa, on the sands of far Daroum, Or in the battle thundering on the downs Of Ramlah, or the bloody day that shed Red horrors on high Gaza's parapets? For never a storm of fatal fight has raged In Islam's track of rout and ruin swept From Egypt to Gebail, but when the ebb Of battle came I and my host have lain, Scarred, scorched, safe somewhere on its fiery shore. At Marcab's lingering siege, where day by day We told the Moslem legions toiling slow, Planting their engines, delving in their mines To quench in our destruction this last light Of Christendom, our fortress in the crags, God's beacon swung defiant from the stars; One thunderous night I knew their miners groped Below, and thought ere morn to die, in crush And tumult of the falling citadel. And pondering of my fate--the broken storm Sobbing its life away--I was aware There grew between me and the quieting skies A face and form I knew,--not as in dreams, The sad dishevelled loveliness of earth, But lighter than the thin air where she swayed,-- Gold hair flame-fluttered, eyes and mouth aglow With lambent light of spiritual joy. With sweet command she beckoned me away And led me vaguely dreaming, till I saw Where the wild flood in sudden fury had burst A passage through the rocks: and thence I led My host unharmed, following her luminous eyes, Until the east was grey, and with a smile Wooing me heavenward still she passed away Into the rosy trouble of the dawn. And I believe my love is shrived in heaven, And I believe that I shall soon be free. For ever, as I journey on, to me Waking or sleeping come faint whisperings And fancies not of earth, as if the gates Of near eternity stood for me ajar, And ghostly gales come blowing o'er my soul Fraught with the amaranth odours of the skies. I go to join the Lion-Heart at Acre, And there, after due homage to my liege, And after patient penance of the Church, And after final devoir in the fight, If that my God be gracious, I shall die. And so I pray--Lord, pardon if I sin!-- That I may lose in death's embittered wave The stain of sinful loving, and may find In glory again the love I lost below, With all of fair and bright and unattained, Beautiful in the cherishing smile of God, By the glad waters of the River of Life! Night hangs above the valley; dies the day In peace, casting his last glance on my cross, And warns me to my prayers. Ave Maria! Mother of God! the evening fades On wave and hill and lea, And in the twilight's deepening shades We lift our souls to thee! In passion's stress--the battle's strife, The desert's lurking harms, Maid-Mother of the Lord of Life Protect thy men-at-arms! TRANSLATIONS. THE WAY TO HEAVEN. FROM THE GERMAN. One day the Sultan, grand and grim, Ordered the Mufti brought to him. "Now let thy wisdom solve for me The question I shall put to thee. "The different tribes beneath my sway Four several sects of priests obey; Now tell me which of all the four Is on the path to Heaven's door." The Sultan spake, and then was dumb. The Mufti looked about the room, And straight made answer to his lord, Fearing the bowstring at each word: "Thou, godlike in thy lofty birth, Who art our Allah upon earth, Illume me with thy favouring ray, And I will answer as I may. "Here, where thou thronest in thy hall, I see there are four doors in all; And through all four thy slaves may gaze Upon the brightness of thy face. "That I came hither safely through Was to thy gracious message due, And, blinded by thy splendour's flame, I cannot tell the way I came." COUNTESS JUTTA. FROM THE GERMAN OF HEINRICH HEINE. The Countess Jutta passed over the Rhine In a light canoe by the moon's pale shine. The handmaid rows and the Countess speaks: "Seest thou not there where the water breaks Seven corpses swim In the moonlight dim? So sorrowful swim the dead! "They were seven knights full of fire and youth, They sank on my heart and swore me truth. I trusted them; but for Truth's sweet sake, Lest they should be tempted their oaths to break, I had them bound, And tenderly drowned! So sorrowful swim the dead!" The merry Countess laughed outright! It rang so wild in the startled night! Up to the waist the dead men rise And stretch lean fingers to the skies. They nod and stare With a glassy glare! So sorrowful swim the dead! A BLESSING. AFTER HEINE. When I look on thee and feel how dear, How pure, and how fair thou art, Into my eyes there steals a tear, And a shadow mingled of love and fear Creeps slowly over my heart. And my very hands feel as if they would lay Themselves on thy fair young head, And pray the good God to keep thee alway As good and lovely, as pure and gay,-- When I and my wild love are dead. TO THE YOUNG. AFTER HEINE. Let your feet not falter, your course not alter By golden apples, till victory's won! The sword's sharp clangour, the dart's shrill anger, Swerve not the hero thundering on. A bold beginning is half the winning, An Alexander makes worlds his fee. No long debating! The Queens are waiting In his pavilion on beaded knee. Thus swift pursuing his wars and wooing, He mounts old Darius' bed and throne. O glorious ruin! O blithe undoing! O drunk death-triumph in Babylon! THE GOLDEN CALF. AFTER HEINE. Double flutes and horns resound As they dance the idol round; Jacob's daughters, madly reeling, Whirl about the golden calf. Hear them laugh! Kettledrums and laughter pealing. Dresses tucked above their knees, Maids of noblest families, In the swift dance blindly wheeling, Circle in their wild career Round the steer,-- Kettledrums and laughter pealing. Aaron's self, the guardian grey Of the faith, at last gives way, Madness all his senses stealing; Prances in his high priest's coat Like a goat,-- Kettledrums and laughter pealing. THE AZRA. AFTER HEINE. Daily walked the fair and lovely Sultan's daughter in the twilight,-- In the twilight by the fountain, Where the sparkling waters plash. Daily stood the young slave silent In the twilight by the fountain, Where the plashing waters sparkle, Pale and paler every day. Once by twilight came the princess Up to him with rapid questions: "I would know thy name, thy nation, Whence thou comest, who thou art." And the young slave said, "My name is Mahomet, I come from Yemmen. I am of the sons of Azra, Men who perish if they love." GOOD AND BAD LUCK. AFTER HEINE. Good luck is the gayest of all gay girls, Long in one place she will not stay; Back from your brow she strokes the curls, Kisses you quick and flies away. But Madame Bad Luck soberly comes And stays,--no fancy has she for flitting,-- Snatches of true love-songs she hums, And sits by your bed, and brings her knitting. L'AMOUR DU MENSONGE. AFTER CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. When I behold thee, O my indolent love, To the sound of ringing brazen melodies, Through garish halls harmoniously move, Scattering a scornful light from languid eyes; When I see, smitten by the blazing lights, Thy pale front, beauteous in its bloodless glow As the faint fires that deck the Northern nights, And eyes that draw me wheresoe'er I go; I say, She is fair, too coldly strange for speech; A crown of memories, her calm brow above, Shines; and her heart is like a bruised red peach, Ripe as her body for intelligent love. Art thou late fruit of spicy savour and scent? A funeral vase awaiting tearful showers? An Eastern odour, waste and oasis blent? A silken cushion or a bank of flowers? I know there are eyes of melancholy sheen To which no passionate secrets e'er were given; Shrines where no god or saint has ever been, As deep and empty as the vault of Heaven. But what care I if this be all pretence? 'Twill serve a heart that seeks for truth no more. All one thy folly or indifference,-- Hail, lovely mask, thy beauty I adore! AMOR MYSTICUS. FROM THE SPANISH OF SOR MARCELA DE CARPIO. Let them say to my Lover That here I lie! The thing of His pleasure, His slave am I. Say that I seek Him Only for love, And welcome are tortures My passion to prove. Love giving gifts Is suspicious and cold; I have all, my Beloved, When Thee I hold. Hope and devotion The good may gain; I am but worthy Of passion and pain. So noble a Lord None serves in vain, For the pay of my love Is my love's sweet pain. I love Thee, to love Thee,-- No more I desire; By faith is nourished My love's strong fire. I kiss Thy hands When I feel their blows; In the place of caresses Thou givest me woes. But in Thy chastising Is joy and peace. O Master and Love, Let Thy blows not cease. Thy beauty, Beloved, With scorn is rife, But I know that Thou lovest me, Better than life. And because thou lovest me, Lover of mine, Death can but make me Utterly Thine. I die with longing Thy face to see; Oh! sweet is the anguish Of death to me! 
61701	----	O. HENRY ENCORE STORIES AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY O. HENRY * _Usually Under the Name_ The Post Man * _Discovered and Edited by_ Mary Sunlocks Harrell _New York 1939_ Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc. Printed at the _Country Life Press_, Garden City, N.Y., U.S.A. CL Copyright, 1939 By Mary Sunlocks Harrell All Rights Reserved TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface Introduction Part One: Stories A Night Errant In Mezzotint The Dissipated Jeweler How Willie Saved Father The Mirage on the Frio A Tragedy Sufficient Provocation The Bruised Reed Paderewski's Hair A Mystery of Many Centuries A Strange Case Simmon's Saturday Night An Unknown Romance Jack the Giant Killer The Pint Flask An Odd Character A Houston Romance The Legend of San Jacinto Binkley's Practical School of Journalism A New Microbe Vereton Villa Whiskey Did It Nothing New Under the Sun Led Astray A Story for Men How She Got in the Swim The Barber Talks Barbershop Adventure Part Two: Sketches Did You See the Circus? Thanksgiving Remarks When the Train Comes In Christmas Eve New Year's Eve and How It Came to Houston Watchman, What of the Night? Newspaper Poets Her Choice Part Three: Newspaper Poetry Topical Verse Cape Jessamines The Cricket My Broncho The Modern Venus Celestial Sounds The Snow "Little Things, but Ain't They Whizzers?" Last Fall of the Alamo Preface During the years 1934 and 1935 I made a close study of O. Henry's Texas contacts. The newspapers of Texas during the time of O. Henry's residence in the state furnished one of the sources which I investigated; and it was during my research in the files of the _Houston Post_, 1895-1896, that I discovered the stories and illustrations which make up this book. In reprinting this material, I have followed the original version meticulously except for the correction of obvious typographical errors and certain slight aberrations in punctuation that seemed to demand revision for the sake of consistency or to comply with modern standards of usage. Even so, I have allowed many typographical and even grammatical conventions to remain as they were printed forty years ago. The companion volume to O. Henry Encore, namely, O. Henry in Texas, embodies the results of my investigation into the Texas period of O. Henry's life, and contains a much more complete account of his work on the _Houston Post_ than I have been able to give in the short introduction to the present volume. Permission for reprinting the material here was arranged for me by former Governor W. P. Hobby of Texas, now President of the Houston Post, and Mr. A. E. Clarkson, Business Manager of the Post. I am happy to express my gratitude to them. My thanks are due also to Dr. Leonidas Warren Payne, Jr., of The University of Texas, Dr. Vernon Loggins, of Columbia University, and the late Dr. Dorothy Scarborough, of Columbia University, for helping in the identification of the material. Mary Sunlocks Harrell Introduction O. Henry's real name was William Sidney (Sydney) Porter. He was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, 1862, of mixed Quaker (Connecticut) and Southern (Virginia) ancestry. His mother, a woman of remarkable strength of character and some literary talent, died in 1865, and O. Henry's rearing was entrusted to his paternal grandmother. His father was a physician, but apparently a business failure at everything he attempted. What schooling O. Henry had was received in the little private school of an aunt, Miss Lina Porter. From early boyhood he worked in the drug store of an uncle, and long before he was twenty he was a registered pharmacist. In 1882 O. Henry left for Texas to seek a dryer climate. It was feared that he was developing consumption. He settled on the Hall ranch in La Salle County, almost half way between San Antonio and the Mexican border. He spent two years on the ranch and in 1884 went to Austin. During his first three years there, he lived as practically an adopted son in the home of Mr. Joe Harrell, who was also a native of Greensboro. He worked at various "jobs"--cigar-store clerk, pharmacist, etc. In 1887 O. Henry secured a position in the State Land Office as assistant compiling draftsman. Here he remained for four years--the happiest ones, it seems, in his life. The position meant to him prosperity; and five months after he had begun his work, he was married to Miss Athol Estes, the daughter of Mrs. G. P. Roach. There was a romantic elopement, a family reconciliation, and what O. Henry called "a settling down to a comedy of happiness ever afterwards." It was shortly after he took up his work in the Land Office that O. Henry first marketed his writings. The amount received for a "string of jokes and sketches" accepted by the Detroit Free Press was small, but it was to increase steadily, even during the most troublous period of his life. As a boy in Greensboro he was known for his drawings and cartoons, and while on the ranch in Texas he drew some pictures and also wrote to his relatives and friends in North Carolina letters indicative of his later literary style. A change in the State administration in 1891 meant that O. Henry's position in the Land Office was lost. He became connected with the First National Bank of Austin as paying and receiving teller, where he was to work until December, 1894. Before giving up his position in the bank, he had undertaken the publication of a humorous, semi-political weekly, The Rolling Stone, published at Austin and later simultaneously in Austin and San Antonio. After he left the bank, he had to depend on The Rolling Stone for all his income, but without capital he could not make of it a financial success. It existed only a year, from April 28, 1894, to April 27, 1895. Almost six months passed before O. Henry left Austin to become a staff contributor to the _Houston Daily Post_. His first work appeared in the Post on October 19, 1895. It was shortly after this date that an ominous shadow settled over O. Henry's head. In February of 1896 the Federal Grand Jury at Austin brought an indictment against W. S. Porter, charging the embezzlement of funds while he was acting as paying and receiving teller of the First National Bank of Austin. Finally, summoned to trial in July, 1896, O. Henry left Houston to answer the charge; but he only got as far as Hempstead. There it was necessary to change trains; but instead of taking the train for Austin, he returned to Houston and then went on to New Orleans. When next heard from, he was in Honduras. In January, 1897, after six month's absence O. Henry received news of the serious illness of his wife. He set out to join her immediately and reached Austin by February 5, 1897. He at once reported to the civil authorities. His bondsmen had not been assessed, and he was allowed to go free but with his bond doubled. His wife died of tuberculosis the following July, and in February, 1898, O. Henry' case came to trial. He plead not guilty, but for some unknown reason he maintained an utter indifference throughout the trial. On March 25 he was sentenced to imprisonment in the Federal Ward of the Ohio State Penitentiary. On account of good behavior, however, O. Henry's term in prison was shortened to a little over three years. On July 24, 1901, he again became a free man. His ability as a pharmacist gave him the opportunity to work in prison at something comparatively easy. But what is of most interest to us in regard to his life there is that by the time he got out of confinement he was pretty well known, under the pseudonym of O. Henry by editors of a number of America's most popular magazines. As soon as he was out of prison O. Henry went to join his daughter and the Roaches, who were then living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He now devoted all his energies to writing, and in the spring of 1902 he was called to New York. The eight years that O. Henry spent in the great metropolis were marked by an astonishing fecundity in literary production and an ever increasing fame as the writer of a peculiar type of short story, now known universally as the "O. Henry short story." O. Henry died in New York City on June 5, 1910, and was buried in Asheville, North Carolina. The only other event of his life which should be recorded here is his marriage in 1907 to Miss Sara Coleman, a sweetheart of his North Carolina days, and author of Wind of Destiny in which appear many letters written to her by O. Henry just before their marriage. II Practically the whole body of O. Henry's stories and sketches first appeared in periodicals. Doubleday, Page & Company (now Doubleday, Doran and Company) have put into book form almost everything he wrote, and the volumes in the order of their publication are as follows: _Cabbages and Kings_, 1904; _The Four Million_, 1906; The Trimmed Lamp and _Heart of the West_, 1907; _The Voice of the City_ and _The Gentle Grafter_, 1908; _Roads of Destiny_ and _Options_, 1909; _Strictly Business_ and _Whirligigs_, 1910; _Sixes and Sevens_, 1911; Rolling Stones, 1913; _Waifs and Strays_, 1917. In 1923 Harper and Brothers brought out _Postscripts_ by O. Henry, edited by Florence Stratton. The title of _Rolling Stones_, invented by Harry Peyton Steger, is based on the weekly, _The Rolling Stone_, published by O. Henry in Texas in 1894 and 1895. It contains odds and ends; some stories written when O. Henry was at his best, "The Fog in Santone," for example; material used in the original The Rolling Stone; excerpts from the Postscripts column written for the _Houston Post_; and a few letters. _Postscripts_ by O. Henry, as the name suggests, contains material taken from Will Porter's _Houston Post_ column. _The Four Million_ is based on New York life, and _The Trimmed Lamp_, _The Voice of the City_, and _Strictly Business_ are simply "more stories of the four million." _Heart of the West_ is made up exclusively of western stories. _Cabbages and Kings_, a composite of several individual stories separately published and now woven together, depicts life as O. Henry saw it in Honduras, Central America. _The Gentle Grafter_ is supposedly based upon stories which O. Henry heard his fellow prisoners relate in the Ohio Penitentiary. The other volumes are made up of stories varied in character--New York, Texas, and tropical America. Just as every other great artist has done, O. Henry has set an example. He invented a short-story technique of his own, and the most discriminating critics have studied that technique and pronounced it good. He owed no more to the "unity of impression idea" of Poe than to the stringy structure of the medieval Patient Griselda. Almost by chance, it seems, he hit upon the trick of concentration of attention, economy of words, rising suspense, and denouement of climax and surprise; and in that trick lies his art. There was in O. Henry, however, a power greater than his art. That was his genius for observation. Art without ideas profits nothing. O. Henry got his ideas by seeing everything about him, by always keeping on the qui vive, as he himself said, for "the man around the corner." Fate dealt him a life of manifold experiences, and from every experience his store of observations increased. After all, his works are no more than an artistic record of life as he saw it. III The stories that make up the present volume have for forty years remained unnoticed in the files of the _Houston Post_. The general belief that O. Henry was simply a columnist on the Post is probably the reason for their being overlooked. The idea that his column appeared regularly has, furthermore, tended to dismiss the question of what sort of work he really did on the paper. When I examined the files of the Post, I was surprised to find that the column "Some Postscripts" was often missing. In February, 1896, it came out only four times, in April seven, in June three. In spite of this irregularity Will Porter's salary had gradually been raised from $15 to $25 a week. Here is a situation which has only one logical explanation. O. Henry must have done other work in order to draw this steadily increasing weekly salary. A close examination of the Houston Post files from October 19, 1895, to June 22, 1896, reveals a mass of material, heretofore unidentified, as unmistakably the work of Will Porter. What first attracts the eye is the abundance of unsigned comic drawings and clever cartoons. The style of these drawings is unquestionably O. Henry's. We know from various sources that he was constantly drawing pictures, and we have a positive statement from Colonel R. M. Johnston, under whom Will Porter worked on the Houston Post, that his ability to draw cartoons was called into requisition soon after he joined the staff of the Post. Some of the best of these cartoons depict the political situation of the time. Others are entirely independent of politics and point to the development of the present-day comic strips in all newspapers. Sometimes they portray character traits and are accompanied by rhymed quips. At other times they are used to illustrate lengthy stories. These stories, of course, were composed by Will Porter, and from them the selections for this volume have been made. The word-usage, sentence-structure, mythological allusion, plot-manipulation, character types, and central ideas that characterize O. Henry's short stories generally, are also plainly recognizable in these selections from the _Houston Post_. For example, "A Tragedy" not only turns on a pun, as O. Henry's stories often do, but is based upon the story of The Arabian Nights, which later colored O. Henry's whole conception of New York City, Little-Old-Bagdad-on- the-Subway. The central idea of "An Odd Character," the story of a tramp who claims to be 241 years old, appeared later in "The Enchanted Kiss" and "Door of Unrest." The characters of these earlier stories--shop-girls, Irish policemen, crooks, tramps, sheep-men, cowmen, drunkards, pharmacists, doctors, newspaper reporters, dudes--are practically identical with many of those used in later O. Henry stories. Likewise, O. Henry's propensity for the use of the "envelope structure," the sort provided by the pilgrimage in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and "narrated development," or the telling of the story by one of the characters, is very much in evidence in these _Houston Post_ stories, as in a number of his later acknowledged works. For example, in "The Mirage on the Frio" a sheep-man from La Salle County tells his story to a group of men on a Buffalo Bayou fishing party; and later in Cabbages and Kings the story of "The Shamrock and the Palm" is told by the Irishman Clancy to a group of fellow Caucasians who have met at the end of a tropical day. A large amount of internal evidence, moreover, points emphatically to O. Henry as the author of these pieces. They have the unmistakable stylistic qualities, the humorous point of view, the unexpected climaxes of O. Henry, After a careful and detailed study of every single piece of the material here reproduced, along with the application of various stylistic tests, I was thoroughly convinced of the authenticity of its authorship. In order to support my own convictions, however, I consulted experts who have been students of O. Henry for years. Dr. L. W. Payne, Jr., of The University of Texas, Dr. Vernon Loggins, of Columbia University, and Dr. Dorothy Scarborough, also of Columbia and compiler of many books of short stories, examined photostatic copies which I had made of the material. They are unanimous in the opinion that the authorship of both the drawings with their legends and the articles and stories may be safely attributed to O. Henry's pen. The nature of the material included in this volume determined the arrangement of the book into three parts. The stories in the first part show that Will Porter had already discovered the technique that made him famous as O. Henry. The sketches in the second part show O. Henry at work-gathering story material from his observations of life. Will Porter's ventures into the realm of newspaper poetry, I have included in order to illustrate the principles set forth in his article "Newspaper Poets," also reprinted here. As far as I know, this article is the only bit of serious literary criticism ever written by O. Henry. It is noteworthy also as the only article in the _Houston Post_ which was ever signed in full by "W. S. Porter." A more detailed treatment of this and allied topics concerning O. Henry's life in Texas may be found in my O. Henry in Texas, designed as a companion volume to the present book. Part One: Stories A Night Errant One of the greatest of books is the daily life around us. All that the human mind can conceive; all that the human heart can feel, and the lips tell are encompassed in the little world about us. He that beholds with understanding eyes can see beneath the thin veil of the commonplace, the romance, the tragedy and the broad comedy that is being played upon the world's stage by the actors great and little who tread the boards of the Theater of the Universe. Life is neither tragedy nor comedy. It is a mingling of both. High above us omnipotent hands pull the strings that choke our laughter with sobs and cause strange sounds of mirth to break in upon our deepest grief. We are marionettes that dance and cry, scarce at our own wills; and at the end, the flaring lights are out, we are laid to rest in our wooden boxes, and down comes the dark night to cover the scene of our brief triumph. We elbow heroes on the streets as grand as any the poets have sung; in the faces of obscure women and prosy men a student of his kind can see the imprints of all the passions, both good and bad, that have illuminated the pages of song and story. There is good in all, and we are none all good. The scholar in his library, the woodcutter in the forest, my lady in her boudoir and the painted, hard-eyed denizen of the byways--we are all from the same clay. And the hands of fate pull the strings, and we caper and pirouette; and some go up and some go down and haphazard chance or else an obscure divinity pulls us this way and that, and where are we left? Blind and chattering on the brink of an eternal unknowableness. We spring from a common root. The king and the bricklayer are equal except as to environs; the queen and the milkmaid may sit side by side with pail and crown on the ragged edge of destiny; the human heart is the same the world over; and when the judge sits upon the doings of his puppets, who will prevail? The Post Man has an overcoat with a high collar. This is convenient in more ways than one. He turns it up when passing beggars upon the street corners, and thus shuts out their importunities and saves his conscience; he pulls it around his ears with dignified stateliness when meeting gentlemen who deal in goods which he hath bought anon; and lastly, it is useful when the weather is cold. Sometimes when the purple shades begin to fall on Saturday evening and the cool mists creep up from the sluggish waters of the bayou the Post Man dons his useful article of apparel and hieth him forth among the hedges and the highways. He sees the seamy side through the gilding that covers the elect of the earth, and he sees the pure gold that glitters amid the mire where tread the lowly and meek of heart. He catches the note of discord in the prayer of the Pharisee on the street corner, and the jangle of the untuned bells that hang above many houses of worship. He sees strange deeds of nobility and lofty self-denial among people from whose touch respectability draws aside its skirts, and the mark of the beast upon the brow of the high and saintly. A little here and there he jots down upon his pad; the greater part of the panorama goes by unrecorded until something comes in the vast To Be that will either explain--or end. * * * * * Robert Burns has drawn a perfect picture of the purest peace and happiness in his "Cotter's Saturday Night." The laborer comes home from his work and is met by his joyful family. The fire burns brightly, the lamp is lit, and they draw the curtains and sit about their humble board, shutting in their little happy world from the cold and bleak night. There are such homes now and always will be, but if one will traverse the streets of a city on Saturday night he will witness many scenes of a far different nature. As the homeward bound columns file along the sidewalks there is much to be seen that presages sorrow and scant comfort to the waiting ones at their homes. There are staggering steps, loud speeches with rude and thickened tongues, and plentiful signs of misspent wages and the indulgence of debased appetites. The saloons are reaping a rich harvest that should belong to wives and children. Some fling away in an hour what has taken them days to earn, and will carry home nothing but sullen looks and empty pockets. You can see all along the streets pale, anxious-looking women slipping through the crowd in the hope of meeting the providers and protectors of their homes, and inducing them to come there instead of lingering with their besotted comrades. What should be a season of rest and repose beneath the home vine and fig tree is turned into Saturnalia, and a loosing of bad passions. Homeward flit the trim shop girls, the week's work over, intent on the rest and pleasure of the morrow; threading their straightforward and dextrous way through the throng. Homeward plods the weary housekeeper with her basket of vegetables for Sunday's dinner. Homeward goes the solid citizen laden with bundles and bags. Homeward slip weary working women, hurrying to fill the hungry mouths awaiting them. Respectability moves homeward, but as the everlasting stars creep out above, queer and warped things steal forth like imps of the night to hide, and sulk, and carouse, and prey upon whatever the darkness bringeth to them. Down on the bank of the bayou, beyond the car shops, the foundries, the lumbermills and the great manufactories that go to make Houston the wonderful business and trade center she is, stands--or rather, leans--a little shanty. It is made of clapboards, old planks, pieces of tin and odds and ends of lumber picked up here and there. It is built close to the edge of the foul and sluggish bayou. Back of it rises the bank full ten feet high; below it, only a few feet, ripples the sullen tide. In this squalid hut lives Crip. Crip is nine years old. He is freckled-faced, thin and subdued. From his knee his left leg is gone and in its place is a clumsy wooden stump, on which he limps around at quite a wonderful pace. Crip's mother cleans up three or four offices on Main Street and takes in washing at other times. Somehow, they manage to live in this tottering habitation patched up by Crip's father, who several years before had fallen into the bayou one night while drunk, and what was left of him by the catfish was buried upon the bank a hundred yards farther down. Of late, Crip had undertaken to assist in the mutual support. One morning he came stumping timidly into the office of the Post and purchased a few papers. These he offered for sale upon the streets with great diffidence. Crip had no difficulty in selling his papers. People stopped and bought readily the wares of this shrinking, weak-voiced youngster. His wooden leg caught the eye of hurrying passersby and the nickels rained into his hand as long as he had any papers left. One morning Crip failed to call for his papers. The next day he did not appear, nor the next, and one of the newsboys was duly questioned as to his absence. "Crip's got de pewmonia," he said. The Post Man, albeit weighed down by numerous tribulations of others and his own, when night comes puts on his overcoat and wends his way down the bayou toward the home of Crip. The air is chilly and full of mist, and great puddles left by the recent rains glimmer and sparkle in the electric lights. No wonder that pneumonia has laid its cold hand upon the frail and weakly Crip, living as he does in the rain-soaked shanty down on the water's edge. The Post Man goes to inquire if he has had a doctor and if he is supplied with the necessities his condition must require. He walks down the railroad tracks and comes close upon two figures marching with uncertain stateliness in the same direction. One of them speaks loudly, with oratorical flourish, but with an exaggerated carefulness that proclaims he is in a certain stage of intoxication. His voice is well known in the drawing-rooms and the highest social circles of Houston. His name is--well, let us call him Old Boy, for so do his admiring companions denominate him. There comes hurrying past them the form of a somberly-clad woman. Intuitively the Post Man thinks she is of the house of Crip and accosts her with interrogatories. He gleans from her gasping brogue that a doctor has seen Crip and that he is very sick, but with proper medicines, nursing and food he will probably recover. She is now hastening to the drug store to buy--with her last dollar, she says--the medicine he must take at once. "I will stay with him until you return," says the Post Man, and with a fervent "Hiven bless you, sorr!" she melts away toward the lights of the city. The house where Crip lives is on a kind of shelf on the bayou side and its approach from above must be made down a set of steep and roughly hewn steps cut into the bank by the deceased architect of the house. At the top of these stairs the two society lights stop. "Old Boy," says one of them, "give it up. It might be catching. And you are going to the dance tonight. This little rat of a newsboy--why should you see him personally? Come, let's go back. You've had so much--" "Bobby," says the Old Boy, "have I labored all these years in vain, trying to convince you that you are an ass? I know I'm a devil of a buzzerfly, and glash of fashion, but I've gozzer see zat boy. Sold me papers a week, 'n now zey tell me he's sick in this ratsh hole down here. Come on, Bobby, or else go't devil. I'm going in." Old Boy pushes his silk hat to the back of his head and starts with dangerous rapidity down the steep stairs. His friend, seeing that he is determined, takes his arm and they both sway and stagger down to the little shelf of land below. The Post Man follows them silently, and they are too much occupied with their own unsteady progress to note his presence. He slips around them, raises the latch of the rickety door, stoops and enters the miserable hut. Crip lies on a meager bed in the corner, with great, feverish eyes, and little, bony, restless fingers moving nervously upon the covers. The night wind blows in streamy draughts between the many crannies and flares the weak flame of a candle stuck in its own grease upon the top of a wooden box. "Hello, mister," says Crip. "I knows yer. Yer works on de paper. I been laid up wid a rattlin' pain in me chist. Who wins de fight?" "Fitzsimmons won," says the Post Man, feeling his hot freckled hand. "Are you in much pain?" "How many rounds?" "First round. Less than two minutes. Can I do anything to make you easier?" "Geeminetty! dat was quick. Yer might gimme a drink." The door opens again and two magnificent beings enter. Crip gives a little gasp as his quick eyes fall upon them. Old Boy acknowledges the presence of the Post Man by a deep and exaggerated but well intentioned bow, and then he goes and stands by Crip's bedside. "Old man," he says, with solemnly raised eyebrows, "Whazzer mazzer?" "Sick," says Crip. "I know yer. Yer gimme a quarter for a paper one mornin'." Old Boy's friend ranges himself in the background. He is a man in a dress suit with a mackintosh and cane, and is not of an obtrusive personality. He shows an inclination to brace himself against something, but the fragile furniture of the hut not promising much support, he stands uneasily, with a perplexed frown upon his face, awaiting developments. "You little devil," says Old Boy, smiling down with mock anger at the little scrap of humanity under the covers, "Do you know why I've come to see you?" "N-n-n-no, sir," says Crip, the fever flush growing deeper on his cheeks. He has never seen anything so wonderful as this grand, tall, handsome man in his black evening suit, with the dark, half-smiling, half-frowning eyes, and the great diamond flashing on his snowy bosom, and the tall, shiny hat on the back of his head. "Gen'lemen," says Old Boy, with a comprehensive wave of his hand, "I don't know myself, why I have come here, but I couldn't help it. That little devil's eyes have been in my head for a week. I've never sheen him 'n my life till a week ago; but I've sheen his eyes somewhere, long time ago. Sheems to me I knew this little rascal when I was a kid myself 'way back before I left Alabama; but, then, gentlemen, thash impossible. However, as Bobby will tell you, I made him walk all the way down here with me to shee zis little sick fellow, 'n now we mus' do all we can for 'm." Old Boy runs his hands into his pockets and draws out the contents thereof and lays all, with lordly indiscrimination, on the ragged quilt that covers Crip. "Little devil," he says solemnly, "you mus' buy medicine and get well and come back and shell me papers again. Where in thunder have I seen you before? Never mind. Come on, Bobby--good boy to wait for me--come on now and le's get a zrink." The two magnificent gentlemen sway around grandly for a moment, make elaborate but silent adieus in the direction of Crip and the Post Man, and finally dwindle out into the darkness, where they can be heard urging each other forward to the tremendous feat of remounting the steps that lead to the path above. Presently Crip's mother returns with his medicine and proceeds to make him comfortable. She gives a screech of surprise at what she sees lying upon the bed, and proceeds to take an inventory. There are $42 in currency, $6.50 in silver, a lady's silver slipper buckle and an elegant pearl-handled knife with four blades. The Post Man sees Crip take his medicine and his fever go down, and promising him to bring down a paper that tells all about the great fight, he moves away. A thought strikes him, and he stops near the door and says: "Your husband, now where was he from?" "Oh, plaze yer honor," says Crip's mother, "from Alabama he was, and a gentleman born, as everyone could tell till the dhrink got away wid him, and thin he married me." As the Post Man departs he hears Crip say to his mother reverentially: "Dat man what left de stuff, mammy, he couldn't have been God, for God don't get full; but if it wasn't him, mammy, I bet a dollar he was Dan Stuart." As the Post Man trudges back along the dark road to the city, he says to himself: "We have seen tonight good springing up where we would never have looked for it, and something of a mystery all the way from Alabama. Heigho! this is a funny little world." (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, March 1, 1896.) In Mezzotint The doctor had long ago ceased his hospital practice, but whenever there was a case of special interest among the wards, his spirited team of bays was sure to be seen standing at the hospital gates. Young, handsome, at the head of his profession, possessing an ample income, and married but six months to a beautiful girl who adored him, his lot was certainly one to be envied. It must have been nine o'clock when he reached home. The stableman took the team, and he ran up the steps lightly. The door opened, and Doris's arms were flung tightly about his neck, and her wet cheek pressed to his. "Oh, Ralph," she said, her voice quivering and plaintive, "you are so late. You can't think how I miss you when you don't come at the usual hour. I've kept supper warm for you. I'm so jealous of those patients of yours--they keep you from me so much." "How fresh and sweet and wholesome you are, after the sights I have to see," he said, smiling down at her girlish face with the airy confidence of a man who knows himself well beloved. "Now, pour my coffee, little one, while I go up and change clothes." After supper he sat in the library in his favorite arm chair, and she sat in her especial place upon the arm of the chair and held a match for him to light his cigar. She seemed so glad to have him with her; every touch was a caress, and every word she spoke had that lingering, loving drawl that a woman uses to but one man--at a time. "I lost my case of cerebrospinal meningitis tonight," he said gravely. "I have you, and I don't have you," she said. "Your thoughts are always with your profession, even when I think you are most mine. Ah, well," with a sigh, "you help the suffering, and I would see all that suffer relieved or else like your cerebro--what is it?--patient, at rest." "A queer case, too," said the doctor, patting his wife's hand and gazing into the clouds of cigar smoke. "He should have recovered. I had him cured, and he died on my hands without any warning. Ungrateful, too, for I treated that case beautifully. Confound the fellow. I believe he wanted to die. Some nonsensical romance worried him into a fever." "A romance? Oh, Ralph, tell it to me. Just think! A romance in a hospital." "He tried to tell it to me this morning in snatches between paroxysms of pain. He was bending backward till his head almost touched his heels, and his ribs were nearly cracking, yet he managed to convey something of his life story." "Oh, how horrible," said the doctor's wife, slipping her arm between his neck and the chair. "It seems," went on the doctor, "as well as I could gather, that some girl had discarded him to marry a more well-to-do man, and he lost hope and interest in life, and went to the dogs. No, he refused to tell her name. There was a great pride in that meningitis case. He lied like an angel about his own name, and he gave his watch to the nurse and spoke to her as he would to a queen. I don't believe I ever will forgive him for dying, for I worked the next thing to a miracle on him. Well, he died this morning, and--let me get a match--oh, yes, here's a little thing in my pocket he gave me to have buried with him. He told me about starting to a concert with this girl one night, and they decided not to go in, but take a moonlight walk instead. She tore the ticket in two pieces, and gave him one-half and kept the other. Here's his half, this little red piece of pasteboard with the word 'Admit--' printed on it. Look out, little one--that old chair arm is so slippery. Hurt you?" "No, Ralph. I'm not so easy hurt. What do you think love is, Ralph?" "Love? Little one! Oh, love is undoubtedly a species of mild insanity. An overbalance of the brain that leads to an abnormal state. It is as much a disease as measles, but as yet, sentimentalists refuse to hand it over to us doctors of medicine for treatment." His wife took the half of the little red ticket and held it up. "Admit--" she said, with a little laugh. "I suppose by this time he's admitted somewhere, isn't he, Ralph?" "Somewhere," said the doctor, lighting his cigar afresh. "Finish your cigar, Ralph, and then come up," she said. "I'm a little tired, and I'll wait for you above." "All right, little one," said the doctor. "Pleasant dreams!" He smoked the cigar out, and then lit another. It was nearly eleven when he went upstairs. The light in his wife's room was turned low, and she lay upon her bed undressed. As he stepped to her side and raised her hand, some steel instrument fell and jingled upon the floor, and he saw upon the white countenance a creeping red horror that froze his blood. He sprang to the lamp and turned up the blaze. As he parted his lips to send forth a shout, he paused for a moment, with his eyes upon his dead patient's half ticket that lay upon the table. The other half had been neatly fitted to it, and it now read: +-----------+ | Admit Two | +-----------+ (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, April 26, 1896.) The Dissipated Jeweler You will not find the name of Thomas Keeling in the Houston city directory. It might have been there by this time, if Mr. Keeling had not discontinued his business a month or so ago and moved to other parts. Mr. Keeling came to Houston about that time and opened up a small detective bureau. He offered his services to the public as a detective in rather a modest way. He did not aspire to be a rival of the Pinkerton agency, but preferred to work along less risky lines. If an employer wanted the habits of a clerk looked into, or a lady wanted an eye kept upon a somewhat too gay husband, Mr. Keeling was the man to take the job. He was a quiet, studious man with theories. He read Gaboriau and Conan Doyle and hoped some day to take a higher place in his profession. He had held a subordinate place in a large detective bureau in the East, but as promotion was slow, he decided to come West, where the field was not so well covered. Mr. Keeling had saved during several years the sum of $900, which he deposited in the safe of a business man in Houston to whom he had letters of introduction from a common friend. He rented a small upstairs office on an obscure street, hung out a sign stating his business, and burying himself in one of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, waited for customers. Three days after he opened his bureau, which consisted of himself, a client called to see him. It was a young lady, apparently about 26 years of age. She was slender and rather tall and neatly dressed. She wore a thin veil which she threw back upon her black straw hat after she had taken the chair Mr. Keeling offered her. She had a delicate, refined face, with rather quick gray eyes, and a slightly nervous manner. * * * * * "I came to see you, sir," she said in a sweet, but somewhat sad, contralto voice, "because you are comparatively a stranger, and I could not bear to discuss my private affairs with any of my friends. I desire to employ you to watch the movements of my husband. Humiliating as the confession is to me, I fear that his affections are no longer mine. Before I married him he was infatuated with a young woman connected with a family with whom he boarded. We have been married five years, and very happily, but this young woman has recently moved to Houston, and I have reasons to suspect that he is paying her attentions. I want you to watch his movements as closely as possible and report to me. I will call here at your office every other day at a given time to learn what you have discovered. My name is Mrs. R----, and my husband is well known. He keeps a small jewelry store on Street. I will pay you well for your services and here is $20 to begin with." The lady handed Mr. Keeling the bill and he took it carelessly as if such things were very, very common in his business. He assured her that he would carry out her wishes faithfully, and asked her to call again the afternoon after the next at four o'clock, for the first report. The next day Mr. Keeling made the necessary inquiries toward beginning operations. He found the jewelry store, and went inside ostensibly to have the crystal of his watch tightened. The jeweler, Mr. R----, was a man apparently 35 years of age, of very quiet manners and industrious ways. His store was small, but contained a nice selection of goods and quite a large assortment of diamonds, jewelry and watches. Further inquiry elicited the information that Mr. R was a man of excellent habits, never drank and was always at work at his jeweler's bench. Mr. Keeling loafed around near the door of the jewelry store for several hours that day and was finally rewarded by seeing a flashily dressed young woman with black hair and eyes enter the store. Mr. Keeling sauntered nearer the door, where he could see what took place inside. The young woman walked confidently to the rear of the store, leaned over the counter and spoke familiarly to Mr. R----. He rose from his bench and they talked in low tones for a few minutes. Finally, the jeweler handed her some coins, which Mr. Keeling heard clinking as they passed into her hands. The woman then came out and walked rapidly down the street. Mr. Keeling's client was at his office promptly at the time agreed upon. She was anxious to know if he had seen anything to corroborate her suspicions. The detective told her what he had seen. "That is she," said the lady, when he had described the young woman who had entered the store. "The brazen, bold thing! And so Charles is giving her money. To think that things should come to this pass." The lady pressed her handkerchief to her eyes in an agitated way. "Mrs. R----," said the detective, "what is your desire in this matter? To what point do you wish me to prosecute inquiries?" "I want to see with my own eyes enough to convince me of what I suspect. I also want witnesses, so I can instigate suit for divorce. I will not lead the life I am now living any longer." She then handed the detective a ten-dollar bill. On the day following the next, when she came to Mr. Keeling's office to hear his report, he said: "I dropped into the store this afternoon on some trifling pretext. This young woman was already there, but she did not remain long. Before she left, she said: 'Charlie, we will have a jolly little supper tonight as you suggest; then we will come around to the store and have a nice chat while you finish that setting for the diamond broach with no one to interrupt us.' Tonight, Mrs. R----, I think, will be a good time for you to witness the meeting between your husband and the object of his infatuation, and satisfy your mind how matters stand." "The wretch," cried the lady with flashing eyes. "He told me at dinner that he would be detained late tonight with some important work. And this is the way he spends his time away from me!" "I suggest," said the detective, "that you conceal yourself in the store, so you can hear what they say, and when you have heard enough you can summon witnesses and confront your husband before them." "The very thing," said the lady. "I believe there is a policeman whose beat is along the street the store is on who is acquainted with our family. His duties will lead him to be in the vicinity of the store after dark. Why not see him, explain the whole matter to him and when I have heard enough, let you and him appear as witnesses?" "I will speak with him," said the detective, "and persuade him to assist us, and you will please come to my office a little before dark tonight, so we can arrange to trap them." * * * * * The detective hunted up the policeman and explained the situation. "That's funny," said the guardian of the peace. "I didn't know R---- was a gay boy at all. But, then, you can never tell about anybody. So his wife wants to catch him tonight. Let's see, she wants to hide herself inside the store and hear what they say. There's a little room in the back of the store where R---- keeps his coal and old boxes. The door between is locked, of course, but if you can get her through that into the store she can hide somewhere. I don't like to mix up in these affairs, but I sympathize with the lady. I've known her ever since we were children and don't mind helping her to do what she wants." About dusk that evening the detective's client came hurriedly to his office. She was dressed plainly in black and wore a dark round hat and her face was covered with a veil. "If Charlie should see me he will not recognize me," she said. Mr. Keeling and the lady strolled down the street opposite the jewelry store, and about eight o'clock the young woman they were watching for entered the store. Immediately afterwards she came out with Mr. R----, took his arm, and they hurried away, presumably to their supper. The detective felt the arm of the lady tremble. "The wretch," she said bitterly. "He thinks me at home innocently waiting for him while he is out carousing with that artful, designing minx. Oh, the perfidy of man." Mr. Keeling took the lady through an open hallway that led into the back yard of the store. The outer door of the back room was unlocked, and they entered. "In the store," said Mrs. R----, "near the bench where my husband works is a large table, the cover of which hangs to the floor. If I could get under that I could hear every word that was said." Mr. Keeling took a big bunch of skeleton keys from his pocket and in a few minutes found one that opened the door into the jewelry store. The gas was burning from one jet turned very low. The lady stepped into the store and said: "I will bolt this door from the inside, and I want you to follow my husband and that woman. See if they are at supper, and if they are, when they start back, you must come back to this room and let me know by tapping thrice on the door. After I listen to their conversation long enough I will unbolt the door, and we will confront the guilty pair together. I may need you to protect me, for I do not know what they might attempt to do to me." * * * * * The detective made his way softly out and followed the jeweler and the woman. He soon discovered that they had taken a private room in a little out of the way restaurant and had ordered supper. He lingered about until they came out and then hurried back to the store, and entering the back room, tapped three times on the door. In a few minutes the jeweler entered with the woman and the detective saw the light shine more brightly through a crack in the door. He could hear the man and woman conversing familiarly and constantly, but could not distinguish their words. He slipped around again to the street, and looking through the window, could see Mr. R---- working away at his jeweler's bench, while the black-haired woman sat close to his side and talked. "I'll give them a little time," thought Mr. Keeling, and he strolled down the street. The policeman was standing on the corner. The detective told him that Mrs. R---- was concealed in the store, and that the scheme was working nicely. "I'll drop back behind now," said Mr. Keeling, "so as to be ready when the lady springs her trap." The policeman walked back with him, and took a look through the window. "They seem to have made up all right," said he. "Where's the other woman gotten to?" "Why, there she is sitting by him," said the detective. "I'm talking about the girl R---- had out to supper." "So am I," said the detective. "You seem to be mixed up," said the policeman. "Do you know that lady with R----?" "That's the woman he was out with." "That's R----'s wife," said the policeman. "I've known her for fifteen years." "Then, who--?" gasped the detective, "Lord A'mighty, then who's under the table?" Mr. Keeling began to kick at the door of the store. Mr. R---- came forward and opened it. The policeman and the detective entered. "Look under that table, quick," yelled the detective. The policeman raised the cover and dragged out a blade dress, a black veil and a woman's wig of black hair. "Is this lady your w-w-wife?" asked Mr. Keeling excitedly, pointing out the dark-eyed young woman, who was regarding them in great surprise. "Certainly," said the jeweler. "Now what the thunder are you looking under my tables and kicking down my door for, if you please?" "Look in your show cases," said the policeman, who began to size up the situation. * * * * * The diamond rings and watches that were missing amounted to $800, and the next day the detective settled the bill. Explanations were made to the jeweler that night, and an hour later Mr. Keeling sat in his office busily engaged in looking over his albums of crook's photos. At last he found one, and he stopped turning over the leaves and tore his hair. Under the picture of a smooth-faced young man, with delicate features was the following description: "James H. Miggles, alias Slick Simon, alias The Weeping Widow, alias Bunco Kate, alias Jimmy the Sneak, General confidence man and burglar. Works generally in female disguises. Very plausible and dangerous. Wanted in Kansas City, Oshkosh, New Orleans and Milwaukee." This is why Mr. Thomas Keeling did not continue his detective business in Houston. (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, May 17, 1896.) How Willie Saved Father Willie Flint was a little Houston boy, six years of age. He was a beautiful child, with long golden curls and wondering, innocent blue eyes. His father was a respectable, sober citizen, who owned four or five large business buildings on Main Street. All day long Mr. Flint toiled among his renters, collecting what was due him, patching up broken window panes, nailing down loose boards and repairing places where the plastering had fallen off. At noon he would sit down upon the stairs of one of his buildings and eat the frugal dinner he had brought, wrapped up in a piece of newspaper, and think about the hard times. Gay and elegantly attired clerks and business men would pass up and down the stairs, but Mr. Flint did not envy them. He lived in a little cottage near the large trash pile known as "Tomato Can Heights," on one of the principal residence streets of Houston. He was perfectly contented to live there with his wife and little boy Willie, and eat his frugal but wholesome fare and draw his $1,400 per month rent for his buildings. He was industrious and temperate, and hardly a day passed that he did not raise the rent of some of his offices, and lay by a few more dollars for a rainy day. One night Mr. Flint came home ill. He had been pasting up some cheap green wall paper on an empty stomach, or rather on the wall of one of his stores without eating, and it had not agreed with him. He went to bed flushed with fever, muttering: "God help my poor wife and child! What will become of them now?" Mr. Flint sent Willie to the other side of the room and drew a roll of greenbacks from under his pillow. "Take this," he said to his wife, "to the bank and deposit it. There is only $900 there. Some of my renters have not paid me yet, and five of them want awnings put up at the windows. He who sent the ravens to feed Elijah will provide for us. Come by the baker's and get a nickel loaf of bread, and then hurry back and pray." Willie was pretending to play with his Noah's ark, by charging the animals for rent and water, and adding the amounts on his slate, but he heard what his father said. As his mother went out, he asked: "Mamma, is papa too sick to work?" "Yes, dear," said Mrs. Flint; "he has a high fever, and I fear will be very ill." After his mother had gone Willie put on his hat and slipped out the front door. "I want to do something to help my good, kind papa, who is sick," he said to himself. He wandered up to Main Street and stood looking at the tall buildings that his poor father owned. Passersby smiled when they saw the little flaxen-haired boy, and many a rough face softened at the sight of his innocent blue eyes. Poor little Willie. What could he do in the great, busy city to help his sick father? "I know what I will do," he said to himself presently. "I will go up and raise the rent of several offices and that will make my papa feel better." Willie toiled up three flights of stairs of one of his father's largest buildings. He had to sit down quite often and rest, for he was short on wind. Away up to the third story was an office rented by two young men who had just begun to practice law. They had their sign out, and had given their note to Mr. Flint for the first month's rent. As Willie climbed the stairs the young lawyers were eating some cheese and crackers, with their feet on their desks, and six empty quart beer bottles stood upon a table. They were breathing hard, and one of them, who had a magnolia in his buttonhole, was telling a funny story about a girl. Presently one of them took his feet off his desk, opened his eyes and said: "Jeeminy! Bob, get onto his Fauntleroyets." The gentleman addressed as Bob also took his feet down, wiped his knife, with which he had been slicing cheese, on his hair, and looked around. A little blue-eyed boy with long golden curls stood in the doorway. "Come in, sissy," said one of the young men. Willie walked boldly into the room. "I'm not a girl," he said. "My name is Willie Flint, and I've come to raise the rent." "Now, that's kind of you, Willie," said the young man called Bob, "to come and do that, for we couldn't do it if we were to be electrocuted. Is that your own hair, Willie, or do you ride a bicycle?" "Don't worry the little boy," said the other young gentleman, whom Bob addressed as Sam. "I'm sure that this is a nice little boy. I say, Willie, did you ever hear a gumdrop?" "Don't tease him," said Bob severely. "He reminds me of someone--excuse my tears--those curls, those bloomers. Say, Willie, speak quick, my child--two hundred and ten years ago, were you standing--" "Oh, let him alone," said Sam, frowning at the other young gentleman. "Willie, as a personal favor, would you mind weeping a while on the floor? I am overcome by ennui, and would be moved to joy." "My papa is very ill," said Willie, bravely forcing back his tears, "and something must be done for him. Please, kind gentleman, let me raise the rent of this office so I can go back and tell him and make him better." "It's old Flint's kid," said Bob. "Don't he make your face wide? Say, Willie, how much do you want to raise the rent?" "What do you pay now?" asked Willie. "Ten dollars a month." "Could you make it twelve?" "Call it fifty," said Sam, lighting a black cigar, "at ninety days, and open the beer, Willie, and it's a deal." "Don't talk nonsense," said Bob. "I say, Willie, you may raise the rent to twenty dollars if you like, and run and tell your father, if it will do him any good." "Oh, thank you," cried Willie, and he ran home with a light heart, singing merrily. When he got home he found Mr. Flint sinking fast and muttering something about giving his wife a ten-dollar bill. "He is out of his head," said Mrs. Flint, bursting into tears. Willie ran to the bed and whispered to his father's ear: "Papa, I have raised the rent of one of your offices from ten to twenty dollars." "You, my child!" said his father, laying his hand on Willie's head. "God bless my brave little boy." Mr. Flint sank into a peaceful slumber and his fever left him. The next day he was able to sit up, and feeling much stronger, when Willie told him whose rent it was he had raised. Mr. Flint then fell dead. Alas! messieurs, life is full of disappointments! (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, May 3, 1896.) The Mirage on the Frio The sheep man rejected the offer of a match, and lit his pipe from a burning brand. We were down on Buffalo Bayou fishing, and had cooked and eaten supper. Fried fresh fish, coffee, corn bread, potatoes, and just enough crisp bacon to flavor gave us a supper at which none murmured. We reclined at ease and worshipped the goddess Nicotine. The moon made a glory in the eastern sky and spread a white shimmering glamour upon the black water of the bayou. A phantom tug crept down stream, leaving a ghostly, wavering silver wake, and a mysterious lapping and washing along the unseen shores. Mosquitoes hummed angrily about the borders of the hanging cloud of tobacco smoke. A dank fresh smell arose from bursting buds and wild flowers. We five sat in the chiaroscuro of the live oaks and cypresses, and babbled as most men and all women will when Night, the tongue loosener, succeeds the discrete Day. Night should be held responsible for poets, breach of promise suits, betrayed secrets and dull stories. The man who will not tell more than he knows in the moonlight of a spring night is a rarity. Four of us were more or less hardened to moonlight and roses; one among us was young enough to note the soft effect of Luna's kiss upon the dim tree tops, the aerial perspective of the drifting gulf clouds, and the dim white eyes of the dogwood blossoms peering out of the wooded darkness. He noted and spake his thoughts without stint of adjectives, while we world-worn passengers grunted in reply; puffed at our cigars and pipes, and refused to commit ourselves on such trifling matters. "Isn't it beautiful?" asked the young man. "The sky like the derne of some dream temple, the woods dark with mystery and the silence broken only by the faint breathing of nature." "It's nice, and no mistake," answered the insurance agent, "but let me tell you, I've known men to plant the seeds of incurable disease along this old bayou. Feel that dampness rising every minute? A fellow never knows what is going to happen. Especially a man with a family dependent on him should--" "Shut up," snapped the druggist. "For talking shop, recommend me to a man in your line. This is a pleasure trip we are on, and I have to have it spoiled by ringing in business. Talk about your malaria, why, two bottles of my--" "There you go, just as bad," said the lawyer. "You fellows have run in the same old rut so long you can't get your minds on anything else. Put me on the witness stand, and I'll swear that I never mention my own business outside of my office; if I don't, kick me clean out of court." "This night," said the sheep man, "reminds me of the night I was lost in the brush along the Frio. That was the night before the morning I seen the mi-ridge." "The--ah--oh! the mirage?" said the young man. "No," said the sheep man, "it wasn't no mi-rosh; this was a mi-ridge, and the plainest one I ever seen. They happened somethin' queer about this one, too, and I don't often tell it, after seein' that incredoolity generally waits upon the relatin' of it." * * * * * "Light up," said the druggist, reaching for the tobacco sack, "and let us have your yarn. There are very few things a man can't believe nowadays." "It was in the fall of '80," said the sheep man, "when I was runnin' sheep in La Salle County. There came a norther that scattered my flock of 1500 muttons to thunderation. The shepherd couldn't hold 'em and they split up right and left, through the chaparral. I got on my hoss and hunted all one day, and I rounded up the biggest part of 'em during the afternoon. I seen a Mexican ridin' along what told me they was a big 'tajo of 'em down near the Palo Blanco crossin' of the Frio. I rode over that way, and when sundown come I was down in a big mesquite flat, where I couldn't see fifty yards before me any ways. Well, I got lost. For some four or five hours my pony stumbled around in the sacuista grass, windin' about this way and that, without knowin' any more than I did where he was at. 'Bout 12 o'clock I give it up, staked my pony and laid down under my saddle blanket to wait till mornin'. I was awful worried about my wife and the kid, who was by themselves on the ranch, for I knew they'd be scared half to death. There wasn't much to be afraid of, but you know how women folks are when night comes, 'specially when they wasn't any neighbor in ten miles of 'em. * * * * * "I was up at daylight, and soon as I'd got my bearin's I knowed just where I was. Right where I was I seen the Fort Ewell road, and a big dead elm on one side that I knew. I was just eighteen miles from my ranch. I jumped in the saddle, when all at once, looking across the Frio towards home, I seen this mi-ridge. These mi-ridges are sure wonderful. I never seen but three or four. It was a kind of misty mornin', with woolly gulf clouds a-flyin' across, and the hollows was all hazy. I seen my ranch house, shearin' pen, the fences with saddles hangin' on 'em, the wood pile, with the ax stickin' in a log, and everything about the yard as plain as if they was only 200 yards away, and I was lookin' at 'em on a foggy mornin'. Everything looked somewhat ghostly like, and a little taller and bigger than it really was, but I could see even the white curtains at the windows and the pet sheep grazin' 'round the corral. It made me feel funny to see everything so close, when I knew I was eighteen miles away. "All to once I seen the door open, and wife come out with the kid in her arms. It was all I could do to keep from hollerin' at her. You bet, I was glad to see her anyhow, and know they was all safe. Just then I seen somethin' big and black a-movin', and it growed plainer, like it had kinder come into focus, and it was a Mexican with a broad-brimmed sombrero, on a hoss what rode up to the fence. He stopped there a minute and then I seen my wife run into the house and shut the door. I seen the Mexican jump off his hoss, try the door, and then go and get the ax at the wood pile. He came back and commenced to split down the door. The mi-ridge commenced to get dimmer and faint like. I don't know what made me do such a fool thing, but I couldn't help it. I jerked my Winchester out'n its scabbard, drawed a bead on the darned scoundrel and fired. Then I cussed myself for an idiot, for tryin' to shoot somethin' eighteen miles away, jabbed my Winchester back in the scabbard, stuck my spurs in my broncho, and split through the brush like a roadrunner after a rattlesnake. * * * * * "I made that eighteen miles in eighty minutes. I never took the road, but crashed through the chaparral, jumped prickly pear and arroyo just as they come. When I got to the ranch I fell off my pony, and he leaned up against the fence streamin' wet and lookin' at me mighty reproachful. I never breathed in jumpin' from the fence to the back door. I clattered up the steps and yelled for Sallie, but my voice sounded to me like somebody else's, 'way off. The door opened and out tumbled the wife and the kid, all right, but scared as wild ducks. 'Oh, Jim,' says the wife, 'where, oh where have you been? A drunken Mexican attacked the house this morning and tried to cut down the door with an ax.' I tried to ask some questions, but I couldn't. 'Look,' says Sallie. "The other door was busted all to pieces and the ax was lyin' on the step, and the Mexican was lyin' on the ground and a Winchester ball had passed clear through his head." "Who shot him?" asked the lawyer. "I've told you all I know," said the sheep man. "Sallie said the man dropped all of a sudden while he was choppin' at the door, and she never heard no gun shoot. I don't pretend to explain nothin', I'm telling you what happened. You might say somebody in the brush seen him breakin' in the door and shot him, usin' noiseless powder, and then slipped away without leavin' his card, or you might say you don't know nothin' at all about it, as I do." "Do you think--" began the young man. "No, I don't think," said the sheep man, rather shortly. "I said I'd tell you about the mi-ridge I seen, and I told you just as it happened. Is they any coffee left in that pot?" (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, April 19, 1896.) A Tragedy "By the beard of the Prophet. Oh, Scheherezade, right well hast thou done," said the Caliph, leaning back and biting off the end of a three-for. For one thousand nights Scheherezade No. 2, daughter of the Grand Vizier, had sat at the feet of the mighty Caliph of the Indies relating tales that held the court entranced and breathless. The soft, melodious sound of falling water from the fountain tinkled pleasantly upon the ear. Slaves sprinkled attar of roses upon the tessellated floor, and waved jeweled fans of peacock's feathers in the air. Outside, in the palace gardens the bulbul warbled in the date trees, the hoodoo flitted among the banyan branches, and the dying song of the goo-goo floated in upon the breeze from New York. "And, now, oh, Scheherezade," continued the Caliph, "your contract calls for one more tale. One thousand have you told unto us, and we have rejoiced exceedingly at your narrative powers. Your stories are all new and do not weary us as do the chestnuts of Marshall P. Wilder. You are quite a peach. But, listen, oh, Daughter of the Moon, and first cousin to a phonograph, there is one more yet to come. Let it be one that has never before been related in the Kingdom. If it be thus, thou shalt have 10,000 gold pieces and a hundred slaves at thy command, but if it bear whiskers, then shall thy head pay the forfeit." The Caliph made a sign, and Mesrour, the executioner, stepped to the side of Scheherezade. In his dark hand he held a glittering scimeter. He folded his arms and stood like a statue as the Caliph spoke again. "Now, oh, Scheherezade, let her go. If it be that thou givest us something like that tale No. 475, where the Bagdad merchant was found by his favorite wife at the roof-garden concert, with his typewriter, or No. 684, where the Cadi of a certain town came home late from the lodge with his shoes off and stepped upon a tack, all will be well, but if you work off a Joe Miller on us, verily you get it in the neck." Scheherezade took a fresh chew of gum, sat down on one foot and began. "Oh, mighty Caliph, I have one story that would hold you spellbound. I call it my 288 story. But I really can not tell it. I--" "And why not, oh, Scheherezade?" "Oh, Brother to the Sun, and Private Secretary to the Milky Way, I am a modest woman, it is too gross, too gross to relate." Scheherezade covered her face in confusion. "Speak, I command you," said the Caliph, drawing nearer. "You need not mind me. I have read Laura Lean Jibbey and Isben. Go on with 288." "I have said it, oh, Caliph. It is too gross." The Caliph made a sign: Mesrour, the executioner, whirled his scimeter through the air and the head of Scheherezade rolled upon the floor. The Caliph pulled his beard and muttered softly to himself: "I knew all the time that 288 is two gross, but puns don't go anywhere in my jurisdiction at present." (_Houston Daily Post_, Friday morning, November 8, 1895.) Sufficient Provocation "He hit me fust." "He gimme de probumcation, judge." "Nebber touched dat nigger tell he up en hit me wid er cheer." They were two Houston negroes, and they were up before the recorder for fighting. "What did you strike this man with a chair for?" asked the recorder. "I wuz playin' de French hahp, judge, to de ball ob de Sebem 'Mancipated Sons ob de Lebem Virgins, en Sam Hobson he wuz playin' de guitar fur de niggers to dance by. Dis here coon what I hit thinks he kin play de French hahp, too, but he kaint." "Dat's a lie, I kin play--" "Keep still," said the recorder sternly. "Go on with your statement." "I wuz playin' en up comes dis here coon what I hit. He am pow'ful jealous ob my playin' en he wuz mad 'coz de flo' committee selected me to puhfahm. While I wuz playin' dis obstrepelous coon came right close up to me en he say: 'Watermillions be gittin' ripe now in nudder mont'. I keeps on playin'. He says: 'Sposin' you had a great big ripe watermillion, wid red meat en black seeds.' I keeps on playin'. He says: 'You take him en bus him open on a rock, en you scoop up a big han'ful ob de heart, en you look all roun' en nobody come.' I keeps on playin. He says: 'You cram de heart in yo' mouf, en crunch down on hit, en de juice hit run down yo' ahm en hit run down yo' chin to yo' neck, en de sweetness run down you' th'oat.' Den my mouf water so it fill dat French hahp plum full, en de music stop, en de flo' committee look aroun'. Den I up wit a chair en bus' dis coon ober de head, en I flings myself on de mussy ob dis co't, kase, Mars Judge, you knows what dese here sandy lan' watermillions is yo'sef." "Get out of here, both of you," said the recorder. "Next case." (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, May 17, 1896.) The Bruised Reed The popular preacher sat in his study before a glowing grate, and a satisfied smile stole over his features, as he remembered his sermon of that morning. He had struck strong blows at sin; relating to his breathless congregation in plain and burning words, tales of the wickedness, debauchery, drunkenness and depravity that was going on in their very midst. Following the prominent example of a certain pureminded and original servant of the Lord, he had gone down himself among the lowest haunts of vice and iniquity, and there sketched in his mind those flaming and accusive portraits that he had painted before the astonished eyes of his congregation, with a broad brush and vivid colors. He had heard blasphemies from lips that were once as pure as his sisters'; he had stood in the midst of unbridled vice, where wine flowed like water and amidst songs, curses, laughing and revelry, the chink of money, earned by dripping hearts' blood, could be heard as it fell into the coffers of the devil. Oh, he had astonished his flock! He had hurled at them fiery words of blame that these things were allowed to exist. It had been a new departure for him, but he expected grand results. And now he sat by his anthracite fire, and thought over the success of his labors, and smiled with satisfaction. The latch of his study door clicked and a being entered. He was grizzly, rum-soaked, dirty, ragged, disreputable, blear-eyed and of uncertain step. Once, he might have been a man. Across his forehead stretched a long strip of dingy court plaster; on the bridge of his nose an unhealed wound showed scarlet against the milder red of his face. He brought with him an odor of disrespectability, rum and unsanctification. The preacher rose; a slight distension visible in his delicate nostril; a little shiver of repulsion rippling through his broadcloth-vestured figure. "What is it, my good man?" he asked. * * * * * The being spoke, and the preacher still standing, followed him through the husky labyrinth of his speech. "Don't yer know me? I lives in 'Hell's Delight.' I knows you. You come down, you did, and wants ter take in ther sights. You asks Tony, the Dago, fer a guide and he sends yer to Creepy Jake. That's me. I takes yer through the dives, one and all. I knows yer a preacher from the way yer did. Yer buys the wine like a gent, though--like a real, high roller gent; anybody would 'a took yer fer a gent." "Excuse me," said the preacher, "that wound on your forehead--the blood seems to be dripping on those engravings--allow me--" "Keep your hankcher, reverend," said the being, as he raised a ragged coat tail and wiped the drops from his brow. "I won't spile yer pictures. I'll git off en yer carpet, and let some fresh air in in a minute. One time I could 'a told yer all about them pictures--dat's Una and de lion--dat one's the Venus of Milo--de other one's the disc thrower--you wouldn't believe, reverend, that I knowed de names, would you? One time I set in cheers like dat--I allus liked dat Spanish leather upholstering, but your wainscotin' ain't right. De carvin's allegorical and it don't suit de modern panels--'scuse me, reverend, dat ain't what I come to say. After you took in de Tenderloin, I got to tinkin' bout somethin' you said one night after I went wid you to de tough dance at Gilligan's. Dey was a cove dere dat twigged you as a parson and was about to biff you one on de ear, but he see'd my gun showin' down in my pocket, and den he see'd my eye, and changed his mind--but dat's all right. You says to yerself dat night, but I heard yer: 'De bruised reed he shall not quench, and de smokin' flax he will not put out,' or somethin' like dat, and I got ter studyin' over what a low down bum I've been, and I says, 'I'm goin' to de big bug church, and hear de bloke preach.' "De boys an' de tinhorns gimme de laugh and called me 'Pious Jake,' but today I went to der big church where you preaches, reverend. I says to myself dat I showed you round de Tenderloin, and stood by you when de rounders guyed you, and never let de coves work de flimflam on yer, and when I heard tell of the big sermons yer was preachin' and de hot shot yer was shootin' into de tough gang, I was real proud, and I felt like I kinder had a share in de business fer havin' gone de rounds with yer. I says I'll hear dat cove preach, and maybe de bruised reed'll git a chance to straighten up--'scuse me, reverend, don't git skeared, I ain't goin' to fall and spile yer carpet. I'm a little groggy. That cut on my head is bled a heap, but I ain't drunk." "Perhaps you would like--possibly, if you would sit--just for a moment--" "Thanks, reverend, I won't sit down. I've jest about finished shootin' in my dye stuff. I goes to dat church and I goes in. I hears music playin', and I suppose them was angels singin' up in de peanut gallery, an' I smelt--such a smell ov violets and stuff like de hay when we used to cut it in de meaders when I wuz a kid. Dey wuz fine people in welvets and folde-rols, and way over at de oder end was you, reverend, standin' in de gran' stan', lookin' carm and fur away like, jest as yer did at Gilligan's ball when de duck tried to guy yer, and I went in fur to hear yer preach." * * * * * A flattering sentence from the report of his sermon in the morning paper came to the preacher's mind: "His wonderful, magnetic influence is as powerful to move the hearts of his roughest, most unlettered hearer, as it is to touch a responsive chord in the cultured brain of the man of refinement and taste." "And my sermon," said the preacher, laying his delicate finger tips one against the other, and allowing the adulation even of this being to run with a slight exhilaration through his veins. "Did it awaken in you any remorse for the life of sin you have led, or bring any light of Divine pity and pardon to your soul, as He promises even unto the most degraded and wicked of creation?" "Yer sermon, reverend?" asked the being, carrying a trembling hand to the disfiguring wounds upon his face. "Do you see them cuts and them bruises? Do you know where I got 'em? I never heard yer sermon. I got dese cuts on de rocks outside when de cop and yer usher fired me out de church. De bruised reed He will not quench, an' de smokin' flax He will not 'stinguish. Has you anything to say, reverend?" (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, December 1, 1895.) Paderewski's Hair The Post Man had the pleasure of meeting Colonel Warburton Pollock yesterday in the rotunda of the New Hutchins. Colonel Pollock is one of the most widely known men in this country, and has probably a more extended acquaintance with distinguished men of the times than any other living man. He is a wit, a raconteur of rare gifts, a born diplomat, and a man of worldwide travel and experience. Nothing pleases him so well as to relate his extremely interesting reminiscences of men and events to some congenial circle of listeners. His recollections of his associations with famous men and women would fill volumes. Colonel Pollock has a suite of rooms permanently engaged in a Washington City hotel, where he passes, however, only a small portion of his time. He always spends his summers in Europe, principally in Naples and Florence, but he rarely stays in one place more than a few weeks or months. Colonel Pollock is now on his way to South America to look after his interests in some valuable mahogany forests there. The colonel chatted freely and most interestingly about his experiences, and told to an admiring and attentive group of listeners some excellent stories about well known people. "Did I ever tell you?" he asked, as he puffed at his long black Principe, "about an adventure I had in Africa a few years ago? No? Well, I see Paderewski is coming to Houston soon, and the story may not be inapropos. You have all heard Paderewski's wonderful hair spoken of, of course. Well, very few people know how he came by it. This is how it was. A few years ago, some of us made up a party to go lion hunting in Africa. There was Nat Goodwin, Paderewski, John L. Sullivan, Joe Pulitzer, and myself. That was before any of us had acquired fame, but we were all ambitious, and everyone of us needed the rest and recreation we were taking. We were a congenial, jolly crowd, and had a rattling good time on the trip. When we landed we hired guides, and stocked up with provisions and ammunition for a month's trip into the Zambesi country. "We were all anxious to kill a lion, and we penetrated into quite a wild and unexplored region. "We had great times at night over our camp fire, chatting and chaffing one another, and thoroughly enjoying ourselves. "Paderewski was the only member of our party who had been making money. It was just about the time there was such a furor about his playing, and he had plied up quite a neat sum from his piano recitals. "One day Goodwin, Sullivan, Paderewski and I were loafing around camp just before dinner. We had been out hunting all the morning without success. Pulitzer had not yet shown up. Goodwin and Sullivan got into a dispute about the proper way to dodge and counter a certain upper cut made famous by Heenan. You know Nat Goodwin is quite an athlete himself, and handles his hands like a professional. Paderewski was always a quiet sort of fellow, but amiable and well liked by everyone. He was sitting on the stump of a banyan tree gazing into the distance with a dreamy look in his magnetic eyes. I was loading some cartridges, and not paying much attention until I heard Sullivan and Goodwin raise their voices in quite an angry dispute. "'If I had a pair of gloves, I'd soon prove I am right,' said Nat. "'I wish you had,' said John. 'In a minute you wouldn't know anything.' "'You couldn't stand up two minutes before a man who knew the first principles of boxing,' said Goodwin. 'Your weight and your rush are the only points in your favor.' "'If we just had some gloves!' said John, grinding his teeth. * * * * * "They both turned and looked at Paderewski as if by common consent. "Paderewski at that time had coal black hair, as smooth and straight as an Indian's, that hung down his back in a thick mass. "Sullivan and Goodwin sprang upon him at the same time. I don't know which of them did it, but there was the flash of a knife, and in two seconds Paderewski was scalped as neatly as a Comanche Indian could have done it. "They divided the mass of hair in two parts, each stuffed his portion into two leather cartridge pouches, wound the straps around his wrists, and they went at each other in regular prize ring style with their extemporized boxing gloves. "Paderewski gave a yell of pain and dismay, and clasped his hands to his bald head in horror. "'I am ruined,' he said. 'My professional career is at an end. What shall I do?' "I tried to separate John and Nat, but I got a backhander from one of those Paderewski boxing gloves that stretched me out into a big cactus. * * * * * "Just then Joe Pulitzer came into camp, dragging a big lion by the tail he had just shot in a canebrake on the river. "'Vat's dis?' he asked, gazing through his spectacles at the two boxers who were hitting at each other and dodging around and at Paderewski, who was wailing and moaning at the loss of his scalp. "'I wouldn't have taken $5,000 for that hair,' he groaned. "'Vat vill you gif,' said Pulitzer, 'for another head of hair yoost as good?' "He went up close to Paderewski and they whispered together for a few minutes. Then Joe got out a tape line and measured Paderewski's head. Then he took a knife and cut out a piece the exact size from the back of the lion's head and fitted it on Paderewski's. He pressed it down close, and bound it with light bandages. "It seems almost incredible, but in three days the skin had grown fast, the pain was gone, and Paderewski had the loveliest head of thick, tawny, flowing hair you ever laid your eyes on. "I saw Paderewski give Pulitzer a check that evening behind the tent, and you can bet it was a stiff one. I don't know the exact figure, but Joe bought out the _World_ as soon as we got back to New York and has since done well. "It simply made Paderewski's fortune. That head of hair he wears will make him a millionaire yet. I never hear him bang down hard on the bass keys of a piano, but I think of a lion roaring in a South African forest, and I'll bet he does, too." * * * * * "I like stage people," continued Colonel Pollock. "They are, as a rule, the jolliest companions in the world and the most entertaining. Hardly a year passes that I do not make up a congenial party for a pleasure trip of some kind, and I always have two or three actors in the crowd. Now, a year or two ago, some of us got together and took a three months' voyage to see the sights. There were DeWolf Hopper, Dr. Parkhurst, Buffalo Bill, Eugene Field, Steve Brodie, Senator Sherman, General Coxey, and Hermann, the great magician, among the party. "We were guests of the Prince of Wales, and went in his steam yacht, the _Albion_. None of us had been to Australia, and the prince wanted to show us around that country. We had a lovely trip. We were all congenial souls, and our time on shipboard was one long banquet and frolic during the whole journey. "We landed at Melbourne and were met by the governor of Victoria and only a few dignitaries of the place, as the prince had sent word that he wished to pass his visit there strictly incog. In a day or two our entertainers took us on a little tour through New South Wales to show us the country, and give us some idea of the great mining and sheep raising industries of the country. We went through Wagga Wagga, Jumbo Junction, and Narraudera, and from there went on horseback through the great pasture country near Cudduldury. "When we reached a little town named Cobar in the center of the sheep raising district, some loyal Englishmen living there recognized the prince, and in an hour the whole town was at our heels, following us about, huzzaring and singing 'God save the Queen.' "'It's annoying, Pollock,' says the prince to me, 'but it can't be helped now.' "Our party rode out into the country to have a look at the sheep ranches, and at least two hundred citizens followed us on foot, staring at us in the deepest admiration and wonder. "It seemed that it had been a mighty bad year on the sheep men, and they were feeling gloomy and disheartened over the prospects. The great trouble in Australia is this: The whole continent is overrun with a prolific breed of rabbits that feed upon the grass and shrubs, sometimes completely destroying all vegetation within large areas. The government has a standing offer of something like 50,000 pounds for a plan by which these rabbits can be destroyed, but nothing has ever been discovered that will do the work. "During years when these rabbits are unusually destructive, the sheep men suffer great losses by not having sufficient range for their sheep. At the time of our visit the rabbits had almost ruined the country. A few herds of sheep were trying to subsist by nibbling the higher branches that the rabbits could not reach, but many of the flocks had to be driven far into the interior. The people were feeling very sore and blue, and it made them angry to even hear anybody mention a rabbit. "About noon we stopped for lunch near the outskirts of a little village, and the prince's servants spread a fine cold dinner of potted game, pate de foie gras, and cold fowls. The prince had ordered a large lot of wines to be sent along, and we had a merry repast. "The villagers and sheep raisers loafed around by the hundred, watching us; and a hungry-looking, starved-out lot they were. * * * * * "Now, there isn't a more vivacious, genial and convivial man in the world than Hermann, the great prestidigitateur. He was the life of the party, and as soon as the prince's wine began to mellow him up, he began to show off his tricks. He threw things in the air that disappeared from sight, changed water into liquids of all colors, cooked an omelet in a hat; and pretty soon we were surrounded by a gaping, awestruck lot of bushmen, both natives and English born. "Hermann was pleased with the open-mouthed attention he was creating, so he walked out into an open space where he could face them all, and began drawing rabbits out of his sleeves, his coat collar, his pockets by the half dozen. He threw them down, and as fast as they could scamper away the great magician kept on pulling out more rabbits to the view of the astonished natives. "Suddenly, with a loud yell, the sheep raisers seized clubs and stones and drawing their long sheath knives, rushed upon our party. "The prince seized my arm. "'Run for it, Pollock,' he cried, 'this rabbit business has set them wild. They'll kill us all if we don't cut our sticks.'" * * * * * "I believe," said Colonel Pollock, "that that was the closest shave I ever had. I struck out as hard as I could run, with about forty natives after me, some of them throwing spears and boomerangs at me every jump. When I was going over a little hill I turned my head and looked back just in time to see Steve Brodie jump off a bridge into the Murrumbidgee river at least 200 feet high. All our party escaped, and came straggling back within two or three days, but they had some tough experiences. Senator Sherman was out two nights in the bush and was severely frostbitten. "I understand DeWolf Hopper is going to dramatize the incident, and will produce it next season, appearing as a kangaroo. "Coxey was caught on the edge of a little stream which he refused to enter, and the natives dragged him before an English justice of the peace who released him the next day. The prince took the whole thing as a good joke. He is an all round good fellow and no mistake. "Sometime," said Colonel Pollock, as he rose to receipt for a telegram, "I will tell you about an adventure I had among the Catacombs of Rome, along with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barney Gibbs and the Shah of Persia." Colonel Pollock leaves on the night train for San Antonio on his way to the City of Mexico. (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, January 26, 1896.) A Mystery of Many Centuries Up to a few years ago man regarded the means of locomotion possessed by the fair sex as a sacred areanum into which it were desecration to inquire. The bicycle costume has developed the fact that there are two--well, that there are two. Whereas man bowed down and worshipped what he could not understand nor see, when the veil of mystery was rent, his reverence departed. For generations woman has been supposed in moving from one place to another to simply get there. Whether borne like Venus in an invisible car drawn by two milk white doves, or wafted imperceptibly by the force of her own sweet will, admiring man did not pause to consider. He only knew that there was a soft rustle of unseen drapery, an entrancing frou-frou of something agitated but unknown and the lovely beings would be standing on another spot. Whereat he wondered, adoring, but uninquisitive. At times beneath the lace-hemmed snowy skirts might be seen the toe of a tiny slipper, and perhaps the gleam of a silver buckle upon the arch of an instep, but thence imagination retired, baffled, but enthralled. In olden times the sweetest singers among the poets sang to their lutes of those Lilliputian members, and romance struck a lofty note when it wove the deathless legend of Cinderella and the slipper of glass. Courtiers have held aloft the silken slipper of the adored one filled with champagne and drank her health. Where is the bicyclist hero who would undertake the task of draining to the good health of his lady love her bicycle gaiter filled with beer? The mysterious and lovelorn damosel no longer chucks roses at us from her latticed window and sighs to us from afar. She has descended, borrowed our clothes, and is our good friend and demands equal rights. We no longer express our admiration by midnight serenades and sonnets. We slap her on the back and feel we have gained a good comrade. But we feel like inserting the following want ad in every paper in the land: Lost--A maiden dressed in long skirts: blushes sometimes, and wears a placard round her neck, which says, "hands off." A liberal reward will be paid for her return. The other, day the Post Man saw a nice, clean-minded old gentleman, who is of the old school of cavaliers, and who is loath to see woman come down from the pedestal on which he has always viewed her.= He was watching a lady bicycle rider go by. The Post Man asked him what he thought. "I never see a lady on a bicycle," said he, "but I am reminded of God, for they certainly move in a mysterious way their wonders to perform." (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, May 10, 1896.) A Strange Case A _Post_ reporter met a young Houston physician the other afternoon, with whom he is well acquainted, and suggested that they go into a neighboring cafe and partake of a cooling lemonade. The physician agreed, and they were soon seated at a little table in a quiet corner, under an electric fan. After the physician had paid for the lemonade, the reporter turned the conversation upon his practice, and asked if he did not meet with some strange cases in his experience. "Yes, indeed," said the doctor, "many that professional etiquette will not allow me to mention, and others that involve no especial secrecy, but are quite as curious in their way. I had one case only a few weeks ago that I considered very unusual, and without giving names, I think I can relate it to you." "By all means do so," said the reporter, "and while you are telling it, let us have another lemonade." The young physician looked serious at this proposition, but after searching in his pocket and finding another quarter he assented. "About a week ago," he began, "I was sitting in my office, hoping for a patient to come in, when I heard footsteps, and looking up, saw a beautiful young lady enter the room. She advanced at the most curious gait I ever beheld in one so charming. She staggered from side to side and lurched one way and another, succeeding only by a supreme effort in reaching the chair I placed for her. Her face was very lovely, but showed signs of sadness and melancholy. "'Doctor,' she said, in a very sweet, but sorrowful voice, 'I want to consult you about my condition, and as it is a most unusual affection, I will have to trouble you to listen to a no doubt tedious discourse upon my family history.' "'Madam,' said I, 'my time is yours. Anything you have to say that will throw light upon your trouble will, of course, benefit me in my diagnosis.' "She thanked me with a smile that for a moment erased the sad lines from her face. "'My father,' she said, 'was one of the Adamses of Eastern Texas. You have doubtless heard of the family.' "'Perhaps so,' I replied, 'but there are so many families by the name of Adams that--' "'It is of no consequence,' she continued with a little wave of her hand. 'Fifty years ago a violent feud broke out between my grandfather's family and another family of old Texas settlers named Redmond. The bloodshed and inhumanities exchanged between the people of each side would fill volumes. The horrors of the old Kentucky and West Virginia feuds were repeated by them. An Adams would shoot a Redmond from behind a fence, at his table while eating, in a church, or anywhere; and a Redmond would murder an Adams in like manner. The most violent hatred imaginable existed between them. They poisoned each other's wells, they killed each other's stock, and if an Adams met a Redmond, only one would leave the spot. The children of each family were taught to hate the others from the time they could speak, and so the legacy of antipathy was handed down from father to son and from mother to daughter. For thirty years this battle raged between them, and one by one the death-dealing rifle and revolver thinned the families until one day just twenty years ago there remained but a single representative of each family, Lemuel Adams and Louisa Redmond. They were both young and handsome, and at their first meeting forgot the ancient feud of their families and loved each other. They married at once, and thus ended the great Adams-Redmond feud. But, alas, sir, the inherited discord and hatred of so many years' standing was destined to rebound upon an innocent victim.' "'I was the child of that marriage, and the Adams and Redmond blood would not mingle. As a babe I was like any other, and was even considered unusually prepossessing.' "'I can well believe that, madam,' I interrupted. "The lady colored slightly and went on: 'As I grew older a strange warring and many adverse impulses began to sway me. Every thought or movement I made was met by a contradictory one. It was the result of hereditary antagonism. Half of me was Adams and the other half Redmond. If I attempted to look at an object, one of my eyes would gaze in another direction. If I tried to salt a potato while eating, the other hand would involuntarily reach out and sprinkle it with sugar. "'Hundreds of times while playing the piano, while one hand would strike the notes of a lovely Beethoven sonata, I could not keep the other from pounding out "Over the Garden Wall," or "The Skidmore Guards." The Adams and the Redmond blood would not flow in harmony. If I went into an ice cream saloon, I would order a vanilla cream in spite of myself, when my very soul was clamoring for lemon. Many a time I would strive with every nerve to disrobe for the night, and the opposing influence would be so strong that I have instead put on my finest and most elaborate clothing and retired with my shoes on. Have you ever met with a similar case, doctor?' "'Never,' I said. 'It is indeed remarkable. And you have never succeeded in overcoming the adverse tendency?' "Oh, yes. By constant efforts and daily exercise I have succeeded so far that it troubles me now in one respect only. With one exception I am now entirely released from its influence. It is my locomotion that is affected. My l-lower limbs refuse to coincide in their movements. If I try to walk in a certain direction, one--one of them will take the step I desire, and the other tries to go by an entirely different route. It seems that one l--one of them is Adams, and the other Redmond. Absolutely the only time when they agree is when I ride a bicycle, and as one goes up when the other is going down, their opposite movements of course facilitate my progress; but when endeavoring to walk I find them utterly unmanageable. You observed my entrance into this room. Is there anything you can do for me, doctor?' "'Your case is indeed a strange one,' I said. 'I will consider the situation, and if you will call tomorrow at 10 o'clock I will prescribe for you.' "She rose from her chair, and I assisted her down the stairs to her carriage, which waited below. Such a sprawling, ungainly, mixed up walk I never saw before. "I meditated over her case for a long time that night and consulted all the authorities on locomotor ataxia, and diseases of the muscles, that I could find. I found nothing covering her case, and about midnight I wandered out along the streets for a breath of cool air. I passed a store kept by an old German whom I knew, and dropped in to speak a word with him. I had noticed some time before two tame deer he kept running about in a paddock in his yard. I asked him about them. He told me that they had been fighting, and had not been able to agree, so he had separated them, placing each one in a separate yard. Of a sudden an idea came to me. "The next day at ten the young lady came to my office. I had a prescription ready for her. I gave it to her, she read it, flushed and was inclined to be angry. "'Try it, madam,' I said. "She agreed to do so, and only yesterday I saw her on the street, walking as gracefully and easily as any lady in the city." "What was your prescription?" asked the reporter. "It was simply to wear a pair of bloomers," said the young physician. "You see by separating the opposing factions harmony was restored. The Adams and the Redmond divisions no longer clashed, and the cure of the patient was complete. Let me see," continued the physician, "it is nearly half past seven, and I have an engagement to call upon her at eight. In confidence, I may say that she has consented to change her name to mine at an early date. I would not have you repeat what I have told you, of course." "To be sure, I will not," said the reporter. "But won't you take another lemo--" "No, no, thank you," said the doctor, rising hurriedly, "I must go. Good evening. I will see you again in a few days." (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, May 3, 1896.) Simmon's Saturday Night How a Guileless Cattle Man Saw the Sights in Houston One fine Saturday afternoon a young man got off the 9:10 p.m. Katy train at the Houston depot, and looked about him in rather a bewildered way. He was deliriously pastoral in his appearance, and presented an aspect almost as rural as that of the young countryman upon the stage as depicted by our leading comedians. He wore a very long black coat of the cut that has perpetuated the name of the late Prince Albert, such as is seen on Sundays at country churches, a pair of pantaloons too short for his somewhat lengthy limbs, and a wondrously tied scarf of deep crimson spotted with green. His face was smoothly shaven, and wore a look of deep wonder, if not apprehension, and his blue eyes were stretched to their widest as he viewed the sights about him. In his hand he carried a long carpet bag of the old style, made of some shiny substance resembling black oil cloth. This young gentleman climbed nervously upon an electric car that was pointed out to him as going into the center of the city, and held his carpet bag upon his knees, clasping it with both hands, as if he distrusted the other people upon the car. As the car started again with a loud hum and scattering of sparks, he grasped the arm of the seat in such a startled way that the conductor could not repress a smile. When the young man was approached for his fare, he opened the carpet bag, pulling out a lot of socks and handkerchiefs, and after searching for some time drew forth an old-fashioned beaded purse from which he drew a nickel and handed it to the conductor. When the car arrived at Main Street the young man requested that it be stopped, and climbed off. He wandered up the side walk, stopping to look with awe and admiration in the jewelers' windows, and his long boot heels and awkward, mincing gait caused much amusement to passersby. Then it was that a well-dressed gentleman wearing a handsome light Melton overcoat happened to pass, and his beautiful Malacca gold-headed cane accidentally touched the elbow of the verdant-looking young man. "I beg a thousand pardons," said the well-dressed gentleman. "It's all right, pardner," said the young man with a friendly smile. "You ain't done no damage. You can't faze a Texas cow man with no plaything like that. Don't mention it." The well-dressed man bowed, and went leisurely on his way. The young man stumbled on up Main Street to a corner, then turned in an aimless way to the right and walked another block. There he looked up and saw the illuminated clock in the market house tower, and drawing from his vest pocket an immense silver watch fully as large as a saucer, he wound it up with a key and set its hands with the clock in the tower. While he was doing this a well-dressed gentleman carrying a gold-headed Malacca cane slipped past and walked softly down the shady side of the street, stopped in a deep shadow and seemed to be waiting for someone. About fifteen minutes later the young man entered a restaurant on Congress Street and took his seat timidly at a table. He drew another chair close to his side and deposited carefully therein his carpet bag. Five minutes later a well-dressed man with a gold-headed Malacca cane entered in a great hurry and after hanging up his silk hat, seated himself, almost out of breath, at the same table. Then, looking up, he recognized the young man whom he had seen gazing in the jeweler's window, and smiling pleasantly remarked: "Ah, we meet again, sir. I have just had a most exhausting race to catch a train. You see, I am the paymaster of the Southern Pacific Railway Company, and am on my way to pay off the hands down the road. I missed my train by about three minutes. It's very awkward, too, as I have nearly two thousand dollars on my person, and I am entirely unacquainted in Houston." "Dod gast it, colonel," said the young man, "I'm in the same fix. I'm just getting back from Kansas City, where I sold a drove of two-year-olds, and I haven't had time to do anything with the money. You beat me on the amount, though; I ain't got but $900." The well-dressed gentleman took a large roll of bills from his pocket, skinned off one with which to pay for his supper, and returned the rest carefully to the inside pocket of his coat. "We seem to be about in the same situation, indeed," he said. "I very much dislike to carry so much money on my person all night. Suppose we form a mutual protection society, and in the meantime walk about and see what sights there are to be seen in town." At first the young man appeared suddenly suspicious at this proposition, and became coldly reserved, but gradually thawed under the frank and unassuming politeness of the well-dressed man, and when that gentleman insisted upon paying for both suppers, his doubts seemed to vanish, and he became not only confidential, but actually loquacious. He informed the well-dressed man that his name was Simmons, that he owned a nice little ranch in Encinal County, and that this was his first trip out of Texas. The well-dressed man said his name was Clancy, called "Captain" by his friends, that he lived in Dallas, and was a member of the Young Men's Christian Association at that place. He handed Mr. Simmons a card on which was printed "Captain Richard Saxon Clancy," and below was scribbled somewhat hastily in pencil, "With M. K. & T. Ry. Co." * * * * * "Now," said Mr. Simmons, when they had finished supper, "I'm sorter shy about proposin' it, you bein' a stranger, but I'm in for havin' a glass of beer. If you don't like the scheme, why, excuse me, and don't think hard of me for suggestin' it." Captain Chancy smiled indulgently. "Have a care," he said, in a sprightly bantering tone. "Remember, you and I must take care of ourselves tonight. I am responsible to the railroad company for the funds I have, and besides, I rarely ever touch beer--well, I guess one glass won't hurt me." Mr. Simmons opened the carpet bag and after some search found the bead purse, from which he drew a dime, and suggested the immediate investment of it. Captain Clancy remembered to have heard a friend say that there was a quiet saloon on--let's see, what street was it? After some hesitation and search they came upon a place with swinging doors where a light was hanging outside, and the captain suggested that they could probably get a glass of beer within. They entered and found themselves before a gorgeous bar, ablaze with lights and mirrors, at which lounged five or six men of a rather rough and night-owlish appearance. Mr. Simmons called for two glasses of beer, and when they had drunk it he laid his dime upon the counter. "Wot's eatin' you?" said the bartender. "They is two for. Cough up some more right away once." "See here," said Mr. Simmons, "beer is 5 cents a glass everywheres. Don't you take me for no country jay." Captain Clancy whispered that they had better pay what was asked than get into a difficulty. "It seems a rough sort of place," he said, "and you must remember it won't do to endanger ourselves while we have our money about us. Let me pay the 15 cents additional." "No, you don't," said Mr. Simmons. "I guess when I treat I foot the whole bill." He went down into the carpet bag again and brought forth three more nickels. Just then an orchestra near at hand struck up in a lively air, and Mr. Simmons turned to look whence it came. The bartender winked at Captain Clancy and said softly: "Struck it rich, eh, Jimmy, old boy?" "Think it will pay," said the captain, as softly, closing his left eye at the bartender. "Say," said Mr. Simmons, "whatever have you got in there?" pointing in the direction of the music. "Finest high-class musical and dramatic entertainment in the South," said the bartender. "Refined and elevatin' specialties by distinguished artists. Walk in, gents." "It's a play show, by gum," said Mr. Simmons. "Shall we go in?" "I don't like the looks of the place much," said Captain Clancy, "but let's have a look at it, anyhow, to pass away the time; let's see, it's just half past ten; we can look on a while and then go up to the hotel and get to bed by eleven-thirty. Let me pay for tickets." "All right," said Mr. Simmons, "I paid for the beer." The bartender pointed out the way through a little hallway, where they entered another door and found a very glib gentleman who persuaded them to buy tickets that admitted them upstairs. They ascended and found themselves in the family circle of a little theater. There were about twenty or thirty men and boys scattered about among the seats, and the performance seemed quite well under way. On the stage a very exaggerated Irishman was chasing a very exaggerated negro with an ax, while a soubrettish young lady dressed in a ruffle and blue tights stood upon a barrel and screamed something in a high, cracked voice. * * * * * "I shouldn't like it if there should happen to be anyone downstairs that knows me," said the captain. "Suppose we take one of these boxes." They went into a little box, screened from view by soiled cheap lace curtains, containing four or five chairs and a little table with little rings all over it made by the bottoms of wet glasses. Mr. Simmons was delighted with the performance. He laughed unrestrainedly at the jokes of the comedian, and leaned half out of the box to applaud when the DeVere sisters did their song and dance and split specialty. Captain Clancy leaned back in his chair and hardly looked at the stage, but on his face was an expression of large content, and a tranquil smile. Mr. Simmons kept the carpet bag in both hands all this time. Presently, while he was listening with apparent rapture to a topical song by Mlle. Fanchon, the Parisian nightingale, he felt a hand laid on his shoulder. He turned about and beheld a vision that seemed to take away his breath. Two radiant beings in white, with blue ribbons, and showing quite a stretch of black ribbed stockings were in the box. Mr. Simmons hugged his carpet bag to his breast and started up in embarrassed alarm. "Don't shy, old man," said one of them. "Sit down and buy some beer." Mr. Simmons seemed so full of blushes and perturbation for a while that he scarcely knew what he was doing, but Captain Clancy seemed so cool and easy, and began to chat so companionably with the ladies that he presently took courage, and the next quarter of an hour found the four seated opposite one another at the little table, and a colored waiter was kept busy bringing bottles of beer from the bar and carrying away empty glasses. Mr. Simmons grew absolutely hilarious. He told funny stories about ranch life, and spoke quite boastingly about the gay times he had had in Kansas City during the three days he was there. "Oh, you're a bold, bad man," said one of the young ladies, called Violet. "If Lillie and Jim--I mean your friend, wasn't in here I'd be real 'fraid of you." "Go way, now," said Mr. Simmons; "you know I ain't nothin' of that sort. Bring some more beer there, you colored feller!" The party certainly were enjoying themselves. Presently Violet leaned over the railing and called Mr. Simmons' attention to a lady that was singing on the stage. Mr. Simmons turned his back, and as he did so Captain Clancy quickly drew from his pocket a small vial and poured the contents into the glass of beer on Mr. Simmons' side of the waiter that had just been brought in. "Here, you all," called the lady addressed as Lillie, "the beer's getting cold." Mr. Simmons and Violet turned back to the table, and Mr. Simmons accidentally stumbled over his carpet bag, which he had actually set down for a moment upon the floor. He fell sprawling across the table, striking the edge of the waiter with his hand and nearly turning Captain Clancy over in his chair, but spilling none of the beer. "Excuse me," he said, turning very red. "Got my foot caught. I'm as awkward as a cowboy at a dance. Well, here's luck." Everybody drank the beer, and Lillie began to hum a little song. In about a minute Violet reeled around in her chair and tumbled off on the floor in a confused heap of white muslin, blondined hair and black stockings. Captain Clancy seemed much vexed. He shot a steel blue flash from his eyes at Lillie and said something very much like "d--n it" to himself. "Great heavens!" cried Mr. Simmons, "this lady has fainted. Call a doctor, or get some water or somethin' quick." "Say," said Lillie, lighting a cigarette, "don't get woozy. She'll sleep it off. You gents get out for a while. Say, J-Mister, tell the bartender to send Sam up as you go out. Good night." "We had better go," said the captain. Mr. Simmons, with many protestations of sympathy and anxiety, was led away by Captain Clancy downstairs, where he delivered the message, and thence out into the cool night air. He was feeling pretty strongly the effects of the beer he had drunk, and leaned heavily upon the captain's arm. Captain Clancy assured him that the lady would be all right in a little while, that she had merely drunk a little too much beer, which had affected her rather suddenly, and succeeded in restoring Mr. Simmons to his former cheerful spirits. "It is not yet half past eleven," said the captain. "How would you like to go up into one of the gambling rooms just to look on a while? It is a very interesting sight." "Just the thing," said Mr. Simmons. "They are not new things to me at all. Twice I have been in 'em in San Antone. Saw a feller win $18 one night in this game you play with little buttons on little boards." "Keno, I believe," said the captain. "Yes, that's it--keno." * * * * * I shall not undertake to describe the locality of the apartments to which our visitors next went. Gambling houses are almost unknown in Houston, and as this is a true story, the attempt to give a definite location to such an institution in a city of the well known morality of Houston would meet with incredulity. Neither is it clear how they managed to find such a place, both of them being strangers, but by some accidental blunder, Captain Clancy led Mr. Simmons up a brightly lighted and carpeted stair into a large apartment, where a goodly crowd of men were gathered, trying their luck at the different games usually found in a well appointed gambling house. The stairway opened into the room nearly at the end farthest from the street. Immediately in front of the two gentlemen when they entered was a room in which were two or three round tables and chairs, at that time unoccupied. Captain Clancy and Mr. Simmons walked about the larger room for a while, gazing upon the players as they won or lost in the vicissitudes and fortunes of the games. The men in the room viewed Mr. Simmons with ill-concealed hilarity. His carpet bag seemed to create a vast deal of merriment, and every man in the room, while betraying much amusement, still gazed upon him with longing and hungry eyes, as upon some choice tit-bit upon which they fain would feast. One fat man with a dyed mustache nudged Captain Clancy in the side and said: "Gad! Jimmy, can't you let me in on it?" The captain frowned and the fat man moved away with a sigh. Mr. Simmons was interested almost to excitement. Presently he said: "Say, I don't know how it will strike you, cap'n, but I guess I must have some sportin' blood in me. Now, I don't gamble, but I'm the darnedest checker player in Southwest Texas. Let's go in that other room, and I'll play you some checkers and the man what loses buys a glass of beer for both of us." "Now, Mr. Simmons," said the captain, raising a warning finger and smiling. "Remember our mutual protection society. I don't like this place at all. We had better be out of it. However, I used to be the crack checker and croquet player in our Young Men's Christian Association--just a game or two, now." They played a game or two, and then they played half a dozen more. The captain won every game. Mr. Simmons was much vexed. He grew very red in the face as his reputation as a checker player began to vanish. "Confound it," he said, "I'm out 70 cents. Gimmie a chance to get even. I'd give it to you if I was ahead." "Why, certainly," said the captain, "but checkers is rather tiresome. Some other way suit you? Let's have in a deck of cards and play a few hands until you get even." "Any way," said Mr. Simmons. His hat was on the back of his head; his light-blue eyes were blinking and somewhat unsteady. His red and green spotted tie was almost under one ear. He sat with the black carpet bag in his lap, and his checked trousers had drawn half way up to his knees. "What, oh, what," said the captain softly, to himself, "have I done to deserve this manna descending to me in the wilderness; this good thing dropping into my hands as if it were greased; this great big soft snap coming my way without a ripple. It's too good to be true." The captain struck a little bell and a waiter brought a deck of cards. "Let's call it poker," said the captain. Mr. Simmons rose to his feet. "That's a gambling game," he said severely. "I ain't no gambler." "Neither am I, Mr. Simmons," said the captain with a sudden dignity and a trifle of a frown. "A game of poker for insignificant stakes between gentlemen is entirely allowable in the circles in which I have moved, and any institution--" "Oh, dang it all," said Mr. Simmons, "I didn't mean anything. I've played some on the ranch with the boys of nights for grains of corn. Deal 'em out." * * * * * The old story of the hawk and the pigeon has been told so often that the details are apt to weary. From a stake of 10 cents they rose to 50 cents and a dollar. Mr. Simmons won, of course. He had taken the bead purse out of his bag and therefrom abstracted certain silver dollars, and later on, $25 in bills. Once he held up a package from the carpet bag tied with a string and winked at the captain. "That's the nine hundred," he said. The captain won a pot occasionally, but the bulk of the money was going to Mr. Simmons, who was jubilant but sympathetic. "You're out of luck," he said jollily, but thickly. He was considerably under the influence of the beer he had drunk, to all appearances. The captain looked worried and anxious. "That's nearly all my expense money," he said moodily. "I say, Simmons, take off the limit and give a feller a chance to get even." "What's that?" asked Mr. Simmons. "You mean bet any amount we please?" "Yes." "Let 'er go," said Mr. Simmons. "Shay, zis beer (hic) make'm me shorter shick." Mr. Simmons seemed to play a very loose game, and his luck began to desert him. He lost a large portion of his winnings on an ace full, and had several fine hands beaten. In a little while his velvet was gone and the next hand lost him all his little capital. He grew more deeply flushed, and his round light eyes shone with an excited stare. He once more opened the black carpet bag, took out his pocket knife and put both hands inside. The captain heard him cut the string of the package and out came the hands grasping a mass of fives, tens and twenties. The carpet bag still kept its place in his lap. "Bring 'sh s'm beer," said Mr. Simmons, loudly. "Jolly f'ler ze captain. Play'm all night 'f wanter. 'M a little full, but bes' checker 'n poker player 'n Encinal County. Deal 'em." * * * * * Captain Richard Saxon Clancy, paymaster (?) of the M. K. & T. Railway Company, drew himself together, his time had come. The manna was about to descend. The pigeon was already fluttering in his talons. The victim was in exactly the right stage of drunkenness; enough to be reckless and not too observant, but not too much so to prevent his playing the game. The captain coughed rather loudly. One or two men strolled in from the other room and watched the game silently. The captain coughed again. A pale young man with gloomy eyes and an unhealthy-looking face lounged around somewhat back of Mr. Simmons' chair, and listlessly looked on. Every time a hand was dealt or a draw made, he would scratch his ear, touch his nose, pull his mustache or play with a button on his vest. It was strange to see how much the captain watched this young man, who certainly had nothing to do with the game. Still the captain won. When Mr. Simmons won a pot it was sure to be a small one. The captain thought the time ripe for his coup de grace. He struck the bell, and the waiter came. "Bring a fresh deck, Mike," he said, "these are getting worn." Mr. Simmons was too confused to notice that the captain, a stranger in the city, called the waiter familiarly by his given name. The captain dealt the cards, and Mr. Simmons cut them in an awkward and bungling way. Then the fatal hand was dealt. It was the captain's favorite. Four kings and the seven of spades to his opponent, four aces and the deuce of diamonds to himself. Any other cards would do as well as the spade and the diamond, but the captain had a weakness for those two cards. He noticed the ill-concealed pleasure on the face of Mr. Simmons as he gazed at his hand. Mr. Simmons stood pat; the captain drew one card. The young man behind Mr. Simmons' chair had moved away. It was no longer necessary for him to scratch his ear and touch his vest button. He knew the captain's coup de grace as well as he himself. Mr. Simmons clutched his cards tightly in his hand and tried in vain to conceal his eagerness. The captain examined the new card he had drawn with exaggerated anxiety, and heaved a sigh that intended to convey to Mr. Simmons the information that he had made his hand good. The betting began. Mr. Simmons threw in his money feverishly and quickly; the captain saw each bet, and raised only after affected deep deliberation. Mr. Simmons raised back gleefully, drunkenly and confidently. When the pot contained about $200 the captain's brows went together, and two faint lines traced themselves from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth, and he made a raise of a hundred. Mr. Simmons laid his hand down carefully on the table and went down in his carpet bag again. This time he drew out two $500 bills and laid them on top of the pot. "I'm goin' busted on this hand," said Mr. Simmons. "'F I didn't zhe boys 'n Encinal County 'd run me out for a coward. Whoop 'em up, cap'n." "Send Charlie over here," said Captain Clancy to one of the bystanders. The fat man with the dyed mustache came over and whispered with the captain. Then he went away and came back with a stack of gold and bills and counted out the thousand dollars to call Mr. Simmons' bet. "I call," said the captain. Then a queer thing happened. Mr. Simmons rose lightly to his feet, spread his hand face upward upon the table, and with the same arm movement swept the pile of money into his capacious carpet bag. With bulging eyes and a sulphurous oath the captain looked for the four kings and the seven of spades he had dealth Mr. Simmons. What he saw was a queen high straight heart flush. The captain made a spring, and the pale gentlemen standing about each took one cat-like step towards Mr. Simmons and then stopped. As the money went into the carpet bag there came out a blue-barreled six-shooter that now shone ominously in Mr. Simmons' hand, and they looked into its barrel. Mr. Simmons gave one lightning glance to his rear and then backed towards the door. "Don't make any mistake," he said. There was a blue gleam in his eyes exactly the color of the shining metal of his weapon. "Gentlemen," he said, "I invite you all when in New York to call at my joint, at 2508 Bowery. Ask for Diamond Joe, and you'll see me. I'm going into Mexico for two weeks to see after my mining plants and I'll be at home any time after then. Upstairs, 2508 Bowery; don't forget the number. I generally make my traveling expenses as I go. Good night." Mr. Simmons backed quickly out and disappeared. Five minutes later Captain Richard Saxon Clancy, paymaster (?) for the M. K. & T. Railway Company, and member (?) of the Dallas Young Men's Christian Association, alias "Jimmy," stood at a corner bar and said: "Whiskey, old man, and--say get a bigger glass than that, will you? I need it." (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, April 12, 1896.) An Unknown Romance The first pale star peeped down the gorge. Above, to illimitable heights reached the Alps, snow-white above, shadowy around, and black in the depths of the gorge. A young and stalwart man, clad in the garb of a chamois hunter, passed up the path. His face was bronzed with sun and wind, his eye was frank and clear, his step agile and firm. He was singing fragments of a Bavarian hunting song, and in his hand he held a white blossom of the edelweiss he had plucked from the cliff. Suddenly he paused, and the song broke, and dropped from his lips. A girl, costumed as the Swiss peasants are, crossed the path along one that bisected his, carrying a small stone pitcher full of water. Her hair was of the lightest gold and hung far below her trim waist in a heavy braid. Her eyes shone through the gathering twilight, and her lips, slightly parted, showed a faint gleam of the whitest teeth. As if impelled by a common impulse, the hunter and the maiden paused, each with their eyes fixed upon the other. Then the man advanced, and doffing his feathered hat, bowed low and spake some words in the German language. The maiden answered, speaking haltingly and low. Then a door opened in a cottage almost hidden among the trees, and a babble of voices was heard. The maiden's cheeks turned crimson, and she started to go, but as she went, she turned her eyes and looked at the hunter still. He took a step after her, and stretched out his hand as if to stay her. She tore a bunch of blue gentians from her bosom and threw them towards him. He caught them as they fell, then ran lightly and gave into her hand the edelweiss bloom that he carried. She thrust it into her bosom, then ran like a mountain sprite into the cottage, where the voices were. The hunter stopped for a while, then went his way more slowly up the mountain path, and he sang no more. As he went he pressed the flowers frequently to his lips. * * * * * The wedding was to be one of the showiest, and the society of the metropolis was almost begging for invitations. The groom-elect brought the ancient lineage of the Van Winklers and a position at the top notch of society for his portion. The bride brought a beauty that was flawless, and five million dollars. The arrangement had been made in a businesslike manner. There had been no question of love. He had been courteous, and politely attentive, and she had acquiesced listlessly. They had first met at a fashionable summer resort. The family of the Van Winklers and the money of the Vances were about to unite. The wedding was to be at high noon. Pelham Van Winkler had had a fire built in the ancient tiled fireplace of one of his rooms, although the weather was warm. He sat on the edge of a writing table, and tossed handfuls of square-shaped letters, some tied with ribbons, into the fire. He smiled a little ironically as they flamed up, or as here and there among them he would find a withered flower, a scented glove or a lock of beribboned hair. The last sacrifice to the flames was a dried and pressed cluster of blue gentians. Van Winkler sighed, and the smile left his face. He recalled the twilight scene among the Alps mountains, where he was wandering with three or four companions on a summer tour, gay and careless, and dressed in the picturesque garb of chamois hunters. He recalled the picture of a lovely peasant girl with eyes that held him with a charm of power, crossing the mountain road, and pausing for a moment to toss him the bunch of gentian flowers. Had he not been a Van Winkler and owed a duty to the name, he would have sought her out and married her, for her image had never left his eyes or his heart since that twilight eve. But society and the family name claimed him, and today, at high noon, he was to marry Miss Vance, the daughter of the millionaire iron founder. Pelham Van Winkler tossed the bunch of blue gentians into the fire and rang for his valet. * * * * * Miss Augusta Vance had flown from the irritating presence of fussy female friends and hysterical relatives to her boudoir for a few moments' quiet. She had no letters to burn; no past to bury. Her mother was in an ecstasy of delight, for the family millions had brought them places in the front row of Vanity Fair. Her marriage to Pelham Van Winkler was to be at high noon. Miss Vance fell suddenly into a dreamy reverie. She recalled a trip she had taken with her family a year before, to Europe, and her mind dwelt lingeringly upon a week they had spent among the foothills of the Alps in the cottage of a Swiss mountaineer. One evening at twilight she had gone with a pitcher across the road and filled it from a spring. She had fancied to put on that day the peasant costume of Babette, the daughter of their host. It had become her well, with her long braid of light-gold hair and blue eyes. A hunter had crossed the road as she was returning--an Alpine chamois hunter, strong, stalwart, bronzed and free. She had looked up and caught his eyes, and his held hers. She went on, and still those magnetic eyes claimed her own. The door of the cottage had opened and voices called. She started and obeyed the impulse to tear a bunch of gentians from her bosom and throw them to him. He had caught them, and springing forward gave her an edelweiss flower. Not since that evening had the image of that chamois hunter left her. Surely fate had led him to her, and he seemed a man among men. But Miss Augusta Vance, with a dowry of five millions, could not commit the folly of thinking of a common hunter of the Alps mountains. Miss Vance arose and opened a gold locket that lay upon her dressing case. She took from it a faded edelweiss flower and slowly crumpled it to dust between her fingers. Then she rang for her maid, as the church bells began to chime outside for the marriage. (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, May 17, 1896.) Jack the Giant Killer The other day a lady canvasser came up into the _Post_ editorial room with a book she was selling. She went into the editor-in-chief's office, and her little five-year-old girl, who came up with her, remained in the outer rooms, doubtless attracted by the brilliant and engaging appearance of the staff, which was lolling about at its various desks during one of its frequent intervals of leisure. She was a bright, curly-haired maiden, of a friendly disposition, so she singled out the literary editor for attack, no doubt fascinated by his aristocratic air, and his peculiarity of writing with his gloves on. "Tell me a 'tory," she demanded, shaking her curls at him, and gazing up with eyes of commanding brown. "A story, little one?" said the literary editor, with a sweet smile, as he stroked her shining curls. "Most assuredly. What shall it be?" "Tell me Dack, de Diant Killer." "Jack, the Giant Killer? little sunbeam; with all my heart." The literary editor helped the little lady upon a stool and began: "Once upon a time, in immediate proximity to a primeval forest, in an humble abode, where pleasures of a bucolic existence were profitably mingled with the more laborious task of agricultural pursuits, dwelt Jack, the hero of my tale, with his widowed maternal progenitor. Scarcely of a parsimonious nature, yet perforce of economic character, the widow was compelled to resort to numerous expedients in order to prolong existence. She was the possessor of a bovine quadruped of most excellent virtues. Her generous store of lacteal fluid, her amicable and pacific nature, and her gentleness of demeanor had endeared her to both Jack and his mother. But, alas, the exigencies of the situation soon demanded that they part with their four-footed friend, and to Jack the sorrowful duty was delegated to lead with lacerated bosom and audible lamentations their bovine benefactor to the market, to be bartered for the more indispensable necessaries of life. So Jack--" "Say," said the little girl, "when is 'ou doin' to tell me dat 'tory?" "See here," said the sporting editor, coming over from his desk, "you can't expect a kid like that to get a place on such a heavy track as yours. Your talk is all right for the grandstand, but you outclass that five-year-old. What's the lay you're on, anyway?" "Tan 'ou tell me Dack, the Diant Killer?" asked the little girl, apparently favorably impressed with the goodhumored smile of the sporting editor. "You can gamble on that, sissy," said that cheerful gentleman, taking her on his knees. "And I'll put it to you low down, right over the plate, without any literary curve to it." * * * * * "Now you see," said the sporting editor, "Jack and his mother were short on dough, and the old girl gave him the tip to sling a running noose around the hooker end of the old cow and steer her up against some guy who was willing to put up the scads for a genuine Jersey creamery. So Jack lined up early one morning with the cow in tow, and when the flag dropped he was on the three-quarters stretch for town. Presently a guy came along and offered to plank down a bag of blue beans for the cow. Jack was inclined to give him the marble face at first, but finally called him and the strange bloke got his gaffles in dead easy. Jack was a regular peach pie for a flim-flammer, and no mistake. Jack then slid for home base, and when he worked his chin at the old girl about what he had done she knocked him over the ropes in a pair of seconds. So he--" "When is 'ou doin' to begin dat 'tory?" asked the little girl, looking up at him in wonder. "Well, I'll be turned out to grass!" said the sporting editor. "I thought I had begun it, sissy," he said, "but it must have been a foul." "What are you fellows teasing that little girl about?" asked the railroad editor, as he came in and hung his cuffs on the gas burner. "She wants to hear about Jack the Giant Killer," said the sporting editor, "but doesn't seem to greet our poor efforts with much hilarity. Do you speak English, or only railroad?" "It's not likely she would be able to flag down your cockpit dialect," said the railroad editor with fine scorn. "Clear the track and let me show you how to interest the youthful mind." "Will 'ou tell me dat 'tory?" said the little maiden with a hopeful look in her eyes. "I will that," said the railroad editor, seating himself on a pile of exchanges. "You fellows waste too much steam in pulling out of the station. You want to get right into the exciting part from the first. * * * * * "Now, little one," said the railroad editor, "you see Jack woke up one morning and looked out of the window, and the right of way was blockaded by a bean stalk that had run a grand trunk air line that went clear up out of sight. Jack took on coal and water, and, without waiting to see if he had the track, grabbed hold and steamed off up grade without even whistling at way stations. When he got to the end of the run he found a castle as big as a union depot. So he put on brakes and--" "Tan 'ou tell me de 'tory about Dack de Diant Killer?" asked the little girl. Just then the lady came out, and the little girl jumped down and ran to her. They had a little consultation, and as they went out the door the staff heard the lady say: "B'ess um's heart, muzzer will tell ums all about Jack when us gets home." (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, January 19, 1896.) The Pint Flask A prominent Houston colonel, who is also a leading church member, started for church last Sunday morning with his family, as was his custom. He was serene and solid-looking, and his black frock coat and light gray trousers fitted him snugly and stylishly. They passed along Main Street on the way to church, and the colonel happened to think of a letter on his desk that he wanted, so he told his family to wait at the door a moment while he stopped in his office to get it. He went in and got the letter, and, to his surprise, there was a disreputable-looking pint whisky flask with about an ounce of whisky left in it standing on his desk. The colonel abominates whisky and never touches a drop of anything strong. He supposed that someone, knowing this, had passed his desk, and set the flask there by way of a mild joke. He looked about for a place to throw the bottle, but the back door was locked, and he tried unsuccessfully to raise the window that overlooked the alley. The colonel's wife, wondering why he was so long in coming, opened the door and surprised him, so that scarcely thinking what he was doing he thrust the flask under his coat tail into his hip pocket. "Why don't you come on?" asked his wife. "Didn't you find the letter?" He couldn't do anything but go with her. He should have produced the bottle right there, and explained the situation, but he neglected his opportunity. He went on down Main Street with his family, with the pint flask feeling as big as a keg in his pocket. He was afraid some of them would notice it bulging under his coat, so he lagged somewhat in the rear. When he entered his pew at church and sat down there was a sharp crack, and the odor of mean whisky began to work its way around the church. The colonel saw several people elevate their noses and look inquiringly around, and he turned as red as a beet. He heard a female voice in the pew behind him whisper loudly: "Old Colonel J is drunk again. They say he is hardly ever sober now, and some people say he beats his wife nearly every day." The colonel recognized the voice of one of the most notorious female gossipers in Houston. He turned around and glared at her. She then whispered a little louder: "Look at him. He really looks dangerous. And to come to church that way, too!" * * * * * The colonel knew that the bottle had cracked and he was afraid to move, but a piece of it fell out on the floor. He usually knelt during prayer, but today he sat bolt upright on the seat. His wife noticed his unusual behavior and whispered: "James, you don't know how you pain me. You don't pray any more. I knew what the result would be when I let you go to hear Ingersoll lecture. You are an infidel. And--what is that I smell? Oh, James, you have been drinking, and on Sunday, too!" The colonel's wife put her handkerchief to her eyes, and he ground his teeth in rage. After the services were over, and they had reached home, his wife took her seat on the back porch and began to cap some strawberries for dinner. This prevented his going out in the back yard and throwing the bottle over the fence, as he had intended. His two little boys hung close around him, as they always did on Sunday, and he found it impossible to get rid of it. He took them out for a stroll in the front yard. Finally, he sent them both in the house on some pretext, and drawing out the bottle hurled it into the street. The crack in it had been only a slight one, and as it struck a soft heap of trash when it fell, it did not break. The colonel felt immediately relieved, but just as the little boys ran back he heard a voice in the street say: "See here, sir, law's against throwing glass in the street. I saw you do it, but take it back, and it'll be all right this time." The colonel turned and saw a big policeman handing the terrible bottle towards him over the fence. He took it and thrust it back into his pocket with a low but expressive remark. His little boys ran up and shouted: "Oh, papa, what was that the policeman gave you? Let's see it!" They clutched at his coat tails, and grabbed for his pockets, and the colonel backed against the fence. "Go away from here, you little devils," he yelled. "Go in the house or I'll thrash you both." * * * * * The colonel went into the house and put on his hat. He resolved to get rid of the bottle if he had to walk a mile to do it. "Where are you going?" asked his wife in astonishment. "Dinner is almost ready. Why don't you pull off your coat and cool off, James, as you usually do?" She gazed at him with the deepest suspicion, and that irritated him. "Confound the dinner," he said, angrily. "I'm hungry--no, I mean I'm sick; I don't want any dinner--I'm going to take a walk." "Papa, please show us what the policeman gave you," said one of his little boys. "Policeman!" echoed the colonel's wife. "Oh, James, to think that you would act this way! I know you haven't been drinking, but what is the matter with you? Come in and lie down. Let me pull off your coat." She tried to pull off the colonel's Prince Albert, as she generally did, but he got furiously angry and danced away from her. "Take your hands off me, woman," he cried. "I've got a headache, and I'm going for a walk. I'll throw the blamed thing away if I have to go to the North Pole to do it." The colonel's wife shook her head as he went out the gate. "He's working too hard," she said. "Maybe a walk will do him good." The colonel went down several blocks watching for an opportunity to dispose of the flask. There were a good many people on the streets, and there seemed to be always somebody looking at him. Two or three of the colonel's friends met him, and stared at him curiously. His face was much flushed, his hat was on the back of his head and there was a wild glare in his eyes. Some of them passed without speaking, and the colonel laughed bitterly. He was getting desperate. Whenever he would get to a vacant lot, he would stop and gaze searchingly in every direction to see if the coast was clear, so that he could pull out the flask and drop it. People began to watch him from windows, and two or three little boys began to follow him. The colonel turned around and spoke sharply to them, and they replied: "Look at the old guy with a jag on lookin' for a place to lie down. W'y don't yer go to de calaboose and snooze it off, mister?" * * * * * The colonel finally dodged the boys, and his spirits rose as he saw before him a vacant square covered with weeds, in some places as high as his head. Here was a place where he could get rid of the bottle. The minister of his church lived on the opposite side of the vacant square, but the weeds were so high that the house was completely hidden. The colonel looked guiltily around and seeing no one, plunged into a path that led through the weeds. When he reached the center, where they were highest, he stopped and drew the whisky flask from his pocket. He looked at it a moment; smiled grimly, and said aloud: "Well, you've given me lots of trouble that nobody knows anything about but me." He was about to drop the flask when he heard a noise, and looking up he saw his minister standing in the path before him, gazing at him with horrified eyes. "My dear Colonel J----," said the good man. "You distress me beyond measure. I never knew that you drank. I am indeed deeply grieved to see you here in this condition." The colonel was infuriated beyond control. "Don't give a d--- if you are," he shouted. "I'm drunk as a biled owl, and I don't care who knows it. I'm always drunk. I've drunk 15,000 gallons of whisky in the last two weeks. I'm a bad man about this time every Sunday. Here goes the bottle once more for luck." He hurled the flask at the minister and it struck him on the ear and broke into twenty pieces. The minister let out a yell and turned and ran back to his house. The colonel gathered a pile of stones and hid among the tall weeds, resolved to fight the whole town as long as his ammunition held out. His hard luck had made him desperate. An hour later three mounted policemen got into the weeds, and the colonel surrendered. He had cooled off by that time enough to explain matters, and as he was well known to be a perfectly sober and temperate citizen, he was allowed to go home. But you can't get him to pick up a bottle now, empty or full. (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, May 17, 1896.) An Odd Character A Post Reporter stood on the San Jacinto Street bridge last night. Half of a May moon swam in a sea of buttermilky clouds high in the east. Below, the bayou gleamed dully in the semi-darkness, merging into inky blackness farther down. A steam tug glided noiselessly down the sluggish waters, leaving a shattered trail of molten silver. Foot passengers across the bridge were scarce. A few belated Fifth-Warders straggled past, clattering along the uneven planks of the footway. The reporter took off his hat and allowed a cool breath of a great city to fan his brow. A mellow voice, with, however, too much dramatic inflection, murmured at his elbow, and quoted incorrectly from Byron: "Oh, moon, and darkening river, ye are wondrous strong; Yet lovely in your strength as is the light of a dark eye in woman." The reporter turned and saw a magnificent specimen of the genus tramp. He was attired in a garb to be viewed with wonder, and even awe. His coat was a black frock, fallen into decay some years ago. Under it he wore a jaunty striped blazer, too tight to button, and the ghost of a collar peered above its intricacies. His trousers were patched, and torn, and frayed, and faded away at the bottom into ghostly, indescribable feet shod in shapeless leather and dust. His face, however, was the face of a hilarious faun. His eyes were brilliant and piercing, and a godlike smile lit up a face that owed little to art or soap. His nose was classic, and his nostrils thin and nervous, betokening either race or fever. His brow was high and smooth, and his regard lofty and superior, though a bristly beard of uncertain cut and grisly effect covered the lower part of his countenance. "Do you know what I am, sir?" asked this strange being. The reporter gazed at his weird form and shook his head. "Your reply reassures me," said the wanderer. "It convinces me that I have not made a mistake in addressing you. You have some of the instincts of a gentleman, because you forbore to say what you know well, namely, that I am a tramp. I look like a tramp and I am one, but no ordinary one. I have a university education, I am a Greek and Latin scholar, and I have held the chair of English literature in a college known all over the world. I am a biologist, and more than all, I am a student of the wonderful book, man. The last accomplishment is the only one I still practice. If I am not grown unskilled, I can read you." He bent a discriminating look upon the reporter. The reporter puffed at his cigar and submitted to the scrutiny. "You are a newspaper man," said the tramp. "I will tell you how I reached the conclusion. I have been watching you for ten minutes. I knew you were not a man of leisure, for you walked upon the bridge with a somewhat rapid step. You stopped and began to watch the effect of the moon upon the water. A business man would have been hurrying along to supper. When you got your cigar out you had to feel in three or four pockets before you found one. A newspaper man has many cigars forced upon him in the course of a day, and he has to distribute them among several pockets. Again, you have no pencil sticking out of your pocket. No newspaper man ever has. Am I right in my conjecture?" The reporter made a shrewd guess. "You are right," he said, "and your having seen me going into a newspaper office some time ago no doubt assisted you in your diagnosis." The tramp laughed. "You are wrong," he said. "You were coming out when I saw you yesterday. I like a man like you. You can give and take. I have been in Houston now for three months, and you are the first man to whom I have spoken of myself. You have not offered me money, and by that have won my esteem. I am a tramp, but I never accept money from anyone. Why should I? The richest man in your town is a pauper compared with me. I see you smile. Come, sir, indulge me for a while. I am afflicted at times with _cacoethes loquendi_, and rarely do I meet a gentleman who will give me an ear." The Post Man had seen so many people with the corners rubbed off, so many men who always say and do what they are expected to, that he fell into the humor of listening to this man who said unexpected things. And then he was so strange to look upon. The tramp was not drunk, and his appearance was not that of a drinking man. His features were refined and clear-cut in the moonlight; and his voice--well, his voice was queer. It sounded like a man talking plainly in his sleep. The Post Man concluded that his mind was unbalanced. The tramp spoke again. "I said I had plenty of money," he continued, "and I have. I will show a few--a very few of the wonders that you respectable, plodding, well-dressed people do not imagine to exist. Look at this ring." He took from his finger a curious carved ring of beaten copper, wrought into a design that the moonlight did not suffer to be deciphered, and handed it to the reporter. "Rub that ring thrice with the thumb of your left hand," said the tramp. The reporter did so, with a creepy feeling that made him smile to himself. The tramp's eyes beamed, and he pointed into the air, following with his finger the movements of some invisible object. "It is Artamela," he said, "the slave of the ring--catch!" He swept his hollowed hand into space, scooping up something, and handed it to the reporter. "See!" he said, "golden coins. I can bring them at will in unlimited numbers. Why should I beg?" He held his empty hand with a gesture toward the reporter, who pretended to accept its visionary contents. The tramp took off his hat and let the breeze sift through his tangled hair. "What would you think," he said, "if I should tell you that I am 241 years old?" "Knock off a couple of centuries," said the reporter, "and it will go all right." "This ring," said the tramp, "was given me by a Buddhist priest in Benares, India, a hundred years before America was discovered. It is an inexhaustible source of wealth, life and good luck. It has brought me every blessing that man can enjoy. With such fortune as that there is no one on earth that I envy. I am blissfully happy and I lead the only ideal life." The tramp leaned on the railing and gazed down the bayou for a long time without speaking. The reporter made a movement as if to go, and he started violently and faced around. A change had come over him. His brow was lowering and his manner cringing. He shivered and pulled his coat tight about him. "Wot wuz I sayin'?" he said in a gruff, husky voice. "Wuz I a talkin'? Hello, there, mister, can't you give a feller a dime to get him some supper?" The reporter, struck by the transformation, gazed at him in silence. The tramp muttered to himself, and with shaking hands drew from his pocket something wrapped in paper. He unrolled it, took something from it between his thumb and finger and thrust it into his mouth. The sickly, faint, sweet odor of gum opium reached the reporter. The mystery about the tramp was solved. (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, May 24, 1896.) A Houston Romance About two years ago one of the most popular young society men in Houston mysteriously disappeared. He had been the glass of fashion and the mold of form of the Magnolia City for several years. Especially was he noted for his exquisite and fashionable dress, and he was regarded as the leader in bringing out the latest and correct styles of clothing. No one in Houston ever saw a wrinkle in his elegantly fitting clothes, or a spot upon his snowy linen. He possessed sufficient means to enable him to devote his whole time to society and the art of dress, and in his whole bearing and manners was well nigh equal to the famous Beau Brummel. About a year ago it was noticed that he was beginning to grow preoccupied and reserved. His gay and gallant manner was as Chesterfieldian as ever, but he was becoming more silent and moody, and there seemed to be something weighing upon his mind. Suddenly, without a word of farewell, he disappeared, and no traces of him could be discovered. He left a good balance in the bank to his credit, and society racked its brains to conjecture some reason for his mysterious disappearance. He had no relatives in Houston, and with proverbial fickleness his acquaintances and butterfly friends soon allowed him to pass from their minds. The mystery has at length been cleared up. A young Houston merchant who was an intimate associate with the young society man took a trip to Europe in September. While in Italy he had a desire to visit one of the old monasteries among the Alps; so one day he ascended the Passo di San Giacomo, a road little wider than a bridle path that led up for 7000 feet among the glaciers of the Leopontine Alps. Far up, perched upon a snow-covered crag, he could see the monastery of the Franciscan monks--the Minorite Friars of the Cismontana group of the Franciscans. He picked his cautious way up the narrow way, pausing now and then to admire the rainbow hues that flashed from frozen glaciers, or the vast drifts of snow packed among the crevasses high above his head. After six hours' arduous toil he stood before the massive iron gates of the monastery. He rang the bell, and a grim warden bade him enter and partake of the hospitality of the brothers. He was ushered into a vast dim hall, with walls and floors of cold gray stone. The monk who admitted him bade him wait, as the brothers were about to pass through on their way to their cells from evening prayer. A deep-toned bell clanged once; a great door softly opened, and a procession of shaved monks filed slowly and noiselessly past. Theirs heads were bowed and, as they told their beads, their lips moved in silent prayer. As they came past the visitor he was astounded to see among the devout monks the form of the man who had once been the curled darling and pattern of elegance in Houston. * * * * * He called his name and the monk, startled by his voice, raised his head and stepped from the ranks of his brother penitents. The others continued their silent march until another great door had closed behind them. The Houston man gazed at the friar in wonder. He wore a long black robe, slightly confined at the waist by a hempen cord, that hung to his feet in classic, shapely folds. The crown of his head was shaven and his face was as smooth as a maiden's. But the most noticeable thing was the expression of absolute peace and serene happiness that shone from his features. There was no trace of the worried and absent look that his friends had noticed before he disappeared. A calm and holy beatitude beamed from his face like a benison. "In heaven's name," said his friend, "what brought you here to bury yourself forever from the world; why did you leave your friends and pleasures to pass your days in this dreary place?" "Listen," said the monk, "and I will tell you. I am now supremely and ecstatically happy. I have attained the goal of my desires. Look at this robe." He glanced proudly at the dark, severe robe that swept downward from his waist in graceful folds. "I am one man," he continued, "who has arrived at the fruition of his dearest earthly hopes. I have got something on at least that will not bag at the knees." (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, November 24, 1895.) The Legend of San Jacinto The Hermit of the Battle Ground Relates an Ancient Tradition to a Post Man The battle ground of San Jacinto is a historic spot, very dear to those who make the past reputation of Texas a personal matter. A Texan who does not thrill at the mention of the locality where General Sam Houston and other gentlemen named after the counties of Texas, captured Santa Anna and his portable bar and side arms, is a baseborn slave. A few days ago a _Hoodoo Jane_ went down the bayou to the battle ground with the intention of gathering from some of the old inhabitants a few of the stories and legends that are so plentiful concerning the events that occurred on that memorable spot. The _Hoodoo Jane_ let the reporter off at the battle ground, which is on the bank of the bayou, and he wandered about under the thick grove of trees and then out upon the low flat country where the famous battle is said to have raged. Down under a little bunch of elm trees was a little cabin, and the reporter wandered thither in the hope of finding an old inhabitant. A venerable man emerged from the cabin, apparently between 15 and 80 years of age, with long white hair and silvery beard. "Come hither, youth," he said. "Would'st know the legend of this place? Then cross my palm with silver, and I'll tell it thee." "Good father," said the reporter, "Gramercy, and by my halidome, and Got wot, as you love me, ask me not for silver, but even fire away with your old legend." "Then sit you here," said the hermit, "and I will tell you the legend of the battle ground of San Jacinto. "A great many years ago, when these silver locks of mine were dark and my step as quick and blithe as thine, my mother told me this tale. How well I remember the day. It was twilight, and the evening shadows were growing long under the trees. She laid her hand upon my head and said: * * * * * "'My boy, I will tell you the legend of San Jacinto. It is a beautiful story, and was told to me by my father, who was one of the earliest settlers in the State. Ah! what a man he was--six feet in height, sinewy as an oaken withe, and as bold as a lion. One day, I remember, he came home after a long, hard fight with the Indians. He took me on his knee as gently as a woman would, this great strong father of mine, and said: "'"Listen, little Sunbeam, and I will tell you the grand old story of San Jacinto. It is a legend known to few. It will make your bright eyes dance in your head with wonder. I heard it from my uncle, who was a strange man, and held in dread by all who knew him. One night when the moon was going down in the west and the big owls were hooting mournfully in the woods, he pointed out to me that great grove of trees on the bayou's bank, and taking me by the arm whispered: 'Do you see them, lad, do you see them?' "'"It was almost dark where we stood alone in the deep grass, and the wind made strange sounds as it swept across the flat. "'"'I have never breathed to a mortal a word of this story, lad,' said my uncle, 'but it must out. Listen; when I was a child my grandmother told me the legend of San Jacinto. The next day she died. She told it to me at midnight on this very spot. There was a storm raging, and the furious wind beat us under this old oak for shelter. My grandmother's eyes, ordinarily so dim and weak, blazed like stars. She seemed fifty years younger as she raised her trembling hand towards the old battle ground and said: "'"'"Child, for the first time in many years a human tongue is about to reveal the secret that this silent spot holds in its eternal bosom. I will now tell you the legend of San Jacinto as told me by my father's half-brother. He was a silent, moody man, fond of reading and solitary walks. One day I found him weeping. When he saw me he brushed the tears away from his eyes and said gently: * * * * * "'"'"'Is that you, little one? Come and I will tell you something that I have kept locked in my breast for many a year. There is a mournful legend connected with this spot that must be told. Sit by my side, and I will tell it you. I had it from my grandmother's sister, who was a well known character in her day. How well I remember her words. She was a gentle and lovely woman, and her sweet and musical tones added interest to the quaint and beautiful legend. "'"'"'"Once upon a time," she said, "I was riding with my uncle's stepfather across this valley, when he gazed upon that grove of trees and said: "'"'"'"'Have you ever heard the legend of San Jacinto?' "'"'"'"'Nay,' I said. "'"'"'"'I will tell it thee,' he said. 'Many years ago when I was a lad, my father and I stopped in the shade there to rest. The sun was just setting, and he pointed to the spot and said: "'"'"'"'"My son, I am growing old and will not be with you long. There is an old legend connected with this ground, and I feel that it should be told you. A long time ago, before you were born my grandfather one day--"'"'"'"'" "See here, you old blatherskite," said the _Post_ reporter, "you've got this story back about 600 years before the Pontius Pilate's time now. Don't you know a news item from an inscription on the pyramids? Our paper doesn't use plate matter. Why don't you work this gag of yours off on the syndicates?" The aged hermit then frowned and reached under his coat tail, and the reporter ran swiftly, but in a dignified manner, to the _Hoodoo Jane_ and embarked. But there is a legend about the San Jacinto battle ground somewhere in the neighborhood, if one could only get at it. (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, April 19, 1896.) Binkley's Practical School of Journalism Last Tuesday afternoon a ragged and disreputable-looking man was noticed standing on a corner of Main Street. Several persons who had occasion to pass a second time along the street saw him still standing there on their return. He seemed to be waiting for someone. Finally a young man came down the sidewalk, and the ragged man sprang upon him without saying a word and engaged him in fierce combat. The young man defended himself as well as he could, but he had been severely handled before the bystanders could separate them. Of course no policeman was in sight, and the affair ended with as little noise and confusion as it began with. The young man slunk away with a black eye and a bruised cheek, and the ragged man with a look of intense satisfaction on his face turned off' down a side street. A Post Man who had viewed the occurrence was struck with something extraordinary in the man's appearance, and, satisfied that there was more in the situation than appeared on the face of it, followed the aggressor. As he came up behind him, the disreputable-looking man said aloud to himself in a voice that expressed a deep and triumphant joy: "That's the last of the lot. After all, the pursuit of revenge gives more pleasure than its attainment. I have robbed my existence of its aim." The man continued his course, turning corners in a hesitating way, with the manner of one unfamiliar with the town, and after a time entered an obscure saloon on Congress Street. The Post Man also entered, and sipping a glass of water, which he begged of the saloon man, he saw the ragged man seat himself at a small table. Although his attire was mean and torn, and his hair disheveled and uncared for, his face showed evidence of much intelligence that rather belied his uncouth dress. Spurred by curiosity, the Post Man also took a chair at the table. With the tact and enterprise of his craft he soon engaged the mysterious stranger in conversation and found him, as he had expected, to be a man of education and manners. "When you tell me you are a newspaper man," said he with a graceful wave of his hand, "you compel my confidence. I shall tell you my story. I once ran a newspaper myself." He rapped on the table, and when the waiter came he fished up from the depths of his rags a lean pocketbook, from which he shook upon the table a single dollar. Handing this to the waiter, he said: "A bottle of your best wine and some good cigars." "Really," said the Post Man, as he placed two fingers in his vest pocket, "I can not allow you--you must let me--" "Not at all," said the ragged man with dignity, "I have ordered." The Post Man awaited with impatience the narrative of his strange entertainer. * * * * * "My name is Binkley," said the ragged man. "I am the founder of Binkley's Practical School of Journalism: the dollar I have just spent is the last dollar I have in the world, and the man I licked up town is the last one of the editorial and reportorial staff of my newspaper that I have treated in the same manner. "About a year ago I had $15,000 in cash to invest. I could have invested it in many things that would have been safe and paid a fair percent, but I unluckily conceived an original idea for making a good deal more. "I understood the newspaper business, as I had served eight or ten years on a first-class journal before I fell heir to the $15,000 on the death of an aunt. I had noticed that every newspaper in the country is besieged with ambitious youths who desire a position in order that they may learn journalism. They are for the most part college graduates, and a great many of them care little for the salaries connected with the positions. They are after experience. "The idea struck me that they would be willing to pay handsomely for situations where they could imbibe the art of practical journalism as found in a first-class newspaper office. Several Schools of Journalism had already been started in the country and were succeeding well. I believed that a school of this nature, combined with a live, prospering newspaper that had a good circulation would prove a gold mine to its originator. In a school they could only learn a theory, in my school both theory and practice would walk hand in hand. "It was a great idea. "I found a newspaper that would sell out. It was in a large Southern city: I don't care to give its name. The proprietor was in ill health and wanted to leave the country. It was a good plant, and it was clearing $3,000 a year above expenses. I got it for $12,000 cash, put $3,000 in bank and sat down and wrote out a neat little advertisement to catch the young would-be journalists. I sent these advertisements to some big Northern and Eastern papers and waited for responses. "My paper was well known, and the idea of getting a place on it to learn journalism seemed to strike the people just right. I advertised that as there were only a limited number of places to be filled, I would have to consider applications in the form of bids, and the one bidding highest for each position got it. "You wouldn't believe it if I told the number of answers I got. I filed everything for about a week, and then I looked over the references they sent me, sized up the bids and selected my force. I ordered them to report on a certain day, and they were on time, eager to go to work. I got $50 per week from my editorial writer; $40 from my city editor; $25 each from three reporters; $20 from a dramatic critic; $35 from a literary editor, and $30 each from night and telegraph editors. I also accepted three special writers, who paid me $15 per week each for doing special assignments. I was managing editor and was to direct, criticize and instruct the staff. * * * * * "I discharged the old force, and after an hour's course of instruction I turned my new staff loose upon their duties. Most of them had graduated with high honors at college and were of wealthy families, who could afford to pay well for the splendid advantage of entering them in Binkley's Practical School of Journalism. "When the staff dispersed, eager and anxious, to their several duties, I leaned back in my revolving chair with a smile of satisfaction. Here was an income of $1,400 per month coming from and not paid to my staff, besides the $3,000 yearly profit from the paper. Oh, it was a good thing. "Of course, I expected a little crudeness and stiffness about the work of my staff at first, but I calculated that they would err on the side of fine writing rather than otherwise. I lit a cigar and strolled through the editorial rooms. The leader writer was at his desk working away, his high, intellectual forehead and broadcloth clothes presenting a fine appearance. The literary editor was consulting an encyclopedia with a knitted brow, and the dramatic critic was pasting a picture of Shakespeare above his desk. The city force were out news gathering. "I began to feel sorry for people who were unable to think up such a fine scheme as I had. Everything was working as smooth as you please. I went downstairs and, rendered reckless by success, I hunted up an old friend and confided to him my wonderful scheme. He was impressed, and we hied ourselves to a caravansary and opened bottle after bottle in honor of the idea. "When I returned to the office, the entire staff was there with their day's work turned in. The truth is I was so exhilarated by what I had taken that I hardly knew what I was reading when I looked over their copy, but with a mistaken confidence in the ability of my scholars, I let the stuff all go on the file, and shortly afterward the foreman carried it away. I instructed the night editor as to his duties and went home, to dream of my good fortune. "The next morning I came down town about 9 o'clock, and it seemed to me I couldn't see anything but newsboys. The town was full of them, and people were buying my paper as fast as the boys could hand them out. I fairly swelled with satisfaction and pride. As I neared the office I saw five men with shotguns standing on the sidewalk. "One of them caught sight of me, and took a snap shot at me as I turned the corner. A buckshot went through my ear and several through my hat. I didn't wait for explanation, as the other four men also tried to get a shot at me, and I cut around the corner and dodged into a back lot full of empty dry goods boxes. "A newsboy went by, calling the paper, and I whistled him up to a crack in the fence and bought one. I thought perhaps there might be something in the paper that had offended somebody. "I crawled into a big box and opened the paper. The more I read the wilder I became. Excuse me for changing the subject," continued the ragged man, "but you said something a while ago in reference to this liquid refreshment, which I perceive is already finished." The Post Man stammered, hesitated, felt in his vest pocket once more and then arose, and taking the saloon man aside, whispered with him for about fifteen minutes. The result was that the saloon man brought another bottle of wine, but with a very bad grace, slamming the bottle and glasses upon the table in an ill-bred and ungracious manner. The ragged man smiled, filled the glasses, and then, his face taking on a deep frown as his mind reverted to his story, he continued. "I turned first to the local page. The first item that met my eyes was this: "'Colonel J. Henry Gwinn, the administrator of the Perkins estate, has robbed the family of the deceased of over $75,000. The heirs will bring suit for that amount at an early date.' "I remembered that the man who fired at me looked a good deal like Colonel J. Henry Gwinn. The next item was as follows: "'A certain city alderman residing not many miles from No. 1204 West Thirty-Second Street, has recently built a $10,000 residence. Votes in the city council must be getting higher.' "There were about fifteen items of the same kind and every one of them was a dead shot for big damages. I glanced at the society columns and saw a few harmless little squibs like the following: 'Mrs. General Crowder gave a big ball last night on Johnson Avenue. It does seem like she would get a divorce from that ticket agent in Kansas City before she tried to cut such a swell as old Crowder's wife.' "'Henry Baumgarten beat his wife again last night.' "'The Ladies' Histrionic Society met last evening over Klein's music store. Miss Sadie Dodson was overcome by the heat and was taken home in a hack. Heat! That's a new name for it.' "These are some of the least objectionable items. There were some that made my hair rise slowly on my head as I read them. "Mechanically I turned to the editorial page, thinking it hardly possible there could be anything wrong with it. The first article charged every city and county official with corruption in office, calling them by name, and wound up by offering to give $10,000 to any charity fund if the paper did not prove every charge within ten days. "I crept through the lot, knocked a board off the next fence and made my way to the back stairway of the office. I found two of my reporters cursing and kicking in the back yard. One of them was in a heap of soft coal dust and the other was hanging by his coat tail on a picket fence. Somebody had thrown them out the window. "Sick at heart I crept upstairs to the editorial rooms. There was considerable noise going on. I went in easy as I could and looked around. My $50 editorial writer was in a corner with half a chair in his hands defending himself manfully against a quorum of the city council. He had laid out three of them and was putting up a great fight. The city editor was lying on the floor with four men sitting on him, and a large, angry German was trying to punch the dramatic editor off the top of the book case with a piece of gas pipe. "It is enough to discourage any man to have a staff that is paying him $1,400 per month treated that way. "I went into my private office, and the enraged public followed me there. I knew it was no use to argue with them, so I pulled out my checkbook and tried to compromise. When all the money I had in the bank was exhausted, and another batch of infuriated citizens came in, I gave up in despair. "At 11 o'clock the business office force came up in a body and resigned. At 12 o'clock damage suits were filed against the paper to the amount of $200,000, and I knew every one of them was good for a judgment. I went downstairs and got about nine drinks and came back. I met the editorial writer on the stairs, and I hit him on the point of the chin without saying a word. He still held one leg of the chair in his hand, and he swiped me over the head with it and ran. When I got inside I found that the dramatic critic was about to win the day. He was a college man and a great football player. He had thrashed the big German and had pulled the four citizens off the city editor, and they were waging great battle with the foe. Just then the society editor dashed into the room barefooted, in his shirt and trousers, and I heard a tremendous screeching and chattering, as if a thousand parrots were talking at once. * * * * * "'Run!' he gasped out. 'The women are coming.' "I looked out the window and saw that the sidewalk was full of them. I made a break for a back window, jumped off onto a shed, and never stopped until I was a mile out of town. That was the end of Binkley's Practical School of Journalism. I have been tramping about the country ever since. "The fellow I attacked on the street today was a special Houston correspondent I had engaged. I had a little grudge against him on account of the first communication he sent the paper. I gave him carte blanche to send in what he thought best, and he wired us 40,000 words the first day about the mockingbirds singing in the trees by the courthouse, while the snow was three feet deep in Dakota. Do you not think I have had some hard luck?" "I must tell you," said the Post Man, "that I don't believe your story at all." The ragged man replied sadly and reproachfully: "Did I not pay my last dollar for refreshments while telling it to you? Have I asked you for anything?" "Well," said the Post Man, after reflecting a while, "it may be true, but--" (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, February 16, 1896.) A New Microbe There is a Houston man who is a great lover of science and an ardent student of her mysteries. He has a small laboratory fitted up at home and spends a great deal of his time in experimenting with chemicals and analyzing different substances. Of late he has been much interested in various germ theories, and has somewhat neglected his business to read Pasteur's and Koch's writings, and everything he could procure relating to sundry kinds of bacilli. He has bought a new 900-power magnifying instrument, and hopes before long to add his quota to the number of valuable discoveries concerning germ life. Last Tuesday night there was a sociable and supper given at one of the churches. The man's wife wanted him to go, but he begged off, saying that he would much rather stay at home and have a good quiet time with his microscope, while she went and took the children. He had been reading ex-State Geologist Dumble's report of his analysis of Houston bayou water, and he was anxious to verify that gentleman's statements by an examination of his own. So, immediately after supper he went through the kitchen and found a tin bucket full of water sitting on a bench by the hydrant and carried it at once to his laboratory and, fastening himself in, went to work. After a time he heard his wife and children leave the house on their way to the supper at the church, which was only a block or two away, and he congratulated himself on the nice quiet time he was going to have. He worked away for nearly three hours, repeatedly examining through the powerful microscope samples of the bayou water from the bucket. * * * * * At last he slapped his hand on his knee in triumph. "Dumble's wrong!" he exclaimed. "He says it's the _hybadid cystallis_, and I'm certain he's mistaken. The inhabitants of this water are schizomycetic bacteria, but they are neither macrocci of roseopersicina, nor have they iso-diametric cells. "Can it be that I have discovered a new germ? Is scientific fame within my grasp?" He seized his pen and began to write. In a little while his family came home and his wife came up to the laboratory. He generally refused to let her in, but on that occasion he opened the door and welcomed her enthusiastically. "Ellen," he cried, "since you have been gone I have won fame and perhaps fortune. I have discovered a new bacterium in the bayou water. Science describes nothing like it. I shall call it after you and your name will pass into eternal fame. Just take a look through the microscope." His wife shut one eye and looked into the cylinder. "Funny little round things, ain't they?" she said. "Are they injurious to the system?" "Sure death. Get one of 'em in your alimentary canal and you're a goner. I'm going to write to the London _Lancet_ and the New York Academy of Sciences tonight. What shall we call 'em, Ellen? Let's see--Ellenobes, or Ellenites, or what?" "Oh, John, you wretch!" shrieked his wife, as she caught sight of the tin bucket on the table. "You've got my bucket of Galveston oysters that I bought to take to the church supper! Microbes, indeed!" (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, November 15, 1895.) Vereton Villa The following story of Southern life and manners won a prize offered by a Boston newspaper, and was written by a young lady in Boston, a teacher in one of the advanced schools of that city. She has never visited the South, but the faithful local color and character drawing shows an intimate acquaintance with the works of Mrs. H. B. Stowe, Albion W. Tourgee and other well known chroniclers of Southern life. Everyone living in the South will recognize the accurate portraits of Southern types of character and realistic description of life among the Southern planters. "Will you go, Penelope?" asked Cyrus. "It is my duty," I said. "It is a grand mission to go to Texas and carry what light I can to its benighted inhabitants. The school I am offered will pay me well, and if I can teach the savage people of that region something of our culture and refinement, I shall be happy." "Well, then, goodbye," said Cyrus, offering me his hand. I had never seen him so passionately aroused. I took his hand for a second and then got upon the train that was to bear me to my new field of duty. Cyrus and I had been engaged to be married for fifteen years. He was professor of chemistry in the Massachusetts State University. I had received an offer of $40 a month to teach a private school in a little town in Texas, and had accepted it. Cyrus received $20 per month from his chair in the university. He had waited for fifteen years for me to save up enough money for us to get married. I seized this chance in Texas, resolved to live economically, and in fifteen more years, if I kept the school that long, we could marry. My board was to cost me nothing, as the DeVeres, one of the oldest and most aristocratic families anywhere in the South, offered me a place in their home. There were several children in the family, and they were anxious to secure a competent teacher for the little school which they attended. The station where I got off was called Houston, and I found there a team waiting to convey me to Vereton, the little town six miles away, which was my destination. The driver was a colored man, who approached me and asked respectfully if I was Miss Cook. My trunk was placed in the vehicle, which was an old rickety ambulance drawn by a pair of wretched mules, and I mounted beside the driver, whose name, he said, was Pete. While we were driving along a shady road, Pete suddenly burst into tears and sobbed as if his heart were breaking. "My friend," said I, "will you not tell me what is the matter?" "Ah, missie," he said between sobs, "I happen to look at dat busted link hangin' down from dat trace chain en it remind me of Massa Linkum what am in heb'n, what gib us po' slaves freedom." "Pete," said I, "do not weep. In the mansions of the blessed above, your godlike liberator awaits you. Singing among the hosts of heaven, Abraham Lincoln wears the brightest crown of glory." I laid my arm gently across Pete's shoulder. The poor, softhearted, grateful man, whose dark skin covered a heart as pure as snow, still sobbed at the remembrance of the martyred Lincoln, and I made him lay his head upon my breast, where he sobbed unrestrainedly as I drove the mules myself the rest of the way to Vereton. * * * * * Vereton was a typical Southern home. I had been informed that the DeVere family were still very wealthy, in spite of having lost a great deal during the rebellion, and that they still lived in the true aristocratic planter style. The house was two-storied and square, with big white pillars in front. Large verandahs ran entirely around the house, about which climbed dense masses of ivy and honeysuckle. As I alighted from the ambulance, I heard a chattering and saw a large mule run out the front door, driven by a lady with a broom. The mule lay down on the verandah and the lady advanced to meet me. "Ah you Miss Cook?" she asked, in the soft slurring accent. I bowed. "Ah am Mrs. DeVere," she said. "Come in, and look out for that dam mule. I can't keep him out of the house." I went in the parlor and looked about me in amazement. The room was magnificently furnished, but I could see the Southern sloth and carelessness visible everywhere. A wheelbarrow full of dried mortar stood in one corner that had been left there when the masons built the house. Five or six chickens were roosting on the piano and a pair of pants were hanging on the chandelier. Mrs. DeVere had a pale, aristocratic face, with Grecian features, and snowy hair arranged carefully in becoming ringlets. She was dressed in black satin and wore flashing diamonds on her hands and at her throat. Her eyes were black and piercing and her eyebrows dark. As I took my seat, she drew a long piece of plug tobacco from a silver card receiver, and bit off a chew. "Do you indulge?" she asked smilingly. I shook my head. "The h--l you don't!" she replied. Just then a horse dashed up to the verandah--or gallery, as they call it in Texas--and someone dismounted and entered the room. * * * * * I shall never forget my first sight of Aubrey DeVere. He was fully seven feet in height, and his face was perfect. It was the absolute image of Andrea del Sarto's painting of the young Saint John. His eyes were immense, dark, and filled with a haunting sadness, and his pale, patrician features and air of haut monde stamped him at once as the descendant of a long line of aristocrats. He wore a dress suit of the latest cut, but I noticed that he was barefooted, and down from each side of his mouth trickled a dark brown stream of tobacco juice. On his head was an enormous Mexican sombrero. He wore no shirt, but his dress coat, thrown back from his broad chest, revealed an enormous scintillating diamond tied with a piece of twine strung into the meshes of his gauze undershirt. "My son, Aubrey; Miss Cook," said Mrs. DeVere languidly. Mr. DeVere took a chew of tobacco from his mouth and tossed it behind the piano. "The lady who has kindly consented to assume our scholastic duties, I presume," he said, in a deep musical baritone. I inclined my head. "I know your countrymen," he said with a dark frown upon his handsome face. "They still grope among their benighted traditions of ignorance and prejudice. What do you think of Jefferson Davis?" I looked into his flashing eye without flinching. "He was a traitor," I said. Mr. DeVere laughed musically, and stooping down drew a pine splinter from one of his toes. Then he approached his mother and saluted her with that chivalrous reverence and courtesy that still lingers among sons of the South. "What shall we have for supper, mammy?" he said. "Whatever you d--- please," said Mrs. DeVere. Aubrey DeVere reached out his hand and seized one of the chickens that roosted upon the piano. He wrung its neck and threw its quivering and fluttering body upon the delicate Brussels carpet. He took a long stride and stood before me, towering like an avenging god, with one arm upraised, the other pointing to the fowl, struggling in its death agonies. "That is the South," he cried, in a voice of thunder; "the bleeding and dying South after Gettysburg. Tonight you will feast upon its carcass, as your countrymen have been doing for the last thirty years." He hurled the head of the chicken into my face with a terrible oath, and then dropped on one knee and bowed his kingly head. "Pardon me, Miss Cook," he said, "I do not mean to offend you. Twenty-eight years ago today, my father was killed at the battle of Shiloh." * * * * * When the supper bell rang I was invited into a long, lofty room, wainscoted with dark oak and lighted by paraffine candles. Aubrey DeVere sat at the foot of the table and carved. He had taken off his coat, and his clinging undershirt revealed every muscle of a torso as grand as that of the Dying Gladiator in the Vatican at Rome. The supper was truly a Southern one. At one end was an enormous grinning opossum and sweet potatoes, while the table was covered with dishes of cabbage, fried chicken, fruit cake, persimmons, hot raw biscuits, blackhaws, Maypops, fried catfish, maple syrup, hominy, ice cream, sausages, bananas, crackling bread, pineapples, squashes, wild grapes and apple pies. Pete, the colored man, waited upon us, and once in handing Mr. DeVere the gravy he spilled a little of it upon the tablecloth. With a yell like a tiger, Aubrey DeVere sprang to his feet and hurled his carving knife to the handle in Pete's breast. The poor colored man fell to the floor, and I ran and lifted his head. "Goodbye, missie," he whispered. "I hear de angels singing, and I sees de bressed Mars Abraham Linkum smilin' at me from near de great white th'one. Goodbye missie, Ol' Pete am goin' home.' I rose and faced Mr. DeVere. "Inhuman monster!" I cried. "You have killed him!" He touched a silver bell and another servant appeared. "Take this body out and bring me a clean knife," he commanded. "Resume your seat, Miss Cook. Like all your countrymen, you evince a penchant for dark meat. Mammy, dear, can I send you a choice bit of the 'possum?" * * * * * The next day I met the four DeVere children, and found them very bright and lovable. Two were boys and two girls, ranging from 10 to 16 years of age. The little school house was half a mile away down a beautiful country lane, full of grass and flowers. I had fifteen scholars in my school, and except for a few things my life at Vereton would have been like Paradise. The first month I saved up $42. My salary was $40, and I made the other two by loaning small sums to my scholars for a few days at a time, for which they paid me from 10 to 25 cents interest. I took a curious interest in studying the character of Aubrey DeVere. His was one of the noblest and grandest natures I had ever known, but it was so far influenced by the traditions and customs of the people with whom he had lived, that scarcely a vestige of its natural good remained. He had been splendidly educated at the University of Virginia, and was an accomplished orator, musician and painter, but from his early childhood he had been allowed to give way to every impulse and desire, and his manhood showed sadly his lack of self-control. One evening I was in the music room in the second story of the DeVere mansion, playing over that loveliest of Schubert's Leider, "Hark, Hark, the Lark," when Aubrey DeVere entered. Of late, on account of some strange whim, he had become more careful in his dress. This evening he wore a shirt, thrown open in front, exhibiting his massive collar bone, and a black velvet smoking jacket, trimmed with gold braid in a fanciful design. On his hands were white kid gloves, and I noticed that his feet, on which he absolutely refused to wear shoes, had been recently washed at the pump. He was in one of his most bitter and sneering moods, and launched forth into a most acrimonious tirade against Grant, Lincoln, George Francis Train and other heroes of the Union. He sat down upon the center table and began scratching one of his ankles with the toe of the other foot in a manner that he knew always irritated me. Resolved not to become angry, I continued playing. Suddenly he said: "Pardon me, Miss Cook, but you struck a wrong note in effecting the run in that diminished seventh." "I think not," I answered. "You are a liar!" he replied. "You struck a natural, when it should have been a sharp. This is the note you should have played." I heard something swish through the air. From where he sat on the center table, he shot between his teeth a solid stream of tobacco juice with deadly aim full upon the black key of A-sharp on the piano. I rose from the stool, somewhat nettled, but smiling. "You are offended," he said, sarcastically. "You do not like our Southern ways. You think me a mauvais sujet. You think we lack aplomb and savoir-vivre. With your Boston culture, you think you can detect a false note in our courtesy, a certain lack of fineness and refinement in our manners. Do not deny it." "Mr. DeVere," I said coldly, "your taunts are nothing to me. I am here to do my duty. In your own house you are at liberty to act as you choose. Will you move one of your feet and allow me to pass?" Mr. DeVere suddenly sprang from the table and clasped me fiercely in his arms. "Penelope," he cried, in a terrible voice. "I love you! You miserable little dried-up, washed-out, white-eyed, sallow-cheeked, prim, angular Yankee schoolma'am. I loved you from the moment I laid eyes on you. Will you marry me?" I struggled to get free. "Put me down," I cried. "Oh, if Cyrus were only here!" "Cyrus!" shouted Mr. DeVere. "Who is Cyrus? Cyrus shall never have you, I swear." He raised me above his head with one hand and hurled me through the plate glass window into the yard below. Then he threw the furniture down upon me, piece by piece, the piano last of all. I then heard him rush down the stairs, and in a moment felt a stream of liquid trickling down among the broken furniture. I recognized the acrid smell of petroleum, heard the scratch of a match, and the fierce roaring of flames; felt a sudden scorching heat, and remembered no more. * * * * * When I regained consciousness I was lying in my own bed, and Mrs. DeVere was sitting beside me, fanning me. I tried to rise, but was too weak. "You must keep still," said Mrs. DeVere gently. "You have been ill with fever for two weeks. You must excuse my son; I am afraid he startled you. He loves you very much, but he is so impulsive." "Where is he?" I asked. "He has gone to bring Cyrus, and it is time he had returned." "How did I escape from that dreadful fire?" "Aubrey rescued you. After his fit of passion had passed he dashed aside the burning furniture and carried you back upstairs." A few minutes later I heard the sound of footsteps, and looking up saw Aubrey DeVere and Cyrus Potts standing by my bedside. "Cyrus," I cried. "How de do, Penelope," said Cyrus. Before I could reply there was a loud and fiendish yell outside. The front door was broken down and a dozen masked men dashed into the room. "We hear there is a d--- Yankee in here," they cried. "Lynch him!" Aubrey DeVere seized a table by the leg and killed every man of the lynching party. "Cyrus Potts," he thundered, "kiss that schoolma'am, or I'll brain you as I did those other fellows." Cyrus dabbed an icy kiss in my direction. A week later Cyrus and I left for Boston. His salary has been raised to $25 per month and I had saved $210. Aubrey DeVere accompanied us to the train. Under his arm he carried a keg of blasting powder. As our train rolled out he sat down upon this keg and touched a lighted match to it. One of his great toes fell through the car window and fell in my lap. Cyrus is not of a jealous disposition, and I now have that great toe in a bottle of alcohol on my writing desk. We are married now, and I will never taken another trip to the South. The Southern people are too impulsive. (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, May 10, 1896.) Whiskey Did It A solemn philanthropist was standing at a corner of the Market House square yesterday making a calculation in his head as to how long it would take a man to save enough beer money to build Solomon's temple. While he was musing, a small, slender policeman with a fiery eye came along, dragging by the wrist a big negro man about twice as large as himself. The policeman stopped for a moment on the steps to rest, and the philanthropist, with a pitying glance, said to the negro: "My colored friend, what has been the cause of your coming to such a sorry plight? To what do you attribute your downfall into the clutches of the law?" "Whisky, boss," said the negro, rolling his eyes wildly at the officer. "Ah, I thought so," said the philanthropist, taking out his note book. "I am making a memorandum of your case for the benefit of some other poor wretch who is also struggling with the demon. Now, how did whisky bring you to this condition?" "It done it in dis way," said the negro, ducking his head as the policeman raised his hand to brush a fly off his nose. "I is one ob de wust niggers in dis town, en dey don't no policeman got sand 'nuff to try en 'rest me fo' de last two years. Dis mawnin' dis here mis'able little dried-up ossifer what's got me, goes out an' fills hisse'f up wid mean whisky till he ain't know what danger he am in, an' he come an' scoop me up. Dis little runt wid brass buttons wouldn't er tetch me ef he ain't plum full er whisky. Yes, boss, de whisky am done it, an' nuffin' else." The philanthropist put up his note book and walked away, while the officer whacked the negro over the head a couple of times with his club and dragged him down the steps, exclaiming: "Come along 'n shuzzer mouse, you blacksh rascal. Strongarm e'r law gossher zis time, 'n no mistake." (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, April 26, 1896.) Nothing New Under the Sun The wind tears at the shingles that poorly cover the attic at the top of seven flights of stairs. The snow crystals, blown as fine as frost by the force of the tempest, buzz through crannies and sift upon the mean bed. Some shutters outside slam and creak with every frequent gale, and the snow clouds sweeping southward suffer a splendent blue-tinged star to turn a radiant eye downward upon the world. Through a rift in the roof of the attic the star alone sees what transpires there that night. On the bare floor stands some rickety furniture, and in the center is a table on which lie paper, pens and ink, and stands a lighted candle. The man who sits in the wooden chair with his elbows on the table, and a hand clenched beneath his chin, does not feel the bitter cold, albeit he is shivering in every limb. His hair is tossed back confusedly from a high brow, and in his eyes there shines a light that the star knows as it twinkles down a brotherly greeting. Genius is heaven-born and its light comes from a height on a level with the source of the star's rays. Suddenly the man seizes the pen and writes. He bends over the paper and his hand flies. He does not heed the howling wind or the deadly snow mist that falls around him. He writes and writes. The clock strikes, and when the hour has passed, and it clangs again, he dashes down the pen, starts to his feet and raises a hand with the fine gesture of a conqueror. It is a natural movement, for there is no one to see him but the star. "By Heaven!" he mutters, "I have won. I am the first in the field. The thought is mine and mine alone. It will live forever. There is nothing like it in literature; but why, oh, why, have I been made to follow such rugged, weary paths to have it come upon me in a moment as easily as falls a moulting feather from the breast of the eagle?" He sits down again and reads what he has written. Then he lays it lovingly down. He does not alter a letter or erase a word. He knows it is perfect, and so tells himself; for true genius knows no mock humility. The man's eyes soften. The fire dies from them, leaving a warm glow that the star does not respond to. About his lips plays a lingering, thin smile that shows half pleasure, half contempt. He is artist enough to know that he has created an original idea, and he knows its value. His far-focused gaze sees warmth, love, pleasure, wine, crystal, mirth, and living beauty--things that he is hungering for with a wolf-like hunger that adds self-contempt to his starved soul's gnawings. Suddenly the sharp whip of the present cracks in his ear and the cold strikes to his marrow and rouses him to action. He rises, dons a ragged overcoat, goes out the door, and down the seven flights of stairs. He returns directly with bread and cheese, wrapped in an old newspaper. He sits again, gulping down the food, which tastes like nectar of the gods. The star looks down through the crack and twinkles with heavenly sympathy, for the man has fought a long and very dreary fight to the end that he is now eating cheese crumbs, with drifting snow falling upon his shoulders. For the first time in many years the man wears the look of success. * * * * * He has gained in an hour what others have strived for during a life time without success. As the man eats he glances idly at the old newspaper that contains his food. The star sees him suddenly grip the paper convulsively with both hands, stare with burning eyes among its columns, and then, with a hoarse choking oath, stumble to his feet, whirl, and fall upon the bare floor. * * * * * In the morning, since he does not appear as usual, two men break open the attic door and find him there. "Suicide?" says one. "Starvation, more likely," says the other. "No, here's bread and cheese. Case for the coroner, anyway. Cheerful sort of a den he lived in. Hullo, what's this he's been writing?" One of them reads what the dead man has written, and says: "It's peculiar stuff. I can't just make it out. Look at his hand; he's got an old newspaper in it gripped like a vise." He stoops and forces the old paper from the cold fingers. He examines it from curiosity and dully stumbles upon the truth. "Say, Bill," he says, "here's a funny thing. This old newspaper's got an article in it very near exactly the same as that thing the gent wrote himself." (_Houston Daily Post_, Friday morning, November 29, 1895.) Led Astray There was no happier family in all Houston than the O'Malleys. Mr. O'Malley held a responsible position in one of our large breweries, and was a thrifty citizen and an indulgent husband and father. His son Pat was part owner of a flourishing little grocery, and also played the E-flat horn in the band that discourses sweet music Sunday afternoons in a building on one of our quietest unpaved avenues. The light and hope of the family was the youngest daughter, Kathleen, an ebon-haired girl of 19, with Madonna-like features, and eyes as black as the wings of the crow. They lived in a little rose-embowered cottage near the corner where the street car turns. Kathleen was engaged to be married to Fergus O'Hollihan, a stalwart and handsome young man, who came to see her every night, with exquisitely washed hands and face, and wet hair, brushed down low upon a forehead that did not exactly retreat, but seemed to rather fall back for reinforcements. On Sunday nights Kathleen and Fergus would wander arm in arm over to the Gesundheit Bier Garten, and while the string band in the pavilion played the dear old Fatherland melodies they would sit at a little round table in some dark corner and click glasses in the most friendly and lover-like manner. The marriage was to come off in June, and Kathleen, after the custom of her people, had already prepared her bridal trousseau and housekeeping effects. In her wardrobe were great piles of beautifully embroidered things in fine linen and damask; heaps of table cloths, napkins and towels, and in the big drawers of her bureau were piles of dainty, lace-trimmed garments that Kathleen, being a modest Irish maiden and not a New York millionairess, kept shyly hidden from view, instead of having their description printed in the _Post_. Kathleen had made these garments herself, working with loving care and patience, and they were intended as a guarantee of good faith, and not for publication. The girls in the neighborhood all envied Kathleen her good luck, for Fergus was a fine-looking young man, and his business was prospering. He could drink more whiskey, tell funnier jokes and sing "The Wearin' of the Green" so you could hear it farther on a still night than could any other young man of their acquaintance. So, dark-haired Kathleen was happy, bending over her work with rosy cheeks and smiling lips, while, alas! already the serpent was at work that was to enter her Eden. * * * * * One day Kathleen was sitting at her window, half hidden by the climbing honeysuckle vines, when she saw Fergus pass down the street with another man, a low-browed, treacherous-looking person, with shifty eyes and a snakelike manner. It was with a deep foreboding and a strange sinking of the heart that she recognized Fergus' companion as a notorious member of the Young Men's Christian Association of Houston. From that moment Kathleen's peace of mind fled. When Fergus came to see her that night he seemed abstracted and different. His hand trembled when he took the glass of rye she handed him, and when he sang for her "Let the huntsman graze his hounds As the farmer does his grounds," that sad and melancholy old song that Irishmen always sing when they feel particularly jolly, his voice sounded plaintive and full of pathos. Kathleen was far too wise to chide him. She tried to be gay and cheerful, though the change in Fergus made her heart very sad. Again the next day, and once more the following day but one, did she see him with the low-browed tempter that had wrought the change. Day by day Fergus grew morose and pale. His once jolly and laughing face grew stern and thoughtful. He rarely spoke to anyone, and once when Mr. O'Malley handed him a big schooner from a keg fresh from the brewery, he heaved such a deep and mournful sigh that the foam flew half across the room. "Kathleen," said her papa one day, "what's the matter wid that long-legged omadhaun Fergus? He looks like he was walking over his own grave." "Oh, papa," said Kathleen, bursting into tears, "I do not know, he seems to be full of bayou water." Let us follow Fergus and the sinister stranger, and see what spell is upon our hero. * * * * * William K. Meeks was a member of the notorious Young Men's Christian Association. His parents were honest and reputable citizens of Houston, and they had tried to inculcate in him the best principles, and train him to be a good and useful citizen. When about 18 years of age he met a man on the street one night who persuaded him to visit the rooms of the association. After taking a bath and joining in the singing of a hymn, he was led into a game of checkers by some smooth talking young man, and finally threw all reserve to the winds and without a thought of his mother or his home, sank back into an arm chair and began to read the editorials in a religious newspaper. After that his progress in the same direction was easy. He cultivated side whiskers and white ties and fell so swiftly into the alluring ways of his companions that no ice cream and strawberry sociable or Evening of Song in the hall of the association was complete without Mr. Meeks. He became what is known as a "capper" for the hall, and many poor wandering young fellows strolling aimlessly about the streets of Houston have good cause to remember the sly, suave, plausible voice of the low-browed William Meeks, as he addressed them in insinuating tones, and invited them to the gorgeously lighted rooms of the Young Men's Christian Association. William Meeks had for a long time had his eye upon Fergus O'Hollihan. The innocent straightforwardness of the young Irishman seemed to mark him as an easy prey. One day he entered Fergus' store, made some trifling purchase, and then invited him to the hall. "All right," said Fergus, "I'll walk up with you, as trade is a little dull. Hadn't we better take along a bottle of whiskey to help pass away the time?" "No," said William, with a sly smile. "There is no need. We have plenty to drink up there." They passed down the street together, and then it was that Kathleen saw them, and the cloud began to gather over her happy young life. William led Fergus to the door of the steps leading up to the hall, gave a sharp glance around to see whether they were observed, and they ascended the stairs. "What do you fellows do up there?" asked Fergus, gazing around the hall in wonder. "We read and sing and pray," said William. "Now, come over here, Mr. O'Hollihan, I have something to show you." William went to a large water cooler in the corner, drew a brimming glass of ice water, and with a cold and cruel smile curling his lips, handed it to Fergus. Ah, little Kathleen, in thy rose-twined cottage, thy dark eyes have many a tear in waiting. Could love be omnipresent, that sparkling glass of water would be dashed to the floor ere it touched thy lover's lips! Fergus took the glass and gazed with wonder at its transparent contents; then seized with some sudden impulse he drained the glass of water to the last drop. As he drank, William Meeks, with a diabolical look of triumph on his face, rubbed his clammy hands together and exulted. "What is this stuff?" asked Fergus; "this cold, refreshing liquid that with such exquisite freshness thrills through my heated frame? What nectar is this, tasteless, colorless and sweet as the morning air that quenches thirst, and does not excite the senses? Speak, Mr. Meeks, is it to be found elsewhere?" "It is water," said William, softly, "and it can be had in plenty." "I have often sailed on the bayou," said Fergus, "and have washed my hands at the hydrant at home, but I have never before seen any water." Fergus drank glass after glass from the cooler, and finally suffered William to lead him, reluctant, from the hall. They parted at the door, and as Fergus went down the street like one in some happy dream, saying softly to himself at intervals: "Water!" "Water!" William Meeks looked after him with a smile of devilish satisfaction upon his dark face. * * * * * That evening after he closed the store Fergus started home and suddenly felt an imperious thirst come upon him. He was already a slave to this wonderful new liquid that refreshed him so. He entered a little corner saloon, where he had been in the habit of stopping to get a drink. The bartender seized a mug and reached for the bottle under the counter. "Hold on," said Fergus; "don't be so fast. Give me a glass of water, please." "You owe me ein dollar und five cents," he said. "Blease, Mr. Hollihan, bay me now pefore you go py yourself too much grazy to him remember, und I pe mooch obliged." Fergus then threw the money upon the counter and staggered out of the saloon. He did not go to see Kathleen that night--he was feeling too badly. He was wandering about in an agony of thirst, when he saw a piece of ice as large as a coconut fall from an ice wagon. He seized it in both hands, and hiding himself behind a pile of lumber sucked the ice greedily, with bloodshot eyes and trembling hands. After that he kept a jug of water in the store behind some barrels under the counter, and when no one was looking he would stoop down, and holding up the jug, let the cursed stuff that was driving the light from Kathleen's dark eyes trickle down his burning throat. * * * * * It was Kathleen's wedding night. The parlor of the little cottage was brilliantly lit, and roses and evergreens were draped upon the walls. Cape jessamines filled the house with their delicious perfume and wreaths of white lilies were hung upon picture frames and the backs of chairs. The ceremony was to take place at 9 p.m., and by 7 o'clock the guests had begun to assemble, for the smell of the good things Mrs. O'Malley was cooking pervaded the whole neighborhood. In the parlor, standing on a trestle decorated with violets and evergreens, stood a keg of whiskey as cold as ice, and on the center table were several beautifully decorated imported glasses, with quite a wedding-like polish upon their shining sides. Kathleen's heart grew lighter as the hour approached. "When Fergus is mine," she said to herself, "I will be so loving and sweet to him that this strange melancholy will leave him. If it doesn't, I will pull his hair out." The minutes crept by, and at half past eight, Kathleen, blushing and timid-eyed, and looking like the Lorelei that charmed men's souls from their bodies on the purple heights of the Rhine, took her stand by the keg, and shyly drew for her father's guests glass after glass of the ruby liquid, scarcely less red than the glow upon her own fair cheek. At a quarter to nine Fergus had not come, and all hands began to grow anxious. At ten minutes to nine, Mr. O'Malley brought in his shotgun and carefully loaded it. Kathleen burst into tears. Where was Fergus O'Hollihan? * * * * * In the garish halls of the Young Men's Christian Association were gathered a group of gay young men. Little do the majority of our citizens know what scenes go on in places of this kind. Our police well know that these resorts exist, but such is our system of city government that rarely do the guardians of peace set foot in establishments of the kind. Two or three young men were playing checkers, feverishly crowning the kings of their opponents, and watching the board with that hollow-eyed absorption and compressed lips so often noted in men of that class. Another played upon the guitar, while in a corner harsh ribald laughter broke from the lips of a man who was reading the Austin _Statesman_. At a little table at one side of the room sat Fergus O'Hollihan and William Meeks. Before them, on a waiter, were two large glasses of ice water. William Meeks was speaking in a low, treacherous voice, and Fergus was listening with an abandoned and reckless look upon his face. "Sobriety," said William, insinuatingly, as his snaky eyes were fixed upon the open and ingenious countenance of Fergus, "sobriety is one of our cardinal virtues. Why should a man debase himself, destroy his brain, deaden his conscience and forge chains that eventually will clog his best efforts and ruin his fondest hopes? Let us be men and live temperate and cleanly lives. Believe me, Mr. O'Hollihan, it is the better plan." Fergus' unsteady hand went out to the glass of water and he tossed it down his throat. "More," he gasped, gazing with feverish eyes. A member of the association in passing by stopped and laid his hand on William's shoulder. "Old man," he said in a whisper, "the boys know you've struck a soft thing, but don't carry it too far. We don't want to have to bore another artesian well." William shot a glance of displeasure at the young man, and he went away. Just then a quartette began to sing "Come, Thou Fount," and Fergus, forgetting all his associations and best impulses, joined in with his strong tenor, and William Meeks' face wore a look of fiendish gloating. At this moment Kathleen was weeping in her mother's arms. Mr. O'Malley was just ramming down the wad on the buckshot in his gun, and the beautiful wedding supper was growing cold upon the banquet table. Suddenly in the street before the hall a brass band began to play an air that was Kathleen's favorite. It brought Fergus to his senses. He sprang to his feet and overturned the table and William Meeks. William sprang to his feet, rushed to the cooler and drawing a glass of water thrust it into Fergus' hands. Fergus hurled the glass to the floor and made a dash for the door. The secretary of the association met him there with the water hose and turned it full in his face. Fergus shut his mouth tightly, put the secretary to sleep with one on the point of his chin, and dashed down the stairs into the street. * * * * * As the clock struck nine, Mr. O'Malley placed two caps on his gun and one upon his head and started to find his son-in-law elect. The door burst open and Fergus rushed in. Kathleen ran to meet him with open arms, but he waved her sternly aside. "I have first," he said, "a duty to perform." He knelt before the whiskey keg, closed his mouth over the faucet and turned on the handle. Sing, happy birds, in the green trees, but your songs make not half the melody that ripples in the glad heart of little Kathleen. When Fergus arose from the keg, he was the same old Fergus once more. He gathered his bride to his heart, and Mr. O'Malley fired both barrels of his gun into the ceiling with joy. Fergus was rescued. (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, April 19, 1896.) A Story for Men This little story will be a disappointment to women who read it. They will all say: "I don't see anything in that." Probably there isn't much. Mrs. Jessamine lives in Houston. You can meet any number of ladies every day out walking on Main Street that resemble her very much. She is not famous or extraordinary in any way. She has a nice family, is in moderate circumstances and lives in her own house. I would call her an average woman if that did not imply that some were below the average, which would be an ungallant insinuation. Mrs. Jessamine is a genuine woman. She always steps on a street car with her left foot first, wears her snowiest lace-trimmed sub-skirts on muddy days, and can cut a magazine, wind a clock, pick walnuts, open a trunk and clean out an inkstand, all with a hairpin. She can take twenty dollars worth of trimming and make over an old dress so you couldn't tell it from a brand new fifteen dollar one. She is intelligent, reads the newspapers regularly and once cut a cooking recipe out of an old magazine that took the prize offered by a newspaper for the best original directions for making a green tomato pie. Her husband has such confidence in her household management that he trusts her with the entire housekeeping, sometimes leaving her in charge until a late hour of the night. Mrs. Jessamine is thoughtful, kindhearted and an excellent manager. She has two children, a little boy of 7 and a little girl of 4, of whom she is extravagantly fond. The Jessamines are going to keep a cook as soon as Mr. Jessamine's salary is raised, but just at present Mrs. Jessamine is doing her own work. While she is attending to her duties she gives the children a paper of needles, the scissors, some sample packages of aniline dyes and a box of safety matches to play with, and during the intervals of baking and sweeping the rooms she rushes in, kisses and cuddles them and then flies back to her work singing merrily. One afternoon last week Mrs. Jessamine was lying on the bed reading a Sunday paper. The children were blowing soap bubbles with some old pipestems of Mr. Jessamine's that he had discarded because they were full of nicotine. Mrs. Jessamine was reading an account of some cruel treatment of children that had been unearthed by the Gerry Society, and the tears came to her eyes as she thought of the heartless and criminally careless mothers of the land who are the cause of so much suffering to their innocent little ones. Presently she fell asleep and dreamed this dream: She was all alone in a great room. She heard the doorbell snap and footsteps leaving and dying away in the hall outside. The room was a strange one, and she went about to examine it. She paused in front of a mirror and saw her reflection, and lo, she was a little child, in a white pinafore, with wide-open, wondering eyes and tangled dark curls. She heard the front door below stairs close and the gate open and shut. She began to play around the room with some dolls and pictures, and for a while was quite happy. She undressed and dressed her doll and talked to it soothingly and put it to bed. She could see out the window, but there were some big trees growing in the yard and the wind blew a branch against the corner of the house, making a queer noise that rather frightened her. Then she saw the closet door standing open and a lot of different shaped bottles on a low shelf. She dragged a chair in front of the shelf and climbed into it. The bottles had all kinds of pretty colored liquids in them and she found some that she could pull the corks from quite easily. She tasted one or two of the corks. Some of them were sweet and nice and one was bitter and badtasting. One bottle was full of something clear like water, so she got that one and pulled out the cork, but the bottle slipped from her hand, fell to the floor and broke. Where the liquid spilled it fumed and sputtered and turned green, and a kind of hot, biting vapor arose. She climbed down and began to feel lonesome and scared. She called "Mamma," three or four times loudly, but all the house was still. Then she began to cry and ran to the door. Just then she thought she heard something scratch behind the bed, and she screamed and beat upon the door with her hands, crying for her mamma to come. Nobody answered her. Then she listened fearfully for a little and crept over and got her dolly from its bed and crouched in a corner whimpering and hugging her doll tightly, with her heart beating wildly, and watching the dark place under the bed with frightened eyes. Presently she saw a pretty red box on a table and curiosity for the moment overcame her fear. She opened the box and saw a lot of funny little sticks, with little round heads on them. She played with them on the floor, building little pigpens and fences and houses. In changing her position her heel fell upon the little sticks and the next moment a big blaze flared up, caught her dress, and with a loud scream she ran to the locked door, wrapped in burning, stinging flames, in an agony of pain and horror. * * * * * Mrs. Jessamine awoke with a start and sprang wildly from the bed. The children were playing merrily on the floor, and she ran to them and caught them in her arms in thankfulness that the terrible dream was over. How she wished for someone to whom she could relate it and gain sympathy. Three blocks away lived Mrs. Flutter, her best friend and confidante. Not for a long time had Mrs. Jessamine had a dream that made such an impression upon her mind. She hastily put on her hat and cloak and said: "Now, be good children till I come back." Then she went out, locked the door and hurried away to Mrs. Flutter's. That is all. (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, December 15, 1895.) How She Got in the Swim There was no happier couple in all Houston than George W. St. Bibbs and his wife before the shadow of the tempter crossed their path. It is remarkable how the tempter always comes up so his shadow will fall across one's path, isn't it? It seems as if a tempter who knew his business would either approach on the other side or select a cloudy day for crossing people's paths. But, we digress. The St. Bibbses lived in a cosy and elegantly furnished cottage, and had everything that could be procured on credit. They had two charming little girls named Dolly and Polly. George St. Bibbs loved fashionable society and his wife was domestic in her ways, so she had made him move to Houston, so that he would not have a chance to gratify his tastes. However, George still went to functions, and things of that kind, and left his wife at home. One night there was to be a very high-toned blowout by society people, gotten up by the Business League and the Daughters of the Survivors of the Confederate Reunion. After George had left, his wife looked into her little hand mirror and said to herself: "I'll bet a dollar there isn't a lady at that ball that stacks up half as well as I do when I fix up." Then an idea struck her. She rang for her maid and told her to bring a cup of hot tea, and then she dressed in a magnificent evening dress, left the maid to look after Dolly and Polly and got on the street car and went to the ball. George was at the ball enjoying himself very much. All the tony people were there, and music's voluptuous swell rose like everything, and soft eyes looked love to eyes that spake again, and all that sort of thing. Among the guests was the Vicomte Carolus de Villiers, a distinguished French nobleman, who had been forced to leave Paris on account of some political intrigue, and who now worked on a large strawberry farm near Alvin. The viscount stood near a portiere picking his teeth, when he saw Mrs. St. Bibbs enter. He was at her side in a moment, and had written his name opposite hers for every dance. George looked over and saw them, and gasped in surprise: "Jerusalem, that's Molly!" He leaned against a velvet cul-de-sac near the doorway and watched them. Mrs. St. Bibbs was the belle of the evening. Everybody crowded about her, and the viscount leaned over her and talked in his most engaging manner, fanning her with an old newspaper, as she smiled brightly upon him, a brilliant stream of wit, persiflage and repartee falling from her lips. "_Mon dieu!_" said the viscount to himself, as his ardent gaze rested upon her, "I wish I knew who she is." At supper Mrs. St. Bibbs was the life of the gang. She engaged in a witty discussion with the brightest intellects around the table, completely overwhelming the boss joshers of the town. She conversed readily with gents from the wards, speaking their own dialect, and even answered without hesitation a question put to her by a man who had a sister attending the State University. George could scarcely believe that this fascinating, brilliant woman of the world was the quiet little wife he had left at home that evening. When the ball was over and the musicians had been stood off, George went up to his wife, feeling ashamed and repentant. "Molly," he said, "forgive me. I didn't know how beautiful and gay you could be in swell society. The next time our Longfellow Literary Coterie gives a fish fry at the Hook and Ladder Company Hall I'll take you along." Mrs. St. Bibbs took her husband's arm with a sweet smile. "All right, George," she said, "I just wanted you to see that this town can't put up no society shindigs that are too high up for me to tackle. I once spent two weeks in Galveston, and I generally catch on to what's proper as quick as anybody." At present there are no two society people in town more sought after and admired than George St. Bibbs and his accomplished wife. (_Houston Daily Post_, Monday morning, May 18, 1896.) The Barber Talks The Post Man slid into the chair with an apologetic manner, for the barber's gaze was superior and scornful. He was so devilish, cool and selfpossessed, and held the public in such infinite contempt. The Post Man's hair had been cut close with the clippers on the day before. "Haircut?" asked the barber in a quiet but thoroughly dangerous tone. "Shave," said the Post Man. The barber raised his eyebrows, gave his victim a look of deep disdain, and hurled the chair with a loud rattle and crash back to a reclining position. Then he seized a mug and brush and, after bestowing upon the Post Man a look of undying contumely, turned with a sneer to the water faucet. Thence he returned, enveloped the passive victim in a voluminous cloth, and with a pitiless hand daubed a great brushful of sweetish tasting lather across his mouth. Then he began to talk. "Ever been in Seattle, Washington Territory?" he asked. "Blub-a-lub-blub," said the Post Man, struggling against the soap, and then he shook his head feebly. "Neither have I," said the barber, "but I have a brother named Bill who runs an orange orchard nine miles from St. John, Fla. That's only a split hair on your neck; it's growing the wrong way. They are caused by shaving the neck in the wrong direction. Sometimes whiskey will make them do that way. Whisky is a terrible thing. Do you drink it?" The Post Man only had one eye of all his features uncovered by lather and he tried to throw an appealing expression implying negation into this optic, but the barber was too quick for him and filled the eye with soap by a dextrous flap of his brush. "My brother Bill used to drink," continued the barber. "He could drink more whiskey than any man in Houston, but he never got drunk. He had a chair in my shop, but I had to let him go. Bill had a wonderful constitution. When he got all he could hold he would quit drinking. The only way he showed it was in his eyes. They would get kind of glazed and fishy and wouldn't turn in his head. When Bill wanted to look to one side he used to take his fingers and turn his eyeballs a little the way he wanted to see. His eyes looked exactly like those little round windows you see in the dome of the postoffice. You could hear Bill breathe across the street when he was full. He could shave people when he was drunk as well as he could sober.--Razor hurt you?" The Post Man tried to wave one of his hands to disclaim any sense of pain, but the barber's quick eye caught the motion and he leaned his weight against the hand, crushing it against the chair. "I kept noticing," went on the barber, "that Bill was getting about four customers to my one, even if he did drink so much. People would come in three or four at a time and sit down and wait their turns with Bill when my chair was vacant. I didn't know what to make of it. Bill had all he could do, and he was so crowded that he didn't have time to go out to a saloon, but he kept a big jug in the back room, and every few minutes he would slip in there and take a drink. "One day I noticed a man that got out of Bill's chair acting queer and he staggered as he went out. A day or two afterwards the shop was full of customers from morning till night, and one man came back and had a shave three different times in the forenoon. In a couple of days more there was a crowd of men in the shop, and they had a line formed outside two or three doors down the sidewalk. Bill made $9.00 that day. That evening a policeman came in and jerked me up for running a saloon without a license. It seems that Bill's breath was so full of whiskey that every man he shaved went out feeling pretty hilarious and sent his friends there to be shaved. It cost me $300 to get out of it, and I shipped Bill to Florida pretty soon afterward." * * * * * "I was sent for once," went on the barber, as he seized his victim by the ear and slammed his head over on the other side, "to go out on Piney Street and shave a dead man. Barbers don't much like a job of that kind, although they get from $5 to $10 for the work. It was 1908 Piney Street. I started about 11 o'clock at night. I found the street all right and I counted from the corner until I found 1908. I had my razors, soap and mug in a little case I use for such purposes. I went in and knocked at the door. An old man opened it and his eye fell on my case. "'You've come, have you?' he asked. 'Well, go upstairs; he's in the front room to your right. There's nobody with him. He hasn't any friends or relatives in town; he's only been boarding here about a week.' "'How long since he--since it occurred?' I asked. "'About an hour, I guess,' says the old man. I was glad of that because corpses always shave better before they get good and cold. I went in the room and turned up the lamp. The man was laid out on the bed. He was warm yet and he had about a week's growth of beard on. I got to work and in half an hour I had given him a nice clean shave that would have done his heart good if he had been alive. Then I went downstairs and saw the old man. "'What success?' he asked. "'Good,' says I. 'He's fixed up all right. Who's to pay?' "'He gave me $30 to send his folks in Alabama yesterday,' says the old man. 'I guess your fee will have to come out of it.' "'It'll be five,' I said. "The old man handed me a five dollar bill and I went home very well satisfied." Here the barber seized the chair, hurled it upright, snatched off the cloth, buried his hands in the Post Man's hair and tore out a handful, bumped and thumped his head, shook it violently and hissed sarcastically: "Bay rum?" The Post Man nodded stupidly, closed his eyes and tried unsuccessfully to recall a prayer. "Next day," said the barber, "I heard some news. It seems that a man had died at 1908 Piney Street and just a little while before a man in the next house had taken poison. The folks in one house sent for a doctor and the ones in the other sent for a barber. The funny part is the doctor and I both made a mistake and got into the wrong house. He went in to see the dead man and found the family doctor just getting ready to leave. The doctor didn't waste any time asking questions, but got out his stomach pump, stuck it into the dead man and went to work pumping the poison out. All this time I was busy shaving the man who had taken poison. And the funniest part of it all is that after the doctor had pumped all the other doctor's medicine out of the dead man, he opened his eyes, raised up in bed and asked for a steak and potatoes. "This made the family doctor mad, and he and the doctor with a stomach pump got into a fight and fell down the stairs and broke the hat rack all to pieces." "And how about your man who had taken poison?" asked the Post Man timidly. "Him?" said the barber, "why he died, of course, but he died with one of the beautifulest shaves that ever a man had.--Brush!" An African of terrible aspect bore down upon the Post Man, struck him violently with the stub of a whisk broom, seized his coat at the back and ripped it loose from its collar. "Call again," growled the barber in a voice of the deepest menace, as the scribe made a rush for the door and escaped. (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, May 31, 1896.) Barbershop Adventure When the Post Man entered the shop yesterday the chairs were full of customers, and for a brief moment he felt a thrill of hope that he might escape, but the barber's eye, deadly and gloomy fixed itself upon him. "You're next," he said, with a look of diabolical malevolence, and the Post Man sank into a hard chair nailed to the wall, with a feeling of hopeless despair. In a few moments there was a rattle and a bang, the customer in the chair was thrown violently on his feet, and fled out of the shop pursued by the African who was making vicious dabs at him with a whisk broom full of tacks and splinters. The Post Man took a long look at the sunlight, pinned a little note to his tie with his scarf pin, giving his address, in case the worst should happen, and settled into the chair. He informed the barber, in answer to a stern inquiry, that he did not want his hair cut, and in turn received a look of cold incredulity and contempt. The chair was hurled to a reclining position, the lather was mixed, and as the deadly brush successively stopped all sense of hearing, sight and smell, the Post Man sank into a state of collapse, from which he was aroused by the loud noise of a steel instrument with which the barber was scraping off the lather and wiping it on the Post Man's shirt sleeve. "Everybody's riding bicycles now," said the barber, "and it's going to be very difficult for the fashionable people to keep it an exclusive exercise. You see, you can't prevent anybody from riding a bicycle that wants to, and the streets are free for everyone. I don't see any harm in the sport, myself, and it's getting more popular every day. After a while, riding will become so general that a lady on a wheel will not create any more notice than she would walking. It's good exercise for the ladies, and that makes up for their looking like a bag full of fighting cats slung over a clothes line when they ride. "But the pains they do take to make themselves mannish! Why can't a lady go in for athletics without trying to look and dress tough? If I should tell you what one of them did the other day you wouldn't believe it." The barber here glared so fiercely at the Post Man that he struggled up to the top of the lather by a superhuman effort and assured the artist that anything he said would be received with implicit faith. "I was sent for," continued the barber, "to go up on McKinney Avenue and was to bring my razor and shaving outfit. I went up and found the house. "A good-looking young lady was riding a bicycle up and down in front of the gate. She had on a short skirt, leggings, and a sack coat, cut like a man's. "I went in and knocked and they showed me into a side room. In a few minutes the young lady came in, sat down on a chair and an old lady whom I took to be her ma dropped in. "'Shave,' said the young lady. 'Twice over, and be in a hurry; I've an engagement.' "I was nearly knocked down with surprise, but I managed to get my outfit in shape. It was evident that that young lady ruled the house. The old lady said to me in a whisper that her daughter was one of the leaders among the girls who believed in the emancipation of women, and she had resolved to raise a moustache and thus get ahead of her young lady companions. "The young lady leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. "I dipped my brush in the lather and ran it across her upper lip. As soon as I did so she sprang to her feet, her eyes flashing with rage. "'How dare you insult me!' she stormed, looking as if she would like to eat me up. 'Leave the house, immediately,' she went on. "I was dumbfounded. I thought perhaps she was a trifle flighty, so I put up my utensils and started for the door. When I got there, I recovered my presence of mind enough to say: "Miss, I am sure I have done nothing to offend you. I always try to act a gentleman whenever it is convenient. In what way have I insulted you? "'Take your departure,' she said angrily. 'I guess I know when a man kisses me.' "And so I left. Now, what do you think of that?" asked the barber, as he pushed about an ounce of soap into the Post Man's mouth with his thumb. "I think that's a pretty tough story to believe," said the Post Man, summoning up his courage. The barber stopped shaving and bent a gaze of such malignant and cool ferocity upon his victim that the Post Man hastened to say: "But no doubt it occurred as you have stated." "It did," said the barber. "I don't ask you to take my word for it. I can prove it. Do you see that blue mug on the shelf, the third from the right? Well, that's the mug I carried with me that day. I guess you'll believe it now." "Speaking of bald heads," went on the barber, although no one had said a word about bald heads, "reminds me of how a man worked a game on me once right here in Houston. You know there's nothing in the world that will make hair grow on a bald head. Lots of things are sold for that purpose, but if the roots are dead nothing can bring them to life. A man came into my shop one day last fall and had a shave. His head was as bald and smooth as a tea cup. All the tonics in the world couldn't have started one hair growing there. The man was a stranger to me, but said he ran a truck garden out on the edge of town. He came in about three times and got shaved and then he struck me to fix him up something to make his hair grow." The barber here reached back upon a shelf and got a strip of sticking plaster. Then he cut a gash along the Post Man's chin and stuck the plaster over it. "When a man asks for a hair tonic," continued the barber, "in a barbershop he always gets it. You can fix up a mixture that a man may use on his head for a long time before he finds it is doing him no good. In the meantime he continues to shave in your shop. "I told my customer that I had invented a hair tonic that if its use were persisted in would certainly cause the hair to grow on the smoothest head. I sat down and wrote him out a formula and told him to have it prepared at a drug store and not to give away the information, as I intended after a while to have it patented and sell it on a large scale. The recipe contained a lot of harmless stuff, some salts of tartar, oil of almonds, bay rum, rose water, tincture of myrrh and some other ingredients. I wrote them down at random just as they came into my head, and half an hour afterwards I couldn't have told what it was composed of myself. The man took it, paid me a dollar for the formula and went off to get it filled at a drug store. "He came back twice that week to get shaved, and he said he was using it faithfully. Then he didn't come any more for about two weeks. He dropped in one afternoon and hung his hat up, and it nearly knocked me down when I saw that the finest kind of a suit of hair had started on his head. It was growing splendidly, and only two weeks before his head had been as bald as a door knob. "He said he was awfully pleased with my tonic, and well he might be. While I was shaving him I tried to think what the ingredients were that I had written down for him to use, but I couldn't remember the quantities or half the things I had used. I knew that I had accidentally struck upon a tonic that would make the hair grow, and I knew furthermore that that formula was worth a million dollars to any man if it would do the work. Making hair grow on bald heads, if it could be done, would be better than any gold mine ever worked. I made up my mind to have that formula. When he was about to start away I said carelessly: "'By the way, Mr. Plunket, I have mislaid my memorandum book that has the formula of my tonic in it and I want to have a bottle or two prepared this morning. If you have the one I gave you I'd like to make a copy of it while you are here.' "I must have looked too anxious, for he looked at me for a few minutes and then broke out into a laugh. "'By Jiminy,' he said, 'I don't believe you've got a copy of it anywheres. I believe you just happend to hit on the right thing and you don't remember what it was. I ain't half as green as I look. That hair grower is worth a fortune, and a big one, too. I think I'll just keep my recipe and get somebody to put the stuff up and sell it.' "He started out, and I called him into the back room and talked to him half an hour. "I finally made a trade with him and bought the formula back for $250 cash. I went up to the bank and got the money which I had there saving up to build a house. He then gave me back the recipe I had given him and signed a paper relinquishing all rights to it. He also agreed to sign a testimonial about the stuff having made his hair grow out in two weeks." The barber began to look gloomy and ran his fingers inside the Post Man's shirt collar, tearing out the button hole, and the collar button flew out the door across the sidewalk into the gutter. "I went to work next day," said the barber, "and filed application at Washington for a patent on my tonic and arranged with a big drug firm in Houston to put it on the market for me. I had a million dollars in sight. I fixed up a room where I mixed the tonic--for I wouldn't let the druggists or anybody else know what was in it--and then the druggists bottled and labeled it. "I quit working in the shop and put all my time into my tonic. "Mr. Plunket came into the shop once or twice within the next two weeks and his hair was still growing finely. Pretty soon I had about $200 worth of the tonic ready for the market, and Mr. Plunket was to come in town on Saturday and give me his testimonial to print on advertising dodgers and circulars with which I was going to flood the country. "I was waiting in the room where I mixed my tonic about 11 o'clock Saturday when the door opened and Mr. Plunket came in. He was very much excited and very angry. "'Look here,' he cried, 'what's the matter with your infernal stuff?' "He pulled off his hat, and his head was as shiny and bare as a china egg. "'It all came out,' he said roughly. 'It was growing all right until yesterday morning, when it commenced to fall out, and this morning there wasn't a hair left.' "I examined his head and there wasn't the ghost of a hair to be found anywhere. "'What's the good of your stuff," he asked angrily, 'if it makes your hair grow and then all fall out again?' "'For heaven's sake, Mr. Plunket,' I said, 'don't say anything about it or you'll ruin me. I've got every cent I've got in the world invested in this hair tonic, and I've got to get my money back. It made your hair grow, give me the testimonial and let me sell what I've got put up, anyway. You are $250 ahead on it and you ought to help me out of it.' "He was very mad and cut up quite roughly and said he had been swindled and would expose the tonic as a fraud and a lot of things like that. Finally he agreed that if I would pay him $100 more he would give me the testimonial to the effect that the tonic had made his hair grow and say nothing about its having fallen out again. If I could sell what I had put up at $1.00 per bottle I would come out about even. "I went out and borrowed the money and paid it to him and he signed the testimonial and left." * * * * * "Did you sell your tonic out?" asked the Post Man, trying to speak in a tone calculated not to give offense. The barber gave him a look of derisive contempt and then said in a tone of the utmost sarcasm: "Oh, yes, I sold it out. I sold exactly five bottles, and the purchasers, after using the mixture faithfully for a month, came back and demanded their money. Not one of them that used it ever had a new hair to start on his head." "How do you account for its having made the hair grow on Mr. Plunket's head?" asked the Post Man. "How do I account for it?" repeated the barber in so dangerous a tone that the Post Man shuddered. "How do I account for it? I'll tell you how I account for it. I went out one day to where Mr. Plunket lived on the edge of town and asked for him. "'Which Mr. Plunket?' asked a man who came out to the gate? "'Come off,' I said, 'the Plunket that lives here.' "'They've both moved,' said the man. "'What do you mean by "both?"' I said, and then I began to think, and I said to the man: "'What kind of looking men were the Plunkets?' "'As much like as two peas,' said the man. 'They were twins, and nobody could tell 'em apart from their faces or their talk. The only difference between 'em was that one of 'em was as bald-headed as a hen egg and the other had plenty of hair.'" "Now," said the barber as he poured about two ounces of bay rum down the Post Man's shirt front, "that's how I account for it. The bald-headed Plunket would come in my shop one time and the one with hair would come in another, and I never knew the difference." When the barber finished the Post Man saw the African with the whisk broom waiting for him near the front door, so he fled by the back entrance, climbed a brick wall and escaped by a side street. (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, June 7, 1896.) Part Two: Sketches Did You See the Circus? Some Twenty Thousand Other People Were There WONDERS OF THE STREET PARADE The Good People Came Out to Show the Children the Animals A Good Parade If some man had cornered the children market day before yesterday, he could have made a fortune. Yesterday was circus day, and every deacon and elder and staid business man in Houston who wanted to see Mademoiselle Marie Meers ride barebacked and walk the tight rope, and had no kids of his own, was out offering love and money for somebody's else to take along as an excuse for going to the circus. In some New England towns large families make a living by renting out their children to church members for this purpose. When a man tells you that he doesn't believe in the Old Testament, just ask him what made him follow the band wagon and the steam piano and the animal cages when he was a boy, and what makes him still sneak into the circus and feed the elephant peanuts and stare the monkeys out of countenance. It's nothing in the world but a feeling we all inherited from Noah when he put on the greatest show on water for a run of forty nights and as many matinees all over the world. The smell of the gas jets and sawdust, the crack of the ring-master's whip, the ancient jokes of the clown, and the wonderful linguistic performances of the lemonade man are temptations that most of us strive to resist in vain. For many weeks Houston has been posted with the bills and banners of Barnum and Bailey's show, and as the time drew nigh the small boy developed insomnia and an unusual affection for indulgent uncles and big brothers with money. When the day came, the pleasure of anticipation developed into the rapture of attainment. All men think of their boyhood days with fond remembrance when the circus comes. Even Susan B. Anthony falls into dreamy retrospection when she sees the animals walking in the parade two by two, and she recalls the time long, long ago when she first saw them go in out of the wet during that dreadful forty days and nights' rain. * * * * * The street parade at 10 o'clock was the best ever seen in Houston. The procession was nearly twenty minutes passing a given point. The cages were new, and the horses, especially, were magnificent specimens of their kind. The animals exhibited were in good condition as a rule and some of them assumed to perfection their role of wild beasts. The lions, however, appeared to be old, and were mere wrecks of the king of beasts. The man who was in the cage with them cowing them down with his eagle eye deserves the attention of the S. P. C. A. This show has twenty elephants and but four tigers, but this should not discourage good democrats. It is a long time yet before the election. The pageant of the world's nations was immense. England, France, Germany, Turkey, Belgium, and other nations were represented by cavalry attired in the national uniform. America was properly represented by a float containing the Goddess of Liberty on a throne, Uncle Sam in front, sailors on the four corners, Jesse James and Richard Croker in the middle. Some Roman chariots came next. We admire the enterprise of Barnum and Bailey in this line, but we think they are carrying realism a little too far when they procure Roman matrons of the time of Marcus Aurelius to drive these chariots in our streets. Is the cigarette girl exhausted or Newport society all engaged, that they cannot furnish us with something better to look upon? It is estimated by a level citizen that fully 15,000 human beings witnessed the street parade, and probably 800 or 900 populists. The crowd awaiting the parade was the same old circus crowd. The streets were lined with pretty girls, dudes, merchants, clerks and country folks. The woman chewing gum and dragging around a howling kid was there; the woman with a baby carriage, receiving the curses and reviling of the crowd with her usual complacent smile, was there; the girl who ate popcorn and shrieked at every bite was there; the man who said it was the same old thing he had seen forty years ago was there. A chilly wind was blowing, and a cold, drizzling rain falling, and one of the shivering Egyptians riding a camel bethought him of his sunny native home and said to one of his countrymen, "Bedad, and Oi wish Oi was in Donnegan's joint on T'irteenth Street long enough to put about half a point of the craythur under me shirt," and the sad-eyed Oriental at his left replied, "Py Cott, dot cold vint a man's pack sdrikes like der teyfel, aindt it?" The Mr. Bailey of this show is not, as some people think, Mr. George Bailey of the _Dallas News_. Mr. George Bailey has nothing to do with the circus, except to write their bill posters. At 1 o'clock the doors of the Ethnological Congress were thrown open, and the surging crowd went down into its pants pocket and drew forth the price. The performance in the circus tent began at 2. The animal exhibit was first-class, and many of the boys who had had the d.t.'s recognized some old friends. In the center of the tent was an international bargain counter on which were displayed families of Hindus, Singalese dancers, Fiji Islanders, Ratmaliatmas, Samoans, etc. The Post Man approached an intelligent-looking Samoan and said: "Lovely and sad-hearted exile from the wave-kissed beach of Pacific's coral-stranded isle, dost thou not pine for thy beloved far-off home?" The large Samoan cast a wistful glance at his questioner and said in his sonorous native tongue: "Cut it short, Cully. Yer can't razzle-dazzle me. Get a movelet on your joblots, or I'll give yer a wipe wid dis property battle-axe. See?" This show has the distinction of carrying the most remarkable dwarf in the world. The owners offer a considerable reward for his equal. He is the largest dwarf now before the public, being nearly six feet in height. * * * * * The pious and stately man who takes the children to see the animals was very much in evidence. One of them, very sour-looking, with his coat buttoned up high, said to a small boy he was leading by the hand: "That animal you see, Willie, is the leopard, of which, as you know the Good Book says, 'he cannot change his spots.'" "But he can, though, papa," said Willie. "A minute ago he was way over in that corner of the cage, and now he's up here in front." "Do not be sacrilegious, my son," said the sour-looking man. "Come, let us go into the tent where Mademoiselle Meers is riding eight horses while in her famous Trilby pose. I wish you to study that noble animal, the horse." Another starchy-looking man, with a plug hat and white tie, had four or five children with him. All paused a moment in the animal tent, and he said rapidly: "My dear children, these are lions, tigers, monkeys, elephants, hippopotamuses and camels. You are all familiar with them from the pictures in your story books. Let us now go into the other tent and view the human form, the noblest work of God, as Mademoiselle Matthews does her act upon the flying trapeze." In the circus tent there were three performances taking place in as many rings at once. The acrobatic acts, tumbling and balancing were good. The "refined contortion act" by Miss Maude Allington and Mr. H. Wentworth was a revelation. Ladies and gentlemen who had heretofore regarded the contortion act as something low and vulgar were surprised and delighted with delicacy, tact and exquisite diplomatic finesse with which these thorough artists tied their legs behind their necks and did the split. "Europe's greatest rider," Mr. William Wallett, was fine, and divided honors with Rider Haggard, the assistant author of the programme and show bills. The ladies who were advertised to ride bareback more than fulfilled their promised feats. They were barebacked, and also bare--that is, were dressed something like surf bathers in Galveston. Evetta, the only lady clown on earth, came into the ring and caused roars of laughter by putting her hands in her bloomer pockets and standing on one foot. She then did the excruciatingly funny thing of sticking out her tongue at the crowd. Then, after convulsing the audience by standing on the other foot, she retired. For that tired feeling, see Evetta, the only lady clown. * * * * * A man who had evidently come up the street on the saloon side went into the side show and seemed fascinated with the tattooed man from Borneo, who exhibited upon his person a great variety of ornamental designs, such as roses, landscapes, ballet girls, ships, etc. "Ladies 'n gent'l'men," he said, "come 'n shee zhis great phenomenon. Always wanted see livin' picshers. Zis fus' livin' picsher ever shee. Set 'em up all round; z'my treat." The tattooed man leaned down and hissed in a low tone: "Say, stop dat song and dance and git a move on you, Cully, or I'll tump you one on de smeller. See?" = * * * * * It must be said of Barnum and Bailey's show that it is orderly and well conducted. The gang of swindlers, toughs and confidence men who generally follow circuses are not allowed to annoy the crowd. The tents are large and the accommodations good. Their immense business is conducted with perfect system and each man in the aggregation fills his place in producing the harmonious working of the whole. * * * * * The performance itself was only the average circus performance, with a great deal that was neither new nor remarkable, but with a feature here and there that was far above the ordinary even in that line. The trouble is in attempting to do too much. Had the programme been executed in the old style, in one ring, it might have been too long; but it would have impressed the public far more than when distributed among three rings. The spectator becomes bewildered and catches a good thing only now and then, while he misses possibly two or three other brilliant acts. There could have been no complaint for want of variety. There was a little of everything and all done at least with the usual skill of the circus performer. Several innovations were introduced, among them a female ring master and a female clown. Trilby on horseback, a skirt dance on horseback, and a serpentine dance on horseback are others. The water carnival, an exhibition of high diving, somersaults into water and other aquatic sports is perhaps the newest circus idea. It is given in a lake of water, to use the fertile press agent's phrase, forty-two feet across and six feet deep. In the menagerie are a number of new animals, notably several new elephants, making the herd now number twenty-four. The Ethnological Congress is all new, and those who have seen the Midway Plaisances at the big fairs will be especially interested in this peripatetic plaisance, which contains a curious assortment of curious peoples. In its acrobatic department, the aerial swinging and leaping and high trapeze work were very fine indeed; and with the equestrian accomplishments of the Meeks sisters, particularly, when the two rode one horse, constituted the most meritorious parts of the performance. A notable feature also was the performance in the ring of a herd of elephants, among other things going through a quadrille. It is such a performance and, to quote the voluble agent again, such an aggregation of panoramic novelties, with much that is old, that the public generally will leave the big tents fully satisfied that they have received their money's worth. (_Houston Daily Post_, Wednesday morning, October 30, 1895.) Thanksgiving Remarks A great many people who are skeptical on other subjects swallow Thanksgiving Day without questioning the validity of its title. There are plenty of people in Houston who will sit at the table today, with their mouths so full of turkey and dressing that they will be utterly unable to answer the smallest question about the origin of this National festival. The United States is the only country in the world that has a day of National thanksgiving in commemoration of one special event. Among the earliest settlers in this country, with the exception of cocktails, were the Pilgrim Fathers. They were a noble band of religious enthusiasts, who sailed from England to America in a ship called the _Mayflower_ after a celebrated brand of soap by the same name. By good fortune and fast sailing they managed to reach America before Thanksgiving Day. They landed at Plymouth Rock, where they were met by Hon. F. R. Lubbock and welcomed with an address. It was a very cold, and not a good day for speeches, either. This heroic little band of refugees were called Puritans in England, which is French for abolitionists. As they stood upon the bleak inhospitable shore, shivering in the biting blast, Captain Miles Standish, who had the stoutest heart and also the most jovial temper in the party, said: "Say, you fellows, can't you stop chattering your teeth and shaking your knees? There don't any of you look like you wanted to pass resolutions against burning anything just at present. You're a jolly-looking lot of guys." Among the distinguished members of this band were William Bradford, Edward Winslow, John Alden, John Carver and Marc. Anthony, a nephew of Susan B. According to the habits of true Americans, they had not been on land half an hour till they went into caucus to elect a governor. John Carver carried around the hat and collected the ballots, and consequently was elected. "Now," said Governor Carver, "I hereby announce my proclamation that next Thursday shall be Thanksgiving Day." "What for?" asked Captain Standish. "Oh, it's the proper thing," said the governor. "You'll find it in all the school books and histories." Governor Carver then appointed a committee with Captain Standish as chairman to explore the country around. Captain Standish set forth at the head of his devoted followers through the deep snow, while the others went to work erecting what rough shelter they could out of logs and pine boughs. Presently Captain Standish and his band returned, making tracks in the snow about ten feet apart and closely pursued by a large, brick-red, passionate Indian, who was remarking, "Waugh-hoo-hoo-hoo!" at every jump. Governor Carver advanced to meet the untutored child of the forest, and said to him in simple words: "How! Me heap white chief. Gottee big guns. You killee my soldiers, me heap shoot. Sabe?" "I am charmed to meet you, governor," said the Indian. "My name is Massasoit. I also am a great chief. My wigwam is down there" (pointing with graceful gesture to the southwest)--"I have just come back from slaying the tribe of the Goo-Goos. You may not have heard, governor, that the cat came back." Governor Carver grasped the hand of Massasoit, and said: "Welcome, thrice welcome to our newly discovered continent, sir. Colonel Winthrop, give Mr. Massasoit your hand." "I'll keep mine, and deal him another if it's all the same to you," said Colonel Winthrop. Massasoit took his place at the side of the blanket that was spread on the snow, and the pasteboards were shuffled. Two hours later the Pilgrim Fathers had won from the Indian chief 200 buffalo robes, 100 pelts of the silver fox, 50 tanned deer hides, 300 otter skins, and 150 hides of the beaver, panther and mink. This was the original skin game. Later on in the game, Governor Carver called a bet of $27 worth of wampum made by Massasoit, with his daughter Priscilla, and lost on eights and treys. Longfellow, in his beautiful poem, describes what followed: Then from her father's tent, Tripping with gentle feet, Priscilla, the Puritan Maiden, stepped. All that she Knew was obedience; Ready to sacrifice All for her father's word, Priscilla, the dutiful, Gentle and meek as the Dove. As the violet Modest and drooping-eyed, Up from his poker game Gazed Massasoit, Chief of the Tammanies, Brave as a lion. Up Gazed Massasoit. Then, as a roebuck springs, Swift as an arrow, or Leapes Couchee-Couchee, the Panther, or Buzzy the Rattlesnake springs from his Coils in the sumac bush, So Massasoit got a Move on his chieftainlets; Got to his Trilby's and Fled to the wildness. Rushing through snowdrifts, and Breaking down saplings, till Far in the distance he Looked back and saw that she Followed not far behind; Priscilla the sprinter was Not very far behind; Cutting a swath through the Snow with her number fives; Right on his trail was she; Right on his track with a New-woman look on her; Longing and hungry look, Look of a new-born hope, Hope for a man that might Be her own tootsicums. Then Massasoit, the Chief of the Tammanies, Gave a loud yell that woke Wise-Kuss the owl, and woke Kat-a-Waugh-Kew-is, the Ring-streaked coon, and woke Snakes in the forest. Then Massasoit was Gone like an arrow that Speeds from the hunter; he Only touched ground on the High elevations; he Fled from the land of the Pilgrims and Puritans, Fled from Priscilla the Puritan maiden; Fled from Priscilla who Wanted to tickle him Under the chin and call Him her sweet toodleums. Thus Massasoit, the Indian warrior, Laid down four aces and Took to the wilderness, Bluffed by a maiden. Laid down a jack-pot, and Lost his percentage. Lost it to treys and eights, And to the forty years Lived by Priscilla; Priscilla, the maiden. (_Houston Daily Post_, Thursday morning, November 28, 1895.) When the Train Comes In Outline Sketches at the Grand Central Depot Next to a poker game for a place to contemplate human nature in its most aggravated form, comes a great railway passenger station. Statistics show that nine-tenths of the human race lose their senses when traveling on the cars, and give free demonstrations of the fact at every station. Traveling by rail brings out all a man's latent characteristics and propensities. There is something in the rush of the train, the smell of the engine smoke, the yell of the butcher, the volapuk cries of the brakeman and the whizzing scenery visible from the windows that causes the average human being to shake off the trammels of convention and custom, and act accordingly. When the train stops at the depot and unloads its passengers, they proceed at once to adopt for their style of procedure the idea expressed by the French phrase _sauve qui peut_, or in polite language--"the devil take the hindmost." An observer, unless he is of the "casual" variety, can find much entertainment in watching the throng of travelers and bystanders at any metropolitan depot. The scene presented belongs to the spectacular comedy. There are no stage waits; no changing of scenery; no forgetting of lines or casting about for applause. The mimes play their part and vanish; the hero with his valise is jostled by the heavy villain from the baggage room; leading ladies scramble, kiss, weep and sigh without bouquets or applause; marionettes wriggle and dance through the crowd, putted by the strings of chance, and the comedian plays his part unabashed by the disapproving hiss of the engines and the groans of the grinding wheels. At the Houston Grand Central Depot when the trains come in there are to be seen laughter and lanterns, smiles and sandwiches, palavering and popcorn, tears and tamales. To the student of human nature is presented a feast; a conglomerate hash of the lighter passions and eccentricities of man; a small dish whereof, ye Post Man will endeavor to set before you. * * * * * The waiting room is bright with electric lights. The line of omnibuses and hacks line the sidewalk on Washington Street, and the drivers are crowding close to the dead line on the south side of the depot. Scattered among the benches in the two waiting rooms are prospective travelers awaiting their trains. The drummers and old traveling men sit reading their papers or smoking, while new and unseasoned voyagers are pacing up and down, glancing uneasily at the clock, and firing questions at everybody that passes. The policeman at the door who has told the old man with the cotton umbrella at six different times that the Central arrives at 6:35, makes up his mind that if he inquires once more he will take the chances on getting a verdict of justifiable homicide. The old lady with the yarn mittens who has been rapping with her spectacle case at the ticket agent's closed window for fifteen minutes says, "Drat the man," and begins to fumble in her traveling bag for licorice lozenges. In the ladies' waiting room there is the usual contingent of peripatetic public. The bright-eyed, self-possessed young lady who is the traveling agent for a book, or, perhaps, a new silverware polish, has learned the art of traveling. Haste and flurry are unknown to her. A neat traveling cloak and a light hand satchel comprise her accoutrements. She waits patiently, tapping lightly with a patent leather toe, and faintly humming the refrain of a song. Not so the large and copious family who are about to make the journey of their lives--at least fifty miles. Baskets, bags, valises, buckets, paper bundles, pot-plants, babies and dogs cover the benches in their vicinity. The head of the family wears a look as deadly solemn as if he were on his way to execution. His face shows the strain of the terrible journey he is about to undertake. He holds his tickets in his moist hand with a vice-like grip. Traveling is a serious matter with him. His good lady has taken off her bonnet. She drags out articles from boxes and bags and puts them back; she trots the baby and strews aprons, hairpins, knitted gloves and crackers far and wide. She tells John where she has hidden $13 under a loose board at home; she would never have mentioned it, but she is certain the train is going to run off the track and she may be killed. A few grummy looking men sit with their coat collars turned up, by the side of their weary spouses, who look as if they cared not for accidents, end of the world, or even fashions. A black-veiled woman with a prattling boy of five sits in a corner, disconsolate and lone; some aimless stragglers enter and wander through the room and out again. * * * * * In the men's waiting room there is more life. Depot officials in uniform hurry through with lanterns. Travelers loll upon the benches, smoke, read and chat. From the buzz of voices fragments of connected words can be caught that read something like this: "Got a $300 order from him, but it cost me $10 in drinks and theater tickets to get it--yes, I'm going to Galveston; doctor ordered perfect quiet and rest-a daisy, you bet; blond hair, dark eyes and the prettiest--lost $20 on treys up; wired my house for expense money this morning--ain't seen Sam for fifteen year; goin' to stay till Christmas--loan me that paper if you're through with it--Red flannel scratches me, this is what I wear--wonder if the train's on time--No, sir, don't keep the _North American Review_, but here's _Puck_ and _Judge_--came home earlier one night and found her sitting on the front steps with--gimme a light please--Houston is the city of Texas--confound it, I told Maria not to put those cream puffs in my pocket--No, a cat didn't do it, it's a fingernail mark; you see I put the letter in the wrong envelope, and-Toot--toot--toot--toot--toot." The train is coming. An official opens the north doors. There is a scramble for valises, baskets and overcoats, a mad rush and a struggling, pushing, impolite jam in the doorway by a lot of people who know that the train will wait twenty minutes for them after it arrives. The bell clangs; the single eye of the coming engine shines with what may be termed--in order not to disappoint the gentle reader--a baleful glare. A disciple of Mr. Howells' realistic school might describe the arrival of the train as follows: "Clang-clang-chookety chookety--chookety-clang-clackety clack-chook-ety-chook. Che-e-e-e-ew! Bumpety-bump--Houston!" The baggage men, with yells of rage, throw themselves upon the trunks and dash them furiously to the earth. A Swiss emigrant standing near clasps his hands in ecstasy. "Oh, Gott," he cries, "dess ees yoost my country like I hear dot avalanch come down like he from dot mountains in Neuchatel fall!" The passengers are alighting; they scramble down the steps eagerly and leap from the last one into space. When they strike the ground most of them relapse into idiocy, and rush wildly off in the first direction that conveniently presents itself. A couple of brakemen head off a few who are trying to run back under the train and start them off in the right direction. The conductor stands like a blue-coated tower of strength in the center of the crowd answering questions with an ease and coolness that would drive a hotel clerk wild with envy. Here are a few of the remarks that are fired at him: "Oh, conductor, I left one of my gloves in the car. How long does the train stop? Do you know where Mrs. Tompkins lives? Merciful heaven, I left my baby in the car! Where can I find a good restaurant? Say! Conductor, watch my valise till I get a cup of coffee! Is my hat on straight? Oh, have you seen my husband? He's a tall man with link cuff-buttons. Conductor, can you change a dollar? What's the best hotel in town? Which way is town? Oh, where's mamma gotten to? Oh, find my darling Fido; he has a blue ribbon round his neck," and so on, _ad noisyam_--as one might say. You can tell old travelers at a glance. They have umbrellas and novels strapped to their satchels and they strike a bee line for the open doors at the depot without creating any disturbance. But the giggling school girls on their way home for the holidays, the old spectacled lady who punches your ribs with her umbrella, the country family covered with confusion and store clothes, the fat lady with the calla-lily in a pot, the timid man following the lady with the iron jaw and carrying two children, a bird cage and a guitar, and the loud breathing man who has been looking upon the buffet car when it was red, all these have tangled themselves into a struggling, inquiring, tangled Babel of bag, baggage, babies and bluster. * * * * * The young lady is there to meet her school-girl friend. The escort stands at one side with his cane in his mouth; nervously fingering in his vest pocket to see if the car fare is ready at hand. The girls grapple each other, catch-as-catch-can, fire a broadside of the opera bouffe brand of kisses, and jabber out something like this: "Oh, you sweet thing, so glad you've come--toothache?--no, no, it's a caramel--such a lovely cape, I want the pattern--dying to see you--that ring--my brother gave it to me--don't tell me a story--Charlie and Tom and Harry and Bob, and--oh, I forgot--Tom, this is Kitty--real sealskin of course--talk all night when we get home"--"Git out der way dere, gents and ladies"--a truck piled with trunks four-high goes crashing by; a policeman drags an old lady from under the wheels, and she plunges madly at the engine and is rescued by the fireman, whom she abuses as a pickpocket and an oppressor of the defenseless. A sour-looking man with a big valise comes out of the crowd and is seized upon by a red-nosed man in a silk hat. "Did you get it, old boy?" asks the man with the nose. "Get your grandmother!" growls the sour man. "That fellow Reed is the biggest liar in America. Feller from Maine got it. I'm a populist from this day on. Got the price of a toddy, Jimmy?" The engine stands and puffs sullenly. The crowd disperses gradually, stringing by twos, threes and larger through the waiting-room doors. Depot officials hustle along, pushing their way among the people. A brakeman springs from his car and runs up to a dim female figure lurking in the shadow of the depot. "How is the kid?" he asks sharply with an uneven breath. "Bad," says the woman, in a dry, low voice. "Fever a hundred and four all day. Keeps a-calling of you all the time, Jim. Got to go out again tonight?" "Orders," says Jim and then: "No, cussed if I do. The company can go to the devil. Callin' of me, is he? Come on, Liz." He takes the woman's arm and they hurry away into the darkness. A ragged man with a dreary whine to his voice fastens upon a big stranger in a long overcoat who is hurrying hotel-wards. "Have you a dime, sir, a man could get something to eat with?" The big man pauses and says kindly, "Certainly. I have more than that. I have at least a dollar for supper, and I'm going up to the Hutchins House and get it. Good night." On the other side of the depot the hack drivers are crowding to the dead line, filling the air with cries. A pompous man, who never allows himself to be imposed upon when traveling, steps up to a carriage and slings his valise inside. "Drive me to the Lawlor Hotel," he says, commandingly. "But, sir," says the driver. "The Lawlor is--" "I don't want any comments," says the pompous man. "If you don't want the job, say so." "I was just going to say that--" "I know where I want to go, and if you think you know any better--" "Jump in," says the driver. "I'll take you." The pompous man gets into the carriage; the driver mounts to his seat, whips up his horses, drives across the street, fully twenty-five yards away, opens the door and says: "Lawlor Hotel, sir; 50 cents, please." He gets a dollar instead, and promises to say nothing about it. The carriages and omnibuses rattle away with their loads; other travelers straggle in for the next train, and when it arrives the Grand Central will repeat its little farce comedy with new actors, and new specialties and various readings between the lines. (_Houston Daily Post_, Monday morning, December 16, 1895.) Christmas Eve Some Sights and Sounds Caught on Houston Streets and Elsewhere Houston is a typical Southern town. Although a busy, growing city that is easily holding its place among the half dozen metropolitan cities of the South, it retains most of the old-time Southern customs and traditions. The all-absorbing haste, the breathless rush, the restless scramble for gain so noticeable in Northern cities is absent here. Houston people are prosperous, and they take things easy, believing that one may gather a few roses of pleasure on the way through life and still keep up with the march of progress. In no city in the South is Christmas more merrily welcomed with social pleasures, the exchanging of friendly offerings, and general rejoicing than in Houston. The immense crowds of people that have lined our streets and stores for the past week testify to the fact. Yesterday was probably the busiest day among the merchants that the season has witnessed; and there is no question but that it brought to the children anticipations of the brightest nature. Stand for a few moments on the corner and view the people. They are moving like a colony of ants, some going, some coming, threading in and out in an endless tangled maze. When the gods lean over the edge of Mount Olympus and gaze down upon this world, while the waiter is out filling their glasses with nectar, they must be highly entertained by the little comedy that is holding the boards on earth. Our world must look to them very much as a great ant bed, over which we crawl and scramble, and run this way and that, apparently without purpose or design. That light streak across the sky, which we call the Milky Way, is nothing more nor less than the foam spilt from tankards of nectar as the gods quaff and laugh at our strange antics. But it is Christmas eve, and what do we care for their laughter? Turn up the lights; let the curtain rise, and the Christmas crowd is on! * * * * * Did you ever watch a young lady buy a Christmas present for her father? If not, you have missed a good thing. They all go about it the same way. In fact, young ladies who buy Christmas presents for their fathers are just as sure to perform the operation in exactly the same way, as they are to sit on one foot while reading a novel. She always has just two dollars for this purpose, which is handed her by her mother, who suggests the idea. She goes out late in the afternoon on the day before Christmas. She first goes to a jeweler's and looks at several trays of diamond studded watches, and wonders which one her father would like. Then, after examining about one hundred diamond rings, she suddenly remembers the amount of money she has, sighs and goes off to a clothing store, where she closely scrutinizes an $18 smoking jacket, and a $40 overcoat. She says she believes she will think over the matter before buying, and leaves. Next she visits a book store, three dry goods stores, two more jewelers, and a candy shop. When Christmas morning comes, her father finds himself the proud possessor of a new red pen wiper with the fifteen cent cost mark carefully erased, and there are to be observed in a certain young lady's dressing case a new pair of gloves and a box of nice chocolate bonbons. * * * * * The fat man who is taking home a red wagon is abroad in the land. He is generally a pompous man who prides himself on being self-made, and glories in showing his democracy by carrying home his own bundles. He holds the wagon in front of him and pushes his way through the crowd with a sterling-citizen-risen-from-the-ranks air that is quite wonderful to observe. How the girls in their cloaks with high turned-up collars laugh and chatter and gaze in the show windows with "Oh's" and "Ah's" at everything they see! If you happen to be standing near a group of them you will hear something like this: "Oh, Mabel, look at that lovely ring--squeezed my hand and said--sealskin, indeed! I guess I know plush when--and five from Papa, so I guess I'll buy that--going to hang them up, of course; I bet they'll hold more than yours, you old slim--good gracious! Belle let me pin your--papa asked him how he wanted his eggs for breakfast, and Charlie got mad and left, and the clock hadn't struck--No, I wear these kind that--sixteen inches around the--Oh! look at that lovely-forgot to shave, and it scratched all along--I'll trade with you, Lil; Tom said--with lace all round the--come on, girls, let's--" The noise of a passing street car drowned the rest. The children are out in full force. Did you ever reflect that children are the wisest philosophers in the world? They see the wonderful things in the windows for sale; and they listen gravely to the tales told them of Santa Claus; and, without endeavoring to analyze the situation, they rejoice with exceeding joy. They never measure the chimney or calculate the size of Santa's sleigh; they never puzzle themselves by wondering how the old fellow gets his goods out of the stores, or question his stupendous feat of climbing down every chimney in the land on the same night. If grown folks would dissect and analyze less things that are mysteries to them, they would be far happier. * * * * * Two men meet on Main Street and one of them says: "I want you to help me think. I want to get even with my wife this Christmas, and I don't exactly know how to do it. For the last five years she has been making me ostensible Christmas presents that are not of the slightest possible use to me, but are very convenient for herself. Under the pretense of buying me a present, she simply buys something she wants for herself and uses Christmas for a cloak for her nefarious schemes. Once she gave me a nice wardrobe, in which she hangs her new dresses. Again she gave me a china tea set; at another time a piano; and last Christmas she made me a present of a side-saddle, and I had to buy her a horse. Now I want to get something for her Christmas present this year that I can use, and that will be of no possible service to her." "H'm," said the other man thoughtfully, "it's going to be a hard thing to do. Let's see. You want something she can't make use of. I have it! Have yourself a new pair of trousers made, and present them to her." "Won't do," says the first man, shaking his head. "She'd have 'em on in ten minutes and be clamoring for a bicycle." "Buy her a razor, then; she can't use that." "Can't she? She has three corns." "Say! There ain't anything you can get that you can use and she can't." "Don't believe there is. Well, let's go take something anyhow." * * * * * The lights are beginning to burn in the show windows, and people are gathering in front of them. To many of the lookers-on this gazing in the windows is all the Christmas pleasure they will have. Many of them are from the country and little towns along the fourteen lines of railroad that run into Houston. A country youth presses through the crowd with open mouth and wondering eyes. Holding fast to his hand, follows Araminta, bedecked in gorgeous colors, beholding with scarce-believing optics the fairy-like splendors of Main Street. When they return to Galveston they will long remember the glories of the great city they visited at Christmas. * * * * * A solemn man in a high silk hat, attired in decorous black, edges his way along the sidewalk. One would think him some city magnate making his way home, or a clergyman out studying the idiosyncrasies of human nature. He opens his mouth and yells in a high, singsong voice: "What will mamma say when Willie comes home with a mustache just like papa's--buy one right now, boys; you can curl 'em, twist 'em, pull 'em, and comb 'em just like real ones--come on boys!" He fixes below his nose a black mustache with a wonderful curl to the ends and goes his way, occasionally selling one to some smooth-faced boy, who shyly makes his purchase. On the edge of the sidewalk a little man is offering "the most wonderful mechanical toy of the century, causing more comment and excitement than any other article exhibited at the great World's Fair." The public crowds about him and buys with avidity. Not twenty steps away in a Houston toy shop the same kind of toy has been sold for years. * * * * * On a corner stand a group of--well, say young men. They wear new style high turn-down collars and chrysanthemums. Their hats tilt backward and their front hair is brushed down low. They are gazing at the ladies as they pass. How Charles Darwin would have loved to meet these young men! But, alas! he died without completing the chain. Listen at the scraps of alleged conversation that can be distinguished above their simultaneous jabber: "Deuced fine girl, but a little too--cigarette? I'll owe you one--she's a nice girl, but--the loveliest necktie you ever--would have paid my board, but saw that elegant suit at--kicked me clear out of the parlor without--that girl has certainly got a--haven't a cent, old man, or I would--old man said I had to go to work, but--look at that blonde with the smiled right at me, and--the little one with the blue--he struck me in the eye, and I won't speak to him now--no, the brunette in the white--I was real mad, and said, confound it--link buttons, of course." * * * * * At a corner sits a woman with blue goggles, grinding an organ, on which stands a lamp chimney, in which burns a tallow candle. Why the candle, the observer knoweth not. At her side crouches her pale little boy. A philanthropist bends toward her with a nickel between his fingers. Far away, among the wilds near Alvin, he has a little boy about the same age, and his heart is touched. The little boy springs up. He has a cigarette in his mouth, and he hurls a big fire-cracker between the philanthropist's feet. It explodes; the boy yells with delight; and the philanthropist says: "Gol darn the kid" and reserves his nickel for beer. * * * * * Gazing with far off, longing eyes into a show window that glistens with diamonds and jewelry, stands a woman. Her black dress and veil proclaim that she is a widow. One year ago the strong arm upon which she leaned with such love and security was her pride and joy. Tonight, beneath the sod of the churchyard, it is turning back to dust. And yet, she is not altogether desolate. She has sweet memories of her loved one to sustain her; and besides that, she is holding to the arm of the man she is engaged to marry when her time of mourning is up, and she is out selecting an engagement ring. * * * * * A policeman lurks in the shadow of an awning with his club in his hand ready to strike. Two doors away there lives an alderman who voted against his being put on the force. It will not be long before the alderman's little boy will come out on the sidewalk and shoot off a Roman candle, and then the policeman will strike; a city ordinance will be carried out, and a little boy carried in. * * * * * A man steps up to a salesman in a fancy goods store. "I want to get something," he says, "for my wife's mother. I think--" "James," calls the salesman, "show this gentleman the 5-cent counter." Merchants who make a study of their customers are quick to know what they want. A man who is unmistakably a clergyman goes into a grocery store that is next door to a saloon. The salesman attends upon him. He buys 10 cents worth of minced meat for pies, and then lingers, clearing his throat. "Anything else?" asks the salesman. The clerical-looking man fumbles with his white cambric tie, and says: "Tomorrow will be Christmas, you know day of holy thoughts--peace on earth, and--and--and--our hearts should carol forth praises however, we must dine--er--er--mince pie, you know; the little ones in the family enjoy it--have the meat here--thought, perhaps--something to flavor--just a drop of--" "Here, Jimmy," yells the salesman, "go in next door and get this gent a pint of whisky." * * * * * Christmas brings pleasure to many; it brightens some lives that hardly ever know sunshine; it is abused by too many and made a season of revelry and sin; but to the little ones it is a joy forever, so let the tin horns blow and the red drums rattle, for those restless little feet and those grimy little hands come first in the making up of Heaven's kingdom. Merry Christmas to all. (_Houston Daily Post_, Wednesday morning, December 25, 1895.) New Year's Eve and How It Came to Houston Sketched at Random as the Old Year Passed We that would properly welcome the new year should view it with the eye of an optimist, and sing its praises with the coated tongue of a penitent. We should dismiss from our hearts the cold precept that history repeats itself, and strive to believe that the deficiencies of the day will be supplied by the morrow. Since fancy whispers to us that at the stroke of midnight the old order will change, yielding to the new, let us put aside, if possible, all knowledge to the contrary and revel in the fairy tale told by the merry bells. Man's arbitrary part of the time into hours, days and years causes no perceptible jolt beneath the noiseless pneumatic tire of the cycle of years. No mortal tack can puncture that wheel. Old Father Time is a "scorcher," and he rides without lamp or warning bell. The years that are as mile-stones to us are as gravel spurned beneath him. But to us, of few days and an occasional night off, they serve as warnings to note the hour upon the face of a mighty clock upon which the hands move silently and are never turned back. The New Year is feminine. There is no question but that the world has become badly mixed as to the gender of time. And again, the New Year is no cherubic debutante with eyes full of prophetic joys, but a grim and ancient spinster who flutters coyly into our presence with a giddy giggle, rejuvenated for the occasion. We have made obeisance to those same charms time out of mind; we have whispered soft nothings into those same ears many moons ago; we have lightly brushed those painted and powdered cheeks in time gone by when they glowed with the damask bloom of youth. But let us hug once more the dear delusion. Let us say that she is fair and fresh as the rising morn, and make unto ourselves a season of mirth and heedless joy. The fiddles strike up and the hautboys sigh. Your hand, sweet, coy New Year--take care of that rheumatic knee--come, let us foot it as the gladsome bells proclaim your debut--number 1896. * * * * * The last day of the year is generally spent in laying in as big a stock as possible of things suitable for use the next day for swearing-off purposes. It is so much easier to resolve to do without anything when we have just had too much of it. How easy it is on New Year's day, just after dinner, when we are full of good resolutions and turkey, to kneel down and solemnly affirm that we will never touch food again. The man who on the morning of the glad New Year stands trembling with fear on the center table, while snakes and lizards merrily play hide and seek on the floor, finds no difficulty in forswearing the sparkling bowl. The dark brown, copper-riveted taste which accompanies what is known to the medical profession as the New Year tongue, is a great incentive to reform. The beautiful siren-like, Christmas-present cigar that is so fair to gaze upon, when lit turns like a viper and stings us into abjuring my Lady Nicotine forever. When we attempt to sit upon the early scarlet runner, hand-embroidered rocking-chair cushion presented to us by our maiden aunt and slide out upon the floor upon our spinal vertebrae, we feel inclined to kneel in our own blood with a dagger between our teeth and swear by heaven never to sit down again. When we go upon the streets wearing the neckties presented to us by our wife, and the loiterer upon the corner sayeth, "Ha, Ha," and the newsboy inquireth, "What is it?" is it any wonder that we curse the necktie habit as an enemy of man, and on New Year's morning swear to abjure it forever? When we say farewell, and with clenched teeth wend our way into the shirt made for us by the fair hands of our partner in sorrow, and find the collar tighter than the last one worn by the late lamented Harry Hayward, and the tail thereof more biased than a populist editorial, and the bosom in billowy waves that heave upon our manly chest like a polonaise on a colored cook on Emancipation Day, and the sleeves dragging the floor as we walk about, saying, "It's so nice, my dear--just what I wanted," what wonder that we register an oath with the Lord of Abraham and Jacob as the glad New Year bells peal out, nevermore to wear again a garment made by that portion of the earth's inhabitants that sits on the floor to put on its shoes, and regards the male torso as a waste basket for remnant AA sheeting and misfit Butterick patterns? There are so many things we take a delight in forswearing on New Year's Day. * * * * * While strolling aimlessly about the streets of Houston on the last evening of 1895, little sights and sounds obtrude themselves and reveal the spirit of the time, as little pulse beats indicate the general tone of the human system. It is nearly 6 o'clock, and there is a lively crowd moving upon the sidewalks. Here comes a lovely little shopgirl, as neat and trim as a fashion plate. Her big hat plumes wave, and her little boot heels beat a merry tictac upon the pavement. Debonaire and full of life and fun, she moves, cheery and happy, on her way to supper. Her bright eyes flash sidelong glances at the jeweler's windows as she passes. Some day she hopes to see upon her white finger one of those sparkling diamonds. Her lips curve in a meaning smile. She is thinking of the handsome, finely-dressed man who comes so often to her counter in the big store, ostensibly to buy her wares. How grand he is, and what eloquent eyes and a lovely mustache he has! She does not know his name; but, well, she knows that he cares a little for the goods she sells. How soft his voice as he asks the price of this and that, and with what romantic feeling he says that we will surely have rain if the clouds gather sufficiently! She wonders where he is now. She trips around a corner and meets him face to face. She gives a little scream, and then her face hardens and a cold glitter comes into her eye. On his arm is a huge market basket, from which protrudes the cold, despairing legs of a turkey, from which the soul has filed. Two yards of celery trail behind him; turnip greens, cauliflower and the alleged yellow yam nestle against his arm. On his brow is confusion; in his face are hung the scarlet banners of a guilty conscience; in his romantic eyes she reads the tell-tale story of a benedict; by the hand he leads a cold-nosed but indisputable little boy. She elevates her charming head to a supercilious angle, snaps out to herself the one word "married!" and is gone. He jerks the limp, sad corpse of the turkey to the other side, snatches the cold-nosed little boy about five feet through the air and vows that never again will he go to market during the joyous year of 1896. It is New Year's eve. * * * * * A citizen is restlessly pacing the floor of his sitting room. There is evidently some crisis near, for his brow is contracted, and his hands are nervously clasped and unclasped behind his back. He is waiting expectantly for something. Suddenly the door opens and his family physician enters smiling and congratulatory. The citizen turns upon him a look full of inquiry. "All is well," says the physician. "Three fine boys, and everybody getting along first rate." "Three?" says the citizen in a tone of horror, "Three!" He kneels on the floor and in fervent accents exclaims: "Tomorrow will be the New Year, and I hereby solemnly swear that--" Breaking in upon his resolutions comes the merry chime of the New Year bells. * * * * * The people come and the people go. In the stores, looking over remnants of Christmas goods, are to be found that class of people who received presents on Christmas Day without giving any, and are now striving to make late and lame amends by returning the compliment on New Year's Day. The New Year's present is a delusion and contains about as much warmth and soul as a eulogy on the South by the _New York Sun_. Two ladies are at a bargain counter, maintaining an animated conversation in low but dangerous tones. "She sent me," says one of them, "a little old nickel-plated card receiver on Christmas Day, and I know she bought it at a racket store. Goodness knows, I never would have thought of sending her anything, but now I've got to return it, of course--the old deceitful thing and I don't know what to get for her. Let's see--oh yes; I have it now. You know they say she used to be a chambermaid in a St. Louis hotel before she was married; I'll just send her this little silver pin with a broom on it. Wonder if she's bright enough to understand?" "I hope so, I'm sure," says the other lady. "That reminds me that George gave me a nice new opera cloak for a Christmas present, and I just forgot all about him. What are those horn collar-buttons worth?" "Fifteen cents a dozen," says the salesman. "Let me see" says the lady meditatively--"Yes, I will; George has been so good to me. Give me three of those buttons, please." * * * * * _Viva el rey; el rey esta muerto!_ The Spanish phrase looks better than the hackneyed French, and it is correct, having been carefully revised by one of the most reliable tamale dealers on Travis Street. The old year is passing; let us stand in with the new. In happy Houston homes light feet are dancing away the hours 'neath holly and mistletoe, but outside stalk those who inherit want and care and misery, to whom the coming season brings nothing of hope or joy. Two young men are wending their way up Preston Street. One is holding the other by the arm and guiding his steps. The sidewalk seems to run in laps and curves, twisting itself into hills and hollows and labyrinthine mazes. One of the young men thinks he is dying. The other one is not sure about it, but he hopes he is not mistaken. They are both good friends of the old year, and they hate to see it leave so badly that they have sewed their sorrow up in a sack and tried to drown it. "Goo' bye, old frien'," says the dying one. "Go 'way and leave me to die here on thish boundless prairie. Sands of life's runnin' out like everyshing. Zat las' dish chick'n salad's done its work. Never see fazzer'n muzzer any more." "Bob," says the other one, "you're 'fern'l idiot. Never shay die. Zis town Houston can't be more'n ten miles away. We're right on Harvey Wilshon's race track now goin' round'n round. Whazzer mazzer wiz livin' for country'n so forth?" "Can't do it, old boy; 'stremities gettin' coldsh now. Light's fadin' out of eyes'n worldsh fadin' from view. Can't shay 'er prayer, old boy, 'fore vital spark expires! Can'tcher say lay'm down to sleep, Jim?" "Don't be a fool, Bob; come on, lesh find city Houston 'n git a drink." "Jim, I' dead man. Been wicked 'n told liesh, 'n played poker. Zhere ain't no hope for handshome, unscrup'loush shociety man like me. Been giddy butterfly 'n broke senty-five lovin' creaturesh hearts--jus' listen Jim, I hear angelsh shingin' an' playin' harpsh, 'n I c'n see beau'ful lights 'n heavensh wiz all kind colors flashin' from golden gates. Jim, don't you hear angel throng shingin' shongs 'n see lights shinin' in New Jerushalem?" "Bob, you d'graded lun'tic, don't you know what that ish? That's Salvation Army singin', 'n Ed Kiam's 'lectric sign you shee. Now I know where we're at. Zere's five saloonsh on nex' block." "Jim, you've shaved m' life. Lesh make one more effort 'fore I die, 'n tell barkeep' put plenty ice in it." * * * * * Midnight draws on apace, and while some welcome with revelry the advent of the New Year, others stray in the land of dreams, and allow it to approach unheralded. Ladies over 30 years of age take on a grim look about the jaw, and bend with a deadly glitter in their eyes over the article in the Sunday paper that treats of "How to avoid wrinkles," and sadly shake their heads when they read that Madame Bonjour, the famous French beauty, kept young and lovely until after 110 years of age by using Bunker's Bunco Balm. The New Year brings to them sad prospects of another gray hair, or a crow's foot around the eye. * * * * * To the little folks the season is but a prolongation of Christmas, and they welcome the turning over of the new leaf without a misgiving. Would that we all might trace a record upon it as fair as that their chubby hands will scrawl. Happy New Year to all. (_Houston Daily Post_, Wednesday morning, January 1, 1896.) Watchman, What of the Night? About the time that Alonzo bids his Melissa the fourteenth farewell at the garden gate, and _pater familias_ calls angrily from his noisily raised window, there sets forth into the city a straggling army of toilers whose duties lead them into laborious ways while the great world slumbers more or less sweetly upon its pillow. Time was when all honest burghers were night-capped and somnolent at an early hour, and the silent streets knew naught but the echoing tread of the watchman who swung his lantern down the lonesome ways and started at his own loud cry of "All's Well." But modern ideas have almost turned the night into day. While we slumber at home, hundreds are toiling that we may have our comforts in the morning. The baker is at work upon our morning rolls; the milkman is at his pump; the butcher is busy choosing his oldest cow to kill; the poor watchman is slumbering in a cold doorway; the fireman is on the alert; the drug clerk sits heavy-eyed, prepared to furnish our paregoric or court plaster; the telephone girl chews gum and reads her novels while the clock chimes wearily on; the printer clicks away at his machine; the reporter prowls through the streets hunting down items to go with our coffee and toast; the policeman lurks at a corner, ready to smash our best hat with his deadly locust. These night workers form a little world to themselves. They grow to know each other, and there seems to be a sympathy among them on account of their peculiar life. The night policemen, and morning newspaper men, the cab drivers, the street cleaners (not referring to Houston now), the late street car drivers, the all-night restaurant men, the "rounders," the wiernerwurst men and the houseless "bums" come to know and greet one another each night on their several regular or aimless rounds. Only those who are called by business or curiosity to walk into this night world know of the strange sights it presents. At 12 o'clock the night in the city may be said to begin. By that time the day toilers are at home, and the night shift is on. The street cars have ceased to run, and the last belated citizen, hurrying home from "the lodge" or the political caucus is, or should be, at home. Even the slow-moving couples who have been to the theater and partaken of oysters at the "cafe for ladies and gents," have bowed to the inevitable and reluctantly turned homeward. And now come forth things that flourish only in the shade; white-faced things with owl-like eyes who prowl in the night and greet the dawn with sullen faces and the sunlight with barred doors and darkened windows. Here and there down the streets are arc lights, and swinging doors, and about are grouped a pale and calm-faced gentry with immaculate clothes and white flexible hands. They are soft-voiced and courteous, but their eyes are shifty and their tread light and cruel as a tiger's. They are gamblers, and they will "rob" you as politely and honestly as any stock broker or railroad manipulator in Christendom. Byron says: "The devil's in the moon for mischief; not the longest day; The twenty-first of June sees half the mischief in a wicked way As does three hours on which the moonshine falls." And still worse; a night when there is no moon to shine. Darkness is the great awakener of latent passions and the chief inciter to evil. When night comes, the drunkard doubles his cups; the roisterer's voice is unrestrained; even the staid and sober citizen, the bulwark of civil and social government looses the checkrein of his demeanor and mingles in the relaxations of the social circle. The tongue of gallantry takes on new license, and even the brow and lip of innocence itself invite admiration with a bolder and a surer charm. What wonder, then, that lawlessness o'erreaches itself, and sin flaunts her flaming skirts in the very face of purity when darkness reigns! In the all-night saloons there is always someone to be found. At little tables in the corners one can always see two or three worn and shady-looking customers, sitting silent, brooding over the wrongs the world has dealt them, or talking in low, querulous tones to each other of their troubles. A smart policeman, with shining buttons and important step, goes down the street twirling his club. He tries the doors carefully of the big stores, the wholesale houses and the jewelry stores to see if they are securely locked. He never makes a mistake and wastes his time trying the fastenings of the small shops. A few gay young men stroll by occasionally, with their coat collars turned up, laughing loudly and scattering slang and coarse jests. Down gloomy side streets steal a few dim figures, clinging to the shadows, walking with dragging, shuffling feet down the inclined plane of eternity. These are disreputable, but harmless, creatures, who have stolen out to buy cocaine and opium with which to dull the bite of misery's sharp tooth. In high windows dim lights burn, where anxious love watches by the bedside of suffering mortality through the long night watches, listening to the moans that it cannot quiet, and wondering at the mysterious Great Plan that so hides its workings toward a beneficent end. Down by the bayou throb the great arteries of the town, where all night long the puffing of steam and the click of piston rods keep its life streams moving; where men move like demons in the red glow of furnace fires; where snorting engines creep in and out among miles of laden freight cars, and lanterns dance and circle amid a wilderness of tracks and shifting trains like big eccentric fire-flies. One can always see a few men perched on high stools at the all-night lunch counters. They are for the most part members of the night-working force, telegraph operators, night clerks, railroad men, messenger boys, streetcar conductors, reporters, cab drivers, printers and watchmen, who drop in to drink a cup of coffee or eat a sandwich. The night clerk at the drug store sees much of the sadness and some of the badness of life. Customers stray into the store at all times of the night. The man with the disarranged attire and impatient manner is a frequent visitor. He has a doctor's prescription for some sick member of his family, and thinks it a greater blessing that he finds a store open and a clerk ready to compound his medicine than to be obliged to tug at a night bell for half an hour to wake up a sleepy clerk, as in times gone by. Desperate-looking men sometimes come in to buy poison--generally morphine--and occasionally a hopeless, wretched woman with eyes big with hope deferred and an unpitying fate, will creep in and beg for something that will stay the pain forever. Often, in the darkest hour that they say comes before dawn, a man will enter in a hurry, buy a few pounds of prepared chalk and slip around the corner and drive away in a wagon containing two big bright tin cans full of pure, rich Jersey milk. In the infirmaries and hospitals the nurses and genial-faced Sisters of Mercy bend over the beds of sufferers all through the dreary night, and bring to many an aching heart, as well as to pain-racked bodies, consolation and solace. The doctors, too, see much of the seamy side of night life. They are out by day and by night; the telephone rouses them from warm beds at all hours; whenever a knife flashes in a brawl, the doctor must be sent for; if a lady feels a nervous fluttering at the heart, out must come the carriage, and he must be sent for to feel her pulse in the middle of the night. Often he watches at the bedside of some stricken wife or child, while the husband is away roistering in evil company. * * * * * On a dry goods box sits a tramp, gently swinging his feet. It is 2 o'clock in the morning, and there he sits chewing a splinter with a frequent side glance toward the policeman on the next corner. What is he doing there? Nothing. Has he any hopes, fears, dislikes, ambitions, hates, loves or desires? Very few. It may be that his is the true philosophy. John Davidson says of him in a poem: I hang about the streets all day, At night I hang about; I sleep a little when I may, But rise, betimes, the morning's scout, For through the year I always hear Aloud, aloft, a ghostly shout. My clothes are worn to threads and loops, My skin shows here and there; About my face, like seaweed, droops My tangled beard, my tangled hair, From cavernous and shaggy brows My stony eyes untroubled stare. I know no handicraft, no art, But I have conquered fate; For I have chosen the better part, And neither hope, nor fear, nor hate; With placid breath, on pain and death, My certain alms, alone I wait. And daily, nightly comes the call, The pale unechoing note, The faint "Aha" sent from the wall Of Heaven, but from no ruddy throat Of human breed or seraph's seed, A phantom voice that cries by rote. This is a state closely bordering upon Nirvana. Tennyson struck another chord that sooner or later most people come to feel, when he said: "For, not to desire or admire, If a man could learn it, were more Than to walk all day like a sultan Of old in a garden of spice." The tramp sits out the weary hours of the night or else wanders in dreary aimlessness about the streets, or crawls into some vestibule or doorway for a few brief hours of unquiet slumber. His is a pitiful solution of life at its best, for, though he has acquired a numbness in place of what was once a keen pain, it is directly contrary to the plan of the human mind to await in hopeless stolidity the "certain alms" of death. * * * * * One of the most important of the world's industries carried on at night is the making of the great morning daily newspaper. The average reader who unfolds his paper above his coffee cup in the morning rarely reflects that it represents the labor of half a hundred men, a great number of whom bend their lagging steps homeward only when the newsboy has begun to wake the morning echoes with his familiar cry. When night comes the editorial day-force is ready for home; the Associated Press wire is rattling in its messages from all parts of the world; the telegraph editor is busy putting "heads" on the type-written copy of the telegraph operator, and the night editor has rolled up his sleeves, laid his club handy, and breathes a silent prayer for help to the Goddess of Invective as he begins to wade through his pile of missives from correspondents. The State wires are opened, and the messenger boys are beginning to arrive with specials. The city editor and his force are in, and are busy writing out the local news from the notes they have taken during the day. The phone rings, a reporter seizes his hat and is off to get the item--perhaps an affray--someone run over by a wagon--a fire-a hold-up, or burglary--something that the good citizens must not miss as they eat their hash and muffins at breakfast. The editorial room at night sees many strange characters and scenes. People come up on all kinds of curious missions. A citizen stumbles up the stairs and nearly falls into the room. The force simply glances at him and keeps on working. His hair is frowzled; his coat is buttoned in the wrong buttonholes; he wears no collar; and in his blinking eyes, a roguish twinkle strives to overcome the effects of loss of sleep. He is a well-known citizien, and the force marvels slightly at his unusual condition. He staggers over to the telegraph operator and clutches the railing around his desk. "Shay," he says in a bibulous voice, "wantscher to telgraph startlin' news to ze outside world. Cable 'm to Europe 'n spread glad tidings to all shivilized countries. Get shome bull'tins out at onesh." The telegraph operator does not look up, and the gentleman tacks with difficulty and steers against the railroad editor. "Whatsher doin'?" he says. "Railroads," says that gentleman shortly. "Zat's ze sing. Gotter bigesht railroad item ever saw. Give you two columns cause tremendoush 'citement railroad shircles." The railroad editor writes calmly on, and the visitor gives him a reproachful look and bears down upon the city editor. "Shay, friend," he says, "gozzer bigges scoop 'n city news world ever heard. No ozzer paper 'n town knows it." "What is it?" says the city editor, without turning his head. "Appalin' sensation 'n Firs' Ward. Shend four, five reporters my house at onesh. I'm goin' back now. Had _twins_ my housh when lef' home. Goin' back to shee 'f any more 'rived. Come back 'n let you know if find any. Sho long, gen'lemen. Keep two columns on front page open 'till get back." Later on three or four young gentlemen drop in. They speak low, and are courteous and conciliatory. They are well-dressed, carry canes and seem to have been out enjoying themselves. One or two of them have torn coats and disarranged ties. One has a handkerchief bound over his eye. They confer deferentially with the city editor, and certain words and phrases, half-caught, tell the tale of their mission: "Unfortunate affair--police--best families--publicity--not seriously hurt--upper circles too much wine--keep out names--heated argument--very sorry--friends again." Comes the hot lunch man with his basket filled with weirnerwurst and mustard, ham sandwiches, boiled eggs, cold chicken. The staff is too busy, and he lugs his basket upstairs where the printers are at work. A boy brings in a special telegram. The night editor opens and reads it, and then springs to his feet. He grasps a handful of his hair and kicks his chair ten feet away. "---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----" he yells. "Listen to this." It is a special by wire from a country correspondent. This is what it says: "Spring has opened here. The birds are singing merrily in the trees and the peach trees are in full bloom. The weather has moderated considerably and the farmers are hopeful. The fruit crop will be assured unless we should have a cold snap sufficient to injure the buds." "---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----" remarks the night editor again, and then, his vocabulary failing to express his feelings, he bites his cigar in two and sits down again. A man in a seedy frock coat and a big walking cane saunters in and draws a chair close to the night editor's desk. "When I was with Lee in the Valley of Virginia--" he begins. "I am sorry you are not with him now," says the night editor. The visitor sighs, borrows a cigar and a match, and drifts out to see if he can get the ear of someone of a more indulgent temper. Between 1 and 2 o'clock the city editor and his assistants are through their work, the railroad man turns in "30" and they troop away, leaving the night editor to remain until the last. In the composing room the printers have been working away since 7 o'clock on their keyboards like so many Paderewskis. They quit about 3:30 a.m. As the night editor leaves, another army has begun its march. These are the people who rise at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. The mailing clerks are preparing the papers for the out-of-town mails; the newsboys are crowding around for their papers, and abroad in the land are audible the first faint sounds of the coming day. Wheels are rattling over the dark streets. The milk man is abroad, and the butcher's cart is making its rounds. Policemen relax their vigilance, and around the coffee stands is gathered quite a crowd of night workers who drop in for something hot before going home. It is five hours yet before my lady arouses in her boudoir, and hundreds of her slaves are astir in her service. When she seats herself at ten at the breakfast table arrayed in becoming morning toilet, she never thinks of her loyal vassals that have been toiling during the night to prepare her dainty breakfast. Miles away the milkman and his assistants rise at 2 o'clock to procure the milk for her tea; the baker many hours earlier to furnish her toast and rolls, and the newspaper she so idly glances at represents twenty-four hours' continuous labor of the brainiest, most intelligent, courtly, learned and fascinating set of men in the world. The night editor stops, perhaps, to eat a light lunch at a stand, and chat a few minutes with the night workers he meets there. As he wends his way homeward, he meets a citizen who has for once for some reason arisen at what seems to him an unholy hour of the morning. "Good morning," says the citizen, "what in the world are you doing up so early?" "Oh," says the night editor, "we newspaper men have to rise real early in order to get the paper out by breakfast time." "To be sure, to be sure," says the citizen. "I never thought of that!" (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, March 29, 1896.) Newspaper Poets The journalist-poet seems to be a hybrid born of the present day when rapidity and feverish haste are the necessary conditions to success. There is hardly a newspaper of the first class in the land that does not include a jingler in its staff. A journalist is one thing, and a poet should be another. A combination of the two--or rather a man who tries to do the work of both--is very nearly a union of opposites. A journalist is a recorder of transient impressions; he seizes whatever is worthy of note from the swiftly-moving stream of current events, and stamping his data with the seal of his own originality--if he possesses any--he flings his paper damp from the press at the heads of the public and is off pursuing fresh quarry. He is a machine--but of admirable efficiency--that threshes the chaff from the million happenings of the day, and delivers the wheat to those who would flounder helplessly among the piled sheaves if left to themselves. The poet should be of different mold. He should not be vexed with the task of winnowing, but, with the golden grains laid before him by his more active brother of the winged feet, he should be allowed to sit apart and view life in its entirety with calmer, larger, and unobstructed vision. A poet-journalist may rise to be a journalist of renown, but he will never be a great poet. The muse is too shy to appear daily at the bidding of an ink-grimed copy boy. In glancing over the daily papers, we occasionally find a verse of merit, that, though evidently scribbled during the daily grind that must come, whether inspiration impels or not, yet has some touch of the true fire. Indeed, many gems that will long be remembered have thus been dashed off in a few minutes, but these are exceptions. Some paper mentioned recently that Frank Stanton wrote his exposition ode at his desk amid the confusion of a newspaper office in two hours, fanning himself with one hand and writing with the other. The ode was said to have been a good one, and much commendation was bestowed upon the writer. Now, this is unjust to Mr. Stanton's fame, for he can write poetry, and the people will persist in praising those daily jingles of his in the Atlanta Constitution. No one seems to suggest that he could have written a much better ode by taking a day or two over it, and not overheating himself and having to waste so much vital energy in fanning. * * * * * The idea intended to be advanced is that it is more than likely that newspaper versifiers as a rule do not claim to be poets, and would rather be known as journalists who sometimes drop into rhyming skits as a relaxation and for diversity. The great public, though, must dub anything poetry that rhymes, and often spoil a good journalist's reputation by insisting on his being passed on to posterity as a poor poet. A good paragraph on a timely subject often gains a spiciness by being turned in rhyme--especially in the form of parody--but our newspaper poets have not yet learned the fact that an article uninteresting in the form of prose will not gain in merit when written even in the most faultlessly metred verse. Somebody has described poetry as lines of equal length, with rhymes at the end and sense in the middle. The daily column which so many newspaper versifiers now turn out is a mistake, if it is poetic fame they are seeking. The "demnition grind" as the wheel turns will soon exhaust all the water in the Pierian spring, as the grist itself bears witness. This is said in reference to those who are really ambitious of winning poetic laurels. Those who attach nothing more than ephemeral importance to their topical skits need no criticism, for they will incur no disappointment. Some of the more serious newspaper rhymesters evidently are making attempts more ambitious than the time occupied in their preparation warrants, and the hasty work and lack of finish and pruning plainly visible in their efforts are to be deplored. If the truth were known, inspiration has played a small part in the production of the most famous poems of the world. It is the patient toil, the unremitting and laborious cutting away of inferior parts; the accurate balance and the careful polish that develops the diamond from the rough stone to the perfect gem. One poem a month from some of our prolific writers might claim our admiration for thirty days, at least, but three in a day have a tendency to force us to save up a portion of our appreciation for the three more we will have dished up to us in the morning. Our Southern poets especially are guilty of over-production. Those among them most generally accepted as representative voices among our writers of verse are occupying positions in which they are doing better work in other than poetic lines. A few of them have talent that would bring them fame if allowed space, time and scope for full development and use. Mr. Will T. Hale, whose poems appear in the _Memphis Commercial-Appeal_, shows a clear and praiseworthy conception of the situation when he says: "I dare say that Tennessee poets, including among the many, Walter Malone, Howard McGee, R. M. Fields, Leland Rankin, Mrs. Hilliard, Mrs. Boyle, Mrs. Gilchrist, Mrs. Barrow and Mr. Lamb, have written jingles which they never called poetry, never expected to be taken as anything more than ephemeral things to be glanced at and forgotten; written in rhyme because as easily written as a prose paragraph. I, an humble versifier, a toiler in newspaperdom, like my confreres throughout the State, arrogating nothing to myself, but pleased if my writings are copied and complimented beyond their deserts--I have done so. I shall continue to do so. Why should it be insisted that I want to cram it down one's throat as poetry? Let me jinglify if I want to." Mr. Hale realizes the transient nature of such verse as the journalist must needs write to fill space, although he has written in this way some gems that study could scarcely improve upon. * * * * * It is doubtful if Mr. Frank Stanton, who has struck some high and abiding chords upon his lyre, could be, or would care to be, remembered by the jingles he turns out daily for his newspaper. Yet, if the popular impression is correct, Mr. Stanton aspires to poetic proficiency and fame. One poem on which he would spend days of labor would do much more toward gaining him reputation than the wonderful number of rhymes that he turns out within that space of time. A short time ago he dashed off two or three verses on a Midway dancer, called something like "Papinta," that had a rhythm and a lilt and swinging grace to it that were fascinating and truly admirable. The poem was delicate, airy and sprite-like, and one could almost see the form of the dancer and hear the castanets and guitars while reading the musical lines. But the amount of verse he writes daily will not permit of such a high average, and the moral of it all is that, while he is succeeding as a journalist and an interesting writer upon the day's topics, his future as a poet is not being benefited by his overproduction of poetry at present. * * * * * The late Eugene Field might in time have become a poet of considerable ability, but there is little question that his newspaper labors were too onerous to allow of a thorough development of his poetic powers. The verses he wrote have always been popular because they were simple and musical, and addressed themselves to an almost universal sympathy for children, and his poems, charming and lovable as they were, stopped short of being great. It was the subject and the sentiment, rather than the literary proficiency of his poetical work, that made him so widely known. A poem to be great and long-remembered must be erected in the same way that a house is built. The foundation, the superstructure, the architectural proportions, the ornament and finish must be the result of care and labor, or else it abideth not. Judge Albion W. Tourgee, whose opinions on matters literary deserve respect, however it be concerning his political proclivities, advises poetic as well as other literary aspirants to always work in a room with an open fire--not for the sake of the fire, but in order that he may burn five sheets for every one he sends to the printer. W. S. Porter. (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, November 24, 1895.) Part Three: Newspaper Poetry Topical Verse (Dramatis Personae: One singer, one baritone horn, one bass drum.) There was a man in our town, And he was very lazy; He made his wife do everything, Till she was almost crazy. Although he was a Christian man, He made her come upstairs And wake him up to say "Amen!" When she had said his prayers. One night before he went to sleep He made her kneel and pray And when she finished, wake him up; Then this good man did say: "Oh, Lord, please answer my wife's prayer." And then to sleep he fell. The Lord did, and the man awoke To find himself in ----. _Baritone horns_ "Ta-ta-rum." _Bass Drums_ "Boom." (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, May 17, 1896.) Cape Jessamines "Cape jessamines! Remove them from my sight! I can not bear that odor, cloying sweet, That hangs about them like a heavy sigh. They bring back to my memory haunting days Of deep regret, and open all my wounds again. Fair, dream-like flower, that in this Southern town Within the dark green copses of thy birth Hangeth faint and heavy with thine own sweet breath, To me ye are a mockery, and your odor foul. Come, sit thee down, Rinaldo, I will tell thee all. Knewest thou fair Rosamond, the Houston belle, Who years ago, like some fair Lorelei of old Upon the hearts of all our gallants set her feet? I loved her madly and I swore to win Her from the suing courtiers in her train. Alas! Rinaldo--this sudden faintness--quick--some wine! Ah! thanks, it gives me strength to tell the tale. For years I have not been myself. Since one Sad night that in my mem'ry burns white-hot Like some sad bark that washes, derelict Within the trough of sullen alien tides, I've drifted down the mournful muttering seas; But at the smell of jessamines, my brain Quick strikes those aching chords of old, And all the latest agony revives. It grasps me now--more wine, Rinaldo--thanks; I'm better now. 'Twas on one summer's night I stood with Rosamond to count the stars. With downcast eyes and softly heaving breast, She pledged a kiss for every star that fell. My pretty, sweet, shy dove. Methinks they fell Too seldom till, anon, some frolic boys Sent up a sky rocket, and when it burst Upon her lips I pressed full seventeen. But--peace! I wander from my theme. At last my love o'erpowered, and I spake In thrilling tones, and wooed her there. What clogs my heart? More wine, Rinaldo, quick! Oh, then she fastened on me those dark orbs, In them illimitable sadness, and such store Of pity that her face angelic seemed. More wine, Rinaldo--thanks. I'm better now. The while the garden there was heavy with The odor of cape jessamines, and pinned Upon her breast a cluster of them lay. And in her hair some snowy buds were twined; Almost oppressive was the odor of the flower. And that is why the smell of jessamines Unto my heart such bitter thoughts recalls. Rinaldo, quick! A glass of wine! My brain Is reeling! Another glass! Is there no more? Well, then, I'll cease. I married Rosamond And since then I can't stand those blooming Blarsted cape jessamine flowers. See?" (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, April 26, 1896.) The Cricket When the moonlight falls from the star-strewn sky; Comes the tune of the mockingbird; When the morning dawns and the roses sigh, Then the lark's sweet voice is heard. When all things smile And the hours beguile, Then the hearts of the singers are stirred. When the dull, cold nigh makes the heart sink low; And the death watch ticks in the wall, And the soul lies crouched like a harried foe, Comes the cricket's merry call. In the hour of fear, With his note of cheer, Rings his sprightly madrigal. (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, May 17, 1896.) My Broncho Yoho! Away o'er the mesquite sward, With stirruped foot and a slackened rein; With drumming hoofs, the hills toward. And our track the boundless grassy plain; Light in the saddle and ready hand; Ride in the teeth of the wind and sand, Wind, and sand, and rain. Knees pressed tight on the saddle flap Where the lasso dangles from its string Over the rifle scabbard strap, And the canteen and suaderos swing; The wind sings hollow in my ear, Nor sail nor wheel could follow near, Sail, nor wheel, nor wing. On dusty roads and streets there prowl Bent riders perched on noiseless wheels; Misshapen things with mannish scowl; Strange crafts with unknown bows and keels; Queer fish enmeshed in Folly's net; Scare human, flesh, or fowl--scarce yet Red herring, flesh, or fowl. Yoho! O'er the hills and far away, My broncho spurns the gravel slope; This is the ride for a man alway; The valleys at gallop, the hills at a lope; Who would exchange for the senseless wheel The life and strength that the horsemen feel? Life, and strength, and hope. (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, April 26, 1896.) The Modern Venus The golden apple Paris gave To the most beautiful, To the fairest Aphrodite fell, Although she had no pull. She did not need to plead her cause, Nor canvass, sue or beg; She did not run her rivals down, Nor pull her best friend's leg. She stood in beauteous youthfulness, Incarnate rose of love; When Paris held the apple forth She did not scrouge or shove. Alas! our modern Venuses Far different methods use To gain the palm of loveliness Whenever one we choose. Towns, churches and societies Now offer prizes rare To one among the pretty girls Who is adjudged most fair. Our modern Venus hustles forth And campaigns all the town, And begs men to buy votes for her; Smith, Johnson, Jones and Brown. 'Twas not thus Venus Victrix gained The gift of Priam's son. By beauty, not by begging, was The golden apple won. (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, May 3, 1896.) Celestial Sounds With three men on the bases, And one to tie the score, The batter rubs sand on his hands, The runners play off more. He hits a home run o'er the fence, The air is full of cheers; The sharp crack of the ball and bat Is music of the spheres. (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, April 26, 1896.) The Snow 'Tis thirty miles, you say? Ah, well, Come, mount! I am no hot-house flower. I love the cold and the north wind's power; Rioting, buffeting, rushing pellmell. Did you think that the colonel's daughter Was afraid to ride in a little cold Back to the fort? Why, Travers, you ought to Do guard duty till you're gray and old. Come, mount--Ah, this is life again; Like a mustang in a hunter's pen, So many months I have fretted sore For a gallop on Firefly's back once more. Going to snow?--Well, what do I care? I told you, Travers, I am not afraid. There are few things that I would not dare; You can go back if you'd rather have stayed. There, now, I was but jesting. No need for that flush resting On your cheek at what I said. Why did they send you to meet me--Oh, You begged the task as a favor! There is about your words a savor Of something that would hardly go Unrebuked if your colonel heard you. As I am the colonel's daughter, You must know that as fire and water Are things that must be kept asunder; So I from a common private; Lest the great big world should wonder; I must not for a moment connive at Your treading its dictates under. Your hand from my bridle rein, sir! What is it you say?--the snow? I take no alarm from your answer; Just a big white flake or so. Ride for my life?--Why, Travers, Are you frightened, man? Would you have us Racing for a stray snowflake? Ah, you will hat it--off, then; Though I positively can not take Alarm, though you tell me so often. * * * * * It's no use, Travers, draw rein; Our wonderful ride has been in vain; It was glorious though, for a while. I'm so cold, and the horrid snow Grows deeper with every mile, And my heart grows faint, and every blow Of the icy wind is death, As it catches my breath And bears my soul out to the snow. No, no, I will not ride on. My strength and my will are gone; Where is our course, can you tell me? Backward or forward, or where? You can not? Then it were well we Stopped here--for, see, in the air Comes the snow in eddying waves; What a pure nice fall for our graves. What, Travers, your coat?--No, keep it; I said no! Do I have to repeat it? Do you forget that you are a private? And I--Oh, God, and what am I, To lie--but come; let's arrive at Some understanding why I always flout you and scorn you. I'll speak to the point, and I warn you I will speak my heart's truth ere I die. I am so sleepy and cold; Is this the maiden bold Who a few hours ago spoke so brave, And claimed such a deal of courage? So dauntless and firm (and save In one thing) quite up to her age. I'm freezing, Travers, help me down; Hark! was not that the sound Of church bells? Travers, come quick I'm afraid of this horrible whiteness around. Look up, Travers, into my eyes; Do you see anything in them to prize? The drifts are rising fast around us, Death has come at last and found us. I am the colonel's daughter, and you Are only--my Jack and the man I love And always have, the long years through. Come, Jack! At last my head finds rest; Draw me closer upon your breast. Has it grown dark? I can not see, But I can feel your dear, strong arm. I am not cold now; it must be The snow was a dream, and we Are at the barracks. Do not keep Me waiting longer; I must sleep. --W. S. P. (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, February 23, 1896.) Her Choice The trump had sounded, and on pinions white Ascended they who in the grave had lain; And seraph bands in floods of golden light Guided before the pure and heavenly train. And on, past comet and past lurid star They winged their way unto the throne of grace; The burning world behind them glowed far, As low in worship, bowed each angel face. There was among the chosen of the earth A woman beautiful and young and fair; So sweet and chaste, and breathing love and worth, She stood the loveliest of the angels there. And then from out the band about the throne, With eager eyes and outstretched hands, there came The forms of two. Each once had been her own, And she on earth of each had borne the name. (Oh, heaven being love, why should not love be thine, And heart to heart strayed souls again unite, And wife to husband there for aye entwine Their spirit tendrils where is no blight?) And each had been her husband; and each spoke Her name and claimed her with fond eyes And beckoning hands, till from her dream she woke And gazed. Then spake a Voice kind-toned and wise: "Choose you between them who your mate shall be; For heaven were not heaven if it were to lose The other half of self, the ecstasy Of loving and of being loved--so choose." The woman raised her down-cast eyes, and o'er The gathered host of spirits swept her gaze. Twice had her heart gone out in love before; Twice had she felt its warm, eternal rays. Wild, sweet and tender to her memory came Her first love's recollections, like the start Of mighty breakers. Then the steady flame Uprising from her second smote her heart. With pleading eyes, the two stayed on her choice, Each thinking one must win and one must lose. And then she spake, uplifting her sweet voice, And said in tender tones: "And must I choose?" "Yea, verily," the Voice replied. "Be free To follow where your heart points out the way. For love, once kindled, fills eternity; 'Tis heaven, not earth, that lights his brightest ray." And then the woman, with fond beaming eye, Spake up and said: "These two are both N. G. They made me tired. I think I'll try That nice blond angel by that apple tree." --W. S. P. (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, January 12, 1896.) "Little Things, but Ain't They Whizzers?" The following song was written for the benefit of any theatrical or musical entertainment that desires to use it in Houston. Any company rendering it outside the city is liable to a fine of $1,000,000, as it has been composed solely for the pleasure of Houston audiences, which it is sure to please. The person singing the song, if a gent, will dress in loud check trousers, tan shoes, and high white hat, advancing to the footlights, smiling, and carrying a large cane. If sung by a lady, the costume is the same, with smaller checks, and parasol instead of cane. The following lines are to be spoken: "Ladies and Gentlemen: You must excuse my hoarseness tonight, as I was up late last night rocking the baby to sleep. (_Laughter._) I love babies. (_Great laughter._) When they get molasses on their fingers and use your shirt front for a piano, it makes a man think marriage is a success, now doesn't it? (_Howls of laughter from the family circle._) Last night I came home late from the lodge (_applause_); and after I took off my shoes and slipped into the room and commenced rocking the cradle, my wife woke up and said, 'What are you doing, Charlie?' 'I'm getting the baby quiet,' said I. 'Come to bed, you fool,' says she, 'the baby has been in bed here with me for two hours.' (_Prolonged yells of laughter._) Babies are little things, but are very important institutions. That reminds me of a song." (_Looks at orchestra, which strikes up at once._) (_Sings_): As we wander down life's pathway Plucking roses as we go, Often do we prick our finger With the little thorns that grow, Little drops make up the ocean, Little chips fill up the pot; Little drinks make great big jaglets, Little wives can make home hot. Little things--but ain't they whizzers! Little bees have biggest stings; Little girls are sometimes Tartars-- Look out for the little things. (_Bass horn--"Ta-ra-rum."_) (_Spoken_)--"Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it is not always the biggest things that are the most valuable. I remember a few nights ago I was in a poker game. It was not in this city, of course, for since Charlie Helm was elected marshal there is no gambling in Hooston (_can also be pronounced Howston_). (_Vociferous cheering in gallery._) I will tell you about it: (_Sings_): Once while I was playing poker, I hid four kings in my shoe; And I said, when someone raised me, "I won't do a thing to you." Then I shoved in all my money, And I reached out for the pot-- But a fellow shouted, "Drop it! I've four aces, what you got?" Little things--but ain't they whizzers! Little one spots downed the kings, And my hand it was not in it When he showed the little things. (_Deafening applause from the audience; two men fall out of private boxes overcome with laughter, and every man in the audience claps his hands for fear it will be thought he does not understand the game. The singer will please smile indulgently, and when the noise has subsided, continue_)-- I engaged board once in Hooston (_or Howston_), At a house not far from here; They were fashionable people, And the grub was scarce and dear. I turned into bed quite early, But I jumped out with a roar, And I scratched myself two hours Then slept upon the floor. Little things--but ain't they whizzers! Never felt such bites and stings! When you go to bed in Howston, Look out for the little things. (_Plaster falls from the opera-house ceiling, and the audience stand up in their chairs and wave their handkerchiefs. The singer will here do a few steps of a clog dance, and exit r. Whistles, yells, and calls and screams from dress circle. Gallery totters. Enter singer, smiling and bowing, wearing another coat and hat--Sings:_) I have got a girl in Hooston, And she rides upon a bike; You should see her when she spins to Harrisburg upon the pike. She wears bloomers, though she don't weigh More than eighty pounds or so; Now, I wonder how she does it, When I see her move 'em so. Little things--but ain't they whizzers! Pair of bloomers hung on strings; Wonder they don't break to pieces, Such hard work for little things. (_The audience goes wild with delight, gentlemen throw their hats at the ceiling, ladies shriek with delight, and the gallery resolves itself into a Republican convention, while the police pound with their clubs on the wall and cry "Encore!"_) _Curtain_. (_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, April 26, 1896.) Last Fall of the Alamo "I am-- Excuse me, I was--the Alamo. Ye who have tears to shed, Shed. Shades of Crockett, Bowie and the rest Who in my sacred blood-stained walls were slain! Shades of the fifty or sixty solitary survivors, Each of whom alone escaped; And shades of the dozen or so daughters, Sisters, cousins and aunts of the Alamo, Protest! Against this foul indignity. Ain't there enough jobs in the city That need whitewashing Without jumping on me? Did I stand off 5,000 Mexicans in '36 To be kalsomined and wall-papered And fixed up with dados and pink mottoes In '96? Why don't you put bloomers on me at once, And call me The New Alamo?-- Tamaleville! You make me tired. I can stand a good deal yet, So don't have any more chrysanthemum shows In me. If you do I'll fall on you. Sabe?" (_Houston Daily Post_, Monday morning, April 13, 1896.) 
61734	----	POSTSCRIPTS by O. Henry With an Introduction _by_ Florence Stratton Publishers Harper & Brothers New York and London MCMXXIII Postscripts Copyright, 1923, by Houston Post Copyright, 1923, by Harper & Brothers Printed in the U.S.A. To Mr. Roy G. Watson TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword The Sensitive Colonel Jay A Matter of Loyalty Taking No Chances The Other Side of It Journalistically Impossible The Power of Reputation The Distraction of Grief A Sporting Interest Had a Use for It The Old Landmark A Personal Insult Toddlekins Reconciliation Buying a Piano Too Late Nothing to Say "Goin Home Fur Christmas" Just a Little Damp Her Mysterious Charm Convinced His Dilemma Something for Baby Some Day A Green Hand A Righteous Outburst Getting at the Facts Just for a Change Too Wise A Fatal Error Prompt The Rake-Off The Telegram An Opportunity Declined Correcting a Great Injustice A Startling Demonstration Leap Year Advice After Supper His Only Opportunity Getting Acquainted Answers to Inquiries City Perils Hush Money Relieved No Time to Lose A Villainous Trick A Forced March Book Reviews A Conditional Pardon Inconsistency Bill Nye To a Portrait A Guarded Secret A Pastel Jim Board and Ancestors An X-Ray Fable A Universal Favorite Spring The Sporting Editor on Culture A Question of Direction The Old Farm Willing to Compromise Ridiculous Guessed Everything Else The Prisoner of Zembla Lucky Either Way The "Bad Man" A Slight Mistake Delayed A Good Story Spoiled Revenge No Help for It Rileys Luck "Not So Much a Tam Fool" A Guess-Proof Mystery Story Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Futility The Wounded Veteran Her Ruse Why Conductors Are Morose "Only to Lie--" The Pewee The Sunday Excursionist Decoration Day Charge of the White Brigade An Inspiration Coming to Him His Pension The Winner Hungry Henry's Ruse A Proof of Love One Consolation An Unsuccessful Experiment Superlatives By Easy Stages Even Worse The Shock The Cynic Speaking of Big Winds Unknown Title An Original Idea Calculations A Valedictory Solemn Thoughts Explaining It Her Failing A Disagreement An E for a Knee The Unconquerable An Expensive Veracity Grounds for Uneasiness It Covers Errors Recognition His Doubt A Cheering Thought What It Was Vanity Identified The Apple How It Started Red Conlin's Eloquence Why He Hesitated Turkish Questions Somebody Lied Marvelous The Confession of a Murderer "Get Off the Earth" The Stranger's Appeal The Good Boy The Colonel's Romance A Narrow Escape A Years Supply Eugene Field Slightly Mixed Knew What Was Needed Some Ancient News Notes A Sure Method Endnotes Foreword It is probable that with the presentation of these, among the earliest of the writings of William Sidney Porter (O. Henry), there is nothing left to be added to the total of his work, and that they will close, as they in a large measure opened the career of America's greatest short story writer. Aside from the intrinsic merit in the newspaper writings of O. Henry which are here given, they have the additional fascination of disclosing to all who have read and know O. Henry from his maturer work the budding of his genius, the first outcroppings of that style, that vivid drawing of character, that keen sense of humor, and that wondrous understanding of human nature which afterward marked him as one of the world's geniuses. It is as though one might go back and watch with eyes that have seen its fullest development and matured beauty, the forming and unfolding of a rose; as though one who has listened to the plaudits of centuries might go back four hundred years and see and study Raphael as he began to wield the brush which subsequently wrought such wonderful magic. Having a high appreciation of the genius of O. Henry, the compiler took occasion while spending a year in Austin, Texas, where O. Henry had lived, to ask his friends and neighbors about him. Among them was Mr. Ed McLean, secretary to the railroad commission, a personal friend of O. Henry's, who told her about the column O. Henry had conducted on the Houston _Post_. He thought O. Henry must have worked for the _Post_ some time in the latter part of 1896 to the fall of 1897. A visit to the Houston _Post_ office and a search through the files of that period were without results. But a call on Mr. A. E. Clarkson, who was with the _Post_ then and who is now business manager of the _Post_, was more successful. Mr. Clarkson looked up the old records in the business office, showing when O. Henry received pay checks, which served as a guide to pages of a year earlier, where the altogether distinctive touch of O. Henry proved that the goal was reached. Here was found the same discernment, the same insight, the same humor, the same style which runs through all his work like a marked thread interwoven into a rare fabric. In many of the brief paragraphs and short stories were found the idioplasm which in the rich soil of his fuller experience grew into some of the masterpieces of his later life. Thus in the files of the Houston _Post_ of the period between October 18, 1895, and June 22, 1896, were found the writings which make up this volume. It was characteristic of O. Henry's modesty that these were unsigned. They are published as they originally appeared in "Tales of the Town," "Postscripts and Pencillings," and "Some Postscripts," under which titles O. Henry wrote at different times during his association with the _Post_. But the rediscovery of this work was not enough. To identify it as beyond question of doubt as that of O. Henry was imperative. To have offered these writings with less of precaution would have savored of literary vandalism, if not sacrilege. This identification has been made, and its sources are herewith given the reader as a part of the introduction of this volume. Here is an account by Mr. R. M. Johnston, who formerly controlled the Houston _Post_, of how he gave O. Henry the job in which he was first to demonstrate his remarkable story-telling gifts: Houston, Texas, October 21, 1922. Miss Florence Stratton, Beaumont, Texas. My dear Miss Stratton: You asked me to write some incidents of O. Henry's connection with the Houston _Post_ when I controlled that newspaper and I am glad to comply with your request. The first thing I ever heard of Mr. Porter, whose writing name was O. Henry, was when some one sent me a copy of the little publication, "The Rolling Stone," published in Austin. This was sent me by Mr. Ed McLean, Secretary of the Railroad Commission, a mutual friend of Mr. Porter and myself. Mr. McLean made the suggestion that Porter would be worth considering for a place as a writer on the _Post_. After reading _The Rolling Stone_ I made an appointment through Mr. McLean with Mr. Porter, who was at that time an employe of one of the banks at Austin. Subsequently I met him and made a contract with him to join the _Post_ editorial staff which he did in a short time. While on the paper his duties were somewhat of a varied nature. He had, however, a column on the editorial page daily filled with witticism, quaint little stories, etc. He also did some special assignment work in a very magnificent way. One morning while sitting at my desk he came to my office in his usual quiet, dignified way and laid a piece of cardboard on my table with the remark, "I don't suppose you will want this, but I thought I would let you look at it," and he walked out. After he had gone, I picked up the cardboard and found it was an unusual cartoon. I was so struck with it that I took it to his room and remarked, "Porter, did you do this?" He looked up with a faint smile, and said "Yes." I said to him that I did not know that he was a cartoonist, and his reply was that he did that kind of work for his own amusement at odd times. To make a long story short, we were in the midst of a very warm political campaign in Texas and during the campaign he drew some of the most magnificent cartoons that I have ever seen in print anywhere. They attracted attention, not only in Texas, but were copied freely throughout the United States. Mr. Porter was a lovely character and one of the brightest men that I have ever come in contact with. He was modest, almost to the fault of self-effacement. His leaving the Houston _Post_ was an irretrievable loss to the paper, but the means possibly of developing the greatest short story writer of this or any other age. Very sincerely your friend, (Signed) R. M. Johnston. A letter from former Governor Hobby of Texas, who worked with O. Henry on the _Post_ during the time that he was producing the column: Office of W. P. HOBBY Houston, Texas. 502 Carter Building, Houston, Texas. October 10, 1922. Miss Florence Stratton, Beaumont, Texas. My dear Miss Stratton: In the first years of my employment by the Houston _Post_, O. Henry, whose name was Sidney Porter, was a member of the _Post_ staff. As is well known, Mr. Porter began his daily journalistic work as a special feature writer for the Houston _Post_ and the human interest and literary attractiveness of his writings were a source of delight to Texas readers. I enjoyed my acquaintance and association with Mr. Porter while a youth in the business office of the Houston _Post_ and not only the stories that he would write, but those he would tell me, made a deep impression on my mind. Mr. Porter's work was that of publishing a special feature column, "Some Postscripts and Pencillings" on the editorial page of the _Post_ during 1895-96, and I think a reproduction of his daily writings in that column, which then were followed by the readers of the Texas newspaper readers of the nation. Yours very truly, (Signed) W. P. Hobby. Mr. A. E. Clarkson, secretary-treasurer of the Houston _Post_, authenticates the O. Henry column from his personal knowledge. Houston, Texas. October 16, 1922. Miss Florence Stratton, 2020 Harrison, Beaumont, Texas. My dear Miss Stratton: In reply to your letter of October 15, I find that Mr. Porter, afterward known as O. Henry, was on the payroll of the Houston _Post_ from October 1895 to June 1896. During that time Mr. Porter wrote, and there was published from time to time in the columns of the _Post_ various articles headed "Some Postscripts" and "Postscripts and Pencillings." The writer was also connected with the _Post_ during this period, being in the business office. He was personally acquainted with Mr. Porter and knows of his own knowledge that the articles headed as stated above were written by him. Yours truly, THE HOUSTON POST (Signed) A. E. Clarkson, _Business Manager_. Neither the compilation, verification, nor publication of these newspaper writings of O. Henry would have been possible without the co-operation of Mr. Roy G. Watson, present proprietor and publisher of the Houston _Post_, whose consent for their publication has been generously given; and of Governor William P. Hobby, Colonel R. M. Johnston, and Mr. A. E. Clarkson, all associated with the _Post_ during O. Henry's employment, and to these, whose attestation of authenticity of this work is herewith given, the compiler is grateful. The doing of this work has been a labor of love, and if the result is to add to the luster of O. Henry's name the writer shall have been repaid. No pen is so facile as to add to or detract from the fame of William Sidney Porter. The flame of his genius has been extinguished, but what he wrought in a vast understanding of humanity will ever illuminate American literature. Florence Stratton. April, 1923. O. HENRY ON THE HOUSTON _POST_ _With respect to O. Henry's services, the Houston Post states as follows_: Between musty covers of the _Post_ files from October, 1895, to July, 1896, are cross-sections of life drawn by a master artist; vignettes as perfect and as beautiful as the finest Amsterdam diamond. Only they are comparatively unknown because they have been overshadowed by larger and more brilliant creations of the same master hand. Verses beautiful and appealing; description, touched by wonderful imagery; dialogue, the lines of which sparkle with wit and understanding of human frailties! They make up O. Henry's "Tales of the Town," his "Postscripts and Pencillings," and his "Some Postscripts." Save for the publication for a brief space of _The Rolling Stone_, a rollicking sheet that was issued irregularly over the period of several months, they represent the sum total of O. Henry's newspaper writings. All too brief to suit lovers of O. Henry's work, they nevertheless betray the writer's knack of getting at the heart and mind of his fellow beings. They show him as well acquainted with the newsdealer on the corner as with his favorite hotel clerk; as much at home in talking with a puncher from the Panhandle as in conversing with a drummer from St. Louis. Into them the master of the short story managed to crowd uncanny description, insight into human nature, and the highly dramatic. O. Henry came to the _Post_ at the invitation of its editor and his first column appeared in the _Post_ on October 18th entitled "Tales of the Town." The caption soon changed to "Postscripts and Pencillings" and later still to "Some Postscripts." Some days a column of seven-point! Others only half a column. Still others when "Some Postscripts" failed to appear at all. But always, whatever the quantity, the quality of O. Henry's output remained at high level. As in the later days in New York, O. Henry was exceedingly modest and shy. He "took a little getting acquainted with" according to tradition handed down. A quiet, unassuming chap, with eyes which seemingly saw little and yet took in everything, the new member of the staff soon acquired a reputation of being the best listener in town. In addition, he was a painstakingly accurate reporter and observer. O. Henry came to the _Post_ under his real name of Sidney Porter, but it was as "The Post Man" that he referred to himself in his writings. The pronoun "I" seldom appeared. According to friends, O. Henry, or Sidney Porter, possessed the most valuable trick of the interviewer. When the telling of a story lagged momentarily, he would insert just the right question in just the right place. And this show of interest never failed to stimulate the teller to a fresh spurt. Favorite haunts in Houston were the lobby of the old Hutchins House, the Grand Central Depot, and the street corners. He used to sit for hours in the hotel, his eyes playing over the faces of guests. Mayhap he was studying types, who knows? Certain, though, it is that hotel attaches grew to love the author of "Some Postscripts," and they frequently went out of their way to send him word of stories on the old hotel's ancient register. At the Grand Central Depot--Grand Central then as now--"The Post Man" was loved by all who knew him. From station master to porter, from superintendent to telegraph operator, the writer of "Some Postscripts" got help and inspiration for many of his brilliant anecdotes and human interest stories. Then, as later in New York, it was the man in the street who claimed his chief attention. Feted though he was by some who thought to patronize him, "The Post Man" refused to allow his head to be turned by admiration. He continued the even tenor of his way, writing the things which most appealed to him. Abundant and spontaneous as was O. Henry's literary output, his jokes were never barbed. There is no record of anyone ever coming to the _Post_ editorial room to "lick" the author of "Some Postscripts." Rather there came to him many picturesque figures of the Southwest, eager to make the acquaintance of the rising young "colyumist." At a time when bicycles and bloomers were agitating the news writers of the country, O. Henry took delight in caricaturing the customs. His sketches of bloomered, career-seeking women and timid husbands are at once a delight and a revelation. O. Henry's brilliant style, together with his never-flagging wit and his seemingly inexhaustible fund of anecdote quickly captured his contemporaries among Texas newspaper men. "The man, woman, or child," wrote an exchange in 1896, "who pens 'Some Postscripts' in the Houston _Post_, is a weird genius, and ought to be captured and put on exhibition." It was soon after this that O. Henry was advised to go to New York, where his ability would command a higher remuneration. But after making all preparations to try his wings in the great metropolis, Fate intervened and O. Henry went instead to South America. The last columns of O. Henry's brilliant paragraphs appeared in the _Post_ of June 22, 1896. The Sensitive Colonel Jay The sun is shining brightly, and the birds are singing merrily in the trees! All nature wears an aspect of peace and harmony. On the porch of a little hotel in a neighboring county a stranger is sitting on a bench waiting for the train, quietly smoking his pipe. Presently a tall man wearing boots and a slouch hat, steps to the door of the hotel from the inside with a six-shooter in his hand and fires. The man on the bench rolls over with a loud yell as the bullet grazes his ear. He springs to his feet in amazement and wrath and shouts: "What are you shooting at me for?" The tall man advances with his slouch hat in his hand, bows and says: "Beg pardon, sah. I am Colonel Jay, sah, and I understood you to insult me, sah, but I see I was mistaken. Am very glad I did not kill you, sah." "I insult you--how?" inquires the stranger. "I never said a word." "You tapped on the bench, sah, as much as to say you was a woodpeckah, sah, and I belong to the other faction. I see now that you was only knockin' the ashes from you' pipe, sah. I ask yo' pahdon, and that you will come in and have a drink with me, sah, to show that you do not harbor any ill feeling after a gentleman apologizes to you, sah." A Matter of Loyalty Two men were talking at the Grand Central depot yesterday, and one of them was telling about a difficulty he had recently been engaged in. "He said I was the biggest liar ever heard in Texas," said the man, "and I jumped on him and blacked both his eyes in about a minute." "That's right," said the other man, "a man ought to resent an imputation of that sort right away." "It wasn't exactly that," said the first speaker, "but Tom Achiltree is a second cousin of mine, and I won't stand by and hear any man belittle him." Taking No Chances "Let's see," said the genial manager as he looked over the atlas. "Here's a town one might strike on our way back. Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, is a city of 100,000 inhabitants." "That sounds promising," said Mark Twain, running his hands through his busy curls, "read some more about it." "The people of Madagascar," continued the genial manager, reading from his book, "are not a savage race and few of the tribes could be classed as barbarian people. There are many native orators among them, and their language abounds in figures, metaphors, and parables, and ample evidence is given of the mental ability of the inhabitants." "Sounds like it might be all right," said the humorist, "read some more." "Madagascar is the home," read the manager, "of an enormous bird called the epyornis, that lays an egg 15 1/2 by 9 1/2 in. in size, weighing from ten to twelve pounds. These eggs--" "Never mind reading any more," said Mark Twain. "We will not go to Madagascar." The Other Side of It There is an item going the rounds of the press relative to the well-known curiosity of woman. It states that if a man brings a newspaper home out of which a piece has been clipped his wife will never rest until she has procured another paper to see what it was that had been cut out. A Houston man was quite impressed with the idea, so he resolved to make the experiment. One night last week he cut out of the day's paper a little two-inch catarrh cure advertisement, and left the mutilated paper on the table where his wife would be sure to read it. He picked up a book and pretended to be interested, while he watched her glance over the paper. When she struck the place where the piece had been cut, she frowned and seemed to be thinking very seriously. However, she did not say anything about it and the man was in doubt as to whether her curiosity had been aroused or not. The next day when he came home to dinner she met him at the door with flashing eyes and an ominous look about her jaw. "You miserable, deceitful wretch!" she cried. "After living all these years with you to find that you have been basely deceiving me and leading a double life, and bringing shame and sorrow upon your innocent family! I always thought you were a villain and a reprobate, and now I have positive proof of the fact." "Wh--wha--what do you mean, Maria?" he gasped. "I haven't been doing anything." "Of course you are ready to add lying to your catalogue of vices. Since you pretend not to understand me--look at this." She held up to his gaze a complete paper of the issue of the day before. "You thought to hide your actions from me by cutting out part of the paper, but I was too sharp for you." "Why that was just a little joke, Maria. I didn't think you would take it seriously. I--" "Do you call that a joke, you shameless wretch?" she cried, spreading the paper before him. The man looked and read in dismay. In cutting out the catarrh advertisement he had never thought to see what was on the other side of it, and this was the item that appeared, to one reading the other side of the page, to have been clipped: A gentleman about town, who stands well in business circles, had a high old time last night in a certain restaurant where he entertained at supper a couple of chorus ladies belonging to the comic opera company now in the city. Loud talking and breaking of dishes attracted some attention, but the matter was smoothed over, owing to the prominence of the gentleman referred to. "You call that a joke, do you, you old reptile," shrieked the excited lady. "I'm going home to mamma this evening and I'm going to stay there. Thought you'd fool me by cutting it out, did you? You sneaking, dissipated old snake you! I've got my trunk nicely packed and I'm going straight home--don't you come near me!" "Maria," gasped the bewildered man. "I swear I--" "Don't add perjury to your crimes, sir!" The man tried unsuccessfully to speak three or four times, and then grabbed his hat and ran downtown. Fifteen minutes later he came back bringing two new silk dress patterns, four pounds of caramels, and his bookkeeper and three clerks to prove that he was hard at work in the store on the night in question. The affair was finally settled satisfactorily, but there is one Houston man who has no further curiosity about woman's curiosity. Journalistically Impossible "Did you report that suicide as I told you to do last night?" asked the editor of the new reporter, a graduate of a school of journalism. "I saw the corpse, sir, but found it impossible to write a description of the affair." "Why?" "How in the world was I to state that the man's throat was cut from ear to ear when he had only one ear?" The Power of Reputation One night last week in San Antonio a tall, solemn-looking man, wearing a silk hat, walked into a hotel bar from the office, and stood by the stove where a group of men were sitting smoking and talking. A fat man, who noticed him go in, asked the hotel clerk who it was. The clerk told his name and the fat man followed the stranger into the barroom, casting at him glances of admiration and delight. "Pretty cold night, gentlemen, for a warm country," said the man in the silk hat. "Oh--ha--ha--ha--ha--ha!" yelled the fat man, bursting into a loud laugh. "That's pretty good." The solemn man looked surprised and went on warming himself at the stove. Presently one of the men sitting by the stove said: "That old Turkey over in Europe doesn't seem to be making much noise now." "No," said the solemn man, "it seems like the other nations are doing all the gobbling." The fat man let out a yell and laid down and rolled over and over on the floor. "Gosh ding it," he howled, "that's the best thing I ever heard. Ah--ha--ha--ha--ha--ha! Come on, gentlemen, and have something on that." The invitation seemed to all hands to be a sufficient apology for all his ill-timed merriment, and they ranged along the bar. While the drinks were being prepared, the fat man slipped along the line and whispered something in the ear of everyone, except the man with the silk hat. When he got through a broad smile spread over the faces of the crowd. "Well, gentlemen, here's fun!" said the solemn man as he raised his glass. The whole party, with one accord, started off into a perfect roar of laughter, spilling half their drinks on the bar and floor. "Did you ever hear such a flow of wit?" said one. "Chock full of fun, ain't he?" "Same old fellow he used to be." "Best thing that's been got off here in a year." "Gentlemen," said the solemn man, "there seems to be a conspiracy among you to guy me. I like a joke myself, but I like to know what I'm being hurrahed about." Three men lay down in the sawdust and screamed, and the rest fell in chairs and leaned against the bar in paroxysms of laughter. Then three or four of them almost fought for the honor of setting them up again. The solemn man was suspicious and watchful, but he drank every time anyone proposed to treat. Whenever he made a remark, the whole gang would yell with laughter until the tears ran from their eyes. "Well," said the solemn man, after about twenty rounds had been paid for by the others, "the best of friends must part. I've got to get to my downy couch." "Good!" yelled the fat man. "Ha--ha--ha--ha--ha! 'Downy couch' is good. Best thing I ever heard. You are as good, by Gad, as you ever were. Never heard such impromptu wit. Texas is proud of you, old boy." "Good night, gentlemen," said the solemn man. "I've got to get up early in the morning and go to work." "Hear that!" shouted the fat man. "Says he's got to work. Ha--ha--ha--ha--ha!" The whole crowd gave a parting roar of laughter as the solemn man walked to the door. He stopped for a moment and said: "Had a very (hic) pleasant evening (hic) gents. Hope'll shee you (hic) 'n mornin'. Here'sh my card. Goo' night." The fat man seized the card and shook the solemn man's hand. When he had gone, he glanced at the card, and his face took on a serious frown. "Gentlemen," he said, "you all know who our friend is that we have been entertaining, don't you?" "Of course; you said it was Alex Sweet, the 'Texas Siftings' man." "So I understood," said the fat man. "The hotel clerk said it was Alex Sweet." He handed them the card and skipped out the side door. The card read: L. X. Wheat Representing Kansas City Smith and Jones Mo. Wholesale Undertakers' Supplies The crowd was out $32 on treats, and they armed themselves and are laying for the fat man. When a stranger attempts to be funny in San Antonio now, he has to produce proper credentials in writing before he can raise a smile. The Distraction of Grief The other day a Houston man died and left a young and charming widow to mourn his loss. Just before the funeral, the pastor came around to speak what words of comfort he could, and learn her wishes regarding the obsequies. He found her dressed in a becoming mourning costume, sitting with her chin in her hand, gazing with far-off eyes in an unfathomable sea of retrospection. The pastor approached her gently, and said: "Pardon me for intruding upon your grief, but I wish to know whether you prefer to have a funeral sermon preached, or simply to have the service read." The heartbroken widow scarcely divined his meaning, so deeply was she plunged in her sorrowful thoughts, but she caught some of his words, and answered brokenly: "Oh, red, of course. Red harmonizes so well with black." A Sporting Interest It is a busy scene in the rear of one of Houston's greatest manufacturing establishments. A number of workmen are busy raising some heavy object by means of blocks and tackles. Somehow, a rope is worn in two by friction, and a derrick falls. There is a hurried scrambling out of the way, a loud jarring crash, a cloud of dust, and a man stretched out dead beneath the heavy timbers. The others gather round and with herculean efforts drag the beams from across his mangled form. There is a hoarse murmur of pity from rough but kindly breasts, and the question runs around the group, "Who is to tell her?" In a neat little cottage near the railroad, within their sight as they stand, a bright-eyed, brownhaired young woman is singing at her work, not knowing that death has snatched away her husband in the twinkling of an eye. Singing happily at her work, while the hand that she had chosen to protect and comfort her through life lies stilled and fast turning to the coldness of the grave! These rough men shrink like children from telling her. They dread to bear the news that will change her smiles to awful sorrow and lamentation. "You go, Mike," three or four of them say at once. "'Tis more lamin' ye have than any av us, whatever, and ye'll be afther brakin' the news to her as aisy as ye can. Be off wid ye now, and shpake gently to Tim's poor lassie while we thry to get the corpse in shape." Mike is a pleasant-faced man, young and stalwart, and with a last look at his unfortunate comrade he goes slowly down the street toward the cottage where the fair young wife--alas, now a widow--lives. When he arrives, he does not hesitate. He is tenderhearted, but strong. He lifts the gate latch and walks firmly to the door. There is something in his face, before he speaks, that tells her the truth. "What was it?" she asks, "spontaneous combustion or snakes?" "Derrick fell," says Mike. "Then I've lost my bet," she says. "I thought sure it would be whisky." Life, messieurs, is full of disappointments. Had a Use for It A strong scent of onions and the kind of whisky advertised "for mechanical purposes" came through the keyhole, closely followed by an individual bearing a bulky manuscript under his arm about the size of a roll of wall paper. The individual was of the description referred to by our English cousins as "one of the lower classes," and by Populist papers as "the bone and sinew of the country," and the scene of his invasion was the sanctum of a great Texas weekly newspaper. The editor sat at his desk with his hands clenched in his scanty hair, gazing despairingly at a typewritten letter from the house where he bought his paper supply. The individual drew a chair close to the editor and laid the heavy manuscript upon the desk, which creaked beneath its weight. "I've worked nineteen hours upon it," he said, "but it's done at last." "What is it?" asked the editor, "a lawn mower?" "It is an answer, sir, to the President's message: a refutation of each and every one of his damnable doctrines, a complete and scathing review of every assertion and every false insidious theory that he has advanced." "About how many--er--how many pounds do you think it contains?" said the editor thoughtfully. "Five hundred and twenty-seven pages, sir, and--" "Written in pencil on one side of the paper?" asked the editor, with a strange light shining in his eye. "Yes, and it treats of--" "You can leave it," said the editor, rising from his chair. "I have no doubt I can use it to advantage." The individual, with a strong effort, collected his breath and departed, feeling that a fatal blow had been struck at those in high places. Ten minutes later six india-rubber erasers had been purchased, and the entire office force were at work upon the manuscript. The great weekly came out on time, but the editor gazed pensively at his last month's unreceipted paper bill and said: "So far, so good; but I wonder what we will print on next week!" The Old Landmark He was old and feeble and his sands of life were nearly run out. He walked with faltering steps along one of the most fashionable avenues in the city of Houston. He had left the city twenty years ago, when it was little more than a thriving village, and now, weary of wandering through the world and filled with an unutterable longing to rest his eyes once more upon the scenes of his youth, he had come back to find a bustling modern city covering the site of his former home. He sought in vain for some familiar object, some old time sight that would recall memories of bygone days. All had changed. On the site where his father's cottage had stood, a stately mansion reared its walls; the vacant lot where he had played when a boy, was covered with modern buildings. Magnificent lawns stretched on either hand, running back to palatial dwellings. Not one of the sights of his boyhood days was left. Suddenly, with a glad cry, he rushed forward with renewed vigor. He saw before him, untouched by the hand of man and unchanged by time, an old familiar object around which he had played when a child. He reached out his arms and ran toward it with a deep sigh of satisfaction. Later on they found him asleep, with a peaceful smile on his face, lying on the old garbage pile in the middle of the street, the sole relic of his boyhood's recollections. A Personal Insult Young lady in Houston became engaged last summer to one of the famous shortstops of the Texas baseball league. Last week he broke the engagement, and this is the reason why. He had a birthday last Tuesday and she sent him a beautiful bound and illustrated edition of Coleridge's famous poem, "The Ancient Mariner." The hero of the diamond opened the book with a puzzled look. "What's dis bloomin' stuff about, anyways?" he said, and read: It is the Ancient Mariner And he stoppeth one of three-- The famous shortstop threw the book out the window, stuck out his chin and said: "No Texas sis can gimme de umpire face like dat. I swipes nine daisy cutters outer ten dat comes in my garden, I do." Toddlekins Toddlekins climbed up the long, long stair; Chubby and fat and round was he; With rosy cheeks and curling hair, Jolly and fair and gay was he. Toddlekins knocked on the office door; Within at a desk a stern man sat; Wrote with a pen while a frown he wore, When he heard on the door a rat-tat-tat. Toddlekins cried, "Oh please let me in! I've come to see you, the door is fast!" Oh, voice so soft, it will surely win The heart of the stern, cold man at last! But he heeded not the pleading cry Of Toddlekins out on the lonely stair; And Toddlekins left with a sorrowful sigh, Toddlekins round, and chubby and fair, Oh, man so stem, when you stand and plead At the door of your Father's house on high; What if he, merciless, pay no heed; Pitiless, turns from your helpless cry! But the man wrote on with a stony stare; He was an editor, poor and ill; And Toddlekins, chubby and round and fair, Was a butcher that brought a big meat bill. Reconciliation A One-Act Drama Dramatis Personae A Houston married couple. Scene--Her boudoir. He And now, Viola, since we understand each other, let us never fall out again. Let us forget the bitter words that we have spoken one to another, and resolve to dwell always in love and affection. [Places his arm around her waist.] She Oh, Charles, you don't know how happy you make me! Of course we will never quarrel again. Life is too short to waste in petty bickerings and strife. Let us keep in the primrose path of love, and never stray from it any more. Oh, what bliss to think you love me and nothing can ever come between us! Just like the old days when we used to meet by the lilac hedge, isn't it? [Lays her head on his shoulder.] He Yes, and when I used to pull blossoms and twine them in your hair and call you Queen Titania. She Oh, that was nice. I remember. Queen Titania? Oh, yes, she was one of Shakespeare's characters, who fell in love with a man with a donkey's head. He H'm! She Now don't. I didn't mean you. Oh, Charles, listen to the Christmas chimes! What a merry day it will be for us. Are you sure you love me as well as you used to? He More. _Smack._ She Does 'em fink me sweet? He _Smack. Smack!_ She Wuz 'em's toodleums? He Awful heap. Who do you wuv? She My ownest own old boy. Both _Smack!_ He Listen, the bells are chiming again. We should be doubly happy, love, for we have passed through stormy seas of doubt and anger. But now, a light is breaking, and the rosy dawn of love has returned. She And should abide with us forever. Oh, Charles, let us never again by word or look cause pain to each other. He Never again. And you will not scold any more? She No, dearest. You know I never have unless you gave me cause. He Sometimes you have become angry and said hard things without any reason. She Maybe you think so, but I don't. [Lifts her head from his shoulder.] He I know what I'm talking about. [Takes his arm from her waist.] She You come home cross because you haven't got sense enough to conduct your business properly, and take your spite out on me. He You make me tired. You get on your ear because you are naturally one of the cain-raising, blab-mouthed kind and can't help it. She You old crosspatch of a liar from Liarsville, don't you talk to me that way or I'll scratch your eyes out. He You blamed wildcat. I wish I had been struck by lightning before I ever met you. She [Seizing the broom.] Biff! biff! biff. He [After reaching the sidewalk] I wonder if Colonel Ingersoll is right when he says suicide is no sin! [Curtain] Buying a Piano A Houston man decided a few days ago to buy his wife a piano for a Christmas present. Now, there is more competition, rivalry, and push among piano agents than any other class of men. The insurance and fruit tree businesses are mild and retiring in comparison with the piano industry. The Houston man, who is a prominent lawyer, knew this, and he was careful not to tell too many people of his intentions, for fear the agents would annoy him. He inquired in a music store only once, regarding prices, etc., and intended after a week or so to make his selection. When he left the store he went around by the post-office before going back to work. When he reached his office he found three agents perched on his desk and in his chair waiting for him. One of them got his mouth open first, and said: "Hear you want to buy a piano, sir. For sweetness, durability, finish, tone, workmanship, style, and quality the Steingay is--" "Nixy," said another agent, pushing in between them and seizing the lawyer's collar. "You get a Chitterling. Only piano in the world. For sweetness, durability, finish, tone, workmanship--" "Excuse me," said the third agent. "I can't stand by and see a man swindled. The Chronic and Bark piano, for sweetness, durability, finish--" "Get out, every one of you," shouted the lawyer. "When I want a piano I'll buy the one I please. Get out of the room!" The agents left, and the lawyer went to work on a brief. During the afternoon, five of his personal friends called to recommend different makes of pianos, and the lawyer began to get snappish. He went out and got a drink and the bartender said: "Say, gent, me brudder works in a piano factory and he gimme de tip dat you'se wants to buy one of de tum-tums. Me brudder says dat for sweetness, durability, finish--" "Devil take your brother," said the lawyer. He got on the street car to go home and four agents were already aboard waiting for him. He dodged back before they saw him and stood on the platform. Presently the brakeman leaned over and whispered in his ear: "Frien', the Epperson piano what me uncle handles in East Texas, fur sweetness, durability--" "Stop the car," said the lawyer. He got off and skulked in a dark doorway until the four agents, who had also got off the car, rushed past, and then he picked up a big stone from the gutter and put it in his pocket. He went around a back way to his home and slipped up to the gate feeling pretty safe. The minister of his church had been calling at the house, and came out the gate just as the lawyer reached it. The lawyer was the proud father of a brand-new, two-weeks-old baby, and the minister had just been admiring it, and wanted to congratulate him. "My dear brother," said the minister. "Your house will soon be filled with joy and music. I think it will be a great addition to your life. Now, there is nothing in the world that for sweetness--" "Confound you, you're drumming for a piano, too, are you?" yelled the lawyer, drawing the stone from his pocket. He fired away and knocked the minister's tall hat across the street, and kicked him in the shin. The minister believed in the church militant, and he gave the lawyer a one-two on the nose, and they clinched and rolled off the sidewalk on a pile of loose bricks. The neighbors heard the row and came out with shotguns and lanterns, and finally an understanding was arrived at. The lawyer was considerably battered up, and the family doctor was sent for to patch him. As the doctor bent over him with sticking-plaster and a bottle of arnica, he said: "You'll be out in a day or two, and then I want you to come around and buy a piano from my brother. The one he is agent for is acknowledged to be the best one for sweetness, durability, style, quality, and action in the world." Too Late Young Lieutenant Baldwin burst excitedly into his general's room and cried hoarsely: "For God's sake, General! Up! Up! and come. Spotted Lightning has carried off your daughter, Inez!" General Splasher sprang to his feet in dismay. "What," he cried, "not Spotted Lightning, the chief of the Kiomas, the most peaceful tribe in the reservation?" "The same." "Good heavens! You know what this tribe is when aroused?" The lieutenant cast a swift look of intelligence at his commander. "They are the most revengeful, murderous, and vindictive Indians in the West when on the warpath, but for months they have been the most peaceable," he answered. "Come," said the general, "we have not a moment to lose. What has been done?" "There are fifty cavalrymen ready to start, with Bowie Knife Bill, the famous scout, to track them." Ten minutes later the general and the lieutenant, with Bowie Knife Bill at their side, set out at a swinging gallop at the head of the cavalry column. Bowie Knife Bill, with the trained instincts of a border sleuthhound, followed the trail of Spotted Lightning's horse with unerring swiftness. "Pray God we may not be too late," said the general as he spurred his panting steed--"and Spotted Lightning, too, of all the chiefs! He has always seemed to be our friend." "On, on," cried Lieutenant Baldwin, "there may yet be time." Mile after mile the pursuers covered, pausing not for food or water, until nearly sunset. Bowie Knife Bill pointed to a thin column of smoke in the distance and said: "Thar's the varmints' camp." The hearts of all the men bounded with excitement as they neared the spot. "Are we in time?" was the silent question in the mind of each. They dashed into an open space of prairie and drew rein near Spotted Lightning's tent. The flap was closed. The troopers swung themselves from their horses. "If it is as I fear," muttered the general hoarsely to the lieutenant, "it means war with the Kioma nation. Oh, why did he not take some other instead of my daughter?" At that instance the door of the tent opened and Inez Splasher, the general's daughter, a maiden of about thirty-seven summers, emerged, bearing in her hand the gory scalp of Spotted Lightning. "Too late!" cried the general as he fell senseless from his horse. "I knew it," said Bowie Knife Bill, folding his arms with a silent smile, "but what surprises me is how he ever got this far alive." Nothing to Say "You can tell your paper," the great man said, "I refused an interview. I have nothing to say on the question, sir, Nothing to say to you." And then he talked till the sun went down And the chickens went to roost: And he seized the coat of the poor _Post_ man And never his hold he loosed. And the sun went down and the moon came up, And he talked till the dawn of day; Though he said, "On this subject mentioned by you, I have nothing whatever to say." And down the reporter dropped to sleep, And flat on the floor he lay; And the last he heard was the great man's words: "I have nothing at all to say." "Goin Home Fur Christmas" Pa fussed at ma, and said By gun! There wa'n't no use a talkin'; Times wuz too hard to travel round, In any way 'cept walkin', And said 'twas nonsense anyhow, Folks didn't want no visitors; And said ma needn't talk no more, 'Bout goin' home for Christmas. "I'd like to see 'em all," says ma, All pale and almost cryin'; A gazin' out the window, where The snow wuz fairly flyin'; "I've been a thinkin', oh so long, 'Bout mother and my sisters; And savin' every cent I could To'ards goin' home for Christmas." But pa he frowned and then ma sighed. Just once, and kinder' smilin', Says: "Well, les' go an' have some tea, The water's all a-bilin'." To-day pa called us children in To ma's room--he wuz cryin'-- And ma wuz--oh so white and still, And cold where she wuz lyin'. She kinder roused up when we come, And turned her face and kissed us, And says: "Good-by--oh good-by, dears! I'm goin' home fur Christmas!" Just a Little Damp As the steamer reached Aransas Pass a Galveston man fell overboard. A life buoy was thrown him, but he thrust it aside contemptuously. A boat was hurriedly lowered, and reached him just as he came to the surface for the second time. Helping hands were stretched forth to rescue him, but he spurned their aid. He spat out about a pint of sea water and shouted: "Go away and leave me alone. I'm walking on the bottom. You'll run your boat aground in a minute. I'll wade out when I get ready and go up to a barber shop and get dusted off. The ground's damp a little, but I ain't afraid of catching cold." He went under for the last time, and the boat pulled back for the ship. The Galveston man had exhibited to the last his scorn and contempt for any other port that claimed deep water. Her Mysterious Charm In the conservatory of a palatial Houston home Roland Pendergast stood with folded arms and an inscrutable smile upon his face, gazing down upon the upturned features of Gabrielle Smithers. "Why is it," he said, "that I am attracted by you? You are not beautiful, you lack aplomb, grace, and savoir faire. You are cold, unsympathetic and bowlegged. "I have striven to analyze the power you have over me, but in vain. Some esoteric chain of mental telepathy binds us two together, but what is its nature? I dislike being in love with one who has neither chic, naivete nor front teeth, but fate has willed it so. You personally repel me, but I can not tear you from my heart. You are in my thoughts by day and nightmares by night. "Your form reminds me of a hatrack, but when I press you to my heart I feel strange thrills of joy. I can no more tell you why I love you than I can tell why a barber can rub a man's head fifteen minutes without touching the spot that itches. Speak, Gabrielle, and tell me what is this spell you have woven around me!" "I will tell you," said Gabrielle with a soft smile. "I have fascinated many men in the same way. When I help you on with your overcoat I never reach under and try to pull your other coat down from the top of your collar." Convinced Houston is the dwelling place of a certain young lady who is exceptionally blessed with the gifts of the goddess of fortune. She is very fair to look upon, bright, witty, and possesses that gracious charm so difficult to describe, but so potent to please, that is commonly called personal magnetism. Although cast in such a lonely world, and endowed with so many graces of mind and matter, she is no idle butterfly of fashion, and the adulation she receives from a numerous circle of admirers has not turned her head. She has a close friend, a young lady of plain exterior, but a sensible and practical mind, whom she habitually consults as a wise counselor and advisor concerning the intricate problems of life. One day she said to Marian--the wise friend: "How I wish there was some way to find out who among these flattering suitors of mine is sincere and genuine in the compliments that are paid me. Men are such deceivers, and they all give me such unstinted praise, and make such pretty speeches to me, that I do not know who among them, if any, are true and sincere in their regard." "I will tell you a way," said Marian. "The next evening when there are a number of them calling upon you, recite a dramatic poem, and then tell me how each one expresses his opinion of your effort." The young lady was much impressed with the idea, and on the following Friday evening when some half-dozen young men were in the parlor paying her attentions, she volunteered to recite. She has not the least dramatic talent, but she stood up and went through with a long poem, with many gestures and much rolling of eyes and pressing of her hands to her heart. She did it very badly, and without the least regard for the rules of elocution or expression. Later on, her friend Marian asked her how her effort was received. "Oh," she said, "they all crowded around me, and appeared to be filled with the utmost delight. Tom, and Henry, and Jim, and Charlie were in raptures. They said that Mary Anderson could not have equaled it. They said they had never heard anything spoken with such dramatic effect and feeling." "Everyone praised you?" asked Marian. "All but one. Mr. Judson sat back in his chair and never applauded at all. He told me after I had finished that he was afraid I had very little dramatic talent at all." "Now," said Marian. "You know who is sincere and genuine?" "Yes," said the beautiful girl, with eyes shining with enthusiasm. "The test was a complete success. I detest that odious Judson, and I'm going to begin studying for the stage right away." His Dilemma An old man with long white chin whiskers and a derby hat two sizes small, dropped into a Main Street drug store yesterday and beckoned a clerk over into a corner. He was about sixty-five years old, but he wore a bright red necktie, and was trying to smoke a very bad and strong cigar in as offhand a style as possible. "Young man," he said, "you lemme ask you a few questions, and I'll send you a big watermelon up from the farm next summer. I came to Houston to see this here carnival, and do some tradin'. Right now, before I go any further, have you got any hair dye?" "Plenty of it." "Any of this real black shiny dye that looks blue in the sunshine?" "Yes." "All right then, now I'll proceed. Do you know anything about this here Monroe docterin'?" "Well, yes, something." "And widders; do you feel able to prognosticate a few lines about widders?" "I can't tell what you are driving at," said the clerk. "What is it you want to know?" "I'm gettin' to the pint. Now there's hair dye, Monroe docterin', and widders. Got them all down in your mind?" "Yes, but--" "Jest hold on, now, and I'll explain. There's the unhappiest fat and sassy widder moved into the adjinin' farm to me, you ever see, and if I knows the female heart she has cast eyes of longin' upon yours truly. Now if I dyes these here white whiskers I ketches her. By blackin' said whiskers and insertin' say four fingers of rye where it properly belongs, I kicks up my heels and I waltzes up and salutes the widder like a calf of forty." "Well," said the clerk, "our hair dye is--" "Wait a minute, young feller. Now on the other hand I hears rumors of wars this mornin', and I hears alarmin' talk about this here Monroe docterin'. Ef I uses hair dye and trains down to thirty-eight or forty years of age, I ketches the widder, but I turns into a peart and chipper youth what is liable to be made to fight in this here great war. Ef I gives up the hair dye, the recrutin' sargent salutes these white hairs and passes by, but I am takin' big chances on the widder. She has been to meetin' twicet with a man what has been divorced, and ties his own cree-vat, and this here Monroe docterin' is all what keeps me from pulling out seventy-five cents and makin' a strong play with said dye. What would you do, ef you was me, young feller?" "I don't think there will be any war soon," said the clerk. "Jerusalem; I'm glad to hear it! Gimme the biggest bottle of blue-black hair dye fur seventy-five cents that you got. I'm goin' to purpose to that widder before it gets dry, and risk the chances of Monroe takin' water again on this war business." Something for Baby This is nothing but a slight jar in the happy holiday music; a minor note struck by the finger of Fate, slipping upon the keys, as anthems of rejoicing and Christmas carols make the Yuletide merry. The Post man stood yesterday in one of the largest fancy and drygoods stores on Main Street, watching the throng of well-dressed buyers, mostly ladies, who were turning over the stock of Christmas notions and holiday goods. Presently a little, slim, white-faced girl crept timidly through the crowd to the counter. She was dressed in thin calico, and her shoes were patched and clumsy. She looked about her with a manner half mournful, half scared. A clerk saw her and came forward. "Well, what is it?" he asked rather shortly. "Please, sir," she answered in a weak voice, "Mamma gave me this dime to get something for baby." "Something for baby, for a dime? Want to buy baby a Christmas present, eh? Well now, don't you think you had better run around to a toyshop? We don't keep such things here. You want a tin horse, or a ball, or a jumping jack, now don't you?" "Please, sir, Mamma said I was to come here. Baby isn't with us now. Mamma told me to get--ten--cents--worth--of--crape, sir, if you please." Some Day Some day--not now; oh, ask me not again; Impassioned, low, and deep, with wild regret; Thy words but fill my heart with haunting pain-- Some day, but oh, my friend--not yet--not yet. Perchance when time hath wrought some wondrous change, And fate hath swept her barriers away. Then, lifted to some higher, freer range. Thou may'st return and speak again--some day. Oh, leave me now--do not so coldly turn! Thou seest my very soul has suffered sore. Adieu! But, oh, some day thou canst return And bring that drygoods bill to me once more. A Green Hand "I shall never again employ any but experienced salesmen, who thoroughly understand the jewelry business," said a Houston jeweler to a friend yesterday. "You see, at Christmas time we generally need more help, and sometimes employ people who can sell goods, but are not familiar with the fine points of the business. Now, that young man over there is thoroughly good and polite to everyone, but he has just lost me one of my best customers." "How was that?" asked the friend. "A man who always trades with us came in with his wife last week and with her assistance selected a magnificent diamond pin that he had promised her for a Christmas present and told this young man to lay it aside for him till today." "I see," said the friend, "and he sold it to someone else and disappointed him." "It's plain you don't know much about married men," said the jeweler. "That idiot of a clerk actually saved the pin for him and he had to buy it." A Righteous Outburst He smelled of gin and his whiskers resembled the cylinder of a Swiss music box. He walked into a toy shop on Main Street yesterday and leaned sorrowfully against the counter. "Anything today?" asked the proprietor coldly. He wiped an eye with a dingy red handkerchief and said: "Nothing at all, thank you. I just came inside to shed a tear. I do not like to obtrude my grief upon the passersby. I have a little daughter, sir; five years of age, with curly golden hair. Her name is Lilian. She says to me this morning: 'Papa, will Santa Claus bring me a red wagon for Christmas?' It completely unmanned me, sir, as, alas, I am out of work and penniless. Just think, one little red wagon would bring her happiness, and there are children who have hundreds of red wagons." "Before you go out," said the proprietor, "which you are going to do in about fifteen seconds, I am willing to inform you that I have a branch store on Trains Street, and was around there yesterday. You came in and made the same talk about your little girl, whom you called Daisy, and I gave you a wagon. It seems you don't remember your little girl's name very well." The man drew himself up with dignity, and started for the door. When nearly there, he turned and said: "Her name is Lilian Daisy, sir, and the wagon you gave me had a rickety wheel and some of the paint was scratched off the handle. I have a friend who tends bar on Willow Street, who is keeping it for me till Christmas, but I will feel a flush of shame on your behalf, sir, when Lilian Daisy sees that old, slab-sided, squeaking, secondhand, leftover-from-last-year's-stock wagon. But, sir, when Lilian Daisy kneels at her little bed at night I shall get her to pray for you, and ask Heaven to have mercy on you. Have you one of your business cards handy, so Lilian Daisy can get your name right in her petitions?" Getting at the Facts It was late in the afternoon and the day staff was absent. The night editor had just come in, pulled off his coat, vest, collar, and necktie, rolled up his shirtsleeves and eased down his suspenders, and was getting ready for work. Someone knocked timidly outside the door, and the night editor yelled, "Come in." A handsome young lady with entreating blue eyes and a Psyche knot entered with a rolled manuscript in her hand. The night editor took it silently and unrolled it. It was a poem and he read it half aloud with a convulsive jaw movement that resulted from his organs of speech being partially engaged with about a quarter of a plug of chewing tobacco. The poem ran thus: A Requiem The soft, sweet, solemn dawn stole through The latticed room's deep gloom; He lay in pallid, pulseless peace, Fulfilled his final doom. Oh, breaking heart of mine--oh, break! Left lonely here to mourn; My alter ego, mentor, friend Thus from me rudely torn. Within his chamber dead he lies, And stilled is his sweet lyre; How long he pored o'er midnight oil. With grand poetic fire! Till came the crash, when his bright light Went out, and all was drear; And my sad soul was left to wait In grief and anguish here. "When did this happen?" asked the night editor. "I wrote it last night, sir," said the young lady. "Is it good enough to print?" "Last night! H'm. A little stale, but the other papers didn't get it. Now, miss," continued the night editor, smiling and throwing out his chest, "I'm going to teach you a lesson in the newspaper business. We can use this item, but it's not in proper shape. Just take that chair, and I'll rewrite it for you, showing you how to properly condense a news item in order to secure its insertion." The young lady seated herself and the night editor knitted his brows and read over the poem two or three times to get the main points. He then wrote a few lines upon a sheet of paper and said: "Now, miss, here is the form in which your item will appear when we print it: Fatal Accident "Last evening Mr. Alter Ego of this city was killed by the explosion of a kerosene lamp while at work in his room. "Now, you see, miss, the item includes the main facts in the case, and--" "Sir!" said the young lady indignantly. "There is nothing of the kind intimated in the poem. The lines are imaginary and are intended to express the sorrow of a poet's friend at his untimely demise." "Why, miss," said the night editor, "it plainly refers to midnight oil, and a crash, and when the light blew up the gent was left for dead in the room." "You horrid thing," said the young lady, "give me my manuscript. I will bring it back when the literary editor is in." "I'm sorry," said the night editor as he handed her the roll. "We're short on news tonight, and it would have made a nice little scoop. Don't happen to know of any accidents in your ward: births, runaways, holdups, or breach of promise suits, do you?" But the slamming of the door was the only answer from the fair poetess. Just for a Change The "lullaby boy" to the same old tune, Who abandons his drum and toys, For the purpose of dying in early June, Is the kind the public enjoys. But, just for a change please sing us a song, Of the sore-toed boy that's fly, And freckled, and mean, and ugly, and strong, And positively will not die. Too Wise Here is a man in Houston who keeps quite abreast of the times. He reads the papers, has traveled extensively and is an excellent judge of human nature. He has a natural gift for detecting humbugs and fakirs, and it would be a smooth artist indeed who could impose upon him in any way. Last night as he was going home, a shady looking man with his hat pulled over his eyes stepped out from a doorway and said: "Say, gent, here's a fine diamond ring I found in de gutter. I don't want to get into no trouble wid it. Gimme a dollar and take it." The Houston man smiled as he looked at the flashy ring the man held toward him. "A very good game, my man," he said, "but the police are hot after you fellows. You had better select your rhinestone customers with better judgment. Good night." When the man got home he found his wife in tears. "Oh, John," she said. "I went shopping this afternoon and lost my solitaire diamond ring. Oh, what shall I--" John turned without a word and rushed back down the street, but the shady-looking man was not to be found. His wife often wonders why he never scolded her for losing the ring. A Fatal Error "What are you looking so glum about?" asked a Houston man as he dropped into a friend's office on Christmas Day. "Same old fool break of putting a letter in the wrong envelope, and I'm afraid to go home. My wife sent me down a note by the hired man an hour ago, telling me to send her ten dollars, and asking me to meet her here at the office at three o'clock and go shopping with her. At the same time I got a bill for ten dollars from a merchant I owe, asking me to remit. I scribbled off a note to the merchant saying: 'Can't possibly do it. I've got to meet another little thing today that won't be put off.' I made the usual mistake and sent the merchant the ten dollars and my wife the note." "Can't you go home and explain the mistake to your wife?" "You don't know her. I've done all I can. I've taken out an accident policy for $10,000 good for two hours, and I expect her here in fifteen minutes. Tell all the boys goodbye for me, and if you meet a lady on the stairs as you go down keep close to the wall." Prompt He raised his arm to strike, but lax and slow His arm fell nerveless to his side. He might have struck a mighty ringing blow. A blow that might have been his joy and pride. But no--his strength at once did fade away, A sudden blow seemed all his soul to fix; He was a workman, working by the day, And heard the whistle blow the hour of six. The Rake-Off "Who bids?" The auctioneer held up a child's rocking-horse, battered and stained. It had belonged to some little member of the man's family whose household property was being sold under the hammer. He was utterly ruined. He had given up everything in the world to his creditors--house, furniture, horses, stock of goods and lands. He stood among the crowd watching the sale that was scattering his household goods and his heirlooms among a hundred strange hands. On his arm leaned a woman heavily veiled. "Who bids?" The auctioneer held the rocking-horse high that it might be seen. Childish hands had torn away the scanty mane; the bridle was twisted and worn by tender little fingers. The crowd was still. The woman under the heavy veil sobbed and stretched out her hands. "No, no, no!" she cried. The man was white with emotion. The little form that once so merrily rode the old rockinghouse had drifted away into the world years ago. This was the only relic left of his happy infancy. The auctioneer, with a queer moisture in his eyes, handed the rocking-horse to the man without a word. He seized it with eager hands, and he and the veiled woman hurried away. The crowd murmured with sympathy. The man and the woman went into an empty room and set the rocking-horse down. He took out his knife, ripped open the front of the horse, and took out a roll of bills. He counted them and said: "It's a cold day when I fail without a rake-off. Eight thousand five hundred dollars, but that auctioneer came very near busting up the game." The Telegram Scene: Telegraph office in Houston. [Enter handsome black velour cape, trimmed with jet and braid, with Tibetan fur collar, all enclosing lovely young lady.] Young lady Oh, I want to send a telegram at once, if you please. Give me about six blanks, please. [Writes about ten minutes.] How much will this amount to, please? Clerk [counting words] Sixteen dollars and ninety-five cents, ma'am. Young lady Goodness gracious! I've only thirty cents with me. [Suspiciously.] How is it you charge so much, when the post-office only requires two cents? Clerk We claim to deliver messages quicker than the post-office, ma'am. You can send ten words to Waco for twenty-five cents. Young lady Give me another blank, please: I guess that will be enough. [After five minutes' hard work she produces the following: "Ring was awfully lovely. Come down as soon as you can. Mamie."] Clerk This contains eleven words. That will be thirty cents. Young lady Oh, gracious! I wanted that nickel to buy gum with. Clerk Let's see. You might strike out, "awfully," and that will make it all right. Young lady Indeed I shan't. You ought to see that ring. I'll give you the thirty cents. Clerk To whom is this to be sent? Young lady It seems to me you are rather inquisitive, sir. Clerk [wearily] I assure you there is no personal interest expressed in the question. We have to know the name and address in order to send the message. Young lady Oh, yes. I didn't think of that. [She writes the name and address, pays the thirty cents and departs. Twenty minutes later she returns, out of breath.] Young lady Oh, I forgot something. Have you sent it off yet? Clerk Yes, ten minutes ago. Young lady Oh, I'm so sorry. It isn't the way I wanted it at all. Can't you telegraph and have it changed for me? Clerk Is it anything important? Young lady Yes: I wanted to underscore the words "awfully lovely." Will you have that attended to at once? Clerk Certainly, and we have some real nice violet extract; would you like a few drops on your telegram? Young lady Oh, yes: so kind of you. I expect to send all my telegrams through your office, you have been so accommodating. Good morning. An Opportunity Declined A farmer who lives about four miles from Houston noticed a stranger in his front yard one afternoon last week acting in a rather unusual manner. He wore a pair of duck trousers stuffed in his boots, and had a nose the color of Elgin pressed brick. In his hand he held a sharpened stake about two feet long, which he would stick into the ground, and after sighting over it at various objects would pull it up and go through the same performance at another place. The farmer went out in the yard and inquired what he wanted. "Wait just a minute," said the stranger, squinting his eye over the stick at the chicken house. "Now, that's it to a _T_. You see, I'm one of de odnance corps of engineers what's runnin' de line of the new railroad from Columbus, Ohio, to Houston. See? De other fellers is over de hill wid de transit and de baggage. Dere's over a million dollars in de company. See? Dey sent me on ahead to locate a place for a big passenger depot, to cost $27,000. De foundation will commence right by your chicken house. Say, I gives you a pointer. You charge 'em high for dis land. Dey'll stand fifty thousand. 'Cause why? 'Cause dey's got de money and dey's got to build de depot right where I says. See? I've got to go on into Houston to record a deed for a right of way, and I never thought to get fifty cents from de treasurer. He's a little man with light pants. You might let me have de fifty cents and when de boys comes along in de mornin' tell 'em what you did, and any one of 'em' hand you a dollar. You might ask 'em fifty-five thousand, if you--" "You throw that stick over the fence, and get the axe and cut up exactly half a cord of that wood, stove length, and I'll give you a quarter and your supper," said the farmer. "Does the proposition strike you favorably?" "And are you goin' to t'row away de opportunity of havin' dat depot built right here, and sellin' out--" "Yes, I need the ground for my chicken coop." "You refuse to take $50,000 for de ground, den?" "I do. Are you going to chop that wood, or shall I whistle for Tige?" "Gimme dat axe, mister, and show me dat wood, and tell de missus to bake an extra pan of biscuits for supper. When dat Columbus and Houston grand trunk railway runs up against your front fence you'll be sorry you didn't take up dat offer. And tell her to fill up the molasses pitcher, too, and not to mind about putting the dish of cooking butter on de table. See?" Correcting a Great Injustice Something has been recently disclosed that will fill every chivalrous man in the country with contrition. For a long time men have supposed that the habit of wearing tall hats at the theater by the ladies was nothing more than a lack of consideration on their part for the unfortunate individuals who were so unlucky as to get a seat behind them. It now appears that the supposition did the fair sex a great injustice. A noted female physician has exposed an affliction that the female sex has long suffered with, and have succeeded up to this time in keeping a profound secret. Their habit of wearing hats in places of public entertainment is the result of a necessity, and relieves them of the charge of selfish disregard of the convenience of others, which has been so often brought against them. It appears that ladies who are past thirty-five years of age are peculiarly sensitive to the effect of a bright light striking upon their heads from above. The skull of a woman is quite different from that of a man, especially on the top, and at the age of thirty-five, the texture of the skull at this place becomes very light. Rays of light--especially electric light--have a peculiarly penetrating and disturbing effect upon the cerebral nerves. Strange to say, this infirmity is never felt by a young woman, but as soon as she passes the heyday of youth, it is at once perceptible. The fact is generally known to women, and discussed among themselves, but they have jealously guarded the secret, even from their nearest male relatives and friends. The lady physician who recently exposed the matter in a scientific journal is the first of her sex to make it known to the public. If anyone will take the trouble to make a test of the statement, its truth will be unquestionably proven. Engage a woman of middle age in conversation beneath a well-lighted chandelier, and in a few moments she will grow uneasy, and very soon the pain inflicted by the light will cause her to move away from under its source. On young and healthy girls the rays of light have no perceptible effect. So, when we see a lady at a theater wearing a tall and cumbersome hat, we should reflect that she is more than thirty-five years old, and is simply protecting herself from an affliction that advancing years have brought upon her. Whenever we observe one wearing small and unobtrusive headgear we know that she is still young and charming, and can yet sit beneath the rays of penetrating light without inconvenience. No man who has had occasion to rail against woman's supposed indifference to the public comfort in this respect, will hesitate to express sincere regret that he has so misunderstood them. It is characteristic of Americans to respect the infirmities of age, especially among the fair sex, and when the facts here narrated have been generally known, pity and toleration will take the place of censure. Henceforth a tall hat, with nodding feathers and clustering flowers and trimming, will not be regarded with aversion when we see it between us and the stage, but with respect, since we are assured that its wearer is no longer young, but is already on the down hill of life, and is forced to take the precaution that advancing years render necessary to infirm women. A Startling Demonstration What a terrible state of affairs it would be if we could read each other's minds! It is safe to say that if such were the case, most of us would be afraid to think above a whisper. As an illustration, a case might be cited that occurred in Houston. Some months ago a very charming young lady came to this city giving exhibitions in mind reading, and proved herself to be marvelously gifted in that respect. She easily read the thoughts of the audience, finding many articles hidden by simply holding the hand of the person secreting them, and read sentences written on little slips of paper by some at a considerable distance from her. A young man in Houston fell in love with her, and married her after a short courtship. They went to housekeeping and for a time were as happy as mortals can be. One evening they were sitting on the porch of their residence holding each other's hands, and wrapt in the close communion of mutual love, when she suddenly rose and knocked him down the steps with a large flowerpot. He arose astonished, with a big bump on his head, and asked her, if it were not too much trouble, to explain. "You can't fool me," she said with flashing eyes. "You were thinking of a redheaded girl named Maud with a gold plug in her front tooth and a light pink waist and a black silk skirt on Rusk Avenue, standing under a cedar bush chewing gum at twenty minutes to eight with your arm around her waist and calling her 'sweetness,' while she fooled with your watch chain and said: 'Oh, George, give me a chance to breathe,' and her mother was calling her to supper. Don't you dare to deny it. Now, when you can get your mind on something better than that, you can come in the house and not before." Then the door slammed and George and the broken flowerpot were alone. Leap Year Advice Spinsters must be up and doing: 1896 will be the only leap year for the next eight years. Once in every four years the wise men who made the calendar insert an extra day so that the average year will not be so short. Once in every hundred years this extra day is omitted, and a leap year is also dropped. The year 1900 will not be a leap year. Unmarried ladies who yearn for matrimonial chains, and have been left standing in the comer by fickle man must get to work. If they fail in landing their prize during 1896 they will have to wait eight years more before they can propose again. Therefore they should work early and late during the present year. The following communication pertaining to the subject was received yesterday. Houston, Texas, January 1, 1896. The Houston Post. Gentlemen: This being leap year I arose this morning at daybreak, resolved to utilize every moment of the time possible. Four years ago, I wrote and received some very valuable advice from you in regard to the exercise of the privileges of my sex (female) during the leap year season. I followed your advice strictly, and in the year 1892 proposed marriage to twenty-seven different men. I am still single, but am not to blame for that. I was engaged to three men in 1892, and, but for the unforeseen bad luck, would certainly have married at least one of them. Two of them committed suicide the day before the wedding and the other got his hat and walking cane and went to Patagonia. I see in the papers that the year 1900 will not be a leap year, and I realize that for the next twelve months I have got to carry on a red hot aggressive campaign, as eight more years will decidedly weaken my chances. Any suggestions you may make that will aid me will be appreciated. I enclose my photo. I am nearly thirty-six, and sleep on my left side. Faithfully yours, Bettie Louis M--- This is an awful subject to speak lightly upon, and the few words of advice we propose giving are sincere and well weighed. Your photograph shows that whatever you do must be done quickly. A good way for a lady of your age and cut of collar bones to open New Year would be with prayer and massage. It may be a defect in the retouching of your photo, but still, it would not be amiss to take a good Turkish bath and then go over low places with plaster of Paris applied with a common case knife with gentle downward motion, breathing as usual, and dry in the sun, turning over frequently two or three hours before eating. You should not waste any time in selecting a man. Try the milkman first, as he generally comes before it is very light. As the milkman will no doubt refuse you, be prepared to give the postman a shock. Do not be too abrupt in proposing, as a rude shock of this nature will often cause a timid man to stampede, causing great loss of confidence and bric-a-brac. After getting a victim to stand, speak gently to him until he ceases to quiver in his limbs and roll his eyes. Do not pat his chest, or rub his nose, as men will sometimes kick at this treatment. Bear in mind the fact that 1900 is not leap year, and keep between him and the door. Approach the subject gradually, allowing him no time to pray and remove the cigars from his vest pocket. If he should shudder and turn pale, turn the conversation upon progressive euchre, Braun's egotism, or some other light subject, until a handkerchief applied to his neck will not come off wet. If possible, get him to seat himself, and then, grasping both lapels of his coat, breathe heavily upon him, and speak of your lonely life. At this stage he will mutter incoherently, answer at random, and try to climb up the chimney. When his pulse gets to 195, and he begins to babble of green fields and shows only the whites of his eyes, strike him on the point of the chin, propose, chloroform him, and telephone for a minister. After Supper Mr. Sharp: "My darling, it seems to me that every year that passes over your head but brings out some new charm, some hidden beauty, some added grace. There is a look in your eyes tonight that is as charming and girllike as when I first met you. What a blessing it is when two hearts can grow but fonder as time flies. You are scarcely less beautiful now than when--" Mrs. Sharp: "I had forgotten it was lodge night, Robert. Don't be out much after twelve, if you can help it." His Only Opportunity Last week "The Rainmakers" gave two performances in Houston. At the night performance a prominent local politician occupied one of the front seats, as near to the stage as possible. He carried in his hand a glossy silk hat, and he seemed to be in a state of anxious suspense, fidgeting about in his chair, and holding his hat in both hands straight before him. A friend who occupied a seat directly behind, leaned over and asked the cause of his agitation. "I'll tell you, Bill," said the politician in a confidential whisper, "just how it is. I've been in politics now for ten years, and I've been bemoaned and abused and cussed out, and called so many hard names that I thought I'd like to be addressed in a decent manner once more before I die, and this is about the only opportunity I shall have. There is a sleight-of-hand performance between two of the acts in this show, and the professor is going to step down to the front and say: 'Will some gentleman kindly loan me a hat?' Then I'm going to stand up and give him mine, and it'll make me feel good for a week. I haven't been called a gentleman in so long. I expect I'll whoop right out hard when he takes the hat. Excuse me now. I've got to be ready and get my hat in first. I see one of the city councilmen over there with an old derby in his hand, and I'll bet he's up to the same game." Getting Acquainted His coat was rusty and his hat out of style, but his nose glasses, secured by a black cord, lent him a distinguished air, and his manner was jaunty and assured. He stepped into a new Houston grocery yesterday, and greeted the proprietor cordially. "I'll have to introduce myself," he said. "My name is ----, and I live next door to the house you have just moved in. Saw you at church Sunday. Our minister also observed you, and after church he says, 'Brother ----, you must really find out who that intelligent-looking stranger is who listened so attentively today.' How did you like the sermon?" "Very well," said the grocer as he picked some funny-looking currants with wings out of a jar. "Yes, he is a very eloquent and pious man. You have not been in business long in Houston, have you?" "Three weeks," said the grocer, as he removed the cheese knife from the box to the shelf behind him. "Our people," said the rusty-looking man, "are whole-souled and hospitable. There is no welcome too warm for them to extend to a newcomer, and the members of our church in particular are especially friendly toward anyone who drops in to worship with us. You have a nice stock of goods." "So, so," said the grocer, turning his back and gazing up at a supply of canned California fruits. "Only last week now I had quite an altercation with the tradesman I deal with for sending me inferior goods. You have some nice hams, I suppose, and such staples as coffee and sugar?" "Yep," said the grocer. "My wife was over to see your wife this morning, and enjoyed her visit very much. What time does your delivery wagon pass up our street?" "Say," said the grocer. "I bought out an old stock of groceries here, and put in a lot of new ones. I see your name on the old books charged with $87.10 balance on account. Did you want something more today?" "No, sir," said the rusty man, drawing himself up and glaring through his glasses. "I merely called in from a sense of Christian duty to extend you a welcome, but I see you are not the man I took you to be. I don't want any of your groceries. I can see the mites in that cheese from the other side of the street, and my wife says your wife is wearing an underskirt made out of an old tablecloth. Several of our congregation were speaking of your smelling of toddy in church, and snoring during the prayers. My wife will return that cup of lard she borrowed at your house this morning just as quick as my last order comes up from the store where we trade. Good morning, sir." The grocer softly whispered, "There Won't Anybody Play with Me," and whittled a little lead out of one of his weights, in an absentminded way. Answers to Inquiries Dear Editor: I want to ask a question in arithmetic. I am a school boy and am anxious to know the solution. If my pa, who keeps a grocery on Milam Street, sells four cans of tomatoes for twenty-five cents, and twenty-two pounds of sugar, and one can of extra evaporated apples and three cans of superior California plums, for only-- There! There! little boy; that will do. Tell your pa to come around and see the advertising manager, who is quite an arithmetician, and will doubtless work the sum for you at the usual rates. City Perils Jeremiah Q. Dilworthy lives away up on San Jacinto Street. He walks home every night. On January first, he promised his wife he would not take another drink in a year. He forgot his promise and on Tuesday night we met some of the boys, and when he started home about nine o'clock he was feeling a trifle careless. Mr. Dilworthy was an old resident of Houston, and on rainy nights he always walked in the middle of the street, which is well paved. Alas! if Mr. Dilworthy had only remembered the promise made his wife! He started out all right, and just as he was walking up San Jacinto Street he staggered over to one side of the street. A policeman standing on the comer heard a loud yell of despair, and turning, saw a man throw up his arms and then disappear from sight. Before the policeman could call someone who could swim the man had gone for the third and last time. Mr. Jeremiah Q. Dilworthy had fallen into the sidewalk. Hush Money He was a great practical joker, and never lost a chance to get a good one on somebody. A few days ago he stopped a friend on Main Street and said, confidentially: "I never would have believed it, but I believe it my duty to make it known. Mr. ----, the alderman for our ward, has been taking hush money." "Impossible!" said his friend. "I tell you, it's true, for I overheard the conversation and actually saw it handed over to him, and he took the money and put it in his pocket." Then he went on without explaining any further, and the thing got talked around considerably for a day or two. He forgot all about it until one day he met the alderman and suffered from the encounter to the extent of two black eyes and a coat split up the back. And then he had to go all round and explain that what he meant was that he had seen the alderman's wife give him a dime to buy some paregoric for the baby. Relieved A Houston gentleman who is worth somewhere up in the hundreds of thousands and lives on eleven dollars a week, was sitting in his private office a few days ago, when a desperate looking man entered and closed the door carefully behind him. The man had an evil, villainous-looking face, and in his hand he held with the utmost care an oblong, square-shaped package. "What do you want?" asked the capitalist. "I must have money," hissed the stranger. "I am starving while you are rolling in wealth. Do you see this little package? Do you know what it contains?" The wealthy citizen sprang from his desk in horror, pale with fright. "No, no," he gasped. "You would not be so cruel, so heartless." "This package," continued the desperate man, "contains enough dynamite, if let fall upon the floor, to hurl this building into a shapeless mass of ruins." "Is that all?" said the capitalist, sinking into his chair and picking up his newspaper with a sigh of relief. "You don't know how much you frightened me. I thought it was a gold brick." No Time to Lose A young Houston mother rushed into die house the other day in the utmost excitement, calling out to her mother to put an iron on the fire as quick as possible. "What is the matter?" asked the old lady. "A dog has just bitten Tommy, and I am afraid it was mad. Oh, hurry up, mother; be as quick as you can!" "Are you going to try to cauterize the wound?" "No--I've got to iron that blue skirt before I can wear it to go after the doctor. Do be in a hurry." A Villainous Trick When it becomes necessary for an actor to write a letter during the performance of a play, it is a custom to read the words aloud as he writes them. It is necessary to do this in order that the audience may be apprised of its contents, otherwise the clearness of the plot might be obscured. The writing of a letter upon the stage, therefore, generally has an important bearing upon the situation being presented, and of course the writer is forced to read aloud what he writes for the benefit of the audience. During the production of "Monbars" in Houston some days ago, the gentleman who assumed the character of the heavy villain took advantage of a situation of this description in a most cowardly manner. In the last act, Mantell, as Monbars, writes a letter of vital importance, and, as customary, reads the lines aloud as he writes them. The villain hides behind the curtains of a couch and listens in fiendish glee to the contents of the letter as imparted by Mr. Mantell in strict confidence to the audience. He then uses the information obtained in this underhanded manner to further his own devilish designs. Mr. Mantell ought not to allow this. A man who is a member of his own company, and who, no doubt is drawing a good salary, should be above taking a mean advantage of a mere stage technicality. A Forced March The young man is a-walking with his girl Hear him swear That he loves her and adores her. And he woos her, and, of course, her Little foolish heart doth force her; She's half crazy and her thoughts are in a whirl. The young man is a-walking with his girl. (Hear him swear.) She is two months old and screaming, While around the room he's steaming, And her ma is in bed dreaming; He's half crazy and his thoughts are in a whirl. Book Reviews _Unabridged Dictionary by Noah Webster_, L. L. D. F. R. S. X. Y. Z. We find on our table quite an exhaustive treatise on various subjects, written in Mr. Webster's well-known, lucid, and piquant style. There is not a dull line between the covers of the book. The range of subjects is wide, and the treatment light and easy without being flippant. A valuable feature of the work is the arranging of the articles in alphabetical order, thus facilitating the finding of any particular word desired. Mr. Webster's vocabulary is large, and he always uses the right word in the right place. Mr. Webster's work is thorough and we predict that he will be heard from again. _Houston's City Directory_, by Morrison and Fourmy. This new book has the decided merit of being non-sensational. In these days of erratic and ultra-imaginative literature of the modern morbid self-analytical school it is a relief to peruse a book with so little straining after effect, so well balanced, and so pure in sentiment. It is a book that a man can place in the hands of the most innocent member of his family with the utmost confidence. Its material is healthy, and its literary style excellent, as it adheres to the methods used with such thrilling effect by Mr. Webster in his famous dictionary, viz: alphabetical arrangement. We venture to assert that no one can carefully and conscientiously read this little volume without being a better man, or lady, as circumstances over which they have no control may indicate. A Conditional Pardon The runaway couple had just returned, and she knelt at the old man's feet and begged forgiveness. "Yes, forgive us," cried the newly wedded husband. "Forgive me for taking her away from you, but see, I have brought her back." "Yes," said the old man, his voice trembling with emotion, "you have brought her back. You have brought her back. Bat that is not all, lad; you have brought her back, but you have also brought the part of her that eats provisions. I will forgive you for fifty dollars per month, lights and washing extra." * * * * * It is but justice to the Pension Bureau at Washington to state that they have not yet granted the pension claimed by a man who was wounded in the late unpleasantness by the accidental discharge of his duty. * * * * * A careful inquiry has revealed the fact that Samson was the first man who rushed the growler. Better blow your own horn than one you haven't paid for. If your rye offend you, buy a better quality. Inconsistency Call a pretty girl a witch And she'll do her best to charm you. Tell an old maid she's a witch, And she certainly will harm you. Thus you see how hard it is to please them all. Call a pretty maiden "Puss," And she'll archly smile upon you. Call an ancient one a "cat," She will grab an axe and run you. The same name will not fit them all, at all. If you call your girl a "mouse," She will think it cute and pretty. If unto an aged spinster You say "rats," you have our pity. Thus you see you need not try to please them all. * * * * * "In a lighthouse by the sea" is what the opera company sang to a forty-dollar audience in Galveston. * * * * * "Yes," said the tramp as he accepted the dime and made for the lunch counter, "I always hollers when I'm hit and I always hits a man when I'm holler." Bill Nye Bill Nye, who recently laid down his pen for all time, was a unique figure in the field of humor. His best work probably more nearly represented American humor than that of any other writer. Mr. Nye had a sense of ludicrous that was keen and judicious. His humor was peculiarly American in that it depended upon sharp and unexpected contrasts, and the bringing of opposites into unlooked-for comparison for its effect. Again, he had the true essence of kindliness, without which humor is stripped of its greatest component part. Bill Nye's jokes never had a sting. They played like summer lightning around the horizon of life, illuminating and spreading bright, if transitory, pictures upon the sky, but they were as harmless as the smile of a child. The brain of the man conceived the swift darts that he threw, but his great manly heart broke off their points. He knew human nature as a scholar knows his book, and the knowledge did not embitter him. He saw all the goodness in frailty, and his clear eyes penetrated the frailty of goodness. His was the child's heart, the scholar's knowledge, and the philosopher's view of life. He might have won laurels in other fields, for he was a careful reasoner, and a close observer, but he showed his greatness in putting aside cold and fruitless discussions that have wearied the world long ago, and set himself the task of arousing bubbling laughter instead of consuming doubt. The world has been better for him, and when that can be said of a man, the tears that drop upon his grave are more potent than the loud huzzas that follow the requiem of the greatest conqueror or the most successful statesman. The kindliest thoughts and the sincerest prayers follow the great humanitarian--for such he was into the great beyond, and such solace as the hearty condolement of a million people can bring to the bereaved loved ones of Bill Nye, is theirs. To a Portrait She might have been some princess fair, From Nile's banks where lotus blooms; Or one of Pharaoh's daughters there Asleep amid long molded tombs. Or fairy princess sweet and proud, Or gipsy queen with regal smiles; Helen of Troy, or Guinevere, Or Vivien with her witching smile. Or Zozo's Queen, or Lily Clay, Or Mrs. Langtry; or a maid Of fashion, who, in costume scant, Her charms is wont to have arrayed. But none of these she is--not e'en, Andromeda chained on the rocks. I found her lovely, lone, and lorn A chromo on a cracker box. A Guarded Secret It is time to call a halt upon the persistent spreaders of the alleged joke that a woman can not keep a secret. No baser ingratitude has been shown by man toward the fair sex than the promulgation of this false report. Whenever a would-be humorous man makes use of this antiquated chestnut which his fellow men feel in duty bound to applaud, the face of the woman takes on a strange, inscrutable, pitying smile that few men ever read. The truth is that it is only woman who can keep a secret. Only a divine intelligence can understand the marvelous power with which ninety-nine married women out of a hundred successfully hide from the rest of the world the secret that they have bound themselves to something unworthy of the pure and sacrificing love they have given them. She may whisper to her neighbor that Mrs. Jones has turned her old silk dress twice, but if she has in her breast anything affecting one she loves, the gods themselves could not drag it from her. Weak man looks into the wine cup and behold, he babbles his innermost thoughts to any gaping bystander; woman can babble of the weather, and gaze with infantine eyes into the orbs of the wiliest diplomat, while holding easily in her breast the heaviest secrets of state. Adam was the original blab; the first telltale, and we are not proud of him. With the dreamy, appealing eyes of Eve upon him--she who was created for his comfort and pleasure--even as she stood by his side, loving and fresh and fair as a spring moon, the wretched cad said, "The woman gave me and I did eat." This reprehensible act in our distinguished forefather can not be excused by any gentleman who knows what is due to a lady. Adam's conduct would have caused his name to be stricken from the list of every decent club in the country. And since that day, woman has stood by man, faithful, true, and ready to give up all for his sake. She hides his puny peccadilloes from the world, she glosses over his wretched misdemeanors, and she keeps silent when a word would pierce his inflated greatness and leave him a shriveled and shrunken rag. And man says that woman can not keep a secret! Let him be thankful that she can, or his littleness would be proclaimed from the housetops. A Pastel Above all hangs the dreadful night. He pleads with her. His hand is on her arm. They stand in the cold, solemn night, gazing into a brilliantly lighted room. His face is white and terror-stricken. Hers is willful, defiant, and white with the surging impulse of destiny. Ten miles away on the Harrisburg road a draggle-tailed rooster crows, but the woman does not falter. He pleads with her. She shakes off his hand with a gesture of loathing, and takes a step forward toward the lighted room. He pleads with her. Crystal flakes of moonlight quiver on the trees above; star dust flecks the illimitable rim of the Ineligible. The whicheverness of the Absolute reigns preeminent. Sin is below; peace above. The whip of the north wind trails a keen lash upon them. Carriages sweep by. Frost creeps upon the stones, lies crustily along parapets, spangles and throws back in arctic scintillation the moon's challenging rays. He pleads with her. At last she turns, conquered. He has refused to treat to oysters. Jim Thanks, young man; I'll sit awhile, And rest while Betsy trades a bit. We've druv 'bout twenty mile to-day; I'm real tired. Just think of it! "Me a-restin' on this here bench 'Mongst all these trees and flowers and sich; A park! You say? It's a nice place To drive your team and stop and hitch. "Farm? Yes, we've got a good one; Two hundred acres as fine as you'll see, We're purty well fixed as to worldly things, We've worked hard for it, Betsy and me. "But there's one thing keeps me mighty sad, We can't get over it, night or day. Never an hour we don't think of Jim-- Ten years now, since he went away. "Dead?--No; just got mad and left. Never a word have we heard from him; Ten years of waitin', hopin', and prayin' Jest fur one more sight of Jim. "Jest about your height, young man; Slender and straight as a stalk of corn; Good as gold, though quick to get angry-- But, then he was mine and Betsy's first-born. "I think if I could git hold of Jim's hand, And kinder explain the words I said, He'd know his old dad's heart would ever Be just the same--but I guess Jim's dead. "Or he never--what's that you say, sir? You Jim!--My God!--it can't be true! Come to my heart, boy--closer, closer-- Can it be Jim--oh, can it be you? "Run quick and call your mother! She's in the store--come quick again; I'll wait here for you. . . . . . . Here! Police! Police! That young feller's got my watch and chain!" Board and Ancestors The snake reporter of the Post was wending his way homeward last night when he was approached by a very gaunt, hungry-looking man with wild eyes and an emaciated face. "Can you tell me, sir," he inquired, "where I can find in Houston a family of lowborn scrubs?" "I don't exactly understand," said the reporter. "Let me tell you how it is," said the emaciated man. "I came to Houston a month ago, and I hunted up a boarding house, as I can not afford to live at a hotel. I found a nice, aristocratic-looking place that suited me, and went inside. The landlady came in the parlor and she was a very stately lady with a Roman nose. I asked the price of board, and she said: 'Eighty dollars per month.' I fell against the door jamb with a dull thud, and she said: "'You seem surprised, sah. You will please remember that I am the widow of Governah Riddle of Virginia. My family is very highly connected; give you board as a favah; I never consider money an equivalent to advantage of my society. Will you have a room with a door in it?' "'I'll call again,' I said, and got out of the house, somehow, and went to another fine, three-storied house, with a sign 'Board and Rooms' on it. "The next lady I saw had gray curls, and a soft gazelle-like eye. She was a cousin of General Mahone of Virginia and wanted $16 per week for a little back room with a pink motto and a picture of the battle of Chancellorsville in it. "I went to some more boarding houses. "The next lady said she was descended from Aaron Burr on one side and Captain Kidd on the other. She was using the Captain Kidd side in her business. She wanted to charge me sixty cents an hour for board and lodging. I traveled around all over Houston and found nine widows of Supreme Court judges, twelve relicts of governors and generals, and twenty-two ruins left by happy departed colonels, professors, and majors, who put fancy figures on the benefits of their society, and carried victuals as a side line. "I finally grew desperately hungry and engaged a week's board at a nice, stylish mansion in the third ward. The lady who kept it was tall and imposing. She kept one hand lying across her waist and the other held a prayer book and a pair of ice hooks. She said she was an aunt of Davy Crockett, and was still in mourning for him. Her family was one of the first in Texas. It was then supper time and I went in to supper. Supper was from six-fifty to seven, and consisted of baker's bread, prayer, and cold slaw. I was so fatigued that I begged to be shown to my room immediately after the meal. "I took the candle, went into the room she showed me, and locked the door quickly. The room was furnished in imitation of the Alamo. The walls and the floor were bare, and the bed was something like a monument only harder. About midnight I felt something as if I had fallen into a prickly pear bush, and jumped up and lit the candle. I looked in the bed and then put on my clothes, and exclaimed: "'Thermopylae had her messenger of defeat, but the Alamo had a thousand.' "I slipped out of the door and left the house. "Now, my dear sir, I am not wealthy, and I can not afford to pay for high lineage and moldy ancestors with my board. Corned beef goes further with me than a coronet, and when I am cold a coat-of-arms does not warm me. I am desperate and hungry, and I hate everybody who can trace their ancestors farther back than the late Confederate Reunion. I want to find a boarding house whose proprietress was left while an infant in a basket at a livery stable, whose father was an unnaturalized dago from the fifth ward, and whose grandfather was never placed upon the map. I want to strike a low-down, scrubby, piebald, sans-culotte outfit that never heard of finger bowls or grace before meals but who can get up a mess of hot corn bread and Irish stew at regular market quotations. Is there any such place in Houston?" The snake reporter shook his head sadly. "I never heard of any," he said. "The boarding houses here are run by ladies who do not take boarders to make a living; they are all trying to get a better rating in Bradstreet's than Hetty Green." "Then," said the emaciated man desperately, "I will shake you for a long toddy." The snake reporter felt in his vest pocket haughtily for a moment, and then refusing the proposition scornfully, moved away down the dimly lighted street. An X-Ray Fable And it came to pass that a man with a Cathode Ray went about the country finding out and showing the people, for a consideration, the insides of folks' heads and what they were thinking about. And he never made a mistake. And in a certain town lived a man whose name was Reuben and a maid whose name was Ruth. And the two were sweethearts and were soon to be married. And Reuben came to the man and hired him with coin to take a snap shot at Ruth's head, and find out whom she truly loved. And later on Ruth came and also hired the man to find out whom Reuben truly loved. And the man did so and got two good negatives. In the meantime Reuben and Ruth confessed to each other what they had done, and the next day they came together, hand in hand, to the man with the Ray, for their answer. The man saw them, and he wrote two names on two slips of paper and gave them into their hands. "On these slips of paper," he said, "you will find the name of the one whom each of you loves best in the world, as truly discovered by my wonderful Cathode Ray." And the man and the maid opened the pieces of paper and saw written on one "Reuben" and on the other "Ruth," and they were filled with joy and happiness, and went away with arms about each other's waists. But the man with the Ray neglected to mention the fact that the photographs he had taken showed that Reuben's head was full of deep and abiding love for Reuben and Ruth's showed her to be passionately enamored of Ruth. The moral is that the proprietor of the Ray probably knew his business. A Universal Favorite The most popular and best loved young lady in the United States is Miss Annie Williams of Philadelphia. Her picture is possessed by more men, and is more eagerly sought after than that of Lillian Russell, Mrs. Langtry, or any other famous beauty. There is more demand for her pictures than for the counterfeit presentments of all the famous men and women in the world combined. And yet she is a modest, charming, and rather retiring young lady, with a face less beautiful than of a clear and classic outline. Miss Williams is soon to be married, but it is expected that the struggle for her pictures will go on as usual. She is the lady the profile of whose face served as the model for the head of Liberty on our silver dollar. Spring A Dialect Poem Oh, dinna ye fash y'r sel' hinny, Varum kanst du nicht the thing see? Don't always be kicking, me darlint; Toujours le meme chose will not be. Tout le monde will grow brighter, ye spalpeen; Und das zeit will get better, you bet; Arrah! now will yez stop dot complainin' Und a creat pig quick move on you get. Ach, Gott! gina de monka a peanutte; Und schmile some, for sweet spring is here, Gott in himmel, carrambo das was sehr gut, Kase its purty nigh time fur bock beer. The Sporting Editor on Culture "Is the literary editor in?" The sporting editor looked up from the paper he was reading, and saw a vision of female loveliness about twenty years of age, with soft blue eyes, and a heavy mass of golden brown hair arranged in a coiffure of the latest and most becoming style. "Nope," said the sporting editor, "you can bet your life he ain't in. He's out trying to get bail for having assaulted a man who wrote to the Letter Box to ask if ten men could build a house in twenty-seven and one-half days by working eight hours a day, how many buttons would be required for a coat of paint for same house. Did you call to see about a poem, or did you want him to sneak you some coupons for the bicycle contest?" "Neither," said the young lady, with dignity. "I am the secretary of the Houston Young Ladies' Society of Ethical Culture, and I was appointed a committee to call upon the literary editor and consult him as to the best plan for the exercise of our various functions." "Now, that's a good thing," said the sporting editor. "I don't seem to exactly catch on to 'ethical,' but if it's anything like physical culture you girls are going in for, you've trotted up to the right rack. I can tell you more about the proper way to exercise your functions in one minute than the literary editor can in an hour. He understands all about the identity of the wherefore and the origin of the pyramids, but he can't punch the bag, or give you any pointers how to increase your chest measurement. How long has your society been in training?" "We organized last month," answered the lady, looking at the cheerful face of the reporter rather doubtfully. "Well, now, how do you girls breathe--with your lungs or with your diaphragm?" "Sir?" "Oh, you'll have to start in right, and you've got to know how to breathe. The first thing is to keep your chest out, your shoulders back, and go through arm exercises for a few days. Then you can try something like this: Keep the upper part of the figure erect, and standing on one leg, try to--" "Sir!" exclaimed the young lady severely, "you are presumptuous. I do not understand your obscure talk. Our society is not connected with a gymnasium. Our aim is the encouragement of social ethics." "Oh," returned the sporting editor, in a disappointed tone, "you are on the society and pink tea racket. Sorry. That lets me out. Hoped you were going in for athletics. You could do it so well, too. Take my advice now, and try that little exercise every morning for a week. You'll be surprised to see how much it will benefit your muscles. As I said, just stand on one--" Bang! went the door, and the blue-eyed young lady was gone. "It's a pity," said the sporting editor, "that these girls don't pay some attention to self-culture without that--that ethical part." A Question of Direction "Do you mean to tell me," gasped the horrified gentleman from Boston, "that this man you speak of was shot and killed at a meeting of your debating society, and by the presiding officer himself, during the discussion of a question, simply because he arose and made a motion that was considered out of order?" "He certainly was, sure," said the colonel. "This is simply awful," said the traveler. "I must make a note of this occurrence so that the people of my State can be apprised of the dreadful lawlessness that prevails in this section--a man shot down and killed at a social and educational meeting for the infringement of an unimportant parliamentary error! It is awful to contemplate." "That's whatever," said the colonel reflectively. "It is for a fact. But you might state, in order to do justice to our community and town, which is, as it were, the Athens of Texas, that the motion made by the deceased was in the direction of his hip pocket. Shall we all liquor?" The Old Farm Just now when the whitening blossoms flare. On the apple trees, and the growing grass Creeps forth, and a balm is in the air; With my lighted pipe and well-filled glass Of the old farm I am dreaming, And softly smiling, seeming To see the bright sun beaming Upon the old home farm. And when I think how we milked the cows, And hauled the hay from the meadows low, And walked the furrows behind the plows, And chapped the cotton to make it grow, I'd much rather be here dreaming, And, smiling, only seeming To see that hot sun beaming Upon the old home farm. Willing to Compromise As he walked up to the bar he pulled up his collar with both hands and straightened the old red tie that was trying to creep around under one ear. The bartender glanced at him and then went on chipping lemon peel into a saucer. "Say," said the man with the red tie, "it makes me right sick to think about it." "What?" said the bartender, "water?" "No sir; the apathy displayed by the people of the state in regard to presenting the battleship Texas with a suitable present. It is a disgrace to our patriotism. I was talking to W. G. Cleveland this morning and we both agreed that something must be done at once. Would you give ten dollars toward a silver service to be presented to the ship?" The bartender reached behind him and took up a glass that was sitting on the shelf. "I don't know that I would give you ten dollars," he said, "but here's some whisky that I put some turpentine in by mistake this morning and forgot to throw it out. Will that do as well?" "It will," said the man with the red tie, reaching for the glass, "and I am also soliciting aid for the Cuban patriots. If you want to assist the cause of liberty and can't spare the cash, if you could rustle up a glass of beer with a fly in it, I would--" "Trot out, now," said the bartender. "There's a church member looking in the back door, and he won't come in till everybody's out." Ridiculous The following conundrum was left at the office yesterday by a young man, who immediately fled: "Why is the coming Sunday like a very young body?" Answer: "Because it's neck's weak." We do not see any reason why this should be the case. It is impossible for Sunday or any other day in the week to have a neck. The thing is printed merely to show what kind of stuff people send in to the paper. Guessed Everything Else A man with a long, sharp nose and a big bundle which he carried by a strap went up the steps of the gloomy-looking brick house, set his bundle down, rang the bell, and took off his hat and wiped his brow. A woman opened the door and he said: "Madam, I have a number of not only useful but necessary articles here that I would like to show you. First, I want you to look at these elegant illustrated books of travel and biography, written by the best authors. They are sold only by subscription. They are bound in--" "I don't care to see them. We have sm--" "Small children only, eh? Well, Madam, here are some building blocks that are very instructive and amusing. No? Well, let me show you some beautiful lace window curtains for your sitting room, handmade and a great bargain. I can--" "I don't want them. We have sm--" "Smoking in the house? It won't injure them in the least. Just shake them out in the morning and I guarantee not a vestige of tobacco smoke will remain. Here also I have a very ingenious bell for awakening lazy servants in the morning. You simply touch a button and--" "I tell you we have sm--" "Have smart servants, have you? Well, that is a blessing. Now, here is a clothes line that is one of the wonders of the age. It needs no pins and can be fastened to anything--fence, side of the house, or tree. It can be raised or lowered in an instant, and for a large washing is the most convenient and laborsaving invention that--" "I say we have small--" "Oh, you have a small family. Let's see, then I have here a--" "I'm trying to tell you," said the woman, "that we have smallpox in the family, and--" The long-nosed man made a convulsive grab at his goods and rolled down the steps in about two seconds, while the woman softly closed the door just as a man got out of a buggy and nailed a yellow flag on the house. The Prisoner of Zembla By Anthony Hoke So the king fell into a furious rage, so that none durst go near him for fear, and he gave out that since the Princess Astla had disobeyed him there would be a great tourney, and to the knight who should prove himself of the greatest valor he would give the hand of the princess. And he sent forth a herald to proclaim that he would do this. And the herald went about the country making his desire known, blowing a great tin horn and riding a noble steed that pranced and gamboled; and the villagers gazed upon him with awe and said: "Lo, that is one of them tin horn gamblers concerning which the chroniclers have told us." And when the day came, the king sat in the grandstand, holding the gage of battle in his hand, and by his side sat the Princess Astla, looking very pale and beautiful, but with mournful eyes from which she scarce could keep the tears, and the knights who came to the tourney gazed upon the princess in wonder at her beauty, and each swore to win her so that he could marry her and board with the king. Suddenly the heart of the princess gave a great bound, for she saw among the knights one of the poor students with whom she had been in love. The knights mounted and rode in a line past the grandstand, and the king stopped the poor student, who had the worst horse and the poorest caparisons of any of the knights, and said: "Sir knight, prithee tell me of what that marvelous shaky and rusty-looking armor of thine is made?" "Oh, king," said the young knight, "seeing that we are about to engage in a big fight, I would call it scrap iron, wouldn't you?" "Ods bodikins!" said the king. "The youth hath a pretty wit." * * * * * The tourney lasted the whole day and at the end but two of the knights were left, one of them being the princess's lover. "Here's enough for a fight, anyhow," said the king. "Come hither, oh knights, will ye joust for the hand of this lady fair?" "We joust will," said the knights. The two knights fought for two hours and at length the princess's lover prevailed and stretched the other upon the ground. The victorious knight made his horse caracole before the king, and bowed low in his saddle. On the Princess Astla's cheek was a rosy flush; in her eyes the light of excitement vied with the soft glow of love; her lips were parted, her lovely hair unbound, and she grasped the arms of her chair and leaned forward with heaving bosom and happy smile to hear the words of her lover. "You have fought well, sir knight," said the king. "And if there is any boon you crave you have but to name it." "Then," said the knight, "I will ask you this: I have bought the patent rights in your kingdom for Schneider's celebrated monkey wrench and I want a letter from you endorsing it." "You shall have it," said the king, "but I must tell you that there is not a monkey in my kingdom." With a yell of rage the victorious knight threw himself on his horse and rode away at a furious gallop. The king was about to speak when a horrible suspicion flashed upon him and he fell dead upon the grandstand. "My God!" he cried, as he expired, "he has forgotten to take the princess with him." Lucky Either Way The Memphis Commercial-Appeal, in commenting on errors in grammar made by magazines, takes exception to an error in construction occurring in Gode's Magazine in which, in J. H. Connelly's story entitled "Mr. Pettigrew's Bad Dog," a character is made to say: "You will be lucky if you escape with only marrying one." A man says this to another one who is being besieged by two ladies, and the Commercial-Appeal thinks he intended to say: "You will be lucky if you escape with marrying only one." Now, after considering the question, it seems likely that there is more in Mr. J. H. Connelly's remark than is dreamed of in the philosophy of the Commercial-Appeal. The history of matrimony gives color to the belief that, to whichever one of the ladies the gentleman might unite himself, he would be lucky if he escaped with only marrying her. Getting married is the easiest part of the affair. It is what comes afterward that makes a man sometimes wish a wolf had carried him into the forest when he was a little boy. It takes only a little nerve, a black coat, from five to ten dollars, and a girl, for a man to get married. Very few men are lucky enough to escape with only marrying a woman. Women are sometimes so capricious and unreasonable that they demand that a man stay around afterward, and board and clothe them, and build fires, and chop wood, and rock the chickens out of the garden, and tell the dressmaker when to send in her bill again. We would like to read "Mr. Pettigrew's Bad Dog" and find out whether the man was lucky enough to only marry the lady, or whether she held on to him afterward and didn't let him escape. The "Bad Man" A bold, bad man made a general display of himself in a Texas town a few days ago. It seems that he'd imbibed a sufficient number of drinks to become anxious to impress the town with his badness, and when the officers tried to arrest him he backed up against the side of a building and defied arrest. A considerable crowd of citizens, among whom were a number of drummers from a hotel close by, had gathered to witness the scene. The bad man was a big, ferocious-looking fellow with long, curling hair that fell on his shoulders, a broad-brimmed hat, a buckskin coat with fringe around the bottom, and a picturesque vocabulary. He was flourishing a big six-shooter and swore by the bones of Davy Crockett that he would perforate the man who attempted to capture him. The city marshal stood in the middle of the street and tried to reason with him, but the bad man gave a whoop and rose up on his toes, and the whole crowd fell back to the other side of the street. The police had a conference, but none of them would volunteer to lead the attack. Presently a little, wizened, consumptive-looking drummer for a Connecticut shoe factory squeezed his way through the crowd on the opposite side of the street to have a peep at the desperado. He weighed about ninety pounds and wore double glass spectacles. Just then the desperado gave another whoop and yelled: "Gol darn ye, why don't some of ye come and take me? I'll eat any five of ye without chawin', and I ain't hungry either--whoopee!" The crowd fell back a few yards further and the police turned pale again, but the skinny little man adjusted his spectacles with both hands, and stepped on to the edge of the sidewalk and took a good look at the bad men. Then he deliberately struck across the street at a funny hopping kind of a run right up to where the terror stood. The crowd yelled at him to come back, and the desperado flourished his six-shooter again, but the little man went straight up to him and said something. The crowd shuddered and expected to see him fall with a forty-five bullet in him, but he didn't. They saw the desperado lower his pistol and run his hand in his pocket and hand something to the little man. Then the desperado walked sheepishly down the sidewalk, and the little man came back across the street. "Bad man?" he said. "I guess not. He wouldn't hurt a fly. That's Zeke Skinner. He was raised on the farm next to me in Connecticut. He's selling some kind of fake liver medicine, and that's his street rig he's got on now. I loaned him eight dollars in Hartford nine years ago, and never expected to see him again. Thought I knew his voice. Pay? I reckon he paid me. I calculate I always collect what's owing to me." Then the crowd scattered and the twelve policeman headed Zeke off at the next corner and clubbed him all the way to the station house. A Slight Mistake An ordinary-looking man wearing a last season's negligee shirt stepped into the business office and unrolled a strip of manuscript some three feet long. "I wanted to see you about this little thing I want to publish in the paper. There are fifteen verses besides the other reading matter. The verses are on spring. My handwriting is a trifle illegible and I may have to read it over to you. This is the way it runs:" Spring The air is full of gentle zephyrs, Grass is growing green; Winter now has surely left us. Spring has come, I ween. When the sun has set, the vapors Rise from out the meadows low; When the stars are lit like tapers Then the night winds chilly blow. "Take that stuff up to the editorial department," said the business manager shortly. "I have been up there already," said the ordinary-looking man, "and they sent me down here. This will fill about a column. I want to talk with you about the price. The last verse runs this way:" Then it is that weakening languors Thicken in our veins the blood And we must ward off these dangers Ere we find our names are "Mud." "The reading matter that follows is, as you see, typewritten, and easily read. Now, I--" "D--n it," said the business manager. "Don't you come in here reading your old spring poems to me. I've been bored already today with a lot of ink and paper drummers. Why don't you go to work instead of fooling away your time on rot like that?" "I didn't mean to bother you," said the other man, rolling up his manuscript. "Is there another paper in the city?" "Yes, there's a few. Have you got a family?" "Yes, sir." "Then why in thunder don't you get into some decent business, instead of going around writing confounded trash and reading it to busy people? Ain't you got any manhood about you?" "Excuse me for troubling you," said the ordinary-looking man, as he walked toward the door. "I tell you how it is. I cleared over $80,000 last year on these little things I write. I am placing my spring and summer ads for the Sarsaparilla firm of which I am a member. I had decided to place about $1,000 in advertising in this town. I will see the other papers you spoke of. Good morning!" The business manager has since become so cautious that all the amateur poets in the city now practice reading their verses to him, and he listens without a murmur. Delayed There's a good time coming--so the optimists all say; When everything will be alive and humming. And we'll have lots of money and sing and dance all day; It may be so--but it's a good time coming. A Good Story Spoiled Few nights ago in a rather tough saloon in a little town on the Central Railroad, a big, strapping desperado, who had an unenviable reputation as a bad man generally, walked up to the bar and in a loud voice ordered everybody in the saloon to walk up and take a drink. The crowd moved quickly to the bar at his invitation, as the man was half drunk and was undoubtedly dangerous when in that condition. One man alone failed to accept the invitation. He was a rather small man, neatly dressed, who sat calmly in his chair, gazing idly at the crowd. A student of physiognomy would have been attracted by the expression of his face, which was one of cool determination and force of will. His jaw was square and firm, and his eye gray and steady, with that peculiar gray glint in the iris that presages more danger than any other kind of optic. The bully looked around and saw that someone had declined his invitation. He repeated it in a louder voice. The small man rose to his feet and walked coolly toward the desperado. "Excuse me," he said in a low but determined tone, "I'm a little deaf and didn't hear you the first time. Gimme whisky straight." And another story was spoiled for the papers. Revenge The man, woman, child, or animal who pens "Postscripts" for the Houston Post is a weird, wild-eyed genius and ought to be captured and put on exhibition with the "nameless things" they are taking out of the government well at San Marcos. There is certainly a reward for both specimens. Kyle _Star-Vindicator_ Although we can stand a great deal, this attack has goaded us to what is perhaps a bitter and cruel, but not entirely an unjustifiable revenge. Below will be found an editorial from the last number of the Star-Vindicator: "Spring, with her magic word of music, pathos, and joy, has touched a thousand hills and vales, has set a million throats to warbling; sunshine, song, and flowers bedeck every altar and crown each day more glorious. Imperial spring is here--the brightest, gayest, and best of all God's seasons. Springtime is like the little child--crowned with its own purity and love not tarnished and seared with the hand of Time. It is like the bright, sparkling miniature rivulet that bursts from the mountain side and goes merrily over the shining pebbles before it hastens into a dark, deep, dangerous river. The sweet cadence of music, the scent of wafted perfumes, the stretch of glorious landscape, radiated and beautified with lovely gems of Oriental hue, catch our attention at every step. The world today is a wilderness of flowers, a bower of beauty, and millions of sweet native warblers make its pastures concert halls, where we can go in peace at even-time, after the strife, the toil, the disappointments, and sorrows of our labors here and gather strength, courage, and hope to meet on the morrow life's renewed duties and responsibilities." No Help for It "John," said a Houston grocer the other day to one of his clerks. "You have been a faithful and competent clerk, and in order to show my appreciation, I have decided to take you into partnership. From this time on you are to have a share in the business, and be a member of the firm." "But, sir," said John anxiously, "I have a family to support. I appreciate the honor, but I fear I am too young for the responsibility. I would much rather retain my present place." "Can't help it," said the grocer. "Times are hard and I've got to cut down expenses if I have to take every clerk in the house into the firm." Rileys Luck Riley was a lazy fellow, Never worked a bit; All day long in some store corner On a chair he'd sit. Never talked much--too much trouble-- Tired his jaws, you see; When his folks got out of victuals, "Just my luck!" says he. Fellow offered him ten dollars If he'd work two days; Riley crossed his legs and looked up Through the sun's hot rays; Then he leaned back in the shadow, Sadly shook his head; "Never asked me till hot weather-- Just my luck!" he said. Riley courted Sally Hopkins In a quiet way; When he saw Jim Dobsen kiss her, "Just my luck!" he'd say. Leap Year came, and Mandy Perkins Sought his company; Riley sighed, and married Mandy-- "Just my luck!" he'd say. Riley took his wife out fishing In a little boat; Storm blew up and turned them over; Mandy couldn't float. Riley sprang into the river, Seized her by the hair. Swam a mile into the shore where Friends pulled out the pair. Mandy was so full of water Seemed she'd surely die. Doctors worked with her two hours Ere she moved an eye. They told Riley she was better; Doctors were in glee. Riley chewed an old pine splinter-- "Just my luck!" says he. "Not So Much a Tam Fool" A man without a collar, wearing a white vest and holes in his elbows, walked briskly into a Congress Street grocery last Saturday with a package in his hand and said: "Here, Fritz, I bought two dozen eggs here this afternoon, and I find your clerk made a mistake, I--" "Coom here, Emil," shouted the grocer, "you hof dis shentleman sheated mit dos rotten eggs. Gif him ein dozen more, und--" "But you don't understand me," said the man, with a pleasant smile. "The mistake is the other way. The eggs are all right; but you have given me too many. I only paid for two dozen, and on reaching home I find three dozen in the sack. I want to return the extra dozen, and I came back at once. I--" "Emil!" shouted the grocer again to his boy. "Gif dis man two dozen eggs at vonce. You haf sheated him mit pad eggs. Don'd you do dot any more times or I discharge you." "But, sir," said the man with the white vest, anxiously. "You gave me too many eggs for my money, and I want to return a dozen. I am too honest to--" "Emil," said the grocer, "gif dis man t'ree dozen goot fresh eggs at vonce and let him go. Ve makes pad eggs good ven ve sells dem. Hurry up quick and put in drei or four extra vons." "But, listen to me, sir," said the man. "I want to--" "Say, mein frindt," said the grocer in a lower voice, "you petter dake dose eggs und go home. I know vat you pring pack dose eggs for. If I dake dem, I say, 'Veil, dot is ein very good man; he vas honest py dose eggs, aind't it?' Den you coom pack Monday und you puy nine tollers' vorth of vlour and paeon and canned goots, and you say you bay me Saturday night. I was not so much a tarn fool as eferypody say I look like. You petter dake dose t'ree dozen eggs and call it skvare. Ve always correct leedle misdakes ven ve make dem. Emil, you petter make it t'ree dozen und a half fur good measure, and put in two t'ree stick candy for die kinder." A Guess-Proof Mystery Story The most popular and recent advertising dodge in literature is the Grand Guess Contest Mystery Story. Everybody is invited to guess how the story will end, at any time before the last chapter is published, and incidentally to buy a paper or subscribe. It is the easiest thing in the world to write a story of mystery that will defy the most ingenious guessers in the country. To prove it, here is one that we offer $10,000 to any man and $15,000 to any woman who guesses the mystery before the last chapter. The synopsis of the story is alone given, as literary style is not our object--we want mystery. Chapter I Judge Smith, a highly esteemed citizen of Plunkville, is found murdered in his bed at his home. He has been stabbed with a pair of scissors, poisoned with "rough on rats." His throat has been cut with an ivory handled razor, an artery in his arm has been opened, and he has been shot full of buckshot from a double-barreled gun. The coroner is summoned and the room examined. On the ceiling is a bloody footprint, and on the floor are found a lady's lace handkerchief, embroidered with the initials "J. B.," a package of cigarettes and a ham sandwich. The coroner renders a verdict of suicide. Chapter II The judge leaves a daughter, Mabel, aged eighteen, and ravishingly lovely. The night before the murder she exhibited a revolver and an axe in the principal saloon in town and declared her intention of "doing up" the old man. The judge has his life insured for $100,000 in her favor. Nobody suspects her of the crime. Mabel is engaged to a young man named Charlie, who is seen on the night of the murder by several citizens climbing out the judge's window with a bloody razor and a shotgun in his hand. Society gives Charlie the cold shoulder. A tramp is run over by a street car and before dying confesses to having committed the murder, and at the judge's funeral his brother, Colonel Smith, breaks down and acknowledges having killed the judge in order to get his watch. Mabel sends to Chicago and employs a skilled detective to work up the case. Chapter III A beautiful strange lady dressed in mourning comes to Plunkville and registers at the hotel as Jane Bumgartner. (The initials on the handkerchief!) The next day a Chinaman is found who denies having killed the judge, and is arrested by the detective. The strange lady meets Charlie on the street, and, on smelling the smoke from his cigarette, faints. Mabel discards him and engages herself to the Chinaman. Chapter IV While the Chinaman is being tried for murder, Jane Bumgartner testifies that she saw the detective murder Judge Smith at the instance of the minister who conducted the funeral, and that Mabel is Charlie's stepmother. The Chinaman is about to confess when footsteps are heard approaching. The next chapter will be the last, and it is safe to say that no one will find it easy to guess the ending of the story. To show how difficult this feat is, the last chapter is now given. Chapter V The footsteps prove to be those of Thomas R. Hefflebomer of Washington Territory, who introduces positive proof of having murdered the judge during a fit of mental aberration, and Mabel marries a man named Tompkins, whom she met two years later at Hot Springs. Futility To be so near--and then to vanish Like some unreal creature of the sense; To come so near that every fiber, tingling, Makes ready welcome; then to surge Back into the recesses of the strange, Mysterious unknown. Ye gods! What agony to feel thee slowly steal Away from us when, with caught breath And streaming eyes, and parted lips, We fain would with convulsive gasp And tortured features bow our frame In one loud spasm of homage to thy spell! But with what grief we find we can not do it; The dream is o'er--we can not sneeze. The Wounded Veteran A party of Northern tourists passed through Houston the other day, and while their train was waiting at the depot an old colored man, with one arm bandaged and hung in an old red handkerchief for a sling, walked along the platform. "What's the matter with your arm, uncle?" called out one of the tourists. "It was hurt in de wah, sah. Hab you any 'bacco you could gib a po' ole niggah, sah?" Several of the tourists poked their heads out of the car windows to listen, and in a few moments the old darky had taken up a collection in his hat, consisting of a plug of tobacco, three or four cigars, and sundry nickels, dimes, and quarters. "How were you wounded?" asked a tourist. "Were you shot in the arm?" "No, sah; hit wusn't exac' by a shot." "Piece of shell strike you?" "No, sah; wusn't a shell." "Bayonet wound, maybe?" "No, boss, hit wusn't a bayonet." "What battle were you in?" "Do' know ef it had a name, but hit was a mighty hot fight while it lasted." "Do you draw a pension?" "No, boss." "It seems it would be a charitable act," said a tourist to the others, "to take this old darky's name and see that he gets the pension he is certainly entitled to. What is your name, uncle?" "Mose Atkisson, sah." "Now, Mose," said the tourist, "give me the particulars of the engagement you were in, and the date, and all the information you possess about the manner in which you were wounded, and the government will pay you a nice little sum every three months to help you along." "Am dat so, boss?" asked the old darky, his eyes growing big with wonder. "Den I'll sho tell you about hit. Hit wus jes' befor' supper en I was totin' a big chance ob wood in to make a fiah, when--" "Never mind about what you did in camp," said the tourist. "Tell us in which battle of the War of the Rebellion were you engaged." "It wusn't dat wah, boss; it wus de wah wid Spain." "What do you mean?" "Lemme tell you how it wus. I cuts wood and does odd jobs up to Cunnel Wadkinses. Cunnel Wadkins am de bigges' fighter in de Souf. W'en dis here wah wid Spain cum up in de papers Cunnel Wadkins 'low he gwine ter pulverize de whole Spanish nation. He set all day in de saloon an' he talk about it, an' he cum home at meal time an' he git out his ole' s'ord, an' he don' talk about nuthin' else. "Mis' Susie, de Cunnel's wife, she suppote de family, an' she do de cookin'. Las' Sadday night de Cunnel cum home, an' he been drinkin' plenty. Mis' Susie she look at him an' shet her mouf tight, an' say nothin'. "De Cunnel git out de s'ord an' 'low dat de day ob recknin' am cum wid de cruel an' bloodthusty Spaniards. Mis' Susie went on fryin' batter cakes, but Land! don't I know dat woman gwine ter bus' things wide open putty soon! "I fetch in a turn ob wood; de Cunnel he settin' by de kitchen stobe, kinder rockin' roun' in de chur. Es I cum in de do' Cunnel say: 'You is treat me col', Madam, kase I uphol' de dignity ob de Wadkins fambly. De Wadkinses nebber wuk; dey am solgers an' am got ter keep ready fur der country's call.' "'Treats you col', does I?' says Mis' Susie. 'Well, den, lemme treat you warm some,' says she. "She po' out of de bilin' tea-kittle a big pan full ob hot water an' she fling it all ober de Cunnel. I gits a big lot ob it on dis arm as I was pilin' de wood in de box, an' it tuk de skin off, an' I dun had it wrapped up fo' days. De Cunnel am in bed yit, but he sw'ar w'en he git up he gwine ter wuk. "Dat's how dis here wah wid Spain done up dis ole niggah. 'Bout w'en, boss, will de fus' payment ob dat penshun git here, do you recum?" "The ignorance and stupidity," said the tourist, as he shut down his window, "of the colored man in the South are appalling." Her Ruse "How do I keep John home of nights?" asked a Houston lady of a friend the other day. "Well, I struck a plan once by a sudden inspiration, and it worked very nicely. John had been in a habit of going downtown every night after supper and staying until ten or eleven o'clock. One night he left as usual, and after going three or four blocks he found he had forgotten his umbrella and came back for it. I was in the sitting room reading, and he slipped in the room on his tiptoes and came up behind me and put his hands over my eyes. John expected me to be very much startled, I suppose, but I only said softly, 'Is that you, Tom?' John hasn't been downtown at night since." Why Conductors Are Morose Street car conductors often have their tempers tried by the inconsiderate portion of the public, but they are not allowed to ease their feelings by "talking back." One of them related yesterday an occurrence on his line a few days ago. A very fashionably dressed lady, accompanied by a little boy, was in the car, which was quite full of people. "Conductor," she said languidly, "let me know when we arrive at Peas Avenue." When the car arrived at that street the conductor rang the bell and the car stopped. "Peas Avenue, ma'am," he said, climbing off to assist her from the car. The lady raised the little boy to his knees and pointed out the window at the name of the street which was on a board, nailed to the corner of a fence. "Look, Freddy," she said, "that tall, straight letter with a funny little curl at the top is a '_P_.' Now don't forget it again. You can go on, conductor; we get off at Gray Street." "Only to Lie--" Only to lie in the evening, Watching the drifting clouds, O'er the blue heavens sailing; Mystical, dreamlike shrouds. Watching the purple shadows Filling the woodland glades, Only to lie in the twilight Deep in the gathering shade. Only to lie at midnight, Climbing the pitch-dark stairs; Wife at the top of them waiting; Upwards are rising our hairs. Only to lie as she asks us-- "Where have you been so late?" Only to lie with judgment-- "Cars blocked; I had to wait." The Pewee In the hush of the drowsy afternoon. When the very mind on the breast of June Lies settled, and hot white tracery Of the shattered sunlight flitters free Through the unstinted leaves to the pied cool sward, On a dead tree branch sings the saddest bard Of the birds that be. 'Tis the lone pewee; Its note is a sob, and its song is pitched In a single key like a soul bewitched To a mournful minstrelsy. "Pewee, Pewee," doth it ever cry; A sad, sweet, minor threnody That threads the aisles of the dim hot grove Like a tale of a wrong or a vanished love, And the fancy comes that the wee dun bird Perchance was a maid, and her heart was stirred By some lover's rhyme In a golden time, And broke when the world turned false and old; And her dreams grew dark and her faith grew cold, In some fairy far-off clime. And her soul crept into the pewee's breast; And forever she cries with a strange unrest For something lost, in the afternoon; For something missed from the lavish June; For the heart, that died in the long ago; For the livelong pain that pierceth so; Thus the pewee cries, While the evening lies Steeped in the languorous still sunshine, Rapt, to the leaf and the bough and the vine, Of some hopeless paradise. The Sunday Excursionist Somebody--who it was doesn't make any difference--has said something like the following: "There is something grand in the grief of the Common People, but there is no sadder sight on earth than that of a Philistine enjoying himself." If a man would realize the truth of this, let him go on a Sunday excursion. The male Sunday excursionist enjoys himself, as the darkies say, "a gwine and a cornin'." No other being on earth can hold quite so much bubbling and vociferous joy. The welkin that would not ring when the Sunday excursionist opens his escape valve is not worth a cent. Six days the Sunday excursionist labors and does his work, but he does his best to refute the opponents of the theory of the late Charles Darwin. He occupies all the vacant seats in the car with his accomplices, and lets his accursed good nature spray over the rest of the passengers. He is so infernally happy that he wants everybody, to the brakeman on the rear car, to know it. He is so devilish agreeable, so perniciously jolly and so abominably entertaining that people who were bom with or have acquired brains love him most vindictively. People who become enamored of the Sunday excursionist are apt to grow insanely jealous, and have been known to rise up and murder him when a stranger enters the car and he proceeds to repeat his funny remarks for the benefit of a fresh audience. The female Sunday excursionist generally accompanies him. She brings her laugh with her, and does a turn in the pauses of his low comedy work. She never by any accident misplaces her laugh or allows it to get out of curl. It ripples naturally and conforms readily to the size of the car. She puts on the male Sunday excursionist's hat, and he puts on hers, and if the other passengers are feeling worse than usual, they sing "The Swanee River." There is enough woe and sorrow in the world without augmenting it in this way. Men who have braved the deepest troubles and emerged unscathed from the heaviest afflictions have gone down with a shriek of horror and despair before the fatal hilarity of the Sunday excursionist. There is no escape from his effects. Decoration Day Decoration Day has passed, and the graves of the Northern and Southern soldiers have been duly flower strewn, as is meet and fitting. The valor of the North has been told on a thousand rostrums, and the courage of the South has been related from ten hundred platforms. Battles have been fought again, and redoubts retaken. Much has been said of brotherly love and the bridging of the chasm. The Blue has marched abreast to the common meeting place, and the Gray has marched abreast, and they have met and shaken hands and said the war is over. There can be no such thing as a union of the Blue and the Gray. When you pronounce the words you form the bar that separates them. The Blue is one thing and the Gray is another. There should be no more Blue and no more Gray. If a tribute is to be paid to the heroes on either side whom we wish to keep in remembrance, it should be made by American citizens, not divided by the colors of their garments. There is no need to march by grand armies, by camps, or by posts. If there is to be a shaking of hands, let it be by one citizen of the United States with another. The Gray and Blue are things of the past. In the innermost hearts, in the still, quick memories of the South, the Gray will always live, but it should live as in a shrine, hallowed and hidden from pomp and display. As citizens of a common country, we of the South offer our hands to citizens of the North in peace and fellowship, but we do not mingle the Gray with the Blue. Charge of the White Brigade Mehitabel, Claribel, Bessie, and Sue All in white lawn and ribbons pale blue. Went into a drug store; each sat on a stool, And called for some phosphate to make them all cool. "Oh! what is that big copper thing over there?" Asked Bessie the gay one, asked Bessie the fair. "Why that," said the clerk, "is the thing with which we Charge the phosphate and soda we sell, don't you see?" "How nice," said bright Bessie and then they all rose, And shook out their ruffles and beautiful clothes; "Please charge those we had," said the girls--then they flew, Mehitabel, Claribel, Bessie, and Sue. An Inspiration He was seated on an empty box on Main Street late yesterday evening during the cold drizzling rain. He was poorly clad and his thick coat was buttoned up high under his chin. He had a woeful, harassed appearance, and there was something about him that indicated that he was different from the average tramp who beats his way by lies and fraud. The _Post_ man felt a touch of sympathy and went up to him and said: "There's a place around the corner where you can get a lunch and lodging for a small sum. When did you strike town?" The man gazed at the reporter out of his small, keen eyes and said: "You're a new man on the _Post_, are you not?" "Yes, comparatively." "Do you see that block of three-story buildings over there?" "Yes." "Well, I own them and was just sitting here studying what I'm going to do." "What's the trouble?" "Why, the walls are cracking and bulging out on the sides, and I'm afraid I'm going to have to put a lot of money into repairs. I've got over one hundred tenants in those buildings." "I'll tell you what to do." "What?" "You say the walls are bulging out?" "Yes." "Well, that makes more room everywhere. You just raise all your tenants' rent on account of the extra space." "Young man, you're a genius. I'll put rents up twenty percent tomorrow." And one more capitalist was saved. Coming to Him The man who keeps up with the latest scientific discoveries is abroad in the land. He knows all about bacilli, microbes, and all the various newly found foes to mankind. He reads the papers and heeds all the warnings that lead to longevity and safety to mind and limb. He stopped a friend on Main Street yesterday who was hurrying to the post-office and said excitedly: "Wait a minute, Brown. Do you ever bite your finger nails?" "I think so--no, I don't know; excuse me, please, I've got to catch that car." "Hold on, man; great goodness alive, you don't know what danger you are in. If a sharp particle of the nail gets into your lungs, inflammation is bound to set in, and finally laceration, consumption, hemorrhage, fits, coma, tuberculosis, and death. Think of it! And by the way, a new bacillus has been found in water in which roses have been left standing that is very fatal. I want to warn you. Do you know that--" "Say, old man, I'm much obliged, but this letter--" "What is a letter compared with your life? There are 10,000,000 animalcules in a spoonful of ordinary hydrant water; there are 2,000 different varieties known. Do you ever put salt in your beer?" "I don't know; I really must go, I--" "Don't hold me responsible for your life, I'm trying to save it. Why, Heavens, man, it's nothing but a miracle that we live a single day. In every glass of beer there is an infinitesimal quantity of hydrochloric acid. Salt is a chloride of sodium, and the union releases the chlorine. You are drinking chlorine gas every day of your life. Pause, before it is too late." "I don't drink beer." "But you breathe through your mouth when you are asleep. Do you know what that does? Brings on angina pectoris and bronchitis. Are you determined to let your ignorance carry you to your grave? Think of your wife and children! Do you know that the common house fly carries 40,000 microbes on his feet, and can convey cholera, typhoid fever, diphtheria, pyaemia, and--" "Dang your microbes. I've got just three minutes to catch that mail. So long." "Wait just a minute. Dr. Pasteur says that--" But the victim was gone. Ten minutes later the heeder of new discoveries was knocked down by a wagon while trying to cross the street reading about a new filter, and was carried home by sympathizing friends. His Pension "Speaking of the $140,000,000 paid out yearly by the government in pensions," said a prominent member of Hood's brigade to the Post's representative, "I am told that a man in Indiana applied for a pension last month on account of a surgical operation he had performed on him during the war. And what do you suppose that surgical operation was?" "Haven't the least idea." "He had his retreat cut off at the battle of Gettysburg!" The Winner After the performance of "In Old Kentucky" Friday night three old cronies went into a saloon with the inflexible determination of taking a drink. After doing so, they added an amendment in the shape of another and then tacked on an emergency clause. When they got to feeling a little mellow they sat down at a table and commenced lying. Not maliciously, but just ordinary, friendly lying, about the things they had seen and done. They all tried their hand at relating experiences, and as the sky was clear, there was no matinee performance of the Ananias tragedy. Finally the judge suggested the concoction of a fine large julep--a julep that would render the use of curling irons unnecessary--and the one who told the most improbable story should be allowed to produce the vacuum in the straws. The major and the judge led off with a couple of marvelous narratives which were about a tie. The colonel moistened his lips as his eye rested on the big glass filled with diamonds and amber, and crowned with fragrant mint. He commenced his story: "The incident I am about to relate is not only wonderful, but true. It happened in this very town on Saturday afternoon. I got up rather early Saturday morning, as I had a big day's work ahead of me. My wife fixed me up a rattling good cocktail when I got up and I was feeling pretty good. When I came downstairs she handed me a five-dollar bill that had dropped out of my pocket and said: 'John, you must really get a better looking housemaid. Jane is so homely, and you never did admire her. See if you can find a real nice-looking one--and John, dear, you are working too hard. You must really have some recreation. Why not take Miss Muggins, your typewriter, out for a drive this afternoon? Then you might stop at the milliner's and tell them not to send up that hat I ordered, and--" "Hold on. Colonel," said the judge. "You just drink that mint julep right now. You needn't go any further with your story." Hungry Henry's Ruse Hungry Henry: Madam, I am state agent for a new roller-action, unbreakable, double-elastic suspender. Can I show you some? Mrs. Lonestreet: No, there ain't no man on the place. Hungry Henry: Well, then, I am also handling something unique in the way of a silvermounted, morocco leather, dog collar, with name engraved free of charge. Perhaps-- Mrs. Lonestreet: 'Tain't no use. I ain't got a dog. Hungry Henry: Hat's what I wanted to know. Now fix me de best supper you'se kin, and do it quick or it won't be healthy fur you. See? A Proof of Love "If you love me as I love you"-- (Ah, sweet those words to lover's ear, 'Twas Lois spake, in accents true, So loving, tender, kind and dear.) "If you love me as I love you"-- (Ah, heaven and earth were wrapped in bliss, The wild rose listened, dissolved in dew; The very zephyrs sought her kiss.) "If you love me as I love you"-- (Ah, strains from Paradise her words!) "And if I do, what then?" I asked; While round us winged the listening birds. "If you love me as I love you--" She raised those fringed eyes of jet, And whispered low in pleading tones: "Just fill the wood box, will you, pet?" One Consolation Breakfast was over and Adam had gone to his daily occupation of pasting the names of the animals on their cages. Eve took the parrot to one side and said: "It was this way. He made a big kick about those biscuits not being good at breakfast." "And what did you say?" asked the parrot. "I told him there was one consolation; he couldn't say his mother ever made any better ones." An Unsuccessful Experiment There is an old colored preacher in Texas who is a great admirer of the Rev. Sam Jones.[1] Last Sunday he determined to drop his old style of exhorting the brethren, and pitch hot shot plump into the middle of their camp, after the manner so successfully followed by the famous Georgia evangelist. After the opening hymn had been sung, and the congregation led in prayer by a worthy deacon, the old preacher laid his spectacles on his Bible, and let out straight from the shoulder. "My dearly belubbed," he said, "I has been preachin' to you fo' mo' dan five years, and de grace ob God hab failed to percolate in yo' obstreperous hearts. I hab nebber seen a more or'nery lot dan dis belubbed congregation. Now dar is Sam Wadkins in de fo'th bench on de left. Kin anybody show me a no'counter, trashier, lowdowner buck nigger in dis community? Whar does the chicken feathers come from what I seen in his back yard dis mawnin'? Kin Brudder Wadkins rise and explain?" Brother Wadkins sat in his pew with his eyes rolling and breathing hard, but was taken by surprise and did not respond. "And dar is Elder Hoskins, on de right. Everybody knows he's er lying, shiftless, beer-drinking bum. His wife supports him takin' in washin'. What good is de blood of de Lamb done for him? Wonder ef he thinks dat he kin keep a lofin' 'round in de kitchen ob de New Jerusalem?" Elder Hoskins, goaded by these charges, rose in his seat, and said: "Dat reminds me ob one thing. I doesn't remember dat I hab ebber worked on de county road fur thirty days down in Bastrop County fur stealin' a bale of cotton." "Who did? Who did?" said the parson, putting on his specs and glaring at the elder. "Who stole dat cotton? You shet yo' mouf, niggah, fo' I come down dah and bust you wide open. Den dar sets Miss Jinny Simpson. Look at dem fine clo'es she got on. Look at dem yallar shoes, and dem ostrick feathers, and dat silk waist and de white glubs. Whar she git de money to buy dem clo'es? She don't work none. De Lawd am got his eye on dat triflin' hussy, and He's gwine ter fling her in de burnin' brimstone and de squenchable pit." Miss Simpson arose, her ostrich plumes trembling with indignation. "You mis'able lyin' ol' niggah," she said. "You don' pay fur none ob my clo'es. S'pose you tells dis 'sembled congregation who was it handed dat big bouquet and dat jib ob cider ober de fence to Liza Jackson yisterday mawnin' when her old man gone to work?" "Dat's a lie, you sneakin', low-down spyin' daughter ob de debble. I wuz in my house ras'lin in pra'er fur de wicked sisters and brudders ob dis church. I come down dah an' smack you in de mouf ef you don't shet up. You is all boun' for de fire ob destruction. You am all nothin' but vile sweepins ob de yearth. I see Bill Rodgers ober dar, who am known to hab loaded dice fur playin' craps, and he nebber pays a cent fur what his family eats. De Lawd am shore gwine ter smote him in de neck. De judgment ob de Spirit am gwine ter rise up an' call him down." Bill Rodgers stood up and put his thumbs in the armholes of his vest. "I could name, sah," he said, "a certain party who wuz run off ob Colonel Yancy's fahm fo' playin' sebben up wid marked cya'ds, ef I choosed to." "Dat's anudder lie," said the preacher, closing his Bible and turning up his cuffs. "Look out, Bill Rodgers, I'm comin' down dar to you." The preacher got out of his pulpit and made for Bill, but Miss Simpson got her hands in his wool first, and Sam Wadkins and Elder Hoskins came quickly to her assistance. Then the rest of the brothers and sisters joined in, and the flying hymn books and the sound of ripping clothes testified to the fact that Sam Jones's style of preaching did not go in that particular church. [1] The methods of the Rev. Sam Jones, who was the Billy Sunday of his time, were frequently the subject of O. Henry's satire. Superlatives "I think the song that is sweetest Is the one that is never sung; That lies in the heart of the singer, Too grand for mortal tongue." --Some poet or other. The hen egg that is largest Was the one she never laid; And the biggest bet in all the world Was the one we never made. And the biggest fight that Dallas had Was the one that did not go; And the finest poet in the world was the one That didn't write "Beautiful Snow." The finest country in all the world Has never yet been explored, And the finest artesian well in town Has not at this time been bored. By Easy Stages "You're at the wrong place," said Cerberus. "This is the gate that leads to the infernal regions, while it is a passport to Heaven that you have handed me." "I know it," said the departed shade wearily, "but it allows a stopover here; you see, I'm from Galveston and I have got to make the change gradually." Even Worse Two Houston men were going home one rainy night last week, and as they stumbled and plowed through the mud across one of the principal streets, one of them said: "This is hell, isn't it?" "Worse," said the other. "Even hell is paved with good intentions." The Shock A man with a very pale face, wearing a woolen comforter and holding a slender stick in his hand, staggered into a Houston drug store yesterday and leaned against the counter, holding the other hand tightly against his breast. The clerk got a graduating glass, and poured an ounce of spiritus frumenti into it quickly, and handed it to him. The man drank it at a gulp. "Feel better?" asked the clerk. "A little. Don't know when I had such a shock. I can hardly stand. Just a little more, now--" The clerk gave him another ounce of whisky. "My pulse has started again, I believe," said the man. "It was terrible, though!" "Fell off a wagon?" asked the clerk. "No, not exactly." "Slip on a banana peel?" "I think not. I'm getting faint again, if you--" The obliging clerk administered a third dose of the stimulant. "Street car run over you?" he asked. "No," said the pale man. "I'll tell you how it was. See that red-faced man out there swearing and dancing on the corner?" "Yes." "He did it. I don't believe I can stand up much longer. I--thanks." The man tossed off the fourth reviver and began to look better. "Shall I call a doctor?" asked the clerk. "No, I guess not. Your kindness has revived me. I'll tell you about it. I have one of those toy spiders attached to a string at the end of this stick, and I saw that red-faced man sitting on a doorstep with his back to me, and I let the spider down over his head in front of his nose. I didn't know who he was, then. "He fell over backwards and cut his ear on the foot-scraper and broke a set of sixty-dollar false teeth. That man is my landlord and I owe him $37 back rent, and he holds a ten-dollar mortgage on my cow, and has already threatened to break my back. I slipped in here and he hasn't seen me yet. The shock to my feelings when I saw who it was, was something awful. If you have a little more of that spirits now, I--" The Cynic Junior Partner: Here's an honest firm! Sharp and Simpson send us a check for $50 in addition to their monthly account, to cover difference in price of a higher grade of goods shipped them last time by mistake. Senior Partner: Do they give us another order? Junior Partner: Yes! The longest they have ever made. Senior Partner: Ship 'em COD. * * * * * "Well! how are they coming?" "I'm getting a move on me," said the checkerboard. "And I'm getting a head in the world," said the piece of sensation news. "I'm dead in it," said the spoiled bivalve at the clambake. "I think I shall get along well," said the artesian water company. "And my work is all being cut out for me," said the grape seed. Speaking of Big Winds The man with the bronzed face and distinguished air was a great traveler, and had just returned from a tour around the world. He sat around the stove at the Lamlor, and four or five drummers and men about town listened with much interest to his tales. He was speaking of the fierce wind storms that occur in South America, when the long grass of the pampas is interlaced and blown so flat by the hurricanes that it is cut into strips and sold for the finest straw matting. He spoke also of the great intelligence of the wild cattle which, he said, although blown about by the furious hurricanes and compelled to drift for days before the drenching floods of the rainy season, never lost their direction by day or night. "How do they guide themselves?" asked the Topeka flour drummer. "Oh, by their udders, of course," said the traveler. "I don't see anything to laugh about," said the Kansas man, "but speaking of big winds we have something of the kind in our state. You've all heard of the Kansas cyclones, but very few of you know what they are. We have plenty of them and some are pretty hard ones, too, but most of the stories you read about them are exaggerated. Still a good, full-grown cyclone can carry things pretty high sometimes. About the only thing they spend their fury upon in vain is a real estate agent. I know a fellow, named Bob Long, who was a real estate hustler from away back. Bob had bought up a lot of prairie land cheap, and was trying to sell it in small tracts for farms and truck patches. One day he took a man in his buggy out to this land and was showing it to him. 'Just look at it,' he said. 'It is the finest, richest piece of ground in Kansas. Now it's worth more, but to start things off, and get improvements to going, I'll sell you 160 acres of this land at $40 per--!' "Before Bob could say 'acre,' a cyclone came along, and the edge of it took Bob up straight into the air. He went up till he was nothing but a black speck and the man stood there and watched him till he was out of sight. "The man liked the land, so he bought it from Bob's heirs, and pretty soon a railroad cut across it, and a fine flourishing town sprang up on the spot. "Well, this man was standing on the sidewalk one day thinking of how lucky he had been, and about Bob's unfortunate fate, when he happened to look up and saw something falling. It grew larger and larger, and finally it turned out to be a man. "He came tumbling down, struck the sidewalk with a sound you could have heard four blocks away, bounded up at least ten feet, came down on his feet and shouted 'Front foot!' "It was Bob Long. His beard was a little grayer and longer, but he was all business still. He had noticed the changes that had taken place while he was coming down, and when he finished the sentence that he began when the cyclone took him up, he altered his language accordingly. Bob was a hustler. Sometime after that he--" "Never mind," said the traveler. "Let's go in and take something on this one first. I claim the usual time before the next round." Unknown Title An old woman who lived in Fla. Had some neighbors who all the time ba Tea, sugar, and soap Till she said: "I do hope I'll never see folks that are ha." An Original Idea There is a lady in Houston who is always having original ideas. Now, this is a very reprehensible thing in a woman and should be frowned down. A woman should find out what her husband thinks about everything and regulate her thoughts to conform with his. Of course, it would not be so bad if she would keep her independent ideas to herself, but who ever knew a woman to do that? This lady in particular had a way of applying her original ideas to practical use, and her family, and even neighbors, were kept constantly on the lookout for something startling at her hands. One day she read in the columns of an Austin newspaper an article that caused her at once to conceive an original idea. The article called attention to the well-known fact that if men's homes supplied their wants and desires they would have no propensity to wander abroad, seeking distraction in gilded saloons. This struck the lady as a forcible truth, and she boldly plagiarized the idea and resolved to put it into immediate execution as an original invention. That night when her husband came home he noticed a curtain stretched across one end of the sitting room, but he had so long been used to innovations of all sorts that he was rather afraid to investigate. It might be stated apropos to the story that the lady's husband was addicted to the use of beer. He not only liked beer, but he fondly loved beer. Beer never felt the slightest jealousy when this gentleman was out of its sight. After supper the lady said: "Now, Robert, I have a little surprise for you. There is no need of your going downtown tonight, as you generally do, because I have arranged our home so that it will supply all the pleasures that you go out to seek." With that she drew the curtain and Robert saw that one end of the sitting room had been fitted up as a bar--or rather his wife's idea of a bar. A couple of strips of the carpet had been taken up and sawdust strewn on the floor. The kitchen table extended across the end of the room, and back of this on a shelf were arranged a formidable display of bottles, of all shapes and sizes, while the mirror of the best dresser had been taken off and placed artistically in the center. On a trestle stood a fresh keg of beer and his wife, who had put on a coquettish-looking cap and apron, tripped lightly behind the bar, and waving a beer mug coyly at him said: "It's an idea I had, Robert. I thought it would be much nicer to have you spend your money at home, and at the same time have all the amusement and pleasure that you do downtown. What will you have, sir?" she continued, with fine, commercial politeness. Robert leaned against the bar and pawed the floor fruitlessly three or four times, trying to find the foot rest. He was a little stunned, as he always was at his wife's original ideas. Then he braced himself and tried to conjure up a ghastly imitation of a smile. "I'll take a beer, please," he said. His wife drew the beer, laid the nickel on the shelf and leaned on the bar, chatting familiarly on the topics of the day after the manner of bartenders. "You must buy plenty, now," she said archly, "for you are the only customer I have tonight." Robert felt a strong oppression of spirits, which he tried to hide. Besides the beer, which was first rate, there was little to remind him of the saloons where he had heretofore spent his money. The lights, the glittering array of crystal, the rattle of dice, the funny stories of Brown, Jones, and Robinson, the motion and color that he found in the other places were wanting. Robert stood still for quite a while and then an original idea struck him. He pulled a handful of change from his pocket and began to call for glass after glass of beer. The lady behind the bar was beaming with pleasure at the success of her experiment. Ordinarily she had made quite a row, if her husband came home smelling of beer--but now, when the profits were falling into her own hands, she made no complaint. It is not known how many glasses she sold her husband but there was quite a little pile of nickels and dimes on the shelf, and two or three quarters. Robert was leaning rather heavily against the bar, now and then raising his foot and making a dab for the rod that was not there, but he was saying very little. His wife ought to have known better, but the profits rendered her indiscreet. Presently Robert remarked in a very loud tone: "Gozzamighty, se' 'm up all roun' barkeep'n puzzom on slate 'm busted." His wife looked at him in surprise. "Indeed, I will not, Robert," she said. "You must pay me for everything you have. I thought you understood that." Robert looked in the mirror as straight as he could, counted his reflections, and then yelled loud enough to be heard a block away: "Gosh dang it, gi' us six glasses beer and put 'em on ice, Susie, old girl, or I'll clean out your joint, 'n bus' up business. Whoopee!" "Robert!" said his wife, in a tone implying a growing suspicion, "you've been drinking!" "Zas d---d lie!" said Robert, as he threw a beer glass through the mirror. "Been down t' office helpin' friend pos' up books 'n missed last car. Say, now, Susie, old girl, you owe me two beers from las' time. Give 'em to me or I'll kick down bar." Robert's wife was named Henrietta. When he made this remark she came around to the front and struck him over the eye with a lemon squeezer. Robert then kicked over the table, broke about half the bottles, spilled the beer, and used language not suited for the mailable edition. Ten minutes later his wife had him tied with the clothes line, and during the intervals between pounding him on the head with a potato masher she was trying to think how to get rid of her last great original idea. Calculations A gentleman with long hair and an expression indicating heavenly resignation stepped off the twelve-thirty train at the Grand Central Depot yesterday. He had a little bunch of temperance tracts in his hand, and he struck a strong scent and followed it up to a red-nosed individual who was leaning on a trunk near the baggage room. "My friend," said the long-haired man, "do you know that if you had placed the price of three drinks out at compound interest at the time of the building of Solomon's temple, you would now have $47,998,645.22?" "I do," said the red-nosed man. "I am something of a calculator myself. I also figured out when the doctor insisted on painting my nose with iodine to cure that boil, that the first lanternjawed, bone-spavined, rubbernecked son-of-a-gun from the amen corner of Meddlesome County that made any remarks about it would have to jump seventeen feet in nine seconds or get kicked thirteen times below the belt. You have just four seconds left." The long-haired man made a brilliant retreat within his allotted time, and bore down with his temperance tracts upon a suspicious-looking Houston man who was carrying home a bottle of mineral water wrapped in a newspaper to his mother-in-law. A Valedictory The "Some Postscripts" man on the _Post_ has about reached the end of his vein. These spurts of brilliancy many are capable of, but the sustained light that burns for years to gladden and instruct is a rare quality, and the possessor should be appreciated by the people, for he is the true Messiah--the eldest son of the great intellectual lord of the universe. --Brenham _Press_ Brother, you should not have given us away. We just had to salt that vein before we could get it in the market, and when the "salt" gave out, and the end of the vein was reached, we hoped you wouldn't notice the fact. If you hadn't mentioned it we might have gone on for years gladdening and instructing and drawing princely salary, but now our little spurt of our brilliancy will have to put on its pajamas and retire between the cold sheets of oblivion. We do not blame you at all for calling the public's attention to the played-out lode, for it is a terrible responsibility to guide the footsteps of innocent purchasers who may be taken in by glittering, quartz and seductive pyrites of iron. To have one whom we regarded as a friend jerk us backward by the left leg when we had made such a successful sneak, and were about to scramble over the back fence of the temple of fame makes us sad, but we do not repine for: "'Twere better to have spurted and lost Than never to have spurted at all." We really intended our light to burn for years, and to have the wick snuffed so quickly, although done in sorrowing kindness, causes us to sputter and smoke a little as we go out. When the true Messiah comes along and shies his valise over to the night clerk, and turns back his cuffs ready to fill the long-felt want; if he should ever hear the whoops of those unappreciative critics who would crucify him, these few lines may teach him to fly to Brenham where his papa, the great intellectual lord of the universe, will protect him. Solemn Thoughts The golden crescent of the new moon hung above the market house, and the night was cool, springlike, and perfect. Five or six men were sitting in front of the Hutchins House, and they had gradually shifted their chairs until they were almost in a group. They were men from different parts of the country, some of them from cities thousands of miles away. They had been rattled in the dice box of chance and thrown in a temporary cluster into the hospitable gates of the Magnolia city. They smoked and talked, and that feeling of comradeship which seizes men who meet in the world far from their own homes, was strong upon them. They told all their funny stories and compared experiences, and then a little silence fell upon them, and while the hanging strata of blue smoke grew thicker, their thoughts began to wander back--as the cows stray homeward at eventide--to other scenes and faces. "'And o'er them many a flaming range of vapor buoyed the crescent bark: And rapt through many a rosy change The twilight melted into dark,'" quoted the New York drummer. "Heigho! I wish I was at home tonight." "Same here," said the little man from St. Louis. "I can just see the kids now tumbling round on the floor and cutting up larks before Laura puts them to bed. There's one blessing, though, I'll be home on Thanksgiving." "I had a letter from home today," said the white-bearded Philadelphian, "and it made me homesick. I would give a foot of that slushy pavement on Spruce Street for all these balmy airs and mockingbird solos in the South. I'm going to strike a bee line for the Quaker City in time for that fat turkey, I don't care what my house says." "Yust hear dot band playing," said the fat gentleman. "I can almost dink I vos back in Cincinnati 'neber die Rhein' mit dot schplendid little beautiful girl from de hat factory. I dink it is dese lovely nights vot makes us of home, sweet home, gedinken." "Now you're shoutin'," said the Chicago hardware drummer. "I wish I was in French Pete's restaurant on State Street with a big bottle of beer and some chitterlings and lemon pie. I'm feelin' kinder sentimental myself tonight." "The worst part of it is," said the man with the gold nose glasses and green necktie, "that our dear ones are separated from us by many long and dreary miles, and we little know what obstacles in the shape of storm and flood and wreck lie in our way. If we could but annihilate time and space for a brief interval there are many of us who would clasp the forms of those we love to our hearts tonight. I, too, am a husband and father." "That breeze," said the man from New York, "feels exactly like the ones that used to blow over the old farm in Montgomery County, and that 'orchard and meadow, and deep tangled wildwood,' etc., keep bobbing up in my memory tonight." "How many of us," said the man with gold glasses, "realize the many pitfalls that Fate digs in our path? What a slight thing may sever the cord that binds us to life! There today, tomorrow gone forever from the world!" "Too true," said the Philadelphia man, wiping his spectacles. "And leave those we love behind," continued the other. "The affections of a lifetime, the love of the strongest hearts, ended in the twinkling of an eye. One loses the clasp of hands that would detain and drifts away into the sad, unknowable, other existence, leaving aching hearts to mourn forever. Life seems all a tragedy." "Banged if you ain't rung the bell first shot," said the Chicago drummer. "Our affections get busted up something worse'n killing hogs." The others frowned upon the Chicago drummer, for the man with gold glasses was about to speak again. "We say," he went on, "that love will live forever, and yet when we are gone others step into our places and the wounds our loss had made are healed. And yet there is an added pang to death that those of us that are wise can avoid, the sting of death and the victory of the grave can be lessened. When we know that our hours are numbered, and when we lie with ebbing breath and there comes 'Unto dying ears the earliest pipe Of half awakened birds; And unto dying eyes The casement slowly grows a glimmering square,' there is sweet relief in knowing that those we leave behind us are shielded from want. "Gentlemen, we are all far from home and you know the risks of travel. I am representing one of the best accident insurance companies on earth, and I want to write every one of you. I offer you the finest death, partial disablement, loss of finger or toe, nervous shock, sick benefit policy known to--" But the man with gold spectacles was talking to five empty chairs, and the moon slipped down below the roof of the market house with a sardonic smile. Explaining It A member of the Texas Legislature from one of the eastern counties was at the chrysanthemum show at Turner Hall last Thursday night, and was making himself agreeable to one of the lady managers. "You were in the House at the last session, I believe?" she inquired. "Well, madam," he said, "I was in the House, but the Senate had me for about forty-five dollars when we adjourned." Her Failing They were two Houston girls, and they were taking a spin on their wheels. They met a fluffy girl who didn't "bike," out driving with a young man in a buggy. Of course they must say something about her--as this is a true story and they were real, live girls--so one of them said: "I never did like that girl." "Why?" "Oh, she's too effeminate." A Disagreement "Dat Mr. Bergman, vot run de obera house, not dread me right," said a Houston citizen. "Ven I go dere und vant ein dicket to see dot 'Schpider und dot Vly' gompany de oder night, I asg him dot he let me in mit half brice, for I was teaf py von ear, and can not but one half of dot performance hear; und he dell me I should bay double brice, as it vould dake me dwice as long to hear de berformance as anypody else." An E for a Knee When Pilgrim fathers landed safe On Plymouth Rock at last, They bowed their heads and bent a knee, And kept a holy fast. But now to celebrate the day We dine--to say the least-- We add an "e" into their plan And change their fast to feast. The Unconquerable A man may avoid the Nin-com-poop By flying fast and far. And even subdue the Scalawag By stratagems of war. And he even may dodge the Fly-up-the-Creek If he's lucky and does not fear; And sometimes conquer the powerful chump. Though the victory cost him dear. And a brave man may do up the Galoot, Though it be a terrible fight, But no man yet has escaped from the clutch Of the terrible Blatherskite. An Expensive Veracity A Houston man who attended a great many of Sam Jones's sermons was particularly impressed with his denunciation of prevaricators, and of lies of all kinds, white, variegated, and black. So strongly was he affected and in such fertile ground did the seed sown by the great evangelist fall, that the Houston man, who had been accustomed occasionally to evade the truth, determined one morning he would turn over a new leaf and tell the truth in all things, big and little. So he commenced the day by scorning to speak even a word that did not follow the exact truth for a model. At breakfast, his wife said: "How are the biscuit, Henry?" "Rather heavy," he answered, "and about half done." His wife flounced out of the dining room and he ate breakfast with the children. Ordinarily Henry would have said, "They are very fine, my dear," and all would have been well. As he went out the gate, his rich old aunt, with whom he had always been a favorite, drove up. She was curled, and stayed, and powdered to look as young as possible. "Oh, Henry," she simpered. "How are Ella and the children? I would come in but I'm looking such a fright today I'm not fit to be seen." "Yes," said Henry, "you do. It's a good thing your horse has a blind bridle on, for if he got a sight of you he'd run away and break your neck." His aunt glared furiously at him and drove away without saying a word. Henry figured it up afterward and found that every word he said to her cost him $8,000. Grounds for Uneasiness When Sousa's Band was in Houston a week or so ago, Professor Sousa was invited to dine with a prominent citizen who had met him while on a visit to the North. This gentleman, while a man of high standing and reputation, has made quite a fortune by the closest kind of dealing. His economies in the smallest matters are a fruitful subject of discussion in his neighborhood, and one or two of his acquaintances have gone so far as to call him stingy. After dinner Professor Sousa was asked to play upon the piano, of which instrument he is a master, and he did so, performing some lovely Beethoven sonatas, and compositions by the best masters. While playing a beautiful adagio movement in a minor key, the Professor caught sight of his host casting uneasy glances out of the window and appearing very restless and worried. Presently the Houston gentleman came over to the piano and touched Professor Sousa on the shoulder. "Say," he said, "please play something livelier. Give us a jig or a quickstep--something fast and jolly." "Ah," said the Professor, "this sad music affects your spirits then?" "No," said the host, "I've got a man in the back yard sawing wood by the day, and he's been keeping time to your music for the last half hour." It Covers Errors Poetic fame can be won this way: If you happen to have not a thing to say, And you happen to be close-pressed for time, And you can't for your life get a word to rhyme, And your knowledge of English is somewhat small, And you have no poetic turn at all, And can't write a hand anybody can read. You are in a first-rate way to succeed; For who in the world can mix things worse Than a popular writer of dialect verse? Recognition The new woman came in with a firm and confident tread. She hung her hat on a nail, stood her cane in the corner, and kissed her husband gayly as he was mixing the biscuit for supper. "Any luck today, dearie?" asked the man as his careworn face took on an anxious expression. "The best of luck," she said with a joyous smile. "The day has come when the world recognizes woman as man's equal in everything. She is no longer content to occupy a lower plane than his, and is his competitor in all the fields of action. I obtained a position today at fifty dollars per week for the entire season." "What is the position?" "Female impersonator at the new theater." His Doubt They lived in a neat little cottage on Prairie Avenue, and had been married about a year. She was young and sentimental and he was a clerk at fifty dollars per month. She sat rocking the cradle and looking at a bunch of something pink and white that was lying asleep, and he was reading the paper. "Charlie," she said, presently, "you must begin to realize that you must economize and lay aside something each month for the future. You must realize that the new addition to our home that will bring us joy arid pleasure and make sweet music around our fireside must be provided for. You must be ready to meet the obligations that will be imposed upon you, and remember that another than ourselves must be considered, and that as our hands strike the chords so shall either harmony or discord be made, and as the notes mount higher and higher, we shall be held to account for our trust here below. Do you realize the responsibility?" Charlie said "Yes," and then went out in the woodshed and muttered to himself: "I wonder whether she was talking about the kid, or means to buy a piano on the installment plan." A Cheering Thought A weary-looking man with dejected auburn whiskers, walked into the police station yesterday afternoon and said to the officer in charge: "I want to give myself up. I expect you had better handcuff me and put me into a real dark cell where there are plenty of spiders and mice. I'm one of the worst men you ever saw, and I waive trial. Please tell the jailer to give me moldy bread to eat, and hydrant water with plenty of sulphur in it." "What have you done?" asked the officer. "I'm a miserable, low-down, lying, good-for-nothing, slandering, drunken, villainous, sacrilegious galoot, and I'm not fit to die. You might ask the jailer, also, to bring little boys in to look at me through the bars, while I gnash my teeth and curse in demoniac rage." "We can't put you in jail unless you have committed some offense. Can't you bring some more specific charge against yourself?" "No, I just want to give myself up on general principles. You see, I went to hear Sam Jones last night, and he saw me in the crowd and diagnosed my case to a _T_. Up to that time I thought I was a four-horse team with a yellow dog under the wagon, but Sam took the negative side and won. I'm a danged old sore-eyed hound dog; I wouldn't mind if you kicked me a few times before you locked me up, and sent my wife word that the old villain that has been abusin' her for twenty years has met his deserts." "Aw, come now," said the officer, "I don't believe you are as bad as you think you are. You don't know that Sam Jones was talking about you at all. It might have been somebody else he was hitting. Brace up and don't let it worry you." "Lemme see," said the weary-looking man reflectively. "Come to think of it there was one of my neighbors sitting right behind me who is the meanest man in Houston. He is a mangy pup, and no mistake. He beats his wife and has refused to loan me three dollars five different times. What Sam said just fits his case exactly. If I thought now--" "That's the way to look at it," said the officer. "The chances are Sam wasn't thinking about you at all." "Durned if I believe he was, now I remember about that neighbor of mine," said the penitent, beginning to brighten up. "You don't know what a weight you've taken off my mind. I was just feeling like I was one of the worst sinners in the world. I'll bet any man ten dollars he was talking right straight at that miserable, contemptible scalawag that sat right behind me. Say, come on and let's go out and take somethin', will you?" The officer declined and the weary-looking man ran his finger down his neck and pulled his collar up into sight and said: "I'll never forget your kindness, sir, in helping me out of this worry. It has made me feel bad all day. I am going out to the racetrack now, and take the field against the favorite for a few plunks. Good day, I shall always remember your kindness." What It Was There was something the matter with the electric lights Tuesday night, and Houston was as dark as Egypt when Moses blew the gas out. They were on Rusk Avenue, out on the lawn, taking advantage of the situation, and were holding as close a session as possible. Presently she said: "George, I know you love me, and I am sure that nothing in the world can change my affection for you, yet I feel that something has come between us, and although I have hesitated long to tell you, it is paining me very much." "What is it, my darling?" asked George, in an agony of suspense. "Speak, my own, and tell me what it is that has come between you and me?" "I think, George" she softly sighed, "it is your watch." And George loosened his hold for a moment and shifted his Waterbury. Vanity A poet sang a song so wondrous sweet, That toiling thousands paused and listened long; So lofty, strong, and noble were his themes, It seemed that strength supernal swayed his song. He, god-like, chided poor, weak, weeping man, And bade him dry his foolish, shameful tears. Taught that each soul on its proud self should lean, And from that rampart scorn all earth-born fears. The poet groveled on a fresh-heaped mound Raised o'er the grave of one he fondly loved, And cursed the world, and drenched the sod with tears, And all the flimsy mockery of his precepts proved. Identified A stranger walked into a Houston bank the other day and presented a draft to the cashier for payment. "You will have to be identified," said the cashier, "by someone who knows your name to be Henry B. Saunders." "But I don't know anybody in Houston," said the stranger. "Here's a lot of letters addressed to me, and a telegram from my firm, and a lot of business cards. Won't they be identification enough?" "I am sorry," said the cashier, "but while I have no doubt that you are the party, our rule is to require better identification." The man unbuttoned his vest and showed the initial, H. B. S., on his shirt. "Does that go?" he asked. The cashier shook his head. "You might have Henry B. Saunders' letters, and his papers, and also his shirt on, without being the right man. We are forced to be very careful." The stranger tore open his shirt front, and exhibited a large mustard plaster, covering his entire chest. "There," he shouted, "if I wasn't Henry B. Saunders, do you suppose I would go around wearing one of his mustard plasters stuck all over me? Do you think I would carry my impersonation of anybody far enough to blister myself to look like him? Gimme tens and fives, now, I haven't got time to fool any more." The cashier hesitated and then shoved out the money. After the stranger had gone, the official rubbed his chin gently and said softly to himself: "That plaster might be somebody else's after all, but no doubt it's all right." The Apple A youth held in his hand a round, red, luscious apple. "Eat," said the Spirit, "it is the apple of life." "I will have none of it," said the Youth, and threw it far from him. "I will have success. I will have fame, fortune, power and knowledge." "Come, then," said the Spirit. They went together up steep and rocky paths. The sun scorched, the rain fell upon them, the mountain mists clung about them, and the snow fell in beautiful and treacherous softness, obscuring the way as they climbed. Time swiftly passed and the golden locks of the Youth took on the whiteness of the snow. His form grew bent with the toil of climbing; his hand grew weak and his voice quivering and high. The Spirit had not changed and upon his face was the inscrutable smile of wisdom. They stood at last upon the topmost peak. The old man that was the Youth said to the Spirit: "Give me the apple of Success. I have come upon the heights where it grows and it is mine. Be quick, for there is a strange dimness in my sight." The Spirit gave him an apple round and red and fair to behold. The man bit into it and found rottenness and bitter dust. "What is this?" he asked. "It was the apple of Life," said the Spirit. "It is now the apple of Success." How It Started "You had better move your chair a little further back," said the old resident. "I saw one of the Judkinses go into the newspaper office just now with his gun, and there may be some shooting." The reporter, who was in the town gathering information for the big edition, got his chair quickly behind a pillar of the hotel piazza, and asked what the trouble was about. "It's an old feud of several years' standing," said the old resident, "between the editor and the Judkins family. About every two months they get to shooting at one another. Everybody in town knows about it. This is the way it started. The Judkinses live in another town, and one time a good-looking young lady of the family came here on a visit to a Mrs. Brown. Mrs. Brown gave her a big party--a regular high-toned affair, to get the young men acquainted with her. One young fellow fell in love with her, and sent a little poem to our paper, the _Observer_. This is the way it read: To Miss Judkins (Visiting Mrs. T. Montcalm Brown.) "We love to see her wear A gown of simple white. Nothing but a rose in her hair At Mrs. Brown's that night, The fairest of them all She stood, with blushes red, While bright the gaslight shone Upon her lovely head. "That poem, now, was what started the feud." "I don't see anything wrong with the poem," said the reporter. "It seems a little crude, but contains nothing to give offense." "Well," said the old resident, "the poem was all right as it was written. The trouble originated in the newspaper office. The morning after it was sent in the society editress got hold of it first. She is an old maid and she didn't think the second line quite proper, so she ran her pencil through it. Then the advertising manager prowled around through the editor's mail as usual, and read the poem. Old Brown owed the office $17 back subscription, and the advertising manager struck out the fourth line. He said old Brown shouldn't get any free advertising in that office. "Then the editor's wife happened to come in to see if there was any square, perfumed envelopes among his mail, and she read it. She was at the Brown's party herself, and when she read the line that proclaimed Miss Judkins 'The fairest of them all' she turned up her nose and scratched that out. "Then the editor himself got hold of it. He is heavily interested in our new electric light plant, and his blue pencil jumped on the line 'While bright the gaslight shone' in a hurry. Later on one of the printers came in and grabbed a lot of copy, and this poem was among it. You know what printers will do if you give them a chance, so here is the way the poem came out in the paper: To Miss Judkins (Visiting Mrs. T. Montcalm Brown.) "We loved to see her wear Nothing but a rose in her hair. She stood with blushes red Upon her lovely head. "And you see," continued the old resident, "the Judkinses got mad." Red Conlin's Eloquence They were speaking of the power of great orators, and each one had something to say of his especial favorite. The drummer was for backing Bourke Cockran for oratory against the world, the young lawyer thought the suave Ingersoll the most persuasive pleader, and the insurance agent advanced the claims of the magnetic W. C. P. Breckenridge. "They all talk some," said the old cattle man, who was puffing his pipe and listening, "but they couldn't hold a candle to Red Conlin, that run cattle below Santone in '80. Ever know Red?" Nobody had had the honor. "Red Conlin was a natural orator; he wasn't overcrowded with book learnin', but his words come free and easy, like whisky out of a new faucet from a full barrel. He was always in a good humor and smilin' clear across his face, and if he asked for a hot biscuit he did it like he was pleadin' for his life. He was one man who had the gift of gab, and it never failed him. "I remember once, in Atascosa County, the hoss thieves worried us right smart. There was a gang of 'em, and they got runnin' off a caballaro every week or so. Some of us got together and raised a p'int of order and concluded to sustain it. The head of the gang was a fellow named Mullens, and a tough cuss he was. Fight, too, and warn't particular when. Twenty of us saddled up and went into camp, loaded down with six-shooters and Winchesters. That Mullens had the nerve to try to cut off our saddle horses the first night, but we heard him, got mounted, and went hot on his trail. There was five or six others with Mullens. "It was dark as thunder, and pretty soon we run one of them down. His horse was lame, and we knew it was Mullens by his big white hat and black beard. We didn't hardly give him time to speak, we was so mad, but in two minutes there was a rope 'round his neck and Mullens was swung up at last. We waited about ten minutes till he was still, and then some fellow strikes a match out of curiosity and screeches out: "'Gosh a'mighty, boys, we've strung up the wrong man!" "And we had. "We reopened the fellow's case and give him a new trial, and acquitted him, but it was too late to do him any good. He was as dead as Davy Crockett. "It was Sandy McNeagh, one of the quietest, straightest, and best-respected men in the county, and what was worse, hadn't been married but about three months. "'Whatever are we to do?' says I, and it sure was a case to think about. "'We ought to be nigh Sandy's house now,' said one of the men, who was tryin' to peer around and kind of locate the scene of our brilliant coop detaw, as they say. "Just then we seen a light from a door that opened in the dark, and the house wasn't two hundred yards away, and we saw what we knew must be Sandy's wife in the door a-lookin' for him. "'Somebody's got to go and tell her,' said I. I was kind o' leadin' the boys. 'Who'll do it?' Nobody jumped at the proposition. "'Red Conlin' says I, 'you're the man to tell her, and the only man here what could open his mouth to the poor girl. Go, like a man, and may the Lord teach you what to say, for d---d if I can.' "That boy never hesitated. I saw him kind o' wet his hand, and smooth back his red curls in the dark, and I seen his teeth shinin' as he said: "'I'll go, boys; wait for me.' "He went and we saw the door open and let him in. "'May the Lord help that poor widder,' we all said, 'and d--n us for bunglin', murderin' butchers what ain't no right to call ourselves men.' "It was fifteen minutes, maybe, when Red came back. "'How is it'?' we whispered, almost afraid to hear him speak. "'It's fixed,' says Red, 'and the widdy and I asks ye to the weddin' nixt Chuesday night.' "That fellow Red Conlin could talk." Why He Hesitated A man with a worn, haggard countenance that showed traces of deep sorrow and suffering rushed excitedly up the stairs into the editorial rooms of the Post. The literary editor was alone in his corner and the man threw himself into a chair nearby and said: "Excuse me, sir, for inflicting my troubles upon you, but I must unbosom myself to someone. I am the unhappiest of men. Two months ago, in a quiet little town in Eastern Texas, there was a family dwelling in the midst of peace and contentment. Hezekiah Skinner was the head of that family, and he almost idolized his wife, who appeared to completely return his affection. Alas, sir, she was deceiving him. Her protestations of love were but honeyed lies, intended to beguile and blind him. She had become infatuated with William Wagstaff, a neighbor, who had insidiously planned to capture her affections. She listened to Wagstaff's pleadings and fled with him, leaving her husband with a wrecked home and a broken heart. Can you not feel for me, sir?" "I do, indeed," said the literary editor. "I can conceive the agony, the sorrow, the deep suffering that you must have felt." "For two months," continued the man, "the home of Hezekiah Skinner has been desolate, and this woman and Wagstaff have been flying from his wrath." "What do you intend to do?" asked the literary editor. "I scarcely know. I do not care for the woman any longer, but I cannot escape the tortures my mind is undergoing day after day." At this point a shrill woman's voice was heard in the outer office, making some inquiry of the office boy. "Great heavens, her voice!" said the man, rising to his feet greatly agitated. "I must get out of here. Quick! Is there no way for me to escape? A window--a side door--anywhere before she finds me." The literary editor rose with indignation in his face. "For shame, sir," he said, "do not act so unworthy a part. Confront your faithless wife, Mr. Skinner, and denounce her for wrecking your life and home. Why do you hesitate to stand up for your honor and your rights?" "You do not understand," said the man, his face white with fear and apprehension, as he climbed out the window upon a shed. "I am William Wagstaff." Turkish Questions Oh, Sultan, tell us quick, we pray What was it Pasha Said? And have they burned the vilayet? So many tales we've read. Who was it passed the Dardanelles? And were they counterfeit? And why was Kharput beaten so? Was there much dust in it? Oh, Ottoman, to do like you Who Hassan eye to see The woes your country has to hear-- Armenia heart must be! And tell us, is the Bosphorus? Or is it still for you? Why is it that you every day Mustafa head or two? Somebody Lied Two men went into a saloon on Main Street yesterday and braced up solemnly to the bar. One was an old man with gray whiskers, the other was a long, lanky youth, evidently his son. Both were dressed like farm hands and they appeared somewhat bewildered at the splendor of the saloon. The bartender asked them what they would have. The old man leaned across the bar and said hoarsely and mysteriously: "You see, mister, me an' Lem just sold a load of tomatters and green corn fer nineteen dollars en a half. The old woman at home figgered we'd git just sixteen dollars and a quarter fer the truck, so me and Lem is three twenty-five ahead. When folks makes a big strike they most al'ays gets drunk, and es me and Lem never was drunk, we says, we'll git drunk and see how it feels. The feelin's pretty bully, ain't it?" "Some think so," said the bartender, "what'll you have?" They both called for whisky and stood against the bar until they had taken some five or six drinks apiece. "Feel good, Lem?" asked the old man. "Not a dam bit," said the son. "Don't feel like shoutin' and raisin' Cain?" "No." "Don't feel good at all?" "No. Feel like the devil. Feel sick, en burnin' inside." "Is yer head buzzin', Lem, and er achin'?" "Yes, Dad, en is yer knees a kind er wobblin', en yer eyes a waterin'?" "You bet, en is yer stummick er gripin' en does yer feel like yer had swallowed a wild cat en er litter of kittens?" "Yes, Dad, and don't you wish we wuz to home, whar we could lie down in ther clover patch en kick?" "Yes, sonny, this here is what comes of goin' back on yer ma. Does yer feel real bad?" "Bad ez ther devil, Dad." "Look a here, mister," said the old man to the bartender, "somebody has lied to us about the fun in gettin' drunk. We're a goin' home and never goin' to do it again. I'd ruther hev the blind staggers, the itch, en the cramp colic all to onct, then ter git drunk. Come on, sonny, en let's hunt the waggin." Marvelous There is one man we know who is about as clever a reasoner as this country has yet produced. He has a way of thinking out a problem that is sometimes little short of divination. One day last week his wife told him to make some purchases, and as with all his logical powers he is rather forgetful on ordinary subjects, she tied a string around his finger so he would not forget his errand. About nine o'clock that night while hurrying homeward, he suddenly felt the string on his finger and stopped short. Then for the life of him he could not remember for what purpose the string had been placed there. "Let's see," he said. "The string was tied on my finger so I would not forget. Therefore it is a forget-me-not. Now forget-me-not is a flower. Ah, yes, that's it. I was to get a sack of flour." The giant intellect had got in its work. The Confession of a Murderer He is dead and I killed him. I gaze upon him, lying cold and still, with the crimson blood welling from his wound, and I laugh with joy. On my hand his life blood leaped and I hold it proudly aloft bearing it accusing stain and in my heart there is no pity, no remorse, no softness. Seeing him lie there crushed and pulseless is to me more than the pleasure of paradise. For months he escaped me. With all the intense hate I bore him at times, I felt admiration for his marvelous courage, his brazen effrontery, his absolute ignorance of fear. Why did I kill him? Because he had with a fixed purpose and a diabolical, persistent effrontery, conspired to rob me of that which is as dear to me as my life. Brave as I have said he was, he scarcely dared to cross my path openly, but with insidious cunning had ever sought to strike me a blow in the dark. I did not fear him, but I knew his power, and I dared not give him his opportunity. Many a sleepless night I have spent, planning some means to rid myself of his devilish machinations. He even attempted to torture me by seeking to harm her whom I love. He approached herewith the utmost care and cunning, wearing the guise of a friend, but striving to instill his poison into her innocent heart. But, thank heaven, she was faithful and true and his honeyed songs and wiles had no effect. When she would tell me of his approaches, how I would grind my teeth and clench my hands in fury, and long for the time when I would wreak a just vengeance upon him. The time has come. I found him worn and helpless from cold and hunger, but there was no pity in my heart. I struck him down and reveled with heartfelt joy when I saw him sink down, bathed in blood, and die by my hands. I do not fear the consequences. When I tell my tale I will be upheld by all. He is dead and I am satisfied. I think he is the largest and fattest mosquito I ever saw. "Get Off the Earth" "Get off the earth," says I, "With your muddy boots and your dirty face; Such a bother I never see, You're the biggest torment in the place; Forever worryin' an' pesterin' me. "Get off the earth," says I. I didn't mean that, but I was so vexed At the boy's disturbin' way; I never knew what he would do next In his noisy, mischief-makin' play. "Get off the earth," says I. And that very night the fever came; And now I'm cryin' to heaven in vain For just one more touch of them same Lost little grimy hands again. The Stranger's Appeal He was tall and angular and had a keen gray eye and a solemn face. His dark coat was buttoned high and had something of a clerical cut. His pepper and salt trousers almost cleared the tops of his shoes, but his tall hat was undeniably respectable, and one would have said he was a country preacher out for a holiday. He was driving a light wagon, and he stopped and climbed out when he came up to where five or six men were sitting on the post-office porch in a little country town in Texas. "My friends," he said, "you all look like intelligent men, and I feel it my duty to say a few words to you in regard to the terrible and deplorable state of things now existing in this section of the country. I refer to the horrible barbarities recently perpetrated in the midst of some of the most civilized of Texas towns, when human beings created in the image of their Maker were subjected to cruel torture and then inhumanly burned in the public streets. Something must be done to wipe the stigma from the fair name of your state. Do you not agree with me?" "Are you from Galveston, stranger?" asked one of the men. "No, sir. I am from Massachusetts, the cradle of liberty of the downtrodden negro, and the home of the champions of his cause. These burnings are causing us to weep tears of blood and I am here to see if I can not move your hearts to pity on his behalf." "I guess you might as well drive on," said one of the group. "We are going to look out for ourselves and just so long as negroes keep on committing the crimes they have, just so long will we punish them." "And you will not repent of the lives you have taken by the horrible agency of fire?" "Nary repent." "And you will continue to visit upon them the horrible suffering of being burned to death?" "If the occasion demands it." "Well, then, gentlemen, since you are so determined, I want to sell you a few gross of the cheapest matches you ever laid your eyes upon. Step out to the wagon and see them. Warranted not to go out in a strong wind, and to strike on anything, wood, bricks, glass, bloomers, boot soles and iron. How many boxes will you take, gentlemen?" The Good Boy (Mostly in Words of One Syllable) James was a good boy. He w'ould not tease his cat or his dog. He went to school. One day as he went home he saw a lady cross the street, and some rude boys tried to guy her. James took the lady by the hand and led her to a safe place. "Oh, fie!" he said to the boys. "For shame, to talk so to the nice lady. A good, kind boy will be mild and love to help the old." At this the boys did rail and laugh. "Oh, boys," said James, "do not be rude and speak so harsh. At home, I have a dear old grandma, and this kind lady may be one, too." The lady took James by the ear and said: "You contemptible little rapscallion. I've a good mind to spank you until you can't navigate. Grandmother, indeed! I'm only twenty-nine my last birthday, and I don't feel a day over eighteen. Now, you clear out, or I'll slap you good." The Colonel's Romance They were sitting around a stove and the tobacco was passed around. They began to grow introspective. The talk turned upon their old homes and the changes that the cycling years bring about. They had lived in Houston for many years, but only one was a native Texan. The colonel hailed from Alabama, the judge was born in the swamps of Mississippi, the grocer first saw the light in a frozen town of Maine, and the major proudly claimed Tennessee as his birthplace. "Have any of you fellows been back home since you left there?" asked the colonel. The judge had been back twice in twenty years, the major once, the grocer never. "It's a curious feeling," said the colonel, "to go back to the old home where you were raised, after an absence of fifteen years. It is like seeing ghosts to be among people whom you have not seen in so long a time. Now I went back to Crosstree, Alabama, just fifteen years after I left there. The impression made upon me was one that never will be obliterated. "There was a girl in Crosstree once that I loved better than anything in the world. One day I slipped away from everybody and went down to the little grove where I used to walk with her. I walked along the paths we used to tread. The oaks along the side had scarcely changed; the little blue flowers on either hand might have been the same ones she used to twine in her hair when she came to meet me. "Our favorite walk had been along a line of thick laurels beyond which ran a little stream. Everything was the same. There was no change there to oppress my heart. Above were the same great sycamores and poplars; there ran the same brook; my feet trod the same path they had so often walked with her. It seemed that if I waited she would surely come again, tripping so lightly through the gloaming with her starry eyes, and nut-brown curls, and she loved me, too. It seemed then that nothing could ever have parted us--no doubt, no misunderstanding, no falsehood. But who can tell? "I went to the end of the path. There stood the old hollow tree in which we used to place notes to each other. What sweet words that old tree could tell if it had known! I had fancied that during the rubs and knocks I had received from the world my heart had grown calloused, but such was not the case. "I looked down into the hollow of the tree, and saw something white. It was a folded piece of paper, yellow and stained with age. I opened it and read it with difficulty. "'Dearest Richard: You know I will marry you if you want me to. Come round early tonight and I will give you my answer in a better way. Your own Nellie.' "Gentlemen, I stood there holding that little piece of paper in my hand like one in a dream. I had written her a note asking her to marry me and telling her to leave her answer in the old tree. She must have done so, and I never got it, and all those years had rolled away since." The crowd was silent. The major wiped his eyes, and the judge sniffed a little. They were middle-aged men now, but they, too, had known love. "And then," said the grocer, "you left right away for Texas and never saw her again?" "No," said the colonel. "When I didn't come round that night she sent her father after me, and we were married two months later. She and the five kids are up at the house now. Pass the tobacco, please." A Narrow Escape A meek-looking man, with one eye and a timid, shuffling gait, entered a Houston saloon while no one was in except the bartender, and said: "Excuse me, sir, but would you permit me to step behind the bar for just a moment? You can keep your eye on me. There is something there I wanted to look at." The bartender was not busy, and humored him through curiosity. The meek-looking man stepped around and toward the shelf back of the bar. "Would you kindly remove that wine bottle and those glasses for a moment?" The bartender did so, and disclosed a little plowed streak on the shelf and a small hole bored for quite a distance into the wall. "Thanks, that's all," said the meek man, as he went around to the front again. He leaned thoughtfully on the bar and said: "I shot that hole in there just nine years ago. I came in feeling pretty thirsty and had no money. The bartender refused me a drink and I commenced firing. That ball went through his ear and five bottles of champagne before it stopped. I then yelled quite loudly, and two men broke their arms trying to get out the door, and the bartender trembled so when he mixed a drink for me you would have thought he was putting up a milk shake for a girl who wanted to catch a street car." "Yes?" said the bartender. "Yes, sir, I am feeling a little out of sorts today, and it always makes me real cross and impatient when I get that way. A little gin and bitters always helps me. It was six times, I think, that I fired, the time I was telling you about. Straight whisky would do if the gin is out." "If I had any fly paper," said the bartender, sweetly, "I would stick you on it and set you in the back window; but I am out, consequently, I shall have to adopt harsher measures. I shall tie a knot in this towel, and then count ten, and walk around the end of the bar. That will give you time to do your shooting, and I'll see that you let out that same old yell that you spoke of." "Wait a moment," said the meek man. "Come to think of it, my doctor ordered me not to drink anything for six weeks. But you had a narrow escape all the same. I think I shall go down to the next drug store and fall in a fit on the sidewalk. That's good for some peppermint and aromatic spirits of ammonia, anyhow." A Years Supply He was one of the city's wealthiest men, but he made no ostentatious display of his wealth. A little, thin, poorly clad girl stood looking in the window of the restaurant at the good things to eat. The man approached and touched her on the shoulder. "What is your name, little girl?" he asked. "Susie Tompkins, sir," she answered, looking up at him with great, haunting, blue eyes. There was something in her pleading, innocent voice that stirred a strange feeling in the millionaire's heart. Still it may have been indigestion. "Have you a father?" he asked. "Oh, no, sir, mother has only me to support." "Is your mother very poor?" "Oh, yes, sir." "What is your mother's name?" "Susan, sir. Just like mine." "Tell me, child," said the wealthy man, clutching her arm in an agony of suspense. "Has your mother a wart on her nose, and does her breath smell of onions?" "Yes, sir." The millionaire covered his face with his hands for a moment, and then said in a trembling voice: "Little one, your mother and I once knew each other. You have her voice, her hair, and her eyes. If it had not been for a misunderstanding--perhaps--but that is all past now." The man unbuttoned his overcoat and took from his vest pocket a package. "Take this," he said. "I have more than I want. It will last you and your mother a year." The little girl took the package and ran home in glee. "Oh, see, mama!" she cried. "A gentleman gave me this. He said it would last us a whole year." The pale woman unrolled the package with trembling hands. It was a nice new calendar. Eugene Field No gift his genius might have had Of titles high, in church and state, Could charm him as the one he bore, Of children's poet-laureate. He smilingly pressed aside his bays And laurel garlands that he won, And bowed his head for baby hands To place a daisy wreath upon. He found his kingdom in the ways, Of little ones he loved so well, For them he tuned his lyre and sang. Sweet simple songs of magic spell. Ah! greater feat to storm the gates Of children's pure and cleanly hearts, Than to subdue a warring world By stratagems and doubtful arts. A tribute paid by chanting choirs And pealing organs rises high; But soft and clear, somewhere he hears Through all, a child's low lullaby. Slightly Mixed A certain Houston racing man was married some months ago. He also is the proud possessor of a fine two-year-old filly that has made five and a half furlongs in 1:09 and he expects her to do better at the next races. He has named the filly after his wife and both of them are dear to his heart. A Post man who ran across him yesterday found him quite willing to talk. "Yes," he said, "I am the happiest man in Texas. Bessie and I are keeping house now and getting quite well settled down. That filly of mine is going to do wonders yet. Bessie takes as much interest in her as I do. You know I have named her for my wife. She is a thoroughbred. I tell you it's fine to see her trotting around at home." "Who, the filly?" "No, my wife. She's going to bet twelve dozen pairs of kid gloves on Bessie next time she goes in. I have but one objection to her. She goes with her head on one side and is cross-legged, and tears off her shoes. "Your w-w-wife?" "No, what's the matter with you? The filly. It pleases me very much to have my friends inquire about Bessie. She is getting to be quite a favorite. I had hard work to get her, too. She trots double without a break." "The filly, you mean?" "No, my wife. I took Bessie out driving with the filly yesterday. Bessie's a daisy. She's a little high in one shoulder, and a trifle stiff in one leg, but her wind is all right. What do you think of her back?" "Really, I--I--I never had the pleasure of meeting your wife, but I have no doubt--" "What are you talking about? I mean the filly. The races come off just on the anniversary of our marriage. The races are going to be a big thing. You know we have been married just a year. I expect Bessie to do wonders. There's a newcomer going to be here, that we are looking for with much interest. You must really come out and see our first event." "I--I--I really, it would be indelicate--you must really excuse me. I never saw anything of the kind. I--I--" "Oh, there's nothing wrong about horse racing. It's fine sport. So long now. I've got to go and take Bessie out and sweat her a little." Knew What Was Needed A gentleman from Ohio, who has come South on a hunting trip, arrived in Houston, rather late one night last week, and on his way to a hotel stopped in a certain saloon to get a drink. A colored man was behind the bar temporarily and served him with what he wanted. The gentleman had his shotgun in its case, and he laid it upon the bar while waiting. "Is there any game about here?" he asked, after paying for his drink. "I guess dey is, boss," said the colored man, looking doubtfully at the gun on the counter, "but you jest wait a minute, boss, till I fixes you up in better shape." He opened a drawer and handed the gentleman a six-shooter. "You take dis, Boss," he said. "Dat dar gun ob yourn am too long fur you to get quick action in de game what we hab here. Now you jest go up dem steps and knock free times on de doah to your left." Some Ancient News Notes It will be remembered that a short while ago, some very ancient documents and records were discovered in an old monastery on Mt. Sinai, where they have been kept filed away by the monks among their dusty archives. Some of them antedate the oldest writings previously known by one hundred years. The finders claim that among them are the original Scripture traced in Syriac language, and that they differ in many material ways from the translation in use. We have procured some advance sheets from the discoverers and in a few fragments given below our readers will perceive that human nature was pretty much the same a thousand years ago. It is evident from the palimpsests in our possession that newspapers were not entirely unknown even at that early date. We give some random translations from the original manuscripts: * * * * * "Commodore Noah, one of our oldest citizens, predicts a big rain soon. The commodore is building an up-to-date houseboat and expects to spend about six weeks afloat with his family and his private menagerie." * * * * * "Colonel Goliath of Gath, and the new middleweight, Mr. David, are at their old tricks again blowing about the championship. Mr. David has one hand in a sling, but says he will be all right when the affair is pulled off. A little more fighting and less talking would please the readers of the Daily Cymbal." * * * * * "Ladies, get one of those new fig leaves at the Eden Bazaar before the style is dropped." * * * * * "The exposition at Shinar is going to be a grand success. Work on the New Woman's Building called the Tower of Babel has been stopped on account of a misunderstanding. The lady managers have been holding meetings in the Tower for some time." * * * * * "See Professor Daniel and his performing lions next Sunday." * * * * * "Colonel Job, who has been suffering from quite a siege of boils at his residence on Avenue C, was arrested yesterday for cussing and disturbing the neighborhood. The colonel has generally a very equable temper, but completely lost his balance on finding that Mrs. Job had put a large quantity of starch in his only night robe." * * * * * "About 1,500 extra deputy clerks were put on by the county clerk yesterday to assist in getting out summonses for witnesses in the divorce case recently brought by Judge Solomon against the last batch of his wives." A Sure Method The editor sat in his palatially furnished sanctum bending over a mass of manuscripts, resting his beetling brow upon his hand. It wanted but one hour of the time of going to press and there was that editorial on the Venezuelan question to write. A pale, intellectual youth approached him with a rolled manuscript tied with a pink ribbon. "It is a little thing," said the youth, "that I dashed off in an idle moment." The editor unrolled the poem and glanced down the long row of verses. He then drew from his pocket a $20 bill and held it toward the poet. A heavy thud was heard, and at the tinkle of an electric bell the editor's minions entered and carried the lifeless form of the poet away. "That's three today," muttered the great editor as he returned the bill to his pocket. "It works better than a gun or a club and the coroner always brings in a verdict of heart failure." 
61755	----	Books Library Project (https://books.google.com) and generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/ohenryanaseveno00presgoog O. HENRYANA Seven Odds and Ends Poetry and Short Stories by O. HENRY Garden City New York Doubleday, Page & Company 1920 Copyright, 1920, by Doubleday, Page & Company All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian Acknowledgement For permission to republish much of the material contained in this volume, the publishers are indebted to Cosmopolitan, Everybody's Magazine, Town Topics, and the Youth's Companion. Table of Contents The Crucible A Lunar Episode Three Paragraphs Bulger's Friend A Professional Secret The Elusive Tenderloin The Struggle of the Outliers O. Henryana The Crucible Hard ye may be in the tumult, Red to your battle hilts, Blow give for blow in the foray, Cunningly ride in the tilts; But when the roaring is ended Tenderly, unbeguiled, Turn to a woman a woman's Heart, and a child's to a child. Test of the man, if his worth be In accord with the ultimate plan, That he be not, to his marring, Always and utterly man; That he bring out of the tumult, Fitter and undefiled, To a woman the heart of a woman, To children the heart of a child. Good when the bugles are ranting It is to be iron and fire; Good to be oak in the foray, Ice to a guilty desire. But when the battle is over (Marvel and wonder the while) Give to a woman a woman's Heart, and a child's to a child. A Lunar Episode The scene was one of supernatural weirdness. Tall, fantastic mountains reared their seamed peaks over a dreary waste of igneous rock and burned-out lava beds. Deep lakes of black water stood motionless as glass under frowning, honeycombed crags, from which ever and anon dropped crumbled masses with a sullen plunge. Vegetation there was none. Bitter cold reigned and ridges of black and shapeless rocks cut the horizon on all sides. An extinct volcano loomed against a purple sky, black as night and old as the world. The firmament was studded with immense stars that shone with a wan and spectral light. Orion's belt hung high above. Aldebaran faintly shone millions of miles away, and the earth gleamed like a new-risen moon with a lurid, blood-like glow. On a lofty mountain that hung toppling above an ink-black sea stood a dwelling built of stone. From its solitary window came a bright light that gleamed upon the misshapen rocks. The door opened and two men emerged locked in a deadly struggle. They swayed and twisted upon the edge of the precipice, now one gaining the advantage, now the other. Strong men they were, and stone rolled from their feet into the valley as each strove to overcome the other. At length one prevailed. He seized his opponent, and raising him high above his head, hurled him into space. The vanquished combatant shot through the air like a stone from a catapult in the direction of the luminous earth. "That's three of 'em this week," said the Man in the Moon as he lit a cigarette and turned back into the house. "Those New York interviewers are going to make me tired if they keep this thing up much longer." Three Paragraphs "Copy," yelled the small boy at the door. The sick woman lying on the bed began to move her fingers aimlessly upon the worn counterpane. Her eyes were bright with fever; her face, once beautiful, was thin and pain drawn. She was dying, but neither she nor the man who held her hand and wrote on a paper tablet knew that the end was so near. Three paragraphs were lacking to fill the column of humorous matter that the foreman had sent for. The small pay it brought them barely furnished shelter and food. Medicine was lacking but the need for that was nearly over. The woman's mind was wandering; she spoke quickly and unceasingly, and the man bit his pencil and stared at the pad of paper, holding her slim, hot hand. "Oh, Jack; Jack, papa says no, I cannot go with you. Not love you! Jack, do you want to break my heart? Oh, look, look! the fields are like heaven, so filled with flowers. Why have you no ice? I had ice when I was at home. Can't you give me just a little piece, my throat is burning?" The humourist wrote: "When a man puts a piece of ice down a girl's back at a picnic, does he give her the cold shoulder?" The woman feverishly put back the loose masses of brown hair from her burning face. "Jack, Jack, I don't want to die! Who is that climbing in the window? Oh, it's only Jack, and here is Jack holding my hand, too. How funny! We are going to the river tonight. The quiet, broad, dark, whispering river. Hold my hand tight. Jack, I can feel the water coming in. It is so cold. How queer it seems to be dead, dead, and see the trees above you." The humourist wrote: "On the dead square--a cemetery lot." "Copy, sir," yelled the small boy again. "Forms locked in half an hour." The man bit his pencil into splinters. The hand he held was growing cooler; surely her fever must be leaving. She was singing now, a little crooning song she might have learned at her mother's knee, and her fingers had ceased moving. "They told me," she said weakly and sadly, "that hardships and suffering would come upon me for disobeying my parents and marrying Jack. Oh, dear, my head aches so I can't think. No, no, the white dress with the lace sleeves, not that black, dreadful thing! Sailing, sailing, sailing, where does this river go? You are not Jack, you are too cold and stern. What is that red mark on your brow? Come, sister, let's make some daisy chains and then hurry home, there is a great black cloud above us--I'll be better in the morning. Jack, if you'll hold my hand tight. Jack, I feel as light as a feather--I'm just floating, floating, right into the cloud and I can't feel your hand. Oh, I see her now, and there is the old love and tenderness in her face. I must go to her. Jack. Mother, mother!" The man wrote quickly: "A woman generally likes her husband's mother-in-law the best of all his relatives." Then he sprang to the door, dashed the column of copy into the boy's hand, and moved swiftly to the bed. He put his arm softly under the brown head that had suffered so much, but it turned heavily aside. The fever was gone. The humourist was alone. Bulger's Friend It was rare sport for a certain element in the town when old Bulger joined the Salvation Army. Bulger was the town's odd "character," a shiftless, eccentric old man, and a natural foe to social conventions. He lived on the bank of a brook that bisected the town, in a wonderful hut of his own contriving, made of scrap lumber, clapboards, pieces of tin, canvas and corrugated iron. The most adventurous boys circled Bulger's residence at a respectful distance. He was intolerant of visitors, and repelled the curious with belligerent and gruff inhospitality. In return, the report was current that he was of unsound mind, something of a wizard, and a miser with a vast amount of gold buried in or near his hut. The old man worked at odd jobs, such as weeding gardens and whitewashing; and he collected old bones, scrap metal and bottles from alleys and yards. One rainy night when the Salvation Army was holding a slenderly attended meeting in its hall, Bulger had appeared and asked permission to join the ranks. The sergeant in command of the post welcomed the old man with that cheerful lack of prejudice that distinguishes the peaceful militants of his order. Bulger was at once assigned to the position of bass drummer, to his evident, although grimly expressed, joy. Possibly the sergeant, who had the success of his command at heart, perceived that it would be no mean token of successful warfare to have the new recruit thus prominently displayed, representing, as he did, if not a brand from the burning, at least a well-charred and sap-dried chunk. So every night, when the Army marched from its quarters to the street corner where open-air services were held, Bulger stumbled along with his bass drum behind the sergeant and the corporal, who played "Sweet By and By" and "Only an Armor-Bearer" in unison upon their cornets. And never before in that town was bass drum so soundly whacked. Bulger managed to keep time with the cornets upon his instrument, but his feet were always wo-fully unrhythmic. He shuffled and staggered and rocked from side to side like a bear. Truly, he was not pleasing to the sight. He was a bent, ungainly old man, with a face screwed to one side and wrinkled like a dry prune. The red shirt, which proclaimed his enlistment into the ranks, was a misfit, being the outer husk of a leviathan corporal who had died some time before. This garment hung upon Bulger in folds. His old brown cap was always pulled down over one eye. These and his wabbling gait gave him the appearance of some great simian, captured and imperfectly educated in pedestrian and musical manoeuvres. The thoughtless boys and undeveloped men who gathered about the street services of the Army badgered Bulger incessantly. They called upon him to give oral testimony to his conversion, and criticized the technique and style of his drum performance. But the old man paid no attention whatever to their jeers. He rarely spoke to anyone except when, on coming and going, he gruffly saluted his comrades. The sergeant had met many odd characters, and knew how to study them. He allowed the recruit to have his own silent way for a time. Every evening Bulger appeared at the hall, marched up the street with the squad and back again. Then he would place his drum in the comer where it belonged, and sit upon the last bench in the rear until the hall meeting was concluded. But one night the sergeant followed the old man outside, and laid his hand upon his shoulder. "Comrade," he said, "is it well with you?" "Not yet, sergeant," said Bulger. "I'm only tryin.' I'm glad you come outside. I've been wantin' to ask you: Do you believe the Lord would take a man in if he come to Him late like--kind of a last resort, you know? Say a man who'd lost everything--home and property and friends and health. Wouldn't it look mean to wait till then and try to come?" "Bless His name--no!" said the sergeant. "Come ye that are heavy laden; that's what He says. The poorer, the more miserable, the more unfortunate--the greater His love and forgiveness." "Yes, I'm poor," said Bulger. "Awful poor and miserable. You know when I can think best, sergeant? It's when I'm beating the drum. Other times there's a kind of muddled roarin' in my head. The drum seems to kind of soothe and calm it. There's a thing I'm tryin' to study out, but I ain't made it yet." "Do you pray, comrade?" asked the sergeant. "No, I don't," said Bulger. "What'd be the use? I know where the hitch is. Don't it say somewhere for a man to give up his own family or friends and serve the Lord?" "If they stand in his way; not otherwise." "I've got no family," continued the old man, "nor no friends--but one. And that one is what's driven me to ruin." "Free yourself!" cried the sergeant. "He is no friend, but an enemy who stands between you and salvation." "No," answered Bulger, emphatically, "no enemy. The best friend I ever had." "But you say he's driven you to ruin!" The old man chuckled dryly: "And keeps me in rags and livin' on scraps and sleepin' like a dog in a patched-up kennel. And yet I never had a better friend. You don't understand, sergeant. You lose all your friends but the best one, and then you'll know how to hold on to the last one." "Do you drink, comrade?" asked the sergeant. "Not a drop in twenty years," Bulger replied. The sergeant was puzzled. "If this friend stands between you and your soul's peace, give him up," was all he could find to say. "I can't--now," said the old man, dropping into a fretful whine. "But you just let me keep on beating the drum, sergeant, and maybe I will some time. I'm a-tryin'. Sometimes I come so near thinkin' it out that a dozen more licks on the drum would settle it. I get mighty nigh to the point, and then I have to quit. You'll give me more time, won't you, sergeant?" "All you want, and God bless you, comrade. Pound away until you hit the right note." Afterward the sergeant would often call to Bulger: "Time, comrade! Knocked that friend of yours out yet?" The answer was always unsatisfactory. One night at a street corner the sergeant prayed loudly that a certain struggling comrade might be parted from an enemy who was leading him astray under the guise of friendship. Bulger, in sudden and plainly evident alarm, immediately turned his drum over to a fellow volunteer, and shuffled rapidly away down the street. The next night he was back again at his post, without any explanation of his strange behaviour. The sergeant wondered what it all meant, and took occasion to question the old man more closely as to the influence that was retarding the peace his soul seemed to crave. But Bulger carefully avoided particularizing. "It's my own fight," he said. "I've got to think it out myself. Nobody else don't understand." The winter of 1892 was a memorable one in the South. The cold was almost unprecedented, and snow fell many inches deep where it had rarely whitened the ground before. Much suffering resulted among the poor, who had not anticipated the rigorous season. The little squad of Salvationists found more distress then they could relieve. Charity in that town, while swift and liberal, lacked organization. Want, in that balmy and productive climate, existed only in sporadic cases, and these were nearly always quietly relieved by generous neighbours. But when some sudden disastrous onslaught of the elements--storm, fire or flood--occurred, the impoverished sufferers were often too slowly aided because system was lacking, and because charity was called upon too seldom to become a habit. At such times the Salvation Army was very useful. Its soldiers went down into alleys and byways to rescue those who, unused to extreme want, had never learned to beg. At the end of three weeks of hard freezing a level foot of snow fell. Hunger and cold struck the improvident, and a hundred women, children and old men were gathered into the Army's quarters to be warmed and fed. Each day the blue-uniformed soldiers slipped in and out of the stores and offices of the town, gathering pennies and dimes and quarters to buy food for the starving. And in and out of private houses the Salvationists went with baskets of food and clothing, while day by day the mercury still crouched among the tens and twenties. Alas! business, that scapegoat, was dull. The dimes and quarters came more reluctantly from tills that jingled not when they were opened. Yet in the big hall of the Army the stove was kept red-hot, and upon the long table, set in the rear, could always be found at least coffee and bread and cheese. The sergeant and the squad fought valiantly. At last the money on hand was all gone, and the daily collections were diminished to a variable sum, inadequate to the needs of the dependents of the Army. Christmas was near at hand. There were fifty children in the hall, and many more outside, to whom that season brought no joy beyond what was brought by the Army. None of these little pensioners had thus far lacked necessary comforts, and they had already begun to chatter of the tree--that one bright vision in the sober monotony of the year. Never since the Army first came had it failed to provide a tree and gifts for the children. The sergeant was troubled. He knew that an announcement of "no tree" would grieve the hearts under those thin cotton dresses and ragged jackets more than would stress of storm or scanty diet; and yet there was not money enough to meet the daily demands for food and fuel. On the night of December the 20th the sergeant decided to announce that there could be no Christmas tree: it seemed unfair to allow the waxing anticipation of the children to reach too great a height. The evening was colder, and the still deep snow was made deeper by another heavy fall swept upon the wings of a fierce and shrill-voiced northern gale. The sergeant, with sodden boots and reddened countenance, entered the hall at nightfall, and removed his threadbare overcoat. Soon afterward the rest of the faithful squad drifted in, the women heavily shawled, the men stamping their snow-crusted feet loudly upon the steep stairs. After the slender supper of cold meat, beans, bread, and coffee had been finished all joined in a short service of song and prayer, according to their daily habit. Far back in the shadow sat Bulger. For weeks his ears had been deprived of that aid to thought, the booming of the big bass drum. His wrinkled face wore an expression of gloomy perplexity. The Army had been too busy for the regular services and parades. The silent drum, the banners, and the cornets were stored in a little room at the top of the stairway. Bulger came to the hall every night and ate supper with the others. In such weather work of the kind that the old man usually did was not to be had, and he was bidden to share the benefits conferred upon the other unfortunates. He always left early, and it was surmised that he passed the nights in his patchwork hut, that structure being waterproof and weathertight beyond the promise of its outward appearance. Of late the sergeant had had no time to bestow upon the old man. At seven o'clock the sergeant stood up and rapped upon the table with a lump of coal. When the room became still he began his talk, that rambled off into a halting discourse quite unlike his usual positive and direct speeches. The children had gathered about their friend in a ragged, wriggling, and wide-a-wake circle. Most of them had seen that fresh, ruddy countenance of his emerge, at the twelve-stroke of a night of splendour, from the whiskered mask of a magnificent Santa Claus. They knew now that he was going to speak of the Christmas tree. They tiptoed and listened, flushed with a hopeful and eager awe. The sergeant saw it, frowned, and swallowed hard. Continuing, he planted the sting of disappointment in each expectant little bosom, and watched the light fade from their eyes. There was to be no tree. Renunciation was no new thing to them; they had been born to it. Still a few little ones in whom hope died hard sobbed aloud, and wan, wretched mothers tried to hush and console them. A kind of voiceless wail went among them, scarcely a protest, rather the ghost of a lament for the childhood's pleasures they had never known. The sergeant sat down and figured cheerlessly with the stump of a pencil upon the blank border of a newspaper. Bulger rose and shuffled out of the room without ceremony, as was his custom. He was heard fumbling in the little room in the hallway, and suddenly a thunderous roar broke out, filling the whole building with its booming din. The sergeant started, and then laughed as if his nerves welcomed the diversion. "It's only Comrade Bulger," he said, "doing a little thinking in his own quiet way." The norther rattled the windows and shrieked around the corners. The sergeant heaped more coal into the stove. The increase of that cutting wind bore the cold promise of days, perhaps weeks, of hard times to come. The children were slowly recovering the sad philosophy out of which the deceptive hope of one bright day had enticed them. The women were arranging things for the night; preparing to draw the long curtain across the width of the hall, separating the children's quarters and theirs from those of the men. About eight o'clock the sergeant had seen that all was shipshape; and was wrapping his woolen comforter around his neck, ready for his cold journey homeward, when footsteps were heard upon the stairway. The door opened, and Bulger came in covered with snow like Santa Claus, and as red of face, but otherwise much unlike the jolly Christmas saint. The old man shambled down the hall to where the sergeant stood, drew a wet, earth-soiled bag from under his coat, and laid it upon the table. "Open it," he said, and motioned to the sergeant. That cheery official obeyed with an indulgent smile. He seized the bottom of the bag, turned it up, and stood, with his smile turned to a gape of amazement, gazing at a heap of gold and silver coin that rolled upon the table. "Count it," said Bulger. The jingling of the money and wonder at its source had produced a profound silence in the room. For a time nothing could be heard but the howling of the wind and the chink of the coins as the sergeant slowly laid them in little separate piles. "Six hundred," said the sergeant, and stopped to clear his throat, "six hundred and twenty-three dollars and eighty-five cents!" "Eighty," said Bulger. "Mistake of five cents. I've thought it out at last, sergeant, and I've give up that friend I told you about. That's him--dollars and cents. The boys was right when they said I was a miser. Take it, sergeant, and spend it the best way for them that needs it, not forgettin' a tree for the young 'uns, and--" "Hallelujah!" cried the sergeant. "And a new bass drum," concluded Bulger. And then the sergeant made another speech. A Professional Secret The Story of a Maid Made Over Dr. Satterfield Prince, physician to the leisure class, looked at his watch. It indicated five minutes to twelve. At the stroke of the hour would expire the morning term set apart for the reception of his patients in his handsome office apartments. And then the young woman attendant ushered in from the waiting-room the last unit of the wealthy and fashionable gathering that had come to patronize his skill. Dr. Prince turned, his watch still in hand, his manner courteous, but seeming to invite promptness and brevity in the interview. The last patient was a middle-aged lady, richly dressed, with an amiable and placid face. When she spoke her voice revealed the drawling, musical slur and intonation of the South. She had come, she leisurely explained, to bespeak the services of Dr. Prince in the case of her daughter, who was possessed of a most mysterious affliction. And then, femininely, she proceeded to exhaustively diagnose the affliction, informing the physician with a calm certitude of its origin and nature. The diagnosis advanced by the lady--Mrs. Galloway Rankin--was one so marvelously strange and singular in its conception that Dr. Prince, accustomed as he was to the conceits and vagaries of wealthy malingerers, was actually dumfounded. The following is the matter of Mrs. Rankin's statement, briefly reported: She--Mrs. Rankin--was of an old Kentucky family, the Bealls. Between the Bealls and another historic house--the Rankins--had been waged for nearly a century one of the fiercest and most sanguinary feuds within the history of the State. Each generation had kept alive both the hate and the warfare, until at length it was said that Nature began to take cognizance of the sentiment and Bealls and Rankins were born upon earth as antagonistic toward each other as cats and dogs. So, for four generations the war had waged, and the mountains were dotted with tombstones of both families. At last, for lack of fuel to feed upon, the feud expired with only one direct descendant of the Bealls and one of the Rankins remaining--Evalina Beall, aged nineteen, and Galloway Rankin, aged twenty-five. The last mortal shot in the feud was fired by Cupid. The two survivors met, became immediately and mutually enamoured, and a miracle transpired on Kentucky soil--a Rankin wedded a Beall. Interposed, and irrelevant to the story, was the information that coal mines had been discovered later on the Rankin lands, and now the Galloway Rankins were to be computed among the millionaries. All that was long enough ago for there to be now a daughter, twenty years of age--Miss Annabel Rankin--for whose relief the services of Dr. Prince was petitioned. Then followed, in Mrs. Rankin's statement, a description of the mysterious, though by her readily accounted for, affliction. It seemed that there was a peculiar difficulty in the young lady's powers of locomotion. In walking, a process requiring a coordination and unanimity of the functions--Dr. Prince, said Mrs. Rankin, would understand and admit the nonexistence of a necessity for anatomical specification--there persisted a stubborn opposition, a most contrary and counteracting antagonism. In those successively progressive and generally unconsciously automatic movements necessary to proper locomotion, there was a violent lack of harmony and mutuality. To give an instance cited by Mrs. Rankin--if Miss Annabel desired to ascend a stairway, one foot would be easily advanced to the step above, but instead of aiding and abetting its fellow, the other would at once proceed to start downstairs. By a strong physical and mental effort the young lady could walk fairly well for a short distance but suddenly the rebellious entities would become uncontrollable, and she would be compelled to turn undesirable corners, to enter impossible doorways, to dance, shuffle, sidestep and perform other undignified and distressing evolutions. After setting forth these lamentable symptoms, Mrs. Rankin emphatically asserted her belief that the affliction was the result of heredity--of the union between the naturally opposing and contrary Beall and Rankin elements. She believed that the inherited spirit of the ancient feud had taken on physical manifestations, exhibiting them in the person of the unfortunate outcome of the union of opposites. That in Miss Annabel Rankin was warring the imperishable antipathy of the two families. In other words, that one of Miss Rankin's--that is to say, that when Miss Rankin took a step it was a Beall step, and the next one was dominated by the bequeathed opposition of the Rankins. Doctor Prince received the communication with his usual grave, professional attention, and promised to call the next day at ten to inspect the patient. Promptly at the hour his electric runabout turned into the line of stylish autos and hansoms that wait along the pavements before the most expensive hostelry on American soil. When Miss Annabel Rankin entered the reception parlour of their choice suite of rooms Doctor Prince gave a little blink of surprise through his brilliantly polished nose glasses. The glow of perfect health and the contour of perfect beauty were visible in the face and form of the young lady. But admiration gave way to sympathy when he saw her walk. She entered at a little run, swayed, stepped off helplessly at a sharp tangent, advanced, marked time, backed off, recovered and sidled with a manoeuvring rush to a couch, where she rested, with a look of serious melancholy upon her handsome face. Dr. Prince proceeded with his interrogatories in the delicate, reassuring gentlemanly manner that had brought him so many patrons who placed a value upon those amenities. Miss Annabel answered frankly and sensibly, indeed, for one of her years. The feud theory of Mrs. Rankin was freely discussed. The daughter also believed in it. Soon the physician departed, promising to call again and administer treatment. Then he buzzed down the Avenue and four doors on an asphalted side street to the office of Dr. Grumbleton Myers, the great specialist in locomotor ataxia and nerve ailments. The two distinguished physicians shut themselves in a private office, and the great Myers dragged forth a decanter of sherry and a box of Havanas. When the consultation was over both shook their heads. "Fact is," summed up Myers, "we don't know anything about anything. I'd say treat symptoms now until something turns up; but there are no symptoms." "The feud diagnosis, then?" suggested Doctor Prince, archly, ridding his cigar of its ash. "It's an interesting case," said the specialist, noncommittally. "I say, Prince," called Myers, as his caller was leaving. "Er--sometimes, you know, children that fight and quarrel are shut in separate rooms. Doesn't it seem a pity, now, that bloomers aren't in fashion? By separ--" "But they aren't," smiled Doctor Prince, "and we must be fashionable, at any rate." Doctor Prince burned midnight oil--or its equivalent, a patent, electric, soft-shaded, midnight incandescent, over his case. With such little success did his light shine that he was forced to make a little speech to the Rankins full of scientific terms--a thing he conscientiously avoided with his patients--which shows that he was driven to expedient. At last he was reduced to suggest treatment by hypnotism. Being crowded further, he advised it, and appeared another day with Professor Adami, the most reputable and non-advertising one he could find among that school of practitioners. Miss Annabel, gentle and melancholy, fell an easy victim--or, I should say, subject--to the professor's influence. Previously instructed by Doctor Prince in the nature of the malady he was about to combat, the dealer in mental drugs proceeded to offer "suggestion" (in the language of his school) to the afflicted and unconscious young lady, impressing her mind with the conviction that her affliction was moonshine and her perambulatory powers without impairment. When the spell was removed Miss Rankin sat up, looking a little bewildered at first, and then rose to her feet, walking straight across the room with the grace, the sureness and the ease of a Diana, a Leslie-Carter, or a Vassar basketball champion. Miss Annabel's sad face was now lit with hope and joy. Mrs. Rankin of Southern susceptibility wept a little, delightedly, upon a minute lace handkerchief. Miss Annabel continued to walk about firmly and accurately, in absolute control of the machinery necessary for her so to do. Doctor Prince quietly congratulated Professor Adami, and then stepped forward, smilingly rubbing his nose glasses with an air. His position enabled him to overshadow the hypnotizer who, contented to occupy the background temporarily, was busy estimating in his mind with how large a bill for services he would dare to embellish the occasion when he should come to the front. Amid repeated expressions of gratitude, the two professional gentlemen made their adieus, a little elated at the success of the treatment which, with one of them, had been an experiment, with the other an exhibition. As the door closed behind them. Miss Annabel, her usually serious and pensive temper somewhat enlivened by the occasion, sat at the piano and dashed into a stirring march. Outside, the two men moving toward the elevator heard a scream of alarm from her and hastened back. They found her on the piano-stool, with one hand still pressing the keys. The other arm was extended rigidly to its full length behind her, its fingers tightly clenched into a pink and pretty little fist. Her mother was bending over her, joining in the alarm and surprise. Miss Rankin rose from the stool, now quiet, but again depressed and sad. "I don't know what did it," she said, plaintively; "I began to play and that arm shot back. It wouldn't stay near the piano while the other one was there." A ping-pong table stood in the room. "A little game, Miss Rankin," cried Professor Adami, gayly, trying to feel his way. They played. With the racquet in the refractory arm, Miss Annabel played in fine style. Her control of it was perfect. The professor laid down his racquet. "Ah! a button is loose on my coat," said he. "Such is the fate of sorrowful bachelors. A needle and thread, now. Miss Rankin?" A little surprised, but smiling acquiescence, Annabel brought the articles from another room. "Now thread the needle, if you please," said Professor Adami. Annabel bit off two feet of the black silk. When she came to thread the needle the secret was out. As the hand presenting the thread approached the other holding the needle that arm was jerked violently away. Doctor Prince was first to reduce the painful discovery to words. "Dear Miss and Mrs. Rankin," he said, in his most musical consolation-baritone, "we have been only partially successful. The affliction, Miss Rankin, has passed from your--that is, the affliction is now in your arms." "Oh, dear!" sighed Annabel, "I've a Beall arm and a Rankin arm, then. Well, I can use one hand at a time, anyway. People won't notice it as they did before. Oh, what an annoyance those feuds were, to be sure! It seems to me they should make laws against them." Doctor Prince looked inquiringly at Professor Adami. That gentleman shook his head. "Another day," he said. "I prefer not to establish the condition at a lesser interval than two or three days." So, three days afterward they returned, and the professor replaced Miss Rankin under control. This time there was, apparently, perfect success. She came forth from the trance, and with full muscular powers. She walked the floor with a sure, rhythmic step. She played several difficult selections upon the piano, the hands and arms moving with propriety and with allied ease. Miss Rankin seemed at last to possess a perfectly well-ordered physical being as well as a very grateful mental one. A week afterward there wafted into Doctor Prince's office a youth, generously gilded. The hallmarks of society were deeply writ upon him. "I'm Ashburton," he explained; "T. Ripley Ashburton, you know. I'm engaged to Miss Rankin. I understand you've been training her for some breaks in her gaits--" T. Ripley Ashburton caught himself. "Didn't mean that, you know--slipped out--been loafing around stables quite a lot. I say, Doctor Prince, I want you to tell me. Candidly, you know. I'm awful spoons on Miss Rankin. We're to be married in the fall. You might consider me one of the family, you know. They told me about the treatment you gave her with the--er--medium fellow. That set her up wonderfully, I assure you. She goes freely now, and handles her fore--I mean you know, she's over all that old trouble. But there's something else started up that's making the track pretty heavy; so I called, don't you understand." "I had not been advised," said Doctor Prince, "of any recurrence of Miss Rankin's indisposition." T. Ripley Ashburton produced a silver cigarette-case and contemplated it tenderly. Receiving no encouragement, he replaced it in his pocket with a sigh. "Not a recurrence," he said, thoughtfully, "but something different. Possibly I'm the only one in a position to know. Hate to discuss it--reveal Cupid's secrets, you know--such a jolly low thing to do--but suppose the occasion justifies it." "If you possess any information or have observed anything," said Doctor Prince, judicially, "through which Miss Rankin's condition might be benefited, it is your duty, of course, to apply it in her behalf. I need hardly remind you that such disclosures are held as secrets on professional honour." "I believe I mentioned," said Mr. Ashburton, his fingers still hovering around the pocket containing his cigarette case, "that Miss Rankin and I are ever so sweet upon each other. She's a jolly, swell girl, if she did come from the Kentucky mountains. Lately she's acted awful queerly. She's awful affectionate one minute, and the next she turns me down like a perfect stranger. Last night I called at the hotel, and she met me at the door of their rooms. Nobody was in sight, and she gave me an awful nice kiss--er--engaged, you know, Doctor Prince--and then she fired away and gave me an awful hard slap in the face. 'I hate the sight of you,' she said; 'how dare you take the liberty!'" Mr. Ashburton drew an envelope from his pocket and extracted from it a sheet of note paper of a delicate heliotrope tint. "You might read this note, you know. Can't say if it's a medical case, 'pon my honour, but I'm awfully queered, don't you understand." Doctor Prince read the following lines: My dearest Ripley: Do come around this evening--there's a dear boy--and take me out somewhere. Mamma has a headache, and says she'll be glad to be rid of both of us for a while. 'Twas so sweet of you to send those pond lilies--they're just what I wanted for the east windows. You darling boy--you're so thoughtful and good--I'm sure you're worth all the love of Your very own Annabel. P.S.--On second thoughts, I will ask you not to call this evening, as I shall be otherwise engaged. Perhaps it has never occurred to you that there may be two opinions about the vast pleasure you seem to think your society affords others. Clothes and the small talk of clubhouses and racetracks hardly ever succeed in making a man without other accessories. Very respectfully, Annabel Rankin. Being deprived of the aid of his consolation cylinders, T. Ripley Ashburton sat, gloomy, revolving things in his mind. "Ah!" exclaimed Doctor Prince, aloud, but addressing the exclamation to himself; "driven from the arms to the heart!" He perceived that the mysterious hereditary contrariety had, indeed, taken up its lodging in that tender organ of the afflicted maiden. The gilded youth was dismissed, with the promise that Doctor Prince would make a professional call upon Miss Rankin. He did so soon, in company with Professor Adami, after they had discussed the strange course taken by this annoying heritage of the Bealls and Rankins. This time, as the location of the disorder required that the subject be approached with ingenuity, some diplomacy was exercised before the young lady could be induced to submit herself to the professor's art. But evidently she did so, and emerged from the trance as usual without a trace of unpleasant effect. With much interest and some anxiety Doctor Prince passed several days awaiting the report of Mr. Ashburton, who, indeed, of all others would have to be depended upon to observe improvements, if any had occurred. One morning that youth dropped in, jubilant. "It's all right, you know," he declared, cheerfully. "Miss Rankin's herself again. She's as sweet as cream, and the trouble's all off. Never a cross word or look. I'm her ducky, all right. She won't believe what I tell her about the way she used to treat me. Intimates I make up the stories. But it's all right now--everything's running on rubber tires. Awfully obliged to you and the old boy--er--the medium, you know. And I say, now, Doctor Prince, there's a wonderful improvement in Miss Rankin in every way. She used to be rather stiff, don't you understand--sort of superior, in a way--bookish, and a habit of thinking things, you know. Well, she's cured all round--she's a topper now of any bunch in the set--swell and stylish and lively! Oh, the crowd will fall in to her lead when she becomes Mrs. T. Ripley. Now, I say. Doctor Prince, you and the--er--medium gentleman come and take supper tonight with Mrs. and Miss Rankin and me. I'd be delighted if you would, now--I would indeed--just for you to see, you know, the improvement in Miss Rankin." It transpired that Doctor Prince and Professor Adami accepted Mr. Ashburton's invitation. They convened at the hotel in the rooms of the Rankins. From there they were to proceed to the restaurant honoured by Mr. Ashburton's patronage. When Miss Rankin swept gracefully into the room the professional gentlemen felt fascination and surprise conflicting in their feelings. She was radiant, bewitching, lively to effervescence. Her mother and Mr. Ashburton hung, enraptured, upon her looks and words. She was most becomingly clothed in pale blue. "Oh, bother!" she suddenly exclaimed, most vivaciously, "I don't like this dress, after all. You must all wait," she commanded, with a captivating fling of her train, "until I change." Half an hour later she returned, magnificent in a stunning costume of black lace. "I'll walk with you downstairs, Professor Adami," she declared, with a charming smile. Halfway down she left his side abruptly and joined Doctor Prince. "You've been such a benefit to me," she said. "It's such a relief to get rid of that horrid feud thing. Heavens! Ripley, did you forget those bonbons? Oh, this horrid black dress! I shouldn't have worn it; it makes me think of funerals. Did you get the scent of those lilacs then? It makes me think of the Kentucky mountains. How I wish we were back there." "Aren't you fond of New York, then?" asked Doctor Prince, regarding her interestedly. She started at the sound of his voice and looked up vivaciously. "Indeed I am," she said, earnestly. "I adore New York. Why, I couldn't live without theatres and dances and my daily drives here. Oh, Ripley," she called, over her shoulder, "don't get that bull pup I wanted; I've changed my mind. I want a Pomeranian--now, don't forget." They arrived on the pavement. "Oh, a carriage!" exclaimed Miss Rankin; "I don't want a carriage, I want an auto. Send it away!" "All right," said Ashburton, cheerily, "I thought you said a carriage." In obedience to orders the carriage rolled away and an open auto glided up in its place. "Stuffy, smelly thing!" cried Miss Rankin, with a winsome pout. "We'll walk. Ripley, you and Doctor Prince look out for mamma. Come on, Professor Adami." The indulgent victims of the charming beauty obeyed. "The dear, dear child!" exclaimed Mrs. Rankin, happily, to Doctor Prince. "How full of spirits and life she is getting to be! She's so much improved from her old self." "Lots," said Ashburton, proudly and fatuously. "She's picked up the regular metropolitan gaits. Chic and swell don't begin to express her. She's cut out the pensive thought business. Up-to-date. Why she changes her mind every two minutes. That's Annabel." At the fashionable restaurant where they were soon seated, Doctor Prince found his curiosity and interest engaged by Miss Rankin's behaviour. She was in an agreeably fascinating humour. Her actions were such as might be expected from an adored child whose vacillating whims were indulged by groveling relatives. She ordered article after article from the bill of fare, petulantly countermanding nearly everyone when they were set before her. Waiters flew and returned, collided, conciliated, apologized, and danced at her bidding. Her speech was quick and lively, deliciously inconsistent, abounding in contradictions, conflicting statements, "bulls," discrepancies and nonconformities. In short, she seemed to have acquired within the space of a few days all that inconsequent, illogical frothiness that passes current among certain circles of fashionable life. Mr. T. Ripley Ashburton showed a doting appreciation and an addled delight at the new charms of his fiancee--charms that he at once recognized as the legal tender of his set. Later, when the party had broken up, Doctor Prince and Professor Adami stood, for a moment, at a corner, where their ways were to diverge. "Well," said the professor, who was genially softened by the excellent supper and wine, "this time our young lady seems to be more fortunate. The malady has been eradicated completely from her entity. Yes, sir, in good time, our school will be recognized by all." Doctor Prince scrutinized the handsome, refined countenance of the hypnotist. He saw nothing there to indicate that his own diagnosis was even guessed at by that gentleman. "As you say," he made answer, "she appears to have recovered, as far as her friends can judge." When he could spare the time. Doctor Prince again invaded the sanctum of the great Grumbleton Myers, and together they absorbed the poison of nicotine. "Yes," said the great Myers, when the door was opened and Doctor Prince began to ooze out with the smoke, "I think you have come to the right decision. As long as none of the persons concerned has any suspicion of the truth, and is happy in the present circumstances, I don't think it necessary to inform him that the _feuditis Beallorum et Rankinorum_--how's the Latin, doctor?--has only been driven to Miss Rankin's brain." The Elusive Tenderloin There is no Tenderloin. There never was. That is, none that you could run a tapeline around. The word really implies a condition or a quality--much as you would say "reprehensibility" or "cold feet." Metes and bounds have been assigned to it. I know. Realists have prated of "from Fourteenth to Forty-second," and "as far west as" etc., but the larger meaning of the word remains with me. Confirmation of my interpretation of the famous slaughterhouse noun-adjective came to me from Bill Jeremy, a friend out of the West. Bill lives in a town on the edge of the prairie-dog country. At times Bill yearns to maintain the tradition that "ginger shall be hot i' the mouth." He brought his last yearning to New York. And it devolved upon me. You know what that means. I took Bill to see the cavity that has been drilled in the city's tooth, soon to be filled with the new gold subway; and the Eden Musee, and the Flatiron and the crack in the front windowpane of Russell Sage's house, and the old man that threw the stone that did it when he was a boy--and I asked Bill what he thought of New York. "You may mean well," said Bill, with gentle reproach, "but you've got in a groove. You thought I was underwear buyer for the Blue-Front Dry Goods Emporium of Pine Knob, NC, didn't you? Or the junior partner of Slowcoach & Green, of Geegeewocomee, State of Goobers, come on for the fall stock of jeans, lingerie, and whetstones? Don't treat me like a business friend. "Do you suppose the wild, insensate longing I feel for metropolitan gayety is going to be satisfied by waxworks and razorback architecture? Now you get out the old envelope with the itinerary on it, and cross out the Brooklyn Bridge and the cab that Morgan rides home in and the remaining objects of interest, for I am going it alone. The Tenderloin, well done, is what I shall admire for to see." Bill Jeremy has a way of doing as he says he will. So I did not urge upon him the bridge, or Carnegie Hall or the great Tomb--wonders that the unselfish New Yorker reserves, unseen, for his friends. That evening Bill descended, unprotected, upon the Tenderloin. The next day he came and put his feet upon my desk and told me about it. "This Tenderloin," said he, "is a cross between a fake sideshow and a footrace. It's a movable feast--somethin' like Easter, or tryin' to eat spaghetti with chopsticks. "Last night I put all my money but nine dollars under a corner of the carpet and started out. I had along a bill-of-fare of this here Tenderloin; it said it begins at Fourteenth Street and runs to Forty-second, with Fourth Avenue and Seventh on each side of it. Well, I started up from Fourteenth so I wouldn't miss any of it. Lots of people was travellin' on the streets in a hurry. Thinks I, the Tenderloin's sizzlin' tonight; if I don't hurry I won't get a seat at the performance. "Most of the crowd seemed to be goin' up and I went up. And then they seemed to be goin' down, and I went down. I asks a man in a light overcoat with a blue jaw leanin' against a lamppost where was this Tenderloin. "Up that way," he says, wavin' his finger-ring. "'How'll I know it when I get to it?' I asks. "'Yah!' says he, like he was sick. 'Easy! Youse'll see a flax-headed cull stakin' a doll in a 98-cent shirtwaist to a cheese sandwich and sarsaparilla, and five Salvation Army corporals waitin' round for de change. Dere'll be a phonograph playin' and nine cops gettin' ready to raid de joint. Dat'll be it.' "I asked that fellow where I was then. "'Two blocks from de Pump,' says he. "I goes on uptown, and seein' nothin' particular in the line of sinful delight, I strikes 'crosstown to another avenue. That was Sixth, I reckon. People was still walkin' up and down, puttin' first one foot in front and then the other in the irreligious and wicked manner that I suppose has given the Tenderloin its frivolous reputation. Street cars was runnin' past, most impious and unregenerate; and the profligate Dagoes was splittin' chestnuts to roast with a wild abandon that reminded me considerably of doings in Paris, France. The dissipated bootblacks was sleepin' in their chairs, and the roast peanut whistles sounded gay and devilish among the mad throng that leaned ag'inst the awnin' posts. "A fellow with a high hat and brass buttons gets down off the top of his covered sulky, and says to me, 'Keb, sir?' "'Whereabouts is this Tenderloin, Colonel?' I asks. "'You're right in the centre of it, boss,' says he. 'You are standin' right now on the wickedest corner in New York. Not ten feet from here a pushcart man had his pocket picked last night; and if you're here for a week I can show you at least two moonlight trolley parties go by on the New Amsterdam line.' "'Look here,' says I, 'I'm out for a razoo. I've got nine iron medallions of Liberty wearin' holes in my pocket linin'. I want to split this Tenderloin in two if there's anything in it. Now put me on to something that's real degraded and boisterous and sizzling with cultured and uproarious sin. Something in the way of metropolitan vice that I can be proud of when I go back home. Ain't you got any civic pride about you?' "This sulky driver scratched the heel of his chin. "'Just now, boss,' says he, 'everything's layin' low. There's a tip out that Jerome's cigarettes ain't agreein' with him. If it was any other time--say,' says he, like an idea struck him, 'how'd you like to take in the all-night restaurants? Lots of electric lights, boss, and people and fun. Sometimes they laugh right out loud. Out-of-town visitors mostly visit our restaurants.' "'Get away,' says I, 'I'm beginnin' to think your old Tenderloin is nothin' but the butcher's article. A little spice and infamy and audible riot is what I am after. If you can't furnish it go back and climb on your demi-barouche. We have restaurants out West' I tells him, 'where we eat grub attended by artificial light and laughter. Where is the boasted badness of your unjustly vituperated city?' "The fellow rubs his chin again. 'Deed if I know, boss,' says he, 'right now. You see Jerome'--and then he buds out with another idea. 'Tell you what,' says he, 'be the very thing! You jump in my keb and I'll drive you over to Brooklyn. My aunt's giving a euchre party tonight,' says he, 'because Miles O'Reilly is busy, watchin' the natatorium--somebody tipped him off it was a poolroom. Can you play euchre? The keb'll be $3.50 an hour. Jump right in, boss.' "That was the best I could do on the wickedest corner in New York. So I walks over where it's more righteous, hopin' there might be somethin' doin' among the Pharisees. Everything, so far as I could see, was as free from guile as a hammock at a Chautauqua picnic. The people just walked up and down, speakin' of chrysanthemum shows and oratorios, and enjoyin' the misbegotten reputation of bein' the wickedest rakes on the continent." "It's too bad. Bill." I said, "that you were disappointed in the Tenderloin. Didn't you have a chance to spend any of your money?" "Oh, yes," said Bill. "I managed to drop one dollar over on the edge of the sinful district. I was goin' along down a boulevard when I hears an awful hollerin' and fussin' that sounded good--it reminded me of a real enjoyable roughhouse out West. Some fellow was quarrelin' at the top of his voice, usin' cuss words, and callin' down all kinds of damnation about somethin'. "The sounds come out through a big door in a high buildin' and I went in to see the fun. Thinks I, I'll get a small slice of this here Tenderloin anyhow. Well, I went in, and that's where I dropped the dollar. They came around and collected it." "What was inside. Bill?" I asked. "A fellow told me, when we come out," said Bill, "it was a church, and one of these preachers that mixes up in politics was denouncin' the evils of the Tenderloin." The Struggle of the Outliers Again today, at a certain street, on the ragged boundaries of the city, Lawrence Holcombe stopped the trolley car and got off. Holcombe was a handsome, prosperous business man of forty; a man of high social standing and connections. His comfortable suburban residence was some five miles farther out on the car line from the street where so often of late he had dropped off the outgoing car. The conductor winked at a regular passenger, and nodded his head archly in the direction of Holcombe's hurrying figure. "Getting to be a regular thing," commented the conductor. Holcombe picked his way gingerly down a roughly graded side street infested with ragged urchins and impeded by abandoned tinware. He stopped at a small cottage fenced in with a patch of stony ground with a few stunted shade-trees growing about it. A stout, middle-aged woman was washing clothes in a tub at one side of the door. She looked around, and smiled a smile of fat recognition. "Good avening, Mr. Holcombe, is it yerself ag'in? Ye'll find Katie inside, sir." "Did you speak to her for me?" asked Holcombe, in a low voice; "did you try to help me gain her consent as you promised to do?" "Sure, and I did that. But, sir, ye know gyurls will be gyurls. The more ye coax 'em the wilfuller they gets. 'Tis yer own pleadin' that'll get her if anything will. An' I hopes ye may, for I tells her she'll never get a betther offer than yours, sir. 'Tis a good girl she is, and a tidy hand for anything from the kitchen to the parlour, and she's never a fault except, maybe, a bit too much likin' for dances and ruffles and ribbons, but that's natural to her age and good looks if I do say it meself, bein' her mither, Mr. Holcombe. Ye can spake ag'in to Katie, sir, and maybe this time ye'll have luck unless Danny Conlan, the wild gossoon, has been at it ag'in overpersuadin' her ag'inst ye." Holcombe turned slightly pale, and his lips closed tightly for a moment. "I've heard of this fellow Conlan before. Why does he interfere? Why does he stand in the way? Is there anything between him and Katie? Does Katie care for him?" Mrs. Flynn gave a sigh, like a puff of a locomotive, and a flap upon the washboard with a sodden garment that sent Holcombe, well splashed, six feet away. "Ask me no questions about what's in a gyurl's heart and I'll tell ye no lies. Her own mither can't tell any more than yerself, Mr. Holcombe." Holcombe stepped inside the cottage. Katie Flynn, with rolled-up sleeves, was ironing a dress of flounced muslin. Criticism of Holcombe's deviation from his own sphere to this star of lower orbit must have waned at the sight of the girl. Her beauty was of the most solvent and convincing sort. Dusky Irish eyes, one great braid of jetty, shining hair, a crimson mouth, dimpling and shaping itself to every mood of its owner, a figure strong and graceful, seemingly full of imperishable life and action--Katie Flynn was one to be sought after and striven for. Holcombe went and stood by her side as she ironed, and watched the lithe play of muscles rolling beneath the satiny skin of her rounded forearms. "Katie," he said, his voice concealing a certain anxiety beneath a wooing tenderness, "I have come for my answer. It isn't necessary to repeat what we have talked over so often, but you know how anxious I am to have you. You know my circumstances and position, and that you will have every comfort and every privilege that you could ask for. Say 'Yes,' Katie, and I'll be the luckiest man in this town today." Kate set her iron down with a metallic click, and leaned her elbows upon the ironing board. Her great blue-black eyes went, in their Irish way, from sparkling fun to thoughtful melancholy. "Oh, Mr. Holcombe, I don't know what to say. I know you'd be kind to me, and give me the best home I could ever expect. I'd like to say 'yes'--indeed I would. I'd about decided to tell you so, but there's Danny--he objects so." Danny again! Holcombe strode up and down the room impatiently frowning. "Who is this fellow Conlan, Katie?" he asked. "Every time I nearly get your consent he comes between us. Does he want you to live always in this cottage for the convenience of his mightiness? Why do you listen to him?" "He wants me," said Katie, in the voice of a small, spoiled child. "Well, I want you too," said Holcombe, masterfully. "If I could see this wonderful Mr. Conlan, of the persuasive tongue, I'd argue the matter with him." "He's been the champion middleweight fighter of this town," said Katie, a bit mischievously. "Oh, has he! Well, that doesn't frighten me, Katie. In fact, I am not sure but what I'd tackle him a few rounds myself, with you for the prize; although I'm somewhat rusty with the gloves." "Whist! there he comes now," exclaimed Katie, her eyes widening a little with apprehension. Holcombe looked out the door and saw a young man coming up from the gate. He walked with an easy swagger. His face was smooth and truculent, but not bad. He wore a cap pulled down to one eye. He walked inside the house and stopped at the door of the room in which stood his rival and the bone of contention. "You're after my girl again, are you?" he grumbled, huskily and ominously. "I don't like it, do you see? I've told her so, and I tell you so. She stays here. For ten cents I'd knock your block off. Do you see?" "Now Mr. Conlan," began Holcombe, striving to avoid the _argumentum ad hominem_, "listen to reason. It is only fair to let Katie choose for herself. Is it quite the square thing to try to prevent her from doing what she prefers to do? If it had not been for your interference I would have had her long ago." "For five cents," pursued the unmoved Mr. Conlan, lowering his terms, "I'd knock your block off." Into Holcombe's eye there came the light of desperate resolve. He saw but one way to clear the obstacle from his path. "I am told," he said quietly and firmly, "that you are a fighter. Your mind seems to dwell upon physical combat as the solution to all questions. Now, Conlan, I'm no scrapper, but I'll fight you to a finish any time within the next three minutes to see who gets the girl. If I win she goes with me. If you win you have your way, and I'll not trouble her again. Are you game?" Danny Conlan's hard, blue eyes looked a sudden admiration. "You're all right," he conceded with gruff candour. "I didn't think you was that sort. You're all right. It's a dead fair sporting prop., and I'm your company. I'll stand by the results according to terms. Come on, and I'll show you where it can be pulled off. You're all right." Katie tried to interfere, but Danny silenced her. He led Holcombe down the hill to a deep gully that sheltered them from view. Night was just closing in upon the twilight. They laid aside their coats and hats. Here was a situation in the methodical existence of Lawrence Holcombe, real estate and bond broker, representative business man of unquestionable habits and social position! Fighting with a professional tough in a gully in a squalid settlement for the daughter of an Irish washerwoman! The combat was a short one. If it had lasted longer, Holcombe would have lost, for both his wind and his science had deteriorated from long lack of training. Therefore, he forced the fighting from the start. It is difficult to say to what he owed his victory over the once champion middleweight. One thing in his favour was that Mr. Conlan's nerve and judgment had been somewhat shattered by the effects of a recent spree. Another must have been that Holcombe was stimulated to supreme exertion by an absorbing incentive to win--a prompting more powerful than the instinct of the gladiator, deeper than all the motives of gallantry, and more important than the vital influence of love itself. A third fortuitous adjunct was, without doubt, a chance blow upon the projecting chin of the middleweight, under which that warrior sank to the gully's grime and remained incapable, while Holcombe stood above him and leisurely counted him out. Danny got shakily to his feet, and proved to be a true sport. "You're all right," he said. "But if we'd had it by rounds 'twould have ended different. The girl goes with you, do you see? I'm on the square." They climbed back to the cottage. "It's settled," announced Holcombe. "Mr. Conlan removes his objections." "That's straight," said Danny. "He's all right." Holcombe had only a scratched and slightly reddened chin from a vicious, glancing uppercut from Danny's left. Danny showed punishment. One eye was nearly closed. His lip was bleeding. Katie was a true woman. Such do not at once crown the victor in the tourney for their favour. Pity comes first. The victor must wait for his own. It will come to him. She flew to the vanquished champion and comforted him, ministering to his bruises. Holcombe stood, serene and smiling, without jealousy. "Tomorrow," he said to Katie, with head erect and beaming eyes. "Tomorrow, if you like," answered Katie. Holcombe minced his precarious way up the ragged hill among the obsolete tinware. His car came along aglitter with electric lights and jammed with passengers. He jumped to the rear platform and stood there. At his side he found Weatherly, a friend and neighbour, who had also built a house in the suburbs, a few squares from his own. "Hello, Holcombe," yelled Weatherly, above the crash of the car. "Been looking over some real estate, out here? How're Mrs. Holcombe and the young H's?" "First rate," shouted Holcombe, "when I left home this morning. How's the family with you?" "Only so-so. Usual suburban troubles. Servants won't stay so far out; tradesmen object to delivering goods in the country; cars break down, etc. What's pleasing you so? Made a lucky deal today?" Holcombe's face wore an ecstatic look. He was fingering a little scratch on his chin with one hand. He leaned his head towards Weatherly's ear. "Say, Bob, do you remember that Irish girl, Katie Flynn, that was with the Spaffords so long a time?" "I've heard of her," said Weatherly. "They say she stayed a year with them without a single day off. But I don't believe any fairy story like that." "'Twas a fact. Well, I engaged her today for a cook. She's going out to the house tomorrow." "Confound you for a lucky dog," shouted Weatherly, with envy in his tones and his heart, "and you live four blocks further out than we do!" 
617	----	[Note on text: Italicized words or phrases are capitalized, placed in single quotes, or otherwise marked as needed. Lines longer than 78 characters are broken and the continuation is indented two spaces. Some obvious errors have been corrected.] [Alan Seeger, American (New York) Poet. 22 June 1888 - 04 July 1916.] Poems by Alan Seeger With an introduction by William Archer Contents Introduction by William Archer Juvenilia An Ode to Natural Beauty The Deserted Garden The Torture of Cuauhtemoc The Nympholept The Wanderer The Need to Love El Extraviado La Nue All That's Not Love . . . Paris The Sultan's Palace Fragments Thirty Sonnets: Sonnet I Sonnet II Sonnet III Sonnet IV Sonnet V Sonnet VI Sonnet VII Sonnet VIII Sonnet IX Sonnet X Sonnet XI Sonnet XII Sonnet XIII Sonnet XIV Sonnet XV Sonnet XVI Kyrenaikos Antinous Vivien I Loved . . . Virginibus Puerisque . . . With a Copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets on Leaving College Written in a Volume of the Comtesse de Noailles Coucy Tezcotzinco The Old Lowe House, Staten Island Oneata On the Cliffs, Newport To England at the Outbreak of the Balkan War At the Tomb of Napoleon Before the Elections in America--November, 1912 The Rendezvous Do You Remember Once . . . The Bayadere Eudaemon Broceliande Lyonesse Tithonus An Ode to Antares Translations Dante. Inferno, Canto XXVI Ariosto. Orlando Furioso, Canto X, 91-99 On a Theme in the Greek Anthology After an Epigram of Clement Marot Last Poems The Aisne (1914-15) Champagne (1914-15) The Hosts Maktoob I Have a Rendezvous with Death . . . Sonnets: - Sonnet I - - Sonnet II - - Sonnet III - - Sonnet IV - - Sonnet V - - Sonnet VI - - Sonnet VII - - Sonnet VIII - - Sonnet IX - - Sonnet X - - Sonnet XI - - Sonnet XII - Bellinglise Liebestod Resurgam A Message to America Introduction and Conclusion of a Long Poem Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France Introduction by William Archer This book contains the undesigned, but all the more spontaneous and authentic, biography of a very rare spirit. It contains the record of a short life, into which was crowded far more of keen experience and high aspiration--of the thrill of sense and the rapture of soul--than it is given to most men, even of high vitality, to extract from a life of twice the length. Alan Seeger had barely passed his twenty-eighth birthday, when, charging up to the German trenches on the field of Belloy-en-Santerre, his "escouade" of the Foreign Legion was caught in a deadly flurry of machine-gun fire, and he fell, with most of his comrades, on the blood-stained but reconquered soil. To his friends the loss was grievous, to literature it was--we shall never know how great, but assuredly not small. Yet this was a case, if ever there was one, in which we may not only say "Nothing is here for tears," but may add to the well-worn phrase its less familiar sequel: Nothing to wail Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt, Dispraise, or blame,--nothing but well and fair, And what may quiet us in a death so noble. Of all the poets who have died young, none has died so happily. Without suggesting any parity of stature, one cannot but think of the group of English poets who, about a hundred years ago, were cut off in the flower of their age. Keats, coughing out his soul by the Spanish Steps; Shelley's spirit of flame snuffed out by a chance capful of wind from the hills of Carrara; Byron, stung by a fever-gnat on the very threshold of his great adventure--for all these we can feel nothing but poignant unrelieved regret. Alan Seeger, on the other hand, we can very truly envy. Youth had given him all that it had to give; and though he would fain have lived on--though no one was ever less world-weary than he--yet in the plenitude of his exultant strength, with eye undimmed and pulse unslackening, he met the death he had voluntarily challenged, in the cause of the land he loved, and in the moment of victory. Again and again, both in prose and in verse, he had said that this seemed to him a good death to die; and two years of unflinching endurance of self-imposed hardship and danger had proved that he meant what he said. I do not, I repeat, pretend to measure him with Shelley, Byron or Keats, though I think none of them would have disdained his gift of song. But assuredly he is of their fellowship in virtue, not only of his early death, but of his whole-hearted devotion to the spirit of Romance, as they understood it. From his boyhood upward, his one passion was for beauty; and it was in the guise of Romance that beauty revealed itself to him. He was from the first determined not only to write but to live Romance, and when fate threw in his way a world-historic opportunity, he seized it with delight. He knew that he was dicing with Death, but that was the very essence of his ideal; and he knew that if Death won the throw, his ideal was crowned and consummated, for ever safe from the withering touch of time, or accidental soilure. If it had been given to Swinburne to fall, rifle in hand, on, say, the field of Mentana, we should have been the poorer by many splendid verses, but the richer by a heroic life-story. And would his lot have been the less enviable? Nay, surely, much the more. That is the thought which may well bring solace to those who loved Alan Seeger, and who may at first have felt as an unmixed cruelty the cutting short of so eager, so generous, so gallant a life. The description "Juvenilia" attached to the first series of these poems is of his own choosing. It is for the reader to judge what allowance is to be made for unripeness, whether of substance or of form. Criticism is none of my present business. But I think no discerning reader can fail to be impressed by one great virtue pervading all the poet's work--its absolute sincerity. There is no pose, no affectation of any sort. There are marks of the loving study of other poets, and these the best. We are frequently reminded of this singer and of that. The young American is instinctively loyal to the long tradition of English literature. He is content to undergo the influence of the great masters, and does not seek for premature originality on the by-paths of eccentricity. But while he is the disciple of many, he is the vassal of none. His matter is always his own, the fruit of personal vision, experience, imagination, even if he may now and then unconsciously pour it into a mould provided by another. He is no mere echo of the rhythms of this poet, or mimic of that other's attitude and outlook. The great zest of living which inspires him is far too real and intense to clothe itself in the trappings of any alien individuality. He is too straightforward to be even dramatic. It is not his instinct to put on a mask, even for purposes of artistic personation, and much less of affectation. If ever there was a being who said "Yea" to life, accepted it as a glorious gift, and was determined to live it with all his might, it was Alan Seeger. Such a frame of mind is too instinctive and temperamental to be called optimism. It is not the result of a balancing of good and ill, and a reasoned decision that good preponderates. Rather it is a direct perception, an intuition, of the beauty and wonder of the universe--an intuition too overpowering to be seriously disturbed by the existence of pain and evil, some of which, at any rate, has its value as a foil, a background, to joy. This was the message--not a philosophy but an irresistible emotion--which he sought to deliver through the medium of an art which he seriously studied and deeply loved. It spoke from the very depths of his being, and the poems in which it found utterance, whatever their purely literary qualities, have at least the value of a first-hand human document, the sincere self-portraiture of a vivid and virile soul. There are three more or less clearly-marked elements in a poet's equipment--observation, passion, reflection, or in simpler terms, seeing, feeling and thinking. The first two are richly represented in the following poems, the third, as was natural, much less so. The poet was too fully occupied in garnering impressions and experiences to think of co-ordinating and interpreting them. That would have come later; and later, too, would have come a general deepening of the spiritual content of his work. There had been nothing in either his outward or his inward life that could fairly be called suffering or struggle. He had not sounded the depths of human experience, which is as much as to say that neither had he risen to the heights. This he no doubt recognised himself, and was not thinking merely of the date of composition when he called his pre-war poems "Juvenilia". Great emotions, and perhaps great sorrows, would have come to him in due time, and would have deepened and enriched his vein of song. The first great emotion which found him, when he rallied to the trumpet-call of France and freedom, did, as a matter of fact, lend new reality and poignancy to his verse; but the soldier's life left him small leisure for composition. We must regard his work, then, as a fragment, a mere foretaste of what he might have achieved had his life been prolonged. But, devoted though he was to his art, he felt that to live greatly is better than to write greatly. The unfulfilment of his poetic hopes and dreams meant the fulfilment of a higher ambition. Alan Seeger was born in New York on June 22nd, 1888. His father and his mother belonged to old New England families. When he was a year old his parents removed to Staten Island, which forms, as it were, the stopper to the bottle of New York harbour. There he remained until his tenth year, growing up along with a brother and a sister, the one a little older, the other a little younger, than himself. From their home on the heights of Staten Island, the children looked out day by day upon one of the most romantic scenes in the world--the gateway to the Western Hemisphere. They could see the great steamships of all the nations threading their way through the Narrows and passing in procession up the glorious expanse of New York Bay, to which the incessant local traffic of tug-boats, river steamers and huge steam-ferries lent an ever-shifting animation. In the foreground lay Robbins Reef Lighthouse, in the middle distance the Statue of Liberty, in the background the giant curves of Brooklyn Bridge, and, range over range, the mountainous buildings of "down town" New York--not then as colossal as they are to-day, but already unlike anything else under the sun. And the incoming stream of tramps and liners met the outgoing stream which carried the imagination seaward, to the islands of the buccaneers, and the haunts of all the heroes and villains of history, in the Old World. The children did not look with incurious eyes upon this stirring scene. They knew the names of all the great European liners and of the warships passing to and from the Navy Yard; and the walls of their nursery were covered with their drawings of the shipping, rude enough, no doubt, but showing accurate observation of such details as funnels, masts and rigging. They were of an age, before they left Staten Island, to realize something of the historic implications of their environment. In 1898 the family returned to New York, and there Alan continued at the Horace Mann School the education begun at the Staten Island Academy. The great delight of the ten-year-old schoolboy was to follow the rushing fire-engines which were an almost daily feature in the life of the New York streets. Even in manhood he could never resist the lure of the fire-alarm. Two years later (1900) came a new migration, which no doubt exercised a determining influence on the boy's development. The family removed to Mexico, and there Alan spent a great part of the most impressionable years of his youth. If New York embodies the romance of Power, Mexico represents to perfection the romance of Picturesqueness. To pass from the United States to Mexico is like passing at one bound from the New World to the Old. Wherever it has not been recently Americanized, its beauty is that of sunbaked, somnolent decay. It is in many ways curiously like its mother--or rather its step-mother--country, Spain. But Spain can show nothing to equal the spacious magnificence of its scenery or the picturesqueness of its physiognomies and its costumes. And then it is the scene of the most fascinating adventure recorded in history--an exploit which puts to shame the imagination of the greatest masters of romance. It is true that the Mexico City of to-day shows scanty traces (except in its Museum) of the Tenochtitlan of Montezuma; but the vast amphitheatre on which it stands is still wonderfully impressive, and still the great silver cones of Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl look down upon it from their immaculate altitudes. Though well within the tropics, the great elevation of the city (7400 feet) renders its climate very attractive to those for whom height has no terrors; and the Seegers soon became greatly attached to it. For two very happy years, it was the home of the whole family. The children had a tutor whom they respected and loved, and who helped to develop their taste for poetry and good literature. "One of our keenest pleasures," writes one of the family, "was to go in a body to the old book-shops, and on Sunday morning to the 'Thieves Market', to rummage for treasures; and many were the Elzevirs and worm-eaten, vellum-bound volumes from the old convent libraries that fell into our hands. At that time we issued a home magazine called 'The Prophet', in honour of a large painting that we had acquired and chose to consider as the patron of our household. The magazine was supposed to appear monthly, but was always months behind its time. Alan was the sporting editor, but his literary ability had even then begun to appear, and he overstepped his department with contributions of poetry and lengthy essays. No copies of this famous periodical are extant: they all went down in the wreck of the 'Merida'." In the chilly days of winter, frequent visits were paid to the lower levels of the 'tierra templada', especially to Cuernavaca, one of the "show" places of the country. The children learned to ride and to cycle, and were thus able to extend their excursions on all sides. When, after two years, they went back to the United States to school, they were already familiar with Mexican nature and life; and they kept their impressions fresh by frequent vacation visits. It must have been a delightful experience to slip down every now and then to the tropics: first to pass under the pink walls of Morro Castle into the wide lagoon of Havana; then to cross the Spanish Main to Vera Cruz; then, after skirting the giant escarpment of Orizaba, to crawl zigzagging up the almost precipitous ascent that divides the 'tierra templada' from the 'tierra fria'; and finally to speed through the endless agave-fields of the upland haciendas, to Mexico City and home. Mexico, and the experiences associated with it, have left deep marks on Alan Seeger's poetry. The vacation voyages thither speak in this apostrophe from the "Ode to Antares": Star of the South that now through orient mist At nightfall off Tampico or Belize Greetest the sailor, rising from those seas Where first in me, a fond romanticist, The tropic sunset's bloom on cloudy piles Cast out industrious cares with dreams of fabulous isles. . . . The longest of his poems, "The Deserted Garden"--a veritable gallery of imaginative landscape--is entirely Mexican in colouring. Indeed we may conjecture without too much rashness that it is a mere expansion of the sonnet entitled "Tezcotzinco", the fruit of a solitary excursion to the ruins of Nezahualcoyotl's baths, in the hills beyond Tezcoco. But even where there is no painting of definite Mexican scenes, motives from the vast uplands with their cloud pageantry, and from the palm-fringed, incandescent coasts, frequently recur in his verse. For instance, he had not forgotten Mexico when he wrote in a volume of the Comtesse de Noailles: Be my companion under cool arcades That frame some drowsy street and dazzling square, Beyond whose flowers and palm-tree promenades White belfries burn in the blue tropic air. And even when the tropics were finally left behind, he carried with him in his memory their profusion of colour, an ever-ready palette on which to draw. Assuredly it was a fortunate chance that took this lover of sunlight and space and splendor, in his most receptive years, to regions where they superabound. Perhaps, had he been confined to gloomier climates, he could not have written: From a boy I gloated on existence. Earth to me Seemed all-sufficient, and my sojourn there One trembling opportunity for joy. But the same good fortune pursued him throughout. He seemed predestined to environments of beauty. When, at fourteen, he left his Mexican home, it was to go to the Hackley School at Tarrytown, N.Y., an institution placed on a high hill overlooking that noblest of rivers, the Hudson, and surrounded by a domain of its own, extending to many acres of meadow and woodland. An attack of scarlet fever in his childhood had left his health far from robust, and it was thought that the altitude of Mexico City was too great for him. He therefore spent one of his vacations among the hills of New Hampshire, and was afterwards given a year out of school, with the family of his former tutor, in Southern California--again a region famed for its beauty. He returned much improved in health, and after a concluding year at Hackley, he entered Harvard College in 1906. He now plunged into wide and miscellaneous reading, both at Harvard, and at the magnificent Boston Library. During his first two years at college, his bent seemed to lie rather towards the studious and contemplative than towards the active life. His brother, at this time, appeared to him to be of a more pleasure-loving and adventurous disposition; and there exists a letter to his mother in which, after contrasting, with obvious allusion to Chaucer's "Prologue", the mediaeval ideals of the Knight and the Clerk, he adds: "C. is the Knight and I the Clerk, deriving more keen pleasure from the perusal of a musty old volume than in pursuing adventure out in the world." But about the middle of his Harvard career, a marked change came over his habits of thought and of action. He emerged from his shell, made many friends, and threw himself with great zest into the social life of his comrades. It is evident, however, that this did not mean any slackening in his literary interests. His work gives ample proof of real, if not of systematic, culture. He genuinely loves and has made his own many of the great things of the past. His translations from Dante and Ariosto, for example, show no less sympathy than accomplishment. Very characteristic is his selection of the Twenty-sixth Canto of the 'Inferno', in which the narrative of Ulysses brings with it a breath from the great romance of the antique world. It is noteworthy that before he graduated he took up with zeal and with distinction the study of Celtic literature--a corrective, perhaps, in its cooler tones, to the tropical motives with which his mind was stored. He was one of the editors of the 'Harvard Monthly', to which he made frequent contributions of verse. There followed two years (1910-12) in New York--probably the least satisfactory years of his life. The quest of beauty is scarcely a profession, and it caused his parents some concern to find him pausing irresolute on the threshold of manhood, instead of setting himself a goal and bracing his energies for its achievement. In 1911 his mother and sister left Mexico, a week or two before Porfirio Diaz made his exit, and the Maderists entered the capital. They returned to New York, to find Alan still unsettled, and possessed with the thought, or perhaps rather the instinct, that the life he craved for was not to be found in America, but awaited him in Europe. In the following year he carried his point, and set off for Paris--a departure which may fairly be called his Hegira, the turning-point of his history. That it shortened his span there can be little doubt. Had he settled down to literary work, in his native city, he might have lived to old age. But it secured him four years of the tense and poignant joy of living on which his heart was set; and during two of these years the joy was of a kind which absolved him for ever from the reproach of mere hedonism and self-indulgence. He would certainly have said--or rather he was continually saying, in words full of passionate conviction -- One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name. It was in the spirit of a romanticist of the eighteen-forties that he plunged into the life of Paris. He had a room near the Musee de Cluny, and he found himself thoroughly at home among the artists and students of the Latin Quarter, though he occasionally varied the 'Vie de Boheme' by excursions into "society" of a more orthodox type. Paris has had many lovers, but few more devoted than Alan Seeger. He accepted the life of "die singende, springende, schoene Paris" with a curious whole-heartedness. Here and there we find evidence -- for instance, in the first two sonnets--that he was not blind to its seamy side. But on the whole he appears to have seen beauty even in aspects of it for which it is almost as difficult to find aesthetic as moral justification. The truth is, no doubt, that the whole spectacle was plunged for him in the glamour of romance. Paris did not belong to the working-day world, but was like Baghdad or Samarcand, a city of the Arabian Nights. How his imagination transfigured it we may see in such a passage as this: By silvery waters in the plains afar Glimmers the inland city like a star, With gilded gates and sunny spires ablaze, And burnished domes half seen through luminous haze. Lo, with what opportunity earth teems! How like a fair its ample beauty seems! Fluttering with flags its proud pavilions rise: What bright bazaars, what marvellous merchandise, Down seething alleys what melodious din, What clamor, importuning from every booth: At Earth's great mart where Joy is trafficked in Buy while thy purse yet swells with golden Youth! Into this fair he sallied forth, not as one to the manner born, but with the eagerness of a traveller from a far country, who feels as though he were living in a dream. His attitude to the whole experience is curiously ingenuous, but perfectly sane and straightforward. It is the Paris of Murger in which he lives, not the Paris of Baudelaire and the Second Empire. He takes his experiences lightly. There is no sign either of any struggle of the soul or of any very rending tempest of the heart. There is no posing, self-conscious Byronism, nor any of that morbid dallying with the idea of "sin" which gives such an unpleasant flavor to a good deal of romantic poetry, both French and English. There are traces of disappointment and disillusion, but they are accepted without a murmur as inevitable incidents of a great, absorbing experience. All this means, of course, that there is no tragic depth, and little analytic subtlety, in these poems. They are the work of a young man enamoured of his youth, enthusiastically grateful for the gift of life, and entirely at his ease within his own moral code. He had known none of what he himself calls "that kind of affliction which alone can unfold the profundities of the human spirit." It was in Paris that he produced most of the "Juvenilia". He included only a few of the pieces which he had written at Harvard and in New York. Thus all, or nearly all, the poems ranged under that title, are, as he said -- Relics of the time when I too fared Across the sweet fifth lustrum of my days. Paris, however, did not absorb him entirely during these years. He would occasionally set forth on long tramps through the French provinces; for he loved every aspect of that gracious country. He once spent some weeks with a friend in Switzerland; but this experience seems to have left no trace in his work. Then came the fateful year 1914. His "Juvenilia" having grown to a passable bulk, he brought them in the early summer to London, with a view to finding a publisher for them; but it does not appear that he took any very active steps to that effect. His days were mainly spent in the British Museum, and his evenings with a coterie of friends at the Cafe Royal. In the middle of July, his father came to England and spent a week with him. Of this meeting Mr. Seeger writes: == We passed three days at Canterbury--three days of such intimacy as we had hardly had since he was a boy in Mexico. For four or five years I had only seen him a few days at a time, during my hurried visits to the United States. We explored the old town together, heard services in the Cathedral, and had long talks in the close. After service in the Cathedral on a Monday morning, the last of our stay at Canterbury, Alan was particularly enthusiastic over the reading of the Psalms, and said "Was there ever such English written as that of the Bible?" I said good-bye to Alan on July 25th. == Two days earlier, the Austrian Ultimatum had been presented to Serbia; on that very day the time limit expired, the Serbian reply was rejected, and the Austrian Minister left Belgrade. The wheels of fate were already whirling. As soon as it became evident that a European war was inevitable Alan returned to Paris. He took Bruges on his way, and there left the manuscript of his poems in the keeping of a printer, not foreseeing the risks to which he was thus exposing them. The war was not three weeks old when, along with forty or fifty of his fellow-countrymen, he enlisted in the Foreign Legion of France. Why did he take this step? Fundamentally, no doubt, because he felt war to be one of the supreme experiences of life, from which, when it offered itself, he could not shrink without disloyalty to his ideal. Long before the war was anything more than a vague possibility, he had imagined the time . . . when courted Death shall claim my limbs and find them Laid in some desert place alone, or where the tides Of war's tumultuous waves on the wet sands behind them Leave rifts of gasping life when their red flood subsides. So far back indeed as May, 1912, he had written to his mother from Paris: "Is it not fine the way the Balkan States are triumphing? I have been so excited over the war, it would have needed a very small opportunity to have taken me over there." It is evident, then, that the soldier's life had long been included among the possibilities which fascinated him. But apart from this general proclivity to adventure, this desire to "live dangerously", he was impelled by a simple sentiment of loyalty to the country and city of his heart, which he himself explained in a letter written from the Aisne trenches to 'The New Republic' (New York, May 22, 1915): == I have talked with so many of the young volunteers here. Their case is little known, even by the French, yet altogether interesting and appealing. They are foreigners on whom the outbreak of war laid no formal compulsion. But they had stood on the butte in springtime perhaps, as Julian and Louise stood, and looked out over the myriad twinkling lights of the beautiful city. Paris--mystic, maternal, personified, to whom they owed the happiest moments of their lives--Paris was in peril. Were they not under a moral obligation, no less binding than [that by which] their comrades were bound legally, to put their breasts between her and destruction? Without renouncing their nationality, they had yet chosen to make their homes here beyond any other city in the world. Did not the benefits and blessings they had received point them a duty that heart and conscience could not deny? "Why did you enlist?" In every case the answer was the same. That memorable day in August came. Suddenly the old haunts were desolate, the boon companions had gone. It was unthinkable to leave the danger to them and accept only the pleasures oneself, to go on enjoying the sweet things of life in defence of which they were perhaps even then shedding their blood in the north. Some day they would return, and with honor--not all, but some. The old order of things would have irrevocably vanished. There would be a new companionship whose bond would be the common danger run, the common sufferings borne, the common glory shared. "And where have you been all the time, and what have you been doing?" The very question would be a reproach, though none were intended. How could they endure it? Face to face with a situation like that, a man becomes reconciled, justifies easily the part he is playing, and comes to understand, in a universe where logic counts for so little and sentiment and the impulse of the heart for so much, the inevitableness and naturalness of war. Suddenly the world is up in arms. All mankind takes sides. The same faith that made him surrender himself to the impulses of normal living and of love, forces him now to make himself the instrument through which a greater force works out its inscrutable ends through the impulses of terror and repulsion. And with no less a sense of moving in harmony with a universe where masses are in continual conflict and new combinations are engendered out of eternal collisions, he shoulders arms and marches forth with haste. == Already in this passage we can discern the fatalistic acceptance of war which runs through many of his utterances on the subject, and may be read especially in the noble conclusion of his poem, "The Hosts": There was a stately drama writ By the hand that peopled the earth & air And set the stars in the infinite And made night gorgeous & morning fair; And all that had sense to reason knew That bloody drama must be gone through. Some sat & watched how the action veered -- Waited, profited, trembled, cheered -- We saw not clearly nor understood, But, yielding ourselves to the master hand, Each in his part, as best he could, We played it through as the author planned. It was not, in his own conception, a "war against war" that he was waging; it was simply a fight for freedom and for France. Some of us may hope and believe that, in after years, when he was at leisure to view history in perspective and carry his psychology a little deeper, he would have allowed, if not more potency, at any rate more adaptability, to the human will. In order to do so, it would not have been necessary to abandon his fatalistic creed. He would have seen, perhaps, that even if we only will what we have to will, the factors which shape the will--of the individual, the nation, or the race--are always changing, and that it is not only possible but probable that the factors which make for peace may one day gain the upper hand of those which (for perfectly definite and tangible reasons) have hitherto made for war. The fact remains, however, that he shouldered his knapsack without any theoretic distaste for the soldier's calling. In so far he was more happily situated than thousands who have made all the better soldiers for their intense detestation of the stupidity of war. But this in no way detracts from his loyalty to his personal ideal, or from the high chivalry of his devotion to France. The story of his life as a soldier shall be told, so far as possible, in his own words. After some brief preliminary training at Rouen he was sent to Toulouse. Thence, on September 28, 1914, he wrote as follows: == 2me Regiment Etranger, Bataillon C., 1re. Cie, 3me Section. Toulouse, Sept. 28, 1914. Dear Mother, . . . We have been putting in our time here at very hard drilling, and are supposed to have learned in six weeks what the ordinary recruit, in times of peace, takes all his two years at. We rise at 5, and work stops in the afternoon at 5. A twelve hours day at one sou a day. I hope to earn higher wages than this in time to come, but I never expect to work harder. The early rising hour is splendid for it gives one the chance to see the most beautiful part of these beautiful autumn days in the South. We march up to a lovely open field on the end of the ridge behind the barracks, walking right into the rising sun. From this panorama, spread about on three sides is incomparably fine -- yellow cornfields, vineyards, harvest-fields where the workers and their teams can be seen moving about in tiny figures -- poplars, little hamlets and church-towers, and far away to the south the blue line of the Pyrenees, the high peaks capped with snow. It makes one in love with life, it is all so peaceful and beautiful. But Nature to me is not only hills and blue skies and flowers, but the Universe, the totality of things, reality as it most obviously presents itself to us; and in this universe strife and sternness play as big a part as love and tenderness, and cannot be shirked by one whose will it is to rule his life in accordance with the cosmic forces he sees in play about him. I hope you see the thing as I do, and think that I have done well, being without responsibilities and with no one to suffer materially by my decision, in taking upon my shoulders, too, the burden that so much of humanity is suffering under, and, rather than stand ingloriously aside when the opportunity was given me, doing my share for the side that I think right. . . . == The battalion must have left Toulouse almost immediately after this was written, for in a post-card of October 10, from the Camp de Mailly, Aube, he says that they have been there ten days. A week later he wrote: == . . . After two weeks here and less than two months from enlistment, we are actually going at last to the firing line. By the time you receive this we shall already perhaps have had our 'bapteme de feu'. We have been engaged in the hardest kind of hard work -- two weeks of beautiful autumn weather on the whole, frosty nights and sunny days and beautiful coloring on the sparse foliage that breaks here and there the wide rolling expanses of open country. Every day, from the distance to the north, has come the booming of the cannon around Reims and the lines along the Meuse. . . . But imagine how thrilling it will be tomorrow and the following days, marching toward the front with the noise of battle growing continually louder before us. I could tell you where we are going, but I do not want to run any risk of having this letter stopped by the censor. The whole regiment is going, four battalions, about 4000 men. You have no idea how beautiful it is to see the troops undulating along the road in front of one, in 'colonnes par quatre' as far as the eye can see, with the captains and lieutenants on horseback at the head of their companies. . . . Tomorrow the real hardship and privations begin. But I go into action with the lightest of light hearts. The hard work and moments of frightful fatigue have not broken but hardened me, and I am in excellent health and spirits. . . . I am happy and full of excitement over the wonderful days that are ahead. It was such a comfort to receive your letter, and know that you approved of my action. == In a post-card of October 20, postmarked "Vertus", he says: == This is the second night's halt of our march to the front. All our way has been one immense battlefield. It was a magnificent victory for the French that the world does not fully realize. I think we are marching to victory too, but whatever we are going to we are going triumphantly. == On October 23, he writes from "17 kil. south-east of Reims". == Dear Mother. . . . I am sitting on the curbstone of a street at the edge of the town. The houses end abruptly and the yellow vineyards begin here. The view is broad and uninterrupted to the crest ten kilometers or so across the valley. Between this and ourselves are the lines of the two armies. A fierce cannonading is going on continually, and I lift my eyes from the sheet at each report, to see the puffs of smoke two or three miles off. The Germans have been firing salvoes of four shots over a little village where the French batteries are stationed, shrapnel that burst in little puffs of white smoke; the French reply with explosive shells that raise columns of dust over the German lines. Half of our regiment have left already for the trenches. We may go tonight. We have made a march of about 75 kilometers in four days, and are now on the front, ready to be called on at any moment. I am feeling fine, in my element, for I have always thirsted for this kind of thing, to be present always where the pulsations are liveliest. Every minute here is worth weeks of ordinary experience. How beautiful the view is here, over the sunny vineyards! And what a curious anomaly. On this slope the grape pickers are singing merrily at their work, on the other the batteries are roaring. Boom! Boom! This will spoil one for any other kind of life. The yellow afternoon sunlight is sloping gloriously across this beautiful valley of Champagne. Aeroplanes pass continually overhead on reconnaissance. I must mail this now. There is too much to be said and too little time to say it. So glad to get your letter. Love and lots of it to all. Alan. == Alas! the hopes of swift, decisive action with which the Legion advanced were destined to disappointment. They soon settled down for the winter into the monotonous hardships of trench warfare. Alan described this experience in admirably vivid letters published in the New York 'Sun', from which a few extracts must suffice. He writes on December 8, during his fourth period of service in the trenches: == We left our camp in the woods before daybreak this morning, and marched up the hill in single file, under the winter stars. . . . Through openings in the woods we could see that we were marching along a high ridge, and on either hand vaporous depths and distances expanded, the darkness broken sometimes by a far light or the momentary glow of a magnesium rocket sent up from the German lines. There is something fascinating if one is stationed on sentry-duty immediately after arrival, in watching the dawn slowly illumine one of these new landscapes, from a position taken up under cover of darkness. The other section has been relieved and departs. We are given the 'consigne', by the preceding sentinel, and are left alone behind a mound of dirt, facing the north and the blank, perilous night. Slowly the mystery that it shrouds resolves as the grey light steals over the eastern hills. Like a photograph in the washing, its high lights and shadows come gradually forth. The light splash in the foreground becomes a ruined chateau, the grey street a demolished village. The details come out on the hillside opposite, where the silent trenches of the enemy are hidden a few hundred metres away. We find ourselves in a woody, mountainous country, with broad horizons and streaks of mist in the valleys. Our position is excellent this time, a high crest, with open land sloping down from the trenches and plenty of barbed wire strung along immediately in front. It would be a hard task to carry such a line, and there is not much danger that the enemy will try. With increasing daylight the sentinel takes a sheltered position, and surveys his new environment through little gaps where the mounds have been crenellated and covered with branches. Suddenly he starts as a metallic bang rings out from the woods immediately behind him. It is of the unmistakable voice of a French 75 starting the day's artillery duel. By the time the sentinel is relieved, in broad daylight, the cannonade is general all along the line. He surrenders his post to a comrade, and crawls down into his bombproof dugout almost reluctantly, for the long day of inactive waiting has commenced. == Though he never expresses even a momentary regret for the choice he has made, he freely admits that trench warfare is "anything but romantic". For the artilleryman it is "doubtless very interesting" but "the poor common soldier" has a pretty mean time of it: == His rule is simply to dig himself a hole in the ground and to keep hidden in it as tightly as possible. Continually under the fire of the opposing batteries, he is yet never allowed to get a glimpse of the enemy. Exposed to all the dangers of war, but with none of its enthusiasm or splendid elan, he is condemned to sit like an animal in its burrow, and hear the shells whistle over his head, and take their little daily toll from his comrades. The winter morning dawns with grey skies and the hoar frost on the fields. His feet are numb, his canteen frozen, but he is not allowed to make a fire. The winter night falls, with its prospect of sentry-duty, and the continual apprehension of the hurried call to arms; he is not even permitted to light a candle, but must fold himself in his blanket and lie down cramped in the dirty straw to sleep as best he may. How different from the popular notion of the evening campfire, the songs and good cheer. == Of the commissariat arrangements he gives, on the whole, a very good account; but he admits that "to supplement the regular rations with luxuries such as butter, cheese, preserves, & especially chocolate, is a matter that occupies more of the young soldier's thoughts than the invisible enemy. Our corporal told us the other day that there wasn't a man in the squad that wouldn't exchange his rifle for a jar of jam." But "though modern warfare allows us to think more about eating than fighting, still we do not actually forget that we are in a battle line." == Ever over our heads goes on the precise and scientific struggle of the artillery. Packed elbow to elbow in these obscure galleries, one might be content to squat all day long, auditor of the magnificent orchestra of battle, were it not that one becomes so soon habituated to it that it is no longer magnificent. We hear the voices of cannon of all calibres and at all distances. We learn to read the score & distinguish the instruments. Near us are field batteries; far away are siege guns. Over all there is the unmistakable, sharp, metallic twang of the French 75, the whistle of its shell and the lesser report of its explosion. == And every now and then comes the bursting of a shell immediately overhead, and the rattle of its fragments on the roof of the bomb-proof dug-out. Think what it must have meant to this eager, ardent, pleasure-loving spirit to sit out, day after day, in a chill, sodden, verminous trench, a grand orchestral concert of this music of human madness! The solitude of sentry-duty evidently comes to him as something of a relief. "It may," he says, "be all that is melancholy if the night is bad and the winter wind moans through the pines"; but it also "brings moments of exaltation, if the cloud-banks roll back, if the moonlight breaks over the windless hills, or the heavens blaze with the beauty of the northern stars." == The sentinel has ample time for reflection. Alone under the stars, war in its cosmic rather than its moral aspect reveals itself to him. . . . He thrills with the sense of filling an appointed, necessary place in the conflict of hosts, and, facing the enemy's crest, above which the Great Bear wheels upward to the zenith, he feels, with a sublimity of enthusiasm that he has never before known, a kind of companionship with the stars. == Six days in the trenches alternated with a three days' interval of rest "either billeted in the stables and haylofts of the village or encamped in the woods and around the chateau." Thus the winter of 1914-15 wore away, with little to break its monotony. The heaviest fighting was all to the northward. One gathers from his poem "The Aisne" that at Craonne he took part in the repulse of a serious enemy attack; but there is no mention of this in the letters before me. On March 12, 1915, he writes to his mother in fierce indignation over something that has appeared in an American paper as to life in the Foreign Legion. The writer of the "disgraceful article", he says, "like many others of his type, was long ago eliminated from our ranks, for a person buoyed up by no noble purpose is the first to succumb to the hardships of the winter that we have been through. . . . If his lies did nothing worse than belittle his comrades, who are here for motives that he is unable to conceive, it would be only dishonourable. But when it comes to throwing discredit on the French Government, that in all its treatment of us has been generous beyond anything that one would think possible, it is too shameful for any words to characterize." With the coming of spring, there was of course some mitigation of the trials of the winter. Here is an almost idyllic passage from a letter to his sister, written on the fly-leaves of 'Les Confessions de J. J. Rousseau', Geneve, MDCCLXXXII: == We put in a very pleasant week here--nine hours of guard at night in our outposts up on the hillside; in the daytime sleep, or foraging in the ruined villages, loafing in the pretty garden of the chateau, or reading up in the library. We have cleaned this up now, and it is an altogether curious sensation to recline here in an easy-chair, reading some fine old book, and just taking the precaution not to stay in front of the glassless windows through which the sharpshooters can snipe at you from their posts in the thickets on the slopes of the plateau, not six hundred metres away. Sometimes our artillery opens up and then you lay down your book for a while, and, looking through a peek-hole, watch the 75's and 120's throw up fountains of dirt and debris all along the line of the enemy's trenches. == "Spring has come here at last," so the letter closes, "and we are having beautiful weather. I am going in swimming in the Aisne this afternoon for the first time. In fine health and spirits." During the summer, the Legion was moved about a good deal from sector to sector, and Alan often found himself in pleasant places, and got a good deal of positive enjoyment out of his life. On June 18, 1915, he wrote to his mother: == You must not be anxious about my not coming back. The chances are about ten to one that I will. But if I should not, you must be proud, like a Spartan mother, and feel that it is your contribution to the triumph of the cause whose righteousness you feel so keenly. Everybody should take part in this struggle which is to have so decisive an effect, not only on the nations engaged but on all humanity. There should be no neutrals, but everyone should bear some part of the burden. If so large a part should fall to your share, you would be in so far superior to other women and should be correspondingly proud. There would be nothing to regret, for I could not have done otherwise than I did, and I think I could not have done better. Death is nothing terrible after all. It may mean something even more wonderful than life. It cannot possibly mean anything worse to the good soldier. == The same note recurs in a letter of two weeks later (July 3): == Whether I am on the winning or losing side is not the point with me: it is being on the side where my sympathies lie that matters, and I am ready to see it through to the end. Success in life means doing that thing than which nothing else conceivable seems more noble or satisfying or remunerative, and this enviable state I can truly say that I enjoy, for had I the choice I would be nowhere else in the world than where I am. == In this letter he says that an article about Rupert Brooke in which his name was mentioned "gave him rather more pain than pleasure, for it rubbed in the matter which most rankled in his heart, that he never could get his book of poems published before the war." However he consoles himself with the reflection that the M.S. is probably as safe at Bruges as anywhere else. "We have finished our eighth month on the firing line," he says, "and rumors are going round of an imminent return to the rear for reorganization." These rumors proved to be well founded, and on July 17, he wrote on a picture-postcard representing the Lion of Belfort: == We have finally come to the rear for a little rest and reorganization, and are cantoned in a valley not far from Belfort, in the extreme east of France, very near the Swiss frontier. Since I wrote you last, all the Americans in the regiment received 48 hours permission in Paris, and it was a great happiness to get back even for so short a while and to see again old scenes and faces after almost a year's absence. We shall be here several weeks perhaps. == Three weeks later (August 8) he wrote to his mother: == . . . I have always had the passion to play the biggest part within my reach, and it is really in a sense a supreme success to be allowed to play this. If I do not come out, I will share the good fortune of those who disappear at the pinnacle of their careers. Come to love France and understand the almost unexampled nobility of the effort this admirable people is making, for that will be the surest way of your finding comfort for anything that I am ready to suffer in their cause. == The spell of rest lasted some two months, and then the Legion returned to the front in time for the battle in Champagne "in which" he writes "we took part from the beginning, the morning of the memorable 25th. September." I cannot resist quoting at some length from the admirably vivid letter in which he gave an account of this experience: == The part we played in the battle is briefly as follows. We broke camp about 11 o'clock the night of the 24th, and marched up through ruined Souain to our place in one of the numerous 'boyaux' where the 'troupes d'attaque' were massed. The cannonade was pretty violent all that night, as it had been for several days previous, but toward dawn it reached an intensity unimaginable to anyone who has not seen a modern battle. A little before 9.15 the fire lessened suddenly, and the crackle of the fusillade between the reports of the cannon told us that the first wave of assault had left and the attack begun. At the same time we received the order to advance. The German artillery had now begun to open upon us in earnest. Amid the most infernal roar of every kind of fire-arms, and through an atmosphere heavy with dust and smoke, we marched up through the 'boyaux' to the 'tranchees de depart'. At shallow places and over breaches that shells had made in the bank, we caught momentary glimpses of the blue lines sweeping up the hillside or silhouetted on the crest where they poured into the German trenches. When the last wave of the Colonial brigade had left, we followed. 'Bayonette au canon', in lines of 'tirailleurs', we crossed the open space between the lines, over the barbed wire, where not so many of our men were lying as I had feared, (thanks to the efficacy of the bombardment) and over the German trench, knocked to pieces and filled with their dead. In some places they still resisted in isolated groups. Opposite us, all was over, and the herds of prisoners were being already led down as we went up. We cheered, more in triumph than in hate; but the poor devils, terror-stricken, held up their hands, begged for their lives, cried "Kamerad", "Bon Francais", even "Vive la France". We advanced and lay down in columns by twos behind the second crest. Meanwhile, bridges had been thrown across trenches and 'boyaux', and the artillery, leaving the emplacements where they had been anchored a whole year, came across and took position in the open, a magnificent spectacle. Squadrons of cavalry came up. Suddenly the long, unpicturesque 'guerre de tranchees' was at an end, and the field really presented the aspect of the familiar battle pictures, -- the battalions in manoeuvre, the officers, superbly indifferent to danger, galloping about on their chargers. But now the German guns, moved back, began to get our range, and the shells to burst over and around batteries and troops, many with admirable precision. Here my best comrade was struck down by shrapnel at my side,--painfully but not mortally wounded. I often envied him after that. For now our advanced troops were in contact with the German second-line defenses, and these proved to be of a character so formidable that all further advance without a preliminary artillery preparation was out of the question. And our role, that of troops in reserve, was to lie passive in an open field under a shell fire that every hour became more terrific, while aeroplanes and captive balloons, to which we were entirely exposed, regulated the fire. That night we spent in the rain. With portable picks and shovels each man dug himself in as well as possible. The next day our concentrated artillery again began the bombardment, and again the fusillade announced the entrance of the infantry into action. But this time only the wounded appeared coming back, no prisoners. I went out and gave water to one of these, eager to get news. It was a young soldier, wounded in the hand. His face and voice bespoke the emotion of the experience he had been through, in a way that I will never forget. "Ah, les salauds!" he cried, "They let us come right up to the barbed wire without firing. Then a hail of grenades and balls. My comrade fell, shot through the leg, got up, and the next moment had his head taken off by a grenade before my eyes." "And the barbed wire, wasn't it cut down by the bombardment?" "Not at all in front of us." I congratulated him on having a 'blessure heureuse' and being well out of the affair. But he thought only of his comrade and went on down the road toward Souain nursing his mangled hand, with the stream of wounded seeking their 'postes de secours'. == He then tells how, in spite of substantial gains, it gradually "became more and more evident that the German second line of defence presented obstacles too serious to attempt overcoming for the moment, and we began going up at night to work at consolidating our advanced trenches and turning them into a new permanent line." To this time, perhaps, belongs the incident related by Rif Baer, an Egyptian, who was his comrade and best friend in the regiment. A piece of difficult trench work was allotted to the men, to be finished in one night. "Each was given the limit, that he was supposed to be able to complete in the time. It happened that Rif Baer was ill, and, after working a while, his strength gave out. Alan completed his own job and R. B.'s also, and although he was quite exhausted by the extra labour, his eyes glowed with happiness, and he said he had never done anything in his life that gave him such entire satisfaction." Summing up the results of the battle, Alan wrote (still in the same letter, October 25): "It was a satisfaction at least to get out of the trenches, to meet the enemy face to face and to see German arrogance turned into suppliance. We knew many splendid moments, worth having endured many trials for. But in our larger aim, of piercing their line, of breaking the long deadlock, of entering Vouziers in triumph, of course we failed." Then he proceeds: == This affair only deepened my admiration for, my loyalty to, the French. If we did not entirely succeed, it was not the fault of the French soldier. He is a better man, man for man, than the German. Anyone who had seen the charge of the Marsouins at Souain would acknowledge it. Never was anything more magnificent. I remember a captain, badly wounded in the leg, as he passed us, borne back on a litter by four German prisoners. He asked us what regiment we were, and when we told him, he cried "Vive la Legion," and kept repeating "Nous les avons en. Nous les avons en." He was suffering, but, oblivious of his wound, was still fired with the enthusiasm of the assault and all radiant with victory. What a contrast with the German wounded on whose faces was nothing but terror and despair. What is the stimulus in their slogans of "Gott mit uns" and "Fuer Koenig und Vaterland" beside that of men really fighting in defense of their country? Whatever be the force in international conflicts of having justice and all the principles of personal morality on one's side, it at least gives the French soldier a strength that's like the strength of ten against an adversary whose weapon is only brute violence. It is inconceivable that a Frenchman, forced to yield, could behave as I saw German prisoners behave, trembling, on their knees, for all the world like criminals at length overpowered and brought to justice. Such men have to be driven to the assault, or intoxicated. But the Frenchman who goes up is possessed with a passion beside which any of the other forms of experience that are reckoned to make life worth while seem pale in comparison. == A report appeared in the American newspapers that he had been killed in the battle of Champagne. On learning of it, he wrote to his mother: == I am 'navre' to think of your having suffered so. I should have arranged to cable after the attack, had I known that any such absurd rumours had been started. Here one has a wholesome notion of the unimportance of the individual. It needs an effort of imagination to conceive of its making any particular difference to anyone or anything if one goes under. So many better men have gone, and yet the world rolls on just the same. == After Champagne, his regiment passed to the rear and did not return to the front until May 1916. On February 1st he writes: "I am in hospital for the first time, not for a wound, unfortunately, but for sickness." Hitherto his health, since he joined the army, had been superb. As a youth he had never been robust; but the soldier's life suited him to perfection, and all remnants of any mischief left behind by the illness of his childhood seemed to have vanished. It was now a sharp attack of bronchitis that sent him to hospital. On his recovery he obtained two months 'conge de convalescence', part of which he spent at Biarritz and part in Paris. About this time, much to his satisfaction, he once more came into the possession of "Juvenilia". On April 13th he wrote to his mother: == Did I tell you that the Embassy have managed to get my M.S. for me? It was very interesting to re-read this work, which I had almost forgotten. I found much that was good in it, but much that was juvenile too, and am not so anxious to publish it as it stands. I shall probably make extracts from it and join it with what I have done since. I shall go back to the front on the first of May without regrets. These visits to the rear only confirm me in my conviction that the work up there on the front is so far the most interesting work a man can be doing at this moment, that nothing else counts in comparison. == On May 13th he wrote to his "marraine", Mrs. Weeks: "The chateau in the grounds of which we are barracked, has a most beautiful name -- Bellinglise. Isn't it pretty? I shall have to write a sonnet to enclose it, as a ring is made express for a jewel. It is a wonderful old seventeenth-century manor, surrounded by a lordly estate. What is that exquisite stanza in 'Maud' about 'in the evening through the lilacs (or laurels) of the old manorial home'?* Look it up and send it to me." Ten days later he wrote to the same lady: -- * He was doubtless thinking of this: Alas for her that met me, That heard me softly call, Came glimmering thro' the laurels In the quiet evenfall, In the garden by the turrets Of the old manorial hall. -- == The week in the trenches was a week of the most beautiful weather. . . . These days were saddened by the death of poor Colette in the bombardment, and by the suffering of his brother who has now returned after the burial. They were marked on the other hand by two afternoons of rather memorable emotion. Exasperated by the inactivity of the sector here, and tempted by danger, I stole off twice after guard, and made a patrol all by myself through the wood paths and trails between the lines. In the front of these, at a crossing of paths not far from one of our posts, I found a burnt rocket-stick planted in the ground, and a scrap of paper stuck in the top, placed there by the boches to guide their little mischief-making parties when they come to visit us in the night. The scrap of paper was nothing else than a bit of the 'Berliner Tageblatt'. This seemed so interesting to me that I reported it to the captain, though my going out alone this way is a thing strictly forbidden. He was very decent about it though, and seemed really interested in the information. Yesterday afternoon I repeated this exploit, following another trail, and I went so far that I came clear up to the German barbed wire, where I left a card with my name. It was very thrilling work, "courting destruction with taunts, with invitations" as Whitman would say. I have never been in a sector like this, where patrols could be made in daylight. Here the deep forest permits it. It also greatly facilitates ambushes, for one must keep to the paths, owing to the underbrush. I and a few others are going to try to get permission to go out on 'patrouilles d'embuscade' and bring in some live prisoners. It would be quite an extraordinary feat if we could pull it off. In our present existence it is the only way I can think of to get the Croix de Guerre. And to be worthy of my marraine I think that I ought to have the Croix de Guerre. == He had hoped to have been in Paris on Decoration Day, May 30th, to read, before the statue of Lafayette and Washington, the "Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France", which he had written at the request of a Committee of American residents; but his "permission" unfortunately did not arrive in time. Completed in two days, during which he was engaged in the hardest sort of labour in the trenches, this Ode is certainly the crown of the poet's achievement. It is entirely admirable, entirely adequate to the historic occasion. If the war has produced a nobler utterance, it has not come my way. On June 24th, he again wrote, giving an account of a march, which was "without exception the hardest he had ever made" -- "20 kilometers through the blazing sun and in a cloud of dust. Something around 30 kilograms on the back. About 50 per cent dropped by the way. By making a supreme effort, I managed to get in at the finish, with the fifteen men that were all that was left of the section." He now knew that the great offensive was imminent. "The situation," he wrote, "is most interesting and exciting, but I am not at liberty to say anything about it. My greatest preoccupation now is whether this affair is coming off before or after the 4th of July. The indications are that it is going to break very soon. In that case nothing doing in the way of permission. But I still have hopes of getting in." His hopes of getting to Paris were frustrated, as were all his other hopes save one--the hope of That rare privilege of dying well. On July 1st, the great advance began. At six in the evening of July 4th, the Legion was ordered to clear the enemy out of the village of Belloy-en-Santerre. Alan Seeger advanced in the first rush, and his squad was enfiladed by the fire of six German machine guns, concealed in a hollow way. Most of them went down, and Alan among them -- wounded in several places. But the following waves of attack were more fortunate. As his comrades came up to him, Alan cheered them on; and as they left him behind, they heard him singing a marching-song in English: -- Accents of ours were in the fierce melee. They took the village, they drove the invaders out; but for some reason unknown--perhaps a very good one -- the battlefield was left unvisited that night. Next morning, Alan Seeger lay dead. There is little to add. He wrote his own best epitaph in the "Ode": -- And on those furthest rims of hallowed ground Where the forlorn, the gallant charge expires, When the slain bugler has long ceased to sound, And on the tangled wires The last wild rally staggers, crumbles, stops, Withered beneath the shrapnel's iron showers: -- Now heaven be thanked, we gave a few brave drops, Now heaven be thanked, a few brave drops were ours. His death was briefly noticed in one or two French papers. The 'Matin' published a translation of part of the poem, "Champagne, 1914-15", and remarked that "Cyrano de Bergerac would have signed it." But France had no time, even if she had had the knowledge, to realize the greatness of the sacrifice that had been made for her. That will come later. One day France will know that this unassuming soldier of the Legion, Who, not unmindful of the antique debt, Came back the generous path of Lafayette, was one whom even she may be proud to have reckoned among her defenders. The "Last Poems" speak for themselves. They contain lines which he would doubtless have remodelled had he lived to review them in tranquillity -- perhaps one or two pieces, sprung from a momentary mood, which, on reflection he would have rejected.* But they not only show a great advance on his earlier work: they rank high, or I am much mistaken, among the hitherto not very numerous poems in the English language produced, not in mere memory or imagination of war, but in its actual stress and under its haunting menace. -- * Neither in the "Juvenilia" nor in the "Last Poems" has anything been suppressed that he himself ever thought of publishing. Indeed nothing at all has been omitted, except two early poems on which he had written "These are worthless." -- Again and again in the "Last Poems"--notably in "Maktoob" with its tribute to The resignation and the calm And wisdom of the East, he returns to the note of fatalism. Here he has not only the wisdom of the East but the logic of the West on his side. Necessity is as incontrovertible to thought as it is incredible to feeling. But in the potent illusion of free-will (if illusion it be) rests all morality and all the admiration that we feel for good and evil deeds. Not even at Alan Seeger's bidding can we quite persuade ourselves that, when he took up arms for France, he was exercising no brave, no generous choice, but was the conscript of Destiny. William Archer. Poems by Alan Seeger Juvenilia 1914 An Ode to Natural Beauty There is a power whose inspiration fills Nature's fair fabric, sun- and star-inwrought, Like airy dew ere any drop distils, Like perfume in the laden flower, like aught Unseen which interfused throughout the whole Becomes its quickening pulse and principle and soul. Now when, the drift of old desire renewing, Warm tides flow northward over valley and field, When half-forgotten sound and scent are wooing From their deep-chambered recesses long sealed Such memories as breathe once more Of childhood and the happy hues it wore, Now, with a fervor that has never been In years gone by, it stirs me to respond, -- Not as a force whose fountains are within The faculties of the percipient mind, Subject with them to darkness and decay, But something absolute, something beyond, Oft met like tender orbs that seem to peer From pale horizons, luminous behind Some fringe of tinted cloud at close of day; And in this flood of the reviving year, When to the loiterer by sylvan streams, Deep in those cares that make Youth loveliest, Nature in every common aspect seems To comment on the burden in his breast -- The joys he covets and the dreams he dreams -- One then with all beneath the radiant skies That laughs with him or sighs, It courses through the lilac-scented air, A blessing on the fields, a wonder everywhere. Spirit of Beauty, whose sweet impulses, Flung like the rose of dawn across the sea, Alone can flush the exalted consciousness With shafts of sensible divinity -- Light of the World, essential loveliness: Him whom the Muse hath made thy votary Not from her paths and gentle precepture Shall vulgar ends engage, nor break the spell That taught him first to feel thy secret charms And o'er the earth, obedient to their lure, Their sweet surprise and endless miracle, To follow ever with insatiate arms. On summer afternoons, When from the blue horizon to the shore, Casting faint silver pathways like the moon's Across the Ocean's glassy, mottled floor, Far clouds uprear their gleaming battlements Drawn to the crest of some bleak eminence, When autumn twilight fades on the sere hill And autumn winds are still; To watch the East for some emerging sign, Wintry Capella or the Pleiades Or that great huntsman with the golden gear; Ravished in hours like these Before thy universal shrine To feel the invoked presence hovering near, He stands enthusiastic. Star-lit hours Spent on the roads of wandering solitude Have set their sober impress on his brow, And he, with harmonies of wind and wood And torrent and the tread of mountain showers, Has mingled many a dedicative vow That holds him, till thy last delight be known, Bound in thy service and in thine alone. I, too, among the visionary throng Who choose to follow where thy pathway leads, Have sold my patrimony for a song, And donned the simple, lowly pilgrim's weeds. From that first image of beloved walls, Deep-bowered in umbrage of ancestral trees, Where earliest thy sweet enchantment falls, Tingeing a child's fantastic reveries With radiance so fair it seems to be Of heavens just lost the lingering evidence From that first dawn of roseate infancy, So long beneath thy tender influence My breast has thrilled. As oft for one brief second The veil through which those infinite offers beckoned Has seemed to tremble, letting through Some swift intolerable view Of vistas past the sense of mortal seeing, So oft, as one whose stricken eyes might see In ferny dells the rustic deity, I stood, like him, possessed, and all my being, Flooded an instant with unwonted light, Quivered with cosmic passion; whether then On woody pass or glistening mountain-height I walked in fellowship with winds and clouds, Whether in cities and the throngs of men, A curious saunterer through friendly crowds, Enamored of the glance in passing eyes, Unuttered salutations, mute replies, -- In every character where light of thine Has shed on earthly things the hue of things divine I sought eternal Loveliness, and seeking, If ever transport crossed my brow bespeaking Such fire as a prophetic heart might feel Where simple worship blends in fervent zeal, It was the faith that only love of thee Needed in human hearts for Earth to see Surpassed the vision poets have held dear Of joy diffused in most communion here; That whomsoe'er thy visitations warmed, Lover of thee in all thy rays informed, Needed no difficulter discipline To seek his right to happiness within Than, sensible of Nature's loveliness, To yield him to the generous impulses By such a sentiment evoked. The thought, Bright Spirit, whose illuminings I sought, That thou unto thy worshipper might be An all-sufficient law, abode with me, Importing something more than unsubstantial dreams To vigils by lone shores and walks by murmuring streams. Youth's flowers like childhood's fade and are forgot. Fame twines a tardy crown of yellowing leaves. How swift were disillusion, were it not That thou art steadfast where all else deceives! Solace and Inspiration, Power divine That by some mystic sympathy of thine, When least it waits and most hath need of thee, Can startle the dull spirit suddenly With grandeur welled from unsuspected springs, -- Long as the light of fulgent evenings, When from warm showers the pearly shades disband And sunset opens o'er the humid land, Shows thy veiled immanence in orient skies, -- Long as pale mist and opalescent dyes Hung on far isle or vanishing mountain-crest, Fields of remote enchantment can suggest So sweet to wander in it matters nought, They hold no place but in impassioned thought, Long as one draught from a clear sky may be A scented luxury; Be thou my worship, thou my sole desire, Thy paths my pilgrimage, my sense a lyre Aeolian for thine every breath to stir; Oft when her full-blown periods recur, To see the birth of day's transparent moon Far from cramped walls may fading afternoon Find me expectant on some rising lawn; Often depressed in dewy grass at dawn, Me, from sweet slumber underneath green boughs, Ere the stars flee may forest matins rouse, Afoot when the great sun in amber floods Pours horizontal through the steaming woods And windless fumes from early chimneys start And many a cock-crow cheers the traveller's heart Eager for aught the coming day afford In hills untopped and valleys unexplored. Give me the white road into the world's ends, Lover of roadside hazard, roadside friends, Loiterer oft by upland farms to gaze On ample prospects, lost in glimmering haze At noon, or where down odorous dales twilit, Filled with low thundering of the mountain stream, Over the plain where blue seas border it The torrid coast-towns gleam. I have fared too far to turn back now; my breast Burns with the lust for splendors unrevealed, Stars of midsummer, clouds out of the west, Pallid horizons, winds that valley and field Laden with joy, be ye my refuge still! What though distress and poverty assail! Though other voices chide, yours never will. The grace of a blue sky can never fail. Powers that my childhood with a spell so sweet, My youth with visions of such glory nursed, Ye have beheld, nor ever seen my feet On any venture set, but 'twas the thirst For Beauty willed them, yea, whatever be The faults I wanted wings to rise above; I am cheered yet to think how steadfastly I have been loyal to the love of Love! The Deserted Garden I know a village in a far-off land Where from a sunny, mountain-girdled plain With tinted walls a space on either hand And fed by many an olive-darkened lane The high-road mounts, and thence a silver band Through vineyard slopes above and rolling grain, Winds off to that dim corner of the skies Where behind sunset hills a stately city lies. Here, among trees whose overhanging shade Strews petals on the little droves below, Pattering townward in the morning weighed With greens from many an upland garden-row, Runs an old wall; long centuries have frayed Its scalloped edge, and passers to and fro Heard never from beyond its crumbling height Sweet laughter ring at noon or plaintive song at night. But here where little lizards bask and blink The tendrils of the trumpet-vine have run, At whose red bells the humming bird to drink Stops oft before his garden feast is done; And rose-geraniums, with that tender pink That cloud-banks borrow from the setting sun, Have covered part of this old wall, entwined With fair plumbago, blue as evening heavens behind. And crowning other parts the wild white rose Rivals the honey-suckle with the bees. Above the old abandoned orchard shows And all within beneath the dense-set trees, Tall and luxuriant the rank grass grows, That settled in its wavy depth one sees Grass melt in leaves, the mossy trunks between, Down fading avenues of implicated green; Wherein no lack of flowers the verdurous night With stars and pearly nebula o'erlay; Azalea-boughs half rosy and half white Shine through the green and clustering apple-spray, Such as the fairy-queen before her knight Waved in old story, luring him away Where round lost isles Hesperian billows break Or towers loom up beneath the clear, translucent lake; And under the deep grass blue hare-bells hide, And myrtle plots with dew-fall ever wet, Gay tiger-lilies flammulate and pied, Sometime on pathway borders neatly set, Now blossom through the brake on either side, Where heliotrope and weedy mignonette, With vines in bloom and flower-bearing trees, Mingle their incense all to swell the perfumed breeze, That sprung like Hermes from his natal cave In some blue rampart of the curving West, Comes up the valleys where green cornfields wave, Ravels the cloud about the mountain crest, Breathes on the lake till gentle ripples pave Its placid floor; at length a long-loved guest, He steals across this plot of pleasant ground, Waking the vocal leaves to a sweet vernal sound. Here many a day right gladly have I sped, Content amid the wavy plumes to lie, And through the woven branches overhead Watch the white, ever-wandering clouds go by, And soaring birds make their dissolving bed Far in the azure depths of summer sky, Or nearer that small huntsman of the air, The fly-catcher, dart nimbly from his leafy lair; Pillowed at ease to hear the merry tune Of mating warblers in the boughs above And shrill cicadas whom the hottest noon Keeps not from drowsy song; the mourning dove Pours down the murmuring grove his plaintive croon That like the voice of visionary love Oft have I risen to seek through this green maze (Even as my feet thread now the great world's garden-ways); And, parting tangled bushes as I passed Down beechen alleys beautiful and dim, Perhaps by some deep-shaded pool at last My feet would pause, where goldfish poise and swim, And snowy callas' velvet cups are massed Around the mossy, fern-encircled brim. Here, then, that magic summoning would cease, Or sound far off again among the orchard trees. And here where the blanched lilies of the vale And violets and yellow star-flowers teem, And pink and purple hyacinths exhale Their heavy fume, once more to drowse and dream My head would sink, from many an olden tale Drawing imagination's fervid theme, Or haply peopling this enchanting spot Only with fair creations of fantastic thought. For oft I think, in years long since gone by, That gentle hearts dwelt here and gentle hands Stored all this bowery bliss to beautify The paradise of some unsung romance; Here, safe from all except the loved one's eye, 'Tis sweet to think white limbs were wont to glance, Well pleased to wanton like the flowers and share Their simple loveliness with the enamored air. Thrice dear to them whose votive fingers decked The altars of First Love were these green ways, -- These lawns and verdurous brakes forever flecked With the warm sunshine of midsummer days; Oft where the long straight allies intersect And marble seats surround the open space, Where a tiled pool and sculptured fountain stand, Hath Evening found them seated, silent, hand in hand. When twilight deepened, in the gathering shade Beneath that old titanic cypress row, Whose sombre vault and towering colonnade Dwarfed the enfolded forms that moved below, Oft with close steps these happy lovers strayed, Till down its darkening aisle the sunset glow Grew less and patterning the garden floor Faint flakes of filtering moonlight mantled more and more. And the strange tempest that a touch imparts Through the mid fibre of the molten frame, When the sweet flesh in early youth asserts Its heyday verve and little hints enflame, Disturbed them as they walked; from their full hearts Welled the soft word, and many a tender name Strove on their lips as breast to breast they strained And the deep joy they drank seemed never, never drained. Love's soul that is the depth of starry skies Set in the splendor of one upturned face To beam adorably through half-closed eyes; Love's body where the breadth of summer days And all the beauty earth and air comprise Come to the compass of an arm's embrace, To burn a moment on impassioned lips And yield intemperate joy to quivering finger-tips, They knew; and here where morning-glories cling Round carven forms of carefullest artifice, They made a bower where every outward thing Should comment on the cause of their own bliss; With flowers of liveliest hue encompassing That flower that the beloved body is -- That rose that for the banquet of Love's bee Has budded all the aeons of past eternity. But their choice seat was where the garden wall, Crowning a little summit, far and near, Looks over tufted treetops onto all The pleasant outer country; rising here From rustling foliage where cuckoos call On summer evenings, stands a belvedere, Buff-hued, of antique plaster, overrun With flowering vines and weatherworn by rain and sun. Still round the turrets of this antique tower The bougainvillea hangs a crimson crown, Wistaria-vines and clematis in flower, Wreathing the lower surface further down, Hide the old plaster in a very shower Of motley blossoms like a broidered gown. Outside, ascending from the garden grove, A crumbling stairway winds to the one room above. And whoso mounts by this dismantled stair Finds the old pleasure-hall, long disarrayed, Brick-tiled and raftered, and the walls foursquare Ringed all about with a twofold arcade. Backward dense branches intercept the glare Of afternoon with eucalyptus shade; Eastward the level valley-plains expand, Sweet as a queen's survey of her own Fairyland. For through that frame the ivied arches make, Wide tracts of sunny midland charm the eye, Frequent with hamlet, grove, and lucent lake Where the blue hills' inverted contours lie; Far to the east where billowy mountains break In surf of snow against a sapphire sky, Huge thunderheads loom up behind the ranges, Changing from gold to pink as deepening sunset changes; And over plain and far sierra spread The fulgent rays of fading afternoon, Showing each utmost peak and watershed All clarified, each tassel and festoon Of floating cloud embroidered overhead, Like lotus-leaves on bluest waters strewn, Flushing with rose, while all breathes fresh and free In peace and amplitude and bland tranquillity. Dear were such evenings to this gentle pair; Love's tide that launched on with a blast too strong Sweeps toward the foaming reef, the hidden snare, Baffling with fond illusion's siren-song, Too faint, on idle shoals, to linger there Far from Youth's glowing dream, bore them along, With purple sail and steered by seraph hands To isles resplendent in the sunset of romance. And out of this old house a flowery fane, A bridal bower, a pearly pleasure-dome, They built, and furnished it with gold and grain, And bade all spirits of beauty hither come, And winged Love to enter with his train And bless their pillow, and in this his home Make them his priests as Hero was of yore In her sweet girlhood by the blue Dardanian shore. Tree-ferns, therefore, and potted palms they brought, Tripods and urns in rare and curious taste, Polychrome chests and cabinets inwrought With pearl and ivory etched and interlaced; Pendant brocades with massive braid were caught, And chain-slung, oriental lamps so placed To light the lounger on some low divan, Sunken in swelling down and silks from Hindustan. And there was spread, upon the ample floors, Work of the Levantine's laborious loom, Such as by Euxine or Ionian shores Carpets the dim seraglio's scented gloom. Each morn renewed, the garden's flowery stores Blushed in fair vases, ochre and peach-bloom, And little birds through wicker doors left wide Flew in to trill a space from the green world outside. And there was many a dainty attitude, Bronze and eburnean. All but disarrayed, Here in eternal doubt sweet Psyche stood Fain of the bath's delight, yet still afraid Lest aught in that palatial solitude Lurked of most menace to a helpless maid. Therefore forever faltering she stands, Nor yet the last loose fold slips rippling from her hands. Close by upon a beryl column, clad In the fresh flower of adolescent grace, They set the dear Bithynian shepherd lad, The nude Antinous. That gentle face, Forever beautiful, forever sad, Shows but one aspect, moon-like, to our gaze, Yet Fancy pictures how those lips could smile At revelries in Rome, and banquets on the Nile. And there were shapes of Beauty myriads more, Clustering their rosy bridal bed around, Whose scented breadth a silken fabric wore Broidered with peacock hues on creamiest ground, Fit to have graced the barge that Cydnus bore Or Venus' bed in her enchanted mound, While pillows swelled in stuffs of Orient dyes, All broidered with strange fruits and birds of Paradise. 'Twas such a bower as Youth has visions of, Thither with one fair spirit to retire, Lie upon rose-leaves, sleep and wake with Love And feast on kisses to the heart's desire; Where by a casement opening on a grove, Wide to the wood-winds and the sweet birds' choir, A girl might stand and gaze into green boughs, Like Credhe at the window of her golden house. Or most like Vivien, the enchanting fay, Where with her friend, in the strange tower they planned, She lies and dreams eternity away, Above the treetops in Broceliande, Sometimes at twilight when the woods are gray And wolf-packs howl far out across the lande, Waking to love, while up behind the trees The large midsummer moon lifts--even so loved these. For here, their pleasure was to come and sit Oft when the sun sloped midway to the west, Watching with sweet enjoyment interknit The long light slant across the green earth's breast, And clouds upon the ranges opposite, Rolled up into a gleaming thundercrest, Topple and break and fall in purple rain, And mist of summer showers trail out across the plain. Whereon the shafts of ardent light, far-flung Across the luminous azure overhead, Ofttimes in arcs of transient beauty hung The fragmentary rainbow's green and red. Joy it was here to love and to be young, To watch the sun sink to his western bed, And streaming back out of their flaming core The vesperal aurora's glorious banners soar. Tinging each altitude of heaven in turn, Those fiery rays would sweep. The cumuli That peeped above the mountain-tops would burn Carmine a space; the cirrus-whorls on high, More delicate than sprays of maiden fern, Streak with pale rose the peacock-breasted sky, Then blanch. As water-lilies fold at night, Sank back into themselves those plumes of fervid light. And they would watch the first faint stars appear, The blue East blend with the blue hills below, As lovers when their shuddering bliss draws near Into one pulse of fluid rapture grow. New fragrance on the freshening atmosphere Would steal with evening, and the sunset glow Draw deeper down into the wondrous west Round vales of Proserpine and islands of the blest. So dusk would come and mingle lake and shore, The snow-peaks fade to frosty opaline, To pearl the domed clouds the mountains bore, Where late the sun's effulgent fire had been -- Showing as darkness deepened more and more The incandescent lightnings flare within, And Night that furls the lily in the glen And twines impatient arms would fall, and then--and then . . . Sometimes the peasant, coming late from town With empty panniers on his little drove Past the old lookout when the Northern Crown Glittered with Cygnus through the scented grove, Would hear soft noise of lute-strings wafted down And voices singing through the leaves above Those songs that well from the warm heart that woos At balconies in Merida or Vera Cruz. And he would pause under the garden wall, Caught in the spell of that voluptuous strain, With all the sultry South in it, and all Its importunity of love and pain; And he would wait till the last passionate fall Died on the night, and all was still again, -- Then to his upland village wander home, Marvelling whence that flood of elfin song might come. O lyre that Love's white holy hands caress, Youth, from thy bosom welled their passionate lays -- Sweet opportunity for happiness So brief, so passing beautiful--O days, When to the heart's divine indulgences All earth in smiling ministration pays -- Thine was the source whose plenitude, past over, What prize shall rest to pluck, what secret to discover! The wake of color that follows her when May Walks on the hills loose-haired and daisy-crowned, The deep horizons of a summer's day, Fair cities, and the pleasures that abound Where music calls, and crowds in bright array Gather by night to find and to be found; What were these worth or all delightful things Without thine eyes to read their true interpretings! For thee the mountains open glorious gates, To thee white arms put out from orient skies, Earth, like a jewelled bride for one she waits, Decks but to be delicious in thine eyes, Thou guest of honor for one day, whose fetes Eternity has travailed to devise; Ah, grace them well in the brief hour they last! Another's turn prepares, another follows fast. Yet not without one fond memorial Let my sun set who found the world so fair! Frail verse, when Time the singer's coronal Has rent, and stripped the rose-leaves from his hair, Be thou my tablet on the temple wall! Among the pious testimonials there, Witness how sweetly on my heart as well The miracles of dawn and starry evening fell! Speak of one then who had the lust to feel, And, from the hues that far horizons take, And cloud and sunset, drank the wild appeal, Too deep to live for aught but life's sweet sake, Whose only motive was the will to kneel Where Beauty's purest benediction spake, Who only coveted what grove and field And sunshine and green Earth and tender arms could yield -- A nympholept, through pleasant days and drear Seeking his faultless adolescent dream, A pilgrim down the paths that disappear In mist and rainbows on the world's extreme, A helpless voyager who all too near The mouth of Life's fair flower-bordered stream, Clutched at Love's single respite in his need More than the drowning swimmer clutches at a reed -- That coming one whose feet in other days Shall bleed like mine for ever having, more Than any purpose, felt the need to praise And seek the angelic image to adore, In love with Love, its wonderful, sweet ways Counting what most makes life worth living for, That so some relic may be his to see How I loved these things too and they were dear to me. I sometimes think a conscious happiness Mantles through all the rose's sentient vine When summer winds with myriad calyces Of bloom its clambering height incarnadine; I sometimes think that cleaving lips, no less, And limbs that crowned desires at length entwine Are nerves through which that being drinks delight, Whose frame is the green Earth robed round with day and night. And such were theirs: the traveller without, Pausing at night under the orchard trees, Wondered and crossed himself in holy doubt, For through their song and in the murmuring breeze It seemed angelic choirs were all about Mingling in universal harmonies, As though, responsive to the chords they woke, All Nature into sweet epithalamium broke. And still they think a spirit haunts the place: 'Tis said, when Night has drawn her jewelled pall And through the branches twinkling fireflies trace Their mimic constellations, if it fall That one should see the moon rise through the lace Of blossomy boughs above the garden wall, That surely would he take great ill thereof And famish in a fit of unexpressive love. But this I know not, for what time the wain Was loosened and the lily's petal furled, Then I would rise, climb the old wall again, And pausing look forth on the sundown world, Scan the wide reaches of the wondrous plain, The hamlet sites where settling smoke lay curled, The poplar-bordered roads, and far away Fair snowpeaks colored with the sun's last ray. Waves of faint sound would pulsate from afar -- Faint song and preludes of the summer night; Deep in the cloudless west the evening star Hung 'twixt the orange and the emerald light; From the dark vale where shades crepuscular Dimmed the old grove-girt belfry glimmering white, Throbbing, as gentlest breezes rose or fell, Came the sweet invocation of the evening bell. The Torture of Cuauhtemoc Their strength had fed on this when Death's white arms Came sleeved in vapors and miasmal dew, Curling across the jungle's ferny floor, Becking each fevered brain. On bleak divides, Where Sleep grew niggardly for nipping cold That twinged blue lips into a mouthed curse, Not back to Seville and its sunny plains Winged their brief-biding dreams, but once again, Lords of a palace in Tenochtitlan, They guarded Montezuma's treasure-hoard. Gold, like some finny harvest of the sea, Poured out knee deep around the rifted floors, Shiny and sparkling,--arms and crowns and rings: Gold, sweet to toy with as beloved hair, -- To plunge the lustful, crawling fingers down, Arms elbow deep, and draw them out again, And watch the glinting metal trickle off, Even as at night some fisherman, home bound With speckled cargo in his hollow keel Caught off Campeche or the Isle of Pines, Dips in his paddle, lifts it forth again, And laughs to see the luminous white drops Fall back in flakes of fire. . . . Gold was the dream That cheered that desperate enterprise. And now? . . . Victory waited on the arms of Spain, Fallen was the lovely city by the lake, The sunny Venice of the western world; There many corpses, rotting in the wind, Poked up stiff limbs, but in the leprous rags No jewel caught the sun, no tawny chain Gleamed, as the prying halberds raked them o'er. Pillage that ran red-handed through the streets Came railing home at evening empty-palmed; And they, on that sad night a twelvemonth gone, Who, ounce by ounce, dear as their own life's blood Retreating, cast the cumbrous load away: They, when brown foemen lopped the bridges down, Who tipped thonged chests into the stream below And over wealth that might have ransomed kings Passed on to safety;--cheated, guerdonless -- Found (through their fingers the bright booty slipped) A city naked, of that golden dream Shorn in one moment like a sunset sky. Deep in a chamber that no cheerful ray Purged of damp air, where in unbroken night Black scorpions nested in the sooty beams, Helpless and manacled they led him down -- Cuauhtemotzin--and other lords beside -- All chieftains of the people, heroes all -- And stripped their feathered robes and bound them there On short stone settles sloping to the head, But where the feet projected, underneath Heaped the red coals. Their swarthy fronts illumed, The bearded Spaniards, helmed and haubergeoned, Paced up and down beneath the lurid vault. Some kneeling fanned the glowing braziers; some Stood at the sufferers' heads and all the while Hissed in their ears: "The gold . . . the gold . . . the gold. Where have ye hidden it--the chested gold? Speak--and the torments cease!" They answered not. Past those proud lips whose key their sovereign claimed No accent fell to chide or to betray, Only it chanced that bound beside the king Lay one whom Nature, more than other men Framing for delicate and perfumed ease, Not yet, along the happy ways of Youth, Had weaned from gentle usages so far To teach that fortitude that warriors feel And glory in the proof. He answered not, But writhing with intolerable pain, Convulsed in every limb, and all his face Wrought to distortion with the agony, Turned on his lord a look of wild appeal, The secret half atremble on his lips, Livid and quivering, that waited yet For leave--for leave to utter it--one sign -- One word--one little word--to ease his pain. As one reclining in the banquet hall, Propped on an elbow, garlanded with flowers, Saw lust and greed and boisterous revelry Surge round him on the tides of wine, but he, Staunch in the ethic of an antique school -- Stoic or Cynic or of Pyrrho's mind -- With steady eyes surveyed the unbridled scene, Himself impassive, silent, self-contained: So sat the Indian prince, with brow unblanched, Amid the tortured and the torturers. He who had seen his hopes made desolate, His realm despoiled, his early crown deprived him, And watched while Pestilence and Famine piled His stricken people in their reeking doors, Whence glassy eyes looked out and lean brown arms Stretched up to greet him in one last farewell As back and forth he paced along the streets With words of hopeless comfort--what was this That one should weaken now? He weakened not. Whate'er was in his heart, he neither dealt In pity nor in scorn, but, turning round, Met that racked visage with his own unmoved, Bent on the sufferer his mild calm eyes, And while the pangs smote sharper, in a voice, As who would speak not all in gentleness Nor all disdain, said: "Yes! And am -I- then Upon a bed of roses?" Stung with shame -- Shame bitterer than his anguish--to betray Such cowardice before the man he loved, And merit such rebuke, the boy grew calm; And stilled his struggling limbs and moaning cries, And shook away his tears, and strove to smile, And turned his face against the wall--and died. The Nympholept There was a boy--not above childish fears -- With steps that faltered now and straining ears, Timid, irresolute, yet dauntless still, Who one bright dawn, when each remotest hill Stood sharp and clear in Heaven's unclouded blue And all Earth shimmered with fresh-beaded dew, Risen in the first beams of the gladdening sun, Walked up into the mountains. One by one Each towering trunk beneath his sturdy stride Fell back, and ever wider and more wide The boundless prospect opened. Long he strayed, From dawn till the last trace of slanting shade Had vanished from the canyons, and, dismayed At that far length to which his path had led, He paused--at such a height where overhead The clouds hung close, the air came thin and chill, And all was hushed and calm and very still, Save, from abysmal gorges, where the sound Of tumbling waters rose, and all around The pines, by those keen upper currents blown, Muttered in multitudinous monotone. Here, with the wind in lovely locks laid bare, With arms oft raised in dedicative prayer, Lost in mute rapture and adoring wonder, He stood, till the far noise of noontide thunder, Rolled down upon the muffled harmonies Of wind and waterfall and whispering trees, Made loneliness more lone. Some Panic fear Would seize him then, as they who seemed to hear In Tracian valleys or Thessalian woods The god's hallooing wake the leafy solitudes; I think it was the same: some piercing sense Of Deity's pervasive immanence, The Life that visible Nature doth indwell Grown great and near and all but palpable . . . He might not linger, but with winged strides Like one pursued, fled down the mountain-sides -- Down the long ridge that edged the steep ravine, By glade and flowery lawn and upland green, And never paused nor felt assured again But where the grassy foothills opened. Then, While shadows lengthened on the plain below And the sun vanished and the sunset-glow Looked back upon the world with fervid eye Through the barred windows of the western sky, Homeward he fared, while many a look behind Showed the receding ranges dim-outlined, Highland and hollow where his path had lain, Veiled in deep purple of the mountain rain. The Wanderer To see the clouds his spirit yearned toward so Over new mountains piled and unploughed waves, Back of old-storied spires and architraves To watch Arcturus rise or Fomalhaut, And roused by street-cries in strange tongues when day Flooded with gold some domed metropolis, Between new towers to waken and new bliss Spread on his pillow in a wondrous way: These were his joys. Oft under bulging crates, Coming to market with his morning load, The peasant found him early on his road To greet the sunrise at the city-gates, -- There where the meadows waken in its rays, Golden with mist, and the great roads commence, And backward, where the chimney-tops are dense, Cathedral-arches glimmer through the haze. White dunes that breaking show a strip of sea, A plowman and his team against the blue, Swiss pastures musical with cowbells, too, And poplar-lined canals in Picardie, And coast-towns where the vultures back and forth Sail in the clear depths of the tropic sky, And swallows in the sunset where they fly Over gray Gothic cities in the north, And the wine-cellar and the chorus there, The dance-hall and a face among the crowd, -- Were all delights that made him sing aloud For joy to sojourn in a world so fair. Back of his footsteps as he journeyed fell Range after range; ahead blue hills emerged. Before him tireless to applaud it surged The sweet interminable spectacle. And like the west behind a sundown sea Shone the past joys his memory retraced, And bright as the blue east he always faced Beckoned the loves and joys that were to be. From every branch a blossom for his brow He gathered, singing down Life's flower-lined road, And youth impelled his spirit as he strode Like winged Victory on the galley's prow. That Loveliness whose being sun and star, Green Earth and dawn and amber evening robe, That lamp whereof the opalescent globe The season's emulative splendors are, That veiled divinity whose beams transpire From every pore of universal space, As the fair soul illumes the lovely face -- That was his guest, his passion, his desire. His heart the love of Beauty held as hides One gem most pure a casket of pure gold. It was too rich a lesser thing to hold; It was not large enough for aught besides. The Need to Love The need to love that all the stars obey Entered my heart and banished all beside. Bare were the gardens where I used to stray; Faded the flowers that one time satisfied. Before the beauty of the west on fire, The moonlit hills from cloister-casements viewed, Cloud-like arose the image of desire, And cast out peace and maddened solitude. I sought the City and the hopes it held: With smoke and brooding vapors intercurled, As the thick roofs and walls close-paralleled Shut out the fair horizons of the world -- A truant from the fields and rustic joy, In my changed thought that image even so Shut out the gods I worshipped as a boy And all the pure delights I used to know. Often the veil has trembled at some tide Of lovely reminiscence and revealed How much of beauty Nature holds beside Sweet lips that sacrifice and arms that yield: Clouds, window-framed, beyond the huddled eaves When summer cumulates their golden chains, Or from the parks the smell of burning leaves, Fragrant of childhood in the country lanes, An organ-grinder's melancholy tune In rainy streets, or from an attic sill The blue skies of a windy afternoon Where our kites climbed once from some grassy hill: And my soul once more would be wrapped entire In the pure peace and blessing of those years Before the fierce infection of Desire Had ravaged all the flesh. Through starting tears Shone that lost Paradise; but, if it did, Again ere long the prison-shades would fall That Youth condemns itself to walk amid, So narrow, but so beautiful withal. And I have followed Fame with less devotion, And kept no real ambition but to see Rise from the foam of Nature's sunlit ocean My dream of palpable divinity; And aught the world contends for to mine eye Seemed not so real a meaning of success As only once to clasp before I die My vision of embodied happiness. El Extraviado Over the radiant ridges borne out on the offshore wind, I have sailed as a butterfly sails whose priming wings unfurled Leave the familiar gardens and visited fields behind To follow a cloud in the east rose-flushed on the rim of the world. I have strayed from the trodden highway for walking with upturned eyes On the way of the wind in the treetops, and the drift of the tinted rack. For the will to be losing no wonder of sunny or starlit skies I have chosen the sod for my pillow and a threadbare coat for my back. Evening of ample horizons, opaline, delicate, pure, Shadow of clouds on green valleys, trailed over meadows and trees, Cities of ardent adventure where the harvests of Joy mature, Forests whose murmuring voices are amorous prophecies, World of romance and profusion, still round my journey spread The glamours, the glints, the enthralments, the nurture of one whose feet From hours unblessed by beauty nor lighted by love have fled As the shade of the tomb on his pathway and the scent of the winding-sheet. I never could rest from roving nor put from my heart this need To be seeing how lovably Nature in flower and face hath wrought, -- In flower and meadow and mountain and heaven where the white clouds breed And the cunning of silken meshes where the heart's desire lies caught. Over the azure expanses, on the offshore breezes borne, I have sailed as a butterfly sails, nor recked where the impulse led, Sufficed with the sunshine and freedom, the warmth and the summer morn, The infinite glory surrounding, the infinite blue ahead. La Nue Oft when sweet music undulated round, Like the full moon out of a perfumed sea Thine image from the waves of blissful sound Rose and thy sudden light illumined me. And in the country, leaf and flower and air Would alter and the eternal shape emerge; Because they spoke of thee the fields seemed fair, And Joy to wait at the horizon's verge. The little cloud-gaps in the east that filled Gray afternoons with bits of tenderest blue Were windows in a palace pearly-silled That thy voluptuous traits came glimmering through. And in the city, dominant desire For which men toil within its prison-bars, I watched thy white feet moving in the mire And thy white forehead hid among the stars. Mystical, feminine, provoking, nude, Radiant there with rosy arms outspread, Sum of fulfillment, sovereign attitude, Sensual with laughing lips and thrown-back head, Draped in the rainbow on the summer hills, Hidden in sea-mist down the hot coast-line, Couched on the clouds that fiery sunset fills, Blessed, remote, impersonal, divine; The gold all color and grace are folded o'er, The warmth all beauty and tenderness embower, -- Thou quiverest at Nature's perfumed core, The pistil of a myriad-petalled flower. Round thee revolves, illimitably wide, The world's desire, as stars around their pole. Round thee all earthly loveliness beside Is but the radiate, infinite aureole. Thou art the poem on the cosmic page -- In rubric written on its golden ground -- That Nature paints her flowers and foliage And rich-illumined commentary round. Thou art the rose that the world's smiles and tears Hover about like butterflies and bees. Thou art the theme the music of the spheres Echoes in endless, variant harmonies. Thou art the idol in the altar-niche Faced by Love's congregated worshippers, Thou art the holy sacrament round which The vast cathedral is the universe. Thou art the secret in the crystal where, For the last light upon the mystery Man, In his lone tower and ultimate despair, Searched the gray-bearded Zoroastrian. And soft and warm as in the magic sphere, Deep-orbed as in its erubescent fire, So in my heart thine image would appear, Curled round with the red flames of my desire. All That's Not Love . . . All that's not love is the dearth of my days, The leaves of the volume with rubric unwrit, The temple in times without prayer, without praise, The altar unset and the candle unlit. Let me survive not the lovable sway Of early desire, nor see when it goes The courts of Life's abbey in ivied decay, Whence sometime sweet anthems and incense arose. The delicate hues of its sevenfold rings The rainbow outlives not; their yellow and blue The butterfly sees not dissolve from his wings, But even with their beauty life fades from them too. No more would I linger past Love's ardent bounds Nor live for aught else but the joy that it craves, That, burden and essence of all that surrounds, Is the song in the wind and the smile on the waves. Paris I First, London, for its myriads; for its height, Manhattan heaped in towering stalagmite; But Paris for the smoothness of the paths That lead the heart unto the heart's delight. . . . Fair loiterer on the threshold of those days When there's no lovelier prize the world displays Than, having beauty and your twenty years, You have the means to conquer and the ways, And coming where the crossroads separate And down each vista glories and wonders wait, Crowning each path with pinnacles so fair You know not which to choose, and hesitate -- Oh, go to Paris. . . . In the midday gloom Of some old quarter take a little room That looks off over Paris and its towers From Saint Gervais round to the Emperor's Tomb, -- So high that you can hear a mating dove Croon down the chimney from the roof above, See Notre Dame and know how sweet it is To wake between Our Lady and our love. And have a little balcony to bring Fair plants to fill with verdure and blossoming, That sparrows seek, to feed from pretty hands, And swallows circle over in the Spring. There of an evening you shall sit at ease In the sweet month of flowering chestnut-trees, There with your little darling in your arms, Your pretty dark-eyed Manon or Louise. And looking out over the domes and towers That chime the fleeting quarters and the hours, While the bright clouds banked eastward back of them Blush in the sunset, pink as hawthorn flowers, You cannot fail to think, as I have done, Some of life's ends attained, so you be one Who measures life's attainment by the hours That Joy has rescued from oblivion. II Come out into the evening streets. The green light lessens in the west. The city laughs and liveliest her fervid pulse of pleasure beats. The belfry on Saint Severin strikes eight across the smoking eaves: Come out under the lights and leaves to the Reine Blanche on Saint Germain. . . . Now crowded diners fill the floor of brasserie and restaurant. Shrill voices cry "L'Intransigeant," and corners echo "Paris-Sport." Where rows of tables from the street are screened with shoots of box and bay, The ragged minstrels sing and play and gather sous from those that eat. And old men stand with menu-cards, inviting passers-by to dine On the bright terraces that line the Latin Quarter boulevards. . . . But, having drunk and eaten well, 'tis pleasant then to stroll along And mingle with the merry throng that promenades on Saint Michel. Here saunter types of every sort. The shoddy jostle with the chic: Turk and Roumanian and Greek; student and officer and sport; Slavs with their peasant, Christ-like heads, and courtezans like powdered moths, And peddlers from Algiers, with cloths bright-hued and stitched with golden threads; And painters with big, serious eyes go rapt in dreams, fantastic shapes In corduroys and Spanish capes and locks uncut and flowing ties; And lovers wander two by two, oblivious among the press, And making one of them no less, all lovers shall be dear to you: All laughing lips you move among, all happy hearts that, knowing what Makes life worth while, have wasted not the sweet reprieve of being young. "Comment ca va!" "Mon vieux!" "Mon cher!" Friends greet and banter as they pass. 'Tis sweet to see among the mass comrades and lovers everywhere, A law that's sane, a Love that's free, and men of every birth and blood Allied in one great brotherhood of Art and Joy and Poverty. . . . The open cafe-windows frame loungers at their liqueurs and beer, And walking past them one can hear fragments of Tosca and Boheme. And in the brilliant-lighted door of cinemas the barker calls, And lurid posters paint the walls with scenes of Love and crime and war. But follow past the flaming lights, borne onward with the stream of feet, Where Bullier's further up the street is marvellous on Thursday nights. Here all Bohemia flocks apace; you could not often find elsewhere So many happy heads and fair assembled in one time and place. Under the glare and noise and heat the galaxy of dancing whirls, Smokers, with covered heads, and girls dressed in the costume of the street. From tables packed around the wall the crowds that drink and frolic there Spin serpentines into the air far out over the reeking hall, That, settling where the coils unroll, tangle with pink and green and blue The crowds that rag to "Hitchy-koo" and boston to the "Barcarole". . . . Here Mimi ventures, at fifteen, to make her debut in romance, And join her sisters in the dance and see the life that they have seen. Her hair, a tight hat just allows to brush beneath the narrow brim, Docked, in the model's present whim, 'frise' and banged above the brows. Uncorseted, her clinging dress with every step and turn betrays, In pretty and provoking ways her adolescent loveliness, As guiding Gaby or Lucile she dances, emulating them In each disturbing stratagem and each lascivious appeal. Each turn a challenge, every pose an invitation to compete, Along the maze of whirling feet the grave-eyed little wanton goes, And, flaunting all the hue that lies in childish cheeks and nubile waist, She passes, charmingly unchaste, illumining ignoble eyes. . . . But now the blood from every heart leaps madder through abounding veins As first the fascinating strains of "El Irresistible" start. Caught in the spell of pulsing sound, impatient elbows lift and yield The scented softnesses they shield to arms that catch and close them round, Surrender, swift to be possessed, the silken supple forms beneath To all the bliss the measures breathe and all the madness they suggest. Crowds congregate and make a ring. Four deep they stand and strain to see The tango in its ecstasy of glowing lives that clasp and cling. Lithe limbs relaxed, exalted eyes fastened on vacancy, they seem To float upon the perfumed stream of some voluptuous Paradise, Or, rapt in some Arabian Night, to rock there, cradled and subdued, In a luxurious lassitude of rhythm and sensual delight. And only when the measures cease and terminate the flowing dance They waken from their magic trance and join the cries that clamor "Bis!" . . . Midnight adjourns the festival. The couples climb the crowded stair, And out into the warm night air go singing fragments of the ball. Close-folded in desire they pass, or stop to drink and talk awhile In the cafes along the mile from Bullier's back to Montparnasse: The "Closerie" or "La Rotonde", where smoking, under lamplit trees, Sit Art's enamored devotees, chatting across their 'brune' and 'blonde'. . . . Make one of them and come to know sweet Paris--not as many do, Seeing but the folly of the few, the froth, the tinsel, and the show -- But taking some white proffered hand that from Earth's barren every day Can lead you by the shortest way into Love's florid fairyland. And that divine enchanted life that lurks under Life's common guise -- That city of romance that lies within the City's toil and strife -- Shall, knocking, open to your hands, for Love is all its golden key, And one's name murmured tenderly the only magic it demands. And when all else is gray and void in the vast gulf of memory, Green islands of delight shall be all blessed moments so enjoyed: When vaulted with the city skies, on its cathedral floors you stood, And, priest of a bright brotherhood, performed the mystic sacrifice, At Love's high altar fit to stand, with fire and incense aureoled, The celebrant in cloth of gold with Spring and Youth on either hand. III Choral Song Have ye gazed on its grandeur Or stood where it stands With opal and amber Adorning the lands, And orcharded domes Of the hue of all flowers? Sweet melody roams Through its blossoming bowers, Sweet bells usher in from its belfries the train of the honey-sweet hour. A city resplendent, Fulfilled of good things, On its ramparts are pendent The bucklers of kings. Broad banners unfurled Are afloat in its air. The lords of the world Look for harborage there. None finds save he comes as a bridegroom, having roses and vine in his hair. 'Tis the city of Lovers, There many paths meet. Blessed he above others, With faltering feet, Who past its proud spires Intends not nor hears The noise of its lyres Grow faint in his ears! Men reach it through portals of triumph, but leave through a postern of tears. It was thither, ambitious, We came for Youth's right, When our lips yearned for kisses As moths for the light, When our souls cried for Love As for life-giving rain Wan leaves of the grove, Withered grass of the plain, And our flesh ached for Love-flesh beside it with bitter, intolerable pain. Under arbor and trellis, Full of flutes, full of flowers, What mad fortunes befell us, What glad orgies were ours! In the days of our youth, In our festal attire, When the sweet flesh was smooth, When the swift blood was fire, And all Earth paid in orange and purple to pavilion the bed of Desire! The Sultan's Palace My spirit only lived to look on Beauty's face, As only when they clasp the arms seem served aright; As in their flesh inheres the impulse to embrace, To gaze on Loveliness was my soul's appetite. I have roamed far in search; white road and plunging bow Were keys in the blue doors where my desire was set; Obedient to their lure, my lips and laughing brow The hill-showers and the spray of many seas have wet. Hot are enamored hands, the fragrant zone unbound, To leave no dear delight unfelt, unfondled o'er, The will possessed my heart to girdle Earth around With their insatiate need to wonder and adore. The flowers in the fields, the surf upon the sands, The sunset and the clouds it turned to blood and wine, Were shreds of the thin veil behind whose beaded strands A radiant visage rose, serene, august, divine. A noise of summer wind astir in starlit trees, A song where sensual love's delirium rose and fell, Were rites that moved my soul more than the devotee's When from the blazing choir rings out the altar bell. I woke amid the pomp of a proud palace; writ In tinted arabesque on walls that gems o'erlay, The names of caliphs were who once held court in it, Their baths and bowers were mine to dwell in for a day. Their robes and rings were mine to draw from shimmering trays -- Brocades and broidered silks, topaz and tourmaline -- Their turban-cloths to wind in proud capricious ways, And fasten plumes and pearls and pendent sapphires in. I rose; far music drew my steps in fond pursuit Down tessellated floors and towering peristyles: Through groves of colonnades fair lamps were blushing fruit, On seas of green mosaic soft rugs were flowery isles. And there were verdurous courts that scalloped arches wreathed, Where fountains plashed in bowls of lapis lazuli. Through enigmatic doors voluptuous accents breathed, And having Youth I had their Open Sesame. I paused where shadowy walls were hung with cloths of gold, And tinted twilight streamed through storied panes above. In lamplit alcoves deep as flowers when they unfold Soft cushions called to rest and fragrant fumes to love. I hungered; at my hand delicious dainties teemed -- Fair pyramids of fruit; pastry in sugared piles. I thirsted; in cool cups inviting vintage beamed -- Sweet syrups from the South; brown muscat from the isles. I yearned for passionate Love; faint gauzes fell away. Pillowed in rosy light I found my heart's desire. Over the silks and down her florid beauty lay, As over orient clouds the sunset's coral fire. Joys that had smiled afar, a visionary form, Behind the ranges hid, remote and rainbow-dyed, Drew near unto my heart, a wonder soft and warm, To touch, to stroke, to clasp, to sleep and wake beside. Joy, that where summer seas and hot horizons shone Had been the outspread arms I gave my youth to seek, Drew near; awhile its pulse strove sweetly with my own, Awhile I felt its breath astir upon my cheek. I was so happy there; so fleeting was my stay, -- What wonder if, assailed with vistas so divine, I only lived to search and sample them the day When between dawn and dusk the sultan's courts were mine! Speak not of other worlds of happiness to be, As though in any fond imaginary sphere Lay more to tempt man's soul to immortality Than ripens for his bliss abundant now and here! Flowerlike I hope to die as flowerlike was my birth. Rooted in Nature's just benignant law like them, I want no better joys than those that from green Earth My spirit's blossom drew through the sweet body's stem. I see no dread in death, no horror to abhor. I never thought it else than but to cease to dwell Spectator, and resolve most naturally once more Into the dearly loved eternal spectacle. Unto the fields and flowers this flesh I found so fair I yield; do you, dear friend, over your rose-crowned wine, Murmur my name some day as though my lips were there, And frame your mouth as though its blushing kiss were mine. Yea, where the banquet-hall is brilliant with young men, You whose bright youth it might have thrilled my breast to know, Drink . . . and perhaps my lips, insatiate even then Of lips to hang upon, may find their loved ones so. Unto the flush of dawn and evening I commend This immaterial self and flamelike part of me, -- Unto the azure haze that hangs at the world's end, The sunshine on the hills, the starlight on the sea, -- Unto angelic Earth, whereof the lives of those Who love and dream great dreams and deeply feel may be The elemental cells and nervules that compose Its divine consciousness and joy and harmony. Fragments I In that fair capital where Pleasure, crowned Amidst her myriad courtiers, riots and rules, I too have been a suitor. Radiant eyes Were my life's warmth and sunshine, outspread arms My gilded deep horizons. I rejoiced In yielding to all amorous influence And multiple impulsion of the flesh, To feel within my being surge and sway The force that all the stars acknowledge too. Amid the nebulous humanity Where I an atom crawled and cleaved and sundered, I saw a million motions, but one law; And from the city's splendor to my eyes The vapors passed and there was nought but Love, A ferment turbulent, intensely fair, Where Beauty beckoned and where Strength pursued. II There was a time when I thought much of Fame, And laid the golden edifice to be That in the clear light of eternity Should fitly house the glory of my name. But swifter than my fingers pushed their plan, Over the fair foundation scarce begun, While I with lovers dallied in the sun, The ivy clambered and the rose-vine ran. And now, too late to see my vision, rise, In place of golden pinnacles and towers, Only some sunny mounds of leaves and flowers, Only beloved of birds and butterflies. My friends were duped, my favorers deceived; But sometimes, musing sorrowfully there, That flowered wreck has seemed to me so fair I scarce regret the temple unachieved. III For there were nights . . . my love to him whose brow Has glistened with the spoils of nights like those, Home turning as a conqueror turns home, What time green dawn down every street uprears Arches of triumph! He has drained as well Joy's perfumed bowl and cried as I have cried: Be Fame their mistress whom Love passes by. This only matters: from some flowery bed, Laden with sweetness like a homing bee, If one have known what bliss it is to come, Bearing on hands and breast and laughing lips The fragrance of his youth's dear rose. To him The hills have bared their treasure, the far clouds Unveiled the vision that o'er summer seas Drew on his thirsting arms. This last thing known, He can court danger, laugh at perilous odds, And, pillowed on a memory so sweet, Unto oblivious eternity Without regret yield his victorious soul, The blessed pilgrim of a vow fulfilled. IV What is Success? Out of the endless ore Of deep desire to coin the utmost gold Of passionate memory; to have lived so well That the fifth moon, when it swims up once more Through orchard boughs where mating orioles build And apple flowers unfold, Find not of that dear need that all things tell The heart unburdened nor the arms unfilled. O Love, whereof my boyhood was the dream, My youth the beautiful novitiate, Life was so slight a thing and thou so great, How could I make thee less than all-supreme! In thy sweet transports not alone I thought Mingled the twain that panted breast to breast. The sun and stars throbbed with them; they were caught Into the pulse of Nature and possessed By the same light that consecrates it so. Love!--'tis the payment of the debt we owe The beauty of the world, and whensoe'er In silks and perfume and unloosened hair The loveliness of lovers, face to face, Lies folded in the adorable embrace, Doubt not as of a perfect sacrifice That soul partakes whose inspiration fills The springtime and the depth of summer skies, The rainbow and the clouds behind the hills, That excellence in earth and air and sea That makes things as they are the real divinity. Thirty Sonnets: Sonnet I Down the strait vistas where a city street Fades in pale dust and vaporous distances, Stained with far fumes the light grows less and less And the sky reddens round the day's retreat. Now out of orient chambers, cool and sweet, Like Nature's pure lustration, Dusk comes down. Now the lamps brighten and the quickening town Rings with the trample of returning feet. And Pleasure, risen from her own warm mould Sunk all the drowsy and unloved daylight In layers of odorous softness, Paphian girls Cover with gauze, with satin, and with pearls, Crown, and about her spangly vestments fold The ermine of the empire of the Night. Sonnet II Her courts are by the flux of flaming ways, Between the rivers and the illumined sky Whose fervid depths reverberate from on high Fierce lustres mingled in a fiery haze. They mark it inland; blithe and fair of face Her suitors follow, guessing by the glare Beyond the hilltops in the evening air How bright the cressets at her portals blaze. On the pure fronts Defeat ere many a day Falls like the soot and dirt on city-snow; There hopes deferred lie sunk in piteous seams. Her paths are disillusion and decay, With ruins piled and unapparent woe, The graves of Beauty and the wreck of dreams. Sonnet III There was a youth around whose early way White angels hung in converse and sweet choir, Teaching in summer clouds his thought to stray, -- In cloud and far horizon to desire. His life was nursed in beauty, like the stream Born of clear showers and the mountain dew, Close under snow-clad summits where they gleam Forever pure against heaven's orient blue. Within the city's shades he walked at last. Faint and more faint in sad recessional Down the dim corridors of Time outworn, A chorus ebbed from that forsaken past, A hymn of glories fled beyond recall With the lost heights and splendor of life's morn. Sonnet IV Up at his attic sill the South wind came And days of sun and storm but never peace. Along the town's tumultuous arteries He heard the heart-throbs of a sentient frame: Each night the whistles in the bay, the same Whirl of incessant wheels and clanging cars: For smoke that half obscured, the circling stars Burnt like his youth with but a sickly flame. Up to his attic came the city cries -- The throes with which her iron sinews heave -- And yet forever behind prison doors Welled in his heart and trembled in his eyes The light that hangs on desert hills at eve And tints the sea on solitary shores. . . . Sonnet V A tide of beauty with returning May Floods the fair city; from warm pavements fume Odors endeared; down avenues in bloom The chestnut-trees with phallic spires are gay. Over the terrace flows the thronged cafe; The boulevards are streams of hurrying sound; And through the streets, like veins when they abound, The lust for pleasure throbs itself away. Here let me live, here let me still pursue Phantoms of bliss that beckon and recede, -- Thy strange allurements, City that I love, Maze of romance, where I have followed too The dream Youth treasures of its dearest need And stars beyond thy towers bring tidings of. Sonnet VI Give me the treble of thy horns and hoofs, The ponderous undertones of 'bus and tram, A garret and a glimpse across the roofs Of clouds blown eastward over Notre Dame, The glad-eyed streets and radiant gatherings Where I drank deep the bliss of being young, The strife and sweet potential flux of things I sought Youth's dream of happiness among! It walks here aureoled with the city-light, Forever through the myriad-featured mass Flaunting not far its fugitive embrace, -- Heard sometimes in a song across the night, Caught in a perfume from the crowds that pass, And when love yields to love seen face to face. Sonnet VII To me, a pilgrim on that journey bound Whose stations Beauty's bright examples are, As of a silken city famed afar Over the sands for wealth and holy ground, Came the report of one--a woman crowned With all perfection, blemishless and high, As the full moon amid the moonlit sky, With the world's praise and wonder clad around. And I who held this notion of success: To leave no form of Nature's loveliness Unworshipped, if glad eyes have access there, -- Beyond all earthly bounds have made my goal To find where that sweet shrine is and extol The hand that triumphed in a work so fair. Sonnet VIII Oft as by chance, a little while apart The pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn, Sweet Beauty, opening on the impoverished heart, Beams like the jewel on the breast of dawn: Not though high heaven should rend would deeper awe Fill me than penetrates my spirit thus, Nor all those signs the Patmian prophet saw Seem a new heaven and earth so marvelous; But, clad thenceforth in iridescent dyes, The fair world glistens, and in after days The memory of kind lips and laughing eyes Lives in my step and lightens all my face, -- So they who found the Earthly Paradise Still breathed, returned, of that sweet, joyful place. Sonnet IX Amid the florid multitude her face Was like the full moon seen behind the lace Of orchard boughs where clouded blossoms part When Spring shines in the world and in the heart. As the full-moon-beams to the ferny floor Of summer woods through flower and foliage pour, So to my being's innermost recess Flooded the light of so much loveliness; She held as in a vase of priceless ware The wine that over arid ways and bare My youth was the pathetic thirsting for, And where she moved the veil of Nature grew Diaphanous and that radiance mantled through Which, when I see, I tremble and adore. Sonnet X A splendor, flamelike, born to be pursued, With palms extent for amorous charity And eyes incensed with love for all they see, A wonder more to be adored than wooed, On whom the grace of conscious womanhood Adorning every little thing she does Sits like enchantment, making glorious A careless pose, a casual attitude; Around her lovely shoulders mantle-wise Hath come the realm of those old fabulous queens Whose storied loves are Art's rich heritage, To keep alive in this our latter age That force that moving through sweet Beauty's means Lifts up Man's soul to towering enterprise. Sonnet XI * A paraphrase of Petrarca, 'Quando fra l'altre donne . . .' When among creatures fair of countenance Love comes enformed in such proud character, So far as other beauty yields to her, So far the breast with fiercer longing pants; I bless the spot, and hour, and circumstance, That wed desire to a thing so high, And say, Glad soul, rejoice, for thou and I Of bliss unpaired are made participants; Hence have come ardent thoughts and waking dreams That, feeding Fancy from so sweet a cup, Leave it no lust for gross imaginings. Through her the woman's perfect beauty gleams That while it gazes lifts the spirit up To that high source from which all beauty springs. Sonnet XII Like as a dryad, from her native bole Coming at dusk, when the dim stars emerge, To a slow river at whose silent verge Tall poplars tremble and deep grasses roll, Come thou no less and, kneeling in a shoal Of the freaked flag and meadow buttercup, Bend till thine image from the pool beam up Arched with blue heaven like an aureole. See how adorable in fancy then Lives the fair face it mirrors even so, O thou whose beauty moving among men Is like the wind's way on the woods below, Filling all nature where its pathway lies With arms that supplicate and trembling sighs. Sonnet XIII I fancied, while you stood conversing there, Superb, in every attitude a queen, Her ermine thus Boadicea bare, So moved amid the multitude Faustine. My life, whose whole religion Beauty is, Be charged with sin if ever before yours A lesser feeling crossed my mind than his Who owning grandeur marvels and adores. Nay, rather in my dream-world's ivory tower I made your image the high pearly sill, And mounting there in many a wistful hour, Burdened with love, I trembled and was still, Seeing discovered from that azure height Remote, untrod horizons of delight. Sonnet XIV It may be for the world of weeds and tares And dearth in Nature of sweet Beauty's rose That oft as Fortune from ten thousand shows One from the train of Love's true courtiers Straightway on him who gazes, unawares, Deep wonder seizes and swift trembling grows, Reft by that sight of purpose and repose, Hardly its weight his fainting breast upbears. Then on the soul from some ancestral place Floods back remembrance of its heavenly birth, When, in the light of that serener sphere, It saw ideal beauty face to face That through the forms of this our meaner Earth Shines with a beam less steadfast and less clear. Sonnet XV Above the ruin of God's holy place, Where man-forsaken lay the bleeding rood, Whose hands, when men had craved substantial food, Gave not, nor folded when they cried, Embrace, I saw exalted in the latter days Her whom west winds with natal foam bedewed, Wafted toward Cyprus, lily-breasted, nude, Standing with arms out-stretched and flower-like face. And, sick with all those centuries of tears Shed in the penance for factitious woe, Once more I saw the nations at her feet, For Love shone in their eyes, and in their ears Come unto me, Love beckoned them, for lo! The breast your lips abjured is still as sweet. Sonnet XVI Who shall invoke her, who shall be her priest, With single rites the common debt to pay? On some green headland fronting to the East Our fairest boy shall kneel at break of day. Naked, uplifting in a laden tray New milk and honey and sweet-tinctured wine, Not without twigs of clustering apple-spray To wreath a garland for Our Lady's shrine. The morning planet poised above the sea Shall drop sweet influence through her drowsing lid; Dew-drenched, his delicate virginity Shall scarce disturb the flowers he kneels amid, That, waked so lightly, shall lift up their eyes, Cushion his knees, and nod between his thighs. Kyrenaikos Lay me where soft Cyrene rambles down In grove and garden to the sapphire sea; Twine yellow roses for the drinker's crown; Let music reach and fair heads circle me, Watching blue ocean where the white sails steer Fruit-laden forth or with the wares and news Of merchant cities seek our harbors here, Careless how Corinth fares, how Syracuse; But here, with love and sleep in her caress, Warm night shall sink and utterly persuade The gentle doctrine Aristippus bare, -- Night-winds, and one whose white youth's loveliness, In a flowered balcony beside me laid, Dreams, with the starlight on her fragrant hair. Antinous Stretched on a sunny bank he lay at rest, Ferns at his elbow, lilies round his knees, With sweet flesh patterned where the cool turf pressed, Flowerlike crept o'er with emerald aphides. Single he couched there, to his circling flocks Piping at times some happy shepherd's tune, Nude, with the warm wind in his golden locks, And arched with the blue Asian afternoon. Past him, gorse-purpled, to the distant coast Rolled the clear foothills. There his white-walled town, There, a blue band, the placid Euxine lay. Beyond, on fields of azure light embossed He watched from noon till dewy eve came down The summer clouds pile up and fade away. Vivien Her eyes under their lashes were blue pools Fringed round with lilies; her bright hair unfurled Clothed her as sunshine clothes the summer world. Her robes were gauzes--gold and green and gules, All furry things flocked round her, from her hand Nibbling their foods and fawning at her feet. Two peacocks watched her where she made her seat Beside a fountain in Broceliande. Sometimes she sang. . . . Whoever heard forgot Errand and aim, and knights at noontide here, Riding from fabulous gestes beyond the seas, Would follow, tranced, and seek . . . and find her not . . . But wake that night, lost, by some woodland mere, Powdered with stars and rimmed with silent trees. I Loved . . . I loved illustrious cities and the crowds That eddy through their incandescent nights. I loved remote horizons with far clouds Girdled, and fringed about with snowy heights. I loved fair women, their sweet, conscious ways Of wearing among hands that covet and plead The rose ablossom at the rainbow's base That bounds the world's desire and all its need. Nature I worshipped, whose fecundity Embraces every vision the most fair, Of perfect benediction. From a boy I gloated on existence. Earth to me Seemed all-sufficient and my sojourn there One trembling opportunity for joy. Virginibus Puerisque . . . I care not that one listen if he lives For aught but life's romance, nor puts above All life's necessities the need to love, Nor counts his greatest wealth what Beauty gives. But sometime on an afternoon in spring, When dandelions dot the fields with gold, And under rustling shade a few weeks old 'Tis sweet to stroll and hear the bluebirds sing, Do you, blond head, whom beauty and the power Of being young and winsome have prepared For life's last privilege that really pays, Make the companion of an idle hour These relics of the time when I too fared Across the sweet fifth lustrum of my days. With a Copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets on Leaving College As one of some fat tillage dispossessed, Weighing the yield of these four faded years, If any ask what fruit seems loveliest, What lasting gold among the garnered ears, -- Ah, then I'll say what hours I had of thine, Therein I reaped Time's richest revenue, Read in thy text the sense of David's line, Through thee achieved the love that Shakespeare knew. Take then his book, laden with mine own love As flowers made sweeter by deep-drunken rain, That when years sunder and between us move Wide waters, and less kindly bonds constrain, Thou may'st turn here, dear boy, and reading see Some part of what thy friend once felt for thee. Written in a Volume of the Comtesse de Noailles Be my companion under cool arcades That frame some drowsy street and dazzling square Beyond whose flowers and palm-tree promenades White belfries burn in the blue tropic air. Lie near me in dim forests where the croon Of wood-doves sounds and moss-banked water flows, Or musing late till the midsummer moon Breaks through some ruined abbey's empty rose. Sweetest of those to-day whose pious hands Tend the sequestered altar of Romance, Where fewer offerings burn, and fewer kneel, Pour there your passionate beauty on my heart, And, gladdening such solitudes, impart How sweet the fellowship of those who feel! Coucy The rooks aclamor when one enters here Startle the empty towers far overhead; Through gaping walls the summer fields appear, Green, tan, or, poppy-mingled, tinged with red. The courts where revel rang deep grass and moss Cover, and tangled vines have overgrown The gate where banners blazoned with a cross Rolled forth to toss round Tyre and Ascalon. Decay consumes it. The old causes fade. And fretting for the contest many a heart Waits their Tyrtaeus to chant on the new. Oh, pass him by who, in this haunted shade Musing enthralled, has only this much art, To love the things the birds and flowers love too. Tezcotzinco Though thou art now a ruin bare and cold, Thou wert sometime the garden of a king. The birds have sought a lovelier place to sing. The flowers are few. It was not so of old. It was not thus when hand in hand there strolled Through arbors perfumed with undying Spring Bare bodies beautiful, brown, glistening, Decked with green plumes and rings of yellow gold. Do you suppose the herdsman sometimes hears Vague echoes borne beneath the moon's pale ray From those old, old, far-off, forgotten years? Who knows? Here where his ancient kings held sway He stands. Their names are strangers to his ears. Even their memory has passed away. The Old Lowe House, Staten Island Another prospect pleased the builder's eye, And Fashion tenanted (where Fashion wanes) Here in the sorrowful suburban lanes When first these gables rose against the sky. Relic of a romantic taste gone by, This stately monument alone remains, Vacant, with lichened walls and window-panes Blank as the windows of a skull. But I, On evenings when autumnal winds have stirred In the porch-vines, to this gray oracle Have laid a wondering ear and oft-times heard, As from the hollow of a stranded shell, Old voices echoing (or my fancy erred) Things indistinct, but not insensible. Oneata A hilltop sought by every soothing breeze That loves the melody of murmuring boughs, Cool shades, green acreage, and antique house Fronting the ocean and the dawn; than these Old monks built never for the spirit's ease Cloisters more calm--not Cluny nor Clairvaux; Sweet are the noises from the bay below, And cuckoos calling in the tulip-trees. Here, a yet empty suitor in thy train, Beloved Poesy, great joy was mine To while a listless spell of summer days, Happier than hoarder in each evening's gain, When evenings found me richer by one line, One verse well turned, or serviceable phrase. On the Cliffs, Newport Tonight a shimmer of gold lies mantled o'er Smooth lovely Ocean. Through the lustrous gloom A savor steals from linden trees in bloom And gardens ranged at many a palace door. Proud walls rise here, and, where the moonbeams pour Their pale enchantment down the dim coast-line, Terrace and lawn, trim hedge and flowering vine, Crown with fair culture all the sounding shore. How sweet, to such a place, on such a night, From halls with beauty and festival a-glare, To come distract and, stretched on the cool turf, Yield to some fond, improbable delight, While the moon, reddening, sinks, and all the air Sighs with the muffled tumult of the surf! To England at the Outbreak of the Balkan War A cloud has lowered that shall not soon pass o'er. The world takes sides: whether for impious aims With Tyranny whose bloody toll enflames A generous people to heroic war; Whether with Freedom, stretched in her own gore, Whose pleading hands and suppliant distress Still offer hearts that thirst for Righteousness A glorious cause to strike or perish for. England, which side is thine? Thou hast had sons Would shrink not from the choice however grim, Were Justice trampled on and Courage downed; Which will they be--cravens or champions? Oh, if a doubt intrude, remember him Whose death made Missolonghi holy ground. At the Tomb of Napoleon Before the Elections in America--November, 1912 I stood beside his sepulchre whose fame, Hurled over Europe once on bolt and blast, Now glows far off as storm-clouds overpast Glow in the sunset flushed with glorious flame. Has Nature marred his mould? Can Art acclaim No hero now, no man with whom men side As with their hearts' high needs personified? There are will say, One such our lips could name; Columbia gave him birth. Him Genius most Gifted to rule. Against the world's great man Lift their low calumny and sneering cries The Pharisaic multitude, the host Of piddling slanderers whose little eyes Know not what greatness is and never can. The Rendezvous He faints with hope and fear. It is the hour. Distant, across the thundering organ-swell, In sweet discord from the cathedral-tower, Fall the faint chimes and the thrice-sequent bell. Over the crowd his eye uneasy roves. He sees a plume, a fur; his heart dilates -- Soars . . . and then sinks again. It is not hers he loves. She will not come, the woman that he waits. Braided with streams of silver incense rise The antique prayers and ponderous antiphones. 'Gloria Patri' echoes to the skies; 'Nunc et in saecula' the choir intones. He marks not the monotonous refrain, The priest that serves nor him that celebrates, But ever scans the aisle for his blonde head. . . . In vain! She will not come, the woman that he waits. How like a flower seemed the perfumed place Where the sweet flesh lay loveliest to kiss; And her white hands in what delicious ways, With what unfeigned caresses, answered his! Each tender charm intolerable to lose, Each happy scene his fancy recreates. And he calls out her name and spreads his arms . . . No use! She will not come, the woman that he waits. But the long vespers close. The priest on high Raises the thing that Christ's own flesh enforms; And down the Gothic nave the crowd flows by And through the portal's carven entry swarms. Maddened he peers upon each passing face Till the long drab procession terminates. No princess passes out with proud majestic pace. She has not come, the woman that he waits. Back in the empty silent church alone He walks with aching heart. A white-robed boy Puts out the altar-candles one by one, Even as by inches darkens all his joy. He dreams of the sweet night their lips first met, And groans--and turns to leave--and hesitates . . . Poor stricken heart, he will, he can not fancy yet She will not come, the woman that he waits. But in an arch where deepest shadows fall He sits and studies the old, storied panes, And the calm crucifix that from the wall Looks on a world that quavers and complains. Hopeless, abandoned, desolate, aghast, On modes of violent death he meditates. And the tower-clock tolls five, and he admits at last, She will not come, the woman that he waits. Through the stained rose the winter daylight dies, And all the tide of anguish unrepressed Swells in his throat and gathers in his eyes; He kneels and bows his head upon his breast, And feigns a prayer to hide his burning tears, While the satanic voice reiterates 'Tonight, tomorrow, nay, nor all the impending years, She will not come,' the woman that he waits. Fond, fervent heart of life's enamored spring, So true, so confident, so passing fair, That thought of Love as some sweet, tender thing, And not as war, red tooth and nail laid bare, How in that hour its innocence was slain, How from that hour our disillusion dates, When first we learned thy sense, ironical refrain, She will not come, the woman that he waits. Do You Remember Once . . . I Do you remember once, in Paris of glad faces, The night we wandered off under the third moon's rays And, leaving far behind bright streets and busy places, Stood where the Seine flowed down between its quiet quais? The city's voice was hushed; the placid, lustrous waters Mirrored the walls across where orange windows burned. Out of the starry south provoking rumors brought us Far promise of the spring already northward turned. And breast drew near to breast, and round its soft desire My arm uncertain stole and clung there unrepelled. I thought that nevermore my heart would hover nigher To the last flower of bliss that Nature's garden held. There, in your beauty's sweet abandonment to pleasure, The mute, half-open lips and tender, wondering eyes, I saw embodied first smile back on me the treasure Long sought across the seas and back of summer skies. Dear face, when courted Death shall claim my limbs and find them Laid in some desert place, alone or where the tides Of war's tumultuous waves on the wet sands behind them Leave rifts of gasping life when their red flood subsides, Out of the past's remote delirious abysses Shine forth once more as then you shone,--beloved head, Laid back in ecstasy between our blinding kisses, Transfigured with the bliss of being so coveted. And my sick arms will part, and though hot fever sear it, My mouth will curve again with the old, tender flame. And darkness will come down, still finding in my spirit The dream of your brief love, and on my lips your name. II You loved me on that moonlit night long since. You were my queen and I the charming prince Elected from a world of mortal men. You loved me once. . . . What pity was it, then, You loved not Love. . . . Deep in the emerald west, Like a returning caravel caressed By breezes that load all the ambient airs With clinging fragrance of the bales it bears From harbors where the caravans come down, I see over the roof-tops of the town The new moon back again, but shall not see The joy that once it had in store for me, Nor know again the voice upon the stair, The little studio in the candle-glare, And all that makes in word and touch and glance The bliss of the first nights of a romance When will to love and be beloved casts out The want to question or the will to doubt. You loved me once. . . . Under the western seas The pale moon settles and the Pleiades. The firelight sinks; outside the night-winds moan -- The hour advances, and I sleep alone.* -- * <Greek> D|/eduke m|\en |'a sel|/anna ka|\i Plh|/iadec, m|/essai de n|/uktec, p|/ara d' |'/erxet' |'/wra |'/egw de m|/ona kate|/udw. <EndGreek>--Sappho. <See appendix for an ASCII to Greek mapping.> -- III Farewell, dear heart, enough of vain despairing! If I have erred I plead but one excuse -- The jewel were a lesser joy in wearing That cost a lesser agony to lose. I had not bid for beautifuller hours Had I not found the door so near unsealed, Nor hoped, had you not filled my arms with flowers, For that one flower that bloomed too far afield. If I have wept, it was because, forsaken, I felt perhaps more poignantly than some The blank eternity from which we waken And all the blank eternity to come. And I betrayed how sweet a thing and tender (In the regret with which my lip was curled) Seemed in its tragic, momentary splendor My transit through the beauty of the world. The Bayadere Flaked, drifting clouds hide not the full moon's rays More than her beautiful bright limbs were hid By the light veils they burned and blushed amid, Skilled to provoke in soft, lascivious ways, And there was invitation in her voice And laughing lips and wonderful dark eyes, As though above the gates of Paradise Fair verses bade, Be welcome and rejoice! O'er rugs where mottled blue and green and red Blent in the patterns of the Orient loom, Like a bright butterfly from bloom to bloom, She floated with delicious arms outspread. There was no pose she took, no move she made, But all the feverous, love-envenomed flesh Wrapped round as in the gladiator's mesh And smote as with his triple-forked blade. I thought that round her sinuous beauty curled Fierce exhalations of hot human love, -- Around her beauty valuable above The sunny outspread kingdoms of the world; Flowing as ever like a dancing fire Flowed her belled ankles and bejewelled wrists, Around her beauty swept like sanguine mists The nimbus of a thousand hearts' desire. Eudaemon O happiness, I know not what far seas, Blue hills and deep, thy sunny realms surround, That thus in Music's wistful harmonies And concert of sweet sound A rumor steals, from some uncertain shore, Of lovely things outworn or gladness yet in store: Whether thy beams be pitiful and come, Across the sundering of vanished years, From childhood and the happy fields of home, Like eyes instinct with tears Felt through green brakes of hedge and apple-bough Round haunts delightful once, desert and silent now; Or yet if prescience of unrealized love Startle the breast with each melodious air, And gifts that gentle hands are donors of Still wait intact somewhere, Furled up all golden in a perfumed place Within the folded petals of forthcoming days. Only forever, in the old unrest Of winds and waters and the varying year, A litany from islands of the blessed Answers, Not here . . . not here! And over the wide world that wandering cry Shall lead my searching heart unsoothed until I die. Broceliande Broceliande! in the perilous beauty of silence and menacing shade, Thou art set on the shores of the sea down the haze of horizons untravelled, unscanned. Untroubled, untouched with the woes of this world are the moon-marshalled hosts that invade Broceliande. Only at dusk, when lavender clouds in the orient twilight disband, Vanishing where all the blue afternoon they have drifted in solemn parade, Sometimes a whisper comes down on the wind from the valleys of Fairyland ---- Sometimes an echo most mournful and faint like the horn of a huntsman strayed, Faint and forlorn, half drowned in the murmur of foliage fitfully fanned, Breathes in a burden of nameless regret till I startle, disturbed and affrayed: Broceliande -- Broceliande -- Broceliande. . . . Lyonesse In Lyonesse was beauty enough, men say: Long Summer loaded the orchards to excess, And fertile lowlands lengthening far away, In Lyonesse. Came a term to that land's old favoredness: Past the sea-walls, crumbled in thundering spray, Rolled the green waves, ravening, merciless. Through bearded boughs immobile in cool decay, Where sea-bloom covers corroding palaces, The mermaid glides with a curious glance to-day, In Lyonesse. Tithonus So when the verdure of his life was shed, With all the grace of ripened manlihead, And on his locks, but now so lovable, Old age like desolating winter fell, Leaving them white and flowerless and forlorn: Then from his bed the Goddess of the Morn Softly withheld, yet cherished him no less With pious works of pitying tenderness; Till when at length with vacant, heedless eyes, And hoary height bent down none otherwise Than burdened willows bend beneath their weight Of snow when winter winds turn temperate, -- So bowed with years--when still he lingered on: Then to the daughter of Hyperion This counsel seemed the best: for she, afar By dove-gray seas under the morning star, Where, on the wide world's uttermost extremes, Her amber-walled, auroral palace gleams, High in an orient chamber bade prepare An everlasting couch, and laid him there, And leaving, closed the shining doors. But he, Deathless by Jove's compassionless decree, Found not, as others find, a dreamless rest. There wakeful, with half-waking dreams oppressed, Still in an aural, visionary haze Float round him vanished forms of happier days; Still at his side he fancies to behold The rosy, radiant thing beloved of old; And oft, as over dewy meads at morn, Far inland from a sunrise coast is borne The drowsy, muffled moaning of the sea, Even so his voice flows on unceasingly, -- Lisping sweet names of passion overblown, Breaking with dull, persistent undertone The breathless silence that forever broods Round those colossal, lustrous solitudes. Times change. Man's fortune prospers, or it falls. Change harbors not in those eternal halls And tranquil chamber where Tithonus lies. But through his window there the eastern skies Fall palely fair to the dim ocean's end. There, in blue mist where air and ocean blend, The lazy clouds that sail the wide world o'er Falter and turn where they can sail no more. There singing groves, there spacious gardens blow -- Cedars and silver poplars, row on row, Through whose black boughs on her appointed night, Flooding his chamber with enchanted light, Lifts the full moon's immeasurable sphere, Crimson and huge and wonderfully near. An Ode to Antares At dusk, when lowlands where dark waters glide Robe in gray mist, and through the greening hills The hoot-owl calls his mate, and whippoorwills Clamor from every copse and orchard-side, I watched the red star rising in the East, And while his fellows of the flaming sign From prisoning daylight more and more released, Lift their pale lamps, and, climbing higher, higher, Out of their locks the waters of the Line Shaking in clouds of phosphorescent fire, Rose in the splendor of their curving flight, Their dolphin leap across the austral night, From windows southward opening on the sea What eyes, I wondered, might be watching, too, Orbed in some blossom-laden balcony. Where, from the garden to the rail above, As though a lover's greeting to his love Should borrow body and form and hue And tower in torrents of floral flame, The crimson bougainvillea grew, What starlit brow uplifted to the same Majestic regress of the summering sky, What ultimate thing--hushed, holy, throned as high Above the currents that tarnish and profane As silver summits are whose pure repose No curious eyes disclose Nor any footfalls stain, But round their beauty on azure evenings Only the oreads go on gauzy wings, Only the oreads troop with dance and song And airy beings in rainbow mists who throng Out of those wonderful worlds that lie afar Betwixt the outmost cloud and the nearest star. Like the moon, sanguine in the orient night Shines the red flower in her beautiful hair. Her breasts are distant islands of delight Upon a sea where all is soft and fair. Those robes that make a silken sheath For each lithe attitude that flows beneath, Shrouding in scented folds sweet warmths and tumid flowers, Call them far clouds that half emerge Beyond a sunset ocean's utmost verge, Hiding in purple shade and downpour of soft showers Enchanted isles by mortal foot untrod, And there in humid dells resplendent orchids nod; There always from serene horizons blow Soul-easing gales and there all spice-trees grow That Phoenix robbed to line his fragrant nest Each hundred years in Araby the Blest. Star of the South that now through orient mist At nightfall off Tampico or Belize Greetest the sailor rising from those seas Where first in me, a fond romanticist, The tropic sunset's bloom on cloudy piles Cast out industrious cares with dreams of fabulous isles -- Thou lamp of the swart lover to his tryst, O'er planted acres at the jungle's rim Reeking with orange-flower and tuberose, Dear to his eyes thy ruddy splendor glows Among the palms where beauty waits for him; Bliss too thou bringst to our greening North, Red scintillant through cherry-blossom rifts, Herald of summer-heat, and all the gifts And all the joys a summer can bring forth ---- Be thou my star, for I have made my aim To follow loveliness till autumn-strown Sunder the sinews of this flower-like frame As rose-leaves sunder when the bud is blown. Ay, sooner spirit and sense disintegrate Than reconcilement to a common fate Strip the enchantment from a world so dressed In hues of high romance. I cannot rest While aught of beauty in any path untrod Swells into bloom and spreads sweet charms abroad Unworshipped of my love. I cannot see In Life's profusion and passionate brevity How hearts enamored of life can strain too much In one long tension to hear, to see, to touch. Now on each rustling night-wind from the South Far music calls; beyond the harbor mouth Each outbound argosy with sail unfurled May point the path through this fortuitous world That holds the heart from its desire. Away! Where tinted coast-towns gleam at close of day, Where squares are sweet with bells, or shores thick set With bloom and bower, with mosque and minaret. Blue peaks loom up beyond the coast-plains here, White roads wind up the dales and disappear, By silvery waters in the plains afar Glimmers the inland city like a star, With gilded gates and sunny spires ablaze And burnished domes half-seen through luminous haze, Lo, with what opportunity Earth teems! How like a fair its ample beauty seems! Fluttering with flags its proud pavilions rise: What bright bazaars, what marvelous merchandise, Down seething alleys what melodious din, What clamor importuning from every booth! At Earth's great market where Joy is trafficked in Buy while thy purse yet swells with golden Youth! Translations Dante. Inferno, Canto XXVI Florence, rejoice! For thou o'er land and sea So spread'st thy pinions that the fame of thee Hath reached no less into the depths of Hell. So noble were the five I found to dwell Therein--thy sons--whence shame accrues to me And no great praise is thine; but if it be That truth unveil in dreamings before dawn, Then is the vengeful hour not far withdrawn When Prato shall exult within her walls To see thy suffering. Whate'er befalls, Let it come soon, since come it must, for later, Each year would see my grief for thee the greater. We left; and once more up the craggy side By the blind steps of our descent, my guide, Remounting, drew me on. So we pursued The rugged path through that steep solitude, Where rocks and splintered fragments strewed the land So thick, that foot availed not without hand. Grief filled me then, and still great sorrow stirs My heart as oft as memory recurs To what I saw; that more and more I rein My natural powers, and curb them lest they strain Where Virtue guide not,--that if some good star, Or better thing, have made them what they are, That good I may not grudge, nor turn to ill. As when, reclining on some verdant hill -- What season the hot sun least veils his power That lightens all, and in that gloaming hour The fly resigns to the shrill gnat--even then, As rustic, looking down, sees, o'er the glen, Vineyard, or tilth where lies his husbandry, Fireflies innumerable sparkle: so to me, Come where its mighty depth unfolded, straight With flames no fewer seemed to scintillate The shades of the eighth pit. And as to him Whose wrongs the bears avenged, dim and more dim Elijah's chariot seemed, when to the skies Uprose the heavenly steeds; and still his eyes Strained, following them, till naught remained in view But flame, like a thin cloud against the blue: So here, the melancholy gulf within, Wandered these flames, concealing each its sin, Yet each, a fiery integument, Wrapped round a sinner. On the bridge intent, Gazing I stood, and grasped its flinty side, Or else, unpushed, had fallen. And my guide, Observing me so moved, spake, saying: "Behold Where swathed each in his unconsuming fold, The spirits lie confined." Whom answering, "Master," I said, "thy words assurance bring To that which I already had supposed; And I was fain to ask who lies enclosed In the embrace of that dividing fire, Which seems to curl above the fabled pyre, Where with his twin-born brother, fiercely hated, Eteocles was laid." He answered, "Mated In punishment as once in wrath they were, Ulysses there and Diomed incur The eternal pains; there groaning they deplore The ambush of the horse, which made the door For Rome's imperial seed to issue: there In anguish too they wail the fatal snare Whence dead Deidamia still must grieve, Reft of Achilles; likewise they receive Due penalty for the Palladium." "Master," I said, "if in that martyrdom The power of human speech may still be theirs, I pray--and think it worth a thousand prayers -- That, till this horned flame be come more nigh, We may abide here; for thou seest that I With great desire incline to it." And he: "Thy prayer deserves great praise; which willingly I grant; but thou refrain from speaking; leave That task to me; for fully I conceive What thing thou wouldst, and it might fall perchance That these, being Greeks, would scorn thine utterance." So when the flame had come where time and place Seemed not unfitting to my guide with grace To question, thus he spoke at my desire: "O ye that are two souls within one fire, If in your eyes some merit I have won -- Merit, or more or less--for tribute done When in the world I framed my lofty verse: Move not; but fain were we that one rehearse By what strange fortunes to his death he came." The elder crescent of the antique flame Began to wave, as in the upper air A flame is tempest-tortured, here and there Tossing its angry height, and in its sound As human speech it suddenly had found, Rolled forth a voice of thunder, saying: "When, The twelvemonth past in Circe's halls, again I left Gaeta's strand (ere thither came Aeneas, and had given it that name) Not love of son, nor filial reverence, Nor that affection that might recompense The weary vigil of Penelope, Could so far quench the hot desire in me To prove more wonders of the teeming earth, -- Of human frailty and of manly worth. In one small bark, and with the faithful band That all awards had shared of Fortune's hand, I launched once more upon the open main. Both shores I visited as far as Spain, -- Sardinia, and Morocco, and what more The midland sea upon its bosom wore. The hour of our lives was growing late When we arrived before that narrow strait Where Hercules had set his bounds to show That there Man's foot shall pause, and further none shall go. Borne with the gale past Seville on the right, And on the left now swept by Ceuta's site, 'Brothers,' I cried, 'that into the far West Through perils numberless are now addressed, In this brief respite that our mortal sense Yet hath, shrink not from new experience; But sailing still against the setting sun, Seek we new worlds where Man has never won Before us. Ponder your proud destinies: Born were ye not like brutes for swinish ease, But virtue and high knowledge to pursue.' My comrades with such zeal did I imbue By these brief words, that scarcely could I then Have turned them from their purpose; so again We set out poop against the morning sky, And made our oars as wings wherewith to fly Into the Unknown. And ever from the right Our course deflecting, in the balmy night All southern stars we saw, and ours so low, That scarce above the sea-marge it might show. So five revolving periods the soft, Pale light had robbed of Cynthia, and as oft Replenished since our start, when far and dim Over the misty ocean's utmost rim, Rose a great mountain, that for very height Passed any I had seen. Boundless delight Filled us--alas, and quickly turned to dole: For, springing from our scarce-discovered goal, A whirlwind struck the ship; in circles three It whirled us helpless in the eddying sea; High on the fourth the fragile stern uprose, The bow drove down, and, as Another chose, Over our heads we heard the surging billows close." Ariosto. Orlando Furioso, Canto X, 91-99 Ruggiero, to amaze the British host, And wake more wonder in their wondering ranks, The bridle of his winged courser loosed, And clapped his spurs into the creature's flanks; High in the air, even to the topmost banks Of crudded cloud, uprose the flying horse, And now above the Welsh, and now the Manx, And now across the sea he shaped his course, Till gleaming far below lay Erin's emerald shores. There round Hibernia's fabled realm he coasted, Where the old saint had left the holy cave, Sought for the famous virtue that it boasted To purge the sinful visitor and save. Thence back returning over land and wave, Ruggiero came where the blue currents flow, The shores of Lesser Brittany to lave, And, looking down while sailing to and fro, He saw Angelica chained to the rock below. 'Twas on the Island of Complaint--well named, For there to that inhospitable shore, A savage people, cruel and untamed, Brought the rich prize of many a hateful war. To feed a monster that bestead them sore, They of fair ladies those that loveliest shone, Of tender maidens they the tenderest bore, And, drowned in tears and making piteous moan, Left for that ravening beast, chained on the rocks alone. Thither transported by enchanter's art, Angelica from dreams most innocent (As the tale mentioned in another part) Awoke, the victim for that sad event. Beauty so rare, nor birth so excellent, Nor tears that make sweet Beauty lovelier still, Could turn that people from their harsh intent. Alas, what temper is conceived so ill But, Pity moving not, Love's soft enthralment will? On the cold granite at the ocean's rim These folk had chained her fast and gone their way; Fresh in the softness of each delicate limb The pity of their bruising violence lay. Over her beauty, from the eye of day To hide its pleading charms, no veil was thrown. Only the fragments of the salt sea-spray Rose from the churning of the waves, wind-blown, To dash upon a whiteness creamier than their own. Carved out of candid marble without flaw, Or alabaster blemishless and rare, Ruggiero might have fancied what he saw, For statue-like it seemed, and fastened there By craft of cunningest artificer; Save in the wistful eyes Ruggiero thought A teardrop gleamed, and with the rippling hair The ocean breezes played as if they sought In its loose depths to hide that which her hand might not. Pity and wonder and awakening love Strove in the bosom of the Moorish Knight. Down from his soaring in the skies above He urged the tenor of his courser's flight. Fairer with every foot of lessening height Shone the sweet prisoner. With tightening reins He drew more nigh, and gently as he might: "O lady, worthy only of the chains With which his bounden slaves the God of Love constrains, "And least for this or any ill designed, Oh, what unnatural and perverted race Could the sweet flesh with flushing stricture bind, And leave to suffer in this cold embrace That the warm arms so hunger to replace?" Into the damsel's cheeks such color flew As by the alchemy of ancient days If whitest ivory should take the hue Of coral where it blooms deep in the liquid blue. Nor yet so tightly drawn the cruel chains Clasped the slim ankles and the wounded hands, But with soft, cringing attitudes in vain She strove to shield her from that ardent glance. So, clinging to the walls of some old manse, The rose-vine strives to shield her tender flowers, When the rude wind, as autumn weeks advance, Beats on the walls and whirls about the towers And spills at every blast her pride in piteous showers. And first for choking sobs she might not speak, And then, "Alas!" she cried, "ah, woe is me!" And more had said in accents faint and weak, Pleading for succor and sweet liberty. But hark! across the wide ways of the sea Rose of a sudden such a fierce affray That any but the brave had turned to flee. Ruggiero, turning, looked. To his dismay, Lo, where the monster came to claim his quivering prey! On a Theme in the Greek Anthology Thy petals yet are closely curled, Rose of the world, Around their scented, golden core; Nor yet has Summer purpled o'er Thy tender clusters that begin To swell within The dewy vine-leaves' early screen Of sheltering green. O hearts that are Love's helpless prey, While yet you may, Fly, ere the shaft is on the string! The fire that now is smouldering Shall be the conflagration soon Whose paths are strewn With torment of blanched lips and eyes That agonize. After an Epigram of Clement Marot The lad I was I longer now Nor am nor shall be evermore. Spring's lovely blossoms from my brow Have shed their petals on the floor. Thou, Love, hast been my lord, thy shrine Above all gods' best served by me. Dear Love, could life again be mine How bettered should that service be! Last Poems 1916 The Aisne (1914-15) We first saw fire on the tragic slopes Where the flood-tide of France's early gain, Big with wrecked promise and abandoned hopes, Broke in a surf of blood along the Aisne. The charge her heroes left us, we assumed, What, dying, they reconquered, we preserved, In the chill trenches, harried, shelled, entombed, Winter came down on us, but no man swerved. Winter came down on us. The low clouds, torn In the stark branches of the riven pines, Blurred the white rockets that from dusk till morn Traced the wide curve of the close-grappling lines. In rain, and fog that on the withered hill Froze before dawn, the lurking foe drew down; Or light snows fell that made forlorner still The ravaged country and the ruined town; Or the long clouds would end. Intensely fair, The winter constellations blazing forth -- Perseus, the Twins, Orion, the Great Bear -- Gleamed on our bayonets pointing to the north. And the lone sentinel would start and soar On wings of strong emotion as he knew That kinship with the stars that only War Is great enough to lift man's spirit to. And ever down the curving front, aglow With the pale rockets' intermittent light, He heard, like distant thunder, growl and grow The rumble of far battles in the night, -- Rumors, reverberant, indistinct, remote, Borne from red fields whose martial names have won The power to thrill like a far trumpet-note, -- Vic, Vailly, Soupir, Hurtelise, Craonne . . . Craonne, before thy cannon-swept plateau, Where like sere leaves lay strewn September's dead, I found for all dear things I forfeited A recompense I would not now forego. For that high fellowship was ours then With those who, championing another's good, More than dull Peace or its poor votaries could, Taught us the dignity of being men. There we drained deeper the deep cup of life, And on sublimer summits came to learn, After soft things, the terrible and stern, After sweet Love, the majesty of Strife; There where we faced under those frowning heights The blast that maims, the hurricane that kills; There where the watchlights on the winter hills Flickered like balefire through inclement nights; There where, firm links in the unyielding chain, Where fell the long-planned blow and fell in vain -- Hearts worthy of the honor and the trial, We helped to hold the lines along the Aisne. Champagne (1914-15) In the glad revels, in the happy fetes, When cheeks are flushed, and glasses gilt and pearled With the sweet wine of France that concentrates The sunshine and the beauty of the world, Drink sometimes, you whose footsteps yet may tread The undisturbed, delightful paths of Earth, To those whose blood, in pious duty shed, Hallows the soil where that same wine had birth. Here, by devoted comrades laid away, Along our lines they slumber where they fell, Beside the crater at the Ferme d'Alger And up the bloody slopes of La Pompelle, And round the city whose cathedral towers The enemies of Beauty dared profane, And in the mat of multicolored flowers That clothe the sunny chalk-fields of Champagne. Under the little crosses where they rise The soldier rests. Now round him undismayed The cannon thunders, and at night he lies At peace beneath the eternal fusillade. . . . That other generations might possess -- From shame and menace free in years to come -- A richer heritage of happiness, He marched to that heroic martyrdom. Esteeming less the forfeit that he paid Than undishonored that his flag might float Over the towers of liberty, he made His breast the bulwark and his blood the moat. Obscurely sacrificed, his nameless tomb, Bare of the sculptor's art, the poet's lines, Summer shall flush with poppy-fields in bloom, And Autumn yellow with maturing vines. There the grape-pickers at their harvesting Shall lightly tread and load their wicker trays, Blessing his memory as they toil and sing In the slant sunshine of October days. . . . I love to think that if my blood should be So privileged to sink where his has sunk, I shall not pass from Earth entirely, But when the banquet rings, when healths are drunk, And faces that the joys of living fill Glow radiant with laughter and good cheer, In beaming cups some spark of me shall still Brim toward the lips that once I held so dear. So shall one coveting no higher plane Than nature clothes in color and flesh and tone, Even from the grave put upward to attain The dreams youth cherished and missed and might have known; And that strong need that strove unsatisfied Toward earthly beauty in all forms it wore, Not death itself shall utterly divide From the beloved shapes it thirsted for. Alas, how many an adept for whose arms Life held delicious offerings perished here, How many in the prime of all that charms, Crowned with all gifts that conquer and endear! Honor them not so much with tears and flowers, But you with whom the sweet fulfilment lies, Where in the anguish of atrocious hours Turned their last thoughts and closed their dying eyes, Rather when music on bright gatherings lays Its tender spell, and joy is uppermost, Be mindful of the men they were, and raise Your glasses to them in one silent toast. Drink to them--amorous of dear Earth as well, They asked no tribute lovelier than this -- And in the wine that ripened where they fell, Oh, frame your lips as though it were a kiss. __ Champagne, France, July, 1915. The Hosts Purged, with the life they left, of all That makes life paltry and mean and small, In their new dedication charged With something heightened, enriched, enlarged, That lends a light to their lusty brows And a song to the rhythm of their tramping feet, These are the men that have taken vows, These are the hardy, the flower, the elite, -- These are the men that are moved no more By the will to traffic and grasp and store And ring with pleasure and wealth and love The circles that self is the center of; But they are moved by the powers that force The sea forever to ebb and rise, That hold Arcturus in his course, And marshal at noon in tropic skies The clouds that tower on some snow-capped chain And drift out over the peopled plain. They are big with the beauty of cosmic things. Mark how their columns surge! They seem To follow the goddess with outspread wings That points toward Glory, the soldier's dream. With bayonets bare and flags unfurled, They scale the summits of the world And fade on the farthest golden height In fair horizons full of light. Comrades in arms there--friend or foe -- That trod the perilous, toilsome trail Through a world of ruin and blood and woe In the years of the great decision--hail! Friend or foe, it shall matter nought; This only matters, in fine: we fought. For we were young and in love or strife Sought exultation and craved excess: To sound the wildest debauch in life We staked our youth and its loveliness. Let idlers argue the right and wrong And weigh what merit our causes had. Putting our faith in being strong -- Above the level of good and bad -- For us, we battled and burned and killed Because evolving Nature willed, And it was our pride and boast to be The instruments of Destiny. There was a stately drama writ By the hand that peopled the earth and air And set the stars in the infinite And made night gorgeous and morning fair, And all that had sense to reason knew That bloody drama must be gone through. Some sat and watched how the action veered -- Waited, profited, trembled, cheered -- We saw not clearly nor understood, But yielding ourselves to the masterhand, Each in his part as best he could, We played it through as the author planned. Maktoob A shell surprised our post one day And killed a comrade at my side. My heart was sick to see the way He suffered as he died. I dug about the place he fell, And found, no bigger than my thumb, A fragment of the splintered shell In warm aluminum. I melted it, and made a mould, And poured it in the opening, And worked it, when the cast was cold, Into a shapely ring. And when my ring was smooth and bright, Holding it on a rounded stick, For seal, I bade a Turco write 'Maktoob' in Arabic. 'Maktoob!' "'Tis written!" . . . So they think, These children of the desert, who From its immense expanses drink Some of its grandeur too. Within the book of Destiny, Whose leaves are time, whose cover, space, The day when you shall cease to be, The hour, the mode, the place, Are marked, they say; and you shall not By taking thought or using wit Alter that certain fate one jot, Postpone or conjure it. Learn to drive fear, then, from your heart. If you must perish, know, O man, 'Tis an inevitable part Of the predestined plan. And, seeing that through the ebon door Once only you may pass, and meet Of those that have gone through before The mighty, the elite ---- Guard that not bowed nor blanched with fear You enter, but serene, erect, As you would wish most to appear To those you most respect. So die as though your funeral Ushered you through the doors that led Into a stately banquet hall Where heroes banqueted; And it shall all depend therein Whether you come as slave or lord, If they acclaim you as their kin Or spurn you from their board. So, when the order comes: "Attack!" And the assaulting wave deploys, And the heart trembles to look back On life and all its joys; Or in a ditch that they seem near To find, and round your shallow trough Drop the big shells that you can hear Coming a half mile off; When, not to hear, some try to talk, And some to clean their guns, or sing, And some dig deeper in the chalk -- I look upon my ring: And nerves relax that were most tense, And Death comes whistling down unheard, As I consider all the sense Held in that mystic word. And it brings, quieting like balm My heart whose flutterings have ceased, The resignation and the calm And wisdom of the East. I Have a Rendezvous with Death . . . I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade, When Spring comes back with rustling shade And apple-blossoms fill the air -- I have a rendezvous with Death When Spring brings back blue days and fair. It may be he shall take my hand And lead me into his dark land And close my eyes and quench my breath -- It may be I shall pass him still. I have a rendezvous with Death On some scarred slope of battered hill, When Spring comes round again this year And the first meadow-flowers appear. God knows 'twere better to be deep Pillowed in silk and scented down, Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep, Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath, Where hushed awakenings are dear . . . But I've a rendezvous with Death At midnight in some flaming town, When Spring trips north again this year, And I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous. Sonnets: - Sonnet I - Sidney, in whom the heyday of romance Came to its precious and most perfect flower, Whether you tourneyed with victorious lance Or brought sweet roundelays to Stella's bower, I give myself some credit for the way I have kept clean of what enslaves and lowers, Shunned the ideals of our present day And studied those that were esteemed in yours; For, turning from the mob that buys Success By sacrificing all Life's better part, Down the free roads of human happiness I frolicked, poor of purse but light of heart, And lived in strict devotion all along To my three idols--Love and Arms and Song. - Sonnet II - Not that I always struck the proper mean Of what mankind must give for what they gain, But, when I think of those whom dull routine And the pursuit of cheerless toil enchain, Who from their desk-chairs seeing a summer cloud Race through blue heaven on its joyful course Sigh sometimes for a life less cramped and bowed, I think I might have done a great deal worse; For I have ever gone untied and free, The stars and my high thoughts for company; Wet with the salt-spray and the mountain showers, I have had the sense of space and amplitude, And love in many places, silver-shoed, Has come and scattered all my path with flowers. - Sonnet III - Why should you be astonished that my heart, Plunged for so long in darkness and in dearth, Should be revived by you, and stir and start As by warm April now, reviving Earth? I am the field of undulating grass And you the gentle perfumed breath of Spring, And all my lyric being, when you pass, Is bowed and filled with sudden murmuring. I asked you nothing and expected less, But, with that deep, impassioned tenderness Of one approaching what he most adores, I only wished to lose a little space All thought of my own life, and in its place To live and dream and have my joy in yours. - Sonnet IV - To . . . in church If I was drawn here from a distant place, 'Twas not to pray nor hear our friend's address, But, gazing once more on your winsome face, To worship there Ideal Loveliness. On that pure shrine that has too long ignored The gifts that once I brought so frequently I lay this votive offering, to record How sweet your quiet beauty seemed to me. Enchanting girl, my faith is not a thing By futile prayers and vapid psalm-singing To vent in crowded nave and public pew. My creed is simple: that the world is fair, And beauty the best thing to worship there, And I confess it by adoring you. __ Biarritz, Sunday, March 26, 1916. - Sonnet V - Seeing you have not come with me, nor spent This day's suggestive beauty as we ought, I have gone forth alone and been content To make you mistress only of my thought. And I have blessed the fate that was so kind In my life's agitations to include This moment's refuge where my sense can find Refreshment, and my soul beatitude. Oh, be my gentle love a little while! Walk with me sometimes. Let me see you smile. Watching some night under a wintry sky, Before the charge, or on the bed of pain, These blessed memories shall revive again And be a power to cheer and fortify. - Sonnet VI - Oh, you are more desirable to me Than all I staked in an impulsive hour, Making my youth the sport of chance, to be Blighted or torn in its most perfect flower; For I think less of what that chance may bring Than how, before returning into fire, To make my dearest memory of the thing That is but now my ultimate desire. And in old times I should have prayed to her Whose haunt the groves of windy Cyprus were, To prosper me and crown with good success My will to make of you the rose-twined bowl From whose inebriating brim my soul Shall drink its last of earthly happiness. - Sonnet VII - There have been times when I could storm and plead, But you shall never hear me supplicate. These long months that have magnified my need Have made my asking less importunate, For now small favors seem to me so great That not the courteous lovers of old time Were more content to rule themselves and wait, Easing desire with discourse and sweet rhyme. Nay, be capricious, willful; have no fear To wound me with unkindness done or said, Lest mutual devotion make too dear My life that hangs by a so slender thread, And happy love unnerve me before May For that stern part that I have yet to play. - Sonnet VIII - Oh, love of woman, you are known to be A passion sent to plague the hearts of men; For every one you bring felicity Bringing rebuffs and wretchedness to ten. I have been oft where human life sold cheap And seen men's brains spilled out about their ears And yet that never cost me any sleep; I lived untroubled and I shed no tears. Fools prate how war is an atrocious thing; I always knew that nothing it implied Equalled the agony of suffering Of him who loves and loves unsatisfied. War is a refuge to a heart like this; Love only tells it what true torture is. - Sonnet IX - Well, seeing I have no hope, then let us part; Having long taught my flesh to master fear, I should have learned by now to rule my heart, Although, Heaven knows, 'tis not so easy near. Oh, you were made to make men miserable And torture those who would have joy in you, But I, who could have loved you, dear, so well, Take pride in being a good loser too; And it has not been wholly unsuccess, For I have rescued from forgetfulness Some moments of this precious time that flies, Adding to my past wealth of memory The pretty way you once looked up at me, Your low, sweet voice, your smile, and your dear eyes. - Sonnet X - I have sought Happiness, but it has been A lovely rainbow, baffling all pursuit, And tasted Pleasure, but it was a fruit More fair of outward hue than sweet within. Renouncing both, a flake in the ferment Of battling hosts that conquer or recoil, There only, chastened by fatigue and toil, I knew what came the nearest to content. For there at least my troubled flesh was free From the gadfly Desire that plagued it so; Discord and Strife were what I used to know, Heartaches, deception, murderous jealousy; By War transported far from all of these, Amid the clash of arms I was at peace. - Sonnet XI - On Returning to the Front after Leave Apart sweet women (for whom Heaven be blessed), Comrades, you cannot think how thin and blue Look the leftovers of mankind that rest, Now that the cream has been skimmed off in you. War has its horrors, but has this of good -- That its sure processes sort out and bind Brave hearts in one intrepid brotherhood And leave the shams and imbeciles behind. Now turn we joyful to the great attacks, Not only that we face in a fair field Our valiant foe and all his deadly tools, But also that we turn disdainful backs On that poor world we scorn yet die to shield -- That world of cowards, hypocrites, and fools. - Sonnet XII - Clouds rosy-tinted in the setting sun, Depths of the azure eastern sky between, Plains where the poplar-bordered highways run, Patched with a hundred tints of brown and green, -- Beauty of Earth, when in thy harmonies The cannon's note has ceased to be a part, I shall return once more and bring to these The worship of an undivided heart. Of those sweet potentialities that wait For my heart's deep desire to fecundate I shall resume the search, if Fortune grants; And the great cities of the world shall yet Be golden frames for me in which to set New masterpieces of more rare romance. Bellinglise I Deep in the sloping forest that surrounds The head of a green valley that I know, Spread the fair gardens and ancestral grounds Of Bellinglise, the beautiful chateau. Through shady groves and fields of unmown grass, It was my joy to come at dusk and see, Filling a little pond's untroubled glass, Its antique towers and mouldering masonry. Oh, should I fall to-morrow, lay me here, That o'er my tomb, with each reviving year, Wood-flowers may blossom and the wood-doves croon; And lovers by that unrecorded place, Passing, may pause, and cling a little space, Close-bosomed, at the rising of the moon. II Here, where in happier times the huntsman's horn Echoing from far made sweet midsummer eves, Now serried cannon thunder night and morn, Tearing with iron the greenwood's tender leaves. Yet has sweet Spring no particle withdrawn Of her old bounty; still the song-birds hail, Even through our fusillade, delightful Dawn; Even in our wire bloom lilies of the vale. You who love flowers, take these; their fragile bells Have trembled with the shock of volleyed shells, And in black nights when stealthy foes advance They have been lit by the pale rockets' glow That o'er scarred fields and ancient towns laid low Trace in white fire the brave frontiers of France. __ May 22, 1916. Liebestod I who, conceived beneath another star, Had been a prince and played with life, instead Have been its slave, an outcast exiled far From the fair things my faith has merited. My ways have been the ways that wanderers tread And those that make romance of poverty -- Soldier, I shared the soldier's board and bed, And Joy has been a thing more oft to me Whispered by summer wind and summer sea Than known incarnate in the hours it lies All warm against our hearts and laughs into our eyes. I know not if in risking my best days I shall leave utterly behind me here This dream that lightened me through lonesome ways And that no disappointment made less dear; Sometimes I think that, where the hilltops rear Their white entrenchments back of tangled wire, Behind the mist Death only can make clear, There, like Brunhilde ringed with flaming fire, Lies what shall ease my heart's immense desire: There, where beyond the horror and the pain Only the brave shall pass, only the strong attain. Truth or delusion, be it as it may, Yet think it true, dear friends, for, thinking so, That thought shall nerve our sinews on the day When to the last assault our bugles blow: Reckless of pain and peril we shall go, Heads high and hearts aflame and bayonets bare, And we shall brave eternity as though Eyes looked on us in which we would seem fair -- One waited in whose presence we would wear, Even as a lover who would be well-seen, Our manhood faultless and our honor clean. Resurgam Exiled afar from youth and happy love, If Death should ravish my fond spirit hence I have no doubt but, like a homing dove, It would return to its dear residence, And through a thousand stars find out the road Back into earthly flesh that was its loved abode. A Message to America You have the grit and the guts, I know; You are ready to answer blow for blow You are virile, combative, stubborn, hard, But your honor ends with your own back-yard; Each man intent on his private goal, You have no feeling for the whole; What singly none would tolerate You let unpunished hit the state, Unmindful that each man must share The stain he lets his country wear, And (what no traveller ignores) That her good name is often yours. You are proud in the pride that feels its might; From your imaginary height Men of another race or hue Are men of a lesser breed to you: The neighbor at your southern gate You treat with the scorn that has bred his hate. To lend a spice to your disrespect You call him the "greaser". But reflect! The greaser has spat on you more than once; He has handed you multiple affronts; He has robbed you, banished you, burned and killed; He has gone untrounced for the blood he spilled; He has jeering used for his bootblack's rag The stars and stripes of the gringo's flag; And you, in the depths of your easy-chair -- What did you do, what did you care? Did you find the season too cold and damp To change the counter for the camp? Were you frightened by fevers in Mexico? I can't imagine, but this I know -- You are impassioned vastly more By the news of the daily baseball score Than to hear that a dozen countrymen Have perished somewhere in Darien, That greasers have taken their innocent lives And robbed their holdings and raped their wives. Not by rough tongues and ready fists Can you hope to jilt in the modern lists. The armies of a littler folk Shall pass you under the victor's yoke, Sobeit a nation that trains her sons To ride their horses and point their guns -- Sobeit a people that comprehends The limit where private pleasure ends And where their public dues begin, A people made strong by discipline Who are willing to give--what you've no mind to -- And understand--what you are blind to -- The things that the individual Must sacrifice for the good of all. You have a leader who knows--the man Most fit to be called American, A prophet that once in generations Is given to point to erring nations Brighter ideals toward which to press And lead them out of the wilderness. Will you turn your back on him once again? Will you give the tiller once more to men Who have made your country the laughing-stock For the older peoples to scorn and mock, Who would make you servile, despised, and weak, A country that turns the other cheek, Who care not how bravely your flag may float, Who answer an insult with a note, Whose way is the easy way in all, And, seeing that polished arms appal Their marrow of milk-fed pacifist, Would tell you menace does not exist? Are these, in the world's great parliament, The men you would choose to represent Your honor, your manhood, and your pride, And the virtues your fathers dignified? Oh, bury them deeper than the sea In universal obloquy; Forget the ground where they lie, or write For epitaph: "Too proud to fight." I have been too long from my country's shores To reckon what state of mind is yours, But as for myself I know right well I would go through fire and shot and shell And face new perils and make my bed In new privations, if ROOSEVELT led; But I have given my heart and hand To serve, in serving another land, Ideals kept bright that with you are dim; Here men can thrill to their country's hymn, For the passion that wells in the Marseillaise Is the same that fires the French these days, And, when the flag that they love goes by, With swelling bosom and moistened eye They can look, for they know that it floats there still By the might of their hands and the strength of their will, And through perils countless and trials unknown Its honor each man has made his own. They wanted the war no more than you, But they saw how the certain menace grew, And they gave two years of their youth or three The more to insure their liberty When the wrath of rifles and pennoned spears Should roll like a flood on their wrecked frontiers. They wanted the war no more than you, But when the dreadful summons blew And the time to settle the quarrel came They sprang to their guns, each man was game; And mark if they fight not to the last For their hearths, their altars, and their past: Yea, fight till their veins have been bled dry For love of the country that WILL not die. O friends, in your fortunate present ease (Yet faced by the self-same facts as these), If you would see how a race can soar That has no love, but no fear, of war, How each can turn from his private role That all may act as a perfect whole, How men can live up to the place they claim And a nation, jealous of its good name, Be true to its proud inheritance, Oh, look over here and learn from FRANCE! Introduction and Conclusion of a Long Poem I have gone sometimes by the gates of Death And stood beside the cavern through whose doors Enter the voyagers into the unseen. From that dread threshold only, gazing back, Have eyes in swift illumination seen Life utterly revealed, and guessed therein What things were vital and what things were vain. Know then, like a vast ocean from my feet Spreading away into the morning sky, I saw unrolled my vanished days, and, lo, Oblivion like a morning mist obscured Toils, trials, ambitions, agitations, ease, And like green isles, sun-kissed, with sweet perfume Loading the airs blown back from that dim gulf, Gleamed only through the all-involving haze The hours when we have loved and been beloved. Therefore, sweet friends, as often as by Love You rise absorbed into the harmony Of planets singing round magnetic suns, Let not propriety nor prejudice Nor the precepts of jealous age deny What Sense so incontestably affirms; Cling to the blessed moment and drink deep Of the sweet cup it tends, as there alone Were that which makes life worth the pain to live. What is so fair as lovers in their joy That dies in sleep, their sleep that wakes in joy? Caressing arms are their light pillows. They That like lost stars have wandered hitherto Lonesome and lightless through the universe, Now glow transfired at Nature's flaming core; They are the centre; constellated heaven Is the embroidered panoply spread round Their bridal, and the music of the spheres Rocks them in hushed epithalamium. . . . . . I know that there are those whose idle tongues Blaspheme the beauty of the world that was So wondrous and so worshipful to me. I call them those that, in the palace where Down perfumed halls the Sleeping Beauty lay, Wandered without the secret or the key. I know that there are those, of gentler heart, Broken by grief or by deception bowed, Who in some realm beyond the grave conceive The bliss they found not here; but, as for me, In the soft fibres of the tender flesh I saw potentialities of Joy Ten thousand lifetimes could not use. Dear Earth, In this dark month when deep as morning dew On thy maternal breast shall fall the blood Of those that were thy loveliest and thy best, If it be fate that mine shall mix with theirs, Hear this my natural prayer, for, purified By that Lethean agony and clad In more resplendent powers, I ask nought else Than reincarnate to retrace my path, Be born again of woman, walk once more Through Childhood's fragrant, flowery wonderland And, entered in the golden realm of Youth, Fare still a pilgrim toward the copious joys I savored here yet scarce began to sip; Yea, with the comrades that I loved so well Resume the banquet we had scarce begun When in the street we heard the clarion-call And each man sprang to arms--ay, even myself Who loved sweet Youth too truly not to share Its pain no less than its delight. If prayers Are to be prayed, lo, here is mine! Be this My resurrection, this my recompense! Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France (To have been read before the statue of Lafayette and Washington in Paris, on Decoration Day, May 30, 1916.) I Ay, it is fitting on this holiday, Commemorative of our soldier dead, When--with sweet flowers of our New England May Hiding the lichened stones by fifty years made gray -- Their graves in every town are garlanded, That pious tribute should be given too To our intrepid few Obscurely fallen here beyond the seas. Those to preserve their country's greatness died; But by the death of these Something that we can look upon with pride Has been achieved, nor wholly unreplied Can sneerers triumph in the charge they make That from a war where Freedom was at stake America withheld and, daunted, stood aside. II Be they remembered here with each reviving spring, Not only that in May, when life is loveliest, Around Neuville-Saint-Vaast and the disputed crest Of Vimy, they, superb, unfaltering, In that fine onslaught that no fire could halt, Parted impetuous to their first assault; But that they brought fresh hearts and springlike too To that high mission, and 'tis meet to strew With twigs of lilac and spring's earliest rose The cenotaph of those Who in the cause that history most endears Fell in the sunny morn and flower of their young years. III Yet sought they neither recompense nor praise, Nor to be mentioned in another breath Than their blue coated comrades whose great days It was their pride to share--ay, share even to the death! Nay, rather, France, to you they rendered thanks (Seeing they came for honor, not for gain), Who, opening to them your glorious ranks, Gave them that grand occasion to excel, That chance to live the life most free from stain And that rare privilege of dying well. IV O friends! I know not since that war began From which no people nobly stands aloof If in all moments we have given proof Of virtues that were thought American. I know not if in all things done and said All has been well and good, Or if each one of us can hold his head As proudly as he should, Or, from the pattern of those mighty dead Whose shades our country venerates to-day, If we've not somewhat fallen and somewhat gone astray. But you to whom our land's good name is dear, If there be any here Who wonder if her manhood be decreased, Relaxed its sinews and its blood less red Than that at Shiloh and Antietam shed, Be proud of these, have joy in this at least, And cry: "Now heaven be praised That in that hour that most imperilled her, Menaced her liberty who foremost raised Europe's bright flag of freedom, some there were Who, not unmindful of the antique debt, Came back the generous path of Lafayette; And when of a most formidable foe She checked each onset, arduous to stem -- Foiled and frustrated them -- On those red fields where blow with furious blow Was countered, whether the gigantic fray Rolled by the Meuse or at the Bois Sabot, Accents of ours were in the fierce melee; And on those furthest rims of hallowed ground Where the forlorn, the gallant charge expires, When the slain bugler has long ceased to sound, And on the tangled wires The last wild rally staggers, crumbles, stops, Withered beneath the shrapnel's iron showers: -- Now heaven be thanked, we gave a few brave drops; Now heaven be thanked, a few brave drops were ours." V There, holding still, in frozen steadfastness, Their bayonets toward the beckoning frontiers, They lie--our comrades--lie among their peers, Clad in the glory of fallen warriors, Grim clusters under thorny trellises, Dry, furthest foam upon disastrous shores, Leaves that made last year beautiful, still strewn Even as they fell, unchanged, beneath the changing moon; And earth in her divine indifference Rolls on, and many paltry things and mean Prate to be heard and caper to be seen. But they are silent, calm; their eloquence Is that incomparable attitude; No human presences their witness are, But summer clouds and sunset crimson-hued, And showers and night winds and the northern star. Nay, even our salutations seem profane, Opposed to their Elysian quietude; Our salutations calling from afar, From our ignobler plane And undistinction of our lesser parts: Hail, brothers, and farewell; you are twice blest, brave hearts. Double your glory is who perished thus, For you have died for France and vindicated us. [End of original text.] Appendix: ASCII to Greek Character Map A,a alpha B,b beta G,g gamma D,d delta E,e epsilon Z,z zeta H,h eta Q,q theta I,i iota K,k kappa L,l lambda M,m mi/mu N,n ni/nu J,j ksi/xi O,o omikron/omicron P,p pi R,r rho S,s,c sigma T,t tau U,u ypsilon/upsilon F,f phi X,x chi/khi Y,y psi W,w omega The ASCII character | (pipe) precedes the following symbols: ''/\^ to mark accents in Greek. These in turn Precede the vowel they refer to. Appendix: Corrections made to original text. The following corrections have been made: In "The Deserted Garden", 'Down beechen allies' has been corrected to read 'Down beechen alleys', as the former is more than doubtful. One occurrence each of "bazar" and "twelve-month" have been corrected to read "bazaar" and "twelvemonth", to be consistent both with other mentions in the text, and with the most common usage. 
63399	----	Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. This book was produced from images made available by the Blue Mountain Project, Princeton University. THE GLEBE VOLUME 2 NUMBER 2 SEPTEMBER 1914 SUBSCRIPTION Three Dollars Yearly THIS ISSUE 50 CENTS POEMS George Cronyn The only editorial policy of THE GLEBE is that embodied in its declaration of absolute freedom of expression, which makes for a range broad enough to include every temperament from the most radical to the most conservative, the only requisite being that the work should have unmistakable merit. Each issue will be devoted exclusively to one individual, thereby giving him an opportunity to present his work in sufficient bulk to make it possible for the reader to obtain a much more comprehensive grasp of his personality than is afforded him in the restricted spaces allotted by the other magazines. Published monthly, THE GLEBE will issue twelve books per year, chosen on their merits alone, since the subscription list does away with the need of catering to the popular demand that confronts every publisher. Thus, THE GLEBE can promise the best work of American and foreign authors, known and unknown. The price of each issue of THE GLEBE will be fifty cents and the yearly subscription three dollars. Editor ALFRED KREYMBORG Published by ALBERT AND CHARLES BONI 96 FIFTH AVENUE New York City POEMS POEMS GEORGE W. CRONYN NEW YORK ALBERT AND CHARLES BONI 96 FIFTH AVENUE 1914 Copyright, 1914 By Albert and Charles Boni To touch the sleeping lids of Beauty Drawing thru finger-tips her dream--a birth Of hell and heaven for a nobler earth; This is the poet's duty. To sleep with stars, to dream a flower, From passing shadows pluck profound relation, With a divine wonder at its emanation; This is the poet's power. DIONYSUS ELEUTHERIOS THE PRAYER Like a cat beside a pool More than half afraid of it, Fishing gingerly I sit Here beside this pool of wit-- Dumb as any fool! Chirrups humor in the grass; Winds of tickling laughter pass, And the world grows wise forsooth, Lets gleam amused tooth Seeing in this water-glass Jests that swim the depths of truth, And like fins of fishes shiver It to fretful quirk and quiver. Ripples break and bubbles rise Catching smiles from out the skies In their globed eyes. Surely, surely there was never Such a pleasant river! Only I am out of tune Like an icicle in June, Or a monster from the moon. Dionysus, hear my prayer! Spreading arms to the mute air, I entreat thee, fashion me One with this gay company, One in mirth and one in song Dartling their minds among. Loosener of lips and heart, Draw my sullen mouth apart. Give a gleam to guide me by As a phare in a night-sky-- Grace of tongue and warmth of eye; Give me of thy fire and dew; Give me flash of mimic art-- Spice of Godhead in this brew To pierce my fellows thru and thru. Oh, thou vintal Deity, Loose my limbs that they may fly With this reckless revelry! Sick of sober ways am I; In this tumult I alone Am a satyr turned to stone; Satyr--satyr--not a man! Gifts I ask not of Apollo-- Wine is good and grief is hollow; I would follow after Pan; I would follow, follow, follow After Pan! Or if he wander ways too quiet, Shepherd ways of warmth and ease, Let me taste a wilder riot In thy mysteries-- Let me quaff it, laugh it, cry it! Give me, give me, give me these-- Fleet foot after those that flee, Hot veins amorous to seize Maenads maddened by the wine, Wound with hair and wreathed with vine, Maenads stained with purple lees-- Give me, give me, give me these. Only this I ask of thee Dionysus, Dionysus, son of Semele! THE ANSWER Lo! the God of purple pleasure Heard and hearkened to his prayer, Reft the swathed bands that bound him, From his cloak of Self unwound him, Filled him with supernal seizure That his humor's jewelled treasure Leaped and sparkled in the air-- Till the night was bright around him. Never such a jestful fit Dreamt he in his wildest wishes! Never from the pool of wit Had he drawn such shining fishes! Humid flame glowed in each eye And his face had changed its vesture, And his arms moved with strange gesture Apt in every mimicry. With the spell of Fire and Dew He pierced his fellows thru and thru. Surely Dithyrambus pressed him! Surely the Great God possessed him! And the mystic sisters too, Oeno, Spermo, and Elais, (Who knoweth what their way is?) Surely they caressed him! He whose tongue of old was frozen-- As he quaffs, with this potation Deep and deeper inspiration Seems to grow a Prophet--chosen, For he speaks by divination! Never were such fancies woven From the carded thoughts of mortal. Some are mazed, and some deride him, "Lo, his wits have gone astray, What a fool he is!" they say. Others whisper (those beside him) "He hath crossed another portal-- He is one whose foot is cloven. Do ye hear wild creatures beat Lifted hoof and naked feet On the quiet woodland sod? Do ye mark what mood that strain is? Hints it not the Shepherd God With his pipings shrill and sweet-- Snubnose, Sweetwine, old Silenus, All his creatures shy and fleet?" Deeper, deeper, Fire and Dew Drains he of the Wine-God's brew Craving furthest essence--thus Heareth now another voice Terrible and new, Luring--appalling, "Iachus! Iachus! Iachus! Wine! Wine! Wine! Rejoice!" Thru the forest calling. And the sky is red and golden And the red, red stars are falling, Falling to the earth in showers. And the fresh blood-scents embolden Gold and sable leopards, sleeping, To come crawling, writhing, leaping, Over gold and purple flowers. And the autumn sun is swollen With the sweetness he has stolen From the wine, and he is wine, wine-red. Come ye now with wreathed head, Come ye now With ivy bound on your white brow, And forgotten, forgotten be the hours! Forgotten and forgotten! Ah the night has fled away, And the wine is spilt, and the stars are gray, For the old cold dawn abashes All the torches turned to ashes, But the feasters--where are they? Fled, the sound of pipes at last; Fled, the panting, goat-shank'd clan, And the maenad rout have passed, And the echoes caught and cast Died where they began. Never, never, never A more sombre river From such springs of laughter ran! And the lucid pool of wit-- What a scum has clouded it! Past each stately Parian column Day comes, gaunt and pale and shrunken And her step is very solemn. On the veined marble sunken, Reft of breath of Deity, Prone there, lies the Priest--the Chosen, Huddled, bestial, bleared and drunken-- Like a body that is frozen (That such things should be!) Shape of shapeless mockery He had tasted all one can; He had heard the pipes of Pan; He had followed in thy van Dionysus, Dionysus, son of Semele-- Satyr?--not a satyr he--a man! THE TRAIL BY NIGHT No human foot-print here before my own! And it is strange to come so far--alone-- So far into this frozen forest world Of moonlight and of shadow and deep snow, And things I do not know, That strike the civil vestments from my soul-- As if all law-born years were backward hurled Toward some dim and other pole-- Some brute primordial reign Whose voice was terror and whose life was pain. On--up the trail I go; Beneath my feet cold streams of moonlight glow, And in the silver-sifted dark strange, naked fancies grow, While the vast pines in vista, round by round, Move with an unearthly sound, And every tree with its white hair is crowned. On--up--I go, And as thru ancient Gothic arches seen I glimpse the valley far below That glistens with a fine fantastic sheen. On--up--I pass, Nor reck the night-wrought spells about me thrown, Heedless--sucked dry of thought or will Save to peer curious into this magician's glass, And see the forest dreams thru forest moonlight blown. On--up I plunge--until Bending, discern before me, with a thrill The signs where some wild beast has gone. Who knows but that within the silence here The cedar shadows gloom about a deer, That stands with body lithe and slim Struck to a statue by surprise? Who knows but that, upon some snowy limb A lynx, lean-bellied, pricks his tufted ear And watches me with evil, amber eyes? * * * * * Surely beyond the stars my man-world lies-- For close to me unhallowed mountains rise And fill my heart with fear! SONG IN WINTER Burning stars in a frosty sky, Thread-bare winds from the hollow west, "Give us a garment of beauty!" they cry, "For the waters of truth our throats are dry, And phantoms of chaos uncover the bones of our breast, Leaving us little rest." Bitter stars in a frozen sky, Tattered winds from the lonely west, Haggard beggars of hours that die-- (Begging the gift of a golden lie!) Is it with you as with us, no rest, no rest-- Is it with you no rest? The lacy chequer of aerial boughs That winter weaves with delicate wizardry. * * * * * Far away--who knows how far?-- Against the flaming calm of winter twilight, I hear the voice of speed--muffled and hoarse, Sounding across the hills. * * * * * Locomotive, locomotive, Over the hills at night, Running on your far-away groove With the husky pant of things that move And cannot turn to left or right, Of things that toil and things that pass In the murk of smoke and the stench of gas, Serf of the monstrous city, What pity--oh what pity For the dearth of your delight, Locomotive, locomotive, Over the hills at night! CLOUDS Whence do you come, oh silken shapes, Across the silver sky? We come from where the wind blows And the young stars die. Why do you move so fast, so fast Across the white moon's breast? The cruel wind is at our heels And we may not rest. Are you not weary, fleeing shapes, That never cease to flee? The forkéd trees' chained shadows are Less weary than we. Whither do you go, O shadow-shapes Across the ghastly sky? We go to where the wind blows And the old stars die. My head is circl'd with fire-- And I think of the failing of one's desire-- And I hear outside the pitiful dropping of rain; Which is the greater pain? I yearn for the birth of the brain-- Be it child of blood and pain, (I pray to endure the pain)-- My heart--lo! my heart is afire With hue as of purple or Tyre-- With hope of Promethean fire-- And oh God! God! God! the desire For what only the Gods attain! In the white moonlight stand With every finger on a star, and feel Infinity as an engulfing wave. JOY The cañons are covered with snow, But the sky doth over them lean With eyes that are warm and keen As if he could never know The gray despair of the snow; And snow and sky join hands together To dance a dance of wonderful weather! A VOICE A woman spoke to me in the street-- I do not remember how or why-- But a breath blew over the winter sky And spring came in with silver feet! ANOTHER A creature plucked at me in the street But well I knew the reason why The red stars sickened in the sky And Hell gaped open at my feet! IMPRESSIONS This is the Gate of the Gray City--wrought With piled roofs and steeples dimly seen Thru the gray dusk--pale, wistful flakes of fire Kindled about its lower fringe--vast murk-- A snuffling monster with an evil eye That surly pants to work some will unknown, Blowing white breaths--a semaphore With lifted arm--a form that swings a light In arcs, against infinitude of gray, Uneasy sounds, the clink and clank and groan; Of things inanimate--the curves of rails In rhythmical convergence gathered up-- (And gathering up what burdens from afar!) Monotony--monotony--despair! This is the Gate of the Gray City. Whatever our immitigable end, The earth's our home and prison thru whose windows Our wistful scrutinizing minds traverse The sky's dissolving continents, exult In melancholy mountains or, shackled, Envy the inconstant sea that seems An uncontaminated god, alone, complete In mighty passion and the scorn of time. * * * * * I love the skyward-spiring tree For its supreme unconsciousness of me. So let us seek the lands that the Gods love, The soil unsown, the isles of sumptuous store; Where fallow fields yield yearly fee of grain, And vines unpruned produce perennial bloom, And olive slips engender faithfully, And dark figs deck their trees; the cavernous oaks Bleed honey'd drops, and from high hills descend The nimble waters with melodious feet. PRELUDE TO A PHANTASY I will tell thee of Far-Away, of Far-Away, of Far-Away, I will tell thee of Far-Away The home of wandering dreams; For they come out of Far-Away To show us how to love and play, And when they've wandered for a day Must return, it seems. There's more than gold in Far-Away, in Far-Away, in Far-Away, There's more than gold in Far-Away, There's more than jewelled gleams. There's more than smiles in Far-Away, And coronals of laughter gay; There's crystal tears that bloom alway Beside forgotten streams. We'll gather gold from Far-Away, from Far-Away, from Far-Away, We'll gather gold from Far-Away, We'll steal the jewelled gleams. We'll hunt for smiles from Far-Away; Following laughter by the way, But we must for another day Leave the tears it seems. We'll find the road to Far-Away, to Far-Away, to Far-Away, We'll know the road to Far-Away By the feet of dreams; For they come out of Far-Away To love a little and to play, And when they've wandered for a day Must return it seems. RUNNING WATER Oh you who stand by the river in a gown of willow-green, I will make you an eager song of my heart to-night; I will find me a feather of a singing bird that has seen And touched the blue targe of the sky in its flight. I will make me a quill of it, and dip in my heart and write! I would not make you a threnody of sorrow that has been, For you are no more than an eager child who demand Magical tales of me, of lacquered Arabian sheen; I will speak very softly then with your hand In mine, a rose petal, the things that you understand. On the waxen and beautiful tablet that is your heart With a singing quill and the stain of my heart I will write; I will write with the simplest words and the simplest art All the splendors that glow so by night-- Of the Genie and the Bottle, and carpets of orient flight. And you who are more than a princess in your gown of yellow-green With your bird-like and trembling heart will understand All the luxurious sorrows and loves that have been Written on parchment at a king's demand-- And the simple words of them will flutter like birds in your hand. EPITHALAMION The pale dawn went down unto the sea, Past the gray ships in the offing. The salt wind found her blowing hair And closed his wings and nested there, And the salt sea hungered for her rare Sweet body and forgot his scoffing. The pale dawn went down unto the sea When all the world was sleeping; She lifted veils and veils of air Until her eager limbs were bare, And the salt sea shook his manéd hair, And the curl'd waves came to her, leaping. MARSH-LANDS Sure in this spongy and luxuriant retreat-- This lovely lyric little marsh Which nothing hath of fierce or harsh, Unhappy fancies to evoke, Where all life is most delicately attuned to sweet Melodious living, here we'll meet Naiads dainty and discreet With other watery folk And watch the twinkle of their iridescent feet. Upon a reed's high silver point Which early dews anoint, The Red-wing lights and poises, swaying, With throaty and delicious whistle playing Pan-music in the mellow morning light. It is like running water's flow A bit unearthly, and celestial quite-- A golden tremolo; And satin robes of air half veil him from our sight. The gay marsh-marigold Delights its small sun to unfold; And many a bulbous goblin thing, Ugly and grave, Into the dull mud burrowing Draws from some secret treasure-cave And to the sunlight heaves Green breadth--great leaves To build a vessel floating on an inland wave. We'll be as busy as the clouds, with naught to do, And we will wonder at the curious striping, In saffron glimpses, of more distant pools Which the wind cools With deep reflected blue. And we will listen now to Hyla's piping-- A thin small sprite That one may never see Calling to the sky his clear delight Filled with insatiate and unbounded ecstasy. SPRING FANCY There is an orchard, old and rare, (I cannot tell you where!) With green doors opening to the sun; And the sky-children gather there To watch the blossoms, one by one, Falling wistfully thru the air From the trees' dishevelled hair. The sky-children shake their wings With flutterings and gurglings-- And love the light and kiss the sun, Nor heed the blossoms that have blown From the fruit-wives' ancient hair Earthward thru the glowing air, Wistfully--one by one. SONG A Flicker, a Robin, a Song-sparrow Have come from Arcady. The Flicker was an imp that shouted in a tree; The Robin was a winged laugh that Spring set free; The Song-sparrow was a liquid arrow That pierced to the heart of me. PLAYING Three little girls and one little boy Out in the first warm sunshine; The wind blows in and the wind blows out Voices cool as moonshine. Six tin cans and a pile of dirt And the air smiles like a mother-- The wind blows in and the wind blows out As they play with each other. Sparrows on the fence and clothes on the line And somewhere someone's laughter-- The wind blows in and the wind blows out And it could not blow much softer! Three little girls and one little boy Out in the first warm weather-- The wind blows in and the wind blows out While they play together. SONG Hi! hi! hi! On this green morning My soul is as taut as a greenwood-bow, Feeling the sap in it mounting so, Needs but a jog to loose without warning An arrow into the infinite sky-- Hi! hi! hi! On this green morning! A BUST BY RODIN, KNOWN AS CERES With rhythmic feet and garments flowing free Draw near, draw near, bring largesse in full hand; Move as to music of the saraband Stately, before this Woman-deity. Woman's--these billows of thick hair that roll Down the billowing breasts of her, and close Shadows of pain and mirth in firm repose-- This delicate mask drawn tight across a soul! A Goddess--Ultima Thule in her eye; For the sad wisdom of its steady gaze, Fixed on far, wintry fields and frozen ways, Goes out to larger things than you or I: The Titan-sap makes gods of the spring hours, And Earth renews its children and its flowers! THE FLOWER'S WAY I have stood long in the night Under a star; I have stood still with shadowy head And arrowy leaves outspread Under its trembling light Where green things are. I have crept close to the grass Where the beetles dart, And the humming-bird and the dragon-fly Were visions in the sky, And the mendicant bees that pass Rifled my heart. I have lain long in the day Under the sun, With my burning face in the arms of the wind, And my petals unconfin'd And my virginal robes a-sway-- Thus joy is won! THE TREE'S WAY The high trees are honest folk; They do not stand so much aloof Up under heaven's roof, Altho they are earth's fairest cloak. Their lives are very calm and slow; They wait for coming things to come, They wait, they rest, they ponder some Purpose forgotten long ago Like quiet folk; And sometimes I am moved to stroke Hand-greeting as I pass them near, And often I am sure I hear An answer from these stately folk! CHILDREN What a garden of surprise Out beyond my window lies! Fancy, when the night is there Gentle trees with drooping hair Rocking, rocking cradle-wise Little stars with yellow eyes! VERSES TO A LITTLE CHILD (From Hofmannsthal) Your feet have been fashioned as roses To seek the lands of the rainbow-- The rainbow-kingdoms are open. There, haunting the taciturn tree-tops Millennial prophecies linger, The inexhaustible waters Abide there forever and aye. Beside the immeasurable forest From wooden bowl brimming will you then Apportion your milk with a hop-toad? So festive a banqueting almost Entices the stars to their fall! By borders of measureless waters Soon you will discover a playmate, A dolphin engaging and kind. He'll leap to dry-land at your bidding, And if he shall fail you sometimes The tender, innumerable zephyrs Will still your tempestuous sobbing. You'll find in the rainbow-kingdom The ancient exalted traditions Forever and ever unchanged. The sun with mysterious power Has fashioned your feet as the roses To enter his measureless kingdom. NIGHT-FLOWERS This night hath no disease; It knows not wrecks nor wars Nor deaths of human minds. The feet of the sweet winds Break all the river's peace Into marmoreal bars. The tops of moonlit trees Have blossomed with white stars, And perfumes that one finds In old Arabian jars Had never blooms like these! THE NIGHT Sorrows confide their secrets; joys lead lives Of lonely splendor. Mankind tells all things To me, knowing I will not ever speak. DISILLUSION The night was like a jewell'd crown-- (Could jewels be so soft a thing!) For stars and wind were in the town And by the highways entering, Plucked there as on a viol string, Until--somewhere--a woman's scream-- Sharply shattered the dream! Silence within The upper twilight of a temple lies Asleep, with pendant plumes--a dreaming god-- And dreams the pageantry of things--and dreams The gifts that he has given with his hands-- The gifts that he has taken with his hands-- And dreams his own eternity. * * * * * I am one that loves The stars of labyrinthine night whom the shrill dawn Devours, the quietude of ultimate slopes Thoughtful of twilight, peering moons that shed Unrisen glamours thru the umbrageous wood With gnome and goblin rife, and the light spray Of gray spring rains enveloping the hills. SONG Would I were a bird To nest in a cover Of leaves that hover 'Twixt earth and heaven Where no sound is heard-- Only the uneven Brush of winds that slumber With no thought to cumber; Would I were a bird! Would I were a wave To rise for a moment From the ocean's foment, To puff my lips asunder Blowing bubbles brave, To dream and to wonder Of the depths below me And the winds that blow me-- Would I were a wave! Bird, canst thou fashion Song of things that grieve thee? Wave hast thou passion For things that will deceive thee? Bird and wave I leave ye! RONDEAU A Sunday-calm, ornate, profound, Enchanting sense, subduing sound, Enjoins its ritual to prepare; The day is bland with unctuous prayer That leaps to heaven at a bound. And bells ope throats in mellow round Of sweet antiphonal resound, And virtue glistens everywhere-- A Sunday-calm. Draw breath! Away to virgin ground! But where the fields are flower-crowned The cattle with self-conscious stare Chide my undeprecative air,-- Good heavens! Can they too have found A Sunday-calm? SUNSET BURIAL The trees upheaven filigrane fingers of desire To touch a ruby-throated cloud-face fanned By a bronze breath and globous mouth of fire; Beneath, the rigid gravestones stand, Each one a cadaver that cannot close its hand. FAIRY SONG I can live in a golden fruit Whose core is hung with honey; I can swing on golden wing In elfin ceremony-- But oh! for the power To open as a flower When the air is sunny! A YOUNG GIRL'S LOVE The season is less stubborn now; Over the youngling world we see A white sky full of scudding blue, A white wind that runneth as a child Touching most delicately the new Sweet buds, and having touched and smiled, Goes to seek out some pale anemone, And wreathe with maiden flowers her fragile brow. A YOUNG MAN'S LOVE If I were your sister I'd lie with you the night-long To feel your bosom's beating; If I were your brother I'd wake you with a day-song And give a kiss as greeting; If I were your mother I'd hold you as a shut flower When the dark comes creeping; If I were your father I'd enter at the dawn-hour To look upon you, sleeping. What is there left over For me, who am your lover? SONG A cup full of star-shine That glowed as an ember, (Oh, star of my delight!) With smiles I do remember And words forgotten quite, A cup full of star-shine I drank with you to-night. A cup full of sea-sound That was as summer thunder-- (Oh sea of my delight!) With love that lay under Seven heavens bright, A cup full of sea-sound I drank with you to-night. SONG (_After an old English tune_) I will bring thee a silver crown. I will bring thee an ell of vair, Cloth of gold and ermine rare To make thee a gown. Thou hast brought me a marble frown. Thou hast brought me a cold, cold stare, Heart of lead and wry despair, And a mad-man's swown. I will bring thee a leaden crown, Cloth of Raines in thirty-fold! I will bring thee a bed on the wold To lay thee down. Thou hast brought me out of the town To the earth upturned where the bell is tolled-- Fires of hell and the river's cold My sorrows drown! TRISTAN AND ISOLDE The sea is here, it hath not any shore, Nor moves with moving of wind-driven waves Which, undulant and writhing--naked slaves To the uneasy wanderer of heaven's floor, Bow sullen backs beneath their master's store He brought with viewless hands from broken graves-- The sea is here, and in its silent caves Moves not, tho the wind clamors more and more. The sea is here, an infinite undertone; But lo! upon its surface I descry Two floating bubbles, wonderfully blown Toward each other, flame-like from the sky-- Meet--melt with lyric splendor into one-- Then, wind-prick'd, vanish--o'er the Sea, a cry! PALINURUS Starlight: with deep and quiet breathing slept The southern sea. The white-wing'd ship that bore The good Aeneas from his Dido's shore Ghostlike, with rippling furrows, onward crept, And only faithful Palinurus kept The midnight watch--but ah, the magic bough, The opiate dew that dript upon his brow, The vacant post, the friends who waking wept. The gods demand their victims; who shall know What failures Time and Circumstance compel? Yet, if such doom were mine, I would 'twere so That they would mark my absence thus: "How well Even unto the last he struggled, lo! He tore the rudder with him when he fell!" THE DERELICT I cannot remember whither I was bound-- I cannot remember why I was found Moving without a sound Moving in mystery-- Derelict, derelict, Over the sea! I too carry a cargo in my hold, Underneath sea-water and green with mold-- I cannot remember how old! For terrible it is to be Derelict, derelict, Over the sea! Feebler ships weather bravely into port; Running a course that is safe and short-- My voyage is another sort; No master guideth me-- Derelict, derelict, Over the sea! Nights have shadow'd me with phantom stride-- Stars have peer'd at me, eerie-eyed-- Goblin lights and magic tide Keep me company, Derelict, derelict, Over the sea! Setting suns have rowell'd me with crimson'd heel-- Winds have flung laughter, peal after peal-- But they shall not know that I feel Mute in my agony-- Derelict, derelict, Over the sea! Rudderless, by ways uncharted blown-- Some day shall waken to find me gone-- What matter? I have drifted alone Ever--alone--yet free-- Derelict, derelict, Over the sea! THE SQUIRE OF DAMES TO HIS LADY Why should our meeting borrow A sense of shame or sorrow That each must go his way? Love liketh no fetter Therefore our roads were better If you go yours to-morrow, And I go mine to-day. I hold you for a minute-- You'd catch the hour and pin it-- But if I held you longer Would you have more assurance In days of richer durance, Life with more rapture in it, Passion more wise and stronger? The Daughter of Illusion Hath made our love seem fusion Of two strange things in one-- But loving hath not taught her That strange as fire to water, Love becomes bleak intrusion When all the glamor's gone. You say I've brought you sorrow And pay not debts I borrow-- But mirth is what's to pay! So part our paths in laughter, And, since your heart is softer, You go your way to-morrow-- And I'll go mine to-day. GAS-LIGHT HEROICS With this night's carousal We will close the portal On our poor espousal-- Sacrament and housel For a love too mortal! With this gay delaying We'll delay yet longer-- Care not what the saying Of the World--that braying Evil tattle-monger! Pleasure has as thunder Scorched and jangled thru me; Now I'll sit and wonder At the day-star yonder And your face, grown gloomy. You are known as "Lily" And they mock your gender; Is it but a silly Fancy, you seem stilly Lily-souled and tender? Underneath the bitter Mockery of color, Underneath the titter Is there something fitter? Something finer, fuller? Something (can I hear it In your secret eyes?) When I come too near it Like a frightened spirit Running from the skies? Girl, you know that glow meant Dawn's thin lips of scarlet-- Bubble of life's foment Stay your soul a moment! * * * * * Bah! You're drunk, you harlot! MISTS I I am most weary of this fatuous me That doth obtrude a niddering death's head At a blithe feast of Springtide jollity, Of revelling buds and flowers unsurfeited. I am most weary of this chained thought That hath forgotten where its mansions are-- And lost the dew its seven-spher'd courses caught Wandering in plunged dark from star to star. I am most weary of my stagnant soul That neither thirsts, nor hungers, nor is stirred By the gigantic thunders that have rolled From the white, hurtling lightning of a word. I am most weary, love; so let thy face-- The sponge that sops my gaze, myself erase. II Oft in the groping night I am afraid, For this, mine opaque organism, seems A glass, a mere reflex of trooping dreams-- A polished boss where images parade. And to see these doth make my senses cold-- This globe become a visionary face-- This little spinning soul of me--in space-- I dare not think of what that space may hold! Such thoughts are as the charnel mists that rise From feverish and mortuary ground Thru which one sees the country all around-- Yet near, the dead--and far away, the skies. But at the thought of you my life expands Until it holds all life within its hands! SCEPTIC I This hour has shut us like a tent From all but night; we two, alone, So close, so poignantly alert, have grown, That trivial speech, from silence rent, Breaks off--a useless instrument. For all the opening world is ours, And you, tho scarce a woman yet, Your eyes with feasts of lights and vintage set, Hold all the dewy wealth of flowers, And gold of Babylonian towers. Our lives will alter if we move-- It were so easy now to rise And tell my unimpassioned soul it lies-- And claim youth's heritage of love, Let bald life prove what it may prove! It were so easy to conceive Your lack my lack would compensate-- And by one stroke undo the knot of fate; It were so easy to believe The lies that such a thing could weave! Or shall I stumble through the night Biting my lips to hold the tears Because your incommunicable years Must spend their summer of delight Without my reach--beyond my sight? The house is still; the midnight seems Inscrutable--no answer there. Oh God!--to break this tension of despair. Between us the calm lamplight streams-- "Good night!" and "Pleasant dreams!"--yes--dreams. II I would I had lain with my love to-night; Her eyes trembled for her body said, "I have smoothed a pillow and made a bed"-- But I smiled against it And turned away my head To come into the cold starlight. I would I had lain with my love to-night, For I know how flowers are shed, And the cynical scintillant stars are dead-- Dead, dead utterly! Yet I turned away my head To come into the cold starlight. I would I had lain with my love to-night! Oh, indolent Gods, we too can tread On the silent spirits, the uncomforted! She did not reproach me, Tho I turned away my head And came into the starlight. III Love (as a cloud on the sea Hung between poles of blue) Hangs in the heart of me Between the eyes of you. Love, as a cloud on the sea, Claims the tears of two. Love (as a wind in a tree Shaking its tower of green) Shakes all the heart of me And leaves no peace between. Love, as the wind the tree Tears with hands unseen. Love (as a storm on the sea Shatters the sleep of the wave) Shatters the heart of me With desires that grope and crave. Love, as the storm the sea, Boasts not me his slave. IV You, flower-named, and as a flower arrayed, Open to all the wandering airs that pass, Opened to me--yet I drew back afraid, Craven to the blood that would have preyed And the sly viper coiling in the grass. V Love, when you smiled and beckoned My cold thought stood aloof and reckoned Some heights above you. But now you have turned and gone Smiling, fugitive as dawn, I know (oh fool!) I love you. VI Love, with her queen's face and child lips Walked at my side; her hair about her head Streamed, with riotous and exuberant spread Like sails and cordage of sea-breasting ships, And as the tides, her mirthful glints and dips Tugged at my anchor'd calmness--then she said, Chilling to gravity, "You are lead." It was as when the bright blade cruelly slips, For in my soul that hid its vain desires Under closed hatch, I knew the stifled fires Devoured in silence, as stealthy serpents writhe Their folds about their prey; and seemed to hear The passing of some irrevocable year, And faint for whistle of a monstrous scythe. VII Pain of widest range-- The intimate grown strange. ARMA VIRUMQUE CANO And so the good Aeneas went away. It was not dawn, and yet the sleepless sea Felt as a mother, the still unborn day. The stars were brighter than they ought to be. A milky foam curled from the vessel's breast Whose long blades lifted to each lifting crest. Happy were the sailors to be aboard once more, And the laughing sea answered to their shouts afar off shore. Dido the Queen Knew he was gone. No need to have seen From the casement withdrawn; No need to be told; Her heart had guessed By the aching unrest And empty breast-- Empty and cold. Oh, plain her Maidens at their spinning, Love has end that had beginning. As the course was traced Aeneas paced, His thoughts uprising like a flock of birds; And one flew west, to the new the unknown nest, And one that was wing'd with flaming words-- Something the Queen had uttered, tender--sweet,-- Fluttered back and died--just at her feet. Ho! chants a Rower, straining at the sweep, Leave the landsman to his pillow, the sailor to the deep. All night the Queen In fever burned; A dream returned Long ago seen: A dream of ships, Of one who came Out of a flame And cried her name And kissed her lips. Somewhere in the dawn Someone's singing: "Lo! what gifts love's hands are bringing!" Jet-black, the palms like sculptured fountains loomed Above the lovers; one star blazed all night. Beyond the river was the sea that boomed. Their barge was lit with lightnings of delight. Of this, the good Aeneas too had dreamed While the unshaken towers of Ilium gleamed. Ah! cry the sailors, "whom we loved must wait. There's no turning back from the open track to the gates of fate." The cicadas drone; Desert winds blow As oarsmen row Their Queen alone Down the river. Alone, she cried Alone! to the tide. And the sea replied Forever! La, croon the Women, nimbly weaving, "Whose heart do we hear grieving?" Months bring all wanderings to a close. The fleet years flee; Aeneas wisely wed, Often, when wind and sea strike mighty blows, Wakening from dreams half ecstasy, half dread, That come upon him from another life, Touches the calm breast of his sleeping wife. Hum, the Night Watch mutters, leaning on his spear, "'Tis a strange world to be in and to have no fear." The sea at last Brings pain to end. The desert vast Becomes her friend. Her people fear it: "The Queen," they say, "Grows day by day Paler, but still gay-- As a spirit." Oh, they murmur, "Queen Dido goes away To where the dark river runs, sunless and gray." A HYMN TO DIONYSUS IN SPRING Yellow the sands of the shores of Elis, and over the creaming Foam-flakes that flutter and curl on the edge of the dreaming Mediterranean, Jupiter arches his azure dome. Here to the somnolent sands the Aeolian women have come, The dreamers, all languid with silence of spring-tide dreaming, And they stand with their hair unbound and their feet in the foam. The heart of the morning beats with a swooning, amorous beating, And the nymph-cool waters and brazen sunshine meeting, Mingle where indolent spring-tide ripples shimmer and burn; Out to the dim horizon the eyes of the dreamers yearn, And like flutes are the low, soft voices that chant thus, entreating The God, Dionysus, to rise from the sea and return. "Bitter thy roving hath been, O Hunter, and stricken with madness, And thy winter frenzy hath torn us with torment of sadness-- Horror of blood in the mouth and of murderous lusts that bring Shadows a-couch in the forest from under us shuddering. We are sick of the feverish nights that have stolen our gladness-- Ah! we are weary of winter and fain of the Spring!" "Thy foes, O Hunter, have goaded thy soul, but their goading is over, For every unfolding leaf is a shield for thy cover And every grass-blade upraises a spear that is scimitar-keen, Gladly the flowers will weave thee a mantle to wander unseen. Slim as a willow-wand, Ariadne awaits thee, her lover, And her heart is full of the dreams that are cool and green." "Hyé, the Dew, thy mother, sorrows because of thy going, And the film-pale, rain-sweet Hyades fleeing and flowing, Dissolved from the rainbow and river to rise in the sap of the tree, Leave never their dolorous grieving, lamenting in quest of thee. And the succulent vine and the spirit of all things growing Cry 'Dionysus, return! Oh, return from the sea!'" "Wilt thou forsake us forever, unheeding our sedulous plaining? See'st not the clusters of pale green globes, crescent and straining Sunwards, that long for thy hand to engarb them with royal attire? Hear us, O Wine-God; return to us! Kindle once more Desire!" So chant the Aeolian women till the light be waning While the foam breaks over their feet in soft folds of fire. The robes of the sun are red, and close to the earth he dozes; The long day lingers, then slowly and silently closes The shadowy orient gates, climbing upward stair by stair, Raising her evening face to the stars in the spring-tide air. Lo! the sea is aglow and aflame with the odor of roses! Lo! a glimpse of the God with the sun in his yellow hair! Recent Publications Price Post Love of One's Neighbor--Leonid Andreyev Boards .40 .05 A satirical comedy by the greatest of the modern Russians. Mariana--José Echegaray Cloth .75 .10 The masterpiece of modern Spain's greatest writer. Chants Communal--Horace Traubel Boards 1.00 .10 Inspirational prose pieces. Paper .25 .05 Collects--Horace Traubel Cloth 1.00 .10 Jack London says: "His is the vision of the Paper .50 Paid poet and the voice of the poet." Horace Traubel--Mildred Bain Boards .50 .05 Not Guilty--Robert Blatchford Cloth .50 .10 A defence of the bottom-dog. Paper .25 .05 The Diary of a Suicide--Wallace Baker Cloth 1.00 .08 "The confession of a youth who was prematurely Paper .50 Paid tired." The Case of Mexico--De Zayas Cloth 1.35 0.10 Our Irrational Distribution of Wealth--Byron C. Cloth 1.00 .10 Mathews Des Imagistes--An Anthology Cloth 1.00 .07 "It sticks out of the crowd like a tall marble monument."--_The New Weekly._ The Thresher's Wife--Harry Kemp Boards .40 .05 A narrative poem of great strength and originality. An English Dante--John Pyne Boards 1.00 .07 A translation in the original rhythm and rhymes. Erna Vitek--Alfred Kreymborg Cloth 1.00 .10 A new form of the novel. A study of character solely by the narration of events. _Complete Catalog Ready July 30. Send For It._ ALBERT & CHARLES BONI 96 Fifth Avenue New York City POETRY A Magazine of Verse Edited by HARRIET MONROE 543 Cass Street, Chicago Established October, 1912, and endowed for an initial period of five years. POETRY publishes the finest work of living American and English poets, and especially forwards recognition of those younger poets whose acceptance might otherwise be retarded by a lack of adventurous appreciation. _Have You Read_ On Heaven, by Ford Madox Hueffer Chicago Poems, by Carl Sandburg Eros Turannos, by Edwin Arlington Robinson The Code--Heroics, by Robert Frost Nishikigi, by Ernest Fenellosa Running to Paradise, by W. B. Yeats Songs of Deliverance, by Orrick Johns A Woman and Her Dead Husband, by D. H. Lawrence Roumanian Poems, by Maurice Aisen The Fireman's Ball, by Nicholas Vachel Lindsay Narratives, by Rabindranath Tagore POETRY is published monthly Annual subscription $1.50. Single copies 15 cents Circular sent on request Sample copy on receipt of 15 cents The Little Review Lowers Its Price $1.50 a Year - 15 Cents a Copy THE LITTLE REVIEW _Literature_ _Drama_ _Music_ _Art_ MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Editor THE NEW MONTHLY WHICH HAS BEEN CALLED "THE MOST VITAL THING EVER STARTED IN AMERICA" To reach _everybody_ who wants "The Little Review" we have decided to become more accessible. Subscriptions now $1.50 a year; single copies 15 cents. The next issue will be ready the first day of September, and the magazine will be published hereafter promptly on the first of every month. The September issue contains the following: POEMS: Maxwell Bodenheim After Feeling Deux Arabesques by Debussy Let Me Not Live Too Long To a Violinist Gifts To a Woman Hell The Nietzschean Love of Eternity George Burman Foster Grocer Shops and Souls The Democrat With apologies to Mr. Galsworthy The Constructive Reasoner POEMS: Amy Lowell Clear, with Light Variable Winds Fool's Moneybags The Crucified Dionysus Alexander S. Kaun The Poetry of Revolt Charles Ashleigh The Venetian Dramatists Irma McArthur The Obituary of a Poet Floyd Dell Humbugging the Public Henry Blackman Sell London Letter Amy Lowell You may make fifty cents on every subscription you send us on the new basis. 917 FINE ARTS BUILDING, CHICAGO The June Number Swept the Country The July is Still Better DON'T FORGET TO ORDER YOUR COPY OF The Masses A yearly subscription will insure an immediate and regular delivery each month of this unique periodical _10 cents a Copy_ _$1.00 a Year_ THE MASSES PUB. CO. 91 GREENWICH AVENUE NEW YORK The October issue of THE GLEBE will present EARTH-SPIRIT By Frank Wedekind. Contents of Volume I: Songs, Sighs and Curses. By Adolf Wolff 60c. The Diary of a Suicide. By Wallace E. Baker 50c. The Azure Adder. By Charles Demuth 35c. Love of One's Neighbor. By Leonid Andreyev 35c. Des Imagistes. An Anthology 50c. Erna Vitek. By Alfred Kreymborg. All sold. Collects. By Horace Traubel 50c. Hereafter all single copies will be 50 cents. The subscription price per year is $3.00. Transcriber's Notes The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical errors were silently corrected. All other changes are listed here (before/after): [p. 10]: ... Fled, the panting, goat-shankid clan, ... ... Fled, the panting, goat-shank'd clan, ... [p. 32]: ... The wind blows in and the wind blows out. ... ... The wind blows in and the wind blows out ... 
63423	----	KATHRINA DR. J. G. HOLLAND'S WRITINGS. _Complete Works_. 16 Volumes. Small 12mo. Sold separately. Bitter-Sweet Kathrina The Mistress of the Manse Puritan's Guest and other Poems Titcomb's Letters to Young People Gold-Foil Lessons in Life Plain Talks on Familiar Subjects Concerning the Jones Family Every-Day Topics. First Series Every-Day Topics. Second Series Sevenoaks The Bay Path Arthur Bonnicastle Miss Gilbert's Career Nicholas Minturn KATHRINA A POEM BY J. G. HOLLAND NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1893. COPYRIGHT BY CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO. 1867 COPYRIGHT BY J. G HOLLAND 1881 TROW'S PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY, NEW YORK. I DEDICATE "KATHRINA" THE WORK OF MY HAND TO ELIZABETH THE WIFE OF MY HEART CONTENTS A TRIBUTE PART I. CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH COMPLAINT PART II. LOVE A REFLECTION PART III. LABOR DESPAIR PART IV. CONSUMMATION KATHRINA. A TRIBUTE. More human, more divine than we-- In truth, half human, half divine-- Is woman, when good stars agree To temper with their beams benign The hour of her nativity. The fairest flower the green earth bears, Bright with the dew and light of heaven, Is, of the double life she wears, The type, in grace and glory given By soil and sun in equal shares. True sister of the Son of Man: True sister of the Son of God: What marvel that she leads the van Of those who in the path he trod, Still bear the cross and wear the ban? If God be in the sky and sea, And live in light and ride the storm, Then God is God, although He be Enshrined within a woman's form; And claims glad reverence from me. So, as I worship Him in Christ, And in the Forms of Earth and Air, I worship Him imparadised, And throned within her bosom fair Whom vanity hath not enticed. O! woman--mother! Woman--wife!-- The sweetest names that language knows! Thy breast, with holy motives rife, With holiest affection glows, Thou queen, thou angel of my life! Noble and fine in his degree Is the best man my heart receives; And this my heart's supremest plea For him: he feels, acts, lives, believes, And seems, and is, the likest thee. O men! O brothers! Well I know That with her nature in our souls Is born the elemental woe-- The brutal impulse that controls, And drives, or drags, the godlike low. Ambition, appetite and pride-- These throng and thrall the hearts of men These plat the thorns, and pierce the side Of Him, who, in our souls again, Is spit upon, and crucified. The greed for gain, the thirst for power, The lust that blackens while it burns: Ah! these the whitest souls deflour! And one, or all of these by turns, Rob man of his divinest dower! Yet man, who shivers like a straw Before Temptation's lightest breeze, Assumes the master--gives the law To her who, on her bended knees, Resists the black-winged thunder-flaw! To him who deems her weak and vain, And boasts his own exceeding might, She clings through darkest fortune fain; Still loyal though the ruffian smite; Still true, though crime his hands distain! And is this weakness? Is it not The strength of God, that loves and bears Though He be slighted or forgot In damning crimes, or driving cares, And closest clings in darkest lot? Not many friends my life has made; Few have I loved, and few are they Who in my hand their hearts have laid; And these were women. I am gray, But never have I been betrayed. These words--this tribute--for the sake Of truth to God and womankind! These--that my heart may cease to ache With love and gratitude confined, And burning from my lips to break! These--to that sisterhood of grace That numbers in its sacred list My mother, risen to her place; My wife, but yester-morning kissed, And folded in Love's last embrace! This tribute of a love profound As ever moved the heart of man, To those to whom my life is bound, To her in whom my life began, And her whose love my life hath crowned! Immortal Love! Thou still hast wings To lift me to those radiant fields, Where Music waits with trembling strings, And Verse her happy numbers yields, And all the soul within me sings. So from the lovely Pagan dream I call no more the Tuneful Nine; For Woman is my Muse Supreme; And she with fire and flight divine, Shall light and lead me to my theme. PART I. CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. Thou lovely vale of sweetest stream that flows: Winding and willow-fringed Connecticut! Swift to thy fairest scenes my fancy flies, As I recall the story of a life Which there began in years of sinless hope, And merged maturely into hopeless sin. O! golden dawning of a day of storms, That fell ere noontide into rayless night! O! beautiful initial, vermeil-flowered, And bright with cherub-eyes and effigies, To the black-letter volume of my life! O! faëry gateway, gilt and garlanded, And shining in the sun, to gloomy groves Of shadowy cypress, and to sunless streams, Feeding with bane the deadly nightshade's roots,-- To vexing labyrinths of doubt and fear, And deep abysses of despair and death! Back to thy peaceful villages and fields, My memory, like a weary pilgrim, comes With scrip and burdon, to repose awhile,-- To pluck a daisy from a lonely grave Where long ago, in common sepulture, I laid my mother and my faith in God; To fix the record of a single day So memorably wonderful and sweet Its power of inspiration lingers still,-- So full of her dear presence, so divine With the melodious breathing of her words, And the warm radiance of her loving smile, That tears fall readily as April rain At its recall; to pass in swift review The years of adolescence, and the paths Of glare and gloom through which, by passion led I reached the fair possession of my power, And won the dear possession of my love, And then--farewell! Queen-village of the meads Fronting the sunrise and in beauty throned, With jewelled homes around her lifted brow, And coronal of ancient forest trees-- Northampton sits, and rules her pleasant realm. There where the saintly Edwards heralded The terrors of the Lord, and men bowed low Beneath the menace of his awful words; And there where Nature, with a thousand tongues Tender and true, from vale and mountain-top, And smiling streams, and landscapes piled afar, Proclaimed a gentler Gospel, I was born. In an old home, beneath an older elm-- A fount of weeping greenery, that dripped Its spray of rain and dew upon the roof-- I opened eyes on life; and now return, Among the visions of my early years, Two so distinct that all the rest grow dim: My mother's pale, fond face and tearful eyes, Bent upon me in Love's absorbing trance, From the low window where she watched my play; And, after this, the wondrous elm, that seemed To my young fancy like an airy bosk, Poised by a single stem upon the earth, And thronged by instant marvels. There in Spring I heard with joy the cheery blue-bird's note; There sang rejoicing robins after rain; And there within the emerald twilight, which Defied the mid-day sun, from bough to bough-- A torch of downy flame--the oriole Passed to his nest, to feed the censer-fires Which Love had lit for Airs of Heaven to swing. There, too, through all the weird September-eves I heard the harsh, reiterant katydids Rasp the mysterious silence. There I watched The glint of stars, playing at hide-and-seek Behind the swaying foliage, till drawn By tender hands to childhood's balmy rest. My Mother and the elm! Too soon I learned That o'er me hung, and o'er the widowed one Who gave me birth, with broader boughs, Haunted by sabler wings and sadder sounds, A darker shadow than the mighty elm! I caught the secret in the street from those Who pointed at me as I passed, or paused To gaze in sighing pity on my play; From playmates who, forbidden to divulge The knowledge they possessed, with childish tricks Of indirection strove in vain to hide Their awful meaning in unmeaning phrase; From kisses which were pitiful; from words Gentler than love's because compassionate; From deep, unconscious sighs out of the heart Of her who loved me best, and from her tears That freest flowed when I was happiest. From frailest filaments of evidence, From dark allusions faintly overheard, From hint and look and sudden change of theme When I approached, from widely scattered words Remembered well, and gathered all at length Into consistent terms, I know not how I wrought the full conclusion, nor how young. I only know that when a little child I learned, though no one told, that he who gave My life to me in madness took his own-- Took it from fear of want, though he possessed The finest fortune in the rich old town. Thenceforth I had a secret which I kept-- Kept by my mother with as close a tongue-- A secret which embittered every cup. It bred rebellion in me--filled my soul, Opening to life in innocent delight, With baleful doubt and harrowing distrust. Why, if my father was the godly man His gentle widow vouched with tender tears, Did He to whom she bowed in daily prayer-- Who loved us, as she told me, with a love Ineffable for strength and tenderness-- Permit such fate to him, such woe to us? Ah! many a time, repeating on my knees The simple language of my evening prayer Which her dear lips had taught me, came the dark Perplexing question, stirring in my heart A sense of guilt, or quenching all my faith. This, too, I kept a secret. I had died Rather than breathe the question in her ears Who knelt beside me. I had rather died Than add a sorrow to the load she bore. Taught to be true, I played the hypocrite In truthfulness to her. I had no God, Nor penitence, nor loyalty nor love; For any being higher than herself. Jealous of all to whom she gave her hand, I clung to her with fond idolatry. I sat with her; where'er she walked, I walked I kissed away her tears; I strove to fill, With strange precocity of manly pride And more than boyish tenderness, the void Which death had made. I could not fail to see That ruth for me and sorrow for her loss-- Twin leeches at her heart--were drinking blood That, from her pallid features, day by day Sank slowly down, to feed the cruel draught. Nay, more than this I saw, and sadly worse. Oft when I watched her and she knew it not, I marked a quivering horror sweep her face-- A strange, quick thrill of pain--that brought her hand With sudden pressure to her heart, and forced To her white lips a swiftly whispered prayer. I fancied that I read the mystery; But it was deeper and more terrible Than I conjectured. Not till darker years Came the solution. Still, we had some days Of pleasure. Sorrow cannot always brood Over the shivering forms that drink her warmth; But springs to meet the morning light, and soars Into the empyrean, to forget For one sweet hour the ring of greedy mouths That surely wait, and cry for her return. My mother's hand in mine, or mine in hers, We often left the village far behind, And walked the meadow-paths to gather flowers, And watch the plowman as he turned the tilth, Or tossed his burnished share into the sun At the long furrow's end, the while we marked The tipsy bobolink, struggling with the chain Of tinkling music that perplexed his wings, And listened to the yellow-breasted lark's Sweet whistle from the grass. Glad in my joy, My mother smiled amid these scenes and sounds, And wandered on with gentle step and slow, While I, in boyish frolic, ran before, Chasing the butterflies, or in her path Tossing the gaudy gold of buttercups, Till sometimes, ere we knew, we stood entranced Upon the river's marge. Ever the spell Of lapsing water tamed my playful mood, And I reclined in silent happiness At the tired feet that rested in the shade. There through the long, bright mornings we remained, Watching the noisy ferry-boat that plied Like a slow shuttle through the sunny warp Of threaded silver from a thousand brooks, That took new beauty as it wound away; Or gazing where at Holyoke's verdant base-- Like a slim hound, stretched at his master's feet-- Lay the long, lazy hamlet, Hockanum; Or, upward turning, traced the line that climbed O'er splintered rock and clustered foliage To the bare mountain-top; then followed down The scars of fire and storm, or paths of gloom That marked the curtained gorges, till, at last, Caught by a wisp of white, belated mist, Our vision rose to trace its airy flight Beyond the height, into the distant blue. One morning, while we rested there, she told Of a dear friend upon the other side-- A lady who had loved her--whom she loved-- And then she promised to my eager wish That soon, across the stream I longed to pass, I should go with her to the lady's home. The wishedfor day came slowly--came at last-- My birthday morning--rounding to their close The fourteen summers of my boyhood's life. The early mists were clinging to the side Of the dark mountain as we left the town, Though all the roadside fields were quick with toil In rhythmic motion through the dewy grass The mowers swept, and on the fragrant air Was borne from far the soft, metallic clash Of stones upon the steel. This was the day "So memorably wonderful and sweet Its power of inspiration lingers still,-- So full of her dear presence, so divine With the melodious breathing of her words, And the warm radiance of her loving smile, That tears fall readily as April rain At its recall." And with this day there came The revelation and the genesis Of a new life. In intellect and heart I ceased to be a child, and grew a man. By one long leap I passed the hidden bound That circumscribed my boyhood, and thenceforth Abjured all childish pleasure, and took on The purpose and the burden of my life. We crossed the river--I, as in a dream; And when I stood upon the eastern shore, In the full presence of the mountain pile, Strange tides of feeling thrilled me, and I wept-- Wept, though I knew not why. I could have knelt On the white sand, and prayed. Within my soul Prophetic whispers breathed of coming power And new possessions. Aspiration swelled Like a pent stream within a narrow chasm, That finds nor vent nor overflow, but swirls And surges and retreats, until it floods The springs that feed it. All was chaos wild,-- A chaos of fresh passion, undefined, Deep in whose vortices of mist and fire A new world waited blindly for its birth. I had no words for revelation;--none For answer, when my mother pressed my hand, And questioned why it trembled. I looked up With tearful eyes, and met her loving smile, And both of us were silent, and passed on. We reached at length the pleasant cottage-home Where dwelt my mother's friend, and, at the gate, Found her with warmest welcome waiting us. She kissed my mother's cheek, and then kissed mine, Which shrank, and mantled with a new-born shame. They crossed the threshold: I remained without. Surprised--half-angry--with the burning blush That still o'erwhelmed my face. I looked around For something to divert my vexing thoughts, And saw intently gazing in my eyes, From his long tether in the grass, a lamb-- A lusty, downy, handsome, household pet. There was a scarlet ribbon on his neck Which held a silver bell, whose note I heard First when his eye met mine; for then he sprang To greet me with a joyous bleat, and fell, Thrown by the cord that held him. Pitying him, I loosed his cruel leashing, with intent, After a half-hour's frolic, to return And fasten as I found him; but my hand, Too careless of its charge, slipped from its hold With the first bound he made; and with a leap He cleared the garden wall, and flew away. Affrighted at my deed and its mischance, I paused a moment--then with ready feet, And first and final impulse, I pursued. He held the pathway to the mountain woods, The tinkle of his bell already faint In the long distance he had placed between Himself and his pursuer. On and on, Climbing the mountain path, he sped away, I following swiftly, never losing sight Of the bright scarlet streaming from his neck, Or hearing of the tinkle of his bell, Till, wearied both, and panting up the steep, Our progress slackened to a walk. At length He paused and looked at me, and waited till My foot had touched the cord he dragged, and then Bounded away, scaling the shelvy cliffs That bolder rose along the narrow path. He had no choice but mount. I pressed him close, And rocks and chasms were thick on either side; So, pausing oft, but ever leaping on Before my hand could reach him, he advanced. Not once in all the passage had I paused To look below, nor had I thought of her Whom I had left. Absorbed in the pursuit I pressed it recklessly, until I grasped My fleecy prisoner, wound and tied his cord Around my wrist, and both of us sank down Upon the mountain summit. In a swoon Of breathless weariness how long I lay I could not know; but consciousness at last Came by my brute companion, who, alert Among the scanty browse, tugged at my wrist, And brought me startled to my feet. I saw In one swift sweep of vision where I stood,-- In presence of what beauty of the earth, What glory of the sky, what majesty Of lofty loneliness. I drew the lamb-- The dear, dumb creature--gently to my side, And led him out upon the beetling cliff That fronts the plaided meadows, and knelt down. When once the shrinking, dizzy spell was gone, I saw below me, like a jewelled cup, The valley hollowed to its heaven-kissed lip-- The serrate green against the serrate blue-- Brimming with beauty's essence; palpitant With a divine elixir--lucent floods Poured from the golden chalice of the sun, At which my spirit drank with conscious growth, And drank again with still expanding scope Of comprehension and of faculty. I felt the bud of being in me burst With full, unfolding petals to a rose, And fragrant breath that flooded all the scene. By sudden insight of myself I knew That I was greater than the scene,--that deep Within my nature was a wondrous world, Broader than that I gazed on, and informed With a diviner beauty,--that the things I saw were but the types of those I held, And that above them both, High Priest and King, I stood supreme, to choose and to combine, And build from that within me and without New forms of life, with meaning of my own. And there alone, upon the mountain-top, Kneeling beside the lamb, I bowed my head Beneath the chrismal light, and felt my soul Baptized and set apart to poetry. The spell of inspiration lingered not; But ere it passed, I knew my destiny-- The passion and the portion of my life: Though, with the new-born consciousness of power And organizing and creative skill, There came a sense of poverty--a sense Of power untrained, of skill without resource, Of ignorance of Nature and her laws And language and the learning of the schools. I could not rise upon my callow wings, But felt that I must wait until the years Should give them plumage, and the skill for flight Be won by trial. Then before me rose The long, long years of study, interposed Between me and the goal that shone afar; But with them rose the courage to surmount, And I was girt for toil. Then, for the first, My eye and spirit that had drunk the whole Wide vision, grew discriminate, and traced The crystal river pouring from the North Its twinkling tide, and winding down the vale, Till, doubling in a serpent coil, it paused Before the chasm that parts the frontal spurs Of Tom and Holyoke; then in wreathing light Sped the swart rocks, and sought the misty South. Across the meadows--carpet for the gods, Woven of ripening rye and greening maize And rosy clover-blooms, and spotted o'er With the black shadows of the feathery elms-- Northampton rose, half hidden in her trees, Lifted above the level of the fields, And noiseless as a picture. At my feet The ferry-boat, diminished to a toy, With automatic diligence conveyed Its puppet passengers between the shores That hemmed its enterprise; and one low barge, With white, square sail, bore northward languidly The slow and scanty commerce of the stream. Eastward, upon another fertile stretch Of meadow-sward and tilth, embowered in elms, Lay the twin streets, and sprang the single spire Of Hadley, where the hunted regicides Securely lived of old, and strangely died; And eastward still, upon the last green step From which the Angel of the Morning Light Leaps to the meadow-lands, fair Amherst sat, Capped by her many-windowed colleges; While from his outpost in the rising North, Bald with the storms and ruddy with the suns Of the long eons, stood old Sugarloaf, Gazing with changeless brow upon a scene, Changing to fairer beauty evermore. Save of the river and my pleasant home, I knew not then the names and history Borne by these visions; but upon my brain Their forms were graved in lines indelible As, on the rocks beneath my feet, the prints Of life in its first motion. Later years Renewed the picture, and its outlines filled With fair associations,--wrought the past And living present into fadeless wreaths That crowned each mound and mount, and town and tower, The king of teeming memories. Nor could I guess with faintest foresight of the life Which, in the years before me, I should weave Of mingled threads of pleasure and of pain Into these scenes, until not one of all Could meet my eye, or touch my memory, Without recalling an experience That drank the sweetest ichor of my veins Or crowded them with joy. At length I turned From the wide survey, and with pleased surprise Detected, nestling at the mountain's foot, The cottage I had left; and, on the lawn, Two forms of life that flitted to and fro. I knew that they had missed me; so I sought The passage I had climbed, and, with the lamb Still fastened to my wrist, I hasted down. Full of the marvels of the hour I sped, Leaping from rock to rock, or flying swift The smoother slopes, with arms half wings, and feet That only guarded the descent, the while My captive led me captive at his will. So tense the strain of sinew, so intense The mood and motion, that before I guessed, The headlong flight was finished, and I walked, Jaded and reeking, in the level path That led the lambkin home. My mother saw, And ran to meet me: then for long, still hours, Couched in a dim, cool room, I lay and slept. When I awoke, I found her at my side, Fanning my face, and ready with her smile And soothing words to greet me. Then I told, With youthful volubility and wild Extravagance of figure and of phrase, The morning's exploit. First she questioned me But, as I wrought each scene and circumstance Into consistent form, she drank my words In eager silence; and within her eyes I saw the glow of pride which gravity And show of deep concern could not disguise, I read her bosom better than she knew. I saw that she had made discovery Of something unsuspected in her child, And that, by one I loved, and she the best, The fire that burned within me and the power That morning called to life, were recognized. When I had told my story, and had read With kindling pride my praises in her eyes, She placed her soft hand on my brow, and said: "My Paul has climbed the noblest mountain height In all his little world, and gazed on scenes As beautiful as rest beneath the sun. I trust he will remember all his life That to his best achievement, and the spot Nearest to heaven his youthful feet have trod, He has been guided by a guileless lamb. It is an omen which his mother's heart Will treasure with her jewels." When the sun Of the long summer day hung but an hour Above his setting, and the cool West Wind Bore from the purpling hills his benison, The farewell courtesies of love were given, And we set forth for home. Not far we fared-- The river left behind--when, looking back, I saw the mountain in the searching light Of the low sun. Surcharged with youthful pride In my adventure, I can ne'er forget The disappointment and chagrin which fell Upon me; for a change had passed. The steep Which in the morning sprang to kiss the sun, Had left the scene; and in its place I saw A shrunken pile, whose paths my steps had climbed. Whose proudest height my humble feet had trod. Its grand impossibilities and all Its store of marvels and of mysteries Were flown away, and would not be recalled. The mountain's might had entered into me; And, from that fruitful hour, whatever scene Nature revealed to me, she never caught My spirit humbled by surprise. My thought Built higher mountains than I ever found; Poured wilder cataracts than I ever saw; Drove grander storms than ever swept the sky; Pushed into loftier heavens and lower hells Than the abysmal reach of light and dark; And entertained me with diviner feasts Than ever met the appetite of sense, And poured me wine of choicer vintages Than fire the hearts of kings. The frolic-flame Which in the morning kindled in my veins Had died away; and at my mother's side I walked in quiet mood, and gravely spoke Of the great future. With a tender quest My mother probed my secret wish, and heard, With silence new and strange respectfulness, The revelation of my plans. I felt In her benign attention to my words; In her suggestions, clothed with gracious phrase To win my judgment; and in all those shades Of mien and manner which a mother's love Inspires so quickly when the form it nursed Becomes a staff in its caressing hand, She had made space for me, and placed her life In new relations to my own. I knew That she who through my span of tender years Had counselled me, had given me privilege Within her councils; and the moment came I learned that in the converse of that hour, The appetency of maternity For manhood in its offspring, had laid hold Of the fresh growth in me, and feasted well Its gentle passion. Ere we reached our home, The plans for study were matured, and I, Who, with an aptitude beyond my years, Had gathered learning's humbler rudiments From her to whom I owed my earliest words, Was, when another day should rise, to pass To rougher teaching, and society Of the rude youth whose wild and boisterous ways Had scared my childish life. I nerved my heart To meet the change; and all the troubled night I tossed upon my pillow, filled with fears, Or fired with hot ambitions; shrinking oft With girlish sensitiveness from the lot My manly heart had chosen; rising oft Above my cowardice, well panoplied By fancy to achieve great victories O'er those whose fellows I should be. At last, The dawn looked in upon me, and I rose To meet its golden coming, and the life Of golden promise whose wide-open doors Waited my feet. The lingering morning hours Seemed days of painful waiting, as they fell In slowly filling numbers from the tower Of the old village church; but when, at length, My eager feet had touched the street, and turned To climb the goodly eminence where he In whose profound and stately pages live His country's annals, ruled his youthful realm, My heart grew stern and strong; and nevermore Did doubt of excellence and mastery Drag down my soaring courage, or disturb My purposes and plans. What boots it here To tell with careful chronicle the life Of my novitiate? Up the graded months My feet rose slowly, but with steady step, To tall and stalwart manliness of frame, And ever rising and expanding reach Of intellection and the power to call Forth from the pregnant nothingness of words The sphered creations of my chosen art. What boots it to recount my victories Over my fellows, or to tell how all, Contemptuous at first, became at length Confessed inferiors in every strife When brain or brawn contended? Victories Were won too easily to bring me pride, And only bred contempt of the low pitch And lower purpose of the power which strove So feebly and so clumsily. When won, They fed my mother's passion, and she praised; And her delight was all the boon they brought. My fierce ambition, ever reaching up To higher fields and nobler combatants, Trampled its triumphs underneath its feet; And in my heart of hearts I pitied her To whose deep hunger of maternal pride They bore ambrosial ministry. In all These years of doing and development, My heart was haunted by a bitter pain. In every scene of pleasure, every hour That lacked employment, every moment's lull Of toil or study, its familiar hand Was raised aloft, to smite me with its pang. From month to month, from year to year, I saw That she who bore me, and to whom I owed The meek and loyal reverence of a child, Was changing places with me, and that she-- Dependent, trustful and subordinate-- Deferred to me in all things, and in all Gave me the parent's place and took the child's. She waited for my coming like a child; She ran to meet and greet me like a child; She leaned on me for guidance and defence, And lived in me, and by me, like a child. If I were absent long beyond my wont, She yielded to distresses and to tears; And when I came, she flew into my arms With childish impulse of delight, or chid With weak complainings my delay. By these, And by a thousand other childish ways, I knew disease was busy with her life, Working distempers in her heart and brain, And driving her for succor to my strength. The change was great in her, though slowly wrought,-- Though wrought so slowly that my thought and life Had been adjusted to it, but for this:-- One dismal night, a trivial accident Had kept me from my home beyond the hour At which my promise stood for my return. Arriving at the garden gate, I paused To catch a glimpse of the accustomed light, Through the cold mist that wrapped me, but in vain. Only one window glimmered through the gloom, Through whose uncurtained panes I dimly saw My mother in her chamber. She was clad In the white robe of rest; but to and fro She crossed the light, sometimes with hands pressed close Upon her brow, sometimes raised up toward heaven, As if in deprecation or despair; And through the strident soughing of the elm I heard her voice, still musical in woe, Wailing and calling. With a noiseless step I reached the door, and, with a noiseless key, Turned back the bolt, and stood within. I could Have called her to my arms, and quelled her fears By one dear word, and yet, I spoke it not. I longed to learn her secret, and to know In what recess of history or heart It hid, and wrought her awful malady. Not long I waited, when I heard her voice Wail out again in wild, beseeching prayer,-- Her voice so sweet and soulful, that it seemed As if a listening fiend could not refuse Such help as in him lay, although her tongue Should falter to articulate her pain. I heard her voice--O God! I heard her words! Not bolts of burning from the vengeful sky Had scathed or stunned me more. I shook like one Powerless within the toils of some great sin, Or some o'ermastering passion; or like one Whose veins turn ice at onset of the plague. "O God," she said, "my Father and my Friend! Spare him to me, and save me from myself! O! if thou help me not--if thou forsake-- This hand which thou hast made, will take the life Thou mad'st the hand to feed. I cling to him, My son,--my boy. If danger come to him, No one is left to save me from this crime. Thou knowest, O! my God, how I have striven To quench the awful impulse; how, in vain, My prayers have gone before thee, for release From the foul demon who would drive my soul To crime that leaves no space for penitence. O! Father! Father! Hear me when I call! Hast thou not made me? Am I not thy child? Why, why this mad, mysterious desire To follow him I loved, by the dark door Through which he forced his passage to the realm That death throws wide to all? O why must I, A poor, weak woman--" I could hear no more, But dropped my dripping cloak, and, with a voice, Toned to its tenderest cadence, I pronounced The sweet word, "mother!" Her excess of joy Burst in a cry, and in a moment's space I sat within her room, and she, my child, Was sobbing in my arms. I spoke no word, But sat distracted with my tenderness For her who threw herself upon my heart In perfect trust, and bitter thoughts of Him Whose succor, though importunately sought In piteous pleadings by a gentle saint, Was grudgingly withheld. Her closing words: "O why must I, a poor, weak woman--" rang Through every chamber of my tortured soul, And called to conclave and rebellion all The black-browed passions thitherto restrained. Ay, why should she, who only sought for God, Be given to a devil? Why should she Who begged for bread be answered with a stone? Ay, why should she whose soul recoiled from sin As from a fiend, find in her heart a fiend To urge the sin she hated?--questions all The fiends within me answered as they would. O God! O Father! How I hated thee! Nay, how within my angry soul I dared To curse thy sacred name! Then other thoughts-- Thoughts of myself and of my destiny-- Succeeded. Who and what was I? A youth, Doomed by hereditary taint to crime, A youth whose every artery and vein Was doubly charged with suicidal blood. When the full consciousness of what I was Possessed my thought, and I gazed down the abyss God had prepared for me, I shrank aghast; And there in silence, with an awful oath I dare not write, I swore my will was mine, And mine my hand; and that, though all the fiends That cumber hell and overrun the earth Should spur the deadly impulse of my blood, And heaven withhold the aid I would not ask; Though woes unnumbered should beset my life, And reason fall, and uttermost despair Hold me a hopeless prisoner in its glooms, I would resist and conquer, and live out My complement of years. My bosom burned With fierce defiance, and the angry blood Leaped from my heart, and boomed within my brain With throbs that stunned me, though each fiery thrill Was charged with tenderness for her whose head Was pillowed on its riot. Long I sat-- How long, I know not--but at last the sad, Hysteric sobs and suspirations ceased, Or only at wide intervals recurred; And then I rose, and to her waiting bed Led my doomed mother. With a cheerful voice-- Cheerful as I could summon--and a kiss, I bade her a good night and pleasant dreams; And then, across the hall, I sought my room Where neither sleep nor dream awaited me, But only blasphemous, black thoughts, and strife With God and Destiny. I saw it all: The lamp that from my mother's window beamed, Illumined other nights and other storms, And by its lurid light revealed to me The secrets of a life. Her sudden pangs, Her brooding woes, her terrors when alone, The strange surrender of her will to mine, Her hunger for my presence, and her fear That by some slip of fortune she should lose Her hold on me, were followed to their home-- To her poor heart, that fluttered every hour With conscious presence of an enemy That would not be expelled, and strove to spill The life it spoiled. From that eventful night She was not left alone. I called a friend, A cheerful lady, whose companionship Was music, medicine and rest; and she, Wanting a home, and with a ready wit Learning my mother's need and my desire, Assumed the place of matron in the house; And, in return for what we gave to her, Gave us herself. My mother's confidence, By her self-confidence, she quickly won; And thus, though sadly burdened at my heart, I found one burden lifted from my hands. More liberty of movement and of toil I needed; for the time was drawing near When I should turn my feet toward other halls, To seek maturer study, and complete The work of culture faithfully begun. Into my mother's ear I breathed my plans With careful words. The university Was but a short remove--a morning's walk-- Away from her; and ever at her wish-- Nay, always when I could--I would return; And separation would but sweeten love, And joy of meeting recompense the pain Of parting and of absence. She was calm And leaning in her thought upon her friend. Gave her consent. So, on a summer day, I kissed her faded cheek, and turned from home To seek the college halls that I had seen From boyhood's mount of vision. Of the years Passed there in study--of the rivalries, The long, stern struggles for pre-eminence, The triumphs hardly won, but won at last Beyond all cavil, matters not to tell. It was my grief that while I gained and grew, My mother languished momently, and lost,-- A grief that turned to poison in my blood. The college prayers were mummeries to me, And with disdainful passion I repelled All Christian questionings of heart and life, By old and young. I stood, I moved alone. I sought no favors, took no courtesies With grateful grace, and nursed my haughty pride. The men who kneeled and gloomed, and prayed and sang, Seemed but a brood of dullards, whom contempt Would honor overmuch. No tender spot Was left within my indurated heart, Save that which moved with ever-melting ruth For her whose breast had nursed me, and whose love Had given my life the only happiness It yet had known. With her I kept my pledge With more than faithful punctuality. Few weeks passed by in all those busy years In which I did not walk the way between The college and my home, and bear to her Such consolation as my presence gave. In truth, my form was as familiar grown To all the rustic dwellers on the road As I had been a post-boy. Little joy These visits won for me--little beyond That which I found in bearing joy to her-- For every year marked on her slender frames And on her cheeks, and on her failing brain, Its record of decadence. I could see That she was sinking into helplessness, And that too soon her inoffensive soul, With all its sweet affections, would go down To hopeless wreck and darkness. From her friend I learned that still the burden of her prayer Was, that she might be saved from one great sin-- The sin of self-destruction. Every hour This one petition struggled from her heart, To reach the ear of heaven; yet never help Came down in answer to her cry. The Spring That ushered in my closing college-year Came up the valley on her balmy wings, And Winter fled away, and left no trace, Save, here and there a snowy drift, to show Where his cold feet had rested in their flight. But one still night, within the span of sleep, A shivering winter cloud that wandered late Shook to the frosty ground its inch of rime. So, when the morning rose, the earth was white; And shrubs and trees, and roofs and rocks and walls, Fulgent with downy crystals, made a world To which a breath were ruin; and a breath Wrecked it for me, and, by a few sad words, Blotted the sunlit splendor from my sight. As I looked out upon the scene, and mused Of her to whom I hoped it might impart Some healthy touch of joy, I heard the beat Of hoofs upon the trackless blank, and saw A horseman speeding up the avenue. I raised my sash (I knew he came for me), And faltered forth my question. From his breast He drew a folded slip: dismounting then, He stooped and pressed the missive in a mass Of clinging snow, and tossed it to my hand. I closed the window, burst the frosty seal, And read: "Your mother cannot long survive: Come home to her to-day." I did not pause To break the fast of night, but rushing forth, I followed close the messenger's return. It was a morning, such as comes but once In all the Spring,--so still and beautiful, So full of promise, so exhilarant With frost and fire, in earth and air, that life Had been a brimming joy but for the scene That waited for my eyes--the scene of death-- From which imagination staggered back, And every sensibility recoiled. The smoke from distant sugar-camps rolled up Through the still ether in columnar coils-- Blue pillars of a bluer dome--and all The resonant air was full of sounds of Spring. The sheep were bleating round their empty ricks; Horses let loose were calling from afar, And winning fierce replies; the axeman's blows Fell nimbly at the piles which wintry woods Had lent to summer stores; while far and faint, The rhythmic ululations of the hound On a fresh trail, upon the mountain's side, Added their strange wild music to the morn. The beauty and the music caught my sense, But woke within my sick and sinking heart No motion of response. I walked as one Condemned to dungeon-glooms might walk Through shouts of mirth and festal pageantry, Hearing and seeing all, yet over all Hearing the clank of chains and clash of bars, And seeing but the reptiles of his cell. How I arrived at home, without fatigue, Without a thought of effort--onward borne By one absorbing and impelling thought-- As one within a minute's mete may slide, O'er leagues of sunny dreamland in a dream, By magic or by miracle--I found No time to question. At my mother's door I stood and listened: soon I heard my name Pronounced within in spiteful whisperings. I raised the latch, and met her burning eyes. She stared a wild, mad stare, then raised herself, And in weak fury poured upon my head The vials of her wrath. I stood like stone, Without the power to speak, the while she rained Her maledictions on me, and in words Fit only for the damned, accused my life Of crimes my language could not name, and deeds Which only outcast wretches know. At length, I gained my tongue, and tried to take her hand; But with a shriek which cut me like a knife She shrank from me, and hid her quivering face Within her pillow. Then I turned away, And sought the room where oft in better days We both had knelt together at my bed, And, making fast my door, I threw myself Prone on the precious couch, and gave to grief My strong and stormy nature. All the day With bursts of passion I bewailed my loss, Or lay benumbed in feeling and in thought, Tasting no food, and shutting out my soul From all approach of human sympathy, Till the light waned, and through the leafless boughs Of the old elm I caught the sheen of stars. Then sleep descended--such a sleep as comes To uttermost exhaustion,--sleep with dreams Wild as the waking fantasies of her Whose screams and incoherent words gave voice To all their phantom brood. At length I woke. The house was still as death; and yet I heard, Or thought I heard, the touch of crafty feet Upon the carpet, creeping by my door. It passed away, away; and then a pause, Still and presageful as the breathless calm On which the storm-cloud mounts the pallid West, Succeeded. I could hear the parlor-clock Counting the beaded silence, and my bed, Rustling beneath my breathing and my pulse, Was sharply crepitant, and gave me pain. An hour passed by (it loitered like an age), And then came hurried words and hasty fall Of footsteps in the passage. I could hear Screams, sobs, and whispered calls and closing doors And heavy feet that jarred my bed, and shook The windows of my room. I did not stir: I dared not stir, but lay in deathly dread, Waiting the sad denouement. Soon it came. A man approached my door, and tried the latch; Then knocked, and called. I knew the kindly voice Of the physician, and threw back the bolt. Then by the light he held before his face I read the fact of death. I took his arm, And, as I feebly staggered down the stairs, He broke to me with lack of useless words The awful truth.... The old familiar tale: She counterfeited sleep: the nurses both, Weary with over-watching in their chairs, Under the cumbrous stillness, slept indeed; And when she knew it, she escaped; and then She did the deed to which for many years She had been predisposed. Perhaps I knew The nature of the case: perhaps I knew My father went that way. I clutched his arm: There was no need of words. The parlor door Stood open, and a throng of silent friends, Choking with tears, gazed on a silent form Shrouded in snowy linen. They made way For me and my companion. On my knees I clasped the precious clay, and pouring forth My pitying love and tenderness for her, I gave indignant voice to my complaint Against the Being who, to all her prayers For succor and security, had turned A deaf, dead ear and a repelling hand. To what blaspheming utterance I gave My raving passion, may the God I cursed Forbid my shrinking memory to recall! I now remember only that when drawn By strong, determined hands away from her, The room was vacant. Every pitying friend Had flown my presence and the room, to find Release of sensibility from words That roused their superstitious souls to fear That God would smite me through the blinding smoke Of my great torment. Silence, for the rest! It was a dream; and only as a dream Do I remember it: the coffined form, The funeral--a concourse of the town-- The trembling prayer for me, the choking sobs, The long procession, the descending clods, The slow return, articulated all With wild, mad words of mine, and gentle speech Of those who sought to curb or comfort me-- All was a dream, from which I woke at length With heart as dead as hers who slept. The heavens Were brass above me, and the breathing world Was void and meaningless. When told to pray, This was the logic of my heart's reply: If God be Love, not such is He to me Nor such to mine. If He heard not the voice Of such a lovely saint as she I mourned, Mine would but rouse His vengeance. So I closed With Reason's hand the adamantine doors Which only Faith unlocks, and shut my soul Away from God, the warder of a gang Of passions that in darkness stormed or gloomed And with each other fought, or on themselves Gnawed for the nourishment which I denied. COMPLAINT. River, sparkling river, I have fault to find with thee River, thou dost never give a word of peace to me! Dimpling to each touch of sunshine, wimpling to each air that blows, Thou dost make no sweet replying to my sighing for repose. Flowers of mount and meadow, I have fault to find with you; So the breezes cross and toss you, so your cups are filled with dew, Matters not though sighs give motion to the ocean of your breath; Matters not though you are filling with the chilling drops of death! Birds of song and beauty, lo! I charge you all with blame:-- Though all hapless passions thrill and fill me, you are still the same. I can borrow for my sorrow nothing that avails From your lonely note, that only speaks of joy that never fails. O! indifference of Nature to the fact of human pain! Every grief that seeks relief entreats it at her hand in vain; Not a bird speaks forth its passion, not a river seeks the sea, Nor a flower from wreaths of Summer breathes in sympathy with me. O! the rigid rock is frigid, though its bed be summer mould, And the diamond glitters ever in the grasp of changeless gold; And the laws that bring the seasons swing their cycles as they must, Though the ample road they trample blind the eyes with human dust. Moons will wax in argent glory, though man wane to hopeless gloom; Stars will sparkle in their splendor, though he darkle to his doom; Winds of heaven he calls to fan him ban him with an icy chill, And the shifting crowds of clouds go drifting o'er him as they will. Yet within my inmost spirit I can hear an undertone, That by law of prime relation holds these voices as its own,-- The full tonic whose harmonic grandeurs rise through Nature's words, From the ocean's thundrous rolling to the trolling of the birds. Spirit, O! my spirit! Is it thou art out of tune? Art thou clinging to December while the earth is in its June? Hast thou dropped thy part in nature? Hast thou touched another key? Art thou angry that the anthem will not, cannot, wait for thee? Spirit, thou art left alone--alone on waters wild; For God is gone, and Love is dead, and Nature spurns her child. Thou art drifting in a deluge, waves below and clouds above, And with weary wings come back to thee, thy raven and thy dove. PART II. LOVE. As from a deep, dead sea, by drastic lift Of pent volcanic fires, the dripping form Of a new island swells to meet the air, And, after months of idle basking, feels The prickly feet of life from countless germs Creeping along its sides, and reaching up In fern and flower to the life-giving sun, So from my grief I rose, and so at length I felt new life returning: so I felt The life already wakened stretching forth To stronger light and purer atmosphere. But most I longed for human love--the source (So sadly closed), from which my life had drawn Its sweetest inspiration and reward. I could not pray, nor could my spirit win From sights and sounds of nature the response It vaguely yearned for. They assailed my sense With senseless seeming of the hum and whirl Of vast machinery, whose motive power Sought its own ends, or wrought for ministry To other life than mine. I could stand still, And see the trains sweep by; could hear the roar Of thundering wheels; could watch the pearly plumes That floated where they flew; could catch a glimpse Of thousand happy faces at the glass; But felt that all their freighted life and wealth Were nought to me, and moved toward other souls In other latitudes. A year had flown, And more, when, on a Sunday morn in June, I wandered out, to wear away the hours Of growing restlessness. The worshippers Were thronging to the service of the day, And gave me sidelong stare, or shunned me quite; As if they knew me for a reprobate, And feared a taint of death. I took the road That eastward cleft the town, and sought the bridge That spanned the river, reaching which I crossed. Then deep within the stripes of springing corn I found the shadow of an elm, and lay Stretched on the downy grass for listless hours, Dreaming of days gone by, or turning o'er With careless hand the pages of a book I had brought with me. Tired at length I rose, And, touched by some light impulse, moved along The old, familiar road. I loitered on In a blind reverie, nor marked the while The furlongs or the time, until the spell In a full burst of music was dissolved. I startled as one startles from a dream, And saw the church of Hadley, from whose doors, Open to summer air, the choral hymn Poured out its measured tides, and rose and fell Upon the silence in broad cadences, As from a far, careering sea, the waves Lift into silver swells the sleeping breasts Of land-locked bays. I heard the sound of flutes And hoarse, sonorous viols, in accord With happy human voices,--and one voice-- A woman's or an angel's--that compelled My feet to swift approach. A thread of gold, Through all the web of sound, I followed it Till, by the stress of some strange sympathy, And by no act of will, I joined my voice To that one voice of melody, and sang. The heart is wiser than the intellect, And works with swifter hands and surer feet Toward wise conclusions. So, without resort To reason, in my heart I knew that she Who sang had suffered--knew that she had grieved, Had hungered, struggled, kissed the cheek of death, And ranged the scale of passions till her soul Was deep, and wide, and soft with sympathy;-- Nay, more than this: that she had found at last Peace like a river, on whose waveless tide She floated while she sang. This was the key That loosed my prisoned voice, and filled my eyes With tender tears, and touched to life again My better nature. When the choral closed, And the last chord in silence lapsed away, I raised my eyes, and, nodding to the beck Of the old, slippered sexton, I went in,-- Not (shall it be confessed?) to find the God At whose plain altar bowed the rural throng; But, through a voice, to follow to its source The influence that moved me. I was late; And many eyes looked up as I advanced Through the broad aisle, and took a seat that turned My face to all the faces in the house. I scanned the simpering girls within the choir, But found not what I sought; and then my eyes With rambling inquisition swept the pews, Pausing at every maiden face in vain. One head, that crowned a tall and slender form, Was bowed with reverent grace upon the rail Before her; and, although I caught no glimpse Of her sweet face, I knew such face was there, And there the voice. It was Communion Day. The simple table underneath the desk Was draped with linen, on whose snow was spread The feast of love--the vases filled with wine, The separated bread and circling cups. The venerable pastor had come down From his high pulpit, and assumed the seat Of presidence, and, with benignant eyes, Sat smiling on his flock. The deacons all Rose from their pews--four old, brown-handed men With frosty hair--and took the ancient chairs That flanked the table. All the house was still Save here and there the rustle of a silk Or folding of a fan; and over all Brooded the dove of peace. I had no part In the fair spectacle, but I could feel That it was beautiful and sweet as heaven. When the old pastor rose, with solemn mien, I looked to see the lady lift her head; But still she bowed; and then I heard these words; "The person who unites with us to-day Will take her place before me in the aisle, To give her answer to our creed, and speak The pledges of our covenant." Then first I saw her face. With modest grace she rose, Lifted her hat, and gave it to the hand Of a companion, and within the aisle Stood out alone. My heart beat thick and fast With vision of her perfect loveliness, And apprehension of the heroism That shone within her eyes, and made her act A Christ-like sacrifice. O! eyes of blue! O! lily throat and cheeks of faintest rose! O! brow serene, enthroned in holy thought! O! soft, brown sweeps of hair! O! shapely grace Of maidenhood, enrobed in virgin white! Why, in your rapt unconsciousness of me And all around you--in the presence-hall Of God and angels--at the marriage-feast Of Jesus and his chosen--did my eyes Profane the hour with other feast than yours? I heard the "You Believe" of the old creed Of puritan New England; and I heard The old "You Promise" of its covenant. Her bow of reverent assent to all The knotty dogmas, and her silent pledge Of faithfulness and fellowship, I saw. These formularies were the frame of oak-- Gnarled, strongly carved, and swart with age and use-- Which held the lovely picture of my saint, And showed her saintliness and beauty well. At close of the recital and response, The pastor raised the plain, baptismal bowl, And she, the maiden devotee, advanced And knelt before him. Lifting then her eyes To him and heaven, with look of earnest faith And perfect consecration, she received Upon her brow the water from his hand. The trickling chrism shone on her cheeks like tears, The while he joined her lovely name with God's: "KATHRINA, I BAPTIZE THEE IN THE NAME OF FATHER, SON, AND HOLY GHOST, AMEN!" Still kneeling like a saint before a shrine, She closed her eyes. Then lifting up toward heaven His hands, the pastor prayed,--prayed that her soul Might be forever kept from stain and sin; That Christ might live in her, and through her life Shine into other souls; might give her strength To master all temptation, and to keep The vows that day assumed; might comfort her In every sorrow, and, in death's dread hour, Bear her in hopeful triumph to the rest Prepared for those who love him. All this scene I saw through blinding tears. The poetry That like a soft aureola embraced Within its cope those two contrasted forms; The eager observation and the hush That reigned through all the house; the breathless spell Of sweet solemnity and tender awe Which held all hearts, when she, The Beautiful, Received the sign of marriage to The Good, O'erwhelmed me, and I wept. Shall I confess That in the struggle to repress my tears And hold my swelling heart, I grudged her gift, And felt that, by the measure she had risen, She had put space between herself and me, And quenched my hope? She stood while courtesy Of formal Christian welcome was bestowed; Then straightway sought her seat, as though no eyes But those of One unseen observed her steps. I saw her taste the sacramental bread, And touch the silver chalice to her lips; And while she thought of Him, The Spotless One Whose flesh and blood were symboled to her heart, And worshipped in her thought, I ate and drank Her virgin beauty--with what guilty sense Of profanation! Last, the closing hymn Gave me her voice again; and this I drank; Nay, this invaded and pervaded me. Its subtile search found out the sleeping chords Of sympathy; and on the bridge of sound It built between our souls, I crossed, and saw Into the depths of purity and love-- The full, pathetic power of womanhood-- From which the structure sprang. Just once I caught her eyes. She blushed with consciousness Of my strong gaze; but paused not in her hymn Till she had given to every word the wings That bore it, like a singing bird, toward heaven. The benediction fell; and then the throng Passed slowly out. I was the last to go. I saw a man whom I had known, and shrank Both from his greetings and his questionings. One thing I learned: that she who thus had joined This cluster of disciples was not born And reared among their number: that was plain. I saw it in her bearing and her dress; In that unconsciousness of self that comes Of gentle breeding, and society Of gentle men and women; in the ease With which she bore the awkward deference Of those who spoke with her adown the aisle; In distant and admiring gaze of men, And the cold scrutiny of village girls Who passed for belles. I stood upon the steps-- The last who left the door--and there I found The lady and her friend. The elder turned, And with a cordial greeting took my hand, And rallied me on my forgetfulness. Her eyes, her smile, her manner and her voice Touched the quick springs of memory, and I spoke Her name. She was my mother's early friend, Whose face I had not seen in all the years That had flown over us, since, from her door, I chased her lamb to where I found--myself. She spoke with tender words and swimming eyes Of her I mourned, and questioned me like one Who felt a mother's anxious interest In all my cares and plans. Why did I not In all my maunderings and wanderings Remember I had friends, and visit them-- Not missing her? Her niece was with her now; Would live with her, perhaps--("a lovely girl!"-- In whisper); and they both would so much like To see me at their house! (whisper again: "Poor child! I fear it is but dull for her, Here in the country.") Then with sudden thought-- "Kathrina!" With a blushing smile she turned (She had heard every word), and then her aunt-- Her voluble, dear aunt--presented me As an old friend--the son of an old friend-- Whose eyes had promised he would visit them, Although, in her monopoly of speech, She had quite shut him from the chance to say So much as that. I caught the period Quick as it dropped, and spoke the happiness I had in meeting them, and gave the pledge-- No costly thing to give--to end my walks On pleasant nightfalls at the little house Under the mountain. I had spoken more, But then the carriage, with its single horse, For which they waited, rattled to the steps, And we descended. To their lofty seats I helped the pair, and in my own I held For one sweet moment, hand of all the hands In the wide world I longed to clasp the most. A courteous "Good Evening, Sir," was all I won From its possessor; but her lively aunt With playful menace shook her fan at me, And said: "Remember, Paul!" and rode away. "A worldly woman, Sir!" growled a grum throat, I turned, and saw the sexton. Query: "which?" "I mean the aunt." ... "And what about the niece?" "Too fine for common people!" (with a shrug). "I think she is," I said, with quiet voice, And turned my feet toward home. A pious girl! And what could I be to a pious girl? What could she be to me? Weak questions, these: And vain perhaps; but such as young men ask On slighter spur than mine. She had bestowed Her love, her life, her goodly self on heaven, And had been nobly earnest in her gift. Before all lovers she had chosen Christ; Before all idols, God; before all wish And will of loving man, her heart and hand Were pledged to duty. Could she be a wife? Could she be mine, with such unstinted wealth Of love, and love's devotion, as I craved? Would she not leave me for a Sunday School Before the first moon's wane? Would she not seek The cant and snuffle of conventicles "At early candle-light," and sing her hymns To drivelling boors, and cheat me of her songs? Would she exhaust herself in "doing good" After the modern styles--in patching quilts, And knitting socks, and bearing feeble tracts To dirty little children--not to speak Of larger work for missionary folk? Would there not come a time (O! fateful time!) When Dorcas and her host would fill my house, And I by courtesy be held at home To entertain their twaddle, and to smile, While in God's name and lovely Charity's They would consume my substance? Would she not Become the stern and stately president Of some society, or figure in the list Of slim directresses in spectacles? So much for questions: then reflections came. These pious women make more careful wives Than giddy ones. They do not run away, Though, doubtless, husbands live whose hearts would heal, Broken by such a blow! The time they give To worship and to pious offices Defrauds the mirror mainly; and the gold That goes for charity goes not for gems. Besides, these pious and believing wives Make gentle mothers, who, with self-control And patient firmness, train their children well-- A fact to be remembered. But, alas! They train their husbands too, and undertake A mission to their souls, so gently pushed, So tenderly, they may not take offence, Or punish with rebuff; and yet, dear hearts! With such persistence, that they reach the raw Before they know it: so it comes to tears At last, with comfort in an upper room. But then--a seal is sacred to them, and a purse Or pocket-book, though in a dressing-room With shutters and a key! Thus wrapped in thought And selfish calculation of the claims Of one my peer, or my superior, In every personal and moral grace, I walked along, till, on my consciousness, Flashed the absurdity of my conceits And my assumptions, and I laughed outright-- Laughed at myself, so loudly and so long That I was startled. Not for many months Had sound of mirth escaped me; and my voice Rang strangely in my ears, as if the lips Of one long dead had spoken. I received The token of returning healthfulness With warm self-gratulation. I had touched The magic hand that held new life for me: The cloud was lifted, and the burden gone. The leaf within my book of fate, that gloomed With awful records, washed and blotched by tears-- Blown by a woman's breath from finger-tip's They knew not what they did--was folded back; And all the next white page held but one word, One word of gold and flame--its title-crown-- That wrought a rosy nimbus for itself; And that one word was LOVE. The laggard days My pride or my propriety imposed Upon desire, before my eyes could see The object of my new-born passion, passed; And in the low hours of an afternoon. Bright with the largess of kingly shower Whose chariot-wheels still thundered in the East, Leaving the West aflame, I sought the meads, And once again, thrilled by foretasted joy, Walked toward the mountain. While I walked, the rain Fell like a veil of gauze between my eyes And the blue wall; and from the precious spot That held the object of my thought, there sprang An iridal effulgence, faint at first, But brightening fast, and leaping to an arch That spanned the heavens--a miracle of light! "There's treasure where the rainbow rests," I said. Would it evade me, as, for years untold, It had evaded every childish dupe Whose feet had chased the bright, elusive cheat? Would it evade me? Question that arose, And loomed with darker front and huger form Than the dark mountain, and more darkly loomed And higher rose as the long path grew short! Would it evade me? Like a passing smile The rainbow faded from the mountain's face; And Hope's resplendent iris, which illumed My question, grew phantasmal, and at length Evanished, leaving but a doubtful blur. Would it evade me? Gods! what wealth or waste Of precious life awaited the reply! Was it a coward's shudder that o'erswept My frame at thought of possible repulse And possible relapse? "Oh! there he comes!" I heard the mistress of the cottage say Behind a honeysuckle. Did I smile? It was because the fancy crossed me then That the announcement was like one which rings Over the polar seas, when, from his perch, The lookout bruits a long-expected whale! Then sweeping the piazza from the spot Where with her niece she sat, she hailed me with: "So, you are come at last! How very sad These men have so much business! Tell me how You got away; how soon you must return; Who suffers by your absence; what the news, And whether you are well." Brisk medicine These words to me, and timely given. They broke The spell of fear, and banished my restraint. She took my arm, and led me to her niece, Who greeted me as if some special grace Of courtesy were due, to make amends For the familiar badinage her aunt Had poured upon me. They had come without-- One with her work, the other with her book-- To taste the freshness of the evening air, Washed of the hot day's dust by rain; to hear The robin's hymn of joy; and watch the clouds That canopied with gold the sinking sun. The maiden in a pale-blue, muslin robe-- Dyed with forget-me-nots, I fancied then, And sweet with life in every fold, I knew-- A blush-rose at her throat, and in her hair A sprig of green and white, was lovelier Than sky or landscape; and her low words fell More musically than the robin's hymn. So, with my back to other scene and sound, I faced the faces, took the proffered chair And looked and listened. "Tell us of yourself," Spoke the blunt aunt, with license of her years. "What are you doing now?" "Nothing," I said. "And were you not the boy who was to grow Into a great, good man, and write fine books, And have no end of fame?" The question cut Deeper than she intended. The hot blush And stammering answer told her of the hurt, And tenderly she tried to heal the wound: "I know that you have suffered; but your hours Must not be told by tears. The life that goes In unavailing sorrow goes to waste." "True," I replied, "but work may not be done Without a motive. Never worthy man Worked worthily who was not moved by love. When she I loved, and she who loved me died, My motive died; and it can never rise Till trump of love shall call it from the dust To resurrection." I spoke earnestly, Without a thought that other ears than hers Were listening to my words; but when I looked, I saw the maiden's eyes were dim with tears. I knew her own experience was touched, And that her heart made answer to my own In perfect sympathy. To change the drift, I took her book, and read the title-page: "So you like poetry," I said. "So well my aunt Finds fault with me." "You write, perhaps?" "Not I." "A happy woman!" I exclaimed; "in truth, The first I ever found affecting art Who shunned expression by it. If a girl Like painting, she must paint; if poetry, She must write verses. Can you tell me why (For sex marks no distinction in this thing). Men with a taste for art in finest forms Cherish the fancy that they may become, Or are, Art's masters? You shall see a man Who never drew a line or struck an arc Direct an architect, and spoil his work, Because, forsooth! he likes a tasteful house! He likes a muffin, but he does not go Into his kitchen to instruct his cook,-- Nay, that were insult. He admires fine clothes, But trusts his tailor. Only in those arts Which issue from creative potencies Does his conceit engage him. He could learn The baker's trade, and learn to cut a coat, But never learn to do that one great deed Which he essays." "'Tis not a strange mistake-- These people make"--she answered, thoughtfully. "Art gives them pleasure; and they honor those Whose heads and hands produce it. If they see The length and breadth and beauty of a thought Embodied by another,--if they hold The taste, the culture, the capacity, To measure values in the things of art, Why cannot they create? Why cannot they Win to themselves the honor they bestow On those who feed them? Is it very strange That those who know how sweet the gratitude Which the true artist stirs, should burn to taste That gratitude themselves?" "Not strange, perhaps," I said, "and yet, it is a sad mistake; For countless noble lives have gone to waste In work which it inspired." Here spoke the aunt: "You are a precious pair; and if you know What you are talking of, you know a deal More than your elders. By your royal leave, I will retire; for I can lay the cloth For kings and queens though I may fail to know Their lore and language. You can eat, I think; And hear a tea-bell, though you hear not me." Thus speaking, in her crisp, good-natured way, The lady left us. When she passed the door, And laughter at her jest had had its way, I said: "It takes all sorts to make a world." "How many, think you? Only one, two, three," The maiden said. "Here we have all the world In this one cottage--artist, teacher, taught, In--not to mar the order of the scale For courtesy--yourself, myself, my aunt. You are an artist, so my aunt reports; But, as an artist, you are nought to her. And now, to broach a petted theory, Let me presume too boldly, while I say She cannot understand you, though I can; You cannot measure her, though she is wise. You have not much for her, and that you have You cannot teach her; but I, knowing her, Can pick from your creations crumbs of thought She will find manna. In the hands of Christ The five loaves grew, the fishes multiplied; And he to his disciples gave the feast-- They to the multitude. Artists are few, Teachers are thousands, and the world is large. Artists are nearest God. Into their souls He breathes his life, and from their hands it comes In fair, articulate forms to bless the world; And yet, these forms may never bless the world Except its teachers take them in their hands, And give each man his portion." As she spoke In earnest eloquence, I could have knelt, And worshipped her. Her delicate cheek was flushed, Her eyes were filled with light, and her closed book Was pressed against her heart, whose throbbing tide Thridded her temples. I was half amused, Half rapt in admiration; and she saw That in my eyes at which she blushed and paused. "Your pardon, Sir," she said. "It ill becomes A teacher to instruct an artist." "Nay, It does become you wondrously," I said With light but earnest words. "Pray you go on; And pardon all that my unconscious eyes Have done to stop you." "I have little more That I would care to say: you have my thought," She answered; "yet there's very much to say, And you should say it." "Not I, lady, no: A poet is not practical like you, Nor sensible like you. You can teach him As well as tamer folk. In truth, I think He needs instruction quite as much as they For whom he writes." "That's possible," she said With an arch smile. "Will you explain yourself?" "Well--if you wish it--yes:" she made reply. "And first, my auditor must know that I Relieve in inspiration, though he knows So much as that already, from my words,-- Believe that God inspires the poet's soul,-- That he gives eyes to see, and ears to hear What in his realm holds finest ministry For highest aptitudes and needs of men, And skill to mould it into forms of art Which shall present it to the world he serves. Sometimes the poet writes with fire; with blood Sometimes; sometimes with blackest ink: It matters not. God finds his mighty way Into his verse. The dimmest window-panes Let in the morning light, and in that light Our faces shine with kindled sense of God And his unwearied goodness; but the glass Gets little good of it; nay, it retains Its chill and grime beyond the power of light To warm or whiten. E'en the prophet's ass Had better eyes than he who strode his back, And, though the prophet bore the word of God, Did finer reverence. The Psalmist's soul Was not a fitting place for psalms like his To dwell in over-long, while waiting words, If I read rightly. As for the old seers, Whose eyes God touched with vision of the life Of the unfolding ages, I must doubt Whether they comprehended what they saw, Or knew what they recorded. It remains For the world's teachers to expound their words; To probe their mysteries; and relegate The truth they hold in blind significance Into the fair domains of history And human knowledge. Am I understood?" "You are," I answered; "and I cannot say You flatter me. God takes within his hand A thing of his contrivance which we call A poet: then he puts it to his lips, And speaks his word, and puts it down again-- The instrument not better and not worse For being handled;--not improved a whit In quality, by quality of that Which it conveys. Do I report aright? Or do you prompt me?" "You are very apt," She said, "at learning, but a little bald In statement. Nathless, be it as you say; And we shall see how it is possible That poets need instruction quite as much As those for whom they write. What sad, bad men The brightest geniuses have been! How weak, How mean in character! how foul in life! How feebly have the best of them retained The wealth of good and beauty which has flowed In crystal streams from God, the fountain head, Through them to fertilize the world! Nay, worse, How many of them have infused the tide With tincture of their own impurity, To poison sweetest, unsuspecting lips, And breed diseases in the finest blood! And poets not alone, and not the worst; But painters, sculptors--those whose kingly power And aptitude for utterance divine Have made them artists:--how have these contemned In countless instances the God of Heaven Who filled them with his fire! Think you that these Could compass their achievements of themselves? Can streams surpass their fountains?" "Nay," I said, In quick response, "Your argument is good; But is the artist nothing? Is he nought But an apt tool--a mouth-piece for a voice? You make him but the spigot of a cask Round which you, teachers, wait with silver cups To bear away the wine that leaves it dry. You magnify your office." "We do all Wait upon God for every grace and good," She then rejoined. "You take it at first hand, And we from yours: the multitude from ours. It may leach through our souls, if our poor wills Retain it not, and drench the fragrant sand. And if I magnify my office--well! 'Tis a great office. What would come of all The music of the masters, did not we Wait at their doors, to publish to the world What God has told them? They would be as mute As the dumb Sphynx. They write a symphony, An opera, an oratorio, In language that the teacher understands, And straight the whole world echoes to its strains It shrills and thunders through cathedral glooms From golden organ-tubes and voiceful choirs; The halls of art of both the hemispheres Resound with its divinest melodies; The street stirs with the impulse, and we hear The blare of martial trumpets, and the tramp Of bannered armies swaying to its rhythm; The hurdy-gurdies and the whistling boys Adopt the lighter strains; and round and round A million souls its hovering fancies float, Like butterflies above a fair parterre, Till, settling one by one, they sleep at last; And lo! two petals more on every flower! And this not all; for though the master die, The teacher lives forever. On and on, Through all the generations, he shall preach The beautiful evangel;--on and on, Till our poor race has passed the tortuous years That lie prevening the millennium, And slid into that broad and open sea, He shall sail singing still the songs he learned In the world's youth, and sing them o'er and o'er To lapping waters, till the thousand leagues Are overpast, and argosy and crew Ride at their port." "True as to facts," I said "And as to prophecies, most credible; But, as an illustration, false, I think. That which the voice and instrument may do For the composer, types may do for those Who mint their thoughts in verse. Music is writ In language that the people do not read-- Is lame in that--and needs interpreters; While poetry, e'en in its noblest forms And boldest flights, speaks their vernacular. Your aunt can read the book within your hand As well as you, if she desire, yet finds Your score all Greek, until you vocalize Its wealth of hidden meaning. As for arts Which meet the eye in picture and in form, They ask no mediator but the light-- No grace but privilege to shine with naught Between them and the light. They are themselves Expositors of that which they expose, Or they are nothing. All the middle-men-- The fools profound--who take it on their tongues To play the showmen, strutting up and down, And mouthing of the beauty that they hide, Are an impertinence." "You leave no room For critics," she suggested, with a smile. "We must not spoil a trade, or starve the wives And innocent babes it feeds." "No care for them!" I made reply. "They do not need much room-- Men of their build--and what they need they take. The feeble conies burrow in the rocks; But the trees grow, and we are not aware Of space encumbered by them." "Yet the fact Still stands untouched," she added, thoughtfully, "That greatest artists speak to fewest souls, Or speak to them directly. They have need Of no such ministry as waits the beck Of the composer; but they need the life, If not the learning, of the cultured few Who understand them. If from out my book I gather that which feeds me, and inspires A nobler, sweeter beauty in my life, And give my life to those who cannot win From the dim text such boon, then have I borne A blessing from the book, and been its best Interpreter. The bread that comes from heaven Needs finest breaking. Some there doubtless are-- Some ready souls--that take the morsel pure Divided to their need; but multitudes Must have it in admixtures, menstruums, And forms that human hands or human life Have moulded. Though the multitudes may find Something to stir and lift their sluggish souls In sight of great cathedrals, or in view Of noble pictures, yet they see not all, And not the best. That which they do not see Must enter higher souls, and there, by art Or life, be fashioned to their want." "Your thought Grows subtle," I responded, "and I grant Its force and beauty. If the round truth lie Somewhere between us, and I see the face It turns to me in stronger light than you Reveal its opposite, why, let the fault be mine; It is not yours. You have instructed me, And won my thanks." "Instructed you?" she said, With a fine blush: "you mock, you humble me. And have I talked so much, with such an air, That, either earnestly or in a jest, You can say this to me?" "'Tis not a sin, In latitude of ours," I made reply, "To talk philosophy; 'tis only rare For beardless lips to do so. I have caught From yours a finer, more suggestive scheme Than all the wise have taught me by their books, Or by their voices. I will think of it." "Now may you be forgiven!" the aunt exclaimed, Approaching unobserved. "There never lived A quieter, more plainly speaking girl, Than my Kathrina. All these weeks and months, I have heard nought from her but common sense; But when you came, why, off she went; though where It's more than I know. You, sir, have the blame; And you must lift your spell, and give her back Just as you found her." "She has practised well Her scheme on us. She breaks to you the bread That meets your want; to me, that meets my own," I said, in answering. "Well," spoke the aunt, "I think I'll try my hand at breaking bread: So, follow me." We followed to her board, And there, in converse suited to the hour And presence of our hostess, proved ourselves-- Quite to that lady's liking--of the earth. We ate her jumbles for her, sipped her tea, And revelled in the spicy succulence Of her preserves. While still I sat at ease, The maiden's eye, with quick, uneasy glance, Sought the clock's dial. Then she turned to me. And said with sweet, respectful courtesy: "Pray you excuse my presence for an hour. A duty calls me out; and that performed, I will return." I saw she marked my look Of disappointment--that it staggered her-- The while with words of stiffest commonplace I gave assent. But she was on her feet; And soon I heard her light step on the stair, Seeking her chamber. "Whither will she go At such an hour as this, from you and me?" I coldly questioned of the keen-eyed aunt. "You men are very curious," she said. "I knew you'd ask me. Can't a lady stir, But you must call her to account? Who knows She may not have some rustic lover here With whom she keeps her tryst? 'Tis an old trick, Not wholly out of fashion in these parts. What matters it? She orders her own ways, And has discretion." With lugubrious voice I said: "You trifle, madam, with my wish. I know the lady has no lover here, And so do you." "I'm not so sure of that!" My hostess made response; and then she laughed A rippling, rollicking roulade, and shook Her finger at me, till my temples burned With the hot shame she summoned. "There!" I said; "You've done your worst, and learned so much, at least-- That I admire your niece. _I_ curious! Well, you are curious and cunning too. Now, in the moment of your victory, Be generous; and tell me what may call The lady from us." "It is Thursday night," She answered soberly,--"the weekly hour At which our quiet neighborhood convenes For social worship. You may guess the rest Without my telling; but you cannot know With what anticipated joy she leaves Our company, or with what shining face She will return." At that, I heard her dress Sliding the flight, and rising, made my way To meet her at its foot. A happy smile Illumed her features, as she gave her hand With thought of parting. I had rallied all My self-control and gallantry meanwhile, And said: "Not here. I'll with you, by your leave, So far as you may walk." There was a flash Of gladness in her eyes, and in her thanks A subtler charm than gratitude. I bade My hostess a "good-night," and left her door. Declining her entreaty to return. We walked in silence, side by side, a space, And then, with feigned indifference, I spoke: "Your aunt has told me of your errand; else, It had been modest in me to withhold This tendance on your steps. She tells me you Are quite a devotee. Whom do you meet, In neighborhood like this, to give a zest To hour like this?" "Brothers and sisters all," She said in low reply; "and as for zest, There's never lack of it where there is love. When families convene, they have no need Of more than love to give them festal joy; Nor do they with discrimination judge Between the high and humble. These are one; Love makes them one." "And you are one with these?" "Though most unworthy of such fellowship, I trust that I am one with these;--that they Are one with me, and reckon me among Their number." "Can they do you any good?" "They can," she said, "but were it otherwise, I can serve them; and so should seek them still. I help them in their songs." We reached too soon The open doorway of the humble hut Which, far long years, had held the village school, And, at a little distance, paused. The room, Battered and black by wantonest abuse Of the rude youth, was lit by feeble lamps, Brought by the villagers; and scattered round Upon the high, hacked benches, hardly less Rude and rough-worn than they, the worshippers In silence sat. It was no place for words. I took the lady's hand, and said "good-night!" In whisper. Then she turned, and disappeared Within the sheltered gloom; but I could see The care-worn cheeks light up with pleasant fire As she passed in; and e'en the fainting lamps Flared with new life, the while they caught the breath Of her sweet robe. Then with an angry heart I turned away, and, wrapped in selfish thought, Took up the walk toward home. This homely group Of Yankee lollards she preferred to me! These poor, pinched boobies, with their silly wives-- Ah! these were they who gave her overmuch In the bestowal of their fellowship! These crowned her with a peerless privilege, Permitting her to sit with them an hour As a dear sister! How my sore self-love Burned with the hot affront! With lips compressed, Or blurting forth their anger and disgust, I strode the meadows, stalked the silent town, And growled and groaned in sullen helplessness About the streets, until the midnight bell Tolled from the old church tower;--in helplessness, For, mattered nothing what or who she was (I had not dared or cared to question that), Or how offensive in her piety And her devotion to the tasteless cult Of the weak throng, I was her slave; and she-- Her own and God's. The miserable strife Between my love of self and love of her I knew was bootless; and the trenchant truth Cut to the quick. She held within her hand My heart, my life, my doom, yet knew it not; And had she known, her soul was under vows Which would forever make subordinate Their recognized possession. But the morn Brought with it better mood and calmer thought: I had the grace to gauge the heartlessness Of my exactions, and the power to crush The tyrant wish to tear her from the throne To which she clung. I said: "So she love me As a true woman loves, and give herself-- Her sweet, pure self--to me, and fill my home With her dear presence, loyal still to me In wifely love and wifely offices, Though she abide in Christian loyalty By Christian vows, she shall have liberty, And hold it as her right." She was my peer; No weakling girl, who would surrender will And life and reason, with her loving heart, To her possessor;--no soft, clinging thing Who would find breath alone within the arms Of a strong master, and obediently Wait on his whims in slavish carefulness;-- No fawning, cringing spaniel, to attend His royal pleasure, and account herself Rewarded by his pats and pretty words, But a round woman, who, with insight keen, Had wrought a scheme of life, and measured well Her womanhood; had spread before her feet A fine philosophy to guide her steps; Had won a faith to which her life was brought In strict adjustment--brain and heart meanwhile Working in conscious harmony and rhythm With the great scheme of God's great universe, On toward her being's end. I could but know Her motives were superior to mine. I could but feel that in her loyalty To God and duty, she condemned my life. Into her woman's heart, thrown open wide In holy charity, she had drawn all Of human kind, and found no humblest soul Too humble for her entertainment,--none So weak it could return no grateful boon For what she gave; and standing modestly Within her scheme, with meekest reverence She bowed to those above her, yet with strong And hearty confidence assumed a place In service of the world, as minister Ordained of heaven to break to it the bread She took from other hands. And she was one Who could see all there was of good in me,-- Could measure well the product of my power, And give it impulse and direction: nay, Could supplement my power; and help my heart Against its foes. The moment that I thrust The selfish thirsting for monopoly Of her affections from my godless heart, She entered in, and reigned a goddess there. If she had fascinated me before, And fired my heart with passion, now she bent My spirit to profound respect. I bowed To the fair graces of her character, Her queenly gifts, and the beneficence Of her devoted life, with humbled heart And self-depreciation. All of God That the world held for me, I found in her; And in her, all the God I sought. She was My saviour from myself and from my sins; For, with my worship of the excellence Which she embodied, came the purity And peace to which, through all my troubled life, I had been stranger. Thoughts and feelings all Were sublimated by the subtle flame Which warmed and wrapped me; and I walked as one Might walk on air, with things of earth beneath, Breathing a rare, supernal atmosphere Which every sense and faculty informed With light and life divine. What need to tell Of the succeeding summer days, and all Their deeds and incidents? They floated by Like silent sails upon a summer sea, That, sweeping in from farthest heaven at morn, Traverse the vision, and at evening slide Out into heaven again, their pennant-flames The rosy dawns and day-falls. O'er and o'er, I walked the path, and crossed the stream, that lay Between me and the idol of my heart; And every day, in every circumstance, I found her still the same, yet not the same; For, every day, some unsuspected grace, Or some fresh revelation of her wealth Of character and culture, touched my heart To new surprise, and overflowed the cup Whose wine was life to me. Though I could see That I was not unwelcome; though I knew I gave a zest to her sequestered life, I had built up so high my only hope On her affection--I had given myself So wholly to the venture for her hand, I did not dare to speak of love, or ask The question which, unasked, held hopefully My destiny: which answered, might bring doom Of madness or of death. Meanwhile, I learned The lady's history from other lips Than hers--her aunt's. Alas! the old, old tale! She had been bred to luxury; and all That wealth could purchase for her, or the friends Swarmed by its golden glamour could bestow, She had possessed. But he who won the wealth, Reaching for more, slipped from his height and fell Dragging his house to ruin. Then he died-- Died in disgrace; and all his thousand friends Fell off, and left his pampered family, The while the noisy auctioneer knocked down His house and household gods, and set adrift The helpless life thus cruelly bereft. The mother lived a month: the rest went forth, Not knowing whither; but they found among The poor a shelter for their poverty,-- Kathrina with her aunt. Thus, in few words, A tragedy of heart-breaks and of death, Such as the world abounds with. But this girl, With her quick instincts and her brave, good heart. Determined she would live awhile, and learn What lesson God would teach her. This she sought, And, seeking, found, or thought she found. How well She learned the lesson--what the lesson was-- Her life, thus far revealed, and waiting still My feeble record, shall disclose. Enough, Just now and here, that out of it she bore A noble womanhood, accepting all Her great misfortunes as the discipline Of a paternal hand, in love prescribed To lead her to her place, and whiten her For Christian service. All the summer fled; And still my heart delayed. One pleasant eve, When first the creaking of the crickets told Of Autumn's opening door, I went with her To ramble in the fields. We touched the hem Of the dark mountain's robe, that falls in folds Of emerald sward around his feet, and there Upon its tufted velvet we sat down. It was my time to speak, but I was dumb; And silence, painful and portentous, hung Upon us both. At length, she turned and said: "Some days have passed since you were latest here. Have you been ill?" "No, I have been at work," I answered,--"at my own delightful work; The first since first we met. The record lies Where I may reach it at a word from you. Command, and I will read it." "I command," She said, responding with a laugh. "Nay, I Entreat. I used your word, but this is mine, And has a better sound from lips of mine. I am your waiting auditor." I read: "Was it the tale of a talking bird? Was it a dream of the night? When have I seen it? Where have I heard Of the haps of a dainty craft, that stirred My spirit with affright? "The shallop stands out from the sheltered bay With a burden of spirits twain,-- A woman who lifts her eyes to pray, A tall youth, trolling a roundelay, And before them night, and the main! "O! Star of The Sea! They will come to harm: Nor master nor sailor is there! The youth clasps the mast with his sinewy arm, And laughs! Does he hold in his bosom a charm That will baffle the sprites of the air? O! woe to the delicate ship! O! woe! For the sun is sunk, and behold! The trooping phantoms that come and go In the sky above and the waves below! Ho! The wind blows wild and cold. "The woman is weeping in weak despair; The youth still clings to the mast, With cheeks aflame, and with eyes that stare At the phantoms hovering everywhere; And the storm-rack rises fast! "The phantoms close on the flying bark; They flutter about her peak; They sweep in swarms from the outer dark; But the youth at the mast stands still and stark, While they flap his stinging cheek. "O! fierce was the shout of the goblins then! How the gibber and laugh went round! The shout and the laugh of a thousand men, Echoed and answered, and echoed again, Would have been a feebler sound. "They shiver the bolts that the lightning flings; They bellow and roar and hiss; They splash the deck with their slimy wings-- Monstrous, horrible, ghastly things-- That climb from the foul abyss. "Straight toward the blackness drove the ship; But the youth still clung to the mast: 'I have read,' quoth he, with a proud, cold lip, 'That the devil gets never a man on the hip Whom he scares not, first or last.' "No star shines out at the woman's prayer; O! madly distraught is she! And the bark drives on with her wild despair With shrieking fiends in the crowded air, And fiends on the swarming sea. "Nearer the blackness loomed; and the bark Scudded before the breeze; Nearer the blackness loomed, and hark! The crash of breakers out of the dark, And the shock of plunging seas! "Then out of the water before their sight A shape loomed bare and black! So black that the darkness bloomed with white; So black that the lightning grew strangely bright And it lay in the shallop's track! "O! woe! for the woman's wits ran daft With the fearful bruit and burst; She sprang to her feet, and flitting aft, She plunged in the sea, and the black waves quaffed The sweet life they had cursed. "Light leaped the bark on the mountain-breast Of a tenth-wave out to land; While the sprites of the sea fell off to rest, And the youth, unharmed, became the guest Of the elves of the silent land. "With banter and buffet they pressed around; They tied his strong hands fast; But he laughed, and said, 'I have read and found That the devil throws never a man to the ground Whom he scares not, first or last.' "Under the charred and ghastly gloom, Over the flinty stones, They led him forth to his terrible doom, And, plunged in a deep and noisome tomb, They sat him among the bones. "They left him there in the crawling mire: They could neither maim nor kill: For fiends of water, and earth, and fire, Are baffled and beaten by the ire Of a dauntless human will. "Days flushed and faded, months passed away, He knew by the golden light That shot, through a loop in the wall, the ray Which parted the short and slender day From the long and doleful night. "Was it a vision that cheated his eyes? Was he awake, or no? He stared through the loop with keen surprise. For he saw a sweet angel from the skies, With white wings, folded low. "Could she not loose him from his thrall, And lead him into the light? 'Ah me!' he murmured, 'I dare not call, Lest she may doubt it a goblin's waul, And leave me in swift affright!' "She plumed her wings with a noiseless haste; He could neither call nor cry: She vanished into the sunny waste, Into far blue air that he longed to taste; And he cursed that he could not die. "But she came again, and every day He worshipped her where she shone; And again she left him and floated away, But his faithless tongue refused to pray For the boon she could give alone. "And there he sits in his dumb despair, And his watching eyes grow dim: Would God that his coward lips might dare To utter the word to the angel fair, That is life or death to him!" I marked her as I read, a furtive glance Filling each pause. The passion of the piece, Flaming and fading, ever and anon, Mirrored itself within her tender eyes, Themselves the mirror of her tender soul, And fixed attent upon my face the while. She had not caught my meaning, but had heard Only a weird, wild story. When I paused, Folding the manuscript, I saw a shade Of disappointment sweep her face, and marked A question rising in her eyes. She knew That I was waiting for her words, and turned Her look away, and for long moments gazed Into the brooding dusk. "Speak it!" I said. "'Twas very strange and sad," she answered me. "Why do you write such things?--or, writing such, Leave them so incomplete? The prisoned youth, Thus unreleased, will haunt me while I live. I shudder while I think of him." Then I: "The poem will be finished, by-and-by, For this is history, and antedates No fact that it records. Whether this youth Shall live entombed, or reach the blessed air, Depends upon his angel; for he calls-- I hear him call, and call again her name Kathrina! O! Kathrina!" Like the flash Of the hot lightning, the significance Of the strange vision gleamed upon her face In a bright, throbbing flame, that fell full soon To ashen paleness. By unconscious will We both arose. She vainly tried to speak, And gazed into my eyes with such a look Of tender questioning, of half-reproach, Of struggling, doubting, hesitating joy, As few men ever see, and none but once. Are there not lofty moments, when the soul Leaps to the front of being, casting off The robes and clumsy instruments of sense, And, postured in its immortality, Reveals its independence of the clod In which it dwells?--moments in which the earth And all material things, all sights and sounds, All signals, ministries, interpreters, Relapse to nothing, and the interflow Of thought and feeling, love and life go on Between two spirits, raised to sympathy By an inspiring passion, as, in heaven, The body dust, within an orb outlived, It shall go on forever? Moments like these-- Nay, these in very truth--were given us then. Who shall expound--ah! who but God alone, The everlasting mystery of love? She spoke not, but I knew that she was mine. I breathed no word, but she was well assured That I was wholly hers. In what disguise Our love had hid, and wrought its miracle; Behind what semblance of indifference, Or play of courtesy, it spun the cords That bound our hearts in one, was mystery Like love itself. The swift intelligence Of interchange of perfect faith and troth, Of gift of life and person, of the thrill Of triumph in my soul and gratitude In hers, without a gesture, or a word, Was like the converse of the continents Tracking with voiceless flight the slender wire That underlay the throbbing mystery Between our souls, and made our heart-beats one. I opened wide my arms, and she, my own, Sobbed on my breast with such excess of joy, In such embrace of passionate tenderness, As heaven may yield again, but never earth. Slow in the golden twilight, toward her home, Her hand upon my arm, we loitered on, Silent at first, and then with quiet speech Broaching our plans, or tracing in review The history of our springing love, when she, Lifting her soft blue eyes to mine: "Dear Paul! There are some things, and some I will not name, That make me sad, e'en in this height of joy. In the wild lay that you have read to-night, You make too much of me. No heart of man, Though loving well and loving worthily, Can be content with any human love. No woman, though the pride and paragon Of all her sex, can take the place of God. No angel she: nor is she quite a man In power and courage,--gifts which charm her most And which, possessing most, disrobe her charms, And make her less a woman. If she stand In fair equality with man--his mate-- Each unto each the rounded complement Of their humanity, it is enough; And such equality must ever lie In their unequal gifts. This thing, at least, Is true as God: she is not more than he, And sits upon no throne. To be adored By man, she must be placed upon a throne Built by his hands, and sit an idol there, Degraded by the measure of the flight Between God's thought and man's." Responding, I "Fix your own place, my love; it is your right, 'Tis well to have a theory, and sit In the centre of it, mistress of its law, And subject also;--to set men up here And women there, in a fine equipoise Of gift and grace and import. It conveys To nicely-working minds a pleasant sense Of order, like a well-appointed room, Where one may see, in various stuffs and wares, Forethoughts of color brought to harmony; Strict balancings of quantity and form; Flowers in the centre, and, beside the grate, A rack for shovel and tongs. But minds like these (Your pardon, love!) are likely to arrange The window-lights to save the furniture, And spoil the pictures on the wall. And you, In the adjustment of your theory, Would shut the light from her whose mind informs Its harmonies. All worship, in my thought, Goes hand in hand with love. We cannot love, And fail to worship what we love. While you Worship the strength and courage which you find In him who has your heart, he bows to all Of faith and sweetness which he finds in you. If, in our worship, we have need to build Noblest ideals, taking much from God With which to make them perfect in our eyes, Shall God mark blame? We worship him the while, In attributes his own, or attributes With which our thought invests him. As for me-- It is no secret--I am what you call A godless man; yet what is worshipful, Or seems to be so, that with all my heart I worship; and I worship while I love. You deem yourself the dwelling-place of God, And keep your spirit cleanly for his feet. All merit you abjure, ascribing all To him who dwells within you. How can you Forbid that I fall down and worship you, When what I find to worship is not yours, But God's alone? I know the ecstasy Enlarges, strengthens, purifies my soul, And blesses me with peace. My love, my life, You are my all. I have no other good, And, in this moment of my happiness, I ask no other." Tears were in her eyes, Her clasped hands clinging fondly to my arm, While under droop of lashes she replied: "I feel, dear Paul, that this is sophistry. It does not touch my judgment or my heart With motive of conviction. In what way God may be working to reclaim your will And worship to himself, I cannot know. If through your love for me, or mine for you, Then, as his grateful, willing instrument, I yield myself to him. But this is true: God is not worshipped in his attributes. I do not love your attributes, but you. Your attributes all meet me otherwhere, Blended in other personalities, Nor do I love, nor do I worship them, Or those who bear them. E'en the spotted pard Will dare a danger which will make you pale, But shall his courage steal my heart from you? You cheat your conscience, for you know that I May like your attributes, yet love not you; Nay, worship them indeed, despising you. I do not argue this to damp your joy, But make it rational. If you presume Perfection in me,--if you lavish all The largess of your worship and your love On me, imposing on my head a crown Stolen from God's, there surely waits your heart The pang of disappointment. There will come A sad, sad time, when, in your famished soul, The cry for something more, and more divine, Will rise, nor be repressed." There is a charm In earnestness, when it inspires the lips Of one we love, that spoils their argument, And yields so much of pleasure and of pride, That the conviction which they seek evades Their eager fingers, and with throbbing wings Crows from its covert. She was casuist, Cunning and clear; and I was proud of her; And though I knew that she had swept away My refuges of lies like chaff, and proved My fair words fustian, I was moved to mirth Over the solemn ruin. Had it been A decent thing to do, I should have laughed Full in her face; but knowing that her words Were offspring of her conscience and her love, I could no less than hold respectfully Her earnest warning. "Well, I'll take the risk," I said. "While you shall have the argument, I will have you, who, on the whole, I like Better than that. And you shall have your way, And I my own, in common liberty, With things like these. You, doubtless, are to me What I am not to you. We are unlike In life and circumstance--alike alone In this: that better than all else on earth We love each other. This is basis broad For happiness, or broad enough for me. If you build better, you are fortunate, Ay, fortunate indeed; and some fine day We'll talk about it. Let us have to-night Joy in our new possessions, and defer This little joust of wits and consciences To more convenient season." We had reached The cottage door at this; and there her aunt Awaited our return. So, hand in hand, Assuming show of rustic bashfulness, We paused before her, and with bows profound Made our obeisance. "Well?" she said at length; "Well?--and what of it?" "Are you not surprised?" I asked. "Surprised, indeed! Surprised at what?" "At what you see: and this! and this!" I said, Planting a kiss upon each lovely cheek Of my betrothed, that straightway bloomed with rose. "What! are you blind, my aunt?" "You silly fools! I've seen it from the first," she answered me. "No doubt you thought that you were very deep, Very mysterious--all that sort of thing. I've watched you, and if you, young man, had been Aught but a coward, it had come before, And saved some sleep o' nights to both of you. But down upon your knees, for benison Of one who loves you both." We knelt, and then She kissed us, leaving on our cheeks the tear That sprang to brim the moment. Her shrewd eyes That melted in the sympathy of love, Would not meet ours again, but turned away, And sought in solitude to drain themselves Of their strange passion. God forbid that I, With weak and sacrilegious lips, betray The confidence of love; or tear aside The secrecy behind whose snowy folds Honor and virgin modesty retire For holiest communion! For the fire Which burns upon that altar is of God. Its tongues of flame, throughout all time and space, Speak but one language, understood by all, But sacred ever to the wedded hearts That listen to their breathings. In the deep hours of night I left the cottage, brain and heart o'erfilled With the ethereal vintage I had quaffed. Disturbing not the drowsy ferryman, I slipped his little wherry from the sand, And in the star-sprent river lipped the oars That pulled me homeward. The enchanting tide Was smooth continuation of the dream On which my spirit, holily afloat, Had glided through long hours of happiness. Earth, by the strange, delicious ecstasy, Was changed to paradise; and something kin To gratitude arose within my soul-- A fleeting passion, dying all too soon, Lacking the root which faith alone can feed. I touched the shore; but when my hasting feet Started the homeward walk, there came a change. Down from the quiet stars there fell a voice, Heard in the innermost, that troubled me: "She is not more than you: why worship her? And she will die: what will remain for you? You may die first, indeed: then what resource? You have no sympathy with her in things Ordained within, her conscience and her life The things supreme: can there be marriage thus? Is e'en such bliss as may be possible Sure to be yours? Fate has a thousand hands To dash your lifted cup." With thoughts like these, A vague uneasiness invaded me, And toned the triumph of my passion, till, Almost in anger, I exclaimed at last: "This is reaction. I have flown too high Above the healthy level, and I feel The press of denser air. The equipoise Of circumstance and feeling will be reached All in good time. Rest and to-morrow's sun Will bring the remedy, and, with the mists, This cloud will pass away." Then with clenched hands I swore I would be happy,--that my soul Should find its satisfaction in her love; And that, if there should ever come a time Of cold satiety, or I should find Weakness or fault where I had thought was strength And full perfection, I would e'en endow Her poverty with all the hoarded wealth Of my imagination, making her The woman of my want, in plenitude Of strength and loveliness. The breezy days Over whose waves my buoyant life careered, Rolled to October, falling on its beach With bursts of mellow music; and I leaped Upon the longed-for shore; for, in that month, My dear betrothed, deferring to the stress Of my impatient wish, had promised me Her hand in wedlock. Ere the happy day Dawned on the world, the world was draped in robes Meet for the nuptials. Baths of sunny haze, Steeping the ripened leaves from day to day, And dainty kisses of the frost at night, Joined in the subtile alchemy that wrought Such miracles of change, that myriad trees Which pranked the meads and clothed the forest glooms Bloomed with the tints of Eden. Had the earth Been splashed with blood of grapes from every clime, Tinted from topaz to dim carbuncle, Or orient ruby, it would not have been Drenched with such waste of color. All the hues The rainbow knows, and all that meet the eye In flowers of field and garden, joined to tell Each tree's close-folded secret. Side by side Rose sister maples, some in amber gold, Others incarnadine or tipped with flame; And oaks that for a hundred years had stood, And flouted one another through the storms-- Boasting their might--proclaimed their pique or pride In dun, or dyes of Tyre. The sumac-leaves Blazed with such scarlet that the crimson fruit Which hung among their flames was touched to guise Of dim and dying embers; while the hills That met the sky at the horizon's rim-- Dabbled with rose among the evergreens, Or stretching off in sweeps of clouted crimson--glowed As if the archery of sunset clouds, By squads and fierce battalions, had rained down Its barbed and feathered fire, and left it fast To advertise th' exploit. In such pomp Of autumn glory, by the simplest rites, Kathrina gave her hand to me, and I Pledged truth and life to her. I bore her home Through shocks of maize, revealing half their gold; Past gazing harvesters with creaking wains That brimmed with fruitage--my adored, my wife, Fruition of my hope--the proudest freight That ever passed that way! My troops of friends, Grown strangely warm and strangely numerous With scent of novelty and pleasant cheer, Assisted me to place upon her throne My household queen. Right royally she sat The new-born dignity. Most graciously She spoke and smiled among the silken clouds That, fold on perfumed fold, like frankincense Enveloped her, through half the festal night, With welcome and good wishes. I was proud: For was not I a king where she was queen? And queen she was--though consort in my home, Queen regnant in the realm of womanhood, By right of every charm. Into her place, As mistress of all home economies, She slid without a jar, as if the Fates, By concert of foreordinate design, Had fitted her for it, and it for her, And, having joined them well, were satisfied. Obedient to the orbit of our love, We came and went, revolving round our home In spheral harmony--twin stars made one, And loyal to one law. When at our board, All viands lifted by her hand became Ambrosial; and her light, elastic step From room to room, in busy household cares, Timed with my heart, and filled me with a sense Of harmony and peace. Days, weeks, and months Lapsed like soft measures, rhyming each with each. All charged with thoughtful ministries to me, And not to me alone; for I was proud To know that she was counted by the good As a good power among them,--by the poor, As angel sent of God, on whom they called His blessing down. She held her separate life Of prayer and Christian service, without show Of sanctity, without obtrusiveness; And, though I could but know she never sought A blessing for herself, forgetting me In her petition, not in all those months Did word of difference betray the gulf Between our souls and lives. She had her plan: I guessed it, and respected it. She felt That if her life were not an argument To move me, nothing that her lips might say Could win me to her wish. Pride would repel What it could not refute, and pleasantry Parry the thrusts that love could not resent. A whole year sped, yet not a line of verse Had grown beneath my pen. When I essayed To brace my powers to effort, and to call Forth from their camp and covert the bright ranks Of tuneful numbers, no responsive shout Answered the bugle-blast, and from my hand-- Irresolute and nerveless as a babe's-- My falchion fell. She rallied me on this; But I had nought to say, save this, perhaps: That she, being all my world, had left no room For other occupation than my love. She did not smile at this: it was no jest, But saddest truth. I had grown enervate In the warm atmosphere which I had breathed; And this, with consciousness that in her soul-- As warm with love as mine--each gentle power Was kindling with new life from day to day, Growing with my decline. Well, in good time, There came to us a child, the miniature Of her on whose dear breast my babyhood Was nursed and cradled; and my happy heart. Charged with a double tenderness, received And blessed the precious gift. Another fount Of human love gurgled to meet my lips. Another store of good, as rich and pure, In its own kind, as that from which I drank, Was thus discovered to my taste, and I Feasted upon its fulness. With the gift That brimmed my cup of joy, there came a grace To her who bore it of fresh loveliness. If I had loved the maiden and the bride, The mother, through whose pain my heart had won Its new possession, fastened to my heart With a new sympathy. Whatever dross Our months of intimacy had betrayed Within her character, was purged away, And she was left pure gold. Nay, I should say, Whatever goodness had not been revealed Through the relations of her heart to mine As loving maid and mistress, found the light Through her maternity. A heavenly change Passed o'er her soul and o'er her pallid face, As if the unconscious yearning of a life Had found full satisfaction in the birth Of the new being. Her long weariness Was but a trance of peace and gratitude; And as she lay--her babe upon her breast, Her eyelids closed--I could but feel that heaven, Should it hold all the good of which she dreamed Had little more for her. And when again She moved about the house, in ministry To me and to her helpless child, I knew That I had tasted every precious good That woman bears to man. Ay, more than this: That not one man in thousands had received Such largess of affection, and such prize Of womanhood, as I had found in her, And made my own. The whole enchanting round Of pure, domestic commerce had been mine. A lover blest, a husband satisfied, A father crowned! Love had no other boon To offer me, and held within its gift No other title. Thus, within the space Of two swift years, I traversed the domain Of novelty, and learned that I must glean The garnered fields of my experience To gratify the greed that still possessed My sateless heart. The time had come to me-- Which I had half foreseen--when, by my will, My interest in those I loved should live Predominant in all my life. I nursed With jealous care my passion for my wife. I raised her to an apotheosis In my imagination, where I bowed And paid my constant homage. I was still Her fond and loyal lover; but my heart, That had so freely drunk, with full content, Had seen the bottom of the cup she held; And what remained but tricks to eke it out, And artifice to give it piquancy, And sips to cool my tongue, the while my heart Was hollow with its thirst? My little child Was precious to my soul beyond all price; Mother and babe were all that they could be To any heart of man; and yet--and yet! Of all the dull, dead weights man ever bore, Sure, none can wear the soul with discontent Like consciousness of power unused. To feel That one has gift to move the multitude,-- To act upon the life of humankind By force of will, or fire of eloquence, Or voice of lofty art, and yet, to feel No stir of mighty motive in the soul To action or endeavor; to behold The fairest prizes of this fleeting life Borne off by patient men who, day by day, By bravest toil and struggle, reach the heights Of great achievement, toiling, struggling thus With a strong joy, and with a fine contempt For soft and selfish passion; to see this, Yet cling to such a passion, like a slave Who hugs his chains in sluggish impotence, Refusing freedom lest he lose the crust The chain of bondage warrants him--ah! this Is misery indeed! Such misery Was mine. I held the consciousness of power To labor even-headed with the best Who wrought for fame, or strove to make themselves Felt in the world's great life; and yet, I felt No lift to enterprise, from heaven above Or earth beneath; for neither God nor man Lived in my love. My home held all my world; Yet it was evident--I felt, I knew-- That nought could fill my opening want but toil; And there were times when I had hailed with joy The curse of poverty, compelling me To labor for my bread, and for the bread Of those I loved. My neighbors all around Were happy in their work. The plodding hind Who served my hand, or groomed my petted horse. Whistled about his work with merry heart, And filled his measure of content with toil. In all the streets and all the busy fields, Men were astir, and doing with their might What their hands found to do. They drove the plough, They trafficked, builded, delved, they spun and wove, They taught and preached, they hasted up and down Each on his little errand, and their eyes Were full of eager fire, as if the earth And all its vast concerns were on their hands. Their homes were fresh with guerdon every night, And ripe with impulse to new industry At each new dawn. I saw all this, but knew That they were not like me--were most unlike In constitution and condition. Thus, My power to do, and do the single thing My power was shaped to do, became, instead Of wings to bear me, weights to burden me. The moiling multitude for little tasks Found little motives plenty; but for me, Who in my indolence they all despised-- Not understanding me--no motive rose To lash or lead. Even the Jove I dreamed Would give me impulse had defrauded me. Feeble and proud; strong, yet emasculate; Centred in self, and still despising self; Goaded, yet held; convinced, but never moved? Such conflict ofttimes held and harried me That death had met with welcome. If I read, I read to kill my time. No interest In the great thoughts of others moved my soul, Because I had no object; useless quite The knowledge and the culture I possessed; And if I rode, the stale monotony Of the familiar landscapes sickened me. In these dull years, my toddling little wean Grew into prattling childhood, and I gained Such fresh delight from her as kept my heart From fatal gloom; but more and more I shunned The world around me, more and more drew in The circle of my life, until, at last, My home became my hermitage. I knew The dissolution of the spell would come, And, though I dreaded it, I longed to greet The crash and transformation. If my pride Forbade the full confession to my wife That time had verified her prophecy, It failed to hold the truth from her. She read, With a true woman's insight, all my heart; But with a woman's sensitiveness shrank From questions which might seem to carry blame; And so, for years, there lay between our souls The bar of silence. One sweet summer eve, After my lamb was folded and before The lamps were lighted, as I sat alone Within my room, I heard reluctant feet Seeking my door. They paused, and then I heard: "May I come in?" "Ay, you may always come; And you are welcome always," I replied. The room was dim, but I could see her face Was pale, and her long lashes wet. "Your seat"-- I said, with open arms. Upon my knee, One hand upon my shoulder, she sank down As if the heart within her breast were lead, And she were weary with its weight. "My wife, What burden now?" I asked her tenderly. She fixed her swimming eyes on mine, and said: "My dear, you are not happy. Years have gone Since you have been content. I bring no words Of blame against you: you have been to me A comfort and a joy. Your constancy Has honored me as few of all my sex Are honored by your own; but while you pine With secret pain, I am so wholly yours That I must pine with you. I've waited long For you to speak; and now I come to you To ask you this one question: Is there aught Of toil or sacrifice within my power To ease your heart, or give you liberty Beyond the round to which you hold your feet? Speak freely, frankly, as to one who loves Her husband better than her only child, And better than herself." I drew her head Down to my cheek, and said: "My angel wife! Whatever torment or disquietude I may have suffered, you have never been Its cause, or its occasion. You are all-- You have been all--that womanhood can be To manhood's want; and in your woman's love And woman's pain, I have found every good My life has known since first our lives were joined. You knew me better than I knew myself; And your prophetic words have haunted me Like thoughts of retribution: '_There will come 'A sad, sad time, when in your famished soul 'The cry for something more, and more divine 'Will rise, nor be repressed._' For something more My spirit clamors: nothing more divine I ask for." "What shall be this 'something more'? "Work," I replied; "ay, work, but never here; Work among men, where I may feel the touch Of kindred life; work where the multitudes Are surging; work where brains and hands Are struggling for the prizes of the world; Work where my spirit, driven to its bent By competitions and grand rivalries, Shall vindicate its own pre-eminence, And wring from a reluctant world the meed Of approbation and respect for which It yearns with awful hunger; work, indeed, Which shall compel the homage of the souls That creep around me here, and pity you Because, forsooth, the Fates have hobbled you With a dull drone. I know how sweet the love Of two fond souls; and I will have the hearts Of millions. These shall satisfy my greed, And round the measure of my life; and these My work shall win me." At these childish words She raised her head, and with a sweet, sad smile Of love and pity blent, made her response: "Not yet, my husband--if your wife may speak A thought that crosses yours--not yet have you Found the great secret of content. But work May help you toward it, and in any case Is better far than idleness. For this, You ask of me to sacrifice this home And all the truest friends my life has gained. I do it from this moment; glad to prove, At any tender cost, my love for you, And faith in your endeavor. I will go To any spot of earth where you may lead, And go rejoicing. Let us go at once!" "I burn my ships behind me," I replied. "Measure the cost: be sure no secret hope Of late return be found among the flames; For, if I go, I leave no single thread, Save that which binds me to my mother's grave. To draw me back." "My love shall be the torch To light the fire," she answered. Then we rose, And, with a kiss, marked a full period To love's excess, and with a sweet embrace Wrote the initial of a stronger life. A REFLECTION. Oh! not by bread alone is manhood nourished To its supreme estate! By every word of God have lived and flourished The good men and the great. Ay, not by bread alone! "Oh! not by bread alone!" the sweet rose, breathing In throbs of perfume, speaks; "But myriad hands, in earth and air, are wreathing The blushes for my cheeks. Ay, not by bread alone!" "Oh! not by bread alone!" proclaims in thunder The old oak from his crest; "But suns and storms upon me, and deep under, The rocks in which I rest. Ay, not by bread alone!" "Oh! not by bread alone!" The truth flies singing In voices of the birds; And from a thousand pastured hills is ringing The answer of the herds: "Ay, not by bread alone!" Oh! not by bread alone! for life and being Are finely complex all, And increment, with element agreeing, Must feed them, or they fall. Ay, not by bread alone! Oh! not by love alone, though strongest, purest That ever swayed the heart; For strongest passion evermore the surest Defrauds each manly part. Ay, not by love alone! Oh! not by love alone is power engendered. Until within the soul The gift of every motive has been rendered, It is not strong and whole. Ay, not by love alone! Oh! not by love alone is manhood nourished To its supreme estate: By every word of God have lived and flourished The good men and the great. Ay, not by love alone! PART III. LABOR. Ten years of love!--a sleep, a pleasant dream That passed its culmen in the early half, Concluding in confusion--a wild scene Of bargains, auctions, partings, and what not?-- And an awaking! I was in Broadway, A unit in a million. Like a bath In ocean surf, blown in from farthest seas Under the August ardors, the grand rush Of crested life assailed me with its waves, And cooled me while it fired. With sturdy joy I sought its broadest billows, and resigned My spirit to their surge and sway; or stood In sheltered coves, reached only by the spume And crepitant bubbles of the yesty floods, Drinking the roar, the sheen, the restlessness, As inspiration, both of sense and soul. I saw the waves of life roll up the steps Of great cathedrals and retire; and break In charioted grandeur at the feet Of marble palaces, and toss their spray Of feathered beauty through the open doors, To pile the restless foam within; and burst On crowded caravansaries, to fall In quick return; and in dark currents glide Through sinuous alleys and the grimy loops Of reeking cellars; and with softest plash Assail the gilded shrines of opulence, And slide in musical relapse away. With senses dazed and stunned, and soul o'erfilled With chaos of new thoughts, I turned away, And sought my city home. There all was calm, With wife and daughter waiting my return, And eager with their welcome. That was life!-- An interest in the great world of life, A place for toil within a world of toil, And love for its reward. "Amen!" I said, "And twice amen! I've found my life at last, And we will all be happy." Day by day-- The while I sought adjustment to the life Which I had chosen, and with careful thought Gathered to hand the fair material Elect by Fancy for the organism Over whose germ she brooded--I went out, To bathe again upon the shore of life My long-enfeebled nature. Every day I met some face I knew. My college friends Came up in strange disguises. Here was one, With a white neck-cloth and a saintly face, Who had been rusticated and disgraced For lawlessness. Now he administered A charge which proved that he had been at work, And made himself a man. And there was one-- A lumpy sort of boy, as memory Recalled him to me--grown to portliness And splendid spectacles. He drove a chaise, And practised surgery,--was on his way To meet a class of youth, who sought to be Great surgeons like himself, and took full notes Of all his stolen wisdom. By his watch-- A gold repeater, with a mighty chain-- He gave me just five minutes; then rolled off--- Pretension upon wheels. Another grasped My hand as if I were his bosom friend, Just in from a long voyage. He was one Who stole my wood in college, and received With grace the kick I gave him. He had grown To be the tail of a portentous firm Of city lawyers: managed, as he said, The matter of collections; and had made In his small way--to use his modest phrase, Truthful as modest--quite a pretty plum. He was o'erjoyed to see me in the town: Hoped I would call upon him at his den: If I had any business in his line, Would do it for me promptly; as for price, No need to talk of that between two friends! But these, and all--the meanest and the best-- Were hard at work. They always questioned me Before we parted, touching my pursuits; And though they questioned kindly, I grew sore Under the repetition, and ashamed To iterate my answer, till I burned To do some work, so lifted into fame, That shame should be to him whose ignorance Compelled a question. Simplest foresters Have learned the trick of woodland broods, that fly In radiant divergence from the flash Of death and danger, and, when all is still, Steal back to where their fellows bit the dust For rendezvous. And thus society Follows the brutal instinct. When the friends, Who from her father's ruin fled amain, Found out my wife, and learned that it was safe To gather back to the old feeding-ground, They came. Her old home had become my own And they were all delighted. It was sweet To have her back again; and it was sad To know that those who once were happy there, Dispensing happiness, could come no more. It had its modicum of earnestness,-- This talk of theirs--and she received it all With hearty courtesy, and yielded it The unction of her charity, so far That it was smooth and redolent to her. The difference--the world-wide difference-- Between my wife and them was obvious; But she was generous through nature's gift I fancied--could not well be otherwise; Although their fawning filled me with disgust. Oh! fool and blind! not to perceive the Christ That shone and spoke in her! The hour approached-- The predetermined time--when I should close My study door, and wrap my kindling brain In the poetic dream which, day by day, Was gathering consistence in my brain. The quick, creative instinct in me plumed Its pinions for the flight, and I could feel The influx of fresh power; but whence it I did not question; though it fired my heart With the assurance of success. I told My dear companion of my hopeful plans For winning fame, and making for myself A lofty place; but I could not inspire Her heart with my ambition, or win o'er Her judgment to my motive. She adhered To her old theory, and gave no room To any motive it did not embrace. We argued much, but always argued wide, And ended where we started. Postulates On which we stood in perfect harmony, Were points of separation, out from which We struck divergently, till sympathy, That only lives by rhythm of thoughts and hearts, Lay dead between us. "Man loves praise," I said. "It is an appetence which He who made The human soul, made to be satisfied. It is a tree He planted. If it grow On that which feeds it, and become at last Thrifty and fruitful, it is still His own, With usury. And if, in His intent, This passion have no place among the powers Of active life, why is it mighty there From youngest childhood? Pray you what is fame But concrete praise?--the universal voice Which bears, from every quarter of the earth. Its homage to a name, that grows thereby To be its own immortal monument Outlasting all the marble and the bronze Which cunning fingers, since the world began, Have shaped or stamped with story? What is fame But aggregate of praise? And if it be Legitimate to win, for sake of praise, The praise of one, why not of multitudes?" "Ay," she replied; "'tis true that men love praise And it is true that He who made the soul Planted therein the love of praise, to be A motive in its life--all true so far? And so far we agree. But motives all Have their appropriate sphere and sway, like men Who bear them in their breasts. The love of praise Fills life with fine amenities. Not all Who live have pleasant tempers, and not all The gift of gracious manners, or the love Of nobler motive, higher meed than praise. The world is full of bears, who smooth their hair, And glove their paws, and put on manly airs, And hold our honey sacred, and our lives Our own, because they hunger for our praise. 'Tis a fine thing for bears--this love of praise-- And those who deal with them; and a good thing For children, and for parents, teachers--all Who have them in their keeping. It may hold A little mind to rectitude, until It grow, and grow ashamed to yield itself To such a petty motive. Children all Like sugar, and it may admit of doubt Whether our praise or sugar sweetens more Their petulant sub-acids; but a man Would choke in swallowing the compliment Which we should pay him, were we but to say 'Go to! Do some great deed, and you shall have Your pay in sugar:--maple, mind you, now, So you shall do it featly.'" "Very good!" I answered, "very good, indeed! if we Engage in talk for sport; but argument On themes like these must have the element Of candor. Highest truth, in certain lights, May be ridiculous, and yet be truth. Women are angels: just a little weak And just a little wicked, it may be, Yet still the sweetest beings in the world; But when one stands with apprehensive gasp At verge of sternutation, or leaps off, Projecting all her being in a sneeze, Or snores with lips wide-parted, or essays The 'double-quick,' we turn our eyes away In sadness, that a creature so divine Can be so shockingly ridiculous; Yet who shall say she's not an angel still? Now you present to me the meanest face Of a most noble truth. I laugh with you Over its sorry semblance; but the truth Is still divine, and claims our reverence. The great King Solomon--and you believe In Solomon--has said that a good name Is more to be desired than much fine gold. If a good name be matter of desire Beyond all wealth--and you will pardon me For holding to the record--it may stand As a grand motive in the life of man, To grand endeavor. I have yet to learn That Solomon addressed his words to bears, Or little children. I am forced to think That you and I, and all who read his words, Are those for whom he wrote." Rejoining she: "A good may be the subject of desire, And not be motive to achievement. Life, If I may speak the riddle, is a scheme Of indirections. My own happiness Is something to desire; and yet, I know That I must win it by forgetting it In ministry to others. If I make My happiness the motive of my work, I spoil it by the taint of selfishness. But are you sure that you do not presume Somewhat too much, in claiming the desire For a good name as motive of your life? Greatness, not goodness, is the end you seek, If I mistake you not; and these are held, In the world's thought, as two, and most distinct. King Solomon was wise, but wiser He Who said to those who loved and followed him, 'Who would be great among you, let him serve.' The greatest men and artists should be such, For they are God's nobility and man's Should work from greatest motives. Selfishness Is never great, and moves to no great deeds. To honor God, to benefit mankind, To serve with lofty gifts the lowly needs Of the poor race for which the God-man died, And do it all for love--oh! this is great! And he who does this will achieve a name Not only great but good." "Not in this world," I answered her. "I know too much of it. The world is selfish; and it never gives Due credit to a motive which assumes To be above its own. If a man write, It takes for granted that he writes for fame, And judges him accordingly. It holds Of no account all other aims and ends; And visits with contempt the man who bears A mission to his kind. The critic pens That twiddle with his work, or play with it As cats with mice, are not remarkable For gentle instincts; and my name must live By pens like these. I choose to take the world Just as I find it, and I pitch my tune To the world's key, that it may sing my tune. And sing for me. Ay, and I take myself Just as I find myself. I do not love The human race enough to work for it. Having no motive of philanthropy, I'll make pretence to none. The love of praise I count legitimate and laudable. 'Tis not the noblest motive in the world, But it is good; and it has won more fames Than any other. Surely, my good wife, You would not shut me from it, and deprive My power of its sole impulse." "No; oh! no," She answered quickly. "I am only sad That it should be the captain of your host. All creatures of the brain are the result Of many motives and of many powers. All life is such, indeed. The power that leads-- The motive dominant--this stamps the work With its own likeness. Throughout all the world Are careful souls, with careful consciences, That pierce themselves with questionings and fears Because that, with the motives which are good, And which alone they seek, a hundred come They do not seek, and aye sophisticate Their finest action. They are wrong in this: All motives bowing to one leadership, And aiding its emprise, are one with it-- The same in trend, the same in terminus. All the low motives that obey the law, And aid the work, of one above them all, Do holy service, and fulfil the end For which they were designed. The love of praise Is not the lowest motive which can move The human soul. Nay, it may do good work As a subordinate, and leave no soil On whitest fabric, at whose selvage shines The Master's broidered signature. Although You write for fame, think not you will escape The press of other motives. You love me; You love your child; you love your pleasant home; You love the memory of one long dead. These, joined with all those qualities of heart Which make you dear to me, will throng around The leader you appoint, and come and go Under his banner; and the work of God Will thrive through these, the while your own goes on God will not be defrauded, nor yet man; And you, who like the Pharisees make prayer At corners of the streets, for praise of men, Will have reward you seek." "Ay, verily!" Responded I with laughter. "Verily! Though not a saint, I'll do a saintly work For my own profit, and in spite of all The selfishness that moves me. Better, this, Than I suspected. My sweet casuist-- My gentle, learned, lovely casuist-- I thank you; and I'll pay you more than thanks. I'll promise that when these fine motives come, And volunteer their service, they shall find Welcome and entertainment, and a place Within the rank and file, with privilege Of quick promotion, so they show themselves Motives of mettle." This the type of talk That passed between us. I was not a fool To count her wisdom worthless; nor a God, To work regeneration in myself. That something which I longed for, to fill up The measure of my good, was human praise; Yet I could see that she was wholly right, And that she held within herself resource Of satisfaction better than my own. But I was quite content--content to know I trod the average altitude of those Within the paths of art, and had no aims To be misconstrued or misunderstood By Pride and Selfishness--that these, in truth, Expected of me what I had to give. Strange, how a man may carry in his heart, From year to year--through all his life, indeed-- A truth, or a conviction, which shall be No more a part of it, and no more worth Than to his flask the cork that slips within! Of this he learns by sourness of his wine, Of muddle of its color; by the bits That vex his lips while drinking; but he feels No impulse in his hand to draw it forth, And bid it crown and keep the draught it spoils. I write this, here, not for its relevance To this one passage of my story, but Because there slipped into my consciousness Just at this juncture, and would not depart, A truth I carried there for many years, Each minute seeing, feeling, tasting it, Yet never touching it with an attempt To draw it forth, and put it to its place. One evening, when our usual theme was up, I asked my wife in playful earnestness How she became so wise. "You talk," I said, "Like one who has survived a thousand years, And drunk the wisdom of a thousand lives." "Who lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God, Who giveth freely and upbraideth not," Was her reply. "I never ask of God," I said. "So, while you take at second hand His breathings to the artist, I will take At second hand the wisdom that he gives To you his teacher." "Do you never pray?" "Never," I answered her. "I cannot pray: You know the reason. Never since the day God shut his heart against my mother's prayer Have I raised one petition, or been moved To reverence." Her long, dark lashes fell, And from her eyes there dropped two precious tears That bathed her folded hands. She pitied me, With tenderness beyond the reach of words. I did not seek her pity. I was proud, And asked her if she blamed me. "No," she said; "I have no right to blame you, and no wish. I marvel only that a man like you Can hold so long the errors of a boy. I've looked--with how much longing, words of mine Can never tell--for reason to restore That priceless thing which passion stole from you, And looked in vain." Though piqued by the reproach Her words conveyed (unwittingly I knew), I wished to learn where, in her theory Of human life, my case had found a place; So, bidding pride aback, I questioned her. "You are so wise in other things," I said, "And read so well God's dealings with his own, Perhaps you can explain this mystery That clouds my life." "I know that God is good," She answered, "and, although my reason fail To explicate the mystery that wraps His providence, it does not shake my faith. But this sad case of yours has seemed so plain, That Reason well may spare the staff of Faith To climb to its conclusions. You are loved, My husband: can you tell your wife for what?" "Oh! modesty! my dear; hem! modesty! Spare me these blushes! I have not at hand The printed catalogue of qualities Which give you inspiration, and decline The personal rehearsal." "You mistake," She answered, smiling. "Not for modesty; And as for blushes, they're not patent yet. But frankly, soberly, I ask you this: Have you a quality of heart or brain Which makes you lovable, and in my eyes A man to be admired, that was not born Quick in your blood? Pray, have you anything Which you did not inherit? Who to me Furnished my husband? By what happy law Was all that was the finest, noblest, best In those who gave you life, bestowed on you? You have your father's form, your father's brain: You have your mother's eyes, your mother's heart. Those twain produced a man for me to love, Out of themselves. I am obliged to them For the most precious good the round earth holds, Transmitted by a law that slew them both. It was not sin, or shame, for them to die Just as they died. They passed with whiter hands Up to The Throne than he who wantonly Murders a sparrow. When your mother prayed She prayed for the suspension of the law By which from Eve, the mother of the race, She had received the grace and loveliness Which made her precious to your heart--the law By which alone she could convey these gifts To others of her blood. Your daughter's face Is beautiful, her soul is pure and sweet, By largess of this law. Could God subvert, To meet her wish, though shaped in agony, The law which, since the life of man began In life of God, has kept the channel clear For His own blood, that it might bless the last Of all the generations as the first? What could He more than give her liberty-- When reason lay in torture or in wreck, And life was death--to part with stainless hand The tie that held her from his loving breast?" If God himself had dropped her words from heaven. They had not reached with surer plummet-plunge The depths of my conviction. I was dumb; I opened not my mouth; but left her side, And sought the crowded street. I felt that all Delusions, subterfuges, self-deceits, By which my soul had shut itself from God, Were stripped away, and that no barrier Was interposed between us which was not My own hand's building. Never, nevermore, Could I hold God in blame, or deem myself A guiltless, injured creature. I could see That I was hard, implacable, unjust; And that by force of wilful choice I held Myself from God; for no impulsion came To seek his face and favor. Nay, I feared And fought such incidence, as enemy Of all my plans. So it became thenceforth A problem with me how to separate My new conviction from my life--to hold A revolutionizing truth within, And hold it yet so loosely, it should be Like a dumb alien in a mural town-- No guest, but an intruder, who might bide, By law or grace, but win no domicile, And hold no power. When I returned, that night My course was chosen, with such sense of guilt I blushed before the calm, inquiring eyes That met me at my threshhold; but the theme Was dropped just there. My gentle mentor read The secret of the struggle and the sin, And left me to myself. At the set time, I entered on my task. The discipline Of early years told feebly on my work, For dissipation and disuse of power Had brought me back to infancy again. My will was weak, my patience was at fault, And in my fretful helplessness, I stormed And sighed by turns; yet still I held in force Determination, as reserve of will; And when I flinched or faltered, always fell Back upon that, and saved my powers from rout. Casting, recasting, till I found the germ Of my conception putting forth its whorls In orderly succession round the stem Of my design, that straight and strong shot up Toward inflorescence, my long work went on, Till I was filled with satisfying joy. This lasted for a little time, and then There came reaction. I grew tired of it. My verses were as meaningless and stale As doggrel of the stalls. I marvelled much That they could ever have beguiled my pride Into self-gratulation, or done aught But overwhelm me with contempt for them, And the dull pen that wrote them. I had hoped To form and finish my projected work Within, and by, myself,--to tease no ear With fragmentary snatches of my song, And call for no support from friendly praise To reinforce my courage; but the stress Of my disgust and my despair--the need, Imperative and absolute, to brace myself By some opinion borrowed for the nonce, And bathe my spirit in the sympathy Of some strong nature--mastered my intent, And sent me for resource to her whose heart Was ever open to my call. She sat Through the long hour in which I read to her, Absorbed, entranced, as one who sits alone Within a dim cathedral, and resigns His spirit to the organ-theme, that mounts, Or sinks in tremulous pauses, or sweeps out On mighty pinions and with trumpet voice Through labyrinthine harmonies, at last Emerging, and through silver clouds of sound Receding and receding, till it melts In the abysses of the upper sky. It was not needful she should say a word; For in her glowing eyes and kindling face, I caught the full assurance that my heart Had yearned for; but she spoke her hearty praise And when I asked her for her criticism, Bestowed it with such modest deference To my opinion, as to spare my pride; Yet, with such subtle sense of harmony, And insight of proportion, that I saw That I should find no critic in the world More competent or more severe. I said, Gulping my pride: "Better this ordeal In friendly hands, before the time of types, Than afterward, in hands of enemies!" So, from that reading, it was understood Between us that, whenever I essayed Revising and retouching, I should know Her intimate impressions, and receive Her frank suggestions. In this oversight And constant interest of one whose mind Was excellent and pure, and raised above All motive to beguile me, I secured New inspiration. Weeks and months passed by With gradient hopefulness, and strength renewed At each renewal of the confidence I had reposed in her; till I perceived That I was living on her praise--that she Held God's place in me and the multitude's. And now, as I look back upon those days Of difficult endeavor, I confess That had she not been with me, I had failed-- Ay, foundered in mid-sea--my hope, my life, The spoil of deep oblivion. At last The work was done--the labored volume closed. "I cannot make it better," I exclaimed. "I can write better, but, before I write, I must have recognition in the voice Of public praise. A good paymaster pays When work is finished. Let him pay for this, And I will work again; but, till he pay, My leisure is my own, and I will wait." "And if he grudge your wage?" suggested she To whom I spoke. "I shall be finished too." Came then the proofs and latest polishing Of words and phrases--work I shared with her To whom I owed so much; and then the fear, The deathly heart-fall, and the haunting dread That go before exposure to the world Of inmost life, and utmost reach of power Toward revelation;--then the shrinking spell, When morbid love of self awaits in pain The verdict it has courted. But at last The book was out. My daughter's hand in mine-- Her careless feet, that thrilled with springing life, Skipping the pavement--I walked down Broadway, To ease the restlessness and cool the heat That vexed my idle waiting. As we passed A showy window, filled with costly books, My little girl exclaimed: "Oh, father! See! There is your name!" Straight all the bravery Within my veins, at one wild heart-thump, dropped, And I was limp as water; but I paused, And read the placard. It announced my book In characters of flame, with adjectives My daring publisher had filched, I think From an old circus broadside. "Well!" thought I-- Biting my lip--"I'm in the market now! How much--O! rattling, roaring multitude! O! selfish, cheating, lying multitude! O! hawking, trading, delving multitude!-- How much for one man's hope, for one man's life? What for his toil and pain?--his heart's red blood? What for his brains and breeding? Oh, how much For one who craves your praises with your pence, And dies with your denial?" I went in, And bought my book--not doubting I was first To give response to my apostrophe. The smug old clerk, who found his length of ear Convenient as a pencil-rack, and thus Made nature's wrath proclaim the praise of trade, Wrapped my dear bantling well; and, as he dropped My dollar in his till, smiled languidly Upon my little girl, and said to me-- To cheer me in my purchase--that the book Was thought to be a deuced clever thing. He never read such books; he had no time; Indeed, he had no interest in them. Still, other people had, and it was well, For it helped trade along. It was for him-- A vulgar fraction of the integral We speak of as "the people," and "the world"-- I had been writing! Had he read my book, And given it his praise, I should have been Delighted, though I knew that his applause Was worthless as his brooch. I was a fool Undoubtedly; yet I could understand, Better than e'er before, how separate The artist is from such a soul as his-- What need of teachers and interpreters To crumble in his pewter porringer The rounded loaf, whose crust was adamant To his weak fingers. The next morning's press Was purchased early, though I read in vain To find my reputation. But at night, My door-bell rang; and I received a note From one who edited an evening print, (I had dined with him at my publisher's), Inclosing a review, and venturing The hope that I should like it. Cunning man! He knew the tricks of trade, and was adroit. My poem was "a revelation." I had "burst Like thunder from a calm and cloudless sky." Well, not to quote his language, this the drift: A man of fortune, living at his ease, But fond of manly effort, had sat down, And turned his culture to supreme account; And he--the editor--took on himself To thank him on the world's behalf. Withal, The poet had betrayed the continence Of genius. He had held, undoubtedly, The consciousness of power from early youth; But, yielding never to the itch for print, Had nursed and chastened and developed it, Until his hand was strong, and swept his lyre With magic of a master. Followed here Sage comments on the rathe and puny brood Of poet-sucklings, who had rushed to type Before their time--pale stems that spun their flowers In the first sunshine, but, when Autumn came, Were fruitless. It was pleasant, too, to see, In such an age of sentimental cant, One man who dared to hold up to the world A creature of his brain, and say: "Look you! This is my thought; and it shall stand alone. It has no moral, bears no ministry Of pious teaching, and makes no appeal To sufferance or suffrage of the muffs Who, in the pulpit or the press, prepare The nation's pap. The fiery-footed barb That pounds the pampas, and the lily-bells That hang above the brooks, present the world With no apology for being there, And no attempt to justify themselves In uselessness. It is enough for God That they are beautiful, and hold his thought In fine embodiment; and it shall be Enough for me that, in this book of mine, I have created somewhat that is strong And beautiful, which, if it profit,--well: If not, 'tis no less strong and beautiful, And holds its being by no feebler right." Ay, it was glorious to find one man Who piled no packs upon his Pegasus, Nor chained him to a rag-cart, loaded down With moral frippery, and strings of bells To call the people to their windows. Then There followed extracts, with a change of type To mark the places where the editor Had caught a fancy hiding, which he feared Might slip detection under slower eyes Than those he carried; or to emphasize Felicities of diction that were stiff In Roman verticals, but grew divine At the Italic angle; then apology, Profoundly humble, to his patrons all For quoting at such length, and one to me For quoting anything, and deep regrets, In quite a general way, that lack of space Forbade a reproduction of the book From title-page to tail-piece, winding up With counsel to all lovers of pure art, Patrons of genius, all Americans, All friends of cis-Atlantic literature, To buy the book, and read it for themselves. I drank the whole, at one long, luscious draught; Tipping the tankard high, that I might see My features at the bottom, and regale My pride, after my palate. Then I tossed The paper to my wife, and bade her read. I watched her while she read, but failed to find The sympathy of pleasure in her face I had expected. Finishing at last, She raised her eyes, and, fixing them on me, Said thoughtfully: "You like this, I suspect." "Well, truly!" I responded, "since it seems To be the first instalment of the wage Which you suggested might come grudgingly. Ay, it is sweet to me. I know it fails In nice discrimination,--that it slurs Defects which I perceive as well as you; But it is kind, and places in best light Such excellences as we both may find-- May claim, indeed." "And yet, it is a lie, Or what the editor would call 'a puff,' From first to last. The 'continence,' my dear, 'Of genius!' What of that? And what about The 'manly effort,' for whose exercise He thanked you on the world's behalf? And so Your nursing, chastening and developing Of power!--Pray what of these?" "Oh! wife!" I said, "Don't spoil it all! Be pitiful, my love! I am a baby--granted: so I need The touch of tender hands, and something sweet To keep me happy." "Babies take a bath, Sometimes, from which the hand of warmest love Filches the chill, and you must have one dash," She answered me, "to close your complement. The weakest spot in all your book, he found With a quick instinct; and on that he spent His sharpest force and finest rhetoric, Shoring and bracing it on every side With bold assumptions and affirmatives, To blind the eyes of novices, and scare With fierce forestalment all the critic-quills Now bristling for their chance. He saw at once Your poem had no mission, save, perhaps, The tickle of the taste, and that it bore Upon its glowing gold small food for life. He saw just there the point to be attacked; And there threw up his earth-works, and spread out His thorned abattis. He was very kind Undoubtedly, and very cunning, too; For well he knew that there are earnest souls In the broad world, who claim that highest art Is highest ministry to human need; And that the artist has no Christian right To prostitute his art to selfish ends, Or make it vehicle alone of plums For the world's pudding." "These will speak in time," Responded I; "but they have not the ear Of the broad world, I think. The Christian right Of which you speak is hardly recognized Among the multitude, or by the guild In which I claim a place. The sectaries Who furnish folios, quartos, magazines, To the religious few, are limited In influence; and these, my wife, are all I have to fear;--nay, could I but arouse Their bitter enmity, I might receive Such superflux of praise and patronage As would o'erwhelm my sweetly Christian wife With shame and misery. But we shall see; And, in the meantime, let us be content That, if one man shall praise me overmuch, Ten, at the least, will fail to render me Befitting justice." As the days went on, Reviews and notices came pouring in. I was notorious, at least; and fame, I whispered comfortably to myself, Is only notoriety turned gray, With less of fire, if more of steadiness. The adverse verdicts were not numerous; And these were rendered, as I fancied then, By sanctimonious fools who deemed profane All verse outside their thumb-worn hymnodies. My book received the rattling fusilade Of all the dailies: then the artillery Of the hebdomadals, whose noisy shells, Though timed by fuse to burst on Saturday, Exploded at the middle of the week; At last, a hundred-pounder quarterly Gave it a single missive from its mask Of far and dark impersonality. The smoke cleared up, and still my colors And still my book stood proudly in the sun, Nor breached nor battered. I had won a place That I was sure of. All had said of me That I was "brilliant:" was not that enough? The petty pesterers, with card and stamp, Who hunt for autographs, were after me, In packages by post; and idle men Held me at corners by the button-hole, And introduced me to their friends. I dined With meek-eyed men, whose literary wives Were dying all to know me, as they said; And the lyceums, quick at scent and sight-- Watching the jungles for a lion--all Courted the delectation of my roar Upon their platforms, pledging to my hand (With city reference to stanchest names), Such honoraria as would have been The lion's share of profits. These were straws; But they had surer fingers for the wind Than withes or weathercocks. The book sold well My publisher (who published at my risk, And first put on the airs of one who stooped To grant a favor), brimmed and overflowed With courtesy; and ere a year was gone, Became importunate for something more. This was his plea: I owed it to myself To write again. The time to make one's hay Is when the sun shines: time to write one's books Is when the public humor turns to them. The public would forget me in a year, And seek another idol; or, meanwhile, Another writer might usurp my throne, And I be hooted from my own domain As a pretender. Then the market's maw Was greedy for my poems. Just how long The appetite would last, he could not tell, For appetite is subject of caprice, And never lasts too long. The man was wise, I plainly saw, and gave me the results Of observation and experience. I took his hint, accepting with a pang The truths that came with it: for instance, these:-- That he who speaks for praise of those who live, Must keep himself before his audience, Nor look for "bravas," cheers, and cries of "hear! And clap of hands and stamp of feet, except With fresh occasion; that applause of crowds, Though fierce, runs never to the chronic stage; That good paymasters, having paid for work The doer's price, expect receipt in full At even date; and that if I would keep My place, as grand purveyor to the greed For novelties of literary art, My viands must be sapid, and abound With change, to wake or whet the appetite I sought to feed. I say I took his hint. Bestowed in selfishness, without a doubt, Though in my interest. For ten long years It was the basis of my policy. I poured my poems with redundancy Upon the world, and won redundant meed. If I gave much, the world was generous, Repaying more than justice: but, at last, Tired and disgusted, I laid down my pen. I knew my work would not outlast my life, That the enchantments which had wreathed themselves Around my name were withering away, With every breath of fragrance they exhaled; And that, too soon, the active brain and hand Whose skill had conjured them, would faint and fail Under the press of weariness and years. My reputation piqued me. None believed That it was in me to write otherwise Than I had written. All the world had laughed, Or shaken its wise head, had I essayed A work beyond the round of brilliancies In which my pen had revelled, and for which It gave such princely guerdon. If I looked, Or came to look, with measureless contempt On those who gave with such munificence The boon I sought, I had provoking cause. I fooled them all with patent worthlessness, And they insisted I should fool them still. The wisdom of a whole decade had failed To teach them that the thing my hand had done Was not worth doing. More and worse than this; I found my character and self-respect Eroded by the canker of conceit, Poisoned by jealousy, and made the prey Of meanest passions. Harlequins in mask, Who live upon the laughter of the throng That crowds their reeking amphitheatres; Light-footed dancing-girls, who sell their grace To gaping lechers of the pit, to win That which shall feed their shameless vanity; The mimics of the buskin--baser still, The mimics of the negro--minstrel-bands. With capital of corks and castanets And threadbare jests--Ah! who and what was I But brother of all these--in higher walk, But brother in the motive of my life, In jealousy, in recompense for toil, And, last, in destiny? My wife had caught Stray silver in her hair in these long years; And the sweet maiden springing from our lives Had grown to womanhood. In my pursuits, Which drank my time and my vitality, I had neglected them. I worked at home, But lived in other scenes, for other lives, Or, rather, for my own; and though my pride Shrank from the deed, I had the tardy grace To call them to me, and confess my shame, And beg for their forgiveness. Once again-- All explanations passed--I sat beside My faithful wife, and canvassed as of old New plans of life. I found her still the same In purpose and in magnanimity; For she dealt no upbraidings and no blame; Cast in my teeth no old-time prophecies Of failure; felt no triumph which rejoiced To mock me with the words, "I told you so," Calmly she sat, and tried, with gentlest speech, To heal the bruises of my fall; to wake A better feeling in me toward the world, And soothe my morbid self-contempt. The world, She said, is apt to take a public man At his own estimate, and yield him place According to his choice. I had essayed To please the world, and gather in its praise; And, certainly, the world was pleased with me, And had not stinted me in its return Of plauditory payment. As the world Had taken me according to my rate, And filled my wish, it had a valid claim On my good nature. Then, beyond all this, The world was not a fool. Those books of mine, That I had come to look upon as trash, Were not all trash. My motive had been poor, And that had vitiated them for me; But there was much in them that yielded strength To struggling souls, and, to the wounded, balm. Indeed, she had been helped by them, herself. They were all pure; they made no foul appeal To baseness and brutality; they had An element of gentle chivalry, Such as must have a place in any man Shrinking with sensitiveness, like myself, From a fine reputation, scorning it For motive which had won it. Words like these, From lips like hers, were needed medicine. They clarified my weak and jaundiced sight, And helped to juster vision of the world, And of myself. But there was no return Of the old greed; and fame, which I had learned To be an entity quite different From my conceit of it in other days, Was something much too far and nebulous To be my star of life. "You have some plan?"-- Statement and query in same words, which fell From lips that sought to rehabilitate My will and self-respect. "I have," I said. "Else you were dead," responded she. "To live, Men must have plans. When these die out of men They crumble into chaos, or relapse Into inanity. Will you reveal These plans of yours to me?" "Ay, if I can," I answered her; "but first I must reveal The base on which I build them. I have tried To find the occasion of my discontent, And find it, as I think, just here; in quest Of popularity, I have become Untrue both to myself and to my art. I have not dared to speak the royal truth For fear of censure; I have been a slave To men's opinions. What is best in me Has been debauched by the pursuit of praise As life's best prize. Conviction, sentiment, All love and hate, all sense of right and wrong, I have held in abeyance, or compelled To work in menial subservience To my grand purpose. If my sentiment Or my conviction were but popular, It flowed in hearty numbers: otherwise, It slept in silence. "Now as to my art; I find that it has suffered like myself, And suffered from same cause. My verse has been Shaped evermore to meet the people's thought. That which was highest, grandest in my art I have not reached, and have not tried to reach I have but touched the surfaces of things That meet the common vision; and my art Has only aimed to clothe them gracefully With fancy's gaudy fabrics, or portray Their patent beauties and deformities. Above the people in my gift and art, Both gift and art have had a downward trend And both are prostitute. "Discarding praise As motive of my labor, I confess My sins against my art, and so, henceforth, As to my goddess, give myself to her. The chivalry which you are pleased to note In me and works of mine, turns loyally To her and to her service. Nevermore Shall pen of mine demean itself by work That serves not first, and with supreme intent, The art whose slave it is." "I understand, I think, the basis of your plan," she said; "And e'en the plan itself. You now propose To write without remotest reference To the world's wishes, prejudices, needs, Or e'en the world's opinions,--quite content If the world find aught in you to applaud; Quite as content if it condemn. With full Expression of yourself in finest terms And noblest forms of art, so far as God Has made you masterful, you give yourself Up to yourself and to your art. Is this Fair statement of your purpose?" "Not unfair," I answered. "Tell me what you think of it." "Suppose," she said, "that all the artist-souls That God has made since time and art began Had acted on your theory: suppose In architecture, picture, poetry, Naught had found utterance but works that sprang To satisfy the worker, and reveal That bundle of ideas which, to him, Is constituted art; but which, in truth, Is figment of his fancy, or his thought,-- His creature, made his God--say where were all The temples, palaces and homes of men; The galleries that blaze with history, Or bloom with landscape, or look down With smile of changeless love or loveliness Into the hearts of men? And where were all The poems that give measure to their praise, Voice to their aspirations, forms of light To homely facts and features of their life, Enveloping this plain, prosaic world In an ideal atmosphere, in which Fair angels come and go? All gifts of men Were made for use, and made for highest use, If highest use be service of one's self, And highest standard, one's embodiment Of dogmas, theories and thoughts of art, As art's identity, then are you right; But if a higher use of gift and art Be service of mankind, and higher rule God's regal truth, revealed in words or worlds, And verified by life, then are you wrong." "But art?"--responded I--"you do not mean That art is nothing but a thing of thought, Or, less than that, of fancy? Nay, I claim That it is somewhat--a grand entity-- An organism of lofty principles, Informed with subtlest life, and clothed upon With usage and tradition of the men Who, working in those sunny provinces Where it holds eminent domain, have brought To build its temple and adorn its walls The usufruct of countless lives. So far Is art from being creature of man's thought That it is subject of his knowledge--stands In mighty mystery, and challenges The study of the world; rules noblest minds Like law or like religion; is a power To which the proudest artist-spirits bow With humblest homage. Is astronomy The creature of man's thought? Is chemistry? Yet these hold not, in this our universe, A form more definite, nor yet a place In human knowledge more beyond dispute, Than art itself. To this embodiment Of theory--of dogmas, if you will-- This body aggregate of truth revealed In growing light of ages to the eyes Touched to perception, I devote my life." "Nay, you're too fast," she said: "let alchemy And old astrology present your thought. These were somewhat; these were grand entities; But they went out like candles in thin air When knowledge came. The sciences are things Of law, of force, relations, measurements, Affinities and combinations, all The definite, demonstrable effects Of first and second causes. Between these And men's opinions, braced by usages, The space is wide. The thing which you call art Is anything but definite in form, Or fixed in law. It has as many shapes As worshippers. The world has many books, Written by earnest men, about this art; But having read them, we are no more wise Than he whose observation of the sun Is taken by kaleidoscope. The more He sees in it, the more he is confused. The sun works, doubtless, many fine effects With what he sees, but he sees not the sun." "But art is art," I said. "You'd cheat my sense. And mock my reason too. Ay, art is art. Things must have being that have history." Then she: "Yes, politics has history, And therefore has a being,--has, in truth, Just such a being as I grant to art-- A being of opinions. Every state Has origin and ends of government Peculiarly its own, and so, from these, Constructs its theory of politics, And holds this theory against the world; And holds it well. There is no fixedness Or form of politics for all mankind; And there is none of art. Each artist-soul Is its own law; and he who dares to bring From work of other man, to lay on yours, His square and compass--thus declaring him The pattern man--and tells, by him, you lack Just so much here, or wander so much there, Thereby confesses just how much he lacks Of wisdom and plain sense. For every man Has special gift of power and end of life. No man is great who lives by other law Than that which wrapped his genius at his birth. The Lind is great because she is the Lind, And not the Malibran. Recorded art Is yours to study--e'en to imitate, In education--imitate or shun, As the case warrants; but it has destroyed, Or toned to commonplace, more gifts of God Than it has ever fanned to life or fed. Who never walks save where he sees men's tracks Makes no discoveries. Show me the man Who, leaving God and nature and himself, Sits at the feet of masters, stuffs his brain With maxims, notions, usages and rules, And yields his fancy up to leading-strings, And I shall see a man who never did A deed worth doing. So, in the name of art-- Nay, in the name of God--do no such thing As smutch your knees by bowing at a shrine, Whose doubtful deity, in midst of dust, Sits in the cast-off robes of devotees, And lives on broken victuals!" "Drive, my dear! Drive on, and over me! You're on the old High-stepping horse to-night; so give him rein, For exercise is good," I said, in mirth. "You sit your courser finely. I confess I'm very proud of you, and too much pleased With your accomplishments to check your speed. Drive on, my love! drive on!" "I thank you, sir No one so gracious as your grudging man Under compulsion! With your kind consent I'll ride a little further," she replied,-- "For I enjoy it quite as much as you-- The more because you've given me little chance In these last years.... Now, soberly, this art Of which we talk so much, without the power To tell exactly what we understand By the hack term--suppose we take the word, And try to find its meaning. You recall Old John who dressed the borders in our court: You called him, hired him, told him what to do. He and his rake stood interposed between You and your work. You chose his skilful hands, Endowing them with pay, or pledge of pay, And set him at his labor. Now suppose Old John had had a philosophic turn After you left him, and had thought like this: 'I am called here to do a certain work-- My rake tells what; and he who called me here Has given me the motive for the job. The work is plain. These borders are to be Levelled and cleaned of weeds: my hand and rake Are fitted for the service;--this my art; And it is first of all the arts. There's none More ancient, useful, worshipful, indeed, Than agriculture. Adam practised it; Poets have sung its praises; and the great Of every age have loved and honored it. This art is greater than the man I serve, And greater than his borders. Therefore I Will serve my art, and let the borders lie, And my employer whistle. True to that, And to myself, it matters not to me What weeds may grow, or what the master think Of my proceeding!' "So, intent on this, He hangs his rake upon your garden wall, And steals your clematis, with which to wind The handle upward; then o'erfills his hands With roses and geraniums, and weaves Their beauty into laurel, for a crown For his slim god, completing his devoir By buttering the teeth, and kneeling down In abject homage. Pray, what would you say, At close of day, when you should go to see Your untouched borders, and your gardener At genuflexion, with your mignonette In every button-hole? Remember, now, He has been true to art and to himself, According to his notion; nor forget To take along a dollar for his hire, Which he expects, of course! What would you say?" "Oh, don't mind that: you've reached your 'fifthly' now, And here the 'application' comes," I said. "I think," responded she, with an arch smile, "The application's needless: but you men Are so obtuse, when will is in the way, That I will do your bidding. Every gift That God bestows on men holds in itself The secret of its office, like the rake The gardener wields. The rake was made to till-- Was fashioned, head and handle, for just that; And if, by grace of God, you hold a gift So fashioned and adapted, that it stands In like relation of supremest use To life of men, the office of your gift Has perfect definition. Gift like this Is yours, my husband. In your facile hands God placed it for the service of himself, In service of your kind. Taking this gift, And using it for God and for the world, In your own way, and in your own best way; Seeking for light and knowledge everywhere To guide your careful hand; and opening wide To spiritual influx all your soul, That so your master may breathe into you, And breathe his great life through you, in such forms Of pure presentment as he gives you skill To build withal--that's all of art--for you. Art is an instrument, and not an end-- A servant, not a master, nor a God To be bowed down to. Shall we worship rakes? Honor of art, by him whose work is art, Is a fine passion; but he honors most Whose use and end are best." "Use! Use! Use!" I cried impatiently;--"nothing but use! As if God never made a violet, Or hung a harebell, or in kindling gold Garnished a sunset, or upreared the arch Of a bright rainbow, or endowed a world-- A universe, indeed--stars, firmament, The vastitudes of forest and of sea, Swift brooks and sweeping rivers, virid meads And fluff of breezy hills--with tints that range The scale of spectral beauty, till they leave No glint or glory of the changeful light Without a revelation! Is this use-- I beg your pardon, love: you say 'this art'-- The sum and end of art? If it be so, Then God's no artist. Are the crystal brooks Sweeter for singing to the thirsty brutes That dip their beaded muzzles in the foam? Burns the tree better that its leaves are green? Sleeps the sun sounder under canopy Of gold or rose?" "Yet beauty has its use," Responded she. "Whatever elevates Inspires, refreshes, any human soul, Is useful to that soul. Beauty has use For you and me. The dainty violet Blooms in our thought, and sheds its fragrance there And we are gainers through its ministry. All God's great values wear the drapery That most becomes them. Beauty may, in truth, Be incident of art and not be end-- Its form, condition, features, dress, and still The humblest value of the things of art. This truth obtains in all God's artistry. Does God make beauty for himself, alone? He is, and holds, all beauty. Has he need To kindle rushes that he may behold The glory of his thoughts? or need to use His thoughts as plasms for the amorphous clay That he may study models? For an end Outside himself, he ever speaks himself; And end, with him, is use." "Well, I confess There's truth in what you utter," I replied;-- "A modicum of truth, at least; and still There's something more which this our subtle talk Has failed to give us. I will not affirm That art, recorded in its thousand forms, And clothed with usages, traditions, rules,-- The thing of history--the mighty pile Of drift that sweep of ages has brought down To heap the puzzled present--is the sum And substance of all art. I will not claim-- Nay, mark me now--I will not even claim That beauty is art's end, or has its end Within itself. Our tedious colloquy Has cleared away the rubbish from my thought, And given me cleaner vision. I can see Before, around me, underneath, above, The great unrealized; and while I bow To the traditions and the things of art, And hold my theories, I find myself Inspired supremely by the Possible That calls for revelation--by the forms That sleep imprisoned in the snowy arms Of still unquarried truth, or stretch their hands At sound of sledge and drill and booming fire, Imploring for release. I turn from men, And stretch my hands toward these. I feel--I know-- That there are mighty myriads waiting there, And listening for my steps. Suppose my age Should fail to give them welcome: ay, suppose They may not help a man to coin a dime Or cook a dinner: they will fare as well As much of God's truth fares, though clothed in forms Divinely chosen. Does God ever stint His utterance because no creature hears? Is it a grand and goodly thing, to spend Brave life and precious treasure in a search For palpitating water at the pole, That so the sum of knowledge may be swelled, Though pearls are not increased; and something less To probe the Possible in art, or sit Through months of dreary dark to catch a glimpse Of the live truth that quivers with the jar Of movement at its axle? Is it good To garner gain beyond the present need, Won by excursive commerce in all seas; And something less to pile redundantly The spoil of thought?" "These latest words of yours," She answered musingly, "impress me much; And yet, I think I see where they will lead, Or, rather, fail to lead. Your fantasy Is beautiful but vague. The Possible Is a vast ocean, from which one poor soul, With its slight oars, can float but flimsy freight; Yet I would help your courage, for I see Where your sole motive lies. Go on, and prove Whether your scheme or mine holds more of good; And take my blessing with you." Then she rose, And kissed my forehead. Looking in her face, By the sharp light that touched her, I was thrilled By her flushed cheeks and strangely lustrous eyes. She spoke not; but I heard the sigh she breathed-- The long-drawn, weary sigh--as she retired; And then the Possible, which had inspired So wondrously my hope, drooped low around, And filled me with foreboding. Had her life Been chilled by my neglect? Was it on wane? Could she be lost to me? Oh! then I felt, As I had never felt before, how mean Beside one true affection is the best Of all earth's prizes, and how little worth The world would be without her love--herself! But sleep refreshed her, and next morn she sat At our bright board, in her accustomed place; And sunlight was not sweeter than her smile, Or cheerfuller. My quick fears died away; And though I saw that she had lost the fire Of her young life, I comforted myself With thinking that it was the same with me-- The sure result of years. My time I gave To my new passion, rioting at large In the fresh realm of fancy and of thought To which the passion bore me, and from which I strove to gather for embodiment Material of art. The more I dreamed, The broader grew my dream. The further on My footsteps pushed, the brighter grew the light; Till, half in terror, half in reverence, I learned that I had broached the Infinite! I had not thought my Possible could bear Such name as this, or wear such attribute; And shrank befitting distance from the front Of awful secrets, hid in awful flame, That scorched and scared me. So, more humble grown, And less adventurous, I chose, at last, My theme and vehicle of song, and wrote. My faculties, grown strong and keen by use, Bent to their task with earnest faithfulness, And glowed with high endeavor. All of power I had within me flowed into my hand; And learning, language--all my life's resource-- Lay close around my enterprise, and poured Their hoarded wealth of imagery and words Faster than I could use it. For long weeks, My ardent labor crowded all my days, Invaded sleep, and haunted e'en my dreams: And then the work was done. I left it there, And sought for recreative rest in scenes That once had charmed me--in society Where I was welcome: but the common talk Of daily news--of politics and trade-- Was senseless as the chatter of the jays In autumn forests. No refreshing balm Came to me in the sympathy of men. In my retirement, I had left the world To go its way; and it had gone its way, And left me hopelessly. I told my wife Of my dissatisfaction and disgust, But found small comfort in her words. She said: "The world is wide, and woman's vision short; But I have never seen a man who turned His efforts from his kind, and failed to spoil All men for him--himself, indeed, for them; And he who gives nor sympathy nor aid To the poor race from which he seeks such boon Must be rejoiced if it be generous; Content, if it be just. Society Is a grand scheme of service and return. We give and take; and he who gives the most, In ways directest, wins the best reward." By purpose, I closed eyes upon my work For many weeks, resisting every day The impulse to review the glowing dream My fancy had engendered: for I wished To go with faculty and fancy cooled To its perusal. I had strong desire, So far as in me lay, to see the work With the world's eyes, for reasons--ah! I shrink From writing them! All men are sometimes weak, And some are inconsistent with their wills. If I were one of these, think not I failed To justify my weakness to myself, In ways that saved my pride. Yet this was true; I had an honest wish to learn how far My work of heat had power to re-inspire The soul that wrought it, and how well my verse Had clothed and kept the creature of my thought; For memory still retained the loveliness That filled the fresh conceit. When, in good time. Rest and diversion had performed their work, And the long fever of my brain was gone, I broached my feast, first making fast my door. That so no eye should mark my greedy joy Or my grimaces,--doubtful of the fate That waited expectation. It were vain To try, in these tame words, to paint the pang, The faintness and the chill, which overwhelmed My disappointed heart. My welded thoughts Which, in their whitest heat, had bent and bound My language to themselves, imparting grace To stiffest words, and meanings fresh and fine To simplest phrases, interfusing all With their own ardency, and shining through With smoothly rounded beauty, lay in heaps Of cold, unmeaning ugliness. My words Had shrunk to old proportions, and stood out In hard, stiff angles, challenging a guess Of what they covered. Meaningless to me, Who knew the meaning that had once informed Its faithless numbers, what way could I hope That, to my own, or any future age, My work should speak its full significance? My latest child, begot in manly joy, Conceived in purity, and born in toil, Lay dead before me,--dead, and in the shroud My hopeful hands had woven and bedecked To be its chrisom. Then the first I learned Where language finds its bound--learned that beyond The range of human commerce, save by force, It never moves, nor lingers in the realm It thus invades, a moment, if the voice Of human commerce speak not the demand;-- That language is a thing of use;--that thought Which seeks a revelation, first must seek Adjustment in the scale of human need, Or find no fitting vehicle. And more: That the great Possible which lies outside The range of commerce is identical With the stupendous Infinite of God, Which only comes in glimpses, or in hints Of vague significance, so dim, so vast, That subtlest, most prehensile language, shrinks From plucking of its robes, the while they sweep The perfumed air! I closed my manuscript, And locked it in my desk. Then stealing forth, I sought the bustle of the street, to drown In the great roar of careless toil, the pain That brings despair. My last resource was gone; And as I brooded o'er the awful blank Of hopeless life that waited for my steps, A fear which I had feared to entertain Found entrance to my heart, and held it still, Almost to bursting. Not alone my life Was sliding from me; for my better life, My pearl of price, the jewel in my crown, My wife Kathrina, growing lovelier With every passing day, arose each morn From wasting dreams to paler loveliness, And sank in growing weariness each night, And hotter hectic, to her welcome bed. Her bed! The sweet, the precious nuptial bed! Bed sanctified by love! Bed blest of God With fruit immortal! Bed too soon to be Crowned with the glory of a Christian death! Ah God! How it brought back the agony, And the rebellious hate of other years-- The hopeless struggle of my will with Him Whose will is law! Thus torn with mingled thought: Of fear, despair and spite, I wore away Miles of wild wandering about the streets, Till weariness at last compelled my feet To drag me to my home. Before my door Stood the familiar chair of one whose call Was ominous of ill. My heart grew sick With flutter of foreboding and foredoom; But in swift silence I flew up the steps, And, blind with stifled frenzy, reached the side Of my poor wife. She smiled at seeing me, But I could only kneel, and bathe her hands With tears and kisses. In her gentle breast-- True home of love, and love and home to me-- The blood had burst its walls, and flowed in flame From lips it left in ashes. In her smile Of perfect trustfulness, I caught first glimpse Of that aureola of fadeless light Which spans my lonely couch, and kindles hope That when my time shall come to follow her, My spirit may go out, enwreathed and wrapped By the familiar glory, which to-night Shall brood o'er all my vigils and my dreams! DESPAIR. Ah! what is so dead as a perished delight! Or a passion outlived! or a scheme overthrown! Save the bankrupt heart it has left in its flight, Still as quick as the eye, but as cold as a stone! The honey-bee hoards for its winter-long need, The treasure it gathers in joy from the flowers; And drinks in each sip of its silvery mead The flavor and flush of the sweet summer hours. But a pleasure expires at its earliest breath: No labor can hoard it, no cunning can save; For the song of its life is the sigh of its death, And the sense it has thrilled is its shroud and its grave. Ah! what is our love, with its tincture of lust, And its pleasure that pains us and pain that endears, But joy in an armful of beautiful dust That crumbles, and flies on the wings of the years? And what is ambition for glory and power, But desire to be reckoned the uppermost fool Of a million of fools, for a pitiful hour, And be cursed for a tyrant, or kicked for a tool? Nay, what is the noblest that art can achieve, But to conjure a vision of light to the eyes, That will pale ere we paint it, and pall ere we leave On the heart it betrays and the hand it defies? We love, and we long with an infinite greed For a love that will fill our deep longing, in vain; The cup that we drink of is pleasant, indeed, Yet it holds but a drop of the heavenly rain. We plan for our powers the divinest we can; We do with our powers the supremest we may; And, winning or losing, for labor and plan The best that we garner is--rest and decay! Content--satisfaction--who wins them? Look down! They are held without thought by the dolts and the drones: 'Tis the slave who in carelessness carries the crown; And the hovels have kinglier men than the thrones. The maid sings of love to the hum of her wheel; And her lover responds as he follows his team; They wed, and their children come quickly to seal In fulfilment the pledge of their loftiest dream. With humblest ambitions and homeliest fare, Contented, though toiling, they travel abreast, Till the kind hand of death lifts their burden of care, And they sink, in the faith of their fathers, to rest. Did I beg to be born? Did I seek to exist? Did I bargain for promptings to loftier gains? Did I ask for a brain, with contempt of the fist That could win a reward for its labor and pains? Was it kind--the strong promise that girded my youth? Was it good--the endowment of motive and skill? Was it well to succeed, when success was, in truth, But the saddest of failure? Make answer, who will! Do I rave without reason? Why, look you, I pray! I have won all I sought of the highest and best; But it brings me no guerdon; and hopeless, to-day, I am poorer than when I set out on the quest. Oh! emptiness! Life, what art thou but a lie, Which I greeted and honored with hopefullest trust? Bah! the beautiful apples that tempted my eye Break dead on my tongue into ashes and dust! "A Father who loves all the children of men"? "A future to fill all these bottomless gaps"? But one life has failed: can I fasten again With my faith and my hope to a specious Perhaps! O! man who begot me! O! woman who bore! Why, why did you call me to being and breath? With ruin behind me, and darkness before, I have nothing to long for, or live for, but death! PART IV. CONSUMMATION. A guest was in my house--a guest unbid-- Who stayed without a welcome from his host,-- So loathed and hated, on such errand bent, And armed with such resistless power of ill, I dared not look him in the face. I heard His tireless footsteps in the lonely halls, In the chill hours of night; and, in the day, They climbed the stairs, or loitered through the rooms With lawless freedom. Ever when I turned I caught a glimpse of him. His shadow stalked Between me and the light, and fled before My restless feet, or followed close behind. Whene'er I bent above the couch that held My fading wife, though looking not, I knew That he was bending from the other side, And mocking me. Familiar grown, at last, He came more closely--came and sat with me Through hours of revery; or, as I paced My dimly-lighted room, slipped his lank arm Through mine, and whispered in my shrinking ear Such fearful words as made me sick and cold. He took the vacant station at my board, Sitting where she had sat, and mixed my cup With poisoned waters, saying in low tones That none but I could hear: "This little room, Where you have breakfasted and dined and supped, And laughed and chatted in the days gone by, Will be a lonely place when we are gone. Those roses at the window, that were wont To bloom so freely with the lady's care, Already miss her touch. That ivy-vine Has grown a yard since it was tied, and needs A training hand." Rising with bitter tears To flee his presence, he arose with me, And wandered through the rooms. "This casket here"-- I heard him say: "Suppose we loose the clasp. These are her jewels--pretty gifts of yours. There is a diamond: there a string of pearls. That paly opal holds a mellowed fire Which minds me of the mistress, whose bright soul, Glows through the lucent whiteness of her face With lambent flicker. These are legacies: She will not wear them more. Her taste and mine Are one in this, that both of us love flowers. Ay, she shall have them, too, some pleasant day, When she goes forth with me! "So? what is this? Her wardrobe! Let the door be opened wide! This musk, so blent with scent of violets, Revives one. You remember when she wore That lavender?--a very pretty silk! Here is a _moire antique_. Ah! yes--I see! You did not like her in it. 'Twas too old, And too suggestive of the dowager. There is your favorite--that glossy blue-- The sweet tint stolen from the skies of June-- But she is done with it. I wonder who Will wear it, when your grief shall find a pause! Your daughter--possibly? ... You shiver, sir! Is it the velvet? Like a pall, you think! Well, close the door! "Those slippers on the rug: The time will come when you will kiss their soles For the dear life that pressed them. Their rosettes Will be more redolent than roses then. You did not know how much you loved your wife? I thought so! "This way! Let us take our stand Beside her bed. Not quite so beautiful To your fond eyes as when she was a bride, Though still a lovely woman! Seems it strange That she is yours no longer?--that her hand Is given to another--to the one For whom she has been waiting all her life, And ready all her life? Your power is gone To punish rivals. There you stand and weep, But dare not lift a finger, while with smiles And kindly welcome she extends her hands To greet her long-expected friend. She knows Where I will take her--to what city of God, What palace there, and what companionship. She knows what robes will drape her loveliness, What flowers bedeck her hair, and rise and fall Upon the pulses of her happy breast. And you, poor man! with all your jealous pride, Have learned that she would turn again to you, And to your food and furniture of life, With disappointment. "Ay, she pities you-- Loves you, indeed; but there is One she loves With holier passion, and with more entire And gladder self-surrender. She will go-- You know that she will go--and go with joy; And you begin to see how poor and mean, When placed beside her joy, are all your gifts, And all that you have won by them. "Poor man! Weeping again! Well, if it comfort you, Rain your salt tears upon her waxen hands, And kiss them dry at leisure! Press her lips, Hot with the hectic! Lay your cold, wet cheek Against the burning scarlet of her own: Only remember that she is not yours, And that your paroxysms of grief and tears Are painful to her." Ah! to wait for death! To see one's idol with the signature Of the Destroyer stamped upon her brow. And know that she is doomed, beyond all hope; To watch her while she fades; to see the form That once was Beauty's own become a corpse In all but breathing, and to meet her eyes A hundred times a day--while the heart bleeds-- With smiles of smooth dissembling, and with words Cheerful as morning, and to do all this Through weeks and weary months, till one half longs To see the spell dissolved, and feel the worst That death can do: can there be misery Sadder than this? My time I passed alone, And at the bedside of my dying wife. She talked of death as children talk of sleep, When--a forgetful blank--it lies between Their glad impatience and a holiday. The morrow--ah! the morrow! That was name For hope all realized, for work all done, For pain all passed, for life and strength renewed. For fruitage of endeavor, for repose, For heaven! What would the morrow bring to me? The morrow--ah! the morrow! It was blank-- Nay, blank and black with gloom of clouds and night Never before had I so realized My helplessness. I could not find relief In love or labor. I could only sit, And gaze against a wall, without the power To pierce or climb. My pride of life was gone. My spirit broken, and my strife with God Was finished. If I could not look before, I dare not look above; and so, whene'er I could forget the present, I went back Upon the past. One soft June day, my thoughts, Touched by some song of bird, or glimpse of green, Returned to life's bright morning, and the Junes That flooded with their wealth of life and song The valley of my birth. Again I walked the meads, Brilliant with beaded grass, and heard the shrill, Sweet jargon of the meadow-birds. Again I trod the forest paths, in shade of trees With foliage so tender that the sun Shot through the soft, thin leaves its virid sheen, As through the emerald waters of the sea. The scarlet tanager--a flake of fire, Blown from the tropic heats upon the breath That brought the summer--caught upon a twig, Or quenched its glow in some remote recess. The springing ferns unfolded at my feet Their tan-brown scrolls, the tiny star-flower shone Among its leaves; the insects filled the air With a monotonous, reedy resonance Of whir and hum, and I sat down again Upon a bank, to gather violets. From dreams of retrospective joy I woke At last, to the quick tinkle of a bell. My wife had touched it. She had been asleep, And, waking, called me to her side. The note, Familiar as the murmur of her voice, For the first time was strange. Another bell, With other music, ran adown the years That lay between me and the golden day When, up the mountain-path, I followed far The lamb that bore it. All the scene came back In a broad flash; and with it came the same Strange apprehension of a mighty change-- A vague prevision of transition, born Of what, I knew not; on what errand sent, I could not guess. I rose upon my feet, Responsive to the summons, when I heard, Repeated in the ear of memory, The words my mother spoke to me that day: "My Paul has climbed the noblest mountain-height In all his little world, and gazed on scenes As beautiful as rest beneath the sun. I trust he will remember all his life That, to his best achievement, and the spot Closest to heaven his youthful feet have trod, He has been guided by a guileless lamb. It is an omen which his mother's heart Will treasure with her jewels." Had her tongue Been moved to prophecy? Omen of what?-- Of a new height of life to be achieved By my lamb's leading? Ay, it seemed like this! An answer to a thousand prayers, up-breathed By her whom I had lost, repeated long By her whom I was losing? Was it this? Thus charged with premonition, when I stepped Into the shaded room, my cheeks were pale, And every nerve was quivering with the stress Of uncontrolled emotion. Ah! my lamb! How white! How innocent! My lamb, my lamb! Even the scarlet ribbon which adorned The lambkin of my chase was at her throat, Repeated in a bright geranium-flower! "Loop up the curtains, love! Let in the light!" The words came strong and sweet, as if the life From which they breathed were at its tidal flood. "Oh! blessed light!" she added, as the sun Flamed on the velvet roses of the floor, And touched to life the pictures on the wall, And smote the dusk with bars of amber. "Paul!" I turned to answer, and beheld a face That glowed with a celestial fire like his Who talked with God in Sinai. "Paul," she said. "I have been almost home. I may not tell, For language cannot paint, what I have seen. The veil was very thin, and I so near, I caught the sheen of multitudes, and heard Voices that called and answered from afar Through spaces inconceivable, and songs Whose harmonies responsive surged and sank On the attenuate air, till all my soul Was thrilled and filled with music, and I prayed To be let loose, that I might cast myself Upon the mighty tides, and give my life To the supernal raptures. Ay, I prayed That death might come, and give me my release From this poor clay, and that I might be born By its last travail into life." "Dear wife," I said, "You have been wildly dreaming, and your brain, Quickened to strange vagaries by disease, Has cheated you. You must not talk like this: 'Twill harm you. I will hold your hand awhile, And you shall have repose. She smiled and said, While her eyes shone with an unearthly light: "You are not wise, my dear, in things like these. The vision was as real as yourself; And it will not be long before I go To mingle in the life that I have seen. I know it, dearest, for she told me this." "She told you this?" I said,--"Who told you this? Did you hold converse with the multitude?" "Not with the multitude," she answered me; "But while I gazed upon the throng, and prayed That death might loose me, there appeared a group Of radiant ones behind the filmy veil That hung between us, looking helplessly Upon my struggle, but with eyes that beamed With love ineffable. I knew them too-- Knew all of them but one--and she the first And sweetest of them all. Pure as the light And beautiful as morning, she advanced; And, at her touch, the veil was parted wide, While she passed through, and stood beside my bed. She took my hand, she kissed my burning cheek, And then, in words that calmed my spirit, said: "'Your prayer will soon be answered; but one prayer, Breathed many years by you, and many years By one you know not, must be answered first. You must go back, though for a little time, And reap the harvest of a life. To him Whom you and I have loved, say all your heart Shall move your lips to speak, and he will hear. The strength, the boldness, the persuasive power Which you may need for this, shall all be yours; For you shall have the ministry of those Whom you have seen. Speak as a dying wife Has liberty to speak to him she leaves; And tell him this--that he may know the voice That gives you your commission--tell him this: The lamb has slipped the leash by which his hand Held her in thrall, and seeks the mountain-height; And he, if he reclaim her to his grasp, Must follow where she leads, and kneel at last Upon the summit by her side. And more: Give him my promise that if he do this, He shall receive from that fair altitude Such vision of the realm that lies around, Cleft by the river of immortal life, As shall so lift him from his selfishness, And so enlarge his soul, that he shall stand Redeemed from all unworthiness, and saved To happiness and heaven.'" Her words flowed forth With the strong utterance, in truth, of one Inspired from other worlds; while pale and faint, I drank her revelations. Unbelief Had given the lie to her abounding faith, And held her vision figment of disease, Until the message of my mother fell Upon my ears. Then overcome, I wept With deep convulsions, rose and walked the room, Wrung my clasped hands, and cried with choking voice, "My mother! O! my mother!" "Gently, love! For she is with you," said my dying wife. "Nay, all of them are with us. This small room Is now the gate of heaven; and you must do That which befits the presence and the place. Come! sit beside me; for my time is short, And I have much to say. What will you do When I am gone? Will the old life of art Content you? Will you fill your waiting time With the old dreams of fame and excellence?" "Alas!" I answered, "I am done with life: My life is dead; and though my hand has won All it has striven to win, and all my heart In its weak pride has prompted it to seek Of love and honor; though success is mine In all my eager enterprise, I know My life has been a failure. I am left Or shall be left, when you, my love, are gone, Without resource--a hopeless, worthless man, Longing to hide his shame and his despair Within the grave." "I thank thee, Lord!" she said: "So many prayers are answered! ... You knew not That I had asked for this. You did not know When you were striving with your feeble might For the great prizes that beguiled your pride, That at the hand of God I begged success. Ay, Paul, I prayed that you might gather all The good that you have won, and that, at last, You might be brought to know the worthlessncss Of every selfish meed, and feel how weak-- How worse than helpless--is the highest man Who lives within, and labors to, himself. Not one of all the prizes you have gained Contains the good that lies in your despair." "Teach me," I said, "for I am ignorant; Lead me, for I am blind. Explain the past, With all its errors. Why am I so low, And you so high?" She pressed my hand, and said "You have been hungry all your life for God, And known it not. You lavished first on me Your heart's best love. You poured its treasured wealth At an unworthy shrine. You made a God Of poor mortality; and when you learned Your love was greater than the one you loved-- The one you worshipped--you invoked the aid Of your imagination, to enrich Your pampered idol, till at last you bowed Before a creature of your thought. You stole From excellence divine the grace and good That made me worshipful; and even these Palled on your heart at last, and ceased to yield The inspiration that you craved. You pined, You starved for something infinitely sweet; And still you sought it blindly, wilfully In your poor wife,--sought it, and found it not, Through wasted years of life. "And then you craved An infinite return. You asked for more Than I could give, although I gave you all That woman can bestow on man. You knew You held my constant love, unlimited Save by the bounds of mortal tenderness; And still you longed for more. Then sprang your scheme For finding in the love of multitudes, And in their praise, that which had failed in me. You wrote for love and fame, and won them both By manly striving--won and wore them long. All good there is in love and praise of men, You garnered in your life. On this reward You lived, till you were sated, or until You learned it bore no satisfying meed-- Learned that the love of many was not more Than love of one. With all my love your own, With love and praise of men, your famished soul Craved infinite approval--craved a love Beyond the love of woman and of man. "Then with new hope, you apotheosized Your cherished art, and sought for excellence And for your own approval; with what end, Your helplessness informs me. You essayed The revelation of the mighty forms That dwell in the unrealized. You sought To shape your best ideals, and to find In the grand scheme your motive and reward. All this blind reaching after excellence, Was but the reaching of your soul for God. Imagination could not touch the height; And you were baffled. So, you failed to find The God your spirit yearned for in your art, And failed of self-approval. "You have now But one resource,--you are shut up to this: You must bow down and worship God; and give Your heart to him, accept his love for you, And feast your soul on excellence in him. So, a new life shall open to your feet, Strown richly with rewards; and when your steps Shall reach the river, I will wait for you Upon the other shore, and we shall be One in the life immortal as in this. O! Paul! your time is now. I cannot die And leave you comfortless. I cannot die And enter on the pleasures that I know Await me yonder, with the consciousness That you are still unhappy." All my life Thus lay revealed in light which she had poured Upon its track. I learned where she had found Her peaceful joy, her satisfying good, And where, in my rebellious pride of heart, Mine had been lost. She, by an instinct sure, Or by the grace of Heaven, had in her youth, Though sorely chastened, given herself to God And through a life of saintly purity-- A life of love to me and love to all-- Had feasted at the fountain of all love. Had worshipped at the Excellence Divine, And only waited for my last adieu To take her crown. I sat like one struck dumb. I knew not how to speak, or what to do. She looked at me expectant; while a thrill Of terror shot through all my frame. "Alas!" She said, "I thought you would be ready now." At this, the door was opened silently, And our dear daughter stood within the room. Alarmed at vision of the sudden change That death had wrought upon her mother's face, She hastened to her side, and kneeling there, Bowed on her breast with tears and choking sobs, Her heart too full for speech. "Be silent, dear!" The dying mother said, resting her hand Upon her daughter's head. "Be silent, dear! Your father kneels to pray. Make room for him, That he may kneel beside you." At her words, I was endowed with apprehensions new; And somewhere in my quickened consciousness, I felt the presence of her heavenly friends, And knew that there were spirits in the room. I did not doubt, nor have I doubted since, That there were loving witnesses of all The scenes enacted round that hallowed bed. Ay, and they spoke. Deep in the innermost I heard the tender words, "O! kneel my son!--" A sweet monition from my mother's lips. "Kneel! kneel!" It was the echo of a throng. "Kneel! kneel!" The gentle mandate reached my heart From depths of lofty space. It was the voice Of the Good Father. From the curtain folds, That rustled at the window, in the airs That moved with conscious pulse to passing wings, Came the same burden "Kneel!" "Kneel! kneel! O! kneel!" In tones of earnest pleading, came from lips Already pinched by death. A hundred worlds. Imposed upon my shoulders, had not bowed And crushed me to my knees with surer power. The hand that lay upon my daughter's head Then passed to mine; but still my lips were dumb. "Pray!" said the spirit of my mother. "Pray!" The word repeated, came from many lips. "Pray!" said the voice of God within my soul; While every whisper of the living air Echoed the low command. "Pray! pray! O! pray!" My dying wife entreated, while swift tears Slid to her pillow. Then the impulse came, And I poured out like water all my heart. "O! God!" I said, "be merciful to me A reprobate! I have blasphemed thy name. Abused thy patient love, and held from thee My heart and life; and now, in my extreme Of need and of despair, I come to thee. O! cast me not away, for here, at last, After a life of selfishness and sin, I yield my will to thine, and pledge my soul-- All that I am, all I can ever be-- Supremely to thy service. I renounce All worldly aims, all selfish enterprise. And dedicate the remnant of my power To thee and those thou lovest. Comfort me! O! come and comfort me, for I despair! Give me thy peace, for I am rent and tossed! Feed me with love, else I shall die of want! Behold! I empty out my worthlessncss, And beg thee to come in, and fill my soul With thy rich presence. I adore thy love; I seek for thy approval; I bow down, And worship thee, the Excellence Supreme. I've tasted of the sweetest that the world Can give to me; and human love and praise. And all of excellence within the scope Of my conception, and my power to reach And realize in highest forms of art, Have left me hungry, thirsty lor thyself. O! feed and fire me! Fill and furnish me! And if thou hast for me some humble task-- Some service for thyself, or for thy own-- Reveal it to thy sad, repentant child, Or use him as thy willing instrument. I ask it for the sake of Jesus Christ, Henceforth my Master!" Multitudes, it seemed, Responded with "Amen!" as if the word Were caught from mortal lips by swooping choirs Of spirits ministrant, and borne away In sweet reverberations into space. I raised my head at last, and met the eyes Bright with the light of death, and with the dawn Of opening heaven. The smile that overspread The fading features was the peaceful smile Of an immortal,--full of faith and love-- A satisfied, triumphant, shining smile, Lit by the heavenly glory. "Paul," she said, "My work is done; but you will live and work These many years. Your life is just begun, Too late, but well begun; and you are mine, Now and forevermore.... Dear Lord! my thanks For this thy crowning blessing!" Then she paused, And raised her eyes in a seraphic trance, And lifted her thin fingers, that were thrilled With tremulous motion, like the slender spray On which a throbbing song-bird clings, and pours His sweet incontinence of ecstasy, And then in broken whispers said to me: "Do you not hear them? They have caught the news, And all the sky is ringing with their song Of gladness and of welcome. '_Paul is saved_! _Paul is redeemed and saved!_' I hear them cry; And myriad voices catch the new delight, And carry the acclaim, till heaven itself Sends back the happy echo: '_Paul is saved._'" She stretched her hands, and took me to her breast. I kissed her, blessed her, spoke my last adieu, And yielded place to her whom God had given To be our child. After a long embrace. She whispered: "I am weary; let me sleep!" She passed to peaceful slumber like a child, The while attendant angels built the dream On which she rode to heaven. Not once again She spoke to mortal ears, but slept and smiled, And slept and smiled again, till daylight passed. The night came down; the long hours lapsed away; The city sounds grew fainter, till at last We sat alone with silence and with death. At the first blush of morning she looked up, And spoke, but not to us: "I'm coming now!" I sought the window, to relieve the pain Of long suppressed emotion. In the East, Tinged with the golden dawn, the morning star Was blazing in its glory, while beneath, The slender moon, at its last rising, hung, Paling and dying in the growing light, And passing with that leading up to heaven. My daughter stood beside her mother's bed, But I had better vision of the scene In the sweet symbol God had hung for me Upon the sky. Swiftly the dawn advanced, And higher rose, and still more faintly shone, The star-led moon. Then, as it faded out, Quenched by prevailing day, I heard one sigh A sigh so charged with pathos of deep joy, And peace ineffable, that memory Can never lose the sound; and all was past! The peaceful summer-day that rose upon This night of trial and this morn of grief, Rose not with calmer light than that which dawned Upon my spirit. Chastened, bowed, subdued, I kissed the rod that smote me, and exclaimed: "The Lord hath given; the Lord hath taken away And blessed be his name!" Rebellion slept. I grieved, and still I grieve; but with a heart At peace with God, and soft with sympathy Toward all my sorrowing, struggling, sinful race. My hope, that clung so fondly to the world And the rewards of time, an anchor sure Now grasps the Eternal Rock within the veil Of troubled waters. Storms may wrench and toss, And tides may swing me, in their ebb and flow, But I shall not be moved. Once more! once more I shall behold her face, and clasp her hand! Once more--forevermore! So here I give The gospel of her precious, Christian life. I owe it to herself, and to the world. Grateful for all her tender ministry In life and death, I bring these leaves, entwined With her own roses, dewy with my tears, And lay them as the tribute of my love Upon the grave that holds her sacred dust. END. 
6442	----	BITTER-SWEET A Poem By J. G. HOLLAND CONTENTS. * * * * * PICTURE PERSONS PRELUDE FIRST MOVEMENT--COLLOQUIAL. The Question Stated and Argued FIRST EPISODE. The Question Illustrated by Nature SECOND MOVEMENT--NARRATIVE. The Question Illustrated by Experience SECOND EPISODE. The Question Illustrated by Story THIRD MOVEMENT--DRAMATIC. The Question Illustrated by the Denouement L'ENVOY PICTURE. Winter's wild birthnight! In the fretful East The uneasy wind moans with its sense of cold, And sends its sighs through gloomy mountain gorge, Along the valley, up the whitening hill, To tease the sighing spirits of the pines, And waste in dismal woods their chilly life. The sky is dark, and on the huddled leaves-- The restless, rustling leaves--sifts down its sleet, Till the sharp crystals pin them to the earth, And they grow still beneath the rising storm. The roofless bullock hugs the sheltering stack, With cringing head and closely gathered feet, And waits with dumb endurance for the morn. Deep in a gusty cavern of the barn The witless calf stands blatant at his chain; While the brute mother, pent within her stall, With the wild stress of instinct goes distraught, And frets her horns, and bellows through the night. The stream runs black; and the far waterfall That sang so sweetly through the summer eyes, And swelled and swayed to Zephyr's softest breath, Leaps with a sullen roar the dark abyss, And howls its hoarse responses to the wind. The mill is still. The distant factory, That swarmed yestreen with many-fingered life, And bridged the river with a hundred bars Of molten light, is dark, and lifts its bulk, With dim, uncertain angles, to the sky. * * * * * Yet lower bows the storm. The leafless trees Lash their lithe limbs, and, with majestic voice, Call to each other through the deepening gloom; And slender trunks that lean on burly boughs Shriek with the sharp abrasion; and the oak, Mellowed in fiber by unnumbered frosts, Yields to the shoulder of the Titan Blast, Forsakes its poise, and, with a booming crash, Sweeps a fierce passage to the smothered rocks, And lies a shattered ruin. * * * * * Other scene:-- Across the swale, half up the pine-capped hill, Stands the old farmhouse with its clump of barns-- The old red farmhouse--dim and dun to-night, Save where the ruddy firelights from the hearth Flap their bright wings against the window panes,-- A billowy swarm that beat their slender bars, Or seek the night to leave their track of flame Upon the sleet, or sit, with shifting feet And restless plumes, among the poplar boughs-- The spectral poplars, standing at the gate. And now a man, erect, and tall, and strong, Whose thin white hair, and cheeks of furrowed bronze, And ancient dress, betray the patriarch, Stands at the window, listening to the storm; And as the fire leaps with a wilder flame-- Moved by the wind--it wraps and glorifies His stalwart frame, until it flares and glows Like the old prophets, in transfigured guise, That shape the sunset for cathedral aisles. And now it passes, and a sweeter shape Stands in its place. O blest maternity! Hushed on her bosom, in a light embrace, Her baby sleeps, wrapped in its long white robe; And as the flame, with soft, auroral sweeps, Illuminates the pair, how like they seem, O Virgin Mother! to thyself and thine! Now Samuel comes with curls of burning gold To hearken to the voice of God without: "Speak, mighty One! Thy little servant hears!" And Miriam, maiden, from her household cares Comes to the window in her loosened robe,-- Comes with the blazing timbrels in her hand,-- And, as the noise of winds and waters swells, It shapes the song of triumph to her lips: "The horse and he who rode are overthrown!" And now a man of noble port and brow, And aspect of benignant majesty, Assumes the vacant niche, while either side Press the fair forms of children, and I hear: "Suffer the little ones to come to me!" PERSONS. Here dwells the good old farmer, Israel, In his ancestral home--a Puritan Who reads his Bible daily, loves his God, And lives serenely in the faith of Christ. For threescore years and ten his life has run Through varied scenes of happiness and woe; But, constant through the wide vicissitude, He has confessed the Giver of his joys, And kissed the hand that took them; and whene'er Bereavement has oppressed his soul with grief, Or sharp misfortune stung his heart with pain, He has bowed down in childlike faith, and said, "Thy will, O God--Thy will be done, not mine!" His gentle wife, a dozen summers since, Passed from his faithful arms and went to heaven; And her best gift--a maiden sweetly named-- His daughter Ruth--orders the ancient house, And fills her mother's place beside the board, And cheers his life with songs and industry. But who are these who crowd the house to-night-- A happy throng? Wayfaring pilgrims, who, Grateful for shelter, charm the golden hours With the sweet jargon of a festival? Who are these fathers? who these mothers? who These pleasant children, rude with health and joy? It is the Puritan's Thanksgiving Eve; And gathered home, from fresher homes around, The old man's children keep the holiday-- In dear New England, since the fathers slept-- The sweetest holiday of all the year. John comes with Prudence and her little girls, And Peter, matched with Patience, brings his boys-- Fair boys and girls with good old Scripture names-- Joseph, Rebekah, Paul, and Samuel; And Grace, young Ruth's companion in the house, Till wrested from her last Thanksgiving Day By the strong hand of Love, brings home her babe And the tall poet David, at whose side She went away. And seated in the midst, Mary, a foster-daughter of the house, Of alien blood--self-aliened many a year-- Whose chastened face and melancholy eyes Bring all the wondering children to her knee, Weeps with the strange excess of happiness, And sighs with joy. What recks the driving storm Of such a scene as this? And what reck these Of such a storm? For every heavy gust That smites the windows with its cloud of sleet, And shakes the sashes with its ghostly hands, And rocks the mansion till the chimney's throat Through all its sooty caverns shrieks and howls, They give full bursts of careless merriment, Or songs that send it baffled on its way. PRELUDE. Doubt takes to wings on such a night as this; And while the traveler hugs her fluttering cloak, And staggers o'er the weary waste alone, Beneath a pitiless heaven, they flap his face, And wheel above, or hunt his fainting soul, As, with relentless greed, a vulture throng, With their lank shadows mock the glazing eyes Of the last camel of the caravan. And Faith takes forms and wings on such a night. Where love burns brightly at the household hearth, And from the altar of each peaceful heart Ascends the fragrant incense of its thanks, And every pulse with sympathetic throb Tells the true rhythm of trustfulest content, They flutter in and out, and touch to smiles The sleeping lips of infancy; and fan The blush that lights the modest maiden's cheeks; And toss the locks of children at their play. Silence is vocal if we listen well; And Life and Being sing in dullest ears From morn to night, from night to morn again, With fine articulations; but when God Disturbs the soul with terror, or inspires With a great joy, the words of Doubt and Faith Sound quick and sharp like drops on forest leaves; And we look up to where the pleasant sky Kisses the thunder-caps, and drink the song. A SONG OF DOUBT. The day is quenched, and the sun is fled; God has forgotten the world! The moon is gone, and the stars are dead; God has forgotten the world! Evil has won in the horrid feud Of ages with The Throne; Evil stands on the neck of Good, And rules the world alone. There is no good; there is no God; And Faith is a heartless cheat Who bares the back for the Devil's rod, And scatters thorns for the feet. What are prayers in the lips of death, Filling and chilling with hail? What are prayers but wasted breath Beaten back by the gale? The day is quenched, and the sun is fled; God has forgotten the world! The moon is gone and the stars are dead; God has forgotten the world! A SONG OF FAITH. Day will return with a fresher boon; God will remember the world! Night will come with a newer moon; God will remember the world! Evil is only the slave of Good; Sorrow the servant of Joy; And the soul is mad that refuses food Of the meanest in God's employ. The fountain of joy is fed by tears, And love is lit by the breath of sighs; The deepest griefs and the wildest fears Have holiest ministries. Strong grows the oak in the sweeping storm; Safely the flower sleeps under the snow; And the farmer's hearth is never warm Till the cold wind starts to blow. Day will return with a fresher boon; God will remember the world! Night will come with a newer moon; God will remember the world! FIRST MOVEMENT. LOCALITY--_The square room of a New England farmhouse_. PRESENT--ISRAEL, _head of the family_; JOHN, PETER, DAVID, PATIENCE, PRUDENCE, GRACE, MARY, RUTH, _and_ CHILDREN. THE QUESTION STATED AND ARGUED. _Israel_. Ruth, touch the cradle. Boys, you must be still! The baby cannot sleep in such a noise. Nay, Grace, stir not; she'll soothe him soon enough, And tell him more sweet stuff in half an hour Than you can dream, in dreaming half a year. _Ruth_. [_Kneeling and rocking the cradle_.] What is the little one thinking about? Very wonderful things, no doubt. Unwritten history! Unfathomed mystery! Yet he laughs and cries, and eats and drinks, And chuckles and crows, and nods and winks, As if his head were as full of kinks And curious riddles as any sphinx! Warped by colic, and wet by tears, Punctured by pins, and tortured by fears, Our little nephew will lose two years; And he'll never know Where the summers go;-- He need not laugh, for he'll find it so! Who can tell what a baby thinks? Who can follow the gossamer links By which the manikin feels his way Out from the shore of the great unknown, Blind, and wailing, and alone, Into the light of day?-- Out from the shore of the unknown sea, Tossing in pitiful agony,-- Of the unknown sea that reels and rolls, Specked with the barks of little souls-- Barks that were launched on the other side, And slipped from Heaven on an ebbing tide! What does he think of his mother's eyes? What does he think of his mother's hair? What of the cradle-roof that flies Forward and backward through the air? What does he thinks of his mother's breast-- Bare and beautiful, smooth and white, Seeking it ever with fresh delight-- Cup of his life and couch of his rest? What does he think when her quick embrace Presses his hand and buries his face Deep where the heart-throbs sink and swell With a tenderness she can never tell, Though she murmur the words Of all the birds-- Words she has learned to murmur well? Now he thinks he'll go to sleep! I can see the shadow creep Over his eyes, in soft eclipse, Over his brow, and over his lips, Out to his little finger-tips! Softly sinking, down he goes! Down he goes! Down he goes! [_Rising and carefully retreating to her seat_.] See! He is hushed in sweet repose! _David_. [_Yawning_.] Behold a miracle! Music transformed To morphine, and the drowsy god invoked By the poor prattle of a maiden's tongue! A moment more, and we should all have gone Down into dreamland with the babe! Ah, well! There is no end of wonders. _Ruth_. None, indeed! When lazy poets who have gorged themselves, And cannot keep awake, make the attempt To shift the burden of their drowsiness, And charge a girl with what they owe to greed. _David_. At your old tricks again! No sleep induced By song of yours, or any other bird's, Can linger long when you begin to talk. Grace, box your sister's ears for me, and save The trouble of my rising. _Ruth_. [_Advancing and kneeling by the side of Grace_.] Sister mine. Now give the proof of your obedience To your imperious lord! Strike, if you dare! I'll wake your baby if you lift your hand. Ha! king; ha! poet; who is master now-- Baby or husband? Pr'ythee, tell me that. Were I a man,--thank Heaven I am not!-- And had a wife who cared not for my will More than your wife for yours, I'd hang myself, Or wear an [***]. See! she kisses me! _David_. And answers to my will, though well she knows I'll spare to her so terrible a task, And take the awful burden on myself; Which I will do, in future, if she please! _Ruth_. Now have you conquered! Look! I am your slave. Denounce me, scourge me, anything but kiss; For life is sweet, and I alone am left To comfort an old man. _Israel_. Ruth, that will do! Remember I'm a Justice of the Peace, And bide no quarrels; and if you and David Persist in strife, I'll place you under bonds For good behavior, or condemn you both To solitary durance for the night. _Ruth_. Father, you fail to understand the case, And do me wrong. David has threatened me With an assault that proves intent to kill; And here's my sister Grace, his wedded wife, Who'll take her oath, that just a year ago He entered into bonds to keep the peace Toward me and womankind. _David_. I'm quite asleep. _Israel_. We'll all agree, then, to pronounce it quits. _Ruth_. Till he awake again, of course. I trust I have sufficient gallantry to grant A nap between encounters, to a foe With odds against him. _Israel_. Peace, my daughter, peace! You've had your full revenge, and we have had Enough of laughter since the day began. We must not squander all these precious hours In jest and merriment; for when the sun Shall rise to-morrow, we shall separate, Not knowing we shall ever meet again. Meetings like this are rare this side of Heaven, And seem to me the best mementoes left Of Eden's hours. _Grace_. Most certainly the best, And quite the rarest, but, unluckily, The weakest, as we know; for sin and pain And evils multiform, that swarm the earth, And poison all our joys and all our hearts, Remind us most of Eden's forfeit bliss. _David_. Forfeit through woman. _Grace_. Forfeit through her power;-- A power not lost, as most men know, I think, Beyond the knowledge of their trustful wives. _Mary_. [_Rising, and walking hurriedly to the window_.] 'Tis a wild night without. _Ruth_. And getting wild Within. Now, Grace, I--all of us--protest Against a scene to-night. Look! You have driven One to the window blushing, and your lord, With lowering brow, is making stern essay To stare the fire-dogs out of countenance. These honest brothers, with their honest wives, Grow glum and solemn, too, as if they feared At the next gust to see the windows burst, Or a riven poplar crashing through the roof. And think of me!--a simple-hearted maid Who learned from Cowper only yesterday (Or a schoolmaster, with a handsome face, And a strange passion for the text), the fact, That wedded bliss alone survives the fall. I'm shocked; I'm frightened; and I'll never wed Unless I--change my mind! _Israel_. And I consent. _David_. And the schoolmaster with the handsome face Propose. _Ruth_. Your pardon, father, for the jest! But I have never patience with the ills That make intrusion on my happy hours. I know the world is full of evil things, And shudder with the consciousness. I know That care has iron crowns for many brows; That Calvaries are everywhere, whereon Virtue is crucified, and nails and spears Draw guiltless blood; that sorrow sits and drinks At sweetest hearts, till all their life is dry; That gentle spirits on the rack of pain Grow faint or fierce, and pray and curse by turns; That Hell's temptations, clad in Heavenly guise And armed with might, lie evermore in wait Along life's path, giving assault to all-- Fatal to most; that Death stalks through the earth, Choosing his victims, sparing none at last; That in each shadow of a pleasant tree A grief sits sadly sobbing to its leaves; And that beside each fearful soul there walks The dim, gaunt phantom of uncertainty, Bidding it look before, where none may see, And all must go; but I forget it all-- I thrust it from me always when I may; Else I should faint with fear, or drown myself In pity. God forgive me! but I've thought A thousand times that if I had His power. Or He my love, we'd have a different world From this we live in. _Israel_. Those are sinful thoughts, My daughter, and too surely indicate A willful soul, unreconciled to God. _Ruth_. So you have told me often. You have said That God is just, and I have looked around To seek the proof in human lot, in vain. The rain falls kindly on the just man's fields, But on the unjust man's more kindly still; And I have never known the winter's blast, Or the quick lightning, or the pestilence, Make nice discriminations when let slip From God's right hand. _Israel_. 'Tis a great mystery; Yet God is just, and,--blessed be His name!-- Is loving too. I know that I am weak, And that the pathway of His Providence Is on the hills where I may never climb. Therefore my reason yields her hand to Faith, And follows meekly where the angel leads. I see the rich man have his portion here, And Lazarus, in glorified repose, Sleep like a jewel on the breast of Faith In Heaven's broad light. I see that whom God loves He chastens sorely, but I ask not why. I only know that God is just and good: All else is mystery. Why evil lives Within His universe, I may not know. I know it lives, and taints the vital air; And that in ways inscrutable to me-- Yet compromising not His soundless love And boundless power--it lives against His will. _Ruth_. I am not satisfied. If evil live Against God's will, evil is king of all, And they do well who worship Lucifer. I am not satisfied. My reason spurns Such prostitution to absurdities. I know that you are happy; but I shrink From your blind faith with loathing and with fear. And feel that I must win it, if I win, With the surrender, not of will alone, But of the noblest faculty that God Has crowned me with. _Israel_. O blind and stubborn child! My light, my joy, my burden and my grief! How would I lead you to the wells of peace, And see you dip your fevered palms and drink! Gladly to purchase this would I lay down The precious remnant of my life, and sleep, Wrapped in the faith you spurn, till the archangel Sounds the last trump. But God's good will be done! I leave you with Him. _Ruth_. Father, talk not thus! Oh, do not blame me! I would do it all, If but to bless you with a single joy; But I am helpless. _Israel_. God will help you, Ruth. _Ruth_. To quench my reason? Can I ask the boon? My lips would blister with the blasphemy. I cannot take your faith; and that is why I would forget that I am in a world Where evil lives, and why I guard my joys With such a jealous care. _David_. There, Ruth, sit down! 'Tis the old question, with the old reply. You fly along the path, with bleeding feet, Where many feet have flown and bled before; And he who seeks to guide you to the goal Has (let me say it, father) stopped far short, And taken refuge at a wayside inn, Whose haunted halls and mazy passages Receive no light, save through the riddled roof, Pierced thick by pilgrim staves, that Faith may lie Upon its back, and only gaze on Heaven. I would not banish evil if I could; Nor would I be so deep in love with joy As to seek for it in forgetfulness, Through faith or fear. _Ruth_. Teach me the better way, And every expiration from my lips Shall be a grateful blessing on your head; And in the coming world I'll seek the side Of no more gracious angel than the man Who gives me brotherhood by leading me Home with himself to heaven. _Israel_. My son, Be careful of your words! 'Tis no light thing To take the guidance of a straying soul. _David_. I mark the burden well, and love it, too, Because I love the girl and love her Lord, And seek to vindicate His love to her And waken hers for Him. Be this my plea: God is almighty--all-benevolent; And naught exists save by His loving will. Evil, or what we reckon such, exists, And not against His will; else the Supreme Is subject, and we have in place of God A phantom nothing, with a phantom name. Therefore I care not whether He ordain That evil live, or whether He permit; Therefore I ask not why, in either case, As if He meant to curse me, but I ask What He would have this evil do for me? What is its mission? what its ministry? What golden fruit lies hidden in its husk? How shall it nurse my virtue, nerve my will, Chasten my passions, purify my love, And make me in some goodly sense like Him Who bore the cross of evil while He lived, Who hung and bled upon it when He died, And now, in glory, wears the victor's crown? _Israel_. If evil, then, have privilege and part In the economy of holiness, Why came the Christ to save us from its power, And bring us restoration of the bliss Lost in the lapse of Eden? _David_. And would you Or Ruth 'have restoration of that bliss, And welcome transplantation to the state Associate with it? _Ruth_. Would I? Would I not! Oh, I have dreamed of it a thousand times, Sleeping and waking, since the torch of thought Flashed into flame at Revelation's touch, And filled my spirit with its quenchless fire. Most envious dreams of innocence and joy Have haunted me,--dreams that were born in sin, Yet swathed in stainless snow. I've dreamed, and dreamed, Of wondrous trees, crowned with perennial green, Whose soft still shadows gleamed with golden lamps Of pensile fruitage, or were flushed with life Radiant and tuneful when broad flocks of birds Swept in and out like sheets of living flame. I've dreamed of aisles tufted with velvet grass, And bordered with the strange intelligence Of myriad loving eyes among the flowers, That watched me with a curious, calm delight, As rows of wayside cherubim may watch A new soul, walking into Paradise. I've dreamed of sunsets when the sun supine Lay rocking on the ocean like a god, And threw his weary arms far up the sky, And with vermilion-tinted fingers toyed With the long tresses of the evening star. I've dreamed of dreams more beautiful than all-- Dreams that were music, perfume, vision, bliss,-- Blent and sublimed, till I have stood inwrapped In the thick essence of an atmosphere That made me tremble to unclose my eyes Lest I should look on God. And I have dreamed Of sinless men and maids, mated in heaven, Ere yet their souls had sought for beauteous forms To give them human sense and residence, Moving through all this realm of choice delights For ever and for aye; with hands and hearts Immaculate as light; without a thought Of evil, and without a name for fear. Oh, when I wake from happy dreams like these, To the old consciousness that I must die, To the old presence of a guilty heart, To the old fear that haunts me night and day, Why should I not deplore the graceless fall That makes me what I am, and shuts me out From a condition and society As much above a sinful maiden's dreams As Eden blest surpasses Eden curst? _David_. So you would be another Eve, and so-- Fall with the first temptation, like herself! God seeks for virtue; you for innocence. You'll find it in the cradle--nowhere else-- Save in your dreams, among the grown-up babes That dwelt in Eden--powerless, pulpy souls That showed a dimple for each touch of sin. God seeks for virtue, and, that it may live, It must resist, and that which it resists Must live. Believe me, God has other thought Than restoration of our fallen race To its primeval innocence and bliss. If Jesus Christ--as we are taught--was slain From the foundation of the world, it was Because our evil lived in essence then-- Coeval with the great, mysterious fact. And He was slain that we might be transformed,-- Not into Adam's sweet similitude-- But the more glorious image of Himself, A resolution of our destiny As high transcending Eden's life and lot As He surpasses Eden's fallen lord. _Ruth_. You're very bold, my brother, very bold. Did I not know you for an earnest man, When sacred themes move you to utterance, I'd chide you for those most irreverent words Which make essential to the Christian scheme That which the scheme was made to kill, or cure. _David_. Yet they do save some very awkward words, That limp to make apology for God, And, while they justify Him, half confess The adverse verdict of appearances. I am ashamed that in this Christian age The pious throng still hug the fallacy That this dear world of ours was not ordained The theater of evil; for no law Declared of God from all eternity Can live a moment save by lease of pain. Law cannot live, e'en in God's inmost thought, Save by the side of evil. What were law But a weak jest without its penalty? Never a law was born that did not fly Forth from the bosom of Omnipotence Matched, wing-and-wing, with evil and with good, Avenger and rewarder--both of God. _Ruth_. I face your thought and give it audience; But I cannot embrace it till it come With some of truth's credentials in its hands-- The fruits of gracious ministries. _David_. Does he Who, driven to labor by the threatening weeds, And forced to give his acres light and air And traps for dew and reservoirs for rain, Till, in the smoky light of harvest time, The ragged husks reveal the golden corn, Ask truth's credentials of the weeds? Does he Who prunes the orchard boughs, or tills the field, Or fells the forests, or pursues their prey, Until the gnarly muscles of his limbs And the free blood that thrills in all his veins Betray the health that toil alone secures, Ask truth's credentials at the hand of toil? Do you ask truth's credentials of the storm Which, while we entertain communion here, Makes better music for our huddling hearts Than choirs of stars can sing in fairest nights? Yet weeds are evils--evils toil and storm. We may suspect the fair, smooth face of good; But evil, that assails us undisguised, Bears evermore God's warrant in its hands. _Israel_. I fear these silver sophistries of yours. If my poor judgment gives them honest weight, Far less than thirty will betray your Lord. You call that evil which is good, and good That which is evil. You apologize For that which God must hate, and justify The life and perpetuity of that Which sets itself against His holiness, And sends its discords through the universe. _David_. I sorrow if I shock you, for I seek To comfort and inspire. I see around A silent company of doubtful souls; But I may challenge any one of them To quote the meanest blessing of its life, And prove that evil did not make the gift, Or bear it from the giver to its hands. The great salvation wrought by Jesus Christ-- That sank an Adam to reveal a God-- Had never come, but at the call of sin. No risen Lord could eat the feast of love Here on the earth, or yonder in the sky, Had He not lain within the sepulcher. 'Tis not the lightly laden heart of man That loves the best the hand that blesses all; But that which, groaning with its weight of sin, Meets with the mercy that forgiveth much. God never fails in an experiment, Nor tries experiment upon a race But to educe its highest style of life, And sublimate its issues. Thus to me Evil is not a mystery, but a means Selected from the infinite resource To make the most of me. _Ruth_. Thank God for light! These truths are slowly dawning on my soul, And take position in the firmament That spans my thought, like stars that know their place. Dear Lord! what visions crowd before my eyes-- Visions drawn forth from memory's mysteries By the sweet shining of these holy lights! I see a girl, once lightest in the dance, And maddest with the gayety of life, Grow pale and pulseless, wasting day by day, While death lies idly dreaming in her breast, Blighting her breath, and poisoning her blood. I see her frantic with a fearful thought That haunts and horrifies her shrinking soul, And bursts in sighs and sobs and feverish prayers; And now, at last, the awful struggle ends, A sweet smile sits upon her angel face, And peace, with downy bosom, nestles close Where her worn heart throbs faintly; closer still As the death shadows gather; closer still, As, on white wings, the outward-going soul Flies to a home it never would have sought, Had a great evil failed to point the way. I see a youth whom God has crowned with power, And cursed with poverty. With bravest heart He struggles with his lot, through toilsome years,-- Kept to his task by daily want of bread, And kept to virtue by his daily task,-- Till, gaining manhood in the manly strife,-- The fire that fills him smitten from a flint-- The strength that arms him wrested from a fiend-- He stands, at last, a master of himself, And, in that grace, a master of his kind. _David_. Familiar visions these, but ever full Of inspiration and significance. Now that your eyes are opened and you see, Your heart should take swift cognizance, and feel. How do these visions move you? _Ruth_. Like the hand Of a strong angel on my shoulder laid, Touching the secret of the spirit's wings. My heart grows brave. I'm ready now to work-- To work with God, and suffer with His Christ; Adopt His measures, and abide His means. If, in the law that spans the universe (The law its maker may not disobey), Virtue may only grow from innocence Through a great struggle with opposing ill; If I must win my way to perfectness In the sad path of suffering, like Him The over-flowing river of whose life Touches the flood-mark of humanity On the white pillars of the heavenly throne, Then welcome evil! Welcome sickness, toil, Sorrow and pain, the fear and fact of death. _Israel_ And welcome sin? _Ruth_. Ah, David! welcome sin? _David_. The fact of sin--so much;--it must needs be Offenses come; if woe to him by whom, Then with good reason; but the fact of sin Unlocked the door to highest destiny, That Christ might enter in and lead the way. God loves not sin, nor I; but in the throng Of evils that assail us, there are none That yield their strength to Virtue's struggling arm With such munificent reward of power As great temptations. We may win by toil Endurance; saintly fortitude by pain; By sickness, patience; faith and trust by fear; But the great stimulus that spurs to life, And crowds to generous development Each chastened power and passion of the soul, Is the temptation of the soul to sin, Resisted, and re-conquered, evermore. _Ruth_. I am content; and now that I have caught Bright glimpses of the outlines of your scheme, As of a landscape, graded to the sky, And seen through trees while passing, I desire No vision further till I make survey In some good time when I may come alone, And drink its beauty and its blessedness. I've been forgetful in my earnestness, And wearied everyone with talk. These boys Are restive grown, or nodding in their chairs, And older heads are set, as if for sleep. I beg their pardon for my theft of time, And will offend no more. _David_. Ruth, is it right To leave a brother in such a plight as this-- Either to imitate your courtesy, Or by your act to be adjudged a boor? _Ruth_. Heaven grant you never note a sin of mine Save of your own construction! _Israel_. Let it pass! I see the spell of thoughtfulness is gone, Or going swiftly. I will not complain; But ere these lads are fastened to their games, And thoughts arise discordant with our theme, Let us with gratitude approach the throne And worship God. I wish once more to lead Your hearts in prayer, and follow with my own The leading of your song of thankfulness. Then will I lease and leave you for the night To such divertisement as suits the time, And meets your humor. [_They all arise and the old man prays_.] _Ruth_. [_After a pause_.] David, let us see Whether your memory prove as true as mine. Do you recall the promise made by you This night one year ago,--to write a hymn For this occasion? _David_. I recall, and keep. Here are the copies, written fairly out. Here,--father, Mary, Ruth, and all the rest; There's one for each. Now what shall be the tune? _Israel_. The old One Hundredth--noblest tune of tunes! Old tunes are precious to me as old paths In which I wandered when a happy boy. In truth, they are the old paths of my soul, Oft trod, well worn, familiar, up to God. THE HYMN. [_In which all unite to sing_.] For Summer's bloom and Autumn's blight, For bending wheat and blasted maize, For health and sickness, Lord of light, And Lord of darkness, hear our praise! We trace to Thee our joys and woes-- To Thee of causes still the cause,-- We thank Thee that Thy hand bestows; We bless Thee that Thy love withdraws. We bring no sorrows to Thy throne; We come to Thee with no complaint; In Providence Thy will is done, And that is sacred to the saint Here on this blest Thanksgiving Night; We raise to Thee our grateful voice; For what Thou doest, Lord, is right; And thus believing, we rejoice. _Grace_. A good old tune, indeed, and strongly sung; But, in my mind, the man who wrote the hymn Had seemed more modest, had he paused a while. Ere by a trick he furnished other tongues With words he only has the heart to sing. _David_. Oh, Grace! Dear Grace! _Ruth_. You may well cry for grace, If that's the company you have to keep. _Grace_. I thought you convert to his sophistry. It makes no difference to him, you know, Whether I plague or please. _Ruth_. It does to you. _Israel_. There, children! No more bitter words like those! I do not understand them; they awake A sad uneasiness within my heart. I found but Christian meaning in the hymn; Aye, I could say _amen_ to every line, As to the breathings of my own poor prayer. But let us talk no more. I'll to my bed. Good-night, my children! Happy thoughts be yours Till sleep arrive--then happy dreams till dawn! _All_. Father, good-night! [ISRAEL _retires_.] _Ruth_. There, little boys and girls-- Off to the kitchen! Now there's fun for you. Play blind-man's-buff until you break your heads; And then sit down beside the roaring fire, And with wild stories scare yourselves to death. We'll all be out there, by and by. Meanwhile, I'll try the cellar; and if David, here, Will promise good behavior, he shall be My candle-bearer, basket-bearer, and-- But no! The pitcher I will bear myself. I'll never trust a pitcher to a man Under this house, and--seventy years of age. [_The children rush out of the room with a shout, which wakes the baby_.] That noisy little youngster on the floor Slept through theology but wakes with mirth-- Precocious little creature! He must go Up to his chamber. Come, Grace, take him off-- Basket and all. Mary will lend a hand, And keep you company until he sleeps. [GRACE _and_ MARY _remove the cradle to the chamber, and_ DAVID _and_ RUTH retire to the cellar_.] _John_. [_Rising and yawning_] Isn't she the strangest girl you ever saw? _Prudence_. Queer, rather, I should say. Grace, now, is strange. I think she treats her husband shamefully. I can't imagine what possesses her, Thus to toss taunts at him with every word. If in his doctrines there be truth enough, He'll be a saint. _Patience_. If he live long enough. _John_. Well, now I tell you, such wild men as he,-- Men who have crazy crotchets in their heads,-- Can't make a woman happy. Don't you see? He isn't settled. He has wandered off From the old landmarks, and has lost himself I may judge wrongly; but if truth were told There'd be excuse for Grace, I warrant ye. Grace is a right good girl, or was, before She married David. _Patience_. Everybody says He makes provision for his family, Like a good husband. _Peter_. We can hardly tell. When men get loose in their theology The screws are started up in everything. Of course, I don't apologize for Grace. I think she might have done more prudently Than introduce her troubles here to-night, But, after all, we do not know the cause That stirs her fretfulness. Well, let it go! What does the evening's talk amount to? Who Is wiser for the wisdom of the hour? The good old paths are good enough for me. The fathers walked to heaven in them, and we, By following mekly where they trod, may reach The home they found. There will be mysteries; Let those who like, bother their heads with them. If Ruth and David seek to fathom all, I wish them patience in their bootless quest. For one, I'm glad the misty talk is done, And we, alone. _Patience_. And I. _John_. I, too. _Prudence_. And I. FIRST EPISODE. LOCALITY--_The cellar stair and the cellar_. PRESENT--DAVID _and_ RUTH. THE QUESTION ILLUSTRATED BY NATURE. _Ruth_. Look where you step, or you'll stumble! Care for your coat, or you'll crock it! Down with your crown, man! Be humble! Put your head into your pocket, Else something or other will knock it. Don't hit that jar of cucumbers Standing an the broad-stair! They have not waked from their slumbers Since they stood there. _David_. Yet they have lived in a constant jar! What remarkable sleepers they are! _Ruth_. Turn to the left--shun the wall-- One step more--that is all! Now we are safe on the ground, I will show you around. Sixteen barrels of cider Ripening all in a row! Open the vent-channels wider! See the froth, drifted like snow. Blown by the tempest below! Those delectable juices Flowed through the sinuous sluices Of sweet springs under the orchard; Climbed into fountains that chained them; Dripped into cups that retained them, And swelled till they dropped, and we gained them. Then they were gathered and tortured By passage from hopper to vat, And fell-every apple crushed flat. Ah! how the bees gathered round them, And how delicious they found them! Oat-straw, as fragrant as clover, Was platted, and smoothly turned over, Weaving a neatly ribbed basket; And, as they built up the casket, In went the pulp by the scoop-full, Till the juice flowed by the stoup-full,-- Filling the half of a puncheon While the men swallowed their luncheon. Pure grew the stream with the stress Of the lever and screw, Till the last drops from the press Were as bright as the dew. There were these juices spilled; There were these barrels filled; Sixteen barrels of cider-- Ripening all in a row! Open the vent-channels wider! See the froth, drifted like snow, Blown by the tempest below! _David_. Hearts, like apples, are hard and sour, Till crushed by Pain's resistless power; And yield their juices rich and bland To none but Sorrow's heavy hand. The purest streams of human love Flow naturally never, But gush by pressure from above With God's hand on the lever. The first are turbidest and meanest; The last are sweetest and serenest. _Ruth_. Sermon quite short for the text! What shall we hit upon next? Lift up the lid of that cask; See if the brine be abundant; Easy for me were the task To make it redundant With tears for my beautiful Zephyr-- Pet of the pasture and stall-- Whitest and comeliest heifer, Gentlest of all! Oh, it seemed cruel to slay her! But they insulted my prayer For her careless and innocent life, And the creature was brought to the knife With gratitude in her eye; For they patted her back, and chafed her head, And coaxed her with softest words, as they led Her up to the ring to die. Do you blame me for crying When my Zephyr was dying? I shut my room and my ears, And opened my heart and my tears, And wept for the half of a day; And I could not go To the rooms below Till the butcher went away. _David_. Life evermore is fed by death, In earth and sea and sky; And, that a rose may breathe its breath, Something must die. Earth is a sepulcher of flowers, Whose vitalizing mold Through boundless transmutation towers, In green and gold. The oak tree, struggling with the blast, Devours its father tree, And sheds its leaves and drops its mast, That more may be. The falcon preys upon the finch, The finch upon the fly, And nought will loose the hunger-pinch But death's wild cry. The milk-haired heifer's life must pass That it may fill your own, As passed the sweet life of the grass She fed upon. The power enslaved by yonder cask Shall many burdens bear; Shall nerve the toiler at his task, The soul at prayer. From lowly woe springs lordly joy; From humbler good diviner; The greater life must aye destroy And drink the minor. From hand to hand life's cup is passed Up Being's piled gradation, Till men to angels yield at last The rich collation. _Ruth_. Well, we are done with the brute; Now let us look at the fruit,-- Every barrel, I'm told, From grafts half a dozen years old. That is a barrel of russets; But we can hardly discuss its Spheres of frost and flint, Till, smitten by thoughts of Spring, And the old tree blossoming, Their bronze takes a yellower tint, And the pulp grows mellower in't. But oh! when they're sick with the savors Of sweets that they dream of, Sure, all the toothsomest flavors They hold the cream of! You will be begging in May, In your irresistible way, For a peck of the apples in gray. Those are the pearmains, I think,-- Bland and insipid as eggs; They were too lazy to drink The light to its dregs, And left them upon the rind-- A delicate film of blue-- Leave them alone;--I can find Better apples for you. Those are the Rhode Island greenings; Excellent apples for pies; There are no mystical meanings In fruit of that color and size. They are too coarse and too juiceful; They are too large and too useful. There are the Baldwins and Flyers, Wrapped in their beautiful fires! Color forks up from their stems As if painted by Flora, Or as out from the pole stream the flames Of the Northern Aurora. Here shall our quest have a close; Fill up your basket with those; Bite through their vesture of flame, And then you will gather All that is meant by the name, "Seek-no-farther!" _David_. The native orchard's fairest trees, Wild springing on the hill, Bear no such precious fruits as these, And never will; Till ax and saw and pruning knife Cut from them every bough, And they receive a gentler life Than crowns them now. And Nature's children, evermore, Though grown to stately stature, Must bear the fruit their fathers bore-- The fruit of nature; Till every thrifty vice is made The shoulder for a scion, Cut from the bending trees that shade The hills of Zion. Sorrow must crop each passion-shoot, And pain each lust infernal, Or human life can bear no fruit To life eternal. For angels wait on Providence; And mark the sundered places, To graft with gentlest instruments The heavenly graces. _Ruth_. Well, you're a curious creature! You should have been a preacher. But look at that bin of potatoes-- Grown in all singular shapes-- Red and in clusters, like grapes, Or more like tomatoes. Those are Merinoes, I guess; Very prolific and cheap; They make an excellent mess For a cow, or a sheep, And are good for the table, they say, When the winter has passed away. Those are my beautiful Carters; Every one doomed to be martyrs To the eccentric desire Of Christian people to skin them,-- Brought to the trial of fire For the good that is in them! Ivory tubers--divide one! Ivory all the way through! Never a hollow inside one; Never a core, black or blue! Ah, you should taste them when roasted! (Chestnuts are not half so good;) And you would find that I've boasted Less than I should. They make the meal for Sunday noon; And, if ever you eat one, let me beg You to manage it just as you do an egg. Take a pat of butter, a silver spoon, And wrap your napkin round the shell: Have you seen a humming-bird probe the bell Of a white-lipped morning-glory? Well, that's the rest of the story! But it's very singular, surely, They should produce so poorly. Father knows that I want them, So he continues to plant them; But, if I try to argue the question, He scoffs, as a thrifty farmer will; And puts me down with the stale suggestion-- "Small potatoes, and few in a hill." _David_. Thus is it over all the earth! That which we call the fairest, And prize for its surpassing worth, Is always rarest. Iron is heaped in mountain piles, And gluts the laggard forges; But gold-flakes gleam in dim defiles And lonely gorges. The snowy marble flecks the land With heaped and rounded ledges, But diamonds hide within the sand Their starry edges. The finny armies clog the twine That sweeps the lazy river, But pearls come singly from the brine, With the pale diver. God gives no value unto men Unmatched by meed of labor; And Cost of Worth has ever been The closest neighbor. Wide is the gate and broad the way That opens to perdition, And countless multitudes are they Who seek admission. But strait the gate, the path unkind, That lead to life immortal, And few the careful feet that find The hidden portal. All common good has common price; Exceeding good, exceeding; Christ bought the keys of Paradise By cruel bleeding; And every soul that wins a place Upon its hills of pleasure, Must give its all, and beg for grace To fill the measure. Were every hill a precious mine, And golden all the mountains; Were all the rivers fed with wine By tireless fountains; Life would be ravished of its zest, And shorn of its ambition, And sinks into the dreamless rest Of inanition. Up the broad stairs that Value rears Stand motives beckoning earthward, To summon men to nobler spheres, And lead them worthward. _Ruth_. I'm afraid to show you anything more; For parsnips and art are so very long, That the passage back to the cellar-door Would be through a mile of song. But Truth owns me for an honest teller; And, if the honest truth be told, I am indebted to you and the cellar For a lesson and a cold. And one or the other cheats my sight; (O silly girl! for shame!) Barrels are hooped with rings of light, And stopped with tongues of flame. Apples have conquered original sin, Manna is pickled in brine, Philosophy fills the potato bin, And cider will soon be wine. So crown the basket with mellow fruit, And brim the pitcher with pearls; And we'll see how the old-time dainties suit The old-time boys and girls. [_They ascend the stairs_.] SECOND MOVEMENT. LOCALITY--_A chamber_. PRESENT--GRACE, MARY, _and the_ BABY. * * * * * THE QUESTION ILLUSTRATED BY EXPERIENCE. _Grace_. [_Sings_.] Hither, Sleep! A mother wants thee! Come with velvet arms! Fold the baby that she grants thee To thy own soft charms! Bear him into Dreamland lightly! Give him sight of flowers! Do not bring him back till brightly Break the morning hours! Close his eyes with gentle fingers! Cross his hands of snow! Tell the angels where he lingers They must whisper low! I will guard thy spell unbroken If thou hear my call; Come then, Sleep! I wait the token Of thy downy thrall. Now I see his sweet lips moving; He is in thy keep; Other milk the babe is proving At the breast of sleep! _Mary_. Sleep, babe, the honeyed sleep of innocence! Sleep like a bud; for soon the sun of life With ardors quick and passionate shall rise, And, with hot kisses part the fragrant lips-- The folded petals of thy soul! Alas! What feverish winds shall tease and toss thee, then! What pride and pain, ambition and despair, Desire, satiety, and all that fill With misery life's fretful enterprise, Shall wrench and blanch thee, till thou fall at last, Joy after joy down fluttering to the earth, To be apportioned to the elements! I marvel, baby, whether it were ill That He who planted thee should pluck thee now, And save thee from the blight that comes on all. I marvel whether it would not be well That the frail bud should burst in Paradise, On the full throbbing of an angel's heart! _Grace_. Oh, speak not thus! The thought is terrible. He is my all; and yet, it sickens me To think that he will grow to be a man. If he were not a boy! _Mary_. Were not a boy? That wakens other thoughts. Thank God for that! To be a man, if aught, is privilege Precious and peerless. While I bide content The modest lot of woman, all my soul Gives truest manhood humblest reverence. It is a great and god-like thing to do! 'Tis a great thing, I think, to be a man. Man fells the forests, plows and tills the fields, And heaps the granaries that feed the world. At his behest swift Commerce spreads her wings, And tires the sinewy sea-birds as she flies, Fanning the solitudes from clime to clime. Smoke-crested cities rise beneath his hand, And roar through ages with the din of trade. Steam is the fleet-winged herald of his will, Joining the angel of the Apocalypse 'Mid sound and smoke and wond'rous circumstance, And with one foot upon the conquered sea And one upon the subject land, proclaims That space shall be no more. The lightnings veil Their fiery forms to wait upon his thought, And give it wing, as unseen spirits pause To bear to God the burden of his prayer. God crowns him with the gift of eloquence, And puts a harp into his tuneful hands, And makes him both his prophet and his priest. 'Twas in his form the great Immanuel Revealed himself; the Apostolic Twelve, Like those who since have ministered the Word, Were men. 'Tis a great thing to be a man. _Grace_. And fortunate to have an advocate Across whose memory convenient clouds Come floating at convenient intervals. The harvest fields that man has honored most Are those where human life is reaped like grain. There never rose a mart, nor shone a sail, Nor sprang a great invention into birth, By other motive than man's love of gold. It is for wrong that he is eloquent; For lust that he indites his sweetest songs. Christ was betrayed by treason of a man, And scourged and hung upon a tree by men; And the sad women who were at his cross, And sought him early at the sepulcher, And since that day, in gentle multitudes Have loved and followed him, have been man's slaves,-- The victims of his power and his desire. _Mary_. And you, a wedded wife-well wedded, too, Can say all this, and say it bitterly! _Grace_. Perhaps because a wife; perhaps because-- _Mary_. Hush, Grace! No more! I beg you, say no more. Nay! I will leave you at another word; For I could listen to a blasphemy, Falling from bestial lips, with lighter chill Than to the mad complainings of a soul Which God has favored as he favors few. I dare not listen when a woman's voice, Which blessings strive to smother, flings them off In mad contempt. I dare not hear the words Whose utterance all the gentle loves dissuade By kisses which are reasons, while a throng Of friendships, comforts, and sweet charities-- The almoners of the All-Bountiful-- With folded wings stand sadly looking on. Believe me, Grace, the pioneer of judgment-- Ordained, commissioned--is Ingratitude; For where it moves, good withers; blessings die; Till a clean path is left for Providence, Who never sows a good the second time Till the torn bosom of the graceless soil Is ready for the seed. _Grace_. Oh, could you know The anguish of my heart, you would not chide! If I repine, it is because my lot Is not the blessed thing it seems to you. O Mary! Could you know! Could you but know! _Mary_. Then why not tell me all? You know me, love. And know that secrets make their graves with me. So, tell me all; for I do promise you Such sympathy as God through suffering Has given me power to grant to such as you. I bought it dearly, and its largess waits The opening of your heart. _Grace_. I am ashamed,-- In truth I am ashamed--to tell you all. You will not laugh at me? _Mary_. I laugh at you? _Grace_. Forgive me, Mary, for my heart is weak; Distrustful of itself and all the world. Ah, well! To what strange issues leads our life! It seems but yesterday that you were brought To this old house, an orphaned little girl, Whose large shy eyes, pale cheeks, and shrinking ways Filled all our hearts with wonder, as we stood And stared at you, until your heart o'erfilled With the oppressive strangeness, and you wept. Yes, I remember how I pitied you-- I who had never wept, nor even sighed, Save on the bosom of my gentle mother; For my quick heart caught all your history When with a hurried step you sought the sun, And pressed your eyes against the windowpane That God's sweet light might dry them. Well I knew Though all untaught, that you were motherless. And I remember how I followed you,-- Embraced and kissed you--kissed your tears away-- Tears that came faster, till they bathed the lips That would have sealed their flooded fountain-heads; And then we wound our arms around each other, And passed out-out under the pleasant sky, And stood among the lilies at the door. I gave no formal comfort; you, no thanks; For tears had been your language, kisses mine, And we were friends. We talked about our dolls, And all the pretty playthings we possessed. Then we revealed, with childish vanity, Our little stores of knowledge. I was full Of a sweet marvel when you pointed out The yellow thighs of bees that, half asleep, Plundered the secrets of the lily-bells, And called the golden pigment honeycomb. And your black eyes were opened very wide When I related how, one sunny day, I found a well, half covered, down the lane, That was so deep and clear that I could see Straight through the world, into another sky! _Mary_. Do you remember how the Guinea hens Set up a scream upon the garden wall, That frightened me to running, when you screamed With laughter quite as loud? _Grace_. Aye, very well; But better still the scene that followed all. Oh, that has lingered in my memory Like that divinest dream of Raphael-- The Dresden virgin prisoned in a print-- That watched with me in sickness through long weeks, And from its frame upon the chamber-wall Breathed constant benedictions, till I learned To love the presence like a Roman saint. My mother called us in; and at her knee, Embracing still, we stood, and felt her smile Shine on our upturned faces like the light Of the soft summer moon. And then she stooped; And when she kissed us, I could see the tears Brimming her eyes. O sweet experiment! To try if love of Jesus and of me Could make our kisses equal to her lips! Then straight my prescient heart set up a song, And fluttered in my bosom like a bird. I knew a blessing was about to fall, As robins know the coming of the rain, And bruit the joyous secret, ere its steps Are heard upon the mountain tops. I knew You were to be my sister; and my heart Was almost bursting with its love and pride. I could not wait to hear the kindly words Our mother spoke--her counsels and commands-- For you were mine--my sister! So I tore Your clinging hand from hers with rude constraint, And took you to my chamber, where I played With you, in selfish sense of property, The whole bright afternoon. And here again, Within this same old chamber we are met. We told our secrets to each other then; Thus let us tell them now; and you shall be To my grief-burdened soul what you have said, So many times that I have been to yours. _Mary_. Alas! I never meant to tell my tale To other ear than God's; but you have claims Upon my confidence,--claims just rehearsed, And other claims which you have never known. _Grace_. And other claims which I have never known! You speak in riddles, love. I only know You grew to womanhood, were beautiful, Were loved and wooed, were married and were blest;-- That after passage of mysterious years We heard sad stories of your misery, And rumors of desertion; but your pen Revealed no secrets of your altered life. Enough for me that you are here to-night, And have an ear for sorrow, and a heart Which disappointment has inhabited. My history you know. A twelvemonth since This fearful, festive night, and in this house, I gave my hand to one whom I believed To be the noblest man God ever made;-- A man who seemed to my infatuate heart Heaven's chosen genius, through whose tuneful soul The choicest harmonies of life should flow, Growing articulate upon his lips In numbers to enchant a willing world. I cannot tell you of the pride that filled My bosom, as I marked his manly form, And read his soul through his effulgent eyes, And heard the wondrous music of his voice, That swept the chords of feeling in all hearts With such a divine persuasion as might grow Under the transit of an angel's hand. And, then, to think that I, a farmer's child, Should be the woman culled from all the world To be that man's companion,--to abide The nearest soul to such a soul--to sit Close by the fountain of his peerless life-- The welling center of his loving thoughts-- And drink, myself, the sweetest and the best,-- To lay my head upon his breast, and feel That of all precious burdens it had borne That was most precious--Oh! my heart was wild With the delirium of happiness-- But, Mary, you are weeping! _Mary_. Mark it not. Your words wake memories which you may guess, And thoughts which you may sometime know--not now. _Grace_. Well, we were married, as I said; and I Was not unthankful utterly, I think; Though, if the awful question had come then, And stood before me with a brow severe And steady finger, bidding me decide Which of the two I loved the more, the God Who gave my husband to me, or his gift, I know I should have groaned, and shut my eyes. We passed a honeymoon whose atmosphere, Flooded with inspiration, and embraced By a wide sky set full of starry thoughts, And constellated visions of delight, Still wraps me in my dreams--itself a dream. The full moon waned at last, and in my sky, With horn inverted, gave its sign of tears; And then, when wasted to a skeleton, It sank into a heaving sea of tears That caught its tumult from my sighing soul. My husband, who had spent whole months with me, Till he was wedded to my every thought, Left me through dreary hours,--nay, days,--alone! He pleaded business--business day and night; Leaving me with a formal kiss at morn, And meeting me with strange reserve at eve; And I could mark the sea of tenderness Upon whose beach I had sat down for life, Hoping to feel for ever, as at first, The love-breeze from its billows, and to clasp With open arms the silver surf that ran To wreck itself upon my bosom, ebb, Day after day receding, till the sand Grew dry and hot, and the old hulls appeared Of hopes sent out upon that faithless main Since woman loved, and he she loved was false. Night after night I sat the evening out, And heard the clock tick on the mantel-tree Till it grew irksome to me, and I grudged The careless pleasures of the kitchen maids Whose distant laughter shocked the lapsing hours. _Mary_. But did your husband never tell the cause Of this neglect? _Grace_. Never an honest word. He told me he was writing; and, at home, Sat down with heart absorbed and absent look. I was offended, and upbraided him. I knew he had a secret, and that from The center of its closely coiling folds A cunning serpent's head, with forked tongue, Swayed with a double story--one for me, And one for whom I knew not--whom he knew. His words, which wandered first as carelessly As the free footsteps of a boy, were trained To the stern paces of a sentinel Guarding a prison door, and never tripped With a suggestion. I despaired at last Of winning what I sought by wiles and prayers; So, through long nights of sleeplessness I lay, And held my ear beside his silent lips-- An eager cup--ready to catch the gush Of the pent waters, if a dream-swung rod Should smite his bosom. It was all in vain. And thus months passed away, and all the while Another heart was beating under mine. May Heaven forgive me! but I grieved the charms The unborn thing was stealing, for I felt That in my insufficiency of power I had no charm to lose. _Mary_. And he did not, In this most tender trial of your heart, Turn in relenting?--give you sympathy? _Grace_. No--yes! Perhaps he pitied me, and that Indeed was very pitiful; for what Has love to do with pity? When a wife Has sunk so hopelessly in the regard Of him she loves that he can pity her,-- Has sunk so low that she may only share The tribute which a mute humanity Bestows on those whom Providence has struck With helpless poverty, or foul disease; She may he pitied, both by earth and heaven, Because he pities her. A pitied child That begs its bread from door to door is blest; A wife who begs for love and confidence, And gets but alms from pity, is accurst. Well, time passed on; and rumor came at last To tell the story of my husband's shame And my dishonor. He was seen at night, Walking in lonely streets with one whose eyes Were blacker than the night,--whose little hand Was clinging to his arm. Both were absorbed In the half-whispered converse of the time; And both, as if accustomed to the path, Turned down an alley, climbed a flight of steps, Entered a door, and closed it after them-- A door of adamant 'twixt hope and me. I had my secret; and I kept it, too. I knew his haunt, and it was watched for me, Till doubt and prayers for doubt,--pale flowers I nourished with my tears--were crushed By the relentless hand of Certainty. Oh, Mary! Mary! Those were fearful days. My wrongs and all their shameful history Were opened to me daily, leaf by leaf, Though he had only shown their title-page: That page was his; the rest were in my heart. I knew that he had left my home for hers; I knew his nightly labor was to feed Other than me;--that he was loaded down With cares that were the price of sinful love. _Mary_. Grace, in your heart do you believe all this? I fear--I know--you do your husband wrong. He is not competent for treachery. He is too good, too noble, to desert The woman whom he only loves too well. You love him not! _Grace_. I love him not? Alas! I am more angry with myself than him That, spite his falsehood to his marriage vows, And spite my hate, I love the traitor still. I love him not? Why am I here to-night-- Here where my girlhood's withered hopes are strewn Through every room for him to trample on-- But in my pride to show him to you all, With the dear child that publishes a love That blessed me once, e'en if it curse me now? You know I do my husband wrong! You think, Because he can talk smoothly, and befool A simple ear with pious sophistries, He must be e'en the saintly man he seems. We heard him talk to-night; it was done well. I saw the triumph of his argument, And I was proud, though full of spite the while. His stuff was meant for me; and, with intent For selfish purpose, or in irony, He tossed me bitterness, and called it sweet. My heart rebelled, and now you know the cause Of my harsh words to him. _Mary_. 'Tis very sad! Oh very--very sad! Pray you go on! Who is this woman? _Grace_. I have never learned. I only know she stole my husband's heart, And made me very wretched. I suppose That at the time my little babe was born, She went away; for David was at home For many days. That pain was bliss to me-- I need no argument to teach me that-- Which caused neglect of her, and gave offense. Since then, he has not where to go from me; And, loving well his child, he stays at home. So he lugs round his secret, and I mine. I call him husband; and he calls me wife; And I, who once was like an April day, That finds quick tears in every cloud, have steeled My heart against my fate, and now am calm. I will live on; and though these simple folk Who call me sister understand me not, It matters little. There is one who does; And he shall have no liberty of love By any word of mine. 'Tis woman's lot, And man's most weak and wicked wantonness. Mine is like other husbands, I suppose; No worse--no better. _Mary_. Ask you sympathy Of such as I? I cannot give it you, For you have shut me from the privilege. _Grace_. I asked it once; you gave me unbelief. I had no choice but to grow hard again. 'Tis my misfortune and my misery That every hand whose friendly ministry My poor heart craves, is held--withheld--by him; And I must freeze that I may stand alone. _Mary_. And so, because one man is false, or you Imagine him to be, all men are false; Do I speak rightly? _Grace_. Have it your own way. Men fit to love, and fitted to be loved, Are prone to falsehood. I will not gainsay The common virtue of the common herd. I prize it as I do the goodish men Who hold the goodish stuff, and know it not. These serve to fill an easy-going world, And that to clothe it with complacency. _Mary_. I had not thought misanthropy like this Could lodge with you; so I must e'en confess A tale which never passed my lips before, Nor sent its flush to any cheek but mine. In this, I'll prove my friendship, if I lose The friendship which demands the sacrifice. I have come back, a worse than widowed wife; Yet I went out with dream as bright as yours,-- Nay, brighter,--for the birds were singing then, And apple-blossoms drifted on the ground Where snow-flakes fell and flew when you were wed. The skies were soft; the roses budded full; The meads and swelling uplands fresh and green;-- The very atmosphere was full of love. It was no girlish carelessness of heart That kept my eyes from tears, as I went forth From this dear shelter of the orphan child. I felt that God was smiling on my lot, And made the airs his angels to convey To every sense and sensibility The message of his favor. Every sound Was music to me; every sight was peace; And breathing was the drinking of perfume. I said, content, and full of gratitude, "This is as God would have it; and he speaks These pleasant languages to tell me so." But I had no such honeymoon as yours. A few brief days of happiness, and then The dream was over. I had married one Who was the sport of vagrant impulses. We had not been a fortnight wed, when he Came home to me with brandy in his brain-- A maudlin fool--for love like mine to hide As if he were an unclean beast. O Grace! I cannot paint the horrors of that night. My heart, till then serene, and safely kept In Trust's strong citadel, quaked all night long, As tower and bastion fell before the rush Of fierce convictions; and the tumbling walls Boomed with dull throbs of ruin through my brain. And there were palaces that leaned on this-- Castles of air, in long and glittering lines, Which melted into air, and pierced the blue That marks the star-strewn vault of heaven;--all fell, With a faint crash like that which scares the soul When dissolution shivers through a dream Smitten by nightmare,--fell and faded all To utter nothingness; and when the morn Flamed up the East, and with its crimson wings Brushed out the paling stars that all the night In silent, slow procession, one by one, Had gazed upon me through the open sash, And passed along, it found me desolate. The stupid dreamer at my side awoke, And with such helpless anguish as they feel Who know that they are weak as well as vile. I saw, through all his forward promises, Excuses, prayers, and pledges that were oaths (What he, poor boaster, thought I could not see), That he was shorn of will, and that his heart Was as defenseless as a little child's;-- That underneath his fair good fellowship He was debauched, and dead in love with sin;-- That love of me had made him what I loved,-- That I could only hold him till the wave Of some overwhelming impulse should sweep in, To lift his feet and bear him from my arms. I felt that morn, when he went trembling forth, With bloodshot eyes and forehead hot with woe, That henceforth strife would be 'twixt Hell and me-- The odds against me--for my husband's soul. _Grace_. Poor dove! Poor Mary! Have you suffered thus? You had not even pride to keep you up. Were he my husband, I had left him then-- The ingrate! _Mary_. Not if you had loved as I; Yet what you know is but a bitter drop Of the full cup of gall that I have drained. Had he left me unstained,--had I rebelled Against the influence by which he sought To bring me to a compromise with him,-- To make my shrinking soul meet his half way, It had been better; but he had an art, When appetite or passion moved in him, That clothed his sins with fair apologies, And smoothed the wrinkles of a haggard guilt With the good-natured hand of charity. He knew he was a fool, he said, and said again; But human nature would be what it was, And life had never zest enough to bear Too much dilution; those who work like slaves Must have their days of frolic and of fun. He doubted whether God would punish sin; God was, in fact, too good to punish sin; For sin itself was a compounded thing, With weakness for its prime ingredient. And thus he fooled a heart that loved him well; And it went toward his heart by slow degrees, Till Virtue seemed a frigid anchorite, And Vice, a jolly fellow--bad enough, But not so bad as Christian people think. This was the cunning work of months--nay, years; And, meantime, Edward sank from bad to worse. But he had conquered. Wine was on his board, Without my protest--with a glass for me! His boon companions came and went, and made My home their rendezvous with my consent. The doughty oath that shocked my ears at first, The doubtful jest that meant, or might not mean, That which should set a woman's brow aflame, Became at last (oh, shame of womanhood!) A thing to frown at with a covert smile; Anything to smile at with a decent frown; A thing to steal a grace from, as I feigned The innocence of deaf unconsciousness. And I became a jester. I could jest In a wild way on sacred things and themes; And I have thought that in his better moods My husband shrank with horror from the work Which he had wrought in me. I do not know If, during all these downward-tending years, Edward kept well his faith with me. I know He used to tell me, in his boastful way, How he had broke the hearts of pretty maids. And that if he were single--well-a-day! The time was past for thinking upon that! And I had heart to toss the badinage Back in his teeth, with pay of kindred coin; And tell him lies to stir his bestial mirth; And make my boast of conquests; and pretend That the true heart I had bestowed on him Had flown, and left him but an empty hand. I had some days of pain and penitence. I saw where all must end. I saw, too well, Edward was growing idle,--that his form Was gathering disgustful corpulence,-- That he was going down, and dragging me To shame and ruin, beggary and death. But judgment came, and overshadowed us; And one quick bolt shot from the awful cloud Severed the tie that bound two worthless lives. What God hath joined together, God may part:-- Grace, have you thought of that? _Grace_. You scare me, Mary! Nay! Do not turn on me with such a look! Its dread suggestion gives my heart a pang That stops its painful beating. _Mary_. Let it pass! One morn we woke with the first flush of light, Our windows jarring with the cannonade That ushered in the nation's festal day. The village streets were full of men and boys, And resonant with rattling mimicry Of the black-throated monsters on the hill,-- A crashing, crepitating war of fire,-- And as we listened to the fitful feud, Dull detonations came from far away, Pulsing along the fretted atmosphere, To tell that in the ruder villages The day had noisy greeting, as in ours. I know not why it was, but then, and there, I felt a sinking sadness, passing tears-- A dark foreboding I could not dissolve, Nor drive away. But when, next morn, I woke In the sweet stillness of the Sabbath day, And found myself alone, I knew that hearts Which once have been God's temple, and in which Something divine still lingers, feel the throb Along the lines that bind them to the Throne When judgment issues; and, though dumb and blind, Shudder and faint with prophecies of ill. How--by what cause--calamity should come, I could not guess; that it was imminent Seemed just as certain as the morning's dawn. We were to have a gala day, indeed. There were to be processions and parades; A great oration in a mammoth tent, With dinner following, and toast and speech By all the wordy magnates of the town; A grand balloon ascension afterwards; And, in the evening, fireworks on the hill. I knew that drink would flow from morn till night In a wild maelstrom, circling slow around The village rim, in bright careering waves, But growing turbulent, and changed to ink Around the village center, till, at last, The whirling, gurgling vortex would engulf A maddened multitude in drunkenness. And this was in my thought (the while my heart Was palpitating with its nameless fear), As, wrapped in vaguest dreams, and purposeless, I laced my shoe and gazed upon the sky. Then strange determination stirred in me; And, turning sharply on my chair, I said, "Edward, where'er you go to-day, I go!" If I had smitten him upon the face, It had not tingled with a hotter flame. He turned upon me with a look of hate-- A something worse than anger--and, with oaths, Raved like a fiend, and cursed me for a fool. But I was firm; he could not shake my will; So, through the morning, until afternoon, He stayed at home, and drank and drank again, Watching the clock, and pacing up and down, Until, at length, he came and sat by me, To try his hackneyed tricks of blandishment. He had not meant, he said, to give offense; But women in a crowd were out of place. He wished to see the aeronauts embark, And meet some friends; but there would be a throng Of boys and drunken boors around the car, And I should not enjoy it; more than this, The rise would be a finer spectacle At home than on the ground. I gave assent, And he went out. Of course, I followed him; For I had learned to read him, and I knew There was some precious scheme of sin on foot. The crowd was heavy, and his form was lost Quick as it touched the mass; but I pressed on, Wild shouts and laughter punishing my ears, Till I could see the bloated, breathing cone, As if it were some monster of the sky Caught by a net and fastened to the earth-- A butt for jeers to all the merry mob. But I was distant still; and if a man In mad impatience tore a passage from The crowd that pressed upon him, or a girl, Frightened or fainting, was allowed escape, I slid like water to the vacant space, And thus, by deftly won advances, gained The stand I coveted. We waited long; And as the curious gazers stood and talked About the diverse currents of the air, And wondered where the daring voyagers Would find a landing-place, a young man said, In words intended for a spicy jest, A man and woman living in the town Had taken passage overland for hell! Then at a distance rose a scattering shout That fixed the vision of the multitude, Standing on eager tiptoe, and afar I saw the crowd give way, and make a path For the pale heroes of the crazy hour. Hats were tossed wildly as they struggled on, And the gap closed behind them, till, at length, They stood within the ring. Oh, damning sight! The woman was a painted courtezan; The man, my husband! I was dumb as death. My teeth were clenched together like a vise, And every heavy heart-throb was a chill. But there I stood, and saw the shame go on. They took their seats; the signal gun was fired; The cords were loosed; and then the billowy bulk Shot toward the zenith! Never bent the sky With a more cloudless depth of blue than then; And, as they rose, I saw his faithless arm Slide o'er her shoulder, and her dizzy head Drop on his breast. Then I became insane. I felt that I was struggling with a dream-- A horrid phantasm I could not shake off. The hollow sky was swinging like a bell; The silken monster swinging like its tongue; And as it reeled from side to side, the roar Of voices round me rang, and rang again, Tolling the dreadful knell of my despair. At the last moment I could trace his form, Edward leaned over from his giddy seat, And tossed out something on the air. I saw The little missive fluttering slowly down, And stretched my hand to catch it, for I knew, Or thought I knew, that it would come to me. And it did come to me--as if it slid Upon the cord that bound my heart to his-- Strained to its utmost tension--snapped at last. I marked it as it fell. It was a rose. I grasped it madly as it struck my hand, And buried all its thorns within my palm; But the fierce pain released my prisoned voice, And, with a shriek, I staggered, swooned, and fell. That night was brushed from life. A passing friend Directed those who bore me rudely off; And I was carried to my home, and laid Entranced upon my bed. The Sabbath morn That followed all this din and devilry Swung noiseless wide its doors of yellow light, And in the hallowed stillness I awoke. My heart was still; I could not stir a hand. I thought that I was dying, or was dead.-- That I had slipped through smooth unconsciousness Into the everlasting silences. I could not speak; but winning strength, at last, I turned my eyes to seek for Edward's face, And saw an unpressed pillow. He was gone! I was oppressed with awful sense of loss; And, as a mother, by a turbid sea That has engulfed her fairest child, sits down And moans over the waters, and looks out With curious despair upon the waves, Until she marks a lock of floating hair, And by its threads of gold draws slowly in, And clasps and presses to her frenzied breast The form it has no power to warm again, So I, beside the sea of memory, Lay feebly moaning, yearning for a clew By which to reach my own extinguished life. It came. A burning pain shot through my palm, And thorns awoke what thorns had put to sleep. It all came back to me--the roar, the rush, The upturned faces, the insane hurrahs, The skyward-shooting spectacle, the shame-- And then I swooned again. _Grace_. But was he killed? Did his foolhardy venture end in wreck? Or did it end in something worse than wreck? Surely, he came again! _Mary_. To me, no more. He had his reasons, and I knew them soon; But, first, the fire enkindled in my brain Burnt through long weeks of fever--burnt my frame Until it lay upon the sheet as white As the pale ashes of a wasted coal. Then, when strength came to me, and I could sit, Braced by the double pillows that were mine, A kind friend took my hand, and told me all. The day that Edward left me was the last He could have been my husband; for the next Disclosed his infamy and my disgrace. He was a thief, and had been one, for years,-- Defrauding those whose gold he held in trust; And he was ruined--ruined utterly. The very bed I sat on was not his, Nor mine, except by tender charity. A guilty secret menacing behind, A guilty passion burning in his heart, And, by his side, a guilty paramour, He seized upon this reckless whim, and fled From those he knew would curse him ere he slept. My cup was filled with wormwood; and it grew Bitter and still more bitter, day by day, Changing from shame and hate, to stern revenge. Life had no more for me. My home was lost; My heart unfitted to return to this; And, reckless of the future, I went forth-- A woman stricken, maddened, desperate. I sought the city with as sure a scent As vultures track a carcass through the air. I knew him there, delivered up to sin, And longed to taunt him with his infamy,-- To haunt his haunts; to sting his perjured soul With sharp reproaches; and to scare his eyes-- With visions of his work upon my face. But God had other means than my revenge To humble him, and other thought for me. I saw him only once; we did not meet; There was a street between us; yet it seemed Wide as the unbridged gulf that yawns between The rich man and the beggar. 'Twas at dawn. I had arisen from the sleepless bed Which my scant means had purchased, and gone forth To taste the air, and cool my burning brow. I wandered on, not knowing where I went, Nor caring whither. There were few astir; The market wagons lumbered slowly in, Piled high with carcasses of slaughtered lambs, Baskets of unhusked corn, and mint, and all The fresh, green things that grow in country fields. I read the signs--the long and curious names-- And wondered who invented them, and if Their owners knew how very strange they were. A corps of weary firemen met me once, Late home from service, with their gaudy car, And loud with careless curses. Then I stopped, And chatted with a frowsy-headed girl Who knelt among her draggled skirts, and scrubbed The heel-worn doorsteps of a faded house. Then, as I left her, and resumed my walk, I turned my eyes across the street, and saw A sight which stopped my feet, my breath, my heart. It was my husband. Oh, how sadly changed! His bloodshot eyes stared from an anxious face; His hat was battered, and his clothes were torn And splashed with mud. His poisoned frame Had shrunk away, until his garments hung In folds about him. Then I knew it all: His life had been a measureless debauch Since his most shameless flight; and in his eye, Eager and strained, and peering down the stairs That tumbled to the anterooms of hell, I saw the thirst which only death can quench. He did not raise his eyes; I did not speak; There was no work for me to do on him; And when, at last, he tottered down the steps Of a dark gin-shop, I was satisfied, And half relentingly retraced my way. I cannot tell the story of the months That followed this. I toiled and toiled for bread, And for the shelter of one stingy room. Temptation, which the hand of poverty Bears oft seductively to woman's lips, To me came not. I hated men like beasts; Their flattering words, and wicked, wanton leers, Sickened me with ineffable disgust. At length there came a change. One warm Spring eve, As I sat idly dreaming of the past, And questioning the future, my quick ear Caught sound of feet upon the creaking stairs, And a light rap delivered at my door. I said, "Come in!" with half-defiant voice, Although I longed to see a human face, And needed labor for my idle hands. But when the door was opened, and there stood A man before me, with an eye as pure And brow as fair as any little child's, Matched with a form and carriage which combined All manly beauty, dignity, and grace, A quick blush overwhelmed my pallid cheeks, And, ere I knew, and by no act of will, I rose and gave him gentle courtesy. He took a seat, and spoke with pleasant voice Of many pleasant things--the pleasant sky, The stars, the opening foliage in the park; And then he came to business. He would have A piece of exquisite embroidery; My hand was cunning if report were true; Would it oblige him? It would do, I said, That which it could to satisfy his wish; And when he took the delicate pattern out, And spread the dainty fabric on his knees, I knew he had a wife. He went away With kind "Good night," and said that, with my leave, He'd call and watch the progress of the work. I marked his careful steps adown the stairs, And then, his brisk, firm tread upon the pave, Till in the dull roar of the distant streets It mingled and was lost. Then I was lost,-- Lost in a wild, wide-ranging reverie-- From which I roused not till the midnight hush Was broken by the toll from twenty towers. This is a man, I said; a man in truth; My room has known the presence of a man, And it has gathered dignity from him. I felt my being flooded with new life. My heart was warm; my poor, sore-footed thoughts Sprang up full fledged through ether; and I felt Like the sick woman who had touched the hem Of Jesus' garment, when through all her veins Leaped the swift tides of youth. He had a wife! Why, to a wrecked, forsaken thing like me Did that thought bring a pang? I did not know; But, truth to tell, it gave me stinging pain. If he was noble, he was naught to me; If he was great, it only made me less; If he loved truly, I was not enriched. So, in my selfishness, I almost cursed The unknown woman, thought for whom had brought Her loving husband to me. What was I To him? Naught but a poor unfortunate, Picking her bread up at a needle's point. He'll come and criticise my handiwork, I said, and when it is at last complete, He'll draw his purse and give me so much gold; And then, forgetting me for ever, go And gather fragrant kisses for the boon, From lips that do not know their privilege. I could be nothing but the medium Through which his love should pass to reach its shrine; The glass through which the sun's electric beams Kindles the rose's heart, and still remains Chill and serene itself--without reward! Then came to me the thought of my great wrong. A man had spoiled my heart, degraded me; A wanton woman had defrauded me; I would get reparation how I could! He must be something to me--I to him! All men, however good, are weak, I thought; And if I can arrest no beam of love By right of nature or by leave of law, I'll stain the glass! And the last words I said, As I lay down upon my bed to dream, Were those four words of sin: "I'll stain the glass!" _Grace_. Mary, I cannot hear you more; your tale, So bitter and so passing pitiful I have forgotten tears, and feel my eyes Burn dry and hot with looking at your face, Now gathers blackness, and grows horrible. _Mary_. Nay, you must hear me out; I cannot pause; And have no worse to say than I have said-- Thank God, and him who put away my toils! He came, and came again; and every charm God had bestowed on me, or art could frame, I used with keenest ingenuities To fascinate the sensuous element O'er which, mistrusted, and but half asleep, His conscience and propriety stood guard. I told with tears the story of my woe; He listened to me with a thoughtful face, And sadly sighed; and thus I won his ruth, And then I told him how my life was lost;-- How earth had nothing more for me but pain; Not e'en a friend. At this, he took my hand, And said, out of his nobleness of heart, That I should have an honest friend in him; On which I bowed my head upon his arm, And wept again, as if my heart would break With the full pressure of his gratitude. He put me gently off, and read my face: I stood before him hopeless, helpless, his! His swift soul gathered what I meant it should. He sighed and trembled; then he crossed the floor, And gazed with eye abstracted on the sky; Then came and looked at me; then turned, As if affrighted at his springing thoughts, And, with abruptest movement, left the room. This time he took with him the broidered thing That I had wrought for him; and when I oped The little purse that he rewarded me, I found full golden payment five times told. Given for pity? thought I,--that alone? Is manly pity so munificent? Pity has mixtures that it knows not of! It was a cruel triumph, and I speak Of it with utter penitence and shame. I knew that he would come again; I knew His feet would bring him, though his soul rebelled; I knew that cheated heart of his would toy With the seductive chains that gave it thrall, And strive to reconcile its perjury With its own conscience of the better way, By fabrication of apologies It knew were false. And he did come again; Confessing a strange interest in me, And doing for me many kindly deeds. I knew the nature of the sympathy That drew him to my side, better than he; Though I could see that solemn change in him Which every face will wear, when Heaven and Hell Are struggling in the heart for mastery. He was unhappy; every sudden sound Startled his apprehensions; from his heart Rose heavy suspirations, charged with prayer, Desire, and deprecation, and remorse;-- Sighs like volcanic breathings--sighs that scorched His parching lips and spread his face with ashes,-- Sighs born in such convulsions of the soul That his strong frame quaked like Vesuvius, Burdened with restless lava. Day by day I marked this dalliance with sinful thought, Without a throb of pity in my heart. I took his gifts, which brought immunity From toil and care, as if they were my right. Day after day I saw my power increase, Until that noble spirit was a slave-- A craven, helpless, self-suspected slave. But this was not to last--thank God and him! One night he came, and there had been a change. My hand was kindly taken, but not held In the way wonted. He was self-possessed; The powers of darkness and his Christian heart Had had a struggle--his the victory; And on his manly brow the benison Of a majestic peace had been imposed. Was I to lose the guerdon of my guile? He was my all, and by the only means Left to a helpless, reckless thing, like me: My heart made pledge the strife should be renewed. I took no notice of his altered mood, But strove, by all the tricks of tenderness, To fan to life again the drooping flame Within his heart;--with what success, at last, The sequel shall reveal. Strange fire came down Responsive to my call, and the quick flash That shriveled resolution, vanquished will, And with a blood-red flame consumed the crown Of peace upon his brow, taught him how weak-- How miserably imbecile--he had become, Tampering with temptation. Such a groan, Wrung from such agony, as then he breathed, Pray Heaven my ears may never hear again! He smote his forehead with his rigid palm, And sank, as if the blow had stunned him, to his knees, And there, with face pressed hard upon his hands Gave utterance to frenzied sobs and prayers-- The wild articulations of despair. I was confounded. He--a man--thought I, Blind with remorse by simple look at sin! And I--a woman--in the devil's hands, Luring him Hellward with no blush of shame! The thought came swift from God, and pierced my heart, Like a barbed arrow; and it quivered there Through whiles of tumult--quivered--and was fast. Thus, while I stood and marked his kneeling form, Still shocked by deep convulsions, such a light Illumed my soul, and flooded all the room, That, without thought, I said, "The Lord is here!" Then straight my spirit heard these wondrous words: "Tempted in all points like ourselves, was He-- Tempted, but sinless." Oh, what majesty Of meaning did those precious words convey! 'Twas through temptation, thought I, that the Lord-- The mediator between God and men-- Reached down the hand of sympathetic love To meet the grasp of lost Humanity; And this man, kneeling, has the Lord in him, And comes to mediate 'twixt Christ and me, "Tempted, but sinless;"--one hand grasping mine, The other Christ's. Why had he suffered thus? Why had his heart been led far down to mine, To beat in sinful sympathy with mine, But that my heart should cling to his and him, And follow his withdrawal to the heights From whence he had descended? Then I learned Why Christ was tempted; and, as broad and full, The heart of the great secret was revealed, And I perceived God's dealings with my soul, I knelt beside the tortured man and wept, And cried to Heaven for mercy. As I prayed, My soul cast off its shameful enterprise; And when it fell, I saw my godless self-- My own degraded, tainted, guilty heart, Which it had hidden from me. Oh, the pang-- The poignant throe of uttermost despair-- That followed the discovery! I felt That I was lost beyond the grace of God; And my heart turned with instinct sure and swift To the strong struggler, praying at my side, And begged his succor and his prayers. I felt That he must lead me up to where the hand Of Jesus could lay hold on me, or I was doomed. Temptation's spell was past. He took my hand. And, as he prayed that we might be forgiven, And pledged our future loyalty to God And His white throne within our hearts, I gave Responses to each promise; then I crowned His closing utterance with such Amen As weak hearts, conscious of their weakness, give When, bowed to dust, and clinging to the robes Of outraged mercy, they devote themselves Once and for ever to the pitying Christ. Then we arose and stood upon our feet. He gave me no reproaches, but with voice Attempered to his altered mood, confessed His own blameworthiness, and pressed the prayer That I would pardon him, as he believed That God had pardoned; but my heart was full,-- So full of its sore sense of wrong to him, Of the deep guilt of shameful purposes And treachery to worthy womanhood, That I could not repeat his Christian words, Asking forbearance on my own behalf. He sat before me for a golden hour; And gave me counsel and encouragement, Till, like broad gates, the possibilities Of a serener and a higher life Were thrown wide open to my eager feet, And I resolved that I would enter in, And, with God's gracious help, go no more out. For weeks he watched me with stern carefulness, Nourished my resolution, prayed with me, And led me, step by step, to higher ground, Till, gathering impulse in the upward walk, And strength in purer air, and keener sight In the sweet light that dawned upon my soul, I grasped the arm of Jesus, and was safe. And now, when I look back upon my life, It seems as if that noble man were sent To give me rescue from the pit of death. But from his distant height he could not reach And act upon my soul; so Heaven allowed Temptation's ladder 'twixt his soul and mine That they might meet and yield his mission thrift. I doubt not in my grateful soul to-night That had he stayed within his higher world, And tried to call me to him, I had spurned Alike his mission and his ministry. That he was tempted, was at once my sin And my salvation. That he sinned in thought, And fiercely wrestled with temptation, won For his own spirit that humility Which God had sought to clothe him with in vain, By other measures, and that strength which springs From a great conflict and a victory. We talked of this; and on our bended knees We blessed the Great Dispenser for the means By which we both had learned our sinful selves, And found the way to a diviner life. So, with my chastened heart and life, I come Back to my home, to live--perhaps to die. God's love has been in all this discipline; God's love has used those awful sins of mine To make me good and happy. I can mourn Over my husband; I can pray for him, Nay, I forgive him; for I know the power With which temptation comes to stronger men. I know the power with which it came to me. And now, dear Grace, my story is complete. You have received it with dumb wonderment, And it has been too long. Tell me what thought Stirs in your face, and waits for utterance. _Grace_. That I have suffered little--trusted less; That I have failed in charity, and been Unjust to all men--specially to one. I did not think there lived a man on earth Who had such virtue as this friend of yours,-- Weak, and yet strong. 'Twas but humanity To give him pity in his awful strife; To stint the meed of reverence and praise For his triumphant conquest of himself, Were infamy. I love and honor him; And if I knew my husband were as strong, I could fall down before, and worship him; I could fall down, and wet his feet with tears-- Tears penitential for the grievous wrong That I have done him. But alas! alas! The thought comes back again. O God in heaven! Help me with patience to await the hour When the great purpose of thy discipline Shall be revealed, and, like this chastened one, I can behold it, and be satisfied. _Mary_. Hark! They are calling us below, I think. We must go down. We'll talk of this again When we have leisure. Kiss the little one, And thank his weary brain it sleeps so well. [_They descend_.] SECOND EPISODE. * * * * * LOCALITY--_The Kitchen_. PRESENT--JOSEPH, SAMUEL, REBEKAH, _and other_ CHILDREN. * * * * * THE QUESTION ILLUSTRATED BY STORY. _Joseph_. Have we not had "Button-Button" enough, And "Forfeits," and all such silly stuff? _Samuel_. Well, we were playing "Blind-Man's-Buff" Until you fell, and rose in a huff, And declared the game was too rude and rough. Poor boy! What a pity he isn't tough! _All_. Ha! ha! ha! what a pretty boy! Papa's delight, and mamma's joy! Wouldn't he like to go to bed, And have a cabbage-leaf on his head? _Joseph_. Laugh, if you like to! Laugh till you're gray; But I guess you'd laugh another way If you'd hit your toe, and fallen like me, And cut a bloody gash in your knee, And bumped your nose and bruised your shin, Tumbling over the rolling-pin That rolled to the floor in the awful din That followed the fall of the row of tin That stood upon the dresser. _Samuel_. Guess again--dear little guesser! You wouldn't catch this boy lopping his wing, Or whining over anything. So stir your stumps, Forget your bumps, Get out of your dumps, And up and at it again; For the clock is striking ten, And Ruth will come pretty soon and say, "Go to your beds You sleepy heads!" So--quick! What shall we play? _Rebekah_. I wouldn't play any more, For Joseph is tired and sore With his fall upon the floor. _All_. Then he shall tell a story. _Joseph_. About old Mother Morey? _All_. No! Tell us another. _Joseph_. About my brother? _Rebekah_. Now, Joseph, you shall be good, And do as you'd be done by; We didn't mean to be rude When you fell and began to cry: We wanted to make you forget your pain; But it frets you, and we'll not laugh again. _Joseph_. Well, if you'll all sit still, And not be frisking about, Nor utter a whisper till You've heard my story out, I'll tell you a tale as weird As ever you heard in your lives, Of a man with a long blue beard, And the way he treated his wives. _All_. Oh, that will be nice! We'll be still as mice. _Joseph_. [_Relates the old story of Blue Beard, and_ DAVID, _and_ RUTH _enter from the cellar unperceived_.] Centuries since there flourished a man, (A cruel old Tartar as rich as the Khan), Whose castle was built on a splendid plan, With gardens and groves and plantations; But his shaggy beard was as blue as the sky, And he lived alone, for his neighbors were shy. And had heard hard stories, by the by, About his domestic relations. Just on the opposite side of the plain A widow abode, with her daughters twain; And one of them--neither cross nor vain-- Was a beautiful little treasure; So he sent them an invitation to tea, And having a natural wish to see His wonderful castle and gardens, all three Said they'd do themselves the pleasure. As soon as there happened a pleasant day, They dressed themselves in a sumptuous way, And rode to the castle as proud and gay As silks and jewels could make them; And they were received in the finest style, And saw everything that was worth their while, In the halls of Blue Beard's grand old pile, Where he was so kind as to take them. The ladies were all enchanted quite; For they found old Blue Beard so polite That they did not suffer at all from fright, And frequently called thereafter; Then he offered to marry the younger one, And as she was willing the thing was done, And celebrated by all the ton With feasting and with laughter. As kind a husband as ever was seen Was Blue Beard then, for a month, I ween; And she was as proud as any queen, And as happy as she could be, too; But her husband called her to him one day, And said, "My dear, I am going away; It will not be long that I shall stay; There is business for me to see to. "The keys of my castle I leave with you; But if you value my love, be true, And forbear to enter the Chamber of Blue! Farewell, Fatima! Remember!" Fatima promised him; then she ran To visit the rooms with her sister Ann; But when she had finished the tour, she began To think about the Blue Chamber. Well, the woman was curiously inclined, So she left her sister and prudence behind, (With a little excuse) and started to find The mystery forbidden. She paused at the door;--all was still as night! She opened it: then through the dim, blue light There blistered her vision the horrible sight That was in that chamber hidden. The room was gloomy and damp and wide, And the floor was red with the bloody tide From headless women, laid side by side, The wives of her lord and master! Frightened and fainting, she dropped the key, But seized it and lifted it quickly; then she Hurried as swiftly as she could flee From the scene of the disaster. She tried to forget the terrible dead, But shrieked when she saw that the key was red, And sickened and shook with an awful dread When she heard Blue Beard was coming. He did not appear to notice her pain; But he took his keys, and seeing the stain, He stopped in the middle of the refrain That he had been quietly humming. "Mighty well, madam!" said he, "mighty well! What does this little bloodstain tell? You've broken your promise; prepare to dwell With the wives I've had before you! You've broken your promise, and you shall die." Then Fatima, supposing her death was nigh, Fell on her knees and began to cry, "Have mercy, I implore you!" "No!" shouted Blue Beard, drawing his sword; "You shall die this very minute," he roared. "Grant me time to prepare to meet my Lord," The terrified woman entreated. "Only ten minutes," he roared again; And holding his watch by its great gold chain, He marked on the dial the fatal ten, And retired till they were completed. "Sister, oh, sister, fly up to the tower! Look for release from this murderer's power! Our brothers should be here this very hour;-- Speak! Does there come assistance?" "No. I see nothing but sheep on the hill." "Look again, sister!" "I'm looking still, But naught can I see, whether good or ill, Save a flurry of dust in the distance." "Time's up!" shouted Blue Beard, out from his room; "This moment shall witness your terrible doom, And give you a dwelling within the room Whose secrets you have invaded." "Comes there no help for my terrible need?" "There are horsemen twain riding hither with speed." "Oh! tell them to ride very fast indeed, Or I must meet death unaided." "Time's fully up! Now have done with your prayer," Shouted Blue Beard, swinging his sword on the stair; Then he entered, and grasping her beautiful hair, Swung his glittering weapon around him; But a loud knock rang at the castle gate, And Fatima was saved from her horrible fate, For, shocked with surprise, he paused too late; And then the two soldiers found him. They were her brothers, and quick as they knew What the fiend was doing, their swords they drew, And attacked him fiercely, and ran him through, So that soon he was mortally wounded. With a wild remorse was his conscience filled When he thought of the hapless wives he had killed; But quickly the last of his blood was spilled, And his dying groan was sounded. As soon as Fatima recovered from fright, She embraced her brothers with great delight; And they were as glad and as grateful quite As she was glad and grateful. Then they all went out from that scene of pain, And sought in quietude to regain Their minds, which had come to be quite insane, In a place so horrid and hateful. 'Twas a private funeral Blue Beard had; For the people knew he was very bad, And, though they said nothing, they all were glad For the fall of the evil-doer; But Fatima first ordered some graves to be made, And there the unfortunate ladies were laid, And after some painful months, with the aid Of her friends, her spirits came to her. Then she cheered the hearts of the suffering poor, And an acre of land around each door And a cow and a couple of sheep, or more, To her tenantry she granted. So all of them had enough to eat, And their love for her was so complete They would kiss the dust from her little feet, Or do anything she wanted. _Samuel_. Capital! Capital! Wasn't it good! I should like to have been her brother; If I had been one, you may guess there would Have been little work for the other. I'd have run him right through the heart, just so; And cut off his head at a single blow, And killed him so quickly he'd never know What it was that struck him, wouldn't I, Joe? _Joseph_. You are very brave with your bragging tongue; But if you had been there, you'd have sung A very different tune Poor Blue Beard! He would have been afraid Of a little boy with a penknife blade, Or a tiny pewter spoon! _Samuel_. It makes no difference what you say (Pretty little boy, afraid to play!) But it served him rightly any way, And gave him just his due. And wasn't it good that his little wife Should live in his castle the rest of her life, And have all his money, too? _Rebekah_. I'm thinking of the ladies who Were lying in the Chamber Blue, With all their small necks cut in two. I see them lying, half a score, In a long row upon the floor, Their cold, white bosoms marked with gore. I know the sweet Fatima would Have put their heads on if she could; And made them live--she was so good; And washed their faces at the sink; But Blue Beard was not sane, I think: I wonder if he did not drink! For no man in his proper mind Would be so cruelly inclined As to kill ladies who were kind. _Ruth_. [_Stepping forward with_ DAVID.] Story and comment alike are bad; These little fellows are raving mad With thinking what they should do, Supposing their sunny-eyed sister had Given her heart--and her head--to a lad Like the man with the Beard of Blue. Each little jacket Is now a packet Of murderous thoughts and fancies; Oh, the gentle trade By which fiends are made With the ready aid Of these bloody old romances! And the little girl takes the woman's turn, And thinks that the old curmudgeon Who owned the castle, and rolled in gold Over fields and gardens manifold, And kept in his house a family tomb, With his bowling course and his billiard-room, Where he could preserve his precious dead, Who took the kiss of the bridal bed From one who straightway took their head, And threw it away with the pair of gloves In which he wedded his hapless loves, Had some excuse for his dudgeon. _David_. We learn by contrast to admire The beauty that enchains us; And know the object of desire By that which pains us. The roses blushing at the door, The lapse of leafy June, The singing birds, the sunny shore, The summer moon;-- All these entrance the eye or ear By innate grace and charm; But o'er them, reaching through the year, Hangs Winter's arm. To give to memory the sign, The index of our bliss, And show by contrast how divine The Summer is. From chilling blasts and stormy skies, Bare hills and icy streams, Touched into fairest life arise Our summer dreams. And virtue never seems so fair As when we lift our gaze From the red eyes and bloody hair That vice displays. We are too low,--our eyes too dark Love's height to estimate, Save as we note the sunken mark Of brutal Hate. So this ensanguined tale shall move Aright each little dreamer, And Blue Beard teach them how to love The sweet Fatima. They hate his crimes, and it is well; They pity those who died; Their sense of justice when he fell Was satisfied. No fierce revenges are the fruit Of their just indignation; They sit in judgment on the brute, And condemnation; And turn to her, his rescued wife, Her deeds so kind and human, And love the beauty of her life, And bless the woman. _Ruth_. That is the way I supposed you would twist it; And now that the boys are disposed of, And the moral so handsomely closed off, What do you say of the girl? That she missed When she thought of old Blue Beard as some do of Judas, Who with this notion essay to delude us: That when he relented, And fiercely repented, He was hardly so bad As he commonly had The fortune to be represented? _David_. The noblest pity in the earth Is that bestowed on sin. The Great Salvation had its birth That ruth within. The girl is nearest God, in fact; The boy gives crime its due; She blames the author of the act, And pities too. Thus, from this strange excess of wrong Her tender heart has caught The noblest truth, the sweetest song, The Saviour taught. So, more than measured homily, Of sage, or priest, or preacher, Is this wild tale of cruelty Love's gentle teacher. It tells of sin, its deep remorse, Its fitting recompense, And vindicates the tardy course Of Providence. These boyish bosoms are on fire With chivalric possession, And burn with just and manly ire Against oppression. The glory and the grace of life, And Love's surpassing sweetness, Rise from the monster to the wife In high completeness; And thence look down with mercy's eye On sin's accurst abuses, And seek to wrest from charity Some fair excuses. _Ruth_. These greedy mouths are watering For the fruit within the basket; And, although they will not ask it, Their jack-knives all are burning And their eager hands are yearning For the peeling and the quartering. So let us have done with our talk; For they are too tired to say their prayers, And the time is come they should walk From the story below to the story upstairs. THE THIRD MOVEMENT. LOCALITY.--_The Kitchen_. PRESENT.-DAVID, RUTH, JOHN, PETER, PRUDENCE, _and_ PATIENCE, THE QUESTION ILLUSTRATED BY THE DENOUEMENT. _John_. Since the old gentleman retired to bed, Things have gone strangely. David, here, and Ruth, Have wasted thirty minutes underground In explorations. One would think the house Covered the entrance of the Mammoth Cave, And they had lost themselves. Mary and Grace Still hold their chamber and their conference, And pour into each other's greedy ears Their stream of talk, whose low monotonous hum, Would lull to slumber any storm but this. The children are play-tired and gone to bed; And one may know by looking round the room Their place of sport was here. And we, plain folk, Who have no gift of speech, especially On themes which we and none may understand, Have yawned and nodded in the great square room, And wondered if the parted family Would ever meet again. _Ruth_. John, do you see The apples and the cider on the hearth? If I remember rightly, you discuss Such themes as these with noticeable zest And pleasant tokens of intelligence; Rather preferring scanty company To the full circle. So, sir, take the lead, And help yourself. _John_. Aye! That I will, and give Your welcome invitation currency, In the old-fashioned way. Come! Help yourselves! _David_. [_Looking out from the window_.] The ground is thick with sleet, and still it falls! The atmosphere is plunging like the sea Against the woods, and pouring on the night The roar of breakers, while the blinding spray O'erleaps the barrier, and comes drifting on In lines as level as the window-bars. What curious visions, in a night like this, Will the eye conjure from the rocks and trees And zigzag fences! I was almost sure I saw a man staggering along the road A moment since; but instantly the shape Dropped from my sight. Hark! Was not that a call-- A human voice? There's a conspiracy Between my eyes and ears to play me tricks, Else wanders there abroad some hapless soul Who needs assistance. There he stands again, And with unsteady essay strives to breast The tempest. Hush! Did you not hear that cry? Quick, brothers! We must out, and give our aid. None but a dying and despairing man Ever gave utterance to a cry like that. Nay, wait for nothing. Follow me! _Ruth_. Alas! Who can he be, who on a night like this, And on this night, of all nights in the year, Holds to the highway, homeless? _Prudence_. Probably Some neighbor, started from his home in quest Of a physician; or, more likely still, Some poor inebriate, sadly overcome By his sad keeping of the holiday. I hope they'll give him quarters in the barn; If he sleep here, there'll be no sleep for me. _Patience_. I'll not believe it was a man at all; David and Ruth are always seeing things That no one else sees. _Ruth_. I see plainly now What we shall all see plainly, soon enough. The man is dead, and they are bearing him As if he were a log. Quick! Stir the fire, And clear the settle! We must lay him there. I will bring cordials, and flannel stuffs With which to chafe him; open wide the door. [_The men enter bearing a body apparently lifeless, which they lay upon the settle.] _David_. Now do my bidding, orderly and swift; And we may save from death a fellow-man. Peter, relieve him of those frozen shoes, And wrap his feet in flannel. This way, Ruth! Administer that cordial yourself. John, you are strong, and that rough hand of yours Will chafe him well. Work with a will, I say! * * * * * My hand is on his heart, and I can feel Both warmth and motion. If we persevere, He will be saved. Work with a will, I say! * * * * * A groan? Ha! That is good. Another groan? Better and better! _Ruth_. It is down at last!-- A spoonful of the cordial. His breath Comes feebly, but is warm upon my hand. _David_. Give him brisk treatment, and persistent, too; And we shall be rewarded presently, For there is life in him. * * * * * He moves his lips And tries to speak. * * * * * And now he opes his eyes. What eyes! How wandering and wild they are! [_To the stranger_.] We are your friends. We found you overcome By the cold storm without, and brought you in. We are your friends, I say; so be at ease, And let us do according to your need. What is your wish? _Stranger_. My friends? O God in Heaven! They've cheated me! I'm in the hospital. Oh, it was cruel to deceive me thus! No, you are not my friends. What bitter pain Racks my poor body! _David_. Poor man, how he raves! Let us be silent while the warmth and wine Provoke his sluggish blood to steady flow, And each dead sense comes back to life again, O'er the same path of torture which it trod When it went out from him. He'll slumber soon, And, when he wakens, we may talk with him. _Prudence_. [Sotto voce_.] Shall I not call the family? I think Mary and Grace must both be very cold; And they know nothing of this strange affair. I'll wait them at the landing, and secure Their silent entrance. _David_. If it please you--well. [PRUDENCE _retires, and returns with_ GRACE _and_ MARY.] _Mary_. Why! We heard nothing of it--Grace and I:-- What a cadaverous hand! How blue and thin! _David_. At his first wild awaking he bemoaned His fancied durance in a hospital; And since he spoke so strangely, I have thought He may have fled a mad-house. Matters not! We've done our duty, and preserved his life. _Mary_. Shall I disturb him if I look at him? I'm strangely curious to see his face. _David_. Go. Move you carefully, and bring us word Whether he sleeps. [MARY _rises, goes to the settle, and sinks back fainting _] Why! What ails the girl? I thought her nerves were iron. Dash her brow, And bathe her temples! _Mary_. There--there,--that will do. 'Tis over now. _David_. The man is speaking. Hush! _Stranger_. Oh, what a heavenly dream! But it is past, Like all my heavenly dreams, for never more Shall dream entrance me. Death has never dreams, But everlasting wakefulness. The eye Of the quick spirit that has dropped the flesh May close no more in slumber. * * * * * I must die! This painless spell which binds my weary limbs-- This peace ineffable of soul and sense-- Is dissolution's herald, and gives note That life is conquered and the struggle o'er. But I had hoped to see her ere I died; To kneel for pardon, and implore one kiss, Pledge to my soul that in the coming heaven We should not meet as strangers, but rejoin Our hearts and lives so madly sundered here, Through fault and freak of mine. But it is well! God's will be done! * * * * * I dreamed that I had reached The old red farmhouse,--that I saw the light Flaming as brightly as in other times It flushed the kitchen windows; and that forms Were sliding to and fro in joyous life, Restless to give me welcome. Then I dreamed Of the dear woman who went out with me One sweet spring morning, in her own sweet spring, To--wretchedness and ruin. Oh, forgive-- Dear, pitying Christ, forgive this cruel wrong, And let me die! Oh let me--let me die! Mary! my Mary! Could you only know How I have suffered since I fled from you.-- How I have sorrowed through long months of pain, And prayed for pardon,--you would pardon me. _David_. [_Sotto voce_] Mary, what means this? Does he dream alone, Or are we dreaming? _Mary_. Edward, I am here! I am your Mary! Know you not my face? My husband, speak to me! Oh, speak once more! This is no dream, but kind reality. _Edward_. [_Raising himself, and looking wildly around_.] You, Mary? Is this heaven, and am I dead? I did not know you died: when did you die? And John and Peter, Grace and little Ruth Grown to a woman; are they all with you? 'Tis very strange! O pity me, my friends! For God has pitied me, and pardoned, too; Else I should not be here. Nay, you seem cold, And look on me with sad severity. Have you no pardoning word--no smile for me? _Mary_. This is not Heaven's, but Earth's reality; This is the farm-house--these your wife and friends. I hold your hand, and I forgive you all. Pray you recline! You are not strong enough To bear this yet. _Edward_. [_Sinking back_.] O toiling heart! O sick and sinking heart! Give me one hour of service, ere I die! This is no dream. This hand is precious flesh, And I am here where I have prayed to be. My God, I thank thee! Thou hast heard my prayer, And, in its answer, given me a pledge Of the acceptance of my penitence. How have I yearned for this one priceless hour! Cling to me, dearest, while my feet go down Into the silent stream; nor loose your hold, Till angels grasp me on the other side. _Mary_. Edward, you are not dying--must not die; For only now are we prepared to live. You must have quiet, and a night of rest. Be silent, if you love me! _Edward_. If I love? Ah, Mary! never till this blessed hour, When power and passion, lust and pride are gone, Have I perceived what wedded love may be;-- Unutterable fondness, soul for soul; Profoundest tenderness between two hearts Allied by nature, interlocked by life. I know that I shall die; but the low clouds That closed my mental vision have retired, And left a sky as clear and calm as Heaven. I must talk now, or never more on earth; So do not hinder me. _Mary_. [_Weeping_.] Have you a wish That I can gratify? Have you any words To send to other friends? _Edward_. I have no friends But you and these, and only wish to leave My worthless name and memory redeemed Within your hearts to pitying respect. I have no strength, and it becomes me not, To tell the story of my life of sin. I was a drunkard, thief, adulterer; And fled from shame, with shame, to find remorse. I had but few months of debauchery, Pursued with mad intent to damp or drown The flames of a consuming conscience, when My body, poisoned, crippled with disease, Refused the guilty service of my soul, And at midday fell prone upon the street. Thence I was carried to a hospital, And there I woke to that delirium Which none but drunkards this side of the pit May even dream of. But at last there came, With abstinence and kindly medicines, Release from pain and peaceful sanity; And then Christ found me, ready for His hand. I was not ready for Him when He came And asked me for my youth; and when He knocked At my heart's door in manhood's early prime With tenderest monitions, I debarred His waiting feet with promise and excuse; And when, in after years, absorbed in sin, The gentle summons swelled to thunderings That echoed through the chambers of my soul With threats of vengeance, I shut up my ears; And then He went away, and let me rush Without arrest, or protest, toward the pit. I made swift passage downward, till, at length, I had become a miserable wreck-- Pleasure behind me; only pain before; My life lived out; the fires of passion dead, Without a friend; no pride, no power, no hope; No motive in me e'en to wish for life. Then, as I said, Christ came, with stern and sad Reminders of His mercy and my guilt, And the door fell before Him. I went out, And trod the wildernesses of remorse For many days. Then from their outer verge, Tortured and blinded, I plunged madly down Into the sullen bosom of despair; But strength from Heaven was given me, and preserved Breath in my bosom, till a light streamed up Upon the other shore, and I struck out On the cold waters, struggling for my life. Fainting I reached the beach, and on my knees Climbed up the thorny hill of penitence, Till I could see, upon its distant brow, The Saviour beck'ning. Then I ran--I flew-- And grasped His outstretched hand. It lifted me High on the everlasting rock, and then It folded me, with all my griefs and tears, My sin-sick body and my guilt-stained soul, To the great heart that throbs for all the world. _Mary_. Dear Lord, I bless Thee! Thou hast heard my prayer, And saved the wanderer! Hear it once again, And lengthen out the life Thou hast redeemed! _Edward_. Mary, my wife, forbear! I may not give Response to such petition. I have prayed That I may die. When first the love Divine Received me on its bosom, and in mine I felt the springing of another life, I begged the Lord to grant me two requests: The first that I might die, and in that world Where passion sleeps, and only influence From Him and those who cluster at His throne Breathes on the soul, the germ of His great life, Bursting within me, might be perfected. The second, that your life, my love, and mine Might be once more united on the earth In holy marriage, and that mine might be Breathed out at last within your loving arms. One prayer is granted, and the other waits But a brief space for its accomplishment. _Mary_. But why this prayer to die? Still loving me,-- With the great motive for desiring life And the deep secret of enjoyment won,-- Why pray for death? _Edward_. Do you not know me, Mary? I am afraid to live, for I am weak. I've found a treasure only life can steal; I've won a jewel only death will keep. In such a heart as mine, the priceless pearl Would not be safe. That which I would not take When health was with me,--which I spurned away So long as I had power to sin, I fear Would be surrendered with that power's return And the temptation to its exercise. For soul like mine, diseased in every part, There is but one condition in which grace May give it service. For my malady The Great Physician draws the blood away That only flows to feed its baleful fires; For only thus the balsam and the balm May touch the springs of healing. So I pray To be delivered from myself,--to be Delivered from necessity of ill,-- To be secured from bringing harm to you. Oh, what a boon is death to the sick soul! I greet it with a joy that passes speech. Were the whole world to come before me now,-- Wealth with its treasures; Pleasure with its cup; Power robed in purple; Beauty in its pride, And with Love's sweetest blossoms garlanded; Fame with its bays, and Glory with its crown,-- To tempt me lifeward, I would turn away, And stretch my hands with utter eagerness Toward the pale angel waiting for me now, And give my hand to him, to be led out, Serenely singing, to the land of shade. _Mary_. Edward, I yield you. I would not retain One who has strayed so long from God and heaven, When his weak feet have found the only path Open for such as he. _Edward_. My strength recedes; But ere it fail, tell me how fares your life. You have seen sorrow; but it comforts me To hear the language of a chastened soul From one perverted by my guilty hand. You speak the dialect of the redeemed-- The Heaven-accepted. Tell me it is so, And you are happy. _Mary_. With sweet hope and trust I may reply, 'tis as you think and wish. I have seen sorrow, surely, and the more That I have seen what was far worse; but God Sent His own servant to me to restore My sadly straying feet to the sure path; And in my soul I have the pledge of grace Which shall suffice to keep them there. _Edward_. Ah, joy! You found a friend; and my o'erflowing heart, Welling with gratitude, pours out to him For his kind ministry its fitting meed. Oh, breathe his name to me, that my poor lips May bind it to a benison, and that, While dying, I may whisper it with those-- Jesus and Mary--which I love the best. Name him, I pray you. _Mary_. You would ask of me To bear your thanks to him, and to rehearse Your dying words? _Grace_. He asks your good friend's name; You do not understand him. _Mary_. It is hard To give denial to a dying wish; But, Edward, I've no right to speak his name. He was a Christian man, and you may give Of the full largess of your gratitude All, without robbing God, you have to give, And fail, e'en then, of worthy recompense. _Edward_. Your will is mine. _Grace_. Nay, Mary, tell it him! Where is he going he should bruit the name? Remember where he lies, and that no ears Save those of angels-- _Mary_. There are others here Who may not hear it. _Ruth_. We will all retire. It is not proper we should linger here, Barring the sacred confidence of hearts Parting so sadly. _David_. Mary, you must yield, Nor keep the secret longer from your friends, _Mary_. David, you know not what you say. _David_. I know; So give the dying man no more delay. _Mary_. I will declare it under your command. This stranger friend--stranger for many months-- This man, selectest instrument of Heaven, Who gave me succor in my hour of need, Snatched me from ruin, rescued me from want, Counseled and cheered me, prayed with me, and then Led me with careful hand into the light, Was he now bending over you in tears-- David, my brother! _Edward_. Blessed be his name! Brother by every law, above--below! _Grace_. [_Pale and trembling_,] David? My husband? Did I hear aright? You are not jesting! Sure you would not jest At such a juncture! Speak, my husband, speak! Is this a plot to cheat a dying man, Or cheat a wife who, if it be no plot, Is worthy death? What can you mean by this? _Mary_. Not more nor less than my true words convey. _Grace_. Nay, David, tell me! _David_. Mary's words are truth. _Grace_. O mean and jealous heart, what hast thou done! What wrong to honor, spite to Christian love, And shame to self beyond self-pardoning! How can I ever lift my faithless eyes To those true eyes that I have counted false; Or meet those lips that I have charged with lies; Or win the dear embraces I have spurned? O most unhappy, most unworthy wife! No one but he who still has clung to thee,-- Proud, and imperious, and impenitent,-- No one but he who has in silence borne Thy peevish criminations and complaints Can now forgive thee, when in deepest shame Thou bowest with confession of thy faults. Dear husband! David! Look upon your wife! Behold one kneeling never knelt to you! I have abused you and your faithful love, And, in my great humiliation, pray You will not trample me beneath your feet. Pity my weakness, and remember, too, That Love was jealous of thee, and not Hate-- That it was Love's own pride tormented me. My husband, take me once more to your arms, And kiss me in forgiveness; say that you Will be my counselor, my friend, my love; And I will give myself to you again, To be all yours--my reason, confidence, My faith and trust all yours, my heart's best love, My service and my prayers, all yours--all yours! _David_. Rise, dearest, rise! It gives me only pain That such as you should kneel to such as I. Your words inform me that you know how weak I am whom you have only fancied weak. Forgive you? I forgive you everything; And take the pardon which your prayer insures. Let this embrace, this kiss, be evidence Our jarring hearts catch common rhythm again, And we are lovers. _Ruth_. Hush! You trouble him. He understands this scene no more than we. Mary, he speaks to you. _Edward_. Dear wife, farewell! The room grows dim, and silently and soft The veil is dropping 'twixt my eyes and yours, Which soon will hide me from you--you from me. Only one hand is warm; it rests in yours, Whose full, sweet pulses throb along my arm, So that I live upon them. Cling to me! And thus your life, after my life is past, Shall lay me gently in the arms of Death. Thus shall you link your being with a soul Gazing unveiled upon the Great White Throne. Dear hearts of love surrounding me, farewell! I cannot see you now; or, if I do, You are transfigured. There are floating forms That whisper over me like summer leaves; And now there comes, and spreads through all my soul. Delicious influx of another life, From out whose essence spring, like living flowers, Angelic senses with quick ultimates, That catch the rustle of ethereal robes, And the thin chime of melting minstrelsy-- Rising and falling--answered far away-- As Echo, dreaming in the twilight woods, Repeats the warble of her twilight birds. And flowers that mock the Iris toss their cups In the impulsive ether, and spill out Sweet tides of perfume, fragrant deluges, Flooding my spirit like an angel's breath. * * * * * And still the throng increases; still unfold With broader span and more elusive sweep The radiant vistas of a world divine. But O my soul! what vision rises now! Far, far away, white blazing like the sun, In deepest distance and on highest height, Through walls diaphanous, and atmosphere Flecked with unnumbered forms of missive power, Out-going fleetly and returning slow, A Presence shines I may not penetrate; But on a throne, with smile ineffable, I see a form my conscious spirit knows. Jesus, my Saviour! Jesus, Lamb of God! Jesus who taketh from me all my sins, And from the world! Jesus, I come to thee! Come thou to me! O come, Lord, quickly! Come! _David_. Flown on the wings of rapture! Is this death? His heart is still; his beaded brow is cold; His wasted breast struggles for breath no more; And his pale features, hardened with the stress Of Life's resistance, momently subside Into a smile, calm as a twilight lake, Sprent with the images of rising stars, We have seen Evil in his countless forms In these poor lives; have met his armed hosts In dread encounter and discomfiture; And languished in captivity to them, Until we lost our courage and our faith; And here we see their Chieftain--Terror's King! He cuts the knot that binds a weary soul To faithless passions, sateless appetites, And powers perverted, and it flies away Singing toward heaven. He turns and looks at us, And finds us weeping with our gratitude-- Full of sweet sorrow,--sorrow sweeter far Than the supremest ecstasy of joy. And this is death! Think you that raptured soul Now walking humbly in the golden streets, Bearing the precious burden of a love Too great for utterance, or with hushed heart Drinking the music of the ransomed throng, Counts death an evil?--evil, sickness, pain, Calamity, or aught that God prescribed To cure it of its sin, or bring it where The healing hand of Christ might touch it? No! He is a man to-night--a man in Christ. This was his childhood, here; and as we give A smile of wonder to the little woes That drew the tears from out our own young eyes, The kind corrections and severe constraints Imposed by those who loved us--so he sees A father's chastisement in all the ill That filled his life with darkness; so he sees In every evil a kind instrument To chasten, elevate, correct, subdue, And fit him for that heavenly estate-- Saintship in Christ--the Manhood Absolute! L'ENVOY. Midnight and silence! In the West, unveiled, The broad, full moon is shining, with the stars. On mount and valley, forest, roof, and rock, On billowy hills smooth-stretching to the sky, On rail and wall, on all things far and near, Cling the bright crystals,--all the earth a floor Of polished silver, pranked with bending forms Uplifting to the light their precious weight Of pearls and diamonds, set in palest gold. The storm is dead; and when it rolled away It took no star from heaven, but left to earth Such legacy of beauty as The Wind-- The light-robed shepherdess from Cuban groves-- Driving soft showers before her, and warm airs, And her wide-scattered flocks of wet-winged birds, Never bestowed upon the waiting Spring. Pale, silent, smiling, cold, and beautiful! Do storms die thus? And is it this to die? Midnight and silence! In that hallowed room God's full-orbed peace is shining, with the stars. On head and hand, on brow, and lip, and eye, On folded arms, on broad unmoving breast, On the white-sanded floor, on everything Rest the pale radiance, while bending forms Stand all around, loaded with precious weight Of jewels such as holy angels wear. The man is dead; and when he passed away He blotted out no good, but left behind Such wealth of faith, such store of love and trust, As breath of joy, in-floating from the isles Smiled on by ceaseless summer, and indued With foliage and flowers perennial, Never conveyed to the enchanted soul. Do men die thus? And is it this to die? Midnight and silence! At each waiting tied, Husband and wife, embracing, kneel in prayer; And lips unused to such a benison Breathe blessings upon evil, and give thanks For knowledge of its sacred ministry. An infant nestles on a mother's breast, Whose head is pillowed where it has not lain For months of wasted life--the tale all told, And confidence and love for aye secure. The widow and the virgin: where are they? The morn shall find them watching with the dead, Like the two angels at the tomb of Christ,-- One at the head, the other at the foot,-- Guarding a sepulcher whose occupant Has risen, and rolled the heavy stone away! THE END. [Transcriber's Note: In the First Movement, one word was missing from our print copy; the symbol [***] denotes the missing word. This work contains some rare words and variants, such as blent, indites, mekly, reck, ruth (no capital), sprent, and ween.] 
691	----	None 
692	----	None 
7056	----	by Al Haines. ALONG THE SHORE BY ROSE HAWTHORNE LATHROP To G. P. L. We see the sky,--we love it day by day; We feel the wind of Spring, from blossoms winging; We meet with souls tender as tints in May: For these large ecstasies what are we bringing? There is no price, best friend, for greatest meed. Laid on the altar of our true affection, Wild flowers of love for me must intercede: And lo! I win your unexcelled protection. CONTENTS Inlet And Shore Impersonality A Protean Glimpse Power Against Power Life's Priestess Love Now One And One The Violin Gertrude Unity In Space The Shell And The Word The Clock-Tower Bell Ours To Endure Broken Waves Why Sad To-Day? The Ghosts Of Revellers Life's Burying-Ground Beyond Utterance The Suicide For Others Zest The Unperfected God-Made A Song Before Grief Pride: Fate Francie Lost Reality Closing Chords Grace Endless Resource The Baby A Waltz First Bloom Of Love A Wooing Song Dorothy Morning Song Looking Backward Unloved The Clock's Song Broken-Hearted The Cynic's Fealty The Girls We Might Have Wed "Neither!" Used Up A Youth's Suicide Twenty Bold Mariners In The Artillery The Lost Battle The Outgoing Race Hidden History A Ballad Of The Mist The Dreaming Wheel The Roads That Meet A PASSING VOICE ALONG THE SHORE. * * * * * INLET AND SHORE. Here is a world of changing glow, Where moods roll swiftly far and wide; Waves sadder than a funeral's pride, Or bluer than the harebell's blow! The sunlight makes the black hulls cast A firefly radiance down the deep; The inlet gleams, the long clouds sweep, The sails flit up, the sails drop past. The far sea-line is hushed and still; The nearer sea has life and voice; Each soul may take his fondest choice,-- The silence, or the restless thrill. O little children of the deep,-- The single sails, the bright, full sails, Gold in the sun, dark when it fails, Now you are smiling, then you weep! O blue of heaven, and bluer sea, And green of wave, and gold of sky, And white of sand that stretches by, Toward east and west, away from me! O shell-strewn shore, that silent hears The legend of the mighty main, And tells to none the lore again,-- We catch one utterance only: "Years!" IMPERSONALITY I dreamed within a dream the sun was gold; And as I walked beneath this golden sun, The world was like a mighty play-room old, Made for our pleasure since it was begun. But when I waked I found the sun was air, The world was air, and all things only seemed, Except the thoughts we grow by; for in prayer We change to spirits such as God has dreamed. A PROTEAN GLIMPSE. Time and I pass to and fro, Hardly greeting as we go,-- Go askant, like crossing wings Of sea-gulls where the brave sea sings. Time, the messenger of Fate! Cunning master of debate, Cunning soother of all sorrow, Ruthless robber of to-morrow; Tyrant to our dallying feet, Though patron of a life complete; Like Puck upon a rosy cloud, He rides to distance while we woo him,-- Like pale Remorse wrapped in a shroud, He brings the world in sackcloth to him! O dimly seen, and often met As shadowings of a wild regret! O king of us, yet feebly served; Dispenser of the dooms reserved; So silent at the folly done, So deadly when our respite's gone!-- As sea-gulls, slanting, cross at sea, So cross our rapid flights with thee. POWER AGAINST POWER. [Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1864.] Where spells were wrought he sat alone, The wizard touching minds of men Through far-swung avenues of power, And proudly held the magic pen. By the dark wall a white Shape gleams, By morning's light a Shadow falls! Is it a servant of his brain, Or Power that to his power calls? By morning's light the Shadow looms, And watches with relentless eyes; In night-gloom holds the glimmering lamp, While the pen ever slower flies. By the dark wall it beckons still, By evening light it darkly stays; The wizard looks, and his great life Thrills with the sense of finished days. A Shape so ghost-like by the sun, With smiles that chill as dusks descend! The glancing wizard, stern and pale, Admits the presence of the End. Health has forsaken, death is near, The hand moves slower, eyes grow dim; The End approaches, and the man Dreams of no spell for quelling Him. LIFE'S PRIESTESS. All to herself a woman never sings A happy song. Oh no! but it is so As when the thrush has closed down his wings Within the wood, and hears his hidden woe From his own bill fill aisles of leaves, and go About the wood and come to him again. LOVE NOW. The sanctity that is about the dead To make us love them more than late, when here, Is not it well to find the living dear With sanctity like this, ere they have fled? The tender thoughts we nurture for a loss Of mother, friend, or child, oh! it were wise To spend this glory on the earnest eyes, The longing heart, that feel life's present cross. Give also mercy to the living here Whose keen-strung souls will quiver at your touch; The utmost reverence is not too much For eyes that weep, although the lips may sneer. ONE AND ONE. The thanking heart can only silence keep; The breaking heart can only die alone: Our happy love above abysses deep Of unguessed power hovers, and is gone! Come, take my hand, O friend I take for life! You cannot reach my soul through touch or gaze; Be our full lips with infinite meanings rife: The longed-for words, which of us ever says? THE VIOLIN. Touch gently, friend, and slow, the violin, So sweet and low, That my dreaming senses may be beckoned so Into a rest as deep as the long past "years ago!" So softly, then, begin; And ever gently touch the violin, Until an impulse grows of a sudden, like wind On the brow of the earth, And the voice of your violin shows its wide-swung girth With a crash of the strings and a medley of rage and mirth; And my rested senses spring Like juice from a broken rind, And the joys that your melodies bring I know worth a life-time to win, As you waken to love and this hour your violin! GERTRUDE. [In Memory: 1877.] What shall I say, my friend, my own heart healing, When for my love you cannot answer me? This earth would quake, alas! might I but see You smile, death's rigorous law repealing! Pale lips, your mystery so well concealing, May not the eloquent, varied minstrelsy Of my inspired ardor potent be To touch your chords to music's uttered feeling? Friend, here you cherished flowers: send me now One ghostly bloom to prove that you are blessed. No? If denial such as brands my brow Be in your heavenly regions, too, confessed, Oh may it prove the truth that your still eyes Foresee the end of all futurities! UNITY IN SPACE. Take me away into a storm of snow So white and soft, I feel no deathly chill, But listen to the murmuring overflow Of clouds that fall in many a frosty rill! Take me away into the sunset's glow, That holds a summer in a glorious bloom; Or take me to the shadowed woods that grow On the sky's mountains, in the evening gloom! Give me an entrance to the limpid lake When moonbeams shine across its purity! A life there is, within the life we take So commonly, for which 't were well to die. THE SHELL AND THE WORLD. The world was like a shell to me,-- Its voice with distant song was low; But now its mysteries I know: I hear the turmoil of the sea. The whirling, soft, and tender sound That meant I knew not what of lore,-- I dream its mystery now no more: Its reckless meaning I have found. O shell! I held thee to my ears When I was young, and smiled with pride To stand aglow at marvel's side! O world, thy voice is wild with tears! THE CLOCK-TOWER BELL. Say not, sad bell, another hour hath come, Bare for the record of a world of crime; Toll, rather, friend, the end of hideous Time, Wherein we bloom, live, die, yet have no home! Bell, laurels would we o'er thy pulsing twine, And sing thee songs of triumph with glad tears, If to the warring of our haggard years Thy clang should herald peace along the line! OURS TO ENDURE. We speak of the world that passes away,-- The world of men who lived years ago, And could not feel that their hearts' quick glow Would fade to such ashen lore to-day. We hear of death that is not our woe, And see the shadow of funerals creeping Over the sweet fresh roads by the reaping; But do we weep till our loved ones go? When one is lost who is greater than we, And loved us so well that death should reprieve Of all hearts this one to us; when we must leave His grave,--the past will break like the sea! BROKEN WAVES. The sun is lying on the garden-wall, The full red rose is sweetening all the air, The day is happier than a dream most fair; The evening weaves afar a wide-spread pall, And lo! sun, day, and rose, no longer there! I have a lover now my life is young, I have a love to keep this many a day; My heart will hold it when my life is gray, My love will last although my heart be wrung. My life, my heart, my love shall fade away! O lover loved, the day has only gone! In death or life, our love can only go; Never forgotten is the joy we know, We follow memory when life is done: No wave is lost in all the tides that flow. WHY SAD TO-DAY? Why is the nameless sorrowing look So often thought a whim? God-willed, the willow shades the brook, The gray owl sings a hymn; Sadly the winds change, and the rain Comes where the sunlight fell: Sad is our story, told again, Which past years told so well! Why not love sorrow and the glance That ends in silent tears? If we count up the world's mischance, Grieving is in arrears. Why should I know why I could weep? The old urns cannot read The names they wear of kings they keep In ashes; both are dead. And like an urn the heart must hold Aims of an age gone by: What the aims were we are not told; We hold them, who knows why? THE GHOSTS OF REVELLERS. At purple eyes beside the grain, Our loves on altars we had burned, And mixed our tribute with the dew, Our tears, when rosy dawn returned. Our voices we had joined with song Of bird ecstatic, light, and free; Our laughter rollicked with the brook Running through darkness merrily. At purple eyes beside the rim Of frozen lakes our loves we burned, And slid away when stillness reigned: Deep the vast woods our bodies urned. In starlit night along the shade Of our dusk tombs our spirits glide; We hear the echoing of the wind, We breathe the sighs we living sighed. LIFE'S BURYING-GROUND. My graveyard holds no once-loved human forms, Grown hideous and forgotten, left alone, But every agony my heart has known,-- The new-born trusts that died, the drift of storms. I visit every day the shadowy grove; I bury there my outraged tender thought; I bring the insult for the love I sought, And my contempt, where I had tried to love. BEYOND UTTERANCE. There in the midst of gloom the church-spire rose, And not a star lit any side of heaven; In glades not far the damp reeds coldly touched Their sides, like soldiers dead before they fall; There in the belfry clung the sleeping bat,-- Most abject creature, hanging like a leaf Down from the bell-tongue, silent as the speech The dead have lost ere they are laid in graves. A melancholy prelude I would sing To song more drear, while thought soars into gloom. Find me the harbor of the roaming storm, Or end of souls whose doom is life itself! So vague, yet surely sad, the song I dream And utter not. So sends the tide its roll,-- Unending chord of horror for a woe We but half know, even when we die of it. THE SUICIDE. A shadowed form before the light, A gleaming face against the night, Clutched hands across a halo bright Of blowing hair,--her fixed sight Stares down where moving black, below, The river's deathly waves in murmurous silence flow. The moon falls fainting on the sky, The dark woods bow their heads in sorrow, The earth sends up a misty sigh: A soul defies the morrow! FOR OTHERS. Weeping for another's woe, Tears flow then that would not flow When our sorrow was our own, And the deadly, stiffening blow Was upon our own heart given In the moments that have flown! Cringing at another's cry In the hollow world of grief Stills the anguish of our pain For the fate that made us die To our hopes as sweet as vain; And our tears can flow again! One storm blows the night this way, But another brings the day. ZEST. Labor not in the murky dell, But till your harvest hill at morn; Stoop to no words that, rank and fell, Grow faster than the rustling corn. With gladdening eyes go greet the sun, Who lifts his brow in varied light; Bring light where'er your feet may run: So bring a day to sorrow's night. THE UNPERFECTED. A broken mirror in a trembling hand; Sad, trembling lips that utter broken thought: One of a wide and wandering, aimless band; One in the world who for the world hath naught. A heart that loves beyond the shallow word; A heart well loved beyond its flowerless worth: One who asks God to answer the prayer heard; One from the dust returning to the earth. Can miracle ne'er make the mirror whole For one who, seeing, could be nobly bold? Who could well die, to magnify the soul,-- Whose strength of love will shake the graveyard's mould? GOD-MADE. Somewhere, somewhere in this heart There lies a jewel from the sea, Or from a rock, or from the sand, Or dropped from heaven wondrously. Oh, burn, my jewel, in my glance! Oh, shimmer on my lips in prayer! Light my love's eyes to read my soul, Which, wrapt in ashes, yet is fair! When dead I lie, forgotten, deep Within the earth and sunken past, Still shall my jewel light my dust,-- The worth God gives us, first and last! A SONG BEFORE GRIEF. Sorrow, my friend, When shall you come again? The wind is slow, and the bent willows send Their silvery motions wearily down the plain. The bird is dead That sang this morning through the summer rain! Sorrow, my friend, I owe my soul to you. And if my life with any glory end Of tenderness for others, and the words are true, Said, honoring, when I'm dead,-- Sorrow, to you, the mellow praise, the funeral wreath, are due. And yet, my friend, When love and joy are strong, Your terrible visage from my sight I rend With glances to blue heaven. Hovering along, By mine your shadow led, "Away!" I shriek, "nor dare to work my new-sprung mercies wrong!" Still, you are near: Who can your care withstand? When deep eternity shall look most clear, Sending bright waves to kiss the trembling land, My joy shall disappear,-- A flaming torch thrown to the golden sea by your pale hand. PRIDE: FATE. Lullaby on the wing Of my song, O my own! Soft airs of evening Join my song's murmuring tone. Lullaby, O my love! Close your eyes, lake-like clear; Lullaby, while above Wake the stars, with heaven near. Lullaby, sweet, so still In arms of death; I alone Sing lullaby, like a rill, To your form, cold as a stone. Lullaby, O my heart! Sleep in peace, all alone; Night has come, and your part For loving is wholly done! FRANCIE. I loved a child as we should love Each other everywhere; I cared more for his happiness Than I dreaded my own despair. An angel asked me to give him My whole life's dearest cost; And in adding mine to his treasures I knew they could never be lost. To his heart I gave the gold, Though little my own had known; To his eyes what tenderness From youth in mine had grown! I gave him all my buoyant Hope for my future years; I gave him whatever melody My voice had steeped in tears. Upon the shore of darkness His drifted body lies. He is dead, and I stand beside him, With his beauty in my eyes. I am like those withered petals We see on a winter day, That gladly gave their color In the happy summer away. I am glad I lavished my worthiest To fashion his greater worth; Since he will live in heaven, I shall lie content in the earth. LOST REALITY. O soul of life, 't is thee we long to hear, Thine eyes we seek for, and thy touch we dream; Lost from our days, thou art a spirit near,-- Life needs thine eloquence, and ways supreme. More real than we who but a semblance wear, We see thee not, because thou wilt not seem! CLOSING CHORDS. I. _Death's Eloquence._ When I shall go Into the narrow home that leaves No room for wringing of the hands and hair, And feel the pressing of the walls which bear The heavy sod upon my heart that grieves, (As the weird earth rolls on), Then I shall know What is the power of destiny. But still, Still while my life, however sad, be mine, I war with memory, striving to divine Phantom to-morrows, to outrun the past; For yet the tears of final, absolute ill And ruinous knowledge of my fate I shun. Even as the frail, instinctive weed Tries, through unending shade, to reach at last A shining, mellowing, rapture-giving sun; So in the deed of breathing joy's warm breath, Fain to succeed, I, too, in colorless longings, hope till death. II. _Peace._ An angel spoke with me, and lo, he hoarded My falling tears to cheer a flower's face! For, so it seems, in all the heavenly space A wasted grief was never yet recorded. Victorious calm those holy tones afforded Unto my soul, whose outcry, in disgrace, Changed to low music, leading to the place Where, though well armed, with futile end awarded, My past lay dead. "Wars are of earth!" he cried; "Endurance only breathes immortal air. Courage eternal, by a world defied, Still wears the front of patience, smooth and fair." Are wars so futile, and is courage peace? Take, then, my soul, thus gently thy release! GRACE. Ill-wrought life we look at as we die! Mistaken, selfish, meagre, and unmeet; So graven on the hearts that cruelly We have deprived of many an hour sweet: O ill-wrought life we look at as we die! O day of God we look at as we die! Grace, like a river flowing toward our feet; Wide pardon blowing with the breezes by; Love telling us bright tales of the Complete;-- While listening, hoping, thanking, lo, we die! ENDLESS RESOURCE. New days are dear, and cannot be unloved, Though in deep grief we mourn, and cling to death; Who has not known, in living on, a breath Of infinite joy that has life's rapture proved? If I have thought that in this rainbow world The best we see was but a preface given Of infinite greater tints in heaven, And life or no, heaven yet would be unfurl'd,-- I did belie the soul-wide joys of earth, And feelings deep as lights that dwell in seas. Can heaven itself outlove such depths as these? Live on! Life holds more than we dream of worth! THE BABY. Pray, have you heard the news? Sturdy in lungs and thews, There's a fine baby! Ring bells of crystal lip, Wave boughs with blossoming tip; Think what he may be! Love cannot love enough, Winter is never rough All round such sweetness; One of a million more Sent to the glad heart's door In their completeness! Such news is never old, Though in each ear't is told, As a first birthday. Welcome, thou ray of light! In golden prayers bedight, Sail down thy mirth-way! A Waltz. Delicate gayety, Strains of a violin; Graceful steps begin-- Roses at her waist! Clouds of sparkling light, Whispers of lovers alone As the couples drift one by one In the golden sheen of the ball. Alone in the happy crowd Each pair glides past each pair; Delicate strains of an air; Rainbow gayety: Pride of the moment throbs, Smiles, on the youthful cheek, Fearing no ill-wind's freak, Warm in the heart of the waltz;-- Moving like melody, Flowing in light and glee, Young as the May is she, Strong as the June I am. FIRST BLOOM OF LOVE. O girl of spring! O brown-eyed girl! Gathering violets near the woods, Whose coy young petals half unfurl The mystery of their dulcet moods. O blushing girl! O girl of spring! I hear no answer move the air; Yet eyelids hovering on the wing Reveal deep meanings curtained there. O girl of spring! O spring of love! Let silent violets be the speech From you to me, and let them prove What maiden silence will not teach! A WOOING SONG. O love, I come; thy last glance guideth me! Drawn, too, by webs of shadow, like thine hair; For, Sweet, the mystery Of thy dark hair the deepening dusk hath caught. In early moonlight gleamings, lo, I see Thy white hands beckon to the garden, where Dim day and silvery darkness are inwrought As our two lives, where, joining soul with soul, The tints shall mingle in a fairer whole. Oh! dost thou hear? I call, beloved, I call, My stout heart trembling till thy words return; Hope-lifted, I float faster with the fall Of fear toward joy such fear alone can earn! DOROTHY. Dear little Dorothy, she is no more! I have wandered world-wide, from shore to shore, I have seen as great beauties as ever were wed; But none can console me for Dorothy dead. Dear little Dorothy! How strange it seems That her face is less real than the faces of dreams; That the love which kept true, and the lips which so spoke, Are more lost than my heart, which died not when it broke! MORNING SONG. Turn thy face to me, my love, I come from out the morning; Give thy hand to me, my love, I'm dewy from the dawning. Touch my lips with thine, my love, I've tasted air at daybreak; Gaze into my eyes, my love, At the sky's waking they wake. LOOKING BACKWARD. Gray towers make me think of thee, Thou girl of olden minstrelsy, Young as the sunlight of to-day, Silent as tasselled boughs in May! A wind-flower in a world of harm, A harebell on a turret's arm, A pearl upon the hilt of fame Thou wert, fair child of some high name. The velvet page, the deep-eyed knight, The heartless falcon, poised for flight, The dainty steed and graceful hound, In thee their keenest rapture found. But for old ballads, and the rhyme And writ of genius o'er the time When keeps had newly reared their towers, The winning scene had not been ours. O Chivalry! thy age was fair, When even knaves set out to dare Their heads for any barbarous crime, And hate was brave, and love sublime. The bugle-note I send so far Across Time's moors to thee, sweet star, Where stands thy castle in its mist, Hear, if the wandering breezes list! UNLOVED. Paler than the water's white Stood the maiden in the shade, And more silent than the night Were her lips together laid; Eyes she hid so long and still By lids wet with unshed tears, Hands she loosely clasped at will, Though her heart was full of fears. Never, never, never more May her soul with joy be moved; Silent, silent, silent,--for He was silent whom she loved. THE CLOCK'S SONG. Eileen of four, Eileen of smiles; Eileen of five, Eileen of tears; Eileen of ten, of fifteen years, Eileen of youth And woman's wiles; Eileen of twenty, In love's land, Eileen all tender In her bliss, Untouched by sorrow's treacherous kiss, And the sly weapon in life's hand,-- Eileen aroused to share all fate, Eileen a wife, Pale, beautiful, Eileen most grave And dutiful, Mourning her dreams in queenly state. Eileen! Eileen!.... BROKEN-HEARTED. "Cross my hands upon my breast," Read her last behest. "Turn my cheek upon the pillow, As resting from life's stormy billow With sleep's fine zest!" "Cross my hands upon my breast," Read her last behest, "That the patient bones may lie In form of thanks eternally, Grimly expressed!" We clasped her hands upon her breast: Oh mockery at misery's hest! We hid in flowers her body's grief,-- Counting by many a rose and leaf Her days unblessed! THE CYNIC'S FEALTY. We all have hearts that shake alike Beneath the arias of Fate's hand; Although the cynics sneering stand, These too the deathless powers strike. A trembling lover's infinite trust, To the last drop of doating blood, Feels not alone the ocean flood Of desperate grief, when dreams are dust. The scornfullest souls, with mourning eyes, Pant o'er again their ghostly ways;-- Dread night-paths, where were gleaming days When life was lovelier than the skies! THE GIRLS WE MIGHT HAVE WED. Come, brothers, let us sing a dirge,-- A dirge for myriad chances dead; In grief your mournful accents merge: Sing, sing the girls we might have wed! Sweet lips were those we never pressed In love that never lost the dew In sunlight of a love confessed,-- Kind were the girls we never knew! Sing low, sing low, while in the glow Of fancy's hour those forms we trace, Hovering around the years that go; Those years our lives can ne'er replace! Sweet lips are those that never turn A cruel word; dear eyes that lead The heart on in a blithe concern; White hand of her we did not wed; Fair hair or dark, that falls along A form that never shrinks with time; Bright image of a realm of song, Standing beside our years of prime;-- When you shall go, then may we know The heart is dead, the man is old. Life can no other charm bestow When girls we might have loved turn cold! "NEITHER!" So ancient to myself I seem, I might have crossed grave Styx's stream A year ago;-- My word, 'tis so;-- And now be wandering with my sires In that rare world we wonder o'er, Half disbelieve, and prize the more! Yet spruce I am, and still can mix My wits with all the sparkling tricks, A youth and girl At twenty's whirl Play round each other's bosom fires, On this brisk earth I once enjoyed:-- But now I'm otherwise employed! Am I a thing without a name; A sort of dummy in the game? "Not young, not old:" A world is told Of misery in that lengthened phrase; Yet, gad, although my coat be smooth, My forehead's wrinkled,--that's the truth! I hardly know which road to go. With youth? Perhaps. With age? Oh no! Well, then, with those Who share my woes, Doomed to mere fashionable ways,-- Fair matrons, cigarettes, and tea, Sighs, mirrors, and society? Is it a folly still to twirl, And smirk and promenade and querl About the town? I'll put this down: A man becomes downright _blast_ Before he knows that he is either That, or what I am--call it, "Neither." Oh, for a hint what we shall do, We bucks whose comedy is through! Who'd be sedate? And yet I hate To pose persistently to-day As one just trying flights, you know, When I _did_ try them long ago! Suppose I hurry up the tide Of age, and bravely drift beside Those hoary dogs Who lie like logs Around the clubs where life is hushed? My blood runs cold! What? Say farewell To this year's new bewildering belle! Hold, man, the secret broad and huge, With every well-known subterfuge! If bald and gray And thin, still say You're only thirty: don't be crushed; But when your voice shakes o'er a pun, Be off to China:--your day's done! USED UP. Hand me my light gloves, James; I'm off for the waltzing world, The kingdom of Strauss and that-- Where is my old crush-hat? _Is_ my hair properly curled? Call in the daytime, James. Think of me, won't you, James, When I am rosily twirling The "Rose of a garden of girls," The Pearl among circling pearls, In a mesh of melodious whirling? Envy me, won't you, James? For a heart lost along with her fan, For a nice sense of honor flown, For the care of an invalid soul, And tastes far beyond my control,-- I have for my precious own The fame of a "waltzing man." If I don't come, come for me, James. Ah, the waltz is my mastering passion! The trip-tripping airs are as sweet As love to my turning feet, While I clasp the fair doll of fashion, My _fiancée_. But come for me, James. The heart which I lost--it is strange-- I've been told it will yet be my death; And I think it quite likely I might Waltz once too often to-night, In spite of the music and Beth. Death's a difficult move to arrange. Pray smoke by the fire, old boy, And find yourself whiskey and books. If I should not turn up, then, at two Or three, you will know I need you. If I'm dead, you must pardon my looks As I lie in the ball-room, old boy. A YOUTH'S SUICIDE. He handed his life a poisoned draught, With a scornful smile and a cold, cold glance, And the merry bystanders loudly laughed (For the rollicking world was gay!). He thought she knew not the juice, perchance; But her tears fell down to her sobbing lips While the merry-makers turned to the dance (The world was mocking fate that day!). To his life he kissed his finger-tips: "Drink deep the beaker, and so farewell!" Then slowly the poisoned draught she sips (How they laugh at her meek dismay!). He sprang to her arm, which loosely fell, Crying: "No! not yet that dire eclipse!" Now loud laughed the dancers, and whirled pell-mell (While the echoes hurried away!). The mad world clustered, it seemed, around. "Farewell!" she sighed, sinking; then from afar Flowed the pealing laughter and wassail's sound (For the dead the world will not stay!). TWENTY BOLD MARINERS. Twenty bold mariners went to the wave, Twenty sweet breezes blew over the main; All were so hearty, so free, and so brave,-- But they never came back again! Half the wild ocean rose up to the clouds, Half the broad sky scowled in thunder and rain; Twenty white crests rose around them like shrouds, And they stayed in the dancing main! This is easy to sing, and often to mourn, And the breaking of dawn is no newer to-day; But those who die young, or are left forlorn, Think grief is no older than they! IN THE ARTILLERY. We are moving on in silence, Save for rattling iron and steel, And a skirmish echoing round us, Showering faintly, peal on peal. Like a lion roars the North wind As a-horse we sternly clank, While beside the guns our men drop, Slyly shot from either flank. You are musing, love, and smiling By the hearth-fire of the Mill, While the tangled oaks are cracking Boughs upon the windy hill. I can see the moonlight shining Over fields of frozen calm; I can hear the chapel organ, And the singing of the psalm. Fare you well, then, English village, Which of all I loved the most, Where my ghost alone can wander Once again, when life is lost. Fare you well, then, Sally Dorset; You will never utter wail For the soldier dead who loved you With these tears of no avail! I can see your drowsy lashes Lifting as you hear them read Prayers in mercy for our souls' shrift When we come to our last need. I forgive you, matchless beauty, Proudly conscious of your fame, Loved by many a luckless youngster Who will ne'er forget your name! Merry, though so cold of answer, With a laughing glance of steel, How your face swept like a banner, Blushing down the village reel! As you dance before my vision On this deadly foreign morn, Death is charmed into the soothing Of the love you chose to scorn. We shall die--our hours are numbered-- As the sunlight dawns serene Over yonder mountain ridges, Rimming round this battle scene. I shall die--few will return, dear; I shall be of those who stay: England sent us, but a handful, Among hordes of heathen clay. We will show the world how England Has no dross to spend in war; When she throws away her soldiers, They are soldiers to the core. You will wake to hear the twitter Of the early sparrow's note: I shall lie beneath the heavens, With the death-grip at my throat! THE LOST BATTLE To his heart it struck such terror That he laughed a laugh of scorn,-- The man in the soldier's doublet, With the sword so bravely worn. It struck his heart like the frost-wind To find his comrades fled, While the battle-field was guarded By the heroes who lay dead. He drew his sword in the sunlight, And called with a long halloo: "Dead men, there is one living Shall stay it out with you!" He raised a ragged standard, This lonely soul in war, And called the foe to onset, With shouts they heard afar. They galloped swiftly toward him. The banner floated wide; It sank; he sank beside it Upon his sword, and died. THE OUTGOING RACE. The mothers wish for no more daughters; There is no future before them. They bow their heads and their pride At the end of the many tribes' journey. The mothers weep over their children, Loved and unwelcome together, Who should have been dreamed, not born, Since there is no road for the Indian. The mothers see into the future, Beyond the end of that Chieftain Who shall be the last of the race Which allowed only death to a coward. The square, cold cheeks, lips firm-set, The hot, straight glance, and the throat-line, Held like a stag's on the cliff, Shall be swept by the night-winds, and vanish! HIDDEN HISTORY. I. There was a maiden in a land Was buried with all honor fine, For they said she had dared her pulsing life To save a silent, holy shrine. The cannon rode by the church's door, The men's wild faces flashed in the sun; The woman had guarded with rifle poised, While the cassocked priests had run. Ah, no! To save her pulsing life The woman like a reindeer turned, While hostile armies rolled by her in clouds, And miles of sun and metal burned. But who should know? For she was dead Before the leathern curtain's wall, When came her wide-eyed comrades, and found Her body and her weapon, all. II. There was a woman left to die Who never told her sacrifice, But trusted for her crown to God, As to its value and device. No land was prouder for her heart, No word has echoed long her deed, And where she has lain, the angel flower Looks like a common weed. A BALLAD OF THE MIST. "I love the Lady of Merle," he said. "She is not for thee!" her suitor cried. And in the valley the lovers fought By the salt river's tide. The braver fell on the dewy sward: The unloved lover returned once more; In yellow satin the lady came And met him at the door. "Hast thou heard, dark Edith," laughed he grim, "Poor Hugh hath craved thee many a day? Soon would it have been too late for him His low-born will to say. "I struck a blade where lay his heart's love, And voice for thee have I left him none, To brag he still seeks thee over the hills When thou and I are one!" Fearless across the wide country Rode the dark Lady Edith of Merle; She looked at the headlands soft with haze, And the moor's mists of pearl. The moon it struggled to see her pass Through its half-lit veils of driving gray; But moonbeams were slower than the steed That Edith rode away. Oh, what was her guerdon and her haste, While cried the far screech-owl in the tree, And to her heart crept its note so lone, Beating tremulously? About her a black scarf floated thin, And over her cheek the mist fell cold, And shuddered the moon between its rifts Of dark cloud's silvery fold. Oh, white fire of the nightly sky When burns the moon's wonder wide and far, And every cloud illumed with flame Engulfs a shaken star! * * * * * Bright as comes morning from the hill, There comes a face to her lover's eyes; Her love she tells; and he, dying, smiles,-- And smiles yet in the skies. He is dead, and closer breathe the mists; He is dead, the owlet moans remote; He is buried, and the moon draws near, To gaze and hide and float. Fearless within the churchyard's spell The white-browed lady doth stand and sigh; She loves the mist, and the grave, and the moon, And the owl's quivering cry. THE DREAMING WHEEL. Down slant the moonbeams to the floor Through the garret's scented air, And show a thin-spoked spinning-wheel, Standing ten years and more Far from the hearth-stone's woe and weal,-- The ghost of a lost day's care! And over the dreaming spinning-wheel, That has not stirred so long, The weaving spiders spin a veil, A silvery shroud for its human zeal And usefulness, with their fingers pale, The shadowy lights among. See! in the moonlight cold and gray A thoughtful maiden stands; And though she blames not overmuch With her sweet lips the great world's way, Yet sad and slow she stoops to touch The still wheel with her hands. "Forsaken wheel! when you first came To clothe young hearts and old, Our ancestors were glad to wear Your woof, nor knew the shame Which later days have bred, to share The homespun's simple fold! "My lover's gone to win for me, With tender pride and care, Riches to garnish all our days; But love thrives in simplicity As well as in the prouder ways, If noble thought is there! "When our strong grandsires vowed to wed, Stout knots of wool, and corn, Were gathered in, and hardly more Of what will count not when we're dead! Life brought them to a happy shore, Who set their sails at dawn. "O silent wheel! we weave a sad, Weak fabric of our days; The faith that moved thee long is gone; Forgot, the couple, lass and lad, Who loved with courage deeply drawn, Heeding but God's delays! "On thy long loneliness the sun Blazes in dread, the moon Shines with a pitiless, threatening hue! And while the golden sand-grains run, Old age comes nearer; and like you I may be standing silent--soon! "Then turn, my lover, turn your eyes Back to the humble door; Waste not the youthful years in hand. See where the truest comfort lies, And join the freer old-time band, Nor crave a worldly store! "In Freedom's land let no one know Even the chain of ease, Nor bow to royal Luxury's glance. From peasant-hands fair art can grow; From the rough brow thought springs with lance And helmet: God loves these!" She wept; then raised her head, and swung The aged wheel with whispering whir; And as it turned, it softly sung (In fancy) this response to her:-- "I had not spun the sower's shirt, I had not kept the children warm, If I had found a wearing harm In my monotonous toil alert. "To those who wait with eager eyes And ready hands and tender hearts,-- They find the giant year, that parts, Hath forged strong links with paradise! "Sigh not that Time doth turn the glass To let the golden sand-grains run, While longer shadows of the sun Fall o'er the spring-time, bonny lass! "The circumstances of a life Are little things compared to it; The way love's shown is ever fit; Thank God, who gives us love, not strife! "And if I do not stand beside The hearth, as fifty years ago, No current of the years that flow Can rob the radiance from a bride! "I know not why the world should change, I know not why my day is done; And yet this limit of my zone Hints of the limit to all range. "Man's progress always alters tint, As mountains move from rose to gray; Yet like their shapes, love still doth stay The same, complete,--'tis God's imprint. "And yet I dream Time yet may turn Its wheel to weave the humbler thought, As in old days. When joy is sought, Men find it where the hearth-fires burn." THE ROADS THAT MEET. ART. One is so fair, I turn to go, As others go, its beckoning length; Such paths can never lead to woe, I say in eager, early strength. What is the goal? Visions of heaven, wake; But the wind's whispers round me roll: "For you, mistake!" LOVE. One leads beneath high oaks, and birds Choose there their joyous revelry; The sunbeams glint in golden herds, The river mirrors silently. Under these trees My heart would bound or break; Tell me what goal, resonant breeze? "For you, mistake!" CHARITY. What is there left? The arid way, The chilling height, whence all the world Looks little, and each radiant day, Like the soul's banner, flies unfurled. May I stand here; In this rare ether slake My reverential lips, and fear No last mistake? Some spirits wander till they die, With shattered thoughts and trembling hands; What jarred their natures hopelessly No living wight yet understands. There is no goal, Whatever end they make; Though prayers each trusting step control, They win mistake. This is so true, we dare not learn Its force until our hopes are old, And, skyward, God's star-beacons burn The brighter as our hearts grow cold. If all we miss, In the great plans that shake The world, still God has need of this,-- Even our mistake. A PASSING VOICE. "Turn me a rhyme," said Fate, "Turn me a rhyme: A swift and deadly hate Blows headlong towards thee in the teeth of Time. Write! or thy words will fall too late." "Write me a fold," said Fate, "Write me a fold, Life to conciliate, Of words red with thine heart's blood, hotly told. Then, kings may envy thine estate!" "Make thee a fame," said Fate, "Make thee a fame To storm the heaven-hung gate, Unbarred alone to the victorious name Which has Art's conquerors to mate." "Die in thy shame," said Fate, "Die in thy shame! Naught here can compensate But the proud radiance of that glorious flame, Genius: fade, thou, unconsecrate!" THE END. 
7110	----	ROSE AND ROOF-TREE: POEMS by GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP [Illustration: JESSAMINE] Upon the enchanted ladder of his rhymes, Round after round and patiently The poet ever upward climbs. _DEDICATION_. _I need give my verse no hint as to whom it sings for. The rose, knowing her own right, makes servitors of the light-rays to carry her color. So every line here shall in some sense breathe of thee, and in its very face bear record of her whom, however unworthily, it seeks to serve and honor._ CONTENTS. WINDFALLS. ROSE AND ROOF-TREE MUSIC OF GROWTH A SONG LONG AGO MELANCHOLY CONTENTMENT PART FIRST. AN APRIL ARIA THE BOBOLINK THE SUN-SHOWER JUNE LONGINGS A RUNE OF THE RAIN THE SONG-SPARROW FAIRHAVEN BAY CHANT FOR AUTUMN BEFORE THE SNOW THE GHOSTS OF GROWTH THE LILY-POND PART SECOND. FIRST GLANCE "THE SUNSHINE OF THINE EYES" "WHEN, LOOKING DEEPLY IN THY FACE" WITHIN A YEAR THE SINGING WIRE MOODS OF LOVE: I. In Absence II. Heart's Fountain III. South-Wind Song IV. The Lover's Year V. New Worlds VI. Wedding-Night LOVE'S DEFEAT MAY AND MARRIAGE THE FISHER OF THE CAPE SAILOR'S SONG JESSAMINE GRIEF'S HERO A FACE IN THE STREET THE BATHER HELEN AT THE LOOM "O WHOLESOME DEATH" BURIAL-SONG FOR SUMNER ARISE, AMERICAN! THE SILENT TIDE WINDFALLS. ROSE AND ROOF-TREE. O wayward rose, why dost thou wreathe so high, Wasting thyself in sweet-breath'd ecstasy? "The pulses of the wind my life uplift, And through my sprays I feel the sunlight sift; "And all my fibres, in a quick consent Entwined, aspire to fill their heavenward bent. "I feel the shaking of the far-off sea, And all things growing blend their life with me: "When men and women on me look, there glows Within my veins a life not of the rose. "Then let me grow, until I touch the sky, And let me grow and grow until I die!" So, every year, the sweet rose shooteth higher, And scales the roof upon its wings of fire, And pricks the air, in lovely discontent, With thorns that question still of its intent. But when it reached the roof-tree, there it clung, Nor ever farther up its blossoms flung. O wayward rose, why hast thou ceased to climb? Hast thou forgot the ardor of thy prime? "O hearken!"--thus the rose-spray, listening,-- "With what weird music sweet these full hearts ring! "What mazy ripples of deep, eddying sound, Rise, touch the roof-tree old, and drift around, "Bearing aloft the burden musical Of joys and griefs from human hearts that fall! "Green stem and fair, flush'd circle I will lay Along the roof, and listen here alway; "For rose and tree, and every leafy growth That toward the sky unfolds with spiry blowth, "No purpose hath save this, to breathe a grace O'er men, and in men's hearts to seek a place. "Therefore, O poet, thou who gav'st to me The homage of thy humble sympathy, "No longer vest thy verse in rose-leaves frail:-- Let the heart's voice loud through thy pæan wail!" * * * * * Lo, at my feet the wind of autumn throws A hundred turbulent blossoms of the rose, Full of the voices of the sea and grove And air, and full of hidden, murmured love, And warm with passion through the roof-tree sent; Dew-drenched with tears;--all in one wild gush spent! MUSIC OF GROWTH. Music is in all growing things; And underneath the silky wings Of smallest insects there is stirred A pulse of air that must be heard. Earth's silence lives, and throbs, and sings. If poet from the vibrant strings Of his poor heart a measure flings, Laugh not, that he no trumpet blows: It may be that Heaven hears and knows His language of low listenings. A SONG LONG AGO. Through the pauses of thy fervid singing Fell crystal sound That thy fingers from the keys were flinging Lightly around: I felt the vine-like harmonies close clinging About my soul; And to my eyes, as fruit of their sweet bringing, The full tear stole! MELANCHOLY. Daughter of my nobler hope That dying gave thee birth, Sweet Melancholy! For memory of the dead, In her dear stead, 'Bide thou with me, Sweet Melancholy! As purple shadows to the tree, When the last sun-rays sadly slope Athwart the bare and darkening earth, Art thou to me, Sweet Melancholy! CONTENTMENT. Glad hours have been when I have seen Life's scope and each dry day's intent United; so that I could stand In silence, covering with my hand The circle of the universe, Balance the blessing and the curse, And trust in deeds without chagrin, Free from to-morrow and yesterday--content. PART FIRST. AN APRIL ARIA. When the mornings dankly fall With a dim forethought of rain, And the robins richly call To their mates mercurial, And the tree-boughs creak and strain In the wind; When the river's rough with foam, And the new-made clearings smoke, And the clouds that go and come Shine and darken frolicsome, And the frogs at evening croak Undefined Mysteries of monotone, And by melting beds of snow Wind-flowers blossom all alone; Then I know That the bitter winter's dead. Over his head The damp sod breaks so mellow,-- Its mosses tipped with points of yellow,-- I cannot but be glad; Yet this sweet mood will borrow Something of a sweeter sorrow, To touch and turn me sad. THE BOBOLINK. How sweetly sang the bobolink, When thou, my Love, wast nigh! His liquid music from the brink Of some cloud-fountain seemed to sink, Built in the blue-domed sky. How sadly sings the bobolink! No more my Love is nigh: Yet rise, my spirit, rise, and drink Once more from that cloud-fountain's brink,-- Once more before I die! THE SUN-SHOWER. A penciled shade the sky doth sweep, And transient glooms creep in to sleep Amid the orchard; Fantastic breezes pull the trees Hither and yon, to vagaries Of aspect tortured. Then, like the downcast dreamy fringe Of eyelids, when dim gates unhinge That locked their tears, Falls on the hills a mist of rain,-- So faint, it seems to fade again; Yet swiftly nears. Now sparkles the air, all steely-bright, With drops swept down in arrow-flight, Keen, quivering lines. Ceased in a breath the showery sound; And teasingly, now, as I look around, Sweet sunlight shines! JUNE LONGINGS. Lo, all about the lofty blue are blown Light vapors white, like thistle-down, That from their softened silver heaps opaque Scatter delicate flake by flake, Upon the wide loom of the heavens weaving Forms of fancies past believing, And, with fantastic show of mute despair, As for some sweet hope hurt beyond repair, Melt in the silent voids of sunny air. All day the cooing brooklet runs in tune: Half sunk i' th' blue, the powdery moon Shows whitely. Hark, the bobolink's note! I hear it, Far and faint as a fairy spirit! Yet all these pass, and as some blithe bird, winging, Leaves a heart-ache for his singing, A frustrate passion haunts me evermore For that which closest dwells to beauty's core. O Love, canst thou this heart of hope restore? A RUNE OF THE RAIN. I. O many-toned rain! O myriad sweet voices of the rain! How welcome is its delicate overture At evening, when the glowing-moistur'd west Seals all things with cool promise of night's rest! At first it would allure The earth to kinder mood, With dainty flattering Of soft, sweet pattering: Faintly now you hear the tramp Of the fine drops falling damp On the dry, sun-seasoned ground And the thirsty leaves around. But anon, imbued With a sudden, bounding access Of passion, it relaxes All timider persuasion, And, with nor pretext nor occasion, Its wooing redoubles; And pounds the ground, and bubbles In sputtering spray, Flinging itself in a fury Of flashing white away; Till the dusty road Flings a perfume dank abroad, And the grass, and the wide-hung trees, The vines, the flowers in their beds, The vivid corn that to the breeze Rustles along the garden-rows, Visibly lift their heads,-- And, as the shower wilder grows, Upleap with answering kisses to the rain. Then, the slow and pleasant murmur Of its subsiding, As the pulse of the storm beats firmer, And the steady rain Drops into a cadenced chiding. Deep-breathing rain, The sad and ghostly noise Wherewith thou dost complain,-- Thy plaintive, spiritual voice, Heard thus at close of day Through vaults of twilight-gray,-- Doth vex me with sweet pain! And still my soul is fain To know the secret of that yearning Which in thine utterance I hear returning. Hush, oh hush! Break not the dreamy rush Of the rain: Touch not the marring doubt Words bring, to the certainty Of its soft refrain, But let the flying fringes flout Their gouts against the pane, And the gurgling throat of the water-spout Groan in the eaves amain. The earth is wedded to the shower. Darkness and awe, gird round the bridal-hour! II. O many-tonèd rain! It hath caught the strain Of a wilder tune, Ere the same night's noon, When dreams and sleep forsake me, And sudden dread doth wake me, To hear the booming drums of heaven beat The long roll to battle; when the knotted cloud, With an echoing loud, Bursts asunder At the sudden resurrection of the thunder; And the fountains of the air, Unsealed again sweep, ruining, everywhere, To wrap the world in a watery winding-sheet. III. O myriad sweet voices of the rain! When the airy war doth wane, And the storm to the east hath flown, Cloaked close in the whirling wind, There's a voice still left behind In each heavy-hearted tree, Charged with tearful memory Of the vanished rain: From their leafy lashes wet Drip the dews of fresh regret For the lover that's gone! All else is still. But the stars are listening; And low o'er the wooded hill Hangs, upon listless wing Outspread, a shape of damp, blue cloud, Watching, like a bird of evil That knows no mercy nor reprieval, The slow and silent death of the pallid moon. IV. But soon, returning duly, Dawn whitens the wet hill-tops bluely. To her vision pure and cold The night's wild tale is told On the glistening leaf, in the mid-road pool, The garden mold turned dark and cool, And the meadow's trampled acres. But hark, how fresh the song of the winged music-makers! For now the moanings bitter, Left by the rain, make harmony With the swallow's matin-twitter, And the robin's note, like the wind's in a tree: The infant morning breathes sweet breath, And with it is blent The wistful, wild, moist scent Of the grass in the marsh which the sea nourisheth: And behold! The last reluctant drop of the storm, Wrung from the roof, is smitten warm And turned to gold; For in its veins doth run The very blood of the bold, unsullied sun! THE SONG-SPARROW. Glimmers gray the leafless thicket Close beside my garden gate, Where, so light, from post to picket Hops the sparrow, blithe, sedate; Who, with meekly folded wing, Comes to sun himself and sing. It was there, perhaps, last year, That his little house he built; For he seems to perk and peer, And to twitter, too, and tilt The bare branches in between, With a fond, familiar mien. Once, I know, there was a nest, Held there by the sideward thrust Of those twigs that touch his breast; Though 'tis gone now. Some rude gust Caught it, over-full of snow,-- Bent the bush,--and robbed it so Thus our highest holds are lost, By the ruthless winter's wind, When, with swift-dismantling frost, The green woods we dwelt in, thinn'd Of their leafage, grow too cold For frail hopes of summer's mold. But if we, with spring-days mellow, Wake to woeful wrecks of change, And the sparrow's ritornello Scaling still its old sweet range; Can we do a better thing Than, with him, still build and sing? Oh, my sparrow, thou dost breed Thought in me beyond all telling; Shootest through me sunlight, seed, And fruitful blessing, with that welling Ripple of ecstatic rest, Gurgling ever from thy breast! And thy breezy carol spurs Vital motion in my blood, Such as in the sapwood stirs, Swells and shapes the pointed bud Of the lilac; and besets The hollows thick with violets. Yet I know not any charm That can make the fleeting time Of thy sylvan, faint alarm Suit itself to human rhyme: And my yearning rhythmic word, Does thee grievous wrong, dear bird. So, however thou hast wrought This wild joy on heart and brain, It is better left untaught. Take thou up the song again: There is nothing sad afloat On the tide that swells thy throat! FAIRHAVEN BAY. I push on through the shaggy wood, I round the hill: 't is here it stood; And there, beyond the crumbled walls, The shining Concord slowly crawls, Yet seems to make a passing stay, And gently spreads its lilied bay, Curbed by this green and reedy shore, Up toward the ancient homestead's door. But dumbly sits the shattered house, And makes no answer: man and mouse Long since forsook it, and decay Chokes its deep heart with ashes gray. On what was once a garden-ground Dull red-bloomed sorrels now abound; And boldly whistles the shy quail Within the vacant pasture's pale. Ah, strange and savage, where he shines, The sun seems staring through those pines That once the vanished home could bless With intimate, sweet loneliness. The ignorant, elastic sod The feet of them that daily trod Its roods hath utterly forgot: The very fire-place knows them not. For, in the weedy cellar, thick The ruined chimney's mass of brick Lies strown. Wide heaven, with such an ease Dost thou, too, lose the thought of these? Yet I, although I know not who Lived here, in years that voiceless grew Ere I was born,--and never can,-- Am moved, because I am a man. Oh glorious gift of brotherhood! Oh sweet elixir in the blood, That makes us live with those long dead, Or hope for those that shall be bred Hereafter! No regret can rob My heart of this delicious throb; No thought of fortunes haply wrecked, Nor pang for nature's wild neglect. And, though the hearth be cracked and cold, Though ruin all the place enfold, These ashes that have lost their name Shall warm my life with lasting flame! CHANT FOR AUTUMN. Veiled in visionary haze, Behold, the ethereal autumn days Draw near again! In broad array, With a low, laborious hum These ministers of plenty come, That seem to linger, while they steal away. O strange, sweet charm Of peaceful pain, When yonder mountain's bended arm Seems wafting o'er the harvest-plain A message to the heart that grieves, And round us, here, a sad-hued rain Of leaves that loosen without number Showering falls in yellow, umber, Red, or russet, 'thwart the stream! Now pale Sorrow shall encumber All too soon these lands, I deem; Yet who at heart believes The autumn, a false friend, Can bring us fatal harm? Ah, mist-hung avenues in dream Not more uncertainly extend Than the season that receives A summer's latest gleam! But the days of death advance: They tarry not, nor turn! I will gather the ashes of summer In my heart, as an urn. Oh draw thou nearer, Thou Spirit of the distant height, Whither now that slender flight Of swallows, winging, guides my sight! The hill cloth seem to me A fading memory Of long delight, And in its distant blue Half hideth from my view This shrinking season that must now retire; And so shall hold it, hopeful, a desire And knowledge old as night and always new. Draw nigher! And, with bended brow, I will be thy reverer Through the long winter's term! So, when the snows hold firm, And the brook is dumb; When sharp winds come To flay the hill-tops bleak, And whistle down the creek; While the unhappy worm Crawls deeper down into the ground, To 'scape Frost's jailer on his round; Thy form to me shall speak From the wide valley's bound, Recall the waving of the last bird's wing, And help me hope for spring. BEFORE THE SNOW. Autumn is gone: through the blue woodlands bare Shatters the windy rain. A thousand leaves, Like birds that fly the mournful Northern air, Flutter away from the old forest's eaves. Autumn is gone: as yonder silent rill, Slow eddying o'er thick leaf-heaps lately shed, My spirit, as I walk, moves awed and still, By thronging fancies wild and wistful led. Autumn is gone: alas, how long ago The grapes were plucked, and garnered was the grain! How soon death settles on us, and the snow Wraps with its white alike our graves, our gain! Yea, autumn's gone! Yet it robs not my mood Of that which makes moods dear,--some shoot of spring Still sweet within me; or thoughts of yonder wood We walked in,--memory's rare environing. And, though they die, the seasons only take A ruined substance. All that's best remains In the essential vision that can make One light for life, love, death, their joys, their pains. THE GHOSTS OF GROWTH. Last night it snowed; and Nature fell asleep. Forest and field lie tranced in gracious dreams Of growth, for ghosts of leaves long dead, me-seems, Hover about the boughs; and wild winds sweep O'er whitened fields full many a hoary heap From the storm-harvest mown by ice-bound streams! With beauty of crushed clouds the cold earth teems, And winter a tranquil-seeming truce would keep. But such ethereal slumber may not bide The ascending sun's bright scorn--not long, I fear; And all its visions on the golden tide Of mid-noon gliding off, must disappear. Fair dreams, farewell! So in life's stir and pride You fade, and leave the treasure of a tear! THE LILY-POND. Some fairy spirit with his wand, I think, has hovered o'er the dell, And spread this film upon the pond, And touched it with this drowsy spell. For here the musing soul is merged In moods no other scene can bring, And sweeter seems the air when scourged With wandering wild-bees' murmuring. One ripple streaks the little lake, Sharp purple-blue; the birches, thin And silvery, crowd the edge, yet break To let a straying sunbeam in. How came we through the yielding wood, That day, to this sweet-rustling shore? Oh, there together while we stood, A butterfly was wafted o'er, In sleepy light; and even now His glimmering beauty doth return Upon me, when the soft winds blow, And lilies toward the sunlight yearn. The yielding wood? And yet 't was both To yield unto our happy march; Doubtful it seemed, at times, if both Could pass its green, elastic arch. Yet there, at last, upon the marge We found ourselves, and there, behold, In hosts the lilies, white and large, Lay close, with hearts of downy gold! Deep in the weedy waters spread The rootlets of the placid bloom: So sprung my love's flower, that was bred In deep, still waters of heart's-gloom. So sprung; and so that morn was nursed To live in light, and on the pool Wherein its roots were deep immersed Burst into beauty broad and cool. Few words were said; a moment passed; I know not how it came--that awe And ardor of a glance that cast Our love in universal law! But all at once a bird sang loud, From dead twigs of the gleamy beech; His notes dropped dewy, as out of a cloud, A blessing on our married speech. Ah, Love! how fresh and rare, even now, That moment and that mood return Upon me, when the soft winds blow, And lilies toward the sunlight yearn! PART SECOND. FIRST GLANCE. A budding mouth and warm blue eyes; A laughing face;--and laughing hair, So ruddy does it rise From off that forehead fair; Frank fervor in whate'er she said, And a shy grace when she was still; A bright, elastic tread; Enthusiastic will; These wrought the magic of a maid As sweet and sad as the sun in spring, Joyous, yet half-afraid Her joyousness to sing. What weighs the unworthiness of earth When beauty such as this finds birth? Rare maid, to look on thee Gives all things harmony! "THE SUNSHINE OF THINE EYES." The sunshine of thine eyes, (Oh still, celestial beam!) Whatever it touches it fills With the life of its lambent gleam. The sunshine of thine eyes, Oh let it fall on me! Though I be but a mote of the air, I could turn to gold for thee! "WHEN, LOOKING DEEPLY IN THY FACE." When, looking deeply in thy face, I catch the undergleam of grace That grows beneath the outward glance, Long looking, lost as in a trance Of long desires that fleet and meet Around me like the fresh and sweet White showers of rain which, vanishing, 'Neath heaven's blue arches whirl, in spring; Suddenly then I seem to know Of some new fountain's overflow In grassy basins, with a sound That leads my fancy, past all bound, Into a region of retreat From this my life's bewildered heat. Oh if my soul might always draw From those deep fountains full of awe, The current of my days should rise Unto the level of thine eyes! WITHIN A YEAR I. Lips that are met in love's Devotion sweet, While parting lovers passionately greet, And earth through heaven's arc more swiftly moves-- Oh, will they be less dear Within a year? II. Eyes in whose shadow-spell Far off I read That which to lovers taking loving heed Dear women's eyes full soon and plainly tell-- Oh, will you give such cheer This time a year? III. Behold! the dark year goes, Nor will reveal Aught of its purpose, if for woe or weal, Swift as a stream that o'er the mill-weir flows: Mayhap the end draws near Within the year! IV. Yet, darling, once more touch Those lips to mine. Set on my life that talisman divine; Absence, new friends, I fear not overmuch---- Even Death, should he appear Within the year! THE SINGING WIRE. Hark to that faint, ethereal twang That from the bosom of the breeze Has caught its rise and fall: there rang Æolian harmonies! I looked; again the mournful, chords, In random rhythm lightly flung From off the wire, came shaped in words; And thus, meseemed, they sung. "I, messenger of many fates, Strung to the tones of woe or weal, Fine nerve that thrills and palpitates With all men know or feel,-- "Oh, is it strange that I should wail? Leave me my tearless, sad refrain, When in the pine-top wakes the gale That breathes of coming rain. "There is a spirit in the post; It, too, was once a murmuring tree; Its sapless, sad, and withered ghost Echoes my melody. "Come close, and lay your listening ear Against the bare and branchless wood. Say, croons it not, so low and clear, As if it understood?" I listened to the branchless pole That held aloft the singing wire; I heard its muffled music roll, And stirred with sweet desire: "O wire more soft than seasoned lute, Hast thou no sunlit word for me? Though long to me so coyly mute, Sure she may speak through thee!" I listened; but it was in vain. At first, the wind's old, wayward will Drew forth the tearless, sad refrain: That ceased, and all was still. But suddenly some kindling shock Struck flashing through the wire: a bird, Poised on it, screamed and flew; the flock Rose with him, wheeled, and whirred. Then to my soul there came this sense: "Her heart has answered unto thine; She comes, to-night. Go, hie thee hence! Meet her: no more repine!" Mayhap the fancy was far-fetched; And yet, mayhap, it hinted true. Ere moonrise, Love, a hand was stretched In mine, that gave me--you! And so more dear to me has grown, Than rarest tones swept from the lyre, The minor-movement of that moan In yonder singing wire. Nor care I for the will of states. Or aught besides, that smites that string, Since then so close it knit our fates, What time the bird took wing! MOODS OF LOVE. I. IN ABSENCE. My love for thee is like a winged seed Blown from the heart of thy rare beauty's flower, And deftly guided by some breezy power To fall and rest, where I should never heed, In deepest caves of memory. There, indeed, With virtue rife of many a sunny hoar,-- Ev'n making cold neglect and darkness dower Its roots with life,--swiftly it 'gan to breed, Till now wide-branching tendrils it outspreads Like circling arms, to prison its own prison, Fretting the walls with blooms by myriads, And blazoning in my brain full summer-season: Thy face, whose dearness presence had not taught. In absence multiplies, and fills all thought. II. HEART'S FOUNTAIN. Her moods are like the fountain's, changing ever, That spouts aloft a sudden, watery dome, Only to fall again in shattering foam, Just where the wedded jets themselves dissever, And palpitating downward, downward quiver, Unfolded like a swift ethereal flower, That sheds white petals in a blinding shower, And straightway soars anew with blithe endeavor. The sun may kindle it with healthful fire; Upon it falls the cloud-gray's leaden load; At night the stars shall haunt the whirling spire: Yet these have but a transient garb bestowed. So her glad life, whate'er the hours impart, Plays still 'twixt heaven's cope and her own clear heart. III. SOUTH-WIND SONG. Soft-throated South, breathing of summer's ease (Sweet breath, whereof the violet's life is made!) Through lips moist-warm, as thou hadst lately stayed 'Mong rosebuds, wooing to the cheeks of these Loth blushes faint and maidenly--rich Breeze, Still doth thy honeyed blowing bring a shade Of sad foreboding. In thy hand is laid The power to build or blight rich fruit of trees, The deep, cool grass, and field of thick-combed grain. Even so my Love may bring me joy or woe, Both measureless, but either counted gain Since given by her. For pain and pleasure flow Like tides upon us of the self-same sea. Tears are the gems of joy and misery! IV. THE LOVER'S YEAR Thou art my morning, twilight, noon, and eve, My Summer and my Winter, Spring and Fall; For Nature left on thee a touch of all The moods that come to gladden or to grieve The heart of Time, with purpose to relieve From lagging sameness. So do these forestall In thee such o'erheaped sweetnesses as pall Too swiftly, and the taster tasteless leave. Scenes that I love to me always remain Beautiful, whether under summer's sun Beheld, or, storm-dark, stricken across with rain. So, through all humors, thou 'rt the same sweet one: Doubt not I love thee well in each, who see Thy constant change is changeful constancy. V. NEW WORLDS. With my beloved I lingered late one night. At last the hour when I must leave her came: But, as I turned, a fear I could not name Possessed me that the long sweet evening might Prelude some sudden storm, whereby delight Should perish. What if Death, ere dawn, should claim One of us? What, though living, not the same Each should appear to each in morning-light? Changed did I find her, truly, the next day: Ne'er could I see her as of old again. That strange mood seemed to draw a cloud away, And let her beauty pour through every vein Sunlight and life, part of me. Thus the lover With each new morn a new world may discover. VI. WEDDING-NIGHT. At night, with shaded eyes, the summer moon In tender meditation downward glances At the dark earth, far-set in dim expanses, And, welcomer than blazoned gold of noon, Down through the air her steady lights are strewn. The breezy forests sigh in moonlit trances, And the full-hearted poet, waking, fancies The smiling hills will break in laughter soon. Oh thus, thou gentle Nature, dost thou shine On me to-night. My very limbs would melt, Like rugged earth beneath yon ray divine, Into faint semblance of what they have felt: Thine eye doth color me, O wife, O mine, With peace that in thy spirit long hath dwelt! LOVE'S DEFEAT. A thousand times I would have hoped, A thousand times protested; But still, as through the night I groped, My torch from me was wrested, and wrested. How often with a succoring cup Unto the hurt I hasted! The wounded died ere I came up; My cup was still untasted,-- Untasted. Of darkness, wounds, and harsh disdain Endured, I ne'er repented. 'T is not of these I would complain: With these I were contented,-- Contented. Here lies the misery, to feel No work of love completed; In prayerless passion still to kneel, And mourn, and cry: "Defeated Defeated!" MAY AND MARRIAGE. THE LOVER WHO THINKS. Dost thou remember, Love, those hours Shot o'er with random rainy showers, When the bold sun would woo coy May? She smiled, then wept--and looked another way. We, learning from the sun and season, Together plotted joyous treason 'Gainst maiden majesty, to give Each other troth, and henceforth wedded live. But love, ah, love we know is blind! Not always what they seek they find When, groping through dim-lighted natures, Fond lovers look for old, ideal statures. What then? Is all our purpose lost? The balance broken, since Fate tossed Uneven weights? Oh well beware That thought, my sweet: 't were neither fit nor fair! Seek not for any grafted fruits From souls so wedded at the roots; But whatsoe'er our fibres hold, Let that grow forth in mutual, ample mold! No sap can circle without flaw Into the perfect sphere we saw Hanging before our happy eyes Amid the shade of marriage-mysteries; But all that in the heart doth lurk Must toward the mystic shaping work: Sweet fruit and bitter both must fall When the boughs bend, at each year's autumn-call. Ah, dear defect! that aye shall lift Us higher, not through craven shift Of fault on common frailty;--nay, But twofold hope to help with generous stay! I shall be nearer, understood: More prized art thou than perfect good. And since thou lov'st me, I shall grow Thy other self--thy Life, thy Joy, thy Woe! THE FISHER OF THE CAPE. At morn his bark like a bird Slips lightly oceanward-- Sail feathering smooth o'er the bay And beak that drinks the wild spray. In his eyes beams cheerily A light like the sun's on the sea, As he watches the waning strand, Where the foam, like a waving hand Of one who mutely would tell Her love, flutters faintly, "Farewell." But at night, when the winds arise And pipe to driving skies, And the moon peers, half afraid, Through the storm-cloud's ragged shade, He hears her voice in the blast That sighs about the mast, He sees her face in the clouds As he climbs the whistling shrouds; And a power nerves his hand, Shall bring the bark to land. SAILOR'S SONG. The sea goes up; the sky comes down. Oh, can you spy the ancient town,-- The granite hills so hard and gray, That rib the land behind the bay? O ye ho, boys! Spread her wings! Fair winds, boys: send her home! O ye ho! Three years? Is it so long that we Have lived upon the lonely sea? Oh, often I thought we'd see the town, When the sea went up, and the sky came down. O ye ho, boys! Spread her wings! Fair winds, boys: send her home! O ye ho! Even the winter winds would rouse A memory of my father's house; For round his windows and his door They made the same deep, mouthless roar. O ye ho, boys! Spread her wings! Fair winds, boys: send her home! O ye ho! And when the summer's breezes beat, Methought I saw the sunny street Where stood my Kate. Beneath her hand She gazed far out, far out from land. O ye ho, boys! Spread her wings! Fair winds, boys: send her home! O ye ho! Farthest away, I oftenest dreamed That I was with her. Then, it seemed A single stride the ocean wide Had bridged, and brought me to her side. O ye ho, boys! Spread her wings! Fair winds, boys: send her home. O ye ho! But though so near we're drawing, now, 'T is farther off----I know not how. We sail and sail: we see no home. Would we into the port were come! O ye ho, boys! Spread her wings! Fair winds, boys: send her home! O ye ho! At night, the same stars o'er the mast: The mast sways round--however fast We fly--still sways and swings around One scanty circle's starry bound. O ye ho, boys! Spread her wings! Fair winds, boys: send her home! O ye ho! Ah, many a month those stars have shone, And many a golden morn has flown, Since that so solemn, happy morn, When, I away, my babe was born. O ye ho, boys! Spread her wings! Fair winds, boys: send her home! O ye ho! And, though so near we're drawing, now, 'T is farther off--I know not how-- I would not aught amiss had come To babe or mother there, at home! O ye ho, boys! Spread her wings! Fair winds, boys: send her home! O ye ho! 'T is but a seeming: swiftly rush The seas, beneath. I hear the crush Of foamy ridges 'gainst the prow. Longing outspeeds the breeze, I know. O ye ho, boys! Spread her wings! Fair winds, boys: send her home! O ye ho! Patience, my mates! Though not this eve We cast our anchor, yet believe, If but the wind holds, short the run: We 'll sail in with to-morrow's sun. O ye ho, boys! Spread her wings! Fair winds, boys: send her home! O ye ho! JESSAMINE. Here stands the great tree still, with broad, bent head, And wide arms grown aweary, yet outspread With their old blessing. But wan memory weaves Strange garlands now amongst the darkening leaves. _And the moon hangs low in the elm_. Beneath these glimmering arches Jessamine Walked with her lover long ago, and in This moon-made shade he questioned; and she spoke: Then on them both love's rarer radiance broke. _And the moon hangs low in the elm_. Sweet Jessamine we called her; for she shone Like blossoms that in sun and shade have grown, Gathering from each alike a perfect white, Whose rich bloom breaks opaque through darkest night. _And the moon hangs low in the elm_. And for this sweetness Walt, her lover, sought To win her; wooed her here, his heart full-fraught With fragrance of her being, and gained his plea. So "We will wed," they said, "beneath this tree." _And the moon hangs low in the elm_. Was it unfaith, or faith more full to her, Made him, for fame and fortune longing, spur Into the world? Far from his home he sailed: And life paused; while she watched joy vanish, vailed. _And the moon hangs low in the elm_. Oh, better at the elm tree's sun-browned feet If he had been content to let life fleet Its wonted way!--there rearing his small house; Mowing and milking, lord of corn and cows! _And the moon hangs low in the elm_. For as against a snarling sea one steers, Ever he battled with the beetling years; And ever Jessamine must watch and pine, Her vision bounded by the bleak sea-line. _And the moon hangs low in the elm_. At last she heard no more. The neighbors said That Walt had married, faithless, or was dead. Yet naught her trust could move; the tryst she kept Each night still, 'neath this tree, before she slept. _And the moon hangs low in the elm._ So, circling years went by; and in her face Slow melancholy wrought a tempered grace Of early joy with sorrow's rich alloy-- Refinèd, rare, no doom should e'er destroy. _And the moon hangs low in the elm._ Sometimes at twilight, when sweet Jessamine, Slow-footed, weary-eyed, passed by to win The elm, we smiled for pity of her, and mused On love that so could live with love refused. _And the moon hangs low in the elm._ Nor none could hope for her. But she had grown Too high in love for hope, and bloomed alone, Aloft in pure sincerity secure; For fortune's failures, in her faith too sure. _And the moon hangs low in the elm._ Oh, well for Walt, if he had known her soul! Discouraged on disaster's changeful shoal Wrecking, he rested; starved on selfish pride Long years; nor would obey love's homeward tide. _And the moon hangs low in the elm._ But, bitterly repenting of his sin, Oh, bitterly he learned to look within Sweet Jessamine's clear depth--when the past, dead, Mocked him, and wild, waste years forever fled! _And the moon hangs low in the elm._ Late, late, oh, late beneath the tree stood two! In awe and anguish wondering: "Is it true?" Two that were each most like to some wan wraith: Yet each on each looked with a living faith. _And the moon hangs low in the elm._ Even to the tree-top sang the wedding-bell; Even to the tree-top tolled the passing knell. Beneath it Walt and Jessamine were wed; Beneath it many a year she lieth dead! _And the moon hangs low in the elm._ Here stands the great tree still. But age has crept Through every coil, while Walt each night has kept The tryst alone. Hark! with what windy might The boughs chant o'er her grave their burial-rite! _And the moon hangs low in the elm. _ GRIEF'S HERO. A youth unto herself Grief took, Whom everything of joy forsook, And men passed with denying head, Saying: "'T were better he were dead." Grief took him, and with master-touch Molded his being. I marveled much To see her magic with the clay, So much she gave--and took away. Daily she wrought, and her design Grew daily clearer and more fine, To make the beauty of his shape Serve for the spirit's free escape. With liquid fire she filled his eyes. She graced his lips with swift surmise Of sympathy for others' woe, And made his every fibre flow In fairer curves. On brow and chin And tinted cheek, drawn clean and thin, She sculptured records rich, great Grief! She made him loving, made him lief. I marveled; for, where others saw A failing frame with many a flaw, Meseemed a figure I beheld Fairer than anything of eld Fashioned from sunny marble. Here Nature was artist with no peer. No chisel's purpose could have caught These lines, nor brush their secret wrought. Not so the world weighed, busily Pursuing drossy industry; But, saturated with success, Well-guarded by a soft excess Of bodily ease, gave little heed To him that held not by their creed, Save o'er the beauteous youth to moan: "A pity that he is not grown To our good stature and heavier weight, To bear his share of our full freight." Meanwhile, thus to himself he spoke: "Oh, noble is the knotted oak, And sweet the gush of sylvan streams, And good the great sun's gladding beams, The blush of life upon the field, The silent might that mountains wield. Still more I love to mix with men, Meeting the kindly human ken; To feel the force of faithful friends-- The thirst for smiles that never ends. "Yet precious more than all of these I hold great Sorrow's mysteries, Whereby Gehenna's sultry gale Is made to lift the golden veil 'Twixt heaven's starry-spherèd light Of truth and our dim, sun-blent sight. Joy comes to ripen; but 'tis Grief That garners in the grainy sheaf. Time was I feared to know or feel The spur of aught but gilded weal; To bear aloft the victor, Fame, Would ev'n have champed a stately shame Of bit and bridle. But my fears Fell off in the pure bath of tears. And now with sinews fresh and strong I stride, to summon with a song The deep, invigorating truth That makes me younger than my youth. "O Sorrow, deathless thy delight! Deathless it were but for our slight Endurance! Truth like thine, too rare, We dare but take in scantiest share." He died: the creatures of his kind Fared on. Not one had known his mind. But the unnamed yearnings of the air, The eternal sky's wide-searching stare, The undertone of brawling floods, And the old moaning of the woods Grew full of memory. The sun Many a brave heart has shone upon Since then, of men who walked abroad For joy and gladness praising God. But widowed Grief lives on alone: She hath not chosen, of them, one. A FACE IN THE STREET. Poor, withered face, that yet was once so fair, Grown ashen-old in the wild fires of lust-- Thy star-like beauty, dimm'd with earthly dust, Yet breathing of a purer native air;-- They who whilom, cursed vultures, sought a share Of thy dead womanhood, their greed unjust Have satisfied, have stripped and left thee bare. Still, like a leaf warped by the autumn gust, And driving to the end, thou wrapp'st in flame And perfume all thy hollow-eyed decay, Feigning on those gray cheeks the blush that Shame Took with her when she fled long since away. Ah God! rain fire upon this foul-souled city That gives such death, and spares its men,--for pity! THE BATHER. Standing here alone, Let me pause awhile, Drinking in the light Ere, with plunge of white limbs prone, I raise the sparkling flight Of foam-flakes volatile. Now, in natural guise, I woo the deathless breeze, Through me rushing fleet The joy of life, in swift surprise: I grow with growing wheat, And burgeon with the trees. Lo! I fetter Time, So he cannot run; And in Eden again-- Flash of memory sublime!-- Dwell naked, without stain, Beneath the dazed sun. All yields brotherhood; Each least thing that lives, Wrought of primal spores, Deepens this wild sense of good That, on these shaggy shores, Return to nature gives. Oh, that some solitude Were ours, in woodlands deep, Where, with lucent eyes, Living lithe and limber-thewed, Our life's shape might arise Like mountains fresh from sleep! To sounds of water falling, Hosts of delicate dreams Should lull us and allure With a dim, enchanted calling, Blameless to live and pure Like these sweet springs and streams. But in a wilderness Alone may such life be? Why of all things framed, In my human form confessed Should I be ashamed, And blush for honesty? Rounded, strengthy limbs That knit me to my kind-- Your glory turns to grief! Shall I for my soul sing hymns, Yet for my body find No clear, divine belief? Let me rather die, Than by faith uphold Dogmas weak that dare The form that once Christ wore deny Afraid with him to share A purity twofold; Yet, while sin remains On this saddened earth, Humbly walk my ways! For my garments are as chains; And I fear to praise My frame with careless mirth. Joy and penance go Hand in hand, I see! Would I could live so well, Soul of me should never know When my coverings fell, Nor feel this nudity! HELEN AT THE LOOM. Helen, in her silent room, Weaves upon the upright loom, Weaves a mantle rich and dark, Purpled over-deep. But mark How she scatters o'er the wool Woven shapes, till it is full Of men that struggle close, complex; Short-clipp'd steeds with wrinkled necks Arching high; spear, shield, and all The panoply that doth recall Mighty war, such war as e'en For Helen's sake is waged, I ween. Purple is the groundwork: good! All the field is stained with blood. Blood poured out for Helen's sake; (Thread, run on; and, shuttle, shake!) But the shapes of men that pass Are as ghosts within a glass, Woven with whiteness of the swan, Pale, sad memories, gleaming wan From the garment's purple fold Where Troy's tale is twined and told. Well may Helen, as with tender Touch of rosy fingers slender She doth knit the story in Of Troy's sorrow and her sin, Feel sharp filaments of pain Reeled off with the well-spun skein, And faint blood-stains on her hands From the shifting sanguine strands. Gently, sweetly she doth sorrow: What has been must be to-morrow; Meekly to her fate she bows. Heavenly beauties still will rouse Strife and savagery in men: Shall the lucid heavens, then, Lose their high serenity, Sorrowing over what must be? If she taketh to her shame, Lo, they give her not the blame,-- Priam's wisest counselors, Aged men, not loving wars: When she goes forth, clad in white, Day-cloud touched by first moonlight, With her fair hair, amber-hued As vapor by the moon imbued With burning brown, that round her clings, See, she sudden silence brings On the gloomy whisperers Who would make the wrong all hers. So, Helen, in thy silent room, Labor at the storied loom; (Thread, run on; and, shuttle, shake!) Let thy aching sorrow make Something strangely beautiful Of this fabric, since the wool Comes so tinted from the Fates, Dyed with loves, hopes, fears, and hates. Thou shalt work with subtle force All thy deep shade of remorse In the texture of the weft, That no stain on thee be left;-- Ay, false queen, shalt fashion grief, Grief and wrong, to soft relief. Speed the garment! It may chance. Long hereafter, meet the glance Of �none; when her lord, Now thy Paris, shall go t'ward Ida, at his last sad end, Seeking her, his early friend, Who alone can cure his ill Of all who love him, if she will. It were fitting she should see In that hour thine artistry, And her husband's speechless corse In the garment of remorse! But take heed that in thy work Naught unbeautiful may lurk. Ah, how little signifies Unto thee what fortunes rise, What others fall! Thou still shalt rule, Still shalt work the colored crewl. Though thy yearning woman's eyes Burn with glorious agonies, Pitying the waste and woe, And the heroes falling low In the war around thee, here, Yet that exquisitest tear 'Twixt thy lids shall dearer be Than life, to friend or enemy. There are people on the earth Doomed with doom of too great worth. Look on Helen not with hate, Therefore, but compassionate. If she suffer not too much, Seldom does she feel the touch Of that fresh, auroral joy Lighter spirits may decoy To their pure and sunny lives. Heavy honey 't is, she hives. To her sweet but burdened soul All that here she doth control-- What of bitter memories, What of coming fate's surmise, Paris' passion, distant din Of the war now drifting in To her quiet--idle seems; Idle as the lazy gleams Of some stilly water's reach, Seen from where broad vine-leaves pleach A heavy arch, and, looking through, Far away the doubtful blue Glimmers, on a drowsy day, Crowded with the sun's rich gray, As she stands within her room, Weaving, weaving at the loom. "O WHOLESOME DEATH." O Wholesome Death, thy sombre funeral-car Looms ever dimly on the lengthening way Of life; while, lengthening still, in sad array, My deeds in long procession go, that are As mourners of the man they helped to mar. I see it all in dreams, such as waylay The wandering fancy when the solid day Has fallen in smoldering ruins, and night's star, Aloft there, with its steady point of light Mastering the eye, has wrapped the brain in sleep. Ah, when I die, and planets take their flight Above my grave, still let my spirit keep Sometimes its vigil of divine remorse, 'Midst pity, praise, or blame heaped o'er my corse! BURIAL-SONG FOR SUMNER. Now the last wreath of snow That melts, in mist exhales White aspiration, and our deep-voiced gales In chorus chant the measured march of spring, Whom griefs of life and death Are burdening! Slow, slow-- With half-held breath-- Tread slow, O mourners, that all men may know What hero here lies low! O music, sweep From some deep cave, and bear To us that gasp in this so meagre air Sweet ministerings And consolations of contorted sound, With agonies profound Of nobly warring and enduring chords That lie, close-bound, Unstirred as yet 'neath thy wide, wakening wings; So that our hearts break not in broken words. O music, that hast power This darkness to devour In vivid light; that from the dusk of grief Canst cause to grow divergent flower and leaf, And from death's darkest roots Bring forth the fairest fruits;-- Come thou, to quicken this hour Of loss, and keep Thy spell on all, that none may dare to weep! For he whom now we mourn, As if from giants born, Was strong in limb and strong in brain, And nobly with a giant scorn Withstood the direst pain That healing science knows, When, by the dastard blows Of his brute enemy Laid low, he sought to rise again Through help of knife and fire,-- The awful enginery Wherewith men dare aspire To wrest from Death his victims. Yea, Though he who healed him shrank and throbbed With horror of the wound, Brave Sumner gave no sound, Nor flinched, nor sobbed, But as though within the man Instant premonition ran Of his high fate, Imperishable, sculptured state Enthroned in death to hold, He stood, a statued form Of veiled and voiceless storm, Inwardly quivering Like the swift-smitten string Of unheard music, yet As massively and firmly set As if he had been marble or wrought gold! Built in so brave a shape, How could he hope escape The blundering people's wrath? Who, seeing him strong, Supposed it right to cast on him their wrong, Since he could bear it all! Lo, now, the sombre pall Sweeps their dull errors from the path, And leaves it free For him, whose hushed heart no reproaches hath, Unto his grave to fare, In shrouded majesty! His triumph fills the air: Behold, the streets are bordered with vain breath Of those who reverent watch the train of death; But he has done with breathing! Wise Death, still choosing near and far, Thou couldst not strike a higher star From out our heaven, and yet its light In falling glorifies the night! Leader in life, his lips, though dumb, Still rule us by their restfulness, their smile Of far-off meanings; and the people come In tributary hosts for many a mile, Drawn by an eloquence More solemn and intense Than that wherewith he shook The Senate, while his look Of sober lightning cleft the knotty growth Of error, that within the riven root Uplifted, lit with peace, truth's buds might shoot, And blow sweet breath o'er all, however loth! Unspeaking, though his eyes forget The light that late forsook Their chambers, there doth rise Mysteriously yet A radiance thence that glows On brows of them, the great and wise, Poets and men of prophecies, Who, with looks of strange repose, Calm, exalted, here have met Him to follow to his grave. Well they know he's crossed their bound, Yet, with baffled longing brave, Seek with him the depths to sound That gulf our lonely life around. Oh, on these mortal faces frail What immortality Falls from the death-light pale! Ev'n thus the path unto thy tomb, Sumner, all our brave and good Still shall pace through time to come, For in distant Auburn wood Seeing the glimmer of thy stone, They a shaft shall deem it, thrown From a dawn beyond the deep, And so haste with thee to keep Angelic brotherhood! O herald, gone before, For these throw wide the door, Make room, make room! Now, music, cease, And bitter brazen trumpets hold your peace! Now, while the dumb, white air Draws from our still despair A purer prayer. Then must the sod Fulfill its humble share, Meek-folded o'er his breast, Here where he lies amongst the waiting trees: They shall break bud when warm winds from the west And southern breezes come to touch the place Made precious by this grace Of memory dear to God. We leave him where the granite Lion lies And gazes toward the East, with woman's eyes That read the riddle of the undying sun, Bearing within her breast the stony germ Of continents, but--lasting no less firm-- The memory of those marvels done, The battles fought, the words that wrought To free a race, and chasten one. We leave him where the river slowly winds, A broken chain; The river that so late its hero finds, Without a stain, Whose name so long expectantly it bore; And, echoing now a people's thought, The Charles shall murmur by this reedy shore His fame forevermore. ARISE, AMERICAN! The soul of a nation awaking,-- High visions of daybreak I saw, And the stir of a state, the forsaking Of sin, and the worship of law. O pine-tree, shout! And hoarser Rush, river, unto the sea, Foam-fettered and sun-flushed, a courser That feels the prairie, free! Our birth-star beckons to trial All faith of the far-fled years, Ere scorn was our share, and denial, Or laughter for patriot's tears. And lo, Faith comes forth the finer From trampled thickets of fire, And the orient opens diviner Before her; the heaven lifts higher. O deep, sweet eyes, and severer Than steel! he knoweth who comes, Thy hero: bend thine eyes nearer! Now wilder than battle-drums Thy glance in his blood is stirring! His heart is alive like the main When the roweled winds are spurring, And the broad tides shoreward strain. O hero, art thou among us? O helper, hidest thou still? Why hath he no anthem sung us, Why waiteth, nor worketh our will? For still a smirk or a favor Can hide the face of the false; And the old-time Faith seeks braver Upholders, and sacreder walls. Yea, cunning is Christian evil, And subtle the conscience' snare; But virtue's volcanic upheaval Shall cast fine device to the air! Too long has the land's soul slumbered, And triumph bred dangerous ease,-- Our victories all unnumbered, Our feet on the down-bowed seas. Come, then, simple and stalwart Life of the earlier days! Come! Far better than all were it-- Our precepts, our prayers, and our lays-- That the heart of the people should tremble Accord to some mighty one's voice, The helpless atoms assemble In music, their valor to poise. Come to us, mountain-dweller, Leader, wherever thou art, Skilled from thy cradle, a queller Of serpents, and sound to the heart! Modest, and mighty, and tender, Man of an iron mold, Learned or unlearned, our defender, American-souled! THE SILENT TIDE A tangled orchard round the farm-house spreads, Wherein it stands home-like, but desolate, 'Midst crowded and uneven-statured sheds, Alike by rain and sunshine sadly stained. A quiet country-road before the door Runs, gathering close its ruts to scale the hill-- A sudden bluff on the New Hampshire coast, That rises rough against the sea, and hangs Crested above the bowlder-sprinkled beach. And on the road white houses small are strung Like threaded beads, with intervals. The church Tops the rough hill; then comes the wheelwright's shop. From orchard, church, and shop you hear the sea, And from the farm-house windows see it strike Sharp gleams through slender arching apple-boughs. Sea-like, too, echoing round me here there rolls A surging sorrow; and even so there breaks A smitten light of woe upon me, now, Seeing this place, and telling o'er again The tale of those who dwelt here once. Long since It was, and they were two--two brothers, bound By early orphanage and solitude The closer, cleaving strongly each to each, Till love, that held them many years in gage, Itself swept them asunder. I have heard The story from old Deacon Snow, their friend, He who was boy and man with them. A boy! What, he? How strange it seems! who now is stiff And warped with life's fierce heat and cold: his brows Are hoary white, and on his head the hairs Stand sparse as wheat-stalks on the bare field's edge! Reuben and Jerry they were named; but two Of common blood and nurture scarce were found More sharply different. For the first was bold, Breeze-like and bold to come or go; not rash, But shrewdly generous, popular, and boon: And Jerry, dark and sad-faced. Whether least He loved himself or neighbor none could tell, So cold he seemed in wonted sympathy. Yet he would ponder an hour at a time Upon a bird found dead; and much he loved To brood i' th' shade of yon wind-wavered pines. Often at night, too, he would wander forth, Lured by the hollow rumbling of the sea In moonlight breaking, there to learn wild things, Such as these dreamers pluck out of the dusk While other men lie sleeping. But a star, Rose on his sight, at last, with power to rule Majestically mild that deep-domed sky, High as youth's hopes, that stood above his soul; And, ruling, led him dayward. That was Grace, I mean Grace Brierly, daughter of the squire, Rivaling the wheelwright Hungerford's shy Ruth For beauty. Therefore, in the sunny field, Mowing the clover-purpled grass, or, waked In keen December dawns,--while creeping light And winter-tides beneath the pallid stars Stole o'er the marsh together,--a thought of her Would turn him cool or warm, like the south breeze, And make him blithe or bitter. Alas for him! Eagerly storing golden thoughts of her, He locked a phantom treasure in his breast. He sought to chain the breezes, and to lift A perfume as a pearl before his eyes-- Intangible delight! A time drew on When from these twilight musings on his hopes He woke, and found the morning of his love Blasted, and all its rays shorn suddenly. For Reuben, too, had turned his eye on Grace, And she with favoring face the suit had met, Known in the village; this dream-fettered youth Perceiving not what passed, until too late. One holiday the young folks all had gone Strawberrying, with the village Sabbath-school; Reuben and Grace and Jerry, Ruth, Rob Snow, And all their friends, youth-mates that buoyantly Bore out 'gainst Time's armadas, like a fleet Of fair ships, sunlit, braced by buffeting winds, Indomitably brave; but, soon or late, Battle and hurricane or whirl them deep Below to death, or send them homeward, seared By shot and storm: so went they forth, that day. Two wagons full of rosy children rolled Along the rutty track, 'twixt swamp and slope, Through deep, green-glimmering woods, and out at last On grassy table-land, warm with the sun And yielding tributary odors wild Of strawberry, late June-rose, juniper, Where sea and land breeze mingled. There a brook Through a bare hollow flashing, spurted, purled, And shot away, yet stayed--a light and grace Unconscious and unceasing. And thick pines, Hard by, drew darkly far away their dim And sheltering, cool arcades. So all dismount, And fields and forest gladden with their shout; Ball, swing, and see-saw sending the light hearts Of the children high o'er earth and everything. While some staid, kindly women draw and spread In pine-shade the long whiteness of a cloth, The rest, a busy legion, o'er the grass Kneeling, must rifle the meadow of its fruit. O laughing Fate! O treachery of truth To royal hopes youth bows before! That day, Ev'n there where life in such glad measure beat Its round, with winds and waters, tunefully, And birds made music in the matted wood, The shaft of death reached Jerry's heart: he saw The sweet conspiracy of those two lives, In looks and gestures read his doom, and heard Their laughter ring to the grave all mirth of his. So Reuben's life in full leaf stood, its fruit Hidden in a green expectancy; but all His days were rounded with ripe consciousness: While Jerry felt the winter's whitening blight, As when that frosty fern-work and those palms Of visionary leaf, and trailing vines, Quaint-chased by night-winds on the pane, melt off, And naked earth, stone-stiff, with bristling trees, Stares in the winter sunlight coldly through. But yet he rose, and clothed himself amain With misery, and once more put on life As a stained garment. Highly he resolved To make his deedless days henceforward strike Pure harmony--a psalm of silences. But on the Sunday, coming from the church, He saw those happy, plighted lovers walk Before proud Grace's father, and of friends Heard comment and congratulation given. Then with Rob Snow he hurried to the beach, To a rough heap of stones they two had reared In boyhood. There the two held sad debate Of life's swift losses, Bob inspiriting still, Jerry rejecting hope, ev'n though his friend, Self-wounding (for he loved Ruth Hungerford), Told how the wheelwright's daughter longed for him, And yet might make him glad, though Grace was lost. The season deepened, and in Jerry's heart Ripened a thought charged with grave consequence. His grief he would have stifled at its birth, Sad child of frustrate longing! But anon-- Knowledge of Ruth's affection being revealed, Which, if he stayed to let it feed on him, Vine-like might wreathe and wind about his life, Lifting all shade and sweetness out of reach Of Robert, so long his friend--honor, and hopes He would not name, kindled a torch for war Of various impulse in him. Reuben wedded; Yet Jerry lingered. Then, swift whisperings Along reverberant walls of gossips' ears Hummed loud and louder a love for Ruth. Grace, too, Involved him in a web of soft surmise With Ruth; and Reuben questioned him thereof. But a white, sudden anger struck like a bolt O'er Jerry's face, that blackened under it: He strode away, and left his brother dazed, With red rush of offended self-conceit Staining his forehead to the hair. This flash Of anger--first since boyhood's wholesome strifes-- On Jerry's path gleamed lurid; by its light He shaped a life's course out. There came a storm One night. He bade farewell to Ruth; and when Above the seas the bare-browed dawn arose, While the last laggard drops ran off the eaves, He dressed, but took some customary garb On his arm; stole swiftly to the sands; and there Cast clown his garments by the ancient heap Of stones. At first brief pause he made, and thought: "And thus I play, to win perchance a tear From her whom, first, to save the smallest care, I thought I could have died!" But then at once Within the sweep of swirling water-planes That from the great waves circled up and slid Instantly back, passing far down the shore, Southward he made his way. Next day he shipped Upon a whaler outward bound. She spread Her mighty wings, and bore him far away-- So far, Death seemed across her wake to stalk, Withering her swift shape from the empty air, Until her memory grew a faded dream. Ah, what a desolate brightness that young day Flung o'er the impassive strand and dull green marsh And green-arched orchard, ere it struck the farm! Storm-strengthened, clear, and cool the morning rose To gaze down on that frighted home, where dawned Pale Ruth's discovery of her loss, who late, Guessing some ill in Jerry's last-night words Of vague farewell, woke now to certainty Of strange disaster. So, when Reuben and Rob, Hither and thither searching, with locked lips And eyes grown suddenly cold in eager dread, On those still sands beside the untamed sea, Came to the garments Jerry had thrown there, dumb They stood, and knew he'd perished. If by chance Borne out with undertow and rolled beneath The gaping surge, or rushing on his death Free-willed, they would not guess; but straight they set Themselves to watch the changes of the sea-- The watchful sea that would not be betrayed, The surly flood that echoed their suspense With hollow-sounding horror. Thus three tides Hurled on the beach their empty spray, and brought Nor doubt-dispelling death, nor new-born hope. But with the fourth slow turn at length there came A naked, drifting body impelled to shore, An unknown sailor by the late storm swept Out of the rigging of some laboring ship. And him, disfigured by the water's wear, The watching friends supposed their dead; and so, Mourning, took up this outcast of the deep, And buried him, with church-rite and with pall Trailing, and train of sad-eyed mourners, there In the old orchard-lot by Reuben's door. Observed among the mourners walked slight Ruth. Her grief had dropped a veil of finer light Around her, hedging her with sanctity Peculiar; all stood shy about her save Rob Snow, he venturing from time to time Some small, uncertain act of kindliness. Long seemed she vowed from joy, but when the birds Began to mate, and quiet violets blow Along the brook-side, lo! she smiled again; Again the wind-flower color in her cheeks Blanch'd in a breath, and bloomed once more; then stayed; Till, like the breeze that rumors ripening buds, A delicate sense crept through the air that soon These two would scale the church-crowned hill, and wed. The seasons faced the world, and fled, and came. In summer nights, the soft roll of the sea Was shattered, resonant, beneath a moon That, silent, seemed to hearken. And every hour In autumn, night or day, large apples fell Without rebound to earth, upon the sod There mounded greenly by the large slate slab In the old orchard-lot near Reuben's door. But there were changes: after some long years Reuben and Grace beheld a brave young boy Bearing their double life abroad in one-- Beginning new the world, and bringing hopes That in their path fell flower-like. Not at ease They dwelt, though; for a slow discordancy Of temper--weak-willed waste of life in bursts Of petulance--had marred their happiness. And so the boy, young Reuben, as he grew, Was chafed and vexed by this ill-fitting mode Of life forced on him, and rebelled. Too oft Brooding alone, he shaped loose schemes of flight Into the joyous outer world, to break From the unwholesome wranglings of his home. Then once, when at some slight demur he made, Dispute ensued between the man and wife, He burst forth, goaded, "Some day I will leave-- Leave you forever!" And his father stared, Lifted and clenched his hand, but let it unloose, Nerveless. The blow, unstruck, yet quivered through The boy's whole body. Waiting for the night, Reuben made ready, lifted latch, went forth; Then, with his little bundle in his hand, Took the bleak road that led him to the world. When Jerry eighteen years had sailed, had bared His hurt soul to the pitiless sun and drunk The rainy brew of storms on all seas, tired Of wreck and fever and renewed mischance That would not end in death, a longing stirred Within him to revisit that gray coast Where he was born. He landed at the port Whence first he sailed; and, as in fervid youth, Set forth upon the highway, to walk home. Some hoarding he had made, wherewith to enrich His brother's brood for spendthrift purposes; And as he walked he wondered how they looked, How tall they were, how many there might be. At noon he set himself beside the way, Under a clump of willows sprouting dense O'er the weed-woven margin of a brook; While in the fine green branches overhead Song-sparrows lightly perched, for whom he threw From his scant bread some crumbs, remembering well Old days when he had played with birds like these-- The same, perhaps, or grandfathers of theirs, Or earlier still progenitors: whereat They chirped and chattered louder than before. But, as he sat, a boy came down the road, Stirring the noontide dust with laggard feet. Young Reuben 't was, who seaward made his way. And Jerry hailed him, carelessly, his mood Moving to salutation, and the boy, From under his torn hat-brim looking, answered. Then, seeing that he eyed his scrap of bread, The sailor bade him come and share it. So They fell to talk; and Jerry, with a rough, Quick-touching kindness, the boy's heart so moved That unto him he all his wrong confessed. Gravely the sailor looked at him, and told His own tale of mad flight and wandering; how, Wasted he had come back, his life a husk Of withered seeds, a raveled purse, though once With golden years well stocked, all squandered now. At ending, he prevailed, and Reub was won To turn and follow. Jerry, though he knew Not yet the father's name, said he that way Was going, too, and he would intercede Between the truant and his father. Back Together then they went. But on the way, As now they passed from pines to farming-land, The boy asked more. "'T is queer you should have come From these same parts, and run away like me! You did not tell me how it happened." JERRY. Foolish, All of it! But I thought it weightier Than the world's history, once. I could not stay And see my brother married to the girl I loved; and so I went. THE BOY. I had an uncle That was in love. But he--he drowned himself. Why do men do so? JERRY. Drowned himself? And when? THE BOY. I don't know. Long ago; it's like a dream To me. I was not born then. Deacon Snow Has told me something of it. Mother cries Even now, beside his grave. Poor uncle! JERRY. His grave! (_That_ could not be, then.) Yet if it should be, How can I think Grace cried-- THE BOY. How did you know My mother's name was Grace? JERRY. I am confused By what you say. But is your mother's name Grace? How! Grace, too? A strange uneasiness In Jerry's breast had waked. They walked awhile In silence. This he could not well believe, That Grace and Reuben unhappy were, nor that One son alone was theirs. Therefore aside He thrust that hidden, sharp foreboding: still He trusted, still sustained a calm suspense, And ranged among his memories. "Tell me, son," He said, "about this Deacon Snow--Rob Snow It must be, I suppose." THE BOY. Oh, do you know him? JERRY. A deacon now! Ay, once I knew Rob Snow-- A jolly blade, if ever any was, And merry as the full moon. THE BOY. He has failed A good deal now, though, since his wife died. JERRY. What! (Of course; of course; all's changed.) He married! THE BOY. Why, How long you must have been away! For since I can remember he has had a wife And children. She was Gran'ther Hungerford's-- JERRY. Her name was Ruth? THE BOY. Yes, Ruth! 'T is after her The deacon's nicest daughter's named; _she's_ Ruth. Then sadly Jerry pondered, and no more Found speech. They tramped on sternly. To the brow Of a long hill they came, whence they could see The village and blue ocean; then they sank Into a region of low-lying fields Half-naked from the scythe, and others veined With vines that 'midst dismantled, fallen corn Dragged all athwart a weight of tawny gourds, Sun-mellowed, sound. And now the level way Stretched forward eagerly, for hard ahead It made the turn that rounded Reuben's house. Between the still road and the tossing sea Lay the wide swamp, with all its hundred pools Reflecting leaden light; anon they passed A farm-yard where the noisy chanticleer Strutted and ruled, as one long since had done; And then the wayside trough with jutting spout Of ancient, mossy wood, that still poured forth Its liquid largess to all comers. Soon A slow cart met them, filled with gathered kelp: The salt scent seemed a breath of younger days. They reached the road-bend, and the evening shone Upon them, calmly. Jerry paused, o'erwhelmed. Reuben, surprised, glanced at him, and then said, "Yonder's the house." Old Jerry gazed on him, And trembled; for before him slowly grew Through the boy's face the mingled features there Of father and of mother--Grace's mouth, Ripe, pouting lips, and Reuben's square-framed eyes. But, mastering well his voice, he bade the boy Wait by the wall, till he a little while Went forward, and prepared. So Reuben stayed; And Jerry with uncertain step advanced, As dreaming of his youth and this his home. Slowly he passed between the gateless posts Before the unused front door, slowly too Beyond the side porch with its woodbine thick Draping autumnal splendor. Thus he came Before the kitchen window, where he saw A gray-haired woman bent o'er needle-work In gathering twilight. And without a voice, Rooted, he stood. He stirred not, but his glance Burned through the pane; uneasily she turned, And seeing that shaggy stranger standing there Expectant, shook her head, as though to warn Some chance, wayfaring beggar. He, though, stood And looked at her immovably. Then, quick The sash upthrowing, she made as if to speak Harshly; but still he held his quiet eyes Upon her. Now she paused; her throat throbbed full; Her lips paled suddenly, her wan face flamed, A fertile stir of memory strove to work Renewal in those features wintry cold. And so she hung, while Jerry by a step Drawn nearer, coming just beneath her, said, "Grace!" And she murmured, "Jerry!" Then she bent Over him, clasping his great matted head With those worn arms, all joyless; and the tears Fell hot upon his forehead from her eyes. For now in this dim gloaming their two souls Unfruited, by an instant insight wild, Delicious, found the full, mysterious clew Of individual being, each in each. But, tremulously, soon they drew themselves Away from that so sweet, so sad embrace, The first, the last that could be theirs. Then he, Summing his story in a word, a glance, Added, "But though you see me broken down And poor enough, not empty-handed quite I come. For God set in my way a gift, The best I could have sought. I bring it you In memory of the love I bore. Not now Must that again be thought of! Waste and black My life's fields lie behind me, and a frost Has stilled the music of my hopes, but here If I may dwell, nor trouble you, such a joy Were mine, I dare not ask it. Oh forgive The weakness! Come and see my gift!" Ah, tears Flowed fast, that night, from springs of love unsealed Once more within the ancient house--rare tears Of reconciliation, grief, and joy! A miracle, it seemed, had here been wrought, The dead brought back to life. And with him came The prodigal, repenting. So, thenceforth, A spirit of peace within the household dwelt. In Jerry a swift-sent age these years had brought, To soften him, wrought with all the woe at home Such open, gracious dignity, that all For cheer and guidance learned to look to him. But chiefly th' younger Reuben sought his aid, And he with homely wisdom shaped the lad To a life's loving duty. Yet not long, Alas! the kind sea-farer with them stayed. After some years his storm-racked body drooped. The season came when crickets cease to sing And flame-curled leaves fly fast; and Jerry sank Softly toward death. Then, on a boisterous morn That beat the wrecked woods with incessant gusts To wrest some last leaf from them, he arose And passed away. But those who loved him watched His fading, half in doubt, and half afraid, As if he must return again; for now Entering the past he seemed, and not a life Beyond; and some who thought of that old grave In the orchard, dreamed a breath's space that the man Long buried had come back, and could not die. But so he died, and, ceasing, made request Beside that outcast of the deep to lie. None other mark desired he but the stone Set there long since, though at a stranger's grave, In heavy memory of him thought dead. They marked the earth with one more mound beside The other, near a gap in the low wall That looked out seaward. There you ever hear The deep, remorseful requiem of the sea; And there, in autumn, windfalls, showering thick Upon the grave, score the slow, voiceless hours With unrebounding stroke. All round about Green milkweed rankly thrives, and golden-rod Sprouts from his prostrate heart in fine-poised grace Of haughty curve, with every crest in flower. 
7115	----	[Illustration: EDWIN MARKHAM ] GIANT HOURS WITH POET PREACHERS BY WILLIAM L. STIDGER Introduction by Edwin Markham To WHITE-SOULED EDWIN MARKHAM DEMOCRACY'S VOICE, HUMANITY'S FRIEND I DEDICATE THIS BOOK CONTENTS: INTRODUCTION. FOREWORD. AMERICAN POETS: I. EDWIN MARKHAM. II. VACHEL LINDSAY. III. JOAQUIN MILLER. IV. ALAN SEEGER. ENGLISH POETS V. JOHN OXENHAM. VI. ALFRED NOYES. VII. JOHN MASEFIELD. VIII. ROBERT SERVICE. IX. RUPERT BROOKE. LIST OF PORTRAITS: EDWIN MARKHAM. VACHEL LINDSAY. JOAQUIN MILLER. ALAN SEEGER. JOHN OXENHAM. ALFRED NOYES. JOHN MASEFIELD. ROBERT SERVICE. RUPERT BROOKE. INTRODUCTION In writing to the readers of Mr. Stidger's book I feel as though I were writing to old friends, friends who may have an interest in knowing some of the thoughts that I hold regarding questions of the hour and questions of the future. The Christian as he looks out upon the battling and broken world sees much to sadden his heart. Thinkers are everywhere asking, "Is Christianity a failure?" I hasten to assure you that Christianity has not failed, for Christianity has nowhere been tried yet, nowhere been tried in a large social sense. Christianity has been tried by individuals, and it has been found to be comforting and transforming. But it has never been tried by any large group of people in any one place--never by a whole city--never by a whole kingdom---never by a whole people. It is for this trial that the watching angels are waiting. Our holy religion is not a saving power merely for individuals; it is also a saving power for society in its industrial order. We have applied it to the individual in the past, but we have never made any wholehearted effort to make religion the working principle of society. Religion is always cooperative and brotherly, but we have not yet made any earnest effort to apply the cooperative and brotherly principle to business. We have tried to persuade the individual to express the ideals of the Sermon on the Mount, but we have made no earnest effort to urge society to express the ideals of the Sermon on the Mount. Therefore, while it is true that we have individual Christians--men and women who make noble sacrifices in their effort to live the good life--it is also true that we have no Christian society anywhere on earth, no Christian civilization anywhere under the stars. Sometimes a careless talker will refer to our social order as "a Christian civilization." All such references, dear friends, disturb our hearts; for they prove that the speaker has no conception of what a Christian civilization would be, how noble and brotherly it would be. Five minutes' reading of the Sermon on the Mount will convince any alert mind that we are yet thousands of miles from a Christian civilization. To speak of only one thing, it is certain that in a Christian civilization these cruel riches we see standing side by side with these cruel poverties could not exist; they would all crumble and vanish away in the fire of the social passion of the Christ. If we have not a Christian civilization, what have we? We have a civilization that is half barbaric; we have a social order with a light sprinkling of Christians in it. It is the hope of the future that this body of earnest Christian men and women will awaken to the call of the social Christ, awake determined to infuse his spirit into the industrial order, and thus extend the power of the cross down into the material ground of our existence. Men are not fully saved until tools are saved, till industries are saved. They must all be lit with the brother spirit of Christ the Artisan. All of this transformation is implied in the Sermon on the Mount. For that sermon may be taken to be the first draft of the constitution of the new social order that the Christ has in his heart for men. It was this new order that he had in mind when he uttered the great invitation, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." All the work-worn toilers of the world were to find rest in the new brotherly order about to be established on the earth. The Master has laid one great duty upon his followers--to embrother men and to emparadise the world. This is a great labor, for it demands that the spirit of the brother Christ shall sing in all the wheels and sound in all the steps of our industrial life. It means that the Golden Rule shall become the working principle in our social order. This is the salvation that Christ came to bring to the world; this is the glad tidings; this the good news to men! This is only a glimpse of the great social truth of the Lord that is beginning to break like a new morning upon the world. And what I have said in this letter I have tried a thousand times to say in my poems that have gone out into the world. And this new note I catch in the lines of the poets everywhere in modern poets, especially in the poets discussed in the following pages. Yours in the Fellowship of the great hopes, [Signature: Edwin Markham] West New Brighton, N. Y. FOREWORD Vachel Lindsay, one of the modern Christian poets, whose writings are discussed in this book, has expressed the reason for the book itself in these four lines: "I wish that I had learned by heart Some lyrics read that day; I knew not 'twas a giant hour That soon would pass away." The author of this book makes no assumption that the "Giant Hours" are in the setting he has given these literary gems, but in the "lyrics" themselves. AMERICAN POETS EDWIN MARKHAM VACHEL LINDSAY JOAQUIN MILLER ALAN SEEGER EDWIN MARKHAM [Footnote: The poetical selections appearing in this chapter are used by permission of the publishers, Doubleday, Page & Co., and are taken from the following works: The Shoes of Happiness and The Man with the Hoe.] A STUDY OF HAPPINESS IN POVERTY, IN SERVICE, IN LOWLINESS; AND A BIT OF "SCRIPT" FOR THE JOURNEY OF LIFE Edwin Markham is the David of modern poetry. He is biblical in the simplicity of his style. He, like the poet of old, tended sheep on "The Suisün Hills," and of it he speaks: "Long, long ago I was a shepherd boy, My young heart touched with wonder and wild joy." THE SHOES OF HAPPINESS. None less than William Dean Howells has said of him, "Excepting always my dear Whitcomb Riley, Edwin Markham is the first of the Americans." "The greatest poet of the century" is the estimate of Ella Wheeler Wilcox; and Francis Grierson adds, "Edwin Markham is one of the greatest poets of the age, and the greatest poet of democracy." Dr. David G. Downey makes his estimate of the poet, in his book, Modern Poets and Christian Teaching, a little broader and deeper in the two phrases: "He is not more poet than prophet," and, "He is the poet of humanity--of man in relations." And of them all I feel that the latter estimate is best put, for Edwin Markham is more than "the poet of democracy"; he is the poet of all humanity, down on the earth where humanity lives. And that Dr. Downey was right in calling him "prophet" one needs but to read some lines from "The Man with the Hoe" in the light of the Russian revolution, and proof is made: "O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, Is this the handiwork you give to God, This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched? How will you ever straighten up this shape? * * * * * How will it be with kingdoms and with kings-- When those who shaped him to the thing he is-- When this dumb Terror shall reply to God, After the silence of the centuries?" THE MAN WITH THE HOE. "How will it be with kingdoms and with kings?" the "Man with the Hoe" is answering in Russia this star-lit night and sun-illumined day. Yes, Markham is prophet as well as poet. And to this humble writer's way of reading poetry there were never four lines for pure poetry more beautifully writ, neither across the seas, nor here at home, neither east nor west, than these four from "Virgilia": "Forget it not till the crowns are crumbled And the swords of the kings are rent with rust; Forget it not till the hills lie humbled, And the springs of the seas run dust." The Shoes of Happiness. Prophetic? Yes! But ah, the music of it! Here rings and here sings David the shepherd; the sweet lute, the harp, the wind in the trees, the surge of the ocean-reef. It is music of a high and holy kind. Which reminds me that I am to treat in this chapter on Markham only of what he has written since 1906, the preceding period, best known through his "Man with the Hoe," having been discussed by Dr. Downey in the book heretofore mentioned. I have the joy-task in these brief lines to bring to you Markham's "The Shoes of Happiness," which seems to me the strongest book he has written, not forgetting, either, "The Hoe" book, as he himself calls it. If you have the privilege of personal friendship with this "Father Poet," he will write for you somewhere, some time, some place, these four favorite lines, with a twinkle in his eyes that is half boy and half sage, but all love, which quatrain he calls "Outwitted": "He drew a circle that shut me out-- Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But Love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in!" The Shoes of Happiness. And with these four lines he introduces the new book of poems, "The Shoes of Happiness." THE HAPPINESS OF POVERTY One wonders where "The Shoes of Happiness" may be found, and the answer is forthcoming in the first of "Six Stories," when he finds that the Sultan Mahmoud is near unto death, and that there is just one thing that will make him well, and that is that he may wear the shoes of a perfectly happy man: "For only by this can you break the ban: You must wear the shoes of a happy man." The Shoes of Happiness. The Vizier was sent to find these shoes or lose his own head: "Go forth, Vizier, when the dawn is red, And bring me the shoes, or send instead, By the hand of this trusted slave, your head!" The Shoes of Happiness. He first found a crowd of idle rich going forth for a day's outing among the fields and flowers, a "swarm of the folk of high degree," and thought to find the shoes here, but, alas! he found that "In each glad heart was a wistful cry; Behind each joy was a secret sigh." The Shoes of Happiness. He turned from the rich and sought the homes of the poor, and the Father in the home of the poor said unto him: "Ah, Vizier, I have seven sweet joys, but I have one fear: The dread of to-morrow ever is here!" The Shoes of Happiness. A Poet was found weaving a song of happiness, and the Vizier thought that surely here would he find the man with the "happy shoes," but the Poet cried: "No," sighed the poet; "you do me wrong, For sorrow is ever the nest of song." The Shoes of Happiness. Everywhere that he wandered in search he found some touch of unhappiness. He tried Youth and Age, but, "The young were restless that youth should stay, The old were sad that it went away." The Shoes of Happiness. He thought to find the shoes on the feet of the Lover, but heard the Lover say: "Yes, yes; but love is a tower of fears, A joy half torment, a heaven half tears!" The Shoes of Happiness. He had heard of a wise old Sage, who had been to Mecca, and sought him only to hear, "I am not glad; I am only wise." At last he heard of a man from far Algiers. With hurried steps he sought in vain. At last one day he found a man lying in a field: "'Ho,' cried Halil, 'I am seeking one Whose days are all in a brightness run.'-- 'Then I am he, for I have no lands, Nor have any gold to crook my hands. Favor, nor fortune, nor fame have I, And I only ask for a road and a sky-- These, and a pipe of the willow-tree To whisper the music out of me.' "Out into the field the vizier ran. 'Allah-il-Allah! but you are the man; Your shoes then, quick, for the great sultan-- Quick, and all fortunes are yours to choose!' 'Yes, mighty Vizier,... but I have no shoes!'" The Shoes of Happiness. THE HAPPINESS OF LOWLINESS And just as this opening poem teaches the happiness of poverty, so the next, "The Juggler of Touraine," teaches the happiness of lowliness. Poor Barnabas, just a common juggler, when winter came, because he had been spending the summer amusing people, had no place to go, and a sympathetic monk took him into the monastery to live. Barnabas was happy for a time; but after a while, as he saw everybody else worshiping the Beautiful Mother with lute and brush, viol, drum, talent, and prayer, he began to feel that his talents were worthless: "But I, poor Barnabas, nothing can I, But drone in the sun as a drowsy fly." The Shoes of Happiness. Then came a thought that leaped like flame over his being, and an hour later the monks found him, kneeling in the sacred altar place. What he was doing chagrined them. They were shocked just as many people of this day, to see a man worshiping with a different bend of the knee than that to which they had been accustomed. How prone we are to judge those who do not worship just as we have worshiped! This seems such a common human weakness that Alfred Noyes, with a touch of kindly indignation, speaks a word in "The Forest of Wild Thyme" that may be interjected just here in this study of Barnabas the juggler, whom the monks indignantly found worshiping the Virgin by juggling his colored balls in the air, and speaking thus as he juggled: "'Lady,' he cried again, 'look, I entreat: I worship with fingers, and body, and feet!" "And they heard him cry at Our Lady's shrine: 'All that I am, Madame, all is thine! Again I come with spangle and ball To lay at your altar my little, my all!'" The Shoes of Happiness. But the poor old monks were indignant. They, and some others of more modern days, had never caught the real gist of the "Judge not" of the New Testament; nor had they read Noyes: "How foolish, then, you will agree, Are those who think that all must see The world alike, or those who scorn Another, who perchance, was born Where--in a different dream from theirs-- What they called sins to him are prayers! We cannot judge; we cannot know; All things mingle, all things flow; There's only one thing constant here-- Love--that untranscended sphere: Love, that while all ages run Holds the wheeling worlds in one; Love, that, as your sages tell, Soars to heaven and sinks to hell." The Shoes of Happiness. No, we have no right to judge one another. The monks condemned poor Barnabas because he was not worshiping as they had always worshiped. They too forgot the real spirit of worship as they condemned him: "'Nothing like this do the rules provide! This is scandal, this is a shame, This madcap prank in Our Lady's name. Out of the doors with him; back to the street: He has no place at Our Lady's feet!'" The Shoes of Happiness. However, then, as now, men are not the final judges: "But why do the elders suddenly quake, Their eyes a-stare and their knees a-shake? Down from the rafters arching high, Her blowing mantle blue with the sky-- Lightly down from the dark descends The Lady of Beauty and lightly bends Over Barnabas stretched in the altar place, And wipes the dew from his shining face; Then touching his hair with a look of light, Passes again from the mortal sight. An odor of lilies hallows the air, And sounds as of harpings are everywhere. "'Ah,' cry the elders, beating the breast, 'So the lowly deed is the lofty test! And whatever is done from the heart to Him Is done from the height of the Seraphim!'" The Shoes of Happiness. "HOW THE GREAT GUEST CAME" A STUDY OF COMPLETE HAPPINESS IN SERVICE I have never found a poem which more truly pictures the Christ and how he comes to human beings than this one of Markham's. Conrad the cobbler had a dream, when he had grown old, that the Master would come "His guest to be." He arose at dawn on that day of great expectations, decorated his simple shop with boughs of green and waited: "His friends went home; and his face grew still As he watched for the shadow across the sill; He lived all the moments o'er and o'er, When the Lord should enter the lowly door-- The knock, the call, the latch pulled up, The lighted face, the offered cup. He would wash the feet where the spikes had been; He would kiss the hands where the nails went in; And then at last he would sit with him And break the bread as the day grew dim." The Shoes of Happiness. But the Master did not come. Instead came a beggar and the cobbler gave him shoes; instead came an old crone with a heavy load of faggots. He gave her a lift with her load and some of the food that he had prepared for the Christ when he should come. Finally a little child came, crying along the streets, lost. He pitied the child and left his shop to take it to its mother; such was his great heart of love. He hurried back that he might not miss the Great Guest when he came. But the Great Guest did not come. As the evening came and the shadows were falling through the window of his shop, more and more the truth, with all its weight of sadness, bore in upon him, that the dream was not to come true; that he had made a mistake; that Christ was not to come to his humble shop. His heart was broken and he cried out in his disappointment: "Why is it, Lord, that your feet delay? Did you forget that this was the day?" The Shoes of Happiness. Then what sweeter scene in all the lines of the poetry of the world than this that follows? Where is Christ more wonderfully and simply summed up; his spirit of love, and care? "Then soft in the silence a voice he heard: 'Lift up your heart, for I kept my word. Three times I came to your friendly door; Three times my shadow was on your floor. I was the beggar with bruised feet; I was the woman you gave to eat; I was the child on the homeless street!'" The Shoes of Happiness. One is reminded here of Masefield's "The Everlasting Mercy," wherein he speaks as Markham speaks about the child: "And he who gives a child a treat Makes joy-bells ring in Heaven's street; And he who gives a child a home Builds palaces in Kingdom Come; And she who gives a baby birth Brings Saviour Christ again to earth." The Shoes of Happiness. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of one of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me," another great-hearted Poet once said; and these words Markham, in "How the Great Guest Came," has made real. "SCRIPT FOR THE JOURNEY" "Script for the Journey" is all that it claims to be. Markham is not doing what Lindsay did. Lindsay started out on a long journey with only his poems for money. He meant to make his way buying his food with a verse. And he did that very thing. But Markham had a different idea, an idea that all of us need script for that larger journey, script that is not money and script that does not buy mere material food, but food for the soul. He means it to be script that will help us along the hard way. And he who has this script is rich indeed, in his inner life. "THE PLACE OF PEACE" One would pay much for peace at any time, but especially when one on the journey of life is wearied unto death with sin, and bickering, and trouble and hurt and pain. Life holds so much heartache and heartbreak. Markham has herein the answer: "At the heart of the cyclone tearing the sky, And flinging the clouds and the towers by, Is a place of central calm; So here in the roar of mortal things, I have a place where my spirit sings, In the hollow of God's palm." The Shoes of Happiness. And when we learn to put our business ventures there as Abbey has his Sir Galahad do in the Vigil panel of "The Search for the Holy Grail," in Boston Library; and when we have learned to put our homes, and our children, and our souls "In the hollow of God's palm," there will be peace on the journey of life. Yes, that is good script. "ANCHORED TO THE INFINITE" What a lesson the poet brings us from the great swinging bridge at Niagara, as he tells of the tiny thread that was flown from a kite from shore to shore; and then a larger string, and then a heavy cord, and then a rope, and finally the great cable, and the mighty bridge. And this he applies to life! "So we may send our little timid thought Across the void out to God's reaching hands--Send out our love and faith to thread the deep-- Thought after thought until the little cord Has greatened to a chain no chance can break, And--we are anchored to the Infinite." The Shoes of Happiness. Who does not need to know how simple a thing will lead to infinite anchorage? Who does not need to know that just the tiny threads of love and faith will draw greater cords and greater, stronger ropes until at last the chasm between man and God on the journey is bridged, and we may be anchored to him forever. This indeed is good script for the journey of life Godward. "THERE IS NO TIME FOR HATE" The world is full of hate these days. War-mad Germany produced "The Hymn of Hate," the lowest song that ever was written in the history of the world. It seems impossible that a censorship so strict could ever let such a mass of mire out to the world. But when one reads this Markham poem, he somehow feels that life is so big, and yet so brief, that even in war we are all brother-men and, as the opening lines say, "There is no time for hate, O wasteful friend: Put hate away until the ages end. Have you an ancient wound? Forget the wrong. Out in my West, a forest loud with song Towers high and green over a field of snow, Over a glacier buried far below." The Shoes of Happiness. And if all the world would learn the meaning of this great phrase, "There is no time for hate," the world would happier be. Good script for the journey? The best there is, is to know "There is no time for hate." II VACHEL LINDSAY, POET OF TOWN; AND CITY TOO [Footnote: The poetical selections appearing in this chapter are used by permission, and are taken from the following works: The Congo, and General William Booth Enters Into Heaven, Published by the Macmillan Company, New York.] A STUDY OF CHRISTIAN INFLUENCES IN VILLAGE AND CITY; ON TEMPERANCE, MISSIONS, AND RACES Vachel Lindsay is not only a poet but he is also a preacher. I do not know whether he is ordained or not, but in a leaflet that he recently sent me, he says, "Mr. Lindsay offers the following sermons to be preached on short notice and without a collection, in any chapel that will open its doors as he passes by: 'The Gospel of the Hearth,' 'The Gospel of Voluntary Poverty,' 'The Holiness of Beauty.'" His truly great book, "The Congo," that poem which so sympathetically catches the spirit of the uplift of the Negro race through Christianity, that weird, musical, chanting, swinging, singing, sweeping, weeping, rhythmic, flowing, swaying, clanging, banging, leaping, laughing, groaning, moaning book of the elementals, was inspired suddenly, one Sabbath evening, as the poet sat in church listening to a returned missionary speaking on "The Congo." Nor a Poe nor a Lanier ever wrote more weirdly or more musically. [Illustration: VACHEL LINDSAY] The poet himself, Christian to the bone, suggests that his poetry must be chanted to get the full sweep and beauty. This I have done, alone by my wood fire of a long California evening, and have found it strangely, beautifully, wonderfully full of memories of church. I think that it is the echo of old hymns that I catch in his poetry. Biblical they are, in their simplicity, Christian until they drip with love. CHRIST AND THE CITY SOUL I think that no Christian poet has so caught the soul of the real city. One phrase that links Christ with the city is the old-fashioned yet ever thrilling phrase, "The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit." An electrical sign suggests prayer to him. It is a unique thought in "A Rhyme About An Electrical Advertising Sign," the lines of which startle one almost with their newness: "Some day this old Broadway shall climb to the skies, As a ribbon of cloud on a soul-wind shall rise. And we shall be lifted rejoicing by night, Till we join with the planets who choir their delight. The signs in the street and the signs in the skies Shall make a new Zodiac guiding the wise, And Broadway make one, with that marvelous stair That is climbed by the rainbow-clad spirits of prayer." The Congo. He looks straight up above the signs to heaven. But he does not forget to look down also, where the people are, the folks that walk and live and crawl under the electric signs. In "Galahad, Knight Who Perished" (a poem dedicated to all crusaders against the international and interstate traffic in young girls), this phrase rings and rings its way into Christian consciousness: "Galahad--knight who perished--awaken again, Teach us to fight for immaculate ways among men." The Congo. And again and again one is rudely awakened from his ease by such lines as "The leaden-eyed" children of the city which he pictures: "Not that they starve, but starve so dreamlessly; Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap; Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve; Not that they die, but that they die like sheep." The Congo. Who has not seen factory windows in village, town, and city, and who has not known that "Factory windows are always broken"? How this smacks of pall, and smoke, and dirt, and grind, and hurt and little weak children, slaves of industry! Thank God, Vachel Lindsay, that the Christian Church has found an ally in you; and poet and preacher together--for they are both akin--pray God we may soon abolish forever child slavery. Yes, no wonder "Factory windows are always broken." The children break them because they hate a prison. The "Coal Heaver," "The Scissors Grinder," "The Mendicant," "The Tramp," all so smacking of the city, have their interpretation. I wish in these pages might be quoted all of "The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit," for it daringly, beautifully, and strongly carries into the new philosophy which Mr. Lindsay is introducing the thought that every village, every town, every city has a community soul that must be saved, through Christian influence. But the ring of it and the swing of it will suggest itself in a few verses: "Censers are swinging Over the town; Censers are swinging, Look overhead! Censers are swinging, Heaven comes down. City, dead city, Awake from the dead! * * * * * "Soldiers of Christ For battle grow keen. Heaven-sent winds Haunt alley and lane. Singing of life In town-meadows green After the toil And battle and pain. * * * * * "Builders, toil on, Make all complete. Make Springfield wonderful. Make her renown Worthy this day, Till at God's feet, Tranced, saved forever, Waits the white town." The Congo. Ah, if we could but catch this vision of not only the individuals but the city itself receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit, we would have therein a new and a tremendous force for good. One might quote from "The Drunkards in the Street": "Within their gutters, drunkards dream of Hell. I say my prayers by my white bed to-night, With the arms of God about me, with the angels singing, singing Until the grayness of my soul grows white." General William Booth. He goes to the bottom of the social evil, down to its economic causes, and blames the state for "The Trap," and this striking couplet rings in one's heart long after the book is laid down: "In liberty's name we cry For these women about to die!" General William Booth. The poet who speaks in "The City That Will Not Repent" is only feeling over again, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,... how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!" The "Old Horse in the City," "To Reformers in Despair," "The Gamblers"--it is all there: the heartaches, the struggle for existence, the fallen woman, the outcast man, the sound of drums, the tambourines, the singing of the mission halls. You find it all, especially in "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven." Here is life--the very life of life in the city. FOREIGN MISSIONS They who have found opposition to foreign missions will discover with a thrill a new helper in Poet Lindsay, he who has won the ear of the literary world. It is good to hear one of his worth, singing the battle challenge of missions, just as it is good to hear him call the modern village, town, and city to "The Gift of the Holy Spirit." "Foreign Fields in Battle Array" brings this thrillingly prophetic, Isaiahanic verse: "What is the final ending? The issue can we know? Will Christ outlive Mohammed? Will Kali's altar go? This is our faith tremendous--- Our wild hope, who shall scorn-- That in the name of Jesus, The world shall be reborn!" General William Booth. "Reborn"--does not that phrase sound familiar to Methodist ears, as does that other phrase, "The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit"? Or, again, hear two lines from "Star of My Heart": "All hearts of the earth shall find _new birth_ And wake no more to sin." General William Booth. TEMPERANCE In these days, when the world is being swept clean with the besom of temperance, the poet who sings the song of temperance is the "poet that sings to battle." Lindsay has done this in some lines in his "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven," which he admits having written while a field worker in the Anti-Saloon League in Illinois. At the end of each verse we have one of these three couplets: "But spears are set, the charge is on, Wise Arthur shall be King!" "Fierce Cromwell builds the flower-bright towns And a more sunlit land;" and, "Our God establishes his arm And makes the battle sure!" General William Booth. He puts the temperance worker in the "Round Table" under the heading, "King Arthur's Men Have Come Again." He lifts the battle to a high realm. "To go about redressing human wrongs," as King Arthur's Knights were sworn to do, would certainly be a most appropriate motto for the modern Christian temperance worker, and Lindsay is the only poet acknowledged by the literary world who has sung this Galahad's praise with keen insight. But his greatest poem, "The Congo," that poem which has captured the imagination of the literary world and which is so little known to the Christian world--where it ought to be known best of all--will give a glimpse of the new Christian influence on the races. The poet suggests that it be chanted to the tune of the old hymn, "Hark, ten thousand harps and voices." It is a strange poem. It is so new that it is startling, but it has won. Listen to its strange swing, and see its stranger pictures. Through the thin veneer of a new civilization, back of the Christianized Negro race, the poet sees, under the inspiration of a missionary sermon delivered in a modern church, the race that was: "Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room, Barrel-house kings with feet unstable, Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table, Pounded on the table, Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom, Hard as they were able, Boom, boom, BOOM With a silk umbrella, and the handle of a broom, Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM Then I had religion, then I had a vision. I could not turn from their revel in derision. THEN I SAW THE CONGO CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK, CUTTING THROUGH THE FORESTS WITH A GOLDEN TRACK!" The Congo. Then follows as vital, vivid, and vigorous a description as ever was written by pen, inspired of God, tipped with fire, of the uplift and redemption of the Negro race, through Jesus Christ. The "General William Booth" title poem to the second Lindsay book shook the literary world awake with its perfect interpretation of The Salvation Army leader. It is a poem to be chanted at first with "Bass drums beaten loudly" and then "with banjos"; then softly with "sweet flute music," and finally, as the great General comes face to face with Christ, with a "Grand chorus of all instruments; tambourines to the foreground." Running through this poem is the refrain of "Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?" and the last lines catch the tender, yet absolutely unique spirit of the entire poem: "And when Booth halted by the curb for prayer He saw his Master thro' the flag-filled air. Christ came gently with a robe and crown For Booth the soldier, while the throng knealt down. He saw King Jesus. They were face to face, And he knealt a-weeping in that holy place, Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?" General William Booth. But one could not get Lindsay to the hearts of folks, one could not make the picture complete, without putting Lincoln in, any more than he could make Lindsay complete without putting into these pages "The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit," or "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven," or "The Congo." Lincoln seems to be as much a part of Lindsay as he is a part of Springfield. Lindsay and Lincoln, to those who love both, mean Springfield, and Springfield means Lincoln and Lindsay. And what Lindsay is trying to do for city, for village, for town, for the Negro, for every human being, is voiced in his poem, "Lincoln." "Would I might rouse the Lincoln in you all, That which is gendered in the wilderness, From lonely prairies and God's tenderness." General William Booth. Let this poem "Heart of God" be the benediction of this chapter on Lindsay: "O great heart of God, Once vague and lost to me, Why do I throb with your throb to-night, In this land, eternity? "O, little heart of God, Sweet intruding stranger, You are laughing in my human breast, A Christ-child in a manger. "Heart, dear heart of God, Beside you now I kneel, Strong heart of faith. O heart not mine, Where God has set His seal. "Wild, thundering heart of God, Out of my doubt I come, And my foolish feet with prophets' feet March with the prophets' drum!" General William Booth. [Illustration: JOAQUIN MILLER] III JOAQUIN MILLER [Footnote: The quotations from the poems of Joaquin Miller appearing in this chapter are used by permission of the Harr Wagner Publishing Company, owners of copyright.] A STUDY OF HOME, FATHER LOVE, GREAT MOMENTS WITH JESUS CHRIST, HEAVEN, AND GOD It was a warm, sunny May California day; and the day stands out, even above California days. A climb up the Piedmont hills back of Oakland, California, brought us to "The Heights," the unique home of Joaquin Miller, poet of the West and poet of the world. A visit to the homes of the New England poets is always interesting because of historic and literary associations, but none of them has the touch of the unique personality of Miller. Most people interested in things literary know that Miller, with a great desire to emphasize the freedom of the individual, built a half dozen separate houses, one for himself, one for his wife, one for his daughter Juanita, several for guests from all over the world who were always visiting him, and a little chapel. Literary men from every nation on the planet visited Miller at "The Heights." Most people interested knew also that Miller, with his own hands, had built monuments of stone to Fremont, the explorer, to Moses, and to Browning. There was also a granite funeral pyre for himself, within sight of the little "God's Acre," in which he had buried some eighteen or twenty outcasts and derelicts of earth who had no other plot to call their own in which to take their last long sleep. We expected to find this strange group of buildings deserted, but after inspecting the chapel, which was modeled after Newstead Abbey, and after rambling through the old-fashioned garden that Miller himself had planted--a garden with a perfect riot of colors--suddenly a little woman with a sweet face walked up to us out of the bushes and said, "Are you lovers of the poet?" I humbly replied that we were. Then she said: "I am Mrs. Miller, and you are welcome. When you have looked around, come into Mr. Miller's own room and be refreshed. After that I will read to you from his writings." It sounded stagey at first, but the more we knew of this sweet-faced widow of the poet the less we found about her that was not simple and sweet and natural. After wandering around, through the fascinating paths, under the great cross of a thousand pine trees, among the roses, and flowers that he had planted with his own hands, we came at last to the little house that Mrs. Miller had called "The poet's own room," and there were we refreshed with cool lemonade and cakes. In the littleness of my soul I wondered when we were to pay for these favors, but the longer we remained the more was I shamed as I saw that this hospitality was just the natural expression of a woman, and a beautiful daughter's desire to extend the hospitality of the dead poet himself, to any who loved his writings. There was the bed on which Miller lay for months writing many of his greatest poems, including the famous "Columbus." There was his picturesque sombrero, still hanging where he had put it last on the post of the great bed. His pen was at hand; his writing pad, his chair, his great fur coat, his handkerchief of many colors which in life he always wore about his neck; his great heavy, high-topped boots. And it was sunset. Then Mrs. Miller began to read. As the slanting rays of as crimson a sunset as God ever painted were falling through the great cross of pine trees, Mrs. Miller's dramatic, sweet, sympathetic voice interpreted his poems for us. I sat on the bed from which Miller had, just a few months previous to that, heard the great call. The others sat in his great rockers. Mrs. Miller stood as she read. I am sure that "Columbus" will never be lifted into the sublime as it was when she read it that late May afternoon, with its famous, and thrilling phrase "Sail on! Sail on! And on! And on!" A STUDY OF HOME I had thought before hearing Mrs. Miller read "The Greatest Battle that Ever was Fought" that I had caught all the subtle meanings of it, but after her reading that great tribute to womanhood I knew that I had never dreamed the half of its inner meaning: "The greatest battle that ever was fought--- Shall I tell you where and when? On the maps of the world you will find it not: It was fought by the Mothers of Men. "Not with cannon or battle shot, With sword or nobler pen; Not with eloquent word or thought From the wonderful minds of men; "But deep in a walled up woman's heart; A woman that would not yield; But bravely and patiently bore her part; Lo! there is that battlefield. "No marshaling troops, no bivouac song, No banner to gleam and wave; But Oh these battles they last so long--From babyhood to the grave! "But faithful still as a bridge of stars She fights in her walled up town; Fights on, and on, in the endless wars; Then silent, unseen goes down I "Ho! ye with banners and battle shot, With soldiers to shout and praise, I tell you the kingliest victories fought Are fought in these silent ways." Then, as if to give us another illustration of her great poet husband's home love, she read for us "Juanita": "You will come, my bird, Bonita? Come, for I by steep and stone, Have built such nest, for you, Juanita, As not eagle bird hath known. . . . . . . . . . All is finished! Roads of flowers Wait your loyal little feet. All completed? Nay, the hours Till you come are incomplete!" Who that hath the blessing of little children will not understand this waiting, yearning love of Miller for his ten-year-old girl, who was at that time in New York with her mother waiting until "The Heights" should be finished? Who does not understand how incomplete the hours were until she came? "You will come, my dearest, truest? Come, my sovereign queen of ten: My blue sky will then be bluest; My white rose be whitest then." GREAT MOMENTS WITH CHRIST Miller had a profound, deep, sincere love for Christ, and more than any poet I know did he express with deep insight and with deeper sweetness the great moments in Christ's life. He made these great moments human. He brings them near to us, so that we see them more clearly. He makes them warm our hearts, and we feel that Christ's words are truly our words in this, our own day. In that great scene where Christ blessed little children, who has ever made it sweeter and nearer and warmer with human touch? "Then reaching his hands, he said, lowly, 'Of such is my Kingdom,' and then Took the little brown babes in the holy White hands of the Saviour of Men; "Held them close to his heart and caressed them, Put his face down to theirs as in prayer, Put their hands to his neck and so blessed them With baby-hands hid in his hair." The scene with the woman taken in adultery he has also made human and near in these lines, called "Charity": "Who now shall accuse and arraign us? What man shall condemn and disown? Since Christ has said only the stainless Shall cast at his fellows a stone?" That Jesus Christ died for the world, that Calvary had more meaning for humanity than anything else that has ever happened, Miller put in four lines: "Look starward! stand far, and unearthy, Free souled as a banner unfurled. Be worthy! O, brother, be worthy! For a God was the price of the world!" He caught Christ's teaching, and the whole gist of the New Testament expressed in that immortal phrase "Judge not," and he wrote some lines that have been on the lips of man the world over, and shall continue to be as long as men speak poetry. A unique pleasure was mine on this afternoon. I had noticed something that Mrs. Miller had not noticed in this great poem. She quoted it to us: "In men whom men condemn as ill I find so much of goodness still; In men whom men pronounce Divine I find so much of sin and blot, I hesitate to draw the line Between the two, where God has not!" Miller wrote it that way when he first wrote it, in his younger days. It was natural for Mrs. Miller to quote it that way. But I had discovered in his revised and complete poems that he had changed a significant phrase in that great verse. He had said, "I do not dare," in the fifth line, instead of "I hesitate." His mature years had made him say, "I do not dare to draw the line!" GOD AND HEAVEN He knew that heaven and God were near to humanity and earth. He was not afraid of death. He teaches us all Christian courage in this line of thought. He knew that his "Greek Heights" were very near to heaven because he knew that anywhere is near to heaven to the believer: "Be this my home till some fair star Stoops earthward and shall beckon me; For surely God-land lies not far From these Greek Heights and this great sea!" He yearned to teach men to believe in this God and his nearness; this God in whom he believed with all his heart. This cry out of his soul, written just a few days before his death, is like Tennyson's "Crossing The Bar" in that it was his swan song: "Could I but teach man to believe, Could I but make small men to grow, To break frail spider webs that weave About their thews and bind them low. Could I but sing one song and lay Grim Doubt; I then could go my way In tranquil silence, glad, serene, And satisfied from off the scene. But Ah! this disbelief, this doubt, This doubt of God, this doubt of God The damned spot will not out! Wouldst learn to know one little flower, Its perfume, perfect form, or hue? Yea, wouldst thou have one perfect hour Of all the years that come to you? Then grow as God hath planted, grow A lovely oak, or daisy low, As he hath set his garden; be Just what thou art, or grass or tree. Thy treasures up in heaven laid Await thy sure ascending soul: Life after life--be not afraid I" Yes, Miller believed in home, in Christ, and God and immortality. He believed that heaven and God were near to man, and in his last days there was no doubt. Thus his own writings confirm what Mrs. Miller, on that memorable afternoon, made certain by her warm, tear-wet, personal testimony. And as she quoted these last lines, and the sun had set behind the Golden Gate, which we could even then see from the room in which we sat, we felt as though Miller himself were near, listening as she read, listening with us. And these are the last verses that she quoted, which seem fit verses with which to close this chapter study of Joaquin Miller: "I will my ashes to my steeps, I will my steeps, green cross, red rose, To those who love the beautiful, Come, learn to be of those." And is it any wonder that, as we sat in the twilight listening to that invitation to his home, these words made the red roses and the green cross of Christ against the hill our very own? And is it any wonder that, as she quoted these last verses we felt him near to us? "Enough to know that I and you Shall breathe together there as here Some clearer, sweeter atmosphere, Shall walk, high, wider ways above Our petty selves, shall learn to lead Man up and up in thought and deed. and, "Come here when I am far away, Fond lovers of this lovely land, And sit quite still and do not say, 'Turn right or left and lend a hand,' But sit beneath my kindly trees And gaze far out yon sea of seas. These trees, these very stones could tell How much I loved them and how well, And maybe I shall come and sit Beside you; sit so silently You will not reck of it." [Illustration: ALAN SEEGER] IV ALAN SEEGER [Footnote: The poetical selections appearing in this chapter are used by permission, and are taken from poems by Alan Seeger. Published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. ] POET OF YOUTH, BEAUTY, FAME, JOY, LOVE, DEATH, AND GOD Rupert Brooke and Alan Seeger--so shall their names be linked together forever by those who love poetry. In the first place, they were much alike: buoyant, young; loving life, living life; and both dying for the great cause of humanity in the world's greatest war. Brooke the Englishman; Seeger the American; so are they linked. Both were but lads in their twenties; both vivid as lightning and as warm as summer sunshine in their personalities; both truly great poets, who had, even in the short time they lived, run a wide gamut of poetic expression. I am not saying that either Brooke or Seeger may be called a Christian poet; nor am I saying that they may not be called that. This war in which they have given their lives will make a vast difference in the definition of what a Christian is. I can detect no orthodox Christian message in either of their dreamings, but I do find in both poets a clean, high moral message, and therefore give them place in this pulpit of the poets. The wide range of this young American's writing astonishes the reader. He died very young: while the morning sun was just lifting its head above the eastern horizon of life; while the heavens were still crimson, and gold, and rose, and fire. What he might have written in the steady white heat of noontime and in life's glorious afternoon of experience, and in its subtle charm of "sunset and the evening star," one can only guess. But while he lived he lived; and, living, wrote. He dipped his pen in that same gold and fire of the only part of life he knew, its daybreak, and wrote. No wonder his writing was warm; no wonder he wrote of Youth, Beauty, Fame, Joy, Love, Death, and God. THE SONG OF YOUTH Nor Byron, nor Shelley, nor Keats, nor Swinburne, nor Brooke, nor any other poet ever sounded the heights and depths and glory of Youth as did Seeger. He sang it as he breathed it and lived it, and just as naturally. His singing of it was as rhythmic as breathing, and as sweet as the first song of an oriole in springtime. In his fifth sonnet, a form in which he loved to write and of which he was a master, he sings youth in terms "almost divine": "Phantoms of bliss that beckon and recede--, Thy strange allurements, City that I love, Maze of romance, where I have followed too The dream Youth treasures of its dearest need And stars beyond thy towers bring tidings of." Poems by Alan Seeger. He loved New York; he loved Paris; he loved any city because youth and life and romance and love were there. He drank all of these into his soul like a thirsty desert drinks rain; to spring to flowers and life and color again. He drank of life and youth as a flower drinks of dew, or a bird at a city fountain, with fluttering joy, drinks, singing as it drinks. You feel all of that eagerness in "Sonnet VI" where he says: "Where I drank deep the bliss of being young, The strife and sweet potential flux of things I sought Youth's dream of happiness among!" Poems by Alan Seeger. THE SONG OF BEAUTY And closely akin to Youth always is Beauty. Beauty and Youth walk arm in arm everywhere, and one may even go so far as to say anywhere. Youth cares not where he goes as long as Beauty walks beside him. He will walk to the ends of the earth. Indeed, he prefers the long way home. Anybody who has known both Youth and Beauty knows this, and it need not be argued about much, thank God. And so it is most natural to find this young poet singing the lyric of Beauty even as he sings the lyric of Youth. How understandingly he addresses Beauty, and how reverently in "An Ode to Natural Beauty"! "Spirit of Beauty, whose sweet impulses, Flung like the rose of dawn across the sea, Alone can flush the exalted consciousness With shafts of sensible divinity, Light of the World, essential loveliness." Poems by Alan Seeger. Then, talking about the "Wanderer" as though that character were some far off person no kin to the poet (a way that poets have to hide the pulsing of their own hearts), Seeger writes of Beauty. But we who know him cannot be made to think that this "Wanderer" is a fellow we do not know; "nor Launcelot, nor another." It is he, the poet of whom we write. It bears his imprint. It bears his trade mark. It is stamped "with the image of the king." He cannot hide from us in this: "His heart the love of Beauty held as hides One gem most pure a casket of pure gold. It was too rich a lesser thing to hold; It was not large enough for aught besides." Poems by Alan Seeger. THE SONG OF FAME Fame always lures Youth. Perhaps later experience proves that it is indeed a hollow thing, hardly worth striving for. But to Youth there is no goal that calls more insistently than Fame. Youth and Beauty and Fame--how closely akin they are! If Beauty and Fame keep him company, Youth is next the stars with delight. And so it is natural that this young poet shall sing the song of Fame with exuberant enthusiasm. He says in "The Need to Love": "And I have followed Fame with less devotion, And kept no real ambition but to see Rise from the foam of Nature's sunlit ocean My dream of palpable divinity." Poems by Alan Seeger. And while we are listening to the music of these human stars, the music of the celestial spheres set down in human words, let us catch again the poetic echo of that third line and let it linger long as we listen, "Rise from the foam of Nature's sunlit ocean," and "Forget it not till the crowns are crumbled, Till the swords of the kings are rent with rust; Forget it not till the hills lie humbled, And the Springs of the seas run dust," that, as Edwin Markham sings, this echo is the echo of the eternal poetic music. With these wondrous lines he answers the question which he himself asks in "Fragments," "What is Success?" "Out of the endless ore Of deep desire to coin the utmost gold Of passionate memory: to have lived so well That the fifth moon, when it swims up once more Through orchard boughs where mating orioles build And apple trees unfold, Find not of that dear need that all things tell The heart unburdened nor the arms unfilled." Poems by Alan Seeger. Joy comes next in our treatment of the outstanding singings of this singing poet, and he himself has given us the connecting link in the following lines: "He has drained as well Joy's perfumed bowl and cried as I have cried: Be Fame their mistress whom Love passes by." Poems by Alan Seeger. And thus smoothly we pass from Fame to Joy and hear him sing of this fourth high peak of Youth. THE SONG OF JOY Whatever he did, whatever he sang, whatever he lived, this man swept all things else aside and plunged in over head. He loved to swim and he loved to dive. Perhaps into his living and his writing he carried this athletic joy also, and as he lived he lived to the full. It seems so as one reads in "I Loved" these impassioned lines: "From a boy I gloated on existence. Earth to me Seemed all sufficient and my sojourn there One trembling opportunity for joy." Poems by Alan Seeger. And then one pauses to weep awhile, and the lines grow dim as he reads them again to know that this man, who so loved to live, who gloated on existence, who saw life as a trembling opportunity for Joy, must leave it so soon. And yet he left it nobly. Again in "An Ode to Antares" he sings of Joy: "What clamor importuning from every booth! At Earth's great market where Joy is trafficked in Buy while thy purse yet swells with golden Youth!" Poems by Alan Seeger. Kindly Age, Age who had not lost his love, always sings like that to Youth; always tells Youth to live while he may, play while the playworld is his. Every poet who has older grown, from Shakespeare to Lowell, and yet retained his love, has told us this. We expect it of older poets, but here a young poet sees it all clearly; that Youth must buy Joy while his purse is full with Youth. And ye who rob Youth of playtime, of Joy, ye capitalists, ye money makers and life destroyers, listen to this dead poet who yet lives in these words. Fathers, mothers, let childhood spend its all for Joy while the purse of Youth is full. It will be empty after while and it shall never be filled again with Youth. So says the Poet. THE SONG OF LOVE The discriminating reader of Seeger soon sees, however, that, while he sings as needs he must, because of the springs that are within him bubbling over, sings of Youth, and Beauty, and Fame, and Joy, yet he knows that these are not all of life. He knows that there are higher things than these. These higher things are Love, Death, God--what a trilogy! Love is all. He is sure of this. He is true to this. Romantic love he knows--love of comrade, love of God. In this same "An Ode to Natural Beauty" his final conclusion is that Love is best after all: "On any venture set, but 'twas the first For Beauty willed them, yea whatever be The faults I wanted wings to rise above; I am cheered yet to think how steadfastly I have been loyal to the love of Love!" Poems by Alan Seeger. This is more than romantic love; it is the "love of Love." And lest this be not strong enough, he sings in "The Need to Love" as great a song as man ever heard on this great theme: "The need to love that all the stars obey Entered my heart and banished all beside. Bare were the gardens where I used to stray; Faded the flowers that one time satisfied." Poems by Alan Seeger. Then, not content, he sets up an altar of poetry and dedicates it to Love and lights a fire of worship there, and leaves it not, nor night nor day: "All that's not love is the dearth of my days, The leaves of the volume with rubric unwrit, The temple in times without prayer, without praise, The altar unset and the candle unlit." Poems by Alan Seeger. If Love be not queen to him, the palace is cold and barren; the "altar unset and the candle unlit" THE SONG OF DEATH Like Brooke, a victim of the Hun, so Seeger, also a victim of the barbarian, seemed to feel the constant presence of Death, an unseen guest at the Feast of Youth and Joy and Fame and Love. Perhaps the war made these two imaginative poets think of Death sooner than Youth usually gives him heed. But most men will think of Death when they are face to face with the shadow day and night as were these soldier-crusading poets; when they see him stalking in every trench, in every wood, on every hill and road, and in every field and village. But how bravely he spoke of Death!-- "Learn to drive fear, then, from your heart. If you must perish, know, O man, 'Tis an inevitable part Of the predestined plan." Poems by Alan Seeger. And again in this same poem, "Makatooh," he sings of Death: "Guard that, not bowed nor blanched with fear You enter, but serene, erect, As you would wish most to appear To those you most respect. "So die, as though your funeral Ushered you through the doors that led Into a stately banquet hall Where heroes banqueted; "And it shall all depend therein Whether you come as slave or lord, If they acclaim you as their kin Or spurn you from their board." Poems by Alan Seeger. What a challenge this is to all who must die in this war, to all lads who are giving their lives heroically in God's great cause of liberty in his world--this challenge to die so that you may be welcomed into the fraternity of heroes! Without doubt Seeger's best-known poem, and one which illustrates also most strongly his attitude toward Death, is that poem entitled "I Have a Rendezvous With Death," from which we quote: "I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade; When Spring comes back with rustling shade And apple blossoms fill the air-- I have a rendezvous with Death When Spring brings back blue days and fair. * * * * * "God knows, 'twere better to be deep Pillowed in silk and scented down, Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep, Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath, Where hushed awakenings are dear,... But I've a rendezvous with Death At midnight in some flaming town; When Spring trips north again this year, And I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous." Poems by Alan Seeger. THE SONG OF GOD From the lighter thoughts of Youth, Joy, Fame, Beauty, through the "long, long thoughts of Youth"; through Love and Death it is not a long way to climb to God. We would not expect this young poet to be thinking much in this direction, but he does just the same. I have even found those who say that he was not a God-man, but these poems refute that slander on a dead man and poet. I find him singing in "The Nympholept": "I think it was the same: some piercing sense Of Deity's pervasive immanence, The life that visible Nature doth indwell Grown great and near and all but palpable He might not linger but with winged strides Like one pursued, fled down the mountainsides." Poems by Alan Seeger. This reminds one instantly of the haunting Christ of Thompson's "The Hound of Heaven." And again in the presence of War's death the poet felt that other and greater presence without doubt, as these words prove: "When to the last assault our bugles blow: Reckless of pain and peril we shall go, Heads high and hearts aflame and bayonets bare, And we shall brave eternity as though Eyes looked on us in which we would see fair-- One waited in whose presence we would wear, Even as a lover who would be well-seen, Our manhood faultless and our honor clean." Poems by Alan Seeger. And with magnificent acknowledgment of the divine plan of it all, of life and war and all, he sweeps that truly great poem, "The Hosts," to a swinging climax in its last tremendous stanza; which, fitting too, shall be the closing lines of this chapter on our dead American, martyred poet. He first speaks of the marching columns of soldiers as "Big with the beauty of cosmic things. Mark how their columns surge!" "With bayonets bare and flags unfurled, They scale the summits of the world--" Poems by Alan Seeger. And then: "There was a stately drama writ By the hand that peopled the earth and air And set the stars in the infinite And made night gorgeous and morning fair, And all that had sense to reason knew That bloody drama must be gone through." Poems by Alan Seeger. ENGLISH POETS JOHN OXENHAM ALFRED NOYES JOHN MASEFIELD ROBERT SERVICE RUPERT BROOKE [Illustration: JOHN OXENHAM.] V JOHN OXENHAM [Footnote: The poetical selections appearing in this chapter are used by permission, and are taken from the following works The Vision Splendid, All's Well, and The Fiery Cross Published by George H. Doran Company, New York.] WHO MAKES ARTICULATE THE VOICE OF WAR, PEACE, THE CROSS, THE CHRIST. In the first volume of The Student in Arms, that widely read book of the war, Donald Hankey has a chapter on "The Religion of the Inarticulate," in which he shows that the "Tommy" who for so long has been accused of having no religion, really has a very definite one. He has a religion that embraces all the Christian virtues, such as love, sacrifice, brotherhood, and comradeship, but he has never connected these with either Christ or the church. His religion is the "Religion of the Inarticulate." Hankey then shows that this war is articulating religion as never before. John Oxenham, Poet-Preacher, is giving articulation to the voice of Christianity--a voice ringing out from over and above the thunder of the guns, the blare, the flare, the outcry, the hurt, the pain and anguish of the most awful war that earth has ever suffered. Some of us have been thinking of this war in terms of Christian hope. We have thought that we see in it a new Calvary out of which shall come a new resurrection to the spiritual world. We have dreamed that men are being redeemed through the sacrifice, through the spirit of service and brotherhood thrust upon the world by war's supreme demands. We have thought all of this, but we have not been able to make it articulate. Now comes a poet to do it for us. What magnificent hope sings out, even in the titles that Oxenham has selected for his books in these days of darkness, anguish and lostness. After his first book, Bees in Amber, comes that warm handclasp of strength: that thrill of hope; that word of a watchman in the night, like a sentinel crying through the very title of his second book, "All's Well." Then came The Vision Splendid, and soon we are to have The Fiery Cross. The publishers were kind enough to let me examine this last book while it was still in the proof sheets. It is the one great hope book of the war. Every mother and father who has a boy in the war, every wife who has a husband, every child who has a father will thrill with a new pride and a new dignity after reading The Fiery Cross. WAR AND ITS VOICE No poet has voiced America's reasons for being in the war as has Oxenham, and nowhere does he do it better than in "Where Are You Going, Great-Heart?" the concluding stanza of which sums up compactly America's high purposes: "Where are you going, Great-Heart? 'To set all burdened peoples free; To win for all God's liberty; To 'stablish His sweet Sovereignty.' God goeth with you, Great-Heart!" The Vision Splendid. To those who go to die in war the poet addresses himself in lines which he titles "On Eagle Wings": "Higher than most, to you is given To live--or in His time, to die; So, bear you as White Knights of Heaven-- The very flower of chivalry! Take Him as Pilot by your side, And 'All is well' whate'er betide." The Vision Splendid. "If God be with you, who can be against you?" is the echo that we hear going and coming behind these great Christian lines. Indeed, behind every poem that Oxenham writes we can hear the echoes of some great scriptural word of promise, or hope or faith or courage. The Christian, as well as those who never saw the Bible or a church, will feel at home with this poet anywhere. The advantage that the Christian will have in reading him is that he will understand him better. Turning to those who stay at home and have lost loved ones, with what sympathy and deep, tender understanding does he write in "To You Who Have Lost." You may almost see a great kindly father standing by your side, his warm hand in yours as he sings: "I know! I know!-- The ceaseless ache, the emptiness, the woe-- The pang of loss-- The strength that sinks beneath so sore a cross. 'Heedless and careless, still the world wags on, And leaves me broken,... Oh, my son I my son!'" "Yea--think of this!-- Yea, rather think on this!-- He died as few men get the chance to die-- Fighting to save a world's morality. He died the noblest death a man may die, Fighting for God, and Right, and Liberty-- And such a death is Immortality." All's Well. If those who have lost loved ones "Over There" cannot be buoyed by that, I know not what will buoy them, what will comfort. Oxenham too gives us a picture of a battlefield where birds sing and roses bloom, just as do Service and several other poets who have been in the midst of the conflict. We have become familiar with this picture, but no writer yet has caught its full, eternal meaning and pressed it down into three lines for the world as has this man; in "Here, There, and Everywhere": "Man proposes--God disposes; Yet our hope in Him reposes Who in war-time still makes roses." The Fiery Cross. But this poet in his interpretation of war does not forget peace; does not forget that it is coming; does not forget that the world is hungry for it; does not forget that it is the duty of the poets and the thinking men and women of the world not only to get ready for it, but to lead the way to it. PEACE AND ITS VOICE In a remarkable poem called "Watchman! What of the Night?" we see this great heart standing sentinel on the walls of the world, watching the midnight skies red with the blaze and glow of carnage: "Watchman! What of the night? No light we see; Our souls are bruised and sickened with the sight Of this foul crime against humanity. The Ways are dark--- 'I SEE THE MORNING LIGHT!' * * * * * "Beyond the war-clouds and the reddened ways, I see the promise of the Coming Days! I see His sun rise, new charged with grace, Earth's tears to dry and all her woes efface! Christ lives! Christ loves! Christ rules! No more shall Might, Though leagued with all the forces of the Night, Ride over Right. No more shall Wrong The world's gross agonies prolong. Who waits His time shall surely see The triumph of His Constancy; When, without let, or bar, or stay, The coming of His Perfect Day Shall sweep the Powers of Night away; And Faith replumed for nobler flight, And Hope aglow with radiance bright, And Love in loveliness bedight SHALL GREET THE MORNING LIGHT." All's Well. Then, as is most fair and logical, the poet tells us how we are to build again after peace comes. We must needs know that. The newspapers are full of a certain popular move--and success to it--to rebuild the destroyed cities of France and Belgium. But the rebuilding that the poet speaks of in "The Winnowing" is a deeper thing. It is a spiritual rebuilding without which there is no permanent peace in the world and no permanent safety for the material world. "How shall we start, Lord, to build life again, Fairer and sweeter, and freed from its pain? 'Build ye in Me and your building shall be Builded for Time and Eternity.'" All's Well. There is the answer to the world's cry in short, sharp, succinct lines; compact as a biblical phrase; and as meaningful. Hearken it, ye world! Only in Him can the new spiritual world be built for "Time and Eternity." And only to those who so believe and hold shall the world belong henceforth. At least so says our poet: "To whom shall the world henceforth belong And who shall go up and possess it?" which question he himself answers in the same verse: "To the Men of Good Fame Who everything claim-- This world and the next--in their Master's great name-- "To these shall the world henceforth belong, And they shall go up and possess it; Overmuch, overlong, has the world suffered wrong, We are here by God's help to redress it." The Fiery Cross. And finally in this fight for peace he does not forget prayer, and in "The Prayer Immortal," which is introduced, as are so many of Oxenham's poems, by a phrase from the Bible, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done," he admonishes those who seek peace: "So--to your knees--And, with your heart and soul, pray God That wars may cease, And earth, by His good will, Through these rough ways, find peace!" The Fiery Cross. THE CROSS AND ITS VOICE The voice of the cross of Calvary is being heard this day of war as it has never been heard before. The world is resonant with its message. Every soldier, every nation, every home, every mother and father and child and wife who has suffered because of this war, shall henceforth understand the Christ and his cross the better. All through this writer's interpretations of the war we find the cross to the fore. To him the cross symbolizes the war. This war is the cross in a deep and abiding sense. In "Through the Valley" he says: "And there of His radiant company, Full many a one I see, Who has won through the Valley of Shadows To the larger liberty. Even there in the grace of the heavenly place, It is joy to meet mine own, And to know that not one but has valiantly won, By the way of the Cross, his crown." The Vision Splendid. Thank God for that hope! Thank God for that word! In "The Ballad of Jim Baxter" this same thought is more vividly and strongly set forth. It is the story of one type of German cruelty of which we have heard in the war dispatches several times and that have been confirmed on the spot; the story of the Germans nailing men to crosses. Jim Baxter suffered this experience: "When Jim came to, he found himself Nailed to a cross of wood, Just like the Christs you find out there On every country road. "He wondered dully if he'd died, And so, become a Christ; 'Perhaps,' he thought, 'all men are Christs When they are crucified.'" The Vision Splendid. And in this homely lad's homely way of putting his cruel experience who knows but that there may be such truth as yet we cannot see in the dark chaos of war? THE CHRIST AND HIS VOICE It isn't a far step from the cross to the Christ of the cross, and in this man's poetry the two mingle and commingle so closely that one overlaps the other. But always these two things stand out--the cross and the Christ. And in the new volume, The Fiery Cross, one finds many pages devoted to this great thought alone. Of the tenderness of the Christ he speaks most sympathetically, having in mind again the lads that war has taken. In "The Master's Garden" hear him: "And some, with wondrous tenderness, To His lips He gently pressed, And fervent blessings breathed on them, And laid them in His breast." The Vision Splendid. And then of his sweetness, referring again to the "Jim Baxter," we have a wonderful picture of the oft mentioned Comrade in White, who is so real to the wounded soldiers: "His face was wondrous pitiful, But still more wondrous sweet; And Jim saw holes just like his own In His white hands and feet; But His look it was that won Jim's heart, It was so wondrous sweet. "'Christ!'--said the dying man once more, With accent reverent, He had never said it so before, But he knew now what Christ meant--" The Vision Splendid. Oxenham has great faith in humanity. From time to time we find him expressing man's kinship with the stars and with God and Christ. "Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels" this poet takes seriously, thank God. This word from the Book means something to him. And so it is in a poem called "In Every Man" we see him finding Christ in every man: "In every soul of all mankind Somewhat of Christ I find, Somewhat of Christ--and Thee; For in each one there surely dwells That something which most surely spells Life's immortality. * * * * * "And so, for love of Christ--and Thee, I will not cease to seek and find, In all mankind, That hope of immortality Which dwells so sacramentally In Christ--and Thee." The Fiery Cross. He feels Christ's eternity so much that he cries out for him continually and will not be satisfied without him. He knows that he must have the Christ if he wants to grow great enough to meet life's demands. In a poem, "A Prayer for Enlargement," which I quote in full because of its brevity, one feels this dependence: "Shrive me of all my littleness and sin! Open your great heart wide! Open it wide and take me in, For the sake of Christ who died! "Was I grown small and strait?-- Then shalt Thou make me wide. Through the love of Christ who died, Thou--thou shalt make me great." The Fiery Cross. To the Christian the following quotation will mean much. In it we hear the echo of Masefield's The Everlasting Mercy; or of that marvelous story of the regeneration of a human soul in Tolstoy's The Resurrection; an old-fashioned conversion of a human being; a Paul's on the road to Damascus experience. And the tragedy is that just about the time that the world of literature is being fascinated with this story of "Rebirth" the church seems to be forgetting it. It is told in the first verse of Ex Tenebris--"The Lay of the King Who Rose Again": "Take away my rage! Take away my sin! Strip me all bare Of that I did wear-- The foul rags, the base rags, The rude and the mean! Strip me, yea strip me Right down to my skin! Strip me all bare Of that I have been! Then wash me in water, In fair running water, Wash me without, And wash me within, In fair running water, In fresh running water, Wash me, ah wash me, And make me all clean! --Clean of the soilure And clean of the sin, --Clean of the soul-crushing Sense of defilure, --Clean of the old self, And clean of the sin! In fair running water, In fresh running water, In sun-running water, All sweet and all pure, Wash me, ah wash me, And I shall be clean." The Fiery Cross GOD AND HIS VOICE From the voice of Christ and the voice of the cross it is not far to hear the voice of God either in life or in John Oxenham's books. Behind the cross and behind the Christ stands the Father, and a treatment of this great poet's writings would not be complete if one did not quote a few excerpts from his writings to show that God was ever present "keeping watch above his own." The first note we catch of the Father's voice is in "The Call of the Dead": "One way there is--one only-- Whereby ye may stand sure; One way by which ye may understand All foes, and Life's High Ways command, And make your building sure.--- Take God once more as Counselor, Work with Him, hand in hand, Build surely, in His Grace and Power, The nobler things that shall endure, And, having done all--STAND!" The Vision Splendid. And as the poet has walked the streets of America and elsewhere and has seen the service flag, which in "Each window shrines a name," he has felt God everywhere. In "The Leaves of the Golden Book" he comforts those who mourn: "God will gather all these scattered Leaves into His Golden Book, Torn and crumpled, soiled and battered, He will heal them with a look. Not one soul of them has perished; No man ever yet forsook Wife and home, and all he cherished, And God's purpose undertook, But he met his full reward In the 'Well Done' of his Lord!" The Vision Splendid. So it is that over and over we hear this note, wrung from the experiences of war, that those who give up all, to die for God's plan, to take the cross in suffering that the world may be better; these shall have life eternal. And who dares to dispute it? In "Our Share" we are admonished that we must find God anew: "Heads of sham gold and feet of crumbling clay, If we would build anew and build to stay, We must find God again, And go His way." All's Well. Oxenham does not claim to fully understand the world cataclysm any more than some of the rest of us. If we all had to understand, we might find ourselves ineligible for the Kingdom, but the Book says everywhere, "He that believeth on me shall have everlasting life." And we can believe whether we understand or no. So voices the poet in "God's Handwriting": "He writes in characters too grand For our short sight to understand; We catch but broken strokes, and try To fathom all the mystery Of withered hopes, of deaths, of life, The endless war, the useless strife,-- But there, with larger, clearer sight, We shall see this-- HIS WAY WAS RIGHT." All's Well, What better way to close this brief interpretation of our poet in this day of darkness and hate and hurt and war and woe and want, of seeing hopelessness and helplessness, than with these heartening lines from "God Is": "God is; God sees; God loves; God knows. And Right is Right; And Right is Might. In the full ripeness of His Time, All these His vast prepotencies Shall round their grace-work to the prime Of full accomplishment, And we shall see the plan sublime Of His beneficent intent. Live on in hope! Press on in faith! Love conquers all things, Even Death." All's Well. [Illustration: ALFRED NOYES.] VI ALFRED NOYES [Footnote: The poetical selections appearing in this chapter are used by permission, and are taken from Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes, two volumes, copyright, 1913, by the Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York.] A STUDY OF CHILDHOOD, OF MANHOOD, CHRISTHOOD, AND GODHOOD If one wants to find the tenderest, most completely sympathetic study of childhood, one that finds echo not only in the heart of the grown-up, but in the heart of children the world over, he must this day go to Alfred Noyes. If you want proof of this, read "The Forest of Wild Thyme" or "The Flower of Old Japan" to your children and watch them sit with open mouths and open hearts to hear these wonder fairy tales. And, further, if you are too grown-up to want to read Noyes for his complete sympathy with childhood, more universal even than our beloved Riley; and you want a poet that challenges you to a more vigorous manhood, a poet who calls man to his highest and deepest virility, read Noyes. Or, if you happen to need a clearer, firmer insight into the man of Galilee and Calvary, read Noyes; and, finally, if you want firmer, more rocklike foundations to plant your faith in God upon, read Noyes, for herein one finds all of these. From childhood to Godhood is, indeed, a wide range for a poet to take, and yet they are akin. As another poet has said, none less than Edwin Markham, "Know man and you will know the deep of God." And as Noyes himself says in the introduction to "The Forest of Wild Thyme": "Husband, there was a happy day, Long ago in love's young May, When, with a wild-flower in your hand You echoed that dead poet's cry-- 'Little flower, but if I could understand!' And you saw it had roots in the depth of the sky, And there in that smallest bud lay furled The secret and meaning of all the world." Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes. And when we know that the mother was talking about "Little Peterkin," their lost baby, we know that she meant that in a little child there lay furled "The secret and meaning of all the world." And so, beginning with childhood, through those intermediate steps of manhood and Christhood, with Noyes leading us, as he literally leads the little tots through the mysteries of Old Japan and the Wild Thyme, let us go from tree to tree, and flower to flower, and hope to hope, and pain to pain, up to God, from whence we came. It is a clear sweet pathway that he leads us. CHILDHOOD AND ITS GLORY Noyes assumes something that we all know for truth: that "Grown-ups do not understand" childhood. But after reading this sweet poet we know that he does understand; and we thank God for him. In Part II of "The Forest of Wild Thyme" one sees this clearly. "O, grown-ups cannot understand, And grown-ups never will, How short's the way to fairyland Across the purple hill: They smile: their smile is very bland, Their eyes are wise and chill; And yet--at just a child's command-- The world's an Eden still." Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes. Thank the stars that watch over us in love that the great-hearted poets, and the children of the world--at least those little ones that a half-way Christian civilization has not robbed of childhood--know that "The world's an Eden still." From the prelude to "The Flower of Old Japan" comes that same note, like a bluebird in springtime, that note of belief, of trust, of hope: "Do you remember the blue stream; The bridge of pale bamboo; The path that seemed a twisted dream Where everything came true; The purple cheery-trees; the house With jutting eaves below the boughs; The mandarins in blue, With tiny tapping, tilted toes, With curious curved mustachios? * * * * * "Ah, let us follow, follow far Beyond the purple seas; Beyond the rosy foaming bar, The coral reef, the trees, The land of parrots and the wild That rolls before the fearless child In ancient mysteries: Onward, and onward if we can, To Old Japan, to Old Japan." Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes. And "The Forest of Wild Thyme" is full of the echos of fairy tales and childhood rhymes heard the world over. Little Peterkin, who went with the children to "Old Japan," is dead now: "Come, my brother pirates, I am tired of play; Come and look for Peterkin, little brother Peterkin, Our merry little comrade that the fairies took away." Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes. And so, they go to the last place they saw him, the old God's Acre, and fall asleep amid the wild thyme blooming there. As they dream the thyme grows to the size of trees, and they wander about in the forest hunting for Peterkin. As they hunted they found out who killed Cock Robin. They appeal to Little Boy Blue to help them hunt for Peterkin: "Little Boy Blue, you are gallant and brave, There was never a doubt in those clear, bright eyes. Come, challenge the grim, dark Gates of the Grave As the skylark sings to those infinite skies!" Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes. The King of Fairyland gives command to Pease-Blossom: "And cried, Pease-blossom, Mustard-Seed! You know the old command; Well; these are little children; you must lead them on to Peterkin!" Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes. They even discovered, as they were led on by Pease-Blossom and Mustard- Seed, how fairies were born: "Men upon earth Bring us to birth Gently at even and morn! When as brother and brother They greet one another And smile--then a fairy is born!" Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes. And, too, they found why fairies die: "But at each cruel word Upon earth that is heard, Each deed of unkindness or hate, Some fairy must pass From the games in the grass And steal through the terrible Gate." Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes. And they learned what it took to make a rose: "'What is there hid in the heart of a rose, Mother-mine?' 'Ah, who knows, who knows, who knows? A man that died on a lonely hill May tell you perhaps, but none other will, Little child.' "'What does it take to make a rose, Mother-mine?' 'The God that died to make it knows. It takes the world's eternal wars, It takes the moon and all the stars, It takes the might of heaven and hell And the everlasting Love as well, Little child.'" Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes. And they heard the old tales over: "And 'See-Saw; Margery Daw,' we heard a rollicking shout, As the swing boats hurtled over our heads to the tune of the roundabout; And 'Little Boy Blue, come blow up your horn,' we heard the showmen cry, And 'Dickery Dock, I'm as good as a clock,' we heard the swings reply." Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes. Then at last they found their little brother Peterkin in "The Babe of Bethlehem." And if this were not enough to make the reader see how completely and wholly and sympathetically Noyes understood the child heart, hear this word from his great soul: "Kind little eyes that I love, Eyes forgetful of mine, In a dream I am bending above Your sleep and you open and shine; And I know as my own grow blind With a lonely prayer for your sake, He will hear--even me--little eyes that were kind, God bless you, asleep or awake!" Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes. MANHOOD AND ITS VIGOR Virility like unto steel is the very mark of Noyes. But as this study of Childhood has shown, it is a virility touched with tenderness. As Bayard Taylor sings: "The bravest are the tenderest, The loving are the daring!" And this is Noyes. Noyes knew Manhood, he sang it, he challenged it too, he crowned it in "Drake"; he placed it a little lower than the gods. Hear this supreme word, enough to lift man to the skies: "Where, what a dreamer yet, in spite of all, Is man, that splendid visionary child Who sent his fairy beacon through the dusk!" Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes. This tribute to Marlow--how eaglelike it is! How suggestive of heights, and mountain peaks and blue skies and far-flung stars! "But he who dared the thunder-roll, Whose eagle-wings could soar, Buffeting down the clouds of night, To beat against the Light of Light, That great God-blinded eagle-soul, We shall not see him more!" Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes. Then he makes us one with all that is granite and flower and high and holy in "The Loom of the Years": "One with the flower of a day, one with the withered moon, One with the granite mountains that melt into the noon, One with the dream that triumphs beyond the light of the spheres, We come from the Loom of the Weaver, that weaves the Web of the years." Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes. From "Drake" again this ringing word: "His face was like a king's face as he spake, For sorrows that strike deep reveal the deep; And through the gateways of a ragged wound Sometimes a God will drive his chariot wheels From some deep heaven within the hearts of men!" Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes. CHRISTHOOD AND ITS CALVARY From childhood to manhood through Christhood to Godhood is a progression that Noyes sees clearly and makes us see as clearly. Somehow Christ is very real to Noyes. He is not a historical character far off. He is the Christ of here and now; the Christ that meets our every need; as real as a dearly beloved friend next door to us. No poet sees the Christ more clearly. First he caught the meanings of Christ's gospel of new birth. He was not confused on that. He knows: "The task is hard to learn While all the songs of Spring return Along the blood and sing. "Yet hear--from her deep skies, How Art, for all your pain, still cries, _Ye must be born again_!" Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes. And who could put his worship more beautifully than the poet does in "The Symbolist"? "Help me to seek that unknown land! I kneel before the shrine. Help me to feel the hidden hand That ever holdeth mine. "I kneel before the Word, I kneel Before the Cross of flame. I cry, as through the gloom I steal, The glory of the Name." Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes. Christ's face, and his life experiences, here and there slip out of the lines of this English poet with an insistence that cannot but win the heart of the world, especially the heart of the Christian. Here and there in the most unexpected places his living presence stands before you, with, to use another of the poet's own lines, "Words that would make the dead arise," as in "Vicisti, Galilee": "Poor, scornful Lilliputian souls, And are ye still too proud To risk your little aureoles By kneeling with the crowd? * * * * * "And while ye scoff, on every side Great hints of Him go by,--Souls that are hourly crucified On some new Calvary!" * * * * * "In flower and dust, in chaff and grain, He binds Himself and dies! We live by His eternal pain, His hourly sacrifice." * * * * * "And while ye scoff from shore to shore From sea to moaning sea, 'Eloi, eloi,' goes up once more, 'Lama sabachthani!' The heavens are like a scroll unfurled, The writing flames above-- This is the King of all the World Upon His Cross of Love!" Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes. And there in the very midst of "Drake," that poem of a great sea fighter, comes this quatrain unexpectedly, showing the Christ always in the background of the poet's mind. He uses the Christ eagerly as a figure, as a help to his thought. He always puts the Christ and his cross to the fore: "Whence came the prentice carpenter whose voice Hath shaken kingdoms down, whose menial gibbet Rises triumphant o'er the wreck of Empires And stretches out its arms amongst the Stars?" Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes. Then in "The Old Skeptic" we hear these of the Christ in the concluding lines: "I will go back to my home and look at the wayside flowers, And hear from the wayside cabin the kind old hymns again, Where Christ holds out His arms in the quiet evening hours, And the light of the chapel porches broods on the peaceful lane. "And there I shall hear men praying the deep old foolish prayers, And there I shall see once more, the fond old faith confessed, And the strange old light on their faces who hear as a blind man hears-- 'Come unto me, ye weary, and I will give you rest.' "I will go back and believe in the deep old foolish tales, And pray the simple prayers that I learned at my mother's knee, Where the Sabbath tolls its peace, through the breathless mountain-vales, And the sunset's evening hymn hallows the listening sea." Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes. GODHOOD AT LAST AND SURELY He finds God. There is no uncertainty about it. From childhood to Godhood has the poet come, and we have come with him. It has been a triumphant journey upward. But we have not been afraid. Even the blinding light of God's face has not made us tremble. We have learned to know him through this climb upward and upward to his throne. At first it was uncertain. The poet had to challenge us to one great end in "The Paradox": "But one thing is needful; and ye shall be true To yourself and the goal and the God that ye seek; Yea, the day and the night shall requite it to you If ye love one another, if your love be not weak!" Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes. For he knew the heart hunger for God that was in every human breast: "I am full-fed, and yet I hunger! Who set this fiercer famine in my maw? Who set this fiercer hunger in my heart?" Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes. From "Drake" comes that scintillating line: "A scribble of God's finger in the sky"; and an admonition to the preacher: "Thou art God's minister, not God's oracle!" Nor did he forget that man, in his search for God, is, after all, but man, and weak! So from "Tales of a Mermaid Tavern": "... and of that other Ocean Where all men sail so blindly, and misjudge Their friends, their charts, their storms, their stars, their _God!_" Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes. Even like unto "Bo'sin Bill," who was and is a prevalent type, but not a serious type--that man who claims to be an atheist, but in times of stress, like unto us all, turns to God. And what humorous creatures we are! Enough to make God smile, if he did not love us so much: "But our bo'sin Bill was an atheist still Ex-cept--sometimes--in the dark!" Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes. And again from "The Paradox": "Flashing forth as a flame, The unnameable Name, The ineffable Word, _I am the Lord_!" "I am the End to which the whole world strives: Therefore are ye girdled with a wild desire and shod With sorrow; for among you all no soul Shall ever cease, or sleep, or reach its goal Of union and communion with the Whole Or rest content with less than being God." Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes. And thus we find God, with Noyes. And I have saved for the last quotation one from "The Origin of Life," which the poet says is "Written in answer to certain scientific theories." I save it for the last because, strangely, it sums up all the journey that we have passed through, from childhood to God-hood: "Watched the great hills like clouds arise and set, And one--named Olivet; When you have seen as a shadow passing away, One child clasp hands and pray; When you have seen emerge from that dark mire One martyr ringed with fire; Or, from that Nothingness, by special grace One woman's love-lit face...." * * * * * "Dare you re-kindle then, One faith for faithless men, And say you found, on that dark road you trod, In the beginning, _God_?" Collected Poems by Alfred Noyes. [Illustration: JOHN MASEFIELD.] VII JOHN MASEFIELD, POET FOR THE PULPIT [Footnote: The poetical selections appearing in this chapter are used by permission, and are taken from the following works: The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street, Salt Water Poems and Ballads, and Good Friday, published by The Macmillan Company, New York.] To climb is to achieve. We like to see men achieve; and the harder that achievement is, the more we thrill to it. For that reason we all have a hope to climb a Shasta, or a Whitney, or a Hood to its whitest peak, and glory in the achievement. And because of this human delight in the climb we thrill to see a man climb out of sin, or out of difficulty, or out of defeat to triumph. From "bar-boy" to poet is a great achievement, a great climb, or leap, or lift, whichever figure you may prefer, but that is exactly what John Masefield did. Perhaps Hutton's figure may describe it better--"The Leap to God." At least ten years ago John Masefield, a wanderer on the face of the earth, found himself in New York city without friends and without means, and it was not to him an unusual thing to accept the position of "bar-boy" in a New York saloon. This particular profession has within its scope the duties of wiping the beer bottles, sweeping the floor, and other menial tasks. And now John Masefield has within recent months come to New York city to be the lauded and feted. Newspaper reporters met him as his boat landed, eager for his every word; Carnegie Hall was crowded to hear him read from his own poetry; and his journey across the country was just a great triumph from New York to San Francisco. Something had happened in those ten years. This man had achieved. This poet had climbed to God. This man had experienced the "Soul's Leap to God." He had found that Man of all men who once said, "If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me." He always lifts men out of nothing into the glory of the greatest achievement. Yes, something had happened in those ten years. And the things that had happened in those ten years are perfectly apparent in his writings if one follow them from the beginning to the end. And the things that had happened I shall trace through this poet's writings from the first, boyhood verses of "Salt Water Ballads" to "Good Friday"; and therein lies the secret; and incidentally therein lies some of the most thrilling human touches, vivid illustrations for the preacher; some of the most intensely interesting religious experiences that any biography ever revealed consciously or unconsciously. I. THE SOUL PSYCHOLOGY OF HIS YOUTH IN "SALT WATER BALLADS" One may search these "Salt Water Ballads" through from the opening line of "Consecration" to "The Song At Parting" and find no faint suggestion of that deep religious glory of "The Everlasting Mercy." This book was written, even as Masefield says, "in my boyhood; all of it in my youth." He has not caught the deeper meaning of life yet--the spiritual meaning--although he has caught the social meaning, just as Markham has caught it. 1. _Social Consciousness_ Even in "Consecration" we hear the challenging ring of a young voice who has wandered over the face of the earth and has taken his place with the "Outcast," has cast his lot with the sailor, the stoker, the tramp. "Not the ruler for me, but the ranker, the tramp of the road, The slave with the sack on his shoulders pricked on with the goad, The man with too weighty a burden, too weary a load. "Others may sing of the wine and the wealth, and the mirth, The portly presence of potentates goodly in girth; Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust, and the scum of the earth! * * * * * "Mine be a handful of ashes, a mouthful of mould. Of the maimed, of the halt and the blind in the rain and the cold-- Of these shall my songs be fashioned, my tales be told. Amen." Salt Water Poems and Ballads. And it is a most fascinating story to see him climb from his boyhood, purely social, sympathetic interest in the outcast to that higher, that highest social consciousness, vitalized with religion. Here, seems it to me, that those who possess true social consciousness must come at last if they do their most effective work for the social regeneration of the world. Many have tremendous social consciousness, but no Christ. Christ himself is the very pulse beat of the social regeneration. Without him it must fail. One feels, even here in his youth poems, however, a promise of that deeper Masefield that later finds his soul in "The Everlasting Mercy." 2. _Faith in Immortality_ In "Rest Her Soul," these haunting lines with that expression of a deep faith found in "All that dies of her," we find a ray of light, which slants through a small window of the man that is to be: "On the black velvet covering her eyes Let the dull earth be thrown; Her's is the mightier silence of the skies, And long, quiet rest alone. Over the pure, dark, wistful eyes of her, O'er all the human, all that dies of her, Gently let flowers be strown." Salt Water Poems and Ballads. But most of these ballads, as their title suggests, are nothing more than the very sea foam of which they speak, and whose tale they tell; as compared with that later, deeper verse of Christian hope and regeneration. And then pass those ten years; ten years following the period of "The Salt Water Ballads"; and ten years following the time when he was a "bar-boy" in New York; ten years in which he climbs from a simple "social consciousness" to a social consciousness that has the heart beat of Christ in its every line. The poems he writes in this period are all of the Christ. "Good Friday," perhaps the strongest poem dealing with this great day in Christ's life, is full of a close knowledge of the spirit of the Man of Galilee. But it is in "The Everlasting Mercy" and not "The Story of a Round House" that we find Masefield at his big best, battering at the very doors of eternity with the fist of a giant and the tender love of a woman, and the plea of a penitent sinner. Something had happened to Masefield in those ten years. A man's entire life had been revolutionized; and his poetry with it. He still feels the want and need of the world, and the social injustice; but he has found the cure. In a word, he has been converted. I do not care whether or no Masefield means to tell his own story in "The Everlasting Mercy," but I do know that he tells, in spite of himself, a story that fits curiously into, and marvelously explains, the strange revolution and change in his own life from "Salt Water Ballads" to "Good Friday." II. CONVERSION It is an old-fashioned Methodist conversion of which he tells, which links itself up with the New Testament gospel of the regeneration of a human soul in such a fascinating way that it gives those of us who preach this gospel an impelling, modern, dramatic putting of the old, old story, that will thrill our congregations and grip the hearts of men who know not the Christ. 1. _Conviction of Sin_ Saul Kane was an amateur prizefighter. He and his friend Bill have a fight in the opening lines of the tale, and Saul wins. This victory is followed by the usual debauch, which lasts until all the drunken crowd are asleep on the floor of the "Lion." No Russian novelist, nor a Dostoievesky, nor another, ever dared such realism as Masefield has given us in his picture of this night's sin. He makes sin all that it is--black and hideous: "From three long hours of gin and smokes, And two girls' breath and fifteen blokes, A warmish night and windows shut The room stank like a fox's gut. The heat, and smell, and drinking deep Began to stun the gang to sleep." The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street. But this was too much for Saul Kane. He had still enough decency left to be ashamed. He wanted air. He went to a window and threw it open: "I opened window wide and leaned Out of that pigsty of the fiend, And felt a cool wind go like grace About the sleeping market-place. The clock struck three, and sweetly, slowly, The bells chimed, Holy, Holy, Holy; And in a second's pause there fell The cold note of the chapel bell, And then a cock crew flapping wings, And summat made me think of things!" The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street. There it is: sin, and conviction of sin. Perhaps he thought of another man who had virtually betrayed the Christ, and the cock crew and made that other "think o' things." Then came the reaction from that conviction; the battle against that same conviction that he must give up sin and surrender to the Christ; and a terrific battle it is, and a terrific description of that battle Masefield gives us, lightninglike in its vividness until there comes the little woman of God, Miss Bourne (a deaconess, if you please), who has always known the better man in Saul, who has followed him with her Christly love like "The Hound of Heaven." And how tenderly, yet how insistently, how pleadingly she speaks: "'Saul Kane,' she said, 'when next you drink, Do me the gentleness to think That every drop of drink accursed Makes Christ within you die of thirst; That every dirty word you say Is one more flint upon His way, Another thorn about His head, Another mock by where He tread; Another nail another cross; All that you are is that Christ's loss.'" The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street. These searching words were beyond defeat. They went home to his already convicted heart and mind like arrows. They hurt. They cut. They awakened. They called. They pierced. They pounded with giant fists. They lashed like spiked whips. They burned like a soul on fire. They clamored, and they whispered like a mother's love, and at last his heart opened: 2. _Forgiveness_ "I know the very words I said, They bayed like bloodhounds in my head. 'The water's going out to sea And there's a great moon calling me; But there's a great sun calls the moon, And all God's bells will carol soon For joy and glory, and delight Of some one coming home to-night.'" The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street. And then came the consciousness that he was "done with sin" forever: "I knew that I had done with sin, I knew that Christ had given me birth To brother all the souls on earth," The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street. which was followed by two "glories"--the "Glory of the Lighted Mind" and the "Glory of the Lighted Soul." I think that perhaps in our preaching on conversion we make too little of the regeneration of the "mind." Masefield does not miss one whit of a complete regeneration. 3. _The Joy of Conversion_ "O glory of the lighted mind. How dead I'd been, how dumb, how blind! The station brook to my new eyes Was babbling out of Paradise, The waters rushing from the rain Were singing, 'Christ has risen again!'" The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street. And then the soul glory: "O glory of the lighted Soul. The dawn came up on Bradlow Knoll, The dawn with glittering on the grasses, The dawn which pass and never passes." The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street. But that wasn't all. Masefield knows that the other self must be completely eradicated, so he makes Saul Kane change his environment entirely. He goes to the country. He plows, and as he plows he learns the lesson of the soil and cries: "O Jesus, drive the coulter deep To plow my living man from sleep." The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street. And more word from Christ as he plowed: "I knew that Christ was there with Callow, That Christ was standing there with me, That Christ had taught me what to be, That I should plow and as I plowed My Saviour Christ would sing aloud, And as I drove the clods apart Christ would be plowing in my heart, Through rest-harrow and bitter roots, Through all my bad life's rotten fruits." The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street. And so it is, that beginning with his poems of youth, John Masefield starts out with a sympathetic social consciousness, but nothing more apparently. He brothers with the outcast and frankly prefers it. Then comes the great regenerating influence in his life, which we surely find in his expression of faith that the soul is immortal, and finally that upheaval which we call conversion with all of its incident steps from conviction of sin to repentance; and then to the consciousness of forgiveness; to the lighted mind and the lighted soul; and then to the uprooting of evil and the planting of good in the soil of his life. And so through Saul Kane we see John Masefield and have an explanation of that subtle yet revolutionary change in his life and his poetry, pregnant with illustrations that, to quote another English poet, Noyes, "Would make the dead arise!" VIII ROBERT SERVICE, POET OF VIRILITY [Footnote: The poetical selections appearing in this chapter are used by permission, and are taken from the following works: The Spell of the Yukon; Rhymes of a Red Cross Man, published by Barse & Hopkins, New York; Rhymes of a Rolling Stone, published by Dodd, Mead & Co., New York.] A STUDY OF HIGH PEAKS AND HIGH HOPES; OF WHITE SNOWS AND WHITE LIVES; OF SIN AND DEATH; OF HEAVEN AND GOD A preacher once preached a sermon, and in the opening moments of this sermon he quoted eight lines, and a layman said at the conclusion of this sermon, "Ah, the sermon was fine, but those lines that you quoted--they were tremendous; they gripped me!" And those lines were from Robert Service, the poet of the Alaskan ice-peaks, of the Yukon's turbulent blue waters, of the great silences, of the high peaks and high hopes; of men and gold and sin and death. And the lines that gripped the layman were: "I've stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow That's plumb-full of hush to the brim; I've watched the big husky sun wallow In crimson and gold, and grow dim; Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming And the stars tumbled out neck and crop; And I've thought that I surely was dreaming With the peace o' the world piled on top." The Spell of the Yukon. [Illustration: ROBERT SERVICE.] Everything that the great northland holds was dear to him and clear to him and near to him. He knew it all as intimately as a child knows his own backyard. He makes it as dear and near and clear too, to those who read: "The summer--no sweeter was ever, The sunshiny woods all athrill; The grayling aleap in the river, The bighorn asleep on the hill; The strong life that never knows harness, The wilds where the caribou call; The freedom, the freshness, the farness; O God! how I'm stuck on it all!" The Spell of the Yukon. Virile as the mountains that he has neighbored with; clean as the snows that have blinded his eyes, and made beautiful the valleys; subdued to love of God through the height and the might of all that he sees, with a vigor that shakes one awake, he speaks, not forgetting the pines; for the pines are kith and kin to the mountains and the snows: "Wind of the East, wind of the West, wandering to and fro, Chant your hymns in our topmost limbs, that the sons of men may know That the peerless pine was the first to come, and the pine will be the last to go. "Sun, moon, and stars give answer; shall we not staunchly stand Even as now, forever, wards of the wilder strand, Sentinels of the stillness, lords of the last, lone land?" The Spell of the Yukon. And these white peaks, and these lone sentinels lift one nearer to God: "But the stars throng out in their glory, And they sing of the God in man; They sing of the Mighty Master, Of the loom his fingers span, Where a star or a soul is a part of the whole, And weft in the wondrous plan. "Here by the camp-fire's flicker, Deep in my blanket curled, I long for the peace of the pine-gloom, Where the scroll of the Lord is unfurled, And the wind and the wave are silent, And world is singing to world." The Spell of the Yukon. "Have you strung your soul to silence?" he abruptly asks in "The Call of the Wild"; and again, another searching query, "Have you known the great White Silence, not a snow-gemmed twig aquiver? (Eternal truths which shame our soothing lies.)" And again another query that rips the soul open, and that tears off life's veneer: "Have you suffered, starved, and triumphed, groveled down, yet grasped at glory, Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole? 'Done things,' just for the doing, letting babblers tell the story, See through the nice veneer the naked soul?" The Spell of the Yukon. and how his virile soul rings its tribute to the "silent men who do things!"--the kind that the world finds once in a century for its great needs: "The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things--." The Spell of the Yukon. SIN AND DEATH The world is full of sin and death, and the former is so often the father of the other. Service has seen this in the far, hard, cruel northland as no other can see it. The hollowness of material things he learns from this land of yellow gold, the very soul of the material quest of the world. He learns that "It isn't the gold that we're wanting, so much as just finding the gold:" "There's gold, and it's haunting and haunting; It's luring me on as of old; Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting So much as just finding the gold. It's the great, big, broad land 'way up yonder, It's the forests where silence has lease; It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder, It's the stillness that fills me with peace." The Spell of the Yukon. Or another verse: "I wanted the gold, and I sought it; I scrabbled and mucked like a slave. Was it famine or scurvy--I fought it; I hurled my youth into a grave. I wanted the gold, and I got it-- Came out with a fortune last fall-- Yet somehow life's not what I thought it, And somehow the gold isn't all." The Spell of the Yukon. Who has not learned that? Thank God for the lesson! Too many of us hurl our youths, aye, our lives into the grave learning that, and only come to know at last that Joaquin Miller was right when he said, "All you can take in your cold, dead hand Is what you have given away." And how the warning against sin hurtles its way into your soul; its grip; its age; its power: "It grips you like some kinds of sinning; It twists you from foe to a friend; It seems it's been since the beginning; It seems it will be to the end." The Spell of the Yukon. Sin is like that. Service is right! Sin lures, and calls under the guise of beauty. But sin, as John Masefield shows in "The Everlasting Mercy," is ugly. In the modern word of the street "Sin will get you." Service says the same thing in "It grips you." GOD AND HEAVEN Maybe you have never thought of God as the God of the trails and Alaskan reaches, but Service makes you see him as "The God of the trails untrod" in "The Heart of the Sourdough." He does not leave God out. Nor do these rough men of the avalanches, the frozen rivers, the gold trails, which are death trails. Indeed, these are the very men who know God, for do not their "Lives just hang by a hair"? "I knew it would call, or soon or late, as it calls the whirring wings; It's the olden lure, it's the golden lure, it's the lure of the timeless things, And to-night, O, God of the trails untrod, how it whines in my heart-strings!" The Spell of the Yukon. This God leads to "The Land of Beyond," the heaven of the gold seeker: "Thank God! there is always a Land of Beyond For us who are true to the trail; A vision to seek, a beckoning peak, A farness that never will fail; A pride in our soul that mocks at a goal, A manhood that irks at a bond, And try how we will, unattainable still, Behold it, our Land of Beyond!" Rhymes of a Rolling Stone. And the northman cannot forget death, as we have suggested, because he is face to face with it all the time, at every turn of a river; at every jump from cake to floe, at every step of every trail: JUST THINK! "Just think! some night the stars will gleam Upon a cold, grey stone, And trace a name with silver beam, And lo! 'twill be your own, "That night is speeding on to greet Your epitaphic rhyme. Your life is but a little beat Within the heart of Time. "A little gain, a little pain, A laugh lest you may moan; A little blame, a little fame, A star-gleam on a stone." Rhymes of a Rolling Stone. Perhaps it is because the men of the north are always so near to death and so conscious of death that they hold to the strict Puritanical rules of conduct that they do, expressed in Service's "The Woman and the Angel," that story of the Angel who came down to earth and withstood all the temptations until he met the beautiful, sinning woman, and who was about to fall. Hear her tempt him: "Then sweetly she mocked his scruples, and softly she him beguiled: 'You, who are verily man among men, speak with the tongue of a child. We have outlived the old standards; we have burst like an overtight thong The ancient outworn, Puritanic traditions of Right and Wrong.'" "Then the Master feared for His angel, and called him again to His side, For O, the woman was wondrous, and O, the angel was tried! And deep in his hell sang the devil, and this was the strain of his song: 'The ancient, outworn, Puritanic traditions of Right and Wrong.'" The Spell of the Yukon. And I doubt not, but that we all need that warning not to give up "The ancient, outworn, Puritanic traditions of Right and Wrong." RHYMES OF A RED CROSS MAN Here it is that we find a consciousness of the Eternal creeping through the smoke and din and glare. Here, like the hard, dangerous life of the Alaskan trails, only harder and more dangerous; here amid war in "The Fool" we catch six last lines that thrill us: "He died with the glory of faith in his eyes, And the glory of love in his heart. And though there's never a grave to tell, Nor a cross to mark his fall, Thank God we know that he "batted well" In the last great Game of all." Rhymes of a Red Cross Man. And even amid the terrible thunder of war the "Lark" sings, as Service reminds us in his poem of that name, sings and points to heaven: "Pure heart of song! do you not know That we are making earth a hell? Or is it that you try to show Life still is joy and all is well? Brave little wings! Ah, not in vain You beat into that bit of blue: Lo! we who pant in war's red rain Lift shining eyes, see Heaven too!" Rhymes of a Red Cross Man. To close this study of Service, which has run from the hard battle ground of the Alaskan trails to the harder battle ground of France; which has run from a study of white peaks and white lives, to high peaks and high hopes, through sin and death to heaven and the Father himself, I quote the closing lines of Service's "The Song of the Wage Slave," which will remind the reader in tone and spirit of Markham's "The Man with the Hoe": "Master, I've filled my contract, wrought in thy many lands; Not by my sins wilt thou judge me, but by the work of my hands. Master, I've done thy bidding, and the light is low in the west, And the long, long shift is over--Master, I've earned it--Rest." [Illustration: RUPERT BROOKE.] IX RUPERT BROOKE [Footnote: The poetical selections from the writings of Rupert Brooke appearing in this chapter are used by permission, and are taken from The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke, published by John Lane Company, New York.] PREACHER OF FRIENDSHIP, LOVE, COUNTRY, GODS, AND GOD Wilfred Gibson expressed it for us all; voiced the sorrow and the hope in the death of Rupert Brooke, a victim of the Hun as well as that other giant of art, the Rheims Cathedral; expressed it in these lines written shortly after Rupert Brooke died: "He's gone. I do not understand. I only know That, as he turned to go And waved his hand, In his young eyes a sudden glory shone, And I was dazzled by a sunset glow-- And he was gone," Thanks, Wilfred Gibson, you who have made articulate the voice of the downtrodden of the world, the poetic "Fires" which have lighted up with sudden glow the slums, the slag heaps, the factories, the coal mines, and hidden common ways of folks who toil; thanks that you have also beautifully lighted up the "End of the Trail" of your friend and our friend, Poet Rupert Brooke; lighted it with the light that shines from eternity. We owe you debt unpayable for that. And you yourself, war-dead poet, you sang your end, full knowing that it would come, as it did on foreign soil, far from the England that you loved and voiced so wondrously. And now these lines that you wrote of your own possible passing have new meaning for us who remain to mourn your going: "If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is forever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam; A body of England's breathing, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home." The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. And so here, even in this hymn of your passing, you have given a striking illustration off one of your strongest characteristics, love of homeland. Poet of Youth who left us so early in life, take your place along with Byron, and Shelley, and our own Seeger--a quartette of immortals, whose voices were heard, but, like the horns of Elfland, "faintly blowing" when they were hushed. Though you were but a youthful voice, yet left you poetry worth listening to, and preached a gospel that will make a better world, though it had not gone far enough to save the world. THE GOSPEL OF FRIENDSHIP Among the few definite, outstanding gospels that Brooke preached is seen the gospel of friendship. In "The Jolly Company" he says: "O white companionship! You only In love, in faith unbroken dwell, Friends, radiant and inseparable!" "Light-hearted and glad they seemed to me And merry comrades, even so God out of heaven may laugh to see.--" The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. Then, again, in a poem which he called "Lines Written in the Belief That the Ancient Roman Festival of the Dead Was Called Ambarvalia," he voices in an even more striking quatrain the immortality of friendship. What a thrill of hope runs through us here as we, who believe that life brings no richer gold than friendship, read this poet's thought that friendship too shall last beyond the years! "And I know, one night, on some far height, In the tongue I never knew, I yet shall hear the tidings clear From them that were friends of you.--" The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. THE GOSPEL OF LOVE And where Friendship sweeps into love who shall tell, or where the dividing line is? But while Brooks lived he forgot not love. His was a throbbing, beating love whose light was a beacon night and day; a beacon of which he was not ashamed. He set the fires of romantic love burning and when he went away he left them burning so that their light might light the way for other poets and other lovers and other travelers when they came. He believed, like Noyes, that love should not be weak; that that was the great hope. Noyes said: "But one thing is needful, and ye shall be true To yourselves and the goal and the God that ye seek; Yea, the day and the night shall requite it to you If ye love one another if your love be not weak." From Collected Poems of Alfred Noyes. Now I do not mean to suggest that the love that Brooke sang was exactly the type that Noyes sang in these four lines. In fact, one feels a difference as he reads the two English poets, but they are alike in that each agreed that Love should not be weak, whatever it was. Brooke sang of romantic love, high and holy as that is; love of Youth for Maiden, lad for lass, and man for woman; and thank God for the high clean song that he gave to it in such lines as in "The Great Lover": "Love is a flame;--we have beaconed the world's night. A city:--and we have built it, these and I. An emperor:--we have taught the world to die." The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. And again in that same great poem: "--Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake, And give what's left of love again, and make New friends, now strangers...." The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. THE GOSPEL OF LOVE FOR ONE'S COUNTRY And who shall say where the line of cleavage is between that love which clings to Friends; and that greater or conjugal love which moulds man and woman into one; and love for children, blood of one's blood, and love of country; and love of God? I say that those who are truly the great Lovers of the world love all of these and that not one is omitted. At least the truly great Lovers have the capacity for love of all these types. I have found no expression of paternal love in Brooke, for he had not come to that great experience of life before Death claimed him. And because Death robbed him of that experience Death robbed us of a rare interpretation of that special type of Love. But of all these other types which I have mentioned we have a clear expression in the slender volume of poems that he left us as our heritage from his estate. And, since we have already read one beautiful expression of this love for his country in the opening paragraphs of this chapter, we will add here another stanza of that noble expression of his love for old England. "And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven." The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. What a voice for the times! What a voice for America! Would that some American Brooke might arise to sing this same deep song. A GOSPEL OF THE GODS Rupert Brooke had a wide range of interests as indeed any great Lover of Life and living must have. He expressed the hopelessness of the heathen gods in a poem which he called "On the Death of Smet-Smet, the Hippopotomus-Goddess" in lines that fairly sparkle with the electricity of destruction and sarcasm: "She was wrinkled and huge and hideous? She was our Mother. She was lustful and lewd?--but a God; we had none other. In the day She was hidden and dumb, but at nightfall moaned in the shade; We shuddered and gave Her Her will in the darkness; we were afraid. (The People without) "She sent us pain, And we bowed before Her; She smiled again And bade us adore Her. She solaced our woe And soothed our sighing; And what shall we do Now God is dying?" The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. And so it was that with the deepest sense of understanding, with the deepest sympathy, without intolerance Brooke, in this one verse sets the Heathen gods where they belong and sets us where we belong in our relations to those who worship these gods and goddesses. It is all they have. We have no right to sneer and scorn until we are able to give them better. These poor Egyptians knew no other God. They said plaintively "but a God; we have none other"; and "And what shall we do now God is dying?" The crime of destroying faith in a lesser god until one has seen and can make seeable the real God is the greatest crime of civilization. And to this writer's way of thinking there is no greater sin than that of Intolerance; a sin to which a certain portion of the institutionalized church is prone. Noyes shot the fist of indignation at this type of intolerance straight from a manly shoulder when he said: "How foolish, then, you will agree Are those who think that all must see The world alike, or those who scorn Another who, perchance, was born Where in a different dream from theirs What they called Sin to him were prayers?" The Collected Poems of Alfred Noyes. Brooke saw the same thing and had great tolerance for those who worshipped the "unknown gods"; worshipped the best they knew, although it were a feeble worship. He understood their outcry that they knew not what to do, now that their god was dying: "She was so strong; But death is stronger. She ruled us long; But time is longer. She solaced our woe And soothed our sighing; And what shall we do Now God is dying?" The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. THE GOSPEL OF ONE GOD Then sweeping upward, although one must admit, with groping, reaching eagerness, this young poet tried to find, and at last did find, the one God. He mentions this God that he found more than any other one thing about which he wrote, so far as I can find. In one slender volume are more than a dozen striking references. Take for example the last fifteen lines of "The Song of the Pilgrims": "O Thou, God of all long desirous roaming, Our hearts are sick of fruitless homing, And crying after lost desire. Hearten us onward! as with fire Consuming dreams of other bliss. The best Thou givest, giving this Sufficient thing--to travel still Over the plain, beyond the hill, Unhesitating through the shade, Amid the silence unafraid, Till, at some hidden turn, one sees Against the black and muttering trees Thine altar, wonderfully white, Among the Forests of the Night." The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. Or again, from "Ambarvalia": "But laughing and half-way up to heaven, With wind and hill and star, I yet shall keep before I sleep, Your Ambarvalia." The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. Immortality, which goes hand in hand with the God of immortality, the God of the "Everlasting Arms," is voiced in "Dining-Room Tea," a poem addressed to one whom he loved: "For suddenly, and other whence, I looked on your magnificence. I saw the stillness and the light, And you, august, immortal, white, Holy and strange; and every glint, Posture and jest and thought and tint Freed from the mask of transiency, Triumphant in eternity, Immote, immortal." The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. Then, speaking of the war and peace with great yearning and great faith, the young poet cried a new glory in what he calls "God's Hour" in a poem on "Peace": "Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour, And caught our youth and wakened us from sleeping, With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power, To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping." The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. And who has not felt this, but has not been able to thus express it? And who has not seen that somehow, strangely, mysteriously, wondrously, the youth not only of England, but of America has leaped to "God's Hour," as Brooke calls this war; leaped from play, and from listlessness in spiritual things; leaped from indifference to things of the eternities; leaped to a magnificent heroism, selflessness, sacrifice, brotherhood; leaped to a new and Godlike nobility. To all who mourn for their dead lads comes the cheering word of Brooke, who himself paid the great debt of love. It comes out of a poem called "Safety." Read it, you who mourn, and be comforted: "Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest He who has found our hid security, Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest, And hear our word, 'Who is so safe as we?' 'We have found safety with all things undying!'" The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. "We have found safety with all things undying." Brooke heard God's word as did the prophet of old crying, "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith the Lord," and this sonnet comes as a personal message to mourning mother and father in America. As they listen they hear the voices of those they loved crying: "Who is so safe as we? We have found safety with all things undying." Thank God that this poet, though young, lived long enough, and saw enough of war and death to give this heartening word to a world which weeps and wearies with war and woe and want! Thus in this new immortality we shall "Learn all we lacked before; hear, know and say What this tumultuous body now denies: And feel, who have laid our groping hands away; And see, no longer blinded by our eyes." The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. 
7274	----	Tiffany Vergon, Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team POETS OF THE SOUTH A SERIES OF BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL STUDIES WITH TYPICAL POEMS, ANNOTATED BY F.V.N. PAINTER, A.M., D.D. _Professor of Modern Languages in Roanoke College Author of "A History of Education" "History of English Literature," "Introduction to American Literature" etc._ PREFACE The poets of the South, who constitute a worthy galaxy of poetic talent and achievement, are not sufficiently known. Even in the South, which might naturally be expected to take pride in its gifted singers, most of them, it is to be feared, are but little read. This has been called an age of prose. Under the sway of what are regarded as "practical interests," there is a drifting away from poetic sentiment and poetic truth. This tendency is to be regretted, for material prosperity is never at its best without the grace and refinements of true culture. At the present time, as in former ages, the gifted poet is a seer, who reveals to us what is highest and best in life. There is at present a new interest in literature in the South. The people read more; and in recent years an encouraging number of Southern writers have achieved national distinction. With this literary renaissance, there has been a turning back to older authors. It is hoped that this little volume will supply a real need. It is intended to call fresh attention to the poetic achievement of the South. While minor poets are not forgotten, among whose writings is found many a gem of poetry, it is the leaders of the chorus--Poe, Hayne, Timrod, Lanier, and Ryan--who receive chief consideration. It may be doubted whether several of them have been given the place in American letters to which their gifts and achievements justly entitle them. It is hoped that the following biographical and critical sketches of these men, each highly gifted in his own way, will lead to a more careful reading of their works, in which, be it said to their honor, there is no thought or sentiment unworthy of a refined and chivalrous nature. F. V. N. PAINTER. SALEM, VIRGINIA. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. MINOR POETS OF THE SOUTH II. EDGAR ALLAN POE III. PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE IV. HENRY TIMROD V. SIDNEY LANIER VI. ABRAM J. RYAN ILLUSTRATIVE SELECTIONS NOTES * * * * * CHAPTER I MINOR POETS OF THE SOUTH The first poetic writer of this country had his home at Jamestown. He was GEORGE SANDYS who came to Virginia in 1621, and succeeded his brother as treasurer of the newly established colony. Amid the hardships of pioneer colonial life, in which he proved himself a leading spirit, he had the literary zeal to complete his translation of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, which he had begun in England. After the toilsome day, spent in introducing iron works or in encouraging shipbuilding, he sat down at night, within the shadow of surrounding forests, to construct his careful, rhymed pentameters. The conditions under which he wrote were very far removed from the Golden Age which he described,-- "Which uncompelled And without rule, in faith and truth, excelled." The promise of this bright, heroic beginning in poetry was not realized; and scarcely another voice was heard in verse in the South before the Revolution. The type of civilization developed in the South prior to the Civil War, admirable as it was in many other particulars, was hardly favorable to literature. The energies of the most intelligent portion of the population were directed to agriculture or to politics; and many of the foremost statesmen of our country--men like Washington, Jefferson, Marshall, Calhoun, Benton--were from the Southern states. The system of slavery, while building up baronial homes of wealth, culture, and boundless hospitality, checked manufacture, retarded the growth of cities, and turned the tide of immigration westward. Without a vigorous public school system, a considerable part of the non-slaveholding class remained without literary taste or culture. The South has been chiefly an agricultural region, and has adhered to conservative habits of thought. While various movements in theology, philosophy, and literature were stirring New England, the South pursued the even tenor of its way. Of all parts of our country, it has been most tenacious of old customs and beliefs. Before the Civil War the cultivated classes of the Southern states found their intellectual nourishment in the older English classics, and Pope, Addison, and Shakespeare formed a part of every gentleman's library. There were no great publishing houses to stimulate literary production; and to this day Southern writers are dependent chiefly on Northern publishers to give their works to the public. Literature was hardly taken seriously; it was rather regarded, to use the words of Paul Hamilton Hayne, "as the choice recreation of gentlemen, as something fair and good, to be courted in a dainty, amateur fashion, and illustrated by _apropos_ quotations from Lucretius, Virgil, or Horace." Thus it happened that before the Civil War literature in the South, whether prose or poetry, had a less vigorous development than in the Middle States and New England. Yet it has been common to undervalue the literary work of the South. While literature was not generally encouraged there before the Civil War,--a fact lamented by gifted, representative writers,--there were at least two literary centers that exerted a notable influence. The first was Richmond, the home of Poe during his earlier years, and of the _Southern Literary Messenger_, in its day the most influential magazine south of the Potomac. It was founded, as set forth in its first issue, in 1834, to encourage literature in Virginia and the other states of the South; and during its career of twenty-eight years it stimulated literary activity in a remarkable degree. Among its contributors we find Poe, Simms, Hayne, Timrod, John Esten Cooke, John R. Thompson, and others--a galaxy of the best-known names in Southern literature. The other principal literary center of the South was Charleston. "Legaré's wit and scholarship," to adopt the words of Mrs. Margaret J. Preston, "brightened its social circle; Calhoun's deep shadow loomed over it from his plantation at Fort Hill; Gilmore Simms's genial culture broadened its sympathies. The latter was the Maecenas to a band of brilliant youths who used to meet for literary suppers at his beautiful home." Among these brilliant youths were Paul Hamilton Hayne and Henry Timrod, two of the best poets the South has produced. The _Southern Literary Gazette_, founded by Simms, and _Russell's Magazine_, edited by Hayne, were published at Charleston. Louisville and New Orleans were likewise literary centers of more or less influence. Yet it is a notable fact that none of these literary centers gave rise to a distinctive group or school of writers. The influence of these centers did not consist in one great dominating principle, but in a general stimulus to literary effort. In this respect it may be fairly claimed that the South was more cosmopolitan than the North. In New England, theology and transcendentalism in turn dominated literature; and not a few of the group of writers who contributed to the Atlantic Monthly were profoundly influenced by the anti-slavery agitation. They struggled up Parnassus, to use the words of Lowell,-- "With a whole bale of _isms_ tied together with rime." But the leading writers of the South, as will be seen later, have been exempt, in large measure, from the narrowing influence of one-sided theological or philosophical tenets. They have not aspired to the rôle of social reformers; and in their loyalty to art, they have abstained from fanatical energy and extravagance. The major poets of the South stand out in strong, isolated individuality. They were not bound together by any sympathy other than that of a common interest in art and in their Southern home. Their genius was nourished on the choicest literary productions of England and of classic antiquity; and looking, with this Old World culture, upon Southern landscape and Southern character, they pictured or interpreted them in the language of poetry. The three leading poets of the Civil War period--Hayne, Timrod, and Ryan --keenly felt the issues involved in that great struggle. All three of them were connected, for a time at least, with the Confederate army. In the earlier stages of the conflict, the intensity of their Southern feeling flamed out in thrilling lyrics. Timrod's martial songs throb with the energy of deep emotion. But all three poets lived to accept the results of the war, and to sing a new loyalty to our great Republic. The South has not been as unfruitful in literature as is often supposed. While there have been very few to make literature a vocation, a surprisingly large number have made it an avocation. Law and literature, as we shall have occasion to note, have frequently gone hand in hand. A recent work on Southern literature [*] enumerates more than twelve hundred writers, most of whom have published one or more volumes. There are more than two hundred poets who have been thought worthy of mention. More than fifty poets have been credited to Virginia alone; and an examination of their works reveals, among a good deal that is commonplace and imitative, many a little gem that ought to be preserved. Apart from the five major poets of the South--Poe, Hayne, Timrod, Lanier, and Ryan--who are reserved for special study, we shall now consider a few of the minor poets who have produced verse of excellent quality. [Footnote *: Manly's _Southern Literature._] FRANCIS SCOTT KEY (1780-1843) is known throughout the land as the author of _The Star-spangled Banner_, the noblest, perhaps, of our patriotic hymns. He was born in Frederick County, Maryland, and was educated at St. John's College, Annapolis. He studied law, and after practicing with success in Frederick City, he removed to Washington, where he became district attorney. During the bombardment of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812, he was detained on board a British vessel, whither he had gone to secure the release of a friend. All night long he watched the bombardment with the keenest anxiety. In the morning, when the dawn disclosed the star- spangled banner still proudly waving over the fort, he conceived the stirring song, which at once became popular and was sung all over the country. Though a volume of his poems, with a sketch by Chief-Justice Taney, was published in 1857, it is to _The Star-spangled Banner_ that he owes his literary fame. "O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming, Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? "And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?" Few poems written in the South have been more popular than _My Life is like the Summer Rose_. It has the distinction of having been praised by Byron. Its author, RICHARD HENRY WILDE (1789-1847), was born in Dublin, Ireland, but brought up and educated in Augusta, Georgia. He studied law, became attorney general of his adopted state, and later entered Congress, where he served for several terms. He was a man of scholarly tastes and poetic gifts. He spent five years abroad, chiefly in Italy, where his studies in Italian literature afterwards led to a work on Torquato Tasso. It was on the occasion of this trip abroad that he wrote _A Farewell to America_, which breathes a noble spirit of patriotism:-- "Farewell, my more than fatherland! Home of my heart and friends, adieu! Lingering beside some foreign strand, How oft shall I remember you! How often, o'er the waters blue, Send back a sigh to those I leave, The loving and beloved few, Who grieve for me,--for whom I grieve!" On his return to America, he settled in New Orleans, where he became a professor of law in the University of Louisiana. Though the author of a volume of poems of more than usual excellence, it is the melancholy lyric, _My Life is like the Summer Rose_, that, more than all the rest, has given him a niche in the temple of literary fame. Is it necessary to quote a stanza of a poem so well known? "My life is like the summer rose, That opens to the morning sky, But, ere the shades of evening close, Is scattered on the ground--to die! Yet on the rose's humble bed The sweetest dews of night are shed, As if she wept the waste to see-- But none shall weep a tear for me!" GEORGE D. PRENTICE (1802-1870) was a native of Connecticut. He was educated at Brown University, and studied law; but he soon gave up his profession for the more congenial pursuit of literature. In 1828 he established at Hartford the _New England Weekly Review_, in which a number of his poems, serious and sentimental, appeared. Two years later, at the age of twenty-eight, he turned over his paper to Whittier and removed to Louisville, where he became editor of the _Journal_. He was a man of brilliant intellect, and soon made his paper a power in education, society, and politics. Apart from his own vigorous contributions, he made his paper useful to Southern letters by encouraging literary activity in others. It was chiefly through his influence that Louisville became one of the literary centers of the South. He was a stout opponent of secession; and when the Civil War came his paper, like his adopted state, suffered severely. Among his writings is a _Life of Henry Clay_. A collection of his witty and pungent paragraphs has also been published under the title of _Prenticeana_. His poems, by which he will be longest remembered, were collected after his death. His best-known poem is _The Closing Year_. Though its vividness and eloquence are quite remarkable, its style is, perhaps, too declamatory for the taste of the present generation. The following lines, which express the poet's bright hopes for the political future of the world, are taken from _The Flight of Years_:-- "Weep not, that Time Is passing on--it will ere long reveal A brighter era to the nations. Hark! Along the vales and mountains of the earth There is a deep, portentous murmuring Like the swift rush of subterranean streams, Or like the mingled sounds of earth and air, When the fierce Tempest, with sonorous wing, Heaves his deep folds upon the rushing winds, And hurries onward with his night of clouds Against the eternal mountains. 'Tis the voice Of infant _Freedom_--and her stirring call Is heard and answered in a thousand tones From every hilltop of her western home---- And lo--it breaks across old Ocean's flood---- And _Freedom, Freedom!_ is the answering shout Of nations starting from the spell of years. The dayspring!--see--'tis brightening in the heavens! The watchmen of the night have caught the sign---- From tower to tower the signal fires flash free---- And the deep watchword, like the rush of seas That heralds the volcano's bursting flame, Is sounding o'er the earth. Bright years of hope And life are on the wing.--Yon glorious bow Of Freedom, bended by the hand of God, Is spanning Time's dark surges. Its high arch, A type of love and mercy on the cloud, Tells that the many storms of human life Will pass in silence, and the sinking waves, Gathering the forms of glory and of peace, Reflect the undimmed brightness of the Heaven." WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS (1806-1870), a native of Charleston, was a man of remarkable versatility. He made up for his lack of collegiate training by private study and wide experience. He early gave up law for literature, and during his long and tireless literary career was editor, poet, dramatist, historian, and novelist. He had something of the wideness of range of Sir Walter Scott; and one can not but think that, had he lived north of Mason and Dixon's line, he might occupy a more prominent place in the literary annals of our country. He has been styled the "Cooper of the South"; but it is hardly too much to say that in versatility, culture, and literary productiveness he surpassed his great Northern contemporary. Simms was a poet before he became a novelist. The poetic impulse manifested itself early; and before he was twenty-five he had published three or more volumes of verse. In 1832 his imaginative poem, _Atalantis, a Story of the Sea_, was brought out by the Harpers; and it introduced him at once to the favorable notice of what Poe called the "Literati" of New York. His subsequent volumes of poetry were devoted chiefly to a description of Southern scenes and incidents. As will be seen in our studies of Hayne and Timrod, Simms was an important figure in the literary circles of Charleston. His large, vigorous nature seemed incapable of jealousy, and he took delight in lending encouragement to young men of literary taste and aspiration. He was a laborious and prolific writer, the number of his various works-- poetry, drama, history, fiction--reaching nearly a hundred. Had he written less rapidly, his work might have gained, perhaps, in artistic quality. Among the best of Simms's novels is a series devoted to the Revolution. The characters and incidents of that conflict in South Carolina are graphically portrayed. _The Partisan_, the first of this historic series, was published in 1835. _The Yemassee_ is an Indian story, in which the character of the red man is less idealized than in Cooper's _Leather- stocking Tales_. In _The Damsel of Darien_, the hero is Balboa, the discoverer of the Pacific. The verse of Simms is characterized by facile vigor rather than by fine poetic quality. The following lines, which represent his style at its best, bear a lesson for the American people to-day:-- "This the true sign of ruin to a race-- It undertakes no march, and day by day Drowses in camp, or, with the laggard's pace, Walks sentry o'er possessions that decay; Destined, with sensible waste, to fleet away;-- For the first secret of continued power Is the continued conquest;--all our sway Hath surety in the uses of the hour; If that we waste, in vain walled town and lofty tower!" EDWARD COATE PINKNEY (1802-1828) died before his poetic gifts had reached their full maturity. He was the son of the eminent lawyer and diplomatist, William Pinkney, and was born in London, while his father was American minister at the court of St. James. At the age of nine he was brought home to America, and educated at Baltimore. He spent eight years in the United States navy, during which period he visited the classic shores of the Mediterranean. He was impressed particularly with the beauty of Italy, and in one of his poems he says:-- "It looks a dimple on the face of earth, The seal of beauty, and the shrine of mirth; Nature is delicate and graceful there, The place's genius feminine and fair: The winds are awed, nor dare to breathe aloud; The air seems never to have borne a cloud, Save where volcanoes send to heaven their curled And solemn smokes, like altars of the world." In 1824 he resigned his place in the navy to take up the practice of law in Baltimore. His health was not good; and he seems to have occupied a part of his abundant leisure (for he was not successful in his profession) in writing poetry. A thin volume of poems was published in 1825, in which he displays, especially in his shorter pieces, an excellent lyrical gift. The following stanzas are from _A Health_:-- "I fill this cup to one made up Of loveliness alone, A woman, of her gentle sex The seeming paragon; To whom the better elements And kindly stars have given A form so fair, that, like the air, 'Tis less of earth than heaven. "Her every tone is music's own, Like those of morning birds, And something more than melody Dwells ever in her words; The coinage of her heart are they, And from her lips each flows As one may see the burdened bee Forth issue from the rose." PHILIP PENDLETON COOKE (1816-1850), like most Southern writers before the Civil War, mingled literature with the practice of law. He was born at Martinsburg, Virginia, and educated at Princeton. He early manifested a literary bent, and wrote for the _Knickerbocker Magazine_, the oldest of our literary monthlies, before he was out of his teens. He was noted for his love of outdoor life, and became a thorough sportsman. In 1847 he published a volume entitled _Froissart Ballads and Other Poems_. The origin of the ballad portion of the volume, as explained in the preface, is found in the lines of an old Roman poet:-- "A certain freak has got into my head, Which I can't conquer for the life of me, Of taking up some history, little read, Or known, and writing it in poetry." The best known of his lyrics is _Florence Vane_ which has the sincerity and pathos of a real experience:-- "I loved thee long and dearly, Florence Vane; My life's bright dream, and early, Hath come again; I renew, in my fond vision, My heart's dear pain, My hope, and thy derision, Florence Vane. "The ruin lone and hoary, The ruin old, Where thou didst hark my story, At even told,-- That spot--the hues Elysian Of sky and plain-- I treasure in my vision, Florence Vane. "Thou wast lovelier than the roses In their prime; Thy voice excelled the closes Of sweetest rhyme; Thy heart was as a river Without a main. Would I had loved thee never, Florence Vane!" THEODORE O'HARA (1820-1867) is chiefly remembered for a single poem that has touched the national heart. He was born in Danville, Kentucky. After taking a course in law, he accepted a clerkship in the Treasury Department at Washington. On the outbreak of the Mexican War he enlisted as a private soldier, and by his gallant service rose to the rank of captain and major. After the close of the war he returned to Washington and engaged for a time in the practice of his profession. Later he became editor of the _Mobile Register_, and _Frankfort Yeoman_ in Kentucky. In the Civil War he served as colonel in the Confederate army. The poem on which his fame largely rests is _The Bivouac of the Dead_. It was written to commemorate the Kentuckians who fell in the battle of Buena Vista. Its well-known lines have furnished an apt inscription for several military cemeteries:-- "The muffled drum's sad roll has beat The soldier's last tattoo; No more on Life's parade shall meet That brave and fallen few. "On Fame's eternal camping-ground Their silent tents are spread, And Glory guards, with solemn round, The bivouac of the dead." O'Hara died in Alabama in 1867. The legislature of Kentucky paid him a fitting tribute in having his body removed to Frankfort and placed by the side of the heroes whom he so worthily commemorated in his famous poem. FRANCIS ORRERY TICKNOR (1822-1874) was a physician living near Columbus, Georgia. He led a busy, useful, humble life, and his merits as a poet have not been fully recognized. In the opinion of Paul Hamilton Hayne, who edited a volume of Ticknor's poems, he was "one of the truest and sweetest lyric poets this country has yet produced." _The Virginians of the Valley_ was written after the soldiers of the Old Dominion, many of whom bore the names of the knights of the "Golden Horseshoe," had obtained a temporary advantage over the invading forces of the North:-- "We thought they slept!--the sons who kept The names of noble sires, And slumbered while the darkness crept Around their vigil fires; But aye the 'Golden Horseshoe' knights Their Old Dominion keep, Whose foes have found enchanted ground, But not a knight asleep." But a martial lyric of greater force is _Little Giffen_, written in honor of a blue-eyed lad of East Tennessee. He was terribly wounded in some engagement, and after being taken to the hospital at Columbus, Georgia, was finally nursed back to life in the home of Dr. Ticknor. Beneath the thin, insignificant exterior of the lad, the poet discerned the incarnate courage of the hero:-- "Out of the focal and foremost fire, Out of the hospital walls as dire; Smitten of grape-shot and gangrene, (Eighteenth battle and _he_ sixteen!) Specter! such as you seldom see, Little Giffen of Tennessee! * * * * * "Word of gloom from the war, one day; Johnson pressed at the front, they say. Little Giffen was up and away; A tear--his first--as he bade good-by, Dimmed the glint of his steel-blue eye. 'I'll write, if spared!' There was news of the fight; But none of Giffen.--He did not write." But Ticknor did not confine himself to war themes. He was a lover of Nature; and its forms, and colors, and sounds--as seen in _April Morning_, _Twilight_, _The Hills_, _Among the Birds_--appealed to his sensitive nature. Shut out from literary centers and literary companionship, he sang, like Burns, from the strong impulse awakened by the presence of the heroic and the beautiful. JOHN R. THOMPSON (1823-1873) has deserved well of the South both as editor and author. He was born in Richmond, and educated at the University of Virginia, where he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1845. Two years later he became editor of the _Southern Literary Messenger_; and during the twelve years of his editorial management, he not only maintained a high degree of literary excellence, but took pains to lend encouragement to Southern letters. It is a misfortune to our literature that his writings, particularly his poetry, have never been collected. The incidents of the Civil War called forth many a stirring lyric, the best of which is his well-known _Music in Camp_:-- "Two armies covered hill and plain, Where Rappahannock's waters Ran deeply crimsoned with the stain Of battle's recent slaughters." The band had played "Dixie" and "Yankee Doodle," which in turn had been greeted with shouts by "Rebels" and "Yanks." "And yet once more the bugles sang Above the stormy riot; No shout upon the evening rang-- There reigned a holy quiet. "The sad, slow stream its noiseless flood Poured o'er the glistening pebbles; All silent now the Yankees stood, And silent stood the Rebels. "No unresponsive soul had heard That plaintive note's appealing, So deeply 'Home, Sweet Home' had stirred The hidden founts of feeling. "Or Blue or Gray, the soldier sees, As by the wand of fairy, The cottage 'neath the live-oak trees, The cabin by the prairie." On account of failing health, Thompson made a visit to Europe, where he spent several years, contributing from time to time to _Blackwood's Magazine_ and other English periodicals. On his return to America, he was engaged on the editorial staff of the _New York Evening Post_, with which he was connected till his death, in 1873. He is buried in Hollywood cemetery at Richmond. "The city's hum drifts o'er his grave, And green above the hollies wave Their jagged leaves, as when a boy, On blissful summer afternoons, He came to sing the birds his runes, And tell the river of his joy." The verse of Mrs. MARGARET J. PRESTON (1820-1897) rises above the commonplace both in sentiment and craftsmanship. She belongs, as some critic has said, to the school of Mrs. Browning; and in range of subject and purity of sentiment she is scarcely inferior to her great English contemporary. She was the daughter of the Rev. George Junkin, D.D., the founder of Lafayette College, Pennsylvania, and for many years president of Washington College at Lexington, Virginia. In 1857 she married Colonel J. T. L. Preston of the Virginia Military Institute. For many years she was a contributor to the _Southern Literary Messenger_, in which her earlier poems first made their appearance. Though a native of Philadelphia, she was loyal to the South during the Civil War, and found inspiration in its deeds of heroism. _Beechenbrook_ is a rhyme of the war; and though well-nigh forgotten now, it was read, on its publication in 1865, from the Potomac to the Gulf. Among her other writings are _Old Songs and New_ and _Cartoons_. Her poetry is pervaded by a deeply religious spirit, and she repeatedly urges the lesson of supreme resignation and trust, as in the following lines:-- "What will it matter by-and-by Whether my path below was bright, Whether it wound through dark or light, Under a gray or golden sky, When I look back on it, by-and-by? "What will it matter by-and-by Whether, unhelped, I toiled alone, Dashing my foot against a stone, Missing the charge of the angel nigh, Bidding me think of the by-and-by? * * * * * "What will it matter? Naught, if I Only am sure the way I've trod, Gloomy or gladdened, leads to God, Questioning not of the how, the why, If I but reach Him by-and-by. "What will I care for the unshared sigh, If in my fear of lapse or fall, Close I have clung to Christ through all, Mindless how rough the road might lie, Sure He will smoothen it by-and-by. "What will it matter by-and-by? _Nothing but this_: that Joy or Pain Lifted me skyward,--helped me to gain, Whether through rack, or smile, or sigh, Heaven, home, all in all, by-and-by." In this rapid sketch of the minor singers of the South, it has been necessary to omit many names worthy of mention. It is beyond our scope to speak of the newer race of poets. Here and there delicate notes are heard, but there is no evidence that a great singer is present among us. Yet there is no ground for discouragement; the changed conditions and the new spirit that has come upon our people may reasonably be expected to lead to higher poetic achievement. In some respects the South affords a more promising field for literature than any other part of our country. There is evident decadence in New England. But the climate and scenery, the history and traditions, and the chivalrous spirit and unexhausted intellectual energies of the South contain the promise of an Augustan age in literature. In no insignificant degree its rich-ored veins have been worked in prose. JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS has successfully wrought in the mine of negro folk-lore; GEORGE W. CABLE has portrayed the Creole life of Louisiana; CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK has pictured the types of character found among the Tennessee mountains; THOMAS NELSON PAGE has shown us the trials and triumphs of Reconstruction days; and Miss MARY JOHNSTON has revived the picturesque scenes of colonial times. There has been an obvious literary awakening in the South; and sooner or later it will find utterance, let us hope, in some strong-voiced, great-souled singer. It is true that there are obstacles to be overcome. There are no literary magazines in the South to encourage and develop our native talent as in the days of the _Southern Literary Messenger_. Southern writers are still dependent upon Northern periodicals, in which they can hardly be said to find a cordial welcome. It seems that the South in a measure suffers the obloquy that rested of old upon Nazareth, from which the Pharisees of the metropolis maintained that no good thing could come. But the most serious drawback of all is the disfavor into which poetry has fallen, or rather which it has brought upon itself. In the remoteness of its themes and sentiments, in its over-anxiety for a faultless or striking technique, it has erected a barrier between itself and the sanity of a practical, truth-loving people. Let us hope that this aberration is not permanent. When poetry returns to simplicity, sincerity, and truth; when it shall voice, as in the great English singers, Tennyson and Browning, the deepest thought and aspirations of our race; when once more, as in the prophetic days of old, it shall resume its lofty, seer-like office,--then will it be restored to its place of honor by a delighted and grateful people. CHAPTER II EDGAR ALLAN POE Poe occupies a peculiar place in American literature. He has been called our most interesting literary man. He stands alone for his intellectual brilliancy and his lamentable failure to use it wisely. No one can read his works intelligently without being impressed with his extraordinary ability. Whether poetry, criticism, or fiction, he shows extraordinary power in them all. But the moral element in life is the most important, and in this Poe was lacking. With him truth was not the first necessity. He allowed his judgment to be warped by friendship, and apparently sacrificed sincerity to the vulgar desire of gaining popular applause. Through intemperate habits, he was unable for any considerable length of time to maintain himself in a responsible or lucrative position. Fortune repeatedly opened to him an inviting door; but he constantly and ruthlessly abused her kindness. Edgar Allan Poe descended from an honorable ancestry. His grandfather, David Poe, was a Revolutionary hero, over whose grave, as he kissed the sod, Lafayette pronounced the words, "_Ici repose un coeur noble_." His father, an impulsive and wayward youth, fell in love with an English actress, and forsook the bar for the stage. The couple were duly married, and acted with moderate success in the principal towns and cities of the country. It was during an engagement at Boston that the future poet was born, January 19, 1809. Two years later the wandering pair were again in Richmond, where within a few weeks of each other they died in poverty. They left three children, the second of whom, Edgar, was kindly received into the home of Mr. John Allan, a wealthy merchant of the city. [Illustration: EDGAR ALLAN POE.] The early training of Poe was misguided and unfortunate. The boy was remarkably pretty and precocious, and his foster-parents allowed no opportunity to pass without showing him off. After dinner in this elegant and hospitable home, he was frequently placed upon the table to drink to the health of the guests, and to deliver short declamations, for which he had inherited a decided talent. He was flattered and fondled and indulged in every way. Is it strange that under this training he acquired a taste for strong drink, and became opinionated and perverse? In 1815 Mr. Allan went to England with his family to spend several years, and there placed the young Edgar at school in an ancient and historic town, which has since been swallowed up in the overflow of the great metropolis. The venerable appearance and associations of the town, as may be learned from the autobiographic tale of _William Wilson_, made a deep and lasting impression on the imaginative boy. After five years spent in this English school, where he learned to read Latin and to speak French, he was brought back to America, and placed in a Richmond academy. Without much diligence in study, his brilliancy enabled him to take high rank in his classes. His skill in verse-making and in debate made him prominent in the school. He excelled in athletic exercises, but was not generally popular among his fellow-students. Conscious of his superior intellectual endowments, he was disposed to live apart and indulge in moody reverie. According to the testimony of one who knew him well at this time, he was "self-willed, capricious, inclined to be imperious, and though of generous impulses, not steadily kind, or even amiable." In 1826, at the age of seventeen, Poe matriculated at the University of Virginia, and entered the schools of ancient and modern languages. Though he attended his classes with a fair degree of regularity, he was not slow in joining the fast set. Gambling seems to have become a passion with him, and he lost heavily. His reckless expenditures led Mr. Allan to visit Charlottesville for the purpose of inquiring into his habits. The result appears not to have been satisfactory; and though his adopted son won high honors in Latin and French, Mr. Allan refused to allow him to return to the university after the close of his first session, and placed him in his own counting-room. It is not difficult to foresee the next step in the drama before us. Many a genius of far greater self-restraint and moral earnestness has found the routine of business almost intolerably irksome. With high notions of his own ability, and with a temper rebellious to all restraint, Poe soon broke away from his new duties, and started out to seek his fortune. He went to Boston; and, in eager search for fame and money, he resorted to the rather unpromising expedient of publishing, in 1827, a small volume of poems. Viewed in the light of his subsequent career, the volume gives here and there an intimation of the author's genius; but, as was to be expected, it attracted but little attention. He was soon reduced to financial straits, and in his pressing need he enlisted, under an assumed name, in the United States army. He served at Fort Moultrie, and afterward at Fortress Monroe. He rose to the rank of sergeant major; and, according to the testimony of his superiors, he was "exemplary in his deportment, prompt and faithful in the discharge of his duties." In 1829, when his heart was softened by the death of his wife, Mr. Allan became reconciled to his adopted but wayward son. Through his influence, young Poe secured a discharge from the army, and obtained an appointment as cadet at West Point. He entered the military academy July 1, 1830, and, as usual, established a reputation for brilliancy and folly. He was reserved, exclusive, discontented, and censorious. As described by a classmate, "He was an accomplished French scholar, and had a wonderful aptitude for mathematics, so that he had no difficulty in preparing his recitations in his class, and in obtaining the highest marks in these departments. He was a devourer of books; but his great fault was his neglect of and apparent contempt for military duties. His wayward and capricious temper made him at times utterly oblivious or indifferent to the ordinary routine of roll call, drills, and guard duties. These habits subjected him often to arrest and punishment, and effectually prevented his learning or discharging the duties of a soldier." The final result may be easily anticipated: at the end of six months, he was summoned before a court-martial, tried, and expelled. Before leaving West Point, Poe arranged for the publication of a volume of poetry, which appeared in New York in 1831. This volume, to which the students of the academy subscribed liberally in advance, is noteworthy in several particulars. In a prefatory letter Poe lays down the poetic principle to which he endeavored to conform his productions. It throws much light on his poetry by exhibiting the ideal at which he aimed. "A poem, in my opinion," he says, "is opposed to a work of science by having for its _immediate_ object pleasure, not truth; to romance, by having for its object an _indefinite_ instead of a definite pleasure, being a poem only so far as this object is attained; romance presenting perceptible images with definite, poetry with _in_ definite sensations, to which end music is an _essential_, since the comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite conception. Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music without the idea is simply music; the idea without the music is prose from its very definiteness." Music embodied in a golden mist of thought and sentiment-- this is Poe's poetic ideal. As illustrative of his musical rhythm, the following lines from _Al Aaraaf_ may be given:-- "Ligeia! Ligeia! My beautiful one! Whose harshest idea Will to melody run, O! is it thy will On the breezes to toss? Or, capriciously still, Like the lone Albatross, Incumbent on night (As she on the air) To keep watch with delight On the harmony there?" Or take the last stanza of _Israfel:_-- "If I could dwell Where Israfel Hath dwelt, and he where I, He might not sing so wildly well A mortal melody, While a bolder note than this might swell From my lyre within the sky." The two principal poems in the volume under consideration--_Al Aaraaf_ and _Tamerlane_--are obvious imitations of Moore and Byron. The beginning of _Al Aaraaf_, for example, might easily be mistaken for an extract from _Lalla Rookh_, so similar are the rhythm and rhyme:-- "O! nothing earthly save the ray (Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty's eye, As in those gardens where the day Springs from the gems of Circassy-- O! nothing earthly save the thrill Of melody in woodland rill-- Or (music of the passion-hearted) Joy's voice so peacefully departed That, like the murmur in the shell, Its echo dwelleth and will dwell-- Oh, nothing of the dross of ours-- Yet all the beauty--all the flowers That list our Love, and deck our bowers-- Adorn yon world afar, afar-- The wandering star." After his expulsion from West Point, Poe appears to have gone to Richmond; but the long-suffering of Mr. Allan, who had married again after the death of his first wife, was at length exhausted. He refused to extend any further recognition to one whom he had too much reason to regard as unappreciative and undeserving. Accordingly Poe was thrown upon his own resources for a livelihood. He settled in Baltimore, where he had a few acquaintances and friends, and entered upon that literary career which is without parallel in American literature for its achievements, its vicissitudes, and its sorrows. With no qualification for the struggle of life other than intellectual brilliancy, he bitterly atoned, through disappointment and suffering, for his defects of temper, lack of judgment, and habits of intemperance. In 1833 the Baltimore _Saturday Visitor_ offered a prize of one hundred dollars for the best prose story. This prize Poe won by his tale, _A Ms. Found in a Bottle_. This success may be regarded as the first step in his literary career. The ability displayed in this fantastic tale brought him to the notice of John P. Kennedy, Esq., who at once befriended him in his distress, and aided him in his literary projects. He gave Poe, whom he found in extreme poverty, free access to his home and, to use his own words, "brought him up from the very verge of despair." After a year or more of hack work in Baltimore, Poe, through the influence of his kindly patron, obtained employment on the _Southern Literary Messenger_, and removed to Richmond in 1835. Here he made a brilliant start; life seemed to open before him full of promise. In a short time he was promoted to the editorship of the _Messenger_, and by his tales, poems, and especially his reviews, he made that periodical very popular. In a twelve-month he increased its subscription list from seven hundred to nearly five thousand, and made the magazine a rival of the _Knickerbocker_ and the _New Englander_. He was loudly praised by the Southern press, and was generally regarded as one of the foremost writers of the day. In the _Messenger_ Poe began his work as a critic. It is hardly necessary to say that his criticism was of the slashing kind. He became little short of a terror. With a great deal of critical acumen and a fine artistic sense, he made relentless war on pretentious mediocrity, and rendered good service to American letters by enforcing higher literary standards. He was lavish in his charges of plagiarism; and he made use of cheap, second-hand learning in order to ridicule the pretended scholarship of others. He often affected an irritating and contemptuous superiority. But with all his humbug and superciliousness, his critical estimates, in the main, have been sustained. The bright prospects before Poe were in a few months ruthlessly blighted. Perhaps he relied too much on his genius and reputation. It is easy for men of ability to overrate their importance. Regarding himself, perhaps, as indispensable to the _Messenger_, he may have relaxed in vigilant self-restraint. It has been claimed that he resigned the editorship in order to accept a more lucrative offer in New York; but the sad truth seems to be that he was dismissed on account of his irregular habits. After eighteen months in Richmond, during which he had established a brilliant literary reputation, Poe was again turned adrift. He went to New York, where his story, _The Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym_, was published by the Harpers in 1838. It is a tale of the sea, written with the simplicity of style and circumstantiality of detail that give such charm to the works of Defoe. In spite of the fact that Cooper and Marryat had created a taste for sea-tales, this story never became popular. It is superabundant in horrors--a vein that had a fatal fascination for the morbid genius of Poe. The same year in which this story appeared, Poe removed to Philadelphia, where he soon found work on the _Gentleman's Magazine_, recently established by the comedian Burton. He soon rose to the position of editor-in-chief, and his talents proved of great value to the magazine. His tales and critiques rapidly increased its circulation. But the actor, whose love of justice does him great credit, could not approve of his editor's sensational criticism. In a letter written when their cordial relations were interrupted for a time, Burton speaks very plainly and positively: "I cannot permit the magazine to be made a vehicle for that sort of severity which you think is so 'successful with the mob. I am truly much less anxious about making a monthly 'sensation' than I am upon the point of fairness.... You say the people love havoc. I think they love justice." Poe did not profit by his experience at Richmond, and after a few months he was dismissed for neglect of duty. He was out of employment but a short time. In November, 1840, _Graham's Magazine_ was established, and Poe appointed editor. At no other period of his life did his genius appear to better advantage. Thrilling stories and trenchant criticisms followed one another in rapid succession. His articles on autography and cryptology attracted widespread attention. In the former he attempted to illustrate character by the handwriting; and in the latter he maintained that human ingenuity cannot invent a cipher that human ingenuity cannot resolve. In the course of a few months the circulation of the magazine (if its own statements may be trusted) increased from eight thousand to forty thousand--a remarkable circulation for that time. His criticism was based on the rather violent assumption "that, as a literary people, we are one vast perambulating humbug." In most cases, he asserted, literary prominence was achieved "by the sole means of a blustering arrogance, or of a busy wriggling conceit, or of the most bare-faced plagiarism, or even through the simple immensity of its assumptions." These fraudulent reputations he undertook, "with the help of a hearty good will" (which no one will doubt) "to tumble down." He admitted that there were a few who rose above absolute "idiocy." "Mr. Bryant is not _all_ a fool. Mr. Willis is not _quite_ an ass. Mr. Longfellow _will_ steal but, perhaps, he cannot help it (for we have heard of such things), and then it must not be denied that _nil tetigit quod non ornavit_." But, in spite of such reckless and extravagant assertion, there was still too much acumen and force in his reviews for them to be treated with indifference or contempt. In about eighteen months Poe's connection with Graham was dissolved. The reason has not been made perfectly clear; but from what we already know, it is safe to charge it to Poe's infirmity of temper or of habit. His protracted sojourn in Philadelphia was now drawing to a close. It had been the most richly productive, as well as the happiest, period of his life. For a time, sustained by appreciation and hope, he in a measure overcame his intemperate habits. Griswold, his much-abused biographer, has given us an interesting description of him and his home at this time: "His manner, except during his fits of intoxication, was very quiet and gentlemanly; he was usually dressed with simplicity and elegance; and when once he sent for me to visit him, during a period of illness caused by protracted and anxious watching at the side of his sick wife, I was impressed by the singular neatness and the air of refinement in his home. It was in a small house, in one of the pleasant and silent neighborhoods far from the center of the town; and, though slightly and cheaply furnished, everything in it was so tasteful and so fitly disposed that it seemed altogether suitable for a man of genius." It was during his residence in Philadelphia that Poe wrote his choicest stories. Among the masterpieces of this period are to be mentioned _The Fall of the House of Usher_, _Ligeia_, which he regarded as his best tale _The Descent into the Maelstrom_, _The Murders in the Rue Morgue_, and _The Mystery of Marie Roget_. The general character of his tales may be inferred from their titles. Poe delighted in the weird, fantastic, dismal, horrible. There is no warmth of human sympathy, no moral consciousness, no lessons of practical wisdom. His tales are the product of a morbid but powerful imagination. His style is in perfect keeping with his peculiar gifts. He had a highly developed artistic sense. By his air of perfect candor, his minuteness of detail, and his power of graphic description, he gains complete mastery over the soul, and leads us almost to believe the impossible. Within the limited range of his imagination (for he was by no means the universal genius he fancied himself to be) he is unsurpassed, perhaps, by any other American writer. Poe's career had now reached its climax, and after a time began its rapid descent. In 1844 he moved to New York, where for a year or two his life did not differ materially from what it had been in Philadelphia. He continued to write his fantastic tales, for which he was poorly paid, and to do editorial work, by which he eked out a scanty livelihood. He was employed by N. P. Willis for a few months on the _Evening Mirror_ as sub-editor and critic, and was regularly "at his desk from nine in the morning till the paper went to press." It was in this paper, January 29, 1845, that his greatest poem, _The Raven_, was published with a flattering commendation by Willis. It laid hold of the popular fancy; and, copied throughout the length and breadth of the land, it met a reception never before accorded to an American poem. Abroad its success was scarcely less remarkable and decisive. "This vivid writing," wrote Mrs. Browning, "this power _which is felt_, has produced a sensation here in England. Some of my friends are taken by the fear of it, and some by the music. I hear of persons who are haunted by the 'Nevermore'; and an acquaintance of mine, who has the misfortune of possessing a bust of Pallas, cannot bear to look at it in the twilight." In 1845 Poe was associated with the management of the _Broadway Journal_, which in a few months passed entirely into his hands. He had long desired to control a periodical of his own, and in Philadelphia had tried to establish a magazine. But, however brilliant as an editor, he was not a man of administrative ability; and in three months he was forced to suspend publication for want of means. Shortly afterward he published in Godey's _Lady's Book_ a series of critical papers entitled _Literati of New York_. The papers, usually brief, are gossipy, interesting, sensational, with an occasional lapse into contemptuous and exasperating severity. In the same year he published a tolerably complete edition of his poems in the revised form in which they now appear in his works. The volume contained nearly all the poems upon which his poetic fame justly rests. Among those that may be regarded as embodying his highest poetic achievement are _The Raven_, _Lenore_, _Ulalume_, _The Bells_, _Annabel Lee_, _The Haunted Palace_, _The Conqueror Worm_, _The City in the Sea_, _Eulalie_, and _Israfel_. Rarely has so large a fame rested on so small a number of poems, and rested so securely. His range of themes, it will be noticed, is very narrow. As in his tales, he dwells in a weird, fantastic, or desolate region--usually under the shadow of death. He conjures up unearthly landscapes as a setting for his gloomy and morbid fancies. In _The City in the Sea_, for example:-- "There shrines and palaces and towers (Time-eaten towers that tremble not!) Resemble nothing that is ours. Around, by lifting winds forgot, Resignedly beneath the sky The melancholy waters lie." He conformed his poetic efforts to his theory that a poem should be short. He maintained that the phrase "'a long poem' is simply a flat contradiction in terms." His strong artistic sense gave him a firm mastery over form. He constantly uses alliteration, assonance, repetition, and refrain. These artifices form an essential part of _The Raven_, _Lenore_, and _The Bells_. In his poems, as in his tales, Poe was less anxious to set forth an experience or a truth than to make an impression. His poetry aims at beauty in a purely artistic sense, unassociated with truth or morals. It is, for the most part, singularly vague, unsubstantial, and melodious. Some of his poems--and precisely those in which his genius finds its highest expression--defy complete analysis. _Ulalume_, for instance, remains obscure after the twentieth perusal--its meaning lost in a haze of mist and music. Yet these poems, when read in a sympathetic mood, never fail of their effect. They are genuine creations; and, as a fitting expression of certain mental states, they possess an indescribable charm, something like the spell of the finest instrumental music. There is no mistaking Poe's poetic genius. Though not the greatest, he is still the most original, of our poets, and has fairly earned the high esteem in which his gifts are held in America and Europe. During his stay in New York, Poe was often present in the literary gatherings of the metropolis. He was sometimes accompanied by his sweet, affectionate, invalid wife, whom in her fourteenth year he had married in Richmond. According to Griswold, "His conversation was at times almost supramortal in its eloquence. His voice was modulated with astonishing skill; and his large and variably expressive eyes looked repose or shot fiery tumult into theirs who listened, while his own face glowed, or was changeless in pallor, as his imagination quickened his blood or drew it back frozen to his heart." His writings are unstained by a single immoral sentiment. Toward the latter part of his sojourn in New York, the hand of poverty and want pressed upon him sorely. The failing health of his wife, to whom his tender devotion is beyond all praise, was a source of deep and constant anxiety. For a time he became an object of charity--a humiliation that was exceedingly galling to his delicately sensitive nature. To a sympathetic friend, who lent her kindly aid in this time of need, we owe a graphic but pathetic picture of Poe's home shortly before the death of his almost angelic wife: "There was no clothing on the bed, which was only straw, but a snow-white counterpane and sheets. The weather was cold, and the sick lady had the dreadful chills that accompany the hectic fever of consumption. She lay on the straw bed, wrapped in her husband's great-coat, with a large tortoise-shell cat in her bosom. The wonderful cat seemed conscious of her great usefulness. The coat and the cat were the sufferer's only means of warmth, except as her husband held her hands, and her mother her feet." She died January 30, 1847. After this event Poe was never entirely himself again. The immediate effect of his bereavement was complete physical and mental prostration, from which he recovered only with difficulty. His subsequent literary work deserves scarcely more than mere mention. His _Eureka_, an ambitious treatise, the immortality of which he confidently predicted, was a disappointment and failure. He tried lecturing, but with only moderate success. His correspondence at this time reveals a broken, hysterical, hopeless man. In his weakness, loneliness, and sorrow, he resorted to stimulants with increasing frequency. Their terrible work was soon done. On his return from a visit to Richmond, he stopped in Baltimore, where he died from the effects of drinking, October 7, 1849. Thus ended the tragedy of his life. It is as depressing as one of his own morbid, fantastic tales. His career leaves a painful sense of incompleteness and loss. With greater self-discipline, how much more he might have accomplished for himself and for others! Gifted, self-willed, proud, passionate, with meager moral sense, he forfeited success by his perversity and his vices. From his own character and experience he drew the unhealthy and pessimistic views to which he has given expression in the maddening poem, _The Conqueror Worm_. And if there were not happier and nobler lives, we might well say with him, as we stand by his grave:-- "Out--out are the lights--out all! And, over each quivering form, The curtain, a funeral pall, Comes down with the rush of a storm, And the angels, all pallid and wan, Uprising, unveiling, affirm That the play is the tragedy 'Man,' And its hero the Conqueror Worm." [Illustration: PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE.] CHAPTER III PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE The poetry of Paul Hamilton Hayne is characterized by a singular delicacy of sentiment and expression. There is an utter absence of what is gross or commonplace. His poetry, as a whole, carries with it an atmosphere of high-bred refinement. We recognize at once fineness of fiber and of culture. It could not well be otherwise; for the poet traced the line of his ancestors to the cultured nobility of England, and, surrounded by wealth, was brought up in the home of Southern chivalry. The aristocratic lineage of the Hayne family was not reflected in its political feelings and affiliations in this country. They were not Tories; on the contrary, from the colonial days down to the Civil War they showed themselves stoutly democratic. The Haynes were, in a measure, to South Carolina what the Adamses and Quincys were to Massachusetts. A chivalrous uncle of the poet, Colonel Arthur P. Hayne, fought in three wars, and afterwards entered the United States Senate. Another uncle, Governor Robert Y. Hayne, was a distinguished statesman, who did not fear to cross swords with Webster in the most famous debate, perhaps, of our national history. The poet's father was a lieutenant in the United States navy, and died at sea when his gifted son was still an infant. These patriotic antecedents were not without influence on the life and writings of the poet. In the existing biographical sketches of Hayne we find little or no mention of his mother. This neglect is undeserved. She was a cultured woman of good English and Scotch ancestry. It was her hand that had the chief fashioning of the young poet's mind and heart. She transmitted to him his poetic temperament; and when his muse began its earliest flights, she encouraged him with appreciative words and ambitious hopes. Hayne's poems are full of autobiographic elements; and in one, entitled _To My Mother_, he says:-- "To thee my earliest verse I brought, All wreathed in loves and roses, Some glowing boyish fancy, fraught With tender May-wind closes; _Thou_ didst not taunt my fledgling song, Nor view its flight with scorning: 'The bird,' thou saidst, 'grown fleet and strong, Might yet outsoar the morning!'" Paul Hamilton Hayne was born in Charleston, South Carolina, January 1, 1830. At that time Charleston was the literary center of the South. Among its wealthy and aristocratic circles there, was a literary group of unusual gifts. Calhoun and Legaré were there; and William Gilmore Simms, a man of great versatility, gathered about him a congenial literary circle, in which we find Hayne and his scarcely less distinguished friend, Henry Timrod. Hayne was graduated with distinction from Charleston College in 1850, receiving a prize for superiority in English composition and elocution. He then studied law; but, like many other authors both North and South, the love of letters proved too strong for the practice of his profession. His literary bent, as with most of our gifted authors, manifested itself early, and even in his college days he became a devotee of the poetic muse. The ardor of his devotion found expression in one of his early poems, first called _Aspirations_, but in his later works appearing under the title of _The Will and the Wing_:-- "Yet would I rather in the outward state Of Song's immortal temple lay me down, A beggar basking by that radiant gate, Than bend beneath the haughtiest empire's crown. "For sometimes, through the bars, my ravished eyes Have caught brief glimpses of a life divine, And seen a far, mysterious rapture rise Beyond the veil that guards the inmost shrine." Hayne served his literary apprenticeship in connection with several periodicals. He was a favorite contributor to the _Southern Literary Messenger_, for many years published in Richmond, Virginia, and deservedly ranking as the best monthly issued in the South before the Civil War. He was one of the editors of the _Southern Literary Gazette_, a weekly published in his native city. Afterwards, as a result of a plan devised at one of Simms's literary dinners, _Russell's Magazine_, with Hayne as editor, was established, to use the language of the first number, as "another depository for Southern genius, and a new incentive, as we hope, for its active exercise." It was a monthly of high excellence for the time; but for lack of adequate support it suspended publication after an honorable career of two years. An article in _Russell's Magazine_ for August, 1857, elaborately discusses the ante-bellum discouragements to authorship in the South. Indifference, ignorance, and prejudice, the article asserted, were encountered on every hand. "It may happen to be only a volume of noble poetry, full of those universal thoughts and feelings which speak, not to a particular people, but to all mankind. It is censured, at the South, as not sufficiently Southern in spirit, while at the North it is pronounced a very fair specimen of Southern commonplace. Both North and South agree with one mind to condemn the author and forget his book." Hayne's critical work as editor of _Russell's Magazine_ is worthy of note. In manly independence of judgment, though not in ferocity of style, he resembled Poe. He prided himself on conscientious loyalty to literary art. He disclaimed all sympathy with that sectional spirit which has sometimes lauded a work merely for geographical reasons; and in the critical reviews of his magazine he did not hesitate to point out and censure crudeness in Southern writers. But, at the same time, it was a more pleasing task to his generous nature to recognize and praise artistic excellence wherever he found it. As a critic Hayne was, perhaps, severest to himself. His poetic standards were high. In his maturer years he blamed the precipitancy with which, as a youth, he had rushed into print. There is an interesting marginal note, as his son tells us, in a copy of his first volume of verse, in which _The Cataract_ is pronounced "the poorest piece in the volume. Boyish and bombastic! Should have been whipped for publishing it!" It is needless to say that the piece does not appear in his _Complete Poems_. This severity of self-criticism, which exacted sincerity of utterance, has imparted a rare average excellence to his work. In 1852 he married Miss Mary Middleton Michel, of Charleston, the daughter of a distinguished French physician. Rarely has a union been more happy. In the days of his prosperity she was an inspiration; and in the long years of poverty and sickness that came later she was his comfort and stay. In his poem, _The Bonny Brown Hand_, there is a reflection of the love that glorified the toil and ills of this later period:-- "Oh, drearily, how drearily, the sombre eve comes down! And wearily, how wearily, the seaboard breezes blow! But place your little hand in mine--so dainty, yet so brown! For household toil hath worn away its rosy-tinted snow; But I fold it, wife, the nearer, And I feel, my love, 'tis dearer Than all dear things of earth, As I watch the pensive gloaming, And my wild thoughts cease from roaming, And birdlike furl their pinions close beside our peaceful hearth; Then rest your little hand in mine, while twilight shimmers down, That little hand, that fervent hand, that hand of bonny brown-- The hand that holds an honest heart, and rules a happy hearth." Two small volumes of Hayne's poetry appeared before the Civil War from the press of Ticknor & Co., Boston. They were made up chiefly of pieces contributed to the _Southern Literary Messenger_, _Russsell's Magazine_, and other periodicals in the South. The first volume appeared in 1855, and the second in 1859. These volumes were well worthy of the favorable reception they met with, and encouraged the poet to dedicate himself more fully to his art. In the fullness of this dedication, he reminds us of Longfellow, Tennyson, and Wordsworth, all of whom he admired and loved. Few first volumes of greater excellence have ever appeared in this country. The judicious critic was at once able to recognize the presence of a genuine singer. The poet rises above the obvious imitation that was a common vice among Southern singers before the Civil War. We may indeed perceive the influence of Tennyson in the delicacy of the craftsmanship, and the influence of Wordsworth in the deep and sympathetic treatment of Nature; but Hayne's study of these great bards had been transmuted into poetic culture, and is reflected only in the superior quality of his work. There is no case of conscious or obvious imitation. The volume of 1859, which bears the title _Avolio and Other Poems_, exhibits the poet's fondness for the sonnet and his admirable skill in its use. Throughout his subsequent poetical career, he frequently chose the sonnet as the medium for expressing his choicest thought. It is hardly too much to claim that Hayne is the prince of American sonneteers. The late Maurice Thompson said that he could pick out twenty of Hayne's sonnets equal to almost any others in our language. In the following sonnet, which is quoted by way of illustration, the poet gives us the key to a large part of his work. He was a worshiper of beauty; and the singleness of this devotion gives him his distinctive place in our poetic annals. "Pent in this common sphere of sensual shows, I pine for beauty; beauty of fresh mien, And gentle utterance, and the charm serene, Wherewith the hue of mystic dreamland glows; I pine for lulling music, the repose Of low-voiced waters, in some realm between The perfect Adenne, and this clouded scene Of love's sad loss, and passion's mournful throes; A pleasant country, girt with twilight calm, In whose fair heaven a moon of shadowy round Wades through a fading fall of sunset rain; Where drooping lotos-flowers, distilling balm, Gleam by the drowsy streamlets sleep hath crown'd, While Care forgets to sigh, and Peace hath balsamed pain." The great civil conflict of '61-'65 naturally stirred the poet's heart. He was a patriotic son of the South. On the breaking out of hostilities, he became a member of Governor Pickens's staff, and was stationed for a time in Fort Sumter; but after a brief service he was forced to resign on account of failing health. His principal service to the Southern cause was rendered in his martial songs, which breathe a lofty, patriotic spirit. They are remarkable at once for their dignity of manner and refinement of utterance. There is an entire absence of the fierceness that is to be found in some of Whittier's and Timrod's sectional lyrics. Hayne lacked the fierce energy of a great reformer or partisan leader. But nowhere else do we find a heart more sensitive to grandeur of achievement or pathos of incident. He recognized the unsurpassed heroism of sentiment and achievement displayed in the war; and in an admirable sonnet, he exclaims:-- "Ah, foolish souls and false! who loudly cried 'True chivalry no longer breathes in time.' Look round us now; how wondrous, how sublime The heroic lives we witness; far and wide Stern vows by sterner deeds are justified; Self-abnegation, calmness, courage, power, Sway, with a rule august, our stormy hour, Wherein the loftiest hearts have wrought and died-- Wrought grandly, and died smiling. Thus, O God, From tears, and blood, and anguish, thou hast brought The ennobling act, the faith-sustaining thought-- Till, in the marvelous present, one may see A mighty stage, by knights and patriots trod, Who had not shunned earth's haughtiest chivalry." The war brought the poet disaster. His beautiful home and the library he has celebrated in a noble sonnet were destroyed in the bombardment of Charleston. The family silver, which had been stored in Columbia for safe-keeping, was lost in Sherman's famous "march to the sea." His native state was in desolation; his friends, warm and true with the fidelity which a common disaster brings, were generally as destitute and helpless as himself. Under these disheartening circumstances, rendered still more gloomy by the ruthless deeds of reconstruction, he withdrew to the pine barrens of Georgia, where, eighteen miles from Augusta, he built a very plain and humble cottage. He christened it Copse Hill; and it was here, on a desk fashioned out of a workbench left by the carpenters, that many of his choicest pieces, reflecting credit on American letters, and earning for him a high place among American poets, were written. This modest home, which from its steep hillside-- "Catches morn's earliest and eve's latest glow,"-- the poet has commemorated in a sonnet, which gives us a glimpse of the quiet, rural scenes that were dear to his heart:-- "Here, far from worldly strife, and pompous show, The peaceful seasons glide serenely by, Fulfill their missions, and as calmly die, As waves on quiet shores when winds are low. Fields, lonely paths, the one small glimmering rill That twinkles like a wood-fay's mirthful eye, Under moist bay leaves, clouds fantastical That float and change at the light breeze's will,-- To me, thus lapped in sylvan luxury, Are more than death of kings, or empires' fall." His son, Mr. W. H. Hayne, has thrown an interesting light upon the poet's methods of composition. Physical movement seemed favorable to his poetic faculty; and many of his pieces were composed as he paced to and fro in his study, or walked with stooping shoulders beneath the trees surrounding Copse Hill. He was not mechanical or systematic in his poetic work, but followed the impulse of inspiration. "The poetic impulse," his son tells us, "frequently came to him so spontaneously as to demand immediate utterance, and he would turn to the fly leaf of the book in hand or on a neighboring shelf, and his pencil would soon record the lines, or fragments of lines, that claimed release from his brain. The labor of revision usually followed,--sometimes promptly, but not infrequently after the fervor of conception had passed away." The painstaking care with which the revising was done is revealed in the artistic finish of almost every poem. Hayne's life at this time was truly heroic. With uncomplaining fortitude he met the hardships of poverty and bore the increasing ills of failing health. He never lost hope and courage. He lived the poetry that he sang:-- "Still smiles the brave soul, undivorced from hope; And, with unwavering eye and warrior mien, Walks in the shadow dauntless and serene, To test, through hostile years, the utmost scope Of man's endurance--constant, to essay All heights of patience free to feet of clay." And in the end he was not disappointed. Gradually his genius gained general recognition. The leading magazines of the country were opened to him; and, as Stedman remarks, "his people regarded him with a tenderness which, if a commensurate largess had been added, would have made him feel less solitary among his pines." In 1872 a volume of _Legends and Lyrics_ was issued by Lippincott & Co. It shows the poet's genius in the full power of maturity. His legends are admirably told, and _Aëthra_ is a gem of its kind. But the richness of Hayne's imagination was better suited to lyric than to narrative or dramatic poetry. The latter, indeed, abounds in rare beauty of thought and expression; but somehow this luxuriance seems to retard or obscure the movement. The lyric pieces of this volume are full of self- revelation, autobiography, and Southern landscape. Hayne was not an apostle of the strenuous life; he preferred to dream among the beauties or sublimities of Nature. Thus, in _Dolce far Niente_, he says:-- "Let the world roll blindly on! Give me shadow, give me sun, And a perfumed eve as this is: Let me lie Dreamfully, Where the last quick sunbeams shiver Spears of light athwart the river, And a breeze, which seems the sigh Of a fairy floating by, Coyly kisses Tender leaf and feathered grasses; Yet so soft its breathing passes, These tall ferns, just glimmering o'er me, Blending goldenly before me, Hardly quiver!" The well-known friendship existing between Hayne and his brother poet Timrod was a beautiful one. As schoolboys they had encouraged each other in poetic efforts. As editor of _Russell's Magazine_, Hayne had welcomed and praised Timrod's contributions. For the edition of Timrod's poems published in 1873, Hayne prepared a generous and beautiful memoir, in which he quoted the opinion of some Northern writers who assigned the highest place to his friend among the poets of the South. In the _Legends and Lyrics_ there is a fine poem, _Under the Pine_, commemorative of Timrod's visit to Copse Hill shortly before his death:-- "O Tree! against thy mighty trunk he laid His weary head; thy shade Stole o'er him like the first cool spell of sleep: It brought a peace _so_ deep, The unquiet passion died from out his eyes, As lightnings from stilled skies. "And in that calm he loved to rest, and hear The soft wind-angels, clear And sweet, among the uppermost branches sighing: Voices he heard replying (Or so he dreamed) far up the mystic height, And pinions rustling light." As illustrating his rich fancy and graphic power of diction, a few stanzas are given from _Cloud Pictures_. They are not unworthy of Tennyson in his happiest moments. "At calm length I lie Fronting the broad blue spaces of the sky, Covered with cloud-groups, softly journeying by: "An hundred shapes, fantastic, beauteous, strange, Are theirs, as o'er yon airy waves they range At the wind's will, from marvelous change to change: "Castles, with guarded roof, and turret tall, Great sloping archway, and majestic wall, Sapped by the breezes to their noiseless fall! "Pagodas vague! above whose towers outstream Banners that wave with motions of a dream-- Rising or drooping in the noontide gleam; "Gray lines of Orient pilgrims: a gaunt band On famished camels, o'er the desert sand Plodding towards their prophet's Holy Land; "Mid-ocean,--and a shoal of whales at play, Lifting their monstrous frontlets to the day, Through rainbow arches of sun-smitten spray; "Followed by splintered icebergs, vast and lone, Set in swift currents of some arctic zone, Like fragments of a Titan world o'erthrown." In 1882 a complete edition of Hayne's poems was published by D. Lothrop & Co. Except a few poems written after that date and still uncollected, this edition contains his later productions, in which we discover an increasing seriousness, richness, and depth. The general range of subjects, as in his earlier volumes, is limited to his Southern environment and individual experience. This limitation is the severest charge that can be brought against his poetry, but, at the same time, it is an evidence of his sincerity and truth. He did not aspire, as did some of his great Northern contemporaries, to the office of moralist, philosopher, or reformer. He was content to dwell in the quiet realm of beauty as it appears, to use the words of Margaret J. Preston, in the "aromatic freshness of the woods, the swaying incense of the cathedral- like isles of pines, the sough of dying summer winds, the glint of lonely pools, and the brooding notes of leaf-hidden mocking-birds." But the beauty and pathos of human life were not forgotten; and now and then he touched upon the great spiritual truths on which the splendid heroism of his life was built. For delicacy of feeling and perfection of form, his meditative and religious poems deserve to rank among the best in our language. They contain what is so often lacking in poetry of this class, genuine poetic feeling and artistic expression. The steps of death approached gradually; for, like two other great poets of the South, Timrod and Lanier, he was not physically strong. Though sustained through his declining years by "the ultimate trust"-- "That love and mercy, Father, still are thine,"-- he felt a pathetic desire to linger awhile in the love of his tender, patient, helpful wife:-- "A little while I fain would linger here; Behold! who knows what soul-dividing bars Earth's faithful loves may part in other stars? Nor can love deem the face of death is fair: A little while I still would linger here." Paul Hamilton Hayne passed away July 6, 1886. As already brought out in the course of this sketch, he was not only a gifted singer, but also a noble man. His extraordinary poetic gifts have not yet been fully recognized. Less gifted singers have been placed above him. No biography has been written to record with fond minuteness the story of his admirable life and achievement. His writings in prose, and a few of his choicest lyrics, still remain unpublished. Let us hope that this reproach to Southern letters may soon be removed, and that this laureate of the South may yet come to the full inheritance of fame to which the children of genius are inalienably entitled. CHAPTER IV HENRY TIMROD In some respects there is a striking similarity in the lives of the three Southern poets, Hayne, Timrod, and Lanier. They were alike victims of misfortune, and in their greatest tribulations they exhibited the same heroic patience and fortitude. "They knew alike what suffering starts From fettering need and ceaseless pain; But still with brave and cheerful hearts, Whose message hope and joy imparts, They sang their deathless strain." The fate of Timrod was the saddest of them all. Gifted with uncommon genius, he never saw its full fruitage; and over and over again, when some precious hope seemed about to be realized, it was cruelly dashed to the ground. There is, perhaps, no sadder story in the annals of literature. Henry Timrod was born in Charleston, South Carolina, December 28, 1829. He was older than his friend Hayne by twenty-three days. The law of heredity seems to find exemplification in his genius. The Timrods, a family of German descent, were long identified with the history of South Carolina. The poet's grandfather belonged to the German Fusiliers of Charleston, a volunteer company organized in 1775, after the battle of Lexington, for the defense of the American colonies. In the Seminole War, the poet's father, Captain William Henry Timrod, commanded the German Fusiliers in Florida. He was a gifted man, whose talents attracted an admiring circle of friends. "By the simple mastery of genius," says Hayne, "he gained no trifling influence among the highest intellectual and social circles of a city noted at that period for aristocratic exclusiveness." [Illustration: HENRY TIMROD.] Timrod's father was not only an eloquent talker, but also a poet. A strong intellect was associated with delicate feelings. He had the gift of musical utterance; and the following verses from his poem, _To Time --the Old Traveler_, were pronounced by Washington Irving equal to any lyric written by Tom Moore:-- "They slander thee, Old Traveler, Who say that thy delight Is to scatter ruin far and wide, In thy wantonness of might: For not a leaf that falleth Before thy restless wings, But in thy flight, thou changest it To a thousand brighter things. * * * * * "'Tis true thy progress layeth Full many a loved one low, And for the brave and beautiful Thou hast caused our tears to flow; But always near the couch of death Nor thou, nor we can stay; And the breath of thy departing wings Dries all our tears away!" On his mother's side the poet was scarcely less fortunate in his parentage. She was as beautiful in form and face as in character. From her more than from his father the poet derived his love of Nature. She delighted in flowers and trees and stars; she caught the glintings of the sunshine through the leaves; she felt a thrill of joy at the music of singing birds and of murmuring waters. With admirable maternal tenderness she taught her children to discern and appreciate the lovely sights and sounds of nature. Timrod received his early education in a Charleston school, where he sat next to Hayne. He was an ambitious boy, insatiable in his desire for knowledge; at the same time, he was fond of outdoor sports, and enjoyed the respect and confidence of his companions. His poetic activity dates from this period. "I well remember," says Hayne, "the exultation with which he showed me one morning his earliest consecutive attempt at verse- making. Our down-East schoolmaster, however, could boast of no turn for sentiment, and having remarked us hobnobbing, meanly assaulted us in the rear, effectually quenching for the time all aesthetic enthusiasm." When sixteen or seventeen years of age he entered the University of Georgia. He was cramped for lack of means; sickness interfered with his studies, and at length he was forced to leave the university without his degree. But his interrupted course was not in vain. His fondness for literature led him, not only to an intelligent study of Virgil, Horace, and Catullus, but also to an unusual acquaintance with the leading poets of England. His pen was not inactive, and some of his college verse, published over a fictitious signature in a Charleston paper, attracted local attention. After leaving college Timrod returned to Charleston, and entered upon the study of law in the office of the Hon. J. L. Petigru. But the law was not adapted to his tastes and talents, and, like Hayne, he early abandoned it to devote himself to literature. He was timid and retiring in disposition. "His walk was quick and nervous," says Dr. J. Dickson Bruns, "with an energy in it that betokened decision of character, but ill sustained by the stammering speech; for in society he was the shyest and most undemonstrative of men. To a single friend whom he trusted, he would pour out his inmost heart; but let two or three be gathered together, above all, introduce a stranger, and he instantly became a quiet, unobtrusive listener, though never a moody or uncongenial one." He aspired to a college professorship, for which he made diligent preparation in the classics; but in spite of his native abilities and excellent attainments, he never secured this object of his ambition. Leaving Charleston, he became a tutor in private families; but on holiday occasions he was accustomed to return to the city, where he was cordially welcomed by his friends. Among these was William Gilmore Simms, a sort of Maecenas to aspiring genius, who gathered about him the younger literary men of his acquaintance. At the little dinners he was accustomed to give, no one manifested a keener enjoyment than Timrod, when, in the words of Hayne:-- "Around the social board The impetuous flood tide poured Of curbless mirth, and keen sparkling jest Vanished like wine-foam on its golden crest." During all these years of toil and waiting the poetic muse was not idle. Under the pseudonym "Aglaus," the name of a minor pastoral poet of Greece, he became a frequent and favorite contributor to the _Southern Literary Messenger_ of Richmond, Virginia. Later he became one of the principal contributors, both in prose and poetry, to _Russell's Magazine_ in Charleston. It was in these periodicals that the foundation of his fame was laid. Timrod's first volume of poetry, made up of pieces taken chiefly from these magazines, appeared in 1860, from the press of Ticknor & Fields, Boston. It was Hayne's judgment that "a better first volume of the kind has seldom appeared anywhere." It contains most of the pieces found in subsequent editions of his works. Here and there, both North and South, a discerning critic recognized in the poet "a lively, delicate fancy, and a graceful beauty of expression." But, upon the whole, the book attracted little attention--a fact that came to the poet as a deep disappointment. In the words of Dr. Bruns, who was familiar with the circumstances of the poet, "success was to him a bitter need, for not his _living_ merely, but his _life_ was staked upon it." When this volume appeared, Timrod was more than a poetic tyro. Apart from native inspiration, in which he was surpassed by few of his contemporaries, he had reflected profoundly on his art, and nursed his genius on the masterpieces of English song. In addition to Shakespeare he had carefully pondered Milton, Wordsworth, and Tennyson. From Wordsworth especially he learned to appreciate the poetry of common things, and to discern the mystic presence of that spirit,-- "Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man." Timrod, like Poe, formulated a theory of poetry which it is interesting to study, as it throws light on his own work. It reveals to us the ideal at which he aimed. In a famous essay Poe made beauty the sole realm and end of poetry. To Timrod belongs the credit of setting forth a larger and juster conception of the poetic art. To beauty he adds _power_ and _truth_ as legitimate sources of poetry. "I think," he says, "when we recall the many and varied sources of poetry, we must, perforce, confess that it is wholly impossible to reduce them all to the simple element of beauty. Two other elements, at least, must be added, and these are power, when it is developed in some noble shape, and truth, whether abstract or not, when it affects the common heart of mankind." Timrod regarded a poem as a work of art. He justly held that a poem should have "one purpose, and that the materials of which it is composed should be so selected and arranged as to help enforce it." He distinguished between the moment of inspiration, "when the great thought strikes for the first time along the brain and flushes the cheek with the sudden revelation of beauty or grandeur, and the hour of patient, elaborate execution." Accordingly he quoted with approval the lines of Matthew Arnold:-- "We cannot kindle when we will The fire that in the heart resides; The spirit bloweth and is still; In mystery our soul abides; But tasks in hours of insight willed, May be through hours of gloom fulfilled." Timrod's poetry is characterized by clearness, simplicity, and force. He was not a mystic; his thoughts and emotions are not obscured in voluble melody. To him poetry is more than rhythmic harmony. Beneath his delicate imagery and rhythmical sweetness are poured treasures of thought and truth. In diction he belongs to the school of Wordsworth; his language is not strained or farfetched, but such as is natural to cultured men in a state of emotion. "Poetry," he says in an early volume of _Russell's Magazine_, "does not deal in abstractions. However abstract be his thought, the poet is compelled, by his passion-fused imagination, to give it life, form, or color. Hence the necessity of employing the _sensuous or concrete_ words of the language, and hence the exclusion of long words, which in English are nearly all purely and austerely _abstract_, from the poetic vocabulary." He defends the use of the sonnet, in which, like Hayne, he excelled. He admits that the sonnet is artificial in structure; but, as already pointed out, he distinguishes the moment of inspiration, from the subsequent labor of composition. In the act of writing, the poet passes into the artist. And "the very restriction so much complained of in the sonnet," he says, "the artist knows to be an advantage. It forces him to condensation." His sonnets are characterized by a rare lucidity of thought and expression. The principal piece in Timrod's first volume, to which we now return, and the longest poem he ever wrote, is entitled _A Vision of Poesy_. In the experience of the imaginative hero, who seems an idealized portrait of the poet himself, we find an almost unequaled presentation of the nature and uses of poetry. The spirit of Poesy, "the angel of the earth," thus explains her lofty mission:-- "And ever since that immemorial hour When the glad morning stars together sung, My task hath been, beneath a mightier Power, To keep the world forever fresh and young; I give it not its fruitage and its green, But clothe it with a glory all unseen." And what are the objects on which this angel of Poesy loves to dwell? Truth, freedom, passion, she answers, and-- "All lovely things, and gentle--the sweet laugh Of children, girlhood's kiss, and friendship's clasp, The boy that sporteth with the old man's staff, The baby, and the breast its fingers grasp-- All that exalts the grounds of happiness, All griefs that hallow, and all joys that bless, "To me are sacred; at my holy shrine Love breathes its latest dreams, its earliest hints; I turn life's tasteless waters into wine, And flush them through and through with purple tints. Wherever earth is fair, and heaven looks down, I rear my altars, and I wear my crown." Many of the poems in this first volume are worthy of note, as revealing some phase of the poet's versatile gifts--delicate fancy, simplicity and truth, lucid force, or finished art. _The Lily Confidante_, is a light, lilting fancy, the moral of which is:-- "Love's the lover's only magic, Truth the very subtlest art; Love that feigns, and lips that flatter, Win no modest heart." _The Past_ was first published in the _Southern Literary Messenger_, and afterwards went the rounds of the press. It teaches the important truth that we are the sum of all we have lived through. The past forms the atmosphere which we breathe today; it is-- "A shadowy land, where joy and sorrow kiss, Each still to each corrective and relief, Where dim delights are brightened into bliss, And nothing wholly perishes but grief. "Ah me!--not dies--no more than spirit dies; But in a change like death is clothed with wings; A serious angel, with entranced eyes, Looking to far-off and celestial things." Timrod possessed an ardent spirit that was stirred to its depths by the Civil War. His martial songs, with their fierce intensity, better voiced the feelings of the South at that time than those of Hayne or any other Southern singer. In his _Ethnogenesis_--the birth of a nation--he celebrates in a lofty strain the rise of the Confederacy, of which he cherished large and generous hopes:-- "The type Whereby we shall be known in every land Is that vast gulf which lips our Southern strand, And through the cold, untempered ocean pours Its genial streams, that far off Arctic shores May sometimes catch upon the softened breeze Strange tropic warmth and hints of summer seas." But his most stirring lyrics are _Carolina_ and _A Cry to Arms_, which in the exciting days of '61 deeply moved the Southern heart, but which today serve as melancholy mementos of a long-past sectional bitterness. Of the vigorous lines of the former, Hayne says in an interesting autobiographic touch, "I read them first, and was thrilled by their power and pathos, upon a stormy March evening in Fort Sumter! Walking along the battlements, under the red lights of a tempestuous sunset, the wind steadily and loudly blowing from off the bar across the tossing and moaning waste of waters, driven inland; with scores of gulls and white sea-birds flying and shrieking round me,--those wild voices of Nature mingled strangely with the rhythmic roll and beat of the poet's impassioned music. The very spirit, or dark genius, of the troubled scene appeared to take up, and to repeat such verses as:-- "'I hear a murmur as of waves That grope their way through sunless caves, Like bodies struggling in their graves, Carolina! "'And now it deepens; slow and grand It swells, as rolling to the land, An ocean broke upon the strand, Carolina!'" These impassioned war lyrics brought the poet speedy popularity. For a time his hopes were lifted up to a roseate future. In 1862 some of his influential friends formed the project of bringing out a handsome edition of his poems in London. The war correspondent of the _London Illustrated News_, himself an artist, volunteered to furnish original illustrations. The scheme, at which the poet was elated, promised at once bread and fame. But, as in so many other instances, he was doomed to bitter disappointment. The increasing stress of the great conflict absorbed the energies of the South; and the promising plan, notwithstanding the poet's popularity, was buried beneath the noise and tumult of battle. Disqualified by feeble health from serving in the ranks, Timrod, shortly after the battle of Shiloh, went to Tennessee as the war correspondent of the _Charleston Mercury_. To his retiring and sympathetic nature the scenes of war were painful. "One can scarcely conceive," says Dr. Bruns, "of a situation more hopelessly wretched than that of a mere child in the world's ways suddenly flung down into the heart of that strong retreat, and tossed like a straw on the crest of those refluent waves, from which he escaped as by a miracle." In 1863 he went to Columbia as associate editor of the _South Carolinian_. He was scarcely less happy and vigorous in prose than in verse. A period of prosperity seemed at last to be dawning; and, in the cheerful prospect, he ventured to marry Miss Kate Goodwin of Charleston, "Katie, the fair Saxon," whom he had long loved and of whom he had sung in one of his longest and sweetest poems. But his happiness was of brief duration. In a twelvemonth the army of General Sherman entered Columbia, demolished his office, and sent him adrift as a helpless fugitive. The close of the war found him a ruined man; he was almost destitute of property and broken in health. He was obliged to sell some of his household furniture to keep his family in bread. "We have," he says, in a sadly playful letter to Hayne at this period, "we have--let me see!--yes, we have eaten two silver pitchers, one or two dozen silver forks, several sofas, innumerable chairs, and a huge--bedstead!" He could find no paying market for his poems in the impoverished South; and in the North political feeling was still too strong to give him access to the magazines there. The only employment he could find was some clerical work for a season in the governor's office, where he sometimes toiled far beyond his strength. In this time of discouragement and need, the gloom of which was never lifted, he pathetically wrote to Hayne: "I would consign every line of my verse to eternal oblivion for _one hundred dollars in hand_." In 1867 his physicians recommended a change of air; and accordingly he spent a month with his lifelong friend Hayne at Copse Hill. It was the one rift in the clouds before the fall of night. There is a pathetic beauty in the fellowship of the two poets during these brief weeks, when, with spirits often attuned to high thought and feeling, they roamed together among the pines or sat beneath the stars. "We would rest on the hillsides," says Hayne, "in the swaying golden shadows, watching together the Titanic masses of snow-white clouds which floated slowly and vaguely through the sky, suggesting by their form, whiteness, and serene motion, despite the season, flotillas of icebergs upon Arctic seas. Like lazzaroni we basked in the quiet noons, sunk in the depths of reverie, or perhaps of yet more 'charmed sleep.' Or we smoked, conversing lazily between the puffs,-- 'Next to some pine whose antique roots just peeped From out the crumbling bases of the sand.'" Timrod survived but a few weeks after his return to Columbia. The circumstances of his death were most pathetic. Though sustained by Christian hopes, he still longed to live a season with the dear ones about him. When, after a period of intense agony that preceded his dissolution, his sister murmured to him, "You will soon be at rest _now_," he replied, with touching pathos, "Yes, my sister, _but love is sweeter than rest_." He died October 7, 1867, and was laid to rest in Trinity churchyard, where his grave long remained unmarked. Two principal editions of his works have been published: the first in 1873, with an admirable memoir by Hayne; the second in 1899, under the auspices of the Timrod Memorial Association of South Carolina. A number of his poems and his prose writings still remain uncollected; and there is yet no biography that fully records the story of his life. This fact is not a credit to Southern letters, for, as we have seen, Timrod was a poet of more than commonplace ability and achievement. For the most part, his themes were drawn from the ordinary scenes and incidents of life. He was not ambitious of lofty subjects, remote from the hearts and homes of men. He placed sincerity above grandeur; he preferred love to admiration. He was always pure, brave, and true; and, as he sang:-- "The brightest stars are nearest to the earth, And we may track the mighty sun above, Even by the shadow of a slender flower. Always, O bard, humility is power! And thou mayest draw from matters of the hearth Truths wide as nations, and as deep as love." CHAPTER V SIDNEY LANIER Lanier's genius was predominantly musical. He descended from a musical ancestry, which included in its line a "master of the king's music" at the court of James I. His musical gifts manifested themselves in early childhood. Without further instruction in music than a knowledge of the notes, which he learned from his mother, he was able to play, almost by intuition, the flute, guitar, violin, piano, and organ. He organized his boyish playmates into an amateur minstrel band; and when in early manhood he began to confide his most intimate thoughts to a notebook, he wrote, "The prime inclination--that is, natural bent (which I have checked, though)--of my nature is to music, and for that I have the greatest talent; indeed, not boasting, for God gave it me, I have an extraordinary musical talent, and feel it within me plainly that I could rise as high as any composer." This early bent and passion for music never left him. His thought continually turned to the subject of music, and in the silences of his soul he frequently heard wonderful melodies. In his novel, _Tiger Lilies_, he lauds music in a rapturous strain: "Since in all holy worship, in all conditions of life, in all domestic, social, religious, political, and lonely individual doings; in all passions, in all countries, earthly or heavenly; in all stages of civilization, of time, or of eternity; since, I say, in all these, music is always present to utter the shallowest or the deepest thoughts of man or spirit--let us cease to call music a fine art, to class it with delicate pastry cookery and confectionery, and to fear to make too much of it lest it should make us sick." At a later period, while seeking to regain his health by a sojourn in Texas, he wrote to his wife: "All day my soul hath been cutting swiftly into the great space of the subtle, unspeakable deep, driven by wind after wind of heavenly melody. The very inner spirit and essence of all wind-songs, bird-songs, passion-songs, folk-songs, country-songs, sex-songs, soul-songs, and body-songs, hath blown upon me in quick gusts like the breath of passion, and sailed me into a sea of vast dreams, whereof each wave is at once a vision and a melody." [Illustration: SIDNEY LANIER.] This predominance of music in the genius of Lanier is at once the source of his strength and of his weakness in poetry. In his poems, and in his work entitled _The Science of English Verse_, it is the musical element of poetry upon which the principal emphasis is laid. This fact makes him the successor of Poe in American letters. Both in theory and in practice Lanier has, as we shall see, achieved admirable results. But, after all, the musical element of poetry is of minor importance. It is a means, and not an end. No jingle of sound can replace the delicacy of fancy, nobleness of sentiment and energy of thought that constitute what we may call the soul of poetry. Rhapsody is not the highest form of poetic achievement. In its noblest forms poetry is the medium through which great souls, like Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Tennyson, give to the world, with classic self-restraint, the fruitage of their highest thought and emotion. The life of Lanier was a tragedy. While lighted here and there with a fleeting joy, its prevailing tone was one of sadness. The heroic courage with which he met disease and poverty impart to his life an inspiring grandeur. He was born at Macon, Georgia, February 3, 1842. His sensitive spirit early responded to the beauties of Nature; and in his hunting and fishing trips, in which he was usually accompanied by his younger brother Clifford, he caught something of the varied beauties of marsh, wood, and sky, which were afterwards to be so admirably woven into his poems. He early showed a fondness for books, and in the well-stored shelves of his father's library he found ample opportunity to gratify his taste for reading. His literary tastes were doubtless formed on the old English classics--Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Addison--which formed a part of every Southern gentleman's library. At the age of fifteen he entered the Sophomore class of Oglethorpe College, near Milledgeville, an institution that did not have sufficient vitality to survive the Civil War. He did not think very highly of the course of instruction, and found his chief delight, as perhaps the best part of his culture, in the congenial circle of friends he gathered around him. The evenings he spent with them were frequently devoted to literature and music. A classmate, Mr. T. F. Newell, gives us a vivid picture of these social features of his college life. "I can recall," he says, "my association with him with sweetest pleasure, especially those Attic nights, for they are among the dearest and tenderest recollections of my life, when with a few chosen companions we would read from some treasured volume, it may have been Tennyson, or Carlyle, or Christopher North's _Noctes Ambrosianoe_, or we would make the hours vocal with music and song; those happy nights, which were veritable refections of the gods, and which will be remembered with no other regret than that they will nevermore return. On such occasions I have seen him walk up and down the room and with his flute extemporize the sweetest music ever vouchsafed to mortal ear. At such times it would seem as if his soul were in a trance, and could only find existence, expression, in the ecstasy of tone, that would catch our souls with his into the very seventh heaven of harmony." Lanier was a diligent student, and easily stood among the first of his classes, particularly in mathematics. His reading took a wide range. In addition to the leading authors of the nineteenth century, he showed a fondness for what was old and quaint in our literature. He delighted in Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_ and in the works of "the poet- preacher," Jeremy Taylor. At this time, too, his thoughtful nature turned to the serious problem of his life work. He eagerly questioned his capabilities as preliminary, to use his own words, "to ascertaining God's will with reference to himself." As already learned from his notebook, he early recognized his extraordinary gifts in music. But his ambition aimed at more than a musician's career, for it seemed to him, as he said, that there were greater things that he might do. His ability and scholarship made a favorable impression on the college authorities, and immediately after his graduation he was elected to a tutorship. From this position, so congenial to his scholarly tastes, he was called, after six months, by the outbreak of the Civil War. In his boyhood he had shown a martial spirit. With his younger brother he joined the Macon Volunteers, and soon saw heavy service in Virginia. He took part in the battles of Seven Pines, Drewry's Bluffs, and Malvern Hill, in all of which he displayed a chivalrous courage. Afterward he became a signal officer and scout. "Nearly two years," he says, in speaking of this part of his service, "were passed in skirmishes, racing to escape the enemy's gunboats, signaling dispatches, serenading country beauties, poring over chance books, and foraging for provender." In 1864 he became a blockade runner, and in his first run out from near Fort Fisher, he was captured and taken to Point Lookout prison. It is remarkable that, amid the distractions and hardships of active service, his love of music and letters triumphantly asserted itself. His flute was his constant companion. He utilized the brief intervals of repose that came to him in camp to set some of Tennyson's songs to music and to prosecute new lines of literary study. He took up the study of German, in which he became quite proficient, and by the light of the camp fire at night translated from Heine, Schiller, and Goethe. At the same time his sympathy with the varied aspects of Nature was deepened. Trees and flowers and ferns revealed to him their mystic beauty; and like Wordsworth, he found it easy, "in the lily, the sunset, the mountain, and rosy hues of all life, to trace God." It was during his campaigns in Virginia that he began the composition of his only novel, _Tiger Lilies_, which was not completed, however, till 1867. It is now out of print. Though immature and somewhat chaotic, it clearly reveals the imaginative temperament of the author. War is imaged to his mind as "a strange, enormous, terrible flower," which he wishes might be eradicated forever and ever. As might be expected, music finds an honored place in its pages. He regards music as essential to the home. "Given the raw materials," he says, "to wit, wife, children, a friend or two, and a house,--two other things are necessary. These are a good fire and good music. And inasmuch as we can do without the fire for half the year, I may say that music is the one essential. After the evening spent around the piano, or the flute, or the violin, how warm and how chastened is the kiss with which the family all say good night! Ah, the music has taken all the day cares and thrown them into its terrible alembic and boiled them and rocked them and cooled them, till they are crystallized into one care, which is a most sweet and rare desirable sorrow--the yearning for God." After the war came a rude struggle for existence--a struggle in which tuberculosis, contracted during his camp life, gradually sapped his strength. Hemorrhages became not infrequent, and he was driven from one locality to another in a vain search for health. But he never lost hope; and his sufferings served to bring out his indomitable, heroic spirit, and to stimulate him to the highest degree of intellectual activity. Few men have accomplished more when so heavily handicapped by disease and poverty. The record of his struggle is truly pathetic. In a letter to Paul Hamilton Hayne, written in 1880, he gives us a glimpse both of his physical suffering and his mental agony. "I could never tell you," he says, "the extremity of illness, of poverty, and of unceasing toil, in which I have spent the last three years, and you would need only once to see the weariness with which I crawl to bed after a long day's work, and after a long night's work at the heels of it--and Sundays just as well as other days--in order to find in your heart a full warrant for my silence. It seems incredible that I have printed such an unchristian quantity of matter--all, too, tolerably successful--and secured so little money; and the wife and the four boys, who are so lovely that I would not think a palace good enough for them if I had it, make one's earnings seem all the less." During all these years of toil he longed to be delivered from the hard struggle for bread that he might give himself more fully to music and poetry. In 1867, while in charge of a prosperous school at Prattville, Alabama, he married Miss Mary Day, of Macon, Georgia. It proved a union in which Lanier found perpetual inspiration and comfort. His new-found strength and happiness are reflected in more than one of his poems. In _Acknowledgment_ we read:-- "By the more height of thy sweet stature grown, Twice-eyed with thy gray vision set in mine, I ken far lands to wifeless men unknown, I compass stars for one-sexed eyes too fine." And in _My Springs_, he says again, with great beauty:-- "Dear eyes, dear eyes and rare complete-- Being heavenly-sweet and earthly-sweet-- I marvel that God made you mine, For when He frowns, 'tis then ye shine!" In 1873, after giving up the study of law in his father's office, he went to Baltimore, where he was engaged as first flute for the Peabody Symphony concerts. This engagement was a bold undertaking, which cannot be better presented than in his own words. In a letter to Hayne he says: "Aside from the complete _bouleversement_ of proceeding from the courthouse to the footlights, I was a raw player and a provincial withal, without practice, and guiltless of instruction--for I had never had a teacher. To go under these circumstances among old professional players, and assume a leading part in a large orchestra which was organized expressly to play the most difficult works of the great masters, was (now that it's all over) a piece of temerity that I don't remember ever to have equaled before. But I trusted in love, pure and simple, and was not disappointed; for, as if by miracle, difficulties and discouragements melted away before the fire of a passion for music which grows ever stronger within my heart; and I came out with results more gratifying than it is becoming in me to specify." His playing possessed an exquisite charm. "In his hands the flute," to quote from the tribute paid him by his director, "no longer remained a mere material instrument, but was transformed into a voice that set heavenly harmonies into vibration. Its tones developed colors, warmth, and a low sweetness of unspeakable poetry; they were not only true and pure, but poetic, allegoric as it were, suggestive of the depths and heights of being and of the delights which the earthly ear never hears and the earthly eye never sees." Henceforth Baltimore was to be Lanier's home. In addition to music, he gave himself seriously to literature. Before this period he had written a number of poems, limited in range and somewhat labored in manner. The current of his life still set to music, and his poetic efforts seem to have been less a matter of inspiration than of deliberate choice. In literary form the influence of Poe is discernible; but in subject-matter the sounds and colors of Nature, as in the poetry of his later years, occupy a prominent place. Of the poems of this early period the songs for _The Jacquerie_ are the best. Here is a stanza of _Betrayal_:-- "The sun has kissed the violet sea, And burned the violet to a rose. O sea! wouldst thou not better be More violet still? Who knows? Who knows? Well hides the violet in the wood: The dead leaf wrinkles her a hood, And winter's ill is violet's good; But the bold glory of the rose, It quickly comes and quickly goes-- Red petals whirling in white snows, Ah me!" After taking up his residence in Baltimore, Lanier entered upon a comprehensive course of reading and study, particularly in early English literature. He studied Anglo-Saxon, and familiarized himself with Langland and Chaucer. He understood that any great poetic achievement must be based on extensive knowledge. A sweet warbler may depend on momentary inspiration; but the great singer, who is to instruct and move his age, must possess the insight and breadth of vision that come alone from a profound acquaintance with Nature and human history. With keen critical discernment Lanier said that "the trouble with Poe was, he did not _know_ enough. He needed to know a good many more things in order to be a great poet." It was to prepare himself for the highest flights possible to him that he entered, with inextinguishable ardor, upon a wide course of reading. In 1874 he was commissioned by a railroad company to write up the scenery, climate, and history of Florida. While spending a month or two with his family in Georgia, he wrote _Corn_, which deservedly ranks as one of his noblest poems. The delicate forms and colors of Nature touched him to an ecstasy of delight; and at the same time they bodied forth to his imagination deep spiritual truths. As we read this poem, we feel that the poet has reached a height of which little promise is given in his earlier poems. Here are the opening lines:-- "To-day the woods are trembling through and through With shimmering forms, and flash before my view, Then melt in green as dawn-stars melt in blue. The leaves that wave against my cheek caress Like women's hands; the embracing boughs express A subtlety of mighty tenderness; The copse-depths into little noises start, That sound anon like beatings of a heart, Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart. The beach dreams balm, as a dreamer hums a song; Through that vague wafture, expirations strong Throb from young hickories breathing deep and long With stress and urgence bold of prisoned spring And ecstasy burgeoning." This poem is remarkable, too, for its presentation of Lanier's conception of the poetic office. The poet should be a prophet and leader, arousing mankind to all noble truth and action:-- "Look, out of line one tall corn-captain stands Advanced beyond the foremost of his bands, And waves his blades upon the very edge And hottest thicket of the battling hedge. Thou lustrous stalk, that ne'er mayst walk nor talk, Still shalt thou type the poet-soul sublime That leads the vanward of his timid time, And sings up cowards with commanding rhyme-- Soul calm, like thee, yet fain, like thee, to grow By double increment, above, below; Soul homely, as thou art, yet rich in grace like thee, Teaching the yeomen selfless chivalry That moves in gentle curves of courtesy; Soul filled like thy long veins with sweetness tense. By every godlike sense Transmuted from the four wild elements." For a time Lanier had difficulty in finding a publisher. He made a visit to New York, but met only with rebuffs. But upheld, like Wordsworth, by a strong consciousness of the excellence of his work, he did not lose his cheerful hope and courage. "The more I am thrown against these people here, and the more reverses I suffer at their hands, the more confident I am of beating them finally. I do not mean by 'beating' that I am in opposition to them, or that I hate them or feel aggrieved with them; no, they know no better and they act up to their light with wonderful energy and consistency. I only mean that I am sure of being able, some day, to teach them better things and nobler modes of thought and conduct." _Corn_ finally appeared in _Lippincott's Magazine_ for February, 1875. From this time poetry became a larger part of Lanier's life. His poetic genius had attained to fullness of power. He gave freer rein to imagination and thought and expression. Speaking of _Special Pleading_, which was written in 1875, he says: "In this little song, I have begun to dare to give myself some freedom in my own peculiar style, and have allowed myself to treat words, similes, and meters with such freedom as I desired. The result convinces me that I can do so now safely." In the next two or three years he produced such notable poems as _The Song of the Chattahoochee_, _The Symphony_, _The Revenge of Hamish_, _Clover_, _The Bee_, and _The Waving of the Corn_. They slowly gained recognition, and brought him the fellowship and encouragement of not a few literary people of distinction, among whom Bayard Taylor and Edmund Clarence Stedman deserve especial mention. Perhaps none of Lanier's poems has been more popular than _The Song of the Chattahoochee_. It does not reach the poetic heights of a few of his other poems, but it is perfectly clear, and has a pleasant lilting movement. Moreover, it teaches the important truth that we are to be dumb to the siren voices of ease and pleasure when the stern voice of duty calls. The concluding stanza is as follows:-- "But oh, not the hills of Habersham, And oh, not the valleys of Hall, Shall hinder the rain from attaining the plain, For downward the voices of duty call-- Downward to toil and be mixed with the main. The dry fields burn and the mills are to turn, And a thousand meadows mortally yearn, And the final main from beyond the plain Calls o'er the hills of Habersham, And calls through the valleys of Hall." In 1876, upon the recommendation of Bayard Taylor, Lanier was invited to write the centennial _Cantata_. As a poem, not much can be said in its favor. Its thought and form fall far below its ambitious conception, in which Columbia presents a meditation on the completed century of our country's history. On its publication it was subject to a good deal of unfavorable criticism; but through it all, though it must have been a bitter disappointment, the poet never lost his faith in his genius and destiny. "The artist shall put forth, humbly and lovingly," he wrote to his father, "and without bitterness against opposition, the very best and highest that is within him, utterly regardless of contemporary criticism. What possible claim can contemporary criticism set up to respect--that criticism which crucified Jesus Christ, stoned Stephen, hooted Paul for a madman, tried Luther for a criminal, tortured Galileo, bound Columbus in chains, and drove Dante into a hell of exile?" The need of a regular income became more and more a necessity. "My head and my heart," he wrote, "are both so full of poems, which the dreadful struggle for bread does not give me time to put on paper, that I am often driven to headache and heartache purely for want of an hour or two to hold a pen." He sought various positions--a clerkship in Washington, an assistant's place in the Peabody Library, a consulship in the south of France--all in vain. He lectured to parlor classes in literature--an enterprise from which he seems to have derived more fame than money. Finally, in 1879, he was appointed to a lectureship in English literature in Johns Hopkins University, from which dates the final period of his literary activity and of his life. The first fruits of this appointment were a series of lectures on metrical forms, which appeared, in 1880, in a volume entitled _The Science of English Verse_. It is an original and suggestive work, in which, however, the author's predilections for music carry him too far. He has done well to emphasize the time element in English versification; but his attempt to reduce all forms of verse to a musical notation can hardly be regarded as successful. His work, though comprehensive in scope, was not intended to impose a new set of laws upon the poet. "For the artist in verse," he says in his brief concluding chapter, "there is no law: the perception and love of beauty constitute the whole outfit; and what is herein set forth is to be taken merely as enlarging that perception and exalting that love. In all cases, the appeal is to the ear; but the ear should, for that purpose, be educated up to the highest possible plane of culture." A second series of lectures, composed and delivered when the anguish of mortal illness was upon him, was subsequently published under the title, _The English Novel_. Its aim was to trace the development of personality in literature. It contains much suggestive and sound criticism. He did not share the fear entertained by some of his contemporaries, that science would gradually abolish poetry. Many of the finest poems in our language, as he pointed out, have been written while the wonderful discoveries of recent science were being made. "Now," he continues, "if we examine the course and progress of this poetry, born thus within the very grasp and maw of this terrible science, it seems to me that we find--as to the _substance_ of poetry--a steadily increasing confidence and joy in the mission of the poet, in the sacredness of faith and love and duty and friendship and marriage, and the sovereign fact of man's personality, while as to the _form_ of the poetry, we find that just as science has pruned our faith (to make it more faithful), so it has pruned our poetic form and technic, cutting away much unproductive wood and effloresence, and creating finer reserves and richer yields." Among novelists he assigns the highest place to George Eliot, who "shows man what he maybe in terms of what he is." There are two poems of this closing period that exhibit Lanier's characteristic manner at its best. They are the high-water mark of his poetic achievement. They exemplify his musical theories of meter. They show the trend forced upon him by his innate love of music; and though he might have written much more, if his life had been prolonged, it is doubtful whether he would have produced anything finer. Any further effort at musical effects would probably have resulted in a kind of ecstatic rhapsody. The first of the poems in question is the _Marshes of Glynn_, descriptive of the sea marshes near the city of Brunswick, Georgia. "Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free-- Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea! Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun, Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won God out of knowledge, and good out of infinite pain, And sight out of blindness, and purity out of a stain." The other poem of his closing period, _Sunrise_, his greatest production, was written during the high fever of his last illness. In the poet's collected works, it is placed first in the series called _Hymns of the Marshes_. At times it almost reaches the point of ecstasy. His love of Nature finds supreme utterance. "In my sleep I was fain of their fellowship, fain Of the live-oak, the marsh, and the main. The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep; Up-breathed from the marshes, a message of range and of sweep, Interwoven with waftures of wild sea-liberties, drifting, Came through the lapped leaves sifting, sifting, Came to the gates of sleep. Then my thoughts, in the dark of the dungeon-keep Of the Castle of Captives hid in the City of Sleep, Upstarted, by twos and by threes assembling: The gates of sleep fell a-trembling Like as the lips of a lady that forth falter _yes_, Shaken with happiness: The gates of sleep stood wide. * * * * * "Oh, what if a sound should be made! Oh, what if a bound should be laid To this bow-and-string tension of beauty and silence a-spring,-- To the bend of beauty the bow, or the hold of silence the string! I fear me, I fear me yon dome of diaphanous gleam Will break as a bubble o'erblown in a dream,-- Yon dome of too-tenuous tissues of space and of night, Overweighted with stars, overfreighted with light, Oversated with beauty and silence, will seem But a bubble that broke in a dream, If a bound of degree to this grace be laid, Or a sound or a motion made." Throughout his artistic life Lanier was true to the loftiest ideals. He did not separate artistic from moral beauty. To his sensitive spirit, the beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty seemed interchangeable terms. He did not make the shallow cry of "art for art's sake" a pretext or excuse for moral taint. On the contrary, he maintained that all art should be the embodiment of truth, goodness, love. "Can not one say with authority," he inquires in one of his university lectures, "to the young artist, whether working in stone, in color, in tones, or in character- forms of the novel: so far from dreading that your moral purpose will interfere with your beautiful creation, go forward in the clear conviction that, unless you are suffused--soul and body, one might say-- with that moral purpose which finds its largest expression in love--that is, the love of all things in their proper relation--unless you are suffused with this love, do not dare to meddle with beauty; unless you are suffused with beauty, do not dare to meddle with truth; unless you are suffused with truth, do not dare to meddle with goodness. In a word, unless you are suffused with truth, wisdom, goodness, and love, abandon the hope that the ages will accept you as an artist." Through these years of high aspiration and manly endeavor, the poet and musician was waging a losing fight with consumption. He was finally driven to tent life in a high, pure atmosphere as his only hope. He first went to Asheville, North Carolina, and a little later to Lynn. But his efforts to regain his health proved in vain; and on the 7th of September, 1881, the tragic struggle was brought to a close. The time has hardly come to give a final judgment as to Lanier's place in American letters. He certainly deserves a place by the side of the very best poets of the South, and perhaps, as many believe, by the side of the greatest masters of American song. His genius had elements of originality equaled only by Poe. He had the high moral purpose of the artist- prophets; but his efforts after musical effects, as well as his untimely death, prevented the full fruitage of his admirable genius. Many of the poems that he has left us are lacking in spontaneity and artistic finish. Alliterative effects are sometimes obtrusive. His poetic theories, as presented in _The Science of English Verse_, often outstripped his execution. But, after all these abatements are made, it remains true that in a few pieces he has reached a trembling height of poetic and musical rapture that is unsurpassed in the whole range of American poetry. [Illustration: FATHER RYAN.] CHAPTER VI ABRAM J. RYAN The poems of Abram J. Ryan, better known as Father Ryan, are unambitious. The poet modestly wished to call them only verses; and, as he tells us, they "were written at random,--off and on, here, there, anywhere,--just as the mood came, with little of study and less of art, and always in a hurry." His poems do not exhibit a painstaking, polished art. They are largely emotional outpourings of a heart that readily found expression in fluent, melodious lays. The poet-priest understood their character too well to assign them a very high place in the realm of song; yet the wish he expressed, that they might echo from heart to heart, has been fulfilled in no small degree. In _Sentinel Songs_ he says:-- "I sing with a voice too low To be heard beyond to-day, In minor keys of my people's woe, But my songs pass away. "To-morrow hears them not-- To-morrow belongs to fame-- My songs, like the birds', will be forgot, And forgotten shall be my name. "And yet who knows? Betimes The grandest songs depart, While the gentle, humble, and low-toned rhymes Will echo from heart to heart." But few facts are recorded of Father Ryan's life. The memoir and the critique prefixed to the latest edition of his poems but poorly fulfill their design. Besides the absence of detail, there is an evident lack of taste and breadth of view. The poet's ecclesiastical relation is unduly magnified; and the invidious comparisons made and the immoderate laudation expressed are far from agreeable. But we are not left wholly at a loss. With the few recorded facts of his life as guide, the poems of Father Ryan become an interesting and instructive autobiography. He was a spontaneous singer whose inspiration came, not from distant fields of legend, history, science, but from his own experience; and it is not difficult to read there a romance, or rather a tragedy, which imparts a deep pathos to his life. His _interior_ life, as reflected in his poems, is all of good report, in no point clashing with the moral excellence befitting the priestly office. Abram J. Ryan was born in Norfolk, Virginia, August 15, 1839, whither his parents, natives of Ireland, had immigrated not long before. He possessed the quick sensibilities characteristic of the Celtic race; and his love for Ireland is reflected in a stout martial lyric entitled _Erin's Flag:_-- "Lift it up! lift it up! the old Banner of Green! The blood of its sons has but brightened its sheen; What though the tyrant has trampled it down, Are its folds not emblazoned with deeds of renown?" When he was seven or eight years old, his parents removed to St. Louis. He is said to have shown great aptitude in acquiring knowledge; and his superior intellectual gifts, associated with an unusual reverence for sacred things, early indicated the priesthood as his future vocation. In the autobiographic poem, _Their Story Runneth Thus_, we have a picture of his youthful character. With a warm heart, he had more than the changefulness of the Celtic temperament. In his boyhood, as throughout his maturity, he was strangely restless. As he says himself:-- "The boy was full of moods. Upon his soul and face the dark and bright Were strangely intermingled. Hours would pass Rippling with his bright prattle--and then, hours Would come and go, and never hear a word Fall from his lips, and never see a smile Upon his face. He was so like a cloud With ever-changeful hues." When his preliminary training was ended, he entered the Roman Catholic seminary at Niagara, New York. He was moved to the priesthood by a spirit of deep consecration. The writer of his memoir dwells on the regret with which he severed the ties binding him to home. No doubt he loved and honored his parents. But there was a still stronger attachment, which, broken by his call to the priesthood, filled all his subsequent life with a consecrated sorrow. It was his love for Ethel:-- "A fair, sweet girl, with great, brown, wond'ring eyes That seemed to listen just as if they held The gift of hearing with the power of sight." The two lovers, forgetting the sacredness of true human affection, had, with equal self-abnegation, resolved to give themselves to the church, she as a nun and he as a priest. He has given a touching picture of their last meeting:-- "One night in mid of May their faces met As pure as all the stars that gazed on them. They met to part from themselves and the world. Their hearts just touched to separate and bleed; Their eyes were linked in look, while saddest tears Fell down, like rain, upon the cheeks of each: They were to meet no more. Their hands were clasped To tear the clasp in twain; and all the stars Looked proudly down on them, while shadows knelt, Or seemed to kneel, around them with the awe Evoked from any heart by sacrifice. And in the heart of that last parting hour Eternity was beating. And he said: 'We part to go to Calvary and to God-- This is our garden of Gethsemane; And here we bow our heads and breathe His prayer Whose heart was bleeding, while the angels heard: Not my will, Father! but Thine be done!'" The Roman Catholic training and faith of Father Ryan exerted a deep influence upon his poetry. His ardent studies in the ancient languages and in scholastic theology naturally withdrew his mind, to a greater or less degree, from intimate communion with Nature. His poetry is principally subjective. Nature enters it only in a subordinate way; its forms and sounds and colors do not inspire in him the rapture found in Hayne and Lanier. He not only treats of Scripture themes, as in _St. Stephen_, _The Masters Voice_, and _A Christmas Chant_, but he also finds subjects, not always happily, in distinctive Roman Catholic dogma. _The Feast of the Assumption_ and _The Last of May_, both in honor of the Virgin Mary, are sufficiently poetic; but _The Feast of the Sacred Heart_ is, in parts, too prosaically literal in its treatment of transubstantiation for any but the most believing and devout of Roman Catholics. On the breaking out of the Civil War, Father Ryan entered the Confederate army as a chaplain, though he sometimes served in the ranks. In 1863 he ministered to the inmates of a prison in New Orleans during an epidemic of smallpox. His martial songs, _The Sword of Robert Lee_, _The Conquered Banner_, and _March of the Deathless Dead_, have been dear to many Southern hearts. He reverenced Lee as a peerless leader. "Forth from its scabbard! How we prayed That sword might victor be; And when our triumph was delayed, And many a heart grew sore afraid, We still hoped on while gleamed the blade Of noble Robert Lee. "Forth from its scabbard all in vain Bright flashed the sword of Lee; 'Tis shrouded now in its sheath again, It sleeps the sleep of our noble slain, Defeated, yet without a stain, Proudly and peacefully." After four years of brave, bitter sacrifice beneath the Confederate flag, words like the following appealed strongly to the men and women who loved _The Conquered Banner_:-- "Take that Banner down! 'tis tattered; Broken is its staff and shattered; And the valiant hosts are scattered Over whom it floated high. Oh! 'tis hard for us to fold it; Hard to think there's none to hold it; Hard that those who once unrolled it Now must furl it with a sigh. "Furl that Banner! True, 'tis gory, Yet 'tis wreathed around with glory. And 'twill live in song and story, Though its folds are in the dust: For its fame on brightest pages, Penned by poets and by sages, Shall go sounding down the ages-- Furl its folds though now we must." Father Ryan's devotion to the South was intense. He long refused to accept the results of the war. The wrongs of the so-called Reconstruction period aroused his ardent indignation, and found expression in his song. In _The Land We Love_ he says, with evident reference to those days:-- "Land where the victor's flag waves, Where only the dead are the free! Each link of the chain that enslaves, But binds us to them and to thee." But during the epidemic of yellow fever in 1878, his heart was touched by the splendid generosity of the North; and, surrendering his sectional prejudice and animosity, he wrote _Reunited_:-- "Purer than thy own white snow, Nobler than thy mountains' height; Deeper than the ocean's flow, Stronger than thy own proud might; O Northland! to thy sister land, Was late thy mercy's generous deed and grand." After the close of the Civil War, the restless temperament of the poet- priest asserted itself in numerous changes of residence. He was successively in Biloxi, Mississippi, Knoxville, Tennessee, and Augusta, Georgia. In the latter place he published for some three years the _Banner of the South_, a periodical that exerted no small influence on the thought of the state. In 1870 he became pastor of St. Mary's church in Mobile. Two years later he made a trip to Europe, of which we find interesting reminiscences in his poems. His visit to Rome was the realization of a long-cherished desire. He was honored with an audience by Pope Pius IX, of whom he has given a graphic sketch:-- "I saw his face to-day; he looks a chief Who fears nor human rage, nor human guile; Upon his cheeks the twilight of a grief, But in that grief the starlight of a smile. Deep, gentle eyes, with drooping lids that tell They are the homes where tears of sorrow dwell; A low voice--strangely sweet--whose very tone Tells how these lips speak oft with God alone." In Milan he was seriously ill. In his poem, _After Sickness_, we find an expression of his world-weariness and his longing for death:-- "I nearly died, I almost touched the door That swings between forever and no more; I think I heard the awful hinges grate, Hour after hour, while I did weary wait Death's coming; but alas! 'twas all in vain: The door half opened and then closed again." As a priest Father Ryan was faithful to his duties. But whether ministering at the altar or making the rounds of his parish, his spirit frequently found utterance in song. In 1880 he published a volume of poems, to which only a few additions were subsequently made. The keynote of his poetry is struck in the opening piece, _Song of the Mystic_. He dwelt much in the "Valley of Silence." "Do you ask me the place of the Valley, Ye hearts that are harrowed by care? It lieth afar between mountains, And God and His angels are there: And one is the dark mount of Sorrow, And one the bright mountain of Prayer." The prevailing tone of Father Ryan's poems is one of sadness. His harp rarely vibrated to cheerful strains. What was the cause of this sadness? It may have been his keen sense of the tragic side of human life; it may have been the enduring anguish that came from the crucified love of his youth. The poet himself refused to tell. In _Lines--1875_, he says:-- "Go list to the voices of air, earth, and sea, And the voices that sound in the sky; Their songs may be joyful to some, but to me There's a sigh in each chord and a sigh in each key, And thousands of sighs swell their grand melody. Ask them what ails them: they will not reply. They sigh--sigh forever--but never tell why. Why does your poetry sound like a sigh? Their lips will not answer you; neither shall I." Yet, in spite of the prevailing tone of sorrow and weariness, Father Ryan was no pessimist. He held that life has "more of sweet than gall"-- "For every one: no matter who-- Or what their lot--or high or low; All hearts have clouds--but heaven's blue Wraps robes of bright around each woe; And this is truest of the true: "That joy is stronger here than grief, Fills more of life, far more of years, And makes the reign of sorrow brief; Gives more of smiles for less of tears. Joy is life's tree--grief but its leaves." Father Ryan conceived of the poet's office as something seerlike or prophetic. With him, as with all great poets, the message counted for more than do rhythm and rhyme. Divorced from truth, art seemed to him but a skeleton masque. He preferred those melodies that rise on the wings of thought, and come to human hearts with an inspiration of faith and hope. He regarded genuine poets as the high priests of Nature. Their sensitive spirits, holding themselves aloof from common things, habitually dwell upon the deeper mysteries of life in something of a morbid loneliness. In _Poets_ he says:-- "They are all dreamers; in the day and night Ever across their souls The wondrous mystery of the dark or bright In mystic rhythm rolls. "They live within themselves--they may not tell What lieth deepest there; Within their breast a heaven or a hell, Joy or tormenting care. "They are the loneliest men that walk men's ways, No matter what they seem; The stars and sunlight of their nights and days Move over them in dream." With Wordsworth, or rather with the great Apostle to the Gentiles, he held that Nature is but the vesture of God, beneath which may be discerned the divine glory and love. The visible seemed to him but an expression of the invisible. "For God is everywhere--and he doth find In every atom which His hand hath made A shrine to hide His presence, and reveal His name, love, power, to those who kneel In holy faith upon this bright below, And lift their eyes, thro' all this mystery, To catch the vision of the great beyond." With this view of Nature, it was but natural that its sounds and forms-- its birds and flowers--should inspire devotion. In _St. Mary's_, speaking of the songs and silences of Nature, he says:-- "God comes close to me here-- Back of ev'ry roseleaf there He is hiding--and the air Thrills with calls to holy prayer; Earth grows far, and heaven near. "Every single flower is fraught With the very sweetest dreams, Under clouds or under gleams Changeful ever--yet meseems On each leaf I read God's thought." It can hardly be said that Father Ryan ever reaches far poetic heights. Neither in thought nor expression does he often rise above cultured commonplace. Fine artistic quality is supplanted by a sort of melodious fluency. Yet the form and tone of his poetry, nearly always in one pensive key, make a distinct impression, unlike that of any other American singer. "Religious feeling," it has been well said, "is dominant. The reader seems to be moving about in cathedral glooms, by dimly lighted altars, with sad procession of ghostly penitents and mourners fading into the darkness to the sad music of lamenting choirs. But the light which falls upon the gloom is the light of heaven, and amid tears and sighs, over farewells and crushed happiness, hope sings a vigorous though subdued strain." Having once caught his distinctive note of weary melancholy, we can recognize it among a chorus of a thousand singers. It is to his honor that he has achieved a distinctive place in American poetry. His poetic craftsmanship is far from perfect. His artistic sense did not aspire to exquisite achievements. He delighted unduly in alliteration, assonance, and rhyming effects, all which he sometimes carried to excess. In the first stanza, for example, of _The Conquered Banner_, popular as it is, the rhyme effect seems somewhat overdone:-- "Furl that Banner, for 'tis weary; Round its staff 'tis drooping dreary; Furl it, fold it, it is best; For there's not a man to _wave it_, And there's not a sword to _save it_, And there's not one left to _lave it_ In the blood which heroes _gave it_; And its foes now scorn and _brave it_; Furl it, hide it--let it rest." Here and there, too, are unmistakable echoes of Poe, as in the following stanza from _At Last:_-- "Into a temple vast and dim, _Solemn and vast and dim_, Just when the last sweet Vesper Hymn Was floating far away, With eyes that tabernacled tears-- _Her heart the home of tears_-- And cheeks wan with the woes of years, A woman went one day." But in spite of these obvious defects, Father Ryan has been for years the most popular of Southern poets. His poems have passed through many editions, and there is still a large demand for them. They have something that outweighs their faults, and appeals strongly to the popular mind and heart. What is it? Perhaps it is impossible to answer this question fully. But in addition to the merits already pointed out, the work of Father Ryan is for the most part simple, spontaneous, and clear. It generally consists of brief lyrics devoted to the expression of a single mood or reflection. There is nothing in thought or style beyond the ready comprehension of the average reader. It does not require, as does the poetry of Browning, repeated and careful reading to render its meaning clear. It does not offend sensible people with its empty, overdone refinement. From beginning to end Father Ryan's poetry is a transparent casket, into which he has poured the richest treasures of a deeply sorrowing but noble Christian spirit. Again, the pensive, moral tone of his poetry renders it attractive to many persons. He gives expression to the sad, reflective moods that are apt, especially in time of suffering or disappointment, to come to most of us. The moral sense of the American people is strong; and sometimes a comforting though commonplace truth from Nature is more pleasing than the most exquisite but superficial description of her beauties. How many have found solace in poems like _A Thought:_-- "The waving rose, with every breath Scents carelessly the summer air; The wounded rose bleeds forth in death A sweetness far more rich and rare. "It is a truth beyond our ken-- And yet a truth that all may read-- It is with roses as with men, The sweetest hearts are those that bleed. "The flower which Bethlehem saw bloom Out of a heart all full of grace, Gave never forth its full perfume Until the cross became its vase." Then again, the poet-priest, as was becoming his character, deals with the mysteries of life. Much of our recent poetry is as trifling in theme as it is polished in workmanship. But Father Ryan habitually brings before us the profounder and sadder aspects of life. The truths of religion, the vicissitudes of human destiny, the tragedy of death--these are the themes in which he finds his inspiration, and to which we all turn in our most serious moments. And though the strain in which he sings is attuned to tears, it is still illumined by a strength-giving faith and hope. When we feel weighed down with a sense of pitiless law, when fate seems to cross our holiest aspirations with a ruthless hand, he bids us be of good cheer. "There is no fate--God's love Is law beneath each law, And law all laws above Fore'er, without a flaw." In 1883 Father Ryan, whose reputation had been established by his volume of poems, undertook a lecturing tour through the North in the interest of some charitable enterprise. At his best he was an eloquent speaker. But during the later years of his life impaired health interfered with prolonged mental effort. His mission had only a moderate degree of success. His sense of weariness deepened, and his eyes turned longingly to the life to come. In one of his later productions he said:-- "My feet are wearied, and my hands are tired, My soul oppressed-- And I desire, what I have long desired-- Rest--only rest. * * * * * "And so I cry a weak and human cry, So heart oppressed; And so I sigh a weak and human sigh For rest--for rest." At length, April 22, 1886, in a Franciscan monastery at Louisville, came the rest for which he had prayed. And in that higher life to which he passed, we may believe that he was welcomed by her to whom in youth he had given the tender name of Ullainee, and for whom, through all the years of a great sacrifice, his faithful heart had yearned with an inextinguishable human longing. ILLUSTRATIVE SELECTIONS WITH NOTES SELECTION FROM FRANCIS SCOTT KEY THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER [1] O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming, Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts [2] we watched, were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? On the shore dimly seen thro' the mists of the deep, Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, [3] What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, In full glory reflected now shines on the stream; 'Tis the star-spangled banner; O long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave! And where is that band who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion A home and a country should leave us no more? [4] Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave; And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved homes and the war's desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land Praise the power that hath made and preserv'd us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto--_"In God is our trust:"_ And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. [Footnote 1: For a brief statement of the circumstances that gave rise to the poem, see sketch of Key, page 12.] [Footnote 2: Fort McHenry, on the north bank of the Patapsco, below Baltimore, was attacked by the British fleet, September 13, 1814.] [Footnote 3: The attack being unsuccessful, the British became disheartened and withdrew.] [Footnote 4: Before the attack upon Baltimore, the British had taken Washington and burned the capitol and other public buildings. With this poem may be compared other martial lyrics, such as Hopkinson's _Hail Columbia_, Mrs. Howe's _Battle Hymn of the Republic_, Campbell's _Ye Mariners of England_ and _Battle of the Baltic_, Tennyson's _Charge of the Light Brigade_, etc.] * * * * * SELECTIONS FROM RICHARD HENRY WILDE STANZAS [1] My life is like the summer rose, That opens to the morning sky, But, ere the shades of evening close, Is scattered on the ground--to die![2] Yet on the rose's humble bed The sweetest dews of night are shed, As if she wept the waste to see-- But none shall weep a tear for me! My life is like the autumn leaf That trembles in the moon's pale ray: Its hold is frail--its date is brief, Restless--and soon to pass away! Yet, ere that leaf shall fall and fade, The parent tree will mourn its shade, The winds bewail the leafless tree-- But none shall breathe a sigh for me! My life is like the prints, which feet Have left on Tampa's [3] desert strand; Soon as the rising tide shall beat, All trace will vanish from the sand; Yet, as if grieving to efface All vestige of the human race, On that lone shore loud moans the sea-- But none, alas! shall mourn for me! A FAREWELL TO AMERICA [4] Farewell, my more than fatherland![5] Home of my heart and friends, adieu! Lingering beside some foreign strand, How oft shall I remember you! How often, o'er the waters blue, Send back a sigh to those I leave, The loving and beloved few, Who grieve for me,--for whom I grieve! We part!--no matter how we part, There are some thoughts we utter not, Deep treasured in our inmost heart, Never revealed, and ne'er forgot! Why murmur at the common lot? We part!--I speak not of the pain,-- But when shall I each lovely spot, And each loved face behold again? It must be months,--it may be years,--[6] It may--but no!--I will not fill Fond hearts with gloom,--fond eyes with tears, "Curious to shape uncertain ill." Though humble,--few and far,--yet, still Those hearts and eyes are ever dear; Theirs is the love no time can chill, The truth no chance or change can sear! All I have seen, and all I see, Only endears them more and more; Friends cool, hopes fade, and hours flee, Affection lives when all is o'er! Farewell, my more than native shore! I do not seek or hope to find, Roam where I will, what I deplore To leave with them and thee behind! [Footnote 1: See sketch of Wilde, page 13. This song was translated into Greek by Anthony Barclay and announced as a newly discovered ode by Alcaeus. The trick, however, was soon detected by scholars, and the author of the poem received a due meed of praise.] [Footnote 2: The brevity of life has been a favorite theme of poets ever since Job (vii. 6) declared, "Our days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle."] [Footnote 3: The reference seems to be to the shore about the Bay of Tampa on the west coast of Florida.] [Footnote 4: See page 13.] [Footnote 5: It will be remembered that the poet was a native of Ireland.] [Footnote 6: The years 1834-1840 were spent in Europe, chiefly in Italy. Compare with this Byron's farewell to England, in Canto I of _Childe Harold_.] * * * * * SELECTION FROM GEORGE D. PRENTICE THE CLOSING YEAR [1] 'Tis midnight's holy hour, and silence now Is brooding like a gentle spirit o'er The still and pulseless world. Hark! on the winds The bell's deep tones are swelling,--'tis the knell Of the departed year. No funeral train Is sweeping past; yet on the stream and wood, With melancholy light, the moonbeams rest Like a pale, spotless shroud; the air is stirred, As by a mourner's sigh; and on yon cloud That floats so still and placidly through heaven, The spirits of the seasons seem to stand-- Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn's solemn form, And Winter with his aged locks--and breathe, In mournful cadences that come abroad Like the far wind-harp's wild and touching wail, A melancholy dirge o'er the dead year, Gone from the earth forever. 'Tis a time For memory and for tears. Within the deep, Still chambers of the heart a specter dim, Whose tones are like the wizard voice of Time, Heard from the tomb of ages, points its cold And solemn finger to the beautiful And holy visions that have passed away, And left no shadow of their loveliness On the dead waste of life. That specter lifts The coffin lid of Hope, and Joy, and Love, And, bending mournfully above the pale, Sweet forms that slumber there, scatters dead flowers O'er what has passed to nothingness. The year Has gone, and with it many a glorious throng Of happy dreams. Its mark is on each brow, Its shadow in each heart. In its swift course It waved its scepter o'er the beautiful,-- And they are not. It laid its pallid hand Upon the strong man,--and the haughty form Is fallen, and the flashing eye is dim. It trod the hall of revelry, where thronged The bright and joyous, and the tearful wail Of stricken ones is heard, where erst the song And reckless shout resounded. It passed o'er The battle plain, where sword, and spear, and shield Flashed in the light of midday--and the strength Of serried hosts is shivered, and the grass, Green from the soil of carnage, waves above The crushed and mouldering skeleton. It came And faded like a wreath of mist at eve; Yet, ere it melted in the viewless air, It heralded its millions to their home In the dim land of dreams. Remorseless Time! Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe!--what power Can stay him in his silent course, or melt His iron heart to pity? On, still on He presses, and forever. The proud bird, The condor of the Andes, that can soar Through heaven's unfathomable depths, or brave The fury of the northern hurricane, And bathe his plumage in the thunder's home, Furls his broad wings at nightfall and sinks down To rest upon his mountain crag--but Time Knows not the weight of sleep or weariness, And night's deep darkness has no chain to bind His rushing pinions. Revolutions sweep O'er earth, like troubled visions o'er the breast Of dreaming sorrow,--cities rise and sink Like bubbles on the water,--fiery isles Spring blazing from the ocean, and go back To their mysterious caverns,--mountains rear To heaven their bald and blackened cliffs, and bow Their tall heads to the plain,--new empires rise, Gathering the strength of hoary centuries, And rush down like the Alpine avalanche, Startling the nations,--and the very stars, Yon bright and burning blazonry of God, Glitter a while in their eternal depths, And, like the Pleiad, loveliest of their train, Shoot from their glorious spheres, and pass away [2] To darkle in the trackless void,--yet Time, Time, the tomb-builder, holds his fierce career, Dark, stern, all-pitiless, and pauses not Amid the mighty wrecks that strew his path To sit and muse, like other conquerors, Upon the fearful ruin he has wrought. [Footnote 1: See sketch of Prentice, page 14. The flight of time is another favorite theme with poets. _The Closing Year_ should be compared with Bryant's _The Flood of Years_; similar in theme, the two poems have much in common. The closing lines of Bryant's poem express a sweet faith that relieves the somber tone of the preceding reflections:-- "In the room Of this grief-shadowed present, there shall be A Present in whose reign no grief shall gnaw The heart, and never shall a tender tie Be broken; in whose reign the eternal Change That waits on growth and action shall proceed With everlasting Concord hand in hand."] [Footnote 2. This is a reference to the belief that one of the seven stars originally supposed to form the Pleiades has disappeared. Such a phenomenon is not unknown; modern astronomers record several such disappearances. See Simms's _The Lost Pleiad_, following.] * * * * * SELECTIONS FROM WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS THE LOST PLEIAD [1] Not in the sky, Where it was seen So long in eminence of light serene,-- Nor on the white tops of the glistering wave, Nor down in mansions of the hidden deep, Though beautiful in green And crystal, its great caves of mystery,-- Shall the bright watcher have Her place, and, as of old, high station keep! Gone! gone! Oh! nevermore, to cheer The mariner, who holds his course alone On the Atlantic, through the weary night, When the stars turn to watchers, and do sleep, Shall it again appear, With the sweet-loving certainty of light, Down shining on the shut eyes of the deep! The upward-looking shepherd on the hills Of Chaldea, night-returning with his flocks, He wonders why her beauty doth not blaze, Gladding his gaze,-- And, from his dreary watch along the rocks, Guiding him homeward o'er the perilous ways! How stands he waiting still, in a sad maze, Much wondering, while the drowsy silence fills The sorrowful vault!--how lingers, in the hope that night May yet renew the expected and sweet light, So natural to his sight! [2] And lone, Where, at the first, in smiling love she shone, Brood the once happy circle of bright stars: How should they dream, until her fate was known, That they were ever confiscate to death? [3] That dark oblivion the pure beauty mars, And, like the earth, its common bloom and breath, That they should fall from high; Their lights grow blasted by a touch, and die, All their concerted springs of harmony Snapt rudely, and the generous music gone![4] Ah! still the strain Of wailing sweetness fills the saddening sky; The sister stars, lamenting in their pain That one of the selected ones must die,-- Must vanish, when most lovely, from the rest! Alas! 'tis ever thus the destiny. Even Rapture's song hath evermore a tone Of wailing, as for bliss too quickly gone. The hope most precious is the soonest lost, The flower most sweet is first to feel the frost. Are not all short-lived things the loveliest? And, like the pale star, shooting down the sky, Look they not ever brightest, as they fly From the lone sphere they blest! THE SWAMP FOX [5] We follow where the Swamp Fox guides, His friends and merry men are we; And when the troop of Tarleton [6] rides, We burrow in the cypress tree. The turfy hammock is our bed, Our home is in the red deer's den, Our roof, the tree-top overhead, For we are wild and hunted men. We fly by day and shun its light, But, prompt to strike the sudden blow, We mount and start with early night, And through the forest track our foe.[7] And soon he hears our chargers leap, The flashing saber blinds his eyes, And ere he drives away his sleep, And rushes from his camp, he dies. Free bridle bit, good gallant steed, That will not ask a kind caress To swim the Santee [8] at our need, When on his heels the foemen press,-- The true heart and the ready hand, The spirit stubborn to be free, The twisted bore, the smiting brand,-- And we are Marion's men, you see. Now light the fire and cook the meal, The last, perhaps, that we shall taste; I hear the Swamp Fox round us steal, And that's a sign we move in haste. He whistles to the scouts, and hark! You hear his order calm and low. Come, wave your torch across the dark, And let us see the boys that go. We may not see their forms again, God help 'em, should they find the strife! For they are strong and fearless men, And make no coward terms for life; They'll fight as long as Marion bids, And when he speaks the word to shy, Then, not till then, they turn their steeds, Through thickening shade and swamp to fly. Now stir the fire and lie at ease,-- The scouts are gone, and on the brush I see the Colonel [9] bend his knees, To take his slumbers too. But hush! He's praying, comrades; 'tis not strange; The man that's fighting day by day May well, when night comes, take a change, And down upon his knees to pray. Break up that hoecake, boys, and hand The sly and silent jug that's there; I love not it should idly stand When Marion's men have need of cheer. 'Tis seldom that our luck affords A stuff like this we just have quaffed, And dry potatoes on our boards May always call for such a draught. Now pile the brush and roll the log; Hard pillow, but a soldier's head That's half the time in brake and bog Must never think of softer bed. The owl is hooting to the night, The cooter [10] crawling o'er the bank, And in that pond the flashing light Tells where the alligator sank. What! 'tis the signal! start so soon, And through the Santee swamp so deep, Without the aid of friendly moon, And we, Heaven help us! half asleep! But courage, comrades! Marion leads, The Swamp Fox takes us out to-night; So clear your swords and spur your steeds, There's goodly chance, I think, of fight. We follow where the Swamp Fox guides, We leave the swamp and cypress tree, Our spurs are in our coursers' sides, And ready for the strife are we. The Tory camp is now in sight, And there he cowers within his den; He hears our shouts, he dreads the fight, He fears, and flies from Marion's men. [Footnote 1: See note above. There is a peculiar fitness in the reference to the sea in this poem; for the constellation of the Pleiades was named by the Greeks from their word _plein_, to sail, because the Mediterranean was navigable with safety during the months these stars were visible.] [Footnote 2: The poet seems to associate the Chaldean shepherd with the Magi, who, as astrologers, observed the stars with profound interest. The hope expressed for the return of the star cannot be regarded, in the light of modern astronomy, as entirely fanciful. Only recently a new star has flamed forth in the constellation Perseus.] [Footnote 3: The fixed stars, continually giving forth immeasurable quantities of heat, are in a process of cooling. Sooner or later they will become dark bodies. Astronomers tell us that there is reason to believe that the dark bodies or burned-out suns of the universe are more numerous than the bright ones, though the number of the latter exceeds 125 millions. The existence of such dark bodies has been established beyond a reasonable doubt.] [Footnote 4: A reference to the old belief that the stars make music in their courses. In Job (xxxviii. 7) we read: "When the morning stars sang together." According to the Platonic philosophy, this music of the spheres, too faint for mortal ears, was heard only by the gods. Shakespeare has given beautiful expression to this belief:-- "There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins; Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it." --_Merchant of Venice_, Act V., Sc. 1.] [Footnote 5: See sketch of Simms, page 16. This poem is found in _The Partisan_, the first of three novels descriptive of the Revolution. Read a biographical sketch of General Francis Marion (1732-1795), whose shrewdness in attack and escape earned for him the _sobriquet_ "Swamp Fox."] [Footnote 6: Sir Banastre Tarleton (1754-1833) was a lieutenant colonel in the army of Cornwallis. He was a brilliant and successful officer, but was defeated by General Morgan in the battle of Cowpens in 1781.] [Footnote 7: "Sumter, Marion, and other South Carolina leaders found places of refuge in the great swamps which are found in parts of the state; and from these they kept up an active warfare with the British. Their desperate battles, night marches, surprises, and hairbreadth escapes make this the most exciting and interesting period of the Revolution."--Johnston's _History of the United States_.] [Footnote 8: Marion's principal field of operations lay between the Santee and Pedee rivers.] [Footnote 9: Marion held the rank of captain at the outbreak of the Revolution, and was made lieutenant colonel for gallant conduct in the defence of Fort Moultrie, June 28, 1776. Later he was made general.] [Footnote 10: A water tortoise or snapping turtle.] Compare Bryant's _Song of Marion's Men_. * * * * * SELECTIONS FROM EDWARD COATE PINKNEY A HEALTH [1] I fill this cup to one made up Of loveliness alone, A woman, of her gentle sex The seeming paragon; To whom the better elements And kindly stars have given A form so fair, that, like the air, 'Tis less of earth than heaven. Her every tone is music's own, Like those of morning birds, And something more than melody Dwells ever in her words; The coinage of her heart are they, And from her lips each flows As one may see the burdened bee Forth issue from the rose. Affections are as thoughts to her,[2] The measures of her hours; Her feelings have the fragrancy, The freshness of young flowers; And lovely passions, changing oft, So fill her, she appears The image of themselves by turns,-- The idol of past years! Of her bright face one glance will trace A picture on the brain, And of her voice in echoing hearts A sound must long remain; But memory, such as mine of her, So very much endears, When death is nigh my latest sigh Will not be life's, but hers. I fill this cup to one made up Of loveliness alone, A woman, of her gentle sex The seeming paragon-- Her health! and would on earth there stood Some more of such a frame, That life might be all poetry, And weariness a name. [3] SONG We break the glass, whose sacred wine To some beloved health we drain, Lest future pledges, less divine, Should e'er the hallowed toy profane; And thus I broke a heart that poured Its tide of feelings out for thee, In draught, by after-times deplored, Yet dear to memory. But still the old, impassioned ways And habits of my mind remain, And still unhappy light displays Thine image chambered in my brain; And still it looks as when the hours Went by like flights of singing birds,[4] Or that soft chain of spoken flowers and airy gems,--thy words. VOTIVE SONG I burn no incense, hang no wreath, On this thine early tomb: Such can not cheer the place of death, But only mock its gloom. Here odorous smoke and breathing flower No grateful influence shed; They lose their perfume and their power, When offered to the dead. And if, as is the Afghaun's creed, The spirit may return, A disembodied sense to feed On fragrance, near its urn,-- It is enough that she, whom thou Didst love in living years, Sits desolate beside it now, And fall these heavy tears. [Footnote 1: See sketch of Pinkney, page 18. The flowing or lilting melody of this and the following songs is quite remarkable. It is traceable to the skillful use of liquid consonants and short vowels, and the avoidance of harsh consonant combinations.] [Footnote 2: The irregularities of this stanza are remarkable. The middle rhyme used in the first and seventh lines of the other stanzas is here lacking. It seems to have been an oversight on the part of the poet.] [Footnote 3: With this drinking song we may compare the well-known one of Ben Jonson:-- "Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cup, And I'll not look for wine. The thirst that from the soul doth rise Doth ask a drink divine; But might I of Jove's nectar sup, I would not change for thine. "I sent thee late a rosy wreath, Not so much honoring thee As giving it a hope that there It could not withered be; But thou thereon didst only breathe And sent'st it back to me; Since when it grows, and smells, I swear, Not of itself, but thee."] [Footnote 4: This same simile occurs in a beautiful poem by Amelia C. Welby (1819-1852), a Southern poet of no mean gifts, entitled _Twilight at Sea_:-- "The twilight hours like birds flew by, As lightly and as free; Ten thousand stars were in the sky, Ten thousand on the sea; For every wave with dimpled face, That leaped upon the air, Had caught a star in its embrace, And held it trembling there."] * * * * * SELECTION FROM PHILIP PENDLETON COOKE FLORENCE VANE [1] I loved thee long and dearly, Florence Vane; My life's bright dream, and early, Hath come again; I renew, in my fond vision, My heart's dear pain; My hope, and thy derision, Florence Vane. The ruin lone and hoary, The ruin old, Where thou didst hark my story, At even told,-- That spot--the hues Elysian Of sky and plain-- I treasure in my vision, Florence Vane. Thou wast lovelier than the roses In their prime; Thy voice excelled the closes Of sweetest rhyme; Thy heart was as a river Without a main. [2] Would I had loved thee never, Florence Vane. But fairest, coldest wonder! Thy glorious clay Lieth the green sod under-- Alas the day! And it boots not to remember Thy disdain-- To quicken love's pale ember, Florence Vane. The lilies of the valley By young graves weep, The pansies love to dally Where maidens sleep; May their bloom, in beauty vying, Never wane, Where thine earthly part is lying, Florence Vane! [Footnote 1: See sketch of Cooke, page 19. In the preface to the volume from which this poem is taken, the author tells us that _Florence Vane and Rosalie Lee_, another brief lyric, had "met with more favor than I could ever perceive their just claim to." Hence he was kept from "venturing upon the correction of some faults." _Rosalie Lee_ is more than usually defective in meter and rhyme, but Florence Vane cannot easily be improved.] [Footnote 2: "My meaning, I suppose," the poet wrote an inquiring friend, "was that Florence did not want the capacity to love, but directed her love to no object. Her passions went flowing like a lost river. Byron has a kindred idea expressed by the same figure. Perhaps his verses were in my mind when I wrote my own:-- 'She was the ocean to the river of his thoughts, Which terminated all.'--_The Dream_. But no verse ought to require to be interpreted, and if I were composing Florence Vane now, I would avoid the over concentrated expression in the two lines, and make the idea clearer."--_Southern Literary Messenger_, 1850, p. 370.] * * * * * SELECTION FROM THEODORE O'HARA THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD [1] The muffled drum's sad roll has beat The soldier's last tattoo: No more op Life's parade shall meet That brave and fallen few. On Fame's eternal camping-ground Their silent tents are spread, And Glory guards, with solemn round, The bivouac of the dead. No rumor of the foe's advance Now swells upon the wind; No troubled thought at midnight haunts Of loved ones left behind; No vision of the morrow's strife The warrior's dream alarms; No braying horn nor screaming fife At dawn shall call to arms. Their shivered swords are red with rust, Their plumed heads are bowed; Their haughty banner, trailed in dust, Is now their martial shroud. And plenteous funeral tears have washed The red stains from each brow, And the proud forms, by battle gashed, Are free from anguish now. The neighboring troop, the flashing blade, The bugle's stirring blast, The charge, the dreadful cannonade, The din and shout, are past; Nor war's wild note nor glory's peal Shall thrill with fierce delight Those breasts that nevermore may feel The rapture of the fight. Like the fierce northern hurricane That sweeps his great plateau, Flushed with the triumph yet to gain, Came down the serried foe. [2] Who heard the thunder of the fray Break o'er the field beneath, Knew well the watchword of that day Was "Victory or Death." Long had the doubtful conflict raged O'er all that stricken plain, For never fiercer fight had waged The vengeful blood of Spain; [3] And still the storm of battle blew, Still swelled the gory tide; Not long, our stout old chieftain knew, Such odds his strength could bide. 'Twas in that hour his stern command Called to a martyr's grave The flower of his beloved land, The nation's flag to save. By rivers of their fathers' gore His first-born laurels grew, [4] And well he deemed the sons would pour Their lives for glory too. Full many a norther's breath has swept O'er Angostura's plain, [5] And long the pitying sky has wept Above its moldered slain. The raven's scream, or eagle's flight, Or shepherd's pensive lay, Alone awakes each sullen height That frowned o'er that dread fray. Sons of the Dark and Bloody Ground, Ye must not slumber there, Where stranger steps and tongues resound Along the heedless air. Your own proud land's heroic soil Shall be your fitter grave: She claims from war his richest spoil-- The ashes of her brave. Thus 'neath their parent turf they rest, Far from the gory field, Borne to a Spartan mother's breast On many a bloody shield; [6] The sunshine of their native sky Smiles sadly on them here, And kindred eyes and hearts watch by The heroes' sepulcher. Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead! Dear as the blood ye gave; No impious footstep here shall tread The herbage of your grave; Nor shall your glory be forgot While Fame her record keeps, Or Honor points the hallowed spot Where valor proudly sleeps. Yon marble minstrel's voiceless stone In deathless song shall tell, When many a vanished age hath flown, The story how ye fell; Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter's blight, Nor Time's remorseless doom, Shall dim one ray of glory's light That gilds your deathless tomb. [Footnote 1: See sketch of O'Hara, page 21, for the occasion of this poem.] [Footnote 2: The American force numbered 4769 men; the Mexican force under Santa Anna, 21,000. The latter was confident of victory, and sent a flag of truce to demand surrender. "You are surrounded by 20,000 men," wrote the Mexican general, "and cannot, in any human probability, avoid suffering a rout, and being cut to pieces with your troops." Gen. Taylor replied, "I beg leave to say that I decline acceding to your request."] [Footnote 3: The battle raged for ten hours with varying success. There was great determination on both sides, as is shown by the heavy losses. The Americans lost 267 killed and 456 wounded; Santa Anna stated his loss at 1500, which was probably an underestimate. He left 500 dead on the field. The battle was a decisive one, and left northeastern Mexico in the hands of the Americans.] [Footnote 4: The reference is to Zachary Taylor, who was in command of the American forces. Though born in Virginia, he was brought up in Kentucky, and won his first laurels in command of Kentuckians in the War of 1812, during which he was engaged in fighting the Indian allies of Great Britain. His victory at Buena Vista aroused great enthusiasm in the United States, and more than any other event led to his election as President.] [Footnote 5: The plateau on which the battle was fought, so called from the mountain pass of Angostura (the narrows) leading to it from the South.] [Footnote 6: Kentucky is here beautifully likened to a Spartan mother who was accustomed to say, as she handed a shield to her son departing for war, "Come back with this or upon this."] * * * * * SELECTIONS FROM FRANCIS ORRERY TICKNOR THE VIRGINIANS OF THE VALLEY [1] The knightliest of the knightly race That, since the days of old, Have kept the lamp of chivalry Alight in hearts of gold; The kindliest of the kindly band That, rarely hating ease, Yet rode with Spotswood [2] round the land, With Raleigh round the seas; Who climbed the blue Virginian hills Against embattled foes, And planted there, in valleys fair, The lily and the rose; Whose fragrance lives in many lands, Whose beauty stars the earth, And lights the hearths of happy homes With loveliness and worth. We thought they slept!--the sons who kept The names of noble sires, And slumbered while the darkness crept Around their vigil fires; But aye the "Golden Horseshoe" knights Their Old Dominion [3] keep, Whose foes have found enchanted ground. But not a knight asleep. LITTLE GIFFEN [4] Out of the focal and foremost fire, Out of the hospital walls as dire; Smitten of grape-shot and gangrene, (Eighteenth battle [5] and _he_ sixteen!) Specter! such as you seldom see, Little Giffen, of Tennessee! "Take him and welcome!" the surgeons said; Little the doctor can help the dead! So we took him; and brought him where The balm was sweet in the summer air; And we laid him down on a wholesome bed,-- Utter Lazarus, heel to head! And we watched the war with abated breath,-- Skeleton Boy against skeleton Death. Months of torture, how many such? Weary weeks of the stick and crutch; And still a glint of the steel-blue eye Told of a spirit that wouldn't die, And didn't. Nay, more! in death's despite The crippled skeleton "learned to write." "Dear Mother," at first, of course; and then "Dear captain," inquiring about the men. Captain's answer: "Of eighty-and-five, Giffen and I are left alive." Word of gloom from the war, one day; Johnston pressed at the front, they say. Little Giffen was up and away; A tear--his first--as he bade good-by, Dimmed the glint of his steel-blue eye. "I'll write, if spared!" There was news of the fight; But none of Giffen.--He did not write. [6] I sometimes fancy that, were I king Of the princely Knights of the Golden Ring, [7] With the song of the minstrel in mine ear, And the tender legend that trembles here, I'd give the best on his bended knee, The whitest soul of my chivalry, For "Little Giffen," of Tennessee. [Footnote 1: See sketch of Ticknor, page 22, for the occasion of this poem. In this poem the exact meaning and sequence of thought do not appear till after repeated readings.] [Footnote 2: Alexander Spotswood (1676-1740) was governor of Virginia 1710-1723. He led an exploring expedition across the Blue Ridge and took possession of the Valley of Virginia "in the name of his Majesty King George of England." On his return to Williamsburg he presented to each of his companions a miniature golden horseshoe to be worn upon the breast. Those who took part in the expedition, which was then regarded as a formidable undertaking, were subsequently known as the "Knights of the Golden Horseshoe."] [Footnote 3: "The Old Dominion" is a popular name for Virginia. Its origin may be traced to acts of Parliament, in which it is designated as "the colony and dominion of Virginia." In his _History of Virginia_ (1629) Captain John Smith calls this colony and dominion _Old Virginia_ in contradistinction to _New England_.] [Footnote 4: See page 23. Of this poem Maurice Thompson said: "If there is a finer lyric than this in the whole realm of poetry, I should be glad to read it."] [Footnote 5: Probably the battle of Murfreesboro, which opened December 31, 1862, and lasted three days. Union loss 14,000; Confederate, 11,000.] [Footnote 6: He was killed in some battle near Atlanta early in 1864.] [Footnote 7: A reference to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.] With this poem should be compared Browning's _Incident of the French Camp_. * * * * * SELECTION FROM JOHN R. THOMPSON MUSIC IN CAMP [1] Two armies covered hill and plain, Where Rappahannock's waters [2] Ran deeply crimsoned with the stain Of battle's recent slaughters. The summer clouds lay pitched like tents In meads of heavenly azure; And each dread gun of the elements Slept in its hid embrasure. The breeze so softly blew, it made No forest leaf to quiver, And the smoke of the random cannonade Rolled slowly from the river. And now, where circling hills looked down With cannon grimly planted, O'er listless camp and silent town The golden sunset slanted. When on the fervid air there came A strain--now rich, now tender; The music seemed itself aflame With day's departing splendor. A Federal band, which, eve and morn, Played measures brave and nimble, Had just struck up, with flute and horn And lively clash of cymbal. Down flocked the soldiers to the banks, Till, margined by its pebbles, One wooded shore was blue with "Yanks," And one was gray with "Rebels." Then all was still, and then the band, With movement light and tricksy, Made stream and forest, hill and strand, Reverberate with "Dixie." The conscious stream with burnished glow Went proudly o'er its pebbles, But thrilled throughout its deepest flow With yelling of the Rebels. Again a pause, and then again The trumpets pealed sonorous, And "Yankee Doodle" was the strain To which the shore gave chorus. The laughing ripple shoreward flew, To kiss the shining pebbles; Loud shrieked the swarming Boys in Blue Defiance to the Rebels. And yet once more the bugles sang Above the stormy riot; No shout upon the evening rang-- There reigned a holy quiet. The sad, slow stream its noiseless flood Poured o'er the glistening pebbles; All silent now the Yankees stood, And silent stood the Rebels. No unresponsive soul had heard That plaintive note's appealing, So deeply "Home, Sweet Home" had stirred The hidden founts of feeling. Or Blue or Gray the soldier sees, As by the wand of fairy, The cottage 'neath the live-oak trees, The cabin by the prairie. Or cold or warm, his native skies Bend in their beauty o'er him; Seen through the tear-mist in his eyes, His loved ones stand before him. As fades the iris after rain In April's tearful weather, The vision vanished, as the strain And daylight died together. And memory, waked by music's art, Expressed in simplest numbers, Subdued the sternest Yankee's heart, Made light the Rebel's slumbers. And fair the form of music shines, That bright celestial creature, Who still, 'mid war's embattled lines, Gave this one touch of Nature. [Footnote 1: See sketch of John R. Thompson, page 23.] [Footnote 2: The incident on which the poem is based may have occurred in 1862 or 1863. In both years the Union and Confederate forces occupied opposite banks of the Rappahannock.] * * * * * SELECTIONS FROM MRS. MARGARET J. PRESTON Grateful acknowledgment is here made to Dr. George J. Preston of Baltimore, for permission to use the two following poems. A NOVEMBER NOCTURNE [1] The autumn air sweeps faint and chill Across the maple-crested hill; And on my ear Falls, tingling clear, A strange, mysterious, woodland thrill. From utmost twig, from scarlet crown Untouched with yet a tinct of brown, Reluctant, slow, As loath to go, The loosened leaves come wavering down; And not a hectic trembler there, In its decadence, doomed to share The fate of all,-- But in its fall Flings something sob-like on the air. No drift or dream of passing bell, Dying afar in twilight dell, Hath any heard, Whose chimes have stirred More yearning pathos of farewell. A silent shiver as of pain, Goes quivering through each sapless vein; And there are moans, Whose undertones Are sad as midnight autumn rain. Ah, if without its dirge-like sigh, No lightest, clinging leaf can die,-- Let him who saith Decay and death Should bring no heart-break, tell me why. Each graveyard gives the answer: there I read _Resurgam_[2] everywhere, So easy said Above the dead-- So weak to anodyne despair. CALLING THE ANGELS IN We mean to do it. Some day, some day, We mean to slacken this feverish rush That is wearing our very souls away, And grant to our hearts a hush That is only enough to let them hear The footsteps of angels drawing near. We mean to do it. Oh, never doubt, When the burden of daytime broil is o'er, We'll sit and muse while the stars come out, As the patriarchs sat in the door [3] Of their tents with a heavenward-gazing eye, To watch for angels passing by. We've seen them afar at high noontide, When fiercely the world's hot flashings beat; Yet never have bidden them turn aside, To tarry in converse sweet; Nor prayed them to hallow the cheer we spread, To drink of our wine and break our bread. We promise our hearts that when the stress Of the life work reaches the longed-for close, When the weight that we groan with hinders less, We'll welcome such calm repose As banishes care's disturbing din, And then--we'll call the angels in. The day that we dreamed of comes at length, When tired of every mocking guest, And broken in spirit and shorn of strength, We drop at the door of rest, And wait and watch as the day wanes on-- But the angels we meant to call are gone! [Footnote 1: See sketch of Mrs. Preston, page 25. This and the following poem are good examples of her poetic art, and exhibit, at the same time, her reflective religious temperament.] [Footnote 2: _Resurgam_ (Latin), I shall rise again.] [Footnote 3: "And Abraham sat in the tent door in the heat of the day; and he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him: and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground, and said, My Lord, if now I have found favour in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant."--_Genesis_ xviii. 1-3.] * * * * * SELECTIONS FROM EDGAR ALLAN POE TO HELEN [1] Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicaean [2] barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, wayworn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs, have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome.[3] Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand! Ah, Psyche, [4] from the regions which Are Holy Land! [5] ANNABEL LEE [6] It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, [7] That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea: But we loved with a love that was more than love, I and my Annabel Lee; With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me.[8] And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee; So that her highborn kinsmen [9] came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulcher In this kingdom by the sea. The angels, not half so happy in heaven, Went envying her and me; Yes!--that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud by night, Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we, Of many far wiser than we; And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee: For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side [10] Of my darling--my darling--my life and my bride, In her sepulcher there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding sea. THE HAUNTED PALACE [11] In the greenest of our valleys By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace-- Radiant palace--reared its head. In the monarch Thought's dominion, It stood there; Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair. Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow (This--all this--was in the olden Time long ago), And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A winged odor went away. Wanderers in that happy valley Through two luminous windows saw Spirits moving musically, To a lute's well-tuned law, Round about a throne where, sitting, Porphyrogene, In state his glory well befitting, The ruler of the realm was seen. And all with pearl and ruby glowing Was the fair palace door, Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing, And sparkling evermore, A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty Was but to sing, In voices of surpassing beauty, The wit and wisdom of their king. But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate!) And round about his home the glory That blushed and bloomed, Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed. And travelers now within that valley Through the red-litten windows see Vast forms that move fantastically To a discordant melody; While like a ghastly rapid river, Through the pale door A hideous throng rush out forever, And laugh--but smile no more. THE CONQUEROR WORM [12] Lo! 'tis a gala night Within the lonesome latter years. An angel throng, bewinged, bedight In veils, and drowned in tears, Sit in a theater to see A play of hopes and fears, While the orchestra breathes fitfully The music of the spheres. Mimes, in the form of God on high, Mutter and mumble low, And hither and thither fly; Mere puppets they, who come and go At bidding of vast formless things That shift the scenery to and fro, Flapping from out their condor wings Invisible woe. That motley drama--oh, be sure It shall not be forgot! With its Phantom chased for evermore By a crowd that seize it not, Through a circle that ever returneth in To the self-same spot; And much of Madness, and more of Sin, And Horror the soul of the plot. But see amid the mimic rout A crawling shape intrude: A blood-red thing that writhes from out The scenic solitude! It writhes--it writhes!--with mortal pangs The mimes become its food, And seraphs sob at vermin fangs In human gore imbued. Out--out are the lights--out all! And over each quivering form The curtain, a funeral pall, Comes down with the rush of a storm, While the angels, all pallid and wan, Uprising, unveiling, affirm That the play is the tragedy "Man," And its hero the Conqueror Worm. THE RAVEN [13] Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,-- While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door-- Only this and nothing more." Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow;--vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for the lost Lenore, For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore: Nameless here for evermore. And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating "'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door-- Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door: This it is and nothing more." Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, "Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you"--here I opened wide the door;-- Darkness there and nothing more. Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word "Lenore?" This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word "Lenore:" Merely this and nothing more. Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before. "Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice; Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore-- Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore: 'Tis the wind and nothing more." Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore. Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; But with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door-- Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door: Perched, and sat, and nothing more. Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,-- "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore: Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning--little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door-- Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, With such name as "Nevermore." But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour. Nothing farther then he uttered; not a feather then he fluttered, Till I scarcely more than muttered,--"Other friends have flown before; On the morrow _he_ will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before." Then the bird said, "Nevermore." Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, "Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store, Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore: Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore Of 'Never--nevermore.'" But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling, Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door; Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore, What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore-- Meant in croaking "Nevermore." This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core; This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o'er, But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o'er _She_ shall press, ah, nevermore! Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer Swung by seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor. "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee--by these angels he hath sent thee Respite--respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore! Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! prophet still, if bird or devil! Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore, Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted-- On this home by Horror haunted--tell me truly, I implore: Is there--_is_ there balm in Gilead?--tell me--tell me, I implore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil--prophet still, if bird or devil! By that heaven that bends above us--by that God we both adore: Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore: Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." "Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting: "Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken! quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; [14] And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;[15] And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted--nevermore! For a general introduction to the selections from Poe, the biographical and critical sketch in Chap. II should be read. [Footnote 1: This was Mrs. Helen Stannard, the mother of one of Poe's schoolmates in Richmond. Her kind and gracious manner made a deep impression on his boyish heart, and soothed his passionate, turbulent nature. In after years this poem was inspired, as the poet tells us, by the memory of "the one idolatrous and purely ideal love" of his restless youth.] [Footnote 2: The reference seems to be to the ancient Ligurian town of Nicaea, now Nice, in France. The "perfumed sea" would then be the Ligurian sea. But one half suspects that it was the scholarly and musical sound of the word, rather than any aptness of classical reference, that led to the use of the word "Nicaean."] [Footnote 3: This appears to be Poe's indefinite and poetic way of saying that the lady's beauty and grace brought him an uplifting sense of happiness. After seeing her the first time, "He returned home in a dream, with but one thought, one hope in life--to hear again the sweet and gracious words that had made the desolate world so beautiful to him, and filled his lonely heart with the oppression of a new joy."--Ingram's _Edgar Allan Poe_, Vol. I, p. 32.] [Footnote 4: Psyche was represented as so exquisitely beautiful that mortals did not dare to love, but only to worship her. The poet could pay no higher tribute to "Helen."] [Footnote 5: This little poem--very beautiful in itself--illustrates Poe's characteristics as a poet: it is indefinite, musical, and intense.] [Footnote 6: This poem is a tribute to his wife, to whom his beautiful devotion has already been spoken of. "I believe," says Mrs. Osgood, "she was the only woman whom he ever truly loved; and this is evidenced by the exquisite pathos of the little poem lately written, called 'Annabel Lee,' of which she was the subject, and which is by far the most natural, simple, tender, and touchingly beautiful of all his songs."] [Footnote 7: This is Poe's poetic designation of America.] [Footnote 8: "Virginia Clemm, born on the 13th of August, 1822, was still a child when her handsome cousin Edgar revisited Baltimore after his escapade at West Point. A more than cousinly affection, which gradually grew in intensity, resulted from their frequent communion, and ultimately, whilst one, at least, of the two cousins was but a child, they were married."--Ingram's _Edgar Allan Poe_, Vol. I, p. 136.] [Footnote 9: These were the angels, to whom "Annabel Lee" was akin in sweet, gentle character. "A lady angelically beautiful in person, and not less beautiful in spirit."--Captain Mayne Reid.] [Footnote 10: This may be literally true. At all events, it is related that he visited the tomb of "Helen"; and "when the autumnal rains fell, and the winds wailed mournfully over the graves, he lingered longest, and came away most regretfully."] [Footnote 11: This admirable poem is an allegory. The "stately palace" is a man who after a time loses his reason. With this fact in mind, the poem becomes quite clear. The "banners yellow, glorious, golden" is the hair; the "luminous windows" are the eyes; the "ruler of the realm" is reason; "the fair palace door" is the mouth; and the "evil things" are the madman's fantasies. The poem is found in _The Fall of the House of Usher_. Poe claimed that Longfellow's _Beleaguered City_ was an imitation of _The Haunted Palace_. The former should be read in connection with the latter. Though some resemblance may be discerned, Longfellow must be acquitted of Poe's charge of plagiarism.] [Footnote 12: This terrible lyric is also an allegory. The "theater" is the world, and the "play" human life. The "mimes" are men, created in the image of God, and are represented as the "mere puppets" of circumstance. The "Phantom chased for evermore" is happiness; but for all, the end is death and the grave.] [Footnote 13: This poem was first published in the New York _Evening Mirror_, January 29, 1845. "In our opinion," wrote the editor, N. P. Willis, "it is the most effective single example of 'fugitive poetry' ever published in this country; and unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift." The story of _The Raven_ is given in prose by Poe in his _Philosophy of Composition_, which contains the best analysis of its structure: "A raven, having learned by rote the single word, 'Nevermore,' and having escaped from the custody of its owner, is driven at midnight, through the violence of a storm, to seek admission at a window from which a light still gleams,--the chamber window of a student, occupied half in poring over a volume, half in dreaming of a beloved mistress deceased. The casement being thrown open at the fluttering of the bird's wings, the bird itself perches on the most convenient seat out of the immediate reach of the student, who, amused by the incident and the oddity of the visitor's demeanor, demands of it, in jest and without looking for a reply, its name. The raven addressed answers with its customary word, 'Nevermore'--a word which finds immediate echo in the melancholy heart of the student, who, giving utterance aloud to certain thoughts suggested by the occasion, is again startled by the fowl's repetition of 'Nevermore.' The student now guesses the state of the case, but is impelled, by the human thirst for self-torture, and in part by superstition, to propound such queries to the bird as will bring him, the lover, the most of the luxury of sorrow, through the anticipated answer, 'Nevermore.'"] [Footnote 14: As Poe explains, the raven is "emblematical of mournful and never-ending remembrance."] [Footnote 15: From the position of the bird it has been held that the shadow could not possibly fall upon the floor. But the author says: "_My_ conception was that of the bracket candelabrum affixed against the wall, high up above the door and bust, as is often seen in the English palaces, and even in some of the better houses in New York."] * * * * * SELECTIONS FROM PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE For their generous permission to use _Aëthra, Under the Pines, Cloud Pictures_, and _Lyric of Action_, the grateful acknowledgments of the editor are due to The Lothrop Publishing Company, Boston, who hold the copyright. THE WILL AND THE WING [1] To have the will to soar, but not the wings, Eyes fixed forever on a starry height, Whence stately shapes of grand imaginings Flash down the splendors of imperial light; And yet to lack the charm [2] that makes them ours, The obedient vassals of that conquering spell, Whose omnipresent and ethereal powers Encircle Heaven, nor fear to enter Hell; This is the doom of Tantalus [3]--the thirst For beauty's balmy fount to quench the fires Of the wild passion that our souls have nurst In hopeless promptings--unfulfilled desires. Yet would I rather in the outward state Of Song's immortal temple lay me down, A beggar basking by that radiant gate, [4] Than bend beneath the haughtiest empire's crown! For sometimes, through the bars, my ravished eyes Have caught brief glimpses of a life divine, And seen a far, mysterious rapture rise Beyond the veil [5] that guards the inmost shrine. MY STUDY [6] This is my world! within these narrow walls, I own a princely service;[7] the hot care And tumult of our frenzied life are here But as a ghost and echo; what befalls In the far mart to me is less than naught; I walk the fields of quiet Arcadies,[8] And wander by the brink of hoary seas, Calmed to the tendance of untroubled thought; Or if a livelier humor should enhance The slow-time pulse, 'tis not for present strife, The sordid zeal with which our age is rife, Its mammon conflicts crowned by fraud or chance, But gleamings of the lost, heroic life, Flashed through the gorgeous vistas of romance. AËTHRA [9] It is a sweet tradition, with a soul Of tenderest pathos! Hearken, love!--for all The sacred undercurrents of the heart Thrill to its cordial music: Once a chief, Philantus, king of Sparta, left the stern And bleak defiles of his unfruitful land-- Girt by a band of eager colonists-- To seek new homes on fair Italian plains.[10] Apollo's [11] oracle had darkly spoken: _"Where'er from cloudless skies a plenteous shower Outpours, the Fates decree that ye should pause And rear your household deities!"_ Racked by doubt Philantus traversed--with his faithful band Full many a bounteous realm; but still defeat Darkened his banners, and the strong-walled towns His desperate sieges grimly laughed to scorn! Weighed down by anxious thoughts, one sultry eve The warrior--his rude helmet cast aside-- Rested his weary head upon the lap Of his fair wife, who loved him tenderly; And there he drank a generous draught of sleep. She, gazing on his brow, all worn with toil, And his dark locks, which pain had silvered over With glistening touches of a frosty rime, Wept on the sudden bitterly; her tears Fell on his face, and, wondering, he woke. "O blest art thou, my Aëthra, _my clear sky_." He cried exultant, "from whose pitying blue A heart-rain falls to fertilize my fate: Lo! the deep riddle's solved--the gods spake truth!" So the next night he stormed Tarentum,[12] took The enemy's host at vantage, and o'erthrew His mightiest captains. Thence with kindly sway He ruled those pleasant regions he had won,-- But dearer even than his rich demesnes The love of her whose gentle tears unlocked The close-shut mystery of the Oracle! UNDER THE PINE [13] _To the memory of Henry Timrod_ The same majestic pine is lifted high Against the twilight sky, The same low, melancholy music grieves Amid the topmost leaves,[14] As when I watched, and mused, and dreamed with him, Beneath these shadows dim. O Tree! hast thou no memory at thy core Of one who comes no more? No yearning memory of those scenes that were So richly calm and fair, When the last rays of sunset, shimmering down, Flashed like a royal crown? And he, with hand outstretched and eyes ablaze, Looked forth with burning [15] gaze, And seemed to drink the sunset like strong wine, Or, hushed in trance divine, Hailed the first shy and timorous glance from far Of evening's virgin star? O Tree! against thy mighty trunk he laid His weary head; thy shade Stole o'er him like the first cool spell of sleep: It brought a peace _so_ deep The unquiet passion died from out his eyes, As lightning from stilled skies. And in that calm he loved to rest, and hear The soft wind-angels, clear And sweet, among the uppermost branches sighing: Voices he heard replying (Or so he dreamed) far up the mystic height, And pinions rustling light. O Tree! have not his poet-touch, his dreams So full of heavenly gleams, Wrought through the folded dullness of thy bark, And all thy nature dark Stirred to slow throbbings, and the fluttering fire Of faint, unknown desire? At least to me there sweeps no rugged ring That girds the forest king, No immemorial stain, or awful rent (The mark of tempest spent), No delicate leaf, no lithe bough, vine-o'ergrown, No distant, flickering cone, But speaks of him, and seems to bring once more The joy, the love of yore; But most when breathed from out the sunset-land The sunset airs are bland, That blow between the twilight and the night, Ere yet the stars are bright; For then that quiet eve comes back to me, When deeply, thrillingly, He spake of lofty hopes which vanquish Death; And on his mortal breath A language of immortal meanings hung, That fired his heart and tongue. For then unearthly breezes stir and sigh, Murmuring, "Look up! 'tis I: Thy friend is near thee! Ah, thou canst not see!" And through the sacred tree Passes what seems a wild and sentient thrill-- Passes, and all is still!-- Still as the grave which holds his tranquil form, Hushed after many a storm,-- Still as the calm that crowns his marble brow, No pain can wrinkle now,-- Still as the peace--pathetic peace of God-- That wraps the holy sod, Where every flower from our dead minstrel's dust Should bloom, a type of trust,-- That faith which waxed to wings of heavenward might To bear his soul from night,-- That faith, dear Christ! whereby we pray to meet His spirit at God's feet! CLOUD PICTURES [16] Here in these mellow grasses, the whole morn, I love to rest; yonder, the ripening corn Rustles its greenery; and his blithesome horn Windeth the frolic breeze o'er field and dell, Now pealing a bold stave with lusty swell, Now falling to low breaths ineffable Of whispered joyance. At calm length I lie, Fronting the broad blue spaces of the sky, Covered with cloud-groups, softly journeying by: An hundred shapes, fantastic, beauteous, strange, Are theirs, as o'er yon airy waves they range At the wind's will, from marvelous change to change; Castles, with guarded roof, and turret tall, Great sloping archway, and majestic wall, Sapped by the breezes to their noiseless fall! Pagodas vague! above whose towers outstream Banners that wave with motions of a dream-- Rising, or drooping in the noontide gleam; Gray lines of Orient pilgrims: a gaunt band On famished camels, o'er the desert sand Plodding towards their prophet's Holy Land; Mid-ocean,--and a shoal of whales at play, Lifting their monstrous frontlets to the day, Thro' rainbow arches of sun-smitten spray; Followed by splintered icebergs, vast and lone, Set in swift currents of some arctic zone, Like fragments of a Titan's world o'erthrown; Next, measureless breadths of barren, treeless moor, Whose vaporous verge fades down a glimmering shore, Round which the foam-capped billows toss and roar! Calms of bright water--like a fairy's wiles, Wooing with ripply cadence and soft smiles, The golden shore-slopes of Hesperian Isles; Their inland plains rife with a rare increase Of plumèd grain! and many a snowy fleece Shining athwart the dew-lit hills of peace; Wrecks of gigantic cities--to the tune Of some wise air-god built!--o'er which the noon Seems shuddering; caverns, such as the wan Moon Shows in her desolate bosom; then, a crowd Of awed and reverent faces, palely bowed O'er a dead queen, laid in her ashy shroud-- A queen of eld--her pallid brow impearled By gems barbaric! her strange beauty furled In mystic cerements of the antique world. Weird pictures, fancy-gendered!--one by one, 'Twixt blended beams and shadows, gold and dun, These transient visions vanish in the sun. LYRIC OF ACTION [17] 'Tis the part of a coward to brood O'er the past that is withered and dead: What though the heart's roses are ashes and dust? What though the heart's music be fled? Still shine the grand heavens o'erhead, Whence the voice of an angel thrills clear on the soul, "Gird about thee thine armor, press on to the goal!" If the faults or the crimes of thy youth Are a burden too heavy to bear, What hope can re-bloom on the desolate waste Of a jealous and craven despair? Down, down with the fetters of fear! In the strength of thy valor and manhood arise, With the faith that illumes and the will that defies. "_Too late!_" through God's infinite world, From his throne to life's nethermost fires, "_Too late!_" is a phantom that flies at the dawn Of the soul that repents and aspires. If pure thou hast made thy desires, There's no height the strong wings of immortals may gain Which in striving to reach thou shalt strive for in vain. Then, up to the contest with fate, Unbound by the past, which is dead! What though the heart's roses are ashes and dust? What though the heart's music be fled? Still shine the fair heavens o'erhead; And sublime as the seraph [18] who rules in the sun Beams the promise of joy when the conflict is won! For a general introduction to the following poems, see Chapter III. The selections are intended to exhibit the poet's various moods and themes. [Footnote 1: This poem, which appeared in the volume of 1855 under the title _Aspirations_, gives expression to a strong literary impulse. It was genuine in sentiment, and its aspiring spirit and forceful utterance gave promise of no ordinary achievement.] [Footnote 2: An act or formula supposed to exert a magical influence or power. "Then, in one moment, she put forth the charm Of woven paces and of waving hands." --Tennyson's _Merlin and Vivien_. Compare the first scene in _Faust_ where the Earth-spirit comes in obedience to a "conquering spell."] [Footnote 3: Tantalus was a character of Greek mythology, who, for divulging the secret counsels of Zeus, was afflicted in the lower world with an insatiable thirst. He stood up to the chin in a lake, the waters of which receded whenever he tried to drink of them.] [Footnote 4: The poet evidently had in mind the lame man who was "laid daily at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful."--_Acts_ iii. 2.] [Footnote 5: A reference to the veil that hung before the Most Holy Place, or "inmost shrine," of the temple. Compare _Exodus_ xxvi. 33.] [Footnote 6: This sonnet, which appeared in the volume of 1859, reveals the retiring, meditative temper of the poet. To him quiet reflection was more than action. He loved to dwell in spirit with the good and great of the past. The rude struggles of the market-place for wealth and power were repugnant to his refined and sensitive nature.] [Footnote 7: Something served for the refreshment of a person; here an intellectual feast fit for a prince.] [Footnote 8: Arcady, or Arcadia, is a place of ideal simplicity and contentment; so called from a picturesque district in Greece, which was noted for the simplicity and happiness of its people.] [Footnote 9: This poem will serve to illustrate Hayne's skill in the use of blank verse. It is a piece of rare excellence and beauty. The name of the heroine is pronounced _Ee-thra_.] [Footnote 10: This migration occurred about 708 B.C.] [Footnote 11: Apollo was one of the major deities of Grecian mythology. He was regarded, among other things, as the god of song or minstrelsy, and also as the god of prophetic inspiration. The most celebrated oracle of Apollo was at Delphi.] [Footnote 12: A town in southern Italy, now Taranto. It was in ancient times a place of great commercial importance.] [Footnote 13: For the occasion of this poem, see page 61. The poet had a peculiar fondness for the pine, which in one of his poems he calls-- "My sylvan darling! set 'twixt shade and sheen, Soft as a maid, yet stately as a queen!" It is the subject of a half-dozen poems,--_The Voice of the Pines, Aspect of the Pines, In the Pine Barrens, The Dryad of the Pine, The Pine's Mystery_, and _The Axe and the Pine_,--all of them in his happiest vein.] [Footnote 14: In _The Pine's Mystery_ we read:-- "Passion and mystery murmur through the leaves, Passion and mystery, touched by deathless pain, Whose monotone of long, low anguish grieves For something lost that shall not live again."] [Footnote 15: Hayne's very careful workmanship is rarely at fault; but here there seems to be an infelicitous epithet that amounts to a sort of tautology. "Eyes ablaze" would necessarily "look forth with _burning gaze_."] [Footnote 16: This poem illustrates the poet's method of dealing with Nature. He depicts its beauty as discerned by the artistic imagination. He is less concerned with the messages of Nature than with its lovely forms. This poem, in its felicitous word-painting, reminds us of Tennyson, though it would be difficult to find in the English poet so brilliant a succession of masterly descriptions. With this poem may be compared Hayne's _Cloud Fantasies_, a sonnet that brings before us, with great vividness, the somber appearance of the clouds in autumn. See also _A Phantom in the Clouds_. No other of our poets has dwelt so frequently and so delightfully on the changing aspects of the sky. Compare Shelley's _The Cloud_.] [Footnote 17: It is not often that Hayne assumed the hortatory tone found in this poem. In artistic temperament he was akin to Keats rather than to Longfellow. Even in his didactic poems, he is meditative and descriptive rather than hortatory. The artist in him hardly ever gave place to the preacher.] [Footnote 18: The seraph's name was Uriel, that is, God's Light. In _Revelation_ (xix. 17) we read, "And I saw an angel standing in the sun." Milton calls him-- "The Archangel Uriel--one of the seven Who in God's presence, nearest to his throne, Stand ready at command." --_Paradise Lost_, Book III, 648-650.] * * * * * SELECTIONS FROM HARRY TIMROD TOO LONG, O SPIRIT OF STORM [1] Too long, O Spirit of storm, Thy lightning sleeps in its sheath! I am sick to the soul of yon pallid sky, And the moveless sea beneath. Come down in thy strength on the deep! Worse dangers there are in life, When the waves are still, and the skies look fair, Than in their wildest strife. A friend I knew, whose days Were as calm as this sky overhead; But one blue morn that was fairest of all, The heart in his bosom fell dead. And they thought him alive while he walked The streets that he walked in youth-- Ah! little they guessed the seeming man Was a soulless corpse in sooth. Come down in thy strength, O Storm! And lash the deep till it raves! I am sick to the soul of that quiet sea, Which hides ten thousand graves. A CRY TO ARMS [2] Ho! woodsmen of the mountain side! Ho! dwellers in the vales! Ho! ye who by the chafing tide Have roughened in the gales! Leave barn and byre,[3] leave kin and cot, Lay by the bloodless spade; Let desk, and case, and counter rot, And burn your books of trade. The despot roves your fairest lands; And till he flies or fears, Your fields must grow but armèd bands, Your sheaves be sheaves of spears! Give up to mildew and to rust The useless tools of gain; And feed your country's sacred dust With floods of crimson rain! Come, with the weapons at your call-- With musket, pike, or knife; He wields the deadliest blade of all Who lightest holds his life. The arm that drives its unbought blows With all a patriot's scorn, Might brain a tyrant with a rose, Or stab him with a thorn. Does any falter? let him turn To some brave maiden's eyes, And catch the holy fires that burn In those sublunar skies. Oh! could you like your women feel, And in their spirit march, A day might see your lines of steel Beneath the victor's arch. What hope, O God! would not grow warm When thoughts like these give cheer? The Lily calmly braves the storm, And shall the Palm Tree fear? No! rather let its branches court The rack [4] that sweeps the plain; And from the Lily's regal port Learn how to breast the strain! Ho! woodsmen of the mountain side! Ho! dwellers in the vales! Ho! ye who by the roaring tide Have roughened in the gales! Come! flocking gayly to the fight, From forest, hill, and lake; We battle for our Country's right, And for the Lily's sake! ODE [5] I Sleep sweetly in your humble graves, Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause; Though yet no marble column craves The pilgrim here to pause. II In seeds of laurel in the earth The blossom of your fame is blown, And somewhere, waiting for its birth, The shaft is in the stone![6] III Meanwhile, behalf [7] the tardy years Which keep in trust your storied tombs, Behold! your sisters bring their tears, And these memorial blooms. IV Small tributes! but your shades will smile More proudly on these wreaths to-day, Than when some cannon-molded pile [8] Shall overlook this bay. V Stoop, angels, hither from the skies! There is no holier spot of ground Than where defeated valor lies, By mourning beauty crowned. FLOWER-LIFE [9] I think that, next to your sweet eyes, And pleasant books, and starry skies, I love the world of flowers; Less for their beauty of a day, Than for the tender things they say, And for a creed I've held alway, That they are sentient powers.[10] It may be matter for a smile-- And I laugh secretly the while I speak the fancy out-- But that they love, and that they woo, And that they often marry too, And do as noisier creatures do, I've not the faintest doubt. And so, I cannot deem it right To take them from the glad sunlight, As I have sometimes dared; Though not without an anxious sigh Lest this should break some gentle tie, Some covenant of friendship, I Had better far have spared. And when, in wild or thoughtless hours, My hand hath crushed the tiniest flowers, I ne'er could shut from sight The corpses of the tender things, With other drear imaginings, And little angel-flowers with wings Would haunt me through the night. Oh! say you, friend, the creed is fraught With sad, and even with painful thought, Nor could you bear to know That such capacities belong To creatures helpless against wrong, At once too weak to fly the strong Or front the feeblest foe? So be it always, then, with you; So be it--whether false or true-- I press my faith on none; If other fancies please you more, The flowers shall blossom as before, Dear as the Sibyl-leaves [11] of yore, But senseless every one. Yet, though I give you no reply, It were not hard to justify My creed to partial ears; But, conscious of the cruel part, My rhymes would flow with faltering art, I could not plead against your heart, Nor reason with your tears. SONNET [12] Poet! if on a lasting fame be bent Thy unperturbing hopes, thou wilt not roam Too far from thine own happy heart and home; Cling to the lowly earth and be content! So shall thy name be dear to many a heart; So shall the noblest truths by thee be taught; The flower and fruit of wholesome human thought Bless the sweet labors of thy gentle art. The brightest stars are nearest to the earth, And we may track the mighty sun above, Even by the shadow of a slender flower. Always, O bard, humility is power! And thou mayest draw from matters of the hearth Truths wide as nations, and as deep as love. SONNET [13] Most men know love but as a part of life;[14] They hide it in some corner of the breast, Even from themselves; and only when they rest In the brief pauses of that daily strife, Wherewith the world might else be not so rife, They draw it forth (as one draws forth a toy To soothe some ardent, kiss-exacting boy) And hold it up to sister, child, or wife. Ah me! why may not love and life be one?[15] Why walk we thus alone, when by our side, Love, like a visible God, might be our guide? How would the marts grow noble! and the street, Worn like a dungeon floor by weary feet, Seem then a golden court-way of the Sun! THE SUMMER BOWER [16] It is a place whither I have often gone For peace, and found it, secret, hushed, and cool, A beautiful recess in neighboring woods. Trees of the soberest hues, thick-leaved and tall. Arch it o'erhead and column it around, Framing a covert, natural and wild, Domelike and dim; though nowhere so enclosed But that the gentlest breezes reach the spot Unwearied and unweakened. Sound is here A transient and unfrequent visitor; Yet, if the day be calm, not often then, Whilst the high pines in one another's arms Sleep, you may sometimes with unstartled ear Catch the far fall of voices, how remote You know not, and you do not care to know. The turf is soft and green, but not a flower Lights the recess, save one, star-shaped and bright-- I do not know its name--which here and there Gleams like a sapphire set in emerald. A narrow opening in the branchèd roof, A single one, is large enough to show, With that half glimpse a dreamer loves so much, The blue air and the blessing of the sky. Thither I always bent my idle steps, When griefs depressed, or joys disturbed my heart, And found the calm I looked for, or returned Strong with the quiet rapture in my soul.[17] But one day, One of those July days when winds have fled One knows not whither, I, most sick in mind With thoughts that shall be nameless, yet, no doubt, Wrong, or at least unhealthful, since though dark With gloom, and touched with discontent, they had No adequate excuse, nor cause, nor end, I, with these thoughts, and on this summer day, Entered the accustomed haunt, and found for once No medicinal virtue. Not a leaf Stirred with the whispering welcome which I sought, But in a close and humid atmosphere, Every fair plant and implicated bough Hung lax and lifeless. Something in the place, Its utter stillness, the unusual heat, And some more secret influence, I thought, Weighed on the sense like sin. Above I saw, Though not a cloud was visible in heaven, The pallid sky look through a glazèd mist Like a blue eye in death. The change, perhaps, Was natural enough; my jaundiced sight, The weather, and the time explain it all: Yet have I drawn a lesson from the spot, And shrined it in these verses for my heart. Thenceforth those tranquil precincts I have sought Not less, and in all shades of various moods; But always shun to desecrate the spot By vain repinings, sickly sentiments, Or inconclusive sorrows. Nature, though Pure as she was in Eden when her breath Kissed the white brow of Eve, doth not refuse, In her own way and with a just reserve, To sympathize with human suffering;[18] But for the pains, the fever, and the fret Engendered of a weak, unquiet heart, She hath no solace; and who seeks her when These be the troubles over which he moans, Reads in her unreplying lineaments Rebukes, that, to the guilty consciousness, Strike like contempt. For a general introduction to the following selections, see Chapter IV. The poet's verse is perfectly clear. He prefers to "Cling to the lowly and be content." [Footnote 1: This poem, which first appeared in _Russell's Magazine_, exhibits one of Timrod's characteristics: he does not describe Nature for its own sake, as Hayne often does, but for the sake of some truth or lesson in relation to man. The lesson of this poem is that a life of uninterrupted ease and comfort is not favorable to the development of noble character.] [Footnote 2: This selection illustrates the fierce energy of the poet's martial lyrics. Compare _Bannockburn_ by Burns, which Carlyle said "should be sung with the throat of the whirlwind."] [Footnote 3: _Byre_ is a cow-stable.] [Footnote 4: _Rack_, usually _wrack_, signifies ruin or destruction.] [Footnote 5: This lyric, which was sung on the occasion of decorating the graves of the Confederate dead in Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, South Carolina, in 1867, has been much admired, especially the last stanza.] [Footnote 6: It is interesting to know that this prediction has been fulfilled. A monument of granite now stands above the dead.] [Footnote 7: _Behalf_, instead of _in behalf of_, is a rather hazardous construction.] [Footnote 8: A noble bronze figure of a color bearer on a granite pedestal now commemorates the fallen heroes.] [Footnote 9: This poem first appeared in the _Southern Literary Messenger_ in 1851. The first stanza of this half-playful, half-serious piece, mentions the objects in which the poet most delighted.] [Footnote 10: This belief has been frequently held, and has some support from recent scientific experiments. But that this sentiency goes as far as the poet describes, is of course pure fancy.] [Footnote 11: The sibyls (Sybil is an incorrect form) were, according to ancient mythology, prophetic women. The sibylline leaves or books contained their teachings, and were preserved with the utmost care in Rome. The sibyl of Cumae conducted Aeneas through the under world, as narrated in the sixth book of Virgil's _Aeneid_.] [Footnote 12: This sonnet expresses the poet's creed, to which his practice was confirmed. This fact imparts unusual simplicity to his verse--a simplicity that strikes us all the more at the present time, when an over-refinement of thought and expression is in vogue.] [Footnote 13: This sonnet, on the commonest of all poetic themes, treats of love in a deep, serious way. It is removed as far as possible from the sentimental.] [Footnote 14: This line reminds us of a well-known passage in Byron:-- "Man's love is of man's life a thing apart; 'Tis woman's whole existence. Man may range The court, camp, church, the vessel and the mart; Sword, gown, gain, glory, offer in exchange Pride, fame, ambition, to fill up his heart, And few there are whom these cannot estrange."] [Footnote 15: This is the divine ideal, the realization of which will bring the true "Golden Age." "God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him."--I _John_ iv. 16.] [Footnote 16: This poem first appeared in the _Southern Literary Messenger_ in 1852. It will serve to show Timrod's manner of using blank verse. It will be observed that "a lesson" is again the principal thing.] [Footnote 17: This recalls the closing lines of Longfellow's _Sunrise on the Hills_:-- "If thou art worn and hard beset With sorrows that thou wouldst forget, If thou wouldst read a lesson that will keep Thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep, Go to the woods and hills! No tears Dim the sweet look that Nature wears."] [Footnote 18: Compare the following lines from Bryant's _Thanatopsis_:-- "To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language; for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, ere he is aware."] * * * * * SELECTIONS FROM SIDNEY LANIER SONG OF THE CHATTAHOOCHEE [1] Out of the hills of Habersham, Down the valleys of Hall,[2] The hurrying rain,[3] to reach the plain, Has run the rapid and leapt the fall, Split at the rock and together again, Accepted his bed, or narrow or wide, And fled from folly on every side, With a lover's pain to attain the plain, Far from the hills of Habersham, Far from the valleys of Hall. All down the hills of Habersham, All through the valleys of Hall, The rushes cried, _Abide, abide_; The wilful water weeds held me thrall, The laurel, slow-laving,[4] turned my tide, The ferns and the fondling grass said _stay_, The dewberry dipped for to win delay,[5] And the little reeds sighed _Abide, abide_, _Here in the hills of Habersham,_ _Here in the valleys of Hall._ High over the hills of Habersham, Veiling the valleys of Hall, The hickory told me manifold Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall Wrought me her shadowy self to hold, The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine, Overleaning, with flickering meaning and sign, Said, _Pass not so cold these manifold Deep shades of the hills of Habersham, These glades in the valleys of Hall._ And oft in the hills of Habersham, And oft in the valleys of Hall, The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook-stone Barred[6] me of passage with friendly brawl, And many a metal lay sad, alone, And the diamond, the garnet, the amethyst, And the crystal that prisons a purple mist, Showed lights like my own from each cordial stone[7] In the clefts of the hills of Habersham, In the beds of the valleys of Hall. But oh, not the hills of Habersham, And oh, not the valleys of Hall, Shall hinder the rain from attaining the plain,[8] For downward the voices of duty call-- Downward to toil and be mixed with the main. The dry fields burn and the mills are to turn, And a thousand meadows [9] mortally yearn, And the final [10] main from beyond the plain Calls o'er the hills of Habersham, And calls through the valleys of Hall. THE CRYSTAL [11] At midnight, death's and truth's unlocking time, When far within the spirit's hearing rolls The great soft rumble of the course of things-- A bulk of silence in a mask of sound-- When darkness clears our vision that by day Is sun-blind, and the soul's a ravening owl For truth, and flitteth here and there about Low-lying woody tracts of time and oft Is minded for to sit upon a bough, Dry-dead and sharp, of some long-stricken tree And muse in that gaunt place,--'twas then my heart, Deep in the meditative dark, cried out: Ye companies of governor-spirits grave, Bards, and old bringers-down of flaming news From steep-walled heavens, holy malcontents, Sweet seers, and stellar visionaries, all That brood about the skies of poesy, Full bright ye shine, insuperable stars; Yet, if a man look hard upon you, none With total luster blazeth, no, not one But hath some heinous freckle of the flesh Upon his shining cheek, not one but winks His ray, opaqued with intermittent mist Of defect; yea, you masters all must ask Some sweet forgiveness, which we leap to give, We lovers of you, heavenly-glad to meet Your largess so with love, and interplight Your geniuses with our mortalities. Thus unto thee, O sweetest Shakspere sole,[12] A hundred hurts a day I do forgive ('Tis little, but, enchantment! 'tis for thee): Small curious quibble; ... Henry's fustian roar Which frights away that sleep he invocates;[13] Wronged Valentine's [14] unnatural haste to yield; Too-silly shifts of maids that mask as men In faint disguises that could ne'er disguise-- Viola, Julia, Portia, Rosalind;[15] Fatigues most drear, and needless overtax Of speech obscure that had as lief be plain. ... Father Homer, thee, Thee also I forgive thy sandy wastes Of prose and catalogue,[16] thy drear harangues That tease the patience of the centuries, Thy sleazy scrap of story,--but a rogue's Rape of a light-o'-love,[17]--too soiled a patch To broider with the gods. Thee, Socrates,[18] Thou dear and very strong one, I forgive Thy year-worn cloak, thine iron stringencies That were but dandy upside-down,[19] thy words Of truth that, mildlier spoke, had manlier wrought. So, Buddha,[20] beautiful! I pardon thee That all the All thou hadst for needy man Was Nothing, and thy Best of being was But not to be. Worn Dante,[21] I forgive The implacable hates that in thy horrid hells Or burn or freeze thy fellows, never loosed By death, nor time, nor love. And I forgive Thee, Milton, those thy comic-dreadful wars [22] Where, armed with gross and inconclusive steel, Immortals smite immortals mortalwise, And fill all heaven with folly. Also thee, Brave Aeschylus,[23] thee I forgive, for that Thine eye, by bare bright justice basilisked, Turned not, nor ever learned to look where Love Stands shining. So, unto thee, Lucretius [24] mine, (For oh, what heart hath loved thee like to this That's now complaining?) freely I forgive Thy logic poor, thine error rich, thine earth Whose graves eat souls and all. Yea, all you hearts Of beauty, and sweet righteous lovers large: Aurelius [25] fine, oft superfine; mild Saint A Kempis,[26] overmild; Epictetus,[27] Whiles low in thought, still with old slavery tinct; Rapt Behmen,[28] rapt too far; high Swedenborg,[29] O'ertoppling; Langley,[30] that with but a touch Of art hadst sung Piers Plowman to the top Of English songs, whereof 'tis dearest, now, And most adorable; Caedmon,[31] in the morn A-calling angels with the cowherd's call That late brought up the cattle; Emerson, Most wise, that yet, in finding Wisdom, lost Thy Self, sometimes; tense Keats, with angels' nerves Where men's were better; Tennyson, largest voice Since Milton, yet some register of wit Wanting,--all, all, I pardon, ere 'tis asked, Your more or less, your little mole that marks Your brother and your kinship seals to man. But Thee, but Thee, O sovereign Seer of time, But Thee, O poets' Poet, Wisdom's Tongue, But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love, O perfect life in perfect labor writ, O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest,-- What _if_ or _yet_, what mole, what flaw, what lapse, What least defect or shadow of defect, What rumor, tattled by an enemy, Of inference loose, what lack of grace Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's,-- Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee, Jesus, good Paragon, thou Crystal Christ?[32] SUNRISE [33] In my sleep I was fain of their fellowship, fain Of the live-oak, the marsh, and the main. The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep; Up breathed from the marshes, a message of range and of sweep, Interwoven with waftures of wild sea-liberties, drifting, Came through the lapped leaves sifting, sifting, Came to the gates of sleep. Then my thoughts, in the dark of the dungeon-keep Of the Castle of Captives hid in the City of Sleep, Upstarted, by twos and by threes assembling: The gates of sleep fell a-trembling Like as the lips of a lady that forth falter _yes_, Shaken with happiness: The gates of sleep stood wide. I have waked, I have come, my beloved! I might not abide: I have come ere the dawn, O beloved, my live-oaks, to hide In your gospeling glooms,[34]--to be As a lover in heaven, the marsh my marsh and the sea my sea. Tell me, sweet burly-barked, man-bodied Tree That mine arms in the dark are embracing, dost know From what fount are these tears at thy feet which flow? They rise not from reason, but deeper inconsequent deeps. Reason's not one that weeps. What logic of greeting lies Betwixt dear over-beautiful trees and the rain of the eyes? O cunning green leaves, little masters! like as ye gloss All the dull-tissued dark with your luminous darks that emboss. The vague blackness of night into pattern and plan, So, (But would I could know, but would I could know,) With your question embroid'ring the dark of the question of man,-- So, with your silences purfling this silence of man While his cry to the dead for some knowledge is under the ban, Under the ban,-- So, ye have wrought me Designs on the night of our knowledge,--yea, ye have taught me, So, That haply we know somewhat more than we know. Ye lispers, whisperers, singers in storms, Ye consciences murmuring faiths under forms, Ye ministers meet for each passion that grieves, Friendly, sisterly, sweetheart leaves,[35] Oh, rain me down from your darks that contain me Wisdoms ye winnow from winds that pain me,-- Sift down tremors of sweet-within-sweet That advise me of more than they bring,--repeat Me the woods-smell that swiftly but now brought breath From the heaven-side bank of the river of death,-- Teach me the terms of silence,--preach me The passion of patience,--sift me,--impeach me,-- And there, oh there As ye hang with your myriad palms upturned in the air, Pray me a myriad prayer.[36] My gossip, the owl,--is it thou That out of the leaves of the low-hanging bough, As I pass to the beach, art stirred? Dumb woods, have ye uttered a bird? Reverend Marsh, low-couched along the sea, Old chemist, rapt in alchemy, Distilling silence,--lo, That which our father-age had died to know-- The menstruum that dissolves all matter--thou Hast found it: for this silence, filling now The globed clarity of receiving space, This solves us all: man, matter, doubt, disgrace, Death, love, sin, sanity, Must in yon silence' clear solution lie. Too clear! That crystal nothing who'll peruse? The blackest night could bring us brighter news. Yet precious qualities of silence haunt Round these vast margins, ministrant. Oh, if thy soul's at latter gasp for space, With trying to breathe no bigger than thy race Just to be fellowed, when that thou hast found No man with room, or grace enough of bound To entertain that New thou tell'st, thou art,-- 'Tis here, 'tis here, thou canst unhand thy heart And breathe it free, and breathe it free, By rangy marsh, in lone sea-liberty. The tide's at full: the marsh with flooded streams Glimmers, a limpid labyrinth of dreams. Each winding creek in grave entrancement lies A rhapsody of morning-stars. The skies Shine scant with one forked galaxy,-- The marsh brags ten: looped on his breast they lie. Oh, what if a sound should be made! Oh, what if a bound should be laid To this bow-and-string tension of beauty and silence a-spring,-- To the bend of beauty the bow, or the hold of silence the string! I fear me, I fear me yon dome of diaphanous gleam Will break as a bubble o'erblown in a dream,-- Yon dome of too-tenuous tissues of space and of night, Overweighted with stars, overfreighted with light, Oversated with beauty and silence, will seem But a bubble that broke in a dream, If a bound of degree to this grace be laid, Or a sound or a motion made. But no: it is made: list! somewhere,--mystery, where? In the leaves? in the air? In my heart? is a motion made: 'Tis a motion of dawn, like a nicker of shade on shade. In the leaves 'tis palpable: low multitudinous stirring Upwinds through the woods; the little ones, softly conferring, Have settled my lord's to be looked for; so; they are still; But the air and my heart and the earth are a-thrill,-- And look where the wild duck sails round the bend of the river,-- And look where a passionate shiver Expectant is bending the blades Of the marsh-grass in serial shimmers and shades,-- And invisible wings, fast fleeting, fast fleeting, Are beating The dark overhead as my heart beats,--and steady and free Is the ebb-tide flowing from marsh to sea-- (Run home, little streams, With your lapfuls of stars and dreams),-- And a sailor unseen is hoisting a-peak, For list, down the inshore curve of the creek How merrily flutters the sail,-- And lo, in the East! Will the East unveil? The East is unveiled, the East hath confessed A flush: 'tis dead; 'tis alive; 'tis dead, ere the West Was aware of it: nay, 'tis abiding, 'tis withdrawn: Have a care, sweet Heaven! 'Tis Dawn. Now a dream of a flame through that dream of a flush is uprolled: To the zenith ascending, a dome of undazzling gold Is builded, in shape as a beehive, from out of the sea: The hive is of gold undazzling, but oh, the Bee, The star-fed Bee, the build-fire Bee, Of dazzling gold is the great Sun-Bee That shall flash from the hive-hole over the sea.[37] Yet now the dewdrop, now the morning gray, Shall live their little lucid sober day Ere with the sun their souls exhale away. Now in each pettiest personal sphere of dew The summ'd morn shines complete as in the blue Big dewdrop of all heaven: with these lit shrines O'er-silvered to the farthest sea-confines, The sacramental marsh one pious plain Of worship lies. Peace to the ante-reign Of Mary Morning, blissful mother mild, Minded of nought but peace, and of a child. Not slower than Majesty moves, for a mean and a measure Of motion,--not faster than dateless Olympian leisure [38] Might pace with unblown ample garments from pleasure to pleasure,-- The wave-serrate sea-rim sinks unjarring, unreeling, Forever revealing, revealing, revealing, Edgewise, bladewise, halfwise, wholewise,--'tis done! Good-morrow, lord Sun! With several voice, with ascription one, The woods and the marsh and the sea and my soul Unto thee, whence the glittering stream of all morrows doth roll, Cry good and past-good and most heavenly morrow, lord Sun. O Artisan born in the purple,--Workman Heat,-- Parter of passionate atoms that travail to meet And be mixed in the death-cold oneness,--innermost Guest At the marriage of elements,--fellow of publicans,--blest King in the blouse of flame, that loiterest o'er The idle skies, yet laborest fast evermore,-- Thou in the fine forge-thunder, thou, in the beat Of the heart of a man, thou Motive,--Laborer Heat: Yea, Artist, thou, of whose art yon sea's all news, With his inshore greens and manifold mid-sea blues, Pearl-glint, shell-tint, ancientest perfectest hues, Ever shaming the maidens,--lily and rose Confess thee, and each mild flame that glows In the clarified virginal bosoms of stones that shine, It is thine, it is thine: Thou chemist of storms, whether driving the winds a-swirl Or a-flicker the subtiler essences polar that whirl In the magnet earth,--yea, thou with a storm for a heart, Rent with debate, many-spotted with question, part From part oft sundered, yet ever a globed light, Yet ever the artist, ever more large and bright Than the eye of a man may avail of:--manifold One, I must pass from thy face, I must pass from the face of the Sun: Old Want is awake and agog, every wrinkle a-frown; The worker must pass to his work in the terrible town: But I fear not, nay, and I fear not the thing to be done; I am strong with the strength of my lord the Sun: How dark, how dark soever the race that must needs be run, I am lit with the Sun. Oh, never the mast-high run of the seas Of traffic shall hide thee, Never the hell-colored smoke of the factories Hide thee, Never the reek of the time's fen-politics Hide thee, And ever my heart through the night shall with knowledge abide thee, And ever by day shall my spirit, as one that hath tried thee, Labor, at leisure, in art,--till yonder beside thee My soul shall float, friend Sun, The day being done. For a general introduction to Lanier's poetry, see Chapter V. [Footnote 1: This poem was first published in _Scott's Magazine_, Atlanta, Georgia, from which it is here taken. It at once became popular, and was copied in many newspapers throughout the South. It was subsequently revised, and the changes, which are pointed out below, are interesting as showing the development of the poet's artistic sense. The singularly rapid and musical lilt of this poem may be readily traced to its sources. It is due to the skillful use of short vowels, liquid consonants, internal rhyme, and constant alliteration. These are matters of technique which Lanier studiously employed throughout his poetry. This poem abounds in seeming irregularities of meter. The fundamental measure is iambic tetrameter, as in the line-- "The rushes cried, _Abide, abide_"; but trochees, dactyls, or anapests are introduced in almost every line, yet without interfering with the time element of the verse. These irregularities were no doubt introduced in order to increase the musical effects.] [Footnote 2: As may be seen by reference to a map, the Chattahoochee rises in Habersham County, in northeastern Georgia, and in its south- westerly course passes through the adjoining county of Hall. Its entire length is about five hundred miles.] [Footnote 3: Changed in the revision to "I hurry amain," with the present tense of the following verbs. The pronoun "his" in line 6 becomes "my."] [Footnote 4: This line was changed to-- "The laving laurel turned my tide."] [Footnote 5: In this line the use of a needless antiquated form may be fairly questioned. In the revised form "win" is changed to "work."] [Footnote 6: "Barred" is changed to "did bar" in the revision--a doubtful gain.] [Footnote 7: The preceding four lines show a decided poetic gain in the revised form:-- "And many a luminous jewel lone-- Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist, Ruby, garnet, and amethyst-- Made lures with the lightnings of streaming stone."] [Footnote 8: The revised form, with an awkward pause after the first foot, and also a useless antiquated phrase, reads-- "Avail! I am fain for to water the plain."] [Footnote 9: Changed to "myriad of flowers."] [Footnote 10: "Final" was changed to "lordly" with fine effect. This poem challenges comparison with other pieces of similar theme. It lacks the exquisite workmanship of Tennyson's _The Brook_, with its incomparable onomatopoeic effects:-- "I chatter over stony ways, In little sharps and trebles; I bubble into eddying bays, I babble on the pebbles." It should be compared with Hayne's _The River_ and also with his _The Meadow Brook_:-- "Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, Hark! the tiny swell; Of wavelets softly, silverly Toned like a fairy bell, Whose every note, dropped sweetly In mellow glamour round, Echo hath caught and harvested In airy sheaves of sound!" But _The Song of the Chattahoochee_ has what the other poems lack, --a lofty moral purpose. The noble stream consciously resists the allurements of pleasure to heed "the voices of duty," and this spirit imparts to it a greater dignity and weight.] [Footnote 11: This poem appeared in The Independent, July 15, 1880, from which it is taken. It illustrates the intellectual rather than the musical side of Lanier's genius. It is purely didactic, and thought rather than melody guides the poet's pen. The meter is quite regular,--an unusual thing in our author's most characteristic work. It shows Lanier's use of pentameter blank verse,--a use that is somewhat lacking in ease and clearness. The first sentence is longer than that of Paradise Lost, without Milton's unity and force. Such ponderous sentences are all too frequent in Lanier, and as a result he is sometimes obscure. Repeated readings are necessary to take in the full meaning of his best work. This poem, though not bearing the distinctive marks of his genius, is peculiarly interesting for two reasons,--it gives us an insight into his wide range of reading and study, and it exhibits his penetration and sanity as a critic. In the long list of great names he never fails to put his finger on the vulnerable spot. Frequently he is exceedingly felicitous, as when he speaks of "rapt Behmen, rapt too far," or of "Emerson, Most wise, that yet, in finding Wisdom, lost Thy Self sometimes."] [Footnote 12: It will be remembered that Lanier was a careful student of Shakespeare, on whom he lectured to private classes in Baltimore.] [Footnote 13: See second part of _King Henry IV_, iii. I. The passage which the poet had in mind begins:-- "How many thousand of my poorest subjects Are at this hour asleep!"] [Footnote 14: See _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_.] [Footnote 15: These characters are found as follows: Viola in _Twelfth Night_; Julia in _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_; Portia in _The Merchant of Venice_; and Rosalind in _As You Like It_.] [Footnote 16: Referring to the well-known catalogue of ships in the Second Book of the Illiad:-- "My song to fame shall give The chieftains, and enumerate their ships." It is in this passage in particular that Homer is supposed to nod.] [Footnote 17: It will be recalled that Paris, son of Priam, king of Troy, persuaded Helen, the fairest of women and wife of King Menelaus of Greece, to elope with him to Troy. This incident gave rise to the famous Trojan War.] [Footnote 18: Socrates (469-399 B.C.) was an Athenian philosopher, of whom Cicero said that he "brought down philosophy from the heavens to the earth." His teachings are preserved in Xenophon's _Memorabilia_ and Plato's _Dialogues_.] [Footnote 19: That is to say, his needless austerity was as much affected as the dandy's excessive and ostentatious refinement.] [Footnote 20: Buddha, meaning _the enlightened one_, was Prince Siddhartha of Hindustan, who died about 477 B.C. He was the founder of the Buddhist religion, which teaches that the supreme attainment of mankind is Nirvana or extinction. This doctrine naturally follows from the Buddhist assumption that life is hopelessly evil. Many of the moral precepts of Buddhism are closely akin to those of Christianity.] [Footnote 21: Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), a native of Florence, is the greatest poet of Italy and one of the greatest poets of the world. His immortal poem, _The Divine Comedy_, is divided into three parts --"Hell," "Purgatory," and "Paradise."] [Footnote 22: This is a reference to the wars among the angels, which ended with the expulsion of Satan and his hosts from heaven, as related in the sixth book of Paradise Lost. This criticism of Milton is as just as it is felicitous.] [Footnote 23: Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.) was the father of Greek tragedy. He presents _destiny_ in its sternest aspects. His _Prometheus Bound_ has been translated by Mrs. Browning, and his _Agamemnon_ by Robert Browning--two dramas that exhibit his grandeur and power at their best.] [Footnote 24: Lucretius (about 95-51 B.C.) was the author of a didactic poem in six books entitled _De Rerum Natura_. It is Epicurean in morals and atheistic in philosophy. At the same time, as a work of art, it is one of the most perfect poems that have descended to us from antiquity.] [Footnote 25: Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 A.D.), one of the best emperors of Rome, was a noble Stoic philosopher. His _Meditations_ is regarded by John Stuart Mill as almost equal to the Sermon on the Mount in moral elevation.] [Footnote 26: Thomas a Kempis (1379-1471) was the author of the famous _Imitation of Christ_ in which, as Dean Milman says, "is gathered and concentered all that is elevating, passionate, profoundly pious in all the older mystics." No other book, except the Bible, has been so often translated and printed.] [Footnote 27: Epictetus (born about 50 A.D.) was a Stoic philosopher, many of whose moral teachings resemble those of Christianity. But he unduly emphasized renunciation, and wished to restrict human aspiration to the narrow limits of the attainable.] [Footnote 28: Jacob Behmen, or Böhme (1575-1624), was a devout mystic philosopher, whose speculations, containing much that was beautiful and profound, sometimes passed the bounds of intelligibility.] [Footnote 29: Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) was a Swedish philosopher and theologian. His principal work, _Arcana Caelestia_, is made up of profound speculations and spiritualistic extravagance. He often oversteps the bounds of sanity.] [Footnote 30: William Langland, or Langley (about 1332-1400), a disciple of Wycliffe, was a poet, whose _Vision of Piers Plowman_, written in strong, alliterative verse, describes, in a series of nine visions, the manifold corruptions of society, church, and state in England.] [Footnote 31: Caedmon (lived about 670) was a cowherd attached to the monastery of Whitby in England. Later he became a poet, and wrote on Scripture themes in his native Anglo-Saxon. His _Paraphrase_, is, next to _Beowulf_, the oldest Anglo-Saxon poem in existence.] [Footnote 32: Lanier was deeply religious, but his beliefs were broader than any creed. In _Remonstrance_ he exclaims,-- "Opinion, let me alone: I am not thine. Prim Creed, with categoric point, forbear To feature me my Lord by rule and line." Yet, as shown in the conclusion of _The Crystal_ he had an exalted sense of the unapproachable beauty of the life and teachings of Christ. His tenderest poem is _A Ballad of Trees and the Master_:-- "Into the woods my Master went, Clean forspent, forspent. Into the woods my Master came, Forspent with love and shame. But the olives they were not blind to Him, The little gray leaves were kind to Him; The thorn-tree had a mind to Him, When into the woods He came. "Out of the woods my Master went, And He was well content. Out of the woods my Master came, Content with death and shame. When Death and Shame would woo Him last, From under the trees they drew Him last: 'Twas on a tree they slew Him--last When out of the woods He came."] [Footnote 33: This poem was first published in _The Independent_, December 14, 1882, from which it is here taken. The editor said, "This poem, we do not hesitate to say, is one of the few great poems that have been written on this side of the ocean." With this judgment there will be general agreement on the part of appreciative readers. On the emotional side, it may be said to reach the high-water mark of poetic achievement in this country. Its emotion at times reaches the summits of poetic rapture; a little more, and it would have passed into the boundary of hysterical ecstasy. The circumstances of its composition possess a melancholy interest. It was Lanier's last and greatest poem. He penciled it a few months before his death when he was too feeble to raise his food to his mouth and when a burning fever was consuming him. Had he not made this supreme effort, American literature would be the poorer. This poem exhibits, in a high degree, the poet's love for Nature. Indeed, most of his great pieces-- _The Marshes of Glynn, Clover, Corn_, and others--are inspired by the sights and sounds of Nature. _Sunrise_, in general tone and style, closely resembles _The Marshes of Glynn_. The musical theories of Lanier in relation to poetry find their highest exemplification in _Sunrise_. It is made up of all the poetic feet --iambics, trochees, dactyls, anapests--so that it almost defies any attempt at scansion. But the melody of the verse never fails; equality of time is observed, along with a rich use of alliteration and assonance. The poem may be easily analyzed; and a distinct notation of its successive themes may be helpful to the young reader. Its divisions are marked by its irregular stanzas. It consists of fifteen parts as follows: 1. The call of the marshes to the poet in his slumbers, and his awaking. 2. He comes as a lover to the live-oaks and marshes. 3. His address to the "man-bodied tree," and the "cunning green leaves." 4. His petition for wisdom and for a prayer of intercession. 5. The stirring of the owl. 6. Address to the "reverend marsh, distilling silence." 7. Description of the full tide. 8. "The bow-and-string tension of beauty and silence." 9. The motion of dawn. 10. The golden flush of the eastern sky. 11. The sacramental marsh at worship. 12. The slow rising of the sun above the sea horizon. 13. Apostrophe to heat. 14. The worker must pass from the contemplation of this splendor to his toil. 15. The poet's inextinguishable adoration of the sun.] [Footnote 34: "Gospeling glooms" means glooms that convey to the sensitive spirit sweet messages of good news.] [Footnote 35: Lanier continually attributes personality to the objects of Nature, and places them in tender relations to man. Here the little leaves become-- "Friendly, sisterly, sweetheart leaves," as a few lines before they were "little masters." In _Individuality_ we read,-- "Sail on, sail on, fair cousin Cloud." And in _Corn_ there is a passage of great tenderness:-- "The leaves that wave against my cheek caress Like women's hands; the embracing boughs express A subtlety of mighty tenderness; The copse-depths into little noises start, That sound anon like beatings of a heart, Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart."] [Footnote 36: This passage is Wordsworthian in spirit. Nature is regarded as a teacher who suggests or reveals ineffable things. Lanier might have said, as did Wordsworth,-- "To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."] [Footnote 37: Lanier had a lively and vigorous imagination, which is seen in his use of personification and metaphor. In this poem almost every object--trees, leaves, marsh, streams, sun, heat--is personified. This same fondness for personification may be observed in his other characteristic poems. In the use of metaphor it may be doubted whether the poet is always so happy. There is sometimes inaptness or remoteness in his resemblances. To liken the naming heavens to a beehive, and the rising sun to a bee issuing from the "hive-hole," can hardly be said to add dignity to the description. In _Clover_ men are clover heads, which the Course-of-things, as an ox, browses upon:-- "This cool, unasking Ox Comes browsing o'er my hills and vales of Time, And thrusts me out his tongue, and curls it, sharp, And sicklewise, about my poets' heads, And twists them in.... and champs and chews, With slantly-churning jaws and swallows down."] [Footnote 38: The deities of Olympus, being immortal, have no need of strenuous haste. They may well move from pleasure to pleasure with stately leisure.] * * * * * SELECTIONS FROM FATHER RYAN SONG OF THE MYSTIC [1] I walk down the Valley of Silence--[2] Down the dim, voiceless valley--alone! And I hear not the fall of a footstep Around me, save God's and my own; And the hush of my heart is as holy As hovers where angels have flown! Long ago was I weary of voices Whose music my heart could not win; Long ago was I weary of noises That fretted my soul with their din; Long ago was I weary of places Where I met but the human--and sin.[3] I walked in the world with the worldly; I craved what the world never gave; And I said: "In the world each Ideal, That shines like a star on life's wave, Is wrecked on the shores of the Real, And sleeps like a dream in a grave." And still did I pine for the Perfect, And still found the False with the True; I sought 'mid the Human for Heaven, But caught a mere glimpse of its Blue; And I wept when the clouds of the Mortal Veiled even that glimpse from my view. And I toiled on, heart-tired of the Human, And I moaned 'mid the mazes of men, Till I knelt, long ago, at an altar, And I heard a voice call me. Since then I walked down the Valley of Silence That lies far beyond mortal ken. Do you ask what I found in the Valley? 'Tis my Trysting Place with the Divine. And I fell at the feet of the Holy, And above me a voice said: "Be Mine." And there arose from the depths of my spirit An echo--"My heart shall be thine." Do you ask how I live in the Valley? I weep--and I dream--and I pray. But my tears are as sweet as the dewdrops That fall on the roses in May; And my prayer like a perfume from censers, Ascendeth to God night and day. In the hush of the Valley of Silence I dream all the songs that I sing;[4] And the music floats down the dim Valley, Till each finds a word for a wing, That to hearts, like the dove of the deluge A message of peace they may bring. But far on the deep there are billows That never shall break on the beach; And I have heard songs in the Silence That never shall float into speech; And I have had dreams in the Valley Too lofty for language to reach. And I have seen thoughts in the Valley-- Ah me! how my spirit was stirred! And they wear holy veils on their faces, Their footsteps can scarcely be heard: They pass through the Valley like virgins, Too pure for the touch of a word![5] Do you ask me the place of the Valley, Ye hearts that are harrowed by care? It lieth afar between mountains, And God and His angels are there: And one is the dark mount of Sorrow, And one the bright mountain of Prayer. THE CONQUERED BANNER [6] Furl that Banner, for 'tis weary; Round its staff 'tis drooping dreary; Furl it, fold it, it is best; For there's not a man to wave it, And there's not a sword to save it, And there's not one left to lave it In the blood which heroes gave it; And its foes now scorn and brave it; Furl it, hide it--let it rest![7] Take that Banner down! 'tis tattered; Broken is its staff and shattered; And the valiant hosts are scattered Over whom it floated high. Oh! 'tis hard for us to fold it; Hard to think there's none to hold it; Hard that those who once unrolled it Now must furl it with a sigh. Furl that Banner! furl it sadly! Once ten thousands hailed it gladly, And ten thousands wildly, madly, Swore it should forever wave; Swore that foeman's sword should never Hearts like theirs entwined dissever, Till that flag should float forever O'er their freedom or their grave! Furl it! for the hands that grasped it, And the hearts that fondly clasped it, Cold and dead are lying low; And that Banner--it is trailing! While around it sounds the wailing Of its people in their woe. For, though conquered, they adore it! Love the cold, dead hands that bore it! Weep for those who fell before it! Pardon those who trailed and tore it![8] But, oh! wildly they deplore it, Now who furl and fold it so. Furl that Banner! True, 'tis gory, Yet 'tis wreathed around with glory, And 'twill live in song and story, Though its folds are in the dust: For its fame on brightest pages, Penned by poets and by sages, Shall go sounding down the ages-- Furl its folds though now we must. Furl that Banner, softly, slowly! Treat it gently--it is holy-- For it droops above the dead. Touch it not--unfold it never, Let it droop there, furled forever, For its people's hopes are dead![9] THE SWORD OF ROBERT LEE [10] Forth from its scabbard, pure and bright, Flashed the sword of Lee! Far in the front of the deadly fight, High o'er the brave in the cause of Right, Its stainless sheen, like a beacon light, Led us to victory. Out of its scabbard, where full long It slumbered peacefully, Roused from its rest by the battle's song, Shielding the feeble, smiting the strong, Guarding the right, avenging the wrong, Gleamed the sword of Lee. Forth from its scabbard, high in air Beneath Virginia's sky-- And they who saw it gleaming there, And knew who bore it, knelt to swear That where that sword led they would dare To follow--and to die. Out of its scabbard! Never hand Waved sword from stain as free; Nor purer sword led braver band, Nor braver bled for a brighter land, Nor brighter land had a cause so grand, Nor cause a chief like Lee![11] Forth from its scabbard! How we prayed That sword might victor be; And when our triumph was delayed, And many a heart grew sore afraid, We still hoped on while gleamed the blade Of noble Robert Lee. Forth from its scabbard all in vain Bright flashed the sword of Lee; 'Tis shrouded now in its sheath again, It sleeps the sleep of our noble slain, Defeated, yet without a stain, Proudly and peacefully. DEATH [12] Out of the shadows of sadness, Into the sunshine of gladness, Into the light of the blest; Out of a land very dreary, Out of the world very weary, Into the rapture of rest. Out of to-day's sin and sorrow, Into a blissful to-morrow, Into a day without gloom; Out of a land filled with sighing, Land of the dead and the dying, Into a land without tomb. Out of a life of commotion, Tempest-swept oft as the ocean, Dark with the wrecks drifting o'er, Into a land calm and quiet; Never a storm cometh nigh it, Never a wreck on its shore. Out of a land in whose bowers Perish and fade all the flowers; Out of the land of decay, Into the Eden where fairest Of flowerets, and sweetest and rarest, Never shall wither away. Out of the world of the wailing Thronged with the anguished and ailing; Out of the world of the sad, Into the world that rejoices-- World of bright visions and voices-- Into the world of the glad. Out of a life ever mournful, Out of a land very lornful, Where in bleak exile we roam,[13] Into a joy-land above us, Where there's a Father to love us-- Into our home--"Sweet Home." PRESENTIMENT [14] Cometh a voice from a far-land, Beautiful, sad, and low; Shineth a light from the star-land Down on the night of my woe; And a white hand, with a garland, Biddeth my spirit to go. Away and afar from the night-land, Where sorrow o'ershadows my way, To the splendors and skies of the light-land, Where reigneth eternity's day,-- To the cloudless and shadowless bright-land, Whose sun never passeth away. And I knew the voice; not a sweeter On earth or in Heaven can be; And never did shadow pass fleeter Than it, and its strange melody; And I know I must hasten to meet her, "Yea, _Sister!_ Thou callest to me!" And I saw the light; 'twas not seeming, It flashed from the crown that she wore, And the brow, that with jewels was gleaming, My lips had kissed often of yore! And the eyes, that with rapture were beaming, Had smiled on me sweetly before. And I saw the hand with the garland, Ethel's hand--holy and fair; Who went long ago to the far-land To weave me the wreath I shall wear; And to-night I look up to the star-land And pray that I soon may be there.[15] NIGHT THOUGHTS [16] Some reckon their age by years, Some measure their life by art,-- But some tell their days by the flow of their tears, And their life, by the moans of their heart. The dials of earth may show The length--not the depth of years; Few or many they come, few or many they go, But our time is best measured by tears. Ah! not by the silver gray That creeps through the sunny hair, And not by the scenes that we pass on our way, And not by the furrows the fingers of care, On forehead and face, have made: Not so do we count our years; Not by the sun of the earth, but the shade Of our souls, and the fall of our tears. For the young are oft-times old, Though their brow be bright and fair; While their blood beats warm, their heart lies cold-- O'er them the springtime, but winter is there. And the old are oft-times young, When their hair is thin and white; And they sing in age, as in youth they sung, And they laugh, for their cross was light. But bead by bead I tell The rosary of my years; From a cross to a cross they lead,--'tis well! And they're blest with a blessing of tears. Better a day of strife Than a century of sleep; Give me instead of a long stream of life, The tempests and tears of the deep. A thousand joys may foam On the billows of all the years; But never the foam brings the brave [17] heart home-- It reaches the haven through tears. For a general introduction to Father Ryan's poetry, see Chapter VI. [Footnote 1: As stated in the sketch of Father Ryan, this poem strikes the keynote to his verse. It therefore properly opens his volume of poems. It became popular on its first publication, and was copied in various papers. It is here taken from the _Religious Herald_, Richmond, Virginia.] [Footnote 2: The location of _The Valley of Silence_ is given in the last stanza.] [Footnote 3: This poem may be taken, in a measure, as autobiographic. In this stanza, and the two following ones, the poet refers to that period of his life before he resolved to consecrate himself to the priesthood.] [Footnote 4: This indicates the general character of his poetry. Inspired in _The Valley of Silence_, it is sad, meditative, mystical, religious.] [Footnote 5: Perhaps every poet has this experience. There come to him elusive glimpses of truth and beauty which are beyond the grasp of speech. As some one has sung:-- "Sometimes there rise, from deeps unknown, Before my inmost gaze, Far brighter scenes than earth has shown In morning's orient blaze; I try to paint the visions bright, But, oh, their glories turn to night!"] [Footnote 6: This poem was first published in Father Ryan's paper, the _Banner of the South_, March 21, 1868, from which it is here taken. Coming so soon after the close of the Civil War, it touched the Southern heart.] [Footnote 7: For a criticism of the versification of this stanza, see the chapter on Father Ryan.] [Footnote 8: This note of pardon, in keeping with the poet's priestly character, is found in several of his lyrics referring to the war. In spite of his strong Southern feeling, there is no unrelenting bitterness. Thus, in _The Prayer of the South_, which appeared a week later, we read:-- "Father, I kneel 'mid ruin, wreck, and grave,-- A desert waste, where all was erst so fair,-- And for my children and my foes I crave Pity and pardon. Father, hear my prayer!"] [Footnote 9: This was the poet's feeling in 1868. In a similar strain we read in _The Prayer of the South_:-- "My heart is filled with anguish deep and vast! My hopes are buried with my children's dust! My joys have fled, my tears are flowing fast! In whom, save Thee, our Father, shall I trust?" Happily the poet lived to see a new order of things--an era in which vain regrets gave place to energetic courage, hope, and endeavor.] [Footnote 10: This poem first appeared in the _Banner of the South_, April 4, 1868, and, like the preceding one, has been very popular in the South.] [Footnote 11: Father Ryan felt great admiration for General Lee, who has remained in the South the popular hero of the war. In the last of his _Sentinel Songs_, the poet-priest pays a beautiful tribute to the stainless character of the Confederate leader:-- "Go, Glory, and forever guard Our chieftain's hallowed dust; And Honor, keep eternal ward, And Fame, be this thy trust! Go, with your bright emblazoned scroll And tell the years to be, The first of names to flash your roll Is ours--great Robert Lee."] [Footnote 12: This poem was first published in the _Banner of the South_, April 25, 1868. It illustrates the profounder themes on which the poet loved to dwell, and likewise the Christian faith by which they were illumined.] [Footnote 13: This mournful view of life appears frequently in Father Ryan's poems. In _De Profundis_, for example, we read:-- "All the hours are full of tears-- O my God! woe are we! Grief keeps watch in brightest eyes-- Every heart is strung with fears, Woe are we! woe are we! All the light hath left the skies, And the living, awe-struck crowds See above them only clouds, And around them only shrouds."] [Footnote 14: This poem, as the two preceding ones, is taken from the _Banner of the South_, where it appeared June 13, 1868. It affords a glimpse of the tragical romance of the poet's life. The voice that he hears is that of "Ethel," the lost love of his youth. Her memory never left him. In the poem entitled _What?_ it is again her spirit voice that conveys to his soul an ineffable word.] [Footnote 15: This desire for death occurs in several poems, as _When?_ and _Rest_. In the latter poem it is said:-- "'Twas always so; when but a child I laid On mother's breast My wearied little head--e'en then I prayed As now--for rest."] [Footnote 16: This poem is taken from the _Banner of the South_, where it appeared June 29, 1870. In the volume of collected poems the title is changed to _The Rosary of my Tears_.] [Footnote 17: "Brave" is changed to "lone" in the poet's revision.] 
7325	----	Charles Franks, and the Online Distributed Proofreaders Team. DREAMS AND DAYS POEMS BY GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP To ROSL CONTENTS I STRIKE HANDS, YOUNG MEN! "O JAY!" THE STAR TO ITS LIGHT "THE SUNSHINE OF THINE EYES" JESSAMINE THE BOBOLINK SAILOR'S SONG, RETURNING FIRST GLANCE BRIDE BROOK MAY-ROSE THE SINGING WIRE THE HEART OF A SONG SOUTH-WIND THE LOVER'S YEAR NEW WORLDS NIGHT IN NEW YORK THE SONG-SPARROW I LOVED YOU, ONCE---- II THE BRIDE OF WAR A RUNE OF THE RAIN BREAKERS BLACKMOUTH, OF COLORADO THE CHILD-YEAR CHRISTENING THANKSGIVING TURKEY BEFORE THE SNOW III YOUTH TO THE POET THE SWORD DHAM "AT THE GOLDEN GATE" CHARITY HELEN AT THE LOOM THE CASKET OF OPALS LOVE THAT LIVES IV BLUEBIRD'S GREETING THE VOICE OF THE VOID "O WHOLESOME DEATH" INCANTATION FAMINE AND HARVEST THE CHILD'S WISH GRANTED THE FLOWN SOUL SUNSET AND SHORE THE PHOEBE-BIRD A STRONG CITY THREE DOVES V ARISE, AMERICAN! THE NAME OF WASHINGTON GRANT'S DIRGE. BATTLE DAYS KEENAN'S CHARGE MARTHY VIRGINIA'S HAND GETTYSBURG: A BATTLE ODE NOTES STRIKE HANDS, YOUNG MEN! Strike hands, young men! We know not when Death or disaster comes, Mightier than battle-drums To summon us away. Death bids us say farewell To all we love, nor stay For tears;--and who can tell How soon misfortune's hand May smite us where we stand, Dragging us down, aloof, Under the swift world's hoof? Strike hands for faith, and power To gladden the passing hour; To wield the sword, or raise a song;-- To press the grape; or crush out wrong. And strengthen right. Give me the man of sturdy palm And vigorous brain; Hearty, companionable, sane, 'Mid all commotions calm, Yet filled with quick, enthusiastic fire;-- Give me the man Whose impulses aspire, And all his features seem to say, "I can!" Strike hands, young men! 'Tis yours to help rebuild the State, And keep the Nation great. With act and speech and pen 'Tis yours to spread The morning-red That ushers in a grander day: To scatter prejudice that blinds, And hail fresh thoughts in noble minds; To overthrow bland tyrannies That cheat the people, and with slow disease Change the Republic to a mockery. Your words can teach that liberty Means more than just to cry "We're free" While bending to some new-found yoke. So shall each unjust bond be broke, Each toiler gain his meet reward, And life sound forth a truer chord. Ah, if we so have striven, And mutually the grasp have given Of brotherhood, To work each other and the whole race good; What matter if the dream Come only partly true, And all the things accomplished seem Feeble and few? At least, when summer's flame burns low And on our heads the drifting snow Settles and stays, We shall rejoice that in our earlier days We boldly then Struck hands, young men! "O JAY!" O jay-- Blue-jay! What are you trying to say? I remember, in the spring You pretended you could sing; But your voice is now still queerer, And as yet you've come no nearer To a song. In fact, to sum the matter, I never heard a flatter Failure than your doleful clatter. Don't you think it's wrong? It was sweet to hear your note, I'll not deny, When April set pale clouds afloat O'er the blue tides of sky, And 'mid the wind's triumphant drums You, in your white and azure coat, A herald proud, came forth to cry, "The royal summer comes!" But now that autumn's here, And the leaves curl up in sheer Disgust, And the cold rains fringe the pine, You really must Stop that supercilious whine--- Or you'll be shot, by some mephitic Angry critic. You don't fulfill your early promise: You're not the smartest Kind of artist, Any more than poor Blind Tom is. Yet somehow, still, There's meaning in your screaming bill. What _are_ you trying to say? Sometimes your piping is delicious, And then again it's simply vicious; Though on the whole the varying jangle Weaves round me an entrancing tangle Of memories grave or joyous: Things to weep or laugh at; Love that lived at a hint, or Days so sweet, they'd cloy us; Nights I have spent with friends;-- Glistening groves of winter, And the sound of vanished feet That walked by the ripening wheat; With other things.... Not the half that Your cry familiar blends Can I name, for it is mostly Very ghostly;-- Such mixed-up things your voice recalls, With its peculiar quirks and falls. Possibly, then, your meaning, plain, Is that your harsh and broken strain Tallies best with a world of pain. Well, I'll admit There's merit in a voice that's truthful: Yours is not honey-sweet nor youthful, But querulously fit. And if we cannot sing, we'll say Something to the purpose, jay! THE STAR TO ITS LIGHT "Go," said the star to its light: "Follow your fathomless flight! Into the dreams of space Carry the joy of my face. Go," said the star to its light: "Tell me the tale of your flight." As the mandate rang The heavens through, Quick the ray sprang: Unheard it flew, Sped by the touch of an unseen spur. It crumbled the dusk of the deep That folds the worlds in sleep, And shot through night with noiseless stir. Then came the day; And all that swift array Of diamond-sparkles died. And lo! the far star cried: "My light has lost its way!" Ages on ages passed: The light returned, at last. "What have you seen, What have you heard-- O ray serene, O flame-winged bird I loosed on endless air? Why do you look so faint and white?"-- Said the star to its light. "O star," said the tremulous ray, "Grief and struggle I found. Horror impeded my way. Many a star and sun I passed and touched, on my round. Many a life undone I lit with a tender gleam: I shone in the lover's eyes, And soothed the maiden's dream. But alas for the stifling mist of lies! Alas, for the wrath of the battle-field Where my glance was mixed with blood! And woe for the hearts by hate congealed, And the crime that rolls like a flood! Too vast is the world for me; Too vast for the sparkling dew Of a force like yours to renew. Hopeless the world's immensity! The suns go on without end: The universe holds no friend: And so I come back to you." "Go," said the star to its light: "You have not told me aright. This you have taught: I am one In a million of million others-- Stars, or planets, or men;-- And all of these are my brothers. Carry that message, and then My guerdon of praise you have won! Say that I serve in my place: Say I will hide my own face Ere the sorrows of others I shun. So, then, my trust you'll requite. Go!"--said the star to its light. "THE SUNSHINE OF THINE EYES" The sunshine of thine eyes, (O still, celestial beam!) Whatever it touches it fills With the life of its lambent gleam. The sunshine of thine eyes, O let it fall on me! Though I be but a mote of the air, I could turn to gold for thee! JESSAMINE Here stands the great tree still, with broad bent head; Its wide arms grown aweary, yet outspread With their old blessing. But wan memory weaves Strange garlands, now, amongst the darkening leaves. _And the moon hangs low in the elm_. Beneath these glimmering arches Jessamine Walked with her lover long ago; and in The leaf-dimmed light he questioned, and she spoke; Then on them both, supreme, love's radiance broke. _And the moon hangs low in the elm_. Sweet Jessamine we called her; for she shone Like blossoms that in sun and shade have grown, Gathering from each alike a perfect white, Whose rich bloom breaks opaque through darkest night. _And the moon hangs low in the elm_. For this her sweetness Walt, her lover, sought To win her; wooed her here, his heart o'er fraught With fragrance of her being; and gained his plea. So "We will wed," they said, "beneath this tree." _And the moon hangs low in the elm._ Yet dreams of conquering greater prize for her Roused his wild spirit with a glittering spur. Eager for wealth, far, far from home he sailed; And life paused;--while she watched joy vanish, veiled. _And the moon hangs low in the elm._ Ah, better at the elm-tree's sunbrowned feet If he had been content to let life fleet Its wonted way!--lord of his little farm, In zest of joys or cares unmixed with harm. _And the moon hangs low in the elm._ For, as against a snarling sea one steers, He battled vainly with the surging years; While ever Jessamine must watch and pine, Her vision bounded by the bleak sea-line. _And the moon hangs low in the elm._ Then silence fell; and all the neighbors said That Walt had married, faithless, or was dead: Unmoved in constancy, her tryst she kept, Each night beneath the tree, ere sorrow slept. _And the moon hangs low in the elm._ So, circling years went by, till in her face Slow melancholy wrought a mingled grace, Of early joy with suffering's hard alloy-- Refined and rare, no doom could e'er destroy. _And the moon hangs low in the elm._ Sometimes at twilight, when sweet Jessamine Slow-footed, weary-eyed, passed by to win The elm, we smiled for pity of her, and mused On love that so could live, with love refused. _And the moon hangs low in the elm._ And none could hope for her. But she had grown Too high in love, for hope. She bloomed alone, Aloft in proud devotion; and secure Against despair; so sweet her faith, so sure. _And the moon hangs low in the elm._ Her wandering lover knew not well her soul. Discouraged, on disaster's changing shoal Stranding, he waited; starved on selfish pride, Long years; nor would obey love's homeward tide. _And the moon hangs low in the elm._ But, bitterly repenting of his sin, Deeper at last he learned to look within Sweet Jessamine's true heart--when the past, dead, Mocked him with wasted years forever fled. _And the moon hangs low in the elm._ Late, late, oh late, beneath the tree stood two; In trembling joy, and wondering "Is it true?"-- Two that were each like some strange, misty wraith: Yet each on each gazed with a living faith. _And the moon hangs low in the elm._ Even to the tree-top sang the wedding-bell: Even to the tree-top tolled the passing knell. Beneath it Walt and Jessamine were wed, Beneath it many a year has she lain dead. _And the moon hangs low in the elm._ Here stands the great tree, still. But age has crept Through every coil, while Walt each night has kept The tryst alone. Hark! with what windy might The boughs chant o'er her grave their burial-rite! _And the moon hangs low in the elm._ THE BOBOLINK How sweetly sang the bobolink, When thou, my love, wast nigh! His liquid music from the brink Of some cloud-fountain seemed to sink, Far in the blue-domed sky. How sadly sings the bobolink! No more my love is nigh: Yet rise, my spirit, rise, and drink Once more from that cloud-fountain's brink,-- Once more before I die! SAILOR'S SONG, RETURNING The sea goes up; the sky comes down. Oh, can you spy the ancient town,-- The granite hills so green and gray, That rib the land behind the bay? O ye ho, boys. Spread her wings! Fair winds, boys: send her home! O ye ho! Three years? Is it so long that we Have lived upon the lonely sea? Oh, often I thought we'd see the town, When the sea went up, and the sky came down. O ye ho, boys. Spread her wings! Even the winter winds would rouse A memory of my father's house; For round his windows and his door They made the same deep, mouthless roar. O ye ho, boys. Spread her wings! And when the summer's breezes beat, Methought I saw the sunny street Where stood my Kate. Beneath her hand She gazed far out, far out from land. O ye ho, boys. Spread her wings! Farthest away, I oftenest dreamed That I was with her. Then it seemed A single stride the ocean wide Had bridged, and brought me to her side. O ye ho, boys. Spread her wings! But though so near we're drawing, now, 'T is farther off--I know not how. We sail and sail: we see no home. Would that we into port were come! O ye ho, boys. Spread her wings! At night, the same stars o'er the mast: The mast sways round--however fast We fly--still sways and swings around One scanty circle's starry bound. O ye ho, boys. Spread her wings! Ah, many a month those stars have shone, And many a golden morn has flown, Since that so solemn, happy morn, When, I away, my babe was born. O ye ho, boys. Spread her wings! And, though so near we're drawing, now, 'T is farther off--I know not how:-- I would not aught amiss had come To babe or mother there, at home! O ye ho, boys. Spread her wings! 'T is but a seeming: swiftly rush The seas, beneath. I hear the crush Of foamy ridges 'gainst the prow. Longing outspeeds the breeze, I know. O ye ho, boys. Spread her wings! Patience, my mates! Though not this eve We cast our anchor, yet believe, If but the wind holds, short the run: We'll sail in with to-morrow's sun. O ye ho, boys. Spread her wings! Fair winds, boys: send her home! O ye ho! FIRST GLANCE A budding mouth and warm blue eyes; A laughing face; and laughing hair,-- So ruddy was its rise From off that forehead fair; Frank fervor in whate'er she said, And a shy grace when she was still; A bright, elastic tread; Enthusiastic will; These wrought the magic of a maid As sweet and sad as the sun in spring;-- Joyous, yet half-afraid Her joyousness to sing. BRIDE BROOK Wide as the sky Time spreads his hand, And blindly over us there blows A swarm of years that fill the land, Then fade, and are as fallen snows. Behold, the flakes rush thick and fast; Or are they years, that come between,-- When, peering back into the past, I search the legendary scene? Nay. Marshaled down the open coast, Fearless of that low rampart's frown, The winter's white-winged, footless host Beleaguers ancient Saybrook town. And when the settlers wake they stare On woods half-buried, white and green, A smothered world, an empty air: Never had such deep drifts been seen! But "Snow lies light upon my heart! An thou," said merry Jonathan Rudd, "Wilt wed me, winter shall depart, And love like spring for us shall bud." "Nay, how," said Mary, "may that be? No minister nor magistrate Is here, to join us solemnly; And snow-banks bar us, every gate." "Winthrop at Pequot Harbor lies," He laughed. And with the morrow's sun He faced the deputy's dark eyes: "How soon, sir, may the rite be done?" "At Saybrook? There the power's not mine," Said he. "But at the brook we'll meet, That ripples down the boundary line; There you may wed, and Heaven shall see't." Forth went, next day, the bridal train Through vistas dreamy with gray light. The waiting woods, the open plain, Arrayed in consecrated white, Received and ushered them, along. The very beasts before them fled, Charmed by the spell of inward song These lovers' hearts around them spread. Four men with netted foot-gear shod Bore the maid's carrying-chair aloft; She swayed above, as roses nod On the lithe stem their bloom-weight soft. At last beside the brook they stood, With Winthrop and his followers; The maid in flake-embroidered hood, The magistrate well cloaked in furs, That, parting, showed a glimpse beneath Of ample, throat-encircling ruff As white as some wind-gathered wreath Of snow quilled into plait and puff. A few grave words, a question asked; Eyelids that with the answer fell Like falling petals;--form that tasked Brief time;--and so was wrought the spell! Then "Brooklet," Winthrop smiled and said, "Frost's finger on thy lip makes dumb The voice wherewith thou shouldst have sped These lovers on their way. But, come, "Henceforth forever be thou known By memory of this day's fair bride: So shall thy slender music's moan Sweeter into the ocean glide!" Then laughed they all, and sudden beams Of sunshine quivered through the sky. Below the ice, the unheard stream's Clear heart thrilled on in ecstasy; And lo, a visionary blush Stole warmly o'er the voiceless wild; And in her rapt and wintry hush The lonely face of Nature smiled. Ah, Time, what wilt thou? Vanished quite Is all that tender vision now; And, like lost snow-flakes in the night, Mute are the lovers as their vow. And O thou little, careless brook, Hast thou thy tender trust forgot? Her modest memory forsook, Whose name, known once, thou utterest not? Spring wakes the rill's blithe minstrelsy; In willow bough or alder bush Birds sing, o'er golden filigree Of pebbles 'neath the flood's clear gush; But none can tell us of that name More than the "Mary." Men still say "Bride Brook" in honor of her fame; But all the rest has passed away. MAY-ROSE [FOR A BIRTHDAY: MAY 20] On this day to life she came-- May-Rose, my May-Rose! With scented breeze, with flowered flame, She touched the earth and took her name Of May, Rose. Here, to-day, she grows and flowers-- May-Rose, my May-Rose. All my life with light she dowers, And colors all the coming hours With May, Rose! THE SINGING WIRE Ethereal, faint that music rang, As, with the bosom of the breeze, It rose and fell and murmuring sang Aeolian harmonies! I turned; again the mournful chords, In random rhythm lightly flung From off the wire, came shaped in words; And thus meseemed, they sung: "I, messenger of many fates, Strung to the tones of woe or weal, Fine nerve that thrills and palpitates With all men know or feel,-- "Is it so strange that I should wail? Leave me my tearless, sad refrain, When in the pine-top wakes the gale That breathes of coming rain. "There is a spirit in the post; It, too, was once a murmuring tree; Its withered, sad, imprisoned ghost Echoes my melody. "Come close, and lay your listening ear Against the bare and branchless wood. Can you not hear it crooning clear, As though it understood?" I listened to the branchless pole That held aloft the singing wire; I heard its muffled music roll, And stirred with sweet desire: "O wire more soft than seasoned lute, Hast thou no sunlit word for me? Though long to me so coyly mute, Her heart may speak through thee!" I listened, but it was in vain. At first, the wind's old wayward will Drew forth the tearless, sad refrain. That ceased; and all was still. But suddenly some kindling shock Struck flashing through the wire: a bird, Poised on it, screamed and flew; the flock Rose with him; wheeled and whirred. Then to my soul there came this sense: "Her heart has answered unto thine; She comes, to-night. Go, speed thee hence: Meet her; no more repine!" Perhaps the fancy was far-fetched; And yet, perhaps, it hinted true. Ere moonrise, Love, a hand was stretched In mine, that gave me--you! And so more dear to me has grown Than rarest tones swept from the lyre, The minor movement of that moan In yonder singing wire. Nor care I for the will of states, Or aught beside, that smites that string, Since then so close it knit our fates, What time the bird took wing! THE HEART OF A SONG Dear love, let this my song fly to you: Perchance forget it came from me. It shall not vex you, shall not woo you; But in your breast lie quietly. Only beware, when once it tarries I cannot coax it from you, then. This little song my whole heart carries, And ne'er will bear it back again. For if its silent passion grieve you, My heart would then too heavy grow;-- And it can never, never leave you, If joy of yours must with it go! SOUTH-WIND Soft-throated South, breathing of summer's ease (Sweet breath, whereof the violet's life is made!) Through lips moist-warm, as thou hadst lately stayed 'Mong rosebuds, wooing to the cheeks of these Loth blushes faint and maidenly:--rich breeze, Still doth thy honeyed blowing bring a shade Of sad foreboding. In thy hand is laid The power to build or blight the fruit of trees, The deep, cool grass, and field of thick-combed grain. Even so my Love may bring me joy or woe, Both measureless, but either counted gain Since given by her. For pain and pleasure flow Like tides upon us of the self-same sea. Tears are the gems of joy and misery. THE LOVER'S YEAR Thou art my morning, twilight, noon, and eve, My summer and my winter, spring and fall; For Nature left on thee a touch of all The moods that come to gladden or to grieve The heart of Time, with purpose to relieve From lagging sameness. So do these forestall In thee such o'erheaped sweetnesses as pall Too swiftly, and the taster tasteless leave. Scenes that I love to me always remain Beautiful, whether under summer sun Beheld, or, storm-dark, stricken across with rain. So, through all humors, thou 'rt the same sweet one: Doubt not I love thee well in each, who see Thy constant change is changeful constancy. NEW WORLDS With my beloved I lingered late one night. At last the hour when I must leave her came: But, as I turned, a fear I could not name Possessed me that the long sweet evening might Prelude some sudden storm, whereby delight Should perish. What if death, ere dawn, should claim One of us? What, though living, not the same Each should appear to each in morning-light? Changed did I find her, truly, the next day: Ne'er could I see her as of old again. That strange mood seemed to draw a cloud away, And let her beauty pour through every vein Sunlight and life, part of me. Thus the lover With each new morn a new world may discover. NIGHT IN NEW YORK Haunted by unknown feet-- Ways of the midnight hour! Strangely you murmur below me, Strange is your half-silent power. Places of life and of death, Numbered and named as streets, What, through your channels of stone, Is the tide that unweariedly beats? A whisper, a sigh-laden breath, Is all that I hear of its flowing. Footsteps of stranger and foe-- Footsteps of friends, could we meet-- Alike to me in my sorrow; Alike to a life left alone. Yet swift as my heart they throb, They fall thick as tears on the stone: My spirit perchance may borrow New strength from their eager tone. Still ever that slip and slide Of the feet that shuffle or glide, And linger or haste through the populous waste Of the shadowy, dim-lit square! And I know not, from the sound, As I sit and ponder within, The goal to which those steps are bound,-- On hest of mercy, or hest of sin, Or joy's short-measured round; Yet a meaning deep they bear In their vaguely muffled din. Roar of the multitude, Chafe of the million-crowd, To this you are all subdued In the murmurous, sad night-air! Yet whether you thunder aloud, Or hush your tone to a prayer, You chant amain through the modern maze The only epic of our days. Still as death are the places of life; The city seems crumbled and gone, Sunk 'mid invisible deeps-- The city so lately rife With the stir of brain and brawn. Haply it only sleeps; But what if indeed it were dead, And another earth should arise To greet the gray of the dawn? Faint then our epic would wail To those who should come in our stead. But what if that earth were ours? What if, with holier eyes, We should meet the new hope, and not fail? Weary, the night grows pale: With a blush as of opening flowers Dimly the east shines red. Can it be that the morn shall fulfil My dream, and refashion our clay As the poet may fashion his rhyme? Hark to that mingled scream Rising from workshop and mill-- Hailing some marvelous sight; Mighty breath of the hours, Poured through the trumpets of steam; Awful tornado of time, Blowing us whither it will! God has breathed in the nostrils of night, And behold, it is day! THE SONG-SPARROW Glimmers gray the leafless thicket Close beside my garden gate, Where, so light, from post to picket Hops the sparrow, blithe, sedate; Who, with meekly folded wing, Comes to sun himself and sing. It was there, perhaps, last year, That his little house he built; For he seems to perk and peer, And to twitter, too, and tilt The bare branches in between, With a fond, familiar mien. Once, I know, there was a nest, Held there by the sideward thrust Of those twigs that touch his breast; Though 'tis gone now. Some rude gust Caught it, over-full of snow,-- Bent the bush,--and stole it so. Thus our highest holds are lost, In the ruthless winter's wind, When, with swift-dismantling frost, The green woods we dwelt in, thinn'd Of their leafage, grow too cold For frail hopes of summer's mold. But if we, with spring-days mellow, Wake to woeful wrecks of change, And the sparrow's ritornello Scaling still its old sweet range; Can we do a better thing Than, with him, still build and sing? Oh, my sparrow, thou dost breed Thought in me beyond all telling; Shootest through me sunlight, seed, And fruitful blessing, with that welling Ripple of ecstatic rest Gurgling ever from thy breast! And thy breezy carol spurs Vital motion in my blood, Such as in the sap-wood stirs, Swells and shapes the pointed bud Of the lilac; and besets The hollow thick with violets. Yet I know not any charm That can make the fleeting time Of thy sylvan, faint alarm Suit itself to human rhyme: And my yearning rhythmic word Does thee grievous wrong, blithe bird. So, however thou hast wrought This wild joy on heart and brain, It is better left untaught. Take thou up the song again: There is nothing sad afloat On the tide that swells thy throat! I LOVED YOU, ONCE-- And did you think my heart Could keep its love unchanging, Fresh as the buds that start In spring, nor know estranging? Listen! The buds depart: I loved you once, but now-- I love you more than ever. 'T is not the early love; With day and night it alters, And onward still must move Like earth, that never falters For storm or star above. I loved you once; but now-- I love you more than ever. With gifts in those glad days How eagerly I sought you! Youth, shining hope, and praise: These were the gifts I brought you. In this world little stays: I loved you once, but now-- I love you more than ever. A child with glorious eyes Here in our arms half sleeping-- So passion wakeful lies; Then grows to manhood, keeping Its wistful, young surprise: I loved you once, but now-- I love you more than ever. When age's pinching air Strips summer's rich possession, And leaves the branches bare, My secret in confession Still thus with you I'll share: I loved you once, but now-- I love you more than ever. II THE BRIDE OF WAR (ARNOLD'S MARCH TO CANADA, 1775) I The trumpet, with a giant sound, Its harsh war-summons wildly sings; And, bursting forth like mountain-springs, Poured from the hillside camping-ground, Each swift battalion shouting flings Its force in line; where you may see The men, broad-shouldered, heavily Sway to the swing of the march; their heads Dark like the stones in river-beds. Lightly the autumn breezes Play with the shining dust-cloud Rising to the sunset rays From feet of the moving column. Soft, as you listen, comes The echo of iterant drums, Brought by the breezes light From the files that follow the road. A moment their guns have glowed Sun-smitten: then out of sight They suddenly sink, Like men who touch a new grave's brink! II So it was the march began, The march of Morgan's riflemen, Who like iron held the van In unhappy Arnold's plan To win Wolfe's daring fame again. With them, by her husband's side, Jemima Warner, nobly free, Moved more fair than when, a bride, One year since, she strove to hide The blush it was a joy to see. III O distant, terrible forests of Maine, With huge trees numberless as the rain That falls on your lonely lakes! (It falls and sings through the years, but wakes No answering echo of joy or pain.) Your tangled wilderness was tracked With struggle and sorrow and vengeful act 'Gainst Puritan, pagan, and priest. Where wolf and panther and serpent ceased, Man added the horrors your dark maze lacked. The land was scarred with deeds not good, Like the fretting of worms on withered wood. What if its venomous spell Breathed into Arnold a prompting of Hell, With slow empoisoning force indued? IV As through that dreary realm he went, Followed a shape of dark portent:-- Pard-like, of furtive eye, with brain To treason narrowing, Aaron Burr, Moved loyal-seeming in the train, Led by the arch-conspirator. And craven Enos closed the rear, Whose honor's flame died out in fear. Not sooner does the dry bough burn And into fruitless ashes turn, Than he with whispered, false command Drew back the hundreds in his hand; Fled like a shade; and all forsook. Wherever Arnold bent his look, Danger and doubt around him hung; And pale Disaster, shrouded, flung Black omens in his track, as though The fingers of a future woe Already clutched his life, to wring Some expiation for the thing That he was yet to do. A chill Struck helpless many a steadfast will Within the ranks; the very air Rang with a thunder-toned despair: The hills seemed wandering to and fro, Like lost guides blinded by the snow. V Yet faithful still 'mid woe and doubt One woman's loyal heart--whose pain Filled it with pure celestial light-- Shone starry-constant like the North, Or that still radiance beaming forth From sacred lights in some lone fane. But he whose ring Jemima wore, By want and weariness all unstrung, Though strong and honest of heart and young, Shrank at the blast that pierced so frore-- Like a huge, invisible bird of prey Furious launched from Labrador And the granite cliffs of Saguenay! Along the bleak Dead River's banks They forced amain their frozen way; But ever from the thinning ranks Shapes of ice would reel and fall, Human shapes, whose dying prayer Floated, a mute white mist, in air; The crowding snow their pall. Spectre-like Famine drew near; Her doom-word hummed in his ear: Ah, weak were woman's hands to reach And save him from the hellish charms And wizard motion of those arms! Yet only noble womanhood The wife her dauntless part could teach: She shared with him the last dry food And thronged with hopefulness her speech, As when hard by her home the flood Of rushing Conestoga fills Its depth afresh from springtide rills! All, all in vain! For far behind the invading rout These two were left alone; And in the waste their wildest shout Seemed but a smothered groan. Like sheeted wanderers from the grave They moved, and yet seemed not to stir, As icy gorge and sere-leaf'd grove Of withered oak and shrouded fir Were passed, and onward still they strove; While the loud wind's artillery clave The air, and furious sleety rain Swung like a sword above the plain! VI They crossed the hills; they came to where Through an arid gloom the river Chaudiere Fled like a Maenad with outstreaming hair; And there the soldier sank, and died. Death-dumb he fell; yet ere life sped, Child-like on her knee he laid his head. She strove to pray; but all words fled Save those their love had sanctified. And then her voice rose waveringly To the notes of a mother's lullaby; But her song was only "Ah, must thou die?" And to her his eyes death-still replied. VII Dead leaves and stricken boughs She heaped o'er the fallen form-- Wolf nor hawk nor lawless storm Him from his rest should rouse; But first, with solemn vows, Took rifle, pouch, and horn, And the belt that he had worn. Then, onward pressing fast Through the forest rude and vast, Hunger-wasted, fever-parch'd, Many bitter days she marched With bleeding feet that spurned the flinty pain; One thought always throbbing through her brain: "They shall never say, 'He was afraid,'-- They shall never cry, 'The coward stayed!'" VIII Now the wilderness is passed; Now the first hut reached, at last. Ho, dwellers by the frontier trail, Come forth and greet the bride of war! From cabin and rough settlement They come to speed her on her way-- Maidens, whose ruddy cheeks grow pale With pity never felt before; Children that cluster at the door; Mothers, whose toil-worn hands are lent To help, or bid her longer stay. But through them all she passes on, Strangely martial, fair and wan; Nor waits to listen to their cheers That sound so faintly in her ears. For now all scenes around her shift, Like those before a racer's eyes When, foremost sped and madly swift, Quick stretching toward the goal he flies, Yet feels his strength wane with his breath, And purpose fail 'mid fears of death,-- Till, like the flashing of a lamp, Starts forth the sight of Arnold's camp,-- The bivouac flame, and sinuous gleam Of steel,--where, crouched, the army waits, Ere long, beyond the midnight stream, To storm Quebec's ice-mounded gates. IX Then to the leader she was brought, And spoke her simply loyal thought. If, 'mid the shame of after-days, The man who wronged his country's trust (Yet now in worth outweighed all praise) Remembered what this woman wrought, It should have bowed him to the dust! "Humbly my soldier-husband tried To do his part. He served,--and died. But honor did not die. His name And honor--bringing both, I came; And this his rifle, here, to show, While far away the tired heart sleeps, To-day his faith with you he keeps!" Proudly the war bride, ending so, Sank breathless in the dumb white snow. A RUNE OF THE RAIN O many-toned rain! O myriad sweet voices of the rain! How welcome is its delicate overture At evening, when the moist and glowing west Seals all things with cool promise of night's rest. At first it would allure The earth to kinder mood, With dainty flattering Of soft, sweet pattering: Faintly now you hear the tramp Of the fine drops, falling damp On the dry, sun-seasoned ground And the thirsty leaves, resound. But anon, imbued With a sudden, bounding access Of passion, it relaxes All timider persuasion. And, with nor pretext nor occasion, Its wooing redoubles; And pounds the ground, and bubbles In sputtering spray, Flinging itself in a fury Of flashing white away; Till the dusty road, Dank-perfumed, is o'erflowed; And the grass, and the wide-hung trees, The vines, the flowers in their beds,-- The virid corn that to the breeze Rustles along the garden-rows,-- Visibly lift their heads, And, as the quick shower wilder grows, Upleap with answering kisses to the rain. Then, the slow and pleasant murmur Of its subsiding, As the pulse of the storm beats firmer, And the steady rain Drops into a cadenced chiding! Deep-breathing rain, The sad and ghostly noise Wherewith thou dost complain--- Thy plaintive, spiritual voice, Heard thus at close of day Through vaults of twilight gray-- Vexes me with sweet pain; And still my soul is fain To know the secret of that yearning Which in thine utterance I hear returning. Hush, oh hush! Break not the dreamy rush Of the rain: Touch not the marring doubt Words bring to the certainty Of its soft refrain; But let the flying fringes flout Their drops against the pane, And the gurgling throat of the water-spout Groan in the eaves amain. The earth is wedded to the shower; Darkness and awe gird round the bridal hour! II O many-toned rain! It hath caught the strain Of a wilder tune, Ere the same night's noon, When dreams and sleep forsake me, And sudden dread doth wake me, To hear the booming drums of heaven beat The long roll to battle; when the knotted cloud, With an echoing loud, Bursts asunder At the sudden resurrection of the thunder; And the fountains of the air, Unsealed again, sweep, ruining, everywhere, To wrap the world in a watery winding-sheet. III O myriad sweet voices of the rain! When the airy war doth wane, And the storm to the east hath flown, Cloaked close in the whirling wind, There's a voice still left behind In each heavy-hearted tree, Charged with tearful memory Of the vanished rain: From their leafy lashes wet Drip the dews of fresh regret For the lover that's gone! All else is still; Yet the stars are listening, And low o'er the wooded hill Hangs, upon listless wing Outspread, a shape of damp, blue cloud, Watching, like a bird of evil That knows nor mercy nor reprieval, The slow and silent death of the pallid moon. IV But soon, returning duly, Dawn whitens the wet hilltops bluely. To her vision pure and cold The night's wild tale is told On the glistening leaf, in the mid-road pool, The garden mold turned dark and cool, And the meadows' trampled acres. But hark, how fresh the song of the winged music-makers! For now the moanings bitter, Left by the rain, make harmony With the swallow's matin-twitter, And the robin's note, like the wind's in a tree. The infant morning breathes sweet breath, And with it is blent The wistful, wild, moist scent Of the grass in the marsh which the sea nourisheth: And behold! The last reluctant drop of the storm, Wrung from the roof, is smitten warm And turned to gold; For in its veins doth run The very blood of the bold, unsullied sun! BREAKERS Far out at sea there has been a storm, And still, as they roll their liquid acres, High-heaped the billows lower and glisten. The air is laden, moist, and warm With the dying tempest's breath; And, as I walk the lonely strand With sea-weed strewn, my forehead fanned By wet salt-winds, I watch the breakers, Furious sporting, tossed and tumbling, Shatter here with a dreadful rumbling-- Watch, and muse, and vainly listen To the inarticulate mumbling Of the hoary-headed deep; For who may tell me what it saith, Muttering, moaning as in sleep? Slowly and heavily Comes in the sea, With memories of storm o'erfreighted, With heaving heart and breath abated, Pregnant with some mysterious, endless sorrow, And seamed with many a gaping, sighing furrow. Slowly and heavily Grows the green water-mound; But drawing ever nigher, Towering ever higher, Swollen with an inward rage Naught but ruin can assuage, Swift, now, without sound, Creeps stealthily Up to the shore-- Creeps, creeps and undulates; As one dissimulates Till, swayed by hateful frenzy, Through passion grown immense, he Bursts forth hostilely; And rising, a smooth billow-- Its swelling, sunlit dome Thinned to a tumid ledge With keen, curved edge Like the scornful curl Of lips that snarl-- O'ertops itself and breaks Into a raving foam; So springs upon the shore With a hungry roar; Its first fierce anger slakes On the stony shallow; And runs up on the land, Licking the smooth, hard sand, Relentless, cold, yet wroth; And dies in savage froth. Then with its backward swirl The sands and the stones, how they whirl! O, fiercely doth it draw Them to its chasm'd maw, And against it in vain They linger and strain; And as they slip away Into the seething gray Fill all the thunderous air With the horror of their despair, And their wild terror wreak In one hoarse, wailing shriek. But scarce is this done, When another one Falls like the bolt from a bellowing gun, And sucks away the shore As that did before: And another shall smother it o'er. Then there's a lull--a half-hush; And forward the little waves rush, Toppling and hurrying, Each other worrying, And in their haste Run to waste. Yet again is heard the trample Of the surges high and ample: Their dreadful meeting-- The wild and sudden breaking-- The dinting, and battering, and beating, And swift forsaking. And ever they burst and boom, A numberless host; Like heralds of doom To the trembling coast; And ever the tangled spray Is tossed from the fierce affray, And, as with spectral arms That taunt and beckon and mock, And scatter vague alarms, Clasps and unclasps the rock; Listlessly over it wanders; Moodily, madly maunders, And hissingly falls From the glistening walls. So all day along the shore Shout the breakers, green and hoar, Weaving out their weird tune; Till at night the full moon Weds the dark with that ring Of gold that you see her fling On the misty air. Then homeward slow returning To slumbers deep I fare, Filled with an infinite yearning, With thoughts that rise and fall To the sound of the sea's hollow call, Breathed now from white-lit waves that reach Cold fingers o'er the damp, dark beach, To scatter a spray on my dreams; Till the slow and measured rote Brings a drowsy ease To my spirit, and seems To set it soothingly afloat On broad and buoyant seas Of endless rest, lulled by the dirge Of the melancholy surge. BLACKMOUTH, OF COLORADO "Who is Blackmouth?" Well, that's hard to say. Mebbe he might ha' told you, 't other day, If you'd been here. Now,--he's gone away. Come to think on, 't wouldn't ha' been no use If you'd called here earlier. His excuse Always was, whenever folks would ask him Where he hailed from, an' _would_ tease an' task him;-- What d' you s'pose? He just said, "I don' know." That was truth. He came here long ago; But, before that, he'd been born somewhere: The conundrum started first, right there. Little shaver--afore he knew his name Or the place from whereabouts he came-- On a wagon-train the Apaches caught him. Killed the old folks! But this cus'--they brought him Safe away from fire an' knife an' arrows. So'thin' 'bout him must have touched their marrows: They was merciful;--treated him real good; Brought him up to man's age well's they could. Now, d' you b'lieve me, that there likely lad, For all they used him so, went to the bad: Leastways left the red men, that he knew, 'N' come to look for folks like me an' you;-- Goldarned white folks that he never saw. Queerest thing was--though he loved a squaw, 'T was on her account he planned escape; Shook the Apaches, an' took up red tape With the U. S. gov'ment arter a while; Tho' they do say gov'ment may be vile, Mean an' treacherous an' deceivin'. Well, _I_ ain't sayin' our gov'ment is a sell. Bocanegra--Spanish term--I've heard Stands for "Blackmouth." Now this curious bird, Known as Bocanegra, gave his life Most for others. First, he saved his wife; Her I spoke of;--nothin' but a squaw. You might wonder by what sort of law He, a white man born, should come to love her. But 't was somehow so: he _did_ discover Beauty in her, of the holding kind. Some men love the light, an' some the shade. Round that little Indian girl there played Soft an' shadowy tremblings, like the dark Under trees; yet now an' then a spark, Quick 's a firefly, flashing from her eyes, Made you think of summer-midnight skies. She was faithful, too, like midnight stars. As for Blackmouth, if you'd seen the scars Made by wounds he suffered for her sake, You'd have called _him_ true, and no mistake. Growin' up a man, he scarcely met Other white folks; an' his heart was set On this red girl. Yet he said: "We'll wait. You must never be my wedded mate Till we reach the white man's country. There, Everything that's done is fair and square." Patiently they stayed, thro' trust or doubt, Till tow'rds Colorado he could scout Some safe track. He told her: "You go first. All my joy goes with you:--that's the worst! But _I_ wait, to guard or hide the trail." Indians caught him; an' they gave him--hail; Cut an' tortured him, till he was bleeding; Yet they found that still they weren't succeeding. "Where's that squaw?" they asked. "We'll have her blood! Either that, or grind you into mud; Pick your eyes out, too, if you can't see Where she's gone to. Which, now, shall it be? Tell us where she's hid." "I'll show the way," Blackmouth says; an' leads toward dawn of day, Till they come straight out beside the brink Of a precipice that seems to sink Into everlasting gulfs below. "Loose me!" Blackmouth tells 'em. "But go slow." Then they loosed him; and, with one swift leap, Blackmouth swooped right down into the deep;-- Jumped out into space beyond the edge, While the Apaches cowered along the ledge. Seven hundred feet, they say. That's guff! Seventy foot, I tell you, 's 'bout enough. Indians called him a dead antelope; But they couldn't touch the bramble-slope Where he, bruised and stabbed, crawled under brush. _Their_ hand was beat hollow: _he_ held a flush. Day and night he limped or crawled along: Winds blew hot, yet sang to him a song (So he told me, once) that gave him hope. Every time he saw a shadow grope Down the hillsides, from a flying cloud, Something touched his heart that made him proud: Seemed to him he saw her dusky face Watching over him, from place to place. Every time the dry leaves rustled near, Seemed to him she whispered, "Have no fear!" So at last he found her:--they were married. But, from those days on, he always carried Marks of madness; actually--yes!-- Trusted the good faith of these U. S. Indian hate an' deviltry he braved; 'N' scores an' scores of white men's lives he saved. Just for that, his name should be engraved. But it won't be! U. S. gov'ment dreads Men who're taller 'n politicians' heads. All the while, his wife--tho' half despised By the frontier folks that civilized An' converted her--served by his side, Helping faithfully, until she died. Left alone, he lay awake o' nights, Thinkin' what they'd both done for the whites. Then he thought of her, and Indian people; Tryin' to measure, by the church's steeple, Just how Christian our great nation's been Toward those native tribes so full of sin. When he counted all the wrongs we've done To the wild men of the setting sun, Seem'd to him the gov'ment wa'n't quite fair. When its notes came due, it wa'n't right there. U. S. gov'ment promised Indians lots, But at last it closed accounts with shots. Mouth was black, perhaps;--but _he_ was white. Calling gov'ment black don't seem polite: Yet I'll swear, its actions wouldn't show 'Longside Blackmouth's better 'n soot with snow. Yes, sir! Blackmouth took the other side: Honestly for years an' years he tried Getting justice for the Indians. He, Risking life an' limb for you an' me;-- He, the man who proved his good intent By his deeds, an' plainly showed he meant He would die for us,--turned round an' said: "White men have been saved. Now, save the red!" But it didn't pan out. No one would hark. "Let the prairie-dogs an' Blackmouth bark," Said our folks. And--no, he wa'n't resigned, But concluded he had missed his find. "_Where_ is Blackmouth?" That I can't decide. Red an' white men, both, he tried to serve; But I guess, at last, he lost his nerve. Kind o' tired out. See? He had his pride: Gave his life for others, far 's he could, Hoping it would do 'em some small good. Didn't seem to be much use. An' so-- Well; you see that man, dropped in the snow, Where the crowd is? Suicide, they say. Looks as though he had quit work, to stay. Bullet in the breast.--His _body_ 's there; But poor Blackmouth's gone--I don't know where! THE CHILD YEAR I "Dying of hunger and sorrow: I die for my youth I fear!" Murmured the midnight-haunting Voice of the stricken Year. There like a child it perished In the stormy thoroughfare: The snow with cruel whiteness Had aged its flowing hair. Ah, little Year so fruitful, Ah, child that brought us bliss, Must we so early lose you-- Our dear hopes end in this? II "Too young am I, too tender, To bear earth's avalanche Of wrong, that grinds down life-hope, And makes my heart's-blood blanch. "Tell him who soon shall follow Where my tired feet have bled, He must be older, shrewder, Hard, cold, and selfish-bred-- "Or else like me be trampled Under the harsh world's heel. 'Tis weakness to be youthful; 'Tis death to love and feel." III Then saw I how the New Year Came like a scheming man, With icy eyes, his forehead Wrinkled by care and plan For trade and rule and profit. To him the fading child Looked up and cried, "Oh, brother!" But died even while it smiled. Down bent the harsh new-comer To lift with loving arm The wanderer mute and fallen; And lo! his eyes were warm; All changed he grew; the wrinkles Vanished: he, too, looked young-- As if that lost child's spirit Into his breast had sprung. So are those lives not wasted, Too frail to bear the fray. So Years may die, yet leave us Young hearts in a world grown gray. CHRISTENING To-day I saw a little, calm-eyed child,-- Where soft lights rippled and the shadows tarried Within a church's shelter arched and aisled,-- Peacefully wondering, to the altar carried; White-robed and sweet, in semblance of a flower; White as the daisies that adorned the chancel; Borne like a gift, the young wife's natural dower, Offered to God as her most precious hansel. Then ceased the music, and the little one Was silent, with the multitude assembled Hearkening; and when of Father and of Son He spoke, the pastor's deep voice broke and trembled. But she, the child, knew not the solemn words, And suddenly yielded to a troublous wailing, As helpless as the cry of frightened birds Whose untried wings for flight are unavailing. How much the same, I thought, with older folk! The blessing falls: we call it tribulation, And fancy that we wear a sorrow's yoke, Even at the moment of our consecration. Pure daisy-child! Whatever be the form Of dream or doctrine,--or of unbelieving,-- A hand may touch our heads, amid the storm Of grief and doubt, to bless beyond bereaving; A voice may sound, in measured, holy rite Of speech we know not, tho' its earnest meaning Be clear as dew, and sure as starry light Gathered from some far-off celestial gleaning. Wise is the ancient sacrament that blends This weakling cry of children in our churches With strength of prayer or anthem that ascends To Him who hearts of men and children searches; Since we are like the babe, who, soothed again, Within her mother's cradling arm lay nested, Bright as a new bud, now, refreshed by rain: And on her hair, it seemed, heaven's radiance rested. THANKSGIVING TURKEY Valleys lay in sunny vapor, And a radiance mild was shed From each tree that like a taper At a feast stood. Then we said, "Our feast, too, shall soon be spread, Of good Thanksgiving turkey." And already still November Drapes her snowy table here. Fetch a log, then; coax the ember; Fill your hearts with old-time cheer; Heaven be thanked for one more year, And our Thanksgiving turkey! Welcome, brothers--all our party Gathered in the homestead old! Shake the snow off and with hearty Hand-shakes drive away the cold; Else your plate you'll hardly hold Of good Thanksgiving turkey. When the skies are sad and murky, 'Tis a cheerful thing to meet Round this homely roast of turkey-- Pilgrims, pausing just to greet, Then, with earnest grace, to eat A new Thanksgiving turkey. And the merry feast is freighted With its meanings true and deep. Those we've loved and those we've hated, All, to-day, the rite will keep, All, to-day, their dishes heap With plump Thanksgiving turkey. But how many hearts must tingle Now with mournful memories! In the festal wine shall mingle Unseen tears, perhaps from eyes That look beyond the board where lies Our plain Thanksgiving turkey. See around us, drawing nearer, Those faint yearning shapes of air-- Friends than whom earth holds none dearer! No--alas! they are not there: Have they, then, forgot to share Our good Thanksgiving turkey? Some have gone away and tarried Strangely long by some strange wave; Some have turned to foes; we carried Some unto the pine-girt grave: They 'll come no more so joyous-brave To take Thanksgiving turkey. Nay, repine not. Let our laughter Leap like firelight up again. Soon we touch the wide Hereafter, Snow-field yet untrod of men: Shall we meet once more--and when?-- To eat Thanksgiving turkey. BEFORE THE SNOW Autumn is gone: through the blue woodlands bare Shatters the rainy wind. A myriad leaves, Like birds that fly the mournful Northern air. Flutter away from the old forest's eaves. Autumn is gone: as yonder silent rill, Slow eddying o'er thick leaf-heaps lately shed, My spirit, as I walk, moves awed and still, By thronging fancies wild and wistful led. Autumn is gone: alas, how long ago The grapes were plucked, and garnered was the grain! How soon death settles on us, and the snow Wraps with its white alike our graves, our gain! Yea, autumn's gone! Yet it robs not my mood Of that which makes moods dear,--some shoot of spring Still sweet within me; or thoughts of yonder wood We walked in,--memory's rare environing. And, though they die, the seasons only take A ruined substance. All that's best remains In the essential vision that can make One light for life, love, death, their joys, their pains. III YOUTH TO THE POET (TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES) Strange spell of youth for age, and age for youth, Affinity between two forms of truth!-- As if the dawn and sunset watched each other, Like and unlike as children of one mother And wondering at the likeness. Ardent eyes Of young men see the prophecy arise Of what their lives shall be when all is told; And, in the far-off glow of years called old, Those other eyes look back to catch a trace Of what was once their own unshadowed grace. But here in our dear poet both are blended-- Ripe age begun, yet golden youth not ended;-- Even as his song the willowy scent of spring Doth blend with autumn's tender mellowing, And mixes praise with satire, tears with fun, In strains that ever delicately run; So musical and wise, page after page, The sage a minstrel grows, the bard a sage. The dew of youth fills yet his late-sprung flowers, And day-break glory haunts his evening hours. Ah, such a life prefigures its own moral: That first "Last Leaf" is now a leaf of laurel, Which--smiling not, but trembling at the touch-- Youth gives back to the hand that gave so much. EVENING OF DECEMBER 3, 1879. THE SWORD DHAM "How shall we honor the man who creates?" Asked the Bedouin chief, the poet Antar;-- "Who unto the truth flings open our gates, Or fashions new thoughts from the light of a star; Or forges with craft of his finger and brain Some marvelous weapon we copy in vain; Or chants to the winds a wild song that shall wander forever undying? "See! His reward is in envies and hates; In lips that deny, or in stabs that may kill." "Nay," said the smith; "for there's one here who waits Humbly to serve you with unmeasured skill, Sure that no utmost devotion can fail, Offered to _you_, nor unfriended assail The heart of the hero and poet Antar, whose fame is undying!" "Speak," said the chief. Then the smith: "O Antar, It is I who would serve you! I know, by the soul Of the poet within you, no envy can bar The stream of your gratitude,--once let it roll. Listen. The lightning, your camel that slew, _I_ caught, and wrought in this sword-blade for you;-- Sword that no foe shall encounter unhurt, or depart from undying." Burst from the eyes of Antar a swift rain,--Gratitude's glittering drops,--as he threw One shining arm round the smith, like a chain. Closer the man to his bosom he drew; Thankful, caressing, with "Great is my debt." "Yea," said the smith, and his eyelids were wet: "I knew the sword Dham would unite me with you in an honor undying." "So?" asked the chief, as his thumb-point at will Silently over the sword's edge played. --"Ay!" said the smith, "but there's one thing, still: Who is the smiter, shall smite with this blade?" Jealous, their eyes met; and fury awoke. "_I_ am the smiter!" Antar cried. One stroke Rolled the smith's head from his neck, and gave him remembrance undying. "Seek now who may, no search will avail: No man the mate of this weapon shall own!" Yet, in his triumph, the chieftain made wail: "Slain is the craftsman, the one friend alone Able to honor the man who creates. I slew him--_I_, who am poet! O fates, Grant that the envious blade slaying artists shall make them undying!" "AT THE GOLDEN GATE" Before the golden gate she stands, With drooping head, with idle hands Loose-clasped, and bent beneath the weight Of unseen woe. Too late, too late! Those carved and fretted, Starred, resetted Panels shall not open ever To her who seeks the perfect mate. Only the tearless enter there: Only the soul that, like a prayer, No bolt can stay, no wall may bar, Shall dream the dreams grief cannot mar. No door of cedar, Alas, shall lead her Unto the stream that shows forever Love's face like some reflected star! They say that golden barrier hides A realm where deathless spring abides; Where flowers shall fade not, and there floats Thro' moon-rays mild or sunlit motes-- 'Mid dewy alleys That gird the palace, And fountain'd spray's unceasing quiver-- A dulcet rain of song-birds' notes. The sultan lord knew not her name; But to the door that fair shape came: The hour had struck, the way was right, Traced by her lamp's pale, flickering light. But ah, whose error Has brought this terror? Whose fault has foiled her fond endeavor? The gate swings to: her hope takes flight. The harp, the song, the nightingales She hears, beyond. The night-wind wails Without, to sound of feast within, While here she stands, shut out by sin. And be that revel Of angel or devil, She longs to sit beside the giver, That she at last her prize may win. Her lamp has fallen; her eyes are wet; Frozen she stands, she lingers yet; But through the garden's gladness steals A whisper that each heart congeals-- A moan of grieving Beyond relieving, Which makes the proudest of them shiver. And suddenly the sultan kneels! The lamp was quenched; he found her dead, When dawn had turned the threshold red. Her face was calm and sad as fate: His sin, not hers, made her too late. Some think, unbidden She brought him, hidden, A truer bliss that came back never To him, unblest, who closed the gate. CHARITY I Unarmed she goeth; yet her hands Strike deeper awe than steel-caparison'd bands. No fatal hurt of foe she fears,-- Veiled, as with mail, in mist of gentle tears. II 'Gainst her thou canst not bar the door: Like air she enters, where none dared before. Even to the rich she can forgive Their regal selfishness,--and let them live! HELEN AT THE LOOM Helen, in her silent room, Weaves upon the upright loom; Weaves a mantle rich and dark, Purpled over, deep. But mark How she scatters o'er the wool Woven shapes, till it is full Of men that struggle close, complex; Short-clipp'd steeds with wrinkled necks Arching high; spear, shield, and all The panoply that doth recall Mighty war; such war as e'en For Helen's sake is waged, I ween. Purple is the groundwork: good! All the field is stained with blood-- Blood poured out for Helen's sake; (Thread, run on; and shuttle, shake!) But the shapes of men that pass Are as ghosts within a glass, Woven with whiteness of the swan, Pale, sad memories, gleaming wan From the garment's purple fold Where Troy's tale is twined and told. Well may Helen, as with tender Touch of rosy fingers slender She doth knit the story in Of Troy's sorrow and her sin, Feel sharp filaments of pain Reeled off with the well-spun skein, And faint blood-stains on her hands From the shifting, sanguine strands. Gently, sweetly she doth sorrow: What has been must be to-morrow; Meekly to her fate she bows. Heavenly beauties still will rouse Strife and savagery in men: Shall the lucid heavens, then, Lose their high serenity, Sorrowing over what must be? If she taketh to her shame, Lo, they give her not the blame,-- Priam's wisest counselors, Aged men, not loving wars. When she goes forth, clad in white, Day-cloud touched by first moonlight, With her fair hair, amber-hued As vapor by the moon imbued With burning brown, that round her clings, See, she sudden silence brings On the gloomy whisperers Who would make the wrong all hers. So, Helen, in thy silent room, Labor at the storied loom; (Thread, run on; and shuttle, shake!) Let thy aching sorrow make Something strangely beautiful Of this fabric; since the wool Comes so tinted from the Fates, Dyed with loves, hopes, fears, and hates. Thou shalt work with subtle force All thy deep shade of remorse In the texture of the weft, That no stain on thee be left;-- Ay, false queen, shalt fashion grief, Grief and wrong, to soft relief. Speed the garment! It may chance, Long hereafter, meet the glance, Of Oenone; when her lord, Now thy Paris, shall go tow'rd Ida, at his last sad end, Seeking her, his early friend, Who alone can cure his ill, Of all who love him, if she will. It were fitting she should see In that hour thine artistry, And her husband's speechless corse In the garment of remorse! But take heed that in thy work Naught unbeautiful may lurk. Ah, how little signifies Unto thee what fortunes rise, What others fall! Thou still shall rule, Still shalt twirl the colored spool. Though thy yearning woman's eyes Burn with glorious agonies, Pitying the waste and woe, And the heroes falling low In the war around thee, here, Yet the least, quick-trembling tear 'Twixt thy lids shall dearer be Than life, to friend or enemy. There are people on the earth Doomed with doom of too great worth. Look on Helen not with hate, Therefore, but compassionate. If she suffer not too much, Seldom does she feel the touch Of that fresh, auroral joy Lighter spirits may decoy To their pure and sunny lives. Heavy honey 'tis she hives. To her sweet but burdened soul All that here she may control-- What of bitter memories, What of coming fate's surmise, Paris' passion, distant din Of the war now drifting in To her quiet--idle seems; Idle as the lazy gleams Of some stilly water's reach, Seen from where broad vine-leaves pleach A heavy arch; and, looking through, Far away the doubtful blue Glimmers, on a drowsy day, Crowded with the sun's rich gray;-- As she stands within her room, Weaving, weaving at the loom. THE CASKET OF OPALS I Deep, smoldering colors of the land and sea Burn in these stones, that, by some mystery, Wrap fire in sleep and never are consumed. Scarlet of daybreak, sunset gleams half spent In thick white cloud; pale moons that may have lent Light to love's grieving; rose-illumined snows, And veins of gold no mine depth ever gloomed; All these, and green of thin-edged waves, are there. I think a tide of feeling through them flows With blush and pallor, as if some being of air,-- Some soul once human,--wandering, in the snare Of passion had been caught, and henceforth doomed In misty crystal here to lie entombed. And so it is, indeed. Here prisoned sleep The ardors and the moods and all the pain That once within a man's heart throbbed. He gave These opals to the woman whom he loved; And now, like glinting sunbeams through the rain, The rays of thought that through his spirit moved Leap out from these mysterious forms again. The colors of the jewels laugh and weep As with his very voice. In them the wave Of sorrow and joy that, with a changing sweep, Bore him to misery or else made him blest Still surges in melodious, wild unrest. So when each gem in place I touch and take, It murmurs what he thought or what he spake. FIRST OPAL My heart is like an opal Made to lie upon your breast In dreams of ardor, clouded o'er By endless joy's unrest. And forever it shall haunt you With its mystic, changing ray: Its light shall live when we lie dead, With hearts at the heart of day! SECOND OPAL If, from a careless hold, One gem of these should fall, No power of art or gold Its wholeness could recall: The lustrous wonder dies In gleams of irised rain, As light fades out from the eyes When a soul is crushed by pain. Take heed that from your hold My love you do not cast: Dim, shattered, vapor-cold-- That day would be its last. II THIRD OPAL _He won her love; and so this opal sings With all its tints in maze, that seem to quake And leap in light, as if its heart would break:_ Gleam of the sea, Translucent air, Where every leaf alive with glee Glows in the sun without shadow of grief-- You speak of spring, When earth takes wing And sunlight, sunlight is everywhere! Radiant life, Face so fair-- Crowned with the gracious glory of wife-- Your glance lights all this happy day, Your tender glow And murmurs low Make miracle, miracle, everywhere. Earth takes wing With birds--do I care Whether of sorrow or joy they sing? No; for they make not my life nor destroy! My soul awakes At a smile that breaks In sun; and sunlight is everywhere! III _Then dawned a mood of musing thoughtfulness; As if he doubted whether he could bless Her wayward spirit, through each fickle hour, With love's serenity of flawless power, Or she remain a vision, as when first She came to soothe his fancy all athirst._ FOURTH OPAL We were alone: the perfumed night, Moonlighted, like a flower Grew round us and exhaled delight To bless that one sweet hour. You stood where, 'mid the white and gold, The rose-fire through the gloom Touched hair and cheek and garment's fold With soft, ethereal bloom. And when the vision seemed to swerve, 'T was but the flickering shine That gave new grace, a lovelier curve, To every dream-like line. O perfect vision! Form and face Of womanhood complete! O rare ideal to embrace And hold, from head to feet! Could I so hold you ever--could Your eye still catch the glow Of mine--it were an endless good: Together we should grow One perfect picture of our love!... Alas, the embers old Fell, and the moonlight fell, above-- Dim, shattered, vapor-cold. IV _What ill befell these lovers? Shall I say? What tragedy of petty care and sorrow? Ye all know, who have lived and loved: if nay, Then those will know who live and love tomorrow. But here at least is what this opal said, The fifth in number: and the next two bore My fancy toward that dim world of the dead, Where waiting spirits muse the past life o'er_: FIFTH OPAL I dreamed my kisses on your hair Turned into roses. Circling bloom Crowned the loose-lifted tresses there. "O Love," I cried, "forever Dwell wreathed, and perfume-haunted By my heart's deep honey-breath!" But even as I bending looked, I saw The roses were not; and, instead, there lay Pale, feathered flakes and scentless Ashes upon your hair! SIXTH OPAL The love I gave, the love I gave, Wherewith I sought to win you-- Ah, long and close to you it clave With life and soul and sinew! My gentleness with scorn you cursed: You knew not what I gave. The strongest man may die of thirst: My love is in its grave! SEVENTH OPAL You say these jewels were accurst-- With evil omen fraught. You should have known it from the first! This was the truth they taught: No treasured thing in heaven or earth Holds potency more weird Than our hearts hold, that throb from birth With wavering flames insphered. And when from me the gems you took, On that strange April day, My nature, too, I gave, that shook With passion's fateful play. The mingled fate my love should give In these mute emblems shone, That more intensely burn and live-- While I am turned to stone. V _Listen now to what is said By the eighth opal, flashing red And pale, by turns, with every breath-- The voice of the lover after death._ EIGHTH OPAL I did not know before That we dead could rise and walk; That our voices, as of yore, Would blend in gentle talk. I did not know her eyes Would so haunt mine after death, Or that she could hear my sighs, Low as the harp-string's breath. But, ah, last night we met! From our stilly trance we rose, Thrilled with all the old regret-- The grieving that God knows. She asked: "Am I forgiven?"-- "And dost thou forgive?" I said, Ah! how long for joy we'd striven! But now our hearts were dead. Alas, for the lips I kissed And the sweet hope, long ago! On her grave chill hangs the mist; On mine, white lies the snow. VI _Hearkening still, I hear this strain From the ninth opal's varied vein:_ NINTH OPAL In the mountains of Mexico, Where the barren volcanoes throw Their fierce peaks high to the sky, With the strength of a tawny brute That sees heaven but to defy, And the soft, white hand of the snow Touches and makes them mute,-- Firm in the clasp of the ground The opal is found. By the struggle of frost and fire Created, yet caught in a spell From which only human desire Can free it, what passion profound In its dim, sweet bosom may dwell! So was it with us, I think, Whose souls were formed on the brink Of a crater, where rain and flame Had mingled and crystallized. One venturous day Love came; Found us; and bound with a link Of gold the jewels he prized. The agonies old of the earth, Its plenitude and its dearth, The torrents of flame and of tears, All these in our souls were inborn. And we must endure through the years The glory and burden of birth That filled us with fire of the morn. Let the diamond lie in its mine; Let ruby and topaz shine; The beryl sleep, and the emerald keep Its sunned-leaf green! We know The joy of sufferings deep That blend with a love divine, And the hidden warmth of the snow! TENTH OPAL Colors that tremble and perish, Atoms that follow the law, You mirror the truth which we cherish, You mirror the spirit we saw. Glow of the daybreak tender, Flushed with an opaline gleam, And passionate sunset-splendor-- Ye both but embody a dream. Visions of cloud-hidden glory Breaking from sources of light Mimic the mist of life's story. Mingled of scarlet and white. Sunset-clouds iridescent, Opals, and mists of the day, Are thrilled alike with the crescent Delight of a deathless ray Shot through the hesitant trouble Of particles floating in space, And touching each wandering bubble With tints of a rainbowed grace. So through the veil of emotion Trembles the light of the truth; And so may the light of devotion Glorify life--age and youth. Sufferings,--pangs that seem cruel,-- These are but atoms adrift: The light streams through, and a jewel Is formed for us, Heaven's own gift! LOVE THAT LIVES Dear face--bright, glinting hair; Dear life, whose heart is mine-- The thought of you is prayer, The love of you divine. In starlight, or in rain; In the sunset's shrouded glow; Ever, with joy or pain, To you my quick thoughts go Like winds or clouds, that fleet Across the hungry space Between, and find you, sweet, Where life again wins grace. Now, as in that once young Year that so softly drew My heart to where it clung, I long for, gladden in you. And when in the silent hours I whisper your sacred name, Like an altar-fire it showers My blood with fragrant flame! Perished is all that grieves; And lo, our old-new joys Are gathered as in sheaves, Held in love's equipoise. Ours is the love that lives; Its springtime blossoms blow 'Mid the fruit that autumn gives, And its life outlasts the snow. IV BLUEBIRD'S GREETING Over the mossy walls, Above the slumbering fields Where yet the ground no fruitage yields, Save as the sunlight falls In dreams of harvest-yellow, What voice remembered calls,-- So bubbling fresh, so soft and mellow? A darting, azure-feathered arrow From some lithe sapling's bow-curve, fleet The bluebird, springing light and narrow, Sings in flight, with gurglings sweet: "Out of the South I wing, Blown on the breath of Spring: The little faltering song That in my beak I bring Some maiden shall catch and sing, Filling it with the longing And the blithe, unfettered thronging Of her spirit's blossoming. "Warbling along In the sunny weather, Float, my notes, Through the sunny motes, Falling light as a feather! Flit, flit, o'er the fertile land 'Mid hovering insects' hums; Fall into the sower's hand: Then, when his harvest comes, The seed and the song shall have flowered together. "From the Coosa and Altamaha, With a thought of the dim blue Gulf; From the Roanoke and Kanawha; From the musical Southern rivers, O'er the land where the fierce war-wolf Lies slain and buried in flowers; I come to your chill, sad hours And the woods where the sunlight shivers. I come like an echo: 'Awake!' I answer the sky and the lake And the clear, cool color that quivers In all your azure rills. I come to your wan, bleak hills For a greeting that rises dearer, To homely hearts draws me nearer Than the warmth of the rice-fields or wealth of the ranches. "I will charm away your sorrow, For I sing of the dewy morrow: My melody sways like the branches My light feet set astir: I bring to the old, as I hover, The days and the joys that were, And hope to the waiting lover! Then, take my note and sing, Filling it with the longing And the blithe, unfettered thronging Of your spirit's blossoming!" Not long that music lingers: Like the breath of forgotten singers It flies,--or like the March-cloud's shadow That sweeps with its wing the faded meadow Not long! And yet thy fleeting, Thy tender, flute-toned greeting, O bluebird, wakes an answer that remains The purest chord in all the year's refrains. THE VOICE OF THE VOID I warn, like the one drop of rain On your face, ere the storm; Or tremble in whispered refrain With your blood, beating warm. I am the presence that ever Baffles your touch's endeavor,-- Gone like the glimmer of dust Dispersed by a gust. I am the absence that taunts you, The fancy that haunts you; The ever unsatisfied guess That, questioning emptiness, Wins a sigh for reply. Nay; nothing am I, But the flight of a breath-- For I am Death! "O WHOLESOME DEATH" O wholesome Death, thy sombre funeral-car Looms ever dimly on the lengthening way Of life; while, lengthening still, in sad array, My deeds in long procession go, that are As mourners of the man they helped to mar. I see it all in dreams, such as waylay The wandering fancy when the solid day Has fallen in smoldering ruins, and night's star, Aloft there, with its steady point of light Mastering the eye, has wrapped the brain in sleep. Ah, when I die, and planets hold their flight Above my grave, still let my spirit keep Sometimes its vigil of divine remorse, 'Midst pity, praise, or blame heaped o'er my corse! INCANTATION When the leaves, by thousands thinned, A thousand times have whirled in the wind, And the moon, with hollow cheek, Staring from her hollow height, Consolation seems to seek From the dim, reechoing night; And the fog-streaks dead and white Lie like ghosts of lost delight O'er highest earth and lowest sky; Then, Autumn, work thy witchery! Strew the ground with poppy-seeds, And let my bed be hung with weeds, Growing gaunt and rank and tall, Drooping o'er me like a pall. Send thy stealthy, white-eyed mist Across my brow to turn and twist Fold on fold, and leave me blind To all save visions in the mind. Then, in the depth of rain-fed streams I shall slumber, and in dreams Slide through some long glen that burns With a crust of blood-red ferns And brown-withered wings of brake Like a burning lava-lake;-- So, urged to fearful, faster flow By the awful gasp, "Hahk! hahk!" of the crow, Shall pass by many a haunted rood Of the nutty, odorous wood; Or, where the hemlocks lean and loom, Shall fill my heart with bitter gloom; Till, lured by light, reflected cloud, I burst aloft my watery shroud, And upward through the ether sail Far above the shrill wind's wail;-- But, falling thence, my soul involve With the dust dead flowers dissolve; And, gliding out at last to sea, Lulled to a long tranquillity, The perfect poise of seasons keep With the tides that rest at neap. So must be fulfilled the rite That giveth me the dead year's might; And at dawn I shall arise A spirit, though with human eyes, A human form and human face; And where'er I go or stay, There the summer's perished grace Shall be with me, night and day. FAMINE AND HARVEST [PLYMOUTH PLANTATION: 1622] The strong and the tender, The young and the old, Unto Death we must render;-- Our silver, our gold. To break their long sleeping No voice may avail: They hear not our weeping-- Our famished love's wail. Yea, those whom we cherish Depart, day by day. Soon we, too, shall perish And crumble to clay. And the vine and the berry Above us will bloom; The wind shall make merry While we lie in gloom. Fear not! Though thou starvest, Provision is made: God gathers His harvest When our hopes fade! THE CHILD'S WISH GRANTED Do you remember, my sweet, absent son, How in the soft June days forever done You loved the heavens so warm and clear and high; And when I lifted you, soft came your cry,-- "Put me 'way up--'way, 'way up in blue sky"? I laughed and said I could not;--set you down, Your gray eyes wonder-filled beneath that crown Of bright hair gladdening me as you raced by. Another Father now, more strong than I, Has borne you voiceless to your dear blue sky. THE FLOWN SOUL (FRANCIS HAWTHORNE LATHROP) FEBRUARY 6, 1881 Come not again! I dwell with you Above the realm of frost and dew, Of pain and fire, and growth to death. I dwell with you where never breath Is drawn, but fragrance vital flows From life to life, even as a rose Unseen pours sweetness through each vein And from the air distills again. You are my rose unseen; we live Where each to other joy may give In ways untold, by means unknown And secret as the magnet-stone. For which of us, indeed, is dead? No more I lean to kiss your head-- The gold-red hair so thick upon it; Joy feels no more the touch that won it When o'er my brow your pearl-cool palm In tenderness so childish, calm, Crept softly, once. Yet, see, my arm Is strong, and still my blood runs warm. I still can work, and think and weep. But all this show of life I keep Is but the shadow of your shine, Flicker of your fire, husk of your vine; Therefore, you are not dead, nor I Who hear your laughter's minstrelsy. Among the stars your feet are set; Your little feet are dancing yet Their rhythmic beat, as when on earth. So swift, so slight are death and birth! Come not again, dear child. If thou By any chance couldst break that vow Of silence at thy last hour made; If to this grim life unafraid Thou couldst return, and melt the frost Wherein thy bright limbs' power was lost; Still would I whisper--since so fair This silent comradeship we share-- Yes, whisper 'mid the unbidden rain Of tears: "Come not, come not again!" SUNSET AND SHORE Birds that like vanishing visions go winging, White, white in the flame of the sunset's burning, Fly with the wild spray the billows are flinging, Blend, blend with the nightfall, and fade, unreturning! Fire of the heaven, whose splendor all-glowing Soon, soon shall end, and in darkness must perish; Sea-bird and flame-wreath and foam lightly blowing;-- Soon, soon tho' we lose you, your beauty we cherish. Visions may vanish, the sweetest, the dearest; Hush'd, hush'd be the voice of love's echo replying; Spirits may leave us that clung to us nearest:-- Love, love, only love dwells with us undying! THE PHOEBE-BIRD (A REPLY) Yes, I was wrong about the phoebe-bird. Two songs it has, and both of them I've heard: I did not know those strains of joy and sorrow Came from one throat, or that each note could borrow Strength from the other, making one more brave And one as sad as rain-drops on a grave. But thus it is. Two songs have men and maidens: One is for hey-day, one is sorrow's cadence. Our voices vary with the changing seasons Of life's long year, for deep and natural reasons. Therefore despair not. Think not you have altered, If, at some time, the gayer note has faltered. We are as God has made us. Gladness, pain, Delight and death, and moods of bliss or bane, With love and hate, or good and evil--all, At separate times, in separate accents call; Yet 't is the same heart-throb within the breast That gives an impulse to our worst and best. I doubt not when our earthly cries are ended, The Listener finds them in one music blended. A STRONG CITY For them that hope in Thee.... Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy face, from the disturbance of men. Thou shalt protect them in Thy tabernacle from the contradiction of tongues. Blessed be the Lord, for He hath shewn His wonderful mercy to me in a fortified city.--_Psalm xxx._ Beauty and splendor were on every hand: Yet strangely crawled dark shadows down the lanes, Twisting across the fields, like dragon-shapes That smote the air with blackness, and devoured The life of light, and choked the smiling world Till it grew livid with a sudden age-- The death of hope. O squandered happiness; Vain dust of misery powdering life's fresh flower! The sky was holy, but the earth was not. Men ruled, but ruled in vain; since wretchedness Of soul and body, for the mass of men, Made them like dead leaves in an idle drift Around the plough of progress as it drove Sharp through the glebe of modern days, to plant A civilized world. Ay; civilized--but not Christian! Civilization is a clarion voice Crying in the wilderness; a prophet-word Still unfulfilled. And lo, along the ways Crowded with nations, there arose a strife; Disturbance of men; tongues contradicting tongues; Madness of noise, that scattered multitudes; A trample of blind feet, beneath whose tread Truth's bloom shrank withered; while incessant mouths Howled "Progress! Change!"--as though all moods of change Were fiats of truth eternal. 'Mid the din Two pilgrims, faring forward, saw the light In a strong city, fortified, and moved Patiently thither. "All your steps are vain," Cried scoffers. "There is mercy in the world; But chiefly mercy of man to man. For we Are good. We help our fellows, when we can. Our charity is enormous. Look at these Long rolls of rich subscriptions. We are good. 'T is true, God's mercy plays a part in things; But most is left to us; and we judge well. Stay with us in the field of endless war! Here only is health. Yon city fortified You dream of--why, its ramparts are as dust. It gives no safety. One assaulting sweep Of our huge cohorts would annul its power-- Crush it in atoms; make it meaningless." The pilgrims listened; but onward still they moved. They passed the gates; they stood upon a hill Enclosed, but in that strong enclosure free! Though earth opposed, they held the key to heaven. On came the turbulent multitude in war, Dashing against the city's walls; and swept Through all the streets, and robbed and burned and killed. The walls were strong; the gates were always open. And so the invader rioted, and was proud. But sudden, in seeming triumph, the enemy host Was stricken with death; and still the city stayed. Skyward the souls of its defenders rose, Returning soon in mist intangible That flashed with radiance of half-hidden swords; And those who still assaulted--though they crept Into the inmost vantage-points, with craft-- Fell, blasted namelessly by this veiled flash, Even as they shouted out, "The place is ours!" So those two pilgrims dwelt there, fortified In that strong city men had thought so frail. They died, and lived again. Fiercest attack Was as a perfumed breeze to them, which drew Their souls still closer unto God. And there Beauty and splendor bloomed untouched. The stars Spoke to them, bidding them be of good cheer, Though hostile hordes rushed over them in blood. And still the prayers of all that people rose As incense mingled with music of their hearts. For Christ was with them: angels were their aid. What though the enemy used their open gates? The children of the citadel conquered all Their conquerors, smiting them with the pure light That shone in that strong city fortified. THREE DOVES Seaward, at morn, my doves flew free; At eve they circled back to me. The first was Faith; the second, Hope; The third--the whitest--Charity. Above the plunging surge's play Dream-like they hovered, day by day. At last they turned, and bore to me Green signs of peace thro' nightfall gray. No shore forlorn, no loveliest land Their gentle eyes had left unscanned, 'Mid hues of twilight-heliotrope Or daybreak fires by heaven-breath fanned. Quick visions of celestial grace,-- Hither they waft, from earth's broad space, Kind thoughts for all humanity. They shine with radiance from God's face. Ah, since my heart they choose for home, Why loose them,--forth again to roam? Yet look: they rise! with loftier scope They wheel in flight toward heaven's pure dome. Fly, messengers that find no rest Save in such toil as makes man blest! Your home is God's immensity: We hold you but at his behest. V ARISE, AMERICAN! The soul of a nation awaking,-- High visions of daybreak,--I saw; A people renewed; the forsaking Of sin, and the worship of law. Sing, pine-tree; shout, to the hoarser Response of the jubilant sea! Rush, river, foam-flecked like a courser; Warn all who are honest and free! Our birth-star beckons to trial The faith of the far-fled years, Ere scorn was our share, and denial, Or laughter for patriots' tears. And Faith shall come forth the finer, From trampled thickets of fire, And the orient open diviner Before her, the heaven rise higher. O deep, sweet eyes, but severer Than steel! See you yet, where he comes-- Our hero? Bend your glance nearer; Speak, Faith! For, as wakening drums, Your voice shall set his blood stirring; His heart shall grow strong like the main When the rowelled winds are spurring, And the broad tides landward strain. O hero, art thou among us? O helper, hidest thou, still? Why hast thou no anthem sung us, Why workest thou not our will? For a smirk of the face, or a favor, Still shelters the cheat where he crawls; And the truth we began with needs braver Upholders, and loftier walls. Too long has the land's soul slumbered In wearying dreams of gain, With prosperous falsity cumbered And dulled with bribes, as a bane. Yes, cunning is civilized evil, And crafty the gold-baited snare; But virtue, in fiery upheaval, May cast fine device to the air. Bring us the simple and stalwart Purpose of earlier days. Come! Far better than all were't-- Our precepts, our pride, and our lays-- That the people in spirit should tremble With heed of the God-given Word; That we cease from our boast, nor dissemble, But follow where truth's voice is heard. Come to us, mountain-dweller, Leader, wherever thou art; Skilled from thy cradle, a queller Of serpents, and sound to the heart! Modest and mighty and tender; Man of an iron mold; Honest, fine-grained, our defender;-- American-souled! THE NAME OF WASHINGTON [Read before the Sons of the Revolution, New-York, February 22, 1887] Sons of the youth and the truth of the nation, Ye that are met to remember the man Whose valor gave birth to a people's salvation, Honor him now; set his name in the van. A nobleness to try for, A name to live and die for-- The name of Washington. Calmly his face shall look down through the ages-- Sweet yet severe with a spirit of warning; Charged with the wisdom of saints and of sages; Quick with the light of a life-giving morning. A majesty to try for, A name to live and die for-- The name of Washington! Though faction may rack us, or party divide us, And bitterness break the gold links of our story, Our father and leader is ever beside us. Live, and forgive! But forget not the glory Of him whose height we try for, A name to live and die for-- The name of Washington! Still in his eyes shall be mirrored our fleeting Days, with the image of days long ended; Still shall those eyes give, immortally, greeting Unto the souls from his spirit descended. His grandeur we will try for, His name we 'll live and die for-- The name of Washington! GRANT'S DIRGE I Ah, who shall sound the hero's funeral march? And what shall be the music of his dirge? No single voice may chant the Nation's grief, No formal strain can give its woe relief. The pent-up anguish of the loyal wife, The sobs of those who, nearest in this life, Still hold him closely in the life beyond;-- These first, with threnody of memories fond. But look! Forth press a myriad mourners thronging, With hearts that throb in sorrow's exaltation, Moved by a strange, impassioned, hopeless longing To serve him with their love's last ministration. Make way! Make way, from wave-bound verge to verge Of all our land, that this great multitude With lamentation proud albeit subdued, Deep murmuring like the ocean's mighty surge, May pass beneath the heavens' triumphal arch! II What is the sound we hear? Never the fall of a tear; For grief repressed In every breast More honors the man we revere. Rising from East and West, There echoes afar or near-- From the cool, sad North and the burning South-- A sound long since grown dear, When brave ranks faced the cannon's mouth And died for a faith austere: The tread of marching men, A steady tramp of feet That never flinched nor faltered when The drums of duty beat. With sable hats whose shade Falls from the cord of gold On every time-worn face; With tattered flags, in black enrolled, Beneath whose folds they warred of old; Forward, firmly arrayed, With a sombre, martial grace; So the Grand Army moves Commanded by the dead, Following him whose name it loves, Whose voice in life its footsteps led. III Those that in the combat perished,-- Hostile shapes and forms of friends,-- Those we hated, those we cherished, Meet the pageant where it ends. Flash of steel and tears forgiving Blend in splendor. Hark, the knell! Comrades ghostly join the living-- Dreaming, chanting: "All is well." They receive the General sleeping, Him of spirit pure and large: Him they draw into their keeping Evermore, in faithful charge. IV Pass on, O steps, with your dead, sad note! For a people's homage is in the sound; And the even tread, in measured rote, As a leader is laid beneath the ground, Rumors the hum of a pilgrim train That shall trample the earth as tramples the rain, Seeking the door of the hero's tomb, Seeking him where he lies low in the gloom, Paying him tribute of worker and mage, Through age on age! V Tall pine-tree on McGregor's height, How didst thou grow to such a lofty bearing, For song of bird or beat of breeze uncaring, There where thy shadow touched the dying brow? Were all thy sinewy fibres shaped aright? Was there no flaw? With what mysterious daring Didst thou put forth each murmuring, odorous bough And trust it to the frail support of air? We only know that thou art now supreme: We know not how thou grewest so tall and fair. So from the unnoticed, humble earth arose The sturdy man whom we, bewailing, deem Worthy the wondrous name fame's far voice blows. And lo! his ancient foes Rise up to praise the plan Of modest grandeur, loyal trust, And generous power from man to man, That lifted him above the formless dust. O heart by kindliness betrayed, O noble spirit snared and strayed-- Unmatched, upright thou standest still As that firm pine-tree rooted on the hill! VI No paragon was he, But moulded in the rough With every fault and scar Ingrained, and plain for all to see: Even as the rocks and mountains are, Common perhaps, yet wrought of such true stuff That common nature in his essence grew To something which till then it never knew; Ay, common as a vast, refreshing wind That sweeps the continent, or as some star Which, 'mid a million, shines out well-defined: With honest soul on duty bent, A servant-soldier, President; Meekest when crowned with victory, And greatest in adversity! VII A silent man whom, strangely, fate Made doubly silent ere he died, His speechless spirit rules us still; And that deep spell of influence mute, The majesty of dauntless will That wielded hosts and saved the State, Seems through the mist our spirits yet to thrill. His heart is with us! From the root Of toil and pain and brave endurance Has sprung at last the perfect fruit, The treasure of a rich assurance That men who nobly work and live A greater gift than life may give; Yielding a promise for all time, Which other men of newer date Surely redeem in deeds sublime. Forerunner of a valiant race, His voiceless spirit still reminds us Of ever-waiting, silent duty: The bond of faith wherewith he binds us Shall hold us ready hour by hour To serve the sacred, guiding power Whene'er it calls, where'er it finds us, With loyalty that, like a folded flower, Blooms at a touch in proud, full-circled beauty. VIII Like swelling river waves that strain, Onward the people crowd In serried, billowing train. And those so slow to yield, On many a hard fought field, Muster together Like a dark cloud In summer weather, Whose threatening thunders suddenly are stilled,-- And all the world is filled With smiling rest. Victory to him was pain, Till he had won his enemies by love; Had leashed the eagle and unloosed the dove; Setting on war's red roll the argent seal of peace. So here they form their solid ranks again, But in no mood of hatred or disdain. They say: "Thou who art fallen at last, Beleaguered stealthily, o'ercome by death, Thy conqueror now shall be magnanimous Even as thou wast to us. But not for thee can we blot out the past: We would not, if we might, forget thy last Great act of war, that with a gentle hand Brought back our hearts unto the mighty mother, For whose defence and honor armed we stand. We hail thee brother, And so salute thy name with holy breath!" IX Land of the hurricane! Land of the avalanche! Land of tempest and rain; Of the Southern sun and of frozen peaks; Stretching from main to main;-- Land of the cypress-glooms; Land of devouring looms; Land of the forest and ranch;-- Hush every sound to-day Save the burden of swarms that assemble Their reverence dear to pay Unto him who saved us all! Ye masses that mourn with bended head, Beneath whose feet the ground doth tremble With weight of woe and a sacred dread-- Lift up the pall That to us shall remain as a warrior's banner! Gaze once more on the fast closed eyes; Mark once the mouth that never speaks; Think of the man and his quiet manner: Weep if you will; then go your way; But remember his face as it looks to the skies, And the dumb appeal wherewith it seeks To lead us on, as one should say, "Arise-- Go forth to meet your country's noblest day!" X Ah, who shall sound the hero's funeral march? And what shall be the music of his dirge? Let generations sing, as they emerge And pass beneath the heavens' trumphal arch! BATTLE DAYS I Veteran memories rally to muster Here at the call of the old battle days: Cavalry clatter and cannon's hoarse bluster: All the wild whirl of the fight's broken maze: Clangor of bugle and flashing of sabre, Smoke-stifled flags and the howl of the shell, With earth for a rest place and death for a neighbor, And dreams of a charge and the deep rebel yell. Stern was our task in the field where the reaping Spared the ripe harvest, but laid our men low: Grim was the sorrow that held us from weeping: Awful the rush of the strife's ebb and flow. Swift came the silence--our enemy hiding Sudden retreat in the cloud-muffled night: Swift as a hawk-pounce our hill-and-dale riding; Hundreds on hundreds we caught in their flight! Hard and incessant the danger and trial, Laid on our squadrons, that gladly bore all, Scorning to meet with delay or denial The summons that rang in the battle-days' call! II Wild days that woke to glory or despair, And smote the coward soul with sudden shame, But unto those whose hearts were bold to dare All things for honor brought eternal fame:-- Lost days, undying days! With undiminished rays Here now on us look down, Illumining our crown Of leaves memorial, wet with tender dew For those who nobly died In fierce self-sacrifice of service true, Rapt in pure fire of life-disdaining pride; Men of this soil, who stood Firm for their country's good, From night to night, from sun to sun, Till o'er the living and the slain A woful dawn that streamed with rain Wept for their victory dearly won. III Days of the future, prophetic days,-- Silence engulfs the roar of war; Yet, through all coming years, repeat the praise Of those leal comrades brave, who come no more! And when our voices cease, Long, long renew the chant, the anthem proud, Which, echoing clear and loud Through templed aisles of peace, Like blended tumults of a joyous chime, Shall tell their valor to a later time. Shine on this field; and in the eyes of men Rekindle, if the need shall come again, That answering light that springs In beaconing splendor from the soul, and brings Promise of faith well kept and deed sublime! KEENAN'S CHARGE [CHANCELLORSVILLE, MAY, 1863] I The sun had set; The leaves with dew were wet: Down fell a bloody dusk On the woods, that second of May, Where Stonewall's corps, like a beast of prey, Tore through, with angry tusk. "They've trapped us, boys!"-- Rose from our flank a voice. With a rush of steel and smoke On came the rebels straight, Eager as love and wild as hate; And our line reeled and broke; Broke and fled. No one stayed--but the dead! With curses, shrieks, and cries, Horses and wagons and men Tumbled back through the shuddering glen, And above us the fading skies. There's one hope, still-- Those batteries parked on the hill! "Battery, wheel!" ('mid the roar) "Pass pieces; fix prolonge to fire Retiring. Trot!" In the panic dire A bugle rings "Trot"--and no more. The horses plunged, The cannon lurched and lunged, To join the hopeless rout. But suddenly rode a form Calmly in front of the human storm, With a stern, commanding shout: "Align those guns!" (We knew it was Pleasonton's.) The cannoneers bent to obey, And worked with a will at his word: And the black guns moved as if _they_ had heard. But ah, the dread delay! "To wait is crime; O God, for ten minutes' time!" The General looked around. There Keenan sat, like a stone, With his three hundred horse alone, Less shaken than the ground. "Major, your men?" "Are soldiers, General." "Then, Charge, Major! Do your best: Hold the enemy back, at all cost, Till my guns are placed;--else the army is lost. You die to save the rest!" II By the shrouded gleam of the western skies, Brave Keenan looked into Pleasonton's eyes For an instant--clear, and cool, and still; Then, with a smile, he said: "I will." "Cavalry, charge!" Not a man of them shrank. Their sharp, full cheer, from rank on rank, Rose joyously, with a willing breath--- Rose like a greeting hail to death. Then forward they sprang, and spurred and clashed; Shouted the officers, crimson-sash'd; Rode well the men, each brave as his fellow, In their faded coats of the blue and yellow; And above in the air, with an instinct true, Like a bird of war their pennon flew. With clank of scabbards and thunder of steeds, And blades that shine like sunlit reeds, And strong brown faces bravely pale For fear their proud attempt shall fail, Three hundred Pennsylvanians close On twice ten thousand gallant foes. Line after line the troopers came To the edge of the wood that was ring'd with flame; Rode in and sabred and shot--and fell; Nor came one back his wounds to tell. And full in the midst rose Keenan, tall, In the gloom like a martyr awaiting his fall, While the circle-stroke of his sabre, swung 'Round his head, like a halo there, luminous hung. Line after line, aye, whole platoons, Struck dead in their saddles, of brave dragoons By the maddened horses were onward borne And into the vortex flung, trampled and torn; As Keenan fought with his men, side by side. So they rode, till there were no more to ride. But over them, lying there shattered and mute, What deep echo rolls?--'T is a death-salute, From the cannon in place; for heroes, you braved Your fate not in vain: the army was saved! Over them now--year following year-- Over their graves the pine-cones fall, And the whip-poor-will chants his spectre-call; But they stir not again: they raise no cheer: They have ceased. But their glory shall never cease, Nor their light be quenched in the light of peace. The rush of their charge is resounding still That saved the army at Chancellorsville. MARTHY VIRGINIA'S HAND "There, on the left!" said the colonel: the battle had shuddered and faded away, Wraith of a fiery enchantment that left only ashes and blood-sprinkled clay-- "Ride to the left and examine that ridge, where the enemy's sharpshooters stood. Lord, how they picked off our men, from the treacherous vantage-ground of the wood! But for their bullets, I'll bet, my batteries sent them something as good. Go and explore, and report to me then, and tell me how many we killed. Never a wink shall I sleep till I know our vengeance was duly fulfilled." Fiercely the orderly rode down the slope of the corn-field--scarred and forlorn, Rutted by violent wheels, and scathed by the shot that had plowed it in scorn; Fiercely, and burning with wrath for the sight of his comrades crushed at a blow, Flung in broken shapes on the ground like ruined memorials of woe: These were the men whom at daybreak he knew, but never again could know. Thence to the ridge, where roots outthrust, and twisted branches of trees Clutched the hill like clawing lions, firm their prey to seize. "What's your report?"--and the grim colonel smiled when the orderly came back at last. Strangely the soldier paused: "Well, they were punished." And strange his face, aghast. "Yes, our fire told on them; knocked over fifty-- laid out in line of parade. Brave fellows, colonel, to stay as they did! But one I 'most wish had n't stayed. Mortally wounded, he'd torn off his knapsack; and then at the end he prayed-- Easy to see, by his hands that were clasped; and the dull, dead fingers yet held This little letter--his wife's--from the knapsack. A pity those woods were shelled!" Silent the orderly, watching with tears in his eyes as his officer scanned Four short pages of writing. "What's this, about 'Marthy Virginia's hand'?" Swift from his honeymoon he, the dead soldier, had gone from his bride to the strife; Never they met again, but she had written him, telling of that new life, Born in the daughter, that bound her still closer and closer to him as his wife. Laying her baby's hand down on the letter, around it she traced a rude line; "If you would kiss the baby," she wrote, "you must kiss this outline of mine." There was the shape of the hand on the page, with the small, chubby fingers outspread. "Marthy Virginia's hand, for her pa,"--so the words on the little palm said. Never a wink slept the colonel that night, for the vengeance so blindly fulfilled; Never again woke the old battle-glow when the bullets their death-note shrilled. Long ago ended the struggle, in union of brotherhood happily stilled; Yet from that field of Antietam, in warning and token of love's command, See! there is lifted the hand of a baby--Marthy Virginia's hand! GETTYSBURG: A BATTLE ODE I Victors, living, with laureled brow, And you that sleep beneath the sward! Your song was poured from cannon throats: It rang in deep-tongued bugle-notes: Your triumph came; you won your crown, The grandeur of a world's renown. But, in our later lays, Full freighted with your praise, Fair memory harbors those whose lives, laid down In gallant faith and generous heat, Gained only sharp defeat. All are at peace, who once so fiercely warred: Brother and brother, now, we chant a common chord. II For, if we say God wills, Shall we then idly deny Him Care of each host in the fight? His thunder was here in the hills When the guns were loud in July; And the flash of the musketry's light Was sped by a ray from God's eye. In its good and its evil the scheme Was framed with omnipotent hand, Though the battle of men was a dream That they could but half understand. Can the purpose of God pass by him? Nay; it was sure, and was wrought Under inscrutable powers: Bravely the two armies fought And left the land, that was greater than they, still theirs and ours! III Lucid, pure, and calm and blameless Dawned on Gettysburg the day That should make the spot, once fameless, Known to nations far away. Birds were caroling, and farmers Gladdened o'er their garnered hay, When the clank of gathering armors Broke the morning's peaceful sway; And the living lines of foemen Drawn o'er pasture, brook, and hill, Formed in figures weird of omen That should work with mystic will Measures of a direful magic-- Shattering, maiming--and should fill Glades and gorges with a tragic Madness of desire to kill. Skirmishers flung lightly forward Moved like scythemen skilled to sweep Westward o'er the field and nor'ward, Death's first harvest there to reap. You would say the soft, white smoke-puffs Were but languid clouds asleep, Here on meadows, there on oak-bluffs, Fallen foam of Heaven's blue deep. Yet that blossom-white outbreaking Smoke wove soon a martyr's shroud. Reynolds fell, with soul unquaking, Ardent-eyed and open-browed: Noble men in humbler raiment Fell where shot their graves had plowed, Dying not for paltry payment: Proud of home, of honor proud. IV Mute Seminary there, Filled once with resonant hymn and prayer, How your meek walls and windows shuddered then! Though Doubleday stemmed the flood, McPherson's Wood and Willoughby's Run Saw ere the set of sun The light of the gospel of blood. And, on the morrow again, Loud the unholy psalm of battle Burst from the tortured Devil's Den, In cries of men and musketry rattle Mixed with the helpless bellow of cattle Torn by artillery, down in the glen; While, hurtling through the branches Of the orchard by the road, Where Sickles and Birney were walled with steel, Shot fiery avalanches That shivered hope and made the sturdiest reel. Yet peach-bloom bright as April saw Blushed there anew, in blood that flowed O'er faces white with death-dealt awe; And ruddy flowers of warfare grew, Though withering winds as of the desert blew, Far at the right while Ewell and Early, Plunging at Slocum and Wadsworth and Greene, Thundered in onslaught consummate and surly; Till trembling nightfall crept between And whispered of rest from the heat of the whelming strife. But unto those forsaken of life What has the night to say? Silent beneath the moony sky, Crushed in a costly dew they lie: Deaf to plaint or paean, they:-- Freed from Earth's dull tyranny. V Wordless the night-wind, funereal plumes of the tree-tops swaying-- Writhing and nodding anon at the beck of the unseen breeze! Yet its voice ever a murmur resumes, as of multitudes praying: Liturgies lost in a moan like the mourning of far-away seas. May then those spirits, set free, a celestial council obeying, Move in this rustling whisper here thro' the dark, shaken trees?-- Souls that are voices alone to us, now, yet linger, returning Thrilled with a sweet reconcilement and fervid with speechless desire? Sundered in warfare, immortal they meet now with wonder and yearning, Dwelling together united, a rapt, invisible choir: Hearken! They wail for the living, whose passion of battle, yet burning, Sears and enfolds them in coils, and consumes, like a serpent of fire! VI Men of New Hampshire, Pennsylvanians, Maine men, firm as the rock's rough ledge! Swift Mississippians, lithe Carolinians Bursting over the battle's edge! Bold Indiana men; gallant Virginians; Jersey and Georgia legions clashing;-- Pick of Connecticut; quick Vermonters; Louisianians, madly dashing;-- And, swooping still to fresh encounters, New-York myriads, whirlwind-led!-- All your furious forces, meeting, Torn, entangled, and shifting place, Blend like wings of eagles beating Airy abysses, in angry embrace. Here in the midmost struggle combining-- Flags immingled and weapons crossed-- Still in union your States troop shining: Never a star from the lustre is lost! VII Once more the sun deploys his rays: Third in the trilogy of battle-days The awful Friday comes: A day of dread, That should have moved with slow, averted head And muffled feet, Knowing what streams of pure blood shed, What broken hearts and wounded lives must meet Its pitiless tread. At dawn, like monster mastiffs baying, Federal cannon, with a din affraying, Roused the old Stonewall brigade, That, eagerly and undismayed, Charged amain, to be repelled After four hours' bitter fighting, Forth and back, with bayonets biting; Where in after years, the wood-- Flayed and bullet-riddled--stood A presence ghostly, grim and stark, With trees all withered, wasted, gray, The place of combat night and day Like marshaled skeletons to mark. Anon, a lull: the troops are spelled. No sound of guns or drums Disturbs the air. Only the insect-chorus faintly hums, Chirping around the patient, sleepless dead Scattered, or fallen in heaps all wildly spread; Forgotten fragments left in hurried flight; Forms that, a few hours since, were human creatures, Now blasted of their features, Or stamped with blank despair; Or with dumb faces smiling as for gladness, Though stricken by utter blight Of motionless, inert, and hopeless sadness. Fear you the naked horrors of a war? Then cherish peace, and take up arms no more. For, if you fight, you must Behold your brothers' dust Unpityingly ground down And mixed with blood and powder, To write the annals of renown That make a nation prouder! VIII All is quiet till one o'clock; Then the hundred and fifty guns, Metal loaded with metal in tons, Massed by Lee, send out their shock. And, with a movement magnificent, Pickett, the golden-haired leader, Thousands and thousands flings onward, as if he sent Merely a meek interceder. Steadily sure his division advances, Gay as the light on its weapons that dances. Agonized screams of the shell The doom that it carries foretell: Rifle-balls whistle, like sea-birds singing; Limbs are severed, and souls set winging; Yet Pickett's warriors never waver. Show me in all the world anything braver Than the bold sweep of his fearless battalions, Three half-miles over ground unsheltered Up to the cannon, where regiments weltered Prone in the batteries' blast that raked Swaths of men and, flame-tongued, drank Their blood with eager thirst unslaked. Armistead, Kemper, and Pettigrew Rush on the Union men, rank against rank, Planting their battle-flags high on the crest. Pause not the soldiers, nor dream they of rest, Till they fall with their enemy's guns at the breast And the shriek in their ears of the wounded artillery stallions. So Pickett charged, a man indued With knightly power to lead a multitude And bring to fame the scarred surviving few. IX In vain the mighty endeavor; In vain the immortal valor; In vain the insurgent life outpoured! Faltered the column, spent with shot and sword; Its bright hope blanched with sudden pallor; While Hancock's trefoil bloomed in triple fame. He chose the field; he saved the second day; And, honoring here his glorious name, Again his phalanx held victorious sway. Meade's line stood firm, and volley on volley roared Triumphant Union, soon to be restored, Strong to defy all foes and fears forever. The Ridge was wreathed with angry fire As flames rise round a martyr's stake; For many a hero on that pyre Was offered for our dear land's sake, What time in heaven the gray clouds flew To mingle with the deathless blue; While here, below, the blue and gray Melted minglingly away, Mirroring heaven, to make another day. And we, who are Americans, we pray The splendor of strength that Gettysburg knew May light the long generations with glorious ray, And keep us undyingly true! X Dear are the dead we weep for; Dear are the strong hearts broken! Proudly their memory we keep for Our help and hope; a token Of sacred thought too deep for Words that leave it unspoken. All that we know of fairest, All that we have of meetest, Here we lay down for the rarest Doers whose souls rose fleetest And in their homes of air rest, Ranked with the truest and sweetest. Days, with fiery-hearted, bold advances; Nights in dim and shadowy, swift retreat; Rains that rush with bright, embattled lances; Thunder, booming round your stirless feet;-- Winds that set the orchard with sweet fancies All abloom, or ripple the ripening wheat; Moonlight, starlight, on your mute graves falling; Dew, distilled as tears unbidden flow;-- Dust of drought in drifts and layers crawling; Lulling dreams of softly whispering snow; Happy birds, from leafy coverts calling;-- These go on, yet none of these you know: Hearing not our human voices Speaking to you all in vain, Nor the psalm of a land that rejoices, Ringing from churches and cities and foundries a mighty refrain! But we, and the sun and the birds, and the breezes that blow When tempests are striving and lightnings of heaven are spent, With one consent Make unto them Who died for us eternal requiem. XI Lovely to look on, O South, No longer stately-scornful But beautiful still in pride, Our hearts go out to you as toward a bride! Garmented soft in white, Haughty, and yet how love-imbuing and tender! You stand before us with your gently mournful Memory-haunted eyes and flower-like mouth, Where clinging thoughts--as bees a-cluster Murmur through the leafy gloom, Musical in monotone-- Whisper sadly. Yet a lustre As of glowing gold-gray light Shines upon the orient bloom, Sweet with orange-blossoms, thrown Round the jasmine-starred, deep night Crowning with dark hair your brow. Ruthless, once, we came to slay, And you met us then with hate. Rough was the wooing of war: we won you, Won you at last, though late! Dear South, to-day, As our country's altar made us One forever, so we vow Unto yours our love to render: Strength with strength we here endow, And we make your honor ours. Happiness and hope shall sun you: All the wiles that half betrayed us Vanish from us like spent showers. XII Two hostile bullets in mid-air Together shocked, And swift were locked Forever in a firm embrace. Then let us men have so much grace To take the bullets' place, And learn that we are held By laws that weld Our hearts together! As once we battled hand to hand, So hand in hand to-day we stand, Sworn to each other, Brother and brother, In storm and mist, or calm, translucent weather: And Gettysburg's guns, with their death-giving roar, Echoed from ocean to ocean, shall pour Quickening life to the nation's core; Filling our minds again With the spirit of those who wrought in the Field of the Flower of Men! NOTES [1] _Bride Brook_.--The colony of New London (now part of Connecticut) was founded by John Winthrop, Jr., under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. One of the boundary lines was a stream flowing into Long Island Sound, between the present city of New London and the Connecticut River. In the snowy winter of 1646, Jonathan Rudd, who dwelt in the settlement of Saybrook Fort, at the mouth of the Connecticut, sent for Winthrop to celebrate a marriage between himself and a certain "Mary" of Saybrook, whose last name has been lost. Winthrop performed the ceremony on the frozen surface of the streamlet, the farthest limit of his magistracy; and thereupon bestowed the name "Bride Brook," which it still bears. [2] _The Bride of War_.--Jemima Warner, a Pennsylvania woman, was the wife of one of Morgan's riflemen. She marched with the expedition; and, when her husband perished of cold and exhaustion, she took his rifle and equipments and herself carried them to Quebec, where she delivered them to Arnold as a token of her husband's sacrifice, and proof that he was not a deserter. Colonel Enos of Connecticut abandoned the column while it was struggling through the Dead River region, with his whole force, the rear-guard, numbering eight hundred men. But for this defection Arnold might have triumphed in his assault on Quebec. It is a curious circumstance that, with this traitor at the rear, and with Benedict Arnold at its head, the little army also counted in its ranks Aaron Burr, whose treason was to ripen after the war ended. [3] _The Sword Dham_.--Antar, the Bedouin poet-hero, was chief of the tribe of Ghaylib. [4] _The Name of Washington_.--Read before the Sons of the Revolution, New-York, February 22, 1887, and adopted as the poem of the Society. [5] _Marthy Virginia's Hand_.--This was an actual incident in the experience of the late Colonel (formerly Captain) Albert J. Munroe. of the Third Rhode Island Artillery, a gallant officer, gentle and brave as well in peace as in war. [6] _Gettysburg: A Battle Ode_.--Written for the Society of the Army of the Potomac, and read at its re-union with Confederate survivors on the field of Gettysburg, July 3, 1888, the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Battle. 
7388	----	THE POETICAL WORKS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES [1893 three volume set] CONTENTS: TO MY READERS EARLIER POEMS (1830-1836). OLD IRONSIDES THE LAST LEAF THE CAMBRIDGE CHURCHYARD TO AN INSECT THE DILEMMA MY AUNT REFLECTIONS OF A PROUD PEDESTRIAN DAILY TRIALS, BY A SENSITIVE MAN EVENING, BY A TAILOR THE DORCHESTER GIANT TO THE PORTRAIT OF "A LADY" THE COMET THE Music-GRINDERS THE TREADMILL SONG THE SEPTEMBER GALE THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS THE LAST READER POETRY: A METRICAL ESSAY TO MY READERS NAY, blame me not; I might have spared Your patience many a trivial verse, Yet these my earlier welcome shared, So, let the better shield the worse. And some might say, "Those ruder songs Had freshness which the new have lost; To spring the opening leaf belongs, The chestnut-burs await the frost." When those I wrote, my locks were brown, When these I write--ah, well a-day! The autumn thistle's silvery down Is not the purple bloom of May. Go, little book, whose pages hold Those garnered years in loving trust; How long before your blue and gold Shall fade and whiten in the dust? O sexton of the alcoved tomb, Where souls in leathern cerements lie, Tell me each living poet's doom! How long before his book shall die? It matters little, soon or late, A day, a month, a year, an age,-- I read oblivion in its date, And Finis on its title-page. Before we sighed, our griefs were told; Before we smiled, our joys were sung; And all our passions shaped of old In accents lost to mortal tongue. In vain a fresher mould we seek,-- Can all the varied phrases tell That Babel's wandering children speak How thrushes sing or lilacs smell? Caged in the poet's lonely heart, Love wastes unheard its tenderest tone; The soul that sings must dwell apart, Its inward melodies unknown. Deal gently with us, ye who read Our largest hope is unfulfilled,-- The promise still outruns the deed,-- The tower, but not the spire, we build. Our whitest pearl we never find; Our ripest fruit we never reach; The flowering moments of the mind Drop half their petals in our speech. These are my blossoms; if they wear One streak of morn or evening's glow, Accept them; but to me more fair The buds of song that never blow. April 8, 1862. EARLIER POEMS 1830-1836 OLD IRONSIDES This was the popular name by which the frigate Constitution was known. The poem was first printed in the Boston Daily Advertiser, at the time when it was proposed to break up the old ship as unfit for service. I subjoin the paragraph which led to the writing of the poem. It is from the Advertiser of Tuesday, September 14, 1830:-- "Old Ironsides.--It has been affirmed upon good authority that the Secretary of the Navy has recommended to the Board of Navy Commissioners to dispose of the frigate Constitution. Since it has been understood that such a step was in contemplation we have heard but one opinion expressed, and that in decided disapprobation of the measure. Such a national object of interest, so endeared to our national pride as Old Ironsides is, should never by any act of our government cease to belong to the Navy, so long as our country is to be found upon the map of nations. In England it was lately determined by the Admiralty to cut the Victory, a one-hundred gun ship (which it will be recollected bore the flag of Lord Nelson at the battle of Trafalgar,) down to a seventy-four, but so loud were the lamentations of the people upon the proposed measure that the intention was abandoned. We confidently anticipate that the Secretary of the Navy will in like manner consult the general wish in regard to the Constitution, and either let her remain in ordinary or rebuild her whenever the public service may require."--New York Journal of Commerce. The poem was an impromptu outburst of feeling and was published on the next day but one after reading the above paragraph. AY, tear her tattered ensign down Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky; Beneath it rung the battle shout, And burst the cannon's roar;-- The meteor of the ocean air Shall sweep the clouds no more. Her deck, once red with heroes' blood, Where knelt the vanquished foe, When winds were hurrying o'er the flood, And waves were white below, No more shall feel the victor's tread, Or know the conquered knee;-- The harpies of the shore shall pluck The eagle of the sea! Oh better that her shattered hulk Should sink beneath the wave; Her thunders shook the mighty deep, And there should be her grave; Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storms, The lightning and the gale! THE LAST LEAF This poem was suggested by the appearance in one of our streets of a venerable relic of the Revolution, said to be one of the party who threw the tea overboard in Boston Harbor. He was a fine monumental specimen in his cocked hat and knee breeches, with his buckled shoes and his sturdy cane. The smile with which I, as a young man, greeted him, meant no disrespect to an honored fellow-citizen whose costume was out of date, but whose patriotism never changed with years. I do not recall any earlier example of this form of verse, which was commended by the fastidious Edgar Allan Poe, who made a copy of the whole poem which I have in his own handwriting. Good Abraham Lincoln had a great liking for the poem, and repeated it from memory to Governor Andrew, as the governor himself told me. I SAW him once before, As he passed by the door, And again The pavement stones resound, As he totters o'er the ground With his cane. They say that in his prime, Ere the pruning-knife of Time Cut him down, Not a better man was found By the Crier on his round Through the town. But now he walks the streets, And he looks at all he meets Sad and wan, And he shakes his feeble head, That it seems as if he said, "They are gone." The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has prest In their bloom, And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On the tomb. My grandmamma has said-- Poor old lady, she is dead Long ago-- That he had a Roman nose, And his cheek was like a rose In the snow. But now his nose is thin, And it rests upon his chin Like a staff, And a crook is in his back, And a melancholy crack In his laugh. I know it is a sin For me to sit and grin At him here; But the old three-cornered hat, And the breeches, and all that, Are so queer! And if I should live to be The last leaf upon the tree In the spring, Let them smile, as I do now, At the old forsaken bough Where I cling. THE CAMBRIDGE CHURCHYARD OUR ancient church! its lowly tower, Beneath the loftier spire, Is shadowed when the sunset hour Clothes the tall shaft in fire; It sinks beyond the distant eye Long ere the glittering vane, High wheeling in the western sky, Has faded o'er the plain. Like Sentinel and Nun, they keep Their vigil on the green; One seems to guard, and one to weep, The dead that lie between; And both roll out, so full and near, Their music's mingling waves, They shake the grass, whose pennoned spear Leans on the narrow graves. The stranger parts the flaunting weeds, Whose seeds the winds have strown So thick, beneath the line he reads, They shade the sculptured stone; The child unveils his clustered brow, And ponders for a while The graven willow's pendent bough, Or rudest cherub's smile. But what to them the dirge, the knell? These were the mourner's share,-- The sullen clang, whose heavy swell Throbbed through the beating air; The rattling cord, the rolling stone, The shelving sand that slid, And, far beneath, with hollow tone Rung on the coffin's lid. The slumberer's mound grows fresh and green, Then slowly disappears; The mosses creep, the gray stones lean, Earth hides his date and years; But, long before the once-loved name Is sunk or worn away, No lip the silent dust may claim, That pressed the breathing clay. Go where the ancient pathway guides, See where our sires laid down Their smiling babes, their cherished brides, The patriarchs of the town; Hast thou a tear for buried love? A sigh for transient power? All that a century left above, Go, read it in an hour! The Indian's shaft, the Briton's ball, The sabre's thirsting edge, The hot shell, shattering in its fall, The bayonet's rending wedge,-- Here scattered death; yet, seek the spot, No trace thine eye can see, No altar,--and they need it not Who leave their children free! Look where the turbid rain-drops stand In many a chiselled square; The knightly crest, the shield, the brand Of honored names were there;-- Alas! for every tear is dried Those blazoned tablets knew, Save when the icy marble's side Drips with the evening dew. Or gaze upon yon pillared stone, The empty urn of pride; There stand the Goblet and the Sun,-- What need of more beside? Where lives the memory of the dead, Who made their tomb a toy? Whose ashes press that nameless bed? Go, ask the village boy! Lean o'er the slender western wall, Ye ever-roaming girls; The breath that bids the blossom fall May lift your floating curls, To sweep the simple lines that tell An exile's date and doom; And sigh, for where his daughters dwell, They wreathe the stranger's tomb. And one amid these shades was born, Beneath this turf who lies, Once beaming as the summer's morn, That closed her gentle eyes; If sinless angels love as we, Who stood thy grave beside, Three seraph welcomes waited thee, The daughter, sister, bride. I wandered to thy buried mound When earth was hid below The level of the glaring ground, Choked to its gates with snow, And when with summer's flowery waves The lake of verdure rolled, As if a Sultan's white-robed slaves Had scattered pearls and gold. Nay, the soft pinions of the air, That lift this trembling tone, Its breath of love may almost bear To kiss thy funeral stone; And, now thy smiles have passed away, For all the joy they gave, May sweetest dews and warmest ray Lie on thine early grave! When damps beneath and storms above Have bowed these fragile towers, Still o'er the graves yon locust grove Shall swing its Orient flowers; And I would ask no mouldering bust, If e'er this humble line, Which breathed a sigh o'er other's dust, Might call a tear on mine. TO AN INSECT The Katydid is "a species of grasshopper found in the United States, so called from the sound which it makes."--Worcester. I used to hear this insect in Providence, Rhode Island, but I do not remember hearing it in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I passed my boyhood. It is well known in other towns in the neighborhood of Boston. I LOVE to hear thine earnest voice, Wherever thou art hid, Thou testy little dogmatist, Thou pretty Katydid Thou mindest me of gentlefolks,-- Old gentlefolks are they,-- Thou say'st an undisputed thing In such a solemn way. Thou art a female, Katydid I know it by the trill That quivers through thy piercing notes, So petulant and shrill; I think there is a knot of you Beneath the hollow tree,-- A knot of spinster Katydids,--- Do Katydids drink tea? Oh tell me where did Katy live, And what did Katy do? And was she very fair and young, And yet so wicked, too? Did Katy love a naughty man, Or kiss more cheeks than one? I warrant Katy did no more Than many a Kate has done. Dear me! I'll tell you all about My fuss with little Jane, And Ann, with whom I used to walk So often down the lane, And all that tore their locks of black, Or wet their eyes of blue,-- Pray tell me, sweetest Katydid, What did poor Katy do? Ah no! the living oak shall crash, That stood for ages still, The rock shall rend its mossy base And thunder down the hill, Before the little Katydid Shall add one word, to tell The mystic story of the maid Whose name she knows so well. Peace to the ever-murmuring race! And when the latest one Shall fold in death her feeble wings Beneath the autumn sun, Then shall she raise her fainting voice, And lift her drooping lid, And then the child of future years Shall hear what Katy did. THE DILEMMA Now, by the blessed Paphian queen, Who heaves the breast of sweet sixteen; By every name I cut on bark Before my morning star grew dark; By Hymen's torch, by Cupid's dart, By all that thrills the beating heart; The bright black eye, the melting blue,-- I cannot choose between the two. I had a vision in my dreams;-- I saw a row of twenty beams; From every beam a rope was hung, In every rope a lover swung; I asked the hue of every eye That bade each luckless lover die; Ten shadowy lips said, heavenly blue, And ten accused the darker hue. I asked a matron which she deemed With fairest light of beauty beamed; She answered, some thought both were fair,-- Give her blue eyes and golden hair. I might have liked her judgment well, But, as she spoke, she rung the bell, And all her girls, nor small nor few, Came marching in,--their eyes were blue. I asked a maiden; back she flung The locks that round her forehead hung, And turned her eye, a glorious one, Bright as a diamond in the sun, On me, until beneath its rays I felt as if my hair would blaze; She liked all eyes but eyes of green; She looked at me; what could she mean? Ah! many lids Love lurks between, Nor heeds the coloring of his screen; And when his random arrows fly, The victim falls, but knows not why. Gaze not upon his shield of jet, The shaft upon the string is set; Look not beneath his azure veil, Though every limb were cased in mail. Well, both might make a martyr break The chain that bound him to the stake; And both, with but a single ray, Can melt our very hearts away; And both, when balanced, hardly seem To stir the scales, or rock the beam; But that is dearest, all the while, That wears for us the sweetest smile. MY AUNT MY aunt! my dear unmarried aunt! Long years have o'er her flown; Yet still she strains the aching clasp That binds her virgin zone; I know it hurts her,--though she looks As cheerful as she can; Her waist is ampler than her life, For life is but a span. My aunt! my poor deluded aunt! Her hair is almost gray; Why will she train that winter curl In such a spring-like way? How can she lay her glasses down, And say she reads as well, When through a double convex lens She just makes out to spell? Her father--grandpapa I forgive This erring lip its smiles-- Vowed she should make the finest girl Within a hundred miles; He sent her to a stylish school; 'T was in her thirteenth June; And with her, as the rules required, "Two towels and a spoon." They braced my aunt against a board, To make her straight and tall; They laced her up, they starved her down, To make her light and small; They pinched her feet, they singed her hair, They screwed it up with pins;-- Oh never mortal suffered more In penance for her sins. So, when my precious aunt was done, My grandsire brought her back; (By daylight, lest some rabid youth Might follow on the track;) "Ah!" said my grandsire, as he shook Some powder in his pan, "What could this lovely creature do Against a desperate man!" Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche, Nor bandit cavalcade, Tore from the trembling father's arms His all-accomplished maid. For her how happy had it been And Heaven had spared to me To see one sad, ungathered rose On my ancestral tree. REFLECTIONS OF A PROUD PEDESTRIAN I SAW the curl of his waving lash, And the glance of his knowing eye, And I knew that he thought he was cutting a dash, As his steed went thundering by. And he may ride in the rattling gig, Or flourish the Stanhope gay, And dream that he looks exceeding big To the people that walk in the way; But he shall think, when the night is still, On the stable-boy's gathering numbers, And the ghost of many a veteran bill Shall hover around his slumbers; The ghastly dun shall worry his sleep, And constables cluster around him, And he shall creep from the wood-hole deep Where their spectre eyes have found him! Ay! gather your reins, and crack your thong, And bid your steed go faster; He does not know, as he scrambles along, That he has a fool for his master; And hurry away on your lonely ride, Nor deign from the mire to save me; I will paddle it stoutly at your side With the tandem that nature gave me! DAILY TRIALS BY A SENSITIVE MAN OH, there are times When all this fret and tumult that we hear Do seem more stale than to the sexton's ear His own dull chimes. Ding dong! ding dong! The world is in a simmer like a sea Over a pent volcano,--woe is me All the day long! From crib to shroud! Nurse o'er our cradles screameth lullaby, And friends in boots tramp round us as we die, Snuffling aloud. At morning's call The small-voiced pug-dog welcomes in the sun, And flea-bit mongrels, wakening one by one, Give answer all. When evening dim Draws round us, then the lonely caterwaul, Tart solo, sour duet, and general squall,-- These are our hymn. Women, with tongues Like polar needles, ever on the jar; Men, plugless word-spouts, whose deep fountains are Within their lungs. Children, with drums Strapped round them by the fond paternal ass; Peripatetics with a blade of grass Between their thumbs. Vagrants, whose arts Have caged some devil in their mad machine, Which grinding, squeaks, with husky groans between, Come out by starts. Cockneys that kill Thin horses of a Sunday,--men, with clams, Hoarse as young bisons roaring for their dams From hill to hill. Soldiers, with guns, Making a nuisance of the blessed air, Child-crying bellmen, children in despair, Screeching for buns. Storms, thunders, waves! Howl, crash, and bellow till ye get your fill; Ye sometimes rest; men never can be still But in their graves. EVENING BY A TAILOR DAY hath put on his jacket, and around His burning bosom buttoned it with stars. Here will I lay me on the velvet grass, That is like padding to earth's meagre ribs, And hold communion with the things about me. Ah me! how lovely is the golden braid That binds the skirt of night's descending robe! The thin leaves, quivering on their silken threads, Do make a music like to rustling satin, As the light breezes smooth their downy nap. Ha! what is this that rises to my touch, So like a cushion? Can it be a cabbage? It is, it is that deeply injured flower, Which boys do flout us with;--but yet I love thee, Thou giant rose, wrapped in a green surtout. Doubtless in Eden thou didst blush as bright As these, thy puny brethren; and thy breath Sweetened the fragrance of her spicy air; But now thou seemest like a bankrupt beau, Stripped of his gaudy hues and essences, And growing portly in his sober garments. Is that a swan that rides upon the water? Oh no, it is that other gentle bird, Which is the patron of our noble calling. I well remember, in my early years, When these young hands first closed upon a goose; I have a scar upon my thimble finger, Which chronicles the hour of young ambition. My father was a tailor, and his father, And my sire's grandsire, all of them were tailors; They had an ancient goose,--it was an heirloom From some remoter tailor of our race. It happened I did see it on a time When none was near, and I did deal with it, And it did burn me,--oh, most fearfully! It is a joy to straighten out one's limbs, And leap elastic from the level counter, Leaving the petty grievances of earth, The breaking thread, the din of clashing shears, And all the needles that do wound the spirit, For such a pensive hour of soothing silence. Kind Nature, shuffling in her loose undress, Lays bare her shady bosom;--I can feel With all around me;--I can hail the flowers That sprig earth's mantle,--and yon quiet bird, That rides the stream, is to me as a brother. The vulgar know not all the hidden pockets, Where Nature stows away her loveliness. But this unnatural posture of the legs Cramps my extended calves, and I must go Where I can coil them in their wonted fashion. THE DORCHESTER GIANT The "pudding-stone" is a remarkable conglomerate found very abundantly in the towns mentioned, all of which are in the neighborhood of Boston. We used in those primitive days to ask friends to _ride_ with us when we meant to take them to _drive_ with us. THERE was a giant in time of old, A mighty one was he; He had a wife, but she was a scold, So he kept her shut in his mammoth fold; And he had children three. It happened to be an election day, And the giants were choosing a king The people were not democrats then, They did not talk of the rights of men, And all that sort of thing. Then the giant took his children three, And fastened them in the pen; The children roared; quoth the giant, "Be still!" And Dorchester Heights and Milton Hill Rolled back the sound again. Then he brought them a pudding stuffed with plums, As big as the State-House dome; Quoth he, "There 's something for you to eat; So stop your mouths with your 'lection treat, And wait till your dad comes home." So the giant pulled him a chestnut stout, And whittled the boughs away; The boys and their mother set up a shout, Said he, "You 're in, and you can't get out, Bellow as loud as you may." Off he went, and he growled a tune As he strode the fields along; 'T is said a buffalo fainted away, And fell as cold as a lump of clay, When he heard the giant's song. But whether the story 's true or not, It is n't for me to show; There 's many a thing that 's twice as queer In somebody's lectures that we hear, And those are true, you know. What are those lone ones doing now, The wife and the children sad? Oh, they are in a terrible rout, Screaming, and throwing their pudding about, Acting as they were mad. They flung it over to Roxbury hills, They flung it over the plain, And all over Milton and Dorchester too Great lumps of pudding the giants threw; They tumbled as thick as rain. Giant and mammoth have passed away, For ages have floated by; The suet is hard as a marrow-bone, And every plum is turned to a stone, But there the puddings lie. And if, some pleasant afternoon, You 'll ask me out to ride, The whole of the story I will tell, And you shall see where the puddings fell, And pay for the punch beside. TO THE PORTRAIT OF "A LADY" IN THE ATHENAEUM GALLERY WELL, Miss, I wonder where you live, I wonder what's your name, I wonder how you came to be In such a stylish frame; Perhaps you were a favorite child, Perhaps an only one; Perhaps your friends were not aware You had your portrait done. Yet you must be a harmless soul; I cannot think that Sin Would care to throw his loaded dice, With such a stake to win; I cannot think you would provoke The poet's wicked pen, Or make young women bite their lips, Or ruin fine young men. Pray, did you ever hear, my love, Of boys that go about, Who, for a very trifling sum, Will snip one's picture out? I'm not averse to red and white, But all things have their place, I think a profile cut in black Would suit your style of face! I love sweet features; I will own That I should like myself To see my portrait on a wall, Or bust upon a shelf; But nature sometimes makes one up Of such sad odds and ends, It really might be quite as well Hushed up among one's friends! THE COMET THE Comet! He is on his way, And singing as he flies; The whizzing planets shrink before The spectre of the skies; Ah! well may regal orbs burn blue, And satellites turn pale, Ten million cubic miles of head, Ten billion leagues of tail! On, on by whistling spheres of light He flashes and he flames; He turns not to the left nor right, He asks them not their names; One spurn from his demoniac heel,-- Away, away they fly, Where darkness might be bottled up And sold for "Tyrian dye." And what would happen to the land, And how would look the sea, If in the bearded devil's path Our earth should chance to be? Full hot and high the sea would boil, Full red the forests gleam; Methought I saw and heard it all In a dyspeptic dream! I saw a tutor take his tube The Comet's course to spy; I heard a scream,--the gathered rays Had stewed the tutor's eye; I saw a fort,--the soldiers all Were armed with goggles green; Pop cracked the guns! whiz flew the balls! Bang went the magazine! I saw a poet dip a scroll Each moment in a tub, I read upon the warping back, "The Dream of Beelzebub;" He could not see his verses burn, Although his brain was fried, And ever and anon he bent To wet them as they dried. I saw the scalding pitch roll down The crackling, sweating pines, And streams of smoke, like water-spouts, Burst through the rumbling mines; I asked the firemen why they made Such noise about the town; They answered not,--but all the while The brakes went up and down. I saw a roasting pullet sit Upon a baking egg; I saw a cripple scorch his hand Extinguishing his leg; I saw nine geese upon the wing Towards the frozen pole, And every mother's gosling fell Crisped to a crackling coal. I saw the ox that browsed the grass Writhe in the blistering rays, The herbage in his shrinking jaws Was all a fiery blaze; I saw huge fishes, boiled to rags, Bob through the bubbling brine; And thoughts of supper crossed my soul; I had been rash at mine. Strange sights! strange sounds! Oh fearful dream! Its memory haunts me still, The steaming sea, the crimson glare, That wreathed each wooded hill; Stranger! if through thy reeling brain Such midnight visions sweep, Spare, spare, oh, spare thine evening meal, And sweet shall be thy sleep! THE MUSIC-GRINDERS THERE are three ways in which men take One's money from his purse, And very hard it is to tell Which of the three is worse; But all of them are bad enough To make a body curse. You're riding out some pleasant day, And counting up your gains; A fellow jumps from out a bush, And takes your horse's reins, Another hints some words about A bullet in your brains. It's hard to meet such pressing friends In such a lonely spot; It's very hard to lose your cash, But harder to be shot; And so you take your wallet out, Though you would rather not. Perhaps you're going out to dine,-- Some odious creature begs You'll hear about the cannon-ball That carried off his pegs, And says it is a dreadful thing For men to lose their legs. He tells you of his starving wife, His children to be fed, Poor little, lovely innocents, All clamorous for bread,-- And so you kindly help to put A bachelor to bed. You're sitting on your window-seat, Beneath a cloudless moon; You hear a sound, that seems to wear The semblance of a tune, As if a broken fife should strive To drown a cracked bassoon. And nearer, nearer still, the tide Of music seems to come, There's something like a human voice, And something like a drum; You sit in speechless agony, Until your ear is numb. Poor "home, sweet home" should seem to be A very dismal place; Your "auld acquaintance" all at once Is altered in the face; Their discords sting through Burns and Moore, Like hedgehogs dressed in lace. You think they are crusaders, sent From some infernal clime, To pluck the eyes of Sentiment, And dock the tail of Rhyme, To crack the voice of Melody, And break the legs of Time. But hark! the air again is still, The music all is ground, And silence, like a poultice, comes To heal the blows of sound; It cannot be,--it is,--it is,-- A hat is going round! No! Pay the dentist when he leaves A fracture in your jaw, And pay the owner of the bear That stunned you with his paw, And buy the lobster that has had Your knuckles in his claw; But if you are a portly man, Put on your fiercest frown, And talk about a constable To turn them out of town; Then close your sentence with an oath, And shut the window down! And if you are a slender man, Not big enough for that, Or, if you cannot make a speech, Because you are a flat, Go very quietly and drop A button in the hat! THE TREADMILL SONG THE stars are rolling in the sky, The earth rolls on below, And we can feel the rattling wheel Revolving as we go. Then tread away, my gallant boys, And make the axle fly; Why should not wheels go round about, Like planets in the sky? Wake up, wake up, my duck-legged man, And stir your solid pegs Arouse, arouse, my gawky friend, And shake your spider legs; What though you're awkward at the trade, There's time enough to learn,-- So lean upon the rail, my lad, And take another turn. They've built us up a noble wall, To keep the vulgar out; We've nothing in the world to do But just to walk about; So faster, now, you middle men, And try to beat the ends,-- It's pleasant work to ramble round Among one's honest friends. Here, tread upon the long man's toes, He sha'n't be lazy here,-- And punch the little fellow's ribs, And tweak that lubber's ear,-- He's lost them both,--don't pull his hair, Because he wears a scratch, But poke him in the further eye, That is n't in the patch. Hark! fellows, there 's the supper-bell, And so our work is done; It's pretty sport,--suppose we take A round or two for fun! If ever they should turn me out, When I have better grown, Now hang me, but I mean to have A treadmill of my own! THE SEPTEMBER GALE This tremendous hurricane occurred on the 23d of September, 1815. I remember it well, being then seven years old. A full account of it was published, I think, in the records of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Some of my recollections are given in The Seasons, an article to be found in a book of mine entitled Pages from an Old Volume of Life. I'M not a chicken; I have seen Full many a chill September, And though I was a youngster then, That gale I well remember; The day before, my kite-string snapped, And I, my kite pursuing, The wind whisked off my palm-leaf hat; For me two storms were brewing! It came as quarrels sometimes do, When married folks get clashing; There was a heavy sigh or two, Before the fire was flashing,-- A little stir among the clouds, Before they rent asunder,-- A little rocking of the trees, And then came on the thunder. Lord! how the ponds and rivers boiled! They seemed like bursting craters! And oaks lay scattered on the ground As if they were p'taters; And all above was in a howl, And all below a clatter,-- The earth was like a frying-pan, Or some such hissing matter. It chanced to be our washing-day, And all our things were drying; The storm came roaring through the lines, And set them all a flying; I saw the shirts and petticoats Go riding off like witches; I lost, ah! bitterly I wept,-- I lost my Sunday breeches! I saw them straddling through the air, Alas! too late to win them; I saw them chase the clouds, as if The devil had been in them; They were my darlings and my pride, My boyhood's only riches,-- "Farewell, farewell," I faintly cried,-- "My breeches! Oh my breeches!" That night I saw them in my dreams, How changed from what I knew them! The dews had steeped their faded threads, The winds had whistled through them I saw the wide and ghastly rents Where demon claws had torn them; A hole was in their amplest part, As if an imp had worn them. I have had many happy years, And tailors kind and clever, But those young pantaloons have gone Forever and forever! And not till fate has cut the last Of all my earthly stitches, This aching heart shall cease to mourn My loved, my long-lost breeches! THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS I WROTE some lines once on a time In wondrous merry mood, And thought, as usual, men would say They were exceeding good. They were so queer, so very queer, I laughed as I would die; Albeit, in the general way, A sober man am I. I called my servant, and he came; How kind it was of him To mind a slender man like me, He of the mighty limb. "These to the printer," I exclaimed, And, in my humorous way, I added, (as a trifling jest,) "There'll be the devil to pay." He took the paper, and I watched, And saw him peep within; At the first line he read, his face Was all upon the grin. He read the next; the grin grew broad, And shot from ear to ear; He read the third; a chuckling noise I now began to hear. The fourth; he broke into a roar; The fifth; his waistband split; The sixth; he burst five buttons off, And tumbled in a fit. Ten days and nights, with sleepless eye, I watched that wretched man, And since, I never dare to write As funny as I can. THE LAST READER I SOMETIMES sit beneath a tree And read my own sweet songs; Though naught they may to others be, Each humble line prolongs A tone that might have passed away But for that scarce remembered lay. I keep them like a lock or leaf That some dear girl has given; Frail record of an hour, as brief As sunset clouds in heaven, But spreading purple twilight still High over memory's shadowed hill. They lie upon my pathway bleak, Those flowers that once ran wild, As on a father's careworn cheek The ringlets of his child; The golden mingling with the gray, And stealing half its snows away. What care I though the dust is spread Around these yellow leaves, Or o'er them his sarcastic thread Oblivion's insect weaves Though weeds are tangled on the stream, It still reflects my morning's beam. And therefore love I such as smile On these neglected songs, Nor deem that flattery's needless wile My opening bosom wrongs; For who would trample, at my side, A few pale buds, my garden's pride? It may be that my scanty ore Long years have washed away, And where were golden sands before Is naught but common clay; Still something sparkles in the sun For memory to look back upon. And when my name no more is heard, My lyre no more is known, Still let me, like a winter's bird, In silence and alone, Fold over them the weary wing Once flashing through the dews of spring. Yes, let my fancy fondly wrap My youth in its decline, And riot in the rosy lap Of thoughts that once were mine, And give the worm my little store When the last reader reads no more! POETRY: A METRICAL ESSAY, READ BEFORE THE PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, AUGUST, 1836 TO CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM, THE FOLLOWING METRICAL ESSAY IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. This Academic Poem presents the simple and partial views of a young person trained after the schools of classical English verse as represented by Pope, Goldsmith, and Campbell, with whose lines his memory was early stocked. It will be observed that it deals chiefly with the constructive side of the poet's function. That which makes him a poet is not the power of writing melodious rhymes, it is not the possession of ordinary human sensibilities nor even of both these qualities in connection with each other. I should rather say, if I were now called upon to define it, it is the power of transfiguring the experiences and shows of life into an aspect which comes from his imagination and kindles that of others. Emotion is its stimulus and language furnishes its expression; but these are not all, as some might infer was the doctrine of the poem before the reader. A common mistake made by young persons who suppose themselves to have the poetical gift is that their own spiritual exaltation finds a true expression in the conventional phrases which are borrowed from the voices of the singers whose inspiration they think they share. Looking at this poem as an expression of some aspects of the _ars poetica_, with some passages which I can read even at this mature period of life without blushing for them, it may stand as the most serious representation of my early efforts. Intended as it was for public delivery, many of its paragraphs may betray the fact by their somewhat rhetorical and sonorous character. SCENES of my youth! awake its slumbering fire! Ye winds of Memory, sweep the silent lyre! Ray of the past, if yet thou canst appear, Break through the clouds of Fancy's waning year; Chase from her breast the thin autumnal snow, If leaf or blossom still is fresh below! Long have I wandered; the returning tide Brought back an exile to his cradle's side; And as my bark her time-worn flag unrolled, To greet the land-breeze with its faded fold, So, in remembrance of my boyhood's time, I lift these ensigns of neglected rhyme; Oh, more than blest, that, all my wanderings through, My anchor falls where first my pennons flew! . . . . . . . . . The morning light, which rains its quivering beams Wide o'er the plains, the summits, and the streams, In one broad blaze expands its golden glow On all that answers to its glance below; Yet, changed on earth, each far reflected ray Braids with fresh hues the shining brow of day; Now, clothed in blushes by the painted flowers, Tracks on their cheeks the rosy-fingered hours; Now, lost in shades, whose dark entangled leaves Drip at the noontide from their pendent eaves, Fades into gloom, or gleams in light again From every dew-drop on the jewelled plain. We, like the leaf, the summit, or the wave, Reflect the light our common nature gave, But every sunbeam, falling from her throne, Wears on our hearts some coloring of our own Chilled in the slave, and burning in the free, Like the sealed cavern by the sparkling sea; Lost, like the lightning in the sullen clod, Or shedding radiance, like the smiles of God; Pure, pale in Virtue, as the star above, Or quivering roseate on the leaves of Love; Glaring like noontide, where it glows upon Ambition's sands,--the desert in the sun,-- Or soft suffusing o'er the varied scene Life's common coloring,--intellectual green. Thus Heaven, repeating its material plan, Arched over all the rainbow mind of man; But he who, blind to universal laws, Sees but effects, unconscious of their cause,-- Believes each image in itself is bright, Not robed in drapery of reflected light,-- Is like the rustic who, amidst his toil, Has found some crystal in his meagre soil, And, lost in rapture, thinks for him alone Earth worked her wonders on the sparkling stone, Nor dreams that Nature, with as nice a line, Carved countless angles through the boundless mine. Thus err the many, who, entranced to find Unwonted lustre in some clearer mind, Believe that Genius sets the laws at naught Which chain the pinions of our wildest thought; Untaught to measure, with the eye of art, The wandering fancy or the wayward heart; Who match the little only with the less, And gaze in rapture at its slight excess, Proud of a pebble, as the brightest gem Whose light might crown an emperor's diadem. And, most of all, the pure ethereal fire Which seems to radiate from the poet's lyre Is to the world a mystery and a charm, An AEgis wielded on a mortal's arm, While Reason turns her dazzled eye away, And bows her sceptre to her subject's sway; And thus the poet, clothed with godlike state, Usurped his Maker's title--to create; He, whose thoughts differing not in shape, but dress, What others feel more fitly can express, Sits like the maniac on his fancied throne, Peeps through the bars, and calls the world his own. There breathes no being but has some pretence To that fine instinct called poetic sense The rudest savage, roaming through the wild; The simplest rustic, bending o'er his child; The infant, listening to the warbling bird; The mother, smiling at its half-formed word; The boy uncaged, who tracks the fields at large; The girl, turned matron to her babe-like charge; The freeman, casting with unpurchased hand The vote that shakes the turret of the land; The slave, who, slumbering on his rusted chain, Dreams of the palm-trees on his burning plain; The hot-cheeked reveller, tossing down the wine, To join the chorus pealing "Auld lang syne"; The gentle maid, whose azure eye grows dim, While Heaven is listening to her evening hymn; The jewelled beauty, when her steps draw near The circling dance and dazzling chandelier; E'en trembling age, when Spring's renewing air Waves the thin ringlets of his silvered hair;-- All, all are glowing with the inward flame, Whose wider halo wreathes the poet's name, While, unenbalmed, the silent dreamer dies, His memory passing with his smiles and sighs! If glorious visions, born for all mankind, The bright auroras of our twilight mind; If fancies, varying as the shapes that lie Stained on the windows of the sunset sky; If hopes, that beckon with delusive gleams, Till the eye dances in the void of dreams; If passions, following with the winds that urge Earth's wildest wanderer to her farthest verge;-- If these on all some transient hours bestow Of rapture tingling with its hectic glow, Then all are poets; and if earth had rolled Her myriad centuries, and her doom were told, Each moaning billow of her shoreless wave Would wail its requiem o'er a poet's grave! If to embody in a breathing word Tones that the spirit trembled when it heard; To fix the image all unveiled and warm, And carve in language its ethereal form, So pure, so perfect, that the lines express No meagre shrinking, no unlaced excess; To feel that art, in living truth, has taught Ourselves, reflected in the sculptured thought;-- If this alone bestow the right to claim The deathless garland and the sacred name, Then none are poets save the saints on high, Whose harps can murmur all that words deny! But though to none is granted to reveal In perfect semblance all that each may feel, As withered flowers recall forgotten love, So, warmed to life, our faded passions move In every line, where kindling fancy throws The gleam of pleasures or the shade of woes. When, schooled by time, the stately queen of art Had smoothed the pathways leading to the heart, Assumed her measured tread, her solemn tone, And round her courts the clouds of fable thrown, The wreaths of heaven descended on her shrine, And wondering earth proclaimed the Muse divine. Yet if her votaries had but dared profane The mystic symbols of her sacred reign, How had they smiled beneath the veil to find What slender threads can chain the mighty mind! Poets, like painters, their machinery claim, And verse bestows the varnish and the frame; Our grating English, whose Teutonic jar Shakes the racked axle of Art's rattling car, Fits like mosaic in the lines that gird Fast in its place each many-angled word; From Saxon lips Anacreon's numbers glide, As once they melted on the Teian tide, And, fresh transfused, the Iliad thrills again From Albion's cliffs as o'er Achaia's plain The proud heroic, with, its pulse-like beat, Rings like the cymbals clashing as they meet; The sweet Spenserian, gathering as it flows, Sweeps gently onward to its dying close, Where waves on waves in long succession pour, Till the ninth billow melts along the shore; The lonely spirit of the mournful lay, Which lives immortal as the verse of Gray, In sable plumage slowly drifts along, On eagle pinion, through the air of song; The glittering lyric bounds elastic by, With flashing ringlets and exulting eye, While every image, in her airy whirl, Gleams like a diamond on a dancing girl! Born with mankind, with man's expanded range And varying fates the poet's numbers change; Thus in his history may we hope to find Some clearer epochs of the poet's mind, As from the cradle of its birth we trace, Slow wandering forth, the patriarchal race. I. When the green earth, beneath the zephyr's wing, Wears on her breast the varnished buds of Spring; When the loosed current, as its folds uncoil, Slides in the channels of the mellowed soil; When the young hyacinth returns to seek The air and sunshine with her emerald beak; When the light snowdrops, starting from their cells, Hang each pagoda with its silver bells; When the frail willow twines her trailing bow With pallid leaves that sweep the soil below; When the broad elm, sole empress of the plain, Whose circling shadow speaks a century's reign, Wreathes in the clouds her regal diadem,-- A forest waving on a single stem;-- Then mark the poet; though to him unknown The quaint-mouthed titles, such as scholars own, See how his eye in ecstasy pursues The steps of Nature tracked in radiant hues; Nay, in thyself, whate'er may be thy fate, Pallid with toil or surfeited with state, Mark how thy fancies, with the vernal rose, Awake, all sweetness, from their long repose; Then turn to ponder o'er the classic page, Traced with the idyls of a greener age, And learn the instinct which arose to warm Art's earliest essay and her simplest form. To themes like these her narrow path confined The first-born impulse moving in the mind; In vales unshaken by the trumpet's sound, Where peaceful Labor tills his fertile ground, The silent changes of the rolling years, Marked on the soil or dialled on the spheres, The crested forests and the colored flowers, The dewy grottos and the blushing bowers,-- These, and their guardians, who, with liquid names, Strephons and Chloes, melt in mutual flames, Woo the young Muses from their mountain shade, To make Arcadias in the lonely glade. Nor think they visit only with their smiles The fabled valleys and Elysian isles; He who is wearied of his village plain May roam the Edens of the world in vain. 'T is not the star-crowned cliff, the cataract's flow, The softer foliage or the greener glow, The lake of sapphire or the spar-hung cave, The brighter sunset or the broader wave, Can warm his heart whom every wind has blown To every shore, forgetful of his own. Home of our childhood! how affection clings And hovers round thee with her seraph wings! Dearer thy hills, though clad in autumn brown, Than fairest summits which the cedars crown! Sweeter the fragrance of thy summer breeze Than all Arabia breathes along the seas! The stranger's gale wafts home the exile's sigh, For the heart's temple is its own blue sky! Oh happiest they, whose early love unchanged, Hopes undissolved, and friendship unestranged, Tired of their wanderings, still can deign to see Love, hopes, and friendship, centring all in thee! And thou, my village! as again I tread Amidst thy living and above thy dead; Though some fair playmates guard with charter fears Their cheeks, grown holy with the lapse of years; Though with the dust some reverend locks may blend, Where life's last mile-stone marks the journey's end; On every bud the changing year recalls, The brightening glance of morning memory falls, Still following onward as the months unclose The balmy lilac or the bridal rose; And still shall follow, till they sink once more Beneath the snow-drifts of the frozen shore, As when my bark, long tossing in the gale, Furled in her port her tempest-rended sail! What shall I give thee? Can a simple lay, Flung on thy bosom like a girl's bouquet, Do more than deck thee for an idle hour, Then fall unheeded, fading like the flower? Yet, when I trod, with footsteps wild and free, The crackling leaves beneath yon linden-tree, Panting from play or dripping from the stream, How bright the visions of my boyish dream Or, modest Charles, along thy broken edge, Black with soft ooze and fringed with arrowy sedge, As once I wandered in the morning sun, With reeking sandal and superfluous gun, How oft, as Fancy whispered in the gale, Thou wast the Avon of her flattering tale! Ye hills, whose foliage, fretted on the skies, Prints shadowy arches on their evening dyes, How should my song with holiest charm invest Each dark ravine and forest-lifting crest! How clothe in beauty each familiar scene, Till all was classic on my native green! As the drained fountain, filled with autumn leaves, The field swept naked of its garnered sheaves, So wastes at noon the promise of our dawn, The springs all choking, and the harvest gone. Yet hear the lay of one whose natal star Still seemed the brightest when it shone afar; Whose cheek, grown pallid with ungracious toil, Glows in the welcome of his parent soil; And ask no garlands sought beyond the tide, But take the leaflets gathered at your side. II. But times were changed; the torch of terror came, To light the summits with the beacon's flame; The streams ran crimson, the tall mountain pines Rose a new forest o'er embattled lines; The bloodless sickle lent the warrior's steel, The harvest bowed beneath his chariot wheel; Where late the wood-dove sheltered her repose The raven waited for the conflict's close; The cuirassed sentry walked his sleepless round Where Daphne smiled or Amaryllis frowned; Where timid minstrels sung their blushing charms, Some wild Tyrtaeus called aloud, "To arms!" When Glory wakes, when fiery spirits leap, Roused by her accents from their tranquil sleep, The ray that flashes from the soldier's crest Lights, as it glances, in the poet's breast;-- Not in pale dreamers, whose fantastic lay Toys with smooth trifles like a child at play, But men, who act the passions they inspire, Who wave the sabre as they sweep the lyre! Ye mild enthusiasts, whose pacific frowns Are lost like dew-drops caught in burning towns, Pluck as ye will the radiant plumes of fame, Break Caesar's bust to make yourselves a name; But if your country bares the avenger's blade For wrongs unpunished or for debts unpaid, When the roused nation bids her armies form, And screams her eagle through the gathering storm, When from your ports the bannered frigate rides, Her black bows scowling to the crested tides, Your hour has past; in vain your feeble cry As the babe's wailings to the thundering sky! Scourge of mankind! with all the dread array That wraps in wrath thy desolating way, As the wild tempest wakes the slumbering sea, Thou only teachest all that man can be. Alike thy tocsin has the power to charm The toil-knit sinews of the rustic's arm, Or swell the pulses in the poet's veins, And bid the nations tremble at his strains. The city slept beneath the moonbeam's glance, Her white walls gleaming through the vines of France, And all was hushed, save where the footsteps fell, On some high tower, of midnight sentinel. But one still watched; no self-encircled woes Chased from his lids the angel of repose; He watched, he wept, for thoughts of bitter years Bowed his dark lashes, wet with burning tears His country's sufferings and her children's shame Streamed o'er his memory like a forest's flame; Each treasured insult, each remembered wrong, Rolled through his heart and kindled into song. His taper faded; and the morning gales Swept through the world the war-song of Marseilles! Now, while around the smiles of Peace expand, And Plenty's wreaths festoon the laughing land; While France ships outward her reluctant ore, And half our navy basks upon the shore; From ruder themes our meek-eyed Muses turn To crown with roses their enamelled urn. If e'er again return those awful days Whose clouds were crimsoned with the beacon's blaze, Whose grass was trampled by the soldier's heel, Whose tides were reddened round the rushing keel, God grant some lyre may wake a nobler strain To rend the silence of our tented plain! When Gallia's flag its triple fold displays, Her marshalled legions peal the Marseillaise; When round the German close the war-clouds dim, Far through their shadows floats his battle-hymn; When, crowned with joy, the camps' of England ring, A thousand voices shout, "God save the King!" When victory follows with our eagle's glance, Our nation's anthem pipes a country dance! Some prouder Muse, when comes the hour at last, May shake our hillsides with her bugle-blast; Not ours the task; but since the lyric dress Relieves the statelier with its sprightliness, Hear an old song, which some, perchance, have seen In stale gazette or cobwebbed magazine. There was an hour when patriots dared profane The mast that Britain strove to bow in vain; And one, who listened to the tale of shame, Whose heart still answered to that sacred name, Whose eye still followed o'er his country's tides Thy glorious flag, our brave Old Ironsides From yon lone attic, on a smiling morn, Thus mocked the spoilers with his school-boy scorn. III. When florid Peace resumed her golden reign, And arts revived, and valleys bloomed again, While War still panted on his-broken blade, Once more the Muse her heavenly wing essayed. Rude was the song: some ballad, stern and wild, Lulled the light slumbers of the soldier's child; Or young romancer, with his threatening glance And fearful fables of his bloodless lance, Scared the soft fancy of the clinging girls, Whose snowy fingers smoothed his raven curls. But when long years the stately form had bent, And faithless Memory her illusions lent, So vast the outlines of Tradition grew That History wondered at the shapes she drew, And veiled at length their too ambitious hues Beneath the pinions of the Epic Muse. Far swept her wing; for stormier days had brought With darker passions deeper tides of thought. The camp's harsh tumult and the conflict's glow, The thrill of triumph and the gasp of woe, The tender parting and the glad return, The festal banquet and the funeral urn, And all the drama which at once uprears Its spectral shadows through the clash of spears, From camp and field to echoing verse transferred, Swelled the proud song that listening nations heard. Why floats the amaranth in eternal bloom O'er Ilium's turrets and Achilles' tomb? Why lingers fancy where the sunbeams smile On Circe's gardens and Calypso's isle? Why follows memory to the gate of Troy Her plumed defender and his trembling boy? Lo! the blind dreamer, kneeling on the sand To trace these records with his doubtful hand; In fabled tones his own emotion flows, And other lips repeat his silent woes; In Hector's infant see the babes that shun Those deathlike eyes, unconscious of the sun, Or in his hero hear himself implore, "Give me to see, and Ajax asks no more!" Thus live undying through the lapse of time The solemn legends of the warrior's clime; Like Egypt's pyramid or Paestum's fane, They stand the heralds of the voiceless plain. Yet not like them, for Time, by slow degrees, Saps the gray stone and wears the embroidered frieze, And Isis sleeps beneath her subject Nile, And crumbled Neptune strews his Dorian pile; But Art's fair fabric, strengthening as it rears Its laurelled columns through the mist of years, As the blue arches of the bending skies Still gird the torrent, following as it flies, Spreads, with the surges bearing on mankind, Its starred pavilion o'er the tides of mind! In vain the patriot asks some lofty lay To dress in state our wars of yesterday. The classic days, those mothers of romance, That roused a nation for a woman's glance; The age of mystery, with its hoarded power, That girt the tyrant in his storied tower, Have passed and faded like a dream of youth, And riper eras ask for history's truth. On other shores, above their mouldering towns, In sullen pomp the tall cathedral frowns, Pride in its aisles and paupers at the door, Which feeds the beggars whom it fleeced of yore. Simple and frail, our lowly temples throw Their slender shadows on the paths below; Scarce steal the winds, that sweep his woodland tracks, The larch's perfume from the settler's axe, Ere, like a vision of the morning air, His slight--framed steeple marks the house of prayer; Its planks all reeking and its paint undried, Its rafters sprouting on the shady side, It sheds the raindrops from its shingled eaves Ere its green brothers once have changed their leaves. Yet Faith's pure hymn, beneath its shelter rude, Breathes out as sweetly to the tangled wood As where the rays through pictured glories pour On marble shaft and tessellated floor;-- Heaven asks no surplice round the heart that feels, And all is holy where devotion kneels. Thus on the soil the patriot's knee should bend Which holds the dust once living to defend; Where'er the hireling shrinks before the free, Each pass becomes "a new Thermopylae"! Where'er the battles of the brave are won, There every mountain "looks on Marathon"! Our fathers live; they guard in glory still The grass-grown bastions of the fortressed hill; Still ring the echoes of the trampled gorge, With _God and Freedom. England and Saint George_! The royal cipher on the captured gun Mocks the sharp night-dews and the blistering sun; The red-cross banner shades its captor's bust, Its folds still loaded with the conflict's dust; The drum, suspended by its tattered marge, Once rolled and rattled to the Hessian's charge; The stars have floated from Britannia's mast, The redcoat's trumpets blown the rebel's blast. Point to the summits where the brave have bled, Where every village claims its glorious dead; Say, when their bosoms met the bayonet's shock, Their only corselet was the rustic frock; Say, when they mustered to the gathering horn, The titled chieftain curled his lip in scorn, Yet, when their leader bade his lines advance, No musket wavered in the lion's glance; Say, when they fainted in the forced retreat, They tracked the snow-drifts with their bleeding feet, Yet still their banners, tossing in the blast, Bore Ever Ready, faithful to the last, Through storm and battle, till they waved again On Yorktown's hills and Saratoga's plain. Then, if so fierce the insatiate patriot's flame, Truth looks too pale and history seems too tame, Bid him await some new Columbiad's page, To gild the tablets of an iron age, And save his tears, which yet may fall upon Some fabled field, some fancied Washington! IV. But once again, from their AEolian cave, The winds of Genius wandered on the wave. Tired of the scenes the timid pencil drew, Sick of the notes the sounding clarion blew, Sated with heroes who had worn so long The shadowy plumage of historic song, The new-born poet left the beaten course, To track the passions to their living source. Then rose the Drama;--and the world admired Her varied page with deeper thought inspired Bound to no clime, for Passion's throb is one In Greenland's twilight or in India's sun; Born for no age, for all the thoughts that roll In the dark vortex of the stormy soul, Unchained in song, no freezing years can tame; God gave them birth, and man is still the same. So full on life her magic mirror shone, Her sister Arts paid tribute to her throne; One reared her temple, one her canvas warmed, And Music thrilled, while Eloquence informed. The weary rustic left his stinted task For smiles and tears, the dagger and the mask; The sage, turned scholar, half forgot his lore, To be the woman he despised before. O'er sense and thought she threw her golden chain, And Time, the anarch, spares her deathless reign. Thus lives Medea, in our tamer age, As when her buskin pressed the Grecian stage; Not in the cells where frigid learning delves In Aldine folios mouldering on their shelves, But breathing, burning in the glittering throng, Whose thousand bravoes roll untired along, Circling and spreading through the gilded halls, From London's galleries to San Carlo's walls! Thus shall he live whose more than mortal name Mocks with its ray the pallid torch of Fame; So proudly lifted that it seems afar No earthly Pharos, but a heavenly star, Who, unconfined to Art's diurnal bound, Girds her whole zodiac in his flaming round, And leads the passions, like the orb that guides, From pole to pole, the palpitating tides! V. Though round the Muse the robe of song is thrown, Think not the poet lives in verse alone. Long ere the chisel of the sculptor taught The lifeless stone to mock the living thought; Long ere the painter bade the canvas glow With every line the forms of beauty know; Long ere the iris of the Muses threw On every leaf its own celestial hue, In fable's dress the breath of genius poured, And warmed the shapes that later times adored. Untaught by Science how to forge the keys That loose the gates of Nature's mysteries; Unschooled by Faith, who, with her angel tread, Leads through the labyrinth with a single thread, His fancy, hovering round her guarded tower, Rained through its bars like Danae's golden shower. He spoke; the sea-nymph answered from her cave He called; the naiad left her mountain wave He dreamed of beauty; lo, amidst his dream, Narcissus, mirrored in the breathless stream; And night's chaste empress, in her bridal play, Laughed through the foliage where Endymion lay; And ocean dimpled, as the languid swell Kissed the red lip of Cytherea's shell. Of power,--Bellona swept the crimson field, And blue-eyed Pallas shook her Gorgon shield; O'er the hushed waves their mightier monarch drove, And Ida trembled to the tread of Jove! So every grace that plastic language knows To nameless poets its perfection owes. The rough-hewn words to simplest thoughts confined Were cut and polished in their nicer mind; Caught on their edge, imagination's ray Splits into rainbows, shooting far away;-- From sense to soul, from soul to sense, it flies, And through all nature links analogies; He who reads right will rarely look upon A better poet than his lexicon! There is a race which cold, ungenial skies Breed from decay, as fungous growths arise; Though dying fast, yet springing fast again, Which still usurps an unsubstantial reign, With frames too languid for the charms of sense, And minds worn down with action too intense; Tired of a world whose joys they never knew, Themselves deceived, yet thinking all untrue; Scarce men without, and less than girls within, Sick of their life before its cares begin;-- The dull disease, which drains their feeble hearts, To life's decay some hectic thrill's imparts, And lends a force which, like the maniac's power, Pays with blank years the frenzy of an hour. And this is Genius! Say, does Heaven degrade The manly frame, for health, for action made? Break down the sinews, rack the brow with pains, Blanch the right cheek and drain the purple veins, To clothe the mind with more extended sway, Thus faintly struggling in degenerate clay? No! gentle maid, too ready to admire, Though false its notes, the pale enthusiast's lyre; If this be genius, though its bitter springs Glowed like the morn beneath Aurora's wings, Seek not the source whose sullen bosom feeds But fruitless flowers and dark, envenomed weeds. But, if so bright the dear illusion seems, Thou wouldst be partner of thy poet's dreams, And hang in rapture on his bloodless charms, Or die, like Raphael, in his angel arms, Go and enjoy thy blessed lot,--to share In Cowper's gloom or Chatterton's despair! Not such were they whom, wandering o'er the waves, I looked to meet, but only found their graves; If friendship's smile, the better part of fame, Should lend my song the only wreath I claim, Whose voice would greet me with a sweeter tone, Whose living hand more kindly press my own, Than theirs,--could Memory, as her silent tread Prints the pale flowers that blossom o'er the dead, Those breathless lips, now closed in peace, restore, Or wake those pulses hushed to beat no more? Thou calm, chaste scholar! I can see thee now, The first young laurels on thy pallid brow, O'er thy slight figure floating lightly down In graceful folds the academic gown, On thy curled lip the classic lines that taught How nice the mind that sculptured them with thought, And triumph glistening in the clear blue eye, Too bright to live,--but oh, too fair to die! And thou, dear friend, whom Science still deplores, And Love still mourns, on ocean-severed shores, Though the bleak forest twice has bowed with snow Since thou wast laid its budding leaves below, Thine image mingles with my closing strain, As when we wandered by the turbid Seine, Both blessed with hopes, which revelled, bright and free, On all we longed or all we dreamed to be; To thee the amaranth and the cypress fell,-- And I was spared to breathe this last farewell! But lived there one in unremembered days, Or lives there still, who spurns the poet's bays, Whose fingers, dewy from Castalia's springs, Rest on the lyre, yet scorn to touch the strings? Who shakes the senate with the silver tone The groves of Pindus might have sighed to own? Have such e'er been? Remember Canning's name! Do such still live? Let "Alaric's Dirge" proclaim! Immortal Art! where'er the rounded sky Bends o'er the cradle where thy children lie, Their home is earth, their herald every tongue Whose accents echo to the voice that sung. One leap of Ocean scatters on the sand The quarried bulwarks of the loosening land; One thrill of earth dissolves a century's toil Strewed like the leaves that vanish in the soil; One hill o'erflows, and cities sink below, Their marbles splintering in the lava's glow; But one sweet tone, scarce whispered to the air, From shore to shore the blasts of ages bear; One humble name, which oft, perchance, has borne The tyrant's mockery and the courtier's scorn, Towers o'er the dust of earth's forgotten graves, As once, emerging through the waste of waves, The rocky Titan, round whose shattered spear Coiled the last whirlpool of the drowning sphere! 
6652	----	Be that as it may, on the very first day That the widow Gengulphus sat down on that settee, What occur'd almost frightened her senses away, Beside scaring her hand-maidens, Gertrude and Betty, They were telling their mistress the wonderful deeds Of the new Saint, to whom all the Town said their orisons; And especially how, as regards invalids, His miraculous cures far outrival'd Von Morison's. "The cripples," said they, "fling their crutches away, And people born blind now can easily see us!" But she (we presume, a disciple of Hume) Shook her head, and said angrily, "'Credat Judaeus!' "Those rascally liars, the Monks and the Friars, To bring grist to their mill, these devices have hit on. He works miracles!--pooh!--I'd believe it of you Just as soon, you great Geese,--or the Chair that I sit on!" The Chair--at that word--it seems really absurd, But the truth must be told,--what contortions and grins Distorted her face!--She sprang up from her place Just as though she'd been sitting on needles and pins! For, as if the Saint's beard the rash challenge had heard Which she utter'd, of what was beneath her forgetful Each particular hair stood on end in the chair, Like a porcupine's quills when the animal's fretful, That stout maroon leather, they pierced altogether, Like tenter-hooks holding when clench'd from within, And the maids cried--"Good gracious! how very tenacious!" --They as well might endeavor to pull off her skin!-- She shriek'd with the pain, but all efforts were vain; In vain did they strain every sinew and muscle,-- The cushion stuck fast!--From that hour to her last She could never get rid of that comfortless "Bustle"! And e'en as Macbeth, when devising the death Of his King, heard "the very stones prate of his whereabouts;" So this shocking bad wife heard a voice all her life Crying "Murder!" resound from the cushion,--or thereabouts. With regard to the Clerk, we are left in the dark As to what his fate was; but I can not imagine he Got off scot-free, though unnoticed it be Both by Ribadaneira and Jacques de Voragine: For cut-throats, we're sure, can be never secure, And "History's Muse" still to prove it her pen holds, As you'll see, if you'll look in a rather scarce book, "God's Revenge against Murder," by one Mr. Reynolds. MORAL. Now, you grave married Pilgrims, who wander away, Like Ulysses of old (vide Homer and Naso), Don't lengthen your stay to three years and a day, And when you are coming home, just write and say so! And you, learned Clerks, who're not given to roam, Stick close to your books, nor lose sight of decorum, Don't visit a house when the master's from home! Shun drinking,--and study the "Vilce Sanctorum!" Above all, you gay ladies, who fancy neglect In your spouses, allow not your patience to fail; But remember Gengulphus's wife!--and reflect On the moral enforced by her terrible tale! SIR RUPERT THE FEARLESS. A LEGEND OF GERMANY. R. HARRIS BARHAM Sir Rupert the Fearless, a gallant young knight, Was equally ready to tipple or fight, Crack a crown, or a bottle, Cut sirloin, or throttle; In brief, or as Hume says, "to sum up the tottle," Unstain'd by dishonor, unsullied by fear, All his neighbors pronounced him a preux chevalier. Despite these perfections, corporeal and mental, He had one slight defect, viz., a rather lean rental; Besides, 'tis own'd there are spots in the sun, So it must be confess'd that Sir Rupert had one; Being rather unthinking, He'd scarce sleep a wink in A night, but addict himself sadly to drinking; And what moralists say, Is as naughty--to play, To Rouge et Noir, Hazard, Short Whist, Ecarte; Till these, and a few less defensible fancies Brought the Knight to the end of his slender finances. When at length through his boozing, And tenants refusing Their rents, swearing "tunes were so bad they were losing," His steward said, "O, sir, It's some time ago, sir, Since aught through my hands reach'd the baker or grocer, And the tradesmen in general are grown great complainers." Sir Rupert the brave thus address'd his retainers: "My friends, since the stock Of my father's old hock Is out, with the Kurchwasser, Barsae, Moselle, And we're fairly reduced to the pump and the well, I presume to suggest, We shall all find it best For each to shake hands with his friends ere he goes, Mount his horse, if he has one, and--follow his nose; As to me, I opine, Left sans money or wine, My best way is to throw myself into the Rhine, Where pitying trav'lers may sigh, as they cross over, Though he lived a roue, yet he died a philosopher." The Knight, having bow'd out his friends thus politely. Got into his skiff, the full moon shining brightly, By the light of whose beam, He soon spied on the stream A dame, whose complexion was fair as new cream, Pretty pink silken hose Cover'd ankles and toes, In other respects she was scanty of clothes; For, so says tradition, both written and oral, Her ONE garment was loop'd up with bunches of coral. Full sweetly she sang to a sparkling guitar, With silver chords stretch'd over Derbyshire spar, And she smiled on the Knight, Who, amazed at the sight, Soon found his astonishment merged in delight; But the stream by degrees Now rose up to her knees, Till at length it invaded her very chemise, While the heavenly strain, as the wave seem'd to swallow her And slowly she sank, sounded fainter and hollower; --Jumping up in his boat And discarding his coat, "Here goes," cried Sir Rupert, "by jingo I'll follow her!" Then into the water he plunged with a souse That was heard quite distinctly by those in the house. Down, down, forty fathom and more from the brink, Sir Rupert the Fearless continues to sink, And, as downward he goes, Still the cold water flows Through his ears, and his eyes, and his mouth, and his nose Till the rum and the brandy he'd swallow'd since lunch Wanted nothing but lemon to fill him with punch; Some minutes elapsed since he enter'd the flood, Ere his heels touch'd the bottom, and stuck in the mud. But oh! what a sight Met the eyes of the Knight, When he stood in the depth of the stream bolt upright!-- A grand stalactite hall, Like the cave of Fingal, Rose above and about him;--great fishes and small Came thronging around him, regardless of danger, And seem'd all agog for a peep at the stranger, Their figures and forms to describe, language fails-- They'd such very odd heads, and such very odd tails; Of their genus or species a sample to gain, You would ransack all Hungerford market in vain; E'en the famed Mr. Myers, Would scarcely find buyers, Though hundreds of passengers doubtless would stop To stare, were such monsters exposed in his shop. But little reck'd Rupert these queer-looking brutes, Or the efts and the newts That crawled up his boots, For a sight, beyond any of which I've made mention, In a moment completely absorb'd his attention. A huge crystal bath, which, with water far clearer Than George Robins' filters, or Thorpe's (which are dearer), Have ever distill'd, To the summit was fill'd, Lay stretch'd out before him--and every nerve thrill'd As scores of young women Were diving and swimming, Till the vision a perfect quandary put him in;-- All slightly accoutred in gauzes and lawns, They came floating about him like so many prawns. Sir Rupert, who (barring the few peccadilloes Alluded to), ere he lept into the billows Possess'd irreproachable morals, began To feel rather queer, as a modest young man; When forth stepp'd a dame, whom he recognized soon As the one he had seen by the light of the moon, And lisp'd, while a soft smile attended each sentence, "Sir Rupert, I'm happy to make your acquaintance; My name is Lurline, And the ladies you've seen, All do me the honor to call me their Queen; I'm delighted to see you, sir, down in the Rhine here And hope you can make it convenient to dine here." The Knight blush'd, and bow'd, As he ogled the crowd Of subaqueous beauties, then answer'd aloud; "Ma'am, you do me much honor--I can not express The delight I shall feel--if you'll pardon my dress-- May I venture to say, when a gentleman jumps In the river at midnight for want of the 'dumps,' He rarely puts on his knee-breeches and pumps; If I could but have guess'd--what I sensibly feel-- Your politeness--I'd not have come en dishabille, But have put on my SILK tights in lieu of my STEEL." Quoth the lady, "Dear sir, no apologies, pray, You will take our 'pot-luck' in the family way; We can give you a dish Of some decentish fish, And our water's thought fairish; but here in the Rhine, I can't say we pique ourselves much on our wine." The Knight made a bow more profound than before, When a Dory-faced page oped the dining-room door, And said, bending his knee, "Madame, on a servi!" Rupert tender'd his arm, led Lurline to her place, And a fat little Mer-man stood up and said grace, What boots it to tell of the viands, or how she Apologized much for their plain water-souchy, Want of Harvey's, and Cross's, And Burgess's sauces? Or how Rupert, on his side, protested, by Jove, he Preferr'd his fish plain, without soy or anchovy. Suffice it the meal Boasted trout, perch, and eel, Besides some remarkably fine salmon peel, The Knight, sooth to say, thought much less of the fishes Than what they were served on, the massive gold dishes; While his eye, as it glanced now and then on the girls, Was caught by their persons much less than their pearls, And a thought came across him and caused him to muse, "If I could but get hold Of some of that gold, I might manage to pay off my rascally Jews!" When dinner was done, at a sign to the lasses, The table was clear'd, and they put on fresh glasses; Then the lady addrest Her redoubtable guest Much as Dido, of old, did the pious Eneas, "Dear sir, what induced you to come down and see us?"-- Rupert gave her a glance most bewitchingly tender, Loll'd back in his chair, put his toes on the fender, And told her outright How that he, a young Knight, Had never been last at a feast or a fight; But that keeping good cheer Every day in the year, And drinking neat wines all the same as small-beer, Had exhausted his rent, And, his money all spent, How he borrow'd large sums at two hundred per cent.; How they follow'd--and then, The once civilest of men, Messrs. Howard and Gibbs, made him bitterly rue it he'd Ever raised money by way of annuity; And, his mortgages being about to foreclose, How he jumped into the river to finish his woes! Lurline was affected, and own'd, with a tear, That a story so mournful had ne'er met her ear: Rupert, hearing her sigh, Look'd uncommonly sly, And said, with some emphasis, "Ah! miss, had I A few pounds of those metals You waste here on kettles, Then, Lord once again Of my spacious domain, A free Count of the Empire once more I might reign, With Lurline at my side, My adorable bride (For the parson should come, and the knot should be tied); No couple so happy on earth should be seen As Sir Rupert the brave and his charming Lurline; Not that money's my object--No, hang it! I scorn it-- And as for my rank--but that YOU'D so adorn it-- I'd abandon it all To remain your true thrall, And, instead of 'the GREAT,' be call'd 'Rupert the SMALL,' --To gain but your smiles, were I Sardanapalus, I'd descend from my throne, and be boots at an alehouse." Lurline hung her head Turn'd pale, and then red, Growing faint at this sudden proposal to wed, As though his abruptness, in "popping the question" So soon after dinner, disturb'd her digestion. Then, averting her eye, With a lover-like sigh, "You are welcome," she murmur'd in tones most bewitching, "To every utensil I have in my kitchen!" Upstarted the Knight, Half mad with delight, Round her finely-form'd waist He immediately placed One arm, which the lady most closely embraced, Of her lily-white fingers the other made capture, And he press'd his adored to his bosom with rapture, "And, oh!" he exclaim'd, "let them go catch my skiff, I'll be home in a twinkling and back in a jiffy, Nor one moment procrastinate longer my journey Than to put up the bans and kick out the attorney." One kiss to her lip, and one squeeze to her hand And Sir Rupert already was half-way to land, For a sour-visaged Triton, With features would frighten Old Nick, caught him up in one hand, though no light one, Sprang up through the waves, popp'd him into his funny, Which some others already had half-fill'd with money; In fact, 'twas so heavily laden with ore And pearls, 'twas a mercy he got it to shore; But Sir Rupert was strong, And while pulling along, Still he heard, faintly sounding, the water-nymphs' song. LAY OF THE NAIADS. "Away! away! to the mountain's brow, Where the castle is darkly frowning; And the vassals, all in goodly row, Weep for their lord a-drowning! Away! away! to the steward's room, Where law with its wig and robe is; Throw us out John Doe and Richard Roe, And sweetly we'll tidde their tobies!" The unearthly voices scarce had ceased their yelling, When Rupert reach'd his old baronial dwelling. What rejoicing was there! How the vassals did stare! The old housekeeper put a clean shirt down to air, For she saw by her lamp That her master's was damp, And she fear'd he'd catch cold, and lumbago, and cramp; But, scorning what she did, The Knight never heeded Wet jacket, or trousers, or thought of repining, Since their pockets had got such a delicate lining. But, oh! what dismay Fill'd the tribe of Ca Sa, When they found he'd the cash, and intended to pay! Away went "cognovits," "bills," "bonds," and "escheats," Rupert cleared off old scores, and took proper receipts. Now no more he sends out, For pots of brown stout, Or schnapps, but resolves to do henceforth without, Abjure from this hour all excess and ebriety, Enroll himself one of a Temp'rance Society, All riot eschew, Begin life anew, And new-cushion and hassock the family pew! Nay, to strengthen him more in this new mode of life He boldly determined to take him a wife. Now, many would think that the Knight, from a nice sense Of honor, should put Lurline's name in the license, And that, for a man of his breeding and quality, To break faith and troth, Confirm'd by an oath, Is not quite consistent with rigid morality; But whether the nymph was forgot, or he thought her From her essence scarce wife, but at best wife-and-water And declined as unsuited, A bride so diluted-- Be this as it may, He, I'm sorry to say For, all things consider'd, I own 'twas a rum thing, Made proposals in form to Miss Una Von--something (Her name has escaped me), sole heiress, and niece To a highly respectable Justice of Peace. "Thrice happy's the wooing That's not long a-doing!" So much time is saved in the billing and cooing-- The ring is now bought, the white favors, and gloves, And all the et cetera which crown people's loves; A magnificent bride-cake comes home from the baker. And lastly appears, from the German Long Acre, That shaft which, the sharpest in all Cupid's quiver is, A plumb-color'd coach, and rich Pompadour liveries, 'Twas a comely sight To behold the Knight, With his beautiful bride, dress'd all in white, And the bridemaids fair with their long lace vails, As they all walk'd up to the altar rails, While nice little boys, the incense dispensers, March'd in front with white surplices, bands, and gilt censers. With a gracious air, and a smiling look, Mess John had open'd his awful book, And had read so far as to ask if to wed he meant? And if "he knew any just cause or impediment?" When from base to turret the castle shook!!! Then came a sound of a mighty rain Dashing against each storied pane, The wind blew loud, And coal-black cloud O'ershadow'd the church, and the party, and crowd; How it could happen they could not divine, The morning had been so remarkably fine! Still the darkness increased, till it reach'd such a pass That the sextoness hasten'd to turn on the gas; But harder it pour'd, And the thunder roar'd, As if heaven and earth were coming together; None ever had witness'd such terrible weather. Now louder it crash'd, And the lightning flash'd, Exciting the fears Of the sweet little dears In the vails, as it danced on the brass chandeliers; The parson ran off, though a stout-hearted Saxon, When he found that a flash had set fire to his caxon. Though all the rest trembled, as might be expected, Sir Rupert was perfectly cool and collected, And endeavor'd to cheer His bride, in her ear Whisp'ring tenderly, "Pray don't be frighten'd, my dear Should it even set fire to the castle, and burn it, you're Amply insured, both for buildings and furniture." But now, from without, A trustworthy scout Rush'd hurriedly in-- Wet through to the skin, Informing his master 'the river was rising, And flooding the grounds in a way quite surprising.' He'd no time to say more, For already the roar Of the waters was heard as they reach'd the church-door, While, high on the first wave that roll'd in, was seen, Riding proudly, the form of the angry Lurline; And all might observe, by her glance fierce and stormy, She was stung by the spretoe injuria formoe. What she said to the Knight, what she said to the bride, What she said to the ladies who stood by her side, What she said to the nice little boys in white clothes, Oh, nobody mentions--for nobody knows; For the roof tumbled in, and the walls tumbled out, And the folks tumbled down, all confusion and rout, The rain kept on pouring, The flood kept on roaring, The billows and water-nymphs roll'd more and more in Ere the close of the day All was clean wash'd away-- One only survived who could hand down the news, A little old woman that open'd the pews; She was borne off, but stuck, By the greatest good luck, In an oak-tree, and there she hung, crying and screaming, And saw all the rest swallow'd up the wild stream in; In vain, all the week, Did the fishermen seek For the bodies, and poke in each cranny and creek; In vain was their search After aught in the church, They caught nothing but weeds, and perhaps a few perch. The Humane Society Tried a variety Of methods, and brought down, to drag for the wreck, tackles But they only fished up the clerk's tortoise-shell spectacles. MORAL. This tale has a moral. Ye youths, oh, beware Of liquor, and how you run after the fair! Shun playing at SHORTS--avoid quarrels and jars-- And don't take to smoking those nasty cigars! --Let no run of bad-luck, or despair for some Jewess-eyed Damsel, induce you to contemplate suicide! Don't sit up much later than ten or eleven!-- Be up in the morning by half after seven! Keep from flirting--nor risk, warn'd by Rupert's miscarriage, An action for breach of a promise of marriage;-- Don't fancy odd fishes! Don't prig silver dishes! And to sum up the whole, in the shortest phrase I know, BEWARE OF THE RHINE, AND TAKE CARE OF THE RHINO! LOOK AT THE CLOCK. R. HARRIS BARHAM. "Look at the Clock!" quoth Winifred Pryce, As she opened the door to her husband's knock, Then paused to give him a piece of advice, "You nasty Warmint, look at the Clock! Is this the way, you Wretch, every day you Treat her who vow'd to love and obey you?-- Out all night! Me in a fright! Staggering home as it's just getting light! You intoxified brute!--you insensible block!-- Look at the Clock!--Do!--Look at the Clock!" Winifred Pryce was tidy and clean, Her gown was a flower'd one, her petticoat green, Her buckles were bright as her milking-cans, Her hat was a beaver, and made like a man's; Her little red eyes were deep set in their socket-holes, Her gown-tail was turn'd up, and tuck'd through the pocket-holes; A face like a ferret Betoken'd her spirit: To conclude, Mrs. Pryce was not over young, Had very short legs, and a very long tongue. Now David Pryce Had one darling vice; Remarkably partial to any thing nice, Nought that was good to him came amiss, Whether to eat, or to drink or to kiss! Especially ale-- If it was not too stale I really believe he'd have emptied a pail; Not that in Wales They talk of their Ales: To pronounce the word they make use of might trouble you, Being spelt with a C, two R's, and a W. That particular day, As I've heard people say, Mr. David Pryce had been soaking his clay, And amusing himself with his pipe and cheroots, The whole afternoon at the Goat-in-Boots, With a couple more soakers, Thoroughbred smokers, Both, like himself, prime singers and jokers; And, long after day had drawn to a close, And the rest of the world was wrapp'd in repose, They were roaring out "Shenkin!" and "Ar hydd y nos;" While David himself, to a Sassenach tune, Sang, "We've drunk down the Sun, boys! let's drink down the Moon! What have we with day to do? Mrs. Winifred Pryce, 't was made for you!"-- At length, when they couldn't well drink any more, Old "Goat-in-Boots" showed them the door: And then came that knock, And the sensible shock David felt when his wife cried, "Look at the Clock!" For the hands stood as crooked as crooked might be, The long at the Twelve, and the short at the Three! That self-same clock had long been a bone Of contention between this Darby and Joan; And often, among their pother and rout, When this otherwise amiable couple fell out, Pryce would drop a cool hint, With an ominous squint At its case, of an "Uncle" of his, who'd a "Spout." That horrid word "Spout" No sooner came out Than Winifred Pryce would turn her about, And with scorn on her lip, And a hand on each hip, "Spout" herself till her nose grew red at the tip, "You thundering Willin, I know you'd be killing Your wife,--ay, a dozen of wives,--for a shilling! You may do what you please, You may sell my chemise (Mrs. P. was too well-bred to mention her stock), But I never will part with my Grandmother's Clock!" Mrs. Pryce's tongue ran long and ran fast, But patience is apt to wear out at last, And David Pryce in temper was quick, So he stretch'd out his hand, and caught hold of a stick; Perhaps in its use he might mean to be lenient, But walking just then wasn't very convenient, So he threw it, instead, Direct at her head; It knock'd off her hat; Down she fell flat; Her case, perhaps, was not much mended by that: But whatever it was,--whether rage and pain Produced apoplexy, or burst a vein, Or her tumble induced a concussion of brain, I can't say for certain,--but THIS I can, When sober'd by fright, to assist her he ran, Mrs. Winifred Pryce was dead as Queen Anne! The fatal catastrophe Named in my last strophe As adding to grim Death's exploits such a vast trophy, Made a great noise; and the shocking fatality, Ran over, like wild-fire, the whole Principality. And then came Mr. Ap Thomas, the Coroner, With his jury to sit, some dozen or more, on her. Mr. Pryce to commence His "ingenious defense," Made a "powerful appeal" to the jury's "good sense," "The world he must defy Ever to justify Any presumption of 'Malice Prepense;'"-- The unlucky lick From the end of his stick He "deplored"--he was "apt to be rather too quick;"-- But, really, her prating Was so aggravating: Some trifling correction was just what he meant;--all The rest, he assured them, was "quite accidental!" Then he calls Mr. Jones, Who depones to her tones, And her gestures and hints about "breaking his bones," While Mr. Ap Morgan, and Mr. Ap Rhys Declared the deceased Had styled him "a Beast," And swear they had witness'd, with grief and surprise, The allusion she made to his limbs and his eyes. The jury, in fine, having sat on the body The whole day, discussing the case, and gin-toddy, Return'd about half-past eleven at night The following verdict, "We find, SARVE HER RIGHT!" Mr. Pryce, Mrs. Winifred Pryce being dead, Felt lonely, and moped; and one evening he said He would marry Miss Davis at once in her stead. Not far from his dwelling, From the vale proudly swelling, Rose a mountain, it's name you'll excuse me from telling For the vowels made use of in Welsh are so few That the A and the E, the I, O, and the U, Have really but little or nothing to do; And the duty, of course, falls the heavier by far, On the L, and the H, and the N, and the R, Its first syllable "PEN," Is pronounceable;--then Come two LL's, and two HH's, two FF's, and an N; About half a score R's and some Ws follow, Beating all my best efforts at euphony hollow: But we shan't have to mention it often, so when We do, with your leave, we'll curtail it to "PEN." Well--the moon shone bright Upon "PEN" that night, When Pryce, being quit of his fuss and his fright, Was scaling its side With that sort of stride A man puts out when walking in search of a bride Mounting higher and higher, He began to perspire, Till, finding his legs were beginning to tire, And feeling opprest By a pain in his chest, He paus'd, and turn'd round to take breath, and to rest; A walk all up hill is apt, we know, To make one, however robust, puff and blow, So he stopp'd, and look'd down on the valley below. O'er fell, and o'er fen, Over mountain and glen, All bright in the moonshine, his eye roved, and then All the Patriot rose in his soul, and he thought Upon Wales, and her glories, and all he'd been taught Of her Heroes of old, So brave and so bold,-- Of her Bards with long beards, and harps mounted in gold Of King Edward the First, Of memory accurst; And the scandalous manner in which he behaved, Killing Poets by dozens, With their uncles and cousins, Of whom not one in fifty had ever been shaved-- Of the Court Ball, at which, by a lucky mishap, Owen Tudor fell into Queen Katherine's lap; And how Mr. Tudor, Successfully woo'd her, Till the Dowager put on a new wedding ring, And so made him Father-in law to the King. He thought upon Arthur, and Merlin of yore, On Gryffith ap Conan, and Owen Glendour; On Pendragon, and Heaven knows how many more. He thought of all this, as he gazed, in a trice, On all things, in short, but the late Mrs. Pryce; When a lumbering noise from behind made him start, And sent the blood back in full tide to his heart, Which went pit-a-pat As he cried out "What's that?"-- That very queer sound?-- Does it come from the ground? Or the air,--from above,--or below,--or around?-- It is not like Talking, It is not like Walking, It's not like the clattering of pot or of pan, Or the tramp of a horse,--or the tread of a man,-- Or the hum of a crowd,--or the shouting of boys,-- It's really a deuced odd sort of a noise! Not unlike a cart's,--but that can't be;--for when Could "all the King's horses, and all the King's men," With Old Nick for a wagoner, drive one up "PEN?" Pryce, usually brimful of valor when drunk, Now experienced what school-boys denominate "funk." In vain he look'd back On the whole of the track He had traversed; a thick cloud, uncommonly black, At this moment obscured the broad disc of the moon, And did not seem likely to pass away soon; While clearer and clearer, 'Twas plain to the hearer, Be the noise what it might, it drew nearer and nearer, And sounded, as Pryce to this moment declares, Very much "like a coffin a-walking up stairs." Mr. Pryce had begun To "make up" for a run, As in such a companion he saw no great fun, When a single bright ray Shone out on the way He had passed, and he saw, with no little dismay, Coming after him, bounding o'er crag and o'er rock, The deceased Mrs. Winifred's "Grandmother's Clock!!" 'Twas so!--it had certainly moved from its place, And come, lumbering on thus, to hold him in chase; 'Twas the very same Head, and the very same Case, And nothing was altered at all--but the Face! In that he perceived, with no little surprise, The two little winder-holes turn'd into eyes Blazing with ire, Like two coals of fire; And the "Name of the Maker" was changed to a Lip, And the Hands to a Nose with a very red tip, No!--he could not mistake it,--'twas SHE to the life! The identical face of his poor defunct Wife! One glance was enough Completely "Quant. suff." As the doctors write down when they send you their "stuff,"-- Like a Weather-cock whirled by a vehement puff, David turned himself round; Ten feet of ground He clear'd, in his start, at the very first bound! I've seen people run at West End Fair for cheeses-- I've seen Ladies run at Bow Fair for chemises-- At Greenwich Fair twenty men run for a hat, And one from a Bailiff much faster than that-- At foot-ball I've seen lads run after the bladder-- I've seen Irish Bricklayers run up a ladder-- I've seen little boys run away from a cane-- And I've seen (that is, READ OF) good running in Spain; But I never did read Of, or witness such speed As David exerted that evening.--Indeed All I have ever heard of boys, women, or men, Falls far short of Pryce, as he ran over "PEN!" He reaches its brow,-- He has past it,--and now Having once gained the summit, and managed to cross it, he Rolls down the side with uncommon velocity; But, run as he will, Or roll down the hill, That bugbear behind him is after him still! And close at his heels, not at all to his liking, The terrible clock keeps on ticking and striking, Till, exhausted and sore, He can't run any more, But falls as he reaches Miss Davis's door, And screams when they rush out, alarm'd at his knock, "Oh! Look at the Clock!--Do!--Look at the Clock!!" Miss Davis look'd up, Miss Davis look'd down, She saw nothing there to alarm her;--a frown Came o'er her white forehead, She said, "It was horrid A man should come knocking at that time of night, And give her Mamma and herself such a fright;-- To squall and to bawl About nothing at all!" She begg'd "he'd not think of repeating his call; His late wife's disaster By no means had past her," She'd "have him to know she was meat for his Master!" Then regardless alike of his love and his woes, She turn'd on her heel and she turn'd up her nose, Poor David in vain Implored to remain, He "dared not," he said, "cross the mountain again." Why the fair was obdurate None knows,--to be sure it Was said she was setting her cap at the Curate;-- Be that as it may, it is certain the sole hole Pryce found to creep into that night was the Coal-hole! In that shady retreat With nothing to eat And with very bruised limbs, and with very sore feet, All night close he kept; I can't say he slept; But he sigh'd, and he sobb'd, and he groan'd, and he wept; Lamenting his sins, And his two broken shins, Bewailing his fate with contortions and grins, And her he once thought a complete Rara Avis, Consigning to Satan,--viz., cruel Miss Davis' Mr. David has since had a "serious call," He never drinks ale, wine, or spirits, at all, And they say he is going to Exeter Hall To make a grand speech, And to preach, and to teach People that "they can't brew their malt liquor too small!" That an ancient Welsh Poet, one PYNDAR AP TUDOR, Was right in proclaiming "ARISTON MEN UDOR!" Which means "The pure Element Is for Man's belly meant!" And that GIN'S but a SNARE of Old Nick the deluder! And "still on each evening when pleasure fills up," At the old Goat-in-Boots, with Metheglin, each cup Mr. Pryce, if he's there, Will get into "The Chair," And make all his QUONDAM associates stare By calling aloud to the Landlady's daughter, "Patty, bring a cigar, and a glass of Spring Water!" The dial he constantly watches; and when The long hand's at the "XII.," and the short at the "X.," He gets on his legs, Drains his glass to the dregs, Takes his hat and great-coat off their several pegs, With his President's hammer bestows his last knock, And says solemnly--"Gentlemen! LOOK AT THE CLOCK!!!" [Illustration: LAMB.] THE BAGMAN'S DOG. R. HARRIS BARHAM. Stant littore Puppies!--VIRGIL. It was a litter, a litter of five, Four are drown'd, and one left alive, He was thought worthy alone to survive; And the Bagman resolved upon bringing him up, To eat of his bread, and to drink of his cup, He was such a dear little cock-tail'd pup! The Bagman taught him many a trick; He would carry, and fetch, and run after a stick, He could well understand The word of command, And appear to doze With a crust on his nose Till the Bagman permissively waved his hand: Then to throw up and catch it he never would fail, As he sat up on end, on his little cock-tail. Never was puppy so bien instruit, Or possess'd of such natural talent as he; And as he grew older, Every beholder Agreed he grew handsomer, sleeker, and bolder. Time, however his wheels we may clog, Wends steadily still with onward jog, And the cock-tail'd puppy's a curly-tail'd dog! When, just at the time He was reaching his prime, And all thought he'd be turning out something sublime, One unlucky day, How no one could say, Whether soft liaison induced him to stray, Or some kidnapping vagabond coaxed him away, He was lost to the view, Like the morning dew;-- He had been, and was not--that's all that they knew And the Bagman storm'd, and the Bagman swore As never a Bagman had sworn before; But storming or swearing but little avails To recover lost dogs with great curly tails. In a large paved court, close by Billiter Square, Stands a mansion, old, but in thorough repair, The only thing strange, from the general air Of its size and appearance, is how it got there; In front is a short semicircular stair Of stone steps--some half score-- Then you reach the ground floor, With a shell-pattern'd architrave over the door. It is spacious, and seems to be built on the plan Of a Gentleman's house in the time of Queen Anne; Which is odd, for, although As we very well know, Under Tudors and Stuarts the City could show Many Noblemen's seats above Bridge and below, Yet that fashion soon after induced them to go From St. Michael Cornhill, and St. Mary-le-Bow, To St. James, and St. George, and St. Anne in Soho-- Be this as it may--at the date I assign To my tale--that's about Seventeen Sixty-Nine-- This mansion, now rather upon the decline, Had less dignified owners--belonging, in fine, To Turner, Dry, Weipersyde, Rogers, and Pyne-- A respectable House in the Manchester line. There were a score Of Bagmen, and more, Who had travel'd full oft for the firm before, But just at this period they wanted to send Some person on whom they could safely depend-- A trust-worthy body, half agent, half friend-- On some mercantile matter, as far as Ostend; And the person they pitch'd on was Anthony Blogg A grave, steady man, not addicted to grog-- The Bagman, in short, who had lost the great dog. * * * * * * "The Sea! the Sea! the open Sea!-- That is the place where we all wish to be, Rolling about on it merrily!" So all sing and say By night and by day, In the boudoir, the street, at the concert, and play, In a sort of coxcombical roundelay;-- You may roam through the City, transversely or straight From Whitechapel turnpike to Cumberland gate, And every young Lady who thrums a guitar, Ev'ry mustached Shopman who smokes a cigar, With affected devotion Promulgates his notion Of being a "Rover" and "Child of the Ocean"-- Whate'er their age, sex, or condition may be, They all of them long for the "Wide, Wide Sea!" But, however they dote, Only set them afloat In any craft bigger at all than a boat, Take them down to the Nore, And you'll see that, before The "Wessel" they "Woyage" in has made half her way Between Shell-Ness Point and the pier at Herne Bay, Let the wind meet the tide in the slightest degree, They'll be all of them heartily sick of "the Sea!" * * * * * * I've stood in Margate, on a bridge of size Inferior far to that described by Byron, Where "palaces and pris'ns on each hand rise--" --That too's a stone one, this is made of iron-- And little donkey-boys your steps environ, Each proffering for your choice his tiny hack, Vaunting its excellence; and, should you hire one, For sixpence, will he urge, with frequent thwack, The much-enduring beast to Buenos Ayres--and back. And there, on many a raw and gusty day, I've stood, and turn'd my gaze upon the pier, And seen the crews, that did embark so gay That self-same morn, now disembark so queer; Then to myself I've sigh'd and said, "Oh dear! Who would believe yon sickly-looking man's a London Jack Tar--a Cheapside Buccaneer!--" But hold, my Muse!--for this terrific stanza Is all too stiffly grand for our Extravaganza. * * * * * "So now we'll go up, up, up, And now we'll go down, down, down, And now we'll go backward and forward, And now we'll go roun', roun', roun'."-- --I hope you've sufficient discernment to see, Gentle Reader, that here the discarding the D Is a fault which you must not attribute to me; Thus my Nurse cut it off when, "with counterfeit glee," She sung, as she danced me about on her knee, In the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and three: All I mean to say is, that the Muse is now free From the self-imposed trammels put on by her betters, And no longer like Filch, midst the felons and debtors, At Drury Lane, dances her hornpipe in fetters. Resuming her track, At once she goes back To our hero, the Bagman--Alas! and Alack! Poor Anthony Blogg Is as sick as a dog, Spite of sundry unwonted potations of grog, By the time the Dutch packet is fairly at sea, With the sands called the Goodwins a league on her lee. And now, my good friends, I've a fine opportunity To obfuscate you all by sea terms with impunity, And talking of "calking," And "quarter-deck walking," "Fore and aft," And "abaft," "Hookers," "barkeys," and "craft," (At which Mr. Poole has so wickedly laughed), Of binnacles--bilboes--the boom call'd the spanker, The best bower-cable--the jib--and sheet-anchor; Of lower-deck guns--and of broadsides and chases, Of taffrails and topsails, and splicing main-braces, And "Shiver my timbers!" and other odd phrases Employ'd by old pilots, with hard-featured faces;-- Of the expletives sea-faring Gentlemen use, The allusions they make to the eyes of their crews;-- How the Sailors, too, swear, How they cherish their hair, And what very long pigtails a great many wear.-- But, Reader, I scorn it--the fact is, I fear, To be candid, I can't make these matters so clear As Marryat, or Cooper, or Captain Chamier, Or Sir E. Lytton Bulwer, who brought up the rear Of the "Nauticals," just at the end of the year Eighteen thirty-nine--(how Time flies!--Oh, dear!)-- With a well-written preface, to make it appear That his play, the "Sea-Captain," 's by no means small beer. There!--"brought up the rear"--you see there's a mistake Which none of the authors I've mentioned would make, I ought to have said, that he "sail'd in their wake."-- So I'll merely observe, as the water grew rougher The more my poor hero continued to suffer, Till the Sailors themselves cried, in pity, "Poor Buffer!" Still rougher it grew, And still harder it blew, And the thunder kick'd up such a hullballoo, That even the Skipper began to look blue; While the crew, who were few, Look'd very queer, too, And seem'd not to know what exactly to do, And they who'd the charge of them wrote in the logs, "Wind N. E.--blows a hurricane--rains cats and dogs." In short it soon grew to a tempest as rude as That Shakspeare describes near the "still vex'd Bermudas," When the winds, in their sport, Drove aside from its port The King's ship, with the whole Neapolitan Court, And swamp'd it to give "the King's Son, Ferdinand," a Soft moment or two with the Lady Miranda, While her Pa met the rest, and severely rebuked 'em For unhandsomely doing him out of his Dukedom, You don't want me, however, to paint you a Storm, As so many have done, and in colors so warm; Lord Byron, for instance, in manner facetious, Mr. Ainsworth, more gravely,--see also Lucretius, --A writer who gave me no trifling vexation When a youngster at school, on Dean Colet's foundation.-- Suffice it to say That the whole of that day, And the next, and the next, they were scudding away Quite out of their course, Propell'd by the force Of those flatulent folks known in Classical story as Aquilo, Libs, Notus, Auster, and Boreas, Driven quite at their mercy 'Twist Guernsey and Jersey, Till at length they came bump on the rocks and the shallows In West longtitude, One, fifty-seven, near St. Maloes; There you will not be surprised That the vessel capsized, Or that Blogg, who had made, from intestine commotions, His specific gravity less than the Ocean's, Should go floating away, 'Mid the surges and spray, Like a cork in a gutter, which, swoll'n by a shower, Runs down Holborn-hill about nine knots an hour. You've seen, I've no doubt, at Bartholomew fair, Gentle Header,--that is, if you've ever been there,-- With their hands tied behind them, some two or three pair Of boys round a bucket set up on a chair, Skipping, and dipping Eyes, nose, chin, and lip in, Their faces and hair with the water all dripping, In an anxious attempt to catch hold of a pippin, That bobs up and down in the water whenever They touch it, as mocking the fruitless endeavor; Exactly as Poets say,--how, though, they can't tell us,-- Old Nick's Nonpareils play at bob with poor Tantalus --Stay!--I'm not clear, But I'm rather out here; 'T was the water itself that slipp'd from him, I fear; Faith, I can't recollect, and I haven't Lempriere-- No matter,--poor Blogg went on clucking and bobbing, Sneezing out the salt water, and gulping and sobbing, Just as Clarence, in Shakspeare, describes all the qualms he Experienced while dreaming they'd drown'd him in Malmsey. "O Lord," he thought, "what pain it was to drown!" And saw great fishes with great goggling eyes, Glaring as he was bobbing up and down, And looking as they thought him quite a prize, When, as he sank, and all was growing dark, A something seized him with its jaws!--A shark?-- No such thing, Reader--most opportunely for Blogg, 'Twas a very large, web-footed, curly-tail'd Dog! * * * * * * * I'm not much of a trav'ler, and really can't boast That I know a great deal of the Brittany coast, But I've often heard say That e'en to this day, The people of Granville, St. Maloes, and thereabout, Are a class that society doesn't much care about; Men who gam their subsistence by contraband dealing, And a mode of abstraction strict people call "stealing," Notwithstanding all which, they are civil of speech, Above all to a stranger who comes within reach; And they were so to Bogg, When the curly-tail'd Dog At last dragged him out, high and dry on the beach. But we all have been told, By the proverb of old, By no means to think "all that glitters is gold," And, in fact, some advance That most people in France Join the manners and air of a Maitre de Danse, To the morals--(as Johnson of Chesterfield said)-- Of an elderly Lady, in Babylon bred, Much addicted to flirting, and dressing in red.-- Be this as it might, It embarrass'd Blogg quite To find those about him so very polite. A suspicious observer perhans might have traced The petiles soins, tendered with so much good taste To the sight of an old-fashion'd pocket-book, placed In a black leather belt well secured round his waist And a ring set with diamonds, his finger that graced, So brilliant, no one could have guess'd they were paste. The group on the shore Consisted of four, You will wonder, perhaps, there were not a few more; But the fact is they've not, in that part of the nation, What Malthus would term, a "too dense population," Indeed the sole sign of man's habitation Was merely a single Rude hut, in a dingle That led away inland direct from the shingle Its sides clothed with underwood, gloomy and dark, Some two hundred yards above high-water mark; And thither the party, So cordial and hearty, Viz., an old man, his wife, two lads, made a start, he The Bagman, proceeding, With equal good breeding, To express, in indifferent French, all he feels, The great curly-tail'd Dog keeping close to his heels.-- They soon reach'd the hut, which seem'd partly in ruin, All the way bowing, chattering, shrugging, Mon-Dieuing, Grimacing, and what sailors call parley-vooing, * * * * * * * Is it Paris, or Kitchener, Reader, exhorts You, whenever your stomach's at all out of sorts, To try, if you find richer viands won't stop in it, A basin of good mutton broth with a chop in it? (Such a basin and chop as I once heard a witty one Call, at the Garrick, "a c--d Committee one," An expression, I own, I do not think a pretty one.) However, it's clear That with sound table beer, Such a mess as I speak of is very good cheer; Especially too When a person's wet through, And is hungry, and tired, and don't know what to do. Now just such a mess of delicious hot pottage Was smoking away when they enter'd the cottage, And casting a truly delicious perfume Through the whole of an ugly ill-furnish'd room; "Hot, smoking hot," On the fire was a pot Well replenish'd, but really I can't say with what; For, famed as the French always are for ragouts, No creature can tell what they put in their stews, Whether bull-frogs, old gloves, or old wigs, or old shoes Notwithstanding, when offer'd I rarely refuse, Any more than poor Blogg did, when seeing the reeky Repast placed before him, scarce able to speak, he In ecstasy mutter'd, "By Jove, Cocky-leeky!" In an instant, as soon As they gave him a spoon. Every feeling and faculty bent on the gruel, he No more blamed Fortune for treating him cruelly, But fell tooth and nail on the soup and the bouilli. * * * * * * Meanwhile that old man standing by, Subducted his long coat-tails on high, With his back to the fire, as if to dry A part of his dress which the watery sky Had visited rather inclemently.-- Blandly he smil'd, but still he look'd sly, And something sinister lurk'd in his eye, Indeed, had you seen him his maritime dress in, You'd have own'd his appearance was not prepossessing; He'd a "dreadnought" coat, and heavy sabots, With thick wooden soles turn'd up at the toes, His nether man cased in a striped quelque chose, And a hump on his back, and a great hook'd nose, So that nine out of ten would be led to suppose That the person before them was Punch in plain clothes. Yet still, as I told you, he smiled on all present, And did all that lay in his power to look pleasant. The old woman, too, Made a mighty ado, Helping her guest to a deal of the stew; She fish'd up the meat, and she help'd him to that, She help'd him to lean, and she help'd him to fat. And it look'd like Hare--but it might have been Cat. The little garcons too strove to express Their sympathy toward the "Child of distress" With a great deal of juvenile French politesse; But the Bagman bluff Continued to "stuff" Of the fat, and the lean, and the tender, and tough, Till they thought he would never cry "Hold, enough!" And the old woman's tones became far less agreeable, Sounding like peste! and sacre! and diable! I've seen an old saw, which is well worth repeating, That says, "Good Eatynge Deserveth good Drynkynge." You'll find it so printed by Caxton or Wynkyn, And a very good proverb it is to my thinking. Blogg thought so too;-- As he finish'd his stew, His ear caught the sound of the word "Morbleu!" Pronounced by the old woman under her breath. Now, not knowing what she could mean by "Blue Death!" He conceiv'd she referr'd to a delicate brewing Which is almost synonymous,--namely, "Blue Ruin." So he pursed up his lip to a smile, and with glee, In his cockneyfy'd accent, responded "Oh, VEE!" Which made her understand he Was asking for brandy; So she turn'd to the cupboard, and, having some handy, Produced, rightly deeming he would not object to it, An oracular bulb with a very long neck to it; In fact you perceive her mistake was the same as his, Each of them "reasoning right from wrong premises;"-- --And here by the way Allow me to say, Kind Reader--you sometimes permit me to stray-- 'Tis strange the French prove, when they take to aspersing, So inferior to us in the science of cursing: Kick a Frenchman down stairs, How absurdly he swears! And how odd 'tis to hear him, when beat to a jelly, Roar out in a passion, "Blue Death!" and "Blue Belly!" "To return to our sheep" from, this little digression:-- Blogg's features assumed a complacent expression As he emptied his glass, and she gave him a fresh one; Too little he heeded, How fast they succeeded. Perhaps you or I might have done, though, as he did; For when once Madam Fortune deals out her hard raps It's amazing to think How one "cottons" to Drink! At such times, of all things in nature, perhaps, There's not one that is half so seducing as Schnaps. Mr. Blogg, beside being uncommonly dry, Was, like most other Bagmen, remarkably shy, --"Did not like to deny"-- "Felt obliged to comply" Every time that she ask'd him to "wet t' other eye;" For 'twas worthy remark that she spared not the stoup, Though before she had seem'd so to grudge him the soup, At length the fumes rose To his brain; and his nose Gave hints of a strong disposition to doze, And a yearning to seek "horizontal repose."-- His queer-looking host, Who, firm at his post, During all the long meal had continued to toast That garment 't were rude to Do more than allude to, Perceived, from his breathing and nodding, the views Of his guest were directed to "taking a snooze:" So he caught up a lamp in his huge dirty paw, With (as Blogg used to tell it) "Mounseer, swivvy maw!" And "marshal'd" him so "The way he should go," Up stairs to an attic, large, gloomy, and low, Without table or chair. Or a movable there, Save an old-fashion'd bedstead, much out of repair, That stood at the end most remov'd from the stair.-- With a grin and a shrug The host points to the rug, Just as much as to say, "There!--I think you'll be snug!" Puts the light on the floor, Walks to the door, Makes a formal Salaam, and is then seen no more; When just as the ear lost the sound of his tread, To the Bagman's surprise, and, at first, to his dread, The great curly tail'd Dog crept from under the bed!-- --It's a very nice thing when a man's in a fright, And thinks matters all wrong, to find matters all right; As, for instance, when going home late-ish at night Through a Church-yard, and seeing a thing all in white. Which, of course, one is led to consider a Sprite, To find that the Ghost Is merely a post. Or a miller, or chalky-faced donkey at most; Or, when taking a walk as the evenings begin To close, or, as some people call it, "draw in," And some undefined form, "looming large" through the haze Presents itself, right in your path, to your gaze, Inducing a dread Of a knock on the head, Or a sever'd carotid, to find that, instead Of one of those ruffians who murder and fleece men, It's your uncle, or one of the "Rural Policemen;"-- Then the blood flows again Through artery and vein; You're delighted with what just before gave you pain; You laugh at your fears--and your friend in the fog Meets a welcome as cordial as Anthony Blogg Now bestow'd on HIS friend--the great curly-tail'd Dog. For the Dog leap'd up, and his paws found a place On each side his neck in a canine embrace, And he lick'd Blogg's hands, and he lick'd his face, And he waggled his tail as much as to say, "Mr. Blogg, we've foregather'd before to-day!" And the Bagman saw, as he now sprang up, What, beyond all doubt, He might have found out Before, had he not been so eager to sup, 'T was Sancho!--the Dog he had rear'd from a pup!-- The Dog who when sinking had seized his hair-- The Dog who had saved, and conducted him there-- The Dog he had lost out of Billiter Square! It's passing sweet, An absolute treat, When friends, long sever'd by distance, meet-- With what warmth and affection each other they greet! Especially too, as we very well know, If there seems any chance of a little cadeau, A "Present from Brighton," or "Token" to show, In the shape of a work-box, ring, bracelet, or so, That our friends don't forget us, although they may go To Ramsgate, or Rome, or Fernando Po. If some little advantage seems likely to start, From a fifty-pound note to a two-penny tart, It's surprising to see how it softens the heart, And you'll find those whose hopes from the other are strongest, Use, in common, endearments the thickest and longest But, it was not so here; For although it is clear, When abroad, and we have not a single friend near, E'en a cur that will love us becomes very dear, And the balance of interest 'twixt him and the Dog Of course was inclining to Anthony Blogg, Yet he, first of all, ceased To encourage the beast, Perhaps thinking "Enough is as good as a feast;" And besides, as we've said, being sleepy and mellow, He grew tired of patting, and crying "Poor fellow!" So his smile by degrees harden'd into a frown, And his "That's a good dog!" into "Down, Sancho! down!" But nothing could stop his mute fav'rite's caressing, Who, in fact, seem'd resolved to prevent his undressing, Using paws, tail, and head, As if he had said, "Most beloved of masters, pray, don't go to bed; You had much better sit up, and pat me instead!" Nay, at last, when determined to take some repose, Blogg threw himself down on the outside the clothes, Spite of all he could do, The Dog jump'd up too, And kept him awake with his very cold nose; Scratching and whining, And moaning and pining, Till Blogg really believed he must have some design in Thus breaking his rest; above all, when at length The Dog scratch'd him off from the bed by sheer strength. Extremely annoy'd by the "tarnation whop," as it 's call'd in Kentuck, on his head and its opposite, Blogg show'd fight; When he saw, by the light Of the flickering candle, that had not yet quite Burnt down in the socket, though not over bright, Certain dark-color'd stains, as of blood newly spilt, Reveal'd by the dog's having scratch'd off the quilt-- Which hinted a story of horror and guilt'-- 'T was "no mistake,"-- He was "wide awake" In an instant; for, when only decently drunk, Nothing sobers a man so completely as "funk." And hark!--what's that?-- They have got into chat In the kitchen below--what the deuce are they at?-- There's the ugly old Fisherman scolding his wife-- And she!--by the Pope! she's whetting a knife!-- At each twist Of her wrist, And her great mutton fist, The edge of the weapon sounds shriller and louder!-- The fierce kitchen fire Had not made Blogg perspire Half so much, or a dose of the best James's powder,-- It ceases--all's silent!--and now, I declare There's somebody crawls up that rickety stair. * * * * * * * The horrid old ruffian comes, cat-like, creeping;-- He opens the door just sufficient to peep in, And sees, as he fancies, the Bagman sleeping! For Blogg, when he'd once ascertain'd that there was some "Precious mischief" on foot, had resolv'd to play "'Possum;"-- Down he went, legs and head, Flat on the bed, Apparently sleeping as sound as the dead; While, though none who look'd at him would think such a thing Every nerve in his frame was braced up for a spring. Then, just as the villain Crept, stealthily still, in, And you'd not have insur'd his guest's life for a shilling, As the knife gleam'd on high, bright and sharp as a razor, Blogg, starting upright, "tipped" the fellow "a facer;"-- --Down went man and weapon.--Of all sorts of blows, From what Mr. Jackson reports, I suppose There are few that surpass a flush hit on the nose. Now, had I the pen of old Ossian or Homer, (Though each of these names some pronounce a misnomer, And say the first person Was call'd James M'Pherson, While, as to the second, they stoutly declare He was no one knows who, and born no one knows where) Or had I the quill of Pierce Egan, a writer Acknowledged the best theoretical fighter For the last twenty years, By the lively young Peers, Who, doffing their coronets, collars, and ermine, treat Boxers to "Max," at the One Tun in Jermyn Street; --I say, could I borrow these Gentlemen's Muses, More skill'd than my meek one in "fibbings" and "bruises," I'd describe now to you As "prime a Set-to," And "regular turn-up," as ever you knew; Not inferior in "bottom" to aught you have read of Since Cribb, years ago, half knock'd Molyneux's head off. But my dainty Urania says, "Such things are shocking!" Lace mittens she loves, Detesting "The Gloves;" And turning, with air most disdainfully mocking, From Melpomene's buskin, adopts the silk stocking. So, as far as I can see, I must leave you to "fancy" The thumps, and the bumps, and the ups and the downs, And the taps, and the slaps, and the raps on the crowns, That pass'd 'twist the Husband, Wife, Bagman, and Dog, As Blogg roll'd over them, and they roll'd over Blogg; While what's called "The Claret" Flew over the garret: Merely stating the fact. As each other they whack'd, The Dog his old master most gallantly back'd; Making both the gargcos, who came running in, sheer off, With "Hippolyte's" thumb, and "Alphonse's" left ear off; Next making a stoop on The buffeting group on The floor, rent in tatters the old woman's jupon; Then the old man turn'd up, and a fresh bite of Sancho's Tore out the whole seat of his striped Calimancoes.-- Really, which way This desperate fray Might have ended at last, I'm not able to say, The dog keeping thus the assassins at bay: But a few fresh arrivals decided the day; For bounce went the door, In came half a score Of the passengers, sailors, and one or two more Who had aided the party in gaining the shore! It's a great many years ago--mine then were few-- Since I spent a short time in the old Courageux; I think that they say She had been, in her day A First-rate,--but was then what they term a Rasee,-- And they took me on board in the Downs, where she lay (Captain Wilkinson held the command, by the way.) In her I pick'd up, on that single occasion, The little I know that concerns Navigation, And obtained, inter alia, some vague information Of a practice which often, in cases of robbing, Is adopted on shipboard--I think it's call'd "Cobbing." How it's managed exactly I really can't say, But I think that a Boot-jack is brought into play,--That is, if I'm right:--it exceeds my ability To tell how 'tis done; But the system is one Of which Sancho's exploit would increase the facility. And, from all I can learn, I'd much rather be robb'd Of the little I have in my purse, than be "cobb'd;"-- That's mere matter of taste: But the Frenchman was placed-- I mean the old scoundrel whose actions we've traced-- In such a position, that, on his unmasking, His consent was the last thing the men thought of asking. The old woman, too, Was obliged to go through, With her boys, the rough discipline used by the crew, Who, before they let one of the set see the back of them, "Cobb'd" the whole party,--ay, "every man Jack of them." MORAL. And now, Gentle Reader, before that I say Farewell for the present, and wish you good-day. Attend to the moral I draw from my lay!-- If ever you travel, like Anthony Blogg, Be wary of strangers!--don't take too much grog!-- And don't fall asleep, if you should, like a hog!-- Above all--carry with you a curly-tail'd Dog! Lastly, don't act like Blogg, who, I say it with blushing, Sold Sancho next month for two guineas at Flushing; But still on these words of the Bard keep a fix'd eye, INGRATUM SI DIXERIS, OMNIA DIXTI!!! L'Envoye. I felt so disgusted with Blogg, from sheer shame of him, I never once thought to inquire what became of him; If YOU want to know, Reader, the way. I opine, To achieve your design,-- --Mind, it's no wish of mine,-- Is,--(a penny will do't)--by addressing a line To Turner, Dry, Weipersyde, Rogers, and Pyne. DAME FREDEGONDE. WILLIAM AYTOUS. When folks with headstrong passion blind, To play the fool make up their mind, They're sure to come with phrases nice, And modest air, for your advice. But, as a truth unfailing make it, They ask, but never mean to take it. 'Tis not advice they want, in fact, But confirmation in their act. Now mark what did, in such a case, A worthy priest who knew the race. A dame more buxom, blithe and free, Than Fredegonde you scarce would see. So smart her dress, so trim her shape, Ne'er hostess offer'd juice of grape, Could for her trade wish better sign; Her looks gave flavor to her wine, And each guest feels it, as he sips, Smack of the ruby of her lips. A smile for all, a welcome glad,-- A jovial coaxing way she had; And,--what was more her fate than blame,-- A nine months' widow was our dame. But toil was hard, for trade was good, And gallants sometimes will be rude. "And what can a lone woman do? The nights are long and eerie too. Now, Guillot there's a likely man. None better draws or taps a can; He's just the man, I think, to suit, If I could bring my courage to't." With thoughts like these her mind is cross'd: The dame, they say, who doubts, is lost. "But then the risk? I'll beg a slice. Of Father Raulin's good advice." Frankt in her best, with looks demure, She seeks the priest; and, to be sure, Asks if he thinks she ought to wed: "With such a business on my head, I'm worried off my legs with care, And need some help to keep things square. I've thought of Guillot, truth to tell! He's steady, knows his business well, What do you think?" When thus he met her "Oh, take him, dear, you can't do better!" "But then the danger, my good pastor, If of the man I make the master. There is no trusting to these men." "Well, well, my dear, don't have him then!" "But help I must have, there's the curse. I may go further and fare worse." "Why, take him then!" "But if he should Turn out a thankless ne'er-do-good,-- In drink and riot waste my all, And rout me out of house and hall?" "Don't have him, then! But I've a plan To clear your doubts, if any can. The bells a peal are ringing,--hark! Go straight, and what they tell you mark. If they say 'Yes!' wed, and be blest-- If 'No,' why--do as you think best." The bells rung out a triple bob: Oh, how our widow's heart did throb, And thus she heard their burden go, "Marry, mar-marry, mar-Guillot!" Bells were not then left to hang idle: A week,--and they rang for her bridal But, woe the while, they might as well Have rung the poor dame's parting knell. The rosy dimples left her cheek. She lost her beauties plump and sleek, For Guillot oftener kick'd than kiss'd, And back'd his orders with his fist, Proving by deeds as well as words, That servants make the worst of lords. She seeks the priest, her ire to wreak, And speaks as angry women speak, With tiger looks, and bosom swelling, Cursing the hour she took his telling. To all, his calm reply was this,-- "I fear you've read the bells amiss, If they have led you wrong in aught, Your wish, not they, inspired the thought, Just go, and mark well what they say." Off trudged the dame upon her way, And sure enough the chime went so,-- "Don't have that knave, that knave Guillot!" "Too true," she cried, "there's not a doubt: What could my ears have been about!" She had forgot, that, as fools think, The bell is ever sure to clink. THE KING OF BRENTFORD'S TESTAMENT. W. MAKEPEACE THACKERAY The noble king of Brentford Was old and very sick; He summoned his physicians To wait upon him quick; They stepped into their coaches, And brought their best physic. They crammed their gracious master With potion and with pill; They drenched him and they bled him; They could not cure his ill. "Go fetch," says he, "my lawyer; I'd better make my will." The monarch's royal mandate The lawyer did obey; The thought of six-and-eightpence Did make his heart full gay. "What is't," says he, "your majesty Would wish of me to-day?" "The doctors have belabored me With potion and with pill; My hours of life are counted O man of tape and quill! Sit down and mend a pen or two, I want to make my will. "O'er all the land of Brentford I'm lord and eke of Kew: I've three per cents and five per cents; My debts are but a few; And to inherit after me I have but children two. "Prince Thomas is my eldest son, A sober prince is he; And from the day we breeched him, Till now he's twenty-three, He never caused disquiet To his poor mamma or me. "At school they never flogged him; At college, though not fast, Yet his little go and great go He creditably passed, And made his year's allowance For eighteen months to last. "He never owed a shilling, Went never drunk to bed, He has not two ideas Within his honest head; In all respects he differs From my second son, Prince Ned. "When Tom has half his income Laid by at the year's end, Poor Ned has ne'er a stiver That rightly he may spend, But sponges on a tradesman, Or borrows from a friend. "While Tom his legal studies Most soberly pursues, Poor Ned must pass his mornings A-dawdling with the Muse; While Tom frequents his banker, Young Ned frequents the Jews. "Ned drives about in buggies, Tom sometimes takes a 'bus; Ah, cruel fate, why made you My children differ thus? Why make of Tom a DULLARD, And Ned a GENIUS?" "You'll cut him with a shilling," Exclaimed the man of wits: "I'll leave my wealth," said Brentford, "Sir Lawyer, as befits; And portion both their fortunes Unto their several wits." "Your grace knows best," the lawyer said, "On your commands I wait." "Be silent, sir," says Brentford, "A plague upon your prate! Come, take your pen and paper, And write as I dictate." The will, as Brentford spoke it, Was writ, and signed, and closed; He bade the lawyer leave him, And turned him round, and dozed; And next week in the church-yard The good old king reposed. Tom, dressed in crape and hatband, Of mourners was the chief; In bitter self-upbraidings Poor Edward showed his grief; Tom hid his fat, white countenance In his pocket handkerchief. Ned's eyes were full of weeping, He faltered in his walk; Tom never shed a tear, But onward he did stalk, As pompous, black, and solemn, As any catafalque. And when the bones of Brentford-- That gentle king and just-- With bell, and book, and candle, Were duly laid in dust, "Now, gentlemen," says Thomas, "Let business be discussed. "When late our sire beloved Was taken deadly ill, Sir Lawyer, you attended him, (I mean to tax your bill;) And, as you signed and wrote it, I pr'ythee read the will." The lawyer wiped his spectacles, And drew the parchment out; And all the Brentford family Sat eager round about: Poor Ned was somewhat anxious, But Tom had ne'er a doubt. "My son, as I make ready To seek my last long home, Some cares I had for Neddy, But none for thee, my Tom: Sobriety and order You ne'er departed from. "Ned hath a brilliant genius, And thou a plodding brain; On thee I think with pleasure, On him with doubt and pain." ("You see, good Ned," says Thomas "What he thought about us twain.") "Though small was your allowance, You saved a little store; And those who save a little Shall get a plenty more." As the lawyer read this compliment, Tom's eyes were running o'er. "The tortoise and the hare, Tom, Set out, at each his pace; The hare it was the fleeter, The tortoise won the race; And since the world's beginning, This ever was the case. "Ned's genius, blithe and singing Steps gayly o'er the ground; As steadily you trudge it, He clears it with a bound; But dullness has stout legs, Tom, And wind that's wondrous sound. "O'er fruits and flowers alike, Tom, You pass with plodding feet; You heed not one nor t'other, But onward go your beat, While genius stops to loiter With all that he may meet. "And ever, as he wanders, Will have a pretext fine For sleeping in the morning, Or loitering to dine, Or dozing in the shade, Or basking in the shine. "Your little steady eyes, Tom, Though not so bright as those That restless round about him Your flashing genius throws, Are excellently suited To look before your nose. "Thank heaven, then, for the blinkers It placed before your eyes; The stupidest are weakest, The witty are not wise; O, bless your good stupidity, It is your dearest prize! "And though my lands are wide, And plenty is my gold, Still better gifts from Nature, My Thomas, do you hold-- A brain that's thick and heavy, A heart that's dull and cold; "Too dull to feel depression, Too hard to heed distress, Too cool to yield to passion, Or silly tenderness. March on--your road is open To wealth, Tom, and success. "Ned sinneth in extravagance, And you in greedy lust." ("I' faith," says Ned, "our father Is less polite than just.") "In you, son Tom, I've confidence, But Ned I can not trust. "Wherefore my lease and copyholds, My lands and tenements, My parks, my farms, and orchards, My houses and my rents, My Dutch stock, and my Spanish stock, My five and three per cents; "I leave to you, my Thomas--" ("What, all?" poor Edward said; "Well, well, I should have spent them, And Tom's a prudent head.") "I leave to you, my Thomas,-- To you, IN TRUST for Ned." The wrath and consternation What poet e'er could trace That at this fatal passage Came o'er Prince Tom his face; The wonder of the company, And honest Ned's amaze! "'Tis surely some mistake," Good-naturedly cries Ned; The lawyer answered gravely, "'Tis even as I said; 'T was thus his gracious majesty Ordained on his death-bed. "See, here the will is witnessed, And here's his autograph." "In truth, our father's writing," Said Edward, with a laugh; "But thou shalt not be loser, Tom, We'll share it half and half." "Alas! my kind young gentleman, This sharing can not be; 'Tis written in the testament That Brentford spoke to me, 'I do forbid Prince Ned to give Prince Tom a half-penny. "'He hath a store of money, But ne'er was known to lend it; He never helped his brother; The poor he ne'er befriended; He hath no need of property He knows not how to spend it. "'Poor Edward knows but how to spend, And thrifty Tom to hoard; Let Thomas be the steward then, And Edward be the lord; And as the honest laborer Is worthy his reward, "'I pray Prince Ned, my second son, And my successor dear, To pay to his intendant Five hundred pounds a year; And to think of his old father, And live and make good cheer.'" Such was old Brentford's honest testament; He did devise his moneys for the best, And lies in Brentford church in peaceful rest. Prince Edward lived, and money made and spent; But his good sire was wrong, it is confessed, To say his young son Thomas, never lent. He did. Young Thomas lent at interest, And nobly took his twenty-five per cent. Long time the famous reign of Ned endured, O'er Chiswick, Fulham, Brentford, Putney, Kew; But of extravagance he ne'er was cured. And when both died, as mortal men will do, 'T was commonly reported that the steward Was very much the richer of the two. TITMARSH'S CARMEN LILLIENSE. W. MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. LILLE, Sept. 2, 1843. My heart is weary, my peace is gone, How shall I e'er my woes reveal? I have no money, I lie in pawn, A stranger in the town of Lille. I. With twenty pounds but three weeks since From Paris forth did Titmarsh wheel, I thought myself as rich a prince As beggar poor I'm now at Lille. Confiding in my ample means-- In troth, I was a happy chiel! I passed the gate of Valenciennes. I never thought to come by Lille. I never thought my twenty pounds Some rascal knave would dare to steal; I gayly passed the Belgic bounds At Quievrain, twenty miles from Lille. To Antwerp town I hastened post, And as I took my evening meal I felt my pouch,--my purse was lost, O Heaven! Why came I not by Lille? I straightway called for ink and pen, To grandmamma I made appeal; Meanwhile a load of guineas ten I borrowed from a friend so leal. I got the cash from grandmamma (Her gentle heart my woes could feel), But where I went, and what I saw, What matters? Here I am at Lille. My heart is weary, my peace is gone, How shall I e'er my woes reveal? I have no cash, I lie in pawn, A stranger in the town of Lille. II. To stealing I can never come, To pawn my watch I'm too genteel, Besides, I left my watch at home; How could I pawn it, then, at Lille? "La note," at times the guests will say, I turn as white as cold boiled veal: I turn and look another way, _I_ dare not ask the bill at Lille. I dare not to the landlord say, "Good sir, I can not pay your bill:" He thinks I am a Lord Anglais, And is quite proud I stay at Lille. He thinks I am a Lord Anglais, Like Rothschild or Sir Robert Peel, And so he serves me every day The best of meat and drink in Lille. Yet when he looks me in the face I blush as red as cochincal; And think did he but know my case, How changed he'd be, my host of Lille. My heart is weary, my peace is gone. How shall I e'er my woes reveal? I have no money, I lie in pawn, A stranger in the town of Lille. III. The sun bursts out in furious blaze, I perspirate from head to heel; I'd like to hire a one-horse chaise; How can I, without cash, at Lille? I pass in sunshine burning hot By cafes where in beer they deal; I think how pleasant were a pot, A frothing pot of beer of Lille! What is yon house with walls so thick, All girt around with guard and grille? O, gracious gods, it makes me sick, It is the PRISON-HOUSE of Lille! O cursed prison strong and barred, It does my very blood congeal! I tremble as I pass the guard, And quit that ugly part of Lille. The church-door beggar whines and prays, I turn away at his appeal: Ah, church-door beggar! go thy ways! You're not the poorest man in Lille. My heart is weary, my peace is gone, How shall I e'er my woes reveal? I have no money, I lie in pawn, A stranger in the town of Lille. IV. Say, shall I to yon Flemish church, And at a Popish altar kneel? O do not leave me in the lurch,-- I'll cry ye patron-saints of Lille! Ye virgins dressed in satin hoops, Ye martyrs slain for mortal weal, Look kindly down! before you stoops The miserablest man in Lille. And lo! as I beheld with awe A pictured saint (I swear 'tis real) It smiled, and turned to grandmamma!-- It did! and I had hope in Lille! 'T was five o'clock, and I could eat, Although I could not pay, my meal; I hasten back into the street Where lies my inn, the best in Lille. What see I on my table stand,-- A letter with a well-known seal? 'Tis grandmamma's! I know her hand,-- "To Mr. M. A. Titmarsh, Lille." I feel a choking in my throat, I pant and stagger, faint and reel! It is--it is--a ten pound note, And I'm no more in pawn at Lille! [He goes off by the diligence that evening, and is restored to the bosom of his happy family.] SHADOWS Lantern DEEP! I own I start at shadows, Listen, I will tell you why; (Life itself is but a taper, Casting shadows till we die.) Once, in Italy, at Florence, I a radiant girl adored: When she came, she saw, she conquered, And by Cupid I was floored. Round my heart her glossy ringlets Were mysteriously entwined-- And her soft voluptuous glances All my inmost thoughts divined. "Mia cara Mandolina! Are we not, indeed," I cried, "All the world to one another?" Mandolina, smiled and sighed. Earth was Eden, she an angel, I a Jupiter enshrined-- Till one night I saw a damning DOUBLE SHADOW ON HER BLIND! "Fire and fury! double shadows On their bed-room windows ne'er, To my knowledge, have been cast by Ladies virtuous and fair. "False, abandoned, Mandolina! Fare thee well, for evermore! Vengeance!" shrieked I, "vengeance! vengeance!" And I thundered through the door. This event occurred next morning; Mandolina staring sat, Stark amaz'd, as out I tumbled, Raving mad, without a hat! Six weeks after I'd a letter, On its road six weeks delayed-- With a dozen re-directions From the lost one, and it said: "Foolish, wicked, cruel Albert! Base suspicion's doubts resign; DOUBLE LIGHTS THROW DOUBLE SHADOWS! Mandolina--ever thine." "Heavens, what an ass!" I muttered, "Not before to think of that!"-- And again I rushed excited To the rail, without a hat. "Mandolina! Mandolina!" When her house I reached, I cried: "Pardon, dearest love!" she answered-- "I'm the Russian Consul's bride!" Thus, by Muscovite barbarian, And by Fate, my life was crossed; Wonder ye I start at shadows? Types of Mandolina lost. THE RETORT GEORGE P. MORRIS Old Nick, who taught the village school, Wedded a maid of homespun habit; He was stubborn as a mule, She was playful as a rabbit. Poor Jane had scarce become a wife, Before her husband sought to make her The pink of country-polished life, And prim and formal as a Quaker. One day the tutor went abroad, And simple Jenny sadly missed him; When he returned, behind her lord She slyly stole, and fondly kissed him! The husband's anger rose!--and red And white his face alternate grew! "Less freedom, ma'am!"--Jane sighed and said "OH, DEAR! I DIDN'T KNOW 'TWAS YOU!" SATIRICAL THE RABBLE: OR, WHO PAYS! SAMUEL BUTLER. How various and innumerable Are those who live upon the rabble! 'Tis they maintain the Church and State, Employ the priest and magistrate; Bear all the charge of government, And pay the public fines and rent; Defray all taxes and excises, And impositions of all prices; Bear all th' expense of peace and war, And pay the pulpit and the bar; Maintain all churches and religions, And give their pastors exhibitions; And those who have the greatest flocks Are primitive and orthodox; Support all schismatics and sects, And pay them for tormenting texts; Take all their doctrines off their hands, And pay 'em in good rents and lands; Discharge all costly offices, The doctor's and the lawyer's fees, The hangman's wages, and the scores Of caterpillar bawds and whores; Discharge all damages and costs Of Knights and Squires of the Post; All statesmen, cut-purses, and padders, And pay for all their ropes and ladders; All pettifoggers, and all sorts Of markets, churches, and of courts; All sums of money paid or spent, With all the charges incident, Laid out, or thrown away, or given To purchase this world, Hell or Heaven. THE CHAMELEON. MATTHEW PRIOR. As the Chameleon who is known To have no colors of its own: But borrows from his neighbor's hue His white or black, his green or blue; And struts as much in ready light, Which credit gives him upon sight: As if the rainbow were in tail Settled on him, and his heirs male; So the young squire, when first he comes From country school to Will or Tom's: And equally, in truth is fit To be a statesman or a wit; Without one notion of his own, He saunters wildly up and down; Till some acquaintance, good or bad, Takes notice of a staring lad; Admits him in among the gang: They jest, reply, dispute, harangue; He acts and talks, as they befriend him, Smear'd with the colors which they lend him, Thus merely, as his fortune chances, His merit or his vice advances. If haply he the sect pursues, That road and comment upon news; He takes up their mysterious face: He drinks his coffee without lace. This week his mimic tongue runs o'er What they have said the week before; His wisdom sets all Europe right, And teaches Marlborough when to fight. Or if it be his fate to meet With folks who have more wealth than wit He loves cheap port, and double bub; And settles in the hum-drum club: He earns how stocks will fall or rise; Holds poverty the greatest vice; Thinks wit the bane of conversation; And says that learning spoils a nation. But if, at first, he minds his hits, And drinks champagne among the wits! Five deep he toasts the towering lasses; Repeats you verses wrote on glasses; Is in the chair; prescribes the law; And lies with those he never saw. MERRY ANDREW. MATTHEW PRIOR. SLY Merry Andrew, the last Southwark fair (At Barthol'mew he did not much appear: So peevish was the edict of the Mayor) At Southwark, therefore, as his tricks he show'd, To please our masters, and his friends the crowd; A huge neat's tongue he in his right hand held: His left was with a huge black pudding fill'd. With a grave look in this odd equipage, The clownish mimic traverses the stage: Why, how now, Andrew! cries his brother droll, To-day's conceit, methinks, is something dull: Come on, sir, to our worthy friends explain, What does your emblematic worship mean? Quoth Andrew; Honest English let us speak: Your emble--(what d' ye call 't) is heathen Greek. To tongue or pudding thou hast no pretense: Learning thy talent is, but mine is sense. That busy fool I was, which thou art now; Desirous to correct, not knowing how: With very good design, but little wit, Blaming or praising things, as I thought fit I for this conduct had what I deserv'd; And dealing honestly, was almost starv'd. But, thanks to my indulgent stars, I eat; Since I have found the secret to be great. O, dearest Andrew, says the humble droll, Henceforth may I obey and thou control; Provided thou impart thy useful skill.-- Bow then, says Andrew; and, for once, I will.-- Be of your patron's mind, whate'er he says; Sleep very much: think little; and talk less; Mind neither good nor bad, nor right nor wrong, But eat your pudding, slave; and hold your tongue. A reverend prelate stopp'd his coach and six, To laugh a little at our Andrew's tricks; But when he heard him give this golden rule, Drive on (he cried); this fellow is no fool. JACK AND JOAN. MATTHEW PRIOR. Stet quicunque volet potens Aulae culmine lubrico, &c. SENECA. Interr'd beneath this marble stone Lie sauntering Jack and idle Joan. While rolling threescore years and one Did round this globe their courses run; If human things went ill or well; If changing empires rose or fell; The morning past, the evening came, And found this couple still the same. They walk'd and eat, good folks: what then? Why then they walk'd and eat again: They soundly slept the night away; They just did nothing all the day; And having buried children four, Would not take pains to try for more; Nor sister either had, nor brother; They seem'd just tallied for each other. Their moral and economy Most perfectly they made agree: Each virtue kept its proper bound, Nor trespass'd on the other's ground, Nor fame, nor censure they regarded; They neither punish'd nor rewarded. He cared not what the footman did; Her maids she neither prais'd nor chid; So every servant took his course; And bad at first, they all grew worse. Slothful disorder filled his table; And sluttish plenty deck'd her table. Their beer was strong; their wine was port; Their meal was large; their grace was short. They gave the poor the remnant meat, Just when it grew not fit to eat. They paid the church and parish rate; And took, but read not the receipt: For which they claim their Sunday's due, Of slumbering in an upper pew. No man's defects sought they to know; So never made themselves a foe, No man's good deeds did they commend; So never rais'd themselves a friend. Nor cherish'd they relations poor; That might decrease their present store: Nor barn nor house did they repair; That might oblige their future heir. They neither added nor confounded; They neither wanted nor abounded. Each Christmas they accompts did clear, And wound their bottom round the year. Nor tear or smile did they employ At news of public grief or joy. When bells were rung, and bonfires made, If ask'd they ne'er denied their aid; Their jug was to the ringers carried, Whoever either died, or married. Their billet at the fire was found, Whoever was depos'd, or crown'd. Nor good, nor bad, nor fools, nor wise; They would not learn, nor could advise: Without love, hatred, joy, or fear, They led--a kind of--as it were: Nor wish'd, nor car'd, nor laugh'd, nor cried: And so they liv'd, and so they died. THE PROGRESS OF POETRY. DEAN SWIFT The farmer's goose, who in the stubble Has fed without restraint or trouble, Grown fat with corn and sitting still, Can scarce get o'er the barn-door sill; And hardly waddles forth to cool Her belly in the neighboring pool: Nor loudly cackles at the door; For cackling shows the goose is poor. But, when she must be turn'd to graze, And round the barren common strays, Hard exercise, and harder fare, Soon make my dame grow lank and spare Her body light, she tries her wings, And scorns the ground, and upward springs While all the parish, as she flies, Hear sounds harmonious from the skies. Such is the poet fresh in pay, The third night's profits of his play; His morning draughts till noon can swill Among his brethren of the quill: With good roast beef his belly full, Grown lazy, foggy, fat, and dull, Deep sunk in plenty and delight, What poet e'er could take his flight? Or, stuff'd with phlegm up to the throat What poet e'er could sing a note? Nor Pegasus could bear the load Along the high celestial road; The steed, oppress'd, would break his To raise the lumber from the earth. But view him in another scene, When all his drink is Hippocrene, His money spent, his patrons fail, His credit out for cheese and ale; His two-years' coat so smooth and Through every thread it lets in air With hungry meals his body pines His guts and belly full of wind; And like a jockey for a race, His flesh brought down to flying case: Now his exalted spirit loathes Encumbrances of food and clothes; And up he rises like a vapor, Supported high on wings of paper. He singing flies, and flying sings, While from below all Grub street rings. TWELVE ARTICLES. DEAN SWIFT. I. Lest it may more quarrels breed, I will never hear you read, II. By disputing, I will never, To convince you once endeavor. III. When a paradox you stick to, I will never contradict you. IV. When I talk and you are heedless I will show no anger needless. V. When your speeches are absurd, I will ne'er object a word. VI. When you furious argue wrong, I will grieve and hold my tongue. VII. Not a jest or humorous story Will I ever tell before ye: To be chidden for explaining, When you quite mistake the meaning. VIII. Never more will I suppose, You can taste my verse or prose. IX. You no more at me shall fret, While I teach and you forget. X. You shall never hear me thunder, When you blunder on, and blunder. XI. Show your poverty of spirit, And in dress place all your merit; Give yourself ten thousand airs: That with me shall break no squares. XII. Never will I give advice, Till you please to ask me thrice: Which if you in scorn reject, 'T will be just as I expect. Thus we both shall have our ends And continue special friends. THE BEASTS' CONFESSION. DEAN SWIFT When beasts could speak (the learned say They still can do so every day), It seems, they had religion then, As much as now we find in men. It happen'd, when a plague broke out (Which therefore made them more devout), The king of brutes (to make it plain, Of quadrupeds I only mean) By proclamation gave command, That every subject in the land Should to the priest confess their sins; And thus the pious Wolf begins: Good father, I must own with shame, That often I have been to blame: I must confess, on Friday last, Wretch that I was! I broke my fast: But I defy the basest tongue To prove I did my neighbor wrong; Or ever went to seek my food, By rapine, theft, or thirst of blood. The Ass approaching next, confess'd, That in his heart he loved a jest: A wag he was, he needs must own, And could not let a dunce alone: Sometimes his friend he would not spare, And might perhaps be too severe: But yet the worst that could be said, He was a wit both born and bred; And, if it be a sin and shame, Nature alone must bear the blame: One fault he has, is sorry for't, His ears are half a foot too short; Which could he to the standard bring, He'd show his face before the king: Then for his voice, there's none disputes That he's the nightingale of brutes. The Swine with contrite heart allow'd, His shape and beauty made him proud: In diet was perhaps too nice, But gluttony was ne'er his vice: In every turn of life content, And meekly took what fortune sent: Inquire through all the parish round, A better neighbor ne'er was found; His vigilance might some displease; Tis true, he hated sloth like pease. The mimic Ape began his chatter, How evil tongues his life bespatter; Much of the censuring world complain'd. Who said, his gravity was feign'd: Indeed, the strictness of his morals Engaged him in a hundred quarrels: He saw, and he was grieved to see't, His zeal was sometimes indiscreet; He found his virtues too severe For our corrupted times to bear; Yet such a lewd licentious age Might well excite stoic's rage. The Goat advanced with decent pace, And first excused his youthful face; Forgiveness begg'd that he appear'd ('T was Nature's fault) without a beard. 'Tis true, he was not much inclined To fondness for the female kind: Not, as his enemies object, From chance, or natural defect, Not by his frigid constitution; But through a pious resolution: For he had made a holy vow Of Chastity, as monks do now: Which he resolved to keep forever hence, And strictly too, as doth his reverence. Apply the tale, and you shall find, How just it suits with human kind. Some faults we own; but can you guess? --Why, virtue's carried to excess, Wherewith our vanity endows us, Though neither foe nor friend allows us. The Lawyer swears (you may rely on't) He never squeezed a needy client; And this he makes his constant rule, For which his brethren call him fool; His conscience always was so nice, He freely gave the poor advice; By which he lost, he may affirm, A hundred fees last Easter term; While others of the learned robe, Would break the patience of a Job. No pleader at the bar could match His diligence and quick dispatch; Ne'er kept a cause, he well may boast, Above a term or two at most. The cringing Knave, who seeks a place Without success, thus tells his case. Why should he longer mince the matter? He fail'd, because he could not flatter: He had not learn'd to turn his coat, Nor for a party give his vote: His crime he quickly understood; Too zealous for the nation's good: He found the ministers resent it, Yet could not for his heart repent it. The Chaplain vows, he can not fawn, Though it would raise him to the lawn He pass'd his hours among his books; You find it in his meager looks: He might, if he were worldly wise, Preferment get, and spare his eyes; But owns he had a stubborn spirit, That made him trust alone to merit; Would rise by merit to promotion; Alas! a mere chimeric notion. The Doctor, if you will believe him, Confess'd a sin; (and God forgive him!) Call'd up at midnight, ran to save A blind old beggar from the grave: But see how Satan spreads his snares; He quite forgot to say his prayers. He can not help it, for his heart, Sometimes to act the parson's part: Quotes from the Bible many a sentence, That moves his patients to repentance; And, when his medicines do no good, Supports their minds with heavenly food: At which, however well intended, He hears the clergy are offended; And grown so bold behind his back, To call him hypocrite and quack. In his own church he keeps a seat; Says grace before and after meat; And calls, without affecting airs, His household twice a-day to prayers, He shuns apothecaries' shops, And hates to cram the sick with slops: He scorns to make his art a trade; Nor bribes my lady's favorite maid. Old nurse-keepers would never hire, To recommend him to the squire; Which others, whom he will not name, Have often practiced to their shame. The Statesman tells you, with a sneer, His fault is to be too sincere; And having no sinister ends, Is apt to disoblige his friends. The nation's good, his master's glory, Without regard to Whig or Tory, Were all the schemes he had in view, Yet he was seconded by few: Though some had spread a thousand lies, 'T was he defeated the excise. 'T was known, though he had borne aspersion, That standing troops were his aversion: His practice was, in every station, To serve the king, and please the nation. Though hard to find in every case The fittest man to fill a place: His promises he ne'er forgot, But took memorials on the spot; His enemies, for want of charity, Said he affected popularity; 'Tis true, the people understood. That all he did was for their good; Their kind affections he has tried; No love is lost on either side. He came to court with fortune clear, Which now he runs out every year; Must at the rate that he goes on, Inevitably be undone: O! if his majesty would please To give him but a writ of ease, Would grant him license to retire, As it has long been his desire, By fair accounts it would be found, He's poorer by ten thousand pound, He owns, and hopes it is no sin, He ne'er was partial to his kin; He thought it base for men in stations, To crowd the court with their relations: His country was his dearest mother, And every virtuous man his brother; Through modesty or awkward shame (For which he owns himself to blame), He found the wisest man he could, Without respect to friends or blood; Nor ever acts on private views, When he has liberty to choose. The Sharper swore he hated play, Except to pass an hour away: And well he might; for, to his cost, By want of skill he always lost; He heard there was a club of cheats, Who had contrived a thousand feats; Could change the stock, or cog a die, And thus deceive the sharpest eye: Nor wonder how his fortune sunk, His brothers fleece him when he's drunk, I own the moral not exact, Besides, the tale is false, in fact; And so absurd, that could I raise up, From fields Elysian, fabling Aesop, I would accuse him to his face, For libeling the four-foot race. Creatures of every kind but ours Well comprehend their natural powers, While we, whom reason ought to sway, Mistake our talents every day. The Ass was never known so stupid, To act the part of Tray or Cupid; Nor leaps upon his master's lap, There to be stroked, and fed with pap, As Aesop would the world persuade; He better understands his trade: Nor comes whene'er his lady whistles. But carries loads, and feeds on thistles. Our author's meaning, I presume, is A creature bipes et implumis; Wherein the moralist design'd A compliment on human kind; For here he owns, that now and then Beasts may degenerate into men. A NEW SIMILE FOR THE LADIES. WITH USEFUL ANNOTATIONS, DR. THOMAS SHERIDAN. [Footnote: The following foot-note's, which appear to be Dr. Sheridan's, are replaced from the Irish edition. They hit the ignorance of the ladies in that age.] To make a writer miss his end, You've nothing else to do but mend. I often tried in vain to find A simile* for womankind, *[Footnote: Most ladies, in reading, call this word a smile; but they are to note, it consists of three syllables, sim-i-le. In English, a likeness.] A simile, I mean, to fit 'em, In every circumstance to hit 'em. [Footnote: Not to hurt them.] Through every beast and bird I went, I ransack'd every element; And, after peeping through all nature, To find so whimsical a creature, A cloud* presented to my view, *[Footnote: Not like a gun or pistol.] And straight this parallel I drew: Clouds turn with every wind about, They keep us in suspense and doubt, Yet, oft perverse, like womankind, Are seen to scud against the wind: And are not women just the same? For who can tell at what they aim? [Footnote: This is not meant as to shooting, but resolving.] Clouds keep the stoutest mortals under, When, bellowing*, they discharge their thunder: *[Footnote: This word is not here to be understood of a bull, but a cloud, which makes a noise like a bull, when it thunders.] So, when the alarum-bell is rung, Of Xanti's* everlasting tongue, [Footnote: Xanti, a nick-name of Xantippe, that scold of glorious memory, who never let poor Socrates have one moment's peace of mind; yet with unexampled patience he bore her pestilential tongue. I shall beg the ladies' pardon if I insert a few passages concerning her: and at the same time I assure them it is not to lesson those of the present age, who are possessed of the like laudable talents; for I will confess, that I know three in the city of Dublin, no way inferior to Xantippe, but that they have not as great men to work upon. When a friend asked Socrates how he could bear the scolding of his wife Xantippe, he retorted, and asked him how he could bear the gaggling of his geese Ay but my geese lay eggs for me, replies his friend; So does my wife bear children, said Socrates.--Diog, Laert, Being asked at another time, by a friend, how he could bear her tongue, he said, she was of this use to him, that she taught him to bear the impertinences of others with more ease when he went abroad,-- Plat, de Capiend. ex. host. utilit. Socrates invited his friend Euthymedus to supper. Xantippe, in great rage, went into them, and overset the table. Huthymedus, rising in a passion to go off, My dear friend, stay, said Socrates, did not a hen do the same thing at your house the other day, and did I show any resentment?--Plat, de ira cohibenda. I could give many more instances of her termagancy and his philosophy, if such a proceeding might not look as if I were glad of an opportunity to expose the fair sex; but, to show that I have no such design, I declare solemnly, that I had much worse stories to tell of her behaviour to her husband, which I rather passed over, on account of the great esteem which I bear the ladies, especially those in the honorable station of matrimony.] The husband dreads its loudness more Than lightning's flash, or thunder's roar. Clouds weep, as they do, without pain And what are tears but women's rain? The clouds about the welkin roam: [Footnote: Ramble.] And ladies never stay at home. The clouds build castles in the air, A thing peculiar to the fair: For all the schemes of their forecasting, [Footnote: Not vomiting.] Are not more solid nor more lasting, A cloud is light by turns, and dark, Such is a lady with her spark; Now with a sudden pouting [Footnote: Thrusting out the lip.] gloom She seems to darken all the room; Again she's pleased, his fear's beguiled, [Footnote: This is to be understood not in the sense of wort, when brewers put yeast or barm in it; but its true meaning is, deceived or cheated.] And all is clear when she has smiled. In this they're wondrously alike, (I hope this simile will strike)[Footnote: Hit your fancy.] Though in the darkest dumps* you view them, *[Footnote: Sullen fits. We have a merry jig called Dumpty-Deary, invented to rouse ladies from the dumps.] Stay but a moment, you'll see through them. The clouds are apt to make reflection, [Footnote: Reflection of the sun.] And frequently produce infection: So Celia, with small provocation, Blasts every neighbor's reputation. The clouds delight in gaudy show, (For they, like ladies, have their bow;) The gravest matron* will confess, *[Footnote: Motherly woman.] That she herself is fond of dress. Observe the clouds in pomp array'd, What various colors are display'd; The pink, the rose, the violet's dye, In that great drawing-room the sky; How do these differ from our Graces,* *[Footnote: Not grace before and after meat, nor their graces the duchesses, but the Graces which attended on Venus.] In garden-silks, brocades, and laces? Are they not such another sight, When met upon a birth-day night? The clouds delight to change their fashion: (Dear ladies be not in a passion!) Nor let this whim to you seem strange, Who every hour delight in change. In them and you alike are seen The sullen symptoms of the spleen; The moment that your vapors rise, We see them dropping from your eyes. In evening fair you may behold The clouds are fring'd with borrow'd gold; And this is many a lady's case, Who flaunts about in borrow'd lace. [Footnote: Not Flauders-lace, but gold and silver lace. By borrowed, I mean such as run into honest tradesmen's debts, for which they were not able to pay, as many of them did for French silver lace, against the last birth-day. Vide the shopkeepers' books.] Grave matrons are like clouds of snow, Where words fall thick, and soft, and slow; While brisk coquettes,* like rattling hail, *[Footnote: Girls who love to hear themselves prate, and put on a number of monkey-airs to catch men.] Our ears on every side assail. Clouds when they intercept our sight, Deprive us of celestial light: So when my Chloe I pursue, No heaven besides I have in view. Thus, on comparison,* you see, *[Footnote: I hope none will be so uncomplaisant to the ladies as to think these comparisons are odious.] In every instance they agree; So like, so very much the same, That one may go by t'other's name, Let me proclaim* it then aloud, *[Footnote: Tell the whole world; not to proclaim them as robbers and rapparees.] That every woman is a cloud. ON A LAPDOG. JOHN GAY. Shock's fate I mourn; poor Shock is now no more: Ye Muses! mourn: ye Chambermaids! deplore. Unhappy Shock! yet more unhappy fair, Doom'd to survive thy joy and only care. Thy wretched fingers now no more shall deck, And tie the favorite ribbon round his neck; No more thy hand shall smooth his glossy hair, And comb the wavings of his pendent ear. Yet cease thy flowing grief, forsaken maid! All mortal pleasures in a moment fade: Our surest hope is in an hour destroy'd, And love, best gift of Heaven, not long enjoy'd. Methinks I see her frantic with despair, Her streaming eyes, wrung hands, and flowing hair Her Mechlin pinners, rent, the floor bestrow, And her torn fan gives real signs of woe. Hence, Superstition! that tormenting guest, That haunts with fancied fears the coward breast, No dread events upon this fate attend, Stream eyes no more, no more thy tresses rend. Though certain omens oft forewarn a state, And dying lions show the monarch's fate, Why should such fears bid Celia's sorrow rise? Fo when a lapdog falls, no lover dies. Cease, Celia, cease; restrain thy flowing tears, Some warmer passion will dispel thy cares. In man you'll find a more substantial bliss, More grateful toying, and a sweeter kiss. He's dead. Oh! lay him gently in the ground! And may his tomb be by this verse renown'd: "Here Shock, the pride of all his kind, is laid, Who fawn'd like man, but ne'er like man betray'd." THE RAZOR SELLER. PETER PINDAR. A fellow in a market town, Most musical, cried razors up and down, And offered twelve for eighteen-pence; Which certainly seemed wondrous cheap, And for the money quite a heap, As every man would buy, with cash and sense. A country bumpkin the great offer heard: Poor Hodge, who suffered by a broad black beard, That seemed a shoe-brush stuck beneath his nose; With cheerfulness the eighteen-pence he paid, And proudly to himself, in whispers, said, "This rascal stole the razors, I suppose. "No matter if the fellow BE a knave, Provided that the razors SHAVE; It certainly will be a monstrous prize." So home the clown, with his good fortune, went, Smiling in heart and soul, content, And quickly soaped himself to ears and eyes. Being well lathered from a dish or tub, Hodge now began with grinning pain to grub, Just like a hedger cutting furze: 'Twas a vile razor!--then the rest he tried-- All were imposters--"Ah," Hodge sighed! "I wish my eighteen-pence within my purse." In vain to chase his beard, and bring the graces, He cut, and dug, and winced, and stamped, and swore, Brought blood, and danced, blasphemed, and made wry faces, And cursed each razor's body o'er and o'er: His muzzle, formed of OPPOSITION stuff, Firm as a Foxite, would not lose its ruff: So kept it--laughing at the steel and suds: Hodge, in a passion, stretched his angry jaws, Vowing the direst vengeance, with clenched claws, On the vile cheat that sold the goods. "Razors! a damned, confounded dog, Not fit to scrape a hog!" Hodge sought the fellow--found him--and begun: "P'rhaps, Master Razor rogue, to you 'tis fun, That people flay themselves out of their lives: You rascal! for an hour have I been grubbing, Giving my crying whiskers here a scrubbing, With razors just like oyster knives. Sirrah! I tell you, you're a knave, To cry up razors that can't SHAVE." "Friend," quoth the razor-man, "I'm not a knave. As for the razors you have bought, Upon my soul I never thought That they would SHAVE." "Not think they'd SHAVE!" quoth Hodge, with wond'ring eyes, And voice not much unlike an Indian yell; "What were they made for then, you dog?" he cries: "Made!" quoth the fellow, with a smile--"to SELL." THE SAILOR BOY AT PRAYERS. PETER PINDAR. A great law Chief, whom God nor demon scares, Compelled to kneel and pray, who swore his prayers, The devil behind him pleased and grinning, Patting the angry lawyer on the shoulder, Declaring naught was ever bolder, Admiring such a novel mode of sinning: Like this, a subject would be reckoned rare, Which proves what blood game infidels can dare; Which to my memory brings a fact, Which nothing but an English tar would act. In ships of war, on Sunday's, prayers are given, For though so wicked, sailors think of heaven, Particularly in a storm, Where, if they find no brandy to get drunk, Their souls are in a miserable funk, Then vow they to th' Almighty to reform, If in His goodness only once, once more, He'll suffer them to clap a foot on shore. In calms, indeed, or gentle airs, They ne'er on weekdays pester heaven with prayers For 'tis among the Jacks a common saying, "Where there's no danger, there's no need of praying." One Sunday morning all were met To hear the parson preach and pray, All but a boy, who, willing to forget That prayers were handing out, had stolen away, And, thinking praying but a useless task, Had crawled to take a nap, into a cask. The boy was soon found missing, and full soon The boatswain's cat, sagacious smelt him out, Gave him a clawing to some tune-- This cat's a cousin Germam to the Knout "Come out, you skulking dog," the boatswain cried, "And save your d---d young sinful soul." He then the moral-mending cat applied, And turned him like a badger from his hole Sulky the boy marched on, and did not mind him, Altho' the boatswain flogging kept behind him "Flog," cried the boy, "flog--curse me, flog away-- I'll go--but mind--G--d d--n me if I'll PRAY." BIENSEANCE PETER PINDAR. There is a little moral thing in France, Called by the natives bienseance, Much are the English mob inclined to scout it, But rarely is Monsieur Canaille without it. To bienseance 'tis tedious to incline, In many cases; To flatter, par example, keep smooth faces When kicked, or suffering grievous want of coin. To vulgars, bienseance may seem an oddity-- I deem it a most portable commodity, A sort of magic wand, Which, if 'tis used with ingenuity, Although a utensil of much tenuity, In place of something solid, it will stand For verily I've marveled times enow To see an Englishman, the ninny, Give people for their services a guinea, Which Frenchmen have rewarded with a bow. Bows are a bit of bienseance Much practiced too in that same France Yet called by Quakers, children of inanity, But as they pay their court to people's vanity, Like rolling-pins they smooth where er they go The souls and faces of mankind like dough! With some, indeed, may bienseance prevail To folly--see the under-written tale: THE PETIT MAITRE, AND THE MAN ON THE WHEEL At Paris some time since, a murdering man, A German, and a most unlucky chap, Sad, stumbling at the threshold of his plan, Fell into Justice's strong trap The bungler was condemned to grace the wheel, On which the dullest fibers learn to feel, His limbs secundum artem to be broke Amid ten thousand people, perhaps, or more; Whenever Monsieur Ketch applied a stroke, The culprit, like a bullock made a roar. A flippant petit maitre skipping by, Stepped up to him and checked him for his cry-- "Bohl" quoth the German, "an't I 'pon de wheel? D'ye tink my nerfs and bons can't feel?" "Sir," quoth the beau, "don't, don't be in a passion; I've naught to say about your situation; But making such a hideous noise in France, Fellow, is contrary to bienseance." KINGS AND COURTIERS. PETER PINDAR How pleasant 'tis the courtier clan to see! So prompt to drop to majesty the knee; To start, to run, to leap, to fly, And gambol in the royal eye; And, if expectant of some high employ, How kicks the heart against the ribs, for joy! How rich the incense to the royal nose! How liquidly the oil of flattery flows! But should the monarch turn from sweet to sour, Which cometh oft to pass in half an hour, How altered instantly the courtier clan! How faint! how pale! how woe-begone, and wan! Thus Corydon, betrothed to Delia's charms, In fancy holds her ever in his arms: In maddening fancy, cheeks, eyes, lips devours; Plays with the ringlets that all flaxen flow In rich luxuriance o'er a breast of snow, And on that breast the soul of rapture pours. Night, too, entrances--slumber brings the dream-- Gives to his lips his idol's sweetest kiss; Bids the wild heart, high panting, swell its stream, And deluge every nerve with bliss: But if his nymph unfortunately frowns, Sad, chapfallen, lo! he hangs himself or drowns! Oh, try with bliss his moments to beguile: Strive not to make your sovereign frown--but smile: Sublime are royal nods--most precious things!-- Then, to be whistled to by kings! To have him lean familiar on one's shoulder, Becoming thus the royal arm upholder, A heart of very stone must grow quite glad. Oh! would some king so far himself demean, As on my shoulder but for once to lean, The excess of joy would nearly make me mad! How on the honored garment I should dote, And think a glory blazed around the coat! Blessed, I should make this coat my coat of arms, In fancy glittering with a thousand charms; And show my children's children o'er and o'er; "Here, babies," I should say, "with awe behold This coat--worth fifty times its weight in gold: This very, very coat your grandsire wore! "Here"--pointing to the shoulder--I should say, "Here majesty's own hand so sacred lay"-- Then p'rhaps repeat some speech the king might utter; As--"Peter, how go sheep a score? what? what? What's cheapest meat to make a bullock fat? Hae? hae? what, what's the price of country butter?" Then should I, strutting, give myself an air, And deem myself adorned with immortality: Then should I make the children, calf-like stare, And fancy grandfather a man of quality: And yet, not stopping here, with cheerful note, The muse should sing an ode upon the coat. Poor lost America, high honors missing, Knows naught of smile, and nod, and sweet hand-kissing, Knows naught of golden promises of kings; Knows naught of coronets, and stars, and strings; In solitude the lovely rebel sighs! But vainly drops the penitential tear-- Deaf as the adder to the woman's cries, We suffer not her wail to wound our ear: For food we bid her hopeless children prowl, And with the savage of the desert howl. PRAYING FOR RAIN. PETER PINDAR How difficult, alas! to please mankind! One or the other every moment MUTTERS: This wants an eastern, that a western, wind: A third, petition for a southern, utters. Some pray for rain, and some for frost and snow: How can Heaven suit ALL palates?--I don't know. Good Lamb, the curate, much approved, Indeed by all his flock BELOVED, Was one dry summer begged to pray for rain. The parson most devoutly prayed-- The powers of prayer were soon displayed; Immediately a TORRENT drenched the plain. It chanced that the church warden, Robin Jay, Had of his meadow not yet SAVED the hay: Thus was his hay to HEALTH quite past restoring. It happened too that Robin was from home; But when he heard the story, in a foam He sought the parson, like a lion roaring. "Zounds! Parson Lamb, why, what have you been doing! A pretty storm, indeed, ye have been brewing! What! pray for RAIN before I SAVED my hay! Oh! you re a cruel and ungrateful man! _I_ that forever help you all I can; Ask you to dine with me and Mistress Jay, Whenever we have something on the spit, Or in the pot a nice and dainty bit; "Send you a goose, a pair of chicken, Whose bones you are so fond of picking; And often too a cag of brandy! YOU that were welcome to a treat, To smoke and chat, and drink and eat; Making my house so very handy! "YOU, parson, serve one such a scurvy trick! Zounds! you must have the bowels of Old Nick. What! bring the flood of Noah from the skies, With MY fine field of hay before your eyes! A numskull, that I wer'n't of this aware.-- Curse me but I had stopped your pretty prayer!" "Dear Mister Jay!" quoth Lamb, "alas! alas! I never thought upon your field of grass." "Lord! parson, you're a fool, one might suppose-- Was not the field just underneath your NOSE? This is a very pretty losing job!"-- "Sir," quoth the curate, "know that Harry Cobb Your brother warden joined, to have the prayer,"-- "Cobb! Cobb! why this for Cobb was only SPORT: What doth Cobb own that any rain can HURT?" Roared furious Jay as broad as he could stare. "The fellow owns, as far as I can LARN, A few old houses only, and a barn; As that's the case, zounds! what are showers to HIM? Not Noah's flood could make HIS trumpery SWIM. "Besides--why could you not for drizzle pray? Why force it down in BUCKETS on the hay? Would _I_ have played with YOUR hay such a freak? No! I'd have stopped the weather for a week." "Dear Mister Jay, I do protest, I acted solely for the best; I do affirm it, Mister Jay, indeed. Your anger for this ONCE restrain, I'll never bring a drop again Till you and all the parish are AGREED." APOLOGY FOR KINGS PETER PINDAR As want of candor really is not right, I own my satire too inclined to bite: On kings behold it breakfast, dine, and sup-- Now shall she praise, and try to make it up. Why will the simple world expect wise things From lofty folk, particularly kings? Look on their poverty of education! Adored and flattered, taught that they are gods, And by their awful frowns and nods, Jove-like, to shake the pillars of creation! They scorn that little useful imp called mind, Who fits them for the circle of mankind! Pride their companion, and the world their hate; Immured, they doze in ignorance and state. Sometimes, indeed, great kings will condescend A little with their subjects to unbend! An instance take:--A king of this great land, In days of yore, we understand, Did visit Salisbury's old church so fair: An Earl of Pembroke was the Monarch's guide; Incog. they traveled, shuffling side by side; And into the cathedral stole the pair. The verger met them in his blue silk gown, And humbly bowed his neck with reverence down, Low as an ass to lick a lock of hay: Looking the frightened verger through and through, And with his eye-glass--"Well, sir, who are you? What, what, sir?--hey, sir?" deigned the king to say. "I am the verger here, most mighty king: In this cathedral I do every thing; Sweep it, an't please ye, sir, and keep it clean." "Hey? verger! verger!--you the verger?--hey?" "Yes, please your glorious majesty, I BE," The verger answered, with the mildest mien. Then turned the king about toward the peer, And winked, and laughed, then whispered in his ear, "Hey, hey--what, what--fine fellow, 'pon my word: I'll knight him, knight him, knight him--hey, my lord?" [It is a satire-royal: and if any thing were yet wanting to convince us that Master Pindar is no turncoat, here is proof sufficient.] Then with his glass, as hard as eye could strain, He kenned the trembling verger o'er again. "He's a poor verger, sire," his lordship cried: "Sixpence would handsomely requite him." "Poor verger, verger, hey?" the king replied: "No, no, then, we won't knight him--no, won't knight him." Now to the lofty roof the king did raise His glass, and skipped it o'er with sounds of praise! For thus his marveling majesty did speak: "Fine roof this, Master Verger, quite complete; High--high and lofty too, and clean, and neat: What, verger, what? MOP, MOP it once a week?" "An't please your majesty," with marveling chops, The verger answered, "we have got no mops In Salisbury that will reach so high." "Not mop, no, no, not mop it," quoth the king-- "No, sir, our Salisbury mops do no such thing; They might as well pretend to scrub the sky." MORAL. This little anecdote doth plainly show That ignorance, a king too often lurches; For, hid from art, Lord! how should monarchs know The natural history of mops and churches? [Illustration with caption: BYRON.] STORY THE SECOND. From Salisbury church to Wilton House, so grand, Returned the mighty ruler of the land-- "My lord, you've got fine statues," said the king. "A few! beneath your royal notice, sir," Replied Lord Pembroke--"Sir, my lord, stir, stir; Let's see them all, all, all, all, every thing, "Who's this? who's this?--who's this fine fellow here? "Sesostris," bowing low, replied the peer. "Sir Sostris, hey?--Sir Sostris?--'pon my word! Knight or a baronet, my lord? One of my making?--what, my lord, my making?" This, with a vengeance, was mistaking? "SE-sostris, sire," so soft, the peer replied-- "A famous king of Egypt, sir, of old." "Oh, poh!" th' instructed monarch snappish cried, "I need not that--I need not that be told." "Pray, pray, my lord, who's that big fellow there?" "'Tis Hercules," replies the shrinking peer; "Strong fellow, hey, my lord? strong fellow, hey? Cleaned stables!--cracked a lion like a flea; Killed snakes, great snakes, that in a cradle found him-- The queen, queen's coming! wrap an apron around him." Our moral is not merely water-gruel-- It shows that curiosity's a jewel! It shows with kings that ignorance may dwell: It shows that subjects must not give opinions To people reigning over wide dominions, As information to great folk is hell: It shows that decency may live with kings, On whom the bold virtu-men turn their backs; And shows (for numerous are the naked things) That saucy statues should be lodged in sacks. ODE TO THE DEVIL. PETER PINDAR. The devil is not so black as he is painted. Ingratum Odi. Prince of the dark abodes! I ween Your highness ne'er till now hath seen Yourself in meter shine; Ne'er heard a song with praise sincere. Sweet warbled on your smutty ear, Before this Ode of mine. Perhaps the reason is too plain, Thou triest to starve the tuneful train, Of potent verse afraid! And yet I vow, in all my time, I've not beheld a single rhyme That ever spoiled thy trade. I've often read those pious whims-- John Wesley's sweet damnation hymns, That chant of heavenly riches. What have they done?--those heavenly strains, Devoutly squeezed from canting brains, But filled John's earthly breeches? There's not a shoe-black in the land, So humbly at the world's command, As thy old cloven foot; Like lightning dost thou fly, when called, And yet no pickpocket's so mauled As thou, O Prince of Soot! What thousands, hourly bent on sin, With supplication call thee in, To aid them to pursue it; Yet, when detected, with a lie Ripe at their fingers' ends, they cry, "The Devil made me do it." Behold the fortunes that are made, By men through rouguish tricks in trade, Yet all to thee are owing-- And though we meet it every day, The sneaking rascals dare not say, This is the Devil's doing. As to thy company, I'm sure, No man can shun thee on that score; The very best is thine: With kings, queens, ministers of state, Lords, ladies, I have seen thee great, And many a grave divine. I'm sorely grieved at times to find, The very instant thou art kind, Some people so uncivil, When aught offends, with face awry, With base ingratitude to cry, "I wish it to the Devil." Hath some poor blockhead got a wife, To be the torment of his life, By one eternal yell-- The fellow cries out coarsely, "Zounds, I'd give this moment twenty pounds To see the jade in hell." Should Heaven their prayers so ardent grant, Thou never company wouldst want To make thee downright mad; For, mind me, in their wishing mood, They never offer thee what's good, But every thing that's bad. My honest anger boils to view A sniffling, long-faced, canting crew, So much thy humble debtors, Rushing, on Sundays, one and all, With desperate prayers thy head to maul, And thus abuse their betters. To seize one day in every week, On thee their black abuse to wreak, By whom their souls are fed Each minute of the other six, With every joy that heart can fix, Is impudence indeed! Blushing I own thy pleasing art Hath oft seduced my vagrant heart, And led my steps to joy-- The charms of beauty have been mine And let me call the merit thine, Who broughtst the lovely toy. So, Satan--if I ask thy aid, To give my arms the blooming maid, I will not, though the nation all, Proclaim thee (like a gracless imp) A vile old good-for-nothing pimp, But say, "'Tis thy vocation, Hal." Since truth must out--I seldom knew What 'twas high pleasure to pursue, Till thou hadst won my heart-- So social were we both together, And beat the hoof in every weather, I never wished to part. Yet when a child--good Lord! I thought That thou a pair of horns hadst got, With eyes like saucers staring! And then a pair of ears so stout, A monstrous tail and hairy snout, With claws beyond comparing. Taught to avoid the paths of evil, By day I used to dread the devil, And trembling when 'twas night, Methought I saw thy horns and ears, They sung or whistled to my fears, And ran to chase my fright. And every night I went to bed, I sweated with a constant dread, And crept beneath the rug; There panting, thought that in my sleep Thou slyly in the dark wouldst creep, And eat me, though so snug. A haberdasher's shop is thine, With sins of all sorts, coarse and fine, To suit both man and maid: Thy wares they buy, with open eyes; How cruel then, with constant cries, To vilify thy trade! To speak the truth, indeed, I'm loath-- Life's deemed a mawkish dish of broth, Without thy aid, old sweeper; So mawkish, few will put it down, Even from the cottage to the crown, Without thy salt and pepper. O Satan, whatsoever geer, Thy Proteus form shall choose to wear, Black, red, or blue, or yellow; Whatever hypocrites may say, They think thee (trust my honest lay) A most bewitching fellow. 'Tis ordered (to deaf ears, alas!) To praise the bridge o'er which we pass Yet often I discover A numerous band who daily make An easy bridge of thy poor back, And damn it when they 're over. Why art thou, then, with cup in hand, Obsequious to a graceless band, Whose souls are scarce worth taking; O prince, pursue but my advice, I'll teach your highness in a trice To set them all a quaking. Plays, operas, masquerades, destroy: Lock up each charming fille de joie; Give race-horses the glander-- The dice-box break, and burn each card-- Let virtue be its own reward, And gag the mouth of slander; In one week's time, I'll lay my life, There's not a man, nor maid, nor wife, That will not glad agree, If thou will chaim'em as before, To show their nose at church no more, But quit their God for thee. Tis now full time my ode should end: And now I tell thee like a friend, Howe'er the world may scout thee; Thy ways are all so wond'rous winning, And folks so very fond of sinning, They can not do without thee. THE KING OF SPAIN AND THE HORSE. PETER PINDAR. In seventeen hundred seventy-eight, The rich, the proud, the potent King of Spain, Whose ancestors sent forth their troops to smite The peaceful natives of the western main, With faggots and the blood-delighting sword, To play the devil, to oblige the Lord! For hunting, roasting heretics, and boiling, Baking and barbecuing, frying, broiling, Was thought Heaven's cause amazingly to further; For which most pious reason, hard to work, They went, with gun and dagger, knife and fork, To charm the God of mercy with their murther! I say, this King, in seventy-eight surveyed, In tapestry so rich, portrayed, A horse with stirrups, crupper, bridle, saddle: Within the stirrup, lo, the monarch tried To fix his foot the palfry to bestride; In vain!--he could not o'er the palfry straddle! Stiff as a Turk, the beast of yarn remained, And every effort of the King disdained, Who, 'midst his labors, to the ground was tumbled, And greatly mortified, as well as humbled. Prodigious was the struggle of the day, The horse attempted not to run away; At which the poor-chafed monarch now 'gan grin, And swore by every saint and holy martyr He would not yield the traitor quarter, Until he got possession of his skin. Not fiercer famed La Mancha's knight, Hight Quixote, at a puppet-show, Did with more valor stoutly fight, And terrify each little squeaking foe; When bold he pierced the lines, immortal fray! And broke their pasteboard bones, and stabbed their hearts of hay. Not with more energy and fury The beauteous street--walker of Drury Attacks a sister of the smuggling trade, Whose winks, and nods, and sweet resistless smile, Ah, me! her paramour beguile, And to her bed of healthy straw persuade; Where mice with music charm, and vermin crawl, And snails with silver traces deck the wall. And now a cane, and now a whip he used, And now he kicked, and sore the palfry bruised; Yet, lo, the horse seemed patient at each kick, Arid bore with Christian spirit whip and stick; And what excessively provoked this prince, The horse so stubborn scorned even once to wince. Now rushed the monarch for a bow and arrow To shoot the rebel like a sparrow; And, lo, with shafts well steeled, with all his force, Just like a pincushion, he stuck the horse! Now with the fury of the chafed wild boar, With nails and teeth the wounded horse he tore, Now to the floor he brought the stubborn beast; Now o'er the vanquish'd horse that dared rebel, Most Indian-like the monarch gave a yell, Pleased on the quadruped his eyes to feast; Blessed as Achilles when with fatal wound He brought the mighty Hector to the ground. Yet more to gratify his godlike ire, He vengeful flung the palfry in the fire! Showing his pages round, poor trembling things, How dangerous to resist the will of kings. THE TENDER HUSBAND. PETER PINDAR Lo, to the cruel hand of fate, My poor dear Grizzle, meek-souled mate, Resigns her tuneful breath-- Though dropped her jaw, her lip though pale, And blue each harmless finger-nail, She's beautiful in death. As o'er her lovely limbs I weep, I scarce can think her but asleep-- How wonderfully tame! And yet her voice is really gone, And dim those eyes that lately shone With all the lightning's flame. Death was, indeed, a daring wight, To take it in his head to smite-- To lift his dart to hit her; For as she was so great a woman, And cared a single fig for no man, I thought he feared to meet her. Still is that voice of late so strong, That many a sweet capriccio sung, And beat in sounds the spheres; No longer must those fingers play "Britons strike home," that many a day Hath soothed my ravished ears, Ah me! indeed I 'm much inclined To think how I may speak my mind, Nor hurt her dear repose; Nor think I now with rage she'd roar, Were I to put my fingers o'er, And touch her precious nose. Here let me philosophic pause- How wonderful are nature's laws, When ladies' breath retires, Its fate the flaming passions share, Supported by a little air, Like culinary fires, Whene'er I hear the bagpipe's note, Shall fancy fix on Grizzle's throat, And loud instructive lungs; O Death, in her, though only one, Are lost a thousand charms unknown, At least a thousand tongues. Soon as I heard her last sweet sigh, And saw her gently-closing eye, How great was my surprise! Yet have I not, with impious breath, Accused the hard decrees of death, Nor blamed the righteous skies. Why do I groan in deep despair, Since she'll be soon an angel fair? Ah! why my bosom smite? Could grief my Grizzle's life restore!-- But let me give such ravings o'er-- Whatever is, is right. O doctor! you are come too late; No more of physic's virtues prate, That could not save my lamb: Not one more bolus shall be given-- You shall not ope her mouth by heaven, And Grizzle's gullet cram. Enough of boluses, poor heart, And pills, she took, to load a cart, Before she closed her eyes: But now my word is here a law, Zounds! with a bolus in her jaw, She shall not seek the skies. Good sir, good doctor, go away; To hear my sighs you must not stay, For this my poor lost treasure: I thank you for your pains and skill; When next you come, pray bring your bill I'll pay it; sir, with pleasure. Ye friends who come to mourn her doom. For God's sake gently tread the room, Nor call her from the blessed-- In softest silence drop the tear, In whispers breathe the fervent prayer, To bid her spirit rest. Repress the sad, the wounding scream; I can not bear a grief extreme-- Enough one little sigh-- Besides, the loud alarm of grief, In many a mind may start belief, Our noise is all a lie. Good nurses, shroud my lamb with care; Her limbs, with gentlest fingers, spare, Her mouth, ah! slowly close; Her mouth a magic tongue that held-- Whose softest tone, at times, compelled To peace my loudest woes. And, carpenter, for my sad sake, Of stoutest oak her coffin make-- I'd not be stingy, sure-- Procure of steel the strongest screws, For who could paltry pence refuse To lodge his wife secure? Ye people who the corpse convey, With caution tread the doleful way, Nor shake her precious head; Since Fame reports a coffin tossed, With careless swing against a post, Did once, disturb the dead. Farewell, my love, forever lost! Ne'er troubled be thy gentle ghost, That I again will woo-- By all our past delights, my dear, No more the marriage chain I'll wear, Deil take me if I do! THE SOLDIER AND THE VIRGIN MARY. PETER PINDAR. A Soldier at Loretto's wondrous chapel, To parry from his soul the wrath Divine, That followed mother Eve's unlucky apple, Did visit oft the Virgin Mary's shrine; Who every day is gorgeously decked out, In silks or velvets, jewels, great and small, Just like a fine young lady for a rout, A concert, opera, wedding, or a ball. At first the Soldier at a distance kept, Begging her vote and interest in heaven-- With seeming bitterness the sinner wept, Wrung his two hands, and hoped to be forgiven: Dinned her two ears with Ave-Mary flummery! Declared what miracles the dame could do, Even with her garter, stocking, or her shoe, And such like wonder-working mummery. What answer Mary gave the wheedling sinner, Who nearly and more nearly moved to win her, The mouth of history doth not mention, And therefore I can't tell but by invention, One day, as he was making love and praying, And pious Aves, thick as herring, saying, And sins so manifold confessing; He drew, as if to whisper, very near, And twitched a pretty diamond from her ear, Instead of taking the good lady's blessing. Then off he set, with nimble shanks, Nor once turned back to give her thanks: A hue and cry the thief pursued, Who, to his cost, soon understood That he was not beyond the claw Of that same long-armed giant, christened Law. With horror did his judges quake-- As for the tender-conscienced jury, They doomed him quickly to the stake, Such was their devilish pious fury. However, after calling him hard names, They asked if aught he had in vindication, To save his wretched body from the flames, And sinful soul from terrible damnation. The Soldier answered them with much sang froid, Which showed, of sin, a conscience void, That if they meant to kill him they might kill: As for the diamond which they found about him, He hoped they would by no means doubt him, That madam gave it him from pure good-will. The answer turned both judge and jury pale; The punishment was for a time deferred, Until his Holiness should hear the tale, And his infallibility be heard. The Pope, to all his counselors, made known This strange affair--to cardinals and friars, Good pious gentlemen, who ne'er were known To act like hypocrites, and thieves, and liars. The question now was banded to and fro, If Mary had the power to GIVE, or NO. That Mary COULD NOT give it, was to say The wonder-working lady wanted power-- This was the stumbling-block that stopped the way-- This made Pope, cardinals, and friars lower. To save the Virgin's credit, And keep secure the diamonds that were left; They said, she MIGHT, indeed, the gem bestow, And consequently it might be no theft: But then they passed immediately an act, That every one discovered in the fact Of taking presents from the Virgin's hand, Or from the saints of any land, Should know no mercy, but be led to slaughter, Flayed here, and fried eternally hereafter. Ladies, I deem the moral much too clear To need poetical assistance; Which bids you not let men approach too near, But keep the saucy fellows at a distance; Since men you find, so bold, are apt to seize Jewels from ladies, even upon their knees! A KING OF FRANCE AND THE FAIR LADY PETER PINDAR A king of France upon a day, With a fair lady of his court, Was pleased at battledore to play A very fashionable sport, Into the bosom of this fair court dame, Whose whiteness did the snow's pure whiteness shame, King Louis by odd mischance did knock The shuttlecock, Thrice happy rogue, upon the town of doves, To nestle with the pretty little loves! "Now, sire, pray take it out"--quoth she, With an arch smile,--But what did he? What? what to charming modesty belongs! Obedient to her soft command, He raised it--but not with his hand! No, marveling reader, but the chimney tongs, What a chaste thought in this good king! How clever! When shall we hear agen of such a thing? Lord! never, Nor were our princes to be prayed To such an act by some fair maid, I'll bet my life not one would mind it: But handy, without more ado, The youths would search the bosom through, Although it took a day to find it! THE EGGS. FROM THE SPANISH OF YRIARTE. G. H. DEVEREUX. Beyond the sunny Philippines An island lies, whose name I do not know; But that's of little consequence, if so You understand that there they had no hens; Till, by a happy chance, a traveler, After a while, carried some poultry there. Fast they increased as any one could wish; Until fresh eggs became the common dish. But all the natives ate them boiled--they say-- Because the stranger taught no other way. At last the experiment by one was tried-- Sagacious man!--of having his eggs fried. And, O! what boundless honors, for his pains, His fruitful and inventive fancy gains! Another, now, to have them baked devised-- Most happy thought I--and still another, spiced. Who ever thought eggs were so delicate! Next, some one gave his friends an omelette. "Ah!" all exclaimed, "what an ingenious feat!" But scarce a year went by, an artiste shouts, "I have it now--ye're all a pack of louts!-- With nice tomatoes all my eggs are stewed." And the whole island thought the mode so good, That they would so have cooked them to this day, But that a stranger, wandering out that way, Another dish the gaping natives taught, And showed them eggs cooked a la Huguenot. Successive cooks thus proved their skill diverse, But how shall I be able to rehearse All of the new, delicious condiments That luxury, from time to time, invents? Soft, hard, and dropped; and now with sugar sweet, And now boiled up with milk, the eggs they eat: In sherbet, in preserves; at last they tickle Their palates fanciful with eggs in pickle, All had their day--the last was still the best But a grave senior thus, one day, addressed The epicures: "Boast, ninnies, if you will, These countless prodigies of gastric skill-- But blessings on the man WHO BROUGHT THE HENS!" Beyond the sunny Philippines Our crowd of modern authors need not go New-fangled modes of cooking eggs to show. THE ASS AND HIS MASTER. FROM THE SPANISH OF YRIARTE. G. H. DEVEREUX. "On good and bad an equal value sets The stupid mob. From me the worst it gets, And never fails to praise," With vile pretense, The scurrilous author thus his trash excused. A poet shrewd, hearing the lame defense, Indignant, thus exposed the argument abused. A Donkey's master said unto his beast, While doling out to him his lock of straw, "Here, take it--since such diet suits your taste, And much good may it do your vulgar maw!" Often the slighting speech the man repeated. The Ass--his quiet mood by insult heated-- Replies: "Just what you choose to give, I take, Master unjust! but not because I choose it. Think you I nothing like but straw? Then make The experiment. Bring corn, and see if I refuse it." Ye caterers for the public, hence take heed How your defaults by false excuse you cover! Fed upon straw--straw it may eat, indeed; Try it with generous fare--'t will scorn the other. THE LOVE OF THE WORLD REPROVED; OR, HYPOCRISY DETECTED. WILLIAM COWPER. Thus says the prophet of the Turk, Good Mussulman, abstain from pork; There is a part in every swine No friend or follower of mine May taste, whate'er his inclination, On pain of excommunication. Such Mohammed's mysterious charge, And thus he left the point at large. Had he the sinful part expressed, They might with safety eat the rest; But for one piece they thought it hard From the whole hog to be debarred; And set their wit at work to find What joint the prophet had in mind. Much controversy straight arose, These chose the back, the belly those; By some 'tis confidently said He meant not to forbid the head; While others at that doctrine rail, And piously prefer the tail. Thus, conscience freed from every clog, Mohammedans eat up the hog. You laugh--'tis well--The tale applied May make you laugh on t' other side. Renounce the world--the preacher cries. We do--a multitude replies. While one as innocent regards A snug and friendly game at cards; And one, whatever you may say, Can see no evil in a play; Some love a concert, or a race; And others shooting, and the chase. Reviled and loved, renounced and followed, Thus, bit by bit, the world is swallowed; Each thinks his neighbor makes too free, Yet likes a slice as well as he; With, sophistry their sauce they sweeten, Till quite from tail to snout 'tis eaten. REPORT OF AN ADJUDGED CASE, NOT TO BE FOUND IN ANY OF THE BOOKS. WILLIAM COWPER. Between Nose and Eyes a strange contest arose, The spectacles set them unhappily wrong; The point in dispute was, as all the world knows, To which the said spectacles ought to belong. So Tongue was the lawyer, and argued the cause With a great deal of skill, and a wig full of learning; While chief baron Ear sat to balance the laws, So famed for his talent in nicely discerning. In behalf of the Nose it will quickly appear, And your lordship, he said, will undoubtedly find, That the Nose has had spectacles always to wear, Which amounts to possession time out of mind. Then holding the spectacles up to the court-- Your lordship observes they are made with a straddle As wide as the ridge of the Nose is; in short, Designed to sit close to it, just like a saddle. Again, would your lordship a moment suppose ('Tis a case that has happened, and may be again) That the visage or countenance had not a nose, Pray who would, or who could, wear spectacles then? On the whole it appears, and my argument shows, With a reasoning the court will never condemn, That the spectacles plainly were made for the Nose, And the Nose was as plainly intended for them. Then shifting his side (as a lawyer knows how), He pleaded again in behalf of the Eyes; But what were his arguments few people know, For the court did not think they were equally wise. So his lordship decreed with a grave solemn tone, Decisive and clear, without one IF or BUT-- That, whenever the Nose put his spectacles on, By daylight or candlelight--Eyes should be shut! HOLY WILLIE'S PRAYER. [Footnote: Kennedy gives the following account of the origin of "Holy Willie's Prayer;"--Gavin Hamilton, Esq., Clerk of Ayr, the Poet's friend and benefactor was accosted one Sunday morning by a mendicant, who begged alms of him. Not recollecting that it was the Sabbath, Hamilton set the man to work in his garden, which lay on lay on the public road, and the poor fellow was discovered by the people on their way to the kirk, and they immediately stoned him from the ground. For this offense, Mr. Hamilton was not permitted to have a child christened, which his wife bore him soon afterward, until he applied to the synod. His most officious opponent was William Fisher, one of the elders of the church: and to revenge the insult to his friend, Burns made him the subject of this humorous ballad.] ROBERT BURNS. O Thou, wha in the heavens dost dwell, Wha, as it pleases best thysel', Sends ane to heaven, and ten to hell, A' for thy glory, And no for ony giud or ill They've done afore thee! I bless and praise thy matchless might, When thousands thou hast left in night, That I am here, afore thy sight. For gifts an' grace, A burnin' an' a shinin' light To a' this place. What was I, or my generation, That I should get sic exaltation! I, wha deserve sic just damnation, For broken laws, Five thousand years 'fore my creation Thro' Adam's cause. When frae my mither's womb I fell, Thou might hae plung'd me into hell, To gnash my gums, to weep and wail, In burnin' lake, Whare damned devils roar and yell, Chain'd to a stake. Yet I am here a chosen sample; To show thy grace is great and ample; I'm here a pillar in thy temple, Strong as a rock, A guide, a buckler, an example To a' thy flock. [O L--d, then kens what zeal I bear, When drinkers drink, and swearers swear, And singing there, and dancing here, Wi' great and sma'; For I am keepit by thy fear, Free frae them a'.] But yet, O L--d! confess I must, At times I 'm fash'd wi' fleshly lust; And sometimes, too, wi' warldly trust, Vile self gets in; But thou remembers we are dust, Defll'd in sin. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * May be thou lets this fleshly thorn Beset thy servant e'en and morn, Lest he owre high and proud should turn, 'Cause he's sae gifted If sae, thy han' maun e'en be borne, Until thou lift it. L--d, bless thy chosen in this place, For here thou hast a chosen race: But G-d confound their stubborn face, And blast their name, Wha bring thy elders to disgrace And public shame. L--d, mind Gawn Hamilton's deserts, He drinks, and swears, and plays at cartes, Yet has sae mony takin' arts, Wi' great and sma', Frae Gr-d's ain priests the people's hearts He steals awa'. An' whan we chasten'd him therefore, Thou kens how he bred sic a splore, As set the warld in a roar O' laughin' at us;-- Curse thou his basket and his store, Kail and potatoes. L--d, hear my earnest cry and pray'r, Against the presbyt'ry of Ayr; Thy strong right hand, L--d, mak' it bare Upo' their heads, L--d, weigh it down, and dinna spare, For their misdeeds. O L--d my G-d, that glib-tongu'd Aiken, My very heart and saul are quakin' To think how we stood groanin', shakin', And swat wi' dread, While Auld wi' hinging lip gaed snakin', And hid his head. L--d in the day of vengeance try him, L--d, visit them wha did employ him, And pass not in thy mercy by 'em, Nor hear their pray'r; But for thy people's sake destroy 'em, And dinna spare. But, L--d, remember me and mine, Wi' mercies temp'ral and divine, That I for gear and grace may shine, Excell'd by nane, An' a' the glory shall be thine, Amen, Amen! EPITAPH ON HOLY WILLIE Here Holy Willie's sair worn clay Taks up its last abode; His saul has ta'en some other way, I fear, the left-hand road. Stop! there he is, as sure's a gun, Poor, silly body, see him; Nae wonder he's as black's the grun-- Observe wha's standing wi him! Your brunstane devilship, I see, Has got him there before ye; But haud your nine-tail cat a wee, Till ance ye've heard my story. Your pity I will not implore, For pity ye hae nane! Justice, alas! has gi'en him o'er And mercy's day is gane. But hear me, sir, deil as ye are, Look something to your credit; A coof like him wad stain your name, If it were kent ye did it. ADDRESS TO THE DEIL. ROBERT BURNS. "O Prince! O Chief of many throned Pow'rs, That led th' embattled Seraphim to war!"-- MILTON. O Thou! whatever title suit thee, Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie, Wha in yon cavern grim and sootie, Closed under hatches, Spairges about the brunstane cootie, To scaud poor wretches! Hear me, auld Hangie, for a wee, An' let poor damned bodies be; I'm sure sma' pleasure it can gie, E'en to a deil, To skelp an' scaud poor dogs like me, An' hear us squeel! Great is thy power, an' great thy fame; Far kenn'd and noted is thy name; An' tho' yon lowin heugh's thy hame, Thou travels far: An,' faith! thou's neither lag nor lame, Nor blate nor scaur. Whyles, ranging like a roaring lion, For prey, a' holes an' corners tryin'; Whyles on the strong-wing'd tempest flyin' Tirl in the kirks; Whyles, in the human bosom pryin', Unseen thou lurks. I've heard my reverend Grannie say, In lanely glens ye like to stray; Or where auld ruin'd castles, gray, Nod to the moon, Ye fright the nightly wand'rer's way Wi' eldritch croon. When twilight did my Grannie summon To say her prayers, douce, honest woman! Aft yont the dyke she's heard you bummin', Wi' eerie drone; Or, rustlin, thro' the boortries comin', Wi' heavy groan. Ae dreary, windy, winter night, The stars shot down wi' sklentin' light, Wi' you, mysel, I gat a fright Ayont the lough; Ye, like a rash-bush, stood in sight, Wi' waving sough. The cudgel in my nieve did shake, Each bristl'd hair stood like a stake, When wi' an eldritch, stoor quaick--quack-- Amang the springs, Awa ye squatter'd, like a drake, On whistling wings. Let warlocks grim, an' wither'd hags, Tell how wi' you, on ragweed nags, They skim the muirs an' dizzy crags, Wi' wicked speed; And in kirk-yards renew their leagues Owre howkit dead. Thence countra wives, wi' toil an' pain, May plunge an' plunge the kirn in vain: For, oh! the yellow treasure's taen By witching skill An' dawtit, twal-pint hawkie's gaen As yell's the bill. Thence mystic knots mak great abuse On young guidmen, fond, keen, an' crouse; When the best wark-lume i' the house, By cantrip--wit, Is instant made no worth a louse, Just at the bit. When thows dissolve the snawy hoord, An' float the jinglin icy-boord, Then water-kelpies haunt the foord, By your direction; An' sighted trav'lers are allur'd To their destruction. An' aft your moss-traversing spunkies Decoy the wight that late an' drunk is: The bleezin, curst, mischievous monkeys Delude his eyes, Till in some miry slough he sunk is, Ne'er mair to rise. When masons' mystic word an' grip In storms an' tempests raise you up, Some cock or cat your rage maun stop, Or, strange to tell! The youngest brother ye wad whip Aff straught to hell! Lang syne, in Eden's bonnie yard, When youthfu' lovers first were pair'd, An' all the soul of love they shar'd, The raptur'd hour. Sweet on the fragrant, flow'ry sward, In shady bow'r: Then you, ye auld, snec-drawing dog! Ye came to Paradise incog., An' play'd on man a cursed brogue, (Black be your fa'!) An' gied the infant warld a shog, Maist ruin'd a'. D'ye mind that day, when in a bizz, Wi' reekit duds, an' reestit gizz, Ye did present your smoutie phiz 'Mang better folk, An' sklented on the man of Uz Your spitefu' joke? An' how ye gat him i' your thrall, Au' brak him out o' house an' hall, While scabs an' botches did him gall, Wi' bitter claw, And lows'd his ill-tongu'd, wicked scawl, Was warst ava? But ai your doings to rehearse, Your wily snares an' fechtin' fierce, Sin' that day Michael did you pierce, Down to this time, Wad ding a Lallan tongue, or Erse, In prose or rhyme. An' now, auld Cloots, I ken ye're thinkin', A certain Bardie's rantin', drinkin', Some luckless hour will send him linkin' To your black pit; But, faith! he 'll turn a corner jinkin', An' cheat you yet. But, fare you weel, auld Nickie-ben! O wad ye tak a thought an' men'! Ye aiblins might--I dinna ken-- Still hae a stake-- I'm wae to think upo' yon den, Ev'n for your sake!! THE DEVIL'S WALK ON EARTH. ROBERT SOUTHEY. From his brimstone bed at break of day A walking the Devil is gone, To look at his snug little farm of the World, And see how his stock went on. Over the hill and over the dale, And he went over the plain; And backward and forward he swish'd his tail As a gentleman swishes a cane. How then was the Devil drest? Oh, he was in his Sunday's best His coat was red and hia breeches were blue, And there was a hole where his tail came through. A lady drove by in her pride, In whose face an expression he spied For which he could have kiss'd her, Such a flourishing, fine, clever woman was she, With an eye as wicked as wicked can be, I should take her for my Aunt, thought he, If my dam had had a sister. He met a lord of high degree, No matter what was his name; Whose face with his own when he came to compare The expression, the look, and the air, And the character, too, as it seem'd to a hair-- Such a twin-likeness there was in the pair That it made the Devil start and stare. For he thought there was surely a looking-glass there, But he could not see the frame. He saw a Lawyer killing a viper, On a dung-hill beside his stable; Ha! quoth he, thou put'st me in mind Of the story of Cain and Abel. An Apothecary on a white horse Rode by on his vocation; And the Devil thought of his old friend Death in the Revelation. He pass'd a cottage with a double coach-house, A cottage of gentility, And he own'd with a grin That his favorite sin, Is pride that apes humility He saw a pig rapidly Down a river float; The pig swam well, but every stroke Was cutting his own throat; And Satan gave thereat his tail A twirl of admiration; For he thought of his daughter War, And her suckling babe Taxation. Well enough, in sooth, he liked that truth. And nothing the worse for the jest; But this was only a first thought And in this he did not rest: Another came presently into his head, And here it proved, as has often been said That second thoughts are best For as Piggy plied with wind and tide, His way with such celerity, And at every stroke the water dyed With his own red blood, the Devil cried, Behold a swinish nation's pride In cotton-spun prosperity. He walk'd into London leisurely, The streets were dirty and dim: But there he saw Brothers the Prophet, And Brothers the Prophet saw him, He entered a thriving bookseller's shop; Quoth he, we are both of one college, For I myself sate like a Cormorant once Upon the Tree of Knowledge. As he passed through Cold-Bath Fields he look'd At a solitary cell; And he was well-pleased, for it gave him a hint For improving the prisons of Hell. He saw a turnkey tie a thief's hands With a cordial tug and jerk; Nimbly, quoth he, a man's fingers move When his heart is in his work. He saw the same turnkey unfettering a man With little expedition; And he chuckled to think of his dear slave-trade, And the long debates and delays that were made, Concerning its abolition. He met one of his favorite daughters By an Evangelical Meeting: And forgetting himself for joy at her sight, He would have accosted her outright, And given her a fatherly greeting. But she tipt him the wink, drew back, and cried, Avaunt! my name's Religion! And then she turn'd to the preacher And leer'd like a love-sick pigeon. A fine man and a famous Professor was he, As the great Alexander now may be, Whose fame not yet o'erpast is: Or that new Scotch performer Who is fiercer and warmer, The great Sir Arch-Bombastes. With throbs and throes, and ah's and oh's. Far famed his flock for frightning; And thundering with his voice, the while His eyes zigzag like lightning. This Scotch phenomenon, I trow, Beats Alexander hollow; Even when most tame He breathes more flame Then ten Fire-Kings could swallow Another daughter he presently met; With music of fife and drum, And a consecrated flag, And shout of tag and rag, And march of rank and file, Which had fill'd the crowded aisle Of the venerable pile, From church he saw her come. He call'd her aside, and began to chide, For what dost thou here? said he, My city of Rome is thy proper home, And there's work enough there for thee Thou hast confessions to listen, And bells to christen, And altars and dolls to dress; And fools to coax, And sinners to hoax, And beads and bones to bless; And great pardons to sell For those who pay well, And small ones for those who pay less. Nay, Father, I boast, that this is my post, She answered; and thou wilt allow, That the great Harlot, Who is clothed in scarlet, Can very well spare me now. Upon her business I am come here, That we may extend our powers: Whatever lets down this church that we hate, Is something in favor of ours. You will not think, great Cosmocrat! That I spend my time in fooling; Many irons, my sire, have we in the fire, And I must leave none of them cooling; For you must know state-councils here, Are held which I bear rule in. When my liberal notions, Produce mischievous motions, There's many a man of good intent, In either house of Parliament, Whom I shall find a tool in; And I have hopeful pupils too Who all this while are schooling, Fine progress they make in our liberal opinions, My Utilitarians, My all sorts of--inians And all sorts of--arians; My all sorts of--ists, And my Prigs and my Whigs Who have all sorts of twists Train'd in the very way, I know, Father, you would have them go; High and low, Wise and foolish, great and small, March-of-Intellect-Boys all. Well pleased wilt thou be at no very far day When the caldron of mischief boils, And I bring them forth in battle array And bid them suspend their broils, That they may unite and fall on the prey, For which we are spreading our toils. How the nice boys all will give mouth at the call, Hark away! hark away to the spoils! My Macs and my Quacks and my lawless-Jacks, My Shiels and O'Connells, my pious Mac-Donnells, My joke-smith Sydney, and all of his kidney, My Humes and my Broughams, My merry old Jerry, My Lord Kings, and my Doctor Doyles! At this good news, so great The Devil's pleasure grew, That with a joyful swish he rent The hole where his tail came through. His countenance fell for a moment When he felt the stitches go; Ah! thought he, there's a job now That I've made for my tailor below. Great news! bloody news! cried a newsman; The Devil said, Stop, let me see! Great news? bloody news? thought the Devil, The bloodier the better for me. So he bought the newspaper, and no news At all for his money he had. Lying varlet, thought he, thus to take in old Nick! But it's some satisfaction, my lad To know thou art paid beforehand for the trick, For the sixpence I gave thee is bad. And then it came into his head By oracular inspiration, That what he had seen and what he had said In the course of this visitation, Would be published in the Morning Post For all this reading nation. Therewith in second sight he saw The place and the manner and time, In which this mortal story Would be put in immortal rhyme. That it would happen when two poets Should on a time be met, In the town of Nether Stowey, In the shire of Somerset. There while the one was shaving Would he the song begin; And the other when he heard it at breakfast, In ready accord join in. So each would help the other, Two heads being better than one; And the phrase and conceit Would in unison meet, And so with glee the verse flow free, In ding-dong chime of sing-song rhyme, Till the whole were merrily done. And because it was set to the razor, Not to the lute or harp, Therefore it was that the fancy Should be bright, and the wit be sharp. But, then, said Satan to himself As for that said beginner, Against my infernal Majesty, There is no greater sinner. He hath put me in ugly ballads With libelous pictures for sale; He hath scoff'd at my hoofs and my horns, And has made very free with my tail. But this Mister Poet shall find I am not a safe subject for whim; For I'll set up a School of my own, And my Poets shall set upon him. He went to a coffee-house to dine, And there he had soy in his dish; Having ordered some soles for his dinner, Because he was fond of flat fish. They are much to my palate, thought he, And now guess the reason who can, Why no bait should be better than place, When I fish for a Parliament-man. But the soles in the bill were ten shillings; Tell your master, quoth he, what I say; If he charges at this rate for all things, He must be in a pretty good way. But mark ye, said he to the waiter, I'm a dealer myself in this line, And his business, between you and me, Nothing like so extensive as mine. Now soles are exceedingly cheap, Which he will not attempt to deny, When I see him at my fish-market, I warrant him, by-and-by. As he went along the Strand Between three in the morning and four He observed a queer-looking person Who staggered from Perry's door. And he thought that all the world over In vain for a man you might seek, Who could drink more like a Trojan Or talk more like a Greek. The Devil then he prophesied It would one day be matter of talk, That with wine when smitten, And with wit moreover being happily bitten, The erudite bibber was he who had written The story of this walk. A pretty mistake, quoth the Devil; A pretty mistake I opine! I have put many ill thoughts in his mouth, He will never put good ones in mine. And whoever shall say that to Porson These best of all verses belong, He is an untruth-telling whore-son, And so shall be call'd in the song. And if seeking an illicit connection with fame, Any one else should put in a claim, In this comical competition; That excellent poem will prove A man-trap for such foolish ambition, Where the silly rogue shall be caught by the leg, And exposed in a second edition. Now the morning air was cold for him Who was used to a warm abode; And yet he did not immediately wish, To set out on his homeward road, For he had some morning calls to make Before he went back to Hell; So thought he I'll step into a gaming-house, And that will do as well; But just before he could get to the door A wonderful chance befell. For all on a sudden, in a dark place, He came upon General ----'s burning face; And it struck him with such consternation, That home in a hurry his way did he take, Because he thought, by a slight mistake 'Twas the general conflagration. CHURCH AND STATE. THOMAS MOORE. When Royalty was young and bold, Ere, touch'd by Time, he had become-- If't is not civil to say OLD-- At least, a ci-devant jeune homme. One evening, on some wild pursuit, Driving along, he chanced to see Religion, passing by on foot, And took him in his vis-a-vis. This said Religion was a friar, The humblest and the best of men, Who ne'er had notion or desire Of riding in a coach till then. "I say"--quoth Royalty, who rather Enjoy'd a masquerading joke-- "I say, suppose, my good old father, You lend me, for a while, your cloak." The friar consented--little knew What tricks the youth had in his head; Besides, was rather tempted, too, By a laced coat he got in stead, Away ran Royalty, slap-dash, Scampering like mad about the town; Broke windows--shiver'd lamps to smash, And knock'd whole scores of watchmen down. While naught could they whose heads were broke Learn of the "why" or the "wherefore," Except that 't was Religion's cloak The gentleman, who crack'd them, wore. Meanwhile, the Friar, whose head was turn'd By the laced coat, grew frisky too-- Look'd big--his former habits spurn'd-- And storm'd about as great men do-- Dealt much in pompous oaths and curses-- Said "Damn you," often, or as bad-- Laid claim to other people's purses-- In short, grew either knave or mad. As work like this was unbefitting, And flesh and blood no longer bore it, The Court of Common Sense then sitting, Summon'd the culprits both before it; Where, after hours in wrangling spent (As courts must wrangle to decide well), Religion to St. Luke's was sent, And Royalty pack'd off to Bridewell: With, this proviso--Should they be Restored in due time to their senses, They both must give security In future, against such offenses-- Religion ne'er to LEND HIS CLOAK, Seeing what dreadful work it leads to; And Royalty to crack his joke-- But NOT to crack poor people's heads, too. LYING. THOMAS MOORE. I do confess, in many a sigh, My lips have breath'd you many a lie, And who, with such delights in view, Would lose them for a lie or two? Nay--look not thus, with brow reproving: Lies are, my dear, the soul of loving! If half we tell the girls were true, If half we swear to think and do, Were aught but lying's bright illusion, The world would be in strange confusion! If ladies' eyes were, every one, As lovers swear, a radiant sun, Astronomy should leave the skies, To learn her lore in ladies' eyes! Oh no!--believe me, lovely girl, When nature turns your teeth to pearl, Your neck to snow, your eyes to fire, Your yellow locks to golden wire, Then, only then, can heaven decree, That you should live for only me, Or I for you, as night and morn, We've swearing kiss'd, and kissing sworn. And now, my gentle hints to clear, For once, I'll tell you truth, my dear! Whenever you may chance to meet A loving youth, whose love is sweet, Long as you're false and he believes you, Long as you trust and he deceives you, So long the blissful bond endures; And while he lies, his heart is yours; But, oh! you've wholly lost the youth The instant that he tells you truth! THE MILLENNIUM. SUGGESTBD BY THE LATE WORK OF THE KEVEKEND MR. IRVING "ON PROPHECY." THOMAS MOORE. Millennium at hand!--I'm delighted to hear it-- As matters both public and private now go, With multitudes round us, all starving or near it, A good rich millennium will come A PROPOS. Only think, Master Fred, what delight to behold, Instead of thy bankrupt old City of Rags, A bran-new Jerusalem, built all of gold, Sound bullion throughout, from the roof to the flags-- A city where wine and cheap corn shall abound-- A celestial Cocaigne, on whose butterfly shelves We may swear the best things of this world will be found, As your saints seldom fail to take care of themselves! Thanks, reverend expounder of raptures elysian, Divine Squintifobus, who, placed within reach Of two opposite worlds by a twist of your vision Can cast, at the same time, a sly look at eaoh;-- Thanks, thanks for the hopes thou hast given us, that we May, even in our times a jubilee share, Which so long has been promised by prophets like thee, And so often has fail'd, we began to despair. There was Whiston, who learnedly took Prince Eugene For the man who must bring the Millennium about; There's Faber, whose pious predictions have been All belied, ere his book's first edition was out;-- There was Counsellor Dobbs, too, an Irish M.P., Who discoursed on the subject with signal eclat, And, each day of his life, sat expecting to see A Millennium break out in the town of Armagh! There was also--but why should I burden my lay With your Brotherses, Southcotes, and names less deserving When all past Millenniums henceforth must give way To the last new Millennium of Orator Irv-ng, Go on, mighty man--doom them all to the shelf-- And, when next thou with prophecy tronblest thy sconce, Oh, forget not, I pray thee, to prove that thyself Art the Beast (chapter 4) that sees nine ways at once! THE LITTLE GRAND LAMA. A FABLE FOR PRINCES ROYAL THOMAS MOORE In Thibet once there reign'd, we're told, A little Lama, one year old-- Raised to the throne, that realm to bless, Just when his little Holiness Had cut--as near as can be reckoned-- Some say his FIRST tooth, some his SECOND, Chronologers and verses vary, Which proves historians should be wary We only know the important truth-- His Majesty HAD cut a tooth. And much his subjects were enchanted, As well all Lamas' subjects may be, And would have given their heads, if wanted, To make tee-totums for the baby As he was there by Eight Divine (What lawyers call Jure Divino Meaning a right to yours and mine, And everybody's goods and rhino)-- Of course his faithful subjects' purses Were ready with their aids and succors-- Nothing was seen but pension'd nurses, And the land groan'd with bibs and tuckers. Oh! had there been a Hume or Bennet Then sitting in the Thibet Senate, Ye gods, what room for long debates Upon the Nursery Estimates! What cutting down of swaddling-clothes And pin-a-fores, in nightly battles! What calls for papers to expose The waste of sugar-plums and rattles? But no--if Thibet NAD M.P.s, They were far better bred than these, Nor gave the slightest opposition, During the Monarch's whole dentition. But short this calm; for, just when he Had reach'd the alarming age of three, When royal natures--and, no doubt Those of ALL noble beasts--break out, The Lama, who till then was quiet, Show'd symptoms of a taste for riot; And, ripe for mischief, early, late, Without regard for Church or State, Made free with whosoe'er came nigh-- Tweak'd the Lord Chancellor by the nose, Turn'd all the Judges' wigs awry, And trod on the old General's toes-- Pelted the Bishops with hot buns, Rode cock-horse on the city maces, And shot, from little devilish guns, Hard peas into his subjects' faces. In short, such wicked pranks he play'd, And grew so mischievous (God bless him!) That his chief Nurse--though with the aid Of an Archbishop--was afraid, When in these moods, to comb or dress him; And even the persons most inclined For Kings, through thick and thin, to stickle, Thought him (if they'd but speak their mind Which they did NOT) an odious pickle. At length, some patriot lords--a breed Of animals they have in Thibet, Extremely rare, and fit, indeed, For folks like Pidcock to exhibit-- Some patriot lords, seeing the length To which things went, combined their strength, And penn'd a manly, plain and free Remonstrance to the Nursery; In which, protesting that they yielded, To none, that ever went before 'em-- In loyalty to him who wielded The hereditary pap-spoon o'er 'em--That, as for treason, 't was a thing That made them almost sick to think of-- That they and theirs stood by the King, Throughout his measles and his chin-cough, When others, thinking him consumptive, Had ratted to the heir Presumptive!-- But still--though much admiring kings (And chiefly those in leading-strings)-- They saw, with shame and grief of soul, There was no longer now the wise And constitutional control Of BIRCH before their ruler's eyes; But that, of late, such pranks and tricks, And freaks occurr'd the whole day long, As all, but men with bishoprics, Allow'd, even in a King, were wrong-- Wherefore it was they humbly pray'd That Honorable Nursery, That such reforms be henceforth made, As all good men desired to see;-- In other words (lest they might seem Too tedious) as the gentlest scheme For putting all such pranks to rest, And in its bud the mischief nipping-- They ventured humbly to suggest His Majesty should have a whipping! When this was read--no Congreve rocket Discharged into the Gallic trenches, E'er equall'd the tremendous shock it Produc'd upon the Nursery Benches. The Bishops, who, of course had votes, By right of age and petticoats, Were first and foremost in the fuss-- "What, whip a Lama!--suffer birch To touch his sacred---infamous! Deistical!--assailing thus The fundamentals of the Church! No--no--such patriot plans as these (So help them Heaven--and their sees!) They held to be rank blasphemies." The alarm thus given, by these and other Grave ladies of the Nursery side, Spread through the land, till, such a pother Such party squabbles, far and wide, Never in history's page had been Recorded, as were then between The Whippers and Non-whippers seen. Till, things arriving at a state Which gave some fears of revolution, The patriot lords' advice, though late, Was put at last in execution. The Parliament of Thibet met-- The little Lama call'd before it, Did, then and there, his whipping get,And (as the Nursery Gazette Assures us) like a hero bore it. And though 'mong Thibet Tories, some Lament that Royal MartyrDom (Please to observe, the letter D In this last word's pronounced like B), Yet to the example of that Prince So much is Thibet's land a debtor, 'Tis said her little Lamas since Have all behaved themselves MUCH better. ETERNAL LONDON. THOMAS MOORE. And is there then no earthly place Where we can rest, in dream Elysian, Without some cursed, round English face, Popping up near, to break the vision! 'Mid northern lakes, 'mid southern vines, Unholy cits we're doom'd to meet; Nor highest Alps nor Appenines Are sacred from Threadneedle-street. If up the Simplon's path we wind, Fancying we leave this world behind, Such pleasant sounds salute one's ear As--"Baddish news from 'Change, my dear-- The Funds--(phew, curse this ugly hill!) Are lowering fast--(what! higher still?)-- And--(zooks, we're mounting up to Heaven!)-- Will soon be down to sixty-seven," Go where we may--rest where we will, Eternal London haunts us still, The trash of Almack's or Fleet-Ditch-- And scarce a pin's head difference WHICH-- Mixes, though even to Greece we run, With every rill from Helicon! And if this rage for traveling lasts, If Cockneys of all sets and castes, Old maidens, aldermen, and squires, WILL leave their puddings and coal fires, To gape at things in foreign lands No soul among them understands-- If Blues desert their coteries, To show off 'mong the Wahabees--- If neither sex nor age controls, Nor fear of Mamelukes forbids Young ladies, with pink parasols, To glide among the Pyramids-- Why, then, farewell all hope to find A spot that's free from London-kind! Who knows, if to the West we roam, But we may find some Blue "at home" Among the BLACKS of Carolina-- Or, flying to the eastward, see Some Mrs. HOPKINS, taking tea And toast upon the Wall of China. OF FACTOTUM NED. THOMAS MOORE. Here lies Factotum Ned at last: Long as he breath'd the vital air, Nothing throughout all Europe pass'd In which he hadn't some small share. Whoe'er was IN, whoe'er was OUT-- Whatever statesmen did or said-- If not exactly brought about, Was all, at least, contrived by Ned. With NAP if Russia went to war, 'Twas owing, under Providence, To certain hints Ned gave the Czar-- (Vide his pamphlet--price six pence). If France was beat at Waterloo-- As all, but Frenchmen, think she was-- To Ned, as Wellington well knew, Was owing half that day's applause. Then for his news--no envoy's bag E'er pass'd so many secrets through it-- Scarcely a telegraph could wag Its wooden finger, but Ned knew it. Such tales he had of foreign plots, With foreign names one's ear to buzz in-- From Russia chefs and ofs in lots, From Poland owskis by the dozen. When GEORGE, alarm'd for England's creed, Turn'd out the last Whig ministry, And men ask'd--who advised the deed? Ned modestly confess'd 'twas he. For though, by some unlucky miss, He had not downright SEEN the King, He sent such hints through Viscount THIS, To Marquis THAT, as clench'd the thing. The same it was in science, arts, The drama, books, MS. and printed-- Kean learn'd from Ned his cleverest parts, And Scott's last work by him was hinted. Childe Harold in the proofs he read, And, here and there, infused some soul in 't-- Nay, Davy's lamp, till seen by Ned, Had--odd enough--a dangerous hole in't. 'Twas thus, all doing and all knowing, Wit, statesman, boxer, chemist, singer, Whatever was the best pie going, In THAT Ned--trust him--had his finger. LETTERS FROM MISS BIDDY FUDGE AT PARIS TO MISS DOROTHY--IN IRELAND THOMAS MOORE. What a time since I wrote!--I'm a sad naughty girl-- Though, like a tee-totum, I'm all in a twirl, Yet even (as you wittily say) a tee-totum Between all its twirls gives a LETTER to note 'em. But, Lord, such a place! and then, Dolly, my dresses, My gowns, so divine!--there's no language expresses, Except just the TWO words "superbe," "magmfique," The trimmings of that which I had home last week! It is call'd--I forget--a la--something which sounded Like alicampane--but, in truth, I'm confounded And bother'd, my dear, 'twixt that troublesome boy's (Bob's) cookery language, and Madame Le Roi's: What with fillets of roses, and fillets of veal, Things garni with lace, and things garni with eel, One's hair, and one's cutlets both en papillote, And a thousand more things I shall ne'er have by rote, I can scarce tell the difference, at least as to phrase, Between beef a la Psyche and curls a la braise.-- But, in short, dear, I'm trick'd out quite a la Francaise, With my bonnet--so beautiful!--high up and poking, Like things that are put to keep chimneys from smoking. Where SHALL I begin with the endless delights Of this Eden of milliners, monkeys, and sights-- This dear busy place, where there's nothing transacting, But dressing and dinnering, dancing and acting? Imprimis, the Opera--mercy, my ears! Brother Bobby's remark t'other night was a true one "This MUST be the music," said he, "of the SPEARS, For I'm curst if each note of it doesn't run through one!" Pa says (and you know, love, his book's to make out), 'T was the Jacobins brought every mischief about; That this passion for roaring has come in of late, Since the rabble all tried for a VOICE in the State. What a frightful idea, one's mind to o'erwhelm! What a chorus, dear Dolly, would soon be let loose of it! If, when of age, every man in the realm Had a voice like old Lais, and chose to make use of it! No--never was known in this riotous sphere Such a breach of the peace as their singing, my dear; So bad, too, you'd swear that the god of both arts, Of Music and Physic, had taken a frolic For setting a loud fit of asthma in parts, And composing a fine rumbling base to a cholic! But, the dancing--ah parlez moi, Dolly, des ca-- There, indeed, is a treat that charms all but Papa. Such beauty--such grace--oh ye sylphs of romance! Fly, fly to Titania, and ask her if SHE has One light-footed nymph in her train, that can dance Like divine Bigottini and sweet Fanny Bias! Fanny Bias in Flora--dear creature!--you'd swear, When her delicate feet in the dance twinkle round, That her steps are of light, that her home is the air, And she only par complaisance touches the ground. And when Bigottini in Psyche dishevels Her black flowing hair, and by demons is driven, Oh! who does not envy those rude little devils, That hold her, and hug her, and keep her from heaven? Then, the music--so softly its cadences die, So divinely--oh, Dolly! between you and I, It's as well for my peace that there's nobody nigh To make love to me then--YOU'VE a soul, and can judge What a crisis 't would be for your friend Biddy Fudge! The next place (which Bobby has near lost his heart in), They call it the Play-house--I think--of Saint Martin: Quite charming--and VERY religious--what folly To say that the French are not pious, dear Dolly, When here one beholds, so correctly and rightly, The Testament turn'd into melo-drames nightly And, doubtless, so fond they're of scriptural facts, They will soon get the Pentateuch up in five acts. Here Daniel, in pantomime, bids bold defiance To Nebuchadnezzar and all his stuff'd lions, While pretty young Israelites dance round the Prophet, In very thin clothing, and BUT little of it;-- Here Begrand, who shines in this scriptural path, As the lovely Susanna, without even a relic Of drapery round her, comes out of the Bath In a manner, that, Bob says, is quite EVE-ANGELIC! But, in short, dear, 't would take me a month to recite All the exquisite places we're at, day and night; And, besides, ere I finish, I think you'll be glad Just to hear one delightful adventure I've had. Last night, at the Beaujon, a place where--I doubt If I well can describe--there are cars that set out From a lighted pavilion, high up in the air, And rattle you down, Doll--you hardly know where. These vehicles, mind me, in which you go through This delightfully dangerous journey, hold TWO. Some cavalier asks, with humility, whether You'll venture down with him--you smile--'tis a match; In an instant you're seated, and down both together Go thundering, as if you went post to old Scratch; Well, it was but last night, as I stood and remark'd On the looks and odd ways of the girls who embark'd, The impatience of some for the perilous flight, The forc'd giggle of others, 'twixt pleasure and fright, That there came up--imagine, dear Doll, if you can-- A fine sallow, sublime, sort of Werter-fac'd man, With mustaches that gave (what we read of so oft), The dear Corsair expression, half savage, half soft As Hyienas in love may be fancied to look, or A something between Abelard and old Bincher! Up he came, Doll, to me, and uncovering his head (Rather bald, but so warlike!) in bad English said, "Ah! my dear--if Ma'maelle vil be so very good-- Just for von little course"--though I scarce understood What he wish'd me to do, I said, thank him, I would. Off we set--and, though 'faith, dear, I hardly knew whether My head or my heels were the uppermost then, For 't was like heaven and earth, Dolly, coming together-- Yet, spite of the danger, we dared it again. And oh! as I gazed on the features and air Of the man, who for me all this peril defied, I could fancy almost he and I were a pair Of unhappy young lovers, who thus, side by side, Were taking, instead of rope, pistol, or dagger, a Desperate dash down the falls of Niagara! This achiev'd, through the gardens we saunter'd about, Saw the fire-works, exclaim'd "magnifique!" at each cracker And, when 't was all o'er, the dear man saw us out With the air, I WILL say, of a prince, to our fiacre. Now, hear me--this stranger--it may be mere folly-- But WHO do you think we all think it is, Dolly? Why, bless you, no less than the great King of Prussia, Who's here now incog.--he, who made such a fuss, you Remember, in London, with Blucher and Platoff, When Sal was near kissing old Blucher's cravat off! Pa says he's come here to look after his money (Not taking things now as he used under Boney), Which suits with our friend, for Bob saw him, he swore, Looking sharp to the silver received at the door. Besides, too, they say that his grief for his Queen (Which was plain in this sweet fellow's face to be seen) Requires such a stimulant dose as this car is, Used three times a day with young ladies in Paris. Some Doctor, indeed, has declared that such grief Should--unless 't would to utter despairing its folly push-- Fly to the Beaujon, and there seek relief By rattling, as Bob says, "like shot through a holly-bush." I must now bid adieu--only think, Dolly, think If this SHOULD be the King--I have scarce slept a wink With imagining how it will sound in the papers, And how all the Misses my good luck will grudge, When they read that Count Buppin, to drive away vapors, Has gone down the Beaujon with Miss Biddy Fudge. Nota Bene.--Papa's almost certain 'tis he-- For he knows the L*git**ate cut, and could see, In the way he went poising, and managed to tower So erect in the car, the true Balance of Power. SECOND LETTER. Well, it ISN'T the King, after all, my dear creature! But DON'T you go laugh, now--there's nothing to quiz in 't-- For grandeur of air and for grimness of feature, He MIGHT be a King, Doll, though, hang him, he isn't. At first I felt hurt, for I wish'd it, I own, If for no other cause than to vex MISS MALONE-- (The great heiress, you know, of Shandangan, who's here, Showing off with SUCH airs and a real Cashmere, While mine's but a paltry old rabbit-skin, dear!) But says Pa, after deeply considering the thing, "I am just as well pleased it should NOT be the King; As I think for my BIDDY, so gentilie jolie, Whose charms may their price in an HONEST way fetch, That a Brandenburg--(what IS a Brandenburg, DOLLY?)-- Would be, after all, no such very great catch, If the R--G--T, indeed--" added he, looking sly-- (You remember that comical squint of his eye) But I stopp'd him--"La, Pa, how CAN you say so, When the R--G--T loves none but old women, you know!" Which is fact, my dear Dolly--we, girls of eighteen, And so slim--Lord, he'd think us not fit to be seen; And would like us much better as old--ay, as old As that Countess of Desmond, of whom I've been told That she lived to much more than a hundred and ten, And was kill'd by a fall from a cherry-tree then! What a frisky old girl! but--to come to my lover, Who, though not a king, is a HERO I'll swear-- You shall hear all that's happen'd just briefly run over, Since that happy night, when we whisk'd through the air! Let me see--'t was on Saturday--yes, Dolly, yes-- From that evening I date the first dawn of my bliss; When we both rattled off in that dear little carriage, Whose journey, Bob says, is so like love and marriage, "Beginning gay, desperate, clashing down-hilly; And ending as dull as a six-inside Dilly!" Well, scarcely a wink did I sleep the night through, And, next day, having scribbled my letter to you, With a heart full of hope this sweet fellow to meet, Set out with Papa, to see Louis Dix-huit Make his bow to some half-dozen women and boys, Who get up a small concert of shrill Vive le Rois-- And how vastly genteeler, my clear, even this is, Than vulgar Pall-Mall's oratorio of hisses! The gardens seem'd full--so, of course, we walk'd o'er 'em, 'Mong orange-trees, clipp'd into town-bred decorum, And Daphnes, and vases, and many a statue There staring, with not even a stitch on them, at you! The ponds, too, we view'd--stood awhile on the brink To contemplate the play of those pretty gold fishes-- "LIVE BULLION" says merciless Bob, "which I think, Would, if COIN'D, with a little MINT sauce, be delicious!" But WHAT, Dolly, what is the gay orange-grove, Or gold fishes, to her that's in search of her love? In vain did I wildly explore every chair Where a thing LIKE a man was--no lover sat there! In vain my fond eyes did I eagerly cast At the whiskers, mustaches, and wigs that went past, To obtain, if I could, but a glance at that curl, But a glimpse of those whiskers, as sacred, my girl, As the lock that, Pa says, is to Mussulmen given, For the angel to hold by that "lugs them to heaven!" Alas, there went by me full many a quiz, And mustaches in plenty, but nothing like his! Disappointed, I found myself sighing out "well-a-day," Thought of the words of T-H M-RE'S Irish melody, Something about the "green spot of delight," (Which you know, Captain Macintosh sung to us one day) Ah, Dolly! MY "spot" was that Saturday night, And its verdure, how fleeting, had wither'd by Sunday! We dined at a tavern--La, what do I say? If Bob was to know!--a Restaurateur's, dear; Where your PROPEREST ladies go dine every day, And drink Burgundy out of large tumblers, like beer. Fine Bob (for he's really grown SUPER-fine) Condescended, for once, to make one of the party; Of course, though but three, we had dinner for nine, And, in spite of my grief, love, I own I ate hearty; Indeed, Doll, I know not how 'tis, but in grief, I have always found eating a wondrous relief; And Bob, who's in love, said he felt the same QUITE-- "My sighs," said he "ceased with the first glass I drank you, The LAMB made me tranquil, the PUFFS made me light, And now that's all o'er--why, I'm--pretty well, thank you!" To MY great annoyance, we sat rather late; For Bobby and Pa had a furious debate About singing and cookery--Bobby, of course, Standing up for the latter Fine Art in full force; And Pa saying, "God only knows which is worst, The French singers or cooks, but I wish us well over it-- What with old Lais and Very, I'm curst If MY head or my stomach will ever recover it!" 'T was dark when we got to the Boulevards to stroll, And in vain did I look 'mong the street Macaronis, When sudden it struck me--last hope of my soul-- That some angel might take the dear man to Tortoni's! We enter'd--and scarcely had Bob, with an air, For a grappe a la jardiniere call'd to the waiters, When, oh! Dolly, I saw him--my hero was there (For I knew his white small-clothes and brown leather gaiters), A group of fair statues from Greece smiling o'er him, And lots of red currant-juice sparkling before him! Oh Dolly, these heroes--what creatures they are! In the boudoir the same as in fields full of slaughter; As cool in the Beaujon's precipitous car As when safe at Tortoni's, o'er iced currant-water! He joined us--imagine, dear creature my ecstasy-- Join'd by the man I'd have broken ten necks to see! Bob wish'd to treat him with punch a la glace, But the sweet fellow swore that my beaute, my GRACE, And my je-ne-sais-quoi (then his whiskers he twirl'd) Were, to HIM, "on de top of all ponch in de vorld."-- How pretty!--though oft (as, of course, it must be) Both his French and his English are Greek, Doll, to me. But, in short, I felt happy as ever fond heart did: And, happier still, when 't was fix'd, ere we parted, That, if the next day should be PASTORAL weather, We all would set off in French buggies, together, To see Montmorency--that place which, you know, Is so famous for cherries and Jean Jacques Rousseau. His card then he gave us--the NAME, rather creased-- But 't was Calicot--something--a colonel, at least! After which--sure there never was hero so civil--he Saw us safe home to our door in Rue Rivoli, Where his LAST words, as at parting, he threw A soft look o'er his shoulders, were--"how do you do?" But, Lord--there's Papa for the post---I'm so vex'd-- Montmorency must now, love, be kept for my next. That dear Sunday night!--I was charmingly dress'd, And--SO providential--was looking my best; Such a sweet muslin gown, with a flounce--and my frills, You've no notion how rich--(though Pa has by the bills)-- And you'd smile had you seen, when we sat rather near, Colonel Calicot eyeing the cambric, my dear. Then the flowers in my bonnet--but, la, it's in vain-- So, good by, my sweet Doll--I shall soon write again, R.F. Nota bene--our love to all neighbors about-- Your papa in particular--how is his gout? P. S.--I 've just open'd my letter to say, In your next you must tell me (now DO, Dolly, pray For I hate to ask Bob, he's so ready to quiz) What sort of a thing, dear, a BRANDENBURG is. THIRD LETTER. At last, DOLLY--thanks to a potent emetic Which BOBBY and Pa, with grimace sympathetic, Have swallowed this morning to balance the bliss Of an eel matelote, and a bisque d'ecrevisses-- I've a morning at home to myself, and sit down To describe you our heavenly trip out of town. How agog you must be for this letter, my dear! Lady JANE in the novel less languish'd to hear If that elegant cornet she met at LORD NEVILLE'S Was actually dying with love or--blue devils. But love, DOLLY, love is the theme _I_ pursue; With, blue devils, thank heaven, I've nothing to do-- Except, indeed, dear Colonel CALICOT spies Any imps of that color in CERTAIN blue eyes, Which he stares at till _I_, DOLL, at HIS do the same; Then he simpers--I blush--and would often exclaim, If I knew but the French for it, "Lord, sir, for shame!" Well, the morning was lovely--the trees in full dress For the happy occasion--the sunshine EXPRESS-- Had we order'd it dear, of the best poet going, It scarce could be furnish'd more golden and glowing. Though late when we started, the scent of the air Was like GATTIE'S rose-water, and bright here and there On the grass an odd dew-drop was glittering yet, Like my aunt's diamond pin on her green tabinet! And the birds seemed to warble, as blest on the boughs, As if EACH a plumed CALICOT had for her spouse, And the grapes were all blushing and kissing in rows, And--in short, need I tell you, wherever one goes With the creature one loves, 'tis all couleur de rose; And ah, I shall ne'er, lived I ever so long, see A day such as that at divine Montmorency! There was but ONE drawback---at first when we started, The Colonel and I were inhumanly parted; How cruel--young hearts of such moments to rob! He went in Pa's buggy, and I went with BOB: And, I own, I felt spitefully happy to know That Papa and his comrade agreed but so-so, For the Colonel, it seems, is a stickler of BONEY'S-- Served with him, of course--nay, I'm sure they were cronies; So martial his features, dear DOLL, you can trace Ulm, Austerlitz, Lodi, as plain in his face As you do on that pillar of glory and brass Which the poor Duc de B**RI must hate so to pass, It appears, too, he made--as most foreigners do-- About English affairs an odd blunder or two. For example--misled by the names. I dare say-- He confounded JACK CASTLES with Lord CASTLEREAGH, And--such a mistake as no mortal hit ever on-- Fancied the PRESENT Lord CAMDEN the CLEVER one! But politics ne'er were the sweet fellow's trade; 'T was for war and the ladies my Colonel was made. And, oh, had you heard, as together we walk'd Through that beautiful forest, how sweetly he talk'd; And how perfectly well he appear'd, DOLL, to know All the life and adventures of JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU!-- "'T was there," said he--not that his WORDS I can state-- 'T was a gibberish that Cupid alone could translate;-- But "there," said he (pointing where, small and remote, The dear Hermitage rose), "there his JULIE he wrote, Upon paper gilt-edged, without blot or erasure, Then sanded it over with silver and azure, And--oh, what will genius and fancy not do?- Tied the leaves up together with nomparsille blue!" What a trait of Rousseau! what a crowd of emotions From sand and blue ribbons are conjured up here! Alas! that a man of such exquisite notions, Should send his poor brats to the Foundling, my dear! "'T was here, too, perhaps," Colonel CALICOT said-- As down the small garden he pensively led-- (Though once I could see his sublime forehead wrinkle With rage not to find there the loved periwinkle)-- "'T was here he received from the fair D'EPINAY, (Who call'd him so sweetly HER BEAR, every day), That dear flannel petticoat, pull'd off to form A waistcoat to keep the enthusiast warm!" Such, DOLL, were the sweet recollections we ponder'd, As, full of romance, through that valley we wander'd, The flannel (one's train of ideas, how odd it is) Led us to talk about other commodities, Cambric, and silk, and I ne'er shall forget, For the sun way then hastening in pomp to its set, And full on the Colonel's dark whiskers shone down, When he ask'd ne, with eagerness--who made my gown? The question confused me--for, DOLL, you must know, And I OUGHT to have told my best friend long ago, That, by Pa's strict command, I no longer employ That enchanting couturiere, Madame LE ROI, But am forc'd, dear, to have VICTORINE, who--deuce take her-- It seems is, at present, the king's mantua-maker-- I mean OF HIS PARTY--and, though much the smartest, LE ROI is condemned as a rank B*n*pa*t*st. Think, DOLL, how confounded I look'd--so well knowing The Colonel's opinions--my cheeks were quite glowing; I stammer'd out something--nay, even half named The LEGITIMATE semptress, when, loud, he exclaimed, "Yes, yes, by the stiching 'tis plain to be seen It was made by that B*rb*n**t b--h, VIOTORINE!" What a word for a hero, but heroes WILL err, And I thought, dear, I'd tell you things JUST as they were, Besides, though the word on good manners intrench, I assure you, 'tis not HALF so shocking in French. But this cloud, though embarrassing, soon pass'd away, And the bliss altogether, the dreams of that day, The thoughts that arise when such dear fellows woo us-- The NOTHINGS that then, love, are EVERYTHING to us-- That quick correspondence of glances and sighs, And what BOB calls the "Twopenny-Post of the Eyes"-- Ah DOLL, though I KNOW you've a heart, 'tis in vain To a heart so unpracticed these things to explain, They can only be felt in their fullness divine By her who has wander'd, at evening's decline, Through a valley like that, with a Colonel like mine! But here I must finish--for BOB, my dear DOLLY, Whom physic, I find, always makes melancholy, Is seized with a fancy for church-yard reflections; And full of all yesterday's rich recollections, Is just setting off for Montmartre--"for THERE is," Said he, looking solemn, "the tomb of the VERYS! Long, long have I wisn'd, as a votary true, O'er the grave of such talents to utter my moans; And to-day, as my stomach is not in good cue For the FLESH of the VERYS--I'll visit their BONES!" He insists upon MY going with him--how teasing! This letter, however, dear DOLLY, shall lie Unseal'd in my drawer, that if any thing pleasing Occurs while I'm out, I may tell you--Good-by. B. F. Four o'clock. Oh, DOLLY, dear DOLLY, I'm ruin'd forever-- I ne'er shall be happy again, DOLLY, never; To think of the wretch!--what a victim was _I_! 'Tis too much to endure--I shall die, I shall die! My brain's in a fever--my pulses beat quick-- I shall die, or, at least, be exceedingly sick! Oh what do you think? after all my romancing, My visions of glory, my sighing, my glancing, This Colonel--I scarce can commit it to paper-- This Colonel's no more than a vile linen-draper!! 'Tis true as I live--I had coax'd brother BOB so (You'll hardly make out what I'm writing, I sob so), For some little gift on my birth-day--September The thirtieth, dear, I'm eighteen, you remember-- That BOB to a shop kindly order'd the coach (Ah, little thought I who the shopman would prove), To bespeak me a few of those mouchoirs de poche, Which, in happier hours, I have sighed for, my love-- (The most beautiful things--two Napoleons the price-- And one's name in the corner embroidered so nice!) Well, with heart full of pleasure, I enter'd the shop, But--ye gods, what a phantom!--I thought I should drop-- There he stood, my dear DOLLY--no room for a doubt-- There, behind the vile counter, these eyes saw him stand, With a piece of French cambric before him roll'd out, And that horrid yard-measure upraised in his hand! Oh--Papa all along knew the secret, 'tis clear-- 'T was a SHOPMAN he meant by a "Brandenburg," dear! The man, whom I fondly had fancied a King, And when THAT too delightful illusion was past, As a hero had worship'd--vile treacherous thing-- To turn out but a low linen-draper at last! My head swam round--the wretch smil'd, I believe, But his smiling, alas! could no longer deceive-- I fell back on BOB--my whole heart seem'd to wither, And, pale as a ghost, I was carried back hither! I only remember that BOB, as I caught him, With cruel facetiousness said--"Curse the Kiddy, A staunch Revolutionist always I've thought him, But now I find out he's a COUNTER one, BIDDY!" Only think, my dear creature, if this should be known To that saucy satirical thing, MISS MALONE! What a story 't will be at Shandangen forever! What laughs and what quizzing she'll have with the men! It will spread through the country--and never, oh never Can BIDDY be seen at Kilrandy again! Farewell--I shall do something desperate, I fear-- And ah! if my fate ever reaches your ear, One tear of compassion my DOLL will not grudge To her poor--broken-hearted--young friend, BIDDY FUDGE Nota Bene,--I'm sure you will hear with delight, That we're going, all three, to see BRUNET to-night A laugh will revive me--and kind Mr. Cox (Do you know him?) has got us the Governor's box. [Illustration: POPE.] THE LITERARY LADY. RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. What motley cares Corilla's mind perplex, Whom maids and metaphors conspire to vex! In studious dishabille behold her sit, A lettered gossip and a household wit; At once invoking, though for different views, Her gods, her cook, her milliner and muse. Bound her strewed room a frippery chaos lies, A checkered wreck of notable and wise, Bills, books, caps, couplets, combs, a varied mass, Oppress the toilet and obscure the glass; Unfinished here an epigram is laid, And there a mantua-maker's bill unpaid. There new-born plays foretaste the town's applause, There dormant patterns pine for future gauze. A moral essay now is all her care, A satire next, and then a bill of fare. A scene she now projects, and now a dish; Here Act the First, and here, Remove with Fish. Now, while this eye in a fine frenzy rolls, That soberly casts up a bill for coals; Black pins and daggers in one leaf she sticks, And tears, and threads, and bowls, and thimbles mix. NETLEY ABBEY. [Footnote: A noted ruin, much frequented by pleasure-parties.] R. HARRIS RARHAM I saw thee, Netley, as the sun Across the western wave Was sinking slow, And a golden glow To thy roofless towers he gave; And the ivy sheen With its mantle of green That wrapt thy walls around, Shone lovehly bright In that glorious light, And I felt 't was holy ground. Then I thought of the ancient time-- The days of thy monks of old,-- When to matin, and vesper, and compline chime, The loud Hosanna roll'd, And, thy courts and "long-drawn aisles" among, Swell'd the full tide of sacred song. And then a vision pass'd Across my mental eye; And silver shrines, and shaven crowns, And delicate ladies, in bombazeen gowns, And long white vails, went by; Stiff, and staid, and solemn, and sad,-- --But one, methought, wink'd at the Gardener-lad! Then came the Abbot, with miter and ring, And pastoral staff, and all that sort of thing, And a monk with a book, and a monk with a bell, And "dear linen souls," In clean linen stoles, Swinging their censers, and making a smell.-- And see where the Choir-master walks in the rear With front severe And brow austere, Now and then pinching a little boy's ear When he chants the responses too late or too soon, Or his Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La's not quite in tune. (Then you know They'd a "movable Do," Not a fix'd one as now--and of course never knew How to set up a musical Hullah-baloo.) It was, in sooth, a comely sight, And I welcom'd the vision with pure delight. But then "a change came o'er" My spirit--a change of fear-- That gorgeous scene I beheld no more, But deep beneath the basement floor A dungeon dark and drear! And there was an ugly hole in the wall-- For an oven too big,--for a cellar too small! And mortar and bricks All ready to fix, And I said, "Here's a Nun has been playing some tricks!-- That horrible hole!--it seems to say, 'I'm a grave that gapes for a living prey!'" And my heart grew sick, and my brow grew sad-- And I thought of that wink at the Gardener-lad. Ah me! ah me!--'tis sad to think That maiden's eye, which was made to wink, Should here be compelled to grow blear and blink, Or be closed for aye In this kind of way, Shut out forever from wholesome day, Wall'd up in a hole with never a chink, No light,--no air,--no victuals,--no drink!-- And that maiden's lip, Which was made to sip, Should here grow wither'd and dry as a chip! --That wandering glance and furtive kiss, Exceedingly naughty, and wrong, I wis, Should yet be considered so much amiss As to call for a sentence severe as this!-- And I said to myself, as I heard with a sigh The poor lone victim's stifled cry, "Well, I can't understand How any man's hand COULD wall up that hole in a Christian land! Why, a Mussulman Turk Would recoil from the work, And though, when his ladies run after the fellows, he Stands not on trifles, if madden'd by jealousy, Its objects, I'm sure, would declare, could they speak, In their Georgian, Circassian, or Turkish, or Greek, 'When all's said and done, far better it was for us, Tied back to back And sewn up in a sack, To be pitch'd neck-and-heels from a boat in the Bosphorus!' Oh! a saint 't would vex To think that the sex Should be no better treated than Combe's double X! Sure some one might run to the Abbess, and tell her A much better method of stocking her cellar." If ever on polluted walls Heaven's right arm in vengeance falls,-- If e'er its justice wraps in flame The black abodes of sin and shame, That justice, in its own good time, Shall visit, for so foul a crime, Ope desolation's floodgate wide, And blast thee, Netley, in thy pride! Lo where it comes!--the tempest lowers,-- It bursts on thy devoted towers; Ruthless Tudor's bloated form Rides on the blast, and guides the storm I hear the sacrilegious cry, "Down--with the nests, and the rooks will fly!" Down! down they come--a fearful fall-- Arch, and pillar, and roof-tree, and all, Stained pane, and sculptured stone, There they lie on the greensward strown-- Moldering walls remain alone! Shaven crown Bombazeen gown, Miter, and crosier, and all are flown! And yet, fair Netley, as I gaze Upon that gray and moldering wall. The glories of thy palmy days Its very stones recall!-- They "come like shadows, so depart"-- I see thee as thou wert--and art-- Sublime in ruin!--grand in woe! Lone refuge of the owl and bat; No voice awakes thine echoes now! No sound--good gracious!--what was that? Was it the moan, The parting groan Of her who died forlorn and alone, Embedded in mortar, and bricks, and stone?-- Full and clear On my listening ear It comes--again--near and more near-- Why zooks! it's the popping of Ginger Beer --I rush to the door-- I tread the floor, By abbots and abbesses trodden before, In the good old chivalric days of yore, And what see I there?-- In a rush-bottom'd chair A hag surrounded by crockery-ware, Vending, in cups, to the credulous throng A nasty decoction miscall'd Souchong,-- And a squeaking fiddle and "wry-necked fife" Are screeching away, for the life!--for the life! Danced to by "All the World and his Wife." Tag, Rag, and Bobtail, are capering there, Worse scene, I ween, than Bartlemy Fair!-- Two or three chimney-sweeps, two or three clowns, Playing at "pitch and toss," sport their "Browns," Two or three damsels, frank and free, Are ogling, and smiling, and sipping Bohea. Parties below, and parties above, Some making tea, and some making love. Then the "toot--toot--toot" Of that vile demi-flute,-- The detestable din Of that cracked violin, And the odors of "Stout," and tobacco, and gin! "--Dear me!" I exclaim'd, "what a place to be in!" And I said to the person who drove my "shay" (A very intelligent man, by the way), "This, all things considered, is rather too gay! It don't suit my humor,--so take me away! Dancing! and drinking!--cigar and song! If not profanation, it's 'coming it strong,' And I really consider it all very wrong.-- --Pray, to whom does this property now belong?"-- He paus'd, and said, Scratching his head, "Why I really DO think he's a little to blame, But I can't say I knows the gentleman's name!" "Well--well!" quoth I, As I heaved a sigh, And a tear-drop fell from my twinkling eye, "My vastly good man, as I scarcely doubt That some day or other you'll find it out, Should he come in your way, Or ride in your 'shay' (As perhaps he may), Be so good as to say That a Visitor whom you drove over one day, Was exceedingly angry, and very much scandalized, Finding these beautiful ruins so Vandalized, And thus of their owner to speak began, As he ordered you home in haste, No DOUBT HE'S A VERY RESPECTABLE MAN, But--'_I_ CAN'T SAY MUCH FOR HIS TASTE!'" FAMILY POETRY. R. HARRIS BARHAM Zooks! I must woo the Muse to-day, Though line before I never wrote! "On what occasion?" do you say? Our Dick has got a long-tail'd coat!! Not a coatee, which soldiers wear Button'd up high about the throat, But easy, flowing, debonair, In short a CIVIL long-tail'd coat. A smarter you'll not find in town, Cut by Nugee, that snip of note; A very quiet olive brown 's the color of Dick's long-tail'd coat. Gay jackets clothe the stately Pole, The proud Hungarian, and the Croat, Yet Esterhazy, on the whole Looks best when in a long-tail'd coat Lord Byron most admired, we know, The Albanian dress, or Suliote, But then he died some years ago, And never saw Dick's long-tail'd coat; Or past all doubt the poet's theme Had never been the "White Capote," Had he once view'd in Fancy's dream, The glories of Dick's long-tail'd coat! We also know on Highland kilt Poor dear Glengarry used to dote, And had esteem'd it actual guilt I' "the Gael" to wear a long-tail'd coat! No wonder 'twould his eyes annoy, Monkbarns himself would never quote "Sir Robert Sibbald," "Gordon," "Ray," Or "Stukely" for a long-tail'd coat. Jackets may do to ride or race, Or row in, when one's in a boat, But in the boudoir, sure, for grace There's nothing like Dick's long-tail'd cost, Of course in climbing up a tree, On terra-firma, or afloat, To mount the giddy topmast, he Would doff awhile his long-tail'd coat. What makes you simper, then, and sneer? From out your own eye pull the mote! A PRETTY thing for you to jeer-- Haven't YOU, too, got a long-tail'd coat? Oh! "Dick's scarce old enough," you mean. Why, though too young to give a note, Or make a will, yet, sure Fifteen 's a ripe age for a long-tail'd coat. What! would you have him sport a chin Like Colonel Stanhope, or that goat O' German Mahon, ere begin To figure in a long-tail'd coat? Suppose he goes to France--can he Sit down at any table d' hote, With any sort of decency, Unless he's got a long-tail'd coat? Why Louis Philippe, Royal Cit, There soon may be a sans culotte, And Nugent's self may then admit The advantage of a long-tail'd coat. Things are not now as when, of yore, In tower encircled by a moat, The lion-hearted chieftain wore A corselet for a long-tail'd coat; Then ample mail his form embraced, Not like a weasel or a stoat, "Cribb'd and confined" about the waist, And pinch'd in like Dick's long-tail'd coat With beamy spear or biting ax, To right and left he thrust and smote-- Ah! what a change! no sinewy thwacks Fall from a modern long-tail'd coati More changes still! now, well-a-day! A few cant phrases learned by rote, Each beardless booby spouts away, A Solon, in a long-tail'd coat! Prates of the "March of Intellect"-- "The Schoolmaster." A PATRIOTE So noble, who could e'er suspect Had just put on a long-tail'd coat? Alack! alack! that every thick- Skull'd lad must find an antidote For England's woes, because, like Dick, He has put on a long-tail'd coat! But lo! my rhyme's begun to fail, Nor can I longer time devote; Thus rhyme and time cut short the TALE, The long tale of Dick's long-tail'd coat. THE SUNDAY QUESTION. THOMAS HOOD. "It is the king's highway that we are in, and in this way it is that thou hast placed the lions,"--BUNYAN. What! shut the Gardens! lock the latticed gate! Refuse the shilling and the fellow's ticket! And hang a wooden notice up to state, On Sundays no admittance at this wicket! The Birds, the Beasts, and all the Reptile race, Denied to friends and visitors till Monday! Now, really, this appears the common case Of putting too much Sabbath into Sunday-- But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy? The Gardens--so unlike the ones we dub Of Tea, wherein the artisan carouses-- Mere shrubberies without one drop of shrub-- Wherefore should they be closed like public-houses? No ale is vended at the wild Deer's Head-- No rum--nor gin--not even of a Monday-- The Lion is not carved--or gilt--or red, And does not send out porter of a Sunday-- But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy? The Bear denied! the Leopard under looks! As if his spots would give contagious fevers! The Beaver close as hat within its box; So different from other Sunday beavers! The Birds invisible--the Gnaw-way Rats-- The Seal hermetically sealed till Monday-- The Monkey tribe--the Family of Cats-- We visit other families on Sunday-- But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy What is the brute profanity that shocks The super-sensitively serious feeling? The Kangaroo--is he not orthodox To bend his legs, the way he does, in kneeling? Was strict Sir Andrew, in his Sabbath coat, Struck all a-heap to see a Coati mundi? Or did the Kentish Plumtree faint to note The Pelicans presenting bills on Sunday?-- But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy? What feature has repulsed the serious set? What error in the bestial birth or breeding, To put their tender fancies on the fret? One thing is plain--it is not in the feeding! Some stiffish people think that smoking joints Are carnal sins 'twixt Saturday and Monday-- But then the beasts are pious on these points, For they all eat cold dinners on a Sunday-- But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy? What change comes o'er the spirit of the place, As if transmuted by some spell organic? Turns fell Hyena of the Ghoulish race? The Snake, pro tempore, the true Satanic? Do Irish minds--(whose theory allows That now and then Good Friday falls on Monday)-- Do Irish minds suppose that Indian Cows Are wicked Bulls of Bashan on a Sunday?-- But what is your opinion, Mrs, Grundy? There are some moody Fellows, not a few, Who, turned by nature with a gloomy bias, Renounce black devils to adopt the blue, And think when they are dismal they are pious: Is't possible that Pug's untimely fun Has sent the brutes to Coventry till Monday?-- Or perhaps some animal, no serious one, Was overheard in laughter on a Sunday-- But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy? What dire offense have serious Fellows found To raise their spleen against the Regent's spinney? Were charitable boxes handed round, And would not Guinea Pigs subscribe their guinea? Perchance, the Demoiselle refused to molt The feathers in her head--at least till Monday; Or did the Elephant, unseemly, bolt A tract presented to be read on Sunday?-- But what is your opinion, Mrs, Grundy? At whom did Leo struggle to get loose? Who mourns through Monkey-tricks his damaged clothing? Who has been hissed by the Canadian Goose? On whom did Llama spit in utter loathing? Some Smithfield Saint did jealous feelings tell To keep the Puma out of sight till Monday, Because he preyed extempore as well As certain wild Itinerants on Sunday-- But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy? To me it seems that in the oddest way (Begging the pardon of each rigid Socius) Our would-be Keepers of the Sabbath-day Are like the Keepers of the brutes ferocious-- As soon the Tiger might expect to stalk About the grounds from Saturday till Monday, As any harmless man to take a walk, If Saints could clap him in a cage on Sunday-- But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy? In spite of all hypocrisy can spin, As surely as I am a Christian scion, I cannot think it is a mortal sin-- (Unless he's loose)--to look upon a lion. I really think that one may go, perchance, To see a bear, as guiltless as on Monday-- (That is, provided that he did not dance)-- Bruin's no worse than bakin' on a Sunday-- But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy? In spite of all the fanatic compiles, I can not think the day a bit diviner, Because no children, with forestalling smiles, Throng, happy, to the gates of Eden Minor-- It is not plain, to my poor faith at least, That what we christen "Natural" on Monday, The wondrous history of Bird and Beast, Can be unnatural because it's Sunday-- But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy? Whereon is sinful fantasy to work? The Dove, the winged Columbus of man's haven? The tender Love-Bird--or the filial Stork? The punctual Crane--the providential Raven? The Pelican whose bosom feeds her young? Nay, must we cut from Saturday till Monday That feathered marvel with a human tongue, Because she does not preach upon a Sunday-- But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy? The busy Beaver--that sagacious beast! The Sheep that owned an Oriental Shepherd-- That Desert-ship, the Camel of the East, The horned Rhinoceros--the spotted Leopard-- The Creatures of the Great Creator's hand Are surely sights for better days than Monday-- The Elephant, although he wears no band, Has he no sermon in his trunk for Sunday?-- But what is your opinion, Mrs, Grundy? What harm if men who burn the midnight-oil, Weary of frame, and worn and wan of feature, Seek once a week their spirits to assoil, And snatch a glimpse of "Animated Nature?" Better it were if, in his best of suits, The artisan, who goes to work on Monday, Should spend a leisure-hour among the brutes, Than make a beast of his own self on Sunday-- But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy? Why, zounds! what raised so Protestant a fuss (Omit the zounds! for which I make apology) But that the Papists, like some Fellows, thus Had somehow mixed up Deus with their Theology? Is Brahma's Bull--a Hindoo god at home-- A Papal Bull to be tied up till Monday?-- Or Leo, like his namesake, Pope of Rome, That there is such a dread of them on Sunday-- But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy? Spirit of Kant! have we not had enough To make Religion sad, and sour, and snubbish, But Saints Zoological must cant their stuff, As vessels cant their ballast-rattling rubbish! Once let the sect, triumphant to their text, Shut Nero up from Saturday till Monday, And sure as fate they will deny us next To see the Dandelions on a Sunday-- But what is your opinion, Mrs, Grundy? ODE TO RAE WILSON, ESQUIRE [Footnote: Who had, in one of his books, characterized some of Hood's verses as "profaneness and ribaldry."] THOMAS HOOD. "Close, close your eyes with holy dread, And weave a circle round him thrice; For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise!"--Coleridge. "It's very hard them kind of men Won't let a body be."--Old Ballad. A wanderer, Wilson, from my native land, Remote, O Rae, from godliness and thee, Where rolls between us the eternal sea, Besides some furlongs of a foreign sand-- Beyond the broadest Scotch of London Wall; Beyond the loudest Saint that has a call; Across the wavy waste between us stretched, A friendly missive warns me of a stricture, Wherein my likeness you have darkly etched, And though I have not seen the shadow sketched, Thus I remark prophetic on the picture. I guess the features:--in a line to paint Their moral ugliness, I'm not a saint, Not one of those self-constituted saints, Quacks--not physicians--in the cure of souls, Censors who sniff out moral taints, And call the devil over his own coals-- Those pseudo Privy Councillors of God, Who write down judgments with a pen hard-nibbed: Ushers of Beelzebub's Black Rod, Commending sinners not to ice thick-ribbed, But endless flames, to scorch them like flax-- Yet sure of heaven themselves, as if they'd cribbed The impression of St. Peter's keys in wax! Of such a character no single trace Exists, I know, in my fictitious face; There wants a certain cast about the eye; A certain lifting of the nose's tip; A certain curling of the nether lip, In scorn of all that is, beneath the sky; In brief, it is an aspect deleterious, A face decidedly not serious, A face profane, that would not do at all To make a face at Exeter Hall-- That Hall where bigots rant, and cant, and pray, And laud each other face to face, Till every farthing-candle RAY Conceives itself a great gas-light of grace! Well!--be the graceless lineaments confest I do enjoy this bounteous beauteous earth; And dote upon a jest "Within the limits of becoming mirth;"-- No solemn sanctimonious face I pull, Nor think I'm pious when I'm only bilious-- Nor study in my sanctum supercilious To frame a Sabbath Bill or forge a Bull, I pray for grace--repent each sinful act-- Peruse, but underneath the rose, my Bible; And love my neighbor, far too well, in fact, To call and twit him with a godly tract That's turned by application to a libel. My heart ferments not with the bigot's leaven, All creeds I view with toleration thorough, And have a horror of regarding heaven As any body's rotten borough. What else? No part I take in party fray, With tropes from Billingsgate's slang-whanging Tartars, I fear no Pope--and let great Ernest play At Fox and Goose with Fox's Martyrs! I own I laugh at over-righteous men, I own I shake my sides at ranters, And treat sham Abr'am saints with wicked banters, I even own, that there are times--but then It's when I 've got my wine--I say d---- canters! I've no ambition to enact the spy On fellow-souls, a spiritual Pry-- 'Tis said that people ought to guard their noses Who thrust them into matters none of theirs And, though no delicacy discomposes Your saint, yet I consider faith and prayers Among the privatest of men's affairs. I do not hash the Gospel in my books, And thus upon the public mind intrude it, As if I thought, like Otahei-tan cooks, No food was fit to eat till I had chewed it. On Bible stilts I don't affect to stalk; Nor lard with Scripture my familiar talk-- For man may pious texts repeat, And yet religion have no inward seat; 'Tis not so plain as the old Hill of Howth, A man has got his belly full of meat Because he talks with victuals in his mouth! Mere verbiage--it is not worth a carrot! Why, Socrates or Plato--where 's the odds?-- Once taught a Jay to supplicate the gods, And made a Polly-theist of a Parrot! A mere professor, spite of all his cant, is Not a whit better than a Mantis-- An insect, of what clime I can't determine, That lifts its paws most parson-like, and thence, By simple savages--through sheer pretense-- Is reckoned quite a saint among the vermin. But where's the reverence, or where the nous, To ride on one's religion through the lobby, Whether as stalking-horse or hobby, To show its pious paces to "the house." I honestly confess that I would hinder The Scottish member's legislative rigs, That spiritual Pindar, Who looks on erring souls as straying pigs, That must be lashed by law, wherever found, And driven to church as to the parish pound. I do confess, without reserve or wheedle, I view that groveling idea as one Worthy some parish clerk's ambitious son, A charity-boy who longs to be a beadle. On such a vital topic sure 'tis odd How much a man can differ from his neighbor, One wishes worship freely given to God, Another wants to make it statute-labor-- The broad distinction in a line to draw, As means to lead us to the skies above, You say--Sir Andrew and his love of law, And I--the Saviour with his law of love. Spontaneously to God should tend the soul, Like the magnetic needle to the Pole; But what were that intrinsic virtue worth, Suppose some fellow with more zeal than knowledge, Fresh from St. Andrew's college, Should nail the conscious needle to the north? I do confess that I abhor and shrink Prom schemes, with a religious willy-nilly, That frown upon St. Giles' sins, but blink The peccadilloes of all Piccadilly-- My soul revolts at such bare hypocrisy, And will not, dare not, fancy in accord The Lord of hosts with an exclusive lord Of this world's aristocracy, It will not own a nation so unholy, As thinking that the rich by easy trips May go to heaven, whereas the poor and lowly Must work their passage as they do in ships. One place there is--beneath the burial-sod, Where all mankind are equalized by death; Another place there is--the Fane of God, Where all are equal who draw living breath;-- Juggle who will ELSEWHERE with his own soul, Playing the Judas with a temporal dole-- He who can come beneath that awful cope, In the dread presence of a Maker just, Who metes to every pinch of human dust One even measure of immortal hope-- He who can stand within that holy door, With soul unbowed by that pure spirit-level, And frame unequal laws for rich and poor,-- Might sit for Hell, and represent the Devil! Such are the solemn sentiments, O Rae, In your last journey-work, perchance, you ravage, Seeming, but in more courtly terms, to say I'm but a heedless, creedless, godless, savage; A very Guy, deserving fire and faggots,-- A scoffer, always on the grin, And sadly given to the mortal sin Of liking Mawworms less than merry maggots! The humble records of my life to search, I have not herded with mere pagan beasts: But sometimes I have "sat at good men's feasts," And I have been "where bells have knolled to church." Dear bells! how sweet the sound of village bells When on the undulating air they swim! Now loud as welcomes! faint, now, as farewells! And trembling all about the breezy dells, As fluttered by the wings of Cherubim. Meanwhile the bees are chanting a low hymn; And lost to sight the ecstatic lark above Sings, like a soul beatified, of love, With, now and then, the coo of the wild pigeon:-- O pagans, heathens, infidels, and doubters! If such sweet sounds can't woo you to religion, Will the harsh voices of church cads and touters? A man may cry Church! Church! at every word, With no more piety than other people-- A daw's not reckoned a religious bird Because it keeps a-cawing from a steeple; The Temple is a good, a holy place, But quacking only gives it an ill savor; While saintly mountebanks the porch disgrace, And bring religion's self into disfavor! Behold yon servitor of God and Mammon, Who, binding up his Bible with his ledger, Blends Gospel texts with trading gammon, A black-leg saint, a spiritual hedger, Who backs his rigid Sabbath, so to speak, Against the wicked remnant of the week, A saving bet against, his sinful bias-- "Rogue that I am," he whispers to himself, "I lie--I cheat--do any thing for pelf, But who on earth can say I am not pious!" In proof how over-righteousness re-acts, Accept an anecdote well based on facts; On Sunday morning--(at the day don't fret)-- In riding with a friend to Ponder's End Outside the stage, we happened to commend A certain mansion that we saw To Let. "Ay," cried our coachman, with our talk to grapple, "You're right! no house along the road comes nigh it! 'T was built by the same man as built yon chapel, And master wanted once to buy it,-- But t' other driv' the bargain much too hard,-- He axed sure-LY a sum prodigious! But being so particular religious, Why, THAT you see, put master on his guard!" Church is "a little heaven below, I have been there and still would go," Yet I am none of those who think it odd A man can pray unbidden from the cassock, And, passing by the customary hassock Kneel down remote upon the simple sod, And sue in forma pauperis to God. As for the rest,--intolerant to none, Whatever shape the pious rite may bear, Even the poor Pagan's homage to the sun I would not harshly scorn, lest even there I spurned some elements of Christian prayer-- An aim, though erring, at a "world ayont"-- Acknowledgment of good--of man's futility, A sense of need, and weakness, and indeed That very thing so many Christians want-- Humilty. Such, unto Papists, Jews or Turbaned Turks, Such is my spirit--(I don't mean my wraith!) Such, may it please you, is my humble faith; I know, full well, you do not like my WORKS! I have not sought, 'tis true, the Holy Land, As full of texts as Cuddie Headrigg's mother, The Bible in one hand, And my own common-place-book in the other-- But you have been to Palestine--alas Some minds improve by travel--others, rather, Resemble copper wire or brass, Which gets the narrower by going further! Worthless are all such pilgrimages--very! If Palmers at the Holy Tomb contrive The humans heats and rancor to revive That at the Sepulcher they ought to bury. A sorry sight it is to rest the eye on, To see a Christian creature graze at Sion, Then homeward, of the saintly pasture full, Rush bellowing, and breathing fire and smoke, At crippled Papistry to butt and poke, Exactly as a skittish Scottish bull Haunts an old woman in a scarlet cloak. Why leave a serious, moral, pious home, Scotland, renewned for sanctity of old, Far distant Catholics to rate and scold For--doing as the Romans do at Rome? With such a bristling spirit wherefore quit The Land of Cakes for any land of wafers, About the graceless images to flit, And buzz and chafe importunate as chafers, Longing to carve the carvers to Scotch collops?-- People who hold such absolute opinions Should stay at home in Protestant dominions, Not travel like male Mrs. Trollopes. Gifted with noble tendency to climb, Yet weak at the same time, Faith is a kind of parasitic plant, That grasps the nearest stem with tendril rings; And as the climate and the soil may grant, So is the sort of tree to which it clings. Consider, then, before, like Hurlothrumbo, You aim your club at any creed on earth, That, by the simple accident of birth, YOU might have been High Priest to Mungo Jumbo. For me--through heathen ignorance perchance, Not having knelt in Palestine,--I feel None of that griffinish excess of zeal, Some travelers would blaze with here in France. Dolls I can see in Virgin-like array, Nor for a scuffle with the idols hanker Like crazy Quixotte at the puppet's play, If their "offense be rank," should mine be RANCOR? Mild light, and by degrees, should be the plan To cure the dark and erring mind; But who would rush at a benighted man, And give him, two black eyes for being blind? Suppose the tender but luxuriant hop Around a cankered stem should twine, What Kentish boor would tear away the prop So roughly as to wound, nay, kill the bine? The images, 'tis true, are strangely dressed, With gauds and toys extremely out of season; The carving nothing of the very best, The whole repugnant to the eye of Reason, Shocking to Taste, and to Fine Arts a treason-- Yet ne'er o'erlook in bigotry of sect One truly CATHOLIC, one common form, At which unchecked All Christian hearts may kindle or keep warm. Say, was it to my spirit's gain or loss One bright and balmy morning, as I went From Liege's lovely environs to Ghent, If hard by the wayside I found a cross, That made me breathe a prayer upon the spot-- While Nature of herself, as if to trace The emblem's use, had trailed around its base The blue significant Forget-Me-Not? Methought, the claims of Charity to urge More forcibly along with Faith and Hope, The pious choice had pitched upon the verge Of a delicious slope, Giving the eye much variegated scope!-- "Look round," it whispered, "on that prospect rare, Those vales so verdant, and those hills so blue; Enjoy the sunny world, so fresh, and fair, But"--(how the simple legend pierced me through!) "PRIEZ POUR LES MALHEUREUX." With sweet kind natures, as in honeyed cells, Religion lives and feels herself at home; But only on a formal visit dwells Where wasps instead of bees have formed the comb. Shun pride, O Rae!--whatever sort beside You take in lieu, shun spiritual pride! A pride there is of rank--a pride of birth, A pride of learning, and a pride of purse, A London pride--in short, there be on earth A host of prides, some better and some worse; But of all prides, since Lucifer's attaint, The proudest swells a self-elected Saint. To picture that cold pride so harsh and hard, Fancy a peacock in a poultry-yard. Behold him in conceited circles sail, Strutting and dancing, and now planted stiff, In all his pomp of pageantry, as if He felt "the eyes of Europe" on his tail! As for the humble breed retained by man, He scorns the whole domestic clan-- He bows, he bridles, He wheels, he sidles, As last, with stately dodgings in a corner, He pens a simple russet hen, to scorn her Full in the blaze of his resplendent fan! "Look here," he cries (to give him words), "Thou feathered clay--thou scum of birds!" Flirting the rustling plumage in her eyes-- "Look here, thou vile predestined sinner, Doomed to be roasted for a dinner, Behold these lovely variegated dyes! These are the rainbow colors of the skies, That heaven has shed upon me con amore-- A Bird of Paradise?--a pretty story! _I_ am that Saintly Fowl, thou paltry chick! Look at my crown of glory! Thou dingy, dirty, dabbled, draggled jill!" And off goes Partlett, wriggling from a kick, With bleeding scalp laid open by his bill! That little simile exactly paints How sinners are despised by saints. By saints!--the Hypocrites that ope heaven's door Obsequious to the sinful man of riches-- But put the wicked, naked, bare-legged poor, In parish stocks, instead of breeches. The Saints?--the Bigots that in public spout, Spread phosphorus of zeal on scraps of fustian, And go like walking "Lucifers" about-- Mere living bundles of combustion. The Saints!--the aping Fanatics that talk All cant and rant and rhapsodies high flown-- That bid you balk A Sunday walk, And shun God's work as you should shun your own. The Saints!--the Formalists, the extra pious, Who think the mortal husk can save the soul, By trundling, with a mere mechanic bias, To church, just like a lignum-vitae bowl! The Saints!--the Pharisees, whose beadle stands Beside a stern coercive kirk, A piece of human mason-work, Calling all sermons contrabands, In that great Temple that's not made with hands! Thrice blessed, rather, is the man with whom The gracious prodigality of nature, The balm, the bliss, the beauty, and the bloom, The bounteous providence in every feature, Recall the good Creator to his creature, Making all earth a fane, all heaven its dome! To HIS tuned spirit the wild heather-bells Ring Sabbath knells; The jubilate of the soaring lark Is chant of clerk; For Choir, the thrush and the gregarious linnet; The sod's a cushion for his pious want; And, consecrated by the heaven within it, The sky-blue pool, a font. Each cloud-capped mountain is a holy altar; An organ breathes in every grove; And the fall heart's a Psalter, Rich in deep hymns of gratitude and love! Sufficiently by stern necessitarians Poor Nature, with her face begrimmed by dust, Is stoked, coked, smoked, and almost choked: but must Religion have its own Utilitarians, Labeled with evangelical phylacteries, To make the road to heaven a railway trust, And churches--that's the naked fact--mere factories? O! simply open wide the temple door, And let the solemn, swelling organ greet, With VOLUNTARIES meet, The WILLING advent of the rich and poor! And while to God the loud Hosannas soar, With rich vibiations from the vocal throng-- From quiet shades that to the woods belong, And brooks with music of their own, Voices may come to swell the choral song With notes of praise they learned in musings lone. How strange it is, while on all vital questions, That occupy the House and public mind, We always meet with some humane suggestions Of gentle measures of a healing kind, Instead of harsh severity and vigor, The saint alone his preference retains For bills of penalties and pains, And marks his narrow code with legal rigor! Why shun, as worthless of affiliation, What men of all political persuasion Extol--and even use upon occasion-- That Christian principle, conciliation? But possibly the men who make such fuss With Sunday pippins and old Trots infirm, Attach some other meaning to the term, As thus: One market morning, in my usual rambles, Passing along Whitechapel's ancient shambles, Where meat was hung in many a joint and quarter, I had to halt a while, like other folks, To let a killing butcher coax A score of lambs and fatted sheep to slaughter. A sturdy man he looked to fell an ox, Bull-fronted, ruddy, with a formal streak Of well-greased hair down either cheek, As if he dee-dashed-dee'd some other flocks Besides those woolly-headed stubborn blocks That stood before him, in vexatious huddle-- Poor little lambs, with bleating wethers grouped, While, now and then, a thirsty creature stooped And meekly snuffed, but did not taste the puddle. Fierce barked the dog, and many a blow was dealt, That loin, and chump, and scrag and saddle felt, Yet still, that fatal step they all declined it-- And shunned the tainted door as if they smelt Onions, mint-sauce, and lemon-juice behind it. At last there came a pause of brutal force; The cur was silent, for his jaws were full Of tangled locks of tarry wool; The man had whooped and bellowed till dead hoarse, The time was ripe for mild expostulation, And thus it stammered ftom a stander-by-- "Zounds!--my good fellow--it quite makes me--why It really--my dear fellow--do just try Conciliation!" Stringing his nerves like flint, The sturdy butcher seized upon the hint-- At least he seized upon the foremost wether-- And hugged and lugged and tugged him neck and crop Just nolens volens through the open shop-- If tails come off he didn't care a feather-- Then walking to the door, and smiling grim, He rubbed his forehead and his sleeve together-- "There!--I've CONciliated him!" Again--good-humoredly to end our quarrel-- (Good humor should prevail!) I'll fit you with a tale Whereto is tied a moral. Once on a time a certain English lass Was seized with symptoms of such deep decline, Cough, hectic flushes, every evil sign, That, as their wont is at such desperate pass, The doctors gave her over--to an ass. Accordingly, the grisly Shade to bilk, Each morn the patient quaffed a frothy bowl Of assinine new milk, Robbing a shaggy suckling of a foal Which got proportionably spare and skinny-- Meanwhile the neighbors cried "Poor Mary Ann! She can't get over it! she never can!" When lo! to prove each prophet was a ninny, The one that died was the poor wet-nurse Jenny. To aggravate the case, There were but two grown donkeys in the place; And, most unluckily for Eve's sick daughter, The other long-eared creature was a male, Who never in his life had given a pail Of milk, or even chalk and water. No matter: at the usual hour of eight Down trots a donkey to the wicket-gate, With Mister Simon Gubbins on his back-- "Your sarvant, Miss--a werry spring-like day-- Bad time for hasses, though! good lack! good lack! Jenny be dead, Miss--but I'ze brought ye Jack-- He doesn't give no milk--but he can bray." So runs the story, And, in vain self-glory, Some Saints would sneer at Gubbins for his blindness; But what the better are their pious saws To ailing souls, than dry hee-haws, Without the milk of human kindness? DEATH'S RAMBLE. THOMAS HOOD. One day the dreary old King of Death Inclined for some sport with the carnal, So he tied a pack of darts on his back, And quietly stole from his charnel. His head was bald of flesh and of hair, His body was lean and lank; His joints at each stir made a crack, and the cur Took a gnaw, by the way, at his shank. And what did he do with his deadly darts, This goblin of grisly bone? He dabbled and spilled man's blood, and he killed Like a butcher that kills his own. The first he slaughtered it made him laugh (For the man was a coffin-maker), To think how the mutes, and men in black suits, Would mourn for an undertaker. Death saw two Quakers sitting at church; Quoth he, "We shall not differ." And he let them alone, like figures of stone, For he could not make them stiffer. He saw two duellists going to fight, In fear they could not smother; And he shot one through at once--for he knew They never would shoot each other. He saw a watchman fast in his box, And he gave a snore infernal; Said Death, "He may keep his breath, for his sleep Can never be more eternal." He met a coachman driving a coach So slow that his fare grew sick; But he let him stray on his tedious way, For Death only wars on the QUICK. Death saw a tollman taking a toll, In the spirit of his fraternity; But he knew that sort of man would extort, Though summoned to all eternity. He found an author writing his life, But he let him write no further; For Death, who strikes whenever he likes, Is jealous of all self-murther! Death saw a patient that pulled out his purse, And a doctor that took the sum; But he let them be--for he knew that the "fee" Was a prelude to "faw" and "fum." He met a dustman ringing a bell, And he gave him a mortal thrust; For himself, by law, since Adam's flaw, Is contractor for all our dust. He saw a sailor mixing his grog, And he marked him out for slaughter; For on water he scarcely had cared for death, And never on rum-and-water. Death saw two players playing at cards, But the game wasn't worth a dump, For he quickly laid them flat with a spade, To wait for the final trump! THE BACHELOR'S DREAM. THOMAS HOOD. My pipe is lit, my grog is mixed, My curtains drawn and all is snug; Old Puss is in her elbow chair, And Tray is sitting on the rug. Last night I had a curious dream, Miss Susan Bates was Mistress Mogg-- What d'ye think of that, my cat? What d'ye think of that, my dog? She look'd so fair, she sang so well, I could but woo and she was won; Myself in blue, the bride in white, The ring was placed, the deed was done! Away we went in chaise-and-four, As fast as grinning boys could flog-- What d'ye think of that my cat? What d'ye think of that my dog? What loving tete-a-tetes to come! What tete-a-tetes must still defer! When Susan came to live with me, Her mother came to live with her! With sister Belle she couldn't part, But all MY ties had leave to jog-- What d'ye think of that, my cat? What d'ye think of that, my dog? The mother brought a pretty Poll-- A monkey, too, what work he made! The sister introduced a beau-- My Susan brought a favorite maid. She had a tabby of her own,-- A snappish mongrel christened Grog,-- What d'ye think of that, my cat? What d'ye think of that, my dog? The monkey bit--the parrot screamed, All day the sister strummed and sung, The petted maid was such a scold! My Susan learned to use her tongue; Her mother had such wretched health, She sat and croaked like any frog-- What d'ye think of that, my cat? What d'ye think of that, my dog? No longer Deary, Duck, and Love, I soon came down to simple "M!" The very servants crossed my wish, My Susan let me down to them. The poker hardly seemed my own, I might as well have been a log-- What d'ye think of that, my cat? What d'ye think of that, my dog? My clothes they were the queerest shape! Such coats and hats she never met! My ways they were the oddest ways! My friends were such a vulgar set! Poor Tompkinson was snubbed and huffed, She could not bear that Mister Blogg-- What d'ye think of that, my cat? What d'ye think of that, my dog? At times we had a spar, and then Mamma must mingle in the song-- The sister took a sister's part-- The maid declared her master wrong-- The parrot learned to call me "Fool!" My life was like a London fog-- What d'ye think of that, my cat? What d'ye think of that, my dog? My Susan's taste was superfine, As proved by bills that had no end; _I_ never had a decent coat-- _I_ never had a coin to spend! She forced me to resign my club, Lay down my pipe, retrench my grog-- What d'ye think of that, my cat? What d'ye think of that, my dog? Each Sunday night we gave a rout To fops and flirts, a pretty list; And when I tried to steal away I found my study full of whist! Then, first to come, and last to go, There always was a Captain Hogg-- What d'ye think of that, my cat? What d'ye think of that, my dog? Now was not that an awful dream For one who single is and snug-- With Pussy in the elbow-chair, And Tray reposing on the rug?-- If I must totter down the hill 'Tis safest done without a clog-- What d'ye think of that, my cat? What d'ye think of that, my dog? ON SAMUEL ROGERS. LORD BYRON. Question. Nose and chin would shame a knocker, Wrinkles that would puzzle Cocker: Mouth which marks the envious scorner, With a scorpion in each corner, Turning its quick tail to sting you In the place that most may wring you: Eyes of lead-like hue, and gummy; Carcass picked out from some mummy Bowels (but they were forgotten, Save the liver, and that's rotten); Skin all sallow, flesh all sodden-- Form the Devil would frighten God in. Is't a corpse stuck up for show, Galvanized at times to go With the Scripture in connection, New proof of the resurrection? Vampyre, ghost, or ghoul, what is it? I would walk ten miles to miss it. Answer. Many passengers arrest one, To demand the same free question. Shorter's my reply, and franker-- That's the Bard, the Beau, the Banker. Yet if you could bring about, Just to turn him inside out, Satan's self would seem less sooty, And his present aspect--Beauty. Mark that (as he masks the bilious Air, so softly supercilious) Chastened bow, and mock humility, Almost sickened to servility; Hear his tone, (which is to talking That which creeping is to walking-- Now on all-fours, now on tiptoe), Hear the tales he lends his lip to; Little hints of heavy scandals, Every friend in turn he handles; All which women or which men do, Glides forth in an innuendo, Clothed in odds and ends of humor-- Herald of each paltry rumor. From divorces down to dresses, Women's frailties, men's excesses, All which life presents of evil Make for him a constant revel. You're his foe--for that he fears you, And in absence blasts and sears you: You're his friend--for that he hates you, First caresses, and then baits you, Darting on the opportunity When to do it with impunity: You are neither--then he'll flatter Till he finds some trait for satire; Hunts your weak point out, then shows it Where it injures to disclose it, In the mode that's most invidious, Adding every trait that's hideous, From the bile, whose blackening river Rushes through his Stygian liver. Then he thinks himself a lover: Why I really can't discover In his mind, age, face, or figure: Viper-broth might give him vigor. Let him keep the caldron steady, He the venom has already. For his faults, he has but ONE-- 'Tis but envy, when all's done. He but pays the pain he suffers; Clipping, like a pair of snuffers, Lights which ought to burn the brighter For this temporary blighter. He's the cancer of his species, And will eat himself to pieces; Plague personified, and famine; Devil, whose sole delight is damning! For his merits, would you know 'em? Once he wrote a pretty Poem. MY PARTNER. W. MACKWORTH PRAED. At Cheltenham, where one drinks one's fill Of folly and cold water, I danced, last year, my first quadrille With old Sir Geoffrey's daughter. Her cheek with summer's rose might vie, When summer's rose is newest; Her eyes were blue as autumn's sky, When autumn's sky is bluest; And well my heart might deem her one Of life's most precious flowers, For half her thoughts were of its sun, And half were of its showers. I spoke of novels:--"Vivian Gray" Was positively charming, And "Almack's" infinitely gay, And "Frankenstein" alarming; I said "De Vere" was chastely told. Thought well of "Herbert Lacy," Called Mr. Banim's sketches "bold," And Lady Morgan's "racy;" I vowed the last new thing of Hook's Was vastly entertaining; And Laura said--"I dote on books, Because it's always raining!" I talked of music's gorgeous fane, I raved about Rossini, Hoped Ronzo would come back again, And criticized Paccini; I wished the chorus singers dumb. The trumpets more pacific, And eulogized Brocard's APLOMB And voted Paul "terrific." What cared she for Medea's pride Or Desdemona's sorrow? "Alas!" my beauteous listener sighed, "We MUST have storms to-morrow!" I told her tales of other lands; Of ever-boiling fountains, Of poisonous lakes, and barren sands, Vast forests, trackless mountains; I painted bright Italian skies, I lauded Persian roses, Coined similes for Spanish eyes, And jests for Indian noses; I laughed at Lisbon's love of mass, And Vienna's dread of treason; And Laura asked me where the glass Stood at Madrid last season. I broached whate'er had gone its rounds, The week before, of scandal; What made Sir Luke lay down his hounds And Jane take up her Handel; Why Julia walked upon the heath, With the pale moon above her; Where Flora lost her false front teeth, And Anne her false lover; How Lord de B. and Mrs. L. Had crossed the sea together; My shuddering partner cried--"Oh, God! How could they in such weather?" Was she a blue?--I put my trust In strata, petals, gases; A boudoir pedant?--I discussed The toga and the fasces; A cockney-muse?--I mouthed a deal Of folly from Endymion: A saint?--I praised the pious zeal Of Messrs. Way and Simeon; A politician?--It was vain To quote the morning paper; The horrid phantoms come again, Rain, hail, and snow, and vapor. Flat flattery was my only chance, I acted deep devotion, Found magic in her every glance, Grace in her every motion; I wasted all a stripling's lore, Prayer, passion, folly, feeling; And wildly looked upon the floor, And wildly on the ceiling; I envied gloves upon her arm, And shawls upon her shoulder; And when my worship was most warm, She "never found it colder." I don't object to wealth or land And she will have the giving Of an extremely pretty hand, Some thousands, and a living. She makes silk purses, broiders stools, Sings sweetly, dances finely, Paints screens, subscribes to Sunday-schools, And sits a horse divinely. But to be linked for life to her!-- The desperate man who tried it, Might marry a barometer, And hang himself beside it! THE BELLE OF THE BALL. W. MACKWORTH PRAED. Years--years ago--ere yet my dreams Had been of being wise and witty; Ere I had done with writing themes, Or yawn'd o'er this infernal Chitty; Years, years ago, while all my joys Were in my fowling-piece and filly: In short, while I was yet a boy, I fell in love with Laura Lilly. I saw her at a country ball; There when the sound of flute and fiddle Gave signal sweet in that old hall, Of hands across and down the middle, Hers was the subtlest spell by far Of all that sets young hearts romancing: She was our queen, our rose, our star; And when she danced--oh, heaven, her dancing! Dark was her hair, her hand was white; Her voice was exquisitely tender, Her eyes were full of liquid light; I never saw a waist so slender; Her every look, her every smile, Shot right and left a score of arrows; I thought't was Venus from her isle, I wondered where she'd left her sparrows. She talk'd of politics or prayers; Of Southey's prose, or Wordsworth's sonnets; Of daggers or of dancing bears, Of battles, or the last new bonnets; By candle-light, at twelve o'clock, To me it matter'd not a tittle, If those bright lips had quoted Locke, I might have thought they murmured Little. Through sunny May, through sultry June, I loved her with a love eternal; I spoke her praises to the moon, I wrote them for the Sunday Journal. My mother laughed; I soon found out That ancient ladies have no feeling; My father frown'd; but how should gout Find any happiness in kneeling? She was the daughter of a dean, Rich, fat, and rather apoplectic; She had one brother just thirteen. Whose color was extremely hectic; Her grandmother, for many a year, Had fed the parish with her bounty; Her second cousin was a peer, And lord-lieutenant of the county. But titles and the three per cents, And mortgages, and great relations, And India bonds, and tithes and rents, Oh! what are they to love's sensations? Black eyes, fair forehead, clustering locks, Such wealth, such honors, Cupid chooses; He cares as little for the stocks, As Baron Rothschild for the muses. She sketch'd; the vale, the wood, the beach, Grew lovelier from her pencil's shading; She botanized; I envied each Young blossom in her boudoir fading; She warbled Handel; it was grand-- She made the Catalina jealous; She touch'd the organ; I could stand For hours and hours and blow the bellows. She kept an album, too, at home, Well fill'd with all an album's glories; Paintings of butterflies and Rome, Patterns for trimming, Persian stories; Soft songs to Julia's cockatoo, Fierce odes to famine and to slaughter; And autographs of Prince Laboo, And recipes of elder water. And she was flatter'd, worship'd, bored, Her steps were watch'd, her dress was noted, Her poodle dog was quite adored, Her sayings were extremely quoted. She laugh'd, and every heart was glad, As if the taxes were abolish'd; She frown'd, and every look was sad, As if the opera were demolishd. She smil'd on many just for fun-- I knew that there was nothing in it; I was the first the only one Her heart thought of for a minute; I knew it, for she told me so, In phrase which was divinely molded; She wrote a charming hand, and oh! How sweetly all her notes were folded! Our love was like most other loves-- A little glow, a little shiver; A rosebud and a pair of gloves, And "Fly Not Yet," upon the river; Some jealousy of some one's heir, Some hopes of dying broken-hearted, A miniature, a lock of hair, The usual vows--and then we parted. We parted--months and years roll'd by; We met again for summers after; Our parting was all sob and sigh-- Our meeting was all mirth and laughter; For in my heart's most secret cell, There had been many other lodgers; And she was not the ball-room belle, But only Mrs.--Something--Rogers. SORROWS OF WERTHER. W. MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. Werther had a love for Charlotte Such as words could never utter; Would you know how first he met her? She was cutting bread and butter. Charlotte was a married lady, And a moral man was Werther, And for all the wealth of Indies, Would do nothing for to hurt her. So he sighed and pined and ogled, And his passion boiled and bubbled. Till he blew his silly brains out, And no more was by it troubled. Charlotte, having seen his body Borne before her on a shutter, Like a well-conducted person, Went on cutting bread and butter. THE YANKEE VOLUNTEERS. W. MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. ["A surgeon of the United States army says, that on inquiring of the Captain of his company, he found THAT NINE-TENTHS of the men had enlisted on account of some female difficulty."]--Morning Paper. Ye Yankee volunteers! It makes my bosom bleed When I your story read, Though oft 'tis told one. So--in both hemispheres The woman are untrue, And cruel in the New, As in the Old one! What--in this company Of sixty sons of Mars, Who march 'neath Stripes and Stars, With fife and horn, Nine tenths of all we see Along the warlike line Had but one cause to join This Hope Folorn? Deserters from the realm Where tyrant Venus reigns, You slipped her wicked chains, Fled and out-ran her. And now, with sword and helm, Together banded are Beneath the Stripe and Star- embroidered banner! And so it is with all The warriors ranged in line, With lace bedizened fine And swords gold-hilted-- Yon lusty corporal, Yon color-man who gripes The flag of Stars and Stripes-- Has each been jilted? Come, each man of this line, The privates strong and tall, "The pioneers and all," The fifer nimble-- Lieutenant and Ensign, Captain with epaulets, And Blacky there, who beats The clanging cymbal-- O cymbal-beating black, Tell us, as thou canst feel, Was it some Lucy Neal Who caused thy ruin? O nimble fifing Jack, And drummer making din So deftly on the skin, With thy rat-tattooing. Confess, ye volunteers, Lieutenant and Ensign, And Captain of the line, As bold as Roman-- Confess, ye grenadiers, However strong and tall, The Conqueror of you all Is Woman, Woman! No corselet is so proof, But through it from her bow, The shafts that she can throw Will pierce and rankle. No champion e'er so tough, But's in the struggle thrown, And tripped and trodden down By her slim ankle. Thus, always it has ruled, And when a woman smiled, The strong man was a child, The sage a noodle. Alcides was befooled, And silly Samson shorn, Long, long ere you were born, Poor Yankee Doodle! COURTSHIP AND MATRIMONY. A POEM, IN TWO CANTOS. PUNCH. CANTO THE FIRST. COURTSHIP. Fairest of earth! if thou wilt hear my vow, Lo! at thy feet I swear to love thee ever; And by this kiss upon thy radiant brow, Promise afiection which no time shall sever; And love which e'er shall burn as bright as now, To be extinguished--never, dearest, never! Wilt thou that naughty, fluttering heart resign? CATHERINE! my own sweet Kate! wilt thou be mine? Thou shalt have pearls to deck thy raven hair-- Thou shalt have all this world of ours can bring, And we will live in solitude, nor care For aught save for each other. We will fling Away all sorrow--Eden shall be there! And thou shalt be my queen, and I thy king! Still coy, and still reluctant? Sweetheart say, When shall we monarchs be? and which the day? CANTO THE SECOND. MATRIMONY. Now MRS. PRINGLE, once for all, I say I will not such extravagance allow! Bills upon bills, and larger every day, Enough to drive a man to drink, I vow! Bonnets, gloves, frippery and trash--nay, nay, Tears, MRS. PRINGLE, will not gull me now-- I say I won't allow ten pounds a week; I can't afford it; madam, do not speak! In wedding you I thought I had a treasure; I find myself most miserably mistaken! You rise at ten, then spend the day in pleasure;-- In fact, my confidence is slightly shaken. Ha! what's that uproar? This, ma'am, is my leisure; Sufficient noise the slumbering dead to waken! I seek retirement, and I find--a riot; Confound those children, but I'll make them quiet! CONCERNING SISTERS-IN-LAW. PUNCH. I. They looked so alike as they sat at their work, (What a pity it is that one isn't a Turk!) The same glances and smiles, the same habits and arts, The same tastes, the same frocks, and (no doubt) the same hearts The same irresistible cut in their jibs, The same little jokes, and the same little fibs-- That I thought the best way to get out of my pain Was by--HEADS for Maria, and WOMAN for Jane; For hang ME if it seemed it could matter a straw, Which dear became wife, and which sister-in-law. II. But now, I will own, I feel rather inclined To suspect I've some reason to alter my mind; And the doubt in my breast daily grows a more strong one, That they're not QUITE alike, and I've taken the wrong one. Jane is always so gentle, obliging, and cool; Never calls me a monster--not even a fool; All our little contentions, 'tis she makes them up, And she knows how much sugar to put in my cup:-- Yes, I sometimes HAVE wished--Heav'n forgive me the flaw!-- That my very dear wife was my sister-in-law. III. Oh, your sister-in-law, is a dangerous thing! The daily comparisons, too, she will bring! Wife--curl-papered, slip-shod, unwashed and undressed; She--ringleted, booted, and "fixed in her best;" Wife--sulky, or storming, or preaching, or prating; She--merrily singing, or laughing, or chatting: Then the innocent freedom her friendship allows To the happy half-way between mother and spouse. In short, if the Devil e'er needs a cat's-paw, He can't find one more sure than a sister-in-law. IV. That no good upon earth can be had undiluted Is a maxim experience has seldom refuted; And preachers and poets have proved it is so With abundance of tropes, more or less apropos. Every light has its shade, every rose has its thorn, The cup has its head-ache, its poppy the corn, There's a fly in the ointment, a spot on the sun-- In short, they've used all illustrations--but one; And have left it to me the most striking to draw-- Viz.: that none, without WIVES, can have SISTERS-IN-LAW. THE LOBSTERS. [Footnote: Appeared at the time of the Anti-popery excitement, produced by the titles of Cardinal Wiseman, etc.] PUNCH. As a young Lobster roamed about, Itself and mother being out, Their eyes at the same moment fell On a boiled lobster's scarlet shell "Look," said the younger; "is it true That we might wear so bright a hue? No coral, if I trust mine eye, Can with its startling brilliance vie; While you and I must be content A dingy aspect to present." "Proud heedless fool," the parent cried; "Know'st thou the penalty of pride? The tawdry finery you wish, Has ruined this unhappy fish. The hue so much by you desired By his destruction was acquired-- So be contented with your lot, Nor seek to change by going to pot." TO SONG-BIRDS ON A SUNDAY. PUNCH. Silence, all! ye winged choir; Let not yon right reverend sire Hear your happy symphony: 'Tis too good for such as he. On the day of rest divine, He poor townsfolk would confine In their crowded streets and lanes, Where they can not hear your strains. All the week they drudge away, Having but one holiday; No more time for you, than that-- Unlike bishops, rich and fat. Utter not your cheerful sounds, Therefore, in the bishop's grounds; Make him melody no more, Who denies you to the poor. Linnet, hist! and blackbird, hush! Throstle, be a songless thrush; Nightingale and lark, be mute, Never sing to such a brute. Robin, at the twilight dim, Never let thine evening hymn, Bird of red and ruthful breast, Lend the bishop's Port a zest. Soothe not, birds, his lonesome hours, Keeping us from fields and flowers, Who to pen us tries, instead, 'Mong the intramural dead. Only let the raven croak At him from the rotten oak; Let the magpie and the jay Chatter at him on his way. And when he to rest has laid him, Let his ears the screech-owl harry; And the night-jar serenade him With a proper charivari. THE FIRST SENSIBLE VALENTINE. (ONE OF THE MOST ASTONISHING FRUITS OF THE EMIGRATION MANIA.) PUNCH. Let other swains, upon the best cream-laid Or wire-wove note, their amorous strains indite; Or, in despair, invoke the limner's aid To paint the sufferings they can not write: Upon their page, transfixed with numerous darts, Let slender youths in agony expire; Or, on one spit, let two pale pink calves' hearts Roast at some fierce imaginary fire. Let ANGELINA there, as in a bower Of shrubs, unknown to LINDLEY, she reposes, See her own ALFRED to the old church tower Led on by CUPID, in a chain of roses; Or let the wreath, when raised, a cage reveal, Wherein two doves their little bills entwine; (A vile device, which always makes me feel Marriage would only add your bills to mine.) For arts like these I've neither skill nor time; But if you'll seek the Diggings, dearest maid, And share my fortune in that happier clime, Your berth is taken, and your passage paid. For reading, lately, in my list of things, "Twelve dozen shirts! twelve dozen collars," too! The horrid host of buttons and of strings Flashed on my spirit, and I thought--of you. "Surely," I said, as in my chest I dived-- That vast receptacle of all things known-- "To teach this truth my outfit was contrived, It is not good for man to be alone!" Then fly with me! My bark is on the shore (Her mark A 1, her size eight hundred tons), And though she's nearly full, can take some more Dry goods, by measurement--say GREEN and SONS. Yes, fly with me! Had all our friends been blind, We might have married, and been happy HERE; But since young married folks the means must find The eyes of stern society to cheer, And satisfy its numerous demands, I think 'twill save us many a vain expense, If on our wedding cards this Notice stands, "At Home, at Ballarat, just three months hence!" A SCENE ON THE AUSTRIAN FRONTIER. PUNCH. "Dey must not pass!" was the warning cry of the Austrian sentinel To one whose little knapsack bore the books he loved so well "Thev must not pass? Now, wherefore not?" the wond'ring tourist cried; "No English book can pass mit me;" the sentinel replied. The tourist laughed a scornful laugh; quoth he, "Indeed, I hope There are few English books would please a Kaiser or a Pope; But these are books in common use: plain truths and facts they tell--" "Der Teufel! Den dey MOST NOT pass!" said the startled sentinel. "This Handbook to North Germany, by worthy Mr. MURRAY, Need scarcely put your government in such a mighty flurry; If tourists' handbooks be proscribed, pray have you ever tried To find a treasonable page in Bradshaws Railway Guide? This map, again, of Switzerland--nay, man, you needn't start or Look black at such a little map, as if't were Magna Charta; I know it is the land of TELL, but, curb your idle fury-- We've not the slightest hope, to-day, to find a TELL in your eye (Uri)." "Sturmwetter!" said the sentinel, "Come! cease dis idle babbles! Was ist dis oder book I see? Das Haus mit sieben Gabbles? I nevvare heard of him bifor, ver mosh I wish I had, For now Ich kann nicht let him pass, for fear he should be bad. Das Haus of Commons it must be; Ja wohl! 'tis so, and den Die Sieben Gabbles are de talk of your chief public men; Potzmiekchen! it is dreadful books. Ja! Ja! I know him well; Hoch Himmel! here he most not pass:" said the learned sentinel. "Dis PLATO, too, I ver mosh fear, he will corrupt the land, He has soch many long big words, Ich kann nicht onderstand." "My friend," the tourist said, "I fear you're really in the way to Quite change the proverb, and be friends will neither Truth nor PLATO. My books, 'tis true, are little worth, but they have served me long, And I regard the greatness less than the nature of the wrong; So, if the books must stay behind, I stay behind as well." "Es ist mir nichts, mein lieber Freund," said the courteous sentinel. ODE TO THE GREAT SEA-SERPENT ON HIS WONDERFUL REAPPEARANCE. PUNCH. From what abysses of the unfathom'd sea Turnest thou up, Great Serpent, now and then, If we may venture to believe in thee, And affidavits of sea-faring men? What whirlpool gulf to thee affords a home! Amid the unknown depths where dost thou dwell? If--like the mermaid, with her glass and comb-- Thou art not what the vulgar call a Sell. Art thou, indeed, a serpent and no sham? Or, if no serpent, a prodigious eel, An entity, though modified by flam, A basking shark, or monstrous kind of seal? I'll think that thou a true Ophidian art; I can not say a reptile of the deep, Because thou dost not play a reptile's part; Thou swimmest, it appears, and dost not creep. The Captain was not WALKER but M'QUHAE, I'll trust, by whom thou some time since wast seen And him who says he saw thee t'other day, I will not bid address the corps marine. Sea-Serpent, art thou venomous or not? What sort of snake may be thy class and style? That of Mud-Python, by APOLLO shot, And mentioned--rather often--by CARLYLE? Or, art thou but a serpent of the mind? Doubts, though subdued, will oft recur again-- A serpent of the visionary kind, Proceeding from the grog-oppressed brain? Art thou a giant adder, or huge asp, And hast thou got a rattle at thy tail? If of the Boa species, couldst thou clasp Within thy fold, and suffocate, a whale? How long art thou?--Some sixty feet, they say, And more--but how much more they do not know: I fancy thou couldst reach across a bay From head to head, a dozen miles or so. Scales hast thou got, of course--but what's thy weight? On either side 'tis said thou hast a fin, A crest, too, on thy neck, deponents state, A saw-shaped ridge of flabby, dabby skin. If I could clutch thee--in a giant's grip-- Could I retain thee in that grasp sublime? Wouldst thou not quickly through my fingers slip, Being all over glazed with fishy slime? Hast thou a forked tongue--and dost thou hiss If ever thou art bored with Ocean's play? And is it the correct hypothesis That thou of gills or lungs dost breathe by way? What spines, or spikes, or claws, or nails, or fin, Or paddle, Ocean-Serpent, dost thou bear? What kind of teeth show'st thou when thou dost grin?-- A set that probably would make one stare. What is thy diet? Canst thou gulp a shoal Of herrings? Or hast thou the gorge and room To bolt fat porpoises and dolphins, whole, By dozens, e'en as oysters we consume? Art thou alone, thou serpent, on the brine, The sole surviving member of thy race? Is there no brother, sister, wife, of thine, But thou alone, afloat on Ocean's face? If such a calculation may be made, Thine age at what a figure may we take? When first the granite mountain-stones were laid, Wast thou not present there and then, old Snake? What fossil Saurians in thy time have been? How many Mammoths crumbled into mold? What geologic periods hast thou seen, Long as the tail thou doubtless canst unfold? As a dead whale, but as a whale, though dead, Thy floating bulk a British crew did strike; And, so far, none will question what they said, That thou unto a whale wast very like. A flock of birds a record, rather loose, Describes as hovering o'er thy lengthy hull; Among them, doubtless, there was many a Goose, And also several of the genus Gull. THE FEAST OF VEGETABLES, AND THE FLOW OF WATER. PUNCH. New Year comes,--so let's be jolly; On the board the Turnip smokes, While we sit beneath, the holly, Eating Greens and passing jokes How the Cauliflower is steaming, Sweetest flower that ever blows. See, good old Sir Kidney, beaming, Shows his jovial famed red nose. Here behold the reign of Plenty,-- Help the Carrots, hand the Kail; Roots how nice, and herbs how dainty, Well washed down with ADAM'S Ale! Feed your fill,--untasted only Let the fragrant onion go; Or, amid the revels lonely, Go not nigh the mistletoe! KINDRED QUACKS. PUNCH. I overheard two matrons grave, allied by close affinity (The name of one was PHYSIC, and the other's was DIVINITY), As they put their groans together, both so doleful and lugubrious: Says PHYSIC, "To unload the heart of grief, ma'am, is salubrious: Here am I, at my time of life, in this year of our deliverance; My age gives me a right to look for some esteem and reverence. But, ma'am, I feel it is too true what every body says to me,-- Too many of my children are a shame and a disgrace to me." "Ah!" says DIVINITY, "my heart can suffer with another, ma'am; I'm sure I can well understand your feelings as a mother, ma'am. I've some, as well,--no doubt but what you're perfectly aware on't, ma'am, Whose doings bring derision and discredit on their parent, ma'am." "There are boys of mine," says PHYSIC, "ma'am, such silly fancies nourishing, As curing gout and stomach-ache by pawing and by flourishing." "Well," says DIVINITY, "I've those that teach that Heaven's beatitudes Are to be earned by postures, genuflexions, bows, and attitudes." "My good-for-nothing sons," says PHYSIC, "some have turned hydropathists, Some taken up with mesmerism, or joined the homoeopathists." "Mine," says DIVINITY, "pursue a system of gimcrackery, Called Puseyism, a pack of stuff, and quite as arrant quackery." Says PHYSIC, "Mine have sleep-walkers, pretending through the hide of you, To look, although their eyes are shut, and tell you what's inside of you." "Ah!" says DIVINITY, "so mine, with quibbling and with caviling, Would have you, ma'am, to blind yourself, to see the road to travel in." "Mine," PHYSIC says, "have quite renounced their good old pills and potions, ma'am, For doses of a billionth of a grain, and such wild notions, ma'am." "So," says DIVINITY, "have mine left wholesome exhortation, ma'am, For credence-tables, reredoses, rood-lofts, and maceration, ma'am." "But hospitals," says PHYSIC, "my misguided boys are founding, ma'am." "Well," says DIVINITY, "of mine, the chapels are abounding, ma'am." "Mine are trifling with diseases, ma'am," says PHYSIC, "not attacking them." "Mine," says DIVINITY, "instead of curing souls, are quacking them." "Ah, ma'am," says PHYSIC, "I'm to blame, I fear, for these absurdities." "That's my fear too," DIVINITY says; "ma'am, upon my word it is." Says PHYSIC, "Fees, not science, have been far too much my wishes, ma'am." "Truth," says DIVINITY, "I've loved much less than loaves and fishes, ma'am." Says each to each, "We're simpletons, or sad deceivers, some of us; And I am sure, ma'am, I don't know whatever will become of us." THE RAILWAY TRAVELER'S FAREWELL TO HIS FAMILY. PUNCH. 'T was business call'd a Father to travel by the Rail; His eye was calm, his hand was firm, although his cheek was pale. He took his little boy and girl, and set them on his knee; And their mother hung about his neck, and her tears flowed fast and free. I'm going by the Rail, my dears--ELIZA, love, don't cry-- Now, kiss me both before I leave, and wish Papa good-by. I hope I shall be back again, this afternoon, to tea, And then, I hope, alive and well, that your Papa you'll see. I'm going by the Rail, my dears, where the engines puff and hiss; And ten to one the chances are that something goes amiss; And in an instant, quick as thought--before you could cry "Ah!" An accident occurs, and--say good-by to poor Papa! Sometimes from scandalous neglect, my dears, the sleepers sink, And then you have the carriages upset, as you may think. The progress of the train, sometimes, a truck or coal-box checks, And there's a risk for poor Papa's, and every body's necks. Or there may be a screw loose, a hook, or bolt, or pin-- Or else an ill-made tunnel may give way, and tumble in; And in the wreck the passengers and poor Papa remain Confined, till down upon them comes the next Excursion-train. If a policeman's careless, dears, or if not over-bright, When he should show a red flag, it may be he shows a white; Between two trains, in consequence, there's presently a clash, If poor Papa is only bruised, he's lucky in the smash. Points may be badly managed, as they were the other day, Because a stingy Company for hands enough won't pay; Over and over goes the train--the engine off the rail, And poor Papa's unable, when he's found, to tell the tale. And should your poor Papa escape, my darlings, with his life, May he return on two legs, to his children and his wife-- With both his arms, my little dears, return your fond embrace, And present to you, unalter'd, every feature of his face. I hope I shall come back, my dears--but, mind, I am insured-- So, in case the worst may happen, you are so far all secured. An action then will also lie for you and your Mamma-- And don't forget to bring it--on account of poor Papa. A LETTER AND AN ANSWER. PUNCH. THE PRESBYTERS TO PALMERSTON. The Plague has come among us, Miserable sinners! Fear and remorse have stung us, Miserable sinners! We ask the State to fix a day, Whereon all men may fast and pray, That Heaven will please to turn away The Plague that works us sore dismay, Miserable sinners! PALMERSTON TO THE PRESBYTERS. The Plague that comes among you, Miserable sinners! To effort hath it strung you? Miserable sinners! You ask that all should fast and pray; Better all wake and work, I say; Sloth and supineness put away, That so the Plague may cease to slay; Miserable sinners! For Plagues, like other evils, Miserable sinners! Are GOD'S and not the Devil's, Miserable sinners! Scourges they are, but in a hand Which love and pity do command: And when the heaviest stripes do fall, 'Tis where they're wanted most of all, Miserable sinners! Look round about your city, Miserable sinners! Arouse to shame and pity, Miserable sinners! Pray: but use brush and limewash pail; Fast: but feed those for want who fail; Bow down, gude town, to ask for grace But bow with cleaner hands and face, Miserable sinners! All Time GOD'S Law hath spoken, Miserable sinners! That Law may not be broken, Miserable sinners! But he that breaks it must endure The penalty which works the cure. To us, for GOD'S great laws transgressed, Is doomsman Pestilence addressed, Miserable sinners! We can not juggle Heaven, Miserable sinners! With one day out of seven, Miserable sinners! Shall any force of fasts atone For years of duty left undone? How expiate with prayer or psalm, Deaf ear, blind eye, and folded palm? Miserable sinners! Let us be up and stirring, Miserable sinners! 'Mong ignorant and erring, Miserable sinners! Sloth and self-seeking from us cast, Believing this the fittest fast, For of all prayers prayed 'neath the sun There is no prayer like work well done, Miserable sinners! PAPA TO HIS HEIR, A FAST MINOR. PUNCH. My son, a father's warning heed; I think my end is nigh: And then, you dog, you will succeed Unto my property. But, seeing you are not, just yet. Arrived at man's estate, Before you full possession get, You'll have a while to wait. A large allowance I allot You during that delay; And I don't recommend you not To throw it all away. To such advice you'd ne'er attend; You won't let prudence rule Your courses; but, I know, will spend Your money like a fool. I do not ask you to eschew The paths of vice and sin; You'll do as all young boobies, who Are left, as you say, tin. You'll sot, you'll bet; and, being green, At all that's right you'll joke; Your life will be a constant scene Of billiards and of smoke. With bad companions you'll consort With creatures vile and base, Who'll rob you; yours will be, in short, The puppy's common case. But oh, my son! although you must Through this ordeal pass, You will not be, I hope--I trust-- A wholly senseless ass. Of course at prudence you will sneer, On that theme I won't harp; Be good, I won't say--that's severe; But be a little sharp. All rascally associates shun To bid you were too much, But, oh I beware, my spooney son, Beware one kind of such. It asks no penetrative mind To know these fellows: when You meet them, you, unless you're blind, At once discern the men. The turgid lip, the piggish eye, The nose in form of hook, The rings, the pins, you tell them by, The vulgar flashy look. Spend every sixpence, if you please, But do not, I implore, Oh! I do not go, my son, to these Vultures to borrow more. Live at a foolish wicked rate, My hopeful, if you choose, But don't your means anticipate Through bill-discounting Jews. [Illustration: CHAUCER] SELLING OFF AT THE OPERA HOUSE A POETICAL CATALOGUE. PUNCH. Lot One, The well-known village, with bridge, and church, and green, Of half a score divertissements the well-remembered scene, Including six substantial planks, forming the eight-inch ridge On which the happy peasantry came dancing down the bridge. Lot Two, A Sheet of Thunder. Lot Three, A Box of Peas Employed in sending storms of hail to rattle through the trees. Lot Four, A Canvas Mossy Bank for Cupids to repose. Lot Five, The old Stage Watering-pot, complete--except the nose. Lot Six, The favorite Water-mill, used for Amina's dream, Complete, with practicable wheel, and painted canvas stream. Lots Seven to Twelve, Some sundries--A Pair of Sylphide's Wings; Three dozen Druid's Dresses (one of them wanting strings). Lots Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen--Three Services of Plate In real papier mache--all in a decent state; One of these services includes--its value to increase-- A full dessert, each plate of fruit forming a single piece. Lot Seventeen, The Gilded Cup, from which Genarro quaffed, Mid loud applause, night after night, Lucrezia's poisoned draught. Lots Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty, Three rich White Satin Skirts, Lot Twenty-one, A set of six Swiss Peasants' Cotton Shirts. Lot Twenty-two, The sheet that backed Mascaniello's tent. Lot Twenty-three, The Long White Wig--in wool--of Bide-the-Bent. Lots Twenty-three to Forty, The Fish--Soles, Cod, and Dace-- For pelting the Vice-regal Guard in Naples' Market-place. Lot Forty-one, Vesuvius, rather the worse for wear. Lots Forty-two to Fifty, Priests' Leggings--at per pair. Lot Fifty-one, The well-known Throne, with canopy and seat, And plank in front, for courtiers to kneel at Sovereigns' feet. Lot Fifty-two, A Royal Robe of Flannel, nearly white, Warranted equal to Cashmere--upon the stage at night-- With handsome ermine collar thrown elegantly back; The tails of twisted worsted--pale yellow, tipped with black. Lots Fifty-three to Sixty, Some Jewellery rare-- The Crown of Semiramide--complete, with false back hair; The Order worn by Ferdinand, when he proceeds to fling His sword and medals at the feet of the astonished king. Lot Sixty-one, The Bellows used in Cinderella's song. Lot Sixty-two, A Document. Lot Sixty-three, A Gong. Lots Sixty-four to Eighty, Of Wigs a large array, Beginning at the Druids down to the present day. Lot Eighty-one, The Bedstead on which Amina falls. Lots Eighty-two to Ninety, Some sets of Outer Walls. Lot Ninety-one, The Furniture of a Grand Ducal Room, Including Chair and Table. Lot Ninety-two, A Tomb. Lot Ninety-three, A set of Kilts. Lot Ninety-four, A Rill. Lot Ninety-five, A Scroll, To form death-warrant, deed, or will. Lot Ninety-six, An ample fall of best White Paper Snow. Lot Ninety-seven, A Drinking-cup, brimmed with stout extra tow. Lot Ninety-eight, A Set of Clouds, a Moon, to work on flat; Water with practicable boat. Lot Ninety-nine, A Hat. Lot Hundred, Massive Chandelier. Hundred and one, A Bower. Hundred and two, A Canvas Grove. Hundred and three, A Tower. Hundred and four, A Fountain. Hundred and five, Some Rocks. Hundred and six, The Hood that hides the Prompter in his box. WONDERS OF THE VICTORIAN AGE. PUNCH. Our gracious Queen--long may she fill her throne-- Has been to see Louis Napoleon. The Majesty of England--bless her heart!-- Has cut her mutton with a Bonaparte; And Cousin Germans have survived the view Of Albert taking luncheon at St. Cloud. In our young days we little thought to see Such legs stretched under such mahogany; That British Royalty would ever share At a French Palace, French Imperial fare: Nor eat--as we should have believed at school-- The croaking tenant of the marshy pool. At the Trois Freres we had not feasted then, As we have since, and hope to do again. This great event of course could not take place Without fit prodigies for such a case; The brazen pig-tail of King George the Third Thrice with a horizontal motion stirr'd, Then rose on end, and stood so all day long, Amid the cheers of an admiring throng. In every lawyer's office Eldon shed From plaster nose three heavy drops of red. Each Statue, too, of Pitt turn'd up the point Of its proboscis--was that out of joint? While Charles James Fox's grinn'd from ear to ear, And Peel's emitted frequent cries of "Hear!" TO THE PORTRAIT OF "A GENTLEMAN," IN THE ATHENAEUM GALLERY. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. It may be so--perhaps thou hast A warm and loving heart; I will not blame thee for thy face, Poor devil as thou art. That thing, thou fondly deem'st a nose, Unsightly though it be,-- In spite of all the cold world's scorn, It may be much to thee. Those eyes,--among thine elder friends Perhaps they pass for blue;-- No matter,--if a man can see, What more have eyes to do? Thy mouth--that fissure in thy face By something like a chin,-- May be a very useful place To put thy victual in. I know thou hast a wife at home, I know thou hast a child, By that subdued, domestic smile Upon thy features mild. That wife sits fearless by thy side, That cherub on thy knee; They do not shudder at thy looks, They do not shrink from thee. Above thy mantel is a hook,-- A portrait once was there; It was thine only ornament,-- Alas! that hook is bare. She begged thee not to let it go, She begged thee all in vain: She wept,--and breathed a trembling prayer To meet it safe again. It was a bitter sight to see That picture torn away; It was a solemn thought to think What all her friends would say! And often in her calmer hours, And in her happy dreams, Upon its long-deserted hook The absent portrait seems. Thy wretched infant turns his head In melancholy wise, And looks to meet the placid stare Of those unbending eyes. I never saw thee, lovely one,-- Perchance I never may; It is not often that we cross Such people in our way; But if we meet in distant years, Or on some foreign shore, Sure I can take my Bible oath I've seen that face before. MY AUNT. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. My aunt! my dear unmarried aunt! Long years have o'er her flown; Yet still she strains the aching clasp That binds her virgin zone; I know it hurts her--though she looks As cheerful as she can; Her waist is ampler than her life, For life is but a span. My aunt! my poor deluded aunt! Her hair is almost gray; Why will she train that winter curl In such a spring-like way? How can she lay her glasses down, And say she reads as well, When, through a double convex lens, She just makes out to spell? Her father--grandpapa! forgive This erring lip its smiles-- Vowed she should make the finest girl Within a hundred miles; He sent her to a stylish school; 'T was in her thirteenth June; And with her, as the rules required, "Two towels and a spoon." They braced my aunt against a board, To make her straight and tall; They laced her up, they starved her down, To make her light and small. They pinched her feet, they singed her hair, They screwed it up with pins;-- O never mortal suffered more In penance for her sins. So, when my precious aunt was done, My grandsire brought her back; (By daylight, lest some rabid youth Might follow on the track;) "Ah!" said my grandsire, as he shook Some powder in his pan, "What could this lovely creature do Against a desperate man!" Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche, Nor bandit cavalcade, Tore from the trembling father's arms His all-accomplished maid. For her how happy had it been! And heaven had spared to me To see one sad, ungathered rose On my ancestral tree. COMIC MISERIES. JOHN G. SAXE. My dear young friend, whose shining wit Sets all the room a-blaze, Don't think yourself a "happy dog," For all your merry ways; But learn to wear a sober phiz, Be stupid, if you can, It's such a very serious thing To be a funny man! You're at an evening party, with A group of pleasant folks,-- You venture quietly to crack The least of little jokes,-- A lady doesn't catch the point, And begs you to explain-- Alas for one that drops a jest And takes it up again! You're talking deep philosophy With very special force, To edify a clergyman With suitable discourse,-- You think you 've got him--when he calls A friend across the way, And begs you'll say that funny thing You said the other day! You drop a pretty jeu-de-mot Into a neighbor's ears, Who likes to give you credit for The clever thing he hears, And so he hawks your jest about The old authentic one, Just breaking off the point of it, And leaving out the pun! By sudden change in politics, Or sadder change in Polly, You, lose your love, or loaves, and fall A prey to melancholy, While every body marvels why Your mirth is under ban,-- They think your very grief "a joke," You're such a funny man! You follow up a stylish card That bids you come and dine, And bring along your freshest wit (To pay for musty wine), You're looking very dismal, when My lady bounces in, And wonders what you're thinking of And why you don't begin! You're telling to a knot of friends A fancy-tale of woes That cloud your matrimonial sky, And banish all repose-- A solemn lady overhears The story of your strife, And tells the town the pleasant news: You quarrel with your wife! My dear young friend, whose shining wit Sets all the room a-blaze, Don't think yourself "a happy dog," For all your merry ways; But learn to wear a sober phiz, Be stupid, if you can, It's such a very serious thing To be a funny man! IDEES NAPOLEONIENNES. WILLIAM AYTOUN. The impossibility of translating this now well-known expression (imperfectly rendered in a companion-work, "Ideas of Napoleonism"), will excuse the title and burden of the present ballad being left in the original French.--TRANSLATOR. Come, listen all who wish to learn How nations should be ruled, From one who from his youth has been In such-like matters school'd; From one who knows the art to please, Improve and govern men-- Eh bien! Ecoutez, aux Idees, Napoleoniennes! To keep the mind intently fixed On number One alone-- To look to no one's interest, But push along your own, Without the slightest reference To how, or what, or when-- Eh bien! c'est la premiere Idee Napoleonienne. To make a friend, and use him well, By which, of course, I mean To use him up--until he's drain'd Completely dry and clean Of all that makes him useful, and To kick him over then Without remorse--c'est une Idee Napoleonienne. To sneak into a good man's house With sham credentials penn'd-- to sneak into his heart and trust, And seem his children's friend-- To learn his secrets, find out where He keeps his keys--and then To bone his spoons--c'est une Idee Napoleonienne. To gain your point in view--to wade Through dirt, and slime, and blood-- To stoop to pick up what you want Through any depth of mud. But always in the fire to thrust Some helpless cat's-paw, when Your chestnuts burn--c'est une Idee Napoleonienne. To clutch and keep the lion's share-- To kill or drive away The wolves, that you upon the lambs May, unmolested, prey-- To keep a gang of jackals fierce To guard and stock your den, While you lie down--c'est une Idee Napoleonienne. To bribe the base, to crush the good, And bring them to their knees-- To stick at nothing, or to stick At what or whom you please-- To stoop, to lie, to brag, to swear, Forswear, and swear again-- To rise--Ah! voia des Idees Napoleoniennes. THE LAY OF THE LOVER'S FRIEND WILLIAM AYTOUN Air--"The days we went a-gipsying." I would all womankind were dead, Or banished o'er the sea; For they have been a bitter plague These last six weeks to me: It is not that I'm touched myself, For that I do not fear; No female face hath shown me grace For many a bygone year. But 'tis the most infernal bore, Of all the bores I know, To have a friend who's lost his heart A short time ago. Whene'er we steam it to Blackwall, Or down to Greenwich run, To quaff the pleasant cider cup, And feed on fish and fun; Or climb the slopes of Richmond Hill, To catch a breath of air: Then, for my sins, he straight begins To rave about his fair. Oh, 'tis the most tremendous bore, Of all the bores I know, To have a friend who's lost his heart A short time ago. In vain you pour into his ear Your own confiding grief; In vain you claim his sympathy, In vain you ask relief; In vain you try to rouse him by Joke, repartee, or quiz; His sole reply's a burning sigh, And "What a mind it is!" O Lord! it is the greatest bore, Of all the bores I know, To have a friend who's lost his heart A short time ago. I've heard her thoroughly described A hundred times, I'm sure; And all the while I've tried to smile, And patiently endure; He waxes, strong upon his pangs, And potters o'er his grog; And still I say, in a playful way-- "Why you're a lucky dog!" But oh! it is the heaviest bore, Of all the bores I know, To have a friend who's lost his heart A short time ago. I really wish he'd do like me When I was young and strong; I formed a passion every week, But never kept it long. But he has not the sportive mood-- That always rescued me, And so I would all women could Be banished o'er the sea. For 'tis the most egregious bore, Of all the bores I know. To have a friend who's lost his heart A short time ago. PARODIES AND BURLESQUES WINE. JOHN GAY. Nulla placere diu, nec vivere carmina possunt, Quae scribuntur aquae potoribus. HOR. Of happiness terrestrial, and the source Whence human pleasures flow, sing, heavenly Muse! Of sparkling juices, of the enlivening grape, Whose quickening taste adds vigor to the soul, Whose sovereign power revives decaying nature, And thaws the frozen blood of hoary Age, A kindly warmth diffusing;--youthful fires Gild his dim eyes, and paint with ruddy hue His wrinkled visage, ghastly wan before: Cordial restorative to mortal man, With copious hand by bounteous gods bestow'd! Bacchus divine! aid my adventurous song, That with no middle flight intends to soar Inspir'd sublime, on Pegasean wing, By thee upborne, I draw Miltonic air. When fumy vapors clog our loaded brows With furrow'd frowns, when stupid downcast eyes, The external symptoms of remorse within, Express our grief, or when in sullen dumps, With head incumbent on expanded palm, Moping we sit, in silent sorrow drown'd; Whether inveigling Hymen has trepann'd The unwary youth, and tied the gordian knot Of jangling wedlock not to be dissolv'd; Worried all day by loud Xantippe's din, Who fails not to exalt him to the stars, And fix him there among the branched crew (Taurus, and Aries, and Capricorn, The greatest monsters of the Zodiac), Or for the loss of anxious worldly pelf, Or Delia's scornful slights, and cold disdain, Which check'd his amorous flame with coy repulse, The worst events that mortals can befall; By cares depress'd, in pensive hippish mood, With slowest pace the tedious minutes roll, Thy charming sight, but much more charming gust, New life incites, and warms our chilly blood. Straight with pert looks we raise our drooping fronts, And pour in crystal pure thy purer juice;-- With cheerful countenance and steady hand Raise it lip-high, then fix the spacious rim To the expecting mouth:--with grateful taste The ebbing wine glides swiftly o'er the tongue; The circling blood with quicker motion flies: Such is thy powerful influence, thou straight Dispell'st those clouds that, lowering dark, eclips'd The whilom glories of the gladsome face;-- While dimpled cheeks, and sparkling rolling eyes, Thy cheering virtues, and thy worth proclaim. So mists and exhalations that arise From "hills or steamy lake, dusky or gray," Prevail, till Phoebus sheds Titanian rays, And paints their fleecy skirts with shining gold; Unable to resist, the foggy damps, That vail'd the surface of the verdant fields, At the god's penetrating beams disperse! The earth again in former beauty smiles, In gaudiest livery drest, all gay and clear. When disappointed Strephon meets repulse, Scoff'd at, despis'd, in melancholic mood Joyless he wastes in sighs the lazy hours, Till reinforc'd by thy most potent aid He storms the breach, and wins the beauteous fort. To pay thee homage, and receive thy blessing, The British seaman quits his native shore, And ventures through the trackless, deep abyss, Plowing the ocean, while the upheav'd oak, "With beaked prow, rides tilting o'er the waves;" Shock'd by tempestuous jarring winds, she rolls In dangers imminent, till she arrives At those blest climes thou favor'st with thy presence. Whether at Lusitania's sultry coast, Or lofty Teneriffe, Palma, Ferro, Provence, or at the Celtiberian shores, With gazing pleasure and astonishment, At Paradise (seat of our ancient sire) He thinks himself arrived: the purple grapes, In largest clusters pendent, grace the vines Innumerous: in fields grotesque and wild, They with implicit curls the oak entwine, And load with fruit divine his spreading boughs: Sight most delicious! not an irksome thought, Or of left native isle, or absent friends, Or dearest wife, or tender sucking babe, His kindly treacherous memory now presents; The jovial god has left no room for cares. Celestial Liquor! thou that didst inspire Maro and Flaccus, and the Grecian bard, With lofty numbers, and heroic strains Unparallel'd, with eloquence profound, And arguments convictive, didst enforce Fam'd Tully, and Demosthenes renown'd; Ennius, first fam'd in Latin song, in vain Drew Heliconian streams, ungrateful whet To jaded Muse, and oft with vain attempt, Heroic acts, in flagging numbers dull, With pains essay'd; but, abject still and low, His unrecruited Muse could never reach The mighty theme, till, from the purple fount Of bright Lenaean sire, her barren drought He quench'd, and with inspiring nectarous juice Her drooping spirits cheer'd:--aloft she towers, Borne on stiff pennons, and of war's alarms, And trophies won, in loftiest numbers sings. 'Tis thou the hero's breast to martial acts, And resolution bold, and ardor brave, Excit'st: thou check'st inglorious lolling ease, And sluggish minds with generous fires inflam'st. O thou! that first my quickened soul didst warm, Still with thy aid assist me, that thy praise, Thy universal sway o'er all the world, In everlasting numbers, like the theme, I may record, and sing thy matchless worth. Had the Oxonian bard thy praise rehears'd, His Muse had yet retain'd her wonted height; Such as of late o'er Blenheim's field she soar'd Aerial; now in Ariconian bogs She lies inglorious, floundering, like her theme, Languid and faint, and on damp wing, immerg'd In acid juice, in vain attempts to rise. With what sublimest joy from noisy town, At rural seat, Lucretius retir'd: Flaccus, untainted by perplexing cares, Where the white poplar and the lofty pine Join neighboring boughs, sweet hospitable shade, Creating, from Phoebean rays secure, A cool retreat, with few well-chosen friends, On flowery mead recumbent, spent the hours In mirth innocuous, and alternate verse! With roses interwoven, poplar wreaths, Their temples bind, dress of sylvestrian gods! Choicest nectarean juice crown'd largest bowls, And overlook'd the brim, alluring sight, Of fragrant scent, attractive, taste divine! Whether from Formian grape depressed, Falern, Or Setin, Massic, Gauran, or Sabine, Lesbian, or Coecuban, the cheering bowl Mov'd briskly round, and spurr'd their heighten'd wit To sing Mecaena's praise, their patron kind. But we not as our pristine sires repair To umbrageous grot or vale; but when the sun Faintly from western skies his rays oblique Darts sloping, and to Thetis' wat'ry lap Hastens in prone career, with friends select Swiftly we hie to Devil,* young or old, *[Footnote: The Devil's Tavern, Temple Bar.] Jocund and boon; where at the entrance stands A stripling, who with scrapes and humil cringe Greets us in winning speech, and accent bland: With lightest bound, and safe unerring step, He skips before, and nimbly climbs the stairs. Melampus thus, panting with lolling tongue, And wagging tail, gambols and frisks before His sequent lord, from pensive walk return'd, Whether in shady wood or pasture green, And waits his coming at the well-known gate. Nigh to the stairs' ascent, in regal port, Sits a majestic dame, whose looks denounce Command and sovereignty: with haughty air, And studied mien, in semicircular throne Enclos'd, she deals around her dread commands; Behind her (dazzling sight!) in order rang'd, Pile above pile, crystalline vessels shine: Attendant slaves with eager strides advance, And, after homage paid, bawl out aloud Words unintelligible, noise confus'd: She knows the jargon sounds, and straight describes, In characters mysterious, words obscure: More legible are algebraic signs, Or mystic figures by magicians drawn, When they invoke the infernal spirit's aid. Drive hence the rude and barbarous dissonance Of savage Thracians and Croatian boors; The loud Centaurian broils with Lapithae Sound harsh, and grating to Lenaean god; Chase brutal feuds of Belgian skippers hence (Amid their cups whose innate temper's shown), In clumsy fist wielding scymetrian knife, Who slash each other's eyes, and blubber'd face, Profaning Bacchanalian solemn rites: Music's harmonious numbers better suit His festivals, from instruments or voice, Or Gasperani's hand the trembling string Should touch; or from the dulcet Tuscan dames, Or warbling Toft's far more melodious tongue, Sweet symphonies should flow: the Delian god For airy Bacchus is associate meet. The stair's ascent now gain'd, our guide unbars The door of spacious room, and creaking chairs (To ear offensive) round the table sets. We sit; when thus his florid speech begins: "Name, sirs! the wine that most invites your taste; Champaign, or Burgundy, or Florence pure, Or Hock antique, or Lisbon new or old, Bourdeaux, or neat French white, or Alicant." For Bourdeaux we with voice unanimous Declare, (such sympathy's in boon compeers). He quits the room alert, but soon returns, One hand capacious glistering vessels bears Resplendent, the other, with a grasp secure, A bottle (mighty charge!) upstaid, full fraught With goodly wine. He, with extended hand Rais'd high, pours forth the sanguine frothy juice, O'erspread with bubbles, dissipated soon: We straight to arms repair, experienc'd chiefs: Now glasses clash with glasses (charming sound!) And glorious Anna's health, the first, the best, Crowns the full glass; at her inspiring name The sprightly wine results, and seems to smile: With hearty zeal and wish unanimous, Her health we drink, and in her health our own. A pause ensues: and now with grateful chat We improve the interval, and joyous mirth Engages our rais'd souls; pat repartee, Or witty joke, our airy senses moves To pleasant laughter; straight the echoing room With universal peals and shouts resounds. The royal Dane, blest consort of the Queen, Next crowns the ruby'd nectar, all whose bliss In Anna's plac'd: with sympathetic flame, And mutual endearments, all her joys, Like to the kind turtle's pure untainted love, Center in him, who shares the grateful hearts Of loyal subjects, with his sovereign queen; For by his prudent care united shores Were sav'd from hostile fleets' invasion dire. The hero Marlborough next, whose vast exploits Fame's clarion sounds; fresh laurels, triumphs new We wish, like those he won at Hockstet's field. Next Devonshire illustrious, who from race Of noblest patriots sprang, whose worthy soul Is with each fair and virtuous gift adorn'd, That shone in his most worthy ancestors; For then distinct in separate breasts were seen Virtues distinct, but all in him unite. Prudent Godolphin, of the nation's weal Frugal, but free and generous of his own. Next crowns the bowl; with faithful Sunderland, And Halifax, the Muses' darling son, In whom conspicuous, with full luster, shine The surest judgment and the brightest wit, Himself Mecaenas and a Flaccus too; And all the worthies of the British realm, In order rang'd succeed; such healths as tinge The dulcet wine with a more charming gust. Now each his mistress toasts, by whose bright eye He's fired; Cosmelia fair, or Dulcibell, Or Sylvia, comely black, with jetty eyes Piercing, or airy Celia, sprightly maid!-- Insensibly thus flow unnumber'd hours; Glass succeeds glass, till the Dircean god Shines in our eyes, and with his fulgent rays Enlightens our glad looks with lovely dye; All blithe and jolly, that like Arthur's knights Of Rotund Table, fam'd in old records, Now most we seem'd--such is the power of Wine. Thus we the winged hours in harmless mirth And joys unsullied pass, till humid Night Has half her race perform'd; now all abroad Is hush'd and silent, nor the rumbling noise Of coach, or cant, or smoky link-boy's call, Is heard--but universal silence reigns; When we in merry plight, airy and gay, Surpris'd to find the hours so swiftly fly, With hasty knock, or twang of pendant cord, Alarm the drowsy youth from slumbering nod: Startled he flies, and stumbles o'er the stairs Erroneous, and with busy knuckles plies His yet clung eyelids, and with staggering reel Enters confus'd, and muttering asks our wills; When we with liberal hand the score discharge, And homeward each his course with steady step Unerring steers, of cares and coin bereft. ODE ON SCIENCE. DEAN SWIFT. O, heavenly born! in deepest dells If fairer science ever dwells Beneath the mossy cave; Indulge the verdure of the woods, With azure beauty gild the floods, And flowery carpets lave. For, Melancholy ever reigns Delighted in the sylvan scenes With scientific light While Dian, huntress of the vales, Seeks lulling sounds and fanning gales Though wrapt from mortal sight Yet, goddess, yet the way explore With magic rites and heathen lore Obstructed and depress'd; Till Wisdom give the sacred Nine, Untaught, not uninspired, to shine By Reason's power redress'd. When Solon and Lycurgus taught To moralize the human thought Of mad opinion's maze, To erring zeal they gave new laws, Thy charms, O Liberty, the cause, That blends congenial rays. Bid bright Astraea gild the morn, Or bid a hundred suns be born, To hecatomb the year; Without thy aid, in vain the poles, In vain the zodiac system rolls, In vain the lunar sphere. Come, fairest princess of the throng; Bring sweet philosophy along, In metaphysic dreams: While raptured bards no more behold A vernal age of purer gold, In Heliconian streams. Drive thraldom with malignant hand, To curse some other destined land. By Folly led astray: Ierne bear on azure wing; Energic let her soar, and sing Thy universal sway. So when Amphion bade the lyre To more majestic sound aspire, Behold the mad'ning throng, In wonder and oblivion drowned, To sculpture turned by magic sound, And petrifying song. A LOVE SONG, IN THE MODERN TASTE. DEAN SWIFT. Fluttering spread thy purple pinions Gentle Cupid, o'er my heart: I a slave in thy dominions; Nature must give way to art. Mild Arcadians, ever blooming, Nightly nodding o'er your flocks, See my weary days consuming All beneath yon flowery rocks. Thus the Cyprian goddess weeping Mourned Adonis, darling youth; Him the boar, in silence creeping, Gored with unrelenting tooth. Cynthia, tune harmonious numbers; Fair Discretion, string the lyre: Soothe my ever-waking slumbers: Bright Apollo, lend thy choir. Gloomy Pluto, king of terrors, Arm'd in adamantine chains, Lead me to the crystal mirrors, Watering soft Elysian plains. Mournful cypress, verdant willow, Gilding my Aurelia's brows, Morpheus, hovering o'er my pillow, Hear me pay my dying vows. Melancholy smooth Meander, Swiftly purling in a round, On thy margin lovers wander, With thy flowery chaplets crown'd. Thus when Philomela drooping, Softly seeks her silent mate, See the bird of Juno stooping; Melody resigns to fate. BAUCIS AND PHILEMON. ON THE EVER-LAMENTED LOSS OF THE TWO YEW-TREES IN THE PARISH OF CHILTHORNE, SOMERSET. IMITATED FROM THE EIGHTH BOOK OF OVID. DEAN SWIFT In ancient time, as story tells, The saints would often leave their cells, And stroll about, but hide their quality, To try good people's hospitality. It happen'd on a winter night, As authors of the legend write, Two brother hermits, saints by trade, Taking their tour in masquerade, Disguised in tatter'd habits, went To a small village down in Kent; Where, in the strollers' canting strain, They begg'd from door to door in vain, Tried every tone might pity win; But not a soul would let them in. Our wandering saints, in woeful state, Treated at this ungodly rate, Having through all the village past, To a small cottage came at last Where dwelt a good old honest ye'man, Call'd in the neighborhood Philemon; Who kindly did these saints invite In his poor hut to pass the night; And then the hospitable sire Bid Goody Baucis mend the fire; While he from out the chimney took A flitch of bacon off the hook, And freely from the fattest side Cut out large slices to be fried; Then stepp'd aside to fetch them drink, Fill'd a large jug up to the brink, And saw it fairly twice go round; Yet (what was wonderful) they found 'T was still replenish'd to the top, As if they ne'er had touch'd a drop. The good old couple were amazed, And often on each other gazed; For both were frighten'd to the heart, And just began to cry, "What ar't!" Then softly turn'd aside, to view Whether the lights were burning blue The gentle pilgrims, soon aware on't, Told them their calling and their errand: "Good folks, you need not be afraid, We are but saints," the hermits said; "No hurt shall come to you or yours: But for that pack of churlish boors, Not fit to live on Christian ground, They and their houses shall be drown'd, While you shall see your cottage rise, And grow a church before your eyes." They scarce had spoke, when fair and soft, The roof began to mount aloft; Aloft rose every beam and rafter; The heavy wall climb'd slowly after. The chimney widen'd, and grew higher, Became a steeple with a spire. The kettle to the top was hoist, And there stood fasten'd to a joist, But with the upside down, to show Its inclination for below: In vain; for a superior force Applied at bottom stops its course: Doom'd ever in suspense to dwell, 'Tis now no kettle, but a bell. A wooden jack, which had almost Lost by disuse the art to roast, A sudden alteration feels, Increased by new intestine wheels; And, what exalts the wonder more, The number made the motion slower. The flier, though it had leaden feet, Turn'd round so quick you scarce could see't; But, slacken'd by some secret power, Now hardly moves an inch an hour. The jack and chimney, near allied, Had never left each other's side; The chimney to a steeple grown, The jack would not be left alone; But, up against the steeple rear'd, Became a clock, and still adhered; And still its love to household cares, By a shrill voice at noon, declares, Warning the cook-maid not to burn That roast meat, which it can not turn. The groaning-chair began to crawl, Like a huge snail, along the wall; There stuck aloft in public view, And with small change, a pulpit grew. The porringers, that in a row Hung high, and made a glittering show, To a less noble substance changed, Were now but leathern buckets ranged. The ballads, pasted on the wall, Of Joan of France, and English Moll Fair Rosamond, and Robin Hood, The little Children in the Wood, Now seem'd to look abundance better, Improved in picture, size, and letter: And, high in order placed, describe The heraldry of every tribe. A bedstead of the antique mode, Compact of timber many a load, Such as our ancestors did use, Was metamorphosed into pews; Which still their ancient nature keep By lodging folks disposed to sleep. The cottage, by such feats as these, Grown to a church by just degrees, The hermits then desired their host To ask for what he fancied most Philemon, having paused a while, Return'd them thanks in homely style; Then said, "My house is grown so fine, Methinks, I still would call it mine. I'm old, and fain would live at ease; Make me the parson if you please." He spoke, and presently he feels His grazier's coat fall down his heels: He sees, yet hardly can believe, About each arm a pudding sleeve; His waistcoat to a cassock grew, And both assumed a sable hue; But, being old, continued just As threadbare, and as full of dust. His talk was now of tithes and dues: He smoked his pipe, and read the news; Knew how to preach old sermons next, Vamp'd in the preface and the text; At christenings well could act his part, And had the service all by heart; Wish'd women might have children fast, And thought whose sow had farrow'd last; Against dissenters would repine, And stood up firm for "right divine;" Found his head fill'd with many a system; But classic authors--he ne'er miss'd 'em. Thus having furbish'd up a parson, Dame Baucis next they play'd their farce on. Instead of homespun coifs, were seen Good pinners edged with colberteen; Her petticoat transform'd apace, Became black satin, flounced with lace. "Plain Goody" would no longer down, 'T was "Madam," in her grogram gown. Philemon was in great surprise, And hardly could believe his eyes. Amazed to see her look so prim, And she admired as much at him. Thus happy in their change of life, Were several years this man and wife: When on a day, which proved their last, Discoursing o'er old stories past, They went by chance, amid their talk, To the church-yard to take a walk; When Baucis hastily cried out, "My dear, I see your forehead sprout!"-- "Sprout," quoth the man; "what's this you tell us? I hope you don't believe me jealous! But yet, methinks I feel it true, And really yours is budding too-- Nay--now I can not stir my foot; It feels as if 't were taking root." Description would but tire my Muse, In short, they both were turn'd to yews. Old Goodman Dobson of the green Remembers he the trees has seen; He'll talk of them from noon till night, And goes with folks to show the sight; On Sundays, after evening prayer, He gathers all the parish there; Points out the place of either yew, Here Baucis, there Philemon, grew: Till once a parson of our town, To mend his barn, cut Baucis down; At which, 'tis hard to be believed How much the other tree was grieved, Grew scrubbed, died a-top, was stunted, So the next parson stubb'd and burnt it. A DESCRIPTION OF A CITY SHOWER IN IMITATION OP VIRGIL'S GEORGICS. DEAN SWIFT. Careful, observers may foretell the hour, (By sure prognostics), when to dread a shower. While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more. Returning home at night, you'll find the sink Strike your offended sense with double stink. If you be wise, then, go not far to dine: You'll spend in coach-hire more than save in wine A coming shower your shooting corns presage, Old aches will throb, your hollow tooth will rage; Sauntering in coffee-house is Dulman seen; He damns the climate, and complains of spleen. Meanwhile the South, rising with dabbled wings, A sable cloud athwart the welkin flings, That swill'd more liquor than it could contain, And, like a drunkard, gives it up again. Brisk Susan whips her linen from the rope, While the first drizzling shower is borne aslope; Such is that sprinkling which some careless quear. Flirts on you from her mop, but not so clean: You fly, invoke the gods; then, turning, stop To rail; she singing, still whirls on her mop. Not yet the dust had shunn'd the unequal strife, But, aided by the wind, fought still for life, And wafted with its foe by violent gust, 'T was doubtful which was rain, and which was dust. Ah! where must needy poet seek for aid, When dust and rain at once his coat invade? Sole coat! where dust, cemented by the rain, Erects the nap, and leaves a cloudy stain! Now in contiguous drops the flood comes down, Threatening with deluge this DEVOTED town. To shops in crowds the daggled females fly, Pretend to cheapen goods, but nothing buy. The Templar spruce, while every spout's abroach. Stays till 'tis fair, yet seems to call a coach. The tuck'd up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides. Here various kinds, by various fortunes led, Commence acquaintance underneath a shed. Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs, Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs. Box'd in a chair the beau impatient sits, While spouts run clattering o'er the roof by fits, And ever and anon with frightful din The leather sounds; he trembles from within. So when Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed, Pregnant with Greeks impatient to be freed, (Those bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do, Instead of paying chairmen, ran them through), Laocoon struck the outside with his spear, And each imprison'd hero quaked for fear. Now from all parts the swelling kennels flow, And bear their trophies with them as they go: Filth of all hues and odor, seem to tell What street they sail'd from by their sight and smell. They, as each torrent drives with rapid force, From Smithfield to St. Pulchre's shape their course, And in huge confluence join'd at Snowhill ridge, Fall from the conduit prone to Holborne bridge. Sweeping from butchers' stalls, dung, guts, and blood; Drown'd puppies, stinking sprats, all drench'd in mud, Dead cats, and turnip-tops, come tumbling down the flood. THE PROGRESS OF CURIOSITY; OR A ROYAL VISIT TO WHITBKEAD'S BREWERY. PETER PINDAR. Sic transit gloria mundi!--Old Sun Dials. From House of Buckingham, in grand parade, To Whitbread's Brewhouse, moved the cavalcade. THE ARGUMENT.--Peter's loyalty.--He suspecteth Mr. Warton [Footnote: The Poet Laureate.] of joking.--Complimenteth the poet Laureate.-- Peter differeth in opinion from Mr. Warton.--Taketh up the cudgels for King Edward, King Harry V., and Queen Bess.--Feats on Blackheath and Wimbledon performed by our most gracious sovereign.--King Charles the Second half damned by Peter, yet praised for keeping company with gentlemen.--Peter praiseth himself.--Peter reproved by Mr. Warton.--Desireth Mr. Warton's prayers.--A fine simile.--Peter still suspecteth the Laureate of ironical dealings.--Peter expostulateth with Mr. Warton.--Mr. Warton replieth.--Peter administereth bold advice.--Wittily calleth death and physicians poachers.--Praiseth the king for parental tenderness.--Peter maketh a natural simile.--Peter furthermore telleth Thomas Warton what to say.--Peter giveth a beautiful example of ode-writing. THE CONTENTS OF THE ODE.--His Majesty's [Footnote: George III.] love for the arts and sciences, even in quadrupeds.--His resolution to know the history of brewing beer.--Billy Ramus sent ambassador to Chiswell street.--Interview between Messrs. Ramus and Whitbread.--Mr. Whitbread's bow, and compliments to Majesty.--Mr. Ramus's return from his embassy.--Mr. Whitbread's terrors described to Majesty by Mr. Ramus.--The King's pleasure thereat.--Description of people of worship.--Account of the Whitbread preparation.--The royal cavalcade to Chiswell-street.--The arrival at the brewhouse.--Great joy of Mr. Whitbread.--His Majesty's nod, the Queen's dip, and a number of questions.--A West India simile.--The marvelings of the draymen described.--His Majesty peepeth into a pump.--Beautifully compared to a magpie peeping into a marrow-bone.--The MINUTE curiosity of the King.--Mr. Whitbread endeavoreth to surprise Majesty.--His Majesty puzzleth Mr. Whitbread.--Mr. Whitbread's horse espresseth wonder.--Also Mr. Whitbread's dog.--His Majesty maketh laudable inquiry about Porter.--Again puzzleth Mr. Whitbread.--King noteth NOTABLE things.--Profound questions proposed by Majesty.--As profoundly answered by Mr. Whitbread.--Majesty in a mistake.--Corrected by the brewer.--A nose simile.--Majesty's admiration of the bell.--Good manners of the bell.--Fine appearance of Mr. Whitbread's pigs.--Majesty proposeth questions, but benevolently waiteth not for answers.--Peter telleth the duty of Kings.-- Discovereth one of his shrewd maxims.--Sublime sympathy of a water- spout and a king.--The great use of asking questions.--The habitation of truth.--The collation.--The wonders performed by the Royal Visitors.--Majesty proposeth to take leave.--Offereth knighthood to Whitbread.--Mr. Whitbread's objections.--The king runneth a rig on his host.--Mr. Whitbread thanketh Majesty.--Miss Whitbread curtsieth.--The queen dippeth.--The Cavalcade departeth. Peter triumpheth.--Admonisheth the Laureate.--Peter croweth over the Laureate.--Discovereth deep knowledge of kings, and surgeons, and men who have lost their legs.--Peter reasoneth.--Vaunteth.--Even insulteth the Laureate.--Peter proclaimeth his peaceable disposition.--Praiseth Majesty, and concludeth with a prayer for curious kings. Tom, soon as e'er thou strik'st thy golden lyre, Thy brother Peter's muse is all on fire, To sing of kings and queens, and such rare folk Yet, 'midst thy heap of compliments so fine, Say, may we venture to believe a line? You Oxford wits most dearly love a joke. Son of the Nine, thou writest well on naught; Thy thundering stanza, and its pompous thought, I think, must put a dog into a laugh: Edward and Harry were much braver men Than this new-christened hero of thy pen. Yes, laurelled Odeman, braver far by half; Though on Blackheath and Wimbledon's wide plain, George keeps his hat off in a shower of rain; Sees swords and bayonets without a dread, Nor at a volley winks, nor ducks his head: Although at grand reviews he seems so blest, And leaves at six o'clock his downy nest, Dead to the charms of blanket, wife, and bolster; Unlike his officers, who, fond of cramming, And at reviews afraid of thirst and famine, With bread and cheese and brandy fill their holsters. Sure, Tom, we should do justice to Queen Bess: His present majesty, whom Heaven long bless With wisdom, wit, and art of choicest quality, Will never get, I fear, so fine a niche As that old queen, though often called old b--ch, In fame's colossal house of immortality. As for John Dryden's Charles--that king Indeed was never any mighty thing; He merited few honors from the pen: And yet he was a devilish hearty fellow, Enjoyed his beef, and bottle, and got mellow, And mind--kept company with GENTLEMEN: For, like some kings, in hobby grooms, Knights of the manger, curry-combs, and brooms, Lost to all glory, Charles did not delight-- Nor joked by day with pages, servant-maids, Large, red-polled, blowzy, hard two-handed jades: Indeed I know not what Charles did by night. Thomas, I AM of CANDOR a GREAT lover; In short, I'm candor's self all over; Sweet as a candied cake from top to toe; Make it a rule that Virtue shall be praised, And humble Merit from the ground be raised: What thinkest thou of Peter now? Thou cryest "Oh! how false! behold thy king, Of whom thou scarcely say'st a handsome thing; That king has virtues that should make thee stare." Is it so?--Then the sin's in me-- 'Tis my vile optics that can't see; Then pray for them when next thou sayest a prayer. But, p'rhaps aloft on his imperial throne, So distant, O ye gods! from every one, The royal virtues are like many a star, From this our pigmy system rather far: Whose light, though flying ever since creation, Has not yet pitched upon our nation. [Footnote: Such was the sublime opinion of the Dutch astronomer, Huygens] Then may the royal ray be soon explored-- And Thomas, if thou'lt swear thou art not humming, I'll take my spying-glass and bring thee word The instant I behold it coming. But, Thomas Warton, without joking, Art thou, or art thou not, thy sovereign smoking? How canst thou seriously declare, That George the Third With Cressy's Edward can compare, Or Harry?--'Tis too bad, upon my word: George is a clever king, I needs must own, And cuts a jolly figure on the throne. Now thou exclaim'st, "God rot it! Peter, pray What to the devil shall I sing or say?" I'll tell thee what to say, O tuneful Tom: Sing how a monarch, when his son was dying, His gracious eyes and ears was edifying, By abbey company and kettle drum: Leaving that son to death and the physician, Between two fires-a forlorn-hope condition; Two poachers, who make man their game, And, special marksmen! seldom miss their aim. Say, though the monarch did not see his son, He kept aloof through fatherly affection; Determined nothing should be done, To bring on useless tears, and dismal recollection. For what can tears avail, and piteous sighs? Death heeds not howls nor dripping eyes; And what are sighs and tears but wind and water, That show the leakiness of feeble nature? Tom, with my simile thou wilt not quarrel; Like air and any sort of drink, Whizzing and oozing through each chink, That proves the weakness of the barrel. Say--for the prince, when wet was every eye, And thousands poured to heaven the pitying sigh Devout; Say how a King, unable to dissemble, Ordered Dame Siddons to his house, and Kemble, To spout: Gave them ice creams and wines, so dear! Denied till then a thimble full of beer; For which they've thanked the author of this meter, Videlicet, the moral mender, Peter Who, in his Ode on Ode, did dare exclaim, And call such royal avarice, a shame. Say--but I'll teach thee how to make an ode; Thus shall thy labors visit fame's abode, In company with my immortal lay; And look, Tom--thus I fire away-- BIRTH-DAY ODE. This day, this very day, gave birth, Not to the brightest monarch upon earth, Because there are some brighter and as big; Who love the arts that man exalt to heaven, George loves them also, when they're given To four-legged Gentry, christened dog and pig.* Whose deeds in this our wonder-hunting nation Prove what a charming thing is education. *[Footnote: The dancing dogs and wise pig have formed a considerable part of the royal amusement.] Full of the art of brewing beer, The monarch heard of Mr. Whitbread's fame: Quoth he unto the queen "My dear, my dear, Whitbread hath got a marvelous great name; Charly, we must, must, must see Whitbread brew-- Rich as us, Charly, richer than a Jew: Shame, shame, we have not yet his brewhouse seen!" Thus sweetly said the king unto the queen! Red-hot with novelty's delightful rage, To Mr. Whitbread forth he sent a page, To say that majesty proposed to view, With thirst of wondrous knowledge deep inflamed, His vats, and tubs, and hops, and hogsheads famed, And learn the noble secret how to brew. Of such undreamt-of honor proud, Meet reverently the brewer bowed; So humbly (so the humble story goes,) He touched even terra firma with his nose; Then said unto the page, hight Billy Ramus, "Happy are we that our great king should name us, As worthy unto majesty to show, How we poor Chiswell people brew." Away sprung Billy Ramus quick as thought, To majesty tha welcome tidings brought, How Whitbread, staring, stood like any stake, And trembled--then the civil things he said-- On which the king did smile and nod his head: For monarchs like to see their subjects quake: Such horrors unto kings most pleasant are, Proclaiming reverence and humility: High thoughts, too, all those shaking fits declare Of kingly grandeur and great capability! People of worship, wealth, and birth, Look on the humbler sons of earth, Indeed in a most humble light, God knows! High stations are like Dover's towering cliffs, Where ships below appear like little skiffs, While people walking on the strand like crows. Muse, sing the stir that Mr. Whitbread made; Poor gentleman! most terribly afraid He should not charm enough his guests divine: He gave his maids new aprons, gowns and smocks; And lo! two hundred pounds were spent in frocks, To make the apprentices and draymen fine: Busy as horses in a field of clover, Dogs, cats, and chairs, and stools, were tumbled over, Amid the Whitbread rout of preparation, To treat the lofty ruler of the nation. Now moved king, queen, and princesses so grand, To visit the first brewer in the land; Who sometimes swills his beer and grinds his meat In a snug corner christened Chiswell-street; But oftener charmed with fashionable air, Amid the gaudy great of Portman-square. Lord Aylesbury, and Denbigh's Lord ALSO, His grace the Duke of Montague LIKEWISE. With Lady Harcourt joined the raree-show, And fixed all Smithfield's marveling eyes: For lo! a greater show ne'er graced those quarters, Since Mary roasted, just like crabs, the martyrs. Arrived, the king broad grinned, and gave a nod To smiling Whitbread, who, had God Come with his angels to behold his beer, With more respect he never could have met-- Indeed the man was in a sweat, So much the brewer did the king revere. Her majesty contrived to make a dip: Light as a feather then the king did skip, And asked a thousand questions, with a laugh, Before poor Whitbread comprehended half. Reader, my Ode should have a simile-- Well, in Jamaica, on a tamarind tree, Five hundred parrots, gabbling just like Jews, I've seen--such noise the feathered imps did make, As made my very pericranium ache-- Asking and telling parrot news: Thus was the brewhouse filled with gabbling noise, Whilst draymen and the brewer's boys, Devoured the questions that the king did ask: In different parties were they staring seen, Wondering to think they saw a king and queen! Behind a tub were some, and some behind a cask. Some draymen forced themselves (a pretty luncheon) Into the mouth of many a gaping puncheon; And through the bung-hole winked with curious eye, To view, and be assured what sort of things Were princesses, and queens, and kings, For whose most lofty station thousands sigh! And lo! of all the gaping puncheon clan, Few were the mouths that had not got a man! Now majesty into a pump so deep Did with an opera-glass so curious peep: Examining with care each wondrous matter That brought up water! Thus have I seen a magpie in the street, A chattering bird we often meet, A bird for curiosity well known; With head awry, And cunning eye, Peep knowingly into a marrow-bone. And now his curious majesty did stoop To count the nails on every hoop; And, lo! no single thing came in his way, That, full of deep research, he did not say, "What's this! hae, hae? what's that? what's this? what's that?" So quick the words, too, when he deigned to speak, As if each syllable would break his neck. Thus, to the world of GREAT whilst others crawl, Our sovereign peeps into the world of SMALL; Thus microscopic genuises explore Things that too oft provoke the public scorn, Yet swell of useful knowledges the store, By finding systems in a pepper-corn. Now boasting Whitbread serious did declare, To make the majesty of England stare, That he had butts enough, he knew, Placed side by side, to reach along to Kew: On which the king with wonder swiftly cried, "What, if they reach to Kew then, side by side, What would they do, what, what, placed end to end?" To whom with knitted, calculating brow, The man of beer most solemnly did vow, Almost to Windsor that they would extend; On which the king, with wondering mien, Repeated it unto the wondering queen: On which, quick turning round his haltered head, The brewer's horse, with face astonished neighed; The brewer's dog too poured a note of thunder, Rattled his chain, and wagged his tail for wonder. Now did the king for other beers inquire, For Calvert's, Jordan's, Thrale's entire And, after talking of these different beers, Asked Whitbread if his porter equalled theirs? This was a puzzling, disagreeing question; Grating like arsenic on his host's digestion: A kind of question to the man of cask, That not even Solomon himself would ask. Now majesty, alive to knowledge, took A very pretty memorandum-book, With gilded leaves of asses' skin so white, And in it legibly began to write-- MEMORANDUM. A charming place beneath the grates For roasting chestnuts or potates. MEM. 'Tis hops that give a bitterness to beer-- Hops grow in Kent, says Whitbread, and elsewhere. QUOERE. Is there no cheaper stuff? where doth it dwell? Would not horse-aloes bitter it as well? MEM. To try it soon on our small beer-- 'Twill save us several pound a year. MEM. To remember to forget to ask Old Whitbread to my house one day MEM. Not to forget to take of beer the cask, The brewer offered me, away. Now having penciled his remarks so shrewd, Sharp as the point indeed of a new pin, His majesty his watch most sagely viewed, And then put up his asses' skin. To Whitbread now deigned majesty to say, "Whitbread, are all your horses fond of hay!" "Yes, please your majesty," in humble notes, The brewer answered--"also, sir, of oats: Another thing my horses too maintains, And that, an't please your majesty, are grains." "Grains, grains," said majesty, "to fill their crops? Grains, grains?--that comes from hops--yes, hops, hops? hops?" Here was the king, like hounds sometimes, at fault-- "Sire," cried the humble brewer, "give me leave Your sacred majesty to undeceive; Grains, sire, are never made from hops, but malt." "True," said the cautious monarch, with a smile: "From malt, malt, malt--I meant malt all the while." "Yes," with the sweetest bow, rejoined the brewer, "An't please your majesty, you did, I'm sure." "Yes," answered majesty, with quick reply, "I did, I did, I did I, I, I, I." Now this was wise in Whitbread--here we find A very pretty knowledge of mankind; As monarchs never must be in the wrong, 'Twas really a bright thought in Whitbread's tongue, To tell a little fib, or some such thing, To save the sinking credit of a king. Some brewers, in a rage of information, Proud to instruct the ruler of a nation, Had on the folly dwelt, to seem damned clever! Now, what had been the consequence? Too plain! The man had cut his consequence in twain; The king had hated the WISE fool forever! Reader, whene'er thou dost espy a nose That bright with many a ruby glows, That nose thou mayest pronounce, nay safely swear, Is nursed on something better than small-beer. Thus when thou findest kings in brewing wise, Or natural history holding lofty station, Thou mayest conclude, with marveling eyes, Such kings have had a goodly education. Now did the king admire the bell so fine, That daily asks the draymen all to dine: On which the bell rung out (how very proper!) To show it was a bell, and had a clapper. And now before their sovereign's curious eye, Parents and children, fine, fat, hopeful sprigs, All snuffling, squinting, grunting in their style, Appeared the brewer's tribe of handsome pigs: On which the observant man, who fills a throne, Declared the pigs were vastly like his own: On which, the brewer, swallowed up in joys, Tears and astonishment in both his eyes, His soul brim full of sentiments so loyal, Exclaimed, "O heavens! and can my swine Be deemed by majesty so fine! Heavens! can my pigs compare, sire, with pigs royal?" To which the king assented with a nod; On which the brewer bowed, and said, "Good God!" Then winked significant on Miss; Significant of wonder and of bliss; Who, bridling in her chin divine, Crossed her fair hands, a dear old maid, And then her lowest courtesy made For such high honor done her father's swine. Now did his majesty so gracious say To Mr. Whitbread, in his flying way, "Whitbread, d'ye nick the excisemen now and then? Hae, Whitbread, when d'ye think to leave off trade? Hae? what? Miss Whitbread's still a maid, a maid? What, what's the matter with the men? "D'ye hunt!--hae, hunt? No, no, you are too old-- You'll be lord mayor--lord mayor one day-- Yes, yes, I've heard so--yes, yes, so I'm told: Don't, don't the fine for sheriff pay? I'll prick you every year, man, I declare: Yes, Whitbread-yes, yes-you shall be lord mayor. "Whitbread, d'ye keep a coach, or job one, pray? Job, job, that's cheapest; yes, that's best, that's best You put your liveries on the draymen-hee? Hae, Whitbread? you have feather'd well your nest. What, what's the price now, hee, of all your stock? But, Whitbread, what's o'clock, pray, what's o'clock?" Now Whitbread inward said, "May I be cursed If I know what to answer first;" Then searched his brains with ruminating eye: But e'er the man of malt an answer found, Quick on his heel, lo, majesty turned round, Skipped off, and baulked the pleasure of reply. Kings in inquisitiveness should be strong- From curiosity doth wisdom flow: For 'tis a maxim I've adopted long, The more a man inquires, the more he'll know. Reader, didst ever see a water-spout? 'Tis possible that thou wilt answer, "No." Well then! he makes a most infernal rout; Sucks, like an elephant, the waves below, With huge proboscis reaching from the sky, As if he meant to drink the ocean dry: At length so full he can't hold one drop more-. He bursts-down rush the waters with a roar On some poor boat, or sloop, or brig, or ship, And almost sinks the wand'rer of the deep: Thus have I seen a monarch at reviews, Suck from the tribe of officers the news, Then bear in triumph off each WONDROUS matter, And souse it on the queen with such a clatter! I always would advise folks to ask questions; For, truly, questions are the keys of knowledge: Soldiers, who forage for the mind's digestions, Cut figures at the Old Bailey, and at college; Make chancellors, chief justices, and judges, Even of the lowest green-bag drudges. The sages say, Dame Truth delights to dwell, Strange mansion! in the bottom of a well, Questions are then the windlass and the rope That pull the grave old gentlewoman up: Damn jokes then, and unmannerly suggestions, Reflecting upon kings for asking questions. Now having well employed his royal lungs On nails, hoops, staves, pumps, barrels, and their bungs, The king and Co. sat down to a collation Of flesh and fish, and fowl of every nation. Dire was the clang of plates, of knife and fork, That merciless fell like tomahawks to work, And fearless scalped the fowl, the fish, and cattle, While Whitbread, in the rear, beheld the battle. The conquering monarch, stopping to take breath Amidst the regiments of death, Now turned to Whitbread with complacence round, And, merry, thus addressed the man of beer "Whitbread, is't true? I hear, I hear, You're of an ancient family--renowned-- What? what? I'm told that you're a limb Of Pym, the famous fellow Pym: What Whitbread, is it true what people say? Son of a round-head are you? hae? hae? hae? I'm told that you send Bibles to your votes-- A snuffling round-headed society-- Prayer-books instead of cash to buy them coats-- Bunyans, and Practices of Piety: Your Bedford votes would wish to change their fare-- Rather see cash--yes, yes--than books of prayer. Thirtieth of January don't you FEED? Yes, yes, you eat calf's head, you eat calf's head." Now having wonders done on flesh, fowl, fish, Whole hosts o'erturned--and seized on all supplies; The royal visitors expressed a wish To turn to House of Buckingham their eyes. But first the monarch, so polite, Asked Mr. Whitbread if he'd be a KNIGHT. Unwilling in the list to be enrolled, Whitbread contemplated the knights of Peg, Then to his generous sovereign made a leg, And said, "He was afraid he was too old. He thanked however his most gracious king, For offering to make him SUCH A THING." But, ah! a different reason 'twas I fear! It was not age that bade the man of beer The proffered honor of the monarch shun: The tale of Margaret's knife, and royal fright, Had almost made him damn the NAME of knight, A tale that farrowed such a world of fun. He mocked the prayer too by the king appointed, Even by himself the Lord's Anointed:-- A foe to FAST too, is he, let me tell ye; And though a Presbyterian, can not think Heaven (quarrelling with meat and drink) Joys in the grumble of a hungry belly! Now from the table with Caesarean air Up rose the monarch with his laureled brow, When Mr. Whitbread, waiting on his chair, Expressed much thanks, much joy, and made a bow. Miss Whitbread now so quick her curtsies drops, Thick as her honored father's Kentish hops; Which hop-like curtsies were returned by dips That never hurt the royal knees and hips; For hips and knees of queens are sacred things, That only bend on gala days Before the best of kings, When odes of triumph sound his praise.-- Now through a thundering peal of kind huzzas, Proceeding some from hired* and unhired jaws, The raree-show thought proper to retire; Whilst Whitbread and his daughter fair Surveyed all Chiswell-street with lofty air, For, lo! they felt themselves some six feet higher *[Footnote: When his majesty goes to a play-house, or brew-house, or parliament, the Lord Chamberlain provides some pounds' worth of mob to huzza their beloved monarch. At the play-house about forty wide- mouthed fellows are hired on the night of their majesties' appearance, at two shillings and sixpence per head, with the liberty of seeing the play GRATIS. These STENTORS are placed in different parts of the theater, who, immediately on the royal entry into the stage-box, set up [illeg.] of loyalty; to whom their majesties, with sweetest smiles, acknowledge the obligation by a genteel bow, and an elegant curtesy. This congratulatory noise of the Stentors is looked on by many, particularly country ladies and gentlemen, as an infallible thermometer, that ascertains the warmth of the national regard--P. P.] Such, Thomas, is the way to write! Thus shouldst thou birth-day songs indite; Then stick to earth, and leave the lofty sky: No more of ti tum tum, and ti tum ti. Thus should an honest laureate write of kings-- Not praise them for IMAGINARY THINGS; I own I can not make my stubborn rhyme Call every king a character sublime; For conscience will not suffer me to wander So very widely from the paths of candor. I know full well SOME kings are to be seen, To whom my verse so bold would give the spleen, Should that bold verse declare they wanted BRAINS I won't say that they NEVER brains possessed-- They MAY have been with such a present blessed, And therefore fancy that some STILL remains; For every well-experienced surgeon knows, That men who with their legs have parted, Swear that they've felt a pain in all their TOES, And often at the twinges started; They stared upon their oaken stumps in vain! Fancying the toes were all come back again. If men, then, who their absent toes have mourned, Can fancy those same toes at times returned; So kings, in matters of intelligences, May fancy they have stumbled on their senses. Yes, Tom--mine is the way of writing ode-- Why liftest thou thy pious eyes to God! Strange disappointment in thy looks I read; And now I hear thee in proud triumph cry, "Is this an action, Peter, this a deed To raise a monarch to the sky? Tubs, porter, pumps, vats, all the Whitbread throng, Rare things to figure in the Muse's song!" Thomas, I here protest, I want no quarrels On kings and brewers, porter, pumps, and barrels-- Far from the dove-like Peter be such strife, But this I tell thee, Thomas, for a fact-- Thy Caesar never did an act More wise, more glorious in his life. Now God preserve all wonder-hunting kings, Whether at Windsor, Buckingham, or Kew-house: And may they never do more foolish things Than visiting Sam Whitbread and his brewhouse. THE AUTHOR AND THE STATESMAN [ADDRESSED BY FIELDING TO SIR ROBERT WALPOLE.] While at the helm of state you ride, Our nation's envy, and its pride; While foreign courts with wonder gaze, And curse those councils which they praise; Would you not wonder, sir, to view Your bard a greater man than you? Which that he is you can not doubt, When you have read the sequel out. You know, great sir, that ancient fellows, Philosophers, and such folks, tell us, No great analogy between Greatness and happiness is seen. If then, as it might follow straight, WRETCHED to be, is to be GREAT; Forbid it, gods, that you should try What'tis to be so great as I! The family that dines the latest, Is in our street esteem'd the greatest; But latest hours must surely fall 'Fore him who never dines at all. Your taste in architect, you know, Hath been admired by friend and foe: But can your earthly domes compare With all my castles--in the air? We're often taught it doth behoove as To think those greater who're above us; Another instance of my glory, Who live above you, twice two story; And from my garret can look down On the whole street of ARLINGTON. Greatness by poets still is painted With many followers acquainted: This too doth in my favor speak; YOUR levee is but twice a week; From mine I can exclude but one day, My door is quiet on a Sunday. Nor in the manner of attendance, Doth your great bard claim less ascendance Familiar you to admiration May be approached by all the nation; While I, like the Mogul in INDO, Am never seen but at my window. If with my greatness you're offended, The fault is easily amended; For I'll come down, with wondrous ease, Into whatever PLACE you please. I'm not ambitious; little matters Will serve us great, but humble creatures. Suppose a secretary o' this isle, Just to be doing with a while; Admiral, gen'ral, judge, or bishop: Or I can foreign treaties dish up. If the good genius of the nation Should call me to negotiation, Tuscan and French are in my head, LATIN I write, and GREEK--I read. If you should ask, what pleases best? To get the most, and do the least. What fittest for?--You know, I'm sure; I'm fittest for--a SINE-CURE. THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY AND THE KNIFE GRINDER. [Footnote: Some stanzas of the original poem, by Southey, are here subjoined:] ANTI-JACOBIN. FRIEND OF HUMANITY. [Footnote: The "Friend of Humanity" was intended for Mr. Tierney, M.P. for Southwark, who in early times was among the more forward of the Reformers. "He was," says Lord Brougham, "an assiduous member of the Society of Friends of the People, and drew up the much and justly celebrated Petition in which that useful body laid before the House of Commons all the more striking particulars of its defective title to the office of representing the people, which that House then, as now, but with far less reason, assumed.] "Needy Knife-grinder! whither are you going? Rough is the road, your wheel is out of order-- Bleak blows the blast; your hat has got a hole in't, So have your breeches!" THE WIDOW. SAPPHIOS Cold was the night wind; drifting fast the snows fell: Wide were the downs, and shelterless and naked; When a poor wand'rer struggled on her journey, Weary and way-sore. Drear were the downs, more dreary her reflections; Cold was the night wind, colder was her bosom: She had no home, the world was all before her. She had no shelter. Fast o'er the heath a chariot rattled by her: "Pity me!" feebly cried the poor night wanderer, "Pity me, strangers! lest with cold and hunger Here I should perish." "Weary Knife-grinder! little think the proud ones, Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike- road, what hard work 'tis crying all day 'Knives and "'Scissors to grind O!' Tell me, Knife-grinder, how came you to grind knives? Did some rich man tyrannically use you? Was it the squire? or parson of the parish? Or the attorney? "Was it the squire, for killing of his game? or Covetous parson, for his tithes distraining? Or roguish lawyer, made you lose your little All in a lawsuit? "(Have you not read the Rights of Man, by Tom Paine?)Drops of compassion tremble on my eyelids, Ready to fall, as soon as you have told your Pitiful story." KNIFE-GRINDER. "Story! God bless you! I have none to tell, sir, Only last night a-drinking at the Chequers, This poor old hat and breeches, as you see, were Torn in a scuffle. "Constables came up, for to take me into Custody; they took me before the justice; Justice Oldmixon put me in the parish-- Stocks for a vagrant. "I should be glad to drink your Honor's health in A pot of beer, if you will give me sixpence; But for my part, I never love to meddle With politics, sir." FRIEND OF HUMANITY. "I give thee sixpence! I will see thee damned first-- Wretch! whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance-- Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded, Spiritless outcast!" [Kicks the Knife-grinder, overturns his wheel, and exit in a transport of Republican enthusiasm and universal philanthropy.] INSCRIPTION FOR THE DOOR OF THE CELL IN NEWGATE, WHERE MRS. BROWNRIGG, THE 'PRENTICE-CIDE WAS CONFINED PREVIOUS TO HER EXECUTION.* FROM THE ANTI-JACOBIN. 1797 For one long term, or e'er her trial came, Here BROWNRIGG linger'd. Often have these cells Echoed her blasphemies, as with shrill voice She screamed for fresh Geneva. Not to her Did the blithe fields of Tothill, or thy street, St. Giles, its fair varieties expand; Till at the last, in slow-drawn cart she went To execution. Dost thou ask her crime? SHE WHIPP'D TWO FEMALE 'PRENTICES TO DEATH, AND HID THEM IN THE COAL-HOLE. For her mind Shaped strictest plans of discipline. Sage schemes! Such as Lycurgus taught, when at the shrine Of the Orthyan goddess he bade flog The little Spartans; such as erst chastised Our Milton, when at college. For this act Did Brownrigg swing. Harsh laws! But time shall come When France shall reign, and laws be all repeal'd! *INSCRIPTION BY SOUTHEY FOR THE APARTMENT IN CHEPSTOW CASTLE, WHERE HENRY MARTEN, THE REGICIDE WAS IMPRISONED THIRTY YEARS. For thirty years, secluded from mankind, Here MARTEN lingered. Often have these walls Echoed his footsteps, as with even tread He paced around his prison: not to him Did Nature's fair varieties exist; He never saw the sun's delightful beams, Save when through yon high bars he pour'd a sad And broken splendor. Dost thou ask his crime? He had REBELL'D AGAINST THE KING, AND SAT In JUDGMENT ON HIM; for his ardent mind Shaped goodliest plans of happiness on earth, And peace and liberty. Wild dreams! but such As Plato loved; such as with holy zeal Our Milton worship'd. Bless'd hopes! awhile From man withheld, even to the latter days When Christ shall come, and all things be fulfill'd. SONG [Footnote: There is a curious circumstance connected with the composition of this song, the first five stanzas of which were written by Mr. Canning. Having been accidentally seen, previous to its publication, by Mr. Pitt, who was cognizant of the proceedings of the "Anti-Jacobin" writers, he was so amused with it that he took up a pen and composed the last stanza on the spot.] SUNG BY ROGERO IN THE BURLESQUE PLAY OF "THE ROVER." FROM THE ANTI-JACOBIN, 1798. CANNING. I. Whene'er with haggard eyes I view This dungeon that I'm rotting in, I think of those companions true Who studied with me at the U --niversity of Gottingen-- --niversity of Gottingen. [Weeps, and pulls out a blue kerchief, with which he wipes his eyes; gazing tenderly at it, he proceeds--] II. Sweet kerchief, check'd with heavenly blue, Which once my love sat knotting in!-- Alas! Matilda THEN was true! At least I thought so at the U-- --niversity of Gottingen-- --niversity of Gottingen. [At the repetition of this line ROGERO clanks his chains in cadence.] III. Barbs! Barbs! alas! how swift you flew Her neat post-wagon trotting in! Ye bore Matilda from my view; Forlorn I languish'd at the U-- --niversity of Gottingen-- --niversity of Gottingen. IV. This faded form! this pallid hue! This blood my veins is clotting in, My years are many--they were few When first I entered at the U-- --niversity of Gottingen-- --niversity of Gottingen. V. There first for thee my psssion grew, Sweet! sweet Matilda Pottingen! Thou wast the daughter of my tu-- --tor, law professor at the U-- --niversity at Gottingen-- --niversity of Gottingen. VI. Sun, moon and thou, vain world, adieu, That kings and priests are plotting in; Here doom'd to starve on water gru-- --el, never shall I see the U-- --niversity of Gottingen-- --niversity of Gottingen. [During the last stanza ROGERO dashes his head repeatedly against the walls of his prison; and, finally, so hard as to produce a visible contusion; he then throws himself on the floor in an agony. The curtain drops; the music still continuing to play till it is wholly fallen.] THE AMATORY SONNETS OF ABEL SHUFFLEBOTTOM. ROBERT SOUTHEY. I. DELIA AT PLAY. She held a CUP AND BALL of ivory white, LESS WHITE the ivory than her snowy hand! Enrapt, I watched her from my secret stand, As now, intent, in INNOCENT delight, Her taper fingers twirled the giddy ball, Now tost it, following still with EAGLE SIGHT, Now on the pointed end INFIXED its fall. Marking her sport I mused, and musing sighed. Methought the BALL she played with was my HEART; (Alas! that sport like THAT should be her pride!) And the KEEN POINT which steadfast still she eyed Wherewith to pierce it, that was Cupid's DART; Shall I not then the cruel Fair condemn Who ON THAT DART IMPALES my BOSOM'S GEM? II. THE POET PROVES THE EXISTENCE OF A SOUL FROM HIS LOVE FOR DELIA. Some have denied a soul! THEY NEVER LOVED. Far from my Delia now by fate removed, At home, abroad, I view her everywhere: HER ONLY in the FLOOD OF NOON I see, My GODDESS-MAID, my OMNIPRESENT FAIR. FOR LOVE ANNIHILATES THE WORLD TO ME! And when the weary SOL AROUND HIS BED CLOSES THE SABLE CURTAINS OF THE NIGHT, SUN OF MY SLUMBERS, on my dazzled sight She shines confest. When EVERY SOUND IS DEAD, The SPIRIT OF HER VOICE comes then to ROLL The surge of music o'er my wavy brain. Far, far from her my BODY drags its chain, But sure with Delia I EXIST A SOUL! III. THE POET EXPRESSES HIS FEELINGS RESPECTING A PORTRAIT IN DELIA'S PARLOR. I would I were that portly gentleman With gold-laced hat and golden-headed cane, Who hangs in Delia's parlor! For whene'er From book or needlework her looks arise, On him CONVERGE THE SUN-BEAMS OF HER EYES, And he UNBLAMED may gaze upon MY FAIR, And oft MY FAIR his FAVORED form surveys. O HAPPY PICTURE! still on HER to gaze; I envy him! and jealous fear alarms, Lest the STRONG GLANCE of those DIVINEST charms WARM HIM TO LIFE, as in the ancient days, When MARBLE MELTED in Pygmalion's arms. I would I were that portly gentleman, With gold-laced hat and golden-headed cane! THE LOVE ELEGIES OF ABEL SHUFFLEBOTTOM. ROBERT SOUTHEY. I. THE POET RELATES HOW HE OBTAINED DELIA'S POCKET-HANDKERCHIEF. 'Tis mine I what accents can my joy declare? Blest be the pressure of the thronging rout! Blest be the hand so hasty of my fair, That left the TEMPTING CORNER hanging out! I envy not the joy the pilgrim feels, After long travel to some distant shrine. When at the relic of his saint he kneels, For Delia's POCKET-HANDKERCHIEF IS MINE. When first with FILCHING FINGERS I drew near, Keen hopes shot tremulous through every vein; And when the FINISHED DEED removed my fear, Scarce could my bounding heart its joy contain. What though the EIGHTH COMMANDMENT rose to mind, It only served a moment's qualm to move; For thefts like this it could not be designed-- THE EIGTH COMMANDMENT WAS NOT MADE FOR LOVE! Here, when she took the maccaroons from me, She wiped her mouth to clear the crumbs so sweet! Dear napkin! yes, she wiped her lips on thee! Lips SWEETER than the MACCAROONS she eat. And when she took that pinch of Moccabaw, That made my love so DELICATELY sneeze, Thee to her Roman nose applied I saw, And thou art doubly dear for things like these. No washerwoman's filthy hand shall e'er, SWEET POCKET-HANDKERCHIEF! thy worth profane For thou hast touched the RUBIES of my fair, And I will kiss thee o'er and o'er again. II. THE POET EXPATIATES ON THE BEAUTY OF DELIA'S HAIR The comb between whose ivory teeth she strains The straightning curls of gold so BEAMY BRIGHT, Not spotless merely from the touch remains, But issues forth MORE PURE, more MILKY WHITE. The rose pomatum that the FRISEUR spreads Sometimes with honored fingers for my fair, No added perfume on her tresses sheds, BUT BORROWS SWEETNESS FROM HER SWEETER HAIR. Happy the FRISEUR who in Delia's hair With licensed fingers uncontrolled may rove! And happy in his death the DANCING BEAR, Who died to make pomatum for my love. Oh could I hope that e'er my favored lays Might CURL THOSE LOVELY LOCKS with conscious pride, Nor Hammond, nor the Mantuan shepherd's praise, I'd envy them, nor wish reward beside. Cupid has strung from you, O tresses fine, The bow that in my breast impell'd his dart; From you, sweet locks! he wove the subtile line Wherewith the urchin ANGLED for MY HEART. Fine are my Delia's tresses as the threads That from the silk-worm, SELF-INTERR'D, proceed; Fine as the GLEAMY GOSSAMER that spreads His filmy net-work o'er the tangled mead. Yet with these tresses Cupid's power, elate, My captive HEART has HANDCUFF'D in a chain, Strong as the cables of some huge first-rate, THAT BEARS BRITANNIA'S THUNDERS O'ER THE MAIN. The SYLPHS that round her radiant locks repair, In FLOWING LUSTER bathe their bright'ning wings; And ELFIN MINSTRELS with assiduous care, The ringlets rob for FAIRY FIDDLESTRINGS. III. THE POET RELATES HOW HE STOLE A LOCK OF DELIA S HAIR, AND HER ANGER. Oh! be the day accurst that gave me birth! Ye Seas! to swallow me, in kindness rise! Fall on me, mountains! and thou merciful earth, Open, and hide me from my Delia's eyes. Let universal Chaos now return, Now let the central fires their prison burst, And EARTH, and HEAVEN, and AIR, and OCEAN burn, For Delia FROWNS. She FROWNS, and I am curst. Oh! I could dare the fury of the fight, Where hostile MILLIONS sought my single life; Would storm VOLCANOES, BATTERIES, with delight, And grapple with Grim Death in glorious strife. Oh! I could brave the bolts of angry Jove, When ceaseless lightnings fire the midnight skies; What is HIS WRATH to that of HER I love? What is his LIGHTNING to my Delia's eyes? Go, fatal lock! I cast thee to the wind; Ye SERPENT CURLS, ye POISON TENDRILS, go! Would I could tear thy memory from my mind, ACCURSED LOCK; thou cause of all my woe! Seize the CURST CURLS, ye Furies, as they fly! Demons of darkness, guard the infernal roll, That thence your cruel vengeance, when I die, May KNIT THE KNOTS OF TORTURE FOR MY SOUL. Last night--Oh hear me, heaven, and grant my prayer! The BOOK OF FATE before thy suppliant lay, And let me from its ample records tear ONLY THE SINGLE PAGE OF YESTERDAY! Or let me meet OLD TIME upon his flight, And I will STOP HIM on his restless way; Omnipotent in love's resistless might, I'LL FORCE HIM BACK THE ROAD OF YESTERDAY. Last night, as o'er the page of love's despair, My Delia bent DELICIOUSLY to grieve, I stood a TREACHEROUS LOITERER by her chair, And drew the FATAL SCISSORS from my sleeve: And would at that instant o'er my thread The SHEARS OF ATROPOS had opened then; And when I reft the lock from Delia's head, Had cut me sudden from the sons of men! She heard the scissors that fair lock divide, And while my heart with transport parted big, She cast a FURY frown on me, and cried, "You stupid puppy--you have spoiled my wig!" [Illustration: WILLIS] THE BABY'S DEBUT. [Footnote: "The author does not, in this instance, attempt to copy any of the higher attributes of Mr. Wordsworth's poetry; but has succeeded perfectly in the imitation of his mawkish affectations of childish simplicity and nursery stammering. We hope it will make him ashamed of his ALICE FELL, and the greater part of his last volumes--of which it is by no means a parody, but a very fair, and indeed we think a flattering, imitation."--Edinburg Review.] A BURLESQUE IMITATION OF WORDSWORTH.--REJECTED ADDRESSES JAMES SMITH. Spoken in the character of Nancy Lake, a girl eight years of age, who is drawn upon the stage in a child's chaise by Samuel Hughes, her uncle's porter. My brother Jack was nine in May, And I was eight on New-year's-day; So in Kate Wilson's shop Papa (he's my papa and Jack's) Bought me, last week, a doll of wax, And brother Jack a top. Jack's in the pouts, and this it is-- He thinks mine came to more than his; So to my drawer he goes, Takes out the doll, and, O, my stars! He pokes her head between the bars, And melts off half her nose! Quite cross, a bit of string I beg, And tie it to his peg-top's peg, And bang, with might and main, Its head against the parlor-door: Off flies the head, and hits the floor, And breaks a window-pane. This made him cry with rage and spite: Well, let him cry, it serves him right A pretty thing, forsooth! If he's to melt, all scalding hot, Half my doll's nose, and I am not To draw his peg-top's tooth! Aunt Hannah heard the window break, And cried, "O naughty Nancy Lake, Thus to distress your aunt: No Drury Lane for you to-day!" And while papa said, "Pooh, she may!" Mamma said, "No, she sha'n't!" Well, after many a sad reproach, They got into a hackney-coach, And trotted down the street. I saw them go: one horse was blind, The tails of both hung down behind, Their shoes were on their feet. The chaise in which poor brother Bill Used to be drawn to Pentonville, Stood in the lumber-room: I wiped the dust from off the top, While Molly mopped it with a mop, And brushed it with a broom. My uncle's porter, Samuel Hughes, Came in at six to black the shoes, (I always talk to Sam:) So what does he, but takes, and drags Me in the chaise along the flags, And leaves me where I am. My father's walls are made of brick, But not so tall and not so thick As these; and, goodness me! My father's beams are made of wood, But never, never half so good As those that now I see. What a large floor! 'tis like a town! The carpet, when they lay it down, Won't hide it, I'll be bound; And there's a row of lamps!--my eye! How they do blaze! I wonder why They keep them on the ground. At first I caught hold of the wing, And kept away; but Mr. Thing- umbob, the prompter man, Gave with his hand my chaise a shove, And said, "Go on, my pretty love; Speak to 'em little Nan. "You've only got to curtsy, whisper, hold your chin up, laugh and lisp, And then you're sure to take: I've known the day when brats, not quite Thirteen, got fifty pounds a night; Then why not Nancy Lake?" But while I'm speaking, where's papa? And where's my aunt? and where's mamma? Where's Jack? O there they sit! They smile, they nod; I'll go my ways, And order round poor Billy's chaise, To join them in the pit. And now, good gentlefolks, I go To join mamma, and see the show; So, bidding you adieu, I curtsy like a pretty miss, And if you'll blow to me a kiss, I'll blow a kiss to you. [Blow a kiss, and exit.] PLAY-HOUSE MUSINGS. A BURLESQUE IMITATION OF COLERIDGE.--REJECTED ADDRESSES. JAMES SMITH My pensive Public, wherefore look you sad? I had a grandmother, she kept a donkey To carry to the mart her crockery-ware, And when that donkey looked me in the face, His face was sad I and you are sad, my Public. Joy should be yours: this tenth day of October Again assembles us in Drury Lane. Long wept my eye to see the timber planks That hid our ruins; many a day I cried, Ah me! I fear they never will rebuild it! Till on one eve, one joyful Monday eve, As along Charles-street I prepared to walk. Just at the corner, by the pastrycook's, I heard a trowel tick against a brick. I looked me up, and straight a parapet Uprose at least seven inches o'er the planks. Joy to thee, Drury! to myself I said: He of the Blackfriars' Road, who hymned thy downfall In loud Hosannahs, and who prophesied That flames, like those from prostrate Solyma, Would scorch the hand that ventured to rebuild thee, Has proved a lying prophet. From that hour, As leisure offered, close to Mr. Spring's Box-office door, I've stood and eyed the builders. They had a plan to render less their labors; Workmen in olden times would mount a ladder With hodded heads, but these stretched forth a pole From the wall's pinnacle, they placed a pulley Athwart the pole, a rope athwart the pulley; To this a basket dangled; mortar and bricks Thus freighted, swung securely to the top, And in the empty basket workmen twain Precipitate, unhurt, accosted earth. Oh! 't was a goodly sound, to hear the people Who watched the work, express their various thoughts! While some believed it never would be finished, Some, on the contrary, believed it would. I've heard our front that faces Drury Lane Much criticised; they say 'tis vulgar brick-work, A mimic manufactory of floor-cloth. One of the morning papers wished that front Cemented like the front in Brydges-street; As now it looks, they call it Wyatt's Mermaid, A handsome woman with a fish's tail. White is the steeple of St. Bride's in Fleet-street, The Albion (as its name denotes) is white; Morgan and Saunders' shop for chairs and tables Gleams like a snow-ball in the setting sun; White is Whitehall. But not St. Bride's in Fleet-street, The spotless Albion, Morgan, no, nor Saunders, Nor white Whitehall, is white as Drury's face. Oh, Mr. Whitbread! fie upon you, sir! I think you should have built a colonnade; When tender Beauty, looking for her coach, Protrudes her gloveless hand, perceives the shower, And draws the tippet closer round her throat, Perchance her coach stands half a dozen off, And, ere she mounts the step, the oozing mud Soaks through her pale kid slipper. On the morrow, She coughs at breakfast, and her gruff papa Cries, "There you go! this comes of playhouses!" To build no portico is penny wise: Heaven grant it prove not in the end pound foolish! Hail to thee, Drury! Queen of Theaters! What is the Regency in Tottenham-street, The Royal Amphitheater of Arts, Astley's, Olympic, or the Sans Pareil, Compared with thee? Yet when I view thee pushed Back from the narrow street that christened thee, I know not why they call thee Drury Lane. Amid the freaks that modern fashion sanctions, It grieves me much to see live animals Brought on the stage. Grimaldi has his rabbit, Laurent his cat, and Bradbury his pig; Fie on such tricks! Johnson, the machinist Of former Drury, imitated life Quite to the life. The elephant in Blue Beard, Stuffed by his hand, wound round his lithe proboscis As spruce as he who roared in Padmanaba. [Footnote: "Padmanaba," viz., in a pantomime called Harlequin in Padmanaba. This elephant, some years afterward, was exhibited over Exeter 'Change, where it was found necessary to destroy the poor animal by discharges of musketry. When he made his entrance in the pantomime above-mentioned, Johnson, the machinist of the rival house, exclaimed, "I should be very sorry if I could not make a better elephant than that!"] Naught born on earth should die. On hackney stands I reverence the coachman who cries "Gee," And spares the lash. When I behold a spider Prey on a fly, a magpie on a worm, Or view a butcher with horn-handled knife Slaughter a tender lamb as dead as mutton, Indeed, indeed, I'm very, very sick! [EXIT HASTILY.] THE THEATER. [Footnote: "'The Theater,' by the Rev. G. Crabbe, we rather think, is the best piece in the collection. It is an exquisite and most masterly imitation, not only of the peculiar style, but of the taste, temper, and manner of description of that most original author. * * * It does not aim, of course, at any shadow of his pathos or moral sublimity, but seems to us to be a singularly faithful copy of his passages of mere description."--Edinburg Review.] [A BURLESQUE IMITATION OF CEABBE.--REJECTED ADDRESSES.] JAMES SMITH. Interior of a Theater described.--Pit gradually fills.-The Check-taker.--Pit full.--The Orchestra tuned.--One Fiddle rather dilatory.--Is reproved--and repents.--Evolutions of a Play-bill.--Its final Settlement on the Spikes.--The Gods taken to task--and why.-- Motley Group of Play-goers.--Holywell-street, St. Pancras.--Emanuel Jennings binds his Son apprentice--not in London--and why.--Episode of the Hat. 'Tis sweet to view, from half-past five to six, Our long wax-candles, with short cotton wicks, Touched by the lamplighter's Promethean art, Start into light, and make the lighter start; To see red Phoebus through the gallery-pane Tinge with his beams the beams of Drury Lane; While gradual parties fill our widened pit, And gape, and gaze, and wonder, ere they sit. At first, while vacant seats give choice and ease, Distant or near, they settle where they please; But when the multitude contracts the span, And seats are rare, they settle where they can. Now the full benches to late comers doom No room for standing, miscalled STANDING-ROOM. Hark! the check-taker moody silence breaks, And bawling "Pit full!" gives the checks he takes; Yet onward still the gathering numbers cram, Contending crowders shout the frequent damn, And all is bustle, squeeze, row, jabbering, and jam. See to their desks Apollo's sons repair-- Swift rides the rosin o'er the horse's hair! In unison their various tones to tune, Murmurs the hautboy, growls the coarse bassoon; In soft vibration sighs the whispering lute, Tang goes the harpsichord, too-too the flute, Brays the loud trumpet, squeaks the fiddle sharp, Winds the French horn, and twangs the tingling harp Till, like great Jove, the leader, fingering in, Attunes to order the chaotic din. Now all seems hushed--but, no, one fiddle will Give half-ashamed, a tiny flourish still. Foiled in his clash, the leader of the clan Reproves with frowns the dilatory man: Then on his candlestick thrice taps his bow, Nods a new signal, and away they go. Perchance, while pit and gallery cry "Hats off!" And awed Consumption checks his chided cough, Some giggling daughter of the Queen of Love Drops, 'reft of pin, her play-bill from above: Like Icarus, while laughing galleries clap, Soars, ducks, and dives in air the printed scrap; But, wiser far than he, combustion fears, And, as it flies, eludes the chandeliers; Till, sinking gradual, with repeated twirl, It settles, curling, on a fiddler's curl; Who from his powdered pate the intruder strikes, And, for mere malice, sticks it on the spikes. Say, why these Babel strains from Babel tongues? Who's that calls "Silence!" with such leathern lungs? He who, in quest of quiet, "Silence!" hoots, Is apt to make the hubbub he imputes. What various swains our motley walls contain! Fashion from Moorfields, honor from Chick Lane; Bankers from Paper Buildings here resort, Bankrupts from Golden Square and Riches Court; From the Haymarket canting rogues in grain, Gulls from the Poultry, sots from Water Lane; The lottery cormorant, the auction shark, The full-price master, and the half-price clerk; Boys who long linger at the gallery-door, With pence twice five--they want but twopence more; Till some Samaritan the two-pence spares, And sends them jumping up the gallery-stairs. Critics we boast who ne'er their malice balk, But talk their minds--we wish they'd mind their talk Big-worded bullies, who by quarrels live-- Who give the lie, and tell the lie they give; Jews from St. Mary's Ax, for jobs so wary, That for old clothes they'd even ax St. Mary; And bucks with pockets empty as their pate, Lax in their gaiters, laxer in their gait; Who oft, when we our house lock up, carouse With tippling tipstaves in a lock-up house. Yet here, as elsewhere, Chance can joy bestow, Where scowling fortune seemed to threaten woe. John Richard William Alexander Dwyer Was footman to Justinian Stubbs, Esquire; But when John Dwyer listed in the Blues, Emanuel Jennings polished Stubb's shoes. Emanuel Jennings brought his youngest boy Up as a corn-cutter--a safe employ; In Holywell Street, St. Pancras, he was bred (At number twenty-seven, it is said), Facing the pump, and near the Granby's Head: He would have bound him to some shop in town, But with a premium he could not come down. Pat was the urchin's name-a red haired youth, Ponder of purl and skittle-grounds than truth. Silence, ye gods! to keep your tongue in awe, The Muse shall tell an accident she saw. Pat Jennings in the upper gallery sat, But, leaning forward, Jennings lost his hat: Down from the gallery the beaver flew, And spurned the one to settle in the two. How shall he act? Pay at the gallery-door Two shillings for what cost, when new, but four? Or till half-price, to save his shilling, wait, And gain his hat again at half-past eight? Now, while his fears anticipate a thief, John Mullins whispers, "Take my handkerchief." "Thank you," cries Pat; "but one won't make a line." "Take mine," cries Wilson; and cries Stokes, "Take mine." A motley cable soon Pat Jennings ties, Where Spitalfields with real India vies. Like Iris' bow, down darts the painted clew, Starred, striped, and spotted, yellow, red, and blue, Old calico, torn silk, and muslin new. George Green below, with palpitating hand Loops the last 'kerchief to the beaver's band-- Up soars the prize! The youth, with joy unfeigned, Regained the felt, and felt the prize regained; While to the applauding galleries grateful Pat Made a low bow, and touched the ransomed hat. A TALE OF DRURY LANE [Footnote: "From the parody of Sir Walter Scott we know not what to select--It Is all good. The effect of the fire on the town, and the description of a fireman in his official apparel, may be quoted as amusing specimens of the MISAPPLICATION of the style and meter of Mr. Scott's admirable romances."--Quarterly Review. "'A Tale of Drury.' by Walter Scott, is, upon the whole, admirably execuated; though the introduction is rather tame. The burning is described with the mighty minstrel's characteristic love of localitics. The catastrophe is described with a spirit not unworthy of the name so ventureously assumed by the describer"--Edinburg Review.] [A BURLESQUE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT'S METRICAL ROMANCES. REJECTED ADDRESSES.] HORACE SMITH. [To be spoken by Mr. Kemble, In a suit of the Black Prince's Armor, borrowed from the Tower.] Survey this shield, all bossy bright-- These cuisses twin behold! Look on my form in armor dight Of steel inlaid with gold; My knees are stiff in iron buckles, Stiff spikes of steel protect my knuckles. These once belonged to sable prince, Who never did in battle wince; With valor tart as pungent quince, He slew the vaunting Gaul. Rest there awhile, my bearded lance, While from green curtain I advance To yon foot-lights, no trivial dance, And tell the town what sad mischance Did Drury Lane befall. THE NIGHT. On fair Augusta's towers and trees Flittered the silent midnight breeze, Curling the foliage as it past, Which from the moon-tipped plumage cast A spangled light, like dancing spray, Then reassumed its still array; When as night's lamp unclouded hung, And down its full effulgence flung, It shed such soft and balmy power That cot and castle, hall and bower, And spire and dome, and turret height, Appear'd to slumber in the light. From Henry's chapel, Rufus' Hall, To Savoy, Temple, and St. Paul, From Knightsbridge, Pancras, Camden Town, To Redriff Shadwell, Horsleydown, No voice was heard, no eye unclosed, But all in deepest sleep reposed. They might have thought, who gazed around Amid a silence so profound, It made the senses thrill, That't was no place inhabited, But some vast city of the dead All was so hushed and still. THE BURNING. As chaos, which, by heavenly doom, Had slept in everlasting gloom, Started with terror and surprise When light first flashed upon her eyes So London's sons in night-cap woke, In bed-gown woke her dames; For shouts were heard 'mid fire and smoke, And twice ten hundred voices spoke "The playhouse is in flames!" And, lo! where Catharine street extends, A fiery tail its luster lends To every window-pane; Blushes each spout in Martlet Court And Barbican, moth-eaten fort, And Covent Garden kennels sport, A bright ensanguined drain; Meux's new brewhouse shows the light, Rowland Hill's chapel, and the height Where patent shot they sell; The Tennis-Court, so fair and tall, Partakes the ray, with Surgeons' Hall, The ticket-porters' house of call. Old Bedlam, close by London Wall, Wright's shrimp and oyster shop withal, And Richardson's Hotel. Nor these alone, but far and wide, Across red Thames's gleaming tide, To distant fields the blaze was borne, And daisy white and hoary thorn In borrowed luster seemed to sham The rose of red sweet Wil-li-am. To those who on the hills around Beheld the flames from Drury's mound, As from a lofty altar rise, It seemed that nations did conspire To offer to the god of fire Some vast stupendous sacrifice! The summoned firemen woke at call, And hied them to their stations all: Starting from short and broken snooze, Each sought his pond'rous hobnailed shoes, But first his worsted hosen plied, Plush breeches next, in crimson dyed, His nether bulk embraced; Then jacket thick, of red or blue, Whose massy shoulder gave to view The badge of each respective crew, In tin or copper traced. The engines thundered through the street, Fire-hook, pipe, bucket, all complete, And torches glared, and clattering feet Along the pavement paced. And one, the leader of the band, From Charing Cross along the Strand, Like stag by beagles hunted hard, Ran till he stopped at Vin'gar Yard. The burning badge his shoulder bore, The belt and oil-skin hat he wore, The cane he had, his men to bang, Showed foreman of the British gang-- His name was Higginbottom. Now 'Tis meet that I should tell you how The others came in view: The Hand-in-Hand the race begun. Then came the Phoenix and the Sun, The Exchange, where old insurers run, The Eagle, where the new; With these came Rumford, Bumford, Cole, Robins from Hockley in the Hole, Lawson and Dawson, cheek by jowl, Crump from St. Giles's Pound: Whitford and Mitford joined the train, Huggins and Muggins from Chick Lane, And Clutterbuck, who got a sprain Before the plug was found. Hobson and Jobson did not sleep, But ah! no trophy could they reap For both were in the Donjon Keep Of Bridewell's gloomy mound! E'en Higginbottom now was posed, For sadder scene was ne'er disclosed, Without, within, in hideous show, Devouring flames resistless glow, And blazing rafters downward go, And never halloo "Heads below!" Nor notice give at all. The firemen terrified are slow To bid the pumping torrent flow, For fear the roof would fall. Back, Robins, back; Crump, stand aloof! Whitford, keep near the walls! Huggins, regard your own behoof, For lo! the blazing rocking roof Down, down, in thunder falls! An awful pause succeeds the stroke, And o'er the ruins volumed smoke, Rolling around its pitchy shroud, Concealed them from th' astonished crowd. At length the mist awhile was cleared, When, lo! amid the wreck upreared, Gradually a moving head appeared, And Eagle firemen knew 'T was Joseph Muggins, name revered, The foreman of their crew. Loud shouted all in signs of woe, "A Muggins! to the rescue, ho!" And poured the hissing tide: Meanwhile the Muggins fought amain, And strove and struggled all in vain, For, rallying but to fall again, He tottered, sunk, and died! Did none attempt, before he fell, To succor one they loved so well? Yes, Higginbottom did aspire (His fireman's soul was all on fire), His brother chief to save; But ah! his reckless generous ire Served but to share his grave! 'Mid blazing beams and scalding streams, Through fire and smoke he dauntless broke, Where Muggins broke before. But sulphury stench and boiling drench Destroying sight o'erwhelmed him quite, He sunk to rise no more. Still o'er his head, while Fate he braved, His whizzing water-pipe he waved; "Whitford and Mitford, ply your pumps, You, Clutterbuck, come, stir your stumps, Why are you in such doleful dumps? A fireman, and afraid of bumps!-- What are they fear'd on? fools: 'od rot 'em!" Were the last words of Higginbottom. THE REVIVAL Peace to his soul! new prospects bloom, And toil rebuilds what fires consume! Eat we and drink we, be our ditty, "Joy to the managing committee!" Eat we and drink we, join to rum Roast beef and pudding of the plum; Forth from thy nook, John Horner, come, With bread of ginger brown thy thumb, For this is Drury's gay day: Roll, roll thy hoop, and twirl thy tops, And buy, to glad thy smiling chops, Crisp parliament with lollypops, And fingers of the Lady. Didst mark, how toiled the busy train, From morn to eve, till Drury Lane Leaped like a roebuck from the plain? Ropes rose and sunk, and rose again, And nimble workmen trod; To realize bold Wyatt's plan Rushed may a howling Irishman; Loud clattered many a porter-can, And many a ragamuffin clan, With trowel and with hod. Drury revives! her rounded pate Is blue, is heavenly blue with slate; She "wings the midway air," elate, As magpie, crow, or chough; White paint her modish visage smears, Yellow and pointed are her ears. No pendant portico appears Dangling beneath, for Whitbread's shears Have cut the bauble off. Yes, she exalts her stately head; And, but that solid bulk outspread, Opposed you on your onward tread, And posts and pillars warranted That all was true that Wyatt said, You might have deemed her walls so thick, Were not composed of stone or brick, But all a phantom, all a trick, Of brain disturbed and fancy-sick, So high she soars, so vast, so quick! DRURY'S DIRGE. [BY LAUBA MATILDA.--REJECTED ADDRESSES.] HORACE SMITH. "You praise our sires: but though they wrote with force, Their rhymes were vicious, and their diction coarse: We want their STRENGTH, agreed; but we atone For that and more, by SWEETNESS all our own"--GIFFORD. Balmy zephyrs, lightly flitting, Shade me with your azure wing; On Parnassus' summit sitting, Aid me, Clio, while I sing. Softly slept the dome of Drury O'er the empyreal crest, When Alecto's sister-fury Softly slumbering sunk to rest. Lo! from Lemnos, limping lamely, Lags the lowly Lord of Fire, Oytherea yielding tamely To the Cyclops dark and dire. Clouds of amber, dreams of gladness, Dulcet joys and sports of youth, Soon must yield to haughty sadness, Mercy holds the vail to Truth. See Erostratus the second Fires again Diana's fane; By the Fates from Orcus beckoned, Clouds envelop Drury Lane. Lurid smoke and frank suspicion Hand in hand reluctant dance: While the god fulfills his mission, Chivarly, resign thy lance. Hark! the engines blandly thunder, Fleecy clouds disheveled lie, And the firemen, mute with wonder, On the son of Saturn cry. See the bird of Ammon sailing, Perches on the engine's peak, And, the Eagle firemen hailing, Soothes them with its bickering beak. Juno saw, and mad with malice, Lost the prize that Paris gave; Jealousy's ensanguined chalice, Mantling pours the orient wave. Pan beheld Patrocles dying, Nox to Niobe was turned; From Busiris Bacchus flying, Saw his Semele inurned. Thus fell Drury's lofty glory, Leveled with the shuddering stones Mars, with tresses black and gory, Drinks the dew of pearly groans. Hark! what soft Aeolian numbers Gem the blushes of the morn! Break, Amphion, break your slumbers, Nature's ringlets deck the thorn. Ha! I hear the strain erratic Dimly glance from pole to pole; Raptures sweet, and dreams ecstatic Fire my everlasting soul. Where is Cupid's crimson motion? Billowy ecstasy of woe, Bear me straight, meandering ocean, Where the stagnant torrents flow. Blood in every vein is gushing, Vixen vengeance lulls my heart, See, the Gorgon gang is rushing! Never, never, let us part! WHAT IS LIFE BY "ONE OF THE FANCY." BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE And do you ask me, "What is LIFE?" And do you ask me, "What is pleasure?" My muse and I are not at strife, So listen, lady, to my measure:-- Listen amid thy graceful leisure, To what is LIFE, and what IS pleasure. 'Tis LIFE to see the first dawn stain With sallow light the window-pane: To dress--to wear a rough drab coat, With large pearl buttons all afloat Upon the waves of plush: to tie A kerchief of the King-cup dye (White spotted with a small bird's-eye) Around the neck, and from the nape Let fall an easy fan-like cape: To quit the house at morning's prime, At six or so--about the time When watchmen, conscious of the day Puff out their lantern's rush-light ray; Just when the silent streets are strewn With level shadows, and the moon Takes the day's wink and walks aside To nurse a nap till eventide. 'Tis LIFE to reach the livery stable, Secure the RIBBONS and the DAY-BILL, And mount a gig that had a spring Some summer's back: and then take wing Behind (in Mr. Hamlet's tongue) A jade whose "withers are unwrung;" Who stands erect, and yet forlorn, And from a HALF-PAY life of corn, Showing as many POINTS each way As Martial's Epigrammata, Yet who, when set a-going, goes Like one undestined to repose. 'Tis LIFE to revel down the road, And QUEER each o'erfraught chaise's load, To rave and rattle at the GATE, And shower upon the gatherer's pate Damns by the dozens, and such speeches As well betokens one's SLANG riches: To take of Deady's bright STARK NAKED A glass or so--'tis LIFE to take it! To see the Hurst with tents encampt on; Lurk around Lawrence's at Hampton; Join the FLASH crowd (the horse being led Into the yard, and clean'd and fed); Talk to Dav' Hudson, and Cy' Davis (The last a fighting rara avis), And, half in secret, scheme a plan For trying the hardy GAS-LIGHT-MAN. 'Tis LIFE to cross the laden ferry, With boon companions, wild and merry, And see the ring upon the Hurst With carts encircled--hear the burst At distance of the eager crowd. Oh, it is LIFE! to see a proud And dauntless man step, full of hopes, Up to the P. C. stakes and ropes, Throw in his hat, and with a spring, Get gallantly within the ring; Eye the wide crowd, and walk awhile, Taking all cheerings with a smile: To see him skip--his well-trained form, White, glowing, muscular, and warm, All beautiful in conscious power, Relaxed and quiet, till the hour; His glossy and transparent frame, In radiant plight to strive for fame! To look upon the clean shap'd limb In silk and flannel clothed trim; While round the waist the 'kerchief tied, Makes the flesh glow in richer pride. 'Tis more than LIFE, to watch him hold His hand forth, tremulous yet bold, Over his second's, and to clasp His rival's in a quiet grasp; To watch the noble attitude He takes--the crowd in breathless mood: And then to see, with adamant start, The muscles set, and the great heart Hurl a courageous splendid light Into the eye-and then-the FIGHT! FRAGMENTS. [BY A FREE-LOVER.] BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, 1823 They were not married by a muttering priest, With superstitious rites, and senseless words, Out-snuffled from an old worm-eaten book, In a dark corner (railed off like a sheep-pen) Of an old house, that fools do call a CHURCH! THEIR altar was the flowery lap of earth-- The starry empyrean their vast temple-- Their book each other's eyes--and Love himself Parson, and Clerk, and Father to the bride!-- Holy espousals! whereat wept with joy The spirit of the universe.--In sooth There was a sort of drizzling rain that day, For I remember (having left at home My parapluie, a name than UMBRELLA, Far more expressive) that I stood for shelter Under an entry not twelve paces off (It might be ten) from Sheriff Waithman's shop For half an hour or more, and there I mused (Mine eyes upon the running kennel fixed, That hurried as a het'rogenous mass To the common sewer, it's dark reservoir), I mused upon the running stream of LIFE! But that's not much to the purpose--I was telling Of these most pure espousals.--Innocent pair! Ye were not shackled by the vulgar chains About the yielding mind of credulous youth, Wound by the nurse and priest--YOUR energies, Your unsophisticated impulses, Taught ye to soar above their "settled rules Of Vice and Virtue." Fairest creature! He Whom the world called thy husband, was in truth Unworthy of thee.-A dull plodding wretch! With whose ignoble nature thy free spirit Held no communion.--'T was well done, fair creature! T' assert the independence of a mind Created-generated I would say-- Free as "that chartered libertine, the air." Joy to thy chosen partner! blest exchange! Work of mysterious sympathy I that drew Your kindred souls by * * * * * * * * * * There fled the noblest spirit--The most pure, Most sublimated essence that ere dwelt In earthly tabernacle. Gone thou art, Exhaled, dissolved, diffused, commingled now Into and with the all-absorbing frame Of Nature, the great mother. Ev'n in life, While still, pent-up in flesh, and skin, and bones, My thoughts and feelings like electric flame Shot through the solid mass, toward the source, And blended with the general elements, When thy young star o'er life's horizon hung Far from it's zenith yet low lagging clouds (Vapors of earth) obscured its heaven-born rays-- Dull joys of prejudice and superstition And vulgar decencies begirt thee round; And thou didst wear awhile th' unholy bonds Of "holy matrimony!" and didst vail Awhile thy lofty spirit to the cheat.-- But reason came-and firm philosophy, And mild philanthropy, and pointed out The shame it was-the crying, crushing shame, To curb within a little paltry pale The love that over all created things Should be diffusive as the atmosphere. Then did thy boundless tenderness expand Over all space--all animated things And things inanimate. Thou hadst a heart, A ready tear for all.--The dying whale, Stranded and gasping--ripped up for his blubber By Man the Tyrant.--The small sucking pig Slain for his riot.--The down-trampled flower Crushed by his cruel foot.--ALL, EACH, and ALL Shared in thy boundless sympathies, and then-- (SUBLIME perfection of perfected LOVE) Then didst thou spurn the whimp'ring wailing thing That dared to call THEE "husband," and to claim, As her just right, support and love from THEE-- Then didst thou * * * * * * * * * * * THE CONFESSION. BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE There's somewhat on my breast father, There's somewhat on my breast! The live-long day I sigh, father, At night I can not rest; I can not take my rest, father, Though I would fain do so, A weary weight oppresseth me-- The weary weight of woe! 'Tis not the lack of gold, father Nor lack of worldly gear; My lands are broad and fair to see, My friends are kind and dear; My kin are leal and true, father, They mourn to see my grief, But oh! 'tis not a kinsman's hand Can give my heart relief! 'Tis not that Janet's false, father, 'Tis not that she's unkind; Though busy flatterers swarm around, I know her constant mind. 'Tis not her coldness, father, That chills my laboring breast-- Its that confounded cucumber I've ate, and can't digest. THE MILLING-MATCH BETWEEN ENTELLUS AND DARES. TRANSLATED FROM THE FIFTH BOOK OF THE AENEID, BY ONE OF THE FANCY. THOMAS MOORE. With daddles [Footnote: Hands.] high upraised, and NOB held back, In awful prescience of the impending THWACK, Both KIDDIES [Footnote: Fellows, usually YOUNG fellows.] stood--and with prelusive SPAR, And light manoeuv'ring, kindled up the war! The One, in bloom of youth--a LIGHT-WEIGHT BLADE-- The Other, vast, gigantic, as if made, Express, by Nature for the hammering trade; But aged, slow, with stiff limbs, tottering much, And lungs, that lack'd the BELLOWS-MENDER'S touch. Yet, sprightly TO THE SCRATCH both BUFFERS came, While RIBBERS rung from each resounding frame, And divers DIGS, and many a ponderous PELT, Were on their broad BREAD-BASKETS heard and felt With roving aim, but aim that rarely miss'd, Round LUGS and OGLES [Footnote: Ears and Eyes.] flew the frequent fist; While showers of FACERS told so deadly well, That the crush'd jaw-bones crackled as they fell! But firmly stood ENTELLUS--and still bright, Though bent by age, with all THE FANCY'S light, STOPP'D with a skill, and RALLIED with a fire The Immortal FANCY could alone inspire! While DARES, SHIFTING round, with looks of thought, An opening to the COVE'S huge carcase sought (Like General PRESTON, in that awful hour, When on ONE leg he hopp'd to--take the Tower!) And here, and there, explored with active FIN [Footnote: Arm.] And skillful FEINT, some guardless pass to win, And prove a BORING guest when once LET IN. And now ENTELLUS, with an eye that plann'd PUNISHING deeds, high raised his heavy hand, But, ere the SLEDGE came down, young DARES spied His shadow o'er his brow, and slipp'd aside-- So nimbly slipp'd, that the vain NOBBER pass'd Through empty air; and He, so high, so vast, Who dealt the stroke, came thundering to the ground Not B--CK--GH--M himself, with bulkier sound, Uprooted from the field of Whiggish glories, Fell SOUSE, of late, among the astonish'd Tories! Instant the RING was broke, and shouts and yells From Trojan FLASHMEN and Sicilian SWELLS Fill'd the wide heaven--while, touch'd with grief to see His PAL, [Footnote: Friend] well-known through many a LARK and SPREE, [Footnote: Party of pleasure and frolic] Thus RUMLY FLOOR'D, the kind ACESTES ran, And pitying raised from earth the GAME old man, Uncow'd, undamaged to the SPORT he came, His limbs all muscle, and his soul all flame. The memory of his MILLING glories past, The shame that aught but death should see him GRASS'D, All fired the veteran's PLUCK--with fury flush'd, Full on his light-limb'd CUSTOMER he rush'd-- And HAMMERING right and left, with ponderous swing, RUFFIAN'D the reeling youngster round the RING-- Nor rest, nor pause, nor breathing-time was given, But, rapid as the rattling hail from heaven Beats on the house-top, showers of RANDALL'S SHOT [Footnote: A favorite blow of THE NONPARIEL'S, so called.] Around the Trojan's LUGS flew peppering hot! Till now AENEAS, fill'd with anxious dread, Rush'd in between them, and, with words well-bred Preserved alike the peace and DARES' head, BOTH which the veteran much inclined to BREAK-- Then kindly thus the PUNISH'D youth bespake: Poor JOHNNY RAW! what madness could impel So RUM a FLAT to face so PRIME a SWELL? Sees't thou not, boy, THE FANCY, heavenly Maid, Herself descends to this great HAMMERER'S aid, And, singling HIM from all her FLASH adorers, Shines in his HITS, and thunders in his FLOORERS? Then, yield thee, youth--nor such a SPOONEY be, To think mere man can MILL a Deity!" Thus spoke the Chief--and now, the SCRIMAGE o'er, His faithful PALS the DONE-UP DARES bore Back to his home, with tottering GAMS, sunk heart, And MUNS and NODDLE PINK'D in every part. While from his GOB the guggling CLARET gush'd, And lots of GRINDERS, from their sockets crush'd, Forth with the crimson tide in rattling fragments rush'd! NOT A SOUS HAD HE GOT. [PARODY ON WOLFE'S "BUKIAL or SIB JOHN MOORE."] R. HARRIS BARHAM Not a SOUS had he got--not a guinea or note, And he looked confoundedly flurried, As he bolted away without paying his shot, And the Landlady after him hurried. We saw him again at dead of night, When home from the Club returning; We twigg'd the Doctor beneath the light Of the gas-lamp brilliantly burning. All bare, and exposed to the midnight dews, Reclined in the gutter we found him; And he look'd like a gentleman taking a snooze, With his MARSHALL cloak around him. "The Doctor's as drunk as the d----," we said, And we managed a shutter to borrow; We raised him, and sigh'd at the thought that his head Whould "consumedly ache" on the morrow. We bore him home, and we put him to bed, And we told his wife and his daughter To give him, next morning, a couple of red Herrings, with soda-water.-- Loudly they talk'd of his money that's gone, And his Lady began to upbraid him; But little he reck'd, so they let him snore on 'Neath the counterpane just as we laid him. We tuck'd him in, and had hardly done When, beneath the window calling, We heard the rough voice of a son of a gun Of a watchman "One o'clock!" bawling. Slowly and sadly we all walk'd down From his room in the uppermost story; A rushlight was placed on the cold hearth-stone, And we left him alone in his glory!! RAISING THE DEVIL. A LEGEND OF CORNELIUS AGRIPPA. R. HARRIS BARHAM. "And hast thou nerve enough?" he said, That gray Old Man, above whose head Unnumbered years have roll'd-- "And hast thou nerve to view," he cried, "The incarnate Fiend that Heaven defied!-- -- Art thou indeed so bold? "Say, canst Thou, with unshrinking gaze, Sustain, rash youth, the withering blaze Of that unearthly eye, That blasts where'er it lights--the breath That, like the Simoom, scatters death On all that yet CAN die! --"Darest thou confront that fearful form, That rides the whirlwind, and the storm, In wild unholy revel!-- The terrors of that blasted brow, Archangel's once--though ruin'd now-- --Ay--dar'st thou face THE DEVIL?"-- "I dare!" the desperate Youth replied, And placed him by that Old Man's side, In fierce and frantic glee, Unblenched his cheek, and firm his limb --"No paltry juggling Fiend, but HIM! --THE DEVIL I-I fain would see!-- "In all his Gorgon terrors clad, His worst, his fellest shape!" the Lad Rejoined in reckless tone.-- --"Have then thy wish!" Agrippa said, And sigh'd and shook his hoary head, With many a bitter groan. He drew the mystic circle's bound, With skull and cross-bones fenc'd around; He traced full many a sigil there; He mutter'd many a backward pray'r, That sounded like a curse-- "He comes !"--he cried with wild grimace, "The fellest of Apollyon's race!" --Then in his startled pupil's face He dash'd-an EMPTY PURSE!! THE LONDON UNIVERSITY; [Footnote: see footnote to SONG by Canning.] OR, STINKOMALEE TRIUMPHANS. AN ODE TO BE PERFORMED ON THE OPENING OF THE NEW COLLEGE. R. HARRIS BARHAM. Whene'er with pitying eye I view Each operative sot in town, I smile to think how wondrous few Get drunk who study at the U- niversity we've Got in town-- niversity we've Got in town. What precious fools "The People" grew, Their alma mater not in town; The "useful classes" hardly knew Four was composed of two and two, Until they learned it at the U- niversity we've Got in town-- niversity we've Got in town. But now they're taught by JOSEPH HU- ME, by far the cleverest Scot in town, Their ITEMS and their TOTTLES too; Each may dissect his sister Sue, From his instructions at the U- niversity we've Got in town-- niversity we've Got in town. Then L----E comes, like him how few Can caper and can trot in town, In PIROUETTE or PAS DE DEUX-- He beats the famed MONSIEUR GIROUX, And teaches dancing at the U- niversity we've Got in town-- niversity we've Got in town. And GILCHRIST, see, that great Geentoo- Professor, has a lot in town Of Cockney boys who fag Hindoo, And LARN JEM-NASTICS at the U- niversity we've Got in town-- niversity we've Got in town. SAM R--- corpse of vampire hue, Comes from its grave to rot in town; For Bays the dead bard's crowned with Yew, And chants, the Pleasures of the U- niversity we've Got in town-- niversity we've Got in town. FRANK JEFFREY, of the Scotch Review,-- Whom MOORE had nearly shot in town,-- Now, with his pamphlet stitched in blue And yellow, d--ns the other two, But lauds the ever-glorious U- niversity we've Got in town-- niversity we've Got in town. Great BIRBECK, king of chips and glue, Who paper oft does blot in town, From the Mechanics' Institu- tion, comes to prate of wedge and screw, Lever and axle at the U- niversity we've Got in town-- niversity we've Got in town. LORD WAITHAM, who long since withdrew From Mansion House to cot in town; Adorn'd with chair of ormolu, All darkly grand, like Prince Lee Boo, Lectures on FREE TRADE at the U- niversity we've Got in town-- niversity we've Got in town. Fat F----, with his coat of blue, Who speeches makes so hot in town, In rhetoric, spells his lectures through, And sounds the V for W, The VAY THEY SPEAKS it at the U- niversity we've Got in town-- niversity we've Got in town. Then H----E comes, who late at New- gate Market, sweetest spot in town! Instead of one clerk popp'd in two, To make a place for his ne-phew, Seeking another at the U- niversity we've Got in town-- niversity we've Got in town. There's Captain ROSS, a traveler true, Has just presented, what in town- 's an article of great VIRTU (The telescope he once peep'd through, And 'spied an Esquimaux canoe On Croker Mountains), to the U- niversity we've Got in town-- niversity we've Got in town. Since MICHAEL gives no roast nor stew, Where Whigs might eat and plot in town, And swill his port, and mischief brew-- Poor CREEVY sips his water gru- el as the beadle of the U- niversity we've Got in town-- niversity we've Got in town, There's JERRY BENTHAM and his crew, Names ne'er to be forgot in town, In swarms like Banquo's long is-sue-- Turk, Papist, Infidel and Jew, Come trooping on to join the U- niversity we've Got in town-- niversity we've Got in town. To crown the whole with triple queue-- Another such there's not in town, Twitching his restless nose askew, Behold tremendous HARRY BROUGH- AM! Law Professor at the U- niversity we've Got in town-- niversity we've Got in town. GRAND CHORUS: Huzza! huzza! for HARRY BROUGH- AM! Law Professor at the U- niversity we've Got in town-- niversity we've Got in town. DOMESTIC POEMS. THOMAS HOOD. I. GOOD-NIGHT. The sun was slumbering in the west, my daily labors past; On Anna's soft and gentle breast my head reclined at last; The darkness closed around, so dear to fond congenial souls, And thus she murmured in my ear, "My love, we're out of coals. "That Mister Bond has called again, insisting on his rent; And all the Todds are coming up to see us, out of Kent; I quite forgot to tell you John has had a tipsy fall;-- I'm sure there's something going on with that vile Mary Hall! "Miss Bell has bought the sweetest milk, and I have bought the rest-- Of course, if we go out of town, Southend will be the best. I really think the Jones's house would be the thing for us; I think I told you Mrs. Pope had parted with her NUS-- "Cook, by the way, came up to-day, to bid me suit myself-- And, what'd ye think? the rats have gnawed the victuals on the shelf. And, Lord! there's such a letter come, inviting you to fight! Of course you, don't intend to go--God bless you, dear, goodnight!" II. A PARENTAL ODE TO MY SON, AGED THREE YEARS AND FIVE MONTHS. Thou happy, happy elf! (But stop--first let me kiss away that tear)-- Thou tiny image of myself! (My love, he's poking peas into his ear!) Thou merry, laughing sprite! With spirits feather-light, Untouched by sorrow, and unsoiled by sin-- (Good heavens! the child is swallowing a pin!) Thou little tricksy Puck! With antic toys so funnily bestuck, Light as the singing bird that wings the air-- (The door! the door! he'll tumble down the stair!) Thou darling of thy sire! (Why, Jane, he'll set his pinafore afire!) Thou imp of mirth and joy! In Love's dear chain so strong and bright a link, Thou idol of thy parents--(Drat the boy! There goes my ink!) Thou cherub--but of earth; Fit playfellow for Fays, by moonlight pale, In harmless sport and mirth, (That dog will bite him if he pulls its tail!) Thou human humming-bee, extracting honey From every blossom in the world that blows, Singing in youth's elysium ever sunny, (Another tumb!--that's his precious nose!) Thy father's pride and hope! (He'll break the mirror with that skipping-rope!) With pure heart newly stamped from Nature's mint-- (Where did he learn that squint?) Thou young domestic dove! (He'll have that jug off, with another shove!) Dear nursling of the Hymeneal nest! (Are those torn clothes his best?) Little epitome of man! (He'll climb upon the table, that's his plan!) Touched with the beauteous tints of dawning life-- (He's got a knife!) Thou enviable being! No storms, no clouds, in thy blue sky foreseeing, Play on, play on, My elfin John! Toss the light ball--bestride the stick-- (I knew so many cakes would make him sick!) With fancies, buoyant as the thistle-down, Prompting the face grotesque, and antic brisk, With many a lamb-like frisk, (He's got the scissors, snipping at your gown!) Thou pretty opening rose! (Go to your mother, child, and wipe your nose!) Balmy and breathing music like the South, (He really brings my heart into my mouth!)Fresh as the morn, and brilliant as its star-- (I wish that window had an iron bar!) Bold as the hawk, yet gentle as the dove-- (I'll tell you what, my love, I can not write, unless he's sent above!) III. A SERENADE. "LULLABY, O, lullaby!" Thus I heard a father cry, "Lullaby, O, lullaby! The brat will never shut an eye; Hither come, some power divine! Close his lids, or open mine!" "Lullaby, O, lullaby! What the devil makes him cry? Lullaby, O, lullaby! Still he stares--I wonder why, Why are not the sons of earth Blind, like puppies, from their birth?" "Lullaby, O, lullaby!" Thus I heard the father cry; "Lullaby, O, lullaby! Mary, you must come and try!-- Hush, O, hush, for mercy's sake-- The more I sing, the more you wake!" "Lullaby, O, lullaby! Fie, you little creature, fie! Lullaby, O, lullaby! Is no poppy-syrup nigh? Give him some, or give him all, I am nodding to his fall!" "Lullaby, O, lullaby! Two such nights and I shall die! Lullaby, O, lullaby! He'll be bruised, and so shall I-- How can I from bed-posts keep, When I'm walking in my sleep!" "Lullaby, O, lullaby! Sleep his very looks deny-- Lullaby, O, lullaby! Nature soon will stupefy-- My nerves relax--my eyes grow dim-- Who's that fallen--me or him?" ODE TO PERRY, THE INVENTOR OF THE STEEL PEN. THOMAS HOOD "In this good work, Penn appears the greatest, usefullest of God's instruments. Firm and unbending when the exigency requires it--soft and yielding when rigid inflexibility is not a desideratum--fluent and flowing, at need, for eloquent rapidity--slow and retentive in cases of deliberation--never spluttering or by amplification going wide of the mark--never splitting, if it can be helped, with any one, but ready to wear itself out rather in their service--all things as it were with all men--ready to embrace the hand of Jew, Christian, or Mohammedan--heavy with the German, light with the Italian, oblique with the English, upright with the Roman, backward in coming forward with the Hebrew--in short, for flexibility, amiability, constitutional durability, general ability, and universal utility, It would be hard to find a parallel to the great Penn." --Perry's CHARACTERISATION OF A SETTLER. O! Patent Pen-inventing Perrian Perry! Friend of the goose and gander, That now unplucked of their quill-feathers wander, Cackling, and gabbling, dabbling, making merry, About the happy fen, Untroubled for one penny-worth of pen, For which they chant thy praise all Britain through, From Goose-Green unto Gander-Cleugh!-- Friend to all Author-kind-- Whether of Poet or of Proser-- Thou art composer unto the composer Of pens--yea, patent vehicles for Mind To carry it on jaunts, or more extensive PERRYgrinations through the realms of thought; Each plying from the Comic to the Pensive, An Omnibus of intellectual sort; Modern improvements in their course we feel, And while to iron railroads heavy wares, Dry goods and human bodies, pay their fares, Mind flies on steel To Penrith, Penrhyn, even to Penzance; Nay, penetrates, perchance, To Pennsylvania, or, without rash vaunts, To where the Penguin haunts! In times bygone, when each man cut his quill, With little Perryan skill, What horrid, awkward, bungling tools of trade Appeared the writing implements home-made! What Pens were sliced, hewed, hacked, and haggled out, Slit or unslit, with many a various snout, Aquiline, Roman, crooked, square, and snubby. Stumpy and stubby; Some capable of ladye-billets neat, Some only fit for ledger-keeping clerk, And some to grub down Peter Stubbs his mark, Or smudge through some illegible receipt; Others in florid caligraphic plans, Equal to ships, and wiggy heads, and swans! To try in any common inkstands, then, With all their miscellaneous stocks, To find a decent pen, Was like a dip into a lucky box: You drew--and got one very curly, And split like endive in some hurly-burly; The next unslit, and square at end, a spade, The third, incipient pop-gun, not yet made; The fourth a broom; the fifth of no avail, Turned upward, like a rabbit's tail; And last, not least, by way of a relief, A stump that Master Richard, James or John, Had tried his candle-cookery upon, Making "roast-beef!" Not so thy Perryan Pens! True to their M's and N's, They do not with a whizzing zig-zag split, Straddle, turn up their noses, sulk, and spit, Or drop large dots, Hugh full-stop blots, Where even semicolons were unfit. They will not frizzle up, or, broom-like, drudge In sable sludge-- Nay, bought at proper "Patent Perryan" shops, They write good grammar, sense, and mind their stops Compose both prose and verse, the sad and merry-- For when the editor, whose pains compile The grown-up Annual, or the Juvenile, Vaunteth his articles, not women's, men's, But lays "by the most celebrated Pens," What means he but thy Patent Pens, my Perry? Pleasant they are to feel! So firm! so flexible! composed of steel So finely tempered--fit for tenderest Miss To give her passion breath, Or kings to sign the warrant stern of death-- But their supremest merit still is this, Write with them all your days, Tragedy, Comedy, all kinds of plays-- (No dramatist should ever be without 'em)-- And, just conceive the bliss-- There is so little of the goose about 'em, One's safe from any hiss! Ah! who can paint that first great awful night, Big with a blessing or a blight, When the poor dramatist, all fume and fret, Fuss, fidget, fancy, fever, funking, fright, Ferment, fault-fearing, faintness--more f's yet: Flushed, frigid, flurried, flinching, fitful, flat, Add famished, fuddled, and fatigued, to that, Funeral, fate-foreboding--sits in doubt, Or rather doubt with hope, a wretched marriage To see his play upon the stage come out; No stage to him! it is Thalia's carriage, And he is sitting on the spikes behind it, Striving to look as if he didn't mind it! Witness how Beazley vents upon his hat His nervousness, meanwhile his fate is dealt He kneads, molds, pummels it, and sits it flat, Squeezes and twists it up, until the felt, That went a beaver in, comes out a rat! Miss Mitford had mis-givings, and in fright, Upon Rienzi's night, Gnawed up one long kid glove, and all her bag, Quite to a rag. Knowles has confessed he trembled as for life, Afraid of his own "Wife;" Poole told me that he felt a monstrous pail Of water backing him, all down his spine-- "The ice-brook's temper"--pleasant to the chine! For fear that Simpson and his Co. should fail. Did Lord Glengall not frame a mental prayer, Wishing devoutly he was Lord knows where? Nay, did not Jerrold, in enormous drouth, While doubtful of Nell Gwynne's eventful luck, Squeeze out and suck More oranges with his one fevered mouth Than Nelly had to hawk from north to south? Yea, Buckstone, changing color like a mullet, Refused, on an occasion, once, twice, thrice, From his best friend, an ice, Lest it should hiss in his own red-hot gullet. Doth punning Peake not sit upon the points Of his own jokes, and shake in all his joints, During their trial? 'Tis past denial. And does not Pocock, feeling, like a peacock, All eyes upon him, turn to very meacock? And does not Planche, tremulous and blank, Meanwhile his personages tread the boards, Seem goaded by sharp swords, And called upon himself to "walk the plank?" As for the Dances, Charles and George to boot, What have they more Of ease and rest, for sole of either foot, Than bear that capers on a hotted floor! Thus pending--does not Matthews, at sad shift For voice, croak like a frog in waters fenny?-- Serle seem upon the surly seas adrift?-- And Kenny think he's going to Kilkenny?-- Haynes Bayly feel Old ditto, with the note Of Cotton in his ear, a mortal grapple About his arms, and Adam's apple Big as a fine Dutch codling in his throat? Did Rodwell, on his chimney-piece, desire Or not to take a jump into the fire? Did Wade feel as composed as music can? And was not Bernard his own Nervous Man? Lastly, don't Farley, a bewildered elf, Quake at the Pantomime he loves to cater, And ere its changes ring transform himself? A frightful mug of human delf? A spirit-bottle--empty of "the cratur"? A leaden-platter ready for the shelf? A thunderstruck dumb-waiter? To clench the fact, Myself, once guilty of one small rash act, Committed at the Surrey, Quite in a hurry, Felt all this flurry, Corporal worry, And spiritual scurry, Dram-devil--attic curry! All going well, From prompter's bell, Until befell A hissing at some dull imperfect dunce-- There's no denying I felt in all four elements at once! My head was swimming, while my arms were flying! My legs for running--all the rest was frying! Thrice welcome, then, for this peculiar use, Thy pens so innocent of goose! For this shall dramatists, when they make merry, Discarding port and sherry, Drink--"Perry!" Perry, whose fame, pennated, is let loose To distant lands, Perry, admitted on all hands, Text, running, German, Roman, For Patent Perryans approached by no man! And when, ah me! far distant be the hour! Pluto shall call thee to his gloomy bower, Many shall be thy pensive mourners, many! And Penury itself shall club its penny To raise thy monument in lofty place, Higher than York's or any son of War; While time all meaner effigies shall bury, On due pentagonal base Shall stand the Parian, Perryan, periwigged Perry, Perched on the proudest peak of Penman Mawr! A THEATRICAL CURIOSITY. CRUIKSHANK'S OMNIBUS. Once in a barn theatric, deep in Kent, A famed tragedian--one of tuneful tongue-- Appeared for that night only--'t was Charles Young. As Rolla he. And as that Innocent, The Child of hapless Cora, on there went A smiling, fair-hair'd girl. She scarcely flung A shadow, as she walk'd the lamps among-- So light she seem'd, and so intelligent! That child would Rolla bear to Cora's lap: Snatching the creature by her tiny gown, He plants her on his shoulder,--All, all clap! While all with praise the Infant Wonder crown, She lisps in Rolla's ear,--"LOOK OUT, OLD CHAP, OR ELSE I'M BLOW'D IF YOU DON'T HAVE ME DOWN!" SIDDONS AND HER MAID. W. S. LANDOR SIDDONS. I leave, and unreluctant, the repast; The herb of China is its crown at last. Maiden! hast thou a thimble in thy gear? MAID. Yes, missus, yes. SIDDONS. Then, maiden, place it here, With penetrated, penetrating eyes. MAID. Mine? missus! are they? SIDDONS. Child! thou art unwise, Of needles', not of woman's eyes, I spake. MAID. O dear me! missus, what a sad mistake! SIDDONS. Now canst thou tell me what was that which led Athenian Theseus into labyrinth dread? MAID. He never told me: I can't say, not I, Unless, mayhap, 't was curiosity. SIDDENS. Fond maiden! MAID. No, upon my conscience, madam! If I was fond of 'em I might have had 'em. SIDDENS. Avoid! avaunt! beshrew me! 'tis in vain That Shakspeare's language germinates again. THE SECRET SORROW. PUNCH Oh! let me from the festive board To thee, my mother, flee; And be my secret sorrow shared By thee--by only thee! In vain they spread the glitt'ring store, The rich repast, in vain; Let others seek enjoyment there, To me 'tis only pain. There WAS a word of kind advice-- A whisper soft and low, But oh! that ONE resistless smile! Alas! why was it so? No blame, no blame, my mother dear. Do I impute to YOU, But since I ate that currant tart I don't know what to do! SONG FOR PUNCH DRINKERS. AFTER SCHILLER. PUNCH. Four be the elements, Here we assemble 'em, Each of man's world And existence an emblem. Press from the lemon The slow flowing juices-- Bitter is life In its lessons and uses. Bruise the fair sugar lumps-- Nature intended Her sweet and severe To be everywhere blended. Pour the still water-- Unwarning by sound, Eternity's ocean Is hemming us round. Mingle the spirit, The life of the bowl-- Man is an earth-clod Unwarmed by a soul! Drink of the stream Ere its potency goes!-- No bath is refreshing Except while it glows! THE SONG OF THE HUMBUGGED HUSBAND. PUNCH. She's not what fancy painted her-- I'm sadly taken in: If some one else had won her, I Should not have cared a pin. I thought that she was mild and good As maiden e'er could be; I wonder how she ever could Have so much humbugg'd me. They cluster round and shake my hand-- They tell me I am blest: My case they do not understand-- I think that I know best. They say she's fairest of the fair-- They drive me mad and madder. What do they mean by it? I swear I only wish they had her. 'Tis true that she has lovely locks, That on her shoulders fall; What would they say to see the box In which she keeps them all? Her taper fingers, it is true, 'Twere difficult to match: What would they say if they but knew How terribly they scratch? TEMPERANCE SONG. PUNCH. AIR--FRIEND OF MY SOUL. Friend of my soul, this water sip, Its strength you need not fear; Tis not so luscious as egg-flip, Nor half so strong as beer. Like Jenkins when he writes, It can not touch the mind; Unlike what he indites, No nausea leaves behind. LINES ADDRESSED TO ** **** ***** ON THE 29TH Of SEPTEMBER WHEN WE PARTED FOR THE LAST TIME. PUNCH. I have watch'd thee with rapture, and dwelt on thy charms, As link'd in Love's fetters we wander'd each day; And each night I have sought a new life in thy arms, And sigh'd that our union could last not for aye. But thy life now depends on a frail silken thread, Which I even by kindness may cruelly sever, And I look to the moment of parting with dread, For I feel that in parting I lose thee forever. Sole being that cherish'd my poor troubled heart! Thou know'st all its secrets--each joy and each grief; And in sharing them all thou did'st ever impart To its sorrows a gentle and soothing relief. The last of a long and affectionate race, As thy days are declining I love thee the more, For I feel that thy loss I can never replace-- That thy death will but leave me to weep and deplore. Unchanged, thou shalt live in the mem'ry of years, I can not--I will not--forget what thou wert! While the thoughts of thy love as they call forth my tears, In fancy will wash thee once more--MY LAST SHIRT. GRUB-STREET. MADNESS. PUNCH. There is a madness of the heart, not head-- That in some bosoms wages endless war; There is a throe when other pangs are dead, That shakes the system to its utmost core. There is a tear more scalding than the brine That streams from out the fountain of the eye, And like the lava leaves a scorched line, As in its fiery course it rusheth by. What is that madness? Is it envy, hate, Or jealousy more cruel than the grave, With all the attendants that upon it wait And make the victim now despair, now rave? It is when hunger, clam'ring for relief, Hears a shrill voice exclaim, "That graceless sinner, The cook, has been, and gone, and burnt the beef, And spilt the tart--in short, she's dish'd the dinner!" THE BANDIT'S FATE. PUNCH. He wore a brace of pistols the night when first we met, His deep-lined brow was frowning beneath his wig of jet, His footsteps had the moodiness, his voice the hollow tone, Of a bandit-chief, who feels remorse, and tears his hair alone-- I saw him but at half-price, yet methinks I see him now, In the tableau of the last act, with the blood upon his brow. A private bandit's belt and boots, when next we met, he wore His salary, he told me, was lower than before; And standing at the O. P. wing he strove, and not in vain, To borrow half a sovereign, which he never paid. I saw it but a moment--and I wish I saw it now-- As he buttoned up his pocket with a condescending bow. And once again we met; but no bandit chief was there; His rouge was off, and gone that head of once luxuriant hair He lodges in a two-pair back, and at the public near, He can not liquidate his "chalk," or wipe away his beer. I saw him sad and seedy, yet methinks I see him now, In the tableau of the last act, with the blood upon his brow. LINES WRITTEN AFTER A BATTLE. BY AN ASSISTANT SURGEON OF THE NINETEENTH NANKEENS. PUNCH. Stiff are the warrior's muscles, Congeal'd, alas! his chyle; No more in hostile tussles Will he excite his bile. Dry is the epidermis, A vein no longer bleeds-- And the communis vermis Upon the warrior feeds. Compress'd, alas! the thorax, That throbbed with joy or pain; Not e'en a dose of borax Could make it throb again. Dried up the warrior's throat is, All shatter'd too, his head: Still is the epiglottis-- The warrior is dead. THE PHRENOLOGIST TO HIS MISTRESS. PUNCH. Though largely developed's my organ of order, And though I possess my destructiveness small, On suicide, dearest, you'll force me to border, If thus you are deaf to my vehement call For thee veneration is daily extending, On a head that for want of it once was quite flat; If thus with my passion I find you contending, My organs will swell till they've knocked off my hat I know, of perceptions, I've none of the clearest; For while I believe that by thee I'm beloved, I'm told at my passion thou secretly sneerest; But oh! may the truth unto me never be proved! I'll fly to Deville, and a cast of my forehead I'll send unto thee;--then upon thee I'll call. Rejection--alas! to the lover how horrid-- When 'tis passion that SPURS-HIM, 'tis bitter as GALL. THE CHEMIST TO HIS LOVE. PUNCH. I love thee, Mary, and thou lovest me-- Our mutual flame is like th' affinity That doth exist between two simple bodies: I am Potassium to thine Oxygen. 'Tis little that the holy marriage vow Shall shortly make us one. That unity Is, after all, but metaphysical O, would that I, my Mary, were an acid, A living acid; thou an alkali Endow'd with human sense, that, brought together, We both might coalesce into one salt, One homogeneous crystal. Oh! that thou Wert Carbon, and myself were Hydrogen; We would unite to form olefiant gas, Or common coal, or naphtha--would to heaven That I were Phosphorus, and thou wert Lime! And we of Lime composed a Phosphuret. I'd be content to be Sulphuric Acid, So that thou might be Soda. In that case We should be Glauber's Salt. Wert thou Magnesia Instead we'd form that's named from Epsom. Couldst thou Potassa be, I Aqua-fortis, Our happy union should that compound form, Nitrate of Potash--otherwise Saltpeter. And thus our several natures sweetly blent, We'd live and love together, until death Should decompose the fleshly TERTIUM QUID, Leaving our souls to all eternity Amalgamated. Sweet, thy name is Briggs And mine is Johnson. Wherefore should not we Agree to form a Johnsonate of Briggs? We will. The day, the happy day, is nigh, When Johnson shall with beauteous Briggs combine. A BALLAD OF BEDLAM. PUNCH. O, lady wake!--the azure moon Is rippling in the verdant skies, The owl is warbling his soft tune, Awaiting but thy snowy eyes. The joys of future years are past, To-morrow's hopes have fled away; Still let us love, and e'en at last, We shall be happy yesterday. The early beam of rosy night Drives off the ebon morn afar, While through the murmur of the light The huntsman winds his mad guitar. Then, lady, wake! my brigantine Pants, neighs, and prances to be free; Till the creation I am thine, To some rich desert fly with me. STANZAS TO AN EGG. [BY A SPOON.] PUNCH. Pledge of a feather'd pair's affection, Kidnapped in thy downy nest, Soon for my breakfast--sad reflection!-- Must thou in yon pot be drest. What are the feelings of thy mother? Poor bereaved, unhappy hen! Though she may lay, perchance, another, Thee she ne'er will see again. Yet do not mourn. Although above thee Never more shall parent brood. Know, dainty darling! that I love thee Dearly as thy mother could. A FRAGMENT. PUNCH. His eye was stern and wild,--his cheek was pale and cold as clay; Upon his tightened lip a smile of fearful meaning lay; He mused awhile--but not in doubt--no trace of doubt was there; It was the steady solemn pause of resolute despair. Once more he look'd upon the scroll--once more its words he read-- Then calmly, with unflinching hand, its folds before him spread. I saw him bare his throat, and seize the blue cold-gleaming steel, And grimly try the tempered edge he was so soon to feel! A sickness crept upon my heart, and dizzy swam my head,-- I could not stir--I could not cry--I felt benumb'd and dead; Black icy horrors struck me dumb, and froze my senses o'er; I closed my eyes in utter fear, and strove to think no more. * * * * * * * Again I looked,--a fearful change across his face had pass'd-- He seem'd to rave,--on cheek and lip a flaky foam was cast; He raised on high the glittering blade--then first I found a tongue-- "Hold, madman! stay thy frantic deed!" I cried, and forth I sprung; He heard me, but he heeded not; one glance around he gave; And ere I could arrest his hand, he had begun to SHAVE! EATING SONG. PUNCH. Oh! carve me yet another slice, O help me to more gravy still, There's naught so sure as something nice To conquer care, or grief to kill. I always loved a bit of beef, When Youth and Bliss and Hope were mine; And now it gives my heart relief In sorrow's darksome hour--to dine! THE SICK CHILD. [BY THE HONOBABLE WILHELMINA SKEGGS.] PUNCH. A weakness seizes on my mind--I would more pudding take; But all in vain--I feel--I feel--my little head will ache. Oh! that I might alone be left, to rest where now I am, And finish with a piece of bread that pot of currant jam. I gaze upon the cake with tears, and wildly I deplore That I must take a powder if I touch a morsel more, Or oil of castor, smoothly bland, will offer'd be to me, In wave pellucid, floating on a cup of milkless tea. It may be so--I can not tell--I yet may do without; They need not know, when left alone, what I have been about. I long to eat that potted beef--to taste that apple-pie; I long--I long to eat some more, but have not strength to try. I gasp for breath, and now I know I've eaten far too much; Not one more crumb of all the feast before me can I touch. Susan, oh! Susan, ring the bell, and call for mother, dear, My brain swims round--I feel it all--mother, your child is queer! THE IMAGINATIVE CRISIS. PUNCH. Oh, solitude! thou wonder-working fay, Come nurse my feeble fancy in your arms, Though I, and thee, and fancy town-pent lay, Come, call around, a world of country charms. Let all this room, these walls dissolve away, And bring me Surrey's fields to take their place: This floor be grass, and draughts as breezes play; Yon curtains trees, to wave in summer's face; My ceiling, sky; my water-jug a stream; My bed, a bank, on which to muse and dream. The spell is wrought: imagination swells My sleeping-room to hills, and woods, and dells! I walk abroad, for naught my footsteps hinder, And fling my arms. Oh! mi! I've broke the WINDER! LINES TO BESSY. [BY A STUDENT AT LAW.] PUNCH. My head is like a title-deed, Or abstract of the same: Wherein, my Bessy, thou may'st read Thine own long-cherish'd name. Against thee I my suit have brought, I am thy plaintiff lover, And for the heart that thou hast caught, An action lies--of trover. Alas, upon me every day The heaviest costs you levy: Oh, give me back my heart--but nay! I feel I can't replevy. I'll love thee with my latest breath, Alas, I can not YOU shun, Till the hard hand of SHERIFF death Takes me in execution. Say, BESSY dearest, if you will Accept me as a lover? Must true affection file a bill The secret to discover? Is it my income's small amount That leads to hesitation? Refer the question of account To CUPID'S arbitration. MONODY ON THE DEATH OF AN ONLY CLIENT. PUNCH. Oh! take away my wig and gown, Their sight is mockery now to me. I pace my chambers up and down, Reiterating "Where is HE?" Alas! wild echo, with a moan, Murmurs above my feeble head: In the wide world I am alone; Ha! ha! my only client's--dead! In vain the robing-room I seek; The very waiters scarcely bow, Their looks contemptuously speak, "He's lost his only client now." E'en the mild usher, who, of yore, Would hasten when his name I said, To hand in motions, comes no more, HE knows my only client's dead. Ne'er shall I, rising up in court, Open the pleadings of a suit: Ne'er shall the judges cut me short While moving them for a compute. No more with a consenting brief Shall I politely bow my head; Where shall I run to hide my grief? Alas! my only client's dead. Imagination's magic power Brings back, as clear, as clear as can be, The spot, the day, the very hour, When first I sign'd my maiden plea. In the Exchequer's hindmost row I sat, and some one touched my head, He tendered ten-and-six, but oh! That only client now is dead. In vain I try to sing--I'm hoarse: In vain I try to play the flute, A phantom seems to flit across-- It is the ghost of a compute. I try to read,--but all in vain; My chamber listlessly I tread; Be still, my heart; throb less, my brain; Ho! ho! my only client's dead. I think I hear a double knock: I did--alas! it is a dun. Tailor--avaunt! my sense you shock; He's dead! you know I had but one. What's this they thrust into my hand? A bill returned!--ten pounds for bread! My butcher's got a large demand; I'm mad! my only client's dead. LOVE ON THE OCEAN. PUNCH. They met, 't was in a storm On the deck of a steamer; She spoke in language warm, Like a sentimental dreamer. He spoke--at least he tried; His position he altered; Then turned his face aside, And his deep-ton'd voice falter'd. She gazed upon the wave, Sublime she declared it; But no reply he gave-- He could not have dared it. A breeze came from the south, Across the billows sweeping; His heart was in his mouth, And out he thought 't was leaping. "O, then, Steward!" he cried With the deepest emotion; Then totter'd to the side, And leant o'er the ocean. The world may think him cold, But they'll pardon him with quickness, When the fact they shall be told, That he suffer'd from sea-sickness. "OH! WILT THOU SEW MY BUTTONS ON?" [Footnote: "Wilt thou love me then as now" and "I will love thee then as now" were two popular songs in 1849] AND "YES, I WILL SEW THY BUTTONS ON!" PUNCH. [Just at present no lyrics have so eclatant a succes de societe as the charming companion ballads which, under the above pathetic titles, have made a fureur in the fashionable circles to which the fair composer, to whom they are attributed in the causeries of May Fair and Belgravia (The HON. MRS. N--T--N), belongs. The touching event to which they refer, is the romantic union of the HON. MISS BL--CHE DE F--TZ--FL--M to C--PT--N DE B--RS, of the C-DS--M G--DS, which took the beau monde by surprise last season. Previous to the eclaircissement, the gifted and lovely composer, at a ball given by the distinguished D--CH--SS of S--TH--D, accidentally overheard the searching question of the gallant but penniless Captain, and the passionate and self- devoted answer of his lovely and universally admired fiancee. She instantly rushed home and produced these pathetic and powerful ballads.] "Oh! wilt thou sew my buttons on, When gayer scenes recall That fairy face, that stately grace, To reign amid the ball? When Fulham's bowers their sweetest flowers For fete-champetres shall don, Oh! say, wilt thou, of queenly brow, Still sew my buttons on? "The noble, sweet, are at thy feet, To meet a freezing eye; The gay, the great, in camp and state, In vain around thee sigh. Thou turn'st away, in scorn of sway, To bless a younger son-- But when we live in lodgings, say, Wilt sew his buttons on?" "Yes I will sew thy buttons on, Though all look dark and drear; And scant, they say, lieutenant's pay, Two hundred pounds a year. Let HOW'LL and JAMES tempt wealthier dames, Of gauds and gems I'll none; Nor ask to roam, but sit at home, And sew thy buttons on! "When ladies blush 'neath lusters' flush, And fast the waltzers fly, Though tame at tea I bide with thee, No tear shall dim my eye. When summer's close brings Chiswick shows-- When all from town have gone, I'll sit me down, nor pout nor frown, But sew thy buttons on!" THE PAID BILL A BALLAD OF DOMESTIC ECONOMY. PUNCH O fling not this receipt away, Given by one who trusted thee; Mistakes will happen every day However honest folks may be. And sad it is, love, twice to pay; So cast not that receipt away! Ah, yes; if e'er, in future hours, When we this bill have all forgot, They send it in again--ye powers! And swear that we have paid it not-- How sweet to know, on such a day We've never cast receipts away! PARODY FOR A REFORMED PARLIAMENT. PUNCH. The quality of bribery is deep stained; It droppeth from a hand behind the door Into the voter's palm. It is twice dirty: It dirts both him that gives, and him that takes. 'Tis basest in the basest, and becomes Low blacklegs more than servants of the Crown. Those swindlers show the force of venal power, The attribute to trick and roguery, Whereby 'tis managed that a bad horse wins: But bribery is below their knavish "lay." It is the vilest of dishonest things; It was the attribute to Gatton's self; And other boroughs most like Gatton show When bribery smothers conscience. Therefore, you, Whose conscience takes the fee, consider this-- That in the cause of just reform, you all Should lose your franchise: we do dislike bribery; And that dislike doth cause us to object to The deeds of W. B. THE WAITER. PUNCH. I met the waiter in his prime At a magnificent hotel; His hair, untinged by care or time, Was oiled and brushed exceeding well. When "waiter," was the impatient cry, In accents growing stronger, He seem'd to murmur "By and by, Wait a little longer." Within a year we met once more, 'Twas in another part of town-- An humbler air the waiter wore, I fancied he was going down. Still, when I shouted "Waiter, bread!" He came out rather stronger, As if he'd say with toss of head, "Wait a little longer." Time takes us on through many a grace; Of "ups and downs" I've had my run, Passing full often through the shade And sometimes loitering in the sun. I and the waiter met again At a small inn at Ongar; Still, when I call'd, 't was almost vain-- He bade me wait the longer. Another time--years since the last-- At eating-house I sought relief From present care and troubles past, In a small plate of round of beef. "One beef, and taturs," was the cry, In tones than mine much stronger; 'T was the old waiter standing by, "Waiting a little longer." I've marked him now for many a year; I've seen his coat more rusty grow; His linen is less bright and clear, His polished pumps are on the go. Torn are, alas! his Berlin gloves-- They used to be much stronger, The waiter's whole appearance proves He can not wait much longer. I sometimes see the waiter still; 'Gainst want he wages feeble strife; He's at the bottom of the hill, Downward has been his path through life. Of "waiter, waiter," there are cries, Which louder grow and stronger; 'Tis to old Time he now replies, "Wait a little longer." [Illustration: Oliver Wendell Holmes] THE LAST APPENDIX TO "YANKEE DOODLE." PUNCH, 1851. YANKEE DOODLE sent to Town His goods for exhibition; Every body ran him down, And laugh'd at his position. They thought him all the world behind; A goney, muff, or noodle; Laugh on, good people--never mind-- Says quiet YANKEE DOODLE. Chorus.--YANKEE DOODLE, etc. YANKEE DOODLE had a craft, A rather tidy clipper, And he challenged, while they laughed, The Britishers to whip her. Their whole yacht-squadron she outsped, And that on their own water; Of all the lot she went a-head, And they came nowhere arter. Chorus.--YANKEE DOODLE, etc. O'er Panama there was a scheme Long talk'd of, to pursue a Short route--which many thought a dream-- By Lake Nicaragua. JOHN BULL discussed the plan on foot, With slow irresolution, While YANKEE DOODLE went and put It into execution. Chorus.--YANKEE DOODLE, etc. A steamer of the COLLINS line, A YANKEE DOODLE'S notion, Has also quickest cut the brine Across the Atlantic Ocean. And British agents, no ways slow Her merits to discover, Have been and bought her--just to tow The CUNARD packets over. CHORUS.--YANKEE DOODLE, etc. Your gunsmiths of their skill may crack, But that again don't mention: I guess that COLTS' revolvers whack Their very first invention. By YANKEE DOODLE, too, you're beat Downright in Agriculture, With his machine for reaping wheat, Chaw'd up as by a vulture. CHORUS.--YANKEE DOODLE, etc. You also fancied, in your pride, Which truly is tarnation, Them British locks of yourn defied The rogues of all creation; But CHUBBS' and BRAMAH'S HOBBS has pick'd, And you must now be view'd all As having been completely licked By glorious YANKEE DOODLE. CHORUS.--YANKEE DOODLE, etc. LINES FOR MUSIC. PUNCH. Come strike me the harp with its soul-stirring twang, The drum shall reply with its hollowest bang; Up, up in the air with the light tamborine, And let the dull ophecleide's groan intervene; For such is our life, lads, a chaos of sounds, Through which the gay traveler actively bounds. With the voice of the public the statesman must chime, And change the key-note, boys, exactly in time; The lawyer will coolly his client survey, As an instrument merely whereon he can play. Then harp, drum, and cymbals together shall clang, With a loud-tooral lira, right tooral, bang, bang! DRAMA FOR EVERY-DAY LIFE. LUDGATE HILL.--A MYSTERY. PUNCH. MR. MEADOWS . . . . A Country Gentleman. PRIGWELL . . . . . With a heavy heart and light fingers. BROWN . . . . . . . Friends of each other. JONES . . . . . . . Friends of each other. BLIND VOCALIST . . Who will attempt the song of "Hey the Bonny Breast Knot." The Scene represents Ludgate Hill in the middle of the day; Passengers, Omnibuses, etc., etc., passing to and fro. MEADOWS enters, musing. MEADOWS. I stand at last on Ludgate's famous hill; I've traversed Farringdon's frequented vale, I've quitted Holborn's heights--the slopes of Snow, Where Skinner's sinuous street, with tortuous track, Trepans the traveler toward the field of Smith; That field, whose scents burst on the offended nose With foulest flavor, while the thrice shocked ear, Thrice shocked with bellowing blasphemy and blows, Making one compound of Satanic sound, Is stunned, in physical and moral sense. But this is Ludgate Hill--here commerce thrives; Here, merchants carry trade to such a height That competition, bursting builders' bonds, Starts from the shop, and rushing through the roof, Unites the basement with the floors above; Till, like a giant, that outgrows his strength, The whole concern, struck with abrupt collapse, In one "tremendous failure" totters down!-- 'Tis food on which philosophy may fatten. [Turns round, musing, and looks into a shop window Enter PRIGWELL, talking to himself. PRIGWELL. I've made a sorry day of it thus far; I've fathomed fifty pockets, all in vain; I've spent in omnibuses half-a-crown; I've ransacked forty female reticules-- And nothing found--some business must be done. By Jove--I'd rather turn Lascar at once: Allow the walnut's devastating juice To track its inky course along my cheek, And stain my British brow with Indian brown. Or, failing that, I'd rather drape myself In cheap white cotton, or gay colored chintz-- Hang roung my ear the massive curtain-ring-- With strings of bold, effective glassy beads Circle my neck--and play the Brahmin Priest, To win the sympathy of passing crowds, And melt the silver in the stranger's purse. But ah! (SEEING MEADOWS) the land of promise looms before me The bulging skirts of that provincial coat Tell tales of well-filled pocket-books within. [Goes behind Meadows and empties his pockets This is indeed a prize! [Meadows turns suddenly round, Your pardon, sir; Is this, the way to Newgate? MEADOWS. Why, indeed I scarce can say; I'm but a stranger here, I should not like to misdirect you. PRIGWELL. Thank you, I'll find the way to Newgate by myself. [Exit. MEADOWS (STILL MUSING). This is indeed a great Metropolis. ENTER BLIND VOCALIST. BLIND VOCALIST (SINGING). Hey, the bonny! (KNOCKS UP AGAINST MEADOWS, WHO EXIT). Ho! the bonny--(A PASSENGER KNOCKS UP AGAINST THE BLIND VOCALIST ON THE OTHER SIDE). Hey, the bonny--(A BUTCHER'S TRAY STRIKES THE BLIND VOCALIST IN THE CHEST)--breast knot. AS HE CONTINUES SINGING "HEY, THE BONNY! HO, THE BONNY," THE BLIND VOCALIST ENCOUNTERS VARIOUS COLLISIONS, AND HIS BREATH BEING TAKEN AWAY BY A POKE OR A PUSH BETWEEN EACH BAR, HE IS CARRIED AWAY BY THE STREAM OF PASSENGERS. ENTER BROWN AND JONES. MEETING, THEY STOP AND SHAKE HANDS MOST CORDIALLY FOR SEVERAL MINUTES. BROWN. How are you, JONES? JONES. Why, BROWN, I do declare 'Tis quite an age since you and I have met. BROWN. I'm quite delighted. JONES. I'm extremely glad. [An awkward pause BROWN. Well! and how are you? JONES. Thank you, very well; And you, I hope are well? BROWN. Quite well, I thank you. [Another awkward pause. JONES. Oh!--by the way--have you seen THOMSON lately? BROWN. Not very lately. (After a pause, and as if struck with a happy idea). But I met with SMITH-- A week ago. JONES. Oh! did you though, indeed? And how was SMITH? Brown. Why, he seemed pretty well [Another long pause; at the end of which both appear as if they were going to speak to each other. JONES. I beg your pardon. SMITH. You were going to speak? JONES. Oh! nothing. I was only going to say-- Good morning. SMITH. Oh! and so was I. Good-day. [Both shake hands, and are going off in opposite directions, when Smith turns round. Jones turning round at the same time they both return and look at each other. JONES. I thought you wished to speak, by looking back. BROWN. Oh no. I thought the same. BOTH TOGETHER. Good-by! Good-by! [Exeunt finally; and the conversation and the curtain drop together. PROCLIVIOR. (A slight Variation on LONGFELLOW'S "EXCELSIOR.") PUNCH. The shades of night were falling fast, As tow'rd the Haymarket there pass'd A youth, whose look told in a trice That his taste chose the queer device-- PROCLIVIOR! His hat, a wide-awake; beneath He tapp'd a cane against his teeth; His eye was bloodshot, and there rung, Midst scraps of slang, in unknown tongue, PROCLIVIOR! In calm first-floors he saw the light Of circles cosy for the night; But far ahead the gas-lamps glow; He turn'd his head, and murmur'd "Slow," PROCLIVIOR! "Come early home," his Uncle said, "We all are early off to bed; The family blame you far and wide;" But loud that noisy youth replied-- PROCLIVIOR! "Stay," said his Aunt, "come home to sup, Early retire--get early up." A wink half quivered in his eye; He answered to the old dame's sigh-- PROCLIVIOR! "Mind how you meddle with that lamp! And mind the pavement, for it's damp!" Such was the Peeler's last good-night A faint voice stutter'd out "All right." PROCLIVIOR! At break of day, as far West-ward A cab roll'd o'er the highways hard, The early mover stopp'd to stare At the wild shouting of the fare-- PROCLIVIOR! And by the bailiff's faithful hound, At breakfast-time, a youth was found, Upon three chairs, with aspect nice, True to his young life's queer device, PROCLIVIOR! Thence, on a dull and muggy day, They bore him to the Bench away, And there for several months he lay, While friends speak gravely as they say-- PROCLIVIOR! JONES AT THE BARBER'S SHOP. PUNCH. SCENE.--A Barber's Shop. Barber's men engaged in cutting hair, making wigs, and other barberesque operations. Enter JONES, meeting OILY the barber. JONES. I wish my hair cut. OILY. Pray, sir, take a seat. OILY puts a chair for JONES, who sits. During the following dialogue OILY continues cutting JONES'S hair. OILY. We've had much wet, sir. JONES. Very much, indeed. OILY. And yet November's early days were fine. JONES. They were. OILY. I hoped fair weather might have lasted us Until the end. JONES. At one time--so did I. OILY. But we have had it very wet. JONES. We have. [A pause of some minutes. OILY. I know not, sir, who cut your hair last time; But this I say, sir, it was badly cut: No doubt 't was in the country. JONES. No! in town! OILY. Indeed! I should have fancied otherwise. JONES. 'Twas cut in town--and in this very room. OILY. Amazement!--but I now remember well. We had an awkward, new provincial hand, A fellow from the country. Sir, he did More damage to my business in a week Than all my skill can in a year repair. He must have cut your hair. JONES (looking at him). No--'twas yourself. OILY. Myself! Impossible! You must mistake. JONES. I don't mistake--'twas you that cut my hair. [A long pause, interrupted only by the clipping of the scissors. OILY. Your hair is very dry, sir. JONES. Oh! indeed. OILY. Our Vegetable Extract moistens it. JONES. I like it dry. OILY. But, sir, the hair when dry. Turns quickly gray. JONES. That color I prefer, OILY. But hair, when gray, will rapidly fall off, And baldness will ensue. JONES. I would be bald. OILY. Perhaps you mean to say you'd like a wig.-- We've wigs so natural they can't be told From real hair. JONES. Deception I detest. [Another pause ensues, during which OILY blows down JONES'S neck, and relieves him from the linen wrapper in which he has been enveloped during the process of hair-cutting. OILY. We've brushes, soaps, and scent, of every kind. JONES. I see you have. (Pays 6d.) I think you'll find that right. OILY. If there is nothing I can show you, sir, JONES. No: nothing. Yet--there may be something, too, That you may show me. OILY. Name it, sir. JONES. The door. [EXIT JONES. OILY (to his man). That's a rum customer at any rate. Had I cut him as short as he cut me, How little hair upon his head would be! But if kind friends will all our pains requite, We'll hope for better luck another night. [Shop-bell rings and curtain falls. THE SATED ONE. [IMPROMPTU AFTER CHRISTMAS DINNER.] PUNCH. It may not be--go maidens, go, Nor tempt me to the mistletoe; I once could dance beneath its bough, But must not, will not, can not, now! A weight--a load within I bear; It is not madness nor despair; But I require to be at rest, So that my burden may-digest! SAPPHICS OF THE CABSTAND [Footnote: See The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder] PUNCH. FRIEND OF SELF-GOVERNMENT. Seedy Cab-driver, whither art thou going? Sad is thy fate--reduced to law and order, Local self-government yielding to the gripe of Centralization. Victim of FITZROY! little think the M.P.s, Lording it o'er cab, 'bus, lodging-house, and grave-yard, Of the good times when every Anglo Saxon's House was his castle. Say, hapless sufferer, was it Mr. CHADWICK-- Underground foe to the British Constitution-- Or my LORD SHAFTESBURY, put up MR. FITZROY Thus to assail you? Was it the growth of Continental notions, Or was it the Metropolitan police-force Prompted this blow at Laissez-faire, that free and Easiest of doctrines? Have you not read Mr. TOULMIN SMITH'S great work on Centralization? If you haven't, buy it; Meanwhile I should be glad at once to hear your View on the subject. CAB-DRIVER. View on the subject? jiggered if I've got one; Only I wants no centrylisin', I don't-- Which I suppose it's a crusher standin' sentry Hover a cabstand. Whereby if we gives e'er a word o' cheek to Parties as rides, they pulls us up like winkin'-- And them there blessed beaks is down upon us Dead as an 'ammer! As for Mr. TOULMIN SMITH, can't say I knows him-- But as you talks so werry like a gem'man, Perhaps you're goin in 'ansome style to stand a Shillin' a mile, sir? FRIEND OF SELF--GOVERNMENT. I give a shilling? I will see thee hanged first-- Sixpence a mile--or drive me straight to Bow-street-- Idle, ill-mannered, dissipated, dirty, Insolent rascal! JUSTICE TO SCOTLAND. [Footnote: In this poem the Scottish words and phrases are all ludicrously misapplied] [AN UNPUBLISHED POEM BY BURNS.] COMMUNICATED BY THE EDINBURG SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CIVILIZATION IN ENGLAND PUNCH. O mickle yeuks the keckle doup, An' a' unsicker girns the graith, For wae and wae the crowdies loup O'er jouk an' hallan, braw an' baith. Where ance the coggie hirpled fair, And blithesome poortith toomed the loof There's nae a burnie giglet rare But blaws in ilka jinking coof. The routhie bield that gars the gear Is gone where glint the pawky een. And aye the stound is birkin lear Where sconnered yowies wheepen yestreen. The creeshie rax wi' skelpin' kaes Nae mair the howdie bicker whangs, Nor weanies in their wee bit claes Glour light as lammies wi' their sangs. Yet leeze me on my bonnie byke! My drappie aiblins blinks the noo, An' leesome luve has lapt the dyke Forgatherin' just a wee bit fou. And SCOTIA! while thy rantin' lunt Is mirk and moop with gowans fine, I'll stowlins pit my unco brunt, An' cleek my duds for auld lang syne. THE POETICAL COOKERY-BOOK. PUNCH THE STEAK. Air.--"The Sea." Of Steak--of Steak--of prime Rump Steak-- A slice of half-inch thickness take, Without a blemish, soft and sound; In weight a little more than a pound. Who'd cook a Stake--who'd cook a Steak-- Must a fire clear proceed to make: With the red above and the red below, In one delicious genial glow. If a coal should come, a blaze to make, Have patience! You mustn't put on your Steak. First rub--yes, rub--with suet fat, The gridiron's bars, then on it flat Impose the meat; and the fire soon Will make it sing a delicious tune. And when 'tis brown'd by the genial glow, Just turn the upper side below. Both sides with brown being cover'd o'er, For a moment you broil your Steak no more, But on a hot dish let it rest, And add of butter a slice of the best; In a minute or two the pepper-box take, And with it gently dredge your Steak. When seasoned quite, upon the fire Some further time it will require; And over and over be sure to turn Your Steak till done--nor let it burn; For nothing drives me half so wild As a nice Rump Steak in the cooking spiled. I've lived in pleasure mixed with grief, On fish and fowl, and mutton and beef, With plenty of cash, and power to range, But my Steak I never wished to change: For a Steak was always a treat to me, At breakfast, luncheon, dinner, or tea. ROASTED SUCKING-PIG. AIR--"Scots wha has." Cooks who'd roast a Sucking-pig, Purchase one not over big; Coarse ones are not worth a fig; So a young one buy. See that he is scalded well (That is done by those who sell), Therefore on that point to dwell, Were absurdity. Sage and bread, mix just enough, Salt and pepper quantum suff., And the Pig's interior stuff, With the whole combined. To a fire that's rather high, Lay it till completely dry; Then to every part apply Cloth, with butter lined. Dredge with flour o'er and o'er, Till the Pig will hold no more; Then do nothing else before 'Tis for serving fit. Then scrape off the flour with care; Then a butter'd cloth prepare; Rub it well; then cut--not tear-- Off the head of it. Then take out and mix the brains With the gravy it contains; While it on the spit remains, Cut the Pig in two. Chop the sage, and chop the bread Fine as very finest shred; O'er it melted butter spread-- Stinginess won't do. When it in the dish appears, Garnish with the jaws and ears; And when dinner-hour nears, Ready let it be. Who can offer such a dish May dispense with fowl and fish; And if he a guest should wish, Let him send for me! BEIGNET DE POMME. AIR--"Home, Sweet Home." 'Mid fritters and lollipops though we may roam, On the whole, there is nothing like Beignet de Pomme. Of flour a pound, with a glass of milk share, And a half pound of butter the mixture will bear. Pomme! Pomme! Beignet de Pomme! Of Beignets there's none like the Beignet de Pomme! A Beignet de Pomme, you will work at in vain, If you stir not the mixture again and again; Some beer, just to thin it, may into it fall; Stir up that, with three whites of eggs, added to all. Pomme! Pomme! Beignet de Pomme! Of Beignets there's none like the Beignet de Pomme! Six apples, when peeled, you must carefully slice, And cut out the cores--if you 'll take my advice; Then dip them in batter, and fry till they foam, And you'll have in six minutes your Beignet de Pomme. Pomme! Pomme! Beignet de Pomme! Of Beignets there's none like the Beignet de Pomme! CHERRY PIE. AIR--"Cherry Ripe." Cherry Pie! Cherry Pie! Pie! I cry, Kentish cherries you may buy. If so be you ask me where To put the fruit, I'll answer "There!" In the dish your fruit must lie, When you make your Cherry Pie. Cherry Pie! Cherry Pie! etc. Cherry Pie! Cherry Pie! Pie! I cry, Full and fair ones mind you buy Whereabouts the crust should go, Any fool, of course will know; In the midst a cup may lie, When you make your Cherry Pie. Cherry Pie! Cherry Pie! etc. DEVILED BISCUIT. AIR--"A Temple of Friendship." "A nice Devil'd Biscuit," said JENKINS enchanted, "I'll have after dinner--the thought is divine!" The biscuit was bought, and he now only wanted-- To fully enjoy it--a glass of good wine. He flew to the pepper, and sat down before it, And at peppering the well-butter'd biscuit he went; Then, some cheese in a paste mix'd with mustard spread o'er it And down to be grill'd to the kitchen 'twas sent. "Oh! how," said the Cook, "can I this think of grilling, When common the pepper? the whole will be flat. But here's the Cayenne; if my master is willing, I'll make, if he pleases, a devil with that." So the Footman ran up with the Cook's observation To JENKINS, who gave him a terrible look: "Oh, go to the devil!" forgetting his station, Was the answer that JENKINS sent down to the Cook. RED HERRINGS. AIR--"Meet Me By Moonlight." Meet me at breakfast alone, And then I will give you a dish Which really deserves to be known, Though it's not the genteelest of fish. You must promise to come, for I said A splendid Red Herring I'd buy-- Nay, turn not away your proud head; You'll like it, I know, when you try. If moisture the Herring betray, Drain, till from moisture 'tis free; Warm it through in the usual way, Then serve it for you and for me. A piece of cold butter prepare, To rub it when ready it lies; Egg-sauce and potatoes don't spare, And the flavor will cause you surprise IRISH STEW. AIR--"Happy Land." Irish stew, Irish stew! Whatever else my dinner be, Once again, once again, I'd have a dish of thee. Mutton chops, and onion slice, Let the water cover, With potatoes, fresh and nice; Boil, but not quite over, Irish stew, Irish stew! Ne'er from thee, my taste will stray. I could eat Such a treat Nearly every day. La, la, la, la! BARLEY BROTH. Air--"The King, God bless him!" A basin of Barley Broth make, make for me; Give those who prefer it, the plain: No matter the broth, so of barley it be, If we ne'er taste a basin again. For, oh I when three pounds of good mutton you buy, And of most of its fat dispossess it, In a stewpan uncover'd, at first, let it lie; Then in water proceed to dress it. Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah! In a stewpan uncover'd, at first, let it lie; Then in water proceed to dress it. What a teacup will hold--you should first have been told-- Of barley you gently should boil; The pearl-barley choose--'tis the nicest that's sold-- All others the mixture might spoil. Of carrots and turnips, small onions, green peas (If the price of the last don't distress one), Mix plenty; and boil altogether with these Your basin of Broth when you dress one. Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah! Two hours together the articles boil; There's your basin of Broth, if you'd dress one. CALF'S HEART. Air--"Maid of Athens, ere we part." Maid of all work, as a part Of my dinner, cook a heart; Or, since such a dish is best, Give me that, and leave the rest. Take my orders, ere I go; Heart of calf we'll cook thee so. Buy--to price you're not confined-- Such a heart as suits your mind: Buy some suet--and enough Of the herbs required to stuff; Buy some le non-peel--and, oh! Heart of calf, we'll fill thee so. Buy some onions--just a taste-- Buy enough, but not to waste; Buy two eggs of slender shell Mix, and stir the mixture well; Crumbs of bread among it throw; Heart of calf we'll roast thee so. Maid of all work, when 'tis done, Serve it up to me alone: Rich brown gravy round it roll, Marred by no intruding coal; Currant jelly add--and lo! Heart of calf, I'll eat thee so. THE CHRISTMAS PUDDING. AIR--"Jeannette and Jeannott." If you wish to make a pudding in which every one delights, Of a dozen new-laid eggs you must take the yolks and whites; Beat them well up in a basin till they thoroughly combine, And shred and chop some suet particularly fine; Take a pound of well-stoned raisins, and a pound of currants dried, A pound of pounded sugar, and a pound of peel beside; Stir them all well up together with a pound of wheaten flour, And let them stand and settle for a quarter of an hour; Then tie the pudding in a cloth, and put it in the pot,-- Some people like the water cold, and some prefer it hot; But though I don't know which of these two methods I should praise, I know it ought to boil an hour for every pound it weighs. Oh! if I were Queen of France, or, still better, Pope of Rome, I'd have a Christmas pudding every day I dined at home; And as for other puddings whatever they might be, Why those who like the nasty things should eat them all for me. APPLE PIE. AIR-"All that's bright must fade." All new dishes fade-- The newest oft the fleetest; Of all the pies now made, The Apple's still the sweetest; Cut and come again, The syrup upward springing! While my life and taste remain, To thee my heart is clinging. Other dainties fade-- The newest oft the fleetest; But of all the pies now made, The Apple's still the sweetest. Who absurdly buys Fruit not worth the baking? Who wastes crust on pies That do not pay for making? Better far to be An Apple Tartlet buying, Than to make one at home, and see On it there's no relying: That all must be weigh'd, When thyself thou treatest-- Still a pie home-made Is, after all, the sweetest. Who a pie would make, First his apple slices; Then he ought to take Some cloves--the best of spices: Grate some lemon rind, Butter add discreetly; Then some sugar mix--but mind The pie's not made too sweetly. Every pie that's made With sugar, is completest; But moderation should pervade-- Too sweet is not the sweetest. Who would tone impart, Must--if my word is trusted-- Add to his pie or tart A glass of port--old crusted If a man of taste, He, complete to make it, In the very finest paste Will inclose and bake it. Pies have each their grade; But, when this thou eatest, Of all that e'er were made, You'll say 'tis best and sweetest. LOBSTER SALAD. AIR-"Blue Bonnets Over The Border." Take, take, lobsters and lettuces; Mind that they send you the fish that you order: Take, take, a decent-sized salad bowl, One that's sufficiently deep in the border. Cut into many a slice All of the fish that's nice, Place in the bowl with due neatness and order: Then hard-boil'd eggs you may Add in a neat array All round the bowl, just by way of a border. Take from the cellar of salt a proportion: Take from the castors both pepper and oil, With vinegar, too--but a moderate portion-- Too much of acid your salad will spoil. Mix them together, You need not mind whether You blend them exactly in apple-pie order; But when you've stirr'd away, Mix up the whole you may-- All but the eggs, which are used as a border. Take, take, plenty of seasoning; A teaspoon of parsley that's chopp'd in small pieces: Though, though, the point will bear reasoning, A small taste of onion the flavor increases. As the sauce curdle may, Should it: the process stay, Patiently do it again in due order; For, if you chance to spoil Vinegar, eggs, and oil, Still to proceed would on lunacy border. STEWED STEAK AIR--"Had I a Heart for Falsehood Framed." Had I pound of tender Steak, I'd use it for a stew; And if the dish you would partake, I'll tell you what to do. Into a stew-pan, clean and neat, Some butter should be flung: And with it stew your pound of meat, A tender piece--but young. And when you find the juice express'd By culinary art, To draw the gravy off, were best, And let it stand apart. Then, lady, if you'd have a treat, Be sure you can't be wrong To put more butter to your meat, Nor let it stew too long. And when the steak is nicely done, To take it off were best; And gently let it fry alone, Without the sauce or zest; Then add the gravy--with of wine A spoonful in it flung; And a shalot cut very fine-- Let the shalot be young. And when the whole has been combined, More stewing 't will require; Ten minutes will suffice--but mind Don't have too quick a fire. Then serve it up--'t will form a treat! Nor fear you've cook'd it wrong; GOURMETS in all the old 't will meet, And GOURMANDS in the young. GREEN PEA SOUP. AIR--"The Ivy Green." Oh! a splendid Soup is the true Pea Green I for it often call; And up it comes in a smart tureen, When I dine in my banquet hall. When a leg of mutton at home is boil'd, The liquor I always keep, And in that liquor (before 'tis spoil'd) A peck of peas I steep. When boil'd till tender they have been, I rub through a sieve the peas so green. Though the trouble the indolent may shock, I rub with all my power; And having return'd them to the stock, I stew them for more than an hour; Then of younger peas I take some more, The mixture to improve, Thrown in a little time before The soup from the fire I move. Then seldom a better soup is seen, Than the old familiar soup Pea Green. Since first I began my household career, How many my dishes have been! But the one that digestion never need fear, Is the simple old soup Pea Green. The giblet may tire, the gravy pall, And the turtle lose its charm; But the Green Pea triumphs over them all, And does not the slightest harm. Smoking hot in a smart tureen, A rare soup is the true Pea Green! TRIFLE. AIR--"The Meeting of the Waters." There's not in the wide world so tempting a sweet As that Trifle where custard and macaroons meet; Oh! the latest sweet tooth from my head must depart Ere the taste of that Trifle shall not win my heart. Yet it is not the sugar that's thrown in between, Nor the peel of the lemon so candied and green; 'Tis not the rich cream that's whipp'd up by a mill: Oh, no! it is something more exquisite still. 'Tis that nice macaroons in the dish I have laid, Of which a delicious foundation is made; And you'll find how the last will in flavor improve, When soak'd with the wine that you pour in above. Sweet PLATEAU of Trifle! how great is my zest For thee, when spread o'er with the jam I love best, When the cream white of eggs--to be over thee thrown, With a whisk kept on purpose--is mingled in one! MUTTON CHOPS. AIR--"Come dwell with me." Come dine with me, come dine with me, And our dish shall be, our dish shall be, A Mutton Chop from the butcher's shop-- And how I cook it you shall see. The Chop I choose is not too lean; For to cut off the fat I mean. Then to the fire I put it down, And let it fry until 'tis brown. Come dine with me; yes, dine with me, etc. I'll fry some bread cut rather fine, To place betwixt each chop of mine; Some spinach, or some cauliflowers, May ornament this dish of ours. I will not let thee once repine At having come with me to dine: 'T will be my pride to hear thee say, "I have enjoy'd my Chop, to-day." Come, dine with me; yes, dine with me; Dine, dine, dine, with me, etc. BARLEY WATER. AIR--"On the Banks of Allan Water." For a jug of Barley Water Take a saucepan not too small; Give it to your wife or daughter, If within your call. If her duty you have taught her, Very willing each will be To prepare some Barley Water Cheerfully for thee. For a jug of Barley Water, Half a gallon, less or more, From the filter that you bought her, Ask your wife to pour. When a saucepan you have brought her Polish'd bright as bright can be, In it empty all the water, Either you or she. For your jug of Barley Water ('Tis a drink by no means bad), Some two ounces and a quarter Of pearl barley add. When 'tis boiling, let your daughter Skim from blacks to keep it free; Added to your Barley Water Lemon rind should be. For your jug of Barley Water (I have made it very oft), It must boil, so tell your daughter, Till the barley's soft. Juice of a small lemon's quarter Add; then sweeten all like tea; Strain through sieve your Barley Water-- 'Twill delicious be. BOILED CHICKEN. AIR--"Norah Creina." Lesbia hath a fowl to cook; But, being anxious not to spoil it, Searches anxiously our book, For how to roast, and how to boil it. Sweet it is to dine upon-- Quite alone, when small its size is;-- And, when cleverly 'tis done, Its delicacy quite surprises. Oh! my tender pullet dear! My boiled--not roasted--tender Chicken; I can wish No other dish, With thee supplied, my tender Chicken! Lesbia, take some water cold, And having on the fire placed it, And some butter, and be bold-- When 'tis hot enough--taste it. Oh! the Chicken meant for me Boil before the fire grows dimmer, Twenty minutes let it be In the saucepan left to simmer. Oh, my tender Chicken dear! My boil'd, delicious, tender Chicken! Rub the breast (To give a zest) With lemon-juice, my tender Chicken. Lesbia hath with sauce combined Broccoli white, without a tarnish; 'Tis hard to tell if 'tis design'd For vegetable or for garnish. Pillow'd on a butter'd dish, My Chicken temptingly reposes, Making gourmands for it wish, Should the savor reach their noses. Oh, my tender pullet dear! My boiled--not roasted--tender Chicken Day or night, Thy meal is light, For supper, e'en, my tender Chicken. STEWED DUCK AND PEAS. AIR--"My Heart and Lute." I give thee all, I can no more, Though poor the dinner be; Stew'd Duck and Peas are all the store That I can offer thee. A Duck, whose tender breast reveals Its early youth full well; And better still, a Pea that peels From fresh transparent shell. Though Duck and Peas may fail, alas! One's hunger to allay; At least for luncheon they may pass, The appetite to stay, If seasoned Duck an odor bring From which one would abstain, The Peas, like fragrant breath of Spring, Set all to rights again. I give thee all my kitchen lore, Though poor the offering be; I'll tell thee how 'tis cook'd, before You come to dine with me: The Duck is truss'd from head to heels, Then stew'd with butter well; And streaky bacon, which reveals A most delicious smell When Duck and Bacon in a mass You in the stew-pan lay, A spoon around the vessel pass, And gently stir away: A table-spoon of flour bring, A quart of water bring, Then in it twenty onions fling, And gently stir again. A bunch of parsley, and a leaf Of ever-verdant bay, Two cloves--I make my language brief-- Then add your Peas you may! And let it simmer till it sings In a delicious strain, Then take your Duck, nor let the strings For trussing it remain. The parsley fail not to remove, Also the leaf of bay; Dish up your Duck--the sauce improve In the accustom'd way, With pepper, salt, and other things, I need not here explain: And, if the dish contentment brings, You'll dine with me again. CURRY. Three pounds of veal my darling girl prepares, And chops it nicely into little squares; Five onions next prepares the little minx (The biggest are the best her Samiwel thinks). And Epping butter, nearly half a pound, And stews them in a pan until they're brown'd. What's next my dexterous little girl will do? She pops the meat into the savory stew, With curry powder, table-spoonfulls three, And milk a pint (the richest that may be); And, when the dish has stewed for half-an-hour, A lemon's ready juice she'll o'er it pour: Then, bless her! then she gives the luscious pot A very gentle boil--and serves quite hot. P.S. Beef, mutton, rabbit, if you wish; Lobsters, or prawns, or any kind of fish Are fit to make A CURRY. 'Tis, when done, A dish for emperors to feed upon. THE RAILWAY GILPIN. PUNCH. JOHN GILPIN is a citizen; For lineage of renown, The famed JOHN GILPIN'S grandson, he Abides in London town. To our JOHN GILPIN said his dear, "Stewed up here as we've been Since Whitsuntide, 'tis time that we Should have a change of scene. "To-morrew is a leisure day, And we'll by rail repair Unto the Nell at Dedmanton, And take a breath of air. "My sister takes our eldest child; The youngest of our three Will go in arms, and so the ride Won't so expensive be." JOHN soon replied, "I don't admire That railway, I, for one; But you know best, my dearest dear And so it must be done. "I, as a linen-draper bold, Will bear myself, and though 'Tis Friday by the calendar, Will risk my limbs, and go." Quoth MISTRESS GILPIN, "Nicely said: And then, besides, look here, We'll go by the Excursion Train, Which makes it still less dear." JOHN GILPIN poked his clever wife, And slightly smiled to find That though on peril she was bent, She had a careful mind. The morning came; a cab was sought: The proper time allow'd To reach the station door; but lo! Before it stood a crowd. For half an hour they there were stay'd, And when they did get in-- "No train! a hoax!" cried clerks, agog To swear through thick and thin. "Yea!" went the throats; stamp went the heels Were never folks so mad, The disappointment dire beneath; All cried "it was too bad!" JOHN GILPIN home would fain have hied, But he must needs remain, Commanded by his willful bride, And take the usual train. 'T was long before our passengers Another train could find, When--stop! one ticket for the fares Was lost or left behind! "Good lack!" quoth JOHN, "yet try it on." "'T won't do," the Guard replies; And bearing wife and babes on board, The train without him flies. Now see him in a second train, Behind the iron steed, Borne on, slap dash-for life or bones With small concern or heed. Away went GILPIN, neck or naught, Exclaiming, "Dash my wig! Oh, here's a game! oh, here's a go! A running such a rig!" A signal, hark!--the whistle screamed-- Smash! went the windows all: "An accident!" cried out each one, As loud as he could bawl. Away went GILPIN, never mind-- His brain seemed spinning round; Thought he, "This speed a killing pace Will prove, I'll bet a pound !" And still, as stations they drew near, The whistle shrilly blew, And in a trice, past signal-men, The train like lightning flew. Thus, all through merry Killbury, Without a stop shot they; But paused, to 'scape a second smash, At Dedmanton so gay. At Dedmanton his loving wife, On platform waiting, spied Her tender husband, striving much To let himself outside. "Hallo! JOHN GILPIN, here we are-- Come out!" they all did cry; "To death with waiting we are tired!" "Guard!" shouted GILPIN, "Hi!" But no--the train was not a bit Arranged to tarry there, For why?--because 't was an Express, And did dispatches bear. So, in a second, off it flew Again, and dashed along, As if the deuce't were going to, With motive impulse strong. Away went GILPIN, on the breath Of puffing steam, until They came unto their journey's end, Where they at last stood still And then--best thing that he could do-- He book'd himself for Town; They stopped at every station up, Till he again got down. Says GILPIN, "Sing, Long live the QUEEN, And eke long life to me; And ere I'll trust that Line again, Myself I blest will see!" ELEGY. WRITTEN IN A RAIL WAY STATION. PUNCH. The Station clock proclaims the close of day; The hard-worked clerks drop gladly off to tea; The last train starts upon its dangerous way, And leaves the place to darkness and to me. Now fades the panting engine's red tail-light, And all the platform solemn stillness holds, Save where the watchmen, pacing for the night, By smothered coughs announce their several colds. Behind that door of three-inch planking made, Those frosted panes placed too high up to peep, All in their iron safes securely laid, The cooked account-books of the Railway sleep. The Debts to credit side so neatly borne, What should be losses, profits proved instead; The Dividends those pages that adorn No more shall turn the fond Shareholder's head. Oft did the doubtful to their balance yield, Their evidence arithmetic could choke: How jocund were they that to them appealed! How many votes of thanks did they provoke! Let not Derision mock KING HUDSON'S toil, Who made things pleasant greenhorns to allure; Nor prudery give hard names unto the spoil 'Twas glad to share--while it could share secure. All know the way that he his fortune made, How he bought votes and consciences did hire; How hands that Gold and Silver-sticks have swayed To grasp his dirty palm would oft aspire, Till these accounts at last their doctored page, Thanks to mischance and panic, did unroll, When virtue suddenly became the rage, And wiped George Hudson out of fashion's scroll. Full many a noble Lord who once serene The feasts at Albert Gate was glad to share, For tricks he blushed not at, or blushed unseen, Now cuts the Iron King with vacant stare. For those who, mindful of their money fled, Rejoice in retribution, sure though late-- Should they, by ruin to reflection led, Ask PUNCH to point the moral of his fate, Haply that wooden-headed sage may say, "Oft have I seen him, in his fortune's dawn, When at his levees elbowing their way, Peer's ermine might be seen and Bishop's lawn. "There the great man vouchsafed in turn to each Advice, what scrip or shares 'twas best to buy, There his own arts his favorites he would teach, And put them up to good things on the sly. "Till to the House by his admirers borne, Warmed with Champagne in flustered speech he strove, And on through commerce, colonies, and corn, Like engine, without break or driver, drove. "Till when he ceased to dip in fortune's till, Out came one cooked account--of our M. P.; Another came--yet men scarce ventured, still, To think their idol such a rogue could be. "Until those figures set in sad array Proved how his victims he had fleeced and shorn Approach and read (if thou canst read) my lay, Writ on him more in sadness than in scorn." THE EPITAPH. Here lies, the gilt rubbed off his sordid earth, A man whom Fortune made to Fashion known; Though void alike of breeding, parts, or birth, God Mammon early marked him for his own. Large was his fortune, but he bought it dear; When he won foully he did freely spend. He plundered no one knows how much a-year, But Chancery o'ertook him in the end. No further seek his frailties to disclose: For many of his sins should share the load: While he kept rising, who asked how he rose? While we could reap, what cared we how he sowed? THE BOA AND THE BLANKET. [Footnote: A few days before this burlesque of Warren appeared, a boa-constrictor in the London Zoological Gardens swallowed the blanket that had served as its bed.] AN APOLOGUE OF THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS.--[AFTER WARREN.] PUNCH. It is talked of Now! Was talked of Yesterday! May be muttered to-morrow! What?-- THE BOA THAT BOLTED THE BLANKET, Speckled Enthusiast! It was full moon's full moonlight! The Shilling I had paid down at the Gate Seem'd hung in Heaven. To NEWTON'S EYE (As Master of the Mint). A Splendid, yea, Celestial Shilling! I was alone, with Nothing to Speak of But Creation! Yes! Gigantic NOAH'S Ark of twenty times her tonnage, Lay crouch'd, and purring, and velvety, and fanged About me! Cane-colored tigers--rug-spotted Leopards-- Snakes (ah, CUPID!) knit and interknit--to true love knots Semblable! Striped Zebra--Onager Calcitrant--Common Ass, And I--and all were there! The bushy Squirrel with his half-cracked Nut, Slept. The Boar of Allemagne snored. The Lion's Cage was hot with heat of blood: And Peace in Curtain Ring linked two Ring Doves! In Gardens Zoological and Regent, I, meditating, stood! And still the moon looked wondrous like a Shilling, Impartial Moon, that showed me all. My heart fluttered as tho' winged from Mercury! I moved--approached the Snake-House! Oh, the balm of Paradise that came and went! The silver gleams of Eden shooting down the trembling strings Of my melodious heart! Down--down to its coral roots! I dashed aside the human tear; and--yes--prepared myself With will, drunk from the eyes of Hope, to gaze upon the Snake! The Boa!! The Python!!! The Anaconda!!!! A Boa was there! A Boa, 'neath Crystal Roof! And rabbits, taking the very moonlight in their paws, Washed their meek faces. Washed, then hopped! "And so (I couldn't help it) so," I groaned--"the ancient Snake-- That milk-white thing--and innocent--trustful! And then, Death--Death-- And lo! there, typical, it is--it is-- THE BLANKET!! Death shred of living thing that cropped the flower; And, thoughtless, bleated forth its little baa-a!" Away! I will not tarry! Let the Boa sleep, And Rabbits, that have given bills to destiny, Meet his demand at three and six months' date! (We know such Boas and rabbits, Know we not?) Let me pass on! And here 'tis cool; nay, even cold Without the Snake-House! The Moon still glistens, and again I think Of Multitudes who've paid and stared, and yawned and wandered here! The city muckworm, who Prom peacock orient, scarce could tell a cock Of hay! Though be ye sure, a guinea from a guinea-pig He knows, and (as for money) Ever has his squeak for't! Here, too, paused the wise, sagacious man, Master of probabilities! He sees the tusk of elephant--the two tusks-- And, with a thought, cuts 'em into cubes-- And with another thought--another--and another- Tells (to himself) how oft, in twenty years Those spotted squares shall come up sixes! And this in living elephant! And HER MAJESTY has trod these Walks, Accompanied By PRINCE ALBERT, THE PRINCE OF WALES, THE PRINCESS ROYAL, And The Rest of the Royal Children!-- She saw the Tiger! Did she think of TIPPOO SAIB'S Tiger's Head? She saw the Lion! Thought she of one of her own Arms? She did NOT see the Unicorn; but (With her gracious habits of condescension) Did she think of him a bit the less? Thoughts crowd upon me-cry move on! And now I am here; and whether I will or no, I feel I'm jolly! The Chameleons are asleep, and, like the Cabinet (Of course i mean the Whigs), Know not, when they rise to-morrow, What color they will wake!-- The baby elephant seems prematurely old: Its infant hide all corrugate with thoughts Of cakes and oranges given it by boys; Alas! in Chancery now, and paralytic! This is very sad. No more of it! Ha! ha! here sits the Ape--the many-colored wight! Thou hast marked him, with nose of scarlet sealing-wax, And so be-colored with prismatic hues, As though he had come from sky to earth-- Sliding and wiping a fresh-painted rainbow! Hush! I have made a perfect circle! And at the Snake-House once again I stand! Such is life! Eh! Oh! Help! Murder! Dreadful Accident! To be conceived--Oh, perhaps! Described--Oh, never! Keepers are up, and crowd about the box-- The Boa's box--with unconcerned rabbits! Not so the Boa! Look! Behold! And where's the Blanket? In the Boa's inside place! The Monster mark! How he writhes and wrestles with the wool, as though He had within him rolls and rolls Of choking, suffocating influenza, That lift his eyes from out their sockets!--Of fleecy phlegm That will neither in or out, but mid-way Seem to strangle! Silence and wonder settle on the crowd; From whom instinctively and breathlessly, Ascend two pregnant questions! "Will the Boa bolt the blanket? Will the blanket choke the Boa?" Such the problem! And then men mark and deduce Differently "THE BLANKET IS ENGLAND: THE BOA THE POPE, WILL THE POPE DISGORGE HIS BULL?" "THE BLANKET'S FREE TRADE: THE CORN-GORGED FOLK IS THE BOA WITH PLENTY STIFLED!" "THE BLANKET'S REFORM TO GAG THE MOB, AND NAUGHT TO SATISFY!" But I, a lofty and an abstract man, A creature of a higher element Than ever nourished the wood Ordained for ballot-boxes--I Say nothing; until a Keeper comes to me, and, Hooking his fore-finger in his forehead's lock, Says--"What's your opinion, Sir? If Boas will bolt Blankets, Boas must: If Snakes will rush upon their end, why not?" "My friend," said I, "The Blanket and the Boa-- You will conceive me--are a type, yes, just a type, Of this our day. The dumb and monstrous, tasteless appetite Of stupid Boa, to gobble up for food What needs must scour or suffocate, Not nourish! My friend, let the wool of that one blanket Warm but the back of one live sheep, And the Boa would bolt the animal entire, And flourish on his meal, transmuting flesh and bones, And turning them to healthful nutriment! Believe this vital truth; The stomach may take down and digest And sweetly, too, a leg of mutton; That would turn at and reject One little ball of worsted!" On saying this I turned away, Feeling adown the small-o'-the back That gentle warmth that waits upon us, when WE KNOW We have said a good thing; Knowing it better than the vain world Ever can or ever will Reader, I have sung my song! The BOA AND THE B----, like new-found star, Is mine no longer; but the world's!-- Tell me, how have I sung it? With what note? With note akin that immortal bard The snow-white Swan of Avon? Or haply, to that --RARA AVIS, --That has --"Tried WARREN'S?" THE DILLY AND THE D'S. [Footnote: Burlesque of Warren's Poem of "The Lily and the Bee," published at the home of the great Exhibition of 1851.] [AN APOLOGUE OF THE OXFORD INSTALLATION.] BY S--L W--RR--N, Q.S., LL.D., F.R.S PUNCH. PART FIRST. Oh, Spirit! Spirit of Literature, Alien to Law! Oh, Muse! ungracious to thy sterner sister, THEMIS, Whither away?--Away! Far from my brief--Brief with a fee upon it, Tremendous! And probably--before my business is concluded-- A REFRESHER--nay, several!! Whither whirlest thou thy thrall? Thy willing thrall? "NOW AND THEN;" But not just at this moment, If you please, Spirit! No, let me read and ponder on THE PLEADINGS. Declaration! Plea!! Replication!!! Rejoinder!!!! Surrejoinder!!!!! Rebutter!!!!!! Surrebutter!!!!!!! ETC! ETC!! ETC!!! It may not be. The Muse-- As ladies often are-- Though lovely, is obstinate, And will have her own way! * * * * And am I not As well as a Q.S., An F.R.S. And LL.D.? Ask BLACKWOOD The reason why, and he will tell you, So will the Mayor-- The MAYOR OF HULL! I obey, Spirit. Hang my brief--'tis gone!-- To-morrow let my junior cram me in Court. Whither away? Where am I? What is it I behold? In space, or out of space? I know not. In fact I've not the least idea if I'm crazy. Or sprung--sprung? I've only had a pint of Port at dinner And can't be sprung-- Oh, no!--Shame on the thought! I see a coach!-- Is it a coach? Not exactly. Yet it has wheels-- Wheels within wheels--and on the box A driver, and a cad behind, And Horses--Horses?-- Bethink thee--Worm!-- Are they Horses? or that race Lower than Horses, but with longer ears And less intelligence-- In fact--"EQUI ASINI," Or in vernacular JACKASSES? 'Tis not a coach exactly-- Now I see on the panels-- Pricked out and flourished-- A word! A magic word-- "THE DILLY!"--"THE DERBY DILLY!" Oh Dilly! Dilly!--all thy passengers Are outsiders-- The road is rough and rutty-- And thy driver, like NIMSHI'S son-- Driveth Furiously! And the cad upon the monkey-board The monkey-board behind, Scorneth the drag--but goes Downhill like mad. He hath a Caucasian brow! A son of SHEM, is he, Not of HAM-- Nor JAPHETH-- In fact a Jew-- But see, the pace Grows faster--and more fast--in fact-- I may say A case of Furious driving! Take care, you'll be upset-- Look out! Holloa! * * * * Horrible! Horrible!! Horrible!! The Dilly-- With all its precious freight Of men and Manners-- Is gone! Gone to immortal SMASH! Pick up the pieces! Let me wipe my eyes! Oh Muse--lend me my scroll To do it with, for I have lost My wipe! PART SECOND * * * Again upon the road The road to where? To nowhere in particular! Ah, no--I thank thee, Muse-- That hint--'tis a finger-post, And "he that runs may read"-- He that runs? But I am not running-- I am riding-- How came I here?--what am I riding on? Who are my fellow-passengers? Ah, ha! I recognize them now! The Coach-- The Box-- The Driver-- And the Cad-- I'm on the Dilly, and the Dilly Is on the road again And now I see That finger-post! It saith "To Oxford Fifty-two miles." And, hark! a chorus! From all the joyous load, Driver and cad, and all! "We go," they sing-- To OXFORD TO BE DOCTORED." To be Doctored? Then, wherefore Are ye so cheerful? I was not cheerful in my early days-- Days of my buoyant boyhood-- When, after inglutition Of too much Christmas pudding, Or Twelfth cake saccharine, I went, as we go now, To be Doctored! Salts! Senna and Rhubarb!! Jalap and Ipecacuanha!!! And Antimonial Wine!!!! "WORM! IDIOT!! DONKEY!!!" Said the free-spoken Muse "With them thou goest to be doctored, too, Not in medicine--but in Law-- All these--and thou-- Are going to be made HONORARY LL.D.s! Behold! And know thy company Be thou familiar with them, But by no means vulgar-- For familiarity breeds contempt; And no man is a hero To his VALET-DE-CHAMBRE! So ponder and perpend." DERBY! The wise, the meek, the chivalrous-- Mirror of knightly graces And daily dodges; Who always says the right things At the right time, And never forgets himself as others-- Nor changes his side Nor his opinion-- A STANLEY to the core, as ready To fight As erst on FLODDEN FIELD His mail-clad ancestor.-- See the poem Of MARMION, By SIR WALTER SOOTT! DIZZY! Dark--supple--subtle-- With mind lithe as the limbs Of ISHMAEL'S sons, his swart progenitors-- With tongue sharp as the spear That o'er Sahara Flings the blue shadow Of the crown of ostrich feathers-- As described so graphically By LAYARD, in his recent book On Nineveh! With tongue as sharp As aspic's tooth of NILUS, Or sugary Upon the occasion As is the date Of TAFILAT. DIZZY, the bounding Arab Of the political arena-- As swift to whirl Right about face-- As strong to leap From premise to conclusion-- As great in balancing A budget-- Or flinging headlong His somersets Over sharp swords of adverse facts, As were his brethren of EL-ARISH, Who Some years ago exhibited-- With rapturous applause-- At Astley's Amphitheater-- And subsequently At Vauxhall Gardens! * * * * * Clustering, front and back On box and knife-board, See, petty man; Behold! and thank thy stars That led thee--Worm-- THEE, that art merely a writer And a barrister, Although a man of elegant acquirements, A gentleman and a scholar-- Nay, F.R.S. to boot-- Into such high society, Among such SWELLS, And REAL NOBS! Behold! ten live LORDS! and lo *! no end Of Ex-Cabinet Ministers! Oh! happy, happy, happy, Oh, happy SAM! Say, isn't this worth, at the least "TEN THOUSAND A YEAR!" * * * * * And these are all, to day at least--- Thy fellows! Going to be made LL.D.s, even as thyself-- And thou shalt walk in silk attire. And hob and nob with all the mighty of the earth, And lunch in Hall-- In Hall! Where lunched before thee, But on inferior grub, That first great SAM-- SAM JOHNSON! And LAUD, and ROGER BACON, And CRANMER, LATIMER, And RIDLEY, And CYRIL JACKSON--and a host besides, Whom at my leisure I will look up In WOOD'S "ATHENAE OXONIENSES" Only to think! How BLACKWOOD Is honored! ALISON! AYTOUN! BULWER!!! And last, not least The great SAM GANDERAM!!!! Oh EBONY! Oh MAGA! And oh Our noble selves! "A BOOK IN A BUSTLE." A TRUE TALE OF THE WARWICK ASSIZES. BY THE GHOST OF CRABBE. PUNCH. The partial power that to the female race Is charged to apportion gifts of form and grace, With liberal hand molds beauty's curves in one, And to another gives as good as none: But woman still for nature proves a match, And grace by her denied, from art will snatch. Hence, great ELIZA, grew thy farthingales; Hence, later ANNA, swelled thy hoops' wide pales; To this we must refer the use of stays; Nor less the bustle of more modern days. Artful device! whose imitative pad Into good figures roundeth off the bad-- Whether of simple sawdust thou art seen, Or tak'st the guise of costlier crinoline-- How oft to thee the female form doth owe A grace rotund, a line of ampler flow, Than flesh and blood thought fit to clothe it with below! There dwelt in Liverpool a worthy dame, Who had a friend--JAMES TAYLOR was his name. He dealt in glass, and drove a thriving trade And still saved up the profits that he made, Till when a daughter blessed his marriage bed, The father in the savings-bank was led In his child's name a small sum to invest, From which he drew the legal interest. Years went and came; JAMES TAYLOR came and went, Paid in, and drew, his modest three per cent, Till, by the time his child reach'd girlhood's bounds, The sum had ris'n to two-and-twenty pounds. Our cautious legislature--well 'tis known-- Round savings-banks a guardian fence has thrown: 'Tis easy to pay into them, no doubt, Though any thing but easy to draw out. And so JAMES TAYLOR found; for on a day He wanted twenty pounds a bill to pay, And, short of cash, unto the bank applied; Failing some form of law, he was denied! JAMES TAYLOR humm'd and haw'd--look'd blank and blue;-- In short, JAMES TAYLOR knew not what to do: His creditor was stern--the bill was over due. As to a friend he did his plight deplore-- The worthy dame of whom I spoke before-- (It might cause pain to give the name she owns, So let me use the pseudonym of JONES); "TAYLOR," said MRS. JONES, "as I'm a friend, I do not care if I the money lend. But even friends security should hold: Give me security--I'll lend the gold." "This savings-bank deposit-book!" he cries. "See--in my daughter's name the sum that lies!" She saw--and, satisfied, the money lent; Wherewith JAMES TAYLOR went away content. But now what cares seize MRS. JONES'S breast! What terrors throng her once unbroken rest! Cash she could keep, in many a secret nook-- But where to stow away JAMES TAYLOR'S book? Money is heavy: where 'tis put 't will stay; Paper--as WILLIAM COBBETT used to say-- Will make wings to itself, and fly away! Long she devised: new plans the old ones chase, Until at last she hit upon a place. Was't VENUS that the strange concealment planned, Or rather PLUTUS'S irreverent hand? Good MRS. JONES was of a scraggy make; But when did woman vanity forsake? What nature sternly to her form denied, A Bustle's ample aid had well supplied, Within whose vasty depths the book might safely hide! 'Twas thought--'twas done! by help of ready pin, The sawdust was let out, the book put in. Henceforth--at home--abroad--where'er she moved, Behind her lurk'd the volume that she loved. She laughed to scorn the cut-purse and his sleight: No fear of burglars scared her through the night; But ah, what shrine is safe from greed of gold, What fort against cupidity can hold? Can stoutest buckram's triple fold keep in, The ODOR LUCRI--the strong scent of TIN? For which CHUBB's locks are weak, and MILNER's safes are thin. Some time elapsed--the time required by law, Which past, JAMES TAYLOR might the money draw, His kind but cautious creditor to pay, So to the savings-bank they took their way. There MRS. JONES with modesty withdrew-- To do what no rude eye might see her do-- And soon returning--with a blushing look, Unmarked by TAYLOR, she produced the book. Which he, presenting, did the sum demand Of MR. TOMKINS, the cashier so bland. What can there be upon the red-lined page That TOMKINS's quick eye should so engage? What means his invitation to J.T., To "Walk in for a moment"--"he would see"-- "Only a moment"--"'twas all right, no doubt," "It could not be"--"and yet"--here he slipped out, Leaving JAMES TAYLOR grievously perplexed, And MRS. JONES by his behavior vexed. "What means the man by treating people so?" Said TAYLOR, "I am a loss to know." Too soon, alas, the secret cause they knew! TOMKINS return'd, and, with him, one in blue-- POLICEMAN X, a stern man and a strong, Who told JAMES TAYLOR he must "come along"-- And TOMKINS, seeing MRS. JONES aghast, Revealed the book was forged--from first to last! Who can describe the wrath of MRS. JONES? The chill of fear that crept through TAYLOR'S bones? The van--the hand-cuffs--and the prison cell Where pined JAMES TAYLOR--wherefore pause to tell? Soon came the Assizes--and the legal train; In form the clerk JAMES TAYLOR did arraign; And though his council mustered tears at will, And made black white with true Old Bailey skill, TAYLOR, though MRS. JONES for mercy sued, Was doomed to five years' penal servitude; And in a yellow suit turned up with gray, To Portland prison was conveyed away! Time passed: forgot JAMES TAYLOR and his shame-- When lo--one day unto the bank there came A new JAMES TAYLOR--a new MRS. JONES-- And a new book, which TOMKINS genuine owns! "Two TAYLORS and two JONESES and two books"-- Thought wary TOMKINS, "this suspicious looks-- "The former TAYLOR, former JONES I knew-- These are imposters-yet the book is true!" When like a flash upon his mind it burst-- Who brought the second book had forged the first! Again was summon'd X, the stern, the strong-- Again that pair were bid to "Come along!" The truth before the justices appear'd, And wrong'd JAMES TAYLOR'S character was clear'd. In evil hour--by what chance ne'er was known, Whether the bustle's seam had come unsewn, Or MRS. JONES by chance had laid aside The artificial charms that decked her side-- But so it was, how or whene'er assailed-- The treacherous hiding-place was tried--and failed! The book was ta'en--a forged one fill'd its place;- And MRS. JONES was robb'd--not to her face-- And poor JAMES TAYLOE doom'd to trial and disgrace! Who shall describe her anguish--her remorse? James Taylor was at once released, of course; And Mrs. Jones, repentant, inly swore Henceforth to carry, what she'd keep, before. My tale is told--and, what is more, 'tis true: I read it in the papers--so may you. And this its moral: Mrs. Joneses all-- Though reticules may drop, and purses fall, Though thieves may unprotected females hustle, Never invest your money in a bustle. STANZAS FOR THE SENTIMENTAL. PUNCH. I. ON A TEAR WHICH ANGELINA OBSERVED TRICKLING DOWN MY NOSE AT DINNER TIME. Nay, fond one I will ne'er reveal Whence flowed that sudden tear: The truth 't were kindness to conceal From thy too anxious ear. How often when some hidden spring Of recollected grief Is rudely touched, a tear will bring The bursting breast relief! Yet 't was no anguish of the soul, No memory of woes, Bade that one lonely tearlet roll Adown my chiseled nose: But, ah! interrogation's note Still twinkles in thine eye; Know then that I have burnt my throat With this confounded pie! II. OM MY REFUSING ANGELINA A KISS UNDER THE MISTLETOE Nay, fond one, shun that misletoe, Nor lure me 'neath its fatal bough: Some other night 't were joy to go, But ah! I must not, dare not now! 'Tis sad, I own, to see thy face Thus tempt me with its giggling glee, And feel I can not now embrace The opportunity--and thee. 'Tis sad to think that jealousy's Sharp scissors may our true love sever; And that my coldness now may freeze Thy warm affection, love, forever. But ah! to disappoint our bliss, A fatal hind'rance now is stuck:'Tis not that I am loath to kiss, But, dearest, list--I DINED OFF DUCK! III. ON MY FINDING ANGELINA STOP SUDDENLY IN A RAPID AFTER-SUPPER POLKA AT MRS. TOMPKINS'S BALL. EDWIN. "Maiden, why that look of sadness? Whence that dark o'erclouded brow? What hath stilled thy bounding gladness, Changed thy pace from fast to slow? Is it that by impulse sudden Childhood's hours thou paus'st to mourn? Or hath thy cruel EDWIN trodden Right upon thy favorite corn? "Is it that for evenings wasted Some remorse thou 'gin'st to feel? Or hath that sham champagne we tasted Turned thy polka to a reel? Still that gloom upon each feature? Still that sad reproachful frown?" ANGELINA. "Can't you see, you clumsy creature, All my back hair's coming down!" COLLOQUY ON A CAB-STAND. ADAPTED FOR THE BOUDOIR. PUNCH. "OH! WILLIAM," JAMES was heard to say-- JAMES drove a hackney cabriolet: WILLIAM, the horses of his friend, With hay and water used to tend. "Now, tell me, WILLIAM, can it be, That MAYNE has issued a decree, Severe and stern, against us, planned Of comfort to deprive our Stand?" "I fear the tale is all too true," Said WILLIAM, "on my word I do." "Are we restricted to the Row And from the footpath?" "Even so." "Must our companions be resigned, We to the Rank alone confined?" "Yes; or they apprehend the lads Denominated Bucks and Cads." "Dear me!" cried JAMES, "how very hard And are we, too, from beer debarred?" Said WILLIAM, "While remaining here We also are forbidden beer." "Nor may we breathe the fragrant weed?" "That's interdicted too." "Indeed!" "Nor in the purifying wave Must we our steeds or chariots lave." "For private drivers, at request, It is SIR RICHARD MAYNE'S behest That we shall move, I understand?" "Such, I believe, IS the command" "Of all remains of food and drink Left by our animals I think, We are required to clear the ground?" "Yes: to remove them we are bound." "These mandates should we disobey--" "They take our licenses away." "That were unkind. How harsh our lot!" "It is indeed." "Now is it not?" "Thus strictly why are we pursued?" "It is alleged that we are rude; The people opposite complain, Our lips that coarse expressions stain." "Law, how absurd!" "And then, they say We smoke and tipple all the day, Are oft in an excited state, Disturbance, noise, and dirt create." "What shocking stories people tell! I never! Did you ever?--Well-- Bless them!" the Cabman mildly sighed. "May they be blest!" his Friend replied. THE SONG OF HIAWATHA. AN ENGLISH CRITICISM PUNCH. You, who hold in grace and honor, Hold, as one who did you kindness When he publish'd former poems, Sang Evangeline the noble, Sang the golden Golden Legend, Sang the songs the Voices utter Crying in the night and darkness, Sang how unto the Red Planet Mars he gave the Night's First Watches, Henry Wadsworth, whose adnomen (Coming awkward, for the accents, Into this his latest rhythm) Write we as Protracted Fellow, Or in Latin, LONGUS COMES-- Buy the Song of Hiawatha. Should you ask me, Is the poem Worthy of its predecessors, Worthy of the sweet conception, Of the manly nervous diction, Of the phrase, concise or pliant, Of the songs that sped the pulses, Of the songs that gemm'd the eyelash, Of the other works of Henry? I should answer, I should tell you, You may wish that you may get it-- Don't you wish that you may get it? Should you ask me, Is it worthless, Is it bosh and is it bunkum, Merely facile flowing nonsense, Easy to a practiced rhythmist, Fit to charm a private circle, But not worth the print and paper David Bogue hath here expended? I should answer, I should tell you, You're a fool and most presumptuous. Hath not Henry Wadsworth writ it? Hath not PUNCH commanded "Buy it?" Should you ask me, What's its nature? Ask me, What's the kind of poem? Ask me in respectful language, Touching your respectiful beaver, Kicking back your manly hind-leg, Like to one who sees his betters; I should answer, I should tell you, 'Tis a poem in this meter, And embalming the traditions, Fables, rites, and suspepstitions, Legends, charms, and ceremonials Of the various tribes of Indians, From the land of the Ojibways, From the land of the Dacotahs, From the mountains, moors, and fenlands, Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, Finds its sugar in the rushes: From the fast-decaying nations, Which our gentle Uncle Samuel Is improving, very smartly, From the face of all creation, Off the face of all creation. Should you ask me, By what story, By what action, plot, or fiction, All these matters are connected? I should answer, I should tell you, Go to Bogue and buy the poem, Publish'd neatly, at one shilling, Publish'd sweetly, at five shillings. Should you ask me, Is there music In the structure of the verses, In the names and in the phrases? Pleading that, like weaver Bottom, You prefer your ears well tickled; I should answer, I should tell you, Henry's verse is very charming; And for names--there's Hiawatha, Who's the hero of the poem; Mudjeekeewis, that's the West Wind, Hiawatha's graceless father; There's Nokomis, there's Wenonah-- Ladies both, of various merit; Puggawangum, that's a war-club; Pau-puk-keewis, he's a dandy, "Barr'd with streaks of red and yellow; And the women and the maidens Love the handsome Pau-puk-keewis," Tracing in him PUNCH'S likeness. Then there's lovely Minnehaha-- Pretty name with pretty meaning-- It implies the Laughing-water; And the darling Minnehaha Married noble Hiawatha; And her story's far too touching To be sport for you, yon donkey, With your ears like weaver Bottom's, Ears like booby Bully Bottom. Once upon a time in London, In the days of the Lyceum, Ages ere keen Arnold let it To the dreadful Northern Wizard, Ages ere the buoyant Mathews Tripp'd upon its boards in briskness-- I remember, I remember How a scribe, with pen chivalrous, Tried to save these Indian stories From the fate of chill oblivion. Out came sundry comic Indians Of the tribe of Kut-an-hack-um. With their Chief, the clean Efmatthews, With the growling Downy Beaver, With the valiant Monkey's Uncle, Came the gracious Mari-Kee-lee, Firing off a pocket-pistol, Singing, too, that Mudjee-keewis (Shorten'd in the song to "Wild Wind,") Was a spirit very kindly. Came her Sire, the joyous Kee-lee, By the waning tribe adopted, Named the Buffalo, and wedded To the fairest of the maidens, But repented of his bargain, And his brother Kut-an-hack-ums Very nearly ohopp'd his toes off-- Serve him right, the fickle Kee-lee. If you ask me, What this memory Hath to do with Hiawatha, And the poem which I speak of? I should answer, I should tell you, You're a fool, and most presumptuous; 'Tis not for such humble cattle To inquire what links and unions Join the thoughts, and mystic meanings, Of their betters, mighty poets, Mighty writers--PUNCH the mightiest; I should answer, I should tell you, Shut your mouth, and go to David, David, MR. PUNCH'S neighbor, Buy the Song of Hiawatha, Read, and learn, and then be thankful Unto PUNCH and Henry Wadsworth, PUNCH and noble Henry Wadsworth, Truer poet, better fellow, Than to be annoyed at jesting, From his friend, great PUNCH, who loves him. COMFORT IN AFFLICTION. WILLIAM AYTOUN. "Wherefore starts my bosom's lord? Why this anguish in thine eye? Oh, it seems as thy heart's chord Had broken with that sigh! "Rest thee, my dear lord, I pray, Rest thee on my bosom now! And let me wipe the dews away, Are gathering on thy brow. "There, again! that fevered start! What, love! husband! is thy pain? There is a sorrow in thy heart, A weight upon thy brain! "Nay, nay, that sickly smile can ne'er Deceive affection's searching eye; 'Tis a wife's duty, love, to share Her husband's agony. "Since the dawn began to peep, Have I lain with stifled breath; Heard thee moaning in thy sleep, As thou wert at grips with death. "Oh, what joy it was to see My gentle lord once more awake! Tell me, what is amiss with thee? Speak, or my heart will break!" "Mary, thou angel of my life, Thou ever good and kind; 'Tis not, believe me, my dear wife, The anguish of the mind! "It is not in my bosom, dear, No, nor my brain, in sooth; But Mary, oh, I feel it here, Here in my wisdom tooth! "Then give,--oh, first, best antidote,-- Sweet partner of my bed! Give me thy flannel petticoat To wrap around my head!" [Illustration: Lowell] THE HUSBAND'S PETITION. WILLIAM AYTOUN. Come hither, my heart's darling, Come, sit upon my knee, And listen, while I whisper, A boon I ask of thee. You need not pull my whiskers So amorously, my dove; 'Tis something quite apart from The gentle cares of love. I feel a bitter craving-- A dark and deep desire, That glows beneath my bosom Like coals of kindled fire. The passion of the nightingale, When singing to the rose, Is feebler than the agony That murders my repose! Nay, dearest! do not doubt me, Though madly thus I speak-- I feel thy arms about me, Thy tresses on my cheek: I know the sweet devotion That links thy heart with mine-- I know my soul's emotion Is doubly felt by thine: And deem not that a shadow Hath fallen across my love: No, sweet, my love is shadowless, As yonder heaven above. These little taper fingers-- Ah! Jane, how white they be!-- Can well supply the cruel want That almost maddens me. Thou wilt not sure deny me My first and fond request; I pray thee, by the memory Of all we cherish best-- By all the dear remembrance Of those delicicious days, When, hand in hand, we wandered Along the summer braes: By all we felt, unspoken, When 'neath the early moon, We sat beside the rivulet, In the leafy month of June; And by the broken whisper, That fell upon my ear, More sweet than angel-music, When first I woo'd thee, dear! By that great vow which bound thee Forever to my side, And by the ring that made thee My darling and my bride! Thou wilt not fail nor falter, But bend thee to the task-- A BOILED SHEEP'S HEAD ON SUNDAY Is all the boon I ask. THE BITER BIT. WILLIAM AYTOUN. The sun is in the sky, mother, the flowers are springing fair, And the melody of woodland birds is stirring in the air; The river, smiling to the sky, glides onward to the sea, And happiness is everywhere, oh, mother, but with me! They are going to the church, mother--I hear the marriage bell It booms along the upland--oh! it haunts me like a knell; He leads her on his arm, mother, he cheers her faltering step, And closely to his side she clings--she does, the demirep! They are crossing by the stile, mother, where we so oft have stood, The stile beside the shady thorn, at the corner of the wood; And the boughs, that wont to murmur back the words that won my ear, Wave their silver branches o'er him, as he leads his bridal fere. He will pass beside the stream, mother, where first my hand he pressed, By the meadow where, with quivering lip, his passion he confessed; And down the hedgerows where we've strayed again and yet again; But he will not think of me, mother, his broken-hearted Jane! He said that I was proud, mother, that I looked for rank and gold, He said I did not love him--he said my words were cold; He said I kept him off and on, in hopes of higher game-- And it may be that I did, mother; but who hasn't done the same? I did not know my heart, mother--I know it now too late; I thought that I without a pang could wed some nobler mate; But no nobler suitor sought me--and he has taken wing, And my heart is gone, and I am left a lone and blighted thing. You may lay me in my bed, mother--my head is throbbing sore; And, mother, prithee, let the sheets be duly aired before; And, if you'd please, my mother dear, your poor desponding child, Draw me a pot of beer, mother, and, mother, draw it mild! A MIDNIGHT MEDITATION. BY SIR E------- B------- L-------. WILLIAM AYTOUN Fill me once more the foaming pewter up! Another board of oysters, ladye mine! To-night Lucullus with himself shall sup. These mute inglorious Miltons are divine; And as I here in slippered ease recline, Quaffing of Perkins' Entire my fill, I sigh not for the lymph of Aganippe's rill. A nobler inspiration fires my brain, Caught from Old England's fine time-hallowed drink, I snatch the pot again and yet again, And as the foaming fluids shrink and shrink, Fill me once more, I say, up to the brink! This makes strong hearts--strong heads attest its charm-- This nerves the might that sleeps in Britain's brawny arm! But these remarks are neither here nor there. Where was I? Oh, I see--old Southey's dead! They'll want some bard to fill the vacant chair, And drain the annual butt--and oh, what head More fit with laurel to be garlanded Than this, which, curled in many a fragrant coil, Breathes of Castalia's streams, and best Macassar oil? I know a grace is seated on my brow, Like young Apollo's with his golden beams; There should Apollo's bays be budding now: And in my flashing eyes the radiance beams That marks the poet in his waking dreams. When as his fancies cluster thick and thicker, He feels the trance divine of poesy and liquor. They throng around me now, those things of air, That from my fancy took their being's stamp: There Pelham sits and twirls his glossy hair, There Clifford leads his pals upon the tramp; Their pale Zanoni, bending o'er his lamp, Roams through the starry wilderness of thought, Where all is every thing, and every thing is naught. Yes, I am he, who sung how Aram won The gentle ear of pensive Madeline! How love and murder hand in hand may run, Cemented by philosophy serene, And kisses bless the spot where gore has been! Who breathed the melting sentiment of crime, And for the assassin waked a sympathy sublime! Yes, I am he, who on the novel shed Obscure philosophy's enchanting light! Until the public, wildered as they read, Believed they saw that which was not in sight-- Of course 'twas not for me to set them right; For in my nether heart convinced I am, Philosophy's as good as any other bam. Novels three-volumed I shall write no more-- Somehow or other now they will not sell; And to invent new passions is a bore-- I find the Magazines pay quite as well. Translating's simple, too, as I can tell, Who've hawked at Schiller on his lyric throne, And given the astonished bard a meaning all my own. Moore, Campbell, Wordsworth, their best days are grassed, Battered and broken are their early lyres. Rogers, a pleasant memory of the past, Warmed his young hands at Smithfield's martyr fires, And, worth a plum, nor bays, nor butt desires. But these are things would suit me to the letter, For though this Stout is good, old Sherry's greatly better. A fice for your small poetic ravers, Your Hunts, your Tennysons, your Milnes, and these! Shall they compete with him who wrote "Maltravers," Prologue to "Alice or the Mysteries?" No! Even now, my glance prophetic sees My own high brow girt with the bays about. What ho, within there, ho! another pint of STOUT! THE DIRGE OF THE DRINKER. BY W------ E------ A------, ESQ. WILLIAM AYTOUN. Brothers, spare awhile your liquor, lay your final tumbler down; He has dropp'd--that star of honor--on the field of his renown! Raise the wail, but raise it softly, lowly bending on your knees, If you find it more convenient, you may hiccup if you please. Sons of Pantagruel, gently let your hip-hurraing sink, Be your manly accents clouded, half with sorrow, half with drink! Lightly to the sofa pillow lift his head from off the floor; See how calm he sleeps, unconscious as the deadest nail in door! Widely o'er the earth I've wander'd; where the drink most freely flow'd, I have ever reel'd the foremost, foremost to the beaker strode. Deep in shady Cider Cellars I have dream'd o'er heavy wet, By the fountains of Damascus I have quaff'd the rich Sherbet, Regal Montepulciano drained beneath its native rock, On Johannis' sunny mountain frequent hiccup'd o'er my hock; I have bathed in butts of Xeres deeper than did e'er Monsoon, Sangaree'd with bearded Tartars in the Mountains of the Moon; In beer-swilling Copenhagen I have drunk your Danesman blind, I have kept my feet in Jena, when each bursch to earth declined; Glass for glass, in fierce Jamaica, I have shared the planter's rum, Drank with Highland dhuinie-wassels till each gibbering Gael grew dumb; But a stouter, bolder drinker--one that loved his liquor more-- Never yet did I encounter than our friend upon the floor! Yet the best of us are mortal, we to weakness all are heir, He has fallen, who rarely stagger'd--let the rest of us beware! We shall leave him, as we found him--lying where his manhood fell, 'Mong the trophies of the revel, for he took his tipple well. Better't were we loosed his neckcloth, laid his throat and bosom bare, Pulled his Hobi's off, and turn'd his toes to taste the breezy air. Throw the sofa cover o'er him, dim the flaring of the gas, Calmly, calmly let him slumber, and, as by the bar we pass, We shall bid that thoughtful waiter place beside him, near and handy, Large supplies of soda water, tumblers bottomed well with brandy, So when waking, he shall drain them, with that deathless thirst of his, Clinging to the hand that smote him, like a good 'un as he is! FRANCESCA DA RIMINI. TO BON GAULTIER. WILLIAM AYTOUN. ARGUMENT-An impassioned pupil of Leigh Hunt, having met Bon Gaultier at a Fancy Ball, declares the destructive consequences thus: Didst thou not praise me, Gaultier, at the ball, Ripe lips, trim boddice, and a waist so small, With clipsome lightness, dwindling ever less, Beneath the robe of pea-y greeniness! Dost thou remember, when with stately prance, Our heads went crosswise in the country dance; How soft, warm fingers, tipp'd like buds of balm, Trembled within the squeezing of thy palm; And how a cheek grew flush'd and peachy-wise At the frank lifting of thy cordial eyes? Ah, me! that night there was one gentle thing, Who like a dove, with its scarce-feather'd wing, Flutter'd at the approach of thy quaint swaggering! There's wont to be, at conscious times like these, An affectation of a bright-eyed ease-- A crispy-cheekiness, if so I dare Describe the swaling of a jaunty air; And thus, when swirling from the waltz's wheel, You craved my hand to grace the next quadrille. That smiling voice, although it made me start, Boil'd in the meek o'erlifting of my heart; And, picking at my flowers, I said with free And usual tone, "Oh yes, sir, certainly!" Like one that swoons, 'twixt sweet amaze and fear, I heard the music burning in my ear, And felt I cared not, so thou wert with me, If Gurth or Wamba were our vis-a-vis. So, when a tall Knight Templar ringing came, And took his place against us with his dame, I neither turned away, nor bashful shrunk From the stern survey of the soldier-monk, Though rather more than full three-quarters drunk; But threading through the figure, first in rule, I paused to see thee plunge into La Poule. Ah, what a sight was that? Not prurient Mars, Pointing his toe through ten celestial bars-- Not young Apollo, beamily array'd In tripsome guise for Juno's masquerade-- Not smartest Hermes, with his pinion girth, Jerking with freaks and snatches down to earth, Look'd half so bold, so beautiful and strong, As thou when pranking thro' the glittering throng! How the calm'd ladies looked with eyes of love On thy trim velvet doublet laced above; The hem of gold, that, like a wavy river, Flowed down into thy back with glancing shiver! So bare was thy fine throat, and curls of black So lightsomely dropp'd on thy lordly back. So crisply swaled the feather in thy bonnet, So glanced thy thigh, and spanning palm upon it, That my weak soul took instant flight to thee, Lost in the fondest gush of that sweet witchery! But when the dance was o'er, and arm in arm (The full heart beating 'gainst the elbow warm), We pass'd to the great refreshment hall, Where the heap'd cheese-cakes and the comfits small Lay, like a hive of sunbeams, to burn Around the margin of the negus urn; When my poor quivering hand you finger'd twice, And, with inquiring accents, whisper'd "Ice, Water, or cream?" I could no more dissemble, But dropp'd upon the couch all in a tremble. A swimming faintness misted o'er my brain, The corks seem'd starting from the brisk champagne, The custards fell untouch'd upon the floor, Thine eyes met mine. That night we danced no more! LOUIS NAPOLEON'S ADDRESS TO HIS ARMY WILLIAM AYTOUN. Guards! who at Smolensko fled-- No--I beg your pardon--bled! For my Uncle blood you've shed, Do the same for me. Now's the day and now's the hour, Heads to split and streets to scour; Strike for rank, promotion, power, Sawg, and eau de vie. Who's afraid a child to kill? Who respects a shopman's till? Who would pay a tailor's bill? Let him turn and flee. Who would burst a goldsmith's door, Shoot a dun, or sack a store? Let him arm, and go before-- That is, follow me! See the mob, to madness riled, Up the barricades have piled; In among them, man and child, Unrelentingly! Shoot the men! there's scarcely one In a dozen's got a gun: Stop them, if they try to run, With artillery! Shoot the boys! each one may grow Into--of the state--a foe (Meaning by the state, you know, My supremacy!) Shoot the girls and women old! Those may bear us traitors bold-- These may be inclined to scold Our severity. Sweep the streets of all who may Rashly venture in the way, Warning for a future day Satisfactory. Then, when still'd is ev'ry voice, We, the nation's darling choice, Calling on them to rejoice, Tell them, FRANCE IS FREE. THE BATTLE OF THE BOULEVARD WILLIAM AYTOUN. On Paris, when the sun was low, The gay "Comique" made goodly show, Habitues crowding every row To hear Limnandier's opera. But Paris showed another sight, When, mustering in the dead of night, Her masters stood, at morning light, The crack shasseurs of Africa By servants in my pay betrayed, Cavaignac, then, my prisoner made, Wrote that a circumstance delayed His marriage rite and revelry. Then shook small Thiers, with terror riven; Then stormed Bedeau, while gaol-ward driven; And, swearing (not alone by Heaven), Was seized bold Lamoriciere. But louder rose the voice of woe When soldiers sacked each cit's depot, And tearing down a helpless foe, Flashed Magnan's red artillery. More, more arrests! Changarnier brave Is dragged to prison like a knave: No time allowed the swell to shave, Or use the least perfumery. 'Tis morn, and now Hortense's son (Perchance her spouse's too) has won The imperial crown. The French are done, Chawed up most incontestably. Few, few shall write, and none shall meet; Suppressed shall be each journal-sheet; And every serf beneath my feet Shall hail the soldier's Emperor. PUFFS POETICAL. WILLIAM AYTOUM I. PARIS AND HELEN. As the youthful Paris presses Helen to his ivory breast, Sporting with her golden tresses, Close and ever closer pressed. He said: "So let me quaff the nectar, Which thy lips of ruby yield; Glory I can leave to Hector, Gathered in the tented field. "Let me ever gaze upon thee, Look into thine eyes so deep; With a daring hand I won thee, With a faithful heart I'll keep. "Oh, my Helen, thou bright wonder, Who was ever like to thee? Jove would lay aside his thunder, So he might be blest like me. "How mine eyes so fondly linger On thy soft and pearly skin; Scan each round and rosy finger, Drinking draughts of beauty in! "Tell me, whence thy beauty, fairest! Whence thy cheek's enchanting bloom! Whence the rosy hue thou wearest, Breathing round thee rich perfume?" Thus he spoke, with heart that panted, Clasped her fondly to his side, Gazed on her with look enchanted, While his Helen thus replied: "Be no discord, love, between us, If I not the secret tell! 'Twas a gift I had of Venus,-- Venus who hath loved me well. "And she told me as she gave it, 'Let not e'er the charm be known, O'er thy person freely lave it, Only when thou art alone.' "'Tis inclosed in yonder casket-- Here behold its golden key; But its name--love, do not ask it, Tell't I may not, e'en to thee!" Long with vow and kiss he plied her, Still the secret did she keep, Till at length he sank beside her, Seemed as he had dropped to sleep. Soon was Helen laid in slumber, When her Paris, rising slow, Did his fair neck disencumber From her rounded arms of snow; Then her heedless fingers oping, Takes the key and steals away, To the ebon table groping, Where the wondrous casket lay; Eagerly the lid uncloses, Sees within it, laid aslope, Pear's Liquid Bloom of Roses, Cakes of his Transparent Soap! II. TARQUIN AND THE AUGUR. Gingerly is good King Tarquin shaving, Gently glides the razor o'er his chin, Near him stands a grim Haruspex raving, And with nasal whine he pitches in, Church Extension hints, Till the monarch squints, Snicks his chin, and swears--a deadly sin! "Jove confound thee, thou bare-legged impostor! From my dressing table get thee gone! Dost thou think my flesh is double Glo'ster? There again! That cut was to the bone! Get ye from my sight; I'll believe you're right When my razor cuts the sharping hone!" Thus spoke Tarquin with a deal of dryness; But the Augur, eager for his fees, Answered--"Try it, your Imperial Highness, Press a little harder, if you please. There! the deed is done!" Through the solid stone Went the steel as glibly as through cheese. So the Augur touched the tin of Tarquin, Who suspected some celestial aid: But he wronged the blameless Gods; for hearken! Ere the monarch's bet was rashly laid, With his searching eye Did the priest espy RODGER'S name engraved upon the blade. REFLECTIONS OF A PROUD PEDESTRIAN. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES I saw the curl of his waving lash, And the glance of his knowing eye, And I knew that he thought he was cutting a dash, As his steed went thundering by. And he may ride in the rattling gig, Or flourish the Stanhope gay, And dream that he looks exceeding big To the people that walk in the way; But he shall think, when the night is still, On the stable-boy's gathering numbers, And the ghost of many a veteran bill Shall hover around his slumbers; The ghastly dun shall worry his sleep, And constables cluster around him, And he shall creep from the wood-hole deep Where their specter eyes have found him! Ay! gather your reins, and crack your thong, And bid your steed go faster; He does not know as he scrambles along, That he has a fool for his master; And hurry away on your lonely ride, Nor deign from the mire to save me; I will paddle it stoutly at your side With the tandem that nature gave me! EVENING. BY A TAILOR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Day hath put on his jacket, and around His burning bosom buttoned it with stars. Here will I lay me on the velvet grass, That is like padding to earth's meager ribs, And hold communion with the things about me. Ah me! how lovely is the golden braid, That binds the skirt of night's descending robe! The thin leaves, quivering on their silken threads, Do make a music like to rustling satin, As the light breezes smooth their downy nap. Ha! what is this that rises to my touch, So like a cushion? Can it be a cabbage? It is, it is that deeply injured flower, Which boys do flout us with;--but yet I love thee, Thou giant rose, wrapped in a green surtout. Doubtless in Eden thou didst blush as bright As these, thy puny brethren; and thy breath Sweetened the fragrance of her spicy air; But now thou seemest like a bankrupt beau, Stripped of his gaudy hues and essences, And growing portly in his sober garments. Is that a swan that rides upon the water? O no, it is that other gentle bird, Which is the patron of our noble calling. I well remember, in my early years, When these young hands first closed upon a goose I have a scar upon my thimble finger, Which chronicles the hour of young ambition My father was a tailor, and his father, And my sire's grandsire, all of them were tailors; They had an ancient goose,--it was an heir-loom From some remoter tailor of our race. It happened I did see it on a time When none was near, and I did deal with it, And it did burn me,--oh, most fearfully! It is a joy to straighten out one's limbs, And leap elastic from the level counter, Leaving the petty grievances of earth, The breaking thread, the din of clashing shears, And all the needles that do wound the spirit, For such a pensive hour of soothing silence. Kind Nature, shuffling in her loose undress, Lays bare her shady bosom; I can feel With all around me;--I can hail the flowers That sprig earth's mantle,--and yon quiet bird, That rides the stream, is to me as a brother. The vulgar know not all the hidden pockets, Where Nature stows away her loveliness. But this unnatural posture of my legs Cramps my extended calves, and I must go Where I can coil them in their wonted fashion. PHAETHON; OR, THE AMATEUR COACHMAN. JOHN G. SAXX DAN PHAETHON--so the histories run-- Was a jolly young chap, and a son of the SUN; Or rather of PHOEBUS--but as to his mother, Genealogists make a deuce of a pother, Some going for one, and some for another! For myself, I must say, as a careful explorer, This roaring young blade was the son of AURORA! Now old Father PHOEBUS, ere railways begun To elevate funds and depreciate fun, Drove a very fast coach by the name of "THE SUN;" Running, they say, Trips every day (On Sundays and all, in a heathenish way). And lighted up with a famous array Of lanterns that shone with a brilliant display, And dashing along like a gentleman's "shay." With never a fare, and nothing to pay! Now PHAETHON begged of his doting old father, To grant him a favor, and this the rather, Since some one had hinted, the youth to annoy, That he wasn't by any means PHOEBUS'S boy! Intending, the rascally son of a gun, To darken the brow of the son of the SUN! "By the terrible Styx!" said the angry sire, While his eyes flashed volumes of fury and fire, "To prove your reviler an infamous liar, I swear I will grant you whate'er you desire!" "Then by my head," The youngster said, "I'll mount the coach when the horses are fed!-- For there's nothing I'd choose, as I'm alive, Like a seat on the box, and a dashing drive!" "Nay, PHAETHON, don't-- I beg you won't-- Just stop a moment and think upon't! You're quite too young," continued the sage, "To tend a coach at your tender age! Besides, you see, 'T will really be Your first appearance on any stage! Desist, my child, The cattle are wild, And when their mettle is thoroughly 'riled,' Depend upon't, the coach'll be 'spiled'-- They're not the fellows to draw it mild! Desist, I say, You'll rue the day-- So mind, and don't be foolish, PHA!" But the youth was proud, And swore aloud, 'T was just the thing to astonish the crowd-- He'd have the horses and wouldn't be cowed! In vain the boy was cautioned at large, He called for the chargers, unheeding the charge, And vowed that any young fellow of force, Could manage a dozen coursers, of course! Now PHOEBUS felt exceedingly sorry He had given his word in such a hurry, But having sworn by the Styx, no doubt He was in for it now, and couldn't back out. So calling Phaethon up in a trice, He gave the youth a bit of advice:-- "'Parce stimulis, utere loris!' (A "stage direction," of which the core is, Don't use the whip--they're ticklish things-- But, whatever you do, hold on to the strings!) Remember the rule of the Jehu-tribe is, 'Medio tutissimus ibis' (As the Judge remarked to a rowdy Scotchman, Who was going to quod between two watchmen!) So mind your eye, and spare your goad, Be shy of the stones, and keep in the road!" Now Phaethon, perched in the coachman's place, Drove off the steeds at a furious pace, Fast as coursers running a race, Or bounding along in a steeple-chase! Of whip and shout there was no lack, "Crack--whack-- Whack--crack" Resounded along the horses' back!-- Frightened beneath the stinging lash, Cutting their flanks in many a gash, On--on they sped as swift as a flash, Through thick and thin away they dash, (Such rapid driving is always rash!) When all at once, with a dreadful crash, The whole "establishment" went to smash! And Phaethon, he, As all agree, Off the coach was suddenly hurled, Into a puddle, and out of the world! MORAL. Don't rashly take to dangerous courses-- Nor set it down in your table of forces, That any one man equals any four horses! Don't swear by the Styx!-- It's one of Old Nick's Diabolical tricks To get people into a regular "fix," And hold 'em there as fast as bricks! THE SCHOOL-HOUSE. [AFTER GOLDSMITH.] JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL Propt on the marsh, a dwelling now, I see The humble school-house of my A, B, C, Where well-drilled urchins, each behind his tire, Waited in ranks the wished command to fire, Then all together, when the signal came, Discharged their A-B ABS against the dame, Who, 'mid the volleyed learning, firm and calm, Patted the furloughed ferule on her palm, And, to our wonder, could detect at once Who flashed the pan, and who was downright dunce. There young Devotion learned to climb with ease The gnarly limbs of Scripture family-trees, And he was most commended and admired Who soonest to the topmost twig perspired; Each name was called as many various ways As pleased the reader's ear on different days, So that the weather, or the ferule's stings, Colds in the head, or fifty other things, Transformed the helpless Hebrew thrice a week To guttural Pequot or resounding Greek, The vibrant accent skipping here and there Just as it pleased invention or despair; No controversial Hebraist was the Dame; With or without the points pleased her the same. If any tyro found a name too tough, And looked at her, pride furnished skill enough; She nerved her larynx for the desperate thing, And cleared the five-barred syllables at a spring. Ah, dear old times! there once it was my hap, Perched on a stool, to wear the long-eared cap; From books degraded, there I sat at ease, A drone, the envy of compulsory bees. EPIGRAMMATIC EPIGRAMS OF BEN JONSON. TO FINE GRAND. What is't Fine Grand, makes thee my friendship fly, Or take an Epigram so fearfully, As't were a challenge, or a borrower's letter? The world must know your greatness is my debtor. IMPRIMIS, Grand, you owe me for a jest I lent you, on mere acquaintance, at a feast. ITEM, a tale or two some fortnight after, That yet maintains you, and your house in laughter. ITEM, the Babylonian song you sing; ITEM, a fair Greek poesy for a ring, With which a learned madam you bely. ITEM, a charm surrounding fearfully Your partie-per-pale picture, one half drawn In solemn cyprus, th' other cobweb lawn. ITEM, a gulling impress for you, at tilt. ITEM, your mistress' anagram, in your hilt. ITEM, your own, sew'd in your mistress' smock. ITEM, an epitaph on my lord's cock, In most vile verses, and cost me more pain, Than had I made 'em good, to fit your vein. Forty things more, dear Grand, which you know true, For which, or pay me quickly, or I'll pay you. TO BRAINHARDY. Hardy, thy brain is valiant, 'tis confest, Thou more; that with it every day dar'st jest Thyself into fresh brawls; when call'd upon, Scarce thy week's swearing brings thee off of one; So in short time, thou art in arrearage grown Some hundred quarrels, yet dost thou fight none; Nor need'st thou; for those few, by oath released, Make good what thou dar'st in all the rest. Keep thyself there, and think thy valor right, He that dares damn himself, dares more than fight. TO DOCTOR EMPIRIC. When men a dangerous disease did 'scape, Of old, they gave a cock to Aesculape; Let me give two, that doubly am got free; From my disease's danger, and from thee. TO SIR ANNUAL FILTER. Filter, the most may admire thee, though not I; And thou, right guiltless, may'st plead to it, why? For thy late sharp device. I say 'tis fit All brains, at times of triumph, should run wit; For then our water-conduits do run wine; But that's put in, thou'lt say. Why, so is thine. ON BANKS THE USURER. Banks feels no lameness of his knotty gout, His moneys travel for him in and out, And though the soundest legs go every day, He toils to be at hell, as soon as they. ON CHEVRIL THE LAWYER No cause, nor client fat, will Cheveril leese, But as they come, on both sides he takes fees, And pleaseth both; for while he melts his grease For this; that wins, for whom he holds his peace. EPIGRAMATIC VERSES BY SAMUEL BUTLER. OPINION. Opinion governs all mankind, Like the blind's leading of the blind; For he that has no eyes in 's head, Must be by a dog glad to be led; And no beasts have so little in 'em As that inhuman brute, Opinion. "Tis an infectious pestilence, The tokens upon wit and sense, That with a venomous contagion Invades the sick imagination: And, when it seizes any part, It strikes the poison to the heart." This men of one another catch, By contact, as the humors match. And nothing's so perverse in nature As a profound opiniator. CRITICS. Critics are like a kind of flies, that breed In wild fig-trees, and when they're grown up, feed Upon the raw fruit of the nobler kind, And, by their nibbling on the outward rind, Open the pores, and make way for the sun To ripen it sooner than he would have done. HYPOCRISY. Hypocrisy will serve as well To propagate a church, as zeal; As persecution and promotion Do equally advance devotion: So round white stones will serve, they pay, As well as eggs to make hens lay. POLISH. All wit and fancy, like a diamond, The more exact and curious 'tis ground, Is forced for every carat to abate, As much in value as it wants in weight. THE GODLY. A godly man, that has served out his time In holiness, may set up any crime; As scholars, when they've taken their degrees May set up any faculty they please. PIETY. Why should not piety be made, As well as equity, a trade, And men get money by devotion, As well as making of a motion? B' allow'd to pray upon conditions, As well as suitors in petitions? And in a congregation pray, No less than Chancery, for pay? MARRIAGE. All sorts of vot'ries, that profess To bind themselves apprentices To Heaven, abjure, with solemn vows, Not Cut and Long-tail, but a Spouse As the worst of all impediments To hinder their devout intents. POETS. It is not poetry that makes men poor; For few do write that were not so before; And those that have writ best, had they been rich. Had ne'er been clapp'd with a poetic itch; Had loved their ease too well to take the pains To undergo that drudgery of brains; But, being for all other trades unfit, Only t' avoid being idle, set up wit. PUFFING. They that do write in authors' praises, And freely give their friends their voices Are not confined to what is true; That's not to give, but pay a due: For praise, that's due, does give no more To worth, than what it had before; But to commend without desert, Requires a mastery of art, That sets a gloss on what's amiss, And writes what should be, not what is. POLITICIANS. All the politics of the great Are like the cunning of a cheat, That lets his false dice freely run, And trusts them to themselves alone, But never lets a true one stir, Without some fingering trick or slur; And, when the gamester doubts his play, Conveys his false dice safe away, And leaves the true ones in the lurch T' endure the torture of the search. FEAR. There needs no other charm, nor conjurer To raise infernal spirits up, but fear; That makes men pull their horns in, like a snail That's both a pris'ner to itself, and jail; Draws more fantastic shapes, than in the grains Of knotted wood, in some men's crazy brains; When all the cocks they think they see, and bulls, Are only in the insides of their skulls. THE LAW. The law can take a purse in open court While it condemns a less delinquent for't. THE SAME. Who can deserve, for breaking of the laws, A greater penance than an honest cause. THE SAME. All those that do but rob and steal enough, Are punishment and court-of-justice proof, And need not fear, nor be concerned a straw In all the idle bugbears of the law; But confidently rob the gallows too, As well as other sufferers, of their due. CONFESSION. In the Church of Rome to go to shrift Is but to put the soul on a clean shift. SMATTERERS All smatterers are more brisk and pert Than those that understand an art; As little sparkles shine more bright Than glowing coals, that give them light. BAD WRITERS. As he that makes his mark is understood To write his name, and 'tis in law as good, So he, that can not write one word of sense Believes he has as legal a pretense To scribble what he does not understand, As idiots have a title to their land. THE OPINIONATIVE. Opinionators naturally differ From other men; as wooden legs are stiffer Than those of pliant joints, to yield and bow, Which way soever they're design'd to go. LANGUAGE OF THE LEARNED. Were Tully now alive, he'd be to seek In all our Latin terms of art and Greek; Would never understand one word of sense The most irrefragable schoolman means: As if the Schools design'd their terms of art, Not to advance a science, but to divert; As Hocus Pocus conjures to amuse The rabble from observing what he does. GOOD WRITING. As 'tis a greater mystery in the art Of painting, to foreshorten any part, Than draw it out; so 'tis in books the chief Of all perfections to be plain and brief. COURTIERS. As in all great and crowded fairs Monsters and puppet-play are wares, Which in the less will not go off, Because they have not money enough; So men in princes' courts will pass That will not in another place. INVENTIONS. All the inventions that the world contains, Were not by reason first found out, nor brains, But pass for theirs who had the luck to light Upon them by mistake or oversight. LOGICIANS. Logicians used to clap a proposition, As justices do criminals, in prison, And, in as learn'd authentic nonsense, writ The names of all their moods and figures fit; For a logician's one that has been broke To ride and pace his reason by the book; And by their rules, and precepts, and examples, To put his wits into a kind of trammels. LABORIOUS WRITERS. Those get the least that take the greatest pains, But most of all i' th' drudgery of the brains, A natural sign of weakness, as an ant Is more laborious than an elephant; And children are more busy at their play, Than those that wiseliest pass their time away. ON A CLUB OF SOTS. The jolly members of a toping club, Like pipestaves, are but hoop'd into a tub; And in a close confederacy link, For nothing else but only to hold drink. HOLLAND. A country that draws fifty feet of water, In which men live as in the hold of Nature; And when the sea does in upon them break, And drown a province, does but spring a leak; That always ply the pump, and never think They can be safe, but at the rate they stink; That live as if they had been run a-ground, And, when they die, are cast away and drown'd; That dwell in ships, like swarms of rats, and prey Upon the goods all nations' fleets convey; And, when their merchants are blown up and cracked, Whole towns are cast away and wrecked; That feed, like cannibals, on other fishes, And serve their cousin-germans up in dishes: A land that rides at anchor, and is moor'd, In which they do not live, but go a-board. WOMEN. The souls of women are so small, That some believe they've none at all; Or if they have, like cripples, still They've but one faculty, the will; The other two are quite laid by To make up one great tyranny; And though their passions have most pow'r, They are, like Turks, but slaves the more To th' abs'lute will, that with a breath Has sovereign pow'r of life and death, And, as its little int'rests move, Can turn 'em all to hate or love; For nothing, in a moment, turn To frantic love, disdain, and scorn; And make that love degenerate T' as great extremity of hate; And hate again, and scorn, and piques, To flames, and raptures, and love-tricks. EPIGRAMS OF EDMUND WALLEB. A PAINTED LADY WITH ILL TEETH. Were men so dull they could not see That Lyce painted; should they flee, Like simple birds, into a net, So grossly woven, and ill set, Her own teeth would undo the knot, And let all go that she had got. Those teeth fair Lyce must not show, If she would bite: her lovers, though Like birds they stoop at seeming grapes, Are dis-abus'd, when first she gapes: The rotten bones discover'd there, Show 'tis a painted sepulcher. OF THE MARRIAGE OF THE DWARFS. Design, or chance, makes others wive; But nature did this match contrive: EVE might as well have ADAM fled, As she denied her little bed To him, for whom heav'n seem'd to frame, And measure out, this only dame. Thrice happy is that humble pair, Beneath the level of all care! Over whose heads those arrows fly Of sad distrust, and jealousy: Secured in as high extreme, As if the world held none but them. To him the fairest nymphs do show Like moving mountains, topp'd with snow: And ev'ry man a POLYPHEME Does to his GALATEA seem; None may presume her faith to prove; He proffers death that proffers love. Ah CHLORIS! that kind nature thus From all the world had sever'd us: Creating for ourselves us two, As love has me for only you! EPIGRAMS OF MATTHEW PRIOR. A SIMILE. Dear Thomas, didst thou never pop Thy head into a tin-man's shop? There, Thomas, didst thou never see ('Tis but by way of simile) A squirrel spend his little rage, In jumping round a rolling cage? The cage, as either side turn'd up, Striking a ring of bells a-top?-- Mov'd in the orb, pleas'd with the chimes, The foolish creature thinks he climbs: But here or there, turn wood or wire, He never gets two inches higher. So fares it with those merry blades, That frisk it under Pindus' shades. In noble songs, and lofty odes, They tread on stars, and talk with gods; Still dancing in an airy round, Still pleased with their own verses' sound; Brought back, how fast soe'er they go, Always aspiring, always low. THE FLIES. Say, sire of insects, mighty Sol, (A Fly upon the chariot pole Cries out), what Blue-bottle alive Did ever with such fury drive? Tell Belzebub, great father, tell (Says t' other, perch'd upon the wheel), Did ever any mortal Fly Raise such a cloud of dust as I? My judgment turn'd the whole debate: My valor sav'd the sinking state. So talk two idle buzzing things; Toss up their heads, and stretch their wings. But let the truth to light be brought; This neither spoke, nor t' other fought: No merit in their own behavior: Both rais'd, but by their party's favor. PHILLIS'S AGE. How old may Phillis be, you ask, Whose beauty thus all hearts engages? To answer is no easy task: For she has really two ages. Stiff in brocade, and pinch'd in stays, Her patches, paint, and jewels on; All day let envy view her face, And Phillis is but twenty-one. Paint, patches, jewels laid aside, At night astronomers agree, The evening has the day belied; And Phillis is some forty-three. TO THE DUKE DE NOALLES. Vain the concern which you express, That uncall'd Alard will possess Your house and coach, both day and night, And that Macbeth was haunted less By Banquo's restless sprite. With fifteen thousand pounds a-year, Do you complain, you can not bear An ill, you may so soon retrieve? Good Alard, faith, is modester By much, than you believe. Lend him but fifty louis-d'or; And you shall never see him more: Take the advice; probatum est. Why do the gods indulge our store, But to secure our rest? ON BISHOP ATTERBURY. Meek Francis lies here, friend: without stop or stay, As you value your peace, make the best of your way. Though at present arrested by death's caitiff paw, If he stirs, he may still have recourse to the law. And in the King's Bench should a verdict be found, That by livery and seisin his grave is his ground, He will claim to himself what is strictly his due, And an action of trespass will straightway ensue, That you without right on his premises tread, On a simple surmise that the owner is dead. FORMA BONUM FRAGILE. What a frail thing is beauty! says baron Le Cras, Perceiving his mistress had one eye of glass: And scarcely had he spoke it, When she more confus'd as more angry she grew, By a negligent rage prov'd the maxim too true: She dropt the eye, and broke it. EARNING A DINNER. Full oft doth Mat. with Topaz dine, Eateth baked meats, drinketh Greek wine; But Topaz his own werke rehearseth; And Mat. mote praise what Topaz verseth. Now sure as priest did e'er shrive sinner, Full hardly earneth Mat. his dinner. BIBO AND CHARON. When Bibo thought fit from the world to retreat, And full of champagne as an egg's full of meat, He waked in the boat; and to Charon he said, He would be row'd back, for he was not yet dead. Trim the boat, and sit quiet, stern Charon replied: You may have forgot, you were drunk when you died. THE PEDANT. Lysander talks extremely well; On any subject let him dwell, His tropes and figures will content ye He should possess to all degrees The art of talk; he practices Full fourteen hours in four-and-twenty EPIGRAMS OF JOSEPH ADDISON. THE COUNTESS OF MANCHESTER. Written on his admission to the Kit-Cat Club, in compliance with the rule that every new member should name his toast, and write a verse in her praise. While haughty Gallia's dames, that spread O'er their pale cheeks an artful red, Beheld this beauteous stranger there, In nature's charms divinely fair; Confusion in their looks they showed, And with unborrowed blushes glowed. TO AN ILL-FAVORED LADY. [IMITATED FROM MARTIAL.] While in the dark on thy soft hand I hung, And heard the tempting syren in thy tongue, What flames, what darts, what anguish I endured! But when the candle entered I was cured. TO A CAPBICIOUS FEIEND. [IMITATED FROM MARTIAL.] In all thy humors, whether grave or mellow, Thou 'rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow; Hast so much wit, and mirth, and spleen about thee, There is no living with thee, nor without thee. TO A ROGUE. [IMITATED FROM MARTIAL.] Thy beard and head are of a different dye: Short of one foot, distorted in an eye: With all these tokens of a knave complete, Should'st thou be honest, thou 'rt a dev'lish cheat. EPIGRAMS OF ALEXANDER POPE. ON MRS. TOFTS. (A CELEBRATED OPERA SINGER.) So bright is thy beauty, so charming thy song, As had drawn both the beasts and their Orpheus along; But such is thy avarice, and such is thy pride. That the beasts must have starved, and the poet have died. TO A BLOCKHEAD. You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come: Knock as you please, there's nobody at home. THE FOOL AND THE POET. Sir, I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool, But you yourself may serve to show it, That every fool is not a poet. EPIGRAMS OF DEAN SWIFT. ON BURNING A DULL POEM. An ass's hoof alone can hold That poisonous juice, which kills by cold. Methought when I this poem read, No vessel but an ass's head Such frigid fustian could contain; I mean the head without the brain. The cold conceits, the chilling thoughts, Went down like stupefying draughts; I found my head begin to swim, A numbness crept through every limb. In haste, with imprecations dire, I threw the volume in the fire; When (who could think?) though cold as ice, It burnt to ashes in a trice. How could I more enhance its fame? Though born in snow, it died in flame. TO A LADY, On hearing her praise her husband. You always are making a god of your spouse; But this neither Reason nor Conscience allows; Perhaps you will say, 'tis in gratitude due, And you adore him because he adores you. Your argument's weak, and so you will find, For you, by this rule, must adore all mankind. THE CUDGELED HUSBAND. As Thomas was cudgel'd one day by his wife, He took to his heels and fled for his life: Tom's three dearest friends came by in the squabble, And saved him at once from the shrew and the rabble; Then ventured to give him some sober advice- But Tom is a person of honor so nice, Too wise to take counsel, too proud to take warning, That he sent to all three a challenge next morning. Three duels he fought, thrice ventured his life; Went home, and was cudgeled again by his wife. ON SEEING VERSES WRITTEN UPON WINDOWS AT INNS The sage, who said he should be proud Of windows in his breast, Because he ne'er a thought allow'd That might not be confest; His window scrawled by every rake, His breast again would cover, And fairly bid the devil take The diamond and the lover. ON SEEING THE BUSTS OP NEWTON, LOCKE, AND OTHERS, Placed by Queen Caroline in Richmond Hermitage. Louis the living learned fed, And raised the scientific head; Our frugal queen, to save her meat, Exalts the heads that cannot eat. ON THE CHURCH'S DANGER. Good Halifax and pious Wharton cry, The Church has vapors; there's no danger nigh. In those we love not, we no danger see, And were they hang'd, there would no danger be. But we must silent be, amid our fears, And not believe our senses, but the Peers. So ravishers that know no sense of shame, First stop her mouth, and then debauch the dame. ON ONE DELACOURT'S COMPLIMENTING CARTHY ON HIS POETRY. Carthy, you say, writes well--his genius true, You pawn your word for him--he'll vouch for you. So two poor knaves, who find their credit fail, To cheat the world, become each other's bail. ON A USURER. Beneath this verdant hillock lies, Demar, the wealthy and the wise. His heirs, that he might safely rest, Have put his carcass in a chest, The very chest in which, they say, His other self, his money lay. And, if his heirs continue kind To that dear self he left behind, I dare believe, that four in five Will think his better half alive. TO MRS. BIDDY FLOYD; OR, THE RECEIPT TO FORM A BEAUTY. When Cupid did his grandsire Jove entreat To form some Beauty by a new receipt, Jove sent, and found, far in a country scene, Truth, innocence, good nature, look serene: From which ingredients first the dext'rous boy Pick'd the demure, the awkward, and the coy. The Graces from the court did next provide Breeding, and wit, and air, and decent pride: These Venus cleans from every spurious grain Of nice coquet, affected, pert, and vain. Jove mix'd up all, and the best clay employ'd; Then call'd the happy composition FLOYD. THE REVERSE; OR, MRS. CLUDD. Venus one day, as story goes, But for what reason no man knows, In sullen mood and grave deport, Trudged it away to Jove's high court; And there his Godship did entreat, To look out for his best receipt: And make a monster strange and odd, Abhorr'd by man and every god. Jove, ever kind to all the fair, Nor e'er refused a lady's prayer, Straight oped 'scrutoire, and forth he took A neatly bound and well-gilt book; Sure sign that nothing enter'd there, But what was very choice and rare. Scarce had he turn'd a page or two-- It might be more, for aught I know; But, be the matter more or less, 'Mong friends 't will break no squares, I guess. Then, smiling, to the dame quoth he, Here's one will fit you to a T. But, as the writing doth prescribe, 'Tis fit the ingredients we provide. Away he went, and search'd the stews, And every street about the Mews; Diseases, impudence, and lies, Are found and brought him in a trice From Hackney then he did provide, A clumsy air and awkward pride; From lady's toilet next he brought Noise, scandal, and malicious thought. These Jove put in an old close-stool, And with them mix'd the vain, the fool. But now came on his greatest care, Of what he should his paste prepare; For common clay or finer mold Was much too good, such stuff to hold At last he wisely thought on mud; So raised it up, and call'd it--CLUDD. With this, the lady well content, Low curtsey'd, and away she went. THE PLACE OF THE DAMNED. All folks who pretend to religion and grace, Allow there's a HELL, but dispute of the place: But if HELL may by logical rules be defined The place of the damn'd--I'll tell you my mind. Wherever the damn'd do chiefly abound, Most certainly there is HELL to be found: Damn'd poets, damn'd critics, damn'd blockheads, damn'd knaves; Damn'd senators bribed, damn'd prostitute slaves; Damn'd lawyers and judges, damn'd lords and damn'd squires; Damn'd spies and informers, damn'd friends and damn'd liars; Damn'd villains, corrupted in every station; Dama'd time-serving priests all over the nation; And into the bargain I'll readily give you Damn'd ignorant prelates, and councillors privy. Then let us no longer by parsons be flamm'd, For we know by these marks the place of the damn'd: And HELL to be sure is at Paris or Rome. How happy for us that it is not at home! THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. With a world of thought oppress'd, I sunk from reverie to rest. A horrid vision seized my head, I saw the graves give up their dead! Jove, arm'd with terrors, bursts the skies, And thunder roars and lightning flies; Amazed, confused, its fate unknown, The world stands trembling at his throne! While each pale sinner hung his head, Jove, nodding, shook the heavens, and said: "Offending race of human kind, By nature, reason, learning, blind; You who, through frailty, stepp'd aside; And you, who never fell from pride: You who in different sects were shamm'd, And come to see each other damn'd; (So some folk told you, but they knew No more of Jove's designs than you); --The world's mad business now is o'er, And I resent these pranks no more. --I to such blockheads set my wit! I damn such fools!--Go, go, you're bit." PAULUS THE LAWYER. LINDSAY. "A slave to crowds, scorch'd with the summer's heats, In courts the wretched lawyer toils and sweats; While smiling Nature, in her best attire, Regales each sense, and vernal joys inspire. Can he, who knows that real good should please Barter for gold his liberty and ease?" This Paulus preach'd:--When, entering at the door, Upon his board the client pours the ore: He grasps the shining gifts, pores o'er the cause, Forgets the sun, and dozes o'er the laws. EPIGRAMS BY THOMAS SHERIDAN. ON A CARICATURE. If you say this was made for friend Dan, you belie it, I'll swear he's so like it that he was made by it. ON DEAN SWIFT'S PROPOSED HOSPITAL FOR LUNATICS Great wits to madness nearly are allied, This makes the Dean for kindred THUS provide. TO A DUBLIN PUBLISHER. Who displayed a bust of Dean Swift in his window, while publishing Lord Orrery's offensive remarks upon the Dean. Faulkner! for once thou hast some judgment shown, By representing Swift transformed to stone; For could he thy ingratitude have known, Astonishment itself the work had done! WHICH IS WHICH. BYRON. "God bless the King! God bless the faith's defender! God bless--no harm in blessing--the Pretender. But who that pretender is, and who that king, God bless us all, is quite another thing." ON SOME LINES OF LOPEZ DE VEGA. DR. JOHNSON. If the man who turnips cries, Cry not when his father dies, 'Tis a proof that he had rather Have a turnip than his father. ON A FULL-LENGTH PORTRAIT OF BEAU MARSH. Placed between the busts of Newton and Pope. LORD CHESTERFIELD "Immortal Newton never spoke More truth than here you'll find; Nor Pope himself e'er penn'd a joke More cruel on mankind. "The picture placed the busts between, Gives satire all its strength; Wisdom and Wit are little seen-- But Folly at full length." ON SCOTLAND. CLEVELAND. "Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his doom; Nor forced him wander, but confined him home." EPIGRAMS OF PETER PINDAR. EDMUND BURKE'S ATTACK ON WARREN HASTINGS Poor Edmund sees poor Britain's setting sun: Poor Edmund GROANS--and Britain is UNDONE! Reader! thou hast, I do presume (God knows though) been in a snug room, By coals or wood made comfortably warm, And often fancied that a storm WITHOUT, Hath made a diabolic rout-- Sunk ships, tore trees up--done a world of harm. Yes, thou hast lifted up thy tearful eyes, Fancying thou heardst of mariners the cries; And sigh'd, "How wretched now must thousands be! Oh! how I pity the poor souls at sea!" When, lo! this dreadful tempest, and his roar, A ZEPHYR--in the key-hole of the door! Now may not Edmund's howlings be a sigh Pressing through Edmund's lungs for loaves and fishes, On which he long hath looked with LONGING eye To fill poor Edmund's not o'erburden'd dishes? Give Mun a sup--forgot will be complaint; Britain be safe, and Hastings prove a SAINT. ON AN ARTIST Who boasted that his pictures had hung near those of Sir Joshua Reynolds in the Exhibition. A shabby fellow chanc'd one day to meet The British Roscius in the street, Garrick, on whom our nation justly brags-- The fellow hugg'd him with a kind embrace-- "Good sir, I do not recollect your face," Quoth Garrick--"No!" replied the man of rags. "The boards of Drury you and I have trod Full many a time together, I am sure--" "When?" with an oath, cried Garrick--"for by G-- I never saw that face of yours before!-- What characters, I pray, Did you and I together play?" "Lord!" quoth the fellow, "think not that I mock-- When you play'd Hamlet, sir--I play'd the cock" ON THE CONCLUSION OF HIS ODES "FINISH'D!" a disappointed artist cries, With open mouth, and straining eyes; Gaping for praise like a young crow for meat-- "Lord! why have you not mentioned ME!" Mention THEE! Thy IMPUDENCE hath put me in a SWEAT-- What rage for fame attends both great and small Better be D--N'D, than mention'd NOT AT ALL! THE LEX TALIONIS UPON BENJAMIN WEST West tells the world that Peter can not rhyme-- Peter declares, point blank, that West can't paint. West swears I've not an atom of sublime-- I swear he hath no notion of a saint; And that his cross-wing'd cherubim are fowls, Baptized by naturalists, owls: Half of the meek apostles, gangs of robbers; His angels, sets of brazen-headed lubbers. The Holy Scripture says, "All flesh is grass," With Mr. West, all flesh is brick and brass; Except his horse-flesh, that I fairly own Is often of the choicest Portland stone. I've said it too, that this artist's faces Ne'er paid a visit to the graces: That on expression he can never brag: Yet for this article hath he been studying, But in it never could surpass a pudding- No, gentle reader, nor a pudding-bag. I dare not say, that Mr. West Can not sound criticism impart: I'm told the man with technicals is blest, That he can talk a deal upon the art; Yes, he can talk, I do not doubt it-- "About it, goddess, and about it." Thus, then, is Mr. West deserving praise-- And let my justice the fair laud afford; For, lo! this far-fam'd artist cuts both ways, Exactly like the angel Gabriel's sword; The beauties of the art his CONVERSE shows, His CANVAS almost ev'ry thing that's bad! Thus at th' Academy, we must suppose, A man more useful never could be had: Who in himself, a host, so much can do; Who is both precept and example too! BARRY'S ATTACK UPON SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS When Barry dares the President to fly on, 'Tis like a mouse, that, work'd into a rage Daring some dreadful war to wage, Nibbles the tail of the Nemaean lion. Or like a louse, of mettle full, Nurs'd in some giant's skull-- Because Goliath scratch'd him as he fed, Employs with vehemence his angry claws, And gaping, grinning, formidable jaws, To CARRY OFF the GIANT'S HEAD! ON THE DEATH OP MR. HONE, R. A. There's one R. A. more dead! stiff is poor Hone-- His works be with him under the same stone: I think the sacred art will not bemoan 'em; But, Muse!--DE MORTUIS NIL NISI BONUM-- As to his host, a TRAV'LER, with a sneer, Said of his DEAD SMALL-BEER. Go, then, poor Hone! and join a numerous train Sunk in OBLIVION'S wide pacific ocean; And may its WHALE-LIKE stomach feel no motion To cast thee, like a Jonah, up again. ON GEORGE THE THIRD'S PATRONAGE OF BENJAMIN WEST. Thus have I seen a child, with smiling face, A little daisy in the garden place, And strut in triumph round its fav'rite flow'r; Gaze on the leaves with infant admiration, Thinking the flow'r the finest in the nation, Then pay a visit to it ev'ry hour: Lugging the wat'ring-pot about, Which John the gard'ner was oblig'd to fill; The child, so pleas'd, would pour the water out, To show its marvelous gard'ning skill; Then staring round, all wild for praises panting, Tell all the world it was its own sweet planting; And boast away, too happy elf, How that it found the daisy all itself! ANOTHER ON THE SAME. In SIMILE if I may shine agen- Thus have I seen a fond old hen With one poor miserable chick, Bustling about a farmer's yard; Now on the dunghill laboring hard, Scraping away through thin and thick, Flutt'ring her feathers--making such a noise! Cackling aloud such quantities of joys, As if this chick, to which her egg gave birth, Was born to deal prodigious knocks, To shine the Broughton of game cocks, And kill the fowls of all the earth! EPITAPH ON PETER STAGGS. Poor Peter Staggs, now rests beneath this rail, Who loved his joke, his pipe, and mug of ale; For twenty years he did the duties well, Of ostler, boots, and waiter at the "Bell." But Death stepp'd in, and order'd Peter Staggs To feed his worms, and leave the farmers' nags. The church clock struck one--alas! 't was Peter's knell, Who sigh'd, "I'm coming--that's the ostler's bell!" TRAY'S EPITAPH. Here rest the relics of a friend below, Blest with more sense than half the folks I know: Fond of his ease, and to no parties prone, He damn'd no sect, but calmly gnaw'd his bone; Perform'd his functions well in ev'ry way- Blush, CHRISTIANS, if you can, and copy Tray. ON A STONE THROWN AT A VERY GREAT MAN, BUT WHICH MISSED HIM. Talk no more of the lucky escape of the head From a flint so unluckily thrown- I think very different, with thousands indeed, 'T was a lucky escape for the stone. [The following stanza, on the death of Lady Mount E---'s favorite pig Cupid, is verily exceeded by nothing in the annals of impertinence.--P. P.] A CONSOLATORY STANZA TO LADY MOUNT E---, ON THE DEATH OF HER PIG CUPID. O dry that tear, so round and big, Nor waste in sighs your precious wind! Death only takes a single pig-- Your lord and son are still behind. EPIGRAMS BY ROBERT BURNS. THE POET'S CHOICE. I murder hate, by field or flood, Though glory's name may screen us; In wars at hame I'll spend my blood, Life-giving wars of Venus. The Jeities that I adore, Are social peace and plenty; I'm better pleased to make one more, Than be the death of twenty. ON A CELEBRATED RULING ELDER. Here souter Hood in death does sleep;-- To h-ll, if he's gane thither, Satan, gie him thy gear to keep, He'll haud it weel thegither. ON JOHN DOVE INNKEEPER OF MAUCHLINE. Here lies Johnny Pidgeon; What was his religion? Wha e'er desires to ken, To some other warl' Maun follow the carl, For here Johnny Pidgeon had nane! Strong ale was ablution-- Small beer, persecution, A dram was MEMENTO MORI: But a full flowing bowl Was the saving his soul, And port was celestial glory. ON ANDREW TURNER. In se'enteen hunder an' forty-nine, Satan took stuff to mak' a swine, And cuist it in a corner; But wilily he chang'd his plan, And shaped it something like a man. And ca'd it Andrew Turner. ON A SCOTCH COXCOMB Light lay the earth on Billy's breast, His chicken heart so tender; But build a castle on his head, His skull will prop it under. ON GRIZZEL GRIM. Here lies with death auld Grizzel Grim. Lineluden's ugly witch; O death, how horrid is thy taste, To lie with such a b----! ON A WAG IN MAUCHLINE. Lament him, Mauchline husbands a', He aften did assist ye; For had ye stayed whole years awa, Your wives they ne'er had missed ye. Ye Mauchline bairns, as on ye pass To school in bands thegither, O tread ye lightly on his grass-- Perhaps he was your father. EPITAPH ON W---. Stop, thief! dame Nature cried to Death, As Willie drew his latest breath; You have my choicest model ta'en; How shall I make a fool again? ON A SUICIDE. Earth'd up here lies an imp o' hell, Planted by Satan's dibble-- Poor silly wretch, he's damn'd himsel' To save the Lord the trouble. EPIGRAMS FROM THE GERMAN OF LESSING. NIGER. "He's gone at last--old Niger's dead!" Last night 'twas said throughout the city; Each quidnunc gravely shook his head, And HALF the town cried, "What a pity!" The news proved false--'t was all a cheat-- The morning came the fact denying; And ALL the town to-day repeat What HALF the town last night was crying. A NICE POINT. Say which enjoys the greater blisses, John, who Dorinda's picture kisses, Or Tom, his friend, the favor'd elf, Who kisses fair Dorinda's self? Faith, 'tis not easy to divine, While both are thus with raptures fainting, To which the balance should incline, Since Tom and John both kiss a painting. THE POINT DECIDED. Nay, surely John's the happier of the twain, Because--the picture can not kiss again! TRUE NOBILITY. Young Stirps as any lord is proud, Vain, haughty, insolent, and loud, Games, drinks, and in the full career Of vice, may vie with any peer; Seduces daughters, wives, and mothers, Spends his own cash, and that of others, Pays like a lord--that is to say, He never condescends to pay, But bangs his creditor in requital-- And yet this blockhead wants a title! TO A LIAR. Lie as long as you will, my fine fellow, believe me, Your rhodomontading will never deceive me; Though you took me in THEN, I confess, my good youth, When moved by caprice you once told me the truth. MENDAX. See yonder goes old Mendax, telling lies To that good easy man with whom he's walking; How know I that? you ask, with some surprise; Why, don't you see, my friend, the fellow's talking. THE BAD-WIFE. SAVANS have decided, that search the globe round, One only bad wife in the world can be found; The worst of it is, as her name is not known, Not a husband but swears that bad wife is his own. THE DEAD MISER. From the grave where dead Gripeall, the miser, reposes, What a villainous odor invades all our noses! It can't be his BODY alone--in the hole They have certainly buried the usurer's SOUL. ON FELL. While Fell was reposing himself on the hay, A reptile conceal'd bit his leg as he lay; But all venom himself, of the wound he made light, And got well, while the scorpion died of the bite. THE BAD ORATOR. So vile your grimace, and so croaking your speech, One scarcely can tell if you're laughing or crying; Were you fix'd on one's funeral sermon to preach, The bare apprehension would keep one from dying. THE WISE CHILD. How plain your little darling says "Mamma," But still she calls you "Doctor," not "Papa." One thing is clear: your conscientious rib Has not yet taught the pretty dear to fib. SPECIMEN OF THE LACONIC. "Be less prolix," says Grill. I like advice-- "Grill, you're an ass!" Now surely that's concise. CUPID AND MERCURY, OR THE BARGAIN. Sly Cupid late with Maia's son Agreed to live as friend and brother; In proof, his bow and shafts the one Chang'd for the well-fill'd purse of t'other. And now, the transfer duly made, Together through the world they rove; The thieving god in arms array'd, And gold the panoply of love! FRITZ. Quoth gallant Fritz, "I ran away To fight again another day." The meaning of his speech is plain, He only fled to fly again. ON DORILIS. That Dorilis thus, on her lap as he lies, Should kiss little Pompey, excites no surprise; But the lapdog whom thus she keeps fondling and praising, Licks her face in return--that I own is amazing! TO A SLOW WALKER AND QUICK EATER. So slowly you walk, and so quickly you eat, You should march with your mouth, and devour with your feet. ON TWO BEAUTIFUL ONE-EYED SISTERS Give up one eye, and make your sister's two, Venus she then would be, and Cupid you. THE PER-CONTRA, OR MATRIMONIAL BALANCE How strange, a deaf wife to prefer! True, but she's also dumb, good sir. EPIGRAMS S. T. COLERIDGE. AN EXPECTORATION, Or Spienetic Extempore, on my joyful departure from the city of Cologne. As I am rhymer, And now, at least, a merry one, Mr. Mum's Eudesheimer, And the church of St. Geryon, Are the two things alone, That deserve to be known, In the body-and-soul-stinking town of Cologne. EXPECTORATION THE SECOND. In Clon, the town of monks and bones, And pavements fanged with murderous stones, And rags, and hags, and hideous wenches, I counted two-and-seventy stenches, All well defined and separate stinks! Ye nymphs that reign o'er sewers and sinks, The river Rhine, it is well known, Doth wash your city of Cologne. But tell me, nymphs, what power divine Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine? TO A LADY, Offended by a sportive observation that women have no souls. Nay, dearest Anna, why so grave? I said you had no soul,'tis true, For what you ARE you can not HAVE; 'Tis _I_ that have one since I first had you. AVARO. [STOLEN FROM LESSING.] There comes from old Avaro's grave A deadly stench--why sure they have Immured his SOUL within his grave. BEELZEBUB AND JOB. Sly Beelzebub took all occasions To try Job's constancy and patience. He took his honor, took his health, He took his children, took his wealth, His servants, oxen, horses, cows-- But cunning Satan did not take his spouse. But Heaven, that brings out good from evil, And loves to disappoint the devil, Had predetermined to restore Twofold all he had before; His servants, horses, oxen, cows-- Short-sighted devil, not to take his spouse! SENTIMENTAL. The rose that blushes like the morn, Bedecks the valleys low: And so dost thou, sweet infant corn, My Angelina's toe. But on the rose there grows a thorn, That breeds disastrous woe: And so dost thou, remorseless corn, On Angelina's toe. AN ETERNAL POEM. Your poem must ETERNAL be, Dear sir, it can not fail, For 'tis incomprehensible, And wants both head and tail. BAD POETS. Swans sing before they die--'t were no bad thing; Did certain persons die before they sing. TO MR. ALEXANDRE, THE VENTRILOQUIST. SIR WALTER SCOTT. Of yore, in Old England, it was not thought good, To carry two visages under one hood: What should folks say to YOU? who have faces so plenty, That from under one hood you last night showed us twenty! Stand forth, arch deceiver, and tell us in truth, Are you handsome or ugly, in age or in youth? Man, woman or child--a dog or a mouse? Or are you, at once, each live thing in the house? Each live thing did I ask?--each dead implement too, A workshop in your person--saw, chisel, and screw! Above all, are you one individual?--I know You must be, at least, Alexandre and Co. But I think you're a troop, an assemblage, a mob, And that I, as the sheriff, should take up the job: And, instead of rehearsing your wonders in verse, Must read you the riot-act, and bid you disperse! THE SWALLOWS. R. BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. The Prince of Wales came into Brooke's one day, and complained of cold, but after drinking three glasses of brandy and water, said he felt comfortable. The prince came in and said't was cold, Then put to his head the rummer, Till SWALLOW after SWALLOW came, When he pronounced it summer. FRENCH AND ENGLISH. ERSKINE The French have taste in all they do, Which we are quite without; For Nature, that to them gave GOUT To us gave only gout. EPIGRAMS BY THOMAS MOORE. TO SIR HUDSON LOWE. Sir Hudson Lowe, Sir Hudson LOW (By name, and ah! by nature so), As thou art fond of persecutions, Perhaps thou'st read, or heard repeated, How Captain Gulliver was treated, When thrown among the Lilliputians. They tied him down-these little men did-- And having valiantly ascended Upon the Mighty Man's protuberance, They did so strut!--upon my soul, It must have been extremely droll To see their pigmy pride's exuberance! And how the doughty mannikins Amused themselves with sticking pins And needles in the great man's breeches; And how some VERY little things, That pass'd for Lords, on scaffoldings Got up and worried him with speeches. Alas! alas! that it should happen To mighty men to be caught napping!-- Though different, too, these persecutions For Gulliver, THERE, took the nap, While, HERE, the NAP, oh sad mishap, Is taken by the Lilliputians! DIALOGUE BETWEEN A CATHOLIC DELEGATE AND HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS DUKE OF CUMBERLAND. Said his Highness to NED, with that grim face of his, "Why refuse us the VETO, dear Catholic NEDDY?"-- "Because, sir" said NED, looking full in his phiz, "You're FORBIDDING enough, in all conscience, already!" TO MISS ----- With woman's form and woman's tricks So much of man you seem to mix, One knows not where to take you; I pray you, if 'tis not too far, Go, ask of Nature WHICH you are, Or what she meant to make you. Yet stay--you need not take the pains With neither beauty, youth, nor brains, For man or maid's desiring: Pert as female, fool as male, As boy too green, as girl too stale The thing's not worth inquiring! TO ----- Die when you will, you need not wear At heaven's court a form more fair Than Beauty here on earth has given; Keep but the lovely looks we see The voice we hear and you will be An angel READY-MADE for heaven! UPON BEING OBLIGED TO LEAVE A PLEASANT PARTY FROM THE WANT OF A PAIR OF BREECHES TO DRESS FOR DINNER IN. Between Adam and me the great difference is, Though a paradise each has been forced to resign, That he never wore breeches till turn'd out of his, While, for want of my breeches, I'm banish'd from mine WHAT'S MY THOUGHT LIKE? QUEST.-Why is a Pump like Viscount CASTLEREAGH? ANSW.-Because it is a slender thing of wood, That up and down its awkward arm doth sway, And coolly spout, and spout, and spout away, In one weak, washy, everlasting flood! FROM THE FRENCH. Of all the men one meets about, There's none like Jack--he's everywhere: At church--park--auction--dinner--rout-- Go when and where you will, he's there. Try the West End, he's at your back-- Meets you, like Eurus, in the East-- You're call'd upon for "How do, Jack?" One hundred times a-day, at least. A friend of his one evening said, As home he took his pensive way, "Upon my soul, I fear Jack's dead-- I've seen him but three times to-day!" A JOKE VERSIFIED. "Come, come," said Tom's father, "at your time of life, There's no longer excuse for thus playing the rake-- It is time you should think, boy, of taking a wife."-- "Why, so it is, father--whose wife shall I take?" THE SURPRISE. Doloris, I swear, by all I ever swore, That from this hour I shall not love thee more.-- "What! love no more? Oh! why this alter'd vow? Because I CAN NOT love thee MORE--than NOW!" ON ----. Like a snuffers, this loving old dame, By a destiny grievous enough, Though so oft she has snapp'd at the flame, Hath never more than the snuff. ON A SQUINTING POETESS. To no ONE Muse does she her glance confine, But has an eye, at once to ALL THE NINE! ON A TUET-HUNTER. Lament, lament, Sir Isaac Heard, Put mourning round thy page, Debrett, For here lies one, who ne'er preferr'd A Viscount to a Marquis yet. Beside his place the God of Wit, Before him Beauty's rosiest girls, Apollo for a STAR he'd quit, And Love's own sister for an Earl's. Did niggard fate no peers afford, He took, of course, to peers' relations; And, rather than not sport a lord, Put up with even the last creations. Even Irish names, could he but tag 'em With "Lord" and "Duke," were sweet to call, And, at a pinch, Lord Ballyraggum Was better than no Lord at all. Heaven grant him now some noble nook, For, rest his soul, he'd rather be Genteelly damn'd beside a Duke, Than saved in vulgar company. THE KISS. Give me, my love, that billing kiss I taught you one delicious night, When, turning epicures in bliss, We tried inventions of delight. Come, gently steal my lips along, And let your lips in murmurs move Ah, no!--again--that kiss was wrong How can you be so dull, my love? "Cease, cease!" the blushing girl replied And in her milky arms she caught me "How can you thus your pupil chide; You know 'T WAS IN THE DARK you taught me!" EPITAPH ON A WELL-KNOWN POET--(ROBERT SOUTHEY.) Beneath these poppies buried deep, The bones of Bob the bard lie hid; Peace to his manes; and may he sleep As soundly as his readers did! Through every sort of verse meandering, Bob went without a hitch or fall, Through Epic, Sapphic, Alexandrine, To verse that was no verse at all; Till fiction having done enough, To make a bard at least absurd, And give his readers QUANTUM SUFF., He took to praising George the Third: And now, in virtue of his crown, Dooms us, poor whigs, at once to slaughter, Like Donellan of bad renown, Poisoning us all with laurel-water. And yet at times some awkward qualms he Felt about leaving honor's track; And though he's got a butt of Malmsey, It may not save him from a sack. Death, weary of so dull a writer, Put to his works a FINIS thus. Oh! may the earth on him lie lighter Than did his quartos upon us! WRITTEN IN A YOUNG LADY'S COMMON-PLACE BOOK, Called the "Book of Follies." This journal of folly's an emblem of me; But what book shall we find emblematic of thee? Oh! shall we not say thou art LOVE'S DUODECIMO? None can be prettier, few can be less, you know. Such a volume in SHEETS were a volume of charms; Or if BOUND, it should only be BOUND IN OUR ARMS! THE RABBINICAL ORIGIN OF WOMEN. They tell us that Woman was made of a rib Just pick'd from a corner so snug in the side; But the Rabbins swear to you that this is a fib, And 't was not so at all that the sex was supplied. For old Adam was fashion'd, the first of his kind, With a tail like a monkey, full a yard and a span; And when Nature cut off this appendage behind, Why--then woman was made of the tail of the man. If such is the tie between women and men, The ninny who weds is a pitiful elf; For he takes to his tail, like an idiot, again, And makes a most damnable ape of himself! Yet, if we may judge as the fashions prevail, Every husband remembers the original plan, And, knowing his wife is no more than his tail, Why--he leaves her behind him as much as he can. ANACREONTIQUE. Press the grape, and let it pour Around the board its purple shower; And while the drops my goblet steep, I'll think--in WOE the clusters weep. Weep on, weep on, my pouting vine! Heaven grant no tears but tears of wine. Weep on; and, as thy sorrows flow, I'll taste the LUXURY OF WOE! SPECULATION. Of all speculations the market holds forth, The best that I know for a lover of pelf, Is to buy --- up at the price he is worth, And then sell him at that which he sets on himself. ON BUTLER'S MONUMENT. REV. SAMUEL WESLEY. While Butler, needy wretch, was yet alive, No generous patron would a dinner give. See him, when starved to death and turn'd to dust, Presented with a monumental bust. The poet's fate is here in emblem shown-- He ask'd for BREAD, and he received a STONE. ON THE DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE WHIG ASSOCIATES OP THE PRINCE REGENT, AT NOT OBTAINING OFFICE. CHARLES LAMB. Ye politicians, tell me, pray, Why thus with woe and care rent? This is the worst that you can say, Some wind has blown the wig away, And left the HAIR APPARENT. TO PROFESSOR AIREY, On his marrying a beautiful woman. SIDNEY SMITH Airey alone has gained that double prize, Which forced musicians to divide the crown; His works have raised a mortal to the skies, His marriage-vows have drawn a mortal down. ON LORD DUDLEY AND WARD. SAMUEL ROGERS "They say Ward has no heart, but I deny it; He has a heart--and gets his speeches by it." EPIGRAMS OF LORD BYRON. TO THE AUTHOR OF A SONNET BEGINNING "'SAD IS MY VERSE,' YOU SAY, 'AND YET NO TEAR.'" Thy verse is "sad" enough, no doubt, A devilish deal more sad than witty! Why should we weep, I can't find out, Unless for THEE we weep in pity. Yet there is one I pity more, And much, alas! I think he needs it-- For he, I'm sure, will suffer sore, Who, to his own misfortune, reads it. The rhymes, without the aid of magic, May ONCE be read--but never after; Yet their effect's by no means tragic, Although by far too dull for laughter. But would you make our bosoms bleed, And of no common pang complain? If you would make us weep indeed, Tell us you'll read them o'er again. WINDSOR POETICS. On the Prince Regent being seen standing between the coffins of Henry VIII. and Charles I, in the royal vault at Windsor. Famed for contemptuous breach of sacred ties, By headless Charles see heartless Henry lies; Between them stands another sceptered thing-- It moves, it reigns--in all but name, a king; Charles to his people, Henry to his wife, --In him the double tyrant starts to life; Justice and death have mixed their dust in vain, Each royal vampyre wakes to life again. Ah! what can tombs avail, since these disgorge The blood and dust of both to mold a George? ON A CARRIER WHO DIED OF DRUNKENNESS. John Adams lies here, of the parish of Southwell, A carrier who carried his can to his mouth well; He carried so much, and he carried so fast, He could carry no more--so was carried at last; For the liquor he drank, being too much for one, He could not carry off--so he's now carriON. EPIGRAMS OF BARHAM. ON THE WINDOWS OF KING'S COLLEGE REMAINING BOARDED. Loquitur Discipulus Esuriens. Professors, in your plan there seems A something not quite right: 'Tis queer to cherish learning's beams By shutting out the light. While thus we see your windows block'd, If nobody complains; Yet everybody must be shock'd, To see you don't take pains. And tell me why should bodily Succumb to mental meat? Or why should Pi-ra, Beta Pi-ra, Pi-c, Be all the pie we eat? No HELLUO LIBRORUM I, No literary glutton, Would veal with Virgil like to try, With metaphysics, mutton. Leave us no longer in the lurch, With Romans, Greeks, and Hindoos: But give us beef instead of birch, And BOARD US--not your windows. NEW-MADE HONOR. [IMITATED FROM MARTIAL.] A friend I met, some half hour since-- "GOOD-MORROW JACK!" quoth I; The new-made Knight, like any Prince, Frown'd, nodded, and pass'd by; When up came Jem--"Sir John, your slave!" "Ah, James; we dine at eight-- Fail not--(low bows the supple knave) Don't make my lady wait." The king can do no wrong? As I'm a sinner, He's spoilt an honest tradesman and my dinner. EHEU FUGACES. What Horace says is, Eheu fugaces Anni labunter, Postume, Postume! Years glide away, and are lost to me, lost to me I Now, when the folks in the dance sport their merry toes, Taglionis, and Ellslers, Duvernays and Ceritos, Sighing, I murmur, "O mihi praeteritos !" ANONYMOUS EPIGRAMS ON A PALE LADY WITH A RED-NOSED HUSBAND. Whence comes it that, in Clara's face, The lily only has its place? Is it because the absent rose Has gone to paint her husband's nose? UPON POPE'S TRANSLATION OF HOMER So much, dear Pope, thy English Homer charms, As pity melts us, or as passion warms, That after ages will with wonder seek Who 'twas translated Homer into Greek. RECIPE FOR A MODERN BONNET. Two scraps of foundation, some fragments of lace, A shower of French rose-buds to droop o'er the face; Fine ribbons and feathers, with crage and illusions, Then mix and DErange them in graceful confusion; Inveigle some fairy, out roaming for pleasure, And beg the slight favor of taking her measure, The length and the breadth of her dear little pate, And hasten a miniature frame to create; Then pour, as above, the bright mixture upon it, And lo! you possess "such a love of a bonnet!" MY WIFE AND I As my wife and I, at the window one day, Stood watching a man with a monkey, A cart came by, with a "broth of a boy," Who was driving a stout little donkey. To my wife I then spoke, by way of a joke, "There's a relation of yours in that carriage." To which she replied, as the donkey she spied, "Ah, yes, a relation--BY MARRIAGE!" ON TWO GENTLEMEN, One of whom, O'Connell, delayed a duel on the plea of his wife's illness; the other declined on account of the illness of his daughter. Some men, with a horror of slaughter, Improve on the Scripture command, And honor their wife and their daughter, That their days may be long in the land. WELLINGTON'S NOSE. "Pray, why does the great Captain's nose Resemble Venice?" Duncomb cries. "Why," quoth Sam Rogers, "I suppose. Because it has a bridge of size (sighs)." THE SMOKER. All dainty meats I do defy Which feed men fat as swine, He is a frugal man indeed That on a leaf can dine! He needs no napkin for his hands, His finger's ends to wipe, That keeps his kitchen in a box, And roast meat in his pipe! AN ESSAY ON THE UNDERSTANDING. "Harry, I can not think," says Dick, "What makes my ANKLES grow so thick:" "You do not recollect," says Harry, "How great a CALF they have to carry." TO A LIVING AUTHOR. Your comedy I've read, my friend, And like the half you pilfer'd best; But sure the piece you yet may mend: Take courage, man! and steal the rest. EPIGRAMS BY THOMAS HOOD. ON THE ART-UNIONS. That picture-raffles will conduce to nourish Design, or cause good coloring to flourish, Admits of logic-chopping and wise sawing, But surely lotteries encourage drawing. THE SUPERIORITY OF MACHINERY. A mechanic his labor will often discard If the rate of his pay he dislikes: But a clock--and its case is uncommonly hard-- Will continue to work though it STRIKES. EPIGRAMS BY W. SAVAGE LANDOR ON OBSERVING A VULGAR NAME ON THE PLINTH OF AN ANCIENT STATUE. Barbarians must we always be? Wild hunters in pursuit of fame? Must there be nowhere stone or tree Ungashed with some ignoble name. O Venus! in thy Tuscan dome May every god watch over thee! Apollo I bend thy bow o'er Rome, And guard thy sister's chastity. Let Britons paint their bodies blue As formerly, but touch not you. LYING IN STATE. Now from the chamber all are gone Who gazed and wept o'er Wellington; Derby and Dis do all they can To emulate so great a man: If neither can be quite so great, Resolved is each to LIE IN STATE. [Illustration: LANDOR] EPIGRAMS FROM PUNCH. THE CAUSE. Lisette has lost her wanton wiles-- What secret care consumes her youth, And circumscribes her smiles?-- A SPECK ON A FRONT TOOTH? IRISH PARTICULAR. Shiel's oratory's like bottled Dublin stout-- For, draw the cork, and only froth comes out. ONE GOOD TURN DESERVES ANOTHER A poor man went to hang himself, But treasure chanced to find: He pocketed the miser's pelf And left the rope behind. His money gone, the miser hung Himself in sheer despair: Thus each the other's wants supplied, And that was surely fair. STICKY. I'm going to seal a letter, Dick, Some WAX pray give to me. I have not got a SINGLE STICK, Or WHACKS I'd give to thee. THE POET FOILED. To win the maid the poet tries, And sometimes writes to Julia's eye She likes a VERSE--but, cruel whim, She still appears A-VERSE to him. BLACK AND WHITE The Tories vow the Whigs are black as night, And boast that they are only blessed with light. Peel's politics to both sides so incline, His may be called the EQUINOCTIAL LINE. INQUEST--NOT EXTRAORDINARY. Great Bulwer's works fell on Miss Basbleu's head, And, in a moment, lo! the maid was dead! A jury sat, and found the verdict plain-- She died of MILK and WATER ON THE BRAIN. DOMESTIC ECONOMY. Said Stiggins to his wife, one day, "We've nothing left to eat; If things go on in this queer way, We shan't make BOTH ENDS MEET." The dame replied, in words discreet, "We're not so badly fed, If we can make but ONE end MEAT, And make the other BREAD." ON SEEING AN EXECUTION. One morn, two friends before the Newgate drop, To see a culprit throttled, chanced to stop: "Alas!" cried one, as round in air he spun, "That miserable wretch's RACE IS RUN." "True," said the other, drily, "to his cost, The race is run--but, by a NECK 'tis lost." A VOICE, AND NOTHING ELSE. "I wonder if Brougham thinks as much as he talks," Said a punster, perusing a trial: "I vow, since his lordship was made Baron Vaux, He's been VAUX ET PRAETEREA NIHIL!" THE AMENDE HONORABLE. Quoth Will, "On that young servant-maid My heart its life-string stakes." "Quite safe!" cries Dick, "don't be afraid-- She pays for all she breaks." THE CZAR. CZAR NICHOLAS is so devout, they say, His majesty does nothing else than prey. BAS BLEU. Ma'amselle Bas Bleu, erudite virgin, With learned zeal is ever urging The love and reverence due From modern men to things antique, Egyptian, British, Roman, Greek, Relic of Gaul or Jew. No wonder that, Ma'amselle, the love Due to antiquity to prove And urge is ever prone; She knows where'er there cease to be Admirers of Antiquity, She needs must lose her own! TO A RICH YOUNG WIDOW. I will not ask if thou canst touch The tuneful ivory key? Those silent notes of thine are such As quite suffice for me. I'll make no question if thy skill The pencil comprehends, Enough for me, love, if thou still Canst draw thy dividends! THE RAILWAY OP LIFE. Short was the passage through this earthly vale, By turnpike roads when mortals used to wend; But now we travel by the way of rail, As soon again we reach the journey's end. A CONJUGAL CONUNDRUM. Which is of greater value, prythee, say, The Bride or Bridegroom?--must the truth be told? Alas, it must! The Bride is given away-- The Bridegroom's often regularly sold. NUMBERS ALTERED. The lounger must oft, as he walks through the streets, Be struck with the grace of some girl that he meets; So graceful behind in dress--ringlets--all that-- But one gaze at the front--what a horrid old cat! You then think of the notice you've seen on a door, Which informs you, of "70 late 24." GRAMMAR FOR THE COURT OF BERLIN His majesty you should not say of FRITZ, That king is neuter; so for HIS, use ITS. THE EMPTY BOTTLE. WILLIAM AYTOUN Ah, liberty! how like thou art To this large bottle lying here, Which yesterday from foreign mart, Came filled with potent English beer! A touch of steel--a hand--a gush-- A pop that sounded far and near-- A wild emotion--liquid rush-- And I had drunk that English beer! And what remains?--An empty shell! A lifeless form both sad and queer, A temple where no god doth dwell-- The simple memory of beer! THE DEATH OF DOCTOR MORRISON. BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY. What's the news?--Why, they say Death has killed Dr. Morrison. The Pill-maker? Yes. Then Death will be sorry soon. EPIGRAMS BY JOHN G. SAXE. ON A RECENT CLASSIC CONTROVERSY. Nay, marvel not to see these scholars fight, In brave disdain of certain scath and scar; 'Tis but the genuine, old, Hellenic spite,-- "When Greek meets Greek, then comes the tug of war!" ANOTHER. Quoth David to Daniel--"Why is it these scholars Abuse one another whenever they speak?" Quoth Daniel to David--"it nat'rally follers Folks come to hard words if they meddle with Greek!" ON AN ILL-READ LAWYER. An idle attorney besought a brother For "something to read--some novel or other, That was really fresh and new." "Take Chitty!" replied his legal friend, "There isn't a book that I could lend Would prove more 'novel' to you!" ON AN UGLY PERSON SITTING FOR A DAGUERREOTYPE Here Nature in her glass--the wanton elf-- Sits gravely making faces at herself; And while she scans each clumsy feature o'er, Repeats the blunders that she made before! WOMAN'S WILL. Men dying make their wills--but wives Escape a work so sad; Why should they make what all their lives The gentle dames have had? FAMILY QUARRELS. "A fool," said Jeanette, "is a creature I hate!" "But hating," quoth John, "is immoral; Besides, my dear girl, it's a terrible fate To be found in a family quarrel!" A REVOLUTIONARY HERO. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL Old Joe is gone, who saw hot Percy goad His slow artillery up the Concord road, A tale which grew in wonder year by year; As every time he told it, Joe drew near To the main fight, till faded and grown gray, The original scene to bolder tints gave way; Then Joe had heard the foe's scared double-quick Beat on stove drum with one uncaptured stick, And, ere death came the lengthening tale to lop, Himself had fired, and seen a red-coat drop; Had Joe lived long enough, that scrambling fight Had squared more nearly to his sense of right, And vanquished Perry, to complete the tale, Had hammered stone for life in Concord jail. EPIGRAMS OF HALPIN THE LAST RESORT. A dramatist declared he had got So many people in his plot, That what to do with half he had Was like to drive him drama-mad! "The hero and the heroine Of course are married--very fine! But with the others, what to do Is more than I can tell--can you?" His friend replied--"'Tis hard to say, But yet I think there is a way. The married couple, thank their stars And half the 'others' take the cars, The other half you put on board An Erie steamboat--take my word, They'll never trouble you again!" The dramatist resumed his pen. FEMININE ARITHMETIC. LAURA. On me he shall ne'er put a ring, So, mamma, 'tis in vain to take trouble-- For I was but eighteen in spring, While his age exactly is double. MAMMA He's but in his thirty-sixth year, Tall, handsome, good-natured and witty, And should you refuse him, my dear, May you die an old maid without pity! LAURA His figure, I grant you, will pass, And at present he's young enough plenty; But when I am sixty, alas! Will not he be a hundred and twenty? THE MUSHROOM HUNT. In early days, ere Common Sense And Genius had in anger parted, They made to friendship some pretense, Though each, Heaven knows! diversely hearted. To hunt for mushrooms once they went, Through nibbled sheepwalks straying onward, Sense with his dull eyes earthward bent, While Genius shot his glances sunward! Away they go! On roll the hours, And toward the west the day-god edges; See! Genius holds a wreath of flowers, Fresh culled from all the neighboring hedges! Alas! ere eve their bright hues flit, While Common Sense (whom I so doat on!) Thanked God "that he had little wit," And drank his ketchup with his mutton. JUPITER AMANS. DEDICATED TO VICTOR HUGO. LONDON LEADER "Le petit" call not him who by one act Has turned old fable into modern fact Nap Louis courted Europe: Europe shied: Th' imperial purple was too newly dyed. "I'll have her though," thought he, "by rape or rapine; Jove nods sometimes, but catch a Nap a napping! And now I think of Jove, 't was Jove's own fix, And so I'll borrow one of Jove's own tricks: Old itching Palm I'll tickle with a joke, And he shall lend me England's decent cloak." 'Twas said and done, and his success was full; He won Europa with the guise of Bull! THE ORATOR'S EPITAPH. LORD BROUGHAM. "Here, reader, turn your weeping eyes, My fate a useful moral teaches; The hole in which my body lies Would not contain one-half my speeches." ECCENTRIC AND NONDESCRIPT. THE JOVIAL PRIEST'S CONFESSION. TRANSLATED FROM THE LATIN OF WALTER DE MAPES, TIME OF HENRY II. LEIGH HUNT. I devise to end my days--in a tavern drinking, May some Christian hold for me--the glass when I am shrinking. That the cherubim may cry--when they see me sinking, God be merciful to a soul--of this gentleman's way of thinking. A glass of wine amazingly--enlighteneth one's intervals; 'Tis wings bedewed with nectar--that fly up to supernals; Bottles cracked in taverns--have much the sweeter kernels, Than the sups allowed to us--in the college journals. Every one by nature hath--a mold which he was cast in; I happen to be one of those--who never could write fasting; By a single little boy--I should be surpass'd in Writing so: I'd just as lief--be buried; tomb'd and grass'd in. Every one by nature hath--a gift too, a dotation: I, when I make verses--do get the inspiration Of the very best of wine--that comes into the nation: It maketh sermons to astound--for edification. Just as liquor floeth good--floweth forth my lay so; But I must moreover eat--or I could not say so; Naught it availeth inwardly--should I write all day so; But with God's grace after meat--I beat Ovidius Naso. Neither is there given to me--prophetic animation, Unless when I have eat and drank--yea, ev'n to saturation, Then in my upper story--hath Bacchus domination And Phoebus rushes into me, and beggareth all relation. TONIS AD RESTO MARE. ANONYMOUS AIR--"Oh, Mary, heave a sigh for me." O MARE aeva si forme; Forme ure tonitru; Iambicum as amandum, Olet Hymen promptu; Mihi is vetas an ne se, As humano erebi; Olet mecum marito te, Or eta beta pi. Alas, plano more meretrix, Mi ardor vel uno; Inferiam ure artis base, Tolerat me urebo. Ah me ve ara silicet, Vi laudu vimin thus? Hiatu as arandum sex-- Illuc Ionicus. Heu sed heu vix en imago, My missis mare sta; O cantu redit in mihi Hibernas arida? A veri vafer heri si, Mihi resolves indu: Totius olet Hymen cum-- Accepta tonitru. DIC. DEAN SWIFT. Dic, heris agro at, an da quar to fine ale, Fora ringat ure nos, an da stringat ure tale. [Footnote: Dick, here is a groat, a quart o' fine ale. For a ring at your nose, and a string at your tail.] MOLL. DEAN SWIFT. Mollis abuti, Has an acuti, No lasso finis, Molli divinis. [Footnote: Moll is a beauty, Has an acute eye; No lass so fine is, Molly divine is.] TO MY MISTRESS. DEAN SWIFT. O mi de armis tres, Imi na dis tres. Cantu disco ver Meas alo ver? [Footnote: O my dear mistress I am in a distress. Can't you discover Me as a lover?] A LOVE SONG. DEAN SWIFT. Apud in is almi de si re, Mimis tres I ne ver re qui re, Alo veri findit a gestis, His miseri ne ver at restis. [Footnote: A pudding is all my desire, My mistress I never require; A lover I find it a jest is, His misery never at rest is.] A GENTLE ECHO ON WOMAN. IN THE DORIC MANNER. DEAN SWIFT. Shepherd. Echo, I ween, will in the woods reply, And quaintly answer questions: shall I try? Echo. Try. Shepherd. What must we do our passion to express? Echo. Press. Shepherd. How shall I please her, who ne'er loved before? Echo. Before. Shepherd. What most moves women when we them address? Echo. A dress. Shepherd. Say, what can keep her chaste whom I adore? Echo. A door. Shepherd. If music softens rocks, love tunes my lyre. Echo. Liar. Shepherd. Then teach me, Echo, how shall I come by her? Echo. Buy her. Shepherd. When bought, no question I shall be her dear? Echo. Her deer. Shepherd. But deer have horns: how must I keep her under? Echo. Keep her under. Shepherd. But what can glad me when she's laid on bier? Echo. Beer. Shepherd. What must I do when women will be kind? Echo. Be kind. Shepherd. What must I do when women will be cross? Echo. Be cross. Shepherd. Lord, what is she that can so turn and wind? Echo. Wind. Shepherd. If she be wind, what stills her when she blows? Echo. Blows. Shepherd. But if she bang again, still should I bang her? Echo. Bang her. Shepherd. Is there no way to moderate her anger? Echo. Hang her. Shepherd. Thanks, gentle Echo! right thy answers tell What woman is and how to guard her well. Echo. Guard her well. TO MY NOSE. ANONYMOUS. Knows he that never took a pinch, Nosey! the pleasure thence which flows? Knows he the titillating joy Which my nose knows? Oh, nose! I am as fond of thee As any mountain of its snows! I gaze on thee, and feel that pride A Roman knows! ROGER AND DOLLY. BLACKWOOD. Young Roger came tapping at Dolly's window-- Thumpaty, thumpaty, thump; He begg'd for admittance--she answered him no-- Glumpaty, glumpaty, glump. No, no, Roger, no--as you came you may go-- Stumpaty, stumpaty, stump. O what is the reason, dear Dolly? he cried-- Humpaty, humpaty, hump-- That thus I'm cast off and unkindly denied?-- Trumpaty, trumpaty, trump-- Some rival more dear, I guess, has been here-- Crumpaty, crumpaty, crump-- Suppose there's been two, sir, pray what's that to you, sir Numpaty, numpaty, nump-- Wi' a disconsolate look his sad farewell he took-- Trumpaty, trumputy, trump-- And all in despair jump'd into a brook-- Jumpaty, jumpaty, jump-- His courage did cool in a filthy green pool-- Slumpaty, slumpaty, slump-- So he swam to the shore, but saw Dolly no more-- Dumpaty, dumpaty, dump-- He did speedily find one more fat and more kind-- Plumpaty, plumpaty, plump-- But poor Dolly's afraid she must die an old maid-- Mumpaty, mumpaty, mump. THE IRISHMAN. BLACKWOOD. I. There was a lady lived at Leith, A lady very stylish, man, And yet, in spite of all her teeth, She fell in love with an Irishman, A nasty, ugly Irishman, A wild tremendous Irishman, A tearing, swearing, thumping, bumping, ranting, roaring Irishman. II. His face was no ways beautiful, For with small-pox 't was scarred across: And the shoulders of the ugly dog Were almost doubled a yard across. O the lump of an Irishman, The whiskey devouring Irishman-- The great he-rogue with his wonderful brogue, the fighting, rioting Irishman. III. One of his eyes was bottle green, And the other eye was out, my dear; And the calves of his wicked-looking legs Were more than two feet about, my dear, O, the great big Irishman, The rattling, battling Irishman-- The stamping, ramping, swaggering, staggering, leathering swash of an Irishman. IV. He took so much of Lundy-foot, That he used to snort and snuffle--O, And in shape and size the fellow's neck Was as bad as the neck of a buffalo. O, the horrible Irishman, The thundering, blundering Irishman-- The slashing, dashing, smashing, lashing, thrashing, hashing Irishman. V. His name was a terrible name, indeed, Being Timothy Thady Mulligan; And whenever he emptied his tumbler of punch, He'd not rest till he fill'd it full again, The boozing, bruising Irishman, The 'toxicated Irishman-- The whiskey, frisky, rummy, gummy, brandy, no dandy Irishman. VI. This was the lad the lady loved, Like all the girls of quality; And he broke the skulls of the men of Leith, Just by the way of jollity, O, the leathering Irishman, The barbarous, savage Irishman-- The hearts of the maids and the gentlemen's heads were bothered I'm sure by this Irishman. A _CAT_ALECTIC MONODY! CRUIKSHANK'S OMNIBUS. A CAT I sing, of famous memory, Though CATachrestical my song may be; In a small garden CATacomb she lies, And CATaclysms fill her comrades' eyes; Borne on the air, the CATacoustic song Swells with her virtues' CATalogue along; No CATaplasm could lengthen out her years, Though mourning friends shed CATaracts of tears. Once loud and strong her CATachist-like voice It dwindled to a CATcall's squeaking noise; Most CATegorical her virtues shone, By CATenation join'd each one to one;-- But a vile CATchpoll dog, with cruel bite, Like CATling's cut, her strength disabled quite; Her CATerwauling pierced the heavy air, As CATaphracts their arms through legions bear; 'Tis vain! as CATerpillars drag away Their lengths, like CATtle after busy day, She ling'ring died, nor left in kit KAT the Embodyment of this CATastrophe. A NEW SONG OF NEW SIMILES. JOHN BAY My passion is as mustard strong; I sit all sober sad; Drunk as a piper all day long, Or like a March-hare mad. Round as a hoop the bumpers flow; I drink, yet can't forget her; For though as drunk as David's sow I love her still the better. Pert as a pear-monger I'd be, If Molly were but kind; Cool as a cucumber could see The rest of womankind. Like a stuck pig I gaping stare, And eye her o'er and o'er; Lean as a rake, with sighs and care, Sleek as a mouse before. Plump as a partridge was I known, And soft as silk my skin; My cheeks as fat as butter grown, But as a goat now thin! I melancholy as a cat, Am kept awake to weep; But she, insensible of that, Sound as a top can sleep. Hard is her heart as flint or stone, She laughs to see me pale; And merry as a grig is grown, And brisk as bottled ale. The god of Love at her approach Is busy as a bee; Hearts sound as any bell or roach, Are smit and sigh like me. Ah me! as thick as hops or hail The fine men crowd about her; But soon as dead as a door-nail Shall I be, if without her. Straight as my leg her shape appears, O were we join'd together! My heart would be scot-free from cares And lighter than a feather. As fine as five-pence is her mien, No drum was ever tighter; Her glance is as the razor keen, And not the sun is brighter As soft as pap her kisses are, Methinks I taste them yet; Brown as a berry is her hair, Her eyes as black as jet. As smooth as glass, as white as curds Her pretty hand invites; Sharp as her needle are her words, Her wit like pepper bites. Brisk as a body-louse she trips, Clean as a penny drest; Sweet as a rose her breath and lips, Round as the globe her breast. Full as an egg was I with glee, And happy as a king: Good Lord! how all men envied me! She loved like any thing. But false as hell, she, like the wind, Chang'd, as her sex must do; Though seeming as the turtle kind, And like the gospel true. If I and Molly could agree, Let who would take Peru! Great as an Emperor should I be, And richer than a Jew. Till you grow tender as a chick, I'm dull as any post; Let us like burs together stick, And warm as any toast. You'll know me truer than a die, And wish me better sped; Flat as a flounder when I lie, And as a herring dead. Sure as a gun she'll drop a tear And sigh, perhaps, and wish, When I am rotten as a pear, And mute as any fish. REMINISCENCES OP A SENTIMENTALIST. THOMAS HOOD. "My TABLES! MEAT it is, _I_ SET IT down!"--Hamlet I think it was Spring--but not certain I am-- When my passion began first to work; But I know we were certainly looking for lamb, And the season was over for pork. 'T was at Christmas, I think, when I met with Miss Chase, Yes--for Morris had asked me to dine-- And I thought I had never beheld such a face, Or so noble a turkey and chine. Placed close by her side, it made others quite wild With sheer envy, to witness my luck; How she blushed as I gave her some turtle, and smiled As I afterward offered some duck. I looked and I languished, alas! to my cost, Through three courses of dishes and meats; Getting deeper in love--but my heart was quite lost When it came to the trifle and sweets. With a rent-roll that told of my houses and land, To her parents I told my designs-- And then to herself I presented my hand, With a very fine pottle of pines! I asked her to have me for weal or for woe, And she did not object in the least;-- I can't tell the date--but we married I know Just in time to have game at the feast. We went to ----, it certainly was the sea-side; For the next, the most blessed of morns, I remember how fondly I gazed at my bride, Sitting down to a plateful of prawns. O, never may memory lose sight of that year, But still hallow the time as it ought! That season the "grass" was remarkably dear, And the peas at a guinea a quart. So happy, like hours, all our days seemed to haste, A fond pair, such as poets have drawn, So united in heart--so congenial in taste-- We were both of us partial to brawn! A long life I looked for of bliss with my bride, But then Death--I ne'er dreamt about that! O, there's nothing is certain in life, as I cried When my turbot eloped with the cat! My dearest took ill at the turn of the year, But the cause no physician could nab; But something, it seemed like consumption, I fear-- It was just after supping on crab. In vain she was doctored, in vain she was dosed, Still her strength and her appetite pined; She lost relish for what she had relished the most, Even salmon she deeply declined! For months still I lingered in hope and in doubt, While her form it grew wasted and thin; But the last dying spark of existence went out. As the oysters were just coming in! She died, and she left me the saddest of men, To indulge in a widower's moan; Oh! I felt all the power of solitude then, As I ate my first "natives" alone! But when I beheld Virtue's friends in their cloaks, And with sorrowful crape on their hats, O my grief poured a flood! and the out-of-door folks Were all crying--I think it was sprats! FAITHLESS NELLY GRAY. A PATHETIC BALLAD. THOMAS HOOD. Ben Battle was a soldier bold, And used to war's alarms; But a cannon-ball took off his legs, So he laid down his arms! Now, as they bore him off the field, Said he, "Let others shoot, For here I leave my second leg, And the Forty-second Foot!" The army-surgeons made him limbs: Said he, "they're only pegs: But there's as wooden members quite As represent my legs!" Now, Ben he loved a pretty maid, Her name was Nelly Gray; So he went up to pay his devours, When he devoured his pay! But when he called on Nelly Gray, She made him quite a scoff; And when she saw his wooden legs, Began to take them off! "O, Nelly Gray! O, Nelly Gray Is this your love so warm? The love that loves a scarlet coat Should be more uniform!" Said she, "I loved a soldier once For he was blithe and brave But I will never have a man With both legs in the grave! "Before you had those timber toes, Your love I did allow, But then, you know, you stand upon Another footing now!" "O, Nelly Gray! O, Nelly Gray! For all your jeering speeches, At duty's call I left my legs, In Badajos's BREACHES!" "Why then," said she, "you've lost the feet Of legs in war's alarms, And now you can not wear your shoes Upon your feats of arms!" "O, false and fickle Nelly Gray! I know why you refuse:-- Though I've no feet--some other man Is standing in my shoes! "I wish I ne'er had seen your face; But now, a long farewell! For you will be my death;--alas You will not be my NELL!" Now, when he went from Nelly Gray, His heart so heavy got, And life was such a burden grown, It made him take a knot! So round his melancholy neck A rope he did entwine, And, for his second time in life, Enlisted in the Line. One end he tied around a beam, And then removed his pegs, And, as his legs were off--of course, He soon was off his legs! And there he hung, till he was dead As any nail in town-- For, though distress had cut him up, It could not cut him down! A dozen men sat on his corpse, To find out why he died-- And they buried Ben in four cross-roads, With a STAKE in his inside! NO! THOMAS HOOD. No sun--no moon! No morn--no noon-- No dawn--no dusk--no proper time of day-- No sky--no earthly view-- No distance looking blue-- No road--no street--no "t' other side the way"-- No end to any Row-- No indications where the Crescents go-- No top to any steeple-- No recognitions of familiar people-- No courtesies for showing 'em-- No knowing 'em! To traveling at all--no locomotion, No inkling of the way--no notion-- No go--by land or ocean-- No mail--no post-- No news from any foreign coast-- No park--no ring--no afternoon gentility-- No company--no nobility-- No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease, No comfortable feel in any member-- No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees. No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds. November! JACOB OMNIUM'S HOSS A NEW PALLICE COURT CHANT. W. MAKEPEACE THACKERAY One sees in Viteall Yard, Vere pleacemen do resort. A wenerable hinstitute, 'Tis called the Pallis Court A gent as got his i on it, I think will make some sport The natur of this Court My hindignation riles: A few fat legal spiders Here set & spin their viles; To rob the town theyr privlege is, In a hayrea of twelve miles. The Judge of this year Court Is a mellitary beak. He knows no more of Lor Than praps he does of Greek, And prowides hisself a deputy Because he can not speak. Four counsel in this Court-- Misnamed of Justice--sits; These lawyers owes their places to Their money, not their wits; And there's six attornies under them, As here their living gits. These lawyers, six and four, Was a livin at their ease, A sendin of their writs abowt, And droring in the fees, When their erose a cirkimstance As is like to make a breeze. It now is some monce since, A gent both good and trew Possest a ansum oss vith vich He didn know what to do: Peraps he did not like the oss, Perhaps he was a scru. This gentleman his oss At Tattersall's did lodge; There came a wulgar oss-dealer, This gentleman's name did fodge, And took the oss from Tattersall's: Wasn that a artful dodge? One day this gentleman's groom This willain did spy out, A mounted on this oss, A ridin him about; "Get out of that there oss, you rogue," Speaks up the groom so stout. The thief was cruel whex'd To find hisself so pinn'd; The oss began to whinny, The honest groom he grinn'd; And the raskle thief got off the oss And cut avay like vind. And phansy with what joy The master did regard His dearly bluvd lost oss again Trot in the stable yard! Who was this master good Of whomb I makes these rhymes? His name is Jacob Homnium, Exquire; And if _I_'d committed crimes, Good Lord! I wouldn't ave that mann Attack me in the TIMES! Now, shortly after the groomb His master's oss did take up, There came a livery-man This gentleman to wake up; And he handed in a little bill, Which hanger'd Mr. Jacob. For two pound seventeen This livery-man eplied, For the keep of Mr. Jacob's oss, Which the thief had took to ride. "Do you see any think green in me?" Mr. Jacob Homnium cried. "Because a raskle chews My oss away to robb, And goes tick at your Mews For seven-and-fifty bobb, Shall _I_ be called to pay?--It is A iniquitious Jobb." Thus Mr. Jacob cut The conwasation short; The livery-man went ome, Detummingd to ave sport, And summingsd Jacob Homnium, Exquire, Into the Pallis Court Pore Jacob went to Court, A Counsel for to fix, And choose a barrister out of the four, An attorney of the six; And there he sor these men of Lor, And watched 'em at their tricks. The dreadful day of trile In the Pallis Court did come; The lawyers said their say, The Judge looked wery glum, And then the British Jury cast Pore Jacob Hom-ni-um. O, a weary day was that For Jacob to go through; The debt was two seventeen (Which he no mor owed than you). And then there was the plaintives costs, Eleven pound six and two. And then there was his own, Which the lawyers they did fix At the wery moderit figgar Of ten pound one and six. Now Evins bless the Pallis Court, And all its bold ver-dicks! I can not settingly tell If Jacob swaw and cust, At aving for to pay this sumb, But I should think he must, And av drawm a cheque for L24 4s. 8d. With most igstreme disgust. O Pallis Court, you move My pitty most profound. A most emusing sport You thought it, I'll be bound, To saddle hup a three-pound debt, With two-and-twenty pound. Good sport it is to you, To grind the honest pore; To puy their just or unjust debts With eight hundred per cent, for Lor; Make haste and git your costes in, They will not last much mor! Come down from that tribewn, Thou Shameless and Unjust; Thou Swindle, picking pockets in The name of Truth, august; Come down, thou hoary Blasphemy, For die thou shalt and must. And go it, Jacob Homnium, And ply your iron pen, And rise up Sir John Jervis, And shut me up that den; That sty for fattening lawyers in, On the bones of honest men. PLEACEMAN X. THE WOFLE NEW BALLAD OF JANE RONEY AND MARY BROWN. WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. An igstrawnary tail I vill tell you this veek-- I stood in the Court of A'Beckett the Beak, Vere Mrs. Jane Roney, a vidow, I see, Who charged Mary Brown with a robbin' of she. This Mary was pore and in misery once, And she came to Mrs. Roney it's more than twelve monce She adn't got no bed, nor no dinner, nor no tea, And kind Mrs. Roney gave Mary all three. Mrs. Roney kep Mary for ever so many veeks (Her conduct disgusted the best of all Beax), She kept her for nothink, as kind as could be, Never thinking that this Mary was a traitor to she. "Mrs. Roney, O Mrs. Roney, I feel very ill; Will you jest step to the doctor's for to fetch me a pill?" "That I will, my pore Mary," Mrs. Roney says she: And she goes off to the doctor's as quickly as may be. No sooner on this message Mrs. Roney was sped, Than hup gits vicked Mary, and jumps out a bed; She hopens all the trunks without never a key-- She bustes all the boxes, and vith them makes free. Mrs. Roney's best linning gownds, petticoats, and close, Her children's little coats and things, her boots and her hose, She packed them, and she stole 'em, and avay vith them did flee Mrs. Roney's situation--you may think vat it vould be! Of Mary, ungrateful, who had served her this vay, Mrs. Roney heard nothink for a long year and a day, Till last Thursday, in Lambeth, ven whom should she see? But this Mary, as had acted so ungrateful to she. She was leaning on the helbo of a worthy young man; They were going to be married, and were walkin hand in hand; And the church-bells was a ringing for Mary and he, And the parson was ready, and a waitin' for his fee. When up comes Mrs. Roney, and faces Mary Brown, Who trembles, and castes her eyes upon the ground. She calls a jolly pleaseman, it happens to be me; I charge this young woman, Mr. Pleaseman, says she. Mrs. Roney, o, Mrs. Roney, o, do let me go, I acted most ungrateful I own, and I know, But the marriage bell is a ringin, and the ring you may see, And this young man is a waitin, says Mary, says she. I don't care three fardens for the parson and clark, And the bell may keep ringing from noon day to dark. Mary Brown, Mary Brown, you must come along with me. And I think this young man is lucky to be free. So, in spite of the tears which bejewed Mary's cheek, I took that young gurl to A'Beckett the Beak; That exlent justice demanded her plea-- But never a sullable said Mary said she. On account of her conduck so base and so vile, That wicked young gurl is committed for trile, And if she's transpawted beyond the salt sea, It's a proper reward for such willians as she. Now, yon young gurls of Southwark for Mary who veep, From pickin and stealin your ands you must keep, Or it may be my dooty, as it was Thursday veek To pull you all hup to A'Beckett the Beak. PLEACEMAN X THE BALLAD OF ELIZA DAVIS. W. MAKEPEACE THACKERAY Galliant gents and lovely ladies, List a tail vich late befel, Vich I heard it, bein on duty, At the Pleace Hoffice, Clerkenwell. Praps you know the Fondling Chapel, Vere the little children sings: (Lord I likes to hear on Sundies Them there pooty little things!) In this street there lived a housemaid, If you particklarly ask me where-- Vy, it was at four-and-tventy, Guilford Street, by Brunsvick Square Vich her name was Eliza Davis, And she went to fetch the beer: In the street she met a party As was quite surprized to see her. Vich he vas a British Sailor, For to judge him by his look: Tarry jacket, canvas trowsies, Ha-la Mr. T. P. Cooke. Presently this Mann accostes Of this hinnocent young gal-- Pray, saysee, Excuse my freedom, You're so like my Sister Sal! You're so like my Sister Sally, Both in valk and face and size; Miss, that--dang my old lee scuppers, It brings tears into my hyes! I'm a mate on board a wessel, I'm a sailor bold and true; Shiver up my poor old timbers, Let me be a mate for you! What's your name, my beauty, tell me? And she faintly hansers, "Lore, Sir, my name's Eliza Davis, And I live at tventy-four." Hofttimes came this British seaman, This deluded gal to meet: And at tventy-four was welcome, Tventy-four in Guilford Street And Eliza told her Master (Kinder they than Missuses are), How in marridge he had ast her, Like a galliant Brittish Tar. And he brought his landlady vith him (Vich vas all his hartful plan), And she told how Charley Thompson Reely was a good young man. And how she herself had lived in Many years of union sweet, Vith a gent she met promiskous, Valkin in the public street. And Eliza listened to them, And she thought that soon their bands Vould be published at the Fondlin. Hand the clergyman jine their ands. And he ast about the lodgers (Vich her master let some rooms), likevise vere they kep their things, and Vere her master kep his spoons. Hand this vicked Charley Thompson Came on Sundy veek to see her, And he sent Eliza Davis Hout to vetch a pint of beer. Hand while poor Eliza vent to Fetch the beer, devoid of sin, This etrocious Charley Thompson Let his wile accomplish him. To the lodgers, their apartments, This abandingd female goes, Prigs their shirts and umberellas: Prigs their boots, and hats, and clothes Vile the scoundrle Charley Thompson, Lest his wictim should escape, Hocust her vith rum and vater, Like a fiend in huming shape. But a hi was fixt upon 'em Vich these raskles little sore; Namely, Mr. Hide, the landlord Of the house at tventy-four. He vas valkin in his garden, Just afore he vent to sup; And on looking up he sor the Lodger's vinders lighted hup. Hup the stairs the landlord tumbled; Something's going wrong, he said; And he caught the vicked voman Underneath the lodger's bed. And he called a brother Pleaseman, Vich vas passing on his beat, Like a true and galliant feller, Hup and down in Guildford Street. And that Pleaseman, able-bodied, Took this voman to the cell; To the cell vere she was quodded, In the Close of Clerkenwell. And though vicked Charley Thompson Boulted like a miscrant base, Presently another Pleaseman Took him to the self-same place. And this precious pair of raskles Tuesday last came up for doom; By the beak they was committed, Vich his name was Mr. Combe. Has for poor Eliza Davia, Simple gurl of tventy-four, She, I ope, will never listen In the streets to sailors moar. But if she must ave a sweet-art (Vich most every gurl expex), Let her take a jolly Pleaseman, Vich is name peraps is--X. LINES ON A LATE HOSPICIOUS EWENT. [Footnote: The Birth of Prince Arthur] BY A GENTLEMAN OF THE FOOT-GUARDS (BLUE). W. MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. I paced upon my beat With steady step and slow, All huppandownd of Ranelagh-street; Ran'lagh, St. Pimlico. While marching huppandownd Upon that fair May morn, Beold the booming cannings sound, A royal child is born! The Ministers of State Then presnly I sor, They gallops to the Pallis gate, In carridges and for. With anxious looks intent, Before the gate they stop, There comes the good Lord President, And there the Archbishopp. Lord John he next elights; And who comes here in haste? 'Tis the ero of one underd fights, The caudle for to taste. Then Mrs. Lily, the nuss, Toward them steps with joy; Say the brave old Duke, "Come tell to us Is it a gal or a boy?" Says Mrs. L. to the Duke, "Your Grace, it is a PRINCE." And at that nuss's bold rebuke, He did both laugh and wince. He vews with pleasant look This pooty flower of May, Then says the wenerable Duke, "Egad, its my buthday." By memory backards borne, Peraps his thoughts did stray To that old place where he was born Upon the first of May. Peraps he did recal The ancient towers of Trim; And County Meath and Dangan Hall They did rewisit him. I phansy of him so His good old thoughts employin; Fourscore years and one ago Beside the flowin' Boyne. His father praps he sees, Most musicle of Lords, A playing maddrigles and glees Upon the Arpsicords. Jest phansy this old Ero Upon his mother's knee! Did ever lady in this land Ave greater sons than she? And I shouldn be surprise While this was in his mind, If a drop there twinkled in his eyes Of unfamiliar brind. * * * * To Hapsly Ouse next day Drives up a Broosh and for, A gracious prince sits in that Shay (I mention him with Hor!) They ring upon the bell, The Porter shows his ed, (He fought at Vaterloo as vell, And vears a veskit red.) To see that carriage come The people round it press: "And is the galliant Duke at ome?" "Your Royal Ighness, yes." He stepps from out the Broosh And in the gate is gone, And X, although the people push, Says wery kind "Move hon." The Royal Prince unto The galliant Duke did say, "Dear Duke, my little son and you Was born the self-same day. "The lady of the land, My wife and Sovring dear, It is by her horgust command I wait upon you here. "That lady is as well As can expected be; And to your Grace she bid me tell This gracious message free. "That offspring of our race, Whom yesterday you see, To show our honor for your Grace, Prince Arthur he shall be. "That name it rhymes to fame; All Europe knows the sound; And I couldn't find a better name If you'd give me twenty pound. "King Arthur had his knights That girt his table round, But you have won a hundred fights, Will match 'em, I'll be bound. "You fought with Bonypart, And likewise Tippoo Saib; I name you then, with all my heart, The Godsire of this babe." That Prince his leave was took, His hinterview was done. So let us give the good old Duke Good luck of his god-son, And wish him years of joy In this our time of Schism, And hope he'll hear the royal boy His little catechism. And my pooty little Prince That's come our arts to cheer, Let me my loyal powers ewince A welcomin of you ere. And the Poit-Laureat's crownd, I think, in some respex, Egstremely shootable might be found For honest Pleaseman X. THE LAMENTABLE BALLAD OF THE FOUNDLING OF SHOREDITCH. W. MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. Come, all ye Christian people, and listen to my tail, It is all about a Doctor was traveling by the rail, By the Heastern Counties Railway (vich the shares don't desire), From Ixworth town in Suffolk, vich his name did not transpire. A traveling from Bury this Doctor was employed With a gentleman, a friend of his, vich his name was Captain Loyd; And on reaching Marks Tey Station, that is next beyond Colchester, a lady entered into them most elegantly dressed. She entered into the carriage all with a tottering step, And a pooty little Bayby upon her bussum slep; The gentlemen received her with kindness and siwillaty, Pitying this lady for her illness and debillaty. She had a fust-class ticket, this lovely lady said, Because it was so lonesome she took a secknd instead. Better to travel by secknd class than sit alone in the fust, And the pooty little Baby upon her breast she nust. A seein of her cryin, and shiverin and pail, To her spoke this surging, the Ero of my tail; Saysee you look unwell, ma'am, I'll elp you if I can, And you may tell your case to me, for I'm a meddicle man. "Thank you, sir," the lady said, "I only look so pale, Because I ain't accustom'd to traveling on the rale; I shall be better presnly, when I've ad some rest:" And that pooty little Baby she squeeged it to her breast. So in conwersation the journey they beguiled, Capting Loyd and the medical man, and the lady and the child, Till the warious stations along the line was passed, For even the Heastern Counties' trains must come in at last. When at Shorediteh tumminus at lenth stopped the train, This kind meddicle gentleman proposed his aid again. "Thank you, sir," the lady said, "for your kyindness dear; My carridge and my osses is probbibly come here. "Will you old this baby, please, vilst I step and see?" The Doctor was a famly man: "That I will," says he. Then the little child she kist, kist it very gently, Vich was sucking his little fist, sleeping innocently. With a sigh from her art, as though she would have bust it, Then she gave the Doctor the child--wery kind he nust it; Hup then the lady jumped hoff the bench she sat from, Tumbled down the carridge steps and ran along the platform. Vile hall the other passengers vent upon their vays, The Capting and the Doctor sat there in a maze; Some vent in a Homminibus, some vent in a Cabby, The Capting and the Doctor vaited with the babby. There they sat looking queer, for an hour or more, But their feller passinger neather on 'em sore: Never, never back again did that lady come To that pooty sleeping Hinfant a suckin of his Thum! What could this pore Doctor do, bein treated thus, When the darling baby woke, cryin for its nuss? Off he drove to a female friend, vich she was both kind and mild, And igsplained to her the circumstance of this year little child. That kind lady took the child instantly in her lap, And made it very comforable by giving it some pap; And when she took its close off, what d'you think she found? A couple of ten pun notes sown up, in its little gownd! Also, in its little close, was a note which did conwey, That this little baby's parents lived in a handsome way: And for its Headucation they reglary would pay, And sirtingly like gentle-folks would claim the child one day, If the Christian people who'd charge of it would say, Per adwertisement in the TIMES, where the baby lay. Pity of this baby many people took, It had such pooty ways and such a pooty look; And there came a lady forrard (I wish that I could see Any kind lady as would do as much for me, And I wish with all my art, some night in MY night gownd, I could find a note stitched for ten or twenty pound)-- There came a lady forrard, that most honorable did say, She'd adopt this little baby, which her parents cast away. While the Doctor pondered on this hoffer fair, Comes a letter from Devonshire, from a party there, Hordering the Doctor, at its Mar's desire, To send the little infant back to Devonshire. Lost in apoplexity, this pore meddicle man, Like a sensable gentleman, to the Justice ran; Which his name was Mr. Hammill, a honorable beak, That takes his seat in Worship-street four times a week. "O Justice!" says the Doctor, "Instrugt me what to do, I've come up from the country, to throw myself on you; My patients have no doctor to tend them in their ills, (There they are in Suffolk without their draffts and pills!) "I've come up from the country, to know how I'll dispose Of this pore little baby, and the twenty-pun note, and the clothes, And I want to go back to Suffolk, dear Justice, if you please, And my patients wants their Doctor, and their Doctor wants his feez." Up spoke Mr. Hammill, sittin at his desk, "This year application does me much perplesk; What I do adwise you, is to leave this babby In the Parish where it was left, by its mother shabby." The Doctor from his Worship sadly did depart-- He might have left the baby, but he hadn't got the heart To go for to leave that Hinnocent, has the laws allows, To the tender mussies of the Union House. Mother who left this little one on a stranger's knee, Think how cruel you have been, and how good was he! Think, if you've been guilty, innocent was she; And do not take unkindly this little word of me: Heaven be merciful to us all, sinners as we be! PLEACEMAN X. THE CRYSTAL PALACE. W. MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. With ganial foire Thransfuse me loyre, Ye sacred nymphths of Pindus, The whoile I sing That wondthrous thing The Palace made o' windows! Say, Paxton, truth, Thou wondthrous youth, What sthroke of art celistial What power was lint You to invint This combineetion cristial O would before That Thomas Moore Likewoise the late Lord Boyron, Thim aigles sthrong Of Godlike song, Cast oi on that cast oiron! And saw thim walls, And glittering halls, Thim rising slendther columns, Which I, poor pote, Could not denote, No, not in twinty vollums. My Muse's words Is like the birds That roosts beneath the panes there; Her wings she spoils 'Gainst them bright toiles, And cracks her silly brains there. This Palace tall, This Cristial Hall, Which imperors might covet, Stands in Hide Park Like Noah's Ark A rainbow bint above it. The towers and faynes, In other scaynes, The fame of this will undo, Saint Paul's big doom, St. Payther's Room, And Dublin's proud Rotundo. 'Tis here that roams, As well becomes Her dignitee and stations, Victoria great, And houlds in state The Congress of the Nations. Her subjects pours From distant shores. Her Injians and Canajians; And also we, Her kingdoms three, Attind with our allagiance. Here comes likewise Her bould allies, Both Asian and Europian; From East and West They sent their best To fill her Coornocopean. I seen (thank Grace!) This wondthrous place (His Noble Honor Misteer H. Cole it was That gave the pass, And let me see what is there.) With conscious proide I stud insoide And look'd the World's Great Fair in. Until me sight Was dazzled quite, And couldn't see for staring. There's holy saints And window paints, By Maydiayval Pugin; Alhamborough Jones Did paint the tones Of yellow and gambouge in. There's fountains there And crosses fair; There's water-gods with urrns; There's organs three, To play, d'ye see, "God save the Queen," by turns. There's statues bright Of marble white, Of silver and of copper, And some in zink, And some, I think, That isn't over proper. There's staym Ingynes, That stand in lines, Enormous and amazing, That squeal and snort, Like whales in sport, Or elephants a-grazing. There's carts and gigs, And pins for pigs; There's dibblers and there's harrows, And plows like toys, For little boys, And illegant wheel-barrows. For them genteels Who ride on wheels, There a plenty to indulge 'em, There's Droskys snug From Paytersbug And vayhycles from Belgium. There's Cabs on Stands, And Shandthry danns; There's wagons from New York here; There's Lapland Sleighs, Have cross'd the seas, And Jaunting Cars from Cork here. Amazed I pass Prom glass to glass, Deloighted I survey 'em; Fresh wondthers grows Beneath me nose In this sublime Musayum, Look, here's a fan From far Japan, A saber from Damasco; There's shawls ye get From far Thibet, And cotton prints from Glasgow. There's German flutes, Marcoky boots, And Naples Macaronies; Bohaymia Has sent Bohay, Polonia her polonies. There's granite flints That's quite imminse, There's sacks of coals and fuels, There's swords and guns, And soap in tuns, And Ginger-bread and Jewels. There's taypots there, And cannons rare; There's coffins filled with roses. There 'a canvas tints, Teeth instruments, And shuits of clothes by Moses. There's lashins more Of things in store, But thim I don't remimber; Nor could disclose Did I compose From May time to Novimber. Ah, JUDY thru! With eyes so blue, That you were here to view it! And could I screw But tu pound tu 'Tis I would thrait you to it. So let us raise Victoria's praise, And Albert's proud condition, That takes his ayse As he surveys This Crystal Exhibition. [Illustration: THACKERAY] THE SPECULATORS. W. MAKEPEACE THACKERAY The night was stormy and dark, The town was shut up in sleep: Only those were abroad who were out on a lark, Or those who'd no beds to keep. I pass'd through the lonely street, The wind did sing and blow; I could hear the policeman's feet Clapping to and fro. There stood a potato-man In the midst of all the wet; He stood with his 'tato-can In the lonely Haymarket. Two gents of dismal mien. And dark and greasy rags, Came out of a shop for gin Swaggering over the flags: Swaggering over the stones, These snabby bucks did walk And I went and followed those seedy ones, And listened to their talk. Was I sober or awake? Could I believe my ears? Those dismal beggars spake Of nothing but railroad shares. I wondered more and more: Says one--"Good friend of mine, How many shares have you wrote for In the Diddlesee Junction line?" "I wrote for twenty," says Jim, "But they wouldn't give me one;" His comrade straight rebuked him For the folly he had done: "O Jim, you are unawares Of the ways of this bad town; _I_ always write for five hundred shares, And THEN they put me down." "And yet you got no shares," Says Jim, "for all your boast;" "I WOULD have wrote," says Jack, "but where Was the penny to pay the post?" "I lost, for I couldn't pay That first instalment up; But here's taters smoking hot--I say Let's stop, my boy, and sup." And at this simple feast The while they did regale, I drew each ragged capitalist Down on my left thumb-nail. Their talk did me perplex, All night I tumbled and toss'd And thought of railroad specs, And how money was won and lost. "Bless railroads everywhere," I said, "and the world's advance; Bless every railroad share In Italy, Ireland, France, For never a beggar need now despair, And every rogue has a chance." LETTER FROM MR. HOSEA BIGLOW TO THE HON. J. T. BUCKINGHAM, EDITOR OF THE BOSTON COURIER, COVERING A LETTER FROM MR. B. SAWIN, PRIVATE IN THE MASSACHUSETTS REGIMENT IN MEXICO. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. Mister Buckinum, the follerin Billet was writ hum by a Yung feller of Our town that wuz cussed fool enuff to goe atrottin inter Miss Chiff arter a Drum and fife. It ain't Nater for a feller to let on that he's sick o' any bizness that He went intu off his own free will and a Cord, but I rather callate he's middlin tired o' voluntearin By this Time. I bleeve u may put dependunts on his statemence. For I never heered nothin bad on him let Alone his havin what Parson Wilbur cals a PONGSHONG for cocktales, and he ses it wuz a soshiashun of idees sot him agoin arter the Crootin Sargient cos he wore a cocktale onto his hat. his Folks gin the letter to me and I shew it to parson Wilbur and he ses it oughter Bee printed, send It to mister Buckinum, ses he, I don't ollers agree with him, ses he, but by Time, says he, I DU like a feller that ain't a Feared. I have intusspussed a Few refleckshuns hear and thair. We're kind o' Prest with Hayin. Ewers respecfly HOSEA BIGLOW. This kind o' sogerin' aint a mite like our October trainin', A chap could clear right out from there ef 't only looked like rainin'. An' th' Cunnles, tu, could kiver up their shappoes with bandanners, An' send the insines skootin' to the bar-room with their banners, (Fear o' gittin' on 'em spotted), an' a feller could cry quarter Ef he fired away his ramrod arter tu much rum an' water. Recollect wut fun we hed, you 'n I an' Ezry Hollis, Up there to Waltham plain last fall, ahavin' the Cornwallis? [Footnote: i halt the Site of a feller with a muskit as I do plze But their is fun to a Cornwallis I ain't agoin to deny it.--H.B.]This sort o' thing aint JEST like thet--I wish thet I wuz furder- [Footnote: he means Not quite so fur i guess.--H.B.]Nimepunce a day fer killin' folks comes kind o' low fer murder (Wy I've worked out to slarterin' some for Deacon Cephas Billins, An' in the hardest times there wuz I ollers tetched ten shillins), There's sutthin' gits into my throat thet makes it hard to swaller, It comes so nateral to think about a hempen collar; It's glory--but, in spite o' all my tryin to git callous, I feel a kind o' in a cart, aridin' to the gallus. But when it comes to BEIN' killed--I tell ye I felt streaked The fust time ever I found out wy baggonets wuz peaked, Here's how it wuz: I started out to go to a fandango, The sentinul he ups an' sez, "Thet's furder 'an you can go" "None o' your sarse," sez I; sez he, "Stan' back!" "Aint you a buster. Sez I, "I'm up to all thet air, I guess I've ben to muster; I know wy sentinuls air sot; you aint agoin' to eat us; Caleb haint to monopoly to court the seenoreetas; My folks to hum air full ez good ez hisn be, by golly!" An' so ez I wuz goin' by, not thinkin'; wut would folly, The everlatin' cus he stuck his one-pronged pitchfork in me An' made a hole right thru my close ez ef I wuz an in'my. Wal, it beats all how big I felt hoorawin' in ole Funnel Wen Mister Bolles he gin the sword to our Leftenant Cunnle (It's Mister Secondary Bolles,* thet writ the prize peace essay, *[Footnote: the ignerant creeter means Sekketary; but he ollers stuck to his books like cobbler's wax to an ile-stone.--H. B.] Thet's wy he didn't list himself along o' us, I dessay), An' Rantoul, tu, talked pooty loud, but dont' put HIS foot in it, Coz human life's so sacred thet he's principled agin'it-- Though I myself can't rightly see it's any wus achokin' on 'em Than puttin' bullets thru their lights, or with a bagnet pokin' on 'em; How dreffle slick he reeled it off (like Blitz at our lyceum Ahaulin' ribbins from his chops so quick you skeercely see 'em), About the Anglo-Saxon race (an' saxons would be handy To do the buryin' down here upon the Rio Grandy), About our patriotic pas an' our star-spangled banner, Our country's bird alookin' on an' singin' out hosanner, An' how he (Mister B himself) wuz happy fer Ameriky-- I felt, ez sister Patience sez, a leetle mite histericky. I felt, I swon, ez though it wuz a dreffle kind o' privilege Atrampin' round thru Boston streets among the gutter's drivelage; I act'lly thought it wuz a treat to hear a little drummin, An' it did bonyfidy seem millanyum wuz acomin' Wen all on us got suits (darned like them wore in the state prison) An' every feller felt ez though all Mexico wuz hisn. [Footnote: It must be aloud that thare's a streak o' nater in lovin' sho, but it sartinly is of the curusest things in nater to see a rispecktable dri goods dealer (deekon off a chutch mayby) a riggin' himself out in the Weigh they du and struttin' round in the Reign aspilin' his trowsis and makin' wet goods of himself. E fany thin's foolisher and moor dicklus than militerry gloary it is milishy gloary.--H. B] This 'ere's about the meanest place a skunk could wal diskiver (Saltillo's Mexican, I b'lieve, fer wut we call Saltriver). The sort o' trash a feller gits to eat doos beat all nater, I'd give a year's pay fer a smell o' one good bluenose tater; The country here thet Mister Bolles declared to be so charmin' Throughout is swarmin' with the most alarmin' kind o' varmin'. He talked about delishis froots, but then it wuz a wopper all, The holl on't 's mud an' prickly pears, with here an' there a chapparal; You see a feller peekin' out, an', fust you know, a lariat Is round your throat en' you a copse, 'fore you can say, "Wut air ye at?" [Footnote: these fellers are verry proppilly called Rank Heroes, and the more tha kill the ranker and more Herowick tha bekum.--H. B.] You never see sech darned gret bugs (it may not be irrelevant To say I've seen a SCARABAEUS PILULARIUS big ez a year old elephant), [Footnote: It wuz "tumblebug" as he Writ it, but the parson put the Latten instid. I sed tother maid better meeter, but he said tha was eddykated peepl to Boston and tha wouldn't stan' it no how. Idnow as tha WOOOD and idnow as tha wood.--H. B.] The rigiment come up one day in time to stop a red bug From runnin' off with Cunnle Wright--'t wuz jest a common CIMEX LECTULARIUS. One night I started up on eend an' thought I wuz to hum agin, I heern a horn, thinks I it's Sol the fisherman hez come agin, HIS bellowses is sound enough--ez I'm a livin' creeter, I felt a thing go thru my leg--'t wuz nothin' more 'n a skeeter! Then there's the yaller fever, tu, they call it here el vomito-- (Come, thet wun't du, you landcrab there, I tell ye to le' GO my toe! My gracious! it's a scorpion thet's took a shine to play with 't, I darsn't skeer the tarnal thing fer fear he'd run away with 't). Afore I come away from hum I hed a strong persuasion Thet Mexicans worn't human beans*--an ourang outang nation, *[Footnote: he means human beins, that's wut he means. I spose he kinder thought tha wuz human beans ware the Xisle Poles comes from.--H. B.] A sort o' folks a chap could kill an' never dream on't arter, No more'n a feller'd dream o' pigs thet he hed hed to slarter; I'd an idee thet they were built arter the darkle fashion all, An' kickin' colored folks about, you know, 's a kind o' national But when I jined I worn't so wise ez thet air queen o' Sheby, Fer, come to look at 'em, they aint much diff'rent from wut we be An' here we air ascrougin' 'em out o' thir own dominions, Ashelterin' 'em, ez Caleb sez, under our eagle's pinions, "Wich means to take a feller up jest by the slack o' 's trowsis An' walk him Spanish clean right out o' all his homes an' houses Wal, it doos seem a curus way, but then hooraw fer Jackson! It must be right, fer Caleb sez it's reg'lar Anglo-Saxon. The Mex'cans don't fight fair, they say, they piz'n all the water, An' du amazin' lots o' things thet isn't wut they ough' ter; Bein' they haint no lead, they make their bullets out o' copper An' shoot the darned things at us, tu, which Caleb sez aint proper; He sez they'd ough' to stan' right up an' let us pop 'em fairly (Guess wen he ketches 'em at thet he'll hev to git up airly), Thet our nation's bigger 'n theirn an' so its rights air bigger, An thet it's all to make 'em free that we air pullin' trigger, Thet Anglo Saxondom's idee's abreakin' 'em to pieces, An' thet idee's thet every man doos jest wut he damn pleases; Ef I don't make his meanin' clear, perhaps in some respex I can, I know that "every man" don't mean a nigger or a Mexican; An' there's another thing I know, an' thet is, ef these creeturs, Thet stick an Anglo-saxon mask onto State-prison feeturs, Should come to Jaalam Center fer to argify an' spout on't, The gals 'ould count the silver spoons the minnit they cleared out on't This goin' ware glory waits ye haint one agreeable feetur, An' ef it worn't fer wakin' snakes, I'd home agin short meter; O, wouldn't I be off, quick time, ef't worn't thet I wuz sartin They'd let the daylight into me to pay me fer desartin! I don't approve o' tellin' tales, but jest to you I may state Our ossifers aint wut they wuz afore they left the Baystate Then it wuz "Mister Sawin, sir, you're middlin' well now, be ye? Step up an' take a nipper, sir; I'm dreffle glad to see ye;" But now it's "Ware's my eppylet? here, Sawin, step an fetch it! An' mind your eye, be thund'rin' spry, or, damn ye, you shall ketch it!" Wal, ez the Doctor sez, some pork will bile so, but by mighty, Ef I bed some on 'em to hum, I'd give 'em linkum vity, I'd play the rogue's march on their hides an' other [illeg] follerin'-- But I must close my letter here, for one on 'em's a-hollerin', These Anglosaxon ossifers--wal, taint no use ajawin', I'm safe enlisted fer the war, Yourn, BIRDOFREEDOM SAWIN A LETTER FROM A CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY IN ANSWER TO SUTTIN QUESTIONS PROPOSED BY MR. HOSEA BIGLOW, INCLOSED IN A NOTE FROM MR. BIGLOW TO S. H. GAY, ESQ., EDITOR OF THE NATIONAL ANTI-SLAVERY STANDARD. JAMES RUSSEL LOWELL Deer Sir its gut to be the fashun now to rite letters to the candid 8s and I wus chose at a public Meetin in Jalaam to du wut wus nessary fur that town. I writ to 271 ginerals and gut ansers to 209. the air called candid 8s but I don't see nothin candid about em. this here 1 which I send wus thought satty's factory. I dunno as it's ushle to print Poscrips, but as all the ansers I got hed the saim, I sposed it wus best. times has gretly changed. Formaly to knock a man into a cocked hat wus to use him up, but now it ony gives him a chance furthe cheef madgutracy.--H. B. Dear Sir--You wish to know my notions On sartin pints thet rile the land; There's nothin' thet my natur so shuns Es bein' mum or underhand; I'm a straight-spoken kind o' creetur Thet blurts right out wut's in his head, An' ef I've one pecooler feetur, It is a nose thet wunt be led. So, to begin at the beginnin'; An' come directly to the pint, I think the country's underpinnin' Is some consid'ble out o' jint; I aint agoin' to try your patience By tellin' who done this or thet, I don't make no insinooations, I jest let on I smell a rat. Thet is, I mean, it seems to me so, But, ef the public think I'm wrong I wunt deny but wut I be so-- An', fact, it don't smell very strong; My mind's tu fair to lose its balance An' say wich party hez most sense; There may be folks o'greater talence Thet can't set stiddier on the fence. I'm an eclectic: ez to choosin' 'Twixt this an'thet, I'm plaguy lawth; I leave a side thet looks like losin', But (wile there's doubt) I stick to both; I stan' upon the Constitution, Ez preudunt statesmun say, who've planned A way to git the most profusion O' chances ez to ware they'll stand. Ez fer the war, I go agin it-- I mean to say I kind o' du-- Thet is, I mean thet, bein' in it, The best way wuz to fight it thru; Not but wut abstract war is horrid, I sign to thet with all my heart-- But civlyzation doos git forrid Sometimes upon a powder-cart. About thet darned Proviso matter I never hed a grain o' doubt, Nor I aint one my sense to scatter So's no one couldn't pick it out; My love fer North an' South is equil, So I'll just answer plump an' frank, No matter wut may be the sequil-- Yes, sir, I am agin a Bank. Ez to the answerin' o' questions, I 'am an off ox at bein' druv, Though I aint one thet ary test shuns I'll give our folks a helpin' shove; Kind o' promiscoous I go it Fer the holl country, an' the ground I take, ez nigh ez I can show it, Is pooty gen'ally all round. I don't appruve o' givin' pledges; You'd ough' to leave a feller free, An' not go knockin' out the wedges To ketch his fingers in the tree; Pledges air awfle breachy cattle Thet preudent farmers don't turn out-- Ez long'z the people git their rattle, Wut is there fer'm to grout about? Ez to the slaves, there's no confusion In MY idees consarnin' them-- _I_ think they air an Institution, A sort of--yes, jest so--ahem: Do _I_ own any? Of my merit On thet pint you yourself may jedge; All is, I never drink no sperit, Nor I haint never signed no pledge. Ez to my principles, I glory In hevin' nothin' o' the sort; I aint a Wig, I aint a Tory, I'm jest a candidate, in short; Thet's fair an' square an' parpendicler, But, ef the Public cares a fig To hev me an' thin' in particler. Wy, I'm a kind o' peri-wig. P. S. Ez we're a sort o' privateerin', O' course, you know, it's sheer an' sheer An' there is sutthin' wuth your hearin' I'll mention in YOUR privit ear; Ef you git ME inside the White House, Your head with ile I'll kio' o' 'nint By gitt'n' YOU inside the Light-house Down to the eend o' Jaalam Pint An' ez the North hez took to brustlin' At bein' scrouged from off the roost, I'll tell ye wut'll save all tusslin' An' give our side a harnsome boost-- Tell 'em thet on the Slavery question I'm RIGHT, although to speak I'm lawth; This gives you a safe pint to rest on, An' leaves me frontin' South by North. THE CANDIDATE'S CREED. (BIGLOW PAPERS.) JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. I du believe in Freedom's cause, Ez fur away ez Paris is; I love to see her stick her claws In them infarnal Pharisees; It's wal enough agin a king To dror resolves and triggers,-- But libbaty's a kind o' thing Thet don't agree with niggers. I du believe the people want A tax on teas and coffees, Thet nothin' aint extravygunt,-- Purvidin' I'm in office; For I hev loved my country sence My eye-teeth filled their sockets, An' Uncle Sam I reverence, Partic'larly his pockets. I du believe in ANY plan O' levyin' the taxes, Ez long ez, like a lumberman, I git jest wut I axes: I go free-trade thru thick an' thin, Because it kind o' rouses The folks to vote--and keep us in Our quiet custom-houses. I du believe it's wise an' good To sen' out furrin missions, Thet is, on sartin understood An' orthydox conditions;-- I mean nine thousan' dolls. per ann., Nine thousan' more fer outfit, An' me to recommend a man The place 'ould jest about fit. I du believe in special ways O' prayin' an' convartin'; The bread comes back in many days, An' buttered, tu, fer sartin;-- I mean in preyin' till one busts On wut the party chooses, An' in convartin' public trusts To very privit uses. I do believe hard coin the stuff Fer 'lectioneers to spout on; The people's ollers soft enough To make hard money out on; Dear Uncle Sam pervides fer his, An' gives a good-sized junk to all-- I don't care HOW hard money is, Ez long ez mine's paid punctooal. I du believe with all my soul In the gret Press's freedom, To pint the people to the goal An' in the traces lead 'em: Palsied the arm thet forges yokes At my fat contracts squintin', An' wilhered be the nose thet pokes Inter the gov'ment printin'! I du believe thet I should give Wut's his'n unto Caesar, Fer it's by him I move an' live, From him my bread an' cheese air I du believe thet all o' me Doth bear his souperscription,-- Will, conscience, honor, honesty, An' things o' thet description. I du believe in prayer an' praise To him thet hez the grantin' O' jobs--in every thin' thet pays, But most of all in CANTIN'; This doth my cup with marcies fill, This lays all thought o' sin to rest-- I DON'T believe in princerple, But, O, I DU in interest. I du believe in bein' this Or thet, ez it may happen One way, or t' other hendiest is To ketch the people nappin'; It aint by princerples nor men My preudent course is steadied-- I scent wich pays the best, an' then Go into it baldheaded. I du believe thet holdin' slaves Comes nat'ral tu a President, Let 'lone the rowdedow it saves To have a wal-broke precedunt; Fer any office, small or gret, I could'nt ax with no face, Without I'd been, thru dry an' wet, The unrizziest kind o' doughface. I du believe wutever trash 'll keep the people in blindness,-- Thet we the Mexicans can thrash Right inter brotherly kindness-- Thet bombshells, grape, an' powder 'n' ball Air good-will's strongest magnets-- Thet peace, to make it stick at all, Must be druv in with bagnets. In short, I firmly du believe In Humbug generally, Fer it's a thing thet I perceive To hev a solid vally; This heth my faithful shepherd ben, In pasturs sweet heth led me, An' this'll keep the people green To feed ez they have fed me. THE COURTIN'. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. Zekle crep' up, quite unbeknown, An' peeked in thru the winder, An there sot Huldy all alone, 'ith no one nigh to hender. Agin' the chimbly crooknecks hung, An' in among 'em rusted The ole queen's arm thet gran'ther Young Fetched back from Concord busted. The wannut logs shot sparkles out Toward the pootiest, bless her! An' leetle fires danced all about The chiny on the dresser. The very room, coz she wuz in, Looked warm frum floor to ceilin'. An' she looked full ez rosy agin Ez th' apple she wuz peelin'. She heerd a foot an' knowd it, tu, Araspin' on the scraper-- All ways to once her feelins flew Like sparks in burnt-up paper. He kin' o' l'itered on the mat, Some doubtfle of the seekle: His heart kep' goin' pitypat, But hern went pity Zekle. A SONG FOR A CATARRH. PUNCH By Bary ALLe is like the suL, WheL at the dawL it fliLgs Its goldeL sBiles of light upoL Earth's greeL and loLely thiLgs. IL vaiL I sue, I oLly wiL FroB her a scorLful frowL, But sooL as I By prayers begiL, She cries O Lo! begoLe, Yes! yes! the burtheL of her soLg Is Lo! Lo! Lo! begoLe! By Bary ALLe is like the mooL, WheL first her silver sheeL Awakes the LightiLgale's soft tuLe, That else had sileLt beeL. But Bary ALLe, like darkest Light, OL be, alas! looks dowL; Her sBiles oL others beaB their light, Her frowLs are all By owL. I've but oLe burtheL to By soLg-- Her frowLs are all By owL. EPITAPH ON A CANDLE. PUNCH. A WICKED one lies buried here, Who died in a DECLINE; He never rose in rank, I fear, Though he was born to SHINE. He once was FAT, but now, indeed, He's thin as any griever; He died--the Doctors all agreed, Of a most BURNING fever. One thing of him is said with truth, With which I'm much amused; It is--that when he stood, forsooth, A STICK he always used. Now WINDING-SHEETS he sometimes made, But this was not enough, For finding it a poorish trade, He also dealt in SNUFF. If e'er you said "GO OUT, I pray," He much ill nature show'd; On such occasions he would say, "Vy, if I do, I'M BLOW'D" In this his friends do all agree, Although you'll think I'm joking, When GOING OUT 'tis said that he Was very fond of SMOKING. Since all religion he despised, Let these few words suffice, Before he ever was baptized They DIPP'D him once or twice. POETRY ON AN IMPROVED PRINCIPLE. A RENCONTER WITH A TEA-TOTALLER. PUNCH. On going forth last night, a friend to see, I met a man by trade a s-n-o-B; Reeling along the path he held his way. "Ho! ho!" quoth I, "he's d-r-u-n-K" Then thus to him--"Were it not better, far, You were a little s-o-b-e-R? 'T were happier for your family, I guess, Than playing of such rum r-i-g-S. Besides, all drunkards, when policemen see 'em, Are taken up at once by t-h-e-M." 'Me drunk!" the cobbler cried, "the devil trouble you You want to kick up a blest r-o-W. Now, may I never wish to work for Hoby, If drain I've had!" (the lying s-n-O-B!) I've just return'd from a tee-total party, Twelve on us jamm'd in a spring c-a-R-P. The man as lectured, now, WAS drunk; why, bless ye, He's sent home in a c-h-a-i-S-E. He'd taken so much lush into his belly, I'm blest if he could t-o-dd-L-E. A pair on 'em--hisself and his good lady;-- The gin had got into her h-e-A-D. (My eye and Betty! what weak mortals WE are; They said they took but ginger b-e-E-R!) But as for me, I've stuck ('t was rather ropy) All day to weak imperial p-O-P. And now we've had this little bit o' sparrin', Just stand a q-u-a-r-t-e-R-N!" ON A REJECTED NOSEGAY, OFFERED BY THE AUTHOR TO A BEAUTIFUL YOUNG LADY, WHO RETURNED IT. PUNCH. What! then you won't accept it, wont you? Oh! No matter; pshaw! my heart is breaking, though. My bouquet is rejected; let it be: For what am I to you, or you to me? 'Tis true I once had hoped; but now, alas! Well, well; 'tis over now, and let it pass. I was a fool--perchance I am so still; You won't accept it! Let me dream you will: But that were idle. Shall we meet again? Why should we? Water for my burning brain? I could have loved thee--Could! I love thee yet Can only Lethe teach me to forget? Oblivion's balm, oh tell me where to find! Is it a tenant of the anguish'd mind? Or is it?--ha! at last I see it come; Waiter! a bottle of your oldest rum. A SERENADE. PUNCH. Smile, lady, smile! (BLESS ME! WHAT'S THAT? CONFOUND THE CAT!)-- Smile, lady, smile! One glance bestow On him who sadly waits below, To catch--(A VILLAIN UP ABOVE HAS THROWN SOME WATER ON ME, LOVE!) To catch one token-- (OH, LORD! MY HEAD IS BROKEN; THE WRETCH WHO THREW THE WATER DOWN, HAS DROPPED THE JUG UPON MY CROWN)-- To catch one token, which shall be As dear as life itself to me. List, lady, then; while on my lute I breathe soft--(NO! I'LL NOT BE QUIET; HOW DARE YOU CALL MY SERENADE A RIOT? I DO DEFY YOU)--while upon my lute I breathe soft sighs--(YES, I DISPUTE YOUR RIGHT TO STOP ME)--breathe soft sighs. Grant but one look from those dear eyes-- (THERE, TAKE THAT STUPID NODDLE IN AGAIN; CALL THE POLICE!--DO! I'LL PROLONG MY STRAIN), We'll wander by the river's placid flow-- (UNTO THE STATION-HOUSE!--NO, SIR, I WON'T GO; LEAVE ME ALONE!)--and talk of love's delight. (OH, MURDER!--HELP! I'M LOCKED UP FOR THE NIGHT!) RAILROAD NURSERY RHYME. PUNCH. Air--"Ride a Cock Horse." Fly by steam force the country across, Faster than jockey outside a race-horse: With time bills mismanaged, fast trains after slow, You shall have danger wherever you go. AN INVITATION TO THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS PUNCH. I have found out a gig-gig-gift for my fuf-fuf-fair, I have found where the rattle-snakes bub-bub-breed; Will you co-co-come, and I'll show you the bub-bub-bear, And the lions and tit-tit-tigers at fuf-fuf-feed. I know where the co-co-cockatoo's song Makes mum-mum-melody through the sweet vale; Where the mum-monkeys gig-gig-grin all the day long Or gracefully swing by the tit-tit-tit-tail. You shall pip-pip-play, dear, some did-did-delicate joke With the bub-bub-bear on the tit-tit-top of his pip-pip-pip-pole; But observe, 'tis forbidden to pip-pip-poke At the bub-bub-bear with your pip-pip-pink pip-pip-pip-pip-parasol! You shall see the huge elephant pip-pip-play, You shall gig-gig-gaze on the stit-stit-stately racoon; And then did-did-dear, together we'll stray To the cage of the bub-bub-blue-faced bab-bab-boon. You wished (I r-r-remember it well, And I lul-lul-loved you the m-m-more for the wish) To witness the bub-bub-beautiful pip-pip-pel- ican swallow the l-l-live little fuf-fuf-fish! THE PEOPLE AND THEIR PALACE. IMPROVISED BY A FINE GENTLEMAN. PUNCH. Oh dem that absawd Cwystal Palace! alas, What a pity they took off the duty on glass! It's having been evaw ewected, in fact, Was en-ti-a-ly owing to that foolish act. Wha-evew they put it a cwowd it will dwaw, And that is the weason I think it a baw; I have no gweat dislike to the building, as sutch; The People is what I object to sa mutch. The People!--I weally am sick of the wawd: The People is ugly, unpleasant, absawd; Wha-evaw they go, it is always the case, They are shaw to destroy all the chawm of the place. Their voices are loud, and their laughter is hawse; Their fealyaws are fabsy, iwegulaw, cause; How seldom it is that their faces disclose, What one can call, pwopally speaking, a nose! They have dull heavy looks, which appeaw to expwess Disagweeable stwuggles with common distwess; The People can't dwess, doesn't know how to walk. And would uttaly wuin a spot like the Pawk. That I hate the People is maw than I 'll say; I only would have them kept out of my way, Let them stay at the pot-house, wejoice in the pipe, And wegale upon beeaw, baked patatas, and twipe. We must have the People--of that tha's no doubt-- In shawt they could not be, pahaps, done without. If'twa not faw the People we could not have Boots Tha's no doubt that they exawcise useful pasuits. They are all vewy well in their own pwopa spheeaw A long distance off; but I don t like them neeaw; The slams is the place faw a popula show; Don't encouwage the people to spoil Wotten Wow. It is odd that the DUKE OF AWGYLL could pasue, So eccentwic a cawse, and LAD SHAFTESBUWY too, As to twy and pwesawve the Glass House on its site, Faw no weason on awth but the People's delight. A "SWELL'S" HOMAGE TO MRS. STOWE PUNCH. A must wead Uncle Tom--a wawk Which A'm afwaid's extwemely slow, People one meets begin to talk Of Mrs. HARWIETBEECHASTOWE. 'Tis not as if A saw ha name To walls and windas still confined; All that is meawly vulga fame: A don't wespect the public mind. But Staffa'd House has made haw quite Anotha kind a pawson look, A Countess would pasist, last night, In asking me about haw book. She wished to know if I admiawd EVA, which quite confounded me; And then haw Ladyship inqwaw'd Whethaw A did'nt hate LEGWEE? Bai JOVE! A was completely flaw'd; A wish'd myself, or haw, at Fwance; And that's the way a fella's baw'd By ev'wy gal he asks to dance. A felt myself a gweat a fool Than A had evaw felt befaw; A'll study at some Wagged School The tale of that old Blackamaw! THE EXCLUSIVE'S BROKEN IDOL. PUNCH. A don't object at all to War With a set a fellas like the Fwench, But this dem wupcha with the Czar, It gives one's feeling quite a wench. The man that peace in Yawwup kept Gives all his pwevious life the lie; A fina fella neva stepped, Bai JOVE, he's maw than six feet high! He cwushed those democwatic beasts; He'd flog a Nun; maltweat a Jew, Or pawsecute those Womish Pwiests, Most likely vewy pwoppa too. To think that afta such a cawce, Which nobody could eva blame, The EMP'WA should employ bwute fawce Against this countwy just the same! We all consida'd him our fwiend, But in a most erwoneus light, In shawt, it seems you can't depend On one who fancies might is wight. His carwacta is coming out; His motives--which A neva saw-- Are now wevealed beyond a doubt, And we must fight--but what a baw! THE LAST KICK OF FOP'S ALLEY. PUNCH. Air--"Weber's Last Waltz." My wawst feaws are wealized; the Op wa is na maw, And the wain of DONIZETTI and TAPISCHOWE are aw! No entapwising capitalist bidding faw the lot, In detail at last the pwopaty is being sold by SCOTT. Fahwell to Anna Bolena; to Nauma, oh, fahwell! Adieu to La Sonnambula! the hamma wings haw knell; I Puwitani, too, must cease a cwowded house to dwaw, And they've knocked down lovely Lucia, the Bwide of Lammamaw. Fahwell the many twinkling steps; fahwell the gwaceful fawm That bounded o'er the wose-beds, and that twipped amid the stawm; Fahwell the gauze and muslin--doomed to load the Hebwew's bags; Faw the Times assauts the wawdwobe went--just fancy--as old wags! That ev'wy thing that's bwight must fade, we know is vewy twue, And now we see what sublunawy glowwy must come to; How twue was MAIDSTONE'S pwophecy; the Deluge we behold Now that HAW MAJESTY'S Theataw is in cawse of being sold. THE MAD CABMAN'S SONG OF SIXPENCE [Footnote: This inimitable burlesque was published soon after the cab fare had reduced from eightpence to sixpence a mile.] PUNCH. Wot's this?--wot hever is this 'ere? Eh?--arf a suvrin!--feels like vun-- Boohoo! they won't let me have no beer! Suppose I chucks it up into the sun!-- No--that ain't right-- The yaller's turned wite! Ha, ha, ho!--he's sold and done-- Come, I say!--I won't stand that-- 'Tis all my eye and BETTY MARTIN! Over the left and all round my hat, As the pewter pot said to the kevarten. Who am I? HEMPRER of the FRENCH LEWIS NAPOLEON BONYPART, Old Spooney, to be sure-- Between you and me and the old blind oss And the doctor says there ain't no cure. D' ye think I care for the blessed Bench?-- From Temple Bar to Charing Cross? Two mile and better--arf a crown-- Talk of screwing a feller down! As for poor BILL, it's broke his art. Cab to the Moon, sir? Here you are!-- That's--how much?-- A farthin' touch! Now as we can't demand back fare. But, guv'ner, wot can this 'ere be?-- The fare of a himperial carridge? You don't mean all this 'ere for me! In course you ain't heerd about my marridge-- I feels so precious keveer! How was it I got that kick o' the 'ed? I've ad a slight hindisposition But a Beak ain't no Physician. Wot's this 'ere, sir? wot's this 'ere? You call yerself a gentleman? yer Snob! He wasn't bled: And I was let in for forty bob, Or a month, instead: And I caught the lumbago in the brain-- I've been confined-- But never you mind-- Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho! I ain't hinsane. Vot his this 'ere? Can't no one tell? It sets my ed a spinnin-- The QUEEN'S eye winks--it ain't no sell-- The QUEEN'S 'ed keeps a grinnin: Ha, ha! 't was guv By the cove I druv-- I vunders for wot e meant it! For e sez to me, E sez, sez e, As I ort to be contented! Wot did yer say, sir, wot did yer say? My fare!--wot, that! Yer knocks me flat. Hit in the vind!--I'm chokin--give us air-- My fare? Ha, ha! My fare? Ho, ho! My fare? Call that my fare for drivin yer a mile? I ain't hinsane--not yet--not yet avile! Wot makes yer smile? My blood is bilin' in a wiolent manner! Wot's this I've got? Show us a light-- This 'ere is--wot?-- There's sunthin the matter with my sight-- It is--yes!--No!-- 'Tis, raly, though-- Oh, blow! blow! blow!-- Ho, ho, ho, ho! it is, it is a Tanner! ALARMING PROSPECT PUNCH. To the Editor of "PUNCH." SIR--You are aware, of course, that in the progress of a few centuries the language of a country undergoes a great alteration; that the Latin of the Augustan age was very different from that of the time of Tarquin; and no less so from that which prevailed at the fall of the Roman empire. Also, that the Queen's English is not precisely what it was in Elizabeth's days; to say nothing of its variation from what was its condition under the Plantagenets. I observe, with regret, that our literature is becoming conversational, and our conversation corrupt. The use of cant phraseology is daily gaining ground among us, and this evil will speedily infect, if it has not already infected, the productions of our men of letters. I fear most for our poetry, because what is vulgarly termed SLANG is unfortunately very expressive, and therefore peculiarly adapted for the purposes of those whose aim it is to clothe "thoughts that breathe" in "words that burn;" and, besides, it is in many instances equivalent to terms and forms of speech which have long been recognized among poetical writers as a kind of current coin. The peril which I anticipate I have endeavored to exemplify in the following AFFECTING COPY OF VERSES (WITH NOTES). Gently o'er the meadows prigging, [1] Joan and Colin took their way, While each flower the dew was swigging, [2] In the jocund month of May. Joan was beauty's plummiest [3] daughter; Colin youth's most nutty [4] son; Many a nob [5] in vain had sought her-- Him full many a spicy [6] one. She her faithful bosom's jewel Did unto this young un' [7] plight; But, alas! the gov'nor [8] cruel, Said as how he'd never fight. [9] Soon as e'er the lark had risen, They had burst the bonds of snooze, [10] And her daddle [11] link'd in his'n, [12] Gone to roam as lovers use. In a crack [13] the youth and maiden To a flowery bank did come, Whence the bees cut, [14] honey-laden, Not without melodious hum. Down they squatted [15] them together, "Lovely Joan," said Colin bold, "Tell me, on thy davy, [16] whether Thou dost dear thy Colin hold?" "Don't I, just?" [17] with look ecstatic, Cried the young and ardent maid; "Then let's bolt!" [18] in tone emphatic, Bumptuous [19] Colin quickly said. "Bolt?" she falter'd, "from the gov'nor? Oh! my Colin, that won't pay; [20] He will ne'er come down, [21] my love, nor Help us, if we run away." "Shall we then be disunited?" Wildly shrieked the frantic cove; [22] "Mull'd [23] our happiness! and blighted In the kinchin-bud [24] our love! "No, my tulip! [25] let us rather Hand in hand the bucket kick; [26] Thus we'll chouse [27] your cruel father-- Cutting from the world our stick!" [28] Thus he spoke, and pull'd a knife out, Sharp of point, of edge full fine; Pierc'd her heart, and let the life out-- "Now," he cried, "here's into mine!" [29] But a hand unseen behind him Did the fatal blow arrest. Oh, my eye! [30] they seize and bind him-- Gentle Mure, conceal the rest! In the precints of the prison, In his cold crib [31] Colin lies; Mourn his fate all you who listen, Draw it mild, and mind your eyes! [32] 1. "Prigging," stealing; as yet exclusively applied to petty larceny. "Stealing" is as well known to be a poetical term as it is to be an indictable offense; the Zephyr and the Vesper Hymn, cum multis aliis, are very prone to this practice. 2. "Swigging," drinking copiously--of malt liquor in particular. "Pearly drops of dew we drink."--OLD SONG. 3. "Plummiest," the superlative of "plummy," exquisitely delicious; an epithet commonly used by young gentlemen in speaking of a bonne bouche or "tit bit," as a mince pie, a preserved apricot, or an oyster patty. The transference of terms expressive of delightful and poignant savor to female beauty, is common with poets. "Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath."--SHAKESPEARE. "Charley loves a pretty girl, AS SWEET AS SUGAR CANDY."--ANON. 4. "Nutty," proper--in the old English sense of "comely," "handsome." "Six PROPER youths, and tall."--OLD SONG. 5. "Nob," a person of consequence; a word very likely to be patronized, from its combined brevity and significancy. 6. "Spicy," very smart and pretty; it has the same recommendation, and will probably supplant the old favorite "bonny." "Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny, bonny bride."--HAMILTON. 7. "Young'un," youth, young man. "A YOUTH to fortune and to fame unknown."--GRAY. 8. "Gov'nor," or "guv'nor," a contraction of "governor," a father. It will, no doubt, soon supersede sire, which is at present the poetical equivalent for the name of the author of one's existence. See all the poets, passim. 9. "Said as how he'd never fight," the thing was out of the question; a metaphorical phrase, though certainly, at present, a vulgar one. 10. "Snooze," slumber personified, like "Morpheus," or "Somnus." 11. "Daddle."--Q. from daktulos, a finger--pars pro toto!--Hand, the only synonym for it that we have, except "Paw," "Mawley," &c., which are decidedly generis ejusdem.12. "His'n," his own; corresponding to the Latin suus, his own and nobody else's, so frequently met with in OVID and others. 13. "Crack," a twinkling, an extremely short interval of time, which was formerly expressed, in general, by a periphrasis; as, "Ere the leviathan can swim a league!"--SHAKESPEARE. 14. "Cut," sped. A synonym. 15. "Squatted," sat. Id. 16. "Davy," affidavit, solemn oath. Significant and euphonious, therefore alluring to the versifier. 17. "Don't I, just?" A question for a strong affirmation, as, "Oh, yes, indeed I do;" a piece of popular rhetoric, pithy and forcible and consequently almost sure to be adopted--especially by the pathetic writers. 18. "Bolt," ran away. Syn. 19. "Bumptious," fearless, bold, and spirited; a very energetic expression such as those rejoice in who would fair "DENHAM'S strength with Waller's sweetness join." 20. "That won't pay," that plan will never answer. Metaph. 21. "Come down," disburse; also rendered in the vernacular by "fork out." etc. Id. 22. "Cove," swain. "Alexis shunn'd his fellow SWAINS."--PRIOR. See also SHENSTONE PASSIM. 23. "Mull'd," equivalent to "wreck'd," a term of pathos. 24. "Kinchin-bud," infant-bud. Metaph.; moreover, very tender, sweet, and touching, as regards the idea. 25. "My tulip," a term of endearment. "Fairest FLOWER, all flowers excelling." ODE TO A CHILD: COTTON. 26. "The bucket kick," pleonasm for die; as, "to breathe life's latest sigh."--"To yield the soul,"--"the breath,"--or, UT APUD ANTIQ. "Animam expirare," seu "efflare," etc. 27. "Chouse," cheat. Syn. 28. "Cutting . . . our stick." Pleon. ut supra. 29. "Here's unto mine!" A form of speech analogous to "Have at thee."--SHAKESPEARE, and the dramatists generally. 30. "Oh, my eye!" an interjectional phrase, tantamount to "Oh, heavens!" "Merciful powers!" etc. 31. "Cold crib," cold bed. "Go to thy cold bed and warm thee."--SHAK. 32. "Draw it mild," etc. Metaph. for "Rule your passions, and beware!" I doubt not that it will be admitted by your judicious readers that I have substantiated my case. Our monarchical institutions may preserve our native tongue for a time, but if it does not become, at no very distant period, as strange a medley as that of the American is at present--to use the expressive but peculiar idiom of that people--"IT'S A PITY." I am, sir, etc., P. EPITAPH ON A LOCOMOTIVE. BY THE SOLE SURVIVOR OF A DEPLORABLE ACCIDENT (NO BLAME TO BE ATTACHED TO ANY SERVANTS OF THE COMPANY). PUNCH. Collisions four Or five she bore, The Signals wor in vain; Grown old and rusted, Her biler busted, And smash'd the Excursion Train. "HER END WAS PIECES." THE TICKET OF LEAVE. [AS SUNG BY THE HOLDER, AMID A CONVIVIAL CIRCLE IN THE SLUMS.] PUNCH. Ven a prig has come to grief, He's no call for desperation; Though I'm a conwicted thief, Still I've opes of liberation. The Reverend Chapling to deceive A certain dodge and safe resource is, Whereby you gets a Ticket of Leave, And then resumes your wicious courses. (SPOKEN.) I vos lagged, my beloved pals, on a suspicion of burglary, 'ad up afore the Recorder, and got seven years' penal serwitude and 'ard labor. Hand preshus 'ard labor and 'ard lines I found it at first, mind you. Vell, I says to myself, blow me! I ain't a goin' to stand this 'ere, you know: but 'taint no ass kickin' agin stone walls and iron spikes: wot I shall try and do is to gammon the parson. "Ven a prig," etc. Them parsons is so jolly green, They're sure to trust in your conwersion, Which they, in course, believes 'as been The consequence of their exertion. You shakes your 'ead, turns up your eyes, And they takes that to be repentance; Wherein you moans, and groans, and sighs, By reason only of your sentence. (SPOKEN.) Wen in a state of wiolent prespiration smokin' 'ot from the crank, the Chapling comes into my cell, and he says, says he, "My man," he says, "how do you feel?" "'Appy, sir," says I, with a gentle sithe: "thank you, sir: quite 'appy." "But you seem distressed, my poor fellow," says he. "In body, sir," says I; "yes. But that makes me more 'appy. I'm glad to be distressed in body. It serves me right. But in mind I'm 'appy: leastways almost 'appy." "'Ave you hany wish to express," says he: "is there any request as you would like to make." "'AWKER'S HEVENING POTION, sir," says I, "and the DAIRYMAN'S DAUGHTER: if 'AWKER'S HEVENING POTION was but mine--and the DAIRYMAN'S DAUGHTER--I think, sir, I should be quite 'appy." "My friend," says the parson, "your desire shall be attended to," and hout he valked: me a takin' a sight at 'im be'ind 'is back; for as soon as I thought he wos out of 'earin', sings I to myself-- "Ven a prig," etc In the chapel hof the Jug, Then I did the meek and lowly, Pullin' sitch a spoony mug That I looked unkimmon pure and 'oly. As loud as ever I could shout, All the responses too I hutter'd, Well knowing what I was about: So the reverend Gent I buttered. (Spoken.) Won day he comes to me arter service, and axes me what I thought: I could do for myself in the way of yarnin a honest liveliwood, if so be as I was to be allowed my liberty and to go back to the world. "Ah! sir," says I, "I don't think no longer about the world. 'Tis a world of sorrow and wanity, I havn't given a thought to what I should do in it" "Every one," says the Chapling "has his sphere of usefulness in society; can you think of no employment which you have the desire and ability to follow?" "Well, sir," says I "if there is a wocation which I should feel delight and pleasure in follerin 'tis that of a Scripter Reader. But I ain't worthy to be a Scripter Reader. A coal-porter of tracts and religious books, sir, I thinks that's what I should like to try and be, if the time of my just punishment was up. But there's near seven year, sir, to think about that--and p'raps 'tis better for me to be here." That's the way I used to soap the Chapling--Cos vy? "Ven a prig," etc. So he thought I kissed the rod, All the while my 'art was 'ardened; And I 'adn't been very long in quod Afore he got me as good as pardoned; And here am I with my Ticket of Leave, Obtained by shamming pious feeling, Which lets me loose again to thieve, For I means to persewere in stealing. (Spoken.) With which resolution, my beloved pals, if you please I'll couple the 'elth of the clergy; and may they hever continue to be sitch kind friends as they now shows theirselves to us when we gets into trouble. For, "Ven a prig," etc. A POLKA LYRIC. BARCLAY PHILLIPS Qui nunc dancere vult modo, Wants to dance in the fashion, oh! Discere debet--ought to know, Kickere floor cum heel and toe, One, two, three, Hop with me, Whirligig, twirligig, rapide. Polkam jungere, Virgo, vis, Will you join the polka, miss? Liberius--most willingly, Sic agimus--then let us try: Nunc vide, Skip with me, Whirlabout, roundabout, celere. Turn laeva cito, tum dextra, First to the left, and then t' other way; Aspice retro in vultu, You look at her, and she looks at you. Das palmam Change hands, ma'am; Celere--run away, just in sham. A SUNNIT TO THE BIG OX. COMPOSED WHILE STANDING WITHIN 2 FEET OF HIM, AND A TUCHIN' OF HIM NOW AND THEN. ANONYMOUS All hale! thou mighty annimil--all hale! You are 4 thousand pounds, and am purty wel Perporshund, thou tremenjos boveen nuggit! I wonder how big you was wen you Wos little, and if yure muther wud no you now That you've grone so long, and thick, and phat; Or if yure father would rekognize his ofspring And his kaff, thou elefanteen quodrupid! I wonder if it hurts you mutch to be so big, And if you grode it in a month or so. I spose wen you wos young tha didn't gin You skim milk but all the kreme you kud stuff Into your little stummick, jest to see How big yude gro; and afterward tha no doubt Fed you on otes and ha and sich like, With perhaps an occasional punkin or squosh! In all probability yu don't no yure enny Bigger than a small kaff; for if you did, Yude brake down fences and switch your tail, And rush around, and hook, and beller, And run over fowkes, thou orful beast O, what a lot of mince pize yude maik, And sassengers, and your tale, Whitch kan't wa fur from phorty pounds, Wud maik nigh unto a barrel of ox-tail soop, And cudn't a heep of stakes be cut oph yu, Whitch, with salt and pepper and termater Ketchup, wouldn't be bad to taik. Thou grate and glorious inseckt! But I must klose, O most prodijus reptile! And for mi admirashun of yu, when yu di, I'le rite a node unto yore peddy and remanes, Pernouncin' yu the largest of yure race; And as I don't expect to have a half a dollar Agin to spare for to pa to look at yu, and as I ain't a ded head, I will sa, farewell. ENIGMATIC RIDDLES BY MATTHEW PRIOR. TWO RIDDLES. Sphinx was a monster that would eat Whatever stranger she could get; Unless his ready wit disclos'd The subtle riddle she propos'd. Oedipus was resolv'd to go, And try what strength of parts would do. Says Sphinx, on this depends your fate; Tell me what animal is that Which has four feet at morning bright, Has two at noon and three at night? 'Tis man, said he, who, weak by nature, At first creeps, like his fellow creature, Upon all-four; as years accrue, With sturdy steps he walks on two; In age, at length, grows weak and sick, For his third leg adopts a stick. Now, in your turn, 'tis just methinks, You should resolve me, Madam Sphinx. What greater stranger yet is he Who has four legs, then two, then three; Then loses one, then gets two more, And runs away at last on four? ENIGMA. By birth I'm a slave, yet can give you a crown, I dispose of all honors, myself having none: I'm obliged by just maxims to govern my life, Yet I hang my own master, and lie with his wife. When men are a-gaming I cunningly sneak, And their cudgels and shovels away from them take. Pair maidens and ladies I by the hand get, And pick off their diamonds, tho' ne'er so well set. For when I have comrades we rob in whole bands, Then presently take off your lands from your hands. But, this fury once over, I've such winning arts, That you love me much more than you do your own hearts. ANOTHER. Form'd half beneath, and half above the earth, We sisters owe to art our second birth: The smith's and carpenter's adopted daughters, Made on the land, to travel on the waters. Swifter they move, as they are straiter bound, Yet neither tread the air, or wave, or ground: They serve the poor for use, the rich for whim, Sink when it rains, and when it freezes swim. RIDDLES BY DEAN SWIFT AND HIS FRIENDS. [Footnote: The following notice is subjoined to some of those riddles, in the Dublin edition: "About nine or ten years ago (i. e. about 1724), some ingenious gentle-men, friends to the author, used to entertain themselves with writing riddles, and send them to him and their other acquaintance; copies of which ran about, and some of them were printed, both here and in England. The author, at his leisure hours, fell into the same amusement; although it be said that he thought them of no great merit, entertainment, or use. However, by the advice of some persons, for whom the author has a great esteem, and who were pleased to send us the copies, we have ventured to print the few following, as we have done two or three before, and which are allowed to be genuine; because we are informed that several good judges have a taste for such kind of compositions."] A MAYPOLE. Deprived of root, and branch, and rind, Yet flowers I bear of every kind: And such is my prolific power, They bloom in less than half an hour; Yet standers-by may plainly see They get no nourishment from me. My head with giddiness goes round, And yet I firmly stand my ground; All over naked I am seen, And painted like an Indian queen. No couple-beggar in the land E'er join'd such numbers hand in hand. I join'd them fairly with a ring; Nor can our parson blame the thing. And though no marriage words are spoke, They part not till the ring is broke: Yet hypocrite fanatics cry, I'm but an idol raised on high; And once a weaver in our town, A damn'd Cromwellian, knock'd me down. I lay a prisoner twenty years, And then the jovial cavaliers To their old post restored all three-- I mean the church, the king, and me. ON THE MOON. I with borrowed silver shine, What you see is none of mine. First I show you but a quarter, Like the bow that guards the Tartar: Then the half, and then the whole, Ever dancing round the pole. What will raise your admiration, I am not one of God's creation, But sprung (and I this truth maintain), Like Pallas, from my father's brain. And after all, I chiefly owe My beauty to the shades below. Most wondrous forms you see me wear, A man, a woman, lion, bear, A fish, a fowl, a cloud, a field, All figures heaven or earth can yield; Like Daphne sometimes in a tree; Yet am not one of all you see. ON INK. I am jet black, as you may see, The son of pitch and gloomy night; Yet all that know me will agree, I'm dead except I live in light. Sometimes in panegyric high, Like lofty Pindar, I can soar, And raise a virgin to the sky, Or sink her to a filthy ----. My blood this day is very sweet, To-morrow of a bitter juice; Like milk, 'tis cried about the street, And so applied to different use. Most wondrous is my magic power: For with one color I can paint; I'll make the devil a saint this hour, Next make a devil of a saint. Through distant regions I can fly, Provide me but with paper wings; And fairly show a reason why There should be quarrels among kings; And, after all, you'll think it odd, When learned doctors will dispute, That I should point the word of God, And show where they can best confute. Let lawyers bawl and strain their throats 'Tis I that must the lands convey, And strip their clients to their coats; Nay, give their very souls away. ON A CIRCLE. I'm up and down, and round about, Yet all the world can't find me out; Though hundreds have employ'd their leisure, They never yet could find my measure. I'm found almost in every garden, Nay, in the compass of a farthing. There's neither chariot, coach, nor mill, Can move an inch except I will. ON A PEN. In youth exalted high in air, Or bathing in the waters fair, Nature to form me took delight, And clad my body all in white. My person tall, and slender waist, On either side with fringes graced; Tell me that tyrant man espied, And dragg'd me from my mother's side, No wonder now I look so thin; The tyrant stript me to the skin: My skin he flay'd, my hair he cropt: At head and foot my body lopt: And then, with heart more hard than s one, He pick'd my marrow from the bone. To vex me more, he took a freak To slit my tongue and make me speak But, that which wonderful appears, I speak to eyes, and not to ears. He oft employs me in disguise, And makes me tell a thousand lies: To me he chiefly gives in trust To please his malice or his lust, From me no secret he can hide: I see his vanity and pride: And my delight is to expose His follies to his greatest foes. All languages I can command, Yet not a word I understand. Without my aid, the best divine In learning would not know a line: The lawyer must forget his pleading; The scholar could not show his reading Nay; man my master is my slave; I give command to kill or save. Can grant ten thousand pounds a-year, And make a beggar's brat a peer. But, while I thus my life relate, I only hasten on my fate. My tongue is black, my mouth is furr'd, I hardly now can force a word. I die unpitied and forgot, And on some dunghill left to rot. A FAN. From India's burning clime I'm brought, With cooling gales like zephyrs fraught. Not Iris, when she paints the sky, Can show more different hues than I: Nor can she change her form so fast, I'm now a sail, and now a mast. I here am red, and there am green, A beggar there, and here a queen. I sometimes live in a house of hair, And oft in hand of lady fair. I please the young, I grace the old, And am at once both hot and cold Say what I am then, if you can, And find the rhyme, and you're the man. ON A CANNON. Begotten, and born, and dying with noise, The terror of women, and pleasure of boys, Like the fiction of poets concerning the wind, I'm chiefly unruly when strongest confined. For silver and gold I don't trouble my head, But all I delight in is pieces of lead; Except when I trade with a ship or a town, Why then I make pieces of iron go down. One property more I would have you remark, No lady was ever more fond of a spark; The moment I get one my soul's all a-fire, And I roar out my joy, and in transport expire. ON THE FIVE SENSES. All of us in one you'll find, Brethren of a wondrous kind; Yet among us all no brother Knows one title of the other; We in frequent counsels are, And our marks of things declare, Where, to us unknown, a clerk Sits, and takes them in the dark. He's the register of all In our ken, both great and small; By us forms his laws and rules, He's our master, we his tools; Yet we can with greatest ease Turn and wind him where you please. One of us alone can sleep, Yet no watch the rest will keep, But the moment that he closes, Every brother else reposes. If wine's bought or victuals drest, One enjoys them for the rest. Pierce us all with wounding steel, One for all of us will feel. Though ten thousand cannons roar, Add to them ten thousand more, Yet but one of us is found Who regards the dreadful sound. ON SNOW. From Heaven I fall, though from earth I begin. No lady alive can show such a skin. I'm bright as an angel, and light as a feather, But heavy and dark, when you squeeze me together. Though candor and truth in my aspect I bear, Yet many poor creatures I help to insnare. Though so much of Heaven appears in my make, The foulest impressions I easily take. My parent and I produce one another, The mother the daughter, the daughter the mother. ON A CANDLE. Of all inhabitants on earth, To man alone I owe my birth, And yet the cow, the sheep, the bee, Are all my parents more than he: I, a virtue, strange and rare, Make the fairest look more fair; And myself, which yet is rarer, Growing old, grow still the fairer. Like sots, alone I'm dull enough, When dosed with smoke, and smear'd with snuff; But, in the midst of mirth and wine, I with double luster shine. Emblem of the Fair am I, Polish'd neck, and radiant eye; In my eye my greatest grace, Emblem of the Cyclops' race; Metals I like them subdue, Slave like them to Vulcan too; Emblem of a monarch old, Wise, and glorious to behold; Wasted he appears, and pale, Watching for the public weal: Emblem of the bashful dame, That in secret feeds her flame, Often aiding to impart All the secrets of her heart; Various is my bulk and hue, Big like Bess, and small like Sue: Now brown and burnish'd like a nut, At other times a very slut; Often fair, and soft and tender, Taper, tall, and smooth, and slender: Like Flora, deck'd with various flowers Like Phoebus, guardian of the hours: But whatever be my dress, Greater be my size or less, Swelling be my shape or small Like thyself I shine in all. Clouded if my face is seen, My complexion wan and green, Languid like a love-sick maid, Steel affords me present aid. Soon or late, my date is done, As my thread of life is spun; Yet to cut the fatal thread Oft revives my drooping head; Yet I perish in my prime, Seldom by the death of time; Die like lovers as they gaze, Die for those I live to please; Pine unpitied to my urn, Nor warm the fair for whom I burn; Unpitied, unlamented too, Die like all that look on you. ON A CORKSCREW. Though I, alas! a prisoner be, My trade is prisoners to set free. No slave his lord's commands obeys With such insinuating ways. My genius piercing, sharp, and bright, Wherein the men of wit delight. The clergy keep me for their ease, And turn and wind me as they please. A new and wondrous art I show Of raising spirits from below; In scarlet some, and some in white; They rise, walk round, yet never fright In at each mouth the spirits pass, Distinctly seen as through a glass. O'er head and body make a rout, And drive at last all secrets out; And still, the more I show my art, The more they open every heart. A greater chemist none than I Who, from materials hard and dry, Have taught men to extract with skill More precious juice than from a still. Although I'm often out of case, I'm not ashamed to show my face. Though at the tables of the great I near the sideboard take my seat; Yet the plain 'squire, when dinner's done, Is never pleased till I make one; He kindly bids me near him stand, And often takes me by the hand. I twice a-day a-hunting go, And never fail to seize my foe; And when I have him by the poll, I drag him upward from his hole; Though some are of so stubborn kind, I'm forced to leave a limb behind. I hourly wait some fatal end; For I can break, but scorn to bend. AN ECHO. Never sleeping, still awake, Pleasing most when most I speak; The delight of old and young, Though I speak without a tongue. Nought but one thing can confound me, Many voices joining round me; Then I fret, and rave, and gabble, Like the laborers of Babel. Now I am a dog, or cow, I can bark, or I can low; I can bleat, or I can sing, Like the warblers of the spring. Let the love-sick bard complain, And I mourn the cruel pain; Let the happy swain rejoice, And I join my helping voice: Both are welcome, grief or joy, I with either sport and toy. Though a lady, I am stout, Drums and trumpets bring me out: Then I clash, and roar, and rattle, Join in all the din of battle. Jove, with all his loudest thunder, When I'm vexed can't keep me under, Yet so tender is my ear, That the lowest voice I fear; Much I dread the courtier's fate, When his merit's out of date, For I hate a silent breath, And a whisper is my death. ON THE VOWELS. We are little airy creatures, All of different voice and features; One of us in glass is set, One of us you'll find in jet. T'other you may see in tin, And the fourth a box within. If the fifth you should pursue, It can never fly from you. ON A PAIR OF DICE. We are little brethren twain, Arbiters of loss and gain, Many to our counters run, Some are made, and some undone: But men find it to their cost, Few are made, but numbers lost. Though we play them tricks forever, Yet they always hope our favor. ON A SHADOW IN A GLASS. By something form'd, I nothing am, Yet every thing that you can name; In no place have I ever been, Yet everywhere I may be seen; In all things false, yet always true, I'm still the same--but ever now. Lifeless, life's perfect form I wear, Can show a nose, eye, tongue, or ear, Yet neither smell, see, taste, nor hear. All shapes and features I can boast, No flesh, no bones, no blood-no ghost: All colors, without paint, put on, And change, like the chameleon. Swiftly I come, and enter there, Where not a chink lets in the air; Like thought, I'm in a moment gone, Nor can I ever be alone: All things on earth I imitate Faster than nature can create; Sometimes imperial robes I wear, Anon in beggar's rags appear; A giant now, and straight an elf, I'm every one, but ne'er myself; Ne'er sad I mourn, ne'er glad rejoice, I move my lips, but want a voice, I ne'er was born, nor ne'er can die, Then, pr'ythee, tell me what am I? ON TIME. Ever eating, ever cloying, All-devouring, all-destroying Never finding full repast, Till I eat the world at last. CATALOGUE OF SOURCES ADDISON, JOSEPH--The Essayist of the "Spectator;" born 1632 died 1708. Addison, though one of the most celebrated of English humorists, wrote scarcely a line of humorous verse. ALLINGHAM, WILLIAM--An American writer; contributor to "Putnam's Magazine;" author of a volume of poems recently published in Hartford. ANONYMOUS--To Punch's Almanac, for 1856, we are indebted for an account of this prolific writer: "Of Anon," says Punch, "but little is known, though his works are excessively numerous. He has dabbled in every thing. Prose and Poetry are alike familiar to his pen. One moment he will be up the highest flights of philosophy, and the next he will be down in some kitchen garden of literature, culling an Enormous Gooseberry, to present it to the columns of some provincial newspaper. His contributions are scattered wherever the English language is read. Open any volume of Miscellanies at any place you will, and you are sure to fall upon some choice little bit signed by 'Anon.' What a mind his must have been! It took in every thing like a pawnbroker's shop. Nothing was too trifling for its grasp. Now he was hanging on to the trunk of an elephant and explaining to you how it was more elastic than a pair of India-rubber braces; and next he would be constructing a suspension bridge with a series of monkey's tails, tying them together as they do pocket- handkerchief's in the gallery of a theater when they want to fish up a bonnet that has fallen into the pit. "Anon is one of our greatest authors. If all the things which are signed with Anon's name were collected on rows of shelves, he would require a British Museum all to himself. And yet of this great man so little is known that we are not even acquainted with his Christian name. There is no certificate of baptism, no moldy tombstone, no musty washing-bill in the world on which we can hook the smallest line of speculation whether it was John, or James, or Joshua, or Tom, or Dick, or Billy Anon. Shame that a man should write so much, and yet be known so little. Oblivion uses its snuffers, sometimes, very unjustly. On second thoughts, perhaps, it is as well that the works of Anon were not collected together. His reputation for consistency would not probably be increased by the collection. It would be found that frequently he had contradicted himself---that in many instances when he had been warmly upholding the Christian white of a question he had afterward turned round, and maintained with equal warmth the Pagan black of it. He might often be discovered on both sides of a truth, jumping boldly from the right side over to the wrong, and flinging big stones at any one who dared to assail him in either position. Such double-sidedness would not be pretty, and yet we should be lenient to such inconsistencies. With one who had written so many thousand volumes, who had twirled his thoughts as with a mop on every possible subject, how was it possible to expect any thing like consistency? How was it likely that he could recollect every little atom out of the innumerable atoms his pen had heaped up? "Anon ought to have been rich, but he lived in an age when piracy was the fashion, and when booksellers walked about, as it were, like Indian chiefs with the skulls of the authors they had slain, hung round their necks. No wonder, therefore, that we know nothing of the wealth of Anon. Doubtless he died in a garret, like many other kindred spirits, Death being the only score out of the many knocking at his door that he could pay. But to his immortal credit let it be said he has filled more libraries than the most generous patrons of literature. The volumes that formed the fuel of the barbarians' bonfire at Alexandria would be but a small book-stall by the side of the octavos, quartos, and duodecimos he has pyramidized on our book-shelves. Look through any catalogue you will, and you will find that a large proportion of the works in it have been contributed by Anon. The only author who can in the least compete with him in fecundity is Ibid." ANTI-JACOBIN, THE---Perhaps the most famous collection of Political Satires extant. Originated by Canning in 1797, it appeared in the form of a weekly newspaper, interspersed with poetry, the avowed object of which was to expose the vicious doctrines of the French Revolution, and to hold up to ridicule and contempt the advocates of that event, and the sticklers for peace and parliamentary reform. The editor was William Gifford, the vigorous and unscrupulous critic and poetaster the writers, Mr. John Hookham Frere, Mr. Jenkinson (afterward Earl of Liverpool); Mr. George Ellis, Lord Clare, Lord Mornington (afterward Marquis Wellesley), Lord Morpeth (afterward Earl of Carlisle), Baron Macdonald, and others. These gentlemen spared no means, fair or foul, in their attempts to blacken their adversaries. Their most distinguished countrymen, if opposed to the Tory government of the time being, were treated with no more respect than foreign adversaries, and were held up to public execration as traitors, blasphemers, and debauchees. The period was one of great political excitement, a fierce war with republican France being in progress, the necessity for which divided the public into two great parties; national credit being affected, the Bank of England suspending cash payments, mutinies breaking out in the fleets at Spithead and the Nore, and Ireland at the verge of rebellion. Spain, also, had declared war against Britain, which was thus left to contend singly against the power of France. Party feeling running very high, the anti-Jacobins were by no means discriminating in their attacks, associating men together who really had nothing in common. Hence the reader is surprised to find Charles Lamb and other non-intruders into politics, figuring as congenial conspirators with Tom Paine. Fox, Sheridan, Erskine, and other eloquent liberals of the day, with Tierney, Home Tooke, and Coleridge were at the same tune writing and talking in the opposite extreme, and little quarter was given--certainly none on the part of the Tory wits. The poetry of the "Anti-Jacobin," however, was not exclusively political, comprising also parodies and burlesques on the current literature of the day, some being of the highest degree of merit, and distinguished by sharp wit and broad humor of the happiest kind. In these, Canning and his coadjutors did a real service to letters, and assisted in a purification which Gifford, by his demolition of the Delia Cruscan school of poetry had so well begun. Perhaps no lines in the English language have been more effective or oftener quoted than Canning's "Friend of Humanity and the Knife Grinder." Many of the celebrated caricatures of Gilray were originally designed to illustrate the Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin. It had, however, but a brief, though brilliant existence. Wilberforce and others of the more moderate supporters of the ministry became alarmed at the boldness of the language employed. Pitt (himself a contributor to the journal), was induced to interfere, and after a career of eight months, the "Anti-Jacobin" (in its original form), ceased to be. AYTOUN, WILLIAM--Professor of Polite Literature in the Edinburg University: editor of "Blackwood's Magazine:" son-in-law of the late Professor Wilson. Professor Aytoun was bred to the bar but, we believe, never came into practice. He is tha author of several humorous pieces, and of many in which the intention to be humorous was not realized. He is what the English call a very CLEVER man. Like many others who excel in ridicule and sarcasm, he is devoid of that kind of moral principle which makes a writer prefer the Just to the Dashing. Aytoun is a fierce Tory in politics--a snob on principle. The specimens of his humorous poetry contained in this collection were taken from the "Ballads of Bon Gaultier," and the "Idees Napoleoniennes," editions of both of which have been published in this country. BARHAM, REV. RICHARD HARRIS--Author of the celebrated "Ingoldsby Legends," published originally in "Bentley's Miscellany," afterward collected and published in three volumes, with a memoir by a son of the author. Mr. Barham was born at Canterbury, England, December 6th, 1788. His family is of great antiquity, having given its name to the well-known "Barham Downs," between Dover and Canterbury. He was educated at St. Paul's School in Canterbury, where he made the acquaintance of Richard Bentley, who afterward became his publisher. From this school, he wont to Oxford, entering Brazennose College, as a gentleman commoner, where he met Theodore Hook, and formed a friendship with that prince of wits which terminated only with Hook's life. At the University, Barham led a wild, dissipated life--as the bad custom then was--and was noted as a wit and good fellow. Being called to account, on one occasion, by his tutor for his continued absence from morning prayer, Barham replied, "The fact is, sir, you are too LATE for me." "Too late?" exclaimed the astonished tutor. "Yes, sir," rejoined the student, "I can not sit up till seven o'clock in the morning. I am a man of regular habits, and unless I get to bed by four or five, I am fit for nothing the next day." The tutor took this jovial reply seriously, and Barham perceiving that he was really wounded, offered a sincere apology, and afterward attended prayers more regularly. Entering the church, he devoted himself to his clerical duties with exemplary assiduity, and obtained valuable preferment, rising at length to be one of the Canons of St. Paul's Cathedral. This office brought him into relations with Sydney Smith, with whom, though Barham was a Tory, he had much convivial intercourse. Very early in life Mr. Barham became an occasional contributor to Blackwood's Magazine, then in the prime of its vigorous youth. The series of contributions called "Family Poetry," which appear in the volumes for 1823, and subsequent years, were by him. Most of those humorous effusions have been transferred to this volume. In 1837 Mr. Bentley established his "Miscellany," and secured the services of his friend Barham, who, up to this time was unknown to the general public, though he had been for nearly twenty years a successful writer. The "Ingoldsby Legends" now appeared in rapid succession, and proved so popular that their author soon became one of the recognized wits of the day. A large number of these unique and excellent productions enrich the present collection, "As respects these poems," says Mr. Barham's biographer, "remarkable as they have been pronounced for the wit and humor which they display, their distinguishing attractions lies in the almost unparalleled flow and felicity of the versification. Popular phrases, sentences the most prosaic, even the cramped technicalities of legal diction, and snatches from well-nigh every language, are wrought in with an apparent absence of all art and effort that surprises, pleases, and convulses the reader at every turn. The author triumphs with a master hand over every variety of stanza, however complicated or exacting; not a word seems out of place, not an expression forced; syllables the most intractable, and the only partners fitted for them throughout the range of language are coupled together as naturally as those kindred spirits which poets tell us were created pairs, and dispersed in space to seek out their particular mates. A harmony pervades the whole, a perfect modulation of numbers, never, perhaps, surpassed, and rarely equaled in compositions of their class. This was the forte of Thomas Ingoldsby; a harsh line or untrue rhyme grated on his ear like the Shandean hinge." These observations are just. As a rhymer, Mr. Barham has but one equal in English literature--Byron. Mr. Barham died at London on the 17th of June, 1845, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. He was an extremely amiable, benevolent character. It does not appear that his love of the humorous was ever allowed to interfere with the performance of his duties as a clergyman. Without being a great preacher, he was a faithful and kindly pastor, never so much in his element as when ministering to the distresses, or healing the differences of his parishioners. Unlike his friend, Sydney Smith, he was singularly fond of the drama, and for many years was a member of the Garrick Club. He was one of the few English writers of humorous verse, ALL of whose writings may be read aloud by a father to his family, and in whose wit there was no admixture of gall. "BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY"--A London Monthly Magazine, founded about twenty years ago by Mr. Bentley, the publisher. Charles Dickens, and the author of the Ingoldsby Legends were among the first contributors. BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE--First appeared in April, 1817 Founded by William Blackwood, a shrewd Edinburgh bookseller. Its literary ability and fierce political partisanship, soon placed it fore-most in the ranks of Tory periodicals. Perhaps no magazine has ever achieved such celebrity, or numbered such a host of illustrious contributors. John Wilson, the world-famous "Christopher North," was the virtual, though not nominal editor, Blackwood himself retaining that title. It would be a long task to enumerate all, who, from the days of Sir Walter Scott and the Ettrick Shepherd, to those of Bulwer and Charles Mackay, have appeared in its columns. Maginn, Lockhart, Gillies, Moir, Landor, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, Bowles, Barry Cornwall, Gleig, Hamilton, Aird, Sym, De Quincey, Allan Cunningham, Mrs. Hemans, Jerrold, Croly, Warren, Ingoldsby (Barham), Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Milnes, and many others, of scarcely less note, found in Blackwood scope for their productions, whether of prose or verse. In its early days much of personality and sarcasm marked its pages, savage onslaughts on Leigh Hunt, and "the Cockney School of Literature," alternating with attacks on the Edinburgh Review, the Quarterly, and all Whigs and Whig productions whatever. The celebrated Noctes Ambrosianae, a series of papers containing probably more learning, wit, eloquence, eccentricity, humor, and personality than have ever appeared elsewhere, formed part of the individuality of Blackwood. They were written by Wilson, Maginn, Lockhart, and Hogg, the two first named (and especially Wilson), having the pre-eminence. To the New York edition of this work, by Dr. Shelton Mackenzie (whose notes contain a perfect mine of information), we refer the reader for further particulars relative to Blackwood. BROUGHAM, LORD--The well-known member of the English House of Peers. It seems, from some jocularities attributed to his lordship, that he adds to his many other claims to distinction that of being a man of wit. BRYANT, WILLIAM CULLEN--The most celebrated of American poets. Editor of the "New York Evening Post." Born 1794. BURNS, ROBERT--Born 1750, died 1796. The best loved, most national, most independent, truest, and greatest of Scottish poets, of whom to say more here were an impertinence. BUTLER, SAMUEL--Born in 1612; the son of a substantial farmer in Worcestershire, England. Very little is known of the earlier portion of his life, as he had reached the age of fifty before he was so much as heard of by his contemporaries. He appears to have received a good education at the cathedral school of his native county, and to have filled various situations, as clerk in the service of Thomas Jeffries of Earl's Croombe, secretary to the Countess of Kent, and general man of business to Sir Samuel Luke, of Cople Hoo, Bedfordshire, who, it is said, served as the model for his hero, Hudibras. The first part of this singular poem was published at the close of 1662, and met with extraordinary success. Its wit, its quaint sense and learning, its passages of sarcastic reflection on all manner of topics, and above all, its unsparing ridicule of men and things on the Puritan side, combined to render it a general favorite. The reception of Part II., which appeared a year subsequent, was equally flattering. Yet its author seems to have fallen into the greatest poverty and obscurity, from which be never was enabled to emerge. It appears to have been his strange fate to flash all at once into notoriety, which lasted precisely two years, to fill the court and town during that time with continuous laughter, intermingled with inquiries who and what he was, and then for seventeen long years to plod on unknown and unregarded, still hearing his Hudibras quoted, and still preparing more of it, or matter similar, with no result. He died, in almost absolute destitution, in 1680, and was buried at a friend's expense, in the church-yard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden. BYROM--A noted English Jacobite. Born 1691. BYRON, GEORGE GORDON NOEL--Born 1788, died in Greece, 1824. Respecting his celebrated Satire on the poet Rogers, which appears in this collection, we read the following in a London periodical:--"The satire on Rogers, by Lord Byron, is not surpassed for cool malignity, dexterous portraiture, and happy imagery, in the whole compass of the English language. It is said, and by those well informed, that Rogers used to bore Byron while in Italy, by his incessant minute dilettantism, and by visits at hours when Byron did not care to see him. One of many wild freaks to repel his unreasonable visits was to set his big dog at him. To a mind like Byron's, here was sufficient provocation for a satire. The subject, too, was irresistible. Other inducements were not wanting. No man indulged himself more in sarcastic remarks on his cotemporaries than Mr. Rogers. He indulged his wit at any sacrifice. He spared no one, and Byron, consequently did not escape. Sarcastic sayings travel on electric wings--and one of Rogers's personal and amusing allusions to Byron reached the ears of the poetic pilgrim at Ravenna. Few characters can bear the microscopic scrutiny of wit. Byron suffered. Fewer characters can bear its microscopic scrutiny when quickened by anger, and Rogers suffered still more severely. "This, the greatest of modern satirical portraits in verse, was written before their final meeting at Bologna. Rogers was not aware that any saying of his had ever reached the ear of Byron, and Byron never published the verses on Rogers. They met like the handsome women described by Cibber, who, though they wished one another at the devil, are 'My dear,' and 'My dear,' whenever they meet. One doubtless considered his saying as something to be forgotten, and the other his verses as something not to be remembered. These verses are not included in Byron's works, and are very little known." CHAUCER lived in the thirteenth century, dying in 1400. He is designated the father of English poetry. The obsolete phraseology of his writings, though presenting a barrier to general appreciation and popularity, will never deter those who truly love the "dainties that are bred in a book" from holding him in affection and reverence. His chief work, the "Canterbury Pilgrimage," "well of English undefiled" as it is, was written in the decline of life, when its author had passed his sixtieth year. For catholicity of spirit, love of nature, purity of thought, pathos, humor, subtle and minute discrimination of character and power of expressing it, Chaucer has one superior--Shakspeare. CHESTERFIELD, LORD--Born in 1694; died 1773. Courtier, statesman, and man of the world; famous for many things, but known to literature chiefly by his "Letters to his Son," which have formed three generations of "gentlemen," and still exert great influence. Chesterfield was a noted wit in his day, but most of his good things have been lost. CLEVELAND, JOHN--A political writer of Charles the First's time; author of several satirical pieces, now known only to the curious. He died in 1659. COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR--Poet, plagiarist, and opium-eater. Born at Bristol, in 1770. Died near London in 1834. He was a weak man of genius, whose reputation, formerly immense, has declined since he has been better known. But "Christabel" and the "Ancient Mariner," will charm many generations of readers yet unborn. Most of the epigrams which appear in his works are ADAPTED from Leasing. COWPER, WILLIAM--The gentle poet of religious England: born 1731; died 1800. Cowper was an elegant humorist, despite the gloominess of his religious belief. It is said, however, that his most comic effusions were written during periods of despondency. "CRUIKSHANK'S OMNIBUS"--A monthly Magazine, published at the period of the artist's greatest celebrity, principally as a vehicle for his pencil. Its editor was Laman Blanchard, a lively essayist, and amiable man, whom anticipations of pecuniary distress subsequently goaded to suicide. DEVREAUX, S. H.--An American scholar. Translator of "Yriarte's Fables," recently published in Boston. ERSKINE, THOMAS--One of the most eminent of English lawyers. Born 1750; died 1823. FIELDING, HENRY--The great English Humorist; author of "Tom Jones;" born, 1707; died, 1754. GAY, JOHN--A poet and satirist of the days of Queen Anne. Born 1688; died, 1732. His wit, gentleness, humor, and animal spirits appear to have rendered him a general favorite. In worldly matters he was not fortunate, losing 20,000 pounds by the South Sea bubble; nor did his interest, which was by no means inconsiderable, succeed in procuring him a place at court. He wrote fables, pastorals, the burlesque poem of "Trivia," and plays, the most successful and celebrated of which is the "Beggar's Opera." Of this work there exists a sequel or second part, as full of wit and satire as the original, but much less known. Its performance was suppressed by Walpole, upon whom it was supposed to reflect. GRAY, THOMAS--Author of the "Elegy written in a Country Church-yard;" Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge. Born in London, 1716; died, 1771. Gray was learned in History, Architecture, and Natural History. As a poet, he was remarkable for the labor bestowed on his poems, for his reluctance to publish, and for the small number of his compositions. Carlyle thinks he is the only English poet who wrote less than he ought. HALPIX.----- --A writer for the press, a resident of New York, author of "Lyrics by the Letter H," published a year or two since by Derby. HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL--A physician of Boston, Professor of Anatomy in Harvard University; born at Cambridge, Mass., in 1809. Dr. Holmes's humorous verses are too well known to require comment in this place. His burlesque, entitled "Evening, by a Tailor," is very excellent of its kind. HOOD, THOMAS--Author of the "Song of the Shirt," which Punch had the honor of first publishing. Born in 1798; died in 1845. Hood was the son of a London bookseller, and began life as a clerk. He became afterward an engraver, but was drawn gradually into the literary profession, which he exercised far more to the advantage of his readers than his own. His later years were saddened by ill-health and poverty. Some of his comic verses seem forced and contrived, as though done for needed wages. Hood was one of the literary men who should have made of literature a staff, not a crutch. It was in him to produce, like Lamb, a few very admirable things, the execution of which should have been the pleasant occupation of his leisure, not the toil by which he gained his bread. HUNT, JAMES HENRY LEIGH--English Journalist and Poet. Born in 1784. His father was a clergyman of the Established church, and a man of wit and feeling. JOHNSON, DR. SAMUEL--Born 1709; died 1784. Critic, moralist, lexicographer, and, above all, the hero of Boswell's Life of Johnson. The ponderous philosopher did not disdain, occasionally, to give play to his elephantine wit. JONSON, BEN--Born 1574; died 1637. Poet, playwright, and friend of Shakspeare, in whose honor he has left a noble eulogium. A manly, sturdy, laborious, English genius, of whose dramatic productions, however, but one ("Every Man in his Humor") has retained possession of the stage. He is also the author of some exquisite lyrics. LAMB, CHARLES--Born in London, 1775; died, 1832. As a humorous essayist, unrivaled and peculiar, he is known and loved by all who are likely to possess this volume. LANDOR, WALTER SAVAGE--A living English writer of considerable celebrity, author of "Imaginary Conversations," contributor to several leading periodicals. Mr. Landor is now advanced in years. His humorous verses are few, and not of striking excellence. "LANTERN," THE--A comic weekly, in imitation of "Punch," published in this city a few years ago. The leading spirit of the "Lantern" was Mr. John Brougham, the well-known dramatist and actor. "LEADER," THE--A London weekly newspaper, of liberal opinions; ably written and badly edited, and, therefore, of limited circulation. LESSING, GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM--The well-known German author; born 1729; died 1781. The epigrams of Lessing have been so frequently stolen by English writers, that, perhaps, they may now be considered as belonging to English literature, and hence entitled to a place in this collection. At least we found the temptation to add them to our stock irresistible. LINDSAY--A friend of Dean Swift. A polite and elegant scholar; an eminent pleader at the bar in Dublin, and afterward advanced to be one of the justices of the Common Pleas. LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL--The American Poet. Born at Boston, in the year 1819. To Mr. Lowell must be assigned a high, if not the highest place, among American writers of humorous poetry. The Biglow Papers, from which we have derived several excellent pieces for this volume, is one of the most ingenious and well-sustained jeux d'esprit in existence. MAPES, WALTER DE--A noted clerical wit of Henry the Second's time. MOORE, THOMAS--The Irish poet; born at Dublin in the year 1780. Moore has been styled the best writer of political squibs that ever lived. He was employed to write comic verses on passing events, by the conductors of the "London Times," in which journal many of his satirical poems appeared. The political effusions that gave so much delight thirty years ago are, however, scarcely intelligible to the present generation, or if intelligible, not interesting. But Moore wrote many a sprightly stanza, the humor of which does not depend for its effect upon local or cotemporary allusions. This collection contains most of them. MORRIS, GEORGE P--The father of polite journalism in this city, and the most celebrated of American Song-writers. Born in Pennsylvania about the beginning of the present century. "PERCY RELIQUES"--A celebrated collection of ancient ballads, edited by Bishop Percy, a man of great antiquarian knowledge and poetic taste. The publication of the "Percy Reliques" in the last century, introduced the taste for the antique, which was gratified to the utmost by Sir Walter Scott, and which has scarcely yet ceased to rage in some quarters. PHILIPS, BARCLAY--A living English writer, of whom nothing is known in this country. PINDAR, PETER--See Wolcott. POPE, ALEXANDER--The poet of the time of Queen Anne; author of the "Dunciad," which has been styled the most perfect of satires. Born in London, 1688; died, 1744. PRAED, WINTHROP MACKWORTH--An English poet, author of "Lillian," born in London about the year 1800. Little is known of Mr. Praed in this country, though it was here that his poems were first collected and published in a volume. His family is of the aristocracy of the city, where some of his surviving relations are still engaged in the business of banking. At Eton, Praed was highly distinguished for his literary talents. He was for some time the editor of "The Etonian," a piquant periodical published by the students. From Eton he went to Cambridge, where he won an unprecedented number of prizes for poems and epigrams in Greek, Latin, and English. On returning to London, he was associated with Thomas Babbington Macaulay in the editorship of "Knight's Quarterly Magazine," after the discontinuance of which he occasionally contributed to the "New Monthly." A few years before his death, Mr. Praed became a member of Parliament, but owing to his love of ease and society, obtained little distinction in that body. Mr. N. P. Willis thus writes of the poet as he appeared in society: "We chance to have it in our power to say a word as to Mr. Praed's personal appearance, manners, etc. It was our good fortune when first in England (in 1834 or '35), to be a guest at the same hospitable country-house for several weeks. The party there assembled was somewhat a femous one-Miss Jane Porter, Miss Julia Pardoe, Krazinski (the Polish historian), Sir Gardiner Wilkinson (the Oriental traveler), venerable Lady Cork ('Lady Bellair' of D'lsraeli's novel), and several persons more distinguished in society than in literature. Praed, we believe, had not been long married, but he was there with his wife. He was apparently about thirty-five, tall, and of dark complexion, with a studious bend in his shoulders, and of irregular features strongly impressed with melancholy. His manners were particularly reserved, though as unassuming as they could well be. His exquisitely beautiful poem of 'Lillian' was among the pet treasures of the lady of the house, and we had all been indulged with a sight of it, in a choicely bound manuscript copy--but it was hard to make him confess to any literary habits or standing. As a gentleman of ample means and retired life, the land of notice drawn upon him by the admiration of this poem, seemed distasteful. His habits were very secluded. We only saw him at table and in the evening; and, for the rest of the day, he was away in the remote walks and woods of the extensive park around the mansion, apparently more fond of solitude than of anything else. Mr. Praed's mind was one of wonderful readiness--rhythm and rhyme coming to him with the flow of an improvisatore. The ladies of the party made the events of every day the subjects of charades, epigrams, sonnets, etc., with the design of suggesting inspiration to his ready pen; and he was most brilliantly complying, with treasures for each in her turn." Mr. Praed died on the 15th of July, 1839, without having accomplished any thing worthy the promise of his earlier years--another instance of Life's reversing the judgment of College. As a writer of agreeable trifles for the amusement of the drawing-room, he has had few superiors, and it is said that a large number of his impromptu effusions are still in the possession of his friends unpublished. Two editions of his poems have appeared in New York, one by Langley in 1844, and another by Redfield a few years later. PRIOR, MATTHEW--Born 1664; died 1721. A wit and poet of no small genius and good nature--one of the minor celebrities of the days of Queen Anne. His "Town and Country Mouse," written to ridicule of Dryden's famous "Hind and Panther," procured him the appointment of Secretary of Embassy at the Hague, and he subsequently rose to be ambassador at Paris. Suffering disgrace with his patrons he was afterward recalled, and received a pension from the University of Oxford, up to the time of his death. "PUNCH"--Commenced in July, 1841, making its appearance just at the close of the Whig ministry, under Lord Melbourne, and the accession of the Tories, headed by Sir Robert Peel. Originated by a circle of wits and literary men who frequented the "Shakspeare's Head," a tavern in Wych-street, London. Mark Lemon, the landlord was, and still is, its editor. He is of Jewish descent, and had some reputation for ability with his pen, having been connected with other journals, and also written farces and dramatic pieces. Punch's earliest contributors were Douglas Jerrold, Albert Smith, Gilbert Abbot a'Beckett Hood and Maginn- Thackeray's debut occurring in the third volume. It is said that one evening each week was especially devoted to a festive meeting of these writers, where, Lernon presiding, they deliberated as to the conduct and course of the periodical. "Punch," however, was at first not successful, and indeed on the point of being abandoned as a bad speculation, when Messrs. Bradbury and Evans, two aspiring printers, now extensive publishers, purchased it at the very moderate price of one hundred pounds, since which time it has continued their property, and a valuable one. In those days it presented a somewhat different appearance from the present, being more closely printed, finer type used, and the illustrations (with the exception of small, black, silhouette cuts, after the style of those in similar French publications), were comparatively scanty. Soon, however, "Punch" throve apace, amply meriting its success. To Henning's drawings (mostly those of a political nature), were added those of Leech, Kenny Meadows, Phiz (H. K. Browne), Gilbert, Alfred Crowquill (Forrester), and others--Doyle's pencil not appearing till some years later. Chief of these gentlemen in possession of the peculiar artistic ability which has identified itself with "Punch" is unquestionably Mr. John Leech, of whom we shall subsequently speak, at greater length. He has remained constant to the journal from its first volume. Jerrold's writings date from the commencement. Many essays and satiric sketches over fancy signatures, are from his pen. His later and longer productions, extending through many volumes, are "Punch's Letters to his Son," "Punch's Complete Letter Writer," "Twelve Labors of Hercules," "Autobiography of Tom Thumb," "Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures," "Capsicum House for Young Ladies," "Our Little Bird," "Mrs. Benimble's Tea and Toast," "Miss Robinson Crusoe," and "Mrs. Bib's Baby," the last two of which were never completed. During the publication of the "Caudle Lectures," "Punch" reached the highest circulation it has attained. We have the authority of a personal friend of the author for the assertion that their heroine was no fictitious one. The lectures were immensely popular, Englishmen not being slow to recognize in Jerold's caustic portraiture the features of a very formidable household reality. But with the ladies Mrs. Caudle proved no favorite, nor, in their judgment, did the "Breakfast-Table-Talk," of the Henpecked Husband (subsequently published in the Almanac of the current year), make amends for the writer's former productions. Albert Smith's contributions to the pages of "Punch," were the "Physiologies of the London Medical Student," "London Idler," and "Evening Parties," with other miscellaneous matter. Much of the author's own personal experience is probably comprised in the former, and his fellow-students and intimates at Middlesex Hospital were at no loss to identify the majority of the characters introduced. Mr. Smith's connection with "Punch" was not of long continuance. A severe criticism appearing subsequently in its columns, on his novel of the "Marchioness of Brinvilliers" (published in "Bentley's Miscellany," of which journal he was then editor), he, in retaliation, made an onslaught on "Punch" in another story, the "Pottleton Legacy," where it figures under the title of the Cracker. Mr. Gilbert a'Beckett, who had before been engaged in many unsuccessful periodicals, found in "Punch" ample scope for his wit and extraordinary faculty of punning. In "The Comic Blackstone," "Political Dictionary," "Punch's Noy's Maxims," and the "Autobiography, and other papers relating to Mr. Briefless," he put his legal knowledge to a comic use. Many fugitive minor pieces have also proceeded from his pen, and he has but few equals in that grotesque form of hybrid poetry known as Macaronic. He is now a London magistrate, and PAR EXCELLENCE, the punster of "Punch." The Greek versions of sundry popular ballads, such as "The King of the Cannibal Islands," were the work of Maginn. Hood's world-famous "Song of the Shirt," first appeared in "Punch's" pages. Thackeray has also been an industrious contributor, Commencing with "Miss Tickletoby's Lectures" (an idea afterward carried out in a somewhat different fashion by a'Beckett in his "Comic History of England"), he, besides miscellaneous writings, produced the "Snob Papers," "Jeames's Diary," "Punch in the East," "Punch's Prose Novelists," "The Traveler in London," "Mr. Brown's Letters to a Young Man about Town," and "The Proser." Of the merits of these works it is unnecessary to speak. The "Book of Snobs" may rank with its author's most finished productions. "Jeames's Diary," suggested by the circumstance of a May-fair footman achieving sudden affluence by railroad speculations during the ruinously exciting period of 1846, may, however, be considered only a further carrying out of the original idea of "Charles Yellowplush." A ballad in it, "The Lines to my Sister's Portrait," is said, to use a vulgar, though expressive phrase, to have SHUT UP Lord John Manners, who had achieved some small reputation as "one of the Young England poits." Thackeray parodied his style, and henceforth the voice of the minstrel was dumb in the land. Like Jerrold's "Caudle Lectures," of which many versions appeared at the London theaters, Jeames's adventures were dramatized. The "Prose Novelists" contain burlesque imitations of Bulwer, D'Israeli, Lever, James, Fennimore Cooper, and Mrs. Gore. The illustrations accompanying Thackeray's publications in "Punch," are by his own hand, as are also many other sketches scattered throughout the volumes. They may be generally distinguished by the insertion of a pair of spectacles in the corner. His articles, too, frequently bear the signature "SPEC." Not until the commencement of 1855 did Thackeray relinquish his connection with "Punch." An allusion to this, from his pen, contained in an essay on the genius of Leech, and published in the "Westminster Review," was commented upon very bitterly by Jerrold, in a notice of the article which appeared in "Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper," of which he is editor. During the last five years, other writers, among which may be enumerated the Mayhew brothers, Mr. Tom Taylor, Angus Reach, and Shirley Brooks, have found a field for their talents in "Punch.'Only Jerrold, a'Beckett, and the editor, Mark Lemon, remain of the original contributors. Its course has been a varied, but perfectly independent one, generally, however, following the lead of the almighty "Times," that glory and shame of English journalism, on political questions. In earlier days it was every way more democratic, and the continuous ridicule both of pen and pencil directed against Prince Albert, was said to have provoked so much resentment on the part of the Queen, that she proposed interference to prevent the artist Doyle supplying two frescos to the pavilion at Buckingham Palace. "Punch's" impartiality has been shown by attacks on the extremes and absurdities of all parties, and there can be little question that it has had considerable influence in producing political reform, and a large and liberal advocacy of all popular questions. In behalf of that great change of national policy, the repeal of the Corn Laws, "Punch" fought most vigorously, not, however, forgetting to bestow a few raps of his baton on the shoulders of the Premier whose wisdom or sense of expediency induced such sudden tergiversation as to bring it about. O'Connell's blatant and venal patriotism was held up to merited derision, which his less wary, but more honest followers in agitation, O'Brien, Meagher, and Mitchell, equally shared. Abolition (or at least modification) of the Game Laws, and of the penalty of death, found championship in "Punch," though the latter was summarily dropped upon a change in public opinion, perhaps mainly induced by one of Carlyle's "Latter Day" pamphlets. "Punch" has repeatedly experienced (and merited) the significant honor of being denied admission to the dominions of continental monarchs. Louis Philippe interdicted its presence in France, even (if we recollect aright) before the Spanish marriage had provoked its fiercest attacks--subsequently, however, withdrawing his royal veto. In Spain, Naples, the Papal Dominions, those of Austria, Russia, and Prussia, the hunch-backed jester has been often under ban as an unholy thing, or only tolerated in a mutilated form. Up to the commencement of the late war, strict measures of this kind were in operation upon the Russian frontier, but "Punch" now is freely accorded ingress in the Czar's dominions--probably as a means of keeping up the feeling of antagonism toward England. Its success has provoked innumerable rivals and imitators, from the days of "Judy," "Toby," "The Squib," "Joe Miller," "Great Gun," and "Puppet-Show," to those of "Diogenes" and" "Falstaff." None haveachieved permanent popularity, and future attempts would most likely be attended with similar failure, as "Punch" has a firm hold on the likings of the English people, and especially Londoners. It fairly amounts to one of their institutions. Like all journals of merit and independence, it has had its law troubles, more than one action for libel having been commenced against it. James Silk Buckingham, the traveler and author, took this course, in consequence of the publication of articles disparaging a club of his originating, known as the "British and Foreign Institute." A Jew clothes-man, named Hart, obtained a small sum as damages from "Punch." But Alfred Bunn, lessee of Drury Lane Theater, libretto-scribbler, and author of certain trashy theatrical books, though most vehemently "pitched into," resorted to other modes than legal redress. He produced a pamphlet of a shape and appearance closely resembling his tormentor, filled not only with quizzical, satirical, and rhyming articles directed against Lemon, a'Beckett, and Jerrold (characterizing them as Thick-head, Sleek-head, and Wrong-head), but with caricature cuts of each. Whether in direct consequence or not, it is certain that "the poet Bunn" was unmolested in future. Our notice would scarcely be complete without a few lines devoted to the "Punch" artists, and more especially John Leech. Doyle (the son of H. B., the well-known political caricaturist), whose exquisite burlesque medieval drawings illustrative of the "Manners and Customs of ye Englishe," will be remembered by all familiar with "Punch's" pages, relinquished his connection with the journal and the yearly salary of eight hundred pounds, in consequence of the Anti-papal onslaughts which followed the nomination of Cardinal Wiseman to the (Catholic) Archbishop of Westminster. The artist held the older faith, and was also a personal friend of "His Eminence." His place was then filled by John Tenniel, a historical painter, who had supplied a cartoon to the Palace of Westminster, and is still employed on "Punch," he, in conjunction with John Leech, and an occasional outsider, furnishing the entire illustrations. John Leech, himself, to whom the periodical unquestionably owes half its success, has been constant to "Punch" from an early day. He has brought caricature into the region of the fine arts, and become the very Dickens of the pencil in his portrayal of the humorous side of life. Before his advent, comic drawing was confined to very limited topics, OUTRE drawings and ugliness of features forming the fun--such as it was. Seymour's "Cockney Sportsmen," and Cruikshank's wider (yet not extensive) range of subjects, were then the best things extant. How stands the case now? Let "Punch's" twenty-nine volumes, with their ample store of pictorial mirth of Leech's creating, so kindly, so honest, so pleasant and graceful, answer. Contrast their blameless wit and humor with the equivoque and foul double entendre of French drawings, and think of the difference involuntarily suggested between the social atmospheres of Paris and London. Leech is a good-looking fellow, approaching the age of forty, and not unlike one of his own handsome "swells" in personal appearance. The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1855 contained his portrait, painted by Millais, the chief of the pre-Raphaelite artists, who is said to be his friend. As may be gathered from his many sporting sketches, Leech is fond of horses, and piques himself on "knowing the points" of a good animal. (We may mention, by-the-by, that Mr. "Briggs" of equestrian celebrity had his original on the Stock Exchange.) He in summer travels considerably, forwarding his sketches to the "Punch" office, generally penciling the accompanying words on the wood-block. In one of the past volumes, dating some eight or ten years back, he has introduced himself in a cut designated "our artist during the hot weather," wherein he appears with his coat off, reclining upon a sofa, and informing a pretty servant-girl who enters the room, that "he is busy." Quizzical Portraits of the writers of "Punch" have been introduced in its pages. In Jerrold's "Capsicum House" (vol. XII.), the author's portrait, burlesqued into the figure of "Punch," occurs more than once. And a double-page cut, entitled "Mr. Punch's Fancy Ball," in the early part of the same volume, comprises sketches of the then entire corps of contributors, artistic and literary. They are drawn as forming the orchestra, Lemon conducting, Jerrold belaboring a big drum, Thackeray playing on the flute, Leech the violin, and others extracting harmony from divers musical instruments. Again they appear at a later date, as a number of boys at play, in an illustration at the commencement of Vol. XXVII. "Punch's" office is at 85 Fleet-street. The engraving, printing, and stereotyping is performed at Lombard-street, Whitefriars, where its proprietors have extensive premises. REJECTED ADDRESSES, by James and Horace Smith, published in London, October, 1812. The most successful jeu d'esprit of modern times, having survived the occasion that suggested it for nearly half a century, and still being highly popular. It has run through twenty editions in England, and three in America. The opening of Drury-lane theater in 1802, after having been burned and rebuilt, and the offering of a prize of fifty pounds by the manager for the best opening address, were the circumstances which suggested the production of the "Rejected Addresses." The idea of the work was suddenly conceived, and it was executed in six weeks. In the preface to the eighteenth London edition the authors give an interesting statement of the difficulties they encountered in getting the volume published: "Urged forward by our hurry, and trusting to chance, two very bad coadjutors in any enterprise, we at length congratulated ourselves on having completed our task in time to have it printed and published by the opening of the theater. But, alas! our difficulties, so far from being surmounted, seemed only to be beginning. Strangers to the arcana of the bookseller's trade, and unacquainted with their almost invincible objection to single volumes of low price, especially when tendered by writers who have acquired no previous name, we little anticipated that they would refuse to publish our 'Rejected Addresses,' even although we asked nothing for the copyright. Such, however, proved to be the case. Our manuscript was perused and returned to us by several of the most eminent publishers. Well do we remember betaking ourselves to one of the craft in Bond-street, whom we found in a back parlor, with his gouty leg propped upon a cushion, in spite of which warning he diluted his luncheon with frequent glasses of Madeira. 'What have you already written?' was his first question, and interrogatory to which we had been subjected in almost every instance. 'Nothing by which we can be known.' 'Then I am afraid to undertake the publication.' We presumed timidly to suggest that every writer must have a beginning, and that to refuse to publish for him until he had acquired a name, was to imitate the sapient mother who cautioned her son against going into the water until he could swim. 'An old joke--a regular Joe!' exclaimed our companion, tossing off another bumper. 'Still older than Joe Miller,' was our reply; 'for, if we mistake not, it is the very first anecdote in the facetiae of Hierocles.' 'Ha, sirs!' resumed the bibliopolist, 'you are learned, are you? do, hoh!--Well, leave your manuscript with me; I will look it over to-night, and give you an answer to-morrow.' Punctual as the clock we presented ourselves at his door on the following morning when our papers were returned to us with the observation--'These trifles are really not deficient in smartness; they are well, vastly well for beginners; but they will never do--never. They would not pay for advertising, and without it I should not sell fifty copies.' "This was discouraging enough. If the most experienced publishers feared to be out of pocket by the work, it was manifest D FORTIORI, that its writers ran a risk of being still more heavy losers, should they undertake the publication on their own account. We had no objection to raise a laugh at the expense of others; but to do it at our own cost, uncertain as we were to what extent we might be involved, had never entered into our contemplation. In this dilemma, our 'Addresses,' now in every sense rejected, might probably have never seen the light, had not some good angel whispered us to betake ourselves to Mr. John Miller, a dramatic publisher, then residing in Bow-street, Covent Garden. No sooner had this gentleman looked over our manuscript, than he immediately offered to take upon himself all the risk of publication, and to give us half the profits, SHOULD THERE BE ANY; a liberal proposition, with which we gladly closed. So rapid and decided was its success, at which none were more unfeignedly astonished than its authors, that Mr. Miller advised us to collect some 'Imitations of Horace,' which had appeared anonymously in the 'Monthly Mirror,' offering to publish them upon the same terms. We did so accordingly; and as new editions of the 'Rejected Addresses' were called for in quick succession, we were shortly enabled to sell our half copyright in the two works to Mr. Miller, for one thousand pounds! We have entered into this unimportant detail, not to gratify any vanity of our own, but to encourage such literary beginners as may be placed in similar circumstances; as well as to impress upon publishers the propriety of giving more consideration to the possible merit of the works submitted to them, than to the mere magic of a name." The authors add, that not one of the poets whom they "audaciously burlesqued," took offense at the ludicrous imitation of their style. From "Sir Walter Scott," they observe, "we received favors and notice, both public and private, which it will be difficult to forget, because we had not the smallest claim upon his kindness. 'I certainly must have written this myself!' said that fine tempered man to one of the authors, pointing to the description of the Fire, 'although I forgot upon what occasion.' Lydia White, a literary lady, who was prone to feed the lions of the day, invited one of us to dinner; but, recollecting afterward that William Spencer formed one of the party, wrote to the latter to put him off; telling him that a man was to be at her table whom he 'would not like to meet.' 'Pray who is this whom I should not like to meet?' inquired the poet 'O!' answered the lady, 'one of those men who have made that shameful attack upon you!' 'The very man upon earth. I should like to know!' rejoined the lively and careless bard. The two individuals accordingly met, and have continued fast friends over since. Lord Byron, too, wrote thus to Mr. Murray from Italy: 'Tell him we forgive him, were he twenty times our satirist.' "It may not be amiss to notice, in this place, one criticism of a Leicester clergyman, which may be pronounced unique: 'I do not see why they should have been rejected,' observed the matter-of-fact annotator; 'I think some of them very good!' Upon the whole, few have been the instances, in the acrimonious history of literature, where a malicious pleasantry like the 'Rejected Addresses'--which the parties ridiculed might well consider more annoying than a direct satire--instead of being met by querulous bitterness or petulant retaliation, has procured for its authors the acquaintance, or conciliated the good-will, of those whom they had the most audaciously burlesqued." James Smith died in London on the 29th of December, 1836, in the sixty-fourth year of his age. His brother survived him many years. Both were admired and ever-welcome members of the best society of London. ROGERS, SAMUEL--The English poet and banker, recently deceased. Author of a "pretty poem," entitled, "The Pleasures of Memory." In his old age, he was noted for the bitter wit of his conversation. SAXE, JOHN G--Editor of the "Burlington Gazette," and "Wandering Minstrel." The witty poems of Mr. Saxe are somewhat in the manner of Hood. To be fully appreciated they must be heard, as they roll in sonorous volumes, from his own lips. His collected poems were published a few years ago by Ticknor & Fields, and have already reached a ninth edition. SCOTT, SIR WALTER--Born 1771; died, 1832. Sir Walter Scott, though he excelled all his cotemporaries in the humorous delineation of character, wrote little humorous verse. The two pieces published in this volume are so excellent that one is surprised to find no more of the same description in his writings. SHERIDAN, DR. THOMAS--Noted for being an intimate friend of Dean Swift, and the grandfather of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Born in 1684; died in 1738. He was an eccentric, witty, somewhat learned, Dublin schoolmaster. He published some sermons and a translation of Persius; acquired great celebrity as a teacher; but through the imprudence that distinguished the family, closed his life in poverty. We may infer from the few specimens of his facetious writings that have been preserved that he was one of the wittiest of a nation of wits. One or two of his epigrams are exquisitely fine. SHERIDAN, RICHARD BRINSLEY--Author of the "Rivals," and the "School for Scandal." Born at Dublin in 1751; died, 1816. Sheridan must have written more humorous poetry than we have been able to discover. It is probable that most of his epigrams and verified repartees have either not been preserved, or have escaped our search. Moore, in his "Life of Sheridan," gives specimens of his satirical verses, but only a few, and but one of striking excellence. SMITH, HORACE--See "Rejected Addresses." SMITH, JAMES--See "Rejected Addresses." SMITH, REV. SYDNEY--The jovial prebendary of St. Paul's, the wittiest Englishman that ever lived; died in 1845. Except the "Recipe for Salad," and an epigram, we have found no comic verses by him. He "leaked another way." SOUTHEY, ROBERT--The English poet and man of letters; born in 1774. Southey wrote a great deal of humorous verse, much of which is ingenious and fluent. He was amazingly dexterous in the use of words, and excelled all his cotemporaries, except Byron and Barham, in the art of rhyming. SWIFT, JONATHAN--Dean of St. Patrick's. Dublin. Born 1667; died, 1739. It were superfluous to speak of the career or abilities of this great but most unhappy man, who unquestionably ranks highest amid the brilliant names of that brilliant epoch. His works speak for him, and will to all time. Of his poetical writings it may be said that though only surpassed in wit and humor by his more universally known prose, they are infinitely NASTIER than any thing else in the English language. They have, however, the negative virtue of being nowise licentious or demoralizing--or at least no more so than is inseparable from the choice of obscene and repulsive subjects. Nearly all his unobjectionable comic verses may be found in this volume. THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE--The greatest of living satirists. Born at Calcutta of English parents, in 1811. Most of Mr. Thackeray's comic verses appeared originally in "Punch" They have recently been collected and published in a volume with other and more serious pieces. This collection contains nothing more mirth-provoking than the "Ballads of Pleaceman X," by Mr. Thackeray. WAKE, WILLIAM BASIL--An English writer, contributor to "Hone's Every Day Book." WALLER, EDMUND--Born in Warwickshire, England, in 1608. Poet, man of fortune, member of the Long Parliament, and traitor to the People's Cause. He was fined ten thousand pounds and banished, but Cromwell permitted his return, and the poet rewarded his clemency by a panegyric. WESLEY, REV. SAMUEL--A clergyman of the Church of England; father of the celebrated John Wesley; author of a volume of poems, entitled "Maggots;" born in 1662; died in 1785. WILLIAMS, SIR CHARLES HANBURY--A noted wit of George the Second's time; born in 1709; died, 1759. He was a friend of Walpole, sat in parliament for Monmouth, and rose to some distinction in the diplomatic service. An edition of his writings in three volumes was published in London in 1822. Time has robbed his satires of their point, by burying in oblivion the circumstances that gave rise to them. A single specimen of his writings is all that was deemed worthy of place in this volume. WILLIS, N. P.--The well-known American poet and journalist, Mr. Willis has written many humorous poems, but only a few have escaped the usual fate of newspaper verses. Born at Portland, Maine, 1807. WOLCOTT, JOHN (Peter Pindar), the most voluminous, and one of the best of the humorous poets who have written in the English language. He was born in Devonshire, England, and flourished in the reign of George III, whose peculiarities it was his delight to ridicule. No king was ever so mercilessly and so successfully lampooned by a poet as George III by Peter Pindar. Wolcott was by profession a Doctor of Medicine. In 1766, we find him accompanying his relative, Sir William Trelawney, to Jamaica, of which island Sir William had been appointed governor. While there, the rector of a valuable living died, and Dr. Wolcott conceived the idea of entering the church and applying for the vacant rectorship. To this end he began actually to perform the duties of the parish, reading prayers and preaching, and soon after returned to England to take orders, provideed with powerful recommendations. To his great disappointment, the Bishop of London refused him ordination, and the reader of Peter Pindar will not be at a loss to guess the reason of the refusal. Wolcott now established himself in Truro, and continued in the successful practice of medicine there for several years. At Truro, he met the youthful Opie. "It is much to his honor," says one who wrote in Wolcott's own lifetime, "that during his residence in Cornwall, he discovered, and encouraged, the fine talents of the late Opie, the artist; a man of such modesty, simplicity of manners, and ignorance of the world, that it is probable his genius would have lain obscure and useless, had he not met, in Dr. Wolcott, with a judicious friend, who knew how to appreciate his worth, and to recommend it tothe admiration of the world. The Doctor's taste in painting has already been noticed; and it may now be added, that perhaps few men have attained more correct notions on the subject, and the fluency with which he expatiates on the beauties or defects of the productions of the ancient or modern school, has been amply acknowledged by all who have shared in his company. The same taste appears to have directed him to some of the first subjects of his poetical satire, when he began to treat the public with the pieces which compose these volumes. The effect of these poems on the public mind will not be soon forgot. Here appeared a new poet and a new critic, a man of unquestionable taste and luxuriant fancy, combined with such powers of satire, as became tremendously formidable to all who had the misfortune to fall under his displeasure. It was acknowledged at the same time, that amid some personal acrimony, and some affectionate preferences, not far removed, perhaps, from downright prejudice, he in general grounded his praise and censure upon solid principles, and carried the public mind along with him, although sometimes at the heavy expense of individuals." Later in life Dr. Wolcott removed to London, where he died at an advanced age. His writings were, as may be supposed, eagerly read at the time of their publication, but since the poet's death, they have scarcely received the attention which their merits deserve. The present collection contains all of his best poems which are not of a character too local and cotemporary, or too coarse in expression, to be enjoyed by the modern reader. YRIARTE, DON TOMAS DE--An eminent Spanish poet, born at Teneriffe about 1760. He is known to English readers chiefly through his "Literary Fables," of which, specimens, translated by Mr. Devereaux, are given in this volume, Yriarte also wrote comedies and essays. 
7389	----	THE POETICAL WORKS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES [1893 three volume set] ADDITIONAL POEMS 1837-1848 THE PILGRIM'S VISION THE STEAMBOAT LEXINGTON ON LENDING A PUNCH BOWL A SONG FOR THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF HARVARD COLLEGE, THE ISLAND HUNTING-SONG DEPARTED DAYS THE ONLY DAUGHTER SONG WRITTEN FOR THE DINNER GIVEN TO CHARLES DICKENS, BY THE YOUNG MEN OF BOSTON, FEBRUARY 1, 1842 LINES RECITED AT THE BERKSHIRE JUBILEE NUX POSTCOENATICA VERSES FOR AFTER-DINNER A MODEST REQUEST, COMPLIED WITH AFTER THE DINNER AT PRESIDENT EVERETT'S INAUGURATION THE PARTING WORD A SONG OF OTHER DAYS SONG FOR A TEMPERANCE DINNER TO WHICH LADIES WERE INVITED (NEW YORK MERCANTILE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, NOVEMBER, 1842) A SENTIMENT A RHYMED LESSON (URANIA) AN AFTER-DINNER POEM (TERPSICHORE) THE PILGRIM'S VISION IN the hour of twilight shadows The Pilgrim sire looked out; He thought of the "bloudy Salvages" That lurked all round about, Of Wituwamet's pictured knife And Pecksuot's whooping shout; For the baby's limbs were feeble, Though his father's arms were stout. His home was a freezing cabin, Too bare for the hungry rat; Its roof was thatched with ragged grass, And bald enough of that; The hole that served for casement Was glazed with an ancient hat, And the ice was gently thawing From the log whereon he sat. Along the dreary landscape His eyes went to and fro, The trees all clad in icicles, The streams that did not flow; A sudden thought flashed o'er him,-- A dream of long ago,-- He smote his leathern jerkin, And murmured, "Even so!" "Come hither, God-be-Glorified, And sit upon my knee; Behold the dream unfolding, Whereof I spake to thee By the winter's hearth in Leyden And on the stormy sea. True is the dream's beginning,-- So may its ending be! "I saw in the naked forest Our scattered remnant cast, A screen of shivering branches Between them and the blast; The snow was falling round them, The dying fell as fast; I looked to see them perish, When lo, the vision passed. "Again mine eyes were opened;-- The feeble had waxed strong, The babes had grown to sturdy men, The remnant was a throng; By shadowed lake and winding stream, And all the shores along, The howling demons quaked to hear The Christian's godly song. "They slept, the village fathers, By river, lake, and shore, When far adown the steep of Time The vision rose once more I saw along the winter snow A spectral column pour, And high above their broken ranks A tattered flag they bore. "Their Leader rode before them, Of bearing calm and high, The light of Heaven's own kindling Throned in his awful eye; These were a Nation's champions Her dread appeal to try. God for the right! I faltered, And lo, the train passed by. "Once more;--the strife is ended, The solemn issue tried, The Lord of Hosts, his mighty arm Has helped our Israel's side; Gray stone and grassy hillock Tell where our martyrs died, But peaceful smiles the harvest, And stainless flows the tide. "A crash, as when some swollen cloud Cracks o'er the tangled trees With side to side, and spar to spar, Whose smoking decks are these? I know Saint George's blood-red cross, Thou Mistress of the Seas, But what is she whose streaming bars Roll out before the breeze? "Ah, well her iron ribs are knit, Whose thunders strive to quell The bellowing throats, the blazing lips, That pealed the Armada's knell! The mist was cleared,--a wreath of stars Rose o'er the crimsoned swell, And, wavering from its haughty peak, The cross of England fell! "O trembling Faith! though dark the morn, A heavenly torch is thine; While feebler races melt away, And paler orbs decline, Still shall the fiery pillar's ray Along thy pathway shine, To light the chosen tribe that sought This Western Palestine. "I see the living tide roll on; It crowns with flaming towers The icy capes of Labrador, The Spaniard's 'land of flowers'! It streams beyond the splintered ridge That parts the northern showers; From eastern rock to sunset wave The Continent is ours!" He ceased, the grim old soldier-saint, Then softly bent to cheer The Pilgrim-child, whose wasting face Was meekly turned to hear; And drew his toil-worn sleeve across To brush the manly tear From cheeks that never changed in woe, And never blanched in fear. The weary Pilgrim slumbers, His resting-place unknown; His hands were crossed, his lips were closed, The dust was o'er him strown; The drifting soil, the mouldering leaf, Along the sod were blown; His mound has melted into earth, His memory lives alone. So let it live unfading, The memory of the dead, Long as the pale anemone Springs where their tears were shed, Or, raining in the summer's wind In flakes of burning red, The wild rose sprinkles with its leaves The turf where once they bled! Yea, when the frowning bulwarks That guard this holy strand Have sunk beneath the trampling surge In beds of sparkling sand, While in the waste of ocean One hoary rock shall stand, Be this its latest legend,-- HERE WAS THE PILGRIM'S LAND! THE STEAMBOAT SEE how yon flaming herald treads The ridged and rolling waves, As, crashing o'er their crested heads, She bows her surly slaves! With foam before and fire behind, She rends the clinging sea, That flies before the roaring wind, Beneath her hissing lee. The morning spray, like sea-born flowers, With heaped and glistening bells, Falls round her fast, in ringing showers, With every wave that swells; And, burning o'er the midnight deep, In lurid fringes thrown, The living gems of ocean sweep Along her flashing zone. With clashing wheel and lifting keel, And smoking torch on high, When winds are loud and billows reel, She thunders foaming by; When seas are silent and serene, With even beam she glides, The sunshine glimmering through the green That skirts her gleaming sides. Now, like a wild, nymph, far apart She veils her shadowy form, The beating of her restless heart Still sounding through the storm; Now answers, like a courtly dame, The reddening surges o'er, With flying scarf of spangled flame, The Pharos of the shore. To-night yon pilot shall not sleep, Who trims his narrowed sail; To-night yon frigate scarce shall keep Her broad breast to the gale; And many a foresail, scooped and strained, Shall break from yard and stay, Before this smoky wreath has stained The rising mist of day. Hark! hark! I hear yon whistling shroud, I see yon quivering mast; The black throat of the hunted cloud Is panting forth the blast! An hour, and, whirled like winnowing chaff, The giant surge shall fling His tresses o'er yon pennon staff, White as the sea-bird's wing. Yet rest, ye wanderers of the deep; Nor wind nor wave shall tire Those fleshless arms, whose pulses leap With floods of living fire; Sleep on, and, when the morning light Streams o'er the shining bay, Oh think of those for whom the night Shall never wake in day. LEXINGTON SLOWLY the mist o'er the meadow was creeping, Bright on the dewy buds glistened the sun, When from his couch, while his children were sleeping, Rose the bold rebel and shouldered his gun. Waving her golden veil Over the silent dale, Blithe looked the morning on cottage and spire; Hushed was his parting sigh, While from his noble eye Flashed the last sparkle of liberty's fire. On the smooth green where the fresh leaf is springing Calmly the first-born of glory have met; Hark! the death-volley around them is ringing! Look! with their life-blood the young grass is wet Faint is the feeble breath, Murmuring low in death, "Tell to our sons how their fathers have died;" Nerveless the iron hand, Raised for its native land, Lies by the weapon that gleams at its side. Over the hillsides the wild knell is tolling, From their far hamlets the yeomanry come; As through the storm-clouds the thunder-burst rolling, Circles the beat of the mustering drum. Fast on the soldier's path Darken the waves of wrath,-- Long have they gathered and loud shall they fall; Red glares the musket's flash, Sharp rings the rifle's crash, Blazing and clanging from thicket and wall. Gayly the plume of the horseman was dancing, Never to shadow his cold brow again; Proudly at morning the war-steed was prancing, Reeking and panting he droops on the rein; Pale is the lip of scorn, Voiceless the trumpet horn, Torn is the silken-fringed red cross on high; Many a belted breast Low on the turf shall rest Ere the dark hunters the herd have passed by. Snow-girdled crags where the hoarse wind is raving, Rocks where the weary floods murmur and wail, Wilds where the fern by the furrow is waving, Reeled with the echoes that rode on the gale; Far as the tempest thrills Over the darkened hills, Far as the sunshine streams over the plain, Roused by the tyrant band, Woke all the mighty land, Girded for battle, from mountain to main. Green be the graves where her martyrs are lying! Shroudless and tombless they sunk to their rest, While o'er their ashes the starry fold flying Wraps the proud eagle they roused from his nest. Borne on her Northern pine, Long o'er the foaming brine Spread her broad banner to storm and to sun; Heaven keep her ever free, Wide as o'er land and sea Floats the fair emblem her heroes have won. ON LENDING A PUNCH-BOWL This "punch-bowl" was, according to old family tradition, a caudle-cup. It is a massive piece of silver, its cherubs and other ornaments of coarse repousse work, and has two handles like a loving-cup, by which it was held, or passed from guest to guest. THIS ancient silver bowl of mine, it tells of good old times, Of joyous days and jolly nights, and merry Christmas times; They were a free and jovial race, but honest, brave, and true, Who dipped their ladle in the punch when this old bowl was new. A Spanish galleon brought the bar,--so runs the ancient tale; 'T was hammered by an Antwerp smith, whose arm was like a flail; And now and then between the strokes, for fear his strength should fail, He wiped his brow and quaffed a cup of good old Flemish ale. 'T was purchased by an English squire to please his loving dame, Who saw the cherubs, and conceived a longing for the same; And oft as on the ancient stock another twig was found, 'T was filled with candle spiced and hot, and handed smoking round. But, changing hands, it reached at length a Puritan divine, Who used to follow Timothy, and take a little wine, But hated punch and prelacy; and so it was, perhaps, He went to Leyden, where he found conventicles and schnapps. And then, of course, you know what's next: it left the Dutchman's shore With those that in the Mayflower came,--a hundred souls and more,-- Along with all the furniture, to fill their new abodes,-- To judge by what is still on hand, at least a hundred loads. 'T was on a dreary winter's eve, the night was closing, dim, When brave Miles Standish took the bowl, and filled it to the brim; The little Captain stood and stirred the posset with his sword, And all his sturdy men-at-arms were ranged about the board. He poured the fiery Hollands in,--the man that never feared,-- He took a long and solemn draught, and wiped his yellow beard; And one by one the musketeers--the men that fought and prayed-- All drank as 't were their mother's milk, and not a man afraid. That night, affrighted from his nest, the screaming eagle flew, He heard the Pequot's ringing whoop, the soldier's wild halloo; And there the sachem learned the rule he taught to kith and kin, Run from the white man when you find he smells of "Hollands gin!" A hundred years, and fifty more, had spread their leaves and snows, A thousand rubs had flattened down each little cherub's nose, When once again the bowl was filled, but not in mirth or joy,-- 'T was mingled by a mother's hand to cheer her parting boy. Drink, John, she said, 't will do you good,--poor child, you'll never bear This working in the dismal trench, out in the midnight air; And if--God bless me!--you were hurt, 't would keep away the chill. So John did drink,--and well he wrought that night at Bunker's Hill! I tell you, there was generous warmth in good old English cheer; I tell you, 't was a pleasant thought to bring its symbol here. 'T is but the fool that loves excess; hast thou a drunken soul? Thy bane is in thy shallow skull, not in my silver bowl! I love the memory of the past,--its pressed yet fragrant flowers,-- The moss that clothes its broken walls, the ivy on its towers; Nay, this poor bauble it bequeathed,--my eyes grow moist and dim, To think of all the vanished joys that danced around its brim. Then fill a fair and honest cup, and bear it straight to me; The goblet hallows all it holds, whate'er the liquid be; And may the cherubs on its face protect me from the sin That dooms one to those dreadful words,--"My dear, where HAVE you been?" A SONG FOR THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF HARVARD COLLEGE, 1836 This song, which I had the temerity to sing myself (_felix auda-cia_, Mr. Franklin Dexter had the goodness to call it), was sent in a little too late to be printed with the official account of the celebration. It was written at the suggestion of Dr. Jacob Bigelow, who thought the popular tune "The Poacher's Song" would be a good model for a lively ballad or ditty. He himself wrote the admirable Latin song to be found in the record of the meeting. WHEN the Puritans came over Our hills and swamps to clear, The woods were full of catamounts, And Indians red as deer, With tomahawks and scalping-knives, That make folks' heads look queer; Oh the ship from England used to bring A hundred wigs a year! The crows came cawing through the air To pluck the Pilgrims' corn, The bears came snuffing round the door Whene'er a babe was born, The rattlesnakes were bigger round Than the but of the old rams horn The deacon blew at meeting time On every "Sabbath" morn. But soon they knocked the wigwams down, And pine-tree trunk and limb Began to sprout among the leaves In shape of steeples slim; And out the little wharves were stretched Along the ocean's rim, And up the little school-house shot To keep the boys in trim. And when at length the College rose, The sachem cocked his eye At every tutor's meagre ribs Whose coat-tails whistled by But when the Greek and Hebrew words Came tumbling from his jaws, The copper-colored children all Ran screaming to the squaws. And who was on the Catalogue When college was begun? Two nephews of the President, And the Professor's son; (They turned a little Indian by, As brown as any bun;) Lord! how the seniors knocked about The freshman class of one! They had not then the dainty things That commons now afford, But succotash and hominy Were smoking on the board; They did not rattle round in gigs, Or dash in long-tailed blues, But always on Commencement days The tutors blacked their shoes. God bless the ancient Puritans! Their lot was hard enough; But honest hearts make iron arms, And tender maids are tough; So love and faith have formed and fed Our true-born Yankee stuff, And keep the kernel in the shell The British found so rough! THE ISLAND HUNTING-SONG The island referred to is a domain of princely proportions, which has long been the seat of a generous hospitality. Naushon is its old Indian name. William Swain, Esq., commonly known as "the Governor," was the proprietor of it at the time when this song was written. Mr. John M. Forbes is his worthy successor in territorial rights and as a hospitable entertainer. The Island Book has been the recipient of many poems from visitors and friends of the owners of the old mansion. No more the summer floweret charms, The leaves will soon be sere, And Autumn folds his jewelled arms Around the dying year; So, ere the waning seasons claim Our leafless groves awhile, With golden wine and glowing flame We 'll crown our lonely isle. Once more the merry voices sound Within the antlered hall, And long and loud the baying hounds Return the hunter's call; And through the woods, and o'er the hill, And far along the bay, The driver's horn is sounding shrill,-- Up, sportsmen, and away! No bars of steel or walls of stone Our little empire bound, But, circling with his azure zone, The sea runs foaming round; The whitening wave, the purpled skies, The blue and lifted shore, Braid with their dim and blending dyes Our wide horizon o'er. And who will leave the grave debate That shakes the smoky town, To rule amid our island-state, And wear our oak-leaf crown? And who will be awhile content To hunt our woodland game, And leave the vulgar pack that scent The reeking track of fame? Ah, who that shares in toils like these Will sigh not to prolong Our days beneath the broad-leaved trees, Our nights of mirth and song? Then leave the dust of noisy streets, Ye outlaws of the wood, And follow through his green retreats Your noble Robin Hood. DEPARTED DAYS YES, dear departed, cherished days, Could Memory's hand restore Your morning light, your evening rays, From Time's gray urn once more, Then might this restless heart be still, This straining eye might close, And Hope her fainting pinions fold, While the fair phantoms rose. But, like a child in ocean's arms, We strive against the stream, Each moment farther from the shore Where life's young fountains gleam; Each moment fainter wave the fields, And wider rolls the sea; The mist grows dark,--the sun goes down,-- Day breaks,--and where are we? THE ONLY DAUGHTER ILLUSTRATION OF A PICTURE THEY bid me strike the idle strings, As if my summer days Had shaken sunbeams from their wings To warm my autumn lays; They bring to me their painted urn, As if it were not time To lift my gauntlet and to spurn The lists of boyish rhyme; And were it not that I have still Some weakness in my heart That clings around my stronger will And pleads for gentler art, Perchance I had not turned away The thoughts grown tame with toil, To cheat this lone and pallid ray, That wastes the midnight oil. Alas! with every year I feel Some roses leave my brow; Too young for wisdom's tardy seal, Too old for garlands now. Yet, while the dewy breath of spring Steals o'er the tingling air, And spreads and fans each emerald wing The forest soon shall wear. How bright the opening year would seem, Had I one look like thine To meet me when the morning beam Unseals these lids of mine! Too long I bear this lonely lot, That bids my heart run wild To press the lips that love me not, To clasp the stranger's child. How oft beyond the dashing seas, Amidst those royal bowers, Where danced the lilacs in the breeze, And swung the chestnut-flowers, I wandered like a wearied slave Whose morning task is done, To watch the little hands that gave Their whiteness to the sun; To revel in the bright young eyes, Whose lustre sparkled through The sable fringe of Southern skies Or gleamed in Saxon blue! How oft I heard another's name Called in some truant's tone; Sweet accents! which I longed to claim, To learn and lisp my own! Too soon the gentle hands, that pressed The ringlets of the child, Are folded on the faithful breast Where first he breathed and smiled; Too oft the clinging arms untwine, The melting lips forget, And darkness veils the bridal shrine Where wreaths and torches met; If Heaven but leaves a single thread Of Hope's dissolving chain, Even when her parting plumes are spread, It bids them fold again; The cradle rocks beside the tomb; The cheek now changed and chill Smiles on us in the morning bloom Of one that loves us still. Sweet image! I have done thee wrong To claim this destined lay; The leaf that asked an idle song Must bear my tears away. Yet, in thy memory shouldst thou keep This else forgotten strain, Till years have taught thine eyes to weep, And flattery's voice is vain; Oh then, thou fledgling of the nest, Like the long-wandering dove, Thy weary heart may faint for rest, As mine, on changeless love; And while these sculptured lines retrace The hours now dancing by, This vision of thy girlish grace May cost thee, too, a sigh. SONG WRITTEN FOR THE DINNER GIVEN TO CHARLES DICKENS BY THE YOUNG MEN OF BOSTON, FEBRUARY 1, 1842 THE stars their early vigils keep, The silent hours are near, When drooping eyes forget to weep,-- Yet still we linger here; And what--the passing churl may ask-- Can claim such wondrous power, That Toil forgets his wonted task, And Love his promised hour? The Irish harp no longer thrills, Or breathes a fainter tone; The clarion blast from Scotland's hills, Alas! no more is blown; And Passion's burning lip bewails Her Harold's wasted fire, Still lingering o'er the dust that veils The Lord of England's lyre. But grieve not o'er its broken strings, Nor think its soul hath died, While yet the lark at heaven's gate sings, As once o'er Avon's side; While gentle summer sheds her bloom, And dewy blossoms wave, Alike o'er Juliet's storied tomb And Nelly's nameless grave. Thou glorious island of the sea! Though wide the wasting flood That parts our distant land from thee, We claim thy generous blood; Nor o'er thy far horizon springs One hallowed star of fame, But kindles, like an angel's wings, Our western skies in flame! LINES RECITED AT THE BERKSHIRE JUBILEE, PITTSFIELD, MASS., AUGUST 23, 1844 COME back to your mother, ye children, for shame, Who have wandered like truants for riches or fame! With a smile on her face, and a sprig in her cap, She calls you to feast from her bountiful lap. Come out from your alleys, your courts, and your lanes, And breathe, like young eagles, the air of our plains; Take a whiff from our fields, and your excellent wives Will declare it 's all nonsense insuring your lives. Come you of the law, who can talk, if you please, Till the man in the moon will allow it's a cheese, And leave "the old lady, that never tells lies," To sleep with her handkerchief over her eyes. Ye healers of men, for a moment decline Your feats in the rhubarb and ipecac line; While you shut up your turnpike, your neighbors can go The old roundabout road to the regions below. You clerk, on whose ears are a couple of pens, And whose head is an ant-hill of units and tens, Though Plato denies you, we welcome you still As a featherless biped, in spite of your quill. Poor drudge of the city! how happy he feels, With the burs on his legs and the grass at his heels No dodger behind, his bandannas to share, No constable grumbling, "You must n't walk there!" In yonder green meadow, to memory dear, He slaps a mosquito and brushes a tear; The dew-drops hang round him on blossoms and shoots, He breathes but one sigh for his youth and his boots. There stands the old school-house, hard by the old church; That tree at its side had the flavor of birch; Oh, sweet were the days of his juvenile tricks, Though the prairie of youth had so many "big licks." By the side of yon river he weeps and he slumps, The boots fill with water, as if they were pumps, Till, sated with rapture, he steals to his bed, With a glow in his heart and a cold in his head. 'T is past,--he is dreaming,--I see him again; The ledger returns as by legerdemain; His neckcloth is damp with an easterly flaw, And he holds in his fingers an omnibus straw. He dreams the chill gust is a blossomy gale, That the straw is a rose from his dear native vale; And murmurs, unconscious of space and of time, "A 1. Extra super. Ah, is n't it PRIME!" Oh, what are the prizes we perish to win To the first little "shiner" we caught with a pin! No soil upon earth is so dear to our eyes As the soil we first stirred in terrestrial pies! Then come from all parties and parts to our feast; Though not at the "Astor," we'll give you at least A bite at an apple, a seat on the grass, And the best of old--water--at nothing a glass. NUX POSTCOENATICA I WAS sitting with my microscope, upon my parlor rug, With a very heavy quarto and a very lively bug; The true bug had been organized with only two antennae, But the humbug in the copperplate would have them twice as many. And I thought, like Dr. Faustus, of the emptiness of art, How we take a fragment for the whole, and call the whole a part, When I heard a heavy footstep that was loud enough for two, And a man of forty entered, exclaiming, "How d' ye do?" He was not a ghost, my visitor, but solid flesh and bone; He wore a Palo Alto hat, his weight was twenty stone; (It's odd how hats expand their brims as riper years invade, As if when life had reached its noon it wanted them for shade!) I lost my focus,--dropped my book,--the bug, who was a flea, At once exploded, and commenced experiments on me. They have a certain heartiness that frequently appalls,-- Those mediaeval gentlemen in semilunar smalls! "My boy," he said, (colloquial ways,--the vast, broad-hatted man,) "Come dine with us on Thursday next,--you must, you know you can; We're going to have a roaring time, with lots of fun and noise, Distinguished guests, et cetera, the JUDGE, and all the boys." Not so,--I said,--my temporal bones are showing pretty clear. It 's time to stop,--just look and see that hair above this ear; My golden days are more than spent,--and, what is very strange, If these are real silver hairs, I'm getting lots of change. Besides--my prospects--don't you know that people won't employ A man that wrongs his manliness by laughing like a boy? And suspect the azure blossom that unfolds upon a shoot, As if wisdom's old potato could not flourish at its root? It's a very fine reflection, when you 're etching out a smile On a copperplate of faces that would stretch at least a mile, That, what with sneers from enemies and cheapening shrugs of friends, It will cost you all the earnings that a month of labor lends! It's a vastly pleasing prospect, when you're screwing out a laugh, That your very next year's income is diminished by a half, And a little boy trips barefoot that Pegasus may go, And the baby's milk is watered that your Helicon may flow! No;--the joke has been a good one,--but I'm getting fond of quiet, And I don't like deviations from my customary diet; So I think I will not go with you to hear the toasts and speeches, But stick to old Montgomery Place, and have some pig and peaches. The fat man answered: Shut your mouth, and hear the genuine creed; The true essentials of a feast are only fun and feed; The force that wheels the planets round delights in spinning tops, And that young earthquake t' other day was great at shaking props. I tell you what, philosopher, if all the longest heads That ever knocked their sinciputs in stretching on their beds Were round one great mahogany, I'd beat those fine old folks With twenty dishes, twenty fools, and twenty clever jokes! Why, if Columbus should be there, the company would beg He'd show that little trick of his of balancing the egg! Milton to Stilton would give in, and Solomon to Salmon, And Roger Bacon be a bore, and Francis Bacon gammon! And as for all the "patronage" of all the clowns and boors That squint their little narrow eyes at any freak of yours, Do leave them to your prosier friends,--such fellows ought to die When rhubarb is so very scarce and ipecac so high! And so I come,--like Lochinvar, to tread a single measure,-- To purchase with a loaf of bread a sugar-plum of pleasure, To enter for the cup of glass that's run for after dinner, Which yields a single sparkling draught, then breaks and cuts the winner. Ah, that's the way delusion comes,--a glass of old Madeira, A pair of visual diaphragms revolved by Jane or Sarah, And down go vows and promises without the slightest question If eating words won't compromise the organs of digestion! And yet, among my native shades, beside my nursing mother, Where every stranger seems a friend, and every friend a brother, I feel the old convivial glow (unaided) o'er me stealing,-- The warm, champagny, the old-particular brandy-punchy feeling. We're all alike;--Vesuvius flings the scoriae from his fountain, But down they come in volleying rain back to the burning mountain; We leave, like those volcanic stones, our precious Alma Mater, But will keep dropping in again to see the dear old crater. VERSES FOR AFTER-DINNER PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY, 1844 I WAS thinking last night, as I sat in the cars, With the charmingest prospect of cinders and stars, Next Thursday is--bless me!--how hard it will be, If that cannibal president calls upon me! There is nothing on earth that he will not devour, From a tutor in seed to a freshman in flower; No sage is too gray, and no youth is too green, And you can't be too plump, though you're never too lean. While others enlarge on the boiled and the roast, He serves a raw clergyman up with a toast, Or catches some doctor, quite tender and young, And basely insists on a bit of his tongue. Poor victim, prepared for his classical spit, With a stuffing of praise and a basting of wit, You may twitch at your collar and wrinkle your brow, But you're up on your legs, and you're in for it now. Oh think of your friends,--they are waiting to hear Those jokes that are thought so remarkably queer; And all the Jack Horners of metrical buns Are prying and fingering to pick out the puns. Those thoughts which, like chickens, will always thrive best When reared by the heat of the natural nest, Will perish if hatched from their embryo dream In the mist and the glow of convivial steam. Oh pardon me, then, if I meekly retire, With a very small flash of ethereal fire; No rubbing will kindle your Lucifer match, If the fiz does not follow the primitive scratch. Dear friends, who are listening so sweetly the while, With your lips double--reefed in a snug little smile, I leave you two fables, both drawn from the deep,-- The shells you can drop, but the pearls you may keep. . . . . . . . . . . . The fish called the FLOUNDER, perhaps you may know, Has one side for use and another for show; One side for the public, a delicate brown, And one that is white, which he always keeps down. A very young flounder, the flattest of flats, (And they 're none of them thicker than opera hats,) Was speaking more freely than charity taught Of a friend and relation that just had been caught. "My! what an exposure! just see what a sight! I blush for my race,--he is showing his white Such spinning and wriggling,--why, what does he wish? How painfully small to respectable fish!" Then said an Old SCULPIN,--"My freedom excuse, You're playing the cobbler with holes in your shoes; Your brown side is up,--but just wait till you're tried And you'll find that all flounders are white on one side." . . . . . . . . . . There's a slice near the PICKEREL'S pectoral fins, Where the thorax leaves off and the venter begins, Which his brother, survivor of fish-hooks and lines, Though fond of his family, never declines. He loves his relations; he feels they'll be missed; But that one little tidbit he cannot resist; So your bait may be swallowed, no matter how fast, For you catch your next fish with a piece of the last. And thus, O survivor, whose merciless fate Is to take the next hook with the president's bait, You are lost while you snatch from the end of his line The morsel he rent from this bosom of mine! A MODEST REQUEST COMPLIED WITH AFTER THE DINNER AT PRESIDENT EVERETT'S INAUGURATION SCENE,--a back parlor in a certain square, Or court, or lane,--in short, no matter where; Time,--early morning, dear to simple souls Who love its sunshine and its fresh-baked rolls; Persons,--take pity on this telltale blush, That, like the AEthiop, whispers, "Hush, oh hush!" Delightful scene! where smiling comfort broods, Nor business frets, nor anxious care intrudes; _O si sic omnia_ I were it ever so! But what is stable in this world below? _Medio e fonte_,--Virtue has her faults,-- The clearest fountains taste of Epsom salts; We snatch the cup and lift to drain it dry,-- Its central dimple holds a drowning fly Strong is the pine by Maine's ambrosial streams, But stronger augers pierce its thickest beams; No iron gate, no spiked and panelled door, Can keep out death, the postman, or the bore. Oh for a world where peace and silence reign, And blunted dulness verebrates in vain! --The door-bell jingles,--enter Richard Fox, And takes this letter from his leathern box. "Dear Sir,-- In writing on a former day, One little matter I forgot to say; I now inform you in a single line, On Thursday next our purpose is to dine. The act of feeding, as you understand, Is but a fraction of the work in hand; Its nobler half is that ethereal meat The papers call 'the intellectual treat;' Songs, speeches, toasts, around the festive board Drowned in the juice the College pumps afford; For only water flanks our knives and forks, So, sink or float, we swim without the corks. Yours is the art, by native genius taught, To clothe in eloquence the naked thought; Yours is the skill its music to prolong Through the sweet effluence of mellifluous song; Yours the quaint trick to cram the pithy line That cracks so crisply over bubbling wine; And since success your various gifts attends, We--that is, I and all your numerous friends-- Expect from you--your single self a host-- A speech, a song, excuse me, and a toast; Nay, not to haggle on so small a claim, A few of each, or several of the same. (Signed), Yours, most truly, ________" No! my sight must fail,-- If that ain't Judas on the largest scale! Well, this is modest;--nothing else than that? My coat? my boots? my pantaloons? my hat? My stick? my gloves? as well as all my wits, Learning and linen,--everything that fits! Jack, said my lady, is it grog you'll try, Or punch, or toddy, if perhaps you're dry? Ah, said the sailor, though I can't refuse, You know, my lady, 't ain't for me to choose; I'll take the grog to finish off my lunch, And drink the toddy while you mix the punch. . . . . . . . . THE SPEECH. (The speaker, rising to be seen, Looks very red, because so very green.) I rise--I rise--with unaffected fear, (Louder!--speak louder!--who the deuce can hear?) I rise--I said--with undisguised dismay --Such are my feelings as I rise, I say Quite unprepared to face this learned throng, Already gorged with eloquence and song; Around my view are ranged on either hand The genius, wisdom, virtue of the land; "Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed" Close at my elbow stir their lemonade; Would you like Homer learn to write and speak, That bench is groaning with its weight of Greek; Behold the naturalist who in his teens Found six new species in a dish of greens; And lo, the master in a statelier walk, Whose annual ciphering takes a ton of chalk; And there the linguist, who by common roots Thro' all their nurseries tracks old Noah's shoots,-- How Shem's proud children reared the Assyrian piles, While Ham's were scattered through the Sandwich Isles! --Fired at the thought of all the present shows, My kindling fancy down the future flows: I see the glory of the coming days O'er Time's horizon shoot its streaming rays; Near and more near the radiant morning draws In living lustre (rapturous applause); From east to west the blazing heralds run, Loosed from the chariot of the ascending sun, Through the long vista of uncounted years In cloudless splendor (three tremendous cheers). My eye prophetic, as the depths unfold, Sees a new advent of the age of gold; While o'er the scene new generations press, New heroes rise the coming time to bless,-- Not such as Homer's, who, we read in Pope, Dined without forks and never heard of soap,-- Not such as May to Marlborough Chapel brings, Lean, hungry, savage, anti-everythings, Copies of Luther in the pasteboard style,-- But genuine articles, the true Carlyle; While far on high the blazing orb shall shed Its central light on Harvard's holy head, And learning's ensigns ever float unfurled Here in the focus of the new-born world The speaker stops, and, trampling down the pause, Roars through the hall the thunder of applause, One stormy gust of long-suspended Ahs! One whirlwind chaos of insane hurrahs! . . . . . . . . THE SONG. But this demands a briefer line,-- A shorter muse, and not the old long Nine; Long metre answers for a common song, Though common metre does not answer long. She came beneath the forest dome To seek its peaceful shade, An exile from her ancient home, A poor, forsaken maid; No banner, flaunting high above, No blazoned cross, she bore; One holy book of light and love Was all her worldly store. The dark brown shadows passed away, And wider spread the green, And where the savage used to stray The rising mart was seen; So, when the laden winds had brought Their showers of golden rain, Her lap some precious gleanings caught, Like Ruth's amid the grain. But wrath soon gathered uncontrolled Among the baser churls, To see her ankles red with gold, Her forehead white with pearls. "Who gave to thee the glittering bands That lace thine azure veins? Who bade thee lift those snow-white hands We bound in gilded chains?" "These are the gems my children gave," The stately dame replied; "The wise, the gentle, and the brave, I nurtured at my side. If envy still your bosom stings, Take back their rims of gold; My sons will melt their wedding-rings, And give a hundred-fold!" . . . . . . . . THE TOAST. Oh tell me, ye who thoughtless ask Exhausted nature for a threefold task, In wit or pathos if one share remains, A safe investment for an ounce of brains! Hard is the job to launch the desperate pun, A pun-job dangerous as the Indian one. Turned by the current of some stronger wit Back from the object that you mean to hit, Like the strange missile which the Australian throws, Your verbal boomerang slaps you on the nose. One vague inflection spoils the whole with doubt, One trivial letter ruins all, left out; A knot can choke a felon into clay, A not will save him, spelt without the k; The smallest word has some unguarded spot, And danger lurks in i without a dot. Thus great Achilles, who had shown his zeal In healing wounds, died of a wounded heel; Unhappy chief, who, when in childhood doused, Had saved his bacon had his feet been soused Accursed heel that killed a hero stout Oh, had your mother known that you were out, Death had not entered at the trifling part That still defies the small chirurgeon's art With corns and bunions,--not the glorious John, Who wrote the book we all have pondered on, But other bunions, bound in fleecy hose, To "Pilgrim's Progress" unrelenting foes! . . . . . . . . A HEALTH, unmingled with the reveller's wine, To him whose title is indeed divine; Truth's sleepless watchman on her midnight tower, Whose lamp burns brightest when the tempests lower. Oh, who can tell with what a leaden flight Drag the long watches of his weary night, While at his feet the hoarse and blinding gale Strews the torn wreck and bursts the fragile sail, When stars have faded, when the wave is dark, When rocks and sands embrace the foundering bark! But still he pleads with unavailing cry, Behold the light, O wanderer, look or die! A health, fair Themis! Would the enchanted vine Wreathed its green tendrils round this cup of thine! If Learning's radiance fill thy modern court, Its glorious sunshine streams through Blackstone's port. Lawyers are thirsty, and their clients too, Witness at least, if memory serve me true, Those old tribunals, famed for dusty suits, Where men sought justice ere they brushed their boots; And what can match, to solve a learned doubt, The warmth within that comes from "cold with-out"? Health to the art whose glory is to give The crowning boon that makes it life to live. Ask not her home;--the rock where nature flings Her arctic lichen, last of living things; The gardens, fragrant with the orient's balm, From the low jasmine to the star-like palm, Hail her as mistress o'er the distant waves, And yield their tribute to her wandering slaves. Wherever, moistening the ungrateful soil, The tear of suffering tracks the path of toil, There, in the anguish of his fevered hours, Her gracious finger points to healing flowers; Where the lost felon steals away to die, Her soft hand waves before his closing eye; Where hunted misery finds his darkest lair, The midnight taper shows her kneeling there! VIRTUE,--the guide that men and nations own; And LAW,--the bulwark that protects her throne; And HEALTH,--to all its happiest charm that lends; These and their servants, man's untiring friends Pour the bright lymph that Heaven itself lets fall, In one fair bumper let us toast them all! THE PARTING WORD I MUST leave thee, lady sweet Months shall waste before we meet; Winds are fair and sails are spread, Anchors leave their ocean bed; Ere this shining day grow dark, Skies shall gird my shoreless bark. Through thy tears, O lady mine, Read thy lover's parting line. When the first sad sun shall set, Thou shalt tear thy locks of jet; When the morning star shall rise, Thou shalt wake with weeping eyes; When the second sun goes down, Thou more tranquil shalt be grown, Taught too well that wild despair Dims thine eyes and spoils thy hair. All the first unquiet week Thou shalt wear a smileless cheek; In the first month's second half Thou shalt once attempt to laugh; Then in Pickwick thou shalt dip, Slightly puckering round the lip, Till at last, in sorrow's spite, Samuel makes thee laugh outright. While the first seven mornings last, Round thy chamber bolted fast Many a youth shall fume and pout, "Hang the girl, she's always out!" While the second week goes round, Vainly shall they ring and pound; When the third week shall begin, "Martha, let the creature in." Now once more the flattering throng Round thee flock with smile and song, But thy lips, unweaned as yet, Lisp, "Oh, how can I forget!" Men and devils both contrive Traps for catching girls alive; Eve was duped, and Helen kissed,-- How, oh how can you resist? First be careful of your fan, Trust it not to youth or man; Love has filled a pirate's sail Often with its perfumed gale. Mind your kerchief most of all, Fingers touch when kerchiefs fall; Shorter ell than mercers clip Is the space from hand to lip. Trust not such as talk in tropes, Full of pistols, daggers, ropes; All the hemp that Russia bears Scarce would answer lovers' prayers; Never thread was spun so fine, Never spider stretched the line, Would not hold the lovers true That would really swing for you. Fiercely some shall storm and swear, Beating breasts in black despair; Others murmur with a sigh, You must melt, or they will die: Painted words on empty lies, Grubs with wings like butterflies; Let them die, and welcome, too; Pray what better could they do? Fare thee well: if years efface From thy heart love's burning trace, Keep, oh keep that hallowed seat From the tread of vulgar feet; If the blue lips of the sea Wait with icy kiss for me, Let not thine forget the vow, Sealed how often, Love, as now. A SONG OF OTHER DAYS As o'er the glacier's frozen sheet Breathes soft the Alpine rose, So through life's desert springing sweet The flower of friendship grows; And as where'er the roses grow Some rain or dew descends, 'T is nature's law that wine should flow To wet the lips of friends. Then once again, before we part, My empty glass shall ring; And he that has the warmest heart Shall loudest laugh and sing. They say we were not born to eat; But gray-haired sages think It means, Be moderate in your meat, And partly live to drink. For baser tribes the rivers flow That know not wine or song; Man wants but little drink below, But wants that little strong. Then once again, etc. If one bright drop is like the gem That decks a monarch's crown, One goblet holds a diadem Of rubies melted down! A fig for Caesar's blazing brow, But, like the Egyptian queen, Bid each dissolving jewel glow My thirsty lips between. Then once again, etc. The Grecian's mound, the Roman's urn, Are silent when we call, Yet still the purple grapes return To cluster on the wall; It was a bright Immortal's head They circled with the vine, And o'er their best and bravest dead They poured the dark-red wine. Then once again, etc. Methinks o'er every sparkling glass Young Eros waves his wings, And echoes o'er its dimples pass From dead Anacreon's strings; And, tossing round its beaded brim Their locks of floating gold, With bacchant dance and choral hymn Return the nymphs of old. Then once again, etc. A welcome then to joy and mirth, From hearts as fresh as ours, To scatter o'er the dust of earth Their sweetly mingled flowers; 'T is Wisdom's self the cup that fills In spite of Folly's frown, And Nature, from her vine-clad hills, That rains her life-blood down! Then once again, before we part, My empty glass shall ring; And he that has the warmest heart Shall loudest laugh and sing. SONG FOR A TEMPERANCE DINNER TO WHICH LADIES WERE INVITED (NEW YORK MERCANTILE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, NOVEMBER, 1842) A HEALTH to dear woman! She bids us untwine, From the cup it encircles, the fast-clinging vine; But her cheek in its crystal with pleasure will glow, And mirror its bloom in the bright wave below. A health to sweet woman! The days are no more When she watched for her lord till the revel was o'er, And smoothed the white pillow, and blushed when he came, As she pressed her cold lips on his forehead of flame. Alas for the loved one! too spotless and fair The joys of his banquet to chasten and share; Her eye lost its light that his goblet might shine, And the rose of her cheek was dissolved in his wine. Joy smiles in the fountain, health flows in the rills, As their ribbons of silver unwind from the hills; They breathe not the mist of the bacchanal's dream, But the lilies of innocence float on their stream. Then a health and a welcome to woman once more! She brings us a passport that laughs at our door; It is written on crimson,--its letters are pearls,-- It is countersigned Nature.--So, room for the Girls! A SENTIMENT THE pledge of Friendship! it is still divine, Though watery floods have quenched its burning wine; Whatever vase the sacred drops may hold, The gourd, the shell, the cup of beaten gold, Around its brim the hand of Nature throws A garland sweeter than the banquet's rose. Bright are the blushes of the vine-wreathed bowl, Warm with the sunshine of Anacreon's soul, But dearer memories gild the tasteless wave That fainting Sidney perished as he gave. 'T is the heart's current lends the cup its glow, Whate'er the fountain whence the draught may flow,-- The diamond dew-drops sparkling through the sand, Scooped by the Arab in his sunburnt hand, Or the dark streamlet oozing from the snow, Where creep and crouch the shuddering Esquimaux; Ay, in the stream that, ere again we meet, Shall burst the pavement, glistening at our feet, And, stealing silent from its leafy hills, Thread all our alleys with its thousand rills,-- In each pale draught if generous feeling blend, And o'er the goblet friend shall smile on friend, Even cold Cochituate every heart shall warm, And genial Nature still defy reform! A RHYMED LESSON (URANIA) This poem was delivered before the Boston Mercantile Library Association, October 14, 1846. YES, dear Enchantress,--wandering far and long, In realms unperfumed by the breath of song, Where flowers ill-flavored shed their sweets around, And bitterest roots invade the ungenial ground, Whose gems are crystals from the Epsom mine, Whose vineyards flow with antimonial wine, Whose gates admit no mirthful feature in, Save one gaunt mocker, the Sardonic grin, Whose pangs are real, not the woes of rhyme That blue-eyed misses warble out of time;-- Truant, not recreant to thy sacred claim, Older by reckoning, but in heart the same, Freed for a moment from the chains of toil, I tread once more thy consecrated soil; Here at thy feet my old allegiance own, Thy subject still, and loyal to thy throne! My dazzled glance explores the crowded hall; Alas, how vain to hope the smiles of all! I know my audience. All the gay and young Love the light antics of a playful tongue; And these, remembering some expansive line My lips let loose among the nuts and wine, Are all impatience till the opening pun Proclaims the witty shamfight is begun. Two fifths at least, if not the total half, Have come infuriate for an earthquake laugh; I know full well what alderman has tied His red bandanna tight about his side; I see the mother, who, aware that boys Perform their laughter with superfluous noise, Beside her kerchief brought an extra one To stop the explosions of her bursting son; I know a tailor, once a friend of mine, Expects great doings in the button line,-- For mirth's concussions rip the outward case, And plant the stitches in a tenderer place. I know my audience,--these shall have their due; A smile awaits them ere my song is through! I know myself. Not servile for applause, My Muse permits no deprecating clause; Modest or vain, she will not be denied One bold confession due to honest pride; And well she knows the drooping veil of song Shall save her boldness from the caviller's wrong. Her sweeter voice the Heavenly Maid imparts To tell the secrets of our aching hearts For this, a suppliant, captive, prostrate, bound, She kneels imploring at the feet of sound; For this, convulsed in thought's maternal pains, She loads her arms with rhyme's resounding chains; Faint though the music of her fetters be, It lends one charm,--her lips are ever free! Think not I come, in manhood's fiery noon, To steal his laurels from the stage buffoon; His sword of lath the harlequin may wield; Behold the star upon my lifted shield Though the just critic pass my humble name, And sweeter lips have drained the cup of fame, While my gay stanza pleased the banquet's lords, The soul within was tuned to deeper chords! Say, shall my arms, in other conflicts taught To swing aloft the ponderous mace of thought, Lift, in obedience to a school-girl's law, Mirth's tinsel wand or laughter's tickling straw? Say, shall I wound with satire's rankling spear The pure, warm hearts that bid me welcome here? No! while I wander through the land of dreams, To strive with great and play with trifling themes, Let some kind meaning fill the varied line. You have your judgment; will you trust to mine? . . . . . . . . . . Between two breaths what crowded mysteries lie,-- The first short gasp, the last and long-drawn sigh! Like phantoms painted on the magic slide, Forth from the darkness of the past we glide, As living shadows for a moment seen In airy pageant on the eternal screen, Traced by a ray from one unchanging flame, Then seek the dust and stillness whence we came. But whence and why, our trembling souls inquire, Caught these dim visions their awakening fire? Oh, who forgets when first the piercing thought Through childhood's musings found its way unsought? I AM;--I LIVE. The mystery and the fear When the dread question, WHAT HAS BROUGHT ME HERE? Burst through life's twilight, as before the sun Roll the deep thunders of the morning gun! Are angel faces, silent and serene, Bent on the conflicts of this little scene, Whose dream-like efforts, whose unreal strife, Are but the preludes to a larger life? Or does life's summer see the end of all, These leaves of being mouldering as they fall, As the old poet vaguely used to deem, As WESLEY questioned in his youthful dream? Oh, could such mockery reach our souls indeed, Give back the Pharaohs' or the Athenian's creed; Better than this a Heaven of man's device,-- The Indian's sports, the Moslem's paradise! Or is our being's only end and aim To add new glories to our Maker's name, As the poor insect, shrivelling in the blaze, Lends a faint sparkle to its streaming rays? Does earth send upward to the Eternal's ear The mingled discords of her jarring sphere To swell his anthem, while creation rings With notes of anguish from its shattered strings? Is it for this the immortal Artist means These conscious, throbbing, agonized machines? Dark is the soul whose sullen creed can bind In chains like these the all-embracing Mind; No! two-faced bigot, thou dost ill reprove The sensual, selfish, yet benignant Jove, And praise a tyrant throned in lonely pride, Who loves himself, and cares for naught beside; Who gave thee, summoned from primeval night, A thousand laws, and not a single right,-- A heart to feel, and quivering nerves to thrill, The sense of wrong, the death-defying will; Who girt thy senses with this goodly frame, Its earthly glories and its orbs of flame, Not for thyself, unworthy of a thought, Poor helpless victim of a life unsought, But all for him, unchanging and supreme, The heartless centre of thy frozen scheme. Trust not the teacher with his lying scroll, Who tears the charter of thy shuddering soul; The God of love, who gave the breath that warms All living dust in all its varied forms, Asks not the tribute of a world like this To fill the measure of his perfect bliss. Though winged with life through all its radiant shores, Creation flowed with unexhausted stores Cherub and seraph had not yet enjoyed; For this he called thee from the quickening void! Nor this alone; a larger gift was thine, A mightier purpose swelled his vast design Thought,--conscience,--will,--to make them all thine own, He rent a pillar from the eternal throne! Made in his image, thou must nobly dare The thorny crown of sovereignty to share. With eye uplifted, it is thine to view, From thine own centre, Heaven's o'erarching blue; So round thy heart a beaming circle lies No fiend can blot, no hypocrite disguise; From all its orbs one cheering voice is heard, Full to thine ear it bears the Father's word, Now, as in Eden where his first-born trod "Seek thine own welfare, true to man and God!" Think not too meanly of thy low estate; Thou hast a choice; to choose is to create! Remember whose the sacred lips that tell, Angels approve thee when thy choice is well; Remember, One, a judge of righteous men, Swore to spare Sodom if she held but ten! Use well the freedom which thy Master gave, (Think'st thou that Heaven can tolerate a slave?) And He who made thee to be just and true Will bless thee, love thee,--ay, respect thee too! Nature has placed thee on a changeful tide, To breast its waves, but not without a guide; Yet, as the needle will forget its aim, Jarred by the fury of the electric flame, As the true current it will falsely feel, Warped from its axis by a freight of steel; So will thy CONSCIENCE lose its balanced truth If passion's lightning fall upon thy youth, So the pure effluence quit its sacred hold Girt round too deeply with magnetic gold. Go to yon tower, where busy science plies Her vast antennae, feeling through the skies That little vernier on whose slender lines The midnight taper trembles as it shines, A silent index, tracks the planets' march In all their wanderings through the ethereal arch; Tells through the mist where dazzled Mercury burns, And marks the spot where Uranus returns. So, till by wrong or negligence effaced, The living index which thy Maker traced Repeats the line each starry Virtue draws Through the wide circuit of creation's laws; Still tracks unchanged the everlasting ray Where the dark shadows of temptation stray, But, once defaced, forgets the orbs of light, And leaves thee wandering o'er the expanse of night. "What is thy creed?" a hundred lips inquire; "Thou seekest God beneath what Christian spire?" Nor ask they idly, for uncounted lies Float upward on the smoke of sacrifice; When man's first incense rose above the plain, Of earth's two altars one was built by Cain! Uncursed by doubt, our earliest creed we take; We love the precepts for the teacher's sake; The simple lessons which the nursery taught Fell soft and stainless on the buds of thought, And the full blossom owes its fairest hue To those sweet tear-drops of affection's dew. Too oft the light that led our earlier hours Fades with the perfume of our cradle flowers; The clear, cold question chills to frozen doubt; Tired of beliefs, we dread to live without Oh then, if Reason waver at thy side, Let humbler Memory be thy gentle guide; Go to thy birthplace, and, if faith was there, Repeat thy father's creed, thy mother's prayer! Faith loves to lean on Time's destroying arm, And age, like distance, lends a double charm; In dim cathedrals, dark with vaulted gloom, What holy awe invests the saintly tomb! There pride will bow, and anxious care expand, And creeping avarice come with open hand; The gay can weep, the impious can adore, From morn's first glimmerings on the chancel floor Till dying sunset sheds his crimson stains Through the faint halos of the irised panes. Yet there are graves, whose rudely-shapen sod Bears the fresh footprints where the sexton trod; Graves where the verdure has not dared to shoot, Where the chance wild-flower has not fixed its root, Whose slumbering tenants, dead without a name, The eternal record shall at length proclaim Pure as the holiest in the long array Of hooded, mitred, or tiaraed clay! Come, seek the air; some pictures we may gain Whose passing shadows shall not be in vain; Not from the scenes that crowd the stranger's soil, Not from our own amidst the stir of toil, But when the Sabbath brings its kind release, And Care lies slumbering on the lap of Peace. The air is hushed, the street is holy ground; Hark! The sweet bells renew their welcome sound As one by one awakes each silent tongue, It tells the turret whence its voice is flung. The Chapel, last of sublunary things That stirs our echoes with the name of Kings, Whose bell, just glistening from the font and forge, Rolled its proud requiem for the second George, Solemn and swelling, as of old it rang, Flings to the wind its deep, sonorous clang; The simpler pile, that, mindful of the hour When Howe's artillery shook its half-built tower, Wears on its bosom, as a bride might do, The iron breastpin which the "Rebels" threw, Wakes the sharp echoes with the quivering thrill Of keen vibrations, tremulous and shrill; Aloft, suspended in the morning's fire, Crash the vast cymbals from the Southern spire; The Giant, standing by the elm-clad green, His white lance lifted o'er the silent scene, Whirling in air his brazen goblet round, Swings from its brim the swollen floods of sound; While, sad with memories of the olden time, Throbs from his tower the Northern Minstrel's chime,-- Faint, single tones, that spell their ancient song, But tears still follow as they breathe along. Child of the soil, whom fortune sends to range Where man and nature, faith and customs change, Borne in thy memory, each familiar tone Mourns on the winds that sigh in every zone. When Ceylon sweeps thee with her perfumed breeze Through the warm billows of the Indian seas; When--ship and shadow blended both in one-- Flames o'er thy mast the equatorial sun, From sparkling midnight to refulgent noon Thy canvas swelling with the still monsoon; When through thy shrouds the wild tornado sings, And thy poor sea-bird folds her tattered wings,-- Oft will delusion o'er thy senses steal, And airy echoes ring the Sabbath peal Then, dim with grateful tears, in long array Rise the fair town, the island-studded bay, Home, with its smiling board, its cheering fire, The half-choked welcome of the expecting sire, The mother's kiss, and, still if aught remain, Our whispering hearts shall aid the silent strain. Ah, let the dreamer o'er the taffrail lean To muse unheeded, and to weep unseen; Fear not the tropic's dews, the evening's chills, His heart lies warm among his triple hills! Turned from her path by this deceitful gleam, My wayward fancy half forgets her theme. See through the streets that slumbered in repose The living current of devotion flows, Its varied forms in one harmonious band Age leading childhood by its dimpled hand; Want, in the robe whose faded edges fall To tell of rags beneath the tartan shawl; And wealth, in silks that, fluttering to appear, Lift the deep borders of the proud cashmere. See, but glance briefly, sorrow-worn and pale, Those sunken cheeks beneath the widow's veil; Alone she wanders where with HIM she trod, No arm to stay her, but she leans on God. While other doublets deviate here and there, What secret handcuff binds that pretty pair? Compactest couple! pressing side to side,-- Ah, the white bonnet that reveals the bride! By the white neckcloth, with its straitened tie, The sober hat, the Sabbath-speaking eye, Severe and smileless, he that runs may read The stern disciple of Geneva's creed Decent and slow, behold his solemn march; Silent he enters through yon crowded arch. A livelier bearing of the outward man, The light-hued gloves, the undevout rattan, Now smartly raised or half profanely twirled,-- A bright, fresh twinkle from the week-day world,-- Tell their plain story; yes, thine eyes behold A cheerful Christian from the liberal fold. Down the chill street that curves in gloomiest shade What marks betray yon solitary maid? The cheek's red rose that speaks of balmier air, The Celtic hue that shades her braided hair, The gilded missal in her kerchief tied,-- Poor Nora, exile from Killarney's side! Sister in toil, though blanched by colder skies, That left their azure in her downcast eyes, See pallid Margaret, Labor's patient child, Scarce weaned from home, the nursling of the wild, Where white Katahdin o'er the horizon shines, And broad Penobscot dashes through the pines. Still, as she hastes, her careful fingers hold The unfailing hymn-book in its cambric fold. Six days at drudgery's heavy wheel she stands, The seventh sweet morning folds her weary hands. Yes, child of suffering, thou mayst well be sure He who ordained the Sabbath loves the poor! This weekly picture faithful Memory draws, Nor claims the noisy tribute of applause; Faint is the glow such barren hopes can lend, And frail the line that asks no loftier end. Trust me, kind listener, I will yet beguile Thy saddened features of the promised smile. This magic mantle thou must well divide, It has its sable and its ermine side; Yet, ere the lining of the robe appears, Take thou in silence what I give in tears. Dear listening soul, this transitory scene Of murmuring stillness, busily serene,-- This solemn pause, the breathing-space of man, The halt of toil's exhausted caravan,-- Comes sweet with music to thy wearied ear; Rise with its anthems to a holier sphere! Deal meekly, gently, with the hopes that guide The lowliest brother straying from thy side If right, they bid thee tremble for thine own; If wrong, the verdict is for God alone. What though the champions of thy faith esteem The sprinkled fountain or baptismal stream; Shall jealous passions in unseemly strife Cross their dark weapons o'er the waves of life? Let my free soul, expanding as it can, Leave to his scheme the thoughtful Puritan; But Calvin's dogma shall my lips deride? In that stern faith my angel Mary died; Or ask if mercy's milder creed can save, Sweet sister, risen from thy new-made grave? True, the harsh founders of thy church reviled That ancient faith, the trust of Erin's child; Must thou be raking in the crumbled past For racks and fagots in her teeth to cast? See from the ashes of Helvetia's pile The whitened skull of old Servetus smile! Round her young heart thy "Romish Upas" threw Its firm, deep fibres, strengthening as she grew; Thy sneering voice may call them "Popish tricks," Her Latin prayers, her dangling crucifix, But De Profundis blessed her father's grave, That "idol" cross her dying mother gave! What if some angel looks with equal eyes On her and thee, the simple and the wise, Writes each dark fault against thy brighter creed, And drops a tear with every foolish bead! Grieve, as thou must, o'er history's reeking page; Blush for the wrongs that stain thy happier age; Strive with the wanderer from the better path, Bearing thy message meekly, not in wrath; Weep for the frail that err, the weak that fall, Have thine own faith,--but hope and pray for all! Faith; Conscience; Love. A meaner task remains, And humbler thoughts must creep in lowlier strains. Shalt thou be honest? Ask the worldly schools, And all will tell thee knaves are busier fools; Prudent? Industrious? Let not modern pens Instruct "Poor Richard's" fellow-citizens. Be firm! One constant element in luck Is genuine solid old Teutonic pluck. See yon tall shaft; it felt the earthquake's thrill, Clung to its base, and greets the sunrise still. Stick to your aim: the mongrel's hold will slip, But only crowbars loose the bulldog's grip; Small as he looks, the jaw that never yields Drags down the bellowing monarch of the fields! Yet in opinions look not always back,-- Your wake is nothing, mind the coming track; Leave what you've done for what you have to do; Don't be "consistent," but be simply true. Don't catch the fidgets; you have found your place Just in the focus of a nervous race, Fretful to change and rabid to discuss, Full of excitements, always in a fuss. Think of the patriarchs; then compare as men These lean-cheeked maniacs of the tongue and pen! Run, if you like, but try to keep your breath; Work like a man, but don't be worked to death; And with new notions,--let me change the rule,-- Don't strike the iron till it 's slightly cool. Choose well your set; our feeble nature seeks The aid of clubs, the countenance of cliques; And with this object settle first of all Your weight of metal and your size of ball. Track not the steps of such as hold you cheap, Too mean to prize, though good enough to keep; The "real, genuine, no-mistake Tom Thumbs" Are little people fed on great men's crumbs. Yet keep no followers of that hateful brood That basely mingles with its wholesome food The tumid reptile, which, the poet said, Doth wear a precious jewel in his head. If the wild filly, "Progress," thou wouldst ride, Have young companions ever at thy side; But wouldst thou stride the stanch old mare, "Success," Go with thine elders, though they please thee less. Shun such as lounge through afternoons and eves, And on thy dial write, "Beware of thieves!" Felon of minutes, never taught to feel The worth of treasures which thy fingers steal, Pick my left pocket of its silver dime, But spare the right,--it holds my golden time! Does praise delight thee? Choose some _ultra_ side,-- A sure old recipe, and often tried; Be its apostle, congressman, or bard, Spokesman or jokesman, only drive it hard; But know the forfeit which thy choice abides, For on two wheels the poor reformer rides,-- One black with epithets the _anti_ throws, One white with flattery painted by the pros. Though books on MANNERS are not out of print, An honest tongue may drop a harmless hint. Stop not, unthinking, every friend you meet, To spin your wordy fabric in the street; While you are emptying your colloquial pack, The fiend Lumbago jumps upon his back. Nor cloud his features with the unwelcome tale Of how he looks, if haply thin and pale; Health is a subject for his child, his wife, And the rude office that insures his life. Look in his face, to meet thy neighbor's soul, Not on his garments, to detect a hole; "How to observe" is what thy pages show, Pride of thy sex, Miss Harriet Martineau! Oh, what a precious book the one would be That taught observers what they 're NOT to see! I tell in verse--'t were better done in prose-- One curious trick that everybody knows; Once form this habit, and it's very strange How long it sticks, how hard it is to change. Two friendly people, both disposed to smile, Who meet, like others, every little while, Instead of passing with a pleasant bow, And "How d' ye do?" or "How 's your uncle now?" Impelled by feelings in their nature kind, But slightly weak and somewhat undefined, Rush at each other, make a sudden stand, Begin to talk, expatiate, and expand; Each looks quite radiant, seems extremely struck, Their meeting so was such a piece of luck; Each thinks the other thinks he 's greatly pleased To screw the vice in which they both are squeezed; So there they talk, in dust, or mud, or snow, Both bored to death, and both afraid to go! Your hat once lifted, do not hang your fire, Nor, like slow Ajax, fighting still, retire; When your old castor on your crown you clap, Go off; you've mounted your percussion cap. Some words on LANGUAGE may be well applied, And take them kindly, though they touch your pride. Words lead to things; a scale is more precise,-- Coarse speech, bad grammar, swearing, drinking, vice. Our cold Northeaster's icy fetter clips The native freedom of the Saxon lips; See the brown peasant of the plastic South, How all his passions play about his mouth! With us, the feature that transmits the soul, A frozen, passive, palsied breathing-hole. The crampy shackles of the ploughboy's walk Tie the small muscles when he strives to talk; Not all the pumice of the polished town Can smooth this roughness of the barnyard down; Rich, honored, titled, he betrays his race By this one mark,--he's awkward in the face;-- Nature's rude impress, long before he knew The sunny street that holds the sifted few. It can't be helped, though, if we're taken young, We gain some freedom of the lips and tongue; But school and college often try in vain To break the padlock of our boyhood's chain One stubborn word will prove this axiom true,-- No quondam rustic can enunciate view. A few brief stanzas may be well employed To speak of errors we can all avoid. Learning condemns beyond the reach of hope The careless lips that speak of so'ap for soap; Her edict exiles from her fair abode The clownish voice that utters ro'ad for road Less stern to him who calls his coat a co'at, And steers his boat, believing it a bo'at, She pardoned one, our classic city's boast, Who said at Cambridge mo'st instead of most, But knit her brows and stamped her angry foot To hear a Teacher call a root a ro'ot. Once more: speak clearly, if you speak at all; Carve every word before you let it fall; Don't, like a lecturer or dramatic star, Try over-hard to roll the British R; Do put your accents in the proper spot; Don't,--let me beg you,--don't say "How?" for "What?" And when you stick on conversation's burs, Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful _urs_. From little matters let us pass to less, And lightly touch the mysteries of DRESS; The outward forms the inner man reveal,-- We guess the pulp before we cut the peel. I leave the broadcloth,--coats and all the rest,-- The dangerous waistcoat, called by cockneys "vest," The things named "pants" in certain documents, A word not made for gentlemen, but "gents;" One single precept might the whole condense Be sure your tailor is a man of sense; But add a little care, a decent pride, And always err upon the sober side. Three pairs of boots one pair of feet demands, If polished daily by the owner's hands; If the dark menial's visit save from this, Have twice the number,--for he 'll sometimes miss. One pair for critics of the nicer sex, Close in the instep's clinging circumflex, Long, narrow, light; the Gallic boot of love, A kind of cross between a boot and glove. Compact, but easy, strong, substantial, square, Let native art compile the medium pair. The third remains, and let your tasteful skill Here show some relics of affection still; Let no stiff cowhide, reeking from the tan, No rough caoutchoue, no deformed brogan, Disgrace the tapering outline of your feet, Though yellow torrents gurgle through the street. Wear seemly gloves; not black, nor yet too light, And least of all the pair that once was white; Let the dead party where you told your loves Bury in peace its dead bouquets and gloves; Shave like the goat, if so your fancy bids, But be a parent,--don't neglect your kids. Have a good hat; the secret of your looks Lives with the beaver in Canadian brooks; Virtue may flourish in an old cravat, But man and nature scorn the shocking hat. Does beauty slight you from her gay abodes? Like bright Apollo, you must take to Rhoades,-- Mount the new castor,--ice itself will melt; Boots, gloves, may fail; the hat is always felt. Be shy of breastpins; plain, well-ironed white, With small pearl buttons,--two of them in sight,-- Is always genuine, while your gems may pass, Though real diamonds, for ignoble glass. But spurn those paltry Cisatlantic lies That round his breast the shabby rustic ties; Breathe not the name profaned to hallow things The indignant laundress blushes when she brings! Our freeborn race, averse to every check, Has tossed the yoke of Europe from its _neck_; From the green prairie to the sea-girt town, The whole wide nation turns its collars down. The stately neck is manhood's manliest part; It takes the life-blood freshest from the heart. With short, curled ringlets close around it spread, How light and strong it lifts the Grecian head! Thine, fair Erechtheus of Minerva's wall; Or thine, young athlete of the Louvre's hall, Smooth as the pillar flashing in the sun That filled the arena where thy wreaths were won, Firm as the band that clasps the antlered spoil Strained in the winding anaconda's coil I spare the contrast; it were only kind To be a little, nay, intensely blind. Choose for yourself: I know it cuts your ear; I know the points will sometimes interfere; I know that often, like the filial John, Whom sleep surprised with half his drapery on, You show your features to the astonished town With one side standing and the other down;-- But, O, my friend! my favorite fellow-man! If Nature made you on her modern plan, Sooner than wander with your windpipe bare,-- The fruit of Eden ripening in the air,-- With that lean head-stalk, that protruding chin, Wear standing collars, were they made of tin! And have a neckcloth--by the throat of Jove!-- Cut from the funnel of a rusty stove! The long-drawn lesson narrows to its close, Chill, slender, slow, the dwindled current flows; Tired of the ripples on its feeble springs, Once more the Muse unfolds her upward wings. Land of my birth, with this unhallowed tongue, Thy hopes, thy dangers, I perchance had sung; But who shall sing, in brutal disregard Of all the essentials of the "native bard"? Lake, sea, shore, prairie, forest, mountain, fall, His eye omnivorous must devour them all; The tallest summits and the broadest tides His foot must compass with its giant strides, Where Ocean thunders, where Missouri rolls, And tread at once the tropics and the poles; His food all forms of earth, fire, water, air, His home all space, his birthplace everywhere. Some grave compatriot, having seen perhaps The pictured page that goes in Worcester's Maps, And, read in earnest what was said in jest, "Who drives fat oxen"--please to add the rest,-- Sprung the odd notion that the poet's dreams Grow in the ratio of his hills and streams; And hence insisted that the aforesaid "bard," Pink of the future, fancy's pattern-card, The babe of nature in the "giant West," Must be of course her biggest and her best. Oh! when at length the expected bard shall come, Land of our pride, to strike thine echoes dumb, (And many a voice exclaims in prose and rhyme, It's getting late, and he's behind his time,) When all thy mountains clap their hands in joy, And all thy cataracts thunder, "That 's the boy,"-- Say if with him the reign of song shall end, And Heaven declare its final dividend! Becalm, dear brother! whose impassioned strain Comes from an alley watered by a drain; The little Mincio, dribbling to the Po, Beats all the epics of the Hoang Ho; If loved in earnest by the tuneful maid, Don't mind their nonsense,--never be afraid! The nurse of poets feeds her winged brood By common firesides, on familiar food; In a low hamlet, by a narrow stream, Where bovine rustics used to doze and dream, She filled young William's fiery fancy full, While old John Shakespeare talked of beeves and wool! No Alpine needle, with its climbing spire, Brings down for mortals the Promethean fire, If careless nature have forgot to frame An altar worthy of the sacred flame. Unblest by any save the goatherd's lines, Mont Blanc rose soaring through his "sea of pines;" In vain the rivers from their ice-caves flash; No hymn salutes them but the Ranz des Vaches, Till lazy Coleridge, by the morning's light, Gazed for a moment on the fields of white, And lo! the glaciers found at length a tongue, Mont Blanc was vocal, and Chamouni sung! Children of wealth or want, to each is given One spot of green, and all the blue of heaven! Enough if these their outward shows impart; The rest is thine,--the scenery of the heart. If passion's hectic in thy stanzas glow, Thy heart's best life-blood ebbing as they flow; If with thy verse thy strength and bloom distil, Drained by the pulses of the fevered thrill; If sound's sweet effluence polarize thy brain, And thoughts turn crystals in thy fluid strain,-- Nor rolling ocean, nor the prairie's bloom, Nor streaming cliffs, nor rayless cavern's gloom, Need'st thou, young poet, to inform thy line; Thy own broad signet stamps thy song divine! Let others gaze where silvery streams are rolled, And chase the rainbow for its cup of gold; To thee all landscapes wear a heavenly dye, Changed in the glance of thy prismatic eye; Nature evoked thee in sublimer throes, For thee her inmost Arethusa flows,-- The mighty mother's living depths are stirred,-- Thou art the starred Osiris of the herd! A few brief lines; they touch on solemn chords, And hearts may leap to hear their honest words; Yet, ere the jarring bugle-blast is blown, The softer lyre shall breathe its soothing tone. New England! proudly may thy children claim Their honored birthright by its humblest name Cold are thy skies, but, ever fresh and clear, No rank malaria stains thine atmosphere; No fungous weeds invade thy scanty soil, Scarred by the ploughshares of unslumbering toil. Long may the doctrines by thy sages taught, Raised from the quarries where their sires have wrought, Be like the granite of thy rock-ribbed land,-- As slow to rear, as obdurate to stand; And as the ice that leaves thy crystal mine Chills the fierce alcohol in the Creole's wine, So may the doctrines of thy sober school Keep the hot theories of thy neighbors cool! If ever, trampling on her ancient path, Cankered by treachery or inflamed by wrath, With smooth "Resolves" or with discordant cries, The mad Briareus of disunion rise, Chiefs of New England! by your sires' renown, Dash the red torches of the rebel down! Flood his black hearthstone till its flames expire, Though your old Sachem fanned his council-fire! But if at last, her fading cycle run, The tongue must forfeit what the arm has won, Then rise, wild Ocean! roll thy surging shock Full on old Plymouth's desecrated rock! Scale the proud shaft degenerate hands have hewn, Where bleeding Valor stained the flowers of June! Sweep in one tide her spires and turrets down, And howl her dirge above Monadnock's crown! List not the tale; the Pilgrim's hallowed shore, Though strewn with weeds, is granite at the core; Oh, rather trust that He who made her free Will keep her true as long as faith shall be! Farewell! yet lingering through the destined hour, Leave, sweet Enchantress, one memorial flower! An Angel, floating o'er the waste of snow That clad our Western desert, long ago, (The same fair spirit who, unseen by day, Shone as a star along the Mayflower's way,)-- Sent, the first herald of the Heavenly plan, To choose on earth a resting-place for man,-- Tired with his flight along the unvaried field, Turned to soar upwards, when his glance revealed A calm, bright bay enclosed in rocky bounds, And at its entrance stood three sister mounds. The Angel spake: "This threefold hill shall be The home of Arts, the nurse of Liberty! One stately summit from its shaft shall pour Its deep-red blaze along the darkened shore; Emblem of thoughts that, kindling far and wide, In danger's night shall be a nation's guide. One swelling crest the citadel shall crown, Its slanted bastions black with battle's frown, And bid the sons that tread its scowling heights Bare their strong arms for man and all his rights! One silent steep along the northern wave Shall hold the patriarch's and the hero's grave; When fades the torch, when o'er the peaceful scene The embattled fortress smiles in living green, The cross of Faith, the anchor staff of Hope, Shall stand eternal on its grassy slope; There through all time shall faithful Memory tell, 'Here Virtue toiled, and Patriot Valor fell; Thy free, proud fathers slumber at thy side; Live as they lived, or perish as they died!'" AN AFTER-DINNER POEM (TERPSICHORE) Read at the Annual Dinner of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 24, 1843. IN narrowest girdle, O reluctant Muse, In closest frock and Cinderella shoes, Bound to the foot-lights for thy brief display, One zephyr step, and then dissolve away! . . . . . . . . . . Short is the space that gods and men can spare To Song's twin brother when she is not there. Let others water every lusty line, As Homer's heroes did their purple wine; Pierian revellers! Know in strains like these The native juice, the real honest squeeze,--- Strains that, diluted to the twentieth power, In yon grave temple might have filled an hour. Small room for Fancy's many-chorded lyre, For Wit's bright rockets with their trains of fire, For Pathos, struggling vainly to surprise The iron tutor's tear-denying eyes, For Mirth, whose finger with delusive wile Turns the grim key of many a rusty smile, For Satire, emptying his corrosive flood On hissing Folly's gas-exhaling brood, The pun, the fun, the moral, and the joke, The hit, the thrust, the pugilistic poke,-- Small space for these, so pressed by niggard Time, Like that false matron, known to nursery rhyme,-- Insidious Morey,--scarce her tale begun, Ere listening infants weep the story done. Oh, had we room to rip the mighty bags That Time, the harlequin, has stuffed with rags! Grant us one moment to unloose the strings, While the old graybeard shuts his leather wings. But what a heap of motley trash appears Crammed in the bundles of successive years! As the lost rustic on some festal day Stares through the concourse in its vast array,-- Where in one cake a throng of faces runs, All stuck together like a sheet of buns,-- And throws the bait of some unheeded name, Or shoots a wink with most uncertain aim, So roams my vision, wandering over all, And strives to choose, but knows not where to fall. Skins of flayed authors, husks of dead reviews, The turn-coat's clothes, the office-seeker's shoes, Scraps from cold feasts, where conversation runs Through mouldy toasts to oxidated puns, And grating songs a listening crowd endures, Rasped from the throats of bellowing amateurs; Sermons, whose writers played such dangerous tricks Their own heresiarchs called them heretics, (Strange that one term such distant poles should link, The Priestleyan's copper and the Puseyan's zinc); Poems that shuffle with superfluous legs A blindfold minuet over addled eggs, Where all the syllables that end in ed, Like old dragoons, have cuts across the head; Essays so dark Champollion might despair To guess what mummy of a thought was there, Where our poor English, striped with foreign phrase, Looks like a zebra in a parson's chaise; Lectures that cut our dinners down to roots, Or prove (by monkeys) men should stick to fruits,-- Delusive error, as at trifling charge Professor Gripes will certify at large; Mesmeric pamphlets, which to facts appeal, Each fact as slippery as a fresh-caught eel; And figured heads, whose hieroglyphs invite To wandering knaves that discount fools at sight: Such things as these, with heaps of unpaid bills, And candy puffs and homoeopathic pills, And ancient bell-crowns with contracted rim, And bonnets hideous with expanded brim, And coats whose memory turns the sartor pale, Their sequels tapering like a lizard's tale,-- How might we spread them to the smiling day, And toss them, fluttering like the new-mown hay, To laughter's light or sorrow's pitying shower, Were these brief minutes lengthened to an hour. The narrow moments fit like Sunday shoes,-- How vast the heap, how quickly must we choose! A few small scraps from out his mountain mass We snatch in haste, and let the vagrant pass. This shrunken CRUST that Cerberus could not bite, Stamped (in one corner) "Pickwick copyright," Kneaded by youngsters, raised by flattery's yeast, Was once a loaf, and helped to make a feast. He for whose sake the glittering show appears Has sown the world with laughter and with tears, And they whose welcome wets the bumper's brim Have wit and wisdom,--for they all quote him. So, many a tongue the evening hour prolongs With spangled speeches,--let alone the songs; Statesmen grow merry, lean attorneys laugh, And weak teetotals warm to half and half, And beardless Tullys, new to festive scenes, Cut their first crop of youth's precocious greens, And wits stand ready for impromptu claps, With loaded barrels and percussion caps, And Pathos, cantering through the minor keys, Waves all her onions to the trembling breeze; While the great Feasted views with silent glee His scattered limbs in Yankee fricassee. Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays The pleasing game of interchanging praise. Self-love, grimalkin of the human heart, Is ever pliant to the master's art; Soothed with a word, she peacefully withdraws And sheathes in velvet her obnoxious claws, And thrills the hand that smooths her glossy fur With the light tremor of her grateful purr. But what sad music fills the quiet hall, If on her back a feline rival fall! And oh, what noises shake the tranquil house If old Self-interest cheats her of a mouse. Thou, O my country, hast thy foolish ways, Too apt to purr at every stranger's praise; But if the stranger touch thy modes or laws, Off goes the velvet and out come the claws! And thou, Illustrious! but too poorly paid In toasts from Pickwick for thy great crusade, Though, while the echoes labored with thy name, The public trap denied thy little game, Let other lips our jealous laws revile,-- The marble Talfourd or the rude Carlyle,-- But on thy lids, which Heaven forbids to close Where'er the light of kindly nature glows, Let not the dollars that a churl denies Weigh like the shillings on a dead man's eyes! Or, if thou wilt, be more discreetly blind, Nor ask to see all wide extremes combined. Not in our wastes the dainty blossoms smile That crowd the gardens of thy scanty isle. There white-cheeked Luxury weaves a thousand charms; Here sun-browned Labor swings his naked arms. Long are the furrows he must trace between The ocean's azure and the prairie's green; Full many a blank his destined realm displays, Yet sees the promise of his riper days Far through yon depths the panting engine moves, His chariots ringing in their steel-shod grooves; And Erie's naiad flings her diamond wave O'er the wild sea-nymph in her distant cave! While tasks like these employ his anxious hours, What if his cornfields are not edged with flowers? Though bright as silver the meridian beams Shine through the crystal of thine English streams, Turbid and dark the mighty wave is whirled That drains our Andes and divides a world! But lo! a PARCHMENT! Surely it would seem The sculptured impress speaks of power supreme; Some grave design the solemn page must claim That shows so broadly an emblazoned name. A sovereign's promise! Look, the lines afford All Honor gives when Caution asks his word: There sacred Faith has laid her snow-white hands, And awful Justice knit her iron bands; Yet every leaf is stained with treachery's dye, And every letter crusted with a lie. Alas! no treason has degraded yet The Arab's salt, the Indian's calumet; A simple rite, that bears the wanderer's pledge, Blunts the keen shaft and turns the dagger's edge; While jockeying senates stop to sign and seal, And freeborn statesmen legislate to steal. Rise, Europe, tottering with thine Atlas load, Turn thy proud eye to Freedom's blest abode, And round her forehead, wreathed with heavenly flame, Bind the dark garland of her daughter's shame! Ye ocean clouds, that wrap the angry blast, Coil her stained ensign round its haughty mast, Or tear the fold that wears so foul a scar, And drive a bolt through every blackened star! Once more,--once only,--- we must stop so soon: What have we here? A GERMAN-SILVER SPOON; A cheap utensil, which we often see Used by the dabblers in aesthetic tea, Of slender fabric, somewhat light and thin, Made of mixed metal, chiefly lead and tin; The bowl is shallow, and the handle small, Marked in large letters with the name JEAN PAUL. Small as it is, its powers are passing strange, For all who use it show a wondrous change; And first, a fact to make the barbers stare, It beats Macassar for the growth of hair. See those small youngsters whose expansive ears Maternal kindness grazed with frequent shears; Each bristling crop a dangling mass becomes, And all the spoonies turn to Absaloms Nor this alone its magic power displays, It alters strangely all their works and ways; With uncouth words they tire their tender lungs, The same bald phrases on their hundred tongues "Ever" "The Ages" in their page appear, "Alway" the bedlamite is called a "Seer;" On every leaf the "earnest" sage may scan, Portentous bore! their "many-sided" man,-- A weak eclectic, groping vague and dim, Whose every angle is a half-starved whim, Blind as a mole and curious as a lynx, Who rides a beetle, which he calls a "Sphinx." And oh, what questions asked in clubfoot rhyme Of Earth the tongueless and the deaf-mute Time! Here babbling "Insight" shouts in Nature's ears His last conundrum on the orbs and spheres; There Self-inspection sucks its little thumb, With "Whence am I?" and "Wherefore did I come?" Deluded infants! will they ever know Some doubts must darken o'er the world below, Though all the Platos of the nursery trail Their "clouds of glory" at the go-cart's tail? Oh might these couplets their attention claim That gain their author the Philistine's name (A stubborn race, that, spurning foreign law, Was much belabored with an ass's jaw.) Melodious Laura! From the sad retreats That hold thee, smothered with excess of sweets, Shade of a shadow, spectre of a dream, Glance thy wan eye across the Stygian stream! The slipshod dreamer treads thy fragrant halls, The sophist's cobwebs hang thy roseate walls, And o'er the crotchets of thy jingling tunes The bard of mystery scrawls his crooked "runes." Yes, thou art gone, with all the tuneful hordes That candied thoughts in amber-colored words, And in the precincts of thy late abodes The clattering verse-wright hammers Orphic odes. Thou, soft as zephyr, wast content to fly On the gilt pinions of a balmy sigh; He, vast as Phoebus on his burning wheels, Would stride through ether at Orion's heels. Thy emblem, Laura, was a perfume-jar, And thine, young Orpheus, is a pewter star. The balance trembles,--be its verdict told When the new jargon slumbers with the old! . . . . . . . . Cease, playful goddess! From thine airy bound Drop like a feather softly to the ground; This light bolero grows a ticklish dance, And there is mischief in thy kindling glance. To-morrow bids thee, with rebuking frown, Change thy gauze tunic for a home-made gown, Too blest by fortune if the passing day Adorn thy bosom with its frail bouquet, But oh, still happier if the next forgets Thy daring steps and dangerous pirouettes! 
7390	----	THE POETICAL WORKS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES [1893 three volume set] MEDICAL POEMS THE MORNING VISIT THE TWO ARMIES THE STETHOSCOPE SONG EXTRACTS FROM A MEDICAL POEM A POEM FOR THE MEETING OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION AT NEW YORK, MAY 5, 1853 A SENTIMENT RIP VAN WINKLE, M. D. THE MORNING VISIT A sick man's chamber, though it often boast The grateful presence of a literal toast, Can hardly claim, amidst its various wealth, The right unchallenged to propose a health; Yet though its tenant is denied the feast, Friendship must launch his sentiment at least, As prisoned damsels, locked from lovers' lips, Toss them a kiss from off their fingers' tips. The morning visit,--not till sickness falls In the charmed circles of your own safe walls; Till fever's throb and pain's relentless rack Stretch you all helpless on your aching back; Not till you play the patient in your turn, The morning visit's mystery shall you learn. 'T is a small matter in your neighbor's case, To charge your fee for showing him your face; You skip up-stairs, inquire, inspect, and touch, Prescribe, take leave, and off to twenty such. But when at length, by fate's transferred decree, The visitor becomes the visitee, Oh, then, indeed, it pulls another string; Your ox is gored, and that's a different thing! Your friend is sick: phlegmatic as a Turk, You write your recipe and let it work; Not yours to stand the shiver and the frown, And sometimes worse, with which your draught goes down. Calm as a clock your knowing hand directs, _Rhei, jalapae ana grana sex_, Or traces on some tender missive's back, _Scrupulos duos pulveris ipecac_; And leaves your patient to his qualms and gripes, Cool as a sportsman banging at his snipes. But change the time, the person, and the place, And be yourself "the interesting case," You'll gain some knowledge which it's well to learn; In future practice it may serve your turn. Leeches, for instance,--pleasing creatures quite; Try them,--and bless you,--don't you find they bite? You raise a blister for the smallest cause, But be yourself the sitter whom it draws, And trust my statement, you will not deny The worst of draughtsmen is your Spanish fly! It's mighty easy ordering when you please, _Infusi sennae capiat uncias tres_; It's mighty different when you quackle down Your own three ounces of the liquid brown. _Pilula, pulvis_,--pleasant words enough, When other throats receive the shocking stuff; But oh, what flattery can disguise the groan That meets the gulp which sends it through your own! Be gentle, then, though Art's unsparing rules Give you the handling of her sharpest tools; Use them not rashly,--sickness is enough; Be always "ready," but be never "rough." Of all the ills that suffering man endures, The largest fraction liberal Nature cures; Of those remaining, 't is the smallest part Yields to the efforts of judicious Art; But simple _Kindness_, kneeling by the bed To shift the pillow for the sick man's head, Give the fresh draught to cool the lips that burn, Fan the hot brow, the weary frame to turn,-- Kindness, untutored by our grave M. D.'s, But Nature's graduate, when she schools to please, Wins back more sufferers with her voice and smile Than all the trumpery in the druggist's pile. Once more, be quiet: coming up the stair, Don't be a plantigrade, a human bear, But, stealing softly on the silent toe, Reach the sick chamber ere you're heard below. Whatever changes there may greet your eyes, Let not your looks proclaim the least surprise; It's not your business by your face to show All that your patient does not want to know; Nay, use your optics with considerate care, And don't abuse your privilege to stare. But if your eyes may probe him overmuch, Beware still further how you rudely touch; Don't clutch his carpus in your icy fist, But warm your fingers ere you take the wrist. If the poor victim needs must be percussed, Don't make an anvil of his aching bust; (Doctors exist within a hundred miles Who thump a thorax as they'd hammer piles;) If you must listen to his doubtful chest, Catch the essentials, and ignore the rest. Spare him; the sufferer wants of you and art A track to steer by, not a finished chart. So of your questions: don't in mercy try To pump your patient absolutely dry; He's not a mollusk squirming in a dish, You're not Agassiz; and he's not a fish. And last, not least, in each perplexing case, Learn the sweet magic of a cheerful face; Not always smiling, but at least serene, When grief and anguish cloud the anxious scene. Each look, each movement, every word and tone, Should tell your patient you are all his own; Not the mere artist, purchased to attend, But the warm, ready, self-forgetting friend, Whose genial visit in itself combines The best of cordials, tonics, anodynes. Such is the _visit_ that from day to day Sheds o'er my chamber its benignant ray. I give his health, who never cared to claim Her babbling homage from the tongue of Fame; Unmoved by praise, he stands by all confest, The truest, noblest, wisest, kindest, best. 1849. THE TWO ARMIES As Life's unending column pours, Two marshalled hosts are seen,-- Two armies on the trampled shores That Death flows black between. One marches to the drum-beat's roll, The wide-mouthed clarion's bray, And bears upon a crimson scroll, "Our glory is to slay." One moves in silence by the stream, With sad, yet watchful eyes, Calm as the patient planet's gleam That walks the clouded skies. Along its front no sabres shine, No blood-red pennons wave; Its banner bears the single line, "Our duty is to save." For those no death-bed's lingering shade; At Honor's trumpet-call, With knitted brow and lifted blade In Glory's arms they fall. For these no clashing falchions bright, No stirring battle-cry; The bloodless stabber calls by night,-- Each answers, "Here am I!" For those the sculptor's laurelled bust, The builder's marble piles, The anthems pealing o'er their dust Through long cathedral aisles. For these the blossom-sprinkled turf That floods the lonely graves When Spring rolls in her sea-green surf In flowery-foaming waves. Two paths lead upward from below, And angels wait above, Who count each burning life-drop's flow, Each falling tear of Love. Though from the Hero's bleeding breast Her pulses Freedom drew, Though the white lilies in her crest Sprang from that scarlet dew,-- While Valor's haughty champions wait Till all their scars are shown, Love walks unchallenged through the gate, To sit beside the Throne. THE STETHOSCOPE SONG A PROFESSIONAL BALLAD THERE was a young man in Boston town, He bought him a stethoscope nice and new, All mounted and finished and polished down, With an ivory cap and a stopper too. It happened a spider within did crawl, And spun him a web of ample size, Wherein there chanced one day to fall A couple of very imprudent flies. The first was a bottle-fly, big and blue, The second was smaller, and thin and long; So there was a concert between the two, Like an octave flute and a tavern gong. Now being from Paris but recently, This fine young man would show his skill; And so they gave him, his hand to try, A hospital patient extremely ill. Some said that his liver was short of bile, And some that his heart was over size, While some kept arguing, all the while, He was crammed with tubercles up to his eyes. This fine young man then up stepped he, And all the doctors made a pause; Said he, The man must die, you see, By the fifty-seventh of Louis's laws. But since the case is a desperate one, To explore his chest it may be well; For if he should die and it were not done, You know the autopsy would not tell. Then out his stethoscope he took, And on it placed his curious ear; Mon Dieu! said he, with a knowing look, Why, here is a sound that 's mighty queer. The bourdonnement is very clear,-- Amphoric buzzing, as I'm alive Five doctors took their turn to hear; Amphoric buzzing, said all the five. There's empyema beyond a doubt; We'll plunge a trocar in his side. The diagnosis was made out,-- They tapped the patient; so he died. Now such as hate new-fashioned toys Began to look extremely glum; They said that rattles were made for boys, And vowed that his buzzing was all a hum. There was an old lady had long been sick, And what was the matter none did know Her pulse was slow, though her tongue was quick; To her this knowing youth must go. So there the nice old lady sat, With phials and boxes all in a row; She asked the young doctor what he was at, To thump her and tumble her ruffles so. Now, when the stethoscope came out, The flies began to buzz and whiz Oh ho! the matter is clear, no doubt; An aneurism there plainly is. The bruit de rape and the bruit de scie And the bruit de diable are all combined; How happy Bouillaud would be, If he a case like this could find! Now, when the neighboring doctors found A case so rare had been descried, They every day her ribs did pound In squads of twenty; so she died. Then six young damsels, slight and frail, Received this kind young doctor's cares; They all were getting slim and pale, And short of breath on mounting stairs. They all made rhymes with "sighs" and "skies," And loathed their puddings and buttered rolls, And dieted, much to their friends' surprise, On pickles and pencils and chalk and coals. So fast their little hearts did bound, The frightened insects buzzed the more; So over all their chests he found The rale sifflant and the rale sonore. He shook his head. There's grave disease,-- I greatly fear you all must die; A slight post-mortem, if you please, Surviving friends would gratify. The six young damsels wept aloud, Which so prevailed on six young men That each his honest love avowed, Whereat they all got well again. This poor young man was all aghast; The price of stethoscopes came down; And so he was reduced at last To practise in a country town. The doctors being very sore, A stethoscope they did devise That had a rammer to clear the bore, With a knob at the end to kill the flies. Now use your ears, all you that can, But don't forget to mind your eyes, Or you may be cheated, like this young man, By a couple of silly, abnormal flies. EXTRACTS FROM A MEDICAL POEM THE STABILITY OF SCIENCE THE feeble sea-birds, blinded in the storms, On some tall lighthouse dash their little forms, And the rude granite scatters for their pains Those small deposits that were meant for brains. Yet the proud fabric in the morning's sun Stands all unconscious of the mischief done; Still the red beacon pours its evening rays For the lost pilot with as full a blaze,-- Nay, shines, all radiance, o'er the scattered fleet Of gulls and boobies brainless at its feet. I tell their fate, though courtesy disclaims To call our kind by such ungentle names; Yet, if your rashness bid you vainly dare, Think of their doom, ye simple, and beware. See where aloft its hoary forehead rears The towering pride of twice a thousand years! Far, far below the vast incumbent pile Sleeps the gray rock from art's AEgean isle Its massive courses, circling as they rise, Swell from the waves to mingle with the skies; There every quarry lends its marble spoil, And clustering ages blend their common toil; The Greek, the Roman, reared its ancient walls, The silent Arab arched its mystic halls; In that fair niche, by countless billows laved, Trace the deep lines that Sydenham engraved; On yon broad front that breasts the changing swell, Mark where the ponderous sledge of Hunter fell; By that square buttress look where Louis stands, The stone yet warm from his uplifted hands; And say, O Science, shall thy life-blood freeze, When fluttering folly flaps on walls like these? A PORTRAIT Thoughtful in youth, but not austere in age; Calm, but not cold, and cheerful though a sage; Too true to flatter and too kind to sneer, And only just when seemingly severe; So gently blending courtesy and art That wisdom's lips seemed borrowing friendship's heart. Taught by the sorrows that his age had known In others' trials to forget his own, As hour by hour his lengthened day declined, A sweeter radiance lingered o'er his mind. Cold were the lips that spoke his early praise, And hushed the voices of his morning days, Yet the same accents dwelt on every tongue, And love renewing kept him ever young. A SENTIMENT _O Bios Bpaxus_,--life is but a song; _H rexvn uakpn_,--art is wondrous long; Yet to the wise her paths are ever fair, And Patience smiles, though Genius may despair. Give us but knowledge, though by slow degrees, And blend our toil with moments bright as these; Let Friendship's accents cheer our doubtful way, And Love's pure planet lend its guiding ray,-- Our tardy Art shall wear an angel's wings, And life shall lengthen with the joy it brings! A POEM FOR THE MEETING OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION AT NEW YORK, MAY 5, 1853 I HOLD a letter in my hand,-- A flattering letter, more's the pity,-- By some contriving junto planned, And signed _per order of Committee_. It touches every tenderest spot,-- My patriotic predilections, My well-known-something--don't ask what,-- My poor old songs, my kind affections. They make a feast on Thursday next, And hope to make the feasters merry; They own they're something more perplexed For poets than for port and sherry. They want the men of--(word torn out); Our friends will come with anxious faces, (To see our blankets off, no doubt, And trot us out and show our paces.) They hint that papers by the score Are rather musty kind of rations,-- They don't exactly mean a bore, But only trying to the patience; That such as--you know who I mean-- Distinguished for their--what d' ye call 'em-- Should bring the dews of Hippocrene To sprinkle on the faces solemn. --The same old story: that's the chaff To catch the birds that sing the ditties; Upon my soul, it makes me laugh To read these letters from Committees! They're all so loving and so fair,-- All for your sake such kind compunction; 'T would save your carriage half its wear To touch its wheels with such an unction! Why, who am I, to lift me here And beg such learned folk to listen, To ask a smile, or coax a tear Beneath these stoic lids to glisten? As well might some arterial thread Ask the whole frame to feel it gushing, While throbbing fierce from heel to head The vast aortic tide was rushing. As well some hair-like nerve might strain To set its special streamlet going, While through the myriad-channelled brain The burning flood of thought was flowing; Or trembling fibre strive to keep The springing haunches gathered shorter, While the scourged racer, leap on leap, Was stretching through the last hot quarter! Ah me! you take the bud that came Self-sown in your poor garden's borders, And hand it to the stately dame That florists breed for, all she orders. She thanks you,--it was kindly meant,-- (A pale afair, not worth the keeping,)-- Good morning; and your bud is sent To join the tea-leaves used for sweeping. Not always so, kind hearts and true,-- For such I know are round me beating; Is not the bud I offer you, Fresh gathered for the hour of meeting, Pale though its outer leaves may be, Rose-red in all its inner petals?-- Where the warm life we cannot see-- The life of love that gave it--settles. We meet from regions far away, Like rills from distant mountains streaming; The sun is on Francisco's bay, O'er Chesapeake the lighthouse gleaming; While summer girds the still bayou In chains of bloom, her bridal token, Monadnock sees the sky grow blue, His crystal bracelet yet unbroken. Yet Nature bears the selfsame heart Beneath her russet-mantled bosom As where, with burning lips apart, She breathes and white magnolias blossom; The selfsame founts her chalice fill With showery sunlight running over, On fiery plain and frozen hill, On myrtle-beds and fields of clover. I give you Home! its crossing lines United in one golden suture, And showing every day that shines The present growing to the future,-- A flag that bears a hundred stars In one bright ring, with love for centre, Fenced round with white and crimson bars No prowling treason dares to enter! O brothers, home may be a word To make affection's living treasure, The wave an angel might have stirred, A stagnant pool of selfish pleasure; HOME! It is where the day-star springs And where the evening sun reposes, Where'er the eagle spreads his wings, From northern pines to southern roses! A SENTIMENT A TRIPLE health to Friendship, Science, Art, From heads and hands that own a common heart! Each in its turn the others' willing slave, Each in its season strong to heal and save. Friendship's blind service, in the hour of need, Wipes the pale face, and lets the victim bleed. Science must stop to reason and explain; ART claps his finger on the streaming vein. But Art's brief memory fails the hand at last; Then SCIENCE lifts the flambeau of the past. When both their equal impotence deplore, When Learning sighs, and Skill can do no more, The tear of FRIENDSHIP pours its heavenly balm, And soothes the pang no anodyne may calm May 1, 1855. RIP VAN WINKLE, M. D. AN AFTER-DINNER PRESCRIPTION TAKEN BY THE MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL SOCIETY, AT THEIR MEETING HELD MAY 25, 1870 CANTO FIRST OLD Rip Van Winkle had a grandson, Rip, Of the paternal block a genuine chip,-- A lazy, sleepy, curious kind of chap; He, like his grandsire, took a mighty nap, Whereof the story I propose to tell In two brief cantos, if you listen well. The times were hard when Rip to manhood grew; They always will be when there's work to do. He tried at farming,--found it rather slow,-- And then at teaching--what he did n't know; Then took to hanging round the tavern bars, To frequent toddies and long-nine cigars, Till Dame Van Winkle, out of patience, vexed With preaching homilies, having for their text A mop, a broomstick, aught that might avail To point a moral or adorn a tale, Exclaimed, "I have it! Now, then, Mr. V. He's good for something,--make him an M. D.!" The die was cast; the youngster was content; They packed his shirts and stockings, and he went. How hard he studied it were vain to tell; He drowsed through Wistar, nodded over Bell, Slept sound with Cooper, snored aloud on Good; Heard heaps of lectures,--doubtless understood,-- A constant listener, for he did not fail To carve his name on every bench and rail. Months grew to years; at last he counted three, And Rip Van Winkle found himself M. D. Illustrious title! in a gilded frame He set the sheepskin with his Latin name, RIPUM VAN WINKLUM, QUEM we--SCIMUS--know IDONEUM ESSE--to do so and so. He hired an office; soon its walls displayed His new diploma and his stock in trade, A mighty arsenal to subdue disease, Of various names, whereof I mention these Lancets and bougies, great and little squirt, Rhubarb and Senna, Snakeroot, Thoroughwort, Ant. Tart., Vin. Colch., Pil. Cochiae, and Black Drop, Tinctures of Opium, Gentian, Henbane, Hop, Pulv. Ipecacuanhae, which for lack Of breath to utter men call Ipecac, Camphor and Kino, Turpentine, Tolu, Cubebs, "Copeevy," Vitriol,--white and blue,-- Fennel and Flaxseed, Slippery Elm and Squill, And roots of Sassafras, and "Sassaf'rill," Brandy,--for colics,--Pinkroot, death on worms,-- Valerian, calmer of hysteric squirms, Musk, Assafoetida, the resinous gum Named from its odor,--well, it does smell some,-- Jalap, that works not wisely, but too well, Ten pounds of Bark and six of Calomel. For outward griefs he had an ample store, Some twenty jars and gallipots, or more: _Ceratum simplex_--housewives oft compile The same at home, and call it "wax and ile;" _Unguentum resinosum_--change its name, The "drawing salve" of many an ancient dame; _Argenti Nitras_, also Spanish flies, Whose virtue makes the water-bladders rise-- (Some say that spread upon a toper's skin They draw no water, only rum or gin); Leeches, sweet vermin! don't they charm the sick? And Sticking-plaster--how it hates to stick _Emplastrum Ferri_--ditto _Picis_, Pitch; Washes and Powders, Brimstone for the--which, _Scabies_ or _Psora_, is thy chosen name Since Hahnemann's goose-quill scratched thee into fame, Proved thee the source of every nameless ill, Whose sole specific is a moonshine pill, Till saucy Science, with a quiet grin, Held up the Acarus, crawling on a pin? --Mountains have labored and have brought forth mice The Dutchman's theory hatched a brood of--twice I've well-nigh said them--words unfitting quite For these fair precincts and for ears polite. The surest foot may chance at last to slip, And so at length it proved with Doctor Rip. One full-sized bottle stood upon the shelf, Which held the medicine that he took himself; Whate'er the reason, it must be confessed He filled that bottle oftener than the rest; What drug it held I don't presume to know-- The gilded label said "Elixir Pro." One day the Doctor found the bottle full, And, being thirsty, took a vigorous pull, Put back the "Elixir" where 't was always found, And had old Dobbin saddled and brought round. --You know those old-time rhubarb-colored nags That carried Doctors and their saddle-bags; Sagacious beasts! they stopped at every place Where blinds were shut--knew every patient's case-- Looked up and thought--The baby's in a fit-- That won't last long--he'll soon be through with it; But shook their heads before the knockered door Where some old lady told the story o'er Whose endless stream of tribulation flows For gastric griefs and peristaltic woes. What jack-o'-lantern led him from his way, And where it led him, it were hard to say; Enough that wandering many a weary mile Through paths the mountain sheep trod single file, O'ercome by feelings such as patients know Who dose too freely with "Elixir Pro.," He tumbl--dismounted, slightly in a heap, And lay, promiscuous, lapped in balmy sleep. Night followed night, and day succeeded day, But snoring still the slumbering Doctor lay. Poor Dobbin, starving, thought upon his stall, And straggled homeward, saddle-bags and all. The village people hunted all around, But Rip was missing,--never could be found. "Drownded," they guessed;--for more than half a year The pouts and eels did taste uncommon queer; Some said of apple-brandy--other some Found a strong flavor of New England rum. Why can't a fellow hear the fine things said About a fellow when a fellow's dead? The best of doctors--so the press declared-- A public blessing while his life was spared, True to his country, bounteous to the poor, In all things temperate, sober, just, and pure; The best of husbands! echoed Mrs. Van, And set her cap to catch another man. So ends this Canto--if it's quantum suff., We'll just stop here and say we've had enough, And leave poor Rip to sleep for thirty years; I grind the organ--if you lend your ears To hear my second Canto, after that We 'll send around the monkey with the hat. CANTO SECOND So thirty years had passed--but not a word In all that time of Rip was ever heard; The world wagged on--it never does go back-- The widow Van was now the widow Mac---- France was an Empire--Andrew J. was dead, And Abraham L. was reigning in his stead. Four murderous years had passed in savage strife, Yet still the rebel held his bloody knife. --At last one morning--who forgets the day When the black cloud of war dissolved away The joyous tidings spread o'er land and sea, Rebellion done for! Grant has captured Lee! Up every flagstaff sprang the Stars and Stripes-- Out rushed the Extras wild with mammoth types-- Down went the laborer's hod, the school-boy's book-- "Hooraw!" he cried, "the rebel army's took!" Ah! what a time! the folks all mad with joy Each fond, pale mother thinking of her boy; Old gray-haired fathers meeting--"Have--you--heard?" And then a choke--and not another word; Sisters all smiling--maidens, not less dear, In trembling poise between a smile and tear; Poor Bridget thinking how she 'll stuff the plums In that big cake for Johnny when he comes; Cripples afoot; rheumatics on the jump; Old girls so loving they could hug the pump; Guns going bang! from every fort and ship; They banged so loud at last they wakened Rip. I spare the picture, how a man appears Who's been asleep a score or two of years; You all have seen it to perfection done By Joe Van Wink--I mean Rip Jefferson. Well, so it was; old Rip at last came back, Claimed his old wife--the present widow Mac---- Had his old sign regilded, and began To practise physic on the same old plan. Some weeks went by--it was not long to wait-- And "please to call" grew frequent on the slate. He had, in fact, an ancient, mildewed air, A long gray beard, a plenteous lack of hair,-- The musty look that always recommends Your good old Doctor to his ailing friends. --Talk of your science! after all is said There's nothing like a bare and shiny head; Age lends the graces that are sure to please; Folks want their Doctors mouldy, like their cheese. So Rip began to look at people's tongues And thump their briskets (called it "sound their lungs"), Brushed up his knowledge smartly as he could, Read in old Cullen and in Doctor Good. The town was healthy; for a month or two He gave the sexton little work to do. About the time when dog-day heats begin, The summer's usual maladies set in; With autumn evenings dysentery came, And dusky typhoid lit his smouldering flame; The blacksmith ailed, the carpenter was down, And half the children sickened in the town. The sexton's face grew shorter than before-- The sexton's wife a brand-new bonnet wore-- Things looked quite serious--Death had got a grip On old and young, in spite of Doctor Rip. And now the Squire was taken with a chill-- Wife gave "hot-drops"--at night an Indian pill; Next morning, feverish--bedtime, getting worse-- Out of his head--began to rave and curse; The Doctor sent for--double quick he came _Ant. Tart. gran. duo_, and repeat the same If no et cetera. Third day--nothing new; Percussed his thorax till 't was black and blue-- Lung-fever threatening--something of the sort-- Out with the lancet--let him bleed--a quart-- Ten leeches next--then blisters to his side; Ten grains of calomel; just then he died. The Deacon next required the Doctor's care-- Took cold by sitting in a draught of air-- Pains in the back, but what the matter is Not quite so clear,--wife calls it "rheumatiz." Rubs back with flannel--gives him something hot-- "Ah!" says the Deacon, "that goes nigh the spot." Next day a rigor--"Run, my little man, And say the Deacon sends for Doctor Van." The Doctor came--percussion as before, Thumping and banging till his ribs were sore-- "Right side the flattest"--then more vigorous raps-- "Fever--that's certain--pleurisy, perhaps. A quart of blood will ease the pain, no doubt, Ten leeches next will help to suck it out, Then clap a blister on the painful part-- But first two grains of _Antimonium Tart_. Last with a dose of cleansing calomel Unload the portal system--(that sounds well!)" But when the selfsame remedies were tried, As all the village knew, the Squire had died; The neighbors hinted. "This will never do; He's killed the Squire--he'll kill the Deacon too." Now when a doctor's patients are perplexed, A consultation comes in order next-- You know what that is? In a certain place Meet certain doctors to discuss a case And other matters, such as weather, crops, Potatoes, pumpkins, lager-beer, and hops. For what's the use?--there 's little to be said, Nine times in ten your man's as good as dead; At best a talk (the secret to disclose) Where three men guess and sometimes one man knows. The counsel summoned came without delay-- Young Doctor Green and shrewd old Doctor Gray-- They heard the story--"Bleed!" says Doctor Green, "That's downright murder! cut his throat, you mean Leeches! the reptiles! Why, for pity's sake, Not try an adder or a rattlesnake? Blisters! Why bless you, they 're against the law-- It's rank assault and battery if they draw Tartrate of Antimony! shade of Luke, Stomachs turn pale at thought of such rebuke! The portal system! What's the man about? Unload your nonsense! Calomel's played out! You've been asleep--you'd better sleep away Till some one calls you." "Stop!" says Doctor Gray-- "The story is you slept for thirty years; With brother Green, I own that it appears You must have slumbered most amazing sound; But sleep once more till thirty years come round, You'll find the lancet in its honored place, Leeches and blisters rescued from disgrace, Your drugs redeemed from fashion's passing scorn, And counted safe to give to babes unborn." Poor sleepy Rip, M. M. S. S., M. D., A puzzled, serious, saddened man was he; Home from the Deacon's house he plodded slow And filled one bumper of "Elixir Pro." "Good-by," he faltered, "Mrs. Van, my dear! I'm going to sleep, but wake me once a year; I don't like bleaching in the frost and dew, I'll take the barn, if all the same to you. Just once a year--remember! no mistake! Cry, 'Rip Van Winkle! time for you to wake!' Watch for the week in May when laylocks blow, For then the Doctors meet, and I must go." Just once a year the Doctor's worthy dame Goes to the barn and shouts her husband's name; "Come, Rip Van Winkle!" (giving him a shake) "Rip! Rip Van Winkle! time for you to wake! Laylocks in blossom! 't is the month of May-- The Doctors' meeting is this blessed day, And come what will, you know I heard you swear You'd never miss it, but be always there!" And so it is, as every year comes round Old Rip Van Winkle here is always found. You'll quickly know him by his mildewed air, The hayseed sprinkled through his scanty hair, The lichens growing on his rusty suit-- I've seen a toadstool sprouting on his boot-- Who says I lie? Does any man presume?-- Toadstool? No matter--call it a mushroom. Where is his seat? He moves it every year; But look, you'll find him,--he is always here,-- Perhaps you'll track him by a whiff you know-- A certain flavor of "Elixir Pro." Now, then, I give you--as you seem to think We can give toasts without a drop to drink-- Health to the mighty sleeper,--long live he! Our brother Rip, M. M. S. S., M. D.! 
7391	----	THE POETICAL WORKS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES [1893 three volume set] SONGS IN MANY KEYS 1849-1861 PROLOGUE AGNES THE PLOUGHMAN SPRING THE STUDY THE BELLS NON-RESISTANCE THE MORAL BULLY THE MIND'S DIET OUR LIMITATIONS THE OLD PLAYER A POEM DEDICATION OF THE PITTSFIELD CEMETERY, SEPTEMBER 9,1850 TO GOVERNOR SWAIN TO AN ENGLISH FRIEND AFTER A LECTURE ON WORDSWORTH AFTER A LECTURE ON MOORE AFTER A LECTURE ON KEATS AFTER A LECTURE ON SHELLEY AT THE CLOSE OF A COURSE OF LECTURES THE HUDSON THE NEW EDEN SEMI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY, NEW YORK, DECEMBER 22,1855 FAREWELL TO J. R. LOWELL FOR THE MEETING OF THE BURNS CLUB, 1856 ODE FOR WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY BIRTHDAY OF DANIEL WEBSTER THE VOICELESS THE TWO STREAMS THE PROMISE AVIS THE LIVING TEMPLE AT A BIRTHDAY FESTIVAL: TO J. R. LOWELL A BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE TO J. F. CLARKE THE GRAY CHIEF THE LAST LOOK: W. W. SWAIN IN MEMORY OF CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM, JR. MARTHA MEETING OF THE ALUMNI OF HARVARD COLLEGE THE PARTING SONG FOR THE MEETING OF THE NATIONAL SANITARY ASSOCIATION FOR THE BURNS CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION, AT A MEETING OF FRIENDS BOSTON COMMON: THREE PICTURES THE OLD MAN OF THE SEA INTERNATIONAL ODE VIVE LA FRANCE BROTHER JONATHAN'S LAMENT FOR SISTER CAROLINE THE piping of our slender, peaceful reeds Whispers uncared for while the trumpets bray; Song is thin air; our hearts' exulting play Beats time but to the tread of marching deeds, Following the mighty van that Freedom leads, Her glorious standard flaming to the day! The crimsoned pavement where a hero bleeds Breathes nobler lessons than the poet's lay. Strong arms, broad breasts, brave hearts, are better worth Than strains that sing the ravished echoes dumb. Hark! 't is the loud reverberating drum Rolls o'er the prairied West, the rock-bound North The myriad-handed Future stretches forth Its shadowy palms. Behold, we come,--we come! Turn o'er these idle leaves. Such toys as these Were not unsought for, as, in languid dreams, We lay beside our lotus-feeding streams, And nursed our fancies in forgetful ease. It matters little if they pall or please, Dropping untimely, while the sudden gleams Glare from the mustering clouds whose blackness seems Too swollen to hold its lightning from the trees. Yet, in some lull of passion, when at last These calm revolving moons that come and go-- Turning our months to years, they creep so slow-- Have brought us rest, the not unwelcome past May flutter to thee through these leaflets, cast On the wild winds that all around us blow. May 1, 1861. AGNES The story of Sir Harry Frankland and Agnes Surriage is told in the ballad with a very strict adhesion to the facts. These were obtained from information afforded me by the Rev. Mr. Webster, of Hopkinton, in company with whom I visited the Frankland Mansion in that town, then standing; from a very interesting Memoir, by the Rev. Elias Nason, of Medford; and from the manuscript diary of Sir Harry, or more properly Sir Charles Henry Frankland, now in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society. At the time of the visit referred to, old Julia was living, and on our return we called at the house where she resided.--[She was living June 10, 1861, when this ballad was published]--Her account is little more than paraphrased in the poem. If the incidents are treated with a certain liberality at the close of the fifth part, the essential fact that Agnes rescued Sir Harry from the ruins after the earthquake, and their subsequent marriage as related, may be accepted as literal truth. So with regard to most of the trifling details which are given; they are taken from the record. It is greatly to be regretted that the Frankland Mansion no longer exists. It was accidentally burned on the 23d of January, 1858, a year or two after the first sketch of this ballad was written. A visit to it was like stepping out of the century into the years before the Revolution. A new house, similar in plan and arrangements to the old one, has been built upon its site, and the terraces, the clump of box, and the lilacs doubtless remain to bear witness to the truth of this story. The story, which I have told literally in rhyme, has been made the subject of a carefully studied and interesting romance by Mr. E. L. Bynner. PART FIRST THE KNIGHT THE tale I tell is gospel true, As all the bookmen know, And pilgrims who have strayed to view The wrecks still left to show. The old, old story,--fair, and young, And fond,--and not too wise,-- That matrons tell, with sharpened tongue, To maids with downcast eyes. Ah! maidens err and matrons warn Beneath the coldest sky; Love lurks amid the tasselled corn As in the bearded rye! But who would dream our sober sires Had learned the old world's ways, And warmed their hearths with lawless fires In Shirley's homespun days? 'T is like some poet's pictured trance His idle rhymes recite,-- This old New England-born romance Of Agnes and the Knight; Yet, known to all the country round, Their home is standing still, Between Wachusett's lonely mound And Shawmut's threefold hill. One hour we rumble on the rail, One half-hour guide the rein, We reach at last, o'er hill and dale, The village on the plain. With blackening wall and mossy roof, With stained and warping floor, A stately mansion stands aloof And bars its haughty door. This lowlier portal may be tried, That breaks the gable wall; And lo! with arches opening wide, Sir Harry Frankland's hall! 'T was in the second George's day They sought the forest shade, The knotted trunks they cleared away, The massive beams they laid, They piled the rock-hewn chimney tall, They smoothed the terraced ground, They reared the marble-pillared wall That fenced the mansion round. Far stretched beyond the village bound The Master's broad domain; With page and valet, horse and hound, He kept a goodly train. And, all the midland county through, The ploughman stopped to gaze Whene'er his chariot swept in view Behind the shining bays, With mute obeisance, grave and slow, Repaid by nod polite,-- For such the way with high and low Till after Concord fight. Nor less to courtly circles known That graced the three-hilled town With far-off splendors of the Throne, And glimmerings from the Crown; Wise Phipps, who held the seals of state For Shirley over sea; Brave Knowles, whose press-gang moved of late The King Street mob's decree; And judges grave, and colonels grand, Fair dames and stately men, The mighty people of the land, The "World" of there and then. 'T was strange no Chloe's "beauteous Form," And "Eyes' celestial Blew," This Strephon of the West could warm, No Nymph his Heart subdue. Perchance he wooed as gallants use, Whom fleeting loves enchain, But still unfettered, free to choose, Would brook no bridle-rein. He saw the fairest of the fair, But smiled alike on all; No band his roving foot might snare, No ring his hand enthrall. PART SECOND THE MAIDEN Why seeks the knight that rocky cape Beyond the Bay of Lynn? What chance his wayward course may shape To reach its village inn? No story tells; whate'er we guess, The past lies deaf and still, But Fate, who rules to blight or bless, Can lead us where she will. Make way! Sir Harry's coach and four, And liveried grooms that ride! They cross the ferry, touch the shore On Winnisimmet's side. They hear the wash on Chelsea Beach,-- The level marsh they pass, Where miles on miles the desert reach Is rough with bitter grass. The shining horses foam and pant, And now the smells begin Of fishy Swampscott, salt Nahant, And leather-scented Lynn. Next, on their left, the slender spires And glittering vanes that crown The home of Salem's frugal sires, The old, witch-haunted town. So onward, o'er the rugged way That runs through rocks and sand, Showered by the tempest-driven spray, From bays on either hand, That shut between their outstretched arms The crews of Marblehead, The lords of ocean's watery farms, Who plough the waves for bread. At last the ancient inn appears, The spreading elm below, Whose flapping sign these fifty years Has seesawed to and fro. How fair the azure fields in sight Before the low-browed inn The tumbling billows fringe with light The crescent shore of Lynn; Nahant thrusts outward through the waves Her arm of yellow sand, And breaks the roaring surge that braves The gauntlet on her hand; With eddying whirl the waters lock Yon treeless mound forlorn, The sharp-winged sea-fowl's breeding-rock, That fronts the Spouting Horn; Then free the white-sailed shallops glide, And wide the ocean smiles, Till, shoreward bent, his streams divide The two bare Misery Isles. The master's silent signal stays The wearied cavalcade; The coachman reins his smoking bays Beneath the elm-tree's shade. A gathering on the village green! The cocked-hats crowd to see, On legs in ancient velveteen, With buckles at the knee. A clustering round the tavern-door Of square-toed village boys, Still wearing, as their grandsires wore, The old-world corduroys! A scampering at the "Fountain" inn,--- A rush of great and small,-- With hurrying servants' mingled din And screaming matron's call. Poor Agnes! with her work half done They caught her unaware; As, humbly, like a praying nun, She knelt upon the stair; Bent o'er the steps, with lowliest mien She knelt, but not to pray,-- Her little hands must keep them clean, And wash their stains away. A foot, an ankle, bare and white, Her girlish shapes betrayed,-- "Ha! Nymphs and Graces!" spoke the Knight; "Look up, my beauteous Maid!" She turned,--a reddening rose in bud, Its calyx half withdrawn,-- Her cheek on fire with damasked blood Of girlhood's glowing dawn! He searched her features through and through, As royal lovers look On lowly maidens, when they woo Without the ring and book. "Come hither, Fair one! Here, my Sweet! Nay, prithee, look not down! Take this to shoe those little feet,"-- He tossed a silver crown. A sudden paleness struck her brow,-- A swifter blush succeeds; It burns her cheek; it kindles now Beneath her golden beads. She flitted, but the glittering eye Still sought the lovely face. Who was she? What, and whence? and why Doomed to such menial place? A skipper's daughter,--so they said,-- Left orphan by the gale That cost the fleet of Marblehead And Gloucester thirty sail. Ah! many a lonely home is found Along the Essex shore, That cheered its goodman outward bound, And sees his face no more! "Not so," the matron whispered,--"sure No orphan girl is she,-- The Surriage folk are deadly poor Since Edward left the sea, "And Mary, with her growing brood, Has work enough to do To find the children clothes and food With Thomas, John, and Hugh. "This girl of Mary's, growing tall,-- (Just turned her sixteenth year,)-- To earn her bread and help them all, Would work as housemaid here." So Agnes, with her golden beads, And naught beside as dower, Grew at the wayside with the weeds, Herself a garden-flower. 'T was strange, 't was sad,--so fresh, so fair! Thus Pity's voice began. Such grace! an angel's shape and air! The half-heard whisper ran. For eyes could see in George's time, As now in later days, And lips could shape, in prose and rhyme, The honeyed breath of praise. No time to woo! The train must go Long ere the sun is down, To reach, before the night-winds blow, The many-steepled town. 'T is midnight,--street and square are still; Dark roll the whispering waves That lap the piers beneath the hill Ridged thick with ancient graves. Ah, gentle sleep! thy hand will smooth The weary couch of pain, When all thy poppies fail to soothe The lover's throbbing brain! 'T is morn,--the orange-mantled sun Breaks through the fading gray, And long and loud the Castle gun Peals o'er the glistening bay. "Thank God 't is day!" With eager eye He hails the morning shine:-- "If art can win, or gold can buy, The maiden shall be mine!" PART THIRD THE CONQUEST "Who saw this hussy when she came? What is the wench, and who?" They whisper. "Agnes--is her name? Pray what has she to do?" The housemaids parley at the gate, The scullions on the stair, And in the footmen's grave debate The butler deigns to share. Black Dinah, stolen when a child, And sold on Boston pier, Grown up in service, petted, spoiled, Speaks in the coachman's ear: "What, all this household at his will? And all are yet too few? More servants, and more servants still,-- This pert young madam too!" "_Servant!_ fine servant!" laughed aloud The man of coach and steeds; "She looks too fair, she steps too proud, This girl with golden beads! "I tell you, you may fret and frown, And call her what you choose, You 'll find my Lady in her gown, Your Mistress in her shoes!" Ah, gentle maidens, free from blame, God grant you never know The little whisper, loud with shame, That makes the world your foe! Why tell the lordly flatterer's art, That won the maiden's ear,-- The fluttering of the frightened heart, The blush, the smile, the tear? Alas! it were the saddening tale That every language knows,-- The wooing wind, the yielding sail, The sunbeam and the rose. And now the gown of sober stuff Has changed to fair brocade, With broidered hem, and hanging cuff, And flower of silken braid; And clasped around her blanching wrist A jewelled bracelet shines, Her flowing tresses' massive twist A glittering net confines; And mingling with their truant wave A fretted chain is hung; But ah! the gift her mother gave,-- Its beads are all unstrung! Her place is at the master's board, Where none disputes her claim; She walks beside the mansion's lord, His bride in all but name. The busy tongues have ceased to talk, Or speak in softened tone, So gracious in her daily walk The angel light has shown. No want that kindness may relieve Assails her heart in vain, The lifting of a ragged sleeve Will check her palfrey's rein. A thoughtful calm, a quiet grace In every movement shown, Reveal her moulded for the place She may not call her own. And, save that on her youthful brow There broods a shadowy care, No matron sealed with holy vow In all the land so fair. PART FOURTH THE RESCUE A ship comes foaming up the bay, Along the pier she glides; Before her furrow melts away, A courier mounts and rides. "Haste, Haste, post Haste!" the letters bear; "Sir Harry Frankland, These." Sad news to tell the loving pair! The knight must cross the seas. "Alas! we part!"--the lips that spoke Lost all their rosy red, As when a crystal cup is broke, And all its wine is shed. "Nay, droop not thus,--where'er," he cried, "I go by land or sea, My love, my life, my joy, my pride, Thy place is still by me!" Through town and city, far and wide, Their wandering feet have strayed, From Alpine lake to ocean tide, And cold Sierra's shade. At length they see the waters gleam Amid the fragrant bowers Where Lisbon mirrors in the stream Her belt of ancient towers. Red is the orange on its bough, To-morrow's sun shall fling O'er Cintra's hazel-shaded brow The flush of April's wing. The streets are loud with noisy mirth, They dance on every green; The morning's dial marks the birth Of proud Braganza's queen. At eve beneath their pictured dome The gilded courtiers throng; The broad moidores have cheated Rome Of all her lords of song. AH! Lisbon dreams not of the day-- Pleased with her painted scenes-- When all her towers shall slide away As now these canvas screens! The spring has passed, the summer fled, And yet they linger still, Though autumn's rustling leaves have spread The flank of Cintra's hill. The town has learned their Saxon name, And touched their English gold, Nor tale of doubt nor hint of blame From over sea is told. Three hours the first November dawn Has climbed with feeble ray Through mists like heavy curtains drawn Before the darkened day. How still the muffled echoes sleep! Hark! hark! a hollow sound,-- A noise like chariots rumbling deep Beneath the solid ground. The channel lifts, the water slides And bares its bar of sand, Anon a mountain billow strides And crashes o'er the land. The turrets lean, the steeples reel Like masts on ocean's swell, And clash a long discordant peal, The death-doomed city's knell. The pavement bursts, the earth upheaves Beneath the staggering town! The turrets crack--the castle cleaves-- The spires come rushing down. Around, the lurid mountains glow With strange unearthly gleams; While black abysses gape below, Then close in jagged seams. And all is over. Street and square In ruined heaps are piled; Ah! where is she, so frail, so fair, Amid the tumult wild? Unscathed, she treads the wreck-piled street, Whose narrow gaps afford A pathway for her bleeding feet, To seek her absent lord. A temple's broken walls arrest Her wild and wandering eyes; Beneath its shattered portal pressed, Her lord unconscious lies. The power that living hearts obey Shall lifeless blocks withstand? Love led her footsteps where he lay,-- Love nerves her woman's hand. One cry,--the marble shaft she grasps,-- Up heaves the ponderous stone:-- He breathes,--her fainting form he clasps,-- Her life has bought his own! PART FIFTH THE REWARD How like the starless night of death Our being's brief eclipse, When faltering heart and failing breath Have bleached the fading lips! The earth has folded like a wave, And thrice a thousand score, Clasped, shroudless, in their closing grave, The sun shall see no more! She lives! What guerdon shall repay His debt of ransomed life? One word can charm all wrongs away,-- The sacred name of WIFE! The love that won her girlish charms Must shield her matron fame, And write beneath the Frankland arms The village beauty's name. Go, call the priest! no vain delay Shall dim the sacred ring! Who knows what change the passing day, The fleeting hour, may bring? Before the holy altar bent, There kneels a goodly pair; A stately man, of high descent, A woman, passing fair. No jewels lend the blinding sheen That meaner beauty needs, But on her bosom heaves unseen A string of golden beads. The vow is spoke,--the prayer is said,-- And with a gentle pride The Lady Agnes lifts her head, Sir Harry Frankland's bride. No more her faithful heart shall bear Those griefs so meekly borne,-- The passing sneer, the freezing stare, The icy look of scorn; No more the blue-eyed English dames Their haughty lips shall curl, Whene'er a hissing whisper names The poor New England girl. But stay!--his mother's haughty brow,-- The pride of ancient race,-- Will plighted faith, and holy vow, Win back her fond embrace? Too well she knew the saddening tale Of love no vow had blest, That turned his blushing honors pale And stained his knightly crest. They seek his Northern home,--alas He goes alone before;-- His own dear Agnes may not pass The proud, ancestral door. He stood before the stately dame; He spoke; she calmly heard, But not to pity, nor to blame; She breathed no single word. He told his love,--her faith betrayed; She heard with tearless eyes; Could she forgive the erring maid? She stared in cold surprise. How fond her heart, he told,--how true; The haughty eyelids fell;-- The kindly deeds she loved to do; She murmured, "It is well." But when he told that fearful day, And how her feet were led To where entombed in life he lay, The breathing with the dead, And how she bruised her tender breasts Against the crushing stone, That still the strong-armed clown protests No man can lift alone,-- Oh! then the frozen spring was broke; By turns she wept and smiled;-- "Sweet Agnes!" so the mother spoke, "God bless my angel child. "She saved thee from the jaws of death,-- 'T is thine to right her wrongs; I tell thee,--I, who gave thee breath,-- To her thy life belongs!" Thus Agnes won her noble name, Her lawless lover's hand; The lowly maiden so became A lady in the land! PART SIXTH CONCLUSION The tale is done; it little needs To track their after ways, And string again the golden beads Of love's uncounted days. They leave the fair ancestral isle For bleak New England's shore; How gracious is the courtly smile Of all who frowned before! Again through Lisbon's orange bowers They watch the river's gleam, And shudder as her shadowy towers Shake in the trembling stream. Fate parts at length the fondest pair; His cheek, alas! grows pale; The breast that trampling death could spare His noiseless shafts assail. He longs to change the heaven of blue For England's clouded sky,-- To breathe the air his boyhood knew; He seeks then but to die. Hard by the terraced hillside town, Where healing streamlets run, Still sparkling with their old renown,-- The "Waters of the Sun,"-- The Lady Agnes raised the stone That marks his honored grave, And there Sir Harry sleeps alone By Wiltshire Avon's wave. The home of early love was dear; She sought its peaceful shade, And kept her state for many a year, With none to make afraid. At last the evil days were come That saw the red cross fall; She hears the rebels' rattling drum,-- Farewell to Frankland Hall! I tell you, as my tale began, The hall is standing still; And you, kind listener, maid or man, May see it if you will. The box is glistening huge and green, Like trees the lilacs grow, Three elms high-arching still are seen, And one lies stretched below. The hangings, rough with velvet flowers, Flap on the latticed wall; And o'er the mossy ridge-pole towers The rock-hewn chimney tall. The doors on mighty hinges clash With massive bolt and bar, The heavy English-moulded sash Scarce can the night-winds jar. Behold the chosen room he sought Alone, to fast and pray, Each year, as chill November brought The dismal earthquake day. There hung the rapier blade he wore, Bent in its flattened sheath; The coat the shrieking woman tore Caught in her clenching teeth;-- The coat with tarnished silver lace She snapped at as she slid, And down upon her death-white face Crashed the huge coffin's lid. A graded terrace yet remains; If on its turf you stand And look along the wooded plains That stretch on either hand, The broken forest walls define A dim, receding view, Where, on the far horizon's line, He cut his vista through. If further story you shall crave, Or ask for living proof, Go see old Julia, born a slave Beneath Sir Harry's roof. She told me half that I have told, And she remembers well The mansion as it looked of old Before its glories fell;-- The box, when round the terraced square Its glossy wall was drawn; The climbing vines, the snow-balls fair, The roses on the lawn. And Julia says, with truthful look Stamped on her wrinkled face, That in her own black hands she took The coat with silver lace. And you may hold the story light, Or, if you like, believe; But there it was, the woman's bite,-- A mouthful from the sleeve. Now go your ways;--I need not tell The moral of my rhyme; But, youths and maidens, ponder well This tale of olden time! THE PLOUGHMAN ANNIVERSARY OF THE BERKSHIRE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, OCTOBER 4, 1849 CLEAR the brown path, to meet his coulter's gleam! Lo! on he comes, behind his smoking team, With toil's bright dew-drops on his sunburnt brow, The lord of earth, the hero of the plough! First in the field before the reddening sun, Last in the shadows when the day is done, Line after line, along the bursting sod, Marks the broad acres where his feet have trod; Still, where he treads, the stubborn clods divide, The smooth, fresh furrow opens deep and wide; Matted and dense the tangled turf upheaves, Mellow and dark the ridgy cornfield cleaves; Up the steep hillside, where the laboring train Slants the long track that scores the level plain; Through the moist valley, clogged with oozing clay, The patient convoy breaks its destined way; At every turn the loosening chains resound, The swinging ploughshare circles glistening round, Till the wide field one billowy waste appears, And wearied hands unbind the panting steers. These are the hands whose sturdy labor brings The peasant's food, the golden pomp of kings; This is the page, whose letters shall be seen Changed by the sun to words of living green; This is the scholar, whose immortal pen Spells the first lesson hunger taught to men; These are the lines which heaven-commanded Toil Shows on his deed,--the charter of the soil. O gracious Mother, whose benignant breast Wakes us to life, and lulls us all to rest, How thy sweet features, kind to every clime, Mock with their smile the wrinkled front of time We stain thy flowers,--they blossom o'er the dead; We rend thy bosom, and it gives us bread; O'er the red field that trampling strife has torn, Waves the green plumage of thy tasselled corn; Our maddening conflicts sear thy fairest plain, Still thy soft answer is the growing grain. Yet, O our Mother, while uncounted charms Steal round our hearts in thine embracing arms, Let not our virtues in thy love decay, And thy fond sweetness waste our strength away. No! by these hills, whose banners now displayed In blazing cohorts Autumn has arrayed; By yon twin summits, on whose splintery crests The tossing hemlocks hold the eagles' nests; By these fair plains the mountain circle screens, And feeds with streamlets from its dark ravines, True to their home, these faithful arms shall toil To crown with peace their own untainted soil; And, true to God, to freedom, to mankind, If her chained bandogs Faction shall unbind, These stately forms, that bending even now Bowed their strong manhood to the humble plough, Shall rise erect, the guardians of the land, The same stern iron in the same right hand, Till o'er their hills the shouts of triumph run, The sword has rescued what the ploughshare won! SPRING WINTER is past; the heart of Nature warms Beneath the wrecks of unresisted storms; Doubtful at first, suspected more than seen, The southern slopes are fringed with tender green; On sheltered banks, beneath the dripping eaves, Spring's earliest nurslings spread their glowing leaves, Bright with the hues from wider pictures won, White, azure, golden,--drift, or sky, or sun,-- The snowdrop, bearing on her patient breast The frozen trophy torn from Winter's crest; The violet, gazing on the arch of blue Till her own iris wears its deepened hue; The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mould Naked and shivering with his cup of gold. Swelled with new life, the darkening elm on high Prints her thick buds against the spotted sky On all her boughs the stately chestnut cleaves The gummy shroud that wraps her embryo leaves; The house-fly, stealing from his narrow grave, Drugged with the opiate that November gave, Beats with faint wing against the sunny pane, Or crawls, tenacious, o'er its lucid plain; From shaded chinks of lichen-crusted walls, In languid curves, the gliding serpent crawls; The bog's green harper, thawing from his sleep, Twangs a hoarse note and tries a shortened leap; On floating rails that face the softening noons The still shy turtles range their dark platoons, Or, toiling aimless o'er the mellowing fields, Trail through the grass their tessellated shields. At last young April, ever frail and fair, Wooed by her playmate with the golden hair, Chased to the margin of receding floods O'er the soft meadows starred with opening buds, In tears and blushes sighs herself away, And hides her cheek beneath the flowers of May. Then the proud tulip lights her beacon blaze, Her clustering curls the hyacinth displays; O'er her tall blades the crested fleur-de-lis, Like blue-eyed Pallas, towers erect and free; With yellower flames the lengthened sunshine glows, And love lays bare the passion-breathing rose; Queen of the lake, along its reedy verge The rival lily hastens to emerge, Her snowy shoulders glistening as she strips, Till morn is sultan of her parted lips. Then bursts the song from every leafy glade, The yielding season's bridal serenade; Then flash the wings returning Summer calls Through the deep arches of her forest halls,-- The bluebird, breathing from his azure plumes The fragrance borrowed where the myrtle blooms; The thrush, poor wanderer, dropping meekly down, Clad in his remnant of autumnal brown; The oriole, drifting like a flake of fire Rent by a whirlwind from a blazing spire. The robin, jerking his spasmodic throat, Repeats, imperious, his staccato note; The crack-brained bobolink courts his crazy mate, Poised on a bulrush tipsy with his weight; Nay, in his cage the lone canary sings, Feels the soft air, and spreads his idle wings. Why dream I here within these caging walls, Deaf to her voice, while blooming Nature calls; Peering and gazing with insatiate looks Through blinding lenses, or in wearying books? Off, gloomy spectres of the shrivelled past! Fly with the leaves that fill the autumn blast Ye imps of Science, whose relentless chains Lock the warm tides within these living veins, Close your dim cavern, while its captive strays Dazzled and giddy in the morning's blaze! THE STUDY YET in the darksome crypt I left so late, Whose only altar is its rusted grate,-- Sepulchral, rayless, joyless as it seems, Shamed by the glare of May's refulgent beams,-- While the dim seasons dragged their shrouded train, Its paler splendors were not quite in vain. From these dull bars the cheerful firelight's glow Streamed through the casement o'er the spectral snow; Here, while the night-wind wreaked its frantic will On the loose ocean and the rock-bound hill, Rent the cracked topsail from its quivering yard, And rived the oak a thousand storms had scarred, Fenced by these walls the peaceful taper shone, Nor felt a breath to slant its trembling cone. Not all unblest the mild interior scene When the red curtain spread its falling screen; O'er some light task the lonely hours were past, And the long evening only flew too fast; Or the wide chair its leathern arms would lend In genial welcome to some easy friend, Stretched on its bosom with relaxing nerves, Slow moulding, plastic, to its hollow curves; Perchance indulging, if of generous creed, In brave Sir Walter's dream-compelling weed. Or, happier still, the evening hour would bring To the round table its expected ring, And while the punch-bowl's sounding depths were stirred,-- Its silver cherubs smiling as they heard,-- Our hearts would open, as at evening's hour The close-sealed primrose frees its hidden flower. Such the warm life this dim retreat has known, Not quite deserted when its guests were flown; Nay, filled with friends, an unobtrusive set, Guiltless of calls and cards and etiquette, Ready to answer, never known to ask, Claiming no service, prompt for every task. On those dark shelves no housewife hand profanes, O'er his mute files the monarch folio reigns; A mingled race, the wreck of chance and time, That talk all tongues and breathe of every clime, Each knows his place, and each may claim his part In some quaint corner of his master's heart. This old Decretal, won from Moss's hoards, Thick-leaved, brass-cornered, ribbed with oaken boards, Stands the gray patriarch of the graver rows, Its fourth ripe century narrowing to its close; Not daily conned, but glorious still to view, With glistening letters wrought in red and blue. There towers Stagira's all-embracing sage, The Aldine anchor on his opening page; There sleep the births of Plato's heavenly mind, In yon dark tomb by jealous clasps confused, "Olim e libris" (dare I call it mine?) Of Yale's grave Head and Killingworth's divine! In those square sheets the songs of Maro fill The silvery types of smooth-leaved Baskerville; High over all, in close, compact array, Their classic wealth the Elzevirs display. In lower regions of the sacred space Range the dense volumes of a humbler race; There grim chirurgeons all their mysteries teach, In spectral pictures, or in crabbed speech; Harvey and Haller, fresh from Nature's page, Shoulder the dreamers of an earlier age, Lully and Geber, and the learned crew That loved to talk of all they could not do. Why count the rest,--those names of later days That many love, and all agree to praise,-- Or point the titles, where a glance may read The dangerous lines of party or of creed? Too well, perchance, the chosen list would show What few may care and none can claim to know. Each has his features, whose exterior seal A brush may copy, or a sunbeam steal; Go to his study,--on the nearest shelf Stands the mosaic portrait of himself. What though for months the tranquil dust descends, Whitening the heads of these mine ancient friends, While the damp offspring of the modern press Flaunts on my table with its pictured dress; Not less I love each dull familiar face, Nor less should miss it from the appointed place; I snatch the book, along whose burning leaves His scarlet web our wild romancer weaves, Yet, while proud Hester's fiery pangs I share, My old MAGNALIA must be standing _there_! THE BELLS WHEN o'er the street the morning peal is flung From yon tall belfry with the brazen tongue, Its wide vibrations, wafted by the gale, To each far listener tell a different tale. The sexton, stooping to the quivering floor Till the great caldron spills its brassy roar, Whirls the hot axle, counting, one by one, Each dull concussion, till his task is done. Toil's patient daughter, when the welcome note Clangs through the silence from the steeple's throat, Streams, a white unit, to the checkered street, Demure, but guessing whom she soon shall meet; The bell, responsive to her secret flame, With every note repeats her lover's name. The lover, tenant of the neighboring lane, Sighing, and fearing lest he sigh in vain, Hears the stern accents, as they come and go, Their only burden one despairing No! Ocean's rough child, whom many a shore has known Ere homeward breezes swept him to his own, Starts at the echo as it circles round, A thousand memories kindling with the sound; The early favorite's unforgotten charms, Whose blue initials stain his tawny arms; His first farewell, the flapping canvas spread, The seaward streamers crackling overhead, His kind, pale mother, not ashamed to weep Her first-born's bridal with the haggard deep, While the brave father stood with tearless eye, Smiling and choking with his last good-by. 'T is but a wave, whose spreading circle beats, With the same impulse, every nerve it meets, Yet who shall count the varied shapes that ride On the round surge of that aerial tide! O child of earth! If floating sounds like these Steal from thyself their power to wound or please, If here or there thy changing will inclines, As the bright zodiac shifts its rolling signs, Look at thy heart, and when its depths are known, Then try thy brother's, judging by thine own, But keep thy wisdom to the narrower range, While its own standards are the sport of change, Nor count us rebels when we disobey The passing breath that holds thy passion's sway. NON-RESISTANCE PERHAPS too far in these considerate days Has patience carried her submissive ways; Wisdom has taught us to be calm and meek, To take one blow, and turn the other cheek; It is not written what a man shall do, If the rude caitiff smite the other too! Land of our fathers, in thine hour of need God help thee, guarded by the passive creed! As the lone pilgrim trusts to beads and cowl, When through the forest rings the gray wolf's howl; As the deep galleon trusts her gilded prow When the black corsair slants athwart her bow; As the poor pheasant, with his peaceful mien, Trusts to his feathers, shining golden-green, When the dark plumage with the crimson beak Has rustled shadowy from its splintered peak,-- So trust thy friends, whose babbling tongues would charm The lifted sabre from thy foeman's arm, Thy torches ready for the answering peal From bellowing fort and thunder-freighted keel! THE MORAL BULLY YON whey-faced brother, who delights to wear A weedy flux of ill-conditioned hair, Seems of the sort that in a crowded place One elbows freely into smallest space; A timid creature, lax of knee and hip, Whom small disturbance whitens round the lip; One of those harmless spectacled machines, The Holy-Week of Protestants convenes; Whom school-boys question if their walk transcends The last advices of maternal friends; Whom John, obedient to his master's sign, Conducts, laborious, up to ninety-nine, While Peter, glistening with luxurious scorn, Husks his white ivories like an ear of corn; Dark in the brow and bilious in the cheek, Whose yellowish linen flowers but once a week, Conspicuous, annual, in their threadbare suits, And the laced high-lows which they call their boots, Well mayst thou shun that dingy front severe, But him, O stranger, him thou canst not _fear_. Be slow to judge, and slower to despise, Man of broad shoulders and heroic size The tiger, writhing from the boa's rings, Drops at the fountain where the cobra stings. In that lean phantom, whose extended glove Points to the text of universal love, Behold the master that can tame thee down To crouch, the vassal of his Sunday frown; His velvet throat against thy corded wrist, His loosened tongue against thy doubled fist. The MORAL BULLY, though he never swears, Nor kicks intruders down his entry stairs, Though meekness plants his backward-sloping hat, And non-resistance ties his white cravat, Though his black broadcloth glories to be seen In the same plight with Shylock's gaberdine, Hugs the same passion to his narrow breast That heaves the cuirass on the trooper's chest, Hears the same hell-hounds yelling in his rear That chase from port the maddened buccaneer, Feels the same comfort while his acrid words Turn the sweet milk of kindness into curds, Or with grim logic prove, beyond debate, That all we love is worthiest of our hate, As the scarred ruffian of the pirate's deck, When his long swivel rakes the staggering wreck! Heaven keep us all! Is every rascal clown Whose arm is stronger free to knock us down? Has every scarecrow, whose cachectic soul Seems fresh from Bedlam, airing on parole, Who, though he carries but a doubtful trace Of angel visits on his hungry face, From lack of marrow or the coins to pay, Has dodged some vices in a shabby way, The right to stick us with his cutthroat terms, And bait his homilies with his brother worms? THE MIND'S DIET No life worth naming ever comes to good If always nourished on the selfsame food; The creeping mite may live so if he please, And feed on Stilton till he turns to cheese, But cool Magendie proves beyond a doubt, If mammals try it, that their eyes drop out. No reasoning natures find it safe to feed, For their sole diet, on a single creed; It spoils their eyeballs while it spares their tongues, And starves the heart to feed the noisy lungs. When the first larvae on the elm are seen, The crawling wretches, like its leaves, are green; Ere chill October shakes the latest down, They, like the foliage, change their tint to brown; On the blue flower a bluer flower you spy, You stretch to pluck it--'tis a butterfly; The flattened tree-toads so resemble bark, They're hard to find as Ethiops in the dark; The woodcock, stiffening to fictitious mud, Cheats the young sportsman thirsting for his blood; So by long living on a single lie, Nay, on one truth, will creatures get its dye; Red, yellow, green, they take their subject's hue,-- Except when squabbling turns them black and blue! OUR LIMITATIONS WE trust and fear, we question and believe, From life's dark threads a trembling faith to weave, Frail as the web that misty night has spun, Whose dew-gemmed awnings glitter in the sun. While the calm centuries spell their lessons out, Each truth we conquer spreads the realm of doubt; When Sinai's summit was Jehovah's throne, The chosen Prophet knew his voice alone; When Pilate's hall that awful question heard, The Heavenly Captive answered not a word. Eternal Truth! beyond our hopes and fears Sweep the vast orbits of thy myriad spheres! From age to age, while History carves sublime On her waste rock the flaming curves of time, How the wild swayings of our planet show That worlds unseen surround the world we know. THE OLD PLAYER THE curtain rose; in thunders long and loud The galleries rung; the veteran actor bowed. In flaming line the telltales of the stage Showed on his brow the autograph of age; Pale, hueless waves amid his clustered hair, And umbered shadows, prints of toil and care; Round the wide circle glanced his vacant eye,-- He strove to speak,--his voice was but a sigh. Year after year had seen its short-lived race Flit past the scenes and others take their place; Yet the old prompter watched his accents still, His name still flaunted on the evening's bill. Heroes, the monarchs of the scenic floor, Had died in earnest and were heard no more; Beauties, whose cheeks such roseate bloom o'er-spread They faced the footlights in unborrowed red, Had faded slowly through successive shades To gray duennas, foils of younger maids; Sweet voices lost the melting tones that start With Southern throbs the sturdy Saxon heart, While fresh sopranos shook the painted sky With their long, breathless, quivering locust-cry. Yet there he stood,--the man of other days, In the clear present's full, unsparing blaze, As on the oak a faded leaf that clings While a new April spreads its burnished wings. How bright yon rows that soared in triple tier, Their central sun the flashing chandelier! How dim the eye that sought with doubtful aim Some friendly smile it still might dare to claim How fresh these hearts! his own how worn and cold! Such the sad thoughts that long-drawn sigh had told. No word yet faltered on his trembling tongue; Again, again, the crashing galleries rung. As the old guardsman at the bugle's blast Hears in its strain the echoes of the past, So, as the plaudits rolled and thundered round, A life of memories startled at the sound. He lived again,--the page of earliest days,-- Days of small fee and parsimonious praise; Then lithe young Romeo--hark that silvered tone, From those smooth lips--alas! they were his own. Then the bronzed Moor, with all his love and woe, Told his strange tale of midnight melting snow; And dark--plumed Hamlet, with his cloak and blade, Looked on the royal ghost, himself a shade. All in one flash, his youthful memories came, Traced in bright hues of evanescent flame, As the spent swimmer's in the lifelong dream, While the last bubble rises through the stream. Call him not old, whose visionary brain Holds o'er the past its undivided reign. For him in vain the envious seasons roll Who bears eternal summer in his soul. If yet the minstrel's song, the poet's lay, Spring with her birds, or children at their play, Or maiden's smile, or heavenly dream of art, Stir the few life-drops creeping round his heart, Turn to the record where his years are told,-- Count his gray hairs,--they cannot make him old! What magic power has changed the faded mime? One breath of memory on the dust of time. As the last window in the buttressed wall Of some gray minster tottering to its fall, Though to the passing crowd its hues are spread, A dull mosaic, yellow, green, and red, Viewed from within, a radiant glory shows When through its pictured screen the sunlight flows, And kneeling pilgrims on its storied pane See angels glow in every shapeless stain; So streamed the vision through his sunken eye, Clad in the splendors of his morning sky. All the wild hopes his eager boyhood knew, All the young fancies riper years proved true, The sweet, low-whispered words, the winning glance From queens of song, from Houris of the dance, Wealth's lavish gift, and Flattery's soothing phrase, And Beauty's silence when her blush was praise, And melting Pride, her lashes wet with tears, Triumphs and banquets, wreaths and crowns and cheers, Pangs of wild joy that perish on the tongue, And all that poets dream, but leave unsung! In every heart some viewless founts are fed From far-off hillsides where the dews were shed; On the worn features of the weariest face Some youthful memory leaves its hidden trace, As in old gardens left by exiled kings The marble basins tell of hidden springs, But, gray with dust, and overgrown with weeds, Their choking jets the passer little heeds, Till time's revenges break their seals away, And, clad in rainbow light, the waters play. Good night, fond dreamer! let the curtain fall The world's a stage, and we are players all. A strange rehearsal! Kings without their crowns, And threadbare lords, and jewel-wearing clowns, Speak the vain words that mock their throbbing hearts, As Want, stern prompter! spells them out their parts. The tinselled hero whom we praise and pay Is twice an actor in a twofold play. We smile at children when a painted screen Seems to their simple eyes a real scene; Ask the poor hireling, who has left his throne To seek the cheerless home he calls his own, Which of his double lives most real seems, The world of solid fact or scenic dreams? Canvas, or clouds,--the footlights, or the spheres,-- The play of two short hours, or seventy years? Dream on! Though Heaven may woo our open eyes, Through their closed lids we look on fairer skies; Truth is for other worlds, and hope for this; The cheating future lends the present's bliss; Life is a running shade, with fettered hands, That chases phantoms over shifting sands; Death a still spectre on a marble seat, With ever clutching palms and shackled feet; The airy shapes that mock life's slender chain, The flying joys he strives to clasp in vain, Death only grasps; to live is to pursue,-- Dream on! there 's nothing but illusion true! A POEM DEDICATION OF THE PITTSFIELD CEMETERY, SEPTEMBER 9,1850 ANGEL of Death! extend thy silent reign! Stretch thy dark sceptre o'er this new domain No sable car along the winding road Has borne to earth its unresisting load; No sudden mound has risen yet to show Where the pale slumberer folds his arms below; No marble gleams to bid his memory live In the brief lines that hurrying Time can give; Yet, O Destroyer! from thy shrouded throne Look on our gift; this realm is all thine own! Fair is the scene; its sweetness oft beguiled From their dim paths the children of the wild; The dark-haired maiden loved its grassy dells, The feathered warrior claimed its wooded swells, Still on its slopes the ploughman's ridges show The pointed flints that left his fatal bow, Chipped with rough art and slow barbarian toil,-- Last of his wrecks that strews the alien soil! Here spread the fields that heaped their ripened store Till the brown arms of Labor held no more; The scythe's broad meadow with its dusky blush; The sickle's harvest with its velvet flush; The green-haired maize, her silken tresses laid, In soft luxuriance, on her harsh brocade; The gourd that swells beneath her tossing plume; The coarser wheat that rolls in lakes of bloom,-- Its coral stems and milk-white flowers alive With the wide murmurs of the scattered hive; Here glowed the apple with the pencilled streak Of morning painted on its southern cheek; The pear's long necklace strung with golden drops, Arched, like the banian, o'er its pillared props; Here crept the growths that paid the laborer's care With the cheap luxuries wealth consents to spare; Here sprang the healing herbs which could not save The hand that reared them from the neighboring grave. Yet all its varied charms, forever free From task and tribute, Labor yields to thee No more, when April sheds her fitful rain, The sower's hand shall cast its flying grain; No more, when Autumn strews the flaming leaves, The reaper's band shall gird its yellow sheaves; For thee alike the circling seasons flow Till the first blossoms heave the latest snow. In the stiff clod below the whirling drifts, In the loose soil the springing herbage lifts, In the hot dust beneath the parching weeds, Life's withering flower shall drop its shrivelled seeds; Its germ entranced in thy unbreathing sleep Till what thou sowest mightier angels reap! Spirit of Beauty! let thy graces blend With loveliest Nature all that Art can lend. Come from the bowers where Summer's life-blood flows Through the red lips of June's half-open rose, Dressed in bright hues, the loving sunshine's dower; For tranquil Nature owns no mourning flower. Come from the forest where the beech's screen Bars the fierce moonbeam with its flakes of green; Stay the rude axe that bares the shadowy plains, Stanch the deep wound That dries the maple's veins. Come with the stream whose silver-braided rills Fling their unclasping bracelets from the hills, Till in one gleam, beneath the forest's wings, Melts the white glitter of a hundred springs. Come from the steeps where look majestic forth From their twin thrones the Giants of the North On the huge shapes, that, crouching at their knees, Stretch their broad shoulders, rough with shaggy trees. Through the wide waste of ether, not in vain, Their softened gaze shall reach our distant plain; There, while the mourner turns his aching eyes On the blue mounds that print the bluer skies, Nature shall whisper that the fading view Of mightiest grief may wear a heavenly hue. Cherub of Wisdom! let thy marble page Leave its sad lesson, new to every age; Teach us to live, not grudging every breath To the chill winds that waft us on to death, But ruling calmly every pulse it warms, And tempering gently every word it forms. Seraph of Love! in heaven's adoring zone, Nearest of all around the central throne, While with soft hands the pillowed turf we spread That soon shall hold us in its dreamless bed, With the low whisper,--Who shall first be laid In the dark chamber's yet unbroken shade?-- Let thy sweet radiance shine rekindled here, And all we cherish grow more truly dear. Here in the gates of Death's o'erhanging vault, Oh, teach us kindness for our brother's fault Lay all our wrongs beneath this peaceful sod, And lead our hearts to Mercy and its God. FATHER of all! in Death's relentless claim We read thy mercy by its sterner name; In the bright flower that decks the solemn bier, We see thy glory in its narrowed sphere; In the deep lessons that affliction draws, We trace the curves of thy encircling laws; In the long sigh that sets our spirits free, We own the love that calls us back to Thee! Through the hushed street, along the silent plain, The spectral future leads its mourning train, Dark with the shadows of uncounted bands, Where man's white lips and woman's wringing hands Track the still burden, rolling slow before, That love and kindness can protect no more; The smiling babe that, called to mortal strife, Shuts its meek eyes and drops its little life; The drooping child who prays in vain to live, And pleads for help its parent cannot give; The pride of beauty stricken in its flower; The strength of manhood broken in an hour; Age in its weakness, bowed by toil and care, Traced in sad lines beneath its silvered hair. The sun shall set, and heaven's resplendent spheres Gild the smooth turf unhallowed yet by tears, But ah! how soon the evening stars will shed Their sleepless light around the slumbering dead! Take them, O Father, in immortal trust! Ashes to ashes, dust to kindred dust, Till the last angel rolls the stone away, And a new morning brings eternal day! TO GOVERNOR SWAIN DEAR GOVERNOR, if my skiff might brave The winds that lift the ocean wave, The mountain stream that loops and swerves Through my broad meadow's channelled curves Should waft me on from bound to bound To where the River weds the Sound, The Sound should give me to the Sea, That to the Bay, the Bay to thee. It may not be; too long the track To follow down or struggle back. The sun has set on fair Naushon Long ere my western blaze is gone; The ocean disk is rolling dark In shadows round your swinging bark, While yet the yellow sunset fills The stream that scarfs my spruce-clad hills; The day-star wakes your island deer Long ere my barnyard chanticleer; Your mists are soaring in the blue While mine are sparks of glittering dew. It may not be; oh, would it might, Could I live o'er that glowing night! What golden hours would come to life, What goodly feats of peaceful strife,-- Such jests, that, drained of every joke, The very bank of language broke,-- Such deeds, that Laughter nearly died With stitches in his belted side; While Time, caught fast in pleasure's chain, His double goblet snapped in twain, And stood with half in either hand,-- Both brimming full,--but not of sand! It may not be; I strive in vain To break my slender household chain,-- Three pairs of little clasping hands, One voice, that whispers, not commands. Even while my spirit flies away, My gentle jailers murmur nay; All shapes of elemental wrath They raise along my threatened path; The storm grows black, the waters rise, The mountains mingle with the skies, The mad tornado scoops the ground, The midnight robber prowls around,-- Thus, kissing every limb they tie, They draw a knot and heave a sigh, Till, fairly netted in the toil, My feet are rooted to the soil. Only the soaring wish is free!-- And that, dear Governor, flies to thee! PITTSFIELD, 1851. TO AN ENGLISH FRIEND THE seed that wasteful autumn cast To waver on its stormy blast, Long o'er the wintry desert tost, Its living germ has never lost. Dropped by the weary tempest's wing, It feels the kindling ray of spring, And, starting from its dream of death, Pours on the air its perfumed breath. So, parted by the rolling flood, The love that springs from common blood Needs but a single sunlit hour Of mingling smiles to bud and flower; Unharmed its slumbering life has flown, From shore to shore, from zone to zone, Where summer's falling roses stain The tepid waves of Pontchartrain, Or where the lichen creeps below Katahdin's wreaths of whirling snow. Though fiery sun and stiffening cold May change the fair ancestral mould, No winter chills, no summer drains The life-blood drawn from English veins, Still bearing wheresoe'er it flows The love that with its fountain rose, Unchanged by space, unwronged by time, From age to age, from clime to clime! 1852. AFTER A LECTURE ON WORDSWORTH COME, spread your wings, as I spread mine, And leave the crowded hall For where the eyes of twilight shine O'er evening's western wall. These are the pleasant Berkshire hills, Each with its leafy crown; Hark! from their sides a thousand rills Come singing sweetly down. A thousand rills; they leap and shine, Strained through the shadowy nooks, Till, clasped in many a gathering twine, They swell a hundred brooks. A hundred brooks, and still they run With ripple, shade, and gleam, Till, clustering all their braids in one, They flow a single stream. A bracelet spun from mountain mist, A silvery sash unwound, With ox-bow curve and sinuous twist It writhes to reach the Sound. This is my bark,--a pygmy's ship; Beneath a child it rolls; Fear not,--one body makes it dip, But not a thousand souls. Float we the grassy banks between; Without an oar we glide; The meadows, drest in living green, Unroll on either side. Come, take the book we love so well, And let us read and dream We see whate'er its pages tell, And sail an English stream. Up to the clouds the lark has sprung, Still trilling as he flies; The linnet sings as there he sung; The unseen cuckoo cries, And daisies strew the banks along, And yellow kingcups shine, With cowslips, and a primrose throng, And humble celandine. Ah foolish dream! when Nature nursed Her daughter in the West, The fount was drained that opened first; She bared her other breast. On the young planet's orient shore Her morning hand she tried; Then turned the broad medallion o'er And stamped the sunset side. Take what she gives, her pine's tall stem, Her elm with hanging spray; She wears her mountain diadem Still in her own proud way. Look on the forests' ancient kings, The hemlock's towering pride Yon trunk had thrice a hundred rings, And fell before it died. Nor think that Nature saves her bloom And slights our grassy plain; For us she wears her court costume,-- Look on its broidered train; The lily with the sprinkled dots, Brands of the noontide beam; The cardinal, and the blood-red spots, Its double in the stream, As if some wounded eagle's breast, Slow throbbing o'er the plain, Had left its airy path impressed In drops of scarlet rain. And hark! and hark! the woodland rings; There thrilled the thrush's soul; And look! that flash of flamy wings,-- The fire-plumed oriole! Above, the hen-hawk swims and swoops, Flung from the bright, blue sky; Below, the robin hops, and whoops His piercing, Indian cry. Beauty runs virgin in the woods Robed in her rustic green, And oft a longing thought intrudes, As if we might have seen. Her every finger's every joint Ringed with some golden line, Poet whom Nature did anoint Had our wild home been thine. Yet think not so; Old England's blood Runs warm in English veins; But wafted o'er the icy flood Its better life remains. Our children know each wildwood smell, The bayberry and the fern, The man who does not know them well Is all too old to learn. Be patient! On the breathing page Still pants our hurried past; Pilgrim and soldier, saint and sage, The poet comes the last! Though still the lark-voiced matins ring The world has known so long; The wood-thrush of the West shall sing Earth's last sweet even-song! AFTER A LECTURE ON MOORE SHINE soft, ye trembling tears of light That strew the mourning skies; Hushed in the silent dews of night The harp of Erin lies. What though her thousand years have past Of poets, saints, and kings,-- Her echoes only hear the last That swept those golden strings. Fling o'er his mound, ye star-lit bowers, The balmiest wreaths ye wear, Whose breath has lent your earth-born flowers Heaven's own ambrosial air. Breathe, bird of night, thy softest tone, By shadowy grove and rill; Thy song will soothe us while we own That his was sweeter still. Stay, pitying Time, thy foot for him Who gave thee swifter wings, Nor let thine envious shadow dim The light his glory flings. If in his cheek unholy blood Burned for one youthful hour, 'T was but the flushing of the bud That blooms a milk-white flower. Take him, kind mother, to thy breast, Who loved thy smiles so well, And spread thy mantle o'er his rest Of rose and asphodel. The bark has sailed the midnight sea, The sea without a shore, That waved its parting sign to thee,-- "A health to thee, Tom Moore!" And thine, long lingering on the strand, Its bright-hued streamers furled, Was loosed by age, with trembling hand, To seek the silent world. Not silent! no, the radiant stars Still singing as they shine, Unheard through earth's imprisoning bars, Have voices sweet as thine. Wake, then, in happier realms above, The songs of bygone years, Till angels learn those airs of love That ravished mortal ears! AFTER A LECTURE ON KEATS "Purpureos spargam flores." THE wreath that star-crowned Shelley gave Is lying on thy Roman grave, Yet on its turf young April sets Her store of slender violets; Though all the Gods their garlands shower, I too may bring one purple flower. Alas! what blossom shall I bring, That opens in my Northern spring? The garden beds have all run wild, So trim when I was yet a child; Flat plantains and unseemly stalks Have crept across the gravel walks; The vines are dead, long, long ago, The almond buds no longer blow. No more upon its mound I see The azure, plume-bound fleur-de-lis; Where once the tulips used to show, In straggling tufts the pansies grow; The grass has quenched my white-rayed gem, The flowering "Star of Bethlehem," Though its long blade of glossy green And pallid stripe may still be seen. Nature, who treads her nobles down, And gives their birthright to the clown, Has sown her base-born weedy things Above the garden's queens and kings. Yet one sweet flower of ancient race Springs in the old familiar place. When snows were melting down the vale, And Earth unlaced her icy mail, And March his stormy trumpet blew, And tender green came peeping through, I loved the earliest one to seek That broke the soil with emerald beak, And watch the trembling bells so blue Spread on the column as it grew. Meek child of earth! thou wilt not shame The sweet, dead poet's holy name; The God of music gave thee birth, Called from the crimson-spotted earth, Where, sobbing his young life away, His own fair Hyacinthus lay. The hyacinth my garden gave Shall lie upon that Roman grave! AFTER A LECTURE ON SHELLEY ONE broad, white sail in Spezzia's treacherous bay On comes the blast; too daring bark, beware I The cloud has clasped her; to! it melts away; The wide, waste waters, but no sail is there. Morning: a woman looking on the sea; Midnight: with lamps the long veranda burns; Come, wandering sail, they watch, they burn for thee! Suns come and go, alas! no bark returns. And feet are thronging on the pebbly sands, And torches flaring in the weedy caves, Where'er the waters lay with icy hands The shapes uplifted from their coral graves. Vainly they seek; the idle quest is o'er; The coarse, dark women, with their hanging locks, And lean, wild children gather from the shore To the black hovels bedded in the rocks. But Love still prayed, with agonizing wail, "One, one last look, ye heaving waters, yield!" Till Ocean, clashing in his jointed mail, Raised the pale burden on his level shield. Slow from the shore the sullen waves retire; His form a nobler element shall claim; Nature baptized him in ethereal fire, And Death shall crown him with a wreath of flame. Fade, mortal semblance, never to return; Swift is the change within thy crimson shroud; Seal the white ashes in the peaceful urn; All else has risen in yon silvery cloud. Sleep where thy gentle Adonais lies, Whose open page lay on thy dying heart, Both in the smile of those blue-vaulted skies, Earth's fairest dome of all divinest art. Breathe for his wandering soul one passing sigh, O happier Christian, while thine eye grows dim,-- In all the mansions of the house on high, Say not that Mercy has not one for him! AT THE CLOSE OF A COURSE OF LECTURES As the voice of the watch to the mariner's dream, As the footstep of Spring on the ice-girdled stream, There comes a soft footstep, a whisper, to me,-- The vision is over,--the rivulet free. We have trod from the threshold of turbulent March, Till the green scarf of April is hung on the larch, And down the bright hillside that welcomes the day, We hear the warm panting of beautiful May. We will part before Summer has opened her wing, And the bosom of June swells the bodice of Spring, While the hope of the season lies fresh in the bud, And the young life of Nature runs warm in our blood. It is but a word, and the chain is unbound, The bracelet of steel drops unclasped to the ground; No hand shall replace it,--it rests where it fell,--- It is but one word that we all know too well. Yet the hawk with the wildness untamed in his eye, If you free him, stares round ere he springs to the sky; The slave whom no longer his fetters restrain Will turn for a moment and look at his chain. Our parting is not as the friendship of years, That chokes with the blessing it speaks through its tears; We have walked in a garden, and, looking around, Have plucked a few leaves from the myrtles we found. But now at the gate of the garden we stand, And the moment has come for unclasping the hand; Will you drop it like lead, and in silence retreat Like the twenty crushed forms from an omnibus seat? Nay! hold it one moment,--the last we may share,-- I stretch it in kindness, and not for my fare; You may pass through the doorway in rank or in file, If your ticket from Nature is stamped with a smile. For the sweetest of smiles is the smile as we part, When the light round the lips is a ray from the heart; And lest a stray tear from its fountain might swell, We will seal the bright spring with a quiet farewell. THE HUDSON AFTER A LECTURE AT ALBANY 'T WAS a vision of childhood that came with its dawn, Ere the curtain that covered life's day-star was drawn; The nurse told the tale when the shadows grew long, And the mother's soft lullaby breathed it in song. "There flows a fair stream by the hills of the West,"-- She sang to her boy as he lay on her breast; "Along its smooth margin thy fathers have played; Beside its deep waters their ashes are laid." I wandered afar from the land of my birth, I saw the old rivers, renowned upon earth, But fancy still painted that wide-flowing stream With the many-hued pencil of infancy's dream. I saw the green banks of the castle-crowned Rhine, Where the grapes drink the moonlight and change it to wine; I stood by the Avon, whose waves as they glide Still whisper his glory who sleeps at their side. But my heart would still yearn for the sound of the waves That sing as they flow by my forefathers' graves; If manhood yet honors my cheek with a tear, I care not who sees it,--no blush for it here! Farewell to the deep-bosomed stream of the West! I fling this loose blossom to float on its breast; Nor let the dear love of its children grow cold, Till the channel is dry where its waters have rolled! December, 1854. THE NEW EDEN MEETING OF THE BERKSHIRE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY, AT STOCKBRIDGE, SEPTEMBER 13,1854 SCARCE could the parting ocean close, Seamed by the Mayflower's cleaving bow, When o'er the rugged desert rose The waves that tracked the Pilgrim's plough. Then sprang from many a rock-strewn field The rippling grass, the nodding grain, Such growths as English meadows yield To scanty sun and frequent rain. But when the fiery days were done, And Autumn brought his purple haze, Then, kindling in the slanted sun, The hillsides gleamed with golden maize. The food was scant, the fruits were few A red-streak glistening here and there; Perchance in statelier precincts grew Some stern old Puritanic pear. Austere in taste, and tough at core, Its unrelenting bulk was shed, To ripen in the Pilgrim's store When all the summer sweets were fled. Such was his lot, to front the storm With iron heart and marble brow, Nor ripen till his earthly form Was cast from life's autumnal bough. But ever on the bleakest rock We bid the brightest beacon glow, And still upon the thorniest stock The sweetest roses love to blow. So on our rude and wintry soil We feed the kindling flame of art, And steal the tropic's blushing spoil To bloom on Nature's ice-clad heart. See how the softening Mother's breast Warms to her children's patient wiles, Her lips by loving Labor pressed Break in a thousand dimpling smiles, From when the flushing bud of June Dawns with its first auroral hue, Till shines the rounded harvest-moon, And velvet dahlias drink the dew. Nor these the only gifts she brings; Look where the laboring orchard groans, And yields its beryl-threaded strings For chestnut burs and hemlock cones. Dear though the shadowy maple be, And dearer still the whispering pine, Dearest yon russet-laden tree Browned by the heavy rubbing kine! There childhood flung its rustling stone, There venturous boyhood learned to climb,-- How well the early graft was known Whose fruit was ripe ere harvest-time! Nor be the Fleming's pride forgot, With swinging drops and drooping bells, Freckled and splashed with streak and spot, On the warm-breasted, sloping swells; Nor Persia's painted garden-queen,-- Frail Houri of the trellised wall,-- Her deep-cleft bosom scarfed with green,-- Fairest to see, and first to fall. . . . . . . . . . . . . . When man provoked his mortal doom, And Eden trembled as he fell, When blossoms sighed their last perfume, And branches waved their long farewell, One sucker crept beneath the gate, One seed was wafted o'er the wall, One bough sustained his trembling weight; These left the garden,--these were all. And far o'er many a distant zone These wrecks of Eden still are flung The fruits that Paradise hath known Are still in earthly gardens hung. Yes, by our own unstoried stream The pink-white apple-blossoms burst That saw the young Euphrates gleam,-- That Gihon's circling waters nursed. For us the ambrosial pear--displays The wealth its arching branches hold, Bathed by a hundred summery days In floods of mingling fire and gold. And here, where beauty's cheek of flame With morning's earliest beam is fed, The sunset-painted peach may claim To rival its celestial red. . . . . . . . . . . . What though in some unmoistened vale The summer leaf grow brown and sere, Say, shall our star of promise fail That circles half the rolling sphere, From beaches salt with bitter spray, O'er prairies green with softest rain, And ridges bright with evening's ray, To rocks that shade the stormless main? If by our slender-threaded streams The blade and leaf and blossom die, If, drained by noontide's parching beams, The milky veins of Nature dry, See, with her swelling bosom bare, Yon wild-eyed Sister in the West,-- The ring of Empire round her hair, The Indian's wampum on her breast! We saw the August sun descend, Day after day, with blood-red stain, And the blue mountains dimly blend With smoke-wreaths from the burning plain; Beneath the hot Sirocco's wings We sat and told the withering hours, Till Heaven unsealed its hoarded springs, And bade them leap in flashing showers. Yet in our Ishmael's thirst we knew The mercy of the Sovereign hand Would pour the fountain's quickening dew To feed some harvest of the land. No flaming swords of wrath surround Our second Garden of the Blest; It spreads beyond its rocky bound, It climbs Nevada's glittering crest. God keep the tempter from its gate! God shield the children, lest they fall From their stern fathers' free estate,-- Till Ocean is its only wall! SEMI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY NEW YORK, DECEMBER 22, 1855 NEW ENGLAND, we love thee; no time can erase From the hearts of thy children the smile on thy face. 'T is the mother's fond look of affection and pride, As she gives her fair son to the arms of his bride. His bride may be fresher in beauty's young flower; She may blaze in the jewels she brings with her dower. But passion must chill in Time's pitiless blast; The one that first loved us will love to the last. You have left the dear land of the lake and the hill, But its winds and its waters will talk with you still. "Forget not," they whisper, "your love is our debt," And echo breathes softly, "We never forget." The banquet's gay splendors are gleaming around, But your hearts have flown back o'er the waves of the Sound; They have found the brown home where their pulses were born; They are throbbing their way through the trees and the corn. There are roofs you remember,--their glory is fled; There are mounds in the churchyard,--one sigh for the dead. There are wrecks, there are ruins, all scattered around; But Earth has no spot like that corner of ground. Come, let us be cheerful,--remember last night, How they cheered us, and--never mind--meant it all right; To-night, we harm nothing,--we love in the lump; Here's a bumper to Maine, in the juice of the pump! Here 's to all the good people, wherever they be, Who have grown in the shade of the liberty-tree; We all love its leaves, and its blossoms and fruit, But pray have a care of the fence round its root. We should like to talk big; it's a kind of a right, When the tongue has got loose and the waistband grown tight; But, as pretty Miss Prudence remarked to her beau, On its own heap of compost no biddy should crow. Enough! There are gentlemen waiting to talk, Whose words are to mine as the flower to the stalk. Stand by your old mother whatever befall; God bless all her children! Good night to you all! FAREWELL TO J. R. LOWELL FAREWELL, for the bark has her breast to the tide, And the rough arms of Ocean are stretched for his bride; The winds from the mountain stream over the bay; One clasp of the hand, then away and away! I see the tall mast as it rocks by the shore; The sun is declining, I see it once more; To-day like the blade in a thick-waving field, To-morrow the spike on a Highlander's shield. Alone, while the cloud pours its treacherous breath, With the blue lips all round her whose kisses are death; Ah, think not the breeze that is urging her sail Has left her unaided to strive with the gale. There are hopes that play round her, like fires on the mast, That will light the dark hour till its danger has past; There are prayers that will plead with the storm when it raves, And whisper "Be still!" to the turbulent waves. Nay, think not that Friendship has called us in vain To join the fair ring ere we break it again; There is strength in its circle,--you lose the bright star, But its sisters still chain it, though shining afar. I give you one health in the juice of the vine, The blood of the vineyard shall mingle with mine; Thus, thus let us drain the last dew-drops of gold, As we empty our hearts of the blessings they hold. April 29, 1855. FOR THE MEETING OF THE BURNS CLUB THE mountains glitter in the snow A thousand leagues asunder; Yet here, amid the banquet's glow, I hear their voice of thunder; Each giant's ice-bound goblet clinks; A flowing stream is summoned; Wachusett to Ben Nevis drinks; Monadnock to Ben Lomond! Though years have clipped the eagle's plume That crowned the chieftain's bonnet, The sun still sees the heather bloom, The silver mists lie on it; With tartan kilt and philibeg, What stride was ever bolder Than his who showed the naked leg Beneath the plaided shoulder? The echoes sleep on Cheviot's hills, That heard the bugles blowing When down their sides the crimson rills With mingled blood were flowing; The hunts where gallant hearts were game, The slashing on the border, The raid that swooped with sword and flame, Give place to "law and order." Not while the rocking steeples reel With midnight tocsins ringing, Not while the crashing war-notes peal, God sets his poets singing; The bird is silent in the night, Or shrieks a cry of warning While fluttering round the beacon-light,-- But hear him greet the morning! The lark of Scotia's morning sky! Whose voice may sing his praises? With Heaven's own sunlight in his eye, He walked among the daisies, Till through the cloud of fortune's wrong He soared to fields of glory; But left his land her sweetest song And earth her saddest story. 'T is not the forts the builder piles That chain the earth together; The wedded crowns, the sister isles, Would laugh at such a tether; The kindling thought, the throbbing words, That set the pulses beating, Are stronger than the myriad swords Of mighty armies meeting. Thus while within the banquet glows, Without, the wild winds whistle, We drink a triple health,--the Rose, The Shamrock, and the Thistle Their blended hues shall never fade Till War has hushed his cannon,-- Close-twined as ocean-currents braid The Thames, the Clyde, the Shannon! ODE FOR WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION OF THE MERCANTILE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, FEBRUARY 22, 1856 WELCOME to the day returning, Dearer still as ages flow, While the torch of Faith is burning, Long as Freedom's altars glow! See the hero whom it gave us Slumbering on a mother's breast; For the arm he stretched to save us, Be its morn forever blest! Hear the tale of youthful glory, While of Britain's rescued band Friend and foe repeat the story, Spread his fame o'er sea and land, Where the red cross, proudly streaming, Flaps above the frigate's deck, Where the golden lilies, gleaming, Star the watch-towers of Quebec. Look! The shadow on the dial Marks the hour of deadlier strife; Days of terror, years of trial, Scourge a nation into life. Lo, the youth, become her leader All her baffled tyrants yield; Through his arm the Lord hath freed her; Crown him on the tented field! Vain is Empire's mad temptation Not for him an earthly crown He whose sword hath freed a nation Strikes the offered sceptre down. See the throneless Conqueror seated, Ruler by a people's choice; See the Patriot's task completed; Hear the Father's dying voice! "By the name that you inherit, By the sufferings you recall, Cherish the fraternal spirit; Love your country first of all! Listen not to idle questions If its bands maybe untied; Doubt the patriot whose suggestions Strive a nation to divide!" Father! We, whose ears have tingled With the discord-notes of shame,-- We, whose sires their blood have mingled In the battle's thunder-flame,-- Gathering, while this holy morning Lights the land from sea to sea, Hear thy counsel, heed thy warning; Trust us, while we honor thee! BIRTHDAY OF DANIEL WEBSTER JANUARY 18, 1856 WHEN life hath run its largest round Of toil and triumph, joy and woe, How brief a storied page is found To compass all its outward show! The world-tried sailor tires and droops; His flag is rent, his keel forgot; His farthest voyages seem but loops That float from life's entangled knot. But when within the narrow space Some larger soul hath lived and wrought, Whose sight was open to embrace The boundless realms of deed and thought,-- When, stricken by the freezing blast, A nation's living pillars fall, How rich the storied page, how vast, A word, a whisper, can recall! No medal lifts its fretted face, Nor speaking marble cheats your eye, Yet, while these pictured lines I trace, A living image passes by: A roof beneath the mountain pines; The cloisters of a hill-girt plain; The front of life's embattled lines; A mound beside the heaving main. These are the scenes: a boy appears; Set life's round dial in the sun, Count the swift arc of seventy years, His frame is dust; his task is done. Yet pause upon the noontide hour, Ere the declining sun has laid His bleaching rays on manhood's power, And look upon the mighty shade. No gloom that stately shape can hide, No change uncrown its brow; behold I Dark, calm, large-fronted, lightning-eyed, Earth has no double from its mould. Ere from the fields by valor won The battle-smoke had rolled away, And bared the blood-red setting sun, His eyes were opened on the day. His land was but a shelving strip Black with the strife that made it free He lived to see its banners dip Their fringes in the Western sea. The boundless prairies learned his name, His words the mountain echoes knew, The Northern breezes swept his fame From icy lake to warm bayou. In toil he lived; in peace he died; When life's full cycle was complete, Put off his robes of power and pride, And laid them at his Master's feet. His rest is by the storm-swept waves Whom life's wild tempests roughly trie Whose heart was like the streaming eaves Of ocean, throbbing at his side. Death's cold white hand is like the snow Laid softly on the furrowed hill, It hides the broken seams below, And leaves the summit brighter still. In vain the envious tongue upbraids; His name a nation's heart shall keep Till morning's latest sunlight fades On the blue tablet of the deep. THE VOICELESS WE count the broken lyres that rest Where the sweet wailing singers slumber, But o'er their silent sister's breast The wild-flowers who will stoop to number? A few can touch the magic string, And noisy Fame is proud to win them:-- Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them! Nay, grieve not for the dead alone Whose song has told their hearts' sad story,-- Weep for the voiceless, who have known The cross without the crown of glory Not where Leucadian breezes sweep O'er Sappho's memory-haunted billow, But where the glistening night-dews weep On nameless sorrow's churchyard pillow. O hearts that break and give no sign Save whitening lip and fading tresses, Till Death pours out his longed-for wine Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing presses,-- If singing breath or echoing chord To every hidden pang were given, What endless melodies were poured, As sad as earth, as sweet as heaven! THE TWO STREAMS BEHOLD the rocky wall That down its sloping sides Pours the swift rain-drops, blending, as they fall, In rushing river-tides! Yon stream, whose sources run Turned by a pebble's edge, Is Athabasca, rolling toward the sun Through the cleft mountain-ledge. The slender rill had strayed, But for the slanting stone, To evening's ocean, with the tangled braid Of foam-flecked Oregon. So from the heights of Will Life's parting stream descends, And, as a moment turns its slender rill, Each widening torrent bends,-- From the same cradle's side, From the same mother's knee,-- One to long darkness and the frozen tide, One to the Peaceful Sea! THE PROMISE NOT charity we ask, Nor yet thy gift refuse; Please thy light fancy with the easy task Only to look and choose. The little-heeded toy That wins thy treasured gold May be the dearest memory, holiest joy, Of coming years untold. Heaven rains on every heart, But there its showers divide, The drops of mercy choosing, as they part, The dark or glowing side. One kindly deed may turn The fountain of thy soul To love's sweet day-star, that shall o'er thee burn Long as its currents roll. The pleasures thou hast planned,-- Where shall their memory be When the white angel with the freezing hand Shall sit and watch by thee? Living, thou dost not live, If mercy's spring run dry; What Heaven has lent thee wilt thou freely give, Dying, thou shalt not die. HE promised even so! To thee his lips repeat,-- Behold, the tears that soothed thy sister's woe Have washed thy Master's feet! March 20, 1859. AVIS I MAY not rightly call thy name,-- Alas! thy forehead never knew The kiss that happier children claim, Nor glistened with baptismal dew. Daughter of want and wrong and woe, I saw thee with thy sister-band, Snatched from the whirlpool's narrowing flow By Mercy's strong yet trembling hand. "Avis!"--With Saxon eye and cheek, At once a woman and a child, The saint uncrowned I came to seek Drew near to greet us,--spoke, and smiled. God gave that sweet sad smile she wore All wrong to shame, all souls to win,-- A heavenly sunbeam sent before Her footsteps through a world of sin. "And who is Avis?"--Hear the tale The calm-voiced matrons gravely tell,-- The story known through all the vale Where Avis and her sisters dwell. With the lost children running wild, Strayed from the hand of human care, They find one little refuse child Left helpless in its poisoned lair. The primal mark is on her face,-- The chattel-stamp,--the pariah-stain That follows still her hunted race,-- The curse without the crime of Cain. How shall our smooth-turned phrase relate The little suffering outcast's ail? Not Lazarus at the rich man's gate So turned the rose-wreathed revellers pale. Ah, veil the living death from sight That wounds our beauty-loving eye! The children turn in selfish fright, The white-lipped nurses hurry by. Take her, dread Angel! Break in love This bruised reed and make it thine!-- No voice descended from above, But Avis answered, "She is mine." The task that dainty menials spurn The fair young girl has made her own; Her heart shall teach, her hand shall learn The toils, the duties yet unknown. So Love and Death in lingering strife Stand face to face from day to day, Still battling for the spoil of Life While the slow seasons creep away. Love conquers Death; the prize is won; See to her joyous bosom pressed The dusky daughter of the sun,-- The bronze against the marble breast! Her task is done; no voice divine Has crowned her deeds with saintly fame. No eye can see the aureole shine That rings her brow with heavenly flame. Yet what has holy page more sweet, Or what had woman's love more fair, When Mary clasped her Saviour's feet With flowing eyes and streaming hair? Meek child of sorrow, walk unknown, The Angel of that earthly throng, And let thine image live alone To hallow this unstudied song! THE LIVING TEMPLE NOT in the world of light alone, Where God has built his blazing throne, Nor yet alone in earth below, With belted seas that come and go, And endless isles of sunlit green, Is all thy Maker's glory seen: Look in upon thy wondrous frame,-- Eternal wisdom still the same! The smooth, soft air with pulse-like waves Flows murmuring through its hidden caves, Whose streams of brightening purple rush, Fired with a new and livelier blush, While all their burden of decay The ebbing current steals away, And red with Nature's flame they start From the warm fountains of the heart. No rest that throbbing slave may ask, Forever quivering o'er his task, While far and wide a crimson jet Leaps forth to fill the woven net Which in unnumbered crossing tides The flood of burning life divides, Then, kindling each decaying part, Creeps back to find the throbbing heart. But warmed with that unchanging flame Behold the outward moving frame, Its living marbles jointed strong With glistening band and silvery thong, And linked to reason's guiding reins By myriad rings in trembling chains, Each graven with the threaded zone Which claims it as the master's own. See how yon beam of seeming white Is braided out of seven-hued light, Yet in those lucid globes no ray By any chance shall break astray. Hark how the rolling surge of sound, Arches and spirals circling round, Wakes the hushed spirit through thine ear With music it is heaven to hear. Then mark the cloven sphere that holds All thought in its mysterious folds; That feels sensation's faintest thrill, And flashes forth the sovereign will; Think on the stormy world that dwells Locked in its dim and clustering cells! The lightning gleams of power it sheds Along its hollow glassy threads! O Father! grant thy love divine To make these mystic temples thine! When wasting age and wearying strife Have sapped the leaning walls of life, When darkness gathers over all, And the last tottering pillars fall, Take the poor dust thy mercy warms, And mould it into heavenly forms! AT A BIRTHDAY FESTIVAL TO J. R. LOWELL WE will not speak of years to-night,-- For what have years to bring But larger floods of love and light, And sweeter songs to sing? We will not drown in wordy praise The kindly thoughts that rise; If Friendship own one tender phrase, He reads it in our eyes. We need not waste our school-boy art To gild this notch of Time;-- Forgive me if my wayward heart Has throbbed in artless rhyme. Enough for him the silent grasp That knits us hand in hand, And he the bracelet's radiant clasp That locks our, circling band. Strength to his hours of manly toil! Peace to his starlit dreams! Who loves alike the furrowed soil, The music-haunted streams! Sweet smiles to keep forever bright The sunshine on his lips, And faith that sees the ring of light Round nature's last eclipse! February 22, 1859. A BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE TO J. F. CLARKE WHO is the shepherd sent to lead, Through pastures green, the Master's sheep? What guileless "Israelite indeed" The folded flock may watch and keep? He who with manliest spirit joins The heart of gentlest human mould, With burning light and girded loins, To guide the flock, or watch the fold; True to all Truth the world denies, Not tongue-tied for its gilded sin; Not always right in all men's eyes, But faithful to the light within; Who asks no meed of earthly fame, Who knows no earthly master's call, Who hopes for man, through guilt and shame, Still answering, "God is over all"; Who makes another's grief his own, Whose smile lends joy a double cheer; Where lives the saint, if such be known?-- Speak softly,--such an one is here! O faithful shepherd! thou hast borne The heat and burden of the clay; Yet, o'er thee, bright with beams unshorn, The sun still shows thine onward way. To thee our fragrant love we bring, In buds that April half displays, Sweet first-born angels of the spring, Caught in their opening hymn of praise. What though our faltering accents fail, Our captives know their message well, Our words unbreathed their lips exhale, And sigh more love than ours can tell. April 4, 1860. THE GRAY CHIEF FOR THE MEETING OF THE MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL SOCIETY, 1859 'T is sweet to fight our battles o'er, And crown with honest praise The gray old chief, who strikes no more The blow of better days. Before the true and trusted sage With willing hearts we bend, When years have touched with hallowing age Our Master, Guide, and Friend. For all his manhood's labor past, For love and faith long tried, His age is honored to the last, Though strength and will have died. But when, untamed by toil and strife, Full in our front he stands, The torch of light, the shield of life, Still lifted in his hands, No temple, though its walls resound With bursts of ringing cheers, Can hold the honors that surround His manhood's twice-told years! THE LAST LOOK W. W. SWAIN BEHOLD--not him we knew! This was the prison which his soul looked through, Tender, and brave, and true. His voice no more is heard; And his dead name--that dear familiar word-- Lies on our lips unstirred. He spake with poet's tongue; Living, for him the minstrel's lyre was strung: He shall not die unsung. Grief tried his love, and pain; And the long bondage of his martyr-chain Vexed his sweet soul,--in vain! It felt life's surges break, As, girt with stormy seas, his island lake, Smiling while tempests wake. How can we sorrow more? Grieve not for him whose heart had gone before To that untrodden shore! Lo, through its leafy screen, A gleam of sunlight on a ring of green, Untrodden, half unseen! Here let his body rest, Where the calm shadows that his soul loved best May slide above his breast. Smooth his uncurtained bed; And if some natural tears are softly shed, It is not for the dead. Fold the green turf aright For the long hours before the morning's light, And say the last Good Night! And plant a clear white stone Close by those mounds which hold his loved, his own,-- Lonely, but not alone. Here let him sleeping lie, Till Heaven's bright watchers slumber in the sky And Death himself shall die! Naushon, September 22, 1858. IN MEMORY OF CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM, JR. HE was all sunshine; in his face The very soul of sweetness shone; Fairest and gentlest of his race; None like him we can call our own. Something there was of one that died In her fresh spring-time long ago, Our first dear Mary, angel-eyed, Whose smile it was a bliss to know. Something of her whose love imparts Such radiance to her day's decline, We feel its twilight in our hearts Bright as the earliest morning-shine. Yet richer strains our eye could trace That made our plainer mould more fair, That curved the lip with happier grace, That waved the soft and silken hair. Dust unto dust! the lips are still That only spoke to cheer and bless; The folded hands lie white and chill Unclasped from sorrow's last caress. Leave him in peace; he will not heed These idle tears we vainly pour, Give back to earth the fading weed Of mortal shape his spirit wore. "Shall I not weep my heartstrings torn, My flower of love that falls half blown, My youth uncrowned, my life forlorn, A thorny path to walk alone?" O Mary! one who bore thy name, Whose Friend and Master was divine, Sat waiting silent till He came, Bowed down in speechless grief like thine. "Where have ye laid him?" "Come," they say, Pointing to where the loved one slept; Weeping, the sister led the way,-- And, seeing Mary, "Jesus wept." He weeps with thee, with all that mourn, And He shall wipe thy streaming eyes Who knew all sorrows, woman-born,-- Trust in his word; thy dead shall rise! April 15, 1860. MARTHA DIED JANUARY 7, 1861 SEXTON! Martha's dead and gone; Toll the bell! toll the bell! Her weary hands their labor cease; Good night, poor Martha,--sleep in peace! Toll the bell! Sexton! Martha's dead and gone; Toll the bell! toll the bell! For many a year has Martha said, "I'm old and poor,--would I were dead!" Toll the bell! Sexton! Martha's dead and gone; Toll the bell! toll the bell! She'll bring no more, by day or night, Her basket full of linen white. Toll the bell! Sexton! Martha's dead and gone; Toll the bell! toll the bell! 'T is fitting she should lie below A pure white sheet of drifted snow. Toll the bell! Sexton! Martha's dead and gone; Toll the bell! toll the bell! Sleep, Martha, sleep, to wake in light, Where all the robes are stainless white. Toll the bell! MEETING OF THE ALUMNI OF HARVARD COLLEGE 1857 I THANK you, MR. PRESIDENT, you've kindly broke the ice; Virtue should always be the first,--I 'm only SECOND VICE-- (A vice is something with a screw that's made to hold its jaw Till some old file has played away upon an ancient saw). Sweet brothers by the Mother's side, the babes of days gone by, All nurslings of her Juno breasts whose milk is never dry, We come again, like half-grown boys, and gather at her beck About her knees, and on her lap, and clinging round her neck. We find her at her stately door, and in her ancient chair, Dressed in the robes of red and green she always loved to wear. Her eye has all its radiant youth, her cheek its morning flame; We drop our roses as we go, hers flourish still the same. We have been playing many an hour, and far away we've strayed, Some laughing in the cheerful sun, some lingering in the shade; And some have tired, and laid them down where darker shadows fall, Dear as her loving voice may be, they cannot hear its call. What miles we 've travelled since we shook the dew-drops from our shoes We gathered on this classic green, so famed for heavy dues! How many boys have joined the game, how many slipped away, Since we've been running up and down, and having out our play! One boy at work with book and brief, and one with gown and band, One sailing vessels on the pool, one digging sand, One flying paper kites on change, one planting little pills,-- The seeds of certain annual flowers well known as little bills. What maidens met us on our way, and clasped us hand in hand! What cherubs,--not the legless kind, that fly, but never stand! How many a youthful head we've seen put on its silver crown What sudden changes back again to youth's empurpled brown! But fairer sights have met our eyes, and broader lights have shone, Since others lit their midnight lamps where once we trimmed our own; A thousand trains that flap the sky with flags of rushing fire, And, throbbing in the Thunderer's hand, Thought's million-chorded lyre. We've seen the sparks of Empire fly beyond the mountain bars, Till, glittering o'er the Western wave, they joined the setting stars; And ocean trodden into paths that trampling giants ford, To find the planet's vertebrae and sink its spinal cord. We've tried reform,--and chloroform,--and both have turned our brain; When France called up the photograph, we roused the foe to pain; Just so those earlier sages shared the chaplet of renown,-- Hers sent a bladder to the clouds, ours brought their lightning down. We've seen the little tricks of life, its varnish and veneer, Its stucco-fronts of character flake off and disappear, We 've learned that oft the brownest hands will heap the biggest pile, And met with many a "perfect brick" beneath a rimless "tile." What dreams we 've had of deathless name, as scholars, statesmen, bards, While Fame, the lady with the trump, held up her picture cards! Till, having nearly played our game, she gayly whispered, "Ah! I said you should be something grand,--you'll soon be grandpapa." Well, well, the old have had their day, the young must take their turn; There's something always to forget, and something still to learn; But how to tell what's old or young, the tap-root from the sprigs, Since Florida revealed her fount to Ponce de Leon Twiggs? The wisest was a Freshman once, just freed from bar and bolt, As noisy as a kettle-drum, as leggy as a colt; Don't be too savage with the boys,--the Primer does not say The kitten ought to go to church because the cat doth prey. The law of merit and of age is not the rule of three; Non constat that A. M. must prove as busy as A. B. When Wise the father tracked the son, ballooning through the skies, He taught a lesson to the old,--go thou and do like Wise! Now then, old boys, and reverend youth, of high or low degree, Remember how we only get one annual out of three, And such as dare to simmer down three dinners into one Must cut their salads mighty short, and pepper well with fun. I've passed my zenith long ago, it's time for me to set; A dozen planets wait to shine, and I am lingering yet, As sometimes in the blaze of day a milk-and-watery moon Stains with its dim and fading ray the lustrous blue of noon. Farewell! yet let one echo rise to shake our ancient hall; God save the Queen,--whose throne is here,--the Mother of us all Till dawns the great commencement-day on every shore and sea, And "Expectantur" all mankind, to take their last Degree! THE PARTING SONG FESTIVAL OF THE ALUMNI, 1857 THE noon of summer sheds its ray On Harvard's holy ground; The Matron calls, the sons obey, And gather smiling round. CHORUS. Then old and young together stand, The sunshine and the snow, As heart to heart, and hand in hand, We sing before we go! Her hundred opening doors have swung Through every storied hall The pealing echoes loud have rung, "Thrice welcome one and all!" Then old and young, etc. We floated through her peaceful bay, To sail life's stormy seas But left our anchor where it lay Beneath her green old trees. Then old and young, etc. As now we lift its lengthening chain, That held us fast of old, The rusted rings grow bright again,-- Their iron turns to gold. Then old and young, etc. Though scattered ere the setting sun, As leaves when wild winds blow, Our home is here, our hearts are one, Till Charles forgets to flow. Then old and young, etc. FOR THE MEETING OF THE NATIONAL SANITARY ASSOCIATION 1860 WHAT makes the Healing Art divine? The bitter drug we buy and sell, The brands that scorch, the blades that shine, The scars we leave, the "cures" we tell? Are these thy glories, holiest Art,-- The trophies that adorn thee best,-- Or but thy triumph's meanest part,-- Where mortal weakness stands confessed? We take the arms that Heaven supplies For Life's long battle with Disease, Taught by our various need to prize Our frailest weapons, even these. But ah! when Science drops her shield-- Its peaceful shelter proved in vain-- And bares her snow-white arm to wield The sad, stern ministry of pain; When shuddering o'er the fount of life, She folds her heaven-anointed wings, To lift unmoved the glittering knife That searches all its crimson springs; When, faithful to her ancient lore, She thrusts aside her fragrant balm For blistering juice, or cankering ore, And tames them till they cure or calm; When in her gracious hand are seen The dregs and scum of earth and seas, Her kindness counting all things clean That lend the sighing sufferer ease; Though on the field that Death has won, She save some stragglers in retreat;-- These single acts of mercy done Are but confessions of defeat. What though our tempered poisons save Some wrecks of life from aches and ails; Those grand specifics Nature gave Were never poised by weights or scales! God lent his creatures light and air, And waters open to the skies; Man locks him in a stifling lair, And wonders why his brother dies! In vain our pitying tears are shed, In vain we rear the sheltering pile Where Art weeds out from bed to bed The plagues we planted by the mile! Be that the glory of the past; With these our sacred toils begin So flies in tatters from its mast The yellow flag of sloth and sin, And lo! the starry folds reveal The blazoned truth we hold so dear To guard is better than to heal,-- The shield is nobler than the spear! FOR THE BURNS CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION JANUARY 25, 1859 His birthday.--Nay, we need not speak The name each heart is beating,-- Each glistening eye and flushing cheek In light and flame repeating! We come in one tumultuous tide,-- One surge of wild emotion,-- As crowding through the Frith of Clyde Rolls in the Western Ocean; As when yon cloudless, quartered moon Hangs o'er each storied river, The swelling breasts of Ayr and Doon With sea green wavelets quiver. The century shrivels like a scroll,-- The past becomes the present,-- And face to face, and soul to soul, We greet the monarch-peasant. While Shenstone strained in feeble flights With Corydon and Phillis,-- While Wolfe was climbing Abraham's heights To snatch the Bourbon lilies,-- Who heard the wailing infant's cry, The babe beneath the sheeliug, Whose song to-night in every sky Will shake earth's starry ceiling,-- Whose passion-breathing voice ascends And floats like incense o'er us, Whose ringing lay of friendship blends With labor's anvil chorus? We love him, not for sweetest song, Though never tone so tender; We love him, even in his wrong,-- His wasteful self-surrender. We praise him, not for gifts divine,-- His Muse was born of woman,-- His manhood breathes in every line,-- Was ever heart more human? We love him, praise him, just for this In every form and feature, Through wealth and want, through woe and bliss, He saw his fellow-creature! No soul could sink beneath his love,-- Not even angel blasted; No mortal power could soar above The pride that all outlasted! Ay! Heaven had set one living man Beyond the pedant's tether,-- His virtues, frailties, HE may scan, Who weighs them all together! I fling my pebble on the cairn Of him, though dead, undying; Sweet Nature's nursling, bonniest bairn Beneath her daisies lying. The waning suns, the wasting globe, Shall spare the minstrel's story,-- The centuries weave his purple robe, The mountain-mist of glory! AT A MEETING OF FRIENDS AUGUST 29, 1859 I REMEMBER--why, yes! God bless me! and was it so long ago? I fear I'm growing forgetful, as old folks do, you know; It must have been in 'forty--I would say 'thirty-nine-- We talked this matter over, I and a friend of mine. He said, "Well now, old fellow, I'm thinking that you and I, If we act like other people, shall be older by and by; What though the bright blue ocean is smooth as a pond can be, There is always a line of breakers to fringe the broadest sea. "We're taking it mighty easy, but that is nothing strange, For up to the age of thirty we spend our years like Change; But creeping up towards the forties, as fast as the old years fill, And Time steps in for payment, we seem to change a bill." "I know it," I said, "old fellow; you speak the solemn truth; A man can't live to a hundred and likewise keep his youth; But what if the ten years coming shall silver-streak my hair, You know I shall then be forty; of course I shall not care. "At forty a man grows heavy and tired of fun and noise; Leaves dress to the five-and-twenties and love to the silly boys; No foppish tricks at forty, no pinching of waists and toes, But high-low shoes and flannels and good thick worsted hose." But one fine August morning I found myself awake My birthday:--By Jove, I'm forty! Yes, forty, and no mistake! Why, this is the very milestone, I think I used to hold, That when a fellow had come to, a fellow would then be old! But that is the young folks' nonsense; they're full of their foolish stuff; A man's in his prime at forty,--I see that plain enough; At fifty a man is wrinkled, and may be bald or gray; I call men old at fifty, in spite of all they say. At last comes another August with mist and rain and shine; Its mornings are slowly counted and creep to twenty-nine, And when on the western summits the fading light appears, It touches with rosy fingers the last of my fifty years. There have been both men and women whose hearts were firm and bold, But there never was one of fifty that loved to say "I'm old"; So any elderly person that strives to shirk his years, Make him stand up at a table and try him by his peers. Now here I stand at fifty, my jury gathered round; Sprinkled with dust of silver, but not yet silver-crowned, Ready to meet your verdict, waiting to hear it told; Guilty of fifty summers; speak! Is the verdict _old_. No! say that his hearing fails him; say that his sight grows dim; Say that he's getting wrinkled and weak in back and limb, Losing his wits and temper, but pleading, to make amends, The youth of his fifty summers he finds in his twenty friends. FOR THE FAIR IN AID OF THE FUND TO PROCURE BALL'S STATUE OF WASHINGTON 1630 ALL overgrown with bush and fern, And straggling clumps of tangled trees, With trunks that lean and boughs that turn, Bent eastward by the mastering breeze,-- With spongy bogs that drip and fill A yellow pond with muddy rain, Beneath the shaggy southern hill Lies wet and low the Shawinut plain. And hark! the trodden branches crack; A crow flaps off with startled scream; A straying woodchuck canters back; A bittern rises from the stream; Leaps from his lair a frightened deer; An otter plunges in the pool;-- Here comes old Shawmut's pioneer, The parson on his brindled bull! 1774 The streets are thronged with trampling feet, The northern hill is ridged with graves, But night and morn the drum is beat To frighten down the "rebel knaves." The stones of King Street still are red, And yet the bloody red-coats come I hear their pacing sentry's tread, The click of steel, the tap of drum, And over all the open green, Where grazed of late the harmless kine, The cannon's deepening ruts are seen, The war-horse stamps, the bayonets shine. The clouds are dark with crimson rain Above the murderous hirelings' den, And soon their whistling showers shall stain The pipe-clayed belts of Gage's men. 186- Around the green, in morning light, The spired and palaced summits blaze, And, sunlike, from her Beacon-height The dome-crowned city spreads her rays; They span the waves, they belt the plains, They skirt the roads with bands of white, Till with a flash of gilded panes Yon farthest hillside bounds the sight. Peace, Freedom, Wealth! no fairer view, Though with the wild-bird's restless wings We sailed beneath the noontide's blue Or chased the moonlight's endless rings! Here, fitly raised by grateful hands His holiest memory to recall, The Hero's, Patriot's image stands; He led our sires who won them all! November 14, 1859. THE OLD MAN OF THE SEA A NIGHTMARE DREAM BY DAYLIGHT Do you know the Old Man of the Sea, of the Sea? Have you met with that dreadful old man? If you have n't been caught, you will be, you will be; For catch you he must and he can. He does n't hold on by your throat, by your throat, As of old in the terrible tale; But he grapples you tight by the coat, by the coat, Till its buttons and button-holes fail. There's the charm of a snake in his eye, in his eye, And a polypus-grip in his hands; You cannot go back, nor get by, nor get by, If you look at the spot where he stands. Oh, you're grabbed! See his claw on your sleeve, on your sleeve! It is Sinbad's Old Man of the Sea! You're a Christian, no doubt you believe, you believe You're a martyr, whatever you be! Is the breakfast-hour past? They must wait, they must wait, While the coffee boils sullenly down, While the Johnny-cake burns on the grate, on the grate, And the toast is done frightfully brown. Yes, your dinner will keep; let it cool, let it cool, And Madam may worry and fret, And children half-starved go to school, go to school; He can't think of sparing you yet. Hark! the bell for the train! "Come along! Come along! For there is n't a second to lose." "ALL ABOARD!" (He holds on.) "Fsht I ding-dong! Fsht! ding-dong!"-- You can follow on foot, if you choose. There's a maid with a cheek like a peach, like a peach, That is waiting for you in the church;-- But he clings to your side like a leech, like a leech, And you leave your lost bride in the lurch. There's a babe in a fit,--hurry quick! hurry quick! To the doctor's as fast as you can! The baby is off, while you stick, while you stick, In the grip of the dreadful Old Man! I have looked on the face of the Bore, of the Bore; The voice of the Simple I know; I have welcomed the Flat at my door, at my door; I have sat by the side of the Slow; I have walked like a lamb by the friend, by the friend, That stuck to my skirts like a bur; I have borne the stale talk without end, without end, Of the sitter whom nothing could stir. But my hamstrings grow loose, and I shake, and I shake, At the sight of the dreadful Old Man; Yea, I quiver and quake, and I take, and I take, To my legs with what vigor I can! Oh the dreadful Old Man of the Sea, of the Sea He's come back like the Wandering Jew! He has had his cold claw upon me, upon me,-- And be sure that he 'll have it on you! INTERNATIONAL ODE OUR FATHERS' LAND GOD bless our Fathers' Land! Keep her in heart and hand One with our own! From all her foes defend, Be her brave People's Friend, On all her realms descend, Protect her Throne! Father, with loving care Guard Thou her kingdom's Heir, Guide all his ways Thine arm his shelter be, From him by land and sea Bid storm and danger flee, Prolong his days! Lord, let War's tempest cease, Fold the whole Earth in peace Under thy wings Make all thy nations one, All hearts beneath the sun, Till Thou shalt reign alone, Great King of kings! A SENTIMENT OFFERED AT THE DINNER TO H. I. H. THE PRINCE NAPOLEON, AT THE REVERE HOUSE, SEPTEMBER 25,1861 THE land of sunshine and of song! Her name your hearts divine; To her the banquet's vows belong Whose breasts have poured its wine; Our trusty friend, our true ally Through varied change and chance So, fill your flashing goblets high,-- I give you, VIVE LA FRANCE! Above our hosts in triple folds The selfsame colors spread, Where Valor's faithful arm upholds The blue, the white, the red; Alike each nation's glittering crest Reflects the morning's glance,-- Twin eagles, soaring east and west Once more, then, VIVE LA FRANCE! Sister in trial! who shall count Thy generous friendship's claim, Whose blood ran mingling in the fount That gave our land its name, Till Yorktown saw in blended line Our conquering arms advance, And victory's double garlands twine Our banners? VIVE LA FRANCE! O land of heroes! in our need One gift from Heaven we crave To stanch these wounds that vainly bleed,-- The wise to lead the brave! Call back one Captain of thy past From glory's marble trance, Whose name shall be a bugle-blast To rouse us! VIVE LA FRANCE! Pluck Conde's baton from the trench, Wake up stout Charles Martel, Or find some woman's hand to clench The sword of La Pucelle! Give us one hour of old Turenne,-- One lift of Bayard's lance,-- Nay, call Marengo's Chief again To lead us! VIVE LA FRANCE! Ah, hush! our welcome Guest shall hear But sounds of peace and joy; No angry echo vex thine ear, Fair Daughter of Savoy Once more! the land of arms and arts, Of glory, grace, romance; Her love lies warm in all our hearts God bless her! VIVE LA FRANCE! BROTHER JONATHAN'S LAMENT FOR SISTER CAROLINE SHE has gone,--she has left us in passion and pride,-- Our stormy-browed sister, so long at our side! She has torn her own star from our firmament's glow, And turned on her brother the face of a foe! Oh, Caroline, Caroline, child of the sun, We can never forget that our hearts have been one,-- Our foreheads both sprinkled in Liberty's name, From the fountain of blood with the finger of flame! You were always too ready to fire at a touch; But we said, "She is hasty,--she does not mean much." We have scowled, when you uttered some turbulent threat; But Friendship still whispered, "Forgive and forget!" Has our love all died out? Have its altars grown cold? Has the curse come at last which the fathers foretold? Then Nature must teach us the strength of the chain That her petulant children would sever in vain. They may fight till the buzzards are gorged with their spoil, Till the harvest grows black as it rots in the soil, Till the wolves and the catamounts troop from their eaves, And the shark tracks the pirate, the lord of the waves: In vain is the strife! When its fury is past, Their fortunes must flow in one channel at last, As the torrents that rush from the mountains of snow Roll mingled in peace through the valleys below. Our Union is river, lake, ocean, and sky Man breaks not the medal, when God cuts the die! Though darkened with sulphur, though cloven with steel, The blue arch will brighten, the waters will heal! Oh, Caroline, Caroline, child of the sun, There are battles with Fate that can never be won! The star-flowering banner must never be furled, For its blossoms of light are the hope of the world! Go, then, our rash sister! afar and aloof, Run wild in the sunshine away from our roof; But when your heart aches and your feet have grown sore, Remember the pathway that leads to our door! March 25, 1861. NOTES: (For original print volume one) [There stand the Goblet and the Sun.] The Goblet and the Sun (Vas-Sol), sculptured on a free-stone slab supported by five pillars, are the only designation of the family tomb of the Vassalls. [Thus mocked the spoilers with his school-boy scorn.] See "Old Ironsides," of this volume. [On other shores, above their mouldering towns.] Daniel Webster quoted several of the verses which follow, in his address at the laying of the corner-stone of the addition to the Capitol at Washington, July 4, 1851. [Thou calm, chaste scholar.] Charles Chauncy Emerson; died May 9, 1836. [And thou, dear friend, whom Science still deplores.] James Jackson, Jr., M. D.; died March 28, 1834. [THE STEAMBOAT.] Mr. Emerson has quoted some lines from this poem, but somewhat disguised as he recalled them. It is never safe to quote poetry without referring to the original. [Hark! The sweet bells renew their welcome sound.] The churches referred to in the lines which follow are,-- 1. King's Chapel, the foundation of which was laid by Governor Shirley in 1749. 2. Brattle Street Church, consecrated in 1773. The completion of this edifice, the design of which included a spire, was prevented by the troubles of the Revolution, and its plain, square tower presented nothing more attractive than a massive simplicity. In the front of this tower, till the church was demolished in 1872, there was to be seen, half imbedded in the brick-work, a cannon-ball, which was thrown from the American fortifications at Cambridge, during the bombard-ment of the city, then occupied by the British troops. 3. The Old South, first occupied for public worship in 1730. 4. Park Street Church, built in 1809, the tall white steeple of which is the most conspicuous of all the Boston spires. 5. Christ Church, opened for public worship in 1723, and containing a set of eight bells, long the only chime in Boston. [INTERNATIONAL ODE.] This ode was sung in unison by twelve hundred children of the public schools, to the air of "God save the Queen," at the visit of the Prince of Wales to Boston, October 18, 1860. 
7392	----	THE POETICAL WORKS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES [Volume 2 of the 1893 three volume set] POEMS OF THE CLASS OF '29 (1851-1889) BILL AND JOE A SONG OF "TWENTY-NINE" QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS AN IMPROMPTU THE OLD MAN DREAMS REMEMBER--FORGET OUR INDIAN SUMMER MARE RUBRUM THE Boys LINES A VOICE OF THE LOYAL NORTH J. D. R. VOYAGE OF THE GOOD SHIP UNION "CHOOSE YOU THIS DAY WHOM YE WILL SERVE" F. W. C. THE LAST CHARGE OUR OLDEST FRIEND SHERMAN 'S IN SAVANNAH MY ANNUAL ALL HERE ONCE MORE THE OLD CRUISER HYMN FOR THE CLASS-MEETING EVEN-SONG THE SMILING LISTENER OUR SWEET SINGER: J. A. H. C. M., H. S., J. K. W. WHAT I HAVE COME FOR OUR BANKER FOR CLASS-MEETING "AD AMICOS" HOW NOT TO SETTLE IT THE LAST SURVIVOR THE ARCHBISHOP AND GIL BLAS THE SHADOWS BENJAMIN PEIRCE IN THE TWILIGHT A LOVING-CUP SONG THE GIRDLE OF FRIENDSHIP THE LYRE OF ANACREON THE OLD TUNE THE BROKEN CIRCLE THE ANGEL-THIEF AFTER THE CURFEW POEMS OF THE CLASS OF '29 1851-1889 BILL AND JOE COME, dear old comrade, you and I Will steal an hour from days gone by, The shining days when life was new, And all was bright with morning dew, The lusty days of long ago, When you were Bill and I was Joe. Your name may flaunt a titled trail Proud as a cockerel's rainbow tail, And mine as brief appendix wear As Tam O'Shanter's luckless mare; To-day, old friend, remember still That I am Joe and you are Bill. You've won the great world's envied prize, And grand you look in people's eyes, With H O N. and L L. D. In big brave letters, fair to see,-- Your fist, old fellow! off they go!-- How are you, Bill? How are you, Joe? You've worn the judge's ermined robe; You 've taught your name to half the globe; You've sung mankind a deathless strain; You've made the dead past live again The world may call you what it will, But you and I are Joe and Bill. The chaffing young folks stare and say "See those old buffers, bent and gray,-- They talk like fellows in their teens! Mad, poor old boys! That's what it means,"-- And shake their heads; they little know The throbbing hearts of Bill and Joe!-- How Bill forgets his hour of pride, While Joe sits smiling at his side; How Joe, in spite of time's disguise, Finds the old schoolmate in his eyes,-- Those calm, stern eyes that melt and fill As Joe looks fondly up at Bill. Ah, pensive scholar, what is fame? A fitful tongue of leaping flame; A giddy whirlwind's fickle gust, That lifts a pinch of mortal dust; A few swift years, and who can show Which dust was Bill and which was Joe? The weary idol takes his stand, Holds out his bruised and aching hand, While gaping thousands come and go,-- How vain it seems, this empty show! Till all at once his pulses thrill;-- 'T is poor old Joe's "God bless you, Bill!" And shall we breathe in happier spheres The names that pleased our mortal ears; In some sweet lull of harp and song For earth-born spirits none too long, Just whispering of the world below Where this was Bill and that was Joe? No matter; while our home is here No sounding name is half so dear; When fades at length our lingering day, Who cares what pompous tombstones say? Read on the hearts that love us still, _Hic jacet_ Joe. _Hic jacet_ Bill. A SONG OF "TWENTY-NINE" 1851 THE summer dawn is breaking On Auburn's tangled bowers, The golden light is waking On Harvard's ancient towers; The sun is in the sky That must see us do or die, Ere it shine on the line Of the CLASS OF '29. At last the day is ended, The tutor screws no more, By doubt and fear attended Each hovers round the door, Till the good old Praeses cries, While the tears stand in his eyes, "You have passed, and are classed With the Boys of '29." Not long are they in making The college halls their own, Instead of standing shaking, Too bashful to be known; But they kick the Seniors' shins Ere the second week begins, When they stray in the way Of the BOYS OF '29. If a jolly set is trolling The last _Der Freischutz_ airs, Or a "cannon bullet" rolling Comes bouncing down the stairs, The tutors, looking out, Sigh, "Alas! there is no doubt, 'T is the noise of the Boys Of the CLASS OF '29." Four happy years together, By storm and sunshine tried, In changing wind and weather, They rough it side by side, Till they hear their Mother cry, "You are fledged, and you must fly," And the bell tolls the knell Of the days of '29. Since then, in peace or trouble, Full many a year has rolled, And life has counted double The days that then we told; Yet we'll end as we've begun, For though scattered, we are one, While each year sees us here, Round the board of '29. Though fate may throw between us The mountains or the sea, No time shall ever wean us, No distance set us free; But around the yearly board, When the flaming pledge is poured, It shall claim every name On the roll of '29. To yonder peaceful ocean That glows with sunset fires, Shall reach the warm emotion This welcome day inspires, Beyond the ridges cold Where a brother toils for gold, Till it shine through the mine Round the Boy of '29. If one whom fate has broken Shall lift a moistened eye, We'll say, before he 's spoken-- "Old Classmate, don't you cry! Here, take the purse I hold, There 's a tear upon the gold-- It was mine-it is thine-- A'n't we BOYS OF '29?" As nearer still and nearer The fatal stars appear, The living shall be dearer With each encircling year, Till a few old men shall say, "We remember 't is the day-- Let it pass with a glass For the CLASS OF '29." As one by one is falling Beneath the leaves or snows, Each memory still recalling, The broken ring shall close, Till the nightwinds softly pass O'er the green and growing grass, Where it waves on the graves Of the BOYS OF '29! QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 1852 WHERE, oh where are the visions of morning, Fresh as the dews of our prime? Gone, like tenants that quit without warning, Down the back entry of time. Where, oh where are life's lilies and roses, Nursed in the golden dawn's smile? Dead as the bulrushes round little Moses, On the old banks of the Nile. Where are the Marys, and Anns, and Elizas, Loving and lovely of yore? Look in the columns of old Advertisers,-- Married and dead by the score. Where the gray colts and the ten-year-old fillies, Saturday's triumph and joy? Gone, like our friend (--Greek--) Achilles, Homer's ferocious old boy. Die-away dreams of ecstatic emotion, Hopes like young eagles at play, Vows of unheard-of and endless devotion, How ye have faded away! Yet, through the ebbing of Time's mighty river Leave our young blossoms to die, Let him roll smooth in his current forever, Till the last pebble is dry. AN IMPROMPTU Not premeditated 1853 THE clock has struck noon; ere it thrice tell the hours We shall meet round the table that blushes with flowers, And I shall blush deeper with shame-driven blood That I came to the banquet and brought not a bud. Who cares that his verse is a beggar in art If you see through its rags the full throb of his heart? Who asks if his comrade is battered and tanned When he feels his warm soul in the clasp of his hand? No! be it an epic, or be it a line, The Boys will all love it because it is mine; I sung their last song on the morn of the day That tore from their lives the last blossom of May. It is not the sunset that glows in the wine, But the smile that beams over it, makes it divine; I scatter these drops, and behold, as they fall, The day-star of memory shines through them all! And these are the last; they are drops that I stole From a wine-press that crushes the life from the soul, But they ran through my heart and they sprang to my brain Till our twentieth sweet summer was smiling again! THE OLD MAN DREAMS 1854 OH for one hour of youthful joy! Give back my twentieth spring! I'd rather laugh, a bright-haired boy, Than reign, a gray-beard king. Off with the spoils of wrinkled age! Away with Learning's crown! Tear out life's Wisdom-written page, And dash its trophies down! One moment let my life-blood stream From boyhood's fount of flame! Give me one giddy, reeling dream Of life all love and fame. My listening angel heard the prayer, And, calmly smiling, said, "If I but touch thy silvered hair Thy hasty wish hath sped. "But is there nothing in thy track, To bid thee fondly stay, While the swift seasons hurry back To find the wished-for day?" "Ah, truest soul of womankind! Without thee what were life? One bliss I cannot leave behind: I'll take--my--precious--wife!" The angel took a sapphire pen And wrote in rainbow dew, _The man would be a boy again, And be a husband too!_ "And is there nothing yet unsaid, Before the change appears? Remember, all their gifts have fled With those dissolving years." "Why, yes;" for memory would recall My fond paternal joys; "I could not bear to leave them all I'll take--my--girl--and--boys." The smiling angel dropped his pen,-- "Why, this will never do; The man would be a boy again, And be a father too!" And so I laughed,--my laughter woke The household with its noise,-- And wrote my dream, when morning broke, To please the gray-haired boys. REMEMBER--FORGET 1855 AND what shall be the song to-night, If song there needs must be? If every year that brings us here Must steal an hour from me? Say, shall it ring a merry peal, Or heave a mourning sigh O'er shadows cast, by years long past, On moments flitting by? Nay, take the first unbidden line The idle hour may send, No studied grace can mend the face That smiles as friend on friend; The balsam oozes from the pine, The sweetness from the rose, And so, unsought, a kindly thought Finds language as it flows. The years rush by in sounding flight, I hear their ceaseless wings; Their songs I hear, some far, some near, And thus the burden rings "The morn has fled, the noon has past, The sun will soon be set, The twilight fade to midnight shade; Remember-and Forget!" Remember all that time has brought-- The starry hope on high, The strength attained, the courage gained, The love that cannot die. Forget the bitter, brooding thought,-- The word too harshly said, The living blame love hates to name, The frailties of the dead! We have been younger, so they say, But let the seasons roll, He doth not lack an almanac Whose youth is in his soul. The snows may clog life's iron track, But does the axle tire, While bearing swift through bank and drift The engine's heart of fire? I lift a goblet in my hand; If good old wine it hold, An ancient skin to keep it in Is just the thing, we 're told. We 're grayer than the dusty flask,-- We 're older than our wine; Our corks reveal the "white top" seal, The stamp of '29. Ah, Boys! we clustered in the dawn, To sever in the dark; A merry crew, with loud halloo, We climbed our painted bark; We sailed her through the four years' cruise, We 'll sail her to the last, Our dear old flag, though but a rag, Still flying on her mast. So gliding on, each winter's gale Shall pipe us all on deck, Till, faint and few, the gathering crew Creep o'er the parting wreck, Her sails and streamers spread aloft To fortune's rain or shine, Till storm or sun shall all be one, And down goes TWENTY-NINE! OUR INDIAN SUMMER 1856 You 'll believe me, dear boys, 't is a pleasure to rise, With a welcome like this in your darling old eyes; To meet the same smiles and to hear the same tone Which have greeted me oft in the years that have flown. Were I gray as the grayest old rat in the wall, My locks would turn brown at the sight of you all; If my heart were as dry as the shell on the sand, It would fill like the goblet I hold in my hand. There are noontides of autumn when summer returns. Though the leaves are all garnered and sealed in their urns, And the bird on his perch, that was silent so long, Believes the sweet sunshine and breaks into song. We have caged the young birds of our beautiful June; Their plumes are still bright and their voices in tune; One moment of sunshine from faces like these And they sing as they sung in the green-growing trees. The voices of morning! how sweet is their thrill When the shadows have turned, and the evening grows still! The text of our lives may get wiser with age, But the print was so fair on its twentieth page! Look off from your goblet and up from your plate, Come, take the last journal, and glance at its date: Then think what we fellows should say and should do, If the 6 were a 9 and the 5 were a 2. Ah, no! for the shapes that would meet with as here, From the far land of shadows, are ever too dear! Though youth flung around us its pride and its charms, We should see but the comrades we clasped in our arms. A health to our future--a sigh for our past, We love, we remember, we hope to the last; And for all the base lies that the almanacs hold, While we've youth in our hearts we can never grow old! MARE RUBRUM 1858 FLASH out a stream of blood-red wine, For I would drink to other days, And brighter shall their memory shine, Seen flaming through its crimson blaze! The roses die, the summers fade, But every ghost of boyhood's dream By nature's magic power is laid To sleep beneath this blood-red stream! It filled the purple grapes that lay, And drank the splendors of the sun, Where the long summer's cloudless day Is mirrored in the broad Garonne; It pictures still the bacchant shapes That saw their hoarded sunlight shed,-- The maidens dancing on the grapes,-- Their milk-white ankles splashed with red. Beneath these waves of crimson lie, In rosy fetters prisoned fast, Those flitting shapes that never die,-- The swift-winged visions of the past. Kiss but the crystal's mystic rim, Each shadow rends its flowery chain, Springs in a bubble from its brim, And walks the chambers of the brain. Poor beauty! Time and fortune's wrong No shape nor feature may withstand; Thy wrecks are scattered all along, Like emptied sea-shells on the sand; Yet, sprinkled with this blushing rain, The dust restores each blooming girl, As if the sea-shells moved again Their glistening lips of pink and pearl. Here lies the home of school-boy life, With creaking stair and wind-swept hall, And, scarred by many a truant knife, Our old initials on the wall; Here rest, their keen vibrations mute, The shout of voices known so well, The ringing laugh, the wailing flute, The chiding of the sharp-tongued bell. Here, clad in burning robes, are laid Life's blossomed joys, untimely shed, And here those cherished forms have strayed We miss awhile, and call them dead. What wizard fills the wondrous glass? What soil the enchanted clusters grew? That buried passions wake and pass In beaded drops of fiery dew? Nay, take the cup of blood-red wine,-- Our hearts can boast a warmer glow, Filled from a vintage more divine, Calmed, but not chilled, by winter's snow! To-night the palest wave we sip Rich as the priceless draught shall be That wet the bride of Cana's lip,-- The wedding wine of Galilee! THE BOYS 1859 HAS there any old fellow got mixed with the boys? If there has, take him out, without making a noise. Hang the Almanac's cheat and the Catalogue's spite! Old Time is a liar! We're twenty to-night! We're twenty! We're twenty! Who says we are more? He's tipsy,--young jackanapes!--show him the door! "Gray temples at twenty?"--Yes! white if we please; Where the snow-flakes fall thickest there's nothing can freeze! Was it snowing I spoke of? Excuse the mistake! Look close,--you will see not a sign of a flake! We want some new garlands for those we have shed,-- And these are white roses in place of the red. We've a trick, we young fellows, you may have been told, Of talking (in public) as if we were old:-- That boy we call "Doctor," and this we call "Judge;" It 's a neat little fiction,--of course it 's all fudge. That fellow's the "Speaker,"--the one on the right; "Mr. Mayor," my young one, how are you to-night? That's our "Member of Congress," we say when we chaff; There's the "Reverend" What's his name?--don't make me laugh. That boy with the grave mathematical look Made believe he had written a wonderful book, And the ROYAL SOCIETY thought it was _true_! So they chose him right in; a good joke it was, too! There's a boy, we pretend, with a three-decker brain, That could harness a team with a logical chain; When he spoke for our manhood in syllabled fire, We called him "The Justice," but now he's "The Squire." And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith,-- Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith; But he shouted a song for the brave and the free,-- Just read on his medal, "My country," "of thee!" You hear that boy laughing?--You think he's all fun; But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done; The children laugh loud as they troop to his call, And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all! Yes, we 're boys,--always playing with tongue or with pen,-- And I sometimes have asked,--Shall we ever be men? Shall we always be youthful, and laughing, and gay, Till the last dear companion drops smiling away? Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its gray! The stars of its winter, the dews of its May! And when we have done with our life-lasting toys, Dear Father, take care of thy children, THE BOYS! LINES 1860 I 'm ashamed,--that 's the fact,--it 's a pitiful case,-- Won't any kind classmate get up in my place? Just remember how often I've risen before,-- I blush as I straighten my legs on the floor! There are stories, once pleasing, too many times told,-- There are beauties once charming, too fearfully old,-- There are voices we've heard till we know them so well, Though they talked for an hour they'd have nothing to tell. Yet, Classmates! Friends! Brothers! Dear blessed old boys! Made one by a lifetime of sorrows and joys, What lips have such sounds as the poorest of these, Though honeyed, like Plato's, by musical bees? What voice is so sweet and what greeting so dear As the simple, warm welcome that waits for us here? The love of our boyhood still breathes in its tone, And our hearts throb the answer, "He's one of our own!" Nay! count not our numbers; some sixty we know, But these are above, and those under the snow; And thoughts are still mingled wherever we meet For those we remember with those that we greet. We have rolled on life's journey,--how fast and how far! One round of humanity's many-wheeled car, But up-hill and down-hill, through rattle and rub, Old, true Twenty-niners! we've stuck to our hub! While a brain lives to think, or a bosom to feel, We will cling to it still like the spokes of a wheel! And age, as it chills us, shall fasten the tire That youth fitted round in his circle of fire! A VOICE OF THE LOYAL NORTH 1861 JANUARY THIRD WE sing "Our Country's" song to-night With saddened voice and eye; Her banner droops in clouded light Beneath the wintry sky. We'll pledge her once in golden wine Before her stars have set Though dim one reddening orb may shine, We have a Country yet. 'T were vain to sigh o'er errors past, The fault of sires or sons; Our soldier heard the threatening blast, And spiked his useless guns; He saw the star-wreathed ensign fall, By mad invaders torn; But saw it from the bastioned wall That laughed their rage to scorn! What though their angry cry is flung Across the howling wave,-- They smite the air with idle tongue The gathering storm who brave; Enough of speech! the trumpet rings; Be silent, patient, calm,-- God help them if the tempest swings The pine against the palm! Our toilsome years have made us tame; Our strength has slept unfelt; The furnace-fire is slow to flame That bids our ploughshares melt; 'T is hard to lose the bread they win In spite of Nature's frowns,-- To drop the iron threads we spin That weave our web of towns, To see the rusting turbines stand Before the emptied flumes, To fold the arms that flood the land With rivers from their looms,-- But harder still for those who learn The truth forgot so long; When once their slumbering passions burn, The peaceful are the strong! The Lord have mercy on the weak, And calm their frenzied ire, And save our brothers ere they shriek, "We played with Northern fire!" The eagle hold his mountain height,-- The tiger pace his den Give all their country, each his right! God keep us all! Amen! J. D. R. 1862 THE friends that are, and friends that were, What shallow waves divide! I miss the form for many a year Still seated at my side. I miss him, yet I feel him still Amidst our faithful band, As if not death itself could chill The warmth of friendship's hand. His story other lips may tell,-- For me the veil is drawn; I only knew he loved me well, He loved me--and is gone! VOYAGE OF THE GOOD SHIP UNION 1862 'T is midnight: through my troubled dream Loud wails the tempest's cry; Before the gale, with tattered sail, A ship goes plunging by. What name? Where bound?--The rocks around Repeat the loud halloo. --The good ship Union, Southward bound: God help her and her crew! And is the old flag flying still That o'er your fathers flew, With bands of white and rosy light, And field of starry blue? --Ay! look aloft! its folds full oft Have braved the roaring blast, And still shall fly when from the sky This black typhoon has past! Speak, pilot of the storm-tost bark! May I thy peril share? --O landsman, there are fearful seas The brave alone may dare! --Nay, ruler of the rebel deep, What matters wind or wave? The rocks that wreck your reeling deck Will leave me naught to save! O landsman, art thou false or true? What sign hast thou to show? --The crimson stains from loyal veins That hold my heart-blood's flow --Enough! what more shall honor claim? I know the sacred sign; Above thy head our flag shall spread, Our ocean path be thine! The bark sails on; the Pilgrim's Cape Lies low along her lee, Whose headland crooks its anchor-flukes To lock the shore and sea. No treason here! it cost too dear To win this barren realm And true and free the hands must be That hold the whaler's helm! Still on! Manhattan's narrowing bay No rebel cruiser scars; Her waters feel no pirate's keel That flaunts the fallen stars! --But watch the light on yonder height,-- Ay, pilot, have a care! Some lingering cloud in mist may shroud The capes of Delaware! Say, pilot, what this fort may be, Whose sentinels look down From moated walls that show the sea Their deep embrasures' frown? The Rebel host claims all the coast, But these are friends, we know, Whose footprints spoil the "sacred soil," And this is?--Fort Monroe! The breakers roar,--how bears the shore? --The traitorous wreckers' hands Have quenched the blaze that poured its rays Along the Hatteras sands. --Ha! say not so! I see its glow! Again the shoals display The beacon light that shines by night, The Union Stars by day! The good ship flies to milder skies, The wave more gently flows, The softening breeze wafts o'er the seas The breath of Beaufort's rose. What fold is this the sweet winds kiss, Fair-striped and many-starred, Whose shadow palls these orphaned walls, The twins of Beauregard? What! heard you not Port Royal's doom? How the black war-ships came And turned the Beaufort roses' bloom To redder wreaths of flame? How from Rebellion's broken reed We saw his emblem fall, As soon his cursed poison-weed Shall drop from Sumter's wall? On! on! Pulaski's iron hail Falls harmless on Tybee! The good ship feels the freshening gales, She strikes the open sea; She rounds the point, she threads the keys That guard the Land of Flowers, And rides at last where firm and fast Her own Gibraltar towers! The good ship Union's voyage is o'er, At anchor safe she swings, And loud and clear with cheer on cheer Her joyous welcome rings: Hurrah! Hurrah! it shakes the wave, It thunders on the shore,-- One flag, one land, one heart, one hand, One Nation, evermore! "CHOOSE YOU THIS DAY WHOM YE WILL SERVE" 1863 YES, tyrants, you hate us, and fear while you hate The self-ruling, chain-breaking, throne-shaking State! The night-birds dread morning,--your instinct is true,-- The day-star of Freedom brings midnight for you! Why plead with the deaf for the cause of mankind? The owl hoots at noon that the eagle is blind! We ask not your reasons,--'t were wasting our time,-- Our life is a menace, our welfare a crime! We have battles to fight, we have foes to subdue,-- Time waits not for us, and we wait not for you! The mower mows on, though the adder may writhe And the copper-head coil round the blade of his scythe! "No sides in this quarrel," your statesmen may urge, Of school-house and wages with slave-pen scourge!-- No sides in the quarrel! proclaim it as well To the angels that fight with the legions of hell! They kneel in God's temple, the North and the South, With blood on each weapon and prayers in each mouth. Whose cry shall be answered? Ye Heavens, attend The lords of the lash as their voices ascend! "O Lord, we are shaped in the image of Thee,-- Smite down the base millions that claim to be free, And lend thy strong arm to the soft-handed race Who eat not their bread in the sweat of their face!" So pleads the proud planter. What echoes are these? The bay of his bloodhound is borne on the breeze, And, lost in the shriek of his victim's despair, His voice dies unheard.--Hear the Puritan's prayer! "O Lord, that didst smother mankind in thy flood, The sun is as sackcloth, the moon is as blood, The stars fall to earth as untimely are cast The figs from the fig-tree that shakes in the blast! "All nations, all tribes in whose nostrils is breath Stand gazing at Sin as she travails with Death! Lord, strangle the monster that struggles to birth, Or mock us no more with thy 'Kingdom on Earth!' "If Ammon and Moab must reign in the land Thou gavest thine Israel, fresh from thy hand, Call Baal and Ashtaroth out of their graves To be the new gods for the empire of slaves!" Whose God will ye serve, O ye rulers of men? Will ye build you new shrines in the slave-breeder's den? Or bow with the children of light, as they call On the Judge of the Earth and the Father of All? Choose wisely, choose quickly, for time moves apace,-- Each day is an age in the life of our race! Lord, lead them in love, ere they hasten in fear From the fast-rising flood that shall girdle the sphere! F. W. C. 1864 FAST as the rolling seasons bring The hour of fate to those we love, Each pearl that leaves the broken string Is set in Friendship's crown above. As narrower grows the earthly chain, The circle widens in the sky; These are our treasures that remain, But those are stars that beam on high. We miss--oh, how we miss!--his face,-- With trembling accents speak his name. Earth cannot fill his shadowed place From all her rolls of pride and fame; Our song has lost the silvery thread That carolled through his jocund lips; Our laugh is mute, our smile is fled, And all our sunshine in eclipse. And what and whence the wondrous charm That kept his manhood boylike still,-- That life's hard censors could disarm And lead them captive at his will? His heart was shaped of rosier clay,-- His veins were filled with ruddier fire,-- Time could not chill him, fortune sway, Nor toil with all its burdens tire. His speech burst throbbing from its fount And set our colder thoughts aglow, As the hot leaping geysers mount And falling melt the Iceland snow. Some word, perchance, we counted rash,-- Some phrase our calmness might disclaim, Yet 't was the sunset's lightning's flash, No angry bolt, but harmless flame. Man judges all, God knoweth each; We read the rule, He sees the law; How oft his laughing children teach The truths his prophets never saw O friend, whose wisdom flowered in mirth, Our hearts are sad, our eyes are dim; He gave thy smiles to brighten earth,-- We trust thy joyous soul to Him! Alas!--our weakness Heaven forgive! We murmur, even while we trust, "How long earth's breathing burdens live, Whose hearts, before they die, are dust!" But thou!--through grief's untimely tears We ask with half-reproachful sigh-- "Couldst thou not watch a few brief years Till Friendship faltered, 'Thou mayst die'?" Who loved our boyish years so well? Who knew so well their pleasant tales, And all those livelier freaks could tell Whose oft-told story never fails? In vain we turn our aching eyes,-- In vain we stretch our eager hands,-- Cold in his wintry shroud he lies Beneath the dreary drifting sands! Ah, speak not thus! _He_ lies not there! We see him, hear him as of old! He comes! He claims his wonted chair; His beaming face we still behold! His voice rings clear in all our songs, And loud his mirthful accents rise; To us our brother's life belongs,-- Dear friends, a classmate never dies! THE LAST CHARGE 1864 Now, men of the North! will you join in the strife For country, for freedom, for honor, for life? The giant grows blind in his fury and spite,-- One blow on his forehead will settle the fight! Flash full in his eyes the blue lightning of steel, And stun him with cannon-bolts, peal upon peal! Mount, troopers, and follow your game to its lair, As the hound tracks the wolf and the beagle the hare! Blow, trumpets, your summons, till sluggards awake! Beat, drums, till the roofs of the faint-hearted shake! Yet, yet, ere the signet is stamped on the scroll, Their names may be traced on the blood-sprinkled roll! Trust not the false herald that painted your shield True honor to-day must be sought on the field! Her scutcheon shows white with a blazon of red,-- The life-drops of crimson for liberty shed. The hour is at hand, and the moment draws nigh; The dog-star of treason grows dim in the sky; Shine forth from the battle-cloud, light of the morn, Call back the bright hour when the Nation was born! The rivers of peace through our valleys shall run, As the glaciers of tyranny melt in the sun; Smite, smite the proud parricide down from his throne,-- His sceptre once broken, the world is our own! OUR OLDEST FRIEND 1865 I GIVE you the health of the oldest friend That, short of eternity, earth can lend,-- A friend so faithful and tried and true That nothing can wean him from me and you. When first we screeched in the sudden blaze Of the daylight's blinding and blasting rays, And gulped at the gaseous, groggy air, This old, old friend stood waiting there. And when, with a kind of mortal strife, We had gasped and choked into breathing life, He watched by the cradle, day and night, And held our hands till we stood upright. From gristle and pulp our frames have grown To stringy muscle and solid bone; While we were changing, he altered not; We might forget, but he never forgot. He came with us to the college class,-- Little cared he for the steward's pass! All the rest must pay their fee, Put the grim old dead-head entered free. He stayed with us while we counted o'er Four times each of the seasons four; And with every season, from year to year, The dear name Classmate he made more dear. He never leaves us,--he never will, Till our hands are cold and our hearts are still; On birthdays, and Christmas, and New-Year's too, He always remembers both me and you. Every year this faithful friend His little present is sure to send; Every year, wheresoe'er we be, He wants a keepsake from you and me. How he loves us! he pats our heads, And, lo! they are gleaming with silver threads; And he 's always begging one lock of hair, Till our shining crowns have nothing to wear. At length he will tell us, one by one, "My child, your labor on earth is done; And now you must journey afar to see My elder brother,--Eternity!" And so, when long, long years have passed, Some dear old fellow will be the last,-- Never a boy alive but he Of all our goodly company! When he lies down, but not till then, Our kind Class-Angel will drop the pen That writes in the day-book kept above Our lifelong record of faith and love. So here's a health in homely rhyme To our oldest classmate, Father Time! May our last survivor live to be As bald and as wise and as tough as he! SHERMAN 'S IN SAVANNAH A HALF-RHYMED IMPROMPTU 1865 LIKE the tribes of Israel, Fed on quails and manna, Sherman and his glorious band Journeyed through the rebel land, Fed from Heaven's all-bounteous hand, Marching on Savannah! As the moving pillar shone, Streamed the starry banner All day long in rosy light, Flaming splendor all the night, Till it swooped in eagle flight Down on doomed Savannah! Glory be to God on high! Shout the loud Hosanna! Treason's wilderness is past, Canaan's shore is won at last, Peal a nation's trumpet-blast,-- Sherman 's in Savannah! Soon shall Richmond's tough old hide Find a tough old tanner! Soon from every rebel wall Shall the rag of treason fall, Till our banner flaps o'er all As it crowns Savannah! MY ANNUAL 1866 How long will this harp which you once loved to hear Cheat your lips of a smile or your eyes of a tear? How long stir the echoes it wakened of old, While its strings were unbroken, untarnished its gold? Dear friends of my boyhood, my words do you wrong; The heart, the heart only, shall throb in my song; It reads the kind answer that looks from your eyes,-- "We will bid our old harper play on till he dies." Though Youth, the fair angel that looked o'er the strings, Has lost the bright glory that gleamed on his wings, Though the freshness of morning has passed from its tone It is still the old harp that was always your own. I claim not its music,--each note it affords I strike from your heart-strings, that lend me its chords; I know you will listen and love to the last, For it trembles and thrills with the voice of your past. Ah, brothers! dear brothers! the harp that I hold No craftsman could string and no artisan mould; He shaped it, He strung it, who fashioned the lyres That ring with the hymns of the seraphim choirs. Not mine are the visions of beauty it brings, Not mine the faint fragrance around it that clings; Those shapes are the phantoms of years that are fled, Those sweets breathe from roses your summers have shed. Each hour of the past lends its tribute to this, Till it blooms like a bower in the Garden of Bliss; The thorn and the thistle may grow as they will, Where Friendship unfolds there is Paradise still. The bird wanders careless while summer is green, The leaf-hidden cradle that rocked him unseen; When Autumn's rude fingers the woods have undressed, The boughs may look bare, but they show him his nest. Too precious these moments! the lustre they fling Is the light of our year, is the gem of its ring, So brimming with sunshine, we almost forget The rays it has lost, and its border of jet. While round us the many-hued halo is shed, How dear are the living, how near are the dead! One circle, scarce broken, these waiting below, Those walking the shores where the asphodels blow! Not life shall enlarge it nor death shall divide,-- No brother new-born finds his place at my side; No titles shall freeze us, no grandeurs infest, His Honor, His Worship, are boys like the rest. Some won the world's homage, their names we hold dear,-- But Friendship, not Fame, is the countersign here; Make room by the conqueror crowned in the strife For the comrade that limps from the battle of life! What tongue talks of battle? Too long we have heard In sorrow, in anguish, that terrible word; It reddened the sunshine, it crimsoned the wave, It sprinkled our doors with the blood of our brave. Peace, Peace comes at last, with her garland of white; Peace broods in all hearts as we gather to-night; The blazon of Union spreads full in the sun; We echo its words,--We are one! We are one! ALL HERE 1867 IT is not what we say or sing, That keeps our charm so long unbroken, Though every lightest leaf we bring May touch the heart as friendship's token; Not what we sing or what we say Can make us dearer to each other; We love the singer and his lay, But love as well the silent brother. Yet bring whate'er your garden grows, Thrice welcome to our smiles and praises; Thanks for the myrtle and the rose, Thanks for the marigolds and daisies; One flower erelong we all shall claim, Alas! unloved of Amaryllis-- Nature's last blossom-need I name The wreath of threescore's silver lilies? How many, brothers, meet to-night Around our boyhood's covered embers? Go read the treasured names aright The old triennial list remembers; Though twenty wear the starry sign That tells a life has broke its tether, The fifty-eight of 'twenty-nine-- God bless THE Boys!--are all together! These come with joyous look and word, With friendly grasp and cheerful greeting,-- Those smile unseen, and move unheard, The angel guests of every meeting; They cast no shadow in the flame That flushes from the gilded lustre, But count us--we are still the same; One earthly band, one heavenly cluster! Love dies not when he bows his head To pass beyond the narrow portals,-- The light these glowing moments shed Wakes from their sleep our lost immortals; They come as in their joyous prime, Before their morning days were numbered,-- Death stays the envious hand of Time,-- The eyes have not grown dim that slumbered! The paths that loving souls have trod Arch o'er the dust where worldlings grovel High as the zenith o'er the sod,-- The cross above the sexton's shovel! We rise beyond the realms of day; They seem to stoop from spheres of glory With us one happy hour to stray, While youth comes back in song and story. Ah! ours is friendship true as steel That war has tried in edge and temper; It writes upon its sacred seal The priest's _ubique--omnes--semper_! It lends the sky a fairer sun That cheers our lives with rays as steady As if our footsteps had begun To print the golden streets already! The tangling years have clinched its knot Too fast for mortal strength to sunder; The lightning bolts of noon are shot; No fear of evening's idle thunder! Too late! too late!--no graceless hand Shall stretch its cords in vain endeavor To rive the close encircling band That made and keeps us one forever! So when upon the fated scroll The falling stars have all descended, And, blotted from the breathing roll, Our little page of life is ended, We ask but one memorial line Traced on thy tablet, Gracious Mother "My children. Boys of '29. In pace. How they loved each other!" ONCE MORE ONCE MORE 1868 "Will I come?" That is pleasant! I beg to inquire If the gun that I carry has ever missed fire? And which was the muster-roll-mention but one-- That missed your old comrade who carries the gun? You see me as always, my hand on the lock, The cap on the nipple, the hammer full cock; It is rusty, some tell me; I heed not the scoff; It is battered and bruised, but it always goes off! "Is it loaded?" I'll bet you! What doesn't it hold? Rammed full to the muzzle with memories untold; Why, it scares me to fire, lest the pieces should fly Like the cannons that burst on the Fourth of July. One charge is a remnant of College-day dreams (Its wadding is made of forensics and themes); Ah, visions of fame! what a flash in the pan As the trigger was pulled by each clever young man! And love! Bless my stars, what a cartridge is there! With a wadding of rose-leaves and ribbons and hair,-- All crammed in one verse to go off at a shot! "Were there ever such sweethearts?" Of course there were not! And next,--what a load! it wall split the old gun,-- Three fingers,--four fingers,--five fingers of fun! Come tell me, gray sages, for mischief and noise Was there ever a lot like us fellows, "The Boys"? Bump I bump! down the staircase the cannon-ball goes,-- Aha, old Professor! Look out for your toes! Don't think, my poor Tutor, to sleep in your bed,-- Two "Boys"--'twenty-niners-room over your head! Remember the nights when the tar-barrel blazed! From red "Massachusetts" the war-cry was raised; And "Hollis" and "Stoughton" reechoed the call; Till P----- poked his head out of Holworthy Hall! Old P----, as we called him,--at fifty or so,-- Not exactly a bud, but not quite in full blow; In ripening manhood, suppose we should say, Just nearing his prime, as we boys are to-day! Oh say, can you look through the vista of age To the time when old Morse drove the regular stage? When Lyon told tales of the long-vanished years, And Lenox crept round with the rings in his ears? And dost thou, my brother, remember indeed The days of our dealings with Willard and Read? When "Dolly" was kicking and running away, And punch came up smoking on Fillebrown's tray? But where are the Tutors, my brother, oh tell!-- And where the Professors, remembered so well? The sturdy old Grecian of Holworthy Hall, And Latin, and Logic, and Hebrew, and all? "They are dead, the old fellows" (we called them so then, Though we since have found out they were lusty young men). They are dead, do you tell me?--but how do you know? You've filled once too often. I doubt if it's so. I'm thinking. I'm thinking. Is this 'sixty-eight? It's not quite so clear. It admits of debate. I may have been dreaming. I rather incline To think--yes, I'm certain--it is 'twenty-nine! "By Zhorzhe!"--as friend Sales is accustomed to cry,-- You tell me they're dead, but I know it's a lie! Is Jackson not President?--What was 't you said? It can't be; you're joking; what,--all of 'em dead? Jim,--Harry,--Fred,--Isaac,--all gone from our side? They could n't have left us,--no, not if they tried. Look,--there 's our old Prises,--he can't find his text; See,--P----- rubs his leg, as he growls out "The next!" I told you 't was nonsense. Joe, give us a song! Go harness up "Dolly," and fetch her along!-- Dead! Dead! You false graybeard, I swear they are not! Hurrah for Old Hickory!--Oh, I forgot! Well, _one_ we have with us (how could he contrive To deal with us youngsters and still to survive?) Who wore for our guidance authority's robe,-- No wonder he took to the study of Job! And now, as my load was uncommonly large, Let me taper it off with a classical charge; When that has gone off, I shall drop my old gun-- And then stand at ease, for my service is done. _Bibamus ad Classem vocatam_ "The Boys" _Et eorum Tutorem cui nomen est "Noyes";_ _Et floreant, valeant, vigeant tam,_ _Non Peircius ipse enumeret quam!_ THE OLD CRUISER 1869 HERE 's the old cruiser, 'Twenty-nine, Forty times she 's crossed the line; Same old masts and sails and crew, Tight and tough and as good as new. Into the harbor she bravely steers Just as she 's done for these forty years, Over her anchor goes, splash and clang! Down her sails drop, rattle and bang! Comes a vessel out of the dock Fresh and spry as a fighting-cock, Feathered with sails and spurred with steam, Heading out of the classic stream. Crew of a hundred all aboard, Every man as fine as a lord. Gay they look and proud they feel, Bowling along on even keel. On they float with wind and tide,-- Gain at last the old ship's side; Every man looks down in turn,-- Reads the name that's on her stern. "Twenty-nine!--Diable you say! That was in Skipper Kirkland's day! What was the Flying Dutchman's name? This old rover must be the same. "Ho! you Boatswain that walks the deck, How does it happen you're not a wreck? One and another have come to grief, How have you dodged by rock and reef?" Boatswain, lifting one knowing lid, Hitches his breeches and shifts his quid "Hey? What is it? Who 's come to grief Louder, young swab, I 'm a little deaf." "I say, old fellow, what keeps your boat With all you jolly old boys afloat, When scores of vessels as good as she Have swallowed the salt of the bitter sea? "Many a crew from many a craft Goes drifting by on a broken raft Pieced from a vessel that clove the brine Taller and prouder than 'Twenty-nine. "Some capsized in an angry breeze, Some were lost in the narrow seas, Some on snags and some on sands Struck and perished and lost their hands. "Tell us young ones, you gray old man, What is your secret, if you can. We have a ship as good as you, Show us how to keep our crew." So in his ear the youngster cries; Then the gray Boatswain straight replies:-- "All your crew be sure you know,-- Never let one of your shipmates go. "If he leaves you, change your tack, Follow him close and fetch him back; When you've hauled him in at last, Grapple his flipper and hold him fast. "If you've wronged him, speak him fair, Say you're sorry and make it square; If he's wronged you, wink so tight None of you see what 's plain in sight. "When the world goes hard and wrong, Lend a hand to help him along; When his stockings have holes to darn, Don't you grudge him your ball of yarn. "Once in a twelvemonth, come what may, Anchor your ship in a quiet bay, Call all hands and read the log, And give 'em a taste of grub and grog. "Stick to each other through thick and thin; All the closer as age leaks in; Squalls will blow and clouds will frown, But stay by your ship till you all go down!" ADDED FOR THE ALUMNI MEETING, JUNE 29, 1869. So the gray Boatswain of 'Twenty-nine Piped to "The Boys" as they crossed the line; Round the cabin sat thirty guests, Babes of the nurse with a thousand breasts. There were the judges, grave and grand, Flanked by the priests on either hand; There was the lord of wealth untold, And the dear good fellow in broadcloth old. Thirty men, from twenty towns, Sires and grandsires with silvered crowns,-- Thirty school-boys all in a row,-- Bens and Georges and Bill and Joe. In thirty goblets the wine was poured, But threescore gathered around the board,-- For lo! at the side of every chair A shadow hovered--we all were there! HYMN FOR THE CLASS-MEETING 1869 THOU Gracious Power, whose mercy lends The light of home, the smile of friends, Our gathered flock thine arms infold As in the peaceful days of old. Wilt thou not hear us while we raise, In sweet accord of solemn praise, The voices that have mingled long In joyous flow of mirth and song? For all the blessings life has brought, For all its sorrowing hours have taught, For all we mourn, for all we keep, The hands we clasp, the loved that sleep; The noontide sunshine of the past, These brief, bright moments fading fast, The stars that gild our darkening years, The twilight ray from holier spheres; We thank thee, Father! let thy grace Our narrowing circle still embrace, Thy mercy shed its heavenly store, Thy peace be with us evermore! EVEN-SONG. 1870 IT may be, yes, it must be, Time that brings An end to mortal things, That sends the beggar Winter in the train Of Autumn's burdened wain,-- Time, that is heir of all our earthly state, And knoweth well to wait Till sea hath turned to shore and shore to sea, If so it need must be, Ere he make good his claim and call his own Old empires overthrown,-- Time, who can find no heavenly orb too large To hold its fee in charge, Nor any motes that fill its beam so small, But he shall care for all,-- It may be, must be,--yes, he soon shall tire This hand that holds the lyre. Then ye who listened in that earlier day When to my careless lay I matched its chords and stole their first-born thrill, With untaught rudest skill Vexing a treble from the slender strings Thin as the locust sings When the shrill-crying child of summer's heat Pipes from its leafy seat, The dim pavilion of embowering green Beneath whose shadowy screen The small sopranist tries his single note Against the song-bird's throat, And all the echoes listen, but in vain; They hear no answering strain,-- Then ye who listened in that earlier day Shall sadly turn away, Saying, "The fire burns low, the hearth is cold That warmed our blood of old; Cover its embers and its half-burnt brands, And let us stretch our hands Over a brighter and fresh-kindled flame; Lo, this is not the same, The joyous singer of our morning time, Flushed high with lusty rhyme! Speak kindly, for he bears a human heart, But whisper him apart,-- Tell him the woods their autumn robes have shed And all their birds have fled, And shouting winds unbuild the naked nests They warmed with patient breasts; Tell him the sky is dark, the summer o'er, And bid him sing no more!" Ah, welladay! if words so cruel-kind A listening ear might find! But who that hears the music in his soul Of rhythmic waves that roll Crested with gleams of fire, and as they flow Stir all the deeps below Till the great pearls no calm might ever reach Leap glistening on the beach,-- Who that has known the passion and the pain, The rush through heart and brain, The joy so like a pang his hand is pressed Hard on his throbbing breast, When thou, whose smile is life and bliss and fame Hast set his pulse aflame, Muse of the lyre! can say farewell to thee? Alas! and must it be? In many a clime, in many a stately tongue, The mighty bards have sung; To these the immemorial thrones belong And purple robes of song; Yet the slight minstrel loves the slender tone His lips may call his own, And finds the measure of the verse more sweet, Timed by his pulse's beat, Than all the hymnings of the laurelled throng. Say not I do him wrong, For Nature spoils her warblers,--them she feeds In lotus-growing meads And pours them subtle draughts from haunted streams That fill their souls with dreams. Full well I know the gracious mother's wiles And dear delusive smiles! No callow fledgling of her singing brood But tastes that witching food, And hearing overhead the eagle's wing, And how the thrushes sing, Vents his exiguous chirp, and from his nest Flaps forth--we know the rest. I own the weakness of the tuneful kind,-- Are not all harpers blind? I sang too early, must I sing too late? The lengthening shadows wait The first pale stars of twilight,--yet how sweet The flattering whisper's cheat,-- "Thou hast the fire no evening chill can tame, Whose coals outlast its flame!" Farewell, ye carols of the laughing morn, Of earliest sunshine born! The sower flings the seed and looks not back Along his furrowed track; The reaper leaves the stalks for other hands To gird with circling bands; The wind, earth's careless servant, truant-born, Blows clean the beaten corn And quits the thresher's floor, and goes his way To sport with ocean's spray; The headlong-stumbling rivulet scrambling down To wash the sea-girt town, Still babbling of the green and billowy waste Whose salt he longs to taste, Ere his warm wave its chilling clasp may feel Has twirled the miller's wheel. The song has done its task that makes us bold With secrets else untold,-- And mine has run its errand; through the dews I tracked the flying Muse; The daughter of the morning touched my lips With roseate finger-tips; Whether I would or would not, I must sing With the new choirs of spring; Now, as I watch the fading autumn day And trill my softened lay, I think of all that listened, and of one For whom a brighter sun Dawned at high summer's noon. Ah, comrades dear, Are not all gathered here? Our hearts have answered.--Yes! they hear our call: All gathered here! all! all! THE SMILING LISTENER 1871 PRECISELY. I see it. You all want to say That a tear is too sad and a laugh is too gay; You could stand a faint smile, you could manage a sigh, But you value your ribs, and you don't want to cry. And why at our feast of the clasping of hands Need we turn on the stream of our lachrymal glands? Though we see the white breakers of age on our bow, Let us take a good pull in the jolly-boat now! It's hard if a fellow cannot feel content When a banquet like this does n't cost him a cent, When his goblet and plate he may empty at will, And our kind Class Committee will settle the bill. And here's your old friend, the identical bard Who has rhymed and recited you verse by the yard Since the days of the empire of Andrew the First Till you 're full to the brim and feel ready to burst. It's awful to think of,--how year after year With his piece in his pocket he waits for you here; No matter who's missing, there always is one To lug out his manuscript, sure as a gun. "Why won't he stop writing?" Humanity cries The answer is briefly, "He can't if he tries; He has played with his foolish old feather so long, That the goose-quill in spite of him cackles in song." You have watched him with patience from morning to dusk Since the tassel was bright o'er the green of the husk, And now--it 's too bad--it 's a pitiful job-- He has shelled the ripe ear till he's come to the cob. I see one face beaming--it listens so well There must be some music yet left in my shell-- The wine of my soul is not thick on the lees; One string is unbroken, one friend I can please! Dear comrade, the sunshine of seasons gone by Looks out from your tender and tear-moistened eye, A pharos of love on an ice-girdled coast,-- Kind soul!--Don't you hear me?--He's deaf as a post! Can it be one of Nature's benevolent tricks That you grow hard of hearing as I grow prolix? And that look of delight which would angels beguile Is the deaf man's prolonged unintelligent smile? Ah! the ear may grow dull, and the eye may wax dim, But they still know a classmate--they can't mistake him; There is something to tell us, "That's one of our band," Though we groped in the dark for a touch of his hand. Well, Time with his snuffers is prowling about And his shaky old fingers will soon snuff us out; There's a hint for us all in each pendulum tick, For we're low in the tallow and long in the wick. You remember Rossini--you 've been at the play? How his overture-endings keep crashing away Till you think, "It 's all over--it can't but stop now-- That 's the screech and the bang of the final bow-wow." And you find you 're mistaken; there 's lots more to come, More banging, more screeching of fiddle and drum, Till when the last ending is finished and done, You feel like a horse when the winning-post 's won. So I, who have sung to you, merry or sad, Since the days when they called me a promising lad, Though I 've made you more rhymes than a tutor could scan, Have a few more still left, like the razor-strop man. Now pray don't be frightened--I 'm ready to stop My galloping anapests' clatter and pop-- In fact, if you say so, retire from to-day To the garret I left, on a poet's half-pay. And yet--I can't help it--perhaps--who can tell? You might miss the poor singer you treated so well, And confess you could stand him five minutes or so, "It was so like old times we remember, you know." 'T is not that the music can signify much, But then there are chords that awake with a touch,-- And our hearts can find echoes of sorrow and joy To the winch of the minstrel who hails from Savoy. So this hand-organ tune that I cheerfully grind May bring the old places and faces to mind, And seen in the light of the past we recall The flowers that have faded bloom fairest of all! OUR SWEET SINGER J. A. 1872 ONE memory trembles on our lips; It throbs in every breast; In tear-dimmed eyes, in mirth's eclipse, The shadow stands confessed. O silent voice, that cheered so long Our manhood's marching day, Without thy breath of heavenly song, How weary seems the way! Vain every pictured phrase to tell Our sorrowing heart's desire,-- The shattered harp, the broken shell, The silent unstrung lyre; For youth was round us while he sang; It glowed in every tone; With bridal chimes the echoes rang, And made the past our own. Oh blissful dream! Our nursery joys We know must have an end, But love and friendship's broken toys May God's good angels mend! The cheering smile, the voice of mirth And laughter's gay surprise That please the children born of earth. Why deem that Heaven denies? Methinks in that refulgent sphere That knows not sun or moon, An earth-born saint might long to hear One verse of "Bonny Doon "; Or walking through the streets of gold In heaven's unclouded light, His lips recall the song of old And hum "The sky is bright." And can we smile when thou art dead? Ah, brothers, even so! The rose of summer will be red, In spite of winter's snow. Thou wouldst not leave us all in gloom Because thy song is still, Nor blight the banquet-garland's bloom With grief's untimely chill. The sighing wintry winds complain,-- The singing bird has flown,-- Hark! heard I not that ringing strain, That clear celestial tone? How poor these pallid phrases seem, How weak this tinkling line, As warbles through my waking dream That angel voice of thine! Thy requiem asks a sweeter lay; It falters on my tongue; For all we vainly strive to say, Thou shouldst thyself have sung! H. C. M. H. S. J. K. W. 1873 THE dirge is played, the throbbing death-peal rung, The sad-voiced requiem sung; On each white urn where memory dwells The wreath of rustling immortelles Our loving hands have hung, And balmiest leaves have strown and tenderest blossoms flung. The birds that filled the air with songs have flown, The wintry blasts have blown, And these for whom the voice of spring Bade the sweet choirs their carols sing Sleep in those chambers lone Where snows untrodden lie, unheard the night-winds moan. We clasp them all in memory, as the vine Whose running stems intwine The marble shaft, and steal around The lowly stone, the nameless mound; With sorrowing hearts resign Our brothers true and tried, and close our broken line. How fast the lamps of life grow dim and die Beneath our sunset sky! Still fading, as along our track We cast our saddened glances back, And while we vainly sigh The shadowy day recedes, the starry night draws nigh. As when from pier to pier across the tide With even keel we glide, The lights we left along the shore Grow less and less, while more, yet more New vistas open wide Of fair illumined streets and casements golden-eyed. Each closing circle of our sunlit sphere Seems to bring heaven more near Can we not dream that those we love Are listening in the world above And smiling as they hear The voices known so well of friends that still are dear? Does all that made us human fade away With this dissolving clay? Nay, rather deem the blessed isles Are bright and gay with joyous smiles, That angels have their play, And saints that tire of song may claim their holiday. All else of earth may perish; love alone Not heaven shall find outgrown! Are they not here, our spirit guests, With love still throbbing in their breasts? Once more let flowers be strown. Welcome, ye shadowy forms, we count you still our own! WHAT I HAVE COME FOR 1873 I HAVE come with my verses--I think I may claim It is not the first time I have tried on the same. They were puckered in rhyme, they were wrinkled in wit; But your hearts were so large that they made them a fit. I have come--not to tease you with more of my rhyme, But to feel as I did in the blessed old time; I want to hear him with the Brobdingnag laugh-- We count him at least as three men and a half. I have come to meet judges so wise and so grand That I shake in my shoes while they're shaking my hand; And the prince among merchants who put back the crown When they tried to enthrone him the King of the Town. I have come to see George--Yes, I think there are four, If they all were like these I could wish there were more. I have come to see one whom we used to call "Jim," I want to see--oh, don't I want to see him? I have come to grow young--on my word I declare I have thought I detected a change in my hair! One hour with "The Boys" will restore it to brown-- And a wrinkle or two I expect to rub down. Yes, that's what I've come for, as all of us come; When I meet the dear Boys I could wish I were dumb. You asked me, you know, but it's spoiling the fun; I have told what I came for; my ditty is done. OUR BANKER 1874 OLD TIME, in whose bank we deposit our notes, Is a miser who always wants guineas for groats; He keeps all his customers still in arrears By lending them minutes and charging them years. The twelvemonth rolls round and we never forget On the counter before us to pay him our debt. We reckon the marks he has chalked on the door, Pay up and shake hands and begin a new score. How long he will lend us, how much we may owe, No angel will tell us, no mortal may know. At fivescore, at fourscore, at threescore and ten, He may close the account with a stroke of his pen. This only we know,--amid sorrows and joys Old Time has been easy and kind with "The Boys." Though he must have and will have and does have his pay, We have found him good-natured enough in his way. He never forgets us, as others will do,-- I am sure he knows me, and I think he knows you, For I see on your foreheads a mark that he lends As a sign he remembers to visit his friends. In the shape of a classmate (a wig on his crown,-- His day-book and ledger laid carefully down) He has welcomed us yearly, a glass in his hand, And pledged the good health of our brotherly band. He 's a thief, we must own, but how many there be That rob us less gently and fairly than he He has stripped the green leaves that were over us all, But they let in the sunshine as fast as they fall. Young beauties may ravish the world with a glance As they languish in song, as they float in the dance,-- They are grandmothers now we remember as girls, And the comely white cap takes the place of the curls. But the sighing and moaning and groaning are o'er, We are pining and moping and sleepless no more, And the hearts that were thumping like ships on the rocks Beat as quiet and steady as meeting-house clocks. The trump of ambition, loud sounding and shrill, May blow its long blast, but the echoes are still, The spring-tides are past, but no billow may reach The spoils they have landed far up on the beach. We see that Time robs us, we know that he cheats, But we still find a charm in his pleasant deceits, While he leaves the remembrance of all that was best, Love, friendship, and hope, and the promise of rest. Sweet shadows of twilight! how calm their repose, While the dewdrops fall soft in the breast of the rose! How blest to the toiler his hour of release When the vesper is heard with its whisper of peace! Then here's to the wrinkled old miser, our friend; May he send us his bills to the century's end, And lend us the moments no sorrow alloys, Till he squares his account with the last of "The Boys." FOR CLASS MEETING 1875 IT is a pity and a shame--alas! alas! I know it is, To tread the trodden grapes again, but so it has been, so it is; The purple vintage long is past, with ripened clusters bursting so They filled the wine-vats to the brim,-'t is strange you will be thirsting so! Too well our faithful memory tells what might be rhymed or sung about, For all have sighed and some have wept since last year's snows were flung about; The beacon flame that fired the sky, the modest ray that gladdened us, A little breath has quenched their light, and deepening shades have saddened us. No more our brother's life is ours for cheering or for grieving us, One only sadness they bequeathed, the sorrow of their leaving us; Farewell! Farewell!--I turn the leaf I read my chiming measure in; Who knows but something still is there a friend may find a pleasure in? For who can tell by what he likes what other people's fancies are? How all men think the best of wives their own particular Nancies are? If what I sing you brings a smile, you will not stop to catechise, Nor read Bceotia's lumbering line with nicely scanning Attic eyes. Perhaps the alabaster box that Mary broke so lovingly, While Judas looked so sternly on, the Master so approvingly, Was not so fairly wrought as those that Pilate's wife and daughters had, Or many a dame of Judah's line that drank of Jordan's waters had. Perhaps the balm that cost so dear, as some remarked officiously, The precious nard that filled the room with fragrance so deliciously, So oft recalled in storied page and sung in verse melodious, The dancing girl had thought too cheap,--that daughter of Herodias. Where now are all the mighty deeds that Herod boasted loudest of? Where now the flashing jewelry the tetrarch's wife was proudest of? Yet still to hear how Mary loved, all tribes of men are listening, And still the sinful woman's tears like stars heaven are glistening. 'T is not the gift our hands have brought, the love it is we bring with it,-- The minstrel's lips may shape the song, his heart in tune must sing with it; And so we love the simple lays, and wish we might have more of them, Our poet brothers sing for us,--there must be half a score of them. It may be that of fame and name our voices once were emulous,-- With deeper thoughts, with tenderer throbs their softening tones are tremulous; The dead seem listening as of old, ere friendship was bereft of them; The living wear a kinder smile, the remnant that is left of them. Though on the once unfurrowed brows the harrow- teeth of Time may show, Though all the strain of crippling years the halting feet of rhyme may show, We look and hear with melting hearts, for what we all remember is The morn of Spring, nor heed how chill the sky of gray November is. Thanks to the gracious powers above from all mankind that singled us, And dropped the pearl of friendship in the cup they kindly mingled us, And bound us in a wreath of flowers with hoops of steel knit under it;-- Nor time, nor space, nor chance, nor change, nor death himself shall sunder it! "AD AMICOS" 1876 "Dumque virent genua Et decet, obducta solvatur fonte senectus." THE muse of boyhood's fervid hour Grows tame as skies get chill and hazy; Where once she sought a passion-flower, She only hopes to find a daisy. Well, who the changing world bewails? Who asks to have it stay unaltered? Shall grown-up kittens chase their tails? Shall colts be never shod or haltered? Are we "The Boys" that used to make The tables ring with noisy follies? Whose deep-lunged laughter oft would shake The ceiling with its thunder-volleys? Are we the youths with lips unshorn, At beauty's feet unwrinkled suitors, Whose memories reach tradition's morn,-- The days of prehistoric tutors? "The Boys" we knew,--but who are these Whose heads might serve for Plutarch's sages, Or Fox's martyrs, if you please, Or hermits of the dismal ages? "The Boys" we knew--can these be those? Their cheeks with morning's blush were painted;-- Where are the Harrys, Jims, and Joes With whom we once were well acquainted? If we are they, we're not the same; If they are we, why then they're masking; Do tell us, neighbor What 's--your--name, Who are you?--What's the use of asking? You once were George, or Bill, or Ben; There's you, yourself--there 's you, that other-- I know you now--I knew you then-- You used to be your younger brother! You both are all our own to-day,-- But ah! I hear a warning whisper; Yon roseate hour that flits away Repeats the Roman's sad _paulisper_. Come back! come back! we've need of you To pay you for your word of warning; We'll bathe your wings in brighter dew Than ever wet the lids of morning! Behold this cup; its mystic wine No alien's lip has ever tasted; The blood of friendship's clinging vine, Still flowing, flowing, yet unwasted Old Time forgot his running sand And laid his hour-glass down to fill it, And Death himself with gentle hand Has touched the chalice, not to spill it. Each bubble rounding at the brim Is rainbowed with its magic story; The shining days with age grown dim Are dressed again in robes of glory; In all its freshness spring returns With song of birds and blossoms tender; Once more the torch of passion burns, And youth is here in all its splendor! Hope swings her anchor like a toy, Love laughs and shows the silver arrow We knew so well as man and boy,-- The shaft that stings through bone and marrow; Again our kindling pulses beat, With tangled curls our fingers dally, And bygone beauties smile as sweet As fresh-blown lilies of the valley. O blessed hour! we may forget Its wreaths, its rhymes, its songs, its laughter, But not the loving eyes we met, Whose light shall gild the dim hereafter. How every heart to each grows warm! Is one in sunshine's ray? We share it. Is one in sorrow's blinding storm? A look, a word, shall help him bear it. "The Boys" we were, "The Boys" we 'll be As long as three, as two, are creeping; Then here 's to him--ah! which is he?-- Who lives till all the rest are sleeping; A life with tranquil comfort blest, The young man's health, the rich man's plenty, All earth can give that earth has best, And heaven at fourscore years and twenty. HOW NOT TO SETTLE IT 1877 I LIKE, at times, to hear the steeples' chimes With sober thoughts impressively that mingle; But sometimes, too, I rather like--don't you?-- To hear the music of the sleigh bells' jingle. I like full well the deep resounding swell Of mighty symphonies with chords inwoven; But sometimes, too, a song of Burns--don't you? After a solemn storm-blast of Beethoven. Good to the heels the well-worn slipper feels When the tired player shuffles off the buskin; A page of Hood may do a fellow good After a scolding from Carlyle or Ruskin. Some works I find,--say Watts upon the Mind,-- No matter though at first they seemed amusing, Not quite the same, but just a little tame After some five or six times' reperusing. So, too, at times when melancholy rhymes Or solemn speeches sober down a dinner, I've seen it 's true, quite often,--have n't you?-- The best-fed guests perceptibly grow thinner. Better some jest (in proper terms expressed) Or story (strictly moral) even if musty, Or song we sung when these old throats were young,-- Something to keep our souls from getting rusty. The poorest scrap from memory's ragged lap Comes like an heirloom from a dear dead mother-- Hush! there's a tear that has no business here, A half-formed sigh that ere its birth we smother. We cry, we laugh; ah, life is half and half, Now bright and joyous as a song of Herrick's, Then chill and bare as funeral-minded Blair; As fickle as a female in hysterics. If I could make you cry I would n't try; If you have hidden smiles I'd like to find them, And that although, as well I ought to know, The lips of laughter have a skull behind them. Yet when I think we may be on the brink Of having Freedom's banner to dispose of, All crimson-hued, because the Nation would Insist on cutting its own precious nose off, I feel indeed as if we rather need A sermon such as preachers tie a text on. If Freedom dies because a ballot lies, She earns her grave; 't is time to call the sexton! But if a fight can make the matter right, Here are we, classmates, thirty men of mettle; We're strong and tough, we've lived nigh long enough,-- What if the Nation gave it us to settle? The tale would read like that illustrious deed When Curtius took the leap the gap that filled in, Thus: "Fivescore years, good friends, as it appears, At last this people split on Hayes and Tilden. "One half cried, 'See! the choice is S. J. T.!' And one half swore as stoutly it was t' other; Both drew the knife to save the Nation's life By wholesale vivisection of each other. "Then rose in mass that monumental Class,-- 'Hold! hold!' they cried, 'give us, give us the daggers!' 'Content! content!' exclaimed with one consent The gaunt ex-rebels and the carpet-baggers. "Fifteen each side, the combatants divide, So nicely balanced are their predilections; And first of all a tear-drop each lets fall, A tribute to their obsolete affections. "Man facing man, the sanguine strife began, Jack, Jim and Joe against Tom, Dick and Harry, Each several pair its own account to square, Till both were down or one stood solitary. "And the great fight raged furious all the night Till every integer was made a fraction; Reader, wouldst know what history has to show As net result of the above transaction? "Whole coat-tails, four; stray fragments, several score; A heap of spectacles; a deaf man's trumpet; Six lawyers' briefs; seven pocket-handkerchiefs; Twelve canes wherewith the owners used to stump it; "Odd rubber-shoes; old gloves of different hues; Tax--bills,--unpaid,--and several empty purses; And, saved from harm by some protecting charm, A printed page with Smith's immortal verses; "Trifles that claim no very special name,-- Some useful, others chiefly ornamental; Pins, buttons, rings, and other trivial things, With various wrecks, capillary and dental. "Also, one flag,--'t was nothing but a rag, And what device it bore it little matters; Red, white, and blue, but rent all through and through, 'Union forever' torn to shreds and tatters. "They fought so well not one was left to tell Which got the largest share of cuts and slashes; When heroes meet, both sides are bound to beat; They telescoped like cars in railroad smashes. "So the great split that baffled human wit And might have cost the lives of twenty millions, As all may see that know the rule of three, Was settled just as well by these civilians. "As well. Just so. Not worse, not better. No, Next morning found the Nation still divided; Since all were slain, the inference is plain They left the point they fought for undecided." If not quite true, as I have told it you, This tale of mutual extermination, To minds perplexed with threats of what comes next, Perhaps may furnish food for contemplation. To cut men's throats to help them count their votes Is asinine--nay, worse--ascidian folly; Blindness like that would scare the mole and bat, And make the liveliest monkey melancholy. I say once more, as I have said before, If voting for our Tildens and our Hayeses Means only fight, then, Liberty, good night! Pack up your ballot-box and go to blazes. Unfurl your blood-red flags, you murderous hags, You petroleuses of Paris, fierce and foamy; We'll sell our stock in Plymouth's blasted rock, Pull up our stakes and migrate to Dahomey! THE LAST SURVIVOR 1878 YES! the vacant chairs tell sadly we are going, going fast, And the thought comes strangely o'er me, who will live to be the last? When the twentieth century's sunbeams climb the far-off eastern hill, With his ninety winters burdened, will he greet the morning still? Will he stand with Harvard's nurslings when they hear their mother's call And the old and young are gathered in the many alcoved hall? Will he answer to the summons when they range themselves in line And the young mustachioed marshal calls out "Class of '29 "? Methinks I see the column as its lengthened ranks appear In the sunshine of the morrow of the nineteen hundredth year; Through the yard 't is creeping, winding, by the walls of dusky red,-- What shape is that which totters at the long procession's head? Who knows this ancient graduate of fourscore years and ten,-- What place he held, what name he bore among the sons of men? So speeds the curious question; its answer travels slow; "'T is the last of sixty classmates of seventy years ago." His figure shows but dimly, his face I scarce can see,-- There's something that reminds me,--it looks like--is it he? He? Who? No voice may whisper what wrinkled brow shall claim The wreath of stars that circles our last survivor's name. Will he be some veteran minstrel, left to pipe in feeble rhyme All the stories and the glories of our gay and golden time? Or some quiet, voiceless brother in whose lonely,loving breast Fond memory broods in silence, like a dove upon her nest? Will it be some old Emeritus, who taught so long ago The boys that heard him lecture have heads as white as snow? Or a pious, painful preacher, holding forth from year to year Till his colleague got a colleague whom the young folks flocked to hear? Will it be a rich old merchant in a square-tied white cravat, Or select-man of a village in a pre-historic hat? Will his dwelling be a mansion in a marble-fronted row, Or a homestead by a hillside where the huckleberries grow? I can see our one survivor, sitting lonely by himself,-- All his college text-books round him, ranged in order on their shelf; There are classic "interliners" filled with learning's choicest pith, Each _cum notis variorum, quas recensuit doctus_ Smith; Physics, metaphysics, logic, mathematics--all the lot Every wisdom--crammed octavo he has mastered and forgot, With the ghosts of dead professors standing guard beside them all; And the room is fall of shadows which their lettered backs recall. How the past spreads out in vision with its far receding train, Like a long embroidered arras in the chambers of the brain, From opening manhood's morning when first we learned to grieve To the fond regretful moments of our sorrow-saddened eve! What early shadows darkened our idle summer's joy When death snatched roughly from us that lovely bright-eyed boy! The years move swiftly onwards; the deadly shafts fall fast,-- Till all have dropped around him--lo, there he stands,--the last! Their faces flit before him, some rosy-hued and fair, Some strong in iron manhood, some worn with toil and care; Their smiles no more shall greet him on cheeks with pleasure flushed! The friendly hands are folded, the pleasant voices hushed! My picture sets me dreaming; alas! and can it be Those two familiar faces we never more may see? In every entering footfall I think them drawing near, With every door that opens I say, "At last they 're here!" The willow bends unbroken when angry tempests blow, The stately oak is levelled and all its strength laid low; So fell that tower of manhood, undaunted, patient, strong, White with the gathering snowflakes, who faced the storm so long. And he,--what subtle phrases their varying light must blend To paint as each remembers our many-featured friend! His wit a flash auroral that laughed in every look, His talk a sunbeam broken on the ripples of a brook, Or, fed from thousand sources, a fountain's glittering jet, Or careless handfuls scattered of diamond sparks unset; Ah, sketch him, paint him, mould him in every shape you will, He was himself--the only--the one unpictured still! Farewell! our skies are darkened and--yet the stars will shine, We 'll close our ranks together and still fall into line Till one is left, one only, to mourn for all the rest; And Heaven bequeath their memories to him who loves us best! THE ARCHBISHOP AND GIL BLAS A MODERNIZED VERSION 1879 I DON'T think I feel much older; I'm aware I'm rather gray, But so are many young folks; I meet 'em every day. I confess I 'm more particular in what I eat and drink, But one's taste improves with culture; that is all it means, I think. _Can you read as once you used to?_ Well, the printing is so bad, No young folks' eyes can read it like the books that once we had. _Are you quite as quick of hearing?_ Please to say that once again. _Don't I use plain words, your Reverence?_ Yes, I often use a cane, But it's not because I need it,--no, I always liked a stick; And as one might lean upon it, 't is as well it should be thick. Oh, I'm smart, I'm spry, I'm lively,--I can walk, yes, that I can, On the days I feel like walking, just as well as you, young man! _Don't you get a little sleepy after dinner every day?_ Well, I doze a little, sometimes, but that always was my way. _Don't you cry a little easier than some twenty years ago?_ Well, my heart is very tender, but I think 't was always so. _Don't you find it sometimes happens that you can't recall a name?_ Yes, I know such lots of people,--but my memory 's not to blame. What! You think my memory's failing! Why, it's just as bright and clear, I remember my great-grandma! She's been dead these sixty year! _Is your voice a little trembly?_ Well, it may be, now and then, But I write as well as ever with a good old-fashioned pen; It 's the Gillotts make the trouble,--not at all my finger-ends,-- That is why my hand looks shaky when I sign for dividends. _Don't you stoop a little, walking?_ It 's a way I 've always had, I have always been round-shouldered, ever since I was a lad. _Don't you hate to tie your shoe-strings?_ Yes, I own it--that is true. _Don't you tell old stories over?_ I am not aware I do. _Don't you stay at home of evenings? Don't you love a cushioned seat_ _In a corner, by the fireside, with your slippers on your feet?_ _Don't you wear warm fleecy flannels? Don't you muffle up your throat_ _Don't you like to have one help you when you're putting on your coat?_ _Don't you like old books you've dogs-eared, you can't remember when?_ _Don't you call it late at nine o'clock and go to bed at ten?_ _How many cronies can you count of all you used to know_ _Who called you by your Christian name some fifty years ago?_ _How look the prizes to you that used to fire your brain?_ _You've reared your mound-how high is it above the level plain?_ _You 've drained the brimming golden cup that made your fancy reel,_ _You've slept the giddy potion off,--now tell us how you feel!_ _You've watched the harvest ripening till every stem was cropped,_ _You 've seen the rose of beauty fade till every petal dropped,_ _You've told your thought, you 've done your task, you've tracked your dial round,_ --I backing down! Thank Heaven, not yet! I'm hale and brisk and sound, And good for many a tussle, as you shall live to see; My shoes are not quite ready yet,--don't think you're rid of me! Old Parr was in his lusty prime when he was older far, And where will you be if I live to beat old Thomas Parr? _Ah well,--I know,--at every age life has a certain charm,_-- _You're going? Come, permit me, please, I beg you'll take my arm._ I take your arm! Why take your arm? I 'd thank you to be told I 'm old enough to walk alone, but not so _very_ old! THE SHADOWS 1880 "How many have gone?" was the question of old Ere Time our bright ring of its jewels bereft; Alas! for too often the death-bell has tolled, And the question we ask is, "How many are left?" Bright sparkled the wine; there were fifty that quaffed; For a decade had slipped and had taken but three. How they frolicked and sung, how they shouted and laughed, Like a school full of boys from their benches set free! There were speeches and toasts, there were stories and rhymes, The hall shook its sides with their merriment's noise; As they talked and lived over the college-day times,-- No wonder they kept their old name of "The Boys"! The seasons moved on in their rhythmical flow With mornings like maidens that pouted or smiled, With the bud and the leaf and the fruit and the snow, And the year-books of Time in his alcoves were piled. There were forty that gathered where fifty had met; Some locks had got silvered, some lives had grown sere, But the laugh of the laughers was lusty as yet, And the song of the singers rose ringing and clear. Still flitted the years; there were thirty that came; "The Boys" they were still, and they answered their call; There were foreheads of care, but the smiles were the same, And the chorus rang loud through the garlanded hall. The hour-hand moved on, and they gathered again; There were twenty that joined in the hymn that was sung; But ah! for our song-bird we listened in vain,-- The crystalline tones like a seraph's that rung! How narrow the circle that holds us to-night! How many the loved ones that greet us no more, As we meet like the stragglers that come from the fight, Like the mariners flung from a wreck on the shore! We look through the twilight for those we have lost; The stream rolls between us, and yet they seem near; Already outnumbered by those who have crossed, Our band is transplanted, its home is not here! They smile on us still--is it only a dream?-- While fondly or proudly their names we recall; They beckon--they come--they are crossing the stream-- Lo! the Shadows! the Shadows! room--room for them all! BENJAMIN PEIRCE ASTRONOMER, MATHEMATICIAN. 1809-1890 1881 FOR him the Architect of all Unroofed our planet's starlit hall; Through voids unknown to worlds unseen His clearer vision rose serene. With us on earth he walked by day, His midnight path how far away! We knew him not so well who knew The patient eyes his soul looked through; For who his untrod realm could share Of us that breathe this mortal air, Or camp in that celestial tent Whose fringes gild our firmament? How vast the workroom where he brought The viewless implements of thought! The wit how subtle, how profound, That Nature's tangled webs unwound; That through the clouded matrix saw The crystal planes of shaping law, Through these the sovereign skill that planned,-- The Father's care, the Master's hand! To him the wandering stars revealed The secrets in their cradle sealed The far-off, frozen sphere that swings Through ether, zoned with lucid rings; The orb that rolls in dim eclipse Wide wheeling round its long ellipse,-- His name Urania writes with these And stamps it on her Pleiades. We knew him not? Ah, well we knew The manly soul, so brave, so true, The cheerful heart that conquered age, The childlike silver-bearded sage. No more his tireless thought explores The azure sea with golden shores; Rest, wearied frame I the stars shall keep A loving watch where thou shalt sleep. Farewell! the spirit needs must rise, So long a tenant of the skies,-- Rise to that home all worlds above Whose sun is God, whose light is love. IN THE TWILIGHT 1882 NOT bed-time yet! The night-winds blow, The stars are out,--full well we know The nurse is on the stair, With hand of ice and cheek of snow, And frozen lips that whisper low, "Come, children, it is time to go My peaceful couch to share." No years a wakeful heart can tire; Not bed-time yet! Come, stir the fire And warm your dear old hands; Kind Mother Earth we love so well Has pleasant stories yet to tell Before we hear the curfew bell; Still glow the burning brands. Not bed-time yet! We long to know What wonders time has yet to show, What unborn years shall bring; What ship the Arctic pole shall reach, What lessons Science waits to teach, What sermons there are left to preach. What poems yet to sing. What next? we ask; and is it true The sunshine falls on nothing new, As Israel's king declared? Was ocean ploughed with harnessed fire? Were nations coupled with a wire? Did Tarshish telegraph to Tyre? How Hiram would have stared! And what if Sheba's curious queen, Who came to see,--and to be seen,-- Or something new to seek, And swooned, as ladies sometimes do, At sights that thrilled her through and through, Had heard, as she was "coming to," A locomotive's shriek, And seen a rushing railway train As she looked out along the plain From David's lofty tower,-- A mile of smoke that blots the sky And blinds the eagles as they fly Behind the cars that thunder by A score of leagues an hour! See to my _fiat lux_ respond This little slumbering fire-tipped wand,-- One touch,--it bursts in flame! Steal me a portrait from the sun,-- One look,--and to! the picture done! Are these old tricks, King Solomon, We lying moderns claim? Could you have spectroscoped a star? If both those mothers at your bar, The cruel and the mild, The young and tender, old and tough, Had said, "Divide,--you're right, though rough,"-- Did old Judea know enough To etherize the child? These births of time our eyes have seen, With but a few brief years between; What wonder if the text, For other ages doubtless true, For coming years will never do,-- Whereof we all should like a few, If but to see what next. If such things have been, such may be; Who would not like to live and see-- If Heaven may so ordain-- What waifs undreamed of, yet in store, The waves that roll forevermore On life's long beach may east ashore From out the mist-clad main? Will Earth to pagan dreams return To find from misery's painted urn That all save hope has flown,-- Of Book and Church and Priest bereft, The Rock of Ages vainly cleft, Life's compass gone, its anchor left, Left,--lost,--in depths unknown? Shall Faith the trodden path pursue The _crux ansata_ wearers knew Who sleep with folded hands, Where, like a naked, lidless eye, The staring Nile rolls wandering by Those mountain slopes that climb the sky Above the drifting sands? Or shall a nobler Faith return, Its fanes a purer gospel learn, With holier anthems ring, And teach us that our transient creeds Were but the perishable seeds Of harvests sown for larger needs, That ripening years shall bring? Well, let the present do its best, We trust our Maker for the rest, As on our way we plod; Our souls, full dressed in fleshly suits, Love air and sunshine, flowers and fruits, The daisies better than their roots Beneath the grassy sod. Not bed-time yet! The full-blown flower Of all the year--this evening hour-- With friendship's flame is bright; Life still is sweet, the heavens are fair, Though fields are brown and woods are bare, And many a joy is left to share Before we say Good-night! And when, our cheerful evening past, The nurse, long waiting, comes at last, Ere on her lap we lie In wearied nature's sweet repose, At peace with all her waking foes, Our lips shall murmur, ere they close, Good-night! and not Good-by! A LOVING-CUP SONG 1883 COME, heap the fagots! Ere we go Again the cheerful hearth shall glow; We 'll have another blaze, my boys! When clouds are black and snows are white, Then Christmas logs lend ruddy light They stole from summer days, my boys, They stole from summer days. And let the Loving-Cup go round, The Cup with blessed memories crowned, That flows whene'er we meet, my boys; No draught will hold a drop of sin If love is only well stirred in To keep it sound and sweet, my boys, To keep it sound and sweet. Give me, to pin upon my breast, The blossoms twain I love the best, A rosebud and a pink, my boys; Their leaves shall nestle next my heart, Their perfumed breath shall own its part In every health we drink, my boys, In every health we drink. The breathing blossoms stir my blood, Methinks I see the lilacs bud And hear the bluebirds sing, my boys; Why not? Yon lusty oak has seen Full tenscore years, yet leaflets green Peep out with every spring, my boys, Peep out with every spring. Old Time his rusty scythe may whet, The unmowed grass is glowing yet Beneath the sheltering snow, my boys; And if the crazy dotard ask, Is love worn out? Is life a task? We'll bravely answer No! my boys, We 'll bravely answer No! For life's bright taper is the same Love tipped of old with rosy flame That heaven's own altar lent, my boys, To glow in every cup we fill Till lips are mute and hearts are still, Till life and love are spent, my boys, Till life and love are spent. THE GIRDLE OF FRIENDSHIP 1884 SHE gathered at her slender waist The beauteous robe she wore; Its folds a golden belt embraced, One rose-hued gem it bore. The girdle shrank; its lessening round Still kept the shining gem, But now her flowing locks it bound, A lustrous diadem. And narrower still the circlet grew; Behold! a glittering band, Its roseate diamond set anew, Her neck's white column spanned. Suns rise and set; the straining clasp The shortened links resist, Yet flashes in a bracelet's grasp The diamond, on her wrist. At length, the round of changes past The thieving years could bring, The jewel, glittering to the last, Still sparkles in a ring. So, link by link, our friendships part, So loosen, break, and fall, A narrowing zone; the loving heart Lives changeless through them all. THE LYRE OF ANACREON 1885 THE minstrel of the classic lay Of love and wine who sings Still found the fingers run astray That touched the rebel strings. Of Cadmus he would fain have sung, Of Atreus and his line; But all the jocund echoes rung With songs of love and wine. Ah, brothers! I would fain have caught Some fresher fancy's gleam; My truant accents find, unsought, The old familiar theme. Love, Love! but not the sportive child With shaft and twanging bow, Whose random arrows drove us wild Some threescore years ago; Not Eros, with his joyous laugh, The urchin blind and bare, But Love, with spectacles and staff, And scanty, silvered hair. Our heads with frosted locks are white, Our roofs are thatched with snow, But red, in chilling winter's spite, Our hearts and hearthstones glow. Our old acquaintance, Time, drops in, And while the running sands Their golden thread unheeded spin, He warms his frozen hands. Stay, winged hours, too swift, too sweet, And waft this message o'er To all we miss, from all we meet On life's fast-crumbling shore: Say that, to old affection true, We hug the narrowing chain That binds our hearts,--alas, how few The links that yet remain! The fatal touch awaits them all That turns the rocks to dust; From year to year they break and fall,-- They break, but never rust. Say if one note of happier strain This worn-out harp afford,-- One throb that trembles, not in vain,-- Their memory lent its chord. Say that when Fancy closed her wings And Passion quenched his fire, Love, Love, still echoed from the strings As from Anacreon's lyre! THE OLD TUNE THIRTY-SIXTH VARIATION 1886 THIS shred of song you bid me bring Is snatched from fancy's embers; Ah, when the lips forget to sing, The faithful heart remembers! Too swift the wings of envious Time To wait for dallying phrases, Or woven strands of labored rhyme To thread their cunning mazes. A word, a sigh, and lo, how plain Its magic breath discloses Our life's long vista through a lane Of threescore summers' roses! One language years alone can teach Its roots are young affections That feel their way to simplest speech Through silent recollections. That tongue is ours. How few the words We need to know a brother! As simple are the notes of birds, Yet well they know each other. This freezing month of ice and snow That brings our lives together Lends to our year a living glow That warms its wintry weather. So let us meet as eve draws nigh, And life matures and mellows, Till Nature whispers with a sigh, "Good-night, my dear old fellows!" THE BROKEN CIRCLE 1887 I STOOD On Sarum's treeless plain, The waste that careless Nature owns; Lone tenants of her bleak domain, Loomed huge and gray the Druid stones. Upheaved in many a billowy mound The sea-like, naked turf arose, Where wandering flocks went nibbling round The mingled graves of friends and foes. The Briton, Roman, Saxon, Dane, This windy desert roamed in turn; Unmoved these mighty blocks remain Whose story none that lives may learn. Erect, half buried, slant or prone, These awful listeners, blind and dumb, Hear the strange tongues of tribes unknown, As wave on wave they go and come. "Who are you, giants, whence and why?" I stand and ask in blank amaze; My soul accepts their mute reply "A mystery, as are you that gaze. "A silent Orpheus wrought the charm From riven rocks their spoils to bring; A nameless Titan lent his arm To range us in our magic ring. "But Time with still and stealthy stride, That climbs and treads and levels all, That bids the loosening keystone slide, And topples down the crumbling wall,-- "Time, that unbuilds the quarried past, Leans on these wrecks that press the sod; They slant, they stoop, they fall at last, And strew the turf their priests have trod. "No more our altar's wreath of smoke Floats up with morning's fragrant dew; The fires are dead, the ring is broke, Where stood the many stand the few." My thoughts had wandered far away, Borne off on Memory's outspread wing, To where in deepening twilight lay The wrecks of friendship's broken ring. Ah me! of all our goodly train How few will find our banquet hall! Yet why with coward lips complain That this must lean, and that must fall? Cold is the Druid's altar-stone, Its vanished flame no more returns; But ours no chilling damp has known,-- Unchanged, unchanging, still it burns. So let our broken circle stand A wreck, a remnant, yet the same, While one last, loving, faithful hand Still lives to feed its altar-flame! THE ANGEL-THIEF 1888 TIME is a thief who leaves his tools behind him; He comes by night, he vanishes at dawn; We track his footsteps, but we never find him Strong locks are broken, massive bolts are drawn, And all around are left the bars and borers, The splitting wedges and the prying keys, Such aids as serve the soft-shod vault-explorers To crack, wrench open, rifle as they please. Ah, these are tools which Heaven in mercy lends us When gathering rust has clenched our shackles fast, Time is the angel-thief that Nature sends us To break the cramping fetters of our past. Mourn as we may for treasures he has taken, Poor as we feel of hoarded wealth bereft, More precious are those implements forsaken, Found in the wreck his ruthless hands have left. Some lever that a casket's hinge has broken Pries off a bolt, and lo! our souls are free; Each year some Open Sesame is spoken, And every decade drops its master-key. So as from year to year we count our treasure, Our loss seems less, and larger look our gains; Time's wrongs repaid in more than even measure,-- We lose our jewels, but we break our chains. AFTER THE CURFEW 1889 THE Play is over. While the light Yet lingers in the darkening hall, I come to say a last Good-night Before the final _Exeunt all_. We gathered once, a joyous throng: The jovial toasts went gayly round; With jest, and laugh, and shout, and song, We made the floors and walls resound. We come with feeble steps and slow, A little band of four or five, Left from the wrecks of long ago, Still pleased to find ourselves alive. Alive! How living, too, are they Whose memories it is ours to share! Spread the long table's full array,-- There sits a ghost in every chair! One breathing form no more, alas! Amid our slender group we see; With him we still remained "The Class,"-- Without his presence what are we? The hand we ever loved to clasp,-- That tireless hand which knew no rest,-- Loosed from affection's clinging grasp, Lies nerveless on the peaceful breast. The beaming eye, the cheering voice, That lent to life a generous glow, Whose every meaning said "Rejoice," We see, we hear, no more below. The air seems darkened by his loss, Earth's shadowed features look less fair, And heavier weighs the daily cross His willing shoulders helped us bear. Why mourn that we, the favored few Whom grasping Time so long has spared Life's sweet illusions to pursue, The common lot of age have shared? In every pulse of Friendship's heart There breeds unfelt a throb of pain,-- One hour must rend its links apart, Though years on years have forged the chain. . . . . . . . . . . . . So ends "The Boys,"--a lifelong play. We too must hear the Prompter's call To fairer scenes and brighter day Farewell! I let the curtain fall. 
7393	----	THE POETICAL WORKS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES [Volume 2 of the 1893 three volume set] POEMS FROM THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE (1857-1858) THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS SUN AND SHADOW MUSA A PARTING HEALTH: To J. L. MOTLEY WHAT WE ALL THINK SPRING HAS COME PROLOGUE LATTER-DAY WARNINGS ALBUM VERSES A GOOD TIME GOING! THE LAST BLOSSOM CONTENTMENT AESTIVATION THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE; OR, THE WONDERFUL "ONE-HOSE SHAY" PARSON TURELL'S LEGACY; OR, THE PRESIDENT'S OLD ARM-CHAIR ODE FOR A SOCIAL MEETING, WITH SLIGHT ALTERATIONS BY A TEETOTALER POEMS FROM THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE (1858-1859) UNDER THE VIOLETS HYMN OF TRUST A SUN-DAY HYMN THE CROOKED FOOTPATH IRIS, HER BOOK ROBINSON OF LEYDEN ST ANTHONY THE REFORMER THE OPENING OF THE PIANO MIDSUMMER DE SAUTY POEMS FROM THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE (1871-1872) HOMESICK IN HEAVEN FANTASIA AUNT TABITHA WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS EPILOGUE TO THE BREAKFAST-TABLE SERIES THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS THIS is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main,-- The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; Wrecked is the ship of pearl! And every chambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed,-- Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed! Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap, forlorn! From thy dead lips a clearer note is born Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn While on mine ear it rings, Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:-- Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! SUN AND SHADOW As I look from the isle, o'er its billows of green, To the billows of foam-crested blue, Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen, Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray As the chaff in the stroke of the flail; Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way, The sun gleaming bright on her sail. Yet her pilot is thinking of dangers to shun,-- Of breakers that whiten and roar; How little he cares, if in shadow or sun They see him who gaze from the shore! He looks to the beacon that looms from the reef, To the rock that is under his lee, As he drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted leaf, O'er the gulfs of the desolate sea. Thus drifting afar to the dim-vaulted caves Where life and its ventures are laid, The dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves May see us in sunshine or shade; Yet true to our course, though the shadows grow dark, We'll trim our broad sail as before, And stand by the rudder that governs the bark, Nor ask how we look from the shore! MUSA O MY lost beauty!--hast thou folded quite Thy wings of morning light Beyond those iron gates Where Life crowds hurrying to the haggard Fates, And Age upon his mound of ashes waits To chill our fiery dreams, Hot from the heart of youth plunged in his icy streams? Leave me not fading in these weeds of care, Whose flowers are silvered hair! Have I not loved thee long, Though my young lips have often done thee wrong, And vexed thy heaven-tuned ear with careless song? Ah, wilt thou yet return, Bearing thy rose-hued torch, and bid thine altar burn? Come to me!--I will flood thy silent shrine With my soul's sacred wine, And heap thy marble floors As the wild spice-trees waste their fragrant stores, In leafy islands walled with madrepores And lapped in Orient seas, When all their feathery palms toss, plume-like, in the breeze. Come to me!--thou shalt feed on honeyed words, Sweeter than song of birds;-- No wailing bulbul's throat, No melting dulcimer's melodious note When o'er the midnight wave its murmurs float, Thy ravished sense might soothe With flow so liquid-soft, with strain so velvet-smooth. Thou shalt be decked with jewels, like a queen, Sought in those bowers of green Where loop the clustered vines And the close-clinging dulcamara twines,-- Pure pearls of Maydew where the moonlight shines, And Summer's fruited gems, And coral pendants shorn from Autumn's berried stems. Sit by me drifting on the sleepy waves,-- Or stretched by grass-grown graves, Whose gray, high-shouldered stones, Carved with old names Life's time-worn roll disowns, Lean, lichen-spotted, o'er the crumbled bones Still slumbering where they lay While the sad Pilgrim watched to scare the wolf away. Spread o'er my couch thy visionary wing! Still let me dream and sing,-- Dream of that winding shore Where scarlet cardinals bloom-for me no more,-- The stream with heaven beneath its liquid floor, And clustering nenuphars Sprinkling its mirrored blue like golden-chaliced stars! Come while their balms the linden-blossoms shed!-- Come while the rose is red,-- While blue-eyed Summer smiles On the green ripples round yon sunken piles Washed by the moon-wave warm from Indian isles, And on the sultry air The chestnuts spread their palms like holy men in prayer! Oh for thy burning lips to fire my brain With thrills of wild, sweet pain!-- On life's autumnal blast, Like shrivelled leaves, youth's passion-flowers are cast,-- Once loving thee, we love thee to the last!-- Behold thy new-decked shrine, And hear once more the voice that breathed "Forever thine!" A PARTING HEALTH TO J. L. MOTLEY YES, we knew we must lose him,--though friendship may claim To blend her green leaves with the laurels of fame; Though fondly, at parting, we call him our own, 'T is the whisper of love when the bugle has blown. As the rider that rests with the spur on his heel, As the guardsman that sleeps in his corselet of steel, As the archer that stands with his shaft on the string, He stoops from his toil to the garland we bring. What pictures yet slumber unborn in his loom, Till their warriors shall breathe and their beauties shall bloom, While the tapestry lengthens the life-glowing dyes That caught from our sunsets the stain of their skies! In the alcoves of death, in the charnels of timid, Where flit the gaunt spectres of passion and crime, There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs unsung, There are heroes yet silent to speak with his tongue! Let us hear the proud story which time has bequeathed! From lips that are warm with the freedom they breathed! Let him summon its tyrants, and tell us their doom, Though he sweep the black past like Van Tromp with his broom! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The dream flashes by, for the west-winds awake On pampas, on prairie, o'er mountain and lake, To bathe the swift bark, like a sea-girdled shrine, With incense they stole from the rose and the pine. So fill a bright cup with the sunlight that gushed When the dead summer's jewels were trampled and crushed: THE TRUE KNIGHT OF LEARNING,--the world holds him dear,-- Love bless him, Joy crown him, God speed his career! 1857. WHAT WE ALL THINK THAT age was older once than now, In spite of locks untimely shed, Or silvered on the youthful brow; That babes make love and children wed. That sunshine had a heavenly glow, Which faded with those "good old days" When winters came with deeper snow, And autumns with a softer haze. That--mother, sister, wife, or child-- The "best of women" each has known. Were school-boys ever half so wild? How young the grandpapas have grown! That but for this our souls were free, And but for that our lives were blest; That in some season yet to be Our cares will leave us time to rest. Whene'er we groan with ache or pain,-- Some common ailment of the race,-- Though doctors think the matter plain,-- That ours is "a peculiar case." That when like babes with fingers burned We count one bitter maxim more, Our lesson all the world has learned, And men are wiser than before. That when we sob o'er fancied woes, The angels hovering overhead Count every pitying drop that flows, And love us for the tears we shed. That when we stand with tearless eye And turn the beggar from our door, They still approve us when we sigh, "Ah, had I but one thousand more!" Though temples crowd the crumbled brink O'erhanging truth's eternal flow, Their tablets bold with what we think, Their echoes dumb to what we know; That one unquestioned text we read, All doubt beyond, all fear above, Nor crackling pile nor cursing creed Can burn or blot it: GOD IS LOVE! SPRING HAS COME INTRA MUROS THE sunbeams, lost for half a year, Slant through my pane their morning rays; For dry northwesters cold and clear, The east blows in its thin blue haze. And first the snowdrop's bells are seen, Then close against the sheltering wall The tulip's horn of dusky green, The peony's dark unfolding ball. The golden-chaliced crocus burns; The long narcissus-blades appear; The cone-beaked hyacinth returns To light her blue-flamed chandelier. The willow's whistling lashes, wrung By the wild winds of gusty March, With sallow leaflets lightly strung, Are swaying by the tufted larch. The elms have robed their slender spray With full-blown flower and embryo leaf; Wide o'er the clasping arch of day Soars like a cloud their hoary chief. See the proud tulip's flaunting cup, That flames in glory for an hour,-- Behold it withering,--then look up,-- How meek the forest monarch's flower! When wake the violets, Winter dies; When sprout the elm-buds, Spring is near: When lilacs blossom, Summer cries, "Bud, little roses! Spring is here!" The windows blush with fresh bouquets, Cut with the May-dew on their lips; The radish all its bloom displays, Pink as Aurora's finger-tips. Nor less the flood of light that showers On beauty's changed corolla-shades,-- The walks are gay as bridal bowers With rows of many-petalled maids. The scarlet shell-fish click and clash In the blue barrow where they slide; The horseman, proud of streak and splash, Creeps homeward from his morning ride. Here comes the dealer's awkward string, With neck in rope and tail in knot,-- Rough colts, with careless country-swing, In lazy walk or slouching trot. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wild filly from the mountain-side, Doomed to the close and chafing thills, Lend me thy long, untiring stride To seek with thee thy western hills! I hear the whispering voice of Spring, The thrush's trill, the robin's cry, Like some poor bird with prisoned wing That sits and sings, but longs to fly. Oh for one spot of living greed,-- One little spot where leaves can grow,-- To love unblamed, to walk unseen, To dream above, to sleep below! PROLOGUE A PROLOGUE? Well, of course the ladies know,-- I have my doubts. No matter,--here we go! What is a Prologue? Let our Tutor teach: Pro means beforehand; logos stands for speech. 'T is like the harper's prelude on the strings, The prima donna's courtesy ere she sings; Prologues in metre are to other pros As worsted stockings are to engine-hose. "The world's a stage,"--as Shakespeare said, one day; The stage a world--was what he meant to say. The outside world's a blunder, that is clear; The real world that Nature meant is here. Here every foundling finds its lost mamma; Each rogue, repentant, melts his stern papa; Misers relent, the spendthrift's debts are paid, The cheats are taken in the traps they laid; One after one the troubles all are past Till the fifth act comes right side up at last, When the young couple, old folks, rogues, and all, Join hands, so happy at the curtain's fall. Here suffering virtue ever finds relief, And black-browed ruffians always come to grief. When the lorn damsel, with a frantic screech, And cheeks as hueless as a brandy-peach, Cries, "Help, kyind Heaven!" and drops upon her knees On the green--baize,--beneath the (canvas) trees,-- See to her side avenging Valor fly:-- "Ha! Villain! Draw! Now, Terraitorr, yield or die!" When the poor hero flounders in despair, Some dear lost uncle turns up millionaire, Clasps the young scapegrace with paternal joy, Sobs on his neck, "My boy! MY BOY!! _MY BOY_!!!" Ours, then, sweet friends, the real world to-night, Of love that conquers in disaster's spite. Ladies, attend! While woful cares and doubt Wrong the soft passion in the world without, Though fortune scowl, though prudence interfere, One thing is certain: Love will triumph here! Lords of creation, whom your ladies rule,-- The world's great masters, when you 're out of school,-- Learn the brief moral of our evening's play Man has his will,--but woman has her way! While man's dull spirit toils in smoke and fire, Woman's swift instinct threads the electric wire,-- The magic bracelet stretched beneath the waves Beats the black giant with his score of slaves. All earthly powers confess your sovereign art But that one rebel,--woman's wilful heart. All foes you master, but a woman's wit Lets daylight through you ere you know you 're hit. So, just to picture what her art can do, Hear an old story, made as good as new. Rudolph, professor of the headsman's trade, Alike was famous for his arm and blade. One day a prisoner Justice had to kill Knelt at the block to test the artist's skill. Bare-armed, swart-visaged, gaunt, and shaggy-browed, Rudolph the headsman rose above the crowd. His falchion lighted with a sudden gleam, As the pike's armor flashes in the stream. He sheathed his blade; he turned as if to go; The victim knelt, still waiting for the blow. "Why strikest not? Perform thy murderous act," The prisoner said. (His voice was slightly cracked.) "Friend, I have struck," the artist straight replied; "Wait but one moment, and yourself decide." He held his snuff-box,--"Now then, if you please!" The prisoner sniffed, and, with a crashing sneeze, Off his head tumbled,--bowled along the floor,-- Bounced down the steps;--the prisoner said no more! Woman! thy falchion is a glittering eye; If death lurk in it, oh how sweet to die! Thou takest hearts as Rudolph took the head; We die with love, and never dream we're dead! LATTER-DAY WARNINGS WHEN legislators keep the law, When banks dispense with bolts and looks, When berries--whortle, rasp, and straw-- Grow bigger downwards through the box,-- When he that selleth house or land Shows leak in roof or flaw in right,-- When haberdashers choose the stand Whose window hath the broadest light,-- When preachers tell us all they think, And party leaders all they mean,-- When what we pay for, that we drink, From real grape and coffee-bean,-- When lawyers take what they would give, And doctors give what they would take,-- When city fathers eat to live, Save when they fast for conscience' sake,-- When one that hath a horse on sale Shall bring his merit to the proof, Without a lie for every nail That holds the iron on the hoof,-- When in the usual place for rips Our gloves are stitched with special care, And guarded well the whalebone tips Where first umbrellas need repair,-- When Cuba's weeds have quite forgot The power of suction to resist, And claret-bottles harbor not Such dimples as would hold your fist,-- When publishers no longer steal, And pay for what they stole before,-- When the first locomotive's wheel Rolls through the Hoosac Tunnel's bore;-- Till then let Cumming blaze away, And Miller's saints blow up the globe; But when you see that blessed day, Then order your ascension robe. ALBUM VERSES WHEN Eve had led her lord away, And Cain had killed his brother, The stars and flowers, the poets say, Agreed with one another. To cheat the cunning tempter's art, And teach the race its duty, By keeping on its wicked heart Their eyes of light and beauty. A million sleepless lids, they say, Will be at least a warning; And so the flowers would watch by day, The stars from eve to morning. On hill and prairie, field and lawn, Their dewy eyes upturning, The flowers still watch from reddening dawn Till western skies are burning. Alas! each hour of daylight tells A tale of shame so crushing, That some turn white as sea-bleached shells, And some are always blushing. But when the patient stars look down On all their light discovers, The traitor's smile, the murderer's frown, The lips of lying lovers, They try to shut their saddening eyes, And in the vain endeavor We see them twinkling in the skies, And so they wink forever. A GOOD TIME GOING! BRAVE singer of the coming time, Sweet minstrel of the joyous present, Crowned with the noblest wreath of rhyme, The holly-leaf of Ayrshire's peasant, Good by! Good by!--Our hearts and hands, Our lips in honest Saxon phrases, Cry, God be with him, till he stands His feet among the English daisies! 'T is here we part;--for other eyes The busy deck, the fluttering streamer, The dripping arms that plunge and rise, The waves in foam, the ship in tremor, The kerchiefs waving from the pier, The cloudy pillar gliding o'er him, The deep blue desert, lone and drear, With heaven above and home before him! His home!--the Western giant smiles, And twirls the spotty globe to find it; This little speck the British Isles? 'T is but a freckle,--never mind it! He laughs, and all his prairies roll, Each gurgling cataract roars and chuckles, And ridges stretched from pole to pole Heave till they crack their iron knuckles! But Memory blushes at the sneer, And Honor turns with frown defiant, And Freedom, leaning on her spear, Laughs louder than the laughing giant "An islet is a world," she said, "When glory with its dust has blended, And Britain keeps her noble dead Till earth and seas and skies are rended!" Beneath each swinging forest-bough Some arm as stout in death reposes,-- From wave-washed foot to heaven-kissed brow Her valor's life-blood runs in roses; Nay, let our brothers of the West Write smiling in their florid pages, One half her soil has walked the rest In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages! Hugged in the clinging billow's clasp, From sea-weed fringe to mountain heather, The British oak with rooted grasp Her slender handful holds together;-- With cliffs of white and bowers of green, And Ocean narrowing to caress her, And hills and threaded streams between,-- Our little mother isle, God bless her! In earth's broad temple where we stand, Fanned by the eastern gales that brought us, We hold the missal in our hand, Bright with the lines our Mother taught us. Where'er its blazoned page betrays The glistening links of gilded fetters, Behold, the half-turned leaf displays Her rubric stained in crimson letters! Enough! To speed a parting friend 'T is vain alike to speak and listen;-- Yet stay,--these feeble accents blend With rays of light from eyes that glisten. Good by! once more,--and kindly tell In words of peace the young world's story,-- And say, besides, we love too well Our mothers' soil, our fathers' glory. THE LAST BLOSSOM THOUGH young no more, we still would dream Of beauty's dear deluding wiles; The leagues of life to graybeards seem Shorter than boyhood's lingering miles. Who knows a woman's wild caprice? 'It played with Goethe's silvered hair, And many a Holy Father's "niece" Has softly smoothed the papal chair. When sixty bids us sigh in vain To melt the heart of sweet sixteen, We think upon those ladies twain Who loved so well the tough old Dean. We see the Patriarch's wintry face, The maid of Egypt's dusky glow, And dream that Youth and Age embrace, As April violets fill with snow. Tranced in her lord's Olympian smile His lotus-loving Memphian lies,-- The musky daughter of the Nile, With plaited hair and almond eyes. Might we but share one wild caress Ere life's autumnal blossoms fall, And Earth's brown, clinging lips impress The long cold kiss that waits us all! My bosom heaves, remembering yet The morning of that blissful day, When Rose, the flower of spring, I met, And gave my raptured soul away. Flung from her eyes of purest blue, A lasso, with its leaping chain, Light as a loop of larkspurs, flew O'er sense and spirit, heart and brain. Thou com'st to cheer my waning age, Sweet vision, waited for so long! Dove that would seek the poet's cage Lured by the magic breath of song! She blushes! Ah, reluctant maid, Love's drapeau rouge the truth has told! O' er girlhood's yielding barricade Floats the great Leveller's crimson fold! Come to my arms!--love heeds not years; No frost the bud of passion knows. Ha! what is this my frenzy hears? A voice behind me uttered,--Rose! Sweet was her smile,--but not for me; Alas! when woman looks too kind, Just turn your foolish head and see,-- Some youth is walking close behind! CONTENTMENT "Man wants but little here below" LITTLE I ask; my wants are few; I only wish a hut of stone, (A _very plain_ brown stone will do,) That I may call my own;-- And close at hand is such a one, In yonder street that fronts the sun. Plain food is quite enough for me; Three courses are as good as ten;-- If Nature can subsist on three, Thank Heaven for three. Amen I always thought cold victual nice;-- My _choice_ would be vanilla-ice. I care not much for gold or land;-- Give me a mortgage here and there,-- Some good bank-stock, some note of hand, Or trifling railroad share,-- I only ask that Fortune send A _little_ more than I shall spend. Honors are silly toys, I know, And titles are but empty names; I would, _perhaps_, be Plenipo,-- But only near St. James; I'm very sure I should not care To fill our Gubernator's chair. Jewels are baubles; 't is a sin To care for such unfruitful things;-- One good-sized diamond in a pin,-- Some, not so large, in rings,-- A ruby, and a pearl, or so, Will do for me;--I laugh at show. My dame should dress in cheap attire; (Good, heavy silks are never dear;)-- I own perhaps I might desire Some shawls of true Cashmere,-- Some marrowy crapes of China silk, Like wrinkled skins on scalded milk. I would not have the horse I drive So fast that folks must stop and stare; An easy gait--two, forty-five-- Suits me; I do not care;-- Perhaps, for just a _single spurt_, Some seconds less would do no hurt. Of pictures, I should like to own Titians and Raphaels three or four,-- I love so much their style and tone, One Turner, and no more, (A landscape,--foreground golden dirt,-- The sunshine painted with a squirt.) Of books but few,--some fifty score For daily use, and bound for wear; The rest upon an upper floor;-- Some _little_ luxury _there_ Of red morocco's gilded gleam And vellum rich as country cream. Busts, cameos, gems,--such things as these, Which others often show for pride, I value for their power to please, And selfish churls deride;-- _One_ Stradivarius, I confess, _Two_ Meerschaums, I would fain possess. Wealth's wasteful tricks I will not learn, Nor ape the glittering upstart fool;-- Shall not carved tables serve my turn, But _all_ must be of buhl? Give grasping pomp its double share,-- I ask but _one_ recumbent chair. Thus humble let me live and die, Nor long for Midas' golden touch; If Heaven more generous gifts deny, I shall not miss them much,-- Too grateful for the blessing lent Of simple tastes and mind content! AESTIVATION AN UNPUBLISHED POEM, BY MY LATE LATIN TUTOR IN candent ire the solar splendor flames; The foles, langueseent, pend from arid rames; His humid front the Give, anheling, wipes, And dreams of erring on ventiferous riper. How dulce to vive occult to mortal eyes, Dorm on the herb with none to supervise, Carp the suave berries from the crescent vine, And bibe the flow from longicaudate kine! To me, alas! no verdurous visions come, Save yon exiguous pool's conferva-scum,-- No concave vast repeats the tender hue That laves my milk-jug with celestial blue! Me wretched! Let me curr to quercine shades! Effund your albid hausts, lactiferous maids! Oh, might I vole to some umbrageous clump,-- Depart,--be off,--excede,--evade,--erump! THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE OR, THE WONDERFUL "ONE-HOSS SHAY" A LOGICAL STORY HAVE you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, That was built in such a logical way It ran a hundred years to a day, And then, of a sudden, it--ah, but stay, I 'll tell you what happened without delay, Scaring the parson into fits, Frightening people out of their wits,-- Have you ever heard of that, I say? Seventeen hundred and fifty-five. _Georgius Secundus_ was then alive,-- Snuffy old drone from the German hive. That was the year when Lisbon-town Saw the earth open and gulp her down, And Braddock's army was done so brown, Left without a scalp to its crown. It was on the terrible Earthquake-day That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay. Now in building of chaises, I tell you what, There is always _somewhere_ a weakest spot,-- In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill, In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill, In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace,--lurking still, Find it somewhere you must and will,-- Above or below, or within or without,-- And that 's the reason, beyond a doubt, That a chaise breaks down, but does n't wear out. But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do, With an "I dew vum," or an "I tell yeou ") He would build one shay to beat the taown 'n' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun'; It should be so built that it couldn' break daown "Fur," said the Deacon, "'t 's mighty plain Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain; 'n' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain, Is only jest T' make that place uz strong uz the rest." So the Deacon inquired of the village folk Where he could find the strongest oak, That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke,-- That was for spokes and floor and sills; He sent for lancewood to make the thills; The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees, The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese, But lasts like iron for things like these; The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"-- Last of its timber,--they could n't sell 'em, Never an axe had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died. That was the way he "put her through." "There!" said the Deacon, "naow she 'll dew!" Do! I tell you, I rather guess She was a wonder, and nothing less! Colts grew horses, beards turned gray, Deacon and deaconess dropped away, Children and grandchildren--where were they? But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day! EIGHTEEN HUNDRED;--it came and found The Deacon's masterpiece strong and sound. Eighteen hundred increased by ten;-- "Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then. Eighteen hundred and twenty came;-- Running as usual; much the same. Thirty and forty at last arrive, And then come fifty, and FIFTY-FIVE. First of November, 'Fifty-five! This morning the parson takes a drive. Now, small boys, get out of the way! Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay, Little of all we value here Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year Without both feeling and looking queer. In fact, there 's nothing that keeps its youth, So far as I know, but a tree and truth. (This is a moral that runs at large; Take it.--You 're welcome.--No extra charge.) FIRST OF NOVEMBER,--the Earthquake-day,-- There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay, A general flavor of mild decay, But nothing local, as one may say. There couldn't be,--for the Deacon's art Had made it so like in every part That there was n't a chance for one to start. For the wheels were just as strong as the thills, And the floor was just as strong as the sills, And the panels just as strong as the floor, And the whipple-tree neither less nor more, And the back-crossbar as strong as the fore, And spring and axle and hub encore. And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt In another hour it will be worn out! Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay. "Huddup!" said the parson.--Off went they. The parson was working his Sunday's text,-- Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed At what the--Moses--was coming next. All at once the horse stood still, Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill. First a shiver, and then a thrill, Then something decidedly like a spill,-- And the parson was sitting upon a rock, At half past nine by the meet'n'-house clock,-- Just the hour of the Earthquake shock! What do you think the parson found, When he got up and stared around? The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, As if it had been to the mill and ground! You see, of course, if you 're not a dunce, How it went to pieces all at once,-- All at once, and nothing first,-- Just as bubbles do when they burst. End of the wonderful one-hoss shay. Logic is logic. That's all I say. PARSON TURELL'S LEGACY OR, THE PRESIDENT'S OLD ARM-CHAIR A MATHEMATICAL STORY FACTS respecting an old arm-chair. At Cambridge. Is kept in the College there. Seems but little the worse for wear. That 's remarkable when I say It was old in President Holyoke's day. (One of his boys, perhaps you know, Died, _at one hundred_, years ago.) He took lodgings for rain or shine Under green bed-clothes in '69. Know old Cambridge? Hope you do.-- Born there? Don't say so! I was, too. (Born in a house with a gambrel-roof,-- Standing still, if you must have proof.-- "Gambrel?--Gambrel?"--Let me beg You'll look at a horse's hinder leg,-- First great angle above the hoof,-- That 's the gambrel; hence gambrel-roof.) Nicest place that ever was seen,-- Colleges red and Common green, Sidewalks brownish with trees between. Sweetest spot beneath the skies When the canker-worms don't rise,-- When the dust, that sometimes flies Into your mouth and ears and eyes, In a quiet slumber lies, _Not_ in the shape of umbaked pies Such as barefoot children prize. A kind of harbor it seems to be, Facing the flow of a boundless sea. Rows of gray old Tutors stand Ranged like rocks above the sand; Rolling beneath them, soft and green, Breaks the tide of bright sixteen,-- One wave, two waves, three waves, four,-- Sliding up the sparkling floor. Then it ebbs to flow no more, Wandering off from shore to shore With its freight of golden ore! Pleasant place for boys to play;-- Better keep your girls away; Hearts get rolled as pebbles do Which countless fingering waves pursue, And every classic beach is strown With heart-shaped pebbles of blood-red stone. But this is neither here nor there; I'm talking about an old arm-chair. You 've heard, no doubt, of PARSON TURELL? Over at Medford he used to dwell; Married one of the Mathers' folk; Got with his wife a chair of oak,-- Funny old chair with seat like wedge, Sharp behind and broad front edge,-- One of the oddest of human things, Turned all over with knobs and rings,-- But heavy, and wide, and deep, and grand,-- Fit for the worthies of the land,-- Chief Justice Sewall a cause to try in, Or Cotton Mather to sit--and lie--in. Parson Turell bequeathed the same To a certain student,--SMITH by name; These were the terms, as we are told: "Saide Smith saide Chaire to have and holde; When he doth graduate, then to passe To ye oldest Youth in ye Senior Classe. On payment of "--(naming a certain sum)-- "By him to whom ye Chaire shall come; He to ye oldest Senior next, And soe forever,"--(thus runs the text,)-- "But one Crown lesse then he gave to claime, That being his Debte for use of same." Smith transferred it to one of the BROWNS, And took his money,--five silver crowns. Brown delivered it up to MOORE, Who paid, it is plain, not five, but four. Moore made over the chair to LEE, Who gave him crowns of silver three. Lee conveyed it unto DREW, And now the payment, of course, was two. Drew gave up the chair to DUNN,-- All he got, as you see, was one. Dunn released the chair to HALL, And got by the bargain no crown at all. And now it passed to a second BROWN, Who took it and likewise claimed a crown. When Brown conveyed it unto WARE, Having had one crown, to make it fair, He paid him two crowns to take the chair; And Ware, being honest, (as all Wares be,) He paid one POTTER, who took it, three. Four got ROBINSON; five got Dix; JOHNSON primus demanded six; And so the sum kept gathering still Till after the battle of Bunker's Hill. When paper money became so cheap, Folks would n't count it, but said "a heap," A certain RICHARDS,--the books declare,-- (A. M. in '90? I've looked with care Through the Triennial,--name not there,)-- This person, Richards, was offered then Eightscore pounds, but would have ten; Nine, I think, was the sum he took,-- Not quite certain,--but see the book. By and by the wars were still, But nothing had altered the Parson's will. The old arm-chair was solid yet, But saddled with such a monstrous debt! Things grew quite too bad to bear, Paying such sums to get rid of the chair But dead men's fingers hold awful tight, And there was the will in black and white, Plain enough for a child to spell. What should be done no man could tell, For the chair was a kind of nightmare curse, And every season but made it worse. As a last resort, to clear the doubt, They got old GOVERNOR HANCOCK out. The Governor came with his Lighthorse Troop And his mounted truckmen, all cock-a-hoop; Halberds glittered and colors flew, French horns whinnied and trumpets blew, The yellow fifes whistled between their teeth, And the bumble-bee bass-drums boomed beneath; So he rode with all his band, Till the President met him, cap in hand. The Governor "hefted" the crowns, and said,-- "A will is a will, and the Parson's dead." The Governor hefted the crowns. Said he,-- "There is your p'int. And here 's my fee. "These are the terms you must fulfil,-- On such conditions I BREAK THE WILL!" The Governor mentioned what these should be. (Just wait a minute and then you 'll see.) The President prayed. Then all was still, And the Governor rose and BROKE THE WILL! "About those conditions?" Well, now you go And do as I tell you, and then you'll know. Once a year, on Commencement day, If you 'll only take the pains to stay, You'll see the President in the CHAIR, Likewise the Governor sitting there. The President rises; both old and young May hear his speech in a foreign tongue, The meaning whereof, as lawyers swear, Is this: Can I keep this old arm-chair? And then his Excellency bows, As much as to say that he allows. The Vice-Gub. next is called by name; He bows like t' other, which means the same. And all the officers round 'em bow, As much as to say that they allow. And a lot of parchments about the chair Are handed to witnesses then and there, And then the lawyers hold it clear That the chair is safe for another year. God bless you, Gentlemen! Learn to give Money to colleges while you live. Don't be silly and think you'll try To bother the colleges, when you die, With codicil this, and codicil that, That Knowledge may starve while Law grows fat; For there never was pitcher that wouldn't spill, And there's always a flaw in a donkey's will! ODE FOR A SOCIAL MEETING WITH SLIGHT ALTERATIONS BY A TEETOTALER--(...) COME! fill a fresh bumper, for why should we go While the nectar (logwood) still reddens our cups as they flow? Pour out the rich juices (decoction) still bright with the sun, Till o'er the brimmed crystal the rubies (dye-stuff) shall run. The purple-globed clusters (half-ripened apples) their life-dews have bled; How sweet is the breath (taste) of the fragrance they shed!(sugar of lead) For summer's last roses (rank poisons) lie hid in the wines (wines!!!) That were garnered by maidens who laughed through the vines (stable-boys smoking long-nines) Then a smile (scowl) and a glass (howl) and a toast (scoff) and a cheer (sneer); For all the good wine, and we 've some of it here! (strychnine and whiskey, and ratsbane and beer!) In cellar, in pantry, in attic, in hall, Long live the gay servant that laughs for us all! (Down, down with the tyrant that masters us all!) POEMS FROM THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE 1858-1859 UNDER THE VIOLETS HER hands are cold; her face is white; No more her pulses come and go; Her eyes are shut to life and light;-- Fold the white vesture, snow on snow, And lay her where the violets blow. But not beneath a graven stone, To plead for tears with alien eyes; A slender cross of wood alone Shall say, that here a maiden lies In peace beneath the peaceful skies. And gray old trees of hugest limb Shall wheel their circling shadows round To make the scorching sunlight dim That drinks the greenness from the ground, And drop their dead leaves on her mound. When o'er their boughs the squirrels run, And through their leaves the robins call, And, ripening in the autumn sun, The acorns and the chestnuts fall, Doubt not that she will heed them all. For her the morning choir shall sing Its matins from the branches high, And every minstrel-voice of Spring, That trills beneath the April sky, Shall greet her with its earliest cry. When, turning round their dial-track, Eastward the lengthening shadows pass, Her little mourners, clad in black, The crickets, sliding through the grass, Shall pipe for her an evening mass. At last the rootlets of the trees Shall find the prison where she lies, And bear the buried dust they seize In leaves and blossoms to the skies. So may the soul that warmed it rise! If any, born of kindlier blood, Should ask, What maiden lies below? Say only this: A tender bud, That tried to blossom in the snow, Lies withered where the violets blow. HYMN OF TRUST O Love Divine, that stooped to share Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear, On Thee we cast each earth-born care, We smile at pain while Thou art near! Though long the weary way we tread, And sorrow crown each lingering year, No path we shun, no darkness dread, Our hearts still whispering, Thou art near! When drooping pleasure turns to grief, And trembling faith is changed to fear, The murmuring wind, the quivering leaf, Shall softly tell us, Thou art near! On Thee we fling our burdening woe, O Love Divine, forever dear, Content to suffer while we know, Living and dying, Thou art near! A SUN-DAY HYMN LORD of all being! throned afar, Thy glory flames from sun and star; Centre and soul of every sphere, Yet to each loving heart how near! Sun of our life, thy quickening ray Sheds on our path the glow of day; Star of our hope, thy softened light Cheers the long watches of the night. Our midnight is thy smile withdrawn; Our noontide is thy gracious dawn; Our rainbow arch thy mercy's sign; All, save the clouds of sin, are thin! Lord of all life, below, above, Whose light is truth, whose warmth is love, Before thy ever-blazing throne We ask no lustre of our own. Grant us thy truth to make us free, And kindling hearts that burn for thee, Till all thy living altars claim One holy light, one heavenly flame! THE CROOKED FOOTPATH AH, here it is! the sliding rail That marks the old remembered spot,-- The gap that struck our school-boy trail,-- The crooked path across the lot. It left the road by school and church, A pencilled shadow, nothing more, That parted from the silver-birch And ended at the farm-house door. No line or compass traced its plan; With frequent bends to left or right, In aimless, wayward curves it ran, But always kept the door in sight. The gabled porch, with woodbine green,-- The broken millstone at the sill,-- Though many a rood might stretch between, The truant child could see them still. No rocks across the pathway lie,-- No fallen trunk is o'er it thrown,-- And yet it winds, we know not why, And turns as if for tree or stone. Perhaps some lover trod the way With shaking knees and leaping heart,-- And so it often runs astray With sinuous sweep or sudden start. Or one, perchance, with clouded brain From some unholy banquet reeled,-- And since, our devious steps maintain His track across the trodden field. Nay, deem not thus,--no earthborn will Could ever trace a faultless line; Our truest steps are human still,-- To walk unswerving were divine! Truants from love, we dream of wrath; Oh, rather let us trust the more! Through all the wanderings of the path, We still can see our Father's door! IRIS, HER BOOK I PRAY thee by the soul of her that bore thee, By thine own sister's spirit I implore thee, Deal gently with the leaves that lie before thee! For Iris had no mother to infold her, Nor ever leaned upon a sister's shoulder, Telling the twilight thoughts that Nature told her. She had not learned the mystery of awaking Those chorded keys that soothe a sorrow's aching, Giving the dumb heart voice, that else were breaking. Yet lived, wrought, suffered. Lo, the pictured token Why should her fleeting day-dreams fade unspoken, Like daffodils that die with sheaths unbroken? She knew not love, yet lived in maiden fancies,-- Walked simply clad, a queen of high romances, And talked strange tongues with angels in her trances. Twin-souled she seemed, a twofold nature wearing: Sometimes a flashing falcon in her daring, Then a poor mateless dove that droops despairing. Questioning all things: Why her Lord had sent her? What were these torturing gifts, and wherefore lent her? Scornful as spirit fallen, its own tormentor. And then all tears and anguish: Queen of Heaven, Sweet Saints, and Thou by mortal sorrows riven, Save me! Oh, save me! Shall I die forgiven? And then--Ah, God! But nay, it little matters: Look at the wasted seeds that autumn scatters, The myriad germs that Nature shapes and shatters! If she had--Well! She longed, and knew not wherefore. Had the world nothing she might live to care for? No second self to say her evening prayer for? She knew the marble shapes that set men dreaming, Yet with her shoulders bare and tresses streaming Showed not unlovely to her simple seeming. Vain? Let it be so! Nature was her teacher. What if a lonely and unsistered creature Loved her own harmless gift of pleasing feature, Saying, unsaddened,--This shall soon be faded, And double-hued the shining tresses braided, And all the sunlight of the morning shaded? This her poor book is full of saddest follies, Of tearful smiles and laughing melancholies, With summer roses twined and wintry hollies. In the strange crossing of uncertain chances, Somewhere, beneath some maiden's tear-dimmed glances May fall her little book of dreams and fancies. Sweet sister! Iris, who shall never name thee, Trembling for fear her open heart may shame thee, Speaks from this vision-haunted page to claim thee. Spare her, I pray thee! If the maid is sleeping, Peace with her! she has had her hour of weeping. No more! She leaves her memory in thy keeping. ROBINSON OF LEYDEN HE sleeps not here; in hope and prayer His wandering flock had gone before, But he, the shepherd, might not share Their sorrows on the wintry shore. Before the Speedwell's anchor swung, Ere yet the Mayflower's sail was spread, While round his feet the Pilgrims clung, The pastor spake, and thus he said:-- "Men, brethren, sisters, children dear! God calls you hence from over sea; Ye may not build by Haerlem Meer, Nor yet along the Zuyder-Zee. "Ye go to bear the saving word To tribes unnamed and shores untrod; Heed well the lessons ye have heard From those old teachers taught of God. "Yet think not unto them was lent All light for all the coming days, And Heaven's eternal wisdom spent In making straight the ancient ways; "The living fountain overflows For every flock, for every lamb, Nor heeds, though angry creeds oppose With Luther's dike or Calvin's dam." He spake; with lingering, long embrace, With tears of love and partings fond, They floated down the creeping Maas, Along the isle of Ysselmond. They passed the frowning towers of Briel, The "Hook of Holland's" shelf of sand, And grated soon with lifting keel The sullen shores of Fatherland. No home for these!--too well they knew The mitred king behind the throne;-- The sails were set, the pennons flew, And westward ho! for worlds unknown. And these were they who gave us birth, The Pilgrims of the sunset wave, Who won for us this virgin earth, And freedom with the soil they gave. The pastor slumbers by the Rhine,-- In alien earth the exiles lie,-- Their nameless graves our holiest shrine, His words our noblest battle-cry! Still cry them, and the world shall hear, Ye dwellers by the storm-swept sea! Ye _have_ not built by Haerlem Meer, Nor on the land-locked Zuyder-Zee! ST. ANTHONY THE REFORMER HIS TEMPTATION No fear lest praise should make us proud! We know how cheaply that is won; The idle homage of the crowd Is proof of tasks as idly done. A surface-smile may pay the toil That follows still the conquering Right, With soft, white hands to dress the spoil That sun-browned valor clutched in fight. Sing the sweet song of other days, Serenely placid, safely true, And o'er the present's parching ways The verse distils like evening dew. But speak in words of living power,-- They fall like drops of scalding rain That plashed before the burning shower Swept o' er the cities of the plain! Then scowling Hate turns deadly pale,-- Then Passion's half-coiled adders spring, And, smitten through their leprous mail, Strike right and left in hope to sting. If thou, unmoved by poisoning wrath, Thy feet on earth, thy heart above, Canst walk in peace thy kingly path, Unchanged in trust, unchilled in love,-- Too kind for bitter words to grieve, Too firm for clamor to dismay, When Faith forbids thee to believe, And Meekness calls to disobey,-- Ah, then beware of mortal pride! The smiling pride that calmly scorns Those foolish fingers, crimson dyed In laboring on thy crown of thorns! THE OPENING OF THE PIANO IN the little southern parlor of the house you may have seen With the gambrel-roof, and the gable looking westward to the green, At the side toward the sunset, with the window on its right, Stood the London-made piano I am dreaming of to-night! Ah me I how I remember the evening when it came! What a cry of eager voices, what a group of cheeks in flame, When the wondrous box was opened that had come from over seas, With its smell of mastic-varnish and its flash of ivory keys! Then the children all grew fretful in the restlessness of joy, For the boy would push his sister, and the sister crowd the boy, Till the father asked for quiet in his grave paternal way, But the mother hushed the tumult with the words, "Now, Mary, play." For the dear soul knew that music was a very sovereign balm; She had sprinkled it over Sorrow and seen its brow grow calm, In the days of slender harpsichords with tapping tinkling quills, Or carolling to her spinet with its thin metallic thrills. So Mary, the household minstrel, who always loved to please, Sat down to the new "Clementi," and struck the glittering keys. Hushed were the children's voices, and every eye grew dim, As, floating from lip and finger, arose the "Vesper Hymn." Catharine, child of a neighbor, curly and rosy-red, (Wedded since, and a widow,--something like ten years dead,) Hearing a gush of music such as none before, Steals from her mother's chamber and peeps at the open door. Just as the "Jubilate" in threaded whisper dies, "Open it! open it, lady!" the little maiden cries, (For she thought 't was a singing creature caged in a box she heard,) "Open it! open it, lady! and let me see the _bird!_" MIDSUMMER HERE! sweep these foolish leaves away, I will not crush my brains to-day! Look! are the southern curtains drawn? Fetch me a fan, and so begone! Not that,--the palm-tree's rustling leaf Brought from a parching coral-reef Its breath is heated;--I would swing The broad gray plumes,--the eagle's wing. I hate these roses' feverish blood! Pluck me a half-blown lily-bud, A long-stemmed lily from the lake, Cold as a coiling water-snake. Rain me sweet odors on the air, And wheel me up my Indian chair, And spread some book not overwise Flat out before my sleepy eyes. Who knows it not,--this dead recoil Of weary fibres stretched with toil,-- The pulse that flutters faint and low When Summer's seething breezes blow! O Nature! bare thy loving breast, And give thy child one hour of rest,-- One little hour to lie unseen Beneath thy scarf of leafy green! So, curtained by a singing pine, Its murmuring voice shall blend with mine, Till, lost in dreams, my faltering lay In sweeter music dies away. DE SAUTY AN ELECTRO-CHEMICAL ECLOGUE The first messages received through the submarine cable were sent by an electrical expert, a mysterious personage who signed himself De Sauty. Professor Blue-Nose PROFESSOR TELL me, O Provincial! speak, Ceruleo-Nasal! Lives there one De Sauty extant now among you, Whispering Boanerges, son of silent thunder, Holding talk with nations? Is there a De Sauty ambulant on Tellus, Bifid-cleft like mortals, dormient in nightcap, Having sight, smell, hearing, food-receiving feature Three times daily patent? Breathes there such a being, O Ceruleo-Nasal? Or is he a _mythus_,--ancient word for "humbug"-- Such as Livy told about the wolf that wet-nursed Romulus and Remus? Was he born of woman, this alleged De Sauty? Or a living product of galvanic action, Like the acarus bred in Crosse's flint-solution? Speak, thou Cyano-Rhinal! BLUE-NOSE Many things thou askest, jackknife-bearing stranger, Much-conjecturing mortal, pork-and-treacle-waster! Pretermit thy whittling, wheel thine ear-flap toward me, Thou shall hear them answered. When the charge galvanic tingled through the cable, At the polar focus of the wire electric Suddenly appeared a white-faced man among us Called himself "DE SAUTY." As the small opossum held in pouch maternal Grasps the nutrient organ whence the term mammalia, So the unknown stranger held the wire electric, Sucking in the current. When the current strengthened, bloomed the pale-faced stranger,-- Took no drink nor victual, yet grew fat and rosy,-- And from time to time, in sharp articulation, Said, "All right! DE SAUTY." From the lonely station passed the utterance, spreading Through the pines and hemlocks to the groves of steeples, Till the land was filled with loud reverberations Of "_All right_ DE SAUTY." When the current slackened, drooped the mystic stranger,-- Faded, faded, faded, as the stream grew weaker,-- Wasted to a shadow, with a hartshorn odor Of disintegration. Drops of deliquescence glistened on his forehead, Whitened round his feet the dust of efflorescence, Till one Monday morning, when the flow suspended, There was no De Sauty. Nothing but a cloud of elements organic, C. O. H. N. Ferrum, Chlor. Flu. Sil. Potassa, Cale. Sod. Phosph. Mag. Sulphur, Mang. (?) Alumin. (?) Cuprum, (?) Such as man is made of. Born of stream galvanic, with it he had perished! There is no De Sauty now there is no current! Give us a new cable, then again we'll hear him Cry, "All right! DE SAUTY." POEMS FROM THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE 1871-1872 HOMESICK IN HEAVEN THE DIVINE VOICE Go seek thine earth-born sisters,--thus the Voice That all obey,--the sad and silent three; These only, while the hosts of Heaven rejoice, Smile never; ask them what their sorrows be; And when the secret of their griefs they tell, Look on them with thy mild, half-human eyes; Say what thou wast on earth; thou knowest well; So shall they cease from unavailing sighs. THE ANGEL Why thus, apart,--the swift-winged herald spake,-- Sit ye with silent lips and unstrung lyres While the trisagion's blending chords awake In shouts of joy from all the heavenly choirs? FIRST SPIRIT Chide not thy sisters,--thus the answer came;-- Children of earth, our half-weaned nature clings To earth's fond memories, and her whispered name Untunes our quivering lips, our saddened strings; For there we loved, and where we love is home, Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts, Though o'er us shine the jasper-lighted dome:-- The chain may lengthen, but it never parts! Sometimes a sunlit sphere comes rolling by, And then we softly whisper,--can it be? And leaning toward the silvery orb, we try To hear the music of its murmuring sea; To catch, perchance, some flashing glimpse of green, Or breathe some wild-wood fragrance, wafted through The opening gates of pearl, that fold between The blinding splendors and the changeless blue. THE ANGEL Nay, sister, nay! a single healing leaf Plucked from the bough of yon twelve-fruited tree Would soothe such anguish,--deeper stabbing grief Has pierced thy throbbing heart-- THE FIRST SPIRIT Ah, woe is me! I from my clinging babe was rudely torn; His tender lips a loveless bosom pressed; Can I forget him in my life new born? Oh that my darling lay upon my breast! THE ANGEL And thou?-- THE SECOND SPIRIT I was a fair and youthful bride, The kiss of love still burns upon my cheek, He whom I worshipped, ever at my side,-- Him through the spirit realm in vain I seek. Sweet faces turn their beaming eyes on mine; Ah! not in these the wished-for look I read; Still for that one dear human smile I pine; _Thou and none other!_--is the lover's creed. THE ANGEL And whence thy sadness in a world of bliss Where never parting comes, nor mourner's tear? Art thou, too, dreaming of a mortal's kiss Amid the seraphs of the heavenly sphere? THE THIRD SPIRIT Nay, tax not me with passion's wasting fire; When the swift message set my spirit free, Blind, helpless, lone, I left my gray-haired sire; My friends were many, he had none save me. I left him, orphaned, in the starless night; Alas, for him no cheerful morning's dawn I wear the ransomed spirit's robe of white, Yet still I hear him moaning, _She is gone!_ THE ANGEL Ye know me not, sweet sisters?--All in vain Ye seek your lost ones in the shapes they wore; The flower once opened may not bud again, The fruit once fallen finds the stem no more. Child, lover, sire,--yea, all things loved below,-- Fair pictures damasked on a vapor's fold,-- Fade like the roseate flush, the golden glow, When the bright curtain of the day is rolled. I was the babe that slumbered on thy breast. And, sister, mine the lips that called thee bride. Mine were the silvered locks thy hand caressed, That faithful hand, my faltering footstep's guide! Each changing form, frail vesture of decay, The soul unclad forgets it once hath worn, Stained with the travel of the weary day, And shamed with rents from every wayside thorn. To lie, an infant, in thy fond embrace,-- To come with love's warm kisses back to thee,-- To show thine eyes thy gray-haired father's face, Not Heaven itself could grant; this may not be! Then spread your folded wings, and leave to earth The dust once breathing ye have mourned so long, Till Love, new risen, owns his heavenly birth, And sorrow's discords sweeten into song! FANTASIA THE YOUNG GIRL'S POEM KISS mine eyelids, beauteous Morn, Blushing into life new-born! Lend me violets for my hair, And thy russet robe to wear, And thy ring of rosiest hue Set in drops of diamond dew! Kiss my cheek, thou noontide ray, From my Love so far away Let thy splendor streaming down Turn its pallid lilies brown, Till its darkening shades reveal Where his passion pressed its seal! Kiss my lips, thou Lord of light, Kiss my lips a soft good-night! Westward sinks thy golden car; Leave me but the evening star, And my solace that shall be, Borrowing all its light from thee! AUNT TABITHA THE YOUNG GIRL'S POEM WHATEVER I do, and whatever I say, Aunt Tabitha tells me that is n't the way; When she was a girl (forty summers ago) Aunt Tabitha tells me they never did so. Dear aunt! If I only would take her advice! But I like my own way, and I find it so nice And besides, I forget half the things I am told; But they all will come back to me--when I am old. If a youth passes by, it may happen, no doubt, He may chance to look in as I chance to look out; She would never endure an impertinent stare,-- It is horrid, she says, and I must n't sit there. A walk in the moonlight has pleasures, I own, But it is n't quite safe to be walking alone; So I take a lad's arm,--just for safety, you know,-- But Aunt Tabitha tells me they did n't do so. How wicked we are, and how good they were then! They kept at arm's length those detestable men; What an era of virtue she lived in!--But stay-- Were the men all such rogues in Aunt Tabitha's day? If the men were so wicked, I 'll ask my papa How he dared to propose to my darling mamma; Was he like the rest of them? Goodness! Who knows? And what shall I say, if a wretch should propose? I am thinking if Aunt knew so little of sin, What a wonder Aunt Tabitha's aunt must have been! And her grand-aunt--it scares me--how shockingly sad That we girls of to-day are so frightfully bad! A martyr will save us, and nothing else can; Let me perish--to rescue some wretched young man! Though when to the altar a victim I go, Aunt Tabitha 'll tell me she never did so. WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS FROM THE YOUNG ASTRONOMER'S POEM I. AMBITION ANOTHER clouded night; the stars are hid, The orb that waits my search is hid with them. Patience! Why grudge an hour, a month, a year, To plant my ladder and to gain the round That leads my footsteps to the heaven of fame, Where waits the wreath my sleepless midnights won? Not the stained laurel such as heroes wear That withers when some stronger conqueror's heel Treads down their shrivelling trophies in the dust; But the fair garland whose undying green Not time can change, nor wrath of gods or men! With quickened heart-beats I shall hear tongues That speak my praise; but better far the sense That in the unshaped ages, buried deep In the dark mines of unaccomplished time Yet to be stamped with morning's royal die And coined in golden days,--in those dim years I shall be reckoned with the undying dead, My name emblazoned on the fiery arch, Unfading till the stars themselves shall fade. Then, as they call the roll of shining worlds, Sages of race unborn in accents new Shall count me with the Olympian ones of old, Whose glories kindle through the midnight sky Here glows the God of Battles; this recalls The Lord of Ocean, and yon far-off sphere The Sire of Him who gave his ancient name To the dim planet with the wondrous rings; Here flames the Queen of Beauty's silver lamp, And there the moon-girt orb of mighty Jove; But this, unseen through all earth's ions past, A youth who watched beneath the western star Sought in the darkness, found, and shewed to men; Linked with his name thenceforth and evermore So shall that name be syllabled anew In all the tongues of all the tribes of men: I that have been through immemorial years Dust in the dust of my forgotten time Shall live in accents shaped of blood-warm breath, Yea, rise in mortal semblance, newly born In shining stone, in undecaying bronze, And stand on high, and look serenely down On the new race that calls the earth its own. Is this a cloud, that, blown athwart my soul, Wears a false seeming of the pearly stain Where worlds beyond the world their mingling rays Blend in soft white,--a cloud that, born of earth, Would cheat the soul that looks for light from heaven? Must every coral-insect leave his sign On each poor grain he lent to build the reef, As Babel's builders stamped their sunburnt clay, Or deem his patient service all in vain? What if another sit beneath the shade Of the broad elm I planted by the way,-- What if another heed the beacon light I set upon the rock that wrecked my keel,-- Have I not done my task and served my kind? Nay, rather act thy part, unnamed, unknown, And let Fame blow her trumpet through the world With noisy wind to swell a fool's renown, Joined with some truth he stumbled blindly o'er, Or coupled with some single shining deed That in the great account of all his days Will stand alone upon the bankrupt sheet His pitying angel shows the clerk of Heaven. The noblest service comes from nameless hands, And the best servant does his work unseen. Who found the seeds of fire and made them shoot, Fed by his breath, in buds and flowers of flame? Who forged in roaring flames the ponderous stone, And shaped the moulded metal to his need? Who gave the dragging car its rolling wheel, And tamed the steed that whirls its circling round? All these have left their work and not their names,-- Why should I murmur at a fate like theirs? This is the heavenly light; the pearly stain Was but a wind-cloud drifting o'er the stars! II. REGRETS BRIEF glimpses of the bright celestial spheres, False lights, false shadows, vague, uncertain gleams, Pale vaporous mists, wan streaks of lurid flame, The climbing of the upward-sailing cloud, The sinking of the downward-falling star,-- All these are pictures of the changing moods Borne through the midnight stillness of my soul. Here am I, bound upon this pillared rock, Prey to the vulture of a vast desire That feeds upon my life. I burst my bands And steal a moment's freedom from the beak, The clinging talons and the shadowing plumes; Then comes the false enchantress, with her song; "Thou wouldst not lay thy forehead in the dust Like the base herd that feeds and breeds and dies Lo, the fair garlands that I weave for thee, Unchanging as the belt Orion wears, Bright as the jewels of the seven-starred Crown, The spangled stream of Berenice's hair!" And so she twines the fetters with the flowers Around my yielding limbs, and the fierce bird Stoops to his quarry,--then to feed his rage Of ravening hunger I must drain my blood And let the dew-drenched, poison-breeding night Steal all the freshness from my fading cheek, And leave its shadows round my caverned eyes. All for a line in some unheeded scroll; All for a stone that tells to gaping clowns, "Here lies a restless wretch beneath a clod Where squats the jealous nightmare men call Fame!" I marvel not at him who scorns his kind And thinks not sadly of the time foretold When the old hulk we tread shall be a wreck, A slag, a cinder drifting through the sky Without its crew of fools! We live too long, And even so are not content to die, But load the mould that covers up our bones With stones that stand like beggars by the road And show death's grievous wound and ask for tears; Write our great books to teach men who we are, Sing our fine songs that tell in artful phrase The secrets of our lives, and plead and pray For alms of memory with the after time, Those few swift seasons while the earth shall wear Its leafy summers, ere its core grows cold And the moist life of all that breathes shall die; Or as the new-born seer, perchance more wise, Would have us deem, before its growing mass, Pelted with star-dust, stoned with meteor-balls, Heats like a hammered anvil, till at last Man and his works and all that stirred itself Of its own motion, in the fiery glow Turns to a flaming vapor, and our orb Shines a new sun for earths that shall be born. I am as old as Egypt to myself, Brother to them that squared the pyramids By the same stars I watch. I read the page Where every letter is a glittering world, With them who looked from Shinar's clay-built towers, Ere yet the wanderer of the Midland sea Had missed the fallen sister of the seven. I dwell in spaces vague, remote, unknown, Save to the silent few, who, leaving earth, Quit all communion with their living time. I lose myself in that ethereal void, Till I have tired my wings and long to fill My breast with denser air, to stand, to walk With eyes not raised above my fellow-men. Sick of my unwalled, solitary realm, I ask to change the myriad lifeless worlds I visit as mine own for one poor patch Of this dull spheroid and a little breath To shape in word or deed to serve my kind. Was ever giant's dungeon dug so deep, Was ever tyrant's fetter forged so strong, Was e'er such deadly poison in the draught The false wife mingles for the trusting fool, As he whose willing victim is himself, Digs, forges, mingles, for his captive soul? III. SYMPATHIES THE snows that glittered on the disk of Mars Have melted, and the planet's fiery orb Rolls in the crimson summer of its year; But what to me the summer or the snow Of worlds that throb with life in forms unknown, If life indeed be theirs; I heed not these. My heart is simply human; all my care For them whose dust is fashioned like mine own; These ache with cold and hunger, live in pain, And shake with fear of worlds more full of woe; There may be others worthier of my love, But such I know not save through these I know. There are two veils of language, hid beneath Whose sheltering folds, we dare to be ourselves; And not that other self which nods and smiles And babbles in our name; the one is Prayer, Lending its licensed freedom to the tongue That tells our sorrows and our sins to Heaven; The other, Verse, that throws its spangled web Around our naked speech and makes it bold. I, whose best prayer is silence; sitting dumb In the great temple where I nightly serve Him who is throned in light, have dared to claim The poet's franchise, though I may not hope To wear his garland; hear me while I tell My story in such form as poets use, But breathed in fitful whispers, as the wind Sighs and then slumbers, wakes and sighs again. Thou Vision, floating in the breathless air Between me and the fairest of the stars, I tell my lonely thoughts as unto thee. Look not for marvels of the scholar's pen In my rude measure; I can only show A slender-margined, unillumined page, And trust its meaning to the flattering eye That reads it in the gracious light of love. Ah, wouldst thou clothe thyself in breathing shape And nestle at my side, my voice should lend Whate'er my verse may lack of tender rhythm To make thee listen. I have stood entranced When, with her fingers wandering o'er the keys, The white enchantress with the golden hair Breathed all her soul through some unvalued rhyme; Some flower of song that long had lost its bloom; Lo! its dead summer kindled as she sang! The sweet contralto, like the ringdove's coo, Thrilled it with brooding, fond, caressing tones, And the pale minstrel's passion lived again, Tearful and trembling as a dewy rose The wind has shaken till it fills the air With light and fragrance. Such the wondrous charm A song can borrow when the bosom throbs That lends it breath. So from the poet's lips His verse sounds doubly sweet, for none like him Feels every cadence of its wave-like flow; He lives the passion over, while he reads, That shook him as he sang his lofty strain, And pours his life through each resounding line, As ocean, when the stormy winds are hushed, Still rolls and thunders through his billowy caves. IV. MASTER AND SCHOLAR LET me retrace the record of the years That made me what I am. A man most wise, But overworn with toil and bent with age, Sought me to be his scholar,-me, run wild From books and teachers,-kindled in my soul The love of knowledge; led me to his tower, Showed me the wonders of the midnight realm His hollow sceptre ruled, or seemed to rule, Taught me the mighty secrets of the spheres, Trained me to find the glimmering specks of light Beyond the unaided sense, and on my chart To string them one by one, in order due, As on a rosary a saint his beads. I was his only scholar; I became The echo to his thought; whate'er he knew Was mine for asking; so from year to year W e wrought together, till there came a time When I, the learner, was the master half Of the twinned being in the dome-crowned tower. Minds roll in paths like planets; they revolve, This in a larger, that a narrower ring, But round they come at last to that same phase, That selfsame light and shade they showed before. I learned his annual and his monthly tale, His weekly axiom and his daily phrase, I felt them coming in the laden air, And watched them laboring up to vocal breath, Even as the first-born at his father's board Knows ere he speaks the too familiar jest Is on its way, by some mysterious sign Forewarned, the click before the striking bell. He shrivelled as I spread my growing leaves, Till trust and reverence changed to pitying care; He lived for me in what he once had been, But I for him, a shadow, a defence, The guardian of his fame, his guide, his staff, Leaned on so long he fell if left alone. I was his eye, his ear, his cunning hand, Love was my spur and longing after fame, But his the goading thorn of sleepless age That sees its shortening span, its lengthening shades, That clutches what it may with eager grasp, And drops at last with empty, outstretched hands. All this he dreamed not. He would sit him down Thinking to work his problems as of old, And find the star he thought so plain a blur, The columned figures labyrinthine wilds Without my comment, blind and senseless scrawls That vexed him with their riddles; he would strive And struggle for a while, and then his eye Would lose its light, and over all his mind The cold gray mist would settle; and erelong The darkness fell, and I was left alone. V. ALONE ALONE! no climber of an Alpine cliff, No Arctic venturer on the waveless sea, Feels the dread stillness round him as it chills The heart of him who leaves the slumbering earth To watch the silent worlds that crowd the sky. Alone! And as the shepherd leaves his flock To feed upon the hillside, he meanwhile Finds converse in the warblings of the pipe Himself has fashioned for his vacant hour, So have I grown companion to myself, And to the wandering spirits of the air That smile and whisper round us in our dreams. Thus have I learned to search if I may know The whence and why of all beneath the stars And all beyond them, and to weigh my life As in a balance,--poising good and ill Against each other,--asking of the Power That flung me forth among the whirling worlds, If I am heir to any inborn right, Or only as an atom of the dust That every wind may blow where'er it will. VI. QUESTIONING I AM not humble; I was shown my place, Clad in such robes as Nature had at hand; Took what she gave, not chose; I know no shame, No fear for being simply what I am. I am not proud, I hold my every breath At Nature's mercy. I am as a babe Borne in a giant's arms, he knows not where; Each several heart-beat, counted like the coin A miser reckons, is a special gift As from an unseen hand; if that withhold Its bounty for a moment, I am left A clod upon the earth to which I fall. Something I find in me that well might claim The love of beings in a sphere above This doubtful twilight world of right and wrong; Something that shows me of the self-same clay That creeps or swims or flies in humblest form. Had I been asked, before I left my bed Of shapeless dust, what clothing I would wear, I would have said, More angel and less worm; But for their sake who are even such as I, Of the same mingled blood, I would not choose To hate that meaner portion of myself Which makes me brother to the least of men. I dare not be a coward with my lips Who dare to question all things in my soul; Some men may find their wisdom on their knees, Some prone and grovelling in the dust like slaves; Let the meek glowworm glisten in the dew; I ask to lift my taper to the sky As they who hold their lamps above their heads, Trusting the larger currents up aloft, Rather than crossing eddies round their breast, Threatening with every puff the flickering blaze. My life shall be a challenge, not a truce! This is my homage to the mightier powers, To ask my boldest question, undismayed By muttered threats that some hysteric sense Of wrong or insult will convulse the throne Where wisdom reigns supreme; and if I err, They all must err who have to feel their way As bats that fly at noon; for what are we But creatures of the night, dragged forth by day, Who needs must stumble, and with stammering steps Spell out their paths in syllables of pain? Thou wilt not hold in scorn the child who dares Look up to Thee, the Father,--dares to ask More than thy wisdom answers. From thy hand The worlds were cast; yet every leaflet claims From that same hand its little shining sphere Of star-lit dew; thine image, the great sun, Girt with his mantle of tempestuous flame, Glares in mid-heaven; but to his noon-tide blaze The slender violet lifts its lidless eye, And from his splendor steals its fairest hue, Its sweetest perfume from his scorching fire. VII. WORSHIP FROM my lone turret as I look around O'er the green meadows to the ring of blue, From slope, from summit, and from half-hid vale The sky is stabbed with dagger-pointed spires, Their gilded symbols whirling in the wind, Their brazen tongues proclaiming to the world, "Here truth is sold, the only genuine ware; See that it has our trade-mark! You will buy Poison instead of food across the way, The lies of -----" this or that, each several name The standard's blazon and the battle-cry Of some true-gospel faction, and again The token of the Beast to all beside. And grouped round each I see a huddling crowd Alike in all things save the words they use; In love, in longing, hate and fear the same. Whom do we trust and serve? We speak of one And bow to many; Athens still would find The shrines of all she worshipped safe within Our tall barbarian temples, and the thrones That crowned Olympus mighty as of old. The god of music rules the Sabbath choir; The lyric muse must leave the sacred nine To help us please the dilettante's ear; Plutus limps homeward with us, as we leave The portals of the temple where we knelt And listened while the god of eloquence (Hermes of ancient days, but now disguised In sable vestments) with that other god Somnus, the son of Erebus and Nox, Fights in unequal contest for our souls; The dreadful sovereign of the under world Still shakes his sceptre at us, and we hear The baying of the triple-throated hound; Eros is young as ever, and as fair The lovely Goddess born of ocean's foam. These be thy gods, O Israel! Who is he, The one ye name and tell us that ye serve, Whom ye would call me from my lonely tower To worship with the many-headed throng? Is it the God that walked in Eden's grove In the cool hour to seek our guilty sire? The God who dealt with Abraham as the sons Of that old patriarch deal with other men? The jealous God of Moses, one who feels An image as an insult, and is wroth With him who made it and his child unborn? The God who plagued his people for the sin Of their adulterous king, beloved of him,-- The same who offers to a chosen few The right to praise him in eternal song While a vast shrieking world of endless woe Blends its dread chorus with their rapturous hymn? Is this the God ye mean, or is it he Who heeds the sparrow's fall, whose loving heart Is as the pitying father's to his child, Whose lesson to his children is "Forgive," Whose plea for all, "They know not what they do"? VIII. MANHOOD I CLAIM the right of knowing whom I serve, Else is my service idle; He that asks My homage asks it from a reasoning soul. To crawl is not to worship; we have learned A drill of eyelids, bended neck and knee, Hanging our prayers on hinges, till we ape The flexures of the many-jointed worm. Asia has taught her Allahs and salaams To the world's children,-we have grown to men! We who have rolled the sphere beneath our feet To find a virgin forest, as we lay The beams of our rude temple, first of all Must frame its doorway high enough for man To pass unstooping; knowing as we do That He who shaped us last of living forms Has long enough been served by creeping things, Reptiles that left their footprints in the sand Of old sea-margins that have turned to stone, And men who learned their ritual; we demand To know Him first, then trust Him and then love When we have found Him worthy of our love, Tried by our own poor hearts and not before; He must be truer than the truest friend, He must be tenderer than a woman's love, A father better than the best of sires; Kinder than she who bore us, though we sin Oftener than did the brother we are told We--poor ill-tempered mortals--must forgive, Though seven times sinning threescore times and ten. This is the new world's gospel: Be ye men! Try well the legends of the children's time; Ye are the chosen people, God has led Your steps across the desert of the deep As now across the desert of the shore; Mountains are cleft before you as the sea Before the wandering tribe of Israel's sons; Still onward rolls the thunderous caravan, Its coming printed on the western sky, A cloud by day, by night a pillared flame; Your prophets are a hundred unto one Of them of old who cried, "Thus saith the Lord;" They told of cities that should fall in heaps, But yours of mightier cities that shall rise Where yet the lonely fishers spread their nets, Where hides the fox and hoots the midnight owl; The tree of knowledge in your garden grows Not single, but at every humble door; Its branches lend you their immortal food, That fills you with the sense of what ye are, No servants of an altar hewed and carved From senseless stone by craft of human hands, Rabbi, or dervish, brahmin, bishop, bonze, But masters of the charm with which they work To keep your hands from that forbidden tree! Ye that have tasted that divinest fruit, Look on this world of yours with opened eyes! Y e are as gods! Nay, makers of your gods,-- Each day ye break an image in your shrine And plant a fairer image where it stood Where is the Moloch of your fathers' creed, Whose fires of torment burned for span--long babes? Fit object for a tender mother's love! Why not? It was a bargain duly made For these same infants through the surety's act Intrusted with their all for earth and heaven, By Him who chose their guardian, knowing well His fitness for the task,--this, even this, Was the true doctrine only yesterday As thoughts are reckoned,--and to--day you hear In words that sound as if from human tongues Those monstrous, uncouth horrors of the past That blot the blue of heaven and shame the earth As would the saurians of the age of slime, Awaking from their stony sepulchres And wallowing hateful in the eye of day! IX. RIGHTS WHAT am I but the creature Thou hast made? What have I save the blessings Thou hast lent? What hope I but thy mercy and thy love? Who but myself shall cloud my soul with fear? Whose hand protect me from myself but thine? I claim the rights of weakness, I, the babe, Call on my sire to shield me from the ills That still beset my path, not trying me With snares beyond my wisdom or my strength, He knowing I shall use them to my harm, And find a tenfold misery in the sense That in my childlike folly I have sprung The trap upon myself as vermin use, Drawn by the cunning bait to certain doom. Who wrought the wondrous charm that leads us on To sweet perdition, but the selfsame power That set the fearful engine to destroy His wretched offspring (as the Rabbis tell), And hid its yawning jaws and treacherous springs In such a show of innocent sweet flowers It lured the sinless angels and they fell? Ah! He who prayed the prayer of all mankind Summed in those few brief words the mightiest plea For erring souls before the courts of heaven,-- _Save us from being tempted_,--lest we fall! If we are only as the potter's clay Made to be fashioned as the artist wills, And broken into shards if we offend The eye of Him who made us, it is well; Such love as the insensate lump of clay That spins upon the swift-revolving wheel Bears to the hand that shapes its growing form,-- Such love, no more, will be our hearts' return To the great Master-workman for his care,-- Or would be, save that this, our breathing clay, Is intertwined with fine innumerous threads That make it conscious in its framer's hand; And this He must remember who has filled These vessels with the deadly draught of life,-- Life, that means death to all it claims. Our love Must kindle in the ray that streams from heaven, A faint reflection of the light divine; The sun must warm the earth before the rose Can show her inmost heart-leaves to the sun. He yields some fraction of the Maker's right Who gives the quivering nerve its sense of pain; Is there not something in the pleading eye Of the poor brute that suffers, which arraigns The law that bids it suffer? Has it not A claim for some remembrance in the book That fills its pages with the idle words Spoken of men? Or is it only clay, Bleeding and aching in the potter's hand, Yet all his own to treat it as He will And when He will to cast it at his feet, Shattered, dishonored, lost forevermore? My dog loves me, but could he look beyond His earthly master, would his love extend To Him who--Hush! I will not doubt that He Is better than our fears, and will not wrong The least, the meanest of created things! He would not trust me with the smallest orb That circles through the sky; He would not give A meteor to my guidance; would not leave The coloring of a cloudlet to my hand; He locks my beating heart beneath its bars And keeps the key himself; He measures out The draughts of vital breath that warm my blood, Winds up the springs of instinct which uncoil, Each in its season; ties me to my home, My race, my time, my nation, and my creed So closely that if I but slip my wrist Out of the band that cuts it to the bone, Men say, "He hath a devil;" He has lent All that I hold in trust, as unto one By reason of his weakness and his years Not fit to hold the smallest shred in fee Of those most common things he calls his own,-- And yet--my Rabbi tells me--He has left The care of that to which a million worlds Filled with unconscious life were less than naught, Has left that mighty universe, the Soul, To the weak guidance of our baby hands, Let the foul fiends have access at their will, Taking the shape of angels, to our hearts,-- Our hearts already poisoned through and through With the fierce virus of ancestral sin; Turned us adrift with our immortal charge, To wreck ourselves in gulfs of endless woe. If what my Rabbi tells me is the truth Why did the choir of angels sing for joy? Heaven must be compassed in a narrow space, And offer more than room enough for all That pass its portals; but the under-world, The godless realm, the place where demons forge Their fiery darts and adamantine chains, Must swarm with ghosts that for a little while Had worn the garb of flesh, and being heirs Of all the dulness of their stolid sires, And all the erring instincts of their tribe, Nature's own teaching, rudiments of "sin," Fell headlong in the snare that could not fail To trap the wretched creatures shaped of clay And cursed with sense enough to lose their souls! Brother, thy heart is troubled at my word; Sister, I see the cloud is on thy brow. He will not blame me, He who sends not peace, But sends a sword, and bids us strike amain At Error's gilded crest, where in the van Of earth's great army, mingling with the best And bravest of its leaders, shouting loud The battle-cries that yesterday have led The host of Truth to victory, but to-day Are watchwords of the laggard and the slave, He leads his dazzled cohorts. God has made This world a strife of atoms and of spheres; With every breath I sigh myself away And take my tribute from the wandering wind To fan the flame of life's consuming fire; So, while my thought has life, it needs must burn, And, burning, set the stubble-fields ablaze, Where all the harvest long ago was reaped And safely garnered in the ancient barns. But still the gleaners, groping for their food, Go blindly feeling through the close-shorn straw, While the young reapers flash, their glittering steel Where later suns have ripened nobler grain! X. TRUTHS THE time is racked with birth-pangs; every hour Brings forth some gasping truth, and truth newborn Looks a misshapen and untimely growth, The terror of the household and its shame, A monster coiling in its nurse's lap That some would strangle, some would only starve; But still it breathes, and passed from hand to hand, And suckled at a hundred half-clad breasts, Comes slowly to its stature and its form, Calms the rough ridges of its dragon-scales, Changes to shining locks its snaky hair, And moves transfigured into angel guise, Welcomed by all that cursed its hour of birth, And folded in the same encircling arms That cast it like a serpent from their hold! If thou wouldst live in honor, die in peace, Have the fine words the marble-workers learn To carve so well, upon thy funeral-stone, And earn a fair obituary, dressed In all the many-colored robes of praise, Be deafer than the adder to the cry Of that same foundling truth, until it grows To seemly favor, and at length has won The smiles of hard-mouthed men and light-lipped dames; Then snatch it from its meagre nurse's breast, Fold it in silk and give it food from gold; So shalt thou share its glory when at last It drops its mortal vesture, and, revealed In all the splendor of its heavenly form, Spreads on the startled air its mighty wings! Alas! how much that seemed immortal truth That heroes fought for, martyrs died to save, Reveals its earth-born lineage, growing old And limping in its march, its wings unplumed, Its heavenly semblance faded like a dream! Here in this painted casket, just unsealed, Lies what was once a breathing shape like thine, Once loved as thou art loved; there beamed the eyes That looked on Memphis in its hour of pride, That saw the walls of hundred-gated Thebes, And all the mirrored glories of the Nile. See how they toiled that all-consuming time Might leave the frame immortal in its tomb; Filled it with fragrant balms and odorous gums That still diffuse their sweetness through the air, And wound and wound with patient fold on fold The flaxen bands thy hand has rudely torn! Perchance thou yet canst see the faded stain Of the sad mourner's tear. XI. IDOLS BUT what is this? The sacred beetle, bound upon the breast Of the blind heathen! Snatch the curious prize, Give it a place among thy treasured spoils, Fossil and relic,--corals, encrinites, The fly in amber and the fish in stone, The twisted circlet of Etruscan gold, Medal, intaglio, poniard, poison-ring,-- Place for the Memphian beetle with thine hoard! AM longer than thy creed has blest the world This toy, thus ravished from thy brother's breast, Was to the heart of Mizraim as divine, As holy, as the symbol that we lay On the still bosom of our white-robed dead, And raise above their dust that all may know Here sleeps an heir of glory. Loving friends, With tears of trembling faith and choking sobs, And prayers to those who judge of mortal deeds, Wrapped this poor image in the cerement's fold That Isis and Osiris, friends of man, Might know their own and claim the ransomed soul. An idol? Man was born to worship such! An idol is an image of his thought; Sometimes he carves it out of gleaming stone, And sometimes moulds it out of glittering gold, Or rounds it in a mighty frescoed dome, Or lifts it heavenward in a lofty spire, Or shapes it in a cunning frame of words, Or pays his priest to make it day by day; For sense must have its god as well as soul; A new-born Dian calls for silver shrines, And Egypt's holiest symbol is our own, The sign we worship as did they of old When Isis and Osiris ruled the world. Let us be true to our most subtle selves, We long to have our idols like the rest. Think! when the men of Israel had their God Encamped among them, talking with their chief, Leading them in the pillar of the cloud And watching o'er them in the shaft of fire, They still must have an image; still they longed For somewhat of substantial, solid form Whereon to hang their garlands, and to fix Their wandering thoughts and gain a stronger hold For their uncertain faith, not yet assured If those same meteors of the day and night Were not mere exhalations of the soil. Are we less earthly than the chosen race? Are we more neighbors of the living God Than they who gathered manna every morn, Reaping where none had sown, and heard the voice Of him who met the Highest in the mount, And brought them tables, graven with His hand? Yet these must have their idol, brought their gold, That star-browed Apis might be god again; Yea, from their ears the women brake the rings That lent such splendors to the gypsy brown Of sunburnt cheeks,--what more could woman do To show her pious zeal? They went astray, But nature led them as it leads us all. We too, who mock at Israel's golden calf And scoff at Egypt's sacred scarabee, Would have our amulets to clasp and kiss, And flood with rapturous tears, and bear with us To be our dear companions in the dust; Such magic works an image in our souls. Man is an embryo; see at twenty years His bones, the columns that uphold his frame Not yet cemented, shaft and capital, Mere fragments of the temple incomplete. At twoscore, threescore, is he then full grown? Nay, still a child, and as the little maids Dress and undress their puppets, so he tries To dress a lifeless creed, as if it lived, And change its raiment when the world cries shame! We smile to see our little ones at play So grave, so thoughtful, with maternal care Nursing the wisps of rags they call their babes;-- Does He not smile who sees us with the toys We call by sacred names, and idly feign To be what we have called them? He is still The Father of this helpless nursery-brood, Whose second childhood joins so close its first, That in the crowding, hurrying years between We scarce have trained our senses to their task Before the gathering mist has dimmed our eyes, And with our hollowed palm we help our ear, And trace with trembling hand our wrinkled names, And then begin to tell our stories o'er, And see--not hear--the whispering lips that say, "You know? Your father knew him.--This is he, Tottering and leaning on the hireling's arm,"-- And so, at length, disrobed of all that clad The simple life we share with weed and worm, Go to our cradles, naked as we came. XII. LOVE WHAT if a soul redeemed, a spirit that loved While yet on earth and was beloved in turn, And still remembered every look and tone Of that dear earthly sister who was left Among the unwise virgins at the gate,-- Itself admitted with the bridegroom's train,-- What if this spirit redeemed, amid the host Of chanting angels, in some transient lull Of the eternal anthem, heard the cry Of its lost darling, whom in evil hour Some wilder pulse of nature led astray And left an outcast in a world of fire, Condemned to be the sport of cruel fiends, Sleepless, unpitying, masters of the skill To wring the maddest ecstasies of pain From worn-out souls that only ask to die,-- Would it not long to leave the bliss of heaven,-- Bearing a little water in its hand To moisten those poor lips that plead in vain With Him we call our Father? Or is all So changed in such as taste celestial joy They hear unmoved the endless wail of woe; The daughter in the same dear tones that hushed Her cradle slumbers; she who once had held A babe upon her bosom from its voice Hoarse with its cry of anguish, yet the same? No! not in ages when the Dreadful Bird Stamped his huge footprints, and the Fearful Beast Strode with the flesh about those fossil bones We build to mimic life with pygmy hands,-- Not in those earliest days when men ran wild And gashed each other with their knives of stone, When their low foreheads bulged in ridgy brows And their flat hands were callous in the palm With walking in the fashion of their sires, Grope as they might to find a cruel god To work their will on such as human wrath Had wrought its worst to torture, and had left With rage unsated, white and stark and cold, Could hate have shaped a demon more malign Than him the dead men mummied in their creed And taught their trembling children to adore! Made in his image! Sweet and gracious souls Dear to my heart by nature's fondest names, Is not your memory still the precious mould That lends its form to Him who hears my prayer? Thus only I behold Him, like to them, Long-suffering, gentle, ever slow to wrath, If wrath it be that only wounds to heal, Ready to meet the wanderer ere he reach The door he seeks, forgetful of his sin, Longing to clasp him in a father's arms, And seal his pardon with a pitying tear! Four gospels tell their story to mankind, And none so full of soft, caressing words That bring the Maid of Bethlehem and her Babe Before our tear-dimmed eyes, as his who learned In the meek service of his gracious art The tones which, like the medicinal balms That calm the sufferer's anguish, soothe our souls. Oh that the loving woman, she who sat So long a listener at her Master's feet, Had left us Mary's Gospel,--all she heard Too sweet, too subtle for the ear of man! Mark how the tender-hearted mothers read The messages of love between the lines Of the same page that loads the bitter tongue Of him who deals in terror as his trade With threatening words of wrath that scorch like flame They tell of angels whispering round the bed Of the sweet infant smiling in its dream, Of lambs enfolded in the Shepherd's arms, Of Him who blessed the children; of the land Where crystal rivers feed unfading flowers, Of cities golden-paved with streets of pearl, Of the white robes the winged creatures wear, The crowns and harps from whose melodious strings One long, sweet anthem flows forevermore! We too had human mothers, even as Thou, Whom we have learned to worship as remote From mortal kindred, wast a cradled babe. The milk of woman filled our branching veins, She lulled us with her tender nursery-song, And folded round us her untiring arms, While the first unremembered twilight yeas Shaped us to conscious being; still we feel Her pulses in our own,--too faintly feel; Would that the heart of woman warmed our creeds! Not from the sad-eyed hermit's lonely cell, Not from the conclave where the holy men Glare on each other, as with angry eyes They battle for God's glory and their own, Till, sick of wordy strife, a show of hands Fixes the faith of ages yet unborn,-- Ah, not from these the listening soul can hear The Father's voice that speaks itself divine! Love must be still our Master; till we learn What he can teach us of a woman's heart, We know not His whose love embraces all. EPILOGUE TO THE BREAKFAST-TABLE SERIES AUTOCRAT-PROFESSOR-POET AT A BOOKSTORE Anno Domini 1972 A CRAZY bookcase, placed before A low-price dealer's open door; Therein arrayed in broken rows A ragged crew of rhyme and prose, The homeless vagrants, waifs, and strays Whose low estate this line betrays (Set forth the lesser birds to lime) YOUR CHOICE AMONG THESE BOORS 1 DIME! Ho! dealer; for its motto's sake This scarecrow from the shelf I take; Three starveling volumes bound in one, Its covers warping in the sun. Methinks it hath a musty smell, I like its flavor none too well, But Yorick's brain was far from dull, Though Hamlet pah!'d, and dropped his skull. Why, here comes rain! The sky grows dark,-- Was that the roll of thunder? Hark! The shop affords a safe retreat, A chair extends its welcome seat, The tradesman has a civil look (I 've paid, impromptu, for my book), The clouds portend a sudden shower,-- I 'll read my purchase for an hour. What have I rescued from the shelf? A Boswell, writing out himself! For though he changes dress and name, The man beneath is still the same, Laughing or sad, by fits and starts, One actor in a dozen parts, And whatsoe'er the mask may be, The voice assures us, This is he. I say not this to cry him down; I find my Shakespeare in his clown, His rogues the selfsame parent own; Nay! Satan talks in Milton's tone! Where'er the ocean inlet strays, The salt sea wave its source betrays; Where'er the queen of summer blows, She tells the zephyr, "I'm the rose!" And his is not the playwright's page; His table does not ape the stage; What matter if the figures seen Are only shadows on a screen, He finds in them his lurking thought, And on their lips the words he sought, Like one who sits before the keys And plays a tune himself to please. And was he noted in his day? Read, flattered, honored? Who shall say? Poor wreck of time the wave has cast To find a peaceful shore at last, Once glorying in thy gilded name And freighted deep with hopes of fame, Thy leaf is moistened with a tear, The first for many a long, long year. For be it more or less of art That veils the lowliest human heart Where passion throbs, where friendship glows, Where pity's tender tribute flows, Where love has lit its fragrant fire, And sorrow quenched its vain desire, For me the altar is divine, Its flame, its ashes,--all are mine! And thou, my brother, as I look And see thee pictured in thy book, Thy years on every page confessed In shadows lengthening from the west, Thy glance that wanders, as it sought Some freshly opening flower of thought, Thy hopeful nature, light and free, I start to find myself in thee! . . . . . . . . . . . Come, vagrant, outcast, wretch forlorn In leather jerkin stained and torn, Whose talk has filled my idle hour And made me half forget the shower, I'll do at least as much for you, Your coat I'll patch, your gilt renew, Read you--perhaps--some other time. Not bad, my bargain! Price one dime! 
7394	----	THE POETICAL WORKS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES [Volume 2 of the 1893 three volume set] SONGS OF MANY SEASONS 1862-1874 OPENING THE WINDOW PROGRAMME IN THE QUIET DAYS AN OLD-YEAR SONG DOROTHY Q: A FAMILY PORTRAIT THE ORGAN-BLOWER AT THE PANTOMIME AFTER THE FIRE A BALLAD OF THE BOSTON TEA-PARTY NEARING THE SNOW-LINE IN WAR TIME TO CANAAN: A PURITAN WAR-SONG "THUS SAITH THE LORD, I OFFER THEE THREE THINGS" NEVER OR NOW ONE COUNTRY GOD SAVE THE FLAG! HYMN AFTER THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION HYMN FOR THE FAIR AT CHICAGO UNDER THE WASHINGTON ELM, CAMBRIDGE FREEDOM, OUR QUEEN ARMY HYMN PARTING HYMN THE FLOWER OF LIBERTY THE SWEET LITTLE MAN UNION AND LIBERTY SONGS OF WELCOME AND FAREWELL AMERICA TO RUSSIA WELCOME TO THE GRAND DUKE ALEXIS AT THE BANQUET TO THE GRAND DUKE ALEXIS AT THE BANQUET TO THE CHINESE EMBASSY AT THE BANQUET TO THE JAPANESE EMBASSY BRYANT'S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY A FAREWELL TO AGASSIZ AT A DINNER TO ADMIRAL FARRAGUT AT A DINNER TO GENERAL GRANT To H W LONGFELLOW To CHRISTIAN GOTTFRIED EHRENBERG A TOAST TO WILKIE COLLINS MEMORIAL VERSES FOR THE SERVICES IN MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, BOSTON, 1865 FOR THE COMMEMORATION SERVICES, CAMBRIDGE JULY 21, 1865 EDWARD EVERETT: JANUARY 30, 1865 SHAKESPEARE TERCENTENNIAL CELEBRATION, APRIL 23, 1864 IN MEMORY OF JOHN AND ROBERT WARE, MAY 25, 1864 HUMBOLDT'S BIRTHDAY: CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION, SEPTEMBER 14, 1869 POEM AT THE DEDICATION OF THE HALLECK MONUMENT, JULY 8, 1869 HYMN FOR THE CELEBRATION AT THE LAYING OF THE CORNER-STONE OF HARVARD MEMORIAL HALL, CAMBRIDGE, OCTOBER 6, 1870 HYMN FOR THE DEDICATION OF MEMORIAL HALL AT CAMBRIDGE, 1874 HYMN AT THE FUNERAL SERVICES OF CHARLES SUMNER, APRIL 29, 1874 RHYMES OF AN HOUR ADDRESS FOR THE OPENING OF THE FIFTH AVENUE THEATRE, N. Y. 1873 A SEA DIALOGUE CHANSON WITHOUT MUSIC FOR THE CENTENNIAL DINNER, PROPRIETORS OF BOSTON PIER, 1873 A POEM SERVED TO ORDER THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH No TIME LIKE THE OLD TIME A HYMN OF PEACE, TO THE MUSIC OF KELLER'S "AMERICAN HYMN" OPENING THE WINDOW THUS I lift the sash, so long Shut against the flight of song; All too late for vain excuse,-- Lo, my captive rhymes are loose. Rhymes that, flitting through my brain, Beat against my window-pane, Some with gayly colored wings, Some, alas! with venomed stings. Shall they bask in sunny rays? Shall they feed on sugared praise? Shall they stick with tangled feet On the critic's poisoned sheet? Are the outside winds too rough? Is the world not wide enough? Go, my winged verse, and try,-- Go, like Uncle Toby's fly! PROGRAMME READER--gentle--if so be Such still live, and live for me, Will it please you to be told What my tenscore pages hold? Here are verses that in spite Of myself I needs must write, Like the wine that oozes first When the unsqueezed grapes have burst. Here are angry lines, "too hard!" Says the soldier, battle-scarred. Could I smile his scars away I would blot the bitter lay, Written with a knitted brow, Read with placid wonder now. Throbbed such passion in my heart? Did his wounds once really smart? Here are varied strains that sing All the changes life can bring, Songs when joyous friends have met, Songs the mourner's tears have wet. See the banquet's dead bouquet, Fair and fragrant in its day; Do they read the selfsame lines,-- He that fasts and he that dines? Year by year, like milestones placed, Mark the record Friendship traced. Prisoned in the walls of time Life has notched itself in rhyme. As its seasons slid along, Every year a notch of song, From the June of long ago, When the rose was full in blow, Till the scarlet sage has come And the cold chrysanthemum. Read, but not to praise or blame; Are not all our hearts the same? For the rest, they take their chance,-- Some may pay a passing glance; Others,-well, they served a turn,-- Wherefore written, would you learn? Not for glory, not for pelf, Not, be sure, to please myself, Not for any meaner ends,-- Always "by request of friends." Here's the cousin of a king,-- Would I do the civil thing? Here 's the first-born of a queen; Here 's a slant-eyed Mandarin. Would I polish off Japan? Would I greet this famous man, Prince or Prelate, Sheik or Shah?-- Figaro gi and Figaro la! Would I just this once comply?-- So they teased and teased till I (Be the truth at once confessed) Wavered--yielded--did my best. Turn my pages,--never mind If you like not all you find; Think not all the grains are gold Sacramento's sand-banks hold. Every kernel has its shell, Every chime its harshest bell, Every face its weariest look, Every shelf its emptiest book, Every field its leanest sheaf, Every book its dullest leaf, Every leaf its weakest line,-- Shall it not be so with mine? Best for worst shall make amends, Find us, keep us, leave us friends Till, perchance, we meet again. Benedicite.--Amen! October 7, 1874. IN THE QUIET DAYS AN OLD-YEAR SONG As through the forest, disarrayed By chill November, late I strayed, A lonely minstrel of the wood Was singing to the solitude I loved thy music, thus I said, When o'er thy perch the leaves were spread Sweet was thy song, but sweeter now Thy carol on the leafless bough. Sing, little bird! thy note shall cheer The sadness of the dying year. When violets pranked the turf with blue And morning filled their cups with dew, Thy slender voice with rippling trill The budding April bowers would fill, Nor passed its joyous tones away When April rounded into May: Thy life shall hail no second dawn,-- Sing, little bird! the spring is gone. And I remember--well-a-day!-- Thy full-blown summer roundelay, As when behind a broidered screen Some holy maiden sings unseen With answering notes the woodland rung, And every tree-top found a tongue. How deep the shade! the groves how fair! Sing, little bird! the woods are bare. The summer's throbbing chant is done And mute the choral antiphon; The birds have left the shivering pines To flit among the trellised vines, Or fan the air with scented plumes Amid the love-sick orange-blooms, And thou art here alone,--alone,-- Sing, little bird! the rest have flown. The snow has capped yon distant hill, At morn the running brook was still, From driven herds the clouds that rise Are like the smoke of sacrifice; Erelong the frozen sod shall mock The ploughshare, changed to stubborn rock, The brawling streams shall soon be dumb,-- Sing, little bird! the frosts have come. Fast, fast the lengthening shadows creep, The songless fowls are half asleep, The air grows chill, the setting sun May leave thee ere thy song is done, The pulse that warms thy breast grow cold, Thy secret die with thee, untold The lingering sunset still is bright,-- Sing, little bird! 't will soon be night. 1874. DOROTHY Q. A FAMILY PORTRAIT I cannot tell the story of Dorothy Q. more simply in prose than I have told it in verse, but I can add something to it. Dorothy was the daughter of Judge Edmund Quincy, and the niece of Josiah Quincy, junior, the young patriot and orator who died just before the American Revolution, of which he was one of the most eloquent and effective promoters. The son of the latter, Josiah Quincy, the first mayor of Boston bearing that name, lived to a great age, one of the most useful and honored citizens of his time. The canvas of the painting was so much decayed that it had to be replaced by a new one, in doing which the rapier thrust was of course filled up. GRANDMOTHER'S mother: her age, I guess, Thirteen summers, or something less; Girlish bust, but womanly air; Smooth, square forehead with uprolled hair; Lips that lover has never kissed; Taper fingers and slender wrist; Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade; So they painted the little maid. On her hand a parrot green Sits unmoving and broods serene. Hold up the canvas full in view,-- Look! there's a rent the light shines through, Dark with a century's fringe of dust,-- That was a Red-Coat's rapier-thrust! Such is the tale the lady old, Dorothy's daughter's daughter, told. Who the painter was none may tell,-- One whose best was not over well; Hard and dry, it must be confessed, Flat as a rose that has long been pressed; Yet in her cheek the hues are bright, Dainty colors of red and white, And in her slender shape are seen Hint and promise of stately mien. Look not on her with eyes of scorn,-- Dorothy Q. was a lady born! Ay! since the galloping Normans came, England's annals have known her name; And still to the three-billed rebel town Dear is that ancient name's renown, For many a civic wreath they won, The youthful sire and the gray-haired son. O Damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.! Strange is the gift that I owe to you; Such a gift as never a king Save to daughter or son might bring,-- All my tenure of heart and hand, All my title to house and land; Mother and sister and child and wife And joy and sorrow and death and life! What if a hundred years ago Those close-shut lips had answered No, When forth the tremulous question came That cost the maiden her Norman name, And under the folds that look so still The bodice swelled with the bosom's thrill? Should I be I, or would it be One tenth another, to nine tenths me? Soft is the breath of a maiden's YES Not the light gossamer stirs with less; But never a cable that holds so fast Through all the battles of wave and blast, And never an echo of speech or song That lives in the babbling air so long! There were tones in the voice that whispered then You may hear to-day in a hundred men. O lady and lover, how faint and far Your images hover,--and here we are, Solid and stirring in flesh and bone,-- Edward's and Dorothy's--all their own,-- A goodly record for Time to show Of a syllable spoken so long ago!-- Shall I bless you, Dorothy, or forgive For the tender whisper that bade me live? It shall be a blessing, my little maid! I will heal the stab of the Red-Coat's blade, And freshen the gold of the tarnished frame, And gild with a rhyme your household name; So you shall smile on us brave and bright As first you greeted the morning's light, And live untroubled by woes and fears Through a second youth of a hundred years. 1871. THE ORGAN-BLOWER DEVOUTEST of My Sunday friends, The patient Organ-blower bends; I see his figure sink and rise, (Forgive me, Heaven, my wandering eyes!) A moment lost, the next half seen, His head above the scanty screen, Still measuring out his deep salaams Through quavering hymns and panting psalms. No priest that prays in gilded stole, To save a rich man's mortgaged soul; No sister, fresh from holy vows, So humbly stoops, so meekly bows; His large obeisance puts to shame The proudest genuflecting dame, Whose Easter bonnet low descends With all the grace devotion lends. O brother with the supple spine, How much we owe those bows of thine Without thine arm to lend the breeze, How vain the finger on the keys! Though all unmatched the player's skill, Those thousand throats were dumb and still: Another's art may shape the tone, The breath that fills it is thine own. Six days the silent Memnon waits Behind his temple's folded gates; But when the seventh day's sunshine falls Through rainbowed windows on the walls, He breathes, he sings, he shouts, he fills The quivering air with rapturous thrills; The roof resounds, the pillars shake, And all the slumbering echoes wake! The Preacher from the Bible-text With weary words my soul has vexed (Some stranger, fumbling far astray To find the lesson for the day); He tells us truths too plainly true, And reads the service all askew,-- Why, why the--mischief--can't he look Beforehand in the service-book? But thou, with decent mien and face, Art always ready in thy place; Thy strenuous blast, whate'er the tune, As steady as the strong monsoon; Thy only dread a leathery creak, Or small residual extra squeak, To send along the shadowy aisles A sunlit wave of dimpled smiles. Not all the preaching, O my friend, Comes from the church's pulpit end! Not all that bend the knee and bow Yield service half so true as thou! One simple task performed aright, With slender skill, but all thy might, Where honest labor does its best, And leaves the player all the rest. This many-diapasoned maze, Through which the breath of being strays, Whose music makes our earth divine, Has work for mortal hands like mine. My duty lies before me. Lo, The lever there! Take hold and blow And He whose hand is on the keys Will play the tune as He shall please. 1812. AT THE PANTOMIME THE house was crammed from roof to floor, Heads piled on heads at every door; Half dead with August's seething heat I crowded on and found my seat, My patience slightly out of joint, My temper short of boiling-point, Not quite at _Hate mankind as such_, Nor yet at _Love them overmuch_. Amidst the throng the pageant drew Were gathered Hebrews not a few, Black-bearded, swarthy,--at their side Dark, jewelled women, orient-eyed: If scarce a Christian hopes for grace Who crowds one in his narrow place, What will the savage victim do Whose ribs are kneaded by a Jew? Next on my left a breathing form Wedged up against me, close and warm; The beak that crowned the bistred face Betrayed the mould of Abraham's race,-- That coal-black hair, that smoke-brown hue,-- Ah, cursed, unbelieving Jew I started, shuddering, to the right, And squeezed--a second Israelite. Then woke the evil brood of rage That slumber, tongueless, in their cage; I stabbed in turn with silent oaths The hook-nosed kite of carrion clothes, The snaky usurer, him that crawls And cheats beneath the golden balls, Moses and Levi, all the horde, Spawn of the race that slew its Lord. Up came their murderous deeds of old, The grisly story Chaucer told, And many an ugly tale beside Of children caught and crucified; I heard the ducat-sweating thieves Beneath the Ghetto's slouching eaves, And, thrust beyond the tented green, The lepers cry, "Unclean! Unclean!" The show went on, but, ill at ease, My sullen eye it could not please, In vain my conscience whispered, "Shame! Who but their Maker is to blame?" I thought of Judas and his bribe, And steeled my soul against their tribe My neighbors stirred; I looked again Full on the younger of the twain. A fresh young cheek whose olive hue The mantling blood shows faintly through; Locks dark as midnight, that divide And shade the neck on either side; Soft, gentle, loving eyes that gleam Clear as a starlit mountain stream;-- So looked that other child of Shem, The Maiden's Boy of Bethlehem! And thou couldst scorn the peerless blood That flows immingled from the Flood,-- Thy scutcheon spotted with the stains Of Norman thieves and pirate Danes! The New World's foundling, in thy pride Scowl on the Hebrew at thy side, And lo! the very semblance there The Lord of Glory deigned to wear! I see that radiant image rise, The flowing hair, the pitying eyes, The faintly crimsoned cheek that shows The blush of Sharon's opening rose,-- Thy hands would clasp his hallowed feet Whose brethren soil thy Christian seat, Thy lips would press his garment's hem That curl in wrathful scorn for them! A sudden mist, a watery screen, Dropped like a veil before the scene; The shadow floated from my soul, And to my lips a whisper stole,-- "Thy prophets caught the Spirit's flame, From thee the Son of Mary came, With thee the Father deigned to dwell,-- Peace be upon thee, Israel!" 18--. Rewritten 1874. AFTER THE FIRE WHILE far along the eastern sky I saw the flags of Havoc fly, As if his forces would assault The sovereign of the starry vault And hurl Him back the burning rain That seared the cities of the plain, I read as on a crimson page The words of Israel's sceptred sage:-- _For riches make them wings, and they Do as an eagle fly away_. O vision of that sleepless night, What hue shall paint the mocking light That burned and stained the orient skies Where peaceful morning loves to rise, As if the sun had lost his way And dawned to make a second day,-- Above how red with fiery glow, How dark to those it woke below! On roof and wall, on dome and spire, Flashed the false jewels of the fire; Girt with her belt of glittering panes, And crowned with starry-gleaming vanes, Our northern queen in glory shone With new-born splendors not her own, And stood, transfigured in our eyes, A victim decked for sacrifice! The cloud still hovers overhead, And still the midnight sky is red; As the lost wanderer strays alone To seek the place he called his own, His devious footprints sadly tell How changed the pathways known so well; The scene, how new! The tale, how old Ere yet the ashes have grown cold! Again I read the words that came Writ in the rubric of the flame Howe'r we trust to mortal things, Each hath its pair of folded wings; Though long their terrors rest unspread Their fatal plumes are never shed; At last, at last they spread in flight, And blot the day and blast then night! Hope, only Hope, of all that clings Around us, never spreads her wings; Love, though he break his earthly chain, Still whispers he will come again; But Faith that soars to seek the sky Shall teach our half-fledged souls to fly, And find, beyond the smoke and flame, The cloudless azure whence they came! 1872. A BALLAD OF THE BOSTON TEA-PARTY Read at a meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society. No! never such a draught was poured Since Hebe served with nectar The bright Olympians and their Lord, Her over-kind protector,-- Since Father Noah squeezed the grape And took to such behaving As would have shamed our grandsire ape Before the days of shaving,-- No! ne'er was mingled such a draught In palace, hall, or arbor, As freemen brewed and tyrants quaffed That night in Boston Harbor! The Western war-cloud's crimson stained The Thames, the Clyde, the Shannon; Full many a six-foot grenadier The flattened grass had measured, And many a mother many a year Her tearful memories treasured; Fast spread the tempest's darkening pall, The mighty realms were troubled, The storm broke loose, but first of all The Boston teapot bubbled! An evening party,--only that, No formal invitation, No gold-laced coat, no stiff cravat, No feast in contemplation, No silk-robed dames, no fiddling band, No flowers, no songs, no dancing,-- A tribe of red men, axe in hand,-- Behold the guests advancing! How fast the stragglers join the throng, From stall and workshop gathered! The lively barber skips along And leaves a chin half-lathered; The smith has flung his hammer down, The horseshoe still is glowing; The truant tapster at the Crown Has left a beer-cask flowing; The cooper's boys have dropped the adze, And trot behind their master; Up run the tarry ship-yard lads,-- The crowd is hurrying faster,-- Out from the Millpond's purlieus gush The streams of white-faced millers, And down their slippery alleys rush The lusty young Fort-Hillers-- The ropewalk lends its 'prentice crew,-- The tories seize the omen: "Ay, boys, you'll soon have work to do For England's rebel foemen, 'King Hancock,' Adams, and their gang, That fire the mob with treason,-- When these we shoot and those we hang The town will come to reason." On--on to where the tea-ships ride! And now their ranks are forming,-- A rush, and up the Dartmouth's side The Mohawk band is swarming! See the fierce natives! What a glimpse Of paint and fur and feather, As all at once the full-grown imps Light on the deck together! A scarf the pigtail's secret keeps, A blanket hides the breeches,-- And out the cursed cargo leaps, And overboard it pitches! O woman, at the evening board So gracious, sweet, and purring, So happy while the tea is poured, So blest while spoons are stirring, What martyr can compare with thee, The mother, wife, or daughter, That night, instead of best Bohea, Condemned to milk and water! Ah, little dreams the quiet dame Who plies with' rock and spindle The patient flax, how great a flame Yon little spark shall kindle! The lurid morning shall reveal A fire no king can smother Where British flint and Boston steel Have clashed against each other! Old charters shrivel in its track, His Worship's bench has crumbled, It climbs and clasps the union-jack, Its blazoned pomp is humbled, The flags go down on land and sea Like corn before the reapers; So burned the fire that brewed the tea That Boston served her keepers! The waves that wrought a century's wreck Have rolled o'er whig and tory; The Mohawks on the Dartmouth's deck Still live in song and story; The waters in the rebel bay Have kept the tea-leaf savor; Our old North-Enders in their spray Still taste a Hyson flavor; And Freedom's teacup still o'erflows With ever fresh libations, To cheat of slumber all her foes And cheer the wakening nations. 1874. NEARING THE SNOW-LINE SLOW toiling upward from' the misty vale, I leave the bright enamelled zones below; No more for me their beauteous bloom shall glow, Their lingering sweetness load the morning gale; Few are the slender flowerets, scentless, pale, That on their ice-clad stems all trembling blow Along the margin of unmelting snow; Yet with unsaddened voice thy verge I hail, White realm of peace above the flowering line; Welcome thy frozen domes, thy rocky spires! O'er thee undimmed the moon-girt planets shine, On thy majestic altars fade the fires That filled the air with smoke of vain desires, And all the unclouded blue of heaven is thine! 1870. IN WARTIME TO CANAAN A PURITAN WAR SONG This poem, published anonymously in the Boston Evening Transcript, was claimed by several persons, three, if I remember correctly, whose names I have or have had, but never thought it worth while to publish. WHERE are you going, soldiers, With banner, gun, and sword? We 're marching South to Canaan To battle for the Lord What Captain leads your armies Along the rebel coasts? The Mighty One of Israel, His name is Lord of Hosts! To Canaan, to Canaan The Lord has led us forth, To blow before the heathen walls The trumpets of the North! What flag is this you carry Along the sea and shore? The same our grandsires lifted up,-- The same our fathers bore In many a battle's tempest It shed the crimson rain,-- What God has woven in his loom Let no man rend in twain! To Canaan, to Canaan The Lord has led us forth, To plant upon the rebel towers The banners of the North! What troop is this that follows, All armed with picks and spades? These are the swarthy bondsmen,-- The iron-skin brigades! They'll pile up Freedom's breastwork, They 'LL scoop out rebels' graves; Who then will be their owner And march them off for slaves? To Canaan, to Canaan The Lord has led us forth, To strike upon the captive's chain The hammers of the North! What song is this you're singing? The same that Israel sung When Moses led the mighty choir, And Miriam's timbrel rung! To Canaan! To Canaan! The priests and maidens cried: To Canaan! To Canaan! The people's voice replied. To Canaan, to Canaan The Lord has led us forth, To thunder through its adder dens The anthems of the North. When Canaan's hosts are scattered, And all her walls lie flat, What follows next in order? The Lord will see to that We'll break the tyrant's sceptre,-- We 'll build the people's throne,-- When half the world is Freedom's, Then all the world's our own To Canaan, to Canaan The Lord has led us forth, To sweep the rebel threshing-floors, A whirlwind from the North. August 12, 1862. "THUS SAITH THE LORD, I OFFER THEE THREE THINGS." IN poisonous dens, where traitors hide Like bats that fear the day, While all the land our charters claim Is sweating blood and breathing flame, Dead to their country's woe and shame, The recreants whisper STAY! In peaceful homes, where patriot fires On Love's own altars glow, The mother hides her trembling fear, The wife, the sister, checks a tear, To breathe the parting word of cheer, Soldier of Freedom, Go! In halls where Luxury lies at ease, And Mammon keeps his state, Where flatterers fawn and menials crouch, The dreamer, startled from his couch, Wrings a few counters from his pouch, And murmurs faintly WAIT! In weary camps, on trampled plains That ring with fife and drum, The battling host, whose harness gleams Along the crimson-flowing streams, Calls, like a warning voice in dreams, We want you, Brother! COME! Choose ye whose bidding ye will do,-- To go, to wait, to stay! Sons of the Freedom-loving town, Heirs of the Fathers' old renown, The servile yoke, the civic crown, Await your choice To-DAY! The stake is laid! O gallant youth With yet unsilvered brow, If Heaven should lose and Hell should win, On whom shall lie the mortal sin, That cries aloud, It might have been? God calls you--answer NOW. 1862. NEVER OR NOW AN APPEAL LISTEN, young heroes! your country is calling! Time strikes the hour for the brave and the true! Now, while the foremost are fighting and falling, Fill up the ranks that have opened for you! You whom the fathers made free and defended, Stain not the scroll that emblazons their fame You whose fair heritage spotless descended, Leave not your children a birthright of shame! Stay not for questions while Freedom. stands gasping! Wait not till Honor lies wrapped in his pall! Brief the lips' meeting be, swift the hands' clasping,-- "Off for the wars!" is enough for them all! Break from the arms that would fondly caress you! Hark! 't is the bugle-blast, sabres are drawn! Mothers shall pray for you, fathers shall bless you, Maidens shall weep for you when you are gone! Never or now! cries the blood of a nation, Poured on the turf where the red rose should bloom; Now is the day and the hour of salvation,-- Never or now! peals the trumpet of doom! Never or now! roars the hoarse-throated cannon Through the black canopy blotting the skies; Never or now! flaps the shell-blasted pennon O'er the deep ooze where the Cumberland lies! From the foul dens where our brothers are dying, Aliens and foes in the land of their birth,-- From the rank swamps where our martyrs are lying Pleading in vain for a handful of earth,-- From the hot plains where they perish outnumbered, Furrowed and ridged by the battle-field's plough, Comes the loud summons; too long you have slumbered, Hear the last Angel-trump,--Never or Now! 1862. ONE COUNTRY ONE country! Treason's writhing asp Struck madly at her girdle's clasp, And Hatred wrenched with might and main To rend its welded links in twain, While Mammon hugged his golden calf Content to take one broken half, While thankless churls stood idly by And heard unmoved a nation's cry! One country! "Nay,"--the tyrant crew Shrieked from their dens,--"it shall be two! Ill bodes to us this monstrous birth, That scowls on all the thrones of earth, Too broad yon starry cluster shines, Too proudly tower the New-World pines, Tear down the 'banner of the free,' And cleave their land from sea to sea!" One country still, though foe and "friend" Our seamless empire strove to rend; Safe! safe' though all the fiends of hell Join the red murderers' battle-yell! What though the lifted sabres gleam, The cannons frown by shore and stream,-- The sabres clash, the cannons thrill, In wild accord, One country still! One country! in her stress and strain We heard the breaking of a chain! Look where the conquering Nation swings Her iron flail,--its shivered rings! Forged by the rebels' crimson hand, That bolt of wrath shall scourge the land Till Peace proclaims on sea and shore One Country now and evermore! 1865. GOD SAVE THE FLAG WASHED in the blood of the brave and the blooming, Snatched from the altars of insolent foes, Burning with star-fires, but never consuming, Flash its broad ribbons of lily and rose. Vainly the prophets of Baal would rend it, Vainly his worshippers pray for its fall; Thousands have died for it, millions defend it, Emblem of justice and mercy to all: Justice that reddens the sky with her terrors, Mercy that comes with her white-handed train, Soothing all passions, redeeming all errors, 'Sheathing the sabre and breaking the chain. Borne on the deluge of old usurpations, Drifted our Ark o'er the desolate seas, Bearing the rainbow of hope to the nations, Torn from the storm-cloud and flung to the breeze! God bless the Flag and its loyal defenders, While its broad folds o'er the battle-field wave, Till the dim star-wreath rekindle its splendors, Washed from its stains in the blood of the brave! 1865. HYMN AFTER THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION GIVER of all that crowns our days, With grateful hearts we sing thy praise; Through deep and desert led by Thee, Our promised land at last we see. Ruler of Nations, judge our cause! If we have kept thy holy laws, The sons of Belial curse in vain The day that rends the captive's chain. Thou God of vengeance! Israel's Lord! Break in their grasp the shield and sword, And make thy righteous judgments known Till all thy foes are overthrown! Then, Father, lay thy healing hand In mercy on our stricken land; Lead all its wanderers to the fold, And be their Shepherd as of old. So shall one Nation's song ascend To Thee, our Ruler, Father, Friend, While Heaven's wide arch resounds again With Peace on earth, good-will to men! 1865. HYMN FOR THE FAIR AT CHICAGO O GOD! in danger's darkest hour, In battle's deadliest field, Thy name has been our Nation's tower, Thy truth her help and shield. Our lips should fill the air with praise, Nor pay the debt we owe, So high above the songs we raise The floods of mercy flow. Yet Thou wilt hear the prayer we speak, The song of praise we sing,-- Thy children, who thine altar seek Their grateful gifts to bring. Thine altar is the sufferer's bed, The home of woe and pain, The soldier's turfy pillow, red With battle's crimson rain. No smoke of burning stains the air, No incense-clouds arise; Thy peaceful servants, Lord, prepare A bloodless sacrifice. Lo! for our wounded brothers' need, We bear the wine and oil; For us they faint, for us they bleed, For them our gracious toil! O Father, bless the gifts we bring! Cause Thou thy face to shine, Till every nation owns her King, And all the earth is thine. 1865. UNDER THE WASHINGTON ELM, CAMBRIDGE APRIL 27,1861 EIGHTY years have passed, and more, Since under the brave old tree Our fathers gathered in arms, and swore They would follow the sign their banners bore, And fight till the land was free. Half of their work was done, Half is left to do,-- Cambridge, and Concord, and Lexington! When the battle is fought and won, What shall be told of you? Hark!--'t is the south-wind moans,-- Who are the martyrs down? Ah, the marrow was true in your children's bones That sprinkled with blood the cursed stones Of the murder-haunted town! What if the storm-clouds blow? What if the green leaves fall? Better the crashing tempest's throe Than the army of worms that gnawed below; Trample them one and all! Then, when the battle is won, And the land from traitors free, Our children shall tell of the strife begun When Liberty's second April sun Was bright on our brave old tree! FREEDOM, OUR QUEEN LAND where the banners wave last in the sun, Blazoned with star-clusters, many in one, Floating o'er prairie and mountain and sea; Hark! 't is the voice of thy children to thee! Here at thine altar our vows we renew Still in thy cause to be loyal and true,-- True to thy flag on the field and the wave, Living to honor it, dying to save! Mother of heroes! if perfidy's blight Fall on a star in thy garland of light, Sound but one bugle-blast! Lo! at the sign Armies all panoplied wheel into line! Hope of the world! thou'hast broken its chains,-- Wear thy bright arms while a tyrant remains, Stand for the right till the nations shall own Freedom their sovereign, with Law for her throne! Freedom! sweet Freedom! our voices resound, Queen by God's blessing, unsceptred, uncrowned! Freedom, sweet Freedom, our pulses repeat, Warm with her life-blood, as long as they beat! Fold the broad banner-stripes over her breast,-- Crown her with star-jewels Queen of the West! Earth for her heritage, God for her friend, She shall reign over us, world without end! ARMY HYMN "OLD HUNDRED" O LORD of Hosts! Almighty King! Behold the sacrifice we bring To every arm thy strength impart, Thy spirit shed through every heart! Wake in our breasts the living fires, The holy faith that warmed our sires; Thy hand hath made our Nation free; To die for her is serving Thee. Be Thou a pillared flame to show The midnight snare, the silent foe; And when the battle thunders loud, Still guide us in its moving cloud. God of all Nations! Sovereign Lord In thy dread name we draw the sword, We lift the starry flag on high That fills with light our stormy sky. From treason's rent, from murder's stain, Guard Thou its folds till Peace shall reign,-- Till fort and field, till shore and sea, Join our loud anthem, PRAISE TO THEE! PARTING HYMN "DUNDEE" FATHER of Mercies, Heavenly Friend, We seek thy gracious throne; To Thee our faltering prayers ascend, Our fainting hearts are known. From blasts that chill, from suns that smite, From every plague that harms; In camp and march, in siege and fight, Protect our men-at-arms. Though from our darkened lives they take What makes our life most dear, We yield them for their country's sake With no relenting tear. Our blood their flowing veins will shed, Their wounds our breasts will share; Oh, save us from the woes we dread, Or grant us strength to bear! Let each unhallowed cause that brings The stern destroyer cease, Thy flaming angel fold his wings, And seraphs whisper Peace! Thine are the sceptre and the sword, Stretch forth thy mighty hand,-- Reign Thou our kingless nation's Lord, Rule Thou our throneless land! THE FLOWER OF LIBERTY WHAT flower is this that greets the morn, Its hues from Heaven so freshly born? With burning star and flaming band It kindles all the sunset land Oh tell us what its name may be,-- Is this the Flower of Liberty? It is the banner of the free, The starry Flower of Liberty! In savage Nature's far abode Its tender seed our fathers sowed; The storm-winds rocked its swelling bud, Its opening leaves were streaked with blood, Till Lo! earth's tyrants shook to see The full-blown Flower of Liberty Then hail the banner of the free, The starry Flower of Liberty! Behold its streaming rays unite, One mingling flood of braided light,-- The red that fires the Southern rose, With spotless white from Northern snows, And, spangled o'er its azure, see The sister Stars of Liberty! Then hail the banner of the free, The starry Flower of Liberty! The blades of heroes fence it round, Where'er it springs is holy ground; From tower and dome its glories spread; It waves where lonely sentries tread; It makes the land as ocean free, And plants an empire on the sea! Then hail the banner of the free, The starry Flower of Liberty! Thy sacred leaves, fair Freedom's flower, Shall ever float on dome and tower, To all their heavenly colors true, In blackening frost or crimson dew,-- And God love us as we love thee, Thrice holy Flower of Liberty! Then hail the banner of the free, The starry FLOWER OF LIBERTY! THE SWEET LITTLE MAN DEDICATED TO THE STAY-AT-HOME RANGERS Now, while our soldiers are fighting our battles, Each at his post to do all that he can, Down among rebels and contraband chattels, What are you doing, my sweet little man? All the brave boys under canvas are sleeping, All of them pressing to march with the van, Far from the home where their sweethearts are weeping; What are you waiting for, sweet little man? You with the terrible warlike mustaches, Fit for a colonel or chief of a clan, You with the waist made for sword-belts and sashes, Where are your shoulder-straps, sweet little man? Bring him the buttonless garment of woman! Cover his face lest it freckle and tan; Muster the Apron-String Guards on the Common, That is the corps for the sweet little man! Give him for escort a file of young misses, Each of them armed with a deadly rattan; They shall defend him from laughter and hisses, Aimed by low boys at the sweet little man. All the fair maidens about him shall cluster, Pluck the white feathers from bonnet and fan, Make him a plume like a turkey-wing duster,-- That is the crest for the sweet little man! Oh, but the Apron-String Guards are the fellows Drilling each day since our troubles began,-- "Handle your walking-sticks!" "Shoulder umbrellas!" That is the style for the sweet little man! Have we a nation to save? In the first place Saving ourselves is the sensible plan,-- Surely the spot where there's shooting's the worst place Where I can stand, says the sweet little man. Catch me confiding my person with strangers! Think how the cowardly Bull-Runners ran! In the brigade of the Stay-at-Home Rangers Marches my corps, says the sweet little man. Such was the stuff of the Malakoff-takers, Such were the soldiers that scaled the Redan; Truculent housemaids and bloodthirsty Quakers, Brave not the wrath of the sweet little man! Yield him the sidewalk, ye nursery maidens! _Sauve qui peut_! Bridget, and right about! Ann;-- Fierce as a shark in a school of menhadens, See him advancing, the sweet little man! When the red flails of the battle-field's threshers Beat out the continent's wheat from its bran, While the wind scatters the chaffy seceshers, What will become of our sweet little man? When the brown soldiers come back from the borders, How will he look while his features they scan? How will he feel when he gets marching orders, Signed by his lady love? sweet little man! Fear not for him, though the rebels expect him,-- Life is too precious to shorten its span; Woman her broomstick shall raise to protect him, Will she not fight for the sweet little man? Now then, nine cheers for the Stay-at-Home Ranger! Blow the great fish-horn and beat the big pan! First in the field that is farthest from danger, Take your white-feather plume, sweet little man! UNION AND LIBERTY FLAG of the heroes who left us their glory, Borne through their battle-fields' thunder and flame, Blazoned in song and illumined in story, Wave o'er us all who inherit their fame! Up with our banner bright, Sprinkled with starry light, Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore, While through the sounding sky Loud rings the Nation's cry,-- UNION AND LIBERTY! ONE EVERMORE! Light of our firmament, guide of our Nation, Pride of her children, and honored afar, Let the wide beams of thy full constellation Scatter each cloud that would darken a star Up with our banner bright, etc. Empire unsceptred! what foe shall assail thee, Bearing the standard of Liberty's van? Think not the God of thy fathers shall fail thee, Striving with men for the birthright of man! Up with our banner bright, etc. Yet if, by madness and treachery blighted, Dawns the dark hour when the sword thou must draw, Then with the arms of thy millions united, Smite the bold traitors to Freedom and Law! Up with our banner bright, etc. Lord of the Universe! shield us and guide us, Trusting Thee always, through shadow and sun! Thou hast united us, who shall divide us? Keep us, oh keep us the MANY IN ONE! Up with our banner bright, Sprinkled with starry light, Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore, While through the sounding sky Loud rings the Nation's cry,-- UNION AND LIBERTY! ONE EVERMORE! SONGS OF WELCOME AND FAREWELL AMERICA TO RUSSIA AUGUST 5, 1866 Read by Hon. G. V. Fox at a dinner given to the Mission from the United States, St. Petersburg. THOUGH watery deserts hold apart The worlds of East and West, Still beats the selfsame human heart In each proud Nation's breast. Our floating turret tempts the main And dares the howling blast To clasp more close the golden chain That long has bound them fast. In vain the gales of ocean sweep, In vain the billows roar That chafe the wild and stormy steep Of storied Elsinore. She comes! She comes! her banners dip In Neva's flashing tide, With greetings on her cannon's lip, The storm-god's iron bride! Peace garlands with the olive-bough Her thunder-bearing tower, And plants before her cleaving prow The sea-foam's milk-white flower. No prairies heaped their garnered store To fill her sunless hold, Not rich Nevada's gleaming ore Its hidden caves infold, But lightly as the sea-bird swings She floats the depths above, A breath of flame to lend her wings, Her freight a people's love! When darkness hid the starry skies In war's long winter night, One ray still cheered our straining eyes, The far-off Northern light. And now the friendly rays return From lights that glow afar, Those clustered lamps of Heaven that burn Around the Western Star. A nation's love in tears and smiles We bear across the sea, O Neva of the banded isles, We moor our hearts in thee! WELCOME TO THE GRAND DUKE ALEXIS MUSIC HALL, DECEMBER 6, 1871 Sung to the Russian national air by the children of the public schools. SHADOWED so long by the storm-cloud of danger, Thou whom the prayers of an empire defend, Welcome, thrice welcome! but not as a stranger, Come to the nation that calls thee its friend! Bleak are our shores with the blasts of December, Fettered and chill is the rivulet's flow; Throbbing and warm are the hearts that remember Who was our friend when the world was our foe. Look on the lips that are smiling to greet thee, See the fresh flowers that a people has strewn Count them thy sisters and brothers that meet thee; Guest of the Nation, her heart is thine own! Fires of the North, in eternal communion, Blend your broad flashes with evening's bright star! God bless the Empire that loves the Great Union; Strength to her people! Long life to the Czar! AT THE BANQUET TO THE GRAND DUKE ALEXIS DECEMBER 9, 1871 ONE word to the guest we have gathered to greet! The echoes are longing that word to repeat,-- It springs to the lips that are waiting to part, For its syllables spell themselves first in the heart. Its accents may vary, its sound may be strange, But it bears a kind message that nothing can change; The dwellers by Neva its meaning can tell, For the smile, its interpreter, shows it full well. That word! How it gladdened the Pilgrim yore, As he stood in the snow on the desolate shore! When the shout of the sagamore startled his ear In the phrase of the Saxon, 't was music to hear! Ah, little could Samoset offer our sire,-- The cabin, the corn-cake, the seat by the fire; He had nothing to give,--the poor lord of the land,-- But he gave him a WELCOME,--his heart in his hand! The tribe of the sachem has melted away, But the word that he spoke is remembered to-day, And the page that is red with the record of shame The tear-drops have whitened round Samoset's name. The word that he spoke to the Pilgrim of old May sound like a tale that has often been told; But the welcome we speak is as fresh as the dew,-- As the kiss of a lover, that always is new! Ay, Guest of the Nation! each roof is thine own Through all the broad continent's star-bannered zone; From the shore where the curtain of morn is uprolled, To the billows that flow through the gateway of gold. The snow-crested mountains are calling aloud; Nevada to Ural speaks out of the cloud, And Shasta shouts forth, from his throne in the sky, To the storm-splintered summits, the peaks of Altai! You must leave him, they say, till the summer is green! Both shores are his home, though the waves roll between; And then we'll return him, with thanks for the same, As fresh and as smiling and tall as he came. But ours is the region of arctic delight; We can show him auroras and pole-stars by night; There's a Muscovy sting in the ice-tempered air, And our firesides are warm and our maidens are fair. The flowers are full-blown in the garlanded hall,-- They will bloom round his footsteps wherever they fall; For the splendors of youth and the sunshine they bring Make the roses believe 't is the summons of Spring. One word of our language he needs must know well, But another remains that is harder to spell; We shall speak it so ill, if he wishes to learn How we utter Farewell, he will have to return! AT THE BANQUET TO THE CHINESE EMBASSY AUGUST 21, 1868 BROTHERS, whom we may not reach Through the veil of alien speech, Welcome! welcome! eyes can tell What the lips in vain would spell,-- Words that hearts can understand, Brothers from the Flowery Land! We, the evening's latest born, Hail the children of the morn! We, the new creation's birth, Greet the lords of ancient earth, From their storied walls and towers Wandering to these tents of ours! Land of wonders, fair Cathay, Who long hast shunned the staring day, Hid in mists of poet's dreams By thy blue and yellow streams,-- Let us thy shadowed form behold,-- Teach us as thou didst of old. Knowledge dwells with length of days; Wisdom walks in ancient ways; Thine the compass that could guide A nation o'er the stormy tide, Scourged by passions, doubts, and fears, Safe through thrice a thousand years! Looking from thy turrets gray Thou hast seen the world's decay,-- Egypt drowning in her sands,-- Athens rent by robbers' hands,-- Rome, the wild barbarian's prey, Like a storm-cloud swept away: Looking from thy turrets gray Still we see thee. Where are they? And to I a new-born nation waits, Sitting at the golden gates That glitter by the sunset sea,-- Waits with outspread arms for thee! Open wide, ye gates of gold, To the Dragon's banner-fold! Builders of the mighty wall, Bid your mountain barriers fall! So may the girdle of the sun. Bind the East and West in one, Till Mount Shasta's breezes fan The snowy peaks of Ta Sieue-Shan,-- Till Erie blends its waters blue With the waves of Tung-Ting-Hu,-- Till deep Missouri lends its flow To swell the rushing Hoang-Ho! AT THE BANQUET TO THE JAPANESE EMBASSY AUGUST 2, 1872 WE welcome you, Lords of the Land of the Sun! The voice of the many sounds feebly through one; Ah! would 't were a voice of more musical tone, But the dog-star is here, and the song-birds have flown. And what shall I sing that can cheat you of smiles, Ye heralds of peace from the Orient isles? If only the Jubilee--Why did you wait? You are welcome, but oh! you're a little too late! We have greeted our brothers of Ireland and France, Round the fiddle of Strauss we have joined in the dance, We have lagered Herr Saro, that fine-looking man, And glorified Godfrey, whose name it is Dan. What a pity! we've missed it and you've missed it too, We had a day ready and waiting for you; We'd have shown you--provided, of course, you had come-- You 'd have heard--no, you would n't, because it was dumb. And then the great organ! The chorus's shout Like the mixture teetotalers call "Cold without"-- A mingling of elements, strong, but not sweet; And the drum, just referred to, that "couldn't be beat." The shrines of our pilgrims are not like your own, Where white Fusiyama lifts proudly its cone, (The snow-mantled mountain we see on the fan That cools our hot cheeks with a breeze from Japan.) But ours the wide temple where worship is free As the wind of the prairie, the wave of the sea; You may build your own altar wherever you will, For the roof of that temple is over you still. One dome overarches the star-bannered shore; You may enter the Pope's or the Puritan's door, Or pass with the Buddhist his gateway of bronze, For a priest is but Man, be he bishop or bonze. And the lesson we teach with the sword and the pen Is to all of God's children, "We also are men! If you wrong us we smart, if you prick us we bleed, If you love us, no quarrel with color or creed!" You'll find us a well-meaning, free-spoken crowd, Good-natured enough, but a little too loud,-- To be sure, there is always a bit of a row When we choose our Tycoon, and especially now. You'll take it all calmly,--we want you to see What a peaceable fight such a contest can be, And of one thing be certain, however it ends, You will find that our voters have chosen your friends. If the horse that stands saddled is first in the race, You will greet your old friend with the weed in his face; And if the white hat and the White House agree, You'll find H. G. really as loving as he. But oh, what a pity--once more I must say-- That we could not have joined in a "Japanese day"! Such greeting we give you to-night as we can; Long life to our brothers and friends of Japan! The Lord of the mountain looks down from his crest As the banner of morning unfurls in the West; The Eagle was always the friend of the Sun; You are welcome!--The song of the cage-bird is done. BRYANT'S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY NOVEMBER 3, 1864 O EVEN-HANDED Nature! we confess This life that men so honor, love, and bless Has filled thine olden measure. Not the less. We count the precious seasons that remain; Strike not the level of the golden grain, But heap it high with years, that earth may gain. What heaven can lose,--for heaven is rich in song Do not all poets, dying, still prolong Their broken chants amid the seraph throng, Where, blind no more, Ionia's bard is seen, And England's heavenly minstrel sits between The Mantuan and the wan-cheeked Florentine? This was the first sweet singer in the cage Of our close-woven life. A new-born age Claims in his vesper song its heritage. Spare us, oh spare us long our heart's desire! Moloch, who calls our children through the fire, Leaves us the gentle master of the lyre. We count not on the dial of the sun The hours, the minutes, that his sands have run; Rather, as on those flowers that one by one. From earliest dawn their ordered bloom display Till evening's planet with her guiding ray Leads in the blind old mother of the day, We reckon by his songs, each song a flower, The long, long daylight, numbering hour by hour, Each breathing sweetness like a bridal bower. His morning glory shall we e'er forget? His noontide's full-blown lily coronet? His evening primrose has not opened yet; Nay, even if creeping Time should hide the skies In midnight from his century-laden eyes, Darkened like his who sang of Paradise, Would not some hidden song-bud open bright As the resplendent cactus of the night That floods the gloom with fragrance and with light? How can we praise the verse whose music flows With solemn cadence and majestic close, Pure as the dew that filters through the rose? How shall we thank him that in evil days He faltered never,--nor for blame, nor praise, Nor hire, nor party, shamed his earlier lays? But as his boyhood was of manliest hue, So to his youth his manly years were true, All dyed in royal purple through and through! He for whose touch the lyre of Heaven is strung Needs not the flattering toil of mortal tongue Let not the singer grieve to die unsung! Marbles forget their message to mankind: In his own verse the poet still we find, In his own page his memory lives enshrined, As in their amber sweets the smothered bees,-- As the fair cedar, fallen before the breeze, Lies self-embalmed amidst the mouldering trees. Poets, like youngest children, never grow Out of their mother's fondness. Nature so Holds their soft hands, and will not let them go, Till at the last they track with even feet Her rhythmic footsteps, and their pulses beat Twinned with her pulses, and their lips repeat. The secrets she has told them, as their own Thus is the inmost soul of Nature known, And the rapt minstrel shares her awful throne! O lover of her mountains and her woods, Her bridal chamber's leafy solitudes, Where Love himself with tremulous step intrudes, Her snows fall harmless on thy sacred fire Far be the day that claims thy sounding lyre To join the music of the angel choir! Yet, since life's amplest measure must be filled, Since throbbing hearts must be forever stilled, And all must fade that evening sunsets gild, Grant, Father, ere he close the mortal eyes That see a Nation's reeking sacrifice, Its smoke may vanish from these blackened skies! Then, when his summons comes, since come it must, And, looking heavenward with unfaltering trust, He wraps his drapery round him for the dust, His last fond glance will show him o'er his head The Northern fires beyond the zenith spread In lambent glory, blue and white and red,-- The Southern cross without its bleeding load, The milky way of peace all freshly strowed, And every white-throned star fixed in its lost abode! A FAREWELL TO AGASSIZ How the mountains talked together, Looking down upon the weather, When they heard our friend had planned his Little trip among the Andes! How they'll bare their snowy scalps To the climber of the Alps When the cry goes through their passes, "Here comes the great Agassiz!" "Yes, I'm tall," says Chimborazo, "But I wait for him to say so,-- That's the only thing that lacks,--he Must see me, Cotopaxi!" "Ay! ay!" the fire-peak thunders, "And he must view my wonders! I'm but a lonely crater Till I have him for spectator!" The mountain hearts are yearning, The lava-torches burning, The rivers bend to meet him, The forests bow to greet him, It thrills the spinal column Of fossil fishes solemn, And glaciers crawl the faster To the feet of their old master! Heaven keep him well and hearty, Both him and all his party! From the sun that broils and smites, From the centipede that bites, From the hail-storm and the thunder, From the vampire and the condor, From the gust upon the river, From the sudden earthquake shiver, From the trip of mule or donkey, From the midnight howling monkey, From the stroke of knife or dagger, From the puma and the jaguar, From the horrid boa-constrictor That has scared us in the pictur', From the Indians of the Pampas Who would dine upon their grampas, From every beast and vermin That to think of sets us squirmin', From every snake that tries on The traveller his p'ison, From every pest of Natur', Likewise the alligator, And from two things left behind him,-- (Be sure they'll try to find him,) The tax-bill and assessor,-- Heaven keep the great Professor May he find, with his apostles, That the land is full of fossils, That the waters swarm with fishes Shaped according to his wishes, That every pool is fertile In fancy kinds of turtle, New birds around him singing, New insects, never stinging, With a million novel data About the articulata, And facts that strip off all husks From the history of mollusks. And when, with loud Te Deum, He returns to his Museum, May he find the monstrous reptile That so long the land has kept ill By Grant and Sherman throttled, And by Father Abraham bottled, (All specked and streaked and mottled With the scars of murderous battles, Where he clashed the iron rattles That gods and men he shook at,) For all the world to look at. God bless the great Professor! And Madam, too, God bless her! Bless him and all his band, On the sea and on the land, Bless them head and heart and hand, Till their glorious raid is o'er, And they touch our ransomed shore! Then the welcome of a nation, With its shout of exultation, Shall awake the dumb creation, And the shapes of buried aeons Join the living creatures' poeans, Till the fossil echoes roar; While the mighty megalosaurus Leads the palaeozoic chorus,-- God bless the great Professor, And the land his proud possessor,-- Bless them now and evermore! 1865. AT A DINNER TO ADMIRAL FARRAGUT JULY 6, 1865 Now, smiling friends and shipmates all, Since half our battle 's won, A broadside for our Admiral! Load every crystal gun Stand ready till I give the word,-- You won't have time to tire,-- And when that glorious name is heard, Then hip! hurrah! and fire! Bow foremost sinks the rebel craft,-- Our eyes not sadly turn And see the pirates huddling aft To drop their raft astern; Soon o'er the sea-worm's destined prey The lifted wave shall close,-- So perish from the face of day All Freedom's banded foes! But ah! what splendors fire the sky What glories greet the morn! The storm-tost banner streams on high, Its heavenly hues new-born! Its red fresh dyed in heroes' blood, Its peaceful white more pure, To float unstained o'er field and flood While earth and seas endure! All shapes before the driving blast Must glide from mortal view; Black roll the billows of the past Behind the present's blue, Fast, fast, are lessening in the light The names of high renown,-- Van Tromp's proud besom fades from sight, And Nelson's half hull down! Scarce one tall frigate walks the sea Or skirts the safer shores Of all that bore to victory Our stout old commodores; Hull, Bainbridge, Porter,--where are they? The waves their answer roll, "Still bright in memory's sunset ray,-- God rest each gallant soul!" A brighter name must dim their light With more than noontide ray, The Sea-King of the "River Fight," The Conqueror of the Bay,-- Now then the broadside! cheer on cheer To greet him safe on shore! Health, peace, and many a bloodless year To fight his battles o'er! AT A DINNER TO GENERAL GRANT JULY 31, 1865 WHEN treason first began the strife That crimsoned sea and shore, The Nation poured her hoarded life On Freedom's threshing-floor; From field and prairie, east and west, From coast and hill and plain, The sheaves of ripening manhood pressed Thick as the bearded grain. Rich was the harvest; souls as true As ever battle tried; But fiercer still the conflict grew, The floor of death more wide; Ah, who forgets that dreadful day Whose blot of grief and shame Four bitter years scarce wash away In seas of blood and flame? Vain, vain the Nation's lofty boasts,-- Vain all her sacrifice! "Give me a man to lead my hosts, O God in heaven!" she cries. While Battle whirls his crushing flail, And plies his winnowing fan,-- Thick flies the chaff on every gale,-- She cannot find her man! Bravely they fought who failed to win,-- Our leaders battle-scarred,-- Fighting the hosts of hell and sin, But devils die always hard! Blame not the broken tools of God That helped our sorest needs; Through paths that martyr feet have trod The conqueror's steps He leads. But now the heavens grow black with doubt, The ravens fill the sky, "Friends" plot within, foes storm without, Hark,--that despairing cry, "Where is the heart, the hand, the brain To dare, to do, to plan?" The bleeding Nation shrieks in vain,-- She has not found her man! A little echo stirs the air,-- Some tale, whate'er it be, Of rebels routed in their lair Along the Tennessee. The little echo spreads and grows, And soon the trump of Fame Has taught the Nation's friends and foes The "man on horseback"'s name. So well his warlike wooing sped, No fortress might resist His billets-doux of lisping lead, The bayonets in his fist,-- With kisses from his cannons' mouth He made his passion known Till Vicksburg, vestal of the South, Unbound her virgin zone. And still where'er his banners led He conquered as he came, The trembling hosts of treason fled Before his breath of flame, And Fame's still gathering echoes grew Till high o'er Richmond's towers The starry fold of Freedom flew, And all the land was ours. Welcome from fields where valor fought To feasts where pleasure waits; A Nation gives you smiles unbought At all her opening gates! Forgive us when we press your hand,-- Your war-worn features scan,-- God sent you to a bleeding land; Our Nation found its man! TO H. W. LONGFELLOW BEFORE HIS DEPARTURE FOR EUROPE, MAY 27, 1868 OUR Poet, who has taught the Western breeze To waft his songs before him o'er the seas, Will find them wheresoe'er his wanderings reach Borne on the spreading tide of English speech Twin with the rhythmic waves that kiss the farthest beach. Where shall the singing bird a stranger be That finds a nest for him in every tree? How shall he travel who can never go Where his own voice the echoes do not know, Where his own garden flowers no longer learn to grow? Ah! gentlest soul! how gracious, how benign Breathes through our troubled life that voice of thine, Filled with a sweetness born of happier spheres, That wins and warms, that kindles, softens, cheers, That calms the wildest woe and stays the bitterest tears! Forgive the simple words that sound like praise; The mist before me dims my gilded phrase; Our speech at best is half alive and cold, And save that tenderer moments make us bold Our whitening lips would close, their truest truth untold. We who behold our autumn sun below The Scorpion's sign, against the Archer's bow, Know well what parting means of friend from friend; After the snows no freshening dews descend, And what the frost has marred, the sunshine will not mend. So we all count the months, the weeks, the days, That keep thee from us in unwonted ways, Grudging to alien hearths our widowed time; And one has shaped a breath in artless rhyme That sighs, "We track thee still through each remotest clime." What wishes, longings, blessings, prayers shall be The more than golden freight that floats with thee! And know, whatever welcome thou shalt find,-- Thou who hast won the hearts of half mankind,-- The proudest, fondest love thou leavest still behind! TO CHRISTIAN GOTTFRIED EHRENBERG FOR HIS "JUBILAEUM" AT BERLIN, NOVEMBER 5, 1868 This poem was written at the suggestion of Mr. George Bancroft, the historian. THOU who hast taught the teachers of mankind How from the least of things the mightiest grow, What marvel jealous Nature made thee blind, Lest man should learn what angels long to know? Thou in the flinty rock, the river's flow, In the thick-moted sunbeam's sifted light Hast trained thy downward-pointed tube to show Worlds within worlds unveiled to mortal sight, Even as the patient watchers of the night,-- The cyclope gleaners of the fruitful skies,-- Show the wide misty way where heaven is white All paved with suns that daze our wondering eyes. Far o'er the stormy deep an empire lies, Beyond the storied islands of the blest, That waits to see the lingering day-star rise; The forest-tinctured Eden of the West; Whose queen, fair Freedom, twines her iron crest With leaves from every wreath that mortals wear, But loves the sober garland ever best That science lends the sage's silvered hair;-- Science, who makes life's heritage more fair, Forging for every lock its mastering key, Filling with life and hope the stagnant air, Pouring the light of Heaven o'er land and sea! From her unsceptred realm we come to thee, Bearing our slender tribute in our hands; Deem it not worthless, humble though it be, Set by the larger gifts of older lands The smallest fibres weave the strongest bands,-- In narrowest tubes the sovereign nerves are spun,-- A little cord along the deep sea-sands Makes the live thought of severed nations one Thy fame has journeyed westering with the sun, Prairies and lone sierras know thy name And the long day of service nobly done That crowns thy darkened evening with its flame! One with the grateful world, we own thy claim,-- Nay, rather claim our right to join the throng Who come with varied tongues, but hearts the same, To hail thy festal morn with smiles and song; Ah, happy they to whom the joys belong Of peaceful triumphs that can never die From History's record,--not of gilded wrong, But golden truths that, while the world goes by With all its empty pageant, blazoned high Around the Master's name forever shine So shines thy name illumined in the sky,-- Such joys, such triumphs, such remembrance thine! A TOAST TO WILKIE COLLINS FEBRUARY 16, 1874 THE painter's and the poet's fame Shed their twinned lustre round his name, To gild our story-teller's art, Where each in turn must play his part. What scenes from Wilkie's pencil sprung, The minstrel saw but left unsung! What shapes the pen of Collins drew, No painter clad in living hue! But on our artist's shadowy screen A stranger miracle is seen Than priest unveils or pilgrim seeks,-- The poem breathes, the picture speaks! And so his double name comes true, They christened better than they knew, And Art proclaims him twice her son,-- Painter and poet, both in one! MEMORIAL VERSES FOR THE SERVICES IN MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN CITY OF BOSTON, JUNE 1, 1865 CHORAL: "LUTHER'S JUDGMENT HYMN." O THOU of soul and sense and breath The ever-present Giver, Unto thy mighty Angel, Death, All flesh thou dost deliver; What most we cherish we resign, For life and death alike are thine, Who reignest Lord forever! Our hearts lie buried in the dust With him so true and tender, The patriot's stay, the people's trust, The shield of the offender; Yet every murmuring voice is still, As, bowing to thy sovereign will, Our best-loved we surrender. Dear Lord, with pitying eye behold This martyr generation, Which thou, through trials manifold, Art showing thy salvation Oh let the blood by murder spilt Wash out thy stricken children's guilt And sanctify our nation! Be thou thy orphaned Israel's friend, Forsake thy people never, In One our broken Many blend, That none again may sever! Hear us, O Father, while we raise With trembling lips our song of praise, And bless thy name forever! FOR THE COMMEMORATION SERVICES CAMBRIDGE, JULY 21, 1865 FOUR summers coined their golden light in leaves, Four wasteful autumns flung them to the gale, Four winters wore the shroud the tempest weaves, The fourth wan April weeps o'er hill and vale; And still the war-clouds scowl on sea and land, With the red gleams of battle staining through, When lo! as parted by an angel's hand, They open, and the heavens again are blue! Which is the dream, the present or the past? The night of anguish or the joyous morn? The long, long years with horrors overcast, Or the sweet promise of the day new-born? Tell us, O father, as thine arms infold Thy belted first-born in their fast embrace, Murmuring the prayer the patriarch breathed of old,-- "Now let me die, for I have seen thy face!" Tell us, O mother,--nay, thou canst not speak, But thy fond eyes shall answer, brimmed with joy,-- Press thy mute lips against the sunbrowned cheek, Is this a phantom,--thy returning boy? Tell us, O maiden,--ah, what canst thou tell That Nature's record is not first to teach,-- The open volume all can read so well, With its twin rose-hued pages full of speech? And ye who mourn your dead,--how sternly true The crushing hour that wrenched their lives away, Shadowed with sorrow's midnight veil for you, For them the dawning of immortal day! Dream-like these years of conflict, not a dream! Death, ruin, ashes tell the awful tale, Read by the flaming war-track's lurid gleam No dream, but truth that turns the nations pale. For on the pillar raised by martyr hands Burns the rekindled beacon of the right, Sowing its seeds of fire o'er all the lands,-- Thrones look a century older in its light! Rome had her triumphs; round the conqueror's car The ensigns waved, the brazen clarions blew, And o'er the reeking spoils of bandit war With outspread wings the cruel eagles flew; Arms, treasures, captives, kings in clanking chains Urged on by trampling cohorts bronzed and scarred, And wild-eyed wonders snared on Lybian plains, Lion and ostrich and camelopard. Vain all that praetors clutched, that consuls brought When Rome's returning legions crowned their lord; Less than the least brave deed these hands have wrought, We clasp, unclinching from the bloody sword. Theirs was the mighty work that seers foretold; They know not half their glorious toil has won, For this is Heaven's same battle,-joined of old When Athens fought for us at Marathon! Behold a vision none hath understood! The breaking of the Apocalyptic seal; Twice rings the summons.--Hail and fire and blood! Then the third angel blows his trumpet-peal. Loud wail the dwellers on the myrtled coasts, The green savannas swell the maddened cry, And with a yell from all the demon hosts Falls the great star called Wormwood from the sky! Bitter it mingles with the poisoned flow Of the warm rivers winding to the shore, Thousands must drink the waves of death and woe, But the star Wormwood stains the heavens no more! Peace smiles at last; the Nation calls her sons To sheathe the sword; her battle-flag she furls, Speaks in glad thunders from unspotted guns, No terror shrouded in the smoke-wreath's curls. O ye that fought for Freedom, living, dead, One sacred host of God's anointed Queen, For every holy, drop your veins have shed We breathe a welcome to our bowers of green! Welcome, ye living! from the foeman's gripe Your country's banner it was yours to wrest,-- Ah, many a forehead shows the banner-stripe, And stars, once crimson, hallow many a breast. And ye, pale heroes, who from glory's bed Mark when your old battalions form in line, Move in their marching ranks with noiseless tread, And shape unheard the evening countersign, Come with your comrades, the returning brave; Shoulder to shoulder they await you here; These lent the life their martyr-brothers gave,-- Living and dead alike forever dear! EDWARD EVERETT "OUR FIRST CITIZEN" Read at the meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society, January 30, 1865. WINTER'S cold drift lies glistening o'er his breast; For him no spring shall bid the leaf unfold What Love could speak, by sudden grief oppressed, What swiftly summoned Memory tell, is told. Even as the bells, in one consenting chime, Filled with their sweet vibrations all the air, So joined all voices, in that mournful time, His genius, wisdom, virtues, to declare. What place is left for words of measured praise, Till calm-eyed History, with her iron pen, Grooves in the unchanging rock the final phrase That shapes his image in the souls of men? Yet while the echoes still repeat his name, While countless tongues his full-orbed life rehearse, Love, by his beating pulses taught, will claim The breath of song, the tuneful throb of verse,-- Verse that, in ever-changing ebb and flow, Moves, like the laboring heart, with rush and rest, Or swings in solemn cadence, sad and slow, Like the tired heaving of a grief-worn breast. This was a mind so rounded, so complete, No partial gift of Nature in excess, That, like a single stream where many meet, Each separate talent counted something less. A little hillock, if it lonely stand, Holds o'er the fields an undisputed reign; While the broad summit of the table-land Seems with its belt of clouds a level plain. Servant of all his powers, that faithful slave, Unsleeping Memory, strengthening with his toils, To every ruder task his shoulder gave, And loaded every day with golden spoils. Order, the law of Heaven, was throned supreme O'er action, instinct, impulse, feeling, thought; True as the dial's shadow to the beam, Each hour was equal to the charge it brought. Too large his compass for the nicer skill That weighs the world of science grain by grain; All realms of knowledge owned the mastering will That claimed the franchise of its whole domain. Earth, air, sea, sky, the elemental fire, Art, history, song,--what meanings lie in each Found in his cunning hand a stringless lyre, And poured their mingling music through his speech. Thence flowed those anthems of our festal days, Whose ravishing division held apart The lips of listening throngs in sweet amaze, Moved in all breasts the selfsame human heart. Subdued his accents, as of one who tries To press some care, some haunting sadness down; His smile half shadow; and to stranger eyes The kingly forehead wore an iron crown. He was not armed to wrestle with the storm, To fight for homely truth with vulgar power; Grace looked from every feature, shaped his form, The rose of Academe,--the perfect flower! Such was the stately scholar whom we knew In those ill days of soul-enslaving calm, Before the blast of Northern vengeance blew Her snow-wreathed pine against the Southern palm. Ah, God forgive us! did we hold too cheap The heart we might have known, but would not see, And look to find the nation's friend asleep Through the dread hour of her Gethsemane? That wrong is past; we gave him up to Death With all a hero's honors round his name; As martyrs coin their blood, he coined his breath, And dimmed the scholar's in the patriot's fame. So shall we blazon on the shaft we raise,-- Telling our grief, our pride, to unborn years,-- "He who had lived the mark of all men's praise Died with the tribute of a Nation's tears." SHAKESPEARE TERCENTENNIAL CELEBRATION APRIL 23, 1864 "Who claims our Shakespeare from that realm unknown, Beyond the storm-vexed islands of the deep, Where Genoa's roving mariner was blown? Her twofold Saint's-day let our England keep; Shall warring aliens share her holy task?" The Old World echoes ask. O land of Shakespeare! ours with all thy past, Till these last years that make the sea so wide; Think not the jar of battle's trumpet-blast Has dulled our aching sense to joyous pride In every noble word thy sons bequeathed The air our fathers breathed! War-wasted, haggard, panting from the strife, We turn to other days and far-off lands, Live o'er in dreams the Poet's faded life, Come with fresh lilies in our fevered hands To wreathe his bust, and scatter purple flowers,-- Not his the need, but ours! We call those poets who are first to mark Through earth's dull mist the coming of the dawn,-- Who see in twilight's gloom the first pale spark, While others only note that day is gone; For him the Lord of light the curtain rent That veils the firmament. The greatest for its greatness is half known, Stretching beyond our narrow quadrant-lines,-- As in that world of Nature all outgrown Where Calaveras lifts his awful pines, And cast from Mariposa's mountain-wall Nevada's cataracts fall. Yet heaven's remotest orb is partly ours, Throbbing its radiance like a beating heart; In the wide compass of angelic powers The instinct of the blindworm has its part; So in God's kingliest creature we behold The flower our buds infold. With no vain praise we mock the stone-carved name Stamped once on dust that moved with pulse and breath, As thinking to enlarge that amplest fame Whose undimmed glories gild the night of death: We praise not star or sun; in these we see Thee, Father, only thee! Thy gifts are beauty, wisdom, power, and love: We read, we reverence on this human soul,-- Earth's clearest mirror of the light above,-- Plain as the record on thy prophet's scroll, When o'er his page the effluent splendors poured, Thine own "Thus saith the Lord!" This player was a prophet from on high, Thine own elected. Statesman, poet, sage, For him thy sovereign pleasure passed them by; Sidney's fair youth, and Raleigh's ripened age, Spenser's chaste soul, and his imperial mind Who taught and shamed mankind. Therefore we bid our hearts' Te Deum rise, Nor fear to make thy worship less divine, And hear the shouted choral shake the skies, Counting all glory, power, and wisdom thine; For thy great gift thy greater name adore, And praise thee evermore! In this dread hour of Nature's utmost need, Thanks for these unstained drops of freshening dew! Oh, while our martyrs fall, our heroes bleed, Keep us to every sweet remembrance true, Till from this blood-red sunset springs new-born Our Nation's second morn! IN MEMORY OF JOHN AND ROBERT WARE Read at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Medical Society, May 25, 1864. No mystic charm, no mortal art, Can bid our loved companions stay; The bands that clasp them to our heart Snap in death's frost and fall apart; Like shadows fading with the day, They pass away. The young are stricken in their pride, The old, long tottering, faint and fall; Master and scholar, side by side, Through the dark portals silent glide, That open in life's mouldering wall And close on all. Our friend's, our teacher's task was done, When Mercy called him from on high; A little cloud had dimmed the sun, The saddening hours had just begun, And darker days were drawing nigh: 'T was time to die. A whiter soul, a fairer mind, A life with purer course and aim, A gentler eye, a voice more kind, We may not look on earth to find. The love that lingers o'er his name Is more than fame. These blood-red summers ripen fast; The sons are older than the sires; Ere yet the tree to earth is cast, The sapling falls before the blast; Life's ashes keep their covered fires,-- Its flame expires. Struck by the noiseless, viewless foe, Whose deadlier breath than shot or shell Has laid the best and bravest low, His boy, all bright in morning's glow, That high-souled youth he loved so well, Untimely fell. Yet still he wore his placid smile, And, trustful in the cheering creed That strives all sorrow to beguile, Walked calmly on his way awhile Ah, breast that leans on breaking reed Must ever bleed! So they both left us, sire and son, With opening leaf, with laden bough The youth whose race was just begun, The wearied man whose course was run, Its record written on his brow, Are brothers now. Brothers!--The music of the sound Breathes softly through my closing strain; The floor we tread is holy ground, Those gentle spirits hovering round, While our fair circle joins again Its broken chain. 1864. HUMBOLDT'S BIRTHDAY CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION, SEPTEMBER 14, 1869 BONAPARTE, AUGUST 15, 1769.-HUMBOLDT, SEPTEMBER 14, 1769 ERE yet the warning chimes of midnight sound, Set back the flaming index of the year, Track the swift-shifting seasons in their round Through fivescore circles of the swinging sphere! Lo, in yon islet of the midland sea That cleaves the storm-cloud with its snowy crest, The embryo-heir of Empires yet to be, A month-old babe upon his mother's breast. Those little hands that soon shall grow so strong In their rude grasp great thrones shall rock and fall, Press her soft bosom, while a nursery song Holds the world's master in its slender thrall. Look! a new crescent bends its silver bow; A new-lit star has fired the eastern sky; Hark! by the river where the lindens blow A waiting household hears an infant's cry. This, too, a conqueror! His the vast domain, Wider than widest sceptre-shadowed lands; Earth and the weltering kingdom of the main Laid their broad charters in his royal hands. His was no taper lit in cloistered cage, Its glimmer borrowed from the grove or porch; He read the record of the planet's page By Etna's glare and Cotopaxi's torch. He heard the voices of the pathless woods; On the salt steppes he saw the starlight shine; He scaled the mountain's windy solitudes, And trod the galleries of the breathless mine. For him no fingering of the love-strung lyre, No problem vague, by torturing schoolmen vexed; He fed no broken altar's dying fire, Nor skulked and scowled behind a Rabbi's text. For God's new truth he claimed the kingly robe That priestly shoulders counted all their own, Unrolled the gospel of the storied globe And led young Science to her empty throne. While the round planet on its axle spins One fruitful year shall boast its double birth, And show the cradles of its mighty twins, Master and Servant of the sons of earth. Which wears the garland that shall never fade, Sweet with fair memories that can never die? Ask not the marbles where their bones are laid, But bow thine ear to hear thy brothers' cry:-- "Tear up the despot's laurels by the root, Like mandrakes, shrieking as they quit the soil! Feed us no more upon the blood-red fruit That sucks its crimson from the heart of Toil! "We claim the food that fixed our mortal fate,-- Bend to our reach the long-forbidden tree! The angel frowned at Eden's eastern gate,-- Its western portal is forever free! "Bring the white blossoms of the waning year, Heap with full hands the peaceful conqueror's shrine Whose bloodless triumphs cost no sufferer's tear! Hero of knowledge, be our tribute thine!" POEM AT THE DEDICATION OF THE HALLECK MONUMENT, JULY 8, 1869 SAY not the Poet dies! Though in the dust he lies, He cannot forfeit his melodious breath, Unsphered by envious death! Life drops the voiceless myriads from its roll; Their fate he cannot share, Who, in the enchanted air Sweet with the lingering strains that Echo stole, Has left his dearer self, the music of his soul! We o'er his turf may raise Our notes of feeble praise, And carve with pious care for after eyes The stone with "Here he lies;" He for himself has built a nobler shrine, Whose walls of stately rhyme Roll back the tides of time, While o'er their gates the gleaming tablets shine That wear his name inwrought with many a golden line! Call not our Poet dead, Though on his turf we tread! Green is the wreath their brows so long have worn,-- The minstrels of the morn, Who, while the Orient burned with new-born flame, Caught that celestial fire And struck a Nation's lyre These taught the western winds the poet's name; Theirs the first opening buds, the maiden flowers of fame! Count not our Poet dead! The stars shall watch his bed, The rose of June its fragrant life renew His blushing mound to strew, And all the tuneful throats of summer swell With trills as crystal-clear As when he wooed the ear Of the young muse that haunts each wooded dell, With songs of that "rough land" he loved so long and well! He sleeps; he cannot die! As evening's long-drawn sigh, Lifting the rose-leaves on his peaceful mound, Spreads all their sweets around, So, laden with his song, the breezes blow From where the rustling sedge Frets our rude ocean's edge To the smooth sea beyond the peaks of snow. His soul the air enshrines and leaves but dust below! HYMN FOR THE CELEBRATION AT THE LAYING OF THE CORNERSTONE OF HARVARD MEMORIAL HALL, CAMBRIDGE, OCTOBER 6, 1870 NOT with the anguish of hearts that are breaking Come we as mourners to weep for our dead; Grief in our breasts has grown weary of aching, Green is the turf where our tears we have shed. While o'er their marbles the mosses are creeping, Stealing each name and its legend away, Give their proud story to Memory's keeping, Shrined in the temple we hallow to-day. Hushed are their battle-fields, ended their marches, Deaf are their ears to the drum-beat of morn,-- Rise from the sod, ye fair columns and arches Tell their bright deeds to the ages unborn! Emblem and legend may fade from the portal, Keystone may crumble and pillar may fall; They were the builders whose work is immortal, Crowned with the dome that is over us all! HYMN FOR THE DEDICATION OF MEMORIAL HALL AT CAMBRIDGE, JUNE 23, 1874 WHERE, girt around by savage foes, Our nurturing Mother's shelter rose, Behold, the lofty temple stands, Reared by her children's grateful hands! Firm are the pillars that defy The volleyed thunders of the sky; Sweet are the summer wreaths that twine With bud and flower our martyrs' shrine. The hues their tattered colors bore Fall mingling on the sunlit floor Till evening spreads her spangled pall, And wraps in shade the storied hall. Firm were their hearts in danger's hour, Sweet was their manhood's morning flower, Their hopes with rainbow hues were bright,-- How swiftly winged the sudden night! O Mother! on thy marble page Thy children read, from age to age, The mighty word that upward leads Through noble thought to nobler deeds. TRUTH, heaven-born TRUTH, their fearless guide, Thy saints have lived, thy heroes died; Our love has reared their earthly shrine, Their glory be forever thine! HYMN AT THE FUNERAL SERVICES OF CHARLES SUMNER, APRIL 29, 1874 SUNG BY MALE VOICES TO A NATIONAL AIR OF HOLLAND ONCE more, ye sacred towers, Your solemn dirges sound; Strew, loving hands, the April flowers, Once more to deck his mound. A nation mourns its dead, Its sorrowing voices one, As Israel's monarch bowed his head And cried, "My son! My son!" Why mourn for him?--For him The welcome angel came Ere yet his eye with age was dim Or bent his stately frame; His weapon still was bright, His shield was lifted high To slay the wrong, to save the right,-- What happier hour to die? Thou orderest all things well; Thy servant's work was done; He lived to hear Oppression's knell, The shouts for Freedom won. Hark!! from the opening skies The anthem's echoing swell,-- "O mourning Land, lift up thine eyes! God reigneth. All is well!" RHYMES OF AN HOUR ADDRESS FOR THE OPENING OF THE FIFTH AVENUE THEATRE, NEW YORK, DECEMBER 3, 1873 HANG out our banners on the stately tower It dawns at last--the long-expected hour I The steep is climbed, the star-lit summit won, The builder's task, the artist's labor done; Before the finished work the herald stands, And asks the verdict of your lips and hands! Shall rosy daybreak make us all forget The golden sun that yester-evening set? Fair was the fabric doomed to pass away Ere the last headaches born of New Year's Day; With blasting breath the fierce destroyer came And wrapped the victim in his robes of flame; The pictured sky with redder morning blushed, With scorching streams the naiad's fountain gushed, With kindling mountains glowed the funeral pyre, Forests ablaze and rivers all on fire,-- The scenes dissolved, the shrivelling curtain fell,-- Art spread her wings and sighed a long farewell! Mourn o'er the Player's melancholy plight,-- Falstaff in tears, Othello deadly white,-- Poor Romeo reckoning what his doublet cost, And Juliet whimpering for her dresses lost,-- Their wardrobes burned, their salaries all undrawn, Their cues cut short, their occupation gone! "Lie there in dust," the red-winged demon cried, "Wreck of the lordly city's hope and pride!" Silent they stand, and stare with vacant gaze, While o'er the embers leaps the fitful blaze; When, to! a hand, before the startled train, Writes in the ashes, "It shall rise again,-- Rise and confront its elemental foes!" The word was spoken, and the walls arose, And ere the seasons round their brief career The new-born temple waits the unborn year. Ours was the toil of many a weary day Your smiles, your plaudits, only can repay; We are the monarchs of the painted scenes, You, you alone the real Kings and Queens! Lords of the little kingdom where we meet, We lay our gilded sceptres at your feet, Place in your grasp our portal's silvered keys With one brief utterance: We have tried to please. Tell us, ye sovereigns of the new domain, Are you content-or have we toiled in vain? With no irreverent glances look around The realm you rule, for this is haunted ground! Here stalks the Sorcerer, here the Fairy trips, Here limps the Witch with malice-working lips, The Graces here their snowy arms entwine, Here dwell the fairest sisters of the Nine,-- She who, with jocund voice and twinkling eye, Laughs at the brood of follies as they fly; She of the dagger and the deadly bowl, Whose charming horrors thrill the trembling soul; She who, a truant from celestial spheres, In mortal semblance now and then appears, Stealing the fairest earthly shape she can-- Sontag or Nilsson, Lind or Malibran; With these the spangled houri of the dance,-- What shaft so dangerous as her melting glance, As poised in air she spurns the earth below, And points aloft her heavenly-minded toe! What were our life, with all its rents and seams, Stripped of its purple robes, our waking dreams? The poet's song, the bright romancer's page, The tinselled shows that cheat us on the stage Lead all our fancies captive at their will; Three years or threescore, we are children still. The little listener on his father's knee, With wandering Sindbad ploughs the stormy sea, With Gotham's sages hears the billows roll (Illustrious trio of the venturous bowl, Too early shipwrecked, for they died too soon To see their offspring launch the great balloon); Tracks the dark brigand to his mountain lair, Slays the grim giant, saves the lady fair, Fights all his country's battles o'er again From Bunker's blazing height to Lundy's Lane; Floats with the mighty captains as they sailed, Before whose flag the flaming red-cross paled, And claims the oft-told story of the scars Scarce yet grown white, that saved the stripes and stars! Children of later growth, we love the PLAY, We love its heroes, be they grave or gay, From squeaking, peppery, devil-defying Punch To roaring Richard with his camel-hunch; Adore its heroines, those immortal dames, Time's only rivals, whom he never tames, Whose youth, unchanging, lives while thrones decay (Age spares the Pyramids-and Dejazet); The saucy-aproned, razor-tongued soubrette, The blond-haired beauty with the eyes of jet, The gorgeous Beings whom the viewless wires Lift to the skies in strontian-crimsoned fires, And all the wealth of splendor that awaits The throng that enters those Elysian gates. See where the hurrying crowd impatient pours, With noise of trampling feet and flapping doors, Streams to the numbered seat each pasteboard fits And smooths its caudal plumage as it sits; Waits while the slow musicians saunter in, Till the bald leader taps his violin; Till the old overture we know so well, Zampa or Magic Flute or William Tell, Has done its worst-then hark! the tinkling bell! The crash is o'er--the crinkling curtain furled, And to! the glories of that brighter world! Behold the offspring of the Thespian cart, This full-grown temple of the magic art, Where all the conjurers of illusion meet, And please us all the more, the more they cheat. These are the wizards and the witches too Who win their honest bread by cheating you With cheeks that drown in artificial tears And lying skull-caps white with seventy years, Sweet-tempered matrons changed to scolding Kates, Maids mild as moonbeams crazed with murderous hates, Kind, simple souls that stab and slash and slay And stick at nothing, if it 's in the play! Would all the world told half as harmless lies! Would all its real fools were half as wise As he who blinks through dull Dundreary's eyes I Would all the unhanged bandits of the age Were like the peaceful ruffians of the stage! Would all the cankers wasting town and state, The mob of rascals, little thieves and great, Dealers in watered milk and watered stocks, Who lead us lambs to pasture on the rocks,-- Shepherds--Jack Sheppards--of their city flocks,-- The rings of rogues that rob the luckless town, Those evil angels creeping up and down The Jacob's ladder of the treasury stairs,-- Not stage, but real Turpins and Macaires,-- Could doff, like us, their knavery with their clothes, And find it easy as forgetting oaths! Welcome, thrice welcome to our virgin dome, The Muses' shrine, the Drama's new-found home Here shall the Statesman rest his weary brain, The worn-out Artist find his wits again; Here Trade forget his ledger and his cares, And sweet communion mingle Bulls and Bears; Here shall the youthful Lover, nestling near The shrinking maiden, her he holds most dear, Gaze on the mimic moonlight as it falls On painted groves, on sliding canvas walls, And sigh, "My angel! What a life of bliss We two could live in such a world as this!" Here shall the timid pedants of the schools, The gilded boors, the labor-scorning fools, The grass-green rustic and the smoke-dried cit, Feel each in turn the stinging lash of wit, And as it tingles on some tender part Each find a balsam in his neighbor's smart; So every folly prove a fresh delight As in the picture of our play to-night. Farewell! The Players wait the Prompter's call; Friends, lovers, listeners! Welcome one and all! A SEA DIALOGUE Cabin Passenger. Man at Wheel. CABIN PASSENGER. FRIEND, you seem thoughtful. I not wonder much That he who sails the ocean should be sad. I am myself reflective. When I think Of all this wallowing beast, the Sea, has sucked Between his sharp, thin lips, the wedgy waves, What heaps of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls; What piles of shekels, talents, ducats, crowns, What bales of Tyrian mantles, Indian shawls, Of laces that have blanked the weavers' eyes, Of silken tissues, wrought by worm and man, The half-starved workman, and the well-fed worm; What marbles, bronzes, pictures, parchments, books; What many-lobuled, thought-engendering brains; Lie with the gaping sea-shells in his maw,-- I, too, am silent; for all language seems A mockery, and the speech of man is vain. O mariner, we look upon the waves And they rebuke our babbling. "Peace!" they say,-- "Mortal, be still!" My noisy tongue is hushed, And with my trembling finger on my lips My soul exclaims in ecstasy-- MAN AT WHEEL. Belay! CABIN PASSENGER. Ah yes! "Delay,"--it calls, "nor haste to break The charm of stillness with an idle word!" O mariner, I love thee, for thy thought Strides even with my own, nay, flies before. Thou art a brother to the wind and wave; Have they not music for thine ear as mine, When the wild tempest makes thy ship his lyre, Smiting a cavernous basso from the shrouds And climbing up his gamut through the stays, Through buntlines, bowlines, ratlines, till it shrills An alto keener than the locust sings, And all the great Aeolian orchestra Storms out its mad sonata in the gale? Is not the scene a wondrous and-- MAN AT WHEEL. A vast! CABIN PASSENGER. Ah yes, a vast, a vast and wondrous scene! I see thy soul is open as the day That holds the sunshine in its azure bowl To all the solemn glories of the deep. Tell me, O mariner, dost thou never feel The grandeur of thine office,--to control The keel that cuts the ocean like a knife And leaves a wake behind it like a seam In the great shining garment of the world? MAN AT WHEEL. Belay y'r jaw, y' swab! y' hoss-marine! (To the Captain.) Ay, ay, Sir! Stiddy, Sir! Sou'wes' b' sou'! November 10, 1864. CHANSON WITHOUT MUSIC BY THE PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF DEAD AND LIVE LANGUAGES PHI BETA KAPPA.--CAMBRIDGE, 1867 You bid me sing,--can I forget The classic ode of days gone by,-- How belle Fifine and jeune Lisette Exclaimed, "Anacreon, geron ei"? "Regardez done," those ladies said,-- "You're getting bald and wrinkled too When summer's roses all are shed, Love 's nullum ite, voyez-vous!" In vain ce brave Anacreon's cry, "Of Love alone my banjo sings" (Erota mounon). "Etiam si,-- Eh b'en?" replied the saucy things,-- "Go find a maid whose hair is gray, And strike your lyre,--we sha'n't complain; But parce nobis, s'il vous plait,-- Voila Adolphe! Voila Eugene!" Ah, j eune Lisette! Ah, belle Fifine! Anacreon's lesson all must learn; O kairos oxiis; Spring is green, But Acer Hyems waits his turn I hear you whispering from the dust, "Tiens, mon cher, c'est toujours so,-- The brightest blade grows dim with rust, The fairest meadow white with snow!" You do not mean it! _Not_ encore? Another string of playday rhymes? You 've heard me--nonne est?-before, Multoties,-more than twenty times; Non possum,--vraiment,--pas du tout, I cannot! I am loath to shirk; But who will listen if I do, My memory makes such shocking work? Ginosko. Scio. Yes, I 'm told Some ancients like my rusty lay, As Grandpa Noah loved the old Red-sandstone march of Jubal's day. I used to carol like the birds, But time my wits has quite unfixed, Et quoad verba,--for my words,-- Ciel! Eheu! Whe-ew!--how they're mixed! Mehercle! Zeu! Diable! how My thoughts were dressed when I was young, But tempus fugit! see them now Half clad in rags of every tongue! O philoi, fratres, chers amis I dare not court the youthful Muse, For fear her sharp response should be, "Papa Anacreon, please excuse!" Adieu! I 've trod my annual track How long!--let others count the miles,-- And peddled out my rhyming pack To friends who always paid in smiles. So, laissez-moi! some youthful wit No doubt has wares he wants to show; And I am asking, "Let me sit," Dum ille clamat, "Dos pou sto!" FOR THE CENTENNIAL DINNER OF THE PROPRIETORS OF BOSTON PIER, OR THE LONG WHARF, APRIL 16, 1873 DEAR friends, we are strangers; we never before Have suspected what love to each other we bore; But each of us all to his neighbor is dear, Whose heart has a throb for our time-honored pier. As I look on each brother proprietor's face, I could open my arms in a loving embrace; What wonder that feelings, undreamed of so long, Should burst all at once in a blossom of song! While I turn my fond glance on the monarch of piers, Whose throne has stood firm through his eightscore of years, My thought travels backward and reaches the day When they drove the first pile on the edge of the bay. See! The joiner, the shipwright, the smith from his forge, The redcoat, who shoulders his gun for King George, The shopman, the 'prentice, the boys from the lane, The parson, the doctor with gold-headed cane, Come trooping down King Street, where now may be seen The pulleys and ropes of a mighty machine; The weight rises slowly; it drops with a thud; And, to! the great timber sinks deep in the mud! They are gone, the stout craftsmen that hammered the piles, And the square-toed old boys in the three-cornered tiles; The breeches, the buckles, have faded from view, And the parson's white wig and the ribbon-tied queue. The redcoats have vanished; the last grenadier Stepped into the boat from the end of our pier; They found that our hills were not easy to climb, And the order came, "Countermarch, double-quick time!" They are gone, friend and foe,--anchored fast at the pier, Whence no vessel brings back its pale passengers here; But our wharf, like a lily, still floats on the flood, Its breast in the sunshine, its roots in the mud. Who--who that has loved it so long and so well-- The flower of his birthright would barter or sell? No: pride of the bay, while its ripples shall run, You shall pass, as an heirloom, from father to son! Let me part with the acres my grandfather bought, With the bonds that my uncle's kind legacy brought, With my bank-shares,--old "Union," whose ten per cent stock Stands stiff through the storms as the Eddystone rock; With my rights (or my wrongs) in the "Erie,"--alas! With my claims on the mournful and "Mutual Mass.;" With my "Phil. Wil. and Balt.," with my "C. B. and Q.;" But I never, no never, will sell out of you. We drink to thy past and thy future to-day, Strong right arm of Boston, stretched out o'er the bay. May the winds waft the wealth of all nations to thee, And thy dividends flow like the waves of the sea! A POEM SERVED TO ORDER PHI BETA KAPPA, JUNE 26, 1873 THE Caliph ordered up his cook, And, scowling with a fearful look That meant,--We stand no gammon,-- "To-morrow, just at two," he said, "Hassan, our cook, will lose his head, Or serve us up a salmon." "Great sire," the trembling chef replied, "Lord of the Earth and all beside, Sun, Moon, and Stars, and so on (Look in Eothen,-there you'll find A list of titles. Never mind; I have n't time to go on:) "Great sire," and so forth, thus he spoke, "Your Highness must intend a joke; It doesn't stand to reason For one to order salmon brought, Unless that fish is sometimes caught, And also is in season. "Our luck of late is shocking bad, In fact, the latest catch we had (We kept the matter shady), But, hauling in our nets,--alack! We found no salmon, but a sack That held your honored Lady!" "Allah is great!" the Caliph said, "My poor Zuleika, you are dead, I once took interest in you." "Perhaps, my Lord, you'd like to know We cut the lines and let her go." "Allah be praised! Continue." "It is n't hard one's hook to bait, And, squatting down, to watch and wait, To see the cork go under; At last suppose you've got your bite, You twitch away with all your might,-- You've hooked an eel, by thunder!" The Caliph patted Hassan's head "Slave, thou hast spoken well," he said, "And won thy master's favor. Yes; since what happened t' other morn The salmon of the Golden Horn Might have a doubtful flavor. "That last remark about the eel Has also justice that we feel Quite to our satisfaction. To-morrow we dispense with fish, And, for the present, if you wish, You'll keep your bulbous fraction." "Thanks! thanks!" the grateful chef replied, His nutrient feature showing wide The gleam of arches dental: "To cut my head off wouldn't pay, I find it useful every day, As well as ornamental." . . . . . . . . . . . . . Brothers, I hope you will not fail To see the moral of my tale And kindly to receive it. You know your anniversary pie Must have its crust, though hard and dry, And some prefer to leave it. How oft before these youths were born I've fished in Fancy's Golden Horn For what the Muse might send me! How gayly then I cast the line, When all the morning sky was mine, And Hope her flies would lend me! And now I hear our despot's call, And come, like Hassan, to the hall,-- If there's a slave, I am one,-- My bait no longer flies, but worms! I 've caught--Lord bless me! how he squirms! An eel, and not a salmon! THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH READ AT THE MEETING OF THE HARVARD ALUMNI ASSOCIATION, JUNE 25, 1873 THE fount the Spaniard sought in vain Through all the land of flowers Leaps glittering from the sandy plain Our classic grove embowers; Here youth, unchanging, blooms and smiles, Here dwells eternal spring, And warm from Hope's elysian isles The winds their perfume bring. Here every leaf is in the bud, Each singing throat in tune, And bright o'er evening's silver flood Shines the young crescent moon. What wonder Age forgets his staff And lays his glasses down, And gray-haired grandsires look and laugh As when their locks were brown! With ears grown dull and eyes grown dim They greet the joyous day That calls them to the fountain's brim To wash their years away. What change has clothed the ancient sire In sudden youth? For, to! The Judge, the Doctor, and the Squire Are Jack and Bill and Joe! And be his titles what they will, In spite of manhood's claim The graybeard is a school-boy still And loves his school-boy name; It calms the ruler's stormy breast Whom hurrying care pursues, And brings a sense of peace and rest, Like slippers after shoes.-- And what are all the prizes won To youth's enchanted view? And what is all the man has done To what the boy may do? O blessed fount, whose waters flow Alike for sire and son, That melts our winter's frost and snow And makes all ages one! I pledge the sparkling fountain's tide, That flings its golden shower With age to fill and youth to guide, Still fresh in morning flower Flow on with ever-widening stream, In ever-brightening morn,-- Our story's pride, our future's dream, The hope of times unborn! NO TIME LIKE THE OLD TIME THERE is no time like the old time, when you and I were young, When the buds of April blossomed, and the birds of spring-time sung! The garden's brightest glories by summer suns are nursed, But oh, the sweet, sweet violets, the flowers that opened first! There is no place like the old place, where you and I were born, Where we lifted first our eyelids on the splendors of the morn From the milk-white breast that warmed us, from the clinging arms that bore, Where the dear eyes glistened o'er us that will look on us no more! There is no friend like the old friend, who has shared our morning days, No greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise Fame is the scentless sunflower, with gaudy crown of gold; But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold. There is no love like the old love, that we courted in our pride; Though our leaves are falling, falling, and we're fading side by side, There are blossoms all around us with the colors of our dawn, And we live in borrowed sunshine when the day-star is withdrawn. There are no times like the old times,--they shall never be forgot! There is no place like the old place,--keep green the dear old spot! There are no friends like our old friends,--may Heaven prolong their lives There are no loves like our old loves,--God bless our loving wives! 1865. A HYMN OF PEACE SUNG AT THE "JUBILEE," JUNE 15, 1869, TO THE MUSIC OF SELLER'S "AMERICAN HYMN" ANGEL of Peace, thou hast wandered too long! Spread thy white wings to the sunshine of love! Come while our voices are blended in song,-- Fly to our ark like the storm-beaten dove! Fly to our ark on the wings of the dove,-- Speed o'er the far-sounding billows of song, Crowned with thine olive-leaf garland of love,-- Angel of Peace, thou hast waited too long! Joyous we meet, on this altar of thine Mingling the gifts we have gathered for thee, Sweet with the odors of myrtle and pine, Breeze of the prairie and breath of the sea,-- Meadow and mountain and forest and sea! Sweet is the fragrance of myrtle and pine, Sweeter the incense we offer to thee, Brothers once more round this altar of thine! Angels of Bethlehem, answer the strain! Hark! a new birth-song is filling the sky!-- Loud as the storm-wind that tumbles the main Bid the full breath of the organ reply,-- Let the loud tempest of voices reply,-- Roll its long surge like the-earth-shaking main! Swell the vast song till it mounts to the sky! Angels of Bethlehem, echo the strain! NOTES. THE BOYS. The members of the Harvard College class of 1829 referred to in this poem are: "Doctor," Francis Thomas; "Judge," G. T. Bigelow, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts; "O Speaker," Hon. Francis B. Crowninshield, Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives; "Mr. Mayor," G. W. Richardson, of Worcester,Mass.; "Member of Congress," Hon. George T. Davis; "Reverend," James Freeman Clarke; "boy with the grave mathematical look," Benjamin Peirce; "boy with a three-decker brain," Judge Benjamin R. Curtis, of the Supreme Court of the United States; "nice youngster of excellent pith," S. F. Smith, author of "My Country, 't is of Thee." "That lovely, bright-eyed boy." William Sturgis. "Who faced the storm so long." Francis B. Crowninshield. "Our many featured friend." George T. Davis. "The close-clinging dulcamara." The "bitter-sweet" of New England is the _Celastrus scandens_, "bourreau des arbres" of the Canadian French. "All armed with picks and spades." The captured slaves were at this time organized as pioneers. 
7395	----	THE POETICAL WORKS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES [Volume 3 of the 1893 three volume set] BUNKER-HILL BATTLE AND OTHER POEMS 1874-1877 GRANDMOTHER'S STORY OF BUNKER-HILL BATTLE AT THE "ATLANTIC" DINNER, DECEMBER 15, 1874 "LUCY." FOR HER GOLDEN WEDDING, OCTOBER 18, 1875 HYMN FOR THE INAUGURATION OF THE STATUE OF GOVERNOR ANDREW, HINGHAM, OCTOBER 7, 1875 A MEMORIAL TRIBUTE TO DR. SAMUEL G. HOWE JOSEPH WARREN, M. D. OLD CAMBRIDGE, JULY 3, 1875 WELCOME TO THE NATIONS, PHILADELPHIA, JULY 4, 1876 A FAMILIAR LETTER UNSATISFIED HOW THE OLD HORSE WON THE BET AN APPEAL FOR "THE OLD SOUTH" THE FIRST FAN To R. B. H. THE SHIP OF STATE A FAMILY RECORD GRANDMOTHER'S STORY OF BUNKER-HILL BATTLE AS SHE SAW IT FROM THE BELFRY 'T is like stirring living embers when, at eighty, one remembers All the achings and the quakings of "the times that tried men's souls"; When I talk of Whig and Tory, when I tell the Rebel story, To you the words are ashes, but to me they're burning coals. I had heard the muskets' rattle of the April running battle; Lord Percy's hunted soldiers, I can see their red-coats still; But a deadly chill comes o'er me, as the day looms up before me, When a thousand men lay bleeding on the slopes of Bunker's Hill. 'T was a peaceful summer's morning, when the first thing gave us warning Was the booming of the cannon from the river and the shore: "Child," says grandma, "what 's the matter, what is all this noise and clatter? Have those scalping Indian devils come to murder us once more?" Poor old soul! my sides were shaking in the midst of all my quaking, To hear her talk of Indians when the guns began to roar: She had seen the burning village, and the slaughter and the pillage, When the Mohawks killed her father with their bullets through his door. Then I said, "Now, dear old granny, don't you fret and worry any, For I'll soon come back and tell you whether this is work or play; There can't be mischief in it, so I won't be gone a minute"-- For a minute then I started. I was gone the live-long day. No time for bodice-lacing or for looking-glass grimacing; Down my hair went as I hurried, tumbling half-way to my heels; God forbid your ever knowing, when there's blood around her flowing, How the lonely, helpless daughter of a quiet house-hold feels! In the street I heard a thumping; and I knew it was the stumping Of the Corporal, our old neighbor, on that wooden leg he wore, With a knot of women round him,-it was lucky I had found him, So I followed with the others, and the Corporal marched before. They were making for the steeple,--the old soldier and his people; The pigeons circled round us as we climbed the creaking stair. Just across the narrow river--oh, so close it made me shiver!-- Stood a fortress on the hill-top that but yesterday was bare. Not slow our eyes to find it; well we knew who stood behind it, Though the earthwork hid them from us, and the stubborn walls were dumb Here were sister, wife, and mother, looking wild upon each other, And their lips were white with terror as they said, THE HOUR HAS COME! The morning slowly wasted, not a morsel had we tasted, And our heads were almost splitting with the cannons' deafening thrill, When a figure tall and stately round the rampart strode sedately; It was PRESCOTT, one since told me; he commanded on the hill. Every woman's heart grew bigger when we saw his manly figure, With the banyan buckled round it, standing up so straight and tall; Like a gentleman of leisure who is strolling out for pleasure, Through the storm of shells and cannon-shot he walked around the wall. At eleven the streets were swarming, for the red-coats' ranks were forming; At noon in marching order they were moving to the piers; How the bayonets gleamed and glistened, as we looked far down, and listened To the trampling and the drum-beat of the belted grenadiers! At length the men have started, with a cheer (it seemed faint-hearted), In their scarlet regimentals, with their knapsacks on their backs, And the reddening, rippling water, as after a sea-fight's slaughter, Round the barges gliding onward blushed like blood along their tracks. So they crossed to the other border, and again they formed in order; And the boats came back for soldiers, came for soldiers, soldiers still: The time seemed everlasting to us women faint and fasting,-- At last they're moving, marching, marching proudly up the hill. We can see the bright steel glancing all along the lines advancing,-- Now the front rank fires a volley,--they have thrown away their shot; For behind their earthwork lying, all the balls above them flying, Our people need not hurry; so they wait and answer not. Then the Corporal, our old cripple (he would swear sometimes and tipple), He had heard the bullets whistle (in the old French war) before,-- Calls out in words of jeering, just as if they all were hearing,-- And his wooden leg thumps fiercely on the dusty belfry floor:-- "Oh! fire away, ye villains, and earn King George's shillin's, But ye 'll waste a ton of powder afore a 'rebel' falls; You may bang the dirt and welcome, they're as safe as Dan'l Malcolm Ten foot beneath the gravestone that you've splintered with your balls!" In the hush of expectation, in the awe and trepidation Of the dread approaching moment, we are well-nigh breathless all; Though the rotten bars are failing on the rickety belfry railing, We are crowding up against them like the waves against a wall. Just a glimpse (the air is clearer), they are nearer,--nearer,--nearer, When a flash--a curling smoke-wreath--then a crash--the steeple shakes-- The deadly truce is ended; the tempest's shroud is rended; Like a morning mist it gathered, like a thunder-cloud it breaks! Oh the sight our eyes discover as the blue-black smoke blows over! The red-coats stretched in windrows as a mower rakes his hay; Here a scarlet heap is lying, there a headlong crowd is flying Like a billow that has broken and is shivered into spray. Then we cried, "The troops are routed! they are beat--it can't be doubted! God be thanked, the fight is over!"--Ah! the grim old soldier's smile! "Tell us, tell us why you look so?" (we could hardly speak, we shook so), "Are they beaten? Are they beaten? ARE they beaten?"--"Wait a while." Oh the trembling and the terror! for too soon we saw our error: They are baffled, not defeated; we have driven them back in vain; And the columns that were scattered, round the colors that were tattered, Toward the sullen, silent fortress turn their belted breasts again. All at once, as we are gazing, lo the roofs of Charlestown blazing! They have fired the harmless village; in an hour it will be down! The Lord in heaven confound them, rain his fire and brimstone round them, The robbing, murdering red-coats, that would burn a peaceful town! They are marching, stern and solemn; we can see each massive column As they near the naked earth-mound with the slanting walls so steep. Have our soldiers got faint-hearted, and in noiseless haste departed? Are they panic-struck and helpless? Are they palsied or asleep? Now! the walls they're almost under! scarce a rod the foes asunder! Not a firelock flashed against them! up the earth-work they will swarm! But the words have scarce been spoken, when the ominous calm is broken, And a bellowing crash has emptied all the vengeance of the storm! So again, with murderous slaughter, pelted backwards to the water, Fly Pigot's running heroes and the frightened braves of Howe; And we shout, "At last they're done for, it's their barges they have run for: They are beaten, beaten, beaten; and the battle 's over now!" And we looked, poor timid creatures, on the rough old soldier's features, Our lips afraid to question, but he knew what we would ask: "Not sure," he said; "keep quiet,--once more, I guess, they 'll try it-- Here's damnation to the cut-throats!"--then he handed me his flask, Saying, "Gal, you're looking shaky; have a drop of old Jamaiky; I 'm afeard there 'll be more trouble afore the job is done"; So I took one scorching swallow; dreadful faint I felt and hollow, Standing there from early morning when the firing was begun. All through those hours of trial I had watched a calm clock dial, As the hands kept creeping, creeping,--they were creeping round to four, When the old man said, "They're forming with their bagonets fixed for storming: It 's the death-grip that's a coming,--they will try the works once more." With brazen trumpets blaring, the flames behind them glaring, The deadly wall before them, in close array they come; Still onward, upward toiling, like a dragon's fold uncoiling,-- Like the rattlesnake's shrill warning the reverberating drum. Over heaps all torn and gory--shall I tell the fearful story, How they surged above the breastwork, as a sea breaks over a deck; How, driven, yet scarce defeated, our worn-out men retreated, With their powder-horns all emptied, like the swimmers from a wreck? It has all been told and painted; as for me, they say I fainted, And the wooden-legged old Corporal stumped with me down the stair: When I woke from dreams affrighted the evening lamps were lighted,-- On the floor a youth was lying; his bleeding breast was bare. And I heard through all the flurry, "Send for WARREN! hurry! hurry! Tell him here's a soldier bleeding, and he 'll come and dress his wound!" Ah, we knew not till the morrow told its tale of death and sorrow, How the starlight found him stiffened on the dark and bloody ground. Who the youth was, what his name was, where the place from which he came was, Who had brought him from the battle, and had left him at our door, He could not speak to tell us; but 't was one of our brave fellows, As the homespun plainly showed us which the dying soldier wore. For they all thought he was dying, as they gathered round him crying,-- And they said, "Oh, how they'll miss him!" and, "What will his mother do?" Then, his eyelids just unclosing like a child's that has been dozing, He faintly murmured, "Mother!"--and--I saw his eyes were blue. "Why, grandma, how you 're winking!" Ah, my child, it sets me thinking Of a story not like this one. Well, he somehow lived along; So we came to know each other, and I nursed him like a--mother, Till at last he stood before me, tall, and rosy-checked, and strong. And we sometimes walked together in the pleasant summer weather,-- "Please to tell us what his name was?" Just your own, my little dear,-- There's his picture Copley painted: we became so well acquainted, That--in short, that's why I 'm grandma, and you children all are here! AT THE "ATLANTIC" DINNER DECEMBER 15, 1874 I SUPPOSE it's myself that you're making allusion to And bringing the sense of dismay and confusion to. Of course some must speak,--they are always selected to, But pray what's the reason that I am expected to? I'm not fond of wasting my breath as those fellows do; That want to be blowing forever as bellows do; Their legs are uneasy, but why will you jog any That long to stay quiet beneath the mahogany? Why, why call me up with your battery of flatteries? You say "He writes poetry,"--that 's what the matter is "It costs him no trouble--a pen full of ink or two And the poem is done in the time of a wink or two; As for thoughts--never mind--take the ones that lie uppermost, And the rhymes used by Milton and Byron and Tupper most; The lines come so easy! at one end he jingles 'em, At the other with capital letters he shingles 'em,-- Why, the thing writes itself, and before he's half done with it He hates to stop writing, he has such good fun with it!" Ah, that is the way in which simple ones go about And draw a fine picture of things they don't know about! We all know a kitten, but come to a catamount The beast is a stranger when grown up to that amount, (A stranger we rather prefer should n't visit us, A _felis_ whose advent is far from felicitous.) The boy who can boast that his trap has just got a mouse Must n't draw it and write underneath "hippopotamus"; Or say unveraciously, "This is an elephant,"-- Don't think, let me beg, these examples irrelevant,-- What they mean is just this--that a thing to be painted well Should always be something with which we're acquainted well. You call on your victim for "things he has plenty of,-- Those copies of verses no doubt at least twenty of; His desk is crammed full, for he always keeps writing 'em And reading to friends as his way of delighting 'em!" I tell you this writing of verses means business,-- It makes the brain whirl in a vortex of dizziness You think they are scrawled in the languor of laziness-- I tell you they're squeezed by a spasm of craziness, A fit half as bad as the staggering vertigos That seize a poor fellow and down in the dirt he goes! And therefore it chimes with the word's etytology That the sons of Apollo are great on apology, For the writing of verse is a struggle mysterious And the gayest of rhymes is a matter that's serious. For myself, I'm relied on by friends in extremities, And I don't mind so much if a comfort to them it is; 'T is a pleasure to please, and the straw that can tickle us Is a source of enjoyment though slightly ridiculous. I am up for a--something--and since I 've begun with it, I must give you a toast now before I have done with it. Let me pump at my wits as they pumped the Cochituate That moistened--it may be--the very last bit you ate: Success to our publishers, authors and editors To our debtors good luck,--pleasant dreams to our creditors; May the monthly grow yearly, till all we are groping for Has reached the fulfilment we're all of us hoping for; Till the bore through the tunnel--it makes me let off a sigh To think it may possibly ruin my prophecy-- Has been punned on so often 't will never provoke again One mild adolescent to make the old joke again; Till abstinent, all-go-to-meeting society Has forgotten the sense of the word inebriety; Till the work that poor Hannah and Bridget and Phillis do The humanized, civilized female gorillas do; Till the roughs, as we call them, grown loving and dutiful, Shall worship the true and the pure and the beautiful, And, preying no longer as tiger and vulture do, All read the "Atlantic" as persons of culture do! "LUCY" FOR HER GOLDEN WEDDING, OCTOBER 18, 1875 "Lucy."--The old familiar name Is now, as always, pleasant, Its liquid melody the same Alike in past or present; Let others call you what they will, I know you'll let me use it; To me your name is Lucy still, I cannot bear to lose it. What visions of the past return With Lucy's image blended! What memories from the silent urn Of gentle lives long ended! What dreams of childhood's fleeting morn, What starry aspirations, That filled the misty days unborn With fancy's coruscations! Ah, Lucy, life has swiftly sped From April to November; The summer blossoms all are shed That you and I remember; But while the vanished years we share With mingling recollections, How all their shadowy features wear The hue of old affections! Love called you. He who stole your heart Of sunshine half bereft us; Our household's garland fell apart The morning that you left us; The tears of tender girlhood streamed Through sorrow's opening sluices; Less sweet our garden's roses seemed, Less blue its flower-de-luces. That old regret is turned to smiles, That parting sigh to greeting; I send my heart-throb fifty miles Through every line 't is beating; God grant you many and happy years, Till when the last has crowned you The dawn of endless day appears, And heaven is shining round you! October 11, 1875. HYMN FOR THE INAUGURATION OF THE STATUE OF GOVERNOR ANDREW, HINGHAM, OCTOBER 7, 1875 BEHOLD the shape our eyes have known! It lives once more in changeless stone; So looked in mortal face and form Our guide through peril's deadly storm. But hushed the beating heart we knew, That heart so tender, brave, and true, Firm as the rooted mountain rock, Pure as the quarry's whitest block! Not his beneath the blood-red star To win the soldier's envied sear; Unarmed he battled for the right, In Duty's never-ending fight. Unconquered will, unslumbering eye, Faith such as bids the martyr die, The prophet's glance, the master's hand To mould the work his foresight planned, These were his gifts; what Heaven had lent For justice, mercy, truth, he spent, First to avenge the traitorous blow, And first to lift the vanquished foe. Lo, thus he stood; in danger's strait The pilot of the Pilgrim State! Too large his fame for her alone,-- A nation claims him as her own! A MEMORIAL TRIBUTE READ AT THE MEETING HELD AT MUSIC HALL, FEBRUARY 8, 1876, IN MEMORY OF DR. SAMUEL G. HOWE I. LEADER of armies, Israel's God, Thy soldier's fight is won! Master, whose lowly path he trod, Thy servant's work is done! No voice is heard from Sinai's steep Our wandering feet to guide; From Horeb's rock no waters leap; No Jordan's waves divide; No prophet cleaves our western sky On wheels of whirling fire; No shepherds hear the song on high Of heaven's angelic choir. Yet here as to the patriarch's tent God's angel comes a guest; He comes on heaven's high errand sent, In earth's poor raiment drest. We see no halo round his brow Till love its own recalls, And, like a leaf that quits the bough, The mortal vesture falls. In autumn's chill declining day, Ere winter's killing frost, The message came; so passed away The friend our earth has lost. Still, Father, in thy love we trust; Forgive us if we mourn The saddening hour that laid in dust His robe of flesh outworn. II. How long the wreck-strewn journey seems To reach the far-off past That woke his youth from peaceful dreams With Freedom's trumpet-blast. Along her classic hillsides rung The Paynim's battle-cry, And like a red-cross knight he sprung For her to live or die. No trustier service claimed the wreath For Sparta's bravest son; No truer soldier sleeps beneath The mound of Marathon; Yet not for him the warrior's grave In front of angry foes; To lift, to shield, to help, to save, The holier task he chose. He touched the eyelids of the blind, And lo! the veil withdrawn, As o'er the midnight of the mind He led the light of dawn. He asked not whence the fountains roll No traveller's foot has found, But mapped the desert of the soul Untracked by sight or sound. What prayers have reached the sapphire throne, By silent fingers spelt, For him who first through depths unknown His doubtful pathway felt, Who sought the slumbering sense that lay Close shut with bolt and bar, And showed awakening thought the ray Of reason's morning star. Where'er he moved, his shadowy form The sightless orbs would seek, And smiles of welcome light and warm The lips that could not speak. No labored line, no sculptor's art, Such hallowed memory needs; His tablet is the human heart, His record loving deeds. III. The rest that earth denied is thine,-- Ah, is it rest? we ask, Or, traced by knowledge more divine, Some larger, nobler task? Had but those boundless fields of blue One darkened sphere like this; But what has heaven for thee to do In realms of perfect bliss? No cloud to lift, no mind to clear, No rugged path to smooth, No struggling soul to help and cheer, No mortal grief to soothe! Enough; is there a world of love, No more we ask to know; The hand will guide thy ways above That shaped thy task below. JOSEPH WARREN, M. D. TRAINED in the holy art whose lifted shield Wards off the darts a never-slumbering foe, By hearth and wayside lurking, waits to throw, Oppression taught his helpful arm to wield The slayer's weapon: on the murderous field The fiery bolt he challenged laid him low, Seeking its noblest victim. Even so The charter of a nation must be sealed! The healer's brow the hero's honors crowned, From lowliest duty called to loftiest deed. Living, the oak-leaf wreath his temples bound; Dying, the conqueror's laurel was his meed, Last on the broken ramparts' turf to bleed Where Freedom's victory in defeat was found. June 11, 1875. OLD CAMBRIDGE JULY 3, 1875 AND can it be you've found a place Within this consecrated space, That makes so fine a show, For one of Rip Van Winkle's race? And is it really so? Who wants an old receipted bill? Who fishes in the Frog-pond still? Who digs last year's potato hill?-- That's what he'd like to know! And were it any spot on earth Save this dear home that gave him birth Some scores of years ago, He had not come to spoil your mirth And chill your festive glow; But round his baby-nest he strays, With tearful eye the scene surveys, His heart unchanged by changing days, That's what he'd have you know. Can you whose eyes not yet are dim Live o'er the buried past with him, And see the roses blow When white-haired men were Joe and Jim Untouched by winter's snow? Or roll the years back one by one As Judah's monarch backed the sun, And see the century just begun?-- That's what he'd like to know! I come, but as the swallow dips, Just touching with her feather-tips The shining wave below, To sit with pleasure-murmuring lips And listen to the flow Of Elmwood's sparkling Hippocrene, To tread once more my native green, To sigh unheard, to smile unseen,-- That's what I'd have you know. But since the common lot I've shared (We all are sitting "unprepared," Like culprits in a row, Whose heads are down, whose necks are bared To wait the headsman's blow), I'd like to shift my task to you, By asking just a thing or two About the good old times I knew,-- Here's what I want to know. The yellow meetin' house--can you tell Just where it stood before it fell Prey of the vandal foe,-- Our dear old temple, loved so well, By ruthless hands laid low? Where, tell me, was the Deacon's pew? Whose hair was braided in a queue? (For there were pig-tails not a few,)-- That's what I'd like to know. The bell--can you recall its clang? And how the seats would slam and bang? The voices high and low? The basso's trump before he sang? The viol and its bow? Where was it old Judge Winthrop sat? Who wore the last three-cornered hat? Was Israel Porter lean or fat?-- That's what I'd like to know. Tell where the market used to be That stood beside the murdered tree? Whose dog to church would go? Old Marcus Reemie, who was he? Who were the brothers Snow? Does not your memory slightly fail About that great September gale?-- Whereof one told a moving tale, As Cambridge boys should know. When Cambridge was a simple town, Say just when Deacon William Brown (Last door in yonder row), For honest silver counted down, His groceries would bestow?-- For those were days when money meant Something that jingled as you went,-- No hybrid like the nickel cent, I'd have you all to know, But quarter, ninepence, pistareen, And fourpence hapennies in between, All metal fit to show, Instead of rags in stagnant green, The scum of debts we owe; How sad to think such stuff should be Our Wendell's cure-all recipe,-- Not Wendell H., but Wendell P.,-- The one you all must know! I question--but you answer not-- Dear me! and have I quite forgot How fivescore years ago, Just on this very blessed spot, The summer leaves below, Before his homespun ranks arrayed In green New England's elmbough shade The great Virginian drew the blade King George full soon should know! O George the Third! you found it true Our George was more than double you, For nature made him so. Not much an empire's crown can do If brains are scant and slow,-- Ah, not like that his laurel crown Whose presence gilded with renown Our brave old Academic town, As all her children know! So here we meet with loud acclaim To tell mankind that here he came, With hearts that throb and glow; Ours is a portion of his fame Our trumpets needs must blow! On yonder hill the Lion fell, But here was chipped the eagle's shell,-- That little hatchet did it well, As all the world shall know! WELCOME TO THE NATIONS PHILADELPHIA, JULY 4, 1876 BRIGHT on the banners of lily and rose Lo! the last sun of our century sets! Wreathe the black cannon that scowled on our foes, All but her friendships the nation forgets All but her friends and their welcome forgets! These are around her; but where are her foes? Lo, while the sun of her century sets, Peace with her garlands of lily and rose! Welcome! a shout like the war trumpet's swell Wakes the wild echoes that slumber around Welcome! it quivers from Liberty's bell; Welcome! the walls of her temple resound! Hark! the gray walls of her temple resound Fade the far voices o'er hillside and dell; Welcome! still whisper the echoes around; Welcome I still trembles on Liberty's bell! Thrones of the continents! isles of the sea Yours are the garlands of peace we entwine; Welcome, once more, to the land of the free, Shadowed alike by the pahn and the pine; Softly they murmur, the palm and the pine, "Hushed is our strife, in the land of the free"; Over your children their branches entwine, Thrones of the continents! isles of the sea! A FAMILIAR LETTER TO SEVERAL CORRESPONDENTS YES, write, if you want to, there's nothing like trying; Who knows what a treasure your casket may hold? I'll show you that rhyming's as easy as lying, If you'll listen to me while the art I unfold. Here's a book full of words; one can choose as he fancies, As a painter his tint, as a workman his tool; Just think! all the poems and plays and romances Were drawn out of this, like the fish from a pool! You can wander at will through its syllabled mazes, And take all you want,--not a copper they cost,-- What is there to hinder your picking out phrases For an epic as clever as "Paradise Lost"? Don't mind if the index of sense is at zero, Use words that run smoothly, whatever they mean; Leander and Lilian and Lillibullero Are much the same thing in the rhyming machine. There are words so delicious their sweetness will smother That boarding-school flavor of which we 're afraid,-- There is "lush" is a good one, and "swirl" another,-- Put both in one stanza, its fortune is made. With musical murmurs and rhythmical closes You can cheat us of smiles when you've nothing to tell; You hand us a nosegay of milliner's roses, And we cry with delight, "Oh, how sweet they do smell!" Perhaps you will answer all needful conditions For winning the laurels to which you aspire, By docking the tails of the two prepositions I' the style o' the bards you so greatly admire. As for subjects of verse, they are only too plenty For ringing the changes on metrical chimes; A maiden, a moonbeam, a lover of twenty Have filled that great basket with bushels of rhymes. Let me show you a picture--'tis far from irrelevant-- By a famous old hand in the arts of design; 'T is only a photographed sketch of an elephant,-- The name of the draughtsman was Rembrandt of Rhine. How easy! no troublesome colors to lay on, It can't have fatigued him,--no, not in the least,-- A dash here and there with a hap-hazard crayon, And there stands the wrinkled-skinned, baggy-limbed beast. Just so with your verse,--'t is as easy as sketching,-- You--can reel off a song without knitting your brow, As lightly as Rembrandt a drawing or etching; It is nothing at all, if you only know how. Well; imagine you've printed your volume of verses: Your forehead is wreathed with the garland of fame, Your poems the eloquent school-boy rehearses, Her album the school-girl presents for your name; Each morning the post brings you autograph letters; You'll answer them promptly,--an hour is n't much For the honor of sharing a page with your betters, With magistrates, members of Congress, and such. Of course you're delighted to serve the committees That come with requests from the country all round, You would grace the occasion with poems and ditties When they've got a new schoolhouse, or poor-house, or pound. With a hymn for the saints and a song for the sinners, You go and are welcome wherever you please; You're a privileged guest at all manner of dinners, You've a seat on the platform among the grandees. At length your mere presence becomes a sensation, Your cup of enjoyment is filled to its brim With the pleasure Horatian of digitmonstration, As the whisper runs round of "That's he!" or "That Is him!" But remember, O dealer in phrases sonorous, So daintily chosen, so tunefully matched, Though you soar with the wings of the cherubim o'er us, The ovum was human from which you were hatched. No will of your own with its puny compulsion Can summon the spirit that quickens the lyre; It comes, if at all, like the Sibyl's convulsion And touches the brain with a finger of fire. So perhaps, after all, it's as well to be quiet, If you've nothing you think is worth saying in prose, As to furnish a meal of their cannibal diet To the critics, by publishing, as you propose. But it's all of no use, and I 'm sorry I've written,-- I shall see your thin volume some day on my shelf; For the rhyming tarantula surely has bitten, And music must cure you, so pipe it yourself. UNSATISFIED "ONLY a housemaid!" She looked from the kitchen,-- Neat was the kitchen and tidy was she; There at her window a sempstress sat stitching; "Were I a sempstress, how happy I'd be!" "Only a Queen!" She looked over the waters,-- Fair was her kingdom and mighty was she; There sat an Empress, with Queens for her daughters; "Were I an Empress, how happy I'd be!" Still the old frailty they all of them trip in! Eve in her daughters is ever the same; Give her all Eden, she sighs for a pippin; Give her an Empire, she pines for a name! May 8, 1876. HOW THE OLD HORSE WON THE BET DEDICATED BY A CONTRIBUTOR TO THE COLLEGIAN, 1830, TO THE EDITORS OF THE HARVARD ADVOCATE, 1876. 'T WAS on the famous trotting-ground, The betting men were gathered round From far and near; the "cracks" were there Whose deeds the sporting prints declare The swift g. m., Old Hiram's nag, The fleet s. h., Dan Pfeiffer's brag, With these a third--and who is he That stands beside his fast b. g.? Budd Doble, whose catarrhal name So fills the nasal trump of fame. There too stood many a noted steed Of Messenger and Morgan breed; Green horses also, not a few; Unknown as yet what they could do; And all the hacks that know so well The scourgings of the Sunday swell. Blue are the skies of opening day; The bordering turf is green with May; The sunshine's golden gleam is thrown On sorrel, chestnut, bay, and roan; The horses paw and prance and neigh, Fillies and colts like kittens play, And dance and toss their rippled manes Shining and soft as silken skeins; Wagons and gigs are ranged about, And fashion flaunts her gay turn-out; Here stands--each youthful Jehu's dream The jointed tandem, ticklish team! And there in ampler breadth expand The splendors of the four-in-hand; On faultless ties and glossy tiles The lovely bonnets beam their smiles; (The style's the man, so books avow; The style's the woman, anyhow); From flounces frothed with creamy lace Peeps out the pug-dog's smutty face, Or spaniel rolls his liquid eye, Or stares the wiry pet of Skye,-- O woman, in your hours of ease So shy with us, so free with these! "Come on! I 'll bet you two to one I 'll make him do it!" "Will you? Done!" What was it who was bound to do? I did not hear and can't tell you,-- Pray listen till my story's through. Scarce noticed, back behind the rest, By cart and wagon rudely prest, The parson's lean and bony bay Stood harnessed in his one-horse shay-- Lent to his sexton for the day; (A funeral--so the sexton said; His mother's uncle's wife was dead.) Like Lazarus bid to Dives' feast, So looked the poor forlorn old beast; His coat was rough, his tail was bare, The gray was sprinkled in his hair; Sportsmen and jockeys knew him not, And yet they say he once could trot Among the fleetest of the town, Till something cracked and broke him down,-- The steed's, the statesman's, common lot! "And are we then so soon forgot?" Ah me! I doubt if one of you Has ever heard the name "Old Blue," Whose fame through all this region rung In those old days when I was young! "Bring forth the horse!" Alas! he showed Not like the one Mazeppa rode; Scant-maned, sharp-backed, and shaky-kneed, The wreck of what was once a steed, Lips thin, eyes hollow, stiff in joints; Yet not without his knowing points. The sexton laughing in his sleeve, As if 't were all a make-believe, Led forth the horse, and as he laughed Unhitched the breeching from a shaft, Unclasped the rusty belt beneath, Drew forth the snaffle from his teeth, Slipped off his head-stall, set him free From strap and rein,--a sight to see! So worn, so lean in every limb, It can't be they are saddling him! It is! his back the pig-skin strides And flaps his lank, rheumatic sides; With look of mingled scorn and mirth They buckle round the saddle-girth; With horsey wink and saucy toss A youngster throws his leg across, And so, his rider on his back, They lead him, limping, to the track, Far up behind the starting-point, To limber out each stiffened joint. As through the jeering crowd he past, One pitying look Old Hiram cast; "Go it, ye cripple, while ye can!" Cried out unsentimental Dan; "A Fast-Day dinner for the crows!" Budd Doble's scoffing shout arose. Slowly, as when the walking-beam First feels the gathering head of steam, With warning cough and threatening wheeze The stiff old charger crooks his knees; At first with cautious step sedate, As if he dragged a coach of state He's not a colt; he knows full well That time is weight and sure to tell; No horse so sturdy but he fears The handicap of twenty years. As through the throng on either hand The old horse nears the judges' stand, Beneath his jockey's feather-weight He warms a little to his gait, And now and then a step is tried That hints of something like a stride. "Go!"--Through his ear the summons stung As if a battle-trump had rung; The slumbering instincts long unstirred Start at the old familiar word; It thrills like flame through every limb,-- What mean his twenty years to him? The savage blow his rider dealt Fell on his hollow flanks unfelt; The spur that pricked his staring hide Unheeded tore his bleeding side; Alike to him are spur and rein,-- He steps a five-year-old again! Before the quarter pole was past, Old Hiram said, "He's going fast." Long ere the quarter was a half, The chuckling crowd had ceased to laugh; Tighter his frightened jockey clung As in a mighty stride he swung, The gravel flying in his track, His neck stretched out, his ears laid back, His tail extended all the while Behind him like a rat-tail file! Off went a shoe,--away it spun, Shot like a bullet from a gun; The quaking jockey shapes a prayer From scraps of oaths he used to swear; He drops his whip, he drops his rein, He clutches fiercely for a mane; He'll lose his hold--he sways and reels-- He'll slide beneath those trampling heels! The knees of many a horseman quake, The flowers on many a bonnet shake, And shouts arise from left and right, "Stick on! Stick on!" "Hould tight! Hould tight!" "Cling round his neck and don't let go--" "That pace can't hold--there! steady! whoa!" But like the sable steed that bore The spectral lover of Lenore, His nostrils snorting foam and fire, No stretch his bony limbs can tire; And now the stand he rushes by, And "Stop him!--stop him!" is the cry. Stand back! he 's only just begun-- He's having out three heats in one! "Don't rush in front! he'll smash your brains; But follow up and grab the reins!" Old Hiram spoke. Dan Pfeiffer heard, And sprang impatient at the word; Budd Doble started on his bay, Old Hiram followed on his gray, And off they spring, and round they go, The fast ones doing "all they know." Look! twice they follow at his heels, As round the circling course he wheels, And whirls with him that clinging boy Like Hector round the walls of Troy; Still on, and on, the third time round They're tailing off! they're losing ground! Budd Doble's nag begins to fail! Dan Pfeiffer's sorrel whisks his tail! And see! in spite of whip and shout, Old Hiram's mare is giving out! Now for the finish! at the turn, The old horse--all the rest astern-- Comes swinging in, with easy trot; By Jove! he's distanced all the lot! That trot no mortal could explain; Some said, "Old Dutchman come again!" Some took his time,--at least they tried, But what it was could none decide; One said he couldn't understand What happened to his second hand; One said 2.10; that could n't be-- More like two twenty-two or three; Old Hiram settled it at last; "The time was two--too dee-vel-ish fast!" The parson's horse had won the bet; It cost him something of a sweat; Back in the one-horse shay he went; The parson wondered what it meant, And murmured, with a mild surprise And pleasant twinkle of the eyes, That funeral must have been a trick, Or corpses drive at double-quick; I should n't wonder, I declare, If brother--Jehu--made the prayer! And this is all I have to say About that tough old trotting bay, Huddup! Huddup! G'lang! Good day! Moral for which this tale is told A horse can trot, for all he 's old. AN APPEAL FOR "THE OLD SOUTH" "While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand; When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall." FULL sevenscore years our city's pride-- The comely Southern spire-- Has cast its shadow, and defied The storm, the foe, the fire; Sad is the sight our eyes behold; Woe to the three-hilled town, When through the land the tale is told-- "The brave 'Old South' is down!" Let darkness blot the starless dawn That hears our children tell, "Here rose the walls, now wrecked and gone, Our fathers loved so well; Here, while his brethren stood aloof, The herald's blast was blown That shook St. Stephen's pillared roof And rocked King George's throne! "The home-bound wanderer of the main Looked from his deck afar, To where the gilded, glittering vane Shone like the evening star, And pilgrim feet from every clime The floor with reverence trod, Where holy memories made sublime The shrine of Freedom's God!" The darkened skies, alas! have seen Our monarch tree laid low, And spread in ruins o'er the green, But Nature struck the blow; No scheming thrift its downfall planned, It felt no edge of steel, No soulless hireling raised his hand The deadly stroke to deal. In bridal garlands, pale and mute, Still pleads the storied tower; These are the blossoms, but the fruit Awaits the golden shower; The spire still greets the morning sun,-- Say, shall it stand or fall? Help, ere the spoiler has begun! Help, each, and God help all! THE FIRST FAN READ AT A MEETING OF THE BOSTON BRIC-A-BRAC CLUB, FEBRUARY 21, 1877 WHEN rose the cry "Great Pan is dead!" And Jove's high palace closed its portal, The fallen gods, before they fled, Sold out their frippery to a mortal. "To whom?" you ask. I ask of you. The answer hardly needs suggestion; Of course it was the Wandering Jew,-- How could you put me such a question? A purple robe, a little worn, The Thunderer deigned himself to offer; The bearded wanderer laughed in scorn,-- You know he always was a scoffer. "Vife shillins! 't is a monstrous price; Say two and six and further talk shun." "Take it," cried Jove; "we can't be nice,-- 'T would fetch twice that at Leonard's auction." The ice was broken; up they came, All sharp for bargains, god and goddess, Each ready with the price to name For robe or head-dress, scarf or bodice. First Juno, out of temper, too,-- Her queenly forehead somewhat cloudy; Then Pallas in her stockings blue, Imposing, but a little dowdy. The scowling queen of heaven unrolled Before the Jew a threadbare turban "Three shillings." "One. 'T will suit some old Terrific feminine suburban." But as for Pallas,--how to tell In seemly phrase a fact so shocking? She pointed,--pray excuse me,--well, She pointed to her azure stocking. And if the honest truth were told, Its heel confessed the need of darning; "Gods!" low-bred Vulcan cried, "behold! There! that's what comes of too much larning!" Pale Proserpine came groping round, Her pupils dreadfully dilated With too much living underground,-- A residence quite overrated; This kerchief's what you want, I know,-- Don't cheat poor Venus of her cestus,-- You'll find it handy when you go To--you know where; it's pure asbestus. Then Phoebus of the silverr bow, And Hebe, dimpled as a baby, And Dian with the breast of snow, Chaser and chased--and caught, it may be: One took the quiver from her back, One held the cap he spent the night in, And one a bit of bric-a-brac, Such as the gods themselves delight in. Then Mars, the foe of human kind, Strode up and showed his suit of armor; So none at last was left behind Save Venus, the celestial charmer. Poor Venus! What had she to sell? For all she looked so fresh and jaunty, Her wardrobe, as I blush' to tell, Already seemed but quite too scanty. Her gems were sold, her sandals gone,-- She always would be rash and flighty,-- Her winter garments all in pawn, Alas for charming Aphrodite. The lady of a thousand loves, The darling of the old religion, Had only left of all the doves That drew her car one fan-tailed pigeon. How oft upon her finger-tips He perched, afraid of Cupid's arrow, Or kissed her on the rosebud lips, Like Roman Lesbia's loving sparrow! "My bird, I want your train," she cried; "Come, don't let's have a fuss about it; I'll make it beauty's pet and pride, And you'll be better off without it. "So vulgar! Have you noticed, pray, An earthly belle or dashing bride walk, And how her flounces track her way, Like slimy serpents on the sidewalk? "A lover's heart it quickly cools; In mine it kindles up enough rage To wring their necks. How can such fools Ask men to vote for woman suffrage?" The goddess spoke, and gently stripped Her bird of every caudal feather; A strand of gold-bright hair she clipped, And bound the glossy plumes together, And lo, the Fan! for beauty's hand, The lovely queen of beauty made it; The price she named was hard to stand, But Venus smiled: the Hebrew paid it. Jove, Juno, Venus, where are you? Mars, Mercury, Phoebus, Neptune, Saturn? But o'er the world the Wandering Jew Has borne the Fan's celestial pattern. So everywhere we find the Fan,-- In lonely isles of the Pacific, In farthest China and Japan,-- Wherever suns are sudorific. Nay, even the oily Esquimaux In summer court its cooling breezes,-- In fact, in every clime 't is so, No matter if it fries or freezes. And since from Aphrodite's dove The pattern of the fan was given, No wonder that it breathes of love And wafts the perfumed gales of heaven! Before this new Pandora's gift In slavery woman's tyrant kept her, But now he kneels her glove to lift,-- The fan is mightier than the sceptre. The tap it gives how arch and sly! The breath it wakes how fresh and grateful! Behind its shield how soft the sigh! The whispered tale of shame how fateful! Its empire shadows every throne And every shore that man is tost on; It rules the lords of every zone, Nay, even the bluest blood of Boston! But every one that swings to-night, Of fairest shape, from farthest region, May trace its pedigree aright To Aphrodite's fan-tailed pigeon. TO R. B. H. AT THE DINNER TO THE PRESIDENT, BOSTON, JUNE 26, 1877 How to address him? awkward, it is true Call him "Great Father," as the Red Men do? Borrow some title? this is not the place That christens men Your Highness and Your Grace; We tried such names as these awhile, you know, But left them off a century ago. His Majesty? We've had enough of that Besides, that needs a crown; he wears a hat. What if, to make the nicer ears content, We say His Honesty, the President? Sir, we believed you honest, truthful, brave, When to your hands their precious trust we gave, And we have found you better than we knew, Braver, and not less honest, not less true! So every heart has opened, every hand Tingles with welcome, and through all the land All voices greet you in one broad acclaim, Healer of strife! Has earth a nobler name? What phrases mean you do not need to learn; We must be civil, and they serve our turn "Your most obedient humble" means--means what? Something the well-bred signer just is not. Yet there are tokens, sir, you must believe; There is one language never can deceive The lover knew it when the maiden smiled; The mother knows it when she clasps her child; Voices may falter, trembling lips turn pale, Words grope and stumble; this will tell their tale Shorn of all rhetoric, bare of all pretence, But radiant, warm, with Nature's eloquence. Look in our eyes! Your welcome waits you there,-- North, South, East, West, from all and everywhere! THE SHIP OF STATE A SENTIMENT This "sentiment" was read on the same occasion as the "Family Record," which immediately follows it. The latter poem is the dutiful tribute of a son to his father and his father's ancestors, residents of Woodstock from its first settlement. THE Ship of State! above her skies are blue, But still she rocks a little, it is true, And there are passengers whose faces white Show they don't feel as happy as they might; Yet on the whole her crew are quite content, Since its wild fury the typhoon has spent, And willing, if her pilot thinks it best, To head a little nearer south by west. And this they feel: the ship came too near wreck, In the long quarrel for the quarter-deck, Now when she glides serenely on her way,-- The shallows past where dread explosives lay,-- The stiff obstructive's churlish game to try Let sleeping dogs and still torpedoes lie! And so I give you all the Ship of State; Freedom's last venture is her priceless freight; God speed her, keep her, bless her, while she steers Amid the breakers of unsounded years; Lead her through danger's paths with even keel, And guide the honest hand that holds her wheel! WOODSTOCK, CONN., July 4, 1877. A FAMILY RECORD WOODSTOCK, CONN., JULY 4, 1877 NOT to myself this breath of vesper song, Not to these patient friends, this kindly throng, Not to this hallowed morning, though it be Our summer Christmas, Freedom's jubilee, When every summit, topmast, steeple, tower, That owns her empire spreads her starry flower, Its blood-streaked leaves in heaven's benignant dew Washed clean from every crimson stain they knew,-- No, not to these the passing thrills belong That steal my breath to hush themselves with song. These moments all are memory's; I have come To speak with lips that rather should be dumb; For what are words? At every step I tread The dust that wore the footprints of the dead But for whose life my life had never known This faded vesture which it calls its own. Here sleeps my father's sire, and they who gave That earlier life here found their peaceful grave. In days gone by I sought the hallowed ground; Climbed yon long slope; the sacred spot I found Where all unsullied lies the winter snow, Where all ungathered spring's pale violets blow, And tracked from stone to stone the Saxon name That marks the blood I need not blush to claim, Blood such as warmed the Pilgrim sons of toil, Who held from God the charter of the soil. I come an alien to your hills and plains, Yet feel your birthright tingling in my veins; Mine are this changing prospect's sun and shade, In full-blown summer's bridal pomp arrayed; Mine these fair hillsides and the vales between; Mine the sweet streams that lend their brightening green; I breathed your air--the sunlit landscape smiled; I touch your soil--it knows its children's child; Throned in my heart your heritage is mine; I claim it all by memory's right divine Waking, I dream. Before my vacant eyes In long procession shadowy forms arise; Far through the vista of the silent years I see a venturous band; the pioneers, Who let the sunlight through the forest's gloom, Who bade the harvest wave, the garden bloom. Hark! loud resounds the bare-armed settler's axe, See where the stealthy panther left his tracks! As fierce, as stealthy creeps the skulking foe With stone-tipped shaft and sinew-corded bow; Soon shall he vanish from his ancient reign, Leave his last cornfield to the coming train, Quit the green margin of the wave he drinks, For haunts that hide the wild-cat and the lynx. But who the Youth his glistening axe that swings To smite the pine that shows a hundred rings? His features?--something in his look I find That calls the semblance of my race to mind. His name?--my own; and that which goes before The same that once the loved disciple bore. Young, brave, discreet, the father of a line Whose voiceless lives have found a voice in mine; Thinned by unnumbered currents though they be, Thanks for the ruddy drops I claim from thee! The seasons pass; the roses come and go; Snows fall and melt; the waters freeze and flow; The boys are men; the girls, grown tall and fair, Have found their mates; a gravestone here and there Tells where the fathers lie; the silvered hair Of some bent patriarch yet recalls the time That saw his feet the northern hillside climb, A pilgrim from the pilgrims far away, The godly men, the dwellers by the bay. On many a hearthstone burns the cheerful fire; The schoolhouse porch, the heavenward pointing spire Proclaim in letters every eye can read, Knowledge and Faith, the new world's simple creed. Hush! 't is the Sabbath's silence-stricken morn No feet must wander through the tasselled corn; No merry children laugh around the door, No idle playthings strew the sanded floor; The law of Moses lays its awful ban On all that stirs; here comes the tithing-man At last the solemn hour of worship calls; Slowly they gather in the sacred walls; Man in his strength and age with knotted staff, And boyhood aching for its week-day laugh, The toil-worn mother with the child she leads, The maiden, lovely in her golden beads,-- The popish symbols round her neck she wears, But on them counts her lovers, not her prayers,-- Those youths in homespun suits and ribboned queues, Whose hearts are beating in the high-backed pews. The pastor rises; looks along the seats With searching eye; each wonted face he meets; Asks heavenly guidance; finds the chapter's place That tells some tale of Israel's stubborn race; Gives out the sacred song; all voices join, For no quartette extorts their scanty coin; Then while both hands their black-gloved palms display, Lifts his gray head, and murmurs, "Let us pray!" And pray he does! as one that never fears To plead unanswered by the God that hears; What if he dwells on many a fact as though Some things Heaven knew not which it ought to know,-- Thanks God for all his favors past, and yet, Tells Him there's something He must not forget; Such are the prayers his people love to hear,-- See how the Deacon slants his listening ear! What! look once more! Nay, surely there I trace The hinted outlines of a well-known face! Not those the lips for laughter to beguile, Yet round their corners lurks an embryo smile, The same on other lips my childhood knew That scarce the Sabbath's mastery could subdue. Him too my lineage gives me leave to claim,-- The good, grave man that bears the Psalmist's name. And still in ceaseless round the seasons passed; Spring piped her carol; Autumn blew his blast; Babes waxed to manhood; manhood shrunk to age; Life's worn-out players tottered off the stage; The few are many; boys have grown to men Since Putnam dragged the wolf from Pomfret's den; Our new-old Woodstock is a thriving town; Brave are her children; faithful to the crown; Her soldiers' steel the savage redskin knows; Their blood has crimsoned his Canadian snows. And now once more along the quiet vale Rings the dread call that turns the mothers pale; Full well they know the valorous heat that runs In every pulse-beat of their loyal sons; Who would not bleed in good King George's cause When England's lion shows his teeth and claws? With glittering firelocks on the village green In proud array a martial band is seen; You know what names those ancient rosters hold,-- Whose belts were buckled when the drum-beat rolled,-- But mark their Captain! tell us, who is he? On his brown face that same old look I see Yes! from the homestead's still retreat he came, Whose peaceful owner bore the Psalmist's name; The same his own. Well, Israel's glorious king Who struck the harp could also whirl the sling,-- Breathe in his song a penitential sigh And smite the sons of Amalek hip and thigh: These shared their task; one deaconed out the psalm, One slashed the scalping hell-hounds of calm; The praying father's pious work is done, Now sword in hand steps forth the fighting son. On many a field he fought in wilds afar; See on his swarthy cheek the bullet's scar! There hangs a murderous tomahawk; beneath, Without its blade, a knife's embroidered sheath; Save for the stroke his trusty weapon dealt His scalp had dangled at their owner's belt; But not for him such fate; he lived to see The bloodier strife that made our nation free, To serve with willing toil, with skilful hand, The war-worn saviors of the bleeding land. His wasting life to others' needs he gave,-- Sought rest in home and found it in the grave. See where the stones life's brief memorials keep, The tablet telling where he "fell on sleep,"-- Watched by a winged cherub's rayless eye,-- A scroll above that says we all must die,-- Those saddening lines beneath, the "Night-Thoughts" lent: So stands the Soldier's, Surgeon's monument. Ah! at a glance my filial eye divines The scholar son in those remembered lines. The Scholar Son. His hand my footsteps led. No more the dim unreal past I tread. O thou whose breathing form was once so dear, Whose cheering voice was music to my ear, Art thou not with me as my feet pursue The village paths so well thy boyhood knew, Along the tangled margin of the stream Whose murmurs blended with thine infant dream, Or climb the hill, or thread the wooded vale, Or seek the wave where gleams yon distant sail, Or the old homestead's narrowed bounds explore, Where sloped the roof that sheds the rains no more, Where one last relic still remains to tell Here stood thy home,--the memory-haunted well, Whose waters quench a deeper thirst than thine, Changed at my lips to sacramental wine,-- Art thou not with me, as I fondly trace The scanty records of thine honored race, Call up the forms that earlier years have known, And spell the legend of each slanted stone? With thoughts of thee my loving verse began, Not for the critic's curious eye to scan, Not for the many listeners, but the few Whose fathers trod the paths my fathers knew; Still in my heart thy loved remembrance burns; Still to my lips thy cherished name returns; Could I but feel thy gracious presence near Amid the groves that once to thee were dear Could but my trembling lips with mortal speech Thy listening ear for one brief moment reach! How vain the dream! The pallid voyager's track No sign betrays; he sends no message back. No word from thee since evening's shadow fell On thy cold forehead with my long farewell,-- Now from the margin of the silent sea, Take my last offering ere I cross to thee! 
7396	----	THE POETICAL WORKS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES [Volume 3 of the 1893 three volume set] THE IRON GATE AND OTHER POEMS 1877-1881 THE IRON GATE VESTIGIA QUINQUE RETRORSUM MY AVIARY ON THE THRESHOLD TO GEORGE PEABODY AT THE PAPYRUS CLUB FOR WHITTIER'S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY TWO SONNETS: HARVARD THE COMING ERA IN RESPONSE FOR THE MOORE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION TO JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE WELCOME TO THE CHICAGO COMMERCIAL CLUB AMERICAN ACADEMY CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION THE SCHOOL-BOY THE SILENT MELODY OUR HOME--OUR COUNTRY POEM AT THE CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY DINNER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL SOCIETY RHYMES OF A LIFE-TIME THE IRON GATE Read at the Breakfast given in honor of Dr. Holmes's Seventieth Birthday by the publishers of the "Atlantic Monthly," Boston, December 3, 1879. WHERE is this patriarch you are kindly greeting? Not unfamiliar to my ear his name, Nor yet unknown to many a joyous meeting In days long vanished,--is he still the same, Or changed by years, forgotten and forgetting, Dull-eared, dim-sighted, slow of speech and thought, Still o'er the sad, degenerate present fretting, Where all goes wrong, and nothing as it ought? Old age, the graybeard! Well, indeed, I know him,-- Shrunk, tottering, bent, of aches and ills the prey; In sermon, story, fable, picture, poem, Oft have I met him from my earliest day. In my old AEsop, toiling with his bundle,-- His load of sticks,--politely asking Death, Who comes when called for,--would he lug or trundle His fagot for him?--he was scant of breath. And sad "Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher,"-- Has he not stamped the image on my soul, In that last chapter, where the worn-out Teacher Sighs o'er the loosened cord, the broken bowl? Yes, long, indeed, I've known him at a distance, And now my lifted door-latch shows him here; I take his shrivelled hand without resistance, And find him smiling as his step draws near. What though of gilded baubles he bereaves us, Dear to the heart of youth, to manhood's prime; Think of the calm he brings, the wealth he leaves us, The hoarded spoils, the legacies of time! Altars once flaming, still with incense fragrant, Passion's uneasy nurslings rocked asleep, Hope's anchor faster, wild desire less vagrant, Life's flow less noisy, but the stream how deep! Still as the silver cord gets worn and slender, Its lightened task-work tugs with lessening strain, Hands get more helpful, voices, grown more tender, Soothe with their softened tones the slumberous brain. Youth longs and manhood strives, but age remembers, Sits by the raked-up ashes of the past, Spreads its thin hands above the whitening embers That warm its creeping life-blood till the last. Dear to its heart is every loving token That comes unbidden ere its pulse grows cold, Ere the last lingering ties of life are broken, Its labors ended and its story told. Ah, while around us rosy youth rejoices, For us the sorrow-laden breezes sigh, And through the chorus of its jocund voices Throbs the sharp note of misery's hopeless cry. As on the gauzy wings of fancy flying From some far orb I track our watery sphere, Home of the struggling, suffering, doubting, dying, The silvered globule seems a glistening tear. But Nature lends her mirror of illusion To win from saddening scenes our age-dimmed eyes, And misty day-dreams blend in sweet confusion The wintry landscape and the summer skies. So when the iron portal shuts behind us, And life forgets us in its noise and whirl, Visions that shunned the glaring noonday find us, And glimmering starlight shows the gates of pearl. I come not here your morning hour to sadden, A limping pilgrim, leaning on his staff,-- I, who have never deemed it sin to gladden This vale of sorrows with a wholesome laugh. If word of mine another's gloom has brightened, Through my dumb lips the heaven-sent message came; If hand of mine another's task has lightened, It felt the guidance that it dares not claim. But, O my gentle sisters, O my brothers, These thick-sown snow-flakes hint of toil's release; These feebler pulses bid me leave to others The tasks once welcome; evening asks for peace. Time claims his tribute; silence now is golden; Let me not vex the too long suffering lyre; Though to your love untiring still beholden, The curfew tells me--cover up the fire. And now with grateful smile and accents cheerful, And warmer heart than look or word can tell, In simplest phrase--these traitorous eyes are tearful-- Thanks, Brothers, Sisters,--Children,--and farewell! VESTIGIA QUINQUE RETRORSUM AN ACADEMIC POEM 1829-1879 Read at the Commencement Dinner of the Alumni of Harvard University, June 25, 1879. WHILE fond, sad memories all around us throng, Silence were sweeter than the sweetest song; Yet when the leaves are green and heaven is blue, The choral tribute of the grove is due, And when the lengthening nights have chilled the skies, We fain would hear the song-bird ere be flies, And greet with kindly welcome, even as now, The lonely minstrel on his leafless bough. This is our golden year,--its golden day; Its bridal memories soon must pass away; Soon shall its dying music cease to ring, And every year must loose some silver string, Till the last trembling chords no longer thrill,-- Hands all at rest and hearts forever still. A few gray heads have joined the forming line; We hear our summons,--"Class of 'Twenty-Nine!" Close on the foremost, and, alas, how few! Are these "The Boys" our dear old Mother knew? Sixty brave swimmers. Twenty--something more-- Have passed the stream and reached this frosty shore! How near the banks these fifty years divide When memory crosses with a single stride! 'T is the first year of stern "Old Hickory" 's rule When our good Mother lets us out of school, Half glad, half sorrowing, it must be confessed, To leave her quiet lap, her bounteous breast, Armed with our dainty, ribbon-tied degrees, Pleased and yet pensive, exiles and A. B.'s. Look back, O comrades, with your faded eyes, And see the phantoms as I bid them rise. Whose smile is that? Its pattern Nature gave, A sunbeam dancing in a dimpled wave; KIRKLAND alone such grace from Heaven could win, His features radiant as the soul within; That smile would let him through Saint Peter's gate While sad-eyed martyrs had to stand and wait. Here flits mercurial _Farrar_; standing there, See mild, benignant, cautious, learned _Ware_, And sturdy, patient, faithful, honest _Hedge_, Whose grinding logic gave our wits their edge; _Ticknor_, with honeyed voice and courtly grace; And _Willard_, larynxed like a double bass; And _Channing_, with his bland, superior look, Cool as a moonbeam on a frozen brook, While the pale student, shivering in his shoes, Sees from his theme the turgid rhetoric ooze; And the born soldier, fate decreed to wreak His martial manhood on a class in Greek, _Popkin_! How that explosive name recalls The grand old Busby of our ancient halls Such faces looked from Skippon's grim platoons, Such figures rode with Ireton's stout dragoons: He gave his strength to learning's gentle charms, But every accent sounded "Shoulder arms!" Names,--empty names! Save only here and there Some white-haired listener, dozing in his chair, Starts at the sound he often used to hear, And upward slants his Sunday-sermon ear. And we--our blooming manhood we regain; Smiling we join the long Commencement train, One point first battled in discussion hot,-- Shall we wear gowns? and settled: We will not. How strange the scene,--that noisy boy-debate Where embryo-speakers learn to rule the State! This broad-browed youth, sedate and sober-eyed, Shall wear the ermined robe at Taney's side; And he, the stripling, smooth of face and slight, Whose slender form scarce intercepts the light, Shall rule the Bench where Parsons gave the law, And sphinx-like sat uncouth, majestic Shaw Ah, many a star has shed its fatal ray On names we loved--our brothers--where are they? Nor these alone; our hearts in silence claim Names not less dear, unsyllabled by fame. How brief the space! and yet it sweeps us back Far, far along our new-born history's track Five strides like this;--the sachem rules the land; The Indian wigwams cluster where we stand. The second. Lo! a scene of deadly strife-- A nation struggling into infant life; Not yet the fatal game at Yorktown won Where failing Empire fired its sunset gun. LANGDON sits restless in the ancient chair,-- Harvard's grave Head,--these echoes heard his prayer When from yon mansion, dear to memory still, The banded yeomen marched for Bunker's Hill. Count on the grave triennial's thick-starred roll What names were numbered on the lengthening scroll,-- Not unfamiliar in our ears they ring,-- Winthrop, Hale, Eliot, Everett, Dexter, Tyng. Another stride. Once more at 'twenty-nine,-- GOD SAVE KING GEORGE, the Second of his line! And is Sir Isaac living? Nay, not so,-- He followed Flainsteed two short years ago,-- And what about the little hump-backed man Who pleased the bygone days of good Queen Anne? What, Pope? another book he's just put out,-- "The Dunciad,"--witty, but profane, no doubt. Where's Cotton Mather? he was always here. And so he would be, but he died last year. Who is this preacher our Northampton claims, Whose rhetoric blazes with sulphureous flames And torches stolen from Tartarean mines? Edwards, the salamander of divines. A deep, strong nature, pure and undefiled; Faith, firm as his who stabbed his sleeping child; Alas for him who blindly strays apart, And seeking God has lost his human heart! Fall where they might, no flying cinders caught These sober halls where WADSWORTH ruled and taught. One footstep more; the fourth receding stride Leaves the round century on the nearer side. GOD SAVE KING CHARLES! God knows that pleasant knave His grace will find it hard enough to save. Ten years and more, and now the Plague, the Fire, Talk of all tongues, at last begin to tire; One fear prevails, all other frights forgot,-- White lips are whispering,--hark! The Popish Plot! Happy New England, from such troubles free In health and peace beyond the stormy sea! No Romish daggers threat her children's throats, No gibbering nightmare mutters "Titus Oates;" Philip is slain, the Quaker graves are green, Not yet the witch has entered on the scene; Happy our Harvard; pleased her graduates four; URIAN OAKES the name their parchments bore. Two centuries past, our hurried feet arrive At the last footprint of the scanty five; Take the fifth stride; our wandering eyes explore A tangled forest on a trackless shore; Here, where we stand, the savage sorcerer howls, The wild cat snarls, the stealthy gray wolf prowls, The slouching bear, perchance the trampling moose Starts the brown squaw and scares her red pappoose; At every step the lurking foe is near; His Demons reign; God has no temple here! Lift up your eyes! behold these pictured walls; Look where the flood of western glory falls Through the great sunflower disk of blazing panes In ruby, saffron, azure, emerald stains; With reverent step the marble pavement tread Where our proud Mother's martyr-roll is read; See the great halls that cluster, gathering round This lofty shrine with holiest memories crowned; See the fair Matron in her summer bower, Fresh as a rose in bright perennial flower; Read on her standard, always in the van, "TRUTH,"--the one word that makes a slave a man; Think whose the hands that fed her altar-fires, Then count the debt we owe our scholar-sires! Brothers, farewell! the fast declining ray Fades to the twilight of our golden day; Some lesson yet our wearied brains may learn, Some leaves, perhaps, in life's thin volume turn. How few they seem as in our waning age We count them backwards to the title-page! Oh let us trust with holy men of old Not all the story here begun is told; So the tired spirit, waiting to be freed, On life's last leaf with tranquil eye shall read By the pale glimmer of the torch reversed, Not Finis, but _The End of Volume First_! MY AVIARY Through my north window, in the wintry weather,-- My airy oriel on the river shore,-- I watch the sea-fowl as they flock together Where late the boatman flashed his dripping oar. The gull, high floating, like a sloop unladen, Lets the loose water waft him as it will; The duck, round-breasted as a rustic maiden, Paddles and plunges, busy, busy still. I see the solemn gulls in council sitting On some broad ice-floe pondering long and late, While overhead the home-bound ducks are flitting, And leave the tardy conclave in debate, Those weighty questions in their breasts revolving Whose deeper meaning science never learns, Till at some reverend elder's look dissolving, The speechless senate silently adjourns. But when along the waves the shrill north-easter Shrieks through the laboring coaster's shrouds "Beware!" The pale bird, kindling like a Christmas feaster When some wild chorus shakes the vinous air, Flaps from the leaden wave in fierce rejoicing, Feels heaven's dumb lightning thrill his torpid nerves, Now on the blast his whistling plumage poising, Now wheeling, whirling in fantastic curves. Such is our gull; a gentleman of leisure, Less fleshed than feathered; bagged you'll find him such; His virtue silence; his employment pleasure; Not bad to look at, and not good for much. What of our duck? He has some high-bred cousins,-- His Grace the Canvas-back, My Lord the Brant,-- Anas and Anser,--both served up by dozens, At Boston's Rocher, half-way to Nahant. As for himself, he seems alert and thriving,-- Grubs up a living somehow--what, who knows? Crabs? mussels? weeds?--Look quick! there 's one just diving! Flop! Splash! his white breast glistens--down he goes! And while he 's under--just about a minute-- I take advantage of the fact to say His fishy carcase has no virtue in it The gunning idiot's worthless hire to pay. Shrewd is our bird; not easy to outwit him! Sharp is the outlook of those pin-head eyes; Still, he is mortal and a shot may hit him, One cannot always miss him if he tries. He knows you! "sportsmen" from suburban alleys, Stretched under seaweed in the treacherous punt; Knows every lazy, shiftless lout that sallies Forth to waste powder--as he says, to "hunt." I watch you with a patient satisfaction, Well pleased to discount your predestined luck; The float that figures in your sly transaction Will carry back a goose, but not a duck. Look! there's a young one, dreaming not of danger; Sees a flat log come floating down the stream; Stares undismayed upon the harmless stranger; Ah! were all strangers harmless as they seem! _Habet_! a leaden shower his breast has shattered; Vainly he flutters, not again to rise; His soft white plumes along the waves are scattered; Helpless the wing that braved the tempest lies. He sees his comrades high above him flying To seek their nests among the island reeds; Strong is their flight; all lonely he is lying Washed by the crimsoned water as he bleeds. O Thou who carest for the falling sparrow, Canst Thou the sinless sufferer's pang forget? Or is thy dread account-book's page so narrow Its one long column scores thy creatures' debt? Poor gentle guest, by nature kindly cherished, A world grows dark with thee in blinding death; One little gasp--thy universe has perished, Wrecked by the idle thief who stole thy breath! Is this the whole sad story of creation, Lived by its breathing myriads o'er and o'er,-- One glimpse of day, then black annihilation,-- A sunlit passage to a sunless shore? Give back our faith, ye mystery-solving lynxes! Robe us once more in heaven-aspiring creeds Happier was dreaming Egypt with her sphinxes, The stony convent with its cross and beads! How often gazing where a bird reposes, Rocked on the wavelets, drifting with the tide, I lose myself in strange metempsychosis And float a sea-fowl at a sea-fowl's side; From rain, hail, snow in feathery mantle muffled, Clear-eyed, strong-limbed, with keenest sense to hear My mate soft murmuring, who, with plumes unruffled, Where'er I wander still is nestling near; The great blue hollow like a garment o'er me; Space all unmeasured, unrecorded time; While seen with inward eye moves on before me Thought's pictured train in wordless pantomime. A voice recalls me.--From my window turning I find myself a plumeless biped still; No beak, no claws, no sign of wings discerning,-- In fact with nothing bird-like but my quill. ON THE THRESHOLD INTRODUCTION TO A COLLECTION OF POEMS BYDIFFERENT AUTHORS AN usher standing at the door I show my white rosette; A smile of welcome, nothing more, Will pay my trifling debt; Why should I bid you idly wait Like lovers at the swinging gate? Can I forget the wedding guest? The veteran of the sea? In vain the listener smites his breast,-- "There was a ship," cries he! Poor fasting victim, stunned and pale, He needs must listen to the tale. He sees the gilded throng within, The sparkling goblets gleam, The music and the merry din Through every window stream, But there he shivers in the cold Till all the crazy dream is told. Not mine the graybeard's glittering eye That held his captive still To hold my silent prisoners by And let me have my will; Nay, I were like the three-years' child, To think you could be so beguiled! My verse is but the curtain's fold That hides the painted scene, The mist by morning's ray unrolled That veils the meadow's green, The cloud that needs must drift away To show the rose of opening day. See, from the tinkling rill you hear In hollowed palm I bring These scanty drops, but ah, how near The founts that heavenward spring! Thus, open wide the gates are thrown And founts and flowers are all your own! TO GEORGE PEABODY DANVERS, 1866 BANKRUPT! our pockets inside out! Empty of words to speak his praises! Worcester and Webster up the spout! Dead broke of laudatory phrases! Yet why with flowery speeches tease, With vain superlatives distress him? Has language better words than these? THE FRIEND OF ALL HIS RACE, GOD BLESS HIM! A simple prayer--but words more sweet By human lips were never uttered, Since Adam left the country seat Where angel wings around him fluttered. The old look on with tear-dimmed eyes, The children cluster to caress him, And every voice unbidden cries, THE FRIEND OF ALL HIS RACE, GOD BLESS HIM! AT THE PAPYRUS CLUB A LOVELY show for eyes to see I looked upon this morning,-- A bright-hued, feathered company Of nature's own adorning; But ah! those minstrels would not sing A listening ear while I lent,-- The lark sat still and preened his wing, The nightingale was silent; I longed for what they gave me not-- Their warblings sweet and fluty, But grateful still for all I got I thanked them for their beauty. A fairer vision meets my view Of Claras, Margarets, Marys, In silken robes of varied hue, Like bluebirds and canaries; The roses blush, the jewels gleam, The silks and satins glisten, The black eyes flash, the blue eyes beam, We look--and then we listen Behold the flock we cage to-night-- Was ever such a capture? To see them is a pure delight; To hear them--ah! what rapture! Methinks I hear Delilah's laugh At Samson bound in fetters; "We captured!" shrieks each lovelier half, "Men think themselves our betters! We push the bolt, we turn the key On warriors, poets, sages, Too happy, all of them, to be Locked in our golden cages!" Beware! the boy with bandaged eyes Has flung away his blinder; He 's lost his mother--so he cries-- And here he knows he'll find her: The rogue! 't is but a new device,-- Look out for flying arrows Whene'er the birds of Paradise Are perched amid the sparrows! FOR WHITTIER'S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY DECEMBER 17, 1877 I BELIEVE that the copies of verses I've spun, Like Scheherezade's tales, are a thousand and one; You remember the story,--those mornings in bed,-- 'T was the turn of a copper,--a tale or a head. A doom like Scheherezade's falls upon me In a mandate as stern as the Sultan's decree I'm a florist in verse, and what would people say If I came to a banquet without my bouquet? It is trying, no doubt, when the company knows Just the look and the smell of each lily and rose, The green of each leaf in the sprigs that I bring, And the shape of the bunch and the knot of the string. Yes,--"the style is the man," and the nib of one's pen Makes the same mark at twenty, and threescore and ten; It is so in all matters, if truth may be told; Let one look at the cast he can tell you the mould. How we all know each other! no use in disguise; Through the holes in the mask comes the flash of the eyes; We can tell by his--somewhat--each one of our tribe, As we know the old hat which we cannot describe. Though in Hebrew, in Sanscrit, in Choctaw you write, Sweet singer who gave us the Voices of Night, Though in buskin or slipper your song may be shod; Or the velvety verse that Evangeline trod, We shall say, "You can't cheat us,--we know it is you," There is one voice like that, but there cannot be two, Maestro, whose chant like the dulcimer rings And the woods will be hushed while the nightingale sings. And he, so serene, so majestic, so true, Whose temple hypethral the planets shine through, Let us catch but five words from that mystical pen, We should know our one sage from all children of men. And he whose bright image no distance can dim, Through a hundred disguises we can't mistake him, Whose play is all earnest, whose wit is the edge (With a beetle behind) of a sham-splitting wedge. Do you know whom we send you, Hidalgos of Spain? Do you know your old friends when you see them again? Hosea was Sancho! you Dons of Madrid, But Sancho that wielded the lance of the Cid! And the wood-thrush of Essex,--you know whom I mean, Whose song echoes round us while he sits unseen, Whose heart-throbs of verse through our memories thrill Like a breath from the wood, like a breeze from the hill, So fervid, so simple, so loving, so pure, We hear but one strain and our verdict is sure,-- Thee cannot elude us,--no further we search,-- 'T is Holy George Herbert cut loose from his church! We think it the voice of a seraph that sings,-- Alas! we remember that angels have wings,-- What story is this of the day of his birth? Let him live to a hundred! we want him on earth! One life has been paid him (in gold) by the sun; One account has been squared and another begun; But he never will die if he lingers below Till we've paid him in love half the balance we owe! TWO SONNETS: HARVARD At the meeting of the New York Harvard Club, February 21, 1878. "CHRISTO ET ECCLESLE." 1700 To GOD'S ANOINTED AND HIS CHOSEN FLOCK So ran the phrase the black-robed conclave chose To guard the sacred cloisters that arose Like David's altar on Moriah's rock. Unshaken still those ancient arches mock The ram's-horn summons of the windy foes Who stand like Joshua's army while it blows And wait to see them toppling with the shock. Christ and the Church. Their church, whose narrow door Shut out the many, who if overbold Like hunted wolves were driven from the fold, Bruised with the flails these godly zealots bore, Mindful that Israel's altar stood of old Where echoed once Araunah's threshing-floor. 1643 "VERITAS." 1878 TRUTH: So the frontlet's older legend ran, On the brief record's opening page displayed; Not yet those clear-eyed scholars were afraid Lest the fair fruit that wrought the woe of man By far Euphrates--where our sire began His search for truth, and, seeking, was betrayed-- Might work new treason in their forest shade, Doubling the curse that brought life's shortened span. Nurse of the future, daughter of the past, That stern phylactery best becomes thee now Lift to the morning star thy marble brow Cast thy brave truth on every warring blast! Stretch thy white hand to that forbidden bough, And let thine earliest symbol be thy last! THE COMING ERA THEY tell us that the Muse is soon to fly hence, Leaving the bowers of song that once were dear, Her robes bequeathing to her sister, Science, The groves of Pindus for the axe to clear. Optics will claim the wandering eye of fancy, Physics will grasp imagination's wings, Plain fact exorcise fiction's necromancy, The workshop hammer where the minstrel sings, No more with laugher at Thalia's frolics Our eyes shall twinkle till the tears run down, But in her place the lecturer on hydraulics Spout forth his watery science to the town. No more our foolish passions and affections The tragic Muse with mimic grief shall try, But, nobler far, a course of vivisections Teach what it costs a tortured brute to die. The unearthed monad, long in buried rocks hid, Shall tell the secret whence our being came; The chemist show us death is life's black oxide, Left when the breath no longer fans its flame. Instead of crack-brained poets in their attics Filling thin volumes with their flowery talk, There shall be books of wholesome mathematics; The tutor with his blackboard and his chalk. No longer bards with madrigal and sonnet Shall woo to moonlight walks the ribboned sex, But side by side the beaver and the bonnet Stroll, calmly pondering on some problem's x. The sober bliss of serious calculation Shall mock the trivial joys that fancy drew, And, oh, the rapture of a solved equation,-- One self-same answer on the lips of two! So speak in solemn tones our youthful sages, Patient, severe, laborious, slow, exact, As o'er creation's protoplasmic pages They browse and munch the thistle crops of fact. And yet we 've sometimes found it rather pleasant To dream again the scenes that Shakespeare drew,-- To walk the hill-side with the Scottish peasant Among the daisies wet with morning's dew; To leave awhile the daylight of the real, Led by the guidance of the master's hand, For the strange radiance of the far ideal,-- "The light that never was on sea or land." Well, Time alone can lift the future's curtain,-- Science may teach our children all she knows, But Love will kindle fresh young hearts, 't is certain, And June will not forget her blushing rose. And so, in spite of all that Time is bringing,-- Treasures of truth and miracles of art, Beauty and Love will keep the poet singing, And song still live, the science of the heart. IN RESPONSE Breakfast at the Century Club, New York, May, 1879. SUCH kindness! the scowl of a cynic would soften, His pulse beat its way to some eloquent words, Alas! my poor accents have echoed too often, Like that Pinafore music you've some of you heard. Do you know me, dear strangers--the hundredth time comer At banquets and feasts since the days of my Spring? Ah! would I could borrow one rose of my Summer, But this is a leaf of my Autumn I bring. I look at your faces,--I'm sure there are some from The three-breasted mother I count as my own; You think you remember the place you have come from, But how it has changed in the years that have flown! Unaltered, 't is true, is the hall we call "Funnel," Still fights the "Old South" in the battle for life, But we've opened our door to the West through the tunnel, And we've cut off Fort Hill with our Amazon knife. You should see the new Westminster Boston has builded,-- Its mansions, its spires, its museums of arts,-- You should see the great dome we have gorgeously gilded,-- 'T is the light of our eyes, 't is the joy of our hearts. When first in his path a young asteroid found it, As he sailed through the skies with the stars in his wake, He thought 't was the sun, and kept circling around it Till Edison signalled, "You've made a mistake." We are proud of our city,--her fast-growing figure, The warp and the woof of her brain and her hands,-- But we're proudest of all that her heart has grown bigger, And warms with fresh blood as her girdle expands. One lesson the rubric of conflict has taught her Though parted awhile by war's earth-rending shock, The lines that divide us are written in water, The love that unites us cut deep in the rock. As well might the Judas of treason endeavor To write his black name on the disk of the sun As try the bright star-wreath that binds us to sever And blot the fair legend of "Many in One." We love You, tall sister, the stately, the splendid,-- The banner of empire floats high on your towers, Yet ever in welcome your arms are extended,-- We share in your splendors, your glory is ours. Yes, Queen of the Continent! All of us own thee,-- The gold-freighted argosies flock at thy call, The naiads, the sea-nymphs have met to enthrone thee, But the Broadway of one is the Highway of all! I thank you. Three words that can hardly be mended, Though phrases on phrases their eloquence pile, If you hear the heart's throb with their eloquence blended, And read all they mean in a sunshiny smile. FOR THE MOORE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION MAY 28, 1879. ENCHANTER of Erin, whose magic has bound us, Thy wand for one moment we fondly would claim, Entranced while it summons the phantoms around us That blush into life at the sound of thy name. The tell-tales of memory wake from their slumbers,-- I hear the old song with its tender refrain,-- What passion lies hid in those honey-voiced numbers What perfume of youth in each exquisite strain! The home of my childhood comes back as a vision,-- Hark! Hark! A soft chord from its song-haunted room,-- 'T is a morning of May, when the air is Elysian,-- The syringa in bud and the lilac in bloom,-- We are clustered around the "Clementi" piano,-- There were six of us then,--there are two of us now,-- She is singing--the girl with the silver soprano-- How "The Lord of the Valley" was false to his vow; "Let Erin remember" the echoes are calling; Through "The Vale of Avoca" the waters are rolled; "The Exile" laments while the night-dews falling; "The Morning of Life" dawns again as of old. But ah! those warm love-songs of fresh adolescence! Around us such raptures celestial they flung That it seemed as if Paradise breathed its quintessence Through the seraph-toned lips of the maiden that sung! Long hushed are the chords that my boyhood enchanted As when the smooth wave by the angel was stirred, Yet still with their music is memory haunted, And oft in my dreams are their melodies heard. I feel like the priest to his altar returning,-- The crowd that was kneeling no longer is there, The flame has died down, but the brands are still burning, And sandal and cinnamon sweeten the air. II. The veil for her bridal young Summer is weaving In her azure-domed hall with its tapestried floor, And Spring the last tear-drop of May-dew is leaving On the daisy of Burns and the shamrock of Moore. How like, how unlike, as we view them together, The song of the minstrels whose record we scan,-- One fresh as the breeze blowing over the heather, One sweet as the breath from an odalisque's fan! Ah, passion can glow mid a palace's splendor; The cage does not alter the song of the bird; And the curtain of silk has known whispers as tender As ever the blossoming hawthorn has heard. No fear lest the step of the soft-slippered Graces Should fright the young Loves from their warm little nest, For the heart of a queen, under jewels and laces, Beats time with the pulse in the peasant girl's breast! Thrice welcome each gift of kind Nature's bestowing! Her fountain heeds little the goblet we hold; Alike, when its musical waters are flowing, The shell from the seaside, the chalice of gold. The twins of the lyre to her voices had listened; Both laid their best gifts upon Liberty's shrine; For Coila's loved minstrel the holly-wreath glistened; For Erin's the rose and the myrtle entwine. And while the fresh blossoms of summer are braided For the sea-girdled, stream-silvered, lake-jewelled isle, While her mantle of verdure is woven unfaded, While Shannon and Liffey shall dimple and smile, The land where the staff of Saint Patrick was planted, Where the shamrock grows green from the cliffs to the shore, The land of fair maidens and heroes undaunted, Shall wreathe her bright harp with the garlands of Moore! TO JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE APRIL 4, 1880 I BRING the simplest pledge of love, Friend of my earlier days; Mine is the hand without the glove, The heart-beat, not the phrase. How few still breathe this mortal air We called by school-boy names! You still, whatever robe you wear, To me are always James. That name the kind apostle bore Who shames the sullen creeds, Not trusting less, but loving more, And showing faith by deeds. What blending thoughts our memories share! What visions yours and mine Of May-days in whose morning air The dews were golden wine, Of vistas bright with opening day, Whose all-awakening sun Showed in life's landscape, far away, The summits to be won! The heights are gained. Ah, say not so For him who smiles at time, Leaves his tired comrades down below, And only lives to climb! His labors,--will they ever cease,-- With hand and tongue and pen? Shall wearied Nature ask release At threescore years and ten? Our strength the clustered seasons tax,-- For him new life they mean; Like rods around the lictor's axe They keep him bright and keen. The wise, the brave, the strong, we know,-- We mark them here or there, But he,--we roll our eyes, and lo! We find him everywhere! With truth's bold cohorts, or alone, He strides through error's field; His lance is ever manhood's own, His breast is woman's shield. Count not his years while earth has need Of souls that Heaven inflames With sacred zeal to save, to lead,-- Long live our dear Saint James! WELCOME TO THE CHICAGO COMMERCIAL CLUB January 14, 1880 CHICAGO sounds rough to the maker of verse; One comfort we have--Cincinnati sounds worse; If we only were licensed to say Chicago! But Worcester and Webster won't let us, you know. No matter, we songsters must sing as we can; We can make some nice couplets with Lake Michigan, And what more resembles a nightingale's voice, Than the oily trisyllable, sweet Illinois? Your waters are fresh, while our harbor is salt, But we know you can't help it--it is n't your fault; Our city is old and your city is new, But the railroad men tell us we're greener than you. You have seen our gilt dome, and no doubt you've been told That the orbs of the universe round it are rolled; But I'll own it to you, and I ought to know best, That this is n't quite true of all stars of the West. You'll go to Mount Auburn,--we'll show you the track,-- And can stay there,--unless you prefer to come back; And Bunker's tall shaft you can climb if you will, But you'll puff like a paragraph praising a pill. You must see--but you have seen--our old Faneuil Hall, Our churches, our school-rooms, our sample-rooms, all; And, perhaps, though the idiots must have their jokes, You have found our good people much like other folks. There are cities by rivers, by lakes, and by seas, Each as full of itself as a cheese-mite of cheese; And a city will brag as a game-cock will crow Don't your cockerels at home--just a little, you know? But we'll crow for you now--here's a health to the boys, Men, maidens, and matrons of fair Illinois, And the rainbow of friendship that arches its span From the green of the sea to the blue Michigan! AMERICAN ACADEMY CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION MAY 26, 1880 SIRE, son, and grandson; so the century glides; Three lives, three strides, three foot-prints in the sand; Silent as midnight's falling meteor slides Into the stillness of the far-off land; How dim the space its little arc has spanned! See on this opening page the names renowned Tombed in these records on our dusty shelves, Scarce on the scroll of living memory found, Save where the wan-eyed antiquarian delves; Shadows they seem; ab, what are we ourselves? Pale ghosts of Bowdoin, Winthrop, Willard, West, Sages of busy brain and wrinkled brow, Searchers of Nature's secrets unconfessed, Asking of all things Whence and Why and How-- What problems meet your larger vision now? Has Gannett tracked the wild Aurora's path? Has Bowdoin found his all-surrounding sphere? What question puzzles ciphering Philomath? Could Williams make the hidden causes clear Of the Dark Day that filled the land with fear? Dear ancient school-boys! Nature taught to them The simple lessons of the star and flower, Showed them strange sights; how on a single stem,-- Admire the marvels of Creative Power!-- Twin apples grew, one sweet, the other sour; How from the hill-top where our eyes beheld In even ranks the plumed and bannered maize Range its long columns, in the days of old The live volcano shot its angry blaze,-- Dead since the showers of Noah's watery days; How, when the lightning split the mighty rock, The spreading fury of the shaft was spent! How the young scion joined the alien stock, And when and where the homeless swallows went To pass the winter of their discontent. Scant were the gleanings in those years of dearth; No Cuvier yet had clothed the fossil bones That slumbered, waiting for their second birth; No Lyell read the legend of the stones; Science still pointed to her empty thrones. Dreaming of orbs to eyes of earth unknown, Herschel looked heavenwards in the starlight pale; Lost in those awful depths he trod alone, Laplace stood mute before the lifted veil; While home-bred Humboldt trimmed his toy ship's sail. No mortal feet these loftier heights had gained Whence the wide realms of Nature we descry; In vain their eyes our longing fathers strained To scan with wondering gaze the summits high That far beneath their children's footpaths lie. Smile at their first small ventures as we may, The school-boy's copy shapes the scholar's hand, Their grateful memory fills our hearts to-day; Brave, hopeful, wise, this bower of peace they planned, While war's dread ploughshare scarred the suffering land. Child of our children's children yet unborn, When on this yellow page you turn your eyes, Where the brief record of this May-day morn In phrase antique and faded letters lies, How vague, how pale our flitting ghosts will rise! Yet in our veins the blood ran warm and red, For us the fields were green, the skies were blue, Though from our dust the spirit long has fled, We lived, we loved, we toiled, we dreamed like you, Smiled at our sires and thought how much we knew. Oh might our spirits for one hour return, When the next century rounds its hundredth ring, All the strange secrets it shall teach to learn, To hear the larger truths its years shall bring, Its wiser sages talk, its sweeter minstrels sing! THE SCHOOL-BOY Read at the Centennial Celebration of the foundation of Phillips Academy, Andover. 1778-1878 THESE hallowed precincts, long to memory dear, Smile with fresh welcome as our feet draw near; With softer gales the opening leaves are fanned, With fairer hues the kindling flowers expand, The rose-bush reddens with the blush of June, The groves are vocal with their minstrels' tune, The mighty elm, beneath whose arching shade The wandering children of the forest strayed, Greets the bright morning in its bridal dress, And spreads its arms the gladsome dawn to bless. Is it an idle dream that nature shares Our joys, our griefs, our pastimes, and our cares? Is there no summons when, at morning's call, The sable vestments of the darkness fall? Does not meek evening's low-voiced Ave blend With the soft vesper as its notes ascend? Is there no whisper in the perfumed air When the sweet bosom of the rose is bare? Does not the sunshine call us to rejoice? Is there no meaning in the storm-cloud's voice? No silent message when from midnight skies Heaven looks upon us with its myriad eyes? Or shift the mirror; say our dreams diffuse O'er life's pale landscape their celestial hues, Lend heaven the rainbow it has never known, And robe the earth in glories not its own, Sing their own music in the summer breeze, With fresher foliage clothe the stately trees, Stain the June blossoms with a livelier dye And spread a bluer azure on the sky,-- Blest be the power that works its lawless will And finds the weediest patch an Eden still; No walls so fair as those our fancies build,-- No views so bright as those our visions gild! So ran my lines, as pen and paper met, The truant goose-quill travelling like Planchette; Too ready servant, whose deceitful ways Full many a slipshod line, alas! betrays; Hence of the rhyming thousand not a few Have builded worse--a great deal--than they knew. What need of idle fancy to adorn Our mother's birthplace on her birthday morn? Hers are the blossoms of eternal spring, From these green boughs her new-fledged birds take wing, These echoes hear their earliest carols sung, In this old nest the brood is ever young. If some tired wanderer, resting from his flight, Amid the gay young choristers alight, These gather round him, mark his faded plumes That faintly still the far-off grove perfumes, And listen, wondering if some feeble note Yet lingers, quavering in his weary throat:-- I, whose fresh voice yon red-faced temple knew, What tune is left me, fit to sing to you? Ask not the grandeurs of a labored song, But let my easy couplets slide along; Much could I tell you that you know too well; Much I remember, but I will not tell; Age brings experience; graybeards oft are wise, But oh! how sharp a youngster's ears and eyes! My cheek was bare of adolescent down When first I sought the academic town; Slow rolls the coach along the dusty road, Big with its filial and parental load; The frequent hills, the lonely woods are past, The school-boy's chosen home is reached at last. I see it now, the same unchanging spot, The swinging gate, the little garden plot, The narrow yard, the rock that made its floor, The flat, pale house, the knocker-garnished door, The small, trim parlor, neat, decorous, chill, The strange, new faces, kind, but grave and still; Two, creased with age,--or what I then called age,-- Life's volume open at its fiftieth page; One, a shy maiden's, pallid, placid, sweet As the first snow-drop, which the sunbeams greet; One, the last nursling's; slight she was, and fair, Her smooth white forehead warmed with auburn hair; Last came the virgin Hymen long had spared, Whose daily cares the grateful household shared, Strong, patient, humble; her substantial frame Stretched the chaste draperies I forbear to name. Brave, but with effort, had the school-boy come To the cold comfort of a stranger's home; How like a dagger to my sinking heart Came the dry summons, "It is time to part; Good-by!" "Goo-ood-by!" one fond maternal kiss. . . . Homesick as death! Was ever pang like this? Too young as yet with willing feet to stray From the tame fireside, glad to get away,-- Too old to let my watery grief appear,-- And what so bitter as a swallowed tear! One figure still my vagrant thoughts pursue; First boy to greet me, Ariel, where are you? Imp of all mischief, heaven alone knows how You learned it all,--are you an angel now, Or tottering gently down the slope of years, Your face grown sober in the vale of tears? Forgive my freedom if you are breathing still; If in a happier world, I know you will. You were a school-boy--what beneath the sun So like a monkey? I was also one. Strange, sure enough, to see what curious shoots The nursery raises from the study's roots! In those old days the very, very good Took up more room--a little--than they should; Something too much one's eyes encountered then Of serious youth and funeral-visaged men; The solemn elders saw life's mournful half,-- Heaven sent this boy, whose mission was to laugh, Drollest of buffos, Nature's odd protest, A catbird squealing in a blackbird's nest. Kind, faithful Nature! While the sour-eyed Scot-- Her cheerful smiles forbidden or forgot-- Talks only of his preacher and his kirk,-- Hears five-hour sermons for his Sunday work,-- Praying and fasting till his meagre face Gains its due length, the genuine sign of grace,-- An Ayrshire mother in the land of Knox Her embryo poet in his cradle rocks;-- Nature, long shivering in her dim eclipse, Steals in a sunbeam to those baby lips; So to its home her banished smile returns, And Scotland sweetens with the song of Burns! The morning came; I reached the classic hall; A clock-face eyed me, staring from the wall; Beneath its hands a printed line I read YOUTH IS LIFE'S SEED-TIME: so the clock-face said: Some took its counsel, as the sequel showed,-- Sowed,--their wild oats,--and reaped as they had sowed. How all comes back! the upward slanting floor,-- The masters' thrones that flank the central door,-- The long, outstretching alleys that divide The rows of desks that stand on either side,-- The staring boys, a face to every desk, Bright, dull, pale, blooming, common, picturesque. Grave is the Master's look; his forehead wears Thick rows of wrinkles, prints of worrying cares; Uneasy lie the heads of all that rule, His most of all whose kingdom is a school. Supreme he sits; before the awful frown That bends his brows the boldest eye goes down; Not more submissive Israel heard and saw At Sinai's foot the Giver of the Law. Less stern he seems, who sits in equal Mate On the twin throne and shares the empire's weight; Around his lips the subtle life that plays Steals quaintly forth in many a jesting phrase; A lightsome nature, not so hard to chafe, Pleasant when pleased; rough-handled, not so safe; Some tingling memories vaguely I recall, But to forgive him. God forgive us all! One yet remains, whose well-remembered name Pleads in my grateful heart its tender claim; His was the charm magnetic, the bright look That sheds its sunshine on the dreariest book; A loving soul to every task he brought That sweetly mingled with the lore he taught; Sprung from a saintly race that never could From youth to age be anything but good, His few brief years in holiest labors spent, Earth lost too soon the treasure heaven had lent. Kindest of teachers, studious to divine Some hint of promise in my earliest line, These faint and faltering words thou canst not hear Throb from a heart that holds thy memory dear. As to the traveller's eye the varied plain Shows through the window of the flying train, A mingled landscape, rather felt than seen, A gravelly bank, a sudden flash of green, A tangled wood, a glittering stream that flows Through the cleft summit where the cliff once rose, All strangely blended in a hurried gleam, Rock, wood, waste, meadow, village, hill-side, stream,-- So, as we look behind us, life appears, Seen through the vista of our bygone years. Yet in the dead past's shadow-filled domain, Some vanished shapes the hues of life retain; Unbidden, oft, before our dreaming eyes From the vague mists in memory's path they rise. So comes his blooming image to my view, The friend of joyous days when life was new, Hope yet untamed, the blood of youth unchilled, No blank arrear of promise unfulfilled, Life's flower yet hidden in its sheltering fold, Its pictured canvas yet to be unrolled. His the frank smile I vainly look to greet, His the warm grasp my clasping hand should meet; How would our lips renew their school-boy talk, Our feet retrace the old familiar walk! For thee no more earth's cheerful morning shines Through the green fringes of the tented pines; Ah me! is heaven so far thou canst not hear, Or is thy viewless spirit hovering near, A fair young presence, bright with morning's glow, The fresh-cheeked boy of fifty years ago? Yes, fifty years, with all their circling suns, Behind them all my glance reverted runs; Where now that time remote, its griefs, its joys, Where are its gray-haired men, its bright-haired boys? Where is the patriarch time could hardly tire,-- The good old, wrinkled, immemorial "squire "? (An honest treasurer, like a black-plumed swan, Not every day our eyes may look upon.) Where the tough champion who, with Calvin's sword, In wordy conflicts battled for the Lord? Where the grave scholar, lonely, calm, austere, Whose voice like music charmed the listening ear, Whose light rekindled, like the morning star Still shines upon us through the gates ajar? Where the still, solemn, weary, sad-eyed man, Whose care-worn face and wandering eyes would scan,-- His features wasted in the lingering strife With the pale foe that drains the student's life? Where my old friend, the scholar, teacher, saint, Whose creed, some hinted, showed a speck of taint; He broached his own opinion, which is not Lightly to be forgiven or forgot; Some riddle's point,--I scarce remember now,-- Homoi-, perhaps, where they said homo-ou. (If the unlettered greatly wish to know Where lies the difference betwixt oi and o, Those of the curious who have time may search Among the stale conundrums of their church.) Beneath his roof his peaceful life I shared, And for his modes of faith I little cared,-- I, taught to judge men's dogmas by their deeds, Long ere the days of india-rubber creeds. Why should we look one common faith to find, Where one in every score is color-blind? If here on earth they know not red from green, Will they see better into things unseen! Once more to time's old graveyard I return And scrape the moss from memory's pictured urn. Who, in these days when all things go by steam, Recalls the stage-coach with its four-horse team? Its sturdy driver,--who remembers him? Or the old landlord, saturnine and grim, Who left our hill-top for a new abode And reared his sign-post farther down the road? Still in the waters of the dark Shawshine Do the young bathers splash and think they're clean? Do pilgrims find their way to Indian Ridge, Or journey onward to the far-off bridge, And bring to younger ears the story back Of the broad stream, the mighty Merrimac? Are there still truant feet that stray beyond These circling bounds to Pomp's or Haggett's Pond, Or where the legendary name recalls The forest's earlier tenant,--"Deerjump Falls"? Yes, every nook these youthful feet explore, Just as our sires and grand sires did of yore; So all life's opening paths, where nature led Their father's feet, the children's children tread. Roll the round century's fivescore years away, Call from our storied past that earliest day When great Eliphalet (I can see him now,-- Big name, big frame, big voice, and beetling brow), Then young Eliphalet,--ruled the rows of boys In homespun gray or old-world corduroys,-- And save for fashion's whims, the benches show The self-same youths, the very boys we know. Time works strange marvels: since I trod the green And swung the gates, what wonders I have seen! But come what will,--the sky itself may fall,-- As things of course the boy accepts them all. The prophet's chariot, drawn by steeds of flame, For daily use our travelling millions claim; The face we love a sunbeam makes our own; No more the surgeon hears the sufferer's groan; What unwrit histories wrapped in darkness lay Till shovelling Schliemann bared them to the day! Your Richelieu says, and says it well, my lord, The pen is (sometimes) mightier than the sword; Great is the goosequill, say we all; Amen! Sometimes the spade is mightier than the pen; It shows where Babel's terraced walls were raised, The slabs that cracked when Nimrod's palace blazed, Unearths Mycenee, rediscovers Troy,-- Calmly he listens, that immortal boy. A new Prometheus tips our wands with fire, A mightier Orpheus strains the whispering wire, Whose lightning thrills the lazy winds outrun And hold the hours as Joshua stayed the sun,-- So swift, in truth, we hardly find a place For those dim fictions known as time and space. Still a new miracle each year supplies,-- See at his work the chemist of the skies, Who questions Sirius in his tortured rays And steals the secret of the solar blaze; Hush! while the window-rattling bugles play The nation's airs a hundred miles away! That wicked phonograph! hark! how it swears! Turn it again and make it say its prayers! And was it true, then, what the story said Of Oxford's friar and his brazen head? While wondering Science stands, herself perplexed At each day's miracle, and asks "What next?" The immortal boy, the coming heir of all, Springs from his desk to "urge the flying ball," Cleaves with his bending oar the glassy waves, With sinewy arm the dashing current braves, The same bright creature in these haunts of ours That Eton shadowed with her "antique towers." Boy! Where is he? the long-limbed youth inquires, Whom his rough chin with manly pride inspires; Ah, when the ruddy cheek no longer glows, When the bright hair is white as winter snows, When the dim eye has lost its lambent flame, Sweet to his ear will be his school-boy name Nor think the difference mighty as it seems Between life's morning and its evening dreams; Fourscore, like twenty, has its tasks and toys; In earth's wide school-house all are girls and boys. Brothers, forgive my wayward fancy. Who Can guess beforehand what his pen will do? Too light my strain for listeners such as these, Whom graver thoughts and soberer speech shall please. Is he not here whose breath of holy song Has raised the downcast eyes of Faith so long? Are they not here, the strangers in your gates, For whom the wearied ear impatient waits,-- The large-brained scholars whom their toils release,-- The bannered heralds of the Prince of Peace? Such was the gentle friend whose youth unblamed In years long past our student-benches claimed; Whose name, illumined on the sacred page, Lives in the labors of his riper age; Such he whose record time's destroying march Leaves uneffaced on Zion's springing arch Not to the scanty phrase of measured song, Cramped in its fetters, names like these belong; One ray they lend to gild my slender line,-- Their praise I leave to sweeter lips than mine. Homes of our sires, where Learning's temple rose, While vet they struggled with their banded foes, As in the West thy century's sun descends, One parting gleam its dying radiance lends. Darker and deeper though the shadows fall From the gray towers on Doubting Castle's wall, Though Pope and Pagan re-array their hosts, And her new armor youthful Science boasts, Truth, for whose altar rose this holy shrine, Shall fly for refuge to these bowers of thine; No past shall chain her with its rusted vow, No Jew's phylactery bind her Christian brow, But Faith shall smile to find her sister free, And nobler manhood draw its life from thee. Long as the arching skies above thee spread, As on thy groves the dews of heaven are shed, With currents widening still from year to year, And deepening channels, calm, untroubled, clear, Flow the twin streamlets from thy sacred hill-- Pieria's fount and Siloam's shaded rill! THE SILENT MELODY "BRING me my broken harp," he said; "We both are wrecks,--but as ye will,-- Though all its ringing tones have fled, Their echoes linger round it still; It had some golden strings, I know, But that was long--how long!--ago. "I cannot see its tarnished gold, I cannot hear its vanished tone, Scarce can my trembling fingers hold The pillared frame so long their own; We both are wrecks,--a while ago It had some silver strings, I know, "But on them Time too long has played The solemn strain that knows no change, And where of old my fingers strayed The chords they find are new and strange,-- Yes! iron strings,--I know,--I know,-- We both are wrecks of long ago. "We both are wrecks,--a shattered pair,-- Strange to ourselves in time's disguise. What say ye to the lovesick air That brought the tears from Marian's eyes? Ay! trust me,--under breasts of snow Hearts could be melted long ago! "Or will ye hear the storm-song's crash That from his dreams the soldier woke, And bade him face the lightning flash When battle's cloud in thunder broke? . . . Wrecks,--nought but wrecks!--the time was when We two were worth a thousand men!" And so the broken harp they bring With pitying smiles that none could blame; Alas! there's not a single string Of all that filled the tarnished frame! But see! like children overjoyed, His fingers rambling through the void! "I clasp thee! Ay . . . mine ancient lyre . . . Nay, guide my wandering fingers. . . There They love to dally with the wire As Isaac played with Esau's hair. Hush! ye shall hear the famous tune That Marian called the Breath of June!" And so they softly gather round Rapt in his tuneful trance he seems His fingers move: but not a sound! A silence like the song of dreams. . . . "There! ye have heard the air," he cries, "That brought the tears from Marian's eyes!" Ah, smile not at his fond conceit, Nor deem his fancy wrought in vain; To him the unreal sounds are sweet,-- No discord mars the silent strain Scored on life's latest, starlit page-- The voiceless melody of age. Sweet are the lips, of all that sing, When Nature's music breathes unsought, But never yet could voice or string So truly shape our tenderest thought As when by life's decaying fire Our fingers sweep the stringless lyre! OUR HOME--OUR COUNTRY FOR THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE SETTLEMENT OF CAMBRIDGE, MASS., DECEMBER 28, 1880 YOUR home was mine,--kind Nature's gift; My love no years can chill; In vain their flakes the storm-winds sift, The snow-drop hides beneath the drift, A living blossom still. Mute are a hundred long-famed lyres, Hushed all their golden strings; One lay the coldest bosom fires, One song, one only, never tires While sweet-voiced memory sings. No spot so lone but echo knows That dear familiar strain; In tropic isles, on arctic snows, Through burning lips its music flows And rings its fond refrain. From Pisa's tower my straining sight Roamed wandering leagues away, When lo! a frigate's banner bright, The starry blue, the red, the white, In far Livorno's bay. Hot leaps the life-blood from my heart, Forth springs the sudden tear; The ship that rocks by yonder mart Is of my land, my life, a part,-- Home, home, sweet home, is here! Fades from my view the sunlit scene,-- My vision spans the waves; I see the elm-encircled green, The tower,--the steeple,--and, between, The field of ancient graves. There runs the path my feet would tread When first they learned to stray; There stands the gambrel roof that spread Its quaint old angles o'er my head When first I saw the day. The sounds that met my boyish ear My inward sense salute,-- The woodnotes wild I loved to hear,-- The robin's challenge, sharp and clear,-- The breath of evening's flute. The faces loved from cradle days,-- Unseen, alas, how long! As fond remembrance round them plays, Touched with its softening moonlight rays, Through fancy's portal throng. And see! as if the opening skies Some angel form had spared Us wingless mortals to surprise, The little maid with light-blue eyes, White necked and golden haired! . . . . . . . . . . So rose the picture full in view I paint in feebler song; Such power the seamless banner knew Of red and white and starry blue For exiles banished long. Oh, boys, dear boys, who wait as men To guard its heaven-bright folds, Blest are the eyes that see again That banner, seamless now, as then,-- The fairest earth beholds! Sweet was the Tuscan air and soft In that unfading hour, And fancy leads my footsteps oft Up the round galleries, high aloft On Pisa's threatening tower. And still in Memory's holiest shrine I read with pride and joy, "For me those stars of empire shine; That empire's dearest home is mine; I am a Cambridge boy!" POEM AT THE CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY DINNER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL SOCIETY, JUNE 8, 1881 THREE paths there be where Learning's favored sons, Trained in the schools which hold her favored ones, Follow their several stars with separate aim; Each has its honors, each its special claim. Bred in the fruitful cradle of the East, First, as of oldest lineage, comes the Priest; The Lawyer next, in wordy conflict strong, Full armed to battle for the right,--or wrong; Last, he whose calling finds its voice in deeds, Frail Nature's helper in her sharpest needs. Each has his gifts, his losses and his gains, Each his own share of pleasures and of pains; No life-long aim with steadfast eye pursued Finds a smooth pathway all with roses strewed; Trouble belongs to man of woman born,-- Tread where he may, his foot will find its thorn. Of all the guests at life's perennial feast, Who of her children sits above the Priest? For him the broidered robe, the carven seat, Pride at his beck, and beauty at his feet, For him the incense fumes, the wine is poured, Himself a God, adoring and adored! His the first welcome when our hearts rejoice, His in our dying ear the latest voice, Font, altar, grave, his steps on all attend, Our staff, our stay, our all but heavenly friend! Where is the meddling hand that dares to probe The secret grief beneath his sable robe? How grave his port! how every gesture tells Here truth abides, here peace forever dwells; Vex not his lofty soul with comments vain; Faith asks no questions; silence, ye profane! Alas! too oft while all is calm without The stormy spirit wars with endless doubt; This is the mocking spectre, scarce concealed Behind tradition's bruised and battered shield. He sees the sleepless critic, age by age, Scrawl his new readings on the hallowed page, The wondrous deeds that priests and prophets saw Dissolved in legend, crystallized in law, And on the soil where saints and martyrs trod Altars new builded to the Unknown God; His shrines imperilled, his evangels torn,-- He dares not limp, but ah! how sharp his thorn! Yet while God's herald questions as he reads The outworn dogmas of his ancient creeds, Drops from his ritual the exploded verse, Blots from its page the Athanasian curse, Though by the critic's dangerous art perplexed, His holy life is Heaven's unquestioned text; That shining guidance doubt can never mar,-- The pillar's flame, the light of Bethlehem's star! Strong is the moral blister that will draw Laid on the conscience of the Man of Law Whom blindfold Justice lends her eyes to see Truth in the scale that holds his promised fee. What! Has not every lie its truthful side, Its honest fraction, not to be denied? Per contra,--ask the moralist,--in sooth Has not a lie its share in every truth? Then what forbids an honest man to try To find the truth that lurks in every lie, And just as fairly call on truth to yield The lying fraction in its breast concealed? So the worst rogue shall claim a ready friend His modest virtues boldly to defend, And he who shows the record of a saint See himself blacker than the devil could paint. What struggles to his captive soul belong Who loves the right, yet combats for the wrong, Who fights the battle he would fain refuse, And wins, well knowing that he ought to lose, Who speaks with glowing lips and look sincere In spangled words that make the worse appear The better reason; who, behind his mask, Hides his true self and blushes at his task,-- What quips, what quillets cheat the inward scorn That mocks such triumph? Has he not his thorn? Yet stay thy judgment; were thy life the prize, Thy death the forfeit, would thy cynic eyes See fault in him who bravely dares defend The cause forlorn, the wretch without a friend Nay, though the rightful side is wisdom's choice, Wrong has its rights and claims a champion's voice; Let the strong arm be lifted for the weak, For the dumb lips the fluent pleader speak;-- When with warm "rebel" blood our street was dyed Who took, unawed, the hated hirelings' side? No greener civic wreath can Adams claim, No brighter page the youthful Quincy's name! How blest is he who knows no meaner strife Than Art's long battle with the foes of life! No doubt assails him, doing still his best, And trusting kindly Nature for the rest; No mocking conscience tears the thin disguise That wraps his breast, and tells him that he lies. He comes: the languid sufferer lifts his head And smiles a welcome from his weary bed; He speaks: what music like the tones that tell, "Past is the hour of danger,--all is well!" How can he feel the petty stings of grief Whose cheering presence always brings relief? What ugly dreams can trouble his repose Who yields himself to soothe another's woes? Hour after hour the busy day has found The good physician on his lonely round; Mansion and hovel, low and lofty door, He knows, his journeys every path explore,-- Where the cold blast has struck with deadly chill The sturdy dweller on the storm-swept hill, Where by the stagnant marsh the sickening gale Has blanched the poisoned tenants of the vale, Where crushed and maimed the bleeding victim lies, Where madness raves, where melancholy sighs, And where the solemn whisper tells too plain That all his science, all his art, were vain. How sweet his fireside when the day is done And cares have vanished with the setting sun! Evening at last its hour of respite brings And on his couch his weary length he flings. Soft be thy pillow, servant of mankind, Lulled by an opiate Art could never find; Sweet be thy slumber,--thou hast earned it well,-- Pleasant thy dreams! Clang! goes the midnight bell! Darkness and storm! the home is far away That waits his coming ere the break of day; The snow-clad pines their wintry plumage toss,-- Doubtful the frozen stream his road must cross; Deep lie the drifts, the slanted heaps have shut The hardy woodman in his mountain hut,-- Why should thy softer frame the tempest brave? Hast thou no life, no health, to lose or save? Look! read the answer in his patient eyes,-- For him no other voice when suffering cries; Deaf to the gale that all around him blows, A feeble whisper calls him,--and he goes. Or seek the crowded city,--summer's heat Glares burning, blinding, in the narrow street, Still, noisome, deadly, sleeps the envenomed air, Unstirred the yellow flag that says "Beware!" Tempt not thy fate,--one little moment's breath Bears on its viewless wing the seeds of death; Thou at whose door the gilded chariots stand, Whose dear-bought skill unclasps the miser's hand, Turn from thy fatal quest, nor cast away That life so precious; let a meaner prey Feed the destroyer's hunger; live to bless Those happier homes that need thy care no less! Smiling he listens; has he then a charm Whose magic virtues peril can disarm? No safeguard his; no amulet he wears, Too well he knows that Nature never spares Her truest servant, powerless to defend From her own weapons her unshrinking friend. He dares the fate the bravest well might shun, Nor asks reward save only Heaven's "Well done!" Such are the toils, the perils that he knows, Days without rest and nights without repose, Yet all unheeded for the love he bears His art, his kind, whose every grief he shares. Harder than these to know how small the part Nature's proud empire yields to striving Art; How, as the tide that rolls around the sphere Laughs at the mounds that delving arms uprear,-- Spares some few roods of oozy earth, but still Wastes and rebuilds the planet at its will, Comes at its ordered season, night or noon, Led by the silver magnet of the moon,-- So life's vast tide forever comes and goes, Unchecked, resistless, as it ebbs and flows. Hardest of all, when Art has done her best, To find the cuckoo brooding in her nest; The shrewd adventurer, fresh from parts unknown, Kills off the patients Science thought her own; Towns from a nostrum-vender get their name, Fences and walls the cure-all drug proclaim, Plasters and pads the willing world beguile, Fair Lydia greets us with astringent smile, Munchausen's fellow-countryman unlocks His new Pandora's globule-holding box, And as King George inquired, with puzzled grin, "How--how the devil get the apple in?" So we ask how,--with wonder-opening eyes,-- Such pygmy pills can hold such giant lies! Yes, sharp the trials, stern the daily tasks That suffering Nature from her servant asks; His the kind office dainty menials scorn, His path how hard,--at every step a thorn! What does his saddening, restless slavery buy? What save a right to live, a chance to die,-- To live companion of disease and pain, To die by poisoned shafts untimely slain? Answer from hoary eld, majestic shades,-- From Memphian courts, from Delphic colonnades, Speak in the tones that Persia's despot heard When nations treasured every golden word The wandering echoes wafted o'er the seas, From the far isle that held Hippocrates; And thou, best gift that Pergamus could send Imperial Rome, her noblest Caesar's friend, Master of masters, whose unchallenged sway Not bold Vesalius dared to disobey; Ye who while prophets dreamed of dawning times Taught your rude lessons in Salerno's rhymes, And ye, the nearer sires, to whom we owe The better share of all the best we know, In every land an ever-growing train, Since wakening Science broke her rusted chain,-- Speak from the past, and say what prize was sent To crown the toiling years so freely spent! List while they speak: In life's uneven road Our willing hands have eased our brothers' load; One forehead smoothed, one pang of torture less, One peaceful hour a sufferer's couch to bless, The smile brought back to fever's parching lips, The light restored to reason in eclipse, Life's treasure rescued like a burning brand Snatched from the dread destroyer's wasteful hand; Such were our simple records day by day, For gains like these we wore our lives away. In toilsome paths our daily bread we sought, But bread from heaven attending angels brought; Pain was our teacher, speaking to the heart, Mother of pity, nurse of pitying art; Our lesson learned, we reached the peaceful shore Where the pale sufferer asks our aid no more,-- These gracious words our welcome, our reward Ye served your brothers; ye have served your Lord! RHYMES OF A LIFE-TIME FROM the first gleam of morning to the gray Of peaceful evening, lo, a life unrolled! In woven pictures all its changes told, Its lights, its shadows, every flitting ray, Till the long curtain, falling, dims the day, Steals from the dial's disk the sunlight's gold, And all the graven hours grow dark and cold Where late the glowing blaze of noontide lay. Ah! the warm blood runs wild in youthful veins,-- Let me no longer play with painted fire; New songs for new-born days! I would not tire The listening ears that wait for fresher strains In phrase new-moulded, new-forged rhythmic chains, With plaintive measures from a worn-out lyre. August 2, 1881. 
7397	----	THE POETICAL WORKS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES [Volume 3 of the 1893 three volume set] BEFORE THE CURFEW AT MY FIRESIDE AT THE SATURDAY CLUB OUR DEAD SINGER. H. W. L. TWO POEMS TO HARRIET BEECHER STOWE ON HER SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY. I. AT THE SUMMIT II. THE WORLD'S HOMAGE A WELCOME TO DR. BENJAMIN APTHORP GOULD TO FREDERICK HENRY HEDGE ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY TO JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL TO JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY PRELUDE TO A VOLUME PRINTED IN RAISED LETTERS FOR THE BLIND BOSTON TO FLORENCE AT THE UNITARIAN FESTIVAL, MARCH 8, 1882 POEM FOR THE TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDING OF HARVARD COLLEGE POST-PRANDIAL: PHI BETA KAPPA, 1881 THE FLANEUR: DURING THE TRANSIT OF VENUS, 1882 AVE KING'S CHAPEL READ AT THE TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY HYMN FOR THE SAME OCCASION HYMN.--THE WORD OF PROMISE HYMN READ AT THE DEDICATION OF THE OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES HOSPITAL AT HUDSON, WISCONSIN, JUNE 7, 1887 ON THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD THE GOLDEN FLOWER HAIL, COLUMBIA! POEM FOR THE DEDICATION OF THE FOUNTAIN AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON, PRESENTED BY GEORGE CHILDS, OF PHILADELPHIA TO THE POETS WHO ONLY READ AND LISTEN FOR THE DEDICATION OF THE NEW CITY LIBRARY FOR THE WINDOW IN ST. MARGARET'S JAMES RUSSELL LO WELL: 1819-1891 AT MY FIRESIDE ALONE, beneath the darkened sky, With saddened heart and unstrung lyre, I heap the spoils of years gone by, And leave them with a long-drawn sigh, Like drift-wood brands that glimmering lie, Before the ashes hide the fire. Let not these slow declining days The rosy light of dawn outlast; Still round my lonely hearth it plays, And gilds the east with borrowed rays, While memory's mirrored sunset blaze Flames on the windows of the past. March 1, 1888. AT THE SATURDAY CLUB THIS is our place of meeting; opposite That towered and pillared building: look at it; King's Chapel in the Second George's day, Rebellion stole its regal name away,-- Stone Chapel sounded better; but at last The poisoned name of our provincial past Had lost its ancient venom; then once more Stone Chapel was King's Chapel as before. (So let rechristened North Street, when it can, Bring back the days of Marlborough and Queen Anne!) Next the old church your wandering eye will meet-- A granite pile that stares upon the street-- Our civic temple; slanderous tongues have said Its shape was modelled from St. Botolph's head, Lofty, but narrow; jealous passers-by Say Boston always held her head too high. Turn half-way round, and let your look survey The white facade that gleams across the way,-- The many-windowed building, tall and wide, The palace-inn that shows its northern side In grateful shadow when the sunbeams beat The granite wall in summer's scorching heat. This is the place; whether its name you spell Tavern, or caravansera, or hotel. Would I could steal its echoes! you should find Such store of vanished pleasures brought to mind Such feasts! the laughs of many a jocund hour That shook the mortar from King George's tower; Such guests! What famous names its record boasts, Whose owners wander in the mob of ghosts! Such stories! Every beam and plank is filled With juicy wit the joyous talkers spilled, Ready to ooze, as once the mountain pine The floors are laid with oozed its turpentine! A month had flitted since The Club had met; The day came round; I found the table set, The waiters lounging round the marble stairs, Empty as yet the double row of chairs. I was a full half hour before the rest, Alone, the banquet-chamber's single guest. So from the table's side a chair I took, And having neither company nor book To keep me waking, by degrees there crept A torpor over me,--in short, I slept. Loosed from its chain, along the wreck-strown track Of the dead years my soul goes travelling back; My ghosts take on their robes of flesh; it seems Dreaming is life; nay, life less life than dreams, So real are the shapes that meet my eyes. They bring no sense of wonder, no surprise, No hint of other than an earth-born source; All seems plain daylight, everything of course. How dim the colors are, how poor and faint This palette of weak words with which I paint! Here sit my friends; if I could fix them so As to my eyes they seem, my page would glow Like a queen's missal, warm as if the brush Of Titian or Velasquez brought the flush Of life into their features. Ay de mi! If syllables were pigments, you should see Such breathing portraitures as never man Found in the Pitti or the Vatican. Here sits our POET, Laureate, if you will. Long has he worn the wreath, and wears it still. Dead? Nay, not so; and yet they say his bust Looks down on marbles covering royal dust, Kings by the Grace of God, or Nature's grace; Dead! No! Alive! I see him in his place, Full-featured, with the bloom that heaven denies Her children, pinched by cold New England skies, Too often, while the nursery's happier few Win from a summer cloud its roseate hue. Kind, soft-voiced, gentle, in his eye there shines The ray serene that filled Evangeline's. Modest he seems, not shy; content to wait Amid the noisy clamor of debate The looked-for moment when a peaceful word Smooths the rough ripples louder tongues have stirred. In every tone I mark his tender grace And all his poems hinted in his face; What tranquil joy his friendly presence gives! How could. I think him dead? He lives! He lives! There, at the table's further end I see In his old place our Poet's vis-a-vis, The great PROFESSOR, strong, broad-shouldered, square, In life's rich noontide, joyous, debonair. His social hour no leaden care alloys, His laugh rings loud and mirthful as a boy's,-- That lusty laugh the Puritan forgot,-- What ear has heard it and remembers not? How often, halting at some wide crevasse Amid the windings of his Alpine pass, High up the cliffs, the climbing mountaineer, Listening the far-off avalanche to hear, Silent, and leaning on his steel-shod staff, Has heard that cheery voice, that ringing laugh, From the rude cabin whose nomadic walls Creep with the moving glacier as it crawls How does vast Nature lead her living train In ordered sequence through that spacious brain, As in the primal hour when Adam named The new-born tribes that young creation claimed!-- How will her realm be darkened, losing thee, Her darling, whom we call _our_ AGASSIZ! But who is he whose massive frame belies The maiden shyness of his downcast eyes? Who broods in silence till, by questions pressed, Some answer struggles from his laboring breast? An artist Nature meant to dwell apart, Locked in his studio with a human heart, Tracking its eaverned passions to their lair, And all its throbbing mysteries laying bare. Count it no marvel that he broods alone Over the heart he studies,--'t is his own; So in his page, whatever shape it wear, The Essex wizard's shadowed self is there,-- The great ROMANCER, hid beneath his veil Like the stern preacher of his sombre tale; Virile in strength, yet bashful as a girl, Prouder than Hester, sensitive as Pearl. From his mild throng of worshippers released, Our Concord Delphi sends its chosen priest, Prophet or poet, mystic, sage, or seer, By every title always welcome here. Why that ethereal spirit's frame describe? You know the race-marks of the Brahmin tribe, The spare, slight form, the sloping shoulders' droop, The calm, scholastic mien, the clerkly stoop, The lines of thought the sharpened features wear, Carved by the edge of keen New England air. List! for he speaks! As when a king would choose The jewels for his bride, he might refuse This diamond for its flaw,--find that less bright Than those, its fellows, and a pearl less white Than fits her snowy neck, and yet at last, The fairest gems are chosen, and made fast In golden fetters; so, with light delays He seeks the fittest word to fill his phrase; Nor vain nor idle his fastidious quest, His chosen word is sure to prove the best. Where in the realm of thought, whose air is song, Does he, the Buddha of the West, belong? He seems a winged Franklin, sweetly wise, Born to unlock the secrets of the skies; And which the nobler calling,--if 't is fair Terrestrial with celestial to compare,-- To guide the storm-cloud's elemental flame, Or walk the chambers whence the lightning came, Amidst the sources of its subtile fire, And steal their effluence for his lips and lyre? If lost at times in vague aerial flights, None treads with firmer footstep when he lights; A soaring nature, ballasted with sense, Wisdom without her wrinkles or pretence, In every Bible he has faith to read, And every altar helps to shape his creed. Ask you what name this prisoned spirit bears While with ourselves this fleeting breath it shares? Till angels greet him with a sweeter one In heaven, on earth we call him EMERSON. I start; I wake; the vision is withdrawn; Its figures fading like the stars at dawn; Crossed from the roll of life their cherished names, And memory's pictures fading in their frames; Yet life is lovelier for these transient gleams Of buried friendships; blest is he who dreams! OUR DEAD SINGER H. W. L. PRIDE of the sister realm so long our own, We claim with her that spotless fame of thine, White as her snow and fragrant as her pine! Ours was thy birthplace, but in every zone Some wreath of song thy liberal hand has thrown Breathes perfume from its blossoms, that entwine Where'er the dewdrops fall, the sunbeams shine, On life's long path with tangled cares o'ergrown. Can Art thy truthful counterfeit command,-- The silver-haloed features, tranquil, mild,-- Soften the lips of bronze as when they smiled, Give warmth and pressure to the marble hand? Seek the lost rainbow in the sky it spanned Farewell, sweet Singer! Heaven reclaims its child. Carved from the block or cast in clinging mould, Will grateful Memory fondly try her best The mortal vesture from decay to wrest; His look shall greet us, calm, but ah, how cold! No breath can stir the brazen drapery's fold, No throb can heave the statue's stony breast; "He is not here, but risen," will stand confest In all we miss, in all our eyes behold. How Nature loved him! On his placid brow, Thought's ample dome, she set the sacred sign That marks the priesthood of her holiest shrine, Nor asked a leaflet from the laurel's bough That envious Time might clutch or disallow, To prove her chosen minstrel's song divine. On many a saddened hearth the evening fire Burns paler as the children's hour draws near,-- That joyous hour his song made doubly dear,-- And tender memories touch the faltering choir. He sings no more on earth; our vain desire Aches for the voice we loved so long to hear In Dorian flute-notes breathing soft and clear,-- The sweet contralto that could never tire. Deafened with listening to a harsher strain, The Maenad's scream, the stark barbarian's cry, Still for those soothing, loving tones we sigh; Oh, for our vanished Orpheus once again! The shadowy silence hears us call in vain! His lips are hushed; his song shall never die. TWO POEMS TO HARRIET BEECHER STOWE ON HER SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY, JUNE 14, 1882 I. AT THE SUMMIT SISTER, we bid you welcome,--we who stand On the high table-land; We who have climbed life's slippery Alpine slope, And rest, still leaning on the staff of hope, Looking along the silent Mer de Glace, Leading our footsteps where the dark crevasse Yawns in the frozen sea we all must pass,-- Sister, we clasp your hand! Rest with us in the hour that Heaven has lent Before the swift descent. Look! the warm sunbeams kiss the glittering ice; See! next the snow-drift blooms the edelweiss; The mated eagles fan the frosty air; Life, beauty, love, around us everywhere, And, in their time, the darkening hours that bear Sweet memories, peace, content. Thrice welcome! shining names our missals show Amid their rubrics' glow, But search the blazoned record's starry line, What halo's radiance fills the page like thine? Thou who by some celestial clue couldst find The way to all the hearts of all mankind, On thee, already canonized, enshrined, What more can Heaven bestow! II. THE WORLD'S HOMAGE IF every tongue that speaks her praise For whom I shape my tinkling phrase Were summoned to the table, The vocal chorus that would meet Of mingling accents harsh or sweet, From every land and tribe, would beat The polyglots at Babel. Briton and Frenchman, Swede and Dane, Turk, Spaniard, Tartar of Ukraine, Hidalgo, Cossack, Cadi, High Dutchman and Low Dutchman, too, The Russian serf, the Polish Jew, Arab, Armenian, and Mantchoo, Would shout, "We know the lady!" Know her! Who knows not Uncle Tom And her he learned his gospel from Has never heard of Moses; Full well the brave black hand we know That gave to freedom's grasp the hoe That killed the weed that used to grow Among the Southern roses. When Archimedes, long ago, Spoke out so grandly, "_dos pou sto_-- Give me a place to stand on, I'll move your planet for you, now,"-- He little dreamed or fancied how The _sto_ at last should find its _pou_ For woman's faith to land on. Her lever was the wand of art, Her fulcrum was the human heart, Whence all unfailing aid is; She moved the earth! Its thunders pealed, Its mountains shook, its temples reeled, The blood-red fountains were unsealed, And Moloch sunk to Hades. All through the conflict, up and down Marched Uncle Tom and Old John Brown, One ghost, one form ideal; And which was false and which was true, And which was mightier of the two, The wisest sibyl never knew, For both alike were real. Sister, the holy maid does well Who counts her beads in convent cell, Where pale devotion lingers; But she who serves the sufferer's needs, Whose prayers are spelt in loving deeds, May trust the Lord will count her beads As well as human fingers. When Truth herself was Slavery's slave, Thy hand the prisoned suppliant gave The rainbow wings of fiction. And Truth who soared descends to-day Bearing an angel's wreath away, Its lilies at thy feet to lay With Heaven's own benediction. A WELCOME TO DR. BENJAMIN APTHORP GOULD ON HIS RETURN FROM SOUTH AMERICA AFTER FIFTEEN YEARS DEVOTED TO CATALOGUING THE STARS OF THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE Read at the Dinner given at the Hotel Vendome, May 6,1885. ONCE more Orion and the sister Seven Look on thee from the skies that hailed thy birth,-- How shall we welcome thee, whose home was heaven, From thy celestial wanderings back to earth? Science has kept her midnight taper burning To greet thy coming with its vestal flame; Friendship has murmured, "When art thou returning?" "Not yet! Not yet!" the answering message came. Thine was unstinted zeal, unchilled devotion, While the blue realm had kingdoms to explore,-- Patience, like his who ploughed the unfurrowed ocean, Till o'er its margin loomed San Salvador. Through the long nights I see thee ever waking, Thy footstool earth, thy roof the hemisphere, While with thy griefs our weaker hearts are aching, Firm as thine equatorial's rock-based pier. The souls that voyaged the azure depths before thee Watch with thy tireless vigils, all unseen,-- Tycho and Kepler bend benignant o'er thee, And with his toy-like tube the Florentine,-- He at whose word the orb that bore him shivered To find her central sovereignty disowned, While the wan lips of priest and pontiff quivered, Their jargon stilled, their Baal disenthroned. Flamsteed and Newton look with brows unclouded, Their strife forgotten with its faded scars,-- (Titans, who found the world of space too crowded To walk in peace among its myriad stars.) All cluster round thee,--seers of earliest ages, Persians, Ionians, Mizraim's learned kings, From the dim days of Shinar's hoary sages To his who weighed the planet's fluid rings. And we, for whom the northern heavens are lighted, For whom the storm has passed, the sun has smiled, Our clouds all scattered, all our stars united, We claim thee, clasp thee, like a long-lost child. Fresh from the spangled vault's o'er-arching splendor, Thy lonely pillar, thy revolving dome, In heartfelt accents, proud, rejoicing, tender, We bid thee welcome to thine earthly home! TO FREDERICK HENRY HEDGE AT A DINNER GIVEN HIM ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY, DECEMBER 12, 1885 With a bronze statuette of John of Bologna's Mercury, presented by a few friends. FIT emblem for the altar's side, And him who serves its daily need, The stay, the solace, and the guide Of mortal men, whate'er his creed! Flamen or Auspex, Priest or Bonze, He feeds the upward-climbing fire, Still teaching, like the deathless bronze, Man's noblest lesson,--to aspire. Hermes lies prone by fallen Jove, Crushed are the wheels of Krishna's car, And o'er Dodona's silent grove Streams the white, ray from Bethlehem's star. Yet snatched from Time's relentless clutch, A godlike shape, that human hands Have fired with Art's electric touch, The herald of Olympus stands. Ask not what ore the furnace knew; Love mingled with the flowing mass, And lends its own unchanging hue, Like gold in Corinth's molten brass. Take then our gift; this airy form Whose bronze our benedictions gild, The hearts of all its givers warm With love by freezing years unchilled. With eye undimmed, with strength unworn, Still toiling in your Master's field, Before you wave the growths unshorn, Their ripened harvest yet to yield. True servant of the Heavenly Sire, To you our tried affection clings, Bids you still labor, still aspire, But clasps your feet and steals their wings. TO JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL THIS is your month, the month of "perfect days," Birds in full song and blossoms all ablaze. Nature herself your earliest welcome breathes, Spreads every leaflet, every bower inwreathes; Carpets her paths for your returning feet, Puts forth her best your coming steps to greet; And Heaven must surely find the earth in tune When Home, sweet Home, exhales the breath of June. These blessed days are waning all too fast, And June's bright visions mingling with the past; Lilacs have bloomed and faded, and the rose Has dropped its petals, but the clover blows, And fills its slender tubes with honeyed sweets; The fields are pearled with milk-white margarites; The dandelion, which you sang of old, Has lost its pride of place, its crown of gold, But still displays its feathery-mantled globe, Which children's breath, or wandering winds unrobe. These were your humble friends; your opened eyes Nature had trained her common gifts to prize; Not Cam nor Isis taught you to despise Charles, with his muddy margin and the harsh, Plebeian grasses of the reeking marsh. New England's home-bred scholar, well you knew Her soil, her speech, her people, through and through, And loved them ever with the love that holds All sweet, fond memories in its fragrant folds. Though far and wide your winged words have flown, Your daily presence kept you all our own, Till, with a sorrowing sigh, a thrill of pride, We heard your summons, and you left our side For larger duties and for tasks untried. How pleased the Spaniards for a while to claim This frank Hidalgo with the liquid name, Who stored their classics on his crowded shelves And loved their Calderon as they did themselves! Before his eyes what changing pageants pass! The bridal feast how near the funeral mass! The death-stroke falls,--the Misereres wail; The joy-bells ring,--the tear-stained cheeks unveil, While, as the playwright shifts his pictured scene, The royal mourner crowns his second queen. From Spain to Britain is a goodly stride,-- Madrid and London long-stretched leagues divide. What if I send him, "Uncle S., says he," To my good cousin whom he calls "J. B."? A nation's servants go where they are sent,-- He heard his Uncle's orders, and he went. By what enchantments, what alluring arts, Our truthful James led captive British hearts,-- Whether his shrewdness made their statesmen halt, Or if his learning found their Dons at fault, Or if his virtue was a strange surprise, Or if his wit flung star-dust in their eyes,-- Like honest Yankees we can simply guess; But that he did it all must needs confess. England herself without a blush may claim Her only conqueror since the Norman came. Eight years an exile! What a weary while Since first our herald sought the mother isle! His snow-white flag no churlish wrong has soiled,--- He left unchallenged, he returns unspoiled. Here let us keep him, here he saw the light,-- His genius, wisdom, wit, are ours by right; And if we lose him our lament will be We have "five hundred"--_not_ "as good as he." TO JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY 1887 FRIEND, whom thy fourscore winters leave more dear Than when life's roseate summer on thy cheek Burned in the flush of manhood's manliest year, Lonely, how lonely! is the snowy peak Thy feet have reached, and mine have climbed so near! Close on thy footsteps 'mid the landscape drear I stretch my hand thine answering grasp to seek, Warm with the love no rippling rhymes can speak! Look backward! From thy lofty height survey Thy years of toil, of peaceful victories won, Of dreams made real, largest hopes outrun! Look forward! Brighter than earth's morning ray Streams the pure light of Heaven's unsetting sun, The unclouded dawn of life's immortal day! PRELUDE TO A VOLUME PRINTED IN RAISED LETTERS FOR THE BLIND DEAR friends, left darkling in the long eclipse That veils the noonday,--you whose finger-tips A meaning in these ridgy leaves can find Where ours go stumbling, senseless, helpless, blind. This wreath of verse how dare I offer you To whom the garden's choicest gifts are due? The hues of all its glowing beds are ours, Shall you not claim its sweetest-smelling flowers? Nay, those I have I bring you,--at their birth Life's cheerful sunshine warmed the grateful earth; If my rash boyhood dropped some idle seeds, And here and there you light on saucy weeds Among the fairer growths, remember still Song comes of grace, and not of human will: We get a jarring note when most we try, Then strike the chord we know not how or why; Our stately verse with too aspiring art Oft overshoots and fails to reach the heart, While the rude rhyme one human throb endears Turns grief to smiles, and softens mirth to tears. Kindest of critics, ye whose fingers read, From Nature's lesson learn the poet's creed; The queenly tulip flaunts in robes of flame, The wayside seedling scarce a tint may claim, Yet may the lowliest leaflets that unfold A dewdrop fresh from heaven's own chalice hold. BOSTON TO FLORENCE Sent to "The Philological Circle" of Florence for its meeting in commemoration of Dante, January 27, 1881, the anniversary of his first condemnation. PROUD of her clustering spires, her new-built towers, Our Venice, stolen from the slumbering sea, A sister's kindliest greeting wafts to thee, Rose of Val d' Arno, queen of all its flowers! Thine exile's shrine thy sorrowing love embowers, Yet none with truer homage bends the knee, Or stronger pledge of fealty brings, than we, Whose poets make thy dead Immortal ours. Lonely the height, but ah, to heaven how near! Dante, whence flowed that solemn verse of thine Like the stern river from its Apennine Whose name the far-off Scythian thrilled with fear: Now to all lands thy deep-toned voice is dear, And every language knows the Song Divine! AT THE UNITARIAN FESTIVAL MARCH 8, 1882 THE waves unbuild the wasting shore; Where mountains towered the billows sweep, Yet still their borrowed spoils restore, And build new empires from the deep. So while the floods of thought lay waste The proud domain of priestly creeds, Its heaven-appointed tides will haste To plant new homes for human needs. Be ours to mark with hearts unchilled The change an outworn church deplores; The legend sinks, but Faith shall build A fairer throne on new-found shores. POEM FOR THE TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDING OF HARVARD COLLEGE TWICE had the mellowing sun of autumn crowned The hundredth circle of his yearly round, When, as we meet to-day, our fathers met: That joyous gathering who can e'er forget, When Harvard's nurslings, scattered far and wide, Through mart and village, lake's and ocean's side, Came, with one impulse, one fraternal throng, And crowned the hours with banquet, speech, and song? Once more revived in fancy's magic glass, I see in state the long procession pass Tall, courtly, leader as by right divine, Winthrop, our Winthrop, rules the marshalled line, Still seen in front, as on that far-off day His ribboned baton showed the column's way. Not all are gone who marched in manly pride And waved their truncheons at their leader's side; Gray, Lowell, Dixwell, who his empire shared, These to be with us envious Time has spared. Few are the faces, so familiar then, Our eyes still meet amid the haunts of men; Scarce one of all the living gathered there, Whose unthinned locks betrayed a silver hair, Greets us to-day, and yet we seem the same As our own sires and grandsires, save in name. There are the patriarchs, looking vaguely round For classmates' faces, hardly known if found; See the cold brow that rules the busy mart; Close at its side the pallid son of art, Whose purchased skill with borrowed meaning clothes, And stolen hues, the smirking face he loathes. Here is the patient scholar; in his looks You read the titles of his learned books; What classic lore those spidery crow's-feet speak! What problems figure on that wrinkled cheek! For never thought but left its stiffened trace, Its fossil footprint, on the plastic face, As the swift record of a raindrop stands, Fixed on the tablet of the hardening sands. On every face as on the written page Each year renews the autograph of age; One trait alone may wasting years defy,-- The fire still lingering in the poet's eye, While Hope, the siren, sings her sweetest strain,-- _Non omnis moriar_ is its proud refrain. Sadly we gaze upon the vacant chair; He who should claim its honors is not there,-- Otis, whose lips the listening crowd enthrall That press and pack the floor of Boston's hall. But Kirkland smiles, released from toil and care Since the silk mantle younger shoulders wear,-- Quincy's, whose spirit breathes the selfsame fire That filled the bosom of his youthful sire, Who for the altar bore the kindled torch To freedom's temple, dying in its porch. Three grave professions in their sons appear, Whose words well studied all well pleased will hear Palfrey, ordained in varied walks to shine, Statesman, historian, critic, and divine; Solid and square behold majestic Shaw, A mass of wisdom and a mine of law; Warren, whose arm the doughtiest warriors fear, Asks of the startled crowd to lend its ear,-- Proud of his calling, him the world loves best, Not as the coming, but the parting guest. Look on that form,--with eye dilating scan The stately mould of nature's kingliest man! Tower-like he stands in life's unfaded prime; Ask you his name? None asks a second time He from the land his outward semblance takes, Where storm-swept mountains watch o'er slumbering lakes. See in the impress which the body wears How its imperial might the soul declares The forehead's large expansion, lofty, wide, That locks unsilvered vainly strive to hide; The lines of thought that plough the sober cheek; Lips that betray their wisdom ere they speak In tones like answers from Dodona's grove; An eye like Juno's when she frowns on Jove. I look and wonder; will he be content-- This man, this monarch, for the purple meant-- The meaner duties of his tribe to share, Clad in the garb that common mortals wear? Ah, wild Ambition, spread thy restless wings, Beneath whose plumes the hidden cestrum stings; Thou whose bold flight would leave earth's vulgar crowds, And like the eagle soar above the clouds, Must feel the pang that fallen angels know When the red lightning strikes thee from below! Less bronze, more silver, mingles in the mould Of him whom next my roving eyes behold; His, more the scholar's than the statesman's face, Proclaims him born of academic race. Weary his look, as if an aching brain Left on his brow the frozen prints of pain; His voice far-reaching, grave, sonorous, owns A shade of sadness in its plaintive tones, Yet when its breath some loftier thought inspires Glows with a heat that every bosom fires. Such Everett seems; no chance-sown wild flower knows The full-blown charms of culture's double rose,-- Alas, how soon, by death's unsparing frost, Its bloom is faded and its fragrance lost! Two voices, only two, to earth belong, Of all whose accents met the listening throng: Winthrop, alike for speech and guidance framed, On that proud day a twofold duty claimed; One other yet,--remembered or forgot,-- Forgive my silence if I name him not. Can I believe it? I, whose youthful voice Claimed a brief gamut,--notes not over choice, Stood undismayed before the solemn throng, And _propria voce_ sung that saucy song Which even in memory turns my soul aghast,-- _Felix audacia_ was the verdict cast. What were the glory of these festal days Shorn of their grand illumination's blaze? Night comes at last with all her starry train To find a light in every glittering pane. From "Harvard's" windows see the sudden flash,-- Old "Massachusetts" glares through every sash; From wall to wall the kindling splendors run Till all is glorious as the noonday sun. How to the scholar's mind each object brings What some historian tells, some poet sings! The good gray teacher whom we all revered-- Loved, honored, laughed at, and by freshmen feared, As from old "Harvard," where its light began, From hall to hall the clustering splendors ran-- Took down his well-worn Eschylus and read, Lit by the rays a thousand tapers shed, How the swift herald crossed the leagues between Mycenae's monarch and his faithless queen; And thus he read,--my verse but ill displays The Attic picture, clad in modern phrase. On Ida's summit flames the kindling pile, And Lemnos answers from his rocky isle; From Athos next it climbs the reddening skies, Thence where the watch-towers of Macistus rise. The sentries of Mesapius in their turn Bid the dry heath in high piled masses burn, Cithoeron's crag the crimson billows stain, Far AEgiplanctus joins the fiery train. Thus the swift courier through the pathless night Has gained at length the Arachnoean height, Whence the glad tidings, borne on wings offlame, "Ilium has fallen!" reach the royal dame. So ends the day; before the midnight stroke The lights expiring cloud the air with smoke; While these the toil of younger hands employ, The slumbering Grecian dreams of smouldering Troy. As to that hour with backward steps I turn, Midway I pause; behold a funeral urn! Ah, sad memorial! known but all too well The tale which thus its golden letters tell: This dust, once breathing, changed its joyous life For toil and hunger, wounds and mortal strife; Love, friendship, learning's all prevailing charms, For the cold bivouac and the clash of arms. The cause of freedom won, a race enslaved Called back to manhood, and a nation saved, These sons of Harvard, falling ere their prime, Leave their proud memory to the coming time. While in their still retreats our scholars turn The mildewed pages of the past, to learn With endless labor of the sleepless brain What once has been and ne'er shall be again, We reap the harvest of their ceaseless toil And find a fragrance in their midnight oil. But let a purblind mortal dare the task The embryo future of itself to ask, The world reminds him, with a scornful laugh, That times have changed since Prospero broke his staff. Could all the wisdom of the schools foretell The dismal hour when Lisbon shook and fell, Or name the shuddering night that toppled down Our sister's pride, beneath whose mural crown Scarce had the scowl forgot its angry lines, When earth's blind prisoners fired their fatal mines? New realms, new worlds, exulting Science claims, Still the dim future unexplored remains; Her trembling scales the far-off planet weigh, Her torturing prisms its elements betray,-- We know what ores the fires of Sirius melt, What vaporous metals gild Orion's belt; Angels, archangels, may have yet to learn Those hidden truths our heaven-taught eyes discern; Yet vain is Knowledge, with her mystic wand, To pierce the cloudy screen and read beyond; Once to the silent stars the fates were known, To us they tell no secrets but their own. At Israel's altar still we humbly bow, But where, oh where, are Israel's prophets now? Where is the sibyl with her hoarded leaves? Where is the charm the weird enchantress weaves? No croaking raven turns the auspex pale, No reeking altars tell the morrow's tale; The measured footsteps of the Fates are dumb, Unseen, unheard, unheralded, they come, Prophet and priest and all their following fail. Who then is left to rend the future's veil? Who but the poet, he whose nicer sense No film can baffle with its slight defence, Whose finer vision marks the waves that stray, Felt, but unseen, beyond the violet ray?-- Who, while the storm-wind waits its darkening shroud, Foretells the tempest ere he sees the cloud,-- Stays not for time his secrets to reveal, But reads his message ere he breaks the seal. So Mantua's bard foretold the coming day Ere Bethlehem's infant in the manger lay; The promise trusted to a mortal tongue Found listening ears before the angels sung. So while his load the creeping pack-horse galled, While inch by inch the dull canal-boat crawled, Darwin beheld a Titan from "afar Drag the slow barge or drive the rapid car," That panting giant fed by air and flame, The mightiest forges task their strength to tame. Happy the poet! him no tyrant fact Holds in its clutches to be chained and racked; Him shall no mouldy document convict, No stern statistics gravely contradict; No rival sceptre threats his airy throne; He rules o'er shadows, but he reigns alone. Shall I the poet's broad dominion claim Because you bid me wear his sacred name For these few moments? Shall I boldly clash My flint and steel, and by the sudden flash Read the fair vision which my soul descries Through the wide pupils of its wondering eyes? List then awhile; the fifty years have sped; The third full century's opened scroll is spread, Blank to all eyes save his who dimly sees The shadowy future told in words like these. How strange the prospect to my sight appears, Changed by the busy hands of fifty years! Full well I know our ocean-salted Charles, Filling and emptying through the sands and marls That wall his restless stream on either bank, Not all unlovely when the sedges rank Lend their coarse veil the sable ooze to hide That bares its blackness with the ebbing tide. In other shapes to my illumined eyes Those ragged margins of our stream arise Through walls of stone the sparkling waters flow, In clearer depths the golden sunsets glow, On purer waves the lamps of midnight gleam, That silver o'er the unpolluted stream. Along his shores what stately temples rise, What spires, what turrets, print the shadowed skies! Our smiling Mother sees her broad domain Spread its tall roofs along the western plain; Those blazoned windows' blushing glories tell Of grateful hearts that loved her long and well; Yon gilded dome that glitters in the sun Was Dives' gift,--alas, his only one! These buttressed walls enshrine a banker's name, That hallowed chapel hides a miser's shame; Their wealth they left,--their memory cannot fade Though age shall crumble every stone they laid. Great lord of millions,--let me call thee great, Since countless servants at thy bidding wait,-- Richesse oblige: no mortal must be blind To all but self, or look at human kind Laboring and suffering,--all its want and woe,-- Through sheets of crystal, as a pleasing show That makes life happier for the chosen few Duty for whom is something not to do. When thy last page of life at length is filled, What shall thine heirs to keep thy memory build? Will piles of stone in Auburn's mournful shade Save from neglect the spot where thou art laid? Nay, deem not thus; the sauntering stranger's eye Will pass unmoved thy columned tombstone by, No memory wakened, not a teardrop shed, Thy name uncared for and thy date unread. But if thy record thou indeed dost prize, Bid from the soil some stately temple rise,-- Some hall of learning, some memorial shrine, With names long honored to associate thine: So shall thy fame outlive thy shattered bust When all around thee slumber in the dust. Thus England's Henry lives in Eton's towers, Saved from the spoil oblivion's gulf devours; Our later records with as fair a fame Have wreathed each uncrowned benefactor's name; The walls they reared the memories still retain That churchyard marbles try to keep in vain. In vain the delving antiquary tries To find the tomb where generous Harvard lies Here, here, his lasting monument is found, Where every spot is consecrated ground! O'er Stoughton's dust the crumbling stone decays, Fast fade its lines of lapidary praise; There the wild bramble weaves its ragged nets, There the dry lichen spreads its gray rosettes; Still in yon walls his memory lives unspent, Nor asks a braver, nobler monument. Thus Hollis lives, and Holden, honored, praised, And good Sir Matthew, in the halls they raised; Thus live the worthies of these later times, Who shine in deeds, less brilliant, grouped in rhymes. Say, shall the Muse with faltering steps retreat, Or dare these names in rhythmic form repeat? Why not as boldly as from Homer's lips The long array, of Argive battle-ships? When o'er our graves a thousand years have past (If to such date our threatened globe shall last) These classic precincts, myriad feet have pressed, Will show on high, in beauteous garlands dressed, Those honored names that grace our later day,-- Weld, Matthews, Sever, Thayer, Austin, Gray, Sears, Phillips, Lawrence, Hemenway,--to the list Add Sanders, Sibley,--all the Muse has missed. Once more I turn to read the pictured page Bright with the promise of the coming age. Ye unborn sons of children yet unborn, Whose youthful eyes shall greet that far-off morn, Blest are those eyes that all undimmed behold The sights so longed for by the wise of old. From high-arched alcoves, through resounding halls, Clad in full robes majestic Science calls, Tireless, unsleeping, still at Nature's feet, Whate'er she utters fearless to repeat, Her lips at last from every cramp released That Israel's prophet caught from Egypt's priest. I see the statesman, firm, sagacious, bold, For life's long conflict cast in amplest mould; Not his to clamor with the senseless throng That shouts unshamed, "Our party, right or wrong," But in the patriot's never-ending fight To side with Truth, who changes wrong to right. I see the scholar; in that wondrous time Men, women, children, all can write in rhyme. These four brief lines addressed to youth inclined To idle rhyming in his notes I find: Who writes in verse that should have writ in prose Is like a traveller walking on his toes; Happy the rhymester who in time has found The heels he lifts were made to touch the ground. I see gray teachers,--on their work intent, Their lavished lives, in endless labor spent, Had closed at last in age and penury wrecked, Martyrs, not burned, but frozen in neglect, Save for the generous hands that stretched in aid Of worn-out servants left to die half paid. Ah, many a year will pass, I thought, ere we Such kindly forethought shall rejoice to see,-- Monarchs are mindful of the sacred debt That cold republics hasten to forget. I see the priest,--if such a name he bears Who without pride his sacred vestment wears; And while the symbols of his tribe I seek Thus my first impulse bids me think and speak: Let not the mitre England's prelate wears Next to the crown whose regal pomp it shares, Though low before it courtly Christians bow, Leave its red mark on Younger England's brow. We love, we honor, the maternal dame, But let her priesthood wear a modest name, While through the waters of the Pilgrim's bay A new-born Mayflower shows her keels the way. Too old grew Britain for her mother's beads,-- Must we be necklaced with her children's creeds? Welcome alike in surplice or in gown The loyal lieges of the Heavenly Crown! We greet with cheerful, not submissive, mien A sister church, but not a mitred Queen! A few brief flutters, and the unwilling Muse, Who feared the flight she hated to refuse, Shall fold the wings whose gayer plumes are shed, Here where at first her half-fledged pinions spread. Well I remember in the long ago How in the forest shades of Fontainebleau, Strained through a fissure in a rocky cell, One crystal drop with measured cadence fell. Still, as of old, forever bright and clear, The fissured cavern drops its wonted tear, And wondrous virtue, simple folk aver, Lies in that teardrop of la roche qui pleure. Of old I wandered by the river's side Between whose banks the mighty waters glide, Where vast Niagara, hurrying to its fall, Builds and unbuilds its ever-tumbling wall; Oft in my dreams I hear the rush and roar Of battling floods, and feel the trembling shore, As the huge torrent, girded for its leap, With bellowing thunders plunges down the steep. Not less distinct, from memory's pictured urn, The gray old rock, the leafy woods, return; Robed in their pride the lofty oaks appear, And once again with quickened sense I hear, Through the low murmur of the leaves that stir, The tinkling teardrop of _la roche qui pleure_. So when the third ripe century stands complete, As once again the sons of Harvard meet, Rejoicing, numerous as the seashore sands, Drawn from all quarters,--farthest distant lands, Where through the reeds the scaly saurian steals, Where cold Alaska feeds her floundering seals, Where Plymouth, glorying, wears her iron crown, Where Sacramento sees the suns go down; Nay, from the cloisters whence the refluent tide Wafts their pale students to our Mother's side,-- Mid all the tumult that the day shall bring, While all the echoes shout, and roar, and ring, These tinkling lines, oblivion's easy prey, Once more emerging to the light of day, Not all unpleasing to the listening ear Shall wake the memories of this bygone year, Heard as I hear the measured drops that flow From the gray rock of wooded Fontainebleau. Yet, ere I leave, one loving word for all Those fresh young lives that wait our Mother's call: One gift is yours, kind Nature's richest dower,-- Youth, the fair bud that holds life's opening flower, Full of high hopes no coward doubts enchain, With all the future throbbing in its brain, And mightiest instincts which the beating heart Fills with the fire its burning waves impart. O joyous youth, whose glory is to dare,-- Thy foot firm planted on the lowest stair, Thine eye uplifted to the loftiest height Where Fame stands beckoning in the rosy light, Thanks for thy flattering tales, thy fond deceits, Thy loving lies, thy cheerful smiling cheats Nature's rash promise every day is broke,-- A thousand acorns breed a single oak, The myriad blooms that make the orchard gay In barren beauty throw their lives away; Yet shall we quarrel with the sap that yields The painted blossoms which adorn the fields, When the fair orchard wears its May-day suit Of pink-white petals, for its scanty fruit? Thrice happy hours, in hope's illusion dressed, In fancy's cradle nurtured and caressed, Though rich the spoils that ripening years may bring, To thee the dewdrops of the Orient cling,-- Not all the dye-stuffs from the vats of truth Can match the rainbow on the robes of youth! Dear unborn children, to our Mother's trust We leave you, fearless, when we lie in dust: While o'er these walls the Christian banner waves From hallowed lips shall flow the truth that saves; While o'er those portals Veritas you read No church shall bind you with its human creed. Take from the past the best its toil has won, But learn betimes its slavish ruts to shun. Pass the old tree whose withered leaves are shed, Quit the old paths that error loved to tread, And a new wreath of living blossoms seek, A narrower pathway up a loftier peak; Lose not your reverence, but unmanly fear Leave far behind you, all who enter here! As once of old from Ida's lofty height The flaming signal flashed across the night, So Harvard's beacon sheds its unspent rays Till every watch-tower shows its kindling blaze. Caught from a spark and fanned by every gale, A brighter radiance gilds the roofs of Yale; Amherst and Williams bid their flambeaus shine, And Bowdoin answers through her groves of pine; O'er Princeton's sands the far reflections steal, Where mighty Edwards stamped his iron heel; Nay, on the hill where old beliefs were bound Fast as if Styx had girt them nine times round, Bursts such a light that trembling souls inquire If the whole church of Calvin is on fire! Well may they ask, for what so brightly burns As a dry creed that nothing ever learns? Thus link by link is knit the flaming chain Lit by the torch of Harvard's hallowed plain. Thy son, thy servant, dearest Mother mine, Lays this poor offering on thy holy shrine, An autumn leaflet to the wild winds tost, Touched by the finger of November's frost, With sweet, sad memories of that earlier day, And all that listened to my first-born lay. With grateful heart this glorious morn I see,-- Would that my tribute worthier were of thee! POST-PRANDIAL PHI BETA KAPPA WENDELL PHILLIPS, ORATOR; CHARLES GODFREY LELAND, POET 1881 "THE Dutch have taken Holland,"--so the schoolboys used to say; The Dutch have taken Harvard,--no doubt of that to-day! For the Wendells were low Dutchmen, and all their vrows were Vans; And the Breitmanns are high Dutchmen, and here is honest Hans. Mynheers, you both are welcome! Fair cousin Wendell P., Our ancestors were dwellers beside the Zuyder Zee; Both Grotius and Erasmus were countrymen of we, And Vondel was our namesake, though he spelt it with a V. It is well old Evert Jansen sought a dwelling over sea On the margin of the Hudson, where he sampled you and me Through our grandsires and great-grandsires, for you would n't quite agree With the steady-going burghers along the Zuyder Zee. Like our Motley's John of Barnveld, you have always been inclined To speak,--well,--somewhat frankly,--to let us know your mind, And the Mynheers would have told you to be cautious what you said, Or else that silver tongue of yours might cost your precious head. But we're very glad you've kept it; it was always Freedom's own, And whenever Reason chose it she found a royal throne; You have whacked us with your sceptre; our backs were little harmed, And while we rubbed our bruises we owned we had been charmed. And you, our quasi Dutchman, what welcome should be yours For all the wise prescriptions that work your laughter-cures? "Shake before taking"?--not a bit,--the bottle-cure's a sham; Take before shaking, and you 'll find it shakes your diaphragm. "Hans Breitmann gif a barty,--vhere is dot barty now?" On every shelf where wit is stored to smooth the careworn brow A health to stout Hans Breitmann! How long before we see Another Hans as handsome,--as bright a man as he! THE FLANEUR BOSTON COMMON, DECEMBER 6, 1882 DURING THE TRANSIT OF VENUS I LOVE all sights of earth and skies, From flowers that glow to stars that shine; The comet and the penny show, All curious things, above, below, Hold each in turn my wandering eyes: I claim the Christian Pagan's line, _Humani nihil_,--even so,-- And is not human life divine? When soft the western breezes blow, And strolling youths meet sauntering maids, I love to watch the stirring trades Beneath the Vallombrosa shades Our much-enduring elms bestow; The vender and his rhetoric's flow, That lambent stream of liquid lies; The bait he dangles from his line, The gudgeon and his gold-washed prize. I halt before the blazoned sign That bids me linger to admire The drama time can never tire, The little hero of the hunch, With iron arm and soul of fire, And will that works his fierce desire,-- Untamed, unscared, unconquered Punch My ear a pleasing torture finds In tones the withered sibyl grinds,-- The dame sans merci's broken strain, Whom I erewhile, perchance, have known, When Orleans filled the Bourbon throne, A siren singing by the Seine. But most I love the tube that spies The orbs celestial in their march; That shows the comet as it whisks Its tail across the planets' disks, As if to blind their blood-shot eyes; Or wheels so close against the sun We tremble at the thought of risks Our little spinning ball may run, To pop like corn that children parch, From summer something overdone, And roll, a cinder, through the skies. Grudge not to-day the scanty fee To him who farms the firmament, To whom the Milky Way is free; Who holds the wondrous crystal key, The silent Open Sesame That Science to her sons has lent; Who takes his toll, and lifts the bar That shuts the road to sun and star. If Venus only comes to time, (And prophets say she must and shall,) To-day will hear the tinkling chime Of many a ringing silver dime, For him whose optic glass supplies The crowd with astronomic eyes,-- The Galileo of the Mall. Dimly the transit morning broke; The sun seemed doubting what to do, As one who questions how to dress, And takes his doublets from the press, And halts between the old and new. Please Heaven he wear his suit of blue, Or don, at least, his ragged cloak, With rents that show the azure through! I go the patient crowd to join That round the tube my eyes discern, The last new-comer of the file, And wait, and wait, a weary while, And gape, and stretch, and shrug, and smile, (For each his place must fairly earn, Hindmost and foremost, in his turn,) Till hitching onward, pace by pace, I gain at last the envied place, And pay the white exiguous coin: The sun and I are face to face; He glares at me, I stare at him; And lo! my straining eye has found A little spot that, black and round, Lies near the crimsoned fire-orb's rim. O blessed, beauteous evening star, Well named for her whom earth adores,-- The Lady of the dove-drawn car,-- I know thee in thy white simar; But veiled in black, a rayless spot, Blank as a careless scribbler's blot, Stripped of thy robe of silvery flame,-- The stolen robe that Night restores When Day has shut his golden doors,-- I see thee, yet I know thee not; And canst thou call thyself the same? A black, round spot,--and that is all; And such a speck our earth would be If he who looks upon the stars Through the red atmosphere of Mars Could see our little creeping ball Across the disk of crimson crawl As I our sister planet see. And art thou, then, a world like ours, Flung from the orb that whirled our own A molten pebble from its zone? How must thy burning sands absorb The fire-waves of the blazing orb, Thy chain so short, thy path so near, Thy flame-defying creatures hear The maelstroms of the photosphere! And is thy bosom decked with flowers That steal their bloom from scalding showers? And bast thou cities, domes, and towers, And life, and love that makes it dear, And death that fills thy tribes with fear? Lost in my dream, my spirit soars Through paths the wandering angels know; My all-pervading thought explores The azure ocean's lucent shores; I leave my mortal self below, As up the star-lit stairs I climb, And still the widening view reveals In endless rounds the circling wheels That build the horologe of time. New spheres, new suns, new systems gleam; The voice no earth-born echo hears Steals softly on my ravished ears I hear them "singing as they shine"-- A mortal's voice dissolves my dream: My patient neighbor, next in line, Hints gently there are those who wait. O guardian of the starry gate, What coin shall pay this debt of mine? Too slight thy claim, too small the fee That bids thee turn the potent key. The Tuscan's hand has placed in thine. Forgive my own the small affront, The insult of the proffered dime; Take it, O friend, since this thy wont, But still shall faithful memory be A bankrupt debtor unto thee, And pay thee with a grateful rhyme. AVE PRELUDE TO "ILLUSTRATED POEMS" FULL well I know the frozen hand has come That smites the songs of grove and garden dumb, And chills sad autumn's last chrysanthemum; Yet would I find one blossom, if I might, Ere the dark loom that weaves the robe of white Hides all the wrecks of summer out of sight. Sometimes in dim November's narrowing day, When all the season's pride has passed away, As mid the blackened stems and leaves we stray, We spy in sheltered nook or rocky cleft A starry disk the hurrying winds have left, Of all its blooming sisterhood bereft. Some pansy, with its wondering baby eyes Poor wayside nursling!--fixed in blank surprise At the rough welcome of unfriendly skies; Or golden daisy,--will it dare disclaim The lion's tooth, to wear this gentler name? Or blood-red salvia, with its lips aflame. The storms have stripped the lily and the rose, Still on its cheek the flush of summer glows, And all its heart-leaves kindle as it blows. So had I looked some bud of song to find The careless winds of autumn left behind, With these of earlier seasons' growth to bind. Ah me! my skies are dark with sudden grief, A flower lies faded on my garnered sheaf; Yet let the sunshine gild this virgin leaf, The joyous, blessed sunshine of the past, Still with me, though the heavens are overcast,-- The light that shines while life and memory last. Go, pictured rhymes, for loving readers meant; Bring back the smiles your jocund morning lent, And warm their hearts with sunbeams yet unspent! BEVERLY FARMS, July 24, 1884. KING'S CHAPEL READ AT THE TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY Is it a weanling's weakness for the past That in the stormy, rebel-breeding town, Swept clean of relics by the levelling blast, Still keeps our gray old chapel's name of "King's," Still to its outworn symbols fondly clings,-- Its unchurched mitres and its empty crown? Poor harmless emblems! All has shrunk away That made them gorgons in the patriot's eyes; The priestly plaything harms us not to-day; The gilded crown is but a pleasing show, An old-world heirloom, left from long ago, Wreck of the past that memory bids us prize, Lightly we glance the fresh-cut marbles o'er; Those two of earlier date our eyes enthrall: The proud old Briton's by the western door, And hers, the Lady of Colonial days, Whose virtues live in long-drawn classic phrase,-- The fair Francesca of the southern wall. Ay! those were goodly men that Reynolds drew, And stately dames our Copley's canvas holds, To their old Church, their Royal Master, true, Proud of the claim their valiant sires had earned, That "gentle blood," not lightly to be spurned, Save by the churl ungenerous Nature moulds. All vanished! It were idle to complain That ere the fruits shall come the flowers must fall; Yet somewhat we have lost amidst our gain, Some rare ideals time may not restore,-- The charm of courtly breeding, seen no more, And reverence, dearest ornament of all. Thus musing, to the western wall I came, Departing: lo! a tablet fresh and fair, Where glistened many a youth's remembered name In golden letters on the snow-white stone,-- Young lives these aisles and arches once have known, Their country's bleeding altar might not spare. These died that we might claim a soil unstained, Save by the blood of heroes; their bequests A realm unsevered and a race unchained. Has purer blood through Norman veins come down From the rough knights that clutched the Saxon's crown Than warmed the pulses in these faithful breasts? These, too, shall live in history's deathless page, High on the slow-wrought pedestals of fame, Ranged with the heroes of remoter age; They could not die who left their nation free, Firm as the rock, unfettered as the sea, Its heaven unshadowed by the cloud of shame. While on the storied past our memory dwells, Our grateful tribute shall not be denied,-- The wreath, the cross of rustling immortelles; And willing hands shall clear each darkening bust, As year by year sifts down the clinging dust On Shirley's beauty and on Vassall's pride. But for our own, our loved and lost, we bring With throbbing hearts and tears that still must flow, In full-heaped hands, the opening flowers of spring, Lilies half-blown, and budding roses, red As their young cheeks, before the blood was shed That lent their morning bloom its generous glow. Ah, who shall count a rescued nation's debt, Or sum in words our martyrs' silent claims? Who shall our heroes' dread exchange forget,-- All life, youth, hope, could promise to allure For all that soul could brave or flesh endure? They shaped our future; we but carve their names. HYMN FOR THE SAME OCCASION SUNG BY THE CONGREGATION TO THE TUNE OF TALLIS'S EVENING HYMN O'ERSHADOWED by the walls that climb, Piled up in air by living hands, A rock amid the waves of time, Our gray old house of worship stands. High o'er the pillared aisles we love The symbols of the past look down; Unharmed, unharming, throned above, Behold the mitre and the crown! Let not our younger faith forget The loyal souls that held them dear; The prayers we read their tears have wet, The hymns we sing they loved to hear. The memory of their earthly throne Still to our holy temple clings, But here the kneeling suppliants own One only Lord, the King of kings. Hark! while our hymn of grateful praise The solemn echoing vaults prolong, The far-off voice of earlier days Blends with our own in hallowed song: To Him who ever lives and reigns, Whom all the hosts of heaven adore, Who lent the life His breath sustains, Be glory now and evermore! HYMN.--THE WORD OF PROMISE (by supposition) An Hymn set forth to be sung by the Great Assembly at Newtown, [Mass.] Mo. 12. 1. 1636. [Written by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, eldest son of Rev. ABIEL HOLMES, eighth Pastor of the First Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts.] LORD, Thou hast led us as of old Thine Arm led forth the chosen Race Through Foes that raged, through Floods that roll'd, To Canaan's far-off Dwelling-Place. Here is Thy bounteous Table spread, Thy Manna falls on every Field, Thy Grace our hungering Souls hath fed, Thy Might hath been our Spear and Shield. Lift high Thy Buckler, Lord of Hosts! Guard Thou Thy Servants, Sons and Sires, While on the Godless heathen Coasts They light Thine Israel's Altar-fires! The salvage Wilderness remote Shall hear Thy Works and Wonders sung; So from the Rock that Moses smote The Fountain of the Desart sprung. Soon shall the slumbering Morn awake, From wandering Stars of Errour freed, When Christ the Bread of Heaven shall break For Saints that own a common Creed. The Walls that fence His Flocks apart Shall crack and crumble in Decay, And every Tongue and every Heart Shall welcome in the new-born Day. Then shall His glorious Church rejoice His Word of Promise to recall,-- ONE SHELTERING FOLD, ONE SHEPHERD'S VOICE, ONE GOD AND FATHER OVER ALL! HYMN READ AT THE DEDICATION OF THE OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES HOSPITAL AT HUDSON, WISCONSIN JUNE 7, 1877 ANGEL of love, for every grief Its soothing balm thy mercy brings, For every pang its healing leaf, For homeless want, thine outspread, wings. Enough for thee the pleading eye, The knitted brow of silent pain; The portals open to a sigh Without the clank of bolt or chain. Who is our brother? He that lies Left at the wayside, bruised and sore His need our open hand supplies, His welcome waits him at our door. Not ours to ask in freezing tones His race, his calling, or his creed; Each heart the tie of kinship owns, When those are human veins that bleed. Here stand the champions to defend From every wound that flesh can feel; Here science, patience, skill, shall blend To save, to calm, to help, to heal. Father of Mercies! Weak and frail, Thy guiding hand Thy children ask; Let not the Great Physician fail To aid us in our holy task. Source of all truth, and love, and light, That warm and cheer our earthly days, Be ours to serve Thy will aright, Be Thine the glory and the praise! ON THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD I. FALLEN with autumn's falling leaf Ere yet his summer's noon was past, Our friend, our guide, our trusted chief,-- What words can match a woe so vast! And whose the chartered claim to speak The sacred grief where all have part, Where sorrow saddens every cheek And broods in every aching heart? Yet Nature prompts the burning phrase That thrills the hushed and shrouded hall, The loud lament, the sorrowing praise, The silent tear that love lets fall. In loftiest verse, in lowliest rhyme, Shall strive unblamed the minstrel choir,--- The singers of the new-born time, And trembling age with outworn lyre. No room for pride, no place for blame,-- We fling our blossoms on the grave, Pale,--scentless,--faded,--all we claim, This only,--what we had we gave. Ah, could the grief of all who mourn Blend in one voice its bitter cry, The wail to heaven's high arches borne Would echo through the caverned sky. II. O happiest land, whose peaceful choice Fills with a breath its empty throne! God, speaking through thy people's voice, Has made that voice for once His own. No angry passion shakes the state Whose weary servant seeks for rest; And who could fear that scowling hate Would strike at that unguarded breast? He stands, unconscious of his doom, In manly strength, erect, serene; Around him Summer spreads her bloom; He falls,--what horror clothes the scene! How swift the sudden flash of woe Where all was bright as childhood's dream! As if from heaven's ethereal bow Had leaped the lightning's arrowy gleam. Blot the foul deed from history's page; Let not the all-betraying sun Blush for the day that stains an age When murder's blackest wreath was won. III. Pale on his couch the sufferer lies, The weary battle-ground of pain Love tends his pillow; Science tries Her every art, alas! in vain. The strife endures how long! how long! Life, death, seem balanced in the scale, While round his bed a viewless throng Await each morrow's changing tale. In realms the desert ocean parts What myriads watch with tear-filled eyes, His pulse-beats echoing in their hearts, His breathings counted with their sighs! Slowly the stores of life are spent, Yet hope still battles with despair; Will Heaven not yield when knees are bent? Answer, O thou that hearest prayer. But silent is the brazen sky; On sweeps the meteor's threatening train, Unswerving Nature's mute reply, Bound in her adamantine chain. Not ours the verdict to decide Whom death shall claim or skill shall save; The hero's life though Heaven denied, It gave our land a martyr's grave. Nor count the teaching vainly sent How human hearts their griefs may share,-- The lesson woman's love has lent, What hope may do, what faith can bear! Farewell! the leaf-strown earth enfolds Our stay, our pride, our hopes, our fears, And autumn's golden sun beholds A nation bowed, a world in tears. THE GOLDEN FLOWER WHEN Advent dawns with lessening days, While earth awaits the angels' hymn; When bare as branching coral sways In whistling winds each leafless limb; When spring is but a spendthrift's dream, And summer's wealth a wasted dower, Nor dews nor sunshine may redeem,-- Then autumn coins his Golden Flower. Soft was the violet's vernal hue, Fresh was the rose's morning red, Full-orbed the stately dahlia grew,-- All gone! their short-lived splendors shed. The shadows, lengthening, stretch at noon; The fields are stripped, the groves are dumb; The frost-flowers greet the icy moon,-- Then blooms the bright chrysanthemum. The stiffening turf is white with snow, Yet still its radiant disks are seen Where soon the hallowed morn will show The wreath and cross of Christmas green; As if in autumn's dying days It heard the heavenly song afar, And opened all its glowing rays, The herald lamp of Bethlehem's star. Orphan of summer, kindly sent To cheer the fading year's decline, In all that pitying Heaven has lent No fairer pledge of hope than thine. Yes! June lies hid beneath the snow, And winter's unborn heir shall claim For every seed that sleeps below A spark that kindles into flame. Thy smile the scowl of winter braves Last of the bright-robed, flowery train, Soft sighing o'er the garden graves, "Farewell! farewell! we meet again!" So may life's chill November bring Hope's golden flower, the last of all, Before we hear the angels sing Where blossoms never fade and fall! HAIL, COLUMBIA! 1798 THE FIRST VERSE OF THE SONG BY JOSEPH HOPKINSON "HAIL, Columbia! Happy land! Hail, ye heroes, heaven-born band, Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause, Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause, And when the storm of war was gone Enjoy'd the peace your valor won. Let independence be our boast, Ever mindful what it cost; Ever grateful for the prize, Let its altar reach the skies. "Firm--united--let us be, Rallying round our Liberty; As a band of brothers join'd, Peace and safety we shall find." ADDITIONAL VERSES WRITTEN AT THE REQUEST OF THE COMMITTEE FOR THE CONSTITUTIONAL CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION AT PHILADELPHIA, 1887 LOOK our ransomed shores around, Peace and safety we have found! Welcome, friends who once were foes! Welcome, friends who once were foes, To all the conquering years have gained,-- A nation's rights, a race unchained! Children of the day new-born, Mindful of its glorious morn, Let the pledge our fathers signed Heart to heart forever bind! While the stars of heaven shall burn, While the ocean tides return, Ever may the circling sun Find the Many still are One! Graven deep with edge of steel, Crowned with Victory's crimson seal, All the world their names shall read! All the world their names shall read, Enrolled with his, the Chief that led The hosts whose blood for us was shed. Pay our sires their children's debt, Love and honor, nor forget Only Union's golden key Guards the Ark of Liberty! While the stars of heaven shall burn, While the ocean tides return, Ever may the circling sun Find the Many still are One! Hail, Columbia! strong and free, Throned in hearts from sea to sea Thy march triumphant still pursue! Thy march triumphant still pursue With peaceful stride from zone to zone, Till Freedom finds the world her own. Blest in Union's holy ties, Let our grateful song arise, Every voice its tribute lend, All in loving chorus blend! While the stars in heaven shall burn, While the ocean tides return, Ever shall the circling sun Find the Many still are One! POEM FOR THE DEDICATION OF THE FOUNTAIN AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON, PRESENTED BY GEORGE W. CHILDS, OF PHILADELPHIA WELCOME, thrice welcome is thy silvery gleam, Thou long-imprisoned stream! Welcome the tinkle of thy crystal beads As plashing raindrops to the flowery meads, As summer's breath to Avon's whispering reeds! From rock-walled channels, drowned in rayless night, Leap forth to life and light; Wake from the darkness of thy troubled dream, And greet with answering smile the morning's beam! No purer lymph the white-limbed Naiad knows Than from thy chalice flows; Not the bright spring of Afric's sunny shores, Starry with spangles washed from golden ores, Nor glassy stream Bandusia's fountain pours, Nor wave translucent where Sabrina fair Braids her loose-flowing hair, Nor the swift current, stainless as it rose Where chill Arveiron steals from Alpine snows. Here shall the traveller stay his weary feet To seek thy calm retreat; Here at high noon the brown-armed reaper rest; Here, when the shadows, lengthening from the west, Call the mute song-bird to his leafy nest, Matron and maid shall chat the cares away That brooded o'er the day, While flocking round them troops of children meet, And all the arches ring with laughter sweet. Here shall the steed, his patient life who spends In toil that never ends, Hot from his thirsty tramp o'er hill and plain, Plunge his red nostrils, while the torturing rein Drops in loose loops beside his floating mane; Nor the poor brute that shares his master's lot Find his small needs forgot,-- Truest of humble, long-enduring friends, Whose presence cheers, whose guardian care defends! Here lark and thrush and nightingale shall sip, And skimming swallows dip, And strange shy wanderers fold their lustrous plumes Fragrant from bowers that lent their sweet perfumes Where Paestum's rose or Persia's lilac blooms; Here from his cloud the eagle stoop to drink At the full basin's brink, And whet his beak against its rounded lip, His glossy feathers glistening as they drip. Here shall the dreaming poet linger long, Far from his listening throng,-- Nor lute nor lyre his trembling hand shall bring; Here no frail Muse shall imp her crippled wing, No faltering minstrel strain his throat to sing! These hallowed echoes who shall dare to claim Whose tuneless voice would shame, Whose jangling chords with jarring notes would wrong The nymphs that heard the Swan if Avon's song? What visions greet the pilgrim's raptured eyes! What ghosts made real rise! The dead return,--they breathe,--they live again, Joined by the host of Fancy's airy train, Fresh from the springs of Shakespeare's quickening brain! The stream that slakes the soul's diviner thirst Here found the sunbeams first; Rich with his fame, not less shall memory prize The gracious gift that humbler wants supplies. O'er the wide waters reached the hand that gave To all this bounteous wave, With health and strength and joyous beauty fraught; Blest be the generous pledge of friendship, brought From the far home of brothers' love, unbought! Long may fair Avon's fountain flow, enrolled With storied shrines of old, Castalia's spring, Egeria's dewy cave, And Horeb's rock the God of Israel slave! Land of our fathers, ocean makes us two, But heart to heart is true! Proud is your towering daughter in the West, Yet in her burning life-blood reign confest Her mother's pulses beating in her breast. This holy fount, whose rills from heaven descend, Its gracious drops shall lend,-- Both foreheads bathed in that baptismal dew, And love make one the old home and the new! August 29, 1887. TO THE POETS WHO ONLY READ AND LISTEN WHEN evening's shadowy fingers fold The flowers of every hue, Some shy, half-opened bud will hold Its drop of morning's dew. Sweeter with every sunlit hour The trembling sphere has grown, Till all the fragrance of the flower Becomes at last its own. We that have sung perchance may find Our little meed of praise, And round our pallid temples bind The wreath of fading bays. Ah, Poet, who hast never spent Thy breath in idle strains, For thee the dewdrop morning lent Still in thy heart remains; Unwasted, in its perfumed cell It waits the evening gale; Then to the azure whence it fell Its lingering sweets exhale. FOR THE DEDICATION OF THE NEW CITY LIBRARY, BOSTON PROUDLY, beneath her glittering dome, Our three-hilled city greets the morn; Here Freedom found her virgin home,-- The Bethlehem where her babe was born. The lordly roofs of traffic rise Amid the smoke of household fires; High o'er them in the peaceful skies Faith points to heaven her clustering spires. Can Freedom breathe if ignorance reign? Shall Commerce thrive where anarchs rule? Will Faith her half-fledged brood retain If darkening counsels cloud the school? Let in the light! from every age Some gleams of garnered wisdom pour, And, fixed on thought's electric page, Wait all their radiance to restore. Let in the light! in diamond mines Their gems invite the hand that delves; So learning's treasured jewels shine Ranged on the alcove's ordered shelves. From history's scroll the splendor streams, From science leaps the living ray; Flashed from the poet's glowing dreams The opal fires of fancy play. Let in the light! these windowed walls Shall brook no shadowing colonnades, But day shall flood the silent halls Till o'er yon hills the sunset fades. Behind the ever open gate No pikes shall fence a crumbling throne, No lackeys cringe, no courtiers wait, This palace is the people's own! Heirs of our narrow-girdled past, How fair the prospect we survey, Where howled unheard the wintry blast, And rolled unchecked the storm-swept bay! These chosen precincts, set apart For learned toil and holy shrines, Yield willing homes to every art That trains, or strengthens, or refines. Here shall the sceptred mistress reign Who heeds her meanest subject's call, Sovereign of all their vast domain, The queen, the handmaid of them all! November 26, 1888. FOR THE WINDOW IN ST. MARGARET'S IN MEMORY OF A SON OF ARCHDEACON FARRAR AFAR he sleeps whose name is graven here, Where loving hearts his early doom deplore; Youth, promise, virtue, all that made him dear Heaven lent, earth borrowed, sorrowing to restore. BOSTON, April 12, 1891. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 1819-1891 THOU shouldst have sung the swan-song for the choir That filled our groves with music till the day Lit the last hilltop with its reddening fire, And evening listened for thy lingering lay. But thou hast found thy voice in realms afar Where strains celestial blend their notes with thine; Some cloudless sphere beneath a happier star Welcomes the bright-winged spirit we resign. How Nature mourns thee in the still retreat Where passed in peace thy love-enchanted hours! Where shall she find an eye like thine to greet Spring's earliest footprints on her opening flowers? Have the pale wayside weeds no fond regret For him who read the secrets they enfold? Shall the proud spangles of the field forget The verse that lent new glory to their gold? And ye whose carols wooed his infant ear, Whose chants with answering woodnotes he repaid, Have ye no song his spirit still may hear From Elmwood's vaults of overarching shade? Friends of his studious hours, who thronged to teach The deep-read scholar all your varied lore, Shall he no longer seek your shelves to reach The treasure missing from his world-wide store? This singer whom we long have held so dear Was Nature's darling, shapely, strong, and fair; Of keenest wit, of judgment crystal-clear, Easy of converse, courteous, debonair, Fit for the loftiest or the lowliest lot, Self-poised, imperial, yet of simplest ways; At home alike in castle or in cot, True to his aim, let others blame or praise. Freedom he found an heirloom from his sires; Song, letters, statecraft, shared his years in turn; All went to feed the nation's altar-fires Whose mourning children wreathe his funeral urn. He loved New England,--people, language, soil, Unweaned by exile from her arid breast. Farewell awhile, white-handed son of toil, Go with her brown-armed laborers to thy rest. Peace to thy slumber in the forest shade! Poet and patriot, every gift was thine; Thy name shall live while summers bloom and fade, And grateful Memory guard thy leafy shrine! 
7398	----	THE POETICAL WORKS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES [Volume 3 of the 1893 three volume set] POEMS FROM OVER THE TEACUPS POEMS FROM OVER THE TEACUPS. TO THE ELEVEN LADIES WHO PRESENTED ME WITH A SILVER LOVING CUP THE PEAU DE CHAGRIN OF STATE STREET CACOETHES SCRIBENDI THE ROSE AND THE FERN I LIKE YOU AND I LOVE YOU LA MAISON D'OR BAR HARBOR TOO YOUNG FOR LOVE THE BROOMSTICK TRAIN; OR, THE RETURN OF THE WITCHES TARTARUS AT THE TURN OF THE ROAD INVITA MINERVA READINGS OVER THE TEACUPS TO MY OLD READERS THE BANKER'S SECRET THE EXILE'S SECRET THE LOVER'S SECRET THE STATESMAN'S SECRET THE MOTHER'S SECRET THE SECRET OF THE STARS TO THE ELEVEN LADIES WHO PRESENTED ME WITH A SILVER LOVING CUP ON THE TWENTY-NINTH OF AUGUST, M DCCC LXXXIX "WHO gave this cup?" The secret thou wouldst steal Its brimming flood forbids it to reveal: No mortal's eye shall read it till he first Cool the red throat of thirst. If on the golden floor one draught remain, Trust me, thy careful search will be in vain; Not till the bowl is emptied shalt thou know The names enrolled below. Deeper than Truth lies buried in her well Those modest names the graven letters spell Hide from the sight; but wait, and thou shalt see Who the good angels be. Whose bounty glistens in the beauteous gift That friendly hands to loving lips shall lift Turn the fair goblet when its floor is dry,-- Their names shall meet thine eye. Count thou their number on the beads of Heaven Alas! the clustered Pleiads are but seven; Nay, the nine sister Muses are too few,-- The Graces must add two. "For whom this gift?" For one who all too long Clings to his bough among the groves of song; Autumn's last leaf, that spreads its faded wing To greet a second spring. Dear friends, kind friends, whate'er the cup may hold, Bathing its burnished depths, will change to gold Its last bright drop let thirsty Maenads drain, Its fragrance will remain. Better love's perfume in the empty bowl Than wine's nepenthe for the aching soul; Sweeter than song that ever poet sung, It makes an old heart young! THE PEAU DE CHAGRIN OF STATE STREET How beauteous is the bond In the manifold array Of its promises to pay, While the eight per cent it gives And the rate at which one lives Correspond! But at last the bough is bare Where the coupons one by one Through their ripening days have run, And the bond, a beggar now, Seeks investment anyhow, Anywhere! CACOETHES SCRIBENDI IF all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth's living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for ten thousand ages, day and night, The human race should write, and write, and write, Till all the pens and paper were used up, And the huge inkstand was an empty cup, Still would the scribblers clustered round its brink Call for more pens, more paper, and more ink. THE ROSE AND THE FERN LADY, life's sweetest lesson wouldst thou learn, Come thou with me to Love's enchanted bower High overhead the trellised roses burn; Beneath thy feet behold the feathery fern,-- A leaf without a flower. What though the rose leaves fall? They still are sweet, And have been lovely in their beauteous prime, While the bare frond seems ever to repeat, "For us no bud, no blossom, wakes to greet The joyous flowering time!" Heed thou the lesson. Life has leaves to tread And flowers to cherish; summer round thee glows; Wait not till autumn's fading robes are shed, But while its petals still are burning red Gather life's full-blown rose! I LIKE YOU AND I LOVE YOU I LIKE YOU Met I LOVE You, face to face; The path was narrow, and they could not pass. I LIKE YOU smiled; I LOVE YOU cried, Alas! And so they halted for a little space. "Turn thou and go before," I LOVE YOU said, "Down the green pathway, bright with many a flower; Deep in the valley, lo! my bridal bower Awaits thee." But I LIKE YOU shook his head. Then while they lingered on the span-wide shelf That shaped a pathway round the rocky ledge, I LIKE You bared his icy dagger's edge, And first he slew I LOVE You,--then himself. LA MAISON D'OR (BAR HARBOR) FROM this fair home behold on either side The restful mountains or the restless sea So the warm sheltering walls of life divide Time and its tides from still eternity. Look on the waves: their stormy voices teach That not on earth may toil and struggle cease. Look on the mountains: better far than speech Their silent promise of eternal peace. TOO YOUNG FOR LOVE Too young for love? Ah, say not so! Tell reddening rose-buds not to blow Wait not for spring to pass away,-- Love's summer months begin with May! Too young for love? Ah, say not so! Too young? Too young? Ah, no! no! no! Too young for love? Ah, say not so, To practise all love learned in May. June soon will come with lengthened day While daisies bloom and tulips glow! Too young for love? Ah, say not so! Too young? Too young? Ah, no! no! no! THE BROOMSTICK TRAIN; OR, THE RETURN OF THE WITCHES LOOK out! Look out, boys! Clear the track! The witches are here! They've all come back! They hanged them high,--No use! No use! What cares a witch for a hangman's noose? They buried them deep, but they wouldn't lie still, For cats and witches are hard to kill; They swore they shouldn't and wouldn't die,-- Books said they did, but they lie! they lie! A couple of hundred years, or so, They had knocked about in the world below, When an Essex Deacon dropped in to call, And a homesick feeling seized them all; For he came from a place they knew full well, And many a tale he had to tell. They longed to visit the haunts of men, To see the old dwellings they knew again, And ride on their broomsticks all around Their wide domain of unhallowed ground. In Essex county there's many a roof Well known to him of the cloven hoof; The small square windows are full in view Which the midnight hags went sailing through, On their well-trained broomsticks mounted high, Seen like shadows against the sky; Crossing the track of owls and bats, Hugging before them their coal-black cats. Well did they know, those gray old wives, The sights we see in our daily drives Shimmer of lake and shine of sea, Browne's bare hill with its lonely tree, (It was n't then as we see it now, With one scant scalp-lock to shade its brow;) Dusky nooks in the Essex woods, Dark, dim, Dante-like solitudes, Where the tree-toad watches the sinuous snake Glide through his forests of fern and brake; Ipswich River; its old stone bridge; Far off Andover's Indian Ridge, And many a scene where history tells Some shadow of bygone terror dwells,-- Of "Norman's Woe" with its tale of dread, Of the Screeching Woman of Marblehead, (The fearful story that turns men pale Don't bid me tell it,--my speech would fail.) Who would not, will not, if he can, Bathe in the breezes of fair Cape Ann,-- Rest in the bowers her bays enfold, Loved by the sachems and squaws of old? Home where the white magnolias bloom, Sweet with the bayberry's chaste perfume, Hugged by the woods and kissed by the sea! Where is the Eden like to thee? For that "couple of hundred years, or so," There had been no peace in the world below; The witches still grumbling, "It is n't fair; Come, give us a taste of the upper air! We 've had enough of your sulphur springs, And the evil odor that round them clings; We long for a drink that is cool and nice,-- Great buckets of water with Wenham ice; We've served you well up-stairs, you know; You 're a good old--fellow--come, let us go!" I don't feel sure of his being good, But he happened to be in a pleasant mood,-- As fiends with their skins full sometimes are,-- (He'd been drinking with "roughs" at a Boston bar.) So what does he do but up and shout To a graybeard turnkey, "Let 'em out!" To mind his orders was all he knew; The gates swung open, and out they flew. "Where are our broomsticks?" the beldams cried. "Here are your broomsticks," an imp replied. "They 've been in--the place you know--so long They smell of brimstone uncommon strong; But they've gained by being left alone,-- Just look, and you'll see how tall they've grown." "And where is my cat?" a vixen squalled. "Yes, where are our cats?" the witches bawled, And began to call them all by name As fast as they called the cats, they came There was bob-tailed Tommy and long-tailed Tim, And wall-eyed Jacky and green-eyed Jim, And splay-foot Benny and slim-legged Beau, And Skinny and Squally, and Jerry and Joe, And many another that came at call,-- It would take too long to count them all. All black,--one could hardly tell which was which, But every cat knew his own old witch; And she knew hers as hers knew her,-- Ah, didn't they curl their tails and purr! No sooner the withered hags were free Than out they swarmed for a midnight spree; I couldn't tell all they did in rhymes, But the Essex people had dreadful times. The Swampscott fishermen still relate How a strange sea-monster stole their bait; How their nets were tangled in loops and knots, And they found dead crabs in their lobster-pots. Poor Danvers grieved for her blasted crops, And Wilmington mourned over mildewed hops. A blight played havoc with Beverly beans,-- It was all the work of those hateful queans! A dreadful panic began at "Pride's," Where the witches stopped in their midnight rides, And there rose strange rumors and vague alarms 'Mid the peaceful dwellers at Beverly Farms. Now when the Boss of the Beldams found That without his leave they were ramping round, He called,--they could hear him twenty miles, From Chelsea beach to the Misery Isles; The deafest old granny knew his tone Without the trick of the telephone. "Come here, you witches! Come here!" says he,-- "At your games of old, without asking me! I'll give you a little job to do That will keep you stirring, you godless crew!" They came, of course, at their master's call, The witches, the broomsticks, the cats, and all; He led the hags to a railway train The horses were trying to drag in vain. "Now, then," says he, "you've had your fun, And here are the cars you've got to run. The driver may just unhitch his team, We don't want horses, we don't want steam; You may keep your old black cats to hug, But the loaded train you've got to lug." Since then on many a car you 'll see A broomstick plain as plain can be; On every stick there's a witch astride,-- The string you see to her leg is tied. She will do a mischief if she can, But the string is held by a careful man, And whenever the evil-minded witch Would cut some caper, he gives a twitch. As for the hag, you can't see her, But hark! you can hear her black cat's purr, And now and then, as a car goes by, You may catch a gleam from her wicked eye. Often you've looked on a rushing train, But just what moved it was not so plain. It couldn't be those wires above, For they could neither pull nor shove; Where was the motor that made it go You couldn't guess, but now you know. Remember my rhymes when you ride again On the rattling rail by the broomstick train! TARTARUS WHILE in my simple gospel creed That "God is Love" so plain I read, Shall dreams of heathen birth affright My pathway through the coming night? Ah, Lord of life, though spectres pale Fill with their threats the shadowy vale, With Thee my faltering steps to aid, How can I dare to be afraid? Shall mouldering page or fading scroll Outface the charter of the soul? Shall priesthood's palsied arm protect The wrong our human hearts reject, And smite the lips whose shuddering cry Proclaims a cruel creed a lie? The wizard's rope we disallow Was justice once,--is murder now! Is there a world of blank despair, And dwells the Omnipresent there? Does He behold with smile serene The shows of that unending scene, Where sleepless, hopeless anguish lies, And, ever dying, never dies? Say, does He hear the sufferer's groan, And is that child of wrath his own? O mortal, wavering in thy trust, Lift thy pale forehead from the dust! The mists that cloud thy darkened eyes Fade ere they reach the o'erarching skies When the blind heralds of despair Would bid thee doubt a Father's care, Look up from earth, and read above On heaven's blue tablet, GOD IS LOVE! AT THE TURN OF THE ROAD THE glory has passed from the goldenrod's plume, The purple-hued asters still linger in bloom The birch is bright yellow, the sumachs are red, The maples like torches aflame overhead. But what if the joy of the summer is past, And winter's wild herald is blowing his blast? For me dull November is sweeter than May, For my love is its sunshine,--she meets me to-day! Will she come? Will the ring-dove return to her nest? Will the needle swing back from the east or the west? At the stroke of the hour she will be at her gate; A friend may prove laggard,--love never comes late. Do I see her afar in the distance? Not yet. Too early! Too early! She could not forget! When I cross the old bridge where the brook overflowed, She will flash full in sight at the turn of the road. I pass the low wall where the ivy entwines; I tread the brown pathway that leads through the pines; I haste by the boulder that lies in the field, Where her promise at parting was lovingly sealed. Will she come by the hillside or round through the wood? Will she wear her brown dress or her mantle and hood? The minute draws near,--but her watch may go wrong; My heart will be asking, What keeps her so long? Why doubt for a moment? More shame if I do! Why question? Why tremble? Are angels more true? She would come to the lover who calls her his own Though she trod in the track of a whirling cyclone! I crossed the old bridge ere the minute had passed. I looked: lo! my Love stood before me at last. Her eyes, how they sparkled, her cheeks, how they glowed, As we met, face to face, at the turn of the road! IN VITA MINERVA VEX not the Muse with idle prayers,-- She will not hear thy call; She steals upon thee unawares, Or seeks thee not at all. Soft as the moonbeams when they sought Endymion's fragrant bower, She parts the whispering leaves of thought To show her full-blown flower. For thee her wooing hour has passed, The singing birds have flown, And winter comes with icy blast To chill thy buds unblown. Yet, though the woods no longer thrill As once their arches rung, Sweet echoes hover round thee still Of songs thy summer sung. Live in thy past; await no more The rush of heaven-sent wings; Earth still has music left in store While Memory sighs and sings. READINGS OVER THE TEACUPS FIVE STORIES AND A SEQUEL TO MY OLD READERS You know "The Teacups," that congenial set Which round the Teapot you have often met; The grave DICTATOR, him you knew of old,-- Knew as the shepherd of another fold Grayer he looks, less youthful, but the same As when you called him by a different name. Near him the MISTRESS, whose experienced skill Has taught her duly every cup to fill; "Weak;" "strong;" "cool;" "lukewarm;" "hot as you can pour;" "No sweetening;" "sugared;" "two lumps;" "one lump more." Next, the PROFESSOR, whose scholastic phrase At every turn the teacher's tongue betrays, Trying so hard to make his speech precise The captious listener finds it overnice. Nor be forgotten our ANNEXES twain, Nor HE, the owner of the squinting brain, Which, while its curious fancies we pursue, Oft makes us question, "Are we crack-brained too?" Along the board our growing list extends, As one by one we count our clustering friends,-- The youthful DOCTOR waiting for his share Of fits and fevers when his crown gets bare; In strong, dark lines our square-nibbed pen should draw The lordly presence of the MAN OF LAW; Our bashful TUTOR claims a humbler place, A lighter touch, his slender form to trace. Mark the fair lady he is seated by,-- Some say he is her lover,--some deny,-- Watch them together,--time alone can show If dead-ripe friendship turns to love or no. Where in my list of phrases shall I seek The fitting words of NUMBER FIVE to speak? Such task demands a readier pen than mine,-- What if I steal the Tutor's Valentine? Why should I call her gracious, winning, fair? Why with the loveliest of her sex compare? Those varied charms have many a Muse inspired,-- At last their worn superlatives have tired; Wit, beauty, sweetness, each alluring grace, All these in honeyed verse have found their place; I need them not,--two little words I find Which hold them all in happiest form combined; No more with baffled language will I strive,-- All in one breath I utter: Number Five! Now count our teaspoons--if you care to learn How many tinkling cups were served in turn,-- Add all together, you will find them ten,-- Our young MUSICIAN joined us now and then. Our bright DELILAH you must needs recall, The comely handmaid, youngest of us all; Need I remind you how the little maid Came at a pinch to our Professor's aid,-- Trimmed his long locks with unrelenting shears And eased his looks of half a score of years? Sometimes, at table, as you well must know, The stream of talk will all at once run low, The air seems smitten with a sudden chill, The wit grows silent and the gossip still; This was our poet's chance, the hour of need, When rhymes and stories we were used to read. One day a whisper round the teacups stole,-- "No scrap of paper in the silver bowl!" (Our "poet's corner" may I not expect My kindly reader still may recollect?) "What! not a line to keep our souls alive?" Spoke in her silvery accents Number Five. "No matter, something we must find to read,-- Find it or make it,--yes, we must indeed! Now I remember I have seen at times Some curious stories in a book of rhymes,-- How certain secrets, long in silence sealed, In after days were guessed at or revealed. Those stories, doubtless, some of you must know,-- They all were written many a year ago; But an old story, be it false or true, Twice told, well told, is twice as good as new; Wait but three sips and I will go myself, And fetch the book of verses from its shelf." No time was lost in finding what she sought,-- Gone but one moment,--lo! the book is brought. "Now, then, Professor, fortune has decreed That you, this evening, shall be first to read,-- Lucky for us that listen, for in fact Who reads this poem must know how to _act_." Right well she knew that in his greener age He had a mighty hankering for the stage. The patient audience had not long to wait; Pleased with his chance, he smiled and took the bait; Through his wild hair his coaxing fingers ran,-- He spread the page before him and began. THE BANKER'S SECRET THE Banker's dinner is the stateliest feast The town has heard of for a year, at least; The sparry lustres shed their broadest blaze, Damask and silver catch and spread the rays; The florist's triumphs crown the daintier spoil Won from the sea, the forest, or the soil; The steaming hot-house yields its largest pines, The sunless vaults unearth their oldest wines; With one admiring look the scene survey, And turn a moment from the bright display. Of all the joys of earthly pride or power, What gives most life, worth living, in an hour? When Victory settles on the doubtful fight And the last foeman wheels in panting flight, No thrill like this is felt beneath the sun; Life's sovereign moment is a battle won. But say what next? To shape a Senate's choice, By the strong magic of the master's voice; To ride the stormy tempest of debate That whirls the wavering fortunes of the state. Third in the list, the happy lover's prize Is won by honeyed words from women's eyes. If some would have it first instead of third, So let it be,--I answer not a word. The fourth,--sweet readers, let the thoughtless half Have its small shrug and inoffensive laugh; Let the grave quarter wear its virtuous frown, The stern half-quarter try to scowl us down; But the last eighth, the choice and sifted few, Will hear my words, and, pleased, confess them true. Among the great whom Heaven has made to shine, How few have learned the art of arts,--to dine! Nature, indulgent to our daily need, Kind-hearted mother! taught us all to feed; But the chief art,--how rarely Nature flings This choicest gift among her social kings Say, man of truth, has life a brighter hour Than waits the chosen guest who knows his power? He moves with ease, itself an angel charm,-- Lifts with light touch my lady's jewelled arm, Slides to his seat, half leading and half led, Smiling but quiet till the grace is said, Then gently kindles, while by slow degrees Creep softly out the little arts that please; Bright looks, the cheerful language of the eye, The neat, crisp question and the gay reply,-- Talk light and airy, such as well may pass Between the rested fork and lifted glass;-- With play like this the earlier evening flies, Till rustling silks proclaim the ladies rise. His hour has come,--he looks along the chairs, As the Great Duke surveyed his iron squares. That's the young traveller,--is n't much to show,-- Fast on the road, but at the table slow. Next him,--you see the author in his look,-- His forehead lined with wrinkles like a book,-- Wrote the great history of the ancient Huns,-- Holds back to fire among the heavy guns. Oh, there's our poet seated at his side, Beloved of ladies, soft, cerulean-eyed. Poets are prosy in their common talk, As the fast trotters, for the most part, walk. And there's our well-dressed gentleman, who sits, By right divine, no doubt, among the wits, Who airs his tailor's patterns when he walks, The man that often speaks, but never talks. Why should he talk, whose presence lends a grace To every table where he shows his face? He knows the manual of the silver fork, Can name his claret--if he sees the cork,-- Remark that "White-top" was considered fine, But swear the "Juno" is the better wine;-- Is not this talking? Ask Quintilian's rules; If they say No, the town has many fools. Pause for a moment,--for our eyes behold The plain unsceptred king, the man of gold, The thrice illustrious threefold millionnaire; Mark his slow-creeping, dead, metallic stare; His eyes, dull glimmering, like the balance-pan That weighs its guinea as he weighs his man. Who's next? An artist in a satin tie Whose ample folds defeat the curious eye. And there 's the cousin,--must be asked, you know,-- Looks like a spinster at a baby-show. Hope he is cool,--they set him next the door,-- And likes his place, between the gap and bore. Next comes a Congressman, distinguished guest We don't count him,--they asked him with the rest; And then some white cravats, with well-shaped ties, And heads above them which their owners prize. Of all that cluster round the genial board, Not one so radiant as the banquet's lord. Some say they fancy, but they know not why, A shade of trouble brooding in his eye, Nothing, perhaps,--the rooms are overhot,-- Yet see his cheek,--the dull-red burning spot,-- Taste the brown sherry which he does not pass,-- Ha! That is brandy; see him fill his glass! But not forgetful of his feasting friends, To each in turn some lively word he sends; See how he throws his baited lines about, And plays his men as anglers play their trout. A question drops among the listening crew And hits the traveller, pat on Timbuctoo. We're on the Niger, somewhere near its source,-- Not the least hurry, take the river's course Through Kissi, Foota, Kankan, Bammakoo, Bambarra, Sego, so to Timbuctoo, Thence down to Youri;--stop him if we can, We can't fare worse,--wake up the Congressman! The Congressman, once on his talking legs, Stirs up his knowledge to its thickest dregs; Tremendous draught for dining men to quaff! Nothing will choke him but a purpling laugh. A word,--a shout,--a mighty roar,--'t is done; Extinguished; lassoed by a treacherous pun. A laugh is priming to the loaded soul; The scattering shots become a steady roll, Broke by sharp cracks that run along the line, The light artillery of the talker's wine. The kindling goblets flame with golden dews, The hoarded flasks their tawny fire diffuse, And the Rhine's breast-milk gushes cold and bright, Pale as the moon and maddening as her light; With crimson juice the thirsty southern sky Sucks from the hills where buried armies lie, So that the dreamy passion it imparts Is drawn from heroes' bones and lovers' hearts. But lulls will come; the flashing soul transmits Its gleams of light in alternating fits. The shower of talk that rattled down amain Ends in small patterings like an April's rain; With the dry sticks all bonfires are begun; Bring the first fagot, proser number one The voices halt; the game is at a stand; Now for a solo from the master-hand 'T is but a story,--quite a simple thing,-- An aria touched upon a single string, But every accent comes with such a grace The stupid servants listen in their place, Each with his waiter in his lifted hands, Still as a well-bred pointer when he stands. A query checks him: "Is he quite exact?" (This from a grizzled, square-jawed man of fact.) The sparkling story leaves him to his fate, Crushed by a witness, smothered with a date, As a swift river, sown with many a star, Runs brighter, rippling on a shallow bar. The smooth divine suggests a graver doubt; A neat quotation bowls the parson out; Then, sliding gayly from his own display, He laughs the learned dulness all away. So, with the merry tale and jovial song, The jocund evening whirls itself along, Till the last chorus shrieks its loud encore, And the white neckcloths vanish through the door. One savage word!--The menials know its tone, And slink away; the master stands alone. "Well played, by ---"; breathe not what were best unheard; His goblet shivers while he speaks the word,-- "If wine tells truth,--and so have said the wise,-- It makes me laugh to think how brandy lies! Bankrupt to-morrow,--millionnaire to-day,-- The farce is over,--now begins the play!" The spring he touches lets a panel glide; An iron closet harks beneath the slide, Bright with such treasures as a search might bring From the deep pockets of a truant king. Two diamonds, eyeballs of a god of bronze, Bought from his faithful priest, a pious bonze; A string of brilliants; rubies, three or four; Bags of old coin and bars of virgin ore; A jewelled poniard and a Turkish knife, Noiseless and useful if we come to strife. Gone! As a pirate flies before the wind, And not one tear for all he leaves behind From all the love his better years have known Fled like a felon,--ah! but not alone! The chariot flashes through a lantern's glare,-- Oh the wild eyes! the storm of sable hair! Still to his side the broken heart will cling,-- The bride of shame, the wife without the ring Hark, the deep oath,--the wail of frenzied woe,-- Lost! lost to hope of Heaven and peace below! He kept his secret; but the seed of crime Bursts of itself in God's appointed time. The lives he wrecked were scattered far and wide; One never blamed nor wept,--she only died. None knew his lot, though idle tongues would say He sought a lonely refuge far away, And there, with borrowed name and altered mien, He died unheeded, as he lived unseen. The moral market had the usual chills Of Virtue suffering from protested bills; The White Cravats, to friendship's memory true, Sighed for the past, surveyed the future too; Their sorrow breathed in one expressive line,-- "Gave pleasant dinners; who has got his wine?" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The reader paused,--the Teacups knew his ways,-- He, like the rest, was not averse to praise. Voices and hands united; every one Joined in approval: "Number Three, well done!" "Now for the Exile's story; if my wits Are not at fault, his curious record fits Neatly as sequel to the tale we've heard; Not wholly wild the fancy, nor absurd That this our island hermit well might be That story's hero, fled from over sea. Come, Number Seven, we would not have you strain The fertile powers of that inventive brain. Read us 'The Exile's Secret'; there's enough Of dream-like fiction and fantastic stuff In the strange web of mystery that invests The lonely isle where sea birds build their nests." "Lies! naught but lies!" so Number Seven began,-- No harm was known of that secluded man. He lived alone,--who would n't if he might, And leave the rogues and idiots out of sight? A foolish story,--still, I'll do my best,-- The house was real,--don't believe the rest. How could a ruined dwelling last so long Without its legends shaped in tale and song? Who was this man of whom they tell the lies? Perhaps--why not?--NAPOLEON! in disguise,-- So some said, kidnapped from his ocean coop, Brought to this island in a coasting sloop,-- Meanwhile a sham Napoleon in his place Played Nap. and saved Sir Hudson from disgrace. Such was one story; others used to say, "No,--not Napoleon,--it was Marshal Ney." "Shot?" Yes, no doubt, but not with balls of lead, But balls of pith that never shoot folks dead. He wandered round, lived South for many a year, At last came North and fixed his dwelling here. Choose which you will of all the tales that pile Their mingling fables on the tree-crowned isle. Who wrote this modest version I suppose That truthful Teacup, our Dictator, knows; Made up of various legends, it would seem, The sailor's yarn, the crazy poet's dream. Such tales as this, by simple souls received, At first are stared at and at last believed; From threads like this the grave historians try To weave their webs, and never know they lie. Hear, then, the fables that have gathered round The lonely home an exiled stranger found. THE EXILE'S SECRET YE that have faced the billows and the spray Of good St. Botolph's island-studded bay, As from the gliding bark your eye has scanned The beaconed rocks, the wave-girt hills of sand, Have ye not marked one elm-o'ershadowed isle, Round as the dimple chased in beauty's smile,-- A stain of verdure on an azure field, Set like a jewel in a battered shield? Fixed in the narrow gorge of Ocean's path, Peaceful it meets him in his hour of wrath; When the mailed Titan, scourged by hissing gales, Writhes in his glistening coat of clashing scales, The storm-beat island spreads its tranquil green, Calm as an emerald on an angry queen. So fair when distant should be fairer near; A boat shall waft us from the outstretched pier. The breeze blows fresh; we reach the island's edge, Our shallop rustling through the yielding sedge. No welcome greets us on the desert isle; Those elms, far-shadowing, hide no stately pile Yet these green ridges mark an ancient road; And to! the traces of a fair abode; The long gray line that marks a garden-wall, And heaps of fallen beams,--fire-branded all. Who sees unmoved, a ruin at his feet, The lowliest home where human hearts have beat? Its hearthstone, shaded with the bistre stain A century's showery torrents wash in vain; Its starving orchard, where the thistle blows And mossy trunks still mark the broken rows; Its chimney-loving poplar, oftenest seen Next an old roof, or where a roof has been; Its knot-grass, plantain,--all the social weeds, Man's mute companions, following where he leads; Its dwarfed, pale flowers, that show their straggling heads, Sown by the wind from grass-choked garden-beds; Its woodbine, creeping where it used to climb; Its roses, breathing of the olden time; All the poor shows the curious idler sees, As life's thin shadows waste by slow degrees, Till naught remains, the saddening tale to tell, Save home's last wrecks,--the cellar and the well? And whose the home that strews in black decay The one green-glowing island of the bay? Some dark-browed pirate's, jealous of the fate That seized the strangled wretch of "Nix's Mate"? Some forger's, skulking in a borrowed name, Whom Tyburn's dangling halter yet may claim? Some wan-eyed exile's, wealth and sorrow's heir, Who sought a lone retreat for tears and prayer? Some brooding poet's, sure of deathless fame, Had not his epic perished in the flame? Or some gray wooer's, whom a girlish frown Chased from his solid friends and sober town? Or some plain tradesman's, fond of shade and ease, Who sought them both beneath these quiet trees? Why question mutes no question can unlock, Dumb as the legend on the Dighton rock? One thing at least these ruined heaps declare,-- They were a shelter once; a man lived there. But where the charred and crumbling records fail, Some breathing lips may piece the half-told tale; No man may live with neighbors such as these, Though girt with walls of rock and angry seas, And shield his home, his children, or his wife, His ways, his means, his vote, his creed, his life, From the dread sovereignty of Ears and Eyes And the small member that beneath them lies. They told strange things of that mysterious man; Believe who will, deny them such as can; Why should we fret if every passing sail Had its old seaman talking on the rail? The deep-sunk schooner stuffed with Eastern lime, Slow wedging on, as if the waves were slime; The knife-edged clipper with her ruffled spars, The pawing steamer with her inane of stars, The bull-browed galliot butting through the stream, The wide-sailed yacht that slipped along her beam, The deck-piled sloops, the pinched chebacco-boats, The frigate, black with thunder-freighted throats, All had their talk about the lonely man; And thus, in varying phrase, the story ran. His name had cost him little care to seek, Plain, honest, brief, a decent name to speak, Common, not vulgar, just the kind that slips With least suggestion from a stranger's lips. His birthplace England, as his speech might show, Or his hale cheek, that wore the red-streak's glow; His mouth sharp-moulded; in its mirth or scorn There came a flash as from the milky corn, When from the ear you rip the rustling sheath, And the white ridges show their even teeth. His stature moderate, but his strength confessed, In spite of broadcloth, by his ample breast; Full-armed, thick-handed; one that had been strong, And might be dangerous still, if things went wrong. He lived at ease beneath his elm-trees' shade, Did naught for gain, yet all his debts were paid; Rich, so 't was thought, but careful of his store; Had all he needed, claimed to have no more. But some that lingered round the isle at night Spoke of strange stealthy doings in their sight; Of creeping lonely visits that he made To nooks and corners, with a torch and spade. Some said they saw the hollow of a cave; One, given to fables, swore it was a grave; Whereat some shuddered, others boldly cried, Those prowling boatmen lied, and knew they lied. They said his house was framed with curious cares, Lest some old friend might enter unawares; That on the platform at his chamber's door Hinged a loose square that opened through the floor; Touch the black silken tassel next the bell, Down, with a crash, the flapping trap-door fell; Three stories deep the falling wretch would strike, To writhe at leisure on a boarder's pike. By day armed always; double-armed at night, His tools lay round him; wake him such as might. A carbine hung beside his India fan, His hand could reach a Turkish ataghan; Pistols, with quaint-carved stocks and barrels gilt, Crossed a long dagger with a jewelled hilt; A slashing cutlass stretched along the bed;-- All this was what those lying boatmen said. Then some were full of wondrous stories told Of great oak chests and cupboards full of gold; Of the wedged ingots and the silver bars That cost old pirates ugly sabre-scars; How his laced wallet often would disgorge The fresh-faced guinea of an English George, Or sweated ducat, palmed by Jews of yore, Or double Joe, or Portuguese moidore; And how his finger wore a rubied ring Fit for the white-necked play-girl of a king. But these fine legends, told with staring eyes, Met with small credence from the old and wise. Why tell each idle guess, each whisper vain? Enough: the scorched and cindered beams remain. He came, a silent pilgrim to the West, Some old-world mystery throbbing in his breast; Close to the thronging mart he dwelt alone; He lived; he died. The rest is all unknown. Stranger, whose eyes the shadowy isle survey, As the black steamer dashes through the bay, Why ask his buried secret to divine? He was thy brother; speak, and tell us thine! . . . . . . . . . . . Silence at first, a kind of spell-bound pause; Then all the Teacups tinkled their applause; When that was hushed no sound the stillness broke Till once again the soft-voiced lady spoke: "The Lover's Secret,--surely that must need The youngest voice our table holds to read. Which of our two 'Annexes' shall we choose? Either were charming, neither will refuse; But choose we must,--what better can we do Than take the younger of the youthful two?" True to the primal instinct of her sex, "Why, that means me," half whispered each Annex. "What if it does?" the voiceless question came, That set those pale New England cheeks aflame; "Our old-world scholar may have ways to teach Of Oxford English, Britain's purest speech,-- She shall be youngest,--youngest for _to-day_,-- Our dates we'll fix hereafter as we may; _All rights reserved_,--the words we know so well, That guard the claims of books which never sell." The British maiden bowed a pleased assent, Her two long ringlets swinging as she bent; The glistening eyes her eager soul looked through Betrayed her lineage in their Saxon blue. Backward she flung each too obtrusive curl And thus began,--the rose-lipped English girl. THE LOVER'S SECRET WHAT ailed young Lucius? Art had vainly tried To guess his ill, and found herself defied. The Augur plied his legendary skill; Useless; the fair young Roman languished still. His chariot took him every cloudless day Along the Pincian Hill or Appian Way; They rubbed his wasted limbs with sulphurous oil, Oozed from the far-off Orient's heated soil; They led him tottering down the steamy path Where bubbling fountains filled the thermal bath; Borne in his litter to Egeria's cave, They washed him, shivering, in her icy wave. They sought all curious herbs and costly stones, They scraped the moss that grew on dead men's bones, They tried all cures the votive tablets taught, Scoured every place whence healing drugs were brought, O'er Thracian hills his breathless couriers ran, His slaves waylaid the Syrian caravan. At last a servant heard a stranger speak A new chirurgeon's name; a clever Greek, Skilled in his art; from Pergamus he came To Rome but lately; GALEN was the name. The Greek was called: a man with piercing eyes, Who must be cunning, and who might be wise. He spoke but little,--if they pleased, he said, He 'd wait awhile beside the sufferer's bed. So by his side he sat, serene and calm, His very accents soft as healing balm; Not curious seemed, but every movement spied, His sharp eyes searching where they seemed to glide; Asked a few questions,--what he felt, and where? "A pain just here," "A constant beating there." Who ordered bathing for his aches and ails? "Charmis, the water-doctor from Marseilles." What was the last prescription in his case? "A draught of wine with powdered chrysoprase." Had he no secret grief he nursed alone? A pause; a little tremor; answer,--"None." Thoughtful, a moment, sat the cunning leech, And muttered "Eros!" in his native speech. In the broad atrium various friends await The last new utterance from the lips of fate; Men, matrons, maids, they talk the question o'er, And, restless, pace the tessellated floor. Not unobserved the youth so long had pined By gentle-hearted dames and damsels kind; One with the rest, a rich Patrician's pride, The lady Hermia, called "the golden-eyed"; The same the old Proconsul fain must woo, Whom, one dark night, a masked sicarius slew; The same black Crassus over roughly pressed To hear his suit,--the Tiber knows the rest. (Crassus was missed next morning by his set; Next week the fishers found him in their net.) She with the others paced the ample hall, Fairest, alas! and saddest of them all. At length the Greek declared, with puzzled face, Some strange enchantment mingled in the case, And naught would serve to act as counter-charm Save a warm bracelet from a maiden's arm. Not every maiden's,--many might be tried; Which not in vain, experience must decide. Were there no damsels willing to attend And do such service for a suffering friend? The message passed among the waiting crowd, First in a whisper, then proclaimed aloud. Some wore no jewels; some were disinclined, For reasons better guessed at than defined; Though all were saints,--at least professed to be,-- The list all counted, there were named but three. The leech, still seated by the patient's side, Held his thin wrist, and watched him, eagle-eyed. Aurelia first, a fair-haired Tuscan girl, Slipped off her golden asp, with eyes of pearl. His solemn head the grave physician shook; The waxen features thanked her with a look. Olympia next, a creature half divine, Sprung from the blood of old Evander's line, Held her white arm, that wore a twisted chain Clasped with an opal-sheeny cymophane. In vain, O daughter I said the baffled Greek. The patient sighed the thanks he could not speak. Last, Hermia entered; look, that sudden start! The pallium heaves above his leaping heart; The beating pulse, the cheek's rekindled flame, Those quivering lips, the secret all proclaim. The deep disease long throbbing in the breast, The dread enchantment, all at once confessed! The case was plain; the treatment was begun; And Love soon cured the mischief he had done. Young Love, too oft thy treacherous bandage slips Down from the eyes it blinded to the lips! Ask not the Gods, O youth, for clearer sight, But the bold heart to plead thy cause aright. And thou, fair maiden, when thy lovers sigh, Suspect thy flattering ear, but trust thine eye; And learn this secret from the tale of old No love so true as love that dies untold. . . . . . . . . . . "Bravo, Annex!" they shouted, every one,-- "Not Mrs. Kemble's self had better done." "Quite so," she stammered in her awkward way,-- Not just the thing, but something she must say. The teaspoon chorus tinkled to its close When from his chair the MAN OF LAW arose, Called by her voice whose mandate all obeyed, And took the open volume she displayed. Tall, stately, strong, his form begins to own Some slight exuberance in its central zone,-- That comely fulness of the growing girth Which fifty summers lend the sons of earth. A smooth, round disk about whose margin stray, Above the temples, glistening threads of gray; Strong, deep-cut grooves by toilsome decades wrought On brow and mouth, the battle-fields of thought; A voice that lingers in the listener's ear, Grave, calm, far-reaching, every accent clear,-- (Those tones resistless many a foreman knew That shaped their verdict ere the twelve withdrew;) A statesman's forehead, athlete's throat and jaw, Such the proud semblance of the Man of Law. His eye just lighted on the printed leaf, Held as a practised pleader holds his brief. One whispered softly from behind his cup, "He does not read,--his book is wrong side up! He knows the story that it holds by heart,-- So like his own! How well he'll act his part!" Then all were silent; not a rustling fan Stirred the deep stillness as the voice began. THE STATESMAN'S SECRET WHO of all statesmen is his country's pride, Her councils' prompter and her leaders' guide? He speaks; the nation holds its breath to hear; He nods, and shakes the sunset hemisphere. Born where the primal fount of Nature springs By the rude cradles of her throneless kings, In his proud eye her royal signet flames, By his own lips her Monarch she proclaims. Why name his countless triumphs, whom to meet Is to be famous, envied in defeat? The keen debaters, trained to brawls and strife, Who fire one shot, and finish with the knife, Tried him but once, and, cowering in their shame, Ground their hacked blades to strike at meaner game. The lordly chief, his party's central stay, Whose lightest word a hundred votes obey, Found a new listener seated at his side, Looked in his eye, and felt himself defied, Flung his rash gauntlet on the startled floor, Met the all-conquering, fought,--and ruled no more. See where he moves, what eager crowds attend! What shouts of thronging multitudes ascend! If this is life,--to mark with every hour The purple deepening in his robes of power, To see the painted fruits of honor fall Thick at his feet, and choose among them all, To hear the sounds that shape his spreading name Peal through the myriad organ-stops of fame, Stamp the lone isle that spots the seaman's chart, And crown the pillared glory of the mart, To count as peers the few supremely wise Who mark their planet in the angels' eyes,-- If this is life-- What savage man is he Who strides alone beside the sounding sea? Alone he wanders by the murmuring shore, His thoughts as restless as the waves that roar; Looks on the sullen sky as stormy-browed As on the waves yon tempest-brooding cloud, Heaves from his aching breast a wailing sigh, Sad as the gust that sweeps the clouded sky. Ask him his griefs; what midnight demons plough The lines of torture on his lofty brow; Unlock those marble lips, and bid them speak The mystery freezing in his bloodless cheek. His secret? Hid beneath a flimsy word; One foolish whisper that ambition heard; And thus it spake: "Behold yon gilded chair, The world's one vacant throne,--thy plate is there!" Ah, fatal dream! What warning spectres meet In ghastly circle round its shadowy seat! Yet still the Tempter murmurs in his ear The maddening taunt he cannot choose but hear "Meanest of slaves, by gods and men accurst, He who is second when he might be first Climb with bold front the ladder's topmost round, Or chain thy creeping footsteps to the ground!" Illustrious Dupe! Have those majestic eyes Lost their proud fire for such a vulgar prize? Art thou the last of all mankind to know That party-fights are won by aiming low? Thou, stamped by Nature with her royal sign, That party-hirelings hate a look like thine? Shake from thy sense the wild delusive dream Without the purple, art thou not supreme? And soothed by love unbought, thy heart shall own A nation's homage nobler than its throne! . . . . . . . . . . Loud rang the plaudits; with them rose the thought, "Would he had learned the lesson he has taught!" Used to the tributes of the noisy crowd, The stately speaker calmly smiled and bowed; The fire within a flushing cheek betrayed, And eyes that burned beneath their penthouse shade. "The clock strikes ten, the hours are flying fast,-- Now, Number Five, we've kept you till the last!" What music charms like those caressing tones Whose magic influence every listener owns,-- Where all the woman finds herself expressed, And Heaven's divinest effluence breathes confessed? Such was the breath that wooed our ravished ears, Sweet as the voice a dreaming vestal hears; Soft as the murmur of a brooding dove, It told the mystery of a mother's love. THE MOTHER'S SECRET How sweet the sacred legend--if unblamed In my slight verse such holy things are named-- Of Mary's secret hours of hidden joy, Silent, but pondering on her wondrous boy! Ave, Maria! Pardon, if I wrong Those heavenly words that shame my earthly song! The choral host had closed the Angel's strain Sung to the listening watch on Bethlehem's plain, And now the shepherds, hastening on their way, Sought the still hamlet where the Infant lay. They passed the fields that gleaning Ruth toiled o'er,-- They saw afar the ruined threshing-floor Where Moab's daughter, homeless and forlorn, Found Boaz slumbering by his heaps of corn; And some remembered how the holy scribe, Skilled in the lore of every jealous tribe, Traced the warm blood of Jesse's royal son To that fair alien, bravely wooed and won. So fared they on to seek the promised sign, That marked the anointed heir of David's line. At last, by forms of earthly semblance led, They found the crowded inn, the oxen's shed. No pomp was there, no glory shone around On the coarse straw that strewed the reeking ground; One dim retreat a flickering torch betrayed,-- In that poor cell the Lord of Life was laid The wondering shepherds told their breathless tale Of the bright choir that woke the sleeping vale; Told how the skies with sudden glory flamed, Told how the shining multitude proclaimed, "Joy, joy to earth! Behold the hallowed morn In David's city Christ the Lord is born! 'Glory to God!' let angels shout on high, 'Good-will to men!' the listening earth reply!" They spoke with hurried words and accents wild; Calm in his cradle slept the heavenly child. No trembling word the mother's joy revealed,-- One sigh of rapture, and her lips were sealed; Unmoved she saw the rustic train depart, But kept their words to ponder in her heart. Twelve years had passed; the boy was fair and tall, Growing in wisdom, finding grace with all. The maids of Nazareth, as they trooped to fill Their balanced urns beside the mountain rill, The gathered matrons, as they sat and spun, Spoke in soft words of Joseph's quiet son. No voice had reached the Galilean vale Of star-led kings, or awe-struck shepherd's tale; In the meek, studious child they only saw The future Rabbi, learned in Israel's law. Beyond the hills that girt the village green; Save when at midnight, o'er the starlit sands, Snatched from the steel of Herod's murdering bands, A babe, close folded to his mother's breast, Through Edom's wilds he sought the sheltering West. Then Joseph spake: "Thy boy hath largely grown; Weave him fine raiment, fitting to be shown; Fair robes beseem the pilgrim, as the priest; Goes he not with us to the holy feast?" And Mary culled the flaxen fibres white; Till eve she spun; she spun till morning light. The thread was twined; its parting meshes through From hand to hand her restless shuttle flew, Till the full web was wound upon the beam; Love's curious toil,--a vest without a seam! They reach the Holy Place, fulfil the days To solemn feasting given, and grateful praise. At last they turn, and far Moriah's height Melts in the southern sky and fades from sight. All day the dusky caravan has flowed In devious trails along the winding road; (For many a step their homeward path attends, And all the sons of Abraham are as friends.) Evening has come,--the hour of rest and joy,-- Hush! Hush! That whisper,--"Where is Mary's boy?" Oh, weary hour! Oh, aching days that passed Filled with strange fears each wilder than the last,-- The soldier's lance, the fierce centurion's sword, The crushing wheels that whirl some Roman lord, The midnight crypt that sucks the captive's breath, The blistering sun on Hinnom's vale of death! Thrice on his cheek had rained the morning light; Thrice on his lips the mildewed kiss of night, Crouched by a sheltering column's shining plinth, Or stretched beneath the odorous terebinth. At last, in desperate mood, they sought once more The Temple's porches, searched in vain before; They found him seated with the ancient men,-- The grim old rufflers of the tongue and pen,-- Their bald heads glistening as they clustered near, Their gray beards slanting as they turned to hear, Lost in half-envious wonder and surprise That lips so fresh should utter words so wise. And Mary said,--as one who, tried too long, Tells all her grief and half her sense of wrong,-- What is this thoughtless thing which thou hast done? Lo, we have sought thee sorrowing, O my son! Few words he spake, and scarce of filial tone, Strange words, their sense a mystery yet unknown; Then turned with them and left the holy hill, To all their mild commands obedient still. The tale was told to Nazareth's sober men, And Nazareth's matrons told it oft again; The maids retold it at the fountain's side, The youthful shepherds doubted or denied; It passed around among the listening friends, With all that fancy adds and fiction lends, Till newer marvels dimmed the young renown Of Joseph's son, who talked the Rabbis down. But Mary, faithful to its lightest word, Kept in her heart the sayings she had heard, Till the dread morning rent the Temple's veil, And shuddering earth confirmed the wondrous tale. Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall A mother's secret hope outlives them all. . . . . . . . . . . . Hushed was the voice, but still its accents thrilled The throbbing hearts its lingering sweetness filled. The simple story which a tear repays Asks not to share the noisy breath of praise. A trance-like stillness,--scarce a whisper heard, No tinkling teaspoon in its saucer stirred; A deep-drawn sigh that would not be suppressed, A sob, a lifted kerchief told the rest. "Come now, Dictator," so the lady spoke, "You too must fit your shoulder to the yoke; You'll find there's something, doubtless, if you look, To serve your purpose,--so, now take the book." "Ah, my dear lady, you must know full well, 'Story, God bless you, I have none to tell.' To those five stories which these pages hold You all have listened,--every one is told. There's nothing left to make you smile or weep,-- A few grave thoughts may work you off to sleep." THE SECRET OF THE STARS Is man's the only throbbing heart that hides The silent spring that feeds its whispering tides? Speak from thy caverns, mystery-breeding Earth, Tell the half-hinted story of thy birth, And calm the noisy champions who have thrown The book of types against the book of stone! Have ye not secrets, ye refulgent spheres, No sleepless listener of the starlight hears? In vain the sweeping equatorial pries Through every world-sown corner of the skies, To the far orb that so remotely strays Our midnight darkness is its noonday blaze; In vain the climbing soul of creeping man Metes out the heavenly concave with a span, Tracks into space the long-lost meteor's trail, And weighs an unseen planet in the scale; Still o'er their doubts the wan-eyed watchers sigh, And Science lifts her still unanswered cry "Are all these worlds, that speed their circling flight, Dumb, vacant, soulless,--baubles of the night? Warmed with God's smile and wafted by his breath, To weave in ceaseless round the dance of Death? Or rolls a sphere in each expanding zone, Crowned with a life as varied as our own?" Maker of earth and stars! If thou hast taught By what thy voice hath spoke, thy hand hath wrought, By all that Science proves, or guesses true, More than thy poet dreamed, thy prophet knew,-- The heavens still bow in darkness at thy feet, And shadows veil thy cloud-pavilioned seat! Not for ourselves we ask thee to reveal One awful word beneath the future's seal; What thou shalt tell us, grant us strength to bear; What thou withholdest is thy single care. Not for ourselves; the present clings too fast, Moored to the mighty anchors of the past; But when, with angry snap, some cable parts, The sound re-echoing in our startled hearts,-- When, through the wall that clasps the harbor round, And shuts the raving ocean from its bound, Shattered and rent by sacrilegious hands, The first mad billow leaps upon the sands,-- Then to the Future's awful page we turn, And what we question hardly dare to learn. Still let us hope! for while we seem to tread The time-worn pathway of the nations dead, Though Sparta laughs at all our warlike deeds, And buried Athens claims our stolen creeds, Though Rome, a spectre on her broken throne, Beholds our eagle and recalls her own, Though England fling her pennons on the breeze And reign before us Mistress of the seas,-- While calm-eyed History tracks us circling round Fate's iron pillar where they all were bound, Still in our path a larger curve she finds, The spiral widening as the chain unwinds Still sees new beacons crowned with brighter flame Than the old watch-fires, like, but not the same No shameless haste shall spot with bandit-crime Our destined empire snatched before its time. Wait,--wait, undoubting, for the winds have caught From our bold speech the heritage of thought; No marble form that sculptured truth can wear Vies with the image shaped in viewless air; And thought unfettered grows through speech to deeds, As the broad forest marches in its seeds. What though we perish ere the day is won? Enough to see its glorious work begun! The thistle falls before a trampling clown, But who can chain the flying thistle-down? Wait while the fiery seeds of freedom fly, The prairie blazes when the grass is dry! What arms might ravish, leave to peaceful arts, Wisdom and love shall win the roughest hearts; So shall the angel who has closed for man The blissful garden since his woes began Swing wide the golden portals of the West, And Eden's secret stand at length confessed! . . . . . . . . . . . The reader paused; in truth he thought it time,-- Some threatening signs accused the drowsy rhyme. The Mistress nodded, the Professor dozed, The two Annexes sat with eyelids closed,-- Not sleeping,--no! But when one shuts one's eyes, That one hears better no one, sure, denies. The Doctor whispered in Delilah's ear, Or seemed to whisper, for their heads drew near. Not all the owner's efforts could restrain The wild vagaries of the squinting brain,-- Last of the listeners Number Five alone The patient reader still could call his own. "Teacups, arouse!" 'T was thus the spell I broke; The drowsy started and the slumberers woke. "The sleep I promised you have now enjoyed, Due to your hour of labor well employed. Swiftly the busy moments have been passed; This, our first 'Teacups,' must not be our last. Here, on this spot, now consecrated ground, The Order of 'The Teacups' let us found! By winter's fireside and in summer's bower Still shall it claim its ever-welcome hour, In distant regions where our feet may roam The magic teapot find or make a home; Long may its floods their bright infusion pour, Till time and teacups both shall be no more!" 
7399	----	THE POETICAL WORKS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES [Volume 3 of the 1893 three volume set] VERSES FROM THE OLDEST PORTFOLIO FROM THE "COLLEGIAN," 1830, ILLUSTRATED ANNUALS, ETC. FIRST VERSES: TRANSLATION FROM THE THE MEETING OF THE DRYADS THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR THE TOADSTOOL THE SPECTRE PIG TO A CAGED LION THE STAR AND THE WATER-LILY ILLUSTRATION OF A PICTURE: "A SPANISH GIRL REVERIE" A ROMAN AQUEDUCT FROM A BACHELOR'S PRIVATE JOURNAL LA GRISETTE OUR YANKEE GIRLS L'INCONNUE STANZAS LINES BY A CLERK THE PHILOSOPHER TO HIS LOVE THE POET'S LOT TO A BLANK SHEET OF PAPER TO THE PORTRAIT OF "A GENTLEMAN" IN THE ATHENAEUM GALLERY THE BALLAD OF THE OYSTERMAN A NOONTIDE LYRIC THE HOT SEASON A PORTRAIT AN EVENING THOUGHT. WRITTEN AT SEA THE WASP AND THE HORNET "QUI VIVE?" VERSES FROM THE OLDEST PORTFOLIO Nescit vox missa reverti.--Horat. Ars Poetica. Ab lis qua non adjuvant quam mollissime oportet pedem referre.-- Quintillian, L. VI. C. 4. These verses have always been printed in my collected poems, and as the best of them may bear a single reading, I allow them to appear, but in a less conspicuous position than the other productions. A chick, before his shell is off his back, is hardly a fair subject for severe criticism. If one has written anything worth preserving, his first efforts may be objects of interest and curiosity. Other young authors may take encouragement from seeing how tame, how feeble, how commonplace were the rudimentary attempts of the half-fledged poet. If the boy or youth had anything in him, there will probably be some sign of it in the midst of his imitative mediocrities and ambitious failures. These "first verses" of mine, written before I was sixteen, have little beyond a common academy boy's ordinary performance. Yet a kindly critic said there was one line which showed a poetical quality:-- "The boiling ocean trembled into calm." One of these poems--the reader may guess which--won fair words from Thackeray. The Spectre Pig was a wicked suggestion which came into my head after reading Dana's Buccaneer. Nobody seemed to find it out, and I never mentioned it to the venerable poet, who might not have been pleased with the parody. This is enough to say of these unvalued copies of verses. FIRST VERSES PHILLIPS ACADEMY, ANDOVER, MASS., 1824 OR 1825 TRANSLATION FROM THE ENEID, BOOK I. THE god looked out upon the troubled deep Waked into tumult from its placid sleep; The flame of anger kindles in his eye As the wild waves ascend the lowering sky; He lifts his head above their awful height And to the distant fleet directs his sight, Now borne aloft upon the billow's crest, Struck by the bolt or by the winds oppressed, And well he knew that Juno's vengeful ire Frowned from those clouds and sparkled in that fire. On rapid pinions as they whistled by He calls swift Zephyrus and Eurus nigh Is this your glory in a noble line To leave your confines and to ravage mine? Whom I--but let these troubled waves subside-- Another tempest and I'll quell your pride! Go--bear our message to your master's ear, That wide as ocean I am despot here; Let him sit monarch in his barren caves, I wield the trident and control the waves He said, and as the gathered vapors break The swelling ocean seemed a peaceful lake; To lift their ships the graceful nymphs essayed And the strong trident lent its powerful aid; The dangerous banks are sunk beneath the main, And the light chariot skims the unruffled plain. As when sedition fires the public mind, And maddening fury leads the rabble blind, The blazing torch lights up the dread alarm, Rage points the steel and fury nerves the arm, Then, if some reverend Sage appear in sight, They stand--they gaze, and check their headlong flight,-- He turns the current of each wandering breast And hushes every passion into rest,-- Thus by the power of his imperial arm The boiling ocean trembled into calm; With flowing reins the father sped his way And smiled serene upon rekindled day. THE MEETING OF THE DRYADS Written after a general pruning of the trees around Harvard College. A little poem, on a similar occasion, may be found in the works of Swift, from which, perhaps, the idea was borrowed; although I was as much surprised as amused to meet with it some time after writing the following lines. IT was not many centuries since, When, gathered on the moonlit green, Beneath the Tree of Liberty, A ring of weeping sprites was seen. The freshman's lamp had long been dim, The voice of busy day was mute, And tortured Melody had ceased Her sufferings on the evening flute. They met not as they once had met, To laugh o'er many a jocund tale But every pulse was beating low, And every cheek was cold and pale. There rose a fair but faded one, Who oft had cheered them with her song; She waved a mutilated arm, And silence held the listening throng. "Sweet friends," the gentle nymph began, "From opening bud to withering leaf, One common lot has bound us all, In every change of joy and grief. "While all around has felt decay, We rose in ever-living prime, With broader shade and fresher green, Beneath the crumbling step of Time. "When often by our feet has past Some biped, Nature's walking whim, Say, have we trimmed one awkward shape, Or lopped away one crooked limb? "Go on, fair Science; soon to thee Shall. Nature yield her idle boast; Her vulgar fingers formed a tree, But thou halt trained it to a post. "Go, paint the birch's silver rind, And quilt the peach with softer down; Up with the willow's trailing threads, Off with the sunflower's radiant crown! "Go, plant the lily on the shore, And set the rose among the waves, And bid the tropic bud unbind Its silken zone in arctic caves; "Bring bellows for the panting winds, Hang up a lantern by the moon, And give the nightingale a fife, And lend the eagle a balloon! "I cannot smile,--the tide of scorn, That rolled through every bleeding vein, Comes kindling fiercer as it flows Back to its burning source again. "Again in every quivering leaf That moment's agony I feel, When limbs, that spurned the northern blast, Shrunk from the sacrilegious steel. "A curse upon the wretch who dared To crop us with his felon saw! May every fruit his lip shall taste Lie like a bullet in his maw. "In every julep that he drinks, May gout, and bile, and headache be; And when he strives to calm his pain, May colic mingle with his tea. "May nightshade cluster round his path, And thistles shoot, and brambles cling; May blistering ivy scorch his veins, And dogwood burn, and nettles sting. "On him may never shadow fall, When fever racks his throbbing brow, And his last shilling buy a rope To hang him on my highest bough!" She spoke;--the morning's herald beam Sprang from the bosom of the sea, And every mangled sprite returned In sadness to her wounded tree. THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR THERE was a sound of hurrying feet, A tramp on echoing stairs, There was a rush along the aisles,-- It was the hour of prayers. And on, like Ocean's midnight wave, The current rolled along, When, suddenly, a stranger form Was seen amidst the throng. He was a dark and swarthy man, That uninvited guest; A faded coat of bottle-green Was buttoned round his breast. There was not one among them all Could say from whence he came; Nor beardless boy, nor ancient man, Could tell that stranger's name. All silent as the sheeted dead, In spite of sneer and frown, Fast by a gray-haired senior's side He sat him boldly down. There was a look of horror flashed From out the tutor's eyes; When all around him rose to pray, The stranger did not rise! A murmur broke along the crowd, The prayer was at an end; With ringing heels and measured tread, A hundred forms descend. Through sounding aisle, o'er grating stair, The long procession poured, Till all were gathered on the seats Around the Commons board. That fearful stranger! down he sat, Unasked, yet undismayed; And on his lip a rising smile Of scorn or pleasure played. He took his hat and hung it up, With slow but earnest air; He stripped his coat from off his back, And placed it on a chair. Then from his nearest neighbor's side A knife and plate he drew; And, reaching out his hand again, He took his teacup too. How fled the sugar from the bowl How sunk the azure cream! They vanished like the shapes that float Upon a summer's dream. A long, long draught,--an outstretched hand,-- And crackers, toast, and tea, They faded from the stranger's touch, Like dew upon the sea. Then clouds were dark on many a brow, Fear sat upon their souls, And, in a bitter agony, They clasped their buttered rolls. A whisper trembled through the crowd, Who could the stranger be? And some were silent, for they thought A cannibal was he. What if the creature should arise,-- For he was stout and tall,-- And swallow down a sophomore, Coat, crow's-foot, cap, and all! All sullenly the stranger rose; They sat in mute despair; He took his hat from off the peg, His coat from off the chair. Four freshmen fainted on the seat, Six swooned upon the floor; Yet on the fearful being passed, And shut the chapel door. There is full many a starving man, That walks in bottle green, But never more that hungry one In Commons hall was seen. Yet often at the sunset hour, When tolls the evening bell, The freshman lingers on the steps, That frightful tale to tell. THE TOADSTOOL THERE 's a thing that grows by the fainting flower, And springs in the shade of the lady's bower; The lily shrinks, and the rose turns pale, When they feel its breath in the summer gale, And the tulip curls its leaves in pride, And the blue-eyed violet starts aside; But the lily may flaunt, and the tulip stare, For what does the honest toadstool care? She does not glow in a painted vest, And she never blooms on the maiden's breast; But she comes, as the saintly sisters do, In a modest suit of a Quaker hue. And, when the stars in the evening skies Are weeping dew from their gentle eyes, The toad comes out from his hermit cell, The tale of his faithful love to tell. Oh, there is light in her lover's glance, That flies to her heart like a silver lance; His breeches are made of spotted skin, His jacket 'is tight, and his pumps are thin; In a cloudless night you may hear his song, As its pensive melody floats along, And, if you will look by the moonlight fair, The trembling form of the toad is there. And he twines his arms round her slender stem, In the shade of her velvet diadem; But she turns away in her maiden shame, And will not breathe on the kindling flame; He sings at her feet through the live-long night, And creeps to his cave at the break of light; And whenever he comes to the air above, His throat is swelling with baffled love. THE SPECTRE PIG A BALLAD IT was the stalwart butcher man, That knit his swarthy brow, And said the gentle Pig must die, And sealed it with a vow. And oh! it was the gentle Pig Lay stretched upon the ground, And ah! it was the cruel knife His little heart that found. They took him then, those wicked men, They trailed him all along; They put a stick between his lips, And through his heels a thong; And round and round an oaken beam A hempen cord they flung, And, like a mighty pendulum, All solemnly he swung! Now say thy prayers, thou sinful man, And think what thou hast done, And read thy catechism well, Thou bloody-minded one; For if his sprite should walk by night, It better were for thee, That thou wert mouldering in the ground, Or bleaching in the sea. It was the savage butcher then, That made a mock of sin, And swore a very wicked oath, He did not care a pin. It was the butcher's youngest son,-- His voice was broke with sighs, And with his pocket-handkerchief He wiped his little eyes; All young and ignorant was he, But innocent and mild, And, in his soft simplicity, Out spoke the tender child:-- "Oh, father, father, list to me; The Pig is deadly sick, And men have hung him by his heels, And fed him with a stick." It was the bloody butcher then, That laughed as he would die, Yet did he soothe the sorrowing child, And bid him not to cry;-- "Oh, Nathan, Nathan, what's a Pig, That thou shouldst weep and wail? Come, bear thee like a butcher's child, And thou shalt have his tail!" It was the butcher's daughter then, So slender and so fair, That sobbed as it her heart would break, And tore her yellow hair; And thus she spoke in thrilling tone,-- Fast fell the tear-drops big:-- "Ah! woe is me! Alas! Alas! The Pig! The Pig! The Pig!" Then did her wicked father's lips Make merry with her woe, And call her many a naughty name, Because she whimpered so. Ye need not weep, ye gentle ones, In vain your tears are shed, Ye cannot wash his crimson hand, Ye cannot soothe the dead. The bright sun folded on his breast His robes of rosy flame, And softly over all the west The shades of evening came. He slept, and troops of murdered Pigs Were busy with his dreams; Loud rang their wild, unearthly shrieks, Wide yawned their mortal seams. The clock struck twelve; the Dead hath heard; He opened both his eyes, And sullenly he shook his tail To lash the feeding flies. One quiver of the hempen cord,-- One struggle and one bound,-- With stiffened limb and leaden eye, The Pig was on the ground. And straight towards the sleeper's house His fearful way he wended; And hooting owl and hovering bat On midnight wing attended. Back flew the bolt, up rose the latch, And open swung the door, And little mincing feet were heard Pat, pat along the floor. Two hoofs upon the sanded floor, And two upon the bed; And they are breathing side by side, The living and the dead! "Now wake, now wake, thou butcher man! What makes thy cheek so pale? Take hold! take hold! thou dost not fear To clasp a spectre's tail?" Untwisted every winding coil; The shuddering wretch took hold, All like an icicle it seemed, So tapering and so cold. "Thou com'st with me, thou butcher man!"-- He strives to loose his grasp, But, faster than the clinging vine, Those twining spirals clasp; And open, open swung the door, And, fleeter than the wind, The shadowy spectre swept before, The butcher trailed behind. Fast fled the darkness of the night, And morn rose faint and dim; They called full loud, they knocked full long, They did not waken him. Straight, straight towards that oaken beam, A trampled pathway ran; A ghastly shape was swinging there,-- It was the butcher man. TO A CAGED LION Poor conquered monarch! though that haughty glance Still speaks thy courage unsubdued by time, And in the grandeur of thy sullen tread Lives the proud spirit of thy burning clime;-- Fettered by things that shudder at thy roar, Torn from thy pathless wilds to pace this narrow floor! Thou wast the victor, and all nature shrunk Before the thunders of thine awful wrath; The steel-armed hunter viewed thee from afar, Fearless and trackless in thy lonely path! The famished tiger closed his flaming eye, And crouched and panted as thy step went by! Thou art the vanquished, and insulting man Bars thy broad bosom as a sparrow's wing; His nerveless arms thine iron sinews bind, And lead in chains the desert's fallen king; Are these the beings that have dared to twine Their feeble threads around those limbs of thine? So must it be; the weaker, wiser race, That wields the tempest and that rides the sea, Even in the stillness of thy solitude Must teach the lesson of its power to thee; And thou, the terror of the trembling wild, Must bow thy savage strength, the mockery of a child! THE STAR AND THE WATER-LILY THE sun stepped down from his golden throne. And lay in the silent sea, And the Lily had folded her satin leaves, For a sleepy thing was she; What is the Lily dreaming of? Why crisp the waters blue? See, see, she is lifting her varnished lid! Her white leaves are glistening through! The Rose is cooling his burning cheek In the lap of the breathless tide;-- The Lily hath sisters fresh and fair, That would lie by the Rose's side; He would love her better than all the rest, And he would be fond and true;-- But the Lily unfolded her weary lids, And looked at the sky so blue. Remember, remember, thou silly one, How fast will thy summer glide, And wilt thou wither a virgin pale, Or flourish a blooming bride? Oh, the Rose is old, and thorny, and cold, "And he lives on earth," said she; "But the Star is fair and he lives in the air, And he shall my bridegroom be." But what if the stormy cloud should come, And ruffle the silver sea? Would he turn his eye from the distant sky, To smile on a thing like thee? Oh no, fair Lily, he will not send One ray from his far-off throne; The winds shall blow and the waves shall flow, And thou wilt be left alone. There is not a leaf on the mountain-top, Nor a drop of evening dew, Nor a golden sand on the sparkling shore, Nor a pearl in the waters blue, That he has not cheered with his fickle smile, And warmed with his faithless beam,-- And will he be true to a pallid flower, That floats on the quiet stream? Alas for the Lily! she would not heed, But turned to the skies afar, And bared her breast to the trembling ray That shot from the rising star; The cloud came over the darkened sky, And over the waters wide She looked in vain through the beating rain, And sank in the stormy tide. ILLUSTRATION OF A PICTURE "A SPANISH GIRL IN REVERIE," SHE twirled the string of golden beads, That round her neck was hung,--- My grandsire's gift; the good old man Loved girls when he was young; And, bending lightly o'er the cord, And turning half away, With something like a youthful sigh, Thus spoke the maiden gray:-- "Well, one may trail her silken robe, And bind her locks with pearls, And one may wreathe the woodland rose Among her floating curls; And one may tread the dewy grass, And one the marble floor, Nor half-hid bosom heave the less, Nor broidered corset more! "Some years ago, a dark-eyed girl Was sitting in the shade,-- There's something brings her to my mind In that young dreaming maid,-- And in her hand she held a flower, A flower, whose speaking hue Said, in the language of the heart, 'Believe the giver true.' "And, as she looked upon its leaves, The maiden made a vow To wear it when the bridal wreath Was woven for her brow; She watched the flower, as, day by day, The leaflets curled and died; But he who gave it never came To claim her for his bride. "Oh, many a summer's morning glow Has lent the rose its ray, And many a winter's drifting snow Has swept its bloom away; But she has kept that faithless pledge To this, her winter hour, And keeps it still, herself alone, And wasted like the flower." Her pale lip quivered, and the light Gleamed in her moistening eyes;-- I asked her how she liked the tints In those Castilian skies? "She thought them misty,--'t was perhaps Because she stood too near;" She turned away, and as she turned I saw her wipe a tear. A ROMAN AQUEDUCT THE sun-browned girl, whose limbs recline When noon her languid hand has laid Hot on the green flakes of the pine, Beneath its narrow disk of shade; As, through the flickering noontide glare, She gazes on the rainbow chain Of arches, lifting once in air The rivers of the Roman's plain;-- Say, does her wandering eye recall The mountain-current's icy wave,-- Or for the dead one tear let fall, Whose founts are broken by their grave? From stone to stone the ivy weaves Her braided tracery's winding veil, And lacing stalks and tangled leaves Nod heavy in the drowsy gale. And lightly floats the pendent vine, That swings beneath her slender bow, Arch answering arch,--whose rounded line Seems mirrored in the wreath below. How patient Nature smiles at Fame! The weeds, that strewed the victor's way, Feed on his dust to shroud his name, Green where his proudest towers decay. See, through that channel, empty now, The scanty rain its tribute pours,-- Which cooled the lip and laved the brow Of conquerors from a hundred shores. Thus bending o'er the nation's bier, Whose wants the captive earth supplied, The dew of Memory's passing tear Falls on the arches of her pride! FROM A BACHELOR'S PRIVATE JOURNAL SWEET Mary, I have never breathed The love it were in vain to name; Though round my heart a serpent wreathed, I smiled, or strove to smile, the same. Once more the pulse of Nature glows With faster throb and fresher fire, While music round her pathway flows, Like echoes from a hidden lyre. And is there none with me to share The glories of the earth and sky? The eagle through the pathless air Is followed by one burning eye. Ah no! the cradled flowers may wake, Again may flow the frozen sea, From every cloud a star may break,-- There conies no second spring to me. Go,--ere the painted toys of youth Are crushed beneath the tread of years; Ere visions have been chilled to truth, And hopes are washed away in tears. Go,--for I will not bid thee weep,-- Too soon my sorrows will be thine, And evening's troubled air shall sweep The incense from the broken shrine. If Heaven can hear the dying tone Of chords that soon will cease to thrill, The prayer that Heaven has heard alone May bless thee when those chords are still. LA GRISETTE As Clemence! when I saw thee last Trip down the Rue de Seine, And turning, when thy form had past, I said, "We meet again,"-- I dreamed not in that idle glance Thy latest image came, And only left to memory's trance A shadow and a name. The few strange words my lips had taught Thy timid voice to speak, Their gentler signs, which often brought Fresh roses to thy cheek, The trailing of thy long loose hair Bent o'er my couch of pain, All, all returned, more sweet, more fair; Oh, had we met again! I walked where saint and virgin keep The vigil lights of Heaven, I knew that thou hadst woes to weep, And sins to be forgiven; I watched where Genevieve was laid, I knelt by Mary's shrine, Beside me low, soft voices prayed; Alas! but where was thine? And when the morning sun was bright, When wind and wave were calm, And flamed, in thousand-tinted light, The rose of Notre Dame, I wandered through the haunts of men, From Boulevard to Quai, Till, frowning o'er Saint Etienne, The Pantheon's shadow lay. In vain, in vain; we meet no more, Nor dream what fates befall; And long upon the stranger's shore My voice on thee may call, When years have clothed the line in moss That tells thy name and days, And withered, on thy simple cross, The wreaths of Pere-la-Chaise! OUR YANKEE GIRLS LET greener lands and bluer skies, If such the wide earth shows, With fairer cheeks and brighter eyes, Match us the star and rose; The winds that lift the Georgian's veil, Or wave Circassia's curls, Waft to their shores the sultan's sail,-- Who buys our Yankee girls? The gay grisette, whose fingers touch Love's thousand chords so well; The dark Italian, loving much, But more than one can tell; And England's fair-haired, blue-eyed dame, Who binds her brow with pearls;-- Ye who have seen them, can they shame Our own sweet Yankee girls? And what if court or castle vaunt Its children loftier born?-- Who heeds the silken tassel's flaunt Beside the golden corn? They ask not for the dainty toil Of ribboned knights and earls, The daughters of the virgin soil, Our freeborn Yankee girls! By every hill whose stately pines Wave their dark arms above The home where some fair being shines, To warm the wilds with love, From barest rock to bleakest shore Where farthest sail unfurls, That stars and stripes are streaming o'er,-- God bless our Yankee girls! L'INCONNUE Is thy name Mary, maiden fair? Such should, methinks, its music be; The sweetest name that mortals bear Were best befitting thee; And she to whom it once was given, Was half of earth and half of heaven. I hear thy voice, I see thy smile, I look upon thy folded hair; Ah! while we dream not they beguile, Our hearts are in the snare; And she who chains a wild bird's wing Must start not if her captive sing. So, lady, take the leaf that falls, To all but thee unseen, unknown; When evening shades thy silent walls, Then read it all alone; In stillness read, in darkness seal, Forget, despise, but not reveal! STANZAS STRANGE! that one lightly whispered tone Is far, far sweeter unto me, Than all the sounds that kiss the earth, Or breathe along the sea; But, lady, when thy voice I greet, Not heavenly music seems so sweet. I look upon the fair blue skies, And naught but empty air I see; But when I turn me to thin eyes, It seemeth unto me Ten thousand angels spread their wings Within those little azure rings. The lily bath the softest leaf That ever western breeze bath fanned, But thou shalt have the tender flower, So I may take thy hand; That little hand to me doth yield More joy than all the broidered field. O lady! there be many things That seem right fair, below, above; But sure not one among them all Is half so sweet as love;-- Let us not pay our vows alone, But join two altars both in one. LINES BY A CLERK OH! I did love her dearly, And gave her toys and rings, And I thought she meant sincerely, When she took my pretty things. But her heart has grown as icy As a fountain in the fall, And her love, that was so spicy, It did not last at all. I gave her once a locket, It was filled with my own hair, And she put it in her pocket With very special care. But a jeweller has got it,-- He offered it to me,-- And another that is not it Around her neck I see. For my cooings and my billings I do not now complain, But my dollars and my shillings Will never come again; They were earned with toil and sorrow, But I never told her that, And now I have to borrow, And want another hat. Think, think, thou cruel Emma, When thou shalt hear my woe, And know my sad dilemma, That thou hast made it so. See, see my beaver rusty, Look, look upon this hole, This coat is dim and dusty; Oh let it rend thy soul! Before the gates of fashion I daily bent my knee, But I sought the shrine of passion, And found my idol,--thee. Though never love intenser Had bowed a soul before it, Thine eye was on the censer, And not the hand that bore it. THE PHILOSOPHER TO HIS LOVE DEAREST, a look is but a ray Reflected in a certain way; A word, whatever tone it wear, Is but a trembling wave of air; A touch, obedience to a clause In nature's pure material laws. The very flowers that bend and meet, In sweetening others, grow more sweet; The clouds by day, the stars by night, Inweave their floating locks of light; The rainbow, Heaven's own forehead's braid, Is but the embrace of sun and shade. Oh! in the hour when I shall feel Those shadows round my senses steal, When gentle eyes are weeping o'er The clay that feels their tears no more, Then let thy spirit with me be, Or some sweet angel, likest thee! How few that love us have we found! How wide the world that girds them round Like mountain streams we meet and part, Each living in the other's heart, Our course unknown, our hope to be Yet mingled in the distant sea. But Ocean coils and heaves in vain, Bound in the subtle moonbeam's chain; And love and hope do but obey Some cold, capricious planet's ray, Which lights and leads the tide it charms To Death's dark caves and icy arms. Alas! one narrow line is drawn, That links our sunset with our dawn; In mist and shade life's morning rose, And clouds are round it at its close; But ah! no twilight beam ascends To whisper where that evening ends. THE POET'S LOT WHAT is a poet's love?-- To write a girl a sonnet, To get a ring, or some such thing, And fustianize upon it. What is a poet's fame?-- Sad hints about his reason, And sadder praise from garreteers, To be returned in season. Where go the poet's lines?-- Answer, ye evening tapers! Ye auburn locks, ye golden curls, Speak from your folded papers! Child of the ploughshare, smile; Boy of the counter, grieve not, Though muses round thy trundle-bed Their broidered tissue weave not. The poet's future holds No civic wreath above him; Nor slated roof, nor varnished chaise, Nor wife nor child to love him. Maid of the village inn, Who workest woe on satin, (The grass in black, the graves in green, The epitaph in Latin,) Trust not to them who say, In stanzas, they adore thee; Oh rather sleep in churchyard clay, With urn and cherub o'er thee! TO A BLANK SHEET OF PAPER WAN-VISAGED thing! thy virgin leaf To me looks more than deadly pale, Unknowing what may stain thee yet,-- A poem or a tale. Who can thy unborn meaning scan? Can Seer or Sibyl read thee now? No,--seek to trace the fate of man Writ on his infant brow. Love may light on thy snowy cheek, And shake his Eden-breathing plumes; Then shalt thou tell how Lelia smiles, Or Angelina blooms. Satire may lift his bearded lance, Forestalling Time's slow-moving scythe, And, scattered on thy little field, Disjointed bards may writhe. Perchance a vision of the night, Some grizzled spectre, gaunt and thin, Or sheeted corpse, may stalk along, Or skeleton may grin. If it should be in pensive hour Some sorrow-moving theme I try, Ah, maiden, how thy tears will fall, For all I doom to die! But if in merry mood I touch Thy leaves, then shall the sight of thee Sow smiles as thick on rosy lips As ripples on the sea. The Weekly press shall gladly stoop To bind thee up among its sheaves; The Daily steal thy shining ore, To gild its leaden leaves. Thou hast no tongue, yet thou canst speak, Till distant shores shall hear the sound; Thou hast no life, yet thou canst breathe Fresh life on all around. Thou art the arena of the wise, The noiseless battle-ground of fame; The sky where halos may be wreathed Around the humblest name. Take, then, this treasure to thy trust, To win some idle reader's smile, Then fade and moulder in the dust, Or swell some bonfire's pile. TO THE PORTRAIT OF "A GENTLEMAN" IN THE ATHENIEUM GALLERY IT may be so,--perhaps thou hast A warm and loving heart; I will not blame thee for thy face, Poor devil as thou art. That thing thou fondly deem'st a nose, Unsightly though it be,-- In spite of all the cold world's scorn, It may be much to thee. Those eyes,--among thine elder friends Perhaps they pass for blue,-- No matter,--if a man can see, What more have eyes to do? Thy mouth,--that fissure in thy face, By something like a chin,-- May be a very useful place To put thy victual in. I know thou hast a wife at home, I know thou hast a child, By that subdued, domestic smile Upon thy features mild. That wife sits fearless by thy side, That cherub on thy knee; They do not shudder at thy looks, They do not shrink from thee. Above thy mantel is a hook,-- A portrait once was there; It was thine only ornament,-- Alas! that hook is bare. She begged thee not to let it go, She begged thee all in vain; She wept,--and breathed a trembling prayer To meet it safe again. It was a bitter sight to see That picture torn away; It was a solemn thought to think What all her friends would say! And often in her calmer hours, And in her happy dreams, Upon its long-deserted hook The absent portrait seems. Thy wretched infant turns his head In melancholy wise, And looks to meet the placid stare Of those unbending eyes. I never saw thee, lovely one,-- Perchance I never may; It is not often that we cross Such people in our way; But if we meet in distant years, Or on some foreign shore, Sure I can take my Bible oath, I've seen that face before. THE BALLAD OF THE OYSTERMAN IT was a tall young oysterman lived by the river-side, His shop was just upon the bank, his boat was on the tide; The daughter of a fisherman, that was so straight and slim, Lived over on the other bank, right opposite to him. It was the pensive oysterman that saw a lovely maid, Upon a moonlight evening, a sitting in the shade; He saw her wave her handkerchief, as much as if to say, "I 'm wide awake, young oysterman, and all the folks away." Then up arose the oysterman, and to himself said he, "I guess I 'll leave the skiff at home, for fear that folks should see I read it in the story-book, that, for to kiss his dear, Leander swam the Hellespont,--and I will swim this here." And he has leaped into the waves, and crossed the shining stream, And he has clambered up the bank, all in the moonlight gleam; Oh there were kisses sweet as dew, and words as soft as rain,-- But they have heard her father's step, and in he leaps again! Out spoke the ancient fisherman,--"Oh, what was that, my daughter?" "'T was nothing but a pebble, sir, I threw into the water." "And what is that, pray tell me, love, that paddles off so fast?" "It's nothing but a porpoise, sir, that 's been a swimming past." Out spoke the ancient fisherman,--"Now bring me my harpoon! I'll get into my fishing-boat, and fix the fellow soon." Down fell that pretty innocent, as falls a snow-white lamb, Her hair drooped round her pallid cheeks, like sea-weed on a clam. Alas for those two loving ones! she waked not from her swound, And he was taken with the cramp, and in the waves was drowned; But Fate has metamorphosed them, in pity of their woe, And now they keep an oyster-shop for mermaids down below. A NOONTIDE LYRIC THE dinner-bell, the dinner-bell Is ringing loud and clear; Through hill and plain, through street and lane, It echoes far and near; From curtained hall and whitewashed stall, Wherever men can hide, Like bursting waves from ocean caves, They float upon the tide. I smell the smell of roasted meat! I hear the hissing fry The beggars know where they can go, But where, oh where shall I? At twelve o'clock men took my hand, At two they only stare, And eye me with a fearful look, As if I were a bear! The poet lays his laurels down, And hastens to his greens; The happy tailor quits his goose, To riot on his beans; The weary cobbler snaps his thread, The printer leaves his pi; His very devil hath a home, But what, oh what have I? Methinks I hear an angel voice, That softly seems to say "Pale stranger, all may yet be well, Then wipe thy tears away; Erect thy head, and cock thy hat, And follow me afar, And thou shalt have a jolly meal, And charge it at the bar." I hear the voice! I go! I go! Prepare your meat and wine! They little heed their future need Who pay not when they dine. Give me to-day the rosy bowl, Give me one golden dream,-- To-morrow kick away the stool, And dangle from the beam! THE HOT SEASON THE folks, that on the first of May Wore winter coats and hose, Began to say, the first of June, "Good Lord! how hot it grows!" At last two Fahrenheits blew up, And killed two children small, And one barometer shot dead A tutor with its ball! Now all day long the locusts sang Among the leafless trees; Three new hotels warped inside out, The pumps could only wheeze; And ripe old wine, that twenty years Had cobwebbed o'er in vain, Came spouting through the rotten corks Like Joly's best champagne. The Worcester locomotives did Their trip in half an hour; The Lowell cars ran forty miles Before they checked the power; Roll brimstone soon became a drug, And loco-focos fell; All asked for ice, but everywhere Saltpetre was to sell. Plump men of mornings ordered tights, But, ere the scorching noons, Their candle-moulds had grown as loose As Cossack pantaloons! The dogs ran mad,--men could not try If water they would choose; A horse fell dead,--he only left Four red-hot, rusty shoes! But soon the people could not bear The slightest hint of fire; Allusions to caloric drew A flood of savage ire; The leaves on heat were all torn out From every book at school, And many blackguards kicked and caned, Because they said, "Keep cool!" The gas-light companies were mobbed, The bakers all were shot, The penny press began to talk Of lynching Doctor Nott; And all about the warehouse steps Were angry men in droves, Crashing and splintering through the doors To smash the patent stoves! The abolition men and maids Were tanned to such a hue, You scarce could tell them from their friends, Unless their eyes were blue; And, when I left, society Had burst its ancient guards, And Brattle Street and Temple Place Were interchanging cards. A PORTRAIT A STILL, sweet, placid, moonlight face, And slightly nonchalant, Which seems to claim a middle place Between one's love and aunt, Where childhood's star has left a ray In woman's sunniest sky, As morning dew and blushing day On fruit and blossom lie. And yet,--and yet I cannot love Those lovely lines on steel; They beam too much of heaven above, Earth's darker shades to feel; Perchance some early weeds of care Around my heart have grown, And brows unfurrowed seem not fair, Because they mock my own. Alas! when Eden's gates were sealed, How oft some sheltered flower Breathed o'er the wanderers of the field, Like their own bridal bower; Yet, saddened by its loveliness, And humbled by its pride, Earth's fairest child they could not bless, It mocked them when they sighed. AN EVENING THOUGHT WRITTEN AT SEA IF sometimes in the dark blue eye, Or in the deep red wine, Or soothed by gentlest melody, Still warms this heart of mine, Yet something colder in the blood, And calmer in the brain, Have whispered that my youth's bright flood Ebbs, not to flow again. If by Helvetia's azure lake, Or Arno's yellow stream, Each star of memory could awake, As in my first young dream, I know that when mine eye shall greet The hillsides bleak and bare, That gird my home, it will not meet My childhood's sunsets there. Oh, when love's first, sweet, stolen kiss Burned on my boyish brow, Was that young forehead worn as this? Was that flushed cheek as now? Were that wild pulse and throbbing heart Like these, which vainly strive, In thankless strains of soulless art, To dream themselves alive? Alas! the morning dew is gone, Gone ere the full of day; Life's iron fetter still is on, Its wreaths all torn away; Happy if still some casual hour Can warm the fading shrine, Too soon to chill beyond the power Of love, or song, or wine! THE WASP AND THE HORNET THE two proud sisters of the sea, In glory and in doom!-- Well may the eternal waters be Their broad, unsculptured tomb! The wind that rings along the wave, The clear, unshadowed sun, Are torch and trumpet o'er the brave, Whose last green wreath is won! No stranger-hand their banners furled, No victor's shout they heard; Unseen, above them ocean curled, Safe by his own pale bird; The gnashing billows heaved and fell; Wild shrieked the midnight gale; Far, far beneath the morning swell Were pennon, spar, and sail. The land of Freedom! Sea and shore Are guarded now, as when Her ebbing waves to victory bore Fair barks and gallant men; Oh, many a ship of prouder name May wave her starry fold, Nor trail, with deeper light of fame, The paths they swept of old! "QUI VIVE?" "Qui vive?" The sentry's musket rings, The channelled bayonet gleams; High o'er him, like a raven's wings The broad tricolored banner flings Its shadow, rustling as it swings Pale in the moonlight beams; Pass on! while steel-clad sentries keep Their vigil o'er the monarch's sleep, Thy bare, unguarded breast Asks not the unbroken, bristling zone That girds yon sceptred trembler's throne;-- Pass on, and take thy rest! "Qui vive?" How oft the midnight air That startling cry has borne! How oft the evening breeze has fanned The banner of this haughty land, O'er mountain snow and desert sand, Ere yet its folds were torn! Through Jena's carnage flying red, Or tossing o'er Marengo's dead, Or curling on the towers Where Austria's eagle quivers yet, And suns the ruffled plumage, wet With battle's crimson showers! "Qui vive?" And is the sentry's cry,-- The sleepless soldier's hand,-- Are these--the painted folds that fly And lift their emblems, printed high On morning mist and sunset sky-- The guardians of a land? No! If the patriot's pulses sleep, How vain the watch that hirelings keep, The idle flag that waves, When Conquest, with his iron heel, Treads down the standards and the steel That belt the soil of slaves! NOTES. Page 6. "They're as safe as Dan'l Malcolm." The following epitaph is still to be read on a tall grave-stone standing as yet undisturbed among the transplanted monuments of the dead in Copp's Hill Burial-Ground, one of the three city cemeteries which have been desecrated and ruined within my own remembrance:-- "Here lies buried in a Stone Grave 10 feet deep, Cap' DANIEL MALCOLM Merch' Who departed this Life October 23d, 1769, Aged 44 years, a true son of Liberty, a Friend to the Publick, an Enemy to oppression, and one of the foremost in opposing the Revenue Acts on America." Page 62. This broad-browed youth. Benjamin Robbins Curtis. Page 62. The stripling smooth of face and slight. George Tyler Bigelow. 
7796	----	POEMS BY MADISON CAWEIN (SELECTED BY THE AUTHOR) WITH A FOREWORD BY WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 1911 INTRODUCTORY NOTE The verses composing this volume have been selected by the author almost entirely from the five-volume edition of his poems published by the Bobbs-Merrill Company in 1907. A number have been included from the three or four volumes which have been published since the appearance of the Collected Poems; namely, three poems from the volume entitled "Nature Notes and Impressions," E. P. Button & Co., New York; one poem from "The Giant and the Star," Small, Maynard & Co., Boston; Section VII and part of Section VIII of "An Ode" written in commemoration of the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and published by John P. Morton & Co., Louisville, Ky.; some five or six poems from "New Poems," published in London by Mr. Grant Richards in 1909; and three or four selections from the volume of selections entitled "Kentucky Poems," compiled by Mr. Edmund Gosse and published in London by Mr. Grant Richards in 19O2. Acknowledgment and thanks for permission to reprint the various poems included in this volume are herewith made to the different publishers. The two poems, "in Arcady" and "The Black Knight" are new and are published here for the first time. In making the selections for the present book Mr. Cawein has endeavored to cover the entire field of his poetical labors, which extends over a quarter of a century. With the exception of his dramatic work, as witnessed by one volume only, "The Shadow Garden," a book of plays four in number, published in 1910, the selection herewith presented by us is, in our opinion, representative of the author's poetical work. CONTENTS The Poetry of Madison Cawein. Hymn to Spiritual Desire. Beautiful-Bosomed, O Night. Discovery. O Maytime Woods. The Redbird. A Niello. In May. Aubade. Apocalypse. Penetralia. Elusion. Womanhood. The Idyll of the Standing-Stone. Noëra. The Old Spring. A Dreamer of Dreams. Deep in the Forest I. Spring on the Hills. II. Moss and Fern. III. The Thorn Tree. IV. The Hamadryad. Preludes. May. What Little Things. In the Shadow of the Beeches. Unrequited. The Solitary. A Twilight Moth. The Old Farm. The Whippoorwill. Revealment. Hepaticas. The Wind of Spring. The Catbird. A Woodland Grave. Sunset Dreams. The Old Byway. "Below the Sunset's Range of Rose". Music of Summer. Midsummer. The Rain-Crow. Field and Forest Call. Old Homes. The Forest Way. Sunset and Storm. Quiet Lanes. One who loved Nature. Garden Gossip. Assumption. Senorita. Overseas. Problems. To a Windflower. Voyagers. The Spell. Uncertainty. In the Wood. Since Then. Dusk in the Woods. Paths. The Quest. The Garden of Dreams. The Path to Faery. There are Faeries. The Spirit of the Forest Spring. In a Garden. In the Lane. The Window on the Hill. The Picture. Moly. Poppy and Mandragora. A Road Song. Phantoms. Intimations of the Beautiful. October. Friends. Comradery. Bare Boughs. Days and Days. Autumn Sorrow. The Tree-Toad. The Chipmunk. The Wild Iris. Drouth. Rain. At Sunset. The Leaf-Cricket. The Wind of Winter. The Owlet. Evening on the Farm. The Locust. The Dead Day. The Old Water-Mill. Argonauts. "The Morn that breaks its Heart of Gold". A Voice on the Wind. Requiem. Lynchers. The Parting. Feud. Ku Klux. Eidolons. The Man Hunt. My Romance. A Maid who died Old. Ballad of Low-Lie-Down. Romance. Amadis and Oriana. The Rosicrucian. The Age of Gold. Beauty and Art. The Sea Spirit. Gargaphie. The Dead Oread. The Faun. The Paphian Venus. Oriental Romance. The Mameluke. The Slave. The Portrait. The Black Knight. In Arcady. Prototypes. March. Dusk. The Winds. Light and Wind. Enchantment. Abandoned. After Long Grief. Mendicants. The End of Summer. November. The Death of Love. Unanswered. The Swashbuckler. Old Sir John. Uncalled. THE POETRY OF MADISON CAWEIN When a poet begins writing, and we begin liking his work, we own willingly enough that we have not, and cannot have, got the compass of his talent. We must wait till he has written more, and we have learned to like him more, and even then we should hesitate his definition, from all that he has done, if we did not very commonly qualify ourselves from the latest thing he has done. Between the earliest thing and the latest thing there may have been a hundred different things, and in his swan-long life of a singer there would probably be a hundred yet, and all different. But we take the latest as if it summed him up in motive and range and tendency. Many parts of his work offer themselves in confirmation of our judgment, while those which might impeach it shrink away and hide themselves, and leave us to our precipitation, our catastrophe. It was surely nothing less than by a catastrophe that I should have been so betrayed in the volumes of Mr. Cawein's verse which reached me last before the volume of his collected poems.... I had read his poetry and loved it from the beginning, and in each successive expression of it, I had delighted in its expanding and maturing beauty. I believe I had not failed to own its compass, and when-- "He touched the tender stops of various quills," I had responded to every note of the changing music. I did not always respond audibly either in public or in private, for it seemed to me that so old a friend might fairly rest on the laurels he had helped bestow. But when that last volume came, I said to myself, "This applausive silence has gone on long enough. It is time to break it with open appreciation. Still," I said, "I must guard against too great appreciation; I must mix in a little depreciation, to show that I have read attentively, critically, authoritatively." So I applied myself to the cheapest and easiest means of depreciation, and asked, "Why do you always write Nature poems? Why not Human Nature poems?" or the like. But in seizing upon an objection so obvious that I ought to have known it was superficial, I had wronged a poet, who had never done me harm, but only good, in the very terms and conditions of his being a poet. I had not stayed to see that his nature poetry was instinct with human poetry, with _his_ human poetry, with mine, with yours. I had made his reproach what ought to have been his finest praise, what is always the praise of poetry when it is not artificial and formal. I ought to have said, as I had seen, that not one of his lovely landscapes in which I could discover no human figure, but thrilled with a human presence penetrating to it from his most sensitive and subtle spirit until it was all but painfully alive with memories, with regrets, with longings, with hopes, with all that from time to time mutably constitutes us men and women, and yet keeps us children. He has the gift, in a measure that I do not think surpassed in any poet, of touching some smallest or commonest thing in nature, and making it live from the manifold associations in which we have our being, and glow thereafter with an inextinguishable beauty. His felicities do not seem sought; rather they seem to seek him, and to surprise him with the delight they impart through him. He has the inspiration of the right word, and the courage of it, so that though in the first instant you may be challenged, you may be revolted, by something that you might have thought uncouth, you are presently overcome by the happy bravery of it, and gladly recognize that no other word of those verbal saints or aristocrats, dedicated to the worship or service of beauty, would at all so well have conveyed the sense of it as this or that plebeian. If I began indulging myself in the pleasure of quotation, or the delight of giving proofs of what I say, I should soon and far transcend the modest bounds which the editor has set my paper. But the reader may take it from me that no other poet, not even of the great Elizabethan range, can outword this poet when it comes to choosing some epithet fresh from the earth or air, and with the morning sun or light upon it, for an emotion or experience in which the race renews its youth from generation to generation. He is of the kind of Keats and Shelley and Wordsworth and Coleridge, in that truth to observance and experience of nature and the joyous expression of it, which are the dominant characteristics of his art. It is imaginable that the thinness of the social life in the Middle West threw the poet upon the communion with the fields and woods, the days and nights, the changing seasons, in which another great nature poet of ours declares they "speak in various language." But nothing could be farther from the didactic mood in which "communion with the various forms" of nature casts the Puritanic soul of Bryant, than the mood in which this German-blooded, Kentucky-born poet, who keeps throughout his song the sense of a perpetual and inalienable youth, with a spirit as pagan as that which breathes from Greek sculpture--but happily not more pagan. Most modern poets who are antique are rather over-Hellenic, in their wish not to be English or French, but there is nothing voluntary in Mr. Cawein's naturalization in the older world of myth and fable; he is too sincerely and solely a poet to be a _posseur;_ he has his eyes everywhere except on the spectator, and his affair is to report the beauty that he sees, as if there were no one by to hear. An interesting and charming trait of his poetry is its constant theme of youth and its limit within the range that the emotions and aspirations of youth take. He might indeed be called the poet of youth if he resented being called the poet of nature; but the poet of youth, be it understood, of vague regrets, of "tears, idle tears," of "long, long thoughts," for that is the real youth, and not the youth of the supposed hilarity, the attributive recklessness, the daring hopes. Perhaps there is some such youth as this, but it has not its home in the breast of any young poet, and he rarely utters it; at best he is of a light melancholy, a smiling wistfulness, and upon the whole, October is more to his mind than May. In Mr. Cawein's work, therefore, what is not the expression of the world we vainly and rashly call the inanimate world, is the hardly more dramatized, and not more enchantingly imagined story of lovers, rather unhappy lovers. He finds his own in this sort far and near; in classic Greece, in heroic England, in romantic Germany, where the blue flower blows, but not less in beautiful and familiar Kentucky, where the blue grass shows itself equally the emblem of poetry, and the moldering log in the cabin wall or the woodland path is of the same poetic value as the marble of the ruined temple or the stone of the crumbling castle. His singularly creative fancy breathes a soul into every scene; his touch leaves everything that was dull to the sense before glowing in the light of joyful recognition. He classifies his poems by different names, and they are of different themes, but they are after all of that unity which I have been trying, all too shirkingly, to suggest. One, for instance, is the pathetic story which tells itself in the lyrical eclogue "One Day and Another." It is the conversation, prolonged from meeting to meeting, between two lovers whom death parts; but who recurrently find themselves and each other in the gardens and the woods, and on the waters which they tell each other of and together delight in. The effect is that which is truest to youth and love, for these transmutations of emotion form the disguise of self which makes passion tolerable; but mechanically the result is a series of nature poems. More genuinely dramatic are such pieces as "The Feud," "Ku Klux," and "The Lynchers," three out of many; but one which I value more because it is worthy of Wordsworth, or of Tennyson in a Wordsworthian mood, is "The Old Mill," where, with all the wonted charm of his landscape art, Mr. Cawein gives us a strongly local and novel piece of character painting. I deny myself with increasing reluctance the pleasure of quoting the stanzas, the verses, the phrases, the epithets, which lure me by scores and hundreds in his poems. It must suffice me to say that I do not know any poem of his which has not some such a felicity; I do not know any poem of his which is not worth reading, at least the first time, and often the second and the third time, and so on as often as you have the chance of recurring to it. Some disappoint and others delight more than others; but there is none but in greater or less measure has the witchery native to the poet, and his place and his period. It is only in order of his later time that I would put Mr. Cawein first among those Midwestern poets, of whom he is the youngest. Poetry in the Middle West has had its development in which it was eclipsed by the splendor, transitory if not vain, of the California school. But it is deeply rooted in the life of the region, and is as true to its origins as any faithful portraiture of the Midwestern landscape could be; you could not mistake the source of the poem or the picture. In a certain tenderness of light and coloring, the poems would recall the mellowed masterpieces of the older literatures rather than those of the New England school, where conscience dwells almost rebukingly with beauty.... W. D. HOWELLS. From _The North American Review_. Copyright, 1908, by the North American Review Publishing Company. POEMS HYMN TO SPIRITUAL DESIRE I Mother of visions, with lineaments dulcet as numbers Breathed on the eyelids of Love by music that slumbers, Secretly, sweetly, O presence of fire and snow, Thou comest mysterious, In beauty imperious, Clad on with dreams and the light of no world that we know: Deep to my innermost soul am I shaken, Helplessly shaken and tossed, And of thy tyrannous yearnings so utterly taken, My lips, unsatisfied, thirst; Mine eyes are accurst With longings for visions that far in the night are forsaken; And mine ears, in listening lost, Yearn, waiting the note of a chord that will never awaken. II Like palpable music thou comest, like moonlight; and far,-- Resonant bar upon bar,-- The vibrating lyre Of the spirit responds with melodious fire, As thy fluttering fingers now grasp it and ardently shake, With laughter and ache, The chords of existence, the instrument star-sprung, Whose frame is of clay, so wonderfully molded of mire. III Vested with vanquishment, come, O Desire, Desire! Breathe in this harp of my soul the audible angel of Love! Make of my heart an Israfel burning above, A lute for the music of God, that lips, which are mortal, but stammer! Smite every rapturous wire With golden delirium, rebellion and silvery clamor, Crying--"Awake! awake! Too long hast thou slumbered! too far from the regions of glamour With its mountains of magic, its fountains of faery, the spar-sprung, Hast thou wandered away, O Heart!" Come, oh, come and partake Of necromance banquets of Beauty; and slake Thy thirst in the waters of Art, That are drawn from the streams Of love and of dreams. IV "Come, oh, come! No longer shall language be dumb! Thy vision shall grasp-- As one doth the glittering hasp Of a sword made splendid with gems and with gold-- The wonder and richness of life, not anguish and hate of it merely. And out of the stark Eternity, awful and dark, Immensity silent and cold,-- Universe-shaking as trumpets, or cymbaling metals, Imperious; yet pensive and pearly And soft as the rosy unfolding of petals, Or crumbling aroma of blossoms that wither too early,-- The majestic music of God, where He plays On the organ, eternal and vast, of eons and days." BEAUTIFUL-BOSOMED, O NIGHT I Beautiful-bosomed, O Night, in thy noon Move with majesty onward! soaring, as lightly As a singer may soar the notes of an exquisite tune, The stars and the moon Through the clerestories high of the heaven, the firmament's halls: Under whose sapphirine walls, June, hesperian June, Robed in divinity wanders. Daily and nightly The turquoise touch of her robe, that the violets star, The silvery fall of her feet, that lilies are, Fill the land with languorous light and perfume.-- Is it the melody mute of burgeoning leaf and of bloom? The music of Nature, that silently shapes in the gloom Immaterial hosts Of spirits that have the flowers and leaves in their keep, Whom I hear, whom I hear? With their sighs of silver and pearl? Invisible ghosts,-- Each sigh a shadowy girl,-- Who whisper in leaves and glimmer in blossoms and hover In color and fragrance and loveliness, breathed from the deep World-soul of the mother, Nature; who over and over,-- Both sweetheart and lover,-- Goes singing her songs from one sweet month to the other. II Lo! 'tis her songs that appear, appear, In forest and field, on hill-land and lea, As visible harmony, Materialized melody, Crystallized beauty, that out of the atmosphere Utters itself, in wonder and mystery, Peopling with glimmering essence the hyaline far and the near.... III Behold how it sprouts from the grass and blossoms from flower and tree! In waves of diaphanous moonlight and mist, In fugue upon fugue of gold and of amethyst, Around me, above me it spirals; now slower, now faster, Like symphonies born of the thought of a musical master.-- O music of Earth! O God, who the music inspired! Let me breathe of the life of thy breath! And so be fulfilled and attired In resurrection, triumphant o'er time and o'er death! DISCOVERY What is it now that I shall seek Where woods dip downward, in the hills?-- A mossy nook, a ferny creek, And May among the daffodils. Or in the valley's vistaed glow, Past rocks of terraced trumpet vines, Shall I behold her coming slow, Sweet May, among the columbines? With redbud cheeks and bluet eyes, Big eyes, the homes of happiness, To meet me with the old surprise, Her wild-rose hair all bonnetless. Who waits for me, where, note for note, The birds make glad the forest trees?-- A dogwood blossom at her throat, My May among th' anemones. As sweetheart breezes kiss the blooms, And dews caress the moon's pale beams, My soul shall drink her lips' perfumes, And know the magic of her dreams. O MAYTIME WOODS! From the idyll "Wild Thorn and Lily" O Maytime woods! O Maytime lanes and hours! And stars, that knew how often there at night Beside the path, where woodbine odors blew Between the drowsy eyelids of the dusk,-- When, like a great, white, pearly moth, the moon Hung silvering long windows of your room,-- I stood among the shrubs! The dark house slept. I watched and waited for--I know not what!-- Some tremor of your gown: a velvet leaf's Unfolding to caresses of the Spring: The rustle of your footsteps: or the dew Syllabling avowal on a tulip's lips Of odorous scarlet: or the whispered word Of something lovelier than new leaf or rose-- The word young lips half murmur in a dream: Serene with sleep, light visions weigh her eyes: And underneath her window blooms a quince. The night is a sultana who doth rise In slippered caution, to admit a prince, Love, who her eunuchs and her lord defies. Are these her dreams? or is it that the breeze Pelts me with petals of the quince, and lifts The Balm-o'-Gilead buds? and seems to squeeze Aroma on aroma through sweet rifts Of Eden, dripping through the rainy trees. Along the path the buckeye trees begin To heap their hills of blossoms.--Oh, that they Were Romeo ladders, whereby I might win Her chamber's sanctity!--where dreams must pray About her soul!--That I might enter in!-- A dream,--and see the balsam scent erase Its dim intrusion; and the starry night Conclude majestic pomp; the virgin grace Of every bud abashed before the white, Pure passion-flower of her sleeping face. THE REDBIRD From "Wild Thorn and Lily" Among the white haw-blossoms, where the creek Droned under drifts of dogwood and of haw, The redbird, like a crimson blossom blown Against the snow-white bosom of the Spring, The chaste confusion of her lawny breast, Sang on, prophetic of serener days, As confident as June's completer hours. And I stood listening like a hind, who hears A wood nymph breathing in a forest flute Among the beech-boles of myth-haunted ways: And when it ceased, the memory of the air Blew like a syrinx in my brain: I made A lyric of the notes that men might know: He flies with flirt and fluting-- As flies a crimson star From flaming star-beds shooting-- From where the roses are. Wings past and sings; and seven Notes, wild as fragrance is,-- That turn to flame in heaven,-- Float round him full of bliss. He sings; each burning feather Thrills, throbbing at his throat; A song of firefly weather, And of a glowworm boat: Of Elfland and a princess Who, born of a perfume, His music rocks,--where winces That rosebud's cradled bloom. No bird sings half so airy, No bird of dusk or dawn, Thou masking King of Faery! Thou red-crowned Oberon! A NIËLLO I It is not early spring and yet Of bloodroot blooms along the stream, And blotted banks of violet, My heart will dream. Is it because the windflower apes The beauty that was once her brow, That the white memory of it shapes The April now? Because the wild-rose wears the blush That once made sweet her maidenhood, Its thought makes June of barren bush And empty wood? And then I think how young she died-- Straight, barren Death stalks down the trees, The hard-eyed Hours by his side, That kill and freeze. II When orchards are in bloom again My heart will bound, my blood will beat, To hear the redbird so repeat, On boughs of rosy stain, His blithe, loud song,--like some far strain From out the past,--among the bloom,-- (Where bee and wasp and hornet boom)-- Fresh, redolent of rain. When orchards are in bloom once more, Invasions of lost dreams will draw My feet, like some insistent law, Through blossoms to her door: In dreams I'll ask her, as before, To let me help her at the well; And fill her pail; and long to tell My love as once of yore. I shall not speak until we quit The farm-gate, leading to the lane And orchard, all in bloom again, Mid which the bluebirds sit And sing; and through whose blossoms flit The catbirds crying while they fly: Then tenderly I'll speak, and try To tell her all of it. And in my dream again she'll place Her hand in mine, as oft before,-- When orchards are in bloom once more,-- With all her young-girl grace: And we shall tarry till a trace Of sunset dyes the heav'ns; and then-- We'll part; and, parting, I again Shall bend and kiss her face. And homeward, singing, I shall go Along the cricket-chirring ways, While sunset, one long crimson blaze Of orchards, lingers low: And my dead youth again I'll know, And all her love, when spring is here-- Whose memory holds me many a year, Whose love still haunts me so! III I would not die when Springtime lifts The white world to her maiden mouth, And heaps its cradle with gay gifts, Breeze-blown from out the singing South: Too full of life and loves that cling; Too heedless of all mortal woe, The young, unsympathetic Spring, That Death should never know. I would not die when Summer shakes Her daisied locks below her hips, And naked as a star that takes A cloud, into the silence slips: Too rich is Summer; poor in needs; In egotism of loveliness Her pomp goes by, and never heeds One life the more or less. But I would die when Autumn goes, The dark rain dripping from her hair, Through forests where the wild wind blows Death and the red wreck everywhere: Sweet as love's last farewells and tears To fall asleep when skies are gray, In the old autumn of my years, Like a dead leaf borne far away. IN MAY I When you and I in the hills went Maying, You and I in the bright May weather, The birds, that sang on the boughs together, There in the green of the woods, kept saying All that my heart was saying low, "I love you! love you!" soft and low,-- And did you know? When you and I in the hills went Maying. II There where the brook on its rocks went winking, There by its banks where the May had led us, Flowers, that bloomed in the woods and meadows, Azure and gold at our feet, kept thinking All that my soul was thinking there, "I love you! love you!" softly there-- And did you care? There where the brook on its rocks went winking. III Whatever befalls through fate's compelling, Should our paths unite or our pathways sever, In the Mays to come I shall feel forever The wildflowers thinking, the wild birds telling, In words as soft as the falling dew, The love that I keep here still for you, Both deep and true, Whatever befalls through fate's compelling. AUBADE Awake! the dawn is on the hills! Behold, at her cool throat a rose, Blue-eyed and beautiful she goes, Leaving her steps in daffodils.-- Awake! arise! and let me see Thine eyes, whose deeps epitomize All dawns that were or are to be, O love, all Heaven in thine eyes!-- Awake! arise! come down to me! Behold! the dawn is up: behold! How all the birds around her float, Wild rills of music, note on note, Spilling the air with mellow gold.-- Arise! awake! and, drawing near, Let me but hear thee and rejoice! Thou, who keep'st captive, sweet and clear, All song, O love, within thy voice! Arise! awake! and let me hear! See, where she comes, with limbs of day, The dawn! with wild-rose hands and feet, Within whose veins the sunbeams beat, And laughters meet of wind and ray. Arise! come down! and, heart to heart, Love, let me clasp in thee all these-- The sunbeam, of which thou art part, And all the rapture of the breeze!-- Arise! come down! loved that thou art! APOCALYPSE Before I found her I had found Within my heart, as in a brook, Reflections of her: now a sound Of imaged beauty; now a look. So when I found her, gazing in Those Bibles of her eyes, above All earth, I read no word of sin; Their holy chapters all were love. I read them through. I read and saw The soul impatient of the sod-- Her soul, that through her eyes did draw Mine--to the higher love of God. PENETRALIA I am a part of all you see In Nature; part of all you feel: I am the impact of the bee Upon the blossom; in the tree I am the sap,--that shall reveal The leaf, the bloom,--that flows and flutes Up from the darkness through its roots. I am the vermeil of the rose, The perfume breathing in its veins; The gold within the mist that glows Along the west and overflows With light the heaven; the dew that rains Its freshness down and strings with spheres Of wet the webs and oaten ears. I am the egg that folds the bird; The song that beaks and breaks its shell; The laughter and the wandering word The water says; and, dimly heard, The music of the blossom's bell When soft winds swing it; and the sound Of grass slow-creeping o'er the ground. I am the warmth, the honey-scent That throats with spice each lily-bud That opens, white with wonderment, Beneath the moon; or, downward bent, Sleeps with a moth beneath its hood: I am the dream that haunts it too, That crystallizes into dew. I am the seed within the pod; The worm within its closed cocoon: The wings within the circling clod, The germ, that gropes through soil and sod To beauty, radiant in the noon: I am all these, behold! and more-- I am the love at the world-heart's core. ELUSION I My soul goes out to her who says, "Come, follow me and cast off care!" Then tosses back her sun-bright hair, And like a flower before me sways Between the green leaves and my gaze: This creature like a girl, who smiles Into my eyes and softly lays Her hand in mine and leads me miles, Long miles of haunted forest ways. II Sometimes she seems a faint perfume, A fragrance that a flower exhaled And God gave form to; now, unveiled, A sunbeam making gold the gloom Of vines that roof some woodland room Of boughs; and now the silvery sound Of streams her presence doth assume-- Music, from which, in dreaming drowned, A crystal shape she seems to bloom. III Sometimes she seems the light that lies On foam of waters where the fern Shimmers and drips; now, at some turn Of woodland, bright against the skies, She seems the rainbowed mist that flies; And now the mossy fire that breaks Beneath the feet in azure eyes Of flowers; now the wind that shakes Pale petals from the bough that sighs. IV Sometimes she lures me with a song; Sometimes she guides me with a laugh; Her white hand is a magic staff, Her look a spell to lead me long: Though she be weak and I be strong, She needs but shake her happy hair, But glance her eyes, and, right or wrong, My soul must follow--anywhere She wills--far from the world's loud throng. V Sometimes I think that she must be No part of earth, but merely this-- The fair, elusive thing we miss In Nature, that we dream we see Yet never see: that goldenly Beckons; that, limbed with rose and pearl, The Greek made a divinity:-- A nymph, a god, a glimmering girl, That haunts the forest's mystery. WOMANHOOD I The summer takes its hue From something opulent as fair in her, And the bright heaven is brighter than it was; Brighter and lovelier, Arching its beautiful blue, Serene and soft, as her sweet gaze, o'er us. II The springtime takes its moods From something in her made of smiles and tears, And flowery earth is flowerier than before, And happier, it appears, Adding new multitudes To flowers, like thoughts, that haunt us evermore. III Summer and spring are wed In her--her nature; and the glamour of Their loveliness, their bounty, as it were, Of life and joy and love, Her being seems to shed,-- The magic aura of the heart of her. THE IDYLL OF THE STANDING STONE The teasel and the horsemint spread The hillside as with sunset, sown With blossoms, o'er the Standing-Stone That ripples in its rocky bed: There are no treasuries that hold Gold richer than the marigold That crowns its sparkling head. 'Tis harvest time: a mower stands Among the morning wheat and whets His scythe, and for a space forgets The labor of the ripening lands; Then bends, and through the dewy grain His long scythe hisses, and again He swings it in his hands. And she beholds him where he mows On acres whence the water sends Faint music of reflecting bends And falls that interblend with flows: She stands among the old bee-gums,-- Where all the apiary hums,-- A simple bramble-rose. She hears him whistling as he leans, And, reaping, sweeps the ripe wheat by; She sighs and smiles, and knows not why, Nor what her heart's disturbance means: He whets his scythe, and, resting, sees Her rose-like 'mid the hives of bees, Beneath the flowering beans. The peacock-purple lizard creeps Along the rail; and deep the drone Of insects makes the country lone With summer where the water sleeps: She hears him singing as he swings His scythe--who thinks of other things Than toil, and, singing, reaps. NOËRA Noëra, when sad Fall Has grayed the fallow; Leaf-cramped the wood-brook's brawl In pool and shallow; When, by the woodside, tall Stands sere the mallow. Noëra, when gray gold And golden gray The crackling hollows fold By every way, Shall I thy face behold, Dear bit of May? When webs are cribs for dew, And gossamers Streak by you, silver-blue; When silence stirs One leaf, of rusty hue, Among the burrs: Noëra, through the wood, Or through the grain, Come, with the hoiden mood Of wind and rain Fresh in thy sunny blood, Sweetheart, again. Noëra, when the corn, Reaped on the fields, The asters' stars adorn; And purple shields Of ironweeds lie torn Among the wealds: Noëra, haply then, Thou being with me, Each ruined greenwood glen Will bud and be Spring's with the spring again, The spring in thee. Thou of the breezy tread; Feet of the breeze: Thou of the sunbeam head; Heart like a bee's: Face like a woodland-bred Anemone's. Thou to October bring An April part! Come! make the wild birds sing, The blossoms start! Noëra, with the spring Wild in thy heart! Come with our golden year: Come as its gold: With the same laughing, clear, Loved voice of old: In thy cool hair one dear Wild marigold. THE OLD SPRING I Under rocks whereon the rose Like a streak of morning glows; Where the azure-throated newt Drowses on the twisted root; And the brown bees, humming homeward, Stop to suck the honeydew; Fern- and leaf-hid, gleaming gloamward, Drips the wildwood spring I knew, Drips the spring my boyhood knew. II Myrrh and music everywhere Haunt its cascades--like the hair That a Naiad tosses cool, Swimming strangely beautiful, With white fragrance for her bosom, And her mouth a breath of song-- Under leaf and branch and blossom Flows the woodland spring along, Sparkling, singing flows along. III Still the wet wan mornings touch Its gray rocks, perhaps; and such Slender stars as dusk may have Pierce the rose that roofs its wave; Still the thrush may call at noontide And the whippoorwill at night; Nevermore, by sun or moontide, Shall I see it gliding white, Falling, flowing, wild and white. A DREAMER OF DREAMS He lived beyond men, and so stood Admitted to the brotherhood Of beauty:--dreams, with which he trod Companioned like some sylvan god. And oft men wondered, when his thought Made all their knowledge seem as naught, If he, like Uther's mystic son, Had not been born for Avalon. When wandering mid the whispering trees, His soul communed with every breeze; Heard voices calling from the glades, Bloom-words of the Leimoniäds; Or Dryads of the ash and oak, Who syllabled his name and spoke With him of presences and powers That glimpsed in sunbeams, gloomed in showers. By every violet-hallowed brook, Where every bramble-matted nook Rippled and laughed with water sounds, He walked like one on sainted grounds, Fearing intrusion on the spell That kept some fountain-spirit's well, Or woodland genius, sitting where Red, racy berries kissed his hair. Once when the wind, far o'er the hill, Had fall'n and left the wildwood still For Dawn's dim feet to trail across,-- Beneath the gnarled boughs, on the moss, The air around him golden-ripe With daybreak,--there, with oaten pipe, His eyes beheld the wood-god, Pan, Goat-bearded, horned; half brute, half man; Who, shaggy-haunched, a savage rhyme Blew in his reed to rudest time; And swollen-jowled, with rolling eye-- Beneath the slowly silvering sky, Whose rose streaked through the forest's roof-- Danced, while beneath his boisterous hoof The branch was snapped, and, interfused Between gnarled roots, the moss was bruised. And often when he wandered through Old forests at the fall of dew-- A new Endymion, who sought A beauty higher than all thought-- Some night, men said, most surely he Would favored be of deity: That in the holy solitude Her sudden presence, long-pursued, Unto his gaze would stand confessed: The awful moonlight of her breast Come, high with majesty, and hold His heart's blood till his heart grew cold, Unpulsed, unsinewed, all undone, And snatch his soul to Avalon. DEEP IN THE FOREST I. SPRING ON THE HILLS Ah, shall I follow, on the hills, The Spring, as wild wings follow? Where wild-plum trees make wan the hills, Crabapple trees the hollow, Haunts of the bee and swallow? In redbud brakes and flowery Acclivities of berry; In dogwood dingles, showery With white, where wrens make merry? Or drifts of swarming cherry? In valleys of wild strawberries, And of the clumped May-apple; Or cloudlike trees of haw-berries, With which the south winds grapple, That brook and byway dapple? With eyes of far forgetfulness,-- Like some wild wood-thing's daughter, Whose feet are beelike fretfulness,-- To see her run like water Through boughs that slipped or caught her. O Spring, to seek, yet find you not! To search, yet never win you! To glimpse, to touch, but bind you not! To lose, and still continue, All sweet evasion in you! In pearly, peach-blush distances You gleam; the woods are braided Of myths; of dream-existences.... There, where the brook is shaded, A sudden splendor faded. O presence, like the primrose's, Again I feel your power! With rainy scents of dim roses, Like some elusive flower, Who led me for an hour! II. MOSS AND FERN Where rise the brakes of bramble there, Wrapped with the trailing rose; Through cane where waters ramble, there Where deep the sword-grass grows, Who knows? Perhaps, unseen of eyes of man, Hides Pan. Perhaps the creek, whose pebbles make A foothold for the mint, May bear,--where soft its trebles make Confession,--some vague hint, (The print, Goat-hoofed, of one who lightly ran,) Of Pan. Where, in the hollow of the hills Ferns deepen to the knees, What sounds are those above the hills, And now among the trees?-- No breeze!-- The syrinx, haply, none may scan, Of Pan. In woods where waters break upon The hush like some soft word; Where sun-shot shadows shake upon The moss, who has not heard-- No bird!-- The flute, as breezy as a fan, Of Pan? Far in, where mosses lay for us Still carpets, cool and plush; Where bloom and branch and ray for us Sleep, waking with a rush-- The hush But sounds the satyr hoof a span Of Pan. O woods,--whose thrushes sing to us, Whose brooks dance sparkling heels; Whose wild aromas cling to us,-- While here our wonder kneels, Who steals Upon us, brown as bark with tan, But Pan? III. THE THORN TREE The night is sad with silver and the day is glad with gold, And the woodland silence listens to a legend never old, Of the Lady of the Fountain, whom the faery people know, With her limbs of samite whiteness and her hair of golden glow, Whom the boyish South Wind seeks for and the girlish-stepping Rain; Whom the sleepy leaves still whisper men shall never see again: She whose Vivien charms were mistress of the magic Merlin knew, That could change the dew to glowworms and the glowworms into dew. There's a thorn tree in the forest, and the faeries know the tree, With its branches gnarled and wrinkled as a face with sorcery; But the Maytime brings it clusters of a rainy fragrant white, Like the bloom-bright brows of beauty or a hand of lifted light. And all day the silence whispers to the sun-ray of the morn How the bloom is lovely Vivien and how Merlin is the thorn: How she won the doting wizard with her naked loveliness Till he told her dæmon secrets that must make his magic less. How she charmed him and enchanted in the thorn-tree's thorns to lie Forever with his passion that should never dim or die: And with wicked laughter looking on this thing which she had done, Like a visible aroma lingered sparkling in the sun: How she stooped to kiss the pathos of an elf-lock of his beard, In a mockery of parting and mock pity of his weird: But her magic had forgotten that "who bends to give a kiss Will but bring the curse upon them of the person whose it is": So the silence tells the secret.--And at night the faeries see How the tossing bloom is Vivien, who is struggling to be free, In the thorny arms of Merlin, who forever is the tree. IV. THE HAMADRYAD She stood among the longest ferns The valley held; and in her hand One blossom, like the light that burns Vermilion o'er a sunset land; And round her hair a twisted band Of pink-pierced mountain-laurel blooms: And darker than dark pools, that stand Below the star-communing glooms, Her eyes beneath her hair's perfumes. I saw the moonbeam sandals on Her flowerlike feet, that seemed too chaste To tread true gold: and, like the dawn On splendid peaks that lord a waste Of solitude lost gods have graced, Her face: she stood there, faultless-hipped, Bound as with cestused silver,--chased With acorn-cup and crown, and tipped With oak leaves,--whence her chiton slipped. Limbs that the gods call loveliness!-- The grace and glory of all Greece Wrought in one marble shape were less Than her perfection!--'Mid the trees I saw her--and time seemed to cease For me.--And, lo! I lived my old Greek life again of classic ease, Barbarian as the myths that rolled Me back into the Age of Gold. PRELUDES I There is no rhyme that is half so sweet As the song of the wind in the rippling wheat; There is no metre that's half so fine As the lilt of the brook under rock and vine; And the loveliest lyric I ever heard Was the wildwood strain of a forest bird.-- If the wind and the brook and the bird would teach My heart their beautiful parts of speech, And the natural art that they say these with, My soul would sing of beauty and myth In a rhyme and metre that none before Have sung in their love, or dreamed in their lore, And the world would be richer one poet the more. II A thought to lift me up to those Sweet wildflowers of the pensive woods; The lofty, lowly attitudes Of bluet and of bramble-rose: To lift me where my mind may reach The lessons which their beauties teach. A dream, to lead my spirit on With sounds of faery shawms and flutes, And all mysterious attributes Of skies of dusk and skies of dawn: To lead me, like the wandering brooks, Past all the knowledge of the books. A song, to make my heart a guest Of happiness whose soul is love; One with the life that knoweth of But song that turneth toil to rest: To make me cousin to the birds, Whose music needs not wisdom's words. MAY The golden discs of the rattlesnake-weed, That spangle the woods and dance-- No gleam of gold that the twilights hold Is strong as their necromance: For, under the oaks where the woodpaths lead, The golden discs of the rattlesnake-weed Are the May's own utterance. The azure stars of the bluet bloom, That sprinkle the woodland's trance-- No blink of blue that a cloud lets through Is sweet as their countenance: For, over the knolls that the woods perfume, The azure stars of the bluet bloom Are the light of the May's own glance. With her wondering words and her looks she comes, In a sunbeam of a gown; She needs but think and the blossoms wink, But look, and they shower down. By orchard ways, where the wild bee hums, With her wondering words and her looks she comes Like a little maid to town. WHAT LITTLE THINGS! From "One Day and Another" What little things are those That hold our happiness! A smile, a glance, a rose Dropped from her hair or dress; A word, a look, a touch,-- These are so much, so much. An air we can't forget; A sunset's gold that gleams; A spray of mignonette, Will fill the soul with dreams More than all history says, Or romance of old days. For of the human heart, Not brain, is memory; These things it makes a part Of its own entity; The joys, the pains whereof Are the very food of love. IN THE SHADOW OF THE BEECHES In the shadow of the beeches, Where the fragile wildflowers bloom; Where the pensive silence pleaches Green a roof of cool perfume, Have you felt an awe imperious As when, in a church, mysterious Windows paint with God the gloom? In the shadow of the beeches, Where the rock-ledged waters flow; Where the sun's slant splendor bleaches Every wave to foaming snow, Have you felt a music solemn As when minster arch and column Echo organ worship low? In the shadow of the beeches, Where the light and shade are blent; Where the forest bird beseeches, And the breeze is brimmed with scent,-- Is it joy or melancholy That o'erwhelms us partly, wholly, To our spirit's betterment? In the shadow of the beeches Lay me where no eye perceives; Where,--like some great arm that reaches Gently as a love that grieves,-- One gnarled root may clasp me kindly, While the long years, working blindly, Slowly change my dust to leaves. UNREQUITED Passion? not hers! who held me with pure eyes: One hand among the deep curls of her brow, I drank the girlhood of her gaze with sighs: She never sighed, nor gave me kiss or vow. So have I seen a clear October pool, Cold, liquid topaz, set within the sere Gold of the woodland, tremorless and cool, Reflecting all the heartbreak of the year. Sweetheart? not she! whose voice was music-sweet; Whose face loaned language to melodious prayer. Sweetheart I called her.--When did she repeat Sweet to one hope, or heart to one despair! So have I seen a wildflower's fragrant head Sung to and sung to by a longing bird; And at the last, albeit the bird lay dead, No blossom wilted, for it had not heard. THE SOLITARY Upon the mossed rock by the spring She sits, forgetful of her pail, Lost in remote remembering Of that which may no more avail. Her thin, pale hair is dimly dressed Above a brow lined deep with care, The color of a leaf long pressed, A faded leaf that once was fair. You may not know her from the stone So still she sits who does not stir, Thinking of this one thing alone-- The love that never came to her. A TWILIGHT MOTH Dusk is thy dawn; when Eve puts on its state Of gold and purple in the marbled west, Thou comest forth like some embodied trait, Or dim conceit, a lily bud confessed; Or of a rose the visible wish; that, white, Goes softly messengering through the night, Whom each expectant flower makes its guest. All day the primroses have thought of thee, Their golden heads close-haremed from the heat; All day the mystic moonflowers silkenly Veiled snowy faces,--that no bee might greet, Or butterfly that, weighed with pollen, passed;-- Keeping Sultana charms for thee, at last, Their lord, who comest to salute each sweet. Cool-throated flowers that avoid the day's Too fervid kisses; every bud that drinks The tipsy dew and to the starlight plays Nocturnes of fragrance, thy wing'd shadow links In bonds of secret brotherhood and faith; O bearer of their order's shibboleth, Like some pale symbol fluttering o'er these pinks. What dost them whisper in the balsam's ear That sets it blushing, or the hollyhock's,-- A syllabled silence that no man may hear,-- As dreamily upon its stem it rocks? What spell dost bear from listening plant to plant, Like some white witch, some ghostly ministrant, Some specter of some perished flower of phlox? O voyager of that universe which lies Between the four walls of this garden fair,-- Whose constellations are the fireflies That wheel their instant courses everywhere,-- Mid faery firmaments wherein one sees Mimic Boötes and the Pleiades, Thou steerest like some faery ship of air. Gnome-wrought of moonbeam-fluff and gossamer, Silent as scent, perhaps thou chariotest Mab or King Oberon; or, haply, her His queen, Titania, on some midnight quest.-- Oh for the herb, the magic euphrasy, That should unmask thee to mine eyes, ah me! And all that world at which my soul hath guessed! THE OLD FARM Dormered and verandaed, cool, Locust-girdled, on the hill; Stained with weather-wear, and dull- Streak'd with lichens; every sill Thresholding the beautiful; I can see it standing there, Brown above the woodland deep, Wrapped in lights of lavender, By the warm wind rocked asleep, Violet shadows everywhere. I remember how the Spring, Liberal-lapped, bewildered its Acred orchards, murmuring, Kissed to blossom; budded bits Where the wood-thrush came to sing. Barefoot Spring, at first who trod, Like a beggermaid, adown The wet woodland; where the god, With the bright sun for a crown And the firmament for rod, Met her; clothed her; wedded her; Her Cophetua: when, lo! All the hill, one breathing blur, Burst in beauty; gleam and glow Blent with pearl and lavender. Seckel, blackheart, palpitant Rained their bleaching strays; and white Snowed the damson, bent aslant; Rambow-tree and romanite Seemed beneath deep drifts to pant. And it stood there, brown and gray, In the bee-boom and the bloom, In the shadow and the ray, In the passion and perfume, Grave as age among the gay. Wild with laughter romped the clear Boyish voices round its walls; Rare wild-roses were the dear Girlish faces in its halls, Music-haunted all the year. Far before it meadows full Of green pennyroyal sank; Clover-dotted as with wool Here and there; with now a bank Hot of color; and the cool Dark-blue shadows unconfined Of the clouds rolled overhead: Clouds, from which the summer wind Blew with rain, and freshly shed Dew upon the flowerkind. Where through mint and gypsy-lily Runs the rocky brook away, Musical among the hilly Solitudes,--its flashing spray Sunlight-dashed or forest-stilly,-- Buried in deep sassafras, Memory follows up the hill Still some cowbell's mellow brass, Where the ruined water-mill Looms, half-hid in cane and grass.... Oh, the farmhouse! is it set On the hilltop still? 'mid musk Of the meads? where, violet, Deepens all the dreaming dusk, And the locust-trees hang wet. While the sunset, far and low, On its westward windows dashes Primrose or pomegranate glow; And above, in glimmering splashes, Lilac stars the heavens sow. Sleeps it still among its roses,-- Oldtime roses? while the choir Of the lonesome insects dozes: And the white moon, drifting higher, O'er its mossy roof reposes-- Sleeps it still among its roses? THE WHIPPOORWILL I Above lone woodland ways that led To dells the stealthy twilights tread The west was hot geranium red; And still, and still, Along old lanes the locusts sow With clustered pearls the Maytimes know, Deep in the crimson afterglow, We heard the homeward cattle low, And then the far-off, far-off woe Of "whippoorwill!" of "whippoorwill!" II Beneath the idle beechen boughs We heard the far bells of the cows Come slowly jangling towards the house; And still, and still, Beyond the light that would not die Out of the scarlet-haunted sky; Beyond the evening-star's white eye Of glittering chalcedony, Drained out of dusk the plaintive cry Of "whippoorwill," of "whippoorwill." III And in the city oft, when swims The pale moon o'er the smoke that dims Its disc, I dream of wildwood limbs; And still, and still, I seem to hear, where shadows grope Mid ferns and flowers that dewdrops rope,-- Lost in faint deeps of heliotrope Above the clover-sweetened slope,-- Retreat, despairing, past all hope, The whippoorwill, the whippoorwill. REVEALMENT A sense of sadness in the golden air; A pensiveness, that has no part in care, As if the Season, by some woodland pool, Braiding the early blossoms in her hair, Seeing her loveliness reflected there, Had sighed to find herself so beautiful. A breathlessness; a feeling as of fear; Holy and dim, as of a mystery near, As if the World, about us, whispering went With lifted finger and hand-hollowed ear, Hearkening a music, that we cannot hear, Haunting the quickening earth and firmament. A prescience of the soul that has no name; Expectancy that is both wild and tame, As if the Earth, from out its azure ring Of heavens, looked to see, as white as flame,-- As Perseus once to chained Andromeda came,-- The swift, divine revealment of the Spring. HEPATICAS In the frail hepaticas,-- That the early Springtide tossed, Sapphire-like, along the ways Of the woodlands that she crossed,-- I behold, with other eyes, Footprints of a dream that flies. One who leads me; whom I seek: In whose loveliness there is All the glamour that the Greek Knew as wind-borne Artemis.-- I am mortal. Woe is me! Her sweet immortality! Spirit, must I always fare, Following thy averted looks? Now thy white arm, now thy hair, Glimpsed among the trees and brooks? Thou who hauntest, whispering, All the slopes and vales of Spring. Cease to lure! or grant to me All thy beauty! though it pain, Slay with splendor utterly! Flash revealment on my brain! And one moment let me see All thy immortality! THE WIND OF SPRING The wind that breathes of columbines And celandines that crowd the rocks; That shakes the balsam of the pines With laughter from his airy locks, Stops at my city door and knocks. He calls me far a-forest, where The twin-leaf and the blood-root bloom; And, circled by the amber air, Life sits with beauty and perfume Weaving the new web of her loom. He calls me where the waters run Through fronding ferns where wades the hern; And, sparkling in the equal sun, Song leans above her brimming urn, And dreams the dreams that love shall learn. The wind has summoned, and I go: To read God's meaning in each line The wildflowers write; and, walking slow, God's purpose, of which song is sign,-- The wind's great, gusty hand in mine. THE CATBIRD I The tufted gold of the sassafras, And the gold of the spicewood-bush, Bewilder the ways of the forest pass, And brighten the underbrush: The white-starred drifts of the wild-plum tree, And the haw with its pearly plumes, And the redbud, misted rosily, Dazzle the woodland glooms. II And I hear the song of the catbird wake I' the boughs o' the gnarled wild-crab, Or there where the snows of the dogwood shake, That the silvery sunbeams stab: And it seems to me that a magic lies In the crystal sweet of its notes, That a myriad blossoms open their eyes As its strain above them floats. III I see the bluebell's blue unclose, And the trillium's stainless white; The birdfoot-violet's purple and rose, And the poppy, golden-bright! And I see the eyes of the bluet wink, And the heads of the white-hearts nod; And the baby mouths of the woodland-pink And sorrel salute the sod. IV And this, meseems, does the catbird say, As the blossoms crowd i' the sun:-- "Up, up! and out! oh, out and away! Up, up! and out, each one! Sweethearts! sweethearts! oh, sweet, sweet, sweet! Come listen and hark to me! The Spring, the Spring, with her fragrant feet, Is passing this way!--Oh, hark to the beat Of her beelike heart!--Oh, sweet, sweet, sweet! Come! open your eyes and see! See, see, see!" A WOODLAND GRAVE White moons may come, white moons may go-- She sleeps where early blossoms blow; Knows nothing of the leafy June, That leans above her night and noon, Crowned now with sunbeam, now with moon, Watching her roses grow. The downy moth at twilight comes And flutters round their honeyed blooms: Long, lazy clouds, like ivory, That isle the blue lagoons of sky, Redden to molten gold and dye With flame the pine-deep glooms. Dew, dripping from wet fern and leaf; The wind, that shakes the violet's sheaf; The slender sound of water lone, That makes a harp-string of some stone, And now a wood bird's glimmering moan, Seem whisperings there of grief. Her garden, where the lilacs grew, Where, on old walls, old roses blew, Head-heavy with their mellow musk, Where, when the beetle's drone was husk, She lingered in the dying dusk, No more shall know that knew. Her orchard,--where the Spring and she Stood listening to each bird and bee,-- That, from its fragrant firmament, Snowed blossoms on her as she went, (A blossom with their blossoms blent) No more her face shall see. White moons may come, white moons may go-- She sleeps where early blossoms blow: Around her headstone many a seed Shall sow itself; and brier and weed Shall grow to hide it from men's heed, And none will care or know. SUNSET DREAMS The moth and beetle wing about The garden ways of other days; Above the hills, a fiery shout Of gold, the day dies slowly out, Like some wild blast a huntsman blows: And o'er the hills my Fancy goes, Following the sunset's golden call Unto a vine-hung garden wall, Where she awaits me in the gloom, Between the lily and the rose, With arms and lips of warm perfume, The dream of Love my Fancy knows. The glowworm and the firefly glow Among the ways of bygone days; A golden shaft shot from a bow Of silver, star and moon swing low Above the hills where twilight lies: And o'er the hills my Longing flies, Following the star's far-arrowed gold, Unto a gate where, as of old, She waits amid the rose and rue, With star-bright hair and night-dark eyes, The dream, to whom my heart is true, My dream of Love that never dies. THE OLD BYWAY Its rotting fence one scarcely sees Through sumac and wild blackberries, Thick elder and the bramble-rose, Big ox-eyed daisies where the bees Hang droning in repose. The little lizards lie all day Gray on its rocks of lichen-gray; And, insect-Ariels of the sun, The butterflies make bright its way, Its path where chipmunks run. A lyric there the redbird lifts, While, twittering, the swallow drifts 'Neath wandering clouds of sleepy cream,-- In which the wind makes azure rifts,-- O'er dells where wood-doves dream. The brown grasshoppers rasp and bound Mid weeds and briers that hedge it round; And in its grass-grown ruts,--where stirs The harmless snake,--mole-crickets sound Their faery dulcimers. At evening, when the sad west turns To lonely night a cheek that burns, The tree-toads in the wild-plum sing; And ghosts of long-dead flowers and ferns The winds wake, whispering. "BELOW THE SUNSET'S RANGE OF ROSE" Below the sunset's range of rose, Below the heaven's deepening blue, Down woodways where the balsam blows, And milkweed tufts hang, gray with dew, A Jersey heifer stops and lows-- The cows come home by one, by two. There is no star yet: but the smell Of hay and pennyroyal mix With herb aromas of the dell, Where the root-hidden cricket clicks: Among the ironweeds a bell Clangs near the rail-fenced clover-ricks. She waits upon the slope beside The windlassed well the plum trees shade, The well curb that the goose-plums hide; Her light hand on the bucket laid, Unbonneted she waits, glad-eyed, Her gown as simple as her braid. She sees fawn-colored backs among The sumacs now; a tossing horn Its clashing bell of copper rung: Long shadows lean upon the corn, And slow the day dies, scarlet stung, The cloud in it a rosy thorn. Below the pleasant moon, that tips The tree tops of the hillside, fly The flitting bats; the twilight slips, In firefly spangles, twinkling by, Through which _he_ comes: Their happy lips Meet--and one star leaps in the sky. He takes her bucket, and they speak Of married hopes while in the grass The plum drops glowing as her cheek; The patient cows look back or pass: And in the west one golden streak Burns as if God gazed through a glass. MUSIC OF SUMMER I Thou sit'st among the sunny silences Of terraced hills and woodland galleries, Thou utterance of all calm melodies, Thou lutanist of Earth's most affluent lute,-- Where no false note intrudes To mar the silent music,--branch and root,-- Charming the fields ripe, orchards and deep woods, To song similitudes Of flower and seed and fruit. II Oft have I seen thee, in some sensuous air, Bewitch the broad wheat-acres everywhere To imitated gold of thy deep hair: The peach, by thy red lips' delicious trouble, Blown into gradual dyes Of crimson; and beheld thy magic double-- Dark-blue with fervid influence of thine eyes-- The grapes' rotundities, Bubble by purple bubble. III Deliberate uttered into life intense, Out of thy soul's melodious eloquence Beauty evolves its just preëminence: The lily, from some pensive-smitten chord Drawing significance Of purity, a visible hush stands: starred With splendor, from thy passionate utterance, The rose writes its romance In blushing word on word. IV As star by star Day harps in Evening, The inspiration of all things that sing Is in thy hands and from their touch takes wing: All brooks, all birds,--whom song can never sate,-- The leaves, the wind and rain, Green frogs and insects, singing soon and late, Thy sympathies inspire, thy heart's refrain, Whose sounds invigorate With rest life's weary brain. V And as the Night, like some mysterious rune, Its beauty makes emphatic with the moon, Thou lutest us no immaterial tune: But where dim whispers haunt the cane and corn, By thy still strain made strong, Earth's awful avatar,--in whom is born Thy own deep music,--labors all night long With growth, assuring Morn Assumes with onward song. MIDSUMMER I The mellow smell of hollyhocks And marigolds and pinks and phlox Blends with the homely garden scents Of onions, silvering into rods; Of peppers, scarlet with their pods; And (rose of all the esculents) Of broad plebeian cabbages, Breathing content and corpulent ease. II The buzz of wasp and fly makes hot The spaces of the garden-plot; And from the orchard,--where the fruit Ripens and rounds, or, loosed with heat, Rolls, hornet-clung, before the feet,-- One hears the veery's golden flute, That mixes with the sleepy hum Of bees that drowsily go and come. III The podded musk of gourd and vine Embower a gate of roughest pine, That leads into a wood where day Sits, leaning o'er a forest pool, Watching the lilies opening cool, And dragonflies at airy play, While, dim and near, the quietness Rustles and stirs her leafy dress. IV Far-off a cowbell clangs awake The noon who slumbers in the brake: And now a pewee, plaintively, Whistles the day to sleep again: A rain-crow croaks a rune for rain, And from the ripest apple tree A great gold apple thuds, where, slow, The red cock curves his neck to crow. V Hens cluck their broods from place to place, While clinking home, with chain and trace, The cart-horse plods along the road Where afternoon sits with his dreams: Hot fragrance of hay-making streams Above him, and a high-heaped load Goes creaking by and with it, sweet, The aromatic soul of heat. VI "Coo-ee! coo-ee!" the evenfall Cries, and the hills repeat the call: "Coo-ee! coo-ee!" and by the log Labor unharnesses his plow, While to the barn comes cow on cow: "Coo-ee! coo-ee!"--and, with his dog, Barefooted boyhood down the lane "Coo-ees" the cattle home again. THE RAIN-CROW I Can freckled August,--drowsing warm and blond Beside a wheat-shock in the white-topped mead, In her hot hair the yellow daisies wound,-- O bird of rain, lend aught but sleepy heed To thee? when no plumed weed, no feathered seed Blows by her; and no ripple breaks the pond, That gleams like flint within its rim of grasses, Through which the dragonfly forever passes Like splintered diamond. II Drouth weights the trees; and from the farmhouse eaves The locust, pulse-beat of the summer day, Throbs; and the lane, that shambles under leaves Limp with the heat--a league of rutty way-- Is lost in dust; and sultry scents of hay Breathe from the panting meadows heaped with sheaves-- Now, now, O bird, what hint is there of rain, In thirsty meadow or on burning plain, That thy keen eye perceives? III But thou art right. Thou prophesiest true. For hardly hast thou ceased thy forecasting, When, up the western fierceness of scorched blue, Great water-carrier winds their buckets bring Brimming with freshness. How their dippers ring And flash and rumble! lavishing large dew On corn and forest land, that, streaming wet, Their hilly backs against the downpour set, Like giants, loom in view. IV The butterfly, safe under leaf and flower, Has found a roof, knowing how true thou art; The bumblebee, within the last half-hour, Has ceased to hug the honey to its heart; While in the barnyard, under shed and cart, Brood-hens have housed.--But I, who scorned thy power, Barometer of birds,--like August there,-- Beneath a beech, dripping from foot to hair, Like some drenched truant, cower. FIELD AND FOREST CALL I There is a field, that leans upon two hills, Foamed o'er of flowers and twinkling with clear rills; That in its girdle of wild acres bears The anodyne of rest that cures all cares; Wherein soft wind and sun and sound are blent With fragrance--as in some old instrument Sweet chords;--calm things, that Nature's magic spell Distills from Heaven's azure crucible, And pours on Earth to make the sick mind well. There lies the path, they say-- Come away! come away! II There is a forest, lying 'twixt two streams, Sung through of birds and haunted of dim dreams; That in its league-long hand of trunk and leaf Lifts a green wand that charms away all grief; Wrought of quaint silence and the stealth of things, Vague, whispering' touches, gleams and twitterings, Dews and cool shadows--that the mystic soul Of Nature permeates with suave control, And waves o'er Earth to make the sad heart whole. There lies the road, they say-- Come away! come away! OLD HOMES Old homes among the hills! I love their gardens; Their old rock fences, that our day inherits; Their doors, round which the great trees stand like wardens; Their paths, down which the shadows march like spirits; Broad doors and paths that reach bird-haunted gardens. I see them gray among their ancient acres, Severe of front, their gables lichen-sprinkled,-- Like gentle-hearted, solitary Quakers, Grave and religious, with kind faces wrinkled,-- Serene among their memory-hallowed acres. Their gardens, banked with roses and with lilies-- Those sweet aristocrats of all the flowers-- Where Springtime mints her gold in daffodillies, And Autumn coins her marigolds in showers, And all the hours are toilless as the lilies. I love their orchards where the gay woodpecker Flits, flashing o'er you, like a wingéd jewel; Their woods, whose floors of moss the squirrels checker With half-hulled nuts; and where, in cool renewal, The wild brooks laugh, and raps the red woodpecker. Old homes! old hearts! Upon my soul forever Their peace and gladness lie like tears and laughter; Like love they touch me, through the years that sever, With simple faith; like friendship, draw me after The dreamy patience that is theirs forever. THE FOREST WAY I I climbed a forest path and found A dim cave in the dripping ground, Where dwelt the spirit of cool sound, Who wrought with crystal triangles, And hollowed foam of rippled bells, A music of mysterious spells. II Where Sleep her bubble-jewels spilled Of dreams; and Silence twilight-filled Her emerald buckets, star-instilled, With liquid whispers of lost springs, And mossy tread of woodland things, And drip of dew that greenly clings. III Here by those servitors of Sound, Warders of that enchanted ground, My soul and sense were seized and bound, And, in a dungeon deep of trees Entranced, were laid at lazy ease, The charge of woodland mysteries. IV The minions of Prince Drowsihead, The wood-perfumes, with sleepy tread, Tiptoed around my ferny bed: And far away I heard report Of one who dimly rode to Court, The Faery Princess, Eve-Amort. V Her herald winds sang as they passed; And there her beauty stood at last, With wild gold locks, a band held fast, Above blue eyes, as clear as spar; While from a curved and azure jar She poured the white moon and a star. SUNSET AND STORM Deep with divine tautology, The sunset's mighty mystery Again has traced the scroll-like west With hieroglyphs of burning gold: Forever new, forever old, Its miracle is manifest. Time lays the scroll away. And now Above the hills a giant brow Of cloud Night lifts; and from his arm, Barbaric black, upon the world, With thunder, wind and fire, is hurled His awful argument of storm. What part, O man, is yours in such? Whose awe and wonder are in touch With Nature,--speaking rapture to Your soul,--yet leaving in your reach No human word of thought or speech Commensurate with the thing you view. QUIET LANES From the lyrical eclogue "One Day and Another" Now rests the season in forgetfulness, Careless in beauty of maturity; The ripened roses round brown temples, she Fulfills completion in a dreamy guess. Now Time grants night the more and day the less: The gray decides; and brown Dim golds and drabs in dulling green express Themselves and redden as the year goes down. Sadder the fields where, thrusting hoary high Their tasseled heads, the Lear-like corn-stocks die, And, Falstaff-like, buff-bellied pumpkins lie.-- Deepening with tenderness, Sadder the blue of hills that lounge along The lonesome west; sadder the song Of the wild redbird in the leafage yellow.-- Deeper and dreamier, aye! Than woods or waters, leans the languid sky Above lone orchards where the cider press Drips and the russets mellow. Nature grows liberal: from the beechen leaves The beech-nuts' burrs their little purses thrust, Plump with the copper of the nuts that rust; Above the grass the spendthrift spider weaves A web of silver for which dawn designs Thrice twenty rows of pearls: beneath the oak, That rolls old roots in many gnarly lines,-- The polished acorns, from their saucers broke, Strew oval agates.--On sonorous pines The far wind organs; but the forest near Is silent; and the blue-white smoke Of burning brush, beyond that field of hay, Hangs like a pillar in the atmosphere: But now it shakes--it breaks, and all the vines And tree tops tremble; see! the wind is here! Billowing and boisterous; and the smiling day Rejoices in its clamor. Earth and sky Resound with glory of its majesty, Impetuous splendor of its rushing by.-- But on those heights the woodland dark is still, Expectant of its coming.... Far away Each anxious tree upon each waiting hill Tingles anticipation, as in gray Surmise of rapture. Now the first gusts play, Like laughter low, about their rippling spines; And now the wildwood, one exultant sway, Shouts--and the light at each tumultuous pause, The light that glooms and shines, Seems hands in wild applause. How glows that garden!--Though the white mists keep The vagabonding flowers reminded of Decay that comes to slay in open love, When the full moon hangs cold and night is deep; Unheeding still their cardinal colors leap Gay in the crescent of the blade of death,-- Spaced innocents whom he prepares to reap,-- Staying his scythe a breath To mark their beauty ere, with one last sweep, He lays them dead and turns away to weep.-- Let me admire,-- Before the sickle of the coming cold Shall mow them down,--their beauties manifold: How like to spurts of fire That scarlet salvia lifts its blooms, which heap With flame the sunlight. And, as sparkles creep Through charring vellum, up that window's screen The cypress dots with crimson all its green, The haunt of many bees. Cascading dark old porch-built lattices, The nightshade bleeds with berries; drops of blood Hanging in clusters 'mid the blue monk's-hood. There is a garden old, Where bright-hued clumps of zinnias unfold Their formal flowers; where the marigold Lifts a pinched shred of orange sunset caught And elfed in petals; the nasturtium, Deep, pungent-leaved and acrid of perfume, Hangs up a goblin bonnet, pixy-brought From Gnomeland. There, predominant red, And arrogant, the dahlia lifts its head, Beside the balsam's rose-stained horns of honey, Lost in the murmuring, sunny Dry wildness of the weedy flower bed; Where crickets and the weed-bugs, noon and night, Shrill dirges for the flowers that soon shall die, And flowers already dead.-- I seem to hear the passing Summer sigh: A voice, that seems to weep,-- "Too soon, too soon the Beautiful passes by! And soon, among these bowers Will dripping Autumn mourn with all her flowers"-- If I, perchance, might peep Beneath those leaves of podded hollyhocks, That the bland wind with odorous murmurs rocks, I might behold her,--white And weary,--Summer, 'mid her flowers asleep, Her drowsy flowers asleep, The withered poppies knotted in her locks. ONE WHO LOVED NATURE I He was not learned in any art; But Nature led him by the hand; And spoke her language to his heart So he could hear and understand: He loved her simply as a child; And in his love forgot the heat Of conflict, and sat reconciled In patience of defeat. II Before me now I see him rise-- A face, that seventy years had snowed With winter, where the kind blue eyes Like hospitable fires glowed: A small gray man whose heart was large, And big with knowledge learned of need; A heart, the hard world made its targe, That never ceased to bleed. III He knew all Nature. Yea, he knew What virtue lay within each flower, What tonic in the dawn and dew, And in each root what magic power: What in the wild witch-hazel tree Reversed its time of blossoming, And clothed its branches goldenly In fall instead of spring. IV He knew what made the firefly glow And pulse with crystal gold and flame; And whence the bloodroot got its snow, And how the bramble's perfume came: He understood the water's word And grasshopper's and cricket's chirr; And of the music of each bird He was interpreter. V He kept no calendar of days, But knew the seasons by the flowers; And he could tell you by the rays Of sun or stars the very hours. He probed the inner mysteries Of light, and knew the chemic change That colors flowers, and what is Their fragrance wild and strange. VI If some old oak had power of speech, It could not speak more wildwood lore, Nor in experience further reach, Than he who was a tree at core. Nature was all his heritage, And seemed to fill his every need; Her features were his book, whose page He never tired to read. VII He read her secrets that no man Has ever read and never will, And put to scorn the charlatan Who botanizes of her still. He kept his knowledge sweet and clean, And questioned not of why and what; And never drew a line between What's known and what is not. VIII He was most gentle, good, and wise; A simpler heart earth never saw: His soul looked softly from his eyes, And in his speech were love and awe. Yet Nature in the end denied The thing he had not asked for--fame! Unknown, in poverty he died, And men forget his name. GARDEN GOSSIP Thin, chisel-fine a cricket chipped The crystal silence into sound; And where the branches dreamed and dripped A grasshopper its dagger stripped And on the humming darkness ground. A bat, against the gibbous moon, Danced, implike, with its lone delight; The glowworm scrawled a golden rune Upon the dark; and, emerald-strewn, The firefly hung with lamps the night. The flowers said their beads in prayer, Dew-syllables of sighed perfume; Or talked of two, soft-standing there, One like a gladiole, straight and fair, And one like some rich poppy-bloom. The mignonette and feverfew Laid their pale brows together:--"See!" One whispered: "Did their step thrill through Your roots?"--"Like rain."--"I touched the two And a new bud was born in me." One rose said to another:--"Whose Is this dim music? song, that parts My crimson petals like the dews?" "My blossom trembles with sweet news-- It is the love of two young hearts." ASSUMPTION I A mile of moonlight and the whispering wood: A mile of shadow and the odorous lane: One large, white star above the solitude, Like one sweet wish: and, laughter after pain, Wild-roses wistful in a web of rain. II No star, no rose, to lesson him and lead; No woodsman compass of the skies and rocks,-- Tattooed of stars and lichens,--doth love need To guide him where, among the hollyhocks, A blur of moonlight, gleam his sweetheart's locks. III We name it beauty--that permitted part, The love-elected apotheosis Of Nature, which the god within the heart, Just touching, makes immortal, but by this-- A star, a rose, the memory of a kiss. SENORITA An agate-black, your roguish eyes Claim no proud lineage of the skies, No starry blue; but of good earth The reckless witchery and mirth. Looped in your raven hair's repose, A hot aroma, one red rose Dies; envious of that loveliness, By being near which its is less. Twin sea shells, hung with pearls, your ears, Whose slender rosiness appears Part of the pearls; whose pallid fire Binds the attention these inspire. One slim hand crumples up the lace About your bosom's swelling grace; A ruby at your samite throat Lends the required color note. The moon bears through the violet night A pearly urn of chaliced light; And from your dark-railed balcony You stoop and wave your fan at me. O'er orange orchards and the rose Vague, odorous lips the south wind blows, Peopling the night with whispers of Romance and palely passionate love. The heaven of your balcony Smiles down two stars, that say to me More peril than Angelica Wrought with her beauty in Cathay. Oh, stoop to me! and, speaking, reach My soul like song that learned sweet speech From some dim instrument--who knows?-- Or flower, a dulcimer or rose. OVERSEAS _Non numero horas nisi serenas_ When Fall drowns morns in mist, it seems In soul I am a part of it; A portion of its humid beams, A form of fog, I seem to flit From dreams to dreams.... An old château sleeps 'mid the hills Of France: an avenue of sorbs Conceals it: drifts of daffodils Bloom by a 'scutcheoned gate with barbs Like iron bills. I pass the gate unquestioned; yet, I feel, announced. Broad holm-oaks make Dark pools of restless violet. Between high bramble banks a lake,-- As in a net The tangled scales twist silver,--shines.... Gray, mossy turrets swell above A sea of leaves. And where the pines Shade ivied walls, there lies my love, My heart divines. I know her window, slimly seen From distant lanes with hawthorn hedged: Her garden, with the nectarine Espaliered, and the peach tree, wedged 'Twixt walls of green. Cool-babbling a fountain falls From gryphons' mouths in porphyry; Carp haunt its waters; and white balls Of lilies dip it when the bee Creeps in and drawls. And butterflies--each with a face Of faery on its wings--that seem Beheaded pansies, softly chase Each other down the gloom and gleam Trees interspace. And roses! roses, soft as vair, Round sylvan statues and the old Stone dial--Pompadours, that wear Their royalty of purple and gold With wanton air.... Her scarf, her lute, whose ribbons breathe The perfume of her touch; her gloves, Modeling the daintiness they sheathe; Her fan, a Watteau, gay with loves, Lie there beneath A bank of eglantine, that heaps A rose-strewn shadow.--Naïve-eyed, With lips as suave as they, she sleeps; The romance by her, open wide, O'er which she weeps. PROBLEMS Man's are the learnings of his books-- What is all knowledge that he knows Beside the wit of winding brooks, The wisdom of the summer rose! How soil distills the scent in flowers Baffles his science: heaven-dyed, How, from the palette of His hours, God gives them colors, hath defied. What dream of heaven begets the light? Or, ere the stars beat burning tunes, Stains all the hollow edge of night With glory as of molten moons? Who is it answers what is birth Or death, that nothing may retard? Or what is love, that seems of Earth, Yet wears God's own divine regard? TO A WINDFLOWER I Teach me the secret of thy loveliness, That, being made wise, I may aspire to be As beautiful in thought, and so express Immortal truths to Earth's mortality; Though to my soul ability be less Than 'tis to thee, O sweet anemone. II Teach me the secret of thy innocence, That in simplicity I may grow wise; Asking of Art no other recompense Than the approval of her own just eyes; So may I rise to some fair eminence, Though less than thine, O cousin of the skies. III Teach me these things; through whose high knowledge, I,-- When Death hath poured oblivion through my veins, And brought me home, as all are brought, to lie In that vast house, common to serfs and thanes,-- I shall not die, I shall not utterly die, For beauty born of beauty--_that_ remains. VOYAGERS Where are they, that song and tale Tell of? lands our childhood knew? Sea-locked Faerylands that trail Morning summits, dim with dew, Crimson o'er a crimson sail. Where in dreams we entered on Wonders eyes have never seen: Whither often we have gone, Sailing a dream-brigantine On from voyaging dawn to dawn. Leons seeking lands of song; Fabled fountains pouring spray; Where our anchors dropped among Corals of some tropic bay, With its swarthy native throng. Shoulder ax and arquebus!-- We may find it!--past yon range Of sierras, vaporous, Rich with gold and wild and strange That lost region dear to us. Yet, behold, although our zeal Darien summits may subdue, Our Balboa eyes reveal But a vaster sea come to-- New endeavor for our keel. Yet! who sails with face set hard Westward,--while behind him lies Unfaith,--where his dreams keep guard Round it, in the sunset skies, He may reach it--afterward. THE SPELL _"We have the receipt of fern seed: we walk invisible."_ --HENRY IV And we have met but twice or thrice!-- Three times enough to make me love!-- I praised your hair once; then your glove; Your eyes; your gown;--you were like ice; And yet this might suffice, my love, And yet this might suffice. St. John hath told me what to do: To search and find the ferns that grow The fern seed that the faeries know; Then sprinkle fern seed in my shoe, And haunt the steps of you, my dear, And haunt the steps of you. You'll see the poppy pods dip here; The blow-ball of the thistle slip, And no wind breathing--but my lip Next to your anxious cheek and ear, To tell you I am near, my love, To tell you I am near. On wood-ways I shall tread your gown-- You'll know it is no brier!--then I'll whisper words of love again, And smile to see your quick face frown: And then I'll kiss it down, my dear, And then I'll kiss it down. And when at home you read or knit,-- Who'll know it was my hands that blotted The page?--or all your needles knotted? When in your rage you cry a bit: And loud I laugh at it, my love, And loud I laugh at it. The secrets that you say in prayer Right so I'll hear: and, when you sing, The name you speak; and whispering I'll bend and kiss your mouth and hair, And tell you I am there, my dear, And tell you I am there. Would it were true what people say!-- Would I _could_ find that elfin seed! Then should I win your love, indeed, By being near you night and day-- There is no other way, my love, There is no other way. Meantime the truth in this is said: It is my soul that follows you; It needs no fern seed in the shoe,-- While in the heart love pulses red, To win you and to wed, my dear, To win you and to wed. UNCERTAINTY _"'He cometh not,' she said."_--MARIANA It will not be to-day and yet I think and dream it will; and let The slow uncertainty devise So many sweet excuses, met With the old doubt in hope's disguise. The panes were sweated with the dawn; Yet through their dimness, shriveled drawn, The aigret of one princess-feather, One monk's-hood tuft with oilets wan, I glimpsed, dead in the slaying weather. This morning, when my window's chintz I drew, how gray the day was!--Since I saw him, yea, all days are gray!-- I gazed out on my dripping quince, Defruited, gnarled; then turned away To weep, but did not weep: but felt A colder anguish than did melt About the tearful-visaged year!-- Then flung the lattice wide, and smelt The autumn sorrow: Rotting near The rain-drenched sunflowers bent and bleached, Up which the frost-nipped gourd-vines reached And morning-glories, seeded o'er With ashen aiglets; whence beseeched One last bloom, frozen to the core. The podded hollyhocks,--that Fall Had stripped of finery,--by the wall Rustled their tatters; dripped and dripped, The fog thick on them: near them, all The tarnished, haglike zinnias tipped. I felt the death and loved it: yea, To have it nearer, sought the gray, Chill, fading garth. Yet could not weep, But wandered in an aimless way, And sighed with weariness for sleep. Mine were the fog, the frosty stalks; The weak lights on the leafy walks; The shadows shivering with the cold; The breaking heart; the lonely talks; The last, dim, ruined marigold. But when to-night the moon swings low-- A great marsh-marigold of glow-- And all my garden with the sea Moans, then, through moon and mist, I know My love will come to comfort me. IN THE WOOD The waterfall, deep in the wood, Talked drowsily with solitude, A soft, insistent sound of foam, That filled with sleep the forest's dome, Where, like some dream of dusk, she stood Accentuating solitude. The crickets' tinkling chips of sound Strewed dim the twilight-twinkling ground; A whippoorwill began to cry, And glimmering through the sober sky A bat went on its drunken round, Its shadow following on the ground. Then from a bush, an elder-copse, That spiced the dark with musky tops, What seemed, at first, a shadow came And took her hand and spoke her name, And kissed her where, in starry drops, The dew orbed on the elder-tops. The glaucous glow of fireflies Flickered the dusk; and foxlike eyes Peered from the shadows; and the hush Murmured a word of wind and rush Of fluttering waters, fragrant sighs, And dreams unseen of mortal eyes. The beetle flung its burr of sound Against the hush and clung there, wound In night's deep mane: then, in a tree, A grig began deliberately To file the stillness: all around A wire of shrillness seemed unwound. I looked for those two lovers there; His ardent eyes, her passionate hair. The moon looked down, slow-climbing wan Heaven's slope of azure: they were gone: But where they'd passed I heard the air Sigh, faint with sweetness of her hair. SINCE THEN I found myself among the trees What time the reapers ceased to reap; And in the sunflower-blooms the bees Huddled brown heads and went to sleep, Rocked by the balsam-breathing breeze. I saw the red fox leave his lair, A shaggy shadow, on the knoll; And tunneling his thoroughfare Beneath the soil, I watched the mole-- Stealth's own self could not take more care. I heard the death-moth tick and stir, Slow-honeycombing through the bark; I heard the cricket's drowsy chirr, And one lone beetle burr the dark-- The sleeping woodland seemed to purr. And then the moon rose: and one white Low bough of blossoms--grown almost Where, ere you died, 'twas our delight To meet,--dear heart!--I thought your ghost.... The wood is haunted since that night. DUSK IN THE WOODS Three miles of trees it is: and I Came through the woods that waited, dumb, For the cool summer dusk to come; And lingered there to watch the sky Up which the gradual splendor clomb. A tree-toad quavered in a tree; And then a sudden whippoorwill Called overhead, so wildly shrill The sleeping wood, it seemed to me, Cried out and then again was still. Then through dark boughs its stealthy flight An owl took; and, at drowsy strife, The cricket tuned its faery fife; And like a ghost-flower, silent white, The wood-moth glimmered into life. And in the dead wood everywhere The insects ticked, or bored below The rotted bark; and, glow on glow, The lambent fireflies here and there Lit up their jack-o'-lantern show. I heard a vesper-sparrow sing, Withdrawn, it seemed, into the far Slow sunset's tranquil cinnabar; The crimson, softly smoldering Behind the trees, with its one star. A dog barked: and down ways that gleamed, Through dew and clover, faint the noise Of cowbells moved. And then a voice, That sang a-milking, so it seemed, Made glad my heart as some glad boy's. And then the lane: and, full in view, A farmhouse with its rose-grown gate, And honeysuckle paths, await For night, the moon, and love and you-- These are the things that made me late. PATHS I What words of mine can tell the spell Of garden ways I know so well?-- The path that takes me in the spring Past quince-trees where the bluebirds sing, And peonies are blossoming, Unto a porch, wistaria-hung, Around whose steps May-lilies blow, A fair girl reaches down among, Her arm more white than their sweet snow. II What words of mine can tell the spell Of garden ways I know so well?-- Another path that leads me, when The summer time is here again, Past hollyhocks that shame the west When the red sun has sunk to rest; To roses bowering a nest, A lattice, 'neath which mignonette And deep geraniums surge and sough, Where, in the twilight, starless yet, A fair girl's eyes are stars enough. III What words of mine can tell the spell Of garden ways I know so well?-- A path that takes me, when the days Of autumn wrap the hills in haze, Beneath the pippin-pelting tree, 'Mid flitting butterfly and bee; Unto a door where, fiery, The creeper climbs; and, garnet-hued, The cock's-comb and the dahlia flare, And in the door, where shades intrude, Gleams bright a fair girl's sunbeam hair. IV What words of mine can tell the spell Of garden ways I know so well?-- A path that brings me through the frost Of winter, when the moon is tossed In clouds; beneath great cedars, weak With shaggy snow; past shrubs blown bleak With shivering leaves; to eaves that leak The tattered ice, whereunder is A fire-flickering window-space; And in the light, with lips to kiss, A fair girl's welcome-smiling face. THE QUEST I First I asked the honeybee, Busy in the balmy bowers; Saying, "Sweetheart, tell it me: Have you seen her, honeybee? She is cousin to the flowers-- All the sweetness of the south In her wild-rose face and mouth." But the bee passed silently. II Then I asked the forest bird, Warbling by the woodland waters; Saying, "Dearest, have you heard? Have you heard her, forest bird? She is one of music's daughters-- Never song so sweet by half As the music of her laugh." But the bird said not a word. III Next I asked the evening sky, Hanging out its lamps of fire; Saying, "Loved one, passed she by? Tell me, tell me, evening sky! She, the star of my desire-- Sister whom the Pleiads lost, And my soul's high pentecost." But the sky made no reply. IV Where is she? ah, where is she? She to whom both love and duty Bind me, yea, immortally.-- Where is she? ah, where is she? Symbol of the Earth-Soul's beauty. I have lost her. Help my heart Find her! her, who is a part Of the pagan soul of me. THE GARDEN OF DREAMS Not while I live may I forget That garden which my spirit trod! Where dreams were flowers, wild and wet, And beautiful as God. Not while I breathe, awake, adream, Shall live again for me those hours, When, in its mystery and gleam, I met her 'mid the flowers. Eyes, talismanic heliotrope, Beneath mesmeric lashes, where The sorceries of love and hope Had made a shining lair. And daydawn brows, whereover hung The twilight of dark locks: wild birds, Her lips, that spoke the rose's tongue Of fragrance-voweled words. I will not tell of cheeks and chin, That held me as sweet language holds; Nor of the eloquence within Her breasts' twin-moonéd molds. Nor of her body's languorous Wind-grace, that glanced like starlight through Her clinging robe's diaphanous Web of the mist and dew. There is no star so pure and high As was her look; no fragrance such As her soft presence; and no sigh Of music like her touch. Not while I live may I forget That garden of dim dreams, where I And Beauty born of Music met, Whose spirit passed me by. THE PATH TO FAERY I When dusk falls cool as a rained-on rose, And a tawny tower the twilight shows, With the crescent moon, the silver moon, the curved new moon in a space that glows, A turret window that grows alight; There is a path that my Fancy knows, A glimmering, shimmering path of night, That far as the Land of Faery goes. II And I follow the path, as Fancy leads, Over the mountains, into the meads, Where the firefly cities, the glowworm cities, the faery cities are strung like beads, Each city a twinkling star: And I live a life of valorous deeds, And march with the Faery King to war, And ride with his knights on milk-white steeds. III Or it's there in the whirl of their life I sit, Or dance in their houses with starlight lit, Their blossom houses, their flower houses, their elfin houses, of fern leaves knit, With fronded spires and domes: And there it is that my lost dreams flit, And the ghost of my childhood, smiling, roams With the faery children so dear to it. IV And it's there I hear that they all come true, The faery stories, whatever they do-- Elf and goblin, dear elf and goblin, loved elf and goblin, and all the crew Of witch and wizard and gnome and fay, And prince and princess, that wander through The storybooks we have put away, The faerytales that we loved and knew. V The face of Adventure lures you there, And the eyes of Danger bid you dare, While ever the bugles, the silver bugles, the far-off bugles of Elfland blare, The faery trumpets to battle blow; And you feel their thrill in your heart and hair, And you fain would follow and mount and go And march with the Faeries anywhere. VI And she--she rides at your side again, Your little sweetheart whose age is ten: She is the princess, the faery princess, the princess fair that you worshiped when You were a prince in a faerytale; And you do great deeds as you did them then, With your magic spear, and enchanted mail, Braving the dragon in his den. VII And you ask again,--"Oh, where shall we ride, Now that the monster is slain, my bride?"-- "Back to the cities, the firefly cities, the glowworm cities where we can hide, The beautiful cities of Faeryland. And the light of my eyes shall be your guide, The light of my eyes and my snow-white hand-- And there forever we two will abide." THERE ARE FAERIES I There are faeries, bright of eye, Who the wildflowers' warders are: Ouphes, that chase the firefly; Elves, that ride the shooting-star: Fays, who in a cobweb lie, Swinging on a moonbeam bar; Or who harness bumblebees, Grumbling on the clover leas, To a blossom or a breeze-- That's their faery car. If you care, you too may see There are faeries.--Verily, There are faeries. II There are faeries. I could swear I have seen them busy, where Roses loose their scented hair, In the moonlight weaving, weaving, Out of starlight and the dew, Glinting gown and shimmering shoe; Or, within a glowworm lair, From the dark earth slowly heaving Mushrooms whiter than the moon, On whose tops they sit and croon, With their grig-like mandolins, To fair faery ladykins, Leaning from the windowsill Of a rose or daffodil, Listening to their serenade All of cricket-music made. Follow me, oh, follow me! Ho! away to Faërie! Where your eyes like mine may see There are faeries.--Verily, There are faeries. III There are faeries. Elves that swing In a wild and rainbow ring Through the air; or mount the wing Of a bat to courier news To the faery King and Queen: Fays, who stretch the gossamers On which twilight hangs the dews; Who, within the moonlight sheen, Whisper dimly in the ears Of the flowers words so sweet That their hearts are turned to musk And to honey; things that beat In their veins of gold and blue: Ouphes, that shepherd moths of dusk-- Soft of wing and gray of hue-- Forth to pasture on the dew. IV There are faeries; verily; Verily: For the old owl in the tree, Hollow tree, He who maketh melody For them tripping merrily, Told it me. There are faeries.--Verily, There are faeries. THE SPIRIT OF THE FOREST SPRING Over the rocks she trails her locks, Her mossy locks that drip, drip, drip: Her sparkling eyes smile at the skies In friendship-wise and fellowship: While the gleam and glance of her countenance Lull into trance the woodland places, As over the rocks she trails her locks, Her dripping locks that the long fern graces. She pours clear ooze from her heart's cool cruse, Its crystal cruse that drips, drips, drips: And all the day its limpid spray Is heard to play from her finger tips: And the slight, soft sound makes haunted ground Of the woods around that the sunlight laces, As she pours clear ooze from her heart's cool cruse, Its dripping cruse that no man traces. She swims and swims with glimmering limbs, With lucid limbs that drip, drip, drip: Where beechen boughs build a leafy house, Where her eyes may drowse or her beauty trip: And the liquid beat of her rippling feet Makes three times sweet the forest mazes, As she swims and swims with glimmering limbs, With dripping limbs through the twilight hazes. Then wrapped in deeps of the wild she sleeps, She whispering sleeps and drips, drips, drips: Where moon and mist wreathe neck and wrist, And, starry-whist, through the dark she slips: While the heavenly dream of her soul makes gleam The falls that stream and the foam that races, As wrapped in the deeps of the wild she sleeps, She dripping sleeps or starward gazes. IN A GARDEN The pink rose drops its petals on The moonlit lawn, the moonlit lawn; The moon, like some wide rose of white, Drops down the summer night. No rose there is As sweet as this-- Thy mouth, that greets me with a kiss. The lattice of thy casement twines With jasmine vines, with jasmine vines; The stars, like jasmine blossoms, lie About the glimmering sky. No jasmine tress Can so caress Like thy white arms' soft loveliness. About thy door magnolia blooms Make sweet the glooms, make sweet the glooms; A moon-magnolia is the dusk Closed in a dewy husk. However much, No bloom gives such Soft fragrance as thy bosom's touch. The flowers blooming now will pass, And strew the grass, and strew the grass; The night, like some frail flower, dawn Will soon make gray and wan. Still, still above, The flower of True love shall live forever, Love. IN THE LANE When the hornet hangs in the hollyhock, And the brown bee drones i' the rose; And the west is a red-streaked four-o'clock, And summer is near its close-- It's oh, for the gate and the locust lane, And dusk and dew and home again! When the katydid sings and the cricket cries, And ghosts of the mists ascend; And the evening star is a lamp i' the skies, And summer is near its end-- It's oh, for the fence and the leafy lane, And the twilight peace and the tryst again! When the owlet hoots in the dogwood tree, That leans to the rippling Run; And the wind is a wildwood melody, And summer is almost done-- It's oh, for the bridge and the bramble lane, And the fragrant hush and her hands again! When fields smell sweet with the dewy hay, And woods are cool and wan, And a path for dreams is the Milky Way, And summer is nearly gone-- It's oh, for the rock and the woodland lane, And the silence and stars and her lips again! When the weight of the apples breaks down the boughs, And muskmelons split with sweet; And the moon is a light in Heaven's house, And summer has spent its heat-- It's oh, for the lane, the trysting lane, The deep-mooned night and her love again! THE WINDOW ON THE HILL Among the fields the camomile Seems blown mist in the lightning's glare: Cool, rainy odors drench the air; Night speaks above; the angry smile Of storm within her stare. The way that I shall take to-night Is through the wood whose branches fill The road with double darkness, till, Between the boughs, a window's light Shines out upon the hill. The fence; and then the path that goes Around a trailer-tangled rock, Through puckered pink and hollyhock, Unto a latch-gate's unkempt rose, And door whereat I knock. Bright on the oldtime flower place The lamp streams through the foggy pane; The door is opened to the rain: And in the door--her happy face And outstretched arms again. THE PICTURE Above her, pearl and rose the heavens lay: Around her, flowers flattered earth with gold, Or down the path in insolence held sway-- Like cavaliers who ride the king's highway-- Scarlet and buff, within a garden old. Beyond the hills, faint-heard through belts of wood, Bells, Sabbath-sweet, swooned from some far-off town: Gamboge and gold, broad sunset colors strewed The purple west as if, with God imbued, Her mighty palette Nature there laid down. Amid such flowers, underneath such skies, Embodying all life knows of sweet and fair, She stood; love's dreams in girlhood's face and eyes, Fair as a star that comes to emphasize The mingled beauty of the earth and air. Behind her, seen through vines and orchard trees, Gray with its twinkling windows--like the face Of calm old age that sits and dreams at ease-- Porched with old roses, haunts of honeybees, The homestead loomed within a lilied space. For whom she waited in the afterglow, Star-eyed and golden 'mid the poppy and rose, I do not know; I do not care to know,-- It is enough I keep her picture so, Hung up, like poetry, in my life's dull prose. A fragrant picture, where I still may find Her face untouched of sorrow or regret, Unspoiled of contact; ever young and kind; The spiritual sweetheart of my soul and mind, She had not been, perhaps, if we had met. MOLY When by the wall the tiger-flower swings A head of sultry slumber and aroma; And by the path, whereon the blown rose flings Its obsolete beauty, the long lilies foam a White place of perfume, like a beautiful breast-- Between the pansy fire of the west, And poppy mist of moonrise in the east, This heartache will have ceased. The witchcraft of soft music and sweet sleep-- Let it beguile the burthen from my spirit, And white dreams reap me as strong reapers reap The ripened grain and full blown blossom near it; Let me behold how gladness gives the whole The transformed countenance of my own soul-- Between the sunset and the risen moon Let sorrow vanish soon. And these things then shall keep me company: The elfins of the dew; the spirit of laughter Who haunts the wind; the god of melody Who sings within the stream, that reaches after The flow'rs that rock themselves to his caress: These of themselves shall shape my happiness, Whose visible presence I shall lean upon, Feeling that care is gone. Forgetting how the cankered flower must die; The worm-pierced fruit fall, sicklied to its syrup; How joy, begotten 'twixt a sigh and sigh, Waits with one foot forever in the stirrup,-- Remembering how within the hollow lute Soft music sleeps when music's voice is mute; And in the heart, when all seems black despair, Hope sits, awaiting there. POPPY AND MANDRAGORA Let us go far from here! Here there is sadness in the early year: Here sorrow waits where joy went laughing late: The sicklied face of heaven hangs like hate Above the woodland and the meadowland; And Spring hath taken fire in her hand Of frost and made a dead bloom of her face, Which was a flower of marvel once and grace, And sweet serenity and stainless glow. Delay not. Let us go. Let us go far away Into the sunrise of a fairer May: Where all the nights resign them to the moon, And drug their souls with odor and soft tune, And tell their dreams in starlight: where the hours Teach immortality with fadeless flowers; And all the day the bee weights down the bloom, And all the night the moth shakes strange perfume, Like music, from the flower-bells' affluence. Let us go far from hence. Why should we sit and weep, And yearn with heavy eyelids still to sleep? Forever hiding from our hearts the hate,-- Death within death,--life doth accumulate, Like winter snows along the barren leas And sterile hills, whereon no lover sees The crocus limn the beautiful in flame; Or hyacinth and jonquil write the name Of Love in fire, for each passer-by. Why should we sit and sigh? We will not stay and long, Here where our souls are wasting for a song; Where no bird sings; and, dim beneath the stars, No silvery water strikes melodious bars; And in the rocks and forest-covered hills No quick-tongued echo from her grotto fills With eery syllables the solitude-- The vocal image of the voice that wooed-- She, of wild sounds the airy looking-glass. Our souls are tired, alas! What should we say to her?-- To Spring, who in our hearts makes no sweet stir: Who looks not on us nor gives thought unto: Too busy with the birth of flowers and dew, And vague gold wings within the chrysalis; Or Love, who will not miss us; had no kiss To give your soul or the sad soul of me, Who bound our hearts to her in poesy, Long since, and wear her badge of service still.-- Have we not served our fill? We will go far away. Song will not care, who slays our souls each day With the dark daggers of denying eyes, And lips of silence! ... Had she sighed us lies, Not passionate, yet falsely tremulous, And lent her mouth to ours in mockery; thus Smiled from calm eyes as if appreciative; Then, then our love had taught itself to live Feeding itself on hope, and recompense. But no!--So let us hence. So be the Bible shut Of all her Beauty, and her wisdom but A clasp for memory! We will not seek The light that came not when the soul was weak With longing, and the darkness gave no sign Of star-born comfort. Nay! why kneel and whine Sad psalms of patience and hosannas of Old hope and dreary canticles of love?-- Let us depart, since, as we long supposed, For us God's book was closed. A ROAD SONG It's--Oh, for the hills, where the wind's some one With a vagabond foot that follows! And a cheer-up hand that he claps upon Your arm with the hearty words, "Come on! We'll soon be out of the hollows, My heart! We'll soon be out of the hollows." It's--Oh, for the songs, where the hope's some one With a renegade foot that doubles! And a jolly lilt that he flings to the sun As he turns with the friendly laugh, "Come on! We'll soon be out of the troubles, My heart! We'll soon be out of the troubles!" PHANTOMS This was her home; one mossy gable thrust Above the cedars and the locust trees: This was her home, whose beauty now is dust, A lonely memory for melodies The wild birds sing, the wild birds and the bees. Here every evening is a prayer: no boast Or ruin of sunset makes the wan world wroth; Here, through the twilight, like a pale flower's ghost, A drowsy flutter, flies the tiger-moth; And dusk spreads darkness like a dewy cloth. In vagabond velvet, on the placid day, A stain of crimson, lolls the butterfly; The south wind sows with ripple and with ray The pleasant waters; and the gentle sky Looks on the homestead like a quiet eye. Their melancholy quaver, lone and low, When day is done, the gray tree-toads repeat: The whippoorwills, far in the afterglow, Complain to silence: and the lightnings beat, In one still cloud, glimmers of golden heat. He comes not yet: not till the dusk is dead, And all the western glow is far withdrawn; Not till,--a sleepy mouth love's kiss makes red,-- The baby bud opes in a rosy yawn, Breathing sweet guesses at the dreamed-of dawn. When in the shadows, like a rain of gold, The fireflies stream steadily; and bright Along the moss the glowworm, as of old, A crawling sparkle--like a crooked light In smoldering vellum--scrawls a square of night,-- Then will he come; and she will lean to him,-- She,--the sweet phantom,--memory of that place,-- Between the starlight and his eyes; so dim With suave control and soul-compelling grace, He cannot help but speak her, face to face. INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL I The hills are full of prophecies And ancient voices of the dead; Of hidden shapes that no man sees, Pale, visionary presences, That speak the things no tongue hath said, No mind hath thought, no eye hath read. The streams are full of oracles, And momentary whisperings; An immaterial beauty swells Its breezy silver o'er the shells With wordless speech that sings and sings The message of diviner things. No indeterminable thought is theirs, The stars', the sunsets' and the flowers'; Whose inexpressible speech declares Th' immortal Beautiful, who shares This mortal riddle which is ours, Beyond the forward-flying hours. II It holds and beckons in the streams; It lures and touches us in all The flowers of the golden fall-- The mystic essence of our dreams: A nymph blows bubbling music where Faint water ripples down the rocks; A faun goes dancing hoiden locks, And piping a Pandean air, Through trees the instant wind shakes bare. Our dreams are never otherwise Than real when they hold us so; We in some future life shall know Them parts of it and recognize Them as ideal substance, whence The actual is--(as flowers and trees, From color sources no one sees, Draw dyes, the substance of a sense)-- Material with intelligence. III What intimations made them wise, The mournful pine, the pleasant beech? What strange and esoteric speech?-- (Communicated from the skies In runic whispers)--that invokes The boles that sleep within the seeds, And out of narrow darkness leads The vast assemblies of the oaks. Within his knowledge, what one reads The poems written by the flowers? The sermons, past all speech of ours, Preached by the gospel of the weeds?-- O eloquence of coloring! O thoughts of syllabled perfume! O beauty uttered into bloom! Teach me your language! let me sing! IV Along my mind flies suddenly A wildwood thought that will not die; That makes me brother to the bee, And cousin to the butterfly: A thought, such as gives perfume to The blushes of the bramble-rose, And, fixed in quivering crystal, glows A captive in the prismed dew. It leads the feet no certain way; No frequent path of human feet: Its wild eyes follow me all day; All day I hear its wild heart beat: And in the night it sings and sighs The songs the winds and waters love; Its wild heart lying tranced above, And tranced the wildness of its eyes. V Oh, joy, to walk the way that goes Through woods of sweet-gum and of beech! Where, like a ruby left in reach, The berry of the dogwood glows: Or where the bristling hillsides mass, 'Twixt belts of tawny sassafras, Brown shocks of corn in wigwam rows! Where, in the hazy morning, runs The stony branch that pools and drips, The red-haws and the wild-rose hips Are strewn like pebbles; and the sun's Own gold seems captured by the weeds; To see, through scintillating seeds, The hunters steal with glimmering guns! Oh, joy, to go the path which lies Through woodlands where the trees are tall! Beneath the misty moon of fall, Whose ghostly girdle prophesies A morn wind-swept and gray with rain; When, o'er the lonely, leaf-blown lane, The night-hawk like a dead leaf flies! To stand within the dewy ring Where pale death smites the boneset blooms, And everlasting's flowers, and plumes Of mint, with aromatic wing! And hear the creek,--whose sobbing seems A wild-man murmuring in his dreams,-- And insect violins that sing. Or where the dim persimmon tree Rains on the path its frosty fruit, And in the oak the owl doth hoot, Beneath the moon and mist, to see The outcast Year go,--Hagar-wise,-- With far-off, melancholy eyes, And lips that sigh for sympathy. VI Towards evening, where the sweet-gum flung Its thorny balls among the weeds, And where the milkweed's sleepy seeds,-- A faery Feast of Lanterns,--swung; The cricket tuned a plaintive lyre, And o'er the hills the sunset hung A purple parchment scrawled with fire. From silver-blue to amethyst The shadows deepened in the vale; And belt by belt the pearly-pale Aladdin fabric of the mist Built up its exhalation far; A jewel on an Afrit's wrist, One star gemmed sunset's cinnabar. Then night drew near, as when, alone, The heart and soul grow intimate; And on the hills the twilight sate With shadows, whose wild robes were sown With dreams and whispers;--dreams, that led The heart once with love's monotone, And memories of the living-dead. VII All night the rain-gusts shook the leaves Around my window; and the blast Rumbled the flickering flue, and fast The storm streamed from the dripping eaves. As if--'neath skies gone mad with fear-- The witches' Sabboth galloped past, The forests leapt like startled deer. All night I heard the sweeping sleet; And when the morning came, as slow As wan affliction, with the woe Of all the world dragged at her feet, No spear of purple shattered through The dark gray of the east; no bow Of gold shot arrows swift and blue. But rain, that whipped the windows; filled The spouts with rushings; and around The garden stamped, and sowed the ground With limbs and leaves; the wood-pool filled With overgurgling.--Bleak and cold The fields looked, where the footpath wound Through teasel and bur-marigold. Yet there's a kindness in such days Of gloom, that doth console regret With sympathy of tears, which wet Old eyes that watch the back-log blaze.-- A kindness, alien to the deep Glad blue of sunny days that let No thought in of the lives that weep. VIII This dawn, through which the Autumn glowers,-- As might a face within our sleep, With stone-gray eyes that weep and weep, And wet brows bound with sodden flowers,-- Is sunset to some sister land; A land of ruins and of palms; Rich sunset, crimson with long calms,-- Whose burning belt low mountains bar,-- That sees some brown Rebecca stand Beside a well the camel-band Winds down to 'neath the evening star. O sunset, sister to this dawn! O dawn, whose face is turned away! Who gazest not upon this day, But back upon the day that's gone! Enamored so of loveliness, The retrospect of what thou wast, Oh, to thyself the present trust! And as thy past be beautiful With hues, that never can grow less! Waiting thy pleasure to express New beauty lest the world grow dull. IX Down in the woods a sorcerer, Out of rank rain and death, distills,-- Through chill alembics of the air,-- Aromas that brood everywhere Among the whisper-haunted hills: The bitter myrrh of dead leaves fills Wet valleys (where the gaunt weeds bleach) With rainy scents of wood-decay;-- As if a spirit all the day Sat breathing softly 'neath the beech. With other eyes I see her flit, The wood-witch of the wild perfumes, Among her elfin owls,--that sit, A drowsy white, in crescent-lit Dim glens of opalescent glooms:-- Where, for her magic, buds and blooms Mysterious perfumes, while she stands, A thornlike shadow, summoning The sleepy odors, that take wing Like bubbles from her dewy hands. X Among the woods they call to me-- The lights that haunt the wood and stream; Voices of such white ecstasy As moves with hushed lips through a dream: They stand in auraed radiances, Or flash with nimbused limbs across Their golden shadows on the moss, Or slip in silver through the trees. What love can give the heart in me More hope and exaltation than The hand of light that tips the tree And beckons far from marts of man? That reaches foamy fingers through The broken ripple, and replies With sparkling speech of lips and eyes To souls who seek and still pursue. XI Give me the streams, that counterfeit The twilight of autumnal skies; The shadowy, silent waters, lit With fire like a woman's eyes! Slow waters that, in autumn, glass The scarlet-strewn and golden grass, And drink the sunset's tawny dyes. Give me the pools, that lie among The centuried forests! give me those, Deep, dim, and sad as darkness hung Beneath the sunset's somber rose: Still pools, in whose vague mirrors look-- Like ragged gypsies round a book Of magic--trees in wild repose. No quiet thing, or innocent, Of water, earth, or air shall please My soul now: but the violent Between the sunset and the trees: The fierce, the splendid, and intense, That love matures in innocence, Like mighty music, give me these! XII When thorn-tree copses still were bare And black along the turbid brook; When catkined willows blurred and shook Great tawny tangles in the air; In bottomlands, the first thaw makes An oozy bog, beneath the trees, Prophetic of the spring that wakes, Sang the sonorous hylodes. Now that wild winds have stripped the thorn, And clogged with leaves the forest-creek; Now that the woods look blown and bleak, And webs are frosty white at morn; At night beneath the spectral sky, A far foreboding cry I hear-- The wild fowl calling as they fly? Or wild voice of the dying Year? XIII And still my soul holds phantom tryst, When chestnuts hiss among the coals, Upon the Evening of All Souls, When all the night is moon and mist, And all the world is mystery; I kiss dear lips that death hath kissed, And gaze in eyes no man may see, Filled with a love long lost to me. I hear the night-wind's ghostly glove Flutter the window: then the knob Of some dark door turn, with a sob As when love comes to gaze on love Who lies pale-coffined in a room: And then the iron gallop of The storm, who rides outside; his plume Sweeping the night with dread and gloom. So fancy takes the mind, and paints The darkness with eidolon light, And writes the dead's romance in night On the dim Evening of All Saints: Unheard the hissing nuts; the clink And fall of coals, whose shadow faints Around the hearts that sit and think, Borne far beyond the actual's brink. XIV I heard the wind, before the morn Stretched gaunt, gray fingers 'thwart my pane, Drive clouds down, a dark dragon-train; Its iron visor closed, a horn Of steel from out the north it wound.-- No morn like yesterday's! whose mouth, A cool carnation, from the south Breathed through a golden reed the sound Of days that drop clear gold upon Cerulean silver floors of dawn. And all of yesterday is lost And swallowed in to-day's wild light-- The birth deformed of day and night, The illegitimate, who cost Its mother secret tears and sighs; Unlovely since unloved; and chilled With sorrows and the shame that filled Its parents' love; which was not wise In passion as the day and night That married yestermorn with light. XV Down through the dark, indignant trees, On indistinguishable wings Of storm, the wind of evening swings; Before its insane anger flees Distracted leaf and shattered bough: There is a rushing as when seas Of thunder beat an iron prow On reefs of wrath and roaring wreck: 'Mid stormy leaves, a hurrying speck Of flickering blackness, driven by, A mad bat whirls along the sky. Like some sad shadow, in the eve's Deep melancholy--visible As by some strange and twilight spell-- A gaunt girl stands among the leaves, The night-wind in her dolorous dress: Symbolic of the life that grieves, Of toil that patience makes not less, Her load of fagots fallen there.-- A wilder shadow sweeps the air, And she is gone.... Was it the dumb Eidolon of the month to come? XVI The song birds--are they flown away? The song birds of the summer time, That sang their souls into the day, And set the laughing hours to rhyme. No catbird scatters through the bush The sparkling crystals of its song; Within the woods no hermit-thrush Thridding with vocal gold the hush. All day the crows fly cawing past: The acorns drop: the forests scowl: At night I hear the bitter blast Hoot with the hooting of the owl. The wild creeks freeze: the ways are strewn With leaves that clog: beneath the tree The bird, that set its toil to tune, And made a home for melody, Lies dead beneath the snow-white moon. OCTOBER Far off a wind blew, and I heard Wild echoes of the woods reply-- The herald of some royal word, With bannered trumpet, blown on high, Meseemed then passed me by: Who summoned marvels there to meet, With pomp, upon a cloth of gold; Where berries of the bittersweet, That, splitting, showed the coals they hold, Sowed garnets through the wold: Where, under tents of maples, seeds Of smooth carnelian, oval red, The spice-bush spangled: where, like beads, The dogwood's rounded rubies--fed With fire--blazed and bled. And there I saw amid the rout Of months, in richness cavalier, A minnesinger--lips apout; A gypsy face; straight as a spear; A rose stuck in his ear: Eyes, sparkling like old German wine, All mirth and moonlight; naught to spare Of slender beard, that lent a line To his short lip; October there, With chestnut curling hair. His brown baretta swept its plume Red through the leaves; his purple hose, Puffed at the thighs, made gleam of gloom; His tawny doublet, slashed with rose, And laced with crimson bows, Outshone the wahoo's scarlet pride, The haw, in rich vermilion dressed: A dagger dangling at his side, A slim lute, banded to his breast, Whereon his hands were pressed. I saw him come.... And, lo, to hear The lilt of his approaching lute, No wonder that the regnant Year Bent down her beauty, blushing mute, Her heart beneath his foot. FRIENDS Down through the woods, along the way That fords the stream; by rock and tree, Where in the bramble-bell the bee Swings; and through twilights green and gray The redbird flashes suddenly, My thoughts went wandering to-day. I found the fields where, row on row, The blackberries hang dark with fruit; Where, nesting at the elder's root, The partridge whistles soft and low; The fields, that billow to the foot Of those old hills we used to know. There lay the pond, all willow-bound, On whose bright face, when noons were hot, We marked the bubbles rise; some plot To lure us in; while all around Our heads,--like faery fancies,--shot The dragonflies without a sound. The pond, above which evening bent To gaze upon her gypsy face; Wherein the twinkling night would trace A vague, inverted firmament; In which the green frogs tuned their bass, And firefly sparkles came and went. The oldtime place we often ranged, When we were playmates, you and I; The oldtime fields, with boyhood's sky Still blue above them!--Naught was changed: Nothing.--Alas! then, tell me why Should we be? whom the years estranged. COMRADERY With eyes hand-arched he looks into The morning's face; then turns away With truant feet, all wet with dew, Out for a holiday. The hill brook sings; incessant stars, Foam-fashioned, on its restless breast; And where he wades its water-bars Its song is happiest. A comrade of the chinquapin, He looks into its knotty eyes And sees its heart; and, deep within, Its soul that makes him wise. The wood-thrush knows and follows him, Who whistles up the birds and bees; And round him all the perfumes swim Of woodland loam and trees. Where'er he pass the silvery springs' Foam-people sing the flowers awake; And sappy lips of bark-clad things Laugh ripe each berried brake. His touch is a companionship; His word an old authority: He comes, a lyric on his lip, The woodboy--Poesy. BARE BOUGHS O heart,--that beat the bird's blithe blood, The blithe bird's strain, and understood The song it sang to leaf and bud,-- What dost thou in the wood? O soul,--that kept the brook's glad flow, The glad brook's word to sun and moon,-- What dost thou here where song lies low, And dead the dreams of June? Where once was heard a voice of song, The hautboys of the mad winds sing; Where once a music flowed along, The rain's wild bugle's ring. The weedy water frets and ails, And moans in many a sunless fall; And, o'er the melancholy, trails The black crow's eldritch call. Unhappy brook! O withered wood! O days, whom Death makes comrades of! Where are the birds that thrilled the blood When Life struck hands with Love? A song, one soared against the blue; A song, one silvered in the leaves; A song, one blew where orchards grew Gold-appled to the eaves. The birds are flown; the flowers, dead; And sky and earth are bleak and gray: Where Joy once went, all light of tread, Grief haunts the leaf-wild way. DAYS AND DAYS The days that clothed white limbs with heat, And rocked the red rose on their breast, Have passed with amber-sandaled feet Into the ruby-gated west. These were the days that filled the heart With overflowing riches of Life, in whose soul no dream shall start But hath its origin in love. Now come the days gray-huddled in The haze; whose foggy footsteps drip; Who pin beneath a gypsy chin The frosty marigold and hip. The days, whose forms fall shadowy Athwart the heart: whose misty breath Shapes saddest sweets of memory Out of the bitterness of death. AUTUMN SORROW Ah me! too soon the autumn comes Among these purple-plaintive hills! Too soon among the forest gums Premonitory flame she spills, Bleak, melancholy flame that kills. Her white fogs veil the morn, that rims With wet the moonflower's elfin moons; And, like exhausted starlight, dims The last slim lily-disk; and swoons With scents of hazy afternoons. Her gray mists haunt the sunset skies, And build the west's cadaverous fires, Where Sorrow sits with lonely eyes, And hands that wake an ancient lyre, Beside the ghost of dead Desire. THE TREE-TOAD I Secluded, solitary on some underbough, Or cradled in a leaf, 'mid glimmering light, Like Puck thou crouchest: Haply watching how The slow toadstool comes bulging, moony white, Through loosening loam; or how, against the night, The glowworm gathers silver to endow The darkness with; or how the dew conspires To hang, at dusk, with lamps of chilly fires Each blade that shrivels now. II O vague confederate of the whippoorwill, Of owl and cricket and the katydid! Thou gatherest up the silence in one shrill Vibrating note and send'st it where, half hid In cedars, twilight sleeps--each azure lid Drooping a line of golden eyeball still.-- Afar, yet near, I hear thy dewy voice Within the Garden of the Hours apoise On dusk's deep daffodil. III Minstrel of moisture! silent when high noon Shows her tanned face among the thirsting clover And parching meadows, thy tenebrious tune Wakes with the dew or when the rain is over. Thou troubadour of wetness and damp lover Of all cool things! admitted comrade boon Of twilight's hush, and little intimate Of eve's first fluttering star and delicate Round rim of rainy moon! IV Art trumpeter of Dwarfland? does thy horn Inform the gnomes and goblins of the hour When they may gambol under haw and thorn, Straddling each winking web and twinkling flower? Or bell-ringer of Elfland? whose tall tower The liriodendron is? from whence is borne The elfin music of thy bell's deep bass, To summon Faeries to their starlit maze, To summon them or warn. THE CHIPMUNK I He makes a roadway of the crumbling fence, Or on the fallen tree,--brown as a leaf Fall stripes with russet,--gambols down the dense Green twilight of the woods. We see not whence He comes, nor whither (in a time so brief) He vanishes--swift carrier of some Fay, Some pixy steed that haunts our child-belief-- A goblin glimpse upon some wildwood way. II What harlequin mood of nature qualified Him so with happiness? and limbed him with Such young activity as winds, that ride The ripples, have, dancing on every side? As sunbeams know, that urge the sap and pith Through hearts of trees? yet made him to delight, Gnome-like, in darkness,--like a moonlight myth,-- Lairing in labyrinths of the under night. III Here, by a rock, beneath the moss, a hole Leads to his home, the den wherein he sleeps; Lulled by near noises of the laboring mole Tunneling its mine--like some ungainly Troll-- Or by the tireless cricket there that keeps Picking its rusty and monotonous lute; Or slower sounds of grass that creeps and creeps, And trees unrolling mighty root on root. IV Such is the music of his sleeping hours. Day hath another--'tis a melody He trips to, made by the assembled flowers, And light and fragrance laughing 'mid the bowers, And ripeness busy with the acorn-tree. Such strains, perhaps, as filled with mute amaze (The silent music of Earth's ecstasy) The Satyr's soul, the Faun of classic days. THE WILD IRIS That day we wandered 'mid the hills,--so lone Clouds are not lonelier, the forest lay In emerald darkness round us. Many a stone And gnarly root, gray-mossed, made wild our way: And many a bird the glimmering light along Showered the golden bubbles of its song. Then in the valley, where the brook went by, Silvering the ledges that it rippled from,-- An isolated slip of fallen sky, Epitomizing heaven in its sum,-- An iris bloomed--blue, as if, flower-disguised, The gaze of Spring had there materialized. I have forgotten many things since then-- Much beauty and much happiness and grief; And toiled and dreamed among my fellow-men, Rejoicing in the knowledge life is brief. "'Tis winter now," so says each barren bough; And face and hair proclaim 'tis winter now. I would forget the gladness of that spring! I would forget that day when she and I, Between the bird-song and the blossoming, Went hand in hand beneath the soft May sky!-- Much is forgotten, yea--and yet, and yet, The things we would we never can forget. Nor I how May then minted treasuries Of crowfoot gold; and molded out of light The sorrel's cups, whose elfin chalices Of limpid spar were streaked with rosy white: Nor all the stars of twinkling spiderwort, And mandrake moons with which her brows were girt. But most of all, yea, it were well for me, Me and my heart, that I forget that flower, The blue wild iris, azure fleur-de-lis, That she and I together found that hour. Its recollection can but emphasize The pain of loss, remindful of her eyes. DROUTH I The hot sunflowers by the glaring pike Lift shields of sultry brass; the teasel tops, Pink-thorned, advance with bristling spike on spike Against the furious sunlight. Field and copse Are sick with summer: now, with breathless stops, The locusts cymbal; now grasshoppers beat Their castanets: and rolled in dust, a team,-- Like some mean life wrapped in its sorry dream,-- An empty wagon rattles through the heat. II Where now the blue wild iris? flowers whose mouths Are moist and musky? Where the sweet-breathed mint, That made the brook-bank herby? Where the South's Wild morning-glories, rich in hues, that hint At coming showers that the rainbows tint? Where all the blossoms that the wildwood knows? The frail oxalis hidden in its leaves; The Indian-pipe, pale as a soul that grieves; The freckled touch-me-not and forest rose. III Dead! dead! all dead beside the drouth-burnt brook, Shrouded in moss or in the shriveled grass. Where waved their bells, from which the wild-bee shook The dewdrop once,--gaunt, in a nightmare mass, The rank weeds crowd; through which the cattle pass, Thirsty and lean, seeking some meager spring, Closed in with thorns, on which stray bits of wool The panting sheep have left, that sought the cool, From morn till evening wearily wandering. IV No bird is heard; no throat to whistle awake The sleepy hush; to let its music leak Fresh, bubble-like, through bloom-roofs of the brake: Only the green-gray heron, famine-weak,-- Searching the stale pools of the minnowless creek,-- Utters its call; and then the rain-crow, too, False prophet now, croaks to the stagnant air; While overhead,--still as if painted there,-- A buzzard hangs, black on the burning blue. RAIN Around, the stillness deepened; then the grain Went wild with wind; and every briery lane Was swept with dust; and then, tempestuous black, Hillward the tempest heaved a monster back, That on the thunder leaned as on a cane; And on huge shoulders bore a cloudy pack, That gullied gold from many a lightning-crack: One big drop splashed and wrinkled down the pane, And then field, hill, and wood were lost in rain. At last, through clouds,--as from a cavern hewn. Into night's heart,--the sun burst angry roon; And every cedar, with its weight of wet, Against the sunset's fiery splendor set, Frightened to beauty, seemed with rubies strewn: Then in drenched gardens, like sweet phantoms met, Dim odors rose of pink and mignonette; And in the east a confidence, that soon Grew to the calm assurance of the moon. AT SUNSET Into the sunset's turquoise marge The moon dips, like a pearly barge Enchantment sails through magic seas To faeryland Hesperides, Over the hills and away. Into the fields, in ghost-gray gown, The young-eyed Dusk comes slowly down; Her apron filled with stars she stands, And one or two slip from her hands Over the hills and away. Above the wood's black caldron bends The witch-faced Night and, muttering, blends The dew and heat, whose bubbles make The mist and musk that haunt the brake Over the hills and away. Oh, come with me, and let us go Beyond the sunset lying low; Beyond the twilight and the night, Into Love's kingdom of long light, Over the hills and away. THE LEAF-CRICKET I Small twilight singer Of dew and mist: thou ghost-gray, gossamer winger Of dusk's dim glimmer, How chill thy note sounds; how thy wings of shimmer Vibrate, soft-sighing, Meseems, for Summer that is dead or dying. I stand and listen, And at thy song the garden-beds, that glisten With rose and lily, Seem touched with sadness; and the tuberose chilly, Breathing around its cold and colorless breath, Fills the pale evening with wan hints of death. II I see thee quaintly Beneath the leaf; thy shell-shaped winglets faintly-- (As thin as spangle Of cobwebbed rain)--held up at airy angle; I hear thy tinkle With faery notes the silvery stillness sprinkle; Investing wholly The moonlight with divinest melancholy: Until, in seeming, I see the Spirit of Summer sadly dreaming Amid her ripened orchards, russet-strewn, Her great, grave eyes fixed on the harvest-moon. III As dewdrops beady; As mist minute, thy notes ring low and reedy: The vaguest vapor Of melody, now near; now, like some taper Of sound, far-fading-- Thou will-o'-wisp of music aye evading. Among the bowers, The fog-washed stalks of Autumn's weeds and flowers, By hill and hollow, I hear thy murmur and in vain I follow-- Thou jack-o'-lantern voice, thou pixy cry, Thou dirge, that tellest Beauty she must die. IV And when the frantic Wild winds of Autumn with the dead leaves antic; And walnuts scatter The mire of lanes; and dropping acorns patter In grove and forest, Like some frail grief with the rude blast thou warrest, Sending thy slender Far cry against the gale, that, rough, untender, Untouched of sorrow, Sweeps thee aside, where, haply, I to-morrow Shall find thee lying--tiny, cold and crushed, Thy weak wings folded and thy music hushed. THE WIND OF WINTER The Winter Wind, the wind of death, Who knocked upon my door, Now through the keyhole entereth, Invisible and hoar: He breathes around his icy breath And treads the flickering floor. I heard him, wandering in the night, Tap at my windowpane; With ghostly fingers, snowy white, I heard him tug in vain, Until the shuddering candlelight Did cringe with fear and strain. The fire, awakened by his voice, Leapt up with frantic arms, Like some wild babe that greets with noise Its father home who storms, With rosy gestures that rejoice, And crimson kiss that warms. Now in the hearth he sits and, drowned Among the ashes, blows; Or through the room goes stealing round On cautious-creeping toes, Deep-mantled in the drowsy sound Of night that sleets and snows. And oft, like some thin faery-thing, The stormy hush amid, I hear his captive trebles sing Beneath the kettle's lid; Or now a harp of elfland string In some dark cranny hid. Again I hear him, implike, whine, Cramped in the gusty flue; Or knotted in the resinous pine Raise goblin cry and hue, While through the smoke his eyeballs shine, A sooty red and blue. At last I hear him, nearing dawn, Take up his roaring broom, And sweep wild leaves from wood and lawn, And from the heavens the gloom, To show the gaunt world lying wan, And morn's cold rose a-bloom. THE OWLET I When dusk is drowned in drowsy dreams, And slow the hues of sunset die; When firefly and moth go by, And in still streams the new moon seems Another moon and sky: Then from the hills there comes a cry, The owlet's cry: A shivering voice that sobs and screams, With terror screams:-- "Who is it, who is it, who-o-o? Who rides through the dusk and dew, With a pair of horns, As thin as thorns, And face a bubble-blue?-- Who, who, who! Who is it, who is it, who-o-o?" II When night has dulled the lily's white, And opened wide the moonflower's eyes; When pale mists rise and veil the skies, And round the height in whispering flight The night-wind sounds and sighs: Then in the wood again it cries, The owlet cries: A shivering voice that calls in fright, In maundering fright:-- "Who is it, who is it, who-o-o? Who walks with a shuffling shoe 'Mid the gusty trees, With a face none sees, And a form as ghostly, too?-- Who, who, who! Who is it, who is it, who-o-o?" III When midnight leans a listening ear And tinkles on her insect lutes; When 'mid the roots the cricket flutes, And marsh and mere, now far, now near, A jack-o'-lantern foots: Then o'er the pool again it hoots, The owlet hoots: A voice that shivers as with fear, That cries with fear:-- "Who is it, who is it, who-o-o? Who creeps with his glowworm crew Above the mire With a corpse-light fire, As only dead men do?-- Who, who, who! Who is it, who is it, who-o-o?" EVENING ON THE FARM From out the hills where twilight stands, Above the shadowy pasture lands, With strained and strident cry, Beneath pale skies that sunset bands, The bull-bats fly. A cloud hangs over, strange of shape, And, colored like the half-ripe grape, Seems some uneven stain On heaven's azure; thin as crape, And blue as rain. By ways, that sunset's sardonyx O'erflares, and gates the farm-boy clicks, Through which the cattle came, The mullein-stalks seem giant wicks Of downy flame. From woods no glimmer enters in, Above the streams that, wandering, win To where the wood pool bids, Those haunters of the dusk begin,-- The katydids. Adown the dark the firefly marks Its flight in gold and emerald sparks; And, loosened from his chain, The shaggy mastiff bounds and barks, And barks again. Each breeze brings scents of hill-heaped hay; And now an owlet, far away, Cries twice or thrice, "T-o-o-w-h-o-o"; And cool dim moths of mottled gray Flit through the dew. The silence sounds its frog-bassoon, Where, on the woodland creek's lagoon,-- Pale as a ghostly girl Lost 'mid the trees,--looks down the moon With face of pearl. Within the shed where logs, late hewed, Smell forest-sweet, and chips of wood Make blurs of white and brown, The brood-hen cuddles her warm brood Of teetering down. The clattering guineas in the tree Din for a time; and quietly The henhouse, near the fence, Sleeps, save for some brief rivalry Of cocks and hens. A cowbell tinkles by the rails, Where, streaming white in foaming pails, Milk makes an uddery sound; While overhead the black bat trails Around and round. The night is still. The slow cows chew A drowsy cud. The bird that flew And sang is in its nest. It is the time of falling dew, Of dreams and rest. The beehives sleep; and round the walk, The garden path, from stalk to stalk The bungling beetle booms, Where two soft shadows stand and talk Among the blooms. The stars are thick: the light is dead That dyed the west: and Drowsyhead, Tuning his cricket-pipe, Nods, and some apple, round and red, Drops over-ripe. Now down the road, that shambles by, A window, shining like an eye Through climbing rose and gourd, Shows Age and young Rusticity Seated at board. THE LOCUST Thou pulse of hotness, who, with reedlike breast, Makest meridian music, long and loud, Accentuating summer!--Dost thy best To make the sunbeams fiercer, and to crowd With lonesomeness the long, close afternoon-- When Labor leans, swart-faced and beady-browed, Upon his sultry scythe--thou tangible tune Of heat, whose waves incessantly arise Quivering and clear beneath the cloudless skies. Thou singest, and upon his haggard hills Drouth yawns and rubs his heavy eyes and wakes; Brushes the hot hair from his face; and fills The land with death as sullenly he takes Downward his dusty way. 'Midst woods and fields At every pool his burning thirst he slakes: No grove so deep, no bank so high it shields A spring from him; no creek evades his eye: He needs but look and they are withered dry. Thou singest, and thy song is as a spell Of somnolence to charm the land with sleep; A thorn of sound that pierces dale and dell, Diffusing slumber over vale and steep. Sleepy the forest, nodding sleepy boughs; Sleepy the pastures with their sleepy sheep: Sleepy the creek where sleepily the cows Stand knee-deep; and the very heaven seems Sleepy and lost in undetermined dreams. Art thou a rattle that Monotony, Summer's dull nurse, old sister of slow Time, Shakes for Day's peevish pleasure, who in glee Takes its discordant music for sweet rhyme? Or oboe that the Summer Noontide plays, Sitting with Ripeness 'neath the orchard tree, Trying repeatedly the same shrill phrase, Until the musky peach with weariness Drops, and the hum of murmuring bees grows less? THE DEAD DAY The west builds high a sepulcher Of cloudy granite and of gold, Where twilight's priestly hours inter The Day like some great king of old. A censer, rimmed with silver fire, The new moon swings above his tomb; While, organ-stops of God's own choir, Star after star throbs in the gloom. And Night draws near, the sadly sweet-- A nun whose face is calm and fair-- And kneeling at the dead Day's feet Her soul goes up in mists like prayer. In prayer, we feel through dewy gleam And flowery fragrance, and--above All earth--the ecstasy and dream That haunt the mystic heart of love. THE OLD WATER MILL Wild ridge on ridge the wooded hills arise, Between whose breezy vistas gulfs of skies Pilot great clouds like towering argosies, And hawk and buzzard breast the azure breeze. With many a foaming fall and glimmering reach Of placid murmur, under elm and beech, The creek goes twinkling through long gleams and glooms Of woodland quiet, summered with perfumes: The creek, in whose clear shallows minnow-schools Glitter or dart; and by whose deeper pools The blue kingfishers and the herons haunt; That, often startled from the freckled flaunt Of blackberry-lilies--where they feed or hide-- Trail a lank flight along the forestside With eery clangor. Here a sycamore Smooth, wave-uprooted, builds from shore to shore A headlong bridge; and there, a storm-hurled oak Lays a long dam, where sand and gravel choke The water's lazy way. Here mistflower blurs Its bit of heaven; there the ox-eye stirs Its gloaming hues of pearl and gold; and here, A gray, cool stain, like dawn's own atmosphere, The dim wild carrot lifts its crumpled crest: And over all, at slender flight or rest, The dragonflies, like coruscating rays Of lapis-lazuli and chrysoprase, Drowsily sparkle through the summer days: And, dewlap-deep, here from the noontide heat The bell-hung cattle find a cool retreat; And through the willows girdling the hill, Now far, now near, borne as the soft winds will, Comes the low rushing of the water-mill. Ah, lovely to me from a little child, How changed the place! wherein once, undefiled, The glad communion of the sky and stream Went with me like a presence and a dream. Where once the brambled meads and orchardlands, Poured ripe abundance down with mellow hands Of summer; and the birds of field and wood Called to me in a tongue I understood; And in the tangles of the old rail-fence Even the insect tumult had some sense, And every sound a happy eloquence: And more to me than wisest books can teach The wind and water said; whose words did reach My soul, addressing their magnificent speech,-- Raucous and rushing,--from the old mill-wheel, That made the rolling mill-cogs snore and reel, Like some old ogre in a faerytale Nodding above his meat and mug of ale. How memory takes me back the ways that lead-- As when a boy--through woodland and through mead! To orchards fruited; or to fields in bloom; Or briery fallows, like a mighty room, Through which the winds swing censers of perfume, And where deep blackberries spread miles of fruit;-- A wildwood feast, that stayed the plowboy's foot When to the tasseling acres of the corn He drove his team, fresh in the primrose morn; And from the liberal banquet, nature lent, Plucked dewy handfuls as he whistling went.-- A boy once more, I stand with sunburnt feet And watch the harvester sweep down the wheat; Or laze with warm limbs in the unstacked straw Near by the thresher, whose insatiate maw Devours the sheaves, hot-drawling out its hum-- Like some great sleepy bee, above a bloom, Made drunk with honey--while, grown big with grain, The bulging sacks receive the golden rain. Again I tread the valley, sweet with hay, And hear the bobwhite calling far away, Or wood-dove cooing in the elder-brake; Or see the sassafras bushes madly shake As swift, a rufous instant, in the glen The red fox leaps and gallops to his den: Or, standing in the violet-colored gloam, Hear roadways sound with holiday riding home From church or fair, or country barbecue, Which half the county to some village drew. How spilled with berries were its summer hills, And strewn with walnuts all its autumn rills!-- And chestnuts too! burred from the spring's long flowers; June's, when their tree-tops streamed delirious showers Of blossoming silver, cool, crepuscular, And like a nebulous radiance shone afar.-- And maples! how their sappy hearts would pour Rude troughs of syrup, when the winter hoar Steamed with the sugar-kettle, day and night, And, red, the snow was streaked with firelight. Then it was glorious! the mill-dam's edge One slope of frosty crystal, laid a ledge Of pearl across; above which, sleeted trees Tossed arms of ice, that, clashing in the breeze, Tinkled the ringing creek with icicles, Thin as the peal of far-off elfin bells: A sound that in my city dreams I hear, That brings before me, under skies that clear, The old mill in its winter garb of snow, Its frozen wheel like a hoar beard below, And its west windows, two deep eyes aglow. Ah, ancient mill, still do I picture o'er Thy cobwebbed stairs and loft and grain-strewn floor; Thy door,--like some brown, honest hand of toil, And honorable with service of the soil,-- Forever open; to which, on his back The prosperous farmer bears his bursting sack, And while the miller measures out his toll, Again I hear, above the cogs' loud roll,-- That makes stout joist and rafter groan and sway,-- The harmless gossip of the passing day: Good country talk, that says how so-and-so Lived, died, or wedded: how curculio And codling-moth play havoc with the fruit, Smut ruins the corn and blight the grapes to boot: Or what is news from town: next county fair: How well the crops are looking everywhere:-- Now this, now that, on which their interests fix, Prospects for rain or frost, and politics. While, all around, the sweet smell of the meal Filters, warm-pouring from the rolling wheel Into the bin; beside which, mealy white, The miller looms, dim in the dusty light. Again I see the miller's home between The crinkling creek and hills of beechen green: Again the miller greets me, gaunt and brown, Who oft o'erawed my boyhood with his frown And gray-browed mien: again he tries to reach My youthful soul with fervid scriptural speech.-- For he, of all the countryside confessed, The most religious was and goodliest; A Methodist, who at all meetings led; Prayed with his family ere they went to bed. No books except the Bible had he read-- At least so seemed it to my younger head.-- All things of Heaven and Earth he'd prove by this, Be it a fact or mere hypothesis: For to his simple wisdom, reverent, _"The Bible says"_ was all of argument.-- God keep his soul! his bones were long since laid Among the sunken gravestones in the shade Of those dark-lichened rocks, that wall around The family burying-ground with cedars crowned: Where bristling teasel and the brier combine With clambering wood-rose and the wildgrape-vine To hide the stone whereon his name and dates Neglect, with mossy hand, obliterates. ARGONAUTS With argosies of dawn he sails, And triremes of the dusk, The Seas of Song, whereon the gales Are myths that trail wild musk. He hears the hail of Siren bands From headlands sunset-kissed; The Lotus-eaters wave pale hands Within a land of mist. For many a league he hears the roar Of the Symplegades; And through the far foam of its shore The Isle of Sappho sees. All day he looks, with hazy lids, At gods who cleave the deep; All night he hears the Nereïds Sing their wild hearts asleep. When heaven thunders overhead, And hell upheaves the Vast, Dim faces of the ocean's dead Gaze at him from each mast. He but repeats the oracle That bade him first set sail; And cheers his soul with, "All is well! Go on! I will not fail." Behold! he sails no earthly bark And on no earthly sea, Who down the years into the dark,-- Divine of destiny,-- Holds to his purpose,--ships of Greece,-- Ideal-steered afar, For whom awaits the Golden Fleece, The fame that is his star. "THE MORN THAT BREAKS ITS HEART OF GOLD" From an ode "In Commemoration of the Founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony." The morn that breaks its heart of gold Above the purple hills; The eve, that spills Its nautilus splendor where the sea is rolled; The night, that leads the vast procession in Of stars and dreams,-- The beauty that shall never die or pass:-- The winds, that spin Of rain the misty mantles of the grass, And thunder raiment of the mountain-streams; The sunbeams, penciling with gold the dusk Green cowls of ancient woods; The shadows, thridding, veiled with musk, The moon-pathed solitudes, Call to my Fancy, saying, "Follow! follow!" Till, following, I see,-- Fair as a cascade in a rainbowed hollow,-- A dream, a shape, take form, Clad on with every charm,-- The vision of that Ideality, Which lured the pioneer in wood and hill, And beckoned him from earth and sky; The dream that cannot die, Their children's children did fulfill, In stone and iron and wood, Out of the solitude, And by a stalwart act Create a mighty fact-- A Nation, now that stands Clad on with hope and beauty, strength and song, Eternal, young and strong, Planting her heel on wrong, Her starry banner in triumphant hands.... Within her face the rose Of Alleghany dawns; Limbed with Alaskan snows, Floridian starlight in her eyes,-- Eyes stern as steel yet tender as a fawn's,-- And in her hair The rapture of her rivers; and the dare, As perishless as truth, That o'er the crags of her Sierras flies, Urging the eagle ardor through her veins, Behold her where, Around her radiant youth, The spirits of the cataracts and plains, The genii of the floods and forests, meet, In rainbow mists circling her brow and feet: The forces vast that sit In session round her; powers paraclete, That guard her presence; awful forms and fair, Making secure her place; Guiding her surely as the worlds through space Do laws sidereal; edicts, thunder-lit, Of skyed eternity, in splendor borne On planetary wings of night and morn. * * * * * From her high place she sees Her long procession of accomplished acts, Cloud-winged refulgences Of thoughts in steel and stone, of marble dreams, Lift up tremendous battlements, Sun-blinding, built of facts; While in her soul she seems, Listening, to hear, as from innumerable tents, Æonian thunder, wonder, and applause Of all the heroic ages that are gone; Feeling secure That, as her Past, her Future shall endure, As did her Cause When redly broke the dawn Of fierce rebellion, and, beneath its star, The firmaments of war Poured down infernal rain, And North and South lay bleeding mid their slain. And now, no less, shall her great Cause prevail, More so in peace than war, Through the thrilled wire and electric rail, Carrying her message far: Shaping her dream Within the brain of steam, That, with a myriad hands, Labors unceasingly, and knits her lands In firmer union; joining plain and stream With steel; and binding shore to shore With bands of iron;--nerves and arteries, Along whose adamant forever pour Her concrete thoughts, her tireless energies. A VOICE ON THE WIND I She walks with the wind on the windy height When the rocks are loud and the waves are white, And all night long she calls through the night, "O my children, come home!" Her bleak gown, torn as a tattered cloud, Tosses around her like a shroud, While over the deep her voice rings loud,-- "O my children, come home, come home! O my children, come home!" II Who is she who wanders alone, When the wind drives sheer and the rain is blown? Who walks all night and makes her moan, "O my children, come home!" Whose face is raised to the blinding gale; Whose hair blows black and whose eyes are pale, While over the world goes by her wail,-- "O my children, come home, come home! O my children, come home!" III She walks with the wind in the windy wood; The dark rain drips from her hair and hood, And her cry sobs by, like a ghost pursued, "O my children, come home!" Where the trees loom gaunt and the rocks stretch drear, The owl and the fox crouch back with fear, As wild through the wood her voice they hear,-- "O my children, come home, come home! O my children, come home!" IV Who is she who shudders by When the boughs blow bare and the dead leaves fly? Who walks all night with her wailing cry, "O my children, come home!" Who, strange of look, and wild of tongue, With wan feet wounded and hands wild-wrung, Sweeps on and on with her cry, far-flung,-- "O my children, come home, come home! O my children, come home!" V 'Tis the Spirit of Autumn, no man sees, The mother of Death and of Mysteries, Who cries on the wind all night to these, "O my children, come home!" The Spirit of Autumn, pierced with pain, Calling her children home again, Death and Dreams, through ruin and rain,-- "O my children, come home, come home! O my children, come home!" REQUIEM I No more for him, where hills look down, Shall Morning crown Her rainy brow with blossom bands!-- The Morning Hours, whose rosy hands Drop wildflowers of the breaking skies Upon the sod 'neath which he lies.-- No more for him! No more! No more! II No more for him, where waters sleep, Shall Evening heap The long gold of the perfect days! The Eventide, whose warm hand lays Great poppies of the afterglow Upon the turf he rests below.-- No more for him! No more! no more! Ill No more for him, where woodlands loom, Shall Midnight bloom The star-flowered acres of the blue! The Midnight Hours, whose dim hands strew Dead leaves of darkness, hushed and deep, Upon the grave where he doth sleep.-- No more for him! No more! No more! IV The hills, that Morning's footsteps wake: The waves that take A brightness from the Eve; the woods And solitudes, o'er which Night broods, Their Spirits have, whose parts are one With him, whose mortal part is done. Whose part is done. LYNCHERS At the moon's down-going let it be On the quarry hill with its one gnarled tree. The red-rock road of the underbrush, Where the woman came through the summer hush. The sumac high and the elder thick, Where we found the stone and the ragged stick. The trampled road of the thicket, full Of footprints down to the quarry pool. The rocks that ooze with the hue of lead, Where we found her lying stark and dead. The scraggy wood; the negro hut, With its doors and windows locked and shut. A secret signal; a foot's rough tramp; A knock at the door; a lifted lamp. An oath; a scuffle; a ring of masks; A voice that answers a voice that asks. A group of shadows; the moon's red fleck; A running noose and a man's bared neck. A word, a curse, and a shape that swings; The lonely night and a bat's black wings. At the moon's down-going let it be On the quarry hill with its one gnarled tree. THE PARTING She passed the thorn-trees, whose gaunt branches tossed Their spider-shadows round her; and the breeze, Beneath the ashen moon, was full of frost, And mouthed and mumbled to the sickly trees, Like some starved hag who sees her children freeze. Dry-eyed she waited by the sycamore. Some stars made misty blotches in the sky. And all the wretched willows on the shore Looked faded as a jaundiced cheek or eye. She felt their pity and could only sigh. And then his skiff ground on the river rocks. Whistling he came into the shadow made By that dead tree. He kissed her dark brown locks; And round her form his eager arms were laid. Passive she stood, her secret unbetrayed. And then she spoke, while still his greeting kiss Ached in her hair. She did not dare to lift Her eyes to his--her anguished eyes to his, While tears smote crystal in her throat. One rift Of weakness humored might set all adrift. Fields over which a path, overwhelmed with burrs And ragweeds, noisy with the grasshoppers, Leads,--lost, irresolute as paths the cows Wear through the woods,--unto a woodshed; then, With wrecks of windows, to a huddled house, Where men have murdered men. A house, whose tottering chimney, clay and rock, Is seamed and crannied; whose lame door and lock Are bullet-bored; around which, there and here, Are sinister stains.--One dreads to look around.-- The place seems thinking of that time of fear And dares not breathe a sound. Within is emptiness: The sunlight falls On faded journals papering the walls; On advertisement chromos, torn with time, Around a hearth where wasps and spiders build.-- The house is dead: meseems that night of crime It, too, was shot and killed. KU KLUX We have sent him seeds of the melon's core, And nailed a warning upon his door: By the Ku Klux laws we can do no more. Down in the hollow, 'mid crib and stack, The roof of his low-porched house looms black; Not a line of light at the door-sill's crack. Yet arm and mount! and mask and ride! The hounds can sense though the fox may hide! And for a word too much men oft have died. The clouds blow heavy toward the moon. The edge of the storm will reach it soon. The kildee cries and the lonesome loon. The clouds shall flush with a wilder glare Than the lightning makes with its angled flare, When the Ku Klux verdict is given there. In the pause of the thunder rolling low, A rifle's answer--who shall know From the wind's fierce hurl and the rain's black blow? Only the signature, written grim At the end of the message brought to him-- A hempen rope and a twisted limb. So arm and mount! and mask and ride! The hounds can sense though the fox may hide!-- For a word too much men oft have died. EIDOLONS The white moth-mullein brushed its slim Cool, faery flowers against his knee; In places where the way lay dim The branches, arching suddenly, Made tomblike mystery for him. The wild-rose and the elder, drenched With rain, made pale a misty place,-- From which, as from a ghost, he blenched; He walking with averted face, And lips in desolation clenched. For far within the forest,--where Weird shadows stood like phantom men, And where the ground-hog dug its lair, The she-fox whelped and had her den,-- The thing kept calling, buried there. One dead trunk, like a ruined tower, Dark-green with toppling trailers, shoved Its wild wreck o'er the bush; one bower Looked like a dead man, capped and gloved, The one who haunted him each hour. Now at his side he heard it: thin As echoes of a thought that speaks To conscience. Listening with his chin Upon his palm, against his cheeks He felt the moon's white finger win. And now the voice was still: and lo, With eyes that stared on naught but night, He saw?--what none on earth shall know!-- Was it the face that far from sight Had lain here, buried long ago? But men who found him,--thither led By the wild fox,--within that place Read in his stony eyes, 'tis said, The thing he saw there, face to face, The thing that left him staring dead. THE MAN HUNT The woods stretch deep to the mountain side, And the brush is wild where a man may hide. They have brought the bloodhounds up again To the roadside rock where they found the slain. They have brought the bloodhounds up, and they Have taken the trail to the mountain way. Three times they circled the trail and crossed; And thrice they found it and thrice they lost. Now straight through the trees and the underbrush They follow the scent through the forest's hush. And their deep-mouthed bay is a pulse of fear In the heart of the wood that the man must hear. The man who crouches among the trees From the stern-faced men who follow these. A huddle of rocks that the ooze has mossed, And the trail of the hunted again is lost. An upturned pebble; a bit of ground A heel has trampled--the trail is found. And the woods re-echo the bloodhounds' bay As again they take to the mountain way. A rock; a ribbon of road; a ledge, With a pine tree clutching its crumbling edge. A pine, that the lightning long since clave, Whose huge roots hollow a ragged cave. A shout; a curse; and a face aghast; The human quarry is laired at last. The human quarry with clay-clogged hair And eyes of terror who waits them there. That glares and crouches and rising then Hurls clods and curses at dogs and men. Until the blow of a gun-butt lays Him stunned and bleeding upon his face. A rope; a prayer; and an oak-tree near, And a score of hands to swing him clear. A grim, black thing for the setting sun And the moon and the stars to gaze upon. MY ROMANCE If it so befalls that the midnight hovers In mist no moonlight breaks, The leagues of the years my spirit covers, And my self myself forsakes. And I live in a land of stars and flowers, White cliffs by a silvery sea; And the pearly points of her opal towers From the mountains beckon me. And I think that I know that I hear her calling From a casement bathed with light-- Through music of waters in waters falling Mid palms from a mountain height. And I feel that I think my love's awaited By the romance of her charms; That her feet are early and mine belated In a world that chains my arms. But I break my chains and the rest is easy-- In the shadow of the rose, Snow-white, that blooms in her garden breezy, We meet and no one knows. And we dream sweet dreams and kiss sweet kisses; The world--it may live or die! The world that forgets; that never misses The life that has long gone by. We speak old vows that have long been spoken; And weep a long-gone woe: For you must know our hearts were broken Hundreds of years ago. A MAID WHO DIED OLD Frail, shrunken face, so pinched and worn, That life has carved with care and doubt! So weary waiting, night and morn, For that which never came about! Pale lamp, so utterly forlorn, In which God's light at last is out. Gray hair, that lies so thin and prim On either side the sunken brows! And soldered eyes, so deep and dim, No word of man could now arouse! And hollow hands, so virgin slim, Forever clasped in silent vows! Poor breasts! that God designed for love, For baby lips to kiss and press; That never felt, yet dreamed thereof, The human touch, the child caress-- That lie like shriveled blooms above The heart's long-perished happiness. O withered body, Nature gave For purposes of death and birth, That never knew, and could but crave Those things perhaps that make life worth,-- Rest now, alas! within the grave, Sad shell that served no end of Earth. BALLAD OF LOW-LIE-DOWN John-A-Dreams and Harum-Scarum Came a-riding into town: At the Sign o' the Jug-and-Jorum There they met with Low-lie-down. Brave in shoes of Romany leather, Bodice blue and gypsy gown, And a cap of fur and feather, In the inn sat Low-lie-down. Harum-Scarum kissed her lightly; Smiled into her eyes of brown: Clasped her waist and held her tightly, Laughing, "Love me, Low-lie-down!" Then with many an oath and swagger, As a man of great renown, On the board he clapped his dagger, Called for sack and sat him down. So a while they laughed together; Then he rose and with a frown Sighed, "While still 'tis pleasant weather, I must leave thee, Low-lie-down." So away rode Harum-Scarum; With a song rode out of town; At the Sign o' the Jug-and-Jorum Weeping tarried Low-lie-down. Then this John-a-dreams, in tatters, In his pocket ne'er a crown, Touched her, saying, "Wench, what matters! Dry your eyes and, come, sit down. "Here's my hand: we'll roam together, Far away from thorp and town. Here's my heart,--for any weather,-- And my dreams, too, Low-lie-down. "Some men call me dreamer, poet: Some men call me fool and clown-- What I am but you shall know it, Only you, sweet Low-lie-down." For a little while she pondered: Smiled: then said, "Let care go drown!" Up and kissed him.... Forth they wandered, John-a-dreams and Low-lie-down. ROMANCE Thus have I pictured her:--In Arden old A white-browed maiden with a falcon eye, Rose-flushed of face, with locks of wind-blown gold, Teaching her hawks to fly. Or, 'mid her boar-hounds, panting with the heat, In huntsman green, sounding the hunt's wild prize, Plumed, dagger-belted, while beneath her feet The spear-pierced monster dies. Or in Brécéliand, on some high tower, Clad white in samite, last of her lost race, My soul beholds her, lovelier than a flower, Gazing with pensive face. Or, robed in raiment of romantic lore, Like Oriana, dark of eye and hair, Riding through realms of legend evermore, And ever young and fair. Or now like Bradamant, as brave as just, In complete steel, her pure face lit with scorn, At giant castles, dens of demon lust, Winding her bugle-horn. Another Una; and in chastity A second Britomart; in beauty far O'er her who led King Charles's chivalry And Paynim lands to war.... Now she, from Avalon's deep-dingled bowers,-- 'Mid which white stars and never-waning moons Make marriage; and dim lips of musk-mouthed flowers Sigh faint and fragrant tunes,-- Implores me follow; and, in shadowy shapes Of sunset, shows me,--mile on misty mile Of purple precipice,--all the haunted capes Of her enchanted isle. Where, bowered in bosks and overgrown with vine, Upon a headland breasting violet seas, Her castle towers, like a dream divine, With stairs and galleries. And at her casement, Circe-beautiful, Above the surgeless reaches of the deep, She sits, while, in her gardens, fountains lull The perfumed wind asleep. Or, round her brow a diadem of spars, She leans and hearkens, from her raven height, The nightingales that, choiring to the stars, Take with wild song the night. Or, where the moon is mirrored in the waves, To mark, deep down, the Sea King's city rolled, Wrought of huge shells and labyrinthine caves, Ribbed pale with pearl and gold. There doth she wait forever; and the kings Of all the world have wooed her: but she cares For none but him, the Love, that dreams and sings, That sings and dreams and dares. AMADIS AND ORIANA From "Beltenebros at Miraflores" O sunset, from the springs of stars Draw down thy cataracts of gold; And belt their streams with burning bars Of ruby on which flame is rolled: Drench dingles with laburnum light; Drown every vale in violet blaze: Rain rose-light down; and, poppy-bright, Die downward o'er the hills of haze, And bring at last the stars of night! The stars and moon! that silver world, Which, like a spirit, faces west, Her foam-white feet with light empearled, Bearing white flame within her breast: Earth's sister sphere of fire and snow, Who shows to Earth her heart's pale heat, And bids her mark its pulses glow, And hear their crystal currents beat With beauty, lighting all below. O cricket, with thy elfin pipe, That tinkles in the grass and grain; And dove-pale buds, that, dropping, stripe The glen's blue night, and smell of rain; O nightingale, that so dost wail On yonder blossoming branch of snow, Thrill, fill the wild deer-haunted dale, Where Oriana, walking slow, Comes, thro' the moonlight, dreamy pale. She comes to meet me!--Earth and air Grow radiant with another light. In her dark eyes and her dark hair Are all the stars and all the night: She comes! I clasp her!--and it is As if no grief had ever been.-- In all the world for us who kiss There are no other women or men But Oriana and Amadis. THE ROSICRUCIAN I The tripod flared with a purple spark, And the mist hung emerald in the dark: Now he stooped to the lilac flame Over the glare of the amber embers, Thrice to utter no earthly name; Thrice, like a mind that half remembers; Bathing his face in the magic mist Where the brilliance burned like an amethyst. II "Sylph, whose soul was born of mine, Born of the love that made me thine, Once more flash on my eyes! Again Be the loved caresses taken! Lip to lip let our forms remain!-- Here in the circle sense, awaken! Ere spirit meet spirit, the flesh laid by, Let me touch thee, and let me die." III Sunset heavens may burn, but never Know such splendor! There bloomed an ever Opaline orb, where the sylphid rose A shape of luminous white; diviner White than the essence of light that sows The moons and suns through space; and finer Than radiance born of a shooting-star, Or the wild Aurora that streams afar. IV "Look on the face of the soul to whom Thou givest thy soul like added perfume! Thou, who heard'st me, who long had prayed, Waiting alone at morning's portal!-- Thus on thy lips let my lips be laid, Love, who hast made me all immortal! Give me thine arms now! Come and rest Weariness out on my beaming breast!" V Was it her soul? or the sapphire fire That sang like the note of a seraph's lyre? Out of her mouth there fell no word-- She spake with her soul, as a flower speaketh. Fragrant messages none hath heard, Which the sense divines when the spirit seeketh.... And he seemed alone in a place so dim That the spirit's face, who was gazing at him, For its burning eyes he could not see: Then he knew he had died; that she and he Were one; and he saw that this was she. THE AGE OF GOLD The clouds that tower in storm, that beat Arterial thunder in their veins; The wildflowers lifting, shyly sweet, Their perfect faces from the plains,-- All high, all lowly things of Earth For no vague end have had their birth. Low strips of mist that mesh the moon Above the foaming waterfall; And mountains, that God's hand hath hewn, And forests, where the great winds call,-- Within the grasp of such as see Are parts of a conspiracy; To seize the soul with beauty; hold The heart with love: and thus fulfill Within ourselves the Age of Gold, That never died, and never will,-- As long as one true nature feels The wonders that the world reveals. BEAUTY AND ART The gods are dead; but still for me Lives on in wildwood brook and tree Each myth, each old divinity. For me still laughs among the rocks The Naiad; and the Dryad's locks Drop perfume on the wildflower flocks. The Satyr's hoof still prints the loam; And, whiter than the wind-blown foam, The Oread haunts her mountain home. To him, whose mind is fain to dwell With loveliness no time can quell, All things are real, imperishable. To him--whatever facts may say-- Who sees the soul beneath the clay, Is proof of a diviner day. The very stars and flowers preach A gospel old as God, and teach Philosophy a child may reach; That cannot die; that shall not cease; That lives through idealities Of Beauty, ev'n as Rome and Greece. That lifts the soul above the clod, And, working out some period Of art, is part and proof of God. THE SEA SPIRIT Ah me! I shall not waken soon From dreams of such divinity! A spirit singing 'neath the moon To me. Wild sea-spray driven of the storm Is not so wildly white as she, Who beckoned with a foam-white arm To me. With eyes dark green, and golden-green Long locks that rippled drippingly, Out of the green wave she did lean To me. And sang; till Earth and Heaven seemed A far, forgotten memory, And more than Heaven in her who gleamed On me. Sleep, sweeter than love's face or home; And death's immutability; And music of the plangent foam, For me! Sweep over her! with all thy ships, With all thy stormy tides, O sea!-- The memory of immortal lips For me! GARGAPHIE "_Succinctae sacra Dianae_".--OVID There the ragged sunlight lay Tawny on thick ferns and gray On dark waters: dimmer, Lone and deep, the cypress grove Bowered mystery and wove Braided lights, like those that love On the pearl plumes of a dove Faint to gleam and glimmer. II There centennial pine and oak Into stormy cadence broke: Hollow rocks gloomed, slanting, Echoing in dim arcade, Looming with long moss, that made Twilight streaks in tatters laid: Where the wild hart, hunt-affrayed, Plunged the water, panting. III Poppies of a sleepy gold Mooned the gray-green darkness rolled Down its vistas, making Wisp-like blurs of flame. And pale Stole the dim deer down the vale: And the haunting nightingale Throbbed unseen--the olden tale All its wild heart breaking. IV There the hazy serpolet, Dewy cistus, blooming wet, Blushed on bank and bowlder; There the cyclamen, as wan As first footsteps of the dawn, Carpeted the spotted lawn: Where the nude nymph, dripping drawn, Basked a wildflower shoulder. V In the citrine shadows there What tall presences and fair, Godlike, stood!--or, gracious As the rock-rose there that grew, Delicate and dim as dew, Stepped from boles of oaks, and drew Faunlike forms to follow, who Filled the forest spacious!-- VI Guarding that Boeotian Valley so no foot of man Soiled its silence holy With profaning tread--save one, The Hyantian: Actæon, Who beheld, and might not shun Pale Diana's wrath; undone By his own mad folly. VII Lost it lies--that valley: sleeps In serene enchantment; keeps Beautiful its banished Bowers that no man may see; Fountains that her deity Haunts, and every rock and tree Where her hunt goes swinging free As in ages vanished. THE DEAD OREAD Her heart is still and leaps no more With holy passion when the breeze, Her whilom playmate, as before, Comes with the language of the bees, Sad songs her mountain cedars sing, And water-music murmuring. Her calm white feet,--erst fleet and fast As Daphne's when a god pursued,-- No more will dance like sunlight past The gold-green vistas of the wood, Where every quailing floweret Smiled into life where they were set. Hers were the limbs of living light, And breasts of snow; as virginal As mountain drifts; and throat as white As foam of mountain waterfall; And hyacinthine curls, that streamed Like crag-born mists, and gloomed and gleamed. Her presence breathed such scents as haunt Moist, mountain dells and solitudes; Aromas wild as some wild plant That fills with sweetness all the woods: And comradeships of stars and skies Shone in the azure of her eyes. Her grave be by a mossy rock Upon the top of some wild hill, Removed, remote from men who mock The myths and dreams of life they kill: Where all of beauty, naught of lust May guard her solitary dust. THE FAUN The joys that touched thee once, be mine! The sympathies of sky and sea, The friendships of each rock and pine, That made thy lonely life, ah me! In Tempe or in Gargaphie. Such joy as thou didst feel when first, On some wild crag, thou stood'st alone To watch the mountain tempest burst, With streaming thunder, lightning-sown, On Latmos or on Pelion. Thy awe! when, crowned with vastness, Night And Silence ruled the deep's abyss; And through dark leaves thou saw'st the white Breasts of the starry maids who kiss Pale feet of moony Artemis. Thy dreams! when, breasting matted weeds Of Arethusa, thou didst hear The music of the wind-swept reeds; And down dim forest-ways drew near Shy herds of slim Arcadian deer. Thy wisdom! that knew naught but love And beauty, with which love is fraught; The wisdom of the heart--whereof All noblest passions spring--that thought As Nature thinks, "All else is naught." Thy hope! wherein To-morrow set No shadow; hope, that, lacking care And retrospect, held no regret, But bloomed in rainbows everywhere, Filling with gladness all the air. These were thine all: in all life's moods Embracing all of happiness: And when within thy long-loved woods Didst lay thee down to die--no less Thy happiness stood by to bless. THE PAPHIAN VENUS With anxious eyes and dry, expectant lips, Within the sculptured stoa by the sea, All day she waited while, like ghostly ships, Long clouds rolled over Paphos: the wild bee Hung in the sultry poppy, half asleep, Beside the shepherd and his drowsy sheep. White-robed she waited day by day; alone With the white temple's shrined concupiscence, The Paphian goddess on her obscene throne, Binding all chastity to violence, All innocence to lust that feels no shame-- Venus Mylitta born of filth and flame. So must they haunt her marble portico, The devotees of Paphos, passion-pale As moonlight streaming through the stormy snow; Dark eyes desirous of the stranger sail, The gods shall bring across the Cyprian Sea, With him elected to their mastery. A priestess of the temple came, when eve Blazed, like a satrap's triumph, in the west; And watched her listening to the ocean's heave, Dusk's golden glory on her face and breast, And in her hair the rosy wind's caress,-- Pitying her dedicated tenderness. When out of darkness night persuades the stars, A dream shall bend above her saying, "Soon A barque shall come with purple sails and spars, Sailing from Tarsus 'neath a low white moon; And thou shalt see one in a robe of Tyre Facing toward thee like the god Desire. "Rise then! as, clad in starlight, riseth Night-- Thy nakedness clad on with loveliness! So shalt thou see him, like the god Delight, Breast through the foam and climb the cliff to press Hot lips to thine and lead thee in before Love's awful presence where ye shall adore." Thus at her heart the vision entered in, With lips of lust the lips of song had kissed, And eyes of passion laughing with sweet sin, A shimmering splendor robed in amethyst,-- Seen like that star set in the glittering gloam,-- Venus Mylitta born of fire and foam. So shall she dream until, near middle night,-- When on the blackness of the ocean's rim The moon, like some war-galleon all alight With blazing battle, from the sea shall swim,-- A shadow, with inviolate lips and eyes, Shall rise before her speaking in this wise: "So hast thou heard the promises of one,-- Of her, with whom the God of gods is wroth,-- For whom was prophesied at Babylon The second death--Chaldaean Mylidoth! Whose feet take hold on darkness and despair, Hissing destruction in her heart and hair. "Wouldst thou behold the vessel she would bring?-- A wreck! ten hundred years have smeared with slime: A hulk! where all abominations cling, The spawn and vermin of the seas of time: Wild waves have rotted it; fierce suns have scorched; Mad winds have tossed and stormy stars have torched. "Can lust give birth to love? The vile and foul Be mother to beauty? Lo! can this thing be?-- A monster like a man shall rise and howl Upon the wreck across the crawling sea, Then plunge; and swim unto thee; like an ape, A beast all belly.--Thou canst not escape!" Gone was the shadow with the suffering brow; And in the temple's porch she lay and wept, Alone with night, the ocean, and her vow.-- Then up the east the moon's full splendor swept, And dark between it--wreck or argosy?-- A sudden vessel far away at sea. ORIENTAL ROMANCE I Beyond lost seas of summer she Dwelt on an island of the sea, Last scion of that dynasty, Queen of a race forgotten long.-- With eyes of light and lips of song, From seaward groves of blowing lemon, She called me in her native tongue, Low-leaned on some rich robe of Yemen. II I was a king. Three moons we drove Across green gulfs, the crimson clove And cassia spiced, to claim her love. Packed was my barque with gums and gold; Rich fabrics; sandalwood, grown old With odor; gems; and pearls of Oman,-- Than her white breasts less white and cold;-- And myrrh, less fragrant than this woman. III From Bassora I came. We saw Her eagle castle on a claw Of soaring precipice, o'erawe The surge and thunder of the spray. Like some great opal, far away It shone, with battlement and spire, Wherefrom, with wild aroma, day Blew splintered lights of sapphirine fire. IV Lamenting caverns dark, that keep Sonorous echoes of the deep, Led upward to her castle steep.... Fair as the moon, whose light is shed In Ramadan, was she, who led My love unto her island bowers, To find her.... lying young and dead Among her maidens and her flowers. THE MAMELUKE I She was a queen. 'Midst mutes and slaves, A mameluke, he loved her.----Waves Dashed not more hopelessly the paves Of her high marble palace-stair Than lashed his love his heart's despair.-- As souls in Hell dream Paradise, He suffered yet forgot it there Beneath Rommaneh's houri eyes. II With passion eating at his heart He served her beauty, but dared dart No amorous glance, nor word impart.-- Taïfi leather's perfumed tan Beneath her, on a low divan She lay 'mid cushions stuffed with down: A slave-girl with an ostrich fan Sat by her in a golden gown. III She bade him sing. Fair lutanist, She loved his voice. With one white wrist, Hooped with a blaze of amethyst, She raised her ruby-crusted lute: Gold-welted stuff, like some rich fruit, Her raiment, diamond-showered, rolled Folds pigeon-purple, whence one foot Drooped in an anklet-twist of gold. IV He stood and sang with all the fire That boiled within his blood's desire, That made him all her slave yet higher: And at the end his passion durst Quench with one burning kiss its thirst.-- O eunuchs, did her face show scorn When through his heart your daggers burst? And dare ye say he died forlorn? THE SLAVE He waited till within her tower Her taper signalled him the hour. He was a prince both fair and brave.-- What hope that he would love _her_ slave! He of the Persian dynasty; And she a Queen of Araby!-- No Peri singing to a star Upon the sea were lovelier.... I helped her drop the silken rope. He clomb, aflame with love and hope. I drew the dagger from my gown And cut the ladder, leaning down. Oh, wild his face, and wild the fall: Her cry was wilder than them all. I heard her cry; I heard him moan; And stood as merciless as stone. The eunuchs came: fierce scimitars Stirred in the torch-lit corridors. She spoke like one who speaks in sleep, And bade me strike or she would leap. I bade her leap: the time was short: And kept the dagger for my heart. She leapt.... I put their blades aside, And smiling in their faces--died. THE PORTRAIT In some quaint Nurnberg _maler-atelier_ Uprummaged. When and where was never clear Nor yet how he obtained it. When, by whom 'Twas painted--who shall say? itself a gloom Resisting inquisition. I opine It is a Dürer. Mark that touch, this line; Are they deniable?--Distinguished grace Of the pure oval of the noble face Tarnished in color badly. Half in light Extend it so. Incline. The exquisite Expression leaps abruptly: piercing scorn; Imperial beauty; each, an icy thorn Of light, disdainful eyes and ... well! no use! Effaced and but beheld! a sad abuse Of patience.--Often, vaguely visible, The portrait fills each feature, making swell The heart with hope: avoiding face and hair Start out in living hues; astonished, "There!-- The picture lives!" your soul exults, when, lo! You hold a blur; an undetermined glow Dislimns a daub.--"Restore?"--Ah, I have tried Our best restorers, and it has defied. Storied, mysterious, say, perhaps a ghost Lives in the canvas; hers, some artist lost; A duchess', haply. Her he worshiped; dared Not tell he worshiped. From his window stared Of Nuremberg one sunny morn when she Passed paged to court. Her cold nobility Loved, lived for like a purpose. Seized and plied A feverish brush--her face!--Despaired and died. The narrow Judengasse: gables frown Around a humpbacked usurer's, where brown, Neglected in a corner, long it lay, Heaped in a pile of riff-raff, such as--say, Retables done in tempera and old Panels by Wohlgemuth; stiff paintings cold Of martyrs and apostles,--names forgot,-- Holbeins and Dürers, say; a haloed lot Of praying saints, madonnas: these, perchance, 'Mid wine-stained purples, mothed; an old romance; A crucifix and rosary; inlaid Arms, Saracen-elaborate; a strayed Niello of Byzantium; rich work, In bronze, of Florence: here a murderous dirk, There holy patens. So.--My ancestor, The first De Herancour, esteemed by far This piece most precious, most desirable; Purchased and brought to Paris. It looked well In the dark paneling above the old Hearth of the room. The head's religious gold, The soft severity of the nun face, Made of the room an apostolic place Revered and feared.-- Like some lived scene I see That Gothic room: its Flemish tapestry; Embossed within the marble hearth a shield, Carved 'round with thistles; in its argent field Three sable mallets--arms of Herancour-- Topped with the crest, a helm and hands that bore, Outstretched, two mallets. On a lectern laid,-- Between two casements, lozenge-paned, embayed,-- A vellum volume of black-lettered text. Near by a taper, winking as if vexed With silken gusts a nervous curtain sends, Behind which, haply, daggered Murder bends. And then I seem to see again the hall; The stairway leading to that room.--Then all The terror of that night of blood and crime Passes before me.-- It is Catherine's time: The house De Herancour's. On floors, splashed red, Torchlight of Medicean wrath is shed. Down carven corridors and rooms,--where couch And chairs lie shattered and black shadows crouch Torch-pierced with fear,--a sound of swords draws near-- The stir of searching steel. What find they here, Torch-bearer, swordsman, and fierce halberdier, On St. Bartholomew's?--A Huguenot! Dead in his chair! Eyes, violently shot With horror, glaring at the portrait there: Coiling his neck a blood line, like a hair Of finest fire. The portrait, like a fiend,-- Looking exalted visitation,--leaned From its black panel; in its eyes a hate Satanic; hair--a glowing auburn; late A dull, enduring golden. "Just one thread Of the fierce hair around his throat," they said, "Twisting a burning ray; he--staring dead." THE BLACK KNIGHT I had not found the road too short, As once I had in days of youth, In that old forest of long ruth, Where my young knighthood broke its heart, Ere love and it had come to part, And lies made mockery of truth. I had not found the road too short. A blind man, by the nightmare way, Had set me right when I was wrong.-- I had been blind my whole life long-- What wonder then that on this day The blind should show me how astray My strength had gone, my heart once strong. A blind man pointed me the way. The road had been a heartbreak one, Of roots and rocks and tortured trees, And pools, above my horse's knees, And wandering paths, where spiders spun 'Twixt boughs that never saw the sun, And silence of lost centuries. The road had been a heartbreak one. It seemed long years since that black hour When she had fled, and I took horse To follow, and without remorse To slay her and her paramour In that old keep, that ruined tower, From whence was borne her father's corse. It seemed long years since that black hour. And now my horse was starved and spent, My gallant destrier, old and spare; The vile road's mire in mane and hair, I felt him totter as he went:-- Such hungry woods were never meant For pasture: hate had reaped them bare. Aye, my poor beast was old and spent. I too had naught to stay me with; And like my horse was starved and lean; My armor gone; my raiment mean; Bare-haired I rode; uneasy sith The way I'd lost, and some dark myth Far in the woods had laughed obscene. I had had naught to stay me with. Then I dismounted. Better so. And found that blind man at my rein. And there the path stretched straight and plain. I saw at once the way to go. The forest road I used to know In days when life had less of pain. Then I dismounted. Better so. I had but little time to spare, Since evening now was drawing near; And then I thought I saw a sneer Enter into that blind man's stare: And suddenly a thought leapt bare,-- What if the Fiend had set him here!-- I still might smite him or might spare. I braced my sword: then turned to look: For I had heard an evil laugh: The blind man, leaning on his staff, Still stood there where my leave I took: What! did he mock me? Would I brook A blind fool's scorn?--My sword was half Out of its sheath. I turned to look: And he was gone. And to my side My horse came nickering as afraid. Did he too fear to be betrayed?-- What use for him? I might not ride. So to a great bough there I tied, And left him in the forest glade: My spear and shield I left beside. My sword was all I needed there. It would suffice to right my wrongs; To cut the knot of all those thongs With which she'd bound me to despair, That woman with her midnight hair, Her Circe snares and Siren songs. My sword was all I needed there. And then that laugh again I heard, Evil as Hell and darkness are. It shook my heart behind its bar Of purpose, like some ghastly word. But then it may have been a bird, An owlet in the forest far, A raven, croaking, that I heard. I loosed my sword within its sheath; My sword, disuse and dews of night Had fouled with rust and iron-blight. I seemed to hear the forest breathe A menace at me through its teeth Of thorns 'mid which the way lay white. I loosed my sword within its sheath. I had not noticed until now The sun was gone, and gray the moon Hung staring; pale as marble hewn;-- Like some old malice, bleak of brow, It glared at me through leaf and bough, With which the tattered way was strewn. I had not noticed until now. And then, all unexpected, vast Above the tops of ragged pines I saw a ruin, dark with vines, Against the blood-red sunset massed: My perilous tower of the past, Round which the woods thrust giant spines. I never knew it was so vast. Long while I stood considering.-- This was the place and this the night. The blind man then had set me right. Here she had come for sheltering. That ruin held her: that dark wing Which flashed a momentary light. Some time I stood considering. Deep darkness fell. The somber glare Of sunset, that made cavernous eyes Of those gaunt casements 'gainst the skies, Had burnt to ashes everywhere. Before my feet there rose a stair Of oozy stone, of giant size, On which the gray moon flung its glare. Then I went forward, sword in hand, Until the slimy causeway loomed, And huge beyond it yawned and gloomed The gateway where one seemed to stand, In armor, like a burning brand, Sword-drawn; his visor barred and plumed. And I went toward him, sword in hand. He should not stay revenge from me. Whatever lord or knight he were, He should not keep me long from her, That woman dyed in infamy. No matter. God or devil he, His sword should prove no barrier.-- Fool! who would keep revenge from me! And then I heard, harsh over all, That demon laughter, filled with scorn: It woke the echoes, wild, forlorn, Dark in the ivy of that wall, As when, within a mighty hall, One blows a giant battle-horn. Loud, loud that laugh rang over all. And then I struck him where he towered: I struck him, struck with all my hate: Black-plumed he loomed before the gate: I struck, and found his sword that showered Fierce flame on mine while black he glowered Behind his visor's wolfish grate. I struck; and taller still he towered. A year meseemed we battled there: A year; ten years; a century: My blade was snapped; his lay in three: His mail was hewn; and everywhere Was blood; it streaked my face and hair; And still he towered over me. A year meseemed we battled there. "Unmask!" I cried. "Yea, doff thy casque! Put up thy visor! fight me fair! I have no mail; my head is bare! Take off thy helm, is all I ask! Why dost thou hide thy face?--Unmask!"-- My eyes were blind with blood and hair, And still I cried, "Take off thy casque!" And then once more that laugh rang out Like madness in the caves of Hell: It hooted like some monster well, The haunt of owls, or some mad rout Of witches. And with battle shout Once more upon that knight I fell, While wild again that laugh rang out. Like Death's own eyes his glared in mine, As with the fragment of my blade I smote him helmwise; huge he swayed, Then crashed, like some cadaverous pine, Uncasqued, his face in full moonshine: And I--I saw; and shrank afraid. For, lo! behold! the face was mine. What devil's work was here!--What jest For fiends to laugh at, demons hiss!-- To slay myself? and so to miss My hate's reward?--revenge confessed!-- Was this knight I?--My brain I pressed.-- Then who was he who gazed on this?-- What devil's work was here!----What jest! It was myself on whom I gazed-- My darker self!--With fear I rose.-- I was right weak from those great blows.-- I stood bewildered, stunned and dazed, And looked around with eyes amazed.-- I could not slay her now, God knows!-- Around me there a while I gazed. Then turned and fled into the night, While overhead once more I heard That laughter, like some demon bird Wailing in darkness.--Then a light Made clear a woman by that knight. I saw 'twas she, but said no word, And silent fled into the night. IN ARCADY I remember, when a child, How within the April wild Once I walked with Mystery In the groves of Arcady.... Through the boughs, before, behind, Swept the mantle of the wind, Thunderous and unconfined. Overhead the curving moon Pierced the twilight: a cocoon, Golden, big with unborn wings-- Beauty, shaping spiritual things, Vague, impatient of the night, Eager for its heavenward flight Out of darkness into light. Here and there the oaks assumed Satyr aspects; shadows gloomed, Hiding, of a dryad look; And the naiad-frantic brook, Crying, fled the solitude, Filled with terror of the wood, Or some faun-thing that pursued. In the dead leaves on the ground Crept a movement; rose a sound: Everywhere the silence ticked As with hands of things that picked At the loam, or in the dew,-- Elvish sounds that crept or flew,-- Beak-like, pushing surely through. Down the forest, overhead, Stammering a dead leaf fled, Filled with elemental fear Of some dark destruction near-- One, whose glowworm eyes I saw Hag with flame the crooked haw, Which the moon clutched like a claw. Gradually beneath the tree Grew a shape; a nudity: Lithe and slender; silent as Growth of tree or blade of grass; Brown and silken as the bloom Of the trillium in the gloom, Visible as strange perfume. For an instant there it stood, Smiling on me in the wood: And I saw its hair was green As the leaf-sheath, gold of sheen: And its eyes an azure wet, From within which seemed to jet Sapphire lights and violet. Swiftly by I saw it glide; And the dark was deified: Wild before it everywhere Gleamed the greenness of its hair; And around it danced a light, Soft, the sapphire of its sight, Making witchcraft of the night. On the branch above, the bird Trilled to it a dreamy word: In its bud the wild bee droned Honeyed greeting, drowsy-toned: And the brook forgot the gloom, Hushed its heart, and, wrapped in bloom, Breathed a welcome of perfume. To its beauty bush and tree Stretched sweet arms of ecstasy; And the soul within the rock Lichen-treasures did unlock As upon it fell its eye; And the earth, that felt it nigh, Into wildflowers seemed to sigh.... Was it dryad? was it faun? Wandered from the times long gone. Was it sylvan? was it fay?-- Dim survivor of the day When Religion peopled streams, Woods and rocks with shapes like gleams,-- That invaded then my dreams? Was it shadow? was it shape? Or but fancy's wild escape?-- Of my own child's world the charm That assumed material form?-- Of my soul the mystery, That the spring revealed to me, There in long-lost Arcady? PROTOTYPES Whether it be that we in letters trace The pure exactness of a wood bird's strain, And name it song; or with the brush attain The high perfection of a wildflower's face; Or mold in difficult marble all the grace We know as man; or from the wind and rain Catch elemental rapture of refrain And mark in music to due time and place: The aim of Art is Nature; to unfold Her truth and beauty to the souls of men In close suggestions; in whose forms is cast Nothing so new but 'tis long eons old; Nothing so old but 'tis as young as when The mind conceived it in the ages past. MARCH This is the tomboy month of all the year, March, who comes shouting o'er the winter hills, Waking the world with laughter, as she wills, Or wild halloos, a windflower in her ear. She stops a moment by the half-thawed mere And whistles to the wind, and straightway shrills The hyla's song, and hoods of daffodils Crowd golden round her, leaning their heads to hear. Then through the woods, that drip with all their eaves, Her mad hair blown about her, loud she goes Singing and calling to the naked trees; And straight the oilets of the little leaves Open their eyes in wonder, rows on rows, And the first bluebird bugles to the breeze. DUSK Corn-colored clouds upon a sky of gold, And 'mid their sheaves,--where, like a daisy-bloom Left by the reapers to the gathering gloom, The star of twilight glows,--as Ruth, 'tis told, Dreamed homesick 'mid the harvest fields of old, The Dusk goes gleaning color and perfume From Bible slopes of heaven, that illume Her pensive beauty deep in shadows stoled. Hushed is the forest; and blue vale and hill Are still, save for the brooklet, sleepily Stumbling the stone with one foam-fluttering foot: Save for the note of one far whippoorwill, And in my heart _her_ name,--like some sweet bee Within a rose,--blowing a faery flute. THE WINDS Those hewers of the clouds, the Winds,--that lair At the four compass-points,--are out to-night; I hear their sandals trample on the height, I hear their voices trumpet through the air: Builders of storm, God's workmen, now they bear, Up the steep stair of sky, on backs of might, Huge tempest bulks, while,--sweat that blinds heir sight,-- The rain is shaken from tumultuous hair: Now, sweepers of the firmament, they broom, Like gathered dust, the rolling mists along Heaven's floors of sapphire; all the beautiful blue Of skyey corridor and celestial room Preparing, with large laughter and loud song, For the white moon and stars to wander through. LIGHT AND WIND Where, through the myriad leaves of forest trees, The daylight falls, beryl and chrysoprase, The glamour and the glimmer of its rays Seem visible music, tangible melodies: Light that is music; music that one sees-- Wagnerian music--where forever sways The spirit of romance, and gods and fays Take form, clad on with dreams and mysteries. And now the wind's transmuting necromance Touches the light and makes it fall and rise, Vocal, a harp of multitudinous waves That speaks as ocean speaks--an utterance Of far-off whispers, mermaid-murmuring sighs-- Pelagian, vast, deep down in coral caves. ENCHANTMENT The deep seclusion of this forest path,-- O'er which the green boughs weave a canopy; Along which bluet and anemone Spread dim a carpet; where the Twilight hath Her cool abode; and, sweet as aftermath, Wood-fragrance roams,--has so enchanted me, That yonder blossoming bramble seems to be A Sylvan resting, rosy from her bath: Has so enspelled me with tradition's dreams, That every foam-white stream that, twinkling, flows, And every bird that flutters wings of tan, Or warbles hidden, to my fancy seems A Naiad dancing to a Faun who blows Wild woodland music on the pipes of Pan. ABANDONED The hornets build in plaster-dropping rooms, And on its mossy porch the lizard lies; Around its chimneys slow the swallow flies, And on its roof the locusts snow their blooms. Like some sad thought that broods here, old perfumes Haunt its dim stairs; the cautious zephyr tries Each gusty door, like some dead hand, then sighs With ghostly lips among the attic glooms. And now a heron, now a kingfisher, Flits in the willows where the riffle seems At each faint fall to hesitate to leap, Fluttering the silence with a little stir. Here Summer seems a placid face asleep, And the near world a figment of her dreams. AFTER LONG GRIEF There is a place hung o'er of summer boughs And dreamy skies wherein the gray hawk sleeps; Where water flows, within whose lazy deeps, Like silvery prisms where the sunbeams drowse, The minnows twinkle; where the bells of cows Tinkle the stillness; and the bobwhite keeps Calling from meadows where the reaper reaps, And children's laughter haunts an oldtime house: A place where life wears ever an honest smell Of hay and honey, sun and elder-bloom,-- Like some sweet, simple girl,--within her hair; Where, with our love for comrade, we may dwell Far from the city's strife, whose cares consume.-- Oh, take my hand and let me lead you there. MENDICANTS Bleak, in dark rags of clouds, the day begins, That passed so splendidly but yesterday, Wrapped in magnificence of gold and gray, And poppy and rose. Now, burdened as with sins, Their wildness clad in fogs, like coats of skins, Tattered and streaked with rain; gaunt, clogged with clay, The mendicant Hours take their somber way Westward o'er Earth, to which no sunray wins. Their splashing sandals ooze; their foosteps drip, Puddle and brim with moisture; their sad hair Is tagged with haggard drops, that with their eyes' Slow streams are blent; each sullen fingertip Rivers; while round them, in the grief-drenched air Wearies the wind of their perpetual sighs. THE END OF SUMMER Pods the poppies, and slim spires of pods The hollyhocks; the balsam's pearly bredes Of rose-stained snow are little sacs of seeds Collapsing at a touch: the lote, that sods The pond with green, has changed its flowers to rods And discs of vesicles; and all the weeds, Around the sleepy water and its reeds, Are one white smoke of seeded silk that nods. Summer is dead, ay me! sweet Summer's dead! The sunset clouds have built her funeral pyre, Through which, e'en now, runs subterranean fire: While from the east, as from a garden bed, Mist-vined, the Dusk lifts her broad moon--like some Great golden melon--saying, "Fall has come." NOVEMBER The shivering wind sits in the oaks, whose limbs, Twisted and tortured, nevermore are still; Grief and decay sit with it; they, whose chill Autumnal touch makes hectic-red the rims Of all the oak leaves; desolating, dims The ageratum's blue that banks the rill; And splits the milkweed's pod upon the hill, And shakes it free of the last seed that swims. Down goes the day despondent to its close: And now the sunset's hands of copper build A tower of brass, behind whose burning bars The day, in fierce, barbarian repose, Like some imprisoned Inca sits, hate-filled, Crowned with the gold corymbus of the stars. II There is a booming in the forest boughs; Tremendous feet seem trampling through the trees: The storm is at his wildman revelries, And earth and heaven echo his carouse. Night reels with tumult; and, from out her house Of cloud, the moon looks,--like a face one sees In nightmare,--hurrying, with pale eyes that freeze Stooping above with white, malignant brows. The isolated oak upon the hill, That seemed, at sunset, in terrific lands A Titan head black in a sea of blood, Now seems a monster harp, whose wild strings thrill To the vast fingering of innumerable hands-- Spirits of tempest and of solitude. THE DEATH OF LOVE So Love is dead, the Love we knew of old! And in the sorrow of our hearts' hushed halls A lute lies broken and a flower falls; Love's house stands empty and his hearth lies cold. Lone in dim places, where sweet vows were told, In walks grown desolate, by ruined walls Beauty decays; and on their pedestals Dreams crumble and th' immortal gods are mold. Music is slain or sleeps; one voice alone, One voice awakes, and like a wandering ghost Haunts all the echoing chambers of the Past-- The voice of Memory, that stills to stone The soul that hears; the mind, that, utterly lost, Before its beautiful presence stands aghast. UNANSWERED How long ago it is since we went Maying! Since she and I went Maying long ago!-- The years have left my forehead lined, I know, Have thinned my hair around the temples graying. Ah, time will change us: yea, I hear it saying-- "She too grows old: the face of rose and snow Has lost its freshness: in the hair's brown glow Some strands of silver sadly, too, are straying. The form you knew, whose beauty so enspelled, Has lost the litheness of its loveliness: And all the gladness that her blue eyes held Tears and the world have hardened with distress."-- "True! true!" I answer, "O ye years that part! These things are chaned--but is her heart, her heart?" UNCALLED As one, who, journeying westward with the sun, Beholds at length from the up-towering hills, Far-off, a land unspeakable beauty fills, Circean peaks and vales of Avalon: And, sinking weary, watches, one by one, The big seas beat between; and knows it skills No more to try; that now, as Heaven wills, This is the helpless end, that all is done: So 'tis with him, whom long a vision led In quest of Beauty; and who finds at last She lies beyond his effort; all the waves Of all the world between them: while the dead, The myriad dead, who people all the past With failure, hail him from forgotten graves. 
8402	----	Proofreading Team EAST AND WEST Poems. by Bret Harte. Contents. I. A Greyport Legend A Newport Romance The Hawk's Nest In the Mission Garden The Old Major Explains "Seventy-Nine" Truthful James's Answer to "Her Letter" Further Language from Truthful James The Wonderful Spring of San Joaquin On a Cone of the Big Trees A Sanitary Message The Copperhead On a Pen of Thomas Starr King Lone Mountain California's Greeting to Seward The Two Ships The Goddess Address The Lost Galleon The Second Review of the Grand Army II. Before the Curtain The Stage-Driver's Story Aspiring Miss de Laine California Madrigal St. Thomas Ballad of Mr. Cooke Legends of the Rhine Mrs. Judge Jenkins: Sequel to Maud Muller Avitor A White Pine Ballad Little Red Riding-Hood The Ritualist A Moral Vindicator Songs without Sense Part I. East and West Poems. A Greyport Legend. (1797.) They ran through the streets of the seaport town; They peered from the decks of the ships that lay: The cold sea-fog that came whitening down Was never as cold or white as they. "Ho, Starbuck and Pinckney and Tenterden! Run for your shallops, gather your men, Scatter your boats on the lower bay." Good cause for fear! In the thick midday The hulk that lay by the rotting pier, Filled with the children in happy play, Parted its moorings, and drifted clear,-- Drifted clear beyond the reach or call,-- Thirteen children they were in all,-- All adrift in the lower bay! Said a hard-faced skipper, "God help us all! She will not float till the turning tide!" Said his wife, "My darling will hear _my_ call, Whether in sea or heaven she bide:" And she lifted a quavering voice and high, Wild and strange as a sea-bird's cry, Till they shuddered and wondered at her side. The fog drove down on each laboring crew, Veiled each from each and the sky and shore: There was not a sound but the breath they drew, And the lap of water and creak of oar; And they felt the breath of the downs, fresh blown O'er leagues of clover and cold gray stone, But not from the lips that had gone before. They come no more. But they tell the tale, That, when fogs are thick on the harbor reef, The mackerel fishers shorten sail; For the signal they know will bring relief: For the voices of children, still at play In a phantom hulk that drifts alway Through channels whose waters never fail. It is but a foolish shipman's tale, A theme for a poet's idle page; But still, when the mists of doubt prevail, And we lie becalmed by the shores of Age, We hear from the misty troubled shore The voice of the children gone before, Drawing the soul to its anchorage. A Newport Romance. They say that she died of a broken heart (I tell the tale as 'twas told to me); But her spirit lives, and her soul is part Of this sad old house by the sea. Her lover was fickle and fine and French: It was nearly a hundred years ago When he sailed away from her arms--poor wench-- With the Admiral Rochambeau. I marvel much what periwigged phrase Won the heart of this sentimental Quaker, At what golden-laced speech of those modish days She listened--the mischief take her! But she kept the posies of mignonette That he gave; and ever as their bloom failed And faded (though with her tears still wet) Her youth with their own exhaled. Till one night, when the sea-fog wrapped a shroud Round spar and spire and tarn and tree, Her soul went up on that lifted cloud From this sad old house by the sea. And ever since then, when the clock strikes two, She walks unbidden from room to room, And the air is filled that she passes through With a subtle, sad perfume. The delicate odor of mignonette, The ghost of a dead and gone bouquet, Is all that tells of her story; yet Could she think of a sweeter way? * * * * * I sit in the sad old house to-night,-- Myself a ghost from a farther sea; And I trust that this Quaker woman might, In courtesy, visit me. For the laugh is fled from porch and lawn, And the bugle died from the fort on the hill, And the twitter of girls on the stairs is gone, And the grand piano is still. Somewhere in the darkness a clock strikes two; And there is no sound in the sad old house, But the long veranda dripping with dew, And in the wainscot a mouse. The light of my study-lamp streams out From the library door, but has gone astray In the depths of the darkened hall. Small doubt But the Quakeress knows the way. Was it the trick of a sense o'erwrought With outward watching and inward fret? But I swear that the air just now was fraught With the odor of mignonette! I open the window, and seem almost-- So still lies the ocean--to hear the beat Of its Great Gulf artery off the coast, And to bask in its tropic heat. In my neighbor's windows the gas-lights flare, As the dancers swing in a waltz of Strauss; And I wonder now could I fit that air To the song of this sad old house. And no odor of mignonette there is But the breath of morn on the dewy lawn; And mayhap from causes as slight as this The quaint old legend is born. But the soul of that subtle, sad perfume, As the spiced embalmings, they say, outlast The mummy laid in his rocky tomb, Awakens my buried past. And I think of the passion that shook my youth, Of its aimless loves and its idle pains, And am thankful now for the certain truth That only the sweet remains. And I hear no rustle of stiff brocade, And I see no face at my library door; For now that the ghosts of my heart are laid, She is viewless forevermore. But whether she came as a faint perfume, Or whether a spirit in stole of white, I feel, as I pass from the darkened room, She has been with my soul to-night! The Hawk's Nest. (Sierras.) We checked our pace,--the red road sharply rounding; We heard the troubled flow Of the dark olive depths of pines, resounding A thousand feet below. Above the tumult of the cañon lifted, The gray hawk breathless hung; Or on the hill a wingèd shadow drifted Where furze and thorn-bush clung; Or where half-way the mountain side was furrowed With many a seam and scar; Or some abandoned tunnel dimly burrowed,-- A mole-hill seen so far. We looked in silence down across the distant Unfathomable reach: A silence broken by the guide's consistent And realistic speech. "Walker of Murphy's blew a hole through Peters For telling him he lied; Then up and dusted out of South Hornitos Across the long Divide. "We ran him out of Strong's, and up through Eden, And 'cross the ford below; And up this cañon (Peters' brother leadin'), And me and Clark and Joe. "He fou't us game: somehow, I disremember Jest how the thing kem round; Some say 'twas wadding, some a scattered ember From fires on the ground. "But in one minute all the hill below him Was just one sheet of flame; Guardin' the crest, Sam Clark and I called to him. And,--well, the dog was game! "He made no sign: the fires of hell were round him, The pit of hell below. We sat and waited, but never found him; And then we turned to go. "And then--you see that rock that's grown so bristly With chaparral and tan-- Suthin' crep' out: it might hev been a grizzly, It might hev been a man; "Suthin' that howled, and gnashed its teeth, and shouted In smoke and dust and flame; Suthin' that sprang into the depths about it, Grizzly or man,--but game! "That's all. Well, yes, it does look rather risky, And kinder makes one queer And dizzy looking down. A drop of whiskey Ain't a bad thing right here!" In the Mission Garden. (1865.) Father Felipe. I speak not the English well, but Pachita She speak for me; is it not so, my Pancha? Eh, little rogue? Come, salute me the stranger Americano. Sir, in my country we say, "Where the heart is, There live the speech." Ah! you not understand? So! Pardon an old man,--what you call "ol fogy,"-- Padre Felipe! Old, Señor, old! just so old as the Mission. You see that pear-tree? How old you think, Señor? Fifteen year? Twenty? Ah, Señor, just _Fifty_ Gone since I plant him! You like the wine? It is some at the Mission, Made from the grape of the year Eighteen Hundred; All the same time when the earthquake he come to San Juan Bautista. But Pancha is twelve, and she is the rose-tree; And I am the olive, and this is the garden: And Pancha we say; but her name is Francisca, Same like her mother. Eh, you knew _her_? No? Ah! it is a story; But I speak not, like Pachita, the English: So? If I try, you will sit here beside me, And shall not laugh, eh? When the American come to the Mission, Many arrive at the house of Francisca: One,--he was fine man,--he buy the cattle Of José Castro. So! he came much, and Francisca she saw him: And it was Love,--and a very dry season; And the pears bake on the tree,--and the rain come, But not Francisca; Not for one year; and one night I have walk much Under the olive-tree, when comes Francisca: Comes to me here, with her child, this Francisca,-- Under the olive-tree. Sir, it was sad; ... but I speak not the English; So! ... she stay here, and she wait for her husband He come no more, and she sleep on the hillside; There stands Pachita. Ah! there's the Angelus. Will you not enter? Or shall you walk in the garden with Pancha? Go, little rogue--stt--attend to the stranger. Adios, Señor. Pachita (_briskly_). So, he's been telling that yarn about mother! Bless you, he tells it to every stranger: Folks about yer say the old man's my father; What's your opinion? The Old Major Explains. (Re-Union Army of the Potomac, 12th May, 1871.) "Well, you see, the fact is, Colonel, I don't know as I can come: For the farm is not half planted, and there's work to do at home; And my leg is getting troublesome,--it laid me up last fall, And the doctors, they have cut and hacked, and never found the ball. "And then, for an old man like me, it's not exactly right, This kind o' playing soldier with no enemy in sight. 'The Union,'--that was well enough way up to '66; But this 'Re-Union,'--maybe now it's mixed with politics? "No? Well, you understand it best; but then, you see, my lad, I'm deacon now, and some might think that the example's bad. And week from next is Conference.... You said the 12th of May? Why, that's the day we broke their line at Spottsylvan-i-a! "Hot work; eh, Colonel, wasn't it? Ye mind that narrow front: They called it the 'Death-Angle!' Well, well, my lad, we won't Fight that old battle over now: I only meant to say I really can't engage to come upon the 12th of May. "How's Thompson? What! will he be there? Well, now, I want to know! The first man in the rebel works! they called him 'Swearing Joe:' A wild young fellow, sir, I fear the rascal was; but then-- Well, short of heaven, there wa'n't a place he dursn't lead his men. "And Dick, you say, is coming too. And Billy? ah! it's true We buried him at Gettysburg: I mind the spot; do you? A little field below the hill,--it must be green this May; Perhaps that's why the fields about bring him to me to-day. "Well, well, excuse me, Colonel! but there are some things that drop The tail-board out one's feelings; and the only way's to stop. So they want to see the old man; ah, the rascals! do they, eh? Well, I've business down in Boston about the 12th of May." "Seventy-Nine" Mr. Interviewer Interviewed. Know me next time when you see me, won't you, old smarty? Oh, I mean you, old figger-head,--just the same party! Take out your pensivil, d--n you; sharpen it, do! Any complaints to make? Lots of 'em--one of 'em's _you_. You! who are you, anyhow, goin' round in that sneakin' way? Never in jail before, was you, old blatherskite, say? Look at it; don't it look pooty? Oh, grin, and be d--d to you, do! But, if I had you this side o' that gratin', I'd just make it lively for you. How did I get in here? Well, what 'ud you give to know? 'Twasn't by sneakin' round where I hadn't no call to go. 'Twasn't by hangin' round a spyin' unfortnet men. Grin! but I'll stop your jaw if ever you do that agen. Why don't you say suthin', blast you? Speak your mind if you dare. Ain't I a bad lot, sonny? Say it, and call it square. Hain't got no tongue, hey, hev ye. O guard! here's a little swell, A cussin' and swearin' and yellin', and bribin' me not to tell. There, I thought that 'ud fetch ye. And you want to know my name? "Seventy-Nine" they call me; but that is their little game. For I'm werry highly connected, as a gent, sir, can understand; And my family hold their heads up with the very furst in the land. For 'twas all, sir, a put-up job on a pore young man like me; And the jury was bribed a puppos, and aftdrst they couldn't agree. And I sed to the judge, sez I,--Oh, grin! it's all right my son! But you're a werry lively young pup, and you ain't to be played upon! Wot's that you got--tobacco? I'm cussed but I thought 'twas a tract. Thank ye. A chap t'other day--now, look'ee, this is a fact, Slings me a tract on the evils o' keepin' bad company, As if all the saints was howlin' to stay here along's we. No: I hain't no complaints. Stop, yes; do you see that chap,-- Him standin' over there,--a hidin' his eves in his cap? Well, that man's stumick is weak, and he can't stand the pris'n fare; For the coffee is just half beans, and the sugar ain't no where. Perhaps it's his bringin' up; but he sickens day by day, And he doesn't take no food, and I'm seein' him waste away. And it isn't the thing to see; for, whatever he's been and done, Starvation isn't the plan as he's to be saved upon. For he cannot rough it like me; and he hasn't the stamps, I guess, To buy him his extry grub outside o' the pris'n mess. And perhaps if a gent like you, with whom I've been sorter free, Would--thank you! But, say, look here! Oh, blast it, don't give it to ME! Don't you give it to me; now, don't ye, don't ye, don't! You think it's a put-up job; so I'll thank ye, sir, if you won't. But hand him the stamps yourself: why, he isn't even my pal; And if it's a comfort to you, why, I don't intend that he shall. His Answer to "Her Letter." Reported by Truthful James. Being asked by an intimate party,-- Which the same I would term as a friend,-- Which his health it were vain to call hearty, Since the mind to deceit it might lend; For his arm it was broken quite recent, And has something gone wrong with his lung,-- Which is why it is proper and decent I should write what he runs off his tongue: First, he says, Miss, he's read through your letter To the end,--and the end came too soon; That a slight illness kept him your debtor (Which for weeks he was wild as a loon); That his spirits are buoyant as yours is; That with you, Miss, he challenges Fate (Which the language that invalid uses At times it were vain to relate). And he says that the mountains are fairer For once being held in your thought; That each rock holds a wealth that is rarer Than ever by gold-seeker sought (Which are words he would put in these pages, By a party not given to guile; Which the same not, at date, paying wages, Might produce in the sinful a smile). He remembers the ball at the Ferry, And the ride, and the gate, and the vow, And the rose that you gave him,--that very Same rose he is treasuring now (Which his blanket he's kicked on his trunk, Miss, And insists on his legs being free; And his language to me from his bunk, Miss, Is frequent and painful and free); He hopes you are wearing no willows, But are happy and gay all the while; That he knows (which this dodging of pillows Imparts but small ease to the style, And the same you will pardon),--he knows, Miss, That, though parted by many a mile, Yet were he lying under the snows, Miss, They'd melt into tears at your smile. And you'll still think of him in your pleasures, In your brief twilight dreams of the past; In this green laurel-spray that he treasures, It was plucked where your parting was last; In this specimen,--but a small trifle,-- It will do for a pin for your shawl (Which the truth not to wickedly stifle Was his last week's "clean up,"--and _his all_). He's asleep, which the same might seem strange, Miss, Were it not that I scorn to deny That I raised his last dose, for a change, Miss, In view that his fever was high; But he lies there quite peaceful and pensive. And now, my respects, Miss, to you; Which my language, although comprehensive, Might seem to be freedom,--it's true. Which I have a small favor to ask you, As concerns a bull-pup, which the same,-- If the duty would not overtask you,-- You would please to procure for me, _game_; And send per express to the Flat, Miss, Which they say York is famed for the breed, Which though words of deceit may be that, Miss, I'll trust to your taste, Miss, indeed. _P.S._--Which this same interfering Into other folks' way I despise; Yet if it so be I was hearing That it's just empty pockets as lies Betwixt you and Joseph, it follers, That, having no family claims, Here's my pile; which it's six hundred dollars, As is yours, with respects, Truthful James. Further Language from Truthful James. (Nye's Ford, Stanislaus.) (1870.) Do I sleep? do I dream? Do I wonder and doubt? Are things what they seem? Or is visions about? Is our civilization a failure? Or is the Caucasian played out? Which expressions are strong; Yet would feebly imply Some account of a wrong-- Not to call it a lie-- As was worked off on William, my pardner, And the same being W. Nye. He came down to the Ford On the very same day Of that lottery drawed By those sharps at the Bay; And he says to me, "Truthful, how goes it?" I replied, "It is far, far from gay; "For the camp has gone wild On this lottery game, And has even beguiled 'Injin Dick' by the same." Which said Nye to me, "Injins is pizen: Do you know what his number is, James?" I replied "7,2, 9,8,4, is his hand;" When he started, and drew Out a list, which he scanned; Then he softly went for his revolver With language I cannot command. Then I said, "William Nye!" But he turned upon me, And the look in his eye Was quite painful to see; And he says, "You mistake: this poor Injin I protects from such sharps as you be!" I was shocked and withdrew; But I grieve to relate, When he next met my view Injin Dick was his mate, And the two around town was a-lying In a frightfully dissolute state. Which the war-dance they had Round a tree at the Bend Was a sight that was sad; And it seemed that the end Would not justify the proceedings, As I quiet remarked to a friend. For that Injin he fled The next day to his band; And we found William spread Very loose on the strand, With a peaceful-like smile on his features, And a dollar greenback in his hand; Which, the same when rolled out, We observed with surprise, That that Injin, no doubt, Had believed was the prize,-- Them figures in red in the corner, Which the number of notes specifies. Was it guile, or a dream? Is it Nye that I doubt? Are things what they seem? Or is visions about? Is our civilization a failure? Or is the Caucasian played out? The Wonderful Spring of San Joaquin. Of all the fountains that poets sing,-- Crystal, thermal, or mineral spring; Ponce de Leon's Fount of Youth; Wells with bottoms of doubtful truth; In short, of all the springs of Time That ever were flowing in fact or rhyme, That ever were tasted, felt, or seen,-- There were none like the Spring of San Joaquin. _Anno Domini_ Eighteen-Seven, Father Dominguez (now in heaven,-- _Obiit_, Eighteen twenty-seven) Found the spring, and found it, too, By his mule's miraculous cast of a shoe; For his beast--a descendant of Balaam's ass-- Stopped on the instant, and would not pass. The Padre thought the omen good, And bent his lips to the trickling flood; Then--as the chronicles declare, On the honest faith of a true believer-- His cheeks, though wasted, lank, and bare, Filled like a withered russet-pear In the vacuum of a glass receiver, And the snows that seventy winters bring Melted away in that magic spring. Such, at least, was the wondrous news The Padre brought into Santa Cruz. The Church, of course, had its own views Of who were worthiest to use The magic spring; but the prior claim Fell to the aged, sick, and lame. Far and wide the people came: Some from the healthful Aptos creek Hastened to bring their helpless sick; Even the fishers of rude Soquel Suddenly found they were far from well; The brawny dwellers of San Lorenzo Said, in fact, they had never been so: And all were-ailing,--strange to say,-- From Pescadero to Monterey. Over the mountain they poured in With leathern bottles, and bags of skin; Through the cañons a motley throng Trotted, hobbled, and limped along. The fathers gazed at the moving scene With pious joy and with souls serene; And then--a result perhaps foreseen-- They laid out the Mission of San Joaquin. Not in the eyes of Faith alone The good effects of the waters shone; But skins grew rosy, eyes waxed clear, Of rough vacquero and muleteer; Angular forms were rounded out, Limbs grew supple, and waists grew stout; And as for the girls,--for miles about They had no equal! To this day, From Pescadero to Monterey, You'll still find eyes in which are seen The liquid graces of San Joaquin. There is a limit to human bliss, And the Mission of San Joaquin had this; None went abroad to roam or stay, But they fell sick in the queerest way,-- A singular _maladie du pays_, With gastric symptoms: so they spent Their days in a sensuous content; Caring little for things unseen Beyond their bowers of living green,-- Beyond the mountains that lay between The world and the Mission of San Joaquin. Winter passed, and the summer came: The trunks of _madroño_ all aflame, Here and there through the underwood Like pillars of fire starkly stood. All of the breezy solitude Was filled with the spicing of pine and bay And resinous odors mixed and blended, And dim and ghost-like far away The smoke of the burning woods ascended. Then of a sudden the mountains swam, The rivers piled their floods in a dam. The ridge above Los Gatos creek Arched its spine in a feline fashion; The forests waltzed till they grew sick, And Nature shook in a speechless passion; And, swallowed up in the earthquake's spleen, The wonderful Spring of San Joaquin Vanished, and never more was seen! Two days passed: the Mission folk Out of their rosy dream awoke. Some of them looked a trifle white; But that, no doubt, was from earthquake fright. Three days: there was sore distress, Headache, nausea, giddiness. Four days: faintings, tenderness Of the mouth and fauces; and in less Than one week,--here the story closes; We won't continue the prognosis,-- Enough that now no trace is seen Of Spring or Mission of San Joaquin. Moral. You see the point? Don't be too quick To break bad habits: better stick, Like the Mission folk, to your _arsenic_. On a Cone of the Big Trees. _Sequoia Gigantea_. Brown foundling of the Western wood, Babe of primeval wildernesses! Long on my table thou hast stood Encounters strange and rude caresses; Perchance contented with thy lot, Surroundings new and curious faces, As though ten centuries were not Imprisoned in thy shining cases! Thou bring'st me back the halcyon days Of grateful rest; the week of leisure, The journey lapped in autumn haze, The sweet fatigue that seemed a pleasure, The morning ride, the noonday halt, The blazing slopes, the red dust rising, And then--the dim, brown, columned vault, With its cool, damp, sepulchral spicing. Once more I see the rocking masts That scrape the sky, their only tenant The jay-bird that in frolic casts From some high yard his broad blue pennant. I see the Indian files that keep Their places in the dusty heather, Their red trunks standing ankle deep In moccasins of rusty leather. I see all this, and marvel much That thou, sweet woodland waif, art able To keep the company of such As throng thy friend's--the poet's--table: The latest spawn the press hath cast,-- The "modern Pope's," "the later Byron's,"-- Why e'en the best may not outlast Thy poor relation,--_Sempervirens_. Thy sire saw the light that shone On Mohammed's uplifted crescent, On many a royal gilded throne And deed forgotten in the present; He saw the age of sacred trees And Druid groves and mystic larches; And saw from forest domes like these The builder bring his Gothic arches. And must thou, foundling, still forego Thy heritage and high ambition, To lie full lowly and full low, Adjusted to thy new condition? Not hidden in the drifted snows, But under ink-drops idly spattered, And leaves ephemeral as those That on thy woodland tomb were scattered. Yet lie thou there, O friend! and speak The moral of thy simple story: Though life is all that thou dost seek, And age alone thy crown of glory,-- Not thine the only germs that fail The purpose of their high creation, If their poor tenements avail For worldly show and ostentation. A Sanitary Message. Last night, above the whistling wind, I heard the welcome rain,-- A fusillade upon the roof, A tattoo on the pane: The key-hole piped; the chimney-top A warlike trumpet blew; Yet, mingling with these sounds of strife, A softer voice stole through. "Give thanks, O brothers!" said the voice, "That He who sent the rains Hath spared your fields the scarlet dew That drips from patriot veins: I've seen the grass on Eastern graves In brighter verdure rise; But, oh! the rain that gave it life Sprang first from human eyes. "I come to wash away no stain Upon your wasted lea; I raise no banners, save the ones The forest wave to me: Upon the mountain side, where Spring Her farthest picket sets, My reveille awakes a host Of grassy bayonets. "I visit every humble roof; I mingle with the low: Only upon the highest peaks My blessings fall in snow; Until, in tricklings of the stream And drainings of the lea, My unspent bounty comes at last To mingle with the sea." And thus all night, above the wind, I heard the welcome rain,-- A fusillade upon the roof, A tattoo on the pane: The key-hole piped; the chimney-top A warlike trumpet blew; But, mingling with these sounds of strife, This hymn of peace stole through. The Copperhead. (1864.) There is peace in the swamp where the Copper head sleeps, Where the waters are stagnant, the white vapor creeps, Where the musk of Magnolia hangs thick in the air, And the lilies' phylacteries broaden in prayer; There is peace in the swamp, though the quiet is Death, Though the mist is miasm, the Upas tree's breath, Though no echo awakes to the cooing of doves,-- There is peace: yes, the peace that the Copperhead loves! Go seek him: he coils in the ooze and the drip Like a thong idly flung from the slave-driver's whip; But beware the false footstep,--the stumble that brings A deadlier lash than the overseer swings. Never arrow so true, never bullet so dread, As the straight steady stroke of that hammershaped head; Whether slave, or proud planter, who braves that dull crest, Woe to him who shall trouble the Copperhead's rest! Then why waste your labors, brave hearts and strong men, In tracking a trail to the Copperhead's den? Lay your axe to the cypress, hew open the shade To the free sky and sunshine Jehovah has made; Let the breeze of the North sweep the vapors away, Till the stagnant lake ripples, the freed waters play; And then to your heel can you righteously doom The Copperhead born of its shadow and gloom! On a Pen of Thomas Starr King. This is the reed the dead musician dropped, With tuneful magic in its sheath still hidden; The prompt allegro of its music stopped, Its melodies unbidden. But who shall finish the unfinished strain, Or wake the instrument to awe and wonder, And bid the slender barrel breathe again,-- An organ-pipe of thunder? His pen! what humbler memories cling about Its golden curves! what shapes and laughing graces Slipped from its point, when his full heart went out In smiles and courtly phrases! The truth, half jesting, half in earnest flung; The word of cheer, with recognition in it; The note of alms, whose golden speech outrung The golden gift within it. But all in vain the enchanter's wand we wave: No stroke of ours recalls his magic vision; The incantation that its power gave Sleeps with the dead magician. Lone Mountain. (Cemetery, San Francisco.) This is that hill of awe That Persian Sindbad saw,-- The mount magnetic; And on its seaward face, Scattered along its base, The wrecks prophetic. Here come the argosies Blown by each idle breeze, To and fro shifting; Yet to the hill of Fate All drawing, soon or late,-- Day by day drifting;-- Drifting forever here Barks that for many a year Braved wind and weather; Shallops but yesterday Launched on yon shining bay,-- Drawn all together. This is the end of all: Sun thyself by the wall, O poorer Hindbad! Envy not Sindbad's fame: Here come alike the same, Hindbad and Sindbad. California's Greeting to Seward. (1869.) We know him well: no need of praise Or bonfire from the windy hill To light to softer paths and ways The world-worn man we honor still; No need to quote those truths he spoke That burned through years of war and shame. While History carves with surer stroke Across our map his noon-day fame; No need to bid him show the scars Of blows dealt by the Scaean gate, Who lived to pass its shattered bars, And see the foe capitulate; Who lived to turn his slower feet Toward the western setting sun, To see his harvest all complete, His dream fulfilled, his duty done,-- The one flag streaming from the pole, The one faith borne from sea to sea,-- For such a triumph, and such goal, Poor must our human greeting be. Ah! rather that the conscious land In simpler ways salute the Man,-- The tall pines bowing where they stand, The bared head of El Capitan, The tumult of the waterfalls, Pohono's kerchief in the breeze, The waving from the rocky walls, The stir and rustle of the trees; Till lapped in sunset skies of hope, In sunset lands by sunset seas, The Young World's Premier treads the slope Of sunset years in calm and peace. The Two Ships. As I stand by the cross on the lone mountain's crest, Looking over the ultimate sea, In the gloom of the mountain a ship lies at rest, And one sails away from the lea: One spreads its white wings on a far-reaching track, With pennant and sheet flowing free; One hides in the shadow with sails laid aback,-- The ship that is waiting for me! But lo, in the distance the clouds break away! The Gate's glowing portals I see; And I hear from the outgoing ship in the bay The song of the sailors in glee: So I think of the luminous footprints that bore The comfort o'er dark Galilee, And wait for the signal to go to the shore, To the ship that is waiting for me. The Goddess. For the Sanitary Fair. "Who comes?" The sentry's warning cry Rings sharply on the evening air: Who comes? The challenge: no reply, Yet something motions there. A woman, by those graceful folds; A soldier, by that martial tread: "Advance three paces. Halt! until Thy name and rank be said." "My name? Her name, in ancient song, Who fearless from Olympus came: Look on me! Mortals know me best In battle and in flame." "Enough! I know that clarion voice; I know that gleaming eye and helm; Those crimson lips,--and in their dew The best blood of the realm. "The young, the brave, the good and wise, Have fallen in thy curst embrace: The juices of the grapes of wrath Still stain thy guilty face. "My brother lies in yonder field, Face downward to the quiet grass: Go back! he cannot see thee now; But here thou shalt not pass." A crack upon the evening air, A wakened echo from the hill: The watch-dog on the distant shore Gives mouth, and all is still. The sentry with his brother lies Face downward on the quiet grass; And by him, in the pale moonshine, A shadow seems to pass. No lance or warlike shield it bears: A helmet in its pitying hands Brings water from the nearest brook, To meet his last demands. Can this be she of haughty mien, The goddess of the sword and shield? Ah, yes! The Grecian poet's myth Sways still each battle-field. For not alone that rugged war Some grace or charm from beauty gains; But, when the goddess' work is done, The woman's still remains. Address. Opening of the California Theatre, San Francisco, Jan. 19, 1870 Brief words, when actions wait, are well The prompter's hand is on his bell; The coming heroes, lovers, kings, Are idly lounging at the wings; Behind the curtain's mystic fold The glowing future lies unrolled,-- And yet, one moment for the Past; One retrospect,--the first and last. "The world's a stage," the master said. To-night a mightier truth is read: Not in the shifting canvas screen, The flash of gas, or tinsel sheen; Not in the skill whose signal calls From empty boards baronial halls; But, fronting sea and curving bay, Behold the players and the play. Ah, friends! beneath your real skies The actor's short-lived triumph dies: On that broad stage, of empire won Whose footlights were the setting sun, Whose flats a distant background rose In trackless peaks of endless snows; Here genius bows, and talent waits To copy that but One creates. Your shifting scenes: the league of sand, An avenue by ocean spanned; The narrow beach of straggling tents, A mile of stately monuments; Your standard, lo! a flag unfurled, Whose clinging folds clasp half the world,-- This is your drama, built on facts, With "twenty years between the acts." One moment more: if here we raise The oft-sung hymn of local praise, Before the curtain facts must sway; _Here_ waits the moral of your play. Glassed in the poet's thought, you view What _money_ can, yet cannot do; The faith that soars, the deeds that shine, Above the gold that builds the shrine. And oh! when others take our place, And Earth's green curtain hides our face, Ere on the stage, so silent now, The last new hero makes his bow: So may our deeds, recalled once more In Memory's sweet but brief encore, Down all the circling ages run, With the world's plaudit of "Well done!" The Lost Galleon. In sixteen hundred and forty-one, The regular yearly galleon, Laden with odorous gums and spice, India cottons and India rice, And the richest silks of far Cathay, Was due at Acapulco Bay. Due she was, and over-due,-- Galleon, merchandise, and crew, Creeping along through rain and shine, Through the tropics, under the line. The trains were waiting outside the walls, The wives of sailors thronged the town, The traders sat by their empty stalls, And the viceroy himself came down; The bells in the tower were all a-trip, _Te Deums_ were on each father's lip, The limes were ripening in the sun For the sick of the coming galleon. All in vain. Weeks passed away, And yet no galleon saw the bay: India goods advanced in price; The governor missed his favorite spice; The señoritas mourned for sandal, And the famous cottons of Coromandel; And some for an absent lover lost, And one for a husband,--Donna Julia, Wife of the captain, tempest-tossed, In circumstances so peculiar: Even the fathers, unawares, Grumbled a little at their prayers; And all along the coast that year Votive candles were scarce and dear. Never a tear bedims the eye That time and patience will not dry; Never a lip is curved with pain That can't be kissed into smiles again: And these same truths, as far as I know, Obtained on the coast of Mexico More than two hundred years ago, In sixteen hundred and fifty-one,-- Ten years after the deed was done,-- And folks had forgotten the galleon: The divers plunged in the Gulf for pearls, White as the teeth of the Indian girls; The traders sat by their full bazaars; The mules with many a weary load, And oxen, dragging their creaking cars, Came and went on the mountain road. Where was the galleon all this while: Wrecked on some lonely coral isle? Burnt by the roving sea-marauders, Or sailing north under secret orders? Had she found the Anian passage famed, By lying Moldonado claimed, And sailed through the sixty-fifth degree Direct to the North Atlantic sea? Or had she found the "River of Kings," Of which De Fonté told such strange things In sixteen forty? Never a sign, East or West or under the line, They saw of the missing galleon; Never a sail or plank or chip, They found of the long-lost treasure-ship, Or enough to build a tale upon. But when she was lost, and where and how, Are the facts we're coming to just now. Take, if you please, the chart of that day Published at Madrid,--_por el Rey_; Look for a spot in the old South Sea, The hundred and eightieth degree Longitude, west of Madrid: there, Under the equatorial glare, Just where the East and West are one, You'll find the missing galleon,-- You'll find the "San Gregorio," yet Riding the seas, with sails all set, Fresh as upon the very day She sailed from Acapulco Bay. How did she get there? What strange spell Kept her two hundred years so well, Free from decay and mortal taint? What? but the prayers of a patron saint! A hundred leagues from Manilla town, The "San Gregorio's" helm came down; Round she went on her heel, and not A cable's length from a galliot That rocked on the waters, just abreast Of the galleon's course, which was west-sou-west. Then said the galleon's commandante, General Pedro Sobriente (That was his rank on land and main, A regular custom of Old Spain), "My pilot is dead of scurvy: may I ask the longitude, time, and day?" The first two given and compared; The third,--the commandante stared! "The _first_ of June? I make it second." Said the stranger, "Then you've wrongly-reckoned; I make it _first_: as you came this way, You should have lost--d'ye see--a day; Lost a day, as plainly see, On the hundred and eightieth degree." "Lost a day?" "Yes: if not rude, When did you make east longitude?" "On the ninth of May,--our patron's day." "On the ninth?--_you had no ninth of May!_ Eighth and tenth was there; but stay"-- Too late; for the galleon bore away. Lost was the day they should have kept, Lost unheeded and lost unwept; Lost in a way that made search vain, Lost in the trackless and boundless main; Lost like the day of Job's awful curse, In his third chapter, third and fourth verse; Wrecked was their patron's only day,-- What would the holy fathers say? Said the Fray Antonio Estavan, The galleon's chaplain,--a learned man,-- "Nothing is lost that you can regain: And the way to look for a thing is plain To go where you lost it, back again. Back with your galleon till you see The hundred and eightieth degree. Wait till the rolling year goes round, And there will the missing day be found; For you'll find--if computation's true-- That sailing _east_ will give to you Not only one ninth of May, but two,-- One for the good saint's present cheer, And one for the day we lost last year." Back to the spot sailed the galleon; Where, for a twelve-month, off and on The hundred and eightieth degree, She rose and fell on a tropic sea: But lo! when it came to the ninth of May, All of a sudden becalmed she lay One degree from that fatal spot, Without the power to move a knot; And of course the moment she lost her way, Gone was her chance to save that day. To cut a lengthening story short, She never saved it. Made the sport Of evil spirits and baffling wind, She was always before or just behind, One day too soon, or one day too late, And the sun, meanwhile, would never wait: She had two eighths, as she idly lay, Two tenths, but never a _ninth_ of May; And there she rides through two hundred years Of dreary penance and anxious fears: Yet through the grace of the saint she served, Captain and crew are still preserved. By a computation that still holds good, Made by the Holy Brotherhood, The "San Gregorio" will cross that line In nineteen hundred and thirty-nine: Just three hundred years to a day From the time she lost the ninth of May. And the folk in Acapulco town, Over the waters, looking down, Will see in the glow of the setting sun The sails of the missing galleon, And the royal standard of Philip _Rey_; The gleaming mast and glistening spar, As she nears the surf of the outer bar. A _Te Deum_ sung on her crowded deck, An odor of spice along the shore, A crash, a cry from a shattered wreck,-- And the yearly galleon sails no more, In or out of the olden bay; For the blessed patron has found his day. * * * * * Such is the legend. Hear this truth: Over the trackless past, somewhere, Lie the lost days of our tropic youth, Only regained by faith and prayer, Only recalled by prayer and plaint: Each lost day has its patron saint! A Second Review of the Grand Army. I read last night of the Grand Review In Washington's chiefest avenue,-- Two Hundred Thousand men in blue, I think they said was the number,-- Till I seemed to hear their trampling feet, The bugle blast and the drum's quick beat, The clatter of hoofs in the stony street, The cheers of people who came to greet, And the thousand details that to repeat Would only my verse encumber,-- Till I fell in a reverie, sad and sweet, And then to a fitful slumber. When, lo! in a vision I seemed to stand In the lonely Capitol. On each hand Far stretched the portico, dim and grand Its columns ranged like a martial band Of sheeted spectres, whom some command Had called to a last reviewing. And the streets of the city were white and bare; No footfall echoed across the square; But out of the misty midnight air I heard in the distance a trumpet blare, And the wandering night-winds seemed to bear The sound of a far tattooing. Then I held my breath with fear and dread; For into the square, with a brazen tread, There rode a figure whose stately head O'erlooked the review that morning, That never bowed from its firm-set seat When the living column passed its feet, Yet now rode steadily up the street To the phantom bugle's warning: Till it reached the Capitol square, and wheeled, And there in the moonlight stood revealed A well-known form that in State and field Had led our patriot sires; Whose face was turned to the sleeping camp, Afar through the river's fog and damp, That showed no flicker, nor waning lamp, Nor wasted bivouac fires. And I saw a phantom army come, With never a sound of fife or drum, But keeping time to a throbbing hum Of wailing and lamentation: The martyred heroes of Malvern Hill, Of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville, The men whose wasted figures fill The patriot graves of the nation. And there came the nameless dead,--the men Who perished in fever swamp and fen, The slowly-starved of the prison-pen; And, marching beside the others, Came the dusky martyrs of Pillow's fight, With limbs enfranchised and bearing bright; I thought--perhaps 'twas the pale moonlight-- They looked as white as their brothers! And so all night marched the Nation's dead With never a banner above them spread, Nor a badge, nor a motto brandished; No mark--save the bare uncovered head Of the silent bronze Reviewer; With never an arch save the vaulted sky; With never a flower save those that lie On the distant graves--for love could buy No gift that was purer or truer. So all night long swept the strange array, So all night long till the morning gray I watched for one who had passed away, With a reverent awe and wonder,-- Till a blue cap waved in the lengthening line, And I knew that one who was kin of mine Had come; and I spake--and lo! that sign Awakened me from my slumber. Part II. Before the Curtain. Behind the footlights hangs the rusty baize, A trifle shabby in the upturned blaze Of flaring gas, and curious eyes that gaze. The stage, methinks, perhaps is none too wide, And hardly fit for royal Richard's stride, Or Falstaff's bulk, or Denmark's youthful pride. Ah, well! no passion walks its humble boards; O'er it no king nor valiant Hector lords: The simplest skill is all its space affords. The song and jest, the dance and trifling play, The local hit at follies of the day, The trick to pass an idle hour away,-- For these, no trumpets that announce the Moor, No blast that makes the hero's welcome sure,-- A single fiddle in the overture! The Stage-Driver's Story. It was the stage-driver's story, as he stood with his back to the wheelers, Quietly flecking his whip, and turning his quid of tobacco; While on the dusty road, and blent with the rays of the moonlight, We saw the long curl of his lash and the juice of tobacco descending. "Danger! Sir, I believe you,--indeed, I may say on that subject, You your existence might put to the hazard and turn of a wager. I have seen danger? Oh, no! not me, sir, indeed, I assure you: 'Twas only the man with the dog that is sitting alone in yon wagon. It was the Geiger Grade, a mile and a half from the summit: Black as your hat was the night, and never a star in the heavens. Thundering down the grade, the gravel and stones we sent flying Over the precipice side,--a thousand feet plumb to the bottom. Half-way down the grade I felt, sir, a thrilling and creaking, Then a lurch to one side, as we hung on the bank of the cañon; Then, looking up the road, I saw, in the distance behind me, The off hind wheel of the coach just loosed from its axle, and following. One glance alone I gave, then gathered together my ribbons, Shouted, and flung them, outspread, on the straining necks of my cattle; Screamed at the top of my voice, and lashed the air in my frenzy, While down the Geiger Grade, on _three_ wheels, the vehicle thundered. Speed was our only chance, when again came the ominous rattle: Crack, and another wheel slipped away, and was lost in the darkness. _Two_ only now were left; yet such was our fearful momentum, Upright, erect, and sustained on _two_ wheels, the vehicle thundered. As some huge boulder, unloosed from its rocky shelf on the mountain, Drives before it the hare and the timorous squirrel, far-leaping, So down the Geiger Grade rushed the Pioneer coach, and before it Leaped the wild horses, and shrieked in advance of the danger impending. But to be brief in my tale. Again, ere we came to the level, Slipped from its axle a wheel; so that, to be plain in my statement, A matter of twelve hundred yards or more, as the distance may be, We travelled upon _one_ wheel, until we drove up to the station. Then, sir, we sank in a heap; but, picking myself from the ruins, I heard a noise up the grade; and looking, I saw in the distance The three wheels following still, like moons on the horizon whirling, Till, circling, they gracefully sank on the road at the side of the station. This is my story, sir; a trifle, indeed, I assure you. Much more, perchance, might be said; but I hold him, of all men, most lightly Who swerves from the truth in his tale--No, thank you--Well, since you _are_ pressing, Perhaps I don't care if I do: you may give me the same, Jim,--no sugar." Aspiring Miss de Laine. A Chemical Narrative. Certain facts which serve to explain The physical charms of Miss Addie De Laine, Who, as the common reports obtain, Surpassed in complexion the lily and rose; With a very sweet mouth and a _retroussé_ nose; A figure like Hebe's, or that which revolves In a milliner's window, and partially solves That question which mentor and moralist pains, If grace may exist _minus_ feeling or brains. Of course the young lady had beaux by the score, All that she wanted,--what girl could ask more? Lovers that sighed, and lovers that swore, Lovers that danced, and lovers that played, Men of profession, of leisure, and trade; But one, who was destined to take the high part Of holding that mythical treasure, her heart,-- This lover--the wonder and envy of town-- Was a practising chemist,--a fellow called Brown. I might here remark that 'twas doubted by many, In regard to the heart, if Miss Addie had any; But no one could look in that eloquent face, With its exquisite outline, and features of grace, And mark, through the transparent skin, how the tide Ebbed and flowed at the impulse of passion or pride,-- None could look, who believed in the blood's circulation As argued by Harvey, but saw confirmation, That here, at least, Nature had triumphed o'er art, And, as far as complexion went, she had a heart. But this, _par parenthesis_. Brown was the man Preferred of all others to carry her fan, Hook her glove, drape her shawl, and do all that a belle May demand of the lover she wants to treat well. Folks wondered and stared that a fellow called Brown-- Abstracted and solemn, in manner a clown, Ill dressed, with a lingering smell of the shop-- Should appear as her escort at party or hop. Some swore he had cooked up some villanous charm, Or love philter, not in the regular Pharm-- Acopea, and thus, from pure _malis prepense_, Had bewitched and bamboozled the young lady's sense; Others thought, with more reason, the secret to lie In a magical wash or indelible dye; While Society, with its censorious eye And judgment impartial, stood ready to damn What wasn't improper as being a sham. For a fortnight the townfolk had all been agog With a party, the finest the season had seen, To be given in honor of Miss Pollywog, Who was just coming out as a belle of sixteen. The guests were invited: but one night before, A carriage drew up at the modest back-door Of Brown's lab'ratory; and, full in the glare Of a big purple bottle, some closely-veiled fair Alighted and entered: to make matters plain, Spite of veils and disguises,--'twas Addie De Laine. As a bower for true love, 'twas hardly the one That a lady would choose to be wooed in or won: No odor of rose or sweet jessamine's sigh Breathed a fragrance to hallow their pledge of troth by, Nor the balm that exhales from the odorous thyme; But the gaseous effusions of chloride of lime, And salts, which your chemist delights to explain As the base of the smell of the rose and the drain. Think of this, O ye lovers of sweetness! and know What you smell, when you snuff up Lubin or Pinaud. I pass by the greetings, the transports and bliss, Which, of course, duly followed a meeting like this, And come down to business;--for such the intent Of the lady who now o'er the crucible leant, In the glow of a furnace of carbon and lime, Like a fairy called up in the new pantomime;-- And give but her words as she coyly looked down, In reply to the questioning glances of Brown: "I am taking the drops, and am using the paste, And the little, white powders that had a sweet taste, Which you told me would brighten the glance of my eye, And the depilatory, and also the dye, And I'm charmed with the trial; and now, my dear Brown, I have one other favor,--now, ducky, don't frown,-- Only one, for a chemist and genius like you But a trifle, and one you can easily do. Now listen: tomorrow, you know, is the night Of the birthday _soiree_ of that Pollywog fright; And I'm to be there, and the dress I shall wear Is _too_ lovely; but"--"But what then, _ma chere_?" Said Brown, as the lady came to a full stop, And glanced round the shelves of the little back shop. "Well, I want--I want something to fill out the skirt To the proper dimension, without being girt In a stiff crinoline, or caged in a hoop That shows through one's skirt like the bars of a coop; Something light, that a lady may waltz in, or polk, With a freedom that none but you masculine folk Ever know. For, however poor woman aspires, She's always bound down to the earth by these wires. Are you listening? nonsense! don't stare like a spoon, Idiotic; some light thing, and spacious, and soon-- Something like--well, in fact--something like a balloon!" Here she paused; and here Brown, overcome by surprise, Gave a doubting assent with still wondering eyes, And the lady departed. But just at the door Something happened,--'tis true, it had happened before In this sanctum of science,--a sibilant sound, Like some element just from its trammels unbound, Or two substances that their affinities found. The night of the anxiously looked-for _soirée_ Had come, with its fair ones in gorgeous array; With the rattle of wheels, and the tinkle of bells, And the "How do ye dos," and the "Hope you are wells;" And the crash in the passage, and last lingering look You give as you hang your best hat on the hook; The rush of hot air as the door opens wide; And your entry,--that blending of self-possessed pride And humility shown in your perfect-bred stare At the folk, as if wondering how they got there; With other tricks worthy of Vanity Fair. Meanwhile that safe topic, the heat of the room, Already was losing its freshness and bloom; Young people were yawning, and wondering when The dance would come off, and why didn't it then: When a vague expectation was thrilling the crowd, Lo, the door swung its hinges with utterance proud! And Pompey announced, with a trumpet-like strain, The entrance of Brown and Miss Addie De Laine. She entered: but oh, how imperfect the verb To express to the senses her movement superb! To say that she "sailed in" more clearly might tell Her grace in its buoyant and billowy swell. Her robe was a vague circumambient space, With shadowy boundaries made of point-lace. The rest was but guess-work, and well might defy The power of critical feminine eye To define or describe: 'twere as futile to try The gossamer web of the cirrus to trace, Floating far in the blue of a warm summer sky. 'Midst the humming of praises and the glances of beaux, That greet our fair maiden wherever she goes, Brown slipped like a shadow, grim, silent, and black, With a look of anxiety, close in her track. Once he whispered aside in her delicate ear, A sentence of warning,--it might be of fear: "Don't stand in a draught, if you value your life." (Nothing more,--such advice might be given your wife Or your sweetheart, in times of bronchitis and cough, Without mystery, romance, or frivolous scoff.) But hark to the music: the dance has begun. The closely-draped windows wide open are flung; The notes of the piccolo, joyous and light, Like bubbles burst forth on the warm summer night. Round about go the dancers; in circles they fly; Trip, trip, go their feet as their skirts eddy by; And swifter and lighter, but somewhat too plain, Whisks the fair circumvolving Miss Addie De Laine. Taglioni and Cerito well might have pined For the vigor and ease that her movements combined; E'en Rigelboche never flung higher her robe In the naughtiest city that's known on the globe. 'Twas amazing, 'twas scandalous: lost in surprise, Some opened their mouths, and a few shut their eyes. But hark! At the moment Miss Addie De Laine, Circling round at the outer edge of an ellipse, Which brought her fair form to the window again, From the arms of her partner incautiously slips! And a shriek fills the air, and the music is still, And the crowd gather round where her partner forlorn Still frenziedly points from the wide window-sill Into space and the night; for Miss Addie was gone! Gone like the bubble that bursts in the sun; Gone like the grain when the reaper is done; Gone like the dew on the fresh morning grass; Gone without parting farewell; and alas! Gone with a flavor of Hydrogen Gas. When the weather is pleasant, you frequently meet A white-headed man slowly pacing the street; His trembling hand shading his lack-lustre eye, Half blind with continually scanning the sky. Rumor points him as some astronomical sage, Reperusing by day the celestial page; But the reader, sagacious, will recognize Brown, Trying vainly to conjure his lost sweetheart down, And learn the stern moral this story must teach, That Genius may lift its love out of its reach. California Madrigal. On the Approach of Spring. Oh come, my beloved! from thy winter abode, From thy home on the Yuba, thy ranch overflowed; For the waters have fallen, the winter has fled, And the river once more has returned to its bed. Oh, mark how the spring in its beauty is near! How the fences and tules once more re-appear! How soft lies the mud on the banks of yon slough By the hole in the levee the waters broke through! All Nature, dear Chloris, is blooming to greet The glance of your eye, and the tread of your feet; For the trails are all open, the roads are all free, And the highwayman's whistle is heard on the lea. Again swings the lash on the high mountain trail, And the pipe of the packer is scenting the gale; The oath and the jest ringing high o'er the plain, Where the smut is not always confined to the grain. Once more glares the sunlight on awning and roof, Once more the red clay's pulverized by the hoof, Once more the dust powders the "outsides" with red, Once more at the station the whiskey is spread. Then fly with me, love, ere the summer's begun, And the mercury mounts to one hundred and one; Ere the grass now so green shall be withered and sear, In the spring that obtains but one month in the year. St. Thomas. A Geographical Survey. (1868.) Very fair and full of promise Lay the island of St. Thomas: Ocean o'er its reefs and bars Hid its elemental scars; Groves of cocoanut and guava Grew above its fields of lava. So the gem of the Antilles,-- "Isles of Eden," where no ill is,-- Like a great green turtle slumbered On the sea that it encumbered. Then said William Henry Seward, As he cast his eye to leeward, "Quite important to our commerce Is this island of St. Thomas." Said the Mountain ranges, "Thank'ee, But we cannot stand the Yankee O'er our scars and fissures poring, In our very vitals boring, In our sacred caverns prying, All our secret problems trying,-- Digging, blasting, with dynamit Mocking all our thunders! Damn it! Other lands may be more civil, Bust our lava crust if we will." Said the Sea,--its white teeth gnashing Through its coral-reef lips flashing,-- "Shall I let this scheming mortal Shut with stone my shining portal, Curb my tide, and check my play, Fence with wharves my shining bay? Rather let me be drawn out In one awful water-spout!" Said the black-browed Hurricane, Brooding down the Spanish main, "Shall I see my forces, zounds! Measured by square inch and pounds, With detectives at my back When I double on my track, And my secret paths made clear, Published o'er the hemisphere To each gaping, prying crew? Shall I? Blow me if I do!" So the Mountains shook and thundered, And the Hurricane came sweeping, And the people stared and wondered As the Sea came on them leaping: Each, according to his promise, Made things lively at St. Thomas. Till one morn, when Mr. Seward Cast his weather eye to leeward, There was not an inch of dry land Left to mark his recent island. Not a flagstaff or a sentry, Not a wharf or port of entry,-- Only--to cut matters shorter-- Just a patch of muddy water In the open ocean lying, And a gull above it flying. The Ballad of Mr. Cooke. A Legend of the Cliff House, San Francisco. Where the sturdy ocean breeze Drives the spray of roaring seas That the Cliff-House balconies Overlook: There, in spite of rain that balked, With his sandals duly chalked, Once upon a tight-rope walked Mr. Cooke. But the jester's lightsome mien, And his spangles and his sheen, All had vanished, when the scene He forsook;---- Yet in some delusive hope, In some vague desire to cope, One still came to view the rope Walked by Cooke. Amid Beauty's bright array, On that strange eventful day, Partly hidden from the spray, In a nook, Stood Florinda Vere de Vere; Who with wind-dishevelled hair, And a rapt, distracted air, Gazed on Cooke. Then she turned, and quickly cried To her lover at her side, While her form with love and pride Wildly shook, "Clifford Snook! oh, hear me now! Here I break each plighted vow: There's but one to whom I bow, And that's Cooke!" Haughtily that young man spoke: "I descend from noble folk. 'Seven Oaks,' and then 'Se'nnoak,' Lastly Snook, Is the way my name I trace: Shall a youth of noble race In affairs of love give place To a Cooke?" "Clifford Snook, I know thy claim To that lineage and name, And I think I've read the same In Horne Tooke; But I swear, by all divine, Never, never to be thine, 'Till thou canst upon yon line Walk like Cooke." Though to that gymnastic feat He no closer might compete Than to strike a _balance_-sheet In a book; Yet thenceforward, from that day, He his figure would display In some wild athletic way, After Cooke. On some household eminence, On a clothes-line or a fence, Over ditches, drains, and thence O'er a brook, He, by high ambition led, Ever walked and balanced; Till the people, wondering, said, "How like Cooke!" Step by step did he proceed, Nerved by valor, not by greed, And at last the crowning deed Undertook: Misty was the midnight air, And the cliff was bleak and bare, When he came to do and dare Just like Cooke. Through the darkness, o'er the flow, Stretched the line where he should go Straight across, as flies the crow Or the rook: One wild glance around he cast; Then he faced the ocean blast, And he strode the cable last Touched by Cooke. Vainly roared the angry seas; Vainly blew the ocean breeze; But, alas! the walker's knees Had a crook; And before he reached the rock Did they both together knock, And he stumbled with a shock-- Unlike Cooke! Downward dropping in the dark, Like an arrow to its mark, Or a fish-pole when a shark Bites the hook, Dropped the pole he could not save, Dropped the walker, and the wave Swift ingulfed the rival brave Of J. Cooke! Came a roar across the sea Of sea-lions in their glee, In a tongue remarkably Like Chinnook; And the maddened sea-gull seemed Still to utter, as he screamed, "Perish thus the wretch who deemed Himself Cooke!" But, on misty moonlit nights, Comes a skeleton in tights, Walks once more the giddy heights He mistook; And unseen to mortal eyes, Purged of grosser earthly ties, Now at last in spirit guise Outdoes Cooke. Still the sturdy ocean breeze Sweeps the spray of roaring seas, Where the Cliff-House balconies Overlook; And the maidens in their prime, Reading of this mournful rhyme, Weep where, in the olden time, Walked J. Cooke. The Legends of the Rhine. Beetling walls with ivy grown, Frowning heights of mossy stone; Turret, with its flaunting flag Flung from battlemented crag; Dungeon-keep and fortalice Looking down a precipice O'er the darkly glancing wave By the Lurline-haunted cave; Robber haunt and maiden bower, Home of Love and Crime and Power,-- That's the scenery, in fine, Of the Legends of the Rhine. One bold baron, double-dyed Bigamist and parricide, And, as most the stories run, Partner of the Evil One; Injured innocence in white, Fair but idiotic quite, Wringing of her lily hands; Valor fresh from Paynim lands, Abbot ruddy, hermit pale, Minstrel fraught with many a tale,-- Are the actors that combine In the Legends of the Rhine. Bell-mouthed flagons round a board; Suits of armor, shield, and sword; Kerchief with its bloody stain; Ghosts of the untimely slain; Thunder-clap and clanking chain; Headsman's block and shining axe; Thumbscrews, crucifixes, racks; Midnight-tolling chapel bell, Heard across the gloomy fell,-- These, and other pleasant facts, Are the properties that shine In the Legends of the Rhine. Maledictions, whispered vows Underneath the linden boughs; Murder, bigamy, and theft; Travellers of goods bereft; Rapine, pillage, arson, spoil,-- Every thing but honest toil, Are the deeds that best define Every Legend of the Rhine. That Virtue always meets reward, But quicker when it wears a sword; That Providence has special care Of gallant knight and lady fair; That villains, as a thing of course, Are always haunted by remorse,-- Is the moral, I opine, Of the Legends of the Rhine. Mrs. Judge Jenkins. [Being the Only Genuine Sequel to "Maud Muller."] Maud Muller, all that summer day, Raked the meadow sweet with hay; Yet, looking down the distant lane, She hoped the judge would come again. But when he came, with smile and bow, Maud only blushed, and stammered, "Ha-ow?" And spoke of her "pa," and wondered whether He'd give consent they should wed together. Old Muller burst in tears, and then Begged that the judge would lend him "ten;" For trade was dull, and wages low, And the "craps," this year, were somewhat slow. And ere the languid summer died, Sweet Maud became the judge's bride. But, on the day that they were mated, Maud's brother Bob was intoxicated; And Maud's relations, twelve in all, Were very drunk at the judge's hall. And when the summer came again, The young bride bore him babies twain. And the judge was blest, but thought it strange That bearing children made such a change: For Maud grew broad and red and stout; And the waist that his arm once clasped about Was more than he now could span. And he Sighed as he pondered, ruefully, How that which in Maud was native grace In Mrs. Jenkins was out of place; And thought of the twins, and wished that they Looked less like the man who raked the hay On Muller's farm, and dreamed with pain Of the day he wandered down the lane. And, looking down that dreary track, He half regretted that he came back. For, had he waited, he might have wed Some maiden fair and thoroughbred; For there be women fair as she, Whose verbs and nouns do more agree. Alas for maiden! alas for judge! And the sentimental,--that's one-half "fudge;" For Maud soon thought the judge a bore, With all his learning and all his lore. And the judge would have bartered Maud's fair face For more refinement and social grace. If, of all words of tongue and pen, The saddest are, "It might have been," More sad are these we daily see: "It is, but hadn't ought to be." Avitor. An Aerial Retrospect. What was it filled my youthful dreams, In place of Greek or Latin themes, Or beauty's wild, bewildering beams? Avitor? What visions and celestial scenes I filled with aerial machines,-- Montgolfier's and Mr. Green's! Avitor. What fairy tales seemed things of course! The rock that brought Sindbad across, The Calendar's own winged-horse! Avitor! How many things I took for facts,-- Icarus and his conduct lax, And how he sealed his fate with wax! Avitor! The first balloons I sought to sail, Soap-bubbles fair, but all too frail, Or kites,--but thereby hangs a tail. Avitor! What made me launch from attic tall A kitten and a parasol, And watch their bitter, frightful fall? Avitor? What youthful dreams of high renown Bade me inflate the parson's gown, That went not up, nor yet came down? Avitor? My first ascent, I may not tell: Enough to know that in that well My first high aspirations fell, Avitor! My other failures let me pass: The dire explosions; and, alas! The friends I choked with noxious gas, Avitor! For lo! I see perfected rise The vision of my boyish eyes, The messenger of upper skies, Avitor! A White-Pine Ballad. Recently with Samuel Johnson this occasion I improved, Whereby certain gents of affluence I hear were greatly moved; But not all of Johnson's folly, although multiplied by nine, Could compare with Milton Perkins, late an owner in White Pine. Johnson's folly--to be candid--was a wild desire to treat Every able male white citizen he met upon the street; And there being several thousand--but this subject why pursue? 'Tis with Perkins, and not Johnson, that to-day we have to do. No: not wild promiscuous treating, not the winecup's ruby flow, But the female of his species brought the noble Perkins low. 'Twas a wild poetic fervor, and excess of sentiment, That left the noble Perkins in a week without a cent. "Milton Perkins," said the Siren, "not thy wealth do I admire, But the intellect that flashes from those eyes of opal fire; And methinks the name thou bearest surely cannot be misplaced, And, embrace me, Mister Perkins!" Milton Perkins her embraced. But I grieve to state, that even then, as she was wiping dry The tear of sensibility in Milton Perkins' eye, She prigged his diamond bosom-pin, and that her wipe of lace Did seem to have of chloroform a most suspicious trace. Enough that Milton Perkins later in the night was found With his head in an ash-barrel, and his feet upon the ground; And he murmured "Seraphina," and he kissed his hand, and smiled On a party who went through him, like an unresisting child. Moral. Now one word to Pogonippers, ere this subject I resign, In this tale of Milton Perkins,--late an owner in White Pine,-- You shall see that wealth and women are deceitful, just the same; And the tear of sensibility has salted many a claim. What the Wolf Really Said to Little Red Riding-Hood. Wondering maiden, so puzzled and fair, Why dost thou murmur and ponder and stare? "Why are my eyelids so open and wild?"-- Only the better to see with, my child! Only the better and clearer to view Cheeks that are rosy, and eyes that are blue. Dost thou still wonder, and ask why these arms Fill thy soft bosom with tender alarms, Swaying so wickedly?--are they misplaced, Clasping or shielding some delicate waist: Hands whose coarse sinews may fill you with fear Only the better protect you, my dear! Little Red Riding-Hood, when in the street, Why do I press your small hand when we meet? Why, when you timidly offered your cheek, Why did I sigh, and why didn't I speak? Why, well: you see--if the truth must appear-- I'm not your grandmother, Riding-Hood, dear! The Ritualist. By a Communicant of "St. James's." He wore, I think, a chasuble, the day when first we met; A stole and snowy alb likewise: I recollect it yet. He called me "daughter," as he raised his jewelled hand to bless; And then, in thrilling undertones, he asked, "Would I confess?" O mother, dear! blame not your child, if then on bended knees I dropped, and thought of Abelard, and also Eloise; Or when, beside the altar high, he bowed before the pyx, I envied that seraphic kiss he gave the crucifix. The cruel world may think it wrong, perhaps may deem me weak, And, speaking of that sainted man, may call his conduct "cheek;" And, like that wicked barrister whom Cousin Harry quotes, May term his mixèd chalice "grog," his vestments, "petticoats." But, whatsoe'er they do or say, I'll build a Christian's hope On incense and on altar-lights, on chasuble and cope. Let others prove, by precedent, the faith that they profess: "His can't be wrong" that's symbolized by such becoming dress. A Moral Vindicator. If Mr. Jones, Lycurgus B., Had one peculiar quality, 'Twas his severe advocacy Of conjugal fidelity. His views of heaven were very free; His views of life were painfully Ridiculous; but fervently He dwelt on marriage sanctity. He frequently went on a spree; But in his wildest revelry, On this especial subject he Betrayed no ambiguity. And though at times Lycurgus B. Did lay his hands not lovingly Upon his wife, the sanctity Of wedlock was his guaranty. But Mrs. Jones declined to see Affairs in the same light as he, And quietly got a decree Divorcing her from that L. B. And what did Jones, Lycurgus B., With his known idiosyncrasy? He smiled,--a bitter smile to see,-- And drew the weapon of Bowie. He did what Sickles did to Key,-- What Cole on Hiscock wrought, did he; In fact, on persons twenty-three He proved the marriage sanctity. The counsellor who took the fee, The witnesses and referee, The judge who granted the decree, Died in that wholesale butchery. And then when Jones, Lycurgus B., Had wiped the weapon of Bowie, Twelve jurymen did instantly Acquit and set Lycurgus free. Songs Without Sense. For the Parlor and Piano. I.--The Personified Sentimental. Affection's charm no longer gilds The idol of the shrine; But cold Oblivion seeks to fill Regret's ambrosial wine. Though Friendship's offering buried lies 'Neath cold Aversion's snow, Regard and Faith will ever bloom Perpetually below. I see thee whirl in marble halls, In Pleasure's giddy train; Remorse is never on that brow, Nor Sorrow's mark of pain. Deceit has marked thee for her own; Inconstancy the same; And Ruin wildly sheds its gleam Athwart thy path of shame. II.--The Homely Pathetic. The dews are heavy on my brow; My breath comes hard and low; Yet, mother, dear, grant one request, Before your boy must go. Oh! lift me ere my spirit sinks, And ere my senses fail: Place me once more, O mother dear! Astride the old fence-rail. The old fence-rail, the old fence-rail! How oft these youthful legs, With Alice' and Ben Bolt's, were hung Across those wooden pegs. 'Twas there the nauseating smoke Of my first pipe arose: O mother, dear! these agonies Are far less keen than those. I know where lies the hazel dell, Where simple Nellie sleeps; I know the cot of Nettie Moore, And where the willow weeps. I know the brookside and the mill: But all their pathos fails Beside the days when once I sat Astride the old fence-rails. III.--Swiss Air. I'm a gay tra, la, la, With my fal, lal, la, la, And my bright-- And my light-- Tra, la, le. [Repeat.] Then laugh, ha, ha, ha, And ring, ting, ling, ling, And sing fal, la, la, La, la, le. [Repeat.] 
845	----	POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD By Henry Timrod With Memoir Contents Introduction The Late Judge George S. Bryan Spring The Cotton Boll Præceptor Amat The Problem A Year's Courtship Serenade Youth and Manhood Hark to the Shouting Wind Too Long, O Spirit of Storm The Lily Confidante The Stream is Flowing from the West Vox et Præterea Nihil Madeline A Dedication Katie Why Silent? Two Portraits La Belle Juive An Exotic The Rosebuds A Mother's Wail Our Willie Address Delivered at the Opening of the New Theatre at Richmond A Vision of Poesy The Past Dreams The Arctic Voyager Dramatic Fragment The Summer Bower A Rhapsody of a Southern Winter Night Flower-Life A Summer Shower Baby's Age The Messenger Rose On Pressing Some Flowers 1866--Addressed to the Old Year Stanzas: A Mother Gazes Upon Her Daughter, Arrayed for an Approaching Bridal. Written in Illustration of a Tableau Vivant Hymn Sung at an Anniversary of the Asylum of Orphans at Charleston To a Captive Owl Love's Logic Second Love Hymn Sung at the Consecration of Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S.C. Hymn Sung at a Sacred Concert at Columbia, S.C. Lines to R. L. To Whom? To Thee Storm and Calm Retirement A Common Thought Poems Written in War Times Carolina A Cry to Arms Charleston Ripley Ethnogenesis Carmen Triumphale The Unknown Dead The Two Armies Christmas Ode Sung on the Occasion of Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead, at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S.C., 1867 Sonnets I "Poet! If on a Lasting Fame Be Bent" II "Most Men Know Love But as a Part of Life" III "Life Ever Seems as from Its Present Site" IV "They Dub Thee Idler, Smiling Sneeringly" V "Some Truths There Be Are Better Left Unsaid" VI "I Scarcely Grieve, O Nature! at the Lot" VII "Grief Dies Like Joy; the Tears Upon My Cheek" VIII "At Last, Beloved Nature! I Have Met" IX "I Know Not Why, But All This Weary Day" X "Were I the Poet-Laureate of the Fairies" XI "Which Are the Clouds, and Which the Mountains? See" XII "What Gossamer Lures Thee Now? What Hope, What Name" XIII "I Thank You, Kind and Best Beloved Friend" XIV "Are These Wild Thoughts, Thus Fettered in My Rhymes" XV In Memoriam--Harris Simons Poems Now First Collected Song Composed for Washington's Birthday, and Respectfully Inscribed to the Officers and Members of the Washington Light Infantry of Charleston, February 22, 1859 A Bouquet Lines: "I Stooped from Star-Bright Regions" A Trifle Lines: "I Saw, or Dreamed I Saw, Her Sitting Lone" Sonnet: "If I Have Graced No Single Song of Mine" To Rosa ----: Acrostic Dedication Introduction "A true poet is one of the most precious gifts that can be bestowed on a generation." He speaks for it and he speaks to it. Reflecting and interpreting his age and its thoughts, feelings, and purposes, he speaks for it; and with a love of truth, with a keener moral insight into the universal heart of man, and with the intuition of inspiration, he speaks to it, and through it to the world. It is thus "The poet to the whole wide world belongs, Even as the Teacher is the child's." "Nor is it to the great masters alone that our homage and thankfulness are due. Wherever a true child of song strikes his harp, we love to listen. All that we ask is that the music be native, born of impassioned impulse that will not be denied, heartfelt, like the lark when she soars up to greet the morning and pours out her song by the same quivering ecstasy that impels her flight." For though the voices be many, the oracle is one, for "God gave the poet his song." Such was Henry Timrod, the Southern poet. A child of nature, his song is the voice of the Southland. Born in Charleston, S.C., December 8th, 1829, his life cast in the seething torrent of civil war, his voice was also the voice of Carolina, and through her of the South, in all the rich glad life poured out in patriotic pride into that fatal struggle, in all the valor and endurance of that dark conflict, in all the gloom of its disaster, and in all the sacred tenderness that clings about its memories. He was the poet of the Lost Cause, the finest interpreter of the feelings and traditions of the splendid heroism of a brave people. Moreover, by his catholic spirit, his wide range, and world-wide sympathies, he is a true American poet. The purpose of the _TIMROD MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION_ of his native city and State, in undertaking this new edition of his poems, is to erect a suitable public memorial to the poet, and also to let his own words renew and keep his own memory in his land's literature. The earliest edition of Timrod's poems was a small volume by Ticknor & Fields, of Boston, in 1860, just before the Civil War. This contained only the poems of the first eight or nine years previous, and was warmly welcomed North and South. The "New York Tribune" then greeted this small first volume in these words: "These poems are worthy of a wide audience, and they form a welcome offering to the common literature of our country." In this first volume was evinced the culture, the lively fancy, the delicate and vigorous imagination, and the finished artistic power of his mind, even then rejoicing in the fullness and freshness of its creations and in the unwearied flow of its natural music. But it fell then on the great world of letters almost unheeded, shut out by the war cloud that soon broke upon the land, enveloping all in darkness. The edition of his complete poems was not issued until the South was recovering from the ravage of war, and was entitled "The Poems of Henry Timrod, edited with a sketch of the Poet's life by Paul H. Hayne. E. J. Hale & Son, publishers, New York, 1873." And immediately, in 1874, there followed a second edition of this volume, which contained the noble series of war poems and other lyrics written since the edition of 1860. In 1884 an illustrated edition of "Katie" was published by Hale & Son, New York. All of these editions were long ago exhausted by an admiring public. The present edition contains the poems of all the former editions, and also some earlier poems not heretofore published. The name of Timrod has been closely identified with the history of South Carolina for over a century. Before the Revolution, Henry Timrod, of German birth, the founder of the family in America, was a prominent citizen of Charleston, and the president of that historic association, the German Friendly Society, still existing, a century and a quarter old. We find his name first on the roll of the German Fusiliers of Charleston, volunteers formed in May, 1775, for the defense of the country, immediately on hearing of the battle of Lexington. Again in the succeeding generation, in the Seminole war and in the peril of St. Augustine, the German Fusiliers were commanded by his son, Captain William Henry Timrod, who was the father of the poet, and who himself published a volume of poems in the early part of the century. He was the editor of a literary periodical published in Charleston, to which he himself largely contributed. He was of strong intellect and delicate feelings, and an ardent patriot. Some of the more striking of the poems of the elder Timrod are the following. Washington Irving said of these lines that Tom Moore had written no finer lyric:-- To Time, the Old Traveler They slander thee, Old Traveler, Who say that thy delight Is to scatter ruin, far and wide, In thy wantonness of might: For not a leaf that falleth Before thy restless wings, But in thy flight, thou changest it To a thousand brighter things. Thou passest o'er the battlefield Where the dead lie stiff and stark, Where naught is heard save the vulture's scream, And the gaunt wolf's famished bark; But thou hast caused the grain to spring From the blood-enrichèd clay, And the waving corn-tops seem to dance To the rustic's merry lay. Thou hast strewed the lordly palace In ruins on the ground, And the dismal screech of the owl is heard Where the harp was wont to sound; But the selfsame spot thou coverest With the dwellings of the poor, And a thousand happy hearts enjoy What _ONE_ usurped before. 'T is true thy progress layeth Full many a loved one low, And for the brave and beautiful Thou hast caused our tears to flow; But always near the couch of death Nor thou, nor we can stay; _AND THE BREATH OF THY DEPARTING WINGS, DRIES ALL OUR TEARS AWAY!_ The Mocking-Bird Nor did lack Sweet music to the magic of the scene: The little crimson-breasted Nonpareil Was there, his tiny feet scarce bending down The silken tendril that he lighted on To pour his love notes; and in russet coat, Most homely, like true genius bursting forth In spite of adverse fortune, a full choir Within himself, the merry Mock Bird sate, Filling the air with melody; and at times, _IN THE RAPT FAVOR OF HIS SWEETEST SONG, HIS QUIVERING FORM WOULD SPRING INTO THE SKY, IN SPIRAL CIRCLES, AS IF HE WOULD CATCH NEW POWERS FROM KINDRED WARBLERS IN THE CLOUDS WHO WOULD BEND DOWN TO GREET HIM!_ These lines, addressed to the poet by his father, have a pathetic interest:-- To Harry Harry, my little blue-eyed boy, I love to have thee playing near; There's music in thy shouts of joy To a fond father's ear. I love to see the lines of mirth Mantle thy cheek and forehead fair, As if all pleasures of the earth Had met to revel there; For gazing on thee, do I sigh That those most happy years must flee, And thy full share of misery Must fall in life on thee! There is no lasting grief below, My Harry! that flows not from guilt; Thou canst not read my meaning now-- In after times thou wilt. Thou'lt read it when the churchyard clay Shall lie upon thy father's breast, And he, though dead, will point the way Thou shalt be always blest. They'll tell thee this terrestrial ball, To man for his enjoyment given, Is but a state of sinful thrall To keep the soul from heaven. My boy! the verdure-crownèd hills, The vales where flowers innumerous blow, The music of ten thousand rills Will tell thee, 't is not so. God is no tyrant who would spread Unnumbered dainties to the eyes, Yet teach the hungering child to dread That touching them he dies! No! all can do his creatures good, He scatters round with hand profuse-- The only precept understood, _ENJOY, BUT NOT ABUSE!_ The poet's mother was the daughter of Mr. Charles Prince, a citizen of Charleston, whose parents had come from England just before the Revolution. Mr. Prince had married Miss French, daughter of an officer in the Revolution, whose family were from Switzerland. It was the influence of his mother also that helped to form the poet's character, and his intense and passionate love of nature. Her beautiful face and form, her purity and goodness, her delight in all the sights and sounds of the country, her childish rapture in wood and field, her love of flowers and trees, and all the mystery and gladness of nature, are among the cherished memories of all her children, and vividly described by the poet's sister. William Henry Timrod, father of the poet, died of disease contracted in the Florida war, and his family thereafter were in straitened circumstances. Nevertheless, the early education of his gifted son was provided for. Paul H. Hayne, the poet, was one of his earliest friends and schoolmates at Charleston's best school. They sat together, and to his brother boy-poet he first showed his earliest verses in exulting confidence. This friendship and confidence lasted through life, and Hayne has tenderly embalmed it in his sketch of the poet. We have this faithful picture of him at that time:-- "Modest and diffident, with a nervous utterance, but with melody ever in his heart and on his lip. Though always slow of speech, he was yet, like Burns, quick to learn. The chariot wheels might jar in the gate through which he tried to drive his winged steeds, but the horses were of celestial temper and the car purest gold." His school-fellows remember him as silent and shy, full of quick impulse, and with an eager ambition, insatiable in his thirst for books, yet mingling freely in all sports, and rejoicing unspeakably in the weekly holiday and its long rambles through wood and field. "The sweet security of streets" had no charm for him. He rejoiced in Nature and her changing scenes and seasons. She was always to him comfort, refreshment, balm. She never turned her face from him, and through all his years he "leaned on her breast with loving trustfulness as a little child." But he had other teachers. He studied all classic literature. "The Æschylean drama had no attraction for him; he reveled in the rich and elegant strains of Virgil, and of the many toned lyre of Horace and the silver lute of Catullus." From the full and inexhaustible fountain of English letters he drank unceasingly. Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Burns, Wordsworth, and, later, Tennyson were his immediate inspiration. His college life at the University of Georgia was interrupted by sickness and cramped by lack of means, and his literary plans were foiled by necessity. Nevertheless, he left his Alma Mater with a mind stirred to its depths, and with a large store of learning, and had already sounded with clear note those chords which were afterwards so vocal in melody. Dr. J. Dickson Bruns has left this graphic description of Timrod's personal appearance, and of some prominent traits of his social character:-- "In stature," he says, "Timrod was far below the medium height. He had always excelled in boyish sports, and, as he grew to manhood, his unusual breadth of shoulder still seemed to indicate a physical vigor which the slender wrists, thin, transparent hands, and habitually lax attitude but too plainly contradicted. "The square jaw was almost stern in its strongly pronounced lines, the mouth large, the lips exquisitely sensitive, the gray eyes set deeply under massive brows, and full of a melancholy and pleading tenderness, which attracted attention to his face at once, as the face of one who had thought and suffered much. "His walk was quick and nervous, with an energy in it that betokened decision of character, but ill sustained by the stammering speech; for in society he was the shyest and most undemonstrative of men. To a single friend whom he trusted, he would pour out his inmost heart; but let two or three be gathered together, above all, introduce a stranger, and he instantly became a quiet, unobtrusive listener, though never a moody or uncongenial one! "Among men of letters, he was always esteemed as a most sympathetic companion; timid, reserved, unready, if taken by surprise, but highly cultivated, and still more highly endowed. "The key to his social character was to be found in the feminine gentleness of his temperament. He shrank from noisy debate, and the wordy clash of argument, as from a blow. It stunned and bewildered him, and left him, in the mêlée, alike incapable of defense or attack. And yet, when some burly protagonist would thrust himself too rudely into the ring, and try to bear down opposition by sheer vehemence of declamation, from the corner where he sat ensconced in unregarded silence, _HE WOULD SUDDENLY SLING OUT SOME SHARP, SWIFT PEBBLE OF THOUGHT_, which he had been slowly rounding, and smite with an aim so keen and true as rarely failed to bring down the boastful Anakim!" In Charleston, as a first effort in life, for a brief period Timrod attempted the law, but found that jealous mistress unsuited to his life work, though he had all the opportunity afforded him in the office of his friend, the Hon. J. L. Petigru, the great jurist. Leaving the bar, he thenceforward devoted himself to literature and to his art. Charleston to Timrod was home, and he always returned with kindling spirit to the city of his love. There were all his happiest associations and the delight of purest friendships,--W. Gilmore Simms and Paul Hayne, and the rest of the literary coterie that presided over "Russell's Magazine", and Judge Bryan and Dr. Bruns (to whom Hayne dedicated his edition of Timrod's poems), and others were of this glad fellowship, and his social hours were bright in their intercourse and in the cordial appreciation of his genius and the tender love they bore him. These he never forgot, and returning after the ravage of war to his impoverished and suffering city, he writes, in the last year of his young life, "My eyes were blind to everything and everybody but a few old friends." Suited by endowment and prepared by special study for a professorship, still all his efforts for the academic chair failed, and, finally, he was compelled to become a private teacher, an office the sacredness of which he profoundly realized. In his leisure hours he now gave himself up to deeper study of nature, literature, and man. It was in these few years of quiet retreat that he wrote the poems contained in the first edition of his works, 1859-60, which, laden with all the poet's longing to be heard, were little heeded in the first great shock of war. Indeed, in such a storm, what shelter could a poet find? An ardent Carolinian, devoted to his native State with an allegiance as to his country, he left his books and study, and threw himself into the struggle, a volunteer in the army. In the first years of the war he was in and near Charleston, and wrote those memorable poems and martial lyrics: "Carolina", "A Cry to Arms", "Charleston", "Ripley", "Ethnogenesis", and "The Cotton Boll", which deeply stirred the heart of his State, and, indeed, of the whole South. His was the voice of his people. Under its spell the public response was quick, and promised largest honor and world-wide fame for the poet. The project formed by some of the most eminent men of the State, late in 1862, was to publish an illustrated and highly embellished edition of his works in London. The war correspondent of the "London Illustrated News", Vizitelly, himself an artist, promised original illustrations, and the future seemed bright for the gratification of his heart's desire, to be known and heard in the great literary centre of the English-speaking world. But disappointment again was his lot. Amid the increasing stress of the conflict, every public and private energy in the South was absorbed in maintaining the ever weakening struggle; and with all art and literature and learning our poet's hopes were buried in the common grave of war; not because he was not loved and cherished, and his genius appreciated, but because a terrible need was upon his people, and desperate issues were draining their life-blood. Then he went to the front. Too weak for the field (for the fatal weakness that finally sapped his life was then upon him), he was compelled, under medical direction, to retire from the battle ranks, and made a last desperate effort to serve the cause he loved as a war correspondent. In this capacity he joined the great army of the West after the battle of Shiloh. The story of his camp life was indeed pathetic. Dr. Bruns writes of him then: "One can scarcely conceive of a situation more hopelessly wretched than that of a mere child in the world's ways suddenly flung down into the heart of that strong retreat, and tossed like a straw on the crest of those refluent waves from which he escaped as by a miracle." Home he came, baffled, dispirited, and sore hurt, to receive the succor of generous friendship, and for a brief time a safe congenial refuge, in 1864, in an editor's chair of the "South Carolinian", at the capital of his native State. Here his strong pen wrote the stirring editorials of that critical time, and there, tempted by the passing hour of comparative calm, he married Miss Kate Goodwin, "Katie, the fair Saxon" of his exquisite song. Here the war that had broken all his plans, and wrecked his health and hopes, and made literature for a time in the South a beggar's vocation, left him with wife and child, the "darling Willie" of his verse, dependent upon his already sapped and fast failing strength for support. Here he saw the capital of his native State, marked for vengeance, pitilessly destroyed by fire and sword. Here gaunt ruin stalked and want entered his own home, made desolate as all the hearthstones of his people. Here the peace that ensued was the peace of the desert! Here the army, defeated and broken, came back after the long heroic struggle to blackened chimneys, sole vestige of home, and the South, with not even bread for her famished children, still stood in solemn silence by those deeper furrows watered with blood. The suffering that he endured was the common suffering of those around him,--actual physical want and lack of the commonest comforts of life, felt most keenly by his sensitive nature and delicate constitution. In the midst of this fierce stress, his darling boy, the crown of his life, died. All his affections, it seemed, were poured out at once, as water spilled upon the ground. He was dying of consumption, and earth shadows crowded around him. Though long in feeble health, his last illness was brief. The best physicians lovingly gave their skillful ministration, and the State's most eminent men, in their common need, tenderly cared for him and his. With death before him, he clung passionately to his art, absorbed in that alone and in the great Beyond. His latest occupation was correcting the proof-sheets of his own poems, and he passed away with them by his side, stained with his life-blood. In the autumn of 1867 he was laid by his beloved child in Trinity churchyard, Columbia, S.C. General Hampton, Governor Thompson, and other great Carolinians bore him to the grave,--a grave that, through the sackcloth of the Reconstruction period in South Carolina, remained without a stone. But as he himself wrote of the host of the Southern dead of the war,-- "In seeds of laurel in the earth The blossom of your fame is blown, And somewhere waiting for its birth, The shaft is in the stone." In later years loving friends reared a small memorial shaft to mark his grave. It was in that dark period that Carl McKinley's genius was touched to these fine lines. At Timrod's Grave. 1877. Harp of the South! no more, no more Thy silvery strings shall quiver, The one strong hand might win thy strains Is chilled and stilled forever. Our one sweet singer breaks no more The silence sad and long, The land is hushed from shore to shore, It brooks no feebler song! No other voice can charm our ears, None other soothe our pain; Better these echoes lingering yet, Than any ruder strain. For singing, Fate has given sighs, For music we make moan; Oh, who may touch the harp-strings since That whisper--"_HE IS GONE!_" See where he lies--his last sad home Of all memorial bare, Save for a little heap of leaves The winds have gathered there! One fair frail shell from some far sea Lies lone above his breast, Sad emblem and sole epitaph To mark his place of rest. The sweet winds murmur in its heart A music soft and low, As they would bring their secrets still To him who sleeps below. And lo! one tender, tearful bloom Wins upward through the grass, As some sweet thought he left unsung Were blossoming at last. Wild weeds grow rank about the place, A dark, cold spot, and drear; The dull neglect that marked his life Has followed even here. Around shine many a marble shaft And polished pillars fair, And strangers stand on Timrod's grave To praise them, unaware! "Hold up the glories of thy dead!" To thine own self be true, Land that he loved! Come, honor now This grave that honors you! The one characteristic above all others that marked the poet's life was his unfaltering trust,--the soul's unclouded sky, a quenchless radiance of blessed sunlight amid the deep darkness that encompassed him. As in his poetry there is no false note, no doubtful sentiment, no selfish grief, even when he sings with breast against the thorn, so in his life do we find no word of bitterness or moaning or complaining. Even amid the terrible blight of war and its final utter ruin, prophet-like, he speaks in faith and hope and courage. His own heart breaking, and life ebbing, he writes of Spring as the true Reconstructionist, and pleads her message to his stricken people. It is so true and prophetic that we quote the words written in April, 1866. "For Spring is a true Reconstructionist,--a reconstructionist in the best and most practical sense. There is not a nook in the land in which she is not at this moment exerting her influence in preparing a way for the restoration of the South. No politician may oppose her; her power defies embarrassment; but she is not altogether independent of help. She brings us balmy airs and gentle dews, golden suns and silver rains; and she says to us, 'These are the materials of the only work in which you need be at present concerned; avail yourselves of them to reclothe your naked country and feed your impoverished people, and you will find that, in the discharge of that task, you have taken the course which will most certainly and most peacefully conduct you to the position which you desire. Turn not aside to bandy epithets with your enemies; stuff your ears, like the princess in the Arabian Nights, against words of insult and wrong; pause not to muse over your condition, or to question your prospects; but toil on bravely, silently, surely....' "Such are the words of wise and kindly counsel, which, if we attend rightly, we may all hear in the winds and read in the skies of Spring. Nowhere, however, does she speak with so eloquent a voice or so pathetic an effect as in this ruined town. She covers our devastated courts with images of renovation in the shape of flowers; she hangs once more in our blasted gardens the fragrant lamps of the jessamine; in our streets she kindles the maple like a beacon; and from amidst the charred and blackened ruins of once happy homes she pours, through the mouth of her favorite musician, the mocking-bird, a song of hope and joy. What is the lesson which she designs by these means to convey? It may be summed in a single sentence,--forgetfulness of the past, effort in the present, and trust for the future." Such was the lofty creed and last hopeful, but dying message to his brothers of the South, whose war songs he had written, and the requiem of whose martyred hosts he had chanted. Such was the tragedy that ended in October, 1867, with the hero at the age of thirty-seven; glory, genius, anguish, tears, but unconquerable faith and heroic fortitude. His larger life scarce begun, his full power felt, but only half expressed, he realized deeply-- "The petty done, the vast undone!" He yearned with passionate longing and hope and conscious might to fulfill an even greater mission; but in the infinite providence of God the full fruitage of this exquisite soul was for another sphere. He was indeed "one of those who stirred us, a friend of man and a lover. In no country of this earth could he long have been an alien, and that may now be said of his spirit. In no part of this universe could it feel lonely or unbefriended; it was in harmony with all that flowers or gives perfume in life." The story of his last days, as given by his poet-friend, Paul Hayne, at the latter's cottage among the pines, is of tender and peculiar interest, and we quote it here, as it was written in 1873:-- ... In the latter summer-tide of this same year (1867), I again persuaded him to visit me. Ah! how sacred now, how sad and sweet, are the memories of that rich, clear, prodigal August of '67! We would rest on the hillsides, in the swaying golden shadows, watching together the Titanic masses of snow-white clouds which floated slowly and vaguely through the sky, suggesting by their form, whiteness, and serene motion, despite the season, flotillas of icebergs upon Arctic seas. Like Lazzaroni we basked in the quiet noons, sunk into the depths of reverie, or perhaps of yet more "charmed sleep". Or we smoked, conversing lazily between the puffs, "Next to some pine whose antique roots just peeped From out the crumbling bases of the sand." But the evenings, with their gorgeous sunsets "rolling down like a chorus" and the "gray-eyed melancholy gloaming", were the favorite hours of the day with him. He would often apostrophize twilight in the language of Wordsworth's sonnet:-- "Hail, twilight! sovereign of one peaceful hour! Not dull art thou as undiscerning night; But only studious to remove from sight Day's mutable distinctions." "Yes," said he, "she is indeed sovereign of _ONE PEACEFUL HOUR!_ In the hardest, busiest time one feels the calm, merciful-minded queen stealing upon one in the fading light, and 'whispering', as Ford has it (or is it Fletcher?),--'_WHISPERING_ tranquillity'." When in-doors and disposed to read, he took much pleasure in perusing the poems of Robert Buchanan and Miss Ingelow. The latter's "Ballads" particularly delighted him. One, written "in the old English manner", he quickly learned by heart, repeating it with a relish and fervor indescribable. Here is the opening stanza:-- "Come out and hear the waters shoot, the owlet hoot, the owlet hoot; Yon crescent moon, a golden boat, hangs dim behind the tree, O! The dropping thorn makes white the grass, O! sweetest lass, and sweetest lass Come out and smell the ricks of hay adown the croft with me, O!" With but a slight effort of memory I can vividly recall his voice and manner in repeating these simple yet beautiful lines. They were the last verses I ever heard from the poet's lips. Just as the woods were assuming their first delicate autumnal tints, Timrod took his leave of us. In a conversation on the night but one previous to his departure, we had been speaking of Dr. Parr and other literary persons of unusual age, when he observed: "I haven't the slightest desire, P----, to be an octogenarian, far less a centenarian, like old Parr; but I hope that I may be spared until I am _FIFTY_ or fifty-five." "About Shakespeare's age," I suggested. "Oh!" he replied, smiling, "I was not thinking of _THAT_; but I'm sure that after fifty-five I would begin to wither, mind and body, and one hates the idea of a mummy, intellectual or physical. Do you remember that picture of extreme old age which Charles Reade gives us in 'Never Too Late to Mend'? George Fielding, the hero, is about going away from England to try his luck in Australia. All his friends and relations are around him, expressing their sorrow at his enforced voyage; all but his grandfather, aged ninety-two, who sits stolid and mumbling in his armchair. "'Grandfather!' shouts George into the deafened ears, 'I'm going a long journey; mayhap shall never see you again; speak a word to me before I go!' Grandfather looks up, brightens for a moment, and cackles feebly out: 'George, fetch me some _SNUFF_ from where you're going. See now' (half whimpering), 'I'm out of snuff.' A good point in the way of illustration, but not a pleasant picture." On the 13th of September, ten days after Timrod's return to Columbia, he wrote me the following note:-- "Dear P----: I have been too sick to write before, and am still too sick to drop you more than a few lines. You will be surprised and pained to hear that I have had a severe hemorrhage of the lungs. "I did not come home an instant too soon. I found them without money or provisions. Fortunately I brought with me a small sum. I won't tell you how small, but six dollars of it was from the editor of the 'Opinion' for my last poem. "I left your climate to my injury. But not only for the sake of my health, I begin already to look back with longing regret to 'Copse Hill'. You have all made me feel as if I had TWO beloved homes! "I wish that I could divide myself between them; or that I had wings, so that I might flit from one to other in a moment. "I hope soon to write you at length. Yours," etc. Again on the 16th I heard from him, thus:-- "Yesterday I had a still more copious hemorrhage!... "I am lying supine in bed, forbidden to speak or make any exertion whatever. But I can't resist the temptation of dropping you a line, in the hope of calling forth a score or two from you in return. "An awkward time this for me to be sick! We are destitute of funds, almost of food. But God will provide! "I send you a Sonnet, written the other day, as an Obituary for Mr. Harris Simons. Tell me what you think of it--be sure! Love to your mother, wife, and my precious Willie [since the death of his own child he had turned with a yearning affection to my boy]. Let me hear from you soon--VERY soon! You'll do me more good than medicines!" etc. On the 25th of the month confidence in Timrod's recovery was confirmed by a letter from Mrs. Goodwin:-- "Our brother," she writes, "is decidedly better; and if there be no recurrence of the hemorrhage will, I hope, be soon convalescent!" A week and upwards passed on in silence. I received no more communications from Columbia. But early in October a vaguely threatening report reached my ears. On the 9th it was mournfully confirmed. Forty-eight hours before, Henry Timrod had expired! On the 7th of October, the mortal remains of the poet, so worn and shattered, were buried in the cemetery of Trinity Church, Columbia. There, in the ruined capital of his native State, whence scholarship, culture, and social purity have been banished to give place to the orgies of semi-barbarians and the political trickery of adventurers and traitors; there, tranquil amid the vulgar turmoil of factions, reposes the dust of one of the truest and sweetest singers this country has given to the world. Nature, kinder to his senseless ashes than ever Fortune had been to the living man, is prodigal around his grave--unmarked and unrecorded though it be--of her flowers and verdant grasses, of her rains that fertilize, and her purifying dews. The peace he loved, and so vainly longed for through stormy years, has crept to him at last, but only to fall upon the pallid eyelids, closed forever; upon the pulseless limbs, and the breathless, broken heart. Still it is good to know that "After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well." Yet, from this mere material repose, this quiet of decaying atoms, surely the most skeptical of thinkers, in contemplation of SUCH a life and SUCH a death, must instinctively look from earth to heaven; from the bruised and mouldering clod to the spirit infinitely exalted, and radiant in redemption. "A calm, a beautiful, a sacred star." The poetic creed of Timrod, expressed in his "Vision of Poesy", set the impress upon all his work. Conscious of his power, he reverently believed in the mission of the poet as prophet and teacher,-- "The mission of Genius on Earth! To uplift, Purify, and confirm, by its own gracious gift, The world,"-- and he has consecrated his gift to its noblest uses in the discharge of that "high and holy debt". As lover of man and nature, his sympathy was universal; no theme was too humble for his pen. "The same law that moulds a planet forms a drop of dew." "Humility is power!" "We may trace the mighty sun above even by the shadow of a slender flower." Yet he dealt not with the fleeting; that was only the passing form of the abiding. Passionately fond as he was of Nature, and nourished and refreshed by her always, he never wrote a line of mere descriptive poetry. Nature is only the symbol, the image, to interpret his spiritual meaning. He felt with Milton, in his noble words, that the abiding work is not raised in the heat of youth or the vapors of wine, or by "invocation to dame Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and send out his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altars to touch and purify the lips of whom He pleases." Under that inspiration and revelation the poet is a divine interpreter of (in his own words)-- "All lovely things, and gentle--the sweet laugh Of children, Girlhood's kiss, and Friendship's clasp, The boy that sporteth with the old man's staff, The baby, and the breast its fingers grasp-- All that exalts the grounds of happiness, All griefs that hallow, and all joys that bless, "To me are sacred; at my holy shrine Love breathes its latest dreams, its earliest hints; I turn life's tasteless waters into wine, And flush them through and through with purple tints. Wherever Earth is fair, and Heaven looks down, I rear my altars, and I wear my crown." It was this mission of Poetry that filled his mind and heart and life with abiding light, which made him cling passionately to life, not because of any physical fear of death, but because in that mission Art and Nature were so inexpressibly rich and sweet to him to reveal his message to man. In the benediction of his dying words, "Love is sweeter than rest!" The moral purity of these poems is their distinctive quality, as it was of the man. With a universal sympathy for all life, still he moved always on the highest planes of thought and feeling and purpose. He seemed always to be impressed in his art with the truth of his own lines,-- "There is no unimpressive spot on earth, The beauty of the stars is over all." His earnestness and deep poetic insight clothed all themes with the beauty and light that is in and over all. Timrod's melancholy, the finest test of high poetic quality, when purified and spiritualized, has no Byronic bitterness, no selfish morbidness, no impenetrable gloom, but in his own exquisite lines it is,-- "A shadowy land, where joy and sorrow kiss, Each still to each corrective and relief, Where dim delights are brightened into bliss, And nothing wholly perishes but Grief. "Ah, me!--not dies--no more than spirit dies; But in a change like death is clothed with wings; A serious angel, with entrancèd eyes, Looking to far off and celestial things." Again, in all these poems there is a nameless spell of a simplicity, fervid yet tender, and an imagination, strong yet delicate, both in its perception and expression. His style, "like noble music unto noble words," is elaborate, yet perfectly natural. There is no trace of labor; grace guides and power impels. So perfect is it at times in its natural power that the mind is almost unconscious of the word-symbol in grasping immediately the thought revealed. There is in the verse a ceaseless melody and perfect finish. At times there is "the easy elegance of Catullus", always his delight, and a metrical translation of whose poems he had completed. Rare endowment with broad culture is evinced in the high intellectual level always maintained; and the evenness of quality that is always of the mountain top. He always knows his power, and its range. His song is always clear and true. Moreover, with a universality of poetic feeling, he has struck every chord, and always with a keen sensibility and delicacy of natural instinct. Among the finest poems, how wide is this range and varied this power! "The Vision of Poesy", his longest work, written in youth, essaying the mission and the philosophy of the poetic art, has some lofty passages, and all the promise of his later power, felicity, and melody. "A Year's Courtship" is in its glow, and grace, and music the perfection of classic art. The dainty voluptuousness in a "Serenade" kindles with the luxuriousness of the South. His "Præceptor Amat" is warm with the breath of rapturous feeling, and rich with the fragrance of flowers. "Ethnogenesis", "the birth of the nation", is regarded by some his greatest poem. It is prophecy linked with the hope and aspiration of the newborn nation of the South. A permanent image of the Southern nature and character is thus richly portrayed:-- "But the type Whereby we shall be known in every land Is that vast gulf which lips our Southern strand, And through the cold, untempered ocean pours Its genial streams, that far off Arctic shores May sometimes catch upon the softened breeze Strange tropic warmth and hints of summer seas." "The Cotton Boll", in "the snow of Southern summers", is a forerunner of Lanier's "Corn". It reveals the mystic spell and kingly power of that far-stretching tropic snow, and contains that glowing painting of Carolina from sea to mountain, which closes "No fairer land hath fired a poet's lays, Or given a home to man!" "Too Long, O Spirit of Storm", is the fused passion of the poet's heart appalled at the moral death of stagnation. It has all the intensity and subtlety of Shelley. In "The Lily Confidante", delicate and fanciful as it is, the reply of the Lily "is a simple yet sacred melody", hallowing the purity of passion. "The Arctic Voyager" suggests Tennyson's "Ulysses" in its high faith, lofty purpose, and sustained power. "Spring" is the burst of the Southern spring, in its flooding life and glory and beauty. There is "a nameless pathos in the air." A wonderful revelation is going on before our eyes! No miracle could startle in the ever new creation, so strange and rapturous is this joy of sense and spiritual rebirth. Nor was his genius only reflective, and creative, and playful; his was a trumpet voice also. When the blast of war sounded, his voice rang like a clarion in "Carolina" and "Cry to Arms". Beyond their local meaning, which kindles and thrills, now as then, the men of the South, they have an abiding, universal power from the standpoint of art; for there is nothing finer in all the martial strains of the lyric. Paul Hayne, his brother poet, speaking of "Carolina", as "lines destined perhaps to outlive the political vitality of the State, whose antique fame they celebrate," said:-- "I read them first, and was thrilled by their power and pathos, upon a stormy March evening in Fort Sumter! Walking along the battlements, under the red light of a tempestuous sunset, the wind steadily and loudly blowing from off the bar across the tossing and moaning waste of waters, driven inland; with scores of gulls and white sea-birds flying and shrieking round me,--those wild voices of Nature mingled strangely with the rhythmic roll and beat of the poet's impassioned music. The very spirit, or dark genius, of the troubled scene appeared to take up and to repeat such verses as-- "'I hear a murmur as of waves That grope their way through sunless caves, Like bodies struggling in their graves, Carolina! And now it deepens; slow and grand It swells, as rolling to the land, An ocean broke upon the strand, Carolina! Shout! let it reach the startled Huns! And roar with all thy festal guns! It is the answer of thy sons, Carolina!'" Profoundly appealing as are Timrod's war strains, for they are the heart-cry of a people, still it should be noted that there is scarcely a battle ode that does not close with an invocation to peace, such was the lofty nature of the poet. War to him was only the drawn sword of right, and truth, and justice, which accomplished, the prayer for peace was ever on his lips, as witness the noble invocation to Peace, closing his "Christmas", that has so often stirred and hushed at once the heart of the South. The Ode, written for Memorial Day, April, 1867, of the Confederate graves at Charleston, was his last production. He had sung in lofty strains each phase of the struggle, its hope, its courage, its fear, its despair; he now sings his latest song, a wreath of flowers upon the unmarked graves of the Southern dead, and has hallowed these sacred mounds to his people in the words,-- "There is no holier spot of ground Than where defeated valor lies, By mourning beauty crowned!" These poems are written in the life-blood of the poet and his generation. The patriotic fire, the devoted sacrifice and splendid achievement, that "Carolina", "Cry to Arms", "Unknown Dead", "Carmen Triumphale", "Charleston", "Storm and Calm", and the other of the war poems celebrate were not only the rushing tide of earnest feeling of a noble people then, but are now a part of the glory and heritage of the State, of the South, and of the American republic. They were the mighty heart-beats of that great epoch. They are now irrevocable history, and make these poems a part of the abiding literature of America. "A Common Thought" is the poet's premonition of his end; but he sees no vision of the dying glory of sunset, no going out into the dark, no presentiment of a vague and gloomy voyage on a homeless sea; but in the sunshine, in the growing light of ever broadening day, amid the joy and splendor of nature, bright prophecy and intuition of immortality, is to come the sudden, solemn mystery of the whisper, "He is gone!" And so it was. For as the sun broadened into glad day, and the full radiance illumined and animated earth and sea and sky, "as it purpled in the zenith, as it brightened on the lawn," this rich young life, in its own fresh morning of genius and spiritual sunshine, passed, and in his own triumphant words,-- "not dies, no more than Spirit dies; But in a change like death was clothed with wings." The Late Judge George S. Bryan It would not be fitting that this memorial edition of Timrod's Poems should go forth to the world without proper recognition, on the part of the TIMROD MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION, of the relation occupied and the services rendered to the poet in his lifetime by the late Hon. George S. Bryan, of Charleston. During the whole of Timrod's career Judge Bryan was his devoted friend, ever ready to assist him materially, morally, and in every other respect. His faith in Timrod's genius never wavered, and but for his early assistance, sympathy, and encouragement, much of the fruit of that genius would have been lost or wasted. He helped him in adversity, cheered him in his hours of anxiety and despondency, and from first to last, throughout the literary and spiritual history of the poet, he did more than any other friend to keep alive in his heart the steadfast flame of faith in his poetic destiny; Judge Bryan's name must always be inseparably connected with Henry Timrod's in the literary annals of South Carolina. January, 1899. POEMS OF HENRY TIMROD Spring Spring, with that nameless pathos in the air Which dwells with all things fair, Spring, with her golden suns and silver rain, Is with us once again. Out in the lonely woods the jasmine burns Its fragrant lamps, and turns Into a royal court with green festoons The banks of dark lagoons. In the deep heart of every forest tree The blood is all aglee, And there's a look about the leafless bowers As if they dreamed of flowers. Yet still on every side we trace the hand Of Winter in the land, Save where the maple reddens on the lawn, Flushed by the season's dawn; Or where, like those strange semblances we find That age to childhood bind, The elm puts on, as if in Nature's scorn, The brown of Autumn corn. As yet the turf is dark, although you know That, not a span below, A thousand germs are groping through the gloom, And soon will burst their tomb. Already, here and there, on frailest stems Appear some azure gems, Small as might deck, upon a gala day, The forehead of a fay. In gardens you may note amid the dearth The crocus breaking earth; And near the snowdrop's tender white and green, The violet in its screen. But many gleams and shadows need must pass Along the budding grass, And weeks go by, before the enamored South Shall kiss the rose's mouth. Still there's a sense of blossoms yet unborn In the sweet airs of morn; One almost looks to see the very street Grow purple at his feet. At times a fragrant breeze comes floating by, And brings, you know not why, A feeling as when eager crowds await Before a palace gate Some wondrous pageant; and you scarce would start, If from a beech's heart, A blue-eyed Dryad, stepping forth, should say, "Behold me! I am May!" Ah! who would couple thoughts of war and crime With such a blessëd time! Who in the west wind's aromatic breath Could hear the call of Death! Yet not more surely shall the Spring awake The voice of wood and brake, Than she shall rouse, for all her tranquil charms, A million men to arms. There shall be deeper hues upon her plains Than all her sunlit rains, And every gladdening influence around, Can summon from the ground. Oh! standing on this desecrated mould, Methinks that I behold, Lifting her bloody daisies up to God, Spring kneeling on the sod, And calling, with the voice of all her rills, Upon the ancient hills To fall and crush the tyrants and the slaves Who turn her meads to graves. The Cotton Boll While I recline At ease beneath This immemorial pine, Small sphere! (By dusky fingers brought this morning here And shown with boastful smiles), I turn thy cloven sheath, Through which the soft white fibres peer, That, with their gossamer bands, Unite, like love, the sea-divided lands, And slowly, thread by thread, Draw forth the folded strands, Than which the trembling line, By whose frail help yon startled spider fled Down the tall spear-grass from his swinging bed, Is scarce more fine; And as the tangled skein Unravels in my hands, Betwixt me and the noonday light, A veil seems lifted, and for miles and miles The landscape broadens on my sight, As, in the little boll, there lurked a spell Like that which, in the ocean shell, With mystic sound, Breaks down the narrow walls that hem us round, And turns some city lane Into the restless main, With all his capes and isles! Yonder bird, Which floats, as if at rest, In those blue tracts above the thunder, where No vapors cloud the stainless air, And never sound is heard, Unless at such rare time When, from the City of the Blest, Rings down some golden chime, Sees not from his high place So vast a cirque of summer space As widens round me in one mighty field, Which, rimmed by seas and sands, Doth hail its earliest daylight in the beams Of gray Atlantic dawns; And, broad as realms made up of many lands, Is lost afar Behind the crimson hills and purple lawns Of sunset, among plains which roll their streams Against the Evening Star! And lo! To the remotest point of sight, Although I gaze upon no waste of snow, The endless field is white; And the whole landscape glows, For many a shining league away, With such accumulated light As Polar lands would flash beneath a tropic day! Nor lack there (for the vision grows, And the small charm within my hands-- More potent even than the fabled one, Which oped whatever golden mystery Lay hid in fairy wood or magic vale, The curious ointment of the Arabian tale-- Beyond all mortal sense Doth stretch my sight's horizon, and I see, Beneath its simple influence, As if with Uriel's crown, I stood in some great temple of the Sun, And looked, as Uriel, down!) Nor lack there pastures rich and fields all green With all the common gifts of God, For temperate airs and torrid sheen Weave Edens of the sod; Through lands which look one sea of billowy gold Broad rivers wind their devious ways; A hundred isles in their embraces fold A hundred luminous bays; And through yon purple haze Vast mountains lift their plumed peaks cloud-crowned; And, save where up their sides the ploughman creeps, An unhewn forest girds them grandly round, In whose dark shades a future navy sleeps! Ye Stars, which, though unseen, yet with me gaze Upon this loveliest fragment of the earth! Thou Sun, that kindlest all thy gentlest rays Above it, as to light a favorite hearth! Ye Clouds, that in your temples in the West See nothing brighter than its humblest flowers! And you, ye Winds, that on the ocean's breast Are kissed to coolness ere ye reach its bowers! Bear witness with me in my song of praise, And tell the world that, since the world began, No fairer land hath fired a poet's lays, Or given a home to man! But these are charms already widely blown! His be the meed whose pencil's trace Hath touched our very swamps with grace, And round whose tuneful way All Southern laurels bloom; The Poet of "The Woodlands", unto whom Alike are known The flute's low breathing and the trumpet's tone, And the soft west wind's sighs; But who shall utter all the debt, O Land wherein all powers are met That bind a people's heart, The world doth owe thee at this day, And which it never can repay, Yet scarcely deigns to own! Where sleeps the poet who shall fitly sing The source wherefrom doth spring That mighty commerce which, confined To the mean channels of no selfish mart, Goes out to every shore Of this broad earth, and throngs the sea with ships That bear no thunders; hushes hungry lips In alien lands; Joins with a delicate web remotest strands; And gladdening rich and poor, Doth gild Parisian domes, Or feed the cottage-smoke of English homes, And only bounds its blessings by mankind! In offices like these, thy mission lies, My Country! and it shall not end As long as rain shall fall and Heaven bend In blue above thee; though thy foes be hard And cruel as their weapons, it shall guard Thy hearth-stones as a bulwark; make thee great In white and bloodless state; And haply, as the years increase-- Still working through its humbler reach With that large wisdom which the ages teach-- Revive the half-dead dream of universal peace! As men who labor in that mine Of Cornwall, hollowed out beneath the bed Of ocean, when a storm rolls overhead, Hear the dull booming of the world of brine Above them, and a mighty muffled roar Of winds and waters, yet toil calmly on, And split the rock, and pile the massive ore, Or carve a niche, or shape the archëd roof; So I, as calmly, weave my woof Of song, chanting the days to come, Unsilenced, though the quiet summer air Stirs with the bruit of battles, and each dawn Wakes from its starry silence to the hum Of many gathering armies. Still, In that we sometimes hear, Upon the Northern winds, the voice of woe Not wholly drowned in triumph, though I know The end must crown us, and a few brief years Dry all our tears, I may not sing too gladly. To Thy will Resigned, O Lord! we cannot all forget That there is much even Victory must regret. And, therefore, not too long From the great burthen of our country's wrong Delay our just release! And, if it may be, save These sacred fields of peace From stain of patriot or of hostile blood! Oh, help us, Lord! to roll the crimson flood Back on its course, and, while our banners wing Northward, strike with us! till the Goth shall cling To his own blasted altar-stones, and crave Mercy; and we shall grant it, and dictate The lenient future of his fate There, where some rotting ships and crumbling quays Shall one day mark the Port which ruled the Western seas. Præceptor Amat It is time (it was time long ago) I should sever This chain--why I wear it I know not--forever! Yet I cling to the bond, e'en while sick of the mask I must wear, as of one whom his commonplace task And proof-armor of dullness have steeled to her charms! Ah! how lovely she looked as she flung from her arms, In heaps to this table (now starred with the stains Of her booty yet wet with those yesterday rains), These roses and lilies, and--what? let me see! Then was off in a moment, but turned with a glee, That lit her sweet face as with moonlight, to say, As 't was almost too late for a lesson to-day, She meant to usurp, for this morning at least, My office of Tutor; and instead of a feast Of such mouthfuls as 'poluphloisboio thalasses', With which I fed her, I should study the grasses (Love-grasses she called them), the buds, and the flowers Of which I know nothing; and if "with MY powers", I did not learn all she could teach in that time, And thank her, perhaps, in a sweet English rhyme, If I did not do this, and she flung back her hair, And shook her bright head with a menacing air, She'd be--oh! she'd be--a real Saracen Omar To a certain much-valued edition of Homer! But these flowers! I believe I could number as soon The shadowy thoughts of a last summer's noon, Or recall with their phases, each one after one, The clouds that came down to the death of the Sun, Cirrus, Stratus, or Nimbus, some evening last year, As unravel the web of one genus! Why, there, As they lie by my desk in that glistering heap, All tangled together like dreams in the sleep Of a bliss-fevered heart, I might turn them and turn Till night, in a puzzle of pleasure, and learn Not a fact, not a secret I prize half so much, As, how rough is this leaf when I think of her touch. There's one now blown yonder! what can be its name? A topaz wine-colored, the wine in a flame; And another that's hued like the pulp of a melon, But sprinkled all o'er as with seed-pearls of Ceylon; And a third! its white petals just clouded with pink! And a fourth, that blue star! and then this, too! I think If one brought me this moment an amethyst cup, From which, through a liquor of amber, looked up, With a glow as of eyes in their elfin-like lustre, Stones culled from all lands in a sunshiny cluster, From the ruby that burns in the sands of Mysore To the beryl of Daunia, with gems from the core Of the mountains of Persia (I talk like a boy In the flush of some new, and yet half-tasted joy); But I think if that cup and its jewels together Were placed by the side of this child of the weather (This one which she touched with her mouth, and let slip From her fingers by chance, as her exquisite lip, With a music befitting the language divine, Gave the roll of the Greek's multitudinous line), I should take--not the gems--but enough! let me shut In the blossom that woke it, my folly, and put Both away in my bosom--there, in a heart-niche, One shall outlive the other--is 't hard to tell which? In the name of all starry and beautiful things, What is it? the cross in the centre, these rings, And the petals that shoot in an intricate maze, From the disk which is lilac--or purple? like rays In a blue Aureole! And so now will she wot, When I sit by her side with my brows in a knot, And praise her so calmly, or chide her perhaps, If her voice falter once in its musical lapse, As I've done, I confess, just to gaze at a flush In the white of her throat, or to watch the quick rush Of the tear she sheds smiling, as, drooping her curls O'er that book I keep shrined like a casket of pearls, She reads on in low tones of such tremulous sweetness, That (in spite of some faults) I am forced, in discreetness, To silence, lest mine, growing hoarse, should betray What I must not reveal--will she guess now, I say, How, for all his grave looks, the stern, passionless Tutor, With more than the love of her youthfulest suitor, Is hiding somewhere in the shroud of his vest, By a heart that is beating wild wings in its nest, This flower, thrown aside in the sport of a minute, And which he holds dear as though folded within it Lay the germ of the bliss that he dreams of! Ah, me! It is hard to love thus, yet to seem and to be A thing for indifference, faint praise, or cold blame, When you long (by the right of deep passion, the claim, On the loved of the loving, at least to be heard) To take the white hand, and with glance, touch, and word, Burn your way to the heart! That her step on the stair? Be still thou fond flutterer! How little I care For your favorites, see! they are all of them, look! On the spot where they fell, and--but here is your book! The Problem Not to win thy favor, maiden, not to steal away thy heart, Have I ever sought thy presence, ever stooped to any art; Thou wast but a wildering problem, which I aimed to solve, and then Make it matter for my note-book, or a picture for my pen. So, I daily conned thee over, thinking it no dangerous task, Peeping underneath thy lashes, peering underneath thy mask-- For thou wear'st one--no denial! there is much within thine eyes; But those stars have other secrets than are patent in their skies. And I read thee, read thee closely, every grace and every sin, Looked behind the outward seeming to the strange wild world within, Where thy future self is forming, where I saw--no matter what! There was something less than angel, there was many an earthly spot; Yet so beautiful thy errors that I had no heart for blame, And thy virtues made thee dearer than my dearest hopes of fame; All so blended, that in wishing one peculiar trait removed, We indeed might make thee better, but less lovely and less loved. All my mind was in the study--so two thrilling fortnights passed-- All my mind was in the study--till my heart was touched at last. Well! and then the book was finished, the absorbing task was done, I awoke as one who had been dreaming in a noon-day sun; With a fever on my forehead, and a throbbing in my brain, In my soul delirious wishes, in my heart a lasting pain; Yet so hopeless, yet so cureless--as in every great despair-- I was very calm and silent, and I never stooped to prayer, Like a sick man unattended, reckless of the coming death, Only for he knows it certain, and he feels no sister's breath. All the while as by an Até, with no pity in her face, Yet with eyes of witching beauty, and with form of matchless grace, I was haunted by thy presence, oh! for weary nights and days, I was haunted by thy spirit, I was troubled by thy gaze, And the question which to answer I had taxed a subtle brain, What thou art, and what thou wilt be, came again and yet again; With its opposite deductions, it recurred a thousand times, Like a coward's apprehensions, like a madman's favorite rhymes. But to-night my thoughts flow calmer--in thy room I think I stand, See a fair white page before thee, and a pen within thy hand; And thy fingers sweep the paper, and a light is in thine eyes, Whilst I read thy secret fancies, whilst I hear thy secret sighs. What they are I will not whisper, those are lovely, these are deep, But one name is left unwritten, that is only breathed in sleep. Is it wonder that my passion bursts at once from out its nest? I have bent my knee before thee, and my love is all confessed; Though I knew that name unwritten was another name than mine, Though I felt those sighs half murmured what I could but half divine. Aye! I hear thy haughty answer! Aye! I see thy proud lip curl! "What presumption, and what folly!" why, I only love a girl With some very winning graces, with some very noble traits, But no better than a thousand who have bent to humbler fates. That I ask not; I have, maiden, just as haught a soul as thine; If thou think'st thy place above me, thou shalt never stoop to mine. Yet as long as blood runs redly, yet as long as mental worth Is a nobler gift than fortune, is a holier thing than birth, I will claim the right to utter, to the high and to the low, That I love them, or I hate them, that I am a friend or foe. Nor shall any slight unman me; I have yet some little strength, Yet my song shall sound as sweetly, yet a power be mine at length! Then, oh, then! but moans are idle--hear me, pitying saints above! With a chaplet on my forehead, I will justify my love. And perhaps when thou art leaning on some less devoted breast, Thou shalt murmur, "He was worthier than my blinded spirit guessed." A Year's Courtship I saw her, Harry, first, in March-- You know the street that leadeth down By the old bridge's crumbling arch?-- Just where it leaves the dusty town A lonely house stands grim and dark-- You've seen it? then I need not say How quaint the place is--did you mark An ivied window? Well! one day, I, chasing some forgotten dream, And in a poet's idlest mood, Caught, as I passed, a white hand's gleam-- A shutter opened--there she stood Training the ivy to its prop. Two dark eyes and a brow of snow Flashed down upon me--did I stop?-- She says I did--I do not know. But all that day did something glow Just where the heart beats; frail and slight, A germ had slipped its shell, and now Was pushing softly for the light. And April saw me at her feet, Dear month of sunshine and of rain! My very fears were sometimes sweet, And hope was often touched with pain. For she was frank, and she was coy, A willful April in her ways; And in a dream of doubtful joy I passed some truly April days. May came, and on that arch, sweet mouth, The smile was graver in its play, And, softening with the softening South, My April melted into May. She loved me, yet my heart would doubt, And ere I spoke the month was June-- One warm still night we wandered out To watch a slowly setting moon. Something which I saw not--my eyes Were not on heaven--a star, perchance, Or some bright drapery of the skies, Had caught her earnest, upper glance. And as she paused--Hal! we have played Upon the very spot--a fir Just touched me with its dreamy shade, But the full moonlight fell on her-- And as she paused--I know not why-- I longed to speak, yet could not speak; The bashful are the boldest--I-- I stooped and gently kissed her cheek. A murmur (else some fragrant air Stirred softly) and the faintest start-- O Hal! we were the happiest pair! O Hal! I clasped her heart to heart! And kissed away some tears that gushed; But how she trembled, timid dove, When my soul broke its silence, flushed With a whole burning June of love. Since then a happy year hath sped Through months that seemed all June and May, And soon a March sun, overhead, Will usher in the crowning day. Twelve blessed moons that seemed to glow All summer, Hal!--my peerless Kate! She is the dearest--"Angel?"--no! Thank God!--but you shall see her--wait. So all is told! I count on thee To see the Priest, Hal! Pass the wine! Here's to my darling wife to be! And here's to--when thou find'st her--thine! Serenade Hide, happy damask, from the stars, What sleep enfolds behind your veil, But open to the fairy cars On which the dreams of midnight sail; And let the zephyrs rise and fall About her in the curtained gloom, And then return to tell me all The silken secrets of the room. Ah, dearest! may the elves that sway Thy fancies come from emerald plots, Where they have dozed and dreamed all day In hearts of blue forget-me-nots. And one perhaps shall whisper thus: Awake! and light the darkness, Sweet! While thou art reveling with us, He watches in the lonely street. Youth and Manhood Another year! a short one, if it flow Like that just past, And I shall stand--if years can make me so-- A man at last. Yet, while the hours permit me, I would pause And contemplate The lot whereto unalterable laws Have bound my fate. Yet, from the starry regions of my youth, The empyreal height Where dreams are happiness, and feeling truth, And life delight-- From that ethereal and serene abode My soul would gaze Downward upon the wide and winding road, Where manhood plays; Plays with the baubles and the gauds of earth-- Wealth, power, and fame-- Nor knows that in the twelvemonth after birth He did the same. Where the descent begins, through long defiles I see them wind; And some are looking down with hopeful smiles, And some are--blind. And farther on a gay and glorious green Dazzles the sight, While noble forms are moving o'er the scene, Like things of light. Towers, temples, domes of perfect symmetry Rise broad and high, With pinnacles among the clouds; ah, me! None touch the sky. None pierce the pure and lofty atmosphere Which I breathe now, And the strong spirits that inhabit there, Live--God sees how. Sick of the very treasure which they heap; Their tearless eyes Sealed ever in a heaven-forgetting sleep, Whose dreams are lies; And so, a motley, unattractive throng, They toil and plod, Dead to the holy ecstasies of song, To love, and God. Dear God! if that I may not keep through life My trust, my truth, And that I must, in yonder endless strife, Lose faith with youth; If the same toil which indurates the hand Must steel the heart, Till, in the wonders of the ideal land, It have no part; Oh! take me hence! I would no longer stay Beneath the sky; Give me to chant one pure and deathless lay, And let me die! Hark to the Shouting Wind Hark to the shouting Wind! Hark to the flying Rain! And I care not though I never see A bright blue sky again. There are thoughts in my breast to-day That are not for human speech; But I hear them in the driving storm, And the roar upon the beach. And oh, to be with that ship That I watch through the blinding brine! O Wind! for thy sweep of land and sea! O Sea! for a voice like thine! Shout on, thou pitiless Wind, To the frightened and flying Rain! I care not though I never see A calm blue sky again. Too Long, O Spirit of Storm Too long, O Spirit of Storm, Thy lightning sleeps in its sheath! I am sick to the soul of yon pallid sky, And the moveless sea beneath. Come down in thy strength on the deep! Worse dangers there are in life, When the waves are still, and the skies look fair, Than in their wildest strife. A friend I knew, whose days Were as calm as this sky overhead; But one blue morn that was fairest of all, The heart in his bosom fell dead. And they thought him alive while he walked The streets that he walked in youth-- Ah! little they guessed the seeming man Was a soulless corpse in sooth. Come down in thy strength, O Storm! And lash the deep till it raves! I am sick to the soul of that quiet sea, Which hides ten thousand graves. The Lily Confidante Lily! lady of the garden! Let me press my lip to thine! Love must tell its story, Lily! Listen thou to mine. Two I choose to know the secret-- Thee, and yonder wordless flute; Dragons watch me, tender Lily, And thou must be mute. There's a maiden, and her name is... Hist! was that a rose-leaf fell? See, the rose is listening, Lily, And the rose may tell. Lily-browed and lily-hearted, She is very dear to me; Lovely? yes, if being lovely Is--resembling thee. Six to half a score of summers Make the sweetest of the "teens"-- Not too young to guess, dear Lily, What a lover means. Laughing girl, and thoughtful woman, I am puzzled how to woo-- Shall I praise, or pique her, Lily? Tell me what to do. "Silly lover, if thy Lily Like her sister lilies be, Thou must woo, if thou wouldst wear her, With a simple plea. "Love's the lover's only magic, Truth the very subtlest art; Love that feigns, and lips that flatter, Win no modest heart. "Like the dewdrop in my bosom, Be thy guileless language, youth; Falsehood buyeth falsehood only, Truth must purchase truth. "As thou talkest at the fireside, With the little children by-- As thou prayest in the darkness, When thy God is nigh-- "With a speech as chaste and gentle, And such meanings as become Ear of child, or ear of angel, Speak, or be thou dumb. "Woo her thus, and she shall give thee Of her heart the sinless whole, All the girl within her bosom, And her woman's soul." The Stream is Flowing from the West The stream is flowing from the west; As if it poured from yonder skies, It wears upon its rippling breast The sunset's golden dyes; And bearing onward to the sea, 'T will clasp the isle that holdeth thee. I dip my hand within the wave; Ah! how impressionless and cold! I touch it with my lip, and lave My forehead in the gold. It is a trivial thought, but sweet, Perhaps the wave will kiss thy feet. Alas! I leave no trace behind-- As little on the senseless stream As on thy heart, or on thy mind; Which was the simpler dream, To win that warm, wild love of thine, Or make the water whisper mine? Dear stream! some moons must wax and wane Ere I again shall cross thy tide, And then, perhaps, a viewless chain Will drag me to her side, To love with all my spirit's scope, To wish, do everything but--hope. Vox et Præterea Nihil I've been haunted all night, I've been haunted all day, By the ghost of a song, by the shade of a lay, That with meaningless words and profusion of rhyme, To a dreamy and musical rhythm keeps time. A simple, but still a most magical strain, Its dim monotones have bewildered my brain With a specious and cunning appearance of thought, I seem to be catching but never have caught. I know it embodies some very sweet things, And can almost divine the low burden it sings; But again, and again, and still ever again, It has died on my ear at the touch of my pen. And so it keeps courting and shunning my quest, As a bird that has just been aroused from her nest, Too fond to depart, and too frightened to stay, Now circles about you, now flutters away. Oh! give me fit words for that exquisite song, And thou couldst not, proud beauty! be obdurate long; It would come like the voice of a saint from above, And win thee to kindness, and melt thee to love. Not gilded with fancy, nor frigid with art, But simple as feeling, and warm as the heart, It would murmur my name with so charming a tone, As would almost persuade thee to wish it thine own. Madeline O lady! if, until this hour, I've gazed in those bewildering eyes, Yet never owned their touching power, But when thou couldst not hear my sighs; It has not been that love has slept One single moment in my soul, Or that on lip or look I kept A stern and stoical control; But that I saw, but that I felt, In every tone and glance of thine, Whate'er they spoke, where'er they dwelt, How small, how poor a part was mine; And that I deeply, dearly knew, THAT hidden, hopeless love confessed, The fatal words would lose me, too, Even the weak friendship I possessed. And so, I masked my secret well; The very love within my breast Became the strange, but potent spell By which I forced it into rest. Yet there were times--I scarce know how These eager lips refrained to speak,-- Some kindly smile would light thy brow, And I grew passionate and weak; The secret sparkled at my eyes, And love but half repressed its sighs,-- Then had I gazed an instant more, Or dwelt one moment on that brow, I might have changed the smile it wore, To what perhaps it weareth now, And spite of all I feared to meet, Confessed that passion at thy feet. To save my heart, to spare thine own, There was one remedy alone. I fled, I shunned thy very touch,-- It cost me much, O God! how much! But if some burning tears were shed, Lady! I let them freely flow; At least, they left unbreathed, unsaid, A worse and wilder woe. But now,--NOW that we part indeed, And that I may not think as then, That as I wish, or as I need, I may return again,-- Now that for months, perhaps for years-- I see no limit in my fears-- My home shall be some distant spot, Where thou--where even thy name is not, And since I shall not see the frown, Such wild, mad language must bring down, Could I--albeit I may not sue In hope to bend thy steadfast will-- Could I have breathed this word, adieu, And kept my secret still? Doubtless thou know'st the Hebrew story-- The tale 's with me a favorite one-- How Raphael left the Courts of Glory, And walked with Judah's honored Son; And how the twain together dwelt, And how they talked upon the road, How often too they must have knelt As equals to the same kind God; And still the mortal never guessed, How much and deeply he was blessed, Till when--the Angel's mission done-- The spell which drew him earthwards, riven-- The lover saved--the maiden won-- He plumed again his wings for Heaven; O Madeline! as unaware Thou hast been followed everywhere, And girt and guarded by a love, As warm, as tender in its care, As pure, ay, powerful in prayer, As any saint above! Like the bright inmate of the skies, It only looked with friendly eyes, And still had worn the illusive guise, And thus at least been half concealed; But at this parting, painful hour, It spreads its wings, unfolds its power, And stands, like Raphael, revealed. More, Lady! I would wish to speak,-- But it were vain, and words are weak, And now that I have bared my breast, Perchance thou wilt infer the rest. So, so, farewell! I need not say I look, I ask for no reply, The cold and scarcely pitying "nay" I read in that unmelted eye; Yet one dear favor, let me pray! Days, months, however slow to me, Must drag at last their length away, And I return--if not to thee-- At least to breathe the same sweet air That wooes thy lips and waves thy hair. Oh, then!--these daring lines forgot-- Look, speak, as thou hadst read them not. So, Lady, may I still retain A right I would not lose again, For all that gold or guilt can buy, Or all that Heaven itself deny, A right such love may justly claim, Of seeing thee in friendship's name. Give me but this, and still at whiles, A portion of thy faintest smiles, It were enough to bless; I may not, dare not ask for more Than boon so rich, and yet so poor, But I should die with less. A Dedication To K. S. G. Fair Saxon, in my lover's creed, My love were smaller than your meed, And you might justly deem it slight, As wanting truth as well as sight, If, in that image which is shrined Where thoughts are sacred, you could find A single charm, or more or less, Than you to all kind eyes possess. To me, even in the happiest dreams, Where, flushed with love's just dawning gleams, My hopes their radiant wings unfurl, You're but a simple English girl, No fairer, grace for grace arrayed, Than many a simple Southern maid; With faults enough to make the good Seem sweeter far than else it would; Frank in your anger and your glee, And true as English natures be, Yet not without some maiden art Which hides a loving English heart. Still there are moments, brief and bright, When fancy, by a poet's light, Beholds you clothed with loftier charms Than love e'er gave to mortal arms. A spell is woven on the air From your brown eyes and golden hair, And all at once you seem to stand Before me as your native land, With all her greatness in your guise, And all her glory in your eyes; And sometimes, as if angels sung, I hear her poets on your tongue. And, therefore, I, who from a boy Have felt an almost English joy In England's undecaying might, And England's love of truth and right, Next to my own young country's fame Holding her honor and her name, I--who, though born where not a vale Hath ever nursed a nightingale, Have fed my muse with English song Until her feeble wing grew strong-- Feel, while with all the reverence meet I lay this volume at your feet, As if through your dear self I pay, For many a deep and deathless lay, For noble lessons nobly taught, For tears, for laughter, and for thought, A portion of the mighty debt We owe to Shakespeare's England yet! Katie It may be through some foreign grace, And unfamiliar charm of face; It may be that across the foam Which bore her from her childhood's home, By some strange spell, my Katie brought, Along with English creeds and thought-- Entangled in her golden hair-- Some English sunshine, warmth, and air! I cannot tell--but here to-day, A thousand billowy leagues away From that green isle whose twilight skies No darker are than Katie's eyes, She seems to me, go where she will, An English girl in England still! I meet her on the dusty street, And daisies spring about her feet; Or, touched to life beneath her tread, An English cowslip lifts its head; And, as to do her grace, rise up The primrose and the buttercup! I roam with her through fields of cane, And seem to stroll an English lane, Which, white with blossoms of the May, Spreads its green carpet in her way! As fancy wills, the path beneath Is golden gorse, or purple heath: And now we hear in woodlands dim Their unarticulated hymn, Now walk through rippling waves of wheat, Now sink in mats of clover sweet, Or see before us from the lawn The lark go up to greet the dawn! All birds that love the English sky Throng round my path when she is by: The blackbird from a neighboring thorn With music brims the cup of morn, And in a thick, melodious rain The mavis pours her mellow strain! But only when my Katie's voice Makes all the listening woods rejoice I hear--with cheeks that flush and pale-- The passion of the nightingale! Anon the pictures round her change, And through an ancient town we range, Whereto the shadowy memory clings Of one of England's Saxon kings, And which to shrine his fading fame Still keeps his ashes and his name. Quaint houses rise on either hand, But still the airs are fresh and bland, As if their gentle wings caressed Some new-born village of the West. A moment by the Norman tower We pause; it is the Sabbath hour! And o'er the city sinks and swells The chime of old St. Mary's bells, Which still resound in Katie's ears As sweet as when in distant years She heard them peal with jocund din A merry English Christmas in! We pass the abbey's ruined arch, And statelier grows my Katie's march, As round her, wearied with the taint Of Transatlantic pine and paint, She sees a thousand tokens cast Of England's venerable Past! Our reverent footsteps lastly claims The younger chapel of St. James, Which, though, as English records run, Not old, had seen full many a sun, Ere to the cold December gale The thoughtful Pilgrim spread his sail. There Katie in her childish days Spelt out her prayers and lisped her praise, And doubtless, as her beauty grew, Did much as other maidens do-- Across the pews and down the aisle Sent many a beau-bewildering smile, And to subserve her spirit's need Learned other things beside the creed! There, too, to-day her knee she bows, And by her one whose darker brows Betray the Southern heart that burns Beside her, and which only turns Its thoughts to Heaven in one request, Not all unworthy to be blest, But rising from an earthlier pain Than might beseem a Christian fane. Ah! can the guileless maiden share The wish that lifts that passionate prayer? Is all at peace that breast within? Good angels! warn her of the sin! Alas! what boots it? who can save A willing victim of the wave? Who cleanse a soul that loves its guilt? Or gather wine when wine is spilt? We quit the holy house and gain The open air; then, happy twain, Adown familiar streets we go, And now and then she turns to show, With fears that all is changing fast, Some spot that's sacred to her Past. Here by this way, through shadows cool, A little maid, she tripped to school; And there each morning used to stop Before a wonder of a shop Where, built of apples and of pears, Rose pyramids of golden spheres; While, dangling in her dazzled sight, Ripe cherries cast a crimson light, And made her think of elfin lamps, And feast and sport in fairy camps, Whereat, upon her royal throne (Most richly carved in cherry-stone), Titania ruled, in queenly state, The boisterous revels of the fête! 'T was yonder, with their "horrid" noise, Dismissed from books, she met the boys, Who, with a barbarous scorn of girls, Glanced slightly at her sunny curls, And laughed and leaped as reckless by As though no pretty face were nigh! But--here the maiden grows demure-- Indeed she's not so VERY sure, That in a year, or haply twain, Who looked e'er failed to look again, And sooth to say, I little doubt (Some azure day, the truth will out!) That certain baits in certain eyes Caught many an unsuspecting prize; And somewhere underneath these eaves A budding flirt put forth its leaves! Has not the sky a deeper blue, Have not the trees a greener hue, And bend they not with lordlier grace And nobler shapes above the place Where on one cloudless winter morn My Katie to this life was born? Ah, folly! long hath fled the hour When love to sight gave keener power, And lovers looked for special boons In brighter flowers and larger moons. But wave the foliage as it may, And let the sky be ashen gray, Thus much at least a manly youth May hold--and yet not blush--as truth: If near that blessed spot of earth Which saw the cherished maiden's birth No softer dews than usual rise, And life there keeps its wonted guise, Yet not the less that spot may seem As lovely as a poet's dream; And should a fervid faith incline To make thereof a sainted shrine, Who may deny that round us throng A hundred earthly creeds as wrong, But meaner far, which yet unblamed Stalk by us and are not ashamed? So, therefore, Katie, as our stroll Ends at this portal, while you roll Those lustrous eyes to catch each ray That may recall some vanished day, I--let them jeer and laugh who will-- Stoop down and kiss the sacred sill! So strongly sometimes on the sense These fancies hold their influence, That in long well-known streets I stray Like one who fears to lose his way. The stranger, I, the native, she, Myself, not Kate, had crossed the sea; And changing place, and mixing times, I walk in unfamiliar climes! These houses, free to every breeze That blows from warm Floridian seas, Assume a massive English air, And close around an English square; While, if I issue from the town, An English hill looks greenly down, Or round me rolls an English park, And in the Broad I hear the Larke! Thus when, where woodland violets hide, I rove with Katie at my side, It scarce would seem amiss to say: "Katie! my home lies far away, Beyond the pathless waste of brine, In a young land of palm and pine! There, by the tropic heats, the soul Is touched as if with living coal, And glows with such a fire as none Can feel beneath a Northern sun, Unless--my Katie's heart attest!-- 'T is kindled in an English breast! Such is the land in which I live, And, Katie! such the soul I give. Come! ere another morning beam, We'll cleave the sea with wings of steam; And soon, despite of storm or calm, Beneath my native groves of palm, Kind friends shall greet, with joy and pride, The Southron and his English bride!" Why Silent? Why am I silent from year to year? Needs must I sing on these blue March days? What will you say, when I tell you here, That already, I think, for a little praise, I have paid too dear? For, I know not why, when I tell my thought, It seems as though I fling it away; And the charm wherewith a fancy is fraught, When secret, dies with the fleeting lay Into which it is wrought. So my butterfly-dreams their golden wings But seldom unfurl from their chrysalis; And thus I retain my loveliest things, While the world, in its worldliness, does not miss What a poet sings. Two Portraits I You say, as one who shapes a life, That you will never be a wife, And, laughing lightly, ask my aid To paint your future as a maid. This is the portrait; and I take The softest colors for your sake: The springtime of your soul is dead, And forty years have bent your head; The lines are firmer round your mouth, But still its smile is like the South. Your eyes, grown deeper, are not sad, Yet never more than gravely glad; And the old charm still lurks within The cloven dimple of your chin. Some share, perhaps, of youthful gloss Your cheek hath shed; but still across The delicate ear are folded down Those silken locks of chestnut brown; Though here and there a thread of gray Steals through them like a lunar ray. One might suppose your life had passed Unvexed by any troubling blast; And such--for all that I foreknow-- May be the truth! The deeper woe! A loveless heart is seldom stirred; And sorrow shuns the mateless bird; But ah! through cares alone we reach The happiness which mocketh speech; In the white courts beyond the stars The noblest brow is seamed with scars; And they on earth who've wept the most Sit highest of the heavenly host. Grant that your maiden life hath sped In music o'er a golden bed, With rocks, and winds, and storms at truce, And not without a noble use; Yet are you happy? In your air I see a nameless want appear, And a faint shadow on your cheek Tells what the lips refuse to speak. You have had all a maid could hope In the most cloudless horoscope: The strength that cometh from above; A Christian mother's holy love; And always at your soul's demand A brother's, sister's heart and hand. Small need your heart hath had to roam Beyond the circle of your home; And yet upon your wish attends A loving throng of genial friends. What, in a lot so sweet as this, Is wanting to complete your bliss? And to what secret shall I trace The clouds that sometimes cross your face, And that sad look which now and then Comes, disappears, and comes again, And dies reluctantly away In those clear eyes of azure gray? At best, and after all, the place You fill with such a serious grace, Hath much to try a woman's heart, And you but play a painful part. The world around, with little ruth, Still laughs at maids who have not youth, And, right or wrong, the old maid rests The victim of its paltry jests, And still is doomed to meet and bear Its pitying smile or furtive sneer. These are indeed but petty things, And yet they touch some hearts like stings. But I acquit you of the shame Of being unresisting game; For you are of such tempered clay As turns far stronger shafts away, And all that foes or fools could guide Would only curl that lip of pride. How then, O weary one! explain The sources of that hidden pain? Alas! you have divined at length How little you have used your strength, Which, with who knows what human good, Lies buried in that maidenhood, Where, as amid a field of flowers, You have but played with April showers. Ah! we would wish the world less fair, If Spring alone adorned the year, And Autumn came not with its fruit, And Autumn hymns were ever mute. So I remark without surprise That, as the unvarying season flies, From day to night and night to day, You sicken of your endless May. In this poor life we may not cross One virtuous instinct without loss, And the soul grows not to its height Till love calls forth its utmost might. Not blind to all you might have been, And with some consciousness of sin-- Because with love you sometimes played, And choice, not fate, hath kept you maid-- You feel that you must pass from earth But half-acquainted with its worth, And that within your heart are deeps In which a nobler woman sleeps; That not the maiden, but the wife Grasps the whole lesson of a life, While such as you but sit and dream Along the surface of its stream. And doubtless sometimes, all unsought, There comes upon your hour of thought, Despite the struggles of your will, A sense of something absent still; And then you cannot help but yearn To love and be beloved in turn, As they are loved, and love, who live As love were all that life could give; And in a transient clasp or kiss Crowd an eternity of bliss; They who of every mortal joy Taste always twice, nor feel them cloy, Or, if woes come, in Sorrow's hour Are strengthened by a double power. II Here ends my feeble sketch of what Might, but will never be your lot; And I foresee how oft these rhymes Shall make you smile in after-times. If I have read your nature right, It only waits a spark of light; And when that comes, as come it must, It will not fall on arid dust, Nor yet on that which breaks to flame In the first blush of maiden shame; But on a heart which, even at rest, Is warmer than an April nest, Where, settling soft, that spark shall creep About as gently as a sleep; Still stealing on with pace so slow Yourself will scarcely feel the glow, Till after many and many a day, Although no gleam its course betray, It shall attain the inmost shrine, And wrap it in a fire divine! I know not when or whence indeed Shall fall and burst the burning seed, But oh! once kindled, it will blaze, I know, forever! By its rays You will perceive, with subtler eyes, The meaning in the earth and skies, Which, with their animated chain Of grass and flowers, and sun and rain, Of green below, and blue above, Are but a type of married love. You will perceive that in the breast The germs of many virtues rest, Which, ere they feel a lover's breath, Lie in a temporary death; And till the heart is wooed and won It is an earth without a sun. III But now, stand forth as sweet as life! And let me paint you as a wife. I note some changes in your face, And in your mien a graver grace; Yet the calm forehead lightly bears Its weight of twice a score of years; And that one love which on this earth Can wake the heart to all its worth, And to their height can lift and bind The powers of soul, and sense, and mind, Hath not allowed a charm to fade-- And the wife's lovelier than the maid. An air of still, though bright repose Tells that a tender hand bestows All that a generous manhood may To make your life one bridal day, While the kind eyes betray no less, In their blue depths of tenderness, That you have learned the truths which lie Behind that holy mystery, Which, with its blisses and its woes, Nor man nor maiden ever knows. If now, as to the eyes of one Whose glance not even thought can shun, Your soul lay open to my view, I, looking all its nature through, Could see no incompleted part, For the whole woman warms your heart. I cannot tell how many dead You number in the cycles fled, And you but look the more serene For all the griefs you may have seen, As you had gathered from the dust The flowers of Peace, and Hope, and Trust. Your smile is even sweeter now Than when it lit your maiden brow, And that which wakes this gentler charm Coos at this moment on your arm. Your voice was always soft in youth, And had the very sound of truth, But never were its tones so mild Until you blessed your earliest child; And when to soothe some little wrong It melts into a mother's song, The same strange sweetness which in years Long vanished filled the eyes with tears, And (even when mirthful) gave always A pathos to your girlish lays, Falls, with perchance a deeper thrill, Upon the breathless listener still. I cannot guess in what fair spot The chance of Time hath fixed your lot, Nor can I name what manly breast Gives to that head a welcome rest; I cannot tell if partial Fate Hath made you poor, or rich, or great; But oh! whatever be your place, I never saw a form or face To which more plainly hath been lent The blessing of a full content! La Belle Juive Is it because your sable hair Is folded over brows that wear At times a too imperial air; Or is it that the thoughts which rise In those dark orbs do seek disguise Beneath the lids of Eastern eyes; That choose whatever pose or place May chance to please, in you I trace The noblest woman of your race? The crowd is sauntering at its ease, And humming like a hive of bees-- You take your seat and touch the keys: I do not hear the giddy throng; The sea avenges Israel's wrong, And on the wind floats Miriam's song! You join me with a stately grace; Music to Poesy gives place; Some grand emotion lights your face: At once I stand by Mizpeh's walls: With smiles the martyred daughter falls, And desolate are Mizpeh's halls! Intrusive babblers come between; With calm, pale brow and lofty mien, You thread the circle like a queen! Then sweeps the royal Esther by; The deep devotion in her eye Is looking "If I die, I die!" You stroll the garden's flowery walks; The plants to me are grainless stalks, And Ruth to old Naomi talks. Adopted child of Judah's creed, Like Judah's daughters, true at need, I see you mid the alien seed. I watch afar the gleaner sweet; I wake like Boaz in the wheat, And find you lying at my feet! My feet! Oh! if the spell that lures My heart through all these dreams endures, How soon shall I be stretched at yours! An Exotic Not in a climate near the sun Did the cloud with its trailing fringes float, Whence, white as the down of an angel's plume, Fell the snow of her brow and throat. And the ground had been rich for a thousand years With the blood of heroes, and sages, and kings, Where the rose that blooms in her exquisite cheek Unfolded the flush of its wings. On a land where the faces are fair, though pale As a moonlit mist when the winds are still, She breaks like a morning in Paradise Through the palms of an orient hill. Her beauty, perhaps, were all too bright, But about her there broods some delicate spell, Whence the wondrous charm of the girl grows soft As the light in an English dell. There is not a story of faith and truth On the starry scroll of her country's fame, But has helped to shape her stately mien, And to touch her soul with flame. I sometimes forget, as she sweeps me a bow, That I gaze on a simple English maid, And I bend my head, as if to a queen Who is courting my lance and blade. Once, as we read, in a curtained niche, A poet who sang of her sea-throned isle, There was something of Albion's mighty Bess In the flash of her haughty smile. She seemed to gather from every age All the greatness of England about her there, And my fancy wove a royal crown Of the dusky gold of her hair. But it was no queen to whom that day, In the dim green shade of a trellised vine, I whispered a hope that had somewhat to do With a small white hand in mine. The Tudor had vanished, and, as I spoke, 'T was herself looked out of her frank brown eye, And an answer was burning upon her face, Ere I caught the low reply. What was it! Nothing the world need know-- The stars saw our parting! Enough, that then I walked from the porch with the tread of a king, And she was a queen again! The Rosebuds Yes, in that dainty ivory shrine, With those three pallid buds, I twine And fold away a dream divine! One night they lay upon a breast Where Love hath made his fragrant nest, And throned me as a life-long guest. Near that chaste heart they seemed to me Types of far fairer flowers to be-- The rosebuds of a human tree! Buds that shall bloom beside my hearth, And there be held of richer worth Than all the kingliest gems of earth. Ah me! the pathos of the thought! I had not deemed she wanted aught; Yet what a tenderer charm it wrought! I know not if she marked the flame That lit my cheek, but not from shame, When one sweet image dimly came. There was a murmur soft and low; White folds of cambric, parted slow; And little fingers played with snow! How far my fancy dared to stray, A lover's reverence needs not say-- Enough--the vision passed away! Passed in a mist of happy tears, While something in my trancèd ears Hummed like the future in a seer's! A Mother's Wail My babe! my tiny babe! my only babe! My single rose-bud in a crown of thorns! My lamp that in that narrow hut of life, Whence I looked forth upon a night of storm! Burned with the lustre of the moon and stars! My babe! my tiny babe! my only babe! Behold the bud is gone! the thorns remain! My lamp hath fallen from its niche--ah, me! Earth drinks the fragrant flame, and I am left Forever and forever in the dark! My babe! my babe! my own and only babe! Where art thou now? If somewhere in the sky An angel hold thee in his radiant arms, I challenge him to clasp thy tender form With half the fervor of a mother's love! Forgive me, Lord! forgive my reckless grief! Forgive me that this rebel, selfish heart Would almost make me jealous for my child, Though thy own lap enthroned him. Lord, thou hast So many such! I have--ah! had but one! O yet once more, my babe, to hear thy cry! O yet once more, my babe, to see thy smile! O yet once more to feel against my breast Those cool, soft hands, that warm, wet, eager mouth, With the sweet sharpness of its budding pearls! But it must never, never more be mine To mark the growing meaning in thine eyes, To watch thy soul unfolding leaf by leaf, Or catch, with ever fresh surprise and joy, Thy dawning recognitions of the world. Three different shadows of thyself, my babe, Change with each other while I weep. The first, The sweetest, yet the not least fraught with pain, Clings like my living boy around my neck, Or purrs and murmurs softly at my feet! Another is a little mound of earth; That comes the oftenest, darling! In my dreams, I see it beaten by the midnight rain, Or chilled beneath the moon. Ah! what a couch For that which I have shielded from a breath That would not stir the violets on thy grave! The third, my precious babe! the third, O Lord! Is a fair cherub face beyond the stars, Wearing the roses of a mystic bliss, Yet sometimes not unsaddened by a glance Turned earthward on a mother in her woe! This is the vision, Lord, that I would keep Before me always. But, alas! as yet, It is the dimmest and the rarest, too! O touch my sight, or break the cloudy bars That hide it, lest I madden where I kneel! Our Willie 'T was merry Christmas when he came, Our little boy beneath the sod; And brighter burned the Christmas flame, And merrier sped the Christmas game, Because within the house there lay A shape as tiny as a fay-- The Christmas gift of God! In wreaths and garlands on the walls The holly hung its ruby balls, The mistletoe its pearls; And a Christmas tree's fantastic fruits Woke laughter like a choir of flutes From happy boys and girls. For the mirth, which else had swelled as shrill As a school let loose to its errant will, Was softened by the thought, That in a dim hushed room above A mother's pains in a mother's love Were only just forgot. The jest, the tale, the toast, the glee, All took a sober tone; We spoke of the babe upstairs, as we Held festival for him alone. When the bells rang in the Christmas morn, It scarcely seemed a sin to say That they rang because that babe was born, Not less than for the sacred day. Ah! Christ forgive us for the crime Which drowned the memories of the time In a merely mortal bliss! We owned the error when the mirth Of another Christmas lit the hearth Of every home but this. When, in that lonely burial-ground, With every Christmas sight and sound Removed or shunned, we kept A mournful Christmas by the mound Where little Willie slept! Ah, hapless mother! darling wife! I might say nothing more, And the dull cold world would hold The story of that precious life As amply told! Shall we, shall you and I, before That world's unsympathetic eyes Lay other relics from our store Of tender memories? What could it know of the joy and love That throbbed and smiled and wept above An unresponsive thing? And who could share the ecstatic thrill With which we watched the upturned bill Of our bird at its living spring? Shall we tell how in the time gone by, Beneath all changes of the sky, And in an ordinary home Amid the city's din, Life was to us a crystal dome, Our babe the flame therein? Ah! this were jargon on the mart; And though some gentle friend, And many and many a suffering heart, Would weep and comprehend, Yet even these might fail to see What we saw daily in the child-- Not the mere creature undefiled, But the winged cherub soon to be. That wandering hand which seemed to reach At angel finger-tips, And that murmur like a mystic speech Upon the rosy lips, That something in the serious face Holier than even its infant grace, And that rapt gaze on empty space, Which made us, half believing, say, "Ah, little wide-eyed seer! who knows But that for you this chamber glows With stately shapes and solemn shows?" Which touched us, too, with vague alarms, Lest in the circle of our arms We held a being less akin To his parents in a world of sin Than to beings not of clay: How could we speak in human phrase, Of such scarce earthly traits and ways, What would not seem A doting dream, In the creed of these sordid days? No! let us keep Deep, deep, In sorrowing heart and aching brain, This story hidden with the pain, Which since that blue October night When Willie vanished from our sight, Must haunt us even in our sleep. In the gloom of the chamber where he died, And by that grave which, through our care, From Yule to Yule of every year, Is made like Spring to bloom; And where, at times, we catch the sigh As of an angel floating nigh, Who longs but has not power to tell That in that violet-shrouded cell Lies nothing better than the shell Which he had cast aside-- By that sweet grave, in that dark room, We may weave at will for each other's ear, Of that life, and that love, and that early doom, The tale which is shadowed here: To us alone it will always be As fresh as our own misery; But enough, alas! for the world is said, In the brief "Here lieth" of the dead! Address Delivered at the Opening of the New Theatre at Richmond A Prize Poem A fairy ring Drawn in the crimson of a battle-plain-- From whose weird circle every loathsome thing And sight and sound of pain Are banished, while about it in the air, And from the ground, and from the low-hung skies, Throng, in a vision fair As ever lit a prophet's dying eyes, Gleams of that unseen world That lies about us, rainbow-tinted shapes With starry wings unfurled, Poised for a moment on such airy capes As pierce the golden foam Of sunset's silent main-- Would image what in this enchanted dome, Amid the night of war and death In which the armèd city draws its breath, We have built up! For though no wizard wand or magic cup The spell hath wrought, Within this charmëd fane, we ope the gates Of that divinest Fairy-land, Where under loftier fates Than rule the vulgar earth on which we stand, Move the bright creatures of the realm of thought. Shut for one happy evening from the flood That roars around us, here you may behold-- As if a desert way Could blossom and unfold A garden fresh with May-- Substantialized in breathing flesh and blood, Souls that upon the poet's page Have lived from age to age, And yet have never donned this mortal clay. A golden strand Shall sometimes spread before you like the isle Where fair Miranda's smile Met the sweet stranger whom the father's art Had led unto her heart, Which, like a bud that waited for the light, Burst into bloom at sight! Love shall grow softer in each maiden's eyes As Juliet leans her cheek upon her hand, And prattles to the night. Anon, a reverend form, With tattered robe and forehead bare, That challenge all the torments of the air, Goes by! And the pent feelings choke in one long sigh, While, as the mimic thunder rolls, you hear The noble wreck of Lear Reproach like things of life the ancient skies, And commune with the storm! Lo! next a dim and silent chamber where, Wrapt in glad dreams in which, perchance, the Moor Tells his strange story o'er, The gentle Desdemona chastely lies, Unconscious of the loving murderer nigh. Then through a hush like death Stalks Denmark's mailëd ghost! And Hamlet enters with that thoughtful breath Which is the trumpet to a countless host Of reasons, but which wakes no deed from sleep; For while it calls to strife, He pauses on the very brink of fact To toy as with the shadow of an act, And utter those wise saws that cut so deep Into the core of life! Nor shall be wanting many a scene Where forms of more familiar mien, Moving through lowlier pathways, shall present The world of every day, Such as it whirls along the busy quay, Or sits beneath a rustic orchard wall, Or floats about a fashion-freighted hall, Or toils in attics dark the night away. Love, hate, grief, joy, gain, glory, shame, shall meet, As in the round wherein our lives are pent; Chance for a while shall seem to reign, While Goodness roves like Guilt about the street, And Guilt looks innocent. But all at last shall vindicate the right, Crime shall be meted with its proper pain, Motes shall be taken from the doubter's sight, And Fortune's general justice rendered plain. Of honest laughter there shall be no dearth, Wit shall shake hands with humor grave and sweet, Our wisdom shall not be too wise for mirth, Nor kindred follies want a fool to greet. As sometimes from the meanest spot of earth A sudden beauty unexpected starts, So you shall find some germs of hidden worth Within the vilest hearts; And now and then, when in those moods that turn To the cold Muse that whips a fault with sneers, You shall, perchance, be strangely touched to learn You've struck a spring of tears! But while we lead you thus from change to change, Shall we not find within our ample range Some type to elevate a people's heart-- Some hero who shall teach a hero's part In this distracted time? Rise from thy sleep of ages, noble Tell! And, with the Alpine thunders of thy voice, As if across the billows unenthralled Thy Alps unto the Alleghanies called, Bid Liberty rejoice! Proclaim upon this trans-Atlantic strand The deeds which, more than their own awful mien, Make every crag of Switzerland sublime! And say to those whose feeble souls would lean, Not on themselves, but on some outstretched hand, That once a single mind sufficed to quell The malice of a tyrant; let them know That each may crowd in every well-aimed blow, Not the poor strength alone of arm and brand, But the whole spirit of a mighty land! Bid Liberty rejoice! Aye, though its day Be far or near, these clouds shall yet be red With the large promise of the coming ray. Meanwhile, with that calm courage which can smile Amid the terrors of the wildest fray, Let us among the charms of Art awhile Fleet the deep gloom away; Nor yet forget that on each hand and head Rest the dear rights for which we fight and pray. A Vision of Poesy Part I I In a far country, and a distant age, Ere sprites and fays had bade farewell to earth, A boy was born of humble parentage; The stars that shone upon his lonely birth Did seem to promise sovereignty and fame-- Yet no tradition hath preserved his name. II 'T is said that on the night when he was born, A beauteous shape swept slowly through the room; Its eyes broke on the infant like a morn, And his cheek brightened like a rose in bloom; But as it passed away there followed after A sigh of pain, and sounds of elvish laughter. III And so his parents deemed him to be blest Beyond the lot of mortals; they were poor As the most timid bird that stored its nest With the stray gleanings at their cottage-door: Yet they contrived to rear their little dove, And he repaid them with the tenderest love. IV The child was very beautiful in sooth, And as he waxed in years grew lovelier still; On his fair brow the aureole of truth Beamed, and the purest maidens, with a thrill, Looked in his eyes, and from their heaven of blue Saw thoughts like sinless Angels peering through. V Need there was none of censure or of praise To mould him to the kind parental hand; Yet there was ever something in his ways, Which those about him could not understand; A self-withdrawn and independent bliss, Beside the father's love, the mother's kiss. VI For oft, when he believed himself alone, They caught brief snatches of mysterious rhymes, Which he would murmur in an undertone, Like a pleased bee's in summer; and at times A strange far look would come into his eyes, As if he saw a vision in the skies. VII And he upon a simple leaf would pore As if its very texture unto him Had some deep meaning; sometimes by the door, From noon until a summer-day grew dim, He lay and watched the clouds; and to his thought Night with her stars but fitful slumbers brought. VIII In the long hours of twilight, when the breeze Talked in low tones along the woodland rills, Or the loud North its stormy minstrelsies Blent with wild noises from the distant hills, The boy--his rosy hand against his ear Curved like a sea-shell--hushed as some rapt seer, IX Followed the sounds, and ever and again, As the wind came and went, in storm or play, He seemed to hearken as to some far strain Of mingled voices calling him away; And they who watched him held their breath to trace The still and fixed attention in his face. X Once, on a cold and loud-voiced winter night, The three were seated by their cottage-fire-- The mother watching by its flickering light The wakeful urchin, and the dozing sire; There was a brief, quick motion like a bird's, And the boy's thought thus rippled into words: XI "O mother! thou hast taught me many things, But none I think more beautiful than speech-- A nobler power than even those broad wings I used to pray for, when I longed to reach That distant peak which on our vale looks down, And wears the star of evening for a crown. XII "But, mother, while our human words are rife To us with meaning, other sounds there be Which seem, and are, the language of a life Around, yet unlike ours: winds talk; the sea Murmurs articulately, and the sky Listens, and answers, though inaudibly. XIII "By stream and spring, in glades and woodlands lone, Beside our very cot I've gathered flowers Inscribed with signs and characters unknown; But the frail scrolls still baffle all my powers: What is this language and where is the key That opes its weird and wondrous mystery? XIV "The forests know it, and the mountains know, And it is written in the sunset's dyes; A revelation to the world below Is daily going on before our eyes; And, but for sinful thoughts, I do not doubt That we could spell the thrilling secret out. XV "O mother! somewhere on this lovely earth I lived, and understood that mystic tongue, But, for some reason, to my second birth Only the dullest memories have clung, Like that fair tree that even while blossoming Keeps the dead berries of a former spring. XVI "Who shall put life in these?--my nightly dreams Some teacher of supernal powers foretell; A fair and stately shape appears, which seems Bright with all truth; and once, in a dark dell Within the forest, unto me there came A voice that must be hers, which called my name." XVII Puzzled and frightened, wondering more and more, The mother heard, but did not comprehend; "So early dallying with forbidden lore! Oh, what will chance, and wherein will it end? My child! my child!" she caught him to her breast, "Oh, let me kiss these wildering thoughts to rest! XVIII "They cannot come from God, who freely gives All that we need to have, or ought to know; Beware, my son! some evil influence strives To grieve thy parents, and to work thee woe; Alas! the vision I misunderstood! It could not be an angel fair and good." XIX And then, in low and tremulous tones, she told The story of his birth-night; the boy's eyes, As the wild tale went on, were bright and bold, With a weird look that did not seem surprise: "Perhaps," he said, "this lady and her elves Will one day come, and take me to themselves." XX "And wouldst thou leave us?" "Dearest mother, no! Hush! I will check these thoughts that give thee pain; Or, if they flow, as they perchance must flow, At least I will not utter them again; Hark! didst thou hear a voice like many streams? Mother! it is the spirit of my dreams!" XXI Thenceforth, whatever impulse stirred below, In the deep heart beneath that childish breast, Those lips were sealed, and though the eye would glow, Yet the brow wore an air of perfect rest; Cheerful, content, with calm though strong control He shut the temple-portals of his soul. XXII And when too restlessly the mighty throng Of fancies woke within his teeming mind, All silently they formed in glorious song, And floated off unheard, and undivined, Perchance not lost--with many a voiceless prayer They reached the sky, and found some record there. XXIII Softly and swiftly sped the quiet days; The thoughtful boy has blossomed into youth, And still no maiden would have feared his gaze, And still his brow was noble with the truth: Yet, though he masks the pain with pious art, There burns a restless fever in his heart. XXIV A childish dream is now a deathless need Which drives him to far hills and distant wilds; The solemn faith and fervor of his creed Bold as a martyr's, simple as a child's; The eagle knew him as she knew the blast, And the deer did not flee him as he passed. XXV But gentle even in his wildest mood, Always, and most, he loved the bluest weather, And in some soft and sunny solitude Couched like a milder sunshine on the heather, He communed with the winds, and with the birds, As if they might have answered him in words. XXVI Deep buried in the forest was a nook Remote and quiet as its quiet skies; He knew it, sought it, loved it as a book Full of his own sweet thoughts and memories; Dark oaks and fluted chestnuts gathering round, Pillared and greenly domed a sloping mound. XXVII Whereof--white, purple, azure, golden, red, Confused like hues of sunset--the wild flowers Wove a rich dais; through crosslights overhead Glanced the clear sunshine, fell the fruitful showers, And here the shyest bird would fold her wings; Here fled the fairest and the gentlest things. XXVIII Thither, one night of mist and moonlight, came The youth, with nothing deeper in his thoughts Than to behold beneath the silver flame New aspects of his fair and favorite spot; A single ray attained the ground, and shed Just light enough to guide the wanderer's tread. XXIX And high and hushed arose the stately trees, Yet shut within themselves, like dungeons, where Lay fettered all the secrets of the breeze; Silent, but not as slumbering, all things there Wore to the youth's aroused imagination An air of deep and solemn expectation. XXX "Hath Heaven," the youth exclaimed, "a sweeter spot, Or Earth another like it?--yet even here The old mystery dwells! and though I read it not, Here most I hope--it is, or seems so near; So many hints come to me, but, alas! I cannot grasp the shadows as they pass. XXXI "Here, from the very turf beneath me, I Catch, but just catch, I know not what faint sound, And darkly guess that from yon silent sky Float starry emanations to the ground; These ears are deaf, these human eyes are blind, I want a purer heart, a subtler mind. XXXII "Sometimes--could it be fancy?--I have felt The presence of a spirit who might speak; As down in lowly reverence I knelt, Its very breath hath kissed my burning cheek; But I in vain have hushed my own to hear A wing or whisper stir the silent air!" XXXIII Is not the breeze articulate? Hark! Oh, hark! A distant murmur, like a voice of floods; And onward sweeping slowly through the dark, Bursts like a call the night-wind from the woods! Low bow the flowers, the trees fling loose their dreams, And through the waving roof a fresher moonlight streams. XXXIV "Mortal!"--the word crept slowly round the place As if that wind had breathed it! From no star Streams that soft lustre on the dreamer's face. Again a hushing calm! while faint and far The breeze goes calling onward through the night. Dear God! what vision chains that wide-strained sight? XXXV Over the grass and flowers, and up the slope Glides a white cloud of mist, self-moved and slow, That, pausing at the hillock's moonlit cope, Swayed like a flame of silver; from below The breathless youth with beating heart beholds A mystic motion in its argent folds. XXXVI Yet his young soul is bold, and hope grows warm, As flashing through that cloud of shadowy crape, With sweep of robes, and then a gleaming arm, Slowly developing, at last took shape A face and form unutterably bright, That cast a golden glamour on the night. XXXVII But for the glory round it it would seem Almost a mortal maiden; and the boy, Unto whom love was yet an innocent dream, Shivered and crimsoned with an unknown joy; As to the young Spring bounds the passionate South, He could have clasped and kissed her mouth to mouth. XXXVIII Yet something checked, that was and was not dread, Till in a low sweet voice the maiden spake; She was the Fairy of his dreams, she said, And loved him simply for his human sake; And that in heaven, wherefrom she took her birth, They called her Poesy, the angel of the earth. XXXIX "And ever since that immemorial hour, When the glad morning-stars together sung, My task hath been, beneath a mightier Power, To keep the world forever fresh and young; I give it not its fruitage and its green, But clothe it with a glory all unseen. XL "I sow the germ which buds in human art, And, with my sister, Science, I explore With light the dark recesses of the heart, And nerve the will, and teach the wish to soar; I touch with grace the body's meanest clay, While noble souls are nobler for my sway. XLI "Before my power the kings of earth have bowed; I am the voice of Freedom, and the sword Leaps from its scabbard when I call aloud; Wherever life in sacrifice is poured, Wherever martyrs die or patriots bleed, I weave the chaplet and award the meed. XLII "Where Passion stoops, or strays, is cold, or dead, I lift from error, or to action thrill! Or if it rage too madly in its bed, The tempest hushes at my 'Peace! be still!' I know how far its tides should sink or swell, And they obey my sceptre and my spell. XLIII "All lovely things, and gentle--the sweet laugh Of children, Girlhood's kiss, and Friendship's clasp, The boy that sporteth with the old man's staff, The baby, and the breast its fingers grasp-- All that exalts the grounds of happiness, All griefs that hallow, and all joys that bless, XLIV "To me are sacred; at my holy shrine Love breathes its latest dreams, its earliest hints; I turn life's tasteless waters into wine, And flush them through and through with purple tints. Wherever Earth is fair, and Heaven looks down, I rear my altars, and I wear my crown. XLV "I am the unseen spirit thou hast sought, I woke those shadowy questionings that vex Thy young mind, lost in its own cloud of thought, And rouse the soul they trouble and perplex; I filled thy days with visions, and thy nights Blessed with all sweetest sounds and fairy sights. XLVI "Not here, not in this world, may I disclose The mysteries in which this life is hearsed; Some doubts there be that, with some earthly woes, By Death alone shall wholly be dispersed; Yet on those very doubts from this low sod Thy soul shall pass beyond the stars to God. XLVII "And so to knowledge, climbing grade by grade, Thou shalt attain whatever mortals can, And what thou mayst discover by my aid Thou shalt translate unto thy brother man; And men shall bless the power that flings a ray Into their night from thy diviner day. XLVIII "For, from thy lofty height, thy words shall fall Upon their spirits like bright cataracts That front a sunrise; thou shalt hear them call Amid their endless waste of arid facts, As wearily they plod their way along, Upon the rhythmic zephyrs of thy song. XLIX "All this is in thy reach, but much depends Upon thyself--thy future I await; I give the genius, point the proper ends, But the true bard is his own only Fate; Into thy soul my soul have I infused; Take care thy lofty powers be wisely used. L "The Poet owes a high and holy debt, Which, if he feel, he craves not to be heard For the poor boon of praise, or place, nor yet Does the mere joy of song, as with the bird Of many voices, prompt the choral lay That cheers that gentle pilgrim on his way. LI "Nor may he always sweep the passionate lyre, Which is his heart, only for such relief As an impatient spirit may desire, Lest, from the grave which hides a private grief, The spells of song call up some pallid wraith To blast or ban a mortal hope or faith. LII "Yet over his deep soul, with all its crowd Of varying hopes and fears, he still must brood; As from its azure height a tranquil cloud Watches its own bright changes in the flood; Self-reading, not self-loving--they are twain-- And sounding, while he mourns, the depths of pain. LIII "Thus shall his songs attain the common breast, Dyed in his own life's blood, the sign and seal, Even as the thorns which are the martyr's crest, That do attest his office, and appeal Unto the universal human heart In sanction of his mission and his art. LIV "Much yet remains unsaid--pure must he be; Oh, blessëd are the pure! for they shall hear Where others hear not, see where others see With a dazed vision: who have drawn most near My shrine, have ever brought a spirit cased And mailëd in a body clean and chaste. LV "The Poet to the whole wide world belongs, Even as the teacher is the child's--I said No selfish aim should ever mar his songs, But self wears many guises; men may wed Self in another, and the soul may be Self to its centre, all unconsciously. LVI "And therefore must the Poet watch, lest he, In the dark struggle of this life, should take Stains which he might not notice; he must flee Falsehood, however winsome, and forsake All for the Truth, assured that Truth alone Is Beauty, and can make him all my own. LVII "And he must be as armëd warrior strong, And he must be as gentle as a girl, And he must front, and sometimes suffer wrong, With brow unbent, and lip untaught to curl; For wrath, and scorn, and pride, however just, Fill the clear spirit's eyes with earthly dust." -------- The story came to me--it recks not whence-- In fragments. Oh! if I could tell it all, If human speech indeed could tell it all, 'T were not a whit less wondrous, than if I Should find, untouched in leaf and stem, and bright, As when it bloomed three thousand years ago, On some Idalian slope, a perfect rose. Alas! a leaf or two, and they perchance Scarce worth the hiving, one or two dead leaves Are the sole harvest of a summer's toil. There was a moment, ne'er to be recalled, When to the Poet's hope within my heart, They wore a tint like life's, but in my hand, I know not why, they withered. I have heard Somewhere, of some dead monarch, from the tomb, Where he had slept a century and more, Brought forth, that when the coffin was laid bare, Albeit the body in its mouldering robes Was fleshless, yet one feature still remained Perfect, or perfect seemed at least; the eyes Gleamed for a second on the startled crowd, And then went out in ashes. Even thus The story, when I drew it from the grave Where it had lain so long, did seem, I thought, Not wholly lifeless; but even while I gazed To fix its features on my heart, and called The world to wonder with me, lo! it proved I looked upon a corpse! What further fell In that lone forest nook, how much was taught, How much was only hinted, what the youth Promised, if promise were required, to do Or strive for, what the gifts he bore away-- Or added powers or blessings--how at last, The vision ended and he sought his home, How lived there, and how long, and when he passed Into the busy world to seek his fate, I know not, and if any ever knew, The tale hath perished from the earth; for here The slender thread on which my song is strung Breaks off, and many after years of life Are lost to sight, the life to reappear Only towards its close--as of a dream We catch the end and opening, but forget That which had joined them in the dreaming brain; Or as a mountain with a belt of mist That shows his base, and far above, a peak With a blue plume of pines. But turn the page And read the only hints that yet remain. Part II I It is not winter yet, but that sweet time In autumn when the first cool days are past; A week ago, the leaves were hoar with rime, And some have dropped before the North wind's blast; But the mild hours are back, and at mid-noon, The day hath all the genial warmth of June. II What slender form lies stretched along the mound? Can it be his, the Wanderer's, with that brow Gray in its prime, those eyes that wander round Listlessly, with a jaded glance that now Seems to see nothing where it rests, and then Pores on each trivial object in its ken? III See how a gentle maid's wan fingers clasp The last fond love-notes of some faithless hand; Thus, with a transient interest, his weak grasp Holds a few leaves as when of old he scanned The meaning in their gold and crimson streaks; But the sweet dream has vanished! hush! he speaks! IV "Once more, once more, after long pain and toil, And yet not long, if I should count by years, I breathe my native air, and tread the soil I trod in childhood; if I shed no tears, No happy tears, 't is that their fount is dry, And joy that cannot weep must sigh, must sigh. V "These leaves, my boyish books in days of yore, When, as the weeks sped by, I seemed to stand Ever upon the brink of some wild lore-- These leaves shall make my bed, and--for the hand Of God is on me, chilling brain and breath-- I shall not ask a softer couch in death. VI "Here was it that I saw, or dreamed I saw, I know not which, that shape of love and light. Spirit of Song! have I not owned thy law? Have I not taught, or striven to teach the right, And kept my heart as clean, my life as sweet, As mortals may, when mortals mortals meet? VII "Thou know'st how I went forth, my youthful breast On fire with thee, amid the paths of men; Once in my wanderings, my lone footsteps pressed A mountain forest; in a sombre glen, Down which its thundrous boom a cataract flung, A little bird, unheeded, built and sung. VIII "So fell my voice amid the whirl and rush Of human passions; if unto my art Sorrow hath sometimes owed a gentler gush, I know it not; if any Poet-heart Hath kindled at my songs its light divine, I know it not; no ray came back to mine. IX "Alone in crowds, once more I sought to make Of senseless things my friends; the clouds that burn Above the sunset, and the flowers that shake Their odors in the wind--these would not turn Their faces from me; far from cities, I Forgot the scornful world that passed me by. X "Yet even the world's cold slights I might have borne, Nor fled, though sorrowing; but I shrank at last When one sweet face, too sweet, I thought, for scorn, Looked scornfully upon me; then I passed From all that youth had dreamed or manhood planned, Into the self that none would understand. XI "She was--I never wronged her womanhood By crowning it with praises not her own-- She was all earth's, and earth's, too, in that mood When she brings forth her fairest; I atone Now, in this fading brow and failing frame, That such a soul such soul as mine could tame. XII "Clay to its kindred clay! I loved, in sooth, Too deeply and too purely to be blest; With something more of lust and less of truth She would have sunk all blushes on my breast; And--but I must not blame her--in my ear Death whispers! and the end, thank God! draws near!" XIII Hist! on the perfect silence of the place Comes and dies off a sound like far-off rain With voices mingled; on the Poet's face A shadow, where no shadow should have lain, Falls the next moment: nothing meets his sight, Yet something moves betwixt him and the light. XIV And a voice murmurs, "Wonder not, but hear! ME to behold again thou need'st not seek; Yet by the dim-felt influence on the air, And by the mystic shadow on thy cheek, Know, though thou mayst not touch with fleshly hands, The genius of thy life beside thee stands! XV "Unto no fault, O weary-hearted one! Unto no fault of man's thou ow'st thy fate; All human hearts that beat this earth upon, All human thoughts and human passions wait Upon the genuine bard, to him belong, And help in their own way the Poet's song. XVI "How blame the world? for the world hast thou wrought? Or wast thou but as one who aims to fling The weight of some unutterable thought Down like a burden? what from questioning Too subtly thy own spirit, and to speech But half subduing themes beyond the reach XVII "Of mortal reason; what from living much In that dark world of shadows, where the soul Wanders bewildered, striving still to clutch Yet never clutching once, a shadowy goal, Which always flies, and while it flies seems near, Thy songs were riddles hard to mortal ear. XVIII "This was the hidden selfishness that marred Thy teachings ever; this the false key-note That on such souls as might have loved thee jarred Like an unearthly language; thou didst float On a strange water; those who stood on land Gazed, but they could not leave their beaten strand. XIX "Your elements were different, and apart-- The world's and thine--and even in those intense And watchful broodings o'er thy inmost heart, It was thy own peculiar difference That thou didst seek; nor didst thou care to find Aught that would bring thee nearer to thy kind. XX "Not thus the Poet, who in blood and brain Would represent his race and speak for all, Weaves the bright woof of that impassioned strain Which drapes, as if for some high festival Of pure delights--whence few of human birth May rightly be shut out--the common earth. XXI "As the same law that moulds a planet, rounds A drop of dew, so the great Poet spheres Worlds in himself; no selfish limit bounds A sympathy that folds all characters, All ranks, all passions, and all life almost In its wide circle. Like some noble host, XXII "He spreads the riches of his soul, and bids Partake who will. Age has its saws of truth, And love is for the maiden's drooping lids, And words of passion for the earnest youth; Wisdom for all; and when it seeks relief, Tears, and their solace for the heart of grief. XXIII "Nor less on him than thee the mysteries Within him and about him ever weigh-- The meanings in the stars, and in the breeze, All the weird wonders of the common day, Truths that the merest point removes from reach, And thoughts that pause upon the brink of speech; XXIV "But on the surface of his song these lie As shadows, not as darkness; and alway, Even though it breathe the secrets of the sky, There is a human purpose in the lay; Thus some tall fir that whispers to the stars Shields at its base a cotter's lattice-bars. XXV "Even such my Poet! for thou still art mine! Thou mightst have been, and now have calmly died, A priest, and not a victim at the shrine; Alas! yet was it all thy fault? I chide, Perchance, myself within thee, and the fate To which thy power was solely consecrate. XXVI "Thy life hath not been wholly without use, Albeit that use is partly hidden now; In thy unmingled scorn of any truce With this world's specious falsehoods, often thou Hast uttered, through some all unworldly song, Truths that for man might else have slumbered long. XXVII "And these not always vainly on the crowd Have fallen; some are cherished now, and some, In mystic phrases wrapped as in a shroud, Wait the diviner, who as yet is dumb Upon the breast of God--the gate of birth Closed on a dreamless ignorance of earth. XXVIII "And therefore, though thy name shall pass away, Even as a cloud that hath wept all its showers, Yet as that cloud shall live again one day In the glad grass, and in the happy flowers, So in thy thoughts, though clothed in sweeter rhymes, Thy life shall bear its flowers in future times." The Past To-day's most trivial act may hold the seed Of future fruitfulness, or future dearth; Oh, cherish always every word and deed! The simplest record of thyself hath worth. If thou hast ever slighted one old thought, Beware lest Grief enforce the truth at last; The time must come wherein thou shalt be taught The value and the beauty of the Past. Not merely as a warner and a guide, "A voice behind thee," sounding to the strife; But something never to be put aside, A part and parcel of thy present life. Not as a distant and a darkened sky, Through which the stars peep, and the moon-beams glow; But a surrounding atmosphere, whereby We live and breathe, sustained in pain and woe. A shadowy land, where joy and sorrow kiss, Each still to each corrective and relief, Where dim delights are brightened into bliss, And nothing wholly perishes but Grief. Ah, me!--not dies--no more than spirit dies; But in a change like death is clothed with wings; A serious angel, with entrancèd eyes, Looking to far-off and celestial things. Dreams Who first said "false as dreams"? Not one who saw Into the wild and wondrous world they sway; No thinker who hath read their mystic law; No Poet who hath weaved them in his lay. Else had he known that through the human breast Cross and recross a thousand fleeting gleams, That, passed unnoticed in the day's unrest, Come out at night, like stars, in shining dreams; That minds too busy or too dull to mark The dim suggestion of the noisier hours, By dreams in the deep silence of the dark, Are roused at midnight with their folded powers. Like that old fount beneath Dodona's oaks, That, dry and voiceless in the garish noon, When the calm night arose with modest looks, Caught with full wave the sparkle of the moon. If, now and then, a ghastly shape glide in, And fright us with its horrid gloom or glee, It is the ghost of some forgotten sin We failed to exorcise on bended knee. And that sweet face which only yesternight Came to thy solace, dreamer (didst thou read The blessing in its eyes of tearful light?), Was but the spirit of some gentle deed. Each has its lesson; for our dreams in sooth, Come they in shape of demons, gods, or elves, Are allegories with deep hearts of truth That tell us solemn secrets of ourselves. The Arctic Voyager Shall I desist, twice baffled? Once by land, And once by sea, I fought and strove with storms, All shades of danger, tides, and weary calms; Head-currents, cold and famine, savage beasts, And men more savage; all the while my face Looked northward toward the pole; if mortal strength Could have sustained me, I had never turned Till I had seen the star which never sets Freeze in the Arctic zenith. That I failed To solve the mysteries of the ice-bound world, Was not because I faltered in the quest. Witness those pathless forests which conceal The bones of perished comrades, that long march, Blood-tracked o'er flint and snow, and one dread night By Athabasca, when a cherished life Flowed to give life to others. This, and worse, I suffered--let it pass--it has not tamed My spirit nor the faith which was my strength. Despite of waning years, despite the world Which doubts, the few who dare, I purpose now-- A purpose long and thoughtfully resolved, Through all its grounds of reasonable hope-- To seek beyond the ice which guards the Pole, A sea of open water; for I hold, Not without proofs, that such a sea exists, And may be reached, though since this earth was made No keel hath ploughed it, and to mortal ear No wind hath told its secrets.... With this tide I sail; if all be well, this very moon Shall see my ship beyond the southern cape Of Greenland, and far up the bay through which, With diamond spire and gorgeous pinnacle, The fleets of winter pass to warmer seas. Whether, my hardy shipmates! we shall reach Our bourne, and come with tales of wonder back, Or whether we shall lose the precious time, Locked in thick ice, or whether some strange fate Shall end us all, I know not; but I know A lofty hope, if earnestly pursued, Is its own crown, and never in this life Is labor wholly fruitless. In this faith I shall not count the chances--sure that all A prudent foresight asks we shall not want, And all that bold and patient hearts can do Ye will not leave undone. The rest is God's! Dramatic Fragment Let the boy have his will! I tell thee, brother, We treat these little ones too much like flowers, Training them, in blind selfishness, to deck Sticks of our poor setting, when they might, If left to clamber where themselves incline, Find nobler props to cling to, fitter place, And sweeter air to bloom in. It is wrong-- Thou striv'st to sow with feelings all thine own, With thoughts and hopes, anxieties and aims, Born of thine own peculiar self, and fed Upon a certain round of circumstance, A soul as different and distinct from thine As love of goodness is from love of glory, Or noble poesy from noble prose. I could forgive thee, if thou wast of them Who do their fated parts in this world's business, Scarce knowing how or why--for common minds See not the difference 'twixt themselves and others-- But thou, thou, with the visions which thy youth did cherish Substantialized upon thy regal brow, Shouldst boast a deeper insight. We are born, It is my faith, in miniature completeness, And like each other only in our weakness. Even with our mother's milk upon our lips, Our smiles have different meanings, and our hands Press with degrees of softness to her bosom. It is not change--whatever in the heart That wears its semblance, we, in looking back, With gratulation or regret, perceive-- It is not change we undergo, but only Growth or development. Yes! what is childhood But after all a sort of golden daylight, A beautiful and blessed wealth of sunshine, Wherein the powers and passions of the soul Sleep starlike but existent, till the night Of gathering years shall call the slumbers forth, And they rise up in glory? Early grief, A shadow like the darkness of eclipse, Hath sometimes waked them sooner. The Summer Bower It is a place whither I've often gone For peace, and found it, secret, hushed, and cool, A beautiful recess in neighboring woods. Trees of the soberest hues, thick-leaved and tall, Arch it o'erhead and column it around, Framing a covert, natural and wild, Domelike and dim; though nowhere so enclosed But that the gentlest breezes reach the spot Unwearied and unweakened. Sound is here A transient and unfrequent visitor; Yet if the day be calm, not often then, Whilst the high pines in one another's arms Sleep, you may sometimes with unstartled ear Catch the far fall of voices, how remote You know not, and you do not care to know. The turf is soft and green, but not a flower Lights the recess, save one, star-shaped and bright-- I do not know its name--which here and there Gleams like a sapphire set in emerald. A narrow opening in the branchëd roof, A single one, is large enough to show, With that half glimpse a dreamer loves so much, The blue air and the blessing of the sky. Thither I always bent my idle steps, When griefs depressed, or joys disturbed my heart, And found the calm I looked for, or returned Strong with the quiet rapture in my soul. But one day, One of those July days when winds have fled One knows not whither, I, most sick in mind With thoughts that shall be nameless, yet, no doubt, Wrong, or at least unhealthful, since though dark With gloom, and touched with discontent, they had No adequate excuse, nor cause, nor end, I, with these thoughts, and on this summer day, Entered the accustomed haunt, and found for once No medicinal virtue. Not a leaf Stirred with the whispering welcome which I sought, But in a close and humid atmosphere, Every fair plant and implicated bough Hung lax and lifeless. Something in the place, Its utter stillness, the unusual heat, And some more secret influence, I thought, Weighed on the sense like sin. Above I saw, Though not a cloud was visible in heaven, The pallid sky look through a glazëd mist Like a blue eye in death. The change, perhaps, Was natural enough; my jaundiced sight, The weather, and the time explain it all: Yet have I drawn a lesson from the spot, And shrined it in these verses for my heart. Thenceforth those tranquil precincts I have sought Not less, and in all shades of various moods; But always shun to desecrate the spot By vain repinings, sickly sentiments, Or inconclusive sorrows. Nature, though Pure as she was in Eden when her breath Kissed the white brow of Eve, doth not refuse, In her own way and with a just reserve, To sympathize with human suffering; But for the pains, the fever, and the fret Engendered of a weak, unquiet heart, She hath no solace; and who seeks her when These be the troubles over which he moans, Reads in her unreplying lineaments Rebukes, that, to the guilty consciousness, Strike like contempt. A Rhapsody of a Southern Winter Night Oh! dost thou flatter falsely, Hope? The day hath scarcely passed that saw thy birth, Yet thy white wings are plumed to all their scope, And hour by hour thine eyes have gathered light, And grown so large and bright, That my whole future life unfolds what seems, Beneath their gentle beams, A path that leads athwart some guiltless earth, To which a star is dropping from the night! Not many moons ago, But when these leafless beds were all aglow With summer's dearest treasures, I Was reading in this lonely garden-nook; A July noon was cloudless in the sky, And soon I put my shallow studies by; Then, sick at heart, and angered by the book, Which, in good sooth, was but the long-drawn sigh Of some one who had quarreled with his kind, Vexed at the very proofs which I had sought, And all annoyed while all alert to find A plausible likeness of my own dark thought, I cast me down beneath yon oak's wide boughs, And, shielding with both hands my throbbing brows, Watched lazily the shadows of my brain. The feeble tide of peevishness went down, And left a flat dull waste of dreary pain, Which seemed to clog the blood in every vein; The world, of course, put on its darkest frown-- In all its realms I saw no mortal crown Which did not wound or crush some restless head; And hope, and will, and motive, all were dead. So, passive as a stone, I felt too low To claim a kindred with the humblest flower; Even that would bare its bosom to a shower, While I henceforth would take no pains to live, Nor place myself where I might feel or give A single impulse whence a wish could grow. There was a tulip scarce a gossamer's throw Beyond that platanus. A little child, Most dear to me, looked through the fence and smiled A hint that I should pluck it for her sake. Ah, me! I trust I was not well awake-- The voice was very sweet, Yet a faint languor kept me in my seat. I saw a pouted lip, a toss, and heard Some low expostulating tones, but stirred Not even a leaf's length, till the pretty fay, Wondering, and half abashed at the wild feat, Climbed the low pales, and laughed my gloom away. And here again, but led by other powers, A morning and a golden afternoon, These happy stars, and yonder setting moon, Have seen me speed, unreckoned and untasked, A round of precious hours. Oh! here, where in that summer noon I basked, And strove, with logic frailer than the flowers, To justify a life of sensuous rest, A question dear as home or heaven was asked, And without language answered. I was blest! Blest with those nameless boons too sweet to trust Unto the telltale confidence of song. Love to his own glad self is sometimes coy, And even thus much doth seem to do him wrong; While in the fears which chasten mortal joy, Is one that shuts the lips, lest speech too free, With the cold touch of hard reality, Should turn its priceless jewels into dust. Since that long kiss which closed the morning's talk, I have not strayed beyond this garden walk. As yet a vague delight is all I know, A sense of joy so wild 't is almost pain, And like a trouble drives me to and fro, And will not pause to count its own sweet gain. I am so happy! that is all my thought. To-morrow I will turn it round and round, And seek to know its limits and its ground. To-morrow I will task my heart to learn The duties which shall spring from such a seed, And where it must be sown, and how be wrought. But oh! this reckless bliss is bliss indeed! And for one day I choose to seal the urn Wherein is shrined Love's missal and his creed. Meantime I give my fancy all it craves; Like him who found the West when first he caught The light that glittered from the world he sought, And furled his sails till Dawn should show the land; While in glad dreams he saw the ambient waves Go rippling brightly up a golden strand. Hath there not been a softer breath at play In the long woodland aisles than often sweeps At this rough season through their solemn deeps-- A gentle Ariel sent by gentle May, Who knew it was the morn On which a hope was born, To greet the flower e'er it was fully blown, And nurse it as some lily of her own? And wherefore, save to grace a happy day, Did the whole West at blushing sunset glow With clouds that, floating up in bridal snow, Passed with the festal eve, rose-crowned, away? And now, if I may trust my straining sight, The heavens appear with added stars to-night, And deeper depths, and more celestial height, Than hath been reached except in dreams or death. Hush, sweetest South! I love thy delicate breath; But hush! methought I felt an angel's kiss! Oh! all that lives is happy in my bliss. That lonely fir, which always seems As though it locked dark secrets in itself, Hideth a gentle elf, Whose wand shall send me soon a frolic troop Of rainbow visions, and of moonlit dreams. Can joy be weary, that my eyelids droop? To-night I shall not seek my curtained nest, But even here find rest. Who whispered then? And what are they that peep Betwixt the foliage in the tree-top there? Come, Fairy Shadows! for the morn is near, When to your sombre pine ye all must creep; Come, ye wild pilots of the darkness, ere My spirit sinks into the gulf of Sleep; Even now it circles round and round the deep-- Appear! Appear! Flower-Life I think that, next to your sweet eyes, And pleasant books, and starry skies, I love the world of flowers; Less for their beauty of a day, Than for the tender things they say, And for a creed I've held alway, That they are sentient powers. It may be matter for a smile-- And I laugh secretly the while I speak the fancy out-- But that they love, and that they woo, And that they often marry too, And do as noisier creatures do, I've not the faintest doubt. And so, I cannot deem it right To take them from the glad sunlight, As I have sometimes dared; Though not without an anxious sigh Lest this should break some gentle tie, Some covenant of friendship, I Had better far have spared. And when, in wild or thoughtless hours, My hand hath crushed the tiniest flowers, I ne'er could shut from sight The corpses of the tender things, With other drear imaginings, And little angel-flowers with wings Would haunt me through the night. Oh! say you, friend, the creed is fraught With sad, and even with painful thought, Nor could you bear to know That such capacities belong To creatures helpless against wrong, At once too weak to fly the strong Or front the feeblest foe? So be it always, then, with you; So be it--whether false or true-- I press my faith on none; If other fancies please you more, The flowers shall blossom as before, Dear as the Sibyl-leaves of yore, But senseless, every one. Yet, though I give you no reply, It were not hard to justify My creed to partial ears; But, conscious of the cruel part, My rhymes would flow with faltering art, I could not plead against your heart, Nor reason with your tears. A Summer Shower Welcome, rain or tempest From yon airy powers, We have languished for them Many sultry hours, And earth is sick and wan, and pines with all her flowers. What have they been doing In the burning June? Riding with the genii? Visiting the moon? Or sleeping on the ice amid an arctic noon? Bring they with them jewels From the sunset lands? What are these they scatter With such lavish hands? There are no brighter gems in Raolconda's sands. Pattering on the gravel, Dropping from the eaves, Glancing in the grass, and Tinkling on the leaves, They flash the liquid pearls as flung from fairy sieves. Meanwhile, unreluctant, Earth like Danaë lies; Listen! is it fancy, That beneath us sighs, As that warm lap receives the largesse of the skies? Jove, it is, descendeth In those crystal rills; And this world-wide tremor Is a pulse that thrills To a god's life infused through veins of velvet hills. Wait, thou jealous sunshine, Break not on their bliss; Earth will blush in roses Many a day for this, And bend a brighter brow beneath thy burning kiss. Baby's Age She came with April blooms and showers; We count her little life by flowers. As buds the rose upon her cheek, We choose a flower for every week. A week of hyacinths, we say, And one of heart's-ease, ushered May; And then because two wishes met Upon the rose and violet-- I liked the Beauty, Kate, the Nun-- The violet and the rose count one. A week the apple marked with white; A week the lily scored in light; Red poppies closed May's happy moon, And tulips this blue week in June. Here end as yet the flowery links; To-day begins the week of pinks; But soon--so grave, and deep, and wise The meaning grows in Baby's eyes, So VERY deep for Baby's age-- We think to date a week with sage! The Messenger Rose If you have seen a richer glow, Pray, tell me where your roses blow! Look! coral-leaved! and--mark these spots Red staining red in crimson clots, Like a sweet lip bitten through In a pique. There, where that hue Is spilt in drops, some fairy thing Hath gashed the azure of its wing, Or thence, perhaps, this very morn, Plucked the splinters of a thorn. Rose! I make thy bliss my care! In my lady's dusky hair Thou shalt burn this coming night, With even a richer crimson light. To requite me thou shalt tell-- What I might not say as well-- How I love her; how, in brief, On a certain crimson leaf In my bosom, is a debt Writ in deeper crimson yet. If she wonder what it be-- But she'll guess it, I foresee-- Tell her that I date it, pray, From the first sweet night in May. On Pressing Some Flowers So, they are dead! Love! when they passed From thee to me, our fingers met; O withered darlings of the May! I feel those fairy fingers yet. And for the bliss ye brought me then, Your faded forms are precious things; No flowers so fair, no buds so sweet Shall bloom through all my future springs. And so, pale ones! with hands as soft As if I closed a baby's eyes, I'll lay you in some favorite book Made sacred by a poet's sighs. Your lips shall press the sweetest song, The sweetest, saddest song I know, As ye had perished, in your pride, Of some lone bard's melodious woe. Oh, Love! hath love no holier shrine! Oh, heart! could love but lend the power, I'd lay thy crimson pages bare, And every leaf should fold its flower. 1866--Addressed to the Old Year Art thou not glad to close Thy wearied eyes, O saddest child of Time, Eyes which have looked on every mortal crime, And swept the piteous round of mortal woes? In dark Plutonian caves, Beneath the lowest deep, go, hide thy head; Or earth thee where the blood that thou hast shed May trickle on thee from thy countless graves! Take with thee all thy gloom And guilt, and all our griefs, save what the breast, Without a wrong to some dear shadowy guest, May not surrender even to the tomb. No tear shall weep thy fall, When, as the midnight bell doth toll thy fate, Another lifts the sceptre of thy state, And sits a monarch in thine ancient hall. HIM all the hours attend, With a new hope like morning in their eyes; Him the fair earth and him these radiant skies Hail as their sovereign, welcome as their friend. Him, too, the nations wait; "O lead us from the shadow of the Past," In a long wail like this December blast, They cry, and, crying, grow less desolate. How he will shape his sway They ask not--for old doubts and fears will cling-- And yet they trust that, somehow, he will bring A sweeter sunshine than thy mildest day. Beneath his gentle hand They hope to see no meadow, vale, or hill Stained with a deeper red than roses spill, When some too boisterous zephyr sweeps the land. A time of peaceful prayer, Of law, love, labor, honest loss and gain-- These are the visions of the coming reign Now floating to them on this wintry air. Stanzas: A Mother Gazes Upon Her Daughter, Arrayed for an Approaching Bridal. Written in Illustration of a Tableau Vivant Is she not lovely! Oh! when, long ago, My own dead mother gazed upon my face, As I stood blushing near in bridal snow, I had not half her beauty and her grace. Yet that fond mother praised, the world caressed, And ONE adored me--how shall HE who soon Shall wear my gentle flower upon his breast, Prize to its utmost worth the priceless boon? Shall he not gird her, guard her, make her rich, (Not as the world is rich, in outward show,) With all the love and watchful kindness which A wise and tender manhood may bestow? Oh! I shall part from her with many tears, My earthly treasure, pure and undefiled! And not without a weight of anxious fears For the new future of my darling child. And yet--for well I know that virgin heart-- No wifely duty will she leave undone; Nor will her love neglect that woman's art Which courts and keeps a love already won. In no light girlish levity she goes Unto the altar where they wait her now, But with a thoughtful, prayerful heart that knows The solemn purport of a marriage vow. And she will keep, with all her soul's deep truth, The lightest pledge which binds her love and life; And she will be--no less in age than youth My noble child will be--a noble wife. And he, her lover! husband! what of him? Yes, he will shield, I think, my bud from blight! Yet griefs will come--enough! my eyes are dim With tears I must not shed--at least, to-night. Bless thee, my daughter!--Oh! she is so fair!-- Heaven bend above thee with its starriest skies! And make thee truly all thou dost appear Unto a lover's and thy mother's eyes! Hymn Sung at an Anniversary of the Asylum of Orphans at Charleston We scarce, O God! could lisp thy name, When those who loved us passed away, And left us but thy love to claim, With but an infant's strength to pray. Thou gav'st that Refuge and that Shrine, At which we learn to know thy ways; Father! the fatherless are thine! Thou wilt not spurn the orphan's praise. Yet hear a single cry of pain! Lord! whilst we dream in quiet beds, The summer sun and winter rain Beat still on many homeless heads. And o'er this weary earth, we know, Young outcasts roam the waste and wave; And little hands are clasped in woe Above some tender mother's grave. Ye winds! keep every storm aloof, And kiss away the tears they weep! Ye skies, that make their only roof, Look gently on their houseless sleep! And thou, O Friend and Father! find A home to shield their helpless youth! Dear hearts to love--sweet ties to bind-- And guide and guard them in the truth! To a Captive Owl I should be dumb before thee, feathered sage! And gaze upon thy phiz with solemn awe, But for a most audacious wish to gauge The hoarded wisdom of thy learned craw. Art thou, grave bird! so wondrous wise indeed? Speak freely, without fear of jest or gibe-- What is thy moral and religious creed? And what the metaphysics of thy tribe? A Poet, curious in birds and brutes, I do not question thee in idle play; What is thy station? What are thy pursuits? Doubtless thou hast thy pleasures--what are THEY? Or is 't thy wont to muse and mouse at once, Entice thy prey with airs of meditation, And with the unvarying habits of a dunce, To dine in solemn depths of contemplation? There may be much--the world at least says so-- Behind that ponderous brow and thoughtful gaze; Yet such a great philosopher should know, It is by no means wise to think always. And, Bird, despite thy meditative air, I hold thy stock of wit but paltry pelf-- Thou show'st that same grave aspect everywhere, And wouldst look thoughtful, stuffed, upon a shelf. I grieve to be so plain, renownëd Bird-- Thy fame 's a flam, and thou an empty fowl; And what is more, upon a Poet's word I'd say as much, wert thou Minerva's owl. So doff th' imposture of those heavy brows; They do not serve to hide thy instincts base-- And if thou must be sometimes munching MOUSE, Munch it, O Owl! with less profound a face. Love's Logic And if I ask thee for a kiss, I ask no more than this sweet breeze, With far less title to the bliss, Steals every minute at his ease. And yet how placid is thy brow! It seems to woo the bold caress, While now he takes his kiss, and now All sorts of freedoms with thy dress. Or if I dare thy hand to touch, Hath nothing pressed its palm before? A flower, I'm sure, hath done as much, And ah! some senseless diamond more. It strikes me, love, the very rings, Now sparkling on that hand of thine, Could tell some truly startling things, If they had tongues or touch like mine. Indeed, indeed, I do not know Of all that thou hast power to grant, A boon for which I could not show Some pretty precedent extant. Suppose, for instance, I should clasp Thus,--so,--and thus!--thy slender waist-- I would not hold within my grasp More than this loosened zone embraced. Oh! put the anger from thine eyes, Or shut them if they still must frown; Those lids, despite yon garish skies, Can bring a timely darkness down. Then, if in that convenient night, My lips should press thy dewy mouth, The touch shall be so soft, so light, Thou 'lt fancy me--this gentle South. Second Love Could I reveal the secret joy Thy presence always with it brings, The memories so strangely waked Of long forgotten things, The love, the hope, the fear, the grief, Which with that voice come back to me,-- Thou wouldst forgive the impassioned gaze So often turned on thee. It was, indeed, that early love, But foretaste of this second one,-- The soft light of the morning star Before the morning sun. The same dark beauty in her eyes, The same blonde hair and placid brow, The same deep-meaning, quiet smile Thou bendest on me now, She might have been, she WAS no more Than what a prescient hope could make,-- A dear presentiment of thee I loved but for thy sake. Hymn Sung at the Consecration of Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S.C. Whose was the hand that painted thee, O Death! In the false aspect of a ruthless foe, Despair and sorrow waiting on thy breath-- O gentle Power! who could have wronged thee so? Thou rather shouldst be crowned with fadeless flowers, Of lasting fragrance and celestial hue; Or be thy couch amid funereal bowers, But let the stars and sunlight sparkle through. So, with these thoughts before us, we have fixed And beautified, O Death! thy mansion here, Where gloom and gladness--grave and garden--mixed, Make it a place to love, and not to fear. Heaven! shed thy most propitious dews around! Ye holy stars! look down with tender eyes, And gild and guard and consecrate the ground Where we may rest, and whence we pray to rise. Hymn Sung at a Sacred Concert at Columbia, S.C. I Faint falls the gentle voice of prayer In the wild sounds that fill the air, Yet, Lord, we know that voice is heard, Not less than if Thy throne it stirred. II Thine ear, thou tender One, is caught, If we but bend the knee in thought; No choral song that shakes the sky Floats farther than the Christian's sigh. III Not all the darkness of the land Can hide the lifted eye and hand; Nor need the clanging conflict cease, To make Thee hear our cries for peace. Lines to R. L. That which we are and shall be is made up Of what we have been. On the autumn leaf The crimson stains bear witness of its spring; And, on its perfect nodes, the ocean shell Notches the slow, strange changes of its growth. Ourselves are our own records; if we looked Rightly into that blotted crimson page Within our bosoms, then there were no need To chronicle our stories; for the heart Hath, like the earth, its strata, and contains Its past within its present. Well for us, And our most cherished secrets, that within The round of being few there are who read Beneath the surface. Else our very forms, The merest gesture of our hands, might tell Much we would hide forever. Know you not Those eyes, in whose dark heaven I have gazed More curiously than on my favorite stars, Are deeper for such griefs as they have seen, And brighter for the fancies they have shrined, And sweeter for the loves which they have talked? Oh! that I had the power to read their smiles, Or sound the depth of all their glorious gloom. So should I learn your history from its birth, Through all its glad and grave experiences, Better than if--(your journal in my hand, Written as only women write, with all A woman's shades and shapes of feeling, traced As with the fine touch of a needle's point)-- I followed you from that bright hour when first I saw you in the garden 'mid the flowers, To that wherein a letter from your hand Made me all rich with the dear name of friend. To Whom? Awake upon a couch of pain, I see a star betwixt the trees; Across yon darkening field of cane, Comes slow and soft the evening breeze. My curtain's folds are faintly stirred; And moving lightly in her rest, I hear the chirrup of a bird, That dreameth in some neighboring nest. Last night I took no note of these-- How it was passed I scarce can say; 'T was not in prayers to Heaven for ease, 'T was not in wishes for the day. Impatient tears, and passionate sighs, Touched as with fire the pulse of pain,-- I cursed, and cursed the wildering eyes That burned this fever in my brain. Oh! blessings on the quiet hour! My thoughts in calmer current flow; She is not conscious of her power, And hath no knowledge of my woe. Perhaps, if like yon peaceful star, She looked upon my burning brow, She would not pity from afar, But kiss me as the breeze does now. To Thee Draw close the lattice and the door! Shut out the very stars above! No other eyes than mine shall pore Upon this thrilling tale of love. As, since the book was open last, Along its dear and sacred text No other eyes than thine have passed-- Be mine the eyes that trace it next! Oh! very nobly is it wrought,-- This web of love's divinest light,-- But not to feed my soul with thought, Hang I upon the book to-night; I read it only for thy sake, To every page my lips I press-- The very leaves appear to make A silken rustle like thy dress. And so, as each blest page I turn, I seem, with many a secret thrill, To touch a soft white hand, and burn To clasp and kiss it at my will. Oh! if a fancy be so sweet, These shadowy fingers touching mine-- How wildly would my pulses beat, If they COULD feel the beat of thine! Storm and Calm Sweet are these kisses of the South, As dropped from woman's rosiest mouth, And tenderer are those azure skies Than this world's tenderest pair of eyes! But ah! beneath such influence Thought is too often lost in Sense; And Action, faltering as we thrill, Sinks in the unnerved arms of Will. Awake, thou stormy North, and blast The subtle spells around us cast; Beat from our limbs these flowery chains With the sharp scourges of thy rains! Bring with thee from thy Polar cave All the wild songs of wind and wave, Of toppling berg and grinding floe, And the dread avalanche of snow! Wrap us in Arctic night and clouds! Yell like a fiend amid the shrouds Of some slow-sinking vessel, when He hears the shrieks of drowning men! Blend in thy mighty voice whate'er Of danger, terror, and despair Thou hast encountered in thy sweep Across the land and o'er the deep. Pour in our ears all notes of woe, That, as these very moments flow, Rise like a harsh discordant psalm, While we lie here in tropic calm. Sting our weak hearts with bitter shame, Bear us along with thee like flame; And prove that even to destroy More God-like may be than to toy And rust or rot in idle joy! Retirement My gentle friend! I hold no creed so false As that which dares to teach that we are born For battle only, and that in this life The soul, if it would burn with starlike power, Must needs forsooth be kindled by the sparks Struck from the shock of clashing human hearts. There is a wisdom that grows up in strife, And one--I like it best--that sits at home And learns its lessons of a thoughtful ease. So come! a lonely house awaits thee!--there Nor praise, nor blame shall reach us, save what love Of knowledge for itself shall wake at times In our own bosoms; come! and we will build A wall of quiet thought, and gentle books, Betwixt us and the hard and bitter world. Sometimes--for we need not be anchorites-- A distant friend shall cheer us through the Post, Or some Gazette--of course no partisan-- Shall bring us pleasant news of pleasant things; Then, twisted into graceful allumettes, Each ancient joke shall blaze with genuine flame To light our pipes and candles; but to wars, Whether of words or weapons, we shall be Deaf--so we twain shall pass away the time Ev'n as a pair of happy lovers, who, Alone, within some quiet garden-nook, With a clear night of stars above their heads, Just hear, betwixt their kisses and their talk, The tumult of a tempest rolling through A chain of neighboring mountains; they awhile Pause to admire a flash that only shows The smile upon their faces, but, full soon, Turn with a quick, glad impulse, and perhaps A conscious wile that brings them closer yet, To dally with their own fond hearts, and play With the sweet flowers that blossom at their feet. A Common Thought Somewhere on this earthly planet In the dust of flowers to be, In the dewdrop, in the sunshine, Sleeps a solemn day for me. At this wakeful hour of midnight I behold it dawn in mist, And I hear a sound of sobbing Through the darkness--hist! oh, hist! In a dim and murky chamber, I am breathing life away; Some one draws a curtain softly, And I watch the broadening day. As it purples in the zenith, As it brightens on the lawn, There's a hush of death about me, And a whisper, "He is gone!" POEMS WRITTEN IN WAR TIMES Carolina I The despot treads thy sacred sands, Thy pines give shelter to his bands, Thy sons stand by with idle hands, Carolina! He breathes at ease thy airs of balm, He scorns the lances of thy palm; Oh! who shall break thy craven calm, Carolina! Thy ancient fame is growing dim, A spot is on thy garment's rim; Give to the winds thy battle hymn, Carolina! II Call on thy children of the hill, Wake swamp and river, coast and rill, Rouse all thy strength and all thy skill, Carolina! Cite wealth and science, trade and art, Touch with thy fire the cautious mart, And pour thee through the people's heart, Carolina! Till even the coward spurns his fears, And all thy fields and fens and meres Shall bristle like thy palm with spears, Carolina! III Hold up the glories of thy dead; Say how thy elder children bled, And point to Eutaw's battle-bed, Carolina! Tell how the patriot's soul was tried, And what his dauntless breast defied; How Rutledge ruled and Laurens died, Carolina! Cry! till thy summons, heard at last, Shall fall like Marion's bugle-blast Re-echoed from the haunted Past, Carolina! IV I hear a murmur as of waves That grope their way through sunless caves, Like bodies struggling in their graves, Carolina! And now it deepens; slow and grand It swells, as, rolling to the land, An ocean broke upon thy strand, Carolina! Shout! let it reach the startled Huns! And roar with all thy festal guns! It is the answer of thy sons, Carolina! V They will not wait to hear thee call; From Sachem's Head to Sumter's wall Resounds the voice of hut and hall, Carolina! No! thou hast not a stain, they say, Or none save what the battle-day Shall wash in seas of blood away, Carolina! Thy skirts indeed the foe may part, Thy robe be pierced with sword and dart, They shall not touch thy noble heart, Carolina! VI Ere thou shalt own the tyrant's thrall Ten times ten thousand men must fall; Thy corpse may hearken to his call, Carolina! When, by thy bier, in mournful throngs The women chant thy mortal wrongs, 'T will be their own funereal songs, Carolina! From thy dead breast by ruffians trod No helpless child shall look to God; All shall be safe beneath thy sod, Carolina! VII Girt with such wills to do and bear, Assured in right, and mailed in prayer, Thou wilt not bow thee to despair, Carolina! Throw thy bold banner to the breeze! Front with thy ranks the threatening seas Like thine own proud armorial trees, Carolina! Fling down thy gauntlet to the Huns, And roar the challenge from thy guns; Then leave the future to thy sons, Carolina! A Cry to Arms Ho! woodsmen of the mountain side! Ho! dwellers in the vales! Ho! ye who by the chafing tide Have roughened in the gales! Leave barn and byre, leave kin and cot, Lay by the bloodless spade; Let desk, and case, and counter rot, And burn your books of trade. The despot roves your fairest lands; And till he flies or fears, Your fields must grow but armèd bands, Your sheaves be sheaves of spears! Give up to mildew and to rust The useless tools of gain; And feed your country's sacred dust With floods of crimson rain! Come, with the weapons at your call-- With musket, pike, or knife; He wields the deadliest blade of all Who lightest holds his life. The arm that drives its unbought blows With all a patriot's scorn, Might brain a tyrant with a rose, Or stab him with a thorn. Does any falter? let him turn To some brave maiden's eyes, And catch the holy fires that burn In those sublunar skies. Oh! could you like your women feel, And in their spirit march, A day might see your lines of steel Beneath the victor's arch. What hope, O God! would not grow warm When thoughts like these give cheer? The Lily calmly braves the storm, And shall the Palm-tree fear? No! rather let its branches court The rack that sweeps the plain; And from the Lily's regal port Learn how to breast the strain! Ho! woodsmen of the mountain side! Ho! dwellers in the vales! Ho! ye who by the roaring tide Have roughened in the gales! Come! flocking gayly to the fight, From forest, hill, and lake; We battle for our Country's right, And for the Lily's sake! Charleston Calm as that second summer which precedes The first fall of the snow, In the broad sunlight of heroic deeds, The City bides the foe. As yet, behind their ramparts stern and proud, Her bolted thunders sleep-- Dark Sumter, like a battlemented cloud, Looms o'er the solemn deep. No Calpe frowns from lofty cliff or scar To guard the holy strand; But Moultrie holds in leash her dogs of war Above the level sand. And down the dunes a thousand guns lie couched, Unseen, beside the flood-- Like tigers in some Orient jungle crouched That wait and watch for blood. Meanwhile, through streets still echoing with trade, Walk grave and thoughtful men, Whose hands may one day wield the patriot's blade As lightly as the pen. And maidens, with such eyes as would grow dim Over a bleeding hound, Seem each one to have caught the strength of him Whose sword she sadly bound. Thus girt without and garrisoned at home, Day patient following day, Old Charleston looks from roof, and spire, and dome, Across her tranquil bay. Ships, through a hundred foes, from Saxon lands And spicy Indian ports, Bring Saxon steel and iron to her hands, And Summer to her courts. But still, along yon dim Atlantic line, The only hostile smoke Creeps like a harmless mist above the brine, From some frail, floating oak. Shall the Spring dawn, and she still clad in smiles, And with an unscathed brow, Rest in the strong arms of her palm-crowned isles, As fair and free as now? We know not; in the temple of the Fates God has inscribed her doom; And, all untroubled in her faith, she waits The triumph or the tomb. Ripley Rich in red honors, that upon him lie As lightly as the Summer dews Fall where he won his fame beneath the sky Of tropic Vera Cruz; Bold scorner of the cant that has its birth In feeble or in failing powers; A lover of all frank and genial mirth That wreathes the sword with flowers; He moves amid the warriors of the day, Just such a soldier as the art That builds its trophies upon human clay Moulds of a cheerful heart. I see him in the battle that shall shake, Ere long, old Sumter's haughty crown, And from their dreams of peaceful traffic wake The wharves of yonder town; As calm as one would greet a pleasant guest, And quaff a cup to love and life, He hurls his deadliest thunders with a jest, And laughs amid the strife. Yet not the gravest soldier of them all Surveys a field with broader scope; And who behind that sea-encircled wall Fights with a loftier hope? Gay Chieftain! on the crimson rolls of Fame Thy deeds are written with the sword; But there are gentler thoughts which, with thy name, Thy country's page shall hoard. A nature of that rare and happy cast Which looks, unsteeled, on murder's face; Through what dark scenes of bloodshed hast thou passed, Yet lost no social grace? So, when the bard depicts thee, thou shalt wield The weapon of a tyrant's doom, Round which, inscribed with many a well-fought field, The rose of joy shall bloom. Ethnogenesis Written During the Meeting of the First Southern Congress, at Montgomery, February, 1861 I Hath not the morning dawned with added light? And shall not evening call another star Out of the infinite regions of the night, To mark this day in Heaven? At last, we are A nation among nations; and the world Shall soon behold in many a distant port Another flag unfurled! Now, come what may, whose favor need we court? And, under God, whose thunder need we fear? Thank Him who placed us here Beneath so kind a sky--the very sun Takes part with us; and on our errands run All breezes of the ocean; dew and rain Do noiseless battle for us; and the Year, And all the gentle daughters in her train, March in our ranks, and in our service wield Long spears of golden grain! A yellow blossom as her fairy shield, June flings her azure banner to the wind, While in the order of their birth Her sisters pass, and many an ample field Grows white beneath their steps, till now, behold, Its endless sheets unfold THE SNOW OF SOUTHERN SUMMERS! Let the earth Rejoice! beneath those fleeces soft and warm Our happy land shall sleep In a repose as deep As if we lay intrenched behind Whole leagues of Russian ice and Arctic storm! II And what if, mad with wrongs themselves have wrought, In their own treachery caught, By their own fears made bold, And leagued with him of old, Who long since in the limits of the North Set up his evil throne, and warred with God-- What if, both mad and blinded in their rage, Our foes should fling us down their mortal gage, And with a hostile step profane our sod! We shall not shrink, my brothers, but go forth To meet them, marshaled by the Lord of Hosts, And overshadowed by the mighty ghosts Of Moultrie and of Eutaw--who shall foil Auxiliars such as these? Nor these alone, But every stock and stone Shall help us; but the very soil, And all the generous wealth it gives to toil, And all for which we love our noble land, Shall fight beside, and through us; sea and strand, The heart of woman, and her hand, Tree, fruit, and flower, and every influence, Gentle, or grave, or grand; The winds in our defence Shall seem to blow; to us the hills shall lend Their firmness and their calm; And in our stiffened sinews we shall blend The strength of pine and palm! III Nor would we shun the battle-ground, Though weak as we are strong; Call up the clashing elements around, And test the right and wrong! On one side, creeds that dare to teach What Christ and Paul refrained to preach; Codes built upon a broken pledge, And Charity that whets a poniard's edge; Fair schemes that leave the neighboring poor To starve and shiver at the schemer's door, While in the world's most liberal ranks enrolled, He turns some vast philanthropy to gold; Religion, taking every mortal form But that a pure and Christian faith makes warm, Where not to vile fanatic passion urged, Or not in vague philosophies submerged, Repulsive with all Pharisaic leaven, And making laws to stay the laws of Heaven! And on the other, scorn of sordid gain, Unblemished honor, truth without a stain, Faith, justice, reverence, charitable wealth, And, for the poor and humble, laws which give, Not the mean right to buy the right to live, But life, and home, and health! To doubt the end were want of trust in God, Who, if he has decreed That we must pass a redder sea Than that which rang to Miriam's holy glee, Will surely raise at need A Moses with his rod! IV But let our fears--if fears we have--be still, And turn us to the future! Could we climb Some mighty Alp, and view the coming time, The rapturous sight would fill Our eyes with happy tears! Not only for the glories which the years Shall bring us; not for lands from sea to sea, And wealth, and power, and peace, though these shall be; But for the distant peoples we shall bless, And the hushed murmurs of a world's distress: For, to give labor to the poor, The whole sad planet o'er, And save from want and crime the humblest door, Is one among the many ends for which God makes us great and rich! The hour perchance is not yet wholly ripe When all shall own it, but the type Whereby we shall be known in every land Is that vast gulf which lips our Southern strand, And through the cold, untempered ocean pours Its genial streams, that far off Arctic shores May sometimes catch upon the softened breeze Strange tropic warmth and hints of summer seas. Carmen Triumphale Go forth and bid the land rejoice, Yet not too gladly, O my song! Breathe softly, as if mirth would wrong The solemn rapture of thy voice. Be nothing lightly done or said This happy day! Our joy should flow Accordant with the lofty woe That wails above the noble dead. Let him whose brow and breast were calm While yet the battle lay with God, Look down upon the crimson sod And gravely wear his mournful palm; And him, whose heart still weak from fear Beats all too gayly for the time, Know that intemperate glee is crime While one dead hero claims a tear. Yet go thou forth, my song! and thrill, With sober joy, the troubled days; A nation's hymn of grateful praise May not be hushed for private ill. Our foes are fallen! Flash, ye wires! The mighty tidings far and nigh! Ye cities! write them on the sky In purple and in emerald fires! They came with many a haughty boast; Their threats were heard on every breeze; They darkened half the neighboring seas; And swooped like vultures on the coast. False recreants in all knightly strife, Their way was wet with woman's tears; Behind them flamed the toil of years, And bloodshed stained the sheaves of life. They fought as tyrants fight, or slaves; God gave the dastards to our hands; Their bones are bleaching on the sands, Or mouldering slow in shallow graves. What though we hear about our path The heavens with howls of vengeance rent? The venom of their hate is spent; We need not heed their fangless wrath. Meantime the stream they strove to chain Now drinks a thousand springs, and sweeps With broadening breast, and mightier deeps, And rushes onward to the main; While down the swelling current glides Our Ship of State before the blast, With streamers poured from every mast, Her thunders roaring from her sides. Lord! bid the frenzied tempest cease, Hang out thy rainbow on the sea! Laugh round her, waves! in silver glee, And speed her to the port of peace! The Unknown Dead The rain is plashing on my sill, But all the winds of Heaven are still; And so it falls with that dull sound Which thrills us in the church-yard ground, When the first spadeful drops like lead Upon the coffin of the dead. Beyond my streaming window-pane, I cannot see the neighboring vane, Yet from its old familiar tower The bell comes, muffled, through the shower. What strange and unsuspected link Of feeling touched, has made me think-- While with a vacant soul and eye I watch that gray and stony sky-- Of nameless graves on battle-plains Washed by a single winter's rains, Where, some beneath Virginian hills, And some by green Atlantic rills, Some by the waters of the West, A myriad unknown heroes rest. Ah! not the chiefs, who, dying, see Their flags in front of victory, Or, at their life-blood's noble cost Pay for a battle nobly lost, Claim from their monumental beds The bitterest tears a nation sheds. Beneath yon lonely mound--the spot By all save some fond few forgot-- Lie the true martyrs of the fight Which strikes for freedom and for right. Of them, their patriot zeal and pride, The lofty faith that with them died, No grateful page shall farther tell Than that so many bravely fell; And we can only dimly guess What worlds of all this world's distress, What utter woe, despair, and dearth, Their fate has brought to many a hearth. Just such a sky as this should weep Above them, always, where they sleep; Yet, haply, at this very hour, Their graves are like a lover's bower; And Nature's self, with eyes unwet, Oblivious of the crimson debt To which she owes her April grace, Laughs gayly o'er their burial-place. The Two Armies Two armies stand enrolled beneath The banner with the starry wreath; One, facing battle, blight and blast, Through twice a hundred fields has passed; Its deeds against a ruffian foe, Stream, valley, hill, and mountain know, Till every wind that sweeps the land Goes, glory laden, from the strand. The other, with a narrower scope, Yet led by not less grand a hope, Hath won, perhaps, as proud a place, And wears its fame with meeker grace. Wives march beneath its glittering sign, Fond mothers swell the lovely line, And many a sweetheart hides her blush In the young patriot's generous flush. No breeze of battle ever fanned The colors of that tender band; Its office is beside the bed, Where throbs some sick or wounded head. It does not court the soldier's tomb, But plies the needle and the loom; And, by a thousand peaceful deeds, Supplies a struggling nation's needs. Nor is that army's gentle might Unfelt amid the deadly fight; It nerves the son's, the husband's hand, It points the lover's fearless brand; It thrills the languid, warms the cold, Gives even new courage to the bold; And sometimes lifts the veriest clod To its own lofty trust in God. When Heaven shall blow the trump of peace, And bid this weary warfare cease, Their several missions nobly done, The triumph grasped, and freedom won, Both armies, from their toils at rest, Alike may claim the victor's crest, But each shall see its dearest prize Gleam softly from the other's eyes. Christmas How grace this hallowed day? Shall happy bells, from yonder ancient spire, Send their glad greetings to each Christmas fire Round which the children play? Alas! for many a moon, That tongueless tower hath cleaved the Sabbath air, Mute as an obelisk of ice, aglare Beneath an Arctic noon. Shame to the foes that drown Our psalms of worship with their impious drum, The sweetest chimes in all the land lie dumb In some far rustic town. There, let us think, they keep, Of the dead Yules which here beside the sea They've ushered in with old-world, English glee, Some echoes in their sleep. How shall we grace the day? With feast, and song, and dance, and antique sports, And shout of happy children in the courts, And tales of ghost and fay? Is there indeed a door, Where the old pastimes, with their lawful noise, And all the merry round of Christmas joys, Could enter as of yore? Would not some pallid face Look in upon the banquet, calling up Dread shapes of battles in the wassail cup, And trouble all the place? How could we bear the mirth, While some loved reveler of a year ago Keeps his mute Christmas now beneath the snow, In cold Virginian earth? How shall we grace the day? Ah! let the thought that on this holy morn The Prince of Peace--the Prince of Peace was born, Employ us, while we pray! Pray for the peace which long Hath left this tortured land, and haply now Holds its white court on some far mountain's brow, There hardly safe from wrong! Let every sacred fane Call its sad votaries to the shrine of God, And, with the cloister and the tented sod, Join in one solemn strain! With pomp of Roman form, With the grave ritual brought from England's shore, And with the simple faith which asks no more Than that the heart be warm! He, who, till time shall cease, Will watch that earth, where once, not all in vain, He died to give us peace, may not disdain A prayer whose theme is--peace. Perhaps ere yet the Spring Hath died into the Summer, over all The land, the peace of His vast love shall fall, Like some protecting wing. Oh, ponder what it means! Oh, turn the rapturous thought in every way! Oh, give the vision and the fancy play, And shape the coming scenes! Peace in the quiet dales, Made rankly fertile by the blood of men, Peace in the woodland, and the lonely glen, Peace in the peopled vales! Peace in the crowded town, Peace in a thousand fields of waving grain, Peace in the highway and the flowery lane, Peace on the wind-swept down! Peace on the farthest seas, Peace in our sheltered bays and ample streams, Peace wheresoe'er our starry garland gleams, And peace in every breeze! Peace on the whirring marts, Peace where the scholar thinks, the hunter roams, Peace, God of Peace! peace, peace, in all our homes, And peace in all our hearts! Ode Sung on the Occasion of Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead, at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S.C., 1867 I Sleep sweetly in your humble graves, Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause; Though yet no marble column craves The pilgrim here to pause. II In seeds of laurel in the earth The blossom of your fame is blown, And somewhere, waiting for its birth, The shaft is in the stone! III Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years Which keep in trust your storied tombs, Behold! your sisters bring their tears, And these memorial blooms. IV Small tributes! but your shades will smile More proudly on these wreaths to-day, Than when some cannon-moulded pile Shall overlook this bay. V Stoop, angels, hither from the skies! There is no holier spot of ground Than where defeated valor lies, By mourning beauty crowned! SONNETS I "Poet! If on a Lasting Fame Be Bent" Poet! if on a lasting fame be bent Thy unperturbing hopes, thou will not roam Too far from thine own happy heart and home; Cling to the lowly earth, and be content! So shall thy name be dear to many a heart; So shall the noblest truths by thee be taught; The flower and fruit of wholesome human thought Bless the sweet labors of thy gentle art. The brightest stars are nearest to the earth, And we may track the mighty sun above, Even by the shadow of a slender flower. Always, O bard, humility is power! And thou mayst draw from matters of the hearth Truths wide as nations, and as deep as love. II "Most Men Know Love But as a Part of Life" Most men know love but as a part of life; They hide it in some corner of the breast, Even from themselves; and only when they rest In the brief pauses of that daily strife, Wherewith the world might else be not so rife, They draw it forth (as one draws forth a toy To soothe some ardent, kiss-exacting boy) And hold it up to sister, child, or wife. Ah me! why may not love and life be one? Why walk we thus alone, when by our side, Love, like a visible God, might be our guide? How would the marts grow noble! and the street, Worn like a dungeon-floor by weary feet, Seem then a golden court-way of the Sun! III "Life Ever Seems as from Its Present Site" Life ever seems as from its present site It aimed to lure us. Mountains of the past It melts, with all their crags and caverns vast, Into a purple cloud! Across the night Which hides what is to be, it shoots a light All rosy with the yet unrisen dawn. Not the near daisies, but yon distant height Attracts us, lying on this emerald lawn. And always, be the landscape what it may-- Blue, misty hill or sweep of glimmering plain-- It is the eye's endeavor still to gain The fine, faint limit of the bounding day. God, haply, in this mystic mode, would fain Hint of a happier home, far, far away! IV "They Dub Thee Idler, Smiling Sneeringly" They dub thee idler, smiling sneeringly, And why? because, forsooth, so many moons, Here dwelling voiceless by the voiceful sea, Thou hast not set thy thoughts to paltry tunes In song or sonnet. Them these golden noons Oppress not with their beauty; they could prate, Even while a prophet read the solemn runes On which is hanging some imperial fate. How know they, these good gossips, what to thee The ocean and its wanderers may have brought? How know they, in their busy vacancy, With what far aim thy spirit may be fraught? Or that thou dost not bow thee silently Before some great unutterable thought? V "Some Truths There Be Are Better Left Unsaid" Some truths there be are better left unsaid; Much is there that we may not speak unblamed. On words, as wings, how many joys have fled! The jealous fairies love not to be named. There is an old-world tale of one whose bed A genius graced, to all, save him, unknown; One day the secret passed his lips, and sped As secrets speed--thenceforth he slept alone. Too much, oh! far too much is told in books; Too broad a daylight wraps us all and each. Ah! it is well that, deeper than our looks, Some secrets lie beyond conjecture's reach. Ah! it is well that in the soul are nooks That will not open to the keys of speech. VI "I Scarcely Grieve, O Nature! at the Lot" I scarcely grieve, O Nature! at the lot That pent my life within a city's bounds, And shut me from thy sweetest sights and sounds. Perhaps I had not learned, if some lone cot Had nursed a dreamy childhood, what the mart Taught me amid its turmoil; so my youth Had missed full many a stern but wholesome truth. Here, too, O Nature! in this haunt of Art, Thy power is on me, and I own thy thrall. There is no unimpressive spot on earth! The beauty of the stars is over all, And Day and Darkness visit every hearth. Clouds do not scorn us: yonder factory's smoke Looked like a golden mist when morning broke. VII "Grief Dies Like Joy; the Tears Upon My Cheek" Grief dies like joy; the tears upon my cheek Will disappear like dew. Dear God! I know Thy kindly Providence hath made it so, And thank thee for the law. I am too weak To make a friend of Sorrow, or to wear, With that dark angel ever by my side (Though to thy heaven there be no better guide), A front of manly calm. Yet, for I hear How woe hath cleansed, how grief can deify, So weak a thing it seems that grief should die, And love and friendship with it, I could pray, That if it might not gloom upon my brow, Nor weigh upon my arm as it doth now, No grief of mine should ever pass away. VIII "At Last, Beloved Nature! I Have Met" At last, beloved Nature! I have met Thee face to face upon thy breezy hills, And boldly, where thy inmost bowers are set, Gazed on thee naked in thy mountain rills. When first I felt thy breath upon my brow, Tears of strange ecstasy gushed out like rain, And with a longing, passionate as vain, I strove to clasp thee. But, I know not how, Always before me didst thou seem to glide; And often from one sunny mountain-side, Upon the next bright peak I saw thee kneel, And heard thy voice upon the billowy blast; But, climbing, only reached that shrine to feel The shadow of a Presence which had passed. IX "I Know Not Why, But All This Weary Day" I know not why, but all this weary day, Suggested by no definite grief or pain, Sad fancies have been flitting through my brain; Now it has been a vessel losing way, Rounding a stormy headland; now a gray Dull waste of clouds above a wintry main; And then, a banner, drooping in the rain, And meadows beaten into bloody clay. Strolling at random with this shadowy woe At heart, I chanced to wander hither! Lo! A league of desolate marsh-land, with its lush, Hot grasses in a noisome, tide-left bed, And faint, warm airs, that rustle in the hush, Like whispers round the body of the dead! X "Were I the Poet-Laureate of the Fairies" (Written on a very small sheet of note-paper) Were I the poet-laureate of the fairies, Who in a rose-leaf finds too broad a page; Or could I, like your beautiful canaries, Sing with free heart and happy, in a cage; Perhaps I might within this little space (As in some Eastern tale, by magic power, A giant is imprisoned in a flower) Have told you something with a poet's grace. But I need wider limits, ampler scope, A world of freedom for a world of passion, And even then, the glory of my hope Would not be uttered in its stateliest fashion; Yet, lady, when fit language shall have told it, You'll find one little heart enough to hold it! XI "Which Are the Clouds, and Which the Mountains? See" Which are the clouds, and which the mountains? See, They mix and melt together! Yon blue hill Looks fleeting as the vapors which distill Their dews upon its summit, while the free And far-off clouds, now solid, dark, and still, An aspect wear of calm eternity. Each seems the other, as our fancies will-- The cloud a mount, the mount a cloud, and we Gaze doubtfully. So everywhere on earth, This foothold where we stand with slipping feet, The unsubstantial and substantial meet, And we are fooled until made wise by Time. Is not the obvious lesson something worth, Lady? or have I wov'n an idle rhyme? XII "What Gossamer Lures Thee Now? What Hope, What Name" What gossamer lures thee now? What hope, what name Is on thy lips? What dreams to fruit have grown? Thou who hast turned ONE Poet-heart to stone, Is thine yet burning with its seraph flame? Let me give back a warning of thine own, That, falling from thee many moons ago, Sank on my soul like the prophetic moan Of some young Sibyl shadowing her own woe. The words are thine, and will not do thee wrong, I only bind their solemn charge to song. Thy tread is on a quicksand--oh! be wise! Nor, in the passionate eagerness of youth, MISTAKE THY BOSOM-SERPENT'S GLITTERING EYES FOR THE CALM LIGHTS OF REASON AND OF TRUTH. XIII "I Thank You, Kind and Best Beloved Friend" I thank you, kind and best belovëd friend, With the same thanks one murmurs to a sister, When, for some gentle favor, he hath kissed her, Less for the gifts than for the love you send, Less for the flowers than what the flowers convey, If I, indeed, divine their meaning truly, And not unto myself ascribe, unduly, Things which you neither meant nor wished to say, Oh! tell me, is the hope then all misplaced? And am I flattered by my own affection? But in your beauteous gift, methought I traced Something above a short-lived predilection, And which, for that I know no dearer name, I designate as love, without love's flame. XIV "Are These Wild Thoughts, Thus Fettered in My Rhymes" Are these wild thoughts, thus fettered in my rhymes, Indeed the product of my heart and brain? How strange that on my ear the rhythmic strain Falls like faint memories of far-off times! When did I feel the sorrow, act the part, Which I have striv'n to shadow forth in song? In what dead century swept that mingled throng Of mighty pains and pleasures through my heart? Not in the yesterdays of that still life Which I have passed so free and far from strife, But somewhere in this weary world I know, In some strange land, beneath some orient clime, I saw or shared a martyrdom sublime, And felt a deeper grief than any later woe. XV In Memoriam--Harris Simons True Christian, tender husband, gentle Sire, A stricken household mourns thee, but its loss Is Heaven's gain and thine; upon the cross God hangs the crown, the pinion, and the lyre: And thou hast won them all. Could we desire To quench that diadem's celestial light, To hush thy song and stay thy heavenward flight, Because we miss thee by this autumn fire? Ah, no! ah, no!--chant on!--soar on!--Reign on! For we are better--thou art happier thus; And haply from the splendor of thy throne, Or haply from the echoes of thy psalm, Something may fall upon us, like the calm To which thou shalt hereafter welcome us! POEMS NOW FIRST COLLECTED Song Composed for Washington's Birthday, and Respectfully Inscribed to the Officers and Members of the Washington Light Infantry of Charleston, February 22, 1859 A hundred years and more ago A little child was born-- To-day, with pomp of martial show, We hail his natal morn. Who guessed as that poor infant wept Upon a woman's knee, A nation from the centuries stept As weak and frail as he? Who saw the future on his brow Upon that happy morn? We are a mighty nation now Because that child was born. To him, and to his spirit's scope, Besides a glorious home, We owe that what we have and hope Are more than Greece and Rome. A Bouquet Take first a Cowslip, then an Asphodel, A bridal Rose, some snowy Orange flowers; A Lily next, and by its spotless bell Place the bright Iris, darling of the showers; Set gold Nasturtiums, Elder blooms between, And Heart's-ease to the Orchis marry sweetly; Then with red Pinks, and slips of Evergreen, You will possess--all folded up discreetly-- In one bouquet, that none but you may know, The name I love beyond all names below. Lines: "I Stooped from Star-Bright Regions" I stooped from star-bright regions, where Thou canst not enter even in prayer; And thought to light thy heart and hearth With all the poesy of earth. Oh, foolish hope! those mystic gleams To thee were unsubstantial dreams; The paltry world had made thee blind, And shut thy heart and dulled thy mind. I was a vassal at thy feet, And cringed more meanly than was meet, And since I dared not to be free, Was scouted as a slave should be. I gave thee all--my truth, my trust-- I bowed my spirit in the dust, I put a crown upon thy brow, And am its proper victim now. A Trifle I know not why, but ev'n to me My songs seem sweet when read to thee. Perhaps in this the pleasure lies-- I read my thoughts within thine eyes. And so dare fancy that my art May sink as deeply as thy heart. Perhaps I love to make my words Sing round thee like so many birds, Or, maybe, they are only sweet As they seem offerings at thy feet. Or haply, Lily, when I speak, I think, perchance, they touch thy cheek, Or with a yet more precious bliss, Die on thy red lips in a kiss. Each reason here--I cannot tell-- Or all perhaps may solve the spell. But if she watch when I am by, Lily may deeper see than I. Lines: "I Saw, or Dreamed I Saw, Her Sitting Lone" I saw, or dreamed I saw, her sitting lone, Her neck bent like a swan's, her brown eyes thrown On some sweet poem--his, I think, who sings Oenone, or the hapless Maud: no rings Flashed from the dainty fingers, which held back Her beautiful blonde hair. Ah! would these black Locks of mine own were mingling with it now, And these warm lips were pressed against her brow! And, as she turned a page, methought I heard-- Hush! could it be?--a faintly murmured word, It was so softly dwelt on--such a smile Played on her brow and wreathed her lip the while That my heart leaped to hear it, and a flame Burned on my forehead--Sa'ra!--'t was my name. Sonnet: "If I Have Graced No Single Song of Mine" If I have graced no single song of mine With thy sweet name, they all are full of thee; Thou art my Muse, my "May", my "Madeline": But "Julia"!--ah! that gentle name to me Is something far too sacred for the throng Of worldly listeners 'round me. Yet ev'n now I weave a chaplet for thy sinless brow;-- Wilt thou not wear it? 'T is a fashionable song,-- I will not say of what,--but on it I Have wreaked heart, mind, my love, my hopes of fame, Yet after all it hath no nobler aim Than thy dear praise. Ere many moons pass by, When the lost gem is set, the crown complete, I'll lay a poet's tribute at thy feet. To Rosa----: Acrostic I took a Rosebud from a certain bower, And by its side placed an Orange flower, Then with the Speedwell, blended the perfume And the sweet beauty of an Apple-bloom, And thus, 't is one of the loveliest feats, Is spelled a gentle lady's name in sweets. Dedication To Fairy Do you recall--I know you do-- A little gift once made to you-- A simple basket filled with flowers, All favorites of our Southern bowers? One was a snowy myrtle-bud, Another blushed as if with blood, A third was pink of softest tinge, Then came a disk with purple fringe. You took them with a happy smile, And nursed them for a little while, And once or twice perhaps you thought Of the fond messages they brought. And yet you could not then divine The promise in that gift of mine,-- In those bright blooms and odors sweet, I laid this volume at your feet. At yours, my child, who scarcely know How much to your dear self I owe,-- Too young and innocent as yet To guess in what consists the debt. Therefore to you henceforth belong These Southern asphodels of song, Less MY creations than your own, What praise they win are yours alone. For here no fancy finds a place But is an affluence of your grace;-- And when my songs are sweetest, then A Dream like you hath touched my pen. 
7928	----	THE POET'S POET Essays on the Character and Mission of the Poet As Interpreted in English Verse of the Last One Hundred and Fifty Years By ELIZABETH ATKINS, PH.D. Instructor in English, University of Minnesota TO HARTLEY AND NELLY ALEXANDER PREFACE Utterances of poets regarding their character and mission have perhaps received less attention than they deserve. The tacit assumption of the majority of critics seems to be that the poet, like the criminal, is the last man who should pass judgment upon his own case. Yet it is by no means certain that this view is correct. Introspective analysis on the part of the poet might reasonably be expected to be as productive of æsthetic revelation as the more objective criticism of the mere observer of literary phenomena. Moreover, aside from its intrinsic merits, the poet's self-exposition must have interest for all students of Platonic philosophy, inasmuch as Plato's famous challenge was directed only incidentally to critics of poetry; primarily it was to Poetry herself, whom he urged to make just such lyrical defense as we are to consider. The method here employed is not to present exhaustively the substance of individual poems treating of poets. Analysis of Wordsworth's _Prelude,_ Browning's _Sordello,_ and the like, could scarcely give more than a re-presentation of what is already available to the reader in notes and essays on those poems. The purpose here is rather to pass in review the main body of such verse written in the last one hundred and fifty years. We are concerned, to be sure, with pointing out idiosyncratic conceptions of individual writers, and with tracing the vogue of passing theories. The chief interest, however, should lie in the discovery of an essential unity in many poets' views on their own character and mission. It is true that there is scarcely an idea relative to the poet which is not somewhere contradicted in the verse of this period, and the attempt has been made to be wholly impartial in presenting all sides of each question. Indeed, the subject may seem to be one in which dualism is inescapable. The poet is, in one sense, a hybrid creature; he is the lover of the sensual and of the spiritual, for he is the revealer of the spiritual in the sensual. Consequently it is not strange that practically every utterance which we may consider,--even such as deal with the most superficial aspects of the poet, as his physical beauty or his health,--falls naturally into one of two divisions, accordingly as the poet feels the sensual or the spiritual aspect of his nature to be the more important Yet the fact remains that the quest of unity has been the most interesting feature of this investigation. The man in whose nature the poet's two apparently contradictory desires shall wholly harmonize is the ideal whom practically all modern English poets are attempting to present. Minor poets have been considered, perhaps to an unwarranted degree. In the Victorian period, for instance, there may seem something grotesque in placing Tupper's judgments on verse beside Browning's. Yet, since it is true that so slight a poet as William Lisles Bowles influenced Coleridge, and that T. E. Chivers probably influenced Poe, it seems that in a study of this sort minor writers have a place. In addition, where the views of one minor verse-writer might be negligible, the views of a large group are frequently highly significant, not only as testifying to the vogue of ephemeral ideas, but as demonstrating that great and small in the poetic world have the same general attitude toward their gift. It is perhaps true that minor poets have been more loquacious on the subject of their nature than have greater ones, but some attempt is here made to hold them within bounds, so that they may not drown out the more meaningful utterances of the master singers. The last one hundred and fifty years have been chosen for discussion, since the beginning of the romantic movement marked the rise of a peculiarly self-conscious attitude in the poet, and brought his personality into new prominence. Contemporary verse seems to fall within the scope of these studies, inasmuch as the "renaissance of poetry" (as enthusiasts like to term the new stirring of interest in verse) is revealing young poets of the present day even more frank in self-revealment than were poets of twenty years ago. The excursion through modern English poetry involved in these studies has been a pleasant one. The value and interest of such an investigation was first pointed out to me by Professor Louise Pound of the University of Nebraska. It is with sincere appreciation that I here express my indebtedness to her, both for the initial suggestion, and for the invaluable advice which I have received from her during my procedure. I owe much gratitude also to President Wimam Allan Neilson of Smith College, who was formerly my teacher in Radcliffe College, and to Professor Hartley Burr Alexander, of the department of Philosophy at the University of Nebraska, who has given me unstinted help and generous encouragement. ELIZABETH ATKINS. CONTENTS PREFACE I. THE EGO-CENTRIC CIRCLE Apparent futility of verse dealing with the poet.--Its justification.--The poet's personality the hidden theme of all verse,--The poet's egotism.--Belief that his inspirations are divine.--Belief in the immortality of his poems.--The romantic view that the creator is greater than his creations.--The poet's contempt for uninspired men.--Reaction of the public to the poet's contempt.--Its retaliation in jeers.--The poet's wounded vanity.--His morbid self-consciousness.--His self-imposed solitude.--Enhancement of his egotism by solitude. II. THE MORTAL COIL View that genius results from a happy combination of physical conditions.--The poet's reluctance to embrace such a theory.--His heredity.--Rank.--Patricians vs. children of the soil.--His body.--Poetic beauty.--Features expressing alert and delicate senses.--Contrary conception of poet rapt away from sense.-- Blindness.--Physique.--Health.--Hypersensibility of invalids.-- Escape from fleshly bondage afforded by perfect health.--The poet's sex.--Limitations of the woman poet.--Her claims.--The poet's habitat.--Vogue of romantic solitude.--Savage environment.--Its advantages.--Growing popularity of the city poet.--The wanderer.-- The financial status of the poet.--Poverty as sharpener of sensibility.--The poet's age.--Vogue of the young poet.--Purity of youthful emotions.--Early death.--Claims of the aged poet.-- Contemplation after active life. III. THE POET AS LOVER The classic conception.--Love as a disturbing factor in composition.--The romantic conception.--Love the source of inspiration.--Fusion of intense passion with repose essential to poetry.--Poetic love and Platonic love synonymous.--Sensual love not suggestive.--The poet's ascent to ideal love.--Analogy with ascent described in Plato's _Symposium_.--Discontent with ephemeralness of passion.--Poetry a means of rendering passion eternal.--Insatiability of the poet's affections.--Idealization of his mistress.--Ideal beauty the real object of his love.--Fickleness.--Its justification.--Advantage in seeing varied aspects of ideal beauty.--Remoteness as an essential factor in ideal love.--Sluggishness resulting from complete content.--Aspiration the poetic attitude.--Abstract love-poetry, consciously addressed to ideal beauty.--Its merits and defects.--The sensuous as well as the ideal indispensable to poetry. IV. THE SPARK FROM HEAVEN Reticence of great geniuses regarding inspiration.--Mystery of inspiration.--The poet's curiosity as to his inspired moments.--Wild desire preceding inspiration.--Sudden arrest rather than satisfaction of desire.--Ecstasy.--Analogy with intoxication.--Attitude of reverence during inspired moments.--Feeling that an outside power is responsible.--Attempts to give a rational account of inspiration.--The theory of the sub-conscious.--Prenatal memory.--Reincarnation of dead geniuses.--Varied conceptions of the spirit inspiring song as the Muse, nature, the spirit of the universe.--The poet's absolute surrender to this power.--Madness.--Contempt for the limitations of the human reason.--Belief in infallibility of inspirations.--Limitations of inspiration.--Transience.--Expression not given from without.--The work of the poet's conscious intelligence.--Need for making the vision intelligible.--Quarrel over the value of hard work. V. THE POET'S MORALITY The poet's reliance upon feeling as sole moral guide.--Attack upon his morals made by philosophers, puritans, philistines.--Professedly wicked poets.--Their rarity.--Revolt against mass-feeling.--The aesthetic appeal of sin.--The morally frail poet, handicapped by susceptibility to passion.--The typical poet's repudiation of immorality.--Feeling that virtue and poetry are inseparable.--Minor explanations for this conviction.--The "poet a poem" theory.--Identity of the good and the beautiful.--The poet's quarrel with the philistine.--The poet's horror of restraint.--The philistine's unfairness to the poet's innocence.--The poet's quarrel with the puritan.--The poet's horror of asceticism.--The poet's quarrel with the philosopher.--Feeling upon which the poet relies allied to Platonic intuition. VI. THE POET'S RELIGION Threefold attack upon the poet's religion.--His lack of theological temper.--His lack of reverence.--His lack of conformance.--The poet's defense.--Materialistic belief deadening to poetry.--His idealistic temper.--His pantheistic leanings.--His reverence for beauty.--His repudiation of a religion that humbles him.--Compatibility of pride and pantheism.--The poet's nonconformance.--His occasional perverseness.-- Inspiring nature of doubt.--The poet's thirst for God.--The occasional orthodox poet. VII. THE PRAGMATIC ISSUE The poet's alleged uselessness,--His effeminacy.--His virility.--The poet warrior.--Incompatibility of poets and materialists.--Plato'scharge that poetry is inferior to actual life.--The concurrence of certain soldier poets in Plato's charge.--Poetry as an amusement only.--The value of faithful imitation.--The realists.--Poetry as a solace.--Poetry a reflection of the ideal essence of things.--Love of beauty the poet's guide in disentangling ideality from the accidents of things.--Beauty as truth.--The poet as seer.--The quarrel with the philosopher.--The truth of beauty vs. cold facts.--Proof of validity of the poet's truth.--His skill as prophet.--The poet's mission as reformer.--His impatience with practical reforms.--Belief in essential goodness of men, since beauty is the essence of things.--Reform a matter of allowing all things to express their essence.--Enthusiasm for liberty.--Denial of the war-poet's charge.--Poets the authors of liberty.--Poets the real rulers of mankind.--The world's appreciation of their importance.--Their immortality. VIII. A SOBER AFTERTHOUGHT Denial that the views of poets on the poet are heterogeneous.--Poets' identity of purpose in discussing poets.--Apparent contradictions in views.-Apparent inconsistency in the thought of each poet.--The two-fold interests of poets.--The poet as harmonizer of sensual and spiritual.-- Balance of sense and spirit in the poetic temperament.--Injustice to one element or the other in most literary criticism.--Limitations of the poet's prose criticism.--Superiority of his critical expressions in verse.--The poet's importance.--Poetry as a proof of the idealistic philosophy. INDEX CHAPTER I. THE EGOCENTRIC CIRCLE Most of us, mere men that we are, find ourselves caught in some entanglement of our mortal coil even before we have fairly embarked upon the enterprise of thinking our case through. The art of self-reflection which appeals to us as so eminent and so human, is it after all much more than a vaporous vanity? We name its subject "human nature"; we give it a raiment of timeless generalities; but in the end the show of thought discloses little beyond the obstreperous bit of a "me" which has blown all the fume. The "psychologist's fallacy," or again the "egocentric predicament" of the philosopher of the Absolute, these are but tagged examples of a type of futile self-return (we name it "discovery" to save our faces) which comes more or less to men of all kinds when they take honest-eyed measure of the consequences of their own valuations of themselves. We pose for the portrait; we admire the Lion; but we have only to turn our heads to catch-glimpse Punch with thumb to nose. And then, of course, we mock our own humiliation, which is another kind of vanity; and, having done this penance, pursue again our self-returning fate. The theme is, after all, one we cannot drop; it is the mortal coil. In the moment of our revulsion from the inevitable return upon itself of the human reason, many of us have clung with the greater desperation to the hope offered by poetry. By the way of intuition poets promise to carry us beyond the boundary of the vicious circle. When the ceaseless round of the real world has come to nauseate us, they assure us that by simply relaxing our hold upon actuality we may escape from the squirrel-cage. By consenting to the prohibition, "Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss!" we may enter the realm of ideality, where our dizzy brains grow steady, and our pulses are calmed, as we gaze upon the quietude of transcendent beauty. But what are we to say when, on opening almost any book of comparatively recent verse, we find, not the self-forgetfulness attendant upon an ineffable vision, but advertisement of the author's importance? His argument we find running somewhat as follows: "I am superior to you because I write poetry. What do I write poetry about? Why, about my superiority, of course!" Must we not conclude that the poet, with the rest of us, is speeding around the hippodrome of his own self-centered consciousness? Indeed the poet's circle is likely to appear to us even more viciousthan that of other men. To be sure, we remember Sir Philip Sidney's contention, supported by his anecdote of the loquacious horseman, that men of all callings are equally disposed to vaunt themselves. If the poet seems especially voluble about his merits, this may be owing to the fact that, words being the tools of his trade, he is more apt than other men in giving expression to his self-importance. But our specific objection to the poet is not met by this explanation. Even the horseman does not expect panegyrics of his profession to take the place of horseshoes. The inventor does not issue an autobiography in lieu of a new invention. The public would seem justified in reminding the poet that, having a reasonable amount of curiosity about human nature, it will eagerly devour the poet's biography, properly labeled, but only after he has forgotten himself long enough to write a poem that will prove his genius, and so lend worth to the perusal of his idiosyncratic records, and his judgments on poetic composition. The first impulse of our revulsion from the self-infatuated poet is to confute him with the potent name of Aristotle, and show him his doom foreordained in the book of poetic Revelations. "The poet should speak as little as possible in his own person," we read, "for it is not this that makes him an imitator." [Footnote: _Poetics_, 1460 a.] One cannot too much admire Aristotle's canniness in thus nipping the poet's egotism in the bud, for he must have seen clearly that if the poet began to talk in his own person, he would soon lead the conversation around to himself, and that, once launched on that inexhaustible subject, he would never be ready to return to his original theme. We may regret that we have not Aristotle's sanction for condemning also extra-poetical advertisements of the poet's personality, as a hindrance to our seeing the ideal world through his poetry. In certain moods one feels it a blessing that we possess no romantic traditions of Homer, to get in the way of our passing impartial judgment upon his works. Our intimate knowledge of nineteenth century poets has been of doubtful benefit to us. Wordsworth has shaken into what promises to be his permanent place among the English poets much more expeditiously than has Byron. Is this not because in Wordsworth's case the reader is not conscious of a magnetic personality drawing his judgment away from purely aesthetic standards? Again, consider the case of Keats. For us the facts of his life must color almost every line he wrote. How are we to determine whether his sonnet, _When I Have Fears,_ is great poetry or not, so long as it fills our minds insistently with the pity of his love for Fanny Brawne, and his epitaph in the Roman graveyard? Christopher North has been much upbraided by a hero-worshiping generation, but one may go too far in condemning the Scotch sense in his contention: Mr. Keats we have often heard spoken of in terms of great kindness, and we have no doubt that his manners and feelings are calculated to make his friends love him. But what has all this to do with our opinion of their poetry? What, in the name of wonder, does it concern us, whether these men sit among themselves with mild or with sulky faces, eating their mutton steaks, and drinking their porter? [Footnote: Sidney Colvin, _John Keats,_ p. 478.] If we are reluctant to sponsor words printed in _Blackwoods,_ we may be more at ease in agreeing with the same sentiments as expressed by Keats himself. After a too protracted dinner party with Wordsworth and Hunt, Keats gave vent to his feelings as follows: Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing that enters into one's soul, and does not startle or amaze it with itself, but with its subject. How beautiful are the retired flowers! How they would lose their beauty were they to throng into the highway crying out, "Admire me, I am a violet! Dote upon me, I am a primrose!".... I will cut all this--I will have no more of Wordsworth or Hunt in particular.... I don't mean to deny Wordsworth's grandeur and Hunt's merit, but I mean to say that we need not be teased with grandeur and merit when we can have them uncontaminated and unobtrusive. [Footnote: _Ibid.,_ p. 253.] If acquaintance with a poet prevents his contemporaries from fixing their attention exclusively upon the merits of his verse, in how much better case is posterity, if the poet's personality makes its way into the heart of his poetry? We have Browning's dictum on Shakespeare's sonnets, With this key Shakespeare unlocked his heart. Once more _Did_ Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he. [Footnote: _House._] Did Browning mean that Shakespeare was less the poet, as well as less the dramatist, if he revealed himself to us in his poetry? And is this our contention? It seems a reasonable contention, at least, the more so since poets are practically unanimous in describing inspiration as lifting them out of themselves, into self-forgetful ecstasy. Even that arch-egoist, Byron, concedes this point. "To withdraw myself from myself--oh, that accursed selfishness," he writes, "has ever been my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all." [Footnote: Letters and Journals, ed, Rowland E. Prothero, November 26, 1813.] Surely we may complain that it is rather hard on us if the poet can escape from himself only by throwing himself at the reader's head. It would seem natural to conclude from the selflessness of inspiration that the more frequently inspired the poet is, the less will he himself be an interesting subject for verse. Again we must quote Keats to confute his more self-centered brothers. "A poet," Keats says, "is the most unpoetical of anything in existence, because he has no identity; he is continually in for, and filling, some other body. The sun, the moon, the stars, and men and women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute; the poet has none, no identity." [Footnote: Letter to Richard Woodhouse, October 27, 1818.] The same conviction is differently phrased by Landor. The poet is a luminous body, whose function is to reveal other objects, not himself, to us. Therefore Landor considers our scanty knowledge of Shakespeare as compared with lesser poets a natural consequence of the self-obliterating splendor of his genius: In poetry there is but one supreme, Though there are many angels round his throne, Mighty and beauteous, while his face is hid. [Footnote: _On Shakespeare_.] But though an occasional poet lends his voice in support of our censure, the average poet would brush aside our complaints with impatience. What right have we to accuse him of swerving from the subject matter proper to poetry, while we appear to have no clear idea as to what the legitimate subject matter is? Precisely what are we looking for, that we are led to complain that the massive outlines of the poet's figure obscure our view? Now just here we who assail the poet are likely to turn our guns upon one another, for we are brought up against the stone wall of age-old dispute over the function of the poet. He should hold up his magic mirror to the physical world, some of us declare, and set the charm of immortality upon the life about us. Far from it, others retort. The poet should redeem us from the flesh, and show us the ideal forms of things, which bear, it may be, very slight resemblance to their imitations in this world. Now while we are sadly meditating our inability to batter our way through this obstacle to perfect clarity, the poets championing the opposing views, like Plato's sophistic brothers, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, proceed to knock us from one to the other side, justifying their self-centered verse by either theory. Do we maintain that the poet should reflect the life about him? Then, holding the mirror up to life, he will naturally be the central figure in the reflection. Do we maintain that the poet should reveal an ideal world? Then, being alone of all men transported by his vision into this ideal realm, he will have no competitors to dispute his place as chief character. At first thought it may have appeared obvious to us that the idealistic poet, who claims that his art is a revelation of a transcendental entity, is soaring to celestial realms whither his mundane personality cannot follow. Leaving below him the dusty atmosphere of the actual world, why should he not attain to ideas in their purity, uncolored by his own individuality? But we must in justice remember that the poet cannot, in the same degree as the mathematician, present his ideals nakedly. They are, like the Phidian statues of the Fates, inseparable from their filmy veiling. Beauty seems to be differentiated from the other Platonic ideas by precisely this attribute, that it must be embodied. What else is the meaning of the statement in the _Phaedrus_, "This is the privilege of beauty, that, being the loveliest (of the ideas) she is also the most palpable to sight?" [Footnote: § 251.] Now, whatever one's stand on the question of nature versus humanity in art, one must admit that embodying ideals means, in the long run, personifying them. The poet, despising the sordid and unwieldy natures of men, may try, as Wordsworth did, to give us a purer crystallization of his ideas in nature, but it is really his own personality, scattered to the four winds, that he is offering us in the guise of nature, as the habiliments of his thought. Reflection leads us to agree with Coleridge: In our life alone does nature live, Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shrowd. [Footnote: _Ode to Dejection._] The poet may not always be conscious of this, any more than Keats was; his traits may be so broadcast that he is in the position of the philosopher who, from the remote citadel of his head, disowns his own toes; nevertheless, a sense of tingling oneness with him is the secret of nature's attraction. Walt Whitman, who conceives of the poet's personality as the most pervasive thing in the universe, arrives at his conviction by the same reflection as that of Keats, telling us, There was a child went forth every day, And the first object he looked upon, that object he became. Perhaps Alice Meynell has best expressed the phenomenon, in a sonnet called _The Love of Narcissus:_ Like him who met his own eyes in the river, The poet trembles at his own long gaze That meets him through the changing nights and days From out great Nature; all her waters quiver With his fair image facing him forever: The music that he listens to betrays His own heart to his ears: by trackless ways His wild thoughts tend to him in long endeavor. His dreams are far among the silent hills; His vague voice calls him from the darkened plain; With winds at night vague recognition thrills His lonely heart with piercing love and pain; He knows again his mirth in mountain rills, His weary tears that touch him in the rain. Possibly we may concede that his fusion with all nature renders the poet's personality so diaphanous that his presence is unobtrusive in poetry of ideas, but we may still object to his thrusting himself into realistic poetry. Shelley's poet-heroes we will tolerate, as translucent mediums of his thought, but we are not inclined to accept Byron's, when we seek a panoramic view of this world. Poetry gains manifold representation of life, we argue, in proportion as the author represses his personal bias, and approximates the objective view that a scientist gives. We cannot but sympathize with Sidney Lanier's complaint against "your cold jellyfish poets that wrinkle themselves about a pebble of a theme and let us see it through their substance, as if that were a great feat." [Footnote: _Poem Outlines._] In answer, champions of the ubiquitous poet in recent realistic verse may point to the _Canterbury Tales,_ and show us Chaucer ambling along with the other pilgrims. His presence, they remind us, instead of distorting his picture of fourteenth-century life, lends intimacy to our view of it. We can only feebly retort that, despite his girth, the poet is the least conspicuous figure in that procession, whereas a modern poet would shoulder himself ahead of the knight, steal the hearts of all the ladies, from Madame Eglantine to the Wife of Bath, and change the destinies of each of his rivals ere Canterbury was reached. We return to our strongest argument for the invisible poet. What of Shakespeare? we reiterate. Well, the poets might remind us that criticism of late years has been laying more and more stress upon the personality of Shakespeare, in the spirit of Hartley Coleridge's lines, Great poet, 'twas thy art, To know thyself, and in thyself to be Whate'er love, hate, ambition, destiny, Or the firm, fatal purpose of the heart Can make of man. [Footnote: _Shakespeare_.] If this trend of criticism is in the right direction, then the apparent objectivity of the poet must be pure camouflage, and it is his own personality that he is giving us all the time, in the guise of one character and another. In this case, not his frank confession of his presence in his poetry, but his self-concealment, falsifies his representation of life. Since we have quoted Browning's apparent criticism of the self-revealing poet, it is only fair to quote some of his unquestionably sincere utterances on the other side of the question. "You speak out, you," he wrote to Elizabeth Barrett; [Footnote: January 13, 1845.] "I only make men and women speak--give you truth broken into prismatic hues, and fear the pure white light." Again he wrote, "I never have begun, even, what I hope I was born to begin and end,--'R.B.', a poem." [Footnote: Letter to Elizabeth Barrett, February 3, 1845.] And Mrs. Browning, usually a better spokesman for the typical English poet than is Browning himself, likewise conceives it the artist's duty to show us his own nature, to be "greatly _himself always_, which is the hardest thing for a man to be, perhaps." [Footnote: Letter to Robert Browning, September 9, 1845.] "Art," says Aristotle, "is an imitation of life." "_L'art, mes enfants_," says the modern poet, speaking through the lips of Verlaine, "_c'est d'être absolument soi-même_." Of course if one concedes that the poet is the only thing in life worth bothering about, the two statements become practically identical. It may be true that the poet's universal sympathies make him the most complex type that civilization has produced, and consequently the most economical figure to present as a sample of humanity. But Taine has offered us a simpler way of harmonizing the two statements, not by juggling with Aristotle's word "life," but with the word "imitation." "Art," says Taine, "is nature seen through a temperament." Now it may be that to Aristotle imitation, _Mimeseis_, did mean "seeing through a temperament." But certainly, had he used that phrase, he would have laid the stress on "seeing," rather than on "temperament." Aristotle would judge a man to have poetic temperament if his mind were like a telescope, sharpening the essential outlines of things. Modern poets, on the other hand, are inclined to grant that a person has poetic temperament only if his mind resembles a jeweled window, transforming all that is seen through it, if by any chance something _is_ seen through it. If the modern poet sees the world colored red or green or violet by his personality, it is well for the interests of truth, we must admit, that he make it clear to us that his nature is the transforming medium, but how comes it that he fixes his attention so exclusively upon the colors of things, for which his own nature is responsible, and ignores the forms of things, which are not affected by him? How comes it that the colored lights thrown on nature by the stained windows of his soul are so important to him that he feels justified in painting for us, notnature, but stained-glass windows? In part this is, as has often been said, a result of the individualizing trend of modern art. The broad general outlines of things have been "done" by earlier artists, and there is no chance for later artists to vary them, but the play of light and shade offers infinite possibilities of variation. If one poet shows us the world highly colored by his personality, it is inevitable that his followers should have their attention caught by the different coloring which their own natures throw upon it. The more acute their sense of observation, the more they will be interested in the phenomenon. "Of course you are self-conscious," Elizabeth Barrett wrote to Robert Browning. "How could you be a poet otherwise?" [Footnote: February 27, 1845.] This modern individualizing trend appears equally in all the arts, of course. Yet the poet's self-consciousness appears in his work more plainly than does that of painters and sculptors and musicians. One wonders if this may not be a consequence of the peculiar nature of his inspiration. While all art is doubtless essentially alike in mode of creation, it may not be fanciful to conceive that the poet's inspiration is surrounded by deeper mystery than that of other geniuses, and that this accounts for the greater prominence of conscious self-analysis in his work. That such a difference exists, seems obvious. In spite of the lengths to which program music has been carried, we have, so far as I know, practically no music, outside of opera, that claims to have the musician, or the artist in general, for its theme. So sweeping an assertion cannot be made regarding painting and sculpture, to be sure. Near the beginning of the history of sculpture we are met by the legend of Phidias placing his own image among the gods. At the other extreme, chronologically, we are familiar with Daniel Chester French's group, Death Staying the Hand of the Sculptor. Painters not infrequently portray themselves and their artist friends. Yet it is improbable that the mass of material concerned with the poet's view of the artist can be paralleled. This is due in part, obviously, to the greater plasticity to ideas of his medium, but may it not be due also to the fact that all other arts demand an apprenticeship, during which the technique is mastered in a rational, comprehensible way? Whereas the poet is apt to forget that he has a technique at all, since he shares his tool, language, with men of all callings whatever. He feels himself, accordingly, to be dependent altogether upon a mysterious "visitation" for his inspiration. At least this mystery surrounding his creations has much to do with removing the artist from the comparative freedom from self-consciousness that we ascribe to the general run of men. In addition it removes him from the comparative humility of other thinkers, who are wont to think of their discoveries as following inevitably upon their data, so that they themselves deserve credit only as they are persistent and painstaking in following the clues. The genesis of Sir Isaac Newton's discovery has been compared to poetical inspiration; yet even in this case the difference is apparent, and Newton did not identify himself with the universe he conceived, as the poet is in the habit of doing. Not being able to account for his inspirations, the poet seems to be driven inevitably either into excessive humility, since he feels that his words are not his own, or into inordinate pride, since he feels that he is able to see and express without volition truths that other men cannot glimpse with the utmost effort. He may disclaim all credit for his performance, in the words of a nineteenth-century verse-writer: This is the end of the book Written by God. I am the earth he took, I am the rod, The iron and wood which he struck With his sounding rod. [Footnote: L. E. Mitchell, _Written at the End of a Book._] a statement that provokes wonder as to God's sensations at having such amateurish works come out under his name. But this sort of humility is really a protean manifestation of egotism, as is clear in the religious states that bear resemblance to the poet's. This the Methodist "experience meeting" abundantly illustrates, where endless loquacity is considered justifiable, because the glory of one's experience is due, not to one's self, but to the Almighty. The minor American poets in the middle of the last century are often found exhorting one another to humility, quite after the prayer-meeting tradition. Bitter is their denunciation of the poet's arrogance: A man that's proud--vile groveller in the dust, Dependent on the mercy of his God For every breath. [Footnote: B. Saunders, _To Chatterton._] Again they declare that the poet should be Self-reading, not self-loving, they are twain, [Footnote: Henry Timrod, _A Vision of Poesy._] telling him, Think not of thine own self, [Footnote: Richard Gilder, _To the Poet._] adding, Always, O bard, humility is power. [Footnote: Henry Timrod, _Poet If on a Lasting Fame._] One is reminded of Mrs. Heep's repeated adjuration, "Be 'umble, Ury," and the likeness is not lessened when we find them ingratiatingly sidling themselves into public favor. We hear them timidly inquiring of their inspiration, Shall not the violet bloom? [Footnote: Mrs. Evans, _Apologetic._] and pleading with their critics, Lightly, kindly deal, My buds were culled amid bright dews In morn of earliest youth. [Footnote: Lydia M. Reno, _Preface to Early Buds._] At times they resort to the mixed metaphor to express their innocuous unimportance, declaring, A feeble hand essays To swell the tide of song, [Footnote: C. H. Faimer, _Invocation._] and send out their ideas with fond insistence upon their diminutiveness: Go, little book, and with thy little thoughts, Win in each heart and memory a home. [Footnote: C. Augustus Price, _Dedication._] But among writers whose names are recognizable without an appeal to a librarian's index, precisely this attitude is not met with. It would be absurd, of course, to deny that one finds convincingly sincere expressions of modesty among poets of genuine merit. Many of them have taken pains to express themselves in their verse as humbled by the genius above their grasp. [Footnote: See Emerson, _In a Dull Uncertain Brain_; Whittier, _To my Namesake_; Sidney Lanier, _Ark of the Future_; Oliver Wendell Holmes, _The Last Reader_; Bayard Taylor, _L'Envoi_; Robert Louis Stevenson, _To Dr. Hake_; Francis Thompson, _To My Godchild_.] But we must agree with their candid avowals that they belong in the second rank. The greatest poets of the century are not in the habit of belittling themselves. It is almost unparalleled to find so sweeping a revolutionist of poetic traditions as Burns saying of himself: I am nae poet, in a sense, But just a rhymer like, by chance, And hae to learning nae pretense, Yet what the matter? Whene'er my muse does on me glance, I jingle at her. [Footnote: _Epistle to Lapraik._] Most of the self-depreciatory writers, by their very abnegation of the title, exalt the supreme poet. There are few indeed so unconcerned about the dignity of the calling as is Sir Walter Scott, who assigns to the minstrels of his tales a subordinate social position that would make the average bard depicted in literature gnash his teeth for rage, and who casually disposes of the poet's immortality: Let but the verse befit a hero's fame; Immortal be the verse, forgot the author's name. [Footnote: _Introduction to Don Roderick._] Mrs. Browning, to be sure, also tries to prick the bubble of the poet's conceit, assuring him: Ye are not great because creation drew Large revelations round your earliest sense, Nor bright because God's glory shines for you. [Footnote: _Mountaineer and Poet_.] But in her other poetry, notably in _Aurora Leigh_ and _A Vision of Poets,_ she amply avows her sense of the preëminence of the singer, as well as of his song. While it is easy to shake our heads over the self-importance of the nineteenth century, and to contrast it with the unconscious lyrical spontaneity of half-mythical singers in the beginning of the world, it is probable that some degree of egotism is essential to a poet. Remembering his statement that his name was written in water, we are likely to think of Keats as the humblest of geniuses, yet he wrote to a friend, "You will observe at the end of this, 'How a solitary life engenders pride and egotism!' True--I know it does: but this pride and egotism will enable me to write finer things than anything else could, so I will indulge it." [Footnote: Letter to John Taylor, August 23, 1819.] No matter how modest one may be about his work after it is completed, a sense of its worth must be with one at the time of composition, else he will not go to the trouble of recording and preserving it. Unless the writer schools himself to keep this conviction out of his verse, it is likely to flower in self-confident poetry of the classic type, so characteristic of the Elizabethan age. This has such a long tradition behind it that it seems almost stereotyped, wherever it appears in our period, especially when it is promising immortality to a beloved one. We scarcely heed such verses as the lines by Landor, Well I remember how you smiled To see me write your name upon The soft sea-sand, "O! what a child, You think you're writing upon stone!" I have since written what no tide Shall ever wash away, what men Unborn shall read, o'er ocean wide, And find Ianthe's name again, or Francis Thompson's sonnet sequence, _Ad Amicam_, which expresses the author's purpose to Fling a bold stave to the old bald Time, Telling him that he is too insolent Who thinks to rase thee from my heart or rhyme, Whereof to one because thou life hast given, The other yet shall give a life to thee, Such as to gain, the prowest swords have striven, And compassed weaker immortality, or Yeats' lines _Of Those Who Have Spoken Evil of His Beloved_, wherein he takes pride in the reflection: Weigh this song with the great and their pride; I made it out of a mouthful of air; Their children's children shall say they have lied. But a more vibrantly personal note breaks out from time to time in the most original verse of the last century, as in Wordsworth's testimony, Yet to me I feel That an internal brightness is vouchsafed That must not die, [Footnote: _Home at Grasmere_.] or in Walt Whitman's injunction: Recorders ages hence, Come, I will take you down underneath this impassive Exterior. I will tell you what to say of me. [Footnote: See also, _Long Long Hence_.] Nowadays, in fact, even minor poets for the most part frankly avow the importance of their works. We find George Edward Woodberry in the clutches of the old-fashioned habit of apology, to be sure, [Footnote: See _My Country_.]--perhaps this is one reason the radicals are so opposed to him; but in the ranks of the radicals themselves we find very few retaining any doubt of themselves. [Footnote: Exceptions are Jessie Rittenhouse, _Patrius_; Lawrence Houseman, _Mendicant Rhymes_; Robert Silliman Hillyer, _Poor Faltering Rhymes_.] Self-assertion is especially characteristic of their self-appointed leader, Ezra Pound, in whose case it is undoubtedly an inheritance from Walt Whitman, whom he has lately acknowledged as his "pig-headed father." [Footnote: _Lustra_.] A typical assertion is that in _Salutation the Second_, How many will come after me, Singing as well as I sing, none better. There is a delicate charm in the self-assurance appearing in some of the present verse, as Sara Teasdale's confidence in her "fragile immortality" [Footnote: _Refuge._] or James Stephens' exultation in _A Tune Upon a Reed,_ Not a piper can succeed When I lean against a tree, Blowing gently on a reed, and in _The Rivals,_ where he boasts over a bird, I was singing all the time, Just as prettily as he, About the dew upon the lawn, And the wind upon the lea; So I didn't listen to him As he sang upon a tree. If one were concerned only with this "not marble nor the gilded monuments" theme, the sixteenth century would quite eclipse the nineteenth or twentieth. But the egoism of our writers goes much further than this parental satisfaction in their offspring. It seems to have needed the intense individualism of Rousseau's philosophy, and of German idealism, especially the conception of "irony," or the superiority of the soul over its creations, to bring the poet's egoism to flower. Its rankest blossoming, in Walt Whitman, would be hard to imagine in another century. Try to conceive even an Elizabethan beginning a poem after the fashion of _A Song of Myself:_ I, now thirty-seven years old, in perfect health, begin, Hoping to cease not till death. Whitman is conscious of--perhaps even exaggerates--the novelty of his task, Pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom exhibited itself (the great pride of man in himself) Chanter of personality. While our poets thus assert, occasionally, that the unblushing nudity of their pride is a conscious departure from convention, they would not have us believe that they are fundamentally different from older singers. One seldom finds an actual poet, of whatever period, depicted in the verse of the last century, whose pride is not insisted upon. The favorite poet-heroes, Aeschylus, Michael Angelo, Tasso, Dante, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Milton, Chatterton, Keats, Byron, are all characterized as proud. The last-named has been especially kept in the foreground by following verse-writers, as a precedent for their arrogance. Shelley's characterization of Byron in _Julian and Maddalo_, The sense that he was greater than his kind Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind By gazing on its own exceeding light, has been followed by many expressions of the same thought, at first wholly sympathetic, lately, it must be confessed, somewhat ironical. Consciousness of partnership with God in composition naturally lifts the poet, in his own estimation, at least, to a super-human level. The myth of Apollo disguised as a shepherd strikes him as being a happy expression of his divinity. [Footnote: See James Russell Lowell, _The Shepherd of King Admetus._] Thus Emerson calls singers Blessed gods in servile masks. [Footnote: _Saadi._] The hero of John Davidson's _Ballad in Blank Verse on the Making of a Poet_ soars to a monotheistic conception of his powers, asserting Henceforth I shall be God, for consciousness Is God. I suffer. I am God. Another poet-hero is characterized: He would reach the source of light, And share, enthroned, the Almighty's might. [Footnote: Harvey Rice, _The Visionary_ (1864). In recent years a few poets have modestly disclaimed equality with God. See William Rose Benét, _Imagination,_ and Joyce Kilmer, _Trees._ The kinship of poets and the Almighty is the theme of _The Lonely Poet_ (1919), by John Hall Wheelock.] On the other hand, recent poets' hatred of orthodox religion has led them to idealize the Evil One, and regard him as no unworthy rival as regards pride. One of Browning's poets is "prouder than the devil." [Footnote: _Waring._] Chatterton, according to Rossetti, was "kin to Milton through his Satan's pride." [Footnote: Sonnet, _To Chatterton._] Of another poet-hero one of his friends declares, You would be arrogant, boy, you know, in hell, And keep the lowest circle to yourself. [Footnote: Josephine Preston Peabody, _Marlowe_ (1911).] There is bathos, after these claims, in the concern some poets show over the question of priority between themselves and kings. Yet one writer takes the trouble to declare, Artists truly great Are on a par with kings, nor would exchange Their fate for that of any potentate. [Footnote: Longfellow, _Michael Angelo_.] Stephen Phillips is unique in his disposition to ridicule such an attitude; in his drama on Nero, he causes this poet, self-styled, to say, Think not, although my aim is art, I cannot toy with empire easily. [Footnote: _Nero_.] Not a little American verse is taken up with this question, [Footnote: See Helen Hunt Jackson, _The King's Singer_; E. L. Sprague, _A Shakespeare Ode_; Eugene Field, _Poet and King_.] betraying a disposition on the part of the authors to follow Walt Whitman's example and "take off their hats to nothing known or unknown." [Footnote: Walt Whitman, _Collect_.] In these days, when the idlest man of the street corner would fight at the drop of a hat, if his inferiority to earth's potentates were suggested to him, all the excitement seems absurdly antiquated. There is, however, something approaching modernity in Byron's disposal of the question, as he makes the hero of _The Lament of Tasso_ express the pacifist sentiment, No!--still too proud to be vindictive, I Have pardoned princes' insults, and would die. It is clear that his creations are the origin of the poet's pride, yet, singularly enough, his arrogance sometimes reaches such proportions that he grows ashamed of his art as unworthy of him. Of course this attitude harks back to Shakespeare's sonnets. The humiliation which Shakespeare endured because his calling was despised by his aristocratic young friend is largely the theme of a poem, _Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford_, by Edwin Arlington Robinson. Such a sense of shame seems to be back of the dilettante artist, wherever he appears in verse. The heroes of Byron's and Praed's poems generally refuse to take their art seriously.[Footnote: See W. M. Praed, _Lillian, How to Rhyme for Love, The Talented Man;_ Byron, _Childe Harold, Don Juan._] A few of Tennyson's characters take the same attitude.[Footnote: See Eleanor, in _Becket;_ and the Count, in _The Falcon._] Again and again Byron gives indication that his own feeling is that imputed to him by a later poet: He, from above descending, stooped to touch The loftiest thought; and proudly stooped, as though It scarce deserved his verse. [Footnote: Robert Pollock, _The Course of Time._] After Byron's vogue died out, this mood slept for a time. It is only of late years that it is showing symptoms of waking. It harries Cale Young Rice: I have felt the ineffable sting Of life, though I be art's valet. I have painted the cloud and the clod, Who should have possessed the earth. [Footnote: _Limitations_.] It depressed Alan Seeger: I, who, conceived beneath another star, Had been a prince and played with life, Have been its slave, an outcast exiled far From the fair things my faith has merited. [Footnote: _Liebestod_.] It characteristically stings Ezra Pound to expletive: Great God! if we be damned to be not men but only dreams, Then let us be such dreams the world shall tremble at, And know we be its rulers, though but dreams. [Footnote: _Revolt Against the Crepuscular Spirit in Modern Poetry_.] Perhaps, indeed, judging from contemporary tendencies, this study is made too early to reflect the poet's egoism at its full tide. The poet's overweening self-esteem may well be the hothouse atmosphere in which alone his genius can thrive, but from another point of view it seems a subtle poison gas, engendering all the ills that differentiate him from other men. Its first effect is likely to be the reflection that his genius is judged by a public that is vastly inferior to him. This galling thought usually drives him into an attitude of indifference or of openly expressed contempt for his audience. The mood is apparent at the very beginning of the romantic period. The germ of such a feeling is to be found even in so modest a poet as Cowper, who maintains that his brother poets, rather than the unliterary public, should pass upon his worth.[Footnote: See _To Darwin_.] But the average poet of the last century and a half goes a step beyond this attitude, and appears to feel that there is something contemptible about popularity. Literary arrogance seems far from characteristic of Burns, yet he tells us how, in a mood of discouragement, I backward mused on wasted time, How I had spent my youthful prime, And done naething But stringin' blithers up in rhyme For fools to sing. [Footnote: _The Vision._] Of course it is not till we come to Byron that we meet the most thoroughgoing expression of this contempt for the public. The sentiment in _Childe Harold_ is one that Byron never tires of harping on: I have not loved the world, nor the world me; I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed To its idolatries a patient knee. And this attitude of Byron's has been adopted by all his disciples, who delight in picturing his scorn: With terror now he froze the cowering blood, And now dissolved the heart in tenderness, Yet would not tremble, would not weep, himself, But back into his soul retired alone, Dark, sullen, proud, gazing contemptuously On hearts and passions prostrate at his feet. [Footnote: Robert Pollock, _The Course of Time._] Of the other romantic poets, Sir Walter Scott alone remains on good terms with the public, expressing a child's surprise and delight over the substantial checks he is given in exchange for his imaginings. But Shelley starts out with a chip on his shoulder, in the very advertisements of his poems expressing his unflattering opinion of The public's judgment, and Keats makes it plain that his own criticisms concern him far more than those of other men. The consciously aristocratic, sniffing attitude toward the public, which ran its course during Victoria's reign, is ushered in by Landor, who confesses, I know not whether I am proud, But this I know, I hate the crowd, Therefore pray let me disengage My verses from the motley page, Where others, far more sure to please Pour forth their choral song with ease. The same gentlemanly indifference to his plebeian readers is diffused all through Matthew Arnold's writing, of course. He casually disposes of popularity: Some secrets may the poet tell For the world loves new ways; To tell too deep ones is not well,-- It knows not what he says. [Footnote: See _In Memory of Obermann._] Mrs. Browning probably has her own success in mind when she makes the young poetess, Aurora Leigh, recoil from the fulsome praise of her readers. Browning takes the same attitude in _Sordello,_ contrasting Eglamor, the versifier who servilely conformed to the taste of the mob, with Sordello, the true poet, who despised it. In _Popularity_, Browning returns to the same theme, of the public's misplaced praises, and in _Pacchiarotto_ he outdoes himself in heaping ridicule upon his readers. Naturally the coterie of later poets who have prided themselves on their unique skill in interpreting Browning have been impressed by his contempt for his readers. Perhaps they have even exaggerated it. No less contemptuous of his readers than Browning was that other Victorian, so like him in many respects, George Meredith. It would be interesting to make a list of the zoological metaphors by which the Victorians expressed their contempt for the public. Landor characterized their criticisms as "asses' kicks aimed at his head." [Footnote: Edmund Gosse, _Life of Swinburne_, p. 103.] Browning alternately represented his public cackling and barking at him. [Footnote: See Thomas J. Wise, Letters, Second Series, Vol. 2, p. 52.] George Meredith made a dichotomy of his readers into "summer flies" and "swinish grunters." [Footnote: _My Theme_.] Tennyson, being no naturalist, simply named the public the "many-headed beast." [Footnote: _In Memoriam_.] In America there has been less of this sort of thing openly expressed by genuine poets. Emerson is fairly outspoken, telling us, in _The Poet_, how the public gapes and jeers at a new vision. But one must go to our border-line poets to find the feeling most candidly put into words. Most of them spurn popularity, asserting that they are too worthwhile to be appreciated. They may be even nauseated by the slight success they manage to achieve, and exclaim, Yet to know That we create an Eden for base worms! If the consciousness of recent writers is dominated by contempt for mankind at large, such a mood is expressed with more caution than formerly. Kipling takes men's stupidity philosophically. [Footnote: See _The Story of Ung._] Edgar Lee Masters uses a fictional character as a mask for his remarks on the subject. [Footnote: See _Having His Way._] Other poets have expressed themselves with a degree of mildness. [Footnote: See Watts-Dunton, _Apollo in Paris;_ James Stephens, _The Market;_ Henry Newbolt, _An Essay in Criticism;_ William Rose Benét, _People._] But of course Ezra Pound is not to be suppressed. He inquires, Will people accept them? (i.e., these songs) As a timorous wench from a centaur (or a centurion) Already they flee, howling in terror * * * * * Will they be touched with the verisimilitude? Their virgin stupidity is untemptable. He adds, I beg you, my friendly critics, Do not set about to procure me an audience. Again he instructs his poems, when they meet the public, Salute them with your thumbs to your noses. It is very curious, after such passages, to find him pleading, in another poem, May my poems be printed this week? The naïveté of this last question brings up insistently a perplexing problem. If the poet despises his readers, why does he write? He may perhaps evade this question by protesting, with Tennyson, I pipe but as the linnets do, And sing because I must. But why does he publish? If he were strictly logical, surely he would do as the artist in Browning's _Pictor Ignotus,_ who so shrank from having his pictures come into contact with fools, that he painted upon hidden, moldering walls, thus renouncing all possibility of fame. But one doubts whether such renunciation has been made often, especially in the field of poetry. Rossetti buried his poems, of course, but their resurrection was not postponed till the Last Judgment. Other writers have coyly waved fame away, but have gracefully yielded to their friends' importunities, and have given their works to the world. When one reads such expressions as Byron's; Fame is the thirst of youth,--but I am not So young as to regard men's frown or smile As loss or guerdon of a glorious lot, [Footnote: _Childe Harold._] one wonders. Perhaps the highest genius takes absolutely no account of fame, as the sun-god asserts in Watts-Dunton's poem, _Apollo in Paris:_ I love the song-born poet, for that he Loves only song--seeks for love's sake alone Shy Poesie, whose dearest bowers, unknown To feudaries of fame, are known to thee. [Footnote: See also Coventry Patmore, from _The Angel in the House,_ "I will not Hearken Blame or Praise"; Francis Carlin, _The Home Song_ (1918).] But other poets, with the utmost inconsistency, have admitted that they find the thought of fame very sweet. [Footnote: See Edward Young, _Love of Fame;_ John Clare, _Song's Eternity, Idle Fame, To John Milton;_ Bulwer Lytton, _The Desire of Fame;_ James Gates Percival, _Sonnet 379;_ Josephine Peston Peabody, _Marlowe._] Keats dwells upon the thought of it. [Footnote: See the _Epistle to My Brother George._] Browning shows both of his poet heroes concerned over the question. In _Pauline_ the speaker confesses, I ne'er sing But as one entering bright halls, where all Will rise and shout for him. In _Sordello,_ again, Browning analyzes the desire for fame: Souls like Sordello, on the contrary, Coerced and put to shame, retaining will, Care little, take mysterious comfort still, But look forth tremblingly to ascertain If others judge their claims not urged in vain, And say for them their stifled thoughts aloud. So they must ever live before a crowd: --"Vanity," Naddo tells you. Emerson's Saadi is one who does not despise fame, Nor can dispense With Persia for an audience. [Footnote: _Saadi._] Can it be that when the poet renounces fame, we must concur with Austin Dobson's paraphrase of his meaning, But most, because the grapes are sour, Farewell, renown? [Footnote: _Farewell Renown._] Perhaps the poet is saved from inconsistency by his touching confidence that in other times and places human nature is less stupid and unappreciative than it proves itself in his immediate audience. He reasons that in times past the public has shown sufficient insight to establish the reputation of the master poets, and that history will repeat itself. Several writers have stated explicitly that their quarrel with humanity is not to be carried beyond the present generation. Thus Arnold objects to his time because it is aesthetically dead. [Footnote: See _Persistency of Poetry._] But elsewhere he objects because it shows signs of coming to life, [Footnote: See _Bacchanalia._] so it is hard to determine how our grandfathers could have pleased him. Similarly unreasonable discontent has been expressed by later poets with our own time. [Footnote: See William Ernest Henley, _The Gods are Dead;_ Edmund Gosse, _On Certain Critics;_ Samuel Waddington, _The Death of Song;_ John Payne, _Double Ballad of the Singers of the Time_(1906).] Only occasionally a poet rebukes his brethren for this carping attitude. Mrs. Browning protests, in _Aurora Leigh,_ 'Tis ever thus With times we live in,--evermore too great To be apprehended near.... I do distrust the poet who discerns No character or glory in his times, And trundles back his soul five hundred years. [Footnote: See Robert Browning, Letter to Elizabeth Barrett, March 12, 1845.] And Kipling is a notorious defender of the present generation, but these two stand almost alone. [Footnote: See also James Elroy Flecker, _Oak and Olive;_ Max Ehrmann, _Give Me Today._] Several mythical explanations for the stupidity of the poet's own times have been offered in verse. Browning says that poetry is like wine; it must age before it grows sweet. [Footnote: _Epilogue to the Pacchiarotto Volume._] Emerson says the poet's generation is deafened by the thunder of his voice. [Footnote: _Solution._] A minor writer says that poetry must be written in one's life-blood, so that it necessarily kills one before it is appreciated. [Footnote: William Reed Dunroy, _The Way of the World_ (1897).] Another suggests that a subtle electric change is worked in one's poems by death. [Footnote: Richard Gilder, _A Poet's Question._] But the only reasonable explanation of the failure of the poet's own generation to appreciate him seems to be that offered by Shelley, in the _Defense of Poetry:_ No living poet ever arrived at the fullness of his fame; the jury which sits in judgment upon a poet, belonging as he does to all time, must be composed of his peers. Of course the contempt of the average poet for his contemporaries is not the sort of thing to endear him to them. Their self-respect almost forces them to ignore the poet's talents. And unfortunately, in addition to taking a top-lofty attitude, the poet has, until recently, gone much farther, and while despising the public has tried to improve it. Most nineteenth century poetry might be described in Mrs. Browning's words, as Antidotes Of medicated music, answering for Mankind's forlornest uses. [Footnote: _Sonnets from the Portuguese._] And like an unruly child the public struggled against the dose. Whereupon the poet was likely to lose his temper, and declare, as Browning did, My Thirty-four Port, no need to waste On a tongue that's fur, and a palate--paste! A magnum for friends who are sound: the sick-- I'll posset and cosset them, nothing loath, Henceforward with nettle-broth. [Footnote: _Epilogue to the Pacchiarotto Volume._] Yes, much as we pity the forlorn poet when his sensitive feelings are hurt by the world's cruelty, we must still pronounce that he is partly to blame. If the public is buzzing around his head like a swarm of angry hornets, he must in most cases admit that he has stirred them up with a stick. The poet's vilified contemporaries employ various means of retaliating. They may invite him to dinner, then point out that His Omniscience does not know how to manage a fork, or they may investigate his family tree, and then cut his acquaintance, or, most often, they may listen to his fanciful accounts of reality, then brand him as a liar. So the vicious circle is completed, for the poet is harassed by this treatment into the belief that he is the target for organized persecution, and as a result his egotism grows more and more morbid, and his contempt for the public more deliberately expressed. At the beginning of the period under discussion the social snubs seem to have rankled most in the poet's nature. This was doubtless a survival from the times of patronage. James Thomson [Footnote: See the _Castle of Indolence,_ Canto II, stanzas XXI-III. See also _To Mr. Thomson, Doubtful to What Patron to Address the Poem,_ by H. Hill.] and Thomas Hood [Footnote: See _To the Late Lord Mayor._] both concerned themselves with the problem. Kirke White appears to have felt that patronage of poets was still a live issue. [Footnote: See the _Ode Addressed to the Earle of Carlisle._] Crabbe, in a narrative poem, offered a pathetic picture of a young poet dying of heartbreak because of the malicious cruelty of the aristocracy toward him, a farmer's son. [Footnote: _The Patron._] Later on Mrs. Browning took up the cudgels for the poet, in _Lady Geraldine's Courtship,_ and upheld the nobility of the untitled poet almost too strenuously, for his morbid pride makes him appear by all odds the worst snob in the poem. The less dignified contingent of the public annoys the poet by burlesquing the grandiose manners and poses to which his large nature easily lends itself. People are likely to question the poet's powers of soul because he forgets to cut his hair, or to fasten his blouse at the throat. And of course there have been rhymsters who have gone over to the side of the enemy, and who have made profit from exhibiting their freakishness, after the manner of circus monstrosities. Thomas Moore sometimes takes malicious pleasure in thus showing up the oddities of his race. [See _Common Sense and Genius,_ and _Rhymes by the Road._] Later libelers have been, usually, writers of no reputation. The literary squib that made most stir in the course of the century was not a poem, but the novel, _The Green Carnation,_ which poked fun at the mannerisms of the 1890 poets. [Footnote: Gilbert and Sullivan's _Patience_ made an even greater sensation.] Oddly, American poets betray more indignation than English ones over such lampoons. Longfellow makes Michael Angelo exclaim, I say an artist Who does not wholly give himself to art, Who has about him nothing marked or strange, But tries to suit himself to all the world Will ne'er attain to greatness. [Footnote: _Michael Angelo._] Sometimes an American poet takes the opposite tack, and denies that his conduct differs from that of other men. Thus Richard Watson Gilder insists that the poet has "manners like other men" and that on thisaccount the world that is eagerly awaiting the future poet will miss him. He repeats the world's query: How shall we know him? Ye shall know him not, Till, ended hate and scorn, To the grave he's borne. [Footnote: _When the True Poet Comes._] Whitman, in his defense, goes farther than this, and takes an original attitude toward his failure to keep step with other men, declaring Of these states the poet is the equable man, Not in him but off him things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of their full returns. [Footnote: _By Blue Ontario's Shore._] As for the third method employed by the public in its attacks upon the poet,--that of making charges against his truthfulness,--the poet resents this most bitterly of all. Gray, in _The Bard,_ lays the wholesale slaughter of Scotch poets by Edward I, to their fearless truth telling. A number of later poets have written pathetic tales showing the tragic results of the unimaginative public's denial of the poet's delicate perceptions of truth. [Footnote: See Jean Ingelow, _Gladys and her Island;_ Helen Hunt Jackson, _The Singer's Hills;_ J. G. Holland, _Jacob Hurd's Child._] To the poet's excited imagination, it seems as if all the world regarded his race as a constantly increasing swarm of flies, and had started in on a systematic course of extirpation. [Footnote: See G. K. Chesterton, _More Poets Yet._] As for the professional critic, he becomes an ogre, conceived of as eating a poet for breakfast every morning. The new singer is invariably warned by his brothers that he must struggle for his honor and his very life against his malicious audience. It is doubtful if we could find a poet of consequence in the whole period who does not somewhere characterize men of his profession as the martyrs of beauty. [Footnote: Examples of abstract discussions of this sort are: Burns, _The Poet's Progress;_ Keats, _Epistle to George Felton Matthew;_ Tennyson, _To ---- After Reading a Life and Letters;_ Longfellow, _The Poets;_ Thomas Buchanan Read, _The Master Poets;_ Paul Hamilton Hayne, _Though Dowered with Instincts;_ Henry Timrod, _A Vision of Poesy;_ George Meredith, _Bellerophon;_ S. L. Fairfield, _The Last Song_ (1832); S. J. Cassells, _A Poet's Reflections_ (1851); Richard Gilder, _The New Poet;_ Richard Realf, _Advice Gratis_ (1898); James Whitcomb Riley, _An Outworn Sappho;_ Paul Laurence Dunbar, _The Poet;_ Theodore Watts-Dunton, _The Octopus of the Golden Isles;_ Francis Ledwidge, _The Coming Poet._] Shelley is particularly wrought up on the subject, and in _The Woodman and the Nightingale_ expresses through an allegory the murderous designs of the public. A salient example of more vicarious indignation is Mrs. Browning, who exposes the world's heartlessness in a poem called _The Seraph and the Poet._ In _A Vision of Poets_ she betrays less indignation, apparently believing that experience of undeserved suffering is essential to the maturing of genius. In this poem the world's greatest poets are described: Where the heart of each should beat, There seemed a wound instead of it, From whence the blood dropped to their feet. The young hero of the poem, to whom the vision is given, naturally shrinks from the thought of such suffering, but the attendant spirit leads him on, nevertheless, to a loathsome pool, where there are bitter waters, And toads seen crawling on his hand, And clinging bats, but dimly scanned, Full in his face their wings expand. A paleness took the poet's cheek; "Must I drink here?" He seemed to seek The lady's will with utterance meek: "Ay, ay," she said, "it so must be:" (And this time she spoke cheerfully) Behooves thee know world's cruelty. The modern poet is able to bring forward many historical names by which to substantiate the charges of cruelty which he makes against society. From classic Greece he names Aeschylus [Footnote: R. C. Robbins, _Poems of Personality_ (1909); Cale Young Rice, _Aeschylus._] and Euripides. [Footnote: Bulwer Lytton, _Euripides;_ Browning, _Balaustion's Adventure;_ Richard Burton, _The First Prize._] From Latin writers our poets have chosen as favorite martyr Lucan, "by his death approved." [Footnote: _Adonais._ See also Robert Bridges, _Nero._] Of the great renaissance poets, Shakespeare alone has usually been considered exempt from the general persecution, though Richard Garnett humorously represents even him as suffering triple punishment,--flogging, imprisonment and exile,--for his offense against Sir Thomas Lucy, aggravated by poetical temperament. [Footnote: See _Wm. Shakespeare, Pedagogue and Poacher_, a drama (1904).] Of all renaissance poets Dante [Footnote: See G. L. Raymond, _Dante_; Sarah King Wiley, _Dante and Beatrice_; Rossetti, _Dante at Verona_; Oscar Wilde, _Ravenna_.] and Tasso [Footnote: Byron, _The Lament of Tasso_; Shelley, _Song for Tasso_; James Thomson, B. V., _Tasso to Leonora_.] have received most attention on account of their wrongs. [Footnote: The sufferings of several French poets are commented upon in English verse. Swinburne's poetry on Victor Hugo, Bulwer Lytton's _Andre Chenier_, and Alfred Lang's _Gerard de Nerval_ come to mind.] Naturally the adversities which touch our writers most nearly are those of the modern English poets. It is the poets of the romantic movement who are thought of as suffering greatest injustice. Chatterton's extreme youth probably has helped to incense many against the cruelty that caused his death. [Footnote: See Shelley, _Adonais_; Coleridge, _Monody on the Death of Chatterton_; Keats, _Sonnet on Chatterton_; James Montgomery, _Stanzas on Chatterton_; Rossetti, _Sonnet to Chatterton_; Edward Dowden, _Prologue to Maurice Gerothwohl's Version of Vigny's Chatterton_; W. A. Percy, _To Chatterton_.] Southey is singled out by Landor for especial commiseration; _Who Smites the Wounded_ is an indignant uncovering of the world's cruelty in exaggerating Southey's faults. Landor insinuates that this persecution is extended to all geniuses: Alas! what snows are shed Upon thy laurelled head, Hurtled by many cares and many wrongs! Malignity lets none Approach the Delphic throne; A hundred lane-fed curs bark down Fame's hundred tongues. [Footnote: _To Southey_, _1833_.] The ill-treatment of Burns has had its measure of denunciation. The centenary of his birth brought forth a good deal of such verse. Of course Byron's sufferings have had their share of attention, though, remembering his enormous popularity, the better poets have left to the more gullible rhymsters the echo of his tirades against persecution, [Footnote: See T. H. Chivers, _Lord Byron's Dying Words to Ada_, and _Byron_ (1853); Charles Soran, _Byron_ (1842); E. F. Hoffman, _Byron_ (1849).] and have conceived of the public as beaten at its own game by him. Thus Shelley exults in the thought, The Pythian of the age one arrow drew And smiled. The spoilers tempt no second blow, They fawn on the proud feet that laid them low. [Footnote: _Adonais._] The wrongs of Keats, also, are not so much stressed in genuine poetry as formerly, and the fiction that his death was due to the hostility of his critics is dying out, though Shelley's _Adonais_ will go far toward giving it immortality. Oscar Wilde's characterization of Keats as "the youngest of the martyrs" [Footnote: _At the Grave of Keats._] brings the tradition down almost to the present in British verse, but for the most part its popularity is now limited to American rhymes. One is rather indignant, after reading Keats' own manly words about hostile criticism, to find a nondescript verse-writer putting the puerile self-characterization into his mouth: I, the Boy-poet, whom with curse They hounded on to death's untimely doom. [Footnote: T. L. Harris, _Lyrics of the Golden Age_ (1856).] In even less significant verse the most maudlin sympathy with Keats is expressed. One is tempted to feel that Keats suffered less from his enemies than from his admirers, of the type which Browning characterized as "the foolish crowd of rushers-in upon genius ... never content till they cut their initials on the cheek of the Medicean Venus to prove they worship her." [Footnote: Letter to Elizabeth Barrett, November 17, 1845.] With the possible exception of Chatterton, the poet whose wrongs have raised the most indignant storm of protest is Shelley. Several poets, as the young Browning, Francis Thompson, James Thomson, B. V., and Mr. Woodberry, have made a chivalrous championing of Shelley almost part of their poetical platform. No doubt the facts of Shelley's life warrant such sympathy. Then too, Shelley's sense of injustice, unlike Byron's, is not such as to seem weak to us, though it is so freely expressed in his verse. In addition one is likely to feel particular sympathy for Shelley because the recoil of the public from him cannot be laid to his scorn. His enthusiasms were always for the happiness of the entire human race, as well as for himself. Everything in his unfortunate life vouches for the sincerity of his statement, in the _Hymn to Intellectual Beauty_: Never joy illumed my brow Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free This world from its dark slavery. Accordingly Shelley's injuries seem to have affected him as a sudden hurt does a child, with a sense of incomprehensibility, and later poets have rallied to his defense as if he were actually a child.[Footnote: See E. C. Stedman, _Ariel_; James Thomson, B. V., _Shelley_; Alfred Austin, _Shelley's Death_; Stephen Vincent Benét, _The General Public_.] The vicariousness of the nineteenth century poet in bewailing the hurts of his brethren is likely to have provoked a smile in us, as in the mourners of Adonais, at recognizing one Who in another's fate now wept his own. Of course a suppressed personal grudge may not always have been a factor in lending warmth to these defenses. Mrs. Browning is an ardent advocate of the misunderstood poet, though she herself enjoyed a full measure of popularity. But when Landor so warmly champions Southey, and Swinburne springs to the defense of Victor Hugo, one cannot help remembering that the public did not show itself wildly appreciative of either of these defenders. So, too, when Oscar Wilde works himself up over the persecutions of Dante, Keats and Byron, we are minded of the irreverent crowds that followed Wilde and his lily down the street. When the poet is too proud to complain of his own wrongs at the hands of the public, it is easy for him to strike in defense of another. As the last century wore on, this vicarious indignation more and more took the place of a personal outcry. Comparatively little has been said by poets since the romantic period about their own persecutions.[Footnote: See, however, Joaquin Miller, _I Shall Remember_, and _Vale_; Francis Ledwidge, _The Visitation of Peace_.] Occasionally a poet endeavors to placate the public by assuming a pose of equality. The tradition of Chaucer, fostered by the _Canterbury Tales_, is that by carefully hiding his genius, he succeeded in keeping on excellent terms with his contemporaries. Percy Mackaye, in the _Canterbury Pilgrims_, shows him obeying St. Paul's injunction so literally that the parson takes him for a brother of the cloth, the plowman is surprised that he can read, and so on, through the whole social gamut of the Pilgrims. But in the nineteenth century this friendly attitude seldom works out so well. Walt Whitman flaunts his ability to fraternize with the man of the street. But the American public has failed "to absorb him as affectionately as he has absorbed it." [Footnote: _By Blue Ontario's Shore._] Emerson tries to get on common ground with his audience by asserting that every man is a poet to some extent,[Footnote: See _The Enchanter_.] and it is consistent with the poetic theory of Yeats that he makes the same assertion as Emerson: There cannot be confusion of sound forgot, A single soul that lacks a sweet crystalline cry. [Footnote: _Pandeen._] But when the mob jeers at a poet, it does not take kindly to his retort, "Poet yourself." Longfellow, J. G. Holland and James Whitcombe Riley have been warmly commended by some of their brothers [Footnote: See O. W. Holmes, _To Longfellow_; P. H. Hayne, _To Henry W. Longfellow_; T. B. Read, _A Leaf from the Past_; E. C. Stedman, _J. G. H._; P. L. Dunbar, _James Whitcombe Riley_; J. W. Riley, _Rhymes of Ironquill_.] for their promiscuous friendliness, but on the whole there is a tendency on the part of the public to sniff at these poets, as well as at those who commend them, because they make themselves so common. One may deride the public's inconsistency, yet, after all, we have not to read many pages of the "homely" poets before their professed ability to get down to the level of the "common man" begins to remind one of pre-campaign speeches. There seems to be nothing for the poet to do, then, but to accept the hostility of the world philosophically. There are a few notable examples of the poet even welcoming the solitude that society forces upon him, because it affords additional opportunity for self-communion. Everyone is familiar with Wordsworth's insistence that uncompanionableness is essential to the poet. In the _Prelude_ he relates how, from early childhood, I was taught to feel, perhaps too much, The self-sufficing power of solitude. Elsewhere he disposes of the forms of social intercourse: These all wear out of me, like Forms, with chalk Painted on rich men's floors, for one feast night. [Footnote: _Personal Talk_.] So he describes the poet's character: He is retired as noontide dew Or fountain in a noonday grove. [Footnote: _The Poet's Epitaph_.] In American verse Wordsworth's mood is, of course, reflected in Bryant, and it appears in the poetry of most of Bryant's contemporaries. Longfellow caused the poet to boast that he "had no friends, and needed none." [Footnote: _Michael Angelo_.] Emerson expressed the same mood frankly. He takes civil leave of mankind: Think me not unkind and rude That I walk alone in grove and glen; I go to the god of the wood, To fetch his word to men. [Footnote: _The Apology_.] He points out the idiosyncrasy of the poet: Men consort in camp and town, But the poet dwells alone. [Footnote: _Saadi_.] Thus he works up to his climactic statement regarding the amplitude of the poet's personality: I have no brothers and no peers And the dearest interferes; When I would spend a lonely day, Sun and moon are in my way. [Footnote: _The Poet_.] Although the poet's egotism would seem logically to cause him to find his chief pleasure in undisturbed communion with himself, still this picture of the poet delighting in solitude cannot be said to follow, usually, upon his banishment from society. For the most part the poet is characterized by an insatiable yearning for affection, and by the stupidity and hostility of other men he is driven into proud loneliness, even while his heart thirsts for companionship.[Footnote: See John Clare, _The Stranger, The Peasant Poet, I Am_; James Gates Percival, _The Bard_; Joseph Rodman Drake, _Brorix_ (1847); Thomas Buchanan Reade, _My Heritage_; Whittier, _The Tent on the Beach_; Mrs. Frances Gage, _The Song of the Dreamer_ (1867); R. H. Stoddard, _Utopia_; Abram J. Ryan, _Poets_; Richard H. Dana, _The Moss Supplicateth for the Poet_; Frances Anne Kemble, _The Fellowship of Genius_ (1889); F. S. Flint, _Loneliness_(1909); Lawrence Hope, _My Paramour was Loneliness_ (1905); Sara Teasdale, _Alone_.] One of the most popular poet-heroes of the last century, asserting that he is in such an unhappy situation, yet declares: For me, I'd rather live With this weak human heart and yearning blood, Lonely as God, than mate with barren souls. More brave, more beautiful than myself must be The man whom I can truly call my friend. [Footnote: Alexander Smith, _A Life Drama_.] So the poet is limited to the companionship of rare souls, who make up to him for the indifference of all the world beside. Occasionally this compensation is found in romantic love, which flames all the brighter, because the affections that most people expend on many human relationships are by the poet turned upon one object. Apropos of the world's indifference to him, Shelley takes comfort in the assurance of such communion, saying to Mary, If men must rise and stamp with fury blind On his pure name who loves them--thou and I, Sweet friend! can look from our tranquillity Like lamps into the world's tempestuous night,-- Two tranquil stars, while clouds are passing by, That burn from year to year with inextinguished light. [Footnote: Introduction to _The Revolt of Islam_.] But though passion is so often the source of his inspiration, the poet's love affairs are seldom allowed to flourish. The only alleviation of his loneliness must be, then, in the friendship of unusually gifted and discerning men, usually of his own calling. Doubtless the ideal of most nineteenth century writers would be such a jolly fraternity of poets as Herrick has made immortal by his _Lines to Ben Jonson_.[Footnote: The tradition of the lonely poet was in existence even at this time, however. See Ben Jonson, _Essay on Donne_.] A good deal of nineteenth century verse shows the author enviously dwelling upon the ideal comradeship of Elizabethan poets.[Footnote: Keats' _Lines on the Mermaid Tavern_, Browning's _At the Mermaid_, Watts-Dunton's _Christmas at the Mermaid_, E. A. Robinson's _Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford_, Josephine Preston Peabody's _Marlowe_, and Alfred Noyes' _Tales of the Mermaid Inn_ all present fondly imagined accounts of the gay intimacy of the master dramatists. Keats, who was so generous in acknowledging his indebtedness to contemporary artists, tells, in his epistles, of the envy he feels for men who created under these ideal conditions of comradeship.] But multiple friendships did not flourish among poets of the last century,--at least they were overhung by no glamor of romance that lured the poet to immortalize them in verse. The closest approximation to such a thing is in the redundant complimentary verse, with which the New England poets showered each other to such an extent as to arouse Lowell's protest. [Footnote: See _A Fable for Critics_.] Even they, however, did not represent themselves as living in Bohemian intimacy. Possibly the temperamental jealousy that the philistine world ascribes to the artist, causing him to feel that he is the one elect soul sent to a benighted age, while his brother-artists are akin to the money-changers in the temple, hinders him from unreserved enjoyment even of his fellows' society. Tennyson's and Swinburne's outbreaks against contemporary writers appear to be based on some such assumption. [Footnote: See Tennyson, _The New Timon and the Poet_; Bulwer Lytton, _The New Timon_; Swinburne, _Essay on Whitman_. For more recent manifestation of the same attitude see John Drinkwater, _To Alice Meynell_ (1911); Shaemas O'Sheel, _The Poets with the Sounding Gong_ (1912); Robert Graves, _The Voice of Beauty Drowned_ (1920).] Consequently the poet is likely to celebrate one or two deep friendships in an otherwise lonely life. A few instances of such friendships are so notable, that the reader is likely to overlook their rarity. Such were the friendships of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and of Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, also that recorded in Landor's shaken lines: Friends! hear the words my wandering thoughts would say, And cast them into shape some other day; Southey, my friend of forty years, is gone, And shattered with the fall, I stand alone. The intimacy of Shelley and Byron, recorded in _Julian and Maddalo_, was of a less ardent sort. Indeed Byron said of it, "As to friendship, it is a propensity in which my genius is very limited.... I did not even feel it for Shelley, however much I admired him." [Footnote: Letter to Mrs. (Shelley?) undated.] Arnold's _Thyrsis_, Tennyson's _In Memoriam_, and more recently, George Edward Woodberry's _North Shore Watch_, indicate that even when the poet has been able to find a human soul which understood him, the friendship has been cut short by death. In fact, the premature close of such friendships has usually been the occasion for their celebration in verse, from classic times onward. Such friendships, like happy love-affairs, are too infrequent and transitory to dissipate the poet's conviction that he is the loneliest of men. "Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart," might have been written by almost any nineteenth century poet about any other. Shelley, in particular, in spite of his not infrequent attachments, is almost obsessed by melancholy reflection upon his loneliness. In _To a Skylark_, he pictures the poet "hidden in the light of thought." Employing the opposite figure in the _Defense of Poetry_, he says, "The poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer his own solitude." Of the poet in _Alastor_ we are told, He lived, he died, he sung, in solitude. Shelley's sense of his personal loneliness is recorded in _Stanzas Written in Dejection_, and also in _Adonais_. In the latter poem he says of himself, He came the last, neglected and apart, and describes himself as companionless As the last cloud of an expiring storm, Whose thunder is its knell. Victorian poets were not less depressed by reflection upon the poet's lonely life. Arnold strikes the note again and again, most poignantly in _The Buried Life_, of the poet's sensitive apprehension that all human intercourse is mockery, and that the gifted soul really dwells in isolation. _Sordello_ is a monumental record of a genius without friends. Francis Thompson, with surface lightness, tells us, in _A Renegade Poet on the Poet:_ He alone of men, though he travel to the pit, picks up no company by the way; but has a contrivance to avoid scripture, and find a narrow road to damnation. Indeed, if the majority of men go to the nether abodes, 'tis the most hopeful argument I know of his salvation, for 'tis inconceivable that he should ever do as other men. One might imagine that in the end the poet's poignant sense of his isolation might allay his excessive conceit. A yearning for something beyond himself might lead him to infer a lack in his own nature. Seldom, however, is this the result of the poet's loneliness. Francis Thompson, indeed, does feel himself humbled by his spiritual solitude, and characterizes himself, I who can scarcely speak my fellows' speech, Love their love or mine own love to them teach, A bastard barred from their inheritance, * * * * * In antre of this lowly body set, Girt with a thirsty solitude of soul. [Footnote: _Sister Songs_.] But the typical poet yearns not downward, but upward, and above him he finds nothing. Therefore reflection upon his loneliness continually draws his attention to the fact that his isolation is an inevitable consequence of his genius,--that he Spares but the cloudy border of his base To the foiled searching of mortality. [Footnote: Matthew Arnold, Sonnet, _Shakespeare_.] The poet usually looks for alleviation of his loneliness after death, when he is gathered to the company of his peers, but to the supreme poet he feels that even this satisfaction is denied. The highest genius must exist absolutely in and for itself, the poet-egoist is led to conclude, for it will "remain at heart unread eternally." [Footnote: Thomas Hardy, _To Shakespeare_.] Such is the self-perpetuating principle which appears to insure perennial growth of the poet's egoism. The mystery of inspiration breeds introspection; introspection breeds egoism; egoism breeds pride; pride breeds contempt for other men; contempt for other men breeds hostility and persecution; persecution breeds proud isolation. Finally, isolation breeds deeper introspection, and the poet is ready to start on a second revolution of the egocentric circle. CHAPTER II THE MORTAL COIL If I might dwell where Israfel Hath dwelt, and he where I, He might not sing so wildly well A mortal melody, sighs Poe, and the envious note vibrates in much of modern song. There is an inconsistency in the poet's attitude,--the same inconsistency that lurks in the most poetical of philosophies. Like Plato, the poet sees this world as the veritable body of his love, Beauty,--and yet it is to him a muddy vesture of decay, and he is ever panting for escape from it as from a prison house. One might think that the poet has less cause for rebellion against the flesh than have other men, inasmuch as the bonds that enthrall feebler spirits seem to have no power upon him. A blind Homer, a mad Tasso, a derelict Villon, an invalid Pope, most wonderful of all--a woman Sappho, suggest that the differences in earthly tabernacles upon which most of us lay stress are negligible to the poet, whose burning genius can consume all fetters of heredity, sex, health, environment and material endowment. Yet in his soberest moments the poet is wont to confess that there are varying degrees in the handicap which genius suffers in the mid-earth life; in fact ever since the romantic movement roused in him an intense curiosity as to his own nature, he has reflected a good deal on the question of what earthly conditions will least cabin and confine his spirit. Apparently the problem of heredity is too involved to stir him to attempted solution. If to make a gentleman one must begin with his grandfather, surely to make a poet one must begin with the race, and in poems even of such bulk as the _Prelude_ one does not find a complete analysis of the singer's forbears. In only one case do we delve far into a poet's heredity. He who will, may perchance hear Sordello's story told, even from his remote ancestry, but to the untutored reader the only clear point regarding heredity is the fusion in Sordello of the restless energy and acumen of his father, Taurello, with the refinement and sensibility of his mother, Retrude. This is a promising combination, but would it necessarily flower in genius? One doubts it. In _Aurora Leigh_ one might speculate similarly about the spiritual aestheticism of Aurora's Italian mother balanced by the intellectual repose of her English father. Doubtless the Brownings were not working blindly in giving their poets this heredity, yet in both characters we must assume, if we are to be scientific, that there is a happy combination of qualities derived from more remote ancestors. The immemorial tradition which Swinburne followed in giving his mythical poet the sun as father and the sea as mother is more illuminating, [Footnote: See _Thalassius_.] since it typifies the union in the poet's nature of the earthly and the heavenly. Whenever heredity is lightly touched upon in poetry it is generally indicated that in the poet's nature there are combined, for the first time, these two powerful strains which, in mysterious fusion, constitute the poetic nature. In the marriage of his father and mother, delight in the senses, absorption in the turbulence of human passions, is likely to meet complete otherworldliness and unusual spiritual sensitiveness. There is a tradition that all great men have resembled their mothers; this may in part account for the fact that the poet often writes of her. Yet in poetical pictures of the mother the reader seldom finds anything patently explaining genius in her child. The glimpse we have of Ben Jonson's mother is an exception. A twentieth century poet conceives of the woman who was "no churl" as A tall, gaunt woman, with great burning eyes, And white hair blown back softly from a face Etherially fierce, as might have looked Cassandra in old age. [Footnote: Alfred Noyes, _Tales of the Mermaid Inn_.] In the usual description, however, there is none of this dynamic force. Womanliness, above all, and sympathy, poets ascribe to their mothers. [Footnote: See Beattie, _The Minstrel_; Wordsworth, _The Prelude_; Cowper, _Lines on his Mother's Picture_; Swinburne, _Ode to his Mother_; J. G. Holland, _Kathrina_; William Vaughan Moody, _The Daguerreotype_; Anna Hempstead Branch, _Her Words_.] A little poem by Sara Teasdale, _The Mother of a Poet_, gives a poetical explanation of this type of woman, in whom all the turbulence of the poet's spiritual inheritance is hushed before it is transmitted to him. Such a mother as Byron's, while she appeals to certain novelists as a means of intensifying the poet's adversities, [Footnote: See H. E. Rives, _The Castaway_ (1904); J. D. Bacon, _A Family Affair_ (1900).] is not found in verse. One might almost conclude that poets consider their maternal heritage indispensable. Very seldom is there such a departure from tradition as making the father bequeather of the poet's sensitiveness. [Footnote: _A Ballad in Blank Verse_, by John Davidson, is a rare exception.] The inheritance of a specific literary gift is almost never insisted upon by poets, [Footnote: See, however, Anna Hempstead Branch, _Her Words_.] though some of the verse addressed to the child, Hartley Coleridge, possibly implies a belief in such heritage. The son of Robert and Mrs. Browning seems, strangely enough, considering his chance of a double inheritance of literary ability, not to have been the subject of versified prophecies of this sort. One expression by a poet of belief in heredity may, however, detain us. At the beginning of Viola Meynell's career, it is interesting to notice that as a child she was the subject of speculation as to her inheritance of her mother's genius. It was Francis Thompson, of course, who, musing on Alice Meynell's poetry, said to the little Viola, If angels have hereditary wings, If not by Salic law is handed down The poet's laurel crown, To thee, born in the purple of the throne, The laurel must belong. [Footnote: _Sister Songs_.] But these lines must not be considered apart from the fanciful poem in which they grow. What have poets to say on the larger question of their social inheritance? This is a subject on which, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, at least, poets should have had ideas, and the varying rank given to their lyrical heroes is not without significance. The renaissance idea, that the nobleman is framed to enjoy, rather than to create, beauty,--that he is the connoisseur rather than the genius,--seems to have persisted in the eighteenth century, and at the beginning of the romantic movement to have combined with the new exaltation of the lower classes to work against the plausible view that the poet is the exquisite flowering of the highest lineage. Of course, it is not to be expected that there should be unanimity of opinion among poets as to the ideal singer's rank. In several instances, confidence in human egotism would enable the reader to make a shrewd guess as to a poet's stand on the question of caste, without the trouble of investigation. Gray, the gentleman, as a matter of course consigns his "rustic Milton" to oblivion. Lord Byron follows the fortunes of "Childe" Harold. Lord Tennyson usually deals with titled artists. [Footnote: See _Lord Burleigh_, Eleanore in _A Becket_, and the Count in _The Falcon_.] Greater significance attaches to the gentle birth of the two prominent fictional poets of the century, Sordello and Aurora Leigh, yet in both poems the plot interest is enough to account for it. In Sordello's case, especially, Taurello's dramatic offer of political leadership to his son suffices to justify Browning's choice of his hero's rank. [Footnote: Other poems celebrating noble poets are _The Troubadour_, Praed; _The King's Tragedy_, Rossetti; _David, Charles di Trocca_, Cale Young Rice.] None of these instances of aristocratic birth are of much importance, and wherever there is a suggestion that the poet's birth represents a tenet of the poem's maker, one finds, naturally, praise of the singer who springs from the masses. The question of the singer's social origin was awake in verse even before Burns. So typical an eighteenth century poet as John Hughes, in lines _On a Print of Tom Burton, a Small Coal Man_, moralizes on the phenomenon that genius may enter into the breast of one quite beyond the social pale. Crabbe [Footnote: See _The Patron_.] and Beattie,[Footnote: See _The Minstrel_.] also, seem not to be departing from the Augustan tradition in treating the fortunes of their peasant bards. But with Burns, of course, the question comes into new prominence. Yet he spreads no propaganda. His statement is merely personal: Gie me ae spark of nature's fire! That's a' the learning I desire. Then, though I drudge through dub and mire At plough or cart, My muse, though homely in attire, May touch the heart. [Footnote: _Epistle to Lapraik_.] It is not till later verse that poets springing from the soil are given sweeping praise, because of the mysterious communion they enjoy with "nature." [Footnote: For verse glorifying the peasant aspect of Burns see Thomas Campbell, _Ode to Burns_; Whittier, _Burns_; Joaquim Miller, _Burns and Byron_; William Bennett, _To the Memory of Burns_; A. B. Street, _Robbie Burns_ (1867); O. W. Holmes, _The Burns Centennial_; Richard Realf, _Burns_; Simon Kerl, _Burns_ (1868); Shelley Halleck, _Burns_.] Obviously the doctrine is reinforced by Wordsworth, though few of his farmer folk are geniuses, and the closest illustration of his belief that the peasant, the child of nature, is the true poet, is found in the character of the old pedlar, in the _Excursion_. The origin of Keats might be assumed to have its share in molding poets' views on caste, but only the most insensitive have dared to touch upon his Cockney birth. In the realm of Best Sellers, however, the hero of May Sinclair's novel, _The Divine Fire_, who is presumably modeled after Keats, is a lower class Londoner, presented with the most unflinching realism that the author can achieve. Consummate indeed is the artistry with which she enables him to keep the sympathy of his readers, even while he commits the unpardonable sin of dropping his h's. [Footnote: Another historical poet whose lowly origin is stressed in poetry is Marlowe, the son of a cobbler. See Alfred Noyes, _At the Sign of the Golden Shoe_; Josephine Preston Peabody, _Marlowe_.] Here and there, the poet from the ranks lifts his head in verse, throughout the last century. [Footnote: For poet-heroes of this sort see John Clare, _The Peasant Poet_; Mrs. Browning, _Lady Geraldine's Courtship_; Robert Buchanan, _Poet Andrew_; T. E. Browne, _Tommy Big Eyes_; Whittier, _Eliot_; J. G. Saxe, _Murillo and his Slave_.] And at present, with the penetration of the "realistic" movement into verse, one notes a slight revival of interest in the type, probably because the lower classes are popularly conceived to have more first hand acquaintance with sordidness than those hedged about by family tradition. [Footnote: See John Davidson, _A Ballad in Blank Verse_; Vachel Lindsay, _The North Star Whispers to the Blacksmith's Son_; John Masefield, _Dauber_; Francis Carlin, _MacSweeney the Rhymer_ (1918).] Still, for the most part, the present attitude of poets toward the question seems to be one of indifference, since they feel that other factors are more important than caste in determining the singer's genius. Most writers of today would probably agree with the sentiment of the lines on Browning, What if men have found Poor footmen or rich merchants on the roll Of his forbears? Did they beget his soul? [Footnote: Henry van Dyke, _Sonnet_.] If poets have given us no adequate body of data by which we may predict the birth of a genius, they have, on the other hand, given us most minute descriptions whereby we may recognize the husk containing the poetic gift. The skeptic may ask, What has the poet to do with his body? since singers tell us so repeatedly that their souls are aliens upon earth, Clothed in flesh to suffer: maimed of wings to soar. [Footnote: _The Centenary of Shelley_.] as Swinburne phrases it. Yet, mysteriously, the artist's soul is said to frame a tenement for its brief imprisonment that approximately expresses it, so that it is only in the most beautiful bodies that we are to look for the soul that creates beauty. Though poets of our time have not troubled themselves much with philosophical explanations of the phenomenon, they seem to concur in the Platonic reasoning of their father Spenser, who argues, So every spirit, as it is most pure, And hath in it the more of heavenly light, So it the fairer body doth procure To habit in, and it more fairly dight With cheerful grace, and amiable sight; For of the soul the body form doth take, For soul is form, and doth the body make. [Footnote: _Hymn in Honour of Beauty_.] What an absurd test! one is likely to exclaim, thinking of a swarthy Sappho, a fat Chaucer, a bald Shakespeare, a runt Pope, a club-footed Byron, and so on, almost _ad infinitum_. Would not a survey of notable geniuses rather indicate that the poet's dreams arise because he is like the sensitive plant of Shelley's allegory, which Desires what it hath not, the beautiful?[Footnote: _The Sensitive Plant_.] Spenser himself foresaw our objections and felt obliged to modify his pronouncement, admitting-- Yet oft it falls that many a gentle mind Dwells in deformed tabernacle drownd, Either by chance, against the course of kind, Or through unaptness of the substance found, Which it assumed of some stubborn ground That will not yield unto her form's direction, But is preformed with some foul imperfection. But the modern poet is not likely to yield his point so easily as does Spenser. Rather he will cast aside historical records as spurious, and insist that all genuine poets have been beautiful. Of the many poems on Sappho written in the last century, not one accepts the tradition that she was ill-favored, but restores a flower-like portrait of her from Alcæus' line, Violet-weaving, pure, sweet-smiling Sappho. As for Shakespeare, here follows a very characteristic idealization of his extant portrait: A pale, plain-favored face, the smile where-of Is beautiful; the eyes gray, changeful, bright, Low-lidded now, and luminous as love, Anon soul-searching, ominous as night, Seer-like, inscrutable, revealing deeps Where-in a mighty spirit wakes or sleeps. [Footnote: C. L. Hildreth, _At the Mermaid_ (1889).] The most unflattering portrait is no bar to poets' confidence in their brother's beauty, yet they are happiest when fashioning a frame for geniuses of whom we have no authentic description. "The love-dream of his unrecorded face," [Footnote: Rossetti, _Sonnet on Chatterton_.] has led to many an idealized portrait of such a long-dead singer. Marlowe has been the favorite figure of this sort with which the fancies of our poets have played. From the glory and power of his dramas their imaginations inevitably turn to The gloriole of his flame-coloured hair, The lean, athletic body, deftly planned To carry that swift soul of fire and air; The long, thin flanks, the broad breast, and the grand Heroic shoulders! [Footnote: Alfred Noyes, _At the Sign of the Golden Shoe_.] It is no wonder that in the last century there has grown up so firm a belief in the poet's beauty, one reflects, remembering the seraphic face of Shelley, the Greek sensuousness of Keats' profile, the romantic fire of Byron's expression. [Footnote: Browning in his youth must have encouraged the tradition. See Macready's Diary, in which he describes Browning as looking "more like a youthful poet than any man I ever saw."] Yet it is a belief that must have been sorely tried since the invention of the camera has brought the verse-writer's countenance, in all its literalness, before the general public. Was it only an accident that the popularity of current poetry died just as cameras came into existence? How many a potential admirer has been lost by a glance at the frontispiece in a book of verse! In recent years, faith in soul-made beauty seems again to have shown itself justified. Likenesses of Rupert Brooke, with his "angel air," [Footnote: See W. W. Gibson, _Rupert Brooke_.] of Alan Seeger, and of Joyce Kilmer in his undergraduate days, are perhaps as beautiful as any the romantic period could afford. Still the young enthusiast of the present day should be warned not to be led astray by wolves in sheep's clothing, for the spurious claimant of the laurel is learning to employ all the devices of the art photographer to obscure and transform his unaesthetic visage. We have implied that insistence upon the artist's beauty arose with the romantic movement, but a statement to that effect would have to be made with reservations. The eighteenth century was by no means without such a conception, as the satires of that period testify, being full of allusions to poetasters' physical defects, with the obvious implication that they are indicative of spiritual deformity, and of literary sterility. Then, from within the romantic movement itself, a critic might exhume verse indicating that faith in the beautiful singer was by no means universal;--that, on the other hand, the interestingly ugly bard enjoyed considerable vogue. He would find, for example, Moore's _Lines on a Squinting Poetess_, and Praed's _The Talented Man_. In the latter verses the speaker says of her literary fancy, He's hideous, I own it; but fame, Love, Is all that these eyes can adore. He's lame,--but Lord Byron was lame, Love, And dumpy, but so is Tom Moore. Still, rightly interpreted, such verse on poetasters is quite in line with the poet's conviction that beauty and genius are inseparable. So, likewise, is the more recent verse of Edgar Lee Masters, giving us the brutal self-portrait of Minerva Jones, the poetess of Spoon River, Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street For my heavy body, cock eye, and rolling walk, [Footnote: _Spoon River Anthology_.] for she is only a would-be poet, and the cry, "I yearned so for beauty!" of her spirit, baffled by its embodiment, is almost insupportable. Walt Whitman alludes to his face as "the heart's geography map," and assures us, Here the idea, all in this mystic handful wrapped, [Footnote: _Out from Behind This Mask_.] but one needs specific instructions for interpretation of the poetic topography to which Whitman alludes. What are the poet's distinguishing features? Meditating on the subject, one finds his irreverent thoughts inevitably wandering to hair, but in verse taken up with hirsute descriptions, there is a false note. It makes itself felt in Mrs. Browning's picture of Keats, The real Adonis, with the hymeneal Fresh vernal buds half sunk between His youthful curls. [Footnote: _A Vision of Poets_.] It is obnoxious in Alexander Smith's portrait of his hero, A lovely youth, With dainty cheeks, and ringlets like a girl's. [Footnote: _A Life Drama_.] And in poorer verse it is unquotable. [Footnote: See Henry Timrod, _A Vision of Poesy_ (1898); Frances Fuller, _To Edith May_ (1851); Metta Fuller, _Lines to a Poetess_ (1851).] Someone has pointed out that decadent poetry is always distinguished by over-insistence upon the heroine's hair, and surely sentimental verse on poets is marked by the same defect. Hair is doubtless essential to poetic beauty, but the poet's strength, unlike Samson's, emphatically does not reside in it. "Broad Homeric brows," [Footnote: See Wordsworth, _On the Death of James Hogg_; Browning, _Sordello_, _By the Fireside_; Mrs. Browning, _Aurora Leigh_; Principal Shairp, _Balliol Scholars_; Alfred Noyes, _Tales of the Mermeid Inn_.] poets invariably possess, but the less phrenological aspect of their beauty is more stressed. The differentiating mark of the singer's face is a certain luminous quality, as of the soul shining through. Lamb noticed this peculiarity of Coleridge, declaring, "His face when he repeats his verses hath its ancient glory; an archangel a little damaged." [Footnote: E. V. Lucas, _The Life of Charles Lamb_, Vol. I., p. 500.] Francis Thompson was especially struck by this phenomenon. In lines _To a Poet Breaking Silence_, he asserts, Yes, in this silent interspace God sets his poems in thy face, and again, in _Her Portrait_, he muses, How should I gage what beauty is her dole, Who cannot see her countenance for her soul, As birds see not the casement for the sky. It is through the eyes, of course, that the soul seems to shine most radiantly. Through them, Rupert Brooke's friends recognized his poetical nature,--through his Dream dazzled gaze Aflame and burning like a god in song. [Footnote: W. W. Gibson, _To E. M., In Memory of Rupert Brooke_.] Generally the poet is most struck by the abstracted expression that he surprises in his eyes. Into it, in the case of later poets, there probably enters unconscious imitation of Keats's gaze, that "inward look, perfectly divine, like a Delphian priestess who saw visions." [Footnote: The words are Benjamin Haydn's. See Sidney Colvin, _John Keats_, p. 79.] In many descriptions, as of "the rapt one--the heaven-eyed" [Footnote: Wordsworth, _On the Death of James Hogg_] Coleridge, or of Edmund Spenser, With haunted eyes, like starlit forest pools [Footnote: Alfred Noyes, _Tales of the Mermaid Inn_.] one feels the aesthetic possibilities of an abstracted expression. But Mrs. Browning fails to achieve a happy effect. When she informs us of a fictitious poet that His steadfast eye burnt inwardly As burning out his soul, [Footnote: '_The Poet's Vow_.] we feel uneasily that someone should rouse him from his revery before serious damage is done. The idealistic poet weans his eyes from their pragmatic character in varying degree. Wordsworth, in poetic mood, seems to have kept them half closed.[Footnote: See _A Poet's Epitaph_, and _Sonnet: Most Sweet it is with Unuplifted Eyes_.] Mrs. Browning notes his Humble-lidded eyes, as one inclined Before the sovran-thought of his own mind. [Footnote: _On a Portrait of Wordsworth_.] Clough, also, impressed his poetic brothers by "his bewildered look, and his half-closed eyes." [Footnote: The quotation is by Longfellow. See J. I. Osborne, _Arthur Hugh Clough_.] But the poet sometimes goes farther, making it his ideal to See, no longer blinded with his eyes, [Footnote: See Rupert Brooke, _Not With Vain Tears_.] and may thus conceive of the master-poet as necessarily blind. Milton's noble lines on blindness in _Samson Agonistes_ have had much to do, undoubtedly, with the conceptions of later poets. Though blindness is seldom extended to other than actual poets, within the confines of verse having such a poet as subject it is referred to, often, as a partial explanation of genius. Thus Gray says of Milton, The living throne, the sapphire blaze Where angels tremble while they gaze He saw, but blasted with excess of light, Closed his eyes in endless night, [Footnote: _Progress of Poesy_.] and most other poems on Milton follow this fancy.[Footnote: See John Hughes, _To the Memory of Milton_; William Lisle Bowles, _Milton in Age_; Bulwer Lytton, _Milton_; W. H. Burleigh, _The Lesson_; R. C. Robbins, _Milton_.] There is a good deal of verse on P. B. Marston, also, concurring with Rossetti's assertion that we may By the darkness of thine eyes discern How piercing was the light within thy soul. [Footnote: See Rossetti, _P. B. Marston_; Swinburne, _Transfiguration, Marston, Light_; Watts-Dunton, _A Grave by the Sea_.] Then, pre-eminently, verse on Homer is characterized by such an assertion as that of Keats, There is a triple sight in blindness keen. [Footnote: See Keats, _Sonnet on Homer_, Landor, _Homer, Laertes, Agatha_; Joyce Kilmer, _The Proud Poet, Vision_.] Though the conception is not found extensively in other types of verse, one finds an admirer apostrophizing Wordsworth, Thou that, when first my quickened ear Thy deeper harmonies might hear, I imaged to myself as old and blind, For so were Milton and Maeonides, [Footnote: Wm. W. Lord, _Wordsworth_ (1845).] and at least one American writer, Richard Gilder, ascribes blindness to his imaginary artists.[Footnote: See _The Blind Poet_, and _Lost_. See also Francis Carlin _Blind O'Cahan_ (1918.)] But the old, inescapable contradiction in aesthetic philosophy crops up here. The poet is concerned only with ideal beauty, yet the way to it, for him, must be through sensuous beauty. So, as opposed to the picture of the singer blind to his surroundings, we have the opposite picture--that of a singer with every sense visibly alert. At the very beginning of a narrative and descriptive poem, the reader can generally distinguish between the idealistic and the sensuous singer. The more spiritually minded poet is usually characterized as blond. The natural tendency to couple a pure complexion and immaculate thoughts is surely aided, here, by portraits of Shelley, and of Milton in his youth. The brunette poet, on the other hand, is perforce a member of the fleshly school. The two types are clearly differentiated in Bulwer Lytton's _Dispute of the Poets_. The spiritual one Lifted the azure light of earnest eyes, but his brother, The one with brighter hues and darker curls Clustering and purple as the fruit of the vine, Seemed like that Summer-Idol of rich life Whom sensuous Greece, inebriate with delight From orient myth and symbol-worship wrought. The decadents favor swarthy poets, and, in describing their features, seize upon the most expressive symbols of sensuality. Thus the hero of John Davidson's _Ballad in Blank Verse on the Making of a Poet_ is A youth whose sultry eyes Bold brow and wanton mouth were not all lust. But even the idealistic poet, if he be not one-sided, must have sensuous features, as Browning conceives him. We are told of Sordello, Yourselves shall trace (The delicate nostril swerving wide and fine, A sharp and restless lip, so well combine With that calm brow) a soul fit to receive Delight at every sense; you can believe Sordello foremost in the regal class Nature has broadly severed from her mass Of men, and framed for pleasure... * * * * * You recognize at once the finer dress Of flesh that amply lets in loveliness At eye and ear. Perhaps it is with the idea that the flesh may be shuffled off the more easily that poets are given "barely enough body to imprison the soul," as Mrs. Browning's biographer says of her. [Footnote: Mrs. Anna B. Jameson. George Stillman Milliard says of Mrs. Browning, "I have never seen a human frame which seemed so nearly a transparent veil for a celestial and immortal spirit." Shelley, Keats, Clough and Swinburne undoubtedly helped to strengthen the tradition.] The imaginary bard is so inevitably slender that allusion to "the poet's frame" needs no further description. Yet, once more, the poet may seem to be deliberately blinding himself to the facts. What of the father of English song, who, in the _Canterbury Tales_, is described by the burly host, He in the waast is shape as wel as I; This were a popet in an arm tenbrace For any woman, smal and fair of face? [Footnote: _Prologue to Sir Thopas_.] Even here, however, one can trace the modern aesthetic aversion to fat. Chaucer undoubtedly took sly pleasure in stressing his difference from the current conception of the poet, which was typified so well by the handsome young squire, who Coude songes make, and wel endyte. [Footnote: _Prologue_.] Such, at least, is the interpretation of Percy Mackaye, who in his play, _The Canterbury Pilgrims_, derives the heartiest enjoyment from Chaucer's woe lest his avoirdupois may affect Madame Eglantine unfavorably. The modern English poet who is oppressed by too, too solid flesh is inclined to follow Chaucer's precedent and take it philosophically. James Thomson allowed the stanza about himself, interpolated by his friends into the _Castle of Indolence_, to remain, though it begins with the line, A bard here dwelt, more fat than bard beseems. And in these days, the sentimental reader is shocked by Joyce Kilmer's callous assertion, "I am fat and gross.... In my youth I was slightly decorative. But now I drink beer instead of writing about absinthe." [Footnote: Letter to Father Daly, November, 1914.] Possibly it would not be unreasonable to take difference in weight as another distinction between idealistic and sensuous poets. Of one recent realistic poet it is recorded, "How a poet could _not_ be a glorious eater, he said he could not see, for the poet was happier than other men, by reason of his acuter senses." [Footnote: Richard Le Gallienne, _Joyce Kilmer_.] As a rule, however, decadent and spiritual poets alike shrink from the thought of grossness, in spite of the fact that Joyce Kilmer was able to win his wager, "I will write a poem about a delicatessen shop. It will be a high-brow poem. It will be liked." [Footnote: Robert Cortez Holliday, _Memoir of Joyce Kilmer_, p. 62.] Of course Keats accustomed the public to the idea that there are aesthetic distinctions in the sense of taste, but throughout the last century the idea of a poet enjoying solid food was an anomaly. Whitman's proclamation of himself, "Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating and drinking and breeding" [Footnote: _Song of Myself_.] automatically shut him off, in the minds of his contemporaries, from consideration as a poet. It is a nice question just how far a poet may go in ignoring the demands of the flesh. Shelley's friends record that his indifference reached the stage of forgetting, for days at a time, that he was in a body at all. Even more extreme was the attitude of Poe, as it is presented at length in Olive Dargan's drama, _The Poet_. So cordial is his detestation of food and bed that he not only eschews them himself, but withholds them from his wife, driving the poor woman to a lingering death from tuberculosis, while he himself succumbs to delirium tremens. In fact, excessive abstemiousness, fostering digestive disorders, has been alleged to be the secret of the copious melancholy verse in the last century. It is not the ill-nourished poet, however, but enemies of the melancholy type of verse, who offer this explanation. Thus Walt Whitman does not hesitate to write poetry on the effect of his digestive disorders upon his gift, [Footnote: See _As I Sit Writing Here_.] and George Meredith lays the weakness of _Manfred_ to the fact that it was Projected from the bilious Childe. [Footnote: George Meredith, _Manfred_.] But to all conscious of possessing poetical temperament in company with emaciation, the explanation has seemed intolerably sordid. To be sure, the unhealthy poet is not ubiquitous. Wordsworth's _Prelude_ describes a life of exuberant physical energy. Walt Whitman's position we have quoted, and after him came a number of American writers, assigning a football physique to their heroes. J. G. Holland's poet was the superior of his comrades when brawn as well as brain, contended. [Footnote: _Kathrina_.] William Henry Burleigh, also, described his favorite poet as A man who measured six feet four: Broad were his shoulders, ample was his chest, Compact his frame, his muscles of the best. [Footnote: _A Portrait_.] With the recent revival of interest in Whitman, the brawny bard has again come into favor in certain quarters. Joyce Kilmer, as has been noted, was his strongest advocate, inveighing against weakly verse-writers, A heavy handed blow, I think, Would make your veins drip scented ink. [Footnote: _To Certain Poets_.] But the poet hero of the Harold Bell Wright type is receiving his share of ridicule, as well as praise, at present. A farce, _Fame and the Poet_, by Lord Dunsany, advertises the adulation by feminine readers resulting from a poet's pose as a "man's man." And Ezra Pound, who began his career as an exemplar of virility,[Footnote: See _The Revolt against the Crepuscular Spirit in Modern Poetry_.] finds himself unable to keep up the pose, and so resorts to the complaint, We are compared to that sort of person, Who wanders about announcing his sex As if he had just discovered it. [Footnote: _The Condolence_.] The most sensible argument offered by the advocate of better health in poets is made by the chronic invalid, Mrs. Browning. She causes Aurora Leigh's cousin Romney to argue, Reflect; if art be in truth the higher life, You need the lower life to stand upon In order to reach up unto that higher; And none can stand a tip-toe in that place He cannot stand in with two stable feet. [Footnote: _Aurora Leigh_. See also the letter to Robert Browning, May 6, 1845.] Mrs. Browning's theory is not out of key with a professedly scientific account of genius, not unpopular nowadays, which represents art as the result of excess vitality. [Footnote: See R. C. Robbins, _Michael Angelo_ (1904).] Yet, on the whole, the frail poet still holds his own; how securely is illustrated by the familiarity of the idea as applied to other artists, outside the domain of poetry. It is noteworthy that in a recent book of essays by the painter, Birge Harrison, one runs across the contention: In fact, as a noted painter once said to me: These semi-invalids neither need nor deserve our commiseration, for in reality the beggars have the advantage of us. _Their_ nerves are always sensitive and keyed to pitch, while we husky chaps have to flog ours up to the point. We must dig painfully through the outer layers of flesh before we can get at the spirit, while the invalids are all spirit. [Footnote: From _Landscape Painters_, p. 184.] That such a belief had no lack of support from facts in the last century, is apparent merely from naming over the chief poets. Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Mrs. Browning, Rossetti, all publish their ill-health through their verse. Even Browning, in whose verse, if anywhere, one would expect to find the virile poet, shows Sordello turned to poetry by the fact of his physical weakness.[Footnote: So nearly ubiquitous has ill-health been among modern poets, that Max Nordau, in his widely read indictment of art, _Degeneration_, was able to make out a plausible case for his theory that genius is a disease which is always accompanied by physical stigmata.] Obviously, if certain invalids possess a short-cut to their souls, as Birge Harrison suggests, the nature of their complaint must be significant. A jumping toothache would hardly be an advantage to a sufferer in turning his thoughts to poesy. Since verse writers recoil from the suggestion that dyspepsia is the name of their complaint, let us ask them to explain its real character to us. To take one of our earliest examples, what is the malady of William Lisles Bowles' poet, of whom we learn, Too long had sickness left her pining trace With slow still touch on each decaying grace; Untimely sorrow marked his thoughtful mien; Despair upon his languid smile was seen. [Footnote: _Monody on Henry Headley_.] We can never know. But with Shelley, it becomes evident that tuberculosis is the typical poet's complaint. Shelley was convinced that he himself was destined to die of it. The irreverent Hogg records that Shelley was also afraid of death from elephantiasis, [Footnote: T. J. Hogg, _Life of Shelley_, p. 458.] but he keeps that affliction out of his verse. So early as the composition of the _Revolt of Islam,_ Shelley tells us of himself, in the introduction, Death and love are yet contending for their prey, and in _Adonais_ he appears as A power Girt round with weakness. * * * * * A light spear ... Vibrated, as the everbearing heart Shook the weak hand that grasped it. Shelley's imaginary poet, Lionel, gains in poetical sensibility as consumption saps his strength: You might see his colour come and go, And the softest strain of music made Sweet smiles, yet sad, arise and fade Amid the dew of his tender eyes; And the breath with intermitting flow Made his pale lips quiver and part. [Footnote: _Rosalind and Helen_.] The deaths from tuberculosis of Kirke White [Footnote: See Kirke White, _Sonnet to Consumption_.] and of Keats, added to Shelley's verse, so affected the imagination of succeeding poets that for a time the cough became almost ubiquitous in verse. In major poetry it appears for the last time in Tennyson's _The Brook_, where the young poet hastens to Italy, "too late," but in American verse it continued to rack the frame of geniuses till the germ theory robbed it of romance and the anti-tuberculosis campaign drove it out of existence. Without the aid of physical causes, the exquisite sensitiveness of the poet's spirit is sometimes regarded as enough to produce illness. Thus Alexander Smith explains his sickly hero: More tremulous Than the soft star that in the azure East Trembles with pity o'er bright bleeding day Was his frail soul. [Footnote: _A Life Drama_.] Arnold, likewise, in _Thyrsis_, follows the poetic tradition in thus vaguely accounting for Clough's death: Some life of men unblest He knew, which made him droop, and filled his head. He went, his piping took a troubled sound Of storms that rage outside our happy ground. He could not wait their passing; he is dead. In addition, the intense application that genius demands leaves its mark upon the body. Recognition of this fact has doubtless been aided by Dante's portrait, which Wilde has repainted in verse: The calm, white brow, as calm as earliest morn, The eyes that flashed with passionate love and scorn, The lips that sang of Heaven and of Hell, The almond face that Giotto drew so well, The weary face of Dante.[Footnote: _Ravenna._] Rossetti repeats the tradition that the composition of the _Inferno_ so preyed upon Dante that the superstitious believed that he had actually visited Hades and whispered to one another, Behold him, how Hell's reek Has crisped his beard and singed his cheek. [Footnote: _Dante at Verona._] A similar note is in Francis Thompson's description of Coventry Patmore: And lo! that hair is blanched with travel-heats of hell. [Footnote: _A Captain of Song._] In this connection one thinks at once of Shelley's prematurely graying hair, reflected in description of his heroes harried by their genius into ill health. Prince Athanase is A youth who as with toil and travel Had grown quite weak and gray before his time. [Footnote: _Prince Athanase_, a fragment.] In _Alastor_, too, we see the hero wasting away until His limbs were lean; his scattered hair, Sered by the autumn of strange suffering, Sung dirges in the wind: his listless hand Hung like dead bone within his withered skin; Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone As in a furnace burning secretly From his dark eyes alone. The likeness of Sordello to Shelley [Footnote: Browning himself pointed out a similarity between them, in the opening of Book I.] is marked in the ravages of his genius upon his flesh, so that at the climax of the poem he, though still a young man, is gray and haggard and fragile. Though ill-health is a handicap to him, the poet's subjection to the mutability that governs the mundane sphere is less important, some persons would declare, in the matter of beauty and health than in the matter of sex. Can a poetic spirit overcome the calamity of being cast by Fate into the body of a woman? As the battle of feminism dragged its bloody way through all fields of endeavor in the last century, it of course has left its traces in the realm of poetry. But here the casualties appear to be light,--in fact, it is a disappointment to the suffragist to find most of the blows struck by the female aspirant for glory, with but few efforts to parry them on the part of the male contingent. Furthermore, in verse concerned with specific woman poets, men have not failed to give them their due, or more. From Miriam [Footnote: See Barry Cornwall, _Miriam_.] and Sappho, [Footnote: Southey, _Sappho_; Freneau, _Monument of Phaon_; Kingsley, _Sappho_, Swinburne, _On the Cliffs_, _Sapphics_, _Anactoria_; Cale Young Rice, _Sappho's Death Song_; J. G. Percival, Sappho; Percy Mackaye, _Sappho and Phaon_; W. A. Percy, _Sappho in Lenkos_.] to the long list of nineteenth century female poets--Mrs. Browning, [Footnote: Browning, _One Word More_, _Preface to The Ring and the Book_; James Thomson, B. V., _E. B. B._; Sidney Dobell, _On the Death of Mrs. Browning_.] Christina Rossetti, [Footnote: Swinburne, _Ballad of Appeal to Christina Rossetti_, _New Year's Eve_, _Dedication to Christina Rossetti_.] Emily Brontë, [Footnote: Stephen Phillips, _Emily Brontë_.] Alice Meynell, [Footnote: Francis Thompson, _Sister Songs_, _On her Photograph_, _To a Poet Breaking Silence_.] Felicia Hemans, [Footnote: L. E. Maclean, _Felicia Hemans_.] Adelaide Proctor, [Footnote: Edwin Arnold, _Adelaide Anne Proctor_.] Helen Hunt, [Footnote: Richard Watson Gilder, _H_. _H_.] Emma Lazarus [Footnote: _Ibid_., _To E. Lazarus_.]--one finds woman the subject of complimentary verse from their brothers. There is nothing to complain of here, we should say at first, and yet, in the unreserved praise given to their greatest is a note that irritates the feminists. For men have made it plain that Sappho was not like other women; it is the "virility" of her style that appeals to them; they have even gone so far as to hail her "manlike maiden." [Footnote: Swinburne, _On the Cliffs_.] So the feminists have been only embittered by their brothers' praise. As time wears on, writers averse to feminine verse seem to be losing thecourage of their convictions. At the end of the eighteenth century, woman's opponent was not afraid to express himself. Woman writers were sometimes praised, but it was for one quality alone, the chastity of their style. John Hughes [Footnote: See _To the Author of "A Fatal Friendship."_] and Tom Moore [Footnote: See _To Mrs. Henry Tighe_.] both deplored the need of such an element in masculine verse. But Moore could not resist counteracting the effect of his chary praise by a play, _The Blue Stocking_, which burlesques the literary pose in women. He seemed to feel, also, that he had neatly quelled their poetical aspirations when he advertised his aversion to marrying a literary woman. [Footnote: See _The Catalogue_. Another of his poems ridiculing poetesses is _The Squinting Poetess_.] Despite a chivalrous sentimentality, Barry Cornwall took his stand with Moore on the point, exhorting women to choose love rather than a literary career. [Footnote: See _To a Poetess_. More seriously, Landor offered the same discouragement to his young friend with poetical tastes. [Footnote: See _To Write as Your Sweet Mother Does_.] On the whole the prevalent view expressed early in the nineteenth century is the considerate one that while women lack a literary gift, they have, none the less, sweet poetical natures. Bulwer Lytton phrased the old-fashioned distinction between his hero and heroine, In each lay poesy--for woman's heart Nurses the stream, unsought and oft unseen; And if it flow not through the tide of art, Nor win the glittering daylight--you may ween It slumbers, but not ceases, and if checked The egress of rich words, it flows in thought, And in its silent mirror doth reflect Whate'er affection to its banks hath brought. [Footnote: Milton.] Yet the poetess has two of the strongest poets of the romantic period on her side. Wordsworth, in his many allusions to his sister Dorothy, appeared to feel her possibilities equal to his own, and in verses on an anthology, he offered praise of a more general nature to verse written by women. [Footnote: See To Lady Mary Lowther.] And beside the sober judgment of Wordsworth, one may place the unbounded enthusiasm of Shelley, who not only praises extravagantly the verse of an individual, Emilia Viviani, [Footnote: See the introduction to Epipsychidion.] but who also offers us an imaginary poetess of supreme powers,--Cythna, in _The Revolt of Islam_. It is disappointing to the agitator to find the question dropping out of sight in later verse. In the Victorian period it comes most plainly to the surface in Browning, and while the exquisite praise of his Lyric love, half angel and half bird, reveals him a believer in at least sporadic female genius, his position on the question of championing the entire sex is at least equivocal. In _The Two Poets of Croisic_ he deals with the eighteenth century in France, where the literary woman came so gloriously into her own. Browning represents a man writing under a feminine pseudonym and winning the admiration of the celebrities of the day--only to have his verse tossed aside as worthless as soon as his sex is revealed. Woman wins by her charm, seems to be the moral. A hopeful sign, however, is the fact that of late years one poet produced his best work under a feminine _nom de plume_, and found it no handicap in obtaining recognition. [Footnote: William Sharp, "Fiona McLeod."] If indifference is the attitude of the male poet, not so of the woman writer. She insists that her work shall redound, not to her own glory, merely, but to that of her entire sex as well. For the most worthy presentation of her case, we must turn to Mrs. Browning, though the radical feminist is not likely to approve of her attitude. "My secret profession of faith," she admitted to Robert Browning, "is--that there is a natural inferiority of mind in women--of the intellect--not by any means of the moral nature--and that the history of Art and of genius testifies to this fact openly." [Footnote: Letter to Robert Browning, July 4, 1845.] Still, despite this private surrender to the enemy, Mrs. Browning defends her sex well. In a short narrative poem, _Mother and Poet_, Mrs. Browning claims for her heroine the sterner virtues that have been denied her by the average critic, who assigns woman to sentimental verse as her proper sphere. Of course her most serious consideration of the problem is to be found in _Aurora Leigh_. She feels that making her imaginary poet a woman is a departure from tradition, and she strives to justify it. Much of the debasing adulation and petty criticism heaped upon Aurora must have been taken from Mrs. Browning's own experience. Ignoring insignificant antagonism to her, Aurora is seriously concerned with the charges that the social worker, Romney Leigh, brings against her sex. Romney declares, Women as you are, Mere women, personal and passionate, You give us doting mothers, and perfect wives, Sublime Madonnas and enduring saints! We get no Christ from you,--and verily We shall not get a poet, in my mind. Aurora is obliged to acknowledge to herself that Romney is right in charging women with inability to escape from personal considerations. She confesses, We women are too apt to look to one, Which proves a certain impotence in art. But in the end, and after much struggling, Aurora wins for her poetry even Romney's reluctant admiration. Mrs. Browning's implication seems to be that the intensely "personal and passionate" nature of woman is an advantage to her, if once she can lift herself from its thraldom, because it saves her from the danger of dry generalization which assails verse of more masculine temper. [Footnote: For treatment of the question of the poet's sex in American verse by women, see Emma Lazarus, _Echoes_; Olive Dargan, _Ye Who are to Sing_.] Of only less vital concern to poets than the question of the poet's physical constitution is the problem of his environment. Where will the chains of mortality least hamper his aspiring spirit? In answer, one is haunted by the line, I too was born in Arcadia. Still, this is not the answer that poets would make in all periods. In the eighteenth century, for example, though a stereotyped conception of the shepherd poet ruled,--as witness the verses of Hughes, [Footnote: See _Corydon_.] Collins, [Footnote: See _Selim, or the Shepherd's Moral_.] and Thomson,[Footnote: See _Pastoral on the Death of Daemon_.]--it is obvious that these gentlemen were in no literal sense expressing their views on the poet's habitat. It was hardly necessary for Thomas Hood to parody their efforts in his eclogues giving a broadly realistic turn to shepherds assuming the singing robes. [Footnote: See _Huggins and Duggins_, and _The Forlorn Shepherd's Complaint_.] Wherever a personal element enters, as in John Hughes' _Letter to a Friend in the Country_, and Sidney Dyer's _A Country Walk_, it is apparent that the poet is not indigenous to the soil. He is the city gentleman, come out to enjoy a holiday. With the growth of a romantic conception of nature, the relation of the poet to nature becomes, of course, more intimate. But Cowper and Thomson keep themselves out of their nature poetry to such an extent that it is hard to tell what their ideal position would be, and not till the publication of Beattie's _The Minstrel_ do we find a poem in which the poet is nurtured under the influence of a natural scenery. At the very climax of the romantic period the poet is not always bred in the country. We find Byron revealing himself as one who seeks nature only occasionally, as a mistress in whose novelty resides a good deal of her charm. Shelley, too, portrays a poet reared in civilization, but escaping to nature. [Footnote: See _Epipsychidion_, and _Alastor_.] Still, it is obvious that ever since the time of Burns and Wordsworth, the idea of a poet nurtured from infancy in nature's bosom has been extremely popular. There are degrees of naturalness in nature, however. How far from the hubbub of commercialism should the poet reside? Burns and Wordsworth were content with the farm country, but for poets whose theories were not so intimately joined with experience such an environment was too tame. Bowles would send his visionary boy into the wilderness. [Footnote: See _The Visionary Boy_.] Coleridge and Southey went so far as to lay plans for emigrating, in person, to the banks of the Susquehanna. Shelley felt that savage conditions best foster poetry. [Footnote: See the _Defense of Poetry_: "In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet."] Campbell, in _Gertrude of Wyoming_, made his bard an Indian, and commented on his songs, So finished he the rhyme, howe'er uncouth, That true to Nature's fervid feelings ran (And song is but the eloquence of truth). The early American poet, J. G. Percival, expressed the same theory, declaring of poetry, Its seat is deeper in the savage breast Than in the man of cities. [Footnote: _Poetry_.] To most of us, this conception of the poet is familiar because of acquaintance, from childhood, with Chibiabus, "he the sweetest of all singers," in Longfellow's _Hiawatha_. But the poet of to-day may well pause, before he starts to an Indian reservation. What is the mysterious benefit which the poet derives from nature? Humility and common sense, Burns would probably answer, and that response would not appeal to the majority of poets. A mystical experience of religion, Wordsworth would say, of course. A wealth of imagery, nineteenth century poets would hardly think it worth while to add, for the influence of natural scenery upon poetic metaphors has come to be such a matter of course that one hardly realizes its significance. Perhaps, too, poets should admit oftener than they do the influence of nature's rhythms upon their style. As Madison Cawein says If the wind and the brook and the bird would teach My heart their beautiful parts of speech, And the natural art they say these with, My soul would sing of beauty and myth In a rhyme and a meter none before Have sung in their love, or dreamed in their lore. [Footnote: _Preludes_.] The influence of nature which the romantic poet stressed most, however, was a negative one. In a sense in which Wordsworth probably did not intend it, the romantic poet betrayed himself hastening to nature More like a man Flying from something that he dreads, than one Who sought the thing he loved. What nature is not, seemed often her chief charm to the romanticist. Bowles sent his visionary boy to "romantic solitude." Byron [Footnote: See _Childe Harold_.] and Shelley, [Footnote: See _Epipsychidion_.] too, were as much concerned with escaping from humanity as with meeting nature. Only Wordsworth, in the romantic period, felt that the poet's life ought not to be wholly disjoined from his fellows. [Footnote: See _Tintern Abbey_, _Ode on Intimations of Immortality,_ and _The Prelude_.] Of course the poet's quarrel with his unappreciative public has led him to express a longing for complete solitude sporadically, even down to the present time, but by the middle of the nineteenth century "romantic solitude" as the poet's perennial habitat seems just about to have run its course. Of the major poets, Matthew Arnold alone consistently urges the poet to flee from "the strange disease of modern life." The Scholar Gypsy lives the ideal life of a poet, Matthew Arnold would say, and preserves his poetical temperament because of his escape from civilization: For early didst thou leave the world, with powers Fresh, undiverted to the world without, Firm to their mark, not spent on other things; Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt Which much to have tried, in much been baffled brings. No doubt, solitude magnifies the poet's sense of his own personality. Stephen Phillips says of Emily Brontë's poetic gift, Only barren hills Could wring the woman riches out of thee, [Footnote: _Emily Brontë_.] and there are several poets of whom a similar statement might be made. But the Victorians were aware that only half of a poet's nature was developed thus. Tennyson [Footnote: See _The Palace of Art_.] and Mrs. Browning [Footnote: See _The Poet's Vow_; Letters to Robert Browning, January 1, 1846, and March 20, 1845.] both sounded a warning as to the dangers of complete isolation. And at present, though the eremite poet is still with us, [Footnote: See Lascelles Ambercrombe, _An Escape_; J. E. Flecker, _Dirge_; Madison Cawein, _Comrading_; Yeats, _The Lake Isle of Innisfree_.] he does not have everything his own way. For it has begun to occur to poets that it may not have been merely anuntoward accident that several of their loftiest brethren were reared in London. In the romantic period even London-bred Keats said, as a matter of course, The coy muse, with me she would not live In this dark city, [Footnote: _Epistle to George Felton Mathew_. Wordsworth's sonnet, "Earth has not anything to show more fair," seems to have been unique at this time.] and the American romanticist, Emerson, said of the poet, In cities he was low and mean; The mountain waters washed him clean. [Footnote: _The Poet_.] But Lowell protested against such a statement, avowing of the muse, She can find a nobler theme for song In the most loathsome man that blasts the sight Than in the broad expanse of sea and shore. [Footnote: _L'Envoi_.] A number of the Victorians acknowledged that they lived from choice in London. Christina Rossetti admitted frankly that she preferred London to the country, and defended herself with Bacon's statement, "The souls of the living are the beauty of the world." [Footnote: See E. L. Gary, _The Rossettis_, p. 236.] Mrs. Browning made Aurora outgrow pastoral verse, and not only reside in London, but find her inspiration there. Francis Thompson and William Henley were not ashamed to admit that they were inspired by London. James Thomson, B.V., belongs with them in this regard, for though he depicted the horror of visions conjured up in the city streets in a way unparalleled in English verse, [Footnote: See _The City of Dreadful Night_.] this is not the same thing as the romantic poet's repudiation of the city as an unimaginative environment. Coming to more recent verse, we find Austin Dobson still feeling it an anomaly that his muse should prefer the city to the country. [Footnote: See _On London Stones_.] John Davidson, also, was very self-conscious about his city poets. [Footnote: See _Fleet Street Eclogues_.] But as landscape painters are beginning to see and record the beauty in the most congested city districts, so poets have been making their muse more and more at home there, until our contemporary poets scarcely stop to take their residence in the city otherwise than as a matter of course. Alan Seeger cries out for Paris as the ideal habitat of the singer. [Footnote: See _Paris_.] Even New York and Chicago [Footnote: See Carl Sandburg, _Chicago Poems_; Edgar Lee Masters, _The Loop_; William Griffith, _City Pastorals_; Charles H. Towne, _The City_.] are beginning to serve as backgrounds for the poet figure. A poem called _A Winter Night_ reveals Sara Teasdale as thoroughly at home in Manhattan as the most bucolic shepherd among his flocks. To poets' minds the only unæsthetic habitat nowadays seems to be the country town. Although Edgar Lee Masters writes what he calls poetry inspired by it, the reader of the _Spoon River Anthology_ is still disposed to sympathize with Benjamin Fraser of Spoon River, the artist whose genius was crushed by his ghastly environment. So manifold, in fact, are the attractions of the world to the modern poet, that the vagabond singer has come into special favor lately. Of course he has appeared in English song ever since the time of minstrels, but usually, as in the Old English poem, _The Wanderer_, he has been unhappy in his roving life. Even so modern a poet as Scott was in the habit of portraying his minstrels as old and homesick. [Footnote: See _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_.] But Byron set the fashion among poets of desiring "a world to roam through," [Footnote: _Epistle to Augusta_.] and the poet who is a wanderer from choice has not been unknown since Byron's day. [Footnote: Alfred Dommett and George Borrow are notable.] The poet vagabond of to-day, as he is portrayed in Maurice Hewlitt's autobiographical novels, _Rest Harrow_ and _Open Country_, and William H. Davies' tramp poetry, looks upon his condition in life as ideal. [Footnote: See also Francis Carlin, _Denby the Rhymer_ (1918); Henry Herbert Knibbs, _Songs of the Trail_ (1920)] Alan Seeger, too, concurred in the view, declaring, Down the free roads of human happiness I frolicked, poor of purse but light of heart. [Footnote: _Sonnet to Sidney_.] "Poor of purse!" The words recall us to another of the poet's quarrels with the world in which he is imprisoned. Should the philanthropist, as has often been suggested, endow the poet with an independent income? What a long and glorious tradition would then be broken! From Chaucer's _Complaint to His Empty Purse_, onward, English poetry has borne the record of its maker's poverty. The verse of our period is filled with names from the past that offer our poets a noble precedent for their destitution,--Homer, Cervantes, Camöens, Spenser, Dryden, Butler, Johnson, Otway, Collins, Chatterton, Burns,--all these have their want exposed in nineteeth and twentieth century verse. The wary philanthropist, before launching into relief schemes, may well inquire into the cause of such wretchedness. The obvious answer is, of course, that instead of earning a livelihood the poet has spent his time on a vocation that makes no pecuniary return. Poets like to tell us, also, that their pride, and a fine sense of honour, hold them back from illegitimate means of acquiring wealth. But tradition has it that there are other contributing causes. Edmund C. Stedman's _Bohemia_ reveals the fact that the artist has most impractical ideas about the disposal of his income. He reasons that, since the more guests he has, the smaller the cost per person, then if he can only entertain extensively enough, the cost _per caput_ will be _nil_. Not only so, but the poet is likely to lose sight completely of tomorrow's needs, once he has a little ready cash on hand. A few years ago, Philistines derived a good deal of contemptuous amusement from a poet's statement, Had I two loaves of bread--ay, ay! One would I sell and daffodils buy To feed my soul. [Footnote: _Beauty_, Theodore Harding Rand.] What is to be done with such people? Charity officers are continually asking. What relief measure can poets themselves suggest? When they are speaking of older poets, they are apt to offer no constructive criticism, but only denunciation of society. Their general tone is that of Burns' lines _Written Under the Portrait of Ferguson:_ Curse on ungrateful man that can be pleased And yet can starve the author of the pleasure. Occasionally the imaginary poet who appears in their verse is quite as bitter. Alexander Smith's hero protests against being "dungeoned in poverty." One of Richard Gilder's poets warns the public, You need not weep for and sigh for and saint me After you've starved me and driven me dead. Friends, do you hear? What I want is bread. [Footnote: _The Young Poet_.] Through the thin veneer of the fictitious poet in Joaquin Miller's _Ina_, the author himself appears, raving, A poet! a poet forsooth! Fool! hungry fool! Would you know what it means to be a poet? It is to want a friend, to want a home, A country, money,--aye, to want a meal. [Footnote: See also John Savage, _He Writes for Bread_.] But in autobiographical verse, the tone changes, and the poet refuses to pose as a candidate for charity. Rather, he parades an ostentatious horror of filthy lucre, only paralleled by his distaste for food. Mrs. Browning boasts, The Devil himself scarce trusts his patented Gold-making art to any who makes rhymes, But culls his Faustus from philosophers And not from poets. [Footnote: _Aurora Leigh_.] A poet who can make ends meet is practically convicted of being no true artist. Shakespeare is so solitary an exception to this rule, that his mercenary aspect is a pure absurdity to his comrades, as Edwin Arlington Robinson conceives of them. [Footnote: See _Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford_.] In the eighteenth century indifference to remuneration was not so marked, and in poetic epistles, forgers of the couplet sometimes concerned themselves over the returns, [Footnote: See _Advice to Mr. Pope_, John Hughes; _Economy, The Poet and the Dun_, Shenstone.] but since the romantic movement began, such thought has been held unworthy. [Footnote: See _To a Poet Abandoning His Art_, Barry Cornwall; and _Poets and Poets_, T. E. Browne. On the other hand, see Sebastian Evans, _Religio Poetae_.] In fact, even in these days, we are comparatively safe from a poet's strike. Usually the poet declares that as for himself, he is indifferent to his financial condition. Praed speaks fairly for his brethren, when in _A Ballad Teaching How Poetry Is Best Paid For_, he represents their terms as very easy to meet. Even the melancholy Bowles takes on this subject, for once, a cheerful attitude, telling his visionary boy, Nor fear, if grim before thine eyes Pale worldly want, a spectre lowers; What is a world of vanities To a world as fair as ours? In the same spirit Burns belittles his poverty, saying, in _An Epistle to Davie, Fellow Poet_: To lie in kilns and barns at e'en When bones are crazed, and blind is thin Is doubtless great distress, Yet then content would make us blest. Shelley, too, eschews wealth, declaring, in _Epipsychidion_, Our simple life wants little, and true taste Hires not the pale drudge luxury to waste The scene it would adorn. Later poetry is likely to take an even exuberant attitude toward poverty. [Footnote: See especially verse on the Mermaid group, as _Tales of the Mermaid Inn_, Alfred Noyes. See also Josephine Preston Peabody, _The Golden Shoes_; Richard Le Gallienne, _Faery Gold_; J. G. Saxe, _The Poet to his Garret_; W. W. Gibson, _The Empty Purse_; C. G. Halpine, _To a Wealthy Amateur Critic_; Simon Kerl, _Ode to Debt, A Leaf of Autobiography_; Thomas Gordon Hake, _The Poet's Feast_; Dana Burnet, _In a Garret_; Henry Aylett Sampson, _Stephen Phillips Bankrupt_.] The poet's wealth of song is so great that he leaves coin to those who wish it. Indeed he often has a superstitious fear of wealth, lest it take away his delight in song. In Markham's _The Shoes of Happiness_, only the poet who is too poor to buy shoes possesses the secret of joy. With a touching trust in providence, another poet cries, Starving, still I smile, Laugh at want and wrong, He is fed and clothed To whom God giveth song. [Footnote: Anne Reeve Aldrich, _A Crowned Poet_.] It is doubtful indeed that the poet would have his fate averted. Pope's satirical coupling of want and song, as cause and effect, One cell there is, concealed from vulgar eye, The cave of Poverty and Poetry. Keen, hollow winds howl through the bleak recess, Emblem of music caused by emptiness, [Footnote: _Dunciad_.] is accepted quite literally by later writers. Emerson's theory of compensations applies delightfully here as everywhere, and he meditates on the poet, The Muse gave special charge His learning should be deep and large,-- * * * * * His flesh should feel, his eyes should read Every maxim of dreadful need. * * * * * By want and pain God screeneth him Till his appointed hour. [Footnote: _The Poet_.] It may appear doubtful to us whether the poet has painted ideal conditions for the nurture of genius in his picture of the poet's physical frame, his environment, and his material endowment, inasmuch as the death rate among young bards,--imaginary ones, at least, is appalling. What can account for it? In a large percentage of cases, the poet's natural frailty of constitution is to blame for his early death, of course, but another popular explanation is that the very keenness of the poet's flame causes it to burn out the quicker. Byron finds an early death fitting to him, For I had the share of life that might have filled a century, Before its fourth in time had passed me by. [Footnote: _Epistle to Augusta_.] A fictitious poet looks back upon the same sort of life, and reflects, ... For my thirty years, Dashed with sun and splashed with tears, Wan with revel, red with wine, Other wiser happier men Take the full three score and ten. [Footnote: Alfred Noyes, _Tales of the Mermaid Inn_.] this richness of experience is not inevitably bound up with recklessness, poets feel. The quality is in such a poet even as Emily Brontë, of whom it is written: They live not long of thy pure fire composed; Earth asks but mud of those that will endure. [Footnote: Stephen Phillips. _Emily Brontë_.] Another cause of the poet's early death is certainly his fearlessness. Shelley prophesies that his daring spirit will meet death Far from the trembling throng Whose souls are never to the tempest given. [Footnote: _Adonais_.] With the deaths of Rupert Brooke, Alan Seeger, Joyce Kilmer, and Francis Ledwidge, this element in the poet's disposition has been brought home to the public. Joyce Kilmer wrote back from the trenches, "It is wrong for a poet ... to be listening to elevated trains when there are screaming shells to hear ... and the bright face of danger to dream about." [Footnote: Letter to his wife, March 12, 1918.] And in his article on Joyce Kilmer in _The Bookman_, Richard LeGallienne speaks of young poets "touched with the ringer of a moonlight that has written 'fated' upon their brows," adding, "Probably our feeling is nothing more than our realization that temperaments so vital and intense must inevitably tempt richer and swifter fates than those less wild-winged." It is a question whether poets would expect us to condole with them or to felicitate them upon the short duration of their subjection to mortality. Even when the poet speaks of his early death solely with regard to its effect upon his earthly reputation, his attitude is not wholly clear. Much elegiac verse expresses such stereotyped sorrow for a departed bard that it is not significant. In other cases, one seems to overhear the gasp of relief from a patron whom time can never force to retract his superlative claims for his protégé's promise. More significant is a different note which is sometimes heard. In Alexander Smith's _Life Drama_, it is ostensibly ironic. The critic muses, He died--'twas shrewd: And came with all his youth and unblown hopes On the world's heart, and touched it into tears. In _Sordello_, likewise, it is the unappreciative critic who expresses this sort of pleasure in Eglamor's death. But this feeling has also been expressed with all seriousness, as in Stephen Phillip's _Keats_: I have seen more glory in sunrise Than in the deepening of azure noon, or in Francis Thompson's _The Cloud's Swan Song_: I thought of Keats, that died in perfect time, In predecease of his just-sickening song, Of him that set, wrapped in his radiant rhyme, Sunlike in sea. Life longer had been life too long. Obviously we are in the wake of the Rousseau theory, acclimatized in English poetry by Wordsworth's youth "who daily farther from the east must travel." A long array of poets testifies to the doctrine that a poet's first days are his best. [Footnote: See S. T. Coleridge, _Youth and Age_; J. G. Percival, _Poetry_; William Cullen Bryant, _I Cannot Forget with What Fervid Devotion_; Bayard Taylor, _The Return of the Goddess_; Richard Watson Gilder, _To a Young Poet_, _The Poet's Secret_; George Henry Boker, _To Bayard Taylor_; Martin Farquhar Tupper, _To a Young Poet_; William E. Henley, _Something Is Dead_; Francis Thompson, _From the Night of Foreboding_; Thomas Hardy, _In the Seventies_; Lewis Morris, _On a Young Poet_; Richard Le Gallienne, _A Face in a Book_; Richard Middleton, _The Faithful Poet, The Boy Poet_; Don Marquis, _The Singer_ (1915); John Hall Wheelock, _The Man to his Dead Poet_ (1919); Cecil Roberts, _The Youth of Beauty_ (1915); J. Thorne Smith, jr., _The Lost Singer_ (1920); Edna St. Vincent Millay, _To a Poet that Died Young_.] _Optima dies_ ... _prima fugit_; the note echoes and reechoes through English poetry. Hear it in Arnold's _Progress of Poetry_: Youth rambles on life's arid mount, And strikes the rock and finds the vein, And brings the water from the fount. The fount which shall not flow again. The man mature with labor chops For the bright stream a channel grand, And sees not that the sacred drops Ran off and vanished out of hand. And then the old man totters nigh And feebly rakes among the stones; The mount is mute, the channel dry, And down he lays his weary bones. But the strangle hold of complimentary verse upon English poetry, if nothing else, would prevent this view being unanimously expressed there. For in the Victorian period, poets who began their literary careers by prophesying their early decease lived on and on. They themselves might bewail the loss of their gift in old age--in fact, it was usual for them to do so [Footnote: See Scott, _Farewell to the Muse_; Landor, _Dull is my Verse_; J. G. Percival, _Invocation_; Matthew Arnold, _Growing Old_; Longfellow, _My Books_; O. W. Holmes, _The Silent Melody_; C. W. Stoddard, _The Minstrel's Harp_; P. H. Hayne, _The Broken Chords_; J. C. MacNiel, _A Prayer_; Harvey Hubbard, _The Old Minstrel_.]--but it would never do for their disciples to concur in the sentiment. Consequently we have a flood of complimentary verses, assuring the great poets of their unaltered charm.[Footnote: See Swinburne, _Age and Song, The Centenary of Landor, Statue of Victor Hugo_; O. W. Holmes, _Whittier's Eightieth Birthday, Bryant's Seventieth Birthday_; E. E. Stedman, _Ad Vatem_; P. H. Hayne, _To Longfellow_; Richard Gilder, _Jocoseria_; M. F. Tupper, _To the Poet of Memory_; Edmund Gosse, _To Lord Tennyson on his Eightieth Birthday_; Alfred Noyes, _Ode for the Seventieth Birthday of Swinburne_; Alfred Austin, _The Poet's Eightieth Birthday_; Lucy Larcom, _J. G. Whittier_; Mary Clemmer, _To Whittier_; Percy Mackaye, _Browning to Ben Ezra_.] And of course it is all worth very little as indicating the writer's attitude toward old age. Yet the fact that Landor was still singing as he "tottered on into his ninth decade,"--that Browning, Tennyson, Swinburne, Longfellow, Whittier, Holme's, and Whitman continued to feel the stir of creation when their hair was hoary, may have had a genuine influence on younger writers. Greater significance attaches to the fact that some of the self-revealing verse lamenting the decay of inspiration in old age is equivocal, as Landor's Dull is my verse: not even thou Who movest many cares away From this lone breast and weary brow Canst make, as once, its fountains play; No, nor those gentle words that now Support my heart to hear thee say, The bird upon the lonely bough Sings sweetest at the close of day. It is, of course, even more meaningful when the aged poet, disregarding convention, frankly asserts the desirability of long life for his race. Browning, despite the sadness of the poet's age recorded in _Cleon_ and the _Prologue to Aslando_, should doubtless be remembered for his belief in The last of life for which the first was made, as applied to poets as well as to other men. In America old age found its most enthusiastic advocate in Walt Whitman, who in lines _To Get the Final Lilt of Songs_ indicated undiminished confidence in himself at eighty. Bayard Taylor, [Footnote: See _My Prologue_.] too, and Edward Dowden, [Footnote: See _The Mage_.] were not dismayed by their longevity. But we are most concerned, naturally, with wholly impersonal verse, and in it the aged poet is never wholly absent from English thought. As the youthful singer suggests the southland, so the aged bard seems indigenous to the north. It seems inevitable that Gray should depict the Scotch bard as old, [Footnote: _The Bard_.] and that Scott's minstrels should be old. Campbell, too, follows the Scotch tradition. [Footnote: See _Lochiel's Warning_.] It is the prophetic power of these fictional poets, no doubt, that makes age seem essential to them. The poet in Campbell's poem explains, 'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore. Outside of Scotch poetry one finds, occasionally, a similar faith in the old poet. Mrs. Browning's observation tells her that maturity alone can express itself with youthful freshness. Aurora declares, I count it strange and hard to understand That nearly all young poets should write old. ... It may be perhaps Such have not settled long and deep enough In trance to attain to clairvoyance, and still The memory mixes with the vision, spoils And works it turbid. Or perhaps again In order to discover the Muse Sphinx The melancholy desert must sweep around Behind you as before. Aurora feels, indeed, that the poet's gift is not proved till age. She sighs, remembering her own youth, Alas, near all the birds Will sing at dawn,--and yet we do not take The chaffering swallow for the holy lark. Coinciding with this feeling is Rossetti's sentiment: ... Many men are poets in their youth, But for one sweet-strung soul the wires prolong Even through all age the indomitable song. [Footnote: _Genius in Beauty_.] Alice Meynell, [Footnote: See _To any Poet_.] too, and Richard Watson Gilder [Footnote: See _Life is a Bell_.] feel that increasing power of song comes with age. It is doubtless natural that the passionate romantic poets insisted upon the poet's youth, while the thoughtful Victorians often thought of himas old. For one is born with nerves, and it does not take long for them to wear out; on the other hand a great deal of experience is required before one can even begin to think significantly. Accordingly one is not surprised, in the turbulent times of Elizabeth, to find Shakespeare, at thirty, asserting, In me thou seest the glowing of such fire As on the ashes of his youth doth lie, and conversely it seems fitting that a _De Senectute_ should come from an Augustan period. As for the attitude toward age of our own day,--the detestation of age expressed by Alan Seeger [Footnote: See _There Was a Youth Around Whose Early Way_.] and Rupert Brooke, [Footnote: See _The Funeral of Youth: Threnody_.]--the complaint of Francis Ledwidge, at twenty-six, that years are robbing him of his inspiration, [Footnote: See _Growing Old, Youth_.]--that, to their future readers, will only mean that they lived in days of much feeling and action, and that they died young. [Footnote: One of the war poets, Joyce Kilmer, was already changing his attitude at thirty. Compare his juvenile verse, "It is not good for poets to grow old," with the later poem, _Old Poets_.] As the world subsides, after its cataclysm, into contemplative revery, it is inevitable that poets will, for a time, once more conceive as their ideal, not a singer aflame with youth and passion, but a poet of rich experience and profound reflection, White-bearded and with eyes that look afar From their still region of perpetual snow, Beyond the little smokes and stirs of men. [Footnote: James Russell Lowell, _Thorwald's Lay_.] CHAPTER III. THE POET AS LOVER Do the _Phaedrus_ and the _Symposium_ leave anything to be said on the relationship of love and poetry? In the last analysis, probably not. The poet, however, is not one to keep silence because of a dearth of new philosophical conceptions. As he discovers, with ever fresh wonder, the power of love as muse, each new poet, in turn, is wont to pour his gratitude for his inspiration into song, undeterred by the fact that love has received many encomiums before. It is not strange that this hymn should be broken by rude taunts on the part of the uninitiated. Saynt Idiote, Lord of these foles alle, Chaucer's Troilus called Love, long ago, and the general public has been no less free with this characterization in the last century than in the fourteenth. Nor is it merely that part of the public which associates all verse with sentimentality, and flees from it as from a contagion, which thus sneers at the praise lovers give to their divinity. On the contrary, certain young aspirants to the poet's laurel, feeling that the singer's indebtedness to love is an overworked theme, have tried, like the non-lover of the _Phaedrus_, to charm the literary public by the novelty of a different profession. As the non-lover of classic Greece was so fluent in his periods that Socrates and Phaedrus narrowly escaped from being overwhelmed by his much speaking, so the non-lover of the present time says much for himself. In the first place, our non-lover may assure us, the nature of love is such that it involves contempt for the life of a bard. For love is a mad pursuit of life at first hand, in its most engrossing aspect, and it renders one deaf and blind to all but the object of the chase; while poetry is, as Plato points out, [Footnote: See the _Republic_ X, § 599-601; and _Phaedrus_, § 248.] only a pale and lifeless imitation of the ardors and delights which the lover enjoys at first hand. Moreover, one who attempts to divide his attention between the muse and an earthly mistress, is likely not only to lose the favor of the former, but, as the ubiquity of the rejected poet in verse indicates, to lose the latter as well, because his temperament will incline him to go into retirement and meditate upon his lady's charms, when he should be flaunting his own in her presence. It will not be long, indeed, before he has so covered the object of his affection with the leafage of his fancy, that she ceases to have an actual existence for him at all. The non-lover may remind us that even so ardent an advocate of love as Mrs. Browning voices this danger, confessing, in _Sonnets of the Portuguese_, [Footnote: Sonnet XXIX.] My thoughts do twine and bud About thee, as wild vines about a tree Put out broad leaves, and soon there's nought to see Except the straggling green that hides the wood. The non-lover may also recall to our minds the notorious egotism and self-sufficiency of the poet, which seem incompatible with the humility and insatiable yearning of the lover. He exults in the declaration of Keats, My solitude is sublime,--for, instead of what I have described (_i.e._, domestic bliss) there is sublimity to welcome me home; the roaring of the wind is my wife; and the stars through the windowpanes are my children; the mighty abstract idea of beauty in all things, I have, stifles the more divided and minute domestic happiness. [Footnote: Letter to George Keats, October 31, 1818.] Borne aloft by his admiration for this passage, the non-lover may himself essay to be sublime. He may picture to us the frozen heights on which genius resides, where the air is too rare for earthly affection. He may declare that Keats' Grecian Urn is a symbol of all art, which must be All breathing human passion far above. He will assert that the mission of the poet is "to see life steadily and see it whole," a feat which is impossible if the worship of one figure out of the multitude is allowed to distort relative values, and to throw his view out of perspective. Finally, the enemy of love may call as witnesses poets whom he fancies he has led astray. Strangely enough, considering the dedication of the _Ring and the Book_, he is likely to give most conspicuous place among these witnesses to Browning. Like passages of Holy Writ, lines from Browning have been used as the text for whatever harangue a new theorist sees fit to give us. In _Youth and Art_, the non-lover will point out the characteristic attitude of young people who are "married to their art," and consequently have no capacity for other affection. In _Pauline_, he will gloat over the hero's confession that he is inept in love because he is concerned with his perceptions rather than with their objects, and his explanation, I am made up of an intensest life; Of a most clear idea of consciousness Of self ... And I can love nothing,--and this dull truth Has come at last: but sense supplies a love Encircling me and mingling with my life. He will point out that Sordello is another example of the same type, for though Sordello is ostensibly the lover of Palma, he really finds nothing outside himself worthy of his unbounded adoration. [Footnote: Compare Browning's treatment of Sordello with the conventional treatment of him as lover, in _Sordello_, by Mrs. W. Buck (1837).] Turning to Tennyson, in _Lucretius_ the non-lover will note the tragic death of the hero that grows out of the asceticism in love engendered by his absorption in composition. With the greatest pride the enemy of love will point to his popularity in the 1890's, when the artificial and heartless artist enjoyed his greatest vogue. As his most scintillating advocate he will choose Oscar Wilde. Assuring us of many prose passages in his favor, he will read to us the expression of conflict between love and art in _Flower of Love_, where Wilde exclaims, I have made my choice, have lived my poems, and though my youth is gone in wasted days, I have found the lover's crown of myrtle better than the poet's crown of bays, and he will read the record of the same sense of conflict, in different mood, expressed in the sonnet _Hélas_: To drift with every passion till my soul Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play, Is it for this that I have given away Mine ancient wisdom and austere control? Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll Scrawled over on some boyish holiday With idle songs for pipe and virelai, Which do but mar the secret of the whole. Surely there was a time I might have trod The sunlit heights, and from life's dissonance Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God. Is that time dead? Lo, with a little rod I did but touch the honey of romance, And must I lose a soul's inheritance? And yet, when the non-lover has finally arrived at the peroration of his defense, we may remain unshaken in our conviction that from the _Song of Solomon_ to the _Love Songs of Sara Teasdale_, the history of poetry constitutes an almost unbroken hymn to the power of love, "the poet, and the source of poetry in others," [Footnote: _The Symposium_ of Plato, § 196.] as Agathon characterized him at the banquet in Love's honour. Within the field of our especial inquiry, the last century, we may rest assured that there is no true poet whose work, rightly interpreted, is out of tune with this general acclaim. Even Browning and Oscar Wilde are to be saved, although, it may be, only as by fire. The influence of love upon poetry, which we are assuming with such _a priori_ certainty, is effected in various ways. The most obvious, of course, is by affording new subject matter. The confidence of Shakespeare, How can my muse want subject to invent While thou dost breathe, that pourest into my verse Thine own sweet argument? is at least as characteristic of the nineteenth as of the sixteenth century. The depletion of our lyric poetry, if everything relating to the singer's love affairs were omitted, is appalling even to contemplate. Yet, if this were the extent of love's influence upon poetry, one would have to class it, in kind if not in degree, with any number of other personal experiences that have thrilled the poet to composition. The scope of love's influence is widened when one reflects upon its efficacy as a prize held up before the poet, spurring him on to express himself. In this aspect poetry is often a form of spiritual display comparable to the gay plumage upon the birds at mating season. In the case of women poets, verse often affords an essentially refined and lady-like manner of expressing one's sentiments toward a possible suitor. The convention so charmingly expressed in William Morris' lines, _Rhyme Slayeth Shame_, seems to be especially grateful to them. At times the ruse fails, as a writer has recently admitted: All sing it now, all praise its artless art, But ne'er the one for whom the song was made, [Footnote: Edith Thomas, _Vos non Nobis_.] but perhaps the worth of the poetry is not affected by the stubbornness of its recipient. Sara Teasdale very delicately names her anthology of love poems by women, _The Answering Voice_, but half the poems reveal the singer speaking first, while a number of them show her expressing an open-minded attitude toward any possible applicant for her hand among her readers. But it is not merely for its efficacy as a matrimonial agency that poets are indebted to love. Since the nineteenth century is primarily the age of the love story, personal experience of love has been invaluable to the poet in a third way. The taste of the time has demanded that the poet sing of the tender theme almost exclusively, whether in dramatic, lyric or narrative, whether in historical or fictional verse. This is, of course, one reason that, wherever the figure of a bard appears in verse, he is almost always portrayed as a lover. Not to illustrate exhaustively, three of the most widely read poems with poet heroes, of the beginning, middle and end of the century respectively, _i. e._, Moore's _Lalla Rookh_, Mrs. Browning's _Lady Geraldine's Courtship_, and Coventry Patmore's _The Angel in the House_, all depend for plot interest upon their hero's implication in a love affair. The authors' love affairs were invaluable, no doubt, since a poet is not be expected to treat adequately a passion which he has not experienced himself. It is true that one hears from time to time, notably in the 1890's, that the artist should remain apart from, and coldly critical of the emotions he portrays. But this is not the typical attitude of our period. When one speaks thus, he is usually thought to be confusing the poet with the literary man, who writes from calculation rather than from inspiration. The dictum of Aristotle, "Those who feel emotion are most convincing through a natural sympathy with the characters they represent," [Footnote: _Poetics_ XVII, Butcher's translation.] has appeared self-evident to most critics of our time. But the real question of inspiration by love goes deeper and is connected with Aristotle's further suggestion that poetry involves "a strain of madness," a statement which we are wont to interpret as meaning that the poet is led by his passions rather than by his reason. This constitutes the gist of the whole dispute between the romanticist and the classicist, and our poets are such ardent devotees of love as their muse, simply because, in spite of other short-lived fads, the temper of the last century has remained predominantly romantic. It is obvious that the idea of love as a distraction and a curse is the offspring of classicism. If poetry is the work of the reason, then equilibrium of soul, which is so sorely upset by passionate love, is doubtless very necessary. But the romanticist represents the poet, not as one drawing upon the resources within his mind, but as the vessel filled from without. His afflatus comes upon him and departs, without his control or understanding. Poetical inspiration, to such a temperament, naturally assumes the shape of passion. Bryant's expression of this point of view is so typical of the general attitude as to seem merely commonplace. He tells us, in _The Poet_, No smooth array of phrase, Artfully sought and ordered though it be, Which the cold rhymer lays Upon his page languid industry Can wake the listless pulse to livelier speed. * * * * * The secret wouldst thou know To touch the heart or fire the blood at will? Let thine own eyes o'erflow; Let thy lips quiver with the passionate thrill. Seize the great thought, ere yet its power be past, And bind, in words, the fleet emotion fast. Coleridge's comprehension of this fact led him to cry, "Love is the vital air of my genius." [Footnote: Letter to his wife, March 12, 1799.] All this, considering the usual subject-matter of poetry, is perhaps only saying that the poet must be sincere. The mathematician is most sincere when he uses his intellect exclusively, but a reasoned portrayal of passion is bound to falsify, for it leads one insensibly either to understate, or to burlesque, or to indulge in a psychopathic analysis of emotion. [Footnote: Of the latter type of poetry a good example is Edgar Lee Masters' _Monsieur D---- and the Psycho-Analyst_.] Accordingly, our poets have not been slow to remind us of their passionate temperaments. Landor, perhaps, may oblige us to dip into his biography in order to verify our thesis that the poet is invariably passionate, but in many cases this state of things is reversed, the poet being wont to assure us that the conventional incidents of his life afford no gauge of the ardors within his soul. Thus Wordsworth solemnly assures us, Had I been a writer of love poetry, it would have been natural to me to write with a degree of warmth which could hardly have been approved by my principles, and which might have been undesirable for the reader. [Footnote: See Arthur Symons, _The Romantic Movement_, p. 92 (from Myers, _Life of Wordsworth_).] Such boasting is equally characteristic of our staid American poets, who shrink from the imputation that their orderly lives are the result of temperamental incapacity for unrestraint. [Footnote: Thus Whittier, in _My Namesake_, says of himself, Few guessed beneath his aspect grave What passions strove in chains. Also Bayard Taylor retorts to those who taunt him with lack of passion, But you are blind, and to the blind The touch of ice and fire is one. The same defense is made by Richard W. Gilder in lines entitled _Our Elder Poets_.] In differing mode, Swinburne's poetry is perhaps an expression of the same attitude. The ultra-erotic verse of that poet somehow suggests a wild hullabaloo raised to divert our attention from the fact that he was constitutionally incapable of experiencing passion. Early in the century, something approaching the Wordsworthian doctrine of emotion recollected in tranquillity was in vogue, as regards capacity for passion. The Byronic hero is one whose affections have burned themselves out, and who employs the last worthless years of his life writing them up. Childe Harold is Grown aged in this world of woe, In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life, So that no wonder waits him, nor below Can love, or sorrow, fame, ambition, strife, Cut to his heart again with the keen knife Of silent, sharp endurance. The very imitative hero of Praed's _The Troubadour_, after disappointment in several successive amours, at the age of twenty-six dismisses passion forever. We are assured that The joys that wound, the pains that bless, Were all, were all departed, And he was wise and passionless And happy and cold-hearted. The popularity of this sort of poet was, however, ephemeral. Of late years poets have shown nothing but contempt for their brothers who attempt to sing after their passion has died away. It seems likely, beside, that instead of giving an account of his genius, the depleted poet depicts his passionless state only as a ruse to gain the sympathy of his readers, reminding them how much greater he might have been if he had not wantonly wasted his emotions. One is justified in asking why, on the other hand, the poet should not be one who, instead of spending his love on a finite mistress, should devote it all to poetry. The bard asks us to believe that love of poetry is as thrilling a passion as any earthly one. His usual emotions are portrayed in Alexander Smith's _Life Drama_, where the hero agonizes for relief from his too ardent love: O that my heart was quiet as a grave Asleep in moonlight! For, as a torrid sunset boils with gold Up to the zenith, fierce within my soul A passion burns from basement to the cope. Poesy, poesy! But one who imagines that this passion can exist in the soul wholly unrelated to any other, is confusing poetry with religion, or possibly with philosophy. The medieval saint was pure in proportion as he died to the life of the senses. This is likewise the state of the philosopher described in the _Phaedo_. But beauty, unlike wisdom and goodness, is not to be apprehended abstractly; ideal beauty is super-sensual, to be sure, but the way to vision of it is through the senses. Without doubt one occasionally finds asceticism preached to the poet in verse. One of our minor American poets declares, The bard who yields to flesh his emotion Knows naught of the frenzy divine. [Footnote: _Passion_, by Elizabeth Cheney. But compare Keats' protest against the poet's abstract love, in the fourth book of _Endymion_.] But this is not the genuine poet's point of view. In so far as he is a Platonist--and "all poets are more or less Platonists" [Footnote: H. B. Alexander, _Poetry and the Individual_, p. 46.]--the poet is led upward to the love of ideal beauty through its incarnations in the world of sense. Thus in one of the most Platonic of our poems, G. E. Woodberry's _Agathon_, Eros says of the hero, who is the young poet of the _Symposium_, A spirit of joy he is, to beauty vowed, Made to be loved, and every sluggish sense In him is amorous and passionate. Whence danger is; therefore I seek him out So with pure thought and care of things divine To touch his soul that it partake the gods. This does not imply that romantic love is the only avenue to ideal beauty. Rupert Brooke's _The Great Lover_ might dissipate such an idea, by its picture of childlike and omnivorous taste for sensuousbeauty. These I have loved, Brooke begins, White plates and cups, clean gleaming, Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust; Wet roofs, beneath the lamplight; the strong crust Of friendly bread; and many tasting food; Rainbows, and the blue bitter smoke of wood. And so on he takes us, apparently at random, through the whole range of his sense impressions. But the main difficulty with having no more than such scattered and promiscuous impressionability is that it is likely to result in poetry that is a mere confusion of color without design, unless the poet is subject to the unifying influence of a great passion, which, far from destroying perspective, as was hinted previously, affords a fixed standard by which to gauge the relative values of other impressions. Of course the exceptionally idealistic poet, who is conscious of a religious ideal, can say with Milton, "I am wont day and night to seek the _idea_ of beauty through all the forms and faces of things (for many are the shapes of things divine) and to follow it leading me on with certain assured traces." [Footnote: _Prose Works_, Vol. I, Letter VII, Symmons ed.] To him there is no need of the unifying influence of romantic love. In his case the mission of a strong passion is rather to humanize the ideal, lest it become purely philosophical (as that of G. E. Woodberry is in danger of doing) or purely ethical, as is the case of our New England poets. On the other hand, to the poet who denies the ideal element in life altogether, the unifying influence of love is indispensable. Such deeply tragic poetry as that of James Thomson, B. V., for instance, which asserts Macbeth's conclusion that life is "a tale told by an idiot," is saved from utter chaos sufficiently to keep its poetical character, only because the memory of his dead love gives Thomson a conception of eternal love and beauty by which to gauge his hopeless despair. In addition, our poets are wont to agree with their father Spenser that the beauty of a beloved person is not to be placed in the same class as the beauty of the world of nature. Spenser argues that the spiritual beauty of a lady, rather than her outward appearance, causes her lover's perturbation. He inquires: Can proportion of the outward part Move such affection in the inward mind That it can rob both sense and reason blind? Why do not then the blossoms of the field, Which are arrayed with much more orient hue And to the sense most daintie odors yield, Work like impression in the looker's view? [Footnote: _An Hymne in Honour of Beautie_.] Modern theorists, who would no doubt despise the quaintly idealistic mode of Spenser's expression, yet express much the same view in asserting that romantic excitement is a stimulus which keys all the senses to a higher pitch, thus dispersing one's amorousness over all creation. The love celebrated in Brooke's _The Great Lover_, they declare, cannot be compared with that of his more conventional love poems, simply because the one love is the cause of the other. Such heightened sensuous impressionability is celebrated in much of our most beautiful love poetry of to-day, notably in Sara Teasdale's. It may be that this intensity of perception engendered by love is its most poetical effect. Much verse pictures the poet as a flamelike spirit kindled by love to a preternaturally vivid apprehension of life for an instant, before love dies away, leaving him ashes. Again and again the analogy is pointed out between Shelley's spirit and the leaping flames that consumed his body. Josephine Preston Peabody's interpretation of Marlowe is of the same sort. In the drama of which Marlowe is the title-character, his fellow-dramatist, Lodge, is much worried when he learns of Marlowe's mad passion for a woman of the court. Thou art a glorious madman, Lodge exclaims, Born to consume thyself anon in ashes, And rise again to immortality. Marlowe replies, Oh, if she cease to smile, as thy looks say, What if? I shall have drained my splendor down To the last flaming drop! Then take me, darkness, And mirk and mire and black oblivion, Despairs that raven where no camp-fire is, Like the wild beasts. I shall be even blest To be so damned. Most often this conception of love's flamelike lightening of life for the poet is applied to Sappho. Many modern English poets picture her living "with the swift singing strength of fire." [Footnote: See Southey, _Sappho_; Mary Robinson (1758-1800), _Sappho and Phaon_; Philip Moren Freneau, _Monument of Phaon_; James Gates Percival, _Sappho_; Charles Kingsley, _Sappho_; Lord Houghton, _A Dream of Sappho_; Swinburne, _On the Cliffs_, _Anactoria_, _Sapphics_; Cale Young Rice, _Sappho's Death Song_; Sara Teasdale, _Sappho_; Percy Mackaye, _Sappho and Phaon_; Zoë Akins, _Sappho to a Swallow on the Ground_; James B. Kenyon, _Phaon Concerning Sappho_, _Sappho_ (1920); William Alexander Percy, _Sappho in Levkos_ (1920).] Swinburne, in _On the Cliffs_, claims this as the essential attribute of genius, when he cries to her for sympathy, For all my days as all thy days from birth My heart as thy heart was in me as thee Fire, and not all the fountains of the sea Have waves enough to quench it; nor on earth Is fuel enough to feed, While day sows night, and night sows day for seed. This intensity of perception is largely the result, or the cause, of the poet's unusually sensitive consciousness of the ephemeralness of love. The notion of permanence often seems to rob love of all its poetical quality. The dark despair engendered by a sense of its transience is needed as a foil to the fiery splendors of passion. Thus Rupert Brooke, in the sonnet, _Mutability_, dismisses the Platonic idea of eternal love and beauty, declaring, Dear, we know only that we sigh, kiss, smile; Each kiss lasts but the kissing; and grief goes over; Love has no habitation but the heart: Poor straws! on the dark flood we catch awhile, Cling, and are borne into the night apart, The laugh dies with the lips, "Love" with the lover. Sappho is represented as especially aware of this aspect of her love. Her frenzies in _Anactoria_, where, if our hypothesis is correct, Swinburne must have been terribly concerned over his natural coldness, arise from rebellion at the brevity of love. Sappho cries, What had all we done That we should live and loathe the sterile sun, And with the moon wax paler as she wanes, And pulse by pulse feel time grow through our veins? Poetry, we are to believe, arises from the yearning to render eternal the fleeting moment of passion. Sappho's poetry is, as Swinburne says, [Footnote: In _On the Cliffs_.] "life everlasting of eternal fire." In Mackaye's _Sappho and Phaon_, she exults in her power to immortalize her passion, contrasting herself with her mother, the sea: Her ways are birth, fecundity and death, But mine are beauty and immortal love. Therefore I will be tyrant of myself-- Mine own law will I be! And I will make Creatures of mind and melody, whose forms Are wrought of loveliness without decay, And wild desire without satiety, And joy and aspiration without death. And on the wings of these shall I, I, Sappho! Still soar and sing above these cliffs of Lesbos, Even when ten thousand blooms of men and maidens Are fallen and withered. To one who craves an absolute aesthetic standard, it is satisfactory to note how nearly unanimous our poets are in their portrayal of Sappho. [Footnote: No doubt they are influenced by the glimpse of her given in Longinus, _On the Sublime_.] This is the more remarkable, since our enormous ignorance of her life and poetry would give almost free scope to inventive faculty. It is significant that none of our writers have been attracted to the picture Welcker gives of her as the respectable matronly head of a girl's seminary. Instead, she is invariably shown as mad with an insatiable yearning, tortured by the conviction that her love can never be satisfied. Charles Kingsley, describing her temperament, Night and day A mighty hunger yearned within her heart, And all her veins ran fever, [Footnote: _Sappho_.] conceives of her much as does Swinburne, who calls her, Love's priestess, mad with pain and joy of song, Song's priestess, mad with pain and joy of love. [Footnote: _On the Cliffs_.] It is in this insatiability that Swinburne finds the secret of her genius, as opposed to the meager desires of ordinary folk. Expressing her conception of God, he makes Sappho assert, But having made me, me he shall not slay: Nor slay nor satiate, like those herds of his, Who laugh and love a little, and their kiss Contents them. It is, no doubt, an inarticulate conviction that she is "imprisoned in the body as in an oyster shell," [Footnote: Plato, _Phaedrus_, § 250.] while the force that is wooing her is outside the boundary of the senses, that accounts for Sappho's agonies of despair. In Sara Teasdale's _Sappho_ she describes herself, Who would run at dusk Along the surges creeping up the shore When tides come in to ease the hungry beach, And running, running till the night was black, Would fall forspent upon the chilly sand, And quiver with the winds from off the sea. Ah! quietly the shingle waits the tides Whose waves are stinging kisses, but to me Love brought no peace, nor darkness any rest. [Footnote: In the end, Sara Teasdale does show her winning content, in the love of her baby daughter, but it is significant that this destroys her lyric gift. She assures Aphrodite, If I sing no more To thee, God's daughter, powerful as God, It is that thou hast made my life too sweet To hold the added sweetness of a song. * * * * * I taught the world thy music; now alone I sing for her who falls asleep to hear.] Swinburne characteristically shows her literally tearing the flesh in her quest of the divinity that is reflected there. In _Anactoria_ she tells the object of her infatuation: I would my love could kill thee: I am satiated With seeing thee alive, and fain would have thee dead. * * * * * I would find grievous ways to have thee slain, Intense device and superflux of pain. And after detailing with gusto the bloody ingenuities of her plan of torture, she states that her motive is, To wring thy very spirit through the flesh. The myth that Sappho's agony resulted from an offense done to Aphrodite, is several times alluded to. In _Sappho and Phaon_ she asserts her independence of Aphrodite's good will, and in revenge the goddess turns Phaon's affection away from Sappho, back to Thalassa, the mother of his children. Sappho's infatuation for Phaon, the slave, seems a cruel jest of Aphrodite, who fills Sappho with a wholly blind and unreasoning passion. In all three of Swinburne's Lesbian poems, Aphrodite's anger is mentioned. This is the sole theme of _Sapphics_, in which poem the goddess, displeased by Sappho's preferment of love poetry to the actual delights of love, yet tried to win Sappho back to her: Called to her, saying "Turn to me, O my Sappho," Yet she turned her face from the Loves, she saw not Tears or laughter darken immortal eyelids.... Only saw the beautiful lips and fingers, Full of songs and kisses and little whispers, Full of music; only beheld among them Soar as a bird soars Newly fledged, her visible song, a marvel Made of perfect sound and exceeding passion, Sweetly shapen, terrible, full of thunders, Clothed with the wind's wings. It seems likely that this myth of Aphrodite's anger is an allegory indicating the tragic character of all poetic love, in that, while incarcerated in the body, the singer strives to break through the limits of the flesh and to grasp ideality. The issue is made clear in Mackaye's drama. There Sappho's rival is Thalassa, Phaon's slave-mate, who conceives as love's only culmination the bearing of children. Sappho, in her superiority, points out that mere perpetuation of physical life is a meaningless circle, unless it leads to some higher satisfaction. But in the end the figure of "the eternal mother," as typified by Thalassa, is more powerful than is Sappho, in the struggle for Phaon's love. Thus Aphrodite asserts her unwillingness to have love refined into a merely spiritual conception. Often the greatest poets, as Sappho herself, are represented as having no more than a blind and instinctive apprehension of the supersensual beauty which is shining through the flesh, and which is the real object of desire. But thus much ideality must be characteristic of love, it seems obvious, before it can be spiritually creative. Unless there is some sense of a universal force, taking the shape of the individual loved one, there can be nothing suggestive in love. Instead of waking the lover to the beauty in all of life, as we have said, it would, as the non-lover has asserted, blind him to all but the immediate object of his pursuit. Then, the goal being reached, there would be no reason for the poet's not achieving complete satisfaction in love, for there would be nothing in it to suggest any delight that he does not possess. Therefore, having all his desire, the lover would be lethargic, with no impulse to express himself in song. Probably something of this sort is the meaning of the Tannhauser legend, as versified both by Owen Meredith and Emma Lazarus, showing the poet robbed of his gift when he comes under the power of the Paphian Venus. Such likewise is probably the meaning of Oscar Wilde's sonnet, _Hélas_, quoted above. While we thus lightly dismiss sensual love as unpoetical, we must remember that Burns, in some of his accounts of inspiration, ascribes quite as powerful and as unidealistic an effect to the kisses of the barmaids, as to the liquor they dispense. But this is mere bravado, as much of his other verse shows. Byron's case, also, is a doubtful one. The element of discontent is all that elevates his amours above the "swinish trough," which Alfred Austin asserts them to be. [Footnote: In _Off Mesolonghi_.] Yet, such as his idealism is, it constitutes the strength and weakness of his poetical gift. Landor well says, [Footnote: In _Lines To a Lady_.] Although by fits so dense a cloud of smoke Puffs from his sappy and ill-seasoned oak, Yet, as the spirit of the dream draws near, Remembered loves make Byron's self sincere. The puny heart within him swells to view, The man grows loftier and the poet too. Ideal love is most likely to become articulate in the sonnet sequence. The Platonic theory of love and beauty, ubiquitous in renaissance sonnets, is less pretentiously but no less sincerely present in the finest sonnets of the last century. The sense that the beauty of his beloved is that of all other fair forms, the motive of Shakespeare's Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts Which I by lacking have supposed dead, is likewise the motive of Rossetti's _Heart's Compass_, Sometimes thou seemest not as thyself alone, But as the meaning of all things that are; A breathless wonder, shadowing forth afar Some heavenly solstice, hushed and halcyon, Whose unstirred lips are music's visible tone; Whose eyes the sungates of the soul unbar, Being of its furthest fires oracular, The evident heart of all life sown and mown. Thus also Mrs. Browning says of her earlier ideal loves, Their shining fronts, Their songs, their splendors (better, yet the same, As river water hallowed into founts) Met in thee. [Footnote: _Sonnets of the Portuguese_, XXVI.] Reflection of this sort almost inevitably leads the poet to the conviction that his real love is eternal beauty. Such is the progress of Rossetti's thought in _Heart's Hope_: Lady, I fain would tell how evermore Thy soul I know not from thy body nor Thee from myself, neither our love from God. The whole of Diotima's theory of the ascent to ideal beauty is here implicit in three lines. In the same spirit Christina Rossetti identifies her lover with her Christian faith: Yea, as I apprehend it, love is such I cannot love you if I love not Him, I cannot love Him if I love not you. [Footnote: _Monna Innominata_, VI. See also Robert Bridges, _The of Love_ (a sonnet sequence).] It is obvious that, from the standpoint of the beloved at least, there is danger in this identification of all beauties as manifestations of the ideal. It is unpropitious to lifelong affection for one person. As a matter of fact, though the English taste for decorous fidelity has affected some poets, on the whole they have not hesitated to picture their race as fickle. Plato's account of the second step in the ascent of the lover, "Soon he will himself perceive that the beauty of one form is truly related to the beauty of another; and then if beauty in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize that the beauty in every form is one and the same," [Footnote: _Symposium_, Jowett translation, §210.] is made by Shelley the justification of his shifting enthusiasms, which the world so harshly censured. In _Epipsychidion_ Shelley declares, I never was attached to that great sect Whose doctrine is that each one should select Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend, And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend To cold oblivion.... True love in this differs from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away. Love is like understanding, that grows bright Gazing on many truths.... Narrow the heart that loves, the brain that contemplates, The life that wears, the spirit that creates One object and one form, and builds thereby A sepulchre for its eternity. These last lines suggest, what many poets have asserted, that the goddess of beauty is apt to change her habitation from one clay to another, and that the poet who clings to the fair form after she has departed, is nauseated by the dead bones which he clasps. [Footnote: See Thomas Hardy's novel, _The Well Beloved_.] This theme Rupert Brooke is constantly harping upon, notably in _Dead Men's Love_, which begins, There was a damned successful poet, There was a woman like the Sun. And they were dead. They did not know it. They did not know his hymns Were silence; and her limbs That had served love so well, Dust, and a filthy smell. The feeling that Aphrodite is leading them a merry chase through manyforms is characteristic of our ultra-modern poets, who anticipate at least one new love affair a year. Most elegantly Ezra Pound expresses his feeling that it is time to move on to a fresh inspiration: As a bathtub lined with white porcelain When the hot water gives out or goes tepid,-- So is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion, My much praised, but not altogether satisfactory lady. As each beautiful form is to be conceived of as reflecting eternal beauty from a slightly different angle, the poet may claim that flitting affection is necessary to one who would gain as complete as possible vision of ideality. Not only so, but this glimpsing of beauty through first one mistress, then another, often seems to perform the function of the mixed metaphor in freeing the soul from bondage to the sensual. This is the interpretation of Sappho's fickleness most popular with our writers, who give her the consciousness that Aphrodite, not flesh and blood, is the object of her quest. In her case, unlike that of the ordinary lover, the new passion does not involve the repudiation or belittling of the one before. In Swinburne's _Anactoria_ Sappho compares her sensations Last year when I loved Atthis, and this year When I love thee. In Mackaye's _Sappho and Phaon_, when Alcaeus pleads for the love of the poetess, she asserts of herself, I doubt if ever she saw form of man Or maiden either whom, being beautiful, She hath not loved. When Alcaeus protests, "But not with passion!" she rejoins, All That breathes to her is passion, love itself All passionate. The inevitability of fickleness arising from her idealism, which fills her with insuperable discontent, is voiced most clearly by the nineteenth century Sappho through the lips of Sara Teasdale, in lines wherein she dismisses those who gossip about her: How should they know that Sappho lived and died Faithful to love, not faithful to the lover, Never transfused and lost in what she loved, Never so wholly loving nor at peace. I asked for something greater than I found, And every time that love has made me weep I have rejoiced that love could be so strong; For I have stood apart and watched my soul Caught in a gust of passion as a bird With baffled wings against the dusty whirlwind Struggles and frees itself to find the sky. She continues, apostrophizing beauty, In many guises didst thou come to me; I saw thee by the maidens when they danced, Phaon allured me with a look of thine, In Anactoria I knew thy grace. I looked at Cercolas and saw thine eyes, But never wholly, soul and body mine Didst thou bid any love me as I loved. The last two lines suggest another reason for the fickleness, as well as for the insatiability of the poet's love. If the poet's genius consists of his peculiar capacity for love, then in proportion as he outsoars the rest of humanity he will be saddened, if not disillusioned, by the half-hearted return of his love. Mrs. Browning characterizes her passion: I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal grace. It is clear that a lesser soul could not possibly give an adequate response to such affection. Perhaps it is one of the strongest evidences that Browning is a genuine philosopher, and not a prestidigitator of philosophy in rhyme, that Mrs. Browning's love poetry does not conclude with the note either of tragic insatiability or of disillusionment. [Footnote: The tragedy of incapacity to return one's poet-lover's passion is the theme of Alice Meynell's _The Poet and his Wife_. On the same theme are the following: Amelia Josephine Burr, _Anne Hathaway's Cottage_ (1914); C. J. Druce, _The Dark Lady to Shakespeare_ (1919); Karle Wilson Baker, _Keats and Fanny Brawne_ (1919); James B. Kenyon, _Phaon concerning Sappho_ (1920).] Since the poet's soul is more beautiful than the souls of other men, it follows that he cannot love at all except, in a sense, by virtue of the fact that he is easily deceived. Here is another explanation of the transience of his affections,--in his horrified recoil from an unworthy object that he has idealized. This blindness to sensuality is accounted for by Plato in the figure, "The lover is his mirror in whom he is beholding himself, but he is not aware of this." [Footnote: _Phædrus_, 255.] [Footnote: Browning shows the poet, with his eyes open, loving an unworthy form, in _Time's Revenges_.] This is the figure used in Sara Teasdale's little poem, _The Star_, which says to the pool, O wondrous deep, I love you, I give you my light to keep. Oh, more profound than the moving sea, That never has shown myself to me. * * * * * But out of the woods as night grew cool A brown pig came to the little pool; It grunted and splashed and waded in And the deepest place but reached its chin. The tragedy in such love is the theme of Alfred Noyes' poem on Marlowe, _At the Sign of the Golden Shoe_. The dramatist comes to London as a young boy, full of high visions and faith in human nature. His innocence makes him easy prey of a notorious woman: In her treacherous eyes, As in dark pools the mirrored stars will gleam, Here did he see his own eternal skies. But, since his love is wholly spiritual, it dies on the instant of her revelation of her character: Clasped in the bitter grave of that sweet clay, Wedded and one with it, he moaned. * * * * * Yet, ere he went, he strove once more to trace Deep in her eyes, the loveliness he knew, Then--spat his hatred in her smiling face. It is probably an instance of the poet's blindness to the sensual, that he is often represented as having a peculiar sympathy with the fallen woman. He feels that all beauty in this world is forced to enter into forms unworthy of it, and he finds the attractiveness of the courtesan only an extreme instance of this. Joaquin Miller's _The Ideal and the Real_ is an allegory in which the poet, following ideal beauty into this world, finds her in such a form. The tradition of the poet idealizing the outcast, which dates back at least to Rossetti's _Jenny_, is still alive, as witness John D. Neihardt's recent poem, _A Vision of Woman_. [Footnote: See also Kirke White, _The Prostitute_; Whitman, _To a Common Prostitute_; Joaquin Miller, _A Dove of St. Mark_; and Olive Dargan, _A Magdalen to Her Poet_.] To return to the question of the poet's fickleness, a very ingenious denial of it is found in the argument that, as his poetical love is purely ideal, he can indulge in a natural love that in no way interferes with it. A favorite view of the 1890's is in Ernest Dowson's _Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonæ sub Regno Cynaræ_: Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine; And I was desolate and sick of an old passion; Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion. The poet sometimes regards it as a proof of the supersensual nature of his passion that he is, willing to marry another woman. The hero of May Sinclair's novel, _The Divine Fire_, who is irresistibly impelled to propose to a girl, even while he trembles at the sacrilege of her touching a book belonging to his soul's mistress, is only a _reductio ad absurdum_ of a rather popular theory. All narratives of this sort can probably be traced back to Dante's autobiography, as given in the _Vita Nuova_. We have two poetic dramas dealing with Dante's love, by G. L. Raymond, [Footnote: _Dante_] and by Sara King Wiley. [Footnote: _Dante and Beatrice_] Both these writers, however, show a tendency to slur over Dante's affection for Gemma. Raymond represents their marriage as the result solely of Dante's compromising her by apparent attention, in order to avoid the appearance of insulting Beatrice with too close regard. Sara King Wiley, on the other hand, stresses the other aspect of Dante's feeling for Gemma, his gratitude for her pity at the time of Beatrice's death. Of course both dramatists are bound by historical considerations to make the outcome of their plays tragical, but practically all other expositions of the poet's double affections are likewise tragic. Cale Young Rice chooses another famous Renaissance lover for the hero of _A Night in Avignon_, a play with this theme. Here Petrarch, in a fit of impatience with his long loyalty to a hopeless love for Laura, turns to a light woman for consolation. According to the accepted mode, he refuses to tolerate Laura's name on the lips of his fancy. Laura, who has chosen this inconvenient moment to become convinced of the purity of Petrarch's devotion to her, comes to his home to offer her heart, but, discovering the other woman's presence there, she fails utterly to comprehend the subtle compliment to her involved, and leaves Petrarch in an agony of contrition. Marlowe, in Josephine Preston Peabody's drama, distributes his admiration more equally between his two loves. One stimulates the dramatist in him, by giving him an insatiable thirst for this world; the other elevates the poet, by lifting his thoughts to eternal beauty. When he is charged with being in love with the Canterbury maiden who is the object of his reverence, the "Little Quietude," as he calls her, he, comparing her to the Evening Star, contrasts her with the object of his burning passion, who seems to him the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He explains, I serve a lady so imperial fair, June paled when she was born. Indeed no star, No dream, no distance, but a very woman, Wise with the argent wisdom of the snake; Fair nurtured with that old forbidden fruit That thou hast heard of ... ... I would eat, and have all human joy, And know,--and know. He continues, But, for the Evening Star, I have it there. I would not have it nearer. Is that love As thou dost understand? Yet is it mine As I would have it: to look down on me, Not loving and not cruel; to be bright, Out of my reach; to lighten me the dark When I lift eyes to it, and in the day To be forgotten. But of all things, far, Far off beyond me, otherwise no star. Marlowe's closing words bring us to another important question, _i. e._, the stage of love at which it is most inspiring. This is the subject of much difference of opinion. Mrs. Browning might well inquire, in one of her love sonnets, How, Dearest, wilt thou have me for most use? A hope, to sing by gladly? or a fine Sad memory with thy songs to interfuse? A shade, in which to sing, of palm or pine? A grave, on which to rest from singing? Choose. [Footnote: _Sonnets from the Portuguese_, XVII.] Each of these situations has been celebrated as begetting the poet's inspiration. To follow the process of elimination, we may first dispose of the married state as least likely to be spiritually creative. It is true that we find a number of poems addressed by poets to their wives. But these are more likely to be the contented purring of one who writes by a cozy fireside, than the passionate cadence of one whose genius has been fanned to flame. One finds but a single champion of the married state considered abstractly. This is Alfred Austin, in whose poem, _The Poet and the Muse_, his genius explains to the newly betrothed poet: How should you, poet, hope to sing? The lute of love hath a single string. Its note is sweet as the coo of the dove, But 'tis only one note, and the note is love. But when once you have paired and built your nest, And can brood thereon with a settled breast, You will sing once more, and your voice will stir All hearts with the sweetness gained from her. And perhaps even Alfred Austin's vote is canceled by his inconsistent statement in his poem on Petrarch, _At Vaucluse_, Let this to lowlier bards atone, Whose unknown Laura is their own, Possessing and possessed: Of whom if sooth they do not sing, 'Tis that near her they fold their wing To drop into her nest. Let us not forget Shelley's expression of his need for his wife: Ah, Mary dear, come to me soon; I am not well when thou art far; As twilight to the sphered moon, As sunset to the evening star, Thou, beloved, art to me. [Footnote: _To Mary_.] Perhaps it is unworthy quibbling to object that the figure here suggests too strongly Shelley's consciousness of the merely atmospheric function of Mary, in enhancing his own personality, as contrasted with the radiant divinity of Emilia Viviani, to whom he ascribes his creativeness. [Footnote: Compare Wordsworth, _She Was a Phantom of Delight_, _Dearer Far than Life_; Tennyson, _Dedication of Enoch Arden_.] It is customary for our bards gallantly to explain that the completeness of their domestic happiness leaves them no lurking discontent to spur them onto verse writing. This is the conclusion of the happily wedded heroes of Bayard Taylor's _A Poet's Journal_, and of Coventry Patmore's _The Angel in the House_; likewise of the poet in J. G. Holland's _Kathrina_, who excuses his waning inspiration after his marriage: She, being all my world, had left no room For other occupation than my love. ... I had grown enervate In the warm atmosphere which I had breathed. Taken as a whole, the evidence is decidedly in favor of the remote love, prevented in some way from reaching its culmination. To requote Alfred Noyes, the poet knows that ideal love must be Far off, beyond me, otherwise no star. [Footnote: Marlowe.] In _Sister Songs_ Francis Thompson asserts that such remoteness is essential to his genius: I deem well why life unshared Was ordained me of yore. In pairing time, we know, the bird Kindles to its deepmost splendour, And the tender Voice is tenderest in its throat. Were its love, forever by it, Never nigh it, It might keep a vernal note, The crocean and amethystine In their pristine Lustre linger on its coat. [Footnote: Possibly this is characteristic only of the male singer. Christina Rossetti expresses the opposite attitude in _Monna Innominata_ XIV, mourning for The silence of a heart that sang its songs When youth and beauty made a summer morn, Silence of love that cannot sing again.] Byron, in the _Lament of Tasso_, causes that famous lover likewise to maintain that distance is necessary to idealization. He sighs, Successful love may sate itself away. The wretched are the faithful; 'tis their fate To have all feeling save the one decay, And every passion into one dilate, As rapid rivers into ocean pour. But ours is bottomless and hath no shore. The manner of achieving this necessary remoteness is a nice problem. Of course the poet may choose it, with open eyes, as the Marlowe of Miss Peabody's imagination does, or as the minstrel in Hewlitt's _Cormac, Son of Ogmond_. The long engagements of Rossetti and Tennyson are often quoted as exemplifying this idiosyncrasy of poets. But there is something decidedly awkward in such a situation, inasmuch as it is not till love becomes so intense as to eclipse the poet's pride and joy in poetry that it becomes effective as a muse. [Footnote: See Mrs. Browning, Sonnet VII. And this! this lute and song, loved yesterday, Are only dear, the singing angels know Because thy name moves right in what they say.] The minor poet, to be sure, is often discovered solicitously feeling his pulse to gauge the effect of love on his rhymes, but one does not feel that his verse gains by it. Therefore, an external obstacle is usually made to intervene. As often as not, this obstacle is the indifference of the beloved. One finds rejected poets by the dozens, mourning in the verse of our period. The sweetheart's reasons are manifold; her suitor's inferior station and poverty being favorites. But one wonders if the primary reason may not be the quality of the love offered by the poet, whose extreme humility and idealization are likely to engender pride and contempt in the lady, she being unaware that it is the reflection of his own soul that the poet is worshipping in her. One can feel some sympathy with the lady in Thomas Hardy's _I Rose Up as My Custom Is_, who, when her lover's ghost discovers her beside a snoring spouse, confesses that she is content with her lot: He makes no quest into my thoughts, But a poet wants to know What one has felt from earliest days, Why one thought not in other ways, And one's loves of long ago. It may be, too, that an instinct for protection has something to do with the lady's rejection, for a recent poet has openly proclaimed the effect of attaining, in successful love, one step toward absolute beauty: O beauty, as thy heart o'erflows In tender yielding unto me, A vast desire awakes and grows Unto forgetfulness of thee. [Footnote: "A. E.," _The Fountain of Shadowy Beauty_.] Rejection is apt to prove an obstacle of double worth to the poet, since it not only removes him to a distance where his lady's human frailties are less visible, so that the divine light shining through her seems less impeded, but it also fires him with a very human ambition to prove his transcendent worth and thus "get even" with his unappreciative beloved. [Footnote: See Joaquin Miller, _Ina_; G. L. Raymond, _"Loving,"_ from _A Life in Song_; Alexander Smith, _A Life Drama_. Richard Realf in _Advice Gratis_ satirically depicts the lady's altruism in rejecting her lover: It would strike fresh heat in your poet's verse If you dropped some aloes into his wine, They write supremely under a curse.] There is danger, of course, that the disillusionment produced by the revelation of low ideals which the lady makes in her refusal will counterbalance these good effects. Still, though the poet is so egotistical toward all the world beside, in his attitude toward his lady the humility which Emerson expresses in _The Sphinx_ is not without parallel in verse. Many singers follow him in his belief that the only worthy love is that for a being so superior that a return of love is impossible. [Footnote: See _The Sphinx_-- Have I a lover who is noble and free? I would he were nobler than to love me. See also Walt Whitman, _Sometimes with One I Love_, and Mrs. Browning, "I never thought that anyone whom I could love would stoop to love me--the two things seemed clearly incompatible." Letter to Robert Browning, December 24, 1845.] To poets who do not subscribe to Emerson's belief in one-sided attachments, Alexander Smith's _A Life Drama_ is a treasury of suggestions as to devices by which the poet's lady may be kept at sufficient distance to be useful. With the aid of intercalations Smith exhibits the poet removed from his lady by scornful rejection, by parental restraint, by an unhappy marriage, by self-reproach, and by death. All these devices have been popular in our poetry. The lady's marriage is seldom felt to be an insuperable barrier to love, though it is effective in removing her to a suitable distance for idealization. The poet's worship is so supersensual as to be inoffensive. To confine ourselves to poetic dramas treating historical poets,--Beatrice,[Footnote: G. L. Raymond's and S. K. Wiley's dramas, _Dante_, and _Dante and Beatrice_.] Laura, [Footnote: Cale Young Rice, _A Night in Avignon_.] Vittoria Colonna, [Footnote: Longfellow, _Michael Angelo_.] and Alison [Footnote: Peabody, _Marlowe_.] are all married to one man while inspiring another. A characteristic autobiographical love poem of this type, is that of Francis Thompson, who asserts the ideality of the poet's affection in his reference to This soul which on thy soul is laid, As maid's breast upon breast of maid. [Footnote: See also _Ad Amicam_, _Her Portrait_, _Manus Animon Pinxit_.] There is no other barrier that so elevates love as does death. Translation of love into Platonic idealism is then almost inevitable. Alexander Smith describes the change accomplished by the death of the poet's sweetheart: Two passions dwelt at once within his soul, Like eve and sunset dwelling in one sky. And as the sunset dies along the west, Eve higher lifts her front of trembling stars Till she is seated in the middle sky, So gradual one passion slowly died And from its death the other drew fresh life, Until 'twas seated in the soul alone, The dead was love, the living, poetry. The mystic merging of Beatrice into ideal beauty is, of course, mentioned often in nineteenth century poetry, most sympathetically, perhaps, by Rossetti. [Footnote: See _On the Vita Nuova of Dante_; also _Dante at Verona_.] Much the same kind of translation is described in _Vane's Story_, by James Thomson, B.V., which appears to be a sort of mystic autobiography. The ascent in love for beauty, as Plato describes it, [Footnote: _Symposium._] might be expected to mark at every step an increase of poetic power, as it leads one from the individual beauties of sense to absolute, supersensual beauty. But it is extremely doubtful if this increase in poetic power is achieved when our poets try to take the last step, and rely for their inspiration upon a lover's passion for disembodied, purely ideal beauty. The lyric power of such love has, indeed, been celebrated by a recent poet. George Edward Woodberry, in his sonnet sequence, _Ideal Passion_, thus exalts his mistress, the abstract idea of beauty, above the loves of other poets: Dante and Petrarch all unenvied go From star to star, upward, all heavens above, The grave forgot, forgot the human woe. Though glorified, their love was human love, One unto one; a greater love I know. But very few of our poets have felt their genius burning at its brightest when they have eschewed the sensuous embodiment of their love. Plato might point out that he intended his theory of progression in love as a description of the development of the philosopher, not of the poet, who, as a base imitator of sense, has not a pure enough soul to soar very high away from it. But our writers have been able partially to vindicate poets by pointing out that Dante was able to travel the whole way toward absolute beauty, and to sublimate his perceptions to supersensual fineness without losing their poetic tone. Nineteenth and twentieth century writers may modestly assert that it is the fault of their inadequacy to represent poetry, and not a fault in the poetic character as such, that accounts for the tameness of their most idealistic verse. However this may be, one notes a tendency in much purely idealistic and philosophical love poetry to present us with a mere skeleton of abstraction. Part of this effect may be the reader's fault, of course. Plato assures us that the harmonies of mathematics are more ravishing than the harmonies of music to the pure spirit, but many of us must take his word for it; in the same way it may be that when we fail to appreciate certain celebrations of ideal love it is because of our "muddy vesture of decay" which hinders our hearing its harmonies. Within the last one hundred and fifty years three notable attempts, of widely varying success, have been made to write a purely philosophical love poem.[Footnote: Keats' _Endymion_ is not discussed here, though it seems to have much in common with the philosophy of the _Symposium_. See Sidney Colvin, _John Keats_, pp. 160ff.] Bulwer Lytton's _Milton_ was, if one may believe the press notices, the most favorably received of his poems, but it is a signal example of aspiring verse that misses both the sensuous beauty of poetry, and the intellectual content of philosophy. Milton is portrayed as the life-long lover of an incarnation of beauty too attenuated to be human and too physical to be purely ideal. At first Milton devotes himself to this vision exclusively, but, hearing the call of his country in distress, he abandons her, and their love is not suffered to culminate till after death. Bulwer Lytton cites the _Phædrus_ of Plato as the basis of his allegory, reminding us, The Athenian guessed that when our souls descend From some lost realm (sad aliens here to be), Dim broken memories of the state before, Form what we call our reason... ... Is not Love, Of all those memories which to parent skies Mount struggling back--(as to their source, above, In upward showers, imprisoned founts arise:) Oh, is not Love the strongest and the clearest? Greater importance attaches to a recent treatment of the theme by George Edward Woodberry. His poem, _Agathon_, dealing with the young poet of Plato's _Symposium_, is our most literal interpretation of Platonism. Agathon is sought out by the god of love, Eros, who is able to realize his divinity only through the perfection of man's love of beauty. He chooses Agathon as the object of instruction because Agathon is a poet, one of those Whose eyes were more divinely touched In that long-memoried world whence souls set forth. As the poem opens, Agathon is in the state of the favorite poet of nineteenth century imagination, loving, yet discontented with, the beauty of the senses. To Diotima, the wise woman of the _Symposium_, he expresses his unhappiness: Still must I mourn That every lovely thing escapes the heart Even in the moment of its cherishing. Eros appears and promises Agathon that if he will accept his love, he may find happiness in eternal beauty, and his poetical gift will be ennobled: Eros I am, the wooer of men's hearts. Unclasp thy lips; yield me thy close embrace; So shall thy thoughts once more to heaven climb, Their music linger here, the joy of men. Agathon resolves to cleave to him, but at this point Anteros, corresponding to Plato's Venus Pandemos, enters into rivalry with Eros for Agathon's love. He shows the poet a beautiful phantom, who describes the folly of one who devotes himself to spiritual love: The waste desire be his, and sightless fate, Him light shall not revisit; late he knows The love that mates the heaven weds the grave. Agathon starts to embrace her, but seeing in her face the inevitable decay of sensual beauty, he recoils, crying, In its fiery womb I saw The twisted serpent ringing woe obscene, And far it lit the pitchy ways of hell. In an agony of horror and contrition, he recalls Eros, who expounds to him how love, beginning with sensuous beauty, leads one to ideality: Let not dejection on thy heart take hold That nature hath in thee her sure effects, And beauty wakes desire. Should Daphne's eyes, Leucothea's arms, and clinging white caress, The arch of Thetis' brows, be made in vain? But, he continues, In fair things There is another vigor, flowing forth From heavenly fountains, the glad energy That broke on chaos, and the outward rush Of the eternal mind;... ... Hence the poet's eye That mortal sees, creates immortally The hero more than men, not more than man, The type prophetic. Agathon, in an ecstasy of comprehension, chants the praises of love which Plato puts into his mouth in the _Symposium_. In conclusion, Urania sums up the mystery of love and genius: For truth divine is life, not love, Creative truth, and evermore Fashions the object of desire Through love that breathes the spirit's fire. We may fittingly conclude a discussion of the poet as lover with the _Epipsychidion_, not merely because it is the most idealistic of the interpretations of Platonic love given by nineteenth century poets, but because by virtue of the fact that it describes Shelley's personal experience, it should be most valuable in revealing the attitude toward love of one possessing the purest of poetic gifts. [Footnote: Treatment of this theme is foreshadowed in _Alastor_.] The prominence given to Shelley's earthly loves in this poem has led J. A. Symonds to deny that it is truly Platonic. He remarks, While Shelley's doctrine in _Epipsychidion_ seems Platonic, it will not square with the _Symposium_.... When a man has formed a just conception of universal beauty, he looks back with a smile on those who find their soul's sphere in the love of some mere mortal object. Tested by this standard, Shelley's identification of Intellectual Beauty with so many daughters of earth, and his worshipping love of Emilia, is spurious Platonism.[Footnote: _Shelley_, p. 142.] Perhaps this failure to break altogether with the physical is precisely the distinction between the love of the poet and the love of the philosopher with whom Plato is concerned. I do not believe that the Platonism of this poem is intrinsically spurious; the conception of Emilia seems to be intended simply as a poetic personification of abstract beauty, but it is undeniable that at times this vision does not mean abstract beauty to Shelley at all, but the actual Emilia Viviani. He has protested against this judgment, "The _Epipsychidion_ is a mystery; as to real flesh and blood, you know that I do not deal with those articles." The revulsion of feeling that turned him away from Emilia, however, taught him how much of his feeling for her had entered into the poem, so that, in June, 1822, Shelley wrote, The _Epipsychidion_ I cannot bear to look at. I think one is always in love with something or other; the error, and I confess it is not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it, consists in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is perhaps eternal. Shelley begins his spiritual autobiography with his early mystical intuition of the existence of spiritual beauty, which is to be the real object of his love throughout life. By Plato, of course, this love is made prenatal. Shelley says, She met me, robed in such exceeding glory That I beheld her not. As this vision was totally disjoined from earthly objects, it won the soul away from all interest in life. Therefore Shelley says, She met me, Stranger, upon life's rough way And lured me towards sweet death. This early vision passed away, however, Into the dreary cone of our life's shade. This line is evidently Shelley's Platonic fashion of referring to the obscurity of this life as compared to the world of ideas. As the vision has embodied itself in this world, it is only through love of its concrete manifestations that the soul may regain it. When it is regained, it will not be, as in the beginning, a momentary intuition, but an abiding presence in the soul. The first step toward this goal was a mistaken one. Shelley describes his marriage with Harriet as a yielding to the senses merely, in other words, as slavery to the Venus Pandemos. He describes this false vision, Whose voice was venomed melody. * * * * * The breath of her false mouth was like sweet flowers, Her touch was as electric poison. Shelley was more successful in his second love, for Mary, whom he calls the "cold, chaste moon." The danger of this stage in the ascent toward beauty is that one is likely to be content with the fragmentary glimpse of beauty gained through the loved one, and by losing sight of its other embodiments fail to aspire to more complete vision. So Shelley says of this period, "I was laid asleep, spirit and limb." By a great effort, however, the next step was taken,--the agonizing one of breaking away from the bondage of this individual, in order that beauty in all its forms may appeal to one. Shelley writes, What storms then shook the ocean of my sleep, Blotting that moon, whose pale and waning lips Then shrank as in the sickness of eclipse. Finally, the dross of its earthly embodiments being burned away by this renunciation, ideal beauty is revealed to the poet, not merely in a flash of inspiration, as at the beginning of his quest, but as an abiding presence in the soul. At least this is the ideal, but, being a poet, Shelley cannot claim the complete merging with the ideal that the philosopher possesses. At the supersensual consummation of his love, Shelley sinks back, only half conceiving of it, and cries, Woe is me! The winged words on which my soul would pierce Into the height of Love's rare universe Are chains of lead around its flight of fire; I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire. CHAPTER IV THE SPARK FROM HEAVEN Dare we venture into the holy of holies, where the gods are said to come upon the poet? Is there not danger that the divine spark which kindles his song may prove a bolt to annihilate us, because of our presumptuous intrusion? What voice is this, which meets us at the threshold? Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes in holy dread-- It is Coleridge, warning us of our peril, if we remain open-eyed and curious, trying to surprise the secret of the poet's visitation. Yet are we not tolerably safe? We are under the guidance of an initiate; the poet himself promises to unveil the mystery of his inspiration for us. As Vergil kept Dante unscathed by the flames of the divine vision, will not our poet protect us? Let us enter. But another doubt, a less thrilling one, bids us pause. Is it indeed the heavenly mystery that we are bid gaze upon, or are we to be the dupe of self-deceived impostors? Our intimacy is with poets of the last two centuries,--not the most inspired period in the history of poetry. And in the ranks of our multitudinous verse-writers, it is not the most prepossessing who are loudest in promising us a fair spectacle. How harsh-voiced and stammering are some of these obscure apostles who are offering to exhibit the entire mystery of their gift of tongues! We see more impressive figures, to be sure. Here is the saturnine Poe, who with contemptuous smile assures us that we are welcome to all the secrets of his creative frenzies. Here is our exuberant Walt Whitman, crying, "Stop this day and night with me, and you shall possess the origin of all poems." [Footnote: _Song of Myself_.] But though we scan every face twice, we find here no Shakespeare promising us the key to creation of a _Hamlet_. Still, is it not well to follow a forlorn hope? Among the less vociferous, here are singers whose faces are alight with a mysterious radiance. Though they promise us little, saying that they themselves are blinded by the transcendent vision, so that they appear as men groping in darkness, yet may they not unawares afford us some glimpse of their transfiguration? If we refuse the poet's revelation, we have no better way of arriving at the truth. The scientist offers us little in this field; and his account of inspiration is as cold and comfortless as a chemical formula. Of course the scientist is amused by this objection to him, and asks, "What more do you expect from the effusions of poets? Will not whatever secret they reveal prove an open one? What will it profit you to learn that the milk of Paradise nourishes the poetic gift, since it is not handled by an earthly dairy?" But when he speaks thus, our scientific friend is merely betraying his ignorance regarding the nature of poetry. Longinus, [Footnote: _On the Sublime,_ I.] and after him, Sidney, [Footnote: _Apology for Poetry._] long ago pointed out its peculiar action, telling us that it is the poet's privilege to make us partakers of his ecstasy. So, if the poet describes his creative impulses, why should he not make us sharers of them? This is not an idle question, for surely Plato, that involuntary poet, has had just this effect upon his readers. Have not his pictures, in the _Phaedrus_ and the _Ion_, of the artist's ecstasy touched Shelley and the lesser Platonic poets of our time with the enthusiasm he depicts? Incidentally, the figure of the magnet which Plato uses in the Ion may arouse hope in the breasts of us, the humblest readers of Shelley and Woodberry. For as one link gives power of suspension to another, so that a ring which is not touched by the magnet is yet thrilled with its force, so one who is out of touch with Plato's supernal melodies, may be sensitized by the virtue imparted to his nineteenth century disciples, who are able to "temper this planetary music for mortal ears." Let us not lose heart, at the beginning of our investigation, though our greatest poets admit that they themselves have not been able to keep this creative ecstasy for long. To be sure this is disillusioning. We should prefer to think of their silent intervals as times of insight too deep for expression; as Anna Branch phrases it, When they went Unto the fullness of their great content Like moths into the grass with folded wings. [Footnote: _The Silence of the Poets._] This pleasing idea has been fostered in us by poems of appeal to silent singers. [Footnote: See Swinburne, _A Ballad of Appeal to Christina Rossetti_; and Francis Thompson, _To a Poet Breaking Silence_.] But we have manifold confessions that it is not commonly thus with the non-productive poet. Not merely do we possess many requiems sung by erst-while makers over their departed gift, [Footnote: See especially Scott, _Farewell to the Muse_; Kirke White, _Hushed is the Lyre_; Landor, _Dull is My Verse_, and _To Wordsworth_; James Thomson, B. V., _The Fire that Filled My Heart of Old_, and _The Poet and the Muse_; Joaquin Miller, _Vale_; Andrew Lang, _The Poet's Apology_; Francis Thompson, _The Cloud's Swan Song_.] but there is much verse indicating that, even in the poet's prime, his genius is subject to a mysterious ebb and flow. [Footnote: See Burns, _Second Epistle to Lapraik_; Keats, _To My Brother George_; Winthrop Mackworth Praed, _Letter from Eaton_; William Cullen Bryant, _The Poet_; Oliver Wendell Holmes, _Invita Minerva_; Emerson, _The Poet, Merlin_; James Gates Percival, _Awake My Lyre_, _Invocation_; J. H. West, _To the Muse_, _After Silence_; Robert Louis Stevenson, _The Laureate to an Academy Class Dinner_; Alice Meynell, _To one Poem in Silent Time_; Austin Dobson, _A Garden Idyl_; James Stevens, _A Reply_; Richard Middleton, _The Artist_; Franklin Henry Giddings, _Song_; Benjamin R. C. Low, _Inspiration_; Robert Haven Schauffler, _The Wonderful Hour_; Henry A. Beers, _The Thankless Muse_; Karl Wilson Baker, _Days_.] Though he has faith that he is not "widowed of his muse," [Footnote: See Francis Thompson, _The Cloud's Swan Song_.] she yet torments him with all the ways of a coquette, so that he sadly assures us his mistress "is sweet to win, but bitter to keep." [Footnote: C. G. Roberts, _Ballade of the Poet's Thought_.] The times when she solaces him may be pitifully infrequent. Rossetti, musing over Coleridge, says that his inspired moments were Like desert pools that show the stars Once in long leagues. [Footnote: _Sonnet to Coleridge_.] Yet, even so, upon such moments of insight rest all the poet's claims for his superior personality. It is the potential greatness enabling him at times to have speech with the gods that makes the rest of his life sacred. Emerson is more outspoken than most poets; he is not perhaps at variance with their secret convictions, when he describes himself: I, who cower mean and small In the frequent interval When wisdom not with me resides. [Footnote: _The Poet_.] However divine the singer considers himself in comparison with ordinary humanity, he must admit that at times Discrowned and timid, thoughtless, worn, The child of genius sits forlorn, * * * * * A cripple of God, half-true, half-formed. [Footnote: Emerson, _The Poet_. See also George Meredith, _Pegasus_.] Like Dante, we seem disposed to faint at every step in our revelation. Now a doubt crosses our minds whether the child of genius in his crippled moments is better fitted than the rest of us to point out the pathway to sacred enthusiasm. It appears that little verse describing the poet's afflatus is written when the gods are actually with him. In this field, the sower sows by night. Verse on inspiration is almost always retrospective or theoretical in character. It seems as if the intermittence of his inspiration filled the poet with a wistful curiosity as to his nature in moments of soaring. By continual introspection he is seeking the charm, so to speak, that will render his afflatus permanent. The rigidity in much of such verse surely betrays, not the white heat of genius, but a self-conscious attitude of readiness for the falling of the divine spark. One wonders whether such preparation has been of much value in hastening the fire from heaven. Often the reader is impatient to inform the loud-voiced suppliant that Baal has gone a-hunting. Yet it is alleged that the most humble bribe has at times sufficed to capture the elusive divinity. Schiller's rotten apples are classic, and Emerson lists a number of tested expedients, from a pound of tea to a night in a strange hotel. [Footnote: See the essay on Inspiration. Hazlitt says Coleridge liked to compose walking over uneven ground or breaking through straggling branches.] This, however, is Emerson in a singularly flat-footed moment. The real poet scoffs at such suggestions. Instead, he feels that it is not for him to know the times and seasons of his powers. Indeed, it seems to him, sometimes, that pure contrariety marks the god's refusal to come when entreated. Thus we are told of the god of song, Vainly, O burning poets! Ye wait for his inspiration. * * * * * Hasten back, he will say, hasten back To your provinces far away! There, at my own good time Will I send my answer to you. [Footnote: E. C. Stedman, _Apollo_. _The Hillside Door_ by the same author also expresses this idea. See also Browning, _Old Pictures in Florence_, in which he speaks "of a gift God gives me now and then." See also Longfellow, _L'Envoi_; Keats, _On Receiving a Laurel Crown_; Cale Young Rice, _New Dreams for Old_; Fiona Macleod, _The Founts of Song_.] Then, at the least expected moment, the fire may fall, so that the poet is often filled with naïve wonder at his own ability. Thus Alice Meynell greets one of her poems, Who looked for thee, thou little song of mine? This winter of a silent poet's heart Is suddenly sweet with thee, but what thou art, Mid-winter flower, I would I could divine. But if the poet cannot predict the time of his afflatus, he indicates that he does know the attitude of mind which will induce it. In certain quarters there is a truly Biblical reliance upon faith as bringer of the gift. A minor writer assures us, "Ah, if we trust, comes the song!" [Footnote: Richard Burton, _Singing Faith_.] Emerson says, The muses' hill by fear is guarded; A bolder foot is still rewarded. [Footnote: _The Poet_.] And more extreme is the counsel of Owen Meredith to the aspiring artist: The genius on thy daily walks Shall meet, and take thee by the hand; But serve him not as who obeys; He is thy slave if thou command. [Footnote: _The Artist_.] The average artist is probably inclined to quarrel with this last high-handed treatment of the muse. Reverent humility rather than arrogance characterizes the most effectual appeals for inspiration. The faith of the typical poet is not the result of boldness, but of an aspiration so intense that it entails forgetfulness of self. Thus one poet accounts for his inspired hour: Purged with high thoughts and infinite desire I entered fearless the most holy place; Received between my lips the sacred fire, The breath of inspiration on my face. [Footnote: C. G. Roberts, _Ave_.] Another writer stresses the efficacy of longing no less strongly; speaking of The unsatiated, insatiable desire Which at once mocks and makes all poesy. [Footnote: William Alexander, _The Finding of the Book_. See also Edward Dowden, _The Artist's Waiting_.] There is nothing new in this. It is only what the poet has implied in all his confessions. Was he inspired by love? It was because thwarted love filled him with intensest longing. So with his thirst for purity, for religion, for worldly vanities. Any desire, be it fierce enough, and hindered from immediate satisfaction, may engender poetry. As Joyce Kilmer phrases it, Nothing keeps a poet In his high singing mood, Like unappeasable hunger For unattainable food. [Footnote: _Apology_.] But the poet would not have us imagine that we have here sounded the depths of the mystery. Aspiration may call down inspiration, but it is not synonymous with it. Mrs. Browning is fond of pointing out this distinction. In _Aurora Leigh_ she reminds us, "Many a fervid man writes books as cold and flat as gravestones." In the same poem she indicates that desire is merely preliminary to inspiration. There are, she says, Two states of the recipient artist-soul; One forward, personal, wanting reverence, Because aspiring only. We'll be calm, And know that when indeed our Joves come down, We all turn stiller than we have ever been. What is this mysterious increment, that must be added to aspiration before it becomes poetically creative? So far as a mere layman can understand it, it is a sudden arrest, rather than a satisfaction, of the poet's longing, for genuine satisfaction would kill the aspiration, and leave the poet heavy and phlegmatic. Inspiration, on the contrary, seems to give him a fictitious satisfaction; it is an arrest of his desire that affords him a delicate poise and repose, on tiptoe, so to speak. [Footnote: Compare Coleridge's statement that poetry is "a more than usual state of emotion with more than usual order." _Biographia Literaria_, Vol. II, Chap. I, p. 14, ed. Henry Nelson Coleridge.] Does not the fact that inspiration works in this manner account for the immemorial connection of poetic creativeness with Bacchic frenzy? To the aspiring poet wine does not bring his mistress, nor virtue, nor communion with God, nor any object of his longing. Yet it does bring a sudden ease to his craving. So, wherever there is a romantic conception of poetry, one is apt to find inspiration compared to intoxication. Such an idea did not, of course, find favor among typical eighteenth century writers. Indeed, they would have seen more reason in ascribing their clear-witted verse to an ice-pack, than to the bibulous hours preceding its application to the fevered brow. We must wait for William Blake before we can expect Bacchus to be reinstated among the gods of song. Blake does not disappoint us, for we find his point of view expressed, elegantly enough, in his comment on artists, "And when they are drunk, they always paint best." [Footnote: _Artist Madmen: On the Great Encouragement Given by the English Nobility and Gentry to Correggio, etc_.] As the romantic movement progresses, one meets with more lyrical expositions of the power in strong drink. Burns, especially, is never tired of sounding its praise. He exclaims, There's naething like the honest nappy. * * * * * I've seen me daist upon a time I scarce could wink or see a styme; Just ae half mutchkin does me prime; Aught less is little, Then back I rattle with the rhyme As gleg's a whittle. [Footnote: _The First Epistle to Lapraik_.] Again he assures us, But browster wives and whiskey stills, They are my muses. [Footnote: _The Third Epistle to Lapraik_.] Then, in more exalted mood: O thou, my Muse, guid auld Scotch drink! Whether through wimplin' worms thou jink, Or, richly brown, ream o'er the brink In glorious faem, Inspire me, till I lisp and wink To sing thy name. [Footnote: _Scotch Drink_.] Keats enthusiastically concurs in Burns' statements. [Footnote: See the _Sonnet on the Cottage Where Burns Was Born_, and _Lines on the Mermaid Tavern_.] Landor, also, tells us meaningly, Songmen, grasshoppers and nightingales Sing cheerily but when the throat is moist. [Footnote: _Homer_; _Laertes_; _Agatha_.] James Russell Lowell, in _The Temptation of Hassan Khaled_, presents the argument of the poet's tempters with charming sympathy: The vine is nature's poet: from his bloom The air goes reeling, typsy with perfume, And when the sun is warm within his blood It mounts and sparkles in a crimson flood, Rich with dumb songs he speaks not, till they find Interpretation in the poet's mind. If wine be evil, song is evil too. His _Bacchic Ode_ is full of the same enthusiasm. Bacchus received his highest honors at the end of the last century from the decadents in England. Swinburne, [Footnote: See _Burns_.] Lionel Johnson,[Footnote: See _Vinum Daemonum_.] Ernest Dowson, [Footnote: See _A Villanelle of the Poet's Road_.] and Arthur Symonds, [Footnote: See _A Sequence to Wine_.] vied with one another in praising inebriety as a lyrical agent. Even the sober Watts-Dunton [Footnote: See _A Toast to Omar Khayyam_.] was drawn into the contest, and warmed to the theme. Poetry about the Mermaid Inn is bound to take this tone. From Keats [Footnote: See _Lines on the Mermaid Inn_.] to Josephine Preston Peabody [Footnote: See _Marlowe_.] writers on the Elizabethan dramatists have dwelt upon their conviviality. This aspect is especially stressed by Alfred Noyes, who imagines himself carried back across the centuries to become the Ganymede of the great poets. All of the group keep him busy. In particular he mentions Jonson: And Ben was there, Humming a song upon the old black settle, "Or leave a kiss within the cup And I'll not ask for wine," But meanwhile, he drank malmsey. [Footnote: _Tales of the Mermaid Inn_.] Fortunately for the future of American verse, there is another side to the picture. The teetotaler poet is by no means non-existent in the last century. Wordsworth takes pains to refer to himself as "a simple, water-drinking bard," [Footnote: See _The Waggoner_.] and in lines _To the Sons of Burns_ he delivers a very fine prohibition lecture. Tennyson offers us _Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue, a reductio ad absurdum_ of the claims of the bibulous bard. Then, lest the temperance cause lack the support of great names, Longfellow causes the title character of _Michael Angelo_ to inform us that he "loves not wine," while, more recently, E. A. Robinson pictures Shakespeare's inability to effervesce with his comrades, because, Ben Jonson confides to us, Whatso he drinks that has an antic in it, He's wondering what's to pay on his insides. [Footnote: _Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford_. See also Poe's letter, April 1, 1841, to Snodgrass, on the unfortunate results of his intemperance.] No, the poet will not allow us to take his words too seriously, lest we drag down Apollo to the level of Bacchus. In spite of the convincing realism in certain eulogies, it is clear that to the poet, as to the convert at the eucharist, wine is only a symbol of a purely spiritual ecstasy. But if intoxication is only a figure of speech, it is a significant one, and perhaps some of the other myths describing the poet's sensations during inspiration may put us on the trail of its meaning. Of course, in making such an assumption, we are precisely like the expounder of Plato's myths, who is likely to say, "Here Plato was attempting to shadow forth the inexpressible. Now listen, and I will explain exactly what he meant." Notwithstanding, we must proceed. The device of Chaucer's _House of Fame_, wherein the poet is carried to celestial realms by an eagle, occasionally occurs to the modern poet as an account of his _Aufschwung_. Thus Keats, in _Lines to Apollo_, avers, Aye, when the soul is fled Too high above our head, Affrighted do we gaze After its airy maze As doth a mother wild When her young infant child Is in an eagle's claws. "Poetry, my life, my eagle!" [Footnote: _Aurora Leigh_.] cries Mrs. Browning, likening herself to Ganymede, ravished from his sheep to the summit of Olympus. The same attitude is apparent in most of her poems, for Mrs. Browning, in singing mood, is precisely like a child in a swing, shouting with delight at every fresh sensation of soaring. [Footnote: See J. G. Percival, _Genius Awaking_, for the same figure.] Again, the crash of the poet's inspiration upon his ordinary modes of thought is compared to "fearful claps of thunder," by Keats [Footnote: See _Sleep and Poetry_.] and others. [Footnote: See _The Master_, A. E. Cheney.] Or, more often, his moment of sudden insight seems a lightning flash upon the dark ways in which he is ordinarily groping. Keats says that his early visions were seen as through a rift of sheet lightning. [Footnote: See _The Epistle to George Keats_.] Emerson's impression is the same; visions come "as if life were a thunderstorm wherein you can see by a flash the horizon, and then cannot see your hand." [Footnote: _Essay on Inspiration_.] Likewise Alexander Smith declares, Across the midnight sea of mind A thought comes streaming like a blazing ship Upon a mighty wind, A terror and a glory! Shocked with light, His boundless being glares aghast. [Footnote: _A Life Drama_.] Perhaps this is a true expression of the poet's feelings during the deepest inspiration, yet we are minded of Elijah's experience with the wind and the fire and the still small voice. So we cannot help sympathizing with Browning's protest against "friend Naddo's" view that genius is a matter of bizarre and grandiose sensations. [Footnote: _Sordello_.] At least it is pleasant to find verse, by minor writers though it be, describing the quietude and naturalness of the poet's best moments. Thus Holmes tells us of his inspiration: Soft as the moonbeams when they sought Endymion's fragrant bower, She parts the whispering leaves of thought To show her full-leaved flower. [Footnote: _Invita Minerva_.] Edwin Markham says, She comes like the hush and beauty of the night. [Footnote: _Poetry_.] And Richard Watson Gilder's mood is the same: How to the singer comes his song? How to the summer fields Come flowers? How yields Darkness to happy dawn? How doth the night Bring stars? [Footnote: _How to the Singer Comes His Song?_] Various as are these accounts which poets give of their inspired moments, all have one point in common, since they indicate that in such moments the poet is wholly passive. His thought is literally given to him. Edward Dowden, in a sonnet, _Wise Passiveness_, says this plainly: Think you I choose or that or this to sing? I lie as patient as yon wealthy stream Dreaming among green fields its summer dream, Which takes whate'er the gracious hours will bring Into its quiet bosom. To the same effect is a somewhat prosaic poem, _Accident in Art_, by Richard Hovey. He inquires, What poet has not found his spirit kneeling A sudden at the sound of such or such Strange verses staring from his manuscript, Written, he knows not how, but which will sound Like trumpets down the years. Doubtless it is a very natural result of his resignation to this creative force that one of the poet's profoundest sensations during his afflatus should be that of reverence for his gift. Longfellow and Wordsworth sometimes speak as if the composition of their poems were a ceremony comparable to high mass. At times one must admit that verse describing such an attitude has a charm of its own. [Footnote: Compare Browning's characterization of the afflatus of Eglamor in _Sordello_, Book II.] In _The Song-Tree_ Alfred Noyes describes his first sensation as a conscious poet: The first note that I heard, A magical undertone, Was sweeter than any bird --Or so it seemed to me-- And my tears ran wild. This tale, this tale is true. The light was growing gray, And the rhymes ran so sweet (For I was only a child) That I knelt down to pray. But our sympathy with this little poet would not be nearly so intense were he twenty years older. When it is said of a mature poetess, She almost shrank To feel the secret and expanding might Of her own mind, [Footnote: _The Last Hours of a Young Poetess_, Lucy Hooper.] the reader does not always remain in a sympathetically prayerful mind. Such reverence paid by the poet to his gift calls to mind the multiple Miss Beauchamp, of psychologic fame, and her comment on the vagaries of her various personalities, "But after all, they are all me!" Too often, when the poet is kneeling in adoration of his Muse, the irreverent reader is likely to suspect that he realizes, only too well, that it is "all me." However, if the Philistine reader sets up as a critic, he must make good his charges. Have we any real grounds for declaring that the alleged divinity who inspires the poet is merely his own intelligence, or lack of it? Perhaps not. And yet the dabbler in psychology finds a good deal to indicate the poet's impression that the "subconscious" is shaping his verse. Shelley was especially fascinated by the mysterious regions of his mind lying below the threshold of his ordinary thought. In fact, some of his prose speculations are in remarkable sympathy with recent scientific papers on the subject. [Footnote: See _Speculations on Metaphysics_, Works, Vol. VI, p. 282, edited by Buxton Forman.] And in _Mont Blanc_ he expresses his wonder at the phenomenon of thought: The everlasting universe of things Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, Now dark--now glittering--now reflecting gloom-- Now lending splendor, where from secret springs The source of human thought its tribute brings Of waters. Again, in _The Defense of Poetry_ he says, The mind in creation is a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within, like the color of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our nature are unprophetic either of its approach or departure. Wordsworth, too, thinks of his gift as arising from the depths of his mind, which are not subject to conscious control. He apprises us, A plastic power Abode with me, a forming hand, at times Rebellious, acting in a devious mood, A local spirit of its own, at war With general tendency, but for the most Subservient strictly to external things With which it communed. An auxiliary light Came from my mind which on the setting sun Bestowed new splendor-- [Footnote: _The Prelude_.] Occasionally the sudden lift of these submerged ideas to consciousness is expressed by the figure of an earthquake. Aurora Leigh says that upon her first impulse to write, her nature was shaken, As the earth Plunges in fury, when the internal fires Have reached and pricked her heart, and throwing flat The marts and temples, the triumphal gates And towers of observation, clears herself To elemental freedom. We have a grander expression of the idea from Robert Browning, who relates how the vision of _Sordello_ arises to consciousness: Upthrust, out-staggering on the world, Subsiding into shape, a darkness rears Its outline, kindles at the core--. Is this to say that the poet's intuitions, apparently so sudden, have really been long germinating in the obscure depths of his mind? Then it is in tune with the idea, so prevalent in English verse, that in sleep a mysterious undercurrent of imaginative power becomes accessible to the poet. "Ever when slept the poet his dreams were music," [Footnote: _The Poet's Sleep_.] says Richard Gilder, and the line seems trite to us. There was surely no reason why Keats' title, _Sleep and Poetry_, should have appeared ludicrous to his critics, for from the time of Caedmon onward English writers have been sensitive to a connection here. The stereotyped device of making poetry a dream vision, so popular in the middle ages,--and even the prominence of _Night Thoughts_ in eighteenth century verse--testify that a coupling of poetry and sleep has always seemed natural to poets. Coleridge, [Footnote: See his account of the composition of _Kubla Khan_.] Keats, Shelley, [Footnote: See _Alastor_, and _Prince Athanase_. See also Edmund Gosse, _Swinburne_, p. 29, where Swinburne says he produced the first three stanzas of _A Vision of Spring_ in his sleep.]--it is the romanticists who seem to have depended most upon sleep as bringer of inspiration. And once more, it is Shelley who shows himself most keenly aware that, asleep or waking, the poet feels his afflatus coming in the same manner. Thus he tells us of the singer in _Prince Athanase:_ And through his sleep, and o'er each waking hour Thoughts after thoughts, unresting multitudes, Were driven within him by some secret power Which bade them blaze, and live, and roll afar, Like lights and sounds, from haunted tower to tower. Probably our jargon of the subconscious would not much impress poets, even those whom we have just quoted. Is this the only cause we can give, Shelley might ask, why the poet should not reverence his gift as something apart from himself and truly divine? If, after the fashion of modern psychology, we denote by the subconscious mind only the welter of myriad forgotten details of our daily life, what is there here to account for poesy? The remote, inaccessible chambers of our mind may, to be sure, be more replete with curious lumber than those continually swept and garnished for everyday use, yet, even so, there is nothing in any memory, as such, to account for the fact that poetry reveals things to us above and beyond any of our actual experiences in this world. Alchemist Memory turned his past to gold, [Footnote: _A Life Drama._] says Alexander Smith of his poet, and as an account of inspiration, the line sounds singularly flat. There is nothing here to distinguish the poet from any octogenarian dozing in his armchair. Is Memory indeed the only Muse? Not unless she is a far grander figure than we ordinarily suppose. Of course she has been exalted by certain artists. There is Richard Wagner, with his definition of art as memory of one's past youth, or--to stay closer home--Wordsworth, with his theory of poetry as emotion recollected in tranquillity,--such artists have a high regard for memory. Still, Oliver Wendell Holmes is tolerably representative of the nineteenth century attitude when he points memory to a second place. It is only the aged poet, conscious that his powers are decaying, to whom Holmes offers the consolation, Live in the past; await no more The rush of heaven-sent wings; Earth still has music left in store While memory sighs and sings. [Footnote: _Invita Minerva_.] But, though he would discourage us from our attempt to chain his genius, like a ghost, to his past life in this world, the poet is inclined to admit that Mnemosyne, in her true grandeur, has a fair claim to her title as mother of the muses. The memories of prosaic men may be, as we have described them, short and sordid, concerned only with their existence here and now, but the recollection of poets is a divine thing, reaching back to the days when their spirits were untrammeled by the body, and they gazed upon ideal beauty, when, as Plato says, they saw a vision and were initiated into the most blessed mysteries ... beholding apparitions innocent and simple and calm and happy as in a mystery; shining in pure light, pure themselves and not yet enshrined in the living tomb which we carry about, now that we are imprisoned in the body, as in an oyster shell. [Footnote: _Phaedrus_, 250.] For the poet is apt to transfer Plato's praise of the philosopher to himself, declaring that "he alone has wings, and this is just, for he is always, according to the measure of his abilities, clinging in recollection to those things in which God abides, and in beholding which He is what He is." [Footnote: _Ibid_., 249.] If the poet exalts memory to this station, he may indeed claim that he is not furtively adoring his own petty powers, when he reverences the visions which Mnemosyne vouchsafes to him. And indeed Plato's account of memory is congenial to many poets. Shelley is probably the most serious of the nineteenth century singers in claiming an ideal life for the soul, before its birth into this world. [Footnote: See _Prince Athanase_. For Matthew Arnold's views, see _Self Deception_.] Wordsworth's adherence to this view is as widely known as the _Ode on Immortality_. As an explanation for inspiration, the theory recurs in verse of other poets. One writer inquires, Are these wild thoughts, thus fettered in my rhymes, Indeed the product of my heart and brain? [Footnote: Henry Timrod, _Sonnet_.] and decides that the only way to account for the occasional gleams of insight in his verse is by assuming a prenatal life for the soul. Another maintains of poetry, Her touch is a vibration and a light From worlds before and after. [Footnote: Edwin Markham, _Poetry_. Another recent poem on prenatal inspiration is _The Dream I Dreamed Before I Was Born_ (1919), by Dorothea Laurence Mann.] Perhaps Alice Meynell's _A Song of Derivations_ is the most natural and unforced of these verses. She muses: ... Mixed with memories not my own The sweet streams throng into my breast. Before this life began to be The happy songs that wake in me Woke long ago, and far apart. Heavily on this little heart Presses this immortality. This poem, however, is not so consistent as the others with the Platonic theory of reminiscence. It is a previous existence in this world, rather than in ideal realms, which Alice Meynell assumes for her inspirations. She continues, I come from nothing, but from where Come the undying thoughts I bear? Down through long links of death and birth, From the past poets of the earth, My immortality is there. Certain singers who seem not to have been affected by the philosophical argument for reminiscence have concurred in Alice Meynell's last statement, and have felt that the mysterious power which is impressing itself in their verse is the genius of dead poets, mysteriously finding expression in their disciple's song. A characteristic example of this attitude is Alfred Noyes' account of Chapman's sensations, when he attempted to complete Marlowe's _Hero and Leander_. Chapman tells his brother poets: I have thought, sometimes, when I have tried To work his will, the hand that moved my pen Was mine and yet--not mine. The bodily mask Is mine, and sometimes dull as clay it sleeps With old Musaeus. Then strange flashes come, Oracular glories, visionary gleams, And the mask moves, not of itself, and sings. [Footnote: _At the Sign of the Golden Shoe_.] The best-known instance of such a belief is, of course, Browning's appeal at the beginning of _The Ring and the Book_, that his dead wife shall inspire his poetry. One is tempted to surmise that many of our young poets, especially have nourished a secret conviction that their genius has such an origin as this. Let there be a deification of some poet who has aroused their special enthusiasm,--a mysterious resemblance to his style in the works which arise in their minds spontaneously, in moments of ecstasy,--what is a more natural result than the assumption that their genius is, in some strange manner, a continuation of his? [Footnote: Keats wrote to Haydn that he took encouragement in the notion of some good genius--probably Shakespeare--presiding over him. Swinburne was often called Shelley reborn.] The tone of certain Shelley worshipers suggests such a hypothesis as an account for their poems. Bayard Taylor seems to be an exception when, after pleading that Shelley infuse his spirit into his disciple's verses, he recalls himself, and concludes: I do but rave, for it is better thus; Were once thy starry nature given to mine, In the one life which would encircle us My voice would melt, my voice be lost in thine; Better to bear the far sublimer pain Of thought that has not ripened into speech. To hear in silence Truth and Beauty sing Divinely to the brain; For thus the poet at the last shall reach His own soul's voice, nor crave a brother's string. [Footnote: _Ode to Shelly._] In the theory that the genius of a past poet may be reincarnated, there is, indeed, a danger that keeps it from appealing to all poets. It tallies too well with the charge of imitativeness, if not downright plagiarism, often brought against a new singer. [Footnote: See Margaret Steele Anderson, _Other People's Wreaths,_ and John Drinkwater, _My Songs._] If the poet feels that his genius comes from a power outside himself, he yet paradoxically insists that it must be peculiarly his own. Therefore Mrs. Browning, through Aurora Leigh, shrinks from the suspicion that her gift may be a heritage from singers before her. She wistfully inquires: My own best poets, am I one with you? . . . When my joy and pain, My thought and aspiration, like the stops Of pipe or flute, are absolutely dumb Unless melodious, do you play on me, My pipers, and if, sooth, you did not play, Would no sound come? Or is the music mine; As a man's voice or breath is called his own, Inbreathed by the life-breather? Are we exaggerating our modern poet's conviction that a spirit not his own is inspiring him? Does he not rather feel self-sufficient as compared with the earlier singers, who expressed such naïve dependence upon the Muse? We have been using the name Muse in this essay merely as a figure of speech, and is this not the poet's usage when he addresses her? The casual reader is inclined to say, yes, that a belief in the Muse is indeed dead. It would be absurd on the face of it, he might say, to expect a belief in this pagan figure to persist after all the rest of the Greek theogony has become a mere literary device to us. This may not be a reliable supposition, since as a matter of fact Milton and Dante impress us as being quite as deeply sincere as Homer, when they call upon the Muse to aid them in their song. But at any rate everyone is conscious that such a belief has degenerated before the eighteenth century. The complacent turner of couplets felt no genuine need for any Muse but his own keen intelligence; accordingly, though the machinery of invocation persists in his poetry, it is as purely an introductory flourish as is the ornamented initial letter of a poem. Indeed, as the century progresses, not even the pose of serious prayer is always kept up. John Hughes is perhaps the most persistent and sober intreater of the Muse whom we find during this period, yet when he compliments the Muse upon her appearance "at Lucinda's tea-table," [Footnote: See _On Lucinda's Tea-table_.] one feels that all awe of her has vanished. It is no wonder that James Thomson, writing verses _On the Death of His Mother_, should disclaim the artificial aid of the muses, saying that his own deep feeling was enough to inspire him. As the romantic movement progressed, it would be easy to show that distaste for the eighteenth century mannerism resulted in more and more flippant treatment of the goddesses. Beattie refers to a contemporary's "reptile Muse, swollen from the sty." [Footnote: See _On a Report of a Monument to a Late Author_.] Burns alludes to his own Muse as a "tapitless ramfeezled hizzie," [Footnote: See the _Epistle to Lapraik_.] and sets the fashion for succeeding writers, who so multiply the original nine that each poet has an individual muse, a sorry sort of guardian-angel, whom he is fond of berating for her lack of ability. One never finds a writer nowadays, with courage to refer to his muse otherwise than apologetically. The usual tone is that of Andrew Lang, when he confesses, apropos of the departure of his poetic gift: 'Twas not much at any time She could hitch into a rhyme, Never was the muse sublime Who has fled. [Footnote: _A Poet's Apology_.] Yet one would be wrong in maintaining that the genuine poet of to-day feels a slighter dependence upon a spirit of song than did the world's earlier singers. There are, of course, certain poetasters now, as always, whose verse is ground out as if by machinery, and who are as little likely to call upon an outside power to aid them as is the horse that treads the cider mill. But among true poets, if the spirit who inspires poesy is a less definitely personified figure than of old, she is no less a sincerely conceived one and reverently worshiped. One doubts if there could be found a poet of merit who would disagree with Shelley's description of poetry as "the inter-penetration of a diviner nature through our own." [Footnote: _Defense of Poetry_.] What is the poet's conception of such a divinity? It varies, of course. There is the occasional belief, just mentioned, in the transmigration of genius, but that goes back, in the end, to the belief that all genius is a memory of pre-existence; that is, dropping (or varying) the myth, that the soul of the poet is not chained to the physical world, but has the power of discerning the things which abide. And this, again, links up with what is perhaps the commonest form of invocation in modern poetry, namely, prayer that God, the spirit of the universe, may inspire the poet. For what does the poet mean when he calls himself the voice of God, but that he is intuitively aware of the eternal verities in the world? Poets who speak in this way ever conceive of God as Shelley did, in what is perhaps the most profoundly sincere invocation of the last century, his _Hymn to Intellectual Beauty_. All poets are idealists. There is yet another view of the spirit who inspires poetry, which may seem more characteristic of our poets than are these others. It is expressed in the opening of Shelley's _Alastor_, and informs the whole of the _Ode to the West Wind_. It pervades Wordsworth, for if he seldom calls upon his natural environment as muse, he is yet profoundly conscious that his song is an inflowing from the heart of nature. This power has become such a familiar divinity to later singers that they are scarcely aware how great is their dependence upon her. There is nothing artificial or in any sense affected in the modern poet's conviction that in walking out to meet nature he is, in fact, going to the source of poetic power. Perhaps nineteenth and twentieth century writers, with their trust in the power of nature to breathe song into their hearts, are closer to the original faith in the muses than most of the poets who have called the sisters by name during the intervening centuries. This deification of nature, like the other modern conceptions of the spirit of song, signifies the poet's need of bringing himself into harmony with the world-spirit, which moulds the otherwise chaotic universe into those forms of harmony and beauty which constitute poetry. Whether the poet ascribes his infilling to a specific goddess of song or to a mysterious harmony between his soul and the world spirit, a coming "into tune with the infinite," as it has been called, the mode of his communion is identical. There is a frenzy of desire so intolerable that it suddenly fails, leaving the poet in trancelike passivity while the revelation is given to him,--ancient and modern writers alike describe the experience thus. And modern poets, no less than ancient ones, feel that, before becoming the channel of world meaning, they must be deprived of their own petty, egocentric thoughts. So Keats avers of the singer, One hour, half-idiot, he stands by mossy waterfall; The next he writes his soul's memorial. [Footnote: _A Visit to Burns' Country_.] So Shelley describes the experience: Meaning on his vacant mind Flashed like strong inspiration. [Footnote: _Alastor_.] The poet is not, he himself avers, merely thinking about things. He becomes one with them. In this sense all poets are pantheists, and the flash of their inspiration means the death of their personal thought, enabling them, like Lucy, to be Rolled round in earth's diurnal course With rocks and stones and trees. Hence the singer has always been called a madman. The modern writer cannot escape Plato's conclusion, There is no invention in him (the poet) until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to this state he is powerless and unable to utter his oracles. [Footnote: _Ion_, §534.] And again, There is a ... kind of madness which is a possession of the Muses; this enters into a delicate and virgin soul, and there inspiring frenzy, awakens lyric and all other numbers.... But he who, not being inspired, and having no touch of madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks he will get into the temple by the help of art, he, I say, and his poetry are not admitted; the sane man is nowhere at all when he enters into rivalry with the madman. [Footnote: _Phaedrus_, § 245.] Even Aristotle, that sanest of philosophers, so far agrees with Plato as to say, Poetry implies either a happy gift of nature, or a strain of madness. In the one case, a man can take the mold of any character; in the other he is lifted out of his proper self. [Footnote: _Poetics_, XVII.] One must admit that poets nowadays are not always so frank as earlier ones in describing their state of mind. Now that the lunatic is no longer placed in the temple, but in the hospital, the popular imputation of insanity to the poet is not always favorably received. Occasionally he regards it as only another unjust charge brought against him by a hostile world. Thus a brother poet has said that George Meredith's lot was Like Lear's--for he had felt the sting Of all too greatly giving The kingdom of his mind to those Who for it deemed him mad. [Footnote: Cale Young Rice, _Meredith_.] In so far as the world's pronouncement is based upon the oracles to which the poet gives utterance, he always repudiates the charge of madness. Such various poets as Jean Ingelow, [Footnote: See _Gladys and Her Island_.] James Thomson, B. V., [Footnote: See _Tasso to Leonora_.] Helen Hunt Jackson, [Footnote: See _The Singer's Hills_.] Alice Gary, [Footnote: See _Genius_.] and George Edward Woodberry, [Footnote: See _He Ate the Laurel and is Mad_.] concur in the judgment that the poet is called insane by the rabble simply because they are blind to the ideal world in which he lives. Like the cave-dwellers of Plato's myth, men resent it when the seer, be he prophet or philosopher, tells them that there are things more real than the shadows on the wall with which they amuse themselves. Not all the writers just named are equally sure that they, rather than the world, are right. The women are thoroughly optimistic. Mr. Woodberry, though he leaves the question, whether the poet's beauty is a delusion, unanswered in the poem where he broaches it, has betrayed his faith in the ideal realms everywhere in his writings. James Thomson, on the contrary, is not at all sure that the world is wrong in its doubt of ideal truth. The tone of his poem, _Tasso and Leonora_, is very gloomy. The Italian poet is shown in prison, reflecting upon his faith in the ideal realms where eternal beauty dwells. He muses, Yes--as Love is truer far Than all other things; so are Life and Death, the World and Time Mere false shows in some great Mime By dreadful mystery sublime. But at the end Tasso's faith is troubled, and he ponders, For were life no flitting dream, Were things truly what they seem, Were not all this world-scene vast But a shade in Time's stream glassed; Were the moods we now display Less phantasmal than the clay In which our poor spirits clad Act this vision, wild and sad, I must be mad, mad,--how mad! However, this is aside from the point. The average poet is as firmly convinced as any philosopher that his visions are true. It is only the manner of his inspiration that causes him to doubt his sanity. Not merely is his mind vacant when the spirit of poetry is about to come upon him, but he is deprived of his judgment, so that he does not understand his own experiences during ecstasy. The idea of verbal inspiration, which used to be so popular in Biblical criticism, has been applied to the works of all poets. [Footnote: See _Kathrina_, by J. G. Holland, where the heroine maintains that the inspiration of modern poets is similar to that of the Old Testament prophets, and declares, As for the old seers Whose eyes God touched with vision of the life Of the unfolding ages, I must doubt Whether they comprehended what they saw.] Such a view has been a boon to literary critics. Shakespeare commentators, in particular, have been duly grateful for the lee-way granted them, when they are relieved from the necessity of limiting Shakespeare's meanings to the confines of his knowledge. As for the poet's own sense of his incomprehension, Francis Thompson's words are typical. Addressing a little child, he wonders at the statements she makes, ignorant of their significance; then he reflects, And ah, we poets, I misdoubt Are little more than thou. We speak a lesson taught, we know not how, And what it is that from us flows The hearer better than the utterer knows. [Footnote: _Sister Songs._] One might think that the poet would take pains to differentiate this inspired madness from the diseased mind of the ordinary lunatic. But as a matter of fact, bards who were literally insane have attracted much attention from their brothers. [Footnote: At the beginning of the romantic period not only Blake and Cowper, but Christopher Smart, John Clare, Thomas Dermody, John Tannahill and Thomas Lovell Beddoes made the mad poet familiar.] Of these, Tasso [Footnote: See _Song for Tasso_, Shelley; _Tasso to Leonora_, James Thomson, B. V., _Tasso to Leonora_, E. F. Hoffman.] and Cowper [Footnote: See Bowles, _The Harp and Despair of Cowper_; Mrs. Browning, _Cowper's Grave_; Lord Houghton, _On Cowper's Cottage at Olney_.] have appeared most often in the verse of the last century. Cowper's inclusion among his poems of verses written during periods of actual insanity has seemed to indicate that poetic madness is not merely a figure of speech. There is also significance, as revealing the poet's attitude toward insanity, in the fact that several fictional poets are represented as insane. Crabbe and Shelley have ascribed madness to their poet-heroes, [Footnote: See Crabbe, _The Patron_; Shelley, _Rosalind and Helen_.] while the American, J. G. Holland, represents his hero's genius as a consequence, in part, at least, of a hereditary strain of suicidal insanity. [Footnote: See J. G. Holland, _Kathrina_. For recent verse on the mad poet see William Rose Benét, _Mad Blake_; Amy Lowell, _Clear, With Light Variable Winds_; Cale Young Rice, _The Mad Philosopher_; Edmund Blunden, _Clare's Ghost_.] It goes without saying that this is a romantic conception, wholly incompatible with the eighteenth century belief that poetry is produced by the action of the intelligence, aided by good taste. Think of the mad poet, William Blake, assuring his sedate contemporaries, All pictures that's painted with sense and with thought Are painted by madmen as sure as a groat. [Footnote: See fragment CI.] What chance did he have of recognition? This is merely indicative of the endless quarrel between the inspired poet and the man of reason. The eighteenth century contempt for poetic madness finds typical expression in Pope's satirical lines, Some demon stole my pen (forgive the offense) And once betrayed me into common sense. [Footnote: _Dunciad_.] And it is answered by Burns' characterization of writers depending upon dry reason alone: A set o' dull, conceited hashes Confuse their brains in college classes! They gang in sticks and come out asses, Plain truth to speak, And syne they think to climb Parnassus By dint of Greek.[Footnote: _Epistle to Lapraik_.] The feud was perhaps at its bitterest between the eighteenth century classicists and such poets as Wordsworth [Footnote: See the _Prelude_.] and Burns, but it is by no means stilled at present. Yeats [Footnote: See _The Scholar_.] and Vachel Lindsay [Footnote: See _The Master of the Dance_. The hero is a dunce in school.] have written poetry showing the persistence of the quarrel. Though the acrimony of the disputants varies, accordingly as the tone of the poet is predominantly thoughtful or emotional, one does not find any poet of the last century who denies the superiority of poetic intuition to scholarship. Thus Tennyson warns the man of learning that he cannot hope to fathom the depths of the poet's mind. [Footnote: See _The Poet's Mind_.] So Richard Gilder maintains of the singer, He was too wise Either to fear, or follow, or despise Whom men call science--for he knew full well All she had told, or still might live to tell Was known to him before her very birth. [Footnote: _The Poet's Fame_. In the same spirit is _Invitation_, by J. E. Flecker.] The foundation of the poet's superiority is, of course, his claim that his inspiration gives him mystical experience of the things which the scholar can only remotely speculate about. Therefore Percy Mackaye makes Sappho vaunt over the philosopher, Pittacus: Yours is the living pall, The aloof and frozen place of listeners And lookers-on at life. But mine--ah! Mine The fount of life itself, the burning fount Pierian. I pity you. [Footnote: _Sappho and Phaon_, a drama.] Very likely Pittacus had no answer to Sappho's boast, but when the average nondescript verse-writer claims that his intuitions are infinitely superior to the results of scholarly research, the man of reason is not apt to keep still. And one feels that the poet, in many cases, has earned such a retort as that recorded by Young: How proud the poet's billow swells! The God! the God! his boast: A boast how vain! what wrecks abound! Dead bards stench every coast. [Footnote: _Resignation_.] There could be no more telling blow against the poet's view of inspiration than this. Even so pronounced a romanticist as Mrs. Browning is obliged to admit that the poet cannot always trust his vision. She muses over the title of poet: The name Is royal, and to sign it like a queen Is what I dare not--though some royal blood Would seem to tingle in me now and then With sense of power and ache,--with imposthumes And manias usual to the race. Howbeit I dare not: 'tis too easy to go mad And ape a Bourbon in a crown of straws; The thing's too common. [Footnote: _Aurora Leigh_. See also the lines in the same poem, For me, I wrote False poems, like the rest, and thought them true Because myself was true in writing them.] Has the poet, then, no guarantee for the genuineness of his inspiration? Must he wait as ignorantly as his contemporaries for the judgment of posterity? One cannot conceive of the grandly egoistic poet saying this. Yet the enthusiast must not believe every spirit, but try them whether they be of God. What is his proof? Emerson suggests a test, in a poem by that name. He avers, I hung my verses in the wind. Time and tide their faults may find. All were winnowed through and through: Five lines lasted sound and true; Five were smelted in a pot Than the south more fierce and hot. [Footnote: _The Test_.] The last lines indicate, do they not, that the depth of the poet's passion during inspiration corresponds with the judgment pronounced by time upon his verses? William Blake quaintly tells us that he was once troubled over this question of the artist's infallibility, and that on a certain occasion when he was dining with the prophet Elijah, he inquired, "Does a firm belief that a thing is so make it so?" To which Elijah gave the comforting reply, "Every poet is convinced that it does." [Footnote: _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_, "A Memorable Fancy."] To the cold critic, such an answer as Emerson's and Blake's is doubtless unsatisfactory, but to the poet, as to the religious enthusiast, his own ecstasy is an all-sufficient evidence. The thoroughgoing romanticist will accept no other test. The critic of the Johnsonian tradition may urge him to gauge the worth of his impulse by its seemliness and restraint, but the romantic poet's utter surrender to a power from on high makes unrestraint seem a virtue to him. So with the critic's suggestion that the words coming to the poet in his season of madness be made to square with his returning reason. Emerson quotes, and partially accepts the dictum, "Poetry must first be good sense, though it is something more." [Footnote: See the essay on _Imagination_.] But the poet is more apt to account for his belief in his visions by Tertullian's motto, _Credo quod absurdum_. If overwhelming passion is an absolute test of true inspiration, whence arises the uncertainty and confusion in the poet's own mind, concerning matters poetical? Why is a writer so stupid as to include one hundred pages of trash in the same volume with his one inspired poem? The answer seems to be that no writer is guided solely by inspiration. Not that he ever consciously falsifies or modifies the revelation given him in his moment of inspiration, but the revelation is ever hauntingly incomplete. The slightest adverse influence may jar upon the harmony between the poet's soul and the spirit of poetry. The stories of Dante's "certain men of business," who interrupted his drawing of Beatrice, and of Coleridge's visitors who broke in upon the writing of _Kubla Khan_, are notorious. Tennyson, in _The Poet's Mind_, warns all intruders away from the singer's inspired hour. He tells them, In your eye there is death; There is frost in your breath Which would blight the plants. * * * * * In the heart of the garden the merry bird chants; It would fall to the ground if you came in. But it is not fair always to lay the shattering of the poet's dream to an intruder. The poet himself cannot account for its departure, so delicate and evanescent is it. Emerson says, There are open hours When the God's will sallies free, And the dull idiot might see The flowing fortunes of a thousand years;-- Sudden, at unawares, Self-moved, fly to the doors, Nor sword of angels could reveal What they conceal. [Footnote: _Merlin_.] What is the poet, thus shut out of Paradise, to do? He can only make a frenzied effort to record his vision before its very memory has faded from him. Benvenuto Cellini has told us of his tantrums while he was finishing his bronze statue of Perseus. He worked with such fury, he declares, that his workmen believed him to be no man, but a devil. But the poet, no less than the molder of bronze, is under the necessity of casting his work into shape before the metal cools. And his success is never complete. Shelley writes, "When composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet." [Footnote: _The Defense of Poetry_.] Hence may arise the pet theory of certain modern poets, that a long poem is an impossibility. Short swallow flights of song only can be wholly sincere, they say, for their ideal is a poem as literally spontaneous as Sordello's song of Elys. In proportion as work is labored, it is felt to be dead. There is no lack of verse suggesting that extemporaneous composition is most poetical, [Footnote: See Scott's accounts of his minstrels' composition. See also, Bayard Taylor, _Ad Amicos_, and _Proem Dedicatory_; Edward Dowden, _The Singer's Plea_; Richard Gilder, _How to the Singer Comes the Song_; Joaquin Miller, _Because the Skies are Blue_; Emerson, _The Poet_; Longfellow, _Envoi_; Robert Bridges, _A Song of My Heart_.] but is there nothing to be said on the other side? Let us reread Browning's judgment on the matter: Touch him ne'er so lightly, into song he broke. Soil so quick receptive,--not one feather-seed, Not one flower-dust fell but straight its fall awoke Vitalizing virtue: song would song succeed Sudden as spontaneous--prove a poet soul! Indeed? Rock's the song soil rather, surface hard and bare: Sun and dew their mildness, storm and frost their rage Vainly both expend,--few flowers awaken there: Quiet in its cleft broods--what the after-age Knows and names a pine, a nation's heritage. [Footnote: _Epilogue to the Dramatic Idyls_. The same thought is in the sonnet, "I ask not for those thoughts that sudden leap," by James Russell Lowell, and _Overnight, a Rose_, by Caroline Giltiman.] Is it possible that the one epic poem which is a man's life work may be as truly inspired as is the lyric that leaps to his lips with a sudden gush of emotion? Or is it true, as Shelley seems to aver that such a poem is never an ideal unity, but a collection of inspired lines and phrases connected "by the intertexture of conventional phrases?" [Footnote: _The Defense of Poetry_.] It may be that the latter view seems truer to us only because we misunderstand the manner in which inspiration is limited. Possibly poets bewail the incompleteness of the flash which is revealed to them, not because they failed to see all the glories of heaven and earth, but because it was a vision merely, and the key to its expression in words was not given them. "Passion and expression are beauty itself," says William Blake, and the passion, so far from making expression inevitable and spontaneous, may by its intensity be an actual handicap, putting the poet into the state "of some fierce thing replete with too much rage." Surely we have no right to condemn the poet because a perfect expression of his thought is not immediately forthcoming. Like any other artist, he works with tools, and is handicapped by their inadequacy. According to Plato, language affords the poet a more flexible implement than any other artist possesses, [Footnote: See _The Republic_, IX, 588 D.] yet, at times, it appears to the maker stubborn enough. To quote Francis Thompson, Our untempered speech descends--poor heirs! Grimy and rough-cast still from Babel's brick-layers; Curse on the brutish jargon we inherit, Strong but to damn, not memorize a spirit! [Footnote: _Her Portrait_.] Walt Whitman voices the same complaint: Speech is the twin of my vision: it is unequal to measure itself; It provokes me forever; it says sarcastically, "Walt, you contain enough, why don't you let it out then?" [Footnote: _Song of Myself_.] Accordingly there is nothing more common than verse bewailing the singer's inarticulateness. [Footnote: See Tennyson, _In Memoriam_, "For words, like nature, half reveal"; Oliver Wendell Holmes, _To my Readers_; Mrs. Browning, _The Soul's Expression_; Jean Ingelow, _A Lily and a Lute_; Coventry Patmore, _Dead Language_; Swinburne, _The Lute and the Lyre, Plus Intra_; Francis Thompson, _Daphne_; Joaquin Miller, _Ina_; Richard Gilder, _Art and Life_; Alice Meynell, _Singers to Come_; Edward Dowden, _Unuttered_; Max Ehrmann, _Tell Me_; Alfred Noyes, _The Sculptor_; William Rose Benét, _Thwarted Utterance_; Robert Silliman Hillyer, _Even as Love Grows More_; Daniel Henderson, _Lover and Lyre_; Dorothea Lawrence Mann, _To Imagination_; John Hall Wheelock, _Rossetti_; Sara Teasdale, _The Net_; Lawrence Binyon, _If I Could Sing the Song of Her_.] Frequently these confessions of the impossibility of expression are coupled with the bitterest tirades against a stupid audience, which refuses to take the poet's genius on trust, and which remains utterly unmoved by his avowals that he has much to say to it that lies too deep for utterance. Such an outlet for the poet's very natural petulance is likely to seem absurd enough to us. It is surely not the fault of his hearers, we are inclined to tell him gently, that he suffers an impediment in his speech. Yet, after all, we may be mistaken. It is significant that the singers who are most aware of their inarticulateness are not the romanticists, who, supposedly, took no thought for a possible audience; but they are the later poets, who are obsessed with the idea that they have a message. Emily Dickinson, herself as untroubled as any singer about her public, yet puts the problem for us. She avers, I found the phrase to every thought I ever had, but one; And that defies me,--as a hand Did try to chalk the sun. To races nurtured in the dark;-- How would your own begin? Can blaze be done in cochineal, Or noon in mazarin? "To races nurtured in the dark." There lies a prolific source to the poet's difficulties. His task is not merely to ensure the permanence of his own resplendent vision, but to interpret it to men who take their darkness for light. As Emerson expresses it in his translation of Zoroaster, the poet's task is "inscribing things unapparent in the apparent fabrication of the world." [Footnote: _Essay on Imagination_.] Here is the point where poets of the last one hundred years have most often joined issues. As writers of the eighteenth century split on the question whether poetry is the product of the human reason, or of a divine visitation, literal "inspiration," so poets of the nineteenth century and of our time have been divided as to the propriety of adapting one's inspiration to the limitations of one's hearers. It too frequently happens that the poet goes to one extreme or the other. He may either despise his audience to such a degree that he does not attempt to make himself intelligible, or he may quench the spark of his thought in the effort to trim his verse into a shape that pleases his public. Austin Dobson takes malicious pleasure, often, in championing the less aristocratic side of the controversy. His _Advice to a Poet_ follows, throughout, the tenor of the first stanza: My counsel to the budding bard Is, "Don't be long," and "Don't be hard." Your "gentle public," my good friend, Won't read what they can't comprehend. This precipitates us at once into the marts of the money changers, and one shrinks back in distaste. If this is what is meant by keeping one's audience in mind during composition, the true poet will have none of it. Poe's account of his deliberate composition of the _Raven_ is enough to estrange him from the poetic brotherhood. Yet we are face to face with an issue that we, as the "gentle reader," cannot ignore. Shall the poet, then, inshrine his visions as William Blake did, for his own delight, and leave us unenlightened by his apocalypse? There is a middle ground, and most poets have taken it. For in the intervals of his inspiration the poet himself becomes, as has been reiterated, a mere man, and except for the memories of happier moments that abide with him, he is as dull as his reader. So when he labors to make his inspiration articulate he is not coldly manipulating his materials, like a pedagogue endeavoring to drive home a lesson, but for his own future delight he is making the spirit of beauty incarnate. And he will spare no pains to this end. Keats cries, O for ten years, that I may overwhelm Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed My soul has to herself decreed. [Footnote: _Sleep and Poetry_. See also the letter to his brother George, April, 1817.] Bryant warns the poet, Deem not the framing of a deathless lay The pastime of a drowsy summer day; But gather all thy powers And wreak them on the verse that thou dost weave. [Footnote: _The Poet_.] It is true that not all poets agree that these years of labor are of avail. Even Bryant, just quoted, warns the poet, Touch the crude line with fear But in the moments of impassioned thought. [Footnote: _The Poet_.] Indeed the singer's awe of the mysterious revelation given him may be so deep that he dares not tamper with his first impetuous transcription of it. But as a sculptor toils over a single vein till it is perfect, the poet may linger over a word or phrase, and so long as the pulse seems to beat beneath his fingers, no one has a right to accuse him of artificiality. Sometimes, indeed, he is awkward, and when he tries to wreathe his thoughts together, they wither like field flowers under his hot touch. Or, in his zeal, he may fashion for his forms an embroidered robe of such richness that like heavy brocade it disguises the form which it should express. In fact, poets are apt to have an affection, not merely for their inspiration, but for the words that clothe it. Keats confessed, "I look upon fine phrases as a lover." Tennyson delighted in "jewels fine words long, that on the stretched forefinger of all time sparkle forever." Rossetti spoke no less sincerely than these others, no doubt, even though he did not illustrate the efficacy of his search, when he described his interest in reading old manuscripts with the hope of "pitching on some stunning words for poetry." Ever and anon there is a rebellion against conscious elaboration in dressing one's thoughts. We are just emerging from one of the noisiest of these. The vers-librists insist that all adornment and disguise be stripped off, and the idea be exhibited in its naked simplicity. The quarrel with more conservative writers comes, not from any disagreement as to the beauty of ideas in the nude, but from a doubt on the part of the conservatives as to whether one can capture ideal beauty without an accurately woven net of words. Nor do the vers-librists prove that they are less concerned with form than are other poets. "The poet must learn his trade in the same manner, and with the same painstaking care, as the cabinet maker," says Amy Lowell. [Footnote: Preface to _Sword Blades and Poppy Seed_.] The disagreement among poets on this point is proving itself to be not so great as some had supposed. The ideal of most singers, did they possess the secret, is to do as Mrs. Browning advises them, Keep up the fire And leave the generous flames to shape themselves. [Footnote: _Aurora Leigh_.] Whether the poet toils for years to form a shrine for his thought, or whether his awe forbids him to touch his first unconscious formulation of it, there comes a time when all that he can do has been done, and he realizes that he will never approximate his vision more closely than this. Then, indeed, as high as was his rapture during the moment of revelation, so deep is likely to be his discouragement with his powers of creation, for, however fair he may feel his poem to be, it yet does not fill the place of what he has lost. Thus Francis Thompson sighs over the poet, When the embrace has failed, the rapture fled, Not he, not he, the wild sweet witch is dead, And though he cherisheth The babe most strangely born from out her death, Some tender trick of her it hath, maybe, It is not she. [Footnote: _Sister Songs_.] We have called the poet an egotist, and surely, his attitude toward the blind rout who have had no glimpse of the heavenly vision, is one of contemptuous superiority. But like the priest in the temple, all his arrogance vanishes when he ceases to harangue the congregation, and goes into the secret place to worship. And toward anyone who sincerely seeks the revelation, no matter how feeble his powers may be, the poet's attitude is one of tenderest sympathy and comradeship. Alice Gary pleads, Hear me tell How much my will transcends my feeble powers, As one with blind eyes feeling out in flowers Their tender hues. [Footnote: _To the Spirit of Song_.] And there is not a poet in the last century of such prominence that he does not reverence such a confession, [Footnote: Some poems showing the similarity in such an attitude of great and small alike, follow: _Epistle to Charles C. Clarke_, Keats; _The Soul's Expression_, Mrs. Browning; _Memorial Verses to Wm. B. Scott_, Swinburne; _Sister Songs_, _Proemion to Love in Dian's Lap_, _A Judgment in Heaven_, Francis Thompson; _Urania_, Matthew Arnold; _There Have Been Vast Displays of Critic Wit_, Alexander Smith; _Invita Minerva_ and _L'Envoi to the Muse_, J. R. Lowell; _The Voiceless_, O. W. Holmes; _Fata Morgana_, and _Epimetheus, or the Poet's Afterthought_, Longfellow; _L'Envoi_, Kipling; _The Apology_, and _Gleam on Me, Fair Ideal_, Lewis Morris; _Dedication to Austin Dobson_, E. Gosse; _A Country Nosegay_, and _Gleaners of Fame_, Alfred Austin; _Another Tattered Rhymster in the Ring_, G. K. Chesterton; _To Any Poet_, Alice Meynell; _The Singer_, and _To a Lady on Chiding Me For Not Writing_, Richard Realf; _The Will and the Wing_ and _Though Dowered with Instincts Keen and High_, P. H. Haynes; _Dull Words_, Trumbull Stickney; _The Inner Passion_, Alfred Noyes; _The Veiled Muse_, William Winter; _Sonnet_, William Bennett; _Tell Me_, Max Ehrmann; _The Singer's Plea_, Edward Dowden; _Genius_, R. H. Home; _My Country_, George Woodberry; _Uncalled_, Madison Cawein; Thomas Bailey Aldrich, _At the Funeral of a Minor Poet_; Robert Haven Schauffler, _Overtones, The Silent Singers_; Stephen Vincent Benét, _A Minor Poet_; Alec de Candole, _The Poets_.] and aver that he too is an earnest and humble suppliant in the temple of beauty. For the clearer his glimpse of the transcendent vision has been, the more conscious he is of his blindness after the glory has passed, and the more unquenchable is his desire for a new and fuller revelation. CHAPTER V THE POET'S MORALITY If English poets of the last century are more inclined to parade their moral virtue than are poets of other countries, this may be the result of a singular persistency on the part of England in searching out and punishing sins ascribed to poetic temperament. Byron was banished; Shelley was judged unfit to rear his own children; Keats was advertised as an example of "extreme moral depravity"; [Footnote: By _Blackwoods_.] Oscar Wilde was imprisoned; Swinburne was castigated as "an unclean fiery imp from the pit." [Footnote: By _The Saturday Review_.] These are some of the most conspicuous examples of a refusal by the British public to countenance what it considers a code of morals peculiar to poets. It is hardly to be wondered at that verse-writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have not been inclined to quarrel with Sir Philip Sidney's statement that "England is the stepmother of poets," [Footnote: _Apology for Poetry_.] and that through their writings should run a vein of aggrieved protest against an unfair discrimination in dragging their failings ruthlessly out to the light. It cannot, however, be maintained that England is unique in her prejudice against poetic morals. The charges against the artist have been long in existence, and have been formulated and reformulated in many countries. In fact Greece, rather than England, might with some justice be regarded as the parent of the poet's maligners, for Plato has been largely responsible for the hue and cry against the poet throughout the last two millennia. Various as are the counts against the poet's conduct, they may all be included under the declaration in the _Republic_, "Poetry feeds and waters the passions instead of withering and starving them; she lets them rule instead of ruling them." [Footnote: Book X, 606, Jowett translation.] Though the accusers of the poet are agreed that the predominance of passion in his nature is the cause of his depravity, still they are a heterogeneous company, suffering the most violent disagreement among themselves as to a valid reason for pronouncing his passionate impulses criminal. Their unfortunate victim is beset from so many directions that he is sorely put to it to defend himself against one band of assailants without exposing himself to attack from another quarter. This hostile public may be roughly divided into three camps, made up, respectively, of philistines, philosophers, and puritans. Within recent years the distinct grievance of each group has been made articulate in a formal denunciation of the artist's morals. There is, first, that notorious indictment, _Degeneration_, by Max Nordau. Nordau speaks eloquently for all who claim the name "average plain citizen," all who would hustle off to the gallows anyone found guilty of breaking the lockstep imposed upon men by convention. Secondly, there is a severe criticism of the poet from an ostensibly unbiased point of view, _The Man of Genius_, by Césare Lombroso. Herein are presented the arguments of the thinkers, who probe the poet's foibles with an impersonal and scientific curiosity. Last, there is the severe arraignment, _What Is Art?_ by Tolstoi. In this book are crystallized the convictions of the ascetics, who recognize in beauty a false goddess, luring men from the stern pursuit of holiness. How does it come about that, in affirming the perniciousness of the poet's passionate temperament, the man of the street, the philosopher, and the puritan are for the nonce in agreement? The man of the street is not averse to feeling, as a rule, even when it is carried to egregious lengths of sentimentality. A stroll through a village when all the victrolas are in operation would settle this point unequivocally for any doubter. It seems that the philistine's quarrel with the poet arises from the fact that, unlike the makers of phonograph records, the poet dares to follow feeling in defiance of public sentiment. Like the conservative that he is, the philistine gloats over the poet's lapses from virtue because, in setting aside mass-feeling as a gauge of right and wrong, and in setting up, instead, his own individual feelings as a rule of conduct, the poet displays an arrogance that deserves a fall. The philosopher, like the philistine, may tolerate feeling within limits. His sole objection to the poet lies in the fact that, far from making emotion the handmaiden of the reason, as the philosopher would do, the poet exalts emotion to a seat above the reason, thus making feeling the supreme arbiter of conduct. The puritan, of course, gives vent to the most bitter hostility of all, for, unlike the philistine and the philosopher, he regards natural feeling as wholly corrupt. Therefore he condemns the poet's indulgence of his passionate nature with equal severity whether he is within or without the popular confines of proper conduct, or whether or not his conduct may be proved reasonable. Much of the inconsistency in the poet's exhibitions of his moral character may be traced to the fact that he is addressing now one, now another, of his accusers. The sobriety of his arguments with the philosopher has sometimes been interpreted by the man of the street as cowardly side-stepping. On the other hand, the poet's bravado in defying the man of the street might be interpreted by the philosopher as an acknowledgment of imperviousness to reason. It seems as though the first impulse of the poet were to set his back against the wall and deal with all his antagonists at once, by challenging their right to pry into his private conduct. It is true that certain poets of the last century have believed it beneath their dignity to pay any attention to the insults and persecution of the public. But though a number have maintained an air of stolid indifference so long as the attacks have remained personal, few or none have been content to disregard defamation of a departed singer. The public cannot maintain, in many instances, that this vicarious indignation arises from a sense of sharing the frailties of the dead poet who is the direct object of attack. Not thus may one account for the generous heat of Whittier, of Richard Watson Gilder, of Robert Browning, of Tennyson, in rebuking the public which itches to make a posthumous investigation of a singer's character. [Footnote: See Whittier, _My Namesake_; Richard W. Gilder, _A Poet's Protest_, and _Desecration_; Robert Browning, _House_; Tennyson, _In Memoriam_.] Tennyson affords a most interesting example of sensitiveness with nothing, apparently, to conceal. There are many anecdotes of his morbid shrinking from public curiosity, wholly in key with his cry of abhorrence, Now the poet cannot die Nor leave his music as of old, But round him ere he scarce be cold Begins the scandal and the cry: Proclaim the faults he would not show, Break lock and seal; betray the trust; Keep nothing sacred; 'tis but just The many-headed beast should know. In protesting against the right of the public to judge their conduct, true poets refuse to bring themselves to a level with their accusers by making the easiest retort, that they are made of exactly the same clay as is the _hoi polloi_ that assails them. This sort of recrimination is characteristic of a certain blustering type of claimant for the title of poet, such as Joaquin Miller, a rather disorderly American of the last generation, who dismissed attacks upon the singer with the words, Yea, he hath sinned. Who hath revealed That he was more than man or less? [Footnote: _Burns_ and _Byron_.] The attitude is also characteristic of another anomalous type which flourished in America fifty years ago, whose verse represents an attempted fusion of emasculated poetry and philistine piety. A writer of this type moralizes impartially over the erring bard and his accusers, Sin met thy brother everywhere, And is thy brother blamed? From passion, danger, doubt and care He no exemption claimed. [Footnote: Ebenezer Eliot, _Burns_.] But genuine poets refuse to compromise themselves by admitting that they are no better than other men. They are not averse, however, to pointing out the unfitness of the public to cast the first stone. So unimpeachable a citizen as Longfellow finds even in the notoriously spotted artist, Benvenuto Cellini, an advantage over his maligners because He is not That despicable thing, a hypocrite. [Footnote: _Michael Angelo_.] Most of the faults charged to them, poets aver, exist solely in the evil minds of their critics. Coleridge goes so far as to expurgate the poetry of William Blake, "not for the want of innocence in the poem, but from the too probable want of it in the readers." [Footnote: Letter to Charles Augustus Tulk, Highgate, Thursday Evening, 1818, p. 684, Vol. II, _Letters_, ed. E. Hartley Coleridge.] The nakedness of any frailties which poets may possess, makes it the more contemptible, they feel, for the public to wrap itself in the cloak of hypocrisy before casting stones. The modern poet's weakness for autobiographical revelation leaves no secret corners in his nature in which surreptitious vices may lurk. One might generalize what Keats says of Burns, "We can see horribly clear in the work of such a man his whole life, as if we were God's spies." [Footnote: Sidney Colvin, _John Keats_, p. 285.] The Rousseau-like nudity of the poet's soul is sometimes put forward as a plea that the public should close its eyes to possible shortcomings. Yet, as a matter of fact, it is precisely in the lack of privacy characterizing the poet's life that his enemies find their justification for concerning themselves with his morality. Since by flaunting his personality in his verse he propagates his faults among his admirers, the public is surely justified in pointing out and denouncing his failings. Poets cannot logically deny this. To do so, they would have to confess that their inspirations are wholly unaffected by their personalities. But this is, naturally, a very unpopular line of defense. That unhappy worshiper of puritan morals and of the muses, J. G. Holland, does make such a contention, averring, God finds his mighty way Into his verse. The dimmest window panes Let in the morning light, and in that light Our faces shine with kindled sense of God And his unwearied goodness, but the glass Gets little good of it; nay, it retains Its chill and grime beyond the power of light To warm or whiten ... ... The psalmist's soul Was not a fitting place for psalms like his To dwell in overlong, while wanting words. [Footnote: _Kathrina._] But the egotism of the average poet precludes this explanation. No more deadly insult could be offered him than forgiveness of his sins on the ground of their unimportance. Far from holding that his personality does not affect his verse, he would have us believe that the sole worth of his poetry lies in its reflection of his unique qualities of soul. Elizabeth Barrett, not Holland, exhibits the typical poetic attitude when she asks Robert Browning, "Is it true, as others say, that the productions of an artist do not partake of his real nature,--that in the minor sense, man is not made in the image of God? It is _not_ true, to my mind." [Footnote: Letter to Robert Browning, February 3, 1845.] The glass houses in which the poet's accusers may reside really have nothing to do with the question. The immorality of these men is of comparatively slight significance, whereas the importance of the poet's personality is enormous, because it takes on immortality through his works. Not his contemporaries alone, but readers of his verse yet unborn have a right to call him to account for his faults. Though Swinburne muses happily over the sins of Villon, But from thy feet now death hath washed the mire, [Footnote: _A Ballad of François Villon._] it is difficult to see how he could seriously have advanced such a claim, inasmuch as, assuming Villon's sincerity, the reader, without recourse to a biography, may reconstruct the whole course of his moral history from his writings. Unquestionably if the poet wishes to satisfy his enemies as to the ethical worth of his poetry, he is under obligation to prove to them that as "the man of feeling" he possesses only those impulses that lead him toward righteousness. And though puritans, philosophers and philistines quarrel over technical points in their conceptions of virtue, still, if the poet is not a criminal, he should be able, by making a plain statement of his innocence, to remove the most heinous charges against him, which bind his enemies into a coalition. There is no doubt that poets, as a class, have acknowledged the obligation of proving that their lives are pure. But the effectiveness of their statements has been largely dissipated by the fact that their voices have been almost drowned by the clamor of a small coterie which finds its chief delight in brazenly exaggerating the vices popularly ascribed to it, then defending them as the poet's exclusive privilege. So perennially does this group flourish, and so shrill-voiced are its members in self-advertisement, that it is useless for other poets to present their case, till the claims of the ostentatiously wicked are heard. One is inclined, perhaps, to dismiss them as pseudo-poets, whose only chance at notoriety is through enunciating paradoxes. In these days when the school has shrunk to Ezra Pound and his followers, vaunting their superiority to the public, "whose virgin stupidity is untemptable," [Footnote: Ezra Pound, _Tensone._] it is easy to dismiss the men and their verse thus lightly. But what is one to say when one encounters the decadent school in the last century, flourishing at a time when, in the words of George Augustus Scala, the public had to choose between "the clever (but I cannot say moral) Mr. Swinburne, and the moral (but I cannot say clever) Mr. Tupper?" [Footnote: See E. Gosse, _Life of Swinburne,_ p. 162.] What is one to say of a period wherein the figure of Byron, with his bravado and contempt for accepted morality, towers above most of his contemporaries? Whatever its justification, the excuse for the poets flaunting an addiction to immorality lies in the obnoxiousness of the philistine element among their enemies. When mass feeling, mass-morality, becomes too oppressive, poets are wont to escape from its trammelling conventions at any cost. Rather than consent to lay their emotions under the rubber-stamp of expediency, they are likely to aver, with the sophists of old, that morality is for slaves, whereas the rulers among men, the poets, recognize no law but natural law. Swinburne affords an excellent example of this type of reaction. Looking back tolerantly upon his early prayers to the pagan ideal to Come down and redeem us from virtue, upon his youthful zest in leaving The lilies and languors of virtue For the roses and raptures of vice, he tried to dissect his motives. "I had," he said, "a touch of Byronic ambition to be thought an eminent and terrible enemy to the decorous life and respectable fashion of the world, and, as in Byron's case, there was mingled with a sincere scorn and horror of hypocrisy a boyish and voluble affectation of audacity and excess." [Footnote: E. Gosse, _Life of Swinburne,_ p. 309.] So far, so good. There is little cause for disagreement among poets, however respectable or the reverse their own lives may be, in the contention that the first step toward sincerity of artistic expression must be the casting off of external restraints. Even the most conservative of them is not likely to be seriously concerned if, for the time being, he finds among the younger generation a certain exaggeration of the pose of unrestraint. The respectability of Oliver Wendell Holmes did not prevent his complacent musing over Tom Moore: If on his cheek unholy blood Burned for one youthful hour, 'Twas but the flushing of the bud That bloomed a milk-white flower. [Footnote: _After a Lecture on Moore_.] One may lay it down as an axiom among poets that their ethical natures must develop spontaneously, or not at all. An attempt to force one's moral instincts will inevitably cramp and thwart one's art. It is unparalleled to find so great a poet as Coleridge plaintively asserting, "I have endeavored to feel what I ought to feel," [Footnote: Letter to the Reverend George Coleridge, March 21, 1794.] and his brothers have recoiled from his words. His declaration was, of course, not equivalent to saying, "I have endeavored to feel what the world thinks I ought to feel," but even so, one suspects that the philosophical part of Coleridge was uppermost at the time of this utterance, and that his obligatory feelings did not flower in a _Christabel_ or a _Kubla Khan_. The real parting of the ways between the major and minor contingents of poets comes when certain writers maintain, not merely their freedom from conventional moral standards, but a perverse inclination to seek what even they regard as evil. This is, presumably, a logical, if unconscious, outgrowth of the romantic conception of art as "strangeness added to beauty." For the decadents conceive that the loveliness of virtue is an age-worn theme which has grown so obvious as to lose its æsthetic appeal, whereas the manifold variety of vice contains unexplored possibilities of fresh, exotic beauty. Hence there has been on their part an ardent pursuit of hitherto undreamed-of sins, whose aura of suggestiveness has not been rubbed off by previous artistic expression. The decadent's excuse for his vices is that his office is to reflect life, and that indulgence of the senses quickens his apprehension of it. He is apt to represent the artist as "a martyr for all mundane moods to tear," [Footnote: See John Davidson, A Ballad in Blank Verse.] and to indicate that he is unable to see life steadily and see it whole until he has experienced the whole gamut of crime.[Footnote: See Oscar Wilde, Ravenna; John Davidson, A Ballad in Blank Verse on the Making of a Poet, A Ballad of an Artist's Wife; Arthur Symons, There's No Lust Like to Poetry.] Such a view has not, of course, been confined to the nineteenth century. A characteristic renaissance attitude toward life and art was caught by Browning in a passage of _Sordello_. The hero, in a momentary reaction from idealism, longs for the keener sensations arising from vice and exclaims, Leave untried Virtue, the creaming honey-wine; quick squeeze Vice, like a biting serpent, from the lees Of life! Together let wrath, hatred, lust, All tyrannies in every shape be thrust Upon this now. Naturally Browning does not allow this thirst for evil to be more than a passing impulse in Sordello's life. The weakness of this recipe for poetic achievement stands revealed in the cynicism with which expositions of the frankly immoral poet end. If the quest of wickedness is a powerful stimulus to the emotions, it is a very short-lived one. The blasé note is so dominant in Byron's autobiographical poetry,--the lyrics, _Childe Harold_ and _Don Juan_--as to render quotation tiresome. It sounds no less inevitably in the decadent verse at the other end of the century. Ernest Dowson's _Villanelle of the Poet's Road_ is a typical expression of the mood. Dowson's biography leaves no doubt of the sincerity of his lines, Wine and women and song, Three things garnish our way: Yet is day overlong. Three things render us strong, Vine-leaves, kisses and bay. Yet is day overlong. Since the decadents themselves must admit that delight in sin kills, rather than nurtures, sensibility, a popular defense of their practices is to the effect that sin, far from being sought consciously, is an inescapable result of the artist's abandonment to his feelings. Moreover it is useful, they assert, in stirring up remorse, a very poetic feeling, because it heightens one's sense of the beauty of holiness. This view attained to considerable popularity during the Victorian period, when sentimental piety and worship of Byron were sorely put to it to exist side by side. The prevalence of the view that remorse is the most reliable poetic stimulant is given amusing evidence in the _Juvenalia_ of Tennyson [Footnote: See _Poems of Two Brothers_.]and Clough, [Footnote: See _An Evening Walk in Spring_.] wherein these youths of sixteen and seventeen, whose later lives were to prove so innocuous, represent themselves as racked with the pangs of repentance for mysteriously awful crimes. Mrs. Browning, an excellent recorder of Victorian public opinion, ascribed a belief in the deplorable but inevitable conjunction of crime and poetry to her literary friends, Miss Mitford and Mrs. Jameson. Their doctrine, Mrs. Browning wrote, "is that everything put into the poetry is taken out of the man and lost utterly by him." [Footnote: See letters to Robert Browning, February 17, 1846; May 1,1846.] Naturally, Mrs. Browning wholly repudiated the idea, and Browning concurred in her judgment. "What is crime," he asked, "which would have been prevented but for the 'genius' involved in it?--Poor, cowardly, miscreated creatures abound--if you could throw genius into their composition, they would become more degraded still, I suppose." [Footnote: Letter to Elizabeth Barrett, April 4, 1846.] Burns has been the great precedent for verse depicting the poet as yearning for holiness, even while his importunate passions force him into evil courses. One must admit that in the verse of Burns himself, a yearning for virtue is not always obvious, for he seems at times to take an unholy delight in contemplating his own failings, as witness the _Epistle to Lapraik_, and his repentance seems merely perfunctory, as in the lines, There's ae wee faut they whiles lay to me, I like the lassies--Gude forgie me. But in _The Vision_ he accounts for his failings as arising from his artist's temperament. The muse tells him, I saw thy pulses' maddening play, Wild, send thee Pleasure's devious way, And yet the light that led astray Was light from Heaven. And in _A Bard's Epitaph_ he reveals himself as the pathetic, misguided poet who has been a favorite in verse ever since his time. Sympathy for the well-meaning but misguided singer reached its height about twenty years ago, when new discoveries about Villon threw a glamor over the poet of checkered life. [Footnote: See Edwin Markham, _Villon_; Swinburne, _Burns_, _A Ballad of François Villon_.] At the same time Verlaine and Baudelaire in France, [Footnote: See Richard Hovey, _Verlaine_; Swinburne, _Ave atque Vale_.] and Lionel Johnson, Francis Thompson, Ernest Dowson, and James Thomson, B. V., in England, appeared to prove the inseparability of genius and especial temptation. At this time Francis Thompson, in his poetry, presented one of the most moving cases for the poet of frail morals, and concluded What expiating agony May for him damned to poesy Shut in that little sentence be,-- What deep austerities of strife,-- He lived his life. He lived his life. [Footnote: _A Judgment in Heaven_.] Such sympathetic portrayal of the erring poet perhaps hurts his case more than does the bravado of the extreme decadent group. Philistines, puritans and philosophers alike are prone to turn to such expositions as the one just quoted and point out that it is in exact accord with their charge against the poet,--namely, that he is more susceptible to temptation than is ordinary humanity, and that therefore the proper course for true sympathizers would be, not to excuse his frailties, but to help him crush the germs of poetry out of his nature. "Genius is a disease of the nerves," is Lombroso's formulation of the charge. [Footnote: _The Man of Genius_.] Nordau points out that the disease is steadily increasing in these days of specialization, and that the overkeenness of the poet's senses in one particular direction throws his nature out of balance, so that he lacks the poise to withstand temptation. Fortunately, it is a comparatively small number of poets that surrenders to the enemy by conceding either the poet's deliberate indulgence in sin, or his pitiable moral frailty. If one were tempted to believe that this defensive portrayal of the sinful poet is in any sense a major conception in English poetry, the volley of repudiative verse greeting every outcropping of the degenerate's self-exposure would offer a sufficient disproof. In the romantic movement, for instance, one finds only Byron (among persons of importance) to uphold the theory of the perverted artist, whereas a chorus of contradiction greets each expression of his theories. In the van of the recoil against Byronic morals one finds Crabbe, [Footnote: See _Edmund Shore_, _Villars_.] Praed [Footnote: See _The Talented Man_, _To Helen with Crabbe's Poetry_.] and Landor. [Footnote: See _Few Poets Beckon_, _Apology for Gebir_.] Later, when the wave of Byronic influence had time to reach America, Longfellow took up the cudgels against the evil poet. [Footnote: See his treatment of Aretino, in _Michael Angelo_.] Protest against the group of decadents who flourished in the 1890's even yet rocks the poetic waves slightly, though these men did not succeed in making the world take them as seriously as it did Byron. The cue of most present-day writers is to dismiss the professedly wicked poet lightly, as an aspirant to the laurel who is unworthy of serious consideration. A contemporary poet reflects of such would-be riders of Pegasus: There will be fools that in the name of art Will wallow in the mire, crying, "I fall, I fall from heaven!" fools that have only heard From earth, the murmur of those golden hooves Far, far above them. [Footnote: Alfred Noyes, _At the Sign of the Golden Shoe_. See also Richard Le Gallienne, _The Decadent to his Soul_, _Proem to the Reader in English Poems_; Joyce Kilmer, _A Ballad of New Sins_.] Poets who indignantly repudiate any and all charges against their moral natures have not been unanimous in following the same line of defense. In many cases their argument is empirical, and their procedure is ideally simple. If a verse-writer of the present time is convicted of wrong living, his title of poet is automatically taken away from him; if a singer of the past is secure in his laurels, it is understood that all scandals regarding him are merely malicious fictions. In the eighteenth century this mode of passing judgment was most naïvely manifest in verse. Vile versifiers were invariably accused of having vile personal lives, whereas the poet who basked in the light of fame was conceded, without investigation, to "exult in virtue's pure ethereal flame." In the nineteenth century, when literary criticism was given over to prose-writers, those ostensible friends of the poets held by the same simple formula, as witness the attempts to kill literary and moral reputation at one blow, which were made, at various times, by Lockhart, Christopher North and Robert Buchanan. [Footnote: Note their respective attacks on Keats, Swinburne and Rossetti.] It may indicate a certain weakness in this hard and fast rule that considerable difficulty is encountered in working it backward. The highest virtue does not always entail a supreme poetic gift, though poets and their friends have sometimes implied as much. Southey, in his critical writings, is likely to confuse his own virtue and that of his protégé, Kirke White, with poetical excellence. Longfellow's, Whittier's, Bryant's strength of character has frequently been represented by patriotic American critics as guaranteeing the quality of their poetical wares. Since a claim for the insunderability of virtue and genius seems to lead one to unfortunate conclusions, it has been rashly conceded in certain quarters that the virtue of a great poet may have no immediate connection with his poetic gift. It is conceived by a few nervously moral poets that morality and art dwell in separate spheres, and that the first transcends the second. Tennyson started a fashion for viewing the two excellences as distinct, comparing them, in _In Memoriam_: Loveliness of perfect deeds, More strong than all poetic thought, and his disciples have continued to speak in this strain. This is the tenor, for instance, of Jean Ingelow's _Letters of Life and Morning_, in which she exhorts the young poet, Learn to sing, But first in all thy learning, learn to be. The puritan element in American literary circles, always troubling the conscience of a would-be poet, makes him eager to protest that virtue, not poetry, holds his first allegiance. He held his manly name Far dearer than the muse, [Footnote: J. G. Saxe, _A Poet's Elegy_.] we are told of one poet-hero. The good Catholic verse of Father Ryan carries a warning of the merely fortuitous connection between poets' talent and their respectability, averring, They are like angels, but some angels fell. [Footnote: _Poets_.] Even Whittier is not sure that poetical excellence is worthy to be mentioned in the same breath as virtue, and he writes, Dimmed and dwarfed, in times like these The poet seems beside the man; His life is now his noblest strain. [Footnote: _To Bryant on His Birthday_.] When the poet of more firmly grounded conviction attempts to show reason for his confidence in the poet's virtue, he may advance such an argument for the association of righteousness and genius as has been offered by Carlyle in his essay, _The Hero as Poet_. This is the theory that, far from being an example of nervous degeneration, as his enemies assert, the poet is a superman, possessing will and moral insight in as preëminent a degree as he possesses sensibility. This view, that poetry is merely a by-product of a great nature, gains plausibility from certain famous artists of history, whose versatility appears to have been unlimited. Longfellow has seized upon this conception of the poet in his drama, _Michael Angelo_, as has G. L. Raymond in his drama, _Dante_. In the latter poem the argument for the poet's moral supremacy is baldly set forth. Artistic sensibility, Dante says, far from excusing moral laxity, binds one to stricter standards of right living. So when Cavalcanti argues in favor of free love, Your humming birds may sip the sweet they need From every flower, and why not humming poets? Raymond makes Dante reply, The poets are not lesser men, but greater, And so should find unworthy of themselves A word, a deed, that makes them seem less worthy. Owing to the growth of specialization in modern life, this argument, despite Carlyle, has not attained much popularity. Even in idealized fictions of the poet, it is not often maintained that he is equally proficient in every line of activity. Only one actual poet within our period, William Morris, can be taken as representative of such a type, and he does not afford a strong argument for the poet's distinctive virtue, inasmuch as tradition does not represent him as numbering remarkable saintliness among his numerous gifts. There is a decided inconsistency, moreover, in claiming unusual strength of will as one of the poet's attributes. The muscular morality resulting from training one's will develops in proportion to one's ability to overthrow one's own unruly impulses. It is almost universally maintained by poets, on the contrary, that their gift depends upon their yielding themselves utterly to every fugitive impulse and emotion. Little modern verse vaunts the poet's stern self-control. George Meredith may cry, I take the hap Of all my deeds. The wind that fills my sails Propels, but I am helmsman. [Footnote: _Modern Love_.] Henley may thank the gods for his unconquerable soul. On the whole, however, a fatalistic temper is much easier to trace in modern poetry than is this one. Hardly more popular than the superman theory is another argument for the poet's virtue that appears sporadically in verse. It has occurred to a few poets that their virtue is accounted for by the high subject-matter of their work, which exercises an unconscious influence upon their lives. Thus in the eighteenth century Young finds it natural that in Addison, the author of _Cato_, Virtues by departed heroes taught Raise in your soul a pure immortal flame, Adorn your life, and consecrate your fame. [Footnote: _Lines to Mr. Addison_.] Middle-class didactic poetry of the Victorian era expresses the same view. Tupper is sure that the true poet will live With pureness in youth and religion in age. [Footnote: _What Is a Poet_.] since he conceives as the function of poetry To raise and purify the grovelling soul, * * * * * And the whole man with lofty thoughts to fill. [Footnote: _Poetry_.] This explanation may account for the piety of a Newman, a Keble, a Charles Wesley, but how can it be stretched to cover the average poet of the last century, whose subject-matter is so largely himself? Conforming his conduct to the theme of his verse would surely be no more efficacious than attempting to lift himself by his own boot straps. These two occasional arguments leave the real issue untouched. The real ground for the poet's faith in his moral intuitions lies in his subscription to the old Platonic doctrine of the trinity,--the fundamental identity of the good, the true and the beautiful. There is something in the nature of a practical joke in the facility with which Plato's bitter enemies, the poets, have fitted to themselves his superlative praise of the philosopher's virtue. [Footnote: See the _Republic_, VI, 485, ff.] The moral instincts of the philosopher are unerring, Plato declares, because the philosopher's attention is riveted upon the unchanging idea of the good which underlies the confusing phantasmagoria of the temporal world. The poets retort that the moral instincts of the poet, more truly than of the philosopher, are unerring, because the poet's attention is fixed upon the good in its most ravishing aspect, that of beauty, and in this guise it has an irresistible charm which it cannot hold even for the philosopher. Poets' convictions on this point have remained essentially unchanged throughout the history of poetry. Granted that there has been a strain of deliberate perversity running through its course, cropping out in the erotic excesses of the late-classic period, springing up anew in one phase of the Italian renaissance, transplanted to France and England, where it appeared at the time of the English restoration, growing again in France at the time of the literary revolution, thence spreading across the channel into England again. Yet this is a minor current. The only serious view of the poet's moral nature is that nurtured by the Platonism of every age. Milton gave it the formulation most familiar to English ears, but Milton by no means originated it. Not only from his Greek studies, but from his knowledge of contemporary Italian æsthetics, he derived the idea of the harmony between the poet's life and his creations which led him to maintain that it is the poet's privilege to make of his own life a true poem. "I am wont day and night," says Milton, "to seek for this idea of the beautiful through all the forms and faces of things (for many are the shapes of things divine) and to follow it leading me on as with certain assured traces." [Footnote: Prose works, Vol. I, Letter VII, Symons ed.] The poet's feeling cannot possibly lead him astray when his sense of beauty affords him a talisman revealing all the ugliness and repulsiveness of evil. Even Byron had, in theory at least, a glimmering sense of the anti-poetical character of evil, leading him to cry, Tis not in The harmony of things--this hard decree, This ineradicable taint of sin, This boundless upas, this all-blasting tree Whose root is earth. [Footnote: _Childe Harold_.] If Byron could be brought to confess the inharmonious nature of evil, it is obvious that to most poets the beauty of goodness has been undeniable. In the eighteenth century Collins and Hughes wrote poems wherein they elaborated Milton's argument for the unity of the good and the beautiful.[Footnote: Collins, _Ode on the Poetical Character_; John Hughes, _Ode on Divine Poetry_.] Among the romantic poets, the Platonism of Coleridge,[Footnote: See his essay on Claudian, where he says, "I am pleased to think that when a mere stripling I formed the opinion that true taste was virtue, and that bad writing was bad feeling."] Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats was unflinching in this particular. The Brownings subscribed to the doctrine. Tennyson's allegiance to scientific naturalism kept him in doubt for a time, but in the end his faith in beauty triumphed, and he was ready to praise the poet as inevitably possessing a nature exquisitely attuned to goodness. One often runs across dogmatic expression of the doctrine in minor poetry. W. A. Percy advises the poet, O singing heart, think not of aught save song, Beauty can do no wrong. [Footnote: _Song_.] Again one hears of the singer, Pure must he be; Oh, blessed are the pure; for they shall hear Where others hear not; see where others see With a dazed vision, [Footnote: Henry Timrod, _A Vision of Poesy_.] and again, To write a poem, a man should be as pure As frost-flowers. [Footnote: T. L. Harris, _Lyrics of the Golden Age_.] Only recently a writer has pictured the poet as one who Lived beyond men, and so stood Admitted to the brotherhood Of beauty. [Footnote: Madison Cawein, _The Dreamer of Dreams_.] It is needless to run through the list of poet heroes. Practically all of them look to a single standard to govern them æsthetically and morally. They are the sort of men whom Watts-Dunton praises, Whose poems are their lives, whose souls within Hold naught in dread save Art's high conscience bar, Who know how beauty dies at touch of sin. [Footnote: _The Silent Voices_.] Such is the poet's case for himself. But no matter how eloquently he presents his case, his quarrel with his three enemies remains almost as bitter as before, and he is obliged to pay some attention to their individual charges. The poet's quarrel with the philistine, in particular, is far from settled. The more lyrical the poet becomes regarding the unity of the good and the beautiful, the more skeptical becomes the plain man. What is this about the irresistible charm of virtue? Virtue has possessed the plain man's joyless fidelity for years, and he has never discovered any charm in her. The poet possesses a peculiar power of insight which reveals in goodness hidden beauties to which ordinary humanity is blind? Let him prove it, then, by being as good in the same way as ordinary folk are. If the poet professes to be able to achieve righteousness without effort, the only way to prove it is to conform his conduct to that of men who achieve righteousness with groaning of spirit. It is too easy for the poet to justify any and every aberration with the announcement, "My sixth sense for virtue, which you do not possess, has revealed to me the propriety of such conduct." Thus reasons the philistine. The beauty-blind philistine doubtless has some cause for bewilderment, but the poet takes no pains to placate him. The more genuine is one's impulse toward goodness, the more inevitably, the poet says, will it bring one into conflict with an artificial code of morals. Shelley indicated this at length in _The Defense of Poetry_, and in both _Rosalind and Helen_ and _The Revolt of Islam_ he showed his bards offending the world by their original conceptions of purity. Likewise of the poet-hero in _Prince Athanase_ Shelley tells us, Fearless he was, and scorning all disguise. What he dared do or think, though men might start He spoke with mild, yet unaverted eyes. It must be admitted that sometimes, notably in Victorian narrative verse, the fictitious poet's virtue is inclined to lapse into a typically bourgeois respectability. In Mrs. Browning's _Aurora Leigh_, for instance, the heroine's morality becomes somewhat rigid, and when she rebukes the unmarried Marian for bearing a child, and chides Romney for speaking tenderly to her after his supposed marriage with Lady Waldemar, the reader is apt to sense in her a most unpoetical resemblance to Mrs. Grundy. And if Mrs. Browning's poet is almost too respectable, she is still not worthy to be mentioned in the same breath with the utterly innocuous poet set forth by another Victorian, Coventry Patmore. In Patmore's poem, _Olympus_, the bard decides to spend an evening with his own sex, but he is offended by the cigar smoke and the coarse jests, and flees home to The milk-soup men call domestic bliss. Likewise, in _The Angel in the House_, the poet follows a most domestic line of orderly living. Only once, in the long poem, does he fall below the standard of conduct he sets for himself. This sin consists of pressing his sweetheart's hand in the dance, and after shamefacedly confessing it, he adds, And ere I slept, on bended knee I owned myself, with many a tear Unseasonable, disorderly. But so distasteful, to the average poet, is such cringing subservience to philistine standards, that he takes delight in swinging to the other extreme, and representing the innocent poet's persecutions at the hands of an unfriendly world. He insists that in venturing away from conventional standards poets merit every consideration, being Tall galleons, Out of their very beauty driven to dare The uncompassed sea, founder in starless night. [Footnote: _At the Sign of the Golden Shoe_, Alfred Noyes.] He is convinced that the public, far from sympathizing with such courage, deliberately tries to drive the poet to desperation. Josephine Preston Peabody makes Marlowe inveigh against the public, My sins they learn by rote, And never miss one; no, no miser of them, * * * * * Avid of foulness, so they hound me out Away from blessing that they prate about, But never saw, and never dreamed upon, And know not how to long for with desire. [Footnote: _Marlowe_.] In the same spirit Richard Le Gallienne, in lines _On the Morals of Poets_, warns their detractor, Bigot, one folly of the man you flout Is more to God than thy lean life is whole. If it be true that the poet occasionally commits an error, he points out that it is the result of the philistine's corruption, not his own. He acknowledges that it is fatally easy to lead him, not astray perhaps, but into gravely compromising himself, because he is characterized by a childlike inability to comprehend the very existence of sin in the world. Of course his environment has a good deal to do with this. The innocent shepherd poet, shut off from crime by many a grassy hill and purling stream, has a long tradition behind him. The most typical pastoral poet of our period, the hero of Beattie's _The Minstrel_, suffers a rude shock when an old hermit reveals to him that all the world is not as fair and good as his immediate environment. The innocence of Wordsworth, and of the young Sordello, were fostered by like circumstances. Arnold conceives of Clough in this way, isolating him in Oxford instead of Arcadia, and represents him as dying from the shock of awakening to conditions as they are. But environment alone does not account for a large per cent of our poet heroes, the tragedy of whose lives most often results from a pathetic inability to recognize evil motives when they are face to face with them. Insistence upon the childlike nature of the poet is a characteristic nineteenth century obsession. Such temperamentally diverse poets as Mrs. Browning, [Footnote: See _A Vision of Poets_.] Swinburne [Footnote: See _A New Year's Ode_.] and Francis Thompson [Footnote: See _Sister Songs_.] agree in stressing this aspect of the poet's virtue. Perhaps it has been overdone, and the resulting picture of the singer as "an ineffectual angel, beating his bright wings in the void," is not so noble a conception as was Milton's sterner one, but it lends to the poet-hero a pathos that has had much to do with popularizing the type in literature, causing the reader to exclaim, with Shelley, The curse of Cain Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest. Of course the vogue of such a conception owes most to Shelley. All the poets appearing in Shelley's verse, the heroes of _Rosalind and Helen, The Revolt of Islam, Adonais, Epipsychidion_ and _Prince Athanase_, share the disposition of the last-named one: Naught of ill his heart could understand, But pity and wild sorrow for the same. It is obvious that all these singers are only veiled expositions of Shelley's own character, as he understood it, and all enthusiastic readers of Shelley's poetry have pictured an ideal poet who is reminiscent of Shelley. Even a poet so different from him, in many respects, as Browning, could not escape from the impress of Shelley's character upon his ideal. Browning seems to have recognized fleeting glimpses of Shelley in _Sordello_, and to have acknowledged them in his apostrophe to Shelley at the beginning of that poem. Browning's revulsion of feeling, after he discovered Shelley's abandonment of Harriet, did not prevent him from holding to his early ideal of Shelley as the typical poet. A poem by James Thomson, B.V., is characteristic of later poets' notion of Shelley. The scene of the poem is laid in heaven. Shelley, as the most compassionate of the angels, is chosen to go to the earth, to right its evils. He comes to this world and lives with "the saint's white purity," being A voice of right amidst a world's foul wrong, * * * * * With heavenly inspiration, too divine For souls besotted with earth's sensual wine. [Footnote: _Shelley_.] Consequently he is misunderstood and persecuted, and returns to heaven heart-broken by the apparent failure of his mission. Aside from Shelley, Marlowe is the historical poet most frequently chosen to illustrate the world's proneness to take advantage of the poet's innocence. In the most famous of the poems about Marlowe, _The Death of Marlowe_, R. H. Horne takes a hopeful view of the world's depravity, for he makes Marlowe's innocence of evil so touching that it moves a prostitute to reform. Other poets, however, have painted Marlowe's associates as villains of far deeper dye. In the drama by Josephine Preston Peabody, the persecutions of hypocritical puritans hound Marlowe to his death. [Footnote: _Marlowe._] The most representative view of Marlowe as an innocent, deceived youth is that presented by Alfred Noyes, in _At the Sign of the Golden Shoe_. In this poem we find Nash describing to the Mermaid group thetragic end of Marlowe, who lies Dead like a dog in a drunken brawl, Dead for a phial of paint, a taffeta gown. While there float in from the street, at intervals, the cries of the ballad-mongers hawking their latest doggerel, Blaspheming Tamborlin must die, And Faustus meet his end; Repent, repent, or presently To hell you must descend, Nash tells his story of the country lad who walked to London, bringing his possessions carried on a stick over his shoulder, bringing also, All unshielded, all unarmed, A child's heart, packed with splendid hopes and dreams. His manner, Untamed, adventurous, but still innocent, exposed him to the clutches of the underworld. One woman, in particular, Used all her London tricks To coney-catch the country greenhorn. Won by her pathetic account of her virtues and trials Marlowe tried to help her to escape from London-then, because he was utterly unused to the wiles of women, and was Simple as all great, elemental things, when she expressed an infatuation for him, then In her treacherous eyes, As in dark pools the mirrored stars will gleam, Here did he see his own eternal skies. * * * * * And all that God had meant to wake one day Under the Sun of Love, suddenly woke By candle-light, and cried, "The Sun, the Sun." At last, holding him wrapped in her hair, the woman attempted to tantalize him by revealing her promiscuous amours. In a horror of agony and loathing, Marlowe broke away from her. The next day, as Nash was loitering in a group including this woman and her lover, Archer, someone ran in to warn Archer that a man was on his way to kill him. As Marlowe strode into the place, Nash was struck afresh by his beauty: I saw his face, Pale, innocent, just the clear face of that boy Who walked to Cambridge, with a bundle and stick, The little cobbler's son. Yet--there I caught My only glimpse of how the sun-god looked-- Mourning for his death, the great dramatists agree that His were, perchance, the noblest steeds of all, And from their nostrils blew a fierier dawn Above the world.... Before his hand Had learned to quell them, he was dashed to earth. Minor writers are most impartial in clearing the names of any and all historical artists by such reasoning as this. By negligible American versifiers one too often finds Burns lauded as one whom "such purity inspires," [Footnote: A. S. G., _Burns_.] and, more astonishingly, Byron conceived of as a misjudged innocent. If one is surprised to hear, in verse on Byron's death, His cherub soul has passed to its eclipse, [Footnote: T. H. Chivers, _On the Death of Byron_.] this fades into insignificance beside the consolation offered Byron by another writer for his trials in this world, Peace awaits thee with caressings, Sitting at the feet of Jesus. Better known poets are likely to admit a streak of imperfection in a few of their number, while maintaining their essential goodness. It is refreshing, after witnessing too much whitewashing of Burns, to find James Russell Lowell bringing Burns down to a level where the attacks of philistines, though unwarranted, are not sacrilegious. Lowell imagines Holy Willie trying to shut Burns out of heaven. He accuses Burns first of irreligion, but St. Paul protests against his exclusion on that ground. At the charges of drunkenness, and of yearning "o'er-warmly toward the lasses," Noah and David come severally to his defense. In the end, Burns' great charity is felt to offset all his failings, and Lowell adds, of poets in general, These larger hearts must feel the rolls Of stormier-waved temptation; These star-wide souls beneath their poles Bear zones of tropic passion. [Footnote: _At the Burns Centennial_.] Browning is willing to allow even fictitious artists to be driven into imperfect conduct by the failure of those about them to live up to their standards. For example, Fra Lippo Lippi, disgusted with the barren virtue of the monks, confesses, I do these wild things in sheer despite And play the fooleries you catch me at In sheer rage. But invariably, whatever a poet hero's failings maybe, the author assures the philistine public that it is entirely to blame. If the poet is unable to find common ground with the plain man on which he can make his morality sympathetically understood, his quarrel with the puritan is foredoomed to unsuccessful issue, for whereas the plain man will wink at a certain type of indulgence, the puritan will be satisfied with nothing but iron restraint on the poet's part, and systematic thwarting of the impulses which are the breath of life to him. The poet's only hope of winning in his argument with the puritan lies in the possibility that the race of puritans is destined for extinction. Certainly they were much more numerous fifty years ago than now, and consequently more voluble in their denunciation of the poet. At that time they found their most redoubtable antagonists in the Brownings. Robert Browning devoted a poem, _With Francis Furini_, to exposing the incompatibility of asceticism and art, while Mrs. Browning, in _The Poet's Vow_, worked out the tragic consequences of the hero's mistaken determination to retire from the world, That so my purged, once human heart, From all the human rent, May gather strength to pledge and drink Your wine of wonderment, While you pardon me all blessingly The woe mine Adam sent. In the end Mrs. Browning makes her poet realize that he is crushing the best part of his nature by thus thwarting his human instincts. No, the poet's virtue must not be a pruning of his human nature, but a flowering of it. Nowhere are the Brownings more in sympathy than in their recognition of this fact. In _Pauline_, Browning traces the poet's mistaken effort to find goodness in self-restraint and denial. It is a failure, and the poem ends with the hero's recognition that "life is truth, and truth is good." The same idea is one of the leading motives in _Sordello_. One seems to be coming perilously near the decadent poet's argument again. And there remains to be dealt with a poet more extreme than Browning--Walt Whitman, who challenges us with his slogan, "Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul," [Footnote: _Song of Myself_.] and then records his zest in throwing himself into all phases of life. It is plain, at any rate, how the abandon of the decadent might develop from the poet's insistence upon his need to follow impulse utterly, to develop himself in all directions. The cry of Browning's poet in _Pauline_, I had resolved No age should come on me ere youth was spent, For I would wear myself out, Omar Khayyam's While you live Drink!--for once dead you never shall return, Swinburne's cry of despair, Thou has conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown gray with thy breath; We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death,[Footnote: _Hymn to Proserpine_.] show that in a revulsion from the asceticism of the puritan, no less than in a revulsion from the stupidity of the plain man, it may become easy for the poet to carry his _carpe diem_ philosophy very far. His talisman, pure love of beauty, must be indeed unerring if it is to guide aright his principle of restlessness That would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel, all [Footnote: _Pauline_.] The puritan sees, with grim pleasure, that an occasional poet confesses that his sense of beauty is not strong enough to lead him at all times. Emerson admits this, telling us, in _The Poet_, that although the singer perceives ideals in his moments of afflatus which Turn his heart from lovely maids, And make the darlings of the earth Swainish, coarse, and nothing worth, these moments of exaltation pass, and the singer finds himself a mere man, with an unusually rich sensuous nature, Eager for good, not hating ill; On his tense chords all strokes are felt, The good, the bad, with equal zeal. It is not unheard-of to find a poet who, despite occasional expressions of confidence in the power of beauty to sustain him, loses his courage at other times, and lays down a system of rules for his guidance that is quite as strict as any which puritans could formulate. Wordsworth's _Ode to Duty_ does not altogether embody the aesthetic conception of effortless right living. One may, perhaps, explain this poem on the grounds that Wordsworth is laying down principles of conduct, not for poets, but for the world at large, which is blind to aesthetic principles. Not thus, however, may one account for the self-tortures of Arthur Clough, or of Christina Rossetti, who was fully aware of the disagreeableness of the standards which she set up for herself. She reflected grimly, Does the road wind uphill all the way? Yes, to the very end! Will the day's journey take the whole long day? From morn till night, my friend. [Footnote: _Uphill._] It cannot be accidental, however, that wherever a poet voices a stern conception of virtue, he is a poet whose sensibility to physical beauty is not noteworthy. This is obviously true in the case of both Clough and Christina Rossetti. At intervals it was true of Wordsworth, whereas in the periods of his inspiration he expressed his belief that goodness is as a matter of good taste. The pleasures of the imagination were then so intense that they destroyed in him all desire for dubious delights. Thus in the _Prelude_ he described an unconscious purification of his life by his worship of physical beauty, saying of nature, If in my youth I have been pure in heart, If, mingling with the world, I am content With my own modest pleasures, and have lived With God and Nature communing, removed From little enmities and low desires, The gift is yours. Dante Gabriel, not Christina, possessed the most purely poetical nature in the Rossetti family, and his moral conceptions were the typical aesthetic ones, as incomprehensible to the puritan as they were to Ruskin, who exclaimed, "I don't say you do wrong, because you don't seem to know what is wrong, but you do just whatever you like as far as possible--as puppies and tomtits do." [Footnote: See E. L. Cary, The Rossettis, p.79.] To poets themselves however, there appears nothing incomprehensible about the inevitable rightness of their conduct, for they have not passed out of the happy stage of Wordsworth's _Ode to Duty,_ When love is an unerring light, And joy its own felicity. For the most part, whenever the puritan imagines that the poet has capitulated, he is mistaken, and the apparent self-denial in the poet's life is really an exquisite sort of epicureanism. The likelihood of such misunderstanding by the world is indicated by Browning in _Sordello,_ wherein the hero refuses to taste the ordinary pleasures of life, because he wishes to enjoy the flavor of the highest pleasure untainted. He resolves, The world shall bow to me conceiving all Man's life, who see its blisses, great and small Afar--not tasting any; no machine To exercise my utmost will is mine, Be mine mere consciousness: Let men perceive What I could do, a mastery believe Asserted and established to the throng By their selected evidence of song, Which now shall prove, whate'er they are, or seek To be, I am. The claims of the puritans being set aside, the poet must, finally, meet the objection of his third disputant, the philosopher, the one accuser whose charges the poet is wont to treat with respect. What validity, the philosopher asks, can be claimed for apprehension of truth, of the good-beautiful, secured not through the intellect, but through emotion? What proof has the poet that feeling is as unerring in detecting the essential nature of the highest good as is the reason? There is great variance in the breach between philosophers and poets on this point. Between the philosopher of purely rationalistic temper, and the poet who dares to take Life's rule from passion craved for passion's sake, [Footnote: Said of Byron. Wordsworth, _Not in the Lucid Intervals._] there is absolutely no common ground, of course. Such a poet finds the rigid ethical system of a rationalistic philosophy as uncharacteristic of the actual fluidity of the world as ever Cratylus did. Feeling, but not reason, may be swift enough in its transformations to mirror the world, such a poet believes, and he imitates the actual flux of things, not with a wagging of the thumb, like Cratylus, but with a flutter of the heart. Thus one finds Byron characteristically asserting, "I hold virtue, in general, or the virtues generally, to be only in the disposition, each a _feeling,_ not a principle." [Footnote: _Letter to Charles Dallas,_ January 21, 1808.] On the other hand, one occasionally meets a point of view as opposite as that of Poe, who believed that the poet, no less than the philosopher, is governed by reason solely,--that the poetic imagination is a purely intellectual function. [Footnote: See the _Southern Literary Messenger,_ II, 328, April, 1836.] The philosopher could have no quarrel with him. Between the two extremes are the more thoughtful of the Victorian poets,--Browning, Tennyson, Arnold, Clough, whose taste leads them so largely to intellectual pursuits that it is difficult to say whether their principles of moral conduct arise from the poetical or the philosophical part of their natures. The most profound utterances of poets on this subject, however, show them to be, not rationalists, but thoroughgoing Platonists. The feeling in which they trust is a Platonic intuition which includes the reason, but exists above it. At least this is the view of Shelley, and Shelley has, more largely than any other man, moulded the beliefs of later English poets. It is because he judges imaginative feeling to be always in harmony with the deepest truths perceived by the reason that he advertises his intention to purify men by awakening their feelings. Therefore, in his preface to _The Revolt of Islam_ he says "I would only awaken the feelings, so that the reader should see the beauty of true virtue." in the preface to the _Cenci,_ again, he declares, "Imagination is as the immortal God which should take flesh for the redemption of human passion." The poet, while thus expressing absolute faith in the power of beauty to redeem the world, yet is obliged to take into account the Platonic distinction between the beautiful and the lover of the beautiful. [Footnote: _Symposium,_ § 204.] No man is pure poet, he admits, but in proportion as he approaches perfect artistry, his life is purified. Shelley is expressing the beliefs of practically all artists when he says, "The greatest poets have been men of the most spotless virtue, of the most consummate prudence, and, if we would look into the interior of their lives, the most fortunate of men; and the exceptions, as they regard those who possess the poetical faculty in a high, yet an inferior degree, will be found upon consideration to confirm, rather than to destroy, the rule." [Footnote: _The Defense of Poetry._] Sidney Lanier's verse expresses this argument of Shelley precisely. In _The Crystal,_ Lanier indicates that the ideal poet has never been embodied. Pointing out the faults of his favorite poets, he contrasts their muddy characters with the perfect purity of Christ. And in _Life and Song_ he repeats the same idea: None of the singers ever yet Has wholly lived his minstrelsy, Or truly sung his true, true thought. Philosophers may retort that this imperfection in the singer's life arises not merely from the inevitable difference between the lover and the beauty which he loves, but from the fact that the object of the poet's love is not really that highest beauty which is identical with the good. Poets are content with the "many beautiful," Plato charges, instead of pressing on to discover the "one beautiful," [Footnote: Republic, VI, 507B.]--that is, they are ravished by the beauty of the senses, rather than by the beauty of the ideal. Possibly this is true. We have had, in recent verse, a sympathetic expression of the final step in Plato's ascent to absolute beauty, hence to absolute virtue. It is significant, however, that this verse is in the nature of a farewell to verse writing. In _The Symbol Seduces,_ "A. E." exclaims, I leave For Beauty, Beauty's rarest flower, For Truth, the lips that ne'er deceive; For Love, I leave Love's haunted bower. But this is exactly what the poet, as poet, cannot do. It may be, as Plato declared, that he is missing the supreme value of life by clinging to the "many beautiful," instead of the "one beautiful," but if he does not do so, all the colour of his poetical garment falls away from him, and he becomes pure philosopher. There is an infinite promise in the imperfection of the physical world that fascinates the poet. Life is to him "a dome of many colored glass" that reveals, yet stains, "the white radiance of eternity." If it were possible for him to gaze upon beauty apart from her sensuous embodiment, it is doubtful if he would find her ravishing. This is only to say that there is no escaping the fundamental aesthetic problem. Is the artist the imitator of the physical world, or the revealer of the spiritual world? He is both, inevitably, if he is a great poet. Hence there is a duality in his moral life. If one aspect of his genius causes him to be rapt away from earthly things, in contemplation of the heavenly vision, the other aspect no less demands that he live, with however pure a standard, in the turmoil of earthly passions. In the period which we have under discussion, it is easy to separate the two types and choose between them. Enthusiasts may, according to their tastes, laud the poet of Byronic worldliness or of Shelleyan otherworldliness. But, of course, this is only because this time boasts of no artist of first rank. When one considers the preëminent names in the history of poetry, it is not so easy to make the disjunction. If the gift of even so great a poet as Milton was compatible with his developing one side of his genius only, we yet feel that Milton is a great poet with limitations, and cannot quite concede to him equal rank with Shakespeare, or Dante, in whom the hybrid nature of the artist is manifest. CHAPTER VI THE POET'S RELIGION There was a time, if we may trust anthropologists, when the poet and the priest were identical, but the modern zeal for specialization has not tolerated this doubling of function. So utterly has the poet been robbed of his priestly character that he is notorious, nowadays, as possessing no religion at all. At least, representatives of the three strongest critical forces in society, philosophers, puritans and plain men, assert with equal vehemence that the poet has no religion that agrees with their interpretation of that word. As was the case in their attack upon the poet's morals, so in the refusal to recognize his religious beliefs, the poet's three enemies are in merely accidental agreement. The philosopher condemns the poet as incapable of forming rational theological tenets, because his temper is unspeculative, or at most, carries him no farther than a materialistic philosophy. The puritan condemns the poet as lacking reverence, that is, as having no "religious instinct." The plain man, of course, charges the poet, in this particular as in all others, with failure to conform. The poet shows no respect, he avers, for the orthodox beliefs of society. The quarrel of the poet and the philosopher has at no time been more in evidence than at present. The unspeculativeness of contemporary poetry is almost a creed. Poets, if they are to be read, must take a solemn pledge to confine their range of subject-matter to fleeting impressions of the world of sense. The quarrel was only less in evidence in the period just before the present one, at the time when the cry, "art for art's sake," held the attention of the public. At that time philosophers could point out that Walter Pater, the molder of poet's opinions, had said, "It is possible that metaphysics may be one of the things which we must renounce, if we would mould our lives to artistic perfection." This narrowness of interest, this deliberate shutting of one's self up within the confines of the physically appealing, has been believed to be characteristic of all poets. The completeness of their satisfaction in what has been called "the aesthetic moment" is the death of their philosophical instincts. The immediate perception of flowers and birds and breezes is so all-sufficing to them that such phenomena do not send their minds racing back on a quest of first principles. Thus argue philosophers. Such a conclusion the poet denies. The philosopher, to whom a sense-impression is a mere needle-prick, useful only as it starts his thoughts off on a tangent from it to the separate world of ideas, is not unnaturally misled by the poet's total absorption in the world of sense. But the poet is thus absorbed, not, as the philosopher implies, because he denies, or ignores, the existence of ideas, but because he cannot conceive of disembodied ideas. Walter Pater's reason for rejecting philosophy as a handicap to the poet was that philosophy robs the world of its sensuousness, as he believed. He explained the conception of philosophy to which he objected, as follows: To that gaudy tangle of what gardens, after all, are meant to produce, in the decay of time, as we may think at first sight, the systematic, logical gardener put his meddlesome hand, and straightway all ran to seed; to _genus_ and _species_ and _differentia_, into formal classes, under general notions, and with--yes! with written labels fluttering on the stalks instead of blossoms--a botanic or physic garden, as they used to say, instead of our flower-garden and orchard. [Footnote: _Plato and Platonism._] But it is only against this particular conception of philosophy, which is based upon abstraction of the ideal from the sensual, that the poet demurs. Beside the foregoing view of philosophy expressed by Pater, we may place that of another poet, an adherent, indeed, of one of the most purely sensuous schools of poetry. Arthur Symons states as his belief, "The poet who is not also philosopher is like a flower without a root. Both seek the same infinitude; the one apprehending the idea, the other the image." [Footnote: _The Romantic Movement,_ p. 129.] That is, to the poet, ideality is the hidden life of the sensual. Wherever a dry as dust rationalizing theology is in vogue, it is true that some poets, in their reaction, have gone to the extreme of subscribing to a materialistic conception of the universe. Shelley is the classic example. Everyone is aware of his revulsion from Paley's theology, which his father sternly proposed to read aloud to him, and of his noisy championing of the materialistic cause, in _Queen Mab_. But Shelley is also the best example that might be cited to prove the incompatibility of materialism and poetry. It might almost be said that Shelley never wrote a line of genuine poetry while his mind was under the bondage of materialistic theory. Fortunately Shelley was scarcely able to hold to the delusion that he was a materialist throughout the course of an entire poem, even in his extreme youth. To Shelley, more truly perhaps than to any other poet, the physical world throbs with spiritual life. His materialistic theories, if more loudly vociferated, were of scarcely greater significance than were those of Coleridge, who declared, "After I had read Voltaire's _Philosophical Dictionary,_ I sported infidel, but my infidel vanity never touched my heart." [Footnote: James Gillman, _Life of Coleridge_, p. 23.] A more serious charge of atheism could be brought against the poets at the other end of the century. John Davidson was a thoroughgoing materialist, and the other members of the school, made sceptic by their admiration for the sophistic philosophy of Wilde, followed Davidson in his views. But this hardly strengthens the philosopher's charge that materialistic philosophy characterizes poets as a class, for the curiously limited poetry which the 1890 group produced might lead the reader to assume that spiritual faith is indispensable to poets. If idealistic philosophy, as Arthur Symons asserts, is the root of which poetry is the flower, then the artificial and exotic poetry of the _fin de siècle_ school bears close resemblance to cut flowers, already drooping. It is significant that the outstanding materialist among American poets, Poe, produced poetry of much the same artificial temper as did these men. Poe himself was unable to accept, with any degree of complacence, the materialistic philosophy which seemed to him the most plausible explanation of life. One of his best-known sonnets is a threnody for poetry which, he feels, is passing away from earth as materialistic views become generally accepted. [Footnote: See the sonnet, _To Science._] Sensuous as was his conception of poetry, he yet felt that one kills it in taking the spirit of ideality out of the physical world. "I really perceive," he wrote in this connection, "that vanity about which most men merely prate,--the vanity of the human or temporal life." [Footnote: Letter to James Russell Lowell, July 2, 1844.] It is obvious that atheism, being pure negation, is not congenial to the poetical temper. The general rule holds that atheism can exist only where the reason holds the imagination in bondage. It was not merely the horrified recoil of orthodox opinion that prevented Constance Naden, the most voluminous writer of atheistic verse in the last century, from obtaining lasting recognition as a poet. Verse like hers, which expresses mere denial, is not essentially more poetical than blank paper. One cannot make so sweeping a statement without at once recalling the notable exception, James Thompson, B.V., the blackness of whose atheistic creed makes up the whole substance of _The City of Dreadful Night_. The preacher brings comfort to the tortured men in that poem, with the words, And now at last authentic word I bring Witnessed by every dead and living thing; Good tidings of great joy for you, for all: There is no God; no fiend with name divine Made us and tortures us; if we must pine It is to satiate no Being's gall. But this poem is a pure freak in poetry. Perhaps it might be asserted of James Thompson, without too much casuistry, that he was, poetically speaking, not a materialist but a pessimist, and that the strength of his poetic gift lay in the thirst of his imagination for an ideal world in which his reason would not permit him to believe. One cannot say of him, as of Coleridge, that "his unbelief never touched his heart." It would be nearer the truth to say that his unbelief broke his heart. Thomson himself would be the first to admit that his vision of the City of Dreadful Night is inferior, as poetry, to the visions of William Blake in the same city, of whom Thomson writes with a certain wistful envy, He came to the desert of London town, Mirk miles broad; He wandered up and he wandered down, Ever alone with God. [Footnote: _William Blake._] Goethe speaks of the poet's impressions of the outer world, the inner world and the other world. To the poet these impressions cannot be distinct, but must be fused in every aesthetic experience. In his impressions of the physical world he finds, not merely the reflection of his own personality, but the germ of infinite spiritual meaning, and it is the balance of the three elements which creates for him the "aesthetic repose." Even in the peculiarly limited sensuous verse of the present the third element is implicit. Other poets, no less than Joyce Kilmer, have a dim sense that in their physical experiences they are really tasting the eucharist, as Kilmer indicates in his warning, Vain is his voice in whom no longer dwells Hunger that craves immortal bread and wine. [Footnote: _Poets._] Very dim, indeed, it may be, the sense is, yet in almost every verse-writer of to-day there crops out, now and then, a conviction of the mystic significance of the physical. [Footnote: See, for example, John Masefield, _Prayer,_ and _The Seekers;_ and William Rose Benét, _The Falconer of God._] To cite the most extreme example of a rugged persistence of the spiritual life in the truncated poetry of the present, even Carl Sandburg cannot escape the conclusion that his birds are Summer-saulting for God's sake. Only the poet seems to possess the secret of the fusion of sense and spirit in the world. To the average eye sense-objects are opaque, or, at best, transmit only a faint glimmering of an idea. To Dr. Thomas Arnold's mind Wordsworth's concern with the flower which brought "thoughts which do often lie too deep for tears" was ridiculously excessive, since, at most, a flower could be only the accidental cause of great thoughts, a push, as it were, that started into activity ideas which afterward ran on by their own impulsion. Tennyson has indicated, however, that the poetical feeling aroused by a flower is, in its utmost reaches, no more than a recognition of that which actually abides in the flower itself. He muses, Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies;-- I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower--but if I could understand What you are, root and all and all in all, I should know what God and man is. By whatever polysyllabic name the more consciously speculative poets designate their philosophical creed, this belief in the infinite meaning of every object in the physical world is pure pantheism, and the instinctive poetical religion is inevitably a pantheistic one. All poetical metaphor is a confession of this fact, for in metaphor the sensuous and the spiritual are conceived as one. A pantheistic religion is the only one which does not hamper the poet's unconscious and unhampering morality. He refuses to die to this world as Plato's philosopher and the early fathers of the church were urged to do, for it is from the physical world that all his inspiration comes. If he attempts to turn away from it, he is bewildered, as Christina Rossetti was, by a duality in his nature, by The foolishest fond folly of a heart Divided, neither here nor there at rest, That hankers after Heaven, but clings to earth. [Footnote: _Later Life,_ Sonnet 24.] On the other hand, if he tries to content himself with the merely physical aspects of things, he finds that he cannot crush out of his nature a mysticism quite as intense as that of the most ascetic saint. Only a religion which maintains the all-pervasive oneness of both elements in his nature can wholly satisfy him. Not infrequently, poets have given this instinctive faith of theirs a conscious formulation. Coleridge, with his indefatigable quest of the unity underlying "the Objective and Subjective," did so. Shelley devoted a large part of _Prometheus Unbound_ and the conclusion of _Adonais_ to his pantheistic views. Wordsworth never wavered in his worship of the sense world which was yet spiritual, The Being that is in the clouds and air, That is in the green leaves among the groves, [Footnote: _Hart Leap Well._] and was led to the conclusion, It is my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes. [Footnote: _Lines Written in Early Spring._] Tennyson, despite the restlessness of his speculative temper, was ever returning to a pantheistic creed. The same is true of the Brownings. Arnold is, of course, undecided upon the question, and now approves, now rejects the pessimistic view of pantheism expressed in _Empedocles on Ætna,_ in accordance with his change of mood putting the poem in and out of the various editions of his works. But wherever his poetry is most worthy, his worship of nature coincides with Wordsworth's pantheistic faith. Swinburne's _Hertha_ is one of the most thorough going expressions of pantheism. At the present time, as in much of the poetry of the past, the pantheistic feeling is merely implicit. One of the most recent conscious formulations of it is in Le Gallienne's _Natural Religion,_ wherein he explains the grounds of his faith, Up through the mystic deeps of sunny air I cried to God, "Oh Father, art thou there?" Sudden the answer like a flute I heard; It was an angel, though it seemed a bird. On the whole the poet might well wax indignant over the philosopher's charge. It is hardly fair to accuse the poet of being indifferent to the realm of ideas, when, as a matter of fact, he not only tries to establish himself there, but to carry everything else in the universe with him. The charge of the puritan appears no more just to the poet than that of the philosopher. How can it be true, as the puritan maintains it to be, that the poet lacks the spirit of reverence, when he is constantly incurring the ridicule of the world by the awe with which he regards himself and his creations? No power, poets aver, is stronger to awaken a religious mood than is the quietude of the beauty which they worship. Wordsworth says that poetry can never be felt or rightly estimated "without love of human nature and reverence for God," [Footnote: Letter to Lady Beaumont, May 21, 1807.] because poetry and religion are of the same nature. If religion proclaims cosmos against chaos, so also does poetry, and both derive the harmony and repose that inspire reverence from this power of revelation. But, the puritan objects, the overweening pride which is one of the poet's most distinctive traits renders impossible the humility of spirit characteristic of religious reverence. It is true that the poet repudiates a religion that humbles him; this is one of the strongest reasons for his pantheistic leanings. There is no God, O son! If thou be none, [Footnote: _On the Downs._] Swinburne represents nature as crying to man, and this suits the poet exactly. Perhaps Swinburne's prose shows more clearly than his poetry the divergence of the puritan temper and the poetical one in the matter of religious humility. "We who worship no material incarnation of any qualities," he wrote, "no person, may worship the Divine Humanity; the ideal of human perfection and aspiration, without worshipping any god, any person, any fetish at all. Therefore I might call myself, if I wished, a kind of Christian (of the Church of Blake and Shelley) but assuredly in no sense a theist." [Footnote: Edmund Gosse, _Swinburne_, p. 309.] Nothing less than complete fusion of the three worlds spoken of by Goethe, will satisfy the poet. If fusion of the outer world and the other world results in the pantheistic color of the poet's religion, the third element, the inner world, makes it imperative that the poet's divinity should be a personal one, no less, in fact, than a deification of his own nature. This tendency of the poet to create God in his own image is frankly acknowledged by Mrs. Browning in prayer to the "Poet God." [Footnote: _A Vision of Poets_.] Of all English writers, William Blake affords the clearest revelation of the poet's instinctive attitude, because he is most courageous in carrying the implications of poetic egotism to their logical conclusion. In the _Prophetic Books_, in particular, Blake boldly expresses all that is implicit in the poet's yearning for a religion which will not humble and thwart his nature, but will exalt and magnify it. Even the puritan cannot affirm that the poet's demand for recognition, in his religious belief, of every phase of his existence, has not flowered, once, at least, in most genuinely religious poetry, for the puritan himself feels the power of Emily Brontë's _Last Lines,_ in which she cries with proud and triumphant faith, Though earth and man were gone, And suns and universes ceased to be, And Thou wert left alone, Every existence would exist in Thee. There is not room for Death, Nor atom that his might could render void; Thou, Thou art Being and Breath, And what Thou art may never be destroyed. There remains the plain man to be dealt with. What, he reiterates, has the poet to say for his orthodoxy? If he can combine his poetical illusions about the divinity of nature and the superlative and awesome importance of the poet himself with regular attendance at church; if these phantasies do not prevent him from sincerely and thoughtfully repeating the Apostle's creed, well and good. The plain man's religious demands upon the poet are really not excessive, yet the poet, from the romantic period onward, has taken delight in scandalizing him. In the eighteenth century poets seem not to have been averse to placating their enemies by publishing their attendance upon the appointed means of grace. Among the more conservative poets, this attitude lasted over into the earlier stages of the romantic movement. So late a poet as Bowles delighted to stress the "churchman's ardor" of the poet. [Footnote: See his verse on Southey and Milton.] Southey also was ready to exhibit his punctilious orthodoxy. Yet poor Southey was the unwitting cause of the impiety of his brothers for many years, inasmuch as Byron's _A Vision of Judgment,_ with its irresistible satire on Southey, sounded the death-knell of the narrowly religious poet. The vogue which the poet of religious ill-repute enjoyed during the romantic period was, of course, a very natural phase of "the renaissance of wonder." The religious "correctness" of the eighteenth century inevitably went out of fashion, in poetic circles, along with the rest of its formalism. Poets vied with one another in forming new and daring conceptions of God. There was no question, in the romantic revolt, of yielding to genuine atheism. "The worst of it is that I _do_ believe," said Byron, discussing his bravery under fear of death. "Anything but the Church of England," was the attitude by which Byron shocked the orthodox. "I think," he wrote, "people can never have enough of religion, if they are to have any. I incline myself very much to the Catholic doctrine." [Footnote: Letter to Tom Moore, March 4, 1822. See also the letter to Robert Charles Dallas, January 21, 1808.] _Cain,_ however, is not a piece of Catholic propaganda, and the chief significance of Byron's religious poetry lies in his romantic delight in arraigning the Almighty as well as Episcopalians. Shelley comes out even more squarely than Byron against conventional religion. In _Julian and Maddalo_, he causes Byron to say of him, You were ever still Among Christ's flock a perilous infidel. Shelley helped to foster the tradition, too, that the poet was persecuted by the church. In _Rosalind and Helen_, the hero was hated by the clergy, For he made verses wild and queer Of the strange creeds priests hold so dear, and this predilection for making them wild and queer resulted in Lionel's death, for The ministers of misrule sent Seized on Lionel and bore His chained limbs to a dreary tower, For he, they said, from his mind had bent Against their gods keen blasphemy. The most notable illustration of this phase of Shelley's thought is _The Revolt of Islam,_ wherein the poets, Laon and Cythna, are put to death by the priests, who regard them as their worst enemies. Burns, also, took a certain pleasure in unorthodoxy, and later poets have gloried in his attitude. Swinburne, in particular, praises his daring, in that he Smote the God of base men's choice At God's own gate. [Footnote: _Burns._] Young poets have not yet lost their taste for religious persecution. It is a great disappointment to them to find it difficult to strike fire from the faithful in these days. Swinburne in his early poetry denounced the orthodox God with such vigor that he roused a momentary flutter of horror in the church, but nowadays the young poet who craves to manifest his spiritual daring is far more likely to find himself in the position of Rupert Brooke, of whom someone has said, "He imagines the poet as going on a magnificent quest to curse God on his throne of fire, and finding--nothing." The poet's youthful zest in scandalizing the orthodox is likely, however, to be early outgrown. As the difficulties in the way of his finding a God worthy of his adoration become manifest to him, it may be, indeed, with a sigh that he turns from the conventional religion in which so many men find certitude and place. This is the mood, frequently, of Browning, [Footnote: See _Christmas Eve_ and _Easter Day._] of Tennyson, [Footnote: See _In Memoriam._] of Arnold, [Footnote: See _Dover Beach._] of Clough. [Footnote: See _The New Sinai, Qui Laborat Orat, Hymnos Amnos, Epistrausium._] So, too, James Thomson muses with regret, How sweet to enter in, to kneel and pray With all the others whom we love so well! All disbelief and doubt might pass away, And peace float to us with its Sabbath bell. Conscience replies, There is but one good rest, Whose head is pillowed upon Truth's pure breast. [Footnote: _The Reclusant._] In fact, as the religious world grows more broad-minded, the mature poet sometimes appeals to the orthodox for sympathy when his daring religious questing threatens to plunge him into despair. The public is too quick to class him with those whose doubt is owing to lassitude of mind, rather than too eager activity. Tennyson is obliged to remind his contemporaries, There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds. Browning, as always, takes a hopeful view of human stupidity when he expresses his belief that men will not long "persist in confounding, any more than God confounds, with genuine infidelity and atheism of the heart those passionate impatient struggles of a boy toward truth and love." [Footnote: _Preface_ to the Letters of Shelley (afterwards proved spurious).] The reluctance of the world to give honor too freely to the poet who prefers solitary doubt to common faith is, probably enough, due to a shrewd suspicion that the poet finds religious perplexity a very satisfactory poetic stimulus. In his character as man of religion as in that of lover, the poet is apt to feel that his thirst, not the quenching of it, is the aesthetic experience. There is not much question that since the beginning of the romantic movement, at least, religious doubt has been more prolific of poetry than religious certainty has been. Even Cowper, most orthodox of poets, composed his best religious poetry while he was tortured by doubt. One does not deny that there is good poetry in the hymn books, expressing settled faith, but no one will seriously contend, I suppose, that any contentedly orthodox poet of the last century has given us a body of verse that compares favorably, in purely poetical merit, with that of Arnold. Against the imputation that he deliberately dallies with doubt, the poet can only reply that, again as in the case of his human loves, longing is strong enough to spur him to poetic achievement, only when it is a thirst driving him mad with its intensity. The poet, in the words of a recent poem, is "homesick after God," and in the period of his blackest doubt beats against the wall of his reason with the cry, Ah, but there should be one! There should be one. And there's the bitterness Of this unending torture-place for men, For the proud soul that craves a perfectness That might outwear the rotting of all things Rooted in earth. [Footnote: Josephine Preston Peabody, _Marlowe._] The public which refuses to credit the poet with earnestness in his quest of God may misconceive the dignified attempts of Arnold to free himself from the tangle of doubt, and deem his beautiful gestures purposely futile, but before condemning the poetic attitude toward religion it must also take into account the contrary disposition of Browning to kick his way out of difficulties with entire indifference to the greater dignity of an attitude of resignation; and no more than Arnold does Browning ever depict a poet who achieves religious satisfaction. Thus the hero of _Pauline_ comes to no triumphant issue, though he maintains, I have always had one lode-star; now As I look back, I see that I have halted Or hastened as I looked towards that star, A need, a trust, a yearning after God. The same bafflement is Sordello's, over whom the author muses, Of a power above you still, Which, utterly incomprehensible, Is out of rivalry, which thus you can Love, though unloving all conceived by man-- What need! And of--none the minutest duct To that out-nature, naught that would instruct And so let rivalry begin to live-- But of a Power its representative Who, being for authority the same, Communication different, should claim A course, the first chosen, but the last revealed, This human clear, as that Divine concealed-- What utter need! There is, after all, small need that the public should charge the poet with deliberate failure to gain a satisfactory view of the deity. The quest of a God who satisfies the poet's demand that He shall include all life, satisfy every impulse, be as personal as the poet himself, and embody only the harmony of beauty, is bound to be a long one. It appears inevitable that the poet should never get more than incomplete and troubled glimpses of such a deity, except, perhaps, in The too-bold dying song of her whose soul Knew no fellow for might, Passion, vehemence, grief, Daring, since Byron died. [Footnote: Said of Emily Bronte. Arnold, _Haworth Churchyard._] A complete view of the poet's deity is likely always to be as disastrous as was that of Lucretius, as Mrs. Browning conceived of him, Who dropped his plummet down the broad Deep universe, and said, "No God," Finding no bottom. [Footnote: _A Vision of Poets._] If the poet's independent quest of God is doomed to no more successful issue than this, it might seem advisable for him to tolerate the conventional religious systems of his day. Though every poet must feel with Tennyson, Our little systems have their day, They have their day and cease to be; They are but broken lights of thee, And thou, O Lord, art more than they, [Footnote: _In Memoriam._] yet he may feel, with Rossetti, that it is best to Let lore of all theology Be to thy soul what it can be. [Footnote: _Soothsay._] Indeed, many of the lesser poets have capitulated to overtures of tolerance and not-too-curious inquiry into their private beliefs on the part of the church. In America, the land of religious tolerance, the poet's break with thechurch was never so serious as in England, and the shifting creeds of the evangelical churches have not much hampered poets. In fact, the frenzy of the poet and of the revivalist have sometimes been felt as akin. Noteworthy in this connection is George Lansing Raymond, who causes the heroes of two pretentious narrative poems, _A Life in Song,_ and _The Real and the Ideal,_ to begin by being poets, and end by becoming ministers of the gospel. The verse of J. G. Holland is hardly less to the point. The poet-hero of Holland's _Bitter Sweet_ is a thoroughgoing evangelist, who, in the stress of temptation by a woman who would seduce him, falls upon his knees and saves his own soul and hers likewise. In _Kathrina,_ though the hero, rebellious on account of the suicide of his demented parents, remains agnostic till almost the end of the poem, this is clearly regarded by Holland as the cause of his incomplete success as a poet, and in the end the hero becomes an irreproachable churchman. At present Vachel Lindsay keeps up the tradition of the poet-revivalist. Even in England, the orthodox poet has not been nonexistent. Christina Rossetti portrays such an one in her autobiographical poetry. Jean Ingelow, in _Letters of Life and Morning_, offers most conventional religious advice to the young poet. And in Coventry Patmore's _The Angel in the House_, one finds as orthodox a poet as any that the eighteenth century could afford. The Catholic church too has some grounds for its title, "nursing mother of poets." The rise of the group of Catholic poets, Francis Thompson, Alice Meynell, and Lionel Johnson, in particular, has tended to give a more religious cast to the recent poet. If Joyce Kilmer had lived, perhaps verse on the Catholic poet would have been even more in evidence. But it is likely that Joyce Kilmer would only have succeeded in inadvertently bringing the religious singer once more into disrepute. There is perhaps nothing nocuous in his creed, as he expressed it in a formal interview: "I hope ... poetry ... is reflecting faith ... in God and His Son and the Holy Ghost." [Footnote: Letter to Howard Cook, June 28, 1918, _Joyce Kilmer: Poems, Essays and Letters_, ed. Robert Cortes Holliday.] But Kilmer went much farther and advocated the suppression of all writings, by Catholics, which did not specifically advertise their author's Catholicism. [Footnote: See his letter to Aline Kilmer, April 21, 1918, _Joyce Kilmer, Poems, Essays and Letters_, ed. Robert Cortes Holliday.] And such a doctrine immediately delivers the poet's freedom of inspiration into the hands of censors. Perhaps a history of art would not square with the repugnance one feels toward such censorship. Conformance to the religious beliefs of his time certainly does not seem to have handicapped Homer or Dante, to say nothing of the preëminent men in other fields of art, Phidias, Michael Angelo, Raphael, etc. Yet in the modern consciousness, the theory of art for art's sake has become so far established that we feel that any compromise of the purely aesthetic standard is a loss to the artist. The deity of the artist and the churchman may be in some measure the same, since absolute beauty and absolute goodness are regarded both by poets and theologians as identical, but there is reason to believe that the poet may not go so far astray if he cleaves to his own immediate apprehension of absolute beauty as he will if he fashions his beliefs upon another man's stereotyped conception of the absolute good. Then, too, it is not unlikely that part of the poet's reluctance to embrace the creed of his contemporaries arises from the fact that he, in his secret heart, still hankers for his old title of priest. He knows that it is the imaginative faculty of the poet that has been largely instrumental in building up every religious system. The system that holds sway in society is apt to be the one that he himself has just outgrown; he has, accordingly, an artist's impatience for its immaturity. There is much truth to the poet's nature in verses entitled _The Idol Maker Prays_: Grant thou, that when my art hath made thee known And others bow, I shall not worship thee, But as I pray thee now, then let me pray Some greater god,--like thee to be conceived Within my soul. [Footnote: By Arthur Guiterman.] CHAPTER VII THE PRAGMATIC ISSUE No matter how strong our affection for the ingratiating ne'er-do-well, there are certain charges against the poet which we cannot ignore. It is a serious thing to have an alleged madman, inebriate, and experimenter in crime running loose in society. But there comes a time when our patience with his indefatigable accusers is exhausted. Is not society going a step too far if, after the poet's positive faults have been exhausted, it institutes a trial for his sins of omission? Yet so it is. If the poet succeeds in proving to the satisfaction of the jury that his influence is innocuous, he must yet hear the gruff decision, "Perhaps, as you say, you are doing no real harm. But of what possible use are you? Either become an efficient member of society, or cease to exist." Must we tamely look on, while the "light, winged, and holy creature," as Plato called the poet, is harnessed to a truck wagon, and made to deliver the world's bread and butter? Would that it were more common for poets openly to defy society's demands for efficiency, as certain children and malaperts of the poetic world have done! It is pleasant to hear the naughty advice which that especially impractical poet, Emily Dickinson, gave to a child: "Be sure to live in vain, dear. I wish I had." [Footnote: Gamaliel Bradford, _Portraits of American Women_, p. 248 (Mrs. Bianchi, p. 37).] And one is hardly less pleased to hear the irrepressible Ezra Pound instruct his songs, But above all, go to practical people, go, jangle their door-bells. Say that you do no work, and that you will live forever. [Footnote: _Salutation the Second_.] Surely no one else has had so bad a time with efficiency experts as has the poet, even though everyone whose occupation does not bring out sweat on the brow is likely to fall under their displeasure. The scholar, for instance, is given no rest from their querulous complaints, because he has been sitting at his ease, with a book in his hand, while they have dug the potatoes for his dinner. But the poet is the object of even bitterer vituperation. He, they remind him, does not even trouble to maintain a decorous posture during his fits of idleness. Instead, he is often discovered flat on his back in the grass, with one foot swinging aloft, wagging defiance at an industrious world. What right has he to loaf and invite his soul, while the world goes to ruin all about him? The poet reacts variously to these attacks. Sometimes with (it must be confessed) aggravating meekness, he seconds all that his beraters say of his idle ways. [Footnote: For verse dealing with the idle poet see James Thomson, _The Castle of Indolence_ (Stanzas about Samuel Patterson, Dr. Armstrong, and the author); Barry Cornwall, _The Poet and the Fisher_, and _Epistle to Charles Lamb on His Emancipation from the Clerkship_; Wordsworth, _Expostulation and Reply_; Emerson, _Apology_; Whitman, _Song of Myself_; Helen Hunt Jackson, _The Poet's Forge_; P. H. Hayne, _An Idle Poet Dreaming_; Henry Timrod, _They Dub Thee Idler_; Washington Allston, _Sylphs of the Seasons_; C. W. Stoddard, _Utopia_; Alan Seeger, _Oneata_; J. G. Neihardt, _The Poet's Town_.] Sometimes he gives them the plaintive assurance that he is overtaxed with imaginary work. But occasionally he seems to be really stung by their reproaches, and tries to convince them that by following a strenuous avocation he has done his bit for society, and has earned his hours of idleness as a poet. When the modern poet tries to establish his point by exhibiting singers laboring in the business and professional world, he cannot be said to make out a very good case for himself. He has dressed an occasional fictional bard in a clergyman's coat, in memory, possibly, of Donne and Herbert. [Footnote: See G. L. Raymond, _A Life in Song_, and _The Real and the Ideal_.] In politics, he has exhibited in his verses only a few scattered figures,--Lucan, [Footnote: See _Nero_, Robert Bridges.] Petrarch, [Footnote: See Landor, _Giovanna of Naples_, and _Andrea of Hungary_.] Dante, [Footnote: See G. L. Raymond, _Dante_.] Boccaccio, Walter Map, [Footnote: See _A Becket_, Tennyson.] Milton [Footnote: See _Milton_, Bulwer Lytton; _Milton_, George Meredith.]--and these, he must admit, belong to remote periods. Does D'Annunzio bring the poet-politician down to the present? But poets have not yet begun to celebrate D'Annunzio in verse. Really there is only one figure, a protean one, in the realm of practical life, to whom the poet may look to save his reputation. Shakespeare he is privileged to represent as following many callings, and adorning them all. Or no, not quite all, for a recent verse-writer has gone to the length of representing Shakespeare as a pedagogue, and in this profession the master dramatist is either inept, or three centuries in advance of his time, for the citizens of Stratford do not take kindly to his scholastic innovations. [Footnote: See _William Shakespeare, Pedagogue and Poacher_, a drama, Richard Garnett.] If the poet does not appear a brilliant figure in the business world, he may turn to another field with the confidence that here his race will vindicate him from the world's charges of sluggishness or weakness. He is wont proudly to declare, with Joyce Kilmer, When you say of the making of ballads and songs that it is a woman's work, You forget all the fighting poets that have been in every land. There was Byron, who left all his lady-loves, to fight against the Turk, And David, the singing king of the Jews, who was born with a sword in his hand. It was yesterday that Rupert Brooke went out to the wars and died, And Sir Philip Sidney's lyric voice was as sweet as his arm was strong, And Sir Walter Raleigh met the axe as a lover meets his bride, Because he carried in his heart the courage of his song. [Footnote: Joyce Kilmer, _The Proud Poet_.] It was only yesterday, indeed, that Rupert Brooke, Francis Ledwidge, Alan Seeger and Joyce Kilmer made the memory of the soldier poet lasting. And it cannot be justly charged that the draft carried the poet, along with the street-loafer, into the fray, an unwilling victim. From Aeschylus and David to Byron and the recent war poets, the singer may find plenty of names to substantiate his claim that he glories in war as his natural element. [Footnote: For poetry dealing with the poet as a warrior see Thomas Moore, _The Minstrel Boy, O Blame Not the Bard, The Harp That Once Through Tara's Halls, Shall the Harp then be Silent, Dear Harp of My Country_; Praed, _The Eve of Battle_; Whitman, _Song of the Banner at Daybreak_; E. C. Stedman, _Jean Prouvaire's Song at the Barricade, Byron_; G. L. Raymond, _Dante, A Song of Life_; S. K. Wiley, _Dante and Beatrice_; Oscar Wilde, _Ravenna_; Richard Realf, _Vates, Written on the Night of His Suicide_; Cale Young Rice, _David, Aeschylus_; Swinburne, _The Sisters_; G. E. Woodberry, _Requiem_; Rupert Brooke, _1914_; Joyce Kilmer, _In Memory of Rupert Brooke, The Proud Poet_; Alan Seeger, _I Have a Rendez-vous with Death, Sonnet to Sidney, Liebestod_; John Bunker, _On Bidding Farewell to a Poet Gone to the Wars_; Jessie Rittenhouse, _To Poets Who Shall Fall in Battle_; Rossiter Johnson, _A Soldier Poet_; Herbert Kaufman, _Hell Gate of Soissons_; Herbert Asquith, _The Volunteer_; Julian Grenfil, _Into Battle_; Grace Hazard Conkling, _Francis Ledwidge_; Richard Mansfield, 2d, _Song of the Artists_; Norreys Jephson O'Connor, _In Memoriam: Francis Ledwidge_; Donald F. Goold Johnson, _Rupert Brooke_.] A recent writer has said, "The poet must ever go where the greatest songs are singing," [Footnote: See Christopher Morley, Essay on Joyce Kilmer.] and nowhere is the poetry of life so manifest as where life is in constant hazard. The verse of Rupert Brooke and Alan Seeger surely makes it plain that warfare was the spark which touched off their genius, even as it might have done Byron's, When the true lightning of his soul was bared, Long smouldering till the Mesolonghi torch. [Footnote: Stephen Phillips, _Emily Brontë_.] But no matter how heroic the poet may prove himself to be, in his character of soldier, or how efficient as a man of affairs, this does not settle his quarrel with the utilitarians, for they are not to be pacified by a recital of the poet's avocations. They would remind him that the world claims the whole of his time. If, after a day of strenuous activity, he hurries home with the pleasant conviction that he has earned a long evening in which to woo the Muse, the world is too likely to peer through the shutters and exclaim, "What? Not in bed yet? Then come out and do some extra chores." If the poet is to prove his title as an efficient citizen, it is clear that he must reveal some merit in verse-making itself. If he can make no more ambitious claims for himself, he must, at the very least, show that Browning was not at fault when he excused his occupation: I said, to do little is bad; to do nothing is worse, And wrote verse. [Footnote: Ferishtah's Fancies.] How can the poet satisfy the philistine world that his songs are worth while? Need we ask? Business men will vouch for their utility, if he will but conform to business men's ideas of art. Here is a typical expression of their views, couched in verse for the singer's better comprehension: The days of long-haired poets now are o'er, The short-haired poet seems to have the floor; For now the world no more attends to rhymes That do not catch the spirit of the times. The short-haired poet has no muse or chief, He sings of corn. He eulogizes beef. [Footnote: "The Short-haired Poet," in _Common-Sense_, by E. F. Ware.] But the poet utterly repudiates such a view of himself as this, for he cannot draw his breath in the commercial world. [Footnote: Several poems lately have voiced the poet's horror of materialism. See Josephine Preston Peabody, _The Singing Man_; Richard Le Gallienne, _To R. W. Emerson, Richard Watson Gilder_; Mary Robinson, _Art and Life_.] In vain he assures his would-be friends that the intangibilities with which he deals have a value of their own. Emerson says, One harvest from thy field Homeward brought the oxen strong; A second crop thine acres yield Which I gather in a song. [Footnote: _Apology_] But for this second crop the practical man says he can find absolutely no market; hence overtures of friendliness between him and the poet end with sneers and contempt on both sides. Doubtless the best way for the poet to deal with the perennial complaints of the practical-minded, is simply to state brazenly, as did Oscar Wilde, "All art is quite useless." [Footnote: Preface to _Dorian Gray_.] Is the poet justified, then, in stopping his ears to all censure, and living unto himself? Not so; when the hub-bub of his sordid accusers dies away, he is conscious of another summons, before a tribunal which he cannot despise or ignore. For once more the poet's equivocal position exposes him to attacks from all quarters. He stands midway between the spiritual and the physical worlds, he reveals the ideal in the sensual. Therefore, while the practical man complains that the poet does not handle the solid objects of the physical world, but transmutes them to airy nothings, the philosopher, on the contrary, condemns the poet because he does not wholly sever connections with this same physical world, but is continually hovering about it, like a homesick ghost. Like the plain man, the philosopher gives the poet a chance to vindicate his usefulness. Plato's challenge is not so age-worn that we may not requote it. He makes Socrates say, in the _Republic_, Let us assure our sweet friend (poetry) and the sister arts of imitation that if she will only prove her title to exist in a well-ordered state, we shall be delighted to receive her.... We are very conscious of her charms, but we may not on that account betray the truth.... Shall I propose, then, that she be allowed to return from exile, but on this condition only, that she makes a defense of herself in lyrical or some other meter? And we may further grant to those of her defenders who are lovers of poetry and yet not poets the permission to speak in prose on her behalf. Let them show not only that she is pleasant but also useful to states and to human life, and we will listen in a kindly spirit. [Footnote: _Republic_, Book X, 607.] * * * * * One wonders why the lovers of Poetry have been so much more solicitous for her cause than Poetry herself has appeared to be. Aristotle, and after him many others,--in the field of English literature, Sidney, Shelley, and in our own day G. E. Woodberry,--have made most eloquent defenses in prose, but thus far the supreme lyrical defense has not been forthcoming. Perhaps Poetry feels that it is beneath her dignity to attempt a utilitarian justification for herself. Yet in the verse of the last century and a half there are occasional passages which give the impression that Poetry, with childishly averted head, is offering them to us, as if to say, "Don't think I would stoop to defend myself, but here are some things I might say for myself, if I wished." Since the Platonic philosopher and the practical man stand for antipodal conceptions of reality, it really seems too bad that Plato will not give the poet credit for a little merit, in comparison with his arch-enemy. But as a matter of fact, the spectator of eternity and the sense-blinded man of the street form a grotesque fraternity, for the nonce, and the philosopher assures the plain man that he is far more to his liking than is the poet. Plato's reasoning is, of course, that the plain man at least does not tamper with the objects of sense, through which the philosopher may discern gleams of the spiritual world, whereas the poet distorts them till their real significance is obscured. The poet pretends that he is giving their real meaning, even as the philosopher, but his interpretation is false. He is like a man who, by an ingenious system of cross-lights and reflections, creates a wraithlike image of himself in the mirror, and alleges that it is his soul, though it is really only a misleading and worthless imitation of his body. Will not Plato's accusation of the poet's inferiority to the practical man be made clearest if we stay by Plato's own humble illustration of the three beds? One, he says, is made by God, one by the carpenter, and one by the poet. [Footnote: See the _Republic_ X, 596 B ff.] Now the bed which a certain poet, James Thomson, B. V., made, is fairly well known. It speaks, in "ponderous bass," to the other furniture in the room: "I know what is and what has been; Not anything to me comes strange, Who in so many years have seen And lived through every kind of change. I know when men are bad or good, When well or ill," he slowly said, "When sad or glad, when sane or mad And when they sleep alive or dead." [Footnote: _In the Room_] Plato would say of this majestic four-poster, with its multifarious memories "of births and deaths and marriage nights," that it does not come so near the essential idea of bedness as does the most non-descript product of the carpenters' tools. James Thomson's poem, he would say, is on precisely the same plane as the reflection of one's bed in the mirror across the room. Therefore he inquires, "Now do you suppose that if a person were able to make the original as well as the image, he would seriously devote himself to the image-making branch? Would he allow imitation to be the ruling principle of his life, as if he had nothing higher in him? ... Imitation is only a kind of play or sport." [Footnote: _Republic_ X, 599 A.] It has long been the fashion for those who care for poetry to shake their heads over Plato's aberration at this point. It seems absurd enough to us to hear the utility of a thing determined by its number of dimensions. What virtue is there in merely filling space? We all feel the fallacy in such an adaptation of Plato's argument as Longfellow assigns to Michael Angelo, causing that versatile artist to conclude: Painting and sculpture are but images; Are merely shadows cast by outward things On stone or canvas, having in themselves No separate existence. Architecture, As something in itself, and not an image, A something that is not, surpasses them As substance shadow. [Footnote: _Michael Angelo_.] Yet it may be that the homeliness of Plato's illustration has misled us as to the seriousness of the problem. Let us forget about beds and buildings and think of actual life in the more dignified way that has become habitual to us since the war. Then it must appear that Plato's charge is as truly a live issue here and now as it ever was in Athens. The claims for the supremacy of poetry, set forth by Aristotle, Sidney and the rest, seem to weaken, for the time being, at least, when we find that in our day the judgment that poetry is inferior to life comes, not from outsiders, but from men who were at one time most ardent votaries of the muse. Repudiation by verse-writers of poetry's highest claims we have been accustomed to dismiss, until recently, as betrayal of a streak of commonness in the speaker's nature,--of a disposition to value the clay of life more highly than the fire. We were not, perhaps, inclined to take even so great a poet as Byron very seriously when he declared, "I by no means rank poets or poetry high in the scale of the intellect. It is the lava of the imagination, whose eruption prevents an earthquake. I prefer the talents of action." But with the outbreak of the world war one met unquestionably sincere confession from more than one poet that he found verse-writing a pale and anemic thing. Thus "A. E." regretted the time that he spent on poetry, sighing, He who might have wrought in flame Only traced upon the foam. [Footnote: _Epilogue_] In the same spirit are Joyce Kilmer's words, written shortly before his death in the trenches: "I see daily and nightly the expression of beauty in action instead of words, and I find it more satisfactory." [Footnote: Letter, May 7, 1918. See Joyce Kilmer's works, edited by Richard Le Gallienne.] Also we have the decision of Francis Ledwidge, another poet who died a soldier: A keen-edged sword, a soldier's heart, Are greater than a poet's art, And greater than a poet's fame A little grave that has no name. [Footnote: _Soliloquy_.] Is not our idealization of poets who died in war a confession that we ourselves believe that they chose the better part,--that they did well to discard imitation of life for life itself? It is not fair to force an answer to such a question till we have more thoroughly canvassed poets' convictions on this matter. Do they all admit the justice of Plato's characterization of poetry as a sport, comparable to golf or tennis? In a few specific instances, poets have taken this attitude toward their own verse, of course. There was the "art for art's sake" cry, which at the end of the last century surely degenerated into such a conception of poetry. There have been a number of poets like Austin Dobson and Andrew Lang, who have frankly regarded their verse as a pastime to while away an idle hour. There was Swinburne, who characterized many of his poems as being idle and light as white butterflies. [Footnote: See the _Dedication to Christina Rossetti_, and _Envoi_.] But when we turn away from these prestidigitators of rhymes and rhythms, we find that no view of poetry is less acceptable than this one to poets in general. They are far more likely to earn the world's ridicule by the deadly seriousness with which they take verse writing. If the object of his pursuit is a sport, the average poet is as little aware of it as is the athlete who suffers a nervous collapse before the big game of the season. But Plato's more significant statement is untouched. Is poetry an imitation of life? It depends, of course, upon how broadly we interpret the phrase, "imitation of life." In one sense almost every poet would say that Plato was right in characterizing poetry thus. The usual account of inspiration points to passive mirroring of life. Someone has said of the poet, As a lake Reflects the flower, tree, rock, and bending heaven, Shall he reflect our great humanity. [Footnote: Alexander Smith, _A Life Drama_.] And these lines are not false to the general view of the poet's function, but they leave us leeway to quarrel over the nature of the reflection mentioned, just as we quarrel over the exact connotations of Plato's and Aristotle's word, imitation. Even if we hold to the narrower meaning of imitation, there are a few poets who intimate that imitation alone is their aim in writing poetry. Denying that life has an ideal element, they take pains to mirror it, line for line, and blemish for blemish. How can they meet Plato's question as to their usefulness? If life is a hideous, meaningless thing, as they insinuate, it is not clear what merit can abide in a faithful reflection of it. Let us take the case of Robert Service, who prided himself upon the realism of his war poetry. [Footnote: See _Rhymes of a Red Cross Man_.] Perhaps his defense depends, more truly than he realized, upon the implication contained in his two lines, If there's good in war and crime, There may be in my bits of rhyme. [Footnote: See _Ibid_.] Yet the realist may find a sort of justification for himself; at least James Thomson, B.V., thinks he has found one for him. The most thoroughly hopeless exposition of the world's meaninglessness, in English poetry, is doubtless Thomson's _City of Dreadful Night_. Why does the author give such a ghastly thing to the world? In order, he says, that some other clear-eyed spectator of the nightmare of existence may gain a forlorn comfort from it, since he will know that a comrade before him has likewise seen things at their blackest and worst. But would Plato accept this as a justification for realistic poetry? It is doubtful. No one could be comforted by a merely literal rendering of life. The comfort must derive from the personal equation, which is the despair engendered in the author by dreams of something better than reality; therefore whatever merit resides in such poetry comes not from its realism, but from the idealism of the writer. We must not think that all poets who regard their poetry as a reflection of this world alone, agree in praising glaring realism as a virtue. Rather, some of them say, the value of their reflection lies in its misty indistinctness. Life may be sordid and ugly at first hand, but let the artist's reflection only be remote enough, and the jagged edges and dissonances of color which mar daily living will be lost in the purple haze of distance. Gazing at such a reflection, men may perhaps forget, for a space, how dreary a thing existence really is. And they shall be accounted poet-kings Who simply tell the most heart-easing things, [Footnote: _Sleep and Poetry_.] said Keats in his youth. Such a statement of the artist's purpose inevitably calls up William Morris: Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time, Why should I strive to set the crooked straight? Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme Beats with light wing against the ivory gate, Telling a tale, not too importunate To those who in the sleepy region stay, Lulled by the singer of an empty day. [Footnote: _Prologue to the Earthly Paradise_.] Would Plato scoff at such a formulation of the artist's mission? He would rather condemn it, as fostering illusion and falsehood in men's minds. But we moderns are perhaps more world-weary, less sanguine about ideal truth than the ancients. With one of our war poets, we often plead for "song that turneth toil to rest," [Footnote: Madison Cawein, _Preludes_.] and agree with Keats that, whether art has any other justification or not, it has one "great end, to soothe the cares of man." [Footnote: _Sleep and Poetry_.] We are not to imagine that many of our poets are content with the idea that poetry has so minor a function as this. They play with the thought of life's possible insignificance and leave it, for idealism is the breath of life to poets, and their adherence to realism amounts to suicide. Poetry may be comforting without being illusive. Emerson says, 'Tis the privilege of art Thus to play its cheerful part Man on earth to acclimate And bend the exile to his fate. [Footnote: _Art_.] It is not, obviously, Emerson's conception that the poetry which brings this about falsifies. Like most poets, he indicates that art accomplishes its end, not merely by obscuring the hideous accidents of life, but by enabling us to glimpse an ideal element which abides in it, and is its essence. Is the essence of things really a spiritual meaning? If so, it seems strange that Plato should have so belittled the poet's capacity to render the spiritual meaning in verse. But it is possible that the artist's view as to the relation of the ideal to the physical does not precisely square with Plato's. Though poets are so constitutionally Platonic, in this one respect they are perhaps more truly Aristotelians. Plato seems to say that ideality is not, as a matter of fact, the essence of objects. It is a light reflected upon them, as the sun's light is reflected upon the moon. So he claims that the artist who portrays life is like one who, drawing a picture of the moon, gives usonly a map of her craters, and misses entirely the only thing that gives the moon any meaning, that is, moonlight. But the poet, that lover of the sensuous, cannot quite accept such a view as this. Ideality is truly the essence of objects, he avers, though it is overlaid with a mass of meaningless material. Hence the poet who gives us a representation of things is not obscuring them, but is doing us a service by simplifying them, and so making their ideality clearer. All that the most idealistic poet need do is to imitate; as Mrs. Browning says, Paint a body well, You paint a soul by implication. [Footnote: _Aurora Leigh_.] This firm faith that the sensual is the dwelling-place of the spiritual accounts for the poet's impatience with the contention that his art is useless unless he points a lesson, by manipulating his materials toward a conscious moral end. The poet refuses to turn objects this way and that, until they catch a reflection from a separate moral world. If he tries to write with two distinct purposes, hoping to "suffice the eye and save the soul beside," [Footnote: _The Ring and the Book_.] as Browning puts it, he is apt to hide the intrinsic spirituality of things under a cloak of ready-made moral conceptions. In his moments of deepest insight the poet is sure that his one duty is to reveal beauty clearly, without troubling himself about moralizing, and he assures his readers, If you get simple beauty and naught else, You get about the best thing God invents. [Footnote: _Fra, Lippo Lippi_.] Probably poets have always felt, in their hearts, what the radicals of the present day are saying so vehemently, that the poet should not be expected to sermonize: "I wish to state my firm belief," says Amy Lowell, "that poetry should not try to teach, that it should exist simply because it is created beauty." [Footnote: Preface to _Sword Blades and Poppy Seed_. See also Joyce Kilmer, Letter to Howard W. Cook, June 28, 1918.] Even conceding that the ideal lives within the sensual, it may seem that the poet is too sanguine in his claim that he is able to catch the ideal and significant feature of a thing rather than its accidents. Why should this be? Apparently because his thirst is for balance, proportion, harmony--what you will--leading him to see life as a unity. The artist's eyes are able to see life in focus, as it were, though it has appeared to men of less harmonious spirit as A many-sided mirror, Which could distort to many a shape of error This true, fair world of things. [Footnote: Shelley, _Prometheus Unbound_.] It is as if the world were a jumbled picture puzzle, which only the artist is capable of putting together, and the fact that the essence of things, as he conceives of them, thus forms a harmonious whole is to him irrefutable proof that the intuition that leads him to see things in this way is not leading him astray. James Russell Lowell has described the poet's achievement: With a sorrowful and conquering beauty, The soul of all looked grandly from his eyes. [Footnote: _Ode_.] "The soul of all," that is the artist's revelation. To him the world is truly a universe, not a heterogeneity of unrelated things. In different mode from Lowell, Mrs. Browning expresses the same conception of the artist's imitation of life, inquiring, What is art But life upon the larger scale, the higher, When, graduating up a spiral line Of still expanding and ascending gyres It pushes toward the intense significance Of all things, hungry for the infinite. [Footnote: _Aurora Leigh_.] The poet cannot accept Plato's characterization of him as an imitator, then, not if this implies that his imitations are inferior to their objects. Rather, the poet proudly maintains, they are infinitely superior, being in fact closer approximations to the meaning of things than are the things themselves. Thus Shelley describes the poet's work: He will watch from dawn to gloom The lake-reflected sun illume The yellow bees in the ivy bloom, Nor heed nor see, what things they be; But from these create he can Forms more real than living man, Nurslings of immortality. [Footnote: _Prometheus Unbound_.] Therefore the poet has usually claimed for himself the title, not of imitator, but of seer. To his purblind readers, who see men as trees walking, he is able, with the search-light of his genius, to reveal the essential forms of things. Mrs. Browning calls him "the speaker of essential truth, opposed to relative, comparative and temporal truth"; [Footnote: _Aurora Leigh_.] James Russell Lowell calls him "the discoverer and revealer of the perennial under the deciduous"; [Footnote: _The Function of the Poet_.] Emerson calls him "the only teller of news." [Footnote: _Poetry and Imagination_. The following are some of the poems asserting that the poet is the speaker of ideal truth: Blake, _Hear the Voice of the Ancient Bard;_ Montgomery, _A Theme for a Poet;_ Bowles, _The Visionary Boy;_ Wordsworth, _Personal Talk;_ Coleridge, _To Wm. Wordsworth;_ Arnold, _The Austerity of Poetry;_ Rossetti, _Sonnet, Shelley;_ Bulwer Lytton, _The Dispute of the Poets;_ Mrs. Browning, _Pan is Dead;_ Landor, _To Wordsworth_; Jean Ingelow, _The Star's Monument_; Tupper, _Wordsworth_; Tennyson, _The Poet_; Swinburne, _The Death of Browning_ (Sonnet V), _A New Year's Ode_; Edmund Gosse, _Epilogue_; James Russell Lowell, Sonnets XIV and XV on _Wordsworth's Views of Capital Punishment_; Bayard Taylor, _For the Bryant Festival_; Emerson, _Saadi_; M. Clemmer, _To Emerson_; Warren Holden, _Poetry_; P. H. Hayne, _To Emerson_; Edward Dowden, _Emerson_; Lucy Larcom, _R. W. Emerson_; R. C. Robbins, _Emerson_; Henry Timrod, _A Vision of Poesy_; G. E. Woodberry, _Ode at the Emerson Centenary_; Bliss Carman, _In a Copy of Browning_; John Drinkwater, _The Loom of the Poets_; Richard Middleton, _To an Idle Poet_; Shaemas O'Sheel, _The Poet Sees that Truth and Passion are One_.] Here we are, then, at the real point of dispute between the philosopher and the poet. They claim the same vantage-point from which to overlook human life. One would think they might peacefully share the same pinnacle, but as a matter of fact they are continuously jostling one another. In vain one tries to quiet their contentiousness. Turning to the most deeply Platonic poets of our period--Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, Arnold, Emerson,--one may inquire, Does not your description of the poet precisely tally with Plato's description of the philosopher? Yes, they aver, but Plato falsified when he named his seer a philosopher rather than a poet. [Footnote: In rare cases, the poet identifies himself with the philosopher. See Coleridge, _The Garden of Boccaccio_; Kirke White, _Lines Written on Reading Some of His Own Earlier Sonnets_; Bulwer Lytton, _Milton_; George E. Woodberry, _Agathon_.] Surely if the quarrel may be thus reduced to a matter of terminology, it grows trivial, but let us see how the case stands. From one approach the dispute seems to arise from a comparison of methods. Coleridge praises the truth of Wordsworth's poetry as being Not learnt, but native, her own natural notes. [Footnote: _To William Wordsworth_.] Wordsworth himself boasts over the laborious investigator of facts, Think you, mid all this mighty sum Of things forever speaking, That nothing of itself will come, We must be ever seeking? [Footnote: _Expostulation and Reply_.] But the dispute goes deeper than mere method. The poet's immediate intuition is superior to the philosopher's toilsome research, he asserts, because it captures ideality alive, whereas the philosopher can only kill and dissect it. As Wordsworth phrases it, poetry is "the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science." Philosophy is useful to the poet only as it presents facts for his synthesis; Shelley states, "Reason is to the imagination as the instrument to the agent, as the body to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance." [Footnote: _A Defense of Poetry_.] To this the philosopher may rejoin that poetry, far from making discoveries beyond the bourne of philosophy, is a mere popularization, a sugar-coating, of the philosopher's discoveries. Tolstoi contends, True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception to the region of emotion. And thus a false activity of science inevitably causes a correspondingly false activity of art. [Footnote: _What is Art?_] Such criticisms have sometimes incensed the poet till he has refused to acknowledge any indebtedness to the dissecting hand of science, and has pronounced the philosopher's attitude of mind wholly antagonistic to poetry. Philosophy will clip an angel's wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, [Footnote: _Lamia_.] Keats once complained. "Sleep in your intellectual crust!" [Footnote: _A Poet's Epitaph_.] Wordsworth contemptuously advised the philosopher, and not a few other poets have felt that philosophy deadens life as a crust of ice deadens a flowing stream. That reason kills poetry is the unoriginal theme of a recent poem. The poet scornfully characterizes present writers, We are they who dream no dreams, Singers of a rising day, Who undaunted, Where the sword of reason gleams, Follow hard, to hew away The woods enchanted. [Footnote: E. Flecker, _Donde Estan_.] One must turn to Poe for the clearest statement of the antagonism. He declares, Science, true daughter of Old Time thou art! Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes, Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart, Vulture, whose wings are dull realities? How should he love thee? Or how deem thee wise, Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies, Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing? Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car, And driven the Hamadryad from the wood To seek for shelter in some happier star? Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, The Elfin from the green grass, and from me The summer dream beneath the tamarund tree? [Footnote: _To Science_.] If this sort of complaint is characteristic of poets, how shall the philosopher refrain from charging them with falsehood? The poet's hamadryad and naiad, what are they, indeed, but cobwebby fictions, which must be brushed away if ideal truth is to be revealed? Critics of the poet like to point out that Shakespeare frankly confessed, Most true it is that I have looked on truth Askance and strangely, and that a renegade artist of the nineteenth century admitted, "Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art." [Footnote: Oscar Wilde, _The Decay of Lying_.] If poets complain that all charms fly At the mere touch of cold philosophy, [Footnote: _Lamia_.] are they not admitting that their vaunted revelations are mere ghosts of distorted facts, and that they themselves are merely accomplished liars? In his rebuttal the poet makes a good case for himself. He has identified the philosopher with the scientist, he says, and rightly, for the philosopher, the seeker for truth alone, can never get beyond the realm of science. His quest of absolute truth will lead him, first, to the delusive rigidity of scientific classification, then, as he tries to make his classification complete, it will topple over like a lofty tower of child's blocks, into the original chaos of things. What! the philosopher may retort, the poet speaks thus of truth, who has just exalted himself as the supreme truth-teller, the seer? But the poet answers that his truth is not in any sense identical with that of the scientist and the philosopher. Not everything that exists is true for the poet, but only that which has beauty. Therefore he has no need laboriously to work out a scientific method for sifting facts. If his love of the beautiful is satisfied by a thing, that thing is real. "Beauty is truth, truth beauty"; Keats' words have been echoed and reechoed by poets. [Footnote: A few examples of poems dealing with this subject are Shelley, _A Hymn to Intellectual Beauty_; Mrs. Browning, _Pan Is Dead_; Henry Timrod, _A Vision of Poesy_; Madison Cawein, _Prototypes_.] If Poe's rejection of The loftiest star of unascended heaven, Pinnacled dim in the intense inane, in favor of attainable "treasures of the jewelled skies" be an offense against truth, it is not, poets would say, because of his non-conformance to the so-called facts of astronomy, but because his sense of beauty is at fault, leading him to prefer prettiness to sublimity. As for the poet's visions, of naiad and dryad, which the philosopher avers are less true than chemical and physical forces, they represent the hidden truth of beauty, which is threaded through the ugly medley of life, being invisible till under the light of the poet's thought it flashes out like a pattern in golden thread, woven through a somber tapestry. It is only when the poet is not keenly alive to beauty that he begins to fret about making an artificial connection between truth and beauty, or, as he is apt to rename them, between wisdom and fancy. In the eighteenth century when the poet's vision of truth became one with the scientist's, he could not conceive of beauty otherwise than as gaudy ornaments, "fancies," with which he might trim up his thoughts. The befuddled conception lasted over into the romantic period; Beattie [Footnote: See _The Minstrel_.] and Bowles [Footnote: See _The Visionary Boy_.] both warned their poets to include both fancy and wisdom in their poetry. Even Landor reflected, A marsh, where only flat leaves lie, And showing but the broken sky Too surely is the sweetest lay That wins the ear and wastes the day Where youthful Fancy pouts alone And lets not wisdom touch her zone. [Footnote: See _To Wordsworth_.] But the poet whose sense of beauty is unerring gives no heed to such distinctions. If the scientist scoffs at the poet's intuitive selection of ideal values, declaring that he might just as well take any other aspect of things--their number, solidarity, edibleness--instead of beauty, for his test of their reality, the poet has his answer ready. After all, this poet, this dreamer, is a pragmatist at heart. To the scientist's charge that his test is absurd, his answer is simply, It works. The world is coming to acknowledge, little by little, the poet points out, that whatever he presents to it as beauty is likewise truth. "The poet's wish is nature's law," [Footnote: _Poem Outlines_.] says Sidney Lanier, and other poets, no less, assert that the poet is in unison with nature. Wordsworth calls poetry "a force, like one of nature's." [Footnote: _The Prelude_.] One of Oscar Wilde's cleverest paradoxes is to the effect that nature imitates art, [Footnote: See the Essay on Criticism.] and in so far as nature is one with human perception, there is no doubt that it is true. "What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth," Keats wrote, "whether it existed before or not." [Footnote: Letter to B. Baillie, November 17, 1817.] And again, "The imagination may be compared to Adam's dream--he awoke and found it truth." [Footnote: Letter to B. Baillie, November 17, 1817.] If the poet's intuitions are false, how does it chance, he inquires, that he has been known, in all periods of the world's history, as a prophet? Shelley says, "Poets are ... the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present," and explains the phenomenon thus: "A poet participates in the eternal, the infinite, the one; so far as related to his conceptions, time and place and number are not." [Footnote: _A Defense of Poetry_.] In our period, verse dealing with the Scotch bard is fondest of stressing the immemorial association of the poet and the prophet, and in much of this, the "pretense of superstition" as Shelley calls it, is kept up, that the poet can foretell specific happenings. [Footnote: See, for example, Gray, _The Bard_; Scott, _The Lady of the Lake_, _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, _Thomas the Rhymer_; Campbell, _Lochiel's Warning_.] But we have many poems that express a broader conception of the poet's gift of prophecy. [Footnote: See William Blake, Introduction to _Songs of Experience_, _Hear the Voice of the Bard_; Crabbe, _The Candidate_; Landor, _Dante_; Barry Cornwall, _The Prophet_; Alexander Smith, _A Life Drama_; Coventry Patmore, _Prophets Who Cannot Sing_; J. R. Lowell, _Massaccio_, Sonnet XVIII; Owen Meredith, _The Prophet_; W. H. Burleigh, _Shelley_; O. W. Holmes, _Shakespeare_; T. H. Olivers, _The Poet_, _Dante_; Alfred Austin, _The Poet's Corner_; Swinburne, _The Statue of Victor Hugo_; Herbert Trench, _Stanzas on Poetry_.] Holmes' view is typical: We call those poets who are first to mark Through earth's dull mist the coming of the dawn,-- Who see in twilight's gloom the first pale spark While others only note that day is gone; For them the Lord of light the curtain rent That veils the firmament. [Footnote: _Shakespeare_.] Most of these poems account for the premonitions of the poet as Shelley does; as a more recent poet has phrased it: Strange hints Of things past, present and to come there lie Sealed in the magic pages of that music, Which, laying hold on universal laws, Ranges beyond these mud-walls of the flesh. [Footnote: Alfred Noyes, _Tales of the Mermaid Inn_.] The poet's defense is not finished when he establishes the truth of his vision. How shall the world be served, he is challenged, even though it be true that the poet's dreams are of reality? Plato demanded of his philosophers that they return to the cave of sense, after they had seen the heavenly vision, and free the slaves there. Is the poet willing to do this? It has been charged that he is not. Browning muses, Ah, but to find A certain mood enervate such a mind, Counsel it slumber in the solitude Thus reached, nor, stooping, task for mankind's good Its nature just, as life and time accord. --Too narrow an arena to reward Emprize--the world's occasion worthless since Not absolutely fitted to evince Its mastery! [Footnote: _Sordello_.] But one is inclined to question the justice of Browning's charge, at least so far as it applies peculiarly to the poet. Logically, he should devote himself to sense-blinded humanity, not reluctantly, like the philosopher descending to a gloomy cave which is not his natural habitat, but eagerly, since the poet is dependent upon sense as well as spirit for his vision. "This is the privilege of beauty," says Plato, "that, being the loveliest of the ideas, she is also the most palpable to sight." [Footnote: _Phaedrus_.] Accordingly the poet has no horror of physical vision as a bondage, but he is fired with an enthusiasm to make the world of sense a more transparent medium of beauty. [Footnote: For poetry dealing with the poet's humanitarian aspect, see Bowles, _The Visionary Boy_, _On the Death of the Rev. Benwell_; Wordsworth, _The Poet and the Caged Turtle Dove_; Arnold, _Heine's Grave_; George Eliot, _O May I Join the Choir Invisible_; Lewis Morris, _Food Of Song_; George Meredith, _Milton_; Bulwer Lytton, _Milton_; James Thomson, B. V., _Shelley_; Swinburne, _Centenary of Landor_, _Victor Hugo_, _Victor Hugo in 1877_, _Ben Jonson_, _Thomas Decker_; Whittier, _To J. P._, and _The Tent on the Beach_; J. R. Lowell, _To The Memory of Hood_; O. W. Holmes, _At a Meeting of the Burns Club_; Emerson, _Solution_; R. Realf, _Of Liberty and Charity_; W. H. Burleigh, _Shelley_; T. L. Harris, _Lyrics of the Golden Age_; Eugene Field, _Poet and King_; C. W. Hubner, _The Poet_; J. H. West, _O Story Teller Poet_; Gerald Massey, _To Hood Who Sang the Song of the Shirt_; Bayard Taylor, _A Friend's Greeting to Whittier_; Sidney Lanier, _Wagner_, _Clover_; C. A. Pierce, _The Poet's Ideal_; E. Markham, _The Bard_, _A Comrade Calling Back_, _An April Greeting_; G. L. Raymond, _A Life in Song_; Richard Gilder, _The City_, _The Dead Poet_; E. L. Cox, _The Master_, _Overture_; R. C. Robbins, _Wordsworth_; Carl McDonald, _A Poet's Epitaph_.] It is inevitable that every poet's feeling for the world should be that of Shelley, who says to the spirit of beauty, Never joy illumed my brow Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free This world from its dark slavery. [Footnote: _Hymn to Intellectual Beauty_.] For, unlike the philosopher, the poet has never departed from the world of sense, and it is hallowed to him as the incarnation of beauty. Therefore he is eager to make other men ever more and more transparent embodiments of their true selves, in order that, gazing upon them, the poet may have ever deeper inspiration. This is the central allegory in _Enydmion_, that the poet must learn to help humanity before the mystery of poetship shall be unlocked to him. Browning comments to this effect upon Bordello's unwillingness to meet the world: But all is changed the moment you descry Mankind as half yourself. Matthew Arnold is the sternest of modern poets, perhaps, in pointing out the poet's responsibility to humanity: The poet, to whose mighty heart Heaven doth a quicker pulse impart, Subdues that energy to scan Not his own course, but that of man. Though he move mountains, though his day Be passed on the proud heights of sway, Though he hath loosed a thousand chains, Though he hath borne immortal pains, Action and suffering though he know, He hath not lived, if he lives so. [Footnote: _Resignation_.] It is obvious that in the poet's opinion there is only one means by which he can help humanity, and that is by helping men to express their essential natures; in other words, by setting them free. Liberty is peculiarly the watch-word of the poets. To the philosopher and the moralist, on the contrary, there is no merit in liberty alone. Men must be free before they can seek wisdom or goodness, no doubt, but something beside freedom is needed, they feel, to make men good or evil. But to the poet, beauty and liberty are almost synonymous. If beauty is the heart of the universe (and it must be, the poet argues, since it abides in sense as well as spirit), there is no place for the corrupt will. If men are free, they are expressing their real natures; they are beautiful. Is this our poet's view? But hear Plato: "The tragic poets, being wise men, will forgive us, and any others who live after our manner, if we do not receive them into our state, because they are the eulogists of tyranny." [Footnote: _Republic._] Few enemies of poets nowadays would go so far as to make a charge like this one, though Thomas Peacock, who locked horns with Shelley on the question of poetry, asserted that poets exist only by virtue of their flattery of earth's potentates. [Footnote: See _The Four Ages of Poetry._] Once, it must be confessed, one of the poets themselves brought their name into disrepute. In the heat of his indignation over attacks made upon his friend Southey, Landor was moved to exclaim, If thou hast ever done amiss It was, O Southey, but in this, That, to redeem the lost estate Of the poor Muse, a man so great Abased his laurels where some Georges stood Knee-deep in sludge and ordure, some in blood. Was ever genius but thyself Friend or befriended of a Guelf? But these are insignificant exceptions to the general characterization of the modern poet as liberty-lover. Probably Plato's equanimity would not be upset, even though we presented to him an overwhelming array of evidence bearing upon the modern poet's allegiance to democracy. Certainly, he might say, the modern poet, like the ancient one, reflects the life about him. At the time of the French revolution, or of the world war, when there is a popular outcry against oppression, what is more likely than that the poet's voice should be the loudest in the throng? But as soon as there is a reaction toward monarchical government, poets will again scramble for the post of poet-laureate. The modern poet can only repeat that this is false, and that a resume of history proves it. Shelley traces the rise and decadence of poetry during periods of freedom and slavery. He points out, "The period in our history of the grossest degradation of the drama is the reign of Charles II, when all the forms in which poetry had been accustomed to be expressed became hymns to the triumph of kingly power over liberty and virtue." Gray, in _The Progress of Poesy_, draws the same conclusion as Shelley: Her track, where'er the goddess roves, Glory pursue, and generous shame, The unconquerable will, and freedom's holy flame. Other poets, if they do not base their conclusions upon history, assert no less positively that every true poet is a lover of freedom. [Footnote: See Gray, _The Bard_; Burns, _The Vision_; Scott, _The Bard's Incantation_; Moore, _The Minstrel Boy_, _O Blame Not the Bard_, _The Harp That Once Through Tara's Halls_, _Shall the Harp then be Silent_, _Dear Harp of My Country_; Wordsworth, _The Brownies' Cell_, _Here Pause_; Tennyson, _Epilogue_, _The Poet_; Swinburne, _Victor Hugo_, _The Centenary of Landor_, _To Catullus_, _The Statue of Victor Hugo_, _To Walt Whitman in America_; Browning, _Sordello_; Barry Cornwall, _Miriam_; Shelley, _To Wordsworth_, _Alastor_, _The Revolt of Islam_, _Hymn to Intellectual Beauty_, _Prometheus Unbound_; S. T. Coleridge, _Ode to France_; Keats, _Epistle to His Brother George_; Philip Freneau, _To a Writer Who Inscribes Himself a Foe to Tyrants_; J. D. Percival, _The Harper_; J. R. Lowell, _Ode_, _L'Envoi_, Sonnet XVII, _Incident in a Railway Car_, _To the Memory of Hood_; Whittier, _Proem_, _Eliot_, Introduction to _The Tent on the Beach_; Longfellow, _Michael Angelo_; Whitman, _Starting from Paumaak_, _By Blue Ontario's Shore_, _For You_, _O Democracy_; W. H. Burleigh, _The Poet_; W. C. Bryant, _The Poet_; Bayard Taylor, _A Friend's Greeting to Whittier_; Richard Realf, _Of Liberty and Charity_; Henry van Dyke, _Victor Hugo_, _To R. W. Gilder_; Simon Kerl, _Burns_; G. L. Raymond, _Dante_, _A Life in Song; Charles Kent, _Lamartine in February_; Robert Underwood Johnson, _To the Spirit of Byron_, _Shakespeare_; Francis Carlin, _The Dublin Poets_, _MacSweeney the Rhymer_, _The Poetical Saints_; Daniel Henderson, _Joyce Kilmer_, _Alan Seeger_, _Walt Whitman_; Rhys Carpenter, _To Rupert Brooke_; William Ellery Leonard, _As I Listened by the Lilacs_; Eden Phillpotts Swinburne, _The Grave of Landor_.] It is to be expected that in the romantic period poets should be almost unanimous in this view, though even here it is something of a surprise to hear Keats, whose themes are usually so far removed from political life, exclaiming, Where's the poet? Show him, show him, Muses mine, that I may know him! 'Tis the man who with a man Is an equal, be he king Or poorest of the beggar clan. [Footnote: _The Poet_.] Wordsworth's devotion to liberty was doubted by some of his brothers, but Wordsworth himself felt that, if he were not a democrat, he would be false to poetry, and he answers his detractors, Here pause: the poet claims at least this praise, That virtuous Liberty hath been the scope Of his pure song. In the Victorian period the same view holds. The Brownings were ardent champions of democracy. Mrs. Browning averred that the poet's thirst for ubiquitous beauty accounts for his love of freedom: Poets (hear the word) Half-poets even, are still whole democrats. Oh, not that they're disloyal to the high, But loyal to the low, and cognizant Of the less scrutable majesties. [Footnote: _Aurora Leigh_.] Tennyson conceived of the poet as the author of democracy. [Footnote: _See The Poet_.] Swinburne prolonged the Victorian paean to the liberty-loving poet [Footnote: See _Mater Triumphilis_, _Prelude_, _Epilogue_, _Litany of Nations_, and _Hertha_.] till our new group of singers appeared, whose devotion to liberty is self-evident. It is true that to the poet liberty is an inner thing, not always synonymous with suffrage. Coleridge, Southey, Wordsworth, all came to distrust the machinery of so-called freedom in society. Likewise Browning was not in favor of too radical social changes, and Mrs. Browning went so far as to declare, "I love liberty so much that I hate socialism." Mob rule is as distasteful to the deeply thoughtful poet as is tyranny, for the liberty which he seeks to bring into the world is simply the condition in which every man is expressing the beauty of his truest self. If the poet has proved that his visions are true, and that he is eager to bring society into harmony with them, what further charge remains against him? That he is "an ineffectual angel, beating his bright wings in the void." He may see a vision of Utopia, and long that men shall become citizens there, but the man who actually perfects human society is he who patiently toils at the "dim, vulgar, vast, unobvious work" [Footnote: See _Sordello_.] of the world, here amending a law, here building a settlement house, and so on. Thus the reformer charges the poet. Mrs. Browning, in _Aurora Leigh_, makes much of the issue, and there the socialist, Romney Leigh, sneers at the poet's inefficiency, telling Aurora that the world Forgets To rhyme the cry with which she still beats back Those savage hungry dogs that hunt her down To the empty grave of Christ ... ... Who has time, An hour's time--think!--to sit upon a bank And hear the cymbal tinkle in white hands. [Footnote: _Aurora Leigh_. See also the letter to Robert Browning, February 17, 1845.] The poet has, occasionally, plunged into the maelstrom of reform and proved to such objectors that he can work as efficiently as they. Thomas Hood, Whittier, and other poets have challenged the respect of the Romney Leighs of the world. Yet one hesitates to make specialization in reform the gauge of a poet's merit. Where, in that case, would Keats be beside Hood? In our day, where would Sara Teasdale be beside Edwin Markham? Is there not danger that the poet, once launched on a career as an agitator, will no longer have time to dream dreams? If he bases his claims of worth on his ability as a "carpet-duster," [Footnote: See _Aurora Leigh_.] as Mrs. Browning calls the agitator, he is merely unsettling society,--for what end? He himself will soon have forgotten--will have become as salt that has lost its savor. Nothing is more disheartening than to see men straining every nerve to make other men righteous, who have themselves not the faintest appreciation of the beauty of holiness. Let reformers beware how they assert the poet's uselessness, our singers say, for it is an indication that they themselves are blind to the light toward which they profess to be leading men. The work of the reformer inevitably degenerates into the mere strenuosity of the campaign, Unless the artist keep up open roads Betwixt the seen and unseen, bursting through The best of our conventions with his best, The speakable, imaginable best God bids him speak, to prove what lies beyond Both speech and imagination. [Footnote: _Aurora Leigh_.] Thus speaks Mrs. Browning. The reforms that make a stir in the world, being merely external, mean little or nothing apart from the impulse that started them, and the poet alone is powerful to stir the impulse of reform in humanity. "To be persuaded rests usually with ourselves," said Longinus, "but genius brings force sovereign and irresistible to bear upon every hearer." [Footnote: _On the Sublime_.] The poet, in ideal mood, is as innocent of specific designs upon current morality as was Pippa, when she wandered about the streets of Asolo, but the power of his songs is ever as insuperable as was that of hers. It is for this reason that Emerson advises the poet to leave hospital building and statute revision for men of duller sight than he: Oft shall war end and peace return And cities rise where cities burn Ere one man my hill shall climb Who can turn the golden rhyme. Let them manage how they may, Heed thou only Saadi's lay. [Footnote: _Saadi_.] Here the philosopher may demur. If the poet were truly an idealist,--if he found for the world conceptions as pure as those of mathematics, which can be applied equally well to any situation, then, indeed, he might regard himself as the author of progress. But it is the poet's failing that he gives men no vision of abstract beauty. He represents his visions in the contemporary dress of his times. Thus he idealizes the past and the present, showing beauty shining through the dullness and error of human history. Is he not, then, the enemy of progress, since he will lead his readers to imagine that things are ideal as they are? Rather, men will be filled with reverence for the idealized portrait of themselves that the poet has drawn, and the intervention of the reformer will be unnecessary, since they will voluntarily tear off the shackles that disfigure them. The poet, said Shelley, "redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man." Emerson said of Wordsworth, "He more than any other man has done justice to the divine in us." Mrs. Browning said (of Carlyle) "He fills the office of a poet--by analyzing humanity back into its elements, to the destruction of the conventions of the hour." [Footnote: Letter to Robert Browning, February 27, 1845.] This is what Matthew Arnold meant by calling poetry "a criticism of life." Poetry is captivating only in proportion as the ideal shines through the sensual; consequently men who are charmed by the beauty incarnate in poetry, are moved to discard all conventions through which beauty does not shine. Therefore, the poet repeats, he is the true author of reform. Tennyson says of freedom, No sword Of wrath her right arm whirled, But one poor poet's scroll, and with his word She shook the world. [Footnote: _The Poet_.] This brings us back to our war poets who have so recently died. Did they indeed disparage the Muse whom they deserted? Did they not rather die to fulfill a poet's prophesy of freedom? A poet who did not carry in his heart the courage of his song--what could be more discreditable to poetry than that? The soldier-poets were like a general who rushes into the thick of the fight and dies beside a private. We reverence such a man, but we realize that it was not his death, but his plan for the engagement, that saved the day. If such is the poet's conception of his service to mankind, what is his reward? The government of society, he returns. Emerson says, The gods talk in the breath of the woods, They talk in the shaken pine, And fill the long reach of the old seashore With dialogue divine. And the poet who overhears Some random word they say Is the fated man of men Whom the nations must obey. [Footnote: Fragment on _The Poet_.] What is the poet's reward? Immortality. He is confident that if his vision is true he shall join The choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence: live In pulses stirred to generosity, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man's search To vaster issues. [Footnote: George Eliot, _The Choir Invisible_.] Does this mean simply the immortality of fame? It is a higher thing than that. The beauty which the poet creates is itself creative, and having the principle of life in it, can never perish. Whitman cries, Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come! Not today is to justify me and answer what I am for, But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known, Arouse! for you must justify me! [Footnote: _Poets to Come_.] Browning made the only apparent trace of Sordello left in the world, the snatch of song which the peasants sing on the hillside. Yet, though his name be lost, the poet's immortality is sure. For like Socrates in the _Symposium_, his desire is not merely for a fleeting vision of beauty, but for birth and generation in beauty. And the beauty which he is enabled to bring into the world will never cease to propagate itself. So, though he be as fragile as a windflower, he may assure himself, I shall not die; I shall not utterly die, For beauty born of beauty--that remains. [Footnote: Madison Cawein, _To a Windflower_.] CHAPTER VIII. A SOBER AFTERTHOUGHT Not even a paper shortage has been potent to give the lie to the author of _Ecclesiastes_, but it has fanned into flame the long smouldering resentment of those who are wearily conscious that of making many books there is no end. No longer is any but the most confirmed writer suffered to spin out volume after volume in complacent ignorance of his readers' state of mind, for these victims of eye-strain and nerves turn upon the newest book, the metaphorical last straw on the camel's load, with the exasperated cry, Why? Why? and again Why? Fortunately for themselves, most of the poets who have taken the poet's character as their theme, indulged their weakness for words before that long-suffering bookworm, the reader, had turned, but one who at the present day drags from cobwebby corners the accusive mass of material on the subject, must seek to justify, not merely the loquacity of its authors, but one's own temerity as well, in forcing it a second time upon the jaded attention of the public. If one had been content merely to make an anthology of poems dealing with the poet, one's deed would perhaps have been easier to excuse, for the public has been so often assured that anthologies are an economical form of publication, and a time-saving form of predigested food, that it usually does not stop to consider whether the material was worth collecting in the first place. Gleaner after gleaner has worked in the field of English literature, sorting and sifting, until almost the last grain, husk, straw and thistle have been gathered and stored with their kind. But instead of making an anthology, we have gone on the assumption that something more than accidental identity of subject-matter holds together the apparently desultory remarks of poets on the subject of the poet's eyebrows, his taste in liquors, his addiction to midnight rambles, and whatnot. We have followed a labyrinthine path through the subject with faith that, if we were but patient in observing the clues, we should finally emerge at a point of vantage on the other side of the woods. The primary grounds of this faith may have appeared to the skeptic ridiculously inadequate. Our faith was based upon the fact that, more than two thousand years ago, a serious accusation had been made against poets, against which they had been challenged to defend themselves. This led us to conclude that there must be unity of intention in poetry dealing with the poet, for we believed that when English poets talked of themselves and their craft, they were attempting to remove the stigma placed upon the name of poet by Plato's charge. Now it is easy for a doubter to object that many of the poems on the subject show the poet, not arraying evidence for a trial, but leaning over the brink of introspection in the attitude of Narcissus. One need seek no farther than self-love, it may be suggested, to find the motive for the poet's absorption in his reflection. Yet it is incontrovertible that the self-infatuation of our Narcissus has its origin in the conviction that no one else understands him, and that this conviction is founded upon a very real attitude of hostility on the part of his companions. The lack of sympathy between the English poet and the public is so notorious that Edmund Gosse is able to state as a truism: While in France poetry has been accustomed to reflect the general tongue of the people, the great poets of England have almost always had to struggle against a complete dissonance between their own aims and interests and those of the nation. The result has been that England, the most inartistic of the modern races, has produced the largest number of exquisite literary artists. [Footnote: _French Profiles_, p. 344.] Furthermore, even though everyone may agree that a lurking sense of hostile criticism is back of the poet's self-absorption, another ground for skepticism may lie in our assumption that Plato is the central figure in the opposition. It is usually with purpose to excite the envy of contemporary enemies that poets call attention to their graces, the student may discover. Frequently the quarrels leading them to flaunt their personalities in their verses have arisen over the most personal and ephemeral of issues. Indeed, we may have appeared to falsify in classifying their enemies under general heads, when for Christopher North, Judson, Belfair, Friend Naddo, Richard Bame, we substituted faces of cipher foolishness, abstractions which we named the puritan, the philosopher, the philistine. Possibly by so doing we have given the impression that poets are beating the air against an abstraction when they are in reality delivering thumping blows upon the body of a personal enemy. And if these generalizations appear indefensible, still more misleading, it may be urged, is an attempt to represent that the poet, when he takes issue with this and that opponent, is answering a challenge hidden away from the unstudious in the tenth book of Plato's _Republic_. It is doubtful even whether a number of our poets are aware of the existence of Plato's challenge, and much more doubtful whether they have it in mind as they write. Second thought must make it clear, however, that to prove ignorance of Plato's accusation on the part of one poet and another does not at all impair the possibility that it is his accusation which they are answering. So multiple are the threads of influence leading from the _Republic_ through succeeding literatures and civilizations that it is unsafe to assert, offhand, that any modern expression of hostility to poetry may not be traced, by a patient untangler of evidence, to a source in the _Republic_. But even this is aside from the point. One might concede that the wide-spread modern antagonism to poetry would have been the same if Plato had never lived, and still maintain that in the _Republic_ is expressed for all time whatever in anti-aesthetic criticism is worthy of a serious answer. Whether poets themselves are aware of it or not, we have a right to assert that in concerning themselves with the character of the ideal poet, they are responding to Plato's challenge. This may not be enough to justify our faith that these defensive expositions lead us anywhere. Let us agree that certain poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have answered Plato's challenge. But has the Poet likewise answered it? If from their independent efforts to paint the ideal poet there has emerged a portrait as sculpturally clear in outline as is Plato's portrait of the ideal philosopher, we shall perhaps be justified in saying, Yes, the Poet, through a hundred mouths, has spoken. Frankly, the composite picture which we have been considering has not sculptural clarity. To the casual observer it bears less resemblance to an alto-relief than to a mosaic; no sooner do distinct patterns spring out of myriad details than they shift under the onlooker's eyes to a totally different form. All that we can claim for the picture is excellence as a piece of impressionism, which one must scan with half-closed eyes at a calculated distance, if one would appreciate its central conception. Apparently readers of English poetry have not taken the trouble to scan it with such care. They may excuse their indifference by declaring that an attempt to discover a common aesthetic principle in a collection of views as catholic as those with which we have dealt is as absurd as an attempt to discover philosophical truth by taking a census of general opinion. Still, obvious as are the limitations of a popular vote in determining an issue, it has a certain place in the discovery of truth. One would not entirely despise the benefit derived from a general survey of philosophers' convictions, for instance. Into the conclusions of each philosopher, even of the greatest, there are bound to enter certain personal whimsicalities of thought, which it is profitable to eliminate, by finding the common elements in the thought of several men. If the quest of a universal least common denominator forces one to give up everything that is of significance in the views of philosophers, there is profit, at least, in learning that the title of philosopher does not carry with it a guarantee of truth-telling. On the other hand if we find universal recognition of some fundamental truth, a common _cogito ergo sum_, or the like, acknowledged by all philosophers, we have made a discovery as satisfactory in its way as is acceptance of the complex system of philosophy offered by Plato or Descartes. There seems to be no real reason why it should not be quite as worth while to take a similar census of the views of poets. After hearkening to the general suffrage of poets on the question of the poet's character, we must bring a serious charge against them if a deafening clamor of contradiction reverberates in our ears. In such a case their claim that they are seers, or masters of harmony, can be worth little. The unbiased listener is likely to assure us that clamorous contradiction is precisely what the aggregate of poets' speaking amounts to, but we shall be slow to acknowledge as much. Have we been merely the dupe of pretty phrasing when we felt ourselves insured against discord by the testimony of Keats? Hear him: How many bards gild the lapses of time! * * * * * ... Often, when I sit me down to rhyme, These will in throngs before my mind intrude, But no confusion, no disturbance rude Do they occasion; 'tis a pleasing chime. However incompatible the characteristics of the poets celebrated by Wordsworth and by Swinburne, by Christina Rossetti and by Walt Whitman may have seemed in immediate juxtaposition, we have trusted that we need only retire to a position where "distance of recognizance bereaves" their individual voices, in order to detect in their mingled notes "pleasing music, and not wild uproar." The critic who condemns as wholly discordant the variant notes of our multitudinous verse-writers may point out that we should have had more right to expect concord if we had shown some discernment in sifting true poets from false. Those who have least claim to the title of poet have frequently been most garrulous in voicing their convictions. Moreover, these pseudo-poets outnumber genuine poets one hundred to one, yet no one in his right mind would contend that their expressions of opinion represent more than a straw vote, if they conflict with the judgment of a single true poet. Still, our propensity for listening to the rank breath of the multitude is not wholly indefensible. In the first place pseudo-poets have not created so much discord as one might suppose. A lurking sense of their own worthlessness has made them timid of utterance except as they echo and prolong a note that has been struck repeatedly by singers of reputation. This echoing, it may be added, has sometimes been effective in bringing the traditions of his craft to the attention of a young singer as yet unaware of them. Thus Bowles and Chivers, neither of whom has very strong claim to the title of bard, yet were in a measure responsible for the minor note in Coleridge's and Poe's description of the typical poet. Even when the voices of spurious bards have failed to chime with the others, the resulting discord has not been of serious moment. A counterfeit coin may be as good a touchstone for the detection of pure silver, as is pure silver for the detection of counterfeit. Not only are a reader's views frequently clarified by setting a poetaster beside a poet as a foil, but poets themselves have clarified their views because they have been incited by declarations in false verse to express their convictions more unreservedly than they should otherwise have done. Pseudo-poets have sometimes been of genuine benefit by their exaggeration of some false note which they have adopted from poetry of the past. No sooner do they exaggerate such a note, than a concerted shout of protest from true poets drowns the erroneous statement, and corrects the misleading impression which careless statements in earlier verse might have left with us. Thus the morbid singer exhibited in minor American verse of the last century, and the vicious singer lauded in one strain of English verse, performed a genuine service by calling forth repudiation, by major poets, of traits which might easily lead a singer in the direction of morbidity and vice. The confusion of sound which our critic complains of is not to be remedied merely by silencing the chorus of echoic voices. If we dropped from consideration all but poets of unquestionable merit, we should not be more successful in detecting a single clear note, binding all their voices together. When the ideal poet of Shelley is set against that of Byron, or that of Matthew Arnold against that of Browning, there is no more unison than when great and small in the poetic world are allowed to speak indiscriminately. Does this prove that only the supreme poet speaks truly, and that we must hush all voices but his if we would learn what is the essential element in the poetic character? Then we are indeed in a hard case. There is no unanimity of opinion among us regarding the supreme English poet of the last century, and if we dared follow personal taste in declaring one of higher altitude than all the others only a small percentage of readers would be satisfied when we set up the _Prelude_ or _Adonais_ or _Childe Harold_ or _Sordello_ beside the _Republic_ as containing the one portrait of the ideal singer worthy to stand beside the portrait of the ideal philosopher. And this is not the worst of the difficulty. Even if we turn from Shelley to Byron, from Wordsworth to Browning, in quest of the one satisfactory conception of the poet, we shall not hear in anyone of their poems the single clear ringing note for which we are listening. When anyone of these men is considering the poetic character, his thought behaves like a pendulum, swinging back and forth between two poles. Thus we ourselves have admitted the futility of our quest of truth, the critic may conclude. But no, before we admit as much, let us see exactly what constitutes the lack of unity which troubles us. After its persistence in verse of the same country, the same period, the same tradition, the same poet, even, has led us to the brink of despair, its further persistence rouses in us fresh hope, or at least intense curiosity, for what impresses us as the swinging of a pendulum keeps up its rhythmical beat, not merely in the mind of each poet, but in each phase of his thought. We find the same measured antithesis of thought, whether he is considering the singer's environment or his health, his inspiration or his mission. In treatment even of the most superficial matters related to the poet's character, this vibration forces itself upon our attention. Poets are sofar from subscribing to Taine's belief in the supreme importance of environment as molder of genius that the question of the singer's proper habitat is of comparative indifference to them, yet the dualism that we have noted runs as true to form here as in more fundamental issues. When one takes the suffrage of poets in general on the question of environment, two voices are equally strong. Genius is fostered by solitude, we hear; but again, genius is fostered by human companionship. At first we may assume that this divergence of view characterizes separate periods. Writers in the romantic period, we say, praised the poet whose thought was turned inward by solitude; while writers in the Victorian period praised the poet whose thought was turned upon the spectacle of human passions. But on finding that this classification is true only in the most general way, we go farther. Within the Victorian period Browning, we say, is the advocate of the social poet, as Arnold is the advocate of the solitary one. But still our classification is inadequate. Is Browning the expositor of the gregarious poet? It is true that he feels it necessary for the singer to "look upon men and their cares and hopes and fears and joys." [Footnote: _Pauline_.] But he makes Sordello flee like a hunted creature back to Goito and solitude in quest of renewed inspiration. Is Arnold the expositor of the solitary poet? True, he urges him to fly from "the strange disease of modern life". [Footnote: _The Scholar Gypsy_.] Yet he preaches that the duty of the poet is to scan Not his own course, but that of man. [Footnote: _Resignation_.] Within the romantic period the same phenomenon is evident. Does Wordsworth paint the ideal poet dwelling apart from human distractions? Yet he declares that his deepest insight is gained by listening to "the still sad music of humanity". In Keats, Shelley, Byron, the same antithesis of thought is not less evident. We cannot justly conclude that a compromise between contradictions, an avoidance of extremes, is what anyone of these poets stands for. It is complete absorption in the drame of human life that makes one a poet, they aver; but again, it is complete isolation that allows the inmost poetry of one's nature to rise to consciousness. At the same time they make it clear that the supreme poet needs the gifts of both environments. To quote Walt Whitman, What the full-grown poet came, Out spake pleased Nature (the round impassive globe with all its shows of day and night) saying, He is mine; But out spake too the Soul of men, proud, jealous and unreconciled, Nay, he is mine alone; --Then the full-grown poet stood between the two and took each by the hand; And today and ever so stands, as blender, uniter, tightly holding hands, Which he will never release till he reconciles the two, And wholly and joyously blends them. The paradox in poets' views was equally perplexing, no matter what phase of the poetic character was considered. A mere resumé of the topics discussed in these essays is enough to make the two horns of the dilemma obtrude themselves. Did we consider the financial status of the poet? We heard that he should experience all the luxurious sensations that wealth can bring; on the other hand we heard that his poverty should shield him from distractions that might call him away from accumulation of spiritual treasure. Did we consider the poet's age? We heard that the freshness of sensation possessed only by youth carries the secret of poetry; on the other hand we heard that the secret lies in depth of spiritual insight possible only to old age. So in the allied question of the poet's body. He should have The dress Of flesh that amply lets in loveliness At eye and ear, that no beauty in the physical world may escape him. Yet he should be absorbed in the other world to such a degree that blindness, even, is a blessing to him, enabling him to "see, no longer blinded by his eyes." The question of the poet's health arose. He should have the exuberance and aplomb of the young animal; no, he should have a body frail enough to enable him, like the mediæval mystic, to escape from its importunatedemands upon the spirit. In the more fundamental questions that poets considered, relating to the poet's temperament, his loves, his inspiration, his morality, his religion, his mission, the same cleavage invariably appeared. What constitutes the poetic temperament? It is a fickle interchange of joy and grief, for the poet is lifted on the wave of each new sensation; it is an imperturbable serenity, for the poet dwells apart with the eternal verities. What is the distinguishing characteristic of his love? The object of his worship must be embodied, passionate, yet his desire is for purely spiritual union with her. What is the nature of his inspiration? It fills him with trancelike impassivity to sensation; it comes upon him with such overwhelming sensation that he must touch the walls to see whether they or his visions are the reality. [Footnote: See Christopher Wordsworth, _Memoirs of Wordsworth_, Vol. II, p. 480.] How is his moral life different from that of other men? He is more fiercely tempted, because he is more sensitive to human passions; he is shut away from all temptations because his interest is solely in the principle of beauty. What is the nature of his religious instinct? He is mad with thirst for God; he will have no God but his own humanity. What is his mission? He must awaken men to the wonder of the physical world and fit them to abide therein; he must redeem them from physical bondage, and open their eyes to the spiritual world. The impatient listener to this lengthy catalogue of the poet's views may assert that it has no significance. It merely shows that there are many kinds of poets, who attempt to imitate many aspects of human life. But surely our catalogue does not show just this. There is no multiform picture of the poet here. The pendulum of his desire vibrates undeviatingly between two points only. Sense and spirit, spirit and sense, the pulse of his nature seems to reiterate incessantly. There is no poet so absorbed in sensation that physical objects do not occasionally fade into unreality when he compares them with the spirit of life. Even Walt Whitman, most sensuous of all our poets, exclaims, Sometimes how strange and clear to the soul That all these solid things are indeed but apparitions, concepts, non-realities. [Footnote: _Apparitions_.] On the other hand there is no poet whose taste is so purely spiritual that he is indifferent to sensation. The idealism of Wordsworth, even, did not preclude his finding in sensation An appetite, a feeling and a love That had no need of a remoter charm By thought supplied. Is this systole and diastole of the affection from sense to spirit, from spirit to sense, peculiarly characteristic of English poets? There may be some reason for assuming that it is. Historians have repeatedly pointed out that there are two strains in the English blood, the one northern and ascetic, the other southern and epicurean. In the modern English poet the austere prophetic character of the Norse scald is wedded to the impressionability of the troubadour. No wonder there is a battle in his breast when he tries to single out one element or the other as his most distinctive quality of soul. Yet, were it not unsafe to generalize when our data apply to only one country, we should venture the assertion that the dualism of the poet's desires is not an insular characteristic, but is typical of his race in every country. Because the poet is drawn equally to this world and to the other world, shall we characterize him as a hybrid creature, and assert that an irreconcilable discord is in his soul? We shall prove ourselves singularly deaf to concord if we do so. Poets have been telling us over and over again that the distinctive element in the poetic nature is harmony. What is harmony? It is the reconciliation of opposites, says Eurymachus in the _Symposium_. It is union of the finite and the infinite, says Socrates in the _Philebus_. Do the poet's desires point in opposite directions? But so, it seems, do the poplars that stand tiptoe, breathless, at the edge of the dreaming pool. The whole secret of the aesthetic repose lies in the duality of the poet's desire. His imagination enables him to see all life as two in one, or one in two; he leaves us uncertain which. His imagination reflects the spiritual in the sensual and the sensual in the spiritual till we cannot tell which is the more tangible or the more meaningful. We sought unity in the poetic character, but we can reduce a nature to complete and barren unity only by draining it of imagination, and it is imagination which enables the poet to find aesthetic unity in the two worlds of sense and spirit, where the rest of us can see only conflict. There is a little poem, by Walter Conrad Arensberg, which is to me a symbol of this power of reflection which distinguishes the poetic imagination. It is called _Voyage à L'Infine_: The swan existing Is like a song with an accompaniment Imaginary. Across the grassy lake, Across the lake to the shadow of the willows It is accompanied by an image, --as by Debussy's "Réflets dans l'eau." The swan that is Reflects Upon the solitary water--breast to breast With the duplicity: "The other one!" And breast to breast it is confused. O visionary wedding! O stateliness of the procession! It is accompanied by the image of itself Alone. At night The lake is a wide silence, Without imagination. But why should poets assume, someone may object, that this mystic answering of sense to spirit and of spirit to sense is to be discovered by the imagination of none but poets? All men are made up of flesh and spirit; do not the desires of all men, accordingly, point to the spiritual and to the physical, exactly as do the poet's? In a sense; yes; but on the other hand all men but the poet have an aim that is clearly either physical or spiritual; therefore they do not stand poised between the two worlds with the perfect balance of interests which marks the poet. The philosopher and the man of religion recognize their goal as a spiritual and ascetic one. If they concern themselves more than is needful with the temporal and sensual, they feel that they are false to their ideal. The scientist and the man of affairs, on the other hand, are concerned with the physical; therefore most of the time they dismiss consideration of the spiritual as being outside of their province. Of course many persons would disagree with this last statement. The genius of an Edison, they assert, is precisely like the genius of a poet. But if this were true, we should be moved by the mechanism of a phonograph just as we are moved by a poem, and we are not. We may be amazed by the invention, and still find our thoughts tied to the physical world. It is not the instrument, but the voice of an artist added to it that makes us conscious of the two worlds of sense and spirit, reflecting one another. Supposing that all this is true, what is gained by discovering, from a consensus of poets' views, that the distinctive characteristic of the poet is harmony of sense and spirit? Is not this so obvious as to be a truism? It is perhaps so obvious that like all the truest things in the world it is likely to be ignored unless insisted upon occasionally. Certainly it has been ignored too frequently in the history of English criticism. Whenever men of simpler aims than the poet have written criticism, they have misread the issue in various ways, and have usually ended by condemning the poet in so far as he diverged from their own goal. It is obvious that the moral obsession which has twisted so much of English criticism is the result of a failure to grasp the real nature of the poet's vitality. Criticism arose, with Gosson's _School of Abuse_, as an attack upon the ethics of the poet by the puritan, who had cut himself off from the joys of sense. Because champions of poetry were concerned with answering this attack, the bulk of Elizabethan criticism, that of Lodge, [Footnote: _Defense of Poetry, Musick and Stage Plays._] Harrington, [Footnote: _Apology for Poetry._] Meres, [Footnote: _Palladis Tamia._] Campion, [Footnote: _Observations in the Art of English Poetry._] Daniel, [Footnote: _Defense of Rhyme._] and even in lesser degree of Sidney, obscures the aesthetic problem by turning it into an ethical one. In the criticism of Sidney, himself a poet, one does find implied a recognition of the twofold significance of the poet's powers. He asserts his spiritual pre-eminence strongly, declaring that the poet, unlike the scientist, is not bound to the physical world.[Footnote: "He is not bound to any such subjection, as scientists, to nature." _Defense of Poetry._] On the other hand he is clearly aware of the need for a sensuous element in poetry, since by it, Sidney declares, the poet may lead men by "delight" to follow the forms of virtue. The next critic of note, Dryden, in his revulsion from the ascetic character which the puritans would develop in the poet, swung too far to the other extreme, and threw the poetic character out of balance by belittling its spiritual insight. He did justice to the physical element in poetry, defining poetic drama, the type of his immediate concern, as "a just and lively image of human nature, in its actions, passions, and traverses of fortune," [Footnote: _English Garner,_ III, 513.] but he appears to have felt the ideal aspect of the poet's nature as merely a negation of the sensual, so that he was driven to the absurdity of recommending a purely mechanical device, rhyme, as a means of elevating poetry above the sordid plane of "a bare imitation." In the eighteenth century, Edmund Burke likewise laid too much stress upon the physical aspect of the poet's nature, in accounting for the sublime in poetry as originating in the sense of pain, and the beautiful as originating in pleasure. Yet he comes closer than most critics to laying his finger onthe particular point which distinguishes poets from philosophers, namely, their dependence upon sensation. With the single exception of Burke, however, the critics of the eighteenth century labored under a misapprehension no less blind than the moral obsession which twisted Elizabethan criticism. In the eighteenth century critics were prone to confuse the spiritual element in the poet's nature with intellectualism, and the sensuous element with emotionalism. Such criticism tended to drive the poet either into an arid display of wit, on the one hand, or into sentimental excess, on the other, and the native English distrust of emotion led eighteenth century critics to praise the poet when the intellect had the upper hand. But surely poets have made it clear enough that the intellect is not the distinctive characteristic of the poet. To be intelligent is merely to be human. Intelligence is only a tool, poets have repeatedly insisted, in their quarrel with philosophers. In proportion as one is intelligent within one's own field, one excels, poets would admit. If one is intelligent with respect to fisticuffs one is likely to become a good prize-fighter, but no matter how far refinement of intelligence goes in this direction, it will not make a pugilist into a poet. Intelligence must belong likewise, in signal degree, to the great poet, but it is neither one of the two essential elements in his nature. Augustan critics starved the spiritual element in poetry, even while they imagined that they were feeding it, for in sharpening his wit the poet came no nearer expressing the "poor soul, the center of his sinful earth" than when he reveled in emotion. We no longer believe that in the most truly poetic nature the intelligence of a Pope is joined with the emotionalism of a Rousseau. We believe that the spirituality of a Crashaw is blent with the sensuousness of a Swinburne. Nineteenth century criticism, since it is almost entirely the work of poets, should not be thus at odds with the conception of the poet expressed in poetry. But although nineteenth century prose criticism moves in the right direction, it is not entirely adequate. The poet is not at his best when he is working in a prose medium. He works too consciously in prose, hence his intuitive flashes are not likely to find expression. After he has tried to express his buried life there, he himself is likely to warn us that what he has said "is well, is eloquent, but 'tis not true." Even Shelley, the most successful of poet-critics, gives us a more vivid comprehension of the poetical balance of sense and spirit through his poet-heroes than through _The Defense of Poetry_, for he is almost exclusively concerned, in that essay, with the spiritual aspect of poetry. He expresses, in fact, the converse of Dryden's view in that he regards the sensuous as negation or dross merely. He asserts: Few poets of the highest class have chosen to exhibit the beauty of their conception in naked truth and splendor, and it is doubtful whether the alloy of costume, habit, etc., be not necessary to temper this planetary music to mortal ears. The harmony in Shelley's nature which made it possible for his contemporaries to believe him a gross sensualist, and succeeding generations to believe him an angel, is better expressed by Browning, who says: His noblest characteristic I call his simultaneous perception of Power and Love in the absolute, and of beauty and good in the concrete, while he throws, from his poet-station between them both, swifter, subtler and more numerous films for the connection of each with each than have been thrown by any modern artificer of whom I have knowledge.[Footnote: Preface to the letters of Shelley (afterward found spurious).] Yet Browning, likewise, gives a more illuminating picture of the poetic nature in his poetry than in his prose. The peculiar merit of poetry about the poet is that it makes a valuable supplement to prose criticism. We have been tempted to deny that such poetry is the highest type of art. It has seemed that poets, when they are introspective and analytical of their gift, are not in the highest poetic mood. But when we are on the quest of criticism, instead of poetry, we are frankly grateful for such verse. It is analytical enough to be intelligible to us, and still intuitive enough to convince us of its truthfulness. Wordsworth's _Prelude_ has been condemned in certain quarters as "a talking about poetry, not poetry itself," but in part, at least, the _Prelude_ is truly poetry. For this reason it gives us more valuable ideas about the nature of poetry than does the _Preface to the Lyrical Ballads_. If it is worth while to analyze the poetic character at all, then poetry on the poet is invaluable to us. Perhaps it is too much for us to decide whether the picture of the poet at which we have been gazing is worthy to be placed above Plato's picture of the philosopher. The poet does not contradict Plato's charge against him. His self-portrait bears out the accusation that he is unable to see "the divine beauty--pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality, and all the colors and varieties of human life." [Footnote: _Symposium_, 212.] Plato would agree with the analysis of the poetic character that Keats once struggled with, when he exclaimed, What quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously--I mean _Negative Capability_, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Pentralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge--With a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration. Plato would agree with this,--all but the last sentence. Only, in place of the phrase "negative capability," he would substitute "incapability," and reflect that the poet fails to see absolute beauty because he is not content to leave the sensual behind and press on to absolute reality. It may be that Plato is right, yet one cannot help wishing that sometime a poet may arise of greater power of persuasion than any with whom we have dealt, who will prove to Plato what he appears ever longing to be convinced of, that absolute ideality is not a negation of the sensual, and that poetry, in revealing the union of sense and spirit, is the strongest proof of idealism that we possess. A poet may yet arise who will prove that he is right in refusing to acknowledge that this world is merely a surface upon which is reflected the ideals which constitute reality and which abide in a different realm. The assumption in that conception is that, if men have spiritual vision, they may apprehend ideals directly, altogether apart from sense. On the contrary, the impression given by the poet is that ideality constitutes the very essence of the so-called physical world, and that this essence is continually striving to express itself through refinement and remolding of the outer crust of things. So, when the world of sense comes to express perfectly the ideal, it will not be a mere representation of reality. It will be reality. If he can prove this, we must acknowledge that, not the rationalistic philosopher, but the poet, grasps reality _in toto_. However inconclusive his proof, the claims of the poet must fascinate one with their implications. The two aspects of human life, the physical and the ideal, focus in the poet, and the result is the harmony which is art. The fact is of profound philosophical significance, surely, for union of the apparent contradictions of the sensual and the spiritual can only mean that idealism is of the essence of the universe. What is the poetic metaphor but the revelation of an identical meaning in the physical and spiritual world? The sympathetic reader of poetry cannot but see the reflection of the spiritual in the sensual, and the sensual in the spiritual, even as does the poet, and one, as the other, must be by temperament an idealist. INDEX Addison, Joseph, "A.E." (see George William Russell), Aeschylus, Agathon, Akins, Zoe, Alcaeus, Aldrich, Anne Reeve, Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, Alexander, Hartley Burr, Alexander, William, Allston, Washington, Ambercrombe, Lascelles, Anderson, Margaret Steele, Angelo, Michael, Arensberg, Walter Conrad, Aristotle, Arnold, Edwin, Arnold, Matthew, his discontent; on the poet's death; inspiration; loneliness; morality; religion; usefulness; youth; his sense of superiority. Arnold, Thomas, Asquith, Herbert, Austin, Alfred, Bacon, Josephine Dodge Daskam, Baker, Karle Wilson, Baudelaire, Charles Pierre, Beatrice, Beattie, James, Beddoes, Thomas Lovell, Beers, Henry A., Benét, Stephen Vincent, Benét, William Rose, Bennet, William, Binyon, Robert Lawrence, Blake, William, later poets on; on inspiration; on the poet as truthteller; on the poet's religion. Blunden, Edmund, Boccaccio, Boker, George Henry, Borrow, George, Bowles, William Lisle, Branch, Anna Hempstead, Brawne, Fanny H., Bridges, Robert, Brontë, Emily, Brooke, Rupert, Browne, T. E., Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, appearance; _Aurora Leigh_; on Keats; on the poet's age; content with his own time; democracy; eyes; habitat; health, humanitarianism, inferiority to his creations, inspiration, love, morals, pain, personality, religion, resentment at patronage, self-consciousness, self-expression, sex, usefulness, other poets on, Browning, Robert, on fame, on inspiration, on the poet's beauty, loneliness, love, morals, persecutions, pride, religion, self-expression, sex, superiority, usefulness, on Shakespeare, on Shelley, _Sordello_, other poets on Bryant, William Cullen Buchanan, Robert Bunker, John Joseph Burke, Edmund Burleigh, William Henry Burnet, Dana Burns, Robert, his self-depreciation, on the poet's caste, habitat, inspiration, love of liberty, morals, persecutions, poverty, superiority, other poets on Burton, Richard Butler, Samuel Byron, Lord, his body, escape from himself in poetry, friendship with Shelley, indifference to fame, later poets on, his morals, his mother, his religion, self-portraits in verse, superiority, on Tasso Camöens Campbell, Thomas Campion, Thomas Candole, Alec de Carlin, Francis Carlyle, Thomas Carman, Bliss Carpenter, Rhys Cary, Alice Cary, Elisabeth Luther Cassells, S. J. Cavalcanti, Guido Cawein, Madison Cellini, Benvenuto Cervantes Chapman, George Chatterton, Thomas Chaucer, Geoffrey Cheney, Annie Elizabeth Chénièr, André Chesterton, Gilbert Keith Chivers, Thomas Holley Clare, John Clough, Arthur Hugh Coleridge, Hartley Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, appearance; on Blake; on Chatterton; friendship with Wordsworth; on the poet's habitat; health; love; morals; reflection in nature; religion; youth; usefulness; later poets on Collins, William, Colonna, Vittoria, Colvin, Sidney, Conkling, Grace Hazard, Cornwall, Barry (see Procter, Bryan Waller), Cowper, William, Cox, Ethel Louise, Crabbe, George, Crashaw, Richard, Cratylus, Dana, Richard Henry, Daniel, Samuel, D'Annunzio, Gabriele, Dante, G.L. Raymond on; Oscar Wilde on; Sara King Wiley on; Dargan, Olive, David, Davidson, John, Davies, William Henry, Dermody, Thomas, Descartes, Dickinson, Emily, Dionysodorus, Dobell, Sidney, Dobson, Austin, Dommett, Alfred, Donne, John, Dowden, Edward, Dowson, Ernest, Drake, Joseph Rodman, Drinkwater, John, Druce, C.J., Dryden, John, Dunbar, Paul Laurence, Dunroy, William Reed, Dunsany, Lord Edward, Dyer, Sidney, Ehrman, Max, Elijah, Eliot, Ebenezer, Eliot, George, Emerson, Ralph Waldo, his contempt for the public; his democracy; his humility; on inspiration; on love of fame; on the poet's divinity; love; morals; poverty; solitude; usefulness Euripedes, Euthydemus, Evans, Mrs. E.H., Fainier, C.H., Fairfield, S. L., Field, Eugene., Flecker, James Elroy, Flint, F.S., French, Daniel Chester, Freneau, Philip Morin, Fuller, Frances, Fuller, Metta, Gage, Mrs. Frances, Garnett, Richard, Gibson, Wilfred Wilson, Giddings, Franklin Henry, Gilbert, Sir William Schwenek Gilder, Richard Watson; on Helen Hunt Jackson; on Emma Lazarus; on the poet's age; blindness; inspiration; morality; normality; poverty Gillman, James Giltinan, Caroline Goethe Gosse, Edmund Gosson, Stephen Graves, Robert Gray, Thomas Grenfil, Julian Griffith, William Guiterman, Arthur Hake, Thomas Gordon Halleck, Shelley Halpine, Charles Graham Hardy, Thomas Harris, Thomas Lake Harrison, Birge Hayne, Paul Hamilton Hazlitt, William Hemans, Felicia Henderson, Daniel Henley, William Ernest Herbert, George Herrick, Robert Hewlett, Maurice Hildreth, Charles Latin Hill, H., Hilliard, George Stillman Hillyer, Robert Silliman Hoffman, C. F. Hogg, Thomas Jefferson Holland, Josiah Gilbert Holmes, Oliver Wendell Homer Hood, Thomas Hooper, Lucy "Hope, Lawrence" (see Violet Nicolson) Horne, Richard Hengest Houghton, Lord Houseman, Laurence Hovey, Richard Hubbard, Harvey Hubner, Charles William Hughes, John Hugo, Victor Hunt, Leigh Ingelow, Jean Jackson, Helen Hunt Jameson, Mrs. Anna Brownell Johnson, Donald F. Goold Johnson, Lionel Johnson, Robert Underwood, Johnson, Rossiter Johnson, Dr. Samuel Jonson, Ben Kaufman, Herbert Keats, John; his body; on Burns; Christopher North on; on his desire for fame; his egotism; on Elizabethan poets; on expression; on the harmony of poets Homer's blindness; on his indifference to the public; on inspiration; later poets on Keats; on love; quarrel with philosophy; on the poet's democracy, gift of prophecy, habitat, morals, persecutions, unpoetical character, unobtrusiveness, usefulness Keble, John Kemble, Frances Anne Kent, Charles Kenyon, James Benjamin Kerl, Simon Khayyam, Omar Kilmer, Joyce Kingsley, Charles Kipling, Rudyard Knibbs, Harry Herbert Lamb, Charles Landor, Walter Savage; on Byron; confidence in immortality; on female poets; on Homer; on intoxication and inspiration; on the poet's age, morals, pride; on poetry and reason; on Shakespeare; on Southey Lang, Andrew Lanier, Sidney Larcom, Lucy Laura Lazarus, Emma Ledwidge, Francis Le Gallienne, Richard Leonard, William Ellery Lindsay, Vachel Lockhart, John Gibson Lodge, Thomas Lombroso, Césare Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth; his democracy; on grief and poetry; _Michael Angelo_; on the poet's morals, solitude; on the savage poet; on inspiration Longinus Lord, William W. Low, Benjamin R. C. Lowell, Amy Lowell, James Russell; on Burns; on the poet's age, divinity, habitat, inspiration, usefulness Lucan Lucretius Lytton, Bulwer, on André Chénier; on the female poet; on Milton; on the poet's appearance, fame, persecution, usefulness McDonald, Carl Mackaye, Percy Maclean, L. E. "Macleod, Fiona" (see William Sharp) MacNiel, J. C. Mann, Dorothea Lawrence Mansfield, Richard Map, Walter Markham, Edwin Marlowe, Christopher, Alfred Noyes on, Josephine Preston Peabody on, Marquis, Don, Masefield, John, Massey, Gerald, Masters, Edgar Lee, Meres, Francis, Meredith, George, Meredith, Owen, Meynell, Alice, Meynell, Viola, Middleton, Richard, Millay, Edna St. Vincent, Miller, Joaquin, Milton, John, Miriam, Mitchell, L. E., Mitchell, Stewart Mitford, Mary Russell, Montgomery, James, Moody, William Vaughan, Moore, Thomas, Morley, Christopher, Morris, Lewis, Morris, William, Myers, Frederick W. H. Naden, Constance, Nash, Thomas, Neihardt, John Gneisenau, Nero, Nerval, Gerard de, Newbolt, Henry, Newman, Henry, Newton, Sir Isaac, Nicolson, Violet, Nordau, Max Simon, North, Christopher, Noyes, Alfred, O'Connor, Norreys Jephson, Osborne, James Insley, O'Sheel, Shaemus, Otway, Thomas, Pater, Walter, Patmore, Coventry, on the poet's expression, indifference to fame, love, morals, religion, usefulness Payne, John, Peabody, Josephine Preston, Percival, James Gates, Percy, William Alexander, Petrarch, Phidias, Phillips, Stephen, Phillpotts, Eden, Pierce, C. A., Plato, _Ion_, _Phaedo_ _Philebus_, _Phaedrus_, _Republic_, _Symposium_, Poe, Edgar Allan, Pollock, Robert, Pope, Alexander, Pound, Ezra, Praed, Winthrop Mackworth Price, C. Augustus Procter, Adelaide Anne Procter, Bryan Cornwall Rand, Theodore Harding Raphael Raymond, George Lansing Reade, Thomas Buchanan Realf, Richard Reno, Lydia M. Rice, Cale Young Rice, Harvey Riley, James Whitcomb Rittenhouse, Jessie Rives, Hallie Erven Robbins, Reginald Chauncey Roberts, Cecil Roberts, Charles George Douglas Robinson, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Mary Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, on Chatterton, on Dante, on Marston, on the poet's age, expression, inspiration, love, morals, usefulness Rousseau, Jean Jacques Ruskin, John Russell, George William Ryan, Abram J. Sampson, Henry Aylett Sandburg, Carl Sappho; Alcaeus on, modern poets on her genius, on her passion Savage, John Saxe, John Godfrey Scala, George Augustus Schauffler, Robert Haven Schiller, Johann Christoff Friedrich Scott, Sir Walter Seeger, Alan Service, Robert Shairp, Principal Shakespeare, William Sharp, William Shelley, Percy Bysshe, and Byron, on female poets, his hostility to the public, his indifference to his body, on Keats, on the poet's early death, habitat, inspiration, love, madness, loneliness, morals, persecutions, poverty, religion, seership, usefulness, on prenatal life, on Tasso Shenstone, William Sidney, Sir Philip Sinclair, May Smart, Christopher Smith, Alexander, Smith, J. Thorne, jr., Socrates, Solomon, Soran, Charles, Southey, Robert, Spenser, Edmund, Sprague, E.L., Stedman, Edmund Clarence, Stephens, James, Stickney, Trumbull, Stoddard, Charles Warren, Sullivan, Sir Arthur, Swinburne, Algernon, chafing against moral restraints; on Victor Hugo; on Marston; on his mother; on the poet's age; love of liberty; morals; parentage; religion; usefulness; on Christina Rossetti; on Sappho; on Shelley Symons, Arthur, Taine, Hippolyte Adolph, Tannahill, John, Tasso, Torquato, Taylor, Bayard, Teasdale, Sara, Tennyson, Alfred, burlesque on inspiration in wine; his contempt for the public; on the poet's death; expression; inspiration; intuitions; love of liberty; lovelessness; morality; pantheism; persecution; rank; religion; superiority to art; usefulness Tertullian, Thomas, Edith, Thompson, Francis, confidence in immortality; humility; on inspiration; on love and poetry; on Alice Meynell; on Viola Meynell; on the poet's body; expression; grief; habitat; loneliness; morals; youth Thomson, James, Thomson, James (B.V.), his atheism; on Mrs. Browning; on inspiration; on pessimistic poetry; on Platonic love; on Shelley; on Tasso; on Weltschmerz Timrod, Henry, Tolstoi, Count Leo, Towne, Charles Hanson, Trench, Herbert, Tupper, Martin Farquhar, Van Dyke, Henry, Vergil, Verlaine, Paul Marie, Villon, François, Viviani, Emilia, Waddington, Samuel Ware, Eugene Watts-Dunton, Theodore Wesley, Charles West, James Harcourt Wheelock, John Hall White, Kirke Whitman, Walt; confidence in immortality; democracy; on expression; on the poet's idleness, inspiration, morals, normality, protean nature, love, reconciling of man and nature; on the poet-warrior; his zest Whittier, John Greenleaf Wilde, Oscar, on Byron; on Dante; on Keats; on love and art; his morals; on the poet's prophecy; on the uselessness of art Wiley, Sara King Winter, William Woodberry, George Edward; apology; on friendship; on the poet's love; on inspiration; on Shelley Wordsworth, William; confidence in immortality; on female poets; his friendship with Coleridge; on James Hogg; on inspiration; Keats' annoyance with Wordsworth; on love poetry; on the peasant poet; on the poet's democracy, habitat, morals, religion, solitude; the _Prelude_; on prenatal life; quarrel with philosophy; repudiation of inspiration through wine Wright, Harold Bell Yeats, William Butler Young, Edmund 
8388	----	POEMS BY WALT WHITMAN by WALT WHITMAN SELECTED AND EDITED BY WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI A NEW EDITION "Or si sa il nome, o per tristo o per buono, E si sa pure al mondo ch'io ci sono." --MICHELANGELO. "That Angels are human forms, or men, I have seen a thousand times. I have also frequently told them that men in the Christian world are in such gross ignorance respecting Angels and Spirits as to suppose them to be minds without a form, or mere thoughts, of which they have no other idea than as something ethereal possessing a vital principle. To the first or ultimate heaven also correspond the forms of man's body, called its members, organs, and viscera. Thus the corporeal part of man is that in which heaven ultimately closes, and upon which, as on its base, it rests." --SWEDENBORG. "Yes, truly, it is a great thing for a nation that it get an articulate voice--that it produce a man who will speak forth melodiously what the heart of it means." --CARLYLE. "Les efforts de vos ennemis contre vous, leurs cris, leur rage impuissante, et leurs petits succès, ne doivent pas vous effrayer; ce ne sont que des égratignures sur les épaules d'Hercule." --ROBESPIERRE. TO WILLIAM BELL SCOTT. DEAR SCOTT,--Among various gifts which I have received from you, tangible and intangible, was a copy of the original quarto edition of Whitman's _Leaves of Grass_, which you presented to me soon after its first appearance in 1855. At a time when few people on this side of the Atlantic had looked into the book, and still fewer had found in it anything save matter for ridicule, you had appraised it, and seen that its value was real and great. A true poet and a strong thinker like yourself was indeed likely to see that. I read the book eagerly, and perceived that its substantiality and power were still ahead of any eulogium with which it might have come commended to me--and, in fact, ahead of most attempts that could be made at verbal definition of them. Some years afterwards, getting to know our friend Swinburne, I found with much satisfaction that he also was an ardent (not of course a _blind_) admirer of Whitman. Satisfaction, and a degree almost of surprise; for his intense sense of poetic refinement of form in his own works and his exacting acuteness as a critic might have seemed likely to carry him away from Whitman in sympathy at least, if not in actual latitude of perception. Those who find the American poet "utterly formless," "intolerably rough and floundering," "destitute of the A B C of art," and the like, might not unprofitably ponder this very different estimate of him by the author of _Atalanta in Calydon_. May we hope that now, twelve years after the first appearance of _Leaves of Grass_, the English reading public may be prepared for a selection of Whitman's poems, and soon hereafter for a complete edition of them? I trust this may prove to be the case. At any rate, it has been a great gratification to me to be concerned in the experiment; and this is enhanced by my being enabled to associate with it your name, as that of an early and well-qualified appreciator of Whitman, and no less as that of a dear friend. Yours affectionately, W. M. ROSSETTI. _October_ 1867. CONTENTS. PREFATORY NOTICE PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION OF LEAVES OF GRASS CHANTS DEMOCRATIC: STARTING FROM PAUMANOK AMERICAN FEUILLAGE THE PAST-PRESENT YEARS OF THE UNPERFORMED FLUX TO WORKING MEN SONG OF THE BROAD-AXE ANTECEDENTS SALUT AU MONDE A BROADWAY PAGEANT OLD IRELAND BOSTON TOWN FRANCE, THE EIGHTEENTH YEAR OF THESE STATES EUROPE, THE SEVENTY-SECOND AND SEVENTY-THIRD YEARS OF THESE STATES TO A FOILED REVOLTER OR REVOLTRESS DRUM TAPS: MANHATTAN ARMING 1861 THE UPRISING BEAT! BEAT! DRUMS! SONG OF THE BANNER AT DAYBREAK THE BIVOUAC'S FLAME BIVOUAC ON A MOUNTAIN SIDE CITY OF SHIPS VIGIL ON THE FIELD THE FLAG THE WOUNDED A SIGHT IN CAMP A GRAVE THE DRESSER A LETTER FROM CAMP WAR DREAMS THE VETERAN'S VISION O TAN-FACED PRAIRIE BOY MANHATTAN FACES OVER THE CARNAGE THE MOTHER OF ALL CAMPS OF GREEN DIRGE FOR TWO VETERANS SURVIVORS HYMN OF DEAD SOLDIERS SPIRIT WHOSE WORK IS DONE RECONCILIATION AFTER THE WAR WALT WHITMAN: ASSIMILATIONS A WORD OUT OF THE SEA CROSSING BROOKLYN FERRY NIGHT AND DEATH ELEMENTAL DRIFTS WONDERS MIRACLES VISAGES THE DARK SIDE MUSIC WHEREFORE? QUESTIONABLE SONG AT SUNSET LONGINGS FOR HOME APPEARANCES THE FRIEND MEETING AGAIN A DREAM PARTING FRIENDS TO A STRANGER OTHER LANDS ENVY THE CITY OF FRIENDS OUT OF THE CROWD AMONG THE MULTITUDE LEAVES OF GRASS: PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S FUNERAL HYMN O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! (FOR THE DEATH OF LINCOLN) PIONEERS! O PIONEERS TO THE SAYERS OF WORDS VOICES WHOSOEVER BEGINNERS TO A PUPIL LINKS THE WATERS TO THE STATES TEARS A SHIP GREATNESSES THE POET BURIAL THIS COMPOST DESPAIRING CRIES THE CITY DEAD-HOUSE TO ONE SHORTLY TO DIE UNNAMED LANDS SIMILITUDE THE SQUARE DEIFIC SONGS OF PARTING: SINGERS AND POETS TO A HISTORIAN FIT AUDIENCE SINGING IN SPRING LOVE OF COMRADES PULSE OF MY LIFE AUXILIARIES REALITIES NEARING DEPARTURE POETS TO COME CENTURIES HENCE SO LONG! POSTSCRIPT PREFATORY NOTICE. During the summer of 1867 I had the opportunity (which I had often wished for) of expressing in print my estimate and admiration of the works of the American poet Walt Whitman.[1] Like a stone dropped into a pond, an article of that sort may spread out its concentric circles of consequences. One of these is the invitation which I have received to edit a selection from Whitman's writings; virtually the first sample of his work ever published in England, and offering the first tolerably fair chance he has had of making his way with English readers on his own showing. Hitherto, such readers--except the small percentage of them to whom it has happened to come across the poems in some one of their American editions--have picked acquaintance with them only through the medium of newspaper extracts and criticisms, mostly short-sighted, sneering, and depreciatory, and rather intercepting than forwarding the candid construction which people might be willing to put upon the poems, alike in their beauties and their aberrations. Some English critics, no doubt, have been more discerning--as W. J. Fox, of old, in the _Dispatch_, the writer of the notice in the _Leader_, and of late two in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ and the _London Review_;[2] but these have been the exceptions among us, the great majority of the reviewers presenting that happy and familiar critical combination-- scurrility and superciliousness. [Footnote 1: See _The Chronicle_ for 6th July 1867, article _Walt Whitman's Poems_.] [Footnote 2: Since this Prefatory Notice was written [in 1868], another eulogistic review of Whitman has appeared--that by Mr. Robert Buchanan, in the _Broadway_.] As it was my lot to set down so recently several of the considerations which seem to me most essential and most obvious in regard to Whitman's writings, I can scarcely now recur to the subject without either repeating something of what I then said, or else leaving unstated some points of principal importance. I shall therefore adopt the simplest course--that of summarising the critical remarks in my former article; after which, I shall leave without further development (ample as is the amount of development most of them would claim) the particular topics there glanced at, and shall proceed to some other phases of the subject. Whitman republished in 1867 his complete poetical works in one moderate- sized volume, consisting of the whole _Leaves of Grass_, with a sort of supplement thereto named _Songs before Parting_,[3] and of the _Drum Taps_, with its _Sequel_. It has been intimated that he does not expect to write any more poems, unless it might be in expression of the religious side of man's nature. However, one poem on the last American harvest sown and reaped by those who had been soldiers in the great war, has already appeared since the volume in question, and has been republished in England. [Footnote 3: In a copy of the book revised by Whitman himself, which we have seen, this title is modified into _Songs of Parting_.] Whitman's poems present no trace of rhyme, save in a couple or so of chance instances. Parts of them, indeed, may be regarded as a warp of prose amid the weft of poetry, such as Shakespeare furnishes the precedent for in drama. Still there is a very powerful and majestic rhythmical sense throughout. Lavish and persistent has been the abuse poured forth upon Whitman by his own countrymen; the tricklings of the British press give but a moderate idea of it. The poet is known to repay scorn with scorn. Emerson can, however, from the first be claimed as on Whitman's side; nor, it is understood after some inquiry, has that great thinker since then retreated from this position in fundamentals, although his admiration may have entailed some worry upon him, and reports of his recantation have been rife. Of other writers on Whitman's side, expressing themselves with no measured enthusiasm, one may cite Mr. M. D. Conway; Mr. W. D. O'Connor, who wrote a pamphlet named _The Good Grey Poet_; and Mr. John Burroughs, author of _Walt Whitman as Poet and Person_, published quite recently in New York. His thorough-paced admirers declare Whitman to be beyond rivalry _the_ poet of the epoch; an estimate which, startling as it will sound at the first, may nevertheless be upheld, on the grounds that Whitman is beyond all his competitors a man of the period, one of audacious personal ascendant, incapable of all compromise, and an initiator in the scheme and form of his works. Certain faults are charged against him, and, as far as they are true, shall frankly stand confessed--some of them as very serious faults. Firstly, he speaks on occasion of gross things in gross, crude, and plain terms. Secondly, he uses some words absurd or ill-constructed, others which produce a jarring effect in poetry, or indeed in any lofty literature. Thirdly, he sins from time to time by being obscure, fragmentary, and agglomerative--giving long strings of successive and detached items, not, however, devoid of a certain primitive effectiveness. Fourthly, his self- assertion is boundless; yet not always to be understood as strictly or merely personal to himself, but sometimes as vicarious, the poet speaking on behalf of all men, and every man and woman. These and any other faults appear most harshly on a cursory reading; Whitman is a poet who bears and needs to be read as a whole, and then the volume and torrent of his power carry the disfigurements along with it, and away. The subject-matter of Whitman's poems, taken individually, is absolutely miscellaneous: he touches upon any and every subject. But he has prefixed to his last edition an "Inscription" in the following terms, showing that the key-words of the whole book are two--"One's-self" and "En Masse:"-- Small is the theme of the following chant, yet the greatest.--namely, ONE'S-SELF; that wondrous thing, a simple separate person. That, for the use of the New World, I sing. Man's physiology complete, from top to toe, I sing. Not physiognomy alone, nor brain alone, is worthy for the Muse: I say the form complete is worthier far. The female equally with the male I sing. Nor cease at the theme of One's-self. I speak the word of the modern, the word EN MASSE. My days I sing, and the lands--with interstice I knew of hapless war. O friend, whoe'er you are, at last arriving hither to commence, I feel through every leaf the pressure of your hand, which I return. And thus upon our journey linked together let us go. The book, then, taken as a whole, is the poem both of Personality and of Democracy; and, it may be added, of American nationalism. It is _par excellence_ the modern poem. It is distinguished also by this peculiarity-- that in it the most literal view of things is continually merging into the most rhapsodic or passionately abstract. Picturesqueness it has, but mostly of a somewhat patriarchal kind, not deriving from the "word-painting" of the _littérateur_; a certain echo of the old Hebrew poetry may even be caught in it, extra-modern though it is. Another most prominent and pervading quality of the book is the exuberant physique of the author. The conceptions are throughout those of a man in robust health, and might alter much under different conditions. Further, there is a strong tone of paradox in Whitman's writings. He is both a realist and an optimist in extreme measure: he contemplates evil as in some sense not existing, or, if existing, then as being of as much importance as anything else. Not that he is a materialist; on the contrary, he is a most strenuous assertor of the soul, and, with the soul, of the body as its infallible associate and vehicle in the present frame of things. Neither does he drift into fatalism or indifferentism; the energy of his temperament, and ever-fresh sympathy with national and other developments, being an effectual bar to this. The paradoxical element of the poems is such that one may sometimes find them in conflict with what has preceded, and would not be much surprised if they said at any moment the reverse of whatever they do say. This is mainly due to the multiplicity of the aspects of things, and to the immense width of relation in which Whitman stands to all sorts and all aspects of them. But the greatest of this poet's distinctions is his absolute and entire originality. He may be termed formless by those who, not without much reason to show for themselves, are wedded to the established forms and ratified refinements of poetic art; but it seems reasonable to enlarge the canon till it includes so great and startling a genius, rather than to draw it close and exclude him. His work is practically certain to stand as archetypal for many future poetic efforts--so great is his power as an originator, so fervid his initiative. It forms incomparably the _largest_ performance of our period in poetry. Victor Hugo's _Légende des Siècles_ alone might be named with it for largeness, and even that with much less of a new starting-point in conception and treatment. Whitman breaks with all precedent. To what he himself perceives and knows he has a personal relation of the intensest kind: to anything in the way of prescription, no relation at all. But he is saved from isolation by the depth of his Americanism; with the movement of his predominant nation he is moved. His comprehension, energy, and tenderness are all extreme, and all inspired by actualities. And, as for poetic genius, those who, without being ready to concede that faculty to Whitman, confess his iconoclastic boldness and his Titanic power of temperament, working in the sphere of poetry, do in effect confess his genius as well. Such, still further condensed, was the critical summary which I gave of Whitman's position among poets. It remains to say something a little more precise of the particular qualities of his works. And first, not to slur over defects, I shall extract some sentences from a letter which a friend, most highly entitled to form and express an opinion on any poetic question--one, too, who abundantly upholds the greatness of Whitman as a poet--has addressed to me with regard to the criticism above condensed. His observations, though severe on this individual point, appear to me not other than correct. "I don't think that you quite put strength enough into your blame on one side, while you make at least enough of minor faults or eccentricities. To me it seems always that Whitman's great flaw is a fault of debility, not an excess of strength--I mean his bluster. His own personal and national self-reliance and arrogance, I need not tell you, I applaud, and sympathise and rejoice in; but the blatant ebullience of feeling and speech, at times, is feeble for so great a poet of so great a people. He is in part certainly the poet of democracy; but not wholly, _because_ he tries so openly to be, and asserts so violently that he is-- always as if he was fighting the case out on a platform. This is the only thing I really or greatly dislike or revolt from. On the whole" (adds my correspondent), "my admiration and enjoyment of his greatness grow keener and warmer every time I think of him"--a feeling, I may be permitted to observe, which is fully shared by myself, and, I suppose, by all who consent in any adequate measure to recognise Whitman, and to yield themselves to his influence. To continue. Besides originality and daring, which have been already insisted upon, width and intensity are leading characteristics of his writings--width both of subject-matter and of comprehension, intensity of self-absorption into what the poet contemplates and expresses. He scans and presents an enormous panorama, unrolled before him as from a mountain-top; and yet, whatever most large or most minute or casual thing his eye glances upon, that he enters into with a depth of affection which identifies him with it for a time, be the object what it may. There is a singular interchange also of actuality and of ideal substratum and suggestion. While he sees men, with even abnormal exactness and sympathy, as men, he sees them also "as trees walking," and admits us to perceive that the whole show is in a measure spectral and unsubstantial, and the mask of a larger and profounder reality beneath it, of which it is giving perpetual intimations and auguries. He is the poet indeed of literality, but of passionate and significant literality, full of indirections as well as directness, and of readings between the lines. If he is the 'cutest of Yankees, he is also as truly an enthusiast as any the most typical poet. All his faculties and performance glow into a white heat of brotherliness; and there is a _poignancy_ both of tenderness and of beauty about his finer works which discriminates them quite as much as their modernness, audacity, or any other exceptional point. If the reader wishes to see the great and more intimate powers of Whitman in their fullest expression, he may consult the _Nocturn for the Death of Lincoln_; than which it would be difficult to find anywhere a purer, more elevated, more poetic, more ideally abstract, or at the same time more pathetically personal, threnody--uniting the thrilling chords of grief, of beauty, of triumph, and of final unfathomed satisfaction. With all his singularities, Whitman is a master of words and of sounds: he has them at his command--made for, and instinct with, his purpose--messengers of unsurpassable sympathy and intelligence between himself and his readers. The entire book may be called the paean of the natural man--not of the merely physical, still less of the disjunctively intellectual or spiritual man, but of him who, being a man first and foremost, is therein also a spirit and an intellect. There is a singular and impressive intuition or revelation of Swedenborg's: that the whole of heaven is in the form of one man, and the separate societies of heaven in the forms of the several parts of man. In a large sense, the general drift of Whitman's writings, even down to the passages which read as most bluntly physical, bear a striking correspondence or analogy to this dogma. He takes man, and every organism and faculty of man, as the unit--the datum--from which all that we know, discern, and speculate, of abstract and supersensual, as well as of concrete and sensual, has to be computed. He knows of nothing nobler than that unit man; but, knowing that, he can use it for any multiple, and for any dynamical extension or recast. Let us next obtain some idea of what this most remarkable poet--the founder of _American_ poetry rightly to be so called, and the most sonorous poetic voice of the tangibilities of actual and prospective democracy--is in his proper life and person. Walt Whitman was born at the farm-village of West Hills, Long Island, in the State of New York, and about thirty miles distant from the capital, on the 31st of May 1819. His father's family, English by origin, had already been settled in this locality for five generations. His mother, named Louisa van Velsor, was of Dutch extraction, and came from Cold Spring, Queen's County, about three miles from West Hills. "A fine-looking old lady" she has been termed in her advanced age. A large family ensued from the marriage. The father was a farmer, and afterwards a carpenter and builder; both parents adhered in religion to "the great Quaker iconoclast, Elias Hicks." Walt was schooled at Brooklyn, a suburb of New York, and began life at the age of thirteen, working as a printer, later on as a country teacher, and then as a miscellaneous press-writer in New York. From 1837 to 1848 he had, as Mr. Burroughs too promiscuously expresses it, "sounded all experiences of life, with all their passions, pleasures, and abandonments." In 1849 he began travelling, and became at New Orleans a newspaper editor, and at Brooklyn, two years afterwards, a printer. He next followed his father's business of carpenter and builder. In 1862, after the breaking-out of the great Civil War, in which his enthusiastic unionism and also his anti-slavery feelings attached him inseparably though not rancorously to the good cause of the North, he undertook the nursing of the sick and wounded in the field, writing also a correspondence in the _New York Times_. I am informed that it was through Emerson's intervention that he obtained the sanction of President Lincoln for this purpose of charity, with authority to draw the ordinary army rations; Whitman stipulating at the same time that he would not receive any remuneration for his services. The first immediate occasion of his going down to camp was on behalf of his brother, Lieutenant-Colonel George W. Whitman, of the 51st New York Veterans, who had been struck in the face by a piece of shell at Fredericksburg. From the spring of 1863 this nursing, both in the field and more especially in hospital at Washington, became his "one daily and nightly occupation;" and the strongest testimony is borne to his measureless self-devotion and kindliness in the work, and to the unbounded fascination, a kind of magnetic attraction and ascendency, which he exercised over the patients, often with the happiest sanitary results. Northerner or Southerner, the belligerents received the same tending from him. It is said that by the end of the war he had personally ministered to upwards of 100,000 sick and wounded. In a Washington hospital he caught, in the summer of 1864, the first illness he had ever known, caused by poison absorbed into the system in attending some of the worst cases of gangrene. It disabled him for six months. He returned to the hospitals towards the beginning of 1865, and obtained also a clerkship in the Department of the Interior. It should be added that, though he never actually joined the army as a combatant, he made a point of putting down his name on the enrolment- lists for the draft, to take his chance as it might happen for serving the country in arms. The reward of his devotedness came at the end of June 1865, in the form of dismissal from his clerkship by the minister, Mr. Harlan, who learned that Whitman was the author of the _Leaves of Grass_; a book whose outspokenness, or (as the official chief considered it) immorality, raised a holy horror in the ministerial breast. The poet, however, soon obtained another modest but creditable post in the office of the Attorney-General. He still visits the hospitals on Sundays, and often on other days as well. The portrait of Mr. Whitman reproduced in the present volume is taken from an engraving after a daguerreotype given in the original _Leaves of Grass_. He is much above the average size, and noticeably well-proportioned--a model of physique and of health, and, by natural consequence, as fully and finely related to all physical facts by his bodily constitution as to all mental and spiritual facts by his mind and his consciousness. He is now, however, old-looking for his years, and might even (according to the statement of one of his enthusiasts, Mr. O'Connor) have passed for being beyond the age for the draft when the war was going on. The same gentleman, in confutation of any inferences which might be drawn from the _Leaves of Grass_ by a Harlan or other Holy Willie, affirms that "one more irreproachable in his relations to the other sex lives not upon this earth"--an assertion which one must take as one finds it, having neither confirmatory nor traversing evidence at hand. Whitman has light blue eyes, a florid complexion, a fleecy beard now grey, and a quite peculiar sort of magnetism about him in relation to those with whom he comes in contact. His ordinary appearance is masculine and cheerful: he never shows depression of spirits, and is sufficiently undemonstrative, and even somewhat silent in company. He has always been carried by predilection towards the society of the common people; but is not the less for that open to refined and artistic impressions--fond of operatic and other good music, and discerning in works of art. As to either praise or blame of what he writes, he is totally indifferent, not to say scornful--having in fact a very decisive opinion of his own concerning its calibre and destinies. Thoreau, a very congenial spirit, said of Whitman, "He is Democracy;" and again, "After all, he suggests something a little more than human." Lincoln broke out into the exclamation, "Well, _he_ looks like a man!" Whitman responded to the instinctive appreciation of the President, considering him (it is said by Mr. Burroughs) "by far the noblest and purest of the political characters of the time;" and, if anything can cast, in the eyes of posterity, an added halo of brightness round the unsullied personal qualities and the great doings of Lincoln, it will assuredly be the written monument reared to him by Whitman. The best sketch that I know of Whitman as an accessible human individual is that given by Mr. Conway.[4] I borrow from it the following few details. "Having occasion to visit New York soon after the appearance of Walt Whitman's book, I was urged by some friends to search him out.... The day was excessively hot, the thermometer at nearly 100°, and the sun blazed down as only on sandy Long Island can the sun blaze.... I saw stretched upon his back, and gazing up straight at the terrible sun, the man I was seeking. With his grey clothing, his blue-grey shirt, his iron-grey hair, his swart sunburnt face and bare neck, he lay upon the brown-and-white grass--for the sun had burnt away its greenness--and was so like the earth upon which he rested that he seemed almost enough a part of it for one to pass by without recognition. I approached him, gave my name and reason for searching him out, and asked him if he did not find the sun rather hot. 'Not at all too hot,' was his reply; and he confided to me that this was one of his favourite places and attitudes for composing 'poems.' He then walked with me to his home, and took me along its narrow ways to his room. A small room of about fifteen feet square, with a single window looking out on the barren solitudes of the island; a small cot; a wash-stand with a little looking-glass hung over it from a tack in the wall; a pine table with pen, ink, and paper on it; an old line-engraving representing Bacchus, hung on the wall, and opposite a similar one of Silenus: these constituted the visible environments of Walt Whitman. There was not, apparently, a single book in the room.... The books he seemed to know and love best were the Bible, Homer, and Shakespeare: these he owned, and probably had in his pockets while we were talking. He had two studies where he read; one was the top of an omnibus, and the other a small mass of sand, then entirely uninhabited, far out in the ocean, called Coney Island.... The only distinguished contemporary he had ever met was the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, of Brooklyn, who had visited him.... He confessed to having no talent for industry, and that his forte was 'loafing and writing poems:' he was poor, but had discovered that he could, on the whole, live magnificently on bread and water.... On no occasion did he laugh, nor indeed did I ever see him smile." [Footnote 4: In the _Fortnightly Review_, 15th October 1866.] The first trace of Whitman as a writer is in the pages of the _Democratic Review_ in or about 1841. Here he wrote some prose tales and sketches--poor stuff mostly, so far as I have seen of them, yet not to be wholly confounded with the commonplace. One of them is a tragic school-incident, which may be surmised to have fallen under his personal observation in his early experience as a teacher. His first poem of any sort was named _Blood Money_, in denunciation of the Fugitive Slave Law, which severed him from the Democratic party. His first considerable work was the _Leaves of Grass_. He began it in 1853, and it underwent two or three complete rewritings prior to its publication at Brooklyn in 1855, in a quarto volume--peculiar-looking, but with something perceptibly artistic about it. The type of that edition was set up entirely by himself. He was moved to undertake this formidable poetic work (as indicated in a private letter of Whitman's, from which Mr. Conway has given a sentence or two) by his sense of the great materials which America could offer for a really American poetry, and by his contempt for the current work of his compatriots--"either the poetry of an elegantly weak sentimentalism, at bottom nothing but maudlin puerilities or more or less musical verbiage, arising out of a life of depression and enervation as their result; or else that class of poetry, plays, &c., of which the foundation is feudalism, with its ideas of lords and ladies, its imported standard of gentility, and the manners of European high-life-below-stairs in every line and verse." Thus incited to poetic self-expression, Whitman (adds Mr. Conway) "wrote on a sheet of paper, in large letters, these words, 'Make the Work,' and fixed it above his table, where he could always see it whilst writing. Thenceforth every cloud that flitted over him, every distant sail, every face and form encountered, wrote a line in his book." The _Leaves of Grass_ excited no sort of notice until a letter from Emerson[5] appeared, expressing a deep sense of its power and magnitude. He termed it "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed." [Footnote 5: Mr. Burroughs (to whom I have recourse for most biographical facts concerning Whitman) is careful to note, in order that no misapprehension may arise on the subject, that, up to the time of his publishing the _Leaves of Grass_, the author had not read either the essays or the poems of Emerson.] The edition of about a thousand copies sold off in less than a year. Towards the end of 1856 a second edition in 16mo appeared, printed in New York, also of about a thousand copies. Its chief feature was an additional poem beginning "A Woman waits for me." It excited a considerable storm. Another edition, of about four to five thousand copies, duodecimo, came out at Boston in 1860-61, including a number of new pieces. The _Drum Taps_, consequent upon the war, with their _Sequel_, which comprises the poem on Lincoln, followed in 1865; and in 1867, as I have already noted, a complete edition of all the poems, including a supplement named _Songs before Parting_. The first of all the _Leaves of Grass_, in point of date, was the long and powerful composition entitled _Walt Whitman_--perhaps the most typical and memorable of all of his productions, but shut out from the present selection for reasons given further on. The final edition shows numerous and considerable variations from all its precursors; evidencing once again that Whitman is by no means the rough-and-ready writer, panoplied in rude art and egotistic self-sufficiency, that many people suppose him to be. Even since this issue, the book has been slightly revised by its author's own hand, with a special view to possible English circulation. The copy so revised has reached me (through the liberal and friendly hands of Mr. Conway) after my selection had already been decided on; and the few departures from the last printed text which might on comparison be found in the present volume are due to my having had the advantage of following this revised copy. In all other respects I have felt bound to reproduce the last edition, without so much as considering whether here and there I might personally prefer the readings of the earlier issues. The selection here offered to the English reader contains a little less than half the entire bulk of Whitman's poetry. My choice has proceeded upon two simple rules: first, to omit entirely every poem which could with any tolerable fairness be deemed offensive to the feelings of morals or propriety in this peculiarly nervous age; and, second, to include every remaining poem which appeared to me of conspicuous beauty or interest. I have also inserted the very remarkable prose preface which Whitman printed in the original edition of _Leaves of Grass_, an edition that has become a literary rarity. This preface has not been reproduced in any later publication, although its materials have to some extent been worked up into poems of a subsequent date.[6] From this prose composition, contrary to what has been my rule with any of the poems, it has appeared to me permissible to omit two or three short phrases which would have shocked ordinary readers, and the retention of which, had I held it obligatory, would have entailed the exclusion of the preface itself as a whole. [Footnote 6: Compare, for instance, the Preface, pp. 38, 39, with the poem _To a Foiled Revolter or Revoltress_, p. 133.] A few words must be added as to the indecencies scattered through Whitman's writings. Indecencies or improprieties--or, still better, deforming crudities--they may rightly be termed; to call them immoralities would be going too far. Whitman finds himself, and other men and women, to be a compound of soul and body; he finds that body plays an extremely prominent and determining part in whatever he and other mundane dwellers have cognisance of; he perceives this to be the necessary condition of things, and therefore, as he fully and openly accepts it, the right condition; and he knows of no reason why what is universally seen and known, necessary and right, should not also be allowed and proclaimed in speech. That such a view of the matter is entitled to a great deal of weight, and at any rate to candid consideration and construction, appears to me not to admit of a doubt: neither is it dubious that the contrary view, the only view which a mealy-mouthed British nineteenth century admits as endurable, amounts to the condemnation of nearly every great or eminent literary work of past time, whatever the century it belongs to, the country it comes from, the department of writing it illustrates, or the degree or sort of merit it possesses. Tenth, second, or first century before Christ--first, eighth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, or even eighteenth century A.D.--it is still the same: no book whose subject-matter admits as possible of an impropriety according to current notions can be depended upon to fail of containing such impropriety,--can, if those notions are accepted as the canon, be placed with a sense of security in the hands of girls and youths, or read aloud to women; and this holds good just as much of severely moral or plainly descriptive as of avowedly playful, knowing, or licentious books. For my part, I am far from thinking that earlier state of literature, and the public feeling from which it sprang, the wrong ones-- and our present condition the only right one. Equally far, therefore, am I from indignantly condemning Whitman for every startling allusion or expression which he has admitted into his book, and which I, from motives of policy, have excluded from this selection; except, indeed, that I think many of his tabooed passages are extremely raw and ugly on the ground of poetic or literary art, whatever aspect they may bear in morals. I have been rigid in exclusion, because it appears to me highly desirable that a fair verdict on Whitman should now be pronounced in England on poetic grounds alone; and because it was clearly impossible that the book, with its audacities of topic and of expression included, should run the same chance of justice, and of circulation through refined minds and hands, which may possibly be accorded to it after the rejection of all such peccant poems. As already intimated, I have not in a single instance excised any _parts_ of poems: to do so would have been, I conceive, no less wrongful towards the illustrious American than repugnant, and indeed unendurable, to myself, who aspire to no Bowdlerian honours. The consequence is, that the reader loses _in toto_ several important poems, and some extremely fine ones--notably the one previously alluded to, of quite exceptional value and excellence, entitled _Walt Whitman_. I sacrifice them grudgingly; and yet willingly, because I believe this to be the only thing to do with due regard to the one reasonable object which a selection can subserve--that of paving the way towards the issue and unprejudiced reception of a complete edition of the poems in England. For the benefit of misconstructionists, let me add in distinct terms that, in respect of morals and propriety, I neither admire nor approve the incriminated passages in Whitman's poems, but, on the contrary, consider that most of them would be much better away; and, in respect of art, I doubt whether even one of them deserves to be retained in the exact phraseology it at present exhibits. This, however, does not amount to saying that Whitman is a vile man, or a corrupt or corrupting writer; he is none of these. The only division of his poems into sections, made by Whitman himself, has been noted above: _Leaves of Grass_, _Songs before Parting_, supplementary to the preceding, and _Drum Taps_, with their _Sequel_. The peculiar title, _Leaves of Grass_, has become almost inseparable from the name of Whitman; it seems to express with some aptness the simplicity, universality, and spontaneity of the poems to which it is applied. _Songs before Parting_ may indicate that these compositions close Whitman's poetic roll. _Drum Taps_ are, of course, songs of the Civil War, and their _Sequel_ is mainly on the same theme: the chief poem in this last section being the one on the death of Lincoln. These titles all apply to fully arranged series of compositions. The present volume is not in the same sense a fully arranged series, but a selection: and the relation of the poems _inter se_ appears to me to depend on altered conditions, which, however narrowed they are, it may be as well frankly to recognise in practice. I have therefore redistributed the poems (a latitude of action which I trust the author may not object to), bringing together those whose subject-matter seems to warrant it, however far separated they may possibly be in the original volume. At the same time, I have retained some characteristic terms used by Whitman himself, and have named my sections respectively-- 1. Chants Democratic (poems of democracy). 2. Drum Taps (war songs). 3. Walt Whitman (personal poems). 4. Leaves of Grass (unclassified poems). 5. Songs of Parting (missives). The first three designations explain themselves. The fourth, _Leaves of Grass_, is not so specially applicable to the particular poems of that section here as I should have liked it to be; but I could not consent to drop this typical name. The _Songs of Parting_, my fifth section, are compositions in which the poet expresses his own sentiment regarding his works, in which he forecasts their future, or consigns them to the reader's consideration. It deserves mention that, in the copy of Whitman's last American edition revised by his own hand, as previously noticed, the series termed _Songs of Parting_ has been recast, and made to consist of poems of the same character as those included in my section No. 5. Comparatively few of Whitman's poems have been endowed by himself with titles properly so called. Most of them are merely headed with the opening words of the poems themselves--as "I was looking a long while;" "To get betimes in Boston Town;" "When lilacs last in the door-yard bloomed;" and so on. It seems to me that in a selection such a lengthy and circuitous method of identifying the poems is not desirable: I should wish them to be remembered by brief, repeatable, and significant titles. I have therefore supplied titles of my own to such pieces as bear none in the original edition: wherever a real title appears in that edition, I have retained it. With these remarks I commend to the English reader the ensuing selection from a writer whom I sincerely believe to be, whatever his faults, of the order of _great_ poets, and by no means of pretty good ones. I would urge the reader not to ask himself, and not to return any answer to the questions, whether or not this poet is like other poets--whether or not the particular application of rules of art which is found to hold good in the works of those others, and to constitute a part of their excellence, can be traced also in Whitman. Let the questions rather be--Is he powerful? Is he American? Is he new? Is he rousing? Does he feel and make me feel? I entertain no doubt as to the response which in due course of time will be returned to these questions and such as these, in America, in England, and elsewhere--or to the further question, "Is Whitman then indeed a true and a great poet?" Lincoln's verdict bespeaks the ultimate decision upon him, in his books as in his habit as he lives--"Well, _he_ looks like a man." Walt Whitman occupies at the present moment a unique position on the globe, and one which, even in past time, can have been occupied by only an infinitesimally small number of men. He is the one man who entertains and professes respecting himself the grave conviction that he is the actual and prospective founder of a new poetic literature, and a great one--a literature proportional to the material vastness and the unmeasured destinies of America: he believes that the Columbus of the continent or the Washington of the States was not more truly than himself in the future a founder and upbuilder of this America. Surely a sublime conviction, and expressed more than once in magnificent words--none more so than the lines beginning "Come, I will make this continent indissoluble."[7] [Footnote 7: See the poem headed _Love of Comrades_, p. 308.] Were the idea untrue, it would still be a glorious dream, which a man of genius might be content to live in and die for: but is it untrue? Is it not, on the contrary, true, if not absolutely, yet with a most genuine and substantial approximation? I believe it _is_ thus true. I believe that Whitman is one of the huge, as yet mainly unrecognised, forces of our time; privileged to evoke, in a country hitherto still asking for its poet, a fresh, athletic, and American poetry, and predestined to be traced up to by generation after generation of believing and ardent--let us hope not servile--disciples. "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." Shelley, who knew what he was talking about when poetry was the subject, has said it, and with a profundity of truth Whitman seems in a peculiar degree marked out for "legislation" of the kind referred to. His voice will one day be potential or magisterial wherever the English language is spoken--that is to say, in the four corners of the earth; and in his own American hemisphere, the uttermost avatars of democracy will confess him not more their announcer than their inspirer. 1868. W. M. ROSSETTI. _N.B._--The above prefatory notice was written in 1868, and is reproduced practically unaltered. Were it to be brought up to the present date, 1886, I should have to mention Whitman's books _Two Rivulets_ and _Specimen-days and Collect_, and the fact that for several years past he has been partially disabled by a paralytic attack. He now lives at Camden, New Jersey. 1886. W. M. R. PREFACE TO LEAVES OF GRASS. America does not repel the past, or what it has produced under its forms, or amid other politics, or the idea of castes, or the old religions; accepts the lesson with calmness; is not so impatient as has been supposed that the slough still sticks to opinions and manners and literature while the life which served its requirements has passed into the new life of the new forms; perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from the eating and sleeping rooms of the house; perceives that it waits a little while in the door, that it was fittest for its days, that its action has descended to the stalwart and well-shaped heir who approaches, and that he shall be fittest for his days. The Americans, of all nations at any time upon the earth, have probably the fullest poetical Nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto the largest and most stirring appear tame and orderly to their ampler largeness and stir. Here at last is something in the doings of man that corresponds with the broadcast doings of the day and night. Here is not merely a nation, but a teeming nation of nations. Here is action untied from strings, necessarily blind to particulars and details, magnificently moving in vast masses. Here is the hospitality which for ever indicates heroes. Here are the roughs and beards and space and ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul loves. Here the performance, disdaining the trivial, unapproached in the tremendous audacity of its crowds and groupings and the push of its perspective, spreads with crampless and flowing breadth, and showers its prolific and splendid extravagance. One sees it must indeed own the riches of the summer and winter, and need never be bankrupt while corn grows from the ground, or the orchards drop apples, or the bays contain fish, or men beget children. Other states indicate themselves in their deputies: but the genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlours, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people. Their manners, speech, dress, friendships,--the freshness and candour of their physiognomy--the picturesque looseness of their carriage--their deathless attachment to freedom--their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or mean--the practical acknowledgment of the citizens of one state by the citizens of all other states--the fierceness of their roused resentment-- their curiosity and welcome of novelty--their self-esteem and wonderful sympathy--their susceptibility to a slight--the air they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors--the fluency of their speech--their delight in music, the sure symptom of manly tenderness and native elegance of soul--their good temper and open- handedness--the terrible significance of their elections, the President's taking off his hat to them, not they to him--these too are unrhymed poetry. It awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it. The largeness of nature or the nation were monstrous without a corresponding largeness and generosity of the spirit of the citizen. Not nature, nor swarming states, nor streets and steamships, nor prosperous business, nor farms nor capital nor learning, may suffice for the ideal of man, nor suffice the poet. No reminiscences may suffice either. A live nation can always cut a deep mark, and can have the best authority the cheapest--namely, from its own soul. This is the sum of the profitable uses of individuals or states, and of present action and grandeur, and of the subjects of poets.--As if it were necessary to trot back generation after generation to the eastern records! As if the beauty and sacredness of the demonstrable must fall behind that of the mythical! As if men do not make their mark out of any times! As if the opening of the western continent by discovery, and what has transpired since in North and South America, were less than the small theatre of the antique, or the aimless sleep-walking of the Middle Ages! The pride of the United States leaves the wealth and finesse of the cities, and all returns of commerce and agriculture, and all the magnitude or geography or shows of exterior victory, to enjoy the breed of full-sized men, or one full-sized man unconquerable and simple. The American poets are to enclose old and new; for America is the race of races. Of them a bard is to be commensurate with a people. To him the other continents arrive as contributions: he gives them reception for their sake and his own sake. His spirit responds to his country's spirit: he incarnates its geography and natural life and rivers and lakes. Mississippi with annual freshets and changing chutes, Missouri and Columbia and Ohio and Saint Lawrence with the Falls and beautiful masculine Hudson, do not embouchure where they spend themselves more than they embouchure into him. The blue breadth over the inland sea of Virginia and Maryland, and the sea off Massachusetts and Maine, and over Manhattan Bay, and over Champlain and Erie, and over Ontario and Huron and Michigan and Superior, and over the Texan and Mexican and Floridian and Cuban seas, and over the seas off California and Oregon, is not tallied by the blue breadth of the waters below more than the breadth of above and below is tallied by him. When the long Atlantic coast stretches longer, and the Pacific coast stretches longer, he easily stretches with them north or south. He spans between them also from east to west, and reflects what is between them. On him rise solid growths that offset the growths of pine and cedar and hemlock and live-oak and locust and chestnut and cypress and hickory and lime-tree and cottonwood and tulip-tree and cactus and wild-vine and tamarind and persimmon, and tangles as tangled as any cane-brake or swamp, and forests coated with transparent ice and icicles, hanging from the boughs and crackling in the wind, and sides and peaks of mountains, and pasturage sweet and free as savannah or upland or prairie,--with flights and songs and screams that answer those of the wild-pigeon and high-hold and orchard- oriole and coot and surf-duck and red-shouldered-bawk and fish-hawk and white-ibis and Indian-hen and cat-owl and water-pheasant and qua-bird and pied-sheldrake and blackbird and mocking-bird and buzzard and condor and night-heron and eagle. To him the hereditary countenance descends, both mother's and father's. To him enter the essences of the real things and past and present events--of the enormous diversity of temperature and agriculture and mines--the tribes of red aborigines--the weather-beaten vessels entering new ports, or making landings on rocky coasts--the first settlements north or south--the rapid stature and muscle--the haughty defiance of '76, and the war and peace and formation of the constitution-- the union always surrounded by blatherers, and always calm and impregnable--the perpetual coming of immigrants--the wharf-hemmed cities and superior marine--the unsurveyed interior--the loghouses and clearings and wild animals and hunters and trappers--the free commerce--the fisheries and whaling and gold-digging--the endless gestations of new states--the convening of Congress every December, the members duly coming up from all climates and the uttermost parts--the noble character of the young mechanics and of all free American workmen and workwomen--the general ardour and friendliness and enterprise--the perfect equality of the female with the male--the large amativeness--the fluid movement of the population--the factories and mercantile life and labour-saving machinery-- the Yankee swap--the New York firemen and the target excursion--the Southern plantation life--the character of the north-east and of the north- west and south-west-slavery, and the tremulous spreading of hands to protect it, and the stern opposition to it which shall never cease till it ceases, or the speaking of tongues and the moving of lips cease. For such the expression of the American poet is to be transcendent and new. It is to be indirect, and not direct or descriptive or epic. Its quality goes through these to much more. Let the age and wars of other nations be chanted, and their eras and characters be illustrated, and that finish the verse. Not so the great psalm of the republic. Here the theme is creative, and has vista. Here comes one among the well-beloved stone-cutters, and plans with decision and science, and sees the solid and beautiful forms of the future where there are now no solid forms. Of all nations, the United States, with veins full of poetical stuff, most needs poets, and will doubtless have the greatest, and use them the greatest. Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall. Of all mankind, the great poet is the equable man. Not in him, but off from him, things are grotesque or eccentric, or fail of their sanity. Nothing out of its place is good, and nothing in its place is bad. He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportions, neither more nor less. He is the arbiter of the diverse, and he is the key. He is the equaliser of his age and land: he supplies what wants supplying, and checks what wants checking. If peace is the routine, out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty, building vast and populous cities, encouraging agriculture and the arts and commerce--lighting the study of man, the soul, immortality--federal, state or municipal government, marriage, health, free-trade, intertravel by land and sea--nothing too close, nothing too far off,--the stars not too far off. In war, he is the most deadly force of the war. Who recruits him recruits horse and foot: he fetches parks of artillery, the best that engineer ever knew. If the time becomes slothful and heavy, he knows how to arouse it: he can make every word he speaks draw blood. Whatever stagnates in the flat of custom or obedience or legislation, he never stagnates. Obedience does not master him, he masters it. High up out of reach, he stands turning a concentrated light; he turns the pivot with his finger; he baffles the swiftest runners as he stands, and easily overtakes and envelops them. The time straying toward infidelity and confections and persiflage he withholds by his steady faith; he spreads out his dishes; he offers the sweet firm-fibred meat that grows men and women. His brain is the ultimate brain. He is no arguer, he is judgment. He judges not as the judge judges, but as the sun falling around a helpless thing. As he sees the farthest, he has the most faith. His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things. In the talk on the soul and eternity and God, off of his equal plane, he is silent. He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement: he sees eternity in men and women,--he does not see men and women as dreams or dots. Faith is the antiseptic of the soul,--it pervades the common people and preserves them: they never give up believing and expecting and trusting. There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius. The poet sees for a certainty how one not a great artist may be just as sacred and perfect as the greatest artist. The power to destroy or remould is freely used by him, but never the power of attack. What is past is past. If he does not expose superior models, and prove himself by every step he takes, he is not what is wanted. The presence of the greatest poet conquers; not parleying or struggling or any prepared attempts. Now he has passed that way, see after him! there is not left any vestige of despair or misanthropy or cunning or exclusiveness, or the ignominy of a nativity or colour, or delusion of hell or the necessity of hell; and no man thenceforward shall be degraded for ignorance or weakness or sin. The greatest poet hardly knows pettiness or triviality. If he breathes into anything that was before thought small, it dilates with the grandeur and life of the universe. He is a seer--he is individual--he is complete in himself: the others are as good as he; only he sees it, and they do not. He is not one of the chorus--he does not stop for any regulation--he is the President of regulation. What the eyesight does to the rest he does to the rest. Who knows the curious mystery of the eyesight? The other senses corroborate themselves, but this is removed from any proof but its own, and foreruns the identities of the spiritual world. A single glance of it mocks all the investigations of man, and all the instruments and books of the earth, and all reasoning. What is marvellous? what is unlikely? what is impossible or baseless or vague? after you have once just opened the space of a peachpit, and given audience to far and near and to the sunset, and had all things enter with electric swiftness, softly and duly, without confusion or jostling or jam. The land and sea, the animals, fishes, and birds, the sky of heaven and the orbs, the forests, mountains, and rivers, are not small themes: but folks expect of the poet to indicate more than the beauty and dignity which always attach to dumb real objects,--they expect him to indicate the path between reality and their souls. Men and women perceive the beauty well enough--probably as well as he. The passionate tenacity of hunters, woodmen, early risers, cultivators of gardens and orchards and fields, the love of healthy women for the manly form, seafaring persons, drivers of horses, the passion for light and the open air, all is an old varied sign of the unfailing perception of beauty, and of a residence of the poetic, in outdoor people. They can never be assisted by poets to perceive: some may, but they never can. The poetic quality is not marshalled in rhyme or uniformity, or abstract addresses to things, nor in melancholy complaints or good precepts, but is the life of these and much else, and is in the soul. The profit of rhyme is that it drops seeds of a sweeter and more luxuriant rhyme; and of uniformity, that it conveys itself into its own roots in the ground out of sight. The rhyme and uniformity of perfect poems show the free growth of metrical laws, and bud from them as unerringly and loosely as lilacs or roses on a bush, and take shapes as compact as the shapes of chestnuts and oranges and melons and pears, and shed the perfume impalpable to form. The fluency and ornaments of the finest poems or music or orations or recitations are not independent, but dependent. All beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain. If the greatnesses are in conjunction in a man or woman, it is enough--the fact will prevail through the universe: but the gaggery and gilt of a million years will not prevail. Who troubles himself about his ornaments or fluency is lost. This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labour to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body. The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground is always ready ploughed and manured: others may not know it, but he shall. He shall go directly to the creation. His trust shall master the trust of everything he touches, and shall master all attachment. The known universe has one complete lover, and that is the greatest poet. He consumes an eternal passion, and is indifferent which chance happens, and which possible contingency of fortune or misfortune, and persuades daily and hourly his delicious pay. What balks or breaks others is fuel for his burning progress to contact and amorous joy. Other proportions of the reception of pleasure dwindle to nothing to his proportions. All expected from heaven or from the highest he is rapport with in the sight of the daybreak, or a scene of the winter woods, or the presence of children playing, or with his arm round the neck of a man or woman. His love, above all love, has leisure and expanse--he leaves room ahead of himself. He is no irresolute or suspicious lover--he is sure--he scorns intervals. His experience and the showers and thrills are not for nothing. Nothing can jar him: suffering and darkness cannot--death and fear cannot. To him complaint and jealousy and envy are corpses buried and rotten in the earth--he saw them buried. The sea is not surer of the shore, or the shore of the sea, than he is of the fruition of his love, and of all perfection and beauty. The fruition of beauty is no chance of hit or miss--it is inevitable as life--it is exact and plumb as gravitation. From the eyesight proceeds another eyesight, and from the hearing proceeds another hearing, and from the voice proceeds another voice, eternally curious of the harmony of things with man. To these respond perfections, not only in the committees that were supposed to stand for the rest, but in the rest themselves just the same. These understand the law of perfection in masses and floods--that its finish is to each for itself and onward from itself--that it is profuse and impartial--that there is not a minute of the light or dark, nor an acre of the earth or sea, without it--nor any direction of the sky, nor any trade or employment, nor any turn of events. This is the reason that about the proper expression of beauty there is precision and balance,--one part does not need to be thrust above another. The best singer is not the one who has the most lithe and powerful organ: the pleasure of poems is not in them that take the handsomest measure and similes and sound. Without effort, and without exposing in the least how it is done, the greatest poet brings the spirit of any or all events and passions and scenes and persons, some more and some less, to bear on your individual character, as you hear or read. To do this well is to compete with the laws that pursue and follow time. What is the purpose must surely be there, and the clue of it must be there; and the faintest indication is the indication of the best, and then becomes the clearest indication. Past and present and future are not disjoined, but joined. The greatest poet forms the consistence of what is to be from what has been and is. He drags the dead out of their coffins, and stands them again on their feet: he says to the past, Rise and walk before me that I may realise you. He learns the lesson--he places himself where the future becomes present. The greatest poet does not only dazzle his rays over character and scenes and passions,--he finally ascends and finishes all: he exhibits the pinnacles that no man can tell what they are for or what is beyond--he glows a moment on the extremest verge. He is most wonderful in his last half-hidden smile or frown: by that flash of the moment of parting the one that sees it shall be encouraged or terrified afterward for many years. The greatest poet does not moralise or make applications of morals,--he knows the soul. The soul has that measureless pride which consists in never acknowledging any lessons but its own. But it has sympathy as measureless as its pride, and the one balances the other, and neither can stretch too far while it stretches in company with the other. The inmost secrets of art sleep with the twain. The greatest poet has lain close betwixt both, and they are vital in his style and thoughts. The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity,--nothing can make up for excess or for the lack of definiteness. To carry on the heave of impulse, and pierce intellectual depths, and give all subjects their articulations, are powers neither common nor very uncommon. But to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insousiance of the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside, is the flawless triumph of art. If you, have looked on him who has achieved it, you have looked on one of the masters of the artists of all nations and times. You shall not contemplate the flight of the grey-gull over the bay, or the mettlesome action of the blood-horse, or the tall leaning of sunflowers on their stalk, or the appearance of the sun journeying through heaven, or the appearance of the moon afterward, with any more satisfaction than you shall contemplate him. The greatest poet has less a marked style, and is more the channel of thoughts and things without increase or diminution, and is the free channel of himself. He swears to his art,--I will not be meddlesome, I will not have in my writing any elegance or effect or originality to hang in the way between me and the rest like curtains. I will have nothing hang in the way, not the richest curtains. What I tell I tell for precisely what it is. Let who may exalt or startle or fascinate or soothe, I will have purposes as health or heat or snow has, and be as regardless of observation. What I experience or pourtray shall go from my composition without a shred of my composition. You shall stand by my side, and look in the mirror with me. The old red blood and stainless gentility of great poets will be proved by their unconstraint. A heroic person walks at his ease through and out of that custom or precedent or authority that suits him not. Of the traits of the brotherhood of writers, savans, musicians, inventors, and artists, nothing is finer than silent defiance advancing from new free forms. In the need of poems, philosophy, politics, mechanism, science, behaviour, the craft of art, an appropriate native grand opera, shipcraft or any craft, he is greatest for ever and for ever who contributes the greatest original practical example. The cleanest expression is that which finds no sphere worthy of itself, and makes one. The messages of great poets to each man and woman are,--Come to us on equal terms, only then can you understand us. We are no better than you; what we enclose you enclose, what we enjoy you may enjoy. Did you suppose there could be only one Supreme? We affirm there can be unnumbered Supremes, and that one does not countervail another any more than one eyesight countervails another--and that men can be good or grand only of the consciousness of their supremacy within them. What do you think is the grandeur of storms and dismemberments, and the deadliest battles and wrecks, and the wildest fury of the elements, and the power of the sea, and the motion of nature, and of the throes of human desires, and dignity and hate and love? It is that something in the soul which says,--Rage on, whirl on, I tread master here and everywhere; master of the spasms of the sky and of the shatter of the sea, master of nature and passion and death, and of all terror and all pain. The American bards shall be marked for generosity and affection and for encouraging competitors: they shall be kosmos--without monopoly or secrecy--glad to pass anything to any one--hungry for equals night and day. They shall not be careful of riches and privilege,--they shall be riches and privilege: they shall perceive who the most affluent man is. The most affluent man is he that confronts all the shows he sees by equivalents out of the stronger wealth of himself. The American bard shall delineate no class of persons, nor one or two out of the strata of interests, nor love most nor truth most, nor the soul most nor the body most; and not be for the eastern states more than the western, or the northern states more than the southern. Exact science and its practical movements are no checks on the greatest poet, but always his encouragement and support. The outset and remembrance are there--there the arms that lifted him first and brace him best--there he returns after all his goings and comings. The sailor and traveller, the anatomist, chemist, astronomer, geologist, phrenologist, spiritualist, mathematician, historian, and lexicographer, are not poets; but they are the lawgivers of poets, and their construction underlies the structure of every perfect poem. No matter what rises or is uttered, they send the seed of the conception of it: of them and by them stand the visible proofs of souls. If there shall be love and content between the father and the son, and if the greatness of the son is the exuding of the greatness of the father, there shall be love between the poet and the man of demonstrable science. In the beauty of poems are the tuft and final applause of science. Great is the faith of the flush of knowledge, and of the investigation of the depths of qualities and things. Cleaving and circling here swells the soul of the poet: yet is president of itself always. The depths are fathomless, and therefore calm. The innocence and nakedness are resumed-- they are neither modest nor immodest. The whole theory of the special and supernatural, and all that was twined with it or educed out of it, departs as a dream. What has ever happened, what happens, and whatever may or shall happen, the vital laws enclose all: they are sufficient for any case and for all cases--none to be hurried or retarded--any miracle of affairs or persons inadmissible in the vast clear scheme where every motion, and every spear of grass, and the frames and spirits of men and women, and all that concerns them, are unspeakably perfect miracles, all referring to all, and each distinct and in its place. It is also not consistent with the reality of the soul to admit that there is anything in the known universe more divine than men and women. Men and women, and the earth and all upon it, are simply to be taken as they are, and the investigation of their past and present and future shall be unintermitted, and shall be done with perfect candour. Upon this basis philosophy speculates, ever looking toward the poet, ever regarding the eternal tendencies of all toward happiness, never inconsistent with what is clear to the senses and to the soul. For the eternal tendencies of all toward happiness make the only point of sane philosophy. Whatever comprehends less than that--whatever is less than the laws of light and of astronomical motion--or less than the laws that follow the thief, the liar, the glutton, and the drunkard, through this life, and doubtless afterward-- or less than vast stretches of time, or the slow formation of density, or the patient upheaving of strata--is of no account. Whatever would put God in a poem or system of philosophy as contending against some being or influence is also of no account. Sanity and ensemble characterise the great master:--spoilt in one principle, all is spoilt. The great master has nothing to do with miracles. He sees health for himself in being one of the mass--he sees the hiatus in singular eminence. To the perfect shape comes common ground. To be under the general law is great, for that is to correspond with it. The master knows that he is unspeakably great, and that all are unspeakably great--that nothing, for instance, is greater than to conceive children, and bring them up well--that to be is just as great as to perceive or tell. In the make of the great masters the idea of political liberty is indispensable. Liberty takes the adherence of heroes wherever men and women exist; but never takes any adherence or welcome from the rest more than from poets. They are the voice and exposition of liberty. They out of ages are worthy the grand idea,--to them it is confided, and they must sustain it. Nothing has precedence of it, and nothing can warp or degrade it. The attitude of great poets is to cheer up slaves and horrify despots. The turn of their necks, the sound of their feet, the motions of their wrists, are full of hazard to the one and hope to the other. Come nigh them a while, and, though they neither speak nor advise, you shall learn the faithful American lesson. Liberty is poorly served by men whose good intent is quelled from one failure or two failures or any number of failures, or from the casual indifference or ingratitude of the people, or from the sharp show of the tushes of power, or the bringing to bear soldiers and cannon or any penal statutes. Liberty relies upon itself, invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is positive and composed, and knows no discouragement. The battle rages with many a loud alarm and frequent advance and retreat--the enemy triumphs--the prison, the handcuffs, the iron necklace and anklet, the scaffold, garrote, and lead-balls, do their work--the cause is asleep--the strong throats are choked with their own blood--the young men drop their eyelashes toward the ground when they pass each other ... and is liberty gone out of that place? No, never. When liberty goes, it is not the first to go, nor the second or third to go: it waits for all the rest to go--it is the last. When the memories of the old martyrs are faded utterly away--when the large names of patriots are laughed at in the public halls from the lips of the orators--when the boys are no more christened after the same, but christened after tyrants and traitors instead--when the laws of the free are grudgingly permitted, and laws for informers and blood-money are sweet to the taste of the people-- when I and you walk abroad upon the earth, stung with compassion at the sight of numberless brothers answering our equal friendship, and calling no man master--and when we are elated with noble joy at the sight of slaves-- when the soul retires in the cool communion of the night, and surveys its experience, and has much ecstasy over the word and deed that put back a helpless innocent person into the gripe of the gripers or into any cruel inferiority--when those in all parts of these states who could easier realise the true American character, but do not yet[1]--when the swarms of cringers, suckers, doughfaces, lice of politics, planners of sly involutions for their own preferment to city offices or state legislatures or the judiciary or Congress or the Presidency, obtain a response of love and natural deference from the people, whether they get the offices or no-- when it is better to be a bound booby and rogue in office at a high salary than the poorest free mechanic or farmer, with his hat unmoved from his head, and firm eyes, and a candid and generous heart--and when servility by town or state or the federal government, or any oppression on a large scale or small scale, can be tried on without its own punishment following duly after in exact proportion, against the smallest chance of escape--or rather when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth--then only shall the instinct of liberty be discharged from that part of the earth. [Footnote 1: This clause is obviously imperfect in some respect: it is here reproduced _verbatim_ from the American edition.] As the attributes of the poets of the kosmos concentre in the real body and soul and in the pleasure of things, they possess the superiority of genuineness over all fiction and romance. As they emit themselves, facts are showered over with light--the daylight is lit with more volatile light--also the deep between the setting and rising sun goes deeper many- fold. Each precise object or condition or combination or process exhibits a beauty: the multiplication-table its--old age its--the carpenter's trade its--the grand opera its: the huge-hulled clean-shaped New York clipper at sea under steam or full sail gleams with unmatched beauty--the American circles and large harmonies of government gleam with theirs, and the commonest definite intentions and actions with theirs. The poets of the kosmos advance through all interpositions and coverings and turmoils and stratagems to first principles. They are of use--they dissolve poverty from its need, and riches from its conceit. You large proprietor, they say, shall not realise or perceive more than any one else. The owner of the library is not he who holds a legal title to it, having bought and paid for it. Any one and every one is owner of the library who can read the same through all the varieties of tongues and subjects and styles, and in whom they enter with ease, and take residence and force toward paternity and maternity, and make supple and powerful and rich and large. These American states, strong and healthy and accomplished, shall receive no pleasure from violations of natural models, and must not permit them. In paintings or mouldings or carvings in mineral or wood, or in the illustrations of books or newspapers, or in any comic or tragic prints, or in the patterns of woven stuffs, or anything to beautify rooms or furniture or costumes, or to put upon cornices or monuments or on the prows or sterns of ships, or to put anywhere before the human eye indoors or out, that which distorts honest shapes, or which creates unearthly beings or places or contingencies, is a nuisance and revolt. Of the human form especially, it is so great it must never be made ridiculous. Of ornaments to a work, nothing _outré_ can be allowed; but those ornaments can be allowed that conform to the perfect facts of the open air, and that flow out of the nature of the work, and come irrepressibly from it, and are necessary to the completion of the work. Most works are most beautiful without ornament. Exaggerations will be revenged in human physiology. Clean and vigorous children are conceived only in those communities where the models of natural forms are public every day. Great genius and the people of these states must never be demeaned to romances. As soon as histories are properly told, there is no more need of romances. The great poets are also to be known by the absence in them of tricks, and by the justification of perfect personal candour. Then folks echo a new cheap joy and a divine voice leaping from their brains. How beautiful is candour! All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candour. Henceforth let no man of us lie, for we have seen that openness wins the inner and outer world, and that there is no single exception, and that never since our earth gathered itself in a mass has deceit or subterfuge or prevarication attracted its smallest particle or the faintest tinge of a shade--and that through the enveloping wealth and rank of a state or the whole republic of states a sneak or sly person shall be discovered and despised--and that the soul has never been once fooled and never can be fooled--and thrift without the loving nod of the soul is only a foetid puff--and there never grew up in any of the continents of the globe, nor upon any planet or satellite or star, nor upon the asteroids, nor in any part of ethereal space, nor in the midst of density, nor under the fluid wet of the sea, nor in that condition which precedes the birth of babes, nor at any time during the changes of life, nor in that condition that follows what we term death, nor in any stretch of abeyance or action afterward of vitality, nor in any process of formation or reformation anywhere, a being whose instinct hated the truth. Extreme caution or prudence, the soundest organic health, large hope and comparison and fondness for women and children, large alimentiveness and destructiveness and causality, with a perfect sense of the oneness of nature, and the propriety of the same spirit applied to human affairs-- these are called up of the float of the brain of the world to be parts of the greatest poet from his birth. Caution seldom goes far enough. It has been thought that the prudent citizen was the citizen who applied himself to solid gains, and did well for himself and his family, and completed a lawful life without debt or crime. The greatest poet sees and admits these economies as he sees the economies of food and sleep, but has higher notions of prudence than to think he gives much when he gives a few slight attentions at the latch of the gate. The premises of the prudence of life are not the hospitality of it, or the ripeness and harvest of it. Beyond the independence of a little sum laid aside for burial-money, and of a few clapboards around and shingles overhead on a lot of American soil owned, and the easy dollars that supply the year's plain clothing and meals, the melancholy prudence of the abandonment of such a great being as a man is to the toss and pallor of years of money-making, with all their scorching days and icy nights, and all their stifling deceits and underhanded dodgings, or infinitesimals of parlours, or shameless stuffing while others starve,--and all the loss of the bloom and odour of the earth, and of the flowers and atmosphere, and of the sea, and of the true taste of the women and men you pass or have to do with in youth or middle age, and the issuing sickness and desperate revolt at the close of a life without elevation or naïveté, and the ghastly chatter of a death without serenity or majesty,--is the great fraud upon modern civilisation and forethought; blotching the surface and system which civilisation undeniably drafts, and moistening with tears the immense features it spreads and spreads with such velocity before the reached kisses of the soul. Still the right explanation remains to be made about prudence. The prudence of the mere wealth and respectability of the most esteemed life appears too faint for the eye to observe at all when little and large alike drop quietly aside at the thought of the prudence suitable for immortality. What is wisdom that fills the thinness of a year or seventy or eighty years, to wisdom spaced out by ages, and coming back at a certain time with strong reinforcements and rich presents and the clear faces of wedding-guests as far as you can look in every direction running gaily toward you? Only the soul is of itself--all else has reference to what ensues. All that a person does or thinks is of consequence. Not a move can a man or woman make that affects him or her in a day or a month, or any part of the direct lifetime or the hour of death, but the same affects him or her onward afterward through the indirect lifetime. The indirect is always as great and real as the direct. The spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to the body. Not one name of word or deed--not of the putrid veins of gluttons or rum-drinkers-- not peculation or cunning or betrayal or murder--no serpentine poison of those that seduce women--not the foolish yielding of women--not of the attainment of gain by discreditable means--not any nastiness of appetite-- not any harshness of officers to men, or judges to prisoners, or fathers to sons, or sons to fathers, or of husbands to wives, or bosses to their boys--not of greedy looks or malignant wishes--nor any of the wiles practised by people upon themselves--ever is or ever can be stamped on the programme, but it is duly realised and returned, and that returned in further performances, and they returned again. Nor can the push of charity or personal force ever be anything else than the profoundest reason, whether it bring arguments to hand or no. No specification is necessary--to add or subtract or divide is in vain. Little or big, learned or unlearned, white or black, legal or illegal, sick or well, from the first inspiration down the windpipe to the last expiration out of it, all that a male or female does that is vigorous and benevolent and clean is so much sure profit to him or her in the unshakable order of the universe and through the whole scope of it for ever. If the savage or felon is wise, it is well--if the greatest poet or savant is wise, it is simply the same--if the President or chief justice is wise, it is the same--if the young mechanic or farmer is wise, it is no more or less. The interest will come round--all will come round. All the best actions of war and peace--all help given to relatives and strangers, and the poor and old and sorrowful, and young children and widows and the sick, and to all shunned persons--all furtherance of fugitives and of the escape of slaves--all the self-denial that stood steady and aloof on wrecks, and saw others take the seats of the boats--all offering of substance or life for the good old cause, or for a friend's sake or opinion's sake--all pains of enthusiasts scoffed at by their neighbours--all the vast sweet love and precious suffering of mothers--all honest men baffled in strifes recorded or unrecorded--all the grandeur and good of the few ancient nations whose fragments of annals we inherit--and all the good of the hundreds of far mightier and more ancient nations unknown to us by name or date or location--all that was ever manfully begun, whether it succeeded or no--all that has at any time been well suggested out of the divine heart of man, or by the divinity of his mouth, or by the shaping of his great hands--and all that is well thought or done this day on any part of the surface of the globe, or on any of the wandering stars or fixed stars by those there as we are here--or that is henceforth to be well thought or done by you, whoever you are, or by any one--these singly and wholly inured at their time, and inured now, and will inure always, to the identities from which they sprung or shall spring. Did you guess any of them lived only its moment? The world does not so exist-- no parts, palpable or impalpable, so exist--no result exists now without being from its long antecedent result, and that from its antecedent, and so backward without the farthest mentionable spot coining a bit nearer the beginning than any other spot.... Whatever satisfies the soul is truth. The prudence of the greatest poet answers at last the craving and glut of the soul, is not contemptuous of less ways of prudence if they conform to its ways, puts off nothing, permits no let-up for its own case or any case, has no particular Sabbath or judgment-day, divides not the living from the dead or the righteous from the unrighteous, is satisfied with the present, matches every thought or act by its correlative, knows no possible forgiveness or deputed atonement--knows that the young man who composedly perilled his life and lost it has done exceeding well for himself, while the man who has not perilled his life, and retains it to old age in riches and ease, has perhaps achieved nothing for himself worth mentioning--and that only that person has no great prudence to learn who has learnt to prefer long-lived things, and favours body and soul the same, and perceives the indirect assuredly following the direct, and what evil or good he does leaping onward and waiting to meet him again--and who in his spirit in any emergency whatever neither hurries nor avoids death. The direct trial of him who would be the greatest poet is to-day. If he does not flood himself with the immediate age as with vast oceanic tides-- and if he does not attract his own land body and soul to himself, and hang on its neck with incomparable love--and if he be not himself the age transfigured--and if to him is not opened the eternity which gives similitude to all periods and locations and processes and animate and inanimate forms, and which is the bond of time, and rises up from its inconceivable vagueness and infiniteness in the swimming shape of to-day, and is held by the ductile anchors of life, and makes the present spot the passage from what was to what shall be, and commits itself to the representation of this wave of an hour, and this one of the sixty beautiful children of the wave--let him merge in the general run and wait his development.... Still, the final test of poems or any character or work remains. The prescient poet projects himself centuries ahead, and judges performer or performance after the changes of time. Does it live through them? Does it still hold on untired? Will the same style, and the direction of genius to similar points, be satisfactory now? Has no new discovery in science, or arrival at superior planes of thought and judgment and behaviour, fixed him or his so that either can be looked down upon? Have the marches of tens and hundreds and thousands of years made willing detours to the right hand and the left hand for his sake? Is he beloved long and long after he is buried? Does the young man think often of him? and the young woman think often of him? and do the middle-aged and the old think of him? A great poem is for ages and ages, in common, and for all degrees and complexions, and all departments and sects, and for a woman as much as a man, and a man as much as a woman. A great poem is no finish to a man or woman, but rather a beginning. Has any one fancied he could sit at last under some due authority, and rest satisfied with explanations, and realise and be content and full? To no such terminus does the greatest poet bring-- he brings neither cessation nor sheltered fatness and ease. The touch of him tells in action. Whom he takes he takes with firm sure grasp into live regions previously unattained. Thenceforward is no rest: they see the space and ineffable sheen that turn the old spots and lights into dead vacuums. The companion of him beholds the birth and progress of stars, and learns one of the meanings. Now there shall be a man cohered out of tumult and chaos. The elder encourages the younger, and shows him how: they two shall launch off fearlessly together till the new world fits an orbit for itself, and looks unabashed on the lesser orbits of the stars, and sweeps through the ceaseless rings, and shall never be quiet again. There will soon be no more priests. Their work is done. They may wait a while--perhaps a generation or two,--dropping off by degrees. A superior breed shall take their place--the gangs of kosmos and prophets _en masse_ shall take their place. A new order shall arise; and they shall be the priests of man, and every man shall be his own priest. The churches built under their umbrage shall be the churches of men and women. Through the divinity of themselves shall the kosmos and the new breed of poets be interpreters of men and women and of all events and things. They shall find their inspiration in real objects to-day, symptoms of the past and future. They shall not deign to defend immortality, or God, or the perfection of things, or liberty, or the exquisite beauty and reality of the soul. They shall arise in America, and be responded to from the remainder of the earth. The English language befriends the grand American expression--it is brawny enough, and limber and full enough. On the tough stock of a race who, through all change of circumstance, was never without the idea of political liberty, which is the animus of all liberty, it has attracted the terms of daintier and gayer and subtler and more elegant tongues. It is the powerful language of resistance--it is the dialect of common sense. It is the speech of the proud and melancholy races, and of all who aspire. It is the chosen tongue to express growth, faith, self-esteem, freedom, justice, equality, friendliness, amplitude, prudence, decision, and courage. It is the medium that shall well nigh express the inexpressible. No great literature, nor any like style of behaviour or oratory or social intercourse or household arrangements or public institutions, or the treatment by bosses of employed people, nor executive detail, or detail of the army or navy, nor spirit of legislation, or courts or police, or tuition or architecture, or songs or amusements, or the costumes of young men, can long elude the jealous and passionate instinct of American standards. Whether or no the sign appears from the mouths of the people, it throbs a live interrogation in every freeman's and freewoman's heart after that which passes by, or this built to remain. Is it uniform with my country? Are its disposals without ignominious distinctions? Is it for the ever-growing communes of brothers and lovers, large, well united, proud beyond the old models, generous beyond all models? Is it something grown fresh out of the fields, or drawn from the sea, for use to me, to-day, here? I know that what answers for me, an American, must answer for any individual or nation that serves for a part of my materials. Does this answer? or is it without reference to universal needs? or sprung of the needs of the less developed society of special ranks? or old needs of pleasure overlaid by modern science and forms? Does this acknowledge liberty with audible and absolute acknowledgment, and set slavery at nought, for life and death? Will it help breed one good-shaped man, and a woman to be his perfect and independent mate? Does it improve manners? Is it for the nursing of the young of the republic? Does it solve readily with the sweet milk of the breasts of the mother of many children? Has it too the old, ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality? Does it look with the same love on the last-born and on those hardening toward stature, and on the errant, and on those who disdain all strength of assault outside of their own? The poems distilled from other poems will probably pass away. The coward will surely pass away. The expectation of the vital and great can only be satisfied by the demeanour of the vital and great. The swarms of the polished, deprecating, and reflectors, and the polite, float off and leave no remembrance. America prepares with composure and goodwill for the visitors that have sent word. It is not intellect that is to be their warrant and welcome. The talented, the artist, the ingenious, the editor, the statesman, the erudite--they are not unappreciated--they fall in their place and do their work. The soul of the nation also does its work. No disguise can pass on it--no disguise can conceal from it. It rejects none, it permits all. Only toward as good as itself and toward the like of itself will it advance half-way. An individual is as superb as a nation when he has the qualities which make a superb nation. The soul of the largest and wealthiest and proudest nation may well go half-way to meet that of its poets. The signs are effectual. There is no fear of mistake. If the one is true, the other is true. The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it. [Script: Meantime, dear friend, Farewell, Walt Whitman.] _CHANTS DEMOCRATIC._ _STARTING FROM PAUMANOK._ 1. Starting from fish-shape Paumanok,[1] where I was born, Well-begotten, and raised by a perfect mother; After roaming many lands--lover of populous pavements; Dweller in Mannahatta,[2] city of ships, my city,--or on southern savannas; Or a soldier camped, or carrying my knapsack and gun--or a miner in California; Or rude in my home in Dakotah's woods, my diet meat, my drink from the spring; Or withdrawn to muse and meditate in some deep recess, Far from the clank of crowds, intervals passing, rapt and happy; Aware of the fresh free giver, the flowing Missouri--aware of mighty Niagara Aware of the buffalo herds, grazing the plains--the hirsute and strong- breasted bull; Of earths, rocks, fifth-month flowers, experienced--stars, rain, snow, my amaze; Having studied the mocking-bird's tones, and the mountain hawk's, And heard at dusk the unrivalled one, the hermit thrush, from the swamp-cedars, Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World. 2. Victory, union, faith, identity, time, Yourself, the present and future lands, the indissoluble compacts, riches, mystery, Eternal progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports. This, then, is life; Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions. How curious! how real! Under foot the divine soil--over head the sun. See, revolving, the globe; The ancestor-continents, away, grouped together; The present and future continents, north and south, with the isthmus between. See, vast trackless spaces; As in a dream, they change, they swiftly fill; Countless masses debouch upon them; They are now covered with the foremost people, arts, institutions, known. See, projected through time, For me an audience interminable. With firm and regular step they wend--they never stop, Successions of men, Americanos, a hundred millions; One generation playing its part, and passing on, Another generation playing its part, and passing on in its turn, With faces turned sideways or backward towards me, to listen, With eyes retrospective towards me. 3. Americanos! conquerors! marches humanitarian; Foremost! century marches! Libertad! masses! For you a programme of chants. Chants of the prairies; Chants of the long-running Mississippi, and down to the Mexican Sea; Chants of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota; Chants going forth from the centre, from Kansas, and thence, equidistant, Shooting in pulses of fire, ceaseless, to vivify all. 4. In the Year 80 of the States,[3] My tongue, every atom of my blood, formed from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here, from parents the same, and their parents the same, I, now thirty-six years old, in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death. Creeds and schools in abeyance, (Retiring back a while, sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten.) I harbour, for good or bad--I permit to speak, at every hazard-- Nature now without check, with original energy. 5. Take my leaves, America! take them South, and take them North! Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are your own offspring; Surround them, East and West! for they would surround you; And you precedents! connect lovingly with them, for they connect lovingly with you. I conned old times; I sat studying at the feet of the great masters: Now, if eligible, O that the great masters might return and study me! In the name of these States, shall I scorn the antique? Why, these are the children of the antique, to justify it. 6. Dead poets, philosophs, priests, Martyrs, artists, inventors, governments long since, Language-shapers on other shores, Nations once powerful, now reduced, withdrawn, or desolate, I dare not proceed till I respectfully credit what you have left, wafted hither: I have perused it--own it is admirable, (moving awhile among it;) Think nothing can ever be greater--nothing can ever deserve more than it deserves; Regarding it all intently a long while, then dismissing it, I stand in my place, with my own day, here. Here lands female and male; Here the heirship and heiress-ship of the world--here the flame of materials; Here spirituality, the translatress, the openly-avowed, The ever-tending, the finale of visible forms; The satisfier, after due long-waiting, now advancing, Yes, here comes my mistress, the Soul. 7. The SOUL! For ever and for ever--longer than soil is brown and solid--longer than water ebbs and flows. I will make the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the most spiritual poems; And I will make the poems of my body and of mortality, For I think I shall then supply myself with the poems of my soul, and of immortality. I will make a song for these States, that no one State may under any circumstances be subjected to another State; And I will make a song that there shall be comity by day and by night between all the States, and between any two of them; And I will make a song for the ears of the President, full of weapons with menacing points, And behind the weapons countless dissatisfied faces: And a song make I, of the One formed out of all; The fanged and glittering one whose head is over all; Resolute, warlike one, including and over all; However high the head of any else, that head is over all. I will acknowledge contemporary lands; I will trail the whole geography of the globe, and salute courteously every city large and small; And employments! I will put in my poems, that with you is heroism, upon land and sea--And I will report all heroism from an American point of view; And sexual organs and acts! do you concentrate in me--for I am determined to tell you with courageous clear voice, to prove you illustrious. I will sing the song of companionship; I will show what alone must finally compact these; I believe These are to found their own ideal of manly love, indicating it in me; I will therefore let flame from me the burning fires that were threatening to consume me; I will lift what has too long kept down those smouldering fires; I will give them complete abandonment; I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love; For who but I should understand love, with all its sorrow and joy? And who but I should be the poet of comrades? 8. I am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races; I advance from the people _en masse_ in their own spirit; Here is what sings unrestricted faith. Omnes! Omnes! let others ignore what they may; I make the poem of evil also--I commemorate that part also; I am myself just as much evil as good, and my nation is--And I say there is in fact no evil, Or if there is, I say it is just as important to you, to the land, or to me, as anything else. I too, following many, and followed by many, inaugurate a Religion--I too go to the wars; It may be I am destined to utter the loudest cries thereof, the winner's pealing shouts; Who knows? they may rise from me yet, and soar above everything. Each is not for its own sake; I say the whole earth, and all the stars in the sky, are for religion's sake. I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough; None has ever yet adored or worshipped half enough; None has begun to think how divine he himself is, and how certain the future is. I say that the real and permanent grandeur of these States must be their religion; Otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur; Nor character, nor life worthy the name, without religion; Nor land, nor man or woman, without religion. 9. What are you doing, young man? Are you so earnest--so given up to literature, science, art, amours? These ostensible realities, politics, points? Your ambition or business, whatever it may be? It is well--Against such I say not a word--I am their poet also; But behold! such swiftly subside--burnt up for religion's sake; For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential life of the earth, Any more than such are to religion. 10. What do you seek, so pensive and silent? What do you need, Camerado? Dear son! do you think it is love? Listen, dear son--listen, America, daughter or son! It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to excess--and yet it satisfies--it is great; But there is something else very great--it makes the whole coincide; It, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous hands, sweeps and provides for all. 11. Know you: to drop in the earth the germs of a greater religion, The following chants, each for its kind, I sing. My comrade! For you, to share with me, two greatnesses--and a third one, rising inclusive and more resplendent, The greatness of Love and Democracy--and the greatness of Religion. Mélange mine own! the unseen and the seen; Mysterious ocean where the streams empty; Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering around me; Living beings, identities, now doubtless near us in the air, that we know not of; Contact daily and hourly that will not release me; These selecting--these, in hints, demanded of me. Not he with a daily kiss onward from childhood kissing me Has winded and twisted around me that which holds me to him, Any more than I am held to the heavens, to the spiritual world, And to the identities of the Gods, my lovers, faithful and true, After what they have done to me, suggesting themes. O such themes! Equalities! O amazement of things! O divine average! O warblings under the sun--ushered, as now, or at noon, or setting! O strain, musical, flowing through ages--now reaching hither, I take to your reckless and composite chords--I add to them, and cheerfully pass them forward. 12. As I have walked in Alabama my morning walk, I have seen where the she-bird, the mocking-bird, sat on her nest in the briars, hatching her brood. I have seen the he-bird also; I have paused to hear him, near at hand, inflating his throat, and joyfully singing. And while I paused, it came to me that what he really sang for was not there only, Nor for his mate nor himself only, nor all sent back by the echoes; But subtle, clandestine, away beyond, A charge transmitted, and gift occult, for those being born. 13. Democracy! Near at hand to you a throat is now inflating itself and joyfully singing. Ma femme! For the brood beyond us and of us, For those who belong here, and those to come, I, exultant, to be ready for them, will now shake out carols stronger and haughtier than have ever yet been heard upon earth. I will make the songs of passion, to give them their way, And your songs, outlawed offenders--for I scan you with kindred eyes, and carry you with me the same as any. I will make the true poem of riches,-- To earn for the body and the mind whatever adheres, and goes forward, and is not dropped by death. I will effuse egotism, and show it underlying all--and I will be the bard of personality; And I will show of male and female that either is but the equal of the other; And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present--and can be none in the future; And I will show that, whatever happens to anybody, it may be turned to beautiful results--and I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death; And I will thread a thread through my poems that time and events are compact, And that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each as profound as any. I will not make poems with reference to parts; But I will make leaves, poems, poemets, songs, says, thoughts, with reference to ensemble: And I will not sing with reference to a day, but with reference to all days; And I will not make a poem, nor the least part of a poem, but has reference to the soul; Because, having looked at the objects of the universe, I find there is no one, nor any particle of one, but has reference to the soul. 14. Was somebody asking to see the Soul? See! your own shape and countenance--persons, substances, beasts, the trees, the running rivers, the rocks and sands. All hold spiritual joys, and afterwards loosen them: How can the real body ever die, and be buried? Of your real body, and any man's or woman's real body, Item for item, it will elude the hands of the corpse-cleaners, and pass to fitting spheres, Carrying what has accrued to it from the moment of birth to the moment of death. Not the types set up by the printer return their impression, the meaning, the main concern, Any more than a man's substance and life, or a woman's substance and life, return in the body and the soul, Indifferently before death and after death. Behold! the body includes and is the meaning, the main concern--and includes and is the soul; Whoever you are! how superb and how divine is your body, or any part of it. 15. Whoever you are! to you endless announcements. Daughter of the lands, did you wait for your poet? Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth and indicative hand? Toward the male of the States, and toward the female of the States, Live words--words to the lands. O the lands! interlinked, food-yielding lands! Land of coal and iron! Land of gold! Lands of cotton, sugar, rice! Land of wheat, beef, pork! Land of wool and hemp! Land of the apple and grape! Land of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the world! Land of those sweet-aired interminable plateaus! Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobie! Lands where the north-west Columbia winds, and where the south-west Colorado winds! Land of the eastern Chesapeake! Land of the Delaware! Land of Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan! Land of the Old Thirteen! Massachusetts land! Land of Vermont and Connecticut! Land of the ocean shores! Land of sierras and peaks! Land of boatmen and sailors! Fishermen's land! Inextricable lands! the clutched together! the passionate ones! The side by side! the elder and younger brothers! the bony-limbed! The great women's land! the feminine! the experienced sisters and the inexperienced sisters! Far-breathed land! Arctic-braced! Mexican-breezed! the diverse! the compact! The Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double Carolinian! O all and each well-loved by me! my intrepid nations! O I at any rate include you all with perfect love! I cannot be discharged from you--not from one, any sooner than another! O Death! O!--for all that, I am yet of you unseen, this hour, with irrepressible love, Walking New England, a friend, a traveller, Splashing my bare feet in the edge of the summer ripples, on Paumanok's sands, Crossing the prairies--dwelling again in Chicago--dwelling in every town, Observing shows, births, improvements, structures, arts, Listening to the orators and the oratresses in public halls, Of and through the States, as during life[4]--each man and woman my neighbour, The Louisianian, the Georgian, as near to me, and I as near to him and her, The Mississippian and Arkansian yet with me--and I yet with any of them; Yet upon the plains west of the spinal river--yet in my house of adobie, Yet returning eastward--yet in the Sea-Side State, or in Maryland, Yet Canadian cheerily braving the winter--the snow and ice welcome to me, or mounting the Northern Pacific, to Sitka, to Aliaska; Yet a true son either of Maine, or of the Granite State,[5] or of the Narragansett Bay State, or of the Empire State;[6] Yet sailing to other shores to annex the same--yet welcoming every new brother; Hereby applying these leaves to the new ones, from the hour they unite with the old ones; Coming among the new ones myself, to be their companion and equal--coming personally to you now; Enjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles, with me. 16. With me, with firm holding--yet haste, haste on. For your life, adhere to me; Of all the men of the earth, I only can unloose you and toughen you; I may have to be persuaded many times before I consent to give myself to you--but what of that? Must not Nature be persuaded many times? No dainty _dolce affettuoso_ I; Bearded, sunburnt, gray-necked, forbidding, I have arrived, To be wrestled with as I pass, for the solid prizes of the universe; For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them. 17. On my way a moment I pause; Here for you! and here for America! Still the Present I raise aloft--still the Future of the States I harbinge, glad and sublime; And for the Past, I pronounce what the air holds of the red aborigines. The red aborigines! Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds, calls as of birds and animals in the woods, syllabled to us for names; Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez, Chattahoochee, Kaqueta, Oronoco, Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-Walla; Leaving such to the States, they melt, they depart, charging the water and the land with names. 18. O expanding and swift! O henceforth, Elements, breeds, adjustments, turbulent, quick, and audacious; A world primal again--vistas of glory, incessant and branching; A new race, dominating previous ones, and grander far, with new contests, New politics, new literatures and religions, new inventions and arts. These my voice announcing--I will sleep no more, but arise; You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you, fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms. 19. See! steamers steaming through my poems! See in my poems immigrants continually coming and landing; See in arriere, the wigwam, the trail, the hunter's hut, the flat-boat, the maize-leaf, the claim, the rude fence, and the backwoods village; See, on the one side the Western Sea, and on the other the Eastern Sea, how they advance and retreat upon my poems, as upon their own shores; See pastures and forests in my poems--See animals, wild and tame--See, beyond the Kanzas, countless herds of buffalo, feeding on short curly grass; See, in my poems, cities, solid, vast, inland, with paved streets, with iron and stone edifices, ceaseless vehicles, and commerce; See the many-cylindered steam printing-press--See the electric telegraph, stretching across the Continent, from the Western Sea to Manhattan; See, through Atlantica's depths, pulses American, Europe reaching--pulses of Europe, duly returned; See the strong and quick locomotive, as it departs, panting, blowing the steam-whistle; See ploughmen, ploughing farms--See miners, digging mines--See the numberless factories; See mechanics, busy at their benches, with tools--See, from among them, superior judges, philosophs, Presidents, emerge, dressed in working dresses; See, lounging through the shops and fields of the States, me, well-beloved, close-held by day and night; Hear the loud echoes of my songs there! Read the hints come at last. 20. O Camerado close! O you and me at last--and us two only. O a word to clear one's path ahead endlessly! O something ecstatic and undemonstrable! O music wild! O now I triumph--and you shall also; O hand in hand--O wholesome pleasure--O one more desirer and lover! O to haste, firm holding--to haste, haste on, with me. [Footnote 1: Paumanok is the native name of Long Island, State of New York. It presents a fish-like shape on the map.] [Footnote 2: Mannahatta, or Manhattan, is (as many readers will know) New York.] [Footnote 3: 1856.] [Footnote 4: The poet here contemplates himself as yet living spiritually and in his poems after the death of the body, still a friend and brother to all present and future American lands and persons.] [Footnote 5: New Hampshire.] [Footnote 6: New York State.] _AMERICAN FEUILLAGE._ AMERICA always! Always our own feuillage! Always Florida's green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana! Always the cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas! Always California's golden hills and hollows--and the silver mountains of New Mexico! Always soft-breathed Cuba! Always the vast slope drained by the Southern Sea--inseparable with the slopes drained by the Eastern and Western Seas! The area the eighty-third year of these States[1]--the three and a half millions of square miles; The eighteen thousand miles of sea-coast and bay-coast on the main--the thirty thousand miles of river navigation, The seven millions of distinct families, and the same number of dwellings-- Always these, and more, branching forth into numberless branches; Always the free range and diversity! Always the continent of Democracy! Always the prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities, travellers, Canada, the snows; Always these compact lands--lands tied at the hips with the belt stringing the huge oval lakes; Always the West, with strong native persons--the increasing density there-- the habitans, friendly, threatening, ironical, scorning invaders; All sights, South, North, East--all deeds, promiscuously done at all times, All characters, movements, growths--a few noticed, myriads unnoticed. Through Mannahatta's streets I walking, these things gathering. On interior rivers, by night, in the glare of pine knots, steamboats wooding up: Sunlight by day on the valley of the Susquehanna, and on the valleys of the Potomac and Rappahannock, and the valleys of the Roanoke and Delaware; In their northerly wilds beasts of prey haunting the Adirondacks the hills--or lapping the Saginaw waters to drink; In a lonesome inlet, a sheldrake, lost from the flock, sitting on the water, rocking silently; In farmers' barns, oxen in the stable, their harvest labour done--they rest standing--they are too tired; Afar on arctic ice, the she-walrus lying drowsily, while her cubs play around; The hawk sailing where men have not yet sailed--the farthest polar sea, ripply, crystalline, open, beyond the floes; White drift spooning ahead, where the ship in the tempest dashes. On solid land, what is done in cities, as the bells all strike midnight together; In primitive woods, the sounds there also sounding--the howl of the wolf, the scream of the panther, and the hoarse bellow of the elk; In winter beneath the hard blue ice of Moosehead Lake, in summer visible through the clear waters, the great trout swimming; In lower latitudes, in warmer air, in the Carolinas, the large black buzzard floating slowly, high beyond the tree-tops, Below, the red cedar, festooned with tylandria--the pines and cypresses, growing out of the white sand that spreads far and flat; Rude boats descending the big Pedee--climbing plants, parasites, with coloured flowers and berries, enveloping huge trees, The waving drapery on the live oak, trailing long and low, noiselessly waved by the wind; The camp of Georgia waggoners, just after dark--the supper-fires, and the cooking and eating by whites and negroes, Thirty or forty great waggons--the mules, cattle, horses, feeding from troughs, The shadows, gleams, up under the leaves of the old sycamore-trees--the flames--also the black smoke from the pitch-pine, curling and rising; Southern fishermen fishing--the sounds and inlets of North Carolina's coast--the shad-fishery and the herring-fishery--the large sweep- seines--the windlasses on shore worked by horses--the clearing, curing, and packing houses; Deep in the forest, in piney woods, turpentine dropping from the incisions in the trees--There are the turpentine works, There are the negroes at work, in good health--the ground in all directions is covered with pine straw. --In Tennessee and Kentucky, slaves busy in the coalings, at the forge, by the furnace-blaze, or at the corn-shucking; In Virginia, the planter's son returning after a long absence, joyfully welcomed and kissed by the aged mulatto nurse. On rivers, boatmen safely moored at nightfall, in their boats, under shelter of high banks, Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or fiddle--others sit on the gunwale, smoking and talking; Late in the afternoon the mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing in the Great Dismal Swamp-there are the greenish waters, the resinous odour, the plenteous moss, the cypress-tree, and the juniper-tree. --Northward, young men of Mannahatta--the target company from an excursion returning home at evening--the musket-muzzles all bear bunches of flowers presented by women; Children at play--or on his father's lap a young boy fallen asleep, (how his lips move! how he smiles in his sleep!) The scout riding on horseback over the plains west of the Mississippi--he ascends a knoll and sweeps his eye around. California life--the miner, bearded, dressed in his rude costume--the staunch California friendship--the sweet air--the graves one, in passing, meets, solitary, just aside the horse-path; Down in Texas, the cotton-field, the negro-cabins--drivers driving mules or oxen before rude carts--cotton-bales piled on banks and wharves. Encircling all, vast-darting, up and wide, the American Soul, with equal hemispheres--one Love, one Dilation or Pride. --In arriere, the peace-talk with the Iroquois, the aborigines--the calumet, the pipe of good-will, arbitration, and endorsement, The sachem blowing the smoke first toward the sun and then toward the earth, The drama of the scalp-dance enacted with painted faces and guttural exclamations, The setting-out of the war-party--the long and stealthy march, The single-file--the swinging hatchets--the surprise and slaughter of enemies. --All the acts, scenes, ways, persons, attitudes, of these States-- reminiscences, all institutions, All these States, compact--Every square mile of these States, without excepting a particle--you also--me also. Me pleased, rambling in lanes and country fields, Paumanok's fields, Me, observing the spiral flight of two little yellow butterflies, shuffling between each other, ascending high in the air; The darting swallow, the destroyer of insects--the fall-traveller southward, but returning northward early in the spring; The country boy at the close of the day, driving the herd of cows, and shouting to them as they loiter to browse by the roadside; The city wharf--Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans, San Francisco, The departing ships, when the sailors heave at the capstan; Evening--me in my room--the setting sun, The setting summer sun shining in my open window, showing the swarm of flies, suspended, balancing in the air in the centre of the room, darting athwart, up and down, casting swift shadows in specks on the opposite wall, where the shine is. The athletic American matron speaking in public to crowds of listeners; Males, females, immigrants, combinations--the copiousness--the individuality of the States, each for itself--the money-makers; Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces--the windlass, lever, pulley-- All certainties, The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity; In space, the sporades, the scattered islands, the stars--on the firm earth, the lands, my lands! O lands! O all so dear to me--what you are (whatever it is), I become a part of that, whatever it is. Southward there, I screaming, with wings slow-flapping, with the myriads of gulls wintering along the coasts of Florida--or in Louisiana, with pelicans breeding, Otherways, there, atwixt the banks of the Arkansaw, the Rio Grande, the Nueces, the Brazos, the Tombigbee, the Red River, the Saskatchewan, or the Osage, I with the spring waters laughing and skipping and running; Northward, on the sands, on some shallow bay of Paumanok, I, with parties of snowy herons wading in the wet to seek worms and aquatic plants; Retreating, triumphantly twittering, the king-bird, from piercing the crow with its bill, for amusement--And I triumphantly twittering; The migrating flock of wild geese alighting in autumn to refresh themselves--the body of the flock feed--the sentinels outside move around with erect heads watching, and are from time to time relieved by other sentinels--And I feeding and taking turns with the rest; In Canadian forests, the moose, large as an ox, cornered by hunters, rising desperately on his hind-feet, and plunging with his fore-feet, the hoofs as sharp as knives--And I plunging at the hunters, cornered and desperate; In the Mannahatta, streets, piers, shipping, store-houses, and the countless workmen working in the shops, And I too of the Mannahatta, singing thereof--and no less in myself than the whole of the Mannahatta in itself, Singing the song of These, my ever-united lands--my body no more inevitably united part to part, and made one identity, any more than my lands are inevitably united, and made ONE IDENTITY; Nativities, climates, the grass of the great pastoral plains, Cities, labours, death, animals, products, good and evil--these me,-- These affording, in all their particulars, endless feuillage to me and to America, how can I do less than pass the clue of the union of them, to afford the like to you? Whoever you are! how can I but offer you divine leaves, that you also be eligible as I am? How can I but, as here, chanting, invite you for yourself to collect bouquets of the incomparable feuillage of these States? [Footnote 1: 1858-59.] _THE PAST-PRESENT._ I was looking a long while for the history of the past for myself, and for these chants--and now I have found it. It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither accept nor reject;) It is no more in the legends than in all else; It is in the present--it is this earth to-day; It is in Democracy--in this America--the Old World also; It is the life of one man or one woman to-day, the average man of to-day; It is languages, social customs, literatures, arts; It is the broad show of artificial things, ships, machinery, politics, creeds, modern improvements, and the interchange of nations, All for the average man of to-day. _YEARS OF THE UNPERFORMED._ Years of the unperformed! your horizon rises--I see it part away for more august dramas; I see not America only--I see not only Liberty's nation but other nations embattling; I see tremendous entrances and exits--I see new combinations--I see the solidarity of races; I see that force advancing with irresistible power on the world's stage; Have the old forces played their parts? are the acts suitable to them closed? I see Freedom, completely armed, and victorious, and very haughty, with Law by her side, both issuing forth against the idea of caste; --What historic denouements are these we so rapidly approach? I see men marching and countermarching by swift millions! I see the frontiers and boundaries of the old aristocracies broken; I see the landmarks of European kings removed; I see this day the People beginning their landmarks, all others give way; Never were such sharp questions asked as this day; Never was average man, his soul, more energetic, more like a God. Lo! how he urges and urges, leaving the masses no rest; His daring foot is on land and sea everywhere--he colonises the Pacific, the archipelagoes; With the steam-ship, the electric telegraph, the newspaper, the wholesale engines of war, With these, and the world-spreading factories, he interlinks all geography, all lands; --What whispers are these, O lands, running ahead of you, passing under the seas? Are all nations communing? is there going to be but one heart to the globe? Is humanity forming _en masse_?--for lo! tyrants tremble, crowns grow dim; The earth, restive, confronts a new era, perhaps a general divine war; No one knows what will happen next--such portents fill the days and nights. Years prophetical! the space ahead as I walk, as I vainly try to pierce it, is full of phantoms; Unborn deeds, things soon to be, project their shapes around me; This incredible rush and heat--this strange ecstatic fever of dreams, O years! Your dreams, O years, how they penetrate through me! (I know not whether I sleep or wake!) The performed America and Europe grow dim, retiring in shadow behind me, The unperformed, more gigantic than ever, advance, advance upon me. _FLUX._ Of these years I sing, How they pass through convulsed pains, as through parturitions; How America illustrates birth, gigantic youth, the promise, the sure fulfilment, despite of people--Illustrates evil as well as good; How many hold despairingly yet to the models departed, caste, myths, obedience, compulsion, and to infidelity; How few see the arrived models, the athletes, the States--or see freedom or spirituality--or hold any faith in results. But I see the athletes--and I see the results glorious and inevitable--and they again leading to other results; How the great cities appear--How the Democratic masses, turbulent, wilful, as I love them, How the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with good, the sounding and resounding, keep on and on; How society waits unformed, and is between things ended and things begun; How America is the continent of glories, and of the triumph of freedom, and of the Democracies, and of the fruits of society, and of all that is begun; And how the States are complete in themselves--And how all triumphs and glories are complete in themselves, to lead onward, And how these of mine, and of the States, will in their turn be convulsed, and serve other parturitions and transitions. And how all people, sights, combinations, the Democratic masses, too, serve--and how every fact serves, And how now, or at any time, each serves the exquisite transition of Death. _TO WORKING MEN._ 1. Come closer to me; Push close, my lovers, and take the best I possess; Yield closer and closer, and give me the best you possess. This is unfinished business with me--How is it with you? (I was chilled with the cold types, cylinder, wet paper between us.) Male and Female! I pass so poorly with paper and types, I must pass with the contact of bodies and souls. American masses! I do not thank you for liking me as I am, and liking the touch of me--I know that it is good for you to do so. 2. This is the poem of occupations; In the labour of engines and trades, and the labour of fields, I find the developments, And find the eternal meanings. Workmen and Workwomen! Were all educations, practical and ornamental, well displayed out of me, what would it amount to? Were I as the head teacher, charitable proprietor, wise statesman, what would it amount to? Were I to you as the boss employing and paying you, would that satisfy you? The learned, virtuous, benevolent, and the usual terms; A man like me, and never the usual terms. Neither a servant nor a master am I; I take no sooner a large price than a small price--I will have my own, whoever enjoys me; I will be even with you, and you shall be even with me. If you stand at work in a shop, I stand as nigh as the nighest in the same shop; If you bestow gifts on your brother or dearest friend, I demand as good as your brother or dearest friend; If your lover, husband, wife, is welcome by day or night, I must be personally as welcome; If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake; If you remember your foolish and outlawed deeds, do you think I cannot remember my own foolish and outlawed deeds? If you carouse at the table, I carouse at the opposite side of the table; If you meet some stranger in the streets, and love him or her--why I often meet strangers in the street, and love them. Why, what have you thought of yourself? Is it you then that thought yourself less? Is it you that thought the President greater than you? Or the rich better off than you? or the educated wiser than you? Because you are greasy or pimpled, or that you was once drunk, or a thief, Or diseased, or rheumatic, or a prostitute, or are so now; Or from frivolity or impotence, or that you are no scholar, and never saw your name in print, Do you give in that you are any less immortal? 3. Souls of men and women! it is not you I call unseen, unheard, untouchable and untouching; It is not you I go argue pro and con about, and to settle whether you are alive or no; I own publicly who you are, if nobody else owns. Grown, half-grown, and babe, of this country and every country, indoors and outdoors, one just as much as the other, I see, And all else behind or through them. The wife--and she is not one jot less than the husband; The daughter--and she is just as good as the son; The mother--and she is every bit as much as the father. Offspring of ignorant and poor, boys apprenticed to trades, Young fellows working on farms, and old fellows working on farms, Sailor-men, merchant-men, coasters, immigrants, All these I see--but nigher and farther the same I see; None shall escape me, and none shall wish to escape me. I bring what you much need, yet always have, Not money, amours, dress, eating, but as good; I send no agent or medium, offer no representative of value, but offer the value itself. There is something that comes home to one now and perpetually; It is not what is printed, preached, discussed--it eludes discussion and print; It is not to be put in a book--it is not in this book; It is for you, whoever you are--it is no farther from you than your hearing and sight are from you; It is hinted by nearest, commonest, readiest--it is ever provoked by them. You may read in many languages, yet read nothing about it; You may read the President's Message, and read nothing about it there; Nothing in the reports from the State department or Treasury department, or in the daily papers or the weekly papers, Or in the census or revenue returns, prices current, or any accounts of stock. 4. The sun and stars that float in the open air; The apple-shaped earth, and we upon it--surely the drift of them is something grand! I do not know what it is, except that it is grand, and that it is happiness, And that the enclosing purport of us here is not a speculation, or bon-mot, or reconnoissance, And that it is not something which by luck may turn out well for us, and without luck must be a failure for us, And not something which may yet be retracted in a certain contingency. The light and shade, the curious sense of body and identity, the greed that with perfect complaisance devours all things, the endless pride and outstretching of man, unspeakable joys and sorrows, The wonder every one sees in every one else he sees, and the wonders that fill each minute of time for ever, What have you reckoned them for, camerado? Have you reckoned them for a trade, or farm-work? or for the profits of a store? Or to achieve yourself a position? or to fill a gentleman's leisure, or a lady's leisure? Have you reckoned the landscape took substance and form that it might be painted in a picture? Or men and women that they might be written of, and songs sung? Or the attraction of gravity, and the great laws and harmonious combinations, and the fluids of the air, as subjects for the savans? Or the brown land and the blue sea for maps and charts? Or the stars to be put in constellations and named fancy names? Or that the growth of seeds is for agricultural tables, or agriculture itself? Old institutions--these arts, libraries, legends, collections, and the practice handed along in manufactures--will we rate them so high? Will we rate our cash and business high?--I have no objection; I rate them as high as the highest--then a child born of a woman and man I rate beyond all rate. We thought our Union grand, and our Constitution grand; I do not say they are not grand and good, for they are; I am this day just as much in love with them as you; Then I am in love with you, and with all my fellows upon the earth. We consider Bibles and religions divine--I do not say they are not divine; I say they have all grown out of you, and may grow out of you still; It is not they who give the life--it is you who give the life; Leaves are not more shed from the trees, or trees from the earth, than they are shed out of you. 5. When the psalm sings, instead of the singer; When the script preaches, instead of the preacher; When the pulpit descends and goes, instead of the carver that carved the supporting desk; When I can touch the body of books, by night or by day, and when they touch my body back again; When a university course convinces, like a slumbering woman and child convince; When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the night-watchman's daughter; When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite, and are my friendly companions; I intend to reach them my hand, and make as much of them as I do of men and women like you. The sum of all known reverence I add up in you, whoever you are; The President is there in the White House for you--it is not you who are here for him; The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you--not you here for them; The Congress convenes every twelfth month for you; Laws, courts, the forming of States, the charters of cities, the going and coming of commerce and mails, are all for you. List close, my scholars dear! All doctrines, all politics and civilisation, exsurge from you; All sculpture and monuments, and anything inscribed anywhere, are tallied in you; The gist of histories and statistics, as far back as the records reach, is in you this hour, and myths and tales the same; If you were not breathing and walking here, where would they all be? The most renowned poems would be ashes, orations and plays would be vacuums. All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it; Did you think it was in the white or grey stone? or the lines of the arches and cornices? All music is what awakes from you, when you are reminded by the instruments; It is not the violins and the cornets--it is not the oboe nor the beating drums, nor the score of the baritone singer singing his sweet romanza--nor that of the men's chorus, nor that of the women's chorus, It is nearer and farther than they. 6. Will the whole come back then? Can each see signs of the best by a look in the looking-glass? is there nothing greater or more? Does all sit there with you, with the mystic, unseen soul? Strange and hard that paradox true I give; Objects gross and the unseen Soul are one. House-building, measuring, sawing the boards; Blacksmithing, glass-blowing, nail-making, coopering, tin-roofing, shingle- dressing, Ship-joining, dock-building, fish-curing, ferrying, flagging of side-walks by flaggers, The pump, the pile-driver, the great derrick, the coal-kiln and brick-kiln, Coal-mines, and all that is down there,--the lamps in the darkness, echoes, songs, what meditations, what vast native thoughts looking through smutched faces, Ironworks, forge-fires in the mountains, or by the river-banks--men around feeling the melt with huge crowbars--lumps of ore, the due combining of ore, limestone, coal--the blast-furnace and the puddling-furnace, the loup-lump at the bottom of the melt at last-- the rolling-mill, the stumpy bars of pig-iron, the strong, clean shaped T-rail for railroads; Oilworks, silkworks, white-lead-works, the sugar-house, steam-saws, the great mills and factories; Stone-cutting, shapely trimmings for façades, or window or door lintels-- the mallet, the tooth-chisel, the jib to protect the thumb, Oakum, the oakum-chisel, the caulking-iron--the kettle of boiling vault- cement, and the fire under the kettle, The cotton-bale, the stevedore's hook, the saw and buck of the sawyer, the mould of the moulder, the working knife of the butcher, the ice- saw, and all the work with ice, The implements for daguerreotyping--the tools of the rigger, grappler, sail-maker, block-maker, Goods of gutta-percha, papier-mâché, colours, brushes, brush-making, glaziers' implements, The veneer and glue-pot, the confectioner's ornaments, the decanter and glasses, the shears and flat-iron, The awl and knee-strap, the pint measure and quart measure, the counter and stool, the writing-pen of quill or metal--the making of all sorts of edged tools, The brewery, brewing, the malt, the vats, everything that is done by brewers, also by wine-makers, also vinegar-makers, Leather-dressing, coach-making, boiler-making, rope-twisting, distilling, sign-painting, lime-burning, cotton-picking--electro-plating, electrotyping, stereotyping, Stave-machines, planing-machines, reaping-machines, ploughing-machines, thrashing-machines, steam waggons, The cart of the carman, the omnibus, the ponderous dray; Pyrotechny, letting off coloured fireworks at night, fancy figures and jets, Beef on the butcher's stall, the slaughter-house of the butcher, the butcher in his killing-clothes, The pens of live pork, the killing-hammer, the hog-hook, the scalder's tub, gutting, the cutter's cleaver, the packer's maul, and the plenteous winter-work of pork-packing, Flour-works, grinding of wheat, rye, maize, rice--the barrels and the half and quarter barrels, the loaded barges, the high piles on wharves and levees, The men, and the work of the men, on railroads, coasters, fish-boats, canals; The daily routine of your own or any man's life--the shop, yard, store, or factory; These shows all near you by day and night-workmen! whoever you are, your daily life! In that and them the heft of the heaviest--in them far more than you estimated, and far less also; In them realities for you and me--in them poems for you and me; In them, not yourself--you and your soul enclose all things, regardless of estimation; In them the development good--in them, all themes and hints. I do not affirm what you see beyond is futile--I do not advise you to stop; I do not say leadings you thought great are not great; But I say that none lead to greater than those lead to. 7. Will you seek afar off? You surely come back at last, In things best known to you finding the best, or as good as the best, In folks nearest to you finding the sweetest, strongest, lovingest; Happiness, knowledge, not in another place, but this place--not for another hour, but this hour; Man in the first you see or touch--always in friend, brother, nighest neighbour--Woman in mother, sister, wife; The popular tastes and employments taking precedence in poems or anywhere, You workwomen and workmen of these States having your own divine and strong life, And all else giving place to men and women like you. _SONG OF THE BROAD-AXE._ 1. Weapon, shapely, naked, wan; Head from the mother's bowels drawn! Wooded flesh and metal bone! limb only one, and lip only one! Grey-blue leaf by red-heat grown! helve produced from a little seed sown! Resting the grass amid and upon, To be leaned, and to lean on. Strong shapes, and attributes of strong shapes--masculine trades, sights and sounds; Long varied train of an emblem, dabs of music; Fingers of the organist skipping staccato over the keys of the great organ. 2. Welcome are all earth's lands, each for its kind; Welcome are lands of pine and oak; Welcome are lands of the lemon and fig; Welcome are lands of gold; Welcome are lands of wheat and maize--welcome those of the grape; Welcome are lands of sugar and rice; Welcome are cotton-lands--welcome those of the white potato and sweet potato; Welcome are mountains, flats, sands, forests, prairies; Welcome the rich borders of rivers, table-lands, openings, Welcome the measureless grazing-lands--welcome the teeming soil of orchards, flax, honey, hemp; Welcome just as much the other more hard-faced lands; Lands rich as lands of gold, or wheat and fruit lands; Lands of mines, lands of the manly and rugged ores; Lands of coal, copper, lead, tin, zinc; LANDS OF IRON! lands of the make of the axe! 3. The log at the wood-pile, the axe supported by it; The sylvan hut, the vine over the doorway, the space cleared for a garden, The irregular tapping of rain down on the leaves, after the storm is lulled, The wailing and moaning at intervals, the thought of the sea, The thought of ships struck in the storm, and put on their beam-ends, and the cutting away of masts; The sentiment of the huge timbers of old-fashioned houses and barns; The remembered print or narrative, the voyage at a venture of men, families, goods, The disembarkation, the founding of a new city, The voyage of those who sought a New England and found it--the outset anywhere, The settlements of the Arkansas, Colorado, Ottawa, Willamette, The slow progress, the scant fare, the axe, rifle, saddle-bags; The beauty of all adventurous and daring persons, The beauty of wood-boys and wood-men, with their clear untrimmed faces, The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves, The American contempt for statutes and ceremonies, the boundless impatience of restraint, The loose drift of character, the inkling through random types, the solidification; The butcher in the slaughter-house, the hands aboard schooners and sloops, the raftsman, the pioneer, Lumbermen in their winter camp, daybreak in the woods, stripes of snow on the limbs of trees, the occasional snapping, The glad clear sound of one's own voice, the merry song, the natural life of the woods, the strong day's work, The blazing fire at night, the sweet taste of supper, the talk, the bed of hemlock boughs, and the bearskin; --The house-builder at work in cities or anywhere, The preparatory jointing, squaring, sawing, mortising, The hoist-up of beams, the push of them in their places, laying them regular, Setting the studs by their tenons in the mortises, according as they were prepared, The blows of mallets and hammers, the attitudes of the men, their curved limbs, Bending, standing, astride the beams, driving in pins, holding on by posts and braces, The hooked arm over the plate, the other arm wielding the axe, The floor-men forcing the planks close, to be nailed, Their postures bringing their weapons downward on the bearers, The echoes resounding through the vacant building; The huge store-house carried up in the city, well under way, The six framing men, two in the middle, and two at each end, carefully bearing on their shoulders a heavy stick for a cross-beam, The crowded line of masons with trowels in their right hands, rapidly laying the long side-wall, two hundred feet from front to rear, The flexible rise and fall of backs, the continual click of the trowels striking the bricks, The bricks, one after another, each laid so workmanlike in its place, and set with a knock of the trowel-handle, The piles of materials, the mortar on the mortar-boards, and the steady replenishing by the hod-men; --Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown apprentices, The swing of their axes on the square-hewed log, shaping it toward the shape of a mast, The brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into the pine, The butter-coloured chips flying off in great flakes and slivers, The limber motion of brawny young arms and hips in easy costumes; The constructor of wharves, bridges, piers, bulk-heads, floats, stays against the sea; --The city fireman--the fire that suddenly bursts forth in the close-packed square, The arriving engines, the hoarse shouts, the nimble stepping and daring, The strong command through the fire-trumpets, the falling in line, the rise and fall of the arms forcing the water, The slender, spasmic blue-white jets--the bringing to bear of the hooks and ladders, and their execution, The crash and cut-away of connecting woodwork, or through floors, if the fire smoulders under them, The crowd with their lit faces, watching--the glare and dense shadows; --The forger at his forge-furnace, and the user of iron after him, The maker of the axe large and small, and the welder and temperer, The chooser breathing his breath on the cold steel, and trying the edge with his thumb, The one who clean-shapes the handle and sets it firmly in the socket; The shadowy processions of the portraits of the past users also, The primal patient mechanics, the architects and engineers, The far-off Assyrian edifice and Mizra edifice, The Roman lictors preceding the consuls, The antique European warrior with his axe in combat, The uplifted arm, the clatter of blows on the helmeted head, The death-howl, the limpsey tumbling body, the rush of friend and foe thither, The siege of revolted lieges determined for liberty, The summons to surrender, the battering at castle-gates, the truce and parley; The sack of an old city in its time, The bursting in of mercenaries and bigots tumultuously and disorderly, Roar, flames, blood, drunkenness, madness, Goods freely rifled from houses and temples, screams of women in the gripe of brigands, Craft and thievery of camp-followers, men running, old persons despairing, The hell of war, the cruelties of creeds, The list of all executive deeds and words, just or unjust, The power of personality, just or unjust. 4. Muscle and pluck for ever! What invigorates life invigorates death, And the dead advance as much as the living advance, And the future is no more uncertain than the present, And the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the _delicatesse_ of the earth and of man, And nothing endures but personal qualities. What do you think endures? Do you think the great city endures? Or a teeming manufacturing state? or a prepared constitution? or the best- built steamships? Or hotels of granite and iron? or any _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of engineering, forts, armaments? Away! These are not to be cherished for themselves; They fill their hour, the dancers dance, the musicians play for them; The show passes, all does well enough of course, All does very well till one flash of defiance. The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman; If it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the whole world. 5. The place where the great city stands is not the place of stretched wharves, docks, manufactures, deposits of produce, Nor the place of ceaseless salutes of new-comers, or the anchor-lifters of the departing, Nor the place of the tallest and costliest buildings, or shops selling goods from the rest of the earth, Nor the place of the best libraries and schools--nor the place where money is plentiest, Nor the place of the most numerous population. Where the city stands with the brawniest breed of orators and bards; Where the city stands that is beloved by these, and loves them in return, and understands them; Where no monuments exist to heroes but in the common words and deeds; Where thrift is in its place, and prudence is in its place; Where the men and women think lightly of the laws; Where the slave ceases, and the master of slaves ceases; Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending audacity of elected persons; Where fierce men and women pour forth, as the sea to the whistle of death pours its sweeping and unripped waves; Where outside authority enters always after the precedence of inside authority; Where the citizen is always the head and ideal--and President, Mayor, Governor, and what not, are agents for pay; Where children are taught to be laws to themselves, and to depend on themselves; Where equanimity is illustrated in affairs; Where speculations on the Soul are encouraged; Where women walk in public processions in the streets, the same as the men; Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same as the men; Where the city of the faithfullest friends stands; Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands; Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands; Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands,-- There the great city stands. 6. How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed! How the floridness of the materials of cities shrivels before a man's or woman's look! All waits, or goes by default, till a strong being appears; A strong being is the proof of the race, and of the ability of the universe; When he or she appears, materials are overawed, The dispute on the Soul stops, The old customs and phrases are confronted, turned back, or laid away. What is your money-making now? What can it do now? What is your respectability now? What are your theology, tuition, society, traditions, statute-books, now? Where are your jibes of being now? Where are your cavils about the Soul now? Was that your best? Were those your vast and solid? Riches, opinions, politics, institutions, to part obediently from the path of one man or woman! The centuries, and all authority, to be trod under the foot-soles of one man or woman! 7. A sterile landscape covers the ore--there is as good as the best, for all the forbidding appearance; There is the mine, there are the miners; The forge-furnace is there, the melt is accomplished; the hammersmen are at hand with their tongs and hammers; What always served and always serves is at hand. Than this nothing has better served--it has served all: Served the fluent-tongued and subtle-sensed Greek, and long ere the Greek; Served in building the buildings that last longer than any; Served the Hebrew, the Persian, the most ancient Hindostanee; Served the mound-raiser on the Mississippi--served those whose relics remain in Central America; Served Albic temples in woods or on plains, with unhewn pillars, and the druids; Served the artificial clefts, vast, high, silent, on the snow-covered hills of Scandinavia; Served those who, time out of mind, made on the granite walls rough sketches of the sun, moon, stars, ships, ocean-waves; Served the paths of the irruptions of the Goths--served the pastoral tribes and nomads; Served the long long distant Kelt--served the hardy pirates of the Baltic; Served, before any of those, the venerable and harmless men of Ethiopia; Served the making of helms for the galleys of pleasure, and the making of those for war; Served all great works on land, and all great works on the sea; For the mediaeval ages, and before the mediaeval ages; Served not the living only, then as now, but served the dead. 8. I see the European headsman; He stands masked, clothed in red, with huge legs and strong naked arms, And leans on a ponderous axe. Whom have you slaughtered lately, European headsman? Whose is that blood upon you, so wet and sticky? I see the clear sunsets of the martyrs; I see from the scaffolds the descending ghosts, Ghosts of dead lords, uncrowned ladies, impeached ministers, rejected kings, Rivals, traitors, poisoners, disgraced chieftains, and the rest. I see those who in any land have died for the good cause; The seed is spare, nevertheless the crop shall never run out; (Mind you, O foreign kings, O priests, the crop shall never run out.) I see the blood washed entirely away from the axe; Both blade and helve are clean; They spirt no more the blood of European nobles--they clasp no more the necks of queens. I see the headsman withdraw and become useless; I see the scaffold untrodden and mouldy--I see no longer any axe upon it; I see the mighty and friendly emblem of the power of my own race--the newest, largest race. 9. America! I do not vaunt my love for you; I have what I have. The axe leaps! The solid forest gives fluid utterances; They tumble forth, they rise and form, Hut, tent, landing, survey, Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade, Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, jamb, lath, panel, gable, Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition house, library, Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, shutter, turret, porch, Hoe, rake, pitchfork, pencil, waggon, staff, saw, jack-plane, mallet, wedge, rounce, Chair, tub, hoop, table, wicket, vane, sash, floor, Work-box, chest, stringed instrument, boat, frame, and what not, Capitols of States, and capitol of the nation of States, Long stately rows in avenues, hospitals for orphans, or for the poor or sick, Manhattan steamboats and clippers, taking the measure of all seas. The shapes arise! Shapes of the using of axes anyhow, and the users, and all that neighbours them, Cutters-down of wood, and haulers of it to the Penobscot or Kennebec, Dwellers in cabins among the Californian mountains, or by the little lakes, or on the Columbia, Dwellers south on the banks of the Gila or Rio Grande--friendly gatherings, the characters and fun, Dwellers up north in Minnesota and by the Yellowstone river--dwellers on coasts and off coasts, Seal-fishers, whalers, arctic seamen breaking passages through the ice. The shapes arise! Shapes of factories, arsenals, foundries, markets; Shapes of the two-threaded tracks of railroads; Shapes of the sleepers of bridges, vast frameworks, girders, arches; Shapes of the fleets of barges, tows, lake craft, river craft. The shapes arise! Shipyards and dry-docks along the Eastern and Western Seas, and in many a bay and by-place, The live-oak kelsons, the pine-planks, the spars, the hackmatack-roots for knees, The ships themselves on their ways, the tiers of scaffolds, the workmen busy outside and inside, The tools lying around, the great auger and little auger, the adze, bolt, line, square, gouge, and bead-plane. 10. The shapes arise! The shape measured, sawed, jacked, joined, stained, The coffin-shape for the dead to lie within in his shroud; The shape got out in posts, in the bedstead posts, in the posts of the bride's bed; The shape of the little trough, the shape of the rockers beneath, the shape of the babe's cradle; The shape of the floor-planks, the floor-planks for dancers' feet; The shape of the planks of the family home, the home of the friendly parents and children, The shape of the roof of the home of the happy young man and woman, the roof over the well-married young man and woman, The roof over the supper joyously cooked by the chaste wife, and joyously eaten by the chaste husband, content after his day's work. The shapes arise! The shape of the prisoner's place in the court-room, and of him or her seated in the place; The shape of the liquor-bar leaned against by the young rum-drinker and the old rum-drinker; The shape of the shamed and angry stairs, trod, by sneaking footsteps; The shape of the sly settee, and the adulterous unwholesome couple; The shape of the gambling-board with its devilish winnings and losings; The shape of the step-ladder for the convicted and sentenced murderer, the murderer with haggard face and pinioned arms, The sheriff at hand with his deputies, the silent and white-lipped crowd, the sickening dangling of the rope. The shapes arise! Shapes of doors giving many exits and entrances; The door passing the dissevered friend, flushed and in haste; The door that admits good news and bad news; The door whence the son left home, confident and puffed up; The door he entered again from a long and scandalous absence, diseased, broken down, without innocence, without means. 11. Her shape arises, She less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than ever; The gross and soiled she moves among do not make her gross and soiled; She knows the thoughts as she passes--nothing is concealed from her; She is none the less considerate or friendly therefor; She is the best beloved--it is without exception--she has no reason to fear, and she does not fear; Oaths, quarrels, hiccupped songs, smutty expressions, are idle to her as she passes; She is silent--she is possessed of herself--they do not offend her; She receives them as the laws of nature receive them--she is strong, She too is a law of nature--there is no law stronger than she is. 12. The main shapes arise! Shapes of Democracy, total result of centuries; Shapes, ever projecting other shapes; Shapes of a hundred Free States, begetting another hundred; Shapes of turbulent manly cities; Shapes of the women fit for these States, Shapes of the friends and home-givers of the whole earth, Shapes bracing the earth, and braced with the whole earth. _ANTECEDENTS._ 1. With antecedents; With my fathers and mothers, and the accumulations of past ages: With all which, had it not been, I would not now be here, as I am; With Egypt, India, Phoenicia, Greece, and Rome; With the Kelt, the Scandinavian, the Alb, and the Saxon; With antique maritime ventures,--with laws, artisanship, wars, and journeys; With the poet, the skald, the saga, the myth, and the oracle; With the sale of slaves--with enthusiasts--with the troubadour, the crusader, and the monk; With those old continents whence we have come to this new continent; With the fading kingdoms and kings over there; With the fading religions and priests; With the small shores we look back to from our own large and present shores; With countless years drawing themselves onward, and arrived at these years; You and Me arrived--America arrived, and making this year; This year! sending itself ahead countless years to come. 2. O but it is not the years--it is I--it is You; We touch all laws, and tally all antecedents; We are the skald, the oracle, the monk, and the knight--we easily include them, and more; We stand amid time, beginningless and endless--we stand amid evil and good; All swings around us--there is as much darkness as light; The very sun swings itself and its system of planets around us: Its sun, and its again, all swing around us. 3. As for me, (torn, stormy, even as I, amid these vehement days;) I have the idea of all, and am all, and believe in all; I believe materialism is true, and spiritualism is true--I reject no part. Have I forgotten any part? Come to me, whoever and whatever, till I give you recognition. I respect Assyria, China, Teutonia, and the Hebrews; I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demi-god; I see that the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true, without exception; I assert that all past days were what they should have been; And that they could nohow have been better than they were, And that to-day is what it should be--and that America is, And that to-day and America could nohow be better than they are. 4. In the name of these States, and in your and my name, the Past, And in the name of these States, and in your and my name, the Present time. I know that the past was great, and the future will be great, And I know that both curiously conjoint in the present time, For the sake of him I typify--for the common average man's sake--your sake, if you are he; And that where I am, or you are, this present day, there is the centre of all days, all races, And there is the meaning, to us, of all that has ever come of races and days, or ever will come. _SALUT AU MONDE!_ 1. O take my hand, Walt Whitman! Such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds! Such joined unended links, each hooked to the next! Each answering all--each sharing the earth with all. What widens within you, Walt Whitman? What waves and soils exuding? What climes? what persons and lands are here? Who are the infants? some playing, some slumbering? Who are the girls? who are the married women? Who are the three old men going slowly with their arms about each others' necks? What rivers are these? what forests and fruits are these? What are the mountains called that rise so high in the mists? What myriads of dwellings are they, filled with dwellers? 2. Within me latitude widens, longitude lengthens; Asia, Africa, Europe, are to the east--America is provided for in the west; Banding the bulge of the earth winds the hot equator, Curiously north and south turn the axis-ends; Within me is the longest day--the sun wheels in slanting rings--it does not set for months. Stretched in due time within me the midnight sun just rises above the horizon, and sinks again; Within me zones, seas, cataracts, plants, volcanoes, groups, Malaysia, Polynesia, and the great West Indian islands. 3. What do you hear, Walt Whitman? I hear the workman singing, and the farmer's wife singing; I hear in the distance the sounds of children, and of animals early in the day; I hear quick rifle-cracks from the riflemen of East Tennessee and Kentucky, hunting on hills; I hear emulous shouts of Australians, pursuing the wild horse; I hear the Spanish dance, with castanets, in the chestnut shade, to the rebeck and guitar; I hear continual echoes from the Thames; I hear fierce French liberty songs; I hear of the Italian boat-sculler the musical recitative of old poems; I hear the Virginian plantation chorus of negroes, of a harvest night, in the glare of pine-knots; I hear the strong barytone of the 'long-shore-men of Mannahatta; I hear the stevedores unlading the cargoes, and singing; I hear the screams of the water-fowl of solitary north-west lakes; I hear the rustling pattering of locusts, as they strike the grain and grass with the showers of their terrible clouds; I hear the Coptic refrain, toward sundown, pensively falling on the breast of the black venerable vast mother, the Nile; I hear the bugles of raft-tenders on the streams of Canada; I hear the chirp of the Mexican muleteer, and the bells of the mule; I hear the Arab muezzin, calling from the top of the mosque; I hear the Christian priests at the altars of their churches--I hear the responsive bass and soprano; I hear the wail of utter despair of the white-haired Irish grandparents, when they learn the death of their grandson; I hear the cry of the Cossack, and the sailor's voice, putting to sea at Okotsk; I hear the wheeze of the slave-coffle, as the slaves march on--as the husky gangs pass on by twos and threes, fastened together with wrist- chains and ankle-chains; I hear the entreaties of women tied up for punishment--I hear the sibilant whisk of thongs through the air; I hear the Hebrew reading his records and psalms; I hear the rhythmic myths of the Greeks, and the strong legends of the Romans; I hear the tale of the divine life and bloody death of the beautiful God, the Christ; I hear the Hindoo teaching his favourite pupil the loves, wars, adages, transmitted safely to this day from poets who wrote three thousand years ago. 4. What do you see, Walt Whitman? Who are they you salute, and that one after another salute you? I see a great round wonder rolling through the air: I see diminute farms, hamlets, ruins, grave-yards, jails, factories, palaces, hovels, huts of barbarians, tents of nomads, upon the surface; I see the shaded part on one side, where the sleepers are sleeping--and the sun-lit part on the other side; I see the curious silent change of the light and shade; I see distant lands, as real and near to the inhabitants of them as my land is to me. I see plenteous waters; I see mountain-peaks--I see the sierras of Andes and Alleghanies, where they range; I see plainly the Himalayas, Chian Shahs, Altays, Ghauts; I see the Rocky Mountains, and the Peak of Winds; I see the Styrian Alps, and the Karnac Alps; I see the Pyrenees, Balks, Carpathians--and to the north the Dofrafields, and off at sea Mount Hecla; I see Vesuvius and Etna--I see the Anahuacs; I see the Mountains of the Moon, and the Snow Mountains, and the Red Mountains of Madagascar; I see the Vermont hills, and the long string of Cordilleras; I see the vast deserts of Western America; I see the Libyan, Arabian, and Asiatic deserts; I see huge dreadful Arctic and Anarctic icebergs; I see the superior oceans and the inferior ones--the Atlantic and Pacific, the sea of Mexico, the Brazilian sea, and the sea of Peru, The Japan waters, those of Hindostan, the China Sea, and the Gulf of Guinea, The spread of the Baltic, Caspian, Bothnia, the British shores, and the Bay of Biscay, The clear-sunned Mediterranean, and from one to another of its islands, The inland fresh-tasted seas of North America, The White Sea, and the sea around Greenland. I behold the mariners of the world; Some are in storms--some in the night, with the watch on the look-out; Some drifting helplessly--some with contagious diseases. I behold the sail and steam ships of the world, some in clusters in port, some on their voyages; Some double the Cape of Storms--some Cape Verde,--others Cape Guardafui, Bon, or Bajadore; Others Dondra Head--others pass the Straits of Sunda--others Cape Lopatka-- others Behring's Straits; Others Cape Horn--others the Gulf of Mexico, or along Cuba or Hayti--others Hudson's Bay or Baffin's Bay; Others pass the Straits of Dover--others enter the Wash--others the Firth of Solway--others round Cape Clear--others the Land's End; Others traverse the Zuyder Zee, or the Scheld; Others add to the exits and entrances at Sandy Hook; Others to the comers and goers at Gibraltar, or the Dardanelles; Others sternly push their way through the northern winter-packs; Others descend or ascend the Obi or the Lena: Others the Niger or the Congo--others the Indus, the Burampooter and Cambodia; Others wait at the wharves of Manhattan, steamed up, ready to start; Wait, swift and swarthy, in the ports of Australia; Wait at Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, Marseilles, Lisbon, Naples, Hamburg, Bremen, Bordeaux, the Hague, Copenhagen; Wait at Valparaiso, Rio Janeiro, Panama; Wait at their moorings at Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans, Galveston, San Francisco. 5. I see the tracks of the railroads of the earth; I see them welding State to State, city to city, through North America; I see them in Great Britain, I see them in Europe; I see them in Asia and in Africa. I see the electric telegraphs of the earth; I see the filaments of the news of the wars, deaths, losses, gains, passions, of my race. I see the long river-stripes of the earth; I see where the Mississippi flows--I see where the Columbia flows; I see the Great River, and the Falls of Niagara; I see the Amazon and the Paraguay; I see the four great rivers of China, the Amour, the Yellow River, the Yiang-tse, and the Pearl; I see where the Seine flows, and where the Loire, the Rhone, and the Guadalquivir flow; I see the windings of the Volga, the Dnieper, the Oder; I see the Tuscan going down the Arno, and the Venetian along the Po; I see the Greek seaman sailing out of Egina bay. 6. I see the site of the old empire of Assyria, and that of Persia, and that of India; I see the falling of the Ganges over the high rim of Saukara. I see the place of the idea of the Deity incarnated by avatars in human forms; I see the spots of the successions of priests on the earth--oracles, sacrificers, brahmins, sabians, lamas, monks, muftis, exhorters; I see where druids walked the groves of Mona--I see the mistletoe and vervain; I see the temples of the deaths of the bodies of Gods--I see the old signifiers. I see Christ once more eating the bread of His last supper, in the midst of youths and old persons: I see where the strong divine young man, the Hercules, toiled faithfully and long, and then died; I see the place of the innocent rich life and hapless fate of the beautiful nocturnal son, the full-limbed Bacchus; I see Kneph, blooming, drest in blue, with the crown of feathers on his head; I see Hermes, unsuspected, dying, well-beloved, saying to the people, _Do not weep for me, This is not my true country, I have lived banished from my true country--I now go back there, I return to the celestial sphere, where every one goes in his turn_. 7. I see the battlefields of the earth--grass grows upon them, and blossoms and corn; I see the tracks of ancient and modern expeditions. I see the nameless masonries, venerable messages of the unknown events, heroes, records of the earth; I see the places of the sagas; I see pine-trees and fir-frees torn by northern blasts; I see granite boulders and cliffs--I see green meadows and lakes; I see the burial-cairns of Scandinavian warriors; I see them raised high with stones, by the marge of restless oceans, that the dead men's spirits, when they wearied of their quiet graves, might rise up through the mounds, and gaze on the tossing billows, and be refreshed by storms, immensity, liberty, action. I see the steppes of Asia; I see the tumuli of Mongolia--I see the tents of Kalmucks and Baskirs; I see the nomadic tribes, with herds of oxen and cows; I see the table-lands notched with ravines--I see the jungles and deserts; I see the camel, the wild steed, the bustard, the fat-tailed sheep, the antelope, and the burrowing-wolf. I see the highlands of Abyssinia; I see flocks of goats feeding, and see the fig-tree, tamarind, date, And see fields of teff-wheat, and see the places of verdure and gold. I see the Brazilian vaquero; I see the Bolivian ascending Mount Sorata; I see the Wacho crossing the plains--I see the incomparable rider of horses with his lasso on his arm; I see over the pampas the pursuit of wild cattle for their hides. 8. I see little and large sea-dots, some inhabited, some uninhabited; I see two boats with nets, lying off the shore of Paumanok, quite still; I see ten fishermen waiting--they discover now a thick school of mossbonkers--they drop the joined sein-ends in the water, The boats separate--they diverge and row off, each on its rounding course to the beach, enclosing the mossbonkers; The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop ashore, Some of the fishermen lounge in their boats--others stand negligently ankle-deep in the water, poised on strong legs; The boats are partly drawn up--the water slaps against them; On the sand, in heaps and winrows, well out from the water, lie the green- backed spotted mossbonkers. 9. I see the despondent red man in the west, lingering about the banks of Moingo, and about Lake Pepin; He has heard the quail and beheld the honey-bee, and sadly prepared to depart. I see the regions of snow and ice; I see the sharp-eyed Samoiede and the Finn; I see the seal-seeker in his boat, poising his lance; I see the Siberian on his slight-built sledge, drawn by dogs; I see the porpess-hunters--I see the whale-crews of the South Pacific and the North Atlantic; I see the cliffs, glaciers, torrents, valleys, of Switzerland--I mark the long winters, and the isolation. I see the cities of the earth, and make myself at random a part of them; I am a real Parisian; I am a habitant of Vienna, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Constantinople; I am of Adelaide, Sidney, Melbourne; I am of London, Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh, Limerick, I am of Madrid, Cadiz, Barcelona, Oporto, Lyons, Brussels, Berne, Frankfort, Stuttgart, Turin, Florence; I belong in Moscow, Cracow, Warsaw--or northward in Christiania or Stockholm--or in Siberian Irkutsk--or in some street in Iceland; I descend upon all those cities, and rise from them again. 10. I see vapours exhaling from unexplored countries; I see the savage types, the bow and arrow, the poisoned splint, the fetish, and the obi. I see African and Asiatic towns; I see Algiers, Tripoli, Derne, Mogadore, Timbuctoo, Monrovia; I see the swarms of Pekin, Canton, Benares, Delhi, Calcutta, Yedo; I see the Kruman in his hut, and the Dahoman and Ashantee-man in their huts; I see the Turk smoking opium in Aleppo; I see the picturesque crowds at the fairs of Khiva, and those of Herat; I see Teheran--I see Muscat and Medina, and the intervening sands--I see the caravans toiling onward; I see Egypt and the Egyptians--I see the pyramids and obelisks; I look on chiselled histories, songs, philosophies, cut in slabs of sandstone or on granite blocks; I see at Memphis mummy-pits, containing mummies, embalmed, swathed in linen cloth, lying there many centuries; I look on the fallen Theban, the large-balled eyes, the side-drooping neck, the hands folded across the breast. I see the menials of the earth, labouring; I see the prisoners in the prisons; I see the defective human bodies of the earth; I see the blind, the deaf and dumb, idiots, hunchbacks, lunatics; I see the pirates, thieves, betrayers, murderers, slave-makers of the earth; I see the helpless infants, and the helpless old men and women. I see male and female everywhere; I see the serene brotherhood of philosophs; I see the constructiveness of my race; I see the results of the perseverance and industry of my race; I see ranks, colours, barbarisms, civilisations--I go among them--I mix indiscriminately, And I salute all the inhabitants of the earth. 11. You, where you are! You daughter or son of England! You of the mighty Slavic tribes and empires! you Russ in Russia! You dim-descended, black, divine-souled African, large, fine-headed, nobly-formed, superbly destined, on equal terms with me! You Norwegian! Swede! Dane! Icelander! you Prussian! You Spaniard of Spain! you Portuguese! You Frenchwoman and Frenchman of France! You Belge! you liberty-lover of the Netherlands! You sturdy Austrian! you Lombard! Hun! Bohemian! farmer of Styria! You neighbour of the Danube! You working-man of the Rhine, the Elbe, or the Weser! you working-woman too! You Sardinian! you Bavarian! Swabian! Saxon! Wallachian! Bulgarian! You citizen of Prague! Roman! Neapolitan! Greek! You lithe matador in the arena at Seville! You mountaineer living lawlessly on the Taurus or Caucasus! You Bokh horse-herd, watching your mares and stallions feeding! You beautiful-bodied Persian, at full speed in the saddle shooting arrows to the mark! You Chinaman and Chinawoman of China! you Tartar of Tartary! You women of the earth subordinated at your tasks! You Jew journeying in your old age through every risk, to stand once on Syrian ground! You other Jews waiting in all lands for your Messiah! You thoughtful Armenian, pondering by some stream of the Euphrates! you peering amid the ruins of Nineveh! you ascending Mount Ararat! You foot-worn pilgrim welcoming the far-away sparkle of the minarets of Mecca! You sheiks along the stretch from Suez to Babelmandeb, ruling your families and tribes! You olive-grower tending your fruit on fields of Nazareth, Damascus, or Lake Tiberias! You Thibet trader on the wide inland, or bargaining in the shops of Lassa! You Japanese man or woman! you liver in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra, Borneo! All you continentals of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, indifferent of place! All you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes of the sea! And you of centuries hence, when you listen to me! And you, each and everywhere, whom I specify not, but include just the same! Health to you! Goodwill to you all--from me and America sent. Each of us inevitable; Each of us limitless--each of us with his or her right upon the earth; Each of us allowed the eternal purports of the earth: Each of us here as divinely as any is here. 12. You Hottentot with clicking palate! You woolly-haired hordes! You owned persons, dropping sweat-drops or blood-drops! You human forms with the fathomless ever-impressive countenances of brutes! I dare not refuse you--the scope of the world, and of time and space, are upon me. You poor koboo whom the meanest of the rest look down upon, for all your glimmering language and spirituality! You low expiring aborigines of the hills of Utah, Oregon, California! You dwarfed Kamtschatkan, Greenlander, Lap! You Austral negro, naked, red, sooty, with protrusive lip, grovelling, seeking your food! You Caffre, Berber, Soudanese! You haggard, uncouth, untutored Bedowee! You plague-swarms in Madras, Nankin, Kaubul, Cairo! You bather bathing in the Ganges! You benighted roamer of Amazonia! you Patagonian! you Fejee-man! You peon of Mexico! you slave of Carolina, Texas, Tennessee! I do not prefer others so very much before you either; I do not say one word against you, away back there, where you stand; You will come forward in due time to my side. My spirit has passed in compassion and determination around the whole earth; I have looked for equals and lovers, and found them ready for me in all lands; I think some divine rapport has equalised me with them. 13. O vapours! I think I have risen with you, and moved away to distant continents, and fallen down there, for reasons; I think I have blown with you, O winds; O waters, I have fingered every shore with you. I have run through what any river or strait of the globe has run through; I have taken my stand on the bases of peninsulas, and on the highest embedded rocks, to cry thence. _Salut au Monde!_ What cities the light or warmth penetrates, I penetrate those cities myself; All islands to which birds wing their way, I wing my way myself. Toward all I raise high the perpendicular hand--I make the signal, To remain after me in sight for ever, For all the haunts and homes of men. _A BROADWAY PAGEANT._ (RECEPTION OF THE JAPANESE EMBASSY, JUNE 16, 1860.) 1. Over sea, hither from Niphon, Courteous, the Princes of Asia, swart-cheeked princes, First-comers, guests, two-sworded princes, Lesson-giving princes, leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive, This day they ride through Manhattan. 2. Libertad! I do not know whether others behold what I behold, In the procession, along with the Princes of Asia, the errand-bearers, Bringing up the rear, hovering above, around, or in the ranks marching; But I will sing you a song of what I behold, Libertad. 3. When million-footed Manhattan, unpent, descends to its pavements; When the thunder-cracking guns arouse me with the proud roar I love; When the round-mouthed guns, out of the smoke and smell I love, spit their salutes; When the fire-flashing guns have fully alerted me--when heaven-clouds canopy my city with a delicate thin haze; When, gorgeous, the countless straight stems, the forests at the wharves, thicken with colours; When every ship, richly dressed, carries her flag at the peak; When pennants trail, and street-festoons hang from the windows; When Broadway is entirely given up to foot-passengers and foot-standers-- when the mass is densest; When the façades of the houses are alive with people--when eyes gaze, riveted, tens of thousands at a time; When the guests from the islands advance--when the pageant moves forward, visible; When the summons is made--when the answer, that waited thousands of years, answers; I too, arising, answering, descend to the pavements, merge with the crowd, and gaze with them. 4. Superb-faced Manhattan! Comrade Americanos!--to us, then, at last, the Orient comes. To us, my city, Where our tall-topped marble and iron beauties range on opposite sides--to walk in the space between, To-day our Antipodes comes. The Originatress comes, The land of Paradise--land of the Caucasus--the nest of birth, The nest of languages, the bequeather of poems, the race of eld, Florid with blood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with passion, Sultry with perfume, with ample and flowing garments, With sunburnt visage, with intense soul and glittering eyes, The race of Brahma comes! See, my cantabile! these, and more, are flashing to us from the procession; As it moves changing, a kaleidoscope divine it moves changing before us. Not the errand-bearing princes, nor the tanned Japanee only; Lithe and silent, the Hindoo appears--the whole Asiatic continent itself appears--the Past, the dead, The murky night-morning of wonder and fable, inscrutable, The enveloped mysteries, the old and unknown hive-bees, The North--the sweltering South--Assyria--the Hebrews--the Ancient of ancients, Vast desolated cities--the gliding Present--all of these, and more, are in the pageant-procession. Geography, the world, is in it; The Great Sea, the brood of islands, Polynesia, the coast beyond; The coast you henceforth are facing--you Libertad! from your Western golden shores; The countries there, with their populations--the millions _en masse_, are curiously here; The swarming market-places--the temples, with idols ranged along the sides, or at the end--bronze, brahmin, and lama; The mandarin, farmer, merchant, mechanic, and fisherman; The singing-girl and the dancing-girl--the ecstatic person--the divine Buddha; The secluded Emperors--Confucius himself--the great poets and heroes--the warriors, the castes, all, Trooping up, crowding from all directions--from the Altay mountains, From Thibet--from the four winding and far-flowing rivers of China, From the Southern peninsulas, and the demi-continental islands--from Malaysia; These, and whatever belongs to them, palpable, show forth to me, and are seized by me, And I am seized by them, and friendlily held by them, Till, as here, them all I chant, Libertad! for themselves and for you. 5. For I too, raising my voice, join the ranks of this pageant; I am the chanter--I chant aloud over the pageant; I chant the world on my Western Sea; I chant, copious, the islands beyond, thick as stars in the sky; I chant the new empire, grander than any before--As in a vision it comes to me; I chant America, the Mistress--I chant a greater supremacy; I chant, projected, a thousand blooming cities yet, in time, on those groups of sea-islands; I chant my sail-ships and steam-ships threading the archipelagoes; I chant my stars and stripes fluttering in the wind; I chant commerce opening, the sleep of ages having done its work--races reborn, refreshed; Lives, works, resumed--The object I know not--but the old, the Asiatic, resumed, as it must be, Commencing from this day, surrounded by the world. And you, Libertad of the world! You shall sit in the middle, well-poised, thousands of years; As to-day, from one side, the Princes of Asia come to you; As to-morrow, from the other side, the Queen of England sends her eldest son to you. The sign is reversing, the orb is enclosed, The ring is circled, the journey is done; The box-lid is but perceptibly opened--nevertheless the perfume pours copiously out of the whole box. 6. Young Libertad! With the venerable Asia, the all-mother, Be considerate with her, now and ever, hot Libertad--for you are all; Bend your proud neck to the long-off mother, now sending messages over the archipelagoes to you: Bend your proud neck for once, young Libertad. 7. Were the children straying westward so long? so wide the tramping? Were the precedent dim ages debouching westward from Paradise so long? Were the centuries steadily footing it that way, all the while unknown, for you, for reasons? They are justified--they are accomplished--they shall now be turned the other way also, to travel toward you thence; They shall now also march obediently eastward, for your sake, Libertad. _OLD IRELAND._ 1. Far hence, amid an isle of wondrous beauty, Crouching over a grave, an ancient sorrowful mother, Once a queen--now lean and tattered, seated on the ground, Her old white hair drooping dishevelled round her shoulders; At her feet fallen an unused royal harp, Long silent--she too long silent--mourning her shrouded hope and heir; Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow, because most full of love. 2. Yet a word, ancient mother; You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground, with forehead between your knees; O you need not sit there, veiled in your old white hair, so dishevelled; For know you, the one you mourn is not in that grave; It was an illusion--the heir, the son you love, was not really dead; The Lord is not dead--he is risen again, young and strong, in another country; Even while you wept there by your fallen harp, by the grave, What you wept for was translated, passed from the grave, The winds favoured, and the sea sailed it, And now, with rosy and new blood, Moves to-day in a new country. _BOSTON TOWN._ 1. To get betimes in Boston town, I rose this morning early; Here's a good place at the corner--I must stand and see the show. 2. Clear the way there, Jonathan! Way for the President's marshal! Way for the government cannon! Way for the Federal foot and dragoons--and the apparitions copiously tumbling. I love to look on the stars and stripes--I hope the fifes will play "Yankee Doodle," How bright shine the cutlasses of the foremost troops! Every man holds his revolver, marching stiff through Boston town. 3. A fog follows--antiques of the same come limping, Some appear wooden-legged, and some appear bandaged and bloodless. Why this is indeed a show! It has called the dead out of the earth! The old graveyards of the hills have hurried to see! Phantoms! phantoms countless by flank and rear! Cocked hats of mothy mould! crutches made of mist! Arms in slings! old men leaning on young men's shoulders! What troubles you, Yankee phantoms? What is all this chattering of bare gums? Does the ague convulse your limbs? Do you mistake your crutches for firelocks, and level them? If you blind your eyes with tears, you will not see the President's marshal; If you groan such groans, you might baulk the government cannon. For shame, old maniacs! Bring down those tossed arms, and let your white hair be; Here gape your great grandsons--their wives gaze at them from the windows, See how well-dressed--see how orderly they conduct themselves. Worse and worse! Can't you stand it? Are you retreating? Is this hour with the living too dead for you? Retreat then! Pell-mell! To your graves! Back! back to the hills, old limpers! I do not think you belong here, anyhow. 4. But there is one thing that belongs here--shall I tell you what it is, gentlemen of Boston? I will whisper it to the Mayor--He shall send a committee to England; They shall get a grant from the Parliament, go with a cart to the royal vault--haste! Dig out King George's coffin, unwrap him quick from the grave-clothes, box up his bones for a journey; Find a swift Yankee clipper--here is freight for you, black-bellied clipper, Up with your anchor! shake out your sails! steer straight toward Boston bay. 5. Now call for the President's marshal again, bring out the government cannon, Fetch home the roarers from Congress,--make another procession, guard it with foot and dragoons. This centre-piece for them! Look, all orderly citizens! Look from the windows, women! The committee open the box; set up the regal ribs; glue those that will not stay; Clap the skull on top of the ribs, and clap a crown on top of the skull. You have got your revenge, old bluster! The crown is come to its own, and more than its own. 6. Stick your hands in your pockets, Jonathan--you are a made man from this day; You are mighty 'cute--and here is one of your bargains. _FRANCE, THE EIGHTEENTH YEAR OF THESE STATES._[1] 1. A great year and place; A harsh, discordant, natal scream out-sounding, to touch the mother's heart closer than any yet. 2. I walked the shores of my Eastern Sea, Heard over the waves the little voice, Saw the divine infant, where she woke, mournfully wailing, amid the roar of cannon, curses, shouts, crash of falling buildings; Was not so sick from the blood in the gutters running--nor from the single corpses, nor those in heaps, nor those borne away in the tumbrils; Was not so desperate at the battues of death--was not so shocked at the repeated fusillades of the guns. Pale, silent, stern, what could I say to that long-accrued retribution? Could I wish humanity different? Could I wish the people made of wood and stone? Or that there be no justice in destiny or time? 3. O Liberty! O mate for me! Here too the blaze, the bullet, and the axe, in reserve to fetch them out in case of need, Here too, though long repressed, can never be destroyed; Here too could rise at last, murdering and ecstatic; Here too demanding full arrears of vengeance. Hence I sign this salute over the sea, And I do not deny that terrible red birth and baptism, But remember the little voice that I heard wailing--and wait with perfect trust, no matter how long; And from to-day, sad and cogent, I maintain the bequeathed cause, as for all lands, And I send these words to Paris with my love, And I guess some _chansonniers_ there will understand them, For I guess there is latent music yet in France--floods of it. O I hear already the bustle of instruments--they will soon be drowning all that would interrupt them; O I think the east wind brings a triumphal and free march, It reaches hither--it swells me to joyful madness, I will run transpose it in words, to justify it, I will yet sing a song for you, _ma femme!_ [Footnote 1: 1793-4---The great poet of Democracy is "not so shocked" at the great European year of Democracy.] _EUROPE, THE SEVENTY-SECOND AND SEVENTY-THIRD YEARS OF THESE STATES._[1] 1. Suddenly, out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves, Like lightning it leaped forth, half startled at itself, Its feet upon the ashes and the rags--its hands tight to the throats of kings. O hope and faith! O aching close of exiled patriots' lives! O many a sickened heart! Turn back unto this day, and make yourselves afresh. 2. And you, paid to defile the People! you liars, mark! Not for numberless agonies, murders, lusts, For court thieving in its manifold mean forms, worming from his simplicity the poor man's wages, For many a promise sworn by royal lips, and broken, and laughed at in the breaking, Then in their power, not for all these did the blows strike revenge, or the heads of the nobles fall; The People scorned the ferocity of kings. 3. But the sweetness of mercy brewed bitter destruction, and the frightened rulers come back; Each comes in state with his train--hangman, priest, tax-gatherer, Soldier, lawyer, lord, jailer, and sycophant. 4. Yet behind all, lowering, stealing--lo, a Shape, Vague as the night, draped interminably, head, front, and form, in scarlet folds, Whose face and eyes none may see: Out of its robes only this--the red robes, lifted by the arm-- One finger crooked, pointed high over the top, like the head of a snake appears. 5. Meanwhile, corpses lie in new-made graves--bloody corpses of young men; The rope of the gibbet hangs heavily, the bullets of princes are flying, the creatures of power laugh aloud, And all these things bear fruits--and they are good. Those corpses of young men, Those martyrs that hang from the gibbets--those hearts pierced by the grey lead, Cold and motionless as they seem, live elsewhere with unslaughtered vitality. They live in other young men, O kings! They live in brothers, again ready to defy you! They were purified by death--they were taught and exalted. Not a grave of the murdered for freedom but grows seed for freedom, in its turn to bear seed, Which the winds carry afar and resow, and the rains and the snows nourish. Not a disembodied spirit can the weapons of tyrants let loose, But it stalks invisibly over the earth, whispering, counselling, cautioning. 6. Liberty! let others despair of you! I never despair of you. Is the house shut? Is the master away? Nevertheless, be ready--be not weary of watching: He will soon return--his messengers come anon. [Footnote 1: The years 1848 and 1849.] _TO A FOILED REVOLTER OR REVOLTRESS._ 1. Courage! my brother or my sister! Keep on! Liberty is to be subserved, whatever occurs; That is nothing that is quelled by one or two failures, or any number of failures, Or by the indifference or ingratitude of the people, or by any unfaithfulness, Or the show of the tushes of power, soldiers, cannon, penal statutes. 2. What we believe in waits latent for ever through all the continents, and all the islands and archipelagoes of the sea. What we believe in invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is positive and composed, knows no discouragement, Waiting patiently, waiting its time. 3. The battle rages with many a loud alarm, and frequent advance and retreat, The infidel triumphs--or supposes he triumphs, The prison, scaffold, garrote, handcuffs, iron necklace and anklet, lead- balls, do their work, The named and unnamed heroes pass to other spheres, The great speakers and writers are exiled--they lie sick in distant lands, The cause is asleep--the strongest throats are still, choked with their own blood, The young men drop their eyelashes toward the ground when they meet; But, for all this, Liberty has not gone out of the place, nor the infidel entered into possession. When Liberty goes out of a place, it is not the first to go, nor the second or third to go, It waits for all the rest to go--it is the last. When there are no more memories of heroes and martyrs, And when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth, Then only shall Liberty be discharged from that part of the earth, And the infidel and the tyrant come into possession. 4. Then courage! revolter! revoltress! For till all ceases neither must you cease. 5. I do not know what you are for, (I do not know what I am for myself, nor what anything is for,) But I will search carefully for it even in being foiled, In defeat, poverty, imprisonment--for they too are great. Did we think victory great? So it is--But now it seems to me, when it cannot be helped, that defeat is great, And that death and dismay are great. _DRUM TAPS._ _MANHATTAN ARMING._ 1. First, O songs, for a prelude, Lightly strike on the stretched tympanum, pride and joy in my city, How she led the rest to arms--how she gave the cue, How at once with lithe limbs, unwaiting a moment, she sprang; O superb! O Manhattan, my own, my peerless! O strongest you in the hour of danger, in crisis! O truer than steel! How you sprang! how you threw off the costumes of peace with indifferent hand; How your soft opera-music changed, and the drum and fife were heard in their stead; How you led to the war, (that shall serve for our prelude, songs of soldiers,) How Manhattan drum-taps led. 2. Forty years had I in my city seen soldiers parading; Forty years as a pageant--till unawares, the Lady of this teeming and turbulent city, Sleepless, amid her ships, her houses, her incalculable wealth, With her million children around her--suddenly, At dead of night, at news from the South, Incensed, struck with clenched hand the pavement. A shock electric--the night sustained it; Till, with ominous hum, our hive at daybreak poured out its myriads. From the houses then, and the workshops, and through all the doorways, Leaped they tumultuous--and lo! Manhattan arming. 3. To the drum-taps prompt, The young men falling in and arming; The mechanics arming, the trowel, the jack-plane, the black-smith's hammer, tossed aside with precipitation; The lawyer leaving his office, and arming--the judge leaving the court; The driver deserting his waggon in the street, jumping down, throwing the reins abruptly down on the horses' backs; The salesman leaving the store--the boss, book-keeper, porter, all leaving; Squads gathering everywhere by common consent, and arming; The new recruits, even boys--the old men show them how to wear their accoutrements--they buckle the straps carefully; Outdoors arming--indoors arming--the flash of the musket-barrels; The white tents cluster in camps--the armed sentries around--the sunrise cannon, and again at sunset; Armed regiments arrive every day, pass through the city, and embark from the wharves; How good they look, as they tramp down to the river, sweaty, with their guns on their shoulders! How I love them! how I could hug them, with their brown faces, and their clothes and knapsacks covered with dust! The blood of the city up--armed! armed! the cry everywhere; The flags flung out from the steeples of churches, and from all the public buildings and stores; The tearful parting--the mother kisses her son--the son kisses his mother; Loth is the mother to part--yet not a word does she speak to detain him; The tumultuous escort--the ranks of policemen preceding, clearing the way; The unpent enthusiasm--the wild cheers of the crowd for their favourites; The artillery--the silent cannons, bright as gold, drawn along, rumble lightly over the stones; Silent cannons--soon to cease your silence, Soon, unlimbered, to begin the red business! All the mutter of preparation--all the determined arming; The hospital service--the lint, bandages, and medicines; The women volunteering for nurses--the work begun for, in earnest--no mere parade now; War! an armed race is advancing!--the welcome for battle--no turning away; War! be it weeks, months, or years--an armed race is advancing to welcome it. 4. Mannahatta a-march!--and it's O to sing it well! It's O for a manly life in the camp! 5. And the sturdy artillery! The guns, bright as gold--the work for giants--to serve well the guns: Unlimber them! no more, as the past forty years, for salutes for courtesies merely; Put in something else now besides powder and wadding. 6. And you, Lady of Ships! you, Mannahatta! Old matron of the city! this proud, friendly, turbulent city! Often in peace and wealth you were pensive, or covertly frowned amid all your children; But now you smile with joy, exulting old Mannahatta! _1861._ Armed year! year of the struggle! No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you, terrible year! Not you as some pale poetling, seated at a desk, lisping cadenzas piano; But as a strong man, erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing, carrying a rifle on your shoulder, With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands--with a knife in the belt at your side, As I heard you shouting loud--your sonorous voice ringing across the continent; Your masculine voice, O year, as rising amid the great cities, Amid the men of Manhattan I saw you, as one of the workmen, the dwellers in Manhattan; Or with large steps crossing the prairies out of Illinois and Indiana, Rapidly crossing the West with springy gait, and descending the Alleghanies; Or down from the great lakes, or in Pennsylvania, or on deck along the Ohio river; Or southward along the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers, or at Chattanooga on the mountain-top, Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs, clothed in blue, bearing weapons, robust year; Heard your determined voice, launched forth again and again; Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipped cannon, I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year. _THE UPRISING._ 1. Rise, O days, from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier and fiercer sweep! Long for my soul, hungering gymnastic, I devoured what the earth gave me; Long I roamed the woods of the North--long I watched Niagara pouring; I travelled the prairies over, and slept on their breast--I crossed the Nevadas, I crossed the plateaus; I ascended the towering rocks along the Pacific, I sailed out to sea; I sailed through the storm, I was refreshed by the storm; I watched with joy the threatening maws of the waves; I marked the white combs where they careered so high, curling over; I heard the wind piping, I saw the black clouds; Saw from below what arose and mounted, (O superb! O wild as my heart, and powerful!) Heard the continuous thunder, as it bellowed after the lightning; Noted the slender and jagged threads of lightning, as sudden and fast amid the din they chased each other across the sky; --These, and such as these, I, elate, saw--saw with wonder, yet pensive and masterful; All the menacing might of the globe uprisen around me; Yet there with my soul I fed--I fed content, supercilious. 2. 'Twas well, O soul! 'twas a good preparation you gave me! Now we advance our latent and ampler hunger to fill; Now we go forth to receive what the earth and the sea never gave us; Not through the mighty woods we go, but through the mightier cities; Something for us is pouring now, more than Niagara pouring; Torrents of men, (sources and rills of the North-west, are you indeed inexhaustible?) What, to pavements and homesteads here--what were those storms of the mountains and sea? What, to passions I witness around me to-day, was the sea risen? Was the wind piping the pipe of death under the black clouds? Lo! from deeps more unfathomable, something more deadly and savage; Manhattan, rising, advancing with menacing front--Cincinnati, Chicago, unchained; --What was that swell I saw on the ocean? behold what comes here! How it climbs with daring feet and hands! how it dashes! How the true thunder bellows after the lightning! how bright the flashes of lightning! How DEMOCRACY with desperate vengeful port strides on, shown through the dark by those flashes of lightning! Yet a mournful wail and low sob I fancied I heard through the dark, In a lull of the deafening confusion. 3. Thunder on! stride on, Democracy! strike with vengeful stroke! And do you rise higher than ever yet, O days, O cities! Crash heavier, heavier yet, O storms! you have done me good; My soul, prepared in the mountains, absorbs your immortal strong nutriment. Long had I walked my cities, my country roads, through farms, only half satisfied; One doubt, nauseous, undulating like a snake, crawled on the ground before me, Continually preceding my steps, turning upon me oft, ironically hissing low; --The cities I loved so well I abandoned and left--I sped to the certainties suitable to me Hungering, hungering, hungering, for primal energies, and Nature's dauntlessness, I refreshed myself with it only, I could relish it only; I waited the bursting forth of the pent fire--on the water and air I waited long. --But now I no longer wait--I am fully satisfied--I am glutted; I have witnessed the true lightning--I have witnessed my cities electric; I have lived to behold man burst forth, and warlike America rise; Hence I will seek no more the food of the northern solitary wilds, No more on the mountains roam, or sail the stormy sea. _BEAT! BEAT! DRUMS!_ 1. Beat! beat! drums!--Blow! bugles! blow! Through the windows--through doors--burst like a force of ruthless men, Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation; Into the school where the scholar is studying: Leave not the bridegroom quiet--no happiness must he have now with his bride; Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or gathering his grain; So fierce you whirr and pound, you drums--so shrill you bugles blow. 2. Beat! beat! drums!--Blow! bugles! blow! Over the traffic of cities--over the rumble of wheels in the streets: Are beds prepared, for sleepers at night in the houses? No sleepers must sleep in those beds; No bargainers' bargains by day--no brokers or speculators--Would they continue? Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing? Would the lawyer rise in the court to state his case before the judge? Then rattle quicker, heavier, drums--you bugles wilder blow. 3. Beat! beat! drums!--Blow! bugles! blow! Make no parley--stop for no expostulation; Mind not the timid--mind not the weeper or prayer; Mind not the old man beseeching the young man; Let not the child's voice be heard, nor the mother's entreaties; Make even the trestles to shake the dead, where they lie awaiting the hearses, So strong you thump, O terrible drums--so loud you bugles blow. _SONG OF THE BANNER AT DAYBREAK._ POET. O a new song, a free song, Flapping, flapping, flapping, flapping, by sounds, by voices clearer, By the wind's voice and that of the drum, By the banner's voice, and child's voice, and sea's voice, and father's voice, Low on the ground and high in the air, On the ground where father and child stand, In the upward air where their eyes turn, Where the banner at daybreak is flapping. Words! book-words! what are you? Words no more, for hearken and see, My song is there in the open air--and I must sing, With the banner and pennant a-flapping. I'll weave the chord and twine in, Man's desire and babe's desire--I'll twine them in, I'll put in life; I'll put the bayonet's flashing point--I'll let bullets and slugs whizz; I'll pour the verse with streams of blood, full of volition, full of joy; Then loosen, launch forth, to go and compete, With the banner and pennant a-flapping. BANNER AND PENNANT. Come up here, bard, bard; Come up here, soul, soul; Come up here, dear little child, To fly in the clouds and winds with us, and play with the measureless light. CHILD. Father, what is that in the sky beckoning to me with long finger? And what does it say to me all the while? FATHER. Nothing, my babe, you see in the sky; And nothing at all to you it says. But look you, my babe, Look at these dazzling things in the houses, and see you the money-shops opening; And see you the vehicles preparing to crawl along the streets with goods: These! ah, these! how valued and toiled for, these! How envied by all the earth! POET. Fresh and rosy red, the sun is mounting high; On floats the sea in distant blue, careering through its channels; On floats the wind over the breast of the sea, setting in toward land; The great steady wind from west and west-by-south, Floating so buoyant, with milk-white foam on the waters. But I am not the sea, nor the red sun; I am not the wind, with girlish laughter; Not the immense wind which strengthens--not the wind which lashes; Not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and death: But I am of that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings, Which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land; Which the birds know in the woods, mornings and evenings, And the shore-sands know, and the hissing wave, and that banner and pennant, Aloft there flapping and flapping. CHILD. O father, it is alive--it is full of people--it has children! O now it seems to me it is talking to its children! I hear it--it talks to me--O it is wonderful! O it stretches--it spreads and runs so fast! O my father, It is so broad it covers the whole sky! FATHER. Cease, cease, my foolish babe, What you are saying is sorrowful to me--much it displeases me; Behold with the rest, again I say--behold not banners and pennants aloft; But the well-prepared pavements behold--and mark the solid-walled houses. BANNER AND PENNANT. Speak to the child, O bard, out of Manhattan; Speak to our children all, or north or south of Manhattan, Where our factory-engines hum, where our miners delve the ground, Where our hoarse Niagara rumbles, where our prairie-ploughs are ploughing; Speak, O bard! point this day, leaving all the rest, to us over all--and yet we know not why; For what are we, mere strips of cloth, profiting nothing, Only flapping in the wind? POET. I hear and see not strips of cloth alone; I hear the tramp of armies, I hear the challenging sentry; I hear the jubilant shouts of millions of men--I hear LIBERTY! I hear the drums beat, and the trumpets blowing; I myself move abroad, swift-rising, flying then; I use the wings of the land-bird, and use the wings of the sea-bird, and look down as from a height. I do not deny the precious results of peace--I see populous cities, with wealth incalculable; I see numberless farms--I see the farmers working in their fields or barns; I see mechanics working--I see buildings everywhere founded, going up, or finished; I see trains of cars swiftly speeding along railroad tracks, drawn by the locomotives; I see the stores, depots, of Boston, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans; I see far in the west the immense area of grain--I dwell a while, hovering; I pass to the lumber forests of the north, and again to the southern plantation, and again to California; Sweeping the whole, I see the countless profit, the busy gatherings, earned wages; See the identity formed out of thirty-six spacious and haughty States, (and many more to come;) See forts on the shores of harbours--see ships sailing in and out; Then over all, (aye! aye!) my little and lengthened pennant shaped like a sword Runs swiftly up, indicating war and defiance--And now the halyards have raised it, Side of my banner broad and blue--side of my starry banner, Discarding peace over all the sea and land. BANNER AND PENNANT. Yet louder, higher, stronger, bard! yet farther, wider cleave! No longer let our children deem us riches and peace alone; We can be terror and carnage also, and are so now. Not now are we one of these spacious and haughty States, (nor any five, nor ten;) Nor market nor depot are we, nor money-bank in the city; But these, and all, and the brown and spreading land, and the mines below, are ours; And the shores of the sea are ours, and the rivers great and small; And the fields they moisten are ours, and the crops, and the fruits are ours; Bays and channels, and ships sailing in and out, are ours--and we over all, Over the area spread below, the three millions of square miles--the capitals, The thirty-five millions of people--O bard! in life and death supreme, We, even we, from this day flaunt out masterful, high up above, Not for the present alone, for a thousand years, chanting through you This song to the soul of one poor little child. CHILD. O my father, I like not the houses; They will never to me be anything--nor do I like money! But to mount up there I would like, O father dear--that banner I like; That pennant I would be, and must be. FATHER. Child of mine, you fill me with anguish, To be that pennant would be too fearful; Little you know what it is this day, and henceforth for ever; It is to gain nothing, but risk and defy everything; Forward to stand in front of wars--and O, such wars!--what have you to do with them? With passions of demons, slaughter, premature death? POET. Demons and death then I sing; Put in all, aye all, will I--sword-shaped pennant for war, and banner so broad and blue, And a pleasure new and ecstatic, and the prattled yearning of children, Blent with the sounds of the peaceful land, and the liquid wash of the sea; And the icy cool of the far, far north, with rustling cedars and pines; And the whirr of drums, and the sound of soldiers marching, and the hot sun shining south; And the beach-waves combing over the beach on my eastern shore, and my western shore the same; And all between those shores, and my ever-running Mississippi, with bends and chutes; And my Illinois fields, and my Kansas fields, and my fields of Missouri; The CONTINENT--devoting the whole identity, without reserving an atom, Pour in! whelm that which asks, which sings, with all, and the yield of all. BANNER AND PENNANT. Aye all! for ever, for all! From sea to sea, north and south, east and west, Fusing and holding, claiming, devouring the whole; No more with tender lip, nor musical labial sound, But out of the night emerging for good, our voice persuasive no more, Croaking like crows here in the wind. POET. My limbs, my veins dilate; The blood of the world has filled me full--my theme is clear at last. --Banner so broad, advancing out of the night, I sing you haughty and resolute; I burst through where I waited long, too long, deafened and blinded; My sight, my hearing and tongue, are come to me, (a little child taught me;) I hear from above, O pennant of war, your ironical call and demand; Insensate! insensate! yet I at any rate chant you, O banner! Not houses of peace are you, nor any nor all their prosperity; if need be, you shall have every one of those houses to destroy them; You thought not to destroy those valuable houses, standing fast, full of comfort, built with money; May they stand fast, then? Not an hour, unless you, above them and all, stand fast. --O banner! not money so precious are you, nor farm produce you, nor the material good nutriment, Nor excellent stores, nor landed on wharves from the ships; Not the superb ships, with sail-power or steam-power, fetching and carrying cargoes, Nor machinery, vehicles, trade, nor revenues,--But you, as henceforth I see you, Running up out of the night, bringing your cluster of stars, ever-enlarging stars; Divider of daybreak you, cutting the air, touched by the sun, measuring the sky, Passionately seen and yearned for by one poor little child, While others remain busy, or smartly talking, for ever teaching thrift, thrift; O you up there! O pennant! where you undulate like a snake, hissing so curious, Out of reach--an idea only--yet furiously fought for, risking bloody death--loved by me! So loved! O you banner, leading the day, with stars brought from the night! Valueless, object of eyes, over all and demanding all--O banner and pennant! I too leave the rest--great as it is, it is nothing--houses, machines are nothing--I see them not; I see but you, O warlike pennant! O banner so broad, with stripes, I sing you only, Flapping up there in the wind. _THE BIVOUAC'S FLAME._ By the bivouac's fitful flame, A procession winding around me, solemn and sweet and slow;--but first I note The tents of the sleeping army, the fields' and woods' dim outline, The darkness, lit by spots of kindled fire--the silence; Like a phantom far or near an occasional figure moving; The shrubs and trees, (as I lift my eyes they seem to be stealthily watching me;) While wind in procession thoughts, O tender and wondrous thoughts, Of life and death--of home and the past and loved, and of those that are far away; A solemn and slow procession there as I sit on the ground, By the bivouac's fitful flame. _BIVOUAC ON A MOUNTAIN-SIDE._ I see before me now a travelling army halting; Below, a fertile valley spread, with barns, and the orchards of summer; Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt in places, rising high; Broken with rocks, with clinging cedars, with tall shapes, dingily seen; The numerous camp-fires scattered near and far, some away up on the mountain; The shadowy forms of men and horses, looming, large-sized, flickering; And over all, the sky--the sky! far, far out of reach, studded with the eternal stars. _CITY OF SHIPS._ City of ships! (O the black ships! O the fierce ships! O the beautiful, sharp-bowed steam-ships and sail-ships!) City of the world! (for all races are here; All the lands of the earth make contributions here;) City of the sea! city of hurried and glittering tides! City whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede, whirling in and out, with eddies and foam! City of wharves and stores! city of tall façades of marble and iron! Proud and passionate city! mettlesome, mad, extravagant city! Spring up, O city! not for peace alone, but be indeed yourself, warlike! Fear not! submit to no models but your own, O city! Behold me! incarnate me, as I have incarnated you! I have rejected nothing you offered me--whom you adopted, I have adopted; Good or bad, I never question you--I love all--I do not condemn anything; I chant and celebrate all that is yours--yet peace no more; In peace I chanted peace, but now the drum of war is mine; War, red war, is my song through your streets, O city! _VIGIL ON THE FIELD._ VIGIL strange I kept on the field one night, When you, my son and my comrade, dropped at my side that day. One look I but gave, which your dear eyes returned with a look I shall never forget; One touch of your hand to mine, O boy, reached up as you lay on the ground. Then onward I sped in the battle, the even-contested battle; Till, late in the night relieved, to the place at last again I made my way; Found you in death so cold, dear comrade--found your body, son of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding;) Bared your face in the starlight--curious the scene--cool blew the moderate night-wind. Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me the battlefield spreading; Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet, there in the fragrant silent night. But not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh--Long, long I gazed; Then on the earth partially reclining, sat by your side, leaning my chin in my hands; Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours, with you, dearest comrade-- Not a tear, not a word; Vigil of silence, love, and death--vigil for you, my son and my soldier, As onward silently stars aloft, eastward new ones upward stole; Vigil final for you, brave boy, (I could not save you, swift was your death, I faithfully loved you and cared for you living--I think we shall surely meet again;) Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as the dawn appeared, My comrade I wrapped in his blanket, enveloped well his form, Folded the blanket well, tucking it carefully over head, and carefully under feet; And there and then, and bathed by the rising sun, my son in his grave, in his rude-dug grave, I deposited; Ending my vigil strange with that--vigil of night and battlefield dim; Vigil for boy of responding kisses, never again on earth responding; Vigil for comrade swiftly slain, vigil I never forget--how as day brightened I rose from the chill ground, and folded my soldier well in his blanket, And buried him where he fell. _THE FLAG._ Bathed in war's perfume--delicate flag! O to hear you call the sailors and the soldiers! flag like a beautiful woman! O to hear the tramp, tramp, of a million answering men! O the ships they arm with joy! O to see you leap and beckon from the tall masts of ships! O to see you peering down on the sailors on the decks! Flag like the eyes of women. _THE WOUNDED._ A march in the ranks hard-pressed, and the road unknown; A route through a heavy wood, with muffled steps in the darkness; Our army foiled with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating; Till after midnight glimmer upon us the lights of a dim-lighted building; We come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-lighted building. 'Tis a large old church, at the crossing roads--'tis now an impromptu hospital; --Entering but for a minute, I see a sight beyond all the pictures and poems ever made: Shadows of deepest, deepest black, just lit by moving, candles and lamps, And by one great pitchy torch, stationary, with wild red flame, and clouds of smoke; By these, crowds, groups of forms, vaguely I see, on the floor, some in the pews laid down; At my feet more distinctly, a soldier, a mere lad, in danger of bleeding to death, (he is shot in the abdomen;) I staunch the blood temporarily, (the youngster's face is white as a lily;) Then before I depart I sweep my eyes o'er the scene, fain to absorb it all; Faces, varieties, postures, beyond description, most in obscurity, some of them dead; Surgeons operating, attendants holding lights, the smell of ether, the odour of blood; The crowd, O the crowd of the bloody forms of soldiers--the yard outside also filled; Some on the bare ground, some on planks or stretchers, some in the death- spasm sweating; An occasional scream or cry, the doctor's shouted orders or calls; The glisten of the little steel instruments catching the glint of the torches; These I resume as I chant--I see again the forms, I smell the odour; Then hear outside the orders given, _Fall in, my men, Fall in_. But first I bend to the dying lad--his eyes open--a half-smile gives he me; Then the eyes close, calmly close: and I speed forth to the darkness, Resuming, marching, as ever in darkness marching, on in the ranks, The unknown road still marching. _A SIGHT IN CAMP._ 1. A sight in camp in the daybreak grey and dim, As from my tent I emerge so early, sleepless, As slow I walk in the cool fresh air the path near by the hospital tent, Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought out there, untended lying; Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woollen blanket, Grey and heavy blanket, folding, covering all. 2. Curious, I halt, and silent stand; Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest, the first, just lift the blanket; Who are you, elderly man, so gaunt and grim, with well-greyed hair, and flesh all sunken about the eyes? Who are you, my dear comrade? Then to the second I step--And who are you, my child and darling? Who are you, sweet boy, with cheeks yet blooming? Then to the third--a face nor child nor old, very calm, as of beautiful yellow-white ivory: Young man, I think I know you--I think this face of yours is the face of the Christ Himself; Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again He lies. _A GRAVE._ 1. As toilsome I wandered Virginia's woods, To the music of rustling leaves kicked by my feet--for 'twas autumn-- I marked at the foot of a tree the grave of a soldier; Mortally wounded he, and buried on the retreat--easily all could I understand; The halt of a mid-day hour--when, Up! no time to lose! Yet this sign left On a tablet scrawled and nailed on the tree by the grave, _Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade_. 2. Long, long I muse,--then on my way go wandering, Many a changeful season to follow, and many a scene of life. Yet at times through changeful season and scene, abrupt,--alone, or in the crowded street,-- Comes before me the unknown soldier's grave, comes the inscription rude in Virginia's woods, _Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade_. _THE DRESSER._ 1. An old man bending, I come among new faces, Years, looking backward, resuming, in answer to children, "Come tell us, old man," (as from young men and maidens that love me, Years hence) "of these scenes, of these furious passions, these chances, Of unsurpassed heroes--(was one side so brave? the other was equally brave) Now be witness again--paint the mightiest armies of earth; Of those armies, so rapid, so wondrous, what saw you to tell us? What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics, Of hard-fought engagements, or sieges tremendous, what deepest remains?" 2. O maidens and young men I love, and that love me, What you ask of my days, those the strangest and sudden your talking recalls, Soldier alert I arrive, after a long march, covered with sweat and dust; In the nick of time I come, plunge in the fight, loudly shout in the rush of successful charge; Enter the captured works,...yet lo! like a swift-running river, they fade, Pass, and are gone; they fade--I dwell not on soldiers' perils or soldiers' joys; (Both I remember well--many the hardships, few the joys, yet I was content.) But in silence, in dreams' projections, While the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on, So soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the imprints off the sand, In nature's reverie sad, with hinged knees returning, I enter the doors--(while for you up there, Whoever you are, follow me without noise, and be of strong heart.) Bearing the bandages, water, and sponge, Straight and swift to my wounded I go, Where they lie on the ground, after the battle brought in; Where their priceless blood reddens the grass, the ground; Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roofed hospital; To the long rows of cots, up and down, each side, I return; To each and all, one after another, I draw near--not one do I miss; An attendant follows, holding a tray--he carries a refuse-pail, Soon to be filled with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and filled again. I onward go, I stop, With hinged knees and steady hand, to dress wounds; I am firm with each--the pangs are sharp, yet unavoidable; One turns to me his appealing eyes--poor boy! I never knew you, Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you if that would save you. On, on I go--(open, doors of time! open, hospital doors!) The crushed head I dress (poor crazed hand, tear not the bandage away;) The neck of the cavalry-man, with the bullet through and through, I examine; Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet life struggles hard; Come, sweet death! be persuaded, O beautiful death! In mercy come quickly. From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand, I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood; Back on his pillow the soldier bends, with curved neck, and side-falling head; His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the bloody stump, And has not yet looked on it. I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep; But a day or two more--for see, the frame all wasted and sinking, And the yellow-blue countenance see. I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet wound, Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, so offensive, While the attendant stands behind aside me, holding the tray and pail. I am faithful, I do not give out; The fractured thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen, These and more I dress with impassive hand--yet deep in my breast a fire, a burning flame. 3. Thus in silence, in dreams' projections, Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals; The hurt and the wounded I pacify with soothing hand, I sit by the restless all the dark night--some are so young, Some suffer so much--I recall the experience sweet and sad. Many a soldier's loving arms about this neck have crossed and rested, Many a soldier's kiss dwells on these bearded lips. _A LETTER FROM CAMP._ 1. "Come up from the fields, father, here's a letter from our Pete; And come to the front door, mother--here's a letter from thy dear son." 2. Lo, 'tis autumn; Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder, Cool and sweeten Ohio's villages, with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind; Where apples ripe in the orchards hang, and grapes on the trellised vines; Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines? Smell you the buckwheat, where the bees were lately buzzing? Above all, lo, the sky, so calm, so transparent after the rain, and with wondrous clouds; Below, too, all calm, all vital and beautiful--and the farm prospers well. 3. Down in the fields all prospers well; But now from the fields come, father--come at the daughter's call; And come to the entry, mother--to the front door come, right away. Fast as she can she hurries--something ominous--her steps trembling; She does not tarry to smooth her white hair, nor adjust her cap. 4. Open the envelope quickly; O this is not our son's writing, yet his name is signed; O a strange hand writes for our dear son--O stricken mother's soul! All swims before her eyes--flashes with black--she catches the main words only; Sentences broken--"_gun-shot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital, At present low, but will soon be better_." 5. Ah, now the single figure to me, Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio, with all its cities and farms, Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint, By the jamb of a door leans. 6. "Grieve not so, dear mother," the just-grown daughter speaks through her sobs; The little sisters huddle around, speechless and dismayed; "See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better." 7. Alas! poor boy, he will never be better, (nor maybe needs to be better, that brave and simple soul;) While they stand at home at the door, he is dead already; The only son is dead. But the mother needs to be better; She, with thin form, presently dressed in black; By day her meals untouched--then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking, In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing, O that she might withdraw unnoticed--silent from life escape and withdraw, To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son! _WAR DREAMS._ 1. In clouds descending, in midnight sleep, of many a face in battle, Of the look at first of the mortally wounded, of that indescribable look, Of the dead on their backs, with arms extended wide-- I dream, I dream, I dream. 2. Of scenes of nature, the fields and the mountains, Of the skies so beauteous after the storm, and at night the moon so unearthly bright, Shining sweetly, shining down, where we dig the trenches, and gather the heaps-- I dream, I dream, I dream. 3. Long have they passed, long lapsed--faces, and trenches, and fields: Long through the carnage I moved with a callous composure, or away from the fallen Onward I sped at the time. But now of their faces and forms, at night, I dream, I dream, I dream. _THE VETERAN'S VISION._ While my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the wars are over long, And my head on the pillow rests at home, and the mystic midnight passes, And through the stillness, through the dark, I hear, just hear, the breath of my infant, There in the room, as I wake from sleep, this vision presses upon me. The engagement opens there and then, in my busy brain unreal; The skirmishers begin--they crawl cautiously ahead--I hear the irregular snap! snap! I hear the sound of the different missiles--the short _t-h-t! t-h-t!_ of the rifle-balls; I see the shells exploding, leaving small white clouds--I hear the great shells shrieking as they pass; The grape, like the hum and whirr of wind through the trees, (quick, tumultuous, now the contest rages!) All the scenes at the batteries themselves rise in detail before me again; The crashing and smoking--the pride of the men in their pieces; The chief gunner ranges and sights his piece, and selects a fuse of the right time; After firing, I see him lean aside, and look eagerly off to note the effect; --Elsewhere I hear the cry of a regiment charging--the young colonel leads himself this time, with brandished sword; I see the gaps cut by the enemy's volleys, quickly filled up--no delay; I breathe the suffocating smoke--then the flat clouds hover low, concealing all; Now a strange lull comes for a few seconds, not a shot fired on either side; Then resumed, the chaos louder than ever, with eager calls, and orders of officers; While from some distant part of the field the wind wafts to my ears a shout of applause, (some special success;) And ever the sound of the cannon, far or near, rousing, even in dreams, a devilish exultation, and all the old mad joy, in the depths of my soul; And ever the hastening of infantry shifting positions--batteries, cavalry, moving hither and thither; The falling, dying, I heed not--the wounded, dripping and red, I heed not-- some to the rear are hobbling; Grime, heat, rush--aides-de-camp galloping by, or on a full run: With the patter of small arms, the warning _s-s-t_ of the rifles, (these in my vision I hear or see,) And bombs bursting in air, and at night the vari-coloured rockets. _O TAN-FACED PRAIRIE BOY._ O tan-faced prairie boy! Before you came to camp came many a welcome gift; Praises and presents came, and nourishing food--till at last, among the recruits, You came, taciturn, with nothing to give--we but looked on each other, When lo! more than all the gifts of the world you gave me. _MANHATTAN FACES._ 1. Give me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling; Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard; Give me a field where the unmowed grass grows; Give me an arbour, give me the trellised grape; Give me fresh corn and wheat--give me serene-moving animals, teaching content; Give me nights perfectly quiet, as on high plateaus west of the Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars; Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers, where I can walk undisturbed; Give me for marriage a sweet-breathed woman, of whom I should never tire; Give me a perfect child--give me, away, aside from the noise of the world, a rural domestic life; Give me to warble spontaneous songs, relieved, recluse by myself, for my own ears only; Give me solitude--give me Nature--give me again, O Nature, your primal sanities! --These, demanding to have them, tired with ceaseless excitement, and racked by the war-strife, These to procure incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart, While yet incessantly asking, still I adhere to my city; Day upon day, and year upon year, O city, walking your streets, Where you hold me enchained a certain time, refusing to give me up, Yet giving to make me glutted, enriched of soul--you give me for ever faces; O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries; I see my own soul trampling down what it asked for. 2. Keep your splendid silent sun; Keep your woods, O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods; Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your cornfields and orchards; Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields, where the ninth-month bees hum. Give me faces and streets! give me these phantoms incessant and endless along the _trottoirs_! Give me interminable eyes! give me women! give me comrades and lovers by the thousand! Let me see new ones every day! let me hold new ones by the hand every day! Give me such shows! give me the streets of Manhattan! Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching--give me the sound of the trumpets and drums! The soldiers in companies or regiments--some starting away, flushed and reckless; Some, their time up, returning, with thinned ranks--young, yet very old, worn, marching, noticing nothing; --Give me the shores and the wharves heavy-fringed with the black ships! O such for me! O an intense life! O full to repletion, and varied! The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me! The saloon of the steamer, the crowded excursion, for me! the torchlight procession! The dense brigade, bound for the war, with high-piled military waggons following; People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants; Manhattan streets, with their powerful throbs, with the beating drums, as now; The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, even the sight of the wounded; Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus--with varied chorus and light of the sparkling eyes; Manhattan faces and eyes for ever for me! _OVER THE CARNAGE._ 1. Over the carnage rose prophetic a voice,-- Be not disheartened--Affection shall solve the problems of Freedom yet; Those who love each other shall become invincible--they shall yet make Columbia victorious. Sons of the Mother of all! you shall yet be victorious! You shall yet laugh to scorn the attacks of all the remainder of the earth. No danger shall baulk Columbia's lovers; If need be, a thousand shall sternly immolate themselves for one. One from Massachusetts shall be a Missourian's comrade; From Maine and from hot Carolina, and another an Oregonese, shall be friends triune, More precious to each other than all the riches of the earth. To Michigan, Florida perfumes shall tenderly come; Not the perfumes of flowers, but sweeter, and wafted beyond death. It shall be customary in the houses and streets to see manly affection; The most dauntless and rude shall touch face to face lightly; The dependence of Liberty shall be lovers, The continuance of Equality shall be comrades. These shall tie you and band you stronger than hoops of iron; I, ecstatic, O partners! O lands! with the love of lovers tie you. 2. Were you looking to be held together by the lawyers? Or by an agreement on a paper? or by arms? --Nay--nor the world nor any living thing will so cohere. _THE MOTHER OF ALL._ Pensive, on her dead gazing, I heard the Mother of all, Desperate, on the torn bodies, on the forms covering the battlefields, gazing; As she called to her earth with mournful voice while she stalked. "Absorb them well, O my earth!" she cried--"I charge you, lose not my sons! lose not an atom; And you, streams, absorb them well, taking their dear blood; And you local spots, and you airs that swim above lightly, And all you essences of soil and growth--and you, O my rivers' depths; And you mountain-sides--and the woods where my dear children's blood, trickling, reddened; And you trees, down in your roots, to bequeath to all future trees, My dead absorb--my young men's beautiful bodies absorb--and their precious, precious, precious blood; Which, holding in trust for me, faithfully back again give me, many a year hence, In unseen essence and odour of surface and grass, centuries hence; In blowing airs from the fields, back again give me my darlings--give my immortal heroes; Exhale me them centuries hence--breathe me their breath--let not an atom be lost. O years and graves! O air and soil! O my dead, an aroma sweet! Exhale them, perennial, sweet death, years, centuries hence." _CAMPS OF GREEN._ 1. Not alone our camps of white, O soldiers, When, as ordered forward, after a long march, Footsore and weary, soon as the light lessens, we halt for the night; Some of us so fatigued, carrying the gun and knapsack, dropping asleep in our tracks; Others pitching the little tents, and the fires lit up begin to sparkle; Outposts of pickets posted, surrounding, alert through the dark, And a word provided for countersign, careful for safety; Till to the call of the drummers at daybreak loudly beating the drums, We rise up refreshed, the night and sleep passed over, and resume our journey, Or proceed to battle. 2. Lo! the camps of the tents of green, Which the days of peace keep filling, and the days of war keep filling, With a mystic army, (is it too ordered forward? is it too only halting a while, Till night and sleep pass over?) Now in those camps of green--in their tents dotting the world; In the parents, children, husbands, wives, in them--in the old and young, Sleeping under the sunlight, sleeping under the moonlight, content and silent there at last; Behold the mighty bivouac-field and waiting-camp of us and ours and all, Of our corps and generals all, and the President over the corps and generals all, And of each of us, O soldiers, and of each and all in the ranks we fight, There without hatred we shall all meet. For presently, O soldiers, we too camp in our place in the bivouac-camps of green; But we need not provide for outposts, nor word for the countersign, Nor drummer to beat the morning drum. _DIRGE FOR TWO VETERANS._ 1. The last sunbeam Lightly falls from the finished Sabbath On the pavement here--and, there beyond, it is looking Down a new-made double grave. 2. Lo! the moon ascending! Up from the east, the silvery round moon; Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon; Immense and silent moon. 3. I see a sad procession, And I hear the sound of coming full-keyed bugles; All the channels of the city streets they're flooding, As with voices and with tears. 4. I hear the great drums pounding, And the small drums steady whirring; And every blow of the great convulsive drums Strikes me through and through. 5. For the son is brought with the father; In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell; Two veterans, son and father, dropped together, And the double grave awaits them. 6. Now nearer blow the bugles, And the drums strike more convulsive; And the daylight o'er the pavement quite has faded, And the strong dead-march enwraps me. 7. In the eastern sky up-buoying, The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumined, 'Tis some mother's large, transparent face, In heaven brighter growing. 8. O strong dead-march, you please me! O moon immense, with your silvery face you soothe me! O my soldiers twain! O my veterans, passing to burial! What I have I also give you. 9. The moon gives you light, And the bugles and the drums give you music; And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans, My heart gives you love. _SURVIVORS._ How solemn, as one by one, As the ranks returning, all worn and sweaty--as the men file by where I stand; As the faces, the masks appear--as I glance at the faces, studying the masks; As I glance upward out of this page, studying you, dear friend, whoever you are;-- How solemn the thought of my whispering soul, to each in the ranks, and to you! I see, behind each mask, that wonder, a kindred soul. O the bullet could never kill what you really are, dear friend, Nor the bayonet stab what you really are. --The soul, yourself, I see, great as any, good as the best, Waiting secure and content,--which the bullet could never kill, Nor the bayonet stab, O friend! _HYMN OF DEAD SOLDIERS._ 1. One breath, O my silent soul! A perfumed thought--no more I ask, for the sake of all dead soldiers. 2. Buglers off in my armies! At present I ask not you to sound; Not at the head of my cavalry, all on their spirited horses, With their sabres drawn and glistening, and carbines clanking by their thighs--(ah, my brave horsemen! My handsome, tan-faced horsemen! what life, what joy and pride, With all the perils, were yours!) Nor you drummers--neither at _reveillé_, at dawn, Nor the long roll alarming the camp--nor even the muffled beat for a burial; Nothing from you, this time, O drummers, bearing my warlike drums. 3. But aside from these, and the crowd's hurrahs, and the land's congratulations, Admitting around me comrades close, unseen by the rest, and voiceless, I chant this chant of my silent soul, in the name of all dead soldiers. 4. Faces so pale, with wondrous eyes, very dear, gather closer yet; Draw close, but speak not. Phantoms, welcome, divine and tender! Invisible to the rest, henceforth become my companions; Follow me ever! desert me not, while I live! Sweet are the blooming cheeks of the living, sweet are the musical voices sounding; But sweet, ah sweet, are the dead, with their silent eyes. Dearest comrades! all now is over; But love is not over--and what love, O comrades! Perfume from battlefields rising--up from foetor arising. Perfume therefore my chant, O love! immortal love! Give me to bathe the memories of all dead soldiers. Perfume all! make all wholesome! O love! O chant! solve all with the last chemistry. Give me exhaustless--make me a fountain, That I exhale love from me wherever I go, For the sake of all dead soldiers. _SPIRIT WHOSE WORK IS DONE._ Spirit whose work is done! spirit of dreadful hours! Ere, departing, fade from my eyes your forests of bayonets-- Spirit of gloomiest fears and doubts, yet onward ever unfaltering pressing! Spirit of many a solemn day, and many a savage scene! Electric spirit! That with muttering voice, through the years now closed, like a tireless phantom flitted, Rousing the land with breath of flame, while you beat and beat the drum; --Now, as the sound of the drum, hollow and harsh to the last, reverberates round me; As your ranks, your immortal ranks, return, return from the battles; While the muskets of the young men yet lean over their shoulders; While I look on the bayonets bristling over their shoulders; While those slanted bayonets, whole forests of them, appearing in the distance, approach and pass on, returning homeward, Moving with steady motion, swaying to and fro, to the right and left, Evenly, lightly, rising and falling, as the steps keep time: --Spirit of hours I knew, all hectic red one day, but pale as death next day; Touch my mouth, ere you depart--press my lips close! Leave me your pulses of rage! bequeath them to me! fill me with currents convulsive! Let them scorch and blister out of my chants, when you are gone; Let them identify you to the future in these songs! _RECONCILIATION._ Word over all, beautiful as the sky! Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost; That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly, softly wash again, and ever again, this soiled world. For my enemy is dead--a man divine as myself is dead. I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin--I draw near; I bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin. _AFTER THE WAR._ To the leavened soil they trod, calling, I sing, for the last; Not cities, nor man alone, nor war, nor the dead: But forth from my tent emerging for good--loosing, untying the tent-ropes; In the freshness, the forenoon air, in the far-stretching circuits and vistas, again to peace restored; To the fiery fields emanative, and the endless vistas beyond--to the south and the north; To the leavened soil of the general Western World, to attest my songs, To the average earth, the wordless earth, witness of war and peace, To the Alleghanian hills, and the tireless Mississippi, To the rocks I, calling, sing, and all the trees in the woods, To the plain of the poems of heroes, to the prairie spreading wide, To the far-off sea, and the unseen winds, and the sane impalpable air. And responding they answer all, (but not in words,) The average earth, the witness of war and peace, acknowledges mutely; The prairie draws me close, as the father, to bosom broad, the son:-- The Northern ice and rain, that began me, nourish me to the end; But the hot sun of the South is to ripen my songs. WALT WHITMAN _ASSIMILATIONS._ 1. There was a child went forth every day; And the first object he looked upon, that object he became; And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day, or for many years, or tretching cycles of years. 2. The early lilacs became part of this child, And grass, and white and red morning-glories,[1] and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,[2] And the Third-month lambs, and the sow's pink-faint litter, and the mare's foal, and the cow's calf, And the noisy brood of the barn-yard, or by the mire of the pond-side, And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there--and the beautiful, curious liquid, And the water-plants with their graceful fiat heads--all became part of him. The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part or him; 3. Winter-grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the garden, And the apple-trees covered with blossoms, and the fruit afterward, and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road; And the old drunkard staggering home from the outhouse of the tavern, whence he had lately risen, And the schoolmistress that passed on her way to the school, And the friendly boys that passed, and the quarrelsome boys, And the tidy and fresh-cheeked girls, and the barefoot negro boy and girl, And all the changes of city and country, wherever he went. His own parents; He that had fathered him, and she that had conceived him in her womb, and birthed him, They gave this child more of themselves than that; They gave him afterward every day--they became part of him. The mother at home, quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table; The mother with mild words--clean her cap and gown, a wholesome odour falling off her person and clothes as she walks by; The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, angered, unjust; The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure, The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture--the yearning and swelling heart, Affection that will not be gainsaid--the sense of what is real--the thought if after all it should prove unreal, The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time--the curious whether and how-- Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks? Men and women crowding fast in the streets--if they are not flashes and specks, what are they? The streets themselves, and the façades of houses, and goods in the windows, Vehicles, teams, the heavy-planked wharves--the huge crossing at the ferries, The village on the highland, seen from afar at sunset--the river between; Shadows, aureola and mist, light falling on roofs and gables of white or brown, three miles off; The schooner near by, sleepily dropping down the tide--the little boat slack-towed astern, The hurrying tumbling waves quick-broken crests slapping, The strata of coloured clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint, away solitary by itself-the spread of purity it lies motionless in, The horizon's edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud;-- These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day. [Footnote 1: The name of "morning-glory" is given to the bindweed, or a sort of bindweed, in America. I am not certain whether this expressive name is used in England also.] [Footnote 2: A dun-coloured little bird with a cheerful note, sounding like the word Phoebe.] _A WORD OUT OF THE SEA._ 1. Out of the rocked cradle, Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle, Out of the Ninth-month midnight, Over the sterile sands, and the fields beyond, where the child, leaving his bed, wandered alone, bareheaded, barefoot, Down from the showered halo, Up from the mystic play of shadows, twining and twisting; as if they were alive, Out from the patches of briars and blackberries, From the memories of the birds that chanted to me, From your memories, sad brother--from the fitful risings and fallings I heard, From under that yellow half-moon, late-risen, and swollen as if with tears, From those beginning notes of sickness and love, there in the transparent mist, From the thousand responses of my heart, never to cease, From the myriad thence-aroused words, From the word stronger and more delicious than any,-- From such, as now they start, the scene revisiting, As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing, Borne hither--ere all eludes me, hurriedly,-- A man--yet by these tears a little boy again, Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves, I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter, Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them, A reminiscence sing. 2. Once, Paumanok, When the snows had melted, and the Fifth-month grass was growing, Up this sea-shore, in some briars, Two guests from Alabama--two together, And their nest, and four light-green eggs spotted with brown; And every day the he-bird, to and fro, near at hand, And every day the she-bird, crouched on her nest, silent, with bright eyes; And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing them, Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating. 3. _Shine! shine! shine! Pour down your warmth, great Sun! While we bask--we two together. Two together! Winds blow South, or winds blow North, Day come white or night come black, Home, or rivers and mountains from home, Singing all time, minding no time, If we two but keep together_. 4. Till of a sudden, Maybe killed, unknown to her mate, One forenoon the she-bird crouched not on the nest, Nor returned that afternoon, nor the next, Nor ever appeared again. And thenceforward, all summer, in the sound of the sea, And at night, under the full of the moon, in calmer weather, Over the hoarse surging of the sea, Or flitting from briar to briar by day, I saw, I heard at intervals, the remaining one, the he-bird, The solitary guest from Alabama. 5. _Blow! blow! blow! Blow up, sea-winds, along Paumanok's shore! I wait and I wait, till you blow my mate to me_. 6. Yes, when the stars glistened. All night long, on the prong of a moss-scalloped stake, Down, almost amid the slapping waves, Sat the lone singer, wonderful, causing tears. He called on his mate; He poured forth the meanings which I, of all men, know. Yes, my brother, I know; The rest might not--but I have treasured every note; For once, and more than once, dimly, down to the beach gliding, Silent, avoiding the moonbeams, blending myself with the shadows, Recalling now the obscure shapes, the echoes, the sounds and sights after their sorts, The white arms out in the breakers tirelessly tossing, I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair, Listened long and long. Listened, to keep, to sing--now translating the notes, Following you, my brother. 7. _Soothe! soothe! soothe! Close on its wave soothes the wave behind, And again another behind, embracing and lapping, every one close,-- But my love soothes not me, not me. Low hangs the moon--it rose late; O it is lagging--O I think it is heavy with love, with love. O madly the sea pushes, pushes upon the land, With love--with love. O night! do I not see my love fluttering out there among the breakers? What is that little black thing I see there in the white? Loud! loud! loud! Loud. I call to you, my love! High and clear I shoot my voice over the waves; Surely you must know who is here, is here; You must know who I am, my love. Low-hanging moon! What is that dusky spot in your brown yellow? O it is the shape, the shape of my mate! O moon, do not keep her from me any longer! Land! land! O land! Whichever way I turn, O I think you could give me my mate back again, if you only would; For I am almost sure I see her dimly whichever way I look. O rising stars! Perhaps the one I want so much will rise, will rise with some of you. O throat! O trembling throat! Sound clearer through the atmosphere! Pierce the woods, the earth; Somewhere, listening to catch you, must be the one I want. Shake out, carols! Solitary here--the night's carols! Carols of lonesome love! Death's carols! Carols under that lagging, yellow, waning moon! O, under that moon, where she droops almost down into the sea! O reckless, despairing carols! But soft! sink low; Soft! let me just murmur; And do you wait a moment, you husky-noised sea; For somewhere I believe I heard my mate responding to me, So faint--I must be still, be still to listen; But not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately to me. Hither, my love! Here I am! Here! With this just-sustained note I announce myself to you; This gentle call is for you, my love, for you! Do not be decoyed elsewhere! That is the whistle of the wind--it is not my voice; That is the fluttering, the flattering of the spray; Those are the shadows of leaves. O darkness! O in vain! O I am very sick and sorrowful! O brown halo in the sky, near the moon, drooping upon the sea! O troubled reflection in the sea! O throat! O throbbing heart! O all!--and I singing uselessly, uselessly all the night.! Yet I murmur, murmur on! O murmurs--you yourselves make me continue to sing, I know not why. O past! O life! O songs of joy! In the air--in the woods--over fields; Loved! loved! loved! loved! loved! But my love no more, no more with me! We two together no more_! 8. The aria sinking; All else continuing--the stars shining, The winds blowing--the notes of the bird continuous echoing, With angry moans the fierce old Mother incessantly moaning, On the sands of Paumanok's shore, grey and rustling; The yellow half-moon enlarged, sagging down, drooping, the face of the sea almost touching; The boy ecstatic--with his bare feet the waves, with his hair the atmosphere, dallying, The love in the heart long pent, now loose, now at last tumultuously bursting; The aria's meaning the ears, the soul, swiftly depositing, The strange tears down the cheeks coursing; The colloquy there--the trio--each uttering; The undertone--the savage old Mother, incessantly crying, To the boy's soul's questions sullenly timing--some drowned secret hissing To the outsetting bard of love. 9. Demon or bird! (said the boy's soul,) Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it mostly to me? For I, that was a child, my tongue's use sleeping, Now I have heard you, Now in a moment I know what I am for--I awake; And already a thousand singers--a thousand songs, clearer, louder, and more sorrowful than yours, A thousand warbling echoes, have started to life within me, Never to die. O you singer, solitary, singing by yourself--projecting me; O solitary me, listening--never more shall I cease perpetuating you; Never more shall I escape, never more, the reverberations, Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me, Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there, in the night, By the sea, under the yellow and sagging moon, The messenger there aroused--the fire, the sweet hell within, The unknown want, the destiny of me. O give me the clue! (it lurks in the night here somewhere;) O if I am to have so much, let me have more! O a word! O what is my destination? I fear it is henceforth chaos;-- O how joys, dreads, convolutions, human shapes and all shapes, spring as from graves around me! O phantoms! you cover all the land, and all the sea! O I cannot see in the dimness whether you smile or frown upon me; O vapour, a look, a word! O well-beloved! O you dear women's and men's phantoms! A word then, (for I will conquer it,) The word final, superior to all, Subtle, sent up--what is it?--I listen; Are you whispering it, and have been all the time, you sea-waves? Is that it from your liquid rims and wet sands? 10. Whereto answering, the Sea, Delaying not, hurrying not, Whispered me through the night, and very plainly before daybreak, Lisped to me the low and delicious word DEATH; And again Death--ever Death, Death, Death, Hissing melodious, neither like the bird nor like my aroused child's heart, But edging near, as privately for me, rustling at my feet, Creeping thence steadily up to my ears, and laving me softly all over, Death, Death, Death, Death, Death. Which I do not forget, But fuse the song of my dusky demon and brother, That he sang to me in the moonlight on Paumanok's grey beach, With the thousand responsive songs, at random, My own songs, awaked from that hour; And with them the key, the word up from the waves, The word of the sweetest song, and all songs, That strong and delicious word which, creeping to my feet, The Sea whispered me. _CROSSING BROOKLYN FERRY._ 1. Flood-tide below me! I watch you face to face; Clouds of the west! sun there half an hour high! I see you also face to face. 2. Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me! On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose; And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose. 3. The impalpable sustenance of me from all things, at all hours of the day; The simple, compact, well-joined scheme--myself disintegrated, every one disintegrated, yet part of the scheme; The similitudes of the past, and those of the future; The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings--on the walk in the street, and the passage over the river; The current rushing so swiftly, and swimming with me far away; The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them; The certainty of others--the life, love, sight, hearing, of others. Others will enter the gates of the ferry, and cross from shore to shore; Others will watch the run of the flood-tide; Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east; Others will see the islands large and small; Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high; A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them, Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the falling-back to the sea of the ebb-tide. It avails not, neither time nor place--distance avails not; I am with you--you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence; I project myself--also I return--I am with you, and know how it is. Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt; Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd; Just as you are refreshed by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refreshed; Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood, yet was hurried; Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships, and the thick-stemmed pipes of steamboats, I looked. I too many and many a time crossed the river, the sun half an hour high; I watched the twelfth-month sea-gulls--I saw them high in the air, floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies, I saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies, and left the rest in strong shadow, I saw the slow-wheeling circles, and the gradual edging toward the south. I too saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water, Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams, Looked at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of my head in the sun-lit water, Looked on the haze on the hills southward and southwestward, Looked on the vapour as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet, Looked toward the lower bay to notice the arriving ships, Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me, Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at anchor, The sailors at work in the rigging, or out astride the spars. The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender serpentine pennants, The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their pilot-houses, The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the wheels, The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset, The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the frolicsome crests and glistening, The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the grey walls of the granite store-houses by the docks, On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flanked on each side by the barges--the hay-boat, the belated lighter, On the neighbouring shore, the fires from the foundry chimneys burning high and glaringly into the night, Casting their flicker of black, contrasted with wild red and yellow light, over the tops of houses and down into the clefts of streets. These, and all else, were to me the same as they are to you; I project myself a moment to tell you--also I return. I loved well those cities; I loved well the stately and rapid river; The men and women I saw were all near to me; Others the same--others who look back on me because I looked forward to them; The time will come, though I stop here to-day and to-night. What is it, then, between us? What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us? Whatever it is, it avails not--distance avails not, and place avails not. I too lived--Brooklyn, of ample hills, was mine; I too walked the streets of Manhattan Island, and bathed in the waters around it; I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me; In the day, among crowds of people, sometimes they came upon me, In my walks home late at night, or as I lay in my bed, they came upon me. I too had been struck from the float for ever held in solution, I too had received identity by my Body; That I was, I knew, was of my body--and what I should be, I knew, I should be of my body. It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall, The dark threw patches down upon me also; The best I had done seemed to me blank and suspicious; My great thoughts, as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre? would not people laugh at me? It is not you alone who know what it is to be evil; I am he who knew what it was to be evil; I too knitted the old knot of contrariety, Blabbed, blushed, resented, lied, stole, grudged; Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak; Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant; The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me; The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting; Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting. But I was Manhattanese, friendly and proud! I was called by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as they saw me approaching or passing, Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the negligent leaning of their flesh against me as I sat; Saw many I loved in the street, or ferry-boat, or public assembly, yet never told them a word; Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping; Played the part that still looks back on the actor or actress, The same old rôle, the rôle that is what we make it,--as great as we like, Or as small as we like, or both great and small. Closer yet I approach you: What thought you have of me, I had as much of you-- I laid in my stores in advance; I considered long and seriously of you before you were born. Who was to know what should come home to me? Who knows but I am enjoying this? Who knows but I am as good as looking at you now, for all you cannot see me? It is not you alone, nor I alone; Not a few races, nor a few generations, nor a few centuries; It is that each came or comes or shall come from its due emission, without fail, either now or then or henceforth. Everything indicates--the smallest does, and the largest does; A necessary film envelops all, and envelops the Soul for a proper time. Now I am curious what sight can ever be more stately and admirable to me than my mast-hemmed Manhatta, My river and sunset, and my scallop-edged waves of flood-tide; The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the twilight, and the belated lighter; Curious what Gods can exceed these that clasp me by the hand, and with voices I love call me promptly and loudly by my nighest name as I approach; Curious what is more subtle than this which ties me to the woman or man that looks in my face, Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you. We understand, then, do we not? What I promised without mentioning it have you not accepted? What the study could not teach--what the preaching could not accomplish, is accomplished, is it not? What the push of reading could not start, is started by me personally, is it not? 4. Flow on river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide! Frolic on, crested and scallop-edged waves! Gorgeous clouds of the sunset, drench with your splendour me, or the men and women generations after me! Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers! Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta!-stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn! Bully for you! you proud, friendly, free Manhattanese! Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers! Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution! Blab, blush, lie, steal, you or I or any one after us! Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house, or street, or public assembly! Sound out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by my nighest name! Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or actress! Play the old role, the role that is great or small, according as one makes it! Consider, you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways be looking upon you: Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet haste with the hasting current; Fly on, sea-birds! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in the air; Receive the summer sky, you water! and faithfully hold it, till all downcast eyes have time to take it from you; Diverge, fine spokes of light, from the shape of my head, or any one's head, in the sun-lit water; Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-sailed schooners, sloops, lighters! Flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly lowered at sunset; Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys! cast black shadows at nightfall; cast red and yellow light over the tops of the houses; Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are; You necessary film, continue to envelop the soul; About my body for me, and your body for you, be hung our divinest aromas; Thrive, cities! bring your freight, bring your shows, ample and sufficient rivers! Expand, being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual! Keep your places, objects than which none else is more lasting! We descend upon you and all things--we arrest you all; We realise the soul only by you, you faithful solids and fluids; Through you colour, form, location, sublimity, ideality; Through you every proof, comparison, and all the suggestions and determinations of ourselves. You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers! you novices! We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward; Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us; We use you, and do not cast you aside--we plant you permanently within us; We fathom you not--we love you--there is perfection in you also; You furnish your parts toward eternity; Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul. _NIGHT AND DEATH._ 1. Night on the prairies. The supper is over--the fire on the ground burns low; The wearied emigrants sleep, wrapped in their blankets; I walk by myself--I stand and look at the stars, which I think now I never realised before. Now I absorb immortality and peace, I admire death, and test propositions. How plenteous! How spiritual! How _resumé_! The same Old Man and Soul--the same old aspirations, and the same content. 2. I was thinking the day most splendid, till I saw what the not day exhibited, I was thinking this globe enough, till there sprang out so noiseless around me myriads of other globes. Now, while the great thoughts of space and eternity fill me, I will measure myself by them: And now, touched with the lives of other globes, arrived as far along as those of the earth, Or waiting to arrive, or passed on farther than those of the earth, I henceforth no more ignore them than I ignore my own life, Or the lives of the earth arrived as far as mine, or waiting to arrive. 3. O I see now that life cannot exhibit all to me-as the day cannot, I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death. _ELEMENTAL DRIFTS._ 1. Elemental drifts! O I wish I could impress others as you and the waves have just been impressing me. As I ebbed with an ebb of the ocean of life, As I wended the shores I know, As I walked where the sea-ripples wash you, Paumanok, Where they rustle up, hoarse and sibilant, Where the fierce old Mother endlessly cries for her castaways, I, musing, late in the autumn day, gazing off southward, Alone, held by this eternal self of me, out of the pride of which I have uttered my poems, Was seized by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot, In the rim, the sediment, that stands for all the water and all the land of the globe. Fascinated, my eyes, reverting from the south, dropped, to follow those slender winrows, Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten, Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left by the tide; Miles walking, the sound of breaking waves the other side of me, Paumanok, there and then, as I thought the old thought of likenesses. These you presented to me, you fish-shaped Island, As I wended the shores I know, As I walked with that eternal self of me, seeking types. 2. As I wend to the shores I know not, As I list to the dirge, the voices of men and women wrecked, As I inhale the impalpable breezes that set in upon me, As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer, I too but signify, at the utmost, a little washed-up drift, A few sands and dead leaves to gather, Gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift. O baffled, baulked, bent to the very earth, Oppressed with myself that I have dared to open my mouth, Aware now that, amid all the blab whose echoes recoil upon me, I have not once had the least idea who or what I am, But that before all my insolent poems, the real ME stands yet untouched, untold, altogether unreached, Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows, With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written, Pointing in silence to all these songs, and then to the sand beneath. Now I perceive I have not understood anything--not a single object--and that no man ever can. I perceive Nature, here in sight of the sea, is taking advantage of me, to dart upon me, and sting me, Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all. 3. You oceans both! I close with you; These little shreds shall indeed stand for all. You friable shore, with trails of debris! You fish-shaped Island! I take what is underfoot; What is yours is mine, my father. I too, Paumanok, I too have bubbled up, floated the measureless float, and been washed on your shores; I too am but a trail of drift and debris, I too leave little wrecks upon you, you fish-shaped Island. I throw myself upon your breast, my father, I cling to you so that you cannot unloose me, I hold you so firm till you answer me something. Kiss me, my father, Touch me with your lips, as I touch those I love, Breathe to me, while I hold you close, the secret of the wondrous murmuring I envy. 4. Ebb, ocean of life, (the flow will return.) Cease not your moaning, you fierce old Mother, Endlessly cry for your castaways--but fear not, deny not me, Rustle not up so hoarse and angry against my feet, as I touch you, or gather from you. I mean tenderly by you, I gather for myself, and for this phantom, looking down where we lead, and following me and mine. Me and mine! We, loose winrows, little corpses, Froth, snowy white, and bubbles, (See! from my dead lips the ooze exuding at last! See--the prismatic colours, glistening and rolling!) Tufts of straw, sands, fragments, Buoyed hither from many moods, one contradicting another, From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell; Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil; Up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown; A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves floating, drifted at random; Just as much for us that sobbing dirge of Nature; Just as much, whence we come, that blare of the cloud-trumpets; We, capricious, brought hither, we know not whence, spread out before you, You, up there, walking or sitting, Whoever you are--we too lie in drifts at your feet. _WONDERS._ 1. Who learns my lesson complete? Boss, journeyman, apprentice--churchman and atheist, The stupid and the wise thinker--parents and offspring--merchant, clerk, porter, and customer, Editor, author, artist; and schoolboy--Draw nigh and commence; It is no lesson--it lets down the bars to a good lesson, And that to another, and every one to another still. 2. The great laws take and effuse without argument; I am of the same style, for I am their friend, I love them quits and quits--I do not halt and make salaams. I lie abstracted, and hear beautiful tales of things, and the reasons of things; They are so beautiful I nudge myself to listen. I cannot say to any person what I hear--I cannot say it to myself--it is very wonderful. It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe, moving so exactly in its orbit for ever and ever, without one jolt, or the untruth of a single second; I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years, nor ten billions of years, Nor planned and built one thing after another, as an architect plans and builds a house. I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman, Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman, Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me, or any one else. 3. Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? as every one is immortal; I know it is wonderful--but my eyesight is equally wonderful, and how I was conceived in my mother's womb is equally wonderful; And passed from a babe, in the creeping trance of a couple of summers and winters, to articulate and walk--All this is equally wonderful. And that my Soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other without ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to see each other, is every bit as wonderful. And that I can think such thoughts as these is just as wonderful; And that I can remind you, and you think them and know them to be true, is just as wonderful. And that the moon spins round the earth, and on with the earth, is equally wonderful; And that they balance themselves with the sun and stars is equally wonderful. _MIRACLES._ 1. What shall I give? and which are my miracles? 2. Realism is mine--my miracles--Take freely, Take without end--I offer them to you wherever your feet can carry you or your eyes reach. 3. Why! who makes much of a miracle? As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles, Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the water, Or stand under trees in the woods, Or talk by day with any one I love--or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love, Or sit at the table at dinner with my mother, Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of a summer forenoon, Or animals feeding in the fields, Or birds--or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, Or the wonderfulness of the sundown--or of stars shining so quiet and bright, Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in spring; Or whether I go among those I like best, and that like me best--mechanics, boatmen, farmers, Or among the savans--or to the _soirée_--or to the opera. Or stand a long while looking at the movements of machinery, Or behold children at their sports, Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or the perfect old woman, Or the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to burial, Or my own eyes and figure in the glass; These, with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, The whole referring--yet each distinct and in its place. 4. To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, Every inch of space is a miracle, Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, Every cubic foot of the interior swarms with the same; Every spear of grass--the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them, All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles. To me the sea is a continual miracle; The fishes that swim--the rocks--the motion of the waves--the ships, with men in them, What stranger miracles are there? _VISAGES._ Of the visages of things--And of piercing through to the accepted hells beneath. Of ugliness--To me there is just as much in it as there is in beauty--And now the ugliness of human beings is acceptable to me. Of detected persons--To me, detected persons are not, in any respect, worse than undetected persons--and are not in any respect worse than I am myself. Of criminals--To me, any judge, or any juror, is equally criminal--and any reputable person is also--and the President is also. _THE DARK SIDE._ I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame; I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done; I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate; I see the wife misused by her husband--I see the treacherous seducer of young women; I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be hid-- I see these sights on the earth; I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny--I see martyrs and prisoners; I observe a famine at sea--I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be killed, to preserve the lives of the rest; I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon labourers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like; All these--all the meanness and agony without end, I, sitting, look out upon; See, hear, and am silent. _MUSIC._ I heard you, solemn-sweet pipes of the organ, as last Sunday morn I passed the church; Winds of autumn!--as I walked the woods at dusk, I heard your long-stretched sighs, up above, so mournful; I heard the perfect Italian tenor, singing at the opera--I heard the soprano in the midst of the quartette singing. --Heart of my love! you too I heard, murmuring low, through one of the wrists around my head; Heard the pulse of you, when all was still, ringing little bells last night under my ear. _WHEREFORE?_ O me! O life!--of the questions of these recurring; Of the endless trains of the faithless--of cities filled with the foolish; Of myself for ever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?) Of eyes that vainly crave the light--of the objects mean--of the struggle ever renewed; Of the poor results of all--of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me; Of the empty and useless years of the rest--with the rest me intertwined; The question, O me! so sad, recurring--What good amid these, O me, O life? _ANSWER_. That you are here--that life exists, and identity; That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse. _QUESTIONABLE._ As I lay with my head in your lap, camerado, The confession I made I resume--what I said to you and the open air I resume. I know I am restless, and make others so; I know my words are weapons, full of danger, full of death; (Indeed I am myself the real soldier; It is not he, there, with his bayonet, and not the red-striped artilleryman;) For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle them; I am more resolute because all have denied me than I could ever have been had all accepted me; I heed not, and have never heeded, either experience, cautions, majorities, nor ridicule; And the threat of what is called hell is little or nothing to me; And the lure of what is called heaven is little or nothing to me. --Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and still urge you, without the least idea what is our destination, Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quelled and defeated. _SONG AT SUNSET._ 1. Splendour of ended day, floating and filling me! Hour prophetic--hour resuming the past: Inflating my throat--you, divine Average! You, Earth and Life, till the last ray gleams, I sing. 2. Open mouth of my soul, uttering gladness, Eyes of my soul, seeing perfection, Natural life of me, faithfully praising things; Corroborating for ever the triumph of things. 3. Illustrious every one! Illustrious what we name space--sphere of unnumbered spirits; Illustrious the mystery of motion, in all beings, even the tiniest insect; Illustrious the attribute of speech--the senses--the body; Illustrious the passing light! Illustrious the pale reflection on the new moon in the western sky! Illustrious whatever I see, or hear, or touch, to the last. Good in all, In the satisfaction and _aplomb_ of animals, In the annual return of the seasons, In the hilarity of youth, In the strength and flush of manhood, In the grandeur and exquisiteness of old age, In the superb vistas of Death. Wonderful to depart; Wonderful to be here! The heart, to jet the all-alike and innocent blood, To breathe the air, how delicious! To speak! to walk! to seize something by the hand! To prepare for sleep, for bed--to look on my rose-coloured flesh, To be conscious of my body, so happy, so large, To be this incredible God I am, To have gone forth among other Gods--those men and women I love. Wonderful how I celebrate you and myself! How my thoughts play subtly at the spectacles around! How the clouds pass silently overhead! How the earth darts on and on! and how the sun, moon, stars, dart on and on! How the water sports and sings! (Surely it is alive!) How the trees rise and stand up--with strong trunks--with branches and leaves! Surely there is something more in each of the trees--some living soul. O amazement of things! even the least particle! O spirituality of things! O strain musical, flowing through ages and continents--now reaching me and America! I take your strong chords--I intersperse them, and cheerfully pass them forward. I too carol the sun, ushered, or at noon, or, as now, setting, I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth, and of all the growths of the earth, I too have felt the resistless call of myself. As I sailed down the Mississippi, As I wandered over the prairies, As I have lived--As I have looked through my windows, my eyes, As I went forth in the morning--As I beheld the light breaking in the east; As I bathed on the beach of the Eastern Sea, and again on the beach of the Western Sea; As I roamed the streets of inland Chicago-whatever streets I have roamed; Wherever I have been, I have charged myself with contentment and triumph. I sing the Equalities; I sing the endless finales of things; I say Nature continues--Glory continues; I praise with electric voice: For I do not see one imperfection in the universe; And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last in the universe. O setting sun! though the time has come, I still warble under you unmitigated adoration. _LONGINGS FOR HOME._ O Magnet South! O glistening, perfumed South! my South! O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse, and love! good and evil! O all dear to me! O dear to me my birth-things--all moving things, and the trees where I was born,[1] the grains, plants, rivers; Dear to me my own slow, sluggish rivers, where they flow distant over flats of silvery sands or through swamps; Dear to me the Roanoke, the Savannah, the Altamahaw, the Pedee, the Tombigbee, the Santee, the Coosa, and the Sabine-- O pensive, far away wandering, I return with my soul to haunt their banks again. Again in Florida I float on transparent lakes--I float on Okeechobee--I cross the hummock land, or through pleasant openings or dense forests. I see the parrots in the woods, I see the papaw-tree, and the blossoming titi. Again, sailing in my coaster, on deck, I coast off Georgia, I coast up the Carolinas; I see where the live-oak is growing--I see where the yellow-pine, the scented bay-tree, the lemon and orange, the cypress, the graceful palmetto. I pass rude sea-headlands, and enter Pamlico Sound through an inlet, and dart my vision inland; O the cotton plant! the growing fields of rice, sugar, hemp! The cactus, guarded with thorns--the laurel-tree, with large white flowers; The range afar--the richness and barrenness--the old woods charged with mistletoe and trailing moss, The piney odour and the gloom--the awful natural stillness, Here in these dense swamps the freebooter carries his gun, and the fugitive slave has his concealed hut; O the strange fascination of these half-known, half-impassable swamps, infested by reptiles, resounding with the bellow of the alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the wild-cat, and the whirr of the rattlesnake; The mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing all the forenoon--singing through the moon-lit night, The humming-bird, the wild-turkey, the raccoon, the opossum; A Tennessee corn-field--the tall, graceful, long-leaved corn--slender, flapping, bright green, with tassels--with beautiful ears, each well-sheathed in its husk; An Arkansas prairie--a sleeping lake, or still bayou. O my heart! O tender and fierce pangs--I can stand them not--I will depart! O to be a Virginian, where I grew up! O to be a Carolinian! O longings irrepressible! O I will go back to old Tennessee, and never wander more! [Footnote 1: These expressions cannot be understood in a literal sense, for Whitman was born, not in the South, but in the State of New York. The precise sense to be attached to them may be open to some difference of opinion.] _APPEARANCES._ Of the terrible doubt of appearances, Of the uncertainty after all--that we may be deluded, That maybe reliance and hope are but speculations after all, That maybe identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only, Maybe the things I perceive--the animals, plants, men, hills, shining and flowing waters, The skies of day and night--colours, densities, forms--Maybe these are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions, and the real something has yet to be known; (How often they dart out of themselves, as if to confound me and mock me! How often I think neither I know, nor any man knows, aught of them!) Maybe seeming to me what they are (as doubtless they indeed but seem) as from my present point of view--And might prove (as of course they would) naught of what they appear, or naught anyhow, from entirely changed points of view; --To me, these, and the like of these, are curiously answered by my lovers, my dear friends. When he whom I love travels with me, or sits a long while holding me by the hand, When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words and reason hold not, surround us and pervade us, Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom--I am silent--I require nothing further, I cannot answer the question of appearances, or that of identity beyond the grave; But I walk or sit indifferent--I am satisfied, He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me. _THE FRIEND._ Recorders ages hence! Come, I will take you down underneath this impassive exterior--I will tell you what to say of me; Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest lover, The friend, the lover's portrait, of whom his friend, his lover, was fondest, Who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless ocean of love within him--and freely poured it forth, Who often walked lonesome walks, thinking of his dear friends, his lovers, Who pensive, away from one he loved, often lay sleepless and dissatisfied at night, Who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he loved might secretly be indifferent to him, Whose happiest days were far away, through fields, in woods, on hills, he and another, wandering hand in hand, they twain, apart from other men, Who oft, as he sauntered the streets, curved with his arm the shoulder of his friend--while the arm of his friend rested upon him also. _MEETING AGAIN._ When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been received with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for me that followed; And else, when I caroused, or when my plans were accomplished, still I was not happy. But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health, refreshed, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn, When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in the morning light, When I wandered alone over the beach, and undressing bathed, laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sunrise, And when I thought how my dear friend, my lover, was on his way coming, O then I was happy; O then each breath tasted sweeter--and all that day my food nourished me more--and the beautiful day passed well, And the next came with equal joy--and with the next, at evening, came my friend; And that night, while all was still, I heard the waters roll slowly continually up the shores, I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands, as directed to me, whispering, to congratulate me; For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night, In the stillness, in the autumn moonbeams, his face was inclined toward me, And his arm lay lightly around my breast--and that night I was happy. _A DREAM._ Of him I love day and night, I dreamed I heard he was dead; And I dreamed I went where they had buried him I love--but he was not in that place; And I dreamed I wandered, searching among burial-places, to find him; And I found that every place was a burial-place; The houses full of life were equally full of death, (this house is now;) The streets, the shipping, the places of amusement, the Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, the Mannahatta, were as full of the dead as of the living, And fuller, O vastly fuller, of the dead than of the living. --And what I dreamed I will henceforth tell to every person and age, And I stand henceforth bound to what I dreamed; And now I am willing to disregard burial-places, and dispense with them; And if the memorials of the dead were put up indifferently everywhere, even in the room where I eat or sleep, I should be satisfied; And if the corpse of any one I love, or if my own corpse, be duly rendered to powder, and poured in the sea, I shall be satisfied; Or if it be distributed to the winds, I shall be satisfied. _PARTING FRIENDS._ What think you I take my pen in hand to record? The battle-ship, perfect-modelled, majestic, that I saw pass the offing to- day under full sail? The splendours of the past day? Or the splendour of the night that envelops me? Or the vaunted glory and growth of the great city spread around me?--No; But I record of two simple men I saw to-day, on the pier, in the midst of the crowd, parting the parting of dear friends; The one to remain hung on the other's neck, and passionately kissed him, While the one to depart tightly pressed the one to remain in his arms. _TO A STRANGER._ Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you; You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking (it comes to me, as of a dream). I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you. All is recalled as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured; You grew up with me, were a boy with me, or a girl with me; I ate with you, and slept with you--your body has become not yours only, nor left my body mine only; You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass--you take of my beard, breast, hands in return; I am not to speak to you--I am to think of you when I sit alone, or wake at night alone; I am to wait--I do not doubt I am to meet you again; I am to see to it that I do not lose you. _OTHER LANDS._ This moment yearning and thoughtful, sitting alone, It seems to me there are other men in other lands, yearning and thoughtful; It seems to me I can look over and behold them in Prussia, Italy, France, Spain--or far, far away, in China, or in Russia or India--talking other dialects; And it seems to me, if I could know those men, I should become attached to them, as I do to men in my own lands. O I know we should be brethren and lovers; I know I should be happy with them. _ENVY._ When I peruse the conquered fame of heroes, and the victories of mighty generals, I do not envy the generals, Nor the President in his Presidency, nor the rich in his great house. But when I read of the brotherhood of lovers, how it was with them; How through life, through dangers, odium, unchanging, long and long, Through youth, and through middle and old age, how unfaltering, how affectionate and faithful they were, Then I am pensive--I hastily put down the book, and walk away, filled with the bitterest envy. _THE CITY OF FRIENDS._ I dreamed in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth; I dreamed that it was the new City of Friends; Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love--it led the rest; It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city, And in all their looks and words. _OUT OF THE CROWD._ 1. Out of the rolling ocean, the crowd, came a drop gently to me, Whispering, _I love you; before long I die: I have travelled a long way, merely to look on you, to touch you: For I could not die till I once looked on you, For I feared I might afterward lose you_. 2. Now we have met, we have looked, we are safe; Return in peace to the ocean, my love; I too am part of that ocean, my love--we are not so much separated; Behold the great _rondure_--the cohesion of all, how perfect! But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us, As for an hour carrying us diverse--yet cannot carry us diverse for ever; Be not impatient--a little space--know you, I salute the air, the ocean, and the land, Every day, at sundown, for your dear sake, my love. _AMONG THE MULTITUDE._ Among the men and women, the multitude, I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs, Acknowledging none else--not parent, wife, husband, brother, child, any nearer than I am; Some are baffled--But that one is not--that one knows me. Ah, lover and perfect equal! I meant that you should discover me so, by my faint indirections; And I, when I meet you, mean to discover you by the like in you. LEAVES OF GRASS. _PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S FUNERAL HYMN._ 1. When lilacs last in the door-yard bloomed, And the great star[1] early drooped in the western sky in the night, I mourned,...and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring; Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west, And thought of him I love. 2. O powerful, western, fallen star! O shades of night! O moody, tearful night! O great star disappeared! O the black murk that hides the star! O cruel hands that hold me powerless! O helpless soul of me! O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul! 3. In the door-yard fronting an old farm-house, near the whitewashed palings, Stands the lilac bush, tall-growing, with heart-shaped leaves of rich green, With many a pointed blossom, rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love, With every leaf a miracle: and from this bush in the dooryard, With delicate-coloured blossoms, and heart-shaped leaves of rich green, A sprig, with its flower, I break. 4. In the swamp, in secluded recesses, A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song. Solitary, the thrush, The hermit, withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements, Sings by himself a song: Song of the bleeding throat! Death's outlet song of life--for well, dear brother, I know, If thou wast not gifted to sing, thou wouldst surely die. 5. Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities, Amid lanes, and through old woods, where lately the violets peeped from the ground, spotting the greydebris; Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes--passing the endless grass; Passing the yellow-speared wheat, every grain from its shroud in the dark-brown fields uprising; Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards; Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave, Night and day journeys a coffin. 6. Coffin that passes through lanes and streets, Through day and night, with the great cloud darkening the land, With the pomp of the inlooped flags, with the cities draped in black, With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veiled women standing, With processions long and winding, and the flambeaus of the night, With the countless torches lit--with the silent sea of faces, and the unbared heads, With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces, With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn; With all the mournful voices of the dirges, poured around the coffin, The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs--Where amid these you journey, With the tolling, tolling bells' perpetual clang; Here! coffin that slowly passes, I give you my sprig of lilac. 7. Nor for you, for one, alone; Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring: For fresh as the morning--thus would I chant a song for you, O sane and sacred Death. All over bouquets of roses, O Death! I cover you over with roses and early lilies; But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first, Copious, I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes! With loaded arms I come, pouring for you, For you and the coffins all of you, O Death. 8. O western orb, sailing the heaven! Now I know what you must have meant, as a month since we walked, As we walked up and down in the dark blue so mystic, As we walked in silence the transparent shadowy night, As I saw you had something to tell, as you bent to me night after night, As you drooped from the sky low down, as if to my side, while the other stars all looked on; As we wandered together the solemn night, for something, I know not what, kept me from sleep; As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west, ere you went, how full you were of woe; As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze, in the cool transparent night, As I watched where you passed and was lost in the netherward black of the night, As my soul, in its trouble, dissatisfied, sank, as where you, sad orb, Concluded, dropped in the night, and was gone. 9. Sing on, there in the swamp! O singer bashful and tender! I hear your notes--I hear your call; I hear--I come presently--I understand you; But a moment I linger--for the lustrous star has detained me; The star, my comrade departing, holds and detains me. 10. O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved? And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone? And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love? Sea-winds, blown from east and west, Blown from the Eastern Sea, and blown from the Western Sea, till there on the prairies meeting: These, and with these, and the breath of my chant, I perfume the grave of him I love. 11. O what shall I hang on the chamber walls? And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls, To adorn the burial-house of him I love? Pictures of growing spring, and farms, and homes, With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the grey smoke lucid and bright, With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent sinking sun, burning, expanding the air; With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves of the trees prolific; In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a wind-dapple here and there; With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky, and shadows; And the city at hand, with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys, And all the scenes of life, and the workshops, and the workmen homeward returning. 12. Lo! body and soul! this land! Mighty Manhattan, with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships; The varied and ample land--the South and the North in the light--Ohio's shores, and flashing Missouri, And ever the far-spreading prairies, covered with grass and corn. Lo! the most excellent sun, so calm and haughty; The violet and purple morn, with just-felt breezes; The gentle, soft-born, measureless light; The miracle, spreading, bathing all--the fulfilled noon; The coming eve, delicious--the welcome night, and the stars, Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land. 13. Sing on! sing on, you grey-brown bird! Sing from the swamps, the recesses--pour your chant from the bushes; Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines. Sing on, dearest brother--warble your reedy song, Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe. O liquid, and free, and tender! O wild and loose to my soul! O wondrous singer! You only I hear,... yet the star holds me, (but will soon depart;) Yet the lilac, with mastering odour, holds me. 14. Now while I sat in the day, and looked forth, In the close of the day, with its light, and the fields of spring, and the farmer preparing his crops, In the large unconscious scenery of my land, with its lakes and forests, In the heavenly aerial beauty, after the perturbed winds and the storms; Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the voices of children and women, The many-moving sea-tides,--and I saw the ships how they sailed, And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with labour, And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals and minutiae of daily usages; And the streets, how their throbbings throbbed, and the cities pent--lo! then and there, Falling upon them all, and among them all, enveloping me with the rest, Appeared the cloud, appeared the long black trail; And I knew Death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of Death. 15. And the Thought of Death close-walking the other side of me, And I in the middle, as with companions, and as holding the hands of companions, I fled forth to the hiding receiving night, that talks not, Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness, To the solemn shadowy cedars, and ghostly pines so still. And the singer so shy to the rest received me; The grey-brown bird I know received us Comrades three; And he sang what seemed the song of Death, and a verse for him I love. From deep secluded recesses, From the fragrant cedars, and the ghostly pines so still, Came the singing of the bird. And the charm of the singing rapt me, As I held, as if by their hands, my Comrades in the night; And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird. 16. Come, lovely and soothing Death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later, delicate Death. Praised be the fathomless universe, For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious; And for love, sweet love--But praise! O praise and praise, For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding Death. Dark Mother, always gliding near, with soft feet, Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome? Then I chant it for thee--I glorify thee above all; I bring thee a song that, when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly. Approach, encompassing Death-strong deliveress! When it is so--when thou hast taken them, I joyously sing the dead, Lost in the loving, floating ocean of thee, Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O Death. From me to thee glad serenades, Dances for thee I propose, saluting thee--adornments and feastings for thee; And the sights of the open landscape, and the high-spread sky, are fitting, And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night. The night, in silence, under many a star; The ocean shore, and the husky whispering wave, whose voice I know; And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veiled Death, And the body gratefully nestling close to thee. Over the tree-tops I float thee a song! Over the rising and sinking waves--over the myriad fields, and the prairies wide; Over the dense-packed cities all, and the teeming wharves and ways, I float this carol with joy, with joy, to thee, O Death! 17. To the tally of my soul Loud and strong kept up the grey-brown bird, With pure, deliberate notes, spreading, filling the night. Loud in the pines and cedars dim, Clear in the freshness moist, and the swamp-perfume, And I with my Comrades there in the night. While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed, As to long panoramas of visions. 18. I saw the vision of armies; And I saw, as in noiseless dreams, hundreds of battle-flags; Borne through the smoke of the battles, and pierced with missiles, I saw them, And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody; And at last but a few shreds of the flags left on the staffs, (and all in silence,) And the staffs all splintered and broken. I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them, And the white skeletons of young men--I saw them; I saw the debris and debris of all dead soldiers. But I saw they were not as was thought; They themselves were fully at rest--they suffered not; The living remained and suffered--the mother suffered, And the wife and the child, and the musing comrade suffered, And the armies that remained suffered. 19. Passing the visions, passing the night; Passing, unloosing the hold of my Comrades' hands; Passing the song of the hermit bird, and the tallying song of my soul; Victorious song, Death's outlet song, yet varying, ever-altering song; As low and wailing, yet clear, the notes, rising and falling, flooding the night, Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting with joy. Covering the earth, and filling the spread of the heaven, As that powerful psalm in the night, I heard from recesses. 20. Must I leave thee, lilac with heart-shaped leaves? Must I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring? Must I pass from my song for thee-- From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with thee, O comrade lustrous, with silver face in the night? 21. Yet each I keep, and all; The song, the wondrous chant of the grey-brown bird, And the tallying chant, the echo aroused in my soul, With the lustrous and drooping star, with the countenance full of woe; With the lilac tali, and its blossoms of mastering odour; Comrades mine, and I in the midst, and their memory ever I keep--for the dead I loved so well; For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands--and this for his dear sake; Lilac and star and bird, twined with the chant of my soul, With the holders holding my hand, nearing the call of the bird, There in the fragrant pines, and the cedars dusk and dim. [Footnote 1: "The evening star, which, as many may remember night after night, in the early part of that eventful spring, hung low in the west with unusual and tender brightness."--JOHN BURROUGHS.] _O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!_ (FOR THE DEATH OF LINCOLN.) 1. O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done! The ship has weathered every wrack, the prize we sought is won. The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring. But, O heart! heart! heart! Leave you not the little spot Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. 2. O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells! Rise up! for you the flag is flung, for you the bugle trills: For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths; for you the shores a-crowding: For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning. O Captain! dear father! This arm I push beneath you. It is some dream that on the deck You've fallen cold and dead! 3. My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still: My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will. But the ship, the ship is anchored safe, its voyage closed and done: From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won! Exult, O shores! and ring, O bells! But I, with silent tread, Walk the spot my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. _PIONEERS! O PIONEERS!_ 1. Come, my tan-faced children, Follow well in order, get your weapons ready; Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes? Pioneers! O pioneers! 2. For we cannot tarry here, We must march, my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend. Pioneers! O pioneers! 3. O you youths, Western youths, So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, Plain I see you, Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, Pioneers! O pioneers! 4. Have the elder races halted? Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied, over there beyond the seas? We take up the task eternal, and the burden, and the lesson, Pioneers! O pioneers! 5. All the past we leave behind; We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world; Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labour and the march, Pioneers! O pioneers! 6. We detachments steady throwing, Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep, Conquering, holding, daring, venturing, as we go, the unknown ways, Pioneers! O pioneers! 7. We primeval forests felling, We the rivers stemming, vexing we, and piercing deep the mines within; We the surface broad surveying, and the virgin soil upheaving, Pioneers! O pioneers! 8. Colorado men are we, From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus, From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come, Pioneers! O pioneers! 9. From Nebraska, from Arkansas, Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental blood interveined; All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern, Pioneers! O pioneers! 10. O resistless, restless race! O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all! O I mourn and yet exult--I am rapt with love for all, Pioneers! O pioneers; 11. Raise the mighty mother mistress, Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress, (bend your heads all,) Raise the fanged and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weaponed mistress, Pioneers! O pioneers! 12. See, my children, resolute children, By those swarms upon our rear, we must never yield or falter, Ages back in ghostly millions, frowning there behind us urging, Pioneers! O pioneers! 13. On and on, the compact ranks, With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly filled, Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping, Pioneers! O pioneers! 14. O to die advancing on! Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come? Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is filled, Pioneers! O pioneers! 15. All the pulses of the world, Falling in, they beat for us, with the Western movement beat; Holding single or together, steady moving, to the front, all for us, Pioneers! O pioneers! 16. Life's involved and varied pageants, All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work, All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves, Pioneers, O pioneers! 17. All the hapless silent lovers, All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked, All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying, Pioneers! O pioneers! 18. I too with my soul and body, We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way, Through these shores, amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing, Pioneers! O pioneers! 19. Lo! the darting, bowling orb! Lo! the brother orbs around! all the clustering suns and planets; All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams, Pioneers! O pioneers! 20. These are of us, they are with us, All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait behind, We to-day's procession heading, we the route for travel clearing, Pioneers! O pioneers! 21. O you daughters of the West! O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives! Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united, Pioneers! O pioneers! 22. Minstrels latent on the prairies! (Shrouded bards of other lands! you may sleep--you have done your work;) Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us, Pioneers! O pioneers! 23. Not for delectations sweet; Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious; Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment, Pioneers! O pioneers! 24. Do the feasters gluttonous feast? Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they locked and bolted doors? Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground, Pioneers! O pioneers! 25. Has the night descended? Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged, nodding on our way? Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious, Pioneers! O pioneers! 26. Till with sound of trumpet, Far, far off the daybreak call--hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind; Swift! to the head of the army!--swift! spring to your places, Pioneers! O pioneers! _TO THE SAYERS OF WORDS._ 1. Earth, round, rolling, compact--suns, moons, animals--all these are words to be said; Watery, vegetable, sauroid advances--beings, premonitions, lispings of the future, Behold! these are vast words to be said. Were you thinking that those were the words--those upright lines? those curves, angles, dots? No, those are not the words--the substantial words are in the ground and sea, They are in the air--they are in you. Were you thinking that those were the words--those delicious sounds out of your friends' mouths? No; the real words are more delicious than they. Human bodies are words, myriads of words; In the best poems reappears the body, man's or woman's, well-shaped, natural, gay; Every part able, active, receptive, without shame or the need of shame. Air, soil, water, fire--these are words; I myself am a word with them--my qualities interpenetrate with theirs--my name is nothing to them; Though it were told in the three thousand languages, what would air, soil, water, fire, know of my name? A healthy presence, a friendly or commanding gesture, are words, sayings, meanings; The charms that go with the mere looks of some men and women are sayings and meanings also. 2. The workmanship of souls is by the inaudible words of the earth; The great masters know the earth's words, and use them more than the audible words. Amelioration is one of the earth's words; The earth neither lags nor hastens; It has all attributes, growths, effects, latent in itself from the jump; It is not half beautiful only--defects and excrescences show just as much as perfections show. The earth does not withhold--it is generous enough; The truths of the earth continually wait, they are not so concealed either; They are calm, subtle, untransmissible by print; They are imbued through all things, conveying themselves willingly, Conveying a sentiment and invitation of the earth. I utter and utter: I speak not; yet, if you hear me not, of what avail am I to you? To bear--to better; lacking these, of what avail am I? _Accouche! Accouchez!_ Will you rot your own fruit in yourself there? Will you squat and stifle there? The earth does not argue, Is not pathetic, has no arrangements, Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise, Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures, Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out; Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out. The earth does not exhibit itself, nor refuse to exhibit itself--possesses still underneath; Underneath the ostensible sounds, the august chorus of heroes, the wail of slaves, Persuasions of lovers, curses, gasps of the dying, laughter of young people, accents of bargainers, Underneath these, possessing the words that never fail. To her children, the words of the eloquent dumb great Mother never fail; The true words do not fail, for motion does not fail, and reflection does not fail; Also the day and night do not fail, and the voyage we pursue does not fail. 3. Of the interminable sisters, Of the ceaseless cotillons of sisters, Of the centripetal and centrifugal sisters, the elder and younger sisters, The beautiful sister we know dances on with the rest. With her ample back towards every beholder, With the fascinations of youth, and the equal fascinations of age, Sits she whom I too love like the rest--sits undisturbed, Holding up in her hand what has the character of a mirror, while her eyes glance back from it, Glance as she sits, inviting none, denying none, Holding a mirror day and night tirelessly before her own face. Seen at hand, or seen at a distance, Duly the twenty-four appear in public every day, Duly approach and pass with their companions, or a companion, Looking from no countenances of their own, but from the countenances of those who are with them, From the countenances of children or women, or the manly countenance, From the open countenances of animals, or from inanimate things, From the landscape or waters, or from the exquisite apparition of the sky, From our countenances, mine and yours, faithfully returning them, Every day in public appearing without fail, but never twice with the same companions. Embracing man, embracing all, proceed the three hundred and sixty-five resistlessly round the sun; Embracing all, soothing, supporting, follow close three hundred and sixty- five offsets of the first, sure and necessary as they. Tumbling on steadily, nothing dreading, Sunshine, storm, cold, heat, for ever withstanding, passing, carrying, The Soul's realisation and determination still inheriting; The fluid vacuum around and ahead still entering and dividing, No baulk retarding, no anchor anchoring, on no rock striking, Swift, glad, content, unbereaved, nothing losing, Of all able and ready at any time to give strict account, The divine ship sails the divine sea. 4. Whoever you are! motion and reflection are especially for you; The divine ship sails the divine sea for you. Whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid and liquid, You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky; For none more than you are the present and the past, For none more than you is immortality. Each man to himself, and each woman to herself, such as the word of the past and present, and the word of immortality; No one can acquire for another--not one! Not one can grow for another--not one! The song is to the singer, and comes back most to him; The teaching is to the teacher, and comes back most to him; The murder is to the murderer, and comes back most to him; The theft is to the thief, and comes back most to him; The love is to the lover, and conies back most to him; The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him--it cannot fail; The oration is to the orator, the acting is to the actor and actress, not to the audience; And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own, or the indication of his own. 5. I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall be complete! I swear the earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains broken and jagged! I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate those of the earth! I swear there can be no theory of any account, unless it corroborate the theory of the earth! No politics, art, religion, behaviour, or what not, is of account, unless it compare with the amplitude of the earth, Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude, of the earth. I swear I begin to see love with sweeter spasms than that which responds love! It is that which contains itself--which never invites, and never refuses. I swear I begin to see little or nothing in audible words! I swear I think all merges toward the presentation of the unspoken meanings of the earth; Toward him who sings the songs of the Body, and of the truths of the earth; Toward him who makes the dictionaries of words that print cannot touch. I swear I see what is better than to tell the best; It is always to leave the best untold. When I undertake to tell the best, I find I cannot, My tongue is ineffectual on its pivots, My breath will not be obedient to its organs, I become a dumb man. The best of the earth cannot be told anyhow--all or any is best; It is not what you anticipated--it is cheaper, easier, nearer; Things are not dismissed from the places they held before; The earth is just as positive and direct as it was before; Facts, religions, improvements, politics, trades, are as real as before; But the Soul is also real,--it too is positive and direct; No reasoning, no proof has established it, Undeniable growth has established it. 6. This is a poem for the sayers of words--these are hints of meanings, These are they that echo the tones of souls, and the phrases of souls; If they did not echo the phrases of souls, what were they then? If they had not reference to you in especial, what were they then? I swear I will never henceforth have to do with the faith that tells the best! I will have to do only with that faith that leaves the best untold. 7. Say on, sayers! Delve! mould! pile the words of the earth! Work on--it is materials you bring, not breaths; Work on, age after age! nothing is to be lost! It may have to wait long, but it will certainly come in use; When the materials are all prepared, the architects shall appear. I swear to you the architects shall appear without fail! I announce them and lead them; I swear to you they will understand you and justify you; I swear to you the greatest among them shall be he who best knows you, and encloses all, and is faithful to all; I swear to you, he and the rest shall not forget you--they shall perceive that you are not an iota less than they; I swear to you, you shall be glorified in them. _VOICES._ 1. Now I make a leaf of Voices--for I have found nothing mightier than they are, And I have found that no word spoken but is beautiful in its place. 2. O what is it in me that makes me tremble so at voices? Surely, whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow, As the water follows the moon, silently, with fluid steps anywhere around the globe. All waits for the right voices; Where is the practised and perfect organ? Where is the developed Soul? For I see every word uttered thence has deeper, sweeter, new sounds, impossible on less terms. I see brains and lips closed--tympans and temples unstruck, Until that comes which has the quality to strike and to unclose, Until that comes which has the quality to bring forth what lies slumbering, for ever ready, in all words. _WHOSOEVER._ Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams, I fear those supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands; Even now, your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you, Your true Soul and Body appear before me, They stand forth out of affairs-out of commerce, shops, law, science, work, farms, clothes, the house, medicine, print, buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, dying. Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem; I whisper with my lips close to your ear, I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you. Oh! I have been dilatory and dumb; I should have made my way straight to you long ago; I should have blabbed nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but you. I will leave all, and come and make the hymns of you; None have understood you, but I understand you; None have done justice to you--you have not done justice to yourself; None but have found you imperfect--I only find no imperfection in you; None but would subordinate you--I only am he who will never consent to subordinate you; I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself. Painters have painted their swarming groups, and the centre figure of all, From the head of the centre figure spreading a nimbus of gold-coloured light; But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of gold- coloured light; From my hand, from the brain of every man and woman, it streams, effulgently flowing for ever. O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you! You have not known what you are--you have slumbered upon yourself all your life; Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time; What you have done returns already in mockeries; Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what is their return? The mockeries are not you; Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk; I pursue you where none else has pursued you; Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustomed routine, if these conceal you from others, or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me; The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these baulk others, they do not baulk me. The pert apparel, the deformed attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature death, all these I part aside. There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you; There is no virtue, no beauty, in man or woman, but as good is in you; No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you; No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you. As for me, I give nothing to any one, except I give the like carefully to you; I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing the songs of the glory of you. Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard! These shows of the east and west are tame compared to you; These immense meadows--these interminable rivers--you are immense and interminable as they; These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent dissolution--you are he or she who is master or mistress over them, Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain, passion, dissolution. The hopples fall from your ankles--you find an unfailing sufficiency; Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever you are promulgates itself; Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing is scanted; Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are picks its way. _BEGINNERS._ How they are provided for upon the earth, appearing at intervals; How dear and dreadful they are to the earth; How they inure to themselves as much as to any--What a paradox appears their age; How people respond to them, yet know them not; How there is something relentless in their fate, all times; How all times mischoose the objects of their adulation and reward, And how the same inexorable price must still be paid for the same great purchase. _TO A PUPIL._ 1. Is reform needed? Is it through you? The greater the reform needed, the greater the PERSONALITY you need to accomplish it. You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood, complexion, clean and sweet? Do you not see how it would serve to have such a Body and Soul that, when you enter the crowd, an atmosphere of desire and command enters with you, and every one is impressed with your personality? 2. O the magnet! the flesh over and over! Go, dear friend! if need be, give up all else, and commence to-day to inure yourself to pluck, reality, self-esteem, definiteness, elevatedness; Rest not, till you rivet and publish yourself of your own personality. LINKS. 1. Think of the Soul; I swear to you that body of yours gives proportions to your Soul somehow to live in other spheres; I do not know how, but I know it is so. 2. Think of loving and being loved; I swear to you, whoever you are, you can interfuse yourself with such things that everybody that sees you shall look longingly upon you. 3. Think of the past; I warn you that, in a little while, others will find their past in you and your times. The race is never separated--nor man nor woman escapes; All is inextricable--things, spirits, nature, nations, you too--from precedents you come. Recall the ever-welcome defiers (the mothers precede them); Recall the sages, poets, saviours, inventors, lawgivers, of the earth; Recall Christ, brother of rejected persons--brother of slaves, felons, idiots, and of insane and diseased persons. 4. Think of the time when you was not yet born; Think of times you stood at the side of the dying; Think of the time when your own body will be dying. Think of spiritual results: Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its objects pass into spiritual results. Think of manhood, and you to be a man; Do you count manhood, and the sweet of manhood, nothing? Think of womanhood, and you to be a woman; The creation is womanhood; Have I not said that womanhood involves all? Have I not told how the universe has nothing better than the best womanhood? _THE WATERS._ The world below the brine. Forests at the bottom of the sea--the branches and leaves, Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds--the thick tangle, the openings, and the pink turf, Different colours, pale grey and green, purple, white, and gold--the play of light through the water, Dumb swimmers there among the rocks--coral, gluten, grass, rushes--and the aliment of the swimmers, Sluggish existences grazing there, suspended, or slowly crawling close to the bottom: The sperm-whale at the surface, blowing air and spray, or disporting with his flukes, The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy sea-leopard, and the sting-ray. Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes--sight in those ocean-depths-- breathing that thick breathing air, as so many do. The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed by beings like us, who walk this sphere: The change onward from ours to that of beings who walk other spheres. _TO THE STATES._ TO IDENTIFY THE SIXTEENTH, SEVENTEENTH, OR EIGHTEENTH PRESIDENTIAD.[1] Why reclining, interrogating? Why myself and all drowsing? What deepening twilight! Scum floating atop of the waters! Who are they, as bats and night-dogs, askant in the Capitol? What a filthy Presidentiad! (O South, your torrid suns! O North, your Arctic freezings!) Are those really Congressmen? Are those the great Judges? Is that the President? Then I will sleep a while yet--for I see that these States sleep, for reasons. With gathering murk--with muttering thunder and lambent shoots, we all duly awake, South, North, East, West, inland and seaboard, we will surely awake. [Footnote 1: These were the three Presidentships of Polk; of Taylor, succeeded by Fillmore; and of Pierce;--1845 to 1857.] _TEARS._ Tears! tears! tears! In the night, in solitude, tears; On the white shore dripping, dripping, sucked in by the sand; Tears--not a star shining--all dark and desolate; Moist tears from the eyes of a muffled head: --O who is that ghost?--that form in the dark, with tears? What shapeless lump is that, bent, crouched there on the sand? Streaming tears--sobbing tears--throes, choked with wild cries; O storm, embodied, rising, careering, with swift steps along the beach; O wild and dismal night-storm, with wind! O belching and desperate! O shade, so sedate and decorous by day, with calm countenance and regulated pace; But away, at night, as you fly, none looking--O then the unloosened ocean Of tears! tears! tears! _A SHIP._ 1. Aboard, at the ship's helm, A young steersman, steering with care. A bell through fog on a sea-coast dolefully ringing, An ocean-bell--O a warning bell, rocked by the waves. O you give good notice indeed, you bell by the sea-reefs ringing, Ringing, ringing, to warn the ship from its wreck-place. For, as on the alert, O steersman, you mind the bell's admonition, The bows turn,--the freighted ship, tacking, speeds away under her grey sails; The beautiful and noble ship, with all her precious wealth, speeds away gaily and safe. 2. But O the ship, the immortal ship! O ship aboard the ship! O ship of the body--ship of the soul--voyaging, voyaging, voyaging. _GREATNESS._ 1. Great are the myths--I too delight in them; Great are Adam and Eve--I too look back and accept them; Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages, inventors, rulers, warriors, and priests. Great is Liberty! great is Equality! I am their follower; Helmsmen of nations, choose your craft! where you sail, I sail, I weather it out with you, or sink with you. Great is Youth--equally great is Old Age--great are the Day and Night; Great is Wealth--great is Poverty--great is Expression--great is Silence. 2. Youth, large, lusty, loving--Youth, full of grace, force, fascination! Do you know that Old Age may come after you, with equal grace, force, fascination? Day, full-blown and splendid--Day of the immense sun, action, ambition, laughter, The Night follows close, with millions of suns, and sleep, and restoring darkness. Wealth, with the flush hand, fine clothes, hospitality; But then the soul's wealth, which is candour, knowledge, pride, enfolding love; Who goes for men and women showing Poverty richer than wealth? Expression of speech! in what is written or said, forget not that Silence is also expressive; That anguish as hot as the hottest, and contempt as cold as the coldest, may be without words. 3. Great is the Earth, and the way it became what it is: Do you imagine it has stopped at this? the increase abandoned? Understand then that it goes as far onward from this as this is from the times when it lay in covering waters and gases, before man had appeared. 4. Great is the quality of Truth in man; The quality of truth in man supports itself through all changes; It is inevitably in the man--he and it are in love, and never leave each other. The truth in man is no dictum, it is vital as eyesight; If there be any Soul, there is truth--if there be man or woman, there is truth--if there be physical or moral, there is truth; If there be equilibrium or volition, there is truth--if there be things at all upon the earth, there is truth. O truth of the earth! O truth of things! I am determined to press my way toward you; Sound your voice! I scale mountains, or dive in the sea, after you. 5. Great is Language--it is the mightiest of the sciences, It is the fulness, colour, form, diversity of the earth, and of men and women, and of all qualities and processes; It is greater than wealth, it is greater than buildings, ships, religions, paintings, music. Great is the English speech--what speech is so great as the English? Great is the English brood--what brood has so vast a destiny as the English? It is the mother of the brood that must rule the earth with the new rule; The new rule shall rule as the Soul rules, and as the love, justice, equality in the Soul rule. 6. Great is Law--great are the old few landmarks of the law, They are the same in all times, and shall not be disturbed. Great is Justice! Justice is not settled by legislators and laws--it is in the Soul; It cannot be varied by statutes, any more than love, pride, the attraction of gravity, can; It is immutable--it does not depend on majorities--majorities or what not come at last before the same passionless and exact tribunal. For justice are the grand natural lawyers, and perfect judges--it is in their souls; It is well assorted--they have not studied for nothing--the great includes the less; They rule on the highest grounds--they oversee all eras, states, administrations. The perfect judge fears nothing--he could go front to front before God; Before the perfect judge all shall stand back--life and death shall stand back--heaven and hell shall stand back. 7. Great is Life, real and mystical, wherever and whoever; Great is Death--sure as Life holds all parts together, Death holds all parts together. Has Life much purport?--Ah! Death has the greatest purport. _THE POET._ 1. Now list to my morning's romanza; To the cities and farms I sing, as they spread in the sunshine before me. 2. A young man came to me bearing a message from his brother; How should the young man know the whether and when of his brother? Tell him to send me the signs. And I stood before the young man face to face, and took his right hand in my left hand, and his left hand in my right hand, And I answered for his brother, and for men, and I answered for THE POET, and sent these signs. Him all wait for--him all yield up to--his word is decisive and final, Him they accept, in him lave, in him perceive themselves, as amid light, Him they immerse, and he immerses them. Beautiful women, the haughtiest nations, laws, the landscape, people, animals, The profound earth and its attributes, and the unquiet ocean (so tell I my morning's romanza), All enjoyments and properties, and money, and whatever money will buy, The best farms--others toiling and planting, and he unavoidably reaps, The noblest and costliest cities--others grading and building, and he domiciles there, Nothing for any one but what is for him--near and far are for him,--the ships in the offing, The perpetual shows and marches on land, are for him, if they are for anybody. He puts things in their attitudes; He puts to-day out of himself, with plasticity and love; He places his own city, times, reminiscences, parents, brothers and sisters, associations, employment, politics, so that the rest never shame them afterward, nor assume to command them. He is the answerer; What can be answered he answers--and what cannot be answered, he shows how it cannot be answered. 3. A man is a summons and challenge; (It is vain to skulk--Do you hear that mocking and laughter? Do you hear the ironical echoes?) Books, friendships, philosophers, priests, action, pleasure, pride, beat up and down, seeking to give satisfaction; He indicates the satisfaction, and indicates them that beat up and down also. Whichever the sex, whatever the season or place, he may go freshly and gently and safely, by day or by night; He has the pass-key of hearts--to him the response of the prying of hands on the knobs. His welcome is universal--the flow of beauty is not more welcome or universal than he is; The person he favours by day or sleeps with at night is blessed. Every existence has its idiom--everything has an idiom and tongue; He resolves all tongues into his own, and bestows it upon men, and any man translates, and any man translates himself also; One part does not counteract another part--he is the joiner--he sees how they join. He says indifferently and alike, "_How are you, friend_?" to the President at his levee, And he says, "_Good-day, my brother_!" to Cudge that hoes in the sugar- field, And both understand him, and know that his speech is right. He walks with perfect ease in the Capitol, He walks among the Congress, and one representative says to another, "_Here is our equal, appearing and new_." 4. Then the mechanics take him for a mechanic, And the soldiers suppose him to be a soldier, and the sailors that he has followed the sea, And the authors take him for an author, and the artists for an artist, And the labourers perceive he could labour with them and love them; No matter what the work is, that he is the one to follow it, or has followed it, No matter what the nation, that he might find his brothers and sisters there. The English believe he comes of their English stock, A Jew to the Jew he seems--a Russ to the Russ--usual and near, removed from none. Whoever he looks at in the travellers' coffee-house claims him; The Italian or Frenchman is sure, and the German is sure, and the Spaniard is sure, and the island Cuban is sure; The engineer, the deck-hand on the great lakes, or on the Mississippi, or St. Lawrence, or Sacramento, or Hudson, or Paumanok Sound, claims him. The gentleman of perfect blood acknowledges his perfect blood; The insulter, the prostitute, the angry person, the beggar, see themselves in the ways of him--he strangely transmutes them, They are not vile any more--they hardly know themselves, they are so grown. _BURIAL._ 1. To think of it! To think of time--of all that retrospection! To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward! Have you guessed you yourself would not continue? Have you dreaded these earth-beetles? Have you feared the future would be nothing to you? Is to-day nothing? Is the beginningless past nothing? If the future is nothing, they are just as surely nothing. To think that the sun rose in the east! that men and women were flexible, real, alive! that everything was alive! To think that you and I did not see, feel, think, nor bear our part! To think that we are now here, and bear our part! 2. Not a day passes--not a minute or second, without an accouchement! Not a day passes-not a minute or second, without a corpse! The dull nights go over, and the dull days also, The soreness of lying so much in bed goes over, The physician, after long putting off, gives the silent and terrible look for an answer, The children come hurried and weeping, and the brothers and sisters are sent for; Medicines stand unused on the shelf--(the camphor-smell has long pervaded the rooms,) The faithful hand of the living does not desert the hand of the dying, The twitching lips press lightly on the forehead of the dying, The breath ceases, and the pulse of the heart ceases, The corpse stretches on the bed, and the living look upon it, It is palpable as the living are palpable. The living look upon the corpse with their eyesight, But without eyesight lingers a different living, and looks curiously on the corpse. 3. To think that the rivers will flow, and the snow fall, and the fruits ripen, and act upon others as upon us now--yet not act upon us! To think of all these wonders of city and country, and others taking great interest in them--and we taking--no interest in them! To think how eager we are in building our houses! To think others shall be just as eager, and we quite indifferent! I see one building the house that serves him a few years, or seventy or eighty years at most, I see one building the house that serves him longer than that. Slow-moving and black lines creep over the whole earth--they never cease-- they are the burial lines; He that was President was buried, and he that is now President shall surely be buried. 4. Gold dash of waves at the ferry-wharf--posh and ice in the river, half- frozen mud in the streets, a grey discouraged sky overhead, the short last daylight of Twelfth-month, A hearse and stages--other vehicles give place--the funeral of an old Broadway stage-driver, the cortege mostly drivers. Steady the trot to the cemetery, duly rattles the death-bell, the gate is passed, the new-dug grave is halted at, the living alight, the hearse uncloses, The coffin is passed out, lowered, and settled, the whip is laid on the coffin, the earth is swiftly shovelled in, The mound above is flattened with the spades--silence, A minute, no one moves or speaks--it is done, He is decently put away--is there anything more? He was a good fellow, free-mouthed, quick-tempered, not bad-looking, able to take his own part, witty, sensitive to a slight, ready with life or death for a friend, fond of women, gambled, ate hearty, drank hearty, had known what it was to be flush, grew low-spirited toward the last, sickened, was helped by a contribution, died, aged forty- one years--and that was his funeral. Thumb extended, finger uplifted, apron, cape, gloves, strap, wet-weather clothes, whip carefully chosen, boss, spotter, starter, hostler, somebody loafing on you, you loafing on somebody, headway, man before and man behind, good day's work, bad day's work, pet stock, mean stock, first out, last out, turning-in at night; To think that these are so much and so nigh to other drivers--and he there takes no interest in them! 5. The markets, the government, the working-man's wages--to think what account they are through our nights and days! To think that other working-men will make just as great account of them-- yet we make little or no account! The vulgar and the refined--what you call sin, and what you call goodness-- to think how wide a difference! To think the difference will still continue to others, yet we lie beyond the difference. To think how much pleasure there is! Have you pleasure from looking at the sky? have you pleasure from poems? Do you enjoy yourself in the city? or engaged in business? or planning a nomination and election? or with your wife and family? Or with your mother and sisters? or in womanly housework? or the beautiful maternal cares? These also flow onward to others--you and I fly onward, But in due time you and I shall take less interest in them. Your farm, profits, crops,--to think how engrossed you are! To think there will still be farms, profits, crops--yet for you, of what avail? 6. What will be will be well--for what is is well; To take interest is well, and not to take interest shall be well. The sky continues beautiful, The pleasure of men with women shall never be sated, nor the pleasure of women with men, nor the pleasure from poems; The domestic joys, the daily housework or business, the building of houses--these are not phantasms--they have weight, form, location; Farms, profits, crops, markets, wages, government, are none of them phantasms; The difference between sin and goodness is no delusion, The earth is not an echo--man and his life, and all the things of his life, are well-considered. You are not thrown to the winds--you gather certainly and safely around yourself; Yourself! Yourself! Yourself, for ever and ever! 7. It is not to diffuse you that you were born of your mother and father--it is to identify you; It is not that you should be undecided, but that you should be decided; Something long preparing and formless is arrived and formed in you, You are henceforth secure, whatever comes or goes. The threads that were spun are gathered, the weft crosses the warp, the pattern is systematic. The preparations have every one been justified, The orchestra have sufficiently tuned their instruments--the baton has given the signal. The guest that was coming--he waited long, for reasons--he is now housed; He is one of those who are beautiful and happy--he is one of those that to look upon and be with is enough. The law of the past cannot be eluded, The law of the present and future cannot be eluded, The law of the living cannot be eluded--it is eternal; The law of promotion and transformation cannot be eluded, The law of heroes and good-doers cannot be eluded, The law of drunkards, informers, mean persons--not one iota thereof can be eluded. 8. Slow-moving and black lines go ceaselessly over the earth, Northerner goes carried, and Southerner goes carried, and they on the Atlantic side, and they on the Pacific, and they between, and all through the Mississippi country, and all over the earth. The great masters and kosmos are well as they go--the heroes and good-doers are well, The known leaders and inventors, and the rich owners and pious and distinguished, may be well, But there is more account than that--there is strict account of all. The interminable hordes of the ignorant and wicked are not nothing, The barbarians of Africa and Asia are not nothing, The common people of Europe are not nothing--the American aborigines are not nothing, The infected in the immigrant hospital are not nothing--the murderer or mean person is not nothing, The perpetual successions of shallow people are not nothing as they go, The lowest prostitute is not nothing--the mocker of religion is not nothing as he goes. 9. I shall go with the rest--we have satisfaction, I have dreamed that we are not to be changed so much, nor the law of us changed, I have dreamed that heroes and good-doers shall be under the present and past law, And that murderers, drunkards, liars, shall be under the present and past law, For I have dreamed that the law they are under now is enough. And I have dreamed that the satisfaction is not so much changed, and that there is no life without satisfaction; What is the earth? what are Body and Soul without satisfaction? I shall go with the rest, We cannot be stopped at a given point--that is no satisfaction, To show us a good thing, or a few good things, for a space of time--that is no satisfaction, We must have the indestructible breed of the best, regardless of time. If otherwise, all these things came but to ashes of dung, If maggots and rats ended us, then alarum! for we are betrayed! Then indeed suspicion of death. Do you suspect death? If I were to suspect death, I should die now: Do you think I could walk pleasantly and well-suited toward annihilation? 10. Pleasantly and well-suited I walk: Whither I walk I cannot define, but I know it is good; The whole universe indicates that it is good, The past and the present indicate that it is good. How beautiful and perfect are the animals! How perfect is my Soul! How perfect the earth, and the minutest thing upon it! What is called good is perfect, and what is called bad is just as perfect, The vegetables and minerals are all perfect, and the imponderable fluids are perfect; Slowly and surely they have passed on to this, and slowly and surely they yet pass on. My Soul! if I realise you, I have satisfaction; Animals and vegetables! if I realise you, I have satisfaction; Laws of the earth and air! if I realise you, I have satisfaction. I cannot define my satisfaction, yet it is so; I cannot define my life, yet it is so. 11. It comes to me now! I swear I think now that everything without exception has an eternal soul! The trees have, rooted in the ground! the weeds of the sea have! the animals! I swear I think there is nothing but immortality! That the exquisite scheme is for it, and the nebulous float is for it, and the cohering is for it; And all preparation is for it! and identity is for it! and life and death are altogether for it! _THIS COMPOST._ 1. Something startles me where I thought I was safest; I withdraw from the still woods I loved; I will not go now on the pastures to walk; I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea; I will not touch my flesh to the earth, as to other flesh, to renew me. 2. O how can the ground not sicken? How can you be alive, you growths of spring? How can you furnish health, you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain? Are they not continually putting distempered corpses in you? Is not every continent worked over and over with sour dead? Where have you disposed of their carcasses? Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations; Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat? I do not see any of it upon you to-day--or perhaps I am deceived; I will run a furrow with my plough--I will press my spade through the sod, and turn it up underneath; I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat. 3. Behold this compost! behold it well! Perhaps every mite has once formed part of a sick person--Yet behold! The grass covers the prairies, The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden, The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward, The apple-buds cluster together on the apple branches, The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves, The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree, The he-birds carol mornings and evenings, while the she-birds sit on their nests, The young of poultry break through the hatched eggs, The new-born of animals appear--the calf is dropped from the cow, the colt from the mare, Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark-green leaves, Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk; The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead. What chemistry! That the winds are really not infectious, That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea, which is so amorous after me; That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues, That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it, That all is clean for ever and for ever, That the cool drink from the well tastes so good, That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy, That the fruits of the apple-orchard, and of the orange-orchard--that melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me, That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease, Though probably every sphere of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease. 4. Now I am terrified at the Earth! it is that calm and patient, It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions, It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseased corpses, It distils such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor, It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops, It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last. _DESPAIRING CRIES._ 1. Despairing cries float ceaselessly toward me, day and night, The sad voice of Death--the call of my nearest lover, putting forth, alarmed, uncertain, "_The Sea I am quickly to sail: come tell me, Come tell me where I am speeding--tell me my destination_." 2. I understand your anguish, but I cannot help you; I approach, hear, behold--the sad mouth, the look out of the eyes, your mute inquiry, "_Whither I go from the bed I recline on, come tell me_." Old age, alarmed, uncertain--A young woman's voice, appealing to me for comfort; A young man's voice, "_Shall I not escape_?" _THE CITY DEAD-HOUSE_ By the City Dead-House, by the gate, As idly sauntering, wending my way from the clangour, I curious pause--for lo! an outcast form, a poor dead prostitute brought; Her corpse they deposit unclaimed, it lies on the damp brick pavement. The divine woman, her body--I see the body--I look on it alone, That house once full of passion and beauty--all else I notice not; Nor stillness so cold, nor running water from faucet, nor odours morbific impress me; But the house alone--that wondrous house--that delicate fair house--that ruin! That immortal house, more than all the rows of dwellings ever built, Or white-domed Capitol itself, with majestic figure surmounted--or all the old high-spired cathedrals, That little house alone, more than them all--poor, desperate house! Fair, fearful wreck! tenement of a Soul! itself a Soul! Unclaimed, avoided house! take one breath from my tremulous lips; Take one tear, dropped aside as I go, for thought of you, Dead house of love! house of madness and sin, crumbled! crushed! House of life--erewhile talking and laughing--but ah, poor house! dead even then; Months, years, an echoing, garnished house-but dead, dead, dead! _TO ONE SHORTLY TO DIE._ 1. From all the rest I single out you, having a message for you: You are to die--Let others tell you what they please, I cannot prevaricate, I am exact and merciless, but I love you--There is no escape for you. 2. Softly I lay my right hand upon you--you just feel it; I do not argue--I bend my head close, and half envelop it, I sit quietly by--I remain faithful, I am more than nurse, more than parent or neighbour, I absolve you from all except yourself, spiritual, bodily--that is eternal,-- The corpse you will leave will be but excrementitious. The sun bursts through in unlooked-for directions! Strong thoughts fill you, and confidence--you smile! You forget you are sick, as I forget you are sick, You do not see the medicines--you do not mind the weeping friends--I am with you, I exclude others from you--there is nothing to be commiserated, I do not commiserate--I congratulate you. _UNNAMED LANDS._ 1. Nations, ten thousand years before these States, and many times ten thousand years before these States; Garnered clusters of ages, that men and women like us grew up and travelled their course, and passed on; What vast-built cities--what orderly republics--what pastoral tribes and nomads; What histories, rulers, heroes, perhaps transcending all others; What laws, customs, wealth, arts, traditions; What sort of marriage--what costumes--what physiology and phrenology; What of liberty and slavery among them--what they thought of death and the soul; Who were witty and wise--who beautiful and poetic--who brutish and undeveloped; Not a mark, not a record remains,--And yet all remains. 2. O I know that those men and women were not for nothing, any more than we are for nothing; I know that they belong to the scheme of the world every bit as much as we now belong to it, and as all will henceforth belong to it. Afar they stand--yet near to me they stand, Some with oval countenances, learned and calm, Some naked and savage--Some like huge collections of insects, Some in tents--herdsmen, patriarchs, tribes, horsemen, Some prowling through woods--Some living peaceably on farms, labouring, reaping, filling barns, Some traversing paved avenues, amid temples, palaces, factories, libraries, shows, courts, theatres, wonderful monuments. Are those billions of men really gone? Are those women of the old experience of the earth gone? Do their lives, cities, arts, rest only with us? Did they achieve nothing for good, for themselves? 3. I believe, of all those billions of men and women that filled the unnamed lands, every one exists this hour, here or elsewhere, invisible to us, in exact proportion to what he or she grew from in life, and out of what he or she did, felt, became, loved, sinned, in life. I believe that was not the end of those nations, or any person of them, any more than this shall be the end of my nation, or of me; Of their languages, governments, marriage, literature, products, games, wars, manners, crimes, prisons, slaves, heroes, poets, I suspect their results curiously await in the yet unseen world--counterparts of what accrued to them in the seen world; I suspect I shall meet them there, I suspect I shall there find each old particular of those unnamed lands. _SIMILITUDE._ 1. On the beach at night alone, As the old Mother sways her to and fro, singing her savage and husky song, As I watch the bright stars shining--I think a thought of the clef of the universes, and of the future. 2. A VAST SIMILITUDE interlocks all, All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, comets, asteroids, All the substances of the same, and all that is spiritual upon the same, All distances of place, however wide, All distances of time--all inanimate forms, All Souls--all living bodies, though they be ever so different, or in different worlds, All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes--the fishes, the brutes, All men and women--me also; All nations, colours, barbarisms, civilisations, languages; All identities that have existed, or may exist, on this globe, or any globe; All lives and deaths--all of the past, present, future; This vast similitude spans them, and always has spanned, and shall for ever span them, and compactly hold them. _THE SQUARE DEIFIC._ GOD. Chanting the Square Deific, out of the One advancing, out of the sides; Out of the old and new--out of the square entirely divine, Solid, four-sided, (all the sides needed)--From this side JEHOVAH am I, Old Brahm I, and I Saturnius am; Not Time affects me--I am Time, modern as any; Unpersuadable, relentless, executing righteous judgments; As the Earth, the Father, the brown old Kronos, with laws, Aged beyond computation--yet ever new--ever with those mighty laws rolling, Relentless, I forgive no man--whoever sins dies--I will have that man's life; Therefore let none expect mercy--Have the seasons, gravitation, the appointed days, mercy?--No more have I; But as the seasons, and gravitation--and as all the appointed days, that forgive not, I dispense from this side judgments inexorable, without the least remorse. SAVIOUR. Consolator most mild, the promised one advancing, With gentle hand extended, the mightier God am I, Foretold by prophets and poets, in their most wrapt prophecies and poems; From this side, lo! the Lord CHRIST gazes--lo! Hermes I--lo! mine is Hercules' face; All sorrow, labour, suffering, I, tallying it, absorb in myself; Many times have I been rejected, taunted, put in prison, and crucified--and many times shall be again; All the world have I given up for my dear brothers' and sisters' sake--for the soul's sake; Wending my way through the homes of men, rich or poor, with the kiss of affection; For I am affection--I am the cheer-bringing God, with hope, and all- enclosing charity; Conqueror yet--for before me all the armies and soldiers of the earth shall yet bow--and all the weapons of war become impotent: With indulgent words, as to children--with fresh and sane words, mine only; Young and strong I pass, knowing well I am destined myself to an early death: But my Charity has no death--my Wisdom dies not, neither early nor late, And my sweet Love, bequeathed here and elsewhere, never dies. SATAN. Aloof, dissatisfied, plotting revolt, Comrade of criminals, brother of slaves, Crafty, despised, a drudge, ignorant, With sudra face and worn brow--black, but in the depths of my heart proud as any; Lifted, now and always, against whoever, scorning, assumes to rule me; Morose, full of guile, full of reminiscences, brooding, with many wiles, Though it was thought I was baffled and dispelled, and my wiles done--but that will never be; Defiant I SATAN still live--still utter words--in new lands duly appearing, and old ones also; Permanent here, from my side, warlike, equal with any, real as any, Nor time, nor change, shall ever change me or my words. THE SPIRIT. Santa SPIRITA,[1] breather, life, Beyond the light, lighter than light, Beyond the flames of hell--joyous, leaping easily above hell; Beyond Paradise--perfumed solely with mine own perfume; Including all life on earth--touching, including God--including Saviour and Satan; Ethereal, pervading all--for, without me, what were all? what were God? Essence of forms--life of the real identities, permanent, positive, namely the unseen, Life of the great round world, the sun and stars, and of man--I, the General Soul, Here the Square finishing, the solid, I the most solid, Breathe my breath also through these little songs. [Footnote 1: The reader will share my wish that Whitman had written _sanctus spiritus_, which is right, instead of _santa spirita_, which is methodically wrong.] _SONGS OF PARTING._ _SINGERS AND POETS._ 1. The indications and tally of time; Perfect sanity shows the master among philosophs; Time, always without flaw, indicates itself in parts; What always indicates the poet is the crowd of the pleasant company of singers, and their words; The words of the singers are the hours or minutes of the light or dark--but the words of the maker of poems are the general light and dark; The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality, His insight and power encircle things and the human race, He is the glory and extract, thus far, of things and of the human race. 2. The singers do not beget--only the POET begets; The singers are welcomed, understood, appear often enough--but rare has the day been, likewise the spot, of the birth of the maker of poems; Not every century, or every five centuries, has contained such a day, for all its names. The singers of successive hours of centuries may have ostensible names, but the name of each of them is one of the singers; The name of each is eye-singer, ear-singer, head-singer, sweet-singer, echo-singer, parlour-singer, love-singer, or something else. 3. All this time, and at all times, wait the words of poems; The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and fathers; The words of poems are the tuft and final applause of science. Divine instinct, breadth of vision, the law of reason, health, rudeness of body, withdrawnness, gaiety, sun-tan, air-sweetness--such are some of the words of poems. 4. The sailor and traveller underlie the maker of poems, The builder, geometer, chemist, anatomist, phrenologist, artist--all these underlie the maker of poems. 5. The words of the true poems give you more than poems, They give you, to form for yourself, poems, religions, politics, war, peace, behaviour, histories, essays, romances, and everything else, They balance ranks, colours, races, creeds, and the sexes, They do not seek beauty--they are sought, For ever touching them, or close upon them, follows beauty, longing, fain, love-sick. They prepare for death--yet are they not the finish, but rather the outset, They bring none to his or her terminus, or to be content and full; Whom they take, they take into space, to behold the birth of stars, to learn one of the meanings, To launch off with absolute faith--to sweep through the ceaseless rings, and never be quiet again. _TO A HISTORIAN._ You who celebrate bygones: Who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races--the life that has exhibited itself; Who have treated of man as the creature of politics, aggregates, rulers, and priests. I, habitué of the Alleghanies, treating man as he is in himself, in his own rights, Pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom exhibited itself, the great pride of man in himself; Chanter of Personality, outlining what is yet to be; I project the history of the future. _FIT AUDIENCE._ 1. Whoever you are, holding me now in hand, Without one thing, all will be useless: I give you fair warning, before you attempt me further, I am not what you supposed, but far different. 2. Who is he that would become my follower? Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections? The way is suspicious--the result uncertain, perhaps destructive; You would have to give up all else--I alone would expect to be your God, sole and exclusive; Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting, The whole past theory of your life, and all conformity to the lives around you, would have to be abandoned; Therefore release me now, before troubling yourself any further--Let go your hand from my shoulders, Put me down, and depart on your way. Or else, by stealth, in some wood, for trial, Or back of a rock, in the open air, (For in any roofed room of a house I emerge not--nor in company, And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,) But just possibly with you on a high hill--first watching lest any person, for miles around, approach unawares-- Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea, or some quiet island, Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you, With the comrade's long-dwelling kiss, or the new husband's kiss, For I am the new husband, and I am the comrade. Or, if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing, Where I may feel the throbs of your heart, or rest upon your hip, Carry me when you go forth over land or sea; For thus, merely touching you, is enough--is best, And thus, touching you, would I silently sleep, and be carried eternally. 3. But these leaves conning, you con at peril, For these leaves, and me, you will not understand, They will elude you at first, and still more afterward--I will certainly elude you, Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold! Already you see I have escaped from you. For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book, Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it, Nor do those know me best who admire me, and vauntingly praise me, Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few) prove victorious, Nor will my poems do good only--they will do just as much evil, perhaps more; For all is useless without that which you may guess at many times and not hit--that which I hinted at; Therefore release me, and depart on your way. _SINGING IN SPRING._ These I, singing in spring, collect for lovers: For who but I should understand lovers, and all their sorrow and joy? And who but I should be the poet of comrades? Collecting, I traverse the garden, the world--but soon I pass the gates, Now along the pond-side--now wading in a little, fearing not the wet, Now by the post-and-rail fences, where the old stones thrown there, picked from the fields, have accumulated, Wild flowers and vines and weeds come up through the stones, and partly cover them--Beyond these I pass, Far, far in the forest, before I think where I go, Solitary, smelling the earthy smell, stopping now and then in the silence; Alone, I had thought--yet soon a silent troop gathers around me; Some walk by my side, and some behind, and some embrace my arms or neck, They, the spirits of friends, dead or alive--thicker they come, a great crowd, and I in the middle, Collecting, dispensing, singing in spring, there I wander with them, Plucking something for tokens--tossing toward whoever is near me. Here lilac, with a branch of pine, Here, out of my pocket, some moss which I pulled off a live-oak in Florida, as it hung trailing down, Here some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage, And here what I now draw from the water, wading in the pond-side, (O here I last saw him that tenderly loves me--and returns again, never to separate from me, And this, O this shall henceforth be the token of comrades--this Calamus- root[1] shall, Interchange it, youths, with each other! Let none render it back!) And twigs of maple, and a bunch of wild orange, and chestnut, And stems of currants, and plum-blows, and the aromatic cedar, These I, compassed around by a thick cloud of spirits, Wandering, point to, or touch as I pass, or throw them loosely from me, Indicating to each one what he shall have--giving something to each. But what I drew from the water by the pond-side, that I reserve; I will give of it--but only to them that love as I myself am capable of loving. [Footnote 1: I am favoured with the following indication, from Mr Whitman himself, of the relation in which this word Calamus is to be understood:--"Calamus is the very large and aromatic grass or rush growing about water-ponds in the valleys--spears about three feet high; often called Sweet Flag; grows all over the Northern and Middle States. The _recherché_ or ethereal sense of the term, as used in my book, arises probably from the actual Calamus presenting the biggest and hardiest kind of spears of grass, and their fresh, aquatic, pungent _bouquet_."] _LOVE OF COMRADES._ 1. Come, I will make the continent indissoluble; I will make the most splendid race the sun ever yet shone upon! I will make divine magnetic lands, With the love of comrades, With the life-long love of comrades. 2. I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America, and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies; I will make inseparable cities, with their arms about each other's necks; By the love of comrades, By the manly love of comrades. 3. For you these, from me, O Democracy, to serve you, _ma femme_! For you! for you, I am trilling these songs, In the love of comrades, In the high-towering love of comrades. _PULSE OF MY LIFE._ Not heaving from my ribbed breast only; Not in sighs at night, in rage, dissatisfied with myself; Not in those long-drawn, ill-suppressed sighs; Not in many an oath and promise broken; Not in my wilful and savage soul's volition; Not in the subtle nourishment of the air; Not in this beating and pounding at my temples and wrists; Not in the curious systole and diastole within, which will one day cease; Not in many a hungry wish, told to the skies only; Not in cries, laughter, defiances, thrown from me when alone, far in the wilds; Not in husky pantings through clenched teeth; Not in sounded and resounded words--chattering words, echoes, dead words; Not in the murmurs of my dreams while I sleep, Nor the other murmurs of these incredible dreams of every day; Nor in the limbs and senses of my body, that take you and dismiss you continually--Not there; Not in any or all of them, O Adhesiveness! O pulse of my life! Need I that you exist and show yourself, any more than in these songs. _AUXILIARIES._ WHAT place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege? Lo! I send to that place a commander, swift, brave, immortal; And with him horse and foot, and parks of artillery, And artillerymen, the deadliest that ever fired gun. _REALITIES._ 1. As I walk, solitary, unattended, Around me I hear that _éclat_ of the world--politics, produce, The announcements of recognised things--science, The approved growth of cities, and the spread of inventions. I see the ships, (they will last a few years,) The vast factories, with their foremen and workmen, And hear the endorsement of all, and do not object to it. 2. But I too announce solid things; Science, ships, politics, cities, factories, are not nothing--they serve, They stand for realities--all is as it should be. 3. Then my realities; What else is so real as mine? Libertad, and the divine Average-Freedom to every slave on the face of the earth, The rapt promises and _luminé_[1] of seers--the spiritual world--these centuries-lasting songs, And our visions, the visions of poets, the most solid announcements of any. For we support all, After the rest is done and gone, we remain, There is no final reliance but upon us; Democracy rests finally upon us, (I, my brethren, begin it,) And our visions sweep through eternity. [Footnote 1: I suppose Whitman gets this odd word _luminé_, by a process of his own, out of _illuminati_, and intends it to stand for what would be called clairvoyance, intuition.] _NEARING DEPARTURE._ 1. As nearing departure, As the time draws nigh, glooming, a cloud, A dread beyond, of I know not what, darkens me. 2. I shall _go_ forth, I shall traverse the States--but I cannot tell whither or how long; Perhaps soon, some day or night while I am singing, my voice will suddenly cease. 3. O book and chant! must all then amount to but this? Must we barely arrive at this beginning of me?... And yet it is enough, O soul! O soul! we have positively appeared--that is enough. _POETS TO COME._ 1. Poets to come! Not to-day is to justify me, and Democracy, and what we are for; But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known, You must justify me. 2. I but write one or two indicative words for the future, I but advance a moment, only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness. I am a man who, sauntering along, without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you, and then averts his face, Leaving it to you to prove and define it, Expecting the main things from you. _CENTURIES HENCE._ Full of life now, compact, visible, I, forty years old the eighty-third year of the States, To one a century hence, or any number of centuries hence, To you, yet unborn, these seeking you. When you read these, I, that was visible, am become invisible; Now it is you, compact, visible, realising my poems, seeking me; Fancying how happy you were, if I could be with you, and become your loving comrade; Be it as if I were with you. Be not too certain but I am now with you. _SO LONG!_ 1. To conclude--I announce what comes after me; I announce mightier offspring, orators, days, and then depart, I remember I said, before my leaves sprang at all, I would raise my voice jocund and strong, with reference to consummations. When America does what was promised, When there are plentiful athletic bards, inland and sea-board, When through these States walk a hundred millions of superb persons, When the rest part away for superb persons, and contribute to them, When breeds of the most perfect mothers denote America, Then to me my due fruition. I have pressed through in my own right, I have offered my style to every one--I have journeyed with confident step. While my pleasure is yet at the full, I whisper, _So long_! And take the young woman's hand, and the young man's hand for the last time. 2. I announce natural persons to arise, I announce justice triumphant, I announce uncompromising liberty and equality, I announce the justification of candour, and the justification of pride. I announce that the identity of these States is a single identity only, I announce the Union, out of all its struggles and wars, more and more compact, I announce splendours and majesties to make all the previous politics of the earth insignificant. I announce a man or woman coming--perhaps you are the one (_So long_!) I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate, fully armed. I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold, And I announce an old age that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation. 3. O thicker and faster! (_So long_!) O crowding too close upon me; I foresee too much--it means more than I thought, It appears to me I am dying. Hasten throat, and sound your last! Salute me--salute the days once more. Peal the old cry once more. Screaming electric, the atmosphere using, At random glancing, each as I notice absorbing, Swiftly on, but a little while alighting, Curious enveloped messages delivering, Sparkles hot, seed ethereal, down in the dirt dropping, Myself unknowing, my commission obeying, to question it never daring, To ages, and ages yet, the growth of the seed leaving, To troops out of me rising--they the tasks I have set promulging, To women certain whispers of myself bequeathing--their affection me more clearly explaining, To young men my problems offering--no dallier I--I the muscle of their brains trying, So I pass--a little time vocal, visible, contrary, Afterward, a melodious echo, passionately bent for--death making me really undying,-- The best of me then when no longer visible--for toward that I have been incessantly preparing. What is there more, that I lag and pause, and crouch extended with unshut mouth? Is there a single final farewell? 4. My songs cease--I abandon them, From behind the screen where I hid, I advance personally, solely to you. Camerado! This is no book; Who touches this touches a man. (Is it night? Are we here alone?) It is I you hold, and who holds you, I spring from the pages into your arms--decease calls me forth. O how your fingers drowse me! Your breath falls around me like dew--your pulse lulls the tympans of my ears, I feel immerged from head to foot, Delicious--enough. Enough, O deed impromptu and secret! Enough, O gliding present! Enough, O summed-up past! 5. Dear friend, whoever you are, here, take this kiss, I give it especially to you--Do not forget me, I feel like one who has done his work--I progress on,--(long enough have I dallied with Life,) The unknown sphere, more real than I dreamed, more direct, awakening rays about me--_So long_! Remember my words--I love you--I depart from materials, I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead. POSTSCRIPT. While this Selection was passing through the press, it has been my privilege to receive two letters from Mr. Whitman, besides another communicated to me through a friend. I find my experience to be the same as that of some previous writers: that, if one admires Whitman in reading his books, one loves him on coming into any personal relation with him--even the comparatively distant relation of letter-writing. The more I have to thank the poet for the substance and tone of his letters, and some particular expressions in them, the more does it become incumbent upon me to guard against any misapprehension. He has had nothing whatever to do with this Selection, as to either prompting, guiding, or even ratifying it: except only that he did not prohibit my making two or three verbal omissions in the _Prose Preface to the Leaves of Grass_, and he has supplied his own title, _President Lincoln's Funeral Hymn_, to a poem which, in my Prefatory Notice, is named (by myself) _Nocturn for the Death of Lincoln_. All admirers of his poetry will rejoice to learn that there is no longer any doubt of his adding to his next edition "a brief cluster of pieces born of thoughts on the deep themes of Death and Immortality." A new American edition will be dear to many: a complete English edition ought to be an early demand of English poetic readers, and would be the right and crowning result of the present Selection. W. M. R. 1868. 
7930	----	THE ADVANCE OF ENGLISH POETRY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY BY WILLIAM LYON PHELPS Lampson Professor of English Literature at Yale Member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters _O! 't is an easy thing To write and sing; But to write true, unfeigned verse Is very hard!_ --HENRY VAUGHAN, _1655_ TO MY FRIEND FOR FORTY YEARS FRANK W. HUBBARD ACKNOWLEDGMENT The publishers of the works of the poets from whom illustrative passages are cited in this volume, have courteously and generously given permission, and I take this opportunity of expressing my thanks to The Macmillan Company, who publish the poems of Thomas Hardy, William Watson, John Masefield, W. W. Gibson, Ralph Hodgson, W. B. Yeats, "A. E.," James Stephens, E. A. Robinson, Vachel Lindsay, Amy Lowell, Edgar Lee Masters, Sara Teasdale, J. C. Underwood, Fannie Stearns Davis; to Henry Holt and Company, who publish the poems of Walter De La Mare, Edward Thomas, Padraic Colum, Robert Frost, Louis Untermeyer, Sarah N. Cleghorn, Margaret Widdemer, Carl Sandburg, and the two poems by Henry A. Beers quoted in this book, which appeared in _The Ways of Yale_; to Charles Scribner's Sons, publishers of the poems of George Santayana, Henry Van Dyke, Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, Alan Seeger; to Houghton, Mifflin and Company, publishers of the poems of Josephine Peabody, Anna Hempstead Branch, and W. A. Bradley's _Old Christmas_; to The John Lane Company, publishers of the poems of Stephen Phillips, Rupert Brooke, Benjamin R. C. Low; to the Frederick A. Stokes Company, publishers of the poems of Alfred Noyes, Robert Nichols, Thomas MacDonagh, Witter Bynner; to the Yale University Press, publishers of the poems of W. A. Percy, Brian Hooker, W. E. Benét, C. M. Lewis, E. B. Reed, F. E. Pierce, R. B. Glaenzer, L. W. Dodd; to the Oxford University Press, publishers of the poems of Robert Bridges; to Alfred A. Knopf, publisher of the poems of W. H. Davies; to John W. Luce and Company, publishers of the poems of John M. Synge; to Harper and Brothers, publishers of William Watson's _The Man Who Saw_; to Longmans, Green and Company, publishers of the poems of Willoughby Weaving; to Doubleday, Page and Company, publishers of the poems of James Elroy Flecker; to the Bobbs-Merrill Company, publishers of the poems of W. D. Foulke; to Thomas B. Mosher, publisher of the poems of W. A. Bradley, W. E. Henley; to James T. White and Company, publishers of William Griffiths; Francis Thompson's _In No Strange Land_ appeared in the _Athenaeum_ and _Lilium Regis_ in the _Dublin Review_; the poem by Scudder Middleton appeared in _Contemporary Verse_, that by Allan Updegraff in the _Forum_, and that by D. H. Lawrence in _Georgian Poetry_ 1913-15, published by The Poetry Bookshop, London. The titles of the several volumes of poems with dates of publication are given in my text. I am grateful to the Yale University Librarians for help on bibliographical matters, and to Professor Charles Bennett and Byrne Hackett, Esquire, for giving some facts about the Irish poets. W. L. P. PREFACE The material in this volume originally appeared in _The Bookman_, 1917-1918. It is now published with much addition and revision. The Great War has had a stimulating effect on the production of poetry. Professional poets have been spokesmen for the inarticulate, and a host of hitherto unknown writers have acquired reputation. An immense amount of verse has been written by soldiers in active service. The Allies are fighting for human liberty, and this Idea is an inspiration. It is comforting to know that some who have made the supreme sacrifice will be remembered through their printed poems, and it is a pleasure to aid in giving them public recognition. Furthermore, the war, undertaken by Germany to dominate the world by crushing the power of Great Britain, has united all English-speaking people as nothing else could have done. In this book, all poetry written in the English language is considered as belonging to English literature. It should be apparent that I am not a sectarian in art, but am thankful for poetry wherever I find it. I have endeavored to make clear the artistic, intellectual, and spiritual significance of many of our contemporary English-writing poets. The difficulties of such an undertaking are obvious; but there are two standards of measure. One is the literature of the past, the other is the life of today. I judge every new poet by these. CONTENTS I SOME CONTRASTS--HENLEY, THOMPSON, HARDY, KIPLING II PHILLIPS, WATSON, NOYES, HOUSMAN III JOHN MASEFIELD IV GIBSON AND HODGSON V BROOKE, FLECKER, DE LA MARE, AND OTHERS VI THE IRISH POETS VII AMERICAN VETERANS AND FORERUNNERS VIII VACHEL LINDSAY AND ROBERT FROST IX AMY LOWELL, ANNA BRANCH, EDGAR LEE MASTERS, LOUIS UNTERMEYER X SARA TEASDALE, ALAN SEEGER, AND OTHERS XI A GROUP OF YALE POETS APPENDIX INDEX THE ADVANCE OF ENGLISH POETRY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY CHAPTER I SOME CONTRASTS--HENLEY, THOMPSON, HARDY, KIPLING Meaning of the word "advance"--the present widespread interest in poetry--the spiritual warfare--Henley and Thompson--Thomas Hardy a prophet in literature--_The Dynasts_--his atheism--his lyrical power--Kipling the Victorian--his future possibilities--Robert Bridges--Robert W. Service. Although English poetry of the twentieth century seems inferior to the poetry of the Victorian epoch, for in England there is no one equal to Tennyson or Browning, and in America no one equal to Poe, Emerson, or Whitman, still it may fairly be said that we can discern an advance in English poetry not wholly to be measured either by the calendar and the clock, or by sheer beauty of expression. I should not like to say that Joseph Conrad is a greater writer than Walter Scott; and yet in _The Nigger of the Narcissus_ there is an intellectual sincerity, a profound psychological analysis, a resolute intention to discover and to reveal the final truth concerning the children of the sea, that one would hardly expect to find in the works of the wonderful Wizard. Shakespeare was surely a greater poet than Wordsworth; but the man of the Lakes, with the rich inheritance of two centuries, had a capital of thought unpossessed by the great dramatist, which, invested by his own genius, enabled him to draw returns from nature undreamed of by his mighty predecessor. Wordsworth was not great enough to have written _King Lear_; and Shakespeare was not late enough to have written _Tintern Abbey_. Every poet lives in his own time, has a share in its scientific and philosophical advance, and his individuality is coloured by his experience. Even if he take a Greek myth for a subject, he will regard it and treat it in the light of the day when he sits down at his desk, and addresses himself to the task of composition. It is absurd to call the Victorians old-fashioned or out of date; they were as intensely modern as we, only their modernity is naturally not ours. A great work of art is never old-fashioned; because it expresses in final form some truth about human nature, and human nature never changes--in comparison with its primal elements, the mountains are ephemeral. A drama dealing with the impalpable human soul is more likely to stay true than a treatise on geology. This is the notable advantage that works of art have over works of science, the advantage of being and remaining true. No matter how important the contribution of scientific books, they are alloyed with inevitable error, and after the death of their authors must be constantly revised by lesser men, improved by smaller minds; whereas the masterpieces of poetry, drama and fiction cannot be revised, because they are always true. The latest edition of a work of science is the most valuable; of literature, the earliest. Apart from the natural and inevitable advance in poetry that every year witnesses, we are living in an age characterized both in England and in America by a remarkable advance in poetry as a vital influence. Earth's oldest inhabitants probably cannot remember a time when there were so many poets in activity, when so many books of poems were not only read, but bought and sold, when poets were held in such high esteem, when so much was written and published about poetry, when the mere forms of verse were the theme of such hot debate. There are thousands of minor poets, but poetry has ceased to be a minor subject. Any one mentally alive cannot escape it. Poetry is in the air, and everybody is catching it. Some American magazines are exclusively devoted to the printing of contemporary poems; anthologies are multiplying, not "Keepsakes" and "Books of Gems," but thick volumes representing the bumper crop of the year. Many poets are reciting their poems to big, eager, enthusiastic audiences, and the atmosphere is charged with the melodies of ubiquitous minstrelsy. The time is ripe for the appearance of a great poet. A vast audience is gazing expectantly at a stage crowded with subordinate actors, waiting or the Master to appear. The Greek dramatists were sure of their public; so were the Russian novelists; so were the German musicians. The "conditions" for poetry are intensified by reason of the Great War. We have got everything except the Genius. And the paradox is that although the Genius may arise out of right conditions, he may not; he may come like a thief in the night. The contrast between public interest in poetry in 1918 and in 1830, for an illustration, is unescapable. At that time the critics and the magazine writers assured the world that "poetry is dead." Ambitious young authors were gravely advised not to attempt anything in verse--as though youth ever listened to advice! Many critics went so far as to insist that the temper of the age was not "adapted" to poetry, that not only was there no interest in it, but that even if the Man should appear, he would find it impossible to sing in such a time and to such a coldly indifferent audience. And yet at that precise moment, Tennyson launched his "chiefly lyrical" volume, and Browning was speedily to follow. Man is ever made humble by the facts of life; and even literary critics cannot altogether ignore them. Let us not then make the mistake of being too sure of the immediate future; nor the mistake of overestimating our contemporary poets; nor the mistake of despising the giant Victorians. Let us devoutly thank God that poetry has come into its own; that the modern poet, in public estimation, is a Hero; that no one has to apologize either for reading or for writing verse. An age that loves poetry with the passion characteristic of the twentieth century is not a flat or materialistic age. We are not disobedient unto the heavenly vision. In the world of thought and spirit this is essentially a fighting age. The old battle between the body and the soul, between Paganism and Christianity, was never so hot as now, and those who take refuge in neutrality receive contempt. Pan and Jesus Christ have never had so many enthusiastic followers. We Christians believe our Leader rose from the dead, and the followers of Pan say their god never died at all. It is significant that at the beginning of the twentieth century two English poets wrote side by side, each of whom unconsciously waged an irreconcilable conflict with the other, and each of whom speaks from the grave today to a concourse of followers. These two poets did not "flourish" in the twentieth century, because the disciple of the bodily Pan was a cripple, and the disciple of the spiritual Christ was a gutter-snipe; but they both lived, lived abundantly, and wrote real poetry. I refer to William Ernest Henley, who died in 1903, and to Francis Thompson, who died in 1907. Both Henley and Thompson loved the crowded streets of London, but they saw different visions there. Henley felt in the dust and din of the city the irresistible urge of spring, the invasion of the smell of distant meadows; the hurly-burly bearing witness to the annual conquest of Pan. Here in this radiant and immortal street Lavishly and omnipotently as ever In the open hills, the undissembling dales, The laughing-places of the juvenile earth. For lo! the wills of man and woman meet, Meet and are moved, each unto each endeared As once in Eden's prodigal bowers befel, To share his shameless, elemental mirth In one great act of faith, while deep and strong, Incomparably nerved and cheered, The enormous heart of London joys to beat To the measures of his rough, majestic song: The lewd, perennial, overmastering spell That keeps the rolling universe ensphered And life and all for which life lives to long Wanton and wondrous and for ever well. The _London Voluntaries_ of Henley, from which the above is a fair example, may have suggested something to Vachel Lindsay both in their irregular singing quality and in the direction, borrowed from notation, which accompanies each one, _Andante con moto, Scherzando, Largo e mesto, Allegro maestoso._ Henley's Pagan resistance to Puritan morality and convention, constantly exhibited positively in his verse, and negatively in his defiant Introduction to the Works of Burns and in the famous paper on R. L. S., is the main characteristic of his mind and temperament. He was by nature a rebel--a rebel against the Anglican God and against English social conventions. He loved all fighting rebels, and one of his most spirited poems deals affectionately with our Southern Confederate soldiers, in the last days of their hopeless struggle. His most famous lyric is an assertion of the indomitable human will in the presence of adverse destiny. This trumpet blast has awakened sympathetic echoes from all sorts and conditions of men, although that creedless Christian, James Whitcomb Riley, regarded it with genial contempt, thinking that the philosophy it represented was not only futile, but dangerous, in that it ignored the deepest facts of human life. He once asked to have the poem read aloud to him, as he had forgotten its exact words, and when the reader finished impressively I am the Master of my fate: I am the Captain of my soul-- "The _hell_ you are," said Riley with a laugh. Henley is, of course, interesting not merely because of his paganism, and robust worldliness; he had the poet's imagination and gift of expression. He loved to take a familiar idea fixed in a familiar phrase, and write a lovely musical variation on the theme. I do not think he ever wrote anything more beautiful than his setting of the phrase "Over the hills and far away," which appealed to his memory much as the three words "Far-far-away" affected Tennyson. No one can read this little masterpiece without that wonderful sense of melody lingering in the mind after the voice of the singer is silent. Where forlorn sunsets flare and fade On desolate sea and lonely sand, Out of the silence and the shade What is the voice of strange command Calling you still, as friend calls friend With love that cannot brook delay, To rise and follow the ways that wend Over the hills and far away? Hark in the city, street on street A roaring reach of death and life, Of vortices that clash and fleet And ruin in appointed strife, Hark to it calling, calling clear, Calling until you cannot stay From dearer things than your own most dear Over the hills and far away. Out of the sound of ebb and flow, Out of the sight of lamp and star, It calls you where the good winds blow, And the unchanging meadows are: From faded hopes and hopes agleam, It calls you, calls you night and day Beyond the dark into the dream Over the hills and far away. In temperament Henley was an Elizabethan. Ben Jonson might have irritated him, but he would have got along very well with Kit Marlowe. He was an Elizabethan in the spaciousness of his mind, in his robust salt-water breeziness, in his hearty, spontaneous singing, and in his deification of the human will. The English novelist, Miss Willcocks, a child of the twentieth century, has remarked, "It is by their will that we recognize the Elizabethans, by the will that drove them over the seas of passion, as well as over the seas that ebb and flow with the salt tides.... For, from a sensitive correspondence with environment our race has passed into another stage; it is marked now by a passionate desire for the mastery of life--a desire, spiritualized in the highest lives, materialized in the lowest, so to mould environment that the lives to come may be shaped to our will. It is this which accounts for the curious likeness in our today with that of the Elizabethans." As Henley was an Elizabethan, so his brilliant contemporary, Francis Thompson, was a "metaphysical," a man of the seventeenth century. Like Emerson, he is closer in both form and spirit to the mystical poets that followed the age of Shakespeare than he is to any other group or school. One has only to read Donne, Crashaw, and Vaughan to recognize the kinship. Like these three men of genius, Thompson was not only profoundly spiritual--he was aflame with religious passion. He was exalted in a mystical ecstasy, all a wonder and a wild desire. He was an inspired poet, careless of method, careless of form, careless of thought-sequences. The zeal for God's house had eaten him up. His poetry is like the burning bush, revealing God in the fire. His strange figures of speech, the molten metal of his language, the sincerity of his faith, have given to his poems a persuasive influence which is beginning to be felt far and wide, and which, I believe, will never die. One critic complains that the young men of Oxford and Cambridge have forsaken Tennyson, and now read only Francis Thompson. He need not be alarmed; these young men will all come back to Tennyson, for sooner or later, everybody comes back to Tennyson. It is rather a matter of joy that Thompson's religious poetry can make the hearts of young men burn within them. Young men are right in hating conventional, empty phrases, words that have lost all hitting power, hollow forms and bloodless ceremonies. Thompson's lips were touched with a live coal from the altar. Francis Thompson walked with God. Instead of seeking God, as so many high-minded folk have done in vain, Thompson had the real and overpowering sensation that God was seeking him. The Hound of Heaven was everlastingly after him, pursuing him with the certainty of capture. In trying to escape, he found torment; in surrender, the peace that passes all understanding. That extraordinary poem, which thrillingly describes the eager, searching love of God, like a father looking for a lost child and determined to find him, might be taken as a modern version of the one hundred and thirty-ninth psalm, perhaps the most marvellous of all religious masterpieces. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. The highest spiritual poetry is not that which portrays soul-hunger, the bitterness of the weary search for God; it is that which reveals an intense consciousness of the all-enveloping Divine Presence. Children do not seek the love of their parents; they can not escape its searching, eager, protecting power. We know how Dr. Johnson was affected by the lines Quaerens me sedisti lassus Redemisti crucem passus Tantus labor non sit passus. Francis Thompson's long walks by day and by night had magnificent company. In the country, in the streets of London, he was attended by seraphim and cherubim. The heavenly visions were more real to him than London Bridge. Just as when we travel far from those we love, we are brightly aware of their presence, and know that their affection is a greater reality than the scenery from the train window, so Thompson would have it that the angels were all about us. They do not live in some distant Paradise, the only gate to which is death--they are here now, and their element is the familiar atmosphere of earth. Shortly after he died, there was found among His papers a bit of manuscript verse, called "In No Strange Land." Whether it was a first draft which he meant to revise, or whether he intended it for publication, we cannot tell; but despite the roughnesses of rhythm--which take us back to some of Donne's shaggy and splendid verse--the thought is complete. It is one of the great poems of the twentieth century, and expresses the essence of Thompson's religion. "IN NO STRANGE LAND" O world invisible, we view thee: O world intangible, we touch thee: O world unknowable, we know thee: Inapprehensible, we clutch thee! Does the fish soar to find the ocean, The eagle plunge to find the air, That we ask of the stars in motion If they have rumour of thee there? Not where the wheeling systems darken, And our benumbed conceiving soars: The drift of pinions, would we harken, Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors. The angels keep their ancient places-- Turn but a stone, and start a wing! 'Tis ye, 'tis your estrangèd faces That miss the many-splendoured thing. But (when so sad thou canst not sadder) Cry; and upon thy so sore loss Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross. Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter, Cry, clinging heaven by the hems: And lo, Christ walking on the water, Not of Gennesareth, but Thames! Thompson planned a series of Ecclesiastical Ballads, of which he completed only two--_Lilium Regis_ and _The Veteran of Heaven_. These were found among his papers, and were published in the January-April 1910 number of the _Dublin Review._ Both are great poems; but _Lilium Regis_ is made doubly impressive by the present war. With the clairvoyance of approaching death, Thompson foresaw the world-struggle, the temporary eclipse of the Christian Church, and its ultimate triumph. The Lily of the King is Christ's Holy Church. I do not see how any one can read this poem without a thrill. LILIUM REGIS O Lily of the King! low lies thy silver wing, And long has been the hour of thine unqueening; And thy scent of Paradise on the night-wind spills its sighs, Nor any take the secrets of its meaning. O Lily of the King! I speak a heavy thing, O patience, most sorrowful of daughters! Lo, the hour is at hand for the troubling of the land, And red shall be the breaking of the waters. Sit fast upon thy stalk, when the blast shall with thee talk, With the mercies of the king for thine awning; And the just understand that thine hour is at hand, Thine hour at hand with power in the dawning. When the nations lie in blood, and their kings a broken brood, Look up, O most sorrowful of daughters! Lift up thy head and hark what sounds are in the dark, For His feet are coming to thee on the waters! O Lily of the King! I shall not see, that sing, I shall not see the hour of thy queening! But my song shall see, and wake, like a flower that dawn-winds shake, And sigh with joy the odours of its meaning. O Lily of the King, remember then the thing That this dead mouth sang; and thy daughters, As they dance before His way, sing there on the Day, What I sang when the Night was on the waters! There is a man of genius living in England today who has been writing verse for sixty years, but who received no public recognition as a poet until the twentieth century. This man is Thomas Hardy. He has the double distinction of being one of the great Victorian novelists, and one of the most notable poets of the twentieth century. At nearly eighty years of age, he is in full intellectual vigour, enjoys a creative power in verse that we more often associate with youth, and writes poetry that in matter and manner belongs distinctly to our time. He could not possibly be omitted from any survey of contemporary production. As is so commonly the case with distinguished novelists, Thomas Hardy practised verse before prose. From 1860 to 1870 he wrote many poems, some of which appear among the Love Lyrics in _Time's Laughingstocks,_ 1909. Then he began a career in prose fiction which has left him today without a living rival in the world. In 1898, with the volume called _Wessex Poems,_ embellished with illustrations from his own hand, he challenged criticism as a professional poet. The moderate but definite success of this collection emboldened him to produce in 1901, _Poems of the Past and Present._ In 1904, 1906, 1908, were issued successively the three parts of _The Dynasts,_ a thoroughly original and greatly-planned epical drama of the Napoleonic wars. This was followed by three books of verse, _Time's Laughingstocks_ in 1909, _Satires of Circumstance,_ 1914, and _Moments of Vision,_ 1917; and he is a familiar and welcome guest in contemporary magazines. Is it possible that when, at the close of the nineteenth century, Thomas Hardy formally abandoned prose for verse, he was either consciously or subconsciously aware of the coming renaissance of poetry? Certainly his change in expression had more significance than an individual caprice. It is a notable fact that the present poetic revival, wherein are enlisted so many enthusiastic youthful volunteers, should have had as one of its prophets and leaders a veteran of such power and fame. Perhaps Mr. Hardy would regard his own personal choice as no factor; the Immanent and Unconscious Will had been busy in his mind, for reasons unknown to him, unknown to man, least of all known to Itself. Leslie Stephen once remarked, "The deepest thinker is not really--though we often use the phrase--in advance of his day so much as in the line along which advance takes place." Looking backward from the year 1918, we may see some new meaning in the spectacle of two modern leaders in fiction, Hardy and Meredith, each preferring as a means of expression poetry to prose, each thinking his own verse better than his novels, and each writing verse that in substance and manner belongs more to the twentieth than to the nineteenth century. Meredith always said that fiction was his kitchen wench; poetry was his Muse. The publication of poems written when he was about twenty-five is interesting to students of Mr. Hardy's temperament, for they show that he was then as complete, though perhaps not so philosophical a pessimist, as he is now. The present world-war may seem to him a vindication of his despair, and therefore proof of the blind folly of those who pray to Our Father in Heaven. He is, though I think not avowedly so, an adherent of the philosophy of Schopenhauer and von Hartmann. The primal force, from which all things proceed, is the Immanent Will. The Will is unconscious and omnipotent. It is superhuman only in power, lacking intelligence, foresight, and any sense of ethical values. In _The Dynasts,_ Mr. Hardy has written an epic illustration of the doctrines of pessimism. Supernatural machinery and celestial inspiration have always been more or less conventional in the Epic. Ancient writers invoked the Muse. When Milton began his great task, he wished to produce something classic in form and Christian in spirit. He found an admirable solution of his problem in a double invocation--first of the Heavenly Muse of Mount Sinai, second, of the Holy Spirit. In the composition of _In Memoriam_, Tennyson knew that an invocation of the Muse would give an intolerable air of artificiality to the poem; he therefore, in the introductory stanzas, offered up a prayer to the Son of God. Now it was impossible for Mr. Hardy to make use of Greek Deities, or of Jehovah, or of any revelation of God in Christ; to his mind all three equally belonged to the lumber-room of discredited and discarded myth. He believes that any conception of the Primal Force as a Personality is not only obsolete among thinking men and women, but that it is unworthy of modern thought. It is perhaps easy to mistake our own world of thought for the thought of the world. In his Preface, written with assurance and dignity, Mr. Hardy says: "The wide prevalence of the Monistic theory of the Universe forbade, in this twentieth century, the importation of Divine personages from any antique Mythology as ready-made sources or channels of Causation, even in verse, and excluded the celestial machinery of, say, _Paradise Lost_, as peremptorily as that of the _Iliad_ or the _Eddas_. And the abandonment of the Masculine pronoun in allusions to the First or Fundamental Energy seemed a necessary and logical consequence of the long abandonment by thinkers of the anthropomorphic conception of the same." Accordingly he arranged a group of Phantom Intelligences that supply adequately a Chorus and a philosophical basis for his world-drama. Like Browning in the original preface to _Paracelsus_, our author expressly disclaims any intention of writing a play for the stage. It is "intended simply for mental performance," and "Whether mental performance alone may not eventually be the fate of all drama other than that of contemporary or frivolous life, is a kindred question not without interest." The question has been since answered in another way than that implied, not merely by the success of community drama, but by the actual production of _The Dynasts_ on the London stage under the direction of the brilliant and audacious Granville Barker. I would give much to have witnessed this experiment, which Mr. Barker insists was successful. "Whether _The Dynasts_ will finally take a place among the world's masterpieces of literature or not, must of course be left to future generations to decide. Two things are clear. The publication of the second and third parts distinctly raised public opinion of the work as a whole, and now that it is ten years old, we know that no man on earth except Mr. Hardy could have written it." To produce this particular epic required a poet, a prose master, a dramatist, a philosopher, and an architect. Mr. Hardy is each and all of the five, and by no means least an architect. The plan of the whole thing, in one hundred and thirty scenes, which seemed at first confused, now appears in retrospect orderly; and the projection of the various geographical scenes is thoroughly architectonic. If the work fails to survive, it will be because of its low elevation on the purely literary side. In spite of occasional powerful phrases, as What corpse is curious on the longitude And situation of his cemetery! the verse as a whole wants beauty of tone and felicity of diction. It is more like a map than a painting. One has only to recall the extraordinary charm of the Elizabethans to understand why so many pages in _The Dynasts_ arouse only an intellectual interest. But no one can read the whole drama without an immense respect for the range and the grasp of the author's mind. Furthermore, every one of its former admirers ought to reread it in 1918. The present world-war gives to this Napoleonic epic an acute and prophetic interest nothing short of astounding. A considerable number of Mr. Hardy's poems are concerned with the idea of God, apparently never far from the author's mind. I suppose he thinks of God every day. Yet his faith is the opposite of that expressed in the _Hound of Heaven_--in few words, it seems to be, "Resist the Lord, and He will flee from you." Mr. Hardy is not content with banishing God from the realm of modern thought; he is not content merely with killing Him; he means to give Him a decent burial, with fitting obsequies. And there is a long procession of mourners, some of whom are both worthy and distinguished. In the interesting poem, _God's Funeral_, written in 1908-1910, which begins I saw a slowly stepping train-- Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar-- Following in files across a twilit plain A strange and mystic form the foremost bore the development of the conception of God through human history is presented with skill in concision. He was man-like at first, then an amorphous cloud, then endowed with mighty wings, then jealous, fierce, yet long-suffering and full of mercy. And, tricked by our own early dream And need of solace, we grew self-deceived, Our making soon our maker did we dream, And what we had imagined we believed. Till, in Time's stayless stealthy swing, Uncompromising rude reality Mangled the Monarch of our fashioning, Who quavered, sank; and now has ceased to be. Among the mourners is no less a person than the poet himself, for in former years--perhaps as a boy--he, too, had worshipped, and therefore he has no touch of contempt for those who still believe. I could not prop their faith: and yet Many I had known: with all I sympathized; And though struck speechless, I did not forget That what was mourned for, I, too, once had prized. In the next stanza, the poet's oft-expressed belief in the wholesome, antiseptic power of pessimism is reiterated, together with a hint, that when we have once and for all put God in His grave, some better way of bearing life's burden will be found, because the new way will be based upon hard fact. Still, how to bear such loss I deemed The insistent question for each animate mind, And gazing, to my growing sight there seemed A pale yet positive gleam low down behind, Whereof, to lift the general night, A certain few who stood aloof had said, "See you upon the horizon that small light-- Swelling somewhat?" Each mourner shook his head. And they composed a crowd of whom Some were right good, and many nigh the best.... Thus dazed and puzzled 'twixt the gleam and gloom Mechanically I followed with the rest. This pale gleam takes on a more vivid hue in a poem written shortly after _God's Funeral_, called _A Plaint to Man_, where God remonstrates with man for having created Him at all, since His life was to be so short and so futile: And tomorrow the whole of me disappears, The truth should be told, and the fact he faced That had best been faced in earlier years: The fact of life with dependence placed On the human heart's resource alone, In brotherhood bonded close and graced With loving-kindness fully blown, And visioned help unsought, unknown. Other poems that express what is and what ought to be the attitude of man toward God are _New Year's Eve, To Sincerity_, and the beautiful lyric, _Let Me Enjoy_, where Mr. Hardy has been more than usually successful in fashioning both language and rhythm into a garment worthy of the thought. No one can read _The Impercipient_ without recognizing that Mr. Hardy's atheism is as honest and as sincere as the religious faith of others, and that no one regrets the blankness of his universe more than he. He would believe if he could. Pessimism is the basis of all his verse, as it is of his prose. It is expressed not merely philosophically in poems of ideas, but over and over again concretely in poems of incident. He is a pessimist both in fancy and in fact, and after reading some of our sugary "glad" books, I find his bitter taste rather refreshing. The titles of his recent collections, _Time's Laughingstocks_ and _Satires of Circumstance_, sufficiently indicate the ill fortune awaiting his personages. At his best, his lyrics written in the minor key have a noble, solemn adagio movement. At his worst--for like all poets, he is sometimes at his worst--the truth of life seems rather obstinately warped. Why should legitimate love necessarily bring misery, and illegitimate passion produce permanent happiness? And in the piece, "Ah, are you digging on my grave?" pessimism approaches a _reductio ad absurdum._ Dramatic power, which is one of its author's greatest gifts, is frequently finely revealed. After reading _A Tramp-woman's Tragedy,_ one unhesitatingly accords Mr. Hardy a place among the English writers of ballads. For this is a genuine ballad, in story, in diction, and in vigour. Yet as a whole, and in spite of Mr. Hardy's love of the dance and of dance music, his poetry lacks grace and movement. His war poem, _Men Who March Away,_ is singularly halting and awkward. His complete poetical works are interesting because they proceed from an interesting mind. His range of thought, both in reminiscence and in speculation, is immensely wide; his power of concentration recalls that of Browning. I have thought sometimes, and thought long and hard. I have stood before, gone round a serious thing, Tasked my whole mind to touch and clasp it close, As I stretch forth my arm to touch this bar. God and man, and what duty I owe both,-- I dare to say I have confronted these In thought: but no such faculty helped here. No such faculty alone could help Mr. Hardy to the highest peaks of poetry, any more than it served Caponsacchi in his spiritual crisis. He thinks interesting thoughts, because he has an original mind. It is possible to be a great poet without possessing much intellectual wealth; just as it is possible to be a great singer, and yet be both shallow and dull. The divine gift of poetry seems sometimes as accidental as the formation of the throat. I do not believe that Tennyson was either shallow or dull; but I do not think he had so rich a mind as Thomas Hardy's, a mind so quaint, so humorous, so sharp. Yet Tennyson was incomparably a greater poet. The greatest poetry always transports us, and although I read and reread the Wessex poet with never-lagging attention--I find even the drawings in _Wessex Poems_ so fascinating that I wish he had illustrated all his books--I am always conscious of the time and the place. I never get the unmistakable spinal chill. He has too thorough a command of his thoughts; they never possess him, and they never soar away with him. Prose may be controlled, but poetry is a possession. Mr. Hardy is too keenly aware of what he is about. In spite of the fact that he has written verse all his life, he seldom writes unwrinkled song. He is, in the last analysis, a master of prose who has learned the technique of verse, and who now chooses to express his thoughts and his observations in rime and rhythm. The title of Mr. Hardy's latest volume of poems, _Moments of Vision_, leads one to expect rifts in the clouds--and one is not disappointed. It is perhaps characteristic of the independence of our author, that steadily preaching pessimism when the world was peaceful, he should now not be perhaps quite so sure of his creed when a larger proportion of the world's inhabitants are in pain than ever before. One of the fallacies of pessimism consists in the fact that its advocates often call a witness to the stand whose testimony counts against them. Nobody really loves life, loves this world, like your pessimist; nobody is more reluctant to leave it. He therefore, to support his argument that life is evil, calls up evidence which proves that it is brief and transitory. But if life is evil, one of its few redeeming features should be its brevity; the pessimist should look forward to death as a man in prison looks toward the day of his release. Yet this attitude toward death is almost never taken by the atheists or the pessimists, while it is the burden of many of the triumphant hymns of the Christian Church. Now, as our spokesman for pessimism approaches the end--which I fervently hope may be afar off--life seems sweet. "FOR LIFE I HAD NEVER CARED GREATLY" For Life I had never eared greatly, As worth a man's while; Peradventures unsought, Peradventures that finished in nought, Had kept me from youth and through manhood till lately Unwon by its style. In earliest years--why I know not-- I viewed it askance; Conditions of doubt, Conditions that slowly leaked out, May haply have bent me to stand and to show not Much zest for its dance. With symphonies soft and sweet colour It courted me then, Till evasions seemed wrong, Till evasions gave in to its song, And I warmed, till living aloofly loomed duller Than life among men. Anew I found nought to set eyes on, When, lifting its hand, It uncloaked a star, Uncloaked it from fog-damps afar, And showed its beams burning from pole to horizon As bright as a brand. And so, the rough highway forgetting, I pace hill and dale, Regarding the sky, Regarding the vision on high, And thus re-illumed have no humour for letting My pilgrimage fail. No one of course can judge of another's happiness; but it is difficult to imagine any man on earth who has had a happier life than Mr. Hardy. He has had his own genius for company all his days; he has been successful in literary art beyond the wildest dreams of his youth; his acute perception has made the beauty of nature a million times more beautiful to him than to most of the children of men; his eye is not dim, nor his natural force abated. He has that which should accompany old age--honour, love, obedience, troops of friends. The last poem in _Moments of Vision_ blesses rather than curses life. AFTERWARDS When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings, Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the people say "He was a man who used to notice such things"? If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid's soundless blink, The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, will a gazer think, "To him this must have been a familiar sight"? If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm, When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn, Will they say, "He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm, But he could do little for them; and now he is gone"? If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door, Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees, Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more, "He was one who had an eye for such mysteries"? And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom, And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings, Till they rise again, as they were a new bell's boom, "He hears it not now, but he used to notice such things"? Should Mr. Hardy ever resort to prayer--which I suppose is unlikely--his prayers ought to be the best in the world. According to Coleridge, he prayeth well who loveth well both man and bird and beast; a beautiful characteristic of our great writer is his tenderness for every living thing. He will be missed by men, women, children, and by the humblest animals; and if trees have any self-consciousness, they will miss him too. Rudyard Kipling is a Victorian poet, as Thomas Hardy is a Victorian novelist. When Tennyson died in 1892, the world, with approximate unanimity, chose the young man from the East as his successor, and for twenty-five years he has been the Laureate of the British Empire in everything but the title. In the eighteenth century, when Gray regarded the offer of the Laureateship as an insult, Mr. Alfred Austin might properly have been appointed; but after the fame of Southey, and the mighty genius of Wordsworth and of Tennyson, it was cruel to put Alfred the Little in the chair of Alfred the Great. It was not an insult to Austin, but an insult to Poetry. With the elevation of the learned and amiable Dr. Bridges in 1913, the public ceased to care who holds the office. This eminently respectable appointment silenced both opposition and applause. We can only echo the language of Gray's letter to Mason, 19 December, 1757: "I interest myself a little in the history of it, and rather wish somebody may accept it that will retrieve the credit of the thing, if it be retrievable, or ever had any credit.... The office itself has always humbled the professor hitherto (even in an age when kings were somebody), if he were a poor writer by making him more conspicuous, and if he were a good one by setting him at war with the little fry of his own profession, for there are poets little enough to envy even a poet-laureat." Mason was willing. Rudyard Kipling had the double qualification of poetic genius and of convinced Imperialism. He had received a formal accolade from the aged Tennyson, and could have carried on the tradition of British verse and British arms. Nor has any Laureate, in the history of the office, risen more magnificently to an occasion than did Mr. Kipling at the sixtieth anniversary of the reign of the Queen. Each poet made his little speech in verse, and then at the close of the ceremony, came the thrilling _Recessional_, which received as instant applause from the world as if it had been spoken to an audience. In its scriptural phraseology, in its combination of haughty pride and deep contrition, in its "holy hope and high humility," it expressed with austere majesty the genius of the English race. The soul of a great poet entered immediately into the hearts of men, there to abide for ever. It is interesting to reflect that not the author of the _Recessional_, but the author of _Regina Cara_ was duly chosen for the Laureateship. This poem by Robert Bridges appeared on the same occasion as that immortalized by Kipling, and was subsequently included in the volume of the writer's poetical works, published in 1912. It shows irreproachable reverence for Queen Victoria. Apparently its poetical quality was satisfactory to those who appoint Laureates. REGINA CARA Jubilee-Song, for music, 1897 Hark! the world is full of thy praise, England's Queen of many days; Who, knowing how to rule the free, Hast given a crown to monarchy. Honour, Truth, and growing Peace Follow Britannia's wide increase, And Nature yield her strength unknown To the wisdom born beneath thy throne! In wisdom and love firm is thy fame: Enemies bow to revere thy name: The world shall never tire to tell Praise of the queen that reignèd well. O Felix anima, Domina pracclara, Amore semper coronabere Regina Cara Rudyard Kipling's poetry is as familiar to us as the air we breathe. He is the spokesman for the Anglo-Saxon breed. His gospel of orderly energy is the inspiration of thousands of business offices; his sententious maxims are parts of current speech: the victrola has carried his singing lyrics even farther than the banjo penetrates, of which latter democratic instrument his wonderful poem is the apotheosis. And we have the word of a distinguished British major-general to prove that Mr. Kipling has wrought a miracle of transformation with Tommy Atkins. General Sir George Younghusband, in a recent book, _A Soldier's Memories_, says, "I had never heard the words or expressions that Rudyard Kipling's soldiers used. Many a time did I ask my brother officers whether they had ever heard them. No, never. But, sure enough, a few years after the soldiers thought, and talked, and expressed themselves exactly as Rudyard Kipling had taught them in his stories. Rudyard Kipling made the modern soldier. Other writers have gone on with the good work, and they have between them manufactured the cheery, devil-may-care, lovable person enshrined in our hearts as Thomas Atkins. Before he had learned from reading stories about himself that he, as an individual, also possessed the above attributes, he was mostly ignorant of the fact. My early recollections of the British soldier are of a bluff, rather surly person, never the least jocose or light-hearted except perhaps when he had too much beer." This is extraordinary testimony to the power of literature--from a first-class fighting man. It is as though John Sargent should paint an inaccurate but idealized portrait, and the original should make it accurate by imitation. The soldiers were transformed by the renewing of their minds. Beholding with open face as in a glass a certain image, they were changed into the same image, by the spirit of the poet. This is certainly a greater achievement than correct reporting. It is quite possible, too, that the _officers_' attitude toward Tommy Atkins had been altered by the _Barrack-Room Ballads_, and this new attitude produced results in character. I give General Younghusband's testimony for what it is worth. It is important if true. But it is only fair to add that it has been contradicted by another military officer, who affirms that Kipling reported the soldier as he was. Readers may take their choice. At all events the transformation of character by discipline, cleanliness, hard work, and danger is the ever-present moral in Mr. Kipling's verse. He loves to take the raw recruit or the boyish, self-conscious, awkward subaltern, and show how he may become an efficient man, happy in the happiness that accompanies success. It is a Philistine goal, but one that has the advantage of being attainable. The reach of this particular poet seldom exceeds his grasp. And although thus far in his career--he is only fifty-two, and we may hope as well as remember--his best poetry belongs to the nineteenth century rather than the twentieth, so universally popular a homily as _If_ indicates that he has by no means lost the power of preaching in verse. With the exception of some sad lapses, his latter poems have come nearer the earlier level of production than his stories. For that matter, from the beginning I have thought that the genius of Rudyard Kipling had more authentic expression in poetry than in prose. I therefore hope that after the war he will become one of the leaders in the advance of English poetry in the twentieth century, as he will remain one of the imperishable monuments of Victorian literature. The verse published in his latest volume of stories, _A Diversity of Creatures_, 1917, has the stamp of his original mind, and _Macdonough's Song_ is impressive. And in a poem which does not appear in this collection, but which was written at the outbreak of hostilities, Mr. Kipling was, I believe, the first to use the name _Hun_--an appellation of considerable adhesive power. Do roses stick like burrs? His influence on other poets has of course been powerful. As Eden Phillpotts is to Thomas Hardy, so is Robert Service to Rudyard Kipling. Like Bret Harte in California, Mr. Service found gold in the Klondike. But it is not merely in his interpretation of the life of a distant country that the new poet reminds one of his prototype; both in matter and in manner he may justly be called the Kipling of the North. His verse has an extraordinary popularity among American college undergraduates, the reasons for which are evident. They read, discuss him, and quote him with joy, and he might well be proud of the adoration of so many of our eager, adventurous, high-hearted youth. Yet, while Mr. Service is undoubtedly a real poet, his work as a whole seems a clear echo, rather than a new song. It is good, but it is reminiscent of his reading, not merely of Mr. Kipling, but of poetry in general. In _The Land God Forgot_, a fine poem, beginning The lonely sunsets flare forlorn Down valleys dreadly desolate; The lordly mountains soar in scorn As still as death, as stern as fate, the opening line infallibly brings to mind Henley's Where forlorn sunsets flare and fade. The poetry of Mr. Service has the merits and the faults of the "red blood" school in fiction, illustrated by the late Jack London and the lively Rex Beach. It is not the highest form of art. It insists on being heard, but it smells of mortality. You cannot give permanence to a book by printing it in italic type. It is indeed difficult to express in pure artistic form great primitive experiences, even with long years of intimate first-hand knowledge. No one doubts Mr. Service's accuracy or sincerity. But many men have had abundance of material, rich and new, only to find it unmanageable. Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling succeeded where thousands have failed. Think of the possibilities of Australia! And from that vast region only one great artist has spoken--Percy Grainger. CHAPTER II PHILLIPS, WATSON, NOYES, HOUSMAN Stephen Phillips--his immediate success--influence of Stratford-on-Avon--his plays--a traditional poet--his realism--William Watson--his unpromising start--his lament on the coldness of the age toward poetry--his Epigrams--_Wordsworth's Grave_--his eminence as a critic in verse--his anti-imperialism--his Song of Hate--his Byronic wit--his contempt for the "new" poetry--Alfred Noyes--both literary and rhetorical--an orthodox poet--a singer--his democracy--his childlike imagination--his sea-poems--_Drake_--his optimism--his religious faith--A. E. Housman--his paganism and pessimism--his modernity--his originality--his lyrical power--war poems--Ludlow. The genius of Stephen Phillips was immediately recognized by London critics. When the thin volume, _Poems_, containing _Marpessa, Christ in Hades_, and some lyrical pieces, appeared in 1897, it was greeted by a loud chorus of approval, ceremoniously ratified by the bestowal of the First Prize from the British Academy. Some of the more distinguished among his admirers asserted that the nobility, splendour, and beauty of his verse merited the adjective Miltonic. I remember that we Americans thought that the English critics had lost their heads, and we queried what they would say if we praised a new poet in the United States in any such fashion. But that was before we had seen the book; when we had once read it for ourselves, we felt no alarm for the safety of Milton, but we knew that English Literature had been enriched. Stephen Phillips is among the English poets. His career extended over the space of twenty-five years, from the first publication of _Marpessa_ in 1890 to his death on the ninth of December, 1915. He was born near the city of Oxford, on the twenty-eighth of July, 1868. His father, the Rev. Dr. Stephen Phillips, still living, is Precentor of Peterborough Cathedral; his mother was related to Wordsworth. He was exposed to poetry germs at the age of eight, for in 1876 his father became Chaplain and Sub-Vicar at Stratford-on-Avon, and the boy attended the Grammar School. Later he spent a year at Queens' College, Cambridge, enough to give him the right to be enrolled in the long list of Cambridge poets. He went on the stage as a member of Frank Benson's company, and in his time played many parts, receiving on one occasion a curtain call as the Ghost in _Hamlet_. This experience--with the early Stratford inspiration--probably fired his ambition to become a dramatist. The late Sir George Alexander produced _Paolo and Francesca_; _Herod_ was acted in London by Beerbohm Tree, and in America by William Faversham. Neither of these plays was a failure, but it is regrettable that he wrote for the stage at all. His genius was not adapted for drama, and the quality of his verse was not improved by the experiment, although all of his half-dozen pieces have occasional passages of rare loveliness. His best play, _Paolo and Francesca_, suffers when compared either with Boker's or D'Annunzio's treatment of the old story. It lacks the stage-craft of the former, and the virility of the latter. Phillips was no pioneer: he followed the great tradition of English poetry, and must be counted among the legitimate heirs. At his best, he resembles Keats most of all; and none but a real poet could ever make us think of Keats. If he be condemned for not breaking new paths, we may remember the words of a wise man--"It is easier to differ from the great poets than it is to resemble them." He loved to employ the standard five-foot measure that has done so much of the best work of English poetry. In _The Woman with the Dead Soul_, he showed once more the musical possibilities latent in the heroic couplet, which Pope had used with such monotonous brilliance. In _Marpessa_, he gave us blank verse of noble artistry. But he was far more than a mere technician. He fairly meets the test set by John Davidson. "In the poet the whole assembly of his being is harmonious; no organ is master; a diapason extends throughout the entire scale; his whole body, his whole soul is rapt into the making of his poetry.... Poetry is the product of originality, of a first-hand experience and observation of life, of a direct communion with men and women, with the seasons of the year, with day and night. The critic will therefore be well-advised, if he have the good fortune to find something that seems to him poetry, to lay it out in the daylight and the moonlight, to take it into the street and the fields, to set against it his own experience and observation of life." One of the most severe tests of poetry that I know of is to read it aloud on the shore of an angry sea. Homer, Shakespeare, Milton gain in splendour with this accompaniment. With the words of John Davidson in mind, let us take two passages from _Marpessa_, and measure one against the atmosphere of day and night, and the other against homely human experience. Although Mr. Davidson was not thinking of Phillips, I believe he would have admitted the validity of this verse. From the dark The floating smell of flowers invisible, The mystic yearning of the garden wet, The moonless-passing night--into his brain Wandered, until he rose and outward leaned In the dim summer; 'twas the moment deep When we are conscious of the secret dawn, Amid the darkness that we feel is green.... When the long day that glideth without cloud, The summer day, was at her deep blue hour Of lilies musical with busy bliss, Whose very light trembled as with excess, And heat was frail, and every bush and flower Was drooping in the glory overcome; Any poet knows how to speak in authentic tones of the wild passion of insurgent hearts; but not every poet possesses the rarer gift of setting the mellower years to harmonious music, as in the following gracious words: But if I live with Idas, then we two On the low earth shall prosper hand in hand In odours of the open field, and live In peaceful noises of the farm, and watch The pastoral fields burned by the setting sun.... And though the first sweet sting of love be past, The sweet that almost venom is; though youth, With tender and extravagant delight, The first and secret kiss by twilight hedge, The insane farewell repeated o'er and o'er, Pass off; there shall succeed a faithful peace; Beautiful friendship tried by sun and wind, Durable from the daily dust of life. And though with sadder, still with kinder eyes, We shall behold all frailties, we shall haste To pardon, and with mellowing minds to bless. Then though we must grow old, we shall grow old Together, and he shall not greatly miss My bloom faded, and waning light of eyes, Too deeply gazed in ever to seem dim; Nor shall we murmur at, nor much regret The years that gently bend us to the ground, And gradually incline our face; that we Leisurely stooping, and with each slow step, May curiously inspect our lasting home. But we shall sit with luminous holy smiles, Endeared by many griefs, by many a jest, And custom sweet of living side by side; And full of memories not unkindly glance Upon each other. Last, we shall descend Into the natural ground--not without tears-- One must go first, ah God! one must go first; After so long one blow for both were good; Still like old friends, glad to have met, and leave Behind a wholesome memory on the earth. Although _Marpessa_ and _Christ in Hades_ are subjects naturally adapted for poetic treatment, Phillips did not hesitate to try his art on material less malleable. In some of his poems we find a realism as honest and clear-sighted as that of Crabbe or Masefield. In _The Woman with the Dead Soul_ and _The Wife_ we have naturalism elevated into poetry. He could make a London night as mystical as a moonlit meadow. And in a brief couplet he has given to one of the most familiar of metropolitan spectacles a pretty touch of imagination. The traffic policeman becomes a musician. The constable with lifted hand Conducting the orchestral Strand. Stephen Phillips's second volume of collected verse, _New Poems_ (1907), came ten years after the first, and was to me an agreeable surprise. His devotion to the drama made me fear that he had burned himself out in the _Poems_ of 1897; but the later book is as unmistakably the work of a poet as was the earlier. The mystical communion with nature is expressed with authority in such poems as _After Rain_, _Thoughts at Sunrise_, _Thoughts at Noon_. Indeed the first-named distinctly harks back to that transcendental mystic of the seventeenth century, Henry Vaughan. The greatest triumph in the whole volume comes where we should least expect it, in the eulogy on Gladstone. Even the most sure-footed bards often miss their path in the Dark Valley. Yet in these seven stanzas on the Old Parliamentary Hand there is not a single weak line, not a single false note; word placed on word grows steadily into a column of majestic beauty. This poem is all the more refreshing because admiration for Gladstone had become unfashionable; his work was belittled, his motives befouled, his clear mentality discounted by thousands of pygmy politicians and journalistic gnats. The poet, with a poet's love for mountains, turns the powerful light of his genius on the old giant; the mists disappear; and we see again a form venerable and august. The saint and poet dwell apart; but thou Wast holy in the furious press of men, And choral in the central rush of life. Yet didst thou love old branches and a book, And Roman verses on an English lawn.... Yet not for all thy breathing charm remote, Nor breach tremendous in the forts of Hell, Not for these things we praise thee, though these things Are much; but more, because thou didst discern In temporal policy the eternal will; Thou gav'st to party strife the epic note, And to debate the thunder of the Lord; To meanest issues fire of the Most High. William Watson, a Yorkshireman by birth and ancestry, was born on the second of August, 1858. His first volume, _The Prince's Quest_, appeared in 1880. Seldom has a true poet made a more unpromising start, or given so little indication, not only of the flame of genius, but of the power of thought. No twentieth century English poet has a stronger personality than William Watson. There is not the slightest tang of it in _The Prince's Quest_. This long, rambling romance, in ten sections, is as devoid of flavour as a five-finger exercise. It is more than objective; it is somnambulistic. It contains hardly any notable lines, and hardly any bad lines. Although quite dull, it never deviates into prose--it is always somehow poetical without ever becoming poetry. It is written in the heroic couplet, written with a fatal fluency; not good enough and not bad enough to be interesting. It is like the student's theme, which was returned to him without corrections, yet with a low mark; and in reply to the student's resentful question, "Why did you not correct my faults, if you thought meanly of my work?" the teacher replied wearily, "Your theme has no faults; it is distinguished by a lack of merit." In _The Prince's Quest_ Mr. Watson exhibited a rather remarkable command of a barren technique. He had neither thoughts that breathe, nor words that burn. He had one or two unusual words--his only indication of immaturity in style--like "wox" and "himseemed." (Why is it that when "herseemed" as used by Rossetti, is so beautiful, "himseemed" should be so irritating!) But aside from a few specimens, the poem is as free from affectations as it is from passion. When we remember the faults and the splendours of _Pauline,_ it seems incredible that a young poet could write so many pages without stumbling and without soaring; that he could produce a finished work of mediocrity. I suppose that those who read the poem in 1880 felt quite sure that its author would never scale the heights; and they were wrong; because William Watson really has the divine gift, and is one of the most deservedly eminent among living poets. It is only fair to add, that in the edition of his works in 1898, _The Prince's Quest_ did not appear; he was persuaded, however, to include it in the two-volume edition of 1905, where it enjoys considerable revision, "wox" becoming normal, and "himseemed" becoming dissyllabic. For my part, I am glad that it has now been definitely retained. It is important in the study of a poet's development. It would seem that the William Watson of the last twenty-five years, a fiery, eager, sensitive man, with a burning passion to express himself on moral and political ideas, learned the mastery of his art before he had anything to say. Perhaps, being a thoroughly honest craftsman, he felt that he ought to keep his thoughts to himself, until he knew how to express them. After proving it on an impersonal romance, he was then ready to speak his mind. No poet has spoken his mind more plainly. In an interesting address, delivered in various cities in the United States, and published in 1913, called _The Poet's Place in the Scheme of Life,_ Mr. Watson said, "Since my arrival on these shores I have been told that here also the public interest in poetry is visibly on the wane." Now whoever told him that was mistaken. The public interest in poetry and in poets has visibly _wox_, to use Mr. Watson's word. It is always true that an original genius, like Browning, like Ibsen, like Wagner, must wait some time for public recognition, although these three all lived long enough to receive not only appreciation, but idolatry; but the "reading public" has no difficulty in recognizing immediately first-rate work, when it is produced in the familiar forms of art. In the Preface that preceded his printed lecture, Mr. Watson complained with some natural resentment, though with no petulance, that his poem, _King Alfred_, starred as it was from the old armories of literature, received scarcely any critical comment, and attracted no attention. But the reason is plain enough--_King Alfred_, as a whole, is a dull poem, and is therefore not provocative of eager discussion. The critics and the public rose in reverence before _Wordsworth's Grave_, because it is a noble work of art. Its author did not have to tell us of its beauty--it was as clear as a cathedral. I do not agree with Mr. Watson or with Mr. Mackaye, that real poets are speaking to deaf ears, or that they should be stimulated by forced attention. I once heard Percy Mackaye make an eloquent and high-minded address, where, if my memory serves me rightly, he advocated something like a stipend for young poets. A distinguished old man in the audience, now with God, whispered audibly, "What most of them need is hanging!" I do not think they should be rewarded either by cash or the gallows. Let them make their way, and if they have genius, the public will find it out. If all they have is talent, and no means to support it, poetry had better become their avocation. Mr. Watson has expressly disclaimed that in his lecture he was lamenting merely "the insufficient praise bestowed upon living poets." It is certainly true that most poets cannot live by the sale of their works. Is this especially the fault of our age? is it the fault of our poets? is it a fault in human nature? Mr. Watson said, "Yet I am bound to admit that this need for the poet is felt by but few persons in our day. With one exception there is not a single living English poet, the sales of whose poems would not have been thought contemptible by Scott and Byron. The exception is, of course, that apostle of British imperialism--that vehement and voluble glorifier of Britannic ideals, whom I dare say you will readily identify from my brief, and, I hope, not disparaging description of him. With that one brilliant and salient exception, England's living singers succeed in reaching only a pitifully small audience." In commenting on this passage, we ought to remember that Scott and Byron were colossal figures, so big that no eye could miss them; and that the reason why Kipling has enjoyed substantial rewards is not because of his political views, nor because of his glorification of the British Empire, but simply because of his literary genius. He is a brilliant and salient exception to the common run of poets, not merely in royalties, but in creative power. Furthermore, shortly after this lecture was delivered, Alfred Noyes and then John Masefield passed from city to city in America in a march of triumph. Mr. Gibson and Mr. De La Mare received homage everywhere; "Riley day" is now a legal holiday in Indiana; Rupert Brooke has been canonized. Mr. Watson is surely mistaken when he offers "his poetical contemporaries in England" his "most sincere condolences on the hard fate which condemned them to be born there at all in the latter part of the nineteenth century." But he is not mistaken in wishing that more people everywhere were appreciative of true poetry. I wish this with all my heart, not so much for the poet's sake, as for that of the people. But the chosen spirits are not rarer in our time than formerly. The fault is in human nature. Material blessings are instantly appreciated by every man, woman, and child, and by all the animals. For one person who knows the joys of listening to music, or looking at pictures, or reading poetry, there are a hundred thousand who know only the joys of food, clothing, shelter. Spiritual delights are not so immediately apparent as the gratification of physical desires. Perhaps if they were, man's growth would stop. As Browning says, While were it so with the soul,--this gift of truth Once grasped, were this our soul's gain safe, and sure To prosper as the body's gain is wont,-- Why, man's probation would conclude, his earth Crumble; for he both reasons and decides, Weighs first, then chooses: will he give up fire For gold or purple once he knows its worth? Could he give Christ up were his worth as plain? Therefore, I say, to test man, the proofs shift, Nor may he grasp that fact like other fact, And straightway in his life acknowledge it, As, say, the indubitable bliss of fire. One of the functions of the poet is to awaken men and women to the knowledge of the delights of the mind, to give them life instead of existence. As Mr. Watson nobly expresses it, the aim of the poet "is to keep fresh within us our often flagging sense of life's greatness and grandeur." We can exist on food; but we cannot live without our poets, who lift us to higher planes of thought and feeling. The poetry of William Watson has done this service for us again and again. In 1884 appeared _Epigrams of Art, Life, and Nature_. I do not think these have been sufficiently admired. As an epigrammatist Mr. Watson has no rival in Victorian or in contemporary verse. The epigram is a quite definite form of art, especially cultivated by the poets in the first half of the seventeenth century. Their formula the terse expression of obscene thoughts. Mr. Watson excels the best of them in wit, concision, and grace; it is needless to say he makes no attempt to rival them as a garbage-collector. Of the large number of epigrams that he has contributed to English literature, I find the majority not only interesting, but richly stimulating. This one ought to please Mr. H. G. Wells: When whelmed are altar, priest, and creed; When all the faiths have passed; Perhaps, from darkening incense freed, God may emerge at last. This one, despite its subject, is far above doggerel: His friends he loved. His direst earthly foes-- Cats--believe he did but feign to hate. My hand will miss the insinuated nose, Mine eyes the tail that wagg'd contempt at fate. But his best epigrams are on purely literary themes: Your Marlowe's page I close, my Shakespeare's ope. How welcome--after gong and cymbal's din-- The continuity, the long slow slope And vast curves of the gradual violin! With the publication in 1890 of his masterpiece, _Wordsworth's Grave_, William Watson came into his own. This is worthy of the man it honours, and what higher praise could be given? It is superior, both in penetration and in beauty, to Matthew Arnold's famous _Memorial Verses_. Indeed, in the art of writing subtle literary criticism in rhythmical language that is itself high and pure poetry, Mr. Watson is unapproachable by any of his contemporaries, and I do not know of any poet in English literature who has surpassed him. This is his specialty, this is his clearest title to permanent fame. And although his criticism is so valuable, when employed on a sympathetic theme, that he must be ranked among our modern interpreters of literature, his style in expressing it could not possibly be translated into prose, sure test of its poetical greatness. In his _Apologia_, he says I have full oft In singers' selves found me a theme of song, Holding these also to be very part Of Nature's greatness, and accounting not Their descants least heroical of deeds. The poem _Wordsworth's Grave_ not only expresses, as no one else has expressed, the quality of Wordsworth's genius, but in single lines assigned to each, the same service is done for Milton, Shakespeare, Shelley, Coleridge, and Byron. This is a matchless illustration of the kind of criticism that is in itself genius; for we may quarrel with Mr. Spingarn as much as we please on his general dogmatic principle of the identity of genius and taste; here we have so admirable an example of what he means by creative criticism, that it is a pity he did not think of it himself. "For it still remains true," says Mr. Spingarn, "that the aesthetic critic, in his moments of highest power, rises to heights where he is at one with, the creator whom he is interpreting. At that moment criticism and 'creation' are one." All great poets have the power of noble indignation, a divine wrath against wickedness in high places. The poets, like the prophets of old, pour out their irrepressible fury against what they believe to be cruelty and oppression. Milton's magnificent Piedmont sonnet is a glorious roar of righteous rage; and since his time the poets have ever been the spokesmen for the insulted and injured. Robert Burns, more than most statesmen, helped to make the world safe for democracy. I do not know what humanity would do without its poets--they are the champions of the individual against the tyranny of power, the cruel selfishness of kings, and the artificial conventions of society. We may or may not agree with Mr. Watson's anti-imperialistic sentiments as expressed in the early days of our century, he himself, like most of us, has changed his mind on many subjects since the outbreak of the world-war, and unless he ceases to develop, will probably change it many times in the future. But whatever our opinions, we cannot help admiring lines like these, published in 1897: HOW WEARY IS OUR HEART Of kings and courts; of kingly, courtly ways In which the life of man is bought and sold; How weary is our heart these many days! Of ceremonious embassies that hold Parley with Hell in fine and silken phrase, How weary is our heart these many days! Of wavering counsellors neither hot nor cold, Whom from His mouth God speweth, be it told How weary is our heart these many days! Yea, for the ravelled night is round the lands, And sick are we of all the imperial story. The tramp of Power, and its long trail of pain; The mighty brows in meanest arts grown hoary; The mighty hands, That in the dear, affronted name of Peace Bind down a people to be racked and slain; The emulous armies waxing without cease, All-puissant all in vain; The pacts and leagues to murder by delays, And the dumb throngs that on the deaf thrones gaze; The common loveless lust of territory; The lips that only babble of their mart, While to the night the shrieking hamlets blaze; The bought allegiance, and the purchased praise, False honour, and shameful glory;-- Of all the evil whereof this is part, How weary is our heart, How weary is our heart these many days! Another poem I cite in full, not for its power and beauty, but as a curiosity. I do not think it has been remembered that in the _New Poems_ of 1909 Mr. Watson published a poem of Hate some years before the Teutonic hymn became famous. It is worth reading again, because it so exactly expresses the cold reserve of the Anglo-Saxon, in contrast with the sentimentality of the German. There is, of course, no indication that its author had Germany in mind. HATE (To certain foreign detractors) Sirs, if the truth must needs be told, We love not you that rail and scold; And, yet, my masters, you may wait Till the Greek Calends for our hate. No spendthrifts of our hate are we; Our hate is used with husbandry. We hold our hate too choice a thing For light and careless lavishing. We cannot, dare not, make it cheap! For holy uses will we keep. A thing so pure, a thing so great As Heaven's benignant gift of hate. Is there no ancient, sceptred Wrong? No torturing Power, endured too long? Yea; and for these our hatred shall Be cloistered and kept virginal. He found occasion to draw from his cold storage of hate much sooner than he had anticipated. Being a convinced anti-imperialist, and having not a spark of antagonism to Germany, the early days of August, 1914, shocked no one in the world more than him. But after the first maze of bewilderment and horror, he drew his pen against the Kaiser in holy wrath. Most of his war poems have been collected in the little volume _The Man Who Saw,_ published in the summer of 1917. He has now at all events one satisfaction, that of being in absolute harmony with the national sentiment. In his Preface, after commenting on the pain he had suffered in times past at finding himself in opposition to the majority of his countrymen, he manfully says, "During the present war, with all its agonies and horrors, he has had at any rate the one private satisfaction of feeling not even the most momentary doubt or misgiving as to the perfect righteousness of his country's cause. There is nothing on earth of which he is more certain than that this Empire, throughout this supreme ordeal, has shaped her course by the light of purest duty." The volume opens with a fine tribute to Mr. Lloyd George, "the man who saw," and _The Kaiser's Dirge_ is a savage malediction. The poems in this book--of decidedly unequal merit--have the fire of indignation if not always the flame of inspiration. Taken as a whole, they are more interesting psychologically than as a contribution to English verse. I sympathize with the author's feelings, and admire his sincerity; but his reputation as a poet is not heightened overmuch. Perhaps the best poem in the collection is _The Yellow Pansy_, accompanied with Shakespeare's line, "There's pansies--that's for thoughts." Winter had swooped, a lean and hungry hawk; It seemed an age since summer was entombed; Yet in our garden, on its frozen stalk, A yellow pansy bloomed. 'Twas Nature saying by trope and metaphor: "Behold, when empire against empire strives, Though all else perish, ground 'neath iron war, The golden thought survives." Although, with the exception of his marriage and travels in America, Mr. Watson's verse tells us little of the facts of his life, few poets have ever revealed more of the history of their mind. What manner of man he is we know without waiting for the publication of his intimate correspondence. It is fortunate for his temperament that, combined with an almost morbid sensitiveness, he has something of Byron's power of hitting back. His numerous volumes contain many verses scoring off adverse critics, upon whom he exercises a sword of satire not always to be found among a poet's weapons; which exercise seems to give him both relief and delight. Apart from these thrusts edged with personal bitterness, William Watson possesses a rarely used vein of ironical wit that immediately recalls Byron, who might himself have written some of the stanzas in _The Eloping Angels_. Faust requests Mephisto to procure for them both admission into heaven for half-an-hour: To whom Mephisto: "Ah, you underrate The hazards and the dangers, my good Sir. Peter is stony as his name; the gate, Excepting to invited guests, won't stir. 'Tis long since he and I were intimate; We differed;--but to bygones why refer? Still, there are windows; if a peep through these Would serve your turn, we'll start whene'er you please...." So Faust and his companion entered, by The window, the abodes where seraphs dwell. "Already morning quickens in the sky, And soon will sound the heavenly matin bell; Our time is short," Mephisto said, "for I Have an appointment about noon in hell. Dear, dear! why, heaven has hardly changed one bit Since the old days before the historic split." The excellent conventional technique displayed in _The Prince's Quest_ has characterized nearly every page of Mr. Watson's works. He is not only content to walk in the ways of traditional poesy, he glories in it. He has a contempt for heretics and experimenters, which he has expressed frequently not only in prose, but in verse. It is natural that he should worship Tennyson; natural (and unfortunate for him) that he can see little in Browning. And if he is blind to Browning, what he thinks of contemporary "new" poets may easily be imagined. With or without inspiration, he believes that hard work is necessary, and that good workmanship ought to be rated more highly. This idea has become an obsession; Mr. Watson writes too much about the sweat of his brow, and vents his spleen on "modern" poets too often. In his latest volume, _Retrogression_, published in 1917, thirty-two of the fifty-two poems are devoted to the defence of standards of poetic art and of purity of speech. They are all interesting and contain some truth; but if the "new" poetry and the "new" criticism are really balderdash, they should not require so much attention from one of the most eminent of contemporary writers. I think Mr. Watson is rather stiff-necked and obstinate, like an honest, hearty country squire, in his sturdy following of tradition. Smooth technique is a fine thing in art; but I do not care whether a poem is written in conventional metre or in free verse, so long as it is unmistakably poetry. And no garments yet invented or the lack of them can conceal true poetry. Perhaps the Traditionalist might reply that uninspired verse gracefully written is better than uninspired verse abominably written. So it is; but why bother about either? He might once more insist that inspired poetry gracefully written is better than inspired poetry ungracefully written. And I should reply that it depended altogether on the subject. I should not like to see Whitman's _Spirit that formed this Scene_ turned into a Spenserian stanza. I cannot forget that David Mallet tried to smoothen Hamlet's soliloquy by jamming it into the heroic couplet. Mr. Watson thinks that the great John Donne is dead. On the contrary, he is audibly alive; and the only time he really approached dissolution was when Pope "versified" him. Stephen Phillips, William Watson, Alfred Noyes--each published his first volume of poems at the age of twenty-two, additional evidence of the old truth that poets are born, not made. Alfred Noyes is a Staffordshire man, though his report of the county differs from that of Arnold Bennett as poetry differs from prose. They did not see the same things in Staffordshire, and if they had, they would not have been the same things, anyhow. Mr. Noyes was born on the sixteenth of September, 1880, and made his first departure from the traditions of English poetry in going to Oxford. There he was an excellent illustration of _mens sana in corpore sano_, writing verses and rowing on his college crew. He is married to an American wife, is a professor at Princeton, and understands the spirit of America better than most visitors who write clever books about us. He has the wholesome, modest, cheerful temperament of the American college undergraduate, and the Princeton students are fortunate, not only in hearing his lectures, but in the opportunity of fellowship with such a man. Mr. Noyes is one of the few poets who can read his own verses effectively, the reason being that his mind is by nature both literary and rhetorical--a rare union. The purely literary temperament is usually marked by a certain shyness which unfits its owner for the public platform. I have heard poets read passionate poetry in a muffled sing-song, something like a child learning to "recite." The works of Alfred Noyes gain distinctly by his oral interpretation of them. He is prolific. Although still a young man, he has a long list of books to his credit; and it is rather surprising that in such a profusion of literary experiments, the general level should be so high. He writes blank verse, octosyllabics, terza-rima, sonnets, and is particularly fond of long rolling lines that have in them the music of the sea. His ideas require no enlargement of the orchestra, and he generally avoids by-paths, or unbeaten tracks, content to go lustily singing along the highway. Perhaps it shows more courage to compete with standard poets in standard measures, than to elude dangerous comparisons by making or adopting a new fashion. Mr. Noyes openly challenges the masters on their own field and with their own weapons. Yet he shows nothing of the schoolmasterish contempt for the "new" poetry so characteristic of Mr. Watson. He actually admires Blake, who was in spirit a twentieth century poet, and he has written a fine poem _On the Death of Francis Thompson_, though he has nothing of Thompson in him except religious faith. In the time-worn but useful classification of versemakers under the labels _Vates_ and _Poeta_, Alfred Noyes belongs clearly to the latter group. He is not without ideas, but he is primarily an artist, a singer. He is one of the most melodious of modern writers, with a witchery in words that at its best is irresistible. He has an extraordinary command of the resources of language and rhythm. Were this all he possessed, he would be nothing but a graceful musician. But he has the imagination of the inspired poet, giving him creative power to reveal anew the majesty of the untamed sea, and the mystery of the stars. With this clairvoyance--essential in poetry--he has a hearty, charming, incondescending sympathy with "common" people, common flowers, common music. One of his most original and most captivating poems is _The Tramp Transfigured, an Episode in the Life of a Corn-flower Millionaire_. This contains a character worthy of Dickens, a faery touch of fantasy, a rippling, singing melody, with delightful audacities of rime. _Tick, tack, tick, tack_, I couldn't wait no longer! Up I gets and bows polite and pleasant as a toff-- "Arternoon," I says, "I'm glad your boots are going stronger; Only thing I'm dreading is your feet 'ull both come off." _Tick, tack, tick, tack_, she didn't stop to answer, "Arternoon," she says, and sort o' chokes a little cough, "I must get to Piddinghoe tomorrow if I can, sir!" "Demme, my good woman! Haw! Don't think I mean to loff," Says I, like a toff, "Where d'you mean to sleep tonight? God made this grass for go'ff." His masterpiece, _The Barrel-Organ_, has something of Kipling's rollicking music, with less noise and more refinement. Out of the mechanical grinding of the hand organ, with the accompaniment of city omnibuses, we get the very breath of spring in almost intolerable sweetness. This poem affects the head, the heart, and the feet. I defy any man or woman to read it without surrendering to the magic of the lilacs, the magic of old memories, the magic of the poet. Nor has one ever read this poem without going immediately back to the first line, and reading it all over again, so susceptible are we to the romantic pleasure of melancholy. Mon coeur est un luth suspendu: Sitôt qu'on le touche, il résonne. Alfred Noyes understands the heart of the child; as is proved by his _Flower of Old Japan_, and _Forest of Wild Thyme_, a kind of singing Alice-in-Wonderland. These are the veritable stuff of dreams--wholly apart from the law of causation--one vision fading into another. It is our fault, and not that of the poet, that Mr. Noyes had to explain them: "It is no new wisdom to regard these things through the eyes of little children; and I know--however insignificant they may be to others--these two tales contain as deep and true things as I, personally, have the power to express. I hope, therefore, that I may be pardoned, in these hurried days, for pointing out that the two poems are not to be taken merely as fairy-tales, but as an attempt to follow the careless and happy feet of children back into the kingdom of those dreams which, as we said above, are the sole reality worth living and dying for; those beautiful dreams, or those fantastic jests--if any care to call them so--for which mankind has endured so many triumphant martyrdoms that even amidst the rush and roar of modern materialism they cannot be quite forgotten." Mr. William J. Locke says he would rather give up clean linen and tobacco than give up his dreams. Nearly all English poetry smells of the sea; the waves rule Britannia. Alfred Noyes loves the ocean, and loves the old sea-dogs of Devonshire. He is not a literary poet, like William Watson, and has seldom given indication of possessing the insight or the interpretative power of his contemporary in dealing with pure literature. He has the blessed gift of admiration, and his poems on Swinburne, Meredith, and other masters show a high reverence; but they are without subtlety, and lack the discriminating phrase. He is, however, deeply read in Elizabethan verse and prose, as his _Tales of the Mermaid Tavern_, one of his longest, most painstaking, and least successful works, proves; and of all the Elizabethan men of action, Drake is his hero. The English lovers of the sea, and the German lovers of efficiency, have both done honour to Drake. I remember years ago, being in the town of Offenburg in Germany, and seeing at a distance a colossal statue, feeling some surprise when I discovered that the monument was erected to Sir Francis Drake, "in recognition of his having introduced the potato into Europe." Here was where eulogy became almost too specific, and I felt that their Drake was not my Drake. Mr. Noyes called _Drake_, published in 1908, an English Epic. It is not really an epic--it is a historical romance in verse, as _Aurora Leigh_ is a novel. It is interesting from beginning to end, more interesting as narrative than as poetry. It is big rather than great, rhetorical rather than literary, declamatory rather than passionate. And while many descriptive passages are fine, the pictures of the terrible storm near Cape Horn are surely less vivid than those in _Dauber_. Had Mr. Noyes written _Drake_ without the songs, and written nothing else, I should not feel certain that he was a poet; I should regard him as an extremely fluent versifier, with remarkable skill in telling a rattling good story. But the _Songs_, especially the one beginning, "Now the purple night is past," could have been written only by a poet. In _Forty Singing Seamen_ there is displayed an imagination quite superior to anything in _Drake_; and I would not trade _The Admiral's Ghost_ for the whole "epic." As a specific illustration of his lyrical power, the following poem may be cited. THE MAY-TREE The May-tree on the hill Stands in the night So fragrant and so still, So dusky white. That, stealing from the wood, In that sweet air, You'd think Diana stood Before you there. If it be so, her bloom Trembles with bliss. She waits across the gloom Her shepherd's kiss. Touch her. A bird will start From those pure snows,-- The dark and fluttering heart Endymion knows. Alfred Noyes is "among the English poets." His position is secure. But because he has never identified himself with the "new" poetry--either in choice of material or in free verse and polyphonic prose--it would he a mistake to suppose that he is afraid to make metrical experiments. The fact of the matter is, that after he had mastered the technique of conventional rime and rhythm, as shown in many of his lyrical pieces, he began playing new tunes on the old instrument. In _The Tramp Transfigured_, to which I find myself always returning in a consideration of his work, because it displays some of the highest qualities of pure poetry, there are new metrical effects. The same is true of the Prelude to the _Forest of Wild Thyme_, and of _The Burial of a Queen_; there are new metres used in _Rank and File_ and in _Mount Ida_. The poem _Astrid_, included in the volume _The Lord of Misrule_ (1915), is an experiment in _initial_ rhymes. Try reading it aloud. White-armed Astrid,--ah, but she was beautiful!-- Nightly wandered weeping thro' the ferns in the moon, Slowly, weaving her strange garland in the forest, Crowned with white violets, Gowned in green. Holy was that glen where she glided, Making her wild garland as Merlin had bidden her, Breaking off the milk-white horns of the honeysuckle, Sweetly dripped the new upon her small white Feet. The English national poetry of Mr. Noyes worthily expresses the spirit of the British people, and indeed of the Anglo-Saxon race. We are no lovers of war; military ambition or the glory of conquest is not sufficient motive to call either Great Britain or America to arms; but if the gun-drunken Germans really believed that the English and Americans would not fight to save the world from an unspeakable despotism, they made the mistake of their lives. There must be a Cause, there must be an Idea, to draw out the full fighting strength of the Anglo-Saxons. Alfred Noyes made a correct diagnosis and a correct prophecy in 1911, when he published _The Sword of England_. She sheds no blood to that vain god of strife Whom tyrants call "renown"; She knows that only they who reverence life Can nobly lay it down; And these will ride from child and home and love, Through death and hell that day; But O, her faith, her flag, must burn above, Her soul must lead the way! I think none the worse of the mental force exhibited in the poetry of Alfred Noyes because he is an optimist. It is a common error to suppose that cheerfulness is a sign of a superficial mind, and melancholy the mark of deep thinking. Pessimism in itself is no proof of intellectual greatness. Every honest man must report the world as he sees it, both in its external manifestations and in the equally salient fact of human emotion. Mr. Noyes has always loved life, and rejoiced in it; he loves the beauty of the world and believes that history proves progress. In an unashamed testimony to the happiness of living he is simply telling truths of his own experience. Happiness is not necessarily thoughtlessness; many men and women have gone through pessimism and come out on serener heights. Alfred Noyes proves, as Browning proved, that it is possible to be an inspired poet and in every other respect to remain normal. He is healthy-minded, without a trace of affectation or decadence. He follows the Tennysonian tradition in seeing that "Beauty, Good, and Knowledge are three sisters." He is religious. A clear-headed, pure-hearted Englishman is Alfred Noyes. Although _A Shropshire Lad_ was published in 1896, there is nothing of the nineteenth century in it except the date, and nothing Victorian except the allusions to the Queen. A double puzzle confronts the reader: how could a University Professor of Latin write this kind of poetry, and how, after having published it, could he refrain from writing more? Since the date of its appearance, he has published an edition of _Manilius_, Book I, followed nine years later by Book II; also an edition of _Juvenal_, and many papers representing the result of original research. Possibly Chill Pedantry repressed his noble rage, And froze the genial current of his soul. Alfred Edward Housman was born on the twenty-sixth of March, 1859, was graduated from Oxford, was Professor of Latin at University College, London, from 1892 to 1911, and since then has been Professor of Latin at Cambridge. Few poets have made a deeper impression on the literature of the time than he; and the sixty-three short lyrics in one small volume form a slender wedge for so powerful an impact. This poetry, except in finished workmanship, follows no English tradition; it is as unorthodox as Samuel Butler; it is thoroughly "modern" in tone, in temper, and in emphasis. Although entirely original, it reminds one in many ways of the verse of Thomas Hardy. It has his paganism, his pessimism, his human sympathy, his austere pride in the tragedy of frustration, his curt refusal to pipe a merry tune, to make one of a holiday crowd. Therefore, since the world has still Much good, but much less good than ill, And while the sun and moon endure Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure, I'd face it as a wise man would, And train for ill and not for good. 'Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale Is not so brisk a brew as ale: Out of a stem that scored the hand I wrung it in a weary land. But take it: if the smack is sour, The better for the embittered hour; It should do good to heart and head When your soul is in my soul's stead; And I will friend you, if I may, In the dark and cloudy day. Those lines might have been written by Thomas Hardy. They express not merely his view of life, but his faith in the healing power of the bitter herb of pessimism. But we should remember that _A Shropshire Lad_ was published before the first volume of Mr. Hardy's verse appeared, and that the lyrical element displayed is natural rather than acquired. Though at the time of its publication the author was thirty-six years old, many of the poems must have been written in the twenties. The style is mature, but the constant dwelling on death and the grave is a mark of youth. Young poets love to write about death, because its contrast to their present condition forms a romantic tragedy, sharply dramatic and yet instinctively felt to be remote. Tennyson's first volume is full of the details of dissolution, the falling jaw, the eye-balls fixing, the sharp-headed worm. Aged poets do not usually write in this manner, because death seems more realistic than romantic. It is a fact rather than an idea. When a young poet is obsessed with the idea of death, it is a sign, not of morbidity, but of normality. The originality in this book consists not in the contrast between love and the grave, but in the acute self-consciousness of youth, in the pagan determination to enjoy nature without waiting till life's summer is past. Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide. Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more. And since to look at things in bloom Fifty springs are little room, About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with snow. The death of the body is not the greatest tragedy in this volume, for suicide, a thought that youth loves to play with, is twice glorified. The death of love is often treated with an ironical bitterness that makes one think of _Time's Laughingstocks_. Is my friend hearty, Now I am thin and pine, And has he found to sleep in A better bed than mine? Yes, lad, I lie easy, I lie as lads would choose; I cheer a dead man's sweetheart, Never ask me whose. The point of view expressed in _The Carpenter's Son_ is singularly detached not only from conventional religious belief, but from conventional reverence. But the originality in _A Shropshire Lad_, while more strikingly displayed in some poems than in others, leaves its mark on them all. It is the originality of a man who thinks his own thoughts with shy obstinacy, makes up his mind in secret meditation, quite unaffected by current opinion. It is not the poetry of a rebel; it is the poetry of an independent man, too indifferent to the crowd even to fight them. And now and then we find a lyric of flawless beauty, that lingers in the mind like the glow of a sunset. Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went, And cannot come again. Mr. Housman's poems are nearer to the twentieth century in spirit than the work of the late Victorians, and many of them are curiously prophetic of the dark days of the present war. What strange vision made him write such poems as _The Recruit_, _The Street Sounds to the Soldiers' Tread_, _The Day of Battle_, and _On the Idle Hill of Summer_? Change the colour of the uniforms, and these four poems would fit today's tragedy accurately. They are indeed superior to most of the war poems written by the professional poets since 1914. Ludlow, for ever associated with. Milton's _Comus_, is now and will be for many years to come also significant in the minds of men as the home of a Shropshire lad. CHAPTER III JOHN MASEFIELD John Masefield--new wine in old bottles--back to Chaucer--the self-conscious adventurer--early education and experiences--_Dauber_--Mr. Masefleld's remarks on Wordsworth--Wordsworth's famous Preface and its application to the poetry of Mr. Masefield--_The Everlasting Mercy_--_The Widow in the Bye Street_ and its Chaucerian manner--his masterpiece--_The Daffodil Fields_--similarities to Wordsworth--the part played by the flowers--comparison of _The Daffodil Fields_ with _Enoch Arden_--the war poem, _August 1914_--the lyrics--the sonnets--the novels--his object in writing--his contribution to the advance of poetry. Poets are the Great Exceptions. Poets are for ever performing the impossible. "No man putteth new wine into old bottles ... new wine must be put into new bottles." But putting new wine into old bottles has been the steady professional occupation of John Masefield. While many of our contemporary vers librists and other experimentalists have been on the hunt for new bottles, sometimes, perhaps, more interested in the bottle than in the wine, John Masefield has been constantly pouring his heady drink into receptacles five hundred years old. In subject-matter and in language he is not in the least "traditional," not at all Victorian; he is wholly modern, new, contemporary. Yet while he draws his themes and his heroes from his own experience, his inspiration as a poet comes directly from Chaucer, who died in 1400. He is, indeed, the Chaucer of today; the most closely akin to Chaucer--not only in temperament, but in literary manner--of all the writers of the twentieth century. The beautiful metrical form that Chaucer invented--rime royal--ideally adapted for narrative poetry, as shown in _Troilus and Criseyde_, is the metre chosen by John Masefield for _The Widow in the Bye Street_ and for _Dauber_; the only divergence in _The Daffodil Fields_ consisting in the lengthening of the seventh line of the stanza, for which he had plenty of precedents. Mr. Masefield owes more to Chaucer than to any other poet. Various are the roads to poetic achievement. Browning became a great poet at the age of twenty, with practically no experience of life outside of books. He had never travelled, he had never "seen the world," but was brought up in a library; and was so deeply read in the Greek poets and dramatists that a sunrise on the Aegean Sea was more real to him than a London fog. He never saw Greece with his natural eyes. In the last year of his life, being asked by an American if he had been much in Athens, he replied contritely, "Thou stick'st a dagger in me." He belied Goethe's famous dictum. John Masefield was born at Ledbury, in western England, in 1874. He ran away from home, shipped as cabin boy on a sailing vessel, spent some years before the mast, tramped on foot through various countries, turned up in New York, worked in the old Columbia Hotel in Greenwich Avenue, and had plenty of opportunity to study human nature in the bar-room. Then he entered a carpet factory in the Bronx. But he was the last man in the world to become a carpet knight. He bought a copy of Chaucer's poems, stayed up till dawn reading it, and for the first time was sure of his future occupation. John Masefield is the real man-of-war-bird imagined by Walt Whitman. He is the bird self-conscious, the wild bird plus the soul of the poet. To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane, Thou ship of air that never furl'st thy sails, Days, even weeks untired and onward, through spaces, realms gyrating, At dusk that look'st on Senegal, at morn America, That sport'st amid the lightning-flash and thunder-cloud, In them, in thy experiences, had'st thou my soul, What joys! what joys were thine! They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep. They do indeed; they see them as the bird sees them, with no spiritual vision, with no self-consciousness, with no power to refer or to interpret. It is sad that so many of those who have marvellous experiences have nothing else; while those who are sensitive and imaginative live circumscribed. What does the middle watch mean to an average seaman? But occasionally the sailor is a Joseph Conrad or a John Masefield. Then the visions of splendour and the glorious voices of nature are seen and heard not only by the eye and the ear, but by the spirit. Although Chaucer took Mr. Masefield out of the carpet factory even as Spenser released Keats it would be a mistake to suppose (as many do) that the Ledbury boy was an uncouth vagabond, who, without reading, without education, and without training, suddenly became a poet. He had a good school education before going to sea; and from earliest childhood he longed to write. Even as a little boy he felt the impulse to put his dreams on paper; he read everything he could lay his hands on, and during all the years of bodily toil, afloat and ashore, he had the mind and the aspiration of a man of letters. Never, I suppose, was there a greater contrast between an individual's outer and inner life. He mingled with rough, brutal, decivilized creatures; his ears were assaulted by obscene language, spoken as to an equal; he saw the ugliest side of humanity, and the blackest phases of savagery. Yet through it all, sharing these experiences with no trace of condescension, his soul was like a lily. He descended into hell again and again, coming out with his inmost spirit unblurred and shining, even as the rough diver brings from the depths the perfect pearl. For every poem that he has written reveals two things: a knowledge of the harshness of life, with a nature of extraordinary purity, delicacy, and grace. To find a parallel to this, we must recall the figure of Dostoevski in the Siberian prison. Many men of natural good taste and good breeding have succumbed to a coarse environment. What saved our poet, and made his experiences actually minister to his spiritual flame, rather than burn him up? It was perhaps that final miracle of humanity, acute self-consciousness, stronger in some men than in others, strongest of all in the creative artist. Even at the age of twenty, Browning felt it more than he felt anything else, and his words would apply to John Masefield, and explain in some measure his thirst for sensation and his control of it. I am made up of an intensest life, Of a most clear idea of consciousness Of self, distinct from all its qualities, From all affections, passions, feelings, powers; And thus far it exists, if tracked, in all: But linked, in me, to self-supremacy, Existing as a centre to all things, Most potent to create and rule and call Upon all things to minister to it; And to a principle of restlessness Which would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel, all-- This is myself. Although the poem _Dauber_ is a true story--for there was such a man, who suffered both horrible fear within and brutal ridicule without, who finally conquered both, and who, in the first sweets of victory, as he was about to enter upon his true career, lost his life by falling from the yardarm--cannot help thinking that Mr. Masefield put a good deal of himself into this strange hero. The adoration of beauty, which is the lodestar of the poet, lifted Dauber into a different world from the life of the ship. He had an ungovernable desire to paint the constantly changing phases of beauty in the action of the vessel and in the wonders of the sea and sky. In this passion his shy, sensitive nature was stronger than all the brute strength enjoyed by his shipmates; they could destroy his paintings, they could hurt his body, they could torture his heart. But they could not prevent him from following his ideal. Dauber died, and his pictures are lost. But in the poem describing his aims and his sufferings, Mr. Masefield has accomplished with his pen what Dauber failed to do with his brush; the beauty of the ship, the beauty of dawn and of midnight, the majesty of the storm are revealed to us in a series of unforgettable pictures. And one of Edison's ambitions is here realized. At the same moment we _see_ the frightful white-capped ocean mountains, and we _hear_ the roar of the gale. Water and sky were devils' brews which boiled, Boiled, shrieked, and glowered; but the ship was saved. Snugged safely down, though fourteen sails were split. Out of the dark a fiercer fury raved. The grey-backs died and mounted, each crest lit With a white toppling gleam that hissed from it And slid, or leaped, or ran with whirls of cloud, Mad with inhuman life that shrieked aloud. Mr. Masefield is a better poet than critic. In the New York _Tribune_ for 23 January 1916, he spoke with modesty and candour of his own work and his own aims, and no one can read what he said without an increased admiration for him. But it is difficult to forgive him for talking as he did about Wordsworth, who "wrote six poems and then fell asleep." And among the six are not _Tintern Abbey_ or the _Intimations of Immortality_. Meditative poetry is not Mr. Masefield's strongest claim to fame, and we do not go to poets for illuminating literary criticism. Swinburne was so violent in his "appreciations" that his essays in criticism are adjectival volcanoes. Every man with him was God or Devil. It is rare that a creative poet has the power of interpretation of literature possessed by William Watson. Mr. Masefield does not denounce Wordsworth, as Swinburne denounced Byron; he is simply blind to the finest qualities of the Lake poet. Yet, although he carries Wordsworth's famous theory of poetry to an extreme that would have shocked the author of it--if Mr. Masefield does not like _Tintern Abbey_, we can only imagine Wordsworth's horror at _The Everlasting Mercy_--the philosophy of poetry underlying both _The Everlasting Mercy_, _The Widow in the Bye Street_, and other works is essentially that of William Wordsworth. Keeping _The Everlasting Mercy_ steadily in mind, it is interesting, instructive, and even amusing to read an extract from Wordsworth's famous Preface of 1800. "The principal object, then, proposed in these poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible in a selection of language really used by men, and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect; and, further, and above all, to make these incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature; chiefly, as far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement. Humble and rustic life was generally chosen, because, in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language; because in that condition of life our elementary feelings coexist in a state of greater simplicity, and, consequently, may be more accurately contemplated, and more forcibly communicated; because the manners of rural life germinate from those elementary feelings, and, from the necessary character of rural occupations, are more easily comprehended, and are more durable; and, lastly, because in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature." When Wordsworth wrote these dicta, he followed them up with some explicit reservations, and made many more implicit ones. Mr. Masefield, in the true manner of the twentieth century, makes none at all. Taking the language of Wordsworth exactly as it stands in the passage quoted above, it applies with precision to the method employed by Mr. Masefield in the poems that have given him widest recognition. And in carrying this theory of poetry to its farthest extreme in _The Everlasting Mercy_, not only did its author break with tradition, the tradition of nineteenth-century poetry, as Wordsworth broke with that of the eighteenth, he succeeded in shocking some of his contemporaries, who refused to grant him a place among English poets. It was in the _English Review_ for October, 1911, that _The Everlasting Mercy_ first appeared. It made a sensation. In 1912 the Academic Committee of the Royal Society of Literature awarded him the Edmond de Polignac prize of five hundred dollars. This aroused the wrath of the orthodox poet Stephen Phillips, who publicly protested, not with any animosity toward the recipient, but with the conviction that true standards of literature were endangered. It is unfortunate for an artist or critic to belong to any "school" whatsoever. Belonging to a school circumscribes a man's sympathies. It shuts him away from outside sources of enjoyment, and makes him incapable of appreciating many new works of art, because he has prejudged them even before they were written. Poetry is greater than any definition of it. There is no doubt that _Marpessa_ is a real poem; and there is no doubt that the same description is true of _The Everlasting Mercy_. In _The Everlasting Mercy_, the prize-fight, given in detail, by rounds, is followed by an orgy of drunkenness rising to a scale almost Homeric. The man, crazy with alcohol, runs amuck, and things begin to happen. The village is turned upside down. Two powerful contrasts are dramatically introduced, one as an interlude between violent phases of the debauch, the other as a conclusion. The first is the contrast between the insane buffoon and the calm splendour of the night. I opened window wide and leaned Out of that pigstye of the fiend And felt a cool wind go like grace About the sleeping market-place. The clock struck three, and sweetly, slowly, The bells chimed Holy, Holy, Holy; And in a second's pause there fell The cold note of the chapel bell, And then a cock crew, flapping wings, And summat made me think of things. How long those ticking clocks had gone From church and chapel, on and on, Ticking the time out, ticking slow To men and girls who'd come and go. These thoughts suddenly become intolerable. A second fit of madness, wilder than the first, drives the man about the town like a tornado. Finally and impressively comes the contrast between the drunkard's horrible mirth and the sudden calm in his mind when the tall pale Quakeress hypnotizes him with conviction of sin. She drives out the devils from his breast with quiet authority, and the peace of God enters into his soul. From the first word of the poem to the last the man's own attitude toward fighting, drink, and religion is logically sustained. It is perfect drama, with never a false note. The hero is one of the "twice-born men," and the work may fairly be taken as one more footnote to the varieties of religious experience. I have been told on good authority that of all his writings Mr. Masefield prefers _Nan_, _The Widow in the Bye Street_, and _The Everlasting Mercy_. I think he is right. In these productions he has no real competitors. They are his most original, most vivid, most powerful pieces. He is at his best when he has a story to tell, and can tell it freely in his own unhampered way, a combination of drama and narrative. In _The Everlasting Mercy_, written in octosyllabics, the metre of _Christmas Eve_, he is unflinchingly realistic, as Browning was in describing the chapel. The _Athenaeum_ thought Browning ought not to write about the mysteries of the Christian faith in doggerel. But _Christmas Eve_ is not doggerel. It is simply the application of the rules of realism to a discussion of religion. It may lack the dignity of the _Essay on Man_, but it is more interesting because it is more definite, more concrete, more real. In _The Everlasting Mercy_ we have beautiful passages of description, sharply exciting narration, while the dramatic element is furnished by conversation--and what conversation! It differs from ordinary poetry as the sermons of an evangelist differ from the sermons of Bishops. Mr. Masefield is a natural-born dramatist. He is never content to describe his characters; he makes them talk, and talk their own language, and you will never go far in his longer poems without seeing the characters rise from the page, spring into life, and immediately you hear their voices raised in angry altercation. It is as though he felt the reality of his men and women so keenly that he cannot keep them down. They refuse to remain quiet. They insist on taking the poem into their own hands, and running away with it. When we are reading _The Widow in the Bye Street_ we realize that Mr. Masefield has studied with some profit the art of narrative verse as displayed by Chaucer. The story begins directly, and many necessary facts are revealed in the first stanza, in a manner so simple that for the moment we forget that this apparent simplicity is artistic excellence. The _Nun's Priest's Tale_ is a model of attack. A poure wydwe, somdel stope in age, Was whilom dwellynge in a narwe cottage, Beside a grove, stondynge in a dale. This wydwe, of which I telle yow my tale, Syn thilke day that she was last a wyf, In pacience ladde a ful symple lyf, For litel was hir catel and hir rente. Now if I could have only one of Mr. Masefield's books, I would take _The Widow in the Bye Street._ Its opening lines have the much-in-little so characteristic of Chaucer. Down Bye Street, in a little Shropshire town, There lived a widow with her only son: She had no wealth nor title to renown, Nor any joyous hours, never one. She rose from ragged mattress before sun And stitched all day until her eyes were red, And had to stitch, because her man was dead. This is one of the best narrative poems in modern literature. It rises from calm to the fiercest and most tumultuous passions that usurp the throne of reason. Love, jealousy, hate, revenge, murder, succeed in cumulative force. Then the calm of unmitigated and hopeless woe returns, and we leave the widow in a solitude peopled only with memories. It is melodrama elevated into poetry. The mastery of the artist is shown in the skill with which he avoids the quagmire of sentimentality. We can easily imagine what form this story would take under the treatment of many popular writers. But although constantly approaching the verge, Mr. Masefield never falls in. He has known so much sentimentality, not merely in books and plays, but in human beings, that he understands how to avoid it. Furthermore, he is steadied by seeing so plainly the weaknesses of his characters, just as a great nervous specialist gains in poise by observing his patients. And perhaps our author feels the sorrows of the widow too deeply to talk about them with any conventional affectation. I should like to find some one who, without much familiarity with the fixed stars in English literature, had read _The Daffodil Fields_, and then ask him to guess who wrote the following stanzas: A gentle answer did the old Man make, In courteous speech which forth he slowly drew; And him with further words I thus bespake, "What occupation do you there pursue? This is a lonesome place for one like you." Ere he replied, a flash of mild surprise Broke from the sable orbs of his yet-vivid eyes. "This will break Michael's heart," he said at length. "Poor Michael," she replied; "they wasted hours. He loved his father so. God give him strength. This is a cruel thing this life of ours." The windy woodland glimmered with shut flowers, White wood anemones that the wind blew down. The valley opened wide beyond the starry town. And I think he would reply with some confidence, "John Masefield." He would he right concerning the second stanza; but the first is, as every one ought to know and does not, from _Resolution and Independence_, by William Wordsworth. It is significant that this is one of the six poems excepted by Mr. Masefield from the mass of Wordsworthian mediocrity. It is, of course, a great poem, although when it was published (1807, written in 1802), it seemed by conventional standards no poem at all. Shortly after its appearance, some one read it aloud to an intelligent woman; she sobbed unrestrainedly; then, recovering herself, said shamefacedly, "After all, it isn't poetry." The reason, I suppose, why she thought it could not be poetry was because it was so much nearer life than "art." The simplicity of the scene; the naturalness of the dialogue; the homeliness of the old leech-gatherer; these all seemed to be outside the realm of the heroic, the elevated, the sublime,--the particular business of poetry, as she mistakenly thought. The reason why John Masefield admires this poem is because of its vitality, its naturalness, its easy dialogue--main characteristics of his own work. In writing _The Daffodil Fields_, he consciously or unconsciously selected the same metre, introduced plenty of conversation, as he loves to do in all his narrative poetry, and set his tragedy on a rural stage. It is important here to repeat the last few phrases already quoted from Wordsworth's famous Preface: "The manners of rural life germinate from those elementary feelings, and, from the necessary character of rural occupations, are more easily comprehended, and are more durable; and, lastly, because in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature." If Mr. Masefield had written this preface for _The Daffodil Fields_, he could not have more accurately expressed both the artistic aim of his poem and its natural atmosphere. "The passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature." In this work, each one of the seven sections ends with the daffodils; so that no matter how base and truculent are the revealed passions of man, the final impression at the close of each stage is the unchanging loveliness of the delicate golden flowers. Indeed, the daffodils not only fill the whole poem with their fluttering beauty, they play the part of the old Greek chorus. At the end of each act in this steadily growing tragedy, they comment in their own incomparable way on the sorrows of man. So the night passed; the noisy wind went down; The half-burnt moon her starry trackway rode. Then the first Are was lighted in the town, And the first carter stacked his early load. Upon the farm's drawn blinds the morning glowed; And down the valley, with little clucks and rills, The dancing waters danced by dancing daffodils. But if, consciously or unconsciously, Mr. Masefield in the composition of _The Daffodil Fields_ followed the metre and the manner of Wordsworth in _Resolution and Independence_, in the story itself he challenges Tennyson's _Enoch Arden_. Whether he meant to challenge it, I do not know; but the comparison is unescapable. Tennyson did not invent the story, and any poet has the right to use the material in his own fashion. Knowing Mr. Masefield from _The Everlasting Mercy_ and _The Widow in the Bye Street_, it would have been safe to prophesy in advance that his own Enoch would not show the self-restraint practised by the Tennysonian hero. Reserve and restraint were the trump cards of the Typical Victorian, just as the annihilation of all reserve is a characteristic of the twentieth-century artist. In the _Idylls of the King_, the parting of Guinevere and Arthur was what interested Tennyson; the poets of today would of course centre attention on the parting of Guinevere and Lancelot, and like so many "advances," they would in truth be only going back to old Malory. "Neither in the design nor in the telling did, or could, _Enoch Arden_ come near the artistic truth of _The Daffodil Fields_," says Professor Quiller-Couch, of Cambridge. I am not entirely sure of the truth of this very positive statement. Each is a rural poem; the characters are simple; the poetic accompaniment supplied by the daffodils in one poem is supplied in the other by the sea. And yet, despite this latter fact, if one reads _Enoch Arden_ immediately after _The Daffodil Fields_, it seems to be without salt. It lacks flavour, and is almost tasteless compared with the biting condiments of the other poem, prepared as it was for the sharper demands of twentieth-century palates. We like, as Browning thought Macready would like "stabbing, drabbing, _et autres gentillesses_," and Mr. Masefield knows how to supply them. Yet I am not sure that the self-denial of Enoch and the timid patience of Philip do not both indicate a certain strength absent in Mr. Masefield's wildly exciting tale. Of course Tennyson's trio are all "good" people, and he meant to make them so. In the other work Michael is a selfish scoundrel, Lion is a murderer, and Mary an adulteress; and we are meant to sympathize with all three, as Mr. Galsworthy wishes us to sympathize with those who follow their instincts rather than their consciences. One poem celebrates the strength of character, the other the strength of passion. But there can be no doubt that Enoch (and perhaps Philip) loved Annie more than either Michael or Lion loved Mary--which is perhaps creditable; for Mary is more attractive. One should remember also that in these two poems--so interesting to compare in so many different ways--Tennyson tried to elevate a homely theme into "poetry"; whereas Mr. Masefield finds the truest poetry in the bare facts of life and feeling. Tennyson is at his best outside of drama, wherever he has an opportunity to adorn and embellish; Mr. Masefield is at his best in the fierce conflict of human wills. Thus _Enoch Arden_ is not one of Tennyson's best poems, and the best parts of it are the purely descriptive passages; whereas in _The Daffodil Fields_ Mr. Masefield has a subject made to his hand, and can let himself go with impressive power. In the introduction of conversation into a poem--a special gift with Mr. Masefield--Tennyson is usually weak, which ought to have taught him never to venture into drama. Nothing is worse in _Enoch Arden_ than passages like these: "Annie, this voyage by the grace of God Will bring fair weather yet to all of us. Keep a clean hearth and a clear fire for me, For I'll be back, my girl, before you know it." Then lightly rocking baby's cradle, "and he, This pretty, puny, weakly little one,-- Nay--for I love him all the better for it-- God bless him, he shall sit upon my knees And I will tell him tales of foreign parts, And make him merry, when I come home again. Come, Annie, come, cheer up before I go." One of the reasons why twentieth-century readers are so impatient with _Enoch Arden,_ is because Tennyson refused to satisfy the all but universal love of a fight. The conditions for a terrific "mix-up" were all there, and just when the spectator is looking for an explosion of wrath and blood, the poet turns away into the more heroic but less thrilling scene of self-conquest. Mr. Masefield may be trusted never to disappoint his readers in such fashion. It might be urged that whereas Tennyson gave a picture of man as he ought to be, Mr. Masefield painted him as he really is. But _The Daffodil Fields_ is not melodrama. It is a poem of extraordinary beauty. Every time I read it I see in it some "stray beauty-beam" that I missed before. It would be impossible to translate it into prose; it would lose half its interest, and all of its charm. It would be easier to translate Tennyson's _Dora_ into prose than _The Daffodil Fields._ In fact, I have often thought that if the story of _Dora_ were told in concise prose, in the manner of Guy de Maupassant, it would distinctly gain in force. No poet, with any claim to the name, can be accurately labelled by an adjective or a phrase. You may think you know his "manner," and he suddenly develops a different one; this you call his "later" manner, and he disconcerts you by harking back to the "earlier," or trying something, that if you must have labels, you are forced to call his "latest," knowing now that it is subject to change without notice. Mr. Masefield published _The Everlasting Mercy_ in 1911; _The Widow in the Bye Street_ in 1912; _Dauber_ in 1912; _The Daffodil Fields_ in 1913. We had him classified. He was a writer of sustained narrative, unscrupulous in the use of language, bursting with vitality, sacrificing anything and everything that stood in the way of his effect. This was "red blood" verse raised to poetry by sheer inspiration, backed by remarkable skill in the use of rime. We looked for more of the same thing from him, knowing that in this particular field he had no rival. Then came the war. As every soldier drew his sword, every poet drew his pen. And of all the poems published in the early days of the struggle, none equalled in high excellence _August 1914,_ by John Masefield. And its tone was precisely the opposite of what his most famous efforts had led us to expect. It was not a lurid picture of wholesale murder, nor a bottle of vitriol thrown in the face of the Kaiser. After the thunder and the lightning, came the still small voice. It is a poem in the metre and manner of Gray, with the same silver tones of twilit peace--heartrending by contrast with the Continental scene. How still this quiet cornfield is to-night; By an intenser glow the evening falls, Bringing, not darkness, but a deeper light; Among the stocks a partridge covey calls. The windows glitter on the distant hill; Beyond the hedge the sheep-bells in the fold Stumble on sudden music and are still; The forlorn pinewoods droop above the wold. An endless quiet valley reaches out Past the blue hills into the evening sky; Over the stubble, cawing, goes a rout Of rooks from harvest, flagging as they fly. So beautiful it is I never saw So great a beauty on these English fields Touched, by the twilight's coming, into awe, Ripe to the soul and rich with summer's yields. The fields are inhabited with the ghosts of ploughmen of old who gave themselves for England, even as the faithful farmers now leave scenes inexpressibly dear. For the aim of our poet is to magnify the lives of the humble and the obscure, whether on land or sea. In the beautiful _Consecration_ that he prefixed to _Salt-Water Ballads,_ he expressly turns his back on Commanders, on Rulers, on Princes and Prelates, in order to sing of the stokers and chantymen, yes, even of the dust and scum of the earth. They work, and others get the praise. They are inarticulate, but have found a spokesman and a champion in the poet. His sea-poems in this respect resemble Conrad's sea-novels. This is perhaps one of the chief functions of the man of letters, whether he be poet, novelist or dramatist--never to let us forget the anonymous army of toilers. For, as Clyde Fitch used to say, the great things do not happen to the great writers; the great things happen to the little people they describe. Although Mr. Masefield's reputation depends mainly on his narrative poems, he has earned a high place among lyrical poets. These poems, at least many of them, are as purely subjective as _The Everlasting Mercy_ was purely objective. Rarely does a poem unfurl with more loveliness than this: I have seen dawn and sunset on moors and windy hills Coming in solemn beauty like slow old tunes of Spain; I have seen the lady April bringing the daffodils, Bringing the springing grass and the soft warm April rain. In _Tewkesbury Road_ and in _Sea Fever_ the poet expresses the urge of his own heart. In _Biography_ he quite properly adopts a style exactly the opposite of the biographical dictionary. Dates and events are excluded. But the various moments when life was most intense in actual experience, sights of mountains on sea and land, long walks and talks with an intimate friend, the frantically fierce endeavour in the racing cutter, quiet scenes of beauty in the peaceful countryside. "The days that make us happy make us wise." As Mr. Masefield's narratives take us back to Chaucer, so his _Sonnets_ (1916) take us back to the great Elizabethan sequences. Whether or not Shakespeare unlocked his heart in his sonnets is impossible to determine. Wordsworth thought he did, Browning thought quite otherwise. But these sonnets of our poet are undoubtedly subjective; no one without the necessary information would guess them to come from the author of _The Everlasting Mercy._ They reveal what has always been--through moving accidents by flood and field--the master passion of his mind and heart, the worship of Beauty. The entire series illustrates a tribute to Beauty expressed in the first one--"Delight in her made trouble in my mind." This mental disturbance is here the spur to composition. They are experiments in relative, meditative, speculative poetry; and while they contain some memorable lines, and heighten one's respect for the dignity and sincerity of their author's temperament, they are surely not so successful as his other work. They are not clearly articulate. Instead of the perfect expression of perfect thoughts--a gift enjoyed only by Shakespeare--they reveal the extreme difficulty of metrically voicing his "trouble." It is in a way like the music of the _Liebestod_. He is struggling to say what is in his mind, he approaches it, falls away comes near again, only to be finally baffled. In 1918 Mr. Masefield returned to battle, murder and sudden death in the romantic poem _Rosas_. This is an exciting tale told in over a hundred stanzas, and it is safe to say that any one who reads the first six lines will read to the end without moving in his chair. Although this is the latest in publication of our poet's works, it sounds as if it were written years ago, before he had attained the mastery so evident in _The Widow in the Bye Street_. It will add little to the author's reputation. I do not think Mr. Masefield has received sufficient credit for his prose fiction. In 1905 he published _A Mainsail Haul_, which contained a number of short stories and sketches, many of which had appeared in the Manchester _Guardian_. It is interesting to recall his connection with that famous journal. These are the results partly of his experiences, partly of his reading. It is plain that he has turned over hundreds of old volumes of buccaneer lore. And humour is as abundant here as it is absent from his best novels, _Captain Margaret_ and _Multitude and Solitude_. These two books, recently republished in America, met with a chilling reception from the critics. For my part, I not only enjoyed reading them, I think every student of Mr. Masefield's poetry might read them with profitable pleasure. They are romances that only a poet could have written. It would be easier to turn them into verse than it would be to turn his verse-narratives into prose, and less would be lost in the transfer. In _Multitude and Solitude_, the author has given us more of the results of his own thinking than can be found in most of the poems. Whole pages are filled with the pith of meditative thought. In _Captain Margaret_, we have a remarkable combination of the love of romance and the romance of love. In response to a question asked him by the _Tribune_ interviewer, as to the guiding motive in his writing, Mr. Masefield replied: "I desire to interpret life both by reflecting it as it appears and by portraying its outcome. Great art must contain these two attributes. Examine any of the dramas of Shakespeare, and you will find that their action is the result of a destruction of balance in the beginning. It is like a cartful of apples which is overturned. All the apples are spilled in the street. But you will notice that Shakespeare piles them up again in his incomparable manner, many bruised, broken, and maybe a few lost." This is certainly an interesting way of putting the doctrine of analysis and synthesis as applied to art. What has Mr. Masefield done then for the advance of poetry? One of his notable services is to have made it so interesting that thousands look forward to a new poem from him as readers look for a new story by a great novelist. He has helped to take away poetry from its conventional "elevation" and bring it everywhere poignantly in contact with throbbing life. Thus he is emphatically apart from so-called traditional poets who brilliantly follow the Tennysonian tradition, and give us another kind of enjoyment. But although Mr. Masefield is a twentieth century poet, it would be a mistake to suppose that he has _originated_ the doctrine that the poet should speak in a natural voice about natural things, and not cultivate a "diction." Browning spent his whole life fighting for that doctrine, and went to his grave covered with honourable scars. Wordsworth successfully rebelled against the conventional garments of the Muse. Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Browning are the poets who took human nature as they found it; who thought life itself was more interesting than any theory about it; who made language appropriate to the time, the place, and the man, regardless of the opinion of those who thought the Muse ought to wear a uniform. The aim of our best twentieth century poets is not really to write something new and strange, it is to get back to those poets who lived up to their conviction that the business of poetry is to chronicle the stages of all life. This is not the only kind of poetry, but it is the kind high in favour during these present years. The fountain-head of poetry is human nature, and our poets are trying to get back to it, just as many of the so-called advances in religious thought are really attempts to get back to the Founder of Christianity, before the theologians built their stockade around Him. Mr. Masefield is a mighty force in the renewal of poetry; in the art of dramatic narrative he goes back to the sincerity and catholicity of Chaucer. For his language, he has carried Wordsworth's idea of "naturalness" to its extreme limits. For his material, he finds nothing common or unclean. But all his virility, candour, and sympathy, backed by all his astonishing range of experience, would not have made him a poet, had he not possessed imagination, and the power to express his vision of life, the power, as he puts it, of getting the apples back into the cart. CHAPTER IV GIBSON AND HODGSON Two Northumberland poets--Wilfrid Wilson Gibson--his early failures--his studies of low life--his collected poems--his short dramas of pastoral experiences--_Daily Bread_--lack of melody--uncanny imagination--whimsies--poems of the Great War--their contrast to conventional sentimental ditties--the accusation--his contribution to the advance of poetry.--Ralph Hodgson--his shyness--his slender output--his fastidious self-criticism--his quiet facing of the known facts in nature and in humanity--his love of books--his humour--his respect for wild and tame animals--the high percentage of artistic excellence in his work.--Lascelles Abercrombie. Wilfrid Wilson Gibson--a horrible mouthful--was born in Hexham, Northumberland, in 1878. Like Walt Whitman's, his early poetry was orthodox, well groomed, and uninteresting. It produced no effect on the public, but it produced upon its author a mental condition of acute discontent--the necessary conviction of sin preceding regeneration. Whether he could ever succeed in bringing his verse down to earth, he did not then know; but so far as he was concerned, he not only got down to earth, but got under it. He made subterranean expeditions with the miners, he followed his nose into slums, he talked long hours with the unclassed, and listened sympathetically to the lamentations of sea-made widows. His nature--extraordinarily delicate and sensitive--received deep wounds, the scars of which appeared in his subsequent poetry. Now he lives where John Masefield was born, and like him, speaks for the inarticulate poor. In 1917 Mr. Gibson collected his poems in one thick volume of some five hundred and fifty pages. This is convenient for reference, but desperately hard to read, on account of the soggy weight of the book. Here we have, however, everything that he has thus far written which he thinks worth preserving. The first piece, _Akra the Slave_ (1904), is a romantic monologue in free verse. Although rather short, it is much too long, and few persons will have the courage to read it through. It is incoherent, spineless, consistent only in dulness. Possibly it is worth keeping as a curiosity. Then comes _Stonefolds_ (1906), a series of bitter bucolics. This is pastoral poetry of a new and refreshing kind--as unlike to the conventional shepherd-shepherdess mincing, intolerable dialogue as could well be imagined. For, among all the groups of verse, in which, for sacred order's sake, we arrange English literature, pastoral poetry easily takes first place in empty, tinkling artificiality. In _Stonefolds_, we have six tiny plays, never containing more than four characters, and usually less, which represent, in a rasping style, the unending daily struggle of generation after generation with the relentless forces of nature. It is surprising to see how, in four or five pages, the author gives a clear view of the monotonous life of seventy years; in this particular art, Strindberg himself has done no better. The experience of age is contrasted with the hope of youth. Perhaps the most impressive of them all is _The Bridal_ where, in the presence of the newly wedded pair, the man's old, bed-ridden mother speaks of the chronic misery of her married life, intimates that the son is just like his dead father, and that therefore the bride has nothing ahead of her but tragedy. Then comes the conclusion, which reminds one somewhat of the close of Ibsen's _Lady from the Sea_. The young husband throws wide the door, and addresses his wife as follows: The door is open; you are free to go. Why do you tarry? Are you not afraid? Go, ere I hate you. I'll not hinder you. I would not have you bound to me by fear. Don't fear to leave me; rather fear to bide With me who am my father's very son. Go, lass, while yet I love you! ESTHER (closing the door). I shall bide. I have heard all; and yet, I would not go. Nor would I have a single word unsaid. I loved you, husband; yet, I did not know you Until your mother spoke. I know you now; And I am not afraid. The first piece in _Stonefolds_ represents the tragic helplessness of those newly born and those very old, a favourite theme with Maeterlinck. A lamb and a child are born on the same night, and both die before dawn. The lamb is a poetic symbol of babyhood. Nicholas, the aged shepherd, who longs to go out into the night and do his share of the work that must be done, but who is unable even to move, thus addresses the dying lamb: Poor, bleating beast! We two are much alike, At either end of life, though scarce an hour You've been in this rough world, and I so long That death already has me by the heels; For neither of us can stir to help himself, But both must bleat for others' aid. This world Is rough and bitter to the newly born, But far more bitter to the nearly dead. In _Daily Bread_ (1908-09), there are eighteen brief plays, written not in orthodox blank verse, like _Stonefolds_, but in irregular, brittle, breathless metres. Here is where art takes the short cut to life, sacrificing every grace to gain reality; the typical goal and method of twentieth-century poetry. So long as a vivid impression of character and circumstance is produced, the writer apparently cares nothing about style. I say "apparently," because the styleless style is perhaps the one best adapted to produce the sought-for effect. There is ever one difference between life and "art"--between drama and theatre--that Mr. Gibson has, I suppose, tried to cancel in these poems of daily bread. In art, the bigger the drama, the bigger the stage; one could not mount _Götterdämmerung_ in a village schoolhouse. But Life does not fit the splendour of the setting to the grandeur of the struggle. In bleak farm cottages, in dull dwellings in city blocks, in slum tenements, the greatest of life's tragedies and comedies are enacted--love, hate, avarice, jealousy, revenge, birth, death--the most terrific passions known to human nature are fully presented, without the slightest care for appropriate scenery from the Master of the show. Thus our poet leads us by the hand into sea-girt huts, into hovels at the mouths of mines, into garrets of noisy cities, and makes us silent witnesses of elemental woe. Here Labour, man's greatest blessing, takes on the aspect of the primal curse, since so many tragedies spring from the simple root of poverty. The love of money may be the root of all evil, but the lack of it is the cause of much pain. It was a happy inspiration that made Mr. Gibson call these scenes _Daily Bread_; for it is the struggle, not for comfort, but for existence, that drives these men from mother, wife, and child into the thick of the fight. Many novels and plays are written nowadays against "big business," where, among other real and imagined evils, the Business itself is represented as the villain in the home, alienating the husband's affections from wife and children. Whatever may be the case with the private soldiers, the Captain of Industry does not, and by the nature of things cannot, confine his labours to an eight-hour day--when he finally comes home, he brings the business with him, forming a more well-founded cause of jealousy than the one usually selected for conventional drama. Mr. Gibson, however, is not interested in the tragic few, but in the tragic many, and in his poems the man of the house leaves early and returns late. The industrial war caused by social conditions takes him from home as surely and as perilously as though he were drafted into an expeditionary force. The daily parting is poignant, for every member of the family knows he may not come back. Perhaps the most dramatic illustration of this corroding worry is seen in _The Night-Shift_, where four women with a newly-born baby spend a night of agonized waiting, only to have their fears confirmed in the dawn. The wife, weak from childbirth, sits up in bed, and speaks: Will no one stop that tapping? I cannot sleep for it. I think that someone is shut in somewhere, And trying to get out. Will no one let them out, And stop the tapping? It keeps on tapping, tapping.... Tap ... tap ... tap ... tap.... And I can scarcely breathe, The darkness is so thick. It stifles me, And weighs so heavily upon me, And drips, and drips.... My hair is wet already; There's water all about my knees.... As though great rocks were hanging overhead! And dripping, dripping.... I cannot lift my feet, The water holds them, It's creeping ... creeping ... creeping.... My wet hair drags me down. Ah, God! Will no one stop that tapping.... I cannot sleep.... And I would sleep Till he comes home.... Tap ... tap ... tap ... tap.... These poems were, of course, composed before the war. In the greater tragedy, some of the lesser ones disappear. For example, Mr. Gibson represents young, able-bodied, healthy and temperate men as unable to find work of any kind; their wives and children starve because of the absence of employment. Surely, since August, 1914, this particular cause of suffering has been removed. In _Womenkind_ (1909), dedicated to Rabbi and Mrs. Wise, we have a real play, not only dramatic in character and situation, but fitted for stage representation without the change of a word. The theme is just the opposite of Middleton's old drama, _Women Beware Women_. Here the two young women, one the mistress-mother, and one the bride, join forces against the man, and walk out of his house on the wedding-day. They feel that the tie between them is stronger than the tie which had united them severally to the man, and depart to live together. The play closes on a note of irony, for Jim, his blind father, and his weary mother repeat in turn--but with quite different emphasis--the accusation that women are a faithless lot. The long series of poems called _Fires_ (1910-11) differ in matter and manner from the earlier works. The form of drama is abandoned, and in its place we have vivid rimed narrative, mingled with glowing pictures of natural scenery, taken at all hours of the day and night. Each of his poems must be taken as a whole, for each poem strives for a single effect. This effect is often gained by taking some object, animate or inanimate, as a symbol. Thus, in _The Hare_, the hunted animal is the symbol of woman. _The Flute_, _The Lighthouse_, and _The Money_ mean more than their definition. Mr. Gibson is somewhat kinder to his readers in this collection, for the monotony of woe, that hangs over his work like a cloud, is rifted here and there by a ray of happiness. In _The Shop_, the little boy actually recovers from pneumonia, and our share in the father's delight is heightened by surprise, for whenever any of our poet's characters falls into a sickness, we have learned to expect the worst. Still, the darker side of life remains the author's chosen field of exploration. Two pieces are so uncanny that one might almost think they proceeded from a disordered imagination. The blind boy, who every day has rowed his father back and forth from the fishing-grounds, while the man steered, one day rows cheerfully toward home, unaware that his father is dead. The boy wonders at his father's silence, and laughingly asserts that he has heard him snoring. Then his mirth changes to fear, and fear to horror. Though none has ever known How he rowed in, alone, And never touched a reef. Some say they saw the dead man steer-- The dead man steer the blind man home-- Though, when they found him dead, His hand was cold as lead. Another strange poem describes how a cripple sits in his room, with a mother eternally stitching for bread, and watches out of the window the giant crane swinging vast weights through the sky. One night, while he is half-dead with fear, the great crane swoops down upon him, clutches his bed, and swings him, bed and all, above the sleeping city, among the blazing stars. Following Mr. Gibson's development as a poet, year by year, we come to _Thoroughfares_ (1908-14). These are short poems more conventional in form than their predecessors, but just as stark and grim as chronicles of life. Every one remembers the torture inflicted on women in the good-old-times, when they were strapped to posts on the flats at low tide, and allowed to watch the cruel slowness of approaching death. The same theme, with an even more terrible termination, is selected by Mr. Gibson in _Solway Ford_, where the carter is pinned by the heavy, overturned wagon on the sands; while the tide gradually brings the water toward his helpless body. He dies a thousand deaths in imagination, but is rescued just as the waves are lapping the wheels. Now he lies in bed, an incurable idiot, smiling as he sees gold and sapphire fishes swimming in the water over his head.... That rarest of all English metres--which Browning chose for _One Word More_--is employed by Mr. Gibson in a compound of tragedy-irony called _The Vindictive Staircase_. Unfortunately the rhythm is so closely associated with Browning's love-poem, that these lines sound like a parody: Mrs. Murphy, timidest of spectres, You who were the cheeriest of charers, With the heart of innocence and only Torn between a zest for priest and porter, Mrs. Murphy of the ample bosom,-- Suckler of a score or so of children. It seems best to leave this measure in the undisturbed possession of the poet who used it supremely well. Yet some of the verses in _Thoroughfares_ are an advance on Mr. Gibson's previous work. No reader will ever forget _Wheels_. Passing over _Borderlands_ (1912-14) which, with the exception of _Akra_, is the least successful of Mr. Gibson's works, we come to his most original contribution to modern poetry, the short poems included under the heading _Battle_ (1914-15). These verses afford one more bit of evidence that in order to write unconventional thoughts, it is not necessary to use unconventional forms. The ideas expressed here can be found in no other war-poet; they are idiosyncratic to the highest degree; yet the verse-forms in which they are written are stanzaic, as traditional as the most conservative critic could desire. There is, of course, no reason why any poet should not compose in new and strange rhythms if he prefers to do so; but I have never believed that originality in thought _necessarily_ demands metrical measures other than those found in the history of English literature. These lyrical poems are dramatic monologues. Each one is the testimony of some soldier in the thick of the fight as to what he has seen or heard, or as to what memories are strongest in his mind as he lies in the filth of the trenches. Conventional emotions of enthusiasm, glory, sacrifice, courage, are omitted, not because they do not exist, but simply because they are taken for granted; these boys are aflame with such feelings at the proper time. But Mr. Gibson is more interested in the strange, fantastic thoughts, waifs of memory, that wander across the surface of the mind in the midst of scenes of horror. And we feel that the more fantastic these thoughts are, the more do they reflect the deep truths of experience. Home naturally looms large, and some of the recollections of home take on a grim humour, strangely in contrast with the present environment of the soldier. HIS FATHER I quite forgot to put the spigot in. It's just come over me.... And it is queer To think he'll not care if we lose or win. And yet be jumping-mad about that beer. I left it running full. He must have said A thing or two. I'd give my stripes to hear What he will say if I'm reported dead Before he gets me told about that beer! It would appear that the world has grown up, or at all events, grown much older, during the last forty years. It has grown older at a high rate of speed. The love of country is the same as ever, because that is a primal human passion, that will never change, any more than the love of the sexes; but the expression of battle-poems seems more mature, more sophisticated, if you like, in this war than in any preceding conflict. Most of the verses written in England and in America are as different as may be from "Just before the battle, mother," which was so popular during our Civil War. Never before has the psychology of the soldier been so acutely studied by national poets. And instead of representing the soldier as a man swayed by a few elemental passions and lush sentiment, he is presented as an extraordinarily complex individual, with every part of his brain abnormally alert. Modern poetry, in this respect, has, I think, followed the lead of the realistic prose novel. Such books as Tolstoi's _Sevastopol_, and Zola's _La Débâcle_, have had a powerful effect in making war poetry more analytical; while that original story, _The Red Badge of Courage_, written by an inspired young American, Stephen Crane, has left its mark on many a volume of verse that has been produced since August, 1914. The unabashed realism of the trenches, together with the psychology of the soldier, is clearly and significantly reflected in _From the Front_ (1918), a book of poems written by men in service, edited by Lieut. C. E. Andrews. What is going to become of us all if the obsession of self-consciousness grows ever stronger? There is not a trace of cheap sentiment in _Battle_. Even the poems that come nearest to the emotional surface are saved by some specific touch, like the sense of smell, which, as every one knows, is a sharper spur to the memory than any other sensation. Tonight they're sitting by the peat Talking of me, I know-- Grandfather in the ingle-seat, Mother and Meg and Joe. I feel a sudden puff of heat That sets my ears aglow, And smell the reek of burning peat Across the Belgian snow. Browning wrote of Shelley, who had been dead eleven years, _The air seems bright with thy past presence yet._ A similar effect of brightness in life and afterglow in death, seems to have been made on every one who knew him by Rupert Brooke. No young poet of the twentieth century has left such a flaming glory as he. The prefatory poem to Mr. Gibson's _Friends_ (1915-16), beautifully expresses the common feeling: He's gone. I do not understand. I only know That as he turned to go And waved his hand In his young eyes a sudden glory shone: And I was dazzled by a sunset glow, And he was gone. The fine sonnets that follow strengthen the strong colour, and are among the most authentic claims to poetry that their author has set forth. The second one, contrasting the pale glimmer of the London garret with the brilliant apparition of Brooke at the open door, "like sudden April," is poignant in its beauty. The verses in this volume are richer in melody than is customary with Mr. Gibson, yet _The Pessimist_ and _The Ice-Cart_ show that he is as whimsical as ever. He has no end of fun with his fancy. _Livelihood_ (1914-16) takes us back to the bitter pessimism of _Stonefolds_ and _Daily Bread_; only instead of being dialogues, these stories are given in descriptive form, and for the most part in regular pentameter rime. The best of them is _In the Orchestra_, where the poor fiddler in the band at the cheap music-hall plays mechanically every night for his daily bread, while his heart is torn by the vulture of memory. This poem shows a firm grasp of the material; every word adds something to the total impression. Mr. Gibson's constantly repeated pictures of the grinding, soul-crushing labour of the poor seem to say _J'accuse_! Yet he nowhere says it explicitly. He never interrupts his narrative with "My Lords and Gentlemen," nor does he comment, like Hood in _The Song of the Shirt_. Yet the effect of his work is an indictment. Only, whom does he accuse? Is it the government; is it society; is it God? Mr. Gibson's latest book of poems, _Hill-Tracks_ (1918), differs from his previous works in two respects. It is full of pictures of the open fields of Northumberland, the county where he was born; and nearly every piece is an attempt at a singing lyric, something seldom found in his _Collected Poems_. I say an "attempt" with deliberation, for song is not the most natural expression of this realistic writer, and not more than half of the fifty lyrics in this handsome volume are successfully melodious. Some are trivial, and hardly deserve such beauty of type and paper; others, however, will be gladly welcomed by all students of Mr. Gibson's work, because they exhibit the powers of the author in an unusual and charming manner. I should think that those familiar with the topography and with the colloquialisms constantly appearing in this book, would read it with a veritable delight of reminiscence. NORTHUMBERLAND Heatherland and bent-land-- Black land and white, God bring me to Northumberland, The land of my delight. Land of singing waters, And winds from off the sea, God bring me to Northumberland, The land where I would be. Heatherland and bent-land, And valleys rich with corn, God bring me to Northumberland, The land where I was born. The shadow of the war darkens nearly every page of this volume, and the last poem expresses not the local but the universal sentiment of us who remain in our homes. We who are left, how shall we look again Happily on the sun, or feel the rain, Without remembering how they who went Ungrudgingly, and spent Their all for us, loved, too, the sun and rain? A bird among the rain-wet lilac sings-- But we, how shall we turn to little things And listen to the birds and winds and streams Made holy by their dreams, Nor feel the heart-break in the heart of things? An interesting feature of the _Collected Poems_ is a striking unfinished portrait of the author by Mrs. Wise; but I think it was an error to publish all these verses in one volume. They produce an impression of grey monotony which is hardly fair to the poet. The individuals change their names, but they pass through the same typical woe of childbirth, desertion, loveless old age, incipient insanity, with eternal joyless toil. One will form a higher opinion if one reads the separate volumes as they appeared, and not too much at a time. His contribution to the advance of English poetry is seen mainly in his grim realism, in his direct, unadorned presentation of what he believes to be the truth, whether it be the facts of environment, or the facts of thought. Conventional war-poetry, excellently represented by Tennyson's _Charge of the Light Brigade_, which itself harks back to Drayton's stirring _Ballad of Agincourt_, has not the slightest echo in these volumes; and ordinary songs of labour are equally remote. Face to face with Life--that is where the poet leads us, and where he leaves us. He is far indeed from possessing the splendid lyrical gift of John Masefield; he has nothing of the literary quality of William Watson. He writes neither of romantic buccaneers nor of golden old books. But he is close to the grimy millions. He writes the short and simple annals of the poor. He is a poet of the people, and seems to have taken a vow that we shall not forget them. Ralph Hodgson was born somewhere in Northumberland about forty years ago, and successfully eluded the notice of the world until the year 1907. He is by nature such a recluse that I feel certain he would prefer to attract no attention whatever were it not for the fact that it is as necessary for a poet to print his songs as it is for a bird to sing them. His favourite companions are Shelley, Wordsworth, and a bull terrier, and he is said to play billiards with "grim earnestness." In 1907 he published a tiny volume called _The Last Blackbird_, and in 1917 another and tinier one called _Poems_. During this decade he printed in a few paper booklets, which some day will be valuable curiosities, separate pieces such as _Eve_, _The Bull_, _The Mystery_. These are now permanently preserved in the 1917 book. This thin volume, weighing only two or three ounces, is a real addition to the English poetry of the twentieth century. It is impossible to read the verse of Ralph Hodgson without admiration for the clarity of his art and respect for the vigour of his mind. Although many of his works are as aloof from his own opinions as a well-executed statue, the strength of his personality is an immanent force. He writes much and publishes little; he is an intellectual aristocrat. He has the fastidiousness which was the main characteristic of the temperament of Thomas Gray; and he has as well Gray's hatred of publicity and much of Gray's lambent humour, more salty than satiric. His work is decidedly caviare to the general, not because it is obscure, which it is not, but because it presupposes much background. Lovers of nature and lovers of books will love these verses, and reread them many times; but they are not for all markets. No contemporary poet is more truly original than he; but his originality is seen in his mental attitude rather than in newness of form or strangeness of language. The standard metres are good enough for him, and so are the words in common use. His subjects are the world-old subjects of poetry--birds, flowers, men and women. Religion is as conspicuously absent as it is in the works of Keats; its place is taken by sympathy for humanity and an extraordinary sympathy for animals. He is as far from the religious passion of Francis Thompson as he is from the sociological inquisitiveness of Mr. Gibson. To him each bird, each flower appears as a form of worship. Men and women appeal to him not because they are poor or downtrodden, but simply because they are men and women. He is neither an optimist nor a pessimist; the world is full of objects both interesting and beautiful, which will pay a rich return to those who observe them accurately. This is as near as he has thus far come to any philosophy or any theology: THE MYSTERY He came and took me by the hand Up to a red rose tree, He kept His meaning to Himself But gave a rose to me. I did not pray Him to lay bare The mystery to me, Enough the rose was Heaven to smell, And His own face to see. It is the absolute object that interests this poet, rather than vague or futile speculation about it. The flower in the crannied wall he would leave there. He would never pluck it out, root and all, wondering about the mystery of the life principle. No poet is more clean-eyed. His eyes are achromatic. He has lost his illusions gladly; every time he has lost an illusion he has gained a new idea. The world as it is seems to him more beautiful, more interesting than any false-coloured picture of it or any longing to remould it nearer to the heart's desire. He faces life with steady composure. But it is not the composure either of stoicism or of despair. He finds it so wonderful just as it is that he is thankful that he has eyes to see its beauty, ears to hear its melodies--enough for his present mortal state. AFTER "How fared you when you mortal were? What did you see on my peopled star?" "Oh, well enough," I answered her, "It went for me where mortals are! "I saw blue flowers and the merlin's flight And the rime on the wintry tree, Blue doves I saw and summer light On the wings of the cinnamon bee." There is in all this a kind of reverent worship without any trace of mysticism. And still less of that modern attitude more popular and surely more fruitless than mysticism--defiance. There is a quite different side to the poetry of Mr. Hodgson, which one would hardly suspect after reading his outdoor verse. The lamplit silence of the library is as charming to him as the fragrant silence of the woods. He is as much of a recluse among books as he is among flowers. No poet of today seems more self-sufficient. Although a lover of humanity, he seems to require no companionship. He is no more lonely than a cat, and has as many resources as Tabby herself. Now when he talks about books, his poetry becomes intimate, and forsakes all objectivity. His humour, a purely intellectual quality with him, rises unrestrainedly. MY BOOKS When the folks have gone to bed, And the lamp is burning low, And the fire burns not so red As it burned an hour ago, Then I turn about my chair So that I can dimly see Into the dark corners where Lies my modest library. Volumes gay and volumes grave, Many volumes have I got; Many volumes though I have, Many volumes have I not. I have not the rare Lucasta, London, 1649; I'm a lean-pursed poetaster, Or the book had long been mine.... Near the "Wit's Interpreter" (Like an antique Whitaker, Full of strange etcetera), "Areopagitiea," And the muse of Lycidas, Lost in meditation deep, Give the cut to Hudibras, Unaware the knave's asleep.... There lies Coleridge, bound in green, Sleepily still wond'ring what He meant Kubla Khan to mean, In that early Wordsworth, Mat. Arnold knows a faithful prop,-- Still to subject-matter leans, Murmurs of the loved hill-top, Fyfield tree and Cumnor scenes. The poem closes with a high tribute to Shelley, "more than all the others mine." The following trifle is excellent fooling: THE GREAT AUK'S GHOST The Great Auk's ghost rose on one leg, Sighed thrice and three times winkt, And turned and poached a phantom egg, And muttered, "I'm extinct." But it is in the love of unextinct animals that Mr. Hodgson's poetic powers find their most effective display. His masterpiece on the old unhappy Bull is surprisingly impressive; surprisingly, because we almost resent being made to feel such ardent sympathy for the poor old Bull, when there are so many other and more important objects to be sorry for. Yet the poet draws us away for the moment from all the other tragedies in God's universe, and absolutely compels our pity for the Bull. The stanzas in this poem swarm with life. From a certain point of view, poets are justified in calling attention to the sufferings of our animal brothers. For it is the sufferings of animals, even more than the sorrows of man, that check our faith either in the providence or in the love of God. Human suffering may possibly be balanced against the spiritual gain it (sometimes) brings; and at all events, we know that there is no road to greatness of character except through pain. But what can compensate the dumb animals for their physical anguish? It is certainly difficult to see their reward, unless they have immortal souls. That this is no slight obstacle in the way of those who earnestly desire to believe in an ethical universe, may be seen from the fact that it was the sight of a snake swallowing a toad that destroyed once for all the religious beliefs of Turgenev; and I know a man of science in America who became an agnostic simply from observation of a particular Texas fly that bites the cattle. The Founder of Christianity recognized this problem, as He did every other painful fact in life, when He made the remark about the sparrow. Yet even the pessimists ought not to be quite so sure that God is morally inferior to man. Even their God may be no more amused by human anguish then men are amused by the grotesque floppings of a dying fish. The villains in the world are those who have no respect for the personality of birds and beasts. And their cruelty to animals is not deliberate or vindictive--it arises from crass stupidity. STUPIDITY STREET I saw with open eyes Singing birds sweet Sold in the shops For the people to eat, Sold in the shops of Stupidity Street. I saw in vision The worm in the wheat, And in the shops nothing For people to eat; Nothing for sale in Stupidity Street. The poet's attitude toward the lion in the jungle, the bull in the field, the cat in the yard, the bird on the tree is not one of affectionate petting, for love and sympathy are often mingled--consciously or unconsciously--with condescension. There is no trace of condescension in the way Mr. Hodgson writes of animals. He treats them with respect, and not only hates to see them hurt, he hates to see their dignity outraged. THE BELLS OF HEAVEN 'Twould ring the bells of Heaven The wildest peal for years, If Parson lost his senses And people came to theirs, And he and they together Knelt down with angry prayers For tamed and shabby tigers And dancing dogs and bears, And wretched, blind pit ponies, And little hunted hares. I confess that I have often felt a sense of shame for humanity when I have observed men and women staring through the bars at the splendid African cats in cages, and have also observed that their foolish stare is returned by the lion or tiger with a dull look of infinite boredom. Nor is it pleasant to see small boys pushing sticks through the safe bars, in an endeavour to irritate the royal captives. One remembers Browning's superb lion in _The Glove_, whom the knight was able to approach in safety, because the regal beast was completely lost in thought--he was homesick for the desert, oblivious of the little man-king and his duodecimo court. Although the total production of Ralph Hodgson is slight in quantity, the percentage of excellence is remarkably high. The reason for this is clear. Instead of printing everything he writes, and leaving the employment of the cream-separator to his readers, he gives to the public only what has passed his own severe scrutiny. He is a true poet, with an original mind. As for the work of Lascelles Abercrombie, which has been much praised in certain circles, I should prefer to leave the criticism of that to those who enjoy reading it. If I should attempt to "do justice" to his poetry, I should seem to his friends to be doing just the opposite--the opposite of just. CHAPTER V BROOKE, FLECKER, DE LA MARE, AND OTHERS Rupert Brooke--a personality--the spirit of youth--his horror at old age--Henry James's tribute--his education--a genius--his poems of death--his affected cynicism--his nature poems--war sonnets--his supreme sacrifice--his charming humour--his masterpiece, _Grantchester_.--James Elroy Flecker--the editorial work of Mr. Squire--no posthumous puffery--the case of Crashaw--life of Flecker--his fondness for revision--his friendship with Rupert Brooke--his skill as a translator--his austerity--art for art's sake--his "brightness"--love of Greek mythology--steady mental development--his definition of the aim of poetry.--Walter De La Mare--the poet of shadow--Hawthorne's tales--his persistence--his reflective mood--his descriptive style--his Shakespeare characters--his sketches from life.--D. H. Lawrence--his lack of discipline--his subjectivity--absence of reserve--a master of colour--his glaring excesses.--John Drinkwater--the west of England--his healthy spirit.--W. H. Davies--the tramp poet.--Edward Thomas--his death--originality of his work.--Robert Nichols--Willoughby Weaving.--The young Oxford poets. Rupert Brooke left the world in a chariot of fire. He was something more than either a man or a poet; he was and is a Personality. It was as a Personality that he dazzled his friends. He was overflowing with tremendous, contagious vitality. He was the incarnation of the spirit of youth, wearing the glamour and glory of youth like a shining garment. Despite our loss, it almost seems fitting that he did not live to that old age which he never understood, for which he had such little sympathy, and which he seems to have hated more than death. For he had the splendid insolence of youth. Youth commonly feels high-spirited in an unconscious, instinctive fashion, like a kitten or a puppy; but Rupert Brooke was as self-consciously young as a decrepit pensioner is self-consciously old. He rejoiced in the strength of his youth, and rolled it as a sweet morsel under his tongue. He was so glad to be young, and to know every morning on rising from sleep that he was still young! His passionate love of beauty made him see in old age only ugliness; he could not foresee the joys of the mellow years. All he saw consisted of grey hairs, wrinkles, double chins, paunches. To him all old people were Struldbrugs. We smile at the insolence of youth, because we know it will pass with the beauty and strength that support it. Ogniben says, "Youth, with its beauty and grace, would seem bestowed on us for some such reason as to make us partly endurable till we have time for really becoming so of ourselves, without their aid; when they leave us ... little by little, he sees fit to forego claim after claim on the world, puts up with a less and less share of its good as his proper portion; and when the octogenarian asks barely a sup of gruel and a fire of dry sticks, and thanks you as for his full allowance and right in the common good of life,--hoping nobody may murder him,--he who began by asking and expecting the whole of us to bow down in worship to him,--why, I say he is advanced." Henry James--whose affectionate tribute in the preface to Brooke's _Letters_ is impressive testimony--saw in the brilliant youth, besides the accident of genius, a perfect illustration of the highest type of Englishman, bred in the best English way, in the best traditions of English scholarship, and adorned with the good sense, fine temper, and healthy humour of the ideal Anglo-Saxon. He indeed enjoyed every possible advantage; like Milton and Browning, had he been intended for a poet from the cradle, his bringing-up could not have been better adapted to the purpose. He was born at Rugby, on the third of August, 1887, where his father was one of the masters in the famous school. He won a poetry prize there in 1905. The next year he entered King's College, Cambridge; his influence as an undergraduate was notable. He took honours in classics, went abroad to study in Munich, and returned to Grantchester, which he was later to celebrate in his best poem. He had travelled somewhat extensively on the Continent, and in 1913 went on a journey through the United States and Canada to the South Seas. I am glad he saw the Hawaiian Islands, for no one should die before beholding that paradise. At the outbreak of war, he enlisted, went to Antwerp, and later embarked on the expedition to the Dardanelles. He was bitten by a fly, and died of bloodpoisoning on a French hospital ship, the day being Shakespeare's, the twenty-third of April, 1915. He was buried on a Greek island. Rupert Brooke lived to be nearly twenty-eight years old, a short life to show ability in most of the ways of the world, but long enough to test the quality of a poet, not merely in promise, but in performance. There is no doubt that he had the indefinable but unmistakable touch of genius. Only a portion of his slender production is of high rank, but it is enough to preserve his name. His _Letters_, which have been underestimated, prove that he had mental as well as poetical powers. Had he lived to middle age, it seems certain that his poetry would have been tightly packed with thought. He had an alert and inquisitive mind. Many have seemed to think that the frequent allusions to death in his poetry are vaguely prophetic. They are, of course--with the exception of the war-poems--nothing of the kind, being merely symptomatic of youth. They form the most conventional side of his work. His cynicism toward the love of the sexes was a youthful affectation, strengthened by his reading. He was deeply read in the seventeenth-century poets, who delighted in imagining themselves passing from one woman to another--swearing "by love's sweetest part, variety." At all events, these poems, of which there are comparatively many, exhibit his least attractive side. The poem addressed to _The One Before the Last_, ends Oh! bitter thoughts I had in plenty, But here's the worst of it-- I shall forget, in Nineteen-twenty, You ever hurt a bit! He was perhaps, too young to understand two real truths--that real love can exist in the midst of wild passion, and that the best part of it can and often does survive the early flames. Such poems as _Menelaus and Helen_, _Jealousy_, and others, profess a profound knowledge of life that is really a profound ignorance. His pictures of nature, while often beautiful, lack the penetrative quality seen so constantly in Wordsworth and Browning; these greater poets saw nature not only with their eyes, but with their minds. Their representations glow with enduring beauty, but they leave in the spectator something even greater than beauty, something that is food for reflection and imagination, the source of quick-coming fancies. Compare the picture of the pines in Brooke's poem _Pine-Trees and the Sky: Evening_, with Browning's treatment of an identical theme in _Paracelsus_, remembering that Browning's lines were written when he was twenty-two years old. Brooke writes, Then from the sad west turning wearily, I saw the pines against the white north sky, Very beautiful, and still, and bending over Their sharp black heads against a quiet sky. Browning writes, The herded pines commune, and have deep thoughts, A secret they assemble to discuss, When the sun drops behind their trunks which glare Like grates of hell. Both in painting and in imagination the second passage is instantly seen to be superior. The war sonnets of 1914 receive so much additional poignancy by the death of the author that it is difficult, and perhaps undesirable, to judge them as objective works of art. They are essentially noble and sincere, speaking from the depths of high-hearted self-sacrifice. He poured out his young life freely and generously, knowing what it meant to say good-bye to his fancy. There is always something eternally sublime--something that we rightly call divine--in the spendthrift giving of one's life-blood for a great cause. And Rupert Brooke was intensely aware of the value of what he unhesitatingly gave. The two "fish" poems exhibit a playful, charming side to Brooke's imagination; but if I could have only one of his pieces, I should assuredly choose Grantchester. Nostalgia is the mother of much fine poetry; but seldom has the expression of it been mingled more exquisitely with humour and longing. By the rivers of Babylon he sat down and laughed when he remembered Zion. And his laughter at Babylon is so different from his laughter at Grantchester. A few felicitous adjectives sum up the significant difference between Germany and England. Writing in a Berlin café, he says: Here tulips bloom as they are told; Unkempt about those hedges blows An English unofficial rose; And there the unregulated sun Slopes down to rest when day is done, And wakes a vague unpunctual star, A slippered Hesper; and there are Meads toward Haslingfleld and Coton Where _das Betreten'_s not _verboten_.... Oh, is the water sweet and cool, Gentle and brown, above the pool? And laughs the immortal river still Under the mill, under the mill? Say, is there Beauty yet to find? And Certainty? and Quiet kind? Deep meadows yet, for to forget The lies, and truths, and pain? ... oh! yet Stands the Church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea? When Hamlet died, he bequeathed his reputation to Horatio, the official custodian of his good name. He could not have made a better choice. Would that all poets who die young were equally fortunate in their posthumous editors! For there are some friends who conceive it to be their duty to print every scrap of written paper the bard left behind him, even if they have to act as scavengers to find the "remains"; and there are others who think affection and admiration for the dead are best shown by adopting the methods and the language of the press-agent. To my mind, the pious memoir of Tennyson is injured by the inclusion of a long list of "testimonials," which assure us that Alfred Tennyson was a remarkable poet. Mr. J. C. Squire, under whose auspices the works of Flecker appear in one handsome volume, is an admirable editor. His introduction is a model of its kind, giving the necessary biographical information, explaining the chronology, the origin, the background of the poems, and showing how the poet revised his earlier work; the last paragraph ought to serve as an example to those who may be entrusted with a task of similar delicacy in the future. "My only object in writing this necessarily rather disjointed Introduction is to give some information that may interest the reader and be useful to the critic; and if a few personal opinions have slipped in they may conveniently be ignored. A vehement 'puff preliminary' is an insolence in a volume of this kind; it might pardonably be supposed to imply either doubts about the author or distrust of his readers." As a contrast to the above, it is interesting to recall the preface that an anonymous friend contributed to a volume of Crashaw's verse in the seventeenth century, which, in his own words, "I have impartially writ of this Learned young Gent." Fearing that readers might not appreciate his poetry at its true value, the friend writes, "It were prophane but to mention here in the Preface those under-headed Poets, Retainers to seven shares and a halfe; Madrigall fellowes, whose onely business in verse, is to rime a poore six-penny soule a Suburb sinner into hell;--May such arrogant pretenders to Poetry vanish, with their prodigious issue of tumorous heats, and flashes of their adulterate braines, and for ever after, may this our Poet fill up the better roome of man. Oh! when the generall arraignment of Poets shall be, to give an accompt of their higher soules, with what a triumphant brow shall our divine Poet sit above, and looke downe upon poore Homer, Virgil, Horace, Claudian; &c. who had amongst them the ill lucke to talke out a great part of their gallant Genius, upon Bees, Dung, froggs, and Gnats, &c. and not as himself here, upon Scriptures, divine Graces, Martyrs and Angels." Our prefatory friend set a pace that it is hopeless for modern champions to follow, and they might as well abandon the attempt. James Elroy Flecker, the eldest child of the Rev. Dr. Flecker, who is Head Master of an English school, was born on the fifth of November, 1884, in London. He spent five years at Trinity College, Oxford, and later studied Oriental languages at Caius College, Cambridge. He went to Constantinople in 1910. In that same year signs of tuberculosis appeared, but after some months at an English sanatorium, he seemed to be absolutely well. In 1911 he was in Constantinople, Smyrna, and finally in Athens, where he was married to Miss Skiadaressi, a Greek. In March the dreaded illness returned, and the rest of his short life was spent in the vain endeavour to recover his health. He died in Switzerland, on the third of January, 1915, at the age of thirty. "I cannot help remembering," says Mr. Squire, "that I first heard the news over the telephone, and that the voice which spoke was Rupert Brooke's." He had published four books of verse and four books of prose, leaving many poems, essays, short stories, and two plays, in manuscript. All his best poetry is now included in the _Collected Poems_ (1916). Flecker had the Tennysonian habit of continually revising; and in this volume we are permitted to see some of the interesting results of the process. I must say, however, that of the two versions of _Tenebris Interlucentem_, although the second is called a "drastic improvement," I prefer the earlier. Any poet might be proud of either. Flecker liked the work of Mr. Yeats, of Mr. Housman, of Mr. De La Mare; and Rupert Brooke was an intimate friend, for the two young men were together at Cambridge. He wrote a sonnet on Francis Thompson, though he was never affected by Thompson's literary manner. Indeed, he is singularly free from the influence of any of the modern poets. His ideas and his style are his own; he thought deeply on the art of writing, and was given to eager and passionate discussion of it with those who had his confidence. His originality is the more remarkable when we remember his fondness for translating verse from a variety of foreign languages, ancient and modern. He was an excellent translator. His skill in this art can only be inferred where we know nothing at first hand of the originals; but his version of Goethe's immortal lyric is proof of his powers. The only blemish--an unavoidable one--is "far" and "father" in the last two lines. Knowest thou the land where bloom the lemon trees? And darkly gleam the golden oranges? A gentle wind blows down from that blue sky; Calm stands the myrtle and the laurel high. Knowest thou the land? So far and fair! Thou, whom I love, and I will wander there. Knowest thou the house with all its rooms aglow, And shining hall and columned portico? The marble statues stand and look at me. Alas, poor child, what have they done to thee? Knowest thou the land? So far and fair. My Guardian, thou and I will wander there. Knowest thou the mountain with its bridge of cloud? The mule plods warily: the white mists crowd. Coiled in their caves the brood of dragons sleep; The torrent hurls the rock from steep to steep. Knowest thou the land? So far and fair. Father, away! Our road is over there! Fletcher was more French than English in his dislike of romanticism, sentimentalism, intimate, and confessional poetry; and of course he was strenuously opposed to contemporary standards in so far as they put correct psychology above beauty. Much contemporary verse reads and sounds like undisciplined thinking out loud, where each poet feels it imperative to tell the reader in detail not only all his adventures, and passions, but even the most minute whimsies and caprices. When the result of this bosom-cleansing is real poetry, it justifies itself; but the method is the exact opposite of Flecker's. His master was Keats, and in his own words, he wrote "with the single intention of creating beauty." Austerity and objectivity were his ideals. Strangely enough, he was able to state in a new and more convincing way the doctrine of art for art's sake. "However few poets have written with a clear theory of art for art's sake, it is by that theory alone that their work has been, or can be, judged;--and rightly so if we remember that art embraces all life and all humanity, and sees in the temporary and fleeting doctrines of conservative or revolutionary only the human grandeur or passion that inspires them." Perhaps the best noun that describes Flecker's verse is _brightness_. He had a consumptive's longing for sunshine, and his sojourns on the Mediterranean shores illuminate his pages. The following poem is decidedly characteristic: IN PHAEACIA Had I that haze of streaming blue, That sea below, the summer faced, I'd work and weave a dress for you And kneel to clasp it round your waist, And broider with those burning bright Threads of the Sun across the sea, And bind it with the silver light That wavers in the olive tree. Had I the gold that like a river Pours through our garden, eve by eve, Our garden that goes on for ever Out of the world, as we believe; Had I that glory on the vine, That splendour soft on tower and town, I'd forge a crown of that sunshine, And break before your feet the crown. Through the great pinewood I have been An hour before the lustre dies, Nor have such forest-colours seen As those that glimmer in your eyes. Ah, misty woodland, down whose deep And twilight paths I love to stroll To meadows quieter than sleep And pools more secret than the soul! Could I but steal that awful throne Ablaze with dreams and songs and stars Where sits Night, a man of stone, On the frozen mountain spars I'd cast him down, for he is old, And set my Lady there to rule, Gowned with silver, crowned with gold, And in her eyes the forest pool. It seems to me improbable that Flecker will be forgotten; he was a real poet. But a remark made of Tennyson is still more applicable to Flecker. "He was an artist before he was a poet." Even as a small boy, he had astonishing facility, but naturally wrote little worth preserval. The _Collected Poems_ show an extraordinary command of his instrument. He had the orthodox virtues of the orthodox poet--rime and rhythm, cunning in words, skill in nature-painting, imagination. The richness of his colouring and the loveliness of his melodies make his verses a delight to the senses. His mind was plentifully stored with classical authors, and he saw nature alive with old gods and fairies. In one of his most charming poems, _Oak and Olive_, he declares, When I go down the Gloucester lanes My friends are deaf and blind: Fast as they turn their foolish eyes The Maenads leap behind, And when I hear the fire-winged feet, They only hear the wind. Have I not chased the fluting Pan, Through Cranham's sober trees? Have I not sat on Painswick Hill With a nymph upon my knees, And she as rosy as the dawn, And naked as the breeze? His poetry is composed of sensations rather than thoughts. What it lacks is intellectual content. A richly packed memory is not the same thing as original thinking, even when the memories are glorified by the artist's own imagination. Yet the death of this young man was a cruel loss to English literature, for his mental development would eventually have kept pace with his gift of song. His cheerful Paganism would, I think, have given place to something deeper and more fruitful. Before he went to Constantinople, he had, as it is a fashion for some modern Occidentals to have, a great admiration for Mohammedanism. A friend reports a rather naïve remark of his, "this intercourse with Mohammedans had led him to find more good in Christianity than he had previously suspected." I have sometimes wondered whether a prolonged residence among Mohammedans might not temper the enthusiasm of those who so loudly insist on the superiority of that faith to Christianity. Mr. Santayana speaks somewhere of "the unconquerable mind of the East." Well, my guess is that this unconquerable mind will some day be conquered by the Man of Nazareth, just as I think He will eventually--some centuries ahead--conquer even us. Flecker died so soon after the opening of the Great War that it is vain to surmise what the effect of that struggle would have been upon his soul. That it would have shaken him to the depths--and perhaps given him the spiritual experience necessary for his further advance--seems not improbable. One of his letters on the subject contains the significant remark, "What a race of deep-eyed and thoughtful men we shall have in Europe--now that all those millions have been baptized in fire!" The last stanza of his poem _A Sacred Dialogue_ reads as follows: Then the black cannons of the Lord Shall wake crusading ghosts And the Milky Way shall swing like a sword When Jerusalem vomits its horde On the Christmas Day preferred of the Lord, The Christmas Day of the Hosts! He appended a footnote in December, 1914, when he was dying: "Originally written for Christmas, 1912, and referring to the first Balkan War, this poem contains in the last speech of Christ words that ring like a prophecy of events that may occur very soon." As I am copying his Note, December, 1917, the English army is entering Jerusalem. Flecker was essentially noble-minded; and without any trace of conceit, felt the responsibility of his talents. There is not an unworthy page in the _Collected Poems_. In a memorable passage, he stated the goal of poetry. "It is not the poet's business to save man's soul, but to make it worth saving." Walter De La Mare, a close personal friend of Rupert Brooke, came of Huguenot, English and Scotch ancestry, and was born at Charlton, Kent, on the twenty-fifth of April, 1873. He was educated at St. Paul's Cathedral Choir School. Although known today exclusively as a poet, he has written much miscellaneous prose--critical articles for periodicals, short stories, and a few plays. His first poetry-book, _Songs of Childhood_, appeared in 1902; in 1906, _Poems_; in 1910, _The Return_, which won the Edmond de Polignac prize; _The Listeners_, which gave him a wide reputation, appeared in 1912; _Peacock Pie_, in 1917, and _Motley and Other Poems_ in 1918. When, in November, 1916, the Howland Memorial Prize at Yale University was formally awarded to the work of Rupert Brooke, it was officially received in New Haven by Walter De La Mare, who came from England for the purpose. If Flecker's poems were written in a glare of light, Mr. De La Mare's shy Muse seems to live in shadow. It is not at all the shadow of grief, still less of bitterness, but rather the cool, grateful shade of retirement. I can find no words anywhere that so perfectly express to my mind the atmosphere of these poems as the language used by Hawthorne to explain the lack of excitement that readers would be sure to notice in his tales. "They have the pale tint of flowers that blossom in too retired a shade,--the coolness of a meditative habit, which diffuses itself through the feeling and observation of every sketch. Instead of passion there is sentiment; and, even in what purport to be pictures of actual life, we have allegory, not always so warmly dressed in its habiliments of flesh and blood as to be taken into the reader's mind without a shiver. Whether from lack of power, or an uncontrollable reserve, the author's touches have often an effect of tameness.... The book, if you would see anything in it, requires to be read in the clear, brown, twilight atmosphere in which it was written; if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to look exceedingly like a volume of blank pages." Hawthorne is naturally not popular today with readers whose sole acquaintance with the art of the short story is gleaned from magazines that adorn the stalls at railway-stations; and to those whose taste in poetry begins and ends with melodrama, who prefer the hoarse cry of animal passion to the still, sad music of humanity, it would not be advisable to recommend a poem like _The Listeners_, where the people are ghosts and the sounds only echoes. Yet there are times when it would seem that every one must weary of strident voices, of persons shouting to attract attention, of poets who capitalize both their moral and literary vices, of hawking advertisers of the latest verse-novelties; then a poem like _The Listeners_ reminds us of Lindsay's bird, whose simple melody is not defeated by the blatant horns. Decidedly a poet must have both courage and faith to hold himself so steadily aloof from the competition of the market-place; to work with such easy cheerfulness in his quiet corner; to remain so manifestly unaffected by the swift currents of contemporary verse. For fifteen years he has gone on producing his own favourite kind of poetry, dealing with children, with flowers, with autumn and winter, with ghosts of memory, with figures in literature, and has finally obtained a respectable audience without once raising his voice. He has written surprisingly little love poetry; the notes of passion, as we are accustomed to hear them, seldom sound from his lute; nor do we hear the agonizing cries of doubt, remorse, or despair. There is nothing turbulent and nothing truculent; he has made no contribution to the literature of revolt. Yet many of his poems make an irresistible appeal to our more reflective moods; and once or twice, his fancy, always winsome and wistful, rises to a height of pure imagination, as in _The Listeners_--which I find myself returning to muse over again and again. His studies of humanity--both from observation and from books--are descriptive rather than dramatic. I do not know a contemporary poet whose published works contain so few quotation marks. The dramatic monologue, which Emerson back in the 'forties prophesied would be the highest class of poetry in the immediate future (which prophecy was fulfilled), does not interest Mr. De La Mare; maybe he feels that it has been done so well that he prefers to let it alone. His remarkable thirteen poems dealing with Shakespearean characters--where he attempts with considerable success to pluck out the heart of the mystery--are all descriptive. Perhaps the most original and beautiful of these is MERCUTIO Along an avenue of almond-trees Came three girls chattering of their sweethearts three. And lo! Mercutio, with Byronic ease, Out of his philosophic eye cast all A mere flow'r'd twig of thought, whereat ... Three hearts fell still as when an air dies out And Venus falters lonely o'er the sea. But when within the further mist of bloom His step and form were hid, the smooth child Ann Said, "La, and what eyes he had!" and Lucy said, "How sad a gentleman!" and Katharine, "I wonder, now, what mischief he was at." And these three also April hid away, Leaving the spring faint with Mercutio. There are immense tracts of Shakespeare which Walter De La Mare never could even have remotely imitated; but I know of no poet today who could approach the wonderful Queen Mab speech more successfully than he. The same method of interpretative description that he employs in dealing with Shakespearean characters he uses repeatedly in making portraits from life. One of the most vivid and delightful of these is OLD SUSAN When Susan's work was done she'd sit, With one fat guttering candle lit, And window opened wide to win The sweet night air to enter in; There, with a thumb to keep her place She'd read, with stern and wrinkled face, Her mild eyes gliding very slow Across the letters to and fro, While wagged the guttering candle flame In the wind that through the window came. And sometimes in the silence she Would mumble a sentence audibly, Or shake her head as if to say, "You silly souls, to act this way!" And never a sound from night I'd hear, Unless some far-off cock crowed clear; Or her old shuffling thumb should turn Another page; and rapt and stern, Through her great glasses bent on me She'd glance into reality; And shake her round old silvery head, With--"You!--I thought you was in bed!"-- Only to tilt her book again, And rooted in Romance remain. I am afraid that Rupert Brooke could not have written a poem like _Old Susan_; he would have made her ridiculous and contemptible; he would have accentuated physical defects so that she would have been a repugnant, even an offensive, figure. But Mr. De La Mare has the power--possessed in the supreme degree by J. M. Barrie--of taking just such a person as Old Susan, living in a world of romance, and making us smile with no trace of contempt and with no descent to pity. One who can do this loves his fellow-men. Poems like _Old Susan_ prepare us for one of the most happy exhibitions of Mr. De La Mare's talent--his verses written for and about children. Every household ought to have that delightful quarto, delightfully and abundantly illustrated, called _Peacock Pie: A Book of Rhymes. With Illustrations by W. Heath Robinson_. There is a picture for each poem, and the combination demands and will obtain an unconditional surrender. If the poetry of James Flecker and Walter De La Mare live after them, it will not be because of sensational qualities, in matter or in manner. Fancy is bred either in the heart or in the head--and the best poetry should touch either one or the other or both. Mr. De La Mare owes his present eminence simply to merit--his endeavour has been to write just as well as he possibly could. His limit has been downward, not upward. He may occasionally strike over the heads of his audience, for his aim is never low. The poetry of D. H. Lawrence (born 1885) erupts from the terrible twenties. In spite of his school experience, he has never sent his mind to school; he hates discipline. He has an undeniable literary gift, which has met--as it ought to--with glad recognition. He has strength, he has fervour, he has passion. But while his strength is sometimes the happy and graceful play of rippling muscles, it is often contortion. If Mr. De La Mare may seem too delicate, too restrained, Mr. Lawrence cares comparatively little for delicacy; and the word restraint is not in his bright lexicon. In other words, he is aggressively "modern." He is one of the most skilful manipulators of free verse--he can drive four horses abreast, and somehow or other reach the goal. He sees his own turbulent heart reflected stormily in every natural spectacle. He observes flowers in an anti-Wordsworthian way. He mentions with appreciation roses, lilies, snapdragons, but to him they are all passion-flowers. And yet--if he only knew it--his finest work is in a subdued mood. He is a master of colouring--and I like his quieter work as a painter better than his feverish, hectic cries of desire. Despite his dialect poems, he is more successful at description than at drama. I imagine Miss Harriet Monroe may think so too; it seems to me she has done well in selecting his verses, to give three out of the five from his colour-pieces, of which perhaps the best is SERVICE OF ALL THE DEAD Between the avenue of cypresses, All in their scarlet capes and surplices Of linen, go the chaunting choristers, The priests in gold and black, the villagers. And all along the path to the cemetery The round dark heads of men crowd silently; And black-scarfed faces of women-folk wistfully Watch at the banner of death, and the mystery. And at the foot of a grave a father stands With sunken head and forgotten, folded hands; And at the foot of a grave a mother kneels With pale shut face, nor neither hears nor feels. The coming of the chaunting choristers Between the avenue of cypresses, The silence of the many villagers, The candle-flames beside the surplices. (Remember the English pronunciation of "cemetery" is not the common American one.) He is surely better as a looker-on at life than when he tries to present the surging passions of an actor-in-chief. Then his art is full of sound and fury, and instead of being thrilled, we are, as Stevenson said of Whitman's poorer poems, somewhat indecorously amused. All poets, I suppose, are thrilled by their own work; they read it to themselves with shudders of rapture; but it is only when this _frisson_ is felt by others than blood-relatives that they may feel some reasonable assurance of success. The London _Times_ quite properly refuses to surrender to lines like these: And if I never see her again? I think, if they told me so, I could convulse the heavens with my horror. I think I could alter the frame of things in my agony. I think I could break the System with my heart. I think, in my convulsion, the skies would break. He should change his gear from high to low; he will never climb Parnassus on this speed, not even with his muffler so manifestly open. The _Times_ also quotes without appreciation from the same volume the following passage, where the woman, looking back, stirs a biblical reminiscence. I have seen it, felt it in my mouth, my throat, my chest, my belly, Burning of powerful salt, burning, eating through my defenceless nakedness, I have been thrust into white sharp crystals, Writhing, twisting, superpenetrated, Ah, Lot's wife, Lot's wife! The pillar of salt, the whirling, horrible column of salt, like a waterspout That has enveloped me! Most readers may not need a whole pillar, but they will surely take the above professions _cum grano salis_. It is all in King Cambyses' vein; and I would that we had Pistol to deliver it. I cite it here, not for the graceless task of showing Mr. Lawrence at his worst, but because such stuff symptomatic of many of the very "new" poets, who wander, as Turgenev expressed it, "aimless but declamatory, over the face of our long-suffering mother earth." John Drinkwater, born on the first of June, 1882, has had varied experiences both in business and in literature, and is at present connected with the management of the Birmingham Repertory theatre. Actively engaged in commercial life, he has found time to publish a number of volumes of poems, plays in verse, critical works in prose, and a long string of magazine articles. He has wisely collected in one volume--though I regret the omission of _Malvern Lyrics_--the best of his poems that had previously appeared in four separate works, containing the cream of his production from 1908 to 1914. His preface to this little book, published in 1917, is excellent in its manly modesty. "Apart from the Cromwell poem itself, the present selection contains all that I am anxious to preserve from those volumes, and there is nothing before 1908 which I should wish to be reprinted now or at any time." One of the earlier books had been dedicated to John Masefield, to whom in the present preface the author pays an affectionate compliment--"John Masefield, who has given a poet's praise to work that I hope he likes half as well as I like his." The first poem, _Symbols_, prepares the reader for what is to follow, though it is somewhat lacking in the technique that is characteristic of most of Mr. Drinkwater's verse. I saw history in a poet's song, In a river-reach and a gallows-hill, In a bridal bed, and a secret wrong, In a crown of thorns: in a daffodil. I imagined measureless time in a day, And starry space in a wagon-road, And the treasure of all good harvests lay In the single seed that the sower sowed. My garden-wind had driven and havened again All ships that ever had gone to sea, And I saw the glory of all dead men In the shadow that went by the side of me. The West of England looms large in contemporary poetry. A. E. Housman, John Masefield, W. W. Gibson, J. E. Flecker have done their best to celebrate its quiet beauty; and some of the finest work of Mr. Drinkwater is lovingly devoted to these rural scenes. We know how Professor Housman and John Masefield regard Bredon Hill--another tribute to this "calm acclivity, salubrious spot" is paid in Mr. Drinkwater's cheerful song, _At Grafton_. The spirit of his work in general is the spirit of health--take life as it is, and enjoy it. It is the open-air verse of broad, windswept English counties. Its surest claim to distinction lies in its excellent, finished--he is a sound craftsman. But he has not yet shown either sufficient originality or sufficient inspiration to rise from the better class of minor poets. His verse-drama, _The Storm_, which was produced in Birmingham in 1915, shows strong resemblances to the one-act plays of Mr. Gibson and is not otherwise impressive. William Henry Davies, the Welsh poet, exhibits in his half-dozen miniature volumes an extraordinary variety of subjects. Everything is grist. He was born of Welsh parentage in Monmouthshire on the twentieth of April, 1870. He became an American tramp, and practised this interesting profession six years; he made eight or nine trips to England on cattle-ships, working his passage; he walked about England selling pins and needles. He remarks that "he sometimes varied this life by singing hymns in the street." At the age of thirty-four he became a poet, and he insists--not without reason--that he has been one ever since. Readers may be at times reminded of the manner of John Davidson, but after all, Mr. Davies is as independent in his poetry as he used to be on the road. Sometimes his verse is banal--as in the advice _To a Working Man_. But oftener his imagination plays on familiar scenes in town and country with a lambent flame, illuminating and glorifying common objects. He has the heart of the child, and tries to see life from a child's clear eyes. THE TWO FLOCKS Where are you going to now, white sheep, Walking the green hill-side; To join that whiter flock on top, And share their pride? Stay where you are, you silly sheep: When you arrive up there, You'll find that whiter flock on top Clouds in the air! Yet much of his poetry springs from his wide knowledge and experience of life. An original defence of the solitary existence is seen in _Death's Game_, although possibly the grapes are sour. Death can but play one game with me-- If I do live alone; He cannot strike me a foul blow Through a belovèd one. Today he takes my neighbour's wife, And leaves a little child To lie upon his breast and cry Like the Night-wind, so wild. And every hour its voice is heard-- Tell me where is she gone! Death cannot play that game with me-- If I do live alone. The feather-weight pocket-volumes of verse that this poet puts forth, each containing a crop of tiny poems--have an excellent virtue--they are interesting, good companions for a day in the country. There is always sufficient momentum in page 28 to carry you on to page 29--something that cannot be said of all books. English literature suffered a loss in the death of Edward Thomas, who was killed in France on the ninth of April, 1917. He was born on the third of March, 1878, and had published a long list of literary critiques, biographies, interpretations of nature, and introspective essays. He took many solitary journeys afoot; his books _The South Country_, _The Heart of England_, and others, show both observation and reflection. Although English by birth and education, he had in his veins Welsh and Spanish blood. In 1917 a tiny volume of his poems appeared. These are unlike any other verse of the past or present. They cannot be called great poetry, but they are original, imaginative, whimsical, and reveal a rich personality. Indeed we feel in reading these rimes that the author was greater than anything he wrote or could write. The difficulty in articulation comes apparently from a mind so full that it cannot run freely off the end of a pen. Shyness was undoubtedly characteristic of the man, as it often is of minute observers of nature. I am not at all surprised to learn from one who knew him of his "temperamental melancholy." He was austere and aloof; but exactly the type of mind that would give all he had to those who possessed his confidence. It must have been a privilege to know him intimately. I have said that his poems resemble the work of no other poet; this is true; but there is a certain kinship between him and Robert Frost, indicated not only in the verses, but in the fact that his book is dedicated to the American. His death accentuates the range of the dragnet of war. This intellectual, quiet, introspective, slightly ironical temperament would seem almost ideally unfitted for the trenches. Yet, although no soldier by instinct, and having a family dependent upon his writings for support, he gave himself freely to the Great Cause. He never speaks in his verses of his own sacrifice, and indeed says little about the war; but the first poem in the volume expresses the universal call. Rise up, rise up, And, as the trumpet blowing Chases the dreams of men, As the dawn glowing The stars that left unlit The land and water, Rise up and scatter The dew that covers The print of last night's lovers-- Scatter it, scatter it! While you are listening To the clear horn, Forget, men, everything On this earth newborn, Except that it is lovelier Than any mysteries. Open your eyes to the air That has washed the eyes of the stars Through all the dewy night: Up with the light, To the old wars; Arise, arise! In reading Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, Alan Seeger, we recognize how much greater were the things they sacrificed than the creature comforts ordinarily emphasized in the departure from home to the trenches; these men gave up their imagination. A thoroughly representative poem by Edward Thomas is _Cock-Crow_; beauty of conception mingled with the inevitable touch of homeliness at the end. Out of the wood of thoughts that grows by night To be cut down by the sharp axe of light,-- Out of the night, two cocks together crow, Cleaving the darkness with a silver blow: And bright before my eyes twin trumpeters stand, Heralds of splendour, one at either hand, Each facing each as in a coat of arms; The milkers lace their boots up at the farms. This is his favourite combination, seen on every page of his work,--fancy and fact. Another poet in khaki who writes powerful and original verse is Robert Nichols (born 1893), an Oxford man who has already produced two volumes--_Invocation_, and, in 1918, _Ardours and Endurances_. Accompanying the second is a portrait made in 1915, exhibiting the face of a dreamy-looking boy. No one who reads the pages of this book can doubt the author's gift. In his trench-poetry he somehow manages to combine the realism of Barbusse with an almost holy touch of imagination; and some of the most beautiful pieces are manly laments for friends killed in battle. He was himself severely wounded. His poems of strenuous action are mostly too long to quote; occasionally he writes in a more quiet mood of contemplation. THE FULL HEART Alone on the shore in the pause of the nighttime I stand and I hear the long wind blow light; I view the constellations quietly, quietly burning; I hear the wave fall in the hush of the night. Long after I am dead, ended this bitter journey, Many another whose heart holds no light Shall your solemn sweetness hush, awe, and comfort, O my companions, Wind, Waters, Stars, and Night. Other Oxford poets from the front are Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves and Willoughby Weaving, whose two volumes _The Star Fields_ and _The Bubble_ are as original in their way as the work of Mr. Nichols, though inferior in beauty of expression. Mr. Weaving was invalided home in 1915, and his first book has an introduction by Robert Bridges. In _The Bubble_ (1917) there are many poems so deeply meditative that their full force does not reach one until after repeated readings. He has also a particular talent for the last line. TO ---- (Winter 1916) Thou lover of fire, how cold is it in the grave? Would I could bring thee fuel and light thee a fire as of old! Alas! how I think of thee there, shivering out in the cold, Till my own bright fire lacketh the heat which it gave! Oh, would I could see thee again, as in days gone by, Sitting hands over the fire, or poking it to a bright blaze And clearing the cloggy ash from the bars in thy careful ways! Oh, art thou the more cold or here by the fire am I? B. H. Blackwell, the Oxford publisher, seems to have made a good many "finds"; besides producing some of the work of Mr. Nichols and Mr. Weaving--both poets now have American publishers as well--the four volumes _Oxford Verse_, running from 1910 to 1917, contain many excellent things. And in addition to these, there are original adventures in the art of poetry, sometimes merely bizarre, but interesting as experiments, exhibited in the two volumes _Wheels 1916_, and _Wheels 1917_, and also in the books called _Initiates: a Series of Poetry by Proved Hands_. CHAPTER VI THE IRISH POETS Irish poetry a part of English Literature--common-sense the basis of romanticism--misapprehension of the poetic temperament--William Butler Yeats--his education--his devotion to art--his theories--his love poetry--resemblance to Maeterlinck--the lyrical element paramount--the psaltery--pure rather than applied poetry--John M. Synge--his mentality--his versatility--a terrible personality--his capacity for hatred--his subjectivity--his interesting Preface--brooding on death--A. E.--The Master of the island--his sincerity and influence--disembodied spirits--his mysticism--homesickness--true optimism--James Stephens--poet and novelist--realism and fantasy--Padraic Colum--Francis Ledwidge--Susan Mitchell--Thomas MacDonagh--Joseph Campbell--Seumas O'Sullivan--Herbert Trench--Maurice Francis Egan--Norreys Jephson O'Conor--F. Carlin--The advance in Ireland. In what I have to say of the work of the Irish poets, I am thinking of it solely as a part of English literature. I have in mind no political bias whatever, though I confess I have small admiration for extremists. During the last forty years Irishmen have written mainly in the English language, which assures to what is good in their compositions an influence bounded only by the dimensions of the earth. Great creative writers are such an immense and continuous blessing to the world that the locality of their birth pales in comparison with the glory of it, a glory in which we all profit. We need original writers in America; but I had rather have a star of the first magnitude appear in London than a star of lesser power appear in Los Angeles. Every one who writes good English contributes something to English literature and is a benefactor to English-speaking people. An Irish or American literary aspirant will be rated not according to his local flavour or fervour, but according to his ability to write the English language. The language belongs to Ireland and to America as much as it belongs to England; excellence in its command is the only test by which Irish, American, Canadian, South African, Hawaiian and Australian poets and novelists will be judged. The more difficult the test, the stronger the appeal to national pride. In a recent work, called _The Celtic Dawn_, I found this passage: "The thesis of their contention is that modern English, the English of contemporary literature, is essentially an impoverished language incapable of directly expressing thought." I am greatly unimpressed by such a statement. The chief reason why there is really a Celtic Dawn, or a Celtic Renaissance, is because Irishmen like Synge, Yeats, Russell and others have succeeded in writing English so well that they have attracted the attention of the world. Ireland has never contributed to English literature a poet of the first class. By a poet of the first class I mean one of the same grade with the leading half-dozen British poets of the nineteenth century. This dearth of great Irish poets is the more noticeable when we think of Ireland's contributions to English prose and to English drama. Possibly, if one had prophecy rather than history to settle the question, one might predict that Irishmen would naturally write more and better poetry than Englishmen; for the common supposition is that the poetic temperament is romantic, sentimental, volatile, reckless. If this were true, then the lovable, careless, impulsive Irish would completely outclass in original poetry the sensible, steady-headed, cautious Englishman. What are the facts about the so-called poetic temperament? Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Gray, Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, were in character, disposition, and temperament precisely the opposite of what is superficially supposed to be "poetic." Some of them were deeply erudite; all of them were deeply thoughtful. They were clear-headed, sensible men--in fact, common sense was the basis of their mental life. And no one can read the letters of Byron without seeing how well supplied he was with the shrewd common sense of the Englishman. He was more selfish than any one of the men enumerated above--but he was no fool. There is nothing inconsistent in his being at once the greatest romantic poet and the greatest satirist of his age. His masterpiece, _Don Juan_, is the expression of a nature at the farthest possible remove from sentimentality. And the author of _Faust_ was remarkable among all the children of men for his poise, balance, calm--in other words, for common sense. It is by no accident that the British--whom foreigners delight to call stodgy and slow-witted,--have produced more high-class poetry than any other nation in the history of the world. English literature is instinctively romantic, as French literature is instinctively classic. The glory of French literature is prose; the glory of English literature is poetry. As the tallest tree must have the deepest roots, so it would seem that the loftiest edifices of verse must have the deepest foundations. Certainly one of the many reasons why American poetry is so inferior to British is because our roots do not go down sufficiently deep. Great poetry does not spring from natures too volatile, too susceptible, too easily swept by gusts of emotion. Landor was one of the most violent men we have on record; he was a prey to uncontrollable outbursts of rage, caused by trivial vexations; but his poetry aimed at cold, classical correctness. In comparison with Landor, Tennyson's reserve was almost glacial--yet out of it bloomed many a gorgeous garden of romance. Splendid imaginative masterpieces seem to require more often than not a creative mind marked by sober reason, logical processes, orderly thinking. John Morley, who found the management of Ireland more than a handful, though he loved Ireland and the Irish with an affection greater than that felt by any other Englishman of his time, has, in his _Recollections_, placed on opposite pages--all the more striking to me because unintentional--illuminating testimony to the difference between the Irish and the British temperament. And this testimony supports the point I am trying to make--that the "typical" logicless, inconsequential Irish mind, so winsome and so exasperating, is not the kind of brain to produce permanent poetry. A peasant was in the dock for a violent assault. The clerk read the indictment with all its legal jargon. The prisoner to the warder: "What's all that he says?" _Warder:_ "He says ye hit Pat Curry with yer spade on the side of his head." _Prisoner:_ "Bedad an' I did." _Warder:_ "Then plade not guilty." This dialogue, loud and in the full hearing of the court. Read Wordsworth's two poems on Burns; kind, merciful, steady, glowing, manly they are, with some strong phrases, good lines, and human feeling all through, winding up in two stanzas at the close. These are among the pieces that make Wordsworth a poet to live with; he repairs the daily wear and tear, puts back what the fret of the day has rubbed thin or rubbed off, sends us forth in the morning _whole_. Robert Browning, whose normality in appearance and conversation pleased sensible folk and shocked idolaters, summed up in two stanzas the difference between the popular conception of a poet and the real truth. One might almost take the first stanza as representing the Irish and the second the English temperament. "Touch him ne'er so lightly, into song he broke: Soil so quick-receptive,--not one feather-seed, Not one flower-dust fell but straight its fall awoke Vitalising virtue: song would song succeed Sudden as spontaneous--prove a poet-soul!" Indeed? Rock's the song-soil rather, surface hard and bare: Sun and dew their mildness, storm and frost their rage Vainly both expend,--few flowers awaken there: Quiet in its cleft broods--what the after age Knows and names a pine, a nation's heritage. People who never grow up may have a certain kind of fascination, but they will not write great poetry. It is exactly the other way with creative artists; they grow up faster than the average. The maturity of Keats is astonishing.... Mr. Yeats's wonderful lamentation, _September 1913_, that sounds like the wailing of the wind, actually gives us a reason why Irishmen are getting the attention of the world in poetry, as well as in fiction and drama. What need you, being come to sense, But fumble in a greasy till And add the halfpence to the pence And prayer to shivering prayer, until You have dried the marrow from the bone; For men were born to pray and save, Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave. Yet they were of a different kind. The names that stilled your childish play They have gone about the world like wind, But little time had they to pray For whom the hangman's rope was spun, And what, God help us, could they save; Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave. Was it for this the wild geese spread The grey wing upon every tide; For this that all that blood was shed, For this Edward Fitzgerald died, And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone, All that delirium of the brave; Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave. Yet could we turn the years again, And call those exiles as they were, In all their loneliness and pain You'd cry "some woman's yellow hair Has maddened every mother's son:" They weighed so lightly what they gave, But let them be, they're dead and gone, They're with O'Leary in the grave. William Butler Yeats has done more for English poetry than any other Irishman, for he is the greatest poet in the English language that Ireland has ever produced. He is a notable figure in contemporary literature, having made additions to verse, prose and stage-plays. He has by no means obliterated Clarence Mangan, but he has surpassed him. Mr. Yeats was born at Dublin, on the thirteenth of June, 1865. His father was an honour man at Trinity College, taking the highest distinction in Political Economy. After practising law, he became a painter, which profession he still adorns. The future poet studied art for three years, but when twenty-one years old definitely devoted himself to literature. In addition to his original work, one of his foremost services to humanity was his advice to that strange genius, John Synge--for it was partly owing to the influence of his friend that Synge became a creative writer, and he had, alas! little time to lose. Mr. Yeats published his first poem in 1886. Since that date, despite his preoccupation with the management of the Abbey Theatre, he has produced a long list of works in verse and prose, decidedly unequal in merit, but shining with the light of a luminous mind. From the first, Mr. Yeats has seemed to realize that he could serve Ireland best by making beautiful and enduring works of art, rather than by any form of political agitation. This is well; for despite the fact that a total ineptitude for statesmanship seldom prevents the enthusiast from issuing and spreading dogmatic propaganda, a merely elementary conception of the principle of division of labour should make us all rejoice when the artist confines himself to art. True artists are scarce and precious; and although practical men of business often regard them as superfluous luxuries, the truth is that we cannot live without them. As poet and dramatist, Mr. Yeats has done more for his country than he could have accomplished in any other way. Never was there more exclusively an artist. He writes pure, not applied poetry. I care little for his theories of symbolism, magic and what not. Poets are judged not by their theories, not by the "schools" to which they give passionate adherence, but simply and solely by the quality of their work. No amount of theory, no correctness of method, no setting up of new or defence of old standards, no elevated ideals can make a poet if he have not the divine gift. Theories have hardly more effect on the actual value of his poetry than the colour of the ink in which he writes. The reason why it is interesting to read what Mr. Yeats says about his love of magic and of symbols is not because there is any truth or falsehood in these will-o'-the-wisps, but because he is such an artist that even when he writes in prose, his style is so beautiful, so harmonious that one is forced to listen. Literary art has enormous power in propelling a projectile of thought. I do not doubt that the chief reason for the immense effect of such a philosophy as that of Schopenhauer or that of Nietzsche is because each man was a literary artist--indeed I think both were greater writers than thinkers. A good thing this is for their fame, for art lasts longer than thought. The fashion of a man's thought may pass away; his knowledge and his ideas may lose their stamp, either because they prove to be false or because they become universally current. Everybody believes Copernicus, but nobody reads him. Yet when a book, no matter how obsolete in thought, is marked by great beauty of style, it lives forever. Consider the case of Sir Thomas Browne. Art is the great preservative. Mr. Yeats has a genius for names and titles. His names, like those of Rossetti's, are sweet symphonies. _The Wind Among the Reeds_, _The Shadowy Waters_, _The Secret Rose_, _The Land of Heart's Desire_, _The Island of Statues_ are poems in themselves, and give separate pleasure like an overture without the opera. Perhaps it is not too fanciful to observe that _The Wind Among the Reeds_ suggests better than any other arrangement of words the lovely minor melodies of our poet, while _The Shadowy Waters_ gives exactly the picture that comes into one's mind in thinking of his poems. There is an extraordinary fluidity in his verse, like running water under the shade of overhanging branches. One feels that Mr. Yeats loves these titles, and chooses them with affectionate solicitude, like a father naming beautiful children. The love poetry of Mr. Yeats, like the love poetry of Poe, is swept with passion, but the passion is mingled with unutterable reverence. It is unlike much modern love poetry in its spiritual exaltation. Just as manners have become more free, and intimacies that once took months to develop, now need only minutes, so much contemporary verse-tribute to women is so detailed, so bold, so cock-sure, that the elaborate compliments only half-conceal a sneer. In all such work love is born of desire--its sole foundation--and hence is equally short-lived and fleeting. In the poems of Mr. Yeats, desire seems to follow rather than to precede love. Love thus takes on, as it ought to, something of the beauty of holiness. Fasten your hair with a golden pin, And bind up every wandering tress; I bade my heart build these poor rhymes: It worked at them, day out, day in, Building a sorrowful loveliness Out of the battles of old times. You need but lift a pearl-pale hand, And bind up your long hair and sigh; And all men's hearts must burn and beat; And candle-like foam on the dim sand, And stars climbing the dew-dropping sky, Live but to light your passing feet. A still more characteristic love-poem is the one which gleams with the symbols of the cloths of heaven. Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the halflight, I would spread the cloths under your feet; But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. In mysticism, in symbolism, and in the quality of his imagination, Mr. Yeats of course reminds us of Maeterlinck. He has the same twilit atmosphere, peopled with elusive dream-footed figures, that make no more noise than the wings of an owl. He is of imagination all compact. He is neither a teacher nor a prophet; he seems to turn away from the real sorrows of life, yes, even from its real joys, to dwell in a world of his own creation. He invites us thither, if we care to go; and if we go not, we cannot understand either his art or his ideas. But if we wander with him in the shadowy darkness, like the lonely man in Titanic alleys accompanied only by Psyche, we shall see strange visions. We may be led to the door of a legended tomb; we may be led along the border of dim waters; but we shall live for a time in the realm of Beauty, and be the better for the experience, even though it resemble nothing in the town and country that we know. Mr. Yeats, like Browning, writes both lyrical poems and dramas; but he is at the opposite remove from Browning in everything except the gift of song. Browning was so devoted to the dramatic aspect of art, that he carried the drama even into its seemingly contradictory form, the lyric. Every lyric is a little one-act play, and he called them dramatic lyrics. Mr. Yeats, on the other hand, is so essentially a lyric poet, that instead of writing dramatic lyrics, he writes lyric dramas. Even his stage-plays are primarily lyrical. Those who are interested in Mr. Yeats's theory of speaking, reciting, or chanting poetry to the psaltery should read his book, _Ideas of Good and Evil_, which contains some of his most significant articles of faith, written in shining prose. Mr. Yeats cannot write on any subject without illuminating it by the light of his own imagination; and I find his essays in criticism full of original thought--the result of years of brooding reflection. In these short pieces his genius is as clear as it is in his poems. He is, in fact, a master of English. His latest work, with its musical title, _Per Amica Silentia Lunae_(1918), has both in spirit and form something of the ecstasy and quaint beauty of Sir Thomas Browne. I had supposed that such a style as that displayed in _Urn-Burial_ was a lost art; but Mr. Yeats comes near to possessing its secret. This book is like a deep pool in its limpidity and mystery; no man without genius could have written it. I mean to read it many times, for there are pages that I am not sure that I understand. One looks into its depths of suggestion as one looks into a clear but very deep lake; one can see far down, but not to the bottom of it, which remains mysterious. He invites his own soul, but there is no loafing. Indeed his mind seems preternaturally active, as in a combination of dream and cerebration. We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry. Unlike the rhetoricians, who get a confident voice from remembering the crowd they have won or may win, we sing amid our uncertainty; and, smitten even in the presence of the most high beauty by the knowledge of our solitude, our rhythm shudders. I think, too, that no fine poet, no matter how disordered his life, has ever, even in his mere life, had pleasure for his end.... The other self, the anti-self or antithetical self, as one may choose to name it, comes but to those who are no longer deceived, whose passion is reality. The sentimentalists are practical men who believe in money, in position, in a marriage bell, and whose understanding of happiness is to be so busy whether at work or at play, that all is forgotten but the momentary aim. They will find their pleasure in a cup that is filled from Lethe's wharf, and for the awakening, for the vision, for the revelation of reality, tradition offers us a different word--ecstasy.... We must not make a false faith by hiding from our thoughts the causes of doubt, for faith is the highest achievement of the human intellect, the only gift man can make to God, and therefore it must be offered in sincerity. Neither must we create, by hiding ugliness, a false beauty as our offering to the world. He only can create the greatest imaginable beauty who has endured all imaginable pangs, for only when we have seen and foreseen what we dread shall we be rewarded by that dazzling unforeseen wing-footed wanderer. I admire his devotion to the art of poetry. He will not turn Pegasus into a dray-horse, and make him haul cart-loads of political or moral propaganda. In his fine apologia, _The Cutting of an Agate_, he states and restates his creed: "Literature decays when it no longer makes more beautiful, or more vivid, the language which unites it to all life, and when one finds the criticism of the student, and the purpose of the reformer, and the logic of the man of science, where there should have been the reveries of the common heart, ennobled into some raving Lear or unabashed Don Quixote.... I have been reading through a bundle of German plays, and have found everywhere a desire not to express hopes and alarms common to every man that ever came into the world, but politics or social passion, a veiled or open propaganda.... If Homer were alive today, he would only resist, after a deliberate struggle, the temptation to find his subject not in Helen's beauty, that every man has desired, nor in the wisdom and endurance of Odysseus that has been the desire of every woman that has come into the world, but in what somebody would describe, perhaps, as 'the inevitable contest,' arising out of economic causes, between the country-places and small towns on the one hand, and, upon the other, the great city of Troy, representing one knows not what 'tendency to centralization.'" In other words, if I understand him correctly, Mr. Yeats believes that in writing pure rather than applied poetry, he is not turning his back on great issues to do filigree work, but is merely turning aside from questions of temporary import to that which is fixed and eternal, life itself. John Millington Synge was born near Dublin on the sixteenth of April, 1871, and died in Dublin on the twenty-fourth of March, 1909. It is a curious thing that the three great Irishmen of the Celtic renaissance--the only men who were truly inspired by genius--originally studied another form of art than literature. Mr. Yeats studied painting for years; A. E. is a painter of distinction; Synge an accomplished musician before he became a of letters. There is not the slightest doubt the effect of these sister arts upon the literary work of the Great Three is pervasive and powerful. The books of Mr. Yeats and Mr. Russell are full of word-pictures; and the rhythm of Synge's strange prose, which Mr. Ernest Boyd ingeniously compares with Dr. Hyde's translations, is full of harmonies. Dr. Hyde has not only witnessed a new and wonderful literary revival in his country, but he has the satisfaction of knowing that he is vitally connected with its birth and bloom. Synge had the greatest mental endowment of all the Irish writers of his time. He had an amazingly powerful mind. At Trinity College he took prizes in Hebrew and in Irish, and at the same time gained a scholarship in harmony and counterpoint at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. As a boy, "he knew the note and plumage of every bird, and when and where they were to be found." As a man, he could easily have mastered the note of every human being, as in addition to his knowledge of ancient languages, he seems to have become proficient in German, French, and Italian with singular speed and ease. He was an excellent performer on the piano, flute, and violin, did conjuring tricks, and delighted the natives of the Aran Islands with his penny whistle. He must have had a positive genius for concentration, obtaining a command over anything to which he cared to devote his attention. Mr. Yeats found him in that ramshackle old Hotel Corneille in the Latin Quarter, busily writing literary criticism in French and English, and told him as an inspired messenger to go to the primitive folk in Ireland and become a creative artist. He went; and in a few years reached the summit of dramatic achievement. Synge was a terrible person, as terrible in his way as Swift. When Carlyle saw Daniel Webster, he said, "I should hate to be that man's nigger." I do not envy any of the men or women who, for whatever reason, incurred the wrath of Synge. He was never noisy or explosive, like a dog whose barks are discounted, to whom one soon ceases to pay any attention; we all know the futile and petty irascibility of the shallow-minded. Synge was like a mastiff who bites without warning. Irony was the common chord in his composition. He studied life and hated death; hated the gossip of the world, which seemed to him the gabble of fools. Physically he was a sick man, and felt his tether. He thought it frightful that he should have to die, while so many idiots lived long. He never forgave men and women for their folly, and the only reason why he did not forgive God was because he was not sure of His existence. The lady addressed in the following "poem" must have read it with queasy emotion, and have unwillingly learned it by heart. A photograph of her face immediately after its perusal would look like futurist art; but who knows the expression on the face of the poet while preparing this poison? THE CURSE _To a sister of an enemy of the author's who disapproved of "The Playboy."_ Lord, confound this surly sister, Blight her brow with blotch and blister, Cramp her larynx, lung, and liver, In her guts a galling give her. Let her live to earn her dinners In Mountjoy with seedy sinners: Lord, this judgment quickly bring, And I'm your servant, John M. Synge. (Mountjoy is a prison.) Irish exaggeration is as often seen in plenary curses as in plenary blessings; both have the quality of humour. The curses are partly compounded of robust delight, like the joy of London cabmen in repartee; and the blessings are doubtless commingled with irony. But Synge had a savage heart. He was essentially a wild man, and a friend of mine had a vision of him that seems not without significance. He was walking in a desolate part of Ireland in a bleak storm of rain; when suddenly over the hills came the solitary figure of Synge, dressed in black, with a broad hat pulled over his brows. As a stranger and sojourner he walked this earth. In the midst of Dublin he never mentioned politics, read no newspapers, and little contemporary literature, not even the books of his few intimate friends. Every one who knew him had such immense respect for the quality of his intellect that it is almost laughable to think how eagerly they must have awaited criticism of the books they gave him--criticism that never came. Yet he never seems to have given the impression of surliness; he was not surly, he was silent. He must have been the despair of diagnosticians; even in his last illness, it was impossible for the doctors and nurses to discover how he felt, for he would not tell. I think his burning mind consumed his bodily frame. Synge wrote few poems, and they came at intervals during a period of sixteen or seventeen years. Objectively, they are unimportant; his contributions to English literature are his dramas and his prose sketches. But as revelations of his personality they have a deep and melancholy interest; and every word of his short Preface, written in December, 1908, a few months before his death, is valuable. He knew he was a dying man, and not only wished to collect these fugitive bits of verse, but wished to leave behind him his theory of poetry. With characteristic bluntness, he says that the poems which follow the Preface were mostly written "before the views just stated, with which they have little to do, had come into my head." No discussion of modern verse should omit consideration of this remarkable Preface--for while it has had no effect on either Mr. Yeats or Mr. Russell--it has influenced other Irish poets, and many that are not Irish. Indeed much aggressively "modern" work is trying, more or less successfully, to fit this theory. In the advance, Synge was more prophet than poet. Many of the older poets, such as Villon and Herrick and Burns, used the whole of their personal life as their material, and the verse written in this way was read by strong men, and thieves, and deacons, not by little cliques only. Then, in the town writing of the eighteenth century, ordinary life was put into verse that was not poetry, and when poetry came back with Coleridge and Shelley, it went into verse that was not always human. [This last clause shows the difference between Synge and his friends, Yeats and Russell.] In these days poetry is usually a flower of evil or good; but it is the timbre of poetry that wears most surely, and there is no timbre that has not strong roots among the clay and worms. Even if we grant that exalted poetry can be kept successful by itself, the strong things in life are needed in poetry also, to show that what is exalted or tender is not made by feeble blood. It may almost be said that before verse can be human again it must learn to be brutal. Like Herrick, he wrote verse about himself, for he knew that much biography and criticism would follow his funeral. ON AN ANNIVERSARY _After reading the dates in a book of Lyrics._ With Fifteen-ninety or Sixteen-sixteen We end Cervantes, Marot, Nashe or Green: Then Sixteen-thirteen till two score and nine, Is Crashaw's niche, that honey-lipped divine. And so when all my little work is done They'll say I came in Eighteen-seventy-one, And died in Dublin.... What year will they write For my poor passage to the stall of night? A QUESTION I asked if I got sick and died, would you With my black funeral go walking too, If you'd stand close to hear them talk or pray While I'm let down in that steep bank of clay. And, No, you said, for if you saw a crew Of living idiots pressing round that new Oak coffin--they alive, I dead beneath That board--you'd rave and rend them with your teeth. The love of brutal strength in Synge's work may have been partly the projection of his sickness, just as the invalid Stevenson delighted in the creation of powerful ruffians; but the brooding on his own death is quite modern, and is, I think, part of the egoism that is so distinguishing a feature in contemporary poetry. So many have abandoned all hope of a life beyond the grave, that they cling to bodily existence with almost gluttonous passion, and are filled with self-pity at the thought of their own death and burial. To my mind, there is something unworthy, something childish, in all this. When a child has been rebuked or punished by its father or mother, it plays a trump card--"You'll be sorry when I am dead!" It is better for men and women to attack the daily task with what cheerful energy they can command, and let the interruption of death come when it must. If life is short, it seems unwise to spend so much of our time in rehearsals of a tragedy that can have only one performance. In the modern Tempest of Ireland, Yeats is Ariel and A. E. is Prospero. He is the Master of the island. As a literary artist, he is not the equal of either of the two men whose work we have considered; but he is by all odds the greatest Personality. He holds over his contemporaries a spiritual sway that many a monarch might envy. Perhaps the final tribute to him is seen in the fact that even George Moore treats him with respect. One reason for this predominance is the man's sincerity. All those who know him regard him with reverence; and to us who know him only through his books and his friends, his sincerity is equally clear and compelling. He has done more than any other man to make Dublin a centre of intellectual life. At one time his house was kept open every Sunday evening, and any friend, stranger, or foreigner had the right to walk in without knocking, and take a part in the conversation. A. E. used to subscribe to every literary journal, no matter how obscure, that was printed in Ireland; every week he would scan the pages, hoping to discover a man of promise. It was in this way he "found" James Stephens, and not only found him, but founded him. Many a struggling painter or poet has reason to bless the gracious assistance of George W. Russell. It is a singular thing that the three great men of modern Ireland seem more like disembodied spirits than carnal persons. Synge always seems to those who read his books like some ghost, waking the echoes with ironical laughter; I cannot imagine A. E. putting on coat and trousers; and although I once had the honour--which I gratefully remember--of a long talk with W. B. Yeats, I never felt that I was listening to a man of flesh and blood. It is fitting that these men had their earthly dwelling in a sea-girt isle, where every foot of ground has its own superstition, and where the constant mists are peopled with unearthly figures. I do not really know what mysticism is; but I know that Mr. Yeats and Mr. Russell are both mystics and of a quite different stamp. Mr. Yeats is not insincere, but his mysticism is a part of his art rather than a part of his mind. He is artistically, rather than intellectually, sincere. The mysticism of Mr. Russell is fully as intellectual as it is emotional; it is more than his creed; it is his life. His poetry and his prose are not shadowed by his mysticism, they emanate from it. He does not have to live in another world when he writes verse, and then come back to earth when the dinner or the door bell rings; he lives in the other world all the time. Or rather, the earth and common objects are themselves part of the Universal Spirit, reflecting its constant activities. DUST I heard them in their sadness say "The earth rebukes the thought of God; We are but embers wrapped in clay, A little nobler than the sod." But I have touched the lips of clay, Mother, thy rudest sod to me Is thrilled with fire of hidden day, And haunted by all mystery. The above poem, taken from the author's first volume, _Homeward: Songs by the Way_, does not reflect that homesickness of which A. E. speaks in his Preface. Homesickness is longing, yearning; and there is little of any such quality in the work of A. E. Or, if he is really homesick, he is homesick not like one who has just left home, but more like one who is certain of his speedy return thither. This homesickness has more anticipation than regret; it is like healthy hunger when one is assured of the next meal. For assurance is the prime thing in A. E.'s temperament and in his work; it partly accounts for his strong influence. Many writers today are like sheep having no shepherd; A. E. is a shepherd. To turn from the wailing so characteristic of the poets, to the books of this high-hearted, resolute, candid, cheerful man, is like coming into harbour after a mad voyage. He moves among his contemporaries like a calm, able surgeon in a hospital. I suspect he has been the recipient of many strange confessions. His poetry has healing in its wings. Has any human voice ever expressed more wisely or more tenderly the reason why Our Lord was a man of sorrows? Why He spake to humanity in the language of pain, rather than in the language of delight? Was it not simply because, in talking to us, He who could speak all languages, used our own, rather than that of His home country? A LEADER Though your eyes with tears were blind, Pain upon the path you trod: Well we knew, the hosts behind, Voice and shining of a god. For your darkness was our day, Signal fires, your pains untold, Lit us on our wandering way To the mystic heart of gold. Naught we knew of the high land, Beauty burning in its spheres; Sorrow we could understand And the mystery told in tears. Something of the secret of his quiet strength is seen in the following two stanzas, which close his poem _Apocalyptic_ (1916): It shall be better to be bold Than clothed in purple in that hour; The will of steel be more than gold; For only what we are is power. Who through the starry gate would win Must be like those who walk therein. You, who have made of earth your star, Cry out, indeed, for hopes made vain: For only those can laugh who are The strong Initiates of Pain, Who know that mighty god to be Sculptor of immortality. It is a wonderful thing--a man living in a house in Dublin, living a life of intense, ceaseless, and extraordinarily diversified activity, travelling on life's common way in cheerful godliness, and shedding abroad to the remotest corners of the earth a masculine serenity of soul. James Stephens was not widely known until the year 1912, when he published a novel called _The Crock of Gold;_ this excited many readers in Great Britain and in America, an excitement considerably heightened by the appearance of another work of prose fiction, _The Demi-Gods,_ in 1914; and general curiosity about the author became rampant. It was speedily discovered that he was a poet as well as a novelist; that three years before his reputation he had issued a slim book of verse, boldly named _Insurrections,_ the title being the boldest thing in it. By 1915 this neglected work had passed through four editions, and during the last six years he has presented to an admiring public five more volumes of poems, _The Hill of Vision,_ 1912; _Songs from the Clay,_ 1915; _The Adventures of Seumas Beg,_ 1915; _Green Branches,_ 1916, and _Reincarnations,_ 1918. A. E. believed in him from the start; and it was owing to the influence of A. E. that _Insurrections_ took the form of a book, gratefully dedicated to its own begetter. Both patron and protégé must have been surprised by its lack of impact, and still more surprised by the immense success of _The Crock of Gold._ The poems are mainly realistic, pictures of slimy city streets with slimy creatures crawling on the pavements. It is an interesting fact that they appeared the same year of Synge's _Poems_ with Synge's famous Preface counselling brutality, counselling anything to bring poetry away from the iridescent dreams of W. B. Yeats down to the stark realities of life and nature. They bear testimony to the catholic breadth of A. E.'s sympathetic appreciation, for they are as different as may be imagined from the spirit of mysticism. It must also be confessed that their absolute merit as poetry is not particularly remarkable; all the more credit to the discernment of A. E., who described behind them an original and powerful personality. The influence of Synge is strong in the second book of verses, called _The Hill of Vision_, particularly noticeable in such a poem as _The Brute_. Curiously enough, _Songs from the Clay_ is more exalted in tone than _The Hill of Vision_. The air is clearer and purer. But the author of _The Crock of Gold_ and _The Demi-Gods_ appears again in _The Adventures of Seumas Beg_. In these charming poems we have that triple combination of realism, humour, and fantasy that gave so original a flavour to the novels. They make a valuable addition to child-poetry; for men, women, angels, fairies, God and the Devil are treated with easy familiarity, in practical, definite, conversational language. These are the best fruits of his imagination in rime. THE DEVIL'S BAG I saw the Devil walking down the lane Behind our house.--There was a heavy bag Strapped tightly on his shoulders, and the rain Sizzled when it hit him. He picked a rag Up from the ground and put it in his sack, And grinned and rubbed his hands. There was a thing Moving inside the bag upon his back-- It must have been a soul! I saw it fling And twist about inside, and not a hole Or cranny for escape. Oh, it was sad. I cried, and shouted out, "_Let out that soul!_" But he turned round, and, sure, his face went mad, And twisted up and down, and he said "_Hell!_" And ran away.... Oh, mammy! I'm not well. In 1916 Mr. Stephens published a threnody, _Green Branches_, which illustrates still another side of his literary powers. There is organ-like music in these noble lines. The sting of bitterness is drawn from death, and sorrow changes into a solemn rapture. In commenting on Synge's poem, _The Curse_, I spoke of the delight the Irish have in hyperbolic curses; an excellent illustration of this may be found in Mr. Stephens' latest volume, _Reincarnations_. There is no doubt that the poet as well as his imaginary imprecator found real pleasure in the production of the following ejaculations: RIGHTEOUS ANGER The lanky hank of a she in the inn over there Nearly killed me for asking the loan of a glass of beer; May the devil grip the whey-faced slut by the hair, And beat bad manners out of her skin for a year. That parboiled imp, with the hardest jaw you will see On virtue's path, and a voice that would rasp the dead, Came roaring and raging the minute she looked at me, And threw me out of the house on the back of my head! If I asked her master he'd give me a cask a day; But she, with the beer at hand, not a gill would arrange! May she marry a ghost and bear him a kitten, and may The High King of Glory permit her to get the mange. Padraic Colum has followed the suggestion of Synge, and made deep excavations for the foundations of his poetry. It grows up out of the soil like a hardy plant; and while it cannot be called major work, it has a wholesome, healthy earthiness. It is realistic in a different way from the town eclogues of James Stephens; it is not merely in the country, it is agricultural. His most important book is _Wild Earth_, published in Dublin in 1901, republished with additions in New York in 1916. The smell of the earth is pungent in such poems as _The Plougher_ and _The Drover_; while his masterpiece, _An Old Woman of the Roads_, voices the primeval and universal longing for the safe shelter of a home. I wonder what those who believe in the abolition of private property are going to do with this natural, human passion? Private property is not the result of an artificial social code--it is the result of an instinct. The first three stanzas of this poem indicate its quality, expressing the all but inexpressible love of women for each stick of furniture and every household article. O, to have a little house! To own the hearth and stool and all! The heaped up sods upon the fire, The pile of turf against the wall! To have a clock with weights and chains And pendulum swinging up and down! A dresser filled with shining delft, Speckled and white and blue and brown! I could be busy all the day Clearing and sweeping hearth and floor, And fixing on their shelf again My white and blue and speckled store! Lord Dunsany brought to public attention a new poet, Francis Ledwidge, whose one volume, _Songs of the Fields_, is full of promise. In October, 1914, he enlisted in Kitchener's first army, and was killed on the thirty-first of August, 1917. Ledwidge's poetry is more conventional than that of most of his Irish contemporaries, and he is at his best in describing natural objects. Such poems as _A Rainy Day in April_, and _A Twilight in Middle March_ are most characteristic. But occasionally he arrests the ear with a deeper note. The first four lines of the following passage, taken from _An Old Pain_, might fittingly apply to a personality like that of Synge: I hold the mind is the imprisoned soul, And all our aspirations are its own Struggles and strivings for a golden goal, That wear us out like snow men at the thaw. And we shall make our Heaven where we have sown Our purple longings. Oh! can the loved dead draw Anear us when we moan, or watching wait Our coming in the woods where first we met, The dead leaves falling in their wild hair wet, Their hands upon the fastenings of the gate? A direct result of the spiritual influence of A. E. is seen in the poetry of Susan Mitchell. She is not an imitator of his manner, but she reflects the mystical faith. Her little volume, _The Living Chalice,_ is full of the beauty that rises from suffering. It is not the spirit of acquiescence or of resignation, but rather dauntless triumphant affirmation. Her poems of the Christ-child have something of the exaltation of Christina Rossetti; for to her mind the road to victory lies through the gate of Humility. Here is a typical illustration: THE HEART'S LOW DOOR O Earth, I will have none of thee. Alien to me the lonely plain, And the rough passion of the sea Storms my unheeding heart in vain. The petulance of rain and wind, The haughty mountains' superb scorn, Are but slight things I've flung behind, Old garments that I have out-worn. Bare of the grudging grass, and bare Of the tall forest's careless shade, Deserter from thee, Earth, I dare See all thy phantom brightness fade. And, darkening to the sun, I go To enter by the heart's low door, And find where Love's red embers glow A home, who ne'er had home before. Thomas MacDonagh (1878-1916) was, like so many of the young Irish writers of the twentieth century, both scholar and poet. In 1916 he published a prose critical work, _Literature in Ireland,_ in which his two passions, love of art and love of country, are clearly displayed. His books of original verse include _The Golden Joy,_ 1906; _Songs of Myself,_ 1910, and others. He was a worshipper of Beauty, his devotion being even more religious than aesthetic. The poems addressed to Beauty--of which there are comparatively many--exhibit the familiar yet melancholy disparity between the vision in the poet's soul and the printed image of it. This disparity is not owing to faulty technique, for his management of metrical effects shows ease and grace; it is simply the lack of sufficient poetic vitality. Although his ambition as an artist appears to have been to write great odes and hymns to Beauty, his simple poems of Irish life are full of charm. The _Wishes to My Son_ has a poignant tenderness. One can hardly read it without tears. And the love of a wife for "her man" is truly revealed in the last two stanzas of _John-John._ The neighbours' shame of me began When first I brought you in; To wed and keep a tinker man They thought a kind of sin; But now this three years since you're gone 'Tis pity me they do, And that I'd rather have, John-John, Than that they'd pity you. Pity for me and you, John-John, I could not bear. Oh, you're my husband right enough, But what's the good of that? You know you never were the stuff To be the cottage cat, To watch the fire and hear me lock The door and put out Shep-- But there now, it is six o'clock And time for you to step. God bless and keep you far, John-John! And that's my prayer. Joseph Campbell, most of whose work has been published under the Irish name Seosamh Maccathmhaoil, writes both regular and free verse. He is close to the soil, and speaks the thoughts of the peasants, articulating their pleasures, their pains, and their superstitions. No deadness of conventionality dulls the edge of his art--he is an original man. His fancy is bold, and he makes no attempt to repress it. Perhaps his most striking poem is _I am the Gilly of Christ_--strange that its reverence has been mistaken for sacrilege! And in the little song, _Go, Ploughman, Plough_, one tastes the joy of muscle, the revelation of the upturned earth, and the promise of beauty in fruition. Go, ploughman, plough The mearing lands, The meadow lands: The mountain lands: All life is bare Beneath your share, All love is in your lusty hands. Up, horses, now! And straight and true Let every broken furrow run: The strength you sweat Shall blossom yet In golden glory to the sun. In 1917 Mr. Campbell published a beautiful volume, signed with his English name, embellished with his own drawings--one for each poem--called _Earth of Cualann_. Cualann is the old name for the County of Wicklow, but it includes also a stretch to the northwest, reaching close to Dublin. Mr. Campbell's description of it in his preface makes a musical overture to the verses that follow. "Wild and unspoilt, a country of cairn-crowned hills and dark, watered valleys, it bears even to this day something of the freshness of the heroic dawn." The work of Seumas O'Sullivan, born in 1878, has often been likened to that of W. B. Yeats, but I can see little similarity either in spirit or in manner. The younger poet has the secret of melody and his verses show a high degree of technical excellence; but in these respects he no more resembles his famous countryman than many another master. His best poems are collected in a volume published in 1912, and the most interesting of these give pictures of various city streets, _Mercer Street_ (three), _Nelson Street, Cuffe Street_, and so on. In other words, the most original part of this poet's production is founded on reality. This does not mean that he lacks imagination; for it is only by imagination that a writer can portray and interpret familiar scenes. The more widely and easily their veracity can be verified by readers, the greater is the challenge to the art of the poet. Although the work of Herbert Trench is not particularly identified with Ireland, he was born in County Cork, in 1865, and his first volume of poems (1901) was called _Deirdre Wedded._ He completed his formal education at Oxford, taking a first class in the Final Honour Schools, and becoming a Fellow of All Souls. His poetical reputation, which began with the appearance of _Apollo and the Seaman,_ in 1907, has been perceptibly heightened by the publication in 1918 of his collected works in two volumes, _Poems, with Fables in Prose,_ saluted rapturously by a London critic under the heading "Unforgettable Phrases." No one can now tell whether they are unforgettable or not; but his poems are certainly memorable for individual lines rather than for complete architectural beauty. In the midst of commonplace composition single phrases stand out in a manner that almost startles the reader. We may properly add to our list the names of three Irish poets who are Americans. Maurice Francis Egan, full of years and honours, a scholar and statesman, giving notable service to America as our Minister to Denmark, has written poetry marked by tenderness of feeling and delicacy of art. His little book, _Songs and Sonnets,_ published in 1892, exhibits the range of his work as well as anything that he has written. It is founded on a deep and pure religious faith.... Norreys Jephson O'Conor is a young Irish-American, a graduate of Harvard, and has already published three volumes of verse, _Celtic Memories,_ which appeared in England in 1913, _Beside the Blackwater,_ 1915, and _Songs of the Celtic Past,_ 1918; in 1916 he published a poetic play, _The Fairy Bride,_ which was produced for the benefit of Irish troops at the front. American by birth and residence, of Irish ancestry, he draws his inspiration almost wholly from Celtic lore and Celtic scenes. He is a natural singer, whose art is steadily increasing in authority. In 1918 immediate attention was aroused by a volume of poems called _My Ireland,_ from Francis Carlin. This is the work of a young Irishman, a New York business man, who, outside of the shop, has dreamed dreams. Many of these verses are full of beauty and charm. It will be seen from our review of the chief figures among contemporary Irish poets that the jolly, jigging Irishman of stage history is quite conspicuous by his absence. He still gives his song and dance, and those who prefer musical-comedy to orchestral compositions can find him in the numerous anthologies of Anglo-Irish verse; but the tone of modern Irish poetry is spiritual rather than hearty. Whatever may be thought of the appropriateness of the term "Advance of English Poetry" for my survey of the modern field as a whole, there is no doubt that it applies fittingly to Ireland. The last twenty-five years have seen an awakening of poetic activity in that island unlike anything known there before; and Dublin has become one of the literary centres of the world. When a new movement produces three men of genius, and a long list of poets of distinction, it should be recognized with respect for its achievement, and with faith in its future. CHAPTER VII AMERICAN VETERANS AND FORERUNNERS American Poetry in the eighteen-nineties--William Vaughn Moody--his early death a serious loss to literature--George Santayana--a master of the sonnet--Robert Underwood Johnson--his moral idealism--Richard Burton--his healthy optimism--his growth--Edwin Markham and his famous poem--Ella Wheeler Wilcox--her additions to our language--Edmund Vance Cooke--Edith M. Thomas--Henry van Dyke--George E. Woodberry--his spiritual and ethereal quality--William Dudley Foulke--translator of Petrarch--the late H. K. Vielé--his whimsicality--Cale Young Rice--his prolific production--his versatility--Josephine P. Peabody--_Sursum Corda_--her child poems--Edwin Arlington Robinson--a forerunner of the modern advance--his manliness and common sense--intellectual qualities. To compel public recognition by a fresh volume of poems is becoming increasingly difficult. The country fields and the city streets are full of singing birds; and after a few more springs have awakened the earth, it may become as impossible to distinguish the note of a new imagist as the note of an individual robin. When the publishers advertise the initial appearance of a poet, we simply say _Another!_ The versifiers and their friends who study them through a magnifying glass may ultimately force us to classify the songsters into wild poets, gamy poets, barnyard poets, poets that hunt and are hunted. But in the last decade of the last century, poets other than migratory, poets who were winter residents, were sufficiently uncommon. Indeed the courage required to call oneself a poet was considerable. Of the old leaders, Whitman, Whittier, and Holmes lived into the eighteen-nineties; and when, in 1894, the last leaf left the tree, we could not help wondering what the next Maytime would bring forth. Had William Vaughn Moody lived longer, it is probable that America would have had another major poet. He wrote verse to please himself, and plays in order that he might write more verse; but at the dawning of a great career, the veto of death ended both. As it is, much of his work will abide. Indiana has the honour of his birth. He was born at Spencer, on the eighth of July, 1869. He was graduated at Harvard, and after teaching there, he became a member of the English Department of the University of Chicago. He died at Colorado Springs, on the seventeenth of October, 1910. The quality of high seriousness, so dear to Matthew Arnold, was characteristic of everything that Mr. Moody gave to the public. At his best, there is a noble dignity, a pure serenity in his work, which make for immortality. This dignity is never assumed; it is not worn like an academic robe; it is an integral part of the poetry. _An Ode in Time of Hesitation_ has already become a classic, both for its depth of moral feeling and for its sculptured style. Like so many other poets, Mr. Moody was an artist with pencil and brush as well as with the pen; his study of form shows in his language. George Santayana was born at Madrid, on the sixteenth of December, 1863. His father was a Spaniard, and his mother an American. He was graduated from Harvard in 1886, and later became Professor of Philosophy, which position he resigned in 1912, because academic life had grown less and less congenial, although his resignation was a matter of sincere regret on the part of both his colleagues and his pupils. Latterly he has lived in France. He is a professional philosopher but primarily a man of letters. His philosophy is interesting chiefly because the books that contain it are exquisitely written. He is an artist in prose and verse, and it seems unfortunate that his professorial activity--as in the case of A. E. Housman--choked his Muse. For art has this eternal advantage over learning. Nobody knows whether or not philosophical truth is really true; but Beauty is really beautiful. In 1894 Mr. Santayana produced--in a tiny volume limited to four hundred and fifty copies on small paper--_Sonnets and Other Poems;_ and in 1899 a less important book, _Lucifer: a Theological Tragedy._ No living American has written finer sonnets than our philosopher. In sincerity of feeling, in living language, and in melody they reach distinction. A wall, a wall around my garden rear, And hedge me in from the disconsolate hills; Give me but one of all the mountain rills, Enough of ocean in its voice I hear. Come no profane insatiate mortal near With the contagion of his passionate ills; The smoke of battle all the valley fills, Let the eternal sunlight greet me here. This spot is sacred to the deeper soul And to the piety that mocks no more. In nature's inmost heart is no uproar, None in this shrine; in peace the heavens roll, In peace the slow tides pulse from shore to shore, And ancient quiet broods from pole to pole. O world, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes, But it is wisdom to believe the heart. Columbus found a world, and had no chart, Save one that faith deciphered in the skies; To trust the soul's invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art. Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine That lights the pathway but one step ahead Across a void of mystery and dread. Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine By which alone the mortal heart is led Unto the thinking of the thought divine. ON A VOLUME OF SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY What chilly cloister or what lattice dim Cast painted light upon this careful page? What thought compulsive held the patient sage Till sound of matin bell or evening hymn? Did visions of the Heavenly Lover swim Before his eyes in youth, or did stern rage Against rash heresy keep green his age? Had he seen God, to write so much of Him? Gone is that irrecoverable mind With all its phantoms, senseless to mankind As a dream's trouble or the speech of birds. The breath that stirred his lips he soon resigned To windy chaos, and we only find The garnered husks of his disused words. Robert Underwood Johnson was born at Washington, on the twelfth of January, 1853, and took his bachelor's degree at Earlham College, in Indiana, at the age of eighteen. When twenty years old, he became a member of the editorial staff of the _Century Magazine,_ and remained there exactly forty years. His first volume of poems, _The Winter Hour,_ was published in 1891, since which time he has produced many others. Now he is his own publisher, and two attractive books "published by the author" appeared in 1917--_Poems of War and Peace_ and _Italian Rhapsody._ Mr. Johnson is a conservative, by which he would mean that as editor, publicist, and poet, he has tried to maintain the highest standards in art, politics, morality, and religion. Certainly his services to his country have been important; and many good causes that he advocated are now realities. There is no love lost between him and the "new" school in poetry, and possibly each fails to appreciate what is good in the other. Moral idealism is the foundation of much of Mr. Johnson's verse; he has written many occasional poems, poems supporting good men and good works, and poems attacking the omnipresent and well-organized forces of evil. I am quite aware that in the eyes of many critics such praise as that damns him beyond hope of redemption; but the interesting fact is, that although he has toiled for righteousness all his life, he is a poet. His poem, _The Voice of Webster,_ although written years ago, is not only in harmony with contemporary historical judgment (1918) but has a Doric dignity worthy of the subject. There are not a few memorable lines: Forgetful of the father in the son, Men praised in Lincoln what they blamed in him. Always the friend of small and oppressed nations, whose fate arouses in him an unquenchable indignation, he published in 1908 paraphrases from the leading poet of Servia. In view of what has happened during the last four years, the first sentence of the preface to these verses, written by Nikola Tesla, has a reinforced emphasis--"Hardly is there a nation which has met with a sadder fate than the Servian." How curious today seems the individual or national pessimism that was so common _before_ 1914! Why did we not realize how (comparatively) happy we were then? Hell then seems like paradise now. It is as though an athletic pessimist should lose both legs. Shall we learn anything from Edgar's wisdom? O gods! Who is't can say "I am at the worst"? I am worse than e'er I was. Another poet, who has had a long and honourable career, is Richard Burton. He was born at Hartford, Connecticut, on the fourteenth of March, 1859, and was educated at Trinity and at Johns Hopkins, where he took the doctor's degree in Anglo-Saxon. For the last twenty years he has been Professor of English Literature at the University of Minnesota, and is one of the best teachers and lecturers in the country. He paradoxically found his voice in a volume of original poems called _Dumb in June,_ which appeared in 1895. Since then he has published many books of verse and prose--plays, stories, essays, and lyrics. He has shown steady development as a poet--_Poems of Earth's Meaning_ (he has the habit of bad titles), which came out in 1917, is his high-water mark. I am glad that he reprinted in this volume the elegy on the death of Arthur Upson, written in 1910; there is not a false note in it. The personality of Richard Burton shines clearly through his work; cheerful manliness and cheerful godliness. He knows more about human nature than many pretentious diagnosticians; and his gladness in living communicates itself to the reader. Occasionally, as in _Spring Fantasies,_ there is a subtlety easy to miss on a first of careless reading. On the edge of sixty, this poet is doing his best singing and best thinking. Sometimes an author who has been writing all his life will, under the flashlight of inspiration, reveal deep places by a few words formed into some phrase that burns its way into literature. This is the case with Edwin Markham (born 1852) who has produced many books, but seems destined to be remembered for _The Man With the Hoe_ (1899). His other works are by no means negligible, but that one poem made the whole world kin. To a certain extent, the same may be said of Ella Wheeler Wilcox (born 1855). In spite of an excess of sentimentality, which is her besetting sin, she has written much excellent verse. Two sayings, however, will be remembered long after many of her contemporaries are forgotten: Laugh and the world laughs with you, Weep, and you weep alone. Furthermore, in these days of world-tragedy, we all owe her a debt of gratitude for being the author of the phrase written many years ago: No question is ever settled Until it is settled right. The legitimate successor to James Whitcomb Riley is Edmund Vance Cooke (born 1866). He has the same philosophy of cheerful kindliness, founded on a shrewd knowledge of human nature. Verse is his mother tongue; and occasionally he rises above fluency and ingenuity into the pure air of imagination. Among America's living veterans should be named with respect Edith M. Thomas, who has been bravely singing for over thirty years. She was born in Ohio on the twelfth of August, 1854 and her first book of poems appeared in 1885. She is an excellent illustration of just how far talent can go unaccompanied by the divine breath of inspiration. She has perhaps almost too much facility; she has dignity, good taste, an excellent command of a wide variety of metrical effects; she has read ancient and modern authors, she is a keen observer, she is as alert and inquisitive now, as in the days of her youth; and loves to use her abilities in cultivating the fruits of the spirit. I suspect that with the modesty that so frequently accompanies good taste, she understands her own limitations better than any critic could do. Her long faithfulness to the Muse ought to be remembered, now that poetry has come into its kingdom. Among our veteran poets should be numbered also Henry Van Dyke (born 1852). His versatility is so remarkable that it has somewhat obscured his particular merit. His lyric _Reliance_ is spiritually as well as artistically true: Not to the swift, the race: Not to the strong, the fight: Not to the righteous, perfect grace: Not to the wise, the light. But often faltering feet Come surest to the goal; And they who walk in darkness meet The sunrise of the soul. A thousand times by night The Syrian hosts have died; A thousand times the vanquished right Hath risen, glorified. The truth by wise men sought Was spoken by a child; The alabaster box was brought In trembling hands defiled. Not from the torch, the gleam, But from the stars above: Not from my heart, life's crystal stream, But from the depths of love. George E. Woodberry (born 1855), graduate of Harvard, a scholar, literary biographer, and critic of high standing, has been eminent among contemporary American poets since the year 1890, when appeared his book of verse, _The North Shore Watch._ In 1917 an interesting and valuable _Study_ of his poetry appeared, written by Louis V. Ledoux, and accompanied by a carefully minute bibliography. I do not mean to say anything unpleasant about Mr. Woodberry or the public, when I say that his poetry is too fine for popularity. It is not the raw material of poetry, like that of Carl Sandburg, yet it is not exactly the finished product that passes by the common name. It is rather the essence of poetry, the spirit of poetry, a clear flame--almost impalpable. "You may not be worthy to smoke the Arcadia mixture," well--we may not be worthy to read all that Mr. Woodberry Writes. And I am convinced that it is not his fault. His poems of nature and his poems of love speak out of the spirit. He not only never "writes down" to the public, it seems almost as if he intended his verse to be read by some race superior to the present stage of human development. But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins; Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. William Dudley Foulke may fairly be classed with the Indiana group. He was born at New York in 1848, but has lived in Indiana since 1876. He has been conspicuous in much political and social service, but the soul of the man is found in his books of verse, most of which have been first printed in England. He is a lifelong student of Petrarch, and has made many excellent translations. His best independent work may be found in a group of poems properly called _Ad Patriam._ I think such a sonnet as _The City's Crown_ is fairly representative: What makes a city great? Huge piles of stone Heaped heavenward? Vast multitudes who dwell Within wide circling walls? Palace and throne And riches past the count of man to tell, And wide domain? Nay, these the empty husk! True glory dwells where glorious deeds are done, Where great men rise whose names athwart the dusk Of misty centuries gleam like the sun! In Athens, Sparta, Florence, 'twas the soul That was the city's bright, immortal part, The splendour of the spirit was their goal, Their jewel, the unconquerable heart! So may the city that I love be great Till every stone shall he articulate. The early death of Herman Knickerbocker Vielé robbed America not only of one of her most brilliant novelists, but of a poet of fine flavour. In 1903 he published a tall, thin book, _Random Verse,_ that has something of the charm and beauty of _The Inn of the Silver Moon._ In everything that he wrote, Mr. Vielé revealed a winsome whimsicality, and a lightness of touch impossible except to true artists. It should also be remembered to his credit that he loved France with an ardour not so frequently expressed then as now. Indeed, he loved her so much that the last four years of agony might have come near to breaking his heart. He was one of the finest spirits of the twentieth century. Cale Young Rice was born in Kentucky, on the seventh of December, 1872. He is a graduate of Cumberland University and of Harvard, and his wife is the famous creator of Mrs. Wiggs. He has been a prolific poet, having produced many dramas and lyrics, which were collected in two stout volumes in 1915. In 1917 appeared two new works, _Trails Sunward_ and _Wraiths and Realities,_ with interesting prefaces, in which the anthologies of the "new" poetry, their makers, editors, and defenders, are heartily cudgelled. Mr. Rice is a conservative in art, and writes in the orthodox manner; although he is not afraid to make metrical experiments. I like his lyrical pieces better than his dramas. His verse-plays are good, but not supremely good; and I find it difficult to read either blank verse or rimed drama, unless it is in the first class, where assuredly Mr. Rice's meritorious efforts do not belong. His songs are spontaneous, not manufactured. He is a natural singer with such facility that it is rather surprising that the average of his work is so good. A man who writes so much ought, one would think, to be more often than not, commonplace; but the fact is that most of his poems could not be turned into prose without losing their life. He has limitations instead of faults; within his range he may be counted on to give a satisfactory performance. By range I mean of course height rather than breadth. He is at home all over the earth, and his subjects are as varied as his style. Josephine Preston Peabody (Mrs. Marks) was born at New York, and took her degree at Radcliffe in 1894. For two years she was a member of the English department of Wellesley (two syllables only). Her drama _Marlowe_ (1901) gave her something like fame, though I have always thought it was overrated; it is certainly inferior to _The Death of Marlowe_ (1837), by Richard Hengist Horne. In 1910 her play _The Piper_ won the Stratford-on-Avon prize, and subsequently proved to be one of the most successful plays seen on the American stage in the twentieth century. It was produced by the New Theatre, the finest stock company ever known in America. Josephine Peabody has written other dramas, and has an enviable reputation as a lyric poet. The burden of her poetry is _Sursum Corda!_ As I read modern verse, I am forced to the conclusion that men and women require a vast deal of comforting. The years preceding the war seem in the retrospect happy, almost a golden age; homesickness for the England, France, Italy, America that existed before 1914 is almost a universal sentiment; yet when we read the verse composed during those days of prosperous tranquillity, when youth seemed comic rather than tragic, we find that half the poets spent their time in lamentation, and the other half in first aid. An enormous number of lyrics speak as though despondency were the normal condition of men and women; are we really all sad when alone, engaged in reading or writing? "Every man is grave alone," said Emerson. I wonder. So many poets seem to tell us that we ought not absolutely to abandon all hope. The case for living is admittedly a bad one; but the poets beseech us to stick it. Does every man really go down to business in the morning with his jaw set? Does every woman begin the day with compressed lips, determined somehow to pull through till afternoon? Even the nature poets are always telling us to look at the birds and flowers and cheer up. Is that all botany and zoology are good for? Have we nothing to learn from nature but--buck up? I do not mean that Josephine Peabody's poems resemble glad Polyanna, but I was driven to these divagations by the number of cheery lyrics that she has felt it necessary to write. Now I find it almost as depressing to be told that there _is_ hope as to be told that there isn't. I met Poor Sorrow on the way As I came down the years; I gave him everything I had And looked at him through tears. "But, Sorrow, give me here again Some little sign to show; For I have given all I own; Yet have I far to go." Then Sorrow charmed my eyes for me And hallowed them thus far; "Look deep enough in every dark, And you shall see the star." The first two poems in _The Harvest Moon_ (1916) are very fine; but sometimes I think her best work is found in a field where it is difficult to excel--I mean child poetry. Her _Cradle Song_ is as good as anything of hers I know, though I could wish she had omitted the parenthetical refrain. I hope readers will forgive me--though I know they won't--for saying that _Dormi, dormi tu_ sounds a triumphant exclamation at the sixteenth hole. An American poet who won twenty-two years ago a reputation with a small volume, who ten years later seemed almost forgotten, and who now deservedly stands higher than ever before is Edwin Arlington Robinson. He was born in Maine, on the twenty-second of December, 1869, and studied at Harvard University. In 1896 he published two poems, _The Torrent_ and _The Night Before;_ these were included the next year in a volume called _The Children of the Night._ His successive books of verse are _Captain Craig,_ 1902; _The Town Down the River,_ 1910; _The Man Against the Sky,_ 1916; _Merlin,_ 1917; and he has printed two plays, of which _Van Zorn_ (1914) despite its chilling reception, is exceedingly good. Mr. Robinson is not only one of our best known American contemporary poets, but is a leader and recognized as such. Many write verses today because the climate is so favourable to the Muse's somewhat delicate health. But if Mr. Robinson is not a germinal writer, he is at all events a precursor of the modern advance. The year 1896 was not opportune for a venture in verse, but the Gardiner poet has never cared to be in the rearward of a fashion. The two poems that he produced that year he has since surpassed, but they clearly demonstrated his right to live and to be heard. The prologue to the 1897 volume contained his platform, which, so far as I know, he has never seen cause to change. Despite the title, he is not an infant crying in the night; he is a full-grown man, whose voice of resonant hope and faith is heard in the darkness. His chief reason for believing in God is that it is more sensible to believe in Him than not to believe. His religion, like his art, is founded on common sense. Everything that he writes, whether in drama, in lyrics, or in prose criticism, is eminently rational. There is one creed, and only one, That glorifies God's excellence; So cherish, that His will be done, The common creed of common sense. It is the crimson, not the grey, That charms the twilight of all time; It is the promise of the day That makes the starry sky sublime. It is the faith within the fear That holds us to the life we curse;-- So let us in ourselves revere The Self which is the Universe! Let us, the Children of the Night, Put off the cloak that hides the scar! Let us be Children of the Light, And tell the ages what we are! This creed is repeated in the sonnet _Credo_, later in the same volume, which also contains those rather striking portraits of individuals, of which the most impressive is _Richard Cory_. More than one critic has observed that these dry sketches are in a way forerunners of the _Spoon River Anthology_. The next book, _Captain Craig_, rather disappointed the eager expectations of the poet's admirers; like Carlyle's Frederick, the man finally turns out to be not anywhere near worth the intellectual energy expended on him. Yet this volume contained what is on the whole, Mr. Robinson's masterpiece--_Isaac and Archibald_. We are given a striking picture of these old men, and I suppose one reason why we recognize the merit of this poem so much more clearly than we did sixteen years ago, is because this particular kind of character-analysis was not in demand at that time. The figure of the man against the sky, which gives the name to the work published in 1916, does not appear, strictly speaking, till the end of the book. Yet in reality the first poem, _Flammonde_, is the man against the sky-line, who looms up biggest of all in his town as we look back. This fable teaches us to appreciate the unappreciated. Mr. Robinson's latest volume, _Merlin_, may safely be neglected by students of his work. It adds nothing to his reputation, and seems uncharacteristic. I can find little in it except diluted Tennyson, and it won't do to dilute Tennyson. One might almost as well try to polish him. It is of course possible that Mr. Robinson wished to try something in a romantic vein; but it is not his vein. He excels in the clear presentment of character; in pith; in sharp outline; in solid, masculine effort; his voice is baritone rather than tenor. To me his poetry is valuable for its moral stimulus; for its unadorned honesty and sincerity; for its clear rather than warm singing. He is an excellent draughtsman; everything that he has done has beauty of line; anything pretentious is to him abhorrent. He is more map-maker than painter. He is of course more than a maker of maps. He has drawn many an intricate and accurate chart of the deeps and shallows of the human soul. CHAPTER VIII VACHEL LINDSAY AND ROBERT FROST Lindsay the Cymbalist--first impression--Harriet Monroe's Magazine--training in art--the long vagabond tramps--correct order of his works--his drawings--the "Poem Game"--_The Congo_--_General William Booth_--wide sweep of his imagination--sudden contrasts in sound--his prose works--his interest in moving pictures--an apostle of democracy--a wandering minstrel--his vitality--a primary man--art plus morality--his geniality--a poet and a missionary--his fearlessness--Robert Frost--the poet of New England--his paradoxical birth--his education--his career in England--his experiences on a farm--his theory of the spoken word--an out-door poet--not a singer--lack of range--interpreter as well as observer--pure realism--rural tragedies--centrifugal force--men and women--suspense--the building of a poem--the pleasure of recognition--his sincerity--his truthfulness. "But you--you can help so much more. You can help spiritually. You can help to shape things, give form and thought and poignancy to the most matter-of-fact existence; show people how to think and live and appreciate beauty. What does it matter if some of them jeer at you, or trample on your work? What matters is that those for whom your message is intended will know you by your work." --STACY AUMONIER, _Just Outside_. Of all living Americans who have contributed to the advance of English poetry in the twentieth century, no one has given more both as prophet and priest than Vachel Lindsay. His poems are notable for originality, pictorial beauty, and thrilling music. He belongs to no modern school, but is doing his best to found one; and when I think of his love of a loud noise, I call him a Cymbalist. Yet when I use the word _noise_ to describe his verse, I use it not only in its present, but in its earlier meaning, as when Edmund Waller saluted Chloris with While I listen to thy voice, Chloris! I feel my life decay; That powerful noise Calls my flitting soul away. This use of the word, meaning an agreeable, harmonious sound, was current from Chaucer to Coleridge. My first acquaintance with Mr. Lindsay's poetry began with a masterpiece, _General William Booth Enters into Heaven_. Early in the year 1913, before I had become a subscriber to Harriet Monroe's _Poetry_, I found among the clippings in the back of a copy of the _Independent_ this extraordinary burst of music. I carried it in my pocket for a year. Nothing since Francis Thompson's _In No Strange Land_ had given me such a spinal chill. Later I learned that it had appeared for the first time in the issue of _Poetry_ for January, 1913. All lovers of verse owe a debt of gratitude to Miss Monroe for bringing the new poet to the attention of the public; and all students of contemporary movements in metre ought to subscribe to her monthly magazine; the numbers naturally vary in value, but almost any one may contain a "find"; as I discovered to my pleasure in reading _Niagara_ in the summer of 1917. Nicholas Vachel Lindsay--Vachel rimes with Rachel--was born at Springfield, Illinois--which rimes with boy--on the tenth of November, 1879. His pen name omits the Nicholas. For three years he was a student at Hiram College in Ohio, and for five years an art student, first at Chicago, and then at New York. This brings us to the year 1905. From that year until 1910 he drew strange pictures, lectured on various subjects, and wrote defiant and peculiar "bulletins." At the same time he became a tramp, making long pilgrimages afoot in 1906 through Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, and in 1908 he invaded in a like manner some of the Northern and Eastern States. These wanderings are described with vigour, vivacity, and contagious good humour in his book called _A Handy Guide for Beggars_. His wallet contained nothing but printed leaflets--his poems--which he exchanged for bed and board. He was the Evangelist of Beauty, preaching his gospel everywhere by reciting his verses. In the summer of 1912 he walked from Illinois to New Mexico. To understand his development, one should read his books not according to the dates of formal publication, but in the following order: _A Handy Guide for Beggars_, _Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty_, _The Art of the Moving Picture_--these three being mainly in prose. Then one is ready for the three volumes of poetry, _General William Booth Enters into Heaven_ (1913), _The Congo_ (1914), and _The Chinese Nightingale_ (1917). Another prose work is well under way, _The Golden Book of Springfield_, concerning which Mr. Lindsay tells me, "The actual Golden Book is a secular testament about Springfield, to be given to the city in 2018, from a mysterious source. My volume is a hypothetical forecast of the times of 2018, as well as of the Golden Book. Frankly the Lindsay the reviewers know came nearer to existing twelve years ago than today, my manuscripts are so far behind my notes. And a thing that has helped in this is that through changing publishers, etc., my first prose book is called my latest. If you want my ideas in order, assume the writer of the _Handy Guide for Beggars_ is just out of college, of _Adventures While Preaching_ beginning in the thirties, and _the Art of the Moving Picture_ half-way through the thirties. The Moving Picture book in the last half embodies my main social ideas of two years ago. In mood and method, you will find _The Golden Book of Springfield_ a direct descendant of the general social and religious philosophy which I crowded into the photoplay book whether it belonged there or not. I hope you will do me the favour and honour to set my work in this order in your mind, for many of my small public still think _A Handy Guide for Beggars_ the keynote of my present work. But it was really my first wild dash." The above letter was written 8 August, 1917. Like many creative writers, Mr. Lindsay is an artist not only with the pen, but with the pencil. He has made drawings since childhood; drawing and writing still divide his time and energy. The first impression one receives from the pictures is like that produced by the poems--strangeness. The best have that Baconian element of strangeness in the proportion which gives the final touch to beauty; the worst are merely bizarre. He says, "My claim for them is that while laboured and struggling in execution, they represent a study of Egyptian hieroglyphics and Japanese art, two most orthodox origins for art, and have no relation whatever to cubism, post-impressionism, or futurism.... I have been very fond of Swinburne all my life, and I should say my drawing is nearer to his ornate mood than any of my writing has been. But that is a matter for your judgment." I find his pictures so interesting that I earnestly hope he will some day publish a large collection of them in a separate volume. One of his latest developments is the idea of the _Poem Game_, which is elaborated with interesting poetic illustrations in the volume called _The Chinese Nightingale_. In giving his directions and suggestions in the latter part of this book, he remarks, "The present rhymer has no ambitions as a stage manager. The Poem Game idea, in its rhythmic picnic stage, is recommended to amateurs, its further development to be on their own initiative. Informal parties might divide into groups of dancers and groups of chanters. The whole might be worked out in the spirit in which children play King William was King James's Son, London Bridge.... The main revolution necessary for dancing improvisers, who would go a longer way with the Poem Game idea is to shake off the Isadora Duncan and the Russian precedents for a while, and abolish the orchestra and piano, replacing all these with the natural meaning and cadences of English speech. The work would come closer to acting than dancing is now conceived." Here is a good opportunity for house parties, in the intervals of Red Cross activities; and at the University of Chicago, 15 February, 1918, _The Chinese Nightingale_ was given with a full chorus of twelve girls, selected for their speaking voices. From the testimony of one of the professors at the university, it is clear that the performance was a success, realizing something of Mr. Lindsay's idea of the union of the arts, with Poetry at the centre. Among the games given in verse by the author in the latter part of _The Chinese Nightingale_ volume is one called _The Potatoes' Dance_, which appears to me to approach most closely to the original purpose. It is certainly a jolly poem. But whether these games are played by laughing choruses of youth or only by the firelight in the fancy of a solitary reader, the validity of Vachel Lindsay's claim to the title of Poet may be settled at once by witnessing the transformation of a filthy rumhole into a sunlit forest. As Edmond Rostand looked at a dunghill, and saw the vision Of Chantecler, so Vachel Lindsay looked at some drunken niggers and saw the vision of the Congo. Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room, Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable, Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table, Pounded on the table, Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom, Hard as they were able, Boom, boom, BOOM, With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom, Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM. THEN I had religion, THEN I had a vision, I could not turn from their revel in derision. THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK, CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK. Then along that river bank A thousand miles Tattooed cannibals danced in flies; Then I heard the boom of the blood-lust song And a thigh-bone beating on a tin-pan gong.... A negro fairyland swung into view, A minstrel river Where dreams come true. The ebony palace soared on high Through the blossoming trees to the evening sky. The inlaid porches and casements shone With gold and ivory and elephant-bone.... Just then from the doorway, as fat as shotes, Came the cake-walk princes in their long red coats, Canes with a brilliant lacquer shine, And tall silk hats that were red as wine. And they pranced with their butterfly partners there, Coal-black maidens with pearls in their hair, Knee-skirts trimmed with the jassamine sweet, And bells on their ankles and little black-feet. There are those who call this nonsense and its author a mountebank. I call it poetry and its author a poet. You never heard anything like it before; but do not be afraid of your own enjoyment. Read it aloud a dozen times, and you, too will hear roaring, epic music, and you will see the mighty, golden river cutting through the forest. I do not know how many towns I have visited where I have heard "What do you think of Vachel Lindsay? He was here last month and recited his verses. Most of his audience were puzzled." Yet they remembered him. What would have happened if I had asked them to give me a brief synopsis of the lecture they heard yesterday on "The Message of John Ruskin"? Fear not, little flock. Vachel Lindsay is an authentic wandering minstrel. The fine phrases you heard yesterday were like snow upon the desert's dusty face, lighting a little hour or two, is gone. _General William Booth Enters into Heaven_--with the accompanying instruments, which blare out from the printed page--is a sublime interpretation of one of the varieties of religious experience. Two works of genius have been written about the Salvation Army--_Major Barbara_ and _General William Booth Enters into Heaven_. But _Major Barbara_, with its almost appalling cleverness--Granville Barker says the second act is the finest thing Shaw ever composed--is written, after all, from the seat of the scornful, like a metropolitan reporter at a Gospel tent; Mr. Lindsay's poem is written from the inside, from the very heart of the mystery. It is interpretation, not description. "Booth was blind," says Mr. Lindsay; "all reformers are blind." One must in turn be blind to many obvious things, blind to ridicule, blind to criticism, blind to the wisdom of this world, if one would understand a phenomenon like General Booth. Booth led boldly with his big bass drum-- (Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?) The Saints smiled gravely and they said: "He's come." (Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?).... Walking lepers followed, rank on rank, Lurching bravoes from the ditches dank, Drabs from the alleyways and drug fiends pale-- Minds still passion-ridden, soul-powers frail:-- Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath, Unwashed legions with the ways of Death-- (Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?).... And when Booth halted by the curb for prayer He saw his Master thro' the flag-filled air. Christ came gently with a robe and crown For Booth the soldier, while the throng knelt down. He saw King Jesus. They were face to face, And he knelt a-weeping in that holy place. (Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?) Dante and Milton were more successful in making pictures of hell than of heaven--no one has ever made a common conception of heaven more permanently vivid than in this poem. See how amid the welter of crowds and the deafening crash of drums and banjos the individual faces stand out in the golden light. Big-voiced lassies made their banjos bang, Tranced, fanatical they shrieked and sang.... Bull-necked convicts with that land make free... The lame were straightened, withered limbs uncurled And blind eyes opened on a new, sweet world.... Gone was the weasel-head, the snout, the jowl! Sages and sibyls now, and athletes clean, Rulers of empires, and of forests green! It is a pictorial, musical, and spiritual masterpiece. I am not afraid to call it a spiritual masterpiece; for to any one who reads it as we should read all true poetry, with an unconditional surrender to its magic, General William Booth and his horde will not be the only persons present who will enter into heaven. Vachel Lindsay needs plenty of room for his imagination--the more space he has in which to disport himself, the more impressive he becomes. His strange poem, _How I Walked Alone in the Jungles of Heaven_, has the vasty sweep congenial to his powers. _Simon Legree_ is as accurate an interpretation of the negro's conception of the devil and of hell as _General William Booth_ is of the Salvation Army's conception of heaven, though it is not so fine a poem. When he rises from hell or descends from heaven, he loves big, boundless things on the face of the earth, like the Western Plains and the glory of Niagara. The contrast between the bustling pettiness of the artificial city of Buffalo and the eternal fresh beauty of Niagara is like Bunyan's vision of the man busy with the muck-rake while over his head stood an angel with a golden crown. Within the town of Buffalo Are prosy men with leaden eyes. Like ants they worry to and fro, (Important men, in Buffalo). But only twenty miles away A deathless glory is at play: Niagara, Niagara.... Above the town a tiny bird, A shining speck at sleepy dawn, Forgets the ant-hill so absurd, This self-important Buffalo. Descending twenty miles away He bathes his wings at break of day-- Niagara, Niagara. True poet that he is, Vachel Lindsay loves to show the contrast between transient noises that tear the atmosphere to shreds and the eternal beauty of unpretentious melody. After the thunder and the lightning comes the still, small voice. Who ever before thought of comparing the roar of the swiftly passing motor-cars with the sweet singing of the stationary bird? Was there ever in a musical composition a more startling change from fortissimo to pianissimo? Listen to the iron-horns, ripping, racking, Listen to the quack-horns, slack and clacking. Way down the road, trilling like a toad, Here comes the _dice_-horn, here comes the _vice_-horn, Here comes the _snarl_-horn, _brawl_-horn, _lewd_-horn, Followed by the _prude_-horn, bleak and squeaking:-- (Some of them from Kansas, some of them from Kansas) Here comes the _hod_-horn, _plod_-horn, _sod_-horn, Nevermore-to-_roam_-horn, _loam_-horn, _home_-horn, (Some of them from Kansas, some of them from Kansas) Far away the Rachel-Jane Not defeated by the horns, Sings amid a hedge of thorns:-- "Love and life, Eternal youth-- Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, Dew and glory, Love and truth, Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet." Of Mr. Lindsay's prose works the one first written, _A Handy Guide for Beggars_, is by all odds the best. Even if it did not contain musical cadenzas, any reader would know that the author was a poet. It is full of the spirit of joyous young manhood and reckless adventure, and laughs its way into our hearts. There is no reason why Mr. Lindsay should ever apologize for this book, even if it does not represent his present attitude; it is as individual as a diary, and as universal as youth. His later prose is more careful, possibly more thoughtful, more full of information; but this has a touch of genius. Its successor, _Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty_, does not quite recapture the first fine careless rapture. Yet both must be read by students of Mr. Lindsay's verse, not only because they display his personality, but because the original data of many poems can be found among these experiences of the road. For example, _The Broncho That Would not Be Broken_, which first appeared in 1917, is the rimed version of an incident that happened in July, 1912. It made an indelible impression on the amateur farmer, and the poem has a poignant beauty that nothing will ever erase from the reader's mind. I feel certain that I shall have a vivid recollection of this poem to the last day of my life, assuming that on that last day I can remember anything at all. A more ambitious prose work than either of the tramp books is _The Art of the Moving Picture_. It is rather singular that Mr. Lindsay, whose poetry primarily appeals to the ear, should be so profoundly interested in an art whose only appeal is to the eye. The reason, perhaps, is twofold. He is professionally a maker of pictures as well as of chants, and he is an apostle of democracy. The moving picture is the most democratic form of art that the world has ever seen. Maude Adams reaches thousands; Mary Pickford reaches millions. It is clear that Mr. Lindsay wishes that the limitless influence of the moving picture may be used to elevate and ennoble America; for here is the greatest force ever known through which his gospel may be preached--the gospel of beauty. Like so many other original artists, Mr. Lindsay's poetry really goes back to the origins of the art. As John Masefield is the twentieth century Chaucer, so Vachel Lindsay is the twentieth century minstrel. On the one occasion when he met W. B. Yeats, the Irishman asked him point-blank, "What are we going to do to restore the primitive singing of poetry?" and would not stay for an answer. Fortunately the question was put to a man who answered it by accomplishment; the best answer to any question is not an elaborate theory, but a demonstration. As it is sometimes supposed that Mr. Lindsay's poetry owes its inspiration to Mr. Yeats, it may be well to state here positively that our American owes nothing to the Irishman; his poetry developed quite independently of the other's influence, and would have been much the same had Mr. Yeats never risen above the horizon. When I say that he owes nothing, I mean he owes nothing in the manner and fashion of his art; he has a consuming admiration for Mr. Yeats's genius; for Mr. Lindsay considers him of all living men the author of the most beautiful poetry. Chants are only about one-tenth of Vachel Lindsay's work. However radical in subject, they are conservative in form, following the precedents of the ode from its origin. It is necessary to insist that while the material is new, the method is consciously old. He is no innovator in rime or rhythm. But the chants, while few in number, are the most individual part of his production; and up to the year 1918--the most impressive. For in _The Congo_ we have real minstrelsy. The shoulder-notes, giving detailed directions for singing, reciting, intoning, are as charming in their way as the stage-directions of J. M. Barrie. They not only show the aim of the poet; they admit the reader immediately into an inner communion with the spirit of the poem. Every one who reads _The Congo_ or who hears it read cannot help enjoying it; which is one reason why so many are afraid to call it a great poem. For a similar reason, some critics are afraid to call Percy Grainger a great composer, because of his numerous and delightful audacities. Yet _The Congo_ is a great poem, possessing as it does many of the high qualities of true poetry. It shows a splendid power of imagination, as fresh as the forests it describes; it blazes with glorious colours; its music transports the listener with climax after climax; it interprets truthfully the spirit of the negro race. I should not think of attempting to determine the relative position of Percy Grainger in music and of Vachel Lindsay in poetry; but it is clear that both men possess an amazing vitality. Is it not the lack of vital force which prevents so many accomplished artists from ever rising above the crowd? I suppose we have all read reams on reams of magazine verse exhibiting technical correctness, exactitude in language, and pretty fancy; and after a momentary unspoken tribute the writer's skill, we straightway forget. But a poem like _Danny Deever_ appears, it is to call it a music-hall ballad, or to pretend it is not high art; the fact is that the worst memory in the world will retain it. Such a poem comes like a breeze into a close chamber; it is charged with vitality. We are in contact with a new force--a force emanating from that mysterious and inexhaustible stream whence comes every manifestation of genius. To have this super-vitality is to have genius; and although one may have with it many distressing faults of expression and an unlimited supply of bad taste, all other qualities combined cannot atone for the absence of this one primal element. Indeed the excess of wealth in energy is bound to produce shocking excrescences; our Springfield poet is sometimes absurd when he means to be sublime, bizarre when he means to be picturesque. The same is true of Walt Whitman--it is true of all creative writers whom John Burroughs calls _primary_ men, in distinction from excellent artists who remain in the secondary class. Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, Walt Whitman, John Masefield, Vachel Lindsay are primary men. I have often wondered who would write a poem worthy of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. Vachel Lindsay is the only living American who could do it, and I hope he will accept this challenge. Its awful majesty can be revealed only in verse; for it is one of the very few wonders of the world which no photograph and no painting can ever reproduce. Who ever saw a picture that gave him any conception of this incomparable spectacle? In order to understand the primary impulse that drove Mr. Lindsay into writing verse and making pictures, one ought to read first of all his poem _The Tree of Laughing Bells, or The Wings Of the Morning_. The first half of the title exhibits his love of resounding harmonies; the second gives an idea of the range of his imagination. His finest work always combines these two elements, melody and elevation, "and singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest." I hope that the picture he drew for _The Tree of Laughing Bells_ may some time be made available for all students of his work, as it was his first serious design. Vachel Lindsay is essentially honest, for he tries to become himself exactly what he hopes the future American will be. He is a Puritan with a passion for Beauty; he is a zealous reformer filled with Falstaffian mirth; he goes along the highway, singing and dancing, distributing tracts. "Apollo's first, at last the true God's priest." We know that two mighty streams, the Renaissance and the Reformation, which flowed side by side without mingling, suddenly and completely merged in Spenser's _Faery Queene_. That immortal song is a combination of ravishing sweetness and moral austerity. Later the Puritan became the Man on Horseback, and rode roughshod over every bloom of beauty that lifted its delicate head. Despite the genius of Milton, supreme artist plus supreme moralist, the Puritans managed somehow to force into the common mind an antagonism between Beauty and Morality which persists even unto this day. There is no reason why those two contemporaries, Oscar Wilde and the Rev. Charles H. Spurgeon, should stand before the London public as the champions of contending armies; for Beauty is an end in itself, not a means, and so is Conduct. In the best work of Vachel Lindsay, we find these two qualities happily married, the zest for beauty and the hunger and thirst after righteousness. He made a soap-box tour for the Anti-Saloon League, preaching at the same time the Gospel of Beauty. As a rule, reformers are lacking in the two things most sedulously cultivated by commercial travellers and life-insurance agents, tact and humour. If these interesting orders of the Knights of the Road were as lacking in geniality as the typical reformer, they would lose their jobs. And yet fishers of men, for that is what all reformers are, try to fish without bait, at the same time making much loud and offensive speech. Then they are amazed at the callous indifference of humanity to "great moral issues." Vachel Lindsay is irresistibly genial. Nor is any of this geniality made up of the professionally ingratiating smile; it is the foundation of his temperament. What has this got to do with his poetry? It has everything to do with it. It gives him the key to the hearts of children; to the basic savagery of a primitive black or a poor white; to peripatetic harvesters; to futurists, imagists, blue-stockings, pedants of all kinds; to evangelists, college professors, drunken sailors, tramps whose robes are lined with vermin. He is the great American democrat, not because that is his political theory, but simply because he cannot help it. His attitude toward other schools of art, even when he has nothing in common with them, is positively affectionate. Could there be two poets more unlike in temperament and in style than Mr. Lindsay and Mr. Masters? Yet in the volume, _The Chinese Nightingale_, we have a poem dedicated "to Edgar Lee Masters, with great respect." He speaks of "the able and distinguished Amy Lowell," and of his own poems "parodied by my good friend, Louis Untermeyer." He says, "I admire the work of the Imagist Poets. We exchange fraternal greetings.... But neither my few heterodox pieces nor my many struggling orthodox pieces conform to their patterns.... The Imagists emphasize pictorial effects, while the Higher Vaudeville exaggerates musical effects. Imagists are apt to omit rhyme, while in my Higher Vaudeville I often put five rhymes on a line." Impossible to quarrel with Vachel Lindsay. His stock of genial tolerance is inexhaustible, and makes him regard not only hostile humans, but even destructive insects, with inquisitive affection. I want live things in their pride to remain. I will not kill one grasshopper vain Though he eats a hole in my shirt like a door. I let him out, give him one chance more. Perhaps, while he gnaws my hat in his whim, Grasshopper lyrics occur to him. During his tramps, the parents who unwillingly received him discovered, when he began to recite stories to their children, that they had entertained an angel unawares; and I have not the slightest doubt that on the frequent occasions when his application for food and lodging was received with a volley of curses, he honestly admired the noble fluency of his enemy. When he was harvesting, the singing stacker became increasingly and distressingly pornographic; instead of rebuking him for foulness, which would only have bewildered the stacker, Mr. Lindsay taught him the first stanza of Swinburne's chorus. "The next morning when my friend climbed into our barge to ride to the field he began: When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces, The mother of months, in meadow or plain, Fills the shadows-- 'Dammit, what's the rest of it? I've been trying to recite that piece all night.' Now he has the first four stanzas. And last evening he left for Dodge City to stay overnight and Sunday. He was resolved to purchase _Atalanta in Calydon_ and find in the Public Library _The Lady of Shalott_ and _The Blessed Damozel_, besides paying the usual visit to his wife and children." If a man cannot understand music, painting, and poetry without loving these arts, neither can a man understand men and women and children without loving them. This is one reason why even the cleverest cynicism is never more than half the truth, and usually less. Mr. Lindsay is a poet, and a missionary. As a missionary, he wishes all Americans to be as good judges of poetry as they are, let us say, of baseball. One of the numerous joys of being a professional ball-player must be the knowledge that you are exhibiting your art to a prodigious assembly of qualified critics. John Sargent knows that the majority of persons who gaze at his picture of President Wilson are incompetent to express any opinion; his subtlety is lost or quite misunderstood; but Tyrus Raymond Cobb knows that the thousands who daily watch him during the summer months appreciate his consummate mastery of the game. Vachel Lindsay, I suppose, wants millions not merely to love, but to detect the finer shades of the poetic art. If he set out to accomplish this dream by lowering the standards of poetry, then he would debase the public and be a traitor to his guild. But his method is uncompromising--he taught the harvester not Mrs. Hemans, but Swinburne. He calls his own verse the higher vaudeville. But _The Congo_ is the higher vaudeville as _Macbeth_ is the higher melodrama. And there is neither melodrama nor vaudeville in _Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight_--a poem of stern and solemn majesty. Mr. Lindsay is true to the oldest traditions of poetry in his successful attempts to make his verses ring and sing. He is both antique and antic. But he is absolutely contemporary, "modern," "new," in his fearlessness. He has this in common with the practicers of free verse, with the imagists, with the futurists; he is not in the least afraid of seeming ridiculous. There can be no progress in art until artists overcome wholly this blighting fear. It is the lone individual, with his name stamped all over him, charging into the safely anonymous mass; but that way lies the Advance. When Thomas Carlyle took up the study of Oliver Cromwell, he found that all previous historians had tried to answer this question: What is the mask that Oliver wore? And suddenly the true answer came to him in the form of another question: What if it should prove to be no mask at all, but just the man's own face? So there are an increasingly large number of readers who are discerning in the dauntless gambols of Vachel Lindsay, not the mask of buffoonery, worn to attract attention, but a real poet, dancing gaily with bronchos, children, field-mice and potatoes. Such unquenchable vitality, such bubbling exuberance, cannot always be graceful, cannot always be impressive. But the blunders of an original man are sometimes more fruitful than the correctness of a copyist. Furthermore, blunders sometimes make for wisdom and truth. Let us not forget Vachel Lindsay's poem on Columbus: Would that we had the fortunes of Columbus, Sailing his caravels a trackless way, He found a Universe--he sought Cathay. God give such dawns as when, his venture o'er, The Sailor looked upon San Salvador. God lead us past the setting of the sun To wizard islands, of august surprise; God make our blunders wise. COLD PASTORAL! The difference between Vachel Lindsay and Robert Frost is the difference between a drum-major and a botanist. The former marches gaily at the head of his big band, looking up and around at the crowd; the latter finds it sweet with unuplifted eyes To pace the ground, if path be there or none. Robert Frost, the poet of New England, was born at San Francisco, and published his first volume in London. Midway between these two cities lies the enchanted ground of his verse; for he belongs to New England as wholly as Whittier, as truly as Mr. Lindsay belongs to Illinois. He showed his originality so early as the twenty-sixth of March, 1875, by being born at San Francisco; for although I have known hundreds of happy Californians, men and women whose love for their great State is a religion, Robert Frost is the only person I ever met who was born there. That beautiful country is frequently used as a springboard to heaven; and that I can understand, for the transition is less violent than from some other points of departure. But why so few natives? Shamelessly I lift the following biographical facts from Miss Amy Lowell's admirable essay on our poet. At the age of ten, the boy was moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts. He went to school, and disliked the experience. He tried Dartmouth and later Harvard, staying a few months at the first and two years at the second. Between these academic experiences he was married. In 1900 he began farming in New Hampshire. In 1911 he taught school, and in 1912 went to England. His first book of poems, _A Boy's Will,_ was published at London in 1913. The review in _The Academy_ was ecstatic. In 1914 he went to live at Ledbury, where John Masefield was born, and where in the neighbourhood dwelt W.W. Gibson. His second volume, _North of Boston,_ was published at London in 1914. Miss Lowell quotes a sentence, full of insight, from the review in the _Times._ "Poetry burns up out of it, as when a faint wind breathes upon smouldering embers." In March, 1915, Mr. Frost returned to America, bringing his reputation with him. He bought a farm in New Hampshire among the mountains, and in 1916 appeared his third volume, _Mountain Interval._ Was there ever a better illustration of the uncritical association of names than the popular coupling of Robert Frost with Edgar Lee Masters? They are similar in one respect; they are both poets. But in the glorious army of poets, it would be difficult to find two contemporaries more wholly unlike both in the spirit and in the form of their work than Mr. Frost and Mr. Masters. Mr. Frost is as far from free verse as he can stretch, as far as Longfellow; and while he sometimes writes in an ironical mood, he never indulges himself in cynicism. As a matter of fact, Mr. Frost is nearer in his art to Mr. Lindsay than to Mr. Masters; for his theory of poetry, which I confess I cannot understand, requires the poet to choose words entirely with reference to their spoken value. His poetry is more interesting and clearer than his theories about it. I once heard him give a combination reading-lecture, and after he had read some of his poems, all of which are free from obscurity, he began to explain his ideas on how poetry should be written. He did this with charming modesty, but his "explanations" were opaque. After he had continued in this vein for some time, he asked the audience which they would prefer to him do next--read some more of his poems, go on talking about poetry? He obtained from his hearers an immediate response, picked up his book, and read in admirable fashion his excellent verse. We judge poets by their poems, not by their theories. Robert Frost is an out-door poet. Even when he gives a picture of an interior, the people are always looking out of the windows at something or other. In his poems we follow the procession of the seasons, with the emphasis on autumn and winter. One might be surprised at the infrequency of his poems on spring, were it not for the fact that his knowledge of the country is so precise and definite. Spring is more beautiful in the city than in the country; it comes with less alloy. No one has ever drawn a better picture of a country road in the pouring rain, where "the hoof-prints vanish away." In spite of his preoccupation with the exact value of oral words, he is not a singing lyrist. There is not much _bel canto_ in his volumes. Nor do any of his poems seem spontaneous. He is a thoughtful man, given to meditation; the meanest flower or a storm-bedraggled bird will lend him material for poetry. But the expression of his poems does not seem naturally fluid. I suspect he has blotted many a line. He is as deliberate as Thomas Hardy, and cultivates the lapidary style. Even in the conversations frequently introduced into his pieces, he is as economical with words as his characters are with cash. This gives to his work a hardness of outline in keeping with the New England temperament and the New Hampshire climate. There is no doubt that much of his peculiarly effective dramatic power is gained by his extremely careful expenditure of language. It is, of course, impossible to prescribe boundary lines for a poet, although there are critics who seem to enjoy staking out a poet's claim. While I have no intention of building futile walls around Mr. Frost's garden, nor erecting a sign with the presumptuous prohibition of trespassing beyond them, it is clear that he has himself chosen to excel in quality of produce rather than in variety and range. In the first poem of the first volume, he concludes as follows: They would not find me changed from him they knew-- Only more sure of all I thought was true. This is certainly a precise statement of the impression made on the reader who studies his three books in chronological order. _A Boy's Will,_ as befits a youth who has lived more in himself than in the world, is more introspective than either _North of Boston_ or _Mountain Interval;_ but this habit of introspection gave him both the method and the insight necessary for the accurate study of nature and neighbours. He discovered what other people were like, simply by looking into his own heart. And in _A Boy's Will_ we find that same penetrating examination of rural scenes and common objects that gives to the two succeeding the final stamp of veracity. I do not remember ever having seen a phrase like the following, though the phrase instantly makes the familiar picture leap into that empty space ever before the reader's eye--that space, which like bare wall-paper, seems to demand a picture on its surface. _Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand._ It is fortunate that the law of diminishing returns--which every farmer is forced to heed--does not apply to pastoral poets. Out of the same soil Robert Frost has successfully raised three crops of the same produce. He might reply that in the intervals he has let the ground lie fallow--but my impression is that he is really working it all the time. The sharp eye of the farmer sees nothing missed by our poet, but the poet has interpretation as well as vision. He not only sees things but sees things in their relations; and he knows that not only is everything related to every other thing, but that all things are related to the eternal mystery, their source and their goal. This is why the yellow primrose is so infinitely more than a yellow primrose. This also explains why the poems of Mr. Frost, after stirring us to glad recognition of their fidelity, leave us in a revery. His studies of human nature are the purest realism. They are conversations rather than arias, for he uses the speaking, not the singing voice. Poets are always amazing us, and some day Robert Frost may astonish me by writing a romantic ballad. It would surely be a surprise, for with his lack of operatic accomplishment, and his fondness for heroes in homespun, he would seem almost ideally unfitted for the task. This feeling I find strengthened by his poem called _An Equal Sacrifice_, the only one of his pieces where anything like a ballad is attempted, and the only one in all three books which seems to be an undeviating failure. It is as flat as a pancake, and ends with flat moralizing. Mr. Frost is particularly unsuccessful at preaching. No, apart from his nature poems, his studies of men and women are most impressive when they follow the lines of Doric simplicity in the manner of the powerful stage-plays written by Susan Glaspell. The rigidity of the mould seems all the better fitted for the suppressed passion it contains, just as liquid fire is poured into a vessel with unyielding sides. His two most successful poems of this kind are _Home Burial_, in _North of Boston_, and _Snow_, in _Mountain Interval_. The former is not so much a tragedy as the concentrated essence of tragedy. There is enough pain in it to furnish forth a dozen funerals. It has that centrifugal force which Mr. Calderon so brilliantly suggests as the main characteristic of the dramas of Chekhov. English plays are centripetal; they draw the attention of the audience to the group of characters on the stage; but Chekhov's, says Mr. Calderon, are centrifugal; they throw our regard off from the actors to the whole class of humanity they represent. Just such a remark applies to _Home Burial_; it makes the reader think of the thousands of farmhouses darkened by similar tragedies. Nor is it possible to quote a single separate passage from this poem for each line is so necessary to the total effect that one must read every word of it to feel its significance. It is a masterpiece of tragedy. And it is curious, as one continues to think about it, as one so often does on finishing a poem by Robert Frost, that we are led first to contemplate the number of such tragedies, and finally to contemplate a stretch of life of far wider range--the broad, profound difference between a man and a woman. Are there any two creatures on God's earth more unlike? In this poem the man is true to himself, and for that very reason cannot in his honest, simple heart comprehend why he should appear to his own wife as if he were some frightful monster. He is perplexed, amazed, and finally enraged at the look of loathing in the wide eyes of his own mate. It was a little thing--his innocent remark about a birch fence--that revealed to her that she was living with a stranger. Grief never possesses a man as it does a woman, except when the grief is exclusively concerned with his own bodily business, as when he discovers that he has cancer or toothache. To the last day of human life on earth, it will seem incomprehensible to a woman that a man, on the occasion of a death in the family, can sit down and eat with gusto a hearty meal. For bodily appetite, which is the first thing to leave a woman, is the last to leave a man; and when it has left every other part of his frame, it sometimes has a repulsive survival in his eyes. The only bridge that can really cross this fathomless chasm between man and woman is the bridge of love. The dramatic quality of _Snow_ is suspense. The object through which the suspense is conveyed to the reader is the telephone, employed with such tragic effect at the Grand Guignol. Mr. Frost's art in colloquial speech has never appeared to better advantage than here, and what a wave of relief when the voice of Meserve is heard! It is like a resurrection. In order fully to appreciate a poem like _Mending Wall_, one should hear Mr. Frost read it. He reads it with such interpretative skill, with subtle hesitations and pauses for apparent reflection, that the poem grows before the audience even as the wall itself. He hesitates as though he had a word in his hands, and was thinking what would be exactly the best place to deposit it--even as the farmer holds a stone before adding it to the structure. For this poem is not written, it is built. It is built of separate words, and like the wall it describes, it takes two to build it, the author and the reader. When the last line is reached, the poem is finished. Nearly every page in the poetry of Robert Frost gives us the pleasure of recognition. He is not only sincere, he is truthful--by which I mean that he not only wishes to tell the truth, but succeeds in doing so. This is the fundamental element in his work, and will, I believe, give it permanence. GOOD HOURS I had for my winter evening walk-- No one at all with whom to talk, But I had the cottages in a row Up to their shining eyes in snow. And I thought I had the folk within: I had the sound of a violin; I had a glimpse through curtain laces Of youthful forms and youthful faces. I had such company outward bound. I went till there were no cottages found. I turned and repented, but coming back I saw no window but that was black. Over the snow my creaking feet Disturbed the slumbering village street Like profanation, by your leave, At ten o'clock of a winter eve. A poem like that gives not only the pleasure of recognition; it has an indescribable charm. It is the charm when joy fades, not into sorrow, but into a deep, abiding peace. CHAPTER IX AMY LOWELL, ANNA BRANCH, EDGAR LEE MASTERS, LOUIS UNTERMEYER Amy Lowell--a patrician--a radical--her education--her years of preparation--vigour and versatility--definitions of free verse and of poetry--Whitman's influence--the imagists--_Patterns_--her first book--her rapid improvement--sword blades--her gift in narrative--polyphonic prose--Anna Hempstead Branch--her dramatic power--domestic poems--tranquil meditation--an orthodox poet--Edgar Lee Masters--his education--Greek inspiration--a lawyer--_Reedy's Mirror_--the _Anthology_--power of the past--mental vigour--similarity and variety--irony and sarcasm--passion for truth--accentuation of ugliness--analysis--a masterpiece of cynicism--an ideal side--the dramatic monologue--defects and limitations--Louis Untermeyer--his youth--the question of beauty--three characteristics--a gust of life--_Still Life_--old maids--burlesques and parodies--the newspaper humourists--F. P. A.--his two books--his influence on English composition. Among the many American women who are writing verse in the twentieth century, two stand out--Amy Lowell and Anna Branch. And indeed I can think of no woman in the history of our poetry who has surpassed them. Both are bone-bred New Englanders. No other resemblance occurs to me. It is interesting that a cosmopolitan radical like Amy Lowell should belong ancestrally so exclusively to Massachusetts, and to so distinguished a family. She is a born patrician, and a reborn Liberal. James Russell Lowell was a cousin of Miss Lowell's grandfather, and her maternal grandfather, Abbott Lawrence, was also Minister to England. Her eldest brother, nineteen years older than she, was the late Percival Lowell, a scientific astronomer with a poetic imagination; he was one of the most interesting and charming personalities I ever knew. His constant encouragement and example were powerful formative influences in his sister's development. Another brother is the President of Harvard, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, through whose dignified, penetrating, sensible, authoritative speeches and writings breathes the old Massachusetts love of liberty. Courage is a salient characteristic in Amy Lowell. She is afraid of nothing, not even of her birthday. She was born at Brookline, on the ninth of February, 1874. "Like all young poets, I was influenced by everybody in turn, but I think the person who affected me most profoundly was Keats, although my later work resembles his so little. I am a collector of Keats manuscripts, and have spent much time in studying his erasures and corrections, and they taught me most of what I know about poetry; they, and a very interesting book which is seldom read today--Leigh Hunt's _Imagination and Fancy._ I discovered the existence of Keats through that volume, as my family read very little of what was considered in those days 'modern poetry'; and, although my father Keats in his library, Shelley was barred, on account of his being an atheist. I ran across this volume of Leigh Hunt's when I was about fifteen and it turned me definitely to poetry." (_Letter of March, 1918._) When she was a child, her family took her on a long European tour; in later years she passed one winter on the Nile, another on a fruit ranch in California, another in visiting Greece and Turkey. In 1902 she decided to devote her life to writing poetry, and spent eight years in faithful study, effort, and practice without publishing a word. In the _Atlantic Monthly_ for August, 1910, appeared her first printed verse; and in 1912 came her first volume of poems, _A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass,_ the title being a quotation from the forbidden Shelley. Since that year she has been a notable figure in contemporary literature. Her reputation was immensely heightened and widened by the publication of her second book, _Sword Blades and Poppy Seed,_ in 1914. In 1916 came the third volume, _Men, Women, and Ghosts._ She has been a valiant fighter for poetic theory, writing many articles on Free Verse, Imagism, and kindred themes; and she is the author of two works in prose criticism, _Six French Poets,_ in 1915, and _Tendencies in Modern American Poetry,_ in 1917, of which the former is the more valuable and important. In five years, then, from 1912 to 1917, she produced three books of original verse, two tall volumes of literary criticism, and a large number of magazine poems and essays--a remarkable record both in quantity and quality. Vigour and versatility are the words that rise in one's mind when thinking of the poetry of Amy Lowell. It is absurd to class her as a disciple of free verse, or of imagism, or of polyphonic prose; she delights in trying her hand at all three of these styles of composition, for she is an experimentalist; but much of her work is in the strictest orthodox forms, and when she has what the Methodists used to call _liberty,_ no form or its absence can prevent her from writing poetry. I can see no reason for either attacking or defending free verse, and if I had any influence with Miss Lowell, I should advise her to waste no more time in the defence of any school or theory, because the ablest defence she or any one else can make is actually to write poetry in the manner in which some crystallized critics say it cannot be done. True poetry is recognizable in any garment; and ridicule of the clothes can no more affect the identity of the article than the attitude of Penelope's suitors toward the rags of Ulysses affected his kingship. Let the journalistic wits have their fling; it is even permissible to enjoy their wit, when it is as cleverly expressed as in the following epigram, which I believe appeared in the Chicago _Tribune:_ "Free verse is a form of theme unworthy of pure prose embodiment developed by a person incapable of pure poetic expression." Not at all bad; but as some one said of G. K. Chesterton, it would be unfair to apply to wit the test of truth. It is better to remember Coleridge's remark on poetry: "The opposite of poetry is not prose but science; the opposite of prose is not poetry but verse." Perhaps we could say of the polyphonic people that they are well versed in prose. The amazing growth of free verse during the last ten years has surprised no one more than me, and it has convinced me of my lack of prophetic clairvoyance. Never an idolater of Walt Whitman, I have also never been blind to his genius; as he recedes in time his figure grows bigger and bigger, like a man in the moving pictures leaving the screen. But I used to insist rather emphatically that although he was said to be both the poet of democracy and the poet of the future, he was in fact admired mostly by literary aristocrats; and that the poets who came after him were careful to write in strict composition. In the 'nineties I looked around me and behold, Kipling, Phillips, Watson and Riley were in their work at the opposite extreme from Walt Whitman; he had not a single disciple of unquestioned poetic standing. Now, in the year of grace 1918, though he is not yet read by the common people--a thousand of whom read Longfellow to one who reads Whitman--he has a tribe of followers and imitators, many of whom do their utmost to reach his results by his methods, and some of whom enjoy eminence. Those who are interested in the growth of imagist poetry in English should read the three slender anthologies published respectively in 1915, 1916, and 1917, called _Some Imagist Poets,_ each containing poems nowhere previously printed. The short prefaces to the first two volumes are models of modesty and good sense, whether one likes imagist poetry or hates it. According to this group of poets, which is not a coterie or a mutual admiration society, but a few individuals engaged in amicable rivalry at the same game, the principles of imagism are mainly six, of which only the second is a departure from the principles that have governed the production of poetry in the past. First, to use the exact word: second, to create new rhythms: third, to allow absolute freedom in the choice of subject; fourth, to present an image: fifth, to produce poetry that is hard and clear: sixth, to study concentration. There are six poets adequately represented in each volume; but the best poem of all is _Patterns,_ by Amy Lowell. In spite of having to carry six rules in her head while writing it--for if one is determined to be "free" one must sufficiently indicate the fact--she has written a real poem. It strictly conforms to all six requirements, and is at the same time simple, sensuous, passionate. I like it for many reasons--because it is real, intimate, confidential; because it narrates a tragic experience that is all too common in actual life; because its tragedy is enhanced by dramatic contrasts, the splendour of the bright, breezy, sunlit garden contrasting with the road of ashen spiritual desolation the soul must take; the splendour of the gorgeous stiff brocade and the futility of the blank, soft, imprisoned flesh; the obstreperous heart, beating in joyous harmony with the rhythm of the swaying flowers, changed by one written word into a desert of silence. It is the sudden annihilation of purpose and significance in a body and mind vital with it; so that as we close the poem we seem to see for ever moving up and down the garden path a stiff, brocaded gown, moving with no volition. The days will pass: the daffodils will change to roses, to asters, to snow; but the unbroken pattern of desolation will change not. Publication is as essential to a poet as an audience to a playwright; Keats realized this truth when he printed _Endymion._ He knew it was full of faults and that he could not revise it. But he also knew that its publication would set him free, and make it possible for him immediately to write something better. This seems to have been the case with Amy Lowell. Her first book, _A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass,_ does not compare for a moment with _Sword Blades and Poppy Seed._ It seems a harsh judgment, but I find under the dome hardly one poem of unusual merit, and some of them are positively bad. Could anything be flatter the first line of the sonnet _To John Keats?_ Great master! Boyish, sympathetic man! The second volume, _Sword Blades and Poppy Seed,_ which came two years later, showed a remarkable advance, and gave its author an enviable position in American literature. An admirable preface reveals three characteristics--reverence for the art of poetry, determination not to be confined to any school, and a refreshingly honest confession of hard labour in learning how to make poems. As old Quarles put it in the plain-spoken seventeenth century, I see no virtues where I smell no sweat. The first poem, which gives its name to the volume, is written in the lively octosyllabics made famous by _Christmas Eve._ The sharpness of her drawings, one of her greatest gifts, is evident in the opening lines: A drifting, April, twilight sky, A wind which blew the puddles dry, And slapped the river into waves That ran and hid among the staves Of an old wharf. A watery light Touched bleak the granite bridge, and white Without the slightest tinge of gold, The city shivered in the cold. Soon the traveller meets a man who takes him to an old room, full of the symbols of poetry-edged weapons, curiously and elegantly wrought together with seeds of poppy. Poems may be divided into two classes, stimulants and sedatives. All books are either dreams, or swords, You can cut, or you can drug, with words. Tennyson's poetry is mainly soothing, which is what lazy and tired people look for in any form of art, and are disappointed when they do not find it; the poetry of Donne, Browning, Emerson is the sword of the spirit; it is the opposite of an anaesthetic. Hence when readers first meet it, the effect is one of disturbance rather than repose, and they think it cannot be poetry. Yet in this piece of symbolism, which itself is full of beauty, Amy Lowell seems to say that both reveillé and taps are wrought by music--one is as much the legitimate office of poetry as the other. But although she classifies her poems in this volume according to the opening pair of symbols, and although she gives twice as much space to poppies as to swords, her poetry is always more stimulating than soothing. Her poppy seeds won't work; there is not a soporific page in the whole book. One of the reasons why her books are so interesting is because she knows how to tell a story in verse. In her romances style waits on matter, like an attentive and thoroughly trained handmaid. Both poetry and incident are sustained from beginning to end; and the reader would stop more often to admire the flowers along the path if he were not so eager to know the event. In this particular kind of verse-composition, she has shown a steady development. The first real illustration of her powers is seen in _The Great Adventure of Max Brueck,_ in _Poppy Seed,_ though why so stirring a poem is thus classified is to me quite mysterious; yet when we compare this "effort" with later poems like _Pickthorn Manor_ and _The Cremona_ Violin we see an advance both in vigour and in technique which is so remarkable that she makes her earlier narrative seem almost immature. A poet is indeed fortunate who can defeat that most formidable of all rivals--her younger self. In _The Cremona Violin_ we have an extraordinary combination of the varied abilities possessed by the author. It is an absorbing tale full of drama, incident, realism, romanticism, imagism, symbolism and pure lyrical singing. There is everything in fact except polyphonic prose, and although I am afraid she loves her experiments in that form, they are the portion of her complete works that I could most willingly let die. Her sensitiveness to colours and to sounds is clearly betrayed all through the romantic narrative of the _Cremona Violin,_ where the instrument is a symbol of the human heart. Those who, in the old days before the Germans began their career of wholesale robbery and murder, used to hear Mozart's operas in the little rococo _Residenz-Theater_ in Munich, will enjoy reminiscently these stanzas. The _Residenz-Theater_ sparkled and hummed With lights and people. Gebnitz was to sing, That rare soprano. All the fiddles strummed With tuning up; the wood-winds made a ring Of reedy bubbling noises, and the sting Of sharp, red brass pierced every eardrum; patting From muffled tympani made a dark slatting Across the silver shimmering of flutes; A bassoon grunted, and an oboe wailed; The 'celli pizzicato-ed like great lutes, And mutterings of double basses trailed Away to silence, while loud harp-strings hailed Their thin, bright colours down in such a scatter They lost themselves amid the general clatter. Frau Altgelt, in the gallery, alone, Felt lifted up into another world. Before her eyes a thousand candles shone In the great chandeliers. A maze of curled And powdered periwigs past her eyes swirled. She smelt the smoke of candles guttering, And caught the scent of jewelled fans fluttering. Her most ambitious attempt in polyphonic prose is _Guns as Keys: and the Great Gate Swings,_ whereof the title is like a trumpet fanfare. The thing itself is a combination of a moving picture and a calliope. Written with immense gusto, full of comedy and tragedy, it certainly is not lacking in vitality; but judged as poetry, I regard it as inferior to her verse romances and lyrics. Rhythmical prose is as old as the Old Testament; the best modern rhythmical prose that I have seen is found in the earlier plays of Maurice Maeterlinck, written a quarter of a century ago. It is unnecessary to enquire whether those dramas are poetry or not; for although nearly all his work is in the printed form of prose, the author is almost invariably spoken of as "the poet Maeterlinck." The versatility of Amy Lowell is so notable that it would be vain to predict the nature of her future production, or to attempt to set a limit to her range. In her latest and best book, _Men Women, and Ghosts,_ besides the two admirable long narratives, we have poems of patriotism, outdoor lyrics, town eclogues, pictures of still life tragic pastorals in the manner of Susan Glaspell, and one delightful _revenant, Nightmare,_ which takes us back to Dickens, for it is a verse comment on a picture by George Cruikshank. Her robust vitality is veined with humour; she watches a roof-shingler with active delight, discovering poetry in cheerful manual toil. One day life seems to her depressing; another day, beautiful; another, inspiring; another, downright funny. In spite of her assured position in contemporary literature, one feels that her career has not reached its zenith. Some twelve years ago, I was engaged in earnest conversation with James Whitcomb Riley concerning the outlook for American poetry. The chronic optimist for once was filled with woe. "There is not a single person among the younger writers," said he, "who shows any promise of greatness, except"--and then his face recovered its habitual cheerfulness--"Anna Hempstead Branch. She is a poet." In justification of his gloom, it should be remembered that the present advance in American poetry began some time after he uttered these words; and although he was a true poet and wrote poems that will live for many years to come, he was, in everything that had to do with the art of poetry, the most conservative man I ever knew. Anna Branch was born at Hempstead House, New London, Connecticut, and was graduated from Smith College in 1897. In 1898 she won a first prize for the best poem awarded by the _Century Magazine_ in a competition open to college graduates. Since then she has published three volumes of verse, _The Heart of the Road,_ 1901, _The Shoes That Danced,_ 1905, _Rose of the Wind,_ 1910. I fear that her ambition to be a dramatist may have prevented her from writing lyrical poetry (her real gift) during these last eight years. If it is true, 'tis pity; for a good poem is a better thing than a successful play and will live longer. Like many poets who cannot write plays, she is surcharged with dramatic energy. But, to use a familiar phrase, it is action in character rather than character in action which marks her work most impressively, and the latter is the essential element for the footlights. Shakespeare, Rostand, and Barrie have both, and are naturally therefore great dramatists. Two of the most of Miss Branch's poems are _Lazarus_ _Ora Pro Nobis._ These are fruitful subjects for poetry, the man who came back from the grave and the passionate woman buried alive. In the short piece _Lazarus,_ cast into the form of dialogue Lazarus answers the question put to him by Tennyson in _In Memoriam._ Where wert thou, brother, those four days? Various members of the group, astounded at his resurrection, try in vain to have their curiosity satisfied. What do the dead do? Are they happy? _Has my baby grown?_ What overpowering motive brought you back from peace to live once more in sorrow? This last question Lazarus answers in a positive but unexpected way. A great desire led me out alone From those assured abodes of perfect bliss.... And by the way I went came seeking earth, Seeing before my eyes one only thing-- _The Crowd_ What was it, Lazarus? Let us share that thing! What was it, brother, thou didst see? _Lazarus_ A cross. Another dynamic poem, glowing with passion, is _Ora Pro Nobis._ It is difficult to select passages from it, for it is sustained in power and beauty from the first line to the last; yet some idea of it: form and colour may be obtained by citation. A little girl was put into a convent with only two ways of passing the time; stitching and praying. She has never seen her face--she never will see for no mirror is permitted; but she sees one day the reflection of its beauty in the hungry eyes of a priest. Long years I dwelt in that dark hall, There was no mirror on the wall, I never saw my face at all, (Hail Mary.) In a great peace they kept me there, A straight white robe they had me wear, And the white bands about my hair. I did not know that I was fair. (Hail Mary.)... The sweet chill fragrance of the snow, More fine than lilies all aglow Breathed around--he saw me so, In garments spun of fire and snow. (Holy Mother, pray for us.) His hands were on my face and hair, His high, stern eyes that would forswear All earthly beauty, saw me there. Oh, then I knew that I was fair! (Mary, intercede for us.)... Then I raised up to God my prayer, I swept its strong and circling air, Betwixt me and the great despair. (Sweet Mary, pray for us.) But when before the sacred shrine I knelt to kiss the cross benign, Mary, I thought his lips touched mine. (Ave Maria, Ora Pro Nobis.) Although some of her poems have an intensity almost terrible, Anna Branch has written household lyrics as beautiful in their uncrowded simplicity as an eighteenth century room. The _Songs for My Mother,_ celebrating her clothes, her her words, her stories breathe the unrivalled perfume of tender memories. And if _Lazarus_ is a sword, two of her most original pieces are poppy-seeds, _To Nature_ and THE SILENCE OF THE POETS I better like that shadowed side of things In which the Poets wrote not; when they went Unto the fullness of their great content Like moths into the grass with folded wings. The silence of the Poets with it brings The other side of moons, and it is spent In love, in sorrow, or in wonderment. After the silence, maybe a bird sings. I have heard call, as Summer calls the swallow, A leisure, bidding unto ways serene To be a child of winds and the blue hazes. "Dream"--quoth the Dreamer--and 'tis sweet to follow! So Keats watched stars rise from his meadows green, And Chaucer spent his hours among the daisies. This productive leisure has borne much fruit in the poetry of Anna Branch; her work often has the quiet beauty rising from tranquil meditation. She is an orthodox poet. She uses the old material--God, Nature, Man--and writes songs with the familiar notation. She has attracted attention not by the strangeness of her ideas, or by the audacity of her method, but simply by the sincerity of her thought and the superior quality of her singing voice. There is no difficulty in distinguishing her among the members of the choir, and she does not have to make a discord to be noticed. There are almost as many kinds of poets as there are varieties of human beings; it is a far cry from Anna Branch to Edgar Lee Masters. I do not know whether either reads the other; it may be a mutual admiration exists; it may be that each would be ashamed to have written the other's books; even if that were true, there is no reason why an American critic--with proper reservations--should not be proud of both. For if there is one thing certain about the advance of poetry in America, it is that the advance is a general one along the whole line of composition from free verse and polyphonic prose on the extreme left to sonnets and quatrains on the extreme right. Edgar Lee Masters was born in Kansas, on the twenty-third of August, 1869. The family moved to Illinois the next year. His father was a lawyer, and the child had access to plenty of good books, which he read eagerly. In spite of his preoccupation with the seamy side of human nature, he is in reality a bookish poet, and most of his work--though not the best part of it--smells of the lamp. Fortunately for him he was brought up on the Bible, for even those who attack the Old Book are glad to be able to tip their weapons with biblical language. Ibsen used to say that his chief reading, even in mature years, was always the Bible; "it is so strong and mighty." Everything connected with books and literary work fascinated the youth; like so many boys of his time--before wireless came in--he had his own printing-press. I wonder if it was a "self-inker"? In my day, the boy who owned a "self-inker" and "club-skates" was regarded with envy. The three generations in this family illustrate the play _Milestones;_ the grandfather vainly tried to make his son a farmer, but the boy elected to be a lawyer and carried his point; he in turn was determined to twist his son into a lawyer, whereas Edgar wanted to be a writer. As this latter profession is usually without emolument, he was forced into the law, where the virile energy of his mind rewarded his zestless efforts with success. However, at the age of twenty-one, he persuaded his father to allow him to study at Knox College for a year, a highly important period in his development; for he resumed the interrupted study of Latin, and began Greek. Greek is the chief inspiration of his life, and of his art. He has read Homer every year since his college days. Later he went to Chicago, and stayed there, busying himself not only at his profession, but taking part in political activities, as any one might guess from reading his poems. The primal impulse to write was not frustrated; he has written verse all his life; and in fact has published a considerable number of volumes during the last twenty years, no one of which attracted any attention until 1915, when _Spoon River Anthology_ made everybody sit up. Mr. Masters was nearly fifty when this book appeared; it is a long time to wait for a reputation, especially if one is constantly trying to obtain a hearing. It speaks powerfully for his courage, tenacity, and faith that he should never have quit--and his triumph will encourage some good and many bad writers to persevere. Emboldened by the immense success of _Spoon River_, he produced three more volumes in rapid succession; _Songs and Satires_ in 1916, _The Great Valley_ in the same year, and _Toward the Gulf_ in 1918. It is fortunate for him that these works followed rather than preceded the _Anthology_; for although they are not destitute of merit, they seem to require a famous name to ensure a sale. It is the brand, and not the goods, that gives a circulation to these books. The pieces in _Spoon River Anthology_ originally appeared in William Marion Reedy's periodical, called _Reedy's Mirror_, the first one being printed in the issue for 29 May, 1914, and the others following week after week. A grateful acknowledgment is made in a brief preface to the volume, and the full debt is handsomely paid in a dedicatory preface of _Toward the Gulf_, which every one interested in Mr. Masters--and who is not?--should read with attention. The poet manfully lets us know that it was Mr. Reedy who, in 1909, made him read the Greek Anthology, without which _Spoon River_ would never have been written. Criticism is forestalled in this preface, because Mr. Masters takes a prose translation of Meleager, "with, its sad revealment and touch of irony"--exactly the characteristics of _Spoon River_--and turns it into free verse: The holy night and thou, O Lamp, We took as witness of our vows; And before thee we swore, He that [he] would love me always And I that I would never leave him. We swore, And thou wert witness of our double promise. But now he says that our vows were written on the running waters. And thou, O Lamp, Thou seest him in the arms of another. What Mr. Masters did was to transfer the method and the tone of the Greek Anthology to a twentieth century village in the Middle West, or as he expresses it, to make "an epic rendition of modern life." Even if it were desirable, how impossible it is to escape from the past! we are ruled by the dead as truly in the fields of art as in the domain of morality and religion. The most radical innovator can no more break loose from tradition than a tree can run away from its roots. John Masefield takes us back to Chaucer; Vachel Lindsay is a reincarnation of the ancient minstrels; Edgar Lee Masters owes both the idea and the form of his masterpiece to Greek literature. Art is as continuous as life. This does not mean that he lacks originality. It was a daring stroke--body-snatching in 1914. To produce a work like _Spoon River Anthology_ required years of accumulated experience; a mordant power of analysis; a gift of shrewd speech, a command of hard words that will cut like a diamond; a mental vigour analogous to, though naturally not so powerful, as that displayed by Browning in _The Ring and the Book_. It is still a debatable proposition whether or not this is high-class poetry; but it is mixed with brains. Imagine the range of knowledge and power necessary to create two hundred and forty-six distinct characters, with a revealing epitaph for each one! The miracle of personal identity has always seemed to me perhaps the greatest miracle among all those that make up the universe; but to take up a pen and clearly display the marks that separate one individual from the mass, and repeat the feat nearly two hundred and fifty times, this needs creative genius. The task that confronted Mr. Masters was this: to exhibit a long list of individuals with sufficient basal similarity for each one to be unmistakably human, and then to show the particular traits that distinguish each man and woman from the others, giving each a right to a name instead of a number. For instinctively we are all alike; it is the Way in which we manage our instincts that shows divergence; just as men and women are alike in possessing fingers, whereas no two finger-prints are ever the same. Mr. Masters has the double power of irony and sarcasm. The irony of life gives the tone to the whole book; particular phases of life like religious hypocrisy and political trimming are treated with vitriolic scorn. The following selection exhibits as well as any the author's poetic power of making pictures, together with the grinning irony of fate. BERT KESSLER I winged my bird, Though he flew toward the setting sun; But just as the shot rang out, he soared Up and up through the splinters of golden light, Till he turned right over, feathers ruffled, With some of the down of him floating near, And fell like a plummet into the grass. I tramped about, parting the tangles, Till I saw a splash of blood on a stump, And the quail lying close to the rotten roots. I reached my hand, but saw no brier, But something pricked and stunned and numbed it. And then, in a second, I spied the rattler-- The shutters wide in his yellow eyes, The head of him arched, sunk back in the rings of him, A circle of filth, the color of ashes, Or oak leaves bleached under layers of leaves, I stood like a stone as he shrank and uncoiled And started to crawl beneath the stump, When I fell limp in the grass. This poem, with its unforgettable pictures and its terrible climax, can stand easily enough by itself; it needs no interpretation; and yet, if we like, the rattler may be taken as a symbol--a symbol of the generation of vipers of which the population of Spoon River is mainly composed. In the _Anthology_, the driving motive is an almost perverted passion for truth. Conventional epitaphs are marked by two characteristics; artistically, when in verse, they are the worst specimens of poetry known to man; even good poets seldom write good epitaphs, and among all the sins against art perpetrated by the uninspired, the most flagrant are found here; to a bad poet, for some reason or other, the temptation to write them is irresistible. In many small communities, one has to get up very early in the morning to die before the village laureate has his poem prepared. This depth of artistic infamy is equalled only by the low percentage of truth; so if one wishes to discover literary illustrations where falsehood is united with crudity, epitaphs would be the field of literature toward which one would instinctively turn. Like Jonathan Swift, Mr. Masters is consumed with hatred for insincerity in art and insincerity in life; in the laudable desire to force the truth upon his readers, he emphasizes the ugly, the brutal, the treacherous elements which exist, not only in Spoon River, but in every man born of woman. The result, viewed calmly, is that we have an impressive collection of vices--which, although inspired by a sincerity fundamentally noble--is as far from being a truthful picture of the village as a conventional panegyric. The ordinary photographer, who irons out the warts and the wrinkles, gives his subject a smooth lying mask instead of a face; but a photograph that should make the defects more prominent than the eyes, nose, and mouth would not be a portrait. A large part of a lawyer's business is analysis; and the analytical power displayed by Mr. Masters is nothing less than remarkable. Each character in Spoon River is subjected to a remorseless autopsy, in which the various vicious elements existing in all men and women are laid bare. But the business of the artist, after preparatory and necessary analysing, is really synthesis. It is to make a complete artistic whole; to produce some form of art. This is why the _Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard_, by Thomas Gray, is so superior as a poem to _Spoon River Anthology_. The rich were buried in the church; the poor in the yard; we are therefore given the short and simple annals of the poor. The curious thing is that these humble, rustic, unlettered folk were presented to the world sympathetically by a man who was almost an intellectual snob. One of the most exact scholars of his day, one of the most fastidious of mortals, one of the shyest men that ever lived, a born mental aristocrat, his literary genius enabled him to write an immortal masterpiece, not about the Cambridge hierarchy, but about illiterate tillers of the soil. The _Elegy_ is the genius of synthesis; without submitting each man in the ground to a ruthless cross-examination, Gray managed to express in impeccable beauty of language the common thoughts and feelings that have ever animated the human soul. His poem will live as long as any book, because it is fundamentally true. I therefore regard _Spoon River Anthology_ not as a brilliant revelation of human nature, but as a masterpiece of cynicism. It took a genius to write the fourth book of _Gulliver's Travels_; but after all, Yahoos are not men and women, and horses are not superior to humanity. The reason why, in reading the _Anthology_, we experience the constant pricking of recognition is because we recognize the baser elements in these characters, not only in other persons, but in ourselves. The reason why the Yahoos fill us with such terror is because they are true incarnations of our worst instincts. There, but for the grace of God, go you and I. The chief element in the creative work of Mr. Masters being the power of analysis, he is at his best in this collection of short poems. When he attempts a longer flight, his limitations appear. It is distinctly unfortunate that _The Spooniad_ and _The Epilogue_ were added at the end of this wonderful Rogues' Gallery. They are witless. Even the greatest cynic has his ideal side. It is the figure of Abraham Lincoln that arouses all the romanticism of our poet, as was the case with Walt Whitman, who, to be sure, was no cynic at all. The short poem _Anne Rutledge_ is one of the few that strictly conform to the etymological meaning of the title of the book; for "Anthology" is a union of two Greek words, signifying a collection of flowers. Like Browning, Mr. Masters forsook the drama for the dramatic monologue. His best work is in this form, where he takes one person and permits him to reveal himself either in a soliloquy or in a conversation. And it must be confessed that the monologues spoken by contemporaries or by those Americans who talk from the graveyard of Spoon River, are superior to the attempts at interpreting great historical figures. The Shakespeare poem _Tomorrow Is My Birthday_ is not only one of the worst effusions of Mr. Masters' pen, it is almost sacrilege. Good friend, for Jesus' sake, forbear! Outside of the monologues and the epitaphs, the work of Mr. Masters is mainly unimpressive. Yet I admire his ambition to write on various subjects and in various metres. Occasionally he produces a short story in verse, characterized by dramatic power and by austere beauty of style. The poem _Boyhood Friends_, recently published in the _Yale Review_, and quite properly included by Mr. Braithwaite in his interesting and valuable Anthology for 1917, shows such a command of blank verse that I look for still finer things in the future. With all his twisted cynicism and perversities of expression, Mr. Masters is a true poet. He has achieved one sinister masterpiece, which has cleansed his bosom of much perilous Stuff. Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new. Louis Untermeyer was born at New York, on the first of October, 1885. He produced a volume of original poems at the age of twenty-five. This was followed by three other books, and in addition, he has written many verse-translations, a long list of prose articles in literary criticism, whilst not neglecting his professional work as a designer of jewelry. There is no doubt that this form of art has been a fascinating occupation and an inspiration to poetry. He not only makes sermons in stones, but can manufacture jewels five words long. Should any one be dissatisfied with his designs for the jewel-factory, he can "point with pride" to his books, saying, _Haec sunt mea ornamenta_. Somewhere or other I read a review of the latest volume of verse from Mr. Untermeyer, and the critic began as follows: "One is grateful to Mr. Untermeyer for doing what almost none of his contemporaries on this side of the water thinks of doing." This sentence stimulated my curiosity, for I wondered what particularly distinguishing feature of his work I had failed to see. "For about the last thing that poets and theorizers about poetry in these days think of is beauty. In discussion and practice beauty is almost entirely left out of consideration. Frequently they do not concern themselves with it at all." Such criticism as that starts with a preconceived definition of beauty, misses every form of beauty outside of the definition, and gives to Mr. Untermeyer credit for originality in precisely that feature of his work where he most resembles contemporary and past poets. I believe that beauty is now as it always has been the main aim of the majority of American poets; but instead of legendary beauty, instead of traditional beauty, they wish us to see beauty in modern life. For example, it is interesting to observe how completely public opinion has changed concerning the New York sky-scrapers. I can remember when they were regarded as monstrosities of commercialism, an offence to the eye and a torment to the aesthetic sense. But I recall through my reading of history that mountains were also once regarded as hideous deformities--they were hook-shouldered giants, impressive in size--anything you like except beautiful. All the mountain had to do was to go on staying there, confident in its supreme excellence, knowing that some day it would be appreciated: Somebody remarks: Morello's outline there is wrongly traced, His hue mistaken; what of that? or else, Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that? Speak as they please, what does the mountain care? We know better today; we know that the New York sky-scrapers are beautiful; just as we know that New York harbour in the night has something of the glory of fairyland. No, it will not do to say that Mr. Untermeyer is original in his preoccupation with beauty; it Would be almost as true to say that the chief feature in his work is the English language. What is notable in him is the combination of three things; an immense love of life, a romantic interpretation of material things, and a remarkable talent for parody and burlesque. Sex and Death--the obsessions of so many young poets--are not particularly conspicuous in the poetry of this healthy, happy young man. He writes about swimming, climbing the palisades, willow-trees, children playing in the street. Familiar objects become mysterious and thought-provoking in the light of his fancy. His imagination provides him with no end of fun; he needs no melancholy solitary pilgrimage in the gloaming to give him a pair of rimes; a country farm or a city slum is quite enough. I like his affectionate salutation to the willow; I like his interpretation of a side street. His greatest _tour de force_ is his poem, _Still Life_. Of all painted pictures, with the one exception of dead fish, the conventional overturned basket of fruit is to me the most barren of meaning, the least inspiring, in suggestion a blank. Yet somehow Mr. Untermeyer, looking at a bowl of fruit, sees something I certainly never saw and do not ever expect to see except on this printed page, something that a bowl of fruit has for me in the same proportion as the stump of a cigar--_something dynamic_. I do not understand why so many Americans plaster the walls of their dining-rooms with pictures of overset fruit-baskets and of dead fish with their ugly mouths open; but in "still life" this paradoxical poet sees something full of demoniacal energy. O Death, where is thy sting? Never have I beheld such fierce contempt, Nor heard a voice so full of vehement life As this that shouted from a bowl of fruit, High-pitched, malignant, lusty and perverse-- Brutal with a triumphant restlessness. But the fruit in the basket is dead. The energy, the fierce vehemence and the lusty shout are not in the bowl, but in the soul. Subjectivity can no further go. It is rather curious, that when our poet can behold such passion in a willow-tree or in a mess of plucked fruit, he should be so blind to it in the heart of an old maid; though to be honest, the heroine of his poem is meant for an individual rather than a type. If there is one object on earth that a healthy young man cannot understand, it is an old maid. Who can forget that terrible outburst of the aunt in _Une Vie_? "Nobody ever cared to ask if my feet were wet!" Mr. Untermeyer will live and learn. He is not contemptuous; he is full of pity, but it is the pity of ignorance. Great joys or sorrows never came To set her placid soul astir; Youth's leaping torch, Love's sudden flame Were never even lit for her. _Don't you believe it, Mr. Untermeyer!_ Even in his "serious" volumes of verse, there is much satire and saline humour; so that his delightful book of parodies, called _---- and Other Poets_ is as spontaneous a product of his Muse as his utterances _ex cathedra_. The twenty-seven poems, called _The Banquet of the Bards_, with which the book begins, are excellent fooling and genuine criticism. He wrote these things for his own amusement, one reason why they amuse us. A roll-call of twenty-seven contemporary poets, where each one comes forward and "speaks his piece," is decidedly worth having. John Masefield "tells the true story of Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son"; William Butler Yeats "gives a Keltic version of Three Wise Men in Gotham"; Robert Frost "relates the Death of the Tired Man," and so on. I had rather possess this volume than any other by the author; it is almost worthy to rank with the immortal _Fly Leaves_. Furthermore, in his serious work Mr. Untermeyer has only begun to fight. And while we are considering poems "in lighter vein," let us not forget the three famous initials signed to a column in the Chicago _Tribune_, Don Marquis of the _Evening Sun_, who can be either grave or gay but cannot be ungraceful, and the universally beloved Captain Franklin P. Adams, whose _Conning Tower_ increased the circulation of the New York _Tribune_ and the blood of its readers. Brightest and best of the sons of the Colyumnists, his classic Muse made the _Evening Mail_ an evening blessing, sending the suburbanites home to their wives "always in good humour"; then, like Jupiter and Venus, he charged from evening star to morning star, and gave many thousands a new zest for the day's work. Skilful indeed was his appropriation of the methods of Tom Sawyer; as Tom got his fence whitewashed by arousing an eager competition among the boys to do his work for him, each toiler firmly persuaded that he was the recipient rather than the bestower of a favour, so F. P. A. incited hundreds of well-paid literary artists to compete with one another for the privilege of writing his column without money and without price. His two books of verse, _By and Large_ and _Weights and Measures_, have fairly earned a place in contemporary American literature; and the influence of his column toward precision and dignity in the use of the English language has made him one of the best teachers of English composition in the country. CHAPTER X SARA TEASDALE, ALAN SEEGER, AND OTHERS Sara Teasdale--her poems of love--her youth--her finished art--Fannie Stearns Davis--her thoughtful verse--Theodosia Garrison--her war poem--war poetry of Mary Carolyn Davies--Harriet Monroe--her services--her original work--Alice Corbin--her philosophy--Sarah Cleghorn--poet of the country village--Jessie B. Rittenhouse--critic and poet--Margaret Widdemer--poet of the factories--Carl Sandburg--poet of Chicago--his career--his defects--J. C. Underwood--poet of city noises--T. S. Eliot--J. G. Neihardt--love poems--C. W. Stork--_Contemporary Verse_--M. L. Fisher--_The Sonnet_--S. Middleton--J. P. Bishop--W. A. Bradley--nature poems--W. Griffith--_City Pastorals_--John Erskine--W. E. Leonard--W. T. Whitsett--Helen Hay Whitney--Corinne Roosevelt Robinson--M. Nicholson--his left hand--Witter Bynner--a country poet--H. Hagedorn--Percy Mackaye--his theories--his possibilities--J. G. Fletcher--monotony of free verse--Conrad Aiken--his gift of melody--W. A. Percy--the best American poem of 1917--Alan Seeger--an Elizabethan--an inspired poet. Sara Teasdale (Mrs. Filsinger) was born at St. Louis (pronounced Lewis), on the eighth of August, 1884. Her first book appeared when she was twenty-three, and made an impression. In 1911 she published _Helen of Troy, and Other Poems_; in 1915 a volume of original lyrics called _Rivers to the Sea_; some of these were reprinted, together with new material, in _Love Poems_ (1917), which also contained _Songs out of Sorrow_--verses that won the prize offered by the Poetry Society of America for the best unpublished work read at the meetings in 1916; and in 1918 she received the Columbia University Poetry Prize of five hundred dollars, for the best book produced by an American in 1917. In spite of her youth and the slender amount of her production, Sara Teasdale has won her way to the front rank of living American poets. She is among the happy few who not only know what they wish to accomplish, but who succeed in the attempt. How many manuscripts she burns, I know not; but the comparatively small number of pages that reach the world are nearly fleckless. Her career is beginning, but her work shows a combination of strength and grace that many a master might envy. It would be an insult to call her poems "promising," for most of them exhibit a consummate control of the art of lyrical expression. Give her more years, more experience, wider range, richer content, her architecture may become as massive as it is fine. She thoroughly understands the manipulation of the material of poetry. It would be difficult to suggest any improvement upon TWILIGHT The stately tragedy of dusk Drew to its perfect close, The virginal white evening star Sank, and the red moon rose. Although she gives us many beautiful pictures of nature, she is primarily a poet of love. White-hot passion without a trace of anything common or unclean; absolute surrender; whole-hearted devotion expressed in pure singing. Nothing is finer than this--to realize that the primal impulse is as strong as in the breast of a cave-woman, yet illumined by clear, high intelligence, and pouring out its feeling in a voice of gracious charm. PITY They never saw my lover's face, They only know our love was brief, Wearing awhile a windy grace And passing like an autumn leaf. They wonder why I do not weep, They think it strange that I can sing, They say, "Her love was scarcely deep Since it has left so slight a sting." They never saw my love nor knew That in my heart's most secret place I pity them as angels do Men who have never seen God's face. A PRAYER Until I lose my soul and lie Blind to the beauty of the earth, Deaf tho' a lyric wind goes by, Dumb in a storm of mirth; Until my heart is quenched at length And I have left the land of men, Oh, let me love with all my strength Careless if I am loved again. If the two pieces just cited are not poetry, then I have no idea what poetry may be. Another young woman poet is Fannie Stearns Davis (Mrs. Grifford). The quality of her mind as displayed in her two books indicates possibilities of high development. She was born at Cleveland, on the sixth of March, 1884, is a graduate of Smith College, was a teacher in Wisconsin, and has made many contributions to various magazines. Her first book of poems, _Myself and I_, appeared in 1913; two years later came the volume called _Crack o' Dawn_. She is not much given to metrical adventure, although one of her most original poems, _As I Drank Tea Today_, has an irregular rime-scheme. For the most part, she follows both in subject and style the poetic tradition. She has the gift of song--not indeed in the superlative degree--but nevertheless unmistakable; and she has a full mind. She is neither optimist nor pessimist; I should call her a sympathetic observer. The following poem sums up fairly well her accumulated wisdom: I have looked into all men's hearts. Like houses at night unshuttered they stand, And I walk in the street, in the dark, and on either hand There are hollow houses, men's hearts. They think that the curtains are drawn, Yet I see their shadows suddenly kneel To pray, or laughing and reckless as drunkards reel Into dead sleep till dawn. And I see an immortal child With its quaint high dreams and wondering eyes Sleeping beneath the hard worn body that lies Like a mummy-case defiled. And I hear an immortal cry Of splendour strain through the sodden words, Like a flight of brave-winged heaven-desirous birds From a swamp where poisons lie. --I have looked into all men's hearts. Oh, secret terrible houses of beauty and pain! And I cannot be gay, but I cannot be bitter again, Since I looked into all men's hearts. There is one commandment that all poets under the first class, and perhaps some of those favoured ones, frequently break: the tenth. One cannot blame them, for they know what poetry is, and they love it. They not only know what it is, but their own limited experience has taught them what rapture it must be to write lines of flawless beauty. This unconquerable covetousness is admirably and artistically expressed in Fannie Davis's poem, _After Copying Goodly Poetry_. It is an honest confession; but its author is fortunate in being able to express vain desire so beautifully that many lesser poets will covet her covetousness. Theodosia Garrison was born at Newark, New Jersey, on the twenty-sixth of November, 1874. She has published three volumes of verse, of which perhaps the best known is _The Joy of Life_ (1909). At present she is engaged in war work, where her high faith, serene womanliness, and overflowing humour ought to make her, in the finest sense of the word, efficient. Her short poem on the war is a good answer to detractors of America. APRIL 2nd We have been patient--and they named us weak; We have been silent--and they judged us meek, Now, in the much-abused, high name of God We speak. Oh, not with faltering or uncertain tone-- With chosen words we make our meaning known, That like a great wind from the West shall shake The double throne. Our colours flame upon the topmost mast,-- We lift the glove so arrogantly cast, And in the much-abused, high name of God We speak at last. Another war alchemist is Mary Carolyn Davies, poet of Oregon and Brooklyn. She knows both coasts of America, she understands the American spirit of idealism and self-sacrifice, and her verses have a direct hitting power that will break open the hardest heart. In her book, _The Drums in Our Street_ (1918), the glory and the tragedy of the world-struggle are expressed in terms of individual feeling. There is decided inequality in this volume, but the best pieces are so carefully distributed among the commonplace that one must read the whole work. Harriet Monroe was born in Chicago and went to school in Georgetown, D. C. In connection with the World's Exposition in Chicago she received the honour of being formally invited to write a poem for the dedication. Accordingly at the ceremony commemorating the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America, 21 October, 1892, her _Columbian Ode_ was given with music. Harriet Monroe's chief services to the art of poetry are seen not so much in her creative work as in her founding and editing of the magazine called _Poetry_, of which I made mention in my remarks on Vachel Lindsay. In addition to this monthly stimulation--which has proved of distinct value both in awakening general interest and in giving new poets an opportunity to be heard, Miss Monroe, with the assistance of Alice Corbin Henderson, published in 1917 an anthology of the new varieties of verse. Certain poets are somewhat arbitrarily excluded, although their names are mentioned in the Preface; the title of the book is _The New Poetry_; the authors are fairly represented, and with some sins of commission the selections from each are made with critical judgment. Every student of contemporary verse should own a copy of this work. In 1914 Miss Monroe produced a volume of her original poems, called _You and I_. There are over two hundred pages, and those who look in them for something strange and startling will be disappointed. Knowing the author's sympathy with radicalism in art, and with all modern extremists, the form of these verses is surprisingly conservative. To be sure, the first one, _The Hotel_, is in a kind of polyphonic prose, but it is not at all a fair sample of the contents. Now whether the reading of many manuscripts has dulled Miss Monroe's creative power or not, who can say? The fact is that most of these poems are in no way remarkable either for feeling or expression and many of them fail to rise above the level of the commonplace. There is happily no straining for effect; but unhappily in most instances there is no effect. Alice Corbin (Mrs. Henderson) is a native of Virginia and a resident of Chicago. She is co-editor with Miss Monroe of _The New Poetry_ anthology, wherein her own poems are represented. These indicate skill in the manipulation of different metrical forms; and they reveal as well a shrewd, healthy acceptance of life as it is. This feeling communicates itself in a charming way to the reader; it is too vigorous for acquiescence, too wise for blind optimism, but nearer optimism than pessimism. It seems perhaps in certain aspects to resemble the philosophy of Ralph Hodgson, although his command of the art of poetry is beyond her range. Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn was born at Norfolk, Virginia, on the fourth of February, 1876, but since childhood has lived in Vermont. She studied at Radcliffe College, and has written much verse and prose. In 1915 a number of her lyrics were printed between the short stories in a volume by her friend, Dorothy Canfield, called _Hillsboro People_. In 1917 she published a book of verses, _Portraits and Protests_, where the portraits are better than the protests. No one has more truly or more sympathetically expressed the spirit of George Herbert's poetry than Miss Cleghorn has given it with a handful of words, in the lyric _In Bemerton Church_. But she is above all a country mouse and a country muse; she knows her Vermont neighbours to the skin and bone, and brings out artistically the austere sweetness of their daily lives. I think I like best of all her work the poem A SAINT'S HOURS In the still cold before the sun, _Her matins_ Her brothers and her sisters small She woke, and washed and dressed each one. And through the morning hours all _Prime_ Singing above her broom she stood And swept the house from hall to hall. Then out she ran with tidings good, _Tierce_ Across the field and down the lane, To share them with the neighbourhood. Four miles she walked, and home again, _Sexts_ To sit through half the afternoon And hear a feeble crone complain. But when she saw the frosty moon _Nones_ And lakes of shadow on the hill, Her maiden dreams grew bright as noon. She threw her pitying apron frill _Vespers_ Over a little trembling mouse When the sleek cat yawned on the sill In the late hours and drowsy house. _Evensong_ At last, too tired, beside her bed She fell asleep--her prayers half said. Is not this one of the high functions of poetry, to interpret the life the poet knows best, and to interpret it always in terms of the eleventh and twelfth commandments? Observe she loves the sister-mother, and she loves the mouse as well as the cat. There is no reason why those who love birds should not love cats as well; is a cat the only animal who eats birds? It is a diverting spectacle, a man with his mouth full of squab, insisting that cats should be exterminated. A woman who has done much for the advance of English poetry in America by her influence on public critical opinion, is Jessie B. Rittenhouse. She is a graduate of Genesee Wesleyan Seminary in Lima, New York, taught Latin and English in Illinois and in Michigan, and for five years was busily engaged in journalism. In 1904 she published a volume of criticism on contemporary verse, and for the last fourteen years has printed many essays of interpretation, dealing with the new poets. I dare say no one in America is more familiar with the English poetry of the twentieth century than she. She has been so occupied with this important and fruitful work that she has had little time to compose original verse; but any one who will read through her volume, _The Door of Dreams_, will find it impossible not to admire her lyrical gift. She has not yet shown enough sustained power to give her a place with Anna Hempstead Branch or with Sara Teasdale; but she has the capacity of putting much feeling into very few words. Margaret Widdemer, the daughter of a clergyman, was born at Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and was graduated from Drexel Institute Library School in 1909. She has written verse and prose from early childhood, but was not widely known until the appearance of her poem _Factories_. In 1915 this was published in a book with other pieces, and a revised, enlarged edition was printed in 1917, called by the name of the now-famous song, and containing in addition nearly a hundred lyrics. Although her soul is aflame at the omnipresence of injustice in the world, her work covers a wide range of thought and feeling. Her heart is swollen with pity for the sufferings of women; but she is no sentimentalist. There is an intellectual independence, a clear-headed womanly self-reliance about her way of thinking and writing that is both refreshing and stimulating. In hope and in despair she speaks for the many thousands of women, who first found their voice in Ibsen's _Doll's House_; her poem, _The Modern Woman to Her Lover_ has a cleanly honesty without any strained pose. And although _Factories_ is doubtless her masterpiece in its eloquent _Inasmuch as ye did it not_, she can portray a more quiet and more lonely tragedy as well. Her poem called _The Two Dyings_ might have been named _The Heart Knoweth its own Bitterness_. I can remember once, ere I was dead, The sorrow and the prayer and bitter cry When they who loved me stood around the bed, Watching till I should die: They need not so have grieved their souls for me, Grouped statue-like to count my failing breath-- Only one thought strove faintly, bitterly With the kind drug of Death: How once upon a time, unwept, unknown, Unhelped by pitying sigh or murmured prayer, My youth died in slow agony alone With none to watch or care. Never in any period of the world's history was the table of life so richly spread as in the years 1900-1914; women were just beginning to realize that places ought to be reserved for them as well as for men, when the war came, and there was no place for any one except a place to fight the Black Plague of Kaiserism; now when the war is over, suppose the women insist? What then? Before the French Revolution, only a few were invited to sit down and eat, while the majority were permitted to kneel and watch from a distance. A Frenchman once remarked, "The great appear to us great because we are kneeling--let us rise." They rose, and out of the turmoil came an enormous enlargement of the dining-hall. Carl Sandburg sings of Chicago with husky-haughty lips. I like Chicago and I like poetry; but I do not much care for the combination as illustrated in Mr. Sandburg's volume, _Chicago Poems_. I think it has been overrated. It is pretentious rather than important. It is the raw material of poetry, rather than the finished product. Mere passion and imagination are not enough to make a poet, even when accompanied by indignation. If feeling and appreciation could produce poetry, then we should all be poets. But it is also necessary to know how to write. Carl Sandburg was born at Galesburg, Illinois, on the sixth of January, 1878. He has "worked his own way" through life with courage and ambition, performing any kind of respectable indoor and outdoor toil that would keep him alive. In the Spanish war, he immediately enlisted, and belonged to the first military company that went to Porto Rico. In 1898 he entered Lombard College; after his Freshman year, he tried to enter West Point, succeeding in every test--physical and mental--except that of arithmetic; there he has my hearty sympathy, for in arithmetic I was always slow but not sure. He returned to Lombard, and took the regular course for the next three years, paying his way by hard work. His literary ambition had already been awakened, and he attained distinction among his mates. Since graduation he has had constant and varied experience in journalism. For a group of poems, of which the first was _Chicago_, he was awarded the Levinson prize as the best poem by an American that had appeared in _Poetry_ during the year October 1913-October 1914. In 1916 appeared a substantial volume from his pen, called _Chicago Poems_. His work gives one the impression of being chaotic in form and content. Miss Lowell quotes him as saying, "I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way." According to G. K. Chesterton, this attitude was characteristic of modern life in general before the war. We don't know where we're going,--but let's put on more speed. Perhaps the other extreme, so characteristic of our southern African friends, is no better, yet it has a charm absent in the strenuosity of mere eagerness. A Southern negro, being asked whither he was going, replied "I aint goin' nowhar: Ise been done gone whar I was goin'!" It would appear that there is sufficient room between these extremes for individual and social progress. In manner Mr. Sandburg is closer to Walt Whitman than almost any other of our contemporary poets. I do not call him an imitator, and certainly he is no plagiarist; but I like that part of his work which is farthest removed from the manner of the man of Camden. Walt Whitman was a genius; and whilst it is quite possible and at times desirable to imitate his freedom in composition, it is not possible to catch the secret of his power. It would be an ungracious task to quote Mr. Sandburg at his worst; we are all pretty bad at our worst, whether we are poets or not; I prefer to cite one of his poems which proves to me that he is not only an original writer, but that he possesses a perceptive power of beauty that transforms the commonplace into something of poignant charm, like the song of the nightingale: Desolate and lone All night long on the lake Where fog trails and mist creeps, The whistle of a boat Calls and cries unendingly, Like some lost child In tears and trouble Hunting the harbour's breast And the harbour's eyes. He has a notable gift for effective poetic figures of speech; in his _Nocturne in a Deserted Brickyard_, an old pond in the moonlight is a "wide dreaming pansy." This and other pieces show true power of poetic interpretation; which makes me believe that the author ought to and will greatly surpass the average excellence exhibited in _Chicago Poems_. John Curtis Underwood is not only a dynamic, but an insurgent poet and critic. He has published four volumes of poems, _The Iron Muse_ (1910), _Americans_ (1912), _Processionals_ (1915), and _War Flames_ (1917). The roar of city streets and the deafening pounding of machinery resound through his pages; yet he somehow or other makes a singing voice heard amid the din. In fact he uses the din as an accompaniment; he is a kind of vocal Tubal Cain. He writes about strap-hangers, chorus girls, moving pictures, convicts, hospitals, bridge-builders and construction gangs--a symphony of noise, where everybody plays some instrument. He is no pessimist and he is not sour; there are a good many "damns" and "hells" in his verse, because, whatever he lacks, he does not lack emphasis. His philosophy seems to be similar to that of the last two stanzas of _In Memoriam_, though Mr. Underwood expresses it somewhat more concretely. Leading the long procession through the midnight, Man that was ether, fire, sea, germ and ape, Out of the aeons blind of slime emerging, Out of the aeons black where ill went groping, Finding the fire, was fused to human shape. Heading the dreary marches through dark ages; Where the rest perished that the rest might be, Out of the aeons raw and red of bloodshed, Man that was caveman, found the stars. Forever Man to the stars goes marching from the sea. His poem _Central_, in which the telephone girl's work is interpreted, is as typical as any of Mr. Underwood's style; and no one, I think, can fail to see the merit in his method. Though men may build their bridges high and plant their piers below the sea, And drive their trains across the sky; a higher task is left to me. I bridge the void 'twixt soul and soul; I bring the longing lovers near. I draw you to your spirit's goal. I serve the ends of fraud and fear. The older fates sat in the sun. The cords they spun were short and slight. I set my stitches one by one, where life electric fetters night, Till it outstrips the planet's speed, and out of darkness leaps to day; And men in Maine shall hear and heed a voice from San Francisco Bay. There is such a display of cynical cleverness in the verse of T. S. Eliot that I think he might be able to write almost anything except poetry. He has an aggressive champion in the distinguished novelist, May Sinclair, who says his best work is equal to the best of Robert Browning. John G. Neihardt was born in Illinois on the eighth of January, 1881. From 1901 to 1907 he lived among the Nebraska Indians, studying their folklore and characteristics. He has published a number of books, of which the best is perhaps _A Bundle of Myrrh_, 1907. In 1915 he produced an epic of the American Fur Trade, preparing himself for the task as follows: "I descended the Missouri in an open boat, and also ascended the Yellowstone for a considerable distance. On the upper river the country was practically unchanged; and for one familiar with what had taken place there, it was no difficult feat of the imagination to revive the details of that time--the men, the trails, the boats, the trading posts where veritable satraps once ruled under the sway of the American Fur Company." I heartily envy him these experiences; to me every river is an adventure, even the quiet, serious old Connecticut. Yet the poem that resulted from these visions is not remarkable. Nothing, I suppose, is more difficult than to write a good long poem. Poe disapproved of the undertaking in itself; and only men of undoubted genius have succeeded, whereas writers of hardly more than ordinary talent have occasionally turned off something combining brevity and excellence. I feel sure that Mr. Neihardt talks about this journey more impressively than he writes about it. His love lyrics, in _A Bundle of Myrrh_, are much better. The tendency to eroticism is redeemed by sincerity of feeling. Charles Wharton Stork was born at Philadelphia, on the twelfth of February, 1881, and studied at Haverford, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania. He is a scholar, a member of the English Faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, and has made many translations of Scandinavian poems. Always interested in modern developments of poetry, both in America and Europe, he is at present the editor of _Contemporary Verse_, a monthly magazine exclusively made up of original poems. This periodical has been of considerable assistance to students of contemporary poetry, for it has given an opportunity to hitherto unknown writers, and often it contains some notable contribution from men of established reputation. Thus the number for April, 1918, may some day have bibliographical value, since it leads off with a remarkable poem by Vachel Lindsay, _The Eyes of Queen Esther_. I advise collectors to secure this, and to subscribe to the magazine. Mr. Stork has written much verse himself, of which _Flying Fish: an Ode_, may be taken as illustrative of his originality and imagination. Another excellent magazine of contemporary poetry is _The Sonnet_, edited and published by Mahlon Leonard Fisher, at Williamsport, Pennsylvania, of which the first number bears the date February, 1917. This appears bimonthly; and while the attempt to publish any magazine whatever displays courage, Mr. Fisher is apparently on the side of the conservatives in art. "We have attempted no propagandism, and acknowledged no revolution," is the sentence that forms the signature to his periodical. Furthermore, we are informed that "the sole aim of _The Sonnet_ is to publish poetry so well thought of by its makers that they were willing to place it within strict confines. The magazine will have nothing to say in defence of its name. It will neither attack nor respond to attacks." It has certainly printed some good sonnets, among which are many by the editor. In 1917 appeared a beautiful little volume, limited to two hundred copies, and published by the author--_Sonnets: a First Series_. Fifty specimens are included, all written by Mr. Fisher. More than a few have grace and truth. A new aspirant appeared in 1917 with his first volume, _Streets and Faces_. This is Scudder Middleton, brother of George Middleton, the dramatist. He was born at New York, on the ninth of September, 1888, and studied at Columbia. His little book of poetry contains nothing profound, yet there is evidence of undoubted talent which gives me hope. The best poem of his that I have seen was published in _Contemporary Verse_ in 1917, and makes a fine recessional to Mr. Braithwaite's Anthology. THE POETS We need you now, strong guardians of our hearts, Now, when a darkness lies on sea and land, When we of weakening faith forget our parts And bow before the falling of the sand. Be with us now or we betray our trust And say, "There is no wisdom but in death"-- Remembering lovely eyes now closed with dust-- "There is no beauty that outlasts the breath." For we are growing blind and cannot see, Beyond the clouds that stand like prison bars, The changeless regions of our empery, Where once we moved in friendship with the stars. O children of the light, now in our grief Give us again the solace of belief. A young Princeton student, John Peale Bishop, First Lieutenant of Infantry in the Officers Reserve Corps, who studied the art of verse under the instruction of Alfred Noyes, published in 1917 a little book of original poems, with the modest title, _Green Fruit_. These were mostly written during his last undergraduate year at college, and would not perhaps have been printed now had he not entered the service. The subjects range from the Princeton Inn to Italy. Mr. Bishop is a clear-voiced singer, and there are original songs here, which owe nothing to other poets. Such a poem as _Mushrooms_ is convincing proof of ability; and there is an excellent spirit in him. William Aspenwall Bradley was born at Hartford, Connecticut, on the eighth of February, 1878. He was a special student at Harvard, and took his bachelor's and master's degrees at Columbia. He is now in the Government War Service. He wrote an admirable _Life of Bryant_ in the English Men of Letters series, and has made many scholarly contributions to the literature of criticism. He has issued two volumes of original verse, of which perhaps the better known is _Old Christmas_, 1917. This is composed of tales of the Cumberland region in Kentucky. These poem-stories are not only full of dramatic power, comic and tragic, but they contain striking portraits. I think, however, that I like best Mr. Bradley's nature-pictures. The pleasure of recognition will be felt by everyone who reads the first few lines of AUTUMN Now shorter grow November days, And leaden ponds begin to glaze With their first ice, while every night The hoarfrost leaves the meadows white Like wimples spread upon the lawn By maidens who are up at dawn, And sparkling diamonds may be seen Strewing the close-clipped golfing green. But the slow sun dispels at noon The season's work begun too soon, Bidding faint filmy mists arise And fold in softest draperies The distant woodlands bleak and bare, Until they seem to melt in air. William Griffiths was born at Memphis, Missouri, on the fifteenth of February 1876, and received his education at the public schools. He has been a "newspaper man" and magazine editor, and has produced a number of books in verse and prose, of which the best example is _City Pastorals_, originally published in 1915, revised and reissued in 1918. The title of this book appears to be a paradox; but its significance is clear enough after one has read a few pages. It is an original and interesting way of bringing the breath of the country into the town. The scene is a New York Club on a side street; the year is 1914; the three speakers are Brown, Gray, Green; the four divisions are Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. The style is for the most part rimed stanzas in short metre, which go trippingly on the tongue. Grace and delicacy characterize the pictures of the country that the men bring back to the smoky city from their travels. Occultly through a riven cloud The ancient river shines again, Still wandering like a silver road Among the cities in the plain. On far horizons softly lean The hills against the coming night; And mantled with a russet green, The orchards gather into sight. Through apples hanging high and low, In ruddy colours, deeply spread From core to rind, the sun melts slow, With gold upcaught against the red. And here and there, with sighs and calls, Among the hills an echo rings Remotely as the water falls And down the meadow softly sings. A wind goes by; the air is stirred With secret whispers far and near; Another token--just a word Had made the rose's meaning clear. I see the fields; I catch the scent Of pine cones and the fresh split wood, Where bearded moss and stains are blent With autumn rains--and all is good. An air, arising, turns and lifts The fallen leaves where they had lain Beneath the trees, then weakly shifts And slowly settles back again. While with far shouts, now homeward bound, Across the fields the reapers go; And, with the darkness closing round, The lilies of the twilight blow. Many of the other poems in this volume, that follow the _City Pastorals_, are interpretations of various individuals and of various nationalities. Mr. Griffith has a gift for the making of epigrams; and indeed he has studied concision in all his work. It may be that this is a result of his long years of training in journalism; he must have silently implored the writers of manuscripts he was forced to read to leave their damnable faces and begin. Certain it is, that although he can write smoothly flowing music, there is hardly a page in his whole book that does not contain some idea worth thinking about. His wine of Cyprus has both body and bouquet. Three professional teachers of youth who write poetry as an avocation are John Erskine, professor at Columbia, whose poems bear the impress of an original and powerful personality, William Ellery Leonard, professor in the University of Wisconsin, the author of a number of volumes of poems, some of which show originality in conception and style, and William Thornton Whitsett, of Whitsett Institute, Whitsett, North Carolina, whose book _Saber and Song_ (1917), exhibits such variations in merit that if one read only a few pages one might be completely deceived as to the author's actual ability. His besetting sin as an artist is moralizing. Fully half the contents of the volume are uninspired, commonplace, flat. But when he forgets to preach, he can write true poetry. He has the lyrical gift to a high degree, and has a rather remarkable command of the technique of the art. _An Ode to Expression, The Soul of the Sea_, and some of the _Sonnets_, fully justify their publication. The author is rather too fond of the old "poetic diction"; he might do well to study simplicity. A poet who differs from the two last mentioned in her ability to maintain a certain level of excellence is Helen Hay Whitney. She perhaps inherited her almost infallible good taste and literary tact from her distinguished father, that wholly admirable person, John Hay. His greatness as an international statesman was matched by the extraordinary charm of his character, which expressed itself in everything he wrote, and in numberless acts of kindness. He was the ideal American gentleman. One feels in reading the poems of Mrs. Whitney that each one is written both creatively and critically. I mean that she has the primal impulse to write, but that in writing, and more especially in revising, every line is submitted to her own severe scrutiny. I am not sure that she has not destroyed some of her best work, though this is of course only conjecture. At all events, while she makes no mistakes, I sometimes feel that there is too much repression. She is one of our best American sonnet-writers. Such a poem as _After Rain_ is a work of art. Corinne Roosevelt Robinson (Mrs. Douglas Robinson, sister of Theodore Roosevelt) has published two volumes of poems, _The Call of Brotherhood_, 1912, and _One Woman to Another_, 1914. I hope that she will speedily collect in a third book the fugitive pieces printed in various magazines since 1914. Mrs. Robinson's poetry comes from a full mind and a full heart. There is the knowledge born of experience combined with spiritual revelation. She is an excellent illustration of the possibility of living to the uttermost in the crowded avenues of the world without any loss of religious or moral values. It must take a strong nature to absorb so much of the strenuous activities of metropolitan society while keeping the heart's sources as clear as a mountain spring. It is the exact opposite of asceticism, yet seems not to lose anything important gained by the ascetic vocation. She does not serve God and Mammon: she serves God, and makes Mammon serve her. This complete roundness and richness of development could not have been accomplished except through pain. She expresses grief's contribution in the following sonnet: Beloved, from the hour that you were born I loved you with the love whose birth is pain; And now, that I have lost you, I must mourn With mortal anguish, born of love again; And so I know that Love and Pain are one, Yet not one single joy would I forego.-- The very radiance of the tropic sun Makes the dark night but darker here below. Mine is no coward soul to count the cost; The coin of love with lavish hand I spend, And though the sunlight of my life is lost And I must walk in shadow to the end,-- I gladly press the cross against my heart-- And welcome Pain, that is Love's counterpart! Meredith Nicholson, the American novelist, like Mr. Galsworthy, Mr. Phillpotts and many other novelists in England, has published a volume of original verse, _Poems_, 1906. It is possibly a sign of the growing interest in poetry that so many who have won distinction in prose should in these latter days strive for the laurel crown. Mr. Nicholson's poems are a kind of riming journal of his heart. It is clear that he is not a born poet, for the flame of inspiration is not in these pages, nor do we find the perfect phrase or ravishing music; what we do have is well worth preservation in print--the manly, dignified, imaginative speculations of a clear and honest mind. Furthermore, although he writes verse with his left hand, there is displayed in many of these pieces a mastery of the exact meaning of words, attained possibly by his long years of training in the other harmony of prose. Witter Bynner--the spelling of whose name I defy any one to remember, and envelopes addressed to him must be a collection of curiosities--was born at Brooklyn on the tenth of August, 1881. He was graduated from Harvard in 1902, and addressed his _Alma Mater_ in an _Ode To Harvard_, published in book form in 1907. In 1917 he collected in one attractive volume, _Grenstone Poems_, the best of his production--exclusive of his plays and prose--up to that date. One who knew Mr. Bynner only by the terrific white slave drama _Tiger_, would be quite unprepared for the sylvan sweetness of the Grenstone poems. Their environment, mainly rural, does not localize the sentiment overmuch; for the poet's mind is a kingdom, even though he is bounded in a nutshell. The environment, however, may be partly responsible for the spirit of healthy cheerfulness that animates these verses; whatever they lack, they certainly do not lack purity and charm. Far from the madding crowd the singer finds contentment, which is the keynote of these songs; happiness built on firm indestructible foundations. Some of the divisional titles indicate the range of subjects: _Neighbors and the Countryside, Children and Death, Wisdom and Unwisdom, Celia, Away from Grenstone_, where homesickness is expressed while travelling in the Far East. And the tone is clearly sounded in A GRACE BEFORE THE POEMS "Is there such a place as Grenstone?" Celia, hear them ask! Tell me, shall we share it with them?-- Shall we let them breathe and bask On the windy, sunny pasture, Where the hill-top turns its face Toward the valley of the mountain, Our beloved place? Shall we show them through our churchyard, With its crumbling wall Set between the dead and living? Shall our willowed waterfall, Huckleberries, pines and bluebirds Be a secret we shall share?-- If they make but little of it, Celia, shall we care? It will be seen that the independence of Mr. Bynner is quite different from the independence of Mr. Underwood; but they both have the secret of self-sufficiency. Another loyal Harvard poet is Herman Hagedorn, who was born at New York in 1882, and took his degree at college in 1907. For some time he was on the English Faculty at Harvard, and has a scholar's knowledge of English literature. He has published plays and books of verse, of which the best known are _A Troop of the Guard_ (1909) and _Poems and Ballads_, which appeared the same year. He has a good command of lyrical expression, which ought to enable him in the years to come to produce work of richer content than his verses have thus far shown. The best known of the Harvard poets of the twentieth century is Percy Mackaye, who is still better known as a playwright and maker of pageants. He was born at New York, on the sixteenth of March, 1875, and was graduated from Harvard in 1897. He has travelled much in Europe, and has given many lectures on dramatic art in America. His poetry may be collectively studied in one volume of appalling avoirdupois, published in 1916. It takes a strong wrist to hold it, but it is worth the effort. The chief difficulty with Mr. Mackaye is his inability to escape from his opinions. He is far too self-conscious, much too much preoccupied with theory, both in drama and in poetry. He can write nothing without explaining his motive, without trying to show himself and others the aim of poetry and drama. However morally noble all this may be--and it surely is that--it hampers the author. I wish he could for once completely forget all artistic propaganda, completely forget himself, and give his Muse a chance. "She needs no introduction to this audience." There is no doubt that he has something of the divine gift. His _Centenary Ode on Lincoln_, published separately in 1909, was the best out of all the immense number of effusions I read that year. He rose to a great occasion. One of his most original pieces is the dog-vivisection poem, called _The Heart in the Jar_. There is a tumultuous passion in it almost overpowering; and no one but a true poet could ever have thought of or have employed such symbolism. Mr. Mackaye's mind is so alert, so inquisitive, so volcanic, that he seems to me always just about to produce something that shall surpass his previous efforts. I have certainly not lost faith in his future. John Gould Fletcher was born at Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1886. He studied at Andover and at Harvard, and has lived much in London. He has become identified with the Imagists. Personally I wish that Mr. Fletcher would use his remarkable power to create gorgeous imagery in the production of orthodox forms of verse. Free verse ought to be less monotonous than constantly repeated sonnets, quatrains, and stanza-forms; but the fact is just the other way. A volume made up entirely of free verse, unless written by a man of genius, has a capacity to bore the reader that at times seems almost criminal. Conrad Aiken was born at Savannah, Georgia, on the fifth of August, 1889, is a graduate of Harvard and lives in Boston. He has published several volumes of poems, among which _Earth Triumphant_ (1914) is representative of his ability and philosophy. It certainly represents his ability more fairly than _The Jig of Forslin_ (1916), which is both pretentious and dull. I suspect few persons have read every page of it. I have. Not yet thirty, Mr. Aiken is widely known; but the duration of his fame will depend upon his future work. He has thus far shown the power to write melodious music, to paint nature pictures in warm colours; he is ever on the quest of Beauty. His sensible preface to _Earth Triumphant_ calls attention to certain similarities between his style in verse-narrative and that of John Masefield. But he is not a copier, and his work is his own. Some poets are on the earth; some are in the air; some, like Shelley, are in the aether. Conrad Aiken is firmly, gladly on the earth. He believes that our only paradise is here and now. He surely has the gift of singing speech, but his poetry lacks intellectual content. In the volume _Nocturne of Remembered Spring_ (1917), there is a dreamy charm, like the hesitating notes of Chopin. Although his contribution to the advance of poetry is not important, he has the equipment of a poet. When he has more to say, he will have no difficulty in making us listen; for he understands the magic of words. Thus far his poems are something like librettos; they don't mean much without the music. Let him remember the bitter cry of old Henry Vaughan: every artist, racked by labour-pains, will understand what Vaughan meant by calling this piece _Anguish_: O! 'tis an easy thing To write and sing; But to write true, unfeigned verse Is very hard! O God, disperse These weights, and give my spirit leave To act as well as to conceive Among our young American poets there are few who have inherited in richer or purer measure than William Alexander Percy. He was born at Greenville, Mississippi, on the fourth of May, 1885, and studied at the University of the South and at the Harvard Law School. He is now in military service. In 1915, his volume of poems, _Sappho in Leukas_, attracted immediately the attention of discriminating critics. The prologue shows that noble devotion to art, that high faith in it, entirely beyond the understanding of the Philistine, but which awakens an instant and accurate vibration in the heart of every lover of poetry. O singing heart, think not of aught save song; Beauty can do no wrong. Let but th' inviolable music shake Golden on golden flake, Down to the human throng, And one, one surely, will look up, and hear and wake. Weigh not the rapture; measure not nor sift God's dark, delirious gift; But deaf to immortality or gain, Give as the shining rain, Thy music pure and swift, And here or there, sometime, somewhere, 'twill reach the grain. There is a wide range of subjects in this volume, Greek, mediaeval, and modern--inspiration from, books and inspiration from outdoors. But there is not a single poem that could be called crude or flat. Mr. Percy is a poet and an artist; he can be ornate and he can be severe; but in both phases there is a dignity not always characteristic of contemporary verse. I do not prophesy--but I feel certain of this man. One day in 1917, I clipped a nameless poem from a daily newspaper, and carried it in my pocketbook for months. Later I discovered that it was written by Mr. Percy, and had first appeared in _The Bellman_. I know of no poem by any American published in the year 1917 that for combined beauty of thought and beauty of expression is superior to this little masterpiece. OVERTONES I heard a bird at break of day Sing from the autumn trees A song so mystical and calm, So full of certainties, No man, I think, could listen long Except upon his knees. Yet this was but a simple bird, Alone, among dead trees. Alan Seeger--whose heroic death glorified his youth--was born at New York on the twenty-second of June, 1888. He studied at Harvard; then lived in Paris, and no one has ever loved Paris more than he. He enlisted in the Foreign Legion of France at the outbreak of the war in 1914, and fell on the fourth of July, 1916. His letters show his mind and heart clearly. He knew his poetry was good, and that it would not die with his body. In the last letter he wrote, we find these words: "I will write you soon if I get through all right. If not, my only earthly care is for my poems. Add the ode I sent you and the three sonnets to my last volume and you will have _opera omnia quae existant_." He wrote his autobiography in one of his last sonnets, paying poetic tribute to Philip Sidney--lover of woman, lover of battle, lover of art. Sidney, in whom the heydey of romance Came to its precious and most perfect flower, Whether you tourneyed with victorious lance Or brought sweet roundelays to Stella's bower, I give myself some credit for the way I have kept clean of what enslaves and lowers, Shunned the ideals of our present day And studied those that were esteemed in yours; For, turning from the mob that buys Success By sacrificing all life's better part, Down the free roads of human happiness I frolicked, poor of purse but light of heart, And lived in strict devotion all along To my three idols--Love and Arms and Song. His most famous poem, _I Have a Rendezvous with Death_, is almost intolerably painful in its tragic beauty, in its contrast between the darkness of the unchanging shadow and the apple-blossoms of the sunny air--above all, because we read it after both Youth and Death have kept their word, and met at the place appointed. He was an inspired poet. Poetry came from him as naturally as rain from clouds. His magnificent _Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen in France_ has a nobility of phrase that matches the elevation of thought. Work like this cannot be forgotten. Alan Seeger was an Elizabethan. He had a consuming passion for beauty--his only religion. He loved women and he loved war, like the gallant, picturesque old soldiers of fortune. There was no pose in all this; his was a brave, uncalculating, forthright nature, that gave everything he had and was, without a shade of fear or a shade of regret. He is one of the most fiery spirits of our time, and like Rupert Brooke, he will be thought of as immortally young. CHAPTER XI A GROUP OF YALE POETS Henry A. Beers--the fine quality of his literary style in prose and verse--force and grace--finished art--his humour--C. M. Lewis--his war poem--E. B. Reed--_Lyra Yalensis_--F. E. Pierce--his farm lyrics--Brian Hooker--his strong sonnets--his _Turns_--R. C. Rogers--_The Rosary_--Rupert Hughes--novelist, playwright, musician, poet--Robert Hunger--his singing--R. B. Glaenzer--his fancies--Benjamin R. C. Low--his growth--William R. Benét--his vitality and optimism--Arthur Colton--his Chaucer poem--Allan Updegraff--_The Time and the Place_--Lee Wilson Dodd--his development--a list of other Yale Poets--Stephen V. Benét. During the twentieth century there has been flowing a fountain of verse from the faculty, young alumni, and undergraduates of Yale University; and I reserve this space at the end of my hook for a consideration of the Yale group of poets, some of whom are already widely known and some of whom seem destined to be. I am not thinking of magazine verse or of fugitive pieces, but only of independent volumes of original poems. Yale has always been close to the national life of America; and the recent outburst of poetry from her sons is simply additional evidence of the renaissance all over the United States. Anyhow, the fact is worth recording. Professor Henry A. Beers was born at Buffalo on the second of July, 1847. He was admitted to the New York Bar in 1870, but in 1871 became an Instructor in English Literature at Yale, teaching continuously for forty-five years, when he retired. He has written--at too rare intervals--all his life. His book of short stories, containing _A Suburban Pastoral_ and _Split Zephyr_, the last-named being, according to Meredith Nicholson, the best story of college life ever printed, would possibly have attracted more general attention were it not for its prevailing tone of quiet, unobtrusive pessimism, an unwelcome note in America. I am as sure of the high quality of _A Suburban Pastoral_ as I am sure of anything; and have never found a critic who, after reading the tale, disagreed with me. In 1885 Professor Beers published a little volume of poems, _The Thankless Muse_; and in 1917 he collected in a thin book _The Two Twilights_, the best of his youthful and mature poetic production. The variety of expression is so great that no two poems are in the same mood. In _Love, Death, and Life_ we have one of the most passionate love-poems in American literature; in _The Pasture Bars_ the valediction has the soft, pure tone of a silver bell. Professor Beers has both vigour and grace. His fastidious taste permits him to write little, and to print only a small part of what he writes. But the force of his poetic language is so extraordinary that it has sometimes led to a complete and unfortunate misinterpretation of his work. In _The Dying Pantheist to the Priest_, he wrote a poem as purely dramatic, as non-personal, as the monologues of Browning; he quite successfully represented the attitude of an (imaginary) defiant, unrepentant pagan to an (imaginary) priest who wished to save him in his last moments. The speeches put into the mouth of the pantheist no more represent Mr. Beers's own sentiments than Browning's poem _Confessions_ represented Browning's attitude toward death and religion; yet it is perhaps a tribute to the fervour of the lyric that many readers have taken it as a violent attack on Christian theology. Just as I am certain of the finished art of _A Suburban Pastoral,_ I am equally certain of the beauty and nobility of the poetry in _The Two Twilights._ This volume gives its author an earned place in the front rank of living American poets. To me one of the most original and charming of the songs is the valediction to New York--and the homage to New Haven. NUNC DIMITTIS Highlands of Navesink, By the blue ocean's brink, Let your grey bases drink Deep of the sea. Tide that comes flooding up, Fill me a stirrup cup, Pledge me a parting sup, Now I go free. Wall of the Palisades, I know where greener glades, Deeper glens, darker shades, Hemlock and pine, Far toward the morning lie Under a bluer sky, Lifted by cliffs as high, Haunts that are mine. Marshes of Hackensack, See, I am going back Where the Quinnipiac Winds to the bay, Down its long meadow track, Piled in the myriad stack, Where in wide bivouac Camps the salt hay. Spire of old Trinity, Never again to be Seamark and goal to me As I walk down; Chimes on the upper air, Calling in vain to prayer, Squandering your music where Roars the black town: Bless me once ere I ride Off to God's countryside, Where in the treetops hide Belfry and bell; Tongues of the steeple towers, Telling the slow-paced hours-- Hail, thou still town of ours-- Bedlam, farewell! Those who are familiar with Professor Beers's humour, as expressed in _The Ways of Yale,_ will wish that he had preserved also in this later book some of his whimsicalities, as in the poem _A Fish Story,_ which begins: A whale of great porosity, And small specific gravity, Dived down with much velocity Beneath the sea's concavity. But soon the weight of water Squeezed in his fat immensity, Which varied--as it ought to-- Inversely as his density. Professor Charlton M. Lewis was born at Brooklyn on the fourth of March, 1866. He took his B.A. at Yale in 1886, and an LL.B at Columbia in 1889. For some years he was a practising lawyer in New York; in 1895 he became a member of the Yale Faculty. In 1903 he published _Gawayne and the Green Knight_, a long poem, in which humour and imagination are delightfully mingled. His lyric _Pro Patria_ (1937) is a good illustration of his poetic powers; it is indeed one of America's finest literary contributions to the war. PRO PATRIA Remember, as the flaming car Of ruin nearer rolls, That of our country's substance are Our bodies and our souls. Her dust we are, and to her dust Our ashes shall descend: Who craves a lineage more august Or a diviner end? By blessing of her fruitful dews, Her suns and winds and rains, We have her granite in our thews, Her iron in our veins. And, sleeping in her sacred earth, The ever-living dead On the dark miracle of birth Their holy influence shed.... So, in the faith our fathers kept, We live, and long to die; To sleep forever, as they have slept, Under a sunlit sky; Close-folded to our mother's heart To find our souls' release-- A secret coeternal part Of her eternal peace;-- Where Hood, Saint Helen's and Rainier, In vestal raiment, keep Inviolate through the varying year Their immemorial sleep; Or where the meadow-lark, in coy But calm profusion, pours The liquid fragments of his joy On old colonial shores. Professor Edward B. Reed, B.A. 1894, published in 1913 a tiny volume of academic verse, called _Lyra Yalensis_. This contains happily humorous comment on college life and college customs, and as the entire edition was almost immediately sold, the book has already become something of a rarity. In 1917, he collected the best of his more ambitious work in _Sea Moods_, of which one of the most impressive is THE DAWN He shook his head as he turned away-- "Is it life or death?" "We shall know by day." Out from the wards where the sick folk lie, Out neath the black and bitter sky. Past one o'clock and the wind is chill, The snow-clad streets are ghostly still; No friendly noise, no cheering light, So calm the city sleeps to-night, I think its soul has taken flight. Back to the empty home--a thrill, A shudder at its darkened sill, For the clock chimes as on that morn, That happy day when she was born. And now, inexorably slow, To life or death the hours go. Time's wings are clipped; he scarce doth creep. Tonight no drug could bring you sleep; Watch at the window for the day; 'Tis all that's left--to watch and pray. But I think the prayer of an anguished heart Must pierce that bleak sky like a dart, And tear that pall of clouds apart. The poplars, edging the frozen lawn, Shudder and whisper: "Wait till dawn." Two spirits stand beside her bed Softly stroking her curly head. Death whispers, "Come"--Life whispers, "Stay." Child, little child, go not away. Life pleads, "Remember"--and Death, "Forget." Little child, little child, go not yet. By all your mother's love and pain, Child of our heart, child of our brain, Stay with us; go not till you see The Fairyland that life can be. . . . . . . . . The poplars, edging the frozen lawn, Are dancing and singing. "Thank God--the Dawn!" Professor Frederick E. Pierce, B.A. 1904, has produced three volumes of poems, of which _The World that God Destroyed_ exhibits an epic sweep of the imagination. He imagines a world far off in space, where every form of life has perished save rank vegetation. One day in their wanderings over the universe, Lucifer and Michael meet on this dead ball. A truce is declared and each expresses some of the wisdom bought by experience. The upas dripped its poison on the ground Harmless; the silvery veil of fog went up From mouldering fen and cold, malarial pool, But brought no taint and threatened ill to none. Far off adown the mountain's craggy side From time to time the avalanche thundered, sounding Like sport of giant children, and the rocks Whereon it smote re-echoed innocently. Then in a pause of silence Lucifer Struck music from the harp again and sang. "I am the shadow that the sunbeams bring, I am the thorn from which the roses spring; Without the thorn would be no blossoming, Nor were there shadow if there were no gleam. I am a leaf before a wind that blows, I am the foam that down the current goes; I work a work on earth that no man knows, And God Works too,--I am not what I seem. "There comes a purer morn whose stainless glow Shall cast no shadow on the ground below, And fairer flowers without the thorn shall blow, And earth at last fulfil her parent's dream. Oh race of men who sin and know not why, I am as you and you are even as I; We all shall die at length and gladly die; Yet even our deaths shall be not what they seem." Then Michael raised the golden lyre, and struck A note more solemn soft, and made reply. "There dwelt a doubt within my mind of yore; I sought to end that doubt and laboured sore; But now I search its mystery no more, But leave it safe within the Eternal's hand. The tiger hunts the lamb and yearns to kill, Himself by famine hunted, fiercer still; And much there is that seems unmingled ill; But God is wise, and God can understand. "All things on earth in endless balance sway; Day follows night and night succeeds the day; And so the powers of good and evil may Work out the purpose that his wisdom planned. Eternal day would parch the dewy mould, Eternal night would freeze the lands with cold; But wise was God who planned the world of old; I rest in Him for He can understand. "Yet good and evil still their wills oppose; And serving both, we still must serve as foes On yon far globe that teems with human woes; And sin thou art, though God work through thy hand. But here the race of man is now no more; The task is done, the long day's work is o'er; One hour I'll dream thee what thou wert of yore, Though changed thou art, too changed to understand." All day sat Michael there with Lucifer Talking of things unknown to men, old tales And memories dating back beyond all time. And all night long beneath the lonely stars, That watched no more the sins of man, they lay, The angel's lofty face at rest against The dark cheek scarred with thunder. Morning came, And each departed on his separate way; But each looked back and lingered as he passed. Some of his best work, however, appears in short pieces that might best be described as lyrics of the farm, or, to use a title discarded by Tennyson, _Idylls of the Hearth_. Mr. Pierce knows the lonely farm-houses of New England, both by inheritance and habitation, and is a true interpreter of the spirit of rural life. One of the best-known of the group of Yale poets is Brian Hooker, who was graduated from Yale in 1902, and for some years was a member of the Faculty. His _Poems_ (1915) are an important addition to contemporary literature. He is a master of the sonnet-form, as any one may see for himself in reading GHOSTS The dead return to us continually; Not at the void of night, as fables feign, In some lone spot where murdered bones have lain Wailing for vengeance to the passer-by; But in the merry clamour and full cry Of the brave noon, our dead whom we have slain And in forgotten graves hidden in vain, Rise up and stand beside us terribly. Sick with the beauty of their dear decay We conjure them with laughters onerous And drunkenness of labour; yet not thus May we absolve ourselves of yesterday-- We cannot put those clinging arms away, Nor those glad faces yearning over us. Mr. Hooker also includes in this volume a number of _Turns_, which he describes as "a new fixed form: Seven lines, in any rhythm, isometric and of not more than four feet; Rhyming AbacbcA, the first line and the last a Refrain; the Idea (as the name suggests) to Turn upon the recurrence of the Refrain at the end with a different sense from that which it bears at the beginning." For example: MISERERE Ah, God, my strength again!-- Not power, nor joy, but these: The waking without pain, The ardour for the task, And in the evening, peace. Is it so much to ask? Ah, God, my strength again! American literature suffered a loss in the death of Robert Cameron Rogers, of the class of 1883. His book of poems, called _The Rosary_, appeared in 1906, containing the song by which naturally he is best known. Set to music by the late Ethelbert Nevin, it had a prodigious vogue, and inspired a sentimental British novel, whose sales ran over a million copies. The success of this ditty ought not to prejudice readers against the author of it; for he was more than a sentimentalist, as his other pieces prove. Rupert Hughes is an all around literary athlete. He was born in Missouri, on the thirty-first of January, 1872, studied at Western Reserve and later at Yale, where he took the degree of M.A. in 1899. He is of course best known as a novelist and playwright; his novel _The Thirteenth Commandment_ (1916) and his play _Excuse Me_ (1911) are among his most successful productions. His works in prose fiction are conscientiously realistic and the finest of them are accurate chronicles of metropolitan life; while his short stories, _In a Little Town_ (1917) are, like those of William Allen White, truthful both in their representation of village manners in the West, and in their recognition of spiritual values. In view of the "up-to-dateness" of Mr. Hughes's novels, it is rather curious that his one long poem _Gyges' Ring_ (1901), which was written during his student days at Yale, should be founded on Greek legend. Yet Mr. Hughes has been a student of Greek all his life, and has made many translations from the original. I do not care much for _Gyges' Ring_; it is hammered out rather than created. But some of the author's short poems, to which he has often composed his own musical accompaniment, I find full of charm. Best of all, I think, is the imaginative and delightful. WITH A FIRST READER Dear little child, this little book Is less a primer than a key To sunder gates where wonder waits Your "Open Sesame!" These tiny syllables look large; They'll fret your wide, bewildered eyes; But "Is the cat upon the mat?" Is passport to the skies. For, yet awhile, and you shall turn From Mother Goose to Avon's swan; From Mary's lamb to grim Khayyam, And Mancha's mad-wise Don. You'll writhe at Jean Valjean's disgrace; And D'Artagnan and Ivanhoe Shall steal your sleep; and you shall weep At Sidney Carton's woe. You'll find old Chaucer young once more, Beaumont and Fletcher fierce with fire; At your demand, John Milton's hand Shall wake his ivory lyre. And learning other tongues, you'll learn All times are one; all men, one race; Hear Homer speak, as Greek to Greek; See Dante, face to face. _Arma virumque_ shall resound; And Horace wreathe his rhymes afresh; You'll rediscover Laura's lover; Meet Gretchen in the flesh. Oh, could I find for the first time The _Churchyard Elegy_ again! Retaste the sweets of new-found Keats; Read Byron now as then! Make haste to wander these old roads, O envied little parvenue; For all things trite shall leap alight And bloom again for you! Robert Munger, B.A., 1897, published in 1912 a volume called _The Land of Lost Music_. He is a lyric poet. Melody seems as natural to him as speech. There is a land uncharted of meadows and shimmering mountains, Stiller than moonlight silence brooding and wan, The land of long-wandering music and dead unmelodious fountains Of singing that rose in the dreams of them that are gone. That rose in the dreams of the dead and that rise in the dreams of the living, Fleeting, bodiless songs that passed in the night, Winging away on the moment of wonder their cadence was giving Into the deeps of the valleys of stifled delight. Richard Butler Glaenzer, B.A. 1898, whose verses have frequently been seen in various periodicals, collected them in _Beggar and King_, 1917. His poems cover a wide range of thought and feeling, but I like him best when he is most whimsical, as in COMPARISONS Jupiter, lost to Vega's realm, Lights his lamp from the sun-ship's helm: Big as a thousand earths, and yet Dimmed by the glow of a cigarette! Mr. Glaenzer has published a number of verse criticisms of contemporary writers, which he calls _Snapshots_. These display considerable penetration; perhaps the following is fairly illustrative. CABLE To read your tales Is like opening a cedar-box Of ante-bellum days, A box holding the crinoline and fan And the tortoise-shell diary With flowers pressed between the leaves Belonging to some languid _grande dame_ Of Creole New Orleans. Benjamin R. C. Low, B.A. 1902, a practising lawyer, has published four or five volumes of poems, including _The Sailor who has Sailed_ (1911), _A Wand and Strings_ (1913) and _The House that Was_ (1915). He is seen at his best in _These United States_, dedicated to Alan Seeger, which appeared in the _Boston Transcript_, 7 February, 1917. This is an original, vigorous work, full of the unexpected, and yet seen to be true as soon as expressed. His verses show a constantly increasing grasp of material, and I look for finer things from his pen. Although Mr. Low seems to be instinctively a romantic poet, he is fond of letting his imaginative sympathy play on common scenes in city streets; as in _The Sandwich Man_. The lights of town are pallid yet With winter afternoon; The sullied streets are dank and wet, The halted motors fume and fret, The world turns homeward soon. There is no kindle in the sky, No cheering sunset flame; I have no help from passers-by,-- They part, and give good-night; but I.... Walk with another's name. I have no kith, nor kin, nor home Wherein to turn to sleep; No star-lamp sifts me through the gloam, I am the driven, wastrel foam On a subsiding deep. I do not toil for love, or fame, Or hope of high reward; My path too low for praise or blame, I struggle on, each day the same, My panoply--a board. Who gave me life I do not know, Nor what that life should be, Or why I live at all; I go, A dead leaf shivering with snow, Under a worn-out tree. The lights of town are blurred with mist, And pale with afternoon,-- Of gold they are, and amethyst: Dull pain is creeping at my wrist.... The world turns homeward soon. A poet of national reputation is William Rose Benét, who was graduated in 1907. Mr. Benét came to Yale from Augusta, Georgia, and since his graduation has been connected with the editorial staff of the _Century Magazine_. At present he is away in service in France, where his adventurous spirit is at home. He may have taken some of his reputation with him, for he is sure to be a favourite over there; but the fame he left behind him is steadily growing. The very splendour of romance glows in his spacious poetry; he loves to let his imagination run riot, as might be guessed merely by reading the names on his books. To every one who has ever been touched by the love of a quest, his title-pages will appeal: _The Great White Wall_, a tale of "magic adventure, of war and death"; _Merchants from Cathay_ (1913), _The Falconer of God_ (1914), _The Burglar of the Zodiac_ (1917). His verses surge with vitality, as in _The Boast of the Tides_. He is at his best in long, swinging, passionate rhythms. Unfortunately in the same measures he is also at his worst. His most potent temptation is the love of noise, which makes some of his less artistic verse sound like organized cheering. But when he gets the right tune for the right words, he is irresistible. There is no space here to quote such a rattling ballad--like a frenzy of snare-drums--as _Merchants from Cathay_, but it is not mere sound and fury, it is not swollen rhetoric, it is an inspired poem. No one can read or hear it without being violently aroused. Mr. Benét is a happy-hearted poet, singing with gusto of the joy of life. ON EDWARD WEBBE, ENGLISH GUNNER He met the Danske pirates off Tuttee; Saw the Chrim burn "Musko"; speaks with bated breath Of his sale to the great Turk, when peril of death Chained him to oar their galleys on the sea Until, as gunner, in Persia they set him free To fight their foes. Of Prester John he saith Astounding things. But Queen Elizabeth He worships, and his dear Lord on Calvary. Quaint is the phrase, ingenuous the wit Of this great childish seaman in Palestine, Mocked home through Italy after his release With threats of the Armada; and all of it Warms me like firelight jewelling old wine In some ghost inn hung with the golden fleece! Arthur Colton, B.A. 1890, is as quiet and reflective as Mr. Benét is strenuous. Has any one ever better expressed the heart of Chaucer's _Troilus and Criseyde_ than in these few words? A smile, of flowers, and fresh May, across The dreamy, drifting face of old Romance; The same reiterate tale of love and loss And joy that trembles in the hands of chance; And midst his rippling lines old Geoffrey stands, Saying, "Pray for me when the tale is done, Who see no more the flowers, nor the sun." Mr. Colton collected many of his poems in 1907, under the title _Harps Hung Up in Babylon_. He had moved from New Haven to New York. Allan Updegraff, who left college before taking his degree, a member of the class of 1907, recently turned from verse to prose, and wrote an admirable novel, _Second Youth_. He is, however, a true poet, and any one might be proud to be the author of THE TIME AND THE PLACE Will you not come? The pines are gold with evening And breathe their old-time fragrance by the sea; You loved so well their spicy exhalation,-- So smiled to smell it and old ocean's piquancy; And those weird tales of winds and waves' relation-- Could you forget? Will you not come to me? See, 'tis the time: the last long gleams are going, The pine-spires darken, mists rise waveringly; The gloaming brings the old familiar longing To be re-crooned by twilight voices of the sea. And just such tinted wavelets shoreward thronging-- Could you forget things once so dear--and me? Whatever of the waves is ceaseless longing, And of the twilight immortality: The urge of some wild, inchoate aspiration Akin to afterglow and stars and winds and sea: This hour makes full and pours out in libation,-- Could you forget? Will you not come to me? What golden galleons sailed into the sunset Not to come home unto eternity: What souls went outward hopeful of returning, This time and tide might well call back across the sea. Did we not dream so while old Wests were burning? Could you forget such once-dear things--and me? From the dimmed sky and long grey waste of waters, Lo, one lone sail on all the lonely sea A moment blooms to whiteness like a lily, As sudden fades, is gone, yet half-seems still to be; And you,--though that last time so strange and stilly,-- Though you are dead, will you not come to me? Lee Wilson Dodd, at present in service in France, was graduated in 1899, and for some years was engaged in the practice of the law. This occupation he abandoned for literature in 1907. He is the author of several successful plays, and has published two volumes of verse, _The Modern Alchemist_ (1906) and _The Middle Miles_ (1915). His growth in the intervening years will be apparent to any one who compares the two books; there is in his best work a combination of fancy and humour. He loves to write about New England gardens and discovers beauty by the very simple process of opening his eyes at home. The following poem is characteristically sincere: TO A NEO-PAGAN Your praise of Nero leaves me cold: Poems of porphyry and of gold, Palatial poems, chill my heart. I gaze--I wonder--I depart. Not to Byzantium would I roam In quest of beauty, nor Babylon; Nor do I seek Sahara's sun To blind me to the hills of home. Here am I native; here the skies Burn not, the sea I know is grey; Wanly the winter sunset dies. Wanly comes day. Yet on these hills and near this sea Beauty has lifted eyes to me, Unlustful eyes, clear eyes and kind; While a clear voice chanted-- _"They who find "Me not beside their doorsteps, know "Me never, know me never, though "Seeking, seeking me, high and low, "Forth on the far four winds they go!" Therefore your basalt, jade, and gems, Your Saracenic silver, your Nilotic gods, your diadems To bind the brows of Queens, impure, Perfidious, passionate, perfumed--these Your petted, pagan stage-properties, Seem but as toys of trifling worth. For I have marked the naked earth Beside my doorstep yield to the print Of a long light foot, and flash with the glint Of crocus-gold-- Crocus-gold! Crocus-gold no mill may mint Save the Mill of God-- The Mill of God! The Mill of God with His angels in't! Other Yale poets are W. B. Arvine, 1903, whose book _Hang Up Philosophy_ (1911), particularly excels in the interpretation of natural scenery; Frederick M. Clapp, 1901, whose volume _On the Overland_ (since republished in America) was in process of printing in Bruges in 1914, when the Germans entered the old town, and smashed among other things, the St. Catherine Press. Just fifteen copies of Mr. Clapp's book had been struck off, of which I own one; Donald Jacobus, 1908, whose _Poems_ (1914) are richly meditative; James H. Wallis, 1906, who has joined the ranks of poets with _The Testament of William Windune_ and _Other Poems_ (1917); Leonard Bacon, 1909, who modestly called his book, published in the year of his graduation, _The Scrannel Pipe_; Kenneth Band, 1914, who produced two volumes of original verse while an undergraduate; Archibald Mac Leish, 1915, whose _Tower of Ivory_, a collection of lyrics, appeared in 1917; Elliot Griffis, a student in the School of Music, who published in 1918 under an assumed name a volume called _Rain in May_; and I may close this roll-call by remarking that those who have seen his work have a staunch faith in the future of Stephen Vincent Benét. He is a younger brother of William, and is at present a Yale undergraduate. Mr. Benét was born at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on the twenty-second of July, 1898. His home is at Augusta, Georgia. Before entering college, and when he was seventeen, he published his first volume of poems, _Five Men and Pompey_ (1915). This was followed in 1917 by another book, _The Drug Shop_. His best single production is the Cook prize poem, _The Hemp_. APPENDIX _I Have a Rendezvous with Death_ The remarkably impressive and beautiful poem by Alan Seeger which bears the above title naturally attracted universal attention. I had supposed the idea originated with Stephen Crane, who, in his novel _The Red Badge of Courage_, Chapter IX, has the following paragraph: At last they saw him stop and stand motionless. Hastening up, they perceived that his face wore an expression telling that he had at last found the place for which he had struggled. His spare figure was erect; his bloody hands were quietly at his side. He was waiting with patience for something that he had come to meet. He was at the rendezvous. They paused and stood, expectant. But I am informed both by Professor F. N. Robinson of Harvard and by Mr. Norreys Jephson O'Conor that the probable source of the title of the poem is Irish. Professor Robinson writes me, "The Irish poem that probably suggested to Seeger the title of his _Rendezvous_ is the _Reicne Fothaid Canainne_ (Song of Fothad Canainne), published by Kuno Meyer in his _Fianaigecht_ (Dublin, 1910), pp. 1-21. Seeger read the piece at one of my Celtic Conferences, and was much impressed by it. He got from it only his title and the fundamental figure of a _rendezvous_ with Death, the Irish poem being wholly different from his in general purport. Fothad Canainne makes a tryst with the wife of Ailill Flann, but is slain in battle by Ailill on the day before the night set for the meeting. Then the spirit of Fothad (or, according to one version, his severed head) sings the _reicne_ to the woman and declares (st. 3): 'It is blindness for one who makes a tryst to set aside the tryst with death.'" Miss Amy Lowell, however, believes that Seeger got the idea from a French poet. Wherever he got it, I believe that he made it his own, for he used it supremely well, and it will always be associated with him. At Harvard, Alan Seeger took the small and special course in Irish, and showed enthusiasm for this branch of study. Wishing to find out something about his undergraduate career, I wrote to a member of the Faculty, and received the following reply: "Many persons found him almost morbidly indifferent and unresponsive, and he seldom showed the full measure of his powers.... I grew to have a strong liking for him personally as well as a respect for his intellectual power. But I should never have expected him to show the robustness of either mind or body which we now know him to have possessed. He was frail and sickly in appearance, and seemed to have a temperament in keeping with his physique. It took a strong impulse to bring him out and disclose his real capacity." There is no doubt that the war gave him this impulse, and that the poem _I Have a Rendezvous with Death_ must be classed among the literature directly produced by the great struggle. After four years, I should put at the head of all the immense number of verses inspired by the war John Masefield's _August 1914_, Alan Seeger's _I Have a Rendezvous with Death_, and Rupert Brooke's _The Soldier_; and of all the poems written by men actually fighting, I should put Alan Seeger's first. While reading these proofs, the news comes of the death of a promising young American poet, Joyce Kilmer, a sergeant in our army, who fell in France, August, 1918. He was born 6 December, 1866, was a graduate of Rutgers and Columbia, and had published a number of poems. His supreme sacrifice nobly closed a life filled with beauty in word and deed. INDEX [Only important references are given; the mere mention of names is omitted.] Abercrombie, D., Adams, F. P., "A. E." (G. W. Russell), personality, a sincere mystic, assurance, discovery of Stephens, influence on Susan Mitchell, Aiken, C., Andrews, C. E., _From the Front_, Arnold, M., poem on Wordsworth compared to Watson's, Arvine, W. B., Aumonier, S., quotation from, Austin, A., Bacon, L., Barker, G., production of _Dynasts_, remark on Shaw, Beers, H, A., Benét, S. V., Benét, W. R., Bishop, J. P., Blackwell, B. H., a publisher, Bradley, W. A., Braithwaite, W. S., his anthology, Branch, A. H., a leader, poems, education, passion, contrasted with Masters, Bridges, R., poet-laureate, his verse, Brooke, R., canonized, Gibson on, poems, letters, Howland prize, compared to De La Mare, _The Soldier_, Browne, T., compared to Yeats, Browning, R., concentration, _Pauline_, on spiritual blessings, lack of experience, self-consciousness, _Christmas Eve_, natural poetry, metre of _One Word More_, _The Glove_, Ogniben's remark, compared to Brooke, temperament, contrasted with Yeats, Masters compared to, _Confessions_, Burns, R., influence on democracy, Burton, R., Bynner, W., Byron, Lord, sales of his poems, wit compared to Watson's, common sense, Calderon, G., remark on Chekhov, Campbell, J., Carlin, F., Carlyle, T., remark on Cromwell, Chaucer, G., effect on Masefield, Chekhov, A., centrifugal force, Clapp, F. M., Cleghorn, S. N., Coleridge, S. T., remark on poetry, Colton, A., Colum, P., Conrad, J., compared to Scott, Cooke, E. V., Corbin, A., Crane, S., _Red Badge of Courage_, Crashaw, R., his editor, Davidson, J., test of poetry, Davies, M. C., Davies, W. H., Davis, F. S., De La Mare, W., homage to, poems, compared to Hawthorne, retirement, _Listeners_, Shakespeare portraits, _Old Susan_, _Peacock Pie_, Dodd, L. W., Donne, J., reputation, stimulant, Drake, F., German statue to, poem by Noyes, Drinkwater, J., Egan, M. F., Eliot, T. S., Emerson, R. W., prophecy on poetry, Erskine, J., Flecker, J. E., posthumous editor of, translations, aims, _Oak and Olive_, religion, _Jerusalem_, Fletcher, J. G., Foulke, W. D., Frost, R., dedication by Thomas, poems, theories, outdoor poet, realism, tragedy, pleasure of recognition, Garrison, T., Gibson, W. W., homage to, poems, _Stonefolds_, _Daily Bread_, _Fires_, _Thoroughfares_, war poems, _Livelihood_, latest work, his contribution, Gladstone, W. E., eulogy by Phillips, Glaenzer, R. B., Goethe, J. W., Flecker's translation of, poise, Grainger, P., great artist, audacities, Graves, R., Gray, T., on laureateship, compared to Hodgson, compared to Masters, Griffis, E., Griffiths, W., Hagedorn, H., Hardy, T., a forerunner, _Dynasts_, idea of God, pessimism, thought and music, _Moments of Vision_, Housman's likeness to, Hawthorne, N., compared to De La Mare. Henley, W. E.; compared to Thompson; paganism; lyrical power. Hodgson, R.; a recluse; love of animals; humour; compared to Alice Corbin. Hooker, B. Housman, A. E.; modernity; scholarship; likeness to Hardy; paganism and pessimism; lyrical power. Hughes, R. Hyde, D., influence. Ibsen, H., student of the Bible. Jacobus, D. James, H., tribute to Brooke. Johnson, R. U. Keats, J., Phillips compared to; influence on Amy Lowell; Endymion; Amy Lowell's sonnet on. Kilmer, J. Kipling, R.; imperial laureate; _Recessional_; popularity; influence on soldiers; Watson's allusion to; _Danny Deever_. Landor, W. S., his violence. Lawrence, D. H. Ledwidge, F. Leonard, W. E. Lewis, C. M. Lindsay, N. V.; Harriet Monroe's magazine; _Booth_; development; drawings; "games"; _Congo,_ _Niagara_; prose; chants; geniality; _Esther_. Locke, W. J., his dreams. Low, B. R. C. Lowell, A. L., love of liberty. Lowell, Amy, essay on Frost; poems; training; free verse; imagism; _Sword Blades_; narrative skill; polyphonic prose; versatility; remark on Seeger. Lowell, P., influence on Amy. MacDonagh, T. Mackaye, P.; stipend for poets; poems. MacLeish, A. Macterlinck, M., compared to Yeats; rhythmical prose. Markham, E. Marquis, D. Masefield, J., homage to; poems; the modern Chaucer; education; _Dauber_; critical power; relation to Wordsworth; _Everlasting Mercy_; _Widow in the Bye Street_; _Daffodil Fields_; compared to Tennyson; _August, 1914_; lyrics; sonnets; _Rosas_; novels; general contribution; Drinkwater's dedication; Aiken's relation to. Masters, E. L.; education; _Spoon River_; irony; love of truth; analysis; cynicism; idealism. Meredith, G., his poems. Middleton, S. Milton, J., his invocation; Piedmont sonnet. Mitchell, S. Monroe, H., her magazine; her anthology; poems. Moody, W. V. Morley, J., remarks on Irishmen and Wordsworth. Munger, R. Neihardt, J. G. Nichols, R. Nicholson, M., poems; remark on college stories. Noyes, A., homage to; poems; education; singing power; _Tramp Transfigured_; his masterpiece; child imagination; sea poetry; _Drake_; _May-Tree_; new effects; war poems; optimism. O'Conor, N. J., poems; remark on Seeger. O'Sullivan, S. Peabody, J. P. Percy, W. A. Phillips, S.; sudden fame; education; _Marpessa_; realism; _Gladstone_; protest against Masefleld. Pierce, F. E. Quarles, F., quoted. Quiller-Couch, A., remark on the _Daffodil Fields_. Rand, K. Reedy, W. M., relation to Masters. Rice, C. Y. Riley, J. W., remark on Henley; "Riley Day"; remark on Anna Branch; a conservative. Rittenhouse, J. B. Robinson, C. R. Robinson, E. A. Robinson, F. N., remark on Seeger. Rogers, R. C. Sandburg, C. Santayana, G. Sassoon, S. Scott, W., compared to Conrad; sales of his poems. Seeger, A.; Low's dedication; source of his poem. Service, R. W., likeness to Kipling. Shakespeare, W., compared to Wordsworth; compared to Masefleld; portraits by De La Mare; poem on by Masters. Shaw, G. B., _Major Barbara_. Spingarn, J., creative criticism. Squire, J. C., introduction to Flecker Stephens, J., novels; discovered by A. E.; realism; child-poetry; power of cursing. Stevenson, R. L., remark on Whitman. Stork, C. W. Swinburne, A. C., critical violence, Lindsay's likeness to; Lindsay's use of. Synge, J. M., advice from Yeats; works; versatility; bitterness; theory of poetry; autobiographical poems; thoughts on death; influence on Stephens. Teasdale, S. Tennyson, A., continued popularity of; his invocation; compared to Hardy; early poems on death; compared to Masefield,; his memoirs; his reserve; quality of his poetry. Thomas, E. Thomas, E. M. Thompson, F., compared to Henley; religious passion; _In No Strange Land_; _Lilium Regis_; Noyes's ode to; Flecker's poem on. Trench, H. Underwood, J. C. Untermeyer, L. Updegraff, A. Van Dyke, H. Vaughan, H., quoted. Vielé, H. K. Wallis, J. H. Watson, W. poor start; address in America; _King Alfred_; _Wordsworth's Grave_; epigrams; _How Weary is Our Heart_; hymn of hate; war poems, _Yellow Pansy_; Byronic wit; _Eloping Angels_; dislike of new poetry. Weaving, W. Wells, H. G. religious position. Whitman, W. natural style; _Man of War Bird_; early conventionality; Stevenson's remark on; growth of reputation; Sandburg's relation. Whitney, H. H. Whitsett, W. T. Widdemer, M. Wilcox, E. W. Willcocks, M. P. remark on will. Woodberry, G. E. Wordsworth, W. compared to Shakespeare; Watson's poem on; Masefield's relations to. Yeats, W. B. education; devotion to art; his names; love poetry; dramas; prose; mysticism; relation to Lindsay. Younghusband, G. remark on Kipling 
841	----	MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS by Amy Lowell by Amy Lowell [American (Massachusetts) poet and critic--1874-1925.] [Note on text: Lines longer than 78 characters are broken and the continuation is indented two spaces. Some obvious errors have been corrected.] "'... See small portions of the Eternal World that ever groweth':... So sang a Fairy, mocking, as he sat on a streak'd tulip, Thinking none saw him: when he ceas'd I started from the trees, And caught him in my hat, as boys knock down a butterfly." William Blake. "Europe. A Prophecy." 'Thou hast a lap full of seed, And this is a fine country.' William Blake. Preface This is a book of stories. For that reason I have excluded all purely lyrical poems. But the word "stories" has been stretched to its fullest application. It includes both narrative poems, properly so called; tales divided into scenes; and a few pieces of less obvious story-telling import in which one might say that the dramatis personae are air, clouds, trees, houses, streets, and such like things. It has long been a favourite idea of mine that the rhythms of 'vers libre' have not been sufficiently plumbed, that there is in them a power of variation which has never yet been brought to the light of experiment. I think it was the piano pieces of Debussy, with their strange likeness to short vers libre poems, which first showed me the close kinship of music and poetry, and there flashed into my mind the idea of using the movement of poetry in somewhat the same way that the musician uses the movement of music. It was quite evident that this could never be done in the strict pattern of a metrical form, but the flowing, fluctuating rhythm of vers libre seemed to open the door to such an experiment. First, however, I considered the same method as applied to the more pronounced movements of natural objects. If the reader will turn to the poem, "A Roxbury Garden", he will find in the first two sections an attempt to give the circular movement of a hoop bowling along the ground, and the up and down, elliptical curve of a flying shuttlecock. From these experiments, it is but a step to the flowing rhythm of music. In "The Cremona Violin", I have tried to give this flowing, changing rhythm to the parts in which the violin is being played. The effect is farther heightened, because the rest of the poem is written in the seven line Chaucerian stanza; and, by deserting this ordered pattern for the undulating line of vers libre, I hoped to produce something of the suave, continuous tone of a violin. Again, in the violin parts themselves, the movement constantly changes, as will be quite plain to any one reading these passages aloud. In "The Cremona Violin", however, the rhythms are fairly obvious and regular. I set myself a far harder task in trying to transcribe the various movements of Stravinsky's "Three Pieces 'Grotesques', for String Quartet". Several musicians, who have seen the poem, think the movement accurately given. These experiments lead me to believe that there is here much food for thought and matter for study, and I hope many poets will follow me in opening up the still hardly explored possibilities of vers libre. A good many of the poems in this book are written in "polyphonic prose". A form about which I have written and spoken so much that it seems hardly necessary to explain it here. Let me hastily add, however, that the word "prose" in its name refers only to the typographical arrangement, for in no sense is this a prose form. Only read it aloud, Gentle Reader, I beg, and you will see what you will see. For a purely dramatic form, I know none better in the whole range of poetry. It enables the poet to give his characters the vivid, real effect they have in a play, while at the same time writing in the 'decor'. One last innovation I have still to mention. It will be found in "Spring Day", and more fully enlarged upon in the series, "Towns in Colour". In these poems, I have endeavoured to give the colour, and light, and shade, of certain places and hours, stressing the purely pictorial effect, and with little or no reference to any other aspect of the places described. It is an enchanting thing to wander through a city looking for its unrelated beauty, the beauty by which it captivates the sensuous sense of seeing. I have always loved aquariums, but for years I went to them and looked, and looked, at those swirling, shooting, looping patterns of fish, which always defied transcription to paper until I hit upon the "unrelated" method. The result is in "An Aquarium". I think the first thing which turned me in this direction was John Gould Fletcher's "London Excursion", in "Some Imagist Poets". I here record my thanks. For the substance of the poems--why, the poems are here. No one writing to-day can fail to be affected by the great war raging in Europe at this time. We are too near it to do more than touch upon it. But, obliquely, it is suggested in many of these poems, most notably those in the section, "Bronze Tablets". The Napoleonic Era is an epic subject, and waits a great epic poet. I have only been able to open a few windows upon it here and there. But the scene from the windows is authentic, and the watcher has used eyes, and ears, and heart, in watching. Amy Lowell July 10, 1916. Contents Figurines in Old Saxe Patterns Pickthorn Manor The Cremona Violin The Cross-Roads A Roxbury Garden 1777 Bronze Tablets The Fruit Shop Malmaison The Hammers Two Travellers in the Place Vendome War Pictures The Allies The Bombardment Lead Soldiers The Painter on Silk A Ballad of Footmen The Overgrown Pasture Reaping Off the Turnpike The Grocery Number 3 on the Docket Clocks Tick a Century Nightmare: A Tale for an Autumn Evening The Paper Windmill The Red Lacquer Music-Stand Spring Day The Dinner-Party Stravinsky's Three Pieces "Grotesques", for String Quartet Towns in Colour Red Slippers Thompson's Lunch Room--Grand Central Station An Opera House Afternoon Rain in State Street An Aquarium The two sea songs quoted in "The Hammers" are taken from 'Songs: Naval and Nautical, of the late Charles Dibdin', London, John Murray, 1841. The "Hanging Johnny" refrain, in "The Cremona Violin", is borrowed from the old, well-known chanty of that name. MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS FIGURINES IN OLD SAXE Patterns I walk down the garden paths, And all the daffodils Are blowing, and the bright blue squills. I walk down the patterned garden-paths In my stiff, brocaded gown. With my powdered hair and jewelled fan, I too am a rare Pattern. As I wander down The garden paths. My dress is richly figured, And the train Makes a pink and silver stain On the gravel, and the thrift Of the borders. Just a plate of current fashion, Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes. Not a softness anywhere about me, Only whalebone and brocade. And I sink on a seat in the shade Of a lime tree. For my passion Wars against the stiff brocade. The daffodils and squills Flutter in the breeze As they please. And I weep; For the lime-tree is in blossom And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom. And the plashing of waterdrops In the marble fountain Comes down the garden-paths. The dripping never stops. Underneath my stiffened gown Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin, A basin in the midst of hedges grown So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding, But she guesses he is near, And the sliding of the water Seems the stroking of a dear Hand upon her. What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown! I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground. All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground. I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths, And he would stumble after, Bewildered by my laughter. I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the buckles on his shoes. I would choose To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths, A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover, Till he caught me in the shade, And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me, Aching, melting, unafraid. With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops, And the plopping of the waterdrops, All about us in the open afternoon-- I am very like to swoon With the weight of this brocade, For the sun sifts through the shade. Underneath the fallen blossom In my bosom, Is a letter I have hid. It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke. "Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell Died in action Thursday se'nnight." As I read it in the white, morning sunlight, The letters squirmed like snakes. "Any answer, Madam," said my footman. "No," I told him. "See that the messenger takes some refreshment. No, no answer." And I walked into the garden, Up and down the patterned paths, In my stiff, correct brocade. The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun, Each one. I stood upright too, Held rigid to the pattern By the stiffness of my gown. Up and down I walked, Up and down. In a month he would have been my husband. In a month, here, underneath this lime, We would have broke the pattern; He for me, and I for him, He as Colonel, I as Lady, On this shady seat. He had a whim That sunlight carried blessing. And I answered, "It shall be as you have said." Now he is dead. In Summer and in Winter I shall walk Up and down The patterned garden-paths In my stiff, brocaded gown. The squills and daffodils Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow. I shall go Up and down, In my gown. Gorgeously arrayed, Boned and stayed. And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace By each button, hook, and lace. For the man who should loose me is dead, Fighting with the Duke in Flanders, In a pattern called a war. Christ! What are patterns for? Pickthorn Manor I How fresh the Dartle's little waves that day! A steely silver, underlined with blue, And flashing where the round clouds, blown away, Let drop the yellow sunshine to gleam through And tip the edges of the waves with shifts And spots of whitest fire, hard like gems Cut from the midnight moon they were, and sharp As wind through leafless stems. The Lady Eunice walked between the drifts Of blooming cherry-trees, and watched the rifts Of clouds drawn through the river's azure warp. II Her little feet tapped softly down the path. Her soul was listless; even the morning breeze Fluttering the trees and strewing a light swath Of fallen petals on the grass, could please Her not at all. She brushed a hair aside With a swift move, and a half-angry frown. She stopped to pull a daffodil or two, And held them to her gown To test the colours; put them at her side, Then at her breast, then loosened them and tried Some new arrangement, but it would not do. III A lady in a Manor-house, alone, Whose husband is in Flanders with the Duke Of Marlborough and Prince Eugene, she's grown Too apathetic even to rebuke Her idleness. What is she on this Earth? No woman surely, since she neither can Be wed nor single, must not let her mind Build thoughts upon a man Except for hers. Indeed that were no dearth Were her Lord here, for well she knew his worth, And when she thought of him her eyes were kind. IV Too lately wed to have forgot the wooing. Too unaccustomed as a bride to feel Other than strange delight at her wife's doing. Even at the thought a gentle blush would steal Over her face, and then her lips would frame Some little word of loving, and her eyes Would brim and spill their tears, when all they saw Was the bright sun, slantwise Through burgeoning trees, and all the morning's flame Burning and quivering round her. With quick shame She shut her heart and bent before the law. V He was a soldier, she was proud of that. This was his house and she would keep it well. His honour was in fighting, hers in what He'd left her here in charge of. Then a spell Of conscience sent her through the orchard spying Upon the gardeners. Were their tools about? Were any branches broken? Had the weeds Been duly taken out Under the 'spaliered pears, and were these lying Nailed snug against the sunny bricks and drying Their leaves and satisfying all their needs? VI She picked a stone up with a little pout, Stones looked so ill in well-kept flower-borders. Where should she put it? All the paths about Were strewn with fair, red gravel by her orders. No stone could mar their sifted smoothness. So She hurried to the river. At the edge She stood a moment charmed by the swift blue Beyond the river sedge. She watched it curdling, crinkling, and the snow Purfled upon its wave-tops. Then, "Hullo, My Beauty, gently, or you'll wriggle through." VII The Lady Eunice caught a willow spray To save herself from tumbling in the shallows Which rippled to her feet. Then straight away She peered down stream among the budding sallows. A youth in leather breeches and a shirt Of finest broidered lawn lay out upon An overhanging bole and deftly swayed A well-hooked fish which shone In the pale lemon sunshine like a spurt Of silver, bowed and damascened, and girt With crimson spots and moons which waned and played. VIII The fish hung circled for a moment, ringed And bright; then flung itself out, a thin blade Of spotted lightning, and its tail was winged With chipped and sparkled sunshine. And the shade Broke up and splintered into shafts of light Wheeling about the fish, who churned the air And made the fish-line hum, and bent the rod Almost to snapping. Care The young man took against the twigs, with slight, Deft movements he kept fish and line in tight Obedience to his will with every prod. IX He lay there, and the fish hung just beyond. He seemed uncertain what more he should do. He drew back, pulled the rod to correspond, Tossed it and caught it; every time he threw, He caught it nearer to the point. At last The fish was near enough to touch. He paused. Eunice knew well the craft--"What's got the thing!" She cried. "What can have caused-- Where is his net? The moment will be past. The fish will wriggle free." She stopped aghast. He turned and bowed. One arm was in a sling. X The broad, black ribbon she had thought his basket Must hang from, held instead a useless arm. "I do not wonder, Madam, that you ask it." He smiled, for she had spoke aloud. "The charm Of trout fishing is in my eyes enhanced When you must play your fish on land as well." "How will you take him?" Eunice asked. "In truth I really cannot tell. 'Twas stupid of me, but it simply chanced I never thought of that until he glanced Into the branches. 'Tis a bit uncouth." XI He watched the fish against the blowing sky, Writhing and glittering, pulling at the line. "The hook is fast, I might just let him die," He mused. "But that would jar against your fine Sense of true sportsmanship, I know it would," Cried Eunice. "Let me do it." Swift and light She ran towards him. "It is so long now Since I have felt a bite, I lost all heart for everything." She stood, Supple and strong, beside him, and her blood Tingled her lissom body to a glow. XII She quickly seized the fish and with a stone Ended its flurry, then removed the hook, Untied the fly with well-poised fingers. Done, She asked him where he kept his fishing-book. He pointed to a coat flung on the ground. She searched the pockets, found a shagreen case, Replaced the fly, noticed a golden stamp Filling the middle space. Two letters half rubbed out were there, and round About them gay rococo flowers wound And tossed a spray of roses to the clamp. XIII The Lady Eunice puzzled over these. "G. D." the young man gravely said. "My name Is Gervase Deane. Your servant, if you please." "Oh, Sir, indeed I know you, for your fame For exploits in the field has reached my ears. I did not know you wounded and returned." "But just come back, Madam. A silly prick To gain me such unearned Holiday making. And you, it appears, Must be Sir Everard's lady. And my fears At being caught a-trespassing were quick." XIV He looked so rueful that she laughed out loud. "You are forgiven, Mr. Deane. Even more, I offer you the fishing, and am proud That you should find it pleasant from this shore. Nobody fishes now, my husband used To angle daily, and I too with him. He loved the spotted trout, and pike, and dace. He even had a whim That flies my fingers tied swiftly confused The greater fish. And he must be excused, Love weaves odd fancies in a lonely place." XV She sighed because it seemed so long ago, Those days with Everard; unthinking took The path back to the orchard. Strolling so She walked, and he beside her. In a nook Where a stone seat withdrew beneath low boughs, Full-blossomed, hummed with bees, they sat them down. She questioned him about the war, the share Her husband had, and grown Eager by his clear answers, straight allows Her hidden hopes and fears to speak, and rouse Her numbed love, which had slumbered unaware. XVI Under the orchard trees daffodils danced And jostled, turning sideways to the wind. A dropping cherry petal softly glanced Over her hair, and slid away behind. At the far end through twisted cherry-trees The old house glowed, geranium-hued, with bricks Bloomed in the sun like roses, low and long, Gabled, and with quaint tricks Of chimneys carved and fretted. Out of these Grey smoke was shaken, which the faint Spring breeze Tossed into nothing. Then a thrush's song XVII Needled its way through sound of bees and river. The notes fell, round and starred, between young leaves, Trilled to a spiral lilt, stopped on a quiver. The Lady Eunice listens and believes. Gervase has many tales of her dear Lord, His bravery, his knowledge, his charmed life. She quite forgets who's speaking in the gladness Of being this man's wife. Gervase is wounded, grave indeed, the word Is kindly said, but to a softer chord She strings her voice to ask with wistful sadness, XVIII "And is Sir Everard still unscathed? I fain Would know the truth." "Quite well, dear Lady, quite." She smiled in her content. "So many slain, You must forgive me for a little fright." And he forgave her, not alone for that, But because she was fingering his heart, Pressing and squeezing it, and thinking so Only to ease her smart Of painful, apprehensive longing. At Their feet the river swirled and chucked. They sat An hour there. The thrush flew to and fro. XIX The Lady Eunice supped alone that day, As always since Sir Everard had gone, In the oak-panelled parlour, whose array Of faded portraits in carved mouldings shone. Warriors and ladies, armoured, ruffed, peruked. Van Dykes with long, slim fingers; Holbeins, stout And heavy-featured; and one Rubens dame, A peony just burst out, With flaunting, crimson flesh. Eunice rebuked Her thoughts of gentler blood, when these had duked It with the best, and scorned to change their name. XX A sturdy family, and old besides, Much older than her own, the Earls of Crowe. Since Saxon days, these men had sought their brides Among the highest born, but always so, Taking them to themselves, their wealth, their lands, But never their titles. Stern perhaps, but strong, The Framptons fed their blood from richest streams, Scorning the common throng. Gazing upon these men, she understands The toughness of the web wrought from such strands And pride of Everard colours all her dreams. XXI Eunice forgets to eat, watching their faces Flickering in the wind-blown candle's shine. Blue-coated lackeys tiptoe to their places, And set out plates of fruit and jugs of wine. The table glitters black like Winter ice. The Dartle's rushing, and the gentle clash Of blossomed branches, drifts into her ears. And through the casement sash She sees each cherry stem a pointed slice Of splintered moonlight, topped with all the spice And shimmer of the blossoms it uprears. XXII "In such a night--" she laid the book aside, She could outnight the poet by thinking back. In such a night she came here as a bride. The date was graven in the almanack Of her clasped memory. In this very room Had Everard uncloaked her. On this seat Had drawn her to him, bade her note the trees, How white they were and sweet And later, coming to her, her dear groom, Her Lord, had lain beside her in the gloom Of moon and shade, and whispered her to ease. XXIII Her little taper made the room seem vast, Caverned and empty. And her beating heart Rapped through the silence all about her cast Like some loud, dreadful death-watch taking part In this sad vigil. Slowly she undrest, Put out the light and crept into her bed. The linen sheets were fragrant, but so cold. And brimming tears she shed, Sobbing and quivering in her barren nest, Her weeping lips into the pillow prest, Her eyes sealed fast within its smothering fold. XXIV The morning brought her a more stoic mind, And sunshine struck across the polished floor. She wondered whether this day she should find Gervase a-fishing, and so listen more, Much more again, to all he had to tell. And he was there, but waiting to begin Until she came. They fished awhile, then went To the old seat within The cherry's shade. He pleased her very well By his discourse. But ever he must dwell Upon Sir Everard. Each incident XXV Must be related and each term explained. How troops were set in battle, how a siege Was ordered and conducted. She complained Because he bungled at the fall of Liege. The curious names of parts of forts she knew, And aired with conscious pride her ravelins, And counterscarps, and lunes. The day drew on, And his dead fish's fins In the hot sunshine turned a mauve-green hue. At last Gervase, guessing the hour, withdrew. But she sat long in still oblivion. XXVI Then he would bring her books, and read to her The poems of Dr. Donne, and the blue river Would murmur through the reading, and a stir Of birds and bees make the white petals shiver, And one or two would flutter prone and lie Spotting the smooth-clipped grass. The days went by Threaded with talk and verses. Green leaves pushed Through blossoms stubbornly. Gervase, unconscious of dishonesty, Fell into strong and watchful loving, free He thought, since always would his lips be hushed. XXVII But lips do not stay silent at command, And Gervase strove in vain to order his. Luckily Eunice did not understand That he but read himself aloud, for this Their friendship would have snapped. She treated him And spoilt him like a brother. It was now "Gervase" and "Eunice" with them, and he dined Whenever she'd allow, In the oak parlour, underneath the dim Old pictured Framptons, opposite her slim Figure, so bright against the chair behind. XXVIII Eunice was happier than she had been For many days, and yet the hours were long. All Gervase told to her but made her lean More heavily upon the past. Among Her hopes she lived, even when she was giving Her morning orders, even when she twined Nosegays to deck her parlours. With the thought Of Everard, her mind Solaced its solitude, and in her striving To do as he would wish was all her living. She welcomed Gervase for the news he brought. XXIX Black-hearts and white-hearts, bubbled with the sun, Hid in their leaves and knocked against each other. Eunice was standing, panting with her run Up to the tool-house just to get another Basket. All those which she had brought were filled, And still Gervase pelted her from above. The buckles of his shoes flashed higher and higher Until his shoulders strove Quite through the top. "Eunice, your spirit's filled This tree. White-hearts!" He shook, and cherries spilled And spat out from the leaves like falling fire. XXX The wide, sun-winged June morning spread itself Over the quiet garden. And they packed Full twenty baskets with the fruit. "My shelf Of cordials will be stored with what it lacked. In future, none of us will drink strong ale, But cherry-brandy." "Vastly good, I vow," And Gervase gave the tree another shake. The cherries seemed to flow Out of the sky in cloudfuls, like blown hail. Swift Lady Eunice ran, her farthingale, Unnoticed, tangling in a fallen rake. XXXI She gave a little cry and fell quite prone In the long grass, and lay there very still. Gervase leapt from the tree at her soft moan, And kneeling over her, with clumsy skill Unloosed her bodice, fanned her with his hat, And his unguarded lips pronounced his heart. "Eunice, my Dearest Girl, where are you hurt?" His trembling fingers dart Over her limbs seeking some wound. She strove To answer, opened wide her eyes, above Her knelt Sir Everard, with face alert. XXXII Her eyelids fell again at that sweet sight, "My Love!" she murmured, "Dearest! Oh, my Dear!" He took her in his arms and bore her right And tenderly to the old seat, and "Here I have you mine at last," she said, and swooned Under his kisses. When she came once more To sight of him, she smiled in comfort knowing Herself laid as before Close covered on his breast. And all her glowing Youth answered him, and ever nearer growing She twined him in her arms and soft festooned XXXIII Herself about him like a flowering vine, Drawing his lips to cling upon her own. A ray of sunlight pierced the leaves to shine Where her half-opened bodice let be shown Her white throat fluttering to his soft caress, Half-gasping with her gladness. And her pledge She whispers, melting with delight. A twig Snaps in the hornbeam hedge. A cackling laugh tears through the quietness. Eunice starts up in terrible distress. "My God! What's that?" Her staring eyes are big. XXXIV Revulsed emotion set her body shaking As though she had an ague. Gervase swore, Jumped to his feet in such a dreadful taking His face was ghastly with the look it wore. Crouching and slipping through the trees, a man In worn, blue livery, a humpbacked thing, Made off. But turned every few steps to gaze At Eunice, and to fling Vile looks and gestures back. "The ruffian! By Christ's Death! I will split him to a span Of hog's thongs." She grasped at his sleeve, "Gervase! XXXV What are you doing here? Put down that sword, That's only poor old Tony, crazed and lame. We never notice him. With my dear Lord I ought not to have minded that he came. But, Gervase, it surprises me that you Should so lack grace to stay here." With one hand She held her gaping bodice to conceal Her breast. "I must demand Your instant absence. Everard, but new Returned, will hardly care for guests. Adieu." "Eunice, you're mad." His brain began to reel. XXXVI He tried again to take her, tried to twist Her arms about him. Truly, she had said Nothing should ever part them. In a mist She pushed him from her, clasped her aching head In both her hands, and rocked and sobbed aloud. "Oh! Where is Everard? What does this mean? So lately come to leave me thus alone!" But Gervase had not seen Sir Everard. Then, gently, to her bowed And sickening spirit, he told of her proud Surrender to him. He could hear her moan. XXXVII Then shame swept over her and held her numb, Hiding her anguished face against the seat. At last she rose, a woman stricken--dumb-- And trailed away with slowly-dragging feet. Gervase looked after her, but feared to pass The barrier set between them. All his rare Joy broke to fragments--worse than that, unreal. And standing lonely there, His swollen heart burst out, and on the grass He flung himself and wept. He knew, alas! The loss so great his life could never heal. XXXVIII For days thereafter Eunice lived retired, Waited upon by one old serving-maid. She would not leave her chamber, and desired Only to hide herself. She was afraid Of what her eyes might trick her into seeing, Of what her longing urge her then to do. What was this dreadful illness solitude Had tortured her into? Her hours went by in a long constant fleeing The thought of that one morning. And her being Bruised itself on a happening so rude. XXXIX It grew ripe Summer, when one morning came Her tirewoman with a letter, printed Upon the seal were the Deane crest and name. With utmost gentleness, the letter hinted His understanding and his deep regret. But would she not permit him once again To pay her his profound respects? No word Of what had passed should pain Her resolution. Only let them get Back the old comradeship. Her eyes were wet With starting tears, now truly she deplored XL His misery. Yes, she was wrong to keep Away from him. He hardly was to blame. 'Twas she--she shuddered and began to weep. 'Twas her fault! Hers! Her everlasting shame Was that she suffered him, whom not at all She loved. Poor Boy! Yes, they must still be friends. She owed him that to keep the balance straight. It was such poor amends Which she could make for rousing hopes to gall Him with their unfulfilment. Tragical It was, and she must leave him desolate. XLI Hard silence he had forced upon his lips For long and long, and would have done so still Had not she--here she pressed her finger tips Against her heavy eyes. Then with forced will She wrote that he might come, sealed with the arms Of Crowe and Frampton twined. Her heart felt lighter When this was done. It seemed her constant care Might some day cease to fright her. Illness could be no crime, and dreadful harms Did come from too much sunshine. Her alarms Would lessen when she saw him standing there, XLII Simple and kind, a brother just returned From journeying, and he would treat her so. She knew his honest heart, and if there burned A spark in it he would not let it show. But when he really came, and stood beside Her underneath the fruitless cherry boughs, He seemed a tired man, gaunt, leaden-eyed. He made her no more vows, Nor did he mention one thing he had tried To put into his letter. War supplied Him topics. And his mind seemed occupied. XLIII Daily they met. And gravely walked and talked. He read her no more verses, and he stayed Only until their conversation, balked Of every natural channel, fled dismayed. Again the next day she would meet him, trying To give her tone some healthy sprightliness, But his uneager dignity soon chilled Her well-prepared address. Thus Summer waned, and in the mornings, crying Of wild geese startled Eunice, and their flying Whirred overhead for days and never stilled. XLIV One afternoon of grey clouds and white wind, Eunice awaited Gervase by the river. The Dartle splashed among the reeds and whined Over the willow-roots, and a long sliver Of caked and slobbered foam crept up the bank. All through the garden, drifts of skirling leaves Blew up, and settled down, and blew again. The cherry-trees were weaves Of empty, knotted branches, and a dank Mist hid the house, mouldy it smelt and rank With sodden wood, and still unfalling rain. XLV Eunice paced up and down. No joy she took At meeting Gervase, but the custom grown Still held her. He was late. She sudden shook, And caught at her stopped heart. Her eyes had shown Sir Everard emerging from the mist. His uniform was travel-stained and torn, His jackboots muddy, and his eager stride Jangled his spurs. A thorn Entangled, trailed behind him. To the tryst He hastened. Eunice shuddered, ran--a twist Round a sharp turning and she fled to hide. XLVI But he had seen her as she swiftly ran, A flash of white against the river's grey. "Eunice," he called. "My Darling. Eunice. Can You hear me? It is Everard. All day I have been riding like the very devil To reach you sooner. Are you startled, Dear?" He broke into a run and followed her, And caught her, faint with fear, Cowering and trembling as though she some evil Spirit were seeing. "What means this uncivil Greeting, Dear Heart?" He saw her senses blur. XLVII Swaying and catching at the seat, she tried To speak, but only gurgled in her throat. At last, straining to hold herself, she cried To him for pity, and her strange words smote A coldness through him, for she begged Gervase To leave her, 'twas too much a second time. Gervase must go, always Gervase, her mind Repeated like a rhyme This name he did not know. In sad amaze He watched her, and that hunted, fearful gaze, So unremembering and so unkind. XLVIII Softly he spoke to her, patiently dealt With what he feared her madness. By and by He pierced her understanding. Then he knelt Upon the seat, and took her hands: "Now try To think a minute I am come, my Dear, Unharmed and back on furlough. Are you glad To have your lover home again? To me, Pickthorn has never had A greater pleasantness. Could you not bear To come and sit awhile beside me here? A stone between us surely should not be." XLIX She smiled a little wan and ravelled smile, Then came to him and on his shoulder laid Her head, and they two rested there awhile, Each taking comfort. Not a word was said. But when he put his hand upon her breast And felt her beating heart, and with his lips Sought solace for her and himself. She started As one sharp lashed with whips, And pushed him from her, moaning, his dumb quest Denied and shuddered from. And he, distrest, Loosened his wife, and long they sat there, parted. L Eunice was very quiet all that day, A little dazed, and yet she seemed content. At candle-time, he asked if she would play Upon her harpsichord, at once she went And tinkled airs from Lully's 'Carnival' And 'Bacchus', newly brought away from France. Then jaunted through a lively rigadoon To please him with a dance By Purcell, for he said that surely all Good Englishmen had pride in national Accomplishment. But tiring of it soon LI He whispered her that if she had forgiven His startling her that afternoon, the clock Marked early bed-time. Surely it was Heaven He entered when she opened to his knock. The hours rustled in the trailing wind Over the chimney. Close they lay and knew Only that they were wedded. At his touch Anxiety she threw Away like a shed garment, and inclined Herself to cherish him, her happy mind Quivering, unthinking, loving overmuch. LII Eunice lay long awake in the cool night After her husband slept. She gazed with joy Into the shadows, painting them with bright Pictures of all her future life's employ. Twin gems they were, set to a single jewel, Each shining with the other. Soft she turned And felt his breath upon her hair, and prayed Her happiness was earned. Past Earls of Crowe should give their blood for fuel To light this Frampton's hearth-fire. By no cruel Affrightings would she ever be dismayed. LIII When Everard, next day, asked her in joke What name it was that she had called him by, She told him of Gervase, and as she spoke She hardly realized it was a lie. Her vision she related, but she hid The fondness into which she had been led. Sir Everard just laughed and pinched her ear, And quite out of her head The matter drifted. Then Sir Everard chid Himself for laziness, and off he rid To see his men and count his farming-gear. LIV At supper he seemed overspread with gloom, But gave no reason why, he only asked More questions of Gervase, and round the room He walked with restless strides. At last he tasked Her with a greater feeling for this man Than she had given. Eunice quick denied The slightest interest other than a friend Might claim. But he replied He thought she underrated. Then a ban He put on talk and music. He'd a plan To work at, draining swamps at Pickthorn End. LV Next morning Eunice found her Lord still changed, Hard and unkind, with bursts of anger. Pride Kept him from speaking out. His probings ranged All round his torment. Lady Eunice tried To sooth him. So a week went by, and then His anguish flooded over; with clenched hands Striving to stem his words, he told her plain Tony had seen them, "brands Burning in Hell," the man had said. Again Eunice described her vision, and how when Awoke at last she had known dreadful pain. LVI He could not credit it, and misery fed Upon his spirit, day by day it grew. To Gervase he forbade the house, and led The Lady Eunice such a life she flew At his approaching footsteps. Winter came Snowing and blustering through the Manor trees. All the roof-edges spiked with icicles In fluted companies. The Lady Eunice with her tambour-frame Kept herself sighing company. The flame Of the birch fire glittered on the walls. LVII A letter was brought to her as she sat, Unsealed, unsigned. It told her that his wound, The writer's, had so well recovered that To join his regiment he felt him bound. But would she not wish him one short "Godspeed", He asked no more. Her greeting would suffice. He had resolved he never should return. Would she this sacrifice Make for a dying man? How could she read The rest! But forcing her eyes to the deed, She read. Then dropped it in the fire to burn. LVIII Gervase had set the river for their meeting As farthest from the farms where Everard Spent all his days. How should he know such cheating Was quite expected, at least no dullard Was Everard Frampton. Hours by hours he hid Among the willows watching. Dusk had come, And from the Manor he had long been gone. Eunice her burdensome Task set about. Hooded and cloaked, she slid Over the slippery paths, and soon amid The sallows saw a boat tied to a stone. LIX Gervase arose, and kissed her hand, then pointed Into the boat. She shook her head, but he Begged her to realize why, and with disjointed Words told her of what peril there might be From listeners along the river bank. A push would take them out of earshot. Ten Minutes was all he asked, then she should land, He go away again, Forever this time. Yet how could he thank Her for so much compassion. Here she sank Upon a thwart, and bid him quick unstrand LX His boat. He cast the rope, and shoved the keel Free of the gravel; jumped, and dropped beside Her; took the oars, and they began to steal Under the overhanging trees. A wide Gash of red lantern-light cleft like a blade Into the gloom, and struck on Eunice sitting Rigid and stark upon the after thwart. It blazed upon their flitting In merciless light. A moment so it stayed, Then was extinguished, and Sir Everard made One leap, and landed just a fraction short. LXI His weight upon the gunwale tipped the boat To straining balance. Everard lurched and seized His wife and held her smothered to his coat. "Everard, loose me, we shall drown--" and squeezed Against him, she beat with her hands. He gasped "Never, by God!" The slidden boat gave way And the black foamy water split--and met. Bubbled up through the spray A wailing rose and in the branches rasped, And creaked, and stilled. Over the treetops, clasped In the blue evening, a clear moon was set. LXII They lie entangled in the twisting roots, Embraced forever. Their cold marriage bed Close-canopied and curtained by the shoots Of willows and pale birches. At the head, White lilies, like still swans, placidly float And sway above the pebbles. Here are waves Sun-smitten for a threaded counterpane Gold-woven on their graves. In perfect quietness they sleep, remote In the green, rippled twilight. Death has smote Them to perpetual oneness who were twain. The Cremona Violin Part First Frau Concert-Meister Altgelt shut the door. A storm was rising, heavy gusts of wind Swirled through the trees, and scattered leaves before Her on the clean, flagged path. The sky behind The distant town was black, and sharp defined Against it shone the lines of roofs and towers, Superimposed and flat like cardboard flowers. A pasted city on a purple ground, Picked out with luminous paint, it seemed. The cloud Split on an edge of lightning, and a sound Of rivers full and rushing boomed through bowed, Tossed, hissing branches. Thunder rumbled loud Beyond the town fast swallowing into gloom. Frau Altgelt closed the windows of each room. She bustled round to shake by constant moving The strange, weird atmosphere. She stirred the fire, She twitched the supper-cloth as though improving Its careful setting, then her own attire Came in for notice, tiptoeing higher and higher She peered into the wall-glass, now adjusting A straying lock, or else a ribbon thrusting This way or that to suit her. At last sitting, Or rather plumping down upon a chair, She took her work, the stocking she was knitting, And watched the rain upon the window glare In white, bright drops. Through the black glass a flare Of lightning squirmed about her needles. "Oh!" She cried. "What can be keeping Theodore so!" A roll of thunder set the casements clapping. Frau Altgelt flung her work aside and ran, Pulled open the house door, with kerchief flapping She stood and gazed along the street. A man Flung back the garden-gate and nearly ran Her down as she stood in the door. "Why, Dear, What in the name of patience brings you here? Quick, Lotta, shut the door, my violin I fear is wetted. Now, Dear, bring a light. This clasp is very much too worn and thin. I'll take the other fiddle out to-night If it still rains. Tut! Tut! my child, you're quite Clumsy. Here, help me, hold the case while I-- Give me the candle. No, the inside's dry. Thank God for that! Well, Lotta, how are you? A bad storm, but the house still stands, I see. Is my pipe filled, my Dear? I'll have a few Puffs and a snooze before I eat my tea. What do you say? That you were feared for me? Nonsense, my child. Yes, kiss me, now don't talk. I need a rest, the theatre's a long walk." Her needles still, her hands upon her lap Patiently laid, Charlotta Altgelt sat And watched the rain-run window. In his nap Her husband stirred and muttered. Seeing that, Charlotta rose and softly, pit-a-pat, Climbed up the stairs, and in her little room Found sighing comfort with a moon in bloom. But even rainy windows, silver-lit By a new-burst, storm-whetted moon, may give But poor content to loneliness, and it Was hard for young Charlotta so to strive And down her eagerness and learn to live In placid quiet. While her husband slept, Charlotta in her upper chamber wept. Herr Concert-Meister Altgelt was a man Gentle and unambitious, that alone Had kept him back. He played as few men can, Drawing out of his instrument a tone So shimmering-sweet and palpitant, it shone Like a bright thread of sound hung in the air, Afloat and swinging upward, slim and fair. Above all things, above Charlotta his wife, Herr Altgelt loved his violin, a fine Cremona pattern, Stradivari's life Was flowering out of early discipline When this was fashioned. Of soft-cutting pine The belly was. The back of broadly curled Maple, the head made thick and sharply whirled. The slanting, youthful sound-holes through The belly of fine, vigorous pine Mellowed each note and blew It out again with a woody flavour Tanged and fragrant as fir-trees are When breezes in their needles jar. The varnish was an orange-brown Lustered like glass that's long laid down Under a crumbling villa stone. Purfled stoutly, with mitres which point Straight up the corners. Each curve and joint Clear, and bold, and thin. Such was Herr Theodore's violin. Seven o'clock, the Concert-Meister gone With his best violin, the rain being stopped, Frau Lotta in the kitchen sat alone Watching the embers which the fire dropped. The china shone upon the dresser, topped By polished copper vessels which her skill Kept brightly burnished. It was very still. An air from 'Orfeo' hummed in her head. Herr Altgelt had been practising before The night's performance. Charlotta had plead With him to stay with her. Even at the door She'd begged him not to go. "I do implore You for this evening, Theodore," she had said. "Leave them to-night, and stay with me instead." "A silly poppet!" Theodore pinched her ear. "You'd like to have our good Elector turn Me out I think." "But, Theodore, something queer Ails me. Oh, do but notice how they burn, My cheeks! The thunder worried me. You're stern, And cold, and only love your work, I know. But Theodore, for this evening, do not go." But he had gone, hurriedly at the end, For she had kept him talking. Now she sat Alone again, always alone, the trend Of all her thinking brought her back to that She wished to banish. What would life be? What? For she was young, and loved, while he was moved Only by music. Each day that was proved. Each day he rose and practised. While he played, She stopped her work and listened, and her heart Swelled painfully beneath her bodice. Swayed And longing, she would hide from him her smart. "Well, Lottchen, will that do?" Then what a start She gave, and she would run to him and cry, And he would gently chide her, "Fie, Dear, fie. I'm glad I played it well. But such a taking! You'll hear the thing enough before I've done." And she would draw away from him, still shaking. Had he but guessed she was another one, Another violin. Her strings were aching, Stretched to the touch of his bow hand, again He played and she almost broke at the strain. Where was the use of thinking of it now, Sitting alone and listening to the clock! She'd best make haste and knit another row. Three hours at least must pass before his knock Would startle her. It always was a shock. She listened--listened--for so long before, That when it came her hearing almost tore. She caught herself just starting in to listen. What nerves she had: rattling like brittle sticks! She wandered to the window, for the glisten Of a bright moon was tempting. Snuffed the wicks Of her two candles. Still she could not fix To anything. The moon in a broad swath Beckoned her out and down the garden-path. Against the house, her hollyhocks stood high And black, their shadows doubling them. The night Was white and still with moonlight, and a sigh Of blowing leaves was there, and the dim flight Of insects, and the smell of aconite, And stocks, and Marvel of Peru. She flitted Along the path, where blocks of shadow pitted The even flags. She let herself go dreaming Of Theodore her husband, and the tune From 'Orfeo' swam through her mind, but seeming Changed--shriller. Of a sudden, the clear moon Showed her a passer-by, inopportune Indeed, but here he was, whistling and striding. Lotta squeezed in between the currants, hiding. "The best laid plans of mice and men," alas! The stranger came indeed, but did not pass. Instead, he leant upon the garden-gate, Folding his arms and whistling. Lotta's state, Crouched in the prickly currants, on wet grass, Was far from pleasant. Still the stranger stayed, And Lotta in her currants watched, dismayed. He seemed a proper fellow standing there In the bright moonshine. His cocked hat was laced With silver, and he wore his own brown hair Tied, but unpowdered. His whole bearing graced A fine cloth coat, and ruffled shirt, and chased Sword-hilt. Charlotta looked, but her position Was hardly easy. When would his volition Suggest his walking on? And then that tune! A half-a-dozen bars from 'Orfeo' Gone over and over, and murdered. What Fortune Had brought him there to stare about him so? "Ach, Gott im Himmel! Why will he not go!" Thought Lotta, but the young man whistled on, And seemed in no great hurry to be gone. Charlotta, crouched among the currant bushes, Watched the moon slowly dip from twig to twig. If Theodore should chance to come, and blushes Streamed over her. He would not care a fig, He'd only laugh. She pushed aside a sprig Of sharp-edged leaves and peered, then she uprose Amid her bushes. "Sir," said she, "pray whose Garden do you suppose you're watching? Why Do you stand there? I really must insist Upon your leaving. 'Tis unmannerly To stay so long." The young man gave a twist And turned about, and in the amethyst Moonlight he saw her like a nymph half-risen From the green bushes which had been her prison. He swept his hat off in a hurried bow. "Your pardon, Madam, I had no idea I was not quite alone, and that is how I came to stay. My trespass was not sheer Impertinence. I thought no one was here, And really gardens cry to be admired. To-night especially it seemed required. And may I beg to introduce myself? Heinrich Marohl of Munich. And your name?" Charlotta told him. And the artful elf Promptly exclaimed about her husband's fame. So Lotta, half-unwilling, slowly came To conversation with him. When she went Into the house, she found the evening spent. Theodore arrived quite wearied out and teased, With all excitement in him burned away. It had gone well, he said, the audience pleased, And he had played his very best to-day, But afterwards he had been forced to stay And practise with the stupid ones. His head Ached furiously, and he must get to bed. Part Second Herr Concert-Meister Altgelt played, And the four strings of his violin Were spinning like bees on a day in Spring. The notes rose into the wide sun-mote Which slanted through the window, They lay like coloured beads a-row, They knocked together and parted, And started to dance, Skipping, tripping, each one slipping Under and over the others so That the polychrome fire streamed like a lance Or a comet's tail, Behind them. Then a wail arose--crescendo-- And dropped from off the end of the bow, And the dancing stopped. A scent of lilies filled the room, Long and slow. Each large white bloom Breathed a sound which was holy perfume from a blessed censer, And the hum of an organ tone, And they waved like fans in a hall of stone Over a bier standing there in the centre, alone. Each lily bent slowly as it was blown. Like smoke they rose from the violin-- Then faded as a swifter bowing Jumbled the notes like wavelets flowing In a splashing, pashing, rippling motion Between broad meadows to an ocean Wide as a day and blue as a flower, Where every hour Gulls dipped, and scattered, and squawked, and squealed, And over the marshes the Angelus pealed, And the prows of the fishing-boats were spattered With spray. And away a couple of frigates were starting To race to Java with all sails set, Topgallants, and royals, and stunsails, and jibs, And wide moonsails; and the shining rails Were polished so bright they sparked in the sun. All the sails went up with a run: "They call me Hanging Johnny, Away-i-oh; They call me Hanging Johnny, So hang, boys, hang." And the sun had set and the high moon whitened, And the ship heeled over to the breeze. He drew her into the shade of the sails, And whispered tales Of voyages in the China seas, And his arm around her Held and bound her. She almost swooned, With the breeze and the moon And the slipping sea, And he beside her, Touching her, leaning-- The ship careening, With the white moon steadily shining over Her and her lover, Theodore, still her lover! Then a quiver fell on the crowded notes, And slowly floated A single note which spread and spread Till it filled the room with a shimmer like gold, And noises shivered throughout its length, And tried its strength. They pulled it, and tore it, And the stuff waned thinner, but still it bore it. Then a wide rent Split the arching tent, And balls of fire spurted through, Spitting yellow, and mauve, and blue. One by one they were quenched as they fell, Only the blue burned steadily. Paler and paler it grew, and--faded--away. Herr Altgelt stopped. "Well, Lottachen, my Dear, what do you say? I think I'm in good trim. Now let's have dinner. What's this, my Love, you're very sweet to-day. I wonder how it happens I'm the winner Of so much sweetness. But I think you're thinner; You're like a bag of feathers on my knee. Why, Lotta child, you're almost strangling me. I'm glad you're going out this afternoon. The days are getting short, and I'm so tied At the Court Theatre my poor little bride Has not much junketing I fear, but soon I'll ask our manager to grant a boon. To-night, perhaps, I'll get a pass for you, And when I go, why Lotta can come too. Now dinner, Love. I want some onion soup To whip me up till that rehearsal's over. You know it's odd how some women can stoop! Fraeulein Gebnitz has taken on a lover, A Jew named Goldstein. No one can discover If it's his money. But she lives alone Practically. Gebnitz is a stone, Pores over books all day, and has no ear For his wife's singing. Artists must have men; They need appreciation. But it's queer What messes people make of their lives, when They should know more. If Gebnitz finds out, then His wife will pack. Yes, shut the door at once. I did not feel it cold, I am a dunce." Frau Altgelt tied her bonnet on and went Into the streets. A bright, crisp Autumn wind Flirted her skirts and hair. A turbulent, Audacious wind it was, now close behind, Pushing her bonnet forward till it twined The strings across her face, then from in front Slantingly swinging at her with a shunt, Until she lay against it, struggling, pushing, Dismayed to find her clothing tightly bound Around her, every fold and wrinkle crushing Itself upon her, so that she was wound In draperies as clinging as those found Sucking about a sea nymph on the frieze Of some old Grecian temple. In the breeze The shops and houses had a quality Of hard and dazzling colour; something sharp And buoyant, like white, puffing sails at sea. The city streets were twanging like a harp. Charlotta caught the movement, skippingly She blew along the pavement, hardly knowing Toward what destination she was going. She fetched up opposite a jeweller's shop, Where filigreed tiaras shone like crowns, And necklaces of emeralds seemed to drop And then float up again with lightness. Browns Of striped agates struck her like cold frowns Amid the gaiety of topaz seals, Carved though they were with heads, and arms, and wheels. A row of pencils knobbed with quartz or sard Delighted her. And rings of every size Turned smartly round like hoops before her eyes, Amethyst-flamed or ruby-girdled, jarred To spokes and flashing triangles, and starred Like rockets bursting on a festal day. Charlotta could not tear herself away. With eyes glued tightly on a golden box, Whose rare enamel piqued her with its hue, Changeable, iridescent, shuttlecocks Of shades and lustres always darting through Its level, superimposing sheet of blue, Charlotta did not hear footsteps approaching. She started at the words: "Am I encroaching?" "Oh, Heinrich, how you frightened me! I thought We were to meet at three, is it quite that?" "No, it is not," he answered, "but I've caught The trick of missing you. One thing is flat, I cannot go on this way. Life is what Might best be conjured up by the word: 'Hell'. Dearest, when will you come?" Lotta, to quell His effervescence, pointed to the gems Within the window, asked him to admire A bracelet or a buckle. But one stems Uneasily the burning of a fire. Heinrich was chafing, pricked by his desire. Little by little she wooed him to her mood Until at last he promised to be good. But here he started on another tack; To buy a jewel, which one would Lotta choose. She vainly urged against him all her lack Of other trinkets. Should she dare to use A ring or brooch her husband might accuse Her of extravagance, and ask to see A strict accounting, or still worse might be. But Heinrich would not be persuaded. Why Should he not give her what he liked? And in He went, determined certainly to buy A thing so beautiful that it would win Her wavering fancy. Altgelt's violin He would outscore by such a handsome jewel That Lotta could no longer be so cruel! Pity Charlotta, torn in diverse ways. If she went in with him, the shopman might Recognize her, give her her name; in days To come he could denounce her. In her fright She almost fled. But Heinrich would be quite Capable of pursuing. By and by She pushed the door and entered hurriedly. It took some pains to keep him from bestowing A pair of ruby earrings, carved like roses, The setting twined to represent the growing Tendrils and leaves, upon her. "Who supposes I could obtain such things! It simply closes All comfort for me." So he changed his mind And bought as slight a gift as he could find. A locket, frosted over with seed pearls, Oblong and slim, for wearing at the neck, Or hidden in the bosom; their joined curls Should lie in it. And further to bedeck His love, Heinrich had picked a whiff, a fleck, The merest puff of a thin, linked chain To hang it from. Lotta could not refrain From weeping as they sauntered down the street. She did not want the locket, yet she did. To have him love her she found very sweet, But it is hard to keep love always hid. Then there was something in her heart which chid Her, told her she loved Theodore in him, That all these meetings were a foolish whim. She thought of Theodore and the life they led, So near together, but so little mingled. The great clouds bulged and bellied overhead, And the fresh wind about her body tingled; The crane of a large warehouse creaked and jingled; Charlotta held her breath for very fear, About her in the street she seemed to hear: "They call me Hanging Johnny, Away-i-oh; They call me Hanging Johnny, So hang, boys, hang." And it was Theodore, under the racing skies, Who held her and who whispered in her ear. She knew her heart was telling her no lies, Beating and hammering. He was so dear, The touch of him would send her in a queer Swoon that was half an ecstasy. And yearning For Theodore, she wandered, slowly turning Street after street as Heinrich wished it so. He had some aim, she had forgotten what. Their progress was confused and very slow, But at the last they reached a lonely spot, A garden far above the highest shot Of soaring steeple. At their feet, the town Spread open like a chequer-board laid down. Lotta was dimly conscious of the rest, Vaguely remembered how he clasped the chain About her neck. She treated it in jest, And saw his face cloud over with sharp pain. Then suddenly she felt as though a strain Were put upon her, collared like a slave, Leashed in the meshes of this thing he gave. She seized the flimsy rings with both her hands To snap it, but they held with odd persistence. Her eyes were blinded by two wind-blown strands Of hair which had been loosened. Her resistance Melted within her, from remotest distance, Misty, unreal, his face grew warm and near, And giving way she knew him very dear. For long he held her, and they both gazed down At the wide city, and its blue, bridged river. From wooing he jested with her, snipped the blown Strands of her hair, and tied them with a sliver Cut from his own head. But she gave a shiver When, opening the locket, they were placed Under the glass, commingled and enlaced. "When will you have it so with us?" He sighed. She shook her head. He pressed her further. "No, No, Heinrich, Theodore loves me," and she tried To free herself and rise. He held her so, Clipped by his arms, she could not move nor go. "But you love me," he whispered, with his face Burning against her through her kerchief's lace. Frau Altgelt knew she toyed with fire, knew That what her husband lit this other man Fanned to hot flame. She told herself that few Women were so discreet as she, who ran No danger since she knew what things to ban. She opened her house door at five o'clock, A short half-hour before her husband's knock. Part Third The 'Residenz-Theater' sparked and hummed With lights and people. Gebnitz was to sing, That rare soprano. All the fiddles strummed With tuning up; the wood-winds made a ring Of reedy bubbling noises, and the sting Of sharp, red brass pierced every ear-drum; patting From muffled tympani made a dark slatting Across the silver shimmering of flutes; A bassoon grunted, and an oboe wailed; The 'celli pizzicato-ed like great lutes, And mutterings of double basses trailed Away to silence, while loud harp-strings hailed Their thin, bright colours down in such a scatter They lost themselves amid the general clatter. Frau Altgelt in the gallery, alone, Felt lifted up into another world. Before her eyes a thousand candles shone In the great chandeliers. A maze of curled And powdered periwigs past her eyes swirled. She smelt the smoke of candles guttering, And caught the glint of jewelled fans fluttering All round her in the boxes. Red and gold, The house, like rubies set in filigree, Filliped the candlelight about, and bold Young sparks with eye-glasses, unblushingly Ogled fair beauties in the balcony. An officer went by, his steel spurs jangling. Behind Charlotta an old man was wrangling About a play-bill he had bought and lost. Three drunken soldiers had to be ejected. Frau Altgelt's eyes stared at the vacant post Of Concert-Meister, she at once detected The stir which brought him. But she felt neglected When with no glance about him or her way, He lifted up his violin to play. The curtain went up? Perhaps. If so, Charlotta never saw it go. The famous Fraeulein Gebnitz' singing Only came to her like the ringing Of bells at a festa Which swing in the air And nobody realizes they are there. They jingle and jangle, And clang, and bang, And never a soul could tell whether they rang, For the plopping of guns and rockets And the chinking of silver to spend, in one's pockets, And the shuffling and clapping of feet, And the loud flapping Of flags, with the drums, As the military comes. It's a famous tune to walk to, And I wonder where they're off to. Step-step-stepping to the beating of the drums. But the rhythm changes as though a mist Were curling and twisting Over the landscape. For a moment a rhythmless, tuneless fog Encompasses her. Then her senses jog To the breath of a stately minuet. Herr Altgelt's violin is set In tune to the slow, sweeping bows, and retreats and advances, To curtsies brushing the waxen floor as the Court dances. Long and peaceful like warm Summer nights When stars shine in the quiet river. And against the lights Blundering insects knock, And the 'Rathaus' clock Booms twice, through the shrill sounds Of flutes and horns in the lamplit grounds. Pressed against him in the mazy wavering Of a country dance, with her short breath quavering She leans upon the beating, throbbing Music. Laughing, sobbing, Feet gliding after sliding feet; His--hers-- The ballroom blurs-- She feels the air Lifting her hair, And the lapping of water on the stone stair. He is there! He is there! Twang harps, and squeal, you thin violins, That the dancers may dance, and never discover The old stone stair leading down to the river With the chestnut-tree branches hanging over Her and her lover. Theodore, still her lover! The evening passed like this, in a half faint, Delirium with waking intervals Which were the entr'acts. Under the restraint Of a large company, the constant calls For oranges or syrops from the stalls Outside, the talk, the passing to and fro, Lotta sat ill at ease, incognito. She heard the Gebnitz praised, the tenor lauded, The music vaunted as most excellent. The scenery and the costumes were applauded, The latter it was whispered had been sent From Italy. The Herr Direktor spent A fortune on them, so the gossips said. Charlotta felt a lightness in her head. When the next act began, her eyes were swimming, Her prodded ears were aching and confused. The first notes from the orchestra sent skimming Her outward consciousness. Her brain was fused Into the music, Theodore's music! Used To hear him play, she caught his single tone. For all she noticed they two were alone. Part Fourth Frau Altgelt waited in the chilly street, Hustled by lackeys who ran up and down Shouting their coachmen's names; forced to retreat A pace or two by lurching chairmen; thrown Rudely aside by linkboys; boldly shown The ogling rapture in two bleary eyes Thrust close to hers in most unpleasant wise. Escaping these, she hit a liveried arm, Was sworn at by this glittering gentleman And ordered off. However, no great harm Came to her. But she looked a trifle wan When Theodore, her belated guardian, Emerged. She snuggled up against him, trembling, Half out of fear, half out of the assembling Of all the thoughts and needs his playing had given. Had she enjoyed herself, he wished to know. "Oh! Theodore, can't you feel that it was Heaven!" "Heaven! My Lottachen, and was it so? Gebnitz was in good voice, but all the flow Of her last aria was spoiled by Klops, A wretched flutist, she was mad as hops." He was so simple, so matter-of-fact, Charlotta Altgelt knew not what to say To bring him to her dream. His lack of tact Kept him explaining all the homeward way How this thing had gone well, that badly. "Stay, Theodore!" she cried at last. "You know to me Nothing was real, it was an ecstasy." And he was heartily glad she had enjoyed Herself so much, and said so. "But it's good To be got home again." He was employed In looking at his violin, the wood Was old, and evening air did it no good. But when he drew up to the table for tea Something about his wife's vivacity Struck him as hectic, worried him in short. He talked of this and that but watched her close. Tea over, he endeavoured to extort The cause of her excitement. She arose And stood beside him, trying to compose Herself, all whipt to quivering, curdled life, And he, poor fool, misunderstood his wife. Suddenly, broken through her anxious grasp, Her music-kindled love crashed on him there. Amazed, he felt her fling against him, clasp Her arms about him, weighing down his chair, Sobbing out all her hours of despair. "Theodore, a woman needs to hear things proved. Unless you tell me, I feel I'm not loved." Theodore went under in this tearing wave, He yielded to it, and its headlong flow Filled him with all the energy she gave. He was a youth again, and this bright glow, This living, vivid joy he had to show Her what she was to him. Laughing and crying, She asked assurances there's no denying. Over and over again her questions, till He quite convinced her, every now and then She kissed him, shivering as though doubting still. But later when they were composed and when She dared relax her probings, "Lottachen," He asked, "how is it your love has withstood My inadvertence? I was made of wood." She told him, and no doubt she meant it truly, That he was sun, and grass, and wind, and sky To her. And even if conscience were unruly She salved it by neat sophistries, but why Suppose her insincere, it was no lie She said, for Heinrich was as much forgot As though he'd never been within earshot. But Theodore's hands in straying and caressing Fumbled against the locket where it lay Upon her neck. "What is this thing I'm pressing?" He asked. "Let's bring it to the light of day." He lifted up the locket. "It should stay Outside, my Dear. Your mother has good taste. To keep it hidden surely is a waste." Pity again Charlotta, straight aroused Out of her happiness. The locket brought A chilly jet of truth upon her, soused Under its icy spurting she was caught, And choked, and frozen. Suddenly she sought The clasp, but with such art was this contrived Her fumbling fingers never once arrived Upon it. Feeling, twisting, round and round, She pulled the chain quite through the locket's ring And still it held. Her neck, encompassed, bound, Chafed at the sliding meshes. Such a thing To hurl her out of joy! A gilded string Binding her folly to her, and those curls Which lay entwined beneath the clustered pearls! Again she tried to break the cord. It stood. "Unclasp it, Theodore," she begged. But he Refused, and being in a happy mood, Twitted her with her inefficiency, Then looking at her very seriously: "I think, Charlotta, it is well to have Always about one what a mother gave. As she has taken the great pains to send This jewel to you from Dresden, it will be Ingratitude if you do not intend To carry it about you constantly. With her fine taste you cannot disagree, The locket is most beautifully designed." He opened it and there the curls were, twined. Charlotta's heart dropped beats like knitting-stitches. She burned a moment, flaming; then she froze. Her face was jerked by little, nervous twitches, She heard her husband asking: "What are those?" Put out her hand quickly to interpose, But stopped, the gesture half-complete, astounded At the calm way the question was propounded. "A pretty fancy, Dear, I do declare. Indeed I will not let you put it off. A lovely thought: yours and your mother's hair!" Charlotta hid a gasp under a cough. "Never with my connivance shall you doff This charming gift." He kissed her on the cheek, And Lotta suffered him, quite crushed and meek. When later in their room she lay awake, Watching the moonlight slip along the floor, She felt the chain and wept for Theodore's sake. She had loved Heinrich also, and the core Of truth, unlovely, startled her. Wherefore She vowed from now to break this double life And see herself only as Theodore's wife. Part Fifth It was no easy matter to convince Heinrich that it was finished. Hard to say That though they could not meet (he saw her wince) She still must keep the locket to allay Suspicion in her husband. She would pay Him from her savings bit by bit--the oath He swore at that was startling to them both. Her resolution taken, Frau Altgelt Adhered to it, and suffered no regret. She found her husband all that she had felt His music to contain. Her days were set In his as though she were an amulet Cased in bright gold. She joyed in her confining; Her eyes put out her looking-glass with shining. Charlotta was so gay that old, dull tasks Were furbished up to seem like rituals. She baked and brewed as one who only asks The right to serve. Her daily manuals Of prayer were duties, and her festivals When Theodore praised some dish, or frankly said She had a knack in making up a bed. So Autumn went, and all the mountains round The city glittered white with fallen snow, For it was Winter. Over the hard ground Herr Altgelt's footsteps came, each one a blow. On the swept flags behind the currant row Charlotta stood to greet him. But his lip Only flicked hers. His Concert-Meistership Was first again. This evening he had got Important news. The opera ordered from Young Mozart was arrived. That old despot, The Bishop of Salzburg, had let him come Himself to lead it, and the parts, still hot From copying, had been tried over. Never Had any music started such a fever. The orchestra had cheered till they were hoarse, The singers clapped and clapped. The town was made, With such a great attraction through the course Of Carnival time. In what utter shade All other cities would be left! The trade In music would all drift here naturally. In his excitement he forgot his tea. Lotta was forced to take his cup and put It in his hand. But still he rattled on, Sipping at intervals. The new catgut Strings he was using gave out such a tone The "Maestro" had remarked it, and had gone Out of his way to praise him. Lotta smiled, He was as happy as a little child. From that day on, Herr Altgelt, more and more, Absorbed himself in work. Lotta at first Was patient and well-wishing. But it wore Upon her when two weeks had brought no burst Of loving from him. Then she feared the worst; That his short interest in her was a light Flared up an instant only in the night. 'Idomeneo' was the opera's name, A name that poor Charlotta learnt to hate. Herr Altgelt worked so hard he seldom came Home for his tea, and it was very late, Past midnight sometimes, when he knocked. His state Was like a flabby orange whose crushed skin Is thin with pulling, and all dented in. He practised every morning and her heart Followed his bow. But often she would sit, While he was playing, quite withdrawn apart, Absently fingering and touching it, The locket, which now seemed to her a bit Of some gone youth. His music drew her tears, And through the notes he played, her dreading ears Heard Heinrich's voice, saying he had not changed; Beer merchants had no ecstasies to take Their minds off love. So far her thoughts had ranged Away from her stern vow, she chanced to take Her way, one morning, quite by a mistake, Along the street where Heinrich had his shop. What harm to pass it since she should not stop! It matters nothing how one day she met Him on a bridge, and blushed, and hurried by. Nor how the following week he stood to let Her pass, the pavement narrowing suddenly. How once he took her basket, and once he Pulled back a rearing horse who might have struck Her with his hoofs. It seemed the oddest luck How many times their business took them each Right to the other. Then at last he spoke, But she would only nod, he got no speech From her. Next time he treated it in joke, And that so lightly that her vow she broke And answered. So they drifted into seeing Each other as before. There was no fleeing. Christmas was over and the Carnival Was very near, and tripping from each tongue Was talk of the new opera. Each book-stall Flaunted it out in bills, what airs were sung, What singers hired. Pictures of the young "Maestro" were for sale. The town was mad. Only Charlotta felt depressed and sad. Each day now brought a struggle 'twixt her will And Heinrich's. 'Twixt her love for Theodore And him. Sometimes she wished to kill Herself to solve her problem. For a score Of reasons Heinrich tempted her. He bore Her moods with patience, and so surely urged Himself upon her, she was slowly merged Into his way of thinking, and to fly With him seemed easy. But next morning would The Stradivarius undo her mood. Then she would realize that she must cleave Always to Theodore. And she would try To convince Heinrich she should never leave, And afterwards she would go home and grieve. All thought in Munich centered on the part Of January when there would be given 'Idomeneo' by Wolfgang Mozart. The twenty-ninth was fixed. And all seats, even Those almost at the ceiling, which were driven Behind the highest gallery, were sold. The inches of the theatre went for gold. Herr Altgelt was a shadow worn so thin With work, he hardly printed black behind The candle. He and his old violin Made up one person. He was not unkind, But dazed outside his playing, and the rind, The pine and maple of his fiddle, guarded A part of him which he had quite discarded. It woke in the silence of frost-bright nights, In little lights, Like will-o'-the-wisps flickering, fluttering, Here--there-- Spurting, sputtering, Fading and lighting, Together, asunder-- Till Lotta sat up in bed with wonder, And the faint grey patch of the window shone Upon her sitting there, alone. For Theodore slept. The twenty-eighth was last rehearsal day, 'Twas called for noon, so early morning meant Herr Altgelt's only time in which to play His part alone. Drawn like a monk who's spent Himself in prayer and fasting, Theodore went Into the kitchen, with a weary word Of cheer to Lotta, careless if she heard. Lotta heard more than his spoken word. She heard the vibrating of strings and wood. She was washing the dishes, her hands all suds, When the sound began, Long as the span Of a white road snaking about a hill. The orchards are filled With cherry blossoms at butterfly poise. Hawthorn buds are cracking, And in the distance a shepherd is clacking His shears, snip-snipping the wool from his sheep. The notes are asleep, Lying adrift on the air In level lines Like sunlight hanging in pines and pines, Strung and threaded, All imbedded In the blue-green of the hazy pines. Lines--long, straight lines! And stems, Long, straight stems Pushing up To the cup of blue, blue sky. Stems growing misty With the many of them, Red-green mist Of the trees, And these Wood-flavoured notes. The back is maple and the belly is pine. The rich notes twine As though weaving in and out of leaves, Broad leaves Flapping slowly like elephants' ears, Waving and falling. Another sound peers Through little pine fingers, And lingers, peeping. Ping! Ping! pizzicato, something is cheeping. There is a twittering up in the branches, A chirp and a lilt, And crimson atilt on a swaying twig. Wings! Wings! And a little ruffled-out throat which sings. The forest bends, tumultuous With song. The woodpecker knocks, And the song-sparrow trills, Every fir, and cedar, and yew Has a nest or a bird, It is quite absurd To hear them cutting across each other: Peewits, and thrushes, and larks, all at once, And a loud cuckoo is trying to smother A wood-pigeon perched on a birch, "Roo--coo--oo--oo--" "Cuckoo! Cuckoo! That's one for you!" A blackbird whistles, how sharp, how shrill! And the great trees toss And leaves blow down, You can almost hear them splash on the ground. The whistle again: It is double and loud! The leaves are splashing, And water is dashing Over those creepers, for they are shrouds; And men are running up them to furl the sails, For there is a capful of wind to-day, And we are already well under way. The deck is aslant in the bubbling breeze. "Theodore, please. Oh, Dear, how you tease!" And the boatswain's whistle sounds again, And the men pull on the sheets: "My name is Hanging Johnny, Away-i-oh; They call me Hanging Johnny, So hang, boys, hang." The trees of the forest are masts, tall masts; They are swinging over Her and her lover. Almost swooning Under the ballooning canvas, She lies Looking up in his eyes As he bends farther over. Theodore, still her lover! The suds were dried upon Charlotta's hands, She leant against the table for support, Wholly forgotten. Theodore's eyes were brands Burning upon his music. He stopped short. Charlotta almost heard the sound of bands Snapping. She put one hand up to her heart, Her fingers touched the locket with a start. Herr Altgelt put his violin away Listlessly. "Lotta, I must have some rest. The strain will be a hideous one to-day. Don't speak to me at all. It will be best If I am quiet till I go." And lest She disobey, he left her. On the stairs She heard his mounting steps. What use were prayers! He could not hear, he was not there, for she Was married to a mummy, a machine. Her hand closed on the locket bitterly. Before her, on a chair, lay the shagreen Case of his violin. She saw the clean Sun flash the open clasp. The locket's edge Cut at her fingers like a pushing wedge. A heavy cart went by, a distant bell Chimed ten, the fire flickered in the grate. She was alone. Her throat began to swell With sobs. What kept her here, why should she wait? The violin she had begun to hate Lay in its case before her. Here she flung The cover open. With the fiddle swung Over her head, the hanging clock's loud ticking Caught on her ear. 'Twas slow, and as she paused The little door in it came open, flicking A wooden cuckoo out: "Cuckoo!" It caused The forest dream to come again. "Cuckoo!" Smashed on the grate, the violin broke in two. "Cuckoo! Cuckoo!" the clock kept striking on; But no one listened. Frau Altgelt had gone. The Cross-Roads A bullet through his heart at dawn. On the table a letter signed with a woman's name. A wind that goes howling round the house, and weeping as in shame. Cold November dawn peeping through the windows, cold dawn creeping over the floor, creeping up his cold legs, creeping over his cold body, creeping across his cold face. A glaze of thin yellow sunlight on the staring eyes. Wind howling through bent branches. A wind which never dies down. Howling, wailing. The gazing eyes glitter in the sunlight. The lids are frozen open and the eyes glitter. The thudding of a pick on hard earth. A spade grinding and crunching. Overhead, branches writhing, winding, interlacing, unwinding, scattering; tortured twinings, tossings, creakings. Wind flinging branches apart, drawing them together, whispering and whining among them. A waning, lopsided moon cutting through black clouds. A stream of pebbles and earth and the empty spade gleams clear in the moonlight, then is rammed again into the black earth. Tramping of feet. Men and horses. Squeaking of wheels. "Whoa! Ready, Jim?" "All ready." Something falls, settles, is still. Suicides have no coffin. "Give us the stake, Jim. Now." Pound! Pound! "He'll never walk. Nailed to the ground." An ash stick pierces his heart, if it buds the roots will hold him. He is a part of the earth now, clay to clay. Overhead the branches sway, and writhe, and twist in the wind. He'll never walk with a bullet in his heart, and an ash stick nailing him to the cold, black ground. Six months he lay still. Six months. And the water welled up in his body, and soft blue spots chequered it. He lay still, for the ash stick held him in place. Six months! Then her face came out of a mist of green. Pink and white and frail like Dresden china, lilies-of-the-valley at her breast, puce-coloured silk sheening about her. Under the young green leaves, the horse at a foot-pace, the high yellow wheels of the chaise scarcely turning, her face, rippling like grain a-blowing, under her puce-coloured bonnet; and burning beside her, flaming within his correct blue coat and brass buttons, is someone. What has dimmed the sun? The horse steps on a rolling stone; a wind in the branches makes a moan. The little leaves tremble and shake, turn and quake, over and over, tearing their stems. There is a shower of young leaves, and a sudden-sprung gale wails in the trees. The yellow-wheeled chaise is rocking--rocking, and all the branches are knocking--knocking. The sun in the sky is a flat, red plate, the branches creak and grate. She screams and cowers, for the green foliage is a lowering wave surging to smother her. But she sees nothing. The stake holds firm. The body writhes, the body squirms. The blue spots widen, the flesh tears, but the stake wears well in the deep, black ground. It holds the body in the still, black ground. Two years! The body has been in the ground two years. It is worn away; it is clay to clay. Where the heart moulders, a greenish dust, the stake is thrust. Late August it is, and night; a night flauntingly jewelled with stars, a night of shooting stars and loud insect noises. Down the road to Tilbury, silence--and the slow flapping of large leaves. Down the road to Sutton, silence--and the darkness of heavy-foliaged trees. Down the road to Wayfleet, silence--and the whirring scrape of insects in the branches. Down the road to Edgarstown, silence--and stars like stepping-stones in a pathway overhead. It is very quiet at the cross-roads, and the sign-board points the way down the four roads, endlessly points the way where nobody wishes to go. A horse is galloping, galloping up from Sutton. Shaking the wide, still leaves as he goes under them. Striking sparks with his iron shoes; silencing the katydids. Dr. Morgan riding to a child-birth over Tilbury way; riding to deliver a woman of her first-born son. One o'clock from Wayfleet bell tower, what a shower of shooting stars! And a breeze all of a sudden, jarring the big leaves and making them jerk up and down. Dr. Morgan's hat is blown from his head, the horse swerves, and curves away from the sign-post. An oath--spurs--a blurring of grey mist. A quick left twist, and the gelding is snorting and racing down the Tilbury road with the wind dropping away behind him. The stake has wrenched, the stake has started, the body, flesh from flesh, has parted. But the bones hold tight, socket and ball, and clamping them down in the hard, black ground is the stake, wedged through ribs and spine. The bones may twist, and heave, and twine, but the stake holds them still in line. The breeze goes down, and the round stars shine, for the stake holds the fleshless bones in line. Twenty years now! Twenty long years! The body has powdered itself away; it is clay to clay. It is brown earth mingled with brown earth. Only flaky bones remain, lain together so long they fit, although not one bone is knit to another. The stake is there too, rotted through, but upright still, and still piercing down between ribs and spine in a straight line. Yellow stillness is on the cross-roads, yellow stillness is on the trees. The leaves hang drooping, wan. The four roads point four yellow ways, saffron and gamboge ribbons to the gaze. A little swirl of dust blows up Tilbury road, the wind which fans it has not strength to do more; it ceases, and the dust settles down. A little whirl of wind comes up Tilbury road. It brings a sound of wheels and feet. The wind reels a moment and faints to nothing under the sign-post. Wind again, wheels and feet louder. Wind again--again--again. A drop of rain, flat into the dust. Drop!--Drop! Thick heavy raindrops, and a shrieking wind bending the great trees and wrenching off their leaves. Under the black sky, bowed and dripping with rain, up Tilbury road, comes the procession. A funeral procession, bound for the graveyard at Wayfleet. Feet and wheels--feet and wheels. And among them one who is carried. The bones in the deep, still earth shiver and pull. There is a quiver through the rotted stake. Then stake and bones fall together in a little puffing of dust. Like meshes of linked steel the rain shuts down behind the procession, now well along the Wayfleet road. He wavers like smoke in the buffeting wind. His fingers blow out like smoke, his head ripples in the gale. Under the sign-post, in the pouring rain, he stands, and watches another quavering figure drifting down the Wayfleet road. Then swiftly he streams after it. It flickers among the trees. He licks out and winds about them. Over, under, blown, contorted. Spindrift after spindrift; smoke following smoke. There is a wailing through the trees, a wailing of fear, and after it laughter--laughter--laughter, skirling up to the black sky. Lightning jags over the funeral procession. A heavy clap of thunder. Then darkness and rain, and the sound of feet and wheels. A Roxbury Garden I Hoops Blue and pink sashes, Criss-cross shoes, Minna and Stella run out into the garden To play at hoop. Up and down the garden-paths they race, In the yellow sunshine, Each with a big round hoop White as a stripped willow-wand. Round and round turn the hoops, Their diamond whiteness cleaving the yellow sunshine. The gravel crunches and squeaks beneath them, And a large pebble springs them into the air To go whirling for a foot or two Before they touch the earth again In a series of little jumps. Spring, Hoops! Spit out a shower of blue and white brightness. The little criss-cross shoes twinkle behind you, The pink and blue sashes flutter like flags, The hoop-sticks are ready to beat you. Turn, turn, Hoops! In the yellow sunshine. Turn your stripped willow whiteness Along the smooth paths. Stella sings: "Round and round, rolls my hoop, Scarcely touching the ground, With a swoop, And a bound, Round and round. With a bumpety, crunching, scattering sound, Down the garden it flies; In our eyes The sun lies. See it spin Out and in; Through the paths it goes whirling, About the beds curling. Sway now to the loop, Faster, faster, my hoop. Round you come, Up you come, Quick and straight as before. Run, run, my hoop, run, Away from the sun." And the great hoop bounds along the path, Leaping into the wind-bright air. Minna sings: "Turn, hoop, Burn hoop, Twist and twine Hoop of mine. Flash along, Leap along, Right at the sun. Run, hoop, run. Faster and faster, Whirl, twirl. Wheel like fire, And spin like glass; Fire's no whiter Glass is no brighter. Dance, Prance, Over and over, About and about, With the top of you under, And the bottom at top, But never a stop. Turn about, hoop, to the tap of my stick, I follow behind you To touch and remind you. Burn and glitter, so white and quick, Round and round, to the tap of a stick." The hoop flies along between the flower-beds, Swaying the flowers with the wind of its passing. Beside the foxglove-border roll the hoops, And the little pink and white bells shake and jingle Up and down their tall spires; They roll under the snow-ball bush, And the ground behind them is strewn with white petals; They swirl round a corner, And jar a bee out of a Canterbury bell; They cast their shadows for an instant Over a bed of pansies, Catch against the spurs of a columbine, Jostle the quietness from a cluster of monk's-hood. Pat! Pat! behind them come the little criss-cross shoes, And the blue and pink sashes stream out in flappings of colour. Stella sings: "Hoop, hoop, Roll along, Faster bowl along, Hoop. Slow, to the turning, Now go!--Go! Quick! Here's the stick. Rat-a-tap-tap it, Pat it, flap it. Fly like a bird or a yellow-backed bee, See how soon you can reach that tree. Here is a path that is perfectly straight. Roll along, hoop, or we shall be late." Minna sings: "Trip about, slip about, whip about Hoop. Wheel like a top at its quickest spin, Then, dear hoop, we shall surely win. First to the greenhouse and then to the wall Circle and circle, And let the wind push you, Poke you, Brush you, And not let you fall. Whirring you round like a wreath of mist. Hoopety hoop, Twist, Twist." Tap! Tap! go the hoop-sticks, And the hoops bowl along under a grape arbour. For an instant their willow whiteness is green, Pale white-green. Then they are out in the sunshine, Leaving the half-formed grape clusters A-tremble under their big leaves. "I will beat you, Minna," cries Stella, Hitting her hoop smartly with her stick. "Stella, Stella, we are winning," calls Minna, As her hoop curves round a bed of clove-pinks. A humming-bird whizzes past Stella's ear, And two or three yellow-and-black butterflies Flutter, startled, out of a pillar rose. Round and round race the little girls After their great white hoops. Suddenly Minna stops. Her hoop wavers an instant, But she catches it up on her stick. "Listen, Stella!" Both the little girls are listening; And the scents of the garden rise up quietly about them. "It's the chaise! It's Father! Perhaps he's brought us a book from Boston." Twinkle, twinkle, the little criss-cross shoes Up the garden path. Blue--pink--an instant, against the syringa hedge. But the hoops, white as stripped willow-wands, Lie in the grass, And the grasshoppers jump back and forth Over them. II Battledore and Shuttlecock The shuttlecock soars upward In a parabola of whiteness, Turns, And sinks to a perfect arc. Plat! the battledore strikes it, And it rises again, Without haste, Winged and curving, Tracing its white flight Against the clipped hemlock-trees. Plat! Up again, Orange and sparkling with sun, Rounding under the blue sky, Dropping, Fading to grey-green In the shadow of the coned hemlocks. "Ninety-one." "Ninety-two." "Ninety-three." The arms of the little girls Come up--and up-- Precisely, Like mechanical toys. The battledores beat at nothing, And toss the dazzle of snow Off their parchment drums. "Ninety-four." Plat! "Ninety-five." Plat! Back and forth Goes the shuttlecock, Icicle-white, Leaping at the sharp-edged clouds, Overturning, Falling, Down, And down, Tinctured with pink From the upthrusting shine Of Oriental poppies. The little girls sway to the counting rhythm; Left foot, Right foot. Plat! Plat! Yellow heat twines round the handles of the battledores, The parchment cracks with dryness; But the shuttlecock Swings slowly into the ice-blue sky, Heaving up on the warm air Like a foam-bubble on a wave, With feathers slanted and sustaining. Higher, Until the earth turns beneath it; Poised and swinging, With all the garden flowing beneath it, Scarlet, and blue, and purple, and white-- Blurred colour reflections in rippled water-- Changing--streaming-- For the moment that Stella takes to lift her arm. Then the shuttlecock relinquishes, Bows, Descends; And the sharp blue spears of the air Thrust it to earth. Again it mounts, Stepping up on the rising scents of flowers, Buoyed up and under by the shining heat. Above the foxgloves, Above the guelder-roses, Above the greenhouse glitter, Till the shafts of cooler air Meet it, Deflect it, Reject it, Then down, Down, Past the greenhouse, Past the guelder-rose bush, Past the foxgloves. "Ninety-nine," Stella's battledore springs to the impact. Plunk! Like the snap of a taut string. "Oh! Minna!" The shuttlecock drops zigzagedly, Out of orbit, Hits the path, And rolls over quite still. Dead white feathers, With a weight at the end. III Garden Games The tall clock is striking twelve; And the little girls stop in the hall to watch it, And the big ships rocking in a half-circle Above the dial. Twelve o'clock! Down the side steps Go the little girls, Under their big round straw hats. Minna's has a pink ribbon, Stella's a blue, That is the way they know which is which. Twelve o'clock! An hour yet before dinner. Mother is busy in the still-room, And Hannah is making gingerbread. Slowly, with lagging steps, They follow the garden-path, Crushing a leaf of box for its acrid smell, Discussing what they shall do, And doing nothing. "Stella, see that grasshopper Climbing up the bank! What a jump! Almost as long as my arm." Run, children, run. For the grasshopper is leaping away, In half-circle curves, Shuttlecock curves, Over the grasses. Hand in hand, the little girls call to him: "Grandfather, grandfather gray, Give me molasses, or I'll throw you away." The grasshopper leaps into the sunlight, Golden-green, And is gone. "Let's catch a bee." Round whirl the little girls, And up the garden. Two heads are thrust among the Canterbury bells, Listening, And fingers clasp and unclasp behind backs In a strain of silence. White bells, Blue bells, Hollow and reflexed. Deep tunnels of blue and white dimness, Cool wine-tunnels for bees. There is a floundering and buzzing over Minna's head. "Bend it down, Stella. Quick! Quick!" The wide mouth of a blossom Is pressed together in Minna's fingers. The stem flies up, jiggling its flower-bells, And Minna holds the dark blue cup in her hand, With the bee Imprisoned in it. Whirr! Buzz! Bump! Bump! Whiz! Bang! BANG!! The blue flower tears across like paper, And a gold-black bee darts away in the sunshine. "If we could fly, we could catch him." The sunshine is hot on Stella's upturned face, As she stares after the bee. "We'll follow him in a dove chariot. Come on, Stella." Run, children, Along the red gravel paths, For a bee is hard to catch, Even with a chariot of doves. Tall, still, and cowled, Stand the monk's-hoods; Taller than the heads of the little girls. A blossom for Minna. A blossom for Stella. Off comes the cowl, And there is a purple-painted chariot; Off comes the forward petal, And there are two little green doves, With green traces tying them to the chariot. "Now we will get in, and fly right up to the clouds. Fly, Doves, up in the sky, With Minna and me, After the bee." Up one path, Down another, Run the little girls, Holding their dove chariots in front of them; But the bee is hidden in the trumpet of a honeysuckle, With his wings folded along his back. The dove chariots are thrown away, And the little girls wander slowly through the garden, Sucking the salvia tips, And squeezing the snapdragons To make them gape. "I'm so hot, Let's pick a pansy And see the little man in his bath, And play we're he." A royal bath-tub, Hung with purple stuffs and yellow. The great purple-yellow wings Rise up behind the little red and green man; The purple-yellow wings fan him, He dabbles his feet in cool green. Off with the green sheath, And there are two spindly legs. "Heigho!" sighs Minna. "Heigho!" sighs Stella. There is not a flutter of wind, And the sun is directly overhead. Along the edge of the garden Walk the little girls. Their hats, round and yellow like cheeses, Are dangling by the ribbons. The grass is a tumult of buttercups and daisies; Buttercups and daisies streaming away Up the hill. The garden is purple, and pink, and orange, and scarlet; The garden is hot with colours. But the meadow is only yellow, and white, and green, Cool, and long, and quiet. The little girls pick buttercups And hold them under each other's chins. "You're as gold as Grandfather's snuff-box. You're going to be very rich, Minna." "Oh-o-o! Then I'll ask my husband to give me a pair of garnet earrings Just like Aunt Nancy's. I wonder if he will. I know. We'll tell fortunes. That's what we'll do." Plump down in the meadow grass, Stella and Minna, With their round yellow hats, Like cheeses, Beside them. Drop, Drop, Daisy petals. "One I love, Two I love, Three I love I say..." The ground is peppered with daisy petals, And the little girls nibble the golden centres, And play it is cake. A bell rings. Dinner-time; And after dinner there are lessons. 1777 I The Trumpet-Vine Arbour The throats of the little red trumpet-flowers are wide open, And the clangour of brass beats against the hot sunlight. They bray and blare at the burning sky. Red! Red! Coarse notes of red, Trumpeted at the blue sky. In long streaks of sound, molten metal, The vine declares itself. Clang!--from its red and yellow trumpets. Clang!--from its long, nasal trumpets, Splitting the sunlight into ribbons, tattered and shot with noise. I sit in the cool arbour, in a green-and-gold twilight. It is very still, for I cannot hear the trumpets, I only know that they are red and open, And that the sun above the arbour shakes with heat. My quill is newly mended, And makes fine-drawn lines with its point. Down the long, white paper it makes little lines, Just lines--up--down--criss-cross. My heart is strained out at the pin-point of my quill; It is thin and writhing like the marks of the pen. My hand marches to a squeaky tune, It marches down the paper to a squealing of fifes. My pen and the trumpet-flowers, And Washington's armies away over the smoke-tree to the Southwest. "Yankee Doodle," my Darling! It is you against the British, Marching in your ragged shoes to batter down King George. What have you got in your hat? Not a feather, I wager. Just a hay-straw, for it is the harvest you are fighting for. Hay in your hat, and the whites of their eyes for a target! Like Bunker Hill, two years ago, when I watched all day from the house-top Through Father's spy-glass. The red city, and the blue, bright water, And puffs of smoke which you made. Twenty miles away, Round by Cambridge, or over the Neck, But the smoke was white--white! To-day the trumpet-flowers are red--red-- And I cannot see you fighting, But old Mr. Dimond has fled to Canada, And Myra sings "Yankee Doodle" at her milking. The red throats of the trumpets bray and clang in the sunshine, And the smoke-tree puffs dun blossoms into the blue air. II The City of Falling Leaves Leaves fall, Brown leaves, Yellow leaves streaked with brown. They fall, Flutter, Fall again. The brown leaves, And the streaked yellow leaves, Loosen on their branches And drift slowly downwards. One, One, two, three, One, two, five. All Venice is a falling of Autumn leaves-- Brown, And yellow streaked with brown. "That sonnet, Abate, Beautiful, I am quite exhausted by it. Your phrases turn about my heart And stifle me to swooning. Open the window, I beg. Lord! What a strumming of fiddles and mandolins! 'Tis really a shame to stop indoors. Call my maid, or I will make you lace me yourself. Fie, how hot it is, not a breath of air! See how straight the leaves are falling. Marianna, I will have the yellow satin caught up with silver fringe, It peeps out delightfully from under a mantle. Am I well painted to-day, 'caro Abate mio'? You will be proud of me at the 'Ridotto', hey? Proud of being 'Cavalier Servente' to such a lady?" "Can you doubt it, 'Bellissima Contessa'? A pinch more rouge on the right cheek, And Venus herself shines less..." "You bore me, Abate, I vow I must change you! A letter, Achmet? Run and look out of the window, Abate. I will read my letter in peace." The little black slave with the yellow satin turban Gazes at his mistress with strained eyes. His yellow turban and black skin Are gorgeous--barbaric. The yellow satin dress with its silver flashings Lies on a chair Beside a black mantle and a black mask. Yellow and black, Gorgeous--barbaric. The lady reads her letter, And the leaves drift slowly Past the long windows. "How silly you look, my dear Abate, With that great brown leaf in your wig. Pluck it off, I beg you, Or I shall die of laughing." A yellow wall Aflare in the sunlight, Chequered with shadows, Shadows of vine leaves, Shadows of masks. Masks coming, printing themselves for an instant, Then passing on, More masks always replacing them. Masks with tricorns and rapiers sticking out behind Pursuing masks with plumes and high heels, The sunlight shining under their insteps. One, One, two, One, two, three, There is a thronging of shadows on the hot wall, Filigreed at the top with moving leaves. Yellow sunlight and black shadows, Yellow and black, Gorgeous--barbaric. Two masks stand together, And the shadow of a leaf falls through them, Marking the wall where they are not. From hat-tip to shoulder-tip, From elbow to sword-hilt, The leaf falls. The shadows mingle, Blur together, Slide along the wall and disappear. Gold of mosaics and candles, And night blackness lurking in the ceiling beams. Saint Mark's glitters with flames and reflections. A cloak brushes aside, And the yellow of satin Licks out over the coloured inlays of the pavement. Under the gold crucifixes There is a meeting of hands Reaching from black mantles. Sighing embraces, bold investigations, Hide in confessionals, Sheltered by the shuffling of feet. Gorgeous--barbaric In its mail of jewels and gold, Saint Mark's looks down at the swarm of black masks; And outside in the palace gardens brown leaves fall, Flutter, Fall. Brown, And yellow streaked with brown. Blue-black, the sky over Venice, With a pricking of yellow stars. There is no moon, And the waves push darkly against the prow Of the gondola, Coming from Malamocco And streaming toward Venice. It is black under the gondola hood, But the yellow of a satin dress Glares out like the eye of a watching tiger. Yellow compassed about with darkness, Yellow and black, Gorgeous--barbaric. The boatman sings, It is Tasso that he sings; The lovers seek each other beneath their mantles, And the gondola drifts over the lagoon, aslant to the coming dawn. But at Malamocco in front, In Venice behind, Fall the leaves, Brown, And yellow streaked with brown. They fall, Flutter, Fall. BRONZE TABLETS The Fruit Shop Cross-ribboned shoes; a muslin gown, High-waisted, girdled with bright blue; A straw poke bonnet which hid the frown She pluckered her little brows into As she picked her dainty passage through The dusty street. "Ah, Mademoiselle, A dirty pathway, we need rain, My poor fruits suffer, and the shell Of this nut's too big for its kernel, lain Here in the sun it has shrunk again. The baker down at the corner says We need a battle to shake the clouds; But I am a man of peace, my ways Don't look to the killing of men in crowds. Poor fellows with guns and bayonets for shrouds! Pray, Mademoiselle, come out of the sun. Let me dust off that wicker chair. It's cool In here, for the green leaves I have run In a curtain over the door, make a pool Of shade. You see the pears on that stool-- The shadow keeps them plump and fair." Over the fruiterer's door, the leaves Held back the sun, a greenish flare Quivered and sparked the shop, the sheaves Of sunbeams, glanced from the sign on the eaves, Shot from the golden letters, broke And splintered to little scattered lights. Jeanne Tourmont entered the shop, her poke Bonnet tilted itself to rights, And her face looked out like the moon on nights Of flickering clouds. "Monsieur Popain, I Want gooseberries, an apple or two, Or excellent plums, but not if they're high; Haven't you some which a strong wind blew? I've only a couple of francs for you." Monsieur Popain shrugged and rubbed his hands. What could he do, the times were sad. A couple of francs and such demands! And asking for fruits a little bad. Wind-blown indeed! He never had Anything else than the very best. He pointed to baskets of blunted pears With the thin skin tight like a bursting vest, All yellow, and red, and brown, in smears. Monsieur Popain's voice denoted tears. He took up a pear with tender care, And pressed it with his hardened thumb. "Smell it, Mademoiselle, the perfume there Is like lavender, and sweet thoughts come Only from having a dish at home. And those grapes! They melt in the mouth like wine, Just a click of the tongue, and they burst to honey. They're only this morning off the vine, And I paid for them down in silver money. The Corporal's widow is witness, her pony Brought them in at sunrise to-day. Those oranges--Gold! They're almost red. They seem little chips just broken away From the sun itself. Or perhaps instead You'd like a pomegranate, they're rarely gay, When you split them the seeds are like crimson spray. Yes, they're high, they're high, and those Turkey figs, They all come from the South, and Nelson's ships Make it a little hard for our rigs. They must be forever giving the slips To the cursed English, and when men clips Through powder to bring them, why dainties mounts A bit in price. Those almonds now, I'll strip off that husk, when one discounts A life or two in a nigger row With the man who grew them, it does seem how They would come dear; and then the fight At sea perhaps, our boats have heels And mostly they sail along at night, But once in a way they're caught; one feels Ivory's not better nor finer--why peels From an almond kernel are worth two sous. It's hard to sell them now," he sighed. "Purses are tight, but I shall not lose. There's plenty of cheaper things to choose." He picked some currants out of a wide Earthen bowl. "They make the tongue Almost fly out to suck them, bride Currants they are, they were planted long Ago for some new Marquise, among Other great beauties, before the Chateau Was left to rot. Now the Gardener's wife, He that marched off to his death at Marengo, Sells them to me; she keeps her life From snuffing out, with her pruning knife. She's a poor old thing, but she learnt the trade When her man was young, and the young Marquis Couldn't have enough garden. The flowers he made All new! And the fruits! But 'twas said that he Was no friend to the people, and so they laid Some charge against him, a cavalcade Of citizens took him away; they meant Well, but I think there was some mistake. He just pottered round in his garden, bent On growing things; we were so awake In those days for the New Republic's sake. He's gone, and the garden is all that's left Not in ruin, but the currants and apricots, And peaches, furred and sweet, with a cleft Full of morning dew, in those green-glazed pots, Why, Mademoiselle, there is never an eft Or worm among them, and as for theft, How the old woman keeps them I cannot say, But they're finer than any grown this way." Jeanne Tourmont drew back the filigree ring Of her striped silk purse, tipped it upside down And shook it, two coins fell with a ding Of striking silver, beneath her gown One rolled, the other lay, a thing Sparked white and sharply glistening, In a drop of sunlight between two shades. She jerked the purse, took its empty ends And crumpled them toward the centre braids. The whole collapsed to a mass of blends Of colours and stripes. "Monsieur Popain, friends We have always been. In the days before The Great Revolution my aunt was kind When you needed help. You need no more; 'Tis we now who must beg at your door, And will you refuse?" The little man Bustled, denied, his heart was good, But times were hard. He went to a pan And poured upon the counter a flood Of pungent raspberries, tanged like wood. He took a melon with rough green rind And rubbed it well with his apron tip. Then he hunted over the shop to find Some walnuts cracking at the lip, And added to these a barberry slip Whose acrid, oval berries hung Like fringe and trembled. He reached a round Basket, with handles, from where it swung Against the wall, laid it on the ground And filled it, then he searched and found The francs Jeanne Tourmont had let fall. "You'll return the basket, Mademoiselle?" She smiled, "The next time that I call, Monsieur. You know that very well." 'Twas lightly said, but meant to tell. Monsieur Popain bowed, somewhat abashed. She took her basket and stepped out. The sunlight was so bright it flashed Her eyes to blindness, and the rout Of the little street was all about. Through glare and noise she stumbled, dazed. The heavy basket was a care. She heard a shout and almost grazed The panels of a chaise and pair. The postboy yelled, and an amazed Face from the carriage window gazed. She jumped back just in time, her heart Beating with fear. Through whirling light The chaise departed, but her smart Was keen and bitter. In the white Dust of the street she saw a bright Streak of colours, wet and gay, Red like blood. Crushed but fair, Her fruit stained the cobbles of the way. Monsieur Popain joined her there. "Tiens, Mademoiselle, c'est le General Bonaparte, partant pour la Guerre!" Malmaison I How the slates of the roof sparkle in the sun, over there, over there, beyond the high wall! How quietly the Seine runs in loops and windings, over there, over there, sliding through the green countryside! Like ships of the line, stately with canvas, the tall clouds pass along the sky, over the glittering roof, over the trees, over the looped and curving river. A breeze quivers through the linden-trees. Roses bloom at Malmaison. Roses! Roses! But the road is dusty. Already the Citoyenne Beauharnais wearies of her walk. Her skin is chalked and powdered with dust, she smells dust, and behind the wall are roses! Roses with smooth open petals, poised above rippling leaves... Roses ... They have told her so. The Citoyenne Beauharnais shrugs her shoulders and makes a little face. She must mend her pace if she would be back in time for dinner. Roses indeed! The guillotine more likely. The tiered clouds float over Malmaison, and the slate roof sparkles in the sun. II Gallop! Gallop! The General brooks no delay. Make way, good people, and scatter out of his path, you, and your hens, and your dogs, and your children. The General is returned from Egypt, and is come in a 'caleche' and four to visit his new property. Throw open the gates, you, Porter of Malmaison. Pull off your cap, my man, this is your master, the husband of Madame. Faster! Faster! A jerk and a jingle and they are arrived, he and she. Madame has red eyes. Fie! It is for joy at her husband's return. Learn your place, Porter. A gentleman here for two months? Fie! Fie, then! Since when have you taken to gossiping. Madame may have a brother, I suppose. That--all green, and red, and glitter, with flesh as dark as ebony--that is a slave; a bloodthirsty, stabbing, slashing heathen, come from the hot countries to cure your tongue of idle whispering. A fine afternoon it is, with tall bright clouds sailing over the trees. "Bonaparte, mon ami, the trees are golden like my star, the star I pinned to your destiny when I married you. The gypsy, you remember her prophecy! My dear friend, not here, the servants are watching; send them away, and that flashing splendour, Roustan. Superb--Imperial, but.. . My dear, your arm is trembling; I faint to feel it touching me! No, no, Bonaparte, not that--spare me that--did we not bury that last night! You hurt me, my friend, you are so hot and strong. Not long, Dear, no, thank God, not long." The looped river runs saffron, for the sun is setting. It is getting dark. Dark. Darker. In the moonlight, the slate roof shines palely milkily white. The roses have faded at Malmaison, nipped by the frost. What need for roses? Smooth, open petals--her arms. Fragrant, outcurved petals--her breasts. He rises like a sun above her, stooping to touch the petals, press them wider. Eagles. Bees. What are they to open roses! A little shivering breeze runs through the linden-trees, and the tiered clouds blow across the sky like ships of the line, stately with canvas. III The gates stand wide at Malmaison, stand wide all day. The gravel of the avenue glints under the continual rolling of wheels. An officer gallops up with his sabre clicking; a mameluke gallops down with his charger kicking. 'Valets de pied' run about in ones, and twos, and groups, like swirled blown leaves. Tramp! Tramp! The guard is changing, and the grenadiers off duty lounge out of sight, ranging along the roads toward Paris. The slate roof sparkles in the sun, but it sparkles milkily, vaguely, the great glass-houses put out its shining. Glass, stone, and onyx now for the sun's mirror. Much has come to pass at Malmaison. New rocks and fountains, blocks of carven marble, fluted pillars uprearing antique temples, vases and urns in unexpected places, bridges of stone, bridges of wood, arbours and statues, and a flood of flowers everywhere, new flowers, rare flowers, parterre after parterre of flowers. Indeed, the roses bloom at Malmaison. It is youth, youth untrammeled and advancing, trundling a country ahead of it as though it were a hoop. Laughter, and spur janglings in tessellated vestibules. Tripping of clocked and embroidered stockings in little low-heeled shoes over smooth grass-plots. India muslins spangled with silver patterns slide through trees--mingle--separate--white day fireflies flashing moon-brilliance in the shade of foliage. "The kangaroos! I vow, Captain, I must see the kangaroos." "As you please, dear Lady, but I recommend the shady linden alley and feeding the cockatoos." "They say that Madame Bonaparte's breed of sheep is the best in all France." "And, oh, have you seen the enchanting little cedar she planted when the First Consul sent home the news of the victory of Marengo?" Picking, choosing, the chattering company flits to and fro. Over the trees the great clouds go, tiered, stately, like ships of the line bright with canvas. Prisoners'-base, and its swooping, veering, racing, giggling, bumping. The First Consul runs plump into M. de Beauharnais and falls. But he picks himself up smartly, and starts after M. Isabey. Too late, M. Le Premier Consul, Mademoiselle Hortense is out after you. Quickly, my dear Sir! Stir your short legs, she is swift and eager, and as graceful as her mother. She is there, that other, playing too, but lightly, warily, bearing herself with care, rather floating out upon the air than running, never far from goal. She is there, borne up above her guests as something indefinably fair, a rose above periwinkles. A blown rose, smooth as satin, reflexed, one loosened petal hanging back and down. A rose that undulates languorously as the breeze takes it, resting upon its leaves in a faintness of perfume. There are rumours about the First Consul. Malmaison is full of women, and Paris is only two leagues distant. Madame Bonaparte stands on the wooden bridge at sunset, and watches a black swan pushing the pink and silver water in front of him as he swims, crinkling its smoothness into pleats of changing colour with his breast. Madame Bonaparte presses against the parapet of the bridge, and the crushed roses at her belt melt, petal by petal, into the pink water. IV A vile day, Porter. But keep your wits about you. The Empress will soon be here. Queer, without the Emperor! It is indeed, but best not consider that. Scratch your head and prick up your ears. Divorce is not for you to debate about. She is late? Ah, well, the roads are muddy. The rain spears are as sharp as whetted knives. They dart down and down, edged and shining. Clop-trop! Clop-trop! A carriage grows out of the mist. Hist, Porter. You can keep on your hat. It is only Her Majesty's dogs and her parrot. Clop-trop! The Ladies in Waiting, Porter. Clop-trop! It is Her Majesty. At least, I suppose it is, but the blinds are drawn. "In all the years I have served Her Majesty she never before passed the gate without giving me a smile!" You're a droll fellow, to expect the Empress to put out her head in the pouring rain and salute you. She has affairs of her own to think about. Clang the gate, no need for further waiting, nobody else will be coming to Malmaison to-night. White under her veil, drained and shaking, the woman crosses the antechamber. Empress! Empress! Foolish splendour, perished to dust. Ashes of roses, ashes of youth. Empress forsooth! Over the glass domes of the hot-houses drenches the rain. Behind her a clock ticks--ticks again. The sound knocks upon her thought with the echoing shudder of hollow vases. She places her hands on her ears, but the minutes pass, knocking. Tears in Malmaison. And years to come each knocking by, minute after minute. Years, many years, and tears, and cold pouring rain. "I feel as though I had died, and the only sensation I have is that I am no more." Rain! Heavy, thudding rain! V The roses bloom at Malmaison. And not only roses. Tulips, myrtles, geraniums, camelias, rhododendrons, dahlias, double hyacinths. All the year through, under glass, under the sky, flowers bud, expand, die, and give way to others, always others. From distant countries they have been brought, and taught to live in the cool temperateness of France. There is the 'Bonapartea' from Peru; the 'Napoleone Imperiale'; the 'Josephinia Imperatrix', a pearl-white flower, purple-shadowed, the calix pricked out with crimson points. Malmaison wears its flowers as a lady wears her gems, flauntingly, assertively. Malmaison decks herself to hide the hollow within. The glass-houses grow and grow, and every year fling up hotter reflections to the sailing sun. The cost runs into millions, but a woman must have something to console herself for a broken heart. One can play backgammon and patience, and then patience and backgammon, and stake gold napoleons on each game won. Sport truly! It is an unruly spirit which could ask better. With her jewels, her laces, her shawls; her two hundred and twenty dresses, her fichus, her veils; her pictures, her busts, her birds. It is absurd that she cannot be happy. The Emperor smarts under the thought of her ingratitude. What could he do more? And yet she spends, spends as never before. It is ridiculous. Can she not enjoy life at a smaller figure? Was ever monarch plagued with so extravagant an ex-wife. She owes her chocolate-merchant, her candle-merchant, her sweetmeat purveyor; her grocer, her butcher, her poulterer; her architect, and the shopkeeper who sells her rouge; her perfumer, her dressmaker, her merchant of shoes. She owes for fans, plants, engravings, and chairs. She owes masons and carpenters, vintners, lingeres. The lady's affairs are in sad confusion. And why? Why? Can a river flow when the spring is dry? Night. The Empress sits alone, and the clock ticks, one after one. The clock nicks off the edges of her life. She is chipped like an old bit of china; she is frayed like a garment of last year's wearing. She is soft, crinkled, like a fading rose. And each minute flows by brushing against her, shearing off another and another petal. The Empress crushes her breasts with her hands and weeps. And the tall clouds sail over Malmaison like a procession of stately ships bound for the moon. Scarlet, clear-blue, purple epauletted with gold. It is a parade of soldiers sweeping up the avenue. Eight horses, eight Imperial harnesses, four caparisoned postilions, a carriage with the Emperor's arms on the panels. Ho, Porter, pop out your eyes, and no wonder. Where else under the Heavens could you see such splendour! They sit on a stone seat. The little man in the green coat of a Colonel of Chasseurs, and the lady, beautiful as a satin seed-pod, and as pale. The house has memories. The satin seed-pod holds his germs of Empire. We will stay here, under the blue sky and the turreted white clouds. She draws him; he feels her faded loveliness urge him to replenish it. Her soft transparent texture woos his nervous fingering. He speaks to her of debts, of resignation; of her children, and his; he promises that she shall see the King of Rome; he says some harsh things and some pleasant. But she is there, close to him, rose toned to amber, white shot with violet, pungent to his nostrils as embalmed rose-leaves in a twilit room. Suddenly the Emperor calls his carriage and rolls away across the looping Seine. VI Crystal-blue brightness over the glass-houses. Crystal-blue streaks and ripples over the lake. A macaw on a gilded perch screams; they have forgotten to take out his dinner. The windows shake. Boom! Boom! It is the rumbling of Prussian cannon beyond Pecq. Roses bloom at Malmaison. Roses! Roses! Swimming above their leaves, rotting beneath them. Fallen flowers strew the unraked walks. Fallen flowers for a fallen Emperor! The General in charge of him draws back and watches. Snatches of music--snarling, sneering music of bagpipes. They say a Scotch regiment is besieging Saint-Denis. The Emperor wipes his face, or is it his eyes. His tired eyes which see nowhere the grace they long for. Josephine! Somebody asks him a question, he does not answer, somebody else does that. There are voices, but one voice he does not hear, and yet he hears it all the time. Josephine! The Emperor puts up his hand to screen his face. The white light of a bright cloud spears sharply through the linden-trees. 'Vive l'Empereur!' There are troops passing beyond the wall, troops which sing and call. Boom! A pink rose is jarred off its stem and falls at the Emperor's feet. "Very well. I go." Where! Does it matter? There is no sword to clatter. Nothing but soft brushing gravel and a gate which shuts with a click. "Quick, fellow, don't spare your horses." A whip cracks, wheels turn, why burn one's eyes following a fleck of dust. VII Over the slate roof tall clouds, like ships of the line, pass along the sky. The glass-houses glitter splotchily, for many of their lights are broken. Roses bloom, fiery cinders quenching under damp weeds. Wreckage and misery, and a trailing of petty deeds smearing over old recollections. The musty rooms are empty and their shutters are closed, only in the gallery there is a stuffed black swan, covered with dust. When you touch it, the feathers come off and float softly to the ground. Through a chink in the shutters, one can see the stately clouds crossing the sky toward the Roman arches of the Marly Aqueduct. The Hammers I Frindsbury, Kent, 1786 Bang! Bang! Tap! Tap-a-tap! Rap! All through the lead and silver Winter days, All through the copper of Autumn hazes. Tap to the red rising sun, Tap to the purple setting sun. Four years pass before the job is done. Two thousand oak trees grown and felled, Two thousand oaks from the hedgerows of the Weald, Sussex had yielded two thousand oaks With huge boles Round which the tape rolls Thirty mortal feet, say the village folks. Two hundred loads of elm and Scottish fir; Planking from Dantzig. My! What timber goes into a ship! Tap! Tap! Two years they have seasoned her ribs on the ways, Tapping, tapping. You can hear, though there's nothing where you gaze. Through the fog down the reaches of the river, The tapping goes on like heart-beats in a fever. The church-bells chime Hours and hours, Dropping days in showers. Bang! Rap! Tap! Go the hammers all the time. They have planked up her timbers And the nails are driven to the head; They have decked her over, And again, and again. The shoring-up beams shudder at the strain. Black and blue breeches, Pigtails bound and shining: Like ants crawling about, The hull swarms with carpenters, running in and out. Joiners, calkers, And they are all terrible talkers. Jem Wilson has been to sea and he tells some wonderful tales Of whales, and spice islands, And pirates off the Barbary coast. He boasts magnificently, with his mouth full of nails. Stephen Pibold has a tenor voice, He shifts his quid of tobacco and sings: "The second in command was blear-eyed Ned: While the surgeon his limb was a-lopping, A nine-pounder came and smack went his head, Pull away, pull away, pull away! I say; Rare news for my Meg of Wapping!" Every Sunday People come in crowds (After church-time, of course) In curricles, and gigs, and wagons, And some have brought cold chicken and flagons Of wine, And beer in stoppered jugs. "Dear! Dear! But I tell 'ee 'twill be a fine ship. There's none finer in any of the slips at Chatham." The third Summer's roses have started in to blow, When the fine stern carving is begun. Flutings, and twinings, and long slow swirls, Bits of deal shaved away to thin spiral curls. Tap! Tap! A cornucopia is nailed into place. Rap-a-tap! They are putting up a railing filigreed like Irish lace. The Three Town's people never saw such grace. And the paint on it! The richest gold leaf! Why, the glitter when the sun is shining passes belief. And that row of glass windows tipped toward the sky Are rubies and carbuncles when the day is dry. Oh, my! Oh, my! They have coppered up the bottom, And the copper nails Stand about and sparkle in big wooden pails. Bang! Clash! Bang! "And he swigg'd, and Nick swigg'd, And Ben swigg'd, and Dick swigg'd, And I swigg'd, and all of us swigg'd it, And swore there was nothing like grog." It seems they sing, Even though coppering is not an easy thing. What a splendid specimen of humanity is a true British workman, Say the people of the Three Towns, As they walk about the dockyard To the sound of the evening church-bells. And so artistic, too, each one tells his neighbour. What immense taste and labour! Miss Jessie Prime, in a pink silk bonnet, Titters with delight as her eyes fall upon it, When she steps lightly down from Lawyer Green's whisky; Such amazing beauty makes one feel frisky, She explains. Mr. Nichols says he is delighted (He is the firm); His work is all requited If Miss Jessie can approve. Miss Jessie answers that the ship is "a love". The sides are yellow as marigold, The port-lids are red when the ports are up: Blood-red squares like an even chequer Of yellow asters and portulaca. There is a wide "black strake" at the waterline And above is a blue like the sky when the weather is fine. The inner bulwarks are painted red. "Why?" asks Miss Jessie. "'Tis a horrid note." Mr. Nichols clears his throat, And tells her the launching day is set. He says, "Be careful, the paint is wet." But Miss Jessie has touched it, her sprigged muslin gown Has a blood-red streak from the shoulder down. "It looks like blood," says Miss Jessie with a frown. Tap! Tap! Rap! An October day, with waves running in blue-white lines and a capful of wind. Three broad flags ripple out behind Where the masts will be: Royal Standard at the main, Admiralty flag at the fore, Union Jack at the mizzen. The hammers tap harder, faster, They must finish by noon. The last nail is driven. But the wind has increased to half a gale, And the ship shakes and quivers upon the ways. The Commissioner of Chatham Dockyard is coming In his ten-oared barge from the King's Stairs; The Marine's band will play "God Save Great George Our King"; And there is to be a dinner afterwards at the Crown, with speeches. The wind screeches, and flaps the flags till they pound like hammers. The wind hums over the ship, And slips round the dog-shores, Jostling them almost to falling. There is no time now to wait for Commissioners and marine bands. Mr. Nichols has a bottle of port in his hands. He leans over, holding his hat, and shouts to the men below: "Let her go!" Bang! Bang! Pound! The dog-shores fall to the ground, And the ship slides down the greased planking. A splintering of glass, And port wine running all over the white and copper stem timbers. "Success to his Majesty's ship, the Bellerophon!" And the red wine washes away in the waters of the Medway. II Paris, March, 1814 Fine yellow sunlight down the rue du Mont Thabor. Ten o'clock striking from all the clock-towers of Paris. Over the door of a shop, in gilt letters: "Martin--Parfumeur", and something more. A large gilded wooden something. Listen! What a ringing of hammers! Tap! Tap! Squeak! Tap! Squeak! Tap-a-tap! "Blaise." "Oui, M'sieu." "Don't touch the letters. My name stays." "Bien, M'sieu." "Just take down the eagle, and the shield with the bees." "As M'sieu pleases." Tap! Squeak! Tap! The man on the ladder hammers steadily for a minute or two, Then stops. "He! Patron! They are fastened well, Nom d'un Chien! What if I break them?" "Break away, You and Paul must have them down to-day." "Bien." And the hammers start again, Drum-beating at the something of gilded wood. Sunshine in a golden flood Lighting up the yellow fronts of houses, Glittering each window to a flash. Squeak! Squeak! Tap! The hammers beat and rap. A Prussian hussar on a grey horse goes by at a dash. From other shops, the noise of striking blows: Pounds, thumps, and whacks; Wooden sounds: splinters--cracks. Paris is full of the galloping of horses and the knocking of hammers. "Hullo! Friend Martin, is business slack That you are in the street this morning? Don't turn your back And scuttle into your shop like a rabbit to its hole. I've just been taking a stroll. The stinking Cossacks are bivouacked all up and down the Champs Elysees. I can't get the smell of them out of my nostrils. Dirty fellows, who don't believe in frills Like washing. Ah, mon vieux, you'd have to go Out of business if you lived in Russia. So! We've given up being perfumers to the Emperor, have we? Blaise, Be careful of the hen, Maybe I can find a use for her one of these days. That eagle's rather well cut, Martin. But I'm sick of smelling Cossack, Take me inside and let me put my head into a stack Of orris-root and musk." Within the shop, the light is dimmed to a pearl-and-green dusk Out of which dreamily sparkle counters and shelves of glass, Containing phials, and bowls, and jars, and dishes; a mass Of aqueous transparence made solid by threads of gold. Gold and glass, And scents which whiff across the green twilight and pass. The perfumer sits down and shakes his head: "Always the same, Monsieur Antoine, You artists are wonderful folk indeed." But Antoine Vernet does not heed. He is reading the names on the bottles and bowls, Done in fine gilt letters with wonderful scrolls. "What have we here? 'Eau Imperial Odontalgique.' I must say, mon cher, your names are chic. But it won't do, positively it will not do. Elba doesn't count. Ah, here is another: 'Baume du Commandeur'. That's better. He needs something to smother Regrets. A little lubricant, too, Might be useful. I have it, 'Sage Oil', perhaps he'll be good now; with it we'll submit This fine German rouge. I fear he is pale." "Monsieur Antoine, don't rail At misfortune. He treated me well and fairly." "And you prefer him to Bourbons, admit it squarely." "Heaven forbid!" Bang! Whack! Squeak! Squeak! Crack! CRASH! "Oh, Lord, Martin! That shield is hash. The whole street is covered with golden bees. They look like so many yellow peas, Lying there in the mud. I'd like to paint it. 'Plum pudding of Empire'. That's rather quaint, it Might take with the Kings. Shall I try?" "Oh, Sir, You distress me, you do." "Poor old Martin's purr! But he hasn't a scratch in him, I know. Now let us get back to the powders and patches. Foolish man, The Kings are here now. We must hit on a plan To change all these titles as fast as we can. 'Bouquet Imperatrice'. Tut! Tut! Give me some ink-- 'Bouquet de la Reine', what do you think? Not the same receipt? Now, Martin, put away your conceit. Who will ever know? 'Extract of Nobility'--excellent, since most of them are killed." "But, Monsieur Antoine--" "You are self-willed, Martin. You need a salve For your conscience, do you? Very well, we'll halve The compliments, also the pastes and dentifrices; Send some to the Kings, and some to the Empresses. 'Oil of Bitter Almonds'--the Empress Josephine can have that. 'Oil of Parma Violets' fits the other one pat." Rap! Rap! Bang! "What a hideous clatter! Blaise seems determined to batter That poor old turkey into bits, And pound to jelly my excellent wits. Come, come, Martin, you mustn't shirk. 'The night cometh soon'--etc. Don't jerk Me up like that. 'Essence de la Valliere'-- That has a charmingly Bourbon air. And, oh! Magnificent! Listen to this!-- 'Vinaigre des Quatre Voleurs'. Nothing amiss With that--England, Austria, Russia and Prussia! Martin, you're a wonder, Upheavals of continents can't keep you under." "Monsieur Antoine, I am grieved indeed At such levity. What France has gone through--" "Very true, Martin, very true, But never forget that a man must feed." Pound! Pound! Thump! Pound! "Look here, in another minute Blaise will drop that bird on the ground." Martin shrugs his shoulders. "Ah, well, what then?--" Antoine, with a laugh: "I'll give you two sous for that antiquated hen." The Imperial Eagle sells for two sous, And the lilies go up. A man must choose! III Paris, April, 1814 Cold, impassive, the marble arch of the Place du Carrousel. Haughty, contemptuous, the marble arch of the Place du Carrousel. Like a woman raped by force, rising above her fate, Borne up by the cold rigidity of hate, Stands the marble arch of the Place du Carrousel. Tap! Clink-a-tink! Tap! Rap! Chink! What falls to the ground like a streak of flame? Hush! It is only a bit of bronze flashing in the sun. What are all those soldiers? Those are not the uniforms of France. Alas! No! The uniforms of France, Great Imperial France, are done. They will rot away in chests and hang to dusty tatters in barn lofts. These are other armies. And their name? Hush, be still for shame; Be still and imperturbable like the marble arch. Another bright spark falls through the blue air. Over the Place du Carrousel a wailing of despair. Crowd your horses back upon the people, Uhlans and Hungarian Lancers, They see too much. Unfortunately, Gentlemen of the Invading Armies, what they do not see, they hear. Tap! Clink-a-tink! Tap! Another sharp spear Of brightness, And a ringing of quick metal lightness On hard stones. Workmen are chipping off the names of Napoleon's victories From the triumphal arch of the Place du Carrousel. Do they need so much force to quell the crowd? An old Grenadier of the line groans aloud, And each hammer tap points the sob of a woman. Russia, Prussia, Austria, and the faded-white-lily Bourbon king Think it well To guard against tumult, A mob is an undependable thing. Ding! Ding! Vienna is scattered all over the Place du Carrousel In glittering, bent, and twisted letters. Your betters have clattered over Vienna before, Officer of his Imperial Majesty our Father-in-Law! Tink! Tink! A workman's chisel can strew you to the winds, Munich. Do they think To pleasure Paris, used to the fall of cities, By giving her a fall of letters! It is a month too late. One month, and our lily-white Bourbon king Has done a colossal thing; He has curdled love, And soured the desires of a people. Still the letters fall, The workmen creep up and down their ladders like lizards on a wall. Tap! Tap! Tink! Clink! Clink! "Oh, merciful God, they will not touch Austerlitz! Strike me blind, my God, my eyes can never look on that. I would give the other leg to save it, it took one. Curse them! Curse them! Aim at his hat. Give me the stone. Why didn't you give it to me? I would not have missed. Curse him! Curse all of them! They have got the 'A'!" Ding! Ding! "I saw the Terror, but I never saw so horrible a thing as this. 'Vive l'Empereur! Vive l'Empereur!'" "Don't strike him, Fritz. The mob will rise if you do. Just run him out to the 'quai', That will get him out of the way. They are almost through." Clink! Tink! Ding! Clear as the sudden ring Of a bell "Z" strikes the pavement. Farewell, Austerlitz, Tilsit, Presbourg; Farewell, greatness departed. Farewell, Imperial honours, knocked broadcast by the beating hammers of ignorant workmen. Straight, in the Spring moonlight, Rises the deflowered arch. In the silence, shining bright, She stands naked and unsubdued. Her marble coldness will endure the march Of decades. Rend her bronzes, hammers; Cast down her inscriptions. She is unconquerable, austere, Cold as the moon that swims above her When the nights are clear. IV Croissy, Ile-de-France, June, 1815 "Whoa! Victorine. Devil take the mare! I've never seen so vicious a beast. She kicked Jules the last time she was here, He's been lame ever since, poor chap." Rap! Tap! Tap-a-tap-a-tap! Tap! Tap! "I'd rather be lame than dead at Waterloo, M'sieu Charles." "Sacre Bleu! Don't mention Waterloo, and the damned grinning British. We didn't run in the old days. There wasn't any running at Jena. Those were decent days, And decent men, who stood up and fought. We never got beaten, because we wouldn't be. See!" "You would have taught them, wouldn't you, Sergeant Boignet? But to-day it's everyone for himself, And the Emperor isn't what he was." "How the Devil do you know that? If he was beaten, the cause Is the green geese in his army, led by traitors. Oh, I say no names, Monsieur Charles, You needn't hammer so loud. If there are any spies lurking behind the bellows, I beg they come out. Dirty fellows!" The old Sergeant seizes a red-hot poker And advances, brandishing it, into the shadows. The rows of horses flick Placid tails. Victorine gives a savage kick As the nails Go in. Tap! Tap! Jules draws a horseshoe from the fire And beats it from red to peacock-blue and black, Purpling darker at each whack. Ding! Dang! Dong! Ding-a-ding-dong! It is a long time since any one spoke. Then the blacksmith brushes his hand over his eyes, "Well," he sighs, "He's broke." The Sergeant charges out from behind the bellows. "It's the green geese, I tell you, Their hearts are all whites and yellows, There's no red in them. Red! That's what we want. Fouche should be fed To the guillotine, and all Paris dance the carmagnole. That would breed jolly fine lick-bloods To lead his armies to victory." "Ancient history, Sergeant. He's done." "Say that again, Monsieur Charles, and I'll stun You where you stand for a dung-eating Royalist." The Sergeant gives the poker a savage twist; He is as purple as the cooling horseshoes. The air from the bellows creaks through the flues. Tap! Tap! The blacksmith shoes Victorine, And through the doorway a fine sheen Of leaves flutters, with the sun between. By a spurt of fire from the forge You can see the Sergeant, with swollen gorge, Puffing, and gurgling, and choking; The bellows keep on croaking. They wheeze, And sneeze, Creak! Bang! Squeeze! And the hammer strokes fall like buzzing bees Or pattering rain, Or faster than these, Like the hum of a waterfall struck by a breeze. Clank! from the bellows-chain pulled up and down. Clank! And sunshine twinkles on Victorine's flank, Starting it to blue, Dropping it to black. Clack! Clack! Tap-a-tap! Tap! Lord! What galloping! Some mishap Is making that man ride so furiously. "Francois, you! Victorine won't be through For another quarter of an hour." "As you hope to die, Work faster, man, the order has come." "What order? Speak out. Are you dumb?" "A chaise, without arms on the panels, at the gate In the far side-wall, and just to wait. We must be there in half an hour with swift cattle. You're a stupid fool if you don't hear that rattle. Those are German guns. Can't you guess the rest? Nantes, Rochefort, possibly Brest." Tap! Tap! as though the hammers were mad. Dang! Ding! Creak! The farrier's lad Jerks the bellows till he cracks their bones, And the stifled air hiccoughs and groans. The Sergeant is lying on the floor Stone dead, and his hat with the tricolore Cockade has rolled off into the cinders. Victorine snorts and lays back her ears. What glistens on the anvil? Sweat or tears? V St. Helena, May, 1821 Tap! Tap! Tap! Through the white tropic night. Tap! Tap! Beat the hammers, Unwearied, indefatigable. They are hanging dull black cloth about the dead. Lustreless black cloth Which chokes the radiance of the moonlight And puts out the little moving shadows of leaves. Tap! Tap! The knocking makes the candles quaver, And the long black hangings waver Tap! Tap! Tap! Tap! Tap! In the ears which do not heed. Tap! Tap! Above the eyelids which do not flicker. Tap! Tap! Over the hands which do not stir. Chiselled like a cameo of white agate against the hangings, Struck to brilliance by the falling moonlight, A face! Sharp as a frozen flame, Beautiful as an altar lamp of silver, And still. Perfectly still. In the next room, the men chatter As they eat their midnight lunches. A knife hits against a platter. But the figure on the bed Between the stifling black hangings Is cold and motionless, Played over by the moonlight from the windows And the indistinct shadows of leaves. Tap! Tap! Upholsterer Darling has a fine shop in Jamestown. Tap! Tap! Andrew Darling has ridden hard from Longwood to see to the work in his shop in Jamestown. He has a corps of men in it, toiling and swearing, Knocking, and measuring, and planing, and squaring, Working from a chart with figures, Comparing with their rules, Setting this and that part together with their tools. Tap! Tap! Tap! Haste indeed! So great is the need That carpenters have been taken from the new church, Joiners have been called from shaping pews and lecterns To work of greater urgency. Coffins! Coffins is what they are making this bright Summer morning. Coffins--and all to measurement. There is a tin coffin, A deal coffin, A lead coffin, And Captain Bennett's best mahogany dining-table Has been sawed up for the grand outer coffin. Tap! Tap! Tap! Sunshine outside in the square, But inside, only hollow coffins and the tapping upon them. The men whistle, And the coffins grow under their hammers In the darkness of the shop. Tap! Tap! Tap! Tramp of men. Steady tramp of men. Slit-eyed Chinese with long pigtails Bearing oblong things upon their shoulders March slowly along the road to Longwood. Their feet fall softly in the dust of the road; Sometimes they call gutturally to each other and stop to shift shoulders. Four coffins for the little dead man, Four fine coffins, And one of them Captain Bennett's dining-table! And sixteen splendid Chinamen, all strong and able And of assured neutrality. Ah! George of England, Lord Bathhurst & Co. Your princely munificence makes one's heart glow. Huzza! Huzza! For the Lion of England! Tap! Tap! Tap! Marble likeness of an Emperor, Dead man, who burst your heart against a world too narrow, The hammers drum you to your last throne Which always you shall hold alone. Tap! Tap! The glory of your past is faded as a sunset fire, Your day lingers only like the tones of a wind-lyre In a twilit room. Here is the emptiness of your dream Scattered about you. Coins of yesterday, Double napoleons stamped with Consul or Emperor, Strange as those of Herculaneum-- And you just dead! Not one spool of thread Will these buy in any market-place. Lay them over him, They are the baubles of a crown of mist Worn in a vision and melted away at waking. Tap! Tap! His heart strained at kingdoms And now it is content with a silver dish. Strange World! Strange Wayfarer! Strange Destiny! Lower it gently beside him and let it lie. Tap! Tap! Tap! Two Travellers in the Place Vendome Reign of Louis Philippe A great tall column spearing at the sky With a little man on top. Goodness! Tell me why? He looks a silly thing enough to stand up there so high. What a strange fellow, like a soldier in a play, Tight-fitting coat with the tails cut away, High-crowned hat which the brims overlay. Two-horned hat makes an outline like a bow. Must have a sword, I can see the light glow Between a dark line and his leg. Vertigo I get gazing up at him, a pygmy flashed with sun. A weathercock or scarecrow or both things in one? As bright as a jewelled crown hung above a throne. Say, what is the use of him if he doesn't turn? Just put up to glitter there, like a torch to burn, A sort of sacrificial show in a lofty urn? But why a little soldier in an obsolete dress? I'd rather see a Goddess with a spear, I confess. Something allegorical and fine. Why, yes-- I cannot take my eyes from him. I don't know why at all. I've looked so long the whole thing swims. I feel he ought to fall. Foreshortened there among the clouds he's pitifully small. What do you say? There used to be an Emperor standing there, With flowing robes and laurel crown. Really? Yet I declare Those spiral battles round the shaft don't seem just his affair. A togaed, laurelled man's I mean. Now this chap seems to feel As though he owned those soldiers. Whew! How he makes one reel, Swinging round above his circling armies in a wheel. Sweeping round the sky in an orbit like the sun's, Flashing sparks like cannon-balls from his own long guns. Perhaps my sight is tired, but that figure simply stuns. How low the houses seem, and all the people are mere flies. That fellow pokes his hat up till it scratches on the skies. Impudent! Audacious! But, by Jove, he blinds the eyes! WAR PICTURES The Allies August 14th, 1914 Into the brazen, burnished sky, the cry hurls itself. The zigzagging cry of hoarse throats, it floats against the hard winds, and binds the head of the serpent to its tail, the long snail-slow serpent of marching men. Men weighed down with rifles and knapsacks, and parching with war. The cry jars and splits against the brazen, burnished sky. This is the war of wars, and the cause? Has this writhing worm of men a cause? Crackling against the polished sky is an eagle with a sword. The eagle is red and its head is flame. In the shoulder of the worm is a teacher. His tongue laps the war-sucked air in drought, but he yells defiance at the red-eyed eagle, and in his ears are the bells of new philosophies, and their tinkling drowns the sputter of the burning sword. He shrieks, "God damn you! When you are broken, the word will strike out new shoots." His boots are tight, the sun is hot, and he may be shot, but he is in the shoulder of the worm. A dust speck in the worm's belly is a poet. He laughs at the flaring eagle and makes a long nose with his fingers. He will fight for smooth, white sheets of paper, and uncurdled ink. The sputtering sword cannot make him blink, and his thoughts are wet and rippling. They cool his heart. He will tear the eagle out of the sky and give the earth tranquillity, and loveliness printed on white paper. The eye of the serpent is an owner of mills. He looks at the glaring sword which has snapped his machinery and struck away his men. But it will all come again, when the sword is broken to a million dying stars, and there are no more wars. Bankers, butchers, shop-keepers, painters, farmers--men, sway and sweat. They will fight for the earth, for the increase of the slow, sure roots of peace, for the release of hidden forces. They jibe at the eagle and his scorching sword. One! Two!--One! Two!--clump the heavy boots. The cry hurtles against the sky. Each man pulls his belt a little tighter, and shifts his gun to make it lighter. Each man thinks of a woman, and slaps out a curse at the eagle. The sword jumps in the hot sky, and the worm crawls on to the battle, stubbornly. This is the war of wars, from eye to tail the serpent has one cause: PEACE! The Bombardment Slowly, without force, the rain drops into the city. It stops a moment on the carved head of Saint John, then slides on again, slipping and trickling over his stone cloak. It splashes from the lead conduit of a gargoyle, and falls from it in turmoil on the stones in the Cathedral square. Where are the people, and why does the fretted steeple sweep about in the sky? Boom! The sound swings against the rain. Boom, again! After it, only water rushing in the gutters, and the turmoil from the spout of the gargoyle. Silence. Ripples and mutters. Boom! The room is damp, but warm. Little flashes swarm about from the firelight. The lustres of the chandelier are bright, and clusters of rubies leap in the bohemian glasses on the 'etagere'. Her hands are restless, but the white masses of her hair are quite still. Boom! Will it never cease to torture, this iteration! Boom! The vibration shatters a glass on the 'etagere'. It lies there, formless and glowing, with all its crimson gleams shot out of pattern, spilled, flowing red, blood-red. A thin bell-note pricks through the silence. A door creaks. The old lady speaks: "Victor, clear away that broken glass." "Alas! Madame, the bohemian glass!" "Yes, Victor, one hundred years ago my father brought it--" Boom! The room shakes, the servitor quakes. Another goblet shivers and breaks. Boom! It rustles at the window-pane, the smooth, streaming rain, and he is shut within its clash and murmur. Inside is his candle, his table, his ink, his pen, and his dreams. He is thinking, and the walls are pierced with beams of sunshine, slipping through young green. A fountain tosses itself up at the blue sky, and through the spattered water in the basin he can see copper carp, lazily floating among cold leaves. A wind-harp in a cedar-tree grieves and whispers, and words blow into his brain, bubbled, iridescent, shooting up like flowers of fire, higher and higher. Boom! The flame-flowers snap on their slender stems. The fountain rears up in long broken spears of dishevelled water and flattens into the earth. Boom! And there is only the room, the table, the candle, and the sliding rain. Again, Boom!--Boom!--Boom! He stuffs his fingers into his ears. He sees corpses, and cries out in fright. Boom! It is night, and they are shelling the city! Boom! Boom! A child wakes and is afraid, and weeps in the darkness. What has made the bed shake? "Mother, where are you? I am awake." "Hush, my Darling, I am here." "But, Mother, something so queer happened, the room shook." Boom! "Oh! What is it? What is the matter?" Boom! "Where is Father? I am so afraid." Boom! The child sobs and shrieks. The house trembles and creaks. Boom! Retorts, globes, tubes, and phials lie shattered. All his trials oozing across the floor. The life that was his choosing, lonely, urgent, goaded by a hope, all gone. A weary man in a ruined laboratory, that is his story. Boom! Gloom and ignorance, and the jig of drunken brutes. Diseases like snakes crawling over the earth, leaving trails of slime. Wails from people burying their dead. Through the window, he can see the rocking steeple. A ball of fire falls on the lead of the roof, and the sky tears apart on a spike of flame. Up the spire, behind the lacings of stone, zigzagging in and out of the carved tracings, squirms the fire. It spouts like yellow wheat from the gargoyles, coils round the head of Saint John, and aureoles him in light. It leaps into the night and hisses against the rain. The Cathedral is a burning stain on the white, wet night. Boom! The Cathedral is a torch, and the houses next to it begin to scorch. Boom! The bohemian glass on the 'etagere' is no longer there. Boom! A stalk of flame sways against the red damask curtains. The old lady cannot walk. She watches the creeping stalk and counts. Boom!--Boom!--Boom! The poet rushes into the street, and the rain wraps him in a sheet of silver. But it is threaded with gold and powdered with scarlet beads. The city burns. Quivering, spearing, thrusting, lapping, streaming, run the flames. Over roofs, and walls, and shops, and stalls. Smearing its gold on the sky, the fire dances, lances itself through the doors, and lisps and chuckles along the floors. The child wakes again and screams at the yellow petalled flower flickering at the window. The little red lips of flame creep along the ceiling beams. The old man sits among his broken experiments and looks at the burning Cathedral. Now the streets are swarming with people. They seek shelter and crowd into the cellars. They shout and call, and over all, slowly and without force, the rain drops into the city. Boom! And the steeple crashes down among the people. Boom! Boom, again! The water rushes along the gutters. The fire roars and mutters. Boom! Lead Soldiers The nursery fire burns brightly, crackling in cheerful little explosions and trails of sparks up the back of the chimney. Miniature rockets peppering the black bricks with golden stars, as though a gala flamed a night of victorious wars. The nodding mandarin on the bookcase moves his head forward and back, slowly, and looks into the air with his blue-green eyes. He stares into the air and nods--forward and back. The red rose in his hand is a crimson splash on his yellow coat. Forward and back, and his blue-green eyes stare into the air, and he nods--nods. Tommy's soldiers march to battle, Trumpets flare and snare-drums rattle. Bayonets flash, and sabres glance-- How the horses snort and prance! Cannon drawn up in a line Glitter in the dizzy shine Of the morning sunlight. Flags Ripple colours in great jags. Red blows out, then blue, then green, Then all three--a weaving sheen Of prismed patriotism. March Tommy's soldiers, stiff and starch, Boldly stepping to the rattle Of the drums, they go to battle. Tommy lies on his stomach on the floor and directs his columns. He puts his infantry in front, and before them ambles a mounted band. Their instruments make a strand of gold before the scarlet-tunicked soldiers, and they take very long steps on their little green platforms, and from the ranks bursts the song of Tommy's soldiers marching to battle. The song jolts a little as the green platforms stick on the thick carpet. Tommy wheels his guns round the edge of a box of blocks, and places a squad of cavalry on the commanding eminence of a footstool. The fire snaps pleasantly, and the old Chinaman nods--nods. The fire makes the red rose in his hand glow and twist. Hist! That is a bold song Tommy's soldiers sing as they march along to battle. Crack! Rattle! The sparks fly up the chimney. Tommy's army's off to war-- Not a soldier knows what for. But he knows about his rifle, How to shoot it, and a trifle Of the proper thing to do When it's he who is shot through. Like a cleverly trained flea, He can follow instantly Orders, and some quick commands Really make severe demands On a mind that's none too rapid, Leaden brains tend to the vapid. But how beautifully dressed Is this army! How impressed Tommy is when at his heel All his baggage wagons wheel About the patterned carpet, and Moving up his heavy guns He sees them glow with diamond suns Flashing all along each barrel. And the gold and blue apparel Of his gunners is a joy. Tommy is a lucky boy. Boom! Boom! Ta-ra! The old mandarin nods under his purple umbrella. The rose in his hand shoots its petals up in thin quills of crimson. Then they collapse and shrivel like red embers. The fire sizzles. Tommy is galloping his cavalry, two by two, over the floor. They must pass the open terror of the door and gain the enemy encamped under the wash-stand. The mounted band is very grand, playing allegro and leading the infantry on at the double quick. The tassel of the hearth-rug has flung down the bass-drum, and he and his dapple-grey horse lie overtripped, slipped out of line, with the little lead drumsticks glistening to the fire's shine. The fire burns and crackles, and tickles the tripped bass-drum with its sparkles. The marching army hitches its little green platforms valiantly, and steadily approaches the door. The overturned bass-drummer, lying on the hearth-rug, melting in the heat, softens and sheds tears. The song jeers at his impotence, and flaunts the glory of the martial and still upstanding, vaunting the deeds it will do. For are not Tommy's soldiers all bright and new? Tommy's leaden soldiers we, Glittering with efficiency. Not a button's out of place, Tons and tons of golden lace Wind about our officers. Every manly bosom stirs At the thought of killing--killing! Tommy's dearest wish fulfilling. We are gaudy, savage, strong, And our loins so ripe we long First to kill, then procreate, Doubling so the laws of Fate. On their women we have sworn To graft our sons. And overborne They'll rear us younger soldiers, so Shall our race endure and grow, Waxing greater in the wombs Borrowed of them, while damp tombs Rot their men. O Glorious War! Goad us with your points, Great Star! The china mandarin on the bookcase nods slowly, forward and back--forward and back--and the red rose writhes and wriggles, thrusting its flaming petals under and over one another like tortured snakes. The fire strokes them with its dartles, and purrs at them, and the old man nods. Tommy does not hear the song. He only sees the beautiful, new, gaily-coloured lead soldiers. They belong to him, and he is very proud and happy. He shouts his orders aloud, and gallops his cavalry past the door to the wash-stand. He creeps over the floor on his hands and knees to one battalion and another, but he sees only the bright colours of his soldiers and the beautiful precision of their gestures. He is a lucky boy to have such fine lead soldiers to enjoy. Tommy catches his toe in the leg of the wash-stand, and jars the pitcher. He snatches at it with his hands, but it is too late. The pitcher falls, and as it goes, he sees the white water flow over its lip. It slips between his fingers and crashes to the floor. But it is not water which oozes to the door. The stain is glutinous and dark, a spark from the firelight heads it to red. In and out, between the fine, new soldiers, licking over the carpet, squirms the stream of blood, lapping at the little green platforms, and flapping itself against the painted uniforms. The nodding mandarin moves his head slowly, forward and back. The rose is broken, and where it fell is black blood. The old mandarin leers under his purple umbrella, and nods--forward and back, staring into the air with blue-green eyes. Every time his head comes forward a rosebud pushes between his lips, rushes into full bloom, and drips to the ground with a splashing sound. The pool of black blood grows and grows, with each dropped rose, and spreads out to join the stream from the wash-stand. The beautiful army of lead soldiers steps boldly forward, but the little green platforms are covered in the rising stream of blood. The nursery fire burns brightly and flings fan-bursts of stars up the chimney, as though a gala flamed a night of victorious wars. The Painter on Silk There was a man Who made his living By painting roses Upon silk. He sat in an upper chamber And painted, And the noises of the street Meant nothing to him. When he heard bugles, and fifes, and drums, He thought of red, and yellow, and white roses Bursting in the sunshine, And smiled as he worked. He thought only of roses, And silk. When he could get no more silk He stopped painting And only thought Of roses. The day the conquerors Entered the city, The old man Lay dying. He heard the bugles and drums, And wished he could paint the roses Bursting into sound. A Ballad of Footmen Now what in the name of the sun and the stars Is the meaning of this most unholy of wars? Do men find life so full of humour and joy That for want of excitement they smash up the toy? Fifteen millions of soldiers with popguns and horses All bent upon killing, because their "of courses" Are not quite the same. All these men by the ears, And nine nations of women choking with tears. It is folly to think that the will of a king Can force men to make ducks and drakes of a thing They value, and life is, at least one supposes, Of some little interest, even if roses Have not grown up between one foot and the other. What a marvel bureaucracy is, which can smother Such quite elementary feelings, and tag A man with a number, and set him to wag His legs and his arms at the word of command Or the blow of a whistle! He's certainly damned, Fit only for mince-meat, if a little gold lace And an upturned moustache can set him to face Bullets, and bayonets, and death, and diseases, Because some one he calls his Emperor, pleases. If each man were to lay down his weapon, and say, With a click of his heels, "I wish you Good-day," Now what, may I ask, could the Emperor do? A king and his minions are really so few. Angry? Oh, of course, a most furious Emperor! But the men are so many they need not mind his temper, or The dire results which could not be inflicted. With no one to execute sentence, convicted Is just the weak wind from an old, broken bellows. What lackeys men are, who might be such fine fellows! To be killing each other, unmercifully, At an order, as though one said, "Bring up the tea." Or is it that tasting the blood on their jaws They lap at it, drunk with its ferment, and laws So patiently builded, are nothing to drinking More blood, any blood. They don't notice its stinking. I don't suppose tigers do, fighting cocks, sparrows, And, as to men--what are men, when their marrows Are running with blood they have gulped; it is plain Such excellent sport does not recollect pain. Toll the bells in the steeples left standing. Half-mast The flags which meant order, for order is past. Take the dust of the streets and sprinkle your head, The civilization we've worked for is dead. Squeeze into this archway, the head of the line Has just swung round the corner to 'Die Wacht am Rhein'. THE OVERGROWN PASTURE Reaping You want to know what's the matter with me, do yer? My! ain't men blinder'n moles? It ain't nothin' new, be sure o' that. Why, ef you'd had eyes you'd ha' seed Me changin' under your very nose, Each day a little diff'rent. But you never see nothin', you don't. Don't touch me, Jake, Don't you dars't to touch me, I ain't in no humour. That's what's come over me; Jest a change clear through. You lay still, an' I'll tell yer, I've had it on my mind to tell yer Fer some time. It's a strain livin' a lie from mornin' till night, An' I'm goin' to put an end to it right now. An' don't make any mistake about one thing, When I married yer I loved yer. Why, your voice 'ud make Me go hot and cold all over, An' your kisses most stopped my heart from beatin'. Lord! I was a silly fool. But that's the way 'twas. Well, I married yer An' thought Heav'n was comin' To set on the door-step. Heav'n didn't do no settin', Though the first year warn't so bad. The baby's fever threw you off some, I guess, An' then I took her death real hard, An' a mopey wife kind o' disgusts a man. I ain't blamin' yer exactly. But that's how 'twas. Do lay quiet, I know I'm slow, but it's harder to say 'n I thought. There come a time when I got to be More wife agin than mother. The mother part was sort of a waste When we didn't have no other child. But you'd got used ter lots o' things, An' you was all took up with the farm. Many's the time I've laid awake Watchin' the moon go clear through the elm-tree, Out o' sight. I'd foller yer around like a dog, An' set in the chair you'd be'n settin' in, Jest to feel its arms around me, So long's I didn't have yours. It preyed on me, I guess, Longin' and longin' While you was busy all day, and snorin' all night. Yes, I know you're wide awake now, But now ain't then, An' I guess you'll think diff'rent When I'm done. Do you mind the day you went to Hadrock? I didn't want to stay home for reasons, But you said someone 'd have to be here 'Cause Elmer was comin' to see t' th' telephone. An' you never see why I was so set on goin' with yer, Our married life hadn't be'n any great shakes, Still marriage is marriage, an' I was raised God-fearin'. But, Lord, you didn't notice nothin', An' Elmer hangin' around all Winter! 'Twas a lovely mornin'. The apple-trees was jest elegant With their blossoms all flared out, An' there warn't a cloud in the sky. You went, you wouldn't pay no 'tention to what I said, An' I heard the Ford chuggin' for most a mile, The air was so still. Then Elmer come. It's no use your frettin', Jake, I'll tell you all about it. I know what I'm doin', An' what's worse, I know what I done. Elmer fixed th' telephone in about two minits, An' he didn't seem in no hurry to go, An' I don't know as I wanted him to go either, I was awful mad at your not takin' me with yer, An' I was tired o' wishin' and wishin' An' gittin' no comfort. I guess it ain't necessary to tell yer all the things. He stayed to dinner, An' he helped me do the dishes, An' he said a home was a fine thing, An' I said dishes warn't a home Nor yet the room they're in. He said a lot o' things, An' I fended him off at first, But he got talkin' all around me, Clost up to the things I'd be'n thinkin', What's the use o' me goin' on, Jake, You know. He got all he wanted, An' I give it to him, An' what's more, I'm glad! I ain't dead, anyway, An' somebody thinks I'm somethin'. Keep away, Jake, You can kill me to-morrer if you want to, But I'm goin' to have my say. Funny thing! Guess I ain't made to hold a man. Elmer ain't be'n here for mor'n two months. I don't want to pretend nothin', Mebbe if he'd be'n lately I shouldn't have told yer. I'll go away in the mornin', o' course. What you want the light fer? I don't look no diff'rent. Ain't the moon bright enough To look at a woman that's deceived yer by? Don't, Jake, don't, you can't love me now! It ain't a question of forgiveness. Why! I'd be thinkin' o' Elmer ev'ry minute; It ain't decent. Oh, my God! It ain't decent any more either way! Off the Turnpike Good ev'nin', Mis' Priest. I jest stepped in to tell you Good-bye. Yes, it's all over. All my things is packed An' every last one o' them boxes Is on Bradley's team Bein' hauled over to th' depot. No, I ain't goin' back agin. I'm stoppin' over to French's fer to-night, And goin' down first train in th' mornin'. Yes, it do seem kinder queer Not to be goin' to see Cherry's Orchard no more, But Land Sakes! When a change's comin', Why, I al'ays say it can't come too quick. Now, that's real kind o' you, Your doughnuts is always so tasty. Yes, I'm goin' to Chicago, To my niece, She's married to a fine man, hardware business, An' doin' real well, she tells me. Lizzie's be'n at me to go out ther for the longest while. She ain't got no kith nor kin to Chicago, you know She's rented me a real nice little flat, Same house as hers, An' I'm goin' to try that city livin' folks say's so pleasant. Oh, yes, he was real generous, Paid me a sight o' money fer the Orchard; I told him 'twouldn't yield nothin' but stones, But he ain't farmin' it. Lor', no, Mis' Priest, He's jest took it to set and look at the view. Mebbe he wouldn't be so stuck on the view Ef he'd seed it every mornin' and night for forty year Same's as I have. I dessay it's pretty enough, But it's so pressed into me I c'n see't with my eyes shut. No. I ain't cold, Mis' Priest, Don't shut th' door. I'll be all right in a minit. But I ain't a mite sorry to leave that view. Well, mebbe 'tis queer to feel so, An' mebbe 'taint. My! But that tea's revivin'. Old things ain't always pleasant things, Mis' Priest. No, no, I don't cal'late on comin' back, That's why I'd ruther be to Chicago, Boston's too near. It ain't cold, Mis' Priest, It's jest my thoughts. I ain't sick, only-- Mis' Priest, ef you've nothin' ter take yer time, An' have a mind to listen, Ther's somethin' I'd like ter speak about I ain't never mentioned it, But I'd like to tell yer 'fore I go. Would you mind lowerin' them shades, Fall twilight's awful grey, An' that fire's real cosy with the shades drawed. Well, I guess folks about here think I've be'n dret'ful onsociable. You needn't say 'taint so, 'cause I know diff'rent. An' what's more, it's true. Well, the reason is I've be'n scared out o' my life. Scared ev'ry minit o' th' time, fer eight year. Eight mortal year 'tis, come next June. 'Twas on the eighteenth o' June, Six months after I'd buried my husband, That somethin' happened ter me. Mebbe you'll mind that afore that I was a cheery body. Hiram was too, Al'ays liked to ask a neighbor in, An' ev'n when he died, Barrin' low sperrits, I warn't averse to seein' nobody. But that eighteenth o' June changed ev'rythin'. I was doin' most o' th' farmwork myself, With jest a hired boy, Clarence King, 'twas, Comin' in fer an hour or two. Well, that eighteenth o' June I was goin' round, Lockin' up and seein' to things 'fore I went to bed. I was jest steppin' out t' th' barn, Goin' round outside 'stead o' through the shed, 'Cause there was such a sight o' moonlight Somehow or another I thought 'twould be pretty outdoors. I got settled for pretty things that night, I guess. I ain't stuck on 'em no more. Well, them laylock bushes side o' th' house Was real lovely. Glitt'rin' and shakin' in the moonlight, An' the smell o' them rose right up An' most took my breath away. The colour o' the spikes was all faded out, They never keep their colour when the moon's on 'em, But the smell fair 'toxicated me. I was al'ays partial to a sweet scent, An' I went close up t' th' bushes So's to put my face right into a flower. Mis' Priest, jest's I got breathin' in that laylock bloom I saw, layin' right at my feet, A man's hand! It was as white's the side o' th' house, And sparklin' like that lum'nous paint they put on gate-posts. I screamed right out, I couldn't help it, An' I could hear my scream Goin' over an' over In that echo be'ind th' barn. Hearin' it agin an' agin like that Scared me so, I dar'sn't scream any more. I jest stood ther, And looked at that hand. I thought the echo'd begin to hammer like my heart, But it didn't. There was only th' wind, Sighin' through the laylock leaves, An' slappin' 'em up agin the house. Well, I guess I looked at that hand Most ten minits, An' it never moved, Jest lay there white as white. After a while I got to thinkin' that o' course 'Twas some drunken tramp over from Redfield. That calmed me some, An' I commenced to think I'd better git him out From under them laylocks. I planned to drag him in t' th' barn An' lock him in ther till Clarence come in th' mornin'. I got so mad thinkin' o' that all-fired brazen tramp Asleep in my laylocks, I jest stooped down and grabbed th' hand and give it an awful pull. Then I bumped right down settin' on the ground. Mis' Priest, ther warn't no body come with the hand. No, it ain't cold, it's jest that I can't abear thinkin' of it, Ev'n now. I'll take a sip o' tea. Thank you, Mis' Priest, that's better. I'd ruther finish now I've begun. Thank you, jest the same. I dropped the hand's ef it'd be'n red hot 'Stead o' ice cold. Fer a minit or two I jest laid on that grass Pantin'. Then I up and run to them laylocks An' pulled 'em every which way. True es I'm settin' here, Mis' Priest, Ther warn't nothin' ther. I peeked an' pryed all about 'em, But ther warn't no man ther Neither livin' nor dead. But the hand was ther all right, Upside down, the way I'd dropped it, And glist'nin' fit to dazzle yer. I don't know how I done it, An' I don't know why I done it, But I wanted to git that dret'ful hand out o' sight I got in t' th' barn, somehow, An' felt roun' till I got a spade. I couldn't stop fer a lantern, Besides, the moonlight was bright enough in all conscience. Then I scooped that awful thing up in th' spade. I had a sight o' trouble doin' it. It slid off, and tipped over, and I couldn't bear Ev'n to touch it with my foot to prop it, But I done it somehow. Then I carried it off be'ind the barn, Clost to an old apple-tree Where you couldn't see from the house, An' I buried it, Good an' deep. I don't rec'lect nothin' more o' that night. Clarence woke me up in th' mornin', Hollerin' fer me to come down and set th' milk. When he'd gone, I stole roun' to the apple-tree And seed the earth all new turned Where I left it in my hurry. I did a heap o' gardenin' That mornin'. I couldn't cut no big sods Fear Clarence would notice and ask me what I wanted 'em fer, So I got teeny bits o' turf here and ther, And no one couldn't tell ther'd be'n any diggin' When I got through. They was awful days after that, Mis' Priest, I used ter go every mornin' and poke about them bushes, An' up and down the fence, Ter find the body that hand come off of. But I couldn't never find nothin'. I'd lay awake nights Hearin' them laylocks blowin' and whiskin'. At last I had Clarence cut 'em down An' make a big bonfire of 'em. I told him the smell made me sick, An' that warn't no lie, I can't abear the smell on 'em now; An' no wonder, es you say. I fretted somethin' awful 'bout that hand I wondered, could it be Hiram's, But folks don't rob graveyards hereabouts. Besides, Hiram's hands warn't that awful, starin' white. I give up seein' people, I was afeared I'd say somethin'. You know what folks thought o' me Better'n I do, I dessay, But mebbe now you'll see I couldn't do nothin' diff'rent. But I stuck it out, I warn't goin' to be downed By no loose hand, no matter how it come ther But that ain't the worst, Mis' Priest, Not by a long ways. Two year ago, Mr. Densmore made me an offer for Cherry's Orchard. Well, I'd got used to th' thought o' bein' sort o' blighted, An' I warn't scared no more. Lived down my fear, I guess. I'd kinder got used to th' thought o' that awful night, And I didn't mope much about it. Only I never went out o' doors by moonlight; That stuck. Well, when Mr. Densmore's offer come, I started thinkin' 'bout the place An' all the things that had gone on ther. Thinks I, I guess I'll go and see where I put the hand. I was foolhardy with the long time that had gone by. I know'd the place real well, Fer I'd put it right in between two o' the apple roots. I don't know what possessed me, Mis' Priest, But I kinder wanted to know That the hand had been flesh and bone, anyway. It had sorter bothered me, thinkin' I might ha' imagined it. I took a mornin' when the sun was real pleasant and warm; I guessed I wouldn't jump for a few old bones. But I did jump, somethin' wicked. Ther warn't no bones! Ther warn't nothin'! Not ev'n the gold ring I'd minded bein' on the little finger. I don't know ef ther ever was anythin'. I've worried myself sick over it. I be'n diggin' and diggin' day in and day out Till Clarence ketched me at it. Oh, I know'd real well what you all thought, An' I ain't sayin' you're not right, But I ain't goin' to end in no county 'sylum If I c'n help it. The shiv'rin' fits come on me sudden like. I know 'em, don't you trouble. I've fretted considerable about the 'sylum, I guess I be'n frettin' all the time I ain't be'n diggin'. But anyhow I can't dig to Chicago, can I? Thank you, Mis' Priest, I'm better now. I only dropped in in passin'. I'll jest be steppin' along down to French's. No, I won't be seein' nobody in the mornin', It's a pretty early start. Don't you stand ther, Mis' Priest, The wind'll blow yer lamp out, An' I c'n see easy, I got aholt o' the gate now. I ain't a mite tired, thank you. Good-night. The Grocery "Hullo, Alice!" "Hullo, Leon!" "Say, Alice, gi' me a couple O' them two for five cigars, Will yer?" "Where's your nickel?" "My! Ain't you close! Can't trust a feller, can yer." "Trust you! Why What you owe this store Would set you up in business. I can't think why Father 'lows it." "Yer Father's a sight more neighbourly Than you be. That's a fact. Besides, he knows I got a vote." "A vote! Oh, yes, you got a vote! A lot o' good the Senate'll be to Father When all his bank account Has run away in credits. There's your cigars, If you can relish smokin' With all you owe us standin'." "I dunno as that makes 'em taste any diff'rent. You ain't fair to me, Alice, 'deed you ain't. I work when anythin's doin'. I'll get a carpenterin' job next Summer sure. Cleve was tellin' me to-day he'd take me on come Spring." "Come Spring, and this December! I've no patience with you, Leon, Shilly-shallyin' the way you do. Here, lift over them crates o' oranges I wanter fix 'em in the winder." "It riles yer, don't it, me not havin' work. You pepper up about it somethin' good. You pick an' pick, and that don't help a mite. Say, Alice, do come in out o' that winder. Th' oranges c'n wait, An' I don't like talkin' to yer back." "Don't you! Well, you'd better make the best o' what you can git. Maybe you won't have my back to talk to soon. They look good in pyramids with the 'lectric light on 'em, Don't they? Now hand me them bananas An' I'll string 'em right acrost." "What do yer mean 'Bout me not havin' you to talk to? Are yer springin' somethin' on me?" "I don't know 'bout springin' When I'm tellin' you right out. I'm goin' away, that's all." "Where? Why? What yer mean--goin' away?" "I've took a place Down to Boston, in a candy store For the holidays." "Good Land, Alice, What in the Heavens fer!" "To earn some money, And to git away from here, I guess." "Ain't yer Father got enough? Don't he give yer proper pocket-money?" "He'd have a plenty, if you folks paid him." "He's rich I tell yer. I never figured he'd be close with you." "Oh, he ain't. Not close. That ain't why. But I must git away from here. I must! I must!" "You got a lot o' reason in yer To-night. How long d' you cal'late You'll be gone?" "Maybe for always." "What ails yer, Alice? Talkin' wild like that. Ain't you an' me goin' to be married Some day." "Some day! Some day! I guess the sun'll never rise on some day." "So that's the trouble. Same old story. 'Cause I ain't got the cash to settle right now. You know I love yer, An' I'll marry yer as soon As I c'n raise the money." "You've said that any time these five year, But you don't do nothin'." "Wot could I do? Ther ain't no work here Winters. Not fer a carpenter, ther ain't." "I guess you warn't born a carpenter. Ther's ice-cuttin' a plenty." "I got a dret'ful tender throat; Dr. Smiles he told me I mustn't resk ice-cuttin'." "Why haven't you gone to Boston, And hunted up a job?" "Have yer forgot the time I went expressin' In the American office, down ther?" "And come back two weeks later! No, I ain't." "You didn't want I should git hurted, Did yer? I'm a sight too light fer all that liftin' work. My back was commencin' to strain, as 'twas. Ef I was like yer brother now, I'd ha' be'n down to the city long ago. But I'm too clumsy fer a dancer. I ain't got Arthur's luck." "Do you call it luck to be a disgrace to your folks, And git locked up in jail!" "Oh, come now, Alice, 'Disgrace' is a mite strong. Why, the jail was a joke. Art's all right." "All right! All right to dance, and smirk, and lie For a livin', And then in the end Lead a silly girl to give you What warn't hers to give By pretendin' you'd marry her-- And she a pupil." "He'd ha' married her right enough, Her folks was millionaires." "Yes, he'd ha' married her! Thank God, they saved her that." "Art's a fine feller. I wish I had his luck. Swellin' round in Hart, Schaffner & Marx fancy suits, And eatin' in rest'rants. But somebody's got to stick to the old place, Else Foxfield'd have to shut up shop, Hey, Alice?" "You admire him! You admire Arthur! You'd be like him only you can't dance. Oh, Shame! Shame! And I've been like that silly girl. Fooled with your promises, And I give you all I had. I knew it, oh, I knew it, But I wanted to git away 'fore I proved it. You've shamed me through and through. Why couldn't you hold your tongue, And spared me seein' you As you really are." "What the Devil's the row? I only said Art was lucky. What you spitfirin' at me fer? Ferget it, Alice. We've had good times, ain't we? I'll see Cleve 'bout that job agin to-morrer, And we'll be married 'fore hayin' time." "It's like you to remind me o' hayin' time. I've good cause to love it, ain't I? Many's the night I've hid my face in the dark To shut out thinkin'!" "Why, that ain't nothin'. You ain't be'n half so kind to me As lots o' fellers' girls. Gi' me a kiss, Dear, And let's make up." "Make up! You poor fool. Do you suppose I care a ten cent piece For you now. You've killed yourself for me. Done it out o' your own mouth. You've took away my home, I hate the sight o' the place. You're all over it, Every stick an' stone means you, An' I hate 'em all." "Alice, I say, Don't go on like that. I can't marry yer Boardin' in one room, But I'll see Cleve to-morrer, I'll make him----" "Oh, you fool! You terrible fool!" "Alice, don't go yit, Wait a minit, I'll see Cleve----" "You terrible fool!" "Alice, don't go. Alice----" (Door slams) Number 3 on the Docket The lawyer, are you? Well! I ain't got nothin' to say. Nothin'! I told the perlice I hadn't nothin'. They know'd real well 'twas me. Ther warn't no supposin', Ketchin' me in the woods as they did, An' me in my house dress. Folks don't walk miles an' miles In the drifted snow, With no hat nor wrap on 'em Ef everythin's all right, I guess. All right? Ha! Ha! Ha! Nothin' warn't right with me. Never was. Oh, Lord! Why did I do it? Why ain't it yesterday, and Ed here agin? Many's the time I've set up with him nights When he had cramps, or rheumatizm, or somethin'. I used ter nurse him same's ef he was a baby. I wouldn't hurt him, I love him! Don't you dare to say I killed him. 'Twarn't me! Somethin' got aholt o' me. I couldn't help it. Oh, what shall I do! What shall I do! Yes, Sir. No, Sir. I beg your pardon, I--I-- Oh, I'm a wicked woman! An' I'm desolate, desolate! Why warn't I struck dead or paralyzed Afore my hands done it. Oh, my God, what shall I do! No, Sir, ther ain't no extenuatin' circumstances, An' I don't want none. I want a bolt o' lightnin' To strike me dead right now! Oh, I'll tell yer. But it won't make no diff'rence. Nothin' will. Yes, I killed him. Why do yer make me say it? It's cruel! Cruel! I killed him because o' th' silence. The long, long silence, That watched all around me, And he wouldn't break it. I tried to make him, Time an' agin, But he was terrible taciturn, Ed was. He never spoke 'cept when he had to, An' then he'd only say "yes" and "no". You can't even guess what that silence was. I'd hear it whisperin' in my ears, An' I got frightened, 'twas so thick, An' al'ays comin' back. Ef Ed would ha' talked sometimes It would ha' driven it away; But he never would. He didn't hear it same as I did. You see, Sir, Our farm was off'n the main road, And set away back under the mountain; And the village was seven mile off, Measurin' after you'd got out o' our lane. We didn't have no hired man, 'Cept in hayin' time; An' Dane's place, That was the nearest, Was clear way 'tother side the mountain. They used Marley post-office An' ours was Benton. Ther was a cart-track took yer to Dane's in Summer, An' it warn't above two mile that way, But it warn't never broke out Winters. I used to dread the Winters. Seem's ef I couldn't abear to see the golden-rod bloomin'; Winter'd come so quick after that. You don't know what snow's like when yer with it Day in an' day out. Ed would be out all day loggin', An' I set at home and look at the snow Layin' over everythin'; It 'ud dazzle me blind, Till it warn't white any more, but black as ink. Then the quiet 'ud commence rushin' past my ears Till I most went mad listenin' to it. Many's the time I've dropped a pan on the floor Jest to hear it clatter. I was most frantic when dinner-time come An' Ed was back from the woods. I'd ha' give my soul to hear him speak. But he'd never say a word till I asked him Did he like the raised biscuits or whatever, An' then sometimes he'd jest nod his answer. Then he'd go out agin, An' I'd watch him from the kitchin winder. It seemed the woods come marchin' out to meet him An' the trees 'ud press round him an' hustle him. I got so I was scared o' th' trees. I thought they come nearer, Every day a little nearer, Closin' up round the house. I never went in t' th' woods Winters, Though in Summer I liked 'em well enough. It warn't so bad when my little boy was with us. He used to go sleddin' and skatin', An' every day his father fetched him to school in the pung An' brought him back agin. We scraped an' scraped fer Neddy, We wanted him to have a education. We sent him to High School, An' then he went up to Boston to Technology. He was a minin' engineer, An' doin' real well, A credit to his bringin' up. But his very first position ther was an explosion in the mine. And I'm glad! I'm glad! He ain't here to see me now. Neddy! Neddy! I'm your mother still, Neddy. Don't turn from me like that. I can't abear it. I can't! I can't! What did you say? Oh, yes, Sir. I'm here. I'm very sorry, I don't know what I'm sayin'. No, Sir, Not till after Neddy died. 'Twas the next Winter the silence come, I don't remember noticin' it afore. That was five year ago, An' it's been gittin' worse an' worse. I asked Ed to put in a telephone. I thought ef I felt the whisperin' comin' on I could ring up some o' th' folks. But Ed wouldn't hear of it. He said we'd paid so much for Neddy We couldn't hardly git along as 'twas. An' he never understood me wantin' to talk. Well, this year was worse'n all the others; We had a terrible spell o' stormy weather, An' the snow lay so thick You couldn't see the fences even. Out o' doors was as flat as the palm o' my hand, Ther warn't a hump or a holler Fer as you could see. It was so quiet The snappin' o' the branches back in the wood-lot Sounded like pistol shots. Ed was out all day Same as usual. An' it seemed he talked less'n ever. He didn't even say 'Good-mornin'', once or twice, An' jest nodded or shook his head when I asked him things. On Monday he said he'd got to go over to Benton Fer some oats. I'd oughter ha' gone with him, But 'twas washin' day An' I was afeared the fine weather'd break, An' I couldn't do my dryin'. All my life I'd done my work punctual, An' I couldn't fix my conscience To go junketin' on a washin'-day. I can't tell you what that day was to me. It dragged an' dragged, Fer ther warn't no Ed ter break it in the middle Fer dinner. Every time I stopped stirrin' the water I heerd the whisperin' all about me. I stopped oftener'n I should To see ef 'twas still ther, An' it al'ays was. An' gittin' louder It seemed ter me. Once I threw up the winder to feel the wind. That seemed most alive somehow. But the woods looked so kind of menacin' I closed it quick An' started to mangle's hard's I could, The squeakin' was comfortin'. Well, Ed come home 'bout four. I seen him down the road, An' I run out through the shed inter th' barn To meet him quicker. I hollered out, 'Hullo!' But he didn't say nothin', He jest drove right in An' climbed out o' th' sleigh An' commenced unharnessin'. I asked him a heap o' questions; Who he'd seed An' what he'd done. Once in a while he'd nod or shake, But most o' th' time he didn't do nothin'. 'Twas gittin' dark then, An' I was in a state, With the loneliness An' Ed payin' no attention Like somethin' warn't livin'. All of a sudden it come, I don't know what, But I jest couldn't stand no more. It didn't seem 's though that was Ed, An' it didn't seem as though I was me. I had to break a way out somehow, Somethin' was closin' in An' I was stiflin'. Ed's loggin' axe was ther, An' I took it. Oh, my God! I can't see nothin' else afore me all the time. I run out inter th' woods, Seemed as ef they was pullin' me; An' all the time I was wadin' through the snow I seed Ed in front of me Where I'd laid him. An' I see him now. There! There! What you holdin' me fer? I want ter go to Ed, He's bleedin'. Stop holdin' me. I got to go. I'm comin', Ed. I'll be ther in a minit. Oh, I'm so tired! (Faints) CLOCKS TICK A CENTURY Nightmare: A Tale for an Autumn Evening After a Print by George Cruikshank It was a gusty night, With the wind booming, and swooping, Looping round corners, Sliding over the cobble-stones, Whipping and veering, And careering over the roofs Like a thousand clattering horses. Mr. Spruggins had been dining in the city, Mr. Spruggins was none too steady in his gait, And the wind played ball with Mr. Spruggins And laughed as it whistled past him. It rolled him along the street, With his little feet pit-a-patting on the flags of the sidewalk, And his muffler and his coat-tails blown straight out behind him. It bumped him against area railings, And chuckled in his ear when he said "Ouch!" Sometimes it lifted him clear off his little patting feet And bore him in triumph over three grey flagstones and a quarter. The moon dodged in and out of clouds, winking. It was all very unpleasant for Mr. Spruggins, And when the wind flung him hard against his own front door It was a relief, Although the breath was quite knocked out of him. The gas-lamp in front of the house flared up, And the keyhole was as big as a barn door; The gas-lamp flickered away to a sputtering blue star, And the keyhole went out with it. Such a stabbing, and jabbing, And sticking, and picking, And poking, and pushing, and prying With that key; And there is no denying that Mr. Spruggins rapped out an oath or two, Rub-a-dub-dubbing them out to a real snare-drum roll. But the door opened at last, And Mr. Spruggins blew through it into his own hall And slammed the door to so hard That the knocker banged five times before it stopped. Mr. Spruggins struck a light and lit a candle, And all the time the moon winked at him through the window. "Why couldn't you find the keyhole, Spruggins?" Taunted the wind. "I can find the keyhole." And the wind, thin as a wire, Darted in and seized the candle flame And knocked it over to one side And pummelled it down--down--down--! But Mr. Spruggins held the candle so close that it singed his chin, And ran and stumbled up the stairs in a surprisingly agile manner, For the wind through the keyhole kept saying, "Spruggins! Spruggins!" behind him. The fire in his bedroom burned brightly. The room with its crimson bed and window curtains Was as red and glowing as a carbuncle. It was still and warm. There was no wind here, for the windows were fastened; And no moon, For the curtains were drawn. The candle flame stood up like a pointed pear In a wide brass dish. Mr. Spruggins sighed with content; He was safe at home. The fire glowed--red and yellow roses In the black basket of the grate-- And the bed with its crimson hangings Seemed a great peony, Wide open and placid. Mr. Spruggins slipped off his top-coat and his muffler. He slipped off his bottle-green coat And his flowered waistcoat. He put on a flannel dressing-gown, And tied a peaked night-cap under his chin. He wound his large gold watch And placed it under his pillow. Then he tiptoed over to the window and pulled back the curtain. There was the moon dodging in and out of the clouds; But behind him was his quiet candle. There was the wind whisking along the street. The window rattled, but it was fastened. Did the wind say, "Spruggins"? All Mr. Spruggins heard was "S-s-s-s-s--" Dying away down the street. He dropped the curtain and got into bed. Martha had been in the last thing with the warming-pan; The bed was warm, And Mr. Spruggins sank into feathers, With the familiar ticking of his watch just under his head. Mr. Spruggins dozed. He had forgotten to put out the candle, But it did not make much difference as the fire was so bright... Too bright! The red and yellow roses pricked his eyelids, They scorched him back to consciousness. He tried to shift his position; He could not move. Something weighed him down, He could not breathe. He was gasping, Pinned down and suffocating. He opened his eyes. The curtains of the window were flung back, The fire and the candle were out, And the room was filled with green moonlight. And pressed against the window-pane Was a wide, round face, Winking--winking-- Solemnly dropping one eyelid after the other. Tick--tock--went the watch under his pillow, Wink--wink--went the face at the window. It was not the fire roses which had pricked him, It was the winking eyes. Mr. Spruggins tried to bounce up; He could not, because-- His heart flapped up into his mouth And fell back dead. On his chest was a fat pink pig, On the pig a blackamoor With a ten pound weight for a cap. His mustachios kept curling up and down like angry snakes, And his eyes rolled round and round, With the pupils coming into sight, and disappearing, And appearing again on the other side. The holsters at his saddle-bow were two port bottles, And a curved table-knife hung at his belt for a scimitar, While a fork and a keg of spirits were strapped to the saddle behind. He dug his spurs into the pig, Which trampled and snorted, And stamped its cloven feet deeper into Mr. Spruggins. Then the green light on the floor began to undulate. It heaved and hollowed, It rose like a tide, Sea-green, Full of claws and scales And wriggles. The air above his bed began to move; It weighed over him In a mass of draggled feathers. Not one lifted to stir the air. They drooped and dripped With a smell of port wine and brandy, Closing down, slowly, Trickling drops on the bed-quilt. Suddenly the window fell in with a great scatter of glass, And the moon burst into the room, Sizzling--"S-s-s-s-s--Spruggins! Spruggins!" It rolled toward him, A green ball of flame, With two eyes in the center, A red eye and a yellow eye, Dropping their lids slowly, One after the other. Mr. Spruggins tried to scream, But the blackamoor Leapt off his pig With a cry, Drew his scimitar, And plunged it into Mr. Spruggins's mouth. Mr. Spruggins got up in the cold dawn And remade the fire. Then he crept back to bed By the light which seeped in under the window curtains, And lay there, shivering, While the bells of St. George the Martyr chimed the quarter after seven. The Paper Windmill The little boy pressed his face against the window-pane and looked out at the bright sunshiny morning. The cobble-stones of the square glistened like mica. In the trees, a breeze danced and pranced, and shook drops of sunlight like falling golden coins into the brown water of the canal. Down stream slowly drifted a long string of galliots piled with crimson cheeses. The little boy thought they looked as if they were roc's eggs, blocks of big ruby eggs. He said, "Oh!" with delight, and pressed against the window with all his might. The golden cock on the top of the 'Stadhuis' gleamed. His beak was open like a pair of scissors and a narrow piece of blue sky was wedged in it. "Cock-a-doodle-do," cried the little boy. "Can't you hear me through the window, Gold Cocky? Cock-a-doodle-do! You should crow when you see the eggs of your cousin, the great roc." But the golden cock stood stock still, with his fine tail blowing in the wind. He could not understand the little boy, for he said "Cocorico" when he said anything. But he was hung in the air to swing, not to sing. His eyes glittered to the bright West wind, and the crimson cheeses drifted away down the canal. It was very dull there in the big room. Outside in the square, the wind was playing tag with some fallen leaves. A man passed, with a dogcart beside him full of smart, new milkcans. They rattled out a gay tune: "Tiddity-tum-ti-ti. Have some milk for your tea. Cream for your coffee to drink to-night, thick, and smooth, and sweet, and white," and the man's sabots beat an accompaniment: "Plop! trop! milk for your tea. Plop! trop! drink it to-night." It was very pleasant out there, but it was lonely here in the big room. The little boy gulped at a tear. It was queer how dull all his toys were. They were so still. Nothing was still in the square. If he took his eyes away a moment it had changed. The milkman had disappeared round the corner, there was only an old woman with a basket of green stuff on her head, picking her way over the shiny stones. But the wind pulled the leaves in the basket this way and that, and displayed them to beautiful advantage. The sun patted them condescendingly on their flat surfaces, and they seemed sprinkled with silver. The little boy sighed as he looked at his disordered toys on the floor. They were motionless, and their colours were dull. The dark wainscoting absorbed the sun. There was none left for toys. The square was quite empty now. Only the wind ran round and round it, spinning. Away over in the corner where a street opened into the square, the wind had stopped. Stopped running, that is, for it never stopped spinning. It whirred, and whirled, and gyrated, and turned. It burned like a great coloured sun. It hummed, and buzzed, and sparked, and darted. There were flashes of blue, and long smearing lines of saffron, and quick jabs of green. And over it all was a sheen like a myriad cut diamonds. Round and round it went, the huge wind-wheel, and the little boy's head reeled with watching it. The whole square was filled with its rays, blazing and leaping round after one another, faster and faster. The little boy could not speak, he could only gaze, staring in amaze. The wind-wheel was coming down the square. Nearer and nearer it came, a great disk of spinning flame. It was opposite the window now, and the little boy could see it plainly, but it was something more than the wind which he saw. A man was carrying a huge fan-shaped frame on his shoulder, and stuck in it were many little painted paper windmills, each one scurrying round in the breeze. They were bright and beautiful, and the sight was one to please anybody, and how much more a little boy who had only stupid, motionless toys to enjoy. The little boy clapped his hands, and his eyes danced and whizzed, for the circling windmills made him dizzy. Closer and closer came the windmill man, and held up his big fan to the little boy in the window of the Ambassador's house. Only a pane of glass between the boy and the windmills. They slid round before his eyes in rapidly revolving splendour. There were wheels and wheels of colours--big, little, thick, thin--all one clear, perfect spin. The windmill vendor dipped and raised them again, and the little boy's face was glued to the window-pane. Oh! What a glorious, wonderful plaything! Rings and rings of windy colour always moving! How had any one ever preferred those other toys which never stirred. "Nursie, come quickly. Look! I want a windmill. See! It is never still. You will buy me one, won't you? I want that silver one, with the big ring of blue." So a servant was sent to buy that one: silver, ringed with blue, and smartly it twirled about in the servant's hands as he stood a moment to pay the vendor. Then he entered the house, and in another minute he was standing in the nursery door, with some crumpled paper on the end of a stick which he held out to the little boy. "But I wanted a windmill which went round," cried the little boy. "That is the one you asked for, Master Charles," Nursie was a bit impatient, she had mending to do. "See, it is silver, and here is the blue." "But it is only a blue streak," sobbed the little boy. "I wanted a blue ring, and this silver doesn't sparkle." "Well, Master Charles, that is what you wanted, now run away and play with it, for I am very busy." The little boy hid his tears against the friendly window-pane. On the floor lay the motionless, crumpled bit of paper on the end of its stick. But far away across the square was the windmill vendor, with his big wheel of whirring splendour. It spun round in a blaze like a whirling rainbow, and the sun gleamed upon it, and the wind whipped it, until it seemed a maze of spattering diamonds. "Cocorico!" crowed the golden cock on the top of the 'Stadhuis'. "That is something worth crowing for." But the little boy did not hear him, he was sobbing over the crumpled bit of paper on the floor. The Red Lacquer Music-Stand A music-stand of crimson lacquer, long since brought In some fast clipper-ship from China, quaintly wrought With bossed and carven flowers and fruits in blackening gold, The slender shaft all twined about and thickly scrolled With vine leaves and young twisted tendrils, whirling, curling, Flinging their new shoots over the four wings, and swirling Out on the three wide feet in golden lumps and streams; Petals and apples in high relief, and where the seams Are worn with handling, through the polished crimson sheen, Long streaks of black, the under lacquer, shine out clean. Four desks, adjustable, to suit the heights of players Sitting to viols or standing up to sing, four layers Of music to serve every instrument, are there, And on the apex a large flat-topped golden pear. It burns in red and yellow, dusty, smouldering lights, When the sun flares the old barn-chamber with its flights And skips upon the crystal knobs of dim sideboards, Legless and mouldy, and hops, glint to glint, on hoards Of scythes, and spades, and dinner-horns, so the old tools Are little candles throwing brightness round in pools. With Oriental splendour, red and gold, the dust Covering its flames like smoke and thinning as a gust Of brighter sunshine makes the colours leap and range, The strange old music-stand seems to strike out and change; To stroke and tear the darkness with sharp golden claws; To dart a forked, vermilion tongue from open jaws; To puff out bitter smoke which chokes the sun; and fade Back to a still, faint outline obliterate in shade. Creeping up the ladder into the loft, the Boy Stands watching, very still, prickly and hot with joy. He sees the dusty sun-mote slit by streaks of red, He sees it split and stream, and all about his head Spikes and spears of gold are licking, pricking, flicking, Scratching against the walls and furniture, and nicking The darkness into sparks, chipping away the gloom. The Boy's nose smarts with the pungence in the room. The wind pushes an elm branch from before the door And the sun widens out all along the floor, Filling the barn-chamber with white, straightforward light, So not one blurred outline can tease the mind to fright. "O All ye Works of the Lord, Bless ye the Lord; Praise Him, and Magnify Him for ever. O let the Earth Bless the Lord; Yea, let it Praise Him, and Magnify Him for ever. O ye Mountains and Hills, Bless ye the Lord; Praise Him, and Magnify Him for ever. O All ye Green Things upon the Earth, Bless ye the Lord; Praise Him, and Magnify Him for ever." The Boy will praise his God on an altar builded fair, Will heap it with the Works of the Lord. In the morning air, Spices shall burn on it, and by their pale smoke curled, Like shoots of all the Green Things, the God of this bright World Shall see the Boy's desire to pay his debt of praise. The Boy turns round about, seeking with careful gaze An altar meet and worthy, but each table and chair Has some defect, each piece is needing some repair To perfect it; the chairs have broken legs and backs, The tables are uneven, and every highboy lacks A handle or a drawer, the desks are bruised and worn, And even a wide sofa has its cane seat torn. Only in the gloom far in the corner there The lacquer music-stand is elegant and rare, Clear and slim of line, with its four wings outspread, The sound of old quartets, a tenuous, faint thread, Hanging and floating over it, it stands supreme-- Black, and gold, and crimson, in one twisted scheme! A candle on the bookcase feels a draught and wavers, Stippling the white-washed walls with dancing shades and quavers. A bed-post, grown colossal, jigs about the ceiling, And shadows, strangely altered, stain the walls, revealing Eagles, and rabbits, and weird faces pulled awry, And hands which fetch and carry things incessantly. Under the Eastern window, where the morning sun Must touch it, stands the music-stand, and on each one Of its broad platforms is a pyramid of stones, And metals, and dried flowers, and pine and hemlock cones, An oriole's nest with the four eggs neatly blown, The rattle of a rattlesnake, and three large brown Butternuts uncracked, six butterflies impaled With a green luna moth, a snake-skin freshly scaled, Some sunflower seeds, wampum, and a bloody-tooth shell, A blue jay feather, all together piled pell-mell The stand will hold no more. The Boy with humming head Looks once again, blows out the light, and creeps to bed. The Boy keeps solemn vigil, while outside the wind Blows gustily and clear, and slaps against the blind. He hardly tries to sleep, so sharp his ecstasy It burns his soul to emptiness, and sets it free For adoration only, for worship. Dedicate, His unsheathed soul is naked in its novitiate. The hours strike below from the clock on the stair. The Boy is a white flame suspiring in prayer. Morning will bring the sun, the Golden Eye of Him Whose splendour must be veiled by starry cherubim, Whose Feet shimmer like crystal in the streets of Heaven. Like an open rose the sun will stand up even, Fronting the window-sill, and when the casement glows Rose-red with the new-blown morning, then the fire which flows From the sun will fall upon the altar and ignite The spices, and his sacrifice will burn in perfumed light. Over the music-stand the ghosts of sounds will swim, 'Viols d'amore' and 'hautbois' accorded to a hymn. The Boy will see the faintest breath of angels' wings Fanning the smoke, and voices will flower through the strings. He dares no farther vision, and with scalding eyes Waits upon the daylight and his great emprise. The cold, grey light of dawn was whitening the wall When the Boy, fine-drawn by sleeplessness, started his ritual. He washed, all shivering and pointed like a flame. He threw the shutters open, and in the window-frame The morning glimmered like a tarnished Venice glass. He took his Chinese pastilles and put them in a mass Upon the mantelpiece till he could seek a plate Worthy to hold them burning. Alas! He had been late In thinking of this need, and now he could not find Platter or saucer rare enough to ease his mind. The house was not astir, and he dared not go down Into the barn-chamber, lest some door should be blown And slam before the draught he made as he went out. The light was growing yellower, and still he looked about. A flash of almost crimson from the gilded pear Upon the music-stand, startled him waiting there. The sun would rise and he would meet it unprepared, Labelled a fool in having missed what he had dared. He ran across the room, took his pastilles and laid Them on the flat-topped pear, most carefully displayed To light with ease, then stood a little to one side, Focussed a burning-glass and painstakingly tried To hold it angled so the bunched and prismed rays Should leap upon each other and spring into a blaze. Sharp as a wheeling edge of disked, carnation flame, Gem-hard and cutting upward, slowly the round sun came. The arrowed fire caught the burning-glass and glanced, Split to a multitude of pointed spears, and lanced, A deeper, hotter flame, it took the incense pile Which welcomed it and broke into a little smile Of yellow flamelets, creeping, crackling, thrusting up, A golden, red-slashed lily in a lacquer cup. "O ye Fire and Heat, Bless ye the Lord; Praise Him, and Magnify Him for ever. O ye Winter and Summer, Bless ye the Lord; Praise Him, and Magnify Him for ever. O ye Nights and Days, Bless ye the Lord; Praise Him, and Magnify Him for ever. O ye Lightnings and Clouds, Bless ye the Lord; Praise Him, and Magnify Him for ever." A moment so it hung, wide-curved, bright-petalled, seeming A chalice foamed with sunrise. The Boy woke from his dreaming. A spike of flame had caught the card of butterflies, The oriole's nest took fire, soon all four galleries Where he had spread his treasures were become one tongue Of gleaming, brutal fire. The Boy instantly swung His pitcher off the wash-stand and turned it upside down. The flames drooped back and sizzled, and all his senses grown Acute by fear, the Boy grabbed the quilt from his bed And flung it over all, and then with aching head He watched the early sunshine glint on the remains Of his holy offering. The lacquer stand had stains Ugly and charred all over, and where the golden pear Had been, a deep, black hole gaped miserably. His dear Treasures were puffs of ashes; only the stones were there, Winking in the brightness. The clock upon the stair Struck five, and in the kitchen someone shook a grate. The Boy began to dress, for it was getting late. Spring Day Bath The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is a smell of tulips and narcissus in the air. The sunshine pours in at the bath-room window and bores through the water in the bath-tub in lathes and planes of greenish-white. It cleaves the water into flaws like a jewel, and cracks it to bright light. Little spots of sunshine lie on the surface of the water and dance, dance, and their reflections wobble deliciously over the ceiling; a stir of my finger sets them whirring, reeling. I move a foot, and the planes of light in the water jar. I lie back and laugh, and let the green-white water, the sun-flawed beryl water, flow over me. The day is almost too bright to bear, the green water covers me from the too bright day. I will lie here awhile and play with the water and the sun spots. The sky is blue and high. A crow flaps by the window, and there is a whiff of tulips and narcissus in the air. Breakfast Table In the fresh-washed sunlight, the breakfast table is decked and white. It offers itself in flat surrender, tendering tastes, and smells, and colours, and metals, and grains, and the white cloth falls over its side, draped and wide. Wheels of white glitter in the silver coffee-pot, hot and spinning like catherine-wheels, they whirl, and twirl--and my eyes begin to smart, the little white, dazzling wheels prick them like darts. Placid and peaceful, the rolls of bread spread themselves in the sun to bask. A stack of butter-pats, pyramidal, shout orange through the white, scream, flutter, call: "Yellow! Yellow! Yellow!" Coffee steam rises in a stream, clouds the silver tea-service with mist, and twists up into the sunlight, revolved, involuted, suspiring higher and higher, fluting in a thin spiral up the high blue sky. A crow flies by and croaks at the coffee steam. The day is new and fair with good smells in the air. Walk Over the street the white clouds meet, and sheer away without touching. On the sidewalks, boys are playing marbles. Glass marbles, with amber and blue hearts, roll together and part with a sweet clashing noise. The boys strike them with black and red striped agates. The glass marbles spit crimson when they are hit, and slip into the gutters under rushing brown water. I smell tulips and narcissus in the air, but there are no flowers anywhere, only white dust whipping up the street, and a girl with a gay Spring hat and blowing skirts. The dust and the wind flirt at her ankles and her neat, high-heeled patent leather shoes. Tap, tap, the little heels pat the pavement, and the wind rustles among the flowers on her hat. A water-cart crawls slowly on the other side of the way. It is green and gay with new paint, and rumbles contentedly, sprinkling clear water over the white dust. Clear zigzagging water, which smells of tulips and narcissus. The thickening branches make a pink 'grisaille' against the blue sky. Whoop! The clouds go dashing at each other and sheer away just in time. Whoop! And a man's hat careers down the street in front of the white dust, leaps into the branches of a tree, veers away and trundles ahead of the wind, jarring the sunlight into spokes of rose-colour and green. A motor-car cuts a swathe through the bright air, sharp-beaked, irresistible, shouting to the wind to make way. A glare of dust and sunshine tosses together behind it, and settles down. The sky is quiet and high, and the morning is fair with fresh-washed air. Midday and Afternoon Swirl of crowded streets. Shock and recoil of traffic. The stock-still brick facade of an old church, against which the waves of people lurch and withdraw. Flare of sunshine down side-streets. Eddies of light in the windows of chemists' shops, with their blue, gold, purple jars, darting colours far into the crowd. Loud bangs and tremors, murmurings out of high windows, whirring of machine belts, blurring of horses and motors. A quick spin and shudder of brakes on an electric car, and the jar of a church-bell knocking against the metal blue of the sky. I am a piece of the town, a bit of blown dust, thrust along with the crowd. Proud to feel the pavement under me, reeling with feet. Feet tripping, skipping, lagging, dragging, plodding doggedly, or springing up and advancing on firm elastic insteps. A boy is selling papers, I smell them clean and new from the press. They are fresh like the air, and pungent as tulips and narcissus. The blue sky pales to lemon, and great tongues of gold blind the shop-windows, putting out their contents in a flood of flame. Night and Sleep The day takes her ease in slippered yellow. Electric signs gleam out along the shop fronts, following each other. They grow, and grow, and blow into patterns of fire-flowers as the sky fades. Trades scream in spots of light at the unruffled night. Twinkle, jab, snap, that means a new play; and over the way: plop, drop, quiver, is the sidelong sliver of a watchmaker's sign with its length on another street. A gigantic mug of beer effervesces to the atmosphere over a tall building, but the sky is high and has her own stars, why should she heed ours? I leave the city with speed. Wheels whirl to take me back to my trees and my quietness. The breeze which blows with me is fresh-washed and clean, it has come but recently from the high sky. There are no flowers in bloom yet, but the earth of my garden smells of tulips and narcissus. My room is tranquil and friendly. Out of the window I can see the distant city, a band of twinkling gems, little flower-heads with no stems. I cannot see the beer-glass, nor the letters of the restaurants and shops I passed, now the signs blur and all together make the city, glowing on a night of fine weather, like a garden stirring and blowing for the Spring. The night is fresh-washed and fair and there is a whiff of flowers in the air. Wrap me close, sheets of lavender. Pour your blue and purple dreams into my ears. The breeze whispers at the shutters and mutters queer tales of old days, and cobbled streets, and youths leaping their horses down marble stairways. Pale blue lavender, you are the colour of the sky when it is fresh-washed and fair... I smell the stars... they are like tulips and narcissus... I smell them in the air. The Dinner-Party Fish "So..." they said, With their wine-glasses delicately poised, Mocking at the thing they cannot understand. "So..." they said again, Amused and insolent. The silver on the table glittered, And the red wine in the glasses Seemed the blood I had wasted In a foolish cause. Game The gentleman with the grey-and-black whiskers Sneered languidly over his quail. Then my heart flew up and laboured, And I burst from my own holding And hurled myself forward. With straight blows I beat upon him, Furiously, with red-hot anger, I thrust against him. But my weapon slithered over his polished surface, And I recoiled upon myself, Panting. Drawing-Room In a dress all softness and half-tones, Indolent and half-reclined, She lay upon a couch, With the firelight reflected in her jewels. But her eyes had no reflection, They swam in a grey smoke, The smoke of smouldering ashes, The smoke of her cindered heart. Coffee They sat in a circle with their coffee-cups. One dropped in a lump of sugar, One stirred with a spoon. I saw them as a circle of ghosts Sipping blackness out of beautiful china, And mildly protesting against my coarseness In being alive. Talk They took dead men's souls And pinned them on their breasts for ornament; Their cuff-links and tiaras Were gems dug from a grave; They were ghouls battening on exhumed thoughts; And I took a green liqueur from a servant So that he might come near me And give me the comfort of a living thing. Eleven O'Clock The front door was hard and heavy, It shut behind me on the house of ghosts. I flattened my feet on the pavement To feel it solid under me; I ran my hand along the railings And shook them, And pressed their pointed bars Into my palms. The hurt of it reassured me, And I did it again and again Until they were bruised. When I woke in the night I laughed to find them aching, For only living flesh can suffer. Stravinsky's Three Pieces "Grotesques", for String Quartet First Movement Thin-voiced, nasal pipes Drawing sound out and out Until it is a screeching thread, Sharp and cutting, sharp and cutting, It hurts. Whee-e-e! Bump! Bump! Tong-ti-bump! There are drums here, Banging, And wooden shoes beating the round, grey stones Of the market-place. Whee-e-e! Sabots slapping the worn, old stones, And a shaking and cracking of dancing bones; Clumsy and hard they are, And uneven, Losing half a beat Because the stones are slippery. Bump-e-ty-tong! Whee-e-e! Tong! The thin Spring leaves Shake to the banging of shoes. Shoes beat, slap, Shuffle, rap, And the nasal pipes squeal with their pigs' voices, Little pigs' voices Weaving among the dancers, A fine white thread Linking up the dancers. Bang! Bump! Tong! Petticoats, Stockings, Sabots, Delirium flapping its thigh-bones; Red, blue, yellow, Drunkenness steaming in colours; Red, yellow, blue, Colours and flesh weaving together, In and out, with the dance, Coarse stuffs and hot flesh weaving together. Pigs' cries white and tenuous, White and painful, White and-- Bump! Tong! Second Movement Pale violin music whiffs across the moon, A pale smoke of violin music blows over the moon, Cherry petals fall and flutter, And the white Pierrot, Wreathed in the smoke of the violins, Splashed with cherry petals falling, falling, Claws a grave for himself in the fresh earth With his finger-nails. Third Movement An organ growls in the heavy roof-groins of a church, It wheezes and coughs. The nave is blue with incense, Writhing, twisting, Snaking over the heads of the chanting priests. 'Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine'; The priests whine their bastard Latin And the censers swing and click. The priests walk endlessly Round and round, Droning their Latin Off the key. The organ crashes out in a flaring chord, And the priests hitch their chant up half a tone. 'Dies illa, dies irae, Calamitatis et miseriae, Dies magna et amara valde.' A wind rattles the leaded windows. The little pear-shaped candle flames leap and flutter, 'Dies illa, dies irae;' The swaying smoke drifts over the altar, 'Calamitatis et miseriae;' The shuffling priests sprinkle holy water, 'Dies magna et amara valde;' And there is a stark stillness in the midst of them Stretched upon a bier. His ears are stone to the organ, His eyes are flint to the candles, His body is ice to the water. Chant, priests, Whine, shuffle, genuflect, He will always be as rigid as he is now Until he crumbles away in a dust heap. 'Lacrymosa dies illa, Qua resurget ex favilla Judicandus homo reus.' Above the grey pillars the roof is in darkness. Towns in Colour I Red Slippers Red slippers in a shop-window, and outside in the street, flaws of grey, windy sleet! Behind the polished glass, the slippers hang in long threads of red, festooning from the ceiling like stalactites of blood, flooding the eyes of passers-by with dripping colour, jamming their crimson reflections against the windows of cabs and tram-cars, screaming their claret and salmon into the teeth of the sleet, plopping their little round maroon lights upon the tops of umbrellas. The row of white, sparkling shop fronts is gashed and bleeding, it bleeds red slippers. They spout under the electric light, fluid and fluctuating, a hot rain--and freeze again to red slippers, myriadly multiplied in the mirror side of the window. They balance upon arched insteps like springing bridges of crimson lacquer; they swing up over curved heels like whirling tanagers sucked in a wind-pocket; they flatten out, heelless, like July ponds, flared and burnished by red rockets. Snap, snap, they are cracker-sparks of scarlet in the white, monotonous block of shops. They plunge the clangour of billions of vermilion trumpets into the crowd outside, and echo in faint rose over the pavement. People hurry by, for these are only shoes, and in a window, farther down, is a big lotus bud of cardboard whose petals open every few minutes and reveal a wax doll, with staring bead eyes and flaxen hair, lolling awkwardly in its flower chair. One has often seen shoes, but whoever saw a cardboard lotus bud before? The flaws of grey, windy sleet beat on the shop-window where there are only red slippers. II Thompson's Lunch Room--Grand Central Station Study in Whites Wax-white-- Floor, ceiling, walls. Ivory shadows Over the pavement Polished to cream surfaces By constant sweeping. The big room is coloured like the petals Of a great magnolia, And has a patina Of flower bloom Which makes it shine dimly Under the electric lamps. Chairs are ranged in rows Like sepia seeds Waiting fulfilment. The chalk-white spot of a cook's cap Moves unglossily against the vaguely bright wall-- Dull chalk-white striking the retina like a blow Through the wavering uncertainty of steam. Vitreous-white of glasses with green reflections, Ice-green carboys, shifting--greener, bluer--with the jar of moving water. Jagged green-white bowls of pressed glass Rearing snow-peaks of chipped sugar Above the lighthouse-shaped castors Of grey pepper and grey-white salt. Grey-white placards: "Oyster Stew, Cornbeef Hash, Frankfurters": Marble slabs veined with words in meandering lines. Dropping on the white counter like horn notes Through a web of violins, The flat yellow lights of oranges, The cube-red splashes of apples, In high plated 'epergnes'. The electric clock jerks every half-minute: "Coming!--Past!" "Three beef-steaks and a chicken-pie," Bawled through a slide while the clock jerks heavily. A man carries a china mug of coffee to a distant chair. Two rice puddings and a salmon salad Are pushed over the counter; The unfulfilled chairs open to receive them. A spoon falls upon the floor with the impact of metal striking stone, And the sound throws across the room Sharp, invisible zigzags Of silver. III An Opera House Within the gold square of the proscenium arch, A curtain of orange velvet hangs in stiff folds, Its tassels jarring slightly when someone crosses the stage behind. Gold carving edges the balconies, Rims the boxes, Runs up and down fluted pillars. Little knife-stabs of gold Shine out whenever a box door is opened. Gold clusters Flash in soft explosions On the blue darkness, Suck back to a point, And disappear. Hoops of gold Circle necks, wrists, fingers, Pierce ears, Poise on heads And fly up above them in coloured sparkles. Gold! Gold! The opera house is a treasure-box of gold. Gold in a broad smear across the orchestra pit: Gold of horns, trumpets, tubas; Gold--spun-gold, twittering-gold, snapping-gold Of harps. The conductor raises his baton, The brass blares out Crass, crude, Parvenu, fat, powerful, Golden. Rich as the fat, clapping hands in the boxes. Cymbals, gigantic, coin-shaped, Crash. The orange curtain parts And the prima-donna steps forward. One note, A drop: transparent, iridescent, A gold bubble, It floats... floats... And bursts against the lips of a bank president In the grand tier. IV Afternoon Rain in State Street Cross-hatchings of rain against grey walls, Slant lines of black rain In front of the up and down, wet stone sides of buildings. Below, Greasy, shiny, black, horizontal, The street. And over it, umbrellas, Black polished dots Struck to white An instant, Stream in two flat lines Slipping past each other with the smoothness of oil. Like a four-sided wedge The Custom House Tower Pokes at the low, flat sky, Pushing it farther and farther up, Lifting it away from the house-tops, Lifting it in one piece as though it were a sheet of tin, With the lever of its apex. The cross-hatchings of rain cut the Tower obliquely, Scratching lines of black wire across it, Mutilating its perpendicular grey surface With the sharp precision of tools. The city is rigid with straight lines and angles, A chequered table of blacks and greys. Oblong blocks of flatness Crawl by with low-geared engines, And pass to short upright squares Shrinking with distance. A steamer in the basin blows its whistle, And the sound shoots across the rain hatchings, A narrow, level bar of steel. Hard cubes of lemon Superimpose themselves upon the fronts of buildings As the windows light up. But the lemon cubes are edged with angles Upon which they cannot impinge. Up, straight, down, straight--square. Crumpled grey-white papers Blow along the side-walks, Contorted, horrible, Without curves. A horse steps in a puddle, And white, glaring water spurts up In stiff, outflaring lines, Like the rattling stems of reeds. The city is heraldic with angles, A sombre escutcheon of argent and sable And countercoloured bends of rain Hung over a four-square civilization. When a street lamp comes out, I gaze at it for fully thirty seconds To rest my brain with the suffusing, round brilliance of its globe. V An Aquarium Streaks of green and yellow iridescence, Silver shiftings, Rings veering out of rings, Silver--gold-- Grey-green opaqueness sliding down, With sharp white bubbles Shooting and dancing, Flinging quickly outward. Nosing the bubbles, Swallowing them, Fish. Blue shadows against silver-saffron water, The light rippling over them In steel-bright tremors. Outspread translucent fins Flute, fold, and relapse; The threaded light prints through them on the pebbles In scarcely tarnished twinklings. Curving of spotted spines, Slow up-shifts, Lazy convolutions: Then a sudden swift straightening And darting below: Oblique grey shadows Athwart a pale casement. Roped and curled, Green man-eating eels Slumber in undulate rhythms, With crests laid horizontal on their backs. Barred fish, Striped fish, Uneven disks of fish, Slip, slide, whirl, turn, And never touch. Metallic blue fish, With fins wide and yellow and swaying Like Oriental fans, Hold the sun in their bellies And glow with light: Blue brilliance cut by black bars. An oblong pane of straw-coloured shimmer, Across it, in a tangent, A smear of rose, black, silver. Short twists and upstartings, Rose-black, in a setting of bubbles: Sunshine playing between red and black flowers On a blue and gold lawn. Shadows and polished surfaces, Facets of mauve and purple, A constant modulation of values. Shaft-shaped, With green bead eyes; Thick-nosed, Heliotrope-coloured; Swift spots of chrysolite and coral; In the midst of green, pearl, amethyst irradiations. Outside, A willow-tree flickers With little white jerks, And long blue waves Rise steadily beyond the outer islands. Some Books by Amy Lowell Poetry What's O'Clock Legends Pictures of the Floating World Can Grande's Castle Men, Women and Ghosts Sword Blades and Poppy Seed A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass (already online) A Critical Fable Fir-Flower Tablets: Poems Translated from the Chinese (In collaboration with Florence Ayscough) Prose Tendencies in Modern American Poetry Six French Poets: Studies in Contemporary Literature John Keats 
937	----	None 
941	----	JUST FOLKS by Edgar A. Guest To the Little Mother and the Memory of the Big Father, This Simple Book Is Affectionately Dedicated Just Folks We're queer folks here. We'll talk about the weather, The good times we have had together, The good times near, The roses buddin', an' the bees Once more upon their nectar sprees; The scarlet fever scare, an' who Came mighty near not pullin' through, An' who had light attacks, an' all The things that int'rest, big or small; But here you'll never hear of sinnin' Or any scandal that's beginnin'. We've got too many other labors To scatter tales that harm our neighbors. We're strange folks here. We're tryin' to be cheerful, An' keep this home from gettin' tearful. We hold it dear Too dear for pettiness an' meanness, An' nasty tales of men's uncleanness. Here you shall come to joyous smilin', Secure from hate an' harsh revilin'; Here, where the wood fire brightly blazes, You'll hear from us our neighbor's praises. Here, that they'll never grow to doubt us, We keep our friends always about us; An' here, though storms outside may pelter Is refuge for our friends, an' shelter. We've one rule here, An' that is to be pleasant. The folks we know are always present, Or very near. An' though they dwell in many places, We think we're talkin' to their faces; An' that keeps us from only seein' The faults in any human bein', An' checks our tongues when they'd go trailin' Into the mire of mortal failin'. Flaws aren't so big when folks are near you; You don't talk mean when they can hear you. An' so no scandal here is started, Because from friends we're never parted. As It Goes In the corner she's left the mechanical toy, On the chair is her Teddy Bear fine; The things that I thought she would really enjoy Don't seem to be quite in her line. There's the flaxen-haired doll that is lovely to see And really expensively dressed, Left alone, all uncared for, and strange though it be, She likes her rag dolly the best. Oh, the money we spent and the plans that we laid And the wonderful things that we bought! There are toys that are cunningly, skillfully made, But she seems not to give them a thought. She was pleased when she woke and discovered them there, But never a one of us guessed That it isn't the splendor that makes a gift rare-- She likes her rag dolly the best. There's the flaxen-haired doll, with the real human hair, There's the Teddy Bear left all alone, There's the automobile at the foot of the stair, And there is her toy telephone; We thought they were fine, but a little child's eyes Look deeper than ours to find charm, And now she's in bed, and the rag dolly lies Snuggled close on her little white arm. Hollyhocks Old-fashioned flowers! I love them all: The morning-glories on the wall, The pansies in their patch of shade, The violets, stolen from a glade, The bleeding hearts and columbine, Have long been garden friends of mine; But memory every summer flocks About a clump of hollyhocks. The mother loved them years ago; Beside the fence they used to grow, And though the garden changed each year And certain blooms would disappear To give their places in the ground To something new that mother found, Some pretty bloom or rosebush rare-- The hollyhocks were always there. It seems but yesterday to me She led me down the yard to see The first tall spires, with bloom aflame, And taught me to pronounce their name. And year by year I watched them grow, The first flowers I had come to know. And with the mother dear I'd yearn To see the hollyhocks return. The garden of my boyhood days With hollyhocks was kept ablaze; In all my recollections they In friendly columns nod and sway; And when to-day their blooms I see, Always the mother smiles at me; The mind's bright chambers, life unlocks Each summer with the hollyhocks. Sacrifice When he has more than he can eat To feed a stranger's not a feat. When he has more than he can spend It isn't hard to give or lend. Who gives but what he'll never miss Will never know what giving is. He'll win few praises from his Lord Who does but what he can afford. The widow's mite to heaven went Because real sacrifice it meant. Reward Don't want medals on my breast, Don't want all the glory, I'm not worrying greatly lest The world won't hear my story. A chance to dream beside a stream Where fish are biting free; A day or two, 'neath skies of blue, Is joy enough for me. I do not ask a hoard of gold, Nor treasures rich and rare; I don't want all the joys to hold; I only want a share. Just now and then, away from men And all their haunts of pride, If I can steal, with rod and reel, I will be satisfied. I'll gladly work my way through life; I would not always play; I only ask to quit the strife For an occasional day. If I can sneak from toil a week To chum with stream and tree, I'll fish away and smiling say That life's been good to me. See It Through When you're up against a trouble, Meet it squarely, face to face; Lift your chin and set your shoulders, Plant your feet and take a brace. When it's vain to try to dodge it, Do the best that you can do; You may fail, but you may conquer, See it through! Black may be the clouds about you And your future may seem grim, But don't let your nerve desert you; Keep yourself in fighting trim. If the worst is bound to happen, Spite of all that you can do, Running from it will not save you, See it through! Even hope may seem but futile, When with troubles you're beset, But remember you are facing Just what other men have met. You may fail, but fall still fighting; Don't give up, whate'er you do; Eyes front, head high to the finish. See it through! To the Humble If all the flowers were roses, If never daisies grew, If no old-fashioned posies Drank in the morning dew, Then man might have some reason To whimper and complain, And speak these words of treason, That all our toil is vain. If all the stars were Saturns That twinkle in the night, Of equal size and patterns, And equally as bright, Then men in humble places, With humble work to do, With frowns upon their faces Might trudge their journey through. But humble stars and posies Still do their best, although They're planets not, nor roses, To cheer the world below. And those old-fashioned daisies Delight the soul of man; They're here, and this their praise is: They work the Master's plan. Though humble be your labor, And modest be your sphere, Come, envy not your neighbor Whose light shines brighter here. Does God forget the daisies Because the roses bloom? Shall you not win His praises By toiling at your loom? Have you, the toiler humble, Just reason to complain, To shirk your task and grumble And think that it is vain Because you see a brother With greater work to do? No fame of his can smother The merit that's in you. When Nellie's on the Job The bright spots in my life are when the servant quits the place, Although that grim disturbance brings a frown to Nellie's face; The week between the old girl's' reign and entry of the new Is one that's filled with happiness and comfort through and through. The charm of living's back again--a charm that servants rob-- I like the home, I like the meals, when Nellie's on the job. There's something in a servant's ways, however fine they be, That has a cold and distant touch and frets the soul of me. The old home never looks so well, as in that week or two That we are servantless and Nell has all the work to do. There is a sense of comfort then that makes my pulses throb And home is as it ought to be when Nellie's on the job. Think not that I'd deny her help or grudge the servant's pay; When one departs we try to get another right away; I merely state the simple fact that no such joys I've known As in those few brief days at home when we've been left alone. There is a gentleness that seems to soothe this selfish elf And, Oh, I like to eat those meals that Nellie gets herself! You cannot buy the gentle touch that mother gives the place; No servant girl can do the work with just the proper grace. And though you hired the queen of cooks to fashion your croquettes, Her meals would not compare with those your loving comrade gets; So, though the maid has quit again, and she is moved to sob, The old home's at its finest now, for Nellie's on the job. The Old, Old Story I have no wish to rail at fate, And vow that I'm unfairly treated; I do not give vent to my hate Because at times I am defeated. Life has its ups and downs, I know, But tell me why should people say Whenever after fish I go: "You should have been here yesterday"? It is my luck always to strike A day when there is nothing doing, When neither perch, nor bass, nor pike My baited hooks will come a-wooing. Must I a day late always be? When not a nibble comes my way Must someone always say to me: "We caught a bunch here yesterday"? I am not prone to discontent, Nor over-zealous now to climb; If victory is not yet meant For me I'll calmly bide my time. But I should like just once to go Out fishing on some lake or bay And not have someone mutter: "Oh, You should have been here yesterday." The Pup He tore the curtains yesterday, And scratched the paper on the wall; Ma's rubbers, too, have gone astray-- She says she left them in the hall; He tugged the table cloth and broke A fancy saucer and a cup; Though Bud and I think it a joke Ma scolds a lot about the pup. The sofa pillows are a sight, The rugs are looking somewhat frayed, And there is ruin, left and right, That little Boston bull has made. He slept on Buddy's counterpane-- Ma found him there when she woke up. I think it needless to explain She scolds a lot about the pup. And yet he comes and licks her hand And sometimes climbs into her lap And there, Bud lets me understand, He very often takes his nap. And Bud and I have learned to know She wouldn't give the rascal up: She's really fond of him, although She scolds a lot about the pup. Since Jessie Died We understand a lot of things we never did before, And it seems that to each other Ma and I are meaning more. I don't know how to say it, but since little Jessie died We have learned that to be happy we must travel side by side. You can share your joys and pleasures, but you never come to know The depth there is in loving, till you've got a common woe. We're past the hurt of fretting--we can talk about it now: She slipped away so gently and the fever left her brow So softly that we didn't know we'd lost her, but, instead, We thought her only sleeping as we watched beside her bed. Then the doctor, I remember, raised his head, as if to say What his eyes had told already, and Ma fainted dead away. Up to then I thought that money was the thing I ought to get; And I fancied, once I had it, I should never have to fret. But I saw that I had wasted precious hours in seeking wealth; I had made a tidy fortune, but I couldn't buy her health. And I saw this truth much clearer than I'd ever seen before: That the rich man and the poor man have to let death through the door. We're not half so keen for money as one time we used to be; I am thinking more of mother and she's thinking more of me. Now we spend more time together, and I know we're meaning more To each other on life's journey, than we ever meant before. It was hard to understand it! Oh, the dreary nights we've cried! But we've found the depth of loving, since the day that Jessie died. Hard Luck Ain't no use as I can see In sittin' underneath a tree An' growlin' that your luck is bad, An' that your life is extry sad; Your life ain't sadder than your neighbor's Nor any harder are your labors; It rains on him the same as you, An' he has work he hates to do; An' he gits tired an' he gits cross, An' he has trouble with the boss; You take his whole life, through an' through, Why, he's no better off than you. If whinin' brushed the clouds away I wouldn't have a word to say; If it made good friends out o' foes I'd whine a bit, too, I suppose; But when I look around an' see A lot o' men resemblin' me, An' see 'em sad, an' see 'em gay With work t' do most every day, Some full o' fun, some bent with care, Some havin' troubles hard to bear, I reckon, as I count my woes, They're 'bout what everybody knows. The day I find a man who'll say He's never known a rainy day, Who'll raise his right hand up an' swear In forty years he's had no care, Has never had a single blow, An' never known one touch o' woe, Has never seen a loved one die, Has never wept or heaved a sigh, Has never had a plan go wrong, But allus laughed his way along; Then I'll sit down an' start to whine That all the hard luck here is mine. Vacation Time Vacation time! How glad it seemed When as a boy I sat and dreamed Above my school books, of the fun That I should claim when toil was done; And, Oh, how oft my youthful eye Went wandering with the patch of sky That drifted by the window panes O'er pleasant fields and dusty lanes, Where I would race and romp and shout The very moment school was out. My artful little fingers then Feigned labor with the ink and pen, But heart and mind were far away, Engaged in some glad bit of play. The last two weeks dragged slowly by; Time hadn't then learned how to fly. It seemed the clock upon the wall From hour to hour could only crawl, And when the teacher called my name, Unto my cheeks the crimson came, For I could give no answer clear To questions that I didn't hear. "Wool gathering, were you?" oft she said And smiled to see me blushing red. Her voice had roused me from a dream Where I was fishing in a stream, And, if I now recall it right, Just at the time I had a bite. And now my youngsters dream of play In just the very selfsame way; And they complain that time is slow And that the term will never go. Their little minds with plans are filled For joyous hours they soon will build, And it is vain for me to say, That have grown old and wise and gray, That time is swift, and joy is brief; They'll put no faith in such belief. To youthful hearts that long for play Time is a laggard on the way. 'Twas, Oh, so slow to me back then Ere I had learned the ways of men! The Little Hurts Every night she runs to me With a bandaged arm or a bandaged knee, A stone-bruised heel or a swollen brow, And in sorrowful tones she tells me how She fell and "hurted herse'f to-day" While she was having the "bestest play." And I take her up in my arms and kiss The new little wounds and whisper this: "Oh, you must be careful, my little one, You mustn't get hurt while your daddy's gone, For every cut with its ache and smart Leaves another bruise on your daddy's heart." Every night I must stoop to see The fresh little cuts on her arm or knee; The little hurts that have marred her play, And brought the tears on a happy day; For the path of childhood is oft beset With care and trouble and things that fret. Oh, little girl, when you older grow, Far greater hurts than these you'll know; Greater bruises will bring your tears, Around the bend of the lane of years, But come to your daddy with them at night And he'll do his best to make all things right. The Lanes of Memory Adown the lanes of memory bloom all the flowers of yesteryear, And looking back we smile to see life's bright red roses reappear, The little sprigs of mignonette that smiled upon us as we passed, The pansy and the violet, too sweet, we thought those days, to last. The gentle mother by the door caresses still her lilac blooms, And as we wander back once more we seem to smell the old perfumes, We seem to live again the joys that once were ours so long ago When we were little girls and boys, with all the charms we used to know. But living things grow old and fade; the dead in memory remain, In all their splendid youth arrayed, exempt from suffering and pain; The little babe God called away, so many, many years ago, Is still a little babe to-day, and I am glad that this is so. Time has not changed the joys we knew; the summer rains or winter snows Have failed to harm the wondrous hue of any dew-kissed bygone rose; In memory 'tis still as fair as when we plucked it for our own, And we can see it blooming there, if anything more lovely grown. Adown the lanes of memory bloom all the joys of yesteryear, And God has given you and me the power to make them reappear; For we can settle back at night and live again the joys we knew And taste once more the old delight of days when all our skies were blue. The Day of Days A year is filled with glad events: The best is Christmas day, But every holiday presents Its special round of play, And looking back on boyhood now And all the charms it knew, One day, above the rest, somehow, Seems brightest in review. That day was finest, I believe; Though many grown-ups scoff, When mother said that we could leave Our shoes and stockings off. Through all the pleasant days of spring We begged to know once more The joy of barefoot wandering And quit the shoes we wore; But always mother shook her head And answered with a smile: "It is too soon, too soon," she said. "Wait just a little while." Then came that glorious day at last When mother let us know That fear of taking cold was past And we could barefoot go. Though Christmas day meant much to me, And eagerly I'd try The first boy on the street to be The Fourth day of July, I think: the summit of my joy Was reached that happy day Each year, when, as a barefoot boy, I hastened out to play. Could I return to childhood fair, That day I think I'd choose When mother said I needn't wear My stockings and my shoes. A Fine Sight I reckon the finest sight of all That a man can see in this world of ours Ain't the works of art on the gallery wall, Or the red an' white o' the fust spring flowers, Or a hoard o' gold from the yellow mines; But the' sight that'll make ye want t' yell Is t' catch a glimpse o' the fust pink signs In yer baby's cheek, that she's gittin' well. When ye see the pink jes' a-creepin' back T' the pale, drawn cheek, an' ye note a smile, Then th' cords o' yer heart that were tight, grow slack An' ye jump fer joy every little while, An' ye tiptoe back to her little bed As though ye doubted yer eyes, or were Afraid it was fever come back instead, An' ye found that th' pink still blossomed there. Ye've watched fer that smile an' that bit o' bloom With a heavy heart fer weeks an' weeks; An' a castle o' joy becomes that room When ye glimpse th' pink 'in yer baby's cheeks. An' out o' yer breast flies a weight o' care, An' ye're lifted up by some magic spell, An' yer heart jes' naturally beats a prayer O' joy to the Lord 'cause she's gittin' well. Manhood's Greeting I've' felt some little thrills of pride, I've inwardly rejoiced Along the pleasant lanes of life to hear my praises voiced; No great distinction have I claimed, but in a humble way Some satisfactions sweet have come to brighten many a day; But of the joyous thrills of life the finest that could be Was mine upon that day when first a stranger "mistered" me. I had my first long trousers on, and wore a derby too, But I was still a little boy to everyone I knew. I dressed in manly fashion, and I tried to act the part, But I felt that I was awkward and lacked the manly art. And then that kindly stranger spoke my name and set me free; I was sure I'd come to manhood on the day he "mistered" me. I never shall forget the joy that suddenly was mine, The sweetness of the thrill that seemed to dance along my spine, The pride that swelled within me, as he shook my youthful hand And treated me as big enough with grown up men to stand. I felt my body straighten and a stiffening at each knee, And was gloriously happy, just because he'd "mistered" me. I cannot now recall his name, I only wish I could. I've often wondered if that day he really understood How much it meant unto a boy, still wearing boyhood's tan, To find that others noticed that he'd grown to be a man. Now I try to treat as equal every growing boy I see In memory of that kindly man--the first to "mister" me. Fishing Nooks "Men will grow weary," said the Lord, "Of working for their bed and board. They'll weary of the money chase And want to find a resting place Where hum of wheel is never heard And no one speaks an angry word, And selfishness and greed and pride And petty motives don't abide. They'll need a place where they can go To wash their souls as white as snow. They will be better men and true If they can play a day or two." The Lord then made the brooks to flow And fashioned rivers here below, And many lakes; for water seems Best suited for a mortal's dreams. He placed about them willow trees To catch the murmur of the breeze, And sent the birds that sing the best Among the foliage to nest. He filled each pond and stream and lake With fish for man to come and take; Then stretched a velvet carpet deep On which a weary soul could sleep. It seemed to me the Good Lord knew That man would want something to do When worn and wearied with the stress Of battling hard for world success. When sick at heart of all the strife And pettiness of daily life, He knew he'd need, from time to time, To cleanse himself of city grime, And he would want some place to be Where hate and greed he'd never see. And so on lakes and streams and brooks The Good Lord fashioned fishing nooks. Show the Flag Show the flag and let it wave As a symbol of the brave Let it float upon the breeze As a sign for each who sees That beneath it, where it rides, Loyalty to-day abides. Show the flag and signify That it wasn't born to die; Let its colors speak for you That you still are standing true, True in sight of God and man To the work that flag began. Show the flag that all may see That you serve humanity. Let it whisper to the breeze That comes singing through the trees That whatever storms descend You'll be faithful to the end. Show the flag and let it fly, Cheering every passer-by. Men that may have stepped aside, May have lost their old-time pride, May behold it there, and then, Consecrate themselves again. Show the flag! The day is gone When men blindly hurry on Serving only gods of gold; Now the spirit that was cold Warms again to courage fine. Show the flag and fall in line! Constant Beauty It's good to have the trees again, the singing of the breeze again, It's good to see the lilacs bloom as lovely as of old. It's good that we can feel again the touch of beauties real again, For hearts and minds, of sorrow now, have all that they can hold. The roses haven't changed a bit, nor have the lilacs stranged a bit, They bud and bloom the way they did before the war began. The world is upside down to-day, there's much to make us frown to-day, And gloom and sadness everywhere beset the path of man. But now the lilacs bloom again and give us their perfume again, And now the roses smile at us and nod along the way; And it is good to see again the blossoms on each tree again, And feel that nature hasn't changed the way we have to-day. Oh, we have changed from what we were; we're not the carefree lot we were; Our hearts are filled with sorrow now and grave concern and pain, But it is good to see once more, the blooming lilac tree once more, And find the constant roses here to comfort us again. A Patriotic Creed To serve my country day by day At any humble post I may; To honor and respect her flag, To live the traits of which I brag; To be American in deed As well as in my printed creed. To stand for truth and honest toil, To till my little patch of soil, And keep in mind the debt I owe To them who died that I might know My country, prosperous and free, And passed this heritage to me. I always must in trouble's hour Be guided by the men in power; For God and country I must live, My best for God and country give; No act of mine that men may scan Must shame the name American. To do my best and play my part, American in mind and heart; To serve the flag and bravely stand To guard the glory of my land; To be American in deed: God grant me strength to keep this creed! Home The road to laughter beckons me, The road to all that's best; The home road where I nightly see The castle of my rest; The path where all is fine and fair, And little children run, For love and joy are waiting there As soon as day is done. There is no rich reward of fame That can compare with this: At home I wear an honest name, My lips are fit to kiss. At home I'm always brave and strong, And with the setting sun They find no trace of shame or wrong In anything I've done. There shine the eyes that only see The good I've tried to do; They think me what I'd like to be; They know that I am true. And whether I have lost my fight Or whether I have won, I find a faith that I've been right As soon as day is done. The Old-Time Family It makes me smile to hear 'em tell each other nowadays The burdens they are bearing, with a child or two to raise. Of course the cost of living has gone soaring to the sky And our kids are wearing garments that my parents couldn't buy. Now my father wasn't wealthy, but I never heard him squeal Because eight of us were sitting at the table every meal. People fancy they are martyrs if their children number three, And four or five they reckon makes a large-sized family. A dozen hungry youngsters at a table I have seen And their daddy didn't grumble when they licked the platter clean. Oh, I wonder how these mothers and these fathers up-to-date Would like the job of buying little shoes for seven or eight. We were eight around the table in those happy days back them, Eight that cleaned our plates of pot-pie and then passed them up again; Eight that needed shoes and stockings, eight to wash and put to bed, And with mighty little money in the purse, as I have said, But with all the care we brought them, and through all the days of stress, I never heard my father or my mother wish for less. The Job The job will not make you, my boy; The job will not bring you to fame Or riches or honor or joy Or add any weight to your name. You may fail or succeed where you are, May honestly serve or may rob; From the start to the end Your success will depend On just what you make of your job. Don't look on the job as the thing That shall prove what you're able to do; The job does no more than to bring A chance for promotion to you. Men have shirked in high places and won Very justly the jeers of the mob; And you'll find it is true That it's all up to you To say what shall come from the job. The job is an incident small; The thing that's important is man. The job will not help you at all If you won't do the best that you can. It is you that determines your fate, You stand with your hand on the knob Of fame's doorway to-day, And life asks you to say Just what you will make of your job. Toys I can pass up the lure of a jewel to wear With never the trace of a sigh, The things on a shelf that I'd like for myself I never regret I can't buy. I can go through the town passing store after store Showing things it would please me to own, With never a trace of despair on my face, But I can't let a toy shop alone. I can throttle the love of fine raiment to death And I don't know the craving for rum, But I do know the joy that is born of a toy, And the pleasure that comes with a drum I can reckon the value of money at times, And govern my purse strings with sense, But I fall for a toy for my girl or my boy And never regard the expense. It's seldom I sigh for unlimited gold Or the power of a rich man to buy; My courage is stout when the doing without Is only my duty, but I Curse the shackles of thrift when I gaze at the toys That my kiddies are eager to own, And I'd buy everything that they wish for, by Jing! If their mother would let me alone. There isn't much fun spending coin on myself For neckties and up-to-date lids, But there's pleasure tenfold, in the silver and gold I part with for things for the kids. I can go through the town passing store after store Showing things it would please me to own, But to thrift I am lost; I won't reckon the cost When I'm left in a toy shop alone. The Mother on the Sidewalk The mother on the sidewalk as the troops are marching by Is the mother of Old Glory that is waving in the sky. Men have fought to keep it splendid, men have died to keep it bright, But that flag was born of woman and her sufferings day and night; 'Tis her sacrifice has made it, and once more we ought to pray For the brave and loyal mother of the boy who goes away. There are days of grief before her; there are hours that she will weep; There are nights of anxious waiting when her fear will banish sleep; She has heard her country calling and has risen to the test, And has placed upon the altar of the nation's need, her best. And no man shall ever suffer in the turmoil of the fray The anguish of the mother of the boy who goes away. You may boast men's deeds of glory, you may tell their courage great, But to die is easier service than alone to sit and wait, And I hail the little mother, with the tear-stained face and grave, Who has given the flag a soldier--she's the bravest of the brave. And that banner we are proud of, with its red and blue and white, Is a lasting holy tribute to all mothers' love of right. Memorial Day The finest tribute we can pay Unto our hero dead to-day, Is not a rose wreath, white and red, In memory of the blood they shed; It is to stand beside each mound, Each couch of consecrated ground, And pledge ourselves as warriors true Unto the work they died to do. Into God's valleys where they lie At rest, beneath the open sky, Triumphant now o'er every foe, As living tributes let us go. No wreath of rose or immortelles Or spoken word or tolling bells Will do to-day, unless we give Our pledge that liberty shall live. Our hearts must be the roses red We place above our hero dead; To-day beside their graves we must Renew allegiance to their trust; Must bare our heads and humbly say We hold the Flag as dear as they, And stand, as once they stood, to die To keep the Stars and Stripes on high. The finest tribute we can pay Unto our hero dead to-day Is not of speech or roses red, But living, throbbing hearts instead, That shall renew the pledge they sealed With death upon the battlefield: That freedom's flag shall bear no stain And free men wear no tyrant's chain. Memory I stood and watched him playing, A little lad of three, And back to me came straying The years that used to be; In him the boy was Maying Who once belonged to me. The selfsame brown his eyes were As those that once I knew; As glad and gay his cries were, He owned his laughter, too. His features, form and size were My baby's, through and through. His ears were those I'd sung to; His chubby little hands Were those that I had clung to; His hair in golden strands It seemed my heart was strung to By love's unbroken bands. With him I lived the old days That seem so far away; The beautiful and bold days When he was here to play; The sunny and the gold days Of that remembered May. I know not who he may be Nor where his home may be, But I shall every day be In hope again to see The image of the baby Who once belonged to me. The Stick-Together Families The stick-together families are happier by far Than the brothers and the sisters who take separate highways are. The gladdest people living are the wholesome folks who make A circle at the fireside that no power but death can break. And the finest of conventions ever held beneath the sun Are the little family gatherings when the busy day is done. There are rich folk, there are poor folk, who imagine they are wise, And they're very quick to shatter all the little family ties. Each goes searching after pleasure in his own selected way, Each with strangers likes to wander, and with strangers likes to play. But it's bitterness they harvest, and it's empty joy they find, For the children that are wisest are the stick-together kind. There are some who seem to fancy that for gladness they must roam, That for smiles that are the brightest they must wander far from home. That the strange friend is the true friend, and they travel far astray they waste their lives in striving for a joy that's far away, But the gladdest sort of people, when the busy day is done, Are the brothers and the sisters who together share their fun. It's the stick-together family that wins the joys of earth, That hears the sweetest music and that finds the finest mirth; It's the old home roof that shelters all the charm that life can give; There you find the gladdest play-ground, there the happiest spot to live. And, O weary, wandering brother, if contentment you would win, Come you back unto the fireside and be comrade with your kin. Childless If certain folks that I know well Should come to me their woes to tell I'd read the sorrow in their faces And I could analyze their cases. I watch some couples day by day Go madly on their selfish way Forever seeking happiness And always finding something less. If she whose face is fair to see, Yet lacks one charm that there should be, Should open wide her heart to-day I think I know what she would say. She'd tell me that his love seems cold And not the love she knew of old; That for the home they've built to share No longer does her husband care; That he seems happier away Than by her side, and every day That passes leaves them more apart; And then perhaps her tears would start And in a softened voice she'd add: "Sometimes I wonder, if we had A baby now to love, if he Would find so many faults in me?" And if he came to tell his woe Just what he'd say to me, I know: "There's something dismal in the place That always stares me in the face. I love her. She is good and sweet But still my joy is incomplete. And then it seems to me that she Can only see the faults in me. I wonder sometimes if we had A little girl or little lad, If life with all its fret and fuss Would then seem so monotonous?" And what I'd say to them I know. I'd bid them straightway forth to go And find that child and take him in And start the joy of life to win. You foolish, hungry souls, I'd say, You're living in a selfish way. A baby's arms stretched out to you Will give you something real to do. And though God has not sent one down To you, within this very town Somewhere a little baby lies That would bring gladness to your eyes. You cannot live this life for gold Or selfish joys. As you grow old You'll find that comfort only springs From living for the living things. And home must be a barren place That never knows a baby's face. Take in a child that needs your care, Give him your name and let him share Your happiness and you will own More joy than you have ever known, And, what is more, you'll come to feel That you are doing something real. The Crucible of Life Sunshine and shadow, blue sky and gray, Laughter and tears as we tread on our way; Hearts that are heavy, then hearts that are light, Eyes that are misty and eyes that are bright; Losses and gains in the heat of the strife, Each in proportion to round out his life. Into the crucible, stirred by the years, Go all our hopes and misgivings and fears; Glad days and sad days, our pleasures and pains, Worries and comforts, our losses and gains. Out of the crucible shall there not come Joy undefiled when we pour off the scum? Out of the sadness and anguish and woe, Out of the travail and burdens we know, Out of the shadow that darkens the way, Out of the failure that tries us to-day, Have you a doubt that contentment will come When you've purified life and discarded the scum? Tinctured with sorrow and flavored with sighs, Moistened with tears that have flowed from your eyes; Perfumed with sweetness of loves that have died, Leavened with failures, with grief sanctified, Sacred and sweet is the joy that must come From the furnace of life when you've poured off the scum. Unimportant Differences If he is honest, kindly, true, And glad to work from day to day; If when his bit of toil is through With children he will stoop to play; If he does always what he can To serve another's time of need, Then I shall hail him as a man And never ask him what's his creed. If he respects a woman's name And guards her from all thoughtless jeers; If he is glad to play life's game And not risk all to get the cheers; If he disdains to win by bluff And scorns to gain by shady tricks, I hold that he is good enough Regardless of his politics. If he is glad his much to share With them who little here possess, If he will stand by what is fair And not desert to claim success, If he will leave a smile behind As he proceeds from place to place, He has the proper frame of mind, And I won't stop to ask his race. For when at last life's battle ends And all the troops are called on high We shall discover many friends That thoughtlessly we journeyed by. And we shall learn that God above Has judged His creatures by their deeds, That millions there have won His love Who spoke in different tongues and creeds. The Fishing Outfit You may talk of stylish raiment, You may boast your broadcloth fine, And the price you gave in payment May be treble that of mine. But there's one suit I'd not trade you Though it's shabby and it's thin, For the garb your tailor made you: That's the tattered, Mud-bespattered Suit that I go fishing in. There's no king in silks and laces And with jewels on his breast, With whom I would alter places. There's no man so richly dressed Or so like a fashion panel That, his luxuries to win, I would swap my shirt of flannel And the rusty, Frayed and dusty Suit that I go fishing in. 'Tis an outfit meant for pleasure; It is freedom's raiment, too; It's a garb that I shall treasure Till my time of life is through. Though perhaps it looks the saddest Of all robes for mortal skin, I am proudest and I'm gladdest In that easy, Old and greasy Suit that I go fishing in. Grown Up Last year he wanted building blocks, And picture books and toys, A saddle horse that gayly rocks, And games for little boys. But now he's big and all that stuff His whim no longer suits; He tells us that he's old enough To ask for rubber boots. Last year whatever Santa brought Delighted him to own; He never gave his wants a thought Nor made his wishes known. But now he says he wants a gun, The kind that really shoots, And I'm confronted with a son Demanding rubber boots. The baby that we used to know Has somehow slipped away, And when or where he chanced to go Not one of us can say. But here's a helter-skelter lad That to me nightly scoots And boldly wishes that he had A pair of rubber boots. I'll bet old Santa Claus will sigh When down our flue he comes, And seeks the babe that used to lie And suck his tiny thumbs, And finds within that little bed A grown up boy who hoots At building blocks, and wants instead A pair of rubber boots. Departed Friends The dead friends live and always will; Their presence hovers round us still. It seems to me they come to share Each joy or sorrow that we bear. Among the living I can feel The sweet departed spirits steal, And whether it be weal or woe, I walk with those I used to know. I can recall them to my side Whenever I am struggle-tried; I've but to wish for them, and they Come trooping gayly down the way, And I can tell to them my grief And from their presence find relief. In sacred memories below Still live the friends of long ago. Laughter Laughter sort o' settles breakfast better than digestive pills; Found it, somehow in my travels, cure for every sort of ills; When the hired help have riled me with their slipshod, careless ways, An' I'm bilin' mad an' cussin' an' my temper's all ablaze, If the calf gets me to laughin' while they're teachin' him to feed Pretty soon I'm feelin' better, 'cause I've found the cure I need. Like to start the day with laughter; when I've had a peaceful night, An' can greet the sun all smilin', that day's goin' to be all right. But there's nothing goes to suit me, when my system's full of bile; Even horses quit their pullin' when the driver doesn't smile, But they'll buckle to the traces when they hear a glad giddap, Just as though they like to labor for a cheerful kind o' chap. Laughter keeps me strong an' healthy. You can bet I'm all run down, Fit for doctor folks an' nurses when I cannot shake my frown. Found in farmin' laughter's useful, good for sheep an' cows an' goats; When I've laughed my way through summer, reap the biggest crop of oats. Laughter's good for any business, leastwise so it seems to me Never knew a smilin' feller but was busy as could be. Sometimes sit an' think about it, ponderin' on the ways of life, Wonderin' why mortals gladly face the toil an care an' strife, Then I come to this conclusion--take it now for what it's worth It's the joy of laughter keeps us plodding on this stretch of earth. Men the fun o' life are seeking--that's the reason for the calf Spillin' mash upon his keeper--men are hungry for a laugh. The Scoffer If I had lived in Franklin's time I'm most afraid that I, Beholding him out in the rain, a kite about to fly, And noticing upon its tail the barn door's rusty key, Would, with the scoffers on the street, have chortled in my glee; And with a sneer upon my lips I would have said of Ben, "His belfry must be full of bats. He's raving, boys, again!" I'm glad I didn't live on earth when Fulton had his dream, And told his neighbors marvelous tales of what he'd do with steam, For I'm not sure I'd not have been a member of the throng That couldn't see how paddle-wheels could shove a boat along. At "Fulton's Folly" I'd have sneered, as thousands did back then, And called the Clermont's architect the craziest of men. Yet Franklin gave us wonders great and Fulton did the same, And many "boobs" have left behind an everlasting fame. And dead are all their scoffers now and all their sneers forgot And scarce a nickel's worth of good was brought here by the lot. I shudder when I stop to think, had I been living then, I might have been a scoffer, too, and jeered at Bob and Ben. I am afraid to-day to sneer at any fellow's dream. Time was I thought men couldn't fly or sail beneath the stream. I never call a man a boob who toils throughout the night On visions that I cannot see, because he may be right. I always think of Franklin's trick, which brought the jeers of men. And to myself I say, "Who knows but here's another Ben?" The Pathway of the Living The pathway of the living is our ever-present care. Let us do our best to smooth it and to make it bright and fair; Let us travel it with kindness, let's be careful as we tread, And give unto the living what we'd offer to the dead. The pathway of the living we can beautify and grace; We can line it deep with roses and make earth a happier place. But we've done all mortals can do, when our prayers are softly said For the souls of those that travel o'er the pathway of the dead. The pathway of the living all our strength and courage needs, There we ought to sprinkle favors, there we ought to sow our deeds, There our smiles should be the brightest, there our kindest words be said, For the angels have the keeping of the pathway of the dead. Lemon Pie The world is full of gladness, There are joys of many kinds, There's a cure for every sadness, That each troubled mortal finds. And my little cares grow lighter And I cease to fret and sigh, And my eyes with joy grow brighter When she makes a lemon pie. When the bronze is on the filling That's one mass of shining gold, And its molten joy is spilling On the plate, my heart grows bold And the kids and I in chorus Raise one glad exultant cry And we cheer the treat before us Which is mother's lemon pie. Then the little troubles vanish, And the sorrows disappear, Then we find the grit to banish All the cares that hovered near, And we smack our lips in pleasure O'er a joy no coin can buy, And we down the golden treasure Which is known as lemon pie. The Flag on the Farm We've raised a flagpole on the farm And flung Old Glory to the sky, And it's another touch of charm That seems to cheer the passer-by, But more than that, no matter where We're laboring in wood and field, We turn and see it in the air, Our promise of a greater yield. It whispers to us all day long, From dawn to dusk: "Be true, be strong; Who falters now with plow or hoe Gives comfort to his country's foe." It seems to me I've never tried To do so much about the place, Nor been so slow to come inside, But since I've got the flag to face, Each night when I come home to rest I feel that I must look up there And say: "Old Flag, I've done my best, To-day I've tried to do my share." And sometimes, just to catch the breeze, I stop my work, and o'er the trees Old Glory fairly shouts my way: "You're shirking far too much to-day!" The help have caught the spirit, too; The hired man takes off his cap Before the old red, white and blue, Then to the horses says: "giddap!" And starting bravely to the field He tells the milkmaid by the door: "We're going to make these acres yield More than they've ever done before." She smiles to hear his gallant brag, Then drops a curtsey to the flag. And in her eyes there seems to shine A patriotism that is fine. We've raised a flagpole on the farm And flung Old Glory to the sky; We're far removed from war's alarm, But courage here is running high. We're doing things we never dreamed We'd ever find the time to do; Deeds that impossible once seemed Each morning now we hurry through. The flag now waves above our toil And sheds its glory on the soil, And boy and man looks up to it As if to say: "I'll do my bit!" Heroes There are different kinds of heroes, there are some you hear about. They get their pictures printed, and their names the newsboys shout; There are heroes known to glory that were not afraid to die In the service of their country and to keep the flag on high; There are brave men in the trenches, there are brave men on the sea, But the silent, quiet heroes also prove their bravery. I am thinking of a hero that was never known to fame, Just a manly little fellow with a very common name; He was freckle-faced and ruddy, but his head was nobly shaped, And he one day took the whipping that his comrades all escaped. And he never made a murmur, never whimpered in reply; He would rather take the censure than to stand and tell a lie. And I'm thinking of another that had courage that was fine, And I've often wished in moments that such strength of will were mine. He stood against his comrades, and he left them then and there When they wanted him to join them in a deed that wasn't fair. He stood alone, undaunted, with his little head erect; He would rather take the jeering than to lose his self-respect. And I know a lot of others that have grown to manhood now, Who have yet to wear the laurel that adorns the victor's brow. They have plodded on in honor through the dusty, dreary ways, They have hungered for life's comforts and the joys of easy days, But they've chosen to be toilers, and in this their splendor's told: They would rather never have it than to do some things for gold. The Mother's Question When I was a boy, and it chanced to rain, Mother would always watch for me; She used to stand by the window pane, Worried and troubled as she could be. And this was the question I used to hear, The very minute that I drew near; The words she used, I can't forget: "Tell me, my boy, if your feet are wet." Worried about me was mother dear, As healthy a lad as ever strolled Over a turnpike, far or near, 'Fraid to death that I'd take a cold. Always stood by the window pane, Watching for me in the pouring rain; And her words in my ears are ringing yet: "Tell me, my boy, if your feet are wet." Stockings warmed by the kitchen fire, And slippers ready for me to wear; Seemed that mother would never tire, Giving her boy the best of care, Thinking of him the long day through, In the worried way that all mothers do; Whenever it rained she'd start to fret, Always fearing my feet were wet. And now, whenever it rains, I see A vision of mother in days of yore, Still waiting there to welcome me, As she used to do by the open door. And always I think as I enter there Of a mother's love and a mother's care; Her words in my ears are ringing yet: "Tell me, my boy, if your feet are wet." The Blue Flannel Shirt I am eager once more to feel easy, I'm weary of thinking of dress; I'm heartily sick of stiff collars, And trousers the tailor must press. I'm eagerly waiting the glad days-- When fashion will cease to assert What I must put on every morning-- The days of the blue flannel shirt. I want to get out in the country And rest by the side of the lake; To go a few days without shaving, And give grim old custom the shake. A week's growth of whiskers, I'm thinking, At present my chin wouldn't hurt; And I'm yearning to don those old trousers And loaf in that blue flannel shirt. You can brag all you like of your fashions, The style of your cutaway coat; You can boast of your tailor-made raiment, And the collar that strangles your throat; But give me the old pair of trousers That seem to improve with the dirt, And let me get back to the comfort That's born of a blue flannel shirt. Grandpa My grandpa is the finest man Excep' my pa. My grandpa can Make kites an' carts an' lots of things You pull along the ground with strings, And he knows all the names of birds, And how they call 'thout using words, And where they live and what they eat, And how they build their nests so neat. He's lots of fun! Sometimes all day He comes to visit me and play. You see he's getting old, and so To work he doesn't have to go, And when it isn't raining, he Drops in to have some fun with me. He takes my hand and we go out And everything we talk about. He tells me how God makes the trees, And why it hurts to pick up bees. Sometimes he stops and shows to me The place where fairies used to be; And then he tells me stories, too, And I am sorry when he's through. When I am asking him for more He says: "Why there's a candy store! Let's us go there and see if they Have got the kind we like to-day." Then when we get back home my ma Says: "You are spoiling Buddy, Pa." My grandpa is my mother's pa, I guess that's what all grandpas are. And sometimes ma, all smiles, will say: "You didn't always act that way. When I was little, then you said That children should be sent to bed And not allowed to rule the place And lead old folks a merry chase." And grandpa laughs and says: "That's true, That's what I used to say to you. It is a father's place to show The young the way that they should go, But grandpas have a different task, Which is to get them all they ask." When I get big and old and gray I'm going to spend my time in play; I'm going to be a grandpa, too, And do as all the grandpas do. I'll buy my daughter's children things Like horns and drums and tops with strings, And tell them all about the trees And frogs and fish and birds and bees And fairies in the shady glen And tales of giants, too, and when They beg of me for just one more, I'll take them to the candy store; I'll buy them everything they see The way my grandpa does for me Pa Did It The train of cars that Santa brought is out of kilter now; While pa was showing how they went he broke the spring somehow. They used to run around a track--at least they did when he Would let me take them in my hands an' wind 'em with a key. I could 'a' had some fun with 'em, if only they would go, But, gee! I never had a chance, for pa enjoyed em so. The automobile that I got that ran around the floor Was lots of fun when it was new, but it won't go no more. Pa wound it up for Uncle Jim to show him how it went, And when those two got through with it the runnin' gear was bent, An' now it doesn't go at all. I mustn't grumble though, 'Cause while it was in shape to run my pa enjoyed it so. I've got my blocks as good as new, my mitts are perfect yet; Although the snow is on the ground I haven't got em wet. I've taken care of everything that Santa brought to me, Except the toys that run about when wound up with a key. But next year you can bet I won't make any such mistake; I'm going to ask for toys an' things that my pa cannot break. The Real Successes You think that the failures are many, You think the successes are few, But you judge by the rule of the penny, And not by the good that men do. You judge men by standards of treasure That merely obtain upon earth, When the brother you're snubbing may measure Full-length to God's standard of worth. The failures are not in the ditches, The failures are not in the ranks, They have missed the acquirement of riches, Their fortunes are not in the banks. Their virtues are never paraded, Their worth is not always in view, But they're fighting their battles unaided, And fighting them honestly, too. There are failures to-day in high places The failures aren't all in the low; There are rich men with scorn in their faces Whose homes are but castles of woe. The homes that are happy are many, And numberless fathers are true; And this is the standard, if any, By which we must judge what men do. Wherever loved ones are awaiting The toiler to kiss and caress, Though in Bradstreet's he hasn't a rating, He still is a splendid success. If the dear ones who gather about him And know what he's striving to do Have never a reason to doubt him, Is he less successful than you? You think that the failures are many, You judge by men's profits in gold; You judge by the rule of the penny-- In this true success isn't told. This falsely man's story is telling, For wealth often brings on distress, But wherever love brightens a dwelling, There lives; rich or poor, a success. The Sorry Hostess She said she was sorry the weather was bad The night that she asked us to dine; And she really appeared inexpressibly sad Because she had hoped 'twould be fine. She was sorry to hear that my wife had a cold, And she almost shed tears over that, And how sorry she was, she most feelingly told, That the steam wasn't on in the flat. She was sorry she hadn't asked others to come, She might just as well have had eight; She said she was downcast and terribly glum Because her dear husband was late. She apologized then for the home she was in, For the state of the rugs and the chairs, For the children who made such a horrible din, And then for the squeak in the stairs. When the dinner began she apologized twice For the olives, because they were small; She was certain the celery, too, wasn't nice, And the soup didn't suit her at all. She was sorry she couldn't get whitefish instead Of the trout that the fishmonger sent, But she hoped that we'd manage somehow to be fed, Though her dinner was not what she meant. She spoke her regrets for the salad, and then Explained she was really much hurt, And begged both our pardons again and again For serving a skimpy dessert. She was sorry for this and sorry for that, Though there really was nothing to blame. But I thought to myself as I put on my hat, Perhaps she is sorry we came. Yesterday I've trod the links with many a man, And played him club for club; 'Tis scarce a year since I began And I am still a dub. But this I've noticed as we strayed Along the bunkered way, No one with me has ever played As he did yesterday. It makes no difference what the drive, Together as we walk, Till we up to the ball arrive, I get the same old talk: "To-day there's something wrong with me, Just what I cannot say. "Would you believe I got a three For this hole--yesterday?" I see them top and slice a shot, And fail to follow through, And with their brassies plough the lot, The very way I do. To six and seven their figures run, And then they sadly say: "I neither dubbed, nor foozled one When I played--yesterday." I have no yesterdays to count, No good work to recall; Each morning sees hope proudly mount, Each evening sees it fall. And in the locker room at night, When men discuss their play, I hear them and I wish I might Have seen them--yesterday, Oh, dear old yesterday! What store Of joys for men you hold! I'm sure there is no day that's more Remembered or extolled. I'm off my task myself a bit, My mind has run astray; I think, perhaps, I should have writ These verses--yesterday. The Beauty Places Here she walked and romped about, And here beneath this apple tree Where all the grass is trampled out The swing she loved so used to be. This path is but a path to you, Because my child you never knew. 'Twas here she used to stoop to smell The first bright daffodil of spring; 'Twas here she often tripped and fell And here she heard the robins sing. You'd call this but a common place, But you have never seen her face. And it was here we used to meet. How beautiful a spot is this, To which she gayly raced to greet Her daddy with his evening kiss! You see here nothing grand or fine, But, Oh, what memories are mine! The people pass from day to day And never turn their heads to see The many charms along the way That mean so very much to me. For all things here are speaking of The babe that once was mine to love. The Little Old Man The little old man with the curve in his back And the eyes that are dim and the skin that is slack, So slack that it wrinkles and rolls on his cheeks, With a thin little voice that goes "crack!" when he speaks, Never goes to the store but that right at his feet Are all of the youngsters who live on the street. And the little old man in the suit that was black, And once might have perfectly fitted his back, Has a boy's chubby fist in his own wrinkled hand, And together they trudge off to Light-Hearted Land; Some splendid excursions he gives every day To the boys and the girls in his funny old way. The little old man is as queer as can be; He'd spend all his time with a child on his knee; And the stories he tells I could never repeat, But they're always of good boys and little girls sweet; And the children come home at the end of the day To tell what the little old man had to say. Once the little old man didn't trudge to the store, And the tap of his cane wasn't heard any more; The children looked eagerly for him each day And wondered why he didn't come out to play Till some of them saw Doctor Brown ring his bell, And they wept when they heard that he might not get well. But after awhile he got out with his cane, And called all the children around him again; And I think as I see him go trudging along In the center, once more, of his light-hearted throng, That earth has no glory that's greater than this: The little old man whom the children would miss. The Little Velvet Suit Last night I got to thinkin' of the pleasant long ago, When I still had on knee breeches, an' I wore a flowing bow, An' my Sunday suit was velvet. Ma an' Pa thought it was fine, But I know I didn't like it--either velvet or design; It was far too girlish for me, for I wanted something rough Like what other boys were wearing, but Ma wouldn't buy such stuff. Ma answered all my protests in her sweet an kindly way; She said it didn't matter what I wore to run an' play, But on Sundays when all people went to church an wore their best, Her boy must look as stylish an' as well kept as the rest. So she dressed me up in velvet, an' she tied the flowing bow, An' she straightened out my stockings, so that not a crease would show. An' then I chuckled softly to myself while dreaming there An' I saw her standing o'er me combing out my tangled hair. I could feel again the tugging, an' I heard the yell I gave When she struck a snarl, an' softly I could hear her say: "Be brave. 'Twill be over in a minute, and a little man like you Shouldn't whimper at a little bit of pain the way you do." Oh, I wouldn't mind the tugging at my scalp lock, and I know That I'd gladly wear to please her that old flowing girlish bow; And I think I'd even try to don once more that velvet suit, And blush the same old blushes, as the women called me cute, Could the dear old mother only take me by the hand again, And be as proud of me right now as she was always then. The First Steps Last night I held my arms to you And you held yours to mine And started out to march to me As any soldier fine. You lifted up our little feet And laughingly advanced; And I stood there and gazed upon Your first wee steps, entranced. You gooed and gurgled as you came Without a sign of fear; As though you knew, your journey o'er, I'd greet you with a cheer. And, what is more, you seemed to know, Although you are so small, That I was there, with eager arms, To save you from a fall. Three tiny steps you took, and then, Disaster and dismay! Your over-confidence had led Your little feet astray. You did not see what we could see Nor fear what us alarms; You stumbled, but ere you could fall I caught you in my arms. You little tyke, in days to come You'll bravely walk alone, And you may have to wander paths Where dangers lurk unknown. And, Oh, I pray that then, as now, When accidents befall You'll still remember that I'm near To save you from a fall. Signs It's "be a good boy, Willie," And it's "run away and play, For Santa Claus is coming With his reindeer and his sleigh." It's "mind what mother tells you," And it's "put away your toys, For Santa Claus is coming To the good girls and the boys." Ho, Santa Claus is coming, there is Christmas in the air, And little girls and little boys are good now everywhere. World-wide the little fellows Now are sweetly saying "please," And "thank you," and "excuse me," And those little pleasantries That good children are supposed to When there's company to hear; And it's just as plain as can be That the Christmas time is near. Ho, it's just as plain as can be that old Santa's on his way, For there are no little children that are really bad to-day. And when evening shadows lengthen, Every little curly head Now is ready, aye, and willing To be tucked away in bed; Not one begs to stay up longer, Not one even sheds a tear; Ho, the goodness of the children Is a sign that Santa's near. It's wonderful, the goodness of the little tots to-day, When they know that good old Santa has begun to pack his sleigh. The Family's Homely Man There never was a family without its homely man, With legs a little longer than the ordinary plan, An' a shock of hair that brush an' comb can't ever straighten out, An' hands that somehow never seem to know what they're about; The one with freckled features and a nose that looks as though It was fashioned by the youngsters from a chunk of mother's dough. You know the man I'm thinking of, the homely one an' plain, That fairly oozes kindness like a rosebush dripping rain. His face is never much to see, but back of it there lies A heap of love and tenderness and judgment, sound and wise. And so I sing the homely man that's sittin' in his chair, And pray that every family will always have him there. For looks don't count for much on earth; it's hearts that wear the gold; An' only that is ugly which is selfish, cruel, cold. The family needs him, Oh, so much; more, maybe, than they know; Folks seldom guess a man's real worth until he has to go, But they will miss a heap of love an' tenderness the day God beckons to their homely man, an' he must go away. He's found in every family, it doesn't matter where They live or be they rich or poor, the homely man is there. You'll find him sitting quiet-like and sort of drawn apart, As though he felt he shouldn't be where folks are fine an' smart. He likes to hide himself away, a watcher of the fun, An' seldom takes a leading part when any game's begun. But when there's any task to do, like need for extra chairs, I've noticed it's the homely man that always climbs the stairs. And always it's the homely man that happens in to mend The little toys the youngsters break, for he's the children's friend. And he's the one that sits all night to watch beside the dead, And sends the worn-out sorrowers and broken hearts to bed. The family wouldn't be complete without him night or day, To smooth the little troubles out and drive the cares away. When Mother Cooked With Wood I do not quarrel with the gas, Our modern range is fine, The ancient stove was doomed to pass From Time's grim firing line, Yet now and then there comes to me The thought of dinners good And pies and cake that used to be When mother cooked with wood. The axe has vanished from the yard, The chopping block is gone, There is no pile of cordwood hard For boys to work upon; There is no box that must be filled Each morning to the hood; Time in its ruthlessness has willed The passing of the wood. And yet those days were fragrant days And spicy days and rare; The kitchen knew a cheerful blaze And friendliness was there. And every appetite was keen For breakfasts that were good When I had scarcely turned thirteen And mother cooked with wood. I used to dread my daily chore, I used to think it tough When mother at the kitchen door Said I'd not chopped enough. And on her baking days, I know, I shirked whene'er I could In that now happy long ago When mother cooked with wood. I never thought I'd wish to see That pile of wood again; Back then it only seemed to me A source of care and pain. But now I'd gladly give my all To stand where once I stood, If those rare days I could recall When mother cooked with wood. Midnight in the Pantry You can boast your round of pleasures, praise the sound of popping corks, Where the orchestra is playing to the rattle of the forks; And your after-opera dinner you may think superbly fine, But that can't compare, I'm certain, to the joy that's always mine When I reach my little dwelling--source, of all sincere delight-- And I prowl around the pantry in the waning hours of night. When my business, or my pleasure, has detained me until late, And it's midnight, say, or after, when I reach my own estate, Though I'm weary with my toiling I don't hustle up to bed, For the inner man is hungry and he's anxious to be fed; Then I feel a thrill of glory from my head down to my feet As I prowl around the pantry after something good to eat. Oft I hear a call above me: "Goodness gracious, come to bed!" And I know that I've disturbed her by my overeager tread, But I've found a glass of jelly and some bread and butter, too, And a bit of cold fried chicken and I answer: "When I'm through!" Oh, there's no cafe that better serves my precious appetite Than the pantry in our kitchen when I get home late at night. You may boast your shining silver, and the linen and the flowers, And the music and the laughter and the lights that hang in showers; You may have your cafe table with its brilliant array, But it doesn't charm yours truly when I'm on my homeward way; For a greater joy awaits me, as I hunger for a bite-- Just the joy of pantry-prowling in the middle of the night. The World Is Against Me "The world is against me," he said with a sigh. "Somebody stops every scheme that I try. The world has me down and it's keeping me there; I don't get a chance. Oh, the world is unfair! When a fellow is poor then he can't get a show; The world is determined to keep him down low." "What of Abe Lincoln?" I asked. "Would you say That he was much richer than you are to-day? He hadn't your chance of making his mark, And his outlook was often exceedingly dark; Yet he clung to his purpose with courage most grim And he got to the top. Was the world against him?" "What of Ben Franklin? I've oft heard it said That many a time he went hungry to bed. He started with nothing but courage to climb, But patiently struggled and waited his time. He dangled awhile from real poverty's limb, Yet he got to the top. Was the world against him? "I could name you a dozen, yes, hundreds, I guess, Of poor boys who've patiently climbed to success; All boys who were down and who struggled alone, Who'd have thought themselves rich if your fortune they'd known; Yet they rose in the world you're so quick to condemn, And I'm asking you now, was the world against them?" Bribed I know that what I did was wrong; I should have sent you far away. You tempted me, and I'm not strong; I tried but couldn't answer nay. I should have packed you off to bed; Instead I let you stay awhile, And mother scolded when I said That you had bribed me with your smile. And yesterday I gave to you Another piece of chocolate cake, Some red-ripe watermelon, too, And that gave you the stomach ache. And that was after I'd been told You'd had enough, you saucy miss; You tempted me, you five-year-old, And bribed me with a hug and kiss. And mother said I mustn't get You roller skates, yet here they are; I haven't dared to tell her yet; Some time, she says, I'll go too far. I gave my word I wouldn't buy These things, for accidents she fears; Now I must tell, when questioned why, Just how you bribed me with your tears. I've tried so hard to do the right, Yet I have broken every vow. I let you do, most every night, The things your mother won't allow. I know that I am doing wrong, Yet all my sense of honor flies, The moment that you come along And bribe me with those wondrous eyes. The Home Builders The world is filled with bustle and with selfishness and greed, It is filled with restless people that are dreaming of a deed. You can read it in their faces; they are dreaming of the day When they'll come to fame and fortune and put all their cares away. And I think as I behold them, though it's far indeed they roam, They will never find contentment save they seek for it at home. I watch them as they hurry through the surging lines of men, Spurred to speed by grim ambition, and I know they're dreaming then. They are weary, sick and footsore, but their goal seems far away, And it's little they've accomplished at the ending of the day. It is rest they're vainly seeking, love and laughter in the gloam, But they'll never come to claim it, save they claim it here at home. For the peace that is the sweetest isn't born of minted gold, And the joy that lasts the longest and still lingers when we're old Is no dim and distant pleasure--it is not to-morrow's prize, It is not the end of toiling, or the rainbow of our sighs. It' is every day within us--all the rest is hippodrome-- And the soul that is the gladdest is the soul that builds a home. They are fools who build for glory! They are fools who pin their hopes On the come and go of battles or some vessel's slender ropes. They shall sicken and shall wither and shall never peace attain Who believe that real contentment only men victorious gain. For the only happy toilers under earth's majestic dome Are the ones who find their glories in the little spot called home. My Books and I My books and I are good old pals: My laughing books are gay, Just suited for my merry moods When I am wont to play. Bill Nye comes down to joke with me And, Oh, the joy he spreads. Just like two fools we sit and laugh And shake our merry heads. When I am in a thoughtful mood, With Stevenson I sit, Who seems to know I've had enough Of Bill Nye and his wit. And so, more thoughtful than I am, He talks of lofty things, And thus an evening hour we spend Sedate and grave as kings. And should my soul be torn with grief Upon my shelf I find A little volume, torn and thumbled, For comfort just designed. I take my little Bible down And read its pages o'er, And when I part from it I find I'm stronger than before. Success I hold no dream of fortune vast, Nor seek undying fame. I do not ask when life is past That many know my name. I may not own the skill to rise To glory's topmost height, Nor win a place among the wise, But I can keep the right. And I can live my life on earth Contented to the end, If but a few shall know my worth And proudly call me friend. Questions Would you sell your boy for a stack of gold? Would you miss that hand that is yours to hold? Would you take a fortune and never see The man, in a few brief years, he'll be? Suppose that his body were racked with pain, How much would you pay for his health again? Is there money enough in the world to-day To buy your boy? Could a monarch pay You silver and gold in so large a sum That you'd have him blinded or stricken dumb? How much would you take, if you had the choice, Never to hear, in this world, his voice? How much would you take in exchange for all The joy that is wrapped in that youngster small? Are there diamonds enough in the mines of earth To equal your dreams of that youngster's worth? Would you give up the hours that he's on your knee The richest man in the world to be? You may prate of gold, but your fortune lies, And you know it well, in your boy's bright eyes. And there's nothing that money can buy or do That means so much as that boy to you. Well, which does the most of your time employ, The chase for gold--or that splendid boy? Sausage You may brag about your breakfast foods you eat at break of day, Your crisp, delightful shavings and your stack of last year's hay, Your toasted flakes of rye and corn that fairly swim in cream, Or rave about a sawdust mash, an epicurean dream. But none of these appeals to me, though all of them I've tried-- The breakfast that I liked the best was sausage mother fried. Old country sausage was its name; the kind, of course, you know, The little links that seemed to be almost as white as snow, But turned unto a ruddy brown, while sizzling in the pan; Oh, they were made both to appease and charm the inner man. All these new-fangled dishes make me blush and turn aside, When I think about the sausage that for breakfast mother fried. When they roused me from my slumbers and I left to do the chores, It wasn't long before I breathed a fragrance out of doors That seemed to grip my spirit, and to thrill my body through, For the spice of hunger tingled, and 'twas then I plainly knew That the gnawing at my stomach would be quickly satisfied By a plate of country sausage that my dear old mother fried. There upon the kitchen table, with its cloth of turkey red, Was a platter heaped with sausage and a plate of home-made bread, And a cup of coffee waiting--not a puny demitasse That can scarcely hold a mouthful, but a cup of greater class; And I fell to eating largely, for I could not be denied-- Oh, I'm sure a king would relish the sausage mother fried. Times have changed and so have breakfasts; now each morning when I see A dish of shredded something or of flakes passed up to me, All my thoughts go back to boyhood, to the days of long ago, When the morning meal meant something more than vain and idle show. And I hunger, Oh, I hunger, in a way I cannot hide, For a plate of steaming sausage like the kind my mother fried. Friends Ain't it fine when things are going Topsy-turvy and askew To discover someone showing Good old-fashioned faith in you? Ain't it good when life seems dreary And your hopes about to end, Just to feel the handclasp cheery Of a fine old loyal friend? Gosh! one fellow to another Means a lot from day to day, Seems we're living for each other In a friendly sort of way. When a smile or cheerful greetin' Means so much to fellows sore, Seems we ought to keep repeatin' Smiles an' praises more an' more. A Boost for Modern Methods In some respects the old days were perhaps ahead of these, Before we got to wanting wealth and costly luxuries; Perhaps the world was happier then, I'm not the one to say, But when it's zero weather I am glad I live to-day. Old-fashioned winters I recall--the winters of my youth-- I have no great desire for them to-day, I say in truth; The frost upon the window panes was beautiful to see, But the chill upon that bedroom floor was not a joy to me. I do not now recall that it was fun in those days when I woke to learn the water pipes were frozen tight "again." To win once more the old-time joys, I don't believe I'd care To have to sleep, for comfort's sake, dressed in my underwear. Old-fashioned winters had their charms, a fact I can't deny, But after all I'm really glad that they have wandered by; We used to tumble out of bed, like firemen, I declare, And grab our clothes and hike down stairs and finish dressing there. Yes, brag about those days of old, boast of them as you will, I sing the modern methods that have robbed them of their chill; I sing the cheery steam pipe and the upstairs snug and warm And a spine that's free from shivers as I robe my manly form. The Man to Be Some day the world will need a man of courage in a time of doubt, And somewhere, as a little boy, that future hero plays about. Within some humble home, no doubt, that instrument of greater things Now climbs upon his father's knee or to his mother's garments clings. And when shall come that call for him to render service that is fine, He that shall do God's mission here may be your little boy or mine. Long years of preparation mark the pathway for the splendid souls, And generations live and die and seem no nearer to their goals, And yet the purpose of it all, the fleeting pleasure and the woe, The laughter and the grief of life that all who come to earth must know May be to pave the way for one--one man to serve the Will Divine And it is possible that he may be your little boy or mine. Some day the world will need a man! I stand beside his cot at night And wonder if I'm teaching him, as best I can, to know the right. I am the father of a boy--his life is mine to make or mar-- And he no better can become than what my daily teachings are; There will be need for someone great--I dare not falter from the line-- The man that is to serve the world may be that little boy of mine. Perhaps your boy and mine may not ascend the lofty heights of fame; The orders for their births are hid. We know not why to earth they came. Yet in some little bed to-night the great man of to-morrow sleeps And only He who sent him here, the secret of his purpose keeps. As fathers then our care is this--to keep in mind the Great Design. The man the world shall need some day may be your little boy or mine. The Summer Children I like 'em, in the winter when their cheeks are slightly pale, I like 'em in the spring time when the March winds blow a gale; But when summer suns have tanned 'em and they're racing to and fro, I somehow think the children make the finest sort of show. When they're brown as little berries and they're bare of foot and head, And they're on the go each minute where the velvet lawns are spread, Then their health is at its finest and they never stop to rest, Oh, it's then I think the children look and are their very best. We've got to know the winter and we've got to know the spring, But for children, could I do it, unto summer I would cling; For I'm happiest when I see 'em, as a wild and merry band Of healthy, lusty youngsters that the summer sun has tanned. October Days are gettin' shorter an' the air a keener snap; Apples now are droppin' into Mother Nature's lap; The mist at dusk is risin' over valley, marsh an' fen An' it's just as plain as sunshine, winter's comin' on again. The turkeys now are struttin' round the old farmhouse once more; They are done with all their nestin', and their hatchin' days are o'er; Now the farmer's cuttin' fodder for the silo towerin' high An' he's frettin' an' complainin' 'cause the corn's a bit too dry. But the air is mighty peaceful an' the scene is good to see, An' there's somethin' in October that stirs deep inside o' me; An' I just can't help believin' in a God above us, when Everything is ripe for harvest an the frost is back again. On Quitting How much grit do you think you've got? Can you quit a thing that you like a lot? You may talk of pluck; it's an easy word, And where'er you go it is often heard; But can you tell to a jot or guess Just how much courage you now possess? You may stand to trouble and keep your grin, But have you tackled self-discipline? Have you ever issued commands to you To quit the things that you like to do, And then, when tempted and sorely swayed, Those rigid orders have you obeyed? Don't boast of your grit till you've tried it out, Nor prate to men of your courage stout, For it's easy enough to retain a grin In the face of a fight there's a chance to win, But the sort of grit that is good to own Is the stuff you need when you're all alone. How much grit do you think you've got? Can you turn from joys that you like a lot? Have you ever tested yourself to know How far with yourself your will can go? If you want to know if you have grit, Just pick out a joy that you like, and quit. It's bully sport and it's open fight; It will keep you busy both day and night; For the toughest kind of a game you'll find Is to make your body obey your mind. And you never will know what is meant by grit Unless there's something you've tried to quit. The Price of Riches Nobody stops at the rich man's door to pass the time of day. Nobody shouts a "hello!" to him in the good old-fashioned way. Nobody comes to his porch at night and sits in that extra chair And talks till it's time to go to bed. He's all by himself up there. Nobody just happens in to call on the long, cold winter nights. Nobody feels that he's welcome now, though the house is ablaze with lights. And never an unexpected guest will tap at his massive door And stay to tea as he used to do, for his neighborly days are o'er. It's a distant life that the rich man leads and many an hour is glum, For never the neighbors call on him save when they are asked to come. At heart he is just as he used to be and he longs for his friends of old, But they never will venture unbidden there. They're afraid of his wall of gold. For silver and gold in a large amount there's a price that all men must pay, And who will dwell in a rich man's house must live in a lonely way. For once you have builded a fortune vast you will sigh for the friends you knew But never they'll tap at your door again in the way that they used to do. The Other Fellow Whose luck is better far than ours? The other fellow's. Whose road seems always lined with flowers? The other fellow's. Who is the man who seems to get Most joy in life, with least regret, Who always seems to win his bet? The other fellow. Who fills the place we think we'd like? The other fellow. Whom does good fortune always strike? The other fellow. Whom do we envy, day by day? Who has more time than we to play? Who is it, when we mourn, seems gay? The other fellow. Who seems to miss the thorns we find? The other fellow. Who seems to leave us all behind? The other fellow. Who never seems to feel the woe, The anguish and the pain we know? Who gets the best seats at the show? The other fellow. And yet, my friend, who envies you? The other fellow. Who thinks he gathers only rue? The other fellow. Who sighs because he thinks that he Would infinitely happier he, If he could be like you or me? The other fellow. The Open Fire There in the flame of the open grate, All that is good in the past I see: Red-lipped youth on the swinging gate, Bright-eyed youth with its minstrelsy; Girls and boys that I used to know, Back in the days of Long Ago, Troop before in the smoke and flame, Chatter and sing, as the wild birds do. Everyone I can call by name, For the fire builds all of my youth anew. Outside, people go stamping by, Squeak of wheel on the evening air, Stars and planets race through the sky, Here are darkness and silence rare; Only the flames in the open grate Crackle and flare as they burn up hate, Malice and envy and greed for gold, Dancing, laughing my cares away; I've forgotten that I am old, Once again I'm a boy at play. There in the flame of the open grate Bright the pictures come and go; Lovers swing on the garden gate, Lovers kiss 'neath the mistletoe. I've forgotten that I am old, I've forgotten my story's told; Whistling boy down the lane I stroll, All untouched by the blows of fate, Time turns back and I'm young of soul, Dreaming there by the open grate. Improvement The joy of life is living it, or so it seems to me; In finding shackles on your wrists, then struggling till you're free; In seeing wrongs and righting them, in dreaming splendid dreams, Then toiling till the vision is as real as moving streams. The happiest mortal on the earth is he who ends his day By leaving better than he found to bloom along the way. Were all things perfect here there would be naught for man to do; If what is old were good enough we'd never need the new. The only happy time of rest is that which follows strife And sees some contribution made unto the joy of life. And he who has oppression felt and conquered it is he Who really knows the happiness and peace of being free. The miseries of earth are here and with them all must cope. Who seeks for joy, through hedges thick of care and pain must grope. Through disappointment man must go to value pleasure's thrill; To really know the joy of health a man must first be ill. The wrongs are here for man to right, and happiness is had By striving to supplant with good the evil and the bad. The joy of life is living it and doing things of worth, In making bright and fruitful all the barren spots of earth. In facing odds and mastering them and rising from defeat, And making true what once was false, and what was bitter, sweet. For only he knows perfect joy whose little bit of soil Is richer ground than what it was when he began to toil. Send Her a Valentine Send her a valentine to say You love her in the same old way. Just drop the long familiar ways And live again the old-time days When love was new and youth was bright And all was laughter and delight, And treat her as you would if she Were still the girl that used to be. Pretend that all the years have passed Without one cold and wintry blast; That you are coming still to woo Your sweetheart as you used to do; Forget that you have walked along The paths of life where right and wrong And joy and grief in battle are, And play the heart without a scar. Be what you were when youth was fine And send to her a valentine; Forget the burdens and the woe That have been given you to know And to the wife, so fond and true, The pledges of the past renew 'Twill cure her life of every ill To find that you're her sweetheart still. Bud Who is it lives to the full every minute, Gets all the joy and the fun that is in it? Tough as they make 'em, and ready to race, Fit for a battle and fit for a chase, Heedless of buttons on blouses and pants, Laughing at danger and taking a chance, Gladdest, it seems, when he wallows in mud, Who is the rascal? I'll tell you, it's Bud! Who is it wakes with a shout of delight, And comes to our room with a smile that is bright? Who is it springs into bed with a leap And thinks it is queer that his dad wants to sleep? Who answers his growling with laughter and tries His patience by lifting the lids of his eyes? Who jumps in the air and then lands with a thud On his poor daddy's stomach? I'll tell you, it's Bud! Who is it thinks life is but laughter and play And doesn't know care is a part of the day? Who is reckless of stockings and heedless of shoes? Who laughs at a tumble and grins at a bruise? Who climbs over fences and clambers up trees, And scrapes all the skin off his shins and his knees? Who sometimes comes home all bespattered with blood That was drawn by a fall? It's that rascal called Bud. Yet, who is it makes all our toiling worth while? Who can cure every ache that we know, by his smile? Who is prince to his mother and king to his dad And makes us forget that we ever were sad? Who is center of all that we dream of and plan, Our baby to-day but to-morrow our man? It's that tough little, rough little tyke in the mud, That tousled-haired, fun-loving rascal called Bud! The Front Seat When I was but a little lad I always liked to ride, No matter what the rig we had, right by the driver's side. The front seat was the honor place in bob-sleigh, coach or hack, And I maneuvered to avoid the cushions in the back. We children used to scramble then to share the driver's seat, And long the pout I wore when I was not allowed that treat. Though times have changed and I am old I still confess I race With other grown-ups now and then to get my favorite place. The auto with its cushions fine and big and easy springs Has altered in our daily lives innumerable things, But hearts of men are still the same as what they used to be, When surreys were the stylish rigs, or so they seem to me, For every grown-up girl to-day and every grown-up boy Still hungers for the seat in front and scrambles for its joy, And riding by the driver's side still holds the charm it did In those glad, youthful days gone by when I was just a kid. I hurry, as I used to do, to claim that favorite place, And when a tonneau seat is mine I wear a solemn face. I try to hide the pout I feel, and do my best to smile, But envy of the man in front gnaws at me all the while. I want to be where I can see the road that lies ahead, To watch the trees go flying by and see the country spread Before me as we spin along, for there I miss the fear That seems to grip the soul of me while riding in the rear. And I am not alone in this. To-day I drive a car And three glad youngsters madly strive to share the "seat with Pa." And older folks that ride with us, I very plainly see, Maneuver in their artful ways to sit in front with me; Though all the cushions in the world were piled up in the rear, The child in all of us still longs to watch the engineer. And happier hearts we seem to own when we're allowed to ride, No matter what the car may be, close by the driver's side. There Are No Gods There are no gods that bring to youth The rich rewards that stalwarts claim; The god of fortune is in truth A vision and an empty name. The toiler who through doubt and care Unto his goal and victory plods, With no one need his glory share: He is himself his favoring gods. There are no gods that will bestow Earth's joys and blessings on a man. Each one must choose the path he'll go, Then win from it what joy he can. And he that battles with the odds Shall know success, but he who waits The favors of the mystic gods, Shall never come to glory's gates. No man is greater than his will; No gods to him will lend a hand! Upon his courage and his skill The record of his life must stand. What honors shall befall to him, What he shall claim of fame or pelf, Depend not on the favoring whim Of fortune's god, but on himself. The Auto An auto is a helpful thing; I love the way the motor hums, I love each cushion and each spring, The way it goes, the way it comes; It saves me many a dreary mile, It brings me quickly to the smile Of those at home, and every day It adds unto my time for play. It keeps me with my friends in touch; No journey now appears too much To make with meetings at the end: It gives me time to be a friend. It laughs at distance, and has power To lengthen every fleeting hour. It bears me into country new That otherwise I'd never view. It's swift and sturdy and it strives To fill with happiness our lives; When for the doctor we've a need It brings him to our door with speed. It saves us hours of anxious care And heavy heartache and despair. It has its faults, but still I sing: The auto is a helpful thing. The Handy Man The handy man about the house Is old and bent and gray; Each morning in the yard he toils, Where all the children play; Some new task every day he finds, Some task he loves to do, The handy man about the house, Whose work is never through. The children stand to see him toil, And watch him mend a chair; They bring their broken toys to him He keeps them in repair. No idle moment Grandpa spends, But finds some work to do, And hums a snatch of some old song, That in his youth he knew. He builds with wood most wondrous things: A table for the den, A music rack to please the girls, A gun case for the men. And 'midst his paints and tools he smiles, And seems as young and gay As any of the little ones Who round him run in play. I stopped to speak with him awhile; "Oh, tell me, Grandpa, pray," I said, "why do you work so hard Throughout the livelong day? Your hair is gray, your back is bent, With weight of years oppressed; This is the evening of your life-- Why don't you sit and rest?" "Ah, no," the old man answered me, "Although I'm old and gray, I like to work out here where I Can watch the children play. The old have tasks that they must do; The greatest of my joys Is working on this shaded porch, And mending children's toys." And as I wandered on, I thought, Oh, shall I lonely be When time has powdered white my hair, And left his mark on me? Will little children round me play, Shall I have work to do? Or shall I be, when age is mine, Lonely and useless too? The New Days The old days, the old days, how oft the poets sing, The days of hope at dewy morn, the days of early spring, The days when every mead was fair, and every heart was true, And every maiden wore a smile, and every sky was blue The days when dreams were golden and every night brought rest, The old, old days of youth and love, the days they say were best But I--I sing the new days, the days that lie before, The days of hope and fancy, the days that I adore. The new days, the new days, the selfsame days they are; The selfsame sunshine heralds them, the selfsame evening star Shines out to light them on their way unto the Bygone Land, And with the selfsame arch of blue the world to-day is spanned. The new days, the new days, when friends are just as true, And maidens smile upon us all, the way they used to do, Dreams we know are golden dreams, hope springs in every breast; It cheers us in the dewy morn and soothes us when we rest. The new days, the new days, of them I want to sing, The new days with the fancies and the golden dreams they bring; The old days had their pleasures, but likewise have the new The gardens with their roses and the meadows bright with dew; We love to-day the selfsame way they loved in days of old; The world is bathed in beauty and it isn't growing cold; There's joy for us a-plenty, there are tasks for us to do, And life is worth the living, for the friends we know are true. The Call Joy stands on the hilltops, Beckoning to me, Urging me to journey Up where I can see Blue skies ever smiling, Cool green fields below, Hear the songs of children Still untouched by woe. Joy stands on the hilltops, Urging me to stay, Spite of toil and trouble, To life's rugged way, Holding out a promise Of a life serene When the steeps I've mastered Lying now between. Joy stands on the hilltops, Smiling down at me, Urging me to clamber Up where I can see Over toil and trouble Far beyond despair, And I answer smiling: Some day I'll be there. Songs of Rejoicing Songs of rejoicin', Of love and of cheer, Are the songs that I'm yearnin' for Year after year. The songs about children Who laugh in their glee Are the songs worth the singin', The bright songs for me. Songs of rejoicin', Of kisses and love, Of faith in the Father, Who sends from above The sunbeams to scatter The gloom and the fear; These songs worth the singin', The songs of good cheer. Songs of rejoicin', Oh, sing them again, The brave songs of courage Appealing to men. Of hope in the future Of heaven the goal; The songs of rejoicin' That strengthen the soul. Another Mouth to Feed We've got another mouth to feed, From out our little store; To satisfy another's need Is now my daily chore. A growing family is ours, Beyond the slightest doubt; It takes all my financial powers To keep them looking stout. With us another makes his bow To breakfast, dine and sup; Our little circle's larger now, For Buddy's got a pup. If I am frayed about the heels And both my elbows shine And if my overcoat reveals The poverty that's mine, 'Tis not because I squander gold In folly's reckless way; The cost of foodstuffs, be it told, Takes all my weekly pay. 'Tis putting food on empty plates That eats my wages up; And now another mouth awaits, For Buddy's got a pup. And yet I gladly stand the strain, And count the task worth while, Nor will I dismally complain While Buddy wears a smile. What's one mouth more at any board Though costly be the fare? The poorest of us can afford His frugal meal to share. And so bring on the extra plate, He will not need a cup, And gladly will I pay the freight Now Buddy's got a pup. The Little Church The little church of Long Ago, where as a boy I sat With mother in the family pew and fumbled with my hat-- How I would like to see it now the way I saw it then, The straight-backed pews, the pulpit high, the women and the men Dressed stiffly in their Sunday clothes and solemnly devout, Who closed their eyes when prayers were said and never looked about-- That little church of Long Ago, it wasn't grand to see, But even as a little boy it meant a lot to me. The choir loft where father sang comes back to me again; I hear his tenor voice once more the way I heard it when The deacons used to pass the plate, and once again I see The people fumbling for their coins, as glad as they could be To drop their quarters on the plate, and I'm a boy once more With my two pennies in my fist that mother gave before We left the house, and once again I'm reaching out to try To drop them on the plate before the deacon passes by. It seems to me I'm sitting in that high-backed pew, the while The minister is preaching in that good old-fashioned style; And though I couldn't understand it all somehow I know The Bible was the text book in that church of Long Ago; He didn't preach on politics, but used the word of God, And even now I seem to see the people gravely nod, As though agreeing thoroughly with all he had to say, And then I see them thanking him before they go away. The little church of Long Ago was not a structure huge, It had no hired singers or no other subterfuge To get the people to attend, 'twas just a simple place Where every Sunday we were told about God's saving grace; No men of wealth were gathered there to help it with a gift; The only worldly thing it had--a mortgage hard to lift. And somehow, dreaming here to-day, I wish that I could know The joy of once more sitting in that church of Long Ago. Sue's Got a Baby Sue's got a baby now, an' she Is like her mother used to be; Her face seems prettier, an' her ways More settled-like. In these few days She's changed completely, an' her smile Has taken on the mother-style. Her voice is sweeter, an' her words Are clear as is the song of birds. She still is Sue, but not the same-- She's different since the baby came. There is a calm upon her face That marks the change that's taken place; It seems as though her eyes now see The wonder things that are to be, An' that her gentle hands now own A gentleness before unknown. Her laughter has a clearer ring Than all the bubbling of a spring, An' in her cheeks love's tender flame Glows brighter since the baby came. I look at her an' I can see Her mother as she used to be. How sweet she was, an' yet how much She sweetened by the magic touch That made her mother! In her face It seemed the angels left a trace Of Heavenly beauty to remain Where once had been the lines of pain An' with the baby in her arms Enriched her with a thousand charms. Sue's got a baby now an' she Is prettier than she used to be. A wondrous change has taken place, A softer beauty marks her face An' in the warmth of her caress There seems the touch of holiness, An' all the charms her mother knew Have blossomed once again in Sue. I sit an' watch her an' I claim My lost joys since her baby came. The Lure That Failed I know a wonderful land, I said, Where the skies are always blue, Where on chocolate drops are the children fed, And cocoanut cookies, too; Where puppy dogs romp at the children's feet, And the liveliest kittens play, And little tin soldiers guard the street To frighten the bears away. This land is reached by a wonderful ship That sails on a golden tide; But never a grown-up makes the trip-- It is only a children's ride. And never a cross-patch journeys there, And never a pouting face, For it is the Land of Smiling, where A frown is a big disgrace. Oh, you board the ship when the sun goes down, And over a gentle sea You slip away from the noisy town To the land of the chocolate tree. And there, till the sun comes over the hill, You frolic and romp and play, And of candy and cake you eat your fill, With no one to tell you "Nay!" So come! It is time for the ship to go To this wonderful land so fair, And gently the summer breezes blow To carry you safely there. So come! Set sail on this golden sea, To the land that is free from dread! "I know what you mean," she said to me, "An' I don't wanna go to bed." The Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving It may be I am getting old and like too much to dwell Upon the days of bygone years, the days I loved so well; But thinking of them now I wish somehow that I could know A simple old Thanksgiving Day, like those of long ago, When all the family gathered round a table richly spread, With little Jamie at the foot and grandpa at the head, The youngest of us all to greet the oldest with a smile, With mother running in and out and laughing all the while. It may be I'm old-fashioned, but it seems to me to-day We're too much bent on having fun to take the time to pray; Each little family grows up with fashions of its own; It lives within a world itself and wants to be alone. It has its special pleasures, its circle, too, of friends; There are no get-together days; each one his journey wends, Pursuing what he likes the best in his particular way, Letting the others do the same upon Thanksgiving Day. I like the olden way the best, when relatives were glad To meet the way they used to do when I was but a lad; The old home was a rendezvous for all our kith and kin, And whether living far or near they all came trooping in With shouts of "Hello, daddy!" as they fairly stormed the place And made a rush for mother, who would stop to wipe her face Upon her gingham apron before she kissed them all, Hugging them proudly to her breast, the grownups and the small. Then laughter rang throughout the home, and, Oh, the jokes they told; From Boston, Frank brought new ones, but father sprang the old; All afternoon we chatted, telling what we hoped to do, The struggles we were making and the hardships we'd gone through; We gathered round the fireside. How fast the hours would fly-- It seemed before we'd settled down 'twas time to say good-bye. Those were the glad Thanksgivings, the old-time families knew When relatives could still be friends and every heart was true. The Old-Fashioned Pair 'Tis a little old house with a squeak in the stairs, And a porch that seems made for just two easy chairs; In the yard is a group of geraniums red, And a glorious old-fashioned peony bed. Petunias and pansies and larkspurs are there Proclaiming their love for the old-fashioned pair. Oh, it's hard now to picture the peace of the place! Never lovelier smile lit a fair woman's face Than the smile of the little old lady who sits On the porch through the bright days of summer and knits. And a courtlier manner no prince ever had Than the little old man that she speaks of as "dad." In that little old house there is nothing of hate; There are old-fashioned things by an old-fashioned grate; On the walls there are pictures of fine looking men And beautiful ladies to look at, and then Time has placed on the mantel to comfort them there The pictures of grandchildren, radiantly fair. Every part of the house seems to whisper of joy, Save the trinkets that speak of a lost little boy. Yet Time has long since soothed the hurt and the pain, And his glorious memories only remain: The laughter of children the old walls have known, And the joy of it stays, though the babies have flown. I am fond of that house and that old-fashioned pair And the glorious calm that is hovering there. The riches of life are not silver and gold But fine sons and daughters when we are grown old, And I pray when the years shall have silvered our hair We shall know the delights of that old-fashioned pair. At Pelletier's We've been out to Pelletier's Brushing off the stain of years, Quitting all the moods of men And been boys and girls again. We have romped through orchards blazing, Petted ponies gently grazing, Hidden in the hayloft's spaces, And the queerest sort of places That are lost (and it's a pity!) To the youngsters in the city. And the hired men have let us Drive their teams, and stopped to get us Apples from the trees, and lingered While a cow's cool nose we fingered; And they told us all about her And her grandpa who was stouter. We've been out to Pelletier's Watching horses raise their ears, And their joyous whinnies hearing When the man with oats was nearing. We've been climbing trees an' fences Never minding consequences. And we helped the man to curry The fat ponies' sides so furry. And we saw a squirrel taking Walnuts to the nest he's making, Storing them for winter, when he Can't get out to hunt for any. And we watched the turkeys, growing Big and fat and never knowing That the reason they were living Is to die for our Thanksgiving. We've been out to Pelletier's, Brushing off the stain of years. We were kids set free from shamming And the city's awful cramming, And the clamor and the bustle And the fearful rush and hustle-- Out of doors with room to race in And broad acres soft to chase in. We just stretched our souls and let them Drop the petty cares that fret them, Left our narrow thoughts behind us, Loosed the selfish traits that bind us And were wholesomer and plainer Simpler, kinder folks and saner, And at night said: "It's a pity Mortals ever built a city." At Christmas A man is at his finest towards the finish of the year; He is almost what he should be when the Christmas season's here; Then he's thinking more of others than be's thought the months before, And the laughter of his children is a joy worth toiling for. He is less a selfish creature than at any other time; When the Christmas spirit rules him he comes close to the sublime. When it's Christmas man is bigger and is better in his part; He is keener for the service that is prompted by the heart. All the petty thoughts and narrow seem to vanish for awhile And the true reward he's seeking is the glory of a smile. Then for others he is toiling and somehow it seems to me That at Christmas he is almost what God wanted him to be. If I had to paint a picture of a man I think I'd wait Till he'd fought his selfish battles and had put aside his hate. I'd not catch him at his labors when his thoughts are all of pelf, On the long days and the dreary when he's striving for himself. I'd not take him when he's sneering, when he's scornful or depressed, But I'd look for him at Christmas when he's shining at his best. Man is ever in a struggle and he's oft misunderstood; There are days the worst that's in him is the master of the good, But at Christmas kindness rules him and he puts himself aside And his petty hates are vanquished and his heart is opened wide. Oh, I don't know how to say it, but somehow it seems to me That at Christmas man is almost what God sent him here to be. The Little Army Little women, little men, Childhood never comes again. Live it gayly while you may; Give your baby souls to play; March to sound of stick and pan, In your paper hats, and tramp just as bravely as you can To your pleasant little camp. Wooden sword and wooden gun Make a battle splendid fun. Fine the victories you win Dimpled cheek and dimpled chin. Little women, little men, Hearts are light when years are ten; Eyes are bright and cheeks are red When life's cares lie all ahead. Drums make merry music when They are leading children out; Trumpet calls are cheerful then, Glorious is the battle shout. Little soldiers, single file, Uniformed in grin and smile, Conquer every foe they meet Up and down the gentle street. Little women, little men, Would that youth could come again! Would that I might fall in line As a little boy of nine, But with broomstick for a gun, And with paper hat that I Bravely wore back there for fun, Never more may I defy Foes that deep in ambush kneel-- Now my warfare's grim and real. I that once was brave and bold, Now am battered, bruised and old. Little women, little men, Planning to attack my den, Little do you know the joy That you give a worn-out boy As he hears your gentle feet Pitter-patting in the hall; Gladly does he wait to meet Conquest by a troop so small. Dimpled cheek and dimpled chin, You have but to smile to win. Come and take him where he stays Dreaming of his by-gone days. Who Is Your Boss? "I work for someone else," he said; "I have no chance to get ahead. At night I leave the job behind; At morn I face the same old grind. And everything I do by day Just brings to me the same old pay. While I am here I cannot see The semblance of a chance for me." I asked another how he viewed The occupation he pursued. "It's dull and dreary toil," said he, "And brings but small reward to me. My boss gets all the profits fine That I believe are rightly mine. My life's monotonously grim Because I'm forced to work for him." I stopped a third young man to ask His attitude towards his task. A cheerful smile lit up his face; "I shan't be always in this place," He said, "because some distant day A better job will come my way." "Your boss?" I asked, and answered he: "I'm going to make him notice me. "He pays me wages and in turn That money I am here to earn, But I don't work for him alone; Allegiance to myself I own. I do not do my best because It gets me favors or applause-- I work for him, but I can see That actually I work for me. "It looks like business good to me The best clerk on the staff to be. If customers approve my style And like my manner and my smile I help the firm to get the pelf, But what is more I help myself. From one big thought I'm never free: That every day I work for me." Oh, youth, thought I, you're bound to climb The ladder of success in time. Too many self-impose the cross Of daily working for a boss, Forgetting that in failing him It is their own stars that they dim. And when real service they refuse They are the ones who really lose. The Truth About Envy I like to see the flowers grow, To see the pansies in a row; I think a well-kept garden's fine, And wish that such a one were mine; But one can't have a stock of flowers Unless he digs and digs for hours. My ground is always bleak and bare; The roses do not flourish there. And where I once sowed poppy seeds Is now a tangled mass of weeds.' I'm fond of flowers, but admit, For digging I don't care a bit. I envy men whose yards are gay, But never work as hard as they; I also envy men who own More wealth than I have ever known. I'm like a lot of men who yearn For joys that they refuse to earn. You cannot have the joys of work And take the comfort of a shirk. I find the man I envy most Is he who's longest at his post. I could have gold and roses, too, If I would work like those who do. Living If through the years we're not to do Much finer deeds than we have done; If we must merely wander through Time's garden, idling in the sun; If there is nothing big ahead, Why do we fear to join the dead? Unless to-morrow means that we Shall do some needed service here; That tasks are waiting you and me That will be lost, save we appear; Then why this dreadful thought of sorrow That we may never see to-morrow? If all our finest deeds are done, And all our splendor's in the past; If there's no battle to be won, What matter if to-day's our last? Is life so sweet that we would live Though nothing back to life we give? It is not greatness to have clung To life through eighty fruitless years; The man who dies in action, young, Deserves our praises and our cheers, Who ventures all for one great deed And gives his life to serve life's need. On Being Broke Don't mind being broke at all, When I can say that what I had Was spent for toys for kiddies small And that the spending made 'em glad. I don't regret the money gone, If happiness it left behind. An empty purse I'll look upon Contented, if its record's kind. There's no disgrace in being broke, Unless it's due to flying high; Though poverty is not a joke, The only thing that counts is "why?" The dollars come to me and go; To-day I've eight or ten to spend; To-morrow I'll be sailing low, And have to lean upon a friend. But if that little bunch of mine Is richer by some toy or frill, I'll face the world and never whine Because I lack a dollar bill. I'm satisfied, if I can see One smile that hadn't bloomed before. The only thing that counts with me Is what I've spent my money for. I might regret my sorry plight, If selfishness brought it about; If for the fun I had last night, Some joy they'd have to go without. But if I've swapped my bit of gold, For laughter and a happier pack Of youngsters in my little fold I'll never wish those dollars back. If I have traded coin for things They needed and have left them glad, Then being broke no sorrow brings-- I've done my best with what I had. The Broken Drum There is sorrow in the household; There's a grief too hard to bear; There's a little cheek that's tear-stained There's a sobbing baby there. And try how we will to comfort, Still the tiny teardrops come; For, to solve a vexing problem, Curly Locks has wrecked his drum. It had puzzled him and worried, How the drum created sound; For he couldn't understand it It was not enough to pound With his tiny hands and drumsticks, And at last the day has come, When another hope is shattered; Now in ruins lies his drum. With his metal bank he broke it, Tore the tightened skin aside, Gazed on vacant space bewildered, Then he broke right down and cried. For the broken bubble shocked him And the baby tears must come; Now a joy has gone forever: Curly Locks has wrecked his drum. While his mother tries to soothe him, I am sitting here alone; In the life that lies behind me; Many shocks like that I've known. And the boy who's upstairs weeping, In the years that are to come Will learn that many pleasures Are as empty as his drum. Mother's Excuses Mother for me made excuses When I was a little tad; Found some reason for my conduct When it had been very bad. Blamed it on a recent illness Or my nervousness and told Father to be easy with me Every time he had to scold. And I knew, as well as any Roguish, healthy lad of ten, Mother really wasn't telling Truthful things to father then. I knew I deserved the whipping, Knew that I'd been very bad, Knew that mother knew it also When she intervened with dad. I knew that my recent illness Hadn't anything to do With the mischief I'd been up to, And I knew that mother knew. But remembering my fever And my nervous temperament, Father put away the shingle And postponed the sad event. Now his mother, when I threaten Punishment for this and that, Calls to mind the dreary night hours When beside his bed we sat. Comes and tells me that he's nervous, That's the reason he was bad, And the boy and doting mother Put it over on the dad. Some day when he's grown as I am, With a boy on mischief bent, He will hear the timeworn story Of the nervous temperament. And remembering the shingle That aside I always threw, All I hope is that he'll let them Put it over on him, too. As It Is I might wish the world were better, I might sit around and sigh For a water that is wetter And a bluer sort of sky. There are times I think the weather Could be much improved upon, But when taken altogether It's a good old world we're on. I might tell how I would make it, But when I have had my say It is still my job to take it As it is, from day to day. I might wish that men were kinder, And less eager after gold; I might wish that they were blinder To the faults they now behold. And I'd try to make them gentle, And more tolerant in strife And a bit more sentimental O'er the finer things of life. But I am not here to make them, Or to work in human clay; It is just my work to take them As they are from day to day. Here's a world that suffers sorrow, Here are bitterness and pain, And the joy we plan to-morrow May be ruined by the rain. Here are hate and greed and badness, Here are love and friendship, too, But the most of it is gladness When at last we've run it through. Could we only understand it As we shall some distant day We should see that He who planned it Knew our needs along the way. A Boy's Tribute Prettiest girl I've ever seen Is Ma. Lovelier than any queen Is Ma. Girls with curls go walking by, Dainty, graceful, bold an' shy, But the one that takes my eye Is Ma. Every girl made into one Is Ma. Sweetest girl to look upon Is Ma. Seen 'em short and seen 'em tall, Seen 'em big and seen 'em small, But the finest one of all Is Ma. Best of all the girls on earth Is Ma. One that all the rest is worth Is Ma. Some have beauty, some have grace, Some look nice in silk and lace, But the one that takes first place Is Ma. Sweetest singer in the land is Ma. She that has the softest hand Is Ma. Tenderest, gentlest nurse is she, Full of fun as she can be, An' the only girl for me Is Ma. Bet if there's an angel here It's Ma.' if God has a sweetheart dear, It's Ma. Take the girls that artists draw, An' all the girls I ever saw, The only one without a flaw Is Ma. Up to the Ceiling Up to the ceiling And down to the floor, Hear him now squealing And calling for more. Laughing and shouting, "Away up!" he cries. Who could be doubting The love in his eyes. Heigho! my baby! And heigho! my son! Up to the ceiling Is wonderful fun. Bigger than daddy And bigger than mother; Only a laddie, But bigger than brother. Laughing and crowing And squirming and wriggling, Cheeks fairly glowing, Now cooing and giggling! Down to the cellar, Then quick as a dart Up to the ceiling Brings joy to the heart. Gone is the hurry, The anguish and sting, The heartache and worry That business cares bring; Gone is the hustle, The clamor for gold, The rush and the bustle The day's affairs hold. Peace comes to the battered Old heart of his dad, When "up to the ceiling" He plays with his lad. Thanksgiving Gettin' together to smile an' rejoice, An' eatin' an' laughin' with folks of your choice; An' kissin' the girls an' declarin' that they Are growin more beautiful day after day; Chattin' an' braggin' a bit with the men, Buildin' the old family circle again; Livin' the wholesome an' old-fashioned cheer, Just for awhile at the end of the year. Greetings fly fast as we crowd through the door And under the old roof we gather once more Just as we did when the youngsters were small; Mother's a little bit grayer, that's all. Father's a little bit older, but still Ready to romp an' to laugh with a will. Here we are back at the table again Tellin' our stories as women an men. Bowed are our heads for a moment in prayer; Oh, but we're grateful an' glad to be there. Home from the east land an' home from the west, Home with the folks that are dearest an' best. Out of the sham of the cities afar We've come for a time to be just what we are. Here we can talk of ourselves an' be frank, Forgettin' position an' station an' rank. Give me the end of the year an' its fun When most of the plannin' an' toilin' is done; Bring all the wanderers home to the nest, Let me sit down with the ones I love best, Hear the old voices still ringin' with song, See the old faces unblemished by wrong, See the old table with all of its chairs An I'll put soul in my Thanksgivin' prayers. The Boy Soldier Each evening on my lap there climbs A little boy of three, And with his dimpled, chubby fists He pounds me shamefully. He gives my beard a vicious tug, He bravely pulls my nose; And then he tussles with my hair And then explores my clothes. He throws my pencils on the floor My watch is his delight; He never seems to think that I Have any private right. And though he breaks my good cigars, With all his cunning art, He works a greater ruin, far, Deep down within my heart. This roguish little tyke who sits Each night upon my knee, And hammers at his poor old dad, Is bound to conquer me. He little knows that long ago, He forced the gates apart, And marched triumphantly into The city of my heart. Some day perhaps, in years to come, When he is older grown, He, too, will be assailed as I, By youngsters of his own. And when at last a little lad Gives battle on his knee, I know that he'll be captured, too, Just as he captured me. My Land My land is where the kind folks are, And where the friends are true, Where comrades brave will travel far Some kindly deed to do. My land is where the smiles are bright And where the speech is sweet, And where men cling to what is right Regardless of defeat. My land is where the starry flag Gleams brightly in the sun; The land of rugged mountain crag, The land where rivers run, Where cheeks are tanned and hearts are bold And women fair to see, And all is not a strife for gold-- That land is home to me. My land is where the children play, And where the roses bloom, And where to break the peaceful day No flaming cannons boom. My land's the land of honest toil, Of laughter, dance and song, Where harvests crown the fertile soil And thoughtful are the strong. My land's the land of many creeds And tolerance for all It is the land of 'splendid deeds Where men are seldom small. And though the world should bid me roam, Its distant scenes to see, My land would keep my heart at home And there I'd always be. Daddies I would rather be the daddy Of a romping, roguish crew, Of a bright-eyed chubby laddie And a little girl or two, Than the monarch of a nation In his high and lofty seat Taking empty adoration From the subjects at his feet. I would rather own their kisses As at night to me they run, Than to be the king who misses All the simpler forms of fun. When his dreary day is ending He is dismally alone, But when my sun is descending There are joys for me to own. He may ride to horns and drumming; I must walk a quiet street, But when once they see me coming Then on joyous, flying feet They come racing to me madly And I catch them with a swing And I say it proudly, gladly, That I'm happier than a king. You may talk of lofty places, You may boast of pomp and power, Men may turn their eager faces To the glory of an hour, But give me the humble station With its joys that long survive, For the daddies of the nation Are the happiest men alive. Loafing Under the shade of trees, Flat on my back at ease, Lulled by the hum of bees, There's where I rest; Breathing the scented air, Lazily loafing there, Never a thought of care, Peace in my breast. There where the waters run, Laughing along in fun, I go when work is done, There's where I stray; Couch of a downy green, Restful and sweet and clean, Set in a fairy scene, Wondrously gay. Worn out with toil and strife, Sick of the din of life, With pain and sorrow rife, There's where I go; Soothing and sweet I find, Comforts that ease the mind, Leaving dull care behind, Rest there I know. Flat on my back I lie, Watching the ships go by, Under the fleecy sky, Day dreaming there; From grief I find surcease, From worry gain release, Resting in perfect peace, Free from all care. When Father Played Baseball The smell of arnica is strong, And mother's time is spent In rubbing father's arms and back With burning liniment. The house is like a druggist's shop; Strong odors fill the hall, And day and night we hear him groan, Since father played baseball. He's forty past, but he declared That he was young as ever; And in his youth, he said, he was A baseball player clever. So when the business men arranged A game, they came to call On dad and asked him if he thought That he could play baseball. "I haven't played in fifteen years," Said father, "but I know That I can stop the grounders hot, And I can make the throw. I used to play a corking game; The curves, I know them all; And you can count on me, you bet, To join your game of ball." On Saturday the game was played, And all of us were there; Dad borrowed an old uniform, That Casey used to wear. He paid three dollars for a glove, Wore spikes to save a fall He had the make-up on all right, When father played baseball. At second base they stationed him; A liner came his way; Dad tried to stop it with his knee, And missed a double play. He threw into the bleachers twice, He let a pop fly fall; Oh, we were all ashamed of him, When father played baseball. He tried to run, but tripped and fell, He tried to take a throw; It put three fingers out of joint, And father let it go. He stopped a grounder with his face; Was spiked, nor was that all; It looked to us like suicide, When father played baseball. At last he limped away, and now He suffers in disgrace; His arms are bathed in liniment; Court plaster hides his face. He says his back is breaking, and His legs won't move at all; It made a wreck of father when He tried to play baseball. The smell of arnica abounds; He hobbles with a cane; A row of blisters mar his hands; He is in constant pain. But lame and weak as father is, He swears he'll lick us all If we dare even speak about The day he played baseball. About Boys Show me the boy who never threw A stone at someone's cat; Or never hurled a snowball swift At someone's high silk hat. Who never ran away from school, To seek the swimming hole; Or slyly from a neighbor's yard Green apples never stole. Show me the boy who never broke A pane of window glass; Who never disobeyed the sign That says: "Keep off the grass." Who never did a thousand things, That grieve us sore to tell; And I'll show you a little boy Who must be far from well. Curly Locks Curly locks, what do you know of the world, And what do your brown eyes see? Has your baby mind been able to find One thread of the mystery? Do you know of the sorrow and pain that lie In the realms that you've never seen? Have you even guessed of the great unrest In the world where you've never been? Curly locks, what do you know of the world And what do you see in the skies? When you solemnly stare at the world out there Can you see where the future lies? What wonderful thoughts are you thinking now? Can it be that you really know That beyond your youth there are joy and ruth, On the way that you soon must go? Baby's Got a Tooth The telephone rang in my office to-day, as it often has tinkled before. I turned in my chair in a half-grouchy way, for a telephone call is a bore; And I thought, "It is somebody wanting to know the distance from here to Pekin." In a tone that was gruff I shouted "Hello," a sign for the talk to begin. "What is it?" I asked in a terrible way. I was huffy, to tell you the truth, Then over the wire I heard my wife say: "The baby, my dear, has a tooth!" I have seen a man jump when the horse that he backed finished first in a well-driven race. I have heard the man cheer, as a matter of fact, and I've seen the blood rush to his face; I've been on the spot when good news has come in and I've witnessed expressions of glee That range from a yell to a tilt of the chin; and some things have happened to me That have thrilled me with joy from my toes to my head, but never from earliest youth Have I jumped with delight as I did when she said, "The baby, my dear, has a tooth." I have answered the telephone thousands of times for messages both good and bad; I've received the reports of most horrible crimes, and news that was cheerful or sad; I've been telephoned this and been telephoned that, a joke, or an errand to run; I've been called to the phone for the idlest of chat, when there was much work to be done; But never before have I realized quite the thrill of a message, forsooth, Till over the wire came these words that I write, "The baby, my dear, has a tooth." Home and the Baby Home was never home before, Till the baby came. Love no golden jewels wore, Till the baby came. There was joy, but now it seems Dreams were not the rosy dreams, Sunbeams not such golden beams-- Till the baby came. Home was never really gay, Till the baby came. I'd forgotten how to play, Till the baby came. Smiles were never half so bright, Troubles never half so light, Worry never took to flight, Till the baby came. Home was never half so blest, Till the baby came. Lacking something that was best, Till the baby came. Kisses were not half so sweet, Love not really so complete, Joy had never found our street Till the baby came. The Fisherman Along a stream that raced and ran Through tangled trees and over stones, That long had heard the pipes o' Pan And shared the joys that nature owns, I met a fellow fisherman, Who greeted me in cheerful tones. The lines of care were on his face. I guessed that he had buried dead; Had run for gold full many a race, And kept great problems in his head, But in that gentle resting place No word of wealth or fame he said. He showed me trout that he had caught And praised the larger ones of mine; Told me how that big beauty fought And almost broke his silken line; Spoke of the trees and sky, and thought Them proof of life and power divine. There man to man we talked of trees And birds, as people talk of men; Discussed the busy ways of bees Wondered what lies beyond our ken; Where is the land no mortal sees, And shall we come this way again. "Out here," he told me, with a smile, "Away from all the city's sham, The strife for splendor and for style, The ticker and the telegram I come for just a little while To be exactly as I am." Foes think the bad in him they've guessed And prate about the wrong they scan; Friends that have seen him at his best Believe they know his every plan; I know him better than the rest, I know him as a fisherman. The March of Mortality Over the hills of time to the valley of endless years; Over the roads of woe to the land that is free from tears Up from the haunts of men to the place where the angels are, This is the march of mortality to a wonderful goal afar. Troopers we are in life, warring at times with wrong, But promised ever unbroken rest at last in a land of song; And whether we serve or rule, and whether we fall or rise, We shall come, in time, to that golden vale where never the spirit dies. Back of the strife for gain, and under the toil for fame, The dreams of men in this mortal march have ever remained the same. They have lived through their days and years for the great rewards to be, When earth's dusty garb shall be laid aside for the robes of eternity. This is the march of mortality, whatever man's race or creed, And whether he's one of the savage tribe or one of a higher breed, He is conscious dimly of better things that were promised him long ago, And he keeps his place in the line with men for the joys that his soul shall know. Growing Down Time was I thought of growing up, But that was ere the babies came; I'd dream and plan to be a man And win my share of wealth and fame, For age held all the splendors then And wisdom seemed lifes brightest crown For mortal brow. It's different now. Each evening finds me growing down. I'm not so keen for growing up To wrinkled cheek and heavy tongue, And sluggish blood; with little Bud I long to be a comrade young. His sports are joys I want to share, His games are games I want to play, An old man grim's no chum for him And so I'm growing down to-day. I'm back to marbles and to tops, To flying kites and one-ol'-cat; "Fan acres!" I now loudly cry; I also take my turn at bat; I've had my fling at growing up And want no old man's fair renown. To be a boy is finer joy, And so I've started growing down. Once more I'm learning games I knew When I was four and five and six, I'm going back along life's track To find the same old-fashioned tricks, And happy are the hours we spend Together, without sigh or frown. To be a boy is Age's joy, And so to him I'm growing down. The Roads of Happiness The roads of happiness are not The selfish roads of pleasure seeking, Where cheeks are flushed with haste and hot And none has time for kindly speaking. But they're the roads where lovers stray, Where wives and husbands walk together And children romp along the way Whenever it is pleasant weather. The roads of happiness are trod By simple folks and tender-hearted, By gentle folks that worship God And want to live their days unparted. There kindly people stop and talk, Regardless of the chase for money, There, arm in arm, the grown-ups walk And every eye you see is sunny. The roads of happiness are lined, Not with the friends of royal splendor, But with the loyal friends and kind That do the gentle deeds and tender. There fame has never brought unrest Nor glory set men's hearts to aching; There unabandoned is life's best For selfish love and money making. The roads of happiness are those That do not lead to pomp and glory But wind among the joys and woes That make the humble toiler's story. The roads that oft we used to tread In early days when first we mated, When hearts were light and cheeks were red, And days were not with burdens freighted. June June is here, the month of roses, month of brides and month of bees, Weaving garlands for our lassies, whispering love songs in the trees, Painting scenes of gorgeous splendor, canvases no man could brush, Changing scenes from early morning till the sunset's crimson flush. June is here, the month of blossoms, month of roses white and red, Wet with dew and perfume-laden, nodding wheresoe'er we tread; Come the bees to gather honey, all the lazy afternoon; Flowers and lassies, men and meadows, love alike the month of June. Month of love and month of sunshine, month of happiness and song, Month that cheers the sad wayfarer as he plods the road along; Spreading out a velvet carpet, green and yellow, for his feet, And affording for his rest hours many a cool and sweet retreat. When Mother Sleeps When mother sleeps, a slamming door Disturbs her not at all; A man might walk across the floor Or wander through the hall A pistol shot outside would not Drive slumber from her eyes-- But she is always on the spot The moment baby cries. The thunder crash she would not hear, Nor shouting in the street; A barking dog, however near, Of sleep can never cheat Dear mother, but I've noticed this To my profound surprise: That always wide-awake she is The moment baby cries. However weary she may be, Though wrapped in slumber deep, Somehow it always seems to me Her vigil she will keep. Sound sleeper that she is, I take It in her heart there lies A love that causes her to wake The moment baby cries. The Weaver The patter of rain on the roof, The glint of the sun on the rose; Of life, these the warp and the woof, The weaving that everyone knows. Now grief with its consequent tear, Now joy with its luminous smile; The days are the threads of the year-- Is what I am weaving worth while? What pattern have I on my loom? Shall my bit of tapestry please? Am I working with gray threads of gloom? Is there faith in the figures I seize? When my fingers are lifeless and cold, And the threads I no longer can weave Shall there be there for men to behold One sign of the things I believe? God sends me the gray days and rare, The threads from his bountiful skein, And many, as sunshine, are fair. And some are as dark as the rain. And I think as I toil to express My life through the days slipping by, Shall my tapestry prove a success? What sort of a weaver am I? Am I making the most of the red And the bright strands of luminous gold? Or blotting them out with the thread By which all men's failure is told? Am I picturing life as despair, As a thing men shall shudder to see, Or weaving a bit that is fair That shall stand as the record of me? The Few The easy roads are crowded And the level roads are jammed; The pleasant little rivers With the drifting folks are crammed. But off yonder where it's rocky, Where you get a better view, You will find the ranks are thinning And the travelers are few. Where the going's smooth and pleasant You will always find the throng, For the many, more's the pity, Seem to like to drift along. But the steeps that call for courage, And the task that's hard to do In the end result in glory For the never-wavering few. Real Swimming I saw him in the distance, as the train went speeding by, A shivery little fellow standing in the sun to dry. And a little pile of clothing very near him I could see: He was owner of a gladness that had once belonged to me. I have shivered as he shivered, I have dried the way he dried, I've stood naked in God's sunshine with my garments at my side; And I thought as I beheld him, of the many weary men Who would like to go in swimming as a little boy again. I saw him scarce a moment, yet I knew his lips were blue And I knew his teeth were chattering just as mine were wont to do; And I knew his merry playmates in the pond were splashing still; I could tell how much he envied all the boys that never chill; And throughout that lonesome journey, I kept living o'er and o'er The joys of going swimming when no bathing suits we wore; I was with that little fellow, standing chattering in the sun; I was sharing in his shivers and a partner of his fun. Back to me there came the pictures that I never shall forget When I dared not travel homewards if my shock of hair was wet, When I did my brief undressing under fine and friendly trees In the days before convention rigged us up in b.v.d's. And I dived for stones and metal on the mill pond's muddy floor, Then stood naked in the sunshine till my blood grew warm once more. I was back again, a youngster, in those golden days of old, When my teeth were wont to chatter and my lips were blue with cold. The Love of the Game There is too much of sighing, and weaving Of pitiful tales of despair. There is too much of wailing and grieving, And too much of railing at care. There is far too much glorification Of money and pleasure and fame; But I sing the joy of my station, And I sing the love of my game. There is too much of tremble-lip telling Of hurts that have come with the fight. There is too much of pitiful dwelling On plans that have failed to go right. There is too much of envious pining For luxuries others may claim. Too much thought of wining and dining, But I sing the love of my game. There is too much of grim magnifying The troubles that come with the day, There is too much indifferent trying To travel a care-beset way. Too much do men think of gold-getting, Too much have they underwrit shame, Which accounts for the frowning and fretting, But I sing the joy of my game. Let's get back to the work we are doing; Let us reckon its joys and its pain; Let us pause while our tasks we're reviewing, To sum up the cost of each gain. Let us give up our whining and wailing Because of the bruises that maim, And battle the chances of failing As being a part of the game. Let us care more for serving than winning, Let us look at our woes as they are; It is time now that we were beginning To be less afraid of a scar. Let us cease in our glorification Of money and pleasure and fame, And find, whatsoe'er be our station, Our joy in the love of the game. Roses and Sunshine Rough is the road I am journeying now, Heavy the burden I'm bearing to-day; But I'm humming a song, as I wander along, And I smile at the roses that nod by the way. Red roses sweet, Blooming there at my feet, Just dripping with honey and perfume and cheer; What a weakling I'd be If I tried not to see The joy and the comfort you bring to us here. Just tramping along o'er the highway of life, Knowing not what's ahead but still doing my best; And I sing as I go, for my soul seems to know In the end I shall come to the valley of rest. With the sun in my face And the roses to grace The roads that I travel, what have I to fear? What a coward I'd be If I tried not to see The roses of hope and the sunshine of cheer. 
8648	----	WAR POETRY OF THE SOUTH Edited By William Gilmore Simms, LL. D. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, By RICHARDSON & CO. In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. Press of Geo. C. Rand & Avery, 540 Broadway. To The Women of the South I Inscribe This Volume They have lost a cause, but they have made a triumph! They have shown themselves worthy of any manhood; and will leave a record which shall survive all the caprices of time. They have proved themselves worthy of the best womanhood, and, in their posterity, will leave no race which shall be unworthy of the cause which is lost, or of the mothers, sisters and wives, who have taught such noble lessons of virtuous effort, and womanly endurance. W.G.S. Preface. Several considerations have prompted the editor of this volume in the compilation of its pages. It constitutes a contribution to the national literature which is assumed to be not unworthy of it, and which is otherwise valuable as illustrating the degree of mental and art development which has been made, in a large section of the country, under circumstances greatly calculated to stimulate talent and provoke expression, through the higher utterances of passion and imagination. Though sectional in its character, and indicative of a temper and a feeling which were in conflict with nationality, yet, now that the States of the Union have been resolved into one nation, this collection is essentially as much the property of the whole as are the captured cannon which were employed against it during the progress of the late war. It belongs to the national literature, and will hereafter be regarded as constituting a proper part of it, just as legitimately to be recognized by the nation as are the rival ballads of the cavaliers and roundheads, by the English, in the great civil conflict of their country. The emotional literature of a people is as necessary to the philosophical historian as the mere details of events in the progress of a nation. This is essential to the reputation of the Southern people, as illustrating their feelings, sentiments, ideas, and opinions--the motives which influenced their actions, and the objects which they had in contemplation, and which seemed to them to justify the struggle in which they were engaged. It shows with what spirit the popular mind regarded the course of events, whether favorable or adverse; and, in this aspect, it is even of more importance to the writer of history than any mere chronicle of facts. The mere facts in a history do not always, or often, indicate the true _animus_, of the action. But, in poetry and song, the emotional nature is apt to declare itself without reserve--speaking out with a passion which disdains subterfuge, and through media of imagination and fancy, which are not only without reserve, but which are too coercive in their own nature, too arbitrary in their influence, to acknowledge any restraints upon that expression, which glows or weeps with emotions that gush freely and freshly from the heart. With this persuasion, we can also forgive the muse who, in her fervor, is sometimes forgetful of her art. And yet, it is believed that the numerous pieces of this volume will be found creditable to the genius and culture of the Southern people, and honorable, as in accordance with their convictions. They are derived from all the States of the late Southern Confederacy, and will be found truthfully to exhibit the sentiment and opinion prevailing more or less generally throughout the whole. The editor has had special advantages in making the compilation. Having a large correspondence in most of the Southern States, he has found no difficulty in procuring his material. Contributions have poured in upon him from all portions of the South; the original publications having been, in a large number of cases, subjected to the careful revision of the several authors. It is a matter of great regret with him that the limits of the present volume have not suffered him to do justice to, and find a place for, many of the pieces which fully deserve to be put on record. Some of the poems were quite too long for his purpose; a large number, delayed by the mails and other causes, were received too late for publication. Several collections, from Louisiana, North Carolina, and Texas, especially, are omitted for this reason. Many of these pieces are distinguished by fire, force, passion, and a free play of fancy. Briefly, his material would enable him to prepare another volume, similar to the present, which would not be unworthy of its companionship. He is authorized by his publisher to say that, in the event of the popular success of the present volume, he will cheerfully follow up its publication by a second, of like style, character, and dimensions. The editor has seen with pleasure the volume of "Rebel Rhymes" edited by Mr. Moore, and of "South Songs," by Mr. De Leon. He has seen, besides, a single number of a periodical pamphlet called "The Southern Monthly," published at Memphis, Tenn. This has been supplied him by a contributor. He has seen no other publications of this nature, though he has heard of others, and has sought for them in vain. There may be others still forthcoming; for, in so large a field, with a population so greatly scattered as that of the South, it is a physical impossibility adequately to do justice to the whole by any one editor; and each of the sections must make its own contributions, in its own time, and according to its several opportunities. There will be room enough for all; and each, I doubt not, will possess its special claims to recognition and reward. His own collections, made during the progress of the war, from the newspapers, chiefly, of South Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia, were copious. Of these, many have been omitted from this collection, which, he trusts, will some day find another medium of publication. He has been able to ascertain the authorship, in many cases, of these writings; but must regret still that so many others, under a too fastidious delicacy, deny that their names should be made known. It is to be hoped that they will hereafter be supplied. To the numerous ladies who have so frankly and generously contributed to this collection, by sending originals and making copies, he begs to offer his most grateful acknowledgments. A large proportion of the pieces omitted are of elegiac character. Of this class, he could find a place for such pieces only as were dedicated to the most distinguished of the persons falling in battle, or such as are marked by the higher characteristics of poetry--freshness, thought, and imagination. But many of the omitted pieces are quite worthy of preservation. Much space has not been given to that class of songs, camp catches, or marching ballads, which are so numerous in the "Rebel Rhymes" of Mr. Moore. The songs which are most popular are rarely such as may claim poetical rank. They depend upon lively music and certain spirit-stirring catchwords, and are rarely worked up with much regard to art or even, propriety. Still, many of these should have found a place in this volume, had adequate space been allowed the editor. It is his desire, as well as that of the publisher, to collect and bind together these fugitives in yet another publication. He will preserve the manuscripts and copies of all unpublished pieces, with the view to this object--keeping them always subject to the wishes of their several writers. At the close, he must express the hope that these poems will be recognized, not only as highly creditable to the Southern mind, but as truly illustrative, if not justificatory of, that sentiment and opinion with which they have been written; which sentiment and opinion have sustained their people through a war unexampled in its horrors in modern times, and which has fully tested their powers of endurance, as well as their ability in creating their own resources, under all reverses, and amidst every form of privation. W.G.S. Brooklyn, September 8, 1866. Contents. Ethnogenesis, _Henry Timrod_ God Save the South, _George H. Miles_ "You can never win them back", _Catherine M. Warfield_ The Southern Cross, _E. K. Blunt_ South Carolina, _S. Henry Dickson_ The New Star, _B. M. Anderson_ The Irrepressible Conflict, _Tyrtæus_ The Southern Republic, _Olivia T. Thomas_ "Is there then no Hope?", _Charleston Courier_ The Fate of the Republic, _Charleston Mercury_ The Voice of the South, _Charleston Mercury_ The Oath of Freedom, _James Barron Hope_ The Battle Cry of the South, _James R. Randall_ Sonnet, _Charleston Mercury_ Seventy-six and Sixty-one, _J. W. Overall_ "Reddato Gladium", _Richmond Whig_ "Nay, keep the Sword", _Richmond Whig_ Coercion, _John R. Thompson_ A Cry to Arms, _Henry Timrod_ Jackson, the Alexandria Martyr, _W. H. Holcombe_ The Martyr of Alexandria, _James W. Simmons_ The Blessed Union, _Charleston Mercury_ The Fire of Freedom, _Richmond paper_ Hymn to the National Flag, _Mrs. M. J. Preston_ Sonnet--moral of party, _Charleston Mercury_ Our Faith in '61, _A. J. Requier_ "Wouldst thou have me love thee?", _Alex. B. Meek_ Enlisted to-day, _Anonymous_ "My Maryland", _James R. Randall_ The Boy Soldier, _Lady of Savannah_ The good old cause, _John D. Phelan_ Manassas, _Catherine M. Warfield_ Virginia, _Ibid._ The War-Christian's Thanksgiving, _S. Teackle Wallis_ Sonnet, _Charleston Mercury_ Marching to Death, _J. Herbert Sass_ Charleston, _Henry Timrod_ Charleston, _Paul H. Hayne_ "Ye Men of Alabama", _Jno. D. Phelan_ Nec temere, nec timida, _Annie C. Ketchum_ Dixie, _Albert Pike_ The Old Rifleman, _Frank Ticknor_ Battle Hymn, _Charleston Mercury_ Kentucky, she is sold, _J. R. Barrick_ The Ship of State, _Charleston Mercury_ "In his blanket on the ground," _Caroline H. Gervais_ The Mountain Partisan, _Charleston Mercury_ The Cameo Bracelet, _James R. Randall_ Zollicoffer, _Henry L. Flash_ Beauregard, _Catherine M. Warfield_ South Carolina, _Gossypium_ Carolina, _Henry Timrod_ My Mother Land, _Paul H. Hayne_ Joe Johnston, _Jno. R. Thompson_ Over the River, _Jane T. H. Cross_ The Confederacy, _Jane T. H. Cross_ President Davis, _Jane T. H. Cross_ The Rifleman's Fancy Shot, _Anonymous_ "All quiet along the Potomac" Prize Address, _Henry Timrod_ The Battle of Richmond, _Geo. Herbert Sass_ The Guerrillas, _S. Teackle Wallis_ A Farewell to Pope, _Jno. R. Thompson_ Sonnet--Public Prayer, _South Carolinian_ Battle of Belmont, _J.A. Signaigo_ Vicksburg, _Paul H. Hayne_ Ballad of the War, _G.H. Sass_ The two Armies, _Henry Timrod_ The Legion of Honor, _H.L. Flash_ Clouds in the West, _A.J. Requier_ Georgia! My Georgia!, _Carrie B. Sinclair_ Song of the Texan Rangers, _Anonymous_ Kentucky required to yield her arms, _Anonymous_ There's life in the old land yet, _J.B. Randall_ "Tell the boys the War is ended," _Emily J. Moore_ The Southern Cross, _St. George Tucker_ England's Neutrality, _John R. Thompson_ Close the Ranks, _J.L. O'Sullivan_ The Sea-kings of the South, _Ed. G. Bruce_ The Return, _Anonymous_ Our Christmas Hymn, _J. Dickson Bruns_ Charleston, _Miss E.B. Cheesborough_ Gathering Song, _Annie Chambers Ketchum_ Christmas, _Henry Timrod_ A Prayer for Peace, _S. Teackle Wallis_ The Band in the Pines, _Jno. Esten Cooke_ At Fort Pillow, _James R. Randall_ From the Rapidan, _Anonymous_ Song of our Southland, _Mrs. Mary Ware_ Sonnets, _Paul H. Hayne_ Hospital Duties, _Charleston Courier_ They cry Peace, Peace! _Mrs. Alethea S. Burroughs_ Ballad--"What! have ye thought?" _Charleston Mercury_ Missing, _Anonymous_ Ode--"Souls of Heroes," _Charleston Mercury_ Jackson, _Henry L. Flash_ Captain Maffit's Ballad, _Charleston Mercury_ Melt the Bells, _F. T. Rockett_ John Pelham, _James R. Randall_ "Ye batteries of Beauregard," _J. R. Barrick_ "When Peace returns," _Olivia T. Thomas_ The Right above the Wrong, _J. W. Overall_ Carmen Triumphale, _Henry Timrod_ The Fiend Unbound, _Charleston Mercury_ The Unknown Dead, _Henry Timrod_ Ode--"Do ye quail?" _W. Gilmore Simms_ Ode--"Our City by the Sea," _Ibid_. The Lone Sentry, _J. R. Randall_ My Soldier Brother, _Sallie E. Bollard_ Seaweeds, _Annie Chambers Ketchum_ The Salkehatchie, _Emily J. Moore_ The Broken Mug, _Jno. Esten Cooke_ Carolina, _Anna Peyre Dinnies_ Our Martyrs, _Paul H. Hayne_ Cleburne, _Mrs. M. A. Jennings_ The Texan Marseillaise, _James Harris_ "O, tempora! O, mores," _J. Dickson Bruns_ Our Departed Comrades, _J. M. Shirer_ No Land like Ours, _J. R. Barrick_ The Angel of the Church, _W. Gilmore Simms_ Ode--"Shell the old City," _Ibid_. The Enemy shall never reach your City, _Charleston Mercury_ War Waves, _Catherine G. Poyas_ Old Moultrie, _Ibid_. Only one killed, _Julia L. Keyes_ Land of King Cotton, _J. A. Signaigo_ If you love me, _Ibid_. The Cotton Boll, _Henry Timrod_ Battle of Charleston Harbor, _Paul H. Hayne_ Fort Wagner, _W. Gilmore Simms_ Sumter in Ruins, _Ibid_. Morris Island, _Ibid_. Promise of Spring, _South Carolinian_ Spring, _Henry Timrod_ Chickamauga, _Richmond Sentinel_ In Memoriam--Bishop Polk, _Viola_ Stonewall Jackson, _H. L. Flash_ Stonewall Jackson--a Dirge, _Anonymous_ Beaufort, _W. J. Grayson_ The Empty Sleeve, _J. R. Bagby_ Cotton Burners' Hymn, _Memphis Appeal_ Reading the List, _Anonymous_ His Last Words, _Anonymous_ Charge of Hagood's Brigade, _J. Blythe Allston_ Carolina, _Jno. A, Wagener_ Savannah, _Alethea S. Burroughs_ "Old Betsy," _John Killian_ Awake! Arise! _G. W. Archer_ Albert Sydney Johnston, _Mary Jervey_ Eulogy of the Dead, _B. F. Porter_ The Beaufort Exile, _Anonymous_ Somebody's Darling, _Miss Maria LaCoste_ John Pegram, _W. Gordon McGabe_ Captives Going Home, _Anonymous_ Heights of Mission Ridge, _J. A. Signaigo_ Our Left at Manassas, _Anonymous_ On to Richmond, _J. R. Thompson_ Turner Ashby, _Ibid_. Captain Latanè, _Ibid_. The Men, _Maurice Bell_ The Rebel Soldier, _Kentucky Girl_ Battle of Hampton Roads, _Ossian D. Gorman_ "Is this a time to dance?" _Anonymous_ The Maryland Line, _J. D, McCabe, Jr._ I give my Soldier Boy a blade, _H. M. L._ Sonnet--Avatar of Hell, _Anonymous_ Stonewall Jackson's Way, _Anonymous_ The Silent March, _Anonymous_ Pro Memoria, _Ina M. Porter_ Southern Homes in Ruins, _R. B. Vance_ Rappahannock Army Song, _J. C. McLemore_ Soldier in the Rain, _Julia L. Keyes_ My Country, _W. D. Porter_ After the Battle, _Miss Agnes Leonard_ Our Confederate Dead, _Lady of Augusta_ Ye Cavaliers of Dixie, _B. F. Porter_ Song of Spring, _Jno. A. Wagener_ What the Village Bell said, _Jno. C. McLemore_ The Tree, the Serpent, and the Star, _A. P. Gray_ Southern War Hymn, _Jno. A. Wagener_ The Battle Rainbow, _J. R. Thompson_ Stonewall Jackson, _Richmond Broadside_ Dirge for Ashby, _Mrs. M. J. Preston_ Sacrifice, _Charleston Mercury_ Sonnet, _Ibid_. Grave of A. Sydney Johnston, _J. B. Synott_ "Not doubtful of your Fatherland," _Charleston Mercury_ Only a Soldier's grave, _S. A. Jonas_ The Guerrilla Martyrs, _Charleston Mercury_ "Libera Nos, O Domine!" _James Barron Hope_ The Knell shall sound once more, _Charleston Mercury_ Gendron Palmer, of the Holcombe Legion, _Ina M. Porter_ Mumford, the Martyr of New Orleans, _Ibid_. The Foe at the Gates--Charleston, _J. Dickson Bruns_ Savannah Fallen, _Alethea S. Burroughs_ Bull Run--A Parody, _Anonymous_ "Stack Arms," _Jos. Blythe Allston_ Doffing the Gray, _Lieutenant Falligant_ In the Land where we were dreaming, _D. B. Lucas_ Ballad--"Yes, build your Walls," _Charleston Mercury_ The Lines around Petersburg, _Samuel Davis_ All is gone, Fadette--_Memphis Appeal_ Bowing her Head, _Savannah Broadside_ The Confederate Flag, _Anna Peyre Dinnies_ Ashes of Glory, _A. J. Requier_ War Poetry of the South Ethnogenesis. By Henry Timrod, of S.C. Written during the meeting of the First Southern Congress, at Montgomery, February, 1861. I. Hath not the morning dawned with added light? And shall not evening--call another star Out of the infinite regions of the night, To mark this day in Heaven? At last, we are A nation among nations; and the world Shall soon behold in many a distant port Another flag unfurled! Now, come what may, whose favor need we court? And, under God, whose thunder need we fear? Thank Him who placed us here Beneath so kind a sky--the very sun Takes part with us; and on our errands run All breezes of the ocean; dew and rain Do noiseless battle for us; and the Year, And all the gentle daughters in her train, March in our ranks, and in our service wield Long spears of golden grain! A yellow blossom as her fairy shield, June fling's her azure banner to the wind, While in the order of their birth Her sisters pass; and many an ample field Grows white beneath their steps, till now, behold Its endless sheets unfold THE SNOW OF SOUTHERN SUMMERS! Let the earth Rejoice! beneath those fleeces soft and warm Our happy land shall sleep In a repose as deep As if we lay intrenched behind Whole leagues of Russian ice and Arctic storm! II. And what if, mad with wrongs themselves have wrought, In their own treachery caught, By their own fears made bold, And leagued with him of old, Who long since, in the limits of the North, Set up his evil throne, and warred with God-- What if, both mad and blinded in their rage, Our foes should fling us down their mortal gage, And with a hostile step profane our sod! We shall not shrink, my brothers, but go forth To meet them, marshalled by the Lord of Hosts, And overshadowed by the mighty ghosts Of Moultrie and of Eutaw--who shall foil Auxiliars such as these? Nor these alone, But every stock and stone Shall help us; but the very soil, And all the generous wealth it gives to toil, And all for which we love our noble land, Shall fight beside, and through us, sea and strand, The heart of woman, and her hand, Tree, fruit, and flower, and every influence, Gentle, or grave, or grand; The winds in our defence Shall seem to blow; to us the hills shall lend Their firmness and their calm; And in our stiffened sinews we shall blend The strength of pine and palm! III. Nor would we shun the battle-ground, Though weak as we are strong; Call up the clashing elements around, And test the right and wrong! On one side, creeds that dare to teach What Christ and Paul refrained to preach; Codes built upon a broken pledge, And charity that whets a poniard's edge; Fair schemes that leave the neighboring poor To starve and shiver at the schemer's door, While in the world's most liberal ranks enrolled, He turns some vast philanthropy to gold; Religion taking every mortal form But that a pure and Christian faith makes warm, Where not to vile fanatic passion urged, Or not in vague philosophies submerged, Repulsive with all Pharisaic leaven, And making laws to stay the laws of Heaven! And on the other, scorn of sordid gain, Unblemished honor, truth without a stain, Faith, justice, reverence, charitable wealth, And, for the poor and humble, laws which give, Not the mean right to buy the right to live, But life, and home, and health! To doubt the end were want of trust in God, Who, if he has decreed That we must pass a redder sea Than that which rang to Miriam's holy glee, Will surely raise at need A Moses with his rod! IV. But let our fears-if fears we have--be still, And turn us to the future! Could we climb Some mighty Alp, and view the coming time, The rapturous sight would fill Our eyes with happy tears! Not only for the glories which the years Shall bring us; not for lands from sea to sea, And wealth, and power, and peace, though these shall be; But for the distant peoples we shall bless, And the hushed murmurs of a world's distress: For, to give labor to the poor, The whole sad planet o'er, And save from want and crime the humblest door, Is one among--the many ends for which God makes us great and rich! The hour perchance is not yet wholly ripe When all shall own it, but the type Whereby we shall be known in every land Is that vast gulf which laves our Southern strand, And through the cold, untempered ocean pours Its genial streams, that far-off Arctic shores May sometimes catch upon the softened breeze Strange tropic warmth and hints of summer seas. God Save the South. George H. Miles, of Baltimore. God save the South! God save the South! Her altars and firesides-- God save the South! Now that the war is nigh-- Now that we arm to die-- Chanting--our battle-cry, Freedom or Death! God be our shield! At home or a-field, Stretch Thine arm over us, Strengthen and save! What though they're five to one, Forward each sire and son, Strike till the war is done, Strike to the grave. God make the right Stronger than might! Millions would trample us Down in their pride. Lay, thou, their legions low; Roll back the ruthless foe; Let the proud spoiler know God's on our side! Hark! honor's call, Summoning all-- Summoning all of us Up to the strife. Sons of the South, awake! Strike till the brand shall break! Strike for dear honor's sake, Freedom and Life! Rebels before Were our fathers of yore; Rebel, the glorious name Washington bore, Why, then, be ours the same Title he snatched from shame; Making it first in fame, Odious no more. War to the hilt! Theirs be the guilt, Who fetter the freeman To ransom the slave. Up, then, and undismayed, Sheathe not the battle-blade? Till the last foe is laid Low in the grave. God save the South! God save the South! Dry the dim eyes that now Follow our path. Still let the light feet rove Safe through the orange grove; Still keep the land we love Safe from all wrath. God save the South! God save the South! Her altars and firesides-- God save the South! For the rude war is nigh, And we must win or die; Chanting our battle-cry Freedom or Death! You Can Never Win Them Back. By Catherine M. Warfield. You can never win them back, never! never! Though they perish on the track of your endeavor; Though their corses strew the earth That smiled upon their birth, And blood pollutes each hearthstone forever! They have risen, to a man stern and fearless; Of your curses and your ban they are careless. Every hand is on its knife; Every gun is primed for strife; Every palm contains a life high and peerless! You have no such blood as theirs for the shedding, In the veins of Cavaliers was its heading. You have no such stately men In your abolition den, To march through foe and fen, nothing dreading. They may fall before the fire of your legions, Paid in gold for murd'rous hire-- bought allegiance! But for every drop you shed You shall leave a mound of dead; And the vultures shall be fed in our regions. But the battle to the strong is not given, While the Judge of right and wrong sits in heaven! And the God of David still Guides each pebble by His will; There are giants yet to kill-- wrong's unshriven. The Southern Cross. By E. K. Blunt. In the name of God! Amen! Stand for our Southern rights; On our side, Southern men, The God of battles fights! Fling the invaders far-- Hurl back their work of woe-- The voice is the voice of a brother, But the hands are the hands of a foe. They come with a trampling army, Invading our native sod-- Stand, Southrons! fight and conquer, In the name of the mighty God! They are singing _our_ song of triumph,[1] Which proclaimed _us_ proud and free-- While breaking away the heartstrings Of our nation's harmony. Sadly it floateth from us, Sighing o'er land and wave; Till, mute on the lips of the poet, It sleeps in his Southern grave. Spirit and song departed! Minstrel and minstrelsy! We mourn ye, heavy hearted,-- But we will--we will be free! They are waving _our_ flag above us, With the despot's tyrant will; With our blood they have stained its colors, And they call it holy still. With tearful eyes, but steady hand, We'll tear its stripes apart, And fling them, like broken fetters, That may not bind the heart. But we'll save our stars of glory, In the might of the sacred sign Of Him who has fixed forever One "Southern Cross" to shine. Stand, Southrons! fight and conquer! Solemn, and strong, and sure! The fight shall not be longer Than God shall bid endure. By the life that but yesterday Waked with the infant's breath! By the feet which, ere morning, may Tread to the soldier's death! By the blood which cries to heaven-- Crimson upon our sod! Stand, Southrons! fight and conquer, In the name of the mighty God! [1] The Star Spangled Banner. Written by F. S. Key, of Baltimore; all whose descendants are Confederates. South Carolina. December 20, 1860. S. Henry Dickson. The deed is done! the die is cast; The glorious Rubicon is passed: Hail, Carolina! free at last! Strong in the right, I see her stand Where ocean laves the shelving sand; Her own Palmetto decks the strand. She turns aloft her flashing eye; Radiant, her lonely star[1] on high Shines clear amidst the darkening sky. Silent, along those azure deeps Its course her silver crescent keeps, And in soft light the landscape steeps. Fling forth her banner to the gale! Let all the hosts of earth assail,-- Their fury and their force shall fail. Echoes the wide resounding shore, With voice above th' Atlantic roar, Her sons proclaim her free once more! Oh, land of heroes! Spartan State! In numbers few, in daring great, Thus to affront the frowns of fate! And while mad triumph rules the hour, And thickening clouds of menace lower, Bear back the tide of tyrant power. With steadfast courage, faltering never, Sternly resolved, her bonds we sever: Hail, Carolina! free forever! [1] The flag showed a star within a crescent or new moon. The New Star. By B.M. Anderson. Another star arisen; another flag unfurled; Another name inscribed among the nations of the world; Another mighty struggle 'gainst a tyrant's fell decree, And again a burdened people have uprisen, and are free. The spirit of the fathers in the children liveth yet; Liveth still the olden blood which dimmed the foreign bayonet; And the fathers fought for freedom, and the sons for freedom fight; Their God was with the fathers--and is still the God of right! Behold! the skies are darkened! A gloomy cloud hath lowered! Shall it break before the sun of peace, or spread in rage impowered? Shall we have the smile of friendship, or shall it be the blow? Shall it be the right hand to the friend, or the red hand to the foe? In peacefulness we wish to live, but not in slavish fear; In peacefulness we dare not die, dishonored on our bier. To our allies of the Northern land we offer heart and hand, But if they scorn our friendship--then the banner and the brand! Honor to the new-born nation! and honor to the brave! A country freed from thraldom, or a soldier's honored grave. Every step shall be contested; every rivulet run red, And the invader, should he conquer, find the conquered in the dead. But victory shall follow where the sons of freedom go, And the signal for the onset be the death-knell of the foe; And hallowed shall the spot be where he was so bravely met, And the star which yonder rises, rises never more to set. The Irrepressible Conflict. Tyrtæus.--_Charleston Mercury._ Then welcome be it, if indeed it be The Irrepressible Conflict! Let it come; There will be mitigation of the doom, If, battling to the last, our sires shall see Their sons contending for the homes made free In ancient conflict with the foreign foe! If those who call us brethren strike the blow, No common conflict shall the invader know! War to the knife, and to the last, until The sacred land we keep shall overflow With blood as sacred--valley, wave, and hill, Or the last enemy finds his bloody grave! Aye, welcome to your graves--or ours! The brave May perish, but ye shall not bind one slave. The Southern Republic. By Olivia Tully Thomas, of Mississippi. In the galaxy of nations, A nation's flag's unfurled, Transcending in its martial pride The nations of the world. Though born of war, baptized in blood, Yet mighty from the time, Like fabled phoenix, forth she stood-- Dismembered, yet sublime. And braver heart, and bolder hand, Ne'er formed a fabric fair As Southern wisdom can command, And Southern valor rear. Though kingdoms scorn to own her sway, Or recognize her birth, The land blood-bought for Liberty Will reign supreme on earth. Clime of the Sun! Home of the Brave! Thy sons are bold and free, And pour life's crimson tide to save Their birthright, Liberty! Their fertile fields and sunny plains That yield the wealth alone, That's coveted for greedy gains By despots-and a throne! Proud country! battling, bleeding, torn, Thy altars desolate; Thy lovely dark-eyed daughters mourn At war's relentless fate; And widow's prayers, and orphan's tears, Her homes will consecrate, While more than brass or marble rears The trophy of her great. Oh! land that boasts each gallant name Of JACKSON, JOHNSON, LEE, And hosts of valiant sons, whose fame Extends beyond the sea; Far rather let thy plains become, From gulf to mountain cave, One honored sepulchre and tomb, Than we the tyrant's slave! Fair, favored land! thou mayst be free, Redeemed by blood and war; Through agony and gloom we see Thy hope--a glimmering star; Thy banner, too, may proudly float, A herald on the seas-- Thy deeds of daring worlds remote Will emulate and praise! But who can paint the impulse pure, That thrills and nerves thy brave To deeds of valor, that secure The rights their fathers gave? Oh! grieve not, hearts; her matchless stain, Crowned with the warrior's wreath, From beds of fame their proud refrain Was "Liberty or Death!" "Is There, Then, No Hope for the Nations?" Charleston Courier. Is there, then, no hope for the nations? Must the record of Time be the same? And shall History, in all her narrations, Still close each last chapter in shame? Shall the valor which grew to be glorious, Prove the shame, as the pride of a race: And a people, for ages victorious, Through the arts of the chapman, grow base? Greek, Hebrew, Assyrian, and Roman, Each strides o'er the scene and departs! How valiant their deeds 'gainst the foeman, How wondrous their virtues and arts! Rude valor, at first, when beginning, The nation through blood took its name; Then the wisdom, which hourly winning New heights in its march, rose to Fame! How noble the tale for long ages, Blending Beauty with courage and might! What Heroes, what Poets, and Sages, Made eminent stars for each height! While their people, with reverence ample. Brought tribute of praise to the Great, Whose wisdom and virtuous example, Made virtue the pride of the State! Ours, too, was as noble a dawning, With hopes of the Future as high: Great men, each a star of the morning, Taught us bravely to live and to die! We fought the long fight with our foeman, And through trial--well-borne--won a name, Not less glorious than Grecian or Roman, And worthy as lasting a fame! Shut the Book! We must open another! O Southron! if taught by the Past, Beware, when thou choosest a brother, With what ally thy fortunes are cast! Beware of all foreign alliance, Of their pleadings and pleasings beware, Better meet the old snake with defiance, Than find in his charming a snare! The Fate of the Republics. Charleston Mercury. Thus, the grand fabric of a thousand years-- Rear'd with such art and wisdom--by a race Of giant sires, in virtue all compact, Self-sacrificing; having grand ideals Of public strength, and peoples capable Of great conceptions for the common good, And of enduring liberties, kept strong Through purity;--tumbles and falls apart, Lacking cement in virtue; and assail'd Within, without, by greed of avarice, And vain ambition for supremacy. So fell the old Republics--Gentile and Jew, Roman and Greek--such evermore the record; Mix'd glory and shame, still lapsing into greed, From conquest and from triumph, into fall! The glory that we see exchanged for guilt Might yet be glory. There were pride enough, And emulous ambition to achieve,-- Both generous powers, when coupled with endowment, To do the work of States--and there were courage And sense of public need, and public welfare,-- And duty--in a brave but scattered few, Throughout the States--had these been credited To combat 'gainst the popular appetites. But these were scorn'd and set aside for naught, As lacking favor with the popular lusts! They found reward in exile or in death! And he alone who could debase his spirit, And file his mind down to the basest nature Grew capp'd with rule!-- So, with the lapse From virtue, the great nation forfeits all The pride with the security--the liberty, With that prime modesty which keeps the heart Upright, in meek subjection, to the doubts That wait upon Humanity, and teach Humility, as best check and guaranty, Against the wolfish greed of appetite! Worst of all signs, assuring coming doom, When peoples loathe to listen to the praise Of their great men; and, jealous of just claims, Eagerly set upon them to revile, And banish from their councils! Worse than all When the great man, succumbing to the mass, Yields up his mind as a low instrument To vulgar fingers, to be played upon:-- Yields to the vulgar lure, the cunning bribe Of place or profit, and makes sale of States To Party! Thus and then are States subdued-- 'Till one vast central tyranny upstarts, With front of glittering brass, but legs of clay; Insolent, reckless of account as right,-- While lust grows license, and tears off the robes From justice; and makes right a thing of mock; And puts a foolscap on the head of law, And plucks the baton of authority From his right hand, and breaks it o'er his head. So rages still the irresponsible power, Using the madden'd populace as hounds, To hunt down freedom where she seeks retreat. The ancient history becomes the new-- The ages move in circles, and the snake Ends ever with his tail in his own mouth. Thus still in all the past!--and man the same In all the ages--a poor thing of passion, Hot greed, and miserable vanity, And all infirmities of lust and error, Makes of himself the wretched instrument To murder his own hope. So empires fall,-- Past, present, and to come!-- There is no hope For nations or peoples, once they lapse from virtue And fail in modest sense of what they are-- Creatures of weakness, whose security Lies in meek resting on the law of God, And in that wise humility which pleads Ever for his guardian watch and Government, Though men may bear the open signs of rule. Humility is safety! could men learn The law, "_ne sutor ultra crepidam_," And the sagacious cobbler, at his last, Content himself with paring leather down To heel and instep, nicely fitting parts, In proper adaptation, to the foot, We might have safety. Rightly to conceive What's right, and limit the o'erreaching will To this one measure only, is the whole Of that grand rule, and wise necessity, Which only gives us safety. Where a State, Or blended States, or peoples, pass the bounds Set for their progress, they must topple and fall Into that gulf of ruin which has swallowed All ancient Empires, States, Republics; all Perishing, in like manner, from the selfsame cause! The terrible conjunction of the event, Close with the provocation, stands apart, A social beacon in all histories; And yet we take no heed, but still rush on, Under mixed sway of greed and vanity, And like the silly boy with his card-castle, Precipitate to ruin as we build. The Voice of the South. Tyrtæus.--_Charleston Mercury._ 'Twas a goodly boon that our fathers gave, And fits but ill to be held by the slave; And sad were the thought, if one of our band Should give up the hope of so fair a land. But the hour has come, and the times that tried The souls of men in our days of pride, Return once more, and now for the brave, To merit the boon which our fathers gave. And if there be one base spirit who stands Now, in our peril, with folded hands, Let his grave at once in the soil be wrought, With the sword with which his old father fought. An oath sublime should the freeman take, Still braving the fight and the felon stake,-- The oath that his sires brought over the sea, When they pledged their swords to Liberty! 'Twas a goodly oath, and In Heaven's own sight, They battled and bled in behalf of the right; 'Twas hallowed by God with the holiest sign, And seal'd with the blood of your sires and mine. We cannot forget, and we dare not forego, The holy duty to them that we owe, The duty that pledges the soul of the son To keep the freedom his sire hath won. To suffer no proud transgressor to spoil One right of our homes, or one foot of our soil, One privilege pluck from our keeping, or dare Usurp one blessing 'tis fit that we share! Art ready for this, dear brother, who still Keep'st Washington's bones upon Vernon's hill? Art ready for this, dear brother, whose ear, Should ever the voices of Mecklenberg hear? Thou art ready, I know, brother nearest my heart, Son of Eutaw and Ashley, to do thy part; The sword and the rifle are bright in thy hands, And waits but the word for the flashing of brands! And thou, by Savannah's broad valleys,--and thou Where the Black Warrior murmurs in echoes the vow; And thou, youngest son of our sires, who roves Where Apala-chicola[1] glides through her groves. Nor shall Tennessee pause, when like voice from the steep, The great South shall summon her sons from their sleep; Nor Kentucky be slow, when our trumpet shall call, To tear down the rifle that hangs on her wall! Oh, sound, to awaken the dead from their graves, The will that would thrust us from place for our slaves, That, by fraud which lacks courage, and plea that lacks truth, Would rob us of right without reason or ruth. Dost thou hearken, brave Creole, as fearless as strong, Nor rouse thee to combat the infamous wrong? Ye hear it, I know, in the depth of your souls, Valiant race, through whose valley the great river rolls. At last ye are wakened, all rising at length, In the passion of pride, in the fulness of strength; And now let the struggle begin which shall see, If the son, like the sire, is fit to be free. We are sworn to the State, from our fathers that came, To welcome the ruin, but never the shame; To yield not a foot of our soil, nor a right, While the soul and the sword are still fit for the fight. Then, brothers, your hands and your hearts, while we draw The bright sword of right, on the charter of law;-- Here the record was writ by our fathers, and here, To keep, with the sword, that old record, we swear. Let those who defile and deface it, be sure, No longer their wrong or their fraud we endure; We will scatter in scorn every link of the chain, With which they would fetter our free souls in vain. How goodly and bright were its links at the first! How loathly and foul, in their usage accurst! We had worn it in pride while it honor'd the brave, But we rend it, when only grown fit for the slave. [1] The reader will place the accent on the _ante-penultimate_, which affords not only the most musical, but the correct pronunciation. The Oath of Freedom. By James Barron Hope. _"Liberty is always won where there exists the unconquerable will to be free."_ Born free, thus we resolve to live: By Heaven we will be free! By all the stars which burn on high-- By the green earth--the mighty sea-- By God's unshaken majesty, We will be free or die! Then let the drums all roll! Let all the trumpets blow! Mind, heart, and soul, We spurn control Attempted by a foe! Born free, thus we resolve to live: By Heaven we will be free! And, vainly now the Northmen try To beat us down--in arms we stand To strike for this our native land! We will be free or die! Then let the drums all roll! etc., etc. Born free, we thus resolve to live: By Heaven we will be free! Our wives and children look on high, Pray God to smile upon the right! And bid us in the deadly fight As freemen live or die! Then let the drums all roll! etc., etc. Born free, thus we resolve to live: By Heaven we will be free! And ere we cease this battle-cry, Be all our blood, our kindred's spilt, On bayonet or sabre hilt! We will be free or die! Then let the drums all roll! etc., etc. Born free, thus we resolve to live: By Heaven we will be free! Defiant let the banners fly, Shake out their glories to the air, And, kneeling, brothers, let us swear We will be free or die! Then let the drums all roll! etc., etc. Born free, thus we resolve to live: By Heaven we will be free! And to this oath the dead reply-- Our valiant fathers' sacred ghosts-- These with us, and the God of hosts, We will be free or die! Then let the drums all roll! etc., etc. The Battle-Cry of the South. By James R. Randall. Arm yourselves and be valiant men, and see that ye be in readiness against the morning, that ye may fight with these nations that are assembled against us, to destroy us and our sanctuary. For it is better for us to die in battle than to behold the calamities of our people and our sanctuary.--_Maccabees I._ Brothers! the thunder-cloud is black, And the wail of the South wings forth; Will ye cringe to the hot tornado's rack, And the vampires of the North? Strike! ye can win a martyr's goal, Strike! with a ruthless hand-- Strike! with the vengeance of the soul, For your bright, beleaguered land! To arms! to arms! for the South needs help, And a craven is he who flees-- For ye have the sword of the Lion's Whelp,[1] And the God of the Maccabees! Arise! though the stars have a rugged glare, And the moon has a wrath-blurred crown-- Brothers! a blessing is ambushed there In the cliffs of the Father's frown: Arise! ye are worthy the wondrous light Which the Sun of Justice gives-- In the caves and sepulchres of night Jehovah the Lord King lives! To arms! to arms! for the South needs help, And a craven is he who flees-- For ye have the sword of the Lion's Whelp, And the God of the Maccabees! Think of the dead by the Tennessee, In their frozen shrouds of gore-- Think of the mothers who shall see Those darling eyes no more! But better are they in a hero grave Than the serfs of time and breath, For they are the children of the brave, And the cherubim of death! To arms! to arms! for the South needs help, And a craven is he who flees-- For ye have the sword of the Lion's Whelp, And the God of the Maccabees! Better the charnels of the West, And a hecatomb of lives, Than the foul invader as a guest 'Mid your sisters and your wives-- But a spirit lurketh in every maid, Though, brothers, ye should quail, To sharpen a Judith's lurid blade, And the livid spike of Jael! To arms! to arms! for the South needs help, And a craven is he who flees-- For ye have the sword of the Lion's Whelp, And the God of the Maccabees! Brothers! I see you tramping by, With the gladiator gaze, And your shout is the Macedonian cry Of the old, heroic days! March on! with trumpet and with drum, With rifle, pike, and dart, And die--if even death must come-- Upon your country's heart! To arms! to arms! for the South needs help, And a craven is he who flees-- For ye have the sword of the Lion's Whelp, And the God of the Maccabees! Brothers! the thunder-cloud is black, And the wail of the South wings forth; Will ye cringe to the hot tornado's rack, And the vampires of the North? Strike! ye can win a martyr's goal, Strike! with a ruthless hand-- Strike! with the vengeance of the soul For your bright, beleaguered land! To arms! to arms! for the South needs help, And a craven is he who flees-- For ye have the sword of the Lion's Whelp, And the God of the Maccabees! [1] The surname of the great Maccabeus. Sonnet. Charleston Mercury. Democracy hath done its work of ill, And, seeming freemen, never to be free, While the poor people shout in vanity, The Demagogue triumphs o'er the popular will. How swift the abasement follows! But few years, And we stood eminent. Great men were ours, Of virtue stern, and armed with mightiest powers! How have we sunk below our proper spheres! No Heroes, Virtues, Men! But in their place, The nimble marmozet and magpie men; Creatures that only mock and mimic, when They run astride the shoulders of the race; Democracy, in vanity elate, Clothing but sycophants in robes of state. Seventy-Six and Sixty-One. By John W. Overall, of Louisiana. Ye spirits of the glorious dead! Ye watchers in the sky! Who sought the patriot's crimson bed, With holy trust and high-- Come, lend your inspiration now, Come, fire each Southern son, Who nobly fights for freemen's rights, And shouts for sixty-one. Come, teach them how, on hill on glade, Quick leaping from your side, The lightning flash of sabres made A red and flowing tide-- How well ye fought, how bravely fell, Beneath our burning sun; And let the lyre, in strains of fire, So speak of sixty-one. There's many a grave in all the land, And many a crucifix, Which tells how that heroic band Stood firm in seventy-six-- Ye heroes of the deathless past, Your glorious race is run, But from your dust springs freemen's trust, And blows for sixty-one. We build our altars where you lie, On many a verdant sod, With sabres pointing to the sky, And sanctified of God; The smoke shall rise from every pile, Till freedom's cause is won, And every mouth throughout the South, Shall shout for sixty-one! "Reddato Gladium." Virginia to Winfield Scott. A voice is heard in Ramah! High sounds are on the gale! Notes to wake buried patriots! Notes to strike traitors pale! Wild notes of outraged feeling Cry aloud and spare him not! 'Tis Virginia's strong appealing, And she calls to Winfield Scott! Oh! chief among ten thousand! Thou whom I loved so well, Star that has set, as never yet Since son of morning fell! I call not in reviling, Nor to speak thee what thou art; I leave thee to thy death-bed, And I leave thee to thy heart! But by every mortal hope, And by every mortal fear; By all that man deems sacred, And that woman holds most dear; Yea! by thy mother's honor, And by thy father's grave, By hell beneath, and heaven above, Give back the sword I gave! Not since God's sword was planted To guard life's heavenly tree, Has ever blade been granted, Like that bestowed on thee! To pierce me with the steel I gave To guard mine honor's shrine, Not since Iscariot lived and died, Was treason like to thine! Give back the sword! and sever Our strong and mighty tie! We part, and part forever, To conquer or to die! In sorrow, not in anger, I speak the word, "We part!" For I leave thee to thy death-bed, And I leave thee to thy heart! Richmond Whig. Nay, Keep the Sword. By Carrie Clifford. Nay, keep the sword which once we gave, A token of our trust in thee; The steel is true, the blade is keen-- False as thou art it cannot be. We hailed thee as our glorious chief, With laurel-wreaths we bound thy brow; Thy name then thrilled from tongue to tongue: In whispers hushed we breathe it now. Yes, keep it till thy dying day; Momentous ever let it be, Of a great treasure once possessed-- A people's love now lost to thee. Thy mother will not bow her head; She bares her bosom to thee now; But may the bright steel fail to wound-- It is more merciful than thou. And ere thou strik'st the fatal blow, Thousands of sons of this fair land Will rise, and, in their anger just, Will stay the rash act of thy hand. And when in terror thou shalt hear Thy murderous deeds of vengeance cry And feel the weight of thy great crime, Then fall upon thy sword and die. Those aged locks I'll not reproach, Although upon a traitor's brow; We've looked with reverence on them once, We'll try and not revile them now. But her true sons and daughters pray, That ere thy day of reckoning be, Thy ingrate heart may feel the pain To know thy mother once more free. Coercion: A Poem for Then and Now. By John R. Thompson, of Virginia. Who talks of coercion? who dares to deny A resolute people the right to be free? Let him blot out forever one star from the sky, Or curb with his fetter the wave of the sea! Who prates of coercion? Can love be restored To bosoms where only resentment may dwell? Can peace upon earth be proclaimed by the sword, Or good-will among men be established by shell? Shame! shame!--that the statesman and trickster, forsooth, Should have for a crisis no other recourse, Beneath the fair day-spring of light and of truth, Than the old _brutum fulmen_ of tyranny--force! From the holes where fraud, falsehood, and hate slink away-- From the crypt in which error lies buried in chains-- This foul apparition stalks forth to the day, And would ravage the land which his presence profanes. Could you conquer us, men of the North--could you bring Desolation and death on our homes as a flood-- Can you hope the pure lily, affection, will spring From ashes all reeking and sodden with blood? Could you brand us as villains and serfs, know ye not What fierce, sullen hatred lurks under the scar? How loyal to Hapsburg is Venice, I wot! How dearly the Pole loves his father, the Czar! But 'twere well to remember this land of the sun Is a _nutrix leonum_, and suckles a race Strong-armed, lion-hearted, and banded as one, Who brook not oppression and know not disgrace. And well may the schemers in office beware The swift retribution that waits upon crime, When the lion, RESISTANCE, shall leap from his lair, With a fury that renders his vengeance sublime. Once, men of the North, we were brothers, and still, Though brothers no more, we would gladly be friends; Nor join in a conflict accursed, that must fill With ruin, the country on which it descends. But, if smitten with blindness, and mad with the rage The gods gave to all whom they wished to destroy, You would act a new Iliad, to darken the age With horrors beyond what is told us of Troy-- If, deaf as the adder itself to the cries, When wisdom, humanity, justice implore, You would have our proud eagle to feed on the eyes Of those who have taught him so grandly to soar-- If there be to your malice no limit imposed, And you purpose hereafter to rule with the rod The men upon whom you already have closed Our goodly domain and the temples of God: To the breeze then your banner dishonored unfold, And, at once, let the tocsin be sounded afar; We greet you, as greeted the Swiss, Charles the Bold-- With a farewell to peace and a welcome to war! For the courage that clings to our soil, ever bright, Shall catch inspiration from turf and from tide; Our sons unappalled shall go forth to the fight, With the smile of the fair, the pure kiss of the bride; And the bugle its echoes shall send through the past, In the trenches of Yorktown to waken the slain; While the sod of King's Mountain shall heave at the blast, And give up its heroes to glory again. A Cry to Arms. By Henry Timrod. Ho! woodsmen of the mountain-side! Ho! dwellers in the vales! Ho! ye who by the chafing tide Have roughened in the gales! Leave barn and byre, leave kin and cot, Lay by the bloodless spade; Let desk, and case, and counter rot, And burn your books of trade. The despot roves your fairest lands; And till he flies or fears, Your fields must grow but armed bands, Your sheaves be sheaves of spears! Give up to mildew and to rust The useless tools of gain; And feed your country's sacred dust With floods of crimson rain! Come, with the weapons at your call-- With musket, pike, or knife; He wields the deadliest blade of all Who lightest holds his life. The arm that drives its unbought blows With all a patriot's scorn, Might brain a tyrant with a rose, Or stab him with a thorn. Does any falter? let him turn To some brave maiden's eyes, And catch the holy fires that burn In those sublunar skies. Oh! could you like your women feel, And in their spirit march, A day might see your lines of steel Beneath the victor's arch. What hope, O God! would not grow warm When thoughts like these give cheer? The lily calmly braves the storm, And shall the palm-tree fear? No! rather let its branches court The rack that sweeps the plain; And from the lily's regal port Learn how to breast the strain! Ho! woodsmen of the mountain-side! Ho! dwellers in the vales! Ho! ye who by the roaring tide Have roughened in the gales! Come! flocking gayly to the fight From forest, hill, and lake; We battle for our country's right, And for the lily's sake! Jackson, The Alexandria Martyr. By Wm. H. Holcombe, M.D., of Virginia. 'Twas not the private insult galled him most, But public outrage of his country's flag, To which his patriotic heart had pledged Its faith as to a bride. The bold, proud chief, Th' avenging host, and the swift-coming death Appalled him not. Nor life with all its charms, Nor home, nor wife, nor children could weigh down The fierce, heroic instincts to destroy The insolent invader. Ellsworth fell, And Jackson perished 'mid the pack of wolves, Befriended only by his own great heart And God approving. More than Roman soul! O type of our impetuous chivalry! May this young nation ever boast her sons A vast, and inconceivable multitude, Standing like thee in her extremest van, Self-poised and ready, in defence of rights Or in revenge of wrongs, to dare and die! The Martyr of Alexandria. By James W. Simmons, of Texas. Revealed, as in a lightning flash, A hero stood! The invading foe, the trumpet's crash, Set up his blood. High o'er the sacred pile that bends Those forms above, Thy star, O Freedom! brightly blends Its rays with love. The banner of a mighty race, Serenely there, Unfurls the genius of the place, In haunted air. A vow is registered in Heaven! Patriot! 'tis thine! To guard those matchless colors, given By hands divine. Jackson! thy spirit may not hear Our wail ascend; A nation gathers round thy bier, And mourns its friend. The example is thy monument, And organ tones Thy name resound, with glory blent, Prouder than thrones! And they whose loss hath been our gain, A people's cares Shall win their wounded hearts from pain, And wipe their tears. When time shall set the captives free, Now scathed by wrath, Heirs of his immortality, Bright be their path. The Blessed Union--Epigram. Doubtless to some, with length of ears, To gratify an ape's desire, The blessed Union still endears;-- The stripes, if not the stars, be theirs! "Greek faith" they gave us eighty years, And then--"Greek fire!" But, better all their fires of scath Than one hour's trust in Yankee faith! The Fire of Freedom. The holy fire that nerved the Greek To make his stand at Marathon, Until the last red foeman's shriek Proclaimed that freedom's fight was won, Still lives unquenched--unquenchable: Through every age its fires will burn-- Lives in the hermit's lonely cell, And springs from every storied urn. The hearthstone embers hold the spark Where fell oppression's foot hath trod; Through superstition's shadow dark It flashes to the living God! From Moscow's ashes springs the Russ; In Warsaw, Poland lives again: Schamyl, on frosty Caucasus, Strikes liberty's electric chain! Tell's freedom-beacon lights the Swiss; Vainly the invader ever strives; He finds _Sic Semper Tyrannis_ In San Jacinto's bowie-knives! Than these--than all--a holier fire Now burns thy soul, Virginia's son! Strike then for wife, babe, gray-haired sire, Strike for the grave of Washington! The Northern rabble arms for greed; The hireling parson goads the train-- In that foul crop from, bigot seed, Old "Praise God Barebones" howls again! We welcome them to "Southern lands," We welcome them to "Southern slaves," We welcome them "with bloody hands To hospitable Southern graves!" Hymn to the National Flag. By Mrs. M. J. Preston. Float aloft, thou stainless banner! Azure cross and field of light; Be thy brilliant stars the symbol Of the pure and true and right. Shelter freedom's holy cause-- Liberty and sacred laws; Guard the youngest of the nations-- Keep her virgin honor bright. From Virginia's storied border, Down to Tampa's furthest shore-- From the blue Atlantic's clashings To the Rio Grande's roar-- Over many a crimson plain, Where our martyred ones lie slain-- Fling abroad thy blessed shelter, Stream and mount and valley o'er. In thy cross of heavenly azure Has our faith its emblem high; In thy field of white, the hallow'd Truth for which we'll dare and die; In thy red, the patriot blood-- Ah! the consecrated flood. Lift thyself, resistless banner! Ever fill our Southern sky! Flash with living, lightning motion In the sight of all the brave! Tell the price at which we purchased Room and right for thee to wave Freely in our God's free air, Pure and proud and stainless fair, Banner of the youngest nation-- Banner we would die to save! Strike Thou for us! King of armies! Grant us room in Thy broad world! Loosen all the despot's fetters, Back be all his legions hurled! Give us peace and liberty, Let the land we love be free-- Then, oh! bright and stainless banner! Never shall thy folds be furled! Sonnet--Moral of Party Charleston Mercury. The moral of a party--if it be That healthy States need parties, lies in this, That we consider well what race it is, And what the germ that first has made it free. That germ must constitute the living tie That binds its generations to the end, Change measures if it need, or policy, But neither break the principle, nor bend. Each race hath its own nature--fixed, defined, By Heaven, and if its principle be won, Kept changeless as the progress of the sun, It mocks at storm and rage, at sea and wind, And grows to consummation, as the tree, Matured, that ever grew in culture free. Our Faith in '61. By A. J. Requier. "That governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed: that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as TO THEM SHALL SEEM most likely to effect their safety and happiness."--[Declaration of Independence, July 4, '76.] Not yet one hundred years have flown Since on this very spot, The subjects of a sovereign throne-- Liege-master of their lot-- This high degree sped o'er the sea, From council-board and tent, "No earthly power can rule the free But by their own consent!" For this, they fought as Saxons fight, On bloody fields and long-- Themselves the champions of the right, And judges of the wrong; For this their stainless knighthood wore The branded rebel's name, Until the starry cross they bore Set all the skies aflame! And States co-equal and distinct Outshone the western sun, By one great charter interlinked-- Not blended into one; Whose graven key that high decree The grand inscription lent, "No earthly power can rule the free But by their own consent!" Oh! sordid age! Oh! ruthless rage! Oh! sacrilegious wrong! A deed to blast the record page, And snap the strings of song; In that great charter's name, a band By grovelling greed enticed, Whose warrant is the grasping hand Of creeds without a Christ-- States that have trampled every pledge Its crystal code contains, Now give their swords a keener edge To harness it with chains-- To make a bond of brotherhood The sanction and the seal, By which to arm a rabble brood With fratricidal steel. Who, conscious that their cause is black, In puling prose and rhyme, Talk hatefully of love, and tack Hypocrisy to crime; Who smile and smite, engross the gorge Or impotently frown; And call us "rebels" with King George, As if they wore his crown! Most venal of a venal race, Who think you cheat the sky With every pharisaic face And simulated lie; Round Freedom's lair, with weapons bare, We greet the light divine Of those who throned the goddess there, And yet inspire the shrine! Our loved ones' graves are at our feet, Their homesteads at our back-- No belted Southron can retreat With women on his track; Peal, bannered host, the proud decree Which from your fathers went, "No earthly power can rule the free But by their own consent!" Wouldst Thou Have Me Love Thee. By Alex B. Meek. Wouldst thou have me love thee, dearest, With a woman's proudest heart, Which shall ever hold thee nearest, Shrined in its inmost heart? Listen, then! My country's calling On her sons to meet the foe! Leave these groves of rose and myrtle; Drop thy dreamy harp of love! Like young Korner--scorn the turtle, When the eagle screams above! Dost thou pause?--Let dastards dally-- Do thou for thy country fight! 'Neath her noble emblem rally-- "God, our country, and our right!" Listen! now her trumpet's calling On her sons to meet the foe! Woman's heart is soft and tender, But 'tis proud and faithful too: Shall she be her land's defender? Lover! Soldier! up and do! Seize thy father's ancient falchion, Which once flashed as freedom's star! Till sweet peace--the bow and halcyon, Stilled the stormy strife of war. Listen! now thy country's calling On her sons to meet her foe! Sweet is love in moonlight bowers! Sweet the altar and the flame! Sweet the spring-time with her flowers! Sweeter far the patriot's name! Should the God who smiles above thee, Doom thee to a soldier's grave, Hearts will break, but fame will love thee, Canonized among the brave! Listen, then! thy country's calling On her sons to meet the foe! Rather would I view thee lying On the last red field of strife, 'Mid thy country's heroes dying, Than become a dastard's wife! Enlisted To-Day. I know the sun shines, and the lilacs are blowing, And summer sends kisses by beautiful May-- Oh! to see all the treasures the spring is bestowing, And think--my boy Willie enlisted to-day. It seems but a day since at twilight, low humming, I rocked him to sleep with his cheek upon mine, While Robby, the four-year old, watched for the coming Of father, adown the street's indistinct line. It is many a year since my Harry departed, To come back no more in the twilight or dawn; And Robby grew weary of watching, and started Alone on the journey his father had gone. It is many a year--and this afternoon sitting At Robby's old window, I heard the band play, And suddenly ceased dreaming over my knitting, To recollect Willie is twenty to-day. And that, standing beside him this soft May-day morning, The sun making gold of his wreathed cigar smoke, I saw in his sweet eyes and lips a faint warning, And choked down the tears when he eagerly spoke: "Dear mother, you know how these Northmen are crowing, They would trample the rights of the South in the dust; The boys are all fire; and they wish I were going--" He stopped, but his eyes said, "Oh, say if I must!" I smiled on the boy, though my heart it seemed breaking, My eyes filled with tears, so I turned them away, And answered him, "Willie, 'tis well you are waking-- Go, act as your father would bid you, to-day!" I sit in the window, and see the flags flying, And drearily list to the roll of the drum, And smother the pain in my heart that is lying, And bid all the fears in my bosom be dumb. I shall sit in the window when summer is lying Out over the fields, and the honey-bee's hum Lulls the rose at the porch from her tremulous sighing, And watch for the face of my darling to come. And if he should fall--his young life he has given For freedom's sweet sake; and for me, I will pray Once more with my Harry and Robby in Heaven To meet the dear boy that enlisted to-day. My Maryland. Written at Pointe Coupee, LA., April 26, 1861. First Published in the New Orleans Delta. The despot's heel is on thy shore, Maryland! His torch is at thy temple door, Maryland! Avenge the patriotic gore That flecked the streets of Baltimore, And be the battle-queen of yore, Maryland! My Maryland! Hark to an exiled son's appeal, Maryland! My Mother-State, to thee I kneel, Maryland! For life and death, for woe and weal, Thy peerless chivalry reveal, And gird thy beauteous limbs with steel, Maryland! My Maryland! Thou wilt not cower in the dust, Maryland! Thy beaming sword shall never rust, Maryland! Remember Carroll's sacred trust, Remember Howard's warlike thrust, And all thy slumberers with the just, Maryland! My Maryland! Come! 'tis the red dawn of the day, Maryland! Come! with thy panoplied array, Maryland! With Ringgold's spirit for the fray, With Watson's blood at Monterey, With fearless Lowe and dashing May, Maryland! My Maryland! Come! for thy shield is bright and strong, Maryland! Come! for thy dalliance does thee wrong, Maryland! Come! to thine own heroic throng, That stalks with Liberty along, And ring thy dauntless Slogan-song, Maryland! My Maryland! Dear Mother! burst the tyrant's chain, Maryland! Virginia should not call in vain, Maryland! _She_ meets her sisters on the plain-- "_Sic semper,_" 'tis the proud refrain That baffles minions back amain, Maryland! Arise, in majesty again, Maryland! My Maryland! I see the blush upon thy cheek, Maryland! For thou wast ever bravely meek, Maryland! But lo! there surges forth a shriek From hill to hill, from creek to creek-- Potomac calls to Chesapeake, Maryland! My Maryland! Thou wilt not yield the Vandal toll, Maryland! Thou wilt not crook to his control, Maryland! Better the fire upon thee roll, Better the shot, the blade, the bowl, Than crucifixion of the soul, Maryland! My Maryland! I hear the distant thunder hum, Maryland! The Old Line bugle, fife, and drum, Maryland! She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb-- Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum! She breathes--she burns! she'll come! she'll come! Maryland! My Maryland! The Boy-Soldier. By a Lady of Savannah. He is acting o'er the battle, With his cap and feather gay, Singing out his soldier-prattle, In a mockish manly way-- With the boldest, bravest footstep, Treading firmly up and down, And his banner waving softly, O'er his boyish locks of brown. And I sit beside him sewing, With a busy heart and hand, For the gallant soldiers going To the far-off battle land-- And I gaze upon my jewel, In his baby spirit bold, My little blue-eyed soldier, Just a second summer old. Still a deep, deep well of feeling, In my mother's heart is stirred, And the tears come softly stealing At each imitative word! There's a struggle in my bosom, For I love my darling boy-- He's the gladness of my spirit, He's the sunlight of my joy! Yet I think upon my country, And my spirit groweth bold-- Oh! I wish my blue-eyed soldier Were but twenty summers old! I would speed him to the battle-- I would arm him for the fight; I would give him to his country, For his country's wrong and right! I would nerve his hand with blessing From the "God of battles" won-- With His helmet and His armor, I would cover o'er my son. Oh! I know there'd be a struggle, For I love my darling boy; He's the gladness of my spirit, He's the sunlight of my joy! Yet in thinking of my country, Oh! my spirit groweth bold, And I with my blue-eyed soldier Were but twenty summers old! The Good Old Cause. By John D. Phelan, of Montgomery, Ala. I. Huzza! huzza! for the _Good Old Cause_, 'Tis a stirring sound to hear, For it tells of rights and liberties, Our fathers bought so dear; It brings up the _Jersey prison-ship_, The spot where _Warren_ fell, And the scaffold which echoes the dying words Of _murdered Hayne's_ farewell. II. The _Good Old Cause!_ it is still the same Though age upon age may roll; 'Tis the cause of _the right_ against _the wrong_, Burning bright in each generous soul; 'Tis the cause of all who claim to live As freemen on Freedom's sod; Of the widow, who wails her husband and sons, By Tyranny's heel down-trod. III. And whoever burns with a holy zeal, To behold his country free, And would sooner see her _baptized in blood_, Than to bend the suppliant knee; Must agree to follow her _White-Cross flag_, Where the storms of battle roll, _A soldier_--A SOLDIER!--with _arms in his hands_, And the _love of the South in his soul!_ IV. Come one, come all, at your country's call, Let none remain behind, But those too young, and those too old, The feeble, the halt, the blind; Let _every man_, whether rich or poor, Who can carry a knapsack and gun, Repair to the ranks of our Southern host, 'Till the cause of the South is won. V. But the son of the South, if such there be, Who will shrink from the contest now, From a love of ease, or the lust of gain, Or through fear of the Yankee foe; May his neighbors shrink from his proffered hand, As though it was soiled for aye, And may every woman turn her cheek From his craven lips away; May his country's curse be on his head, And may no man ever see, A gentle bride by the traitor's side, Or children about his knee. VI. Huzza! huzza! for the Good Old Cause, 'Tis a stirring sound to hear; For it tells of rights and liberties, Our fathers bought so dear; It summons our braves from their bloody graves. To receive our fond applause, And bids us tread in the steps of those Who _died_ for the _Good Old Cause_. Manassas. By Catherine M. Warfield. They have met at last--as storm-clouds meet in heaven; And the Northmen, back and bleeding, have been driven: And their thunders have been stilled, And their leaders crushed or killed, And their ranks, with terror thrilled, rent and riven! Like the leaves of Vallambrosa they are lying; In the moonlight, in the midnight, dead and dying: Like those leaves before the gale, Swept their legions, wild and pale; While the host that made them quail stood, defying. When aloft in morning sunlight flags were flaunted, And "swift vengeance on the rebel" proudly vaunted: Little did they think that night Should close upon their shameful flight, And rebels, victors in the fight, stand undaunted. But peace to those who perished in our passes! Light be the earth above them! green the grasses! Long shall Northmen rue the day, When they met our stern array, And shrunk from battle's wild affray at Manassas! Virginia. By Catherine M. Warfield. Glorious Virginia! Freedom sprang Light to her feet at thy trumpet's clang: At the first sound of that clarion blast, Foes like the chaff from the whirlwind passed-- Passed to their doom: from that hour no more Triumphs their cause by sea or shore. Glorious Virginia! noble the blood That hath bathed thy fields in a crimson flood; On many a wide-spread and sunny plain, Like leaves of autumn thy dead have lain: The Southron heart is their funeral urn! The Southern slogan their requiem stern! Glorious Virginia! to thee, to thee We lean, as the shoots to the parent tree; Bending in awe at thy glance of might;-- First in the council, first in the fight! While our flag is fanned by the breath of fame, Glorious Virginia! we'll bless thy name. The War-Christian's Thanksgiving. Respectfully dedicated to the War-Clergy of the United States. By S. Teackle Wallis. Oh, God of battles! once again, With banner, trump, and drum, And garments in thy wine-press dyed, To give Thee thanks we come. No goats or bullocks garlanded, Unto thine altars go; With brothers' blood, by brothers shed, Our glad libations flow, From pest-house and from dungeon foul, Where, maimed and torn, they die, From gory trench and charnel-house, Where, heap on heap, they lie. In every groan that yields a soul, Each shriek a heart that rends, With every breath of tainted air, Our homage, Lord, ascends. We thank Thee for the sabre's gash, The cannon's havoc wild; We bless Thee for the widow's tears, The want that starves her child! We give Thee praise that Thou hast lit The torch, and fanned the flame; That lust and rapine hunt their prey, Kind Father, in Thy name! That, for the songs of idle joy False angels sang of yore, Thou sendest War on earth--ill-will To men for evermore! We know that wisdom, truth, and right To us and ours are given; That Thou hast clothed us with the wrath, To do the work of heaven. We know that plains and cities waste Are pleasant in Thine eyes-- Thou lov'st a hearthstone desolate, Thou lov'st a mourner's cries. Let not our weakness fall below The measure of Thy will, And while the press hath wine to bleed, Oh, tread it with us still! Teach us to hate--as Jesus taught Fond fools, of yore, to love; Give us Thy vengeance as our own-- Thy pity, hide above! Teach us to turn, with reeking hands, The pages of Thy word, And learn the blessed curses there, On them that sheathe the sword. Where'er we tread may deserts spring, 'Till none are left to slay; And when the last red drop is shed, We'll kneel again--and pray! Sonnet. Charleston Mercury. Man makes his own dread fates, and these in turn Create his tyrants. In our lust and passion, Our appetite and ignorance, he springs. The creature of our need as our desert, The scourge that whips us for decaying virtue, He chastens to reform us! Never yet, In mortal life, did tyrant rise to power, But in the people's worst infirmities Of crime and greed. The creature of our vices, The loathsome ulcer of our vicious moods, He is decreed their proper punishment. Marching to Death. By J. Herbert Sass, of South Carolina. 1862. "The National Quarterly depicts a remarkable scene, which occurred some years since on one of the British transport ships. The commander of the troops on board, seeing that the vessel must soon sink, and that there was no hope of saving his men, drew them up in order of battle, and, as in the presence of a human enemy, bravely faced the doom that was before them. We know of no more impressive illustration of the power of military discipline in the presence of death." I. The last farewells are breathed by loving lips, The last fond prayer for darling ones is said, And o'er each heart stern sorrow's dark eclipse Her sable pall hath spread. II. Far, far beyond each anxious watcher's sight, Baring her bosom to the wanton sea, The lordly ship sweeps onward in her might, Her tameless majesty. III. Forth from his fortress in the western sky, Flashing defiance on each crested wave, Out glares the sun, with red and lowering eye, Grand, even in his grave. IV. Till, waxing bolder as his rays decline, The clustering billows o'er his ramparts sweep, Slow droops his banner--fades his light divine, And darkness rules the deep. V. Look once again!--Night's sombre shades have fled: But the pale rays that glimmer from their sheath, Serve but to show the blackness overhead, And the wild void beneath. VI. Mastless and helmless drifts the helpless bark; Her pride, her majesty, her glory gone; While o'er the waters broods the tempest dark, And the wild winds howl on. VII. But hark! amid the madness of the storm There comes an echo o'er the surging wave; Firm at its call the dauntless legions form, The resolute and brave. VIII. Eight hundred men, the pride of England's host, In stern array stand marshall'd on her deck, Calmly as though they knew not they were lost-- Lost in that shattered wreck. IX. Eight hundred men,--old England's tried and true, Their hopes, their fears, their tasks of glory done, Steadfast, till the last foe be conquered too, And the last fight be won. X. Free floats their banner o'er them as they stand; No mournful dirge may o'er the waters ring; Out peals the anthem, glorious and grand, "The king! God save the king!" XI. Lower and lower sinks the fated bark, Closer and closer creeps the ruthless wave, But loud outswells, across the waters dark, The death-song of the brave. XII. Over their heads the gurgling billows sweep; Still o'er the waves the last fond echoes ring, Out-thrilling from the caverns of the deep, "The king! God save the king!" XIII. Oh thou! whoe'er thou art that reads this page, Learn here a lesson of high, holy faith, For all throughout our earthly pilgrimage, We hold a tryst with death. XIV. Not in the battle-field's tumultuous strife, Not in the hour when vanquished foemen fly, Not in the midst of bright and happy life, Is it most hard to die. XV. Greater the guerdon, holier the prize, Of him who trusts, and waits in lowly mood; Oh! learn how high, how holy courage lies In patient fortitude. Charleston. By Henry Timrod. Calm as that second summer which precedes The first fall of the snow, In the broad sunlight of heroic deeds, The city bides the foe. As yet, behind their ramparts, stern and proud, Her bolted thunders sleep-- Dark Sumter, like a battlemented cloud, Looms o'er the solemn deep. No Calpe frowns from lofty cliff or scaur To guard the holy strand; But Moultrie holds in leash her dogs of war, Above the level sand. And down the dunes a thousand guns lie couched. Unseen, beside the flood-- Like tigers in some Orient jungle crouched, That wait and watch for blood. Meanwhile, through streets still echoing with trade, Walk grave and thoughtful men, Whose hands may one day wield the patriot's blade As lightly as the pen. And maidens, with such eyes as would grow dim Over a bleeding hound, Seem each one to have caught the strength of him Whose sword she sadly bound. Thus girt without and garrisoned at home, Day patient following day, Old Charleston looks from roof, and spire, and dome, Across her tranquil bay. Ships, through a hundred foes, from Saxon lands And spicy Indian ports, Bring Saxon steel and iron to her hands, And summer to her courts. But still, along yon dim Atlantic line, The only hostile smoke Creeps like a harmless mist above the brine, From some frail, floating oak. Shall the spring dawn, and she still clad in smiles, And with an unscathed brow, Rest in the strong arms of her palm-crowned isles, As fair and free as now? We know not; in the temple of the Fates God has inscribed her doom; And, all untroubled in her faith, she waits The triumph or the tomb. Charleston. By Paul H. Hayne. I. What! still does the Mother of Treason uprear Her crest 'gainst the Furies that darken her sea? Unquelled by mistrust, and unblanched by a Fear, Unbowed her proud head, and unbending her knee, Calm, steadfast, and free? II. Aye! launch your red lightnings, blaspheme in your wrath, Shock earth, wave, and heaven with the blasts of your ire;-- But she seizes your death-bolts, yet hot from their path, And hurls back your lightnings, and mocks at the fire Of your fruitless desire. III. Ringed round by her Brave, a fierce circlet of flame, Flashes up from the sword-points that cover her breast; She is guarded by Love, and enhaloed by Fame, And never, we swear, shall _your_ footsteps be pressed Where her dead heroes rest! IV. Her voice shook the Tyrant!--sublime from her tongue Fell the accents of warning,--a Prophetess grand,-- On her soil the first life-notes of Liberty rung, _And the first stalwart blow of her gauntleted hand_ Broke the sleep of her land! V. What more! she hath grasped with her iron-bound will The Fate that would trample her honor to earth,-- The light in those deep eyes is luminous still With the warmth of her valor, the glow of her worth, Which illumine the Earth! VI. And beside her a Knight the great Bayard had loved, "Without fear or reproach," lifts her Banner on high; He stands in the vanguard, majestic, unmoved, And a thousand firm souls, when that Chieftain is nigh, Vow, "'tis easy to die!" VII. Their swords have gone forth on the fetterless air! The world's breath is hushed at the conflict! before Gleams the bright form of Freedom with wreaths in her hair-- And what though the chaplet be crimsoned with gore, We shall prize her the more! VIII. And while Freedom lures on with her passionate eyes To the height of her promise, the voices of yore, From the storied Profound of past ages arise, And the pomps of their magical music outpour O'er the war-beaten shore. IX. Then gird your brave Empress, O! Heroes, with flame Flashed up from the sword-points that cover her breast, She is guarded by Love, and enhaloed by Fame, And never, base Foe! shall your footsteps be pressed Where her dead Martyrs rest! "Ye Men of Alabama!" By John D. Phelan, of Montgomery, Ala. Air--"Ye Mariners of England." I. Ye men of Alabama, Awake, arise, awake! And rend the coils asunder Of this Abolition snake. If another fold he fastens-- If this final coil he plies-- In the cold clasp of hate and power Fair Alabama dies. II. Though round your lower limbs and waist His deadly coils I see, Yet, yet, thank Heaven! your head and arms, And good right hand, are free; And in that hand there glistens-- O God! what joy to feel!-- A polished blade, full sharp and keen, Of tempered State Rights steel. III. Now, by the free-born sires From whose brave loins ye sprung! And by the noble mothers At whose fond breasts ye hung! And by your wives and daughters, And by the ills they dread, Drive deep that good Secession steel Right through the Monster's head. IV. This serpent Abolition Has been coiling on for years; We have reasoned, we have threatened, We have begged almost with tears: Now, away, away with Union, Since on our Southern soil The only _union_ left us Is an anaconda's coil. V. Brave little South Carolina Will strike the self-same blow, And Florida, and Georgia, And Mississippi too; And Arkansas, and Texas; And at the death, I ween, The head will fall beneath the blows Of all the brave Fifteen. VI. In this our day of trial, Let feuds and factions cease, Until above this howling storm We see the sign of Peace. Let Southern men, like brothers, In solid phalanx stand, And poise their spears, and lock their shields, To guard their native land. VII. The love that for the Union Once in our bosoms beat, From insult and from injury Has turned to scorn and hate; And the banner of Secession To-day we lift on high, Resolved, beneath that sacred flag, To conquer, or TO DIE! Montgomery Advertiser, October, 1860. Nec Temere, Nec Timide. By Annie Chambers Ketchum. Gentlemen of the South, Gird on your glittering swords! Darkly along our borders fair Gather the Northern hordes. Ruthless and fierce they come At the fiery cannon's mouth, To blast the glory of our land, Gentlemen of the South! Ride forth in your stately pride, Each bearing on his shield Ensigns our fathers won of yore On many a well-fought field! Let this be your battle-cry, Even to the cannon's mouth, _Cor unum via una!_ Onward, Gentlemen of the South! Brave knights of a knightly race, Gordon, and Chambers, and Gray, Show to the minions of the North How Valor dares the fray! Let them read on each stainless crest At the belching cannon's mouth, _Decori decus addit avito_, Gentlemen of the South! Morrison, Douglas, Stuart, Erskine, and Bradford, and West, Your gauntlets on many a bloody field Have stood the battle's test! _Animo non astutia!_ March to the cannon's mouth, Heirs of the brave dead centuries! Onward, Gentlemen of the South! Call forth your stalwart men, Workers in brass and steel! Bid the swart artisans come forth At sound of the trumpet's peal! Give them your war-cry, Erskine! _Fight!_ to the cannon's mouth! Bid the men _Forward!_ Douglas, _Forward!_ Yeomanry of the South! Brave hunters! Ye have met The fierce black bear in the fray; Ye have trailed the panther night by night, Ye have chased the fox by day! Your prancing chargers pant To dash at the gray wolf's mouth, Your arms are sure of their quarry! Onward! Gentlemen of the South! Fight! that the lowly serf And the high-born lady still May bide in their proud dependency, Free subjects of your will! Teach the base North how ill, At the fiery cannon's mouth, He fares who touches your household gods, Gentlemen of the South! From mother, and wife, and child, From faithful and happy slave, Prayers for your sakes ascend to Him Whose arm is strong to save! We check the gathering tears, Though ye go to the cannon's mouth; _Dominus providebit!_ Onward, Gentlemen of the South! Memphis Appeal. Dixie. By Albert Pike. I. Southrons, hear your Country call you! Up! lest worse than death befall you! To arms! to arms! to arms! in Dixie! Lo! all the beacon-fires are lighted, Let all hearts be now united! To arms! to arms! to arms! in Dixie! Advance the flag; of Dixie! Hurrah! hurrah! For Dixie's land we'll take our stand, To live or die for Dixie! To arms! to arms! And conquer peace for Dixie! To arms! to arms! And conquer peace for Dixie! II. Hear the Northern thunders mutter! Northern flags in South-winds flutter! To arms! etc. Send them back your fierce defiance! Stamp upon the accursed alliance! To arms! etc. Advance the flag of Dixie! etc. III. Fear no danger! shun no labor! Lift up rifle, pike, and sabre! To arms! etc. Shoulder pressing close to shoulder, Let the odds make each heart bolder! To arms! etc. Advance the flag of Dixie, etc. IV. How the South's great heart rejoices At your cannon's ringing voices; To arms! etc. For faith betrayed and pledges broken, Wrong inflicted, insults spoken. To arms! etc. Advance the flag of Dixie, etc. V. Strong as lions, swift as eagles, Back to their kennels hunt these beagles! To arms! etc. Cut the unequal bonds asunder! Let them hence each other plunder! To arms! etc. Advance the flag of Dixie! etc. VI. Swear upon your Country's altar, Never to submit or falter; To arms! etc. Till the spoilers are defeated, Till the Lord's work is completed. To arms! etc. Advance the flag of Dixie! etc. VII. Halt not till our Federation Secures among earth's Powers its station! To arms! etc. Then at peace, and crowned with glory, Hear your children tell the story! To arms! etc. Advance the flag of Dixie! etc. VIII. If the loved ones weep in sadness, Victory soon shall bring them gladness; To arms! etc. Exultant pride soon banish sorrow; Smiles chase tears away to-morrow. To arms! etc. Advance the flag of Dixie! etc. The Old Rifleman. By Frank Ticknor, of Georgia. Now bring me out my buckskin suit! My pouch and powder, too! We'll see if seventy-six can shoot As sixteen used to do. Old Bess! we've kept our barrels bright! Our trigger quick and true! As far, if not as _fine_ a sight, As long ago we drew! And pick me out a trusty flint! A real white and blue, Perhaps 'twill win the _other_ tint Before the hunt is through! Give boys your brass percussion caps! Old "shut-pan" suits as well! There's something in the _sparks:_ perhaps There's something in the smell! We've seen the red-coat Briton bleed! The red-skin Indian, too! We've never thought to draw a bead On Yanke-doodle-doo! But, Bessie! bless your dear old heart! Those days are mostly done; And now we must revive the art Of shooting on the run! If Doodle must be meddling, why, There's only this to do-- Select the black spot in his eye, And let the daylight through! And if he doesn't like the way That Bess presents the view, He'll maybe change his mind, and stay Where the good Doodles do! Where Lincoln lives. The man, you know, Who kissed the Testament; To keep the Constitution? No! _To keep the Government!_ We'll hunt for Lincoln, Bess! old tool, And take him half and half; We'll aim to _hit_ him, if a fool, And _miss_ him, if a calf! We'll teach these shot-gun boys the tricks By which a war is won; Especially how Seventy-six Took Tories on the run. Battle Hymn. Charleston Mercury. Lord of Hosts, that beholds us in battle, defending The homes of our sires 'gainst the hosts of the foe, Send us help on the wings of thy angels descending, And shield from his terrors, and baffle his blow. Warm the faith of our sons, till they flame as the iron, Red-glowing from the fire-forge, kindled by zeal; Make them forward to grapple the hordes that environ, In the storm-rush of battle, through forests of steel! Teach them, Lord, that the cause of their country makes glorious The martyr who falls in the front of the fight;-- That the faith which is steadfast makes ever victorious The arm which strikes boldly defending the right;-- That the zeal, which is roused by the wrongs of a nation, Is a war-horse that sweeps o'er the field as his own; And the Faith, which is winged by the soul's approbation, Is a warrior, in proof, that can ne'er be o'erthrown. Kentucky, She Is Sold By J. R. Barrick, of Kentucky. A tear for "the dark and bloody ground," For the land of hills and caves; Her Kentons, Boones, and her Shelbys sleep Where the vandals tread their graves; A sigh for the loss of her honored fame, Dear won in the days of old; Her ship is manned by a foreign crew, For Kentucky, she is sold. The bones of her sons lie bleaching on The plains of Tippecanoe, On the field of Raisin her blood was shed, As free as the summer's dew; In Mexico her McRee and Clay Were first of the brave and bold-- A change has been in her bosom wrought, For Kentucky, she is sold. Pride of the free, was that noble State, And her banner still were so, Had the iron heel of the despot not Her prowess sunk so low; Her valleys once were the freeman's home, Her valor unbought with gold, But now the pride of her life is fled, For Kentucky, she is sold. Her brave would once have scorned to wear The yoke that crushes her now, And the tyrant grasp, and the vandal tread, Would sullen have made her brow; Her spirit yet will be wakened up, And her saddened fate be told, Her gallant sons to the world yet prove That Kentucky is not sold. Sonnet--The Ship of State. Here lie the peril and necessity That need a race of giants--a great realm, With not one noble leader at the helm; And the great Ship of State still driving high, 'Midst breakers, on a lee shore--to the rocks. With ever and anon most terrible shocks-- The crew aghast, and fear in every eye. Yet is the gracious Providence still nigh; And, if our cause be just, our hearts be true, We shall save goodly ship and gallant crew, Nor suffer shipwreck of our liberty! It needs that as a people we arise, With solemn purpose that even fate defies, And brave all perils with unblenching eye! Charleston Mercury. "In His Blanket on the Ground." By Caroline H. Gervais, Charleston. Weary, weary lies the soldier, In his blanket on the ground With no sweet "Good-night" to cheer him, And no tender voice's sound, Making music in the darkness, Making light his toilsome hours, Like a sunbeam in the forest, Or a tomb wreathed o'er with flowers. Thoughtful, hushed, he lies, and tearful, As his memories sadly roam To the "cozy little parlor" And the loved ones of his home; And his waking and his dreaming Softly braid themselves in one, As the twilight is the mingling Of the starlight and the sun. And when sleep descends upon him, _Still_ his thought within his dream Is of home, and friends, and loved ones, And his busy fancies seem To be _real_, as they wander To his mother's cherished form. As she gently said, in parting "Thine in sunshine and in storm: Thine in helpless childhood's morning, And in boyhood's joyous time, Thou must leave me now--_God_ watch thee In thy manhood's ripened prime." Or, mayhap, amid the phantoms Teeming thick within his brain, His dear father's locks, o'er-silvered, Come to greet his view again; And he hears his trembling accents, Like a clarion ringing high, "Since _not mine_ are youth and strength, boy, _Thou_ must victor prove, or die." Or perchance he hears a whisper Of the faintest, faintest sigh, Something deeper than word-spoken, Something breathing of a tie Near his soul as bounding heart-blood: It is hers, that patient wife-- And again that parting seemeth Like the taking leave of life: And her last kiss he remembers, And the agonizing thrill, And the "_Must you go?_" and answer, "_I but know my Country's will._" Or the little children gather, Half in wonder, round his knees; And the faithful dog, mute, watchful, In the mystic glass he sees; And the voice of song, and pictures, And the simplest homestead flowers, Unforgotten, crowd before him In the solemn midnight hours. Then his thoughts in Dreamland wander To a sister's sweet caress, And he feels her dear lips quiver As his own they fondly press; And he hears her proudly saying, (Though sad tears are in her eyes), "Brave men fall, but live in story, _For the Hero never dies!_" Or, perhaps, his brown cheek flushes, And his heart beats quicker now, As he thinks of one who gave him, Him, the loved one, love's sweet vow; And, ah, fondly he remembers He is _still_ her dearest care, Even in his star-watched slumber That she pleads for him in prayer. Oh, the soldier _will_ be dreaming, Dreaming _often_ of us all, (When the damp earth is his pillow, And the snow and cold sleet fall), Of the dear, familiar faces, Of the cozy, curtained room, Of the flitting of the shadows In the twilight's pensive gloom. Or when summer suns burn o'er him, Bringing drought and dread disease, And the throes of wasting fever Come his weary frame to seize-- In the restless sleep of sickness, Doomed, perchance, to martyr death, Hear him whisper "_Home_"--sweet cadence, With his quickened, labored breath. Then God bless him, bless the soldier, And God nerve him for the fight; May He lend his arm new prowess To do battle for the right. Let him feel that while he's dreaming In his fitful slumber bound, That we're praying--_God watch o'er him In his blanket on the ground._ The Mountain Partisan. I. My rifle, pouch, and knife! My steed! And then we part! One loving kiss, dear wife, One press of heart to heart! Cling to me yet awhile, But stay the sob, the tear! Smile--only try to smile-- And I go without a fear. II. Our little cradled boy, He sleeps--and in his sleep, Smiles, with an angel joy, Which tells thee not to weep. I'll kneel beside, and kiss-- He will not wake the while, Thus dreaming of the bliss, That bids thee, too, to smile. III. Think not, dear wife, I go, With a light thought at my heart 'Tis a pang akin to woe, That fills me as we part; But when the wolf was heard To howl around our lot, Thou know'st, dear mother-bird, I slew him on the spot! IV. Aye, panther, wolf, and bear, Have perish'd 'neath my knife; Why tremble, then, with fear, When now I go, my wife? Shall I not keep the peace, That made our cottage dear; And 'till these wolf-curs cease Shall I be housing here? V. One loving kiss, dear wife, One press of heart to heart; Then for the deadliest strife, For freedom I depart! I were of little worth, Were these Yankee wolves left free To ravage 'round our hearth, And bring one grief to thee! VI. God's blessing on thee, wife, God's blessing on the young: Pray for me through the strife, And teach our infant's tongue. Whatever haps in fight, I shall be true to thee-- To the home of our delight-- To my people of the free. The Cameo Bracelet. By James R. Randall, of Maryland. Eva sits on the ottoman there, Sits by a Psyche carved in stone, With just such a face, and just such an air, As Esther upon her throne. She's sifting lint for the brave who bleed, And I watch her fingers float and flow Over the linen, as, thread by thread, It flakes to her lap like snow. A bracelet clinks on her delicate wrist, Wrought, as Cellini's were at Rome, Out of the tears of the amethyst, And the wan Vesuvian foam. And full on the bauble-crest alway-- A cameo image keen and fine-- Glares thy impetuous knife, Corday, And the lava-locks are thine! I thought of the war-wolves on our trail, Their gaunt fangs sluiced with gouts of blood; Till the Past, in a dead, mesmeric veil, Drooped with a wizard flood Till the surly blaze through the iron bars Shot to the hearth with a pang and cry-- And a lank howl plunged from the Champ de Mars To the Column of July-- Till Corday sprang from the gem, I swear, And the dove-eyed damsel I knew had flown-- For Eva was not on the ottoman there, By the Psyche carved in stone. She grew like a Pythoness flushed with fate, With the incantation in her gaze, A lip of scorn--an arm of hate-- And a dirge of the "Marseillaise!" Eva, the vision was not wild, When wreaked on the tyrants of the land-- For you were transfigured to Nemesis, child, With the dagger in your hand! Zollicoffer. By H. L. Flash, of Alabama. First in the fight, and first in the arms Of the white-winged angels of glory, With the heart of the South at the feet of God, And his wounds to tell the story: And the blood that flowed from his hero heart, On the spot where he nobly perished, Was drunk by the earth as a sacrament In the holy cause he cherished. In Heaven a home with the brave and blessed, And, for his soul's sustaining, The apocalyptic eyes of Christ-- And nothing on earth remaining, But a handful of dust in the land of his choice, A name in song and story, And Fame to shout with her brazen voice, "Died on the Field of Glory!" Beauregard By Catharine A. Warfield, of Mississippi. Let the trumpet shout once more, Beauregard! Let the battle-thunders roar, Beauregard! And again by yonder sea, Let the swords of all the free Leap forth to fight with thee, Beauregard! Old Sumter loves thy name, Beauregard! Grim Moultrie guards thy fame, Beauregard! Oh! first in Freedom's fight! Oh! steadfast in the right! Oh! brave and Christian Knight! Beauregard! St. Michael with his host, Beauregard! Encamps by yonder coast, Beauregard! And the Demon's might shall quail, And the Dragon's terrors fail, Were he trebly clad in mail, Beauregard! Not a leaf shall fall away, Beauregard! From the laurel won to-day, Beauregard! While the ocean breezes blow, While the billows lapse and flow O'er the Northman's bones below, Beauregard! Let the trumpet shout once more, Beauregard! Let the battle-thunders roar, Beauregard! From the centre to the shore, From the sea to the land's core Thrills the echo, evermore, Beauregard! South Carolina. 1719. Colonial Revolution. 1763. Colonial History--Progress, 1776. American Revolution. 1812-15. Second War with Great Britain 1830-32. Nullification for State Rights. 1835-40. Florida War. 1847. Mexican War--Palmetto Regiment. 1860-61. Secession, and Third War for Independence. My brave old Country! I have watched thee long Still ever first to rise against the wrong; To check the usurper in his giant stride, And brave his terrors and abase his pride; Foresee the insidious danger ere it rise, And warn the heedless and inform the wise; Scorning the lure, the bribe, the selfish game, Which, through the office, still becomes the shame; Thou stood'st aloof--superior to the fate That would have wrecked thy freedom as a State. In vain the despot's threat, his cunning lure; Too proud thy spirit, and thy heart too pure; Thou hadst no quest but freedom, and to be In conscience well-assured, and people free. The statesman's lore was thine, the patriot's aim, These kept thee virtuous, and preserved thy fame; The wisdom still for council, the brave voice, That thrills a people till they all rejoice. These were thy birthrights; and two centuries pass'd, As, at the first, still find thee at the last; Supreme in council, resolute in will, Pure in thy purpose--independent still! The great good counsels, the examples brave, Won from the past, not buried in its grave, Still warm your soul with courage--still impar Wisdom to virtue, valor to the heart! Still first to check th' encroachment--to declare "Thus far! no further, shall the assailant dare;" Thou keep'st thy ermine white, thy State secure, Thy fortunes prosperous, and thy freedom sure; No glozing art deceives thee to thy bane; The tempter and the usurper strive in vain! Thy spear's first touch unfolds the fiendish form, And first, with fearless breast, thou meet'st the storm; Though hosts assail thee, thou thyself a host, Prepar'st to meet the invader on the coast: Thy generous sons contending which shall be First in the phalanx, gathering by the sea; No dastard fear appals them, as they teach How best to hurl the bolt, or man the breach! Great Soul in little frame!--the hope of man Exults, when such as thou art in the van! Unshaken, unbeguiled, unslaved, unbought, Thy fame shall brighten with each battle fought; True to the examples of the past, thou'lt be, For the long future, best security. Charleston Mercury. Gossypium. Carolina. By Henry Timrod. I. The despot treads thy sacred sands, Thy pines give shelter to his bands, Thy sons stand by with idle hands, Carolina! He breathes at ease thy airs of balm, He scorns the lances of thy palm; Oh I who shall break thy craven calm, Carolina! Thy ancient fame is growing dim, A spot is on thy garment's rim; Give to the winds thy battle hymn, Carolina! II. Call on thy children of the hill, Wake swamp and river, coast and rill, Rouse all thy strength and all thy skill, Carolina! Cite wealth and science, trade and art, Touch with thy fire the cautious mart, And pour thee through the people's heart, Carolina! Till even the coward spurns his fears, And all thy fields, and fens, and meres, Shall bristle like thy palm, with spears, Carolina! III. Hold up the glories of thy dead; Say how thy elder children bled, Arid point to Eutaw's battle-bed, Carolina! Tell how the patriot's soul was tried, And what his dauntless breast defied; How Rutledge ruled, and Laurens died, Carolina! Cry! till thy summons, heard at last, Shall fall, like Marion's bugle-blast, Re-echoed from the haunted past, Carolina! IV. I hear a murmur, as of waves That grope their way through sunless caves, Like bodies struggling in their graves, Carolina! And now it deepens; slow and grand It swells, as rolling to the land An ocean broke upon the strand, Carolina! Shout! let it reach the startled Huns! And roar with all thy festal guns! It is the answer of thy sons, Carolina! V. They will not wait to hear thee call; From Sachem's head to Sumter's wall Resounds the voice of hut and hall, Carolina! No! thou hast not a stain, they say, Or none save what the battle-day Shall wash in seas of blood away, Carolina! Thy skirts, indeed, the foe may part, Thy robe be pierced with sword and dart, They shall not touch thy noble heart, Carolina! VI. Ere thou shalt own the tyrant's thrall, Ten times ten thousand men must fall; Thy corpse may hearken to his call, Carolina! When by thy bier, in mournful throngs, The women chant thy mortal wrongs, 'Twill be their own funereal songs, Carolina! From thy dead breast, by ruffians trod, No helpless child shall look to God; All shall be safe beneath thy sod, Carolina! VII. Girt with such wills to do and bear, Assured in right, and mailed in prayer, Thou wilt not bow thee to despair, Carolina! Throw thy bold banner to the breeze! Front with thy ranks the threatening seas, Like thine own proud armorial trees, Carolina! Fling down thy gauntlet to the Huns, And roar the challenge from thy guns; Then leave the future to thy sons, Carolina! My Mother-Land. By Paul H. Hayne. _"Animis, Opibusque Parati."_ My Mother-land! thou wert the first to fling Thy virgin flag of freedom to the breeze, The first to humble, in thy neighboring seas, The imperious despot's power; But long before that hour, While yet, in false and vain imagining, Thy sister nations would not own their foe, And turned to jest thy warnings, though the low, Deep, awful mutterings, that precede the throe Of earthquakes, burdened all the ominous air; While yet they paused in scorn, Of fatal madness born,-- Thou, oh, my Mother! like a priestess bless'd With wondrous vision of the things to come, Thou couldst not calmly rest Secure and dumb-- But from thy borders, with the sounds of drum And trumpet, came the thrilling note, "PREPARE!" "Prepare for what?" thy careless sisters said; "We see no threatening tempest overhead, Only a few pale clouds, the west wind's breath Will sweep away, or melt in watery death." "Prepare!" the time grows ripe to meet our doom! Alas! it was not till the thunder-boom Of shell and cannon shocked the vernal day, Which shone o'er Charleston Bay-- When the tamed "Stars and Stripes" before us bowed-- That startled, roused, the last scale fallen away From, blinded eyes, our SOUTH, erect and proud, Fronted the issue, and, though lulled too long, Felt her great spirit nerved, her patriot valor strong. But darker days have found us--'gainst the horde Of robber Northmen, who, with torch and sword, Approach to desecrate The sacred hearthstone and the Temple-gate-- Who would defile our fathers' graves, and cast Their ashes to the blast-- Yea! who declare, "we will annihilate The very bound-lines of your sovereign State"-- Against this ravening flood Of foul invaders, drunk with lust and blood, Oh! we, Strong in the strength of God-supported might, Go forth to give our foe no paltry fight, Nor basely yield To venal legions a scarce blood-dewed field-- But witness, Heaven! if such the need should be, To make our fated land one vast Thermopylæ! Death! What of Death?-- Can he who once drew honorable breath In liberty's pure sphere, Foster a sensual fear, When death and slavery meet him face to face, Saying: "Choose thou between us; here, the grace Which follows patriot martyrdom, and there, Black degradation, haunted by despair." Death! What of Death?-- The vilest reptiles, brutes or men, who crawl Across their portion of this earthly ball, Share life and motion with us; would we strive Like such to creep alive, Polluted, loathsome, only that with sin We still might keep our mortal breathings in? The very thought brings blushes to the cheek! I hear all 'round about me murmurs run, Hot murmurs, but soon merging into ONE Soul-stirring utterance--hark! the people speak: "Our course is righteous, and our aims are just! Behold, we seek Not merely to preserve for noble wives The virtuous pride of unpolluted lives, To shield our daughters from the ruffian's hand, And leave our sons their heirloom of command, In generous perpetuity of trust; Not only to defend those ancient laws, Which Saxon sturdiness and Norman fire Welded forevermore with freedom's cause, And handed scathless down from sire to sire-- Nor yet, our grand religion, and our Christ, Undecked by upstart creeds and vulgar charms, (Though these had sure sufficed To urge the feeblest Sybarite to arms)-- But more than all, because embracing all, Insuring all, SELF-GOVERNMENT, the boon Our patriot statesmen strove to win and keep, From prescient Pinckney and the wise Calhoun To him, that gallant Knight, The youngest champion in the Senate hall, Who, led and guarded by a luminous fate, His armor, Courage, and his war-horse, Right, Dared through the lists of eloquence to sweep Against the proud Bois Guilbert of debate![1] "There's not a tone from out the teeming past, Uplifted once in such a cause as ours, Which does not smite our souls In long reverberating thunder-rolls, From the far mountain-steeps of ancient story. Above the shouting, furious Persian mass, Millions arrayed in pomp of Orient powers, Rings the wild war-cry of Leonidas Pent in his rugged fortress of the rock; And o'er the murmurous seas, Compact of hero-faith and patriot bliss, (For conquest crowns the Athenian's hope at last), Gome the clear accents of Miltiades, Mingled with cheers that drown the battle-shock Beside the wave-washed strand of Salamis. "Where'er on earth the self-devoted heart Hath been by worthy deeds exalted thus, We look for proud exemplars; yet for us It is enough to know _Our fathers left us freemen_; let us show The will to hold our lofty heritage, The patient strength to act our fathers' part-- Brothers on history's page, We wait to write our autographs in gore, To cast the morning brightness of our glory Beyond our day and hope, The narrow limit of _one_ age's scope, On Time's remotest shore! "Yea! though our children's blood Kain 'round us in a crimson-swelling flood, Why pause or falter?--that red tide shall bear The Ark that holds our shrined liberty, Nearer, and yet more near Some height of promise o'er the ensanguined sea. "At last, the conflict done, The fadeless meed of final victory won-- Behold! emerging from the rifted dark Athwart a shining summit high in heaven, That delegated Ark! No more to be by vengeful tempests driven, But poised upon the sacred mount, whereat The congregated nations gladly gaze, Struck by the quiet splendor of the rays That circle Freedom's blood-bought Ararat!" Thus spake the people's wisdom; unto me Its voice hath come, a passionate augury! Methinks the very aspect of the world Changed to the mystic music of its hope. For, lo! about the deepening heavenly cope The stormy cloudland banners all are furled, And softly borne above Are brooding pinions of invisible love, Distilling balm of rest and tender thought From fairy realms, by fairy witchery wrought O'er the hushed ocean steal celestial gleams Divine as light that haunts a poet's dreams; And universal nature, wheresoever My vision strays--o'er sky, and sea, and river-- Sleeps, like a happy child, In slumber undefiled, A premonition of sublimer days, When war and warlike lays At length shall cease, Before a grand Apocalypse of Peace, Vouchsafed in mercy to all human kind-- A prelude and a prophecy combined! [1]Everybody must remember the famous tournament scene in "Ivanhoe." Of course the author, in drawing a comparison between that chivalric battle and the contest upon "Foote's Resolutions" in the great Senatorial debate of 1832, would be understood as _not_ pushing the comparison further than the _first_ shock of arms between Bois Guilbert and his youthful opponent, which Scott tells us was the most spirited encounter of the day. Both the knights' lances were fairly broken, and they parted, with no decisive advantage on either side. Joe Johnston. By John R. Thompson. Once more to the breach for the land of the West! And a leader we give of our bravest and best, Of his State and his army the pride; Hope shines like the plume of Navarre on his crest, And gleams in the glaive at his side. For his courage is keen, and his honor is bright As the trusty Toledo[1] he wears to the fight, Newly wrought in the forges of Spain; And this weapon, like all he has brandished for right, Will never be dimmed by a stain. He leaves the loved, soil of Virginia behind, Where the dust of his fathers is fitly enshrined, Where lie the fresh fields of his fame; Where the murmurous pines, as they sway in the wind, Seem ever to whisper his name. The Johnstons have always borne wings on their spurs, And their motto a noble distinction confers-- "Ever ready!" for friend or for foe-- With a patriot's fervor the sentiment stirs The large, manly heart of our JOE. We read that a former bold chief of the clan, Fell, bravely defending the West, in the van, On Shiloh's illustrious day; And with reason we reckon our Johnston's the man The dark, bloody debt to repay. There is much to be done; if not glory to seek, There's a just and terrible vengeance to wreak For crimes of a terrible dye; While the plaint of the helpless, the wail of the weak, In a chorus rise up to the sky. For the Wolf of the North we once drove to his den, That quailed with affright 'neath the stern glance of men, With his pack has returned to the spoil; Then come from the mountain, the hamlet, the glen, And drive him again from your soil. Brave-born Tennesseeans, so loyal, so true, Who have hunted the beast in your highlands, of you Our leader had never a doubt; You will troop by the thousand the chase to renew, The day that his bugles ring out. But ye "Hunters," so famed, "of Kentucky" of yore, Where now are the rifles that kept from your door The wolf and the robber as well? Of a truth, you have never been laggard before To deal with a savage so fell. Has the love you once bore to your country grown cold? Has the fire on the altar died out? do you hold Your lives than your freedom more dear? Can you shamefully barter your birthright for gold, Or basely take counsel of fear? We will not believe it; Kentucky, the land Of a Clay, will not tamely submit to the brand That disgraces the dastard, the slave: The hour of redemption draws nigh, is at hand, Her own sons her own honor shall save! Mighty men of Missouri, come forth to the call, When the rush of your rivers, when tempests appal, And the torrents their sources unseal; And this be the watchword of one and of all-- "Remember the butcher, McNeil!" Then once more to the breach for the land of the West; Strike home for your hearths--for the lips you love best; Follow on where your leader you see; One flash of his sword, when the foe is hard pressed, And the land of the West shall be free! [Footnote 1: General Johnston carries with him a beautiful blade, recently presented to him, bearing the mark of the Royal Manufactory of Toledo, 1862.] Over the River. By Jane T. H. Cross. Published in the Nashville Christian Advocate, 1861. We hail your "stripes" and lessened "stars," As one may hail a neighbor; Now forward move! no fear of jars, With nothing but free labor; And we will mind our slaves and farm, And never wish you any harm, But greet you--_over the river_. The self-same language do we speak, The same dear words we utter; Then let's not make each other weak, Nor 'gainst each other mutter; But let each go his separate way, And each will doff his hat, and say: "I greet you--over the river!" Our flags, almost the same, unfurl, And nod across the border; Ohio's waves between them curl-- _Our stripe's a little broader_; May yours float out on every breeze, And, _in our wake_, traverse all seas-- We greet you--over the river! We part, as friends of years should part, With pleasant words and wishes, And no desire is in our heart For Lincoln's loaves and fishes; "Farewell," we wave you from afar, We like you best--just where you are-- And greet you--over the river! The Confederacy. By Jane T. H. Cross. Published in the Southern Christian Advocated. Born in a day, full-grown, our Nation stood, The pearly light of heaven was on her face; Life's early joy was coursing in her blood; A thing she was of beauty and of grace. She stood, a stranger on the great broad earth, No voice of sympathy was heard to greet The glory-beaming morning of her birth, Or hail the coming of the unsoiled feet. She stood, derided by her passing foes; Her heart beat calmly 'neath their look of scorn; Their rage in blackening billows round her rose-- Her brow, meanwhile, as radiant as the morn. Their poisonous coils about her limbs are cast, She shakes them off in pure and holy ire, As quietly as Paul, in ages past, Shook off the serpent in the crackling fire. She bends not to her foes, nor to the world, She bears a heart for glory, or for gloom; But with her starry cross, her flag unfurled, She kneels amid the sweet magnolia bloom. She kneels to Thee, O God, she claims her birth, She lifts to Thee her young and trusting eye, She asks of Thee her place upon the earth-- For it is Thine to give or to deny. Oh, let _Thine_ eye but recognize her right! Oh, let _Thy_ voice but justify her claim! Like grasshoppers are nations in Thy sight, And all their power is but an empty name, Then listen, Father, listen to her prayer! Her robes are dripping with her children's blood; Her foes around "like bulls of Bashan stare," They fain would sweep her off, "as with a flood." The anguish wraps her close around, like death, Her children lie in heaps about her slain; Before the world she bravely holds her breath, Nor gives one utterance to a note of pain. But 'tis not like Thee to forget the oppressed, Thou feel'st within her heart the stifled moan-- Thou Christ! Thou Lamb of God! oh, give her rest! For Thou hast called her!--is she not Thine own? President Davis. By Jane T. H. Cross. Published in the New York News, 1865. The cell is lonely, and the night Has filled it with a darker gloom; The little rays of friendly light, Which through each crack and chink found room To press in with their noiseless feet, All merciful and fleet, And bring, like Noah's trembling dove, God's silent messages of love-- These, too, are gone, Shut out, and gone, And that great heart is left alone. Alone, with darkness and with woe, Around him Freedom's temple lies, Its arches crushed, its columns low, The night-wind through its ruin sighs; Rash, cruel hands that temple razed, Then stood the world amazed! And now those hands--ah, ruthless deeds! Their captive pierce--his brave heart bleeds; And yet no groan Is heard, no groan! He suffers silently, alone. For all his bright and happy home, He has that cell, so drear and dark, The narrow walls, for heaven's blue dome, The clank of chains, for song of lark; And for the grateful voice of friends-- That voice which ever lends Its charm where human hearts are found-- He hears the key's dull, grating sound; No heart is near, No kind heart near, No sigh of sympathy, no tear! Oh, dream not thus, thou true and good! Unnumbered hearts on thee await, By thee invisibly have stood, Have crowded through thy prison-gate; Nor dungeon bolts, nor dungeon bars, Nor floating "stripes and stars," Nor glittering gun or bayonet, Can ever cause us to forget Our faith to thee, Our love to thee, Thou glorious soul! thou strong! _thou free!_ The Rifleman's "Fancy Shot." "Rifleman, shoot me a fancy shot, Straight at the heart of yon prowling vidette; Ring me a ball on the glittering spot That shines on his breast like an amulet." "Ah, captain! here goes for a fine-drawn bead; There's music around when my barrel's in tune." Crack! went the rifle; the messenger sped, And dead from his horse fell the ringing dragoon. "Now, rifleman, steal through the bushes, and snatch From your victim some trinket to handsel first blood: A button, a loop, or that luminous patch That gleams in the moon like a diamond stud." "Oh, captain! I staggered, and sank in my track, When I gazed on the face of the fallen vidette; For he looked so like you, as he lay on his back, That my heart rose upon me, and masters me yet. "But I snatched off the trinket--this locket of gold; An inch from the centre my lead broke its way, Scarce grazing the picture, so fair to behold, Of a beautiful lady in bridal array." "Ha! rifleman! fling me the locket--'tis she! My brother's young bride; and the fallen dragoon. Was her husband. Hush, soldier!--'twas heaven's deer We must bury him there, by the light of the moon. "But hark! the far bugles their warning unite; War is a virtue, and weakness a sin; There's a lurking and lopping around us to-night: Load again, rifleman, keep your hand in!" "All Quiet Along the Potomac To-Night." By Lamar Fontaine. [The claim to the authorship of this poem, which Fontaine alleges, has been disputed in behalf of a lady of New York, but she herself continues silent on the subject.] "All quiet along the Potomac to-night!" Except here and there a stray picket Is shot, as he walks on his beat, to and fro, By a rifleman hid in the thicket. 'Tis nothing! a private or two now and then Will not count in the news of a battle; Not an officer lost! only one of the men Moaning out, all alone, the death-rattle. All quiet along the Potomac to-night! Where soldiers lie peacefully dreaming; And their tents in the rays of the clear autumn moon, And the light of their camp-fires are gleaming. A tremulous sigh, as a gentle night-wind Through the forest leaves slowly is creeping; While the stars up above, with their glittering eyes, Keep guard o'er the army while sleeping. There's only the sound of the lone sentry's tread, As he tramps from the rock to the fountain, And thinks of the two on the low trundle bed, Far away, in the cot on the mountain. His musket falls slack, his face, dark and grim, Grows gentle with memories tender, As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep, And their mother--"may heaven defend her!" The moon seems to shine forth as brightly as then-- That night, when the love, yet unspoken, Leaped up to his lips, and when low-murmured vows Were pledged to be ever unbroken. Then drawing his sleeve roughly over his eyes, He dashes off tears that are welling; And gathers his gun closer up to his breast, As if to keep down the heart's swelling. He passes the fountain, the blasted pine-tree, And his footstep is lagging and weary; Yet onward he goes, through the broad belt of light, Towards the shades of the forest so dreary. Hark! was it the night-wind that rustled the leaves? Was it moonlight so wondrously flashing? It looked like a rifle: "Ha! Mary, good-by!" And his life-blood is ebbing and splashing. "All quiet along the Potomac to-night!" No sound save the rush of the river; While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead, And the picket's off duty forever! Address Delivered at the opening of the new theatre at Richmond. A Prize Poem.--By Henry Timrod. A FAIRY ring Drawn in the crimson of a battle-plain-- From whose weird circle every loathsome thing And sight and sound of pain Are banished, while about it in the air, And from the ground, and from the low-hung skies, Throng, in a vision fair As ever lit a prophet's dying eyes, Gleams of that unseen world That lies about us, rainbow-tinted shapes With starry wings unfurled, Poised for a moment on such airy capes As pierce the golden foam Of sunset's silent main-- Would image what in this enchanted dome, Amid the night of war and death In which the armed city draws its breath, We have built up! For though no wizard wand or magic cup The spell hath wrought, Within this charmed fane we ope the gates Of that divinest fairy-land Where, under loftier fates Than rule the vulgar earth on which we stand, Move the bright creatures of the realm of thought. Shut for one happy evening from the flood That roars around us, here you may behold-- As if a desert way Could blossom and unfold A garden fresh with May-- Substantialized in breathing flesh and blood, Souls that upon the poet's page Have lived from age to age, And yet have never donned this mortal clay. A golden strand Shall sometimes spread before you like the isle Where fair Miranda's smile Met the sweet stranger whom the father's art Had led unto her heart, Which, like a bud that waited for the light, Burst into bloom at sight! Love shall grow softer in each maiden's eyes As Juliet leans her cheek upon her hand, And prattles to the night. Anon, a reverend form With tattered robe and forehead bare, That challenge all the torments of the air, Goes by! And the pent feelings choke in one long sigh, While, as the mimic thunder rolls, you hear The noble wreck of Lear Reproach like things of life the ancient skies, And commune with the storm! Lo! next a dim and silent chamber, where Wrapt in glad dreams, in which, perchance, the Moor Tells his strange story o'er, The gentle Desdemona chastely lies, Unconscious of the loving murderer nigh. Then through a hush like death Stalks Denmark's mailed ghost! And Hamlet enters with that thoughtful breath Which is the trumpet to a countless host Of reasons, but which wakes no deed from sleep; For while it calls to strife, He pauses on the very brink of fact To toy as with the shadow of an act, And utter those wise saws that cut so deep Into the core of life! Nor shall be wanting many a scene Where forms of more familiar mien, Moving through lowlier pathways, shall present The world of every day, Such as it whirls along the busy quay, Or sits beneath a rustic orchard wall, Or floats about a fashion-freighted hall, Or toils in attics dark the night away. Love, hate, grief, joy, gain, glory, shame, shall meet, As in the round wherein our lives are pent; Chance for a while shall seem to reign, While goodness roves like guilt about the street, And guilt looks innocent. But all at last shall vindicate the right. Crime shall be meted with its proper pain, Motes shall be taken from the doubter's sight, And fortune's general justice rendered plain. Of honest laughter there shall be no dearth, Wit shall shake hands with humor grave and sweet, Our wisdom shall not be too wise for mirth, Nor kindred follies want a fool to greet. As sometimes from the meanest spot of earth A sudden beauty unexpected starts, So you shall find some germs of hidden worth Within the vilest hearts; And now and then, when in those moods that turn To the cold Muse that whips a fault with sneers, You shall, perchance, be strangely touched to learn You've struck a spring of tears! But while we lead you thus from change to change, Shall we not find within our ample range Some type to elevate a people's heart-- Some haro who shall teach a hero's part In this distracted time? Rise from thy sleep of ages, noble Tell! And, with the Alpine thunders of thy voice, As if across the billows unenthralled, Thy Alps unto the Alleghanies called, Bid liberty rejoice! Proclaim upon this trans-Atlantic strand The deeds which, more than their own awful mien, Make every crag of Switzerland sublime! And say to those whose feeble souls would lean Not on themselves, but on some outstretched hand, That once a single mind sufficed to quell The malice of a tyrant; let them know That each may crowd in every well-aimed blow, Not the poor strength alone of arm and brand, But the whole spirit of a mighty land! Bid liberty rejoice! Aye, though its day Be far or near, these clouds shall yet be red With the large promise of the coming ray. Meanwhile, with that calm courage which can smile Amid the terrors of the wildest fray, Let us among the charms of art awhile Fleet the deep gloom away; Nor yet forget that on each hand and head Rest the dear rights for which we fight and pray. The Battle of Richmond. By George Herbert Sass, Charleston, S.C. "For they gat not the land in possession by their own sword; neither was it their own arm that helped them; but Thy right hand, and Thine arm, and the light of Thy countenance, because Thou hadst a favor unto them." --Psalm, xliv. 3, 4. I. Now blessed be the Lord of Hosts through all our Southern land, And blessed be His holy name, in whose great might we stand; For He who loves the voice of prayer hath heard His people's cry, And with His own almighty arm hath won the victory! Oh, tell it out through hearth and home, from blue Potomac's wave To those far waters of the West which hide De Soto's grave. II. Now let there be through all the land one grand triumphant cry, Wherever beats a Southern heart, or glows a Southern sky; For He who ruleth every fight hath been with us to-day, And the great God of battles hath led the glorious fray; Oh, then unto His holy name ring out the joyful song, The race hath not been to the swift, the battle to the strong. III. From royal Hudson's cliff-crowned banks, from proud Ohio's flood, From that dark rock in Plymouth's bay where erst the pilgrims stood, From East and North, from far and near, went forth the gathering cry, And the countless hordes came swarming on with fierce and lustful eye. In the great name of Liberty each thirsty sword is drawn; In the great name of Liberty each tyrant presseth on. IV. Alas, alas! her sacred name is all dishonored now, And blood-stained hands are tearing off each laurel from her brow; But ever yet rings out the cry, in loud and mocking tone, Still in her holy shrine they strive to rear a despot's throne; And pressing on with eager tread, they sweep across the land, To burn and havoc and destroy--a fierce and ruthless band. V. I looked on fair Potomac's shore, and at my feet the while The sparkling waves leaped gayly up to meet glad summer's smile; And pennons gay were floating there, and banners fair to see, A mighty host arrayed, I ween, in war's proud panoply; And as I gazed a cry arose, a low, deep-swelling hum, And loud and stern along the line broke in the sullen drum. VI. Onward, o'er fair Virginia's fields, through ranks of nodding grain, With shout and song they sweep along, a gay and gallant train. Oh, ne'er, I ween, had those broad plains beheld a fairer sight, And clear and glad those skies of June shed forth their glorious light. Onwards, yea, ever onwards, that mighty host hath passed, And "On to Richmond!" is the cry which echoes on the blast. VII. I looked again, the rising sun shines down upon the moors, And 'neath his beams rise ramparts high and frowning embrasures, And on each proud abattis yawn, with menace stern and dread, Grim-visaged messengers of death: the watchful sentry's tread In measured cadence slowly falls; all Nature seems at ease, And over all the Stars and Stripes are floating in the breeze. VIII. But far away another line is stretching dark and long, Another flag is floating free where armed legions throng; Another war-cry's on the air, as wakes the martial drum, And onward still, in serried ranks, the Southern soldiers come, And up to that abattis high the charging' columns tread, And bold and free the Stars and Bars are waving at their head. IX. They are on it! they are o'er it! who can stay that living flood? Lo, ever swelling, rolleth on the weltering tide of blood. Yet another and another is full boldly stormed and won, And forward to the spoiler's camp the column presseth on. Hurrah! hurrah! the field is won! we'e met them man to man, And ever still the Stars and Bars are riding in the van. X. They are flying! they are flying! and close upon their track Comes our glorious "Stonewall" Jackson, with ten thousand at his back; And Longstreet, too, and gallant Hill, and Rhodes, and brave Huger,[1] And he whose name is worth a host, our bold, devoted Lee; And back to where the lordly James his scornful billow rolls, The recreant foe is fleeing fast--those men of dastard souls. XI. They are flying! they are flying! horse and foot, and bold dragoon, In one refluent mass are mingled, 'neath the slowly waning moon; And louder still the cry is heard, as borne upon the blast, The shouts of the pursuing host are rising full and fast: "On, on unto the river, 'tis our only chance for life! We needs must reach the gunboats, or we perish in the strife!" XII. 'Tis done! the gory field is ours; we've conquered in the fight! And yet once more our tongues can tell the triumph of the right; And humbled is the haughty foe, who our destruction sought, For God's right hand and holy arm have great deliverance wrought. Oh, then, unto His holy name ring out the joyful song-- The race has not been to the swift, the battle to the strong. [1] Pronounced _Eujee_ The Guerillas: A Southern War-Song. By S. Teackle Wallis, of Maryland. "Awake! and to horse, my brothers! For the dawn is glimmering gray; And hark! in the crackling brushwood There are feet that tread this way. "Who cometh?" "A friend." "What tidings?" "O God! I sicken to tell, For the earth seems earth no longer, And its sights are sights of hell! "There's rapine and fire and slaughter, From the mountain down to the shore; There's blood on the trampled harvest-- There's blood on the homestead floor. "From the far-off conquered cities Comes the voice of a stifled wail; And the shrieks and moans of the houseless Ring out, like a dirge, on the gale. "I've seen, from the smoking village Our mothers and daughters fly; I've seen where the little children Sank down, in the furrows, to die. "On the banks of the battle-stained river I stood, as the moonlight shone, And it glared on the face of my brother, As the sad wave swept him on. "Where my home was glad, are ashes, And horror and shame had been there-- For I found, on the fallen lintel, This tress of my wife's torn hair. "They are turning the slave upon us, And, with more than the fiend's worst art, Have uncovered the fires of the savage That slept in his untaught heart. "The ties to our hearths that bound him, They have rent, with curses, away, And maddened him, with their madness, To be almost as brutal as they. "With halter and torch and Bible, And hymns to the sound of the drum, They preach the gospel of Murder, And pray for Lust's kingdom to come. "To saddle! to saddle! my brothers! Look up to the rising sun, And ask of the God who shines there, Whether deeds like these shall be done! "Wherever the vandal cometh, Press home to his heart with your steel, And when at his bosom you cannot, Like the serpent, go strike at his heel! "Through thicket and wood go hunt him, Creep up to his camp fireside, And let ten of his corpses blacken Where one of our brothers hath died. "In his fainting, foot-sore marches, In his flight from the stricken fray, In the snare of the lonely ambush, The debts that we owe him pay, "In God's hand, alone, is judgment; But He strikes with the hands of men, And His blight would wither our manhood If we smote not the smiter again. "By the graves where our fathers slumber, By the shrines where our mothers prayed, By our homes and hopes and freedom. Let every man swear on his blade.-- "That he will not sheath nor stay it, Till from point to heft it glow With the flush of Almighty vengeance, In the blood of the felon foe." They swore--and the answering sunlight Leapt red from their lifted swords, And the hate in their hearts made echo To the wrath in their burning words. There's weeping in all New England, And by Schuylkill's banks a knell, And the widows there, and the orphans, How the oath was kept can tell. A Farewell to Pope. By John K. Thompson, of Virginia. "Hats off" in the crowd, "Present arms" in the line! Let the standards all bow, and the sabres incline-- Roll, drums, the Rogue's March, while the conqueror goes, Whose eyes have seen only "the backs of his foes"-- Through a thicket of laurel, a whirlwind of cheers, His vanishing form from our gaze disappears; Henceforth with the savage Dacotahs to cope, _Abiit, evasit, erupit_--John Pope. He came out of the West, like the young Lochinvor, Compeller of fate and controller of war, _Videre et vincere_, simply to see, And straightway to conquer Hill, Jackson and Lee, And old Abe at the White House, like Kilmansegg _pére_, With a monkeyish grin and beatified air, "Seemed washing his hands with invisible soap," As with eager attention he listened to Pope. He _came_--and the poultry was swept by his sword, Spoons, liquors, and furniture went by the board; He _saw_--at a distance, the rebels appear, And "rode to the front," which was strangely the rear; He _conquered_--truth, decency, honor full soon, Pest, pilferer, puppy, pretender, poltroon; And was fain from the scene of his triumphs to slope. Sure there never was fortunate hero like Pope. He has left us his shining example to note, And Stuart has captured his uniform coat; But 'tis puzzling enough, as his deeds we recall, To tell on whose shoulders his mantle should fall; While many may claim to deserve it, at least, From Hunter, the Hound, down to Butler, the Beast, None else, we can say, without risking the trope, But himself can be parallel ever to Pope. Like his namesake the poet of genius and fire, He gives new expression and force to _the lyre_; But in one little matter they differ, the two, And differ, indeed, very widely, 'tis true-- While his verses gave great Alexaader his fame, 'Tis our hero's reverses accomplish the same; And fate may decree that the end of a rope Shall award yet his highest position to Pope. Sonnet. On Reading a Proclamation for Public Prayer. South Carolinian. Oh! terrible, this prayer in the market-place, These advertised humilities--decreed By proclamation, that we may be freed, And mercy find for once, and saving grace, Even while we forfeit all that made the race Worthy of Heavenly favor--and profess Our faith and homage only through duress, And dread of danger which we dare not face. All working that's done worthily is prayer-- And honest thought is prayer--the wish, the will To mend our ways, maintain our virtues still, And, losing life, still keep our bosoms fair In sight of God--with whom humility And patient working can alone make free. Battle of Belmont. By J. Augustine Signaigo. From the Memphis Appeal, Dec. 21, 1861. I. Now glory to our Southern cause, and praises be to God, That He hath met the Southron's foe, and scourged him with his rod: On the tented plains of Belmont, in their might the Vandals came, And they gave unto destruction all they found, with sword and flame; But they met a stout resistance from a little band that day, Who swore nobly they would conquer, or return to mother clay. II. But the Vandals with presumption--for they came in all their might-- Gave free vent unto their _feelings_, for they thought to win the fight; And they forced our little cohorts to the very river's brink, With a breath between destruction and of life's remaining link: When the cannon of McCown, belching fire from out its mouth, Brought destruction to the Vandals and protection to the South. III. There was Pillow, Polk and Cheatham, who had sworn that day on high That field should see them conquer, or that field should see them die; And amid the groan of dying and amid the battle's din, Came the echo back from heaven, that they should that battle win: And amid the boom of cannons, and amid the clash of swords, Came destruction to the foeman--and the vengeance was the Lord's! IV. When the fight was raging hottest, came the wild and cheering cry, That brought terror to the foeman, and that raised our spirits high! It was "Cheatham!" "Cheatham!" "Cheatham!" that the Vandals' ears did sting, And our boys caught up the echo till it made the welkin ring; And the moment that the Hessians thought the fight was surely won, From the crackling of our rifles--_bravely_ then they had to run! V. Then they ran unto their transports in deep terror and dismay, And their great grandchildren's children will be shamed to name that day; For the woe they came to bring to the people of the South Was returned tenfold to them at the cannon's booming mouth: And the proud old Mississippi ran that day a horrid flood, For its banks were deeply crimsoned with the hireling Northman's blood. VI. Let us think of those who fell there, fighting foremost with the foe, And who nobly struck for Freedom, dealing Tyranny a blow: Like the ocean beating wildly 'gainst a prow of adamant, Or the storm that keeps on bursting, but cannot destroy the plant; Brave Lieutenant Walker, wounded, still fought on the bloody field, Cheering on his noble comrades, ne'er unto the foe to yield! VII. None e'er knew him but to love him, the brave martyr to his clime-- Now his name belongs to Freedom, to the very end of Time: And the last words that he uttered will forgotten be by few: "I have bravely fought them, mother--I have bravely fought for you!" Let his memory be green in the hearts who love the South, And his noble deeds the theme that shall dwell in every mouth. VIII. In the hottest of the battle stood a Vandal bunting rag, Proudly to the breeze 'twas floating in defiance to our flag; And our Southern boys knew well that, to bring that bunting down, They would meet the angel death in his sternest, maddest frown; But it could not gallant Armstrong, dauntless Vollmer, or brave Lynch, Though ten thousand deaths confronted, from the task of honor flinch! IX. And they charged upon that bunting, guarded by grim-visaged Death, Who had withered all around it with the blister of his breath; But they plucked it from his grasp, and brave Vollmner waved it high, On the gory field of battle, where the three were doomed to die; But before their spirits fled came the death-shout of the three, Cheering for the sunny South and beloved old Tennessee! X. Let the horrors of this day to the foe a warning be, That the Lord is with the South, that His arm is with the free; That her soil is pure and spotless, as her clear and sunny sky. And that he who dare pollute it on her soil shall basely die; For His fiat hath gone forth, e'en among the Hessian horde, That the South has got His blessing, for the South is of the Lord. XI. Then glory to our Southern cause, and praises give to God, That He hath met the Southron's foe and scourged him with His rod; That He hath been upon our side, with all His strength and might, And battled for the Southern cause in every bloody fight; Let us, in meek humility, to all the world proclaim, We bless and glorify the Lord, and battle in His name. Vicksburg--A Ballad. By Paul H. Hayne. I. For sixty days and upwards, A storm of shell and shot Rained 'round us in a flaming shower, But still we faltered not! "If the noble city perish," Our grand young leader said, "Let the only walls the foe shall scale Be the ramparts of the dead!" II. For sixty days and upwards The eye of heaven waxed dim, And even throughout God's holy morn, O'er Christian's prayer and hymn, Arose a hissing tumult, As if the fiends of air Strove to ingulf the voice of faith In the shrieks of their despair. III. There was wailing in the houses, There was trembling on the marts, While the tempest raged and thundered, 'Mid the silent thrill of hearts; But the Lord, our shield, was with us, And ere a month had sped Our very women walked the streets With scarce one throb of dread. IV. And the little children gambolled-- Their faces purely raised, Just for a wondering moment, As the huge bomb whirled and blazed! Then turned with silvery laughter To the sports which children love, Thrice mailed in the sweet, instinctive thought, That the good God watched above. V. Yet the hailing bolts fell faster, From scores of flame-clad ships, And about us, denser, darker, Grew the conflict's wild eclipse, Till a solid cloud closed o'er us, Like a type of doom, and ire, Whence shot a thousand quivering tongues Of forked and vengeful fire. VI. But the unseen hands of angels Those death-shafts turned aside, And the dove of heavenly mercy Ruled o'er the battle tide; In the houses ceased the wailing, And through the war-scarred marts The people trode with the step of hope, To the music in their hearts. Columbia, S.C., August 6, 1862. A Ballad of the War. Published Originally in the Southern Field and Fireside, By George Herbert Sass, of Charleston, S.C. Watchman, what of the night? Through the city's darkening street, Silent and slow, the guardsmen go On their long and lonely beat. Darkly, drearily down, Falleth the wintry rain; And the cold, gray mist hath the roof-tops kissed, As it glides o'er town and plain. Beating against the windows, The sleet falls heavy and chill, And the children draw nigher 'round hearth and fire, As the blast shrieks loud and shrill. Silent is all without, Save the sentry's challenge grim, And a hush sinks down o'er the weary town, And the sleeper's eyes are dim. Watchman, what of the night? Hark! from the old church-tower Rings loud and clear, on the misty air, The chime of the midnight hour. But another sound breaks in, A summons deep and rude, The roll of the drum, and the rush and hum Of a gathering multitude. And the dim and flickering torch Sheds a red and lurid glare, O'er the long dark line, whose bayonets shine Faintly, yet sternly there. A low, deep voice is heard: "Rest on your arms, my men." Then the muskets clank through each serried rank, And all is still again. Pale faces and tearful eyes Gaze down on that grim array, For a rumor hath spread that that column dread Marcheth ere break of day. Marcheth against "the rebels," Whose camp lies heavy and still, Where the driving sleet and the cold rain beat On the brow of a distant hill. And the mother's heart grows faint, As she thinks of her darling one, Who perchance may lie 'neath that wintry sky, Ere the long, dark night be done. Pallid and haggard, too, Is the cheek of the fair young wife; And her eye grows dim as she thinks of him She loveth more than life. For fathers, husbands, sons, Are the "rebels" the foe would smite, And earnest the prayer for those lives so dear, And a bleeding country's right. And where their treasure is, There is each loving heart; And sadly they gaze by the torches' blaze, And the tears unbidden start. Is there none to warn the camp, None from that anxious throng? Ah, the rain beats down o'er plain and town-- The way is dark and long. No _man_ is left behind, None that is brave and true, And the bayonets, bright in the lurid light With menace stern shine through. Guarded is every street, Brutal the hireling foe; Is there one heart here will boldly dare So brave a deed to do? Look! in her still, dark room, Alone a woman kneels, With Care's deep trace on her pale, worn face, And Sorrow's ruthless seals. Wrinkling her placid brow, A matron, she, and fair, Though wan her cheek, and the silver streak Gemming her glossy hair. A moment in silent prayer Her pale lips move, and then, Through the dreary night, like an angel bright, On her mission of love to men. She glideth upon her way, Through the lonely, misty street, Shrinking with dread as she hears the tread Of the watchman on his beat. Onward, aye, onward still, Far past the weary town, Till languor doth seize on her feeble knees, And the heavy hands hang down. But bravely she struggles on, Breasting the cold, dank rain, And, heavy and chill, the mist from the hill Sweeps down upon the plain. Hark! far behind she hears A dull and muffled tramp, But before her the gleam of the watch-fire's beam Shines out from the Southern camp. She hears the sentry's challenge, Her work of love is done; She has fought a good fight, and on Fame's proud height Hath a crown of glory won. Oh, they tell of a Tyrol maiden, Who saved from a ruthless foe Her own fair town, 'mid its mountains brown, Three hundred years ago. And I've read in tales heroic How a noble Scottish maid Her own life gave, her king to save From the foul assassin's blade. But if these, on the rolls of honor, Shall live in lasting fame, Oh, close beside, in grateful pride, We'll write this matron's name. And when our fair-haired children Shall cluster round our knee, With wondering gaze, as we tell of the days When we swore that we would be free, We'll tell them the thrilling story, And we'll say to each childish heart, "By this gallant deed, at thy country's need, Be ready to do thy part." The Two Armies. By Henry Timrod. Two armies stand enrolled beneath The banner with the starry wreath: One, facing battle, blight, and blast, Through twice a hundred fields has passed; Its deeds against a ruffian foe, Stream, valley, hill, and mountain know, Till every wind that sweeps the land Goes, glory-laden, from the strand. The other, with a narrower scope, Yet led by not less grand a hope, Hath won, perhaps, as proud a place, And wears its fame with meeker grace. Wives march beneath its glittering sign, Fond mothers swell the lovely line: And many a sweetheart hides her blush In the young patriot's generous flush. No breeze of battle ever fanned The colors of that tender band; Its office is beside the bed, Where throbs some sick or wounded head. It does not court the soldier's tomb, But plies the needle and the loom; And, by a thousand peaceful deeds, Supplies a struggling nation's needs. Nor is that army's gentle might Unfelt amid the deadly fight; It nerves the son's, the husband's hand, It points the lover's fearless brand; It thrills the languid, warms the cold, Gives even new courage to the bold; And sometimes lifts the veriest clod To its own lofty trust in God. When Heaven shall blow the trump of peace, And bid this weary warfare cease, Their several missions nobly done, The triumph grasped, and freedom won, Both armies, from their toils at rest, Alike may claim the victor's crest, But each shall see its dearest prize Gleam softly from the other's eyes. The Legion of Honor. By H.L. Flash. Why are we forever speaking Of the warriors of old? Men are fighting all around us, Full as noble, full as bold. Ever working, ever striving, Mind and muscle, heart and soul, With the reins of judgment keeping Passions under full control. Noble hearts are beating boldly As they ever did on earth; Swordless heroes are around us, Striving ever from their birth. Tearing down the old abuses, Building up the purer laws, Scattering the dust of ages, Searching out the hidden flaws. Acknowledging no "right divine" In kings and princes from the rest; In their creed he is the noblest Who has worked and striven best. Decorations do not tempt them-- Diamond stars they laugh to scorn-- Each will wear a "Cross of Honor" On the Resurrection morn. Warriors they in fields of wisdom-- Like the noble Hebrew youth, Striking down Goliath's error With the God-blessed stone of truth. Marshalled 'neath the Right's broad banner, Forward rush these volunteers, Beating olden wrong away From the fast advancing years. Contemporaries do not see them, But the _coming_ times will say (Speaking of the slandered present), "There were heroes in that day." Why are we then idly lying On the roses of our life, While the noble-hearted struggle In the world-redeeming strife. Let us rise and join the legion, Ever foremost in the fray-- Battling in the name of Progress For the nobler, purer day. Clouds in the West. By A. J. Requier, of Alabama. Hark! on the wind that whistles from the West A manly shout for instant succor comes, From men who fight, outnumbered, breast to breast, With rage-indented drums! Who dare for child, wife, country--stream and strand, Though but a fraction to the swarming foe, There--at the flooded gateways of the land, To stem a torrent's flow. To arms! brave sons of each embattled State, Whose queenly standard is a Southern star: Who would be free must ride the lists of Fate On Freedom's victor-car! Forsake the field, the shop, the mart, the hum Of craven traffic for the mustering clan: The dead themselves are pledged that you shall come And prove yourself--a man. That sacred turf where first a thrilling grief Was felt which taught you Heaven alone disposes-- God! can you live to see a foreign thief Contaminate its roses? Blow, summoning trumpets, a compulsive stave Through all the bounds, from Beersheba to Dan; Come out! come out! who scorns to be a slave, Or claims to be a man! Hark! on the breezes whistling from the West A manly shout for instant succor comes, From men who fight, outnumbered, breast to breast. With rage-indented drums! Who charge and cheer amid the murderous din, Where still your battle-flags unbended wave, Dying for what your fathers died to win And you must fight to save. Ho! shrilly fifes that stir the vales from sleep, Ho! brazen thunders from the mountains hoar; The very waves are marshalling on the deep, While tempests tread the shore. Arise and swear, your palm-engirdled land Shall burial only yield a bandit foe; Then spring upon the caitiffs, steel in hand, And strike the fated blow. Georgia, My Georgia! By Carrie Bell Sinclair. Hark! 'tis the cannon's deafening roar, That sounds along thy sunny shore, And thou shalt lie in chains no more, My wounded, bleeding Georgia! Then arm each youth and patriot sire, Light up the patriotic fire, And bid the zeal of those ne'er tire, Who strike for thee, my Georgia On thee is laid oppression's hand, Around thy altars foemen stand, To scatter freedom's gallant band, And lay thee low, my Georgia! But thou hast noble sons, and brave, The Stars and Bars above thee wave, And here we'll make oppression's grave, Upon the soil of Georgia! We bow at Liberty's fair shrine, And kneel in holy love at thine, And while above our stars still shine, We'll strike for them and Georgia! Thy woods with victory shall resound, Thy brow shall be with laurels crowned, And peace shall spread her wings around My own, my sunny Georgia! Yes, these shall teach thy foes to feel That Southern hearts, and Southern steel, Will make them in submission kneel Before the sons of Georgia! And thou shalt see thy daughters, too, With pride and patriotism true, Arise with strength to dare and do, Ere they shall conquer Georgia. Thy name shall be a name of pride-- Thy heroes all have nobly died, That thou mayst be the spotless bride Of Liberty, my Georgia! Then wave thy sword and banner high, And louder raise the battle-cry, 'Till shouts of victory reach the sky, And thou art free, my Georgia! Song of the Texas Rangers. Air--_The Yellow Rose of Texas_. The morning star is paling, The camp-fires flicker low, Our steeds are madly neighing, For the bugle bids us go. So put the foot in stirrup, And shake the bridle free, For to-day the Texas Rangers Must cross the Tennessee, With Wharton for our leader, We'll chase the dastard foe, Till our horses bathe their fetlocks In the deep blue Ohio. Our men are from the prairies, That roll broad and proud and free, From the high and craggy mountains To the murmuring Mexic' sea; And their hearts are open as their plains, Their thoughts as proudly brave As the bold cliffs of the San Bernard, Or the Gulf's resistless wave. Then quick! into the saddle, And shake the bridle free, To-day, with gallant Wharton, We cross the Tennessee. 'Tis joy to be a Ranger! To fight for dear Southland; 'Tis joy to follow Wharton, With his gallant, trusty band! 'Tis joy to see our Harrison, Plunge like a meteor bright Into the thickest of the fray, And deal his deathly might. Oh! who'd not be a Ranger, And follow Wharton's cry! To battle for his country-- And, if it needs be--die! By the Colorado's waters, On the Gulf's deep murmuring shore, On our soft green peaceful prairies Are the homes we may see no more; But in those homes our gentle wives, And mothers with silv'ry hairs, Are loving us with tender hearts, And shielding us with prayers. So, trusting in our country's God, We draw our stout, good brand, For those we love at home, Our altars and our land. Up, up with the crimson battle-flag-- Let the blue pennon fly; Our steeds are stamping proudly-- They hear the battle-cry! The thundering bomb, the bugle's call, Proclaim the foe is near; We strike for God and native land, And all we hold most dear. Then spring into the saddle, And shake the bridle free-- For Wharton leads, through fire and blood, For Home and Victory! Kentucky Required to Yield Her Arms. By----Boone. Ho! will the despot trifle, In dwellings of the free; Kentuckians yield the rifle, Kentuckians bend the knee! With dastard fear of danger, And trembling at the strife; Kentucky, to the stranger, Yield liberty for life! Up! up! each gallant ranger, With rifle and with knife! The bastard and the traitor, The wolfcub and the snake, The robber, swindler, hater, Are in your homes--awake! Nor let the cunning foeman Despoil your liberty; Yield weapon up to no man, While ye can strike and see, Awake, each gallant yeoman, If still ye would be free! Aye, see to sight the rifle, And smite with spear and knife, Let no base cunning stifle Each lesson of your life: How won your gallant sires The country which ye keep? By soul, which still inspires The soil on which ye weep! Leap up! their spirit fires, And rouse ye from your sleep! "What!" cry the sires so famous, In Orleans' ancient field, "Will ye, our children, shame us, And to the despot yield? What! each brave lesson stifle We left to give you life? Let apish despots trifle With home and child and wife? And yield, O shame! the rifle, And sheathe, O shame! the knife?" "There's Life in the Old Land Yet." First Published in the New Orleans Delta, about September 1, 1861. By blue Patapsco's billowy dash The tyrant's war-shout comes, Along with the cymbal's fitful clash And the growl of his sullen drums; We hear it, we heed it, with vengeful thrills, And we shall not forgive or forget-- There's faith in the streams, there's hope in the hills, "There's life in the Old Land yet!" Minions! we sleep, but we are not dead, We are crushed, we are scourged, we are scarred-- We crouch--'tis to welcome the triumph-tread Of the peerless Beauregard. Then woe to your vile, polluting horde, When the Southern braves are met; There's faith in the victor's stainless sword, "There's life in the Old Land yet!" Bigots! ye quell not the valiant mind With the clank of an iron chain; The spirit of Freedom sings in the wind O'er Merryman, Thomas, and Kane; And we--though we smite not--are not thralls, We are piling a gory debt; While down by McHenry's dungeon walls "There's life in the Old Land yet!" Our women, have hung their harps away And they scowl on your brutal bands, While the nimble poignard dares the day In their dear defiant hands; They will strip their tresses to string our bows Ere the Northern sun is set-- There's faith in their unrelenting woes-- "There's life in the Old Land yet!" There's life, though it throbbeth in silent veins, 'Tis vocal without noise; It gushed o'er Manassas' solemn plains From the blood of the Maryland boys. That blood shall cry aloud and rise With an everlasting threat-- By the death of the brave, by the God in the skies, "There's life in the Old Land yet!" Tell the Boys the War Is Ended. By Emily J. Moore. While in the first ward of the Quintard Hospital, Rome, Georgia, a young soldier from the Eighth Arkansas Begiment, who had been wounded at Murfreesboro', called me to his bedside. As I approached I saw that he was dying, and when I bent over him he was just able to whisper, "Tell the boys the war is ended." "Tell the boys the war is ended," These were all the words he said; "Tell the boys the war is ended," In an instant more was dead. Strangely bright, serene, and cheerful Was the smile upon his face, While the pain, of late so fearful, Had not left the slightest trace. "Tell the boys the war is ended," And with heavenly visions bright Thoughts of comrades loved were blended, As his spirit took its flight. "Tell the boys the war is ended," "Grant, 0 God, it may be so," Was the prayer which then ascended, In a whisper deep, though low. "Tell the boys the war is ended," And his warfare then was o'er, As, by angel bands attended, He departed from earth's shore. Bursting shells and cannons roaring Could not rouse him by their din; He to better worlds was soaring, Far from war, and pain, and sin. "The Southern Cross." By St. George Tucker, of Virginia. Oh! say can you see, through the gloom and the storm, More bright for the darkness, that pure constellation? Like the symbol of love and redemption its form, As it points to the haven of hope for the nation. How radiant each star, as the beacon afar, Giving promise of peace, or assurance in war! 'Tis the Cross of the South, which shall ever remain To light us to freedom and glory again! How peaceful and blest was America's soil, 'Till betrayed by the guile of the Puritan demon, Which lurks under virtue, and springs from its coil To fasten its fangs in the life-blood of freemen. Then boldly appeal to each heart that can feel, And crush the foul viper 'neath Liberty's heel! And the Cross of the South shall in triumph remain, To light us to freedom and glory again! 'Tis the emblem of peace,'tis the day-star of hope, Like the sacred _Labarum_ that guided the Roman; From the shores of the Gulf to the Delaware's slope, 'Tis the trust of the free and the terror of foemen. Fling its folds to the air, while we boldly declare The rights we demand or the deeds that we dare! While the Cross of the South shall in triumph remain, To light us to freedom and glory again! And if peace should be hopeless and justice denied, And war's bloody vulture should flap its black pinions, Then gladly "to arms," while we hurl, in our pride, Defiance to tyrants and death to their minions! With our front in the field, swearing never to yield, Or return, like the Spartan, in death on our shield! And the Cross of the South shall triumphantly wave, As the flag of the free or the pall of the brave! Southern Literary Messenger. England's Neutrality. A Parliamentary Debate. By John R. Thompson, of Richmond, Virginia. All ye who with credulity the whispers hear of fancy, Or yet pursue with eagerness hope's wild extravagancy, Who dream that England soon will drop her long miscalled neutrality, And give us, with a hearty shake, the hand of nationality, Read, as we give, with little fault of statement or omission, The _next_ debate in parliament on Southern Recognition; They're all so much alike, indeed, that one can write it off, I see, As truly as the _Times_' report, without the gift of prophecy. Not yet, not yet to interfere does England see occasion, But treats our good commissioner with coolness and evasion; Such coolness in the premises, that really 'tis refrigerant To think that two long years ago she called us a belligerent. But, further, Downing-street is dumb, the premier deaf to reason, As deaf as is the _Morning Post_, both in and out of season; The working men of Lancashire are all reduced to beggary, And yet they will not listen unto Roebuck or to Gregory, "Or any other man," to-day, who counsels interfering, While all who speak on t'other side obtain a ready hearing-- As, _par exemple_, Mr. Bright, that pink of all propriety, That meek and mild disciple of the blessed Peace Society. "Why, let 'em fight," says Mr. Bright, "those Southerners, I hate 'em, And hope the Black Republicans will soon exterminate 'em; If freedom can't rebellion crush, pray tell me what's the use of her?" And so he chuckles o'er the fray as gleefully as Lucifer. Enough of him--an abler man demands our close attention-- The Maximus Apollo of strict _non_-intervention-- With pitiless severity, though decorous and calm his tone, Thus spake the "old man eloquent," the puissant Earl of Palmerston: "What though the land run red with blood, what though the lurid flashes Of cannon light, at dead of night, a mournful heap of ashes Where many an ancient mansion stood--what though the robber pillages The sacred home, the house of God, in twice a hundred villages. "What though a fiendish, nameless wrong, that makes revenge a duty, Is daily done" (O Lord, how long!) "to tenderness and beauty!" (And who shall tell this deed of hell, how deadlier far a curse it is Than even pulling temples down and burning universities)? "Let arts decay, let millions fall, aye, let freedom perish, With all that in the western world men fain would love and cherish; Let universal ruin there become a sad reality: We cannot swerve, we must preserve our rigorous neutrality." Oh, Pam! oh, Pam! hast ever read what's writ in holy pages, How blessed the peace-makers are, God's children of the ages? Perhaps you think the promise sweet was nothing but a platitude; 'Tis clear that _you_ have no concern in that divine beatitude. But "hear! hear! hear!" another peer, that mighty man of muscle, Is on his legs, what slender pegs! "ye noble Earl" of Russell; Thus might he speak, did not of speech his shrewd reserve the folly see, And thus unfold the subtle plan of England's secret policy. "John Bright was right, yes, let 'em fight, these fools across the water, 'Tis no affair at all of ours, their carnival of slaughter; The Christian world, indeed, may say we ought not to allow it, sirs, But still 'tis music in our ears, this roar of Yankee howitzers. "A word or two of sympathy, that costs us not a penny, We give the gallant Southerners, the few against the many; We say their noble fortitude of final triumph presages, And praise, in Blackwood's Magazine, Jeff. Davis and his messages. "Of course we claim the shining fame of glorious Stonewall Jackson, Who typifies the English race, a sterling Anglo-Saxon; To bravest song his deeds belong, to Clio and Melpomene"-- (And why not for a British stream demand the Chickahominy?) "But for the cause in which he fell we cannot lift a finger, 'Tis idle on the question any longer here to linger; 'Tis true the South has freely bled, her sorrows are Homeric, oh! Her case is like to his of old who journeyed unto Jericho. "The thieves have stripped and bruised, although as yet they have not bound her, We'd like to see her slay 'em all to right and left around her; We shouldn't cry in parliament if Lee should cross the Raritan, But England never yet was known to play the Good Samaritan. "And so we pass the other side, and leave them to their glory, To give new proofs of manliness, new scenes for song and story; These honeyed words of compliment may possibly bamboozle 'em, But ere we intervene, you know, we'll see 'em in--Jerusalem. "Yes, let 'em fight, till both are brought to hopeless desolation, Till wolves troop round the cottage door in one and t'other nation, Till, worn and broken down, the South shall prove no more refractory, And rust eats up the silent looms of every Yankee factory. "Till bursts no more the cotton boll o'er fields of Carolina, And fills with snowy flosses the dusky hands of Dinah; Till war has dealt its final blow, and Mr. Seward's knavery Has put an end in all the land to freedom and to slavery. "The grim Bastile, the rack, the wheel, without remorse or pity, May flourish with the guillotine in every Yankee city; No matter should old Abe revive the brazen bull of Phalaris, 'Tis no concern at all of ours"--(sensation in the galleries.) "So shall our 'merry England' thrive on trans-Atlantic troubles, While India, on her distant plains, her crop of cotton doubles; And just so long as North or South shall show the least vitality, We cannot swerve, we must preserve our rigorous neutrality." Your speech, my lord, might well become a Saxon legislator, When the "fine old English gentleman" lived in a state of natur', When Vikings quaffed from human skulls their fiery draughts of honey mead, Long, long before the barons bold met tyrant John at Runnymede. But 'tis a speech so plain, my lord, that all may understand it, And so we quickly turn again to fight the Yankee bandit, Convinced that we shall fairly win at last our nationality, Without the help of Britain's arm, _in spite of_ her neutrality. Illustrated News. Close the Ranks. By John L. O'Sullivan. The fell invader is before! Close the ranks! Close up the ranks! We'll hunt his legions from our shore, Close the ranks! Close up the ranks! Our wives, our children are behind, Our mothers, sisters, dear and kind, Their voices reach us on the wind, Close the ranks! Close up the ranks! Are we to bend to slavish yoke? Close the ranks! Close up the ranks! We'll bend when bends our Southern oak. Close the ranks! Close up the ranks! On with the line of serried steel, We all can die, we none can kneel To crouch beneath the Northern heel. Close the ranks! Close up the ranks! We kneel to God, and God alone. Close the ranks! Close up the ranks! One heart in all--all hearts as one. Close the ranks! Close up the ranks! For home, for country, truth and right, We stand or fall in freedom's fight: In such a cause the right is might. Close the ranks! Close up the ranks! We're here from every southern home. Close the ranks! Close up the ranks! Fond, weeping voices bade us come. Close the ranks! Close up the ranks The husband, brother, boy, and sire, All burning with one holy fire-- Our country's love our only hire. Close the ranks! Close up the ranks! We cannot fail, we will not yield! Close the ranks! Close up the ranks! Our bosoms are our country's shield. Close the ranks! Close up the ranks! By Washington's immortal name, By Stonewall Jackson's kindred fame, Their souls, their deeds, their cause the same, Close the ranks! Close up the ranks! By all we hope, by all we love, Close the ranks! Close up the ranks! By home on earth, by Heaven above, Close the ranks! Close up the ranks! By all the tears, and heart's blood shed, By all our hosts of martyred dead, We'll conquer, or we'll share their bed. Close the ranks! Close up the ranks! The front may fall, the rear succeed, Close the ranks! Close up the ranks! We smile in triumph as we bleed, Close the ranks! Close up the ranks! Our Southern Cross above us waves, Long shall it bless the sacred graves Of those who died, but were not slaves. Close the ranks! Close up the ranks! The Sea-Kings of the South. By Edward C. Bruce, of Winchester, Va. Full many have sung of the victories our warriors have won, From Bethel, by the eastern tide, to sunny Galveston, On fair Potomac's classic shore, by sweeping Tennessee, Hill, rock, and river shall tell forever the vengeance of the free. The air still rings with the cannon-shot, with battle's breath is warm; Still on the hills their swords have saved our legions wheel and form; And Johnston, Beauregard, and Lee, with all their gallant train, Wait yet at their head, in silence dread, the hour to charge again. But a ruggeder field than the mountain-side--a broader field than the plain, Is spread for the fight in the stormy wave and the globe-embracing main, 'Tis there the keel of the goodly ship must trace the fate of the land, For the name ye write in the sea-foam white shall first and longest stand. For centuries on centuries, since first the hallowed tree Was launched by the lone mariner on some primeval sea, No stouter stuff than the heart of oak, or tough elastic pine, Had floated beyond the shallow shoal to pass the burning Line. The Naiad and the Dryad met in billow and in spar; The forest fought at Salamis, the grove at Trafalgar. Old Tubalcain had sweated amain to forge the brand and ball; But failed to frame the mighty hull that held enfortressed all. Six thousand years had waited for our gallant tars to show That iron was to ride the wave and timber sink below. The waters bland that welcomed first the white man to our shore, Columbus, of an iron world, the brave Buchanan bore. Not gun for gun, but thirty to one, the odds he had to meet! One craft, untried of wind or tide, to beard a haughty fleet! Above her shattered relics now the billows break and pour; But the glory of that wondrous day shall be hers for evermore. See yonder speck on the mist afar, as dim as in a dream! Anear it speeds, there are masts like reeds and a tossing plume of steam! Fleet, fierce, and gaunt, with bows aslant, she dashes proudly on, Whence and whither, her prey to gather, the foe shall learn anon. Oh, broad and green is her hunting-park, and plentiful the game! From the restless bay of old Biscay to the Carib' sea she came. The catchers of the whale she caught; swift _Ariel_ overhauled; And made _Hatteras_ know the hardest _blow_ that ever a tar appalled. She bears the name of a noble State, and sooth she bears it well. To us she hath made it a word of pride, to the Northern ear a knell. To the Puritan in the busy mart, the Puritan on his deck, With "Alabama" visions start of ruin, woe, and wreck. In vain his lubberly squadrons round her magic pathway swoop-- Admiral, captain, commodore, in gunboat, frigate, sloop. Save to snatch a prize, or a foe chastise, as their feeble art she foils, She will scorn a point from her course to veer, to baffle all their toils. And bravely doth her sister-ship begin her young career. Already hath her gentle name become a name of fear; The name that breathes of the orange-bloom, of soft lagoons that roll Round the home of the Roman of the West--the unconquered Seminole. Like the albatross and the tropic-bird, forever on the wing, For them nor night nor breaking morn may peace nor shelter bring. All drooping from the weary cruise or shattered from the fight, No dear home-haven opes to them its arms with welcome bright. Then side by side, in our love and pride, be our men of the land and sea; The fewer these, the sterner task, the greater their guerdon be! The fairest wreaths of amaranth the fairest hands shall twine For the brows of our preux chevaliers, the Bayards of the brine! The "stars and bars" of our sturdy tars as gallantly shall wave As long shall live in the storied page, or the spirit-stirring stave, As hath the red cross of St. George or the raven-flag of Thor, Or flag of the sea, whate'er it be, that ever unfurled to war. Then flout full high to their parent sky those circled stars of ours, Where'er the dark-hulled foeman floats, where'er his emblem towers! Speak for the right, for the truth and light, from the gun's unmuzzled mouth, And the fame of the Dane revive again, ye Vikings of the SOUTH! Richmond Sentinel, March 30, 1863. The Return. Three years! I wonder if she'll know me? I limp a little, and I left one arm At Petersburg; and I am grown as brown As the plump chestnuts on my little farm: And I'm as shaggy as the chestnut burrs-- But ripe and sweet within, and wholly hers. The darling! how I long to see her! My heart outruns this feeble soldier pace, For I remember, after I had left, A little Charlie came to take my place. Ah! how the laughing, three-year old, brown eyes-- His mother's eyes--will stare with pleased surprise! Surely, they will be at the corner watching! I sent them word that I should come to-night: The birds all know it, for they crowd around, Twittering their welcome with a wild delight; And that old robin, with a halting wing-- I saved her life, three years ago last spring. Three years! perhaps I am but dreaming! For, like the pilgrim of the long ago, I've tugged, a weary burden at my back, Through summer's heat and winter's blinding snow; Till now, I reach my home, my darling's breast, There I can roll my burden off, and rest. * * * * * When morning came, the early rising sun Laid his light fingers on a soldier sleeping-- Where a soft covering of bright green grass Over two mounds was lightly creeping; But waked him not: his was the rest eternal, Where the brown eyes reflected love supernal. Our Christmas Hymn. By John Dickson Bruns, M.D., of Charleston, S.C. "Good-will and peace! peace and good-will!" The burden of the Advent song, What time the love-charmed waves grew still To hearken to the shining throng; The wondering shepherds heard the strain Who watched by night the slumbering fleece, The deep skies echoed the refrain, "Peace and good-will, good-will and peace!" And wise men hailed the promised sign, And brought their birth-gifts from the East, Dear to that Mother as the wine That hallowed Cana's bridal feast; But what to these are myrrh or gold, And what Arabia's costliest gem, Whose eyes the Child divine behold, The blessed Babe of Bethlehem. "Peace and good-will, good-will and peace!" They sing, the bright ones overhead; And scarce the jubilant anthems cease Ere Judah wails her first-born dead; And Rama's wild, despairing cry Fills with great dread the shuddering coast, And Rachel hath but one reply, "Bring back, bring back my loved and lost." So, down two thousand years of doom That cry is borne on wailing winds, But never star breaks through the gloom, No cradled peace the watcher finds; And still the Herodian steel is driven, And breaking hearts make ceaseless moan, And still the mute appeal to heaven Man answers back with groan for groan. How shall we keep our Christmas tide? With that dread past, its wounds agape, Forever walking by our side, A fearful shade, an awful shape; Can any promise of the spring Make green the faded autumn leaf? Or who shall say that time will bring Fair fruit to him who sows but grief? Wild bells! that shake the midnight air With those dear tones that custom loves, You wake no sounds of laughter here, Nor mirth in all our silent groves; On one broad waste, by hill or flood, Of ravaged lands your music falls, And where the happy homestead stood The stars look down on roofless halls. At every board a vacant chair Fills with quick tears some tender eye, And at our maddest sports appear Those well-loved forms that will not die. We lift the glass, our hand is stayed-- We jest, a spectre rises up-- And weeping, though no word is said, We kiss and pass the silent cup, And pledge the gallant friend who keeps His Christmas-eve on Malvern's height, And him, our fair-haired boy, who sleeps Beneath Virginian snows to-night; While, by the fire, she, musing, broods On all that was and might have been, If Shiloh's dank and oozing woods Had never drunk that crimson stain. O happy Yules of buried years! Could ye but come in wonted guise, Sweet as love's earliest kiss appears, When looking back through wistful eyes, Would seem those chimes whose voices tell His birth-night with melodious burst, Who, sitting by Samaria's well, Quenched the lorn widow's life-long thirst. Ah! yet I trust that all who weep, Somewhere, at last, will surely find His rest, if through dark ways they keep The child-like faith, the prayerful mind; And some far Christmas morn shall bring From human ills a sweet release To loving hearts, while angels sing "Peace and good-will, good-will and peace!" Charleston. Written for the Charleston Courier in 1863. By Miss E. B. Cheesborough. Proudly she stands by the crystal sea, With the fires of hate around her, But a cordon of love as strong as fate, With adamant links surround her. Let them hurl their bolts through the azure sky, And death-bearing missiles send her, She finds in our God a mighty shield, And in heaven a sure defender. Her past is a page of glory bright, Her present a blaze of splendor, You may turn o'er the leaves of the jewell'd tome, You'll not find the word _surrender_; For sooner than lay down her trusty arms, She'd build her own funeral pyre, And the flames that give her a martyr's fate Will kindle her glory higher. How the demons glare as they see her stand In majestic pride serenely, And gnash with the impotent rage of hate, Creeping up slowly, meanly; While she cries, "Come forth from your covered dens, All your hireling legions send me, I'll bare my breast to a million swords, Whilst God and my sons defend me." Oh, brave old town, o'er thy sacred form Whilst the fiery rain is sweeping, May He whose love is an armor strong Embrace thee in tender keeping; And when the red war-cloud has rolled away, Anoint thee with holy chrism, And sanctified, chastened, regenerate, true, Thou surviv'st this fierce baptism. Gathering Song. Air--Bonnie Blue Flag By Annie Chambers Ketchum. Come, brothers! rally for the right! The bravest of the brave Sends forth her ringing battle-cry Beside the Atlantic wave! She leads the way in honor's path! Come, brothers, near and far, Come rally 'round the Bonnie Blue Flag That bears a single star! We've borne the Yankee trickery, The Yankee gibe and sneer, Till Yankee insolence and pride Know neither shame nor fear; But ready now with shot and steel Their brazen front to mar, We hoist aloft the Bonnie Blue Flag That bears a single star! Now Georgia marches to the front, And close beside her come Her sisters by the Mexique Sea, With pealing trump and drum! Till, answering back from hill and glen The rallying cry afar, A NATION hoists the Bonnie Blue Flag That bears a single star! By every stone in Charleston Bay, By each beleaguered town, We swear to rest not, night nor day, But hunt the tyrants down! Till, bathed in valor's holy blood The gazing world afar Shall greet with shouts the Bonnie Blue That bears the cross and star! Christmas. By Henry Timrod, of South Carolina. How grace this hallowed day? Shall happy bells, from yonder ancient spire, Send their glad greetings to each Christmas fire Round which the children play? Alas! for many a moon, That tongueless tower hath cleaved the Sabbath air, Mute as an obelisk of ice aglare Beneath an Arctic noon. Shame to the foes that drown Our psalms of worship with their impious drum. The sweetest chimes in all the land lie dumb In some far rustic town. There, let us think, they keep, Of the dead Yules which here beside the sea They've ushered in with old-world, English glee, Some echoes in their sleep. How shall we grace the day? With feast, and song, and dance, and antique sports, And shout of happy children in the courts, And tales of ghost and fay? Is there indeed a door Where the old pastimes, with their lawful noise, And all the merry round of Christmas joys, Could enter as of yore? Would not some pallid face Look in upon the banquet, calling up Dread shapes of battle in the wassail cup, And trouble all the place? How could we bear the mirth, While some loved reveller of a year ago Keeps his mute Christmas now beneath the snow, In cold Virginian earth? How shall we grace the day? Ah! let the thought that on this holy morn The Prince of Peace--the Prince of Peace was born, Employ us, while we pray! Pray for the peace which long Hath left this tortured land, and haply now Holds its white court on some far mountain's brow, There hardly safe from wrong. Let every sacred fane Call its sad votaries to the shrine of God, And, with the cloister and the tented sod, Join in one solemn strain! With pomp of Roman form, With the grave ritual brought from England's shore, And with the simple faith which asks no more Than that the heart be warm. He, who till time shall cease, Shall watch that earth, where once, not all in vain, He died to give us peace, will not disdain A prayer whose theme is--peace. Perhaps, ere yet the spring Hath died into the summer, over all The land, the peace of His vast love shall fall Like some protecting wing. Oh, ponder what it means! Oh, turn the rapturous thought in every way! Oh, give the vision and the fancy play, And shape the coming scenes! Peace in the quiet dales, Made rankly fertile by the blood of men; Peace in the woodland, and the lonely glen, Peace in the peopled vales! Peace in the crowded town, Peace in a thousand fields of waving grain, Peace in the highway and the flowery lane, Peace on the wind-swept down! Peace on the furthest seas, Peace in our sheltered bays and ample streams, Peace wheresoe'er our starry garland gleams, And peace in every breeze! Peace on the whirring marts, Peace where the scholar thinks, the hunter roams, Peace, God of Peace! peace, peace in all our homes, And peace in all our hearts! A Prayer for Peace. By S. Teackle Wallis, of Maryland. Peace! Peace! God of our fathers, grant us Peace! Unto our cry of anguish and despair Give ear and pity! From the lonely homes, Where widowed beggary and orphaned woe Fill their poor urns with tears; from trampled plains, Where the bright harvest Thou has sent us rots-- The blood of them who should have garnered it Calling to Thee--from fields of carnage, where The foul-beaked vultures, sated, flap their wings O'er crowded corpses, that but yesterday Bore hearts of brothers, beating high with love And common hopes and pride, all blasted now-- Father of Mercies! not alone from these Our prayer and wail are lifted. Not alone Upon the battle's seared and desolate track, Nor with the sword and flame, is it, O God, That Thou hast smitten us. Around our hearths, And in the crowded streets and busy marts, Where echo whispers not the far-off strife That slays our loved ones; in the solemn halls Of safe and quiet counsel--nay, beneath The temple-roofs that we have reared to Thee, And 'mid their rising incense--God of Peace! The curse of war is on us. Greed and hate Hungering for gold and blood; Ambition, bred Of passionate vanity and sordid lusts, Mad with the base desire of tyrannous sway Over men's souls and thoughts, have set their price On human hecatombs, and sell and buy Their sons and brothers for the shambles. Priests, With white, anointed, supplicating hands, From Sabbath unto Sabbath clasped to Thee, Burn, in their tingling pulses, to fling down Thy censers and Thy cross, to clutch the throats Of kinsmen, by whose cradles they were born, Or grasp the brand of Herod, and go forth Till Rachel hath no children left to slay. The very name of Jesus, writ upon Thy shrines beneath the spotless, outstretched wings, Of Thine Almighty Dove, is wrapt and hid With bloody battle-flags, and from the spires That rise above them angry banners flout The skies to which they point, amid the clang Of rolling war-songs tuned to mock Thy praise. All things once prized and honored are forgot: The freedom that we worshipped next to Thee; The manhood that was freedom's spear and shield; The proud, true heart; the brave, outspoken word, Which might be stifled, but could never wear The guise, whate'er the profit, of a lie; All these are gone, and in their stead have come The vices of the miser and the slave-- Scorning no shame that bringeth gold or power, Knowing no love, or faith, or reverence, Or sympathy, or tie, or aim, or hope, Save as begun in self, and ending there. With vipers like to these, oh! blessed God! Scourge us no longer! Send us down, once more, Some shining seraph in Thy glory glad, To wake the midnight of our sorrowing With tidings of good-will and peace to men; And if the star, that through the darkness led Earth's wisdom then, guide not our folly now, Oh, be the lightning Thine Evangelist, With all its fiery, forked tongues, to speak The unanswerable message of Thy will. Peace! Peace! God of our fathers, grant us peace! Peace in our hearts, and at Thine altars; Peace On the red waters and their blighted shores; Peace for the 'leaguered cities, and the hosts That watch and bleed around them and within, Peace for the homeless and the fatherless; Peace for the captive on his weary way, And the mad crowds who jeer his helplessness; For them that suffer, them that do the wrong Sinning and sinned against.--O God! for all; For a distracted, torn, and bleeding land-- Speed the glad tidings! Give us, give us Peace! The Band in the Pines. (Heard after Pelham Died.) By John Esten Cooke. Oh, band in the pine-wood, cease! Cease with your splendid call; The living are brave and noble, But the dead were bravest of all! They throng to the martial summons, To the loud, triumphant strain; And the dear bright eyes of long-dead friends Come to the heart again! They come with the ringing bugle, And the deep drum's mellow roar; Till the soul is faint with longing For the hands we clasp no more! Oh, band in the pine-wood, cease! Or the heart will melt in tears, For the gallant eyes and the smiling lips, And the voices of old years! At Fort Pillow. First published in the Wilmington Journal, April 25, 1864. You shudder as you think upon The carnage of the grim report, The desolation when we won The inner trenches of the fort. But there are deeds you may not know, That scourge the pulses into strife; Dark memories of deathless woe Pointing the bayonet and knife. The house is ashes where I dwelt, Beyond the mighty inland sea; The tombstones shattered where I knelt, By that old church at Pointe Coupee. The Yankee fiends, that came with fire, Camped on the consecrated sod, And trampled in the dust and mire The Holy Eucharist of God! The spot where darling mother sleeps, Beneath the glimpse of yon sad moon, Is crushed, with splintered marble heaps, To stall the horse of some dragoon. God! when I ponder that black day It makes my frantic spirit wince; I marched--with Longstreet--far away, But have beheld the ravage since The tears are hot upon my face, When thinking what bleak fate befell The only sister of our race-- A thing too horrible to tell. They say that, ere her senses fled, She rescue of her brothers cried; Then feebly bowed her stricken head, Too pure to live thus--so she died. Two of those brothers heard no plea; With their proud hearts forever still-- John shrouded by the Tennessee, And Arthur there at Malvern Hill. But I have heard it everywhere, Vibrating like a passing knell; 'Tis as perpetual as the air, And solemn as a funeral bell. By scorched lagoon and murky swamp My wrath was never in the lurch; I've killed the picket in his camp, And many a pilot on his perch. With steady rifle, sharpened brand, A week ago, upon my steed, With Forrest and his warrior band, I made the hell-hounds writhe and bleed. You should have seen our leader go Upon the battle's burning marge, Swooping, like falcon, on the foe, Heading the gray line's iron charge! All outcasts from our ruined marts, We heard th' undying serpent hiss, And in the desert of our hearts The fatal spell of Nemesis. The Southern yell rang loud and high The moment that we thundered in, Smiting the demons hip and thigh, Cleaving them to the very chin. My right arm bared for fiercer play, The left one held the rein in slack; In all the fury of the fray I sought the white man, not the black. The dabbled clots of brain and gore Across the swirling sabres ran; To me each brutal visage bore The front of one accursed man. Throbbing along the frenzied vein, My blood seemed kindled into song-- The death-dirge of the sacred slain, The slogan of immortal wrong. It glared athwart the dripping glaves, It blazed in each avenging eye-- _The thought of desecrated graves, And some lone sister's desperate cry!_ From the Rapidan--1864. A low wind in the pines! And a dull pain in the breast! And oh! for the sigh of her lips and eyes-- One touch of the hand I pressed! The slow, sad lowland wind, It sighs through the livelong day, While the splendid mountain breezes blow, And the autumn is burning away. Here the pines sigh ever above, And the broomstraw sighs below; And far from the bare, bleak, windy fields Comes the note of the drowsy crow. There the trees are crimson and gold, Like the tints of a magical dawn, And the slender form, in the dreamy days, By the slow stream rambles on. Oh, day that weighs on the heart! Oh, wind in the dreary pines! Does she think on me 'mid the golden hours, Past the mountain's long blue lines? The old house, lonely and still, By the sad Shenandoah's waves, Must be touched to-day by the sunshine's gleam, As the spring flowers bloom on graves. Oh, sunshine, flitting and sad, Oh, wind, that forever sighs! The hall may be bright, but my life is dark For the sunshine of her eyes! Song of Our Glorious Southland. By Mrs. Mary Ware. From the Southern Field and Fireside. I. Oh, sing of our glorious Southland, The pride of the golden sun! 'Tis the fairest land of flowers The eye e'er looked upon. Sing of her orange and myrtle That glitter like gems above; Sing of her dark-eyed maidens As fair as a dream of love. Sing of her flowing rivers-- How musical their sound! Sing of her dark green forests, The Indian hunting-ground. Sing of the noble nation Fierce struggling to be free; Sing of the brave who barter Their lives for liberty! II. Weep for the maid and matron Who mourn their loved ones slain; Sigh for the light departed, Never to shine again: 'Tis the voice of Rachel weeping, That never will comfort know; 'Tis the wail of desolation, The breaking of hearts in woe! III. Ah! the blood of Abel crieth For vengeance from the sod! 'Tis a brother's hand that's lifted In the face of an angry God! Oh! brother of the Northland, We plead from our father's grave; We strike for our homes and altars, He fought to build and save! A smouldering fire is burning, The Southern heart is steeled-- Perhaps 'twill break in dying, But never will it yield. Sonnet. By Paul H. Hayne. Rise from your gory ashes stern and pale, Ye martyred thousands! and with dreadful ire, A voice of doom, a front of gloomy fire, Rebuke those faithless souls, whose querulous wail Disturbs your sacred sleep!--"The withering hail Of battle, hunger, pestilence, despair, Whatever of mortal anguish man may bear, We bore unmurmuring! strengthened by the mail Of a most holy purpose!--then we died!-- Vex not our rest by cries of selfish pain, But to the noblest measure of your powers Endure the appointed trial! Griefs defied, But launch their threatening thunderbolts in vain, And angry storms pass by in gentlest showers!" Hospital Duties. Charleston Courier. Fold away all your bright-tinted dresses, Turn the key on your jewels to-day, And the wealth of your tendril-like tresses Braid back in a serious way; No more delicate gloves, no more laces, No more trifling in boudoir or bower, But come with your souls in your faces To meet the stern wants of the hour. Look around. By the torchlight unsteady The dead and the dying seem one-- What! trembling and paling already, Before your dear mission's begun? These wounds are more precious than ghastly-- Time presses her lips to each scar, While she chants of that glory which vastly Transcends all the horrors of war. Pause here by this bedside. How mellow The light showers down on that brow! Such a brave, brawny visage, poor fellow! Some homestead is missing him now. Some wife shades her eyes in the clearing, Some mother sits moaning distressed, While the loved one lies faint but unfearing, With the enemy's ball in his breast. Here's another--a lad--a mere stripling, Picked up in the field almost dead, With the blood through his sunny hair rippling From the horrible gash in the head. They say he was first in the action: Gay-hearted, quick-headed, and witty: He fought till he dropped with exhaustion At the gates of our fair southern city. Fought and fell 'neath the guns of that city, With a spirit transcending his years-- Lift him up in your large-hearted pity, And wet his pale lips with your tears. Touch him gently; most sacred the duty Of dressing that poor shattered hand! God spare him to rise in his beauty, And battle once more for his land! Pass on! it is useless to linger While others are calling your care; There is need for your delicate finger, For your womanly sympathy there. There are sick ones athirst for caressing, There are dying ones raving at home, There are wounds to be bound with a blessing, And shrouds to make ready for some. They have gathered about you the harvest Of death in its ghastliest view; The nearest as well as the furthest Is there with the traitor and true. And crowned with your beautiful patience, Made sunny with love at the heart, You must balsam the wounds of the nations, Nor falter nor shrink from your part. And the lips of the mother will bless you, And angels, sweet-visaged and pale, And the little ones run to caress you, And the wives and the sisters cry hail! But e'en if you drop down unheeded, What matter? God's ways are the best: You have poured out your life where 'twas needed, And he will take care of the rest. They Cry Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace. By Mrs. Alethea S. Burroughs, of Georgia. They are ringing peace on my heavy ear-- No peace to my heavy heart! They are ringing peace, I hear! I hear! O God! how my hopes depart! They are ringing peace from the mountain side; With a hollow voice it comes-- They are ringing peace o'er the foaming tide, And its echoes fill our homes. They are ringing peace, and the spring-time blooms Like a garden fresh and fair; But our martyrs sleep in their silent tombs-- Do _they_ hear that sound--do they hear? They are ringing peace, and the battle-cry And the bayonet's work are done, And the armor bright they are laying by, From the brave sire to the son. And the musket's clang, and the soldier's drill, And the tattoo's nightly sound; We shall hear no more, with a joyous thrill, Peace, peace, they are ringing round! There are women, still as the stifled air On the burning desert's track, Not a cry of joy, not a welcome cheer-- And their brave ones coming back! There are fair young heads in their morning pride, Like the lilies pale they bow; Just a memory left to the soldier's bride-- Ah, God! sustain her now! There are martial steps that we may not hear! There are forms we may not see! Death's muster roll they have answered clear, _They are free! thank God, they are free!_ Not a fetter fast, nor a prisoner's chain For the noble army gone-- No conqueror comes o'er the heavenly plain-- Peace, _peace to the dead alone!_ They are ringing peace, but strangers tread O'er the land where our fathers trod, And our birthright joys, like a dream, have fled, And _Thou!_ where art _Thou_, 0 God! They are ringing peace! _not here, not here,_ Where the victor's mark is set; Roll back to the North its mocking cheer-- No peace to the Southland yet! We may sheathe the sword, and the rifle-gun We may hang on the cottage wall, And the bayonet brave, sharp duty done, From, the soldier's arm it may fall. But peace!--no peace! till the same good sword, Drawn out from its scabbard be, And the wide world list to my country's word, And the South! oh, the South, be free! Charleston Broadside. Ballad--"What! Have Ye Thought?" Charleston Mercury. I. What! have ye thought to pluck Victory from chance and luck, Triumph from clamorous shout, without a will? Without the heart to brave All peril to the grave, And battle on its brink, unshrinking still? II. And did ye dream success Would still unvarying bless Your arms, nor meet reverse in some dread field? And shall an adverse hour Make ye mistrust the power Of virtue, in your souls, to make your enemy yield? III. Oh! from this dreary sleep Arise, and upward leap, Nor let your hearts grow palsied with dismay! Fling out your banner high, Still challenging the sky, While thousand strong arms bear it on its way. IV. Forth, as a sacred band, Sworn saviours of the land, Chosen by God, the champions of the right! And never doubt that _He_ Who _made_ will _keep_ ye free, If thus your souls resolve to triumph in the fight! V. The felon foe, no more Trampling the sacred shore, Shall leave defiling footprint on the sod; Where, desperate in the strife, Reckless of wounds and life, Ye brave your myriad foes beneath the eye of God! VI. On brothers, comrades, men, Rush to the field again; Home, peace, love, safety--freedom--are the prize! Strike! while an arm can bear Weapon--and do not spare-- Ye break a felon bond in every foe that dies! Missing. In the cool, sweet hush of a wooded nook, Where the May buds sprinkle the green old mound, And the winds, and the birds, and the limpid brook, Murmur their dreams with a drowsy sound; Who lies so still in the plushy moss, With his pale cheek pressed on a breezy pillow, Couched where the light and the shadows cross Through the flickering fringe of the willow? Who lies, alas! So still, so chill, in the whispering grass? A soldier clad in the Zouave dress, A bright-haired man, with his lips apart, One hand thrown up o'er his frank, dead face, And the other clutching his pulseless heart, Lies here in the shadows, cool and dim, His musket swept by a trailing bough, With a careless grace in each quiet limb, And a wound on his manly brow; A wound, alas! Whence the warm blood drips on the quiet grass. The violets peer from their dusky beds, With a tearful dew in their great, pure eyes; The lilies quiver their shining heads, Their pale lips full of a sad surprise; And the lizard darts through the glistening fern-- And the squirrel rustles the branches hoary; Strange birds fly out, with a cry, to bathe Their wings in the sunset glory; While the shadows pass O'er the quiet face and the dewy grass. God pity the bride who waits at home, With her lily cheeks and her violet eyes, Dreaming the sweet old dreams of love, While her lover is walking in Paradise; God strengthen her heart as the days go by, And the long, drear nights of her vigil follow, Nor bird, nor moon, nor whispering wind, May breathe the tale of the hollow; Alas! alas! The secret is safe with the woodland grass. Ode-"Souls of Heroes." Charleston Mercury. Souls of heroes, ascended from fields ye have won, Still smile on the conflict so greatly begun; Bring succor to comrade, to brother, to son Now breasting the battle in ranks of the brave; And the dastard that loiters, the conflict to shun, Pursue him with scorn to the grave! II. Pursue him with furies that goad to despair, Hunt him out, where he crouches in crevice and lair, Drive him forth, while the wife of his bosom cries--"There Goes the coward that skulks, though his sister and wife Tremble, nightly, in sleep, overshadowed by fear Of a sacrifice dearer than life." III. There are thousands that loiter, of historied claim, Who boast of the heritage shrined in each name-- Sting their souls to the quick, till they shrink from the shame Which dishonors the names and the past of their boast; Even now they may win the best guerdon of fame, And retrieve the bright honors they've lost! IV. Even now, while their country is torn in the toils, While the wild boar is raging to raven the spoils, While the boa is spreading around us the coils Which would strangle the freedom our ancestors gave; But each soul must be quickened until it o'er-boils, Every muscle be corded to save! V. Still the cause is the same which, in long ages gone, Roused up your great sires, so gallantly known, When, braving the tyrant, the sceptre and throne, They rushed to the conflict, despising the odds; Armed with bow, spear, and scythe, and with sling and with stone, For their homes and their family gods! VI. Shall we be less worthy the sacrifice grand, The heritage noble we took at their hand, The peace and the comfort, the fruits of the land; And, sunk in a torpor as hopeless as base, Recoil from the shock of the Sodomite band, That would ruin the realm and the race? VII. Souls of heroes, ascended from fields ye have won, Your toils are not closed in the deeds ye have done; Touch the souls of each laggard and profligate son, The greed and the sloth, and the cowardice shame; Till we rise to complete the great work ye've begun, And with freedom make conquest of fame! Jackson. By H. L. Flash, of Galveston, Formerly of Mobile. Not midst the lightning of the stormy fight, Nor in the rush upon the vandal foe, Did kingly death, with his resistless might, Lay the great leader low. His warrior soul its earthly shackles broke, In the full sunshine of a peaceful town: When all the storm was hushed, the trusty oak That propped our cause went down. Though his alone the blood that flecks the ground, Recalling all his grand heroic deeds, Freedom herself is writhing with the wound, And all the country bleeds. He entered not the nation's promised land, At the red belching of the cannon's mouth: But broke the house of bondage with his hand-- The Moses of the South! O gracious God! not gainless in the loss; A glorious sunbeam gilds the sternest frown; And while his country staggers with the cross, He rises with the crown! Mobile Advertiser and Register. Captain Maffit's Ballad of the Sea. Charleston Mercury. I. Though winds are high and skies are dark, And the stars scarce show us a meteor spark; Yet buoyantly bounds our gallant barque, Through billows that flash in a sea of blue; We are coursing free, like the Viking shark, And our prey, like him, pursue! II. At each plunge of our prow we bare the graves, Where, heedless of roar among winds and waves, The dead have slept in their ocean caves, Never once dreaming--as if no more They hear, though the Storm-God ramps and raves From the deeps to the rock-bound shore. III. Brave sailors were they in the ancient times, Heroes or pirates--men of all climes, That had never an ear for the Sabbath chimes, Never once called on the priest to be shriven; They died with the courage that still sublimes, And, haply, may fit for Heaven. IV. Never once asking the when or why, But ready, all hours, to battle and die, They went into fight with a terrible cry, Counting no odds, and, victors or slain, Meeting fortune or fate, with an equal eye, Defiant of death and pain. V. Dread are the tales of the wondrous deep, And well do the billows their secrets keep, And sound should those savage old sailors sleep, If sleep they may after such a life; Where every dark passion, alert and aleap, Made slumber itself a strife. VI. What voices of horror, through storm and surge, Sang in the perishing ear its dirge, As, raging and rending, o'er Hell's black verge, Each howling soul sank to its doom; And what thunder-tones from the deeps emerge, As yawns for its prey the tomb! VII. We plough the same seas which the rovers trod, But with better faith in the saving God, And bear aloft and carry abroad The starry cross, our sacred sign, Which, never yet sullied by crime or fraud, Makes light o'er the midnight brine. VIII. And we rove not now on a lawless quest, With passions foul in the hero's breast, Moved by no greed at the fiend's behest, Gloating in lust o'er a bloody prey; But from tyrant robber the spoil to wrest, And tear down his despot sway! IX. 'Gainst the spawn of Europe, and all the lands, British and German--Norway's sands, Dutchland and Irish--the hireling bands Bought for butchery--recking no rede, But, flocking like vultures, with felon hands, To fatten the rage of greed. X. With scath they traverse both land and sea, And with sacred wrath we must make them flee; Making the path of the nations free, And planting peace in the heart of strife; In the star of the cross, our liberty Brings light to the world, and life! XI. Let Christendom cower 'neath Stripes and Stars, Cloaking her shame under legal bars, Not too moral for traffic, but shirking wars, While the Southern cross, floating topmast high. Though torn, perchance, by a thousand scars, Shall light up the midnight sky! Melt the Bells. F. Y. Rockett.--Memphis Appeal. The following lines were written on General Beauregard's appeal to the people to contribute their bells, that they may be melted into cannon. Melt the bells, melt the bells, Still the tinkling on the plains, And transmute the evening chimes Into war's resounding rhymes, That the invaders may be slain By the bells. Melt the bells, melt the bells, That for years have called to prayer, And, instead, the cannon's roar Shall resound the valleys o'er, That the foe may catch despair From the bells. Melt the bells, melt the bells, Though it cost a tear to part With the music they have made, Where the friends we love are laid, With pale cheek and silent heart, 'Neath the bells. Melt the bells, melt the bells, Into cannon, vast and grim, And the foe shall feel the ire From each heaving lungs of fire, And we'll put our trust in Him And the bells. Melt the bells, melt the bells, And when foes no more attack, And the lightning cloud of war Shall roll thunderless and far, We will melt the cannon back Into bells. Melt the bells, melt the bells, And they'll peal a sweeter chime, And remind of all the brave Who have sunk to glory's grave, And will sleep thro' coming time 'Neath the bells. John Pelham. By James R. Randall. Just as the spring came laughing through the strife, With all its gorgeous cheer; In the bright April of historic life Fell the great cannoneer. The wondrous lulling of a hero's breath His bleeding country weeps-- Hushed in the alabaster arms of death, Our young Marcellus sleeps. Nobler and grander than the Child of Rome, Curbing his chariot steeds; The knightly scion of a Southern home Dazzled the land with deeds. Gentlest and bravest in the battle brunt, The champion of the truth, He bore his banner to the very front Of our immortal youth. A clang of sabres 'mid Virginian snow, The fiery pang of shells-- And there's a wail of immemorial woe In Alabama dells. The pennon drops that led the sacred band Along the crimson field; The meteor blade sinks from the nerveless hand Over the spotless shield. We gazed and gazed upon that beauteous face While 'round the lips and eyes, Couched in the marble slumber, flashed the grace Of a divine surprise. Oh, mother of a blessed soul on high! Thy tears may soon be shed-- Think of thy boy with princes of the sky, Among the Southern dead. How must he smile on this dull world beneath, Fevered with swift renown-- He--with the martyr's amaranthine wreath Twining the victor's crown! "Ye Batteries of Beauregard." By J. R. Barrick, of Kentucky. "Ye batteries of Beauregard!" Pour your hail from Moultrie's wall; Bid the shock of your deep thunder On their fleet in terror fall: Rain your storm of leaden fury On the black invading host-- Teach them that their step shall never Press on Carolina's coast. "Ye batteries of Beauregard!" Sound the story of our wrong; Let your tocsin wake the spirit Of a people brave and strong; Her proud names of old remember-- Marion, Sumter, Pinckney, Greene; Swell the roll whose deeds of glory Side by side with theirs are seen. "Ye batteries of Beauregard!" From Savannah on them frown; By the majesty of Heaven Strike their "grand armada" down; By the blood of many a freeman, By each dear-bought battle-field, By the hopes we fondly cherish, Never ye the victory yield. "Ye batteries of Beauregard!" All along our Southern coast, Let, in after-time, your triumphs, Be a nation's pride and boast; Send each missile with a greeting To the vile, ungodly crew; Make them feel they ne'er can conquer People to themselves so true. "Ye batteries of Beauregard!" By the glories of the past, By the memory of old Sumter, Whose renown will ever last, Speed upon their vaunted legions Volleys thick of shot and shell, Bid them welcome, in your glory, To their own appointed hell. "When Peace Returns." Published in the Granada Picket. By Olivia Tully Thomas. When "war has smoothed his wrinkled front," And meek-eyed peace returning, Has brightened hearts that long were wont To sigh in grief and mourning-- How blissful then will be the day When, from the wars returning, The weary soldier wends his way To dear ones that are yearning, To clasp in true love's fond embrace, To gaze with looks so tender Upon the war-worn form and face Of Liberty's defender; To count with pride each cruel scar, That mars the manly beauty, Of him who proved so brave in war, So beautiful in duty. When peace returns, throughout our land, Glad shouts of welcome render The gallant few of Freedom's band Whose cry was "no surrender;" Who battled bravely to be free From tyranny's oppressions, And won, for Southern chivalry, The homage of all nations! And when, again, in Southern bowers The ray of peace is shining, Her maidens gather fairest flowers, And honor's wreaths are twining, To bind the brows victorious On many a field so gory, Whose names, renowned and glorious, Shall live in song and story, Then will affection's tear be shed, And pity, joy restraining, For those, the lost, lamented dead, Are all beyond our plaining; They fell in manhood's prime and might; And we should not weep the story That tells of Fame, a sacred light, Above each grave of glory! The Right above the Wrong. By John W. Overall. In other days our fathers' love was loyal, full, and free, For those they left behind them in the Island of the Sea; They fought the battles of King George, and toasted him in song, For then the Right kept proudly down the tyranny of Wrong. But when the King's weak, willing slaves laid tax upon the tea, The Western men rose up and braved the Island of the Sea; And swore a fearful oath to God, those men of iron might, That in the end the Wrong should die, and up should go the Right. The King sent over hireling hosts--the Briton, Hessian, Scot-- And swore in turn those Western men, when captured, should be shot; While Chatham spoke with earnest tongue against the hireling throng, And mournfully saw the Right go down, and place given to the Wrong. But God was on the righteous side, and Gideon's sword was out, With clash of steel, and rattling drum, and freeman's thunder-shout; And crimson torrents drenched the land through that long, stormy fight, But in the end, hurrah! the Wrong was beaten by the Right! And when again the foemen came from out the Northern Sea, To desolate our smiling land and subjugate the free, Our fathers rushed to drive them back, with rifles keen and long, And swore a mighty oath, the Right should subjugate the Wrong. And while the world was looking on, the strife uncertain grew, But soon aloft rose up our stars amid a field of blue; For Jackson fought on red Chalmette, and won the glorious fight, And then the Wrong went down, hurrah! and triumph crowned the Right! The day has come again, when men who love the beauteous South, To speak, if needs be, for the Right, though by the cannon's mouth; For foes accursed of God and man, with lying speech and song, Would bind, imprison, hang the Right, and deify the Wrong. But canting knave of pen and sword, nor sanctimonious fool, Shall never win this Southern land, to cripple, bind, and rule; We'll muster on each bloody plain, thick as the stars of night, And, through the help of God, the Wrong shall perish by the Right. Carmen Triumphale. By Henry Timrod. Go forth and bid the land rejoice, Yet not too gladly, oh my song! Breathe softly, as if mirth would wrong The solemn rapture of thy voice. Be nothing lightly done or said This happy day! Our joy should flow Accordant with the lofty woe That wails above the noble dead. Let him whose brow and breast were calm While yet the battle lay with God, Look down upon the crimson sod And gravely wear his mournful palm; And him, whose heart still weak from fear Beats all too gayly for the time, Know that intemperate glee is crime While one dead hero claims a tear. Yet go thou forth, my song! and thrill, With sober joy, the troubled days; A nation's hymn of grateful praise May not be hushed for private ill. Our foes are fallen! Flash, ye wires! The mighty tidings far and nigh! Ye cities! write them on the sky In purple and in emerald fires! They came with many a haughty boast; Their threats were heard on every breeze; They darkened half the neighboring seas, And swooped like vultures on the coast. False recreants in all knightly strife, Their way was wet with woman's tears; Behind them flamed the toil of years, And bloodshed stained the sheaves of life. They fought as tyrants fight, or slaves; God gave the dastards to our hands; Their bones are bleaching on the sands, Or mouldering slow in shallow graves. What though we hear about our path The heavens with howls of vengeance rent; The venom of their hate is spent; We need not heed their fangless wrath. Meantime the stream they strove to chain Now drinks a thousand springs, and sweeps With broadening breast, and mightier deeps, And rushes onward to the main; While down the swelling current glides Our ship of state before the blast, With streamers poured from every mast, Her thunders roaring from her sides. Lord! bid the frenzied tempest cease, Hang out thy rainbow on the sea! Laugh round her, waves! in silver glee, And speed her to the ports of peace! The Fiend Unbound. Charleston Mercury. I. No more, with glad and happy cheer, And smiling face, doth Christmas come, But usher'd in with sword and spear, And beat of the barbarian drum! No more, with ivy-circled brow, And mossy beard all snowy white, He comes to glad the children now, With sweet and innocent delight. II. The merry dance, the lavish feast, The cheery welcome, all are o'er: The music of the viol ceased, The gleesome ring around the floor. No glad communion greets the hour, That welcomes in a Saviour's birth, And Christmas, to a hostile power, Yields all the sway that made its mirth. III. The Church, like some deserted bride, In trembling, at the Altar waits, While, raging fierce on every side, The foe is thundering at her gates. No ivy green, nor glittering leaves, Nor crimson berries, deck her walls: But blood, red dripping from her eaves, Along the sacred pavement falls. IV. Her silver bells no longer chime In summons to her sacred home; Nor holy song at matin prime, Proclaims the God within the dome. Nor do the fireside's happy bands Assemble fond, with greetings dear, While Patriarch Christmas spreads his hands To glad with gifts and crown with cheer. V. In place of that beloved form, Benignant, bland, and blessing all, Comes one begirt with fire and storm, The raging shell, the hissing ball! Type of the Prince of Peace, no more, Evoked by those who bear His name, THE FIEND, in place of SAINT of yore, Now hurls around Satanic flame. VI. In hate,--evoked by kindred lands, But late beslavering with caress, Lo, Moloch, dripping crimson, stands, And curses where he cannot bless. He wings the bolt and hurls the spear, A _demon loosed_, that rends in rage, Sends havoc through the homes most dear, And butchers youth and tramples age! VII. With face of Fox--with glee that grins, And apish arms, with fingers claw'd, To snatch at all his brother wins, And straight secrete, with stealth and fraud;-- Lo! Mammon, kindred Demon, comes, And lurks, as dreading ill, in rear; He blows the trumpet, beats the drums, Inflames the torch, and sharps the spear! VIII. And furious, following in their train, What hosts of lesser Demons rise; Lust, Malice, Hunger, Greed and Gain, Each raging for its special prize. Too base for freedom, mean for toil, And reckless all of just and right, They rage in peaceful homes for spoil, And where they cannot butcher, blight. IX. A Serpent lie from every mouth, Coils outward ever,--sworn to bless; Yet, through the gardens of the South, Still spreading evils numberless, By locust swarms the fields are swept, By frenzied hands the dwelling flames, And virgin beds, where Beauty slept, Polluted blush, from worst of shames. X. The Dragon, chain'd for thousand years, Hath burst his bonds and rages free;-- Yet, patience, brethren, stay your fears;-- Loosed for "a little season,"[1] he Will soon, beneath th' Ithuriel sword, Of heavenly judgment, crush'd and driven, Yield to the vengeance of the Lord, And crouch beneath the wrath of Heaven! XI. "A little season," and the Peace, That now is foremost in your prayers, Shall crown your harvest with increase, And bless with smiles the home of tears; Your wounds be healed; your noble sons, Unhurt, unmutilated--free-- Shall limber up their conquering guns, In triumph grand of Liberty! XII. A few more hours of mortal strife,-- Of faith and patience, working still, In struggle for the immortal life, With all their soul, and strength, and will; And, in the favor of the Lord, And powerful grown by heavenly aid, Your roof trees all shall be restored, And ye shall triumph in their shade. [1] "1. And I saw an Angel come down from Heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. "2. And he laid hold on the Dragon, that Old Serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years. "And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled; and _after that he must be loosed a little season_."--Rev. xx., v. 1-3. The Unknown Dead. By Henry Timrod. The rain is plashing on my sill, But all the winds of Heaven are still; And so, it falls with that dull sound Which thrills us in the churchyard ground, When the first spadeful drops like lead Upon the coffin of the dead. Beyond my streaming window-pane, I cannot see the neighboring vane, Yet from its old familiar tower The bell comes, muffled, through the shower. What strange and unsuspected link Of feeling touched has made me think-- While with a vacant soul and eye I watch that gray and stony sky-- Of nameless graves on battle plains, Washed by a single winter's rains, Where, some beneath Virginian hills, And some by green Atlantic rills, Some by the waters of the West, A myriad unknown heroes rest? Ah! not the chiefs who, dying, see Their flags in front of victory, Or, at their life-blood's noblest cost Pay for a battle nobly lost, Claim from their monumental beds The bitterest tears a nation sheds. Beneath yon lonely mound--the spot, By all save some fond few forgot-- Lie the true martyrs of the fight, Which strikes for freedom and for right. Of them, their patriot zeal and pride, The lofty faith that with them died, No grateful page shall further tell Than that so many bravely fell; And we can only dimly guess What worlds of all this world's distress, What utter woe, despair, and dearth, Their fate has brought to many a hearth. Just such a sky as this should weep Above them, always, where they sleep; Yet, haply, at this very hour, Their graves are like a lover's bower; And Nature's self, with eyes unwet, Oblivious of the crimson debt To which she owes her April grace, Laughs gayly o'er their burial place. Ode--"Do Ye Quail?" By W. Gilmore Simms. I. Do ye quail but to hear, Carolinians, The first foot-tramp of Tyranny's minions? Have ye buckled on armor, and brandished the spear, But to shrink with the trumpet's first peal on the ear? Why your forts now embattled on headland and height, Your sons all in armor, unless for the fight? Did ye think the mere show of your guns on the wall, And your shouts, would the souls of the heathen appal? That his lusts and his appetites, greedy as Hell, Led by Mammon and Moloch, would sink at a spell;-- Nor strive, with the tiger's own thirst, lest the flesh Should be torn from his jaws, while yet bleeding afresh. II. For shame! To the breach, Carolinians!-- To the death for your sacred dominions!-- Homes, shrines, and your cities all reeking in flame, Cry aloud to your souls, in their sorrow and shame; Your greybeards, with necks in the halter-- Your virgins, defiled at the altar,-- In the loathsome embrace of the felon and slave, Touch loathsomer far than the worm of the grave! Ah! God! if you fail in this moment of gloom! How base were the weakness, how horrid the doom! With the fiends in your streets howling pæans, And the Beast o'er another Orleans! III. Do ye quail, as on yon little islet They have planted the feet that defile it? Make its sands pure of taint, by the stroke of the sword, And by torrents of blood in red sacrifice pour'd! Doubts are Traitors, if once they persuade you to fear, That the foe, in his foothold, is safe from your spear! When the foot of pollution is set on your shores, What sinew and soul should be stronger than yours? By the fame--by the shame--of your sires, Set on, though each freeman expires; Better fall, grappling fast with the foe, to their graves, Than groan in your fetters, the slaves of your slaves. IV. The voice of your loud exultation Hath rung, like a trump, through the nation, How loudly, how proudly, of deeds to be done, The blood of the sire in the veins of the son! Old Moultrie and Sumter still keep at your gates, And the foe in his foothold as patiently waits. He asks, with a taunt, by your patience made bold, If the hot spur of Percy grows suddenly cold-- Makes merry with boasts of your city his own, And the Chivalry fled, ere his trumpet is blown; Upon them, O sons of the mighty of yore, And fatten the sands with their Sodomite gore! V. Where's the dastard that cowers and falters In the sight of his hearthstones and altars? With the faith of the free in the God of the brave, Go forth; ye are mighty to conquer and save! By the blue Heaven shining above ye, By the pure-hearted thousands that love ye, Ye are armed with a might to prevail in the fight, And an ægis to shield and a weapon to smite! Then fail not, and quail not; the foe shall prevail not: With the faith and the will, ye shall conquer him still. To the knife--with the knife, Carolinians, For your homes, and your sacred dominions. Ode--"Our City by the Sea." By W. Gilmore Simms. I. Our city by the sea, As the rebel city known, With a soul and spirit free As the waves that make her zone, Stands in wait for the fate From the angry arm of hate; But she nothing fears the terror of his blow; She hath garrisoned her walls, And for every son that falls, She will spread a thousand palls For-the foe! II. Old Moultrie at her gate, Clad in arms and ancient fame. Grimly watching, stands elate To deliver bolt and flame! Brave the band, at command, To illumine sea and land With a glory that shall honor days of yore; And, as racers for their goals, A thousand fiery souls, While the drum of battle rolls, Line the shore. III. Lo! rising at his side, As if emulous to share His old historic pride, The vast form of Sumter there! Girt by waves, which he braves Though the equinoctial raves, As the mountain braves the lightning on his steep; And, like tigers crouching round, Are the tribute forts that bound All the consecrated ground, By the deep! IV. It was calm, the April noon, When, in iron-castled towers, Our haughty foe came on, With his aggregated powers; All his might 'gainst the right, Now embattled for the fight, With Hell's hate and venom working in his heart; A vast and dread array, Glooming black upon the day, Hell's passions all in play, With Hell's art. V. But they trouble not the souls Of our Carolina host,[1] And the drum of battle rolls, While each hero seeks his post; Firm, though few, sworn to do, Their old city full in view, The brave city of their sires and their dead; There each freeman had his brood, All the dear ones of his blood, And he knew they watching stood, In their dread! VI. To the bare embattled height, Then our gallant colonel sprung-- "Bid them welcome to the fight," Were the accents of his tongue-- "Music! band, pour out--grand-- The free song of Dixie Land! Let it tell them we are joyful that they come! Bid them welcome, drum and flute, Nor be your cannon mute, Give them chivalrous salute-- To their doom!"[2] VII. Out spoke an eager gun, From the walls of Moultrie then; And through clouds of sulph'rous dun, Rose a shout of thousand men, As the shot, hissing hot, Goes in lightning to the spot-- Goes crashing wild through timber and through mail; Then roared the storm from all, Moultrie's ports and Sumter's wall-- Bursting bomb and driving ball-- Hell in hail! VIII. Full a hundred cannon roared The dread welcome to the foe, And his felon spirit cowered, As he crouched beneath the blow! As each side opened wide To the iron and the tide, He lost his faith in armor and in art; And, with the loss of faith, Came the dread of wounds and scath-- And the felon fear of death Wrung his heart! IX. Quenched then his foul desires; In his mortal pain and fear, How feeble grew his fires, How stayed his fell career! How each keel, made to reel 'Neath our thunder, seems to kneel, Their turrets staggering wildly, to and fro, blind and lame; Ironsides and iron roof, Held no longer bullet-proof, Steal away, shrink aloof, In their shame! X. But our lightnings follow fast, With a vengeance sharp and hot; Our bolts are on the blast, And they rive with shell and shot! Huge the form which they warm With the hot breath of the storm; Dread the crash which follows as each Titan mass is struck-- They shiver as they fly, While their leader, drifting nigh, Sinks, choking with the cry-- "Keokuk!" XI. To the brave old city, joy! For that the hostile race, Commissioned to destroy, Hath fled in sore disgrace! That our sons, at their guns, Have beat back the modern Huns-- Have maintained their household fanes and their fires; And free from taint and scath, Have kept the fame and faith (And will keep, through blood and death) Of their sires! XII. To the Lord of Hosts the glory, For His the arm and might, That have writ for us the story, And have borne us through the fight! His our shield in that field-- Voice that bade us never yield; Oh! had he not been with us through the terrors of that day? His strength hath made us strong, Cheered the right and crushed the wrong, To His temple let us throng-- PRAISE AND PRAY! [1] The battle of Charleston Harbor, April 7, 1863, was fought by South Carolina troops exclusively. [2] As the iron-clads approached Fort Sumter in line of battle, Col. Alfred Rhett, commandant of the post, mounting the parapet, where he remained, ordered the band to strike up the national air of "Dixie;" and at the same time, in addition to the Confederate flag, the State and regimental flags were flung out at different salients of the fort, and saluted with thirteen guns. The Lone Sentry. By James R. Randall. Previous to the first battle of Manassas, when the troops under Stonewall Jackson had made a forced march, on halting at night they fell on the ground exhausted and faint. The hour arrived for setting the watch for the night. The officer of the day went to the general's tent, and said: "General, the men are all wearied, and there is not one but is asleep. Shall I wake them?" "No," said the noble Jackson; "let them sleep, and I will watch the camp to-night." And all night long he rode round that lonely camp, the one lone sentinel for that brave, but weary and silent body of Virginia heroes. And when glorious morning broke, the soldiers awoke fresh and ready for action, all unconscious of the noble vigils kept over their slumbers. 'Twas in the dying of the day, The darkness grew so still; The drowsy pipe of evening birds Was hushed upon the hill; Athwart the shadows of the vale Slumbered the men of might, And one lone sentry paced his rounds, To watch the camp that night. A grave and solemn man was he, With deep and sombre brow; The dreamful eyes seemed hoarding up Some unaccomplished vow. The wistful glance peered o'er the plains Beneath the starry light-- And with the murmured name of God, He watched the camp that night. The Future opened unto him Its grand and awful scroll: Manassas and the Valley march Came heaving o'er his soul-- Richmond and Sharpsburg thundered by With that tremendous fight Which gave him to the angel hosts Who watched the camp that night. We mourn for him who died for us, With one resistless moan; While up the Valley of the Lord He marches to the Throne! He kept the faith of men and saints Sublime, and pure, and bright-- He sleeps--and all is well with him Who watched the camp that night. Brothers! the Midnight of the Cause Is shrouded in our fate; The demon Goths pollute our halls With fire, and lust, and hate. Be strong--be valiant--be assured-- Strike home for Heaven and Right! _The soul of Jackson stalks abroad, And guards the camp to-night!_ To My Soldier Brother. By Sallie E. Ballard, of Texas. When softly gathering shades of ev'n Creep o'er the prairies broad and green, And countless stars bespangle heav'n, And fringe the clouds with silv'ry sheen, My fondest sigh to thee is giv'n, My lonely wandering soldier boy; And thoughts of thee Steal over me Like ev'ning shades, my soldier boy. My brother, though thou'rt far away, And dangers hurtle round thy path, And battle lightnings o'er thee play, And thunders peal in awful wrath, Think, whilst thou'rt in the hot affray, Thy sister prays for thee, my boy. If fondest prayer Can shield thee there Sweet angels guard my soldier boy. Thy proud young heart is beating high To clash of arms and cannons' roar; That firm-set lip and flashing eye Tell how thy heart is brimming o'er. Be free and live, be free or die; Be that thy motto now, my boy; And though thy name's Unknown to fame's, 'Tis graven on my heart, my boy. Sea-Weeds Written in Exile. By Annie Chambers Ketchum. Friend of the thoughtful mind and gentle heart! Beneath the citron-tree-- Deep calling to my soul's profounder deep-- I hear the Mexique Sea. While through the night rides in the spectral surf Along the spectral sands, And all the air vibrates, as if from harps Touched by phantasmal hands. Bright in the moon the red pomegranate flowers Lean to the Yucca's bells, While with her chrism of dew, sad Midnight fills The milk-white asphodels. Watching all night--as I have done before-- I count the stars that set, Each writing on my soul some memory deep Of Pleasure or Regret; Till, wild with heart-break, toward the East I turn, Waiting for dawn of day;-- And chanting sea, and asphodel and star Are faded, all, away. Only within my trembling, trembling hands-- Brought unto me by thee-- I clasp these beautiful and fragile things, Bright sea-weeds from the sea, Fair bloom the flowers beneath these Northern skies, Pure shine the stars by night, And grandly sing the grand Atlantic waves In thunder-throated might; But, as the sea-shell in her chambers keeps The murmur of the sea, So the deep-echoing memories of my home Will not depart from me. Prone on the page they lie, these gentle things! As I have seen them cast Like a drowned woman's hair, along the beach, When storms were over-past; Prone, like mine own affections, cast ashore In Battle's storm and blight; Would _they_ had died, like sea-weeds! Pray forgive me But I must weep to-night. Tell me again, of Summer fields made fair By Spring's precursing plough; Of joyful reapers, gathering tear-sown harvests-- Talk to me,--will you?--now! The Salkehatchie. By Emily J. Moore. Written when a garrison, at or near Salkehatchie Bridge, were threatening a raid up in the Fork of Big and Little Salkehatchie. The crystal streams, the pearly streams, The streams in sunbeams flashing, The murm'ring streams, the gentle streams, The streams down mountains dashing, Have been the theme Of poets' dream, And, in wild witching story, Have been renowned for love's fond scenes, Or some great deed of glory. The Rhine, the Tiber, Ayr, and Tweed, The Arno, silver-flowing, The Hudson, Charles, Potomac, Dan, With poesy are glowing; But I would praise In artless lays, A stream which well may match ye, Though dark its waters glide along-- The swampy Salkehatchie. 'Tis not the beauty of its stream, Which makes it so deserving Of honor at the Muses' hands, But 'tis the use it's serving, And 'gainst a raid, We hope its aid Will ever prove efficient, Its fords remain still overflowed, In water ne'er deficient. If Vandal bands are held in check, Their crossing thus prevented, And we are spared the ravage wild Their malice has invented, Then we may well In numbers tell No other stream can match ye, And grateful we shall ever be To swampy Salkehatchie. The Broken Mug. Ode (so-called) on a Lite Melancholy Accident in the Shenandoah Valley (so-called.) John Esten Cooke. My mug is broken, my heart is sad! What woes can fate still hold in store! The friend I cherished a thousand days Is smashed to pieces on the floor! Is shattered and to Limbo gone, I'll see my Mug no more! Relic it was of joyous hours Whose golden memories still allure-- When coffee made of rye we drank, And gray was all the dress we wore! When we were paid some cents a month, But never asked for more! In marches long, by day and night, In raids, hot charges, shocks of war, Strapped on the saddle at my back This faithful comrade still I bore-- This old companion, true and tried, I'll never carry more! From the Rapidan to Gettysburg-- "Hard bread" behind, "sour krout" before-- This friend went with the cavalry And heard the jarring-cannon roar In front of Cemetery Hill-- Good heavens! how they did roar! Then back again, the foe behind, Back to the "Old Virginia shore"-- Some dead and wounded left--some holes In flags, the sullen graybacks bore; This mug had made the great campaign, And we'd have gone once more! Alas! we never went again! The red cross banner, slow but sure, "Fell back"--we bade to sour krout (Like the lover of Lenore) A long, sad, lingering farewell-- To taste its joys no more. But still we fought, and ate hard bread, Or starved--good friend, our woes deplore! And still this faithful friend remained-- Riding behind me as before-- The friend on march, in bivouac, When others were no more. How oft we drove the horsemen blue In Summer bright or Winter frore! How oft before the Southern charge Through field and wood the blue-birds tore! Im "harmonized," but long to hear The bugles ring once more. Oh yes! we're all "fraternal" now, Purged of our sins, we're clean and pure, Congress will "reconstruct" us soon-- But no gray people on _that_ floor! I'm harmonized--"so-called"--but long To see those times once more! Gay days! the sun was brighter then, And we were happy, though so poor! That past comes back as I behold My shattered friend upon the floor, My splintered, useless, ruined mug, From which I'll drink no more. How many lips I'll love for aye, While heart and memory endure, Have touched this broken cup and laughed-- How they did laugh!--in days of yore! Those days we'd call "a beauteous dream, If they had been no more!" Dear comrades, dead this many a day, I saw you weltering in your gore, After those days, amid the pines On the Rappahannock shore! When the joy of life was much to me But your warm hearts were more! Yours was the grand heroic nerve That laughs amid the storm of war-- Souls that "loved much" your native land, Who fought and died therefor! You gave your youth, your brains, your arms, Your blood--you had no more! You lived and died true to your flag! And now your wounds are healed--but sore Are many hearts that think of you Where you have "gone before." Peace, comrade! God bound up those forms, They are "whole" forevermore! Those lips this broken vessel touched, His, too!--the man's we all adore-- That cavalier of cavaliers, Whose voice will ring no more-- Whose plume will float amid the storm Of battle never more! Not on this idle page I write That name of names, shrined in the core Of every heart!--peace! foolish pen, Hush! words so cold and poor! His sword is rust; the blue eyes dust, His bugle sounds no more! Never was cavalier like ours! Not Rupert in the years before! And when his stern, hard work was done, His griefs, joys, battles o'er-- His mighty spirit rode the storm, And led his men once more! He lies beneath his native sod, Where violets spring, or frost is hoar: He recks not--charging squadrons watch His raven plume no more! That smile we'll see, that voice we'll hear, That hand we'll touch no more! My foolish mirth is quenched in tears: Poor fragments strewed upon the floor, Ye are the types of nobler things That find their use no more-- Things glorious once, now trodden down-- That makes us smile no more! Of courage, pride, high hopes, stout hearts-- Hard, stubborn nerve, devotion pure, Beating his wings against the bars, The prisoned eagle tried to soar! Outmatched, overwhelmed, we struggled still-- Bread failed--we fought no more! Lies in the dust the shattered staff That bore aloft on sea and shore, That blazing flag, amid the storm! And none are now so poor, So poor to do it reverence, Now when it flames no more! But it is glorious in the dust, Sacred till Time shall be no more: Spare it, fierce editors! your scorn-- The dread "Rebellion's" o'er! Furl the great flag--hide cross and star, Thrust into darkness star and bar, But look! across the ages far It flames for evermore! Carolina. By Anna Peyre Dinnies. In the hour of thy glory, When thy name was far renowned, When Sumter's glowing story Thy bright escutcheon crowned; Oh, noble Carolina! how proud a claim was mine, That through homage and through duty, and birthright, I was thine. Exulting as I heard thee, Of every lip the theme, Prophetic visions stirred me, In a hope-illumined dream: A dream of dauntless valor, of battles fought and won, Where each field was but a triumph--a hero every son. And now, when clouds arise, And shadows round thee fall; I lift to heaven my eyes, Those visions to recall; For I cannot dream that darkness will rest upon thee long, Oh, lordly Carolina! with thine arms and hearts so strong. Thy serried ranks of pine, Thy live-oaks spreading wide, Beneath the sunbeams shine, In fadeless robes of pride; Thus marshalled on their native soil their gallant sons stand forth, As changeless as thy forests green, defiant of the North. The deeds of other days, Enacted by their sires, Themes long of love and praise, Have wakened high desires In every heart that beats within thy proud domain, To cherish their remembrance, and live those scenes again. Each heart the home of daring, Each hand the foe of wrong, They'll meet with haughty bearing, The war-ship's thunder song; And though the base invader pollute thy sacred shore, They'll greet him in their prowess as their fathers did of yore. His feet may press their soil, Or his numbers bear them down, In his vandal raid for spoil, His sordid soul to crown; But his triumph will be fleeting, for the hour is drawing near, When the war-cry of thy cavaliers shall strike his startled ear. A fearful time shall come, When thy gathering bands unite, And the larum-sounding drum Calls to struggle for the Right; "_Pro aris et pro focis_," from rank to rank shall fly, As they meet the cruel foeman, to conquer or to die. Oh, then a tale of glory Shall yet again be thine, And the record of thy story The Laurel shall entwine; Oh, noble Carolina! oh, proud and lordly State! Heroic deeds shall crown thee, and the Nations own thee great. Our Martyrs. Bu Paul H. Hayne. I am sitting lone and weary On the hearth of my darkened room, And the low wind's _miserere_ Makes sadder the midnight gloom; There's a terror that's nameless nigh me-- There's a phantom spell in the air, And methinks that the dead glide by me, And the breath of the grave's in my hair! 'Tis a vision of ghastly faces, All pallid, and worn with pain, Where the splendor of manhood's graces Give place to a gory stain; In a wild and weird procession They sweep by my startled eyes, And stern with their fate's fruition, Seem melting in blood-red skies. Have they come from the shores supernal, Have they passed from the spirit's goal, 'Neath the veil of the life eternal, To dawn on my shrinking soul? Have they turned from the choiring angels, Aghast at the woe and dearth That war, with his dark evangels, Hath wrought in the loved of earth? Vain dream! 'mid the far-off mountains They lie, where the dew-mists weep, And the murmur of mournful fountains Breaks over their painful sleep; On the breast of the lonely meadows, Safe, safe from the despot's will, They rest in the star-lit shadows, And their brows are white and still! Alas! for the martyred heroes Cut down at their golden prime, In a strife with the brutal Neroes, Who blacken the path of Time! For them is the voice of wailing, And the sweet blush-rose departs From the cheeks of the maidens, paling O'er the wreck of their broken hearts! And alas! for the vanished glory Of a thousand household spells! And alas! for the tearful story Of the spirit's fond farewells! By the flood, on the field, in the forest, Our bravest have yielded breath, But the shafts that have smitten sorest, Were launched by a viewless death! Oh, Thou, that hast charms of healing, Descend on a widowed land, And bind o'er the wounds of feeling The balms of Thy mystic hand! Till the hearts that lament and languish, Renewed by the touch divine, From the depths of a mortal anguish May rise to the calm of Thine! Cleburne. By M. A. Jennings, of Alabama. "_Another star now shines on high._" Another ray of light hath fled, another Southern brave Hath fallen in his country's cause and found a laurelled grave-- Hath fallen, but his deathless name shall live when stars shall set, For, noble Cleburne, thou art one this world will ne'er forget. 'Tis true thy warm heart beats no more, that on thy noble head Azrael placed his icy hand, and thou art with the dead; The glancing of thine eyes are dim; no more will they be bright Until they ope in Paradise, with clearer, heavenlier light. No battle news disturbs thy rest upon the sun-bright shore, No clarion voice awakens thee on earth to wrestle more, No tramping steed, no wary foe bids thee awake, arise, For thou art in the angel world, beyond the starry skies. Brave Cleburne, dream in thy low bed, with pulseless, deadened heart; Calm, calm and sweet, 0 warrior rest! thou well hast borne thy part, And now a glory wreath for thee the angels singing twine, A glory wreath, not of the earth, but made by hands divine. A long farewell--we give thee up, with all thy bright renown; A chieftain here on earth is lost, in heaven an angel found. Above thy grave a wail is heard--a nation mourns her dead; A nobler for the South ne'er died, a braver never bled. A last farewell--how can we speak the bitter word farewell! The anguish of our bleeding hearts vain words may never tell. Sleep on, sleep on, to God we give our chieftain in his might; And weeping, feel he lives on high, where comes no sorrow's night. Selma Despatch, 1864. The Texan Marseillaise. By James Haines, of Texas. Sons of the South, arouse to battle! Gird on your armor for the fight! The Northern Thugs with dread "War's rattle," Pour on each vale, and glen, and height; Meet them as Ocean meets in madness The frail bark on the rocky shore, When crested billows foam and roar, And the wrecked crew go down in sadness. Arm! Arm! ye Southern braves! Scatter yon Vandal hordes! Despots and bandits, fitting food For vultures and your swords. Shall dastard tyrants march their legions To crush the land of Jackson--Lee? Shall freedom fly to other regions, And sons of Yorktown bend the knee? Or shall their "footprints' base pollution" Of Southern soil, in blood be purged, And every flying slave be scourged Back to his snows in wild confusion? Arm! Arm! &c. Vile despots, with their minions knavish, Would drag us back to their embrace; Will freemen brook a chain so slavish? Will brave men take so low a place? O, Heaven! for words--the loathing, scorning We feel for such a Union's bands: To paint with more than mortal hands, And sound our loudest notes of warning. Arm! Arm! &c. What! union with a race ignoring The charter of our nation's birth! Union with bastard slaves adoring The fiend that chains them, to the earth! No! we reply in tones of thunder-- No! our staunch hills fling back the sound-- No! our hoarse cannon echo round-- No! evermore remain asunder! Arm! Arm! &c. Southern Confederacy. O, Tempora! O, Mores! By John Dickson Bruns, M. D. "Great Pan is dead!" so cried an airy tongue To one who, drifting down Calabria's shore, Heard the last knell, in starry midnight rung, Of the old Oracles, dumb for evermore. A low wail ran along the shuddering deep, And as, far off, its flaming accents died, The awe-struck sailors, startled from their sleep, Gazed, called aloud: no answering voice replied; Nor ever will--the angry Gods have fled, Closed are the temples, mute are all the shrines, The fires are quenched, Dodona's growth is dead, The Sibyl's leaves are scattered to the winds. No mystic sentence will they bear again, Which, sagely spelled, might ward a nation's doom; But we have left us still some god-like men, And some great voices pleading from the tomb. If we would heed them, they might save us yet, Call up some gleams of manhood in our breasts, Truth, valor, justice, teach us to forget In a grand cause our selfish interests. But we have fallen on evil times indeed, When public faith is but the common shame, And private morals held an idiot's creed, And old-world honesty an empty name. And lust, and greed, and gain are all our arts! The simple lessons which our father's taught Are scorned and jeered at; in our sordid marts We sell the faith for which they toiled and fought. Each jostling each in the mad strife for gold, The weaker trampled by the unrecking throng Friends, honor, country lost, betrayed, or sold, And lying blasphemies on every tongue. Cant for religion, sounding words for truth, Fraud leads to fortune, gelt for guilt atones, No care for hoary age or tender youth, For widows' tears or helpless orphans' groans. The people rage, and work their own wild will, They stone the prophets, drag their highest down, And as they smite, with savage folly still Smile at their work, those dead eyes wear no frown. The sage of "Drainfield"[1] tills a barren soil, And reaps no harvest where he sowed the seed, He has but exile for long years of toil; Nor voice in council, though his children bleed. And never more shall "Redcliffs"[2] oaks rejoice, Now bowed with grief above their master's bier; Faction and party stilled that mighty voice, Which yet could teach us wisdom, could we hear. And "Woodland's"[3] harp is mute: the gray, old man Broods by his lonely hearth and weaves no song; Or, if he sing, the note is sad and wan, Like the pale face of one who's suffered long. So all earth's teachers have been overborne By the coarse crowd, and fainting; droop or die; They bear the cross, their bleeding brows the thorn, And ever hear the clamor--"Crucify!" Oh, for a man with godlike heart and brain! A god in stature, with a god's great will. And fitted to the time, that not in vain Be all the blood we're spilt and yet must spill. Oh, brothers! friends! shake off the Circean spell! Rouse to the dangers of impending fate! Grasp your keen swords, and all may yet be well-- More gain, more pelf, and it will be, too late! Charleston Mercury [1864]. [1] The country-seat of R. Barnwell Rhett. [2] The homestead of Jas. H. Hammond. [3] The homestead of W. Gilmore Simms (destroyed by Sherman's army.) Our Departed Comrades. By J. Marion Shirer. I am sitting alone by a fire That glimmers on Sugar Loaf's height, But before I to rest shall retire And put out the fast fading light-- While the lanterns of heaven are ling'ring In silence all o'er the deep sea, And loved ones at home are yet mingling Their voices in converse of me-- While yet the lone seabird is flying So swiftly far o'er the rough wave, And many fond mothers are sighing For the noble, the true, and the brave; Let me muse o'er the many departed Who slumber on mountain and vale; With the sadness which shrouds the lone-hearted, Let me tell of my comrades a tale. Far away in the green, lonely mountains, Where the eagle makes bloody his beak, In the mist, and by Gettysburg's fountains, Our fallen companions now sleep! Near Charleston, where Sumter still rises In grandeur above the still wave, And always at evening discloses The fact that her inmates yet live-- On islands, and fronting Savannah, Where dark oaks overshadow the ground, Round Macon and smoking Atlanta, How many dead heroes are found! And out on the dark swelling ocean, Where vessels go, riding the waves, How many, for love and devotion, Now slumber in warriors' graves! No memorials have yet been erected To mark where these warriors lie. All alone, save by angels protected, They sleep 'neath the sea and the sky! But think not that they are forgotten By those who the carnage survive: When their headboards will all have grown rotten, And the night-winds have levelled their graves, Then hundreds of sisters and mothers, Whose freedom they perished to save, And fathers, and empty-sleeved brothers, Who surmounted the battle's red wave; Will crowd from their homes in the Southward, In search of the loved and the blest, And, rejoicing, will soon return homeward And lay our dear martyrs to rest. No Land Like Ours. Published in the Montgomery Advertiser, January, 1863. By J. R. Barrick, of Kentucky. Though other lands may boast of skies Far deeper in their blue, Where flowers, in Eden's pristine dyes, Bloom with a richer hue; And other nations pride in kings, And worship lordly powers; Yet every voice of nature sings, There is no land like ours! Though other scenes, than such as grace Our forests, fields, and plains, May lend the earth a sweeter face Where peace incessant reigns; But dearest still to me the land Where sunshine cheers the hours, For God hath shown, with his own hand, There is no land like ours! Though other streams may softer flow In vales of classic bloom, And rivers clear as crystal glow, That wear no tinge of gloom; Though other mountains lofty look, And grand seem olden towers, We see, as in an open book, There is no land like ours! Though other nations boast of deeds That live in old renown, And other peoples cling to creeds That coldly on us frown; On pure religion, love, and law Are based our ruling powers-- The world but feels, with wondering awe, There is no land like ours! Though other lands may boast their brave, Whose deeds are writ in fame, Their heroes ne'er such glory gave As gilds our country's name; Though others rush to daring deeds, Where the darkening war-cloud lowers, Here, each alike for freedom bleeds-- There is no land like ours! Though other lands Napoleon And Wellington adorn, America, her Washington, And later heroes born; Yet Johnston, Jackson, Price, and Lee, Bragg, Buckner, Morgan towers, With Beauregard, and Hood, and Bee-- There is no land like ours! The Angel of the Church. By W. Gilmore Simms. The enemy, from his camp on Morris Island, has, in frequent letters in the Northern papers, avowed the object at which they aim their shells in Charleston to be the spire of St. Michael's Church. Their _practice_ shows that these avowals are true. Thus far, they have not succeeded in their aim. Angels of the Churches, is a phrase applied by St. John in reference to the Seven Churches of Asia. The Hebrews recognized an Angel of the Church, in their language, "Sheliack-Zibbor," whose office may be described as that of a watcher or guardian of the church. Daniel says, iv. 13, "Behold, a watcher and a Holy one came down from Heaven." The practice of naming churches after tutelary saints, originated, no doubt, in the conviction that, where the church was pure, and the faith true, and the congregation pious, these guardian angels, so chosen, would accept the office assigned them. They were generally chosen from the Seraphim and Cherubim--those who, according to St. Paul (1 Colossians xvi.), represented thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers. According to the Hebrew traditions, St. Michael was the head of the first order; Gabriel, of the second; Uriel, of the third; and Raphael, of the fourth. St. Michael is the warrior angel who led the hosts of the sky against the powers of the princes of the air; who overthrew the dragon, and trampled him under foot. The destruction of the Anaconda, in his hands, would be a smaller undertaking. Assuming for our people a hope not less rational than that of the people of Nineveh, we may reasonably build upon the guardianship and protection of God, through his angels, "a great city of sixty thousand souls," which has been for so long a season the subject of his care. These notes will supply the adequate illustrations for the ode which follows. I. Aye, strike with sacrilegious aim The temple of the living God; Hurl iron bolt and seething flame Through aisles which holiest feet have trod; Tear up the altar, spoil the tomb, And, raging with demoniac ire, Send down, in sudden crash of doom, That grand, old, sky-sustaining spire. II. That spire, for full a hundred years,[1] Hath been a people's point of sight; That shrine hath warmed their souls to tears, With strains well worthy Salem's height; The sweet, clear music of its bells, Made liquid soft in Southern air, Still through the heart of memory swells, And wakes the hopeful soul to prayer. III. Along the shores for many a mile, Long ere they owned a beacon-mark, It caught arid kept the Day-God's smile, The guide for every wandering bark;[2] Averting from our homes the scaith Of fiery bolt, in storm-cloud driven, The Pharos to the wandering faith, It pointed every prayer to Heaven! IV. Well may ye, felons of the time, Still loathing all that's pure and free, Add this to many a thousand crime 'Gainst peace and sweet humanity: Ye, who have wrapped our towns in flame, Defiled our shrines, befouled our homes, But fitly turn your murderous aim Against Jehovah's ancient domes. V. Yet, though the grand old temple falls, And downward sinks the lofty spire, Our faith is stronger than our walls, And soars above the storm and fire. Ye shake no faith in souls made free To tread the paths their fathers trod; To fight and die for liberty, Believing in the avenging God! VI. Think not, though long his anger stays, His justice sleeps--His wrath is spent; The arm of vengeance but delays, To make more dread the punishment! Each impious hand that lights the torch Shall wither ere the bolt shall fall; And the bright Angel of the Church, With seraph shield avert the ball! VII. For still we deem, as taught of old, That where the faith the altar builds, God sends an angel from his fold, Whose sleepless watch the temple shields, And to his flock, with sweet accord, Yields their fond choice, from THRONES and POWERS; Thus, Michael, with his fiery sword And golden shield, still champions ours! VIII. And he who smote the dragon down, And chained him thousand years of time, Need never fear the boa's frown, Though loathsome in his spite and slime. He, from the topmost height, surveys And guards the shrines our fathers gave; And we, who sleep beneath his gaze, May well believe his power to save! IX. Yet, if it be that for our sin Our angel's term of watch is o'er, With proper prayer, true faith must win The guardian watcher back once more I Faith, brethren of the Church, and prayer-- In blood and sackcloth, if it need; And still our spire shall rise in air, Our temple, though our people bleed! [1] St.. Michael's Church was opened for divine worship, February 1, 1761 [2] "The height of this steeple makes it the principal land-mark for the pilots."--Dalcjio (in 1819). Ode--"Shell the Old City! Shell!" By W. Gilmore Simms. I. Shell the old city I shell! Ye myrmidons of Hell; Ye serve your master well, With hellish arts! Hurl down, with bolt and fire, The grand old shrines, the spire; But know, your demon ire Subdues no hearts! II. There, we defy ye still, With sworn and resolute will; Courage ye cannot kill While we have breath! Stone walls your bolts may break, But, ere our souls ye shake, Of the whole land we'll make One realm of death! III. Dear are our homes! our eyes Weep at their sacrifice; And, with each bolt that flies, Each roof that falls, The pang extorts the tear, That things so precious, dear To memory, love, and care, Sink with our walls. IV. Trophies of ancient time, When, with great souls, sublime, Opposing force and crime, Our fathers fought; Relics of golden hours, When, for our shrines and bowers, Genius, with magic powers, Her triumphs wrought! V. Each Sabbath-hallowed dome, Each ancient family home, The dear old southwest room, All trellised round; Where gay, bright summer vines, Linked in fantastic twines With the sun's blazing lines, Rubied the ground! VI. Homes, sacred to the past, Which bore the hostile blast, Though Spain, France, Britain cast Their shot and shell! Tombs of the mighty dead, That in our battles bled, When on our infant head These furies fell! VII. Halls which the foreign guest Found of each charm possessed, With cheer unstinted blessed, And noblest grace; Where, drawing to her side The stranger, far and wide, Frank courtesy took pride To give him place! VIII. The shaded walks--the bowers Where, through long summer hours, Young Love first proved his powers To win the prize; Where every tree has heard Some vows of love preferred, And, with his leaves unstirred, Watch'd lips and eyes. IX. Gardens of tropic blooms, That, through the shaded rooms, Sent Orient-winged perfumes With dusk and dawn; The grand old laurel, tall, As sovereign over all, And, from the porch and hall, The verdant lawn. X. Oh! when we think of these Old homes, ancestral trees; Where, in the sun and breeze, At morn and even, Was to enjoy the play Of hearts at holiday, And find, in blooms of May, Foretaste of Heaven! XI. Where, as we cast our eyes On thing's of precious prize, Trophies of good and wise, Grand, noble, brave; And think of these, so late Sacred to soul and state, Doomed, as the wreck of fate, By fiend and slave!-- XII. The inevitable pain, Coursing through blood and brain, Drives forth, like winter rain, The bitter tear! We cannot help but weep, From depth of hearts that keep The memories, dread and deep. To vengeance dear! XIII. Aye, for each tear we shed, There shall be torrents red, Not from the eye-founts fed, But from the veins! Bloody shall be the sweat, Fiends, felons, that shall yet Pay retribution's debt, In torture's pains! XIV. Our tears shall naught abate, Of what we owe to hate-- To the avenging fate-- To earth and Heaven! And, soon or late, the hour Shall bring th' atoning power, When, through the clouds that lower, The storm-bolt's driven! XV. Shell the old city--shell! But, with each rooftree's knell, Vows deep of vengeance fell, Fire soul and eye! With every tear that falls Above our stricken walls Each heart more fiercely calls, "Avenge, or die!" "The Enemy Shall Never Reach Your City." Andrew Jackson's Address to the People of New Orleans. I. Never, while such as ye are in the breach, Oh! brothers, sons, and Southrons--never! never! Shall the foul enemy your city reach! For souls and hearts are eager with endeavor; And God's own sanction on your cause, makes holy Each arm that strikes for home, however lowly!-- And ye shall conquer by the rolling deep!-- And ye shall conquer on the embattled steep!-- And ye shall see Leviathan go down A hundred fathoms, with a horrible cry Of drowning wretches, in their agony-- While Slaughter wades in gore along the sands, And Terror flies with pleading, outstretched hands, All speechless, but with glassy-staring eyes-- Flying to Fate--and fated as he flies;-- Seeking his refuge in the tossing wave, That gives him, when the shark has fed, a grave! II. Thus saith the Lord of Battles: "Shall it be, That this great city, planted by the sea, With threescore thousand souls--with fanes and spires Reared by a race of unexampled sires-- That I have watched, now twice a hundred years,[1] Nursed through long infancy of hopes and fears, Baptized in blood at seasons, oft in tears; Purged with the storm and fire, and bade to grow To greatness, with a progress firm but slow-- That being the grand condition of duration-- Until it spreads into the mighty nation! And shall the usurper, insolent of power, O'erwhelm it with swift ruin in an hour! And hurl his bolts, and with a dominant will, Say to its mighty heart--'Crouch, and be still! My foot is on your neck! I am your Fate! Can speak your doom, and make you desolate!'" III. "No! He shall know--I am the Lord of war; And all his mighty hosts but pigmies are! His hellish engines, wrought for human woe, His arts and vile inventions, and his power, My arm shall bring to ruin, swift and low! Even now my bolts are aimed, my storm-clouds lower, And I will arm my people with a faith, Shall make them free of fear, and free of scaith; Arid they shall bear from me a smiting sword, Edged with keen lightning, at whose stroke is poured A torrent of destruction and swift wrath, Sweeping--the insolent legions from their path! The usurper shall be taught that none shall take-- The right to punish and avenge from me: And I will guard my City by the Sea, And save its people for their fathers' sake!" IV. Selah!--Oh I brothers, sons, and Southrons, rise; To prayer: and lo! the wonder in the skies! The sunbow spans your towers, even while the foe Hurls his fell bolt, and rains his iron blow. Toss'd by his shafts, the spray above yon height[1] God's smile hath turned into a golden light; Orange and purple-golden! In that sign Find ye fit promise for that voice divine! Hark! 'tis the thunder! Through the murky air, The solemn roll goes echoing far and near! Go forth, and unafraid! His shield is yours! And the great spirits of your earlier day-- Your fathers, hovering round your sacred shores-- Will guard your bosoms through the unequal fray! Hark to their voices, issuing through the gloom:[2] "The cruel hosts that haunt you, march to doom: Give them the vulture's rites--a naked tomb! And, while ye bravely smite, with fierce endeavor, The foe shall reach your city--never! never!" [1] Charleston was originally settled in 1671. She is now near 2 years old. [2]In the late engagement of Fort Sumter, with the enemy's fleet, April 7th, the spray thrown above the walls by their enormous missiles, was formed into a beautiful sunbow, seeing which, General Ripley, with the piety of Constantine, exclaimed: "_In hoc signo vinces!_" Charleston Mercury. War-Waves. By Catherine Gendron Poyas, of Charleston. What are the war-waves saying, As they compass us around? The dark, ensanguined billows, With their deep and dirge-like sound? Do they murmur of submission; Do they call on us to bow Our necks to the foe triumphant Who is riding o'er us now? Never! No sound submissive Comes from those waves sublime, Or the low, mysterious voices Attuned to their solemn chime! For the hearts of our noble martyrs Are the springs of its rich supply; And those deeply mystic murmurs Echo their dying cry! They bid us uplift our banner Once more in the name of God; And press to the goal of Freedom By the paths our Fathers trod: _They_ passed o'er their dying brothers; From their pale lips caught the sigh-- The _flame_ of their hearts heroic, From the flash of each closing eye! Up! Up! for the time is pressing, The red waves close around;-- They will lift us on their billows If our hearts are faithful found! They will lift us high--exultant, And the craven world shall see The Ark of a ransomed people Afloat on the crimson sea! Afloat, with her glorious banner-- The cross on its field of red, Its stars, and its white folds waving In triumph at her head; Emblem of all that's sacred Heralding Faith to view; Type of unblemished honor; Symbol of all that's true! _Then_ what can those waves be singing But an anthem grand, sublime, As they bear for our martyred heroes A wail to the coast of Time? What else as they roll majestic To the far-off shadowy shore, To join the Eternal chorus When Time shall be no more! Old Moultrie. By Catherine Gendron Poyas, of Charleston. All lovers of poetry will know in whose liquid gold I have dipped my brush to illumine the picture. The splendor falls on bannered walls Of ancient Moultrie, great in story; And flushes now, his scar-seamed brow, With rays of golden glory! Great in his old renown; Great in the honor thrown Around him by the foe, Had sworn to lay him low! The glory falls--historic walls Too weak to cover foes insulting, Become a tower--a sheltering bower-- A theme of joy exulting; God, merciful and great, Preserved the high estate Of Moultrie, by His power Through the fierce battle-hour! The splendor fell--his banners swell Majestic forth to catch the shower; Our own loved _blue_ receives anew A rich immortal dower! Adown the triple bars Of its companion, spars Of golden glory stream; On seven-rayed circlet beam! The glory falls--but not on walls Of Sumter deemed _the post of duty_; A brilliant sphere, it circles clear The harbor in its beauty; Holding in its embrace The city's queenly grace; Stern battery and tower, Of manly strength and power, But brightest falls on Moultrie's walls, Forever there to rest in glory, A hallowed light--on buttress height-- Oh, fort, beloved and hoary! Rest _there_ and tell that _faith_ Shall never suffer scaith; _Rest there_-and glow afar-- _Hope's ever-burning star!_ Charleston Mercury Only One Killed. By Julia L. Keyes, Montgomery, Ala. Only one killed--in company B, 'Twas a trifling loss--one man! A charge of the bold and dashing Lee-- While merry enough it was, to see The enemy, as he ran. Only one killed upon our side-- Once more to the field they turn. Quietly now the horsemen ride-- And pause by the form of the one who died, So bravely, as now we learn. Their grief for the comrade loved and true For a time was unconcealed; They saw the bullet had pierced him through That his pain was brief--ah! very few Die thus, on the battle-field. The news has gone to his home, afar-- Of the short and gallant fight, Of the noble deeds of the young La Var Whose life went out as a falling star In the skirmish of that night. "Only one killed! It was my son," The widowed mother cried. She turned but to clasp the sinking one, Who heard not the words of the victory won, But of him who had bravely died. Ah! death to her were a sweet relief, The bride of a single year. Oh! would she might, with her weight of grief, Lie down in the dust, with the autumn leaf Now trodden and brown and sere! But no, she must bear through coming life Her burden of silent woe, The aged mother and youthful wife Must live through a nation's bloody strife, Sighing, and waiting to go. Where the loved are meeting beyond the stars, Are meeting no more to part, They can smile once more through the crystal bars-- Where never more will the woe of wars O'ershadow the loving--heart. Field and Fireside. Land of King Cotton.[1] Air--Red, White, and Blue. By J. Augustine Signaigo. From the Memphis Appeal, December 18, 1861. Oh! Dixie, dear land of King Cotton, "The home of the brave and the free," A nation by freedom begotten, The terror of despots to be; Wherever thy banner is streaming, Base tyranny quails at thy feet, And liberty's sunlight is beaming, In splendor of majesty sweet. CHORUS.--Three cheers for our army so true, Three cheers for Price, Johnston, and Lee; Beauregard and our Davis forever, The pride of the brave and the free! When Liberty sounds her war-rattle, Demanding her right and her due, The first land that rallies to battle Is Dixie, the shrine of the true; Thick as leaves of the forest in summer, Her brave sons will rise on each plain, And then strike, until each Vandal comer Lies dead on the soil he would stain. CHORUS.--Three cheers, etc. May the names of the dead that we cherish, Fill memory's cup to the brim; May the laurels they've won never perish, "Nor star of their glory grow dim;" May the States of the South never sever, But the champions of freedom e'er be; May they flourish Confederate forever, The boast of the brave and the free. CHORUS.--Three cheers, etc. [1] "Land of King Cotton" was the favorite song of the Tennessee troops, but especially of the Thirteenth and One Hundred and Fifty-fourth regiments. If You Love Me. By J. Augustine Signaigo. You have told me that you love me, That you worship at my shrine; That no purity above me Can on earth be more divine. Though the kind words you have spoken. Sound to me most sweetly strange, Will your pledges ne'er be broken? Will there be in you no change? If you love me half so wildly-- Half so madly as you say, Listen to me, darling, mildly-- Would you do aught I would pray? If you would, then hear the thunder Of our country's cannon speak! While by war she's rent asunder, Do not come my love to seek. If you love me, do not ponder, Do not breathe what you would say, Do not look at me with wonder, Join your country in the fray. Go! your aid and right hand lend her, Breast the tyrant's angry blast: Be her own and my defender-- Strike for freedom to the last, Then I'll vow to love none other, While you nobly dare and do; As you're faithful to our mother, So I'll faithful prove to you. But return not while the thunder Lives in one invading sword; Strike the despot's hirelings under-- Own no master but the Lord. The Cotton Boll. By Henry Timrod. While I recline At ease beneath This immemorial pine, Small sphere!-- By dusky fingers brought this morning here? And shown with boastful smiles,-- I turn thy cloven sheath, Through which the soft white fibres peer, That, with their gossamer bands, Unite, like love, the sea-divided lands, And slowly, thread by thread, Draw forth the folded strands, Than which the trembling line, By whose frail help yon startled spider fled Down the tall spear-grass from his swinging bed, Is scarce more fine; And as the tangled skein Unravels in my hands, Betwixt me and the noonday light, A veil seems lifted, and for miles and miles The landscape broadens on my sight, As, in the little boll, there lurked a spell Like that which, in the ocean shell, With mystic sound, Breaks down the narrow walls that hem us round, And turns some city lane Into the restless main, With all his capes and isles! Yonder bird,-- Which floats, as if at rest, In those blue tracts above the thunder, where No vapors cloud the stainless air, And never sound is heard, Unless at such rare time When, from the City of the Blest, Rings down some golden chime,-- Sees not from his high place So vast a cirque of summer space As widens round me in one mighty field, Which, rimmed by seas and sands, Doth hail its earliest daylight in the beams Of gray Atlantic dawns; And, broad as realms made up of many lands, Is lost afar Behind the crimson hills and purple lawns Of sunset, among plains which roll their streams Against the Evening Star! And lo! To the remotest point of sight, Although I gaze upon no waste of snow, The endless field is white; And the whole landscape glows, For many a shining league away, With such accumulated light As Polar lands would flash beneath a tropic day! Nor lack there (for the vision grows, And the small charm within my hands-- More potent even than the fabled one, Which oped whatever golden mystery Lay hid in fairy wood or magic vale, The curious ointment of the Arabian tale-- Beyond all mortal sense Doth stretch my sight's horizon, and I see Beneath its simple influence, As if, with Uriel's crown, I stood in some great temple of the Sun, And looked, as Uriel, down)-- Nor lack there pastures rich and fields all green With all the common gifts of God, For temperate airs and torrid sheen Weave Edens of the sod; Through lands which look one sea of billowy gold Broad rivers wind their devious ways; A hundred isles in their embraces fold A hundred luminous bays; And through yon purple haze Vast mountains lift their pluméd peaks cloud-crowned; And, save where up their sides the ploughman creeps, An unknown forest girds them grandly round, In whose dark shades a future navy sleeps! Ye stars, which though unseen, yet with me gaze Upon this loveliest fragment of the earth! Thou Sun, that kindlest all thy gentlest rays Above it, as to light a favorite hearth! Ye clouds, that in your temples in the West See nothing brighter than its humblest flowers! And, you, ye Winds, that on the ocean's breast Are kissed to coolness ere ye reach its bowers! Bear witness with me in my song of praise, And tell the world that, since the world began, No fairer land hath fired a poet's lays, Or given a home to man! But these are charms already widely blown! His be the meed whose pencil's trace Hath touched our very swamps with grace, And round whose tuneful way All Southern laurels bloom; The Poet of "The Woodlands," unto whom Alike are known The flute's low breathing and the trumpet's tone, And the soft west-wind's sighs; But who shall utter all the debt, 0 Land! wherein all powers are met That bind a people's heart, The world doth owe thee at this day, And which it never can repay, Yet scarcely deigns to own! Where sleeps the poet who shall fitly sing The source wherefrom doth spring That mighty commerce which, confined To the mean channels of no selfish mart, Goes out to every shore Of this broad earth, and throngs the sea with ships That bear no thunders; hushes hungry lips In alien lands; Joins with a delicate web remotest strands; And gladdening rich and poor, Doth gild Parisian domes, Or feed the cottage-smoke of English homes, And only bounds its blessings by mankind! In offices like these, thy mission lies, My Country! and it shall not end As long as rain shall fall and Heaven bend In blue above thee; though thy foes be hard And cruel as their weapons, it shall guard Thy hearthstones as a bulwark; make thee great In white and bloodless state; And, haply, as the years increase-- Still working through its humbler reach With that large wisdom which the ages teach-- Revive the half-dead dream of universal peace! As men who labor in that mine Of Cornwall, hollowed out beneath the bed Of ocean, when a storm rolls overhead, Hear the dull booming of the world of brine Above them, and a mighty muffled roar Of winds and waters, and yet toil calmly on, And split the rock, and pile the massive ore, Or carve a niche, or shape the archéd roof; So I, as calmly, weave my woof Of song, chanting the days to come, Unsilenced, though the quiet summer air Stirs with the bruit of battles, and each dawn Wakes from its starry silence to the hum Of many gathering armies. Still, In that we sometimes hear, Upon the Northern winds the voice of woe Not wholly drowned in triumph, though I know The end must crown us, and a few brief years Dry all our tears, I may not sing too gladly. To Thy will Resigned, O Lord! we cannot all forget That there is much even Victory must regret. And, therefore, not too long From the great burden of our country's wrong Delay our just release! And, if it may be, save These sacred fields of peace From stain of patriot or of hostile blood! Oh, help us Lord! to roll the crimson flood Back on its course, and, while our banners wing Northward, strike with us! till the Goth shall cling To his own blasted altar-stones, and crave Mercy; and we shall grant it, and dictate The lenient future of his fate There, where some rotting ships and trembling quays Shall one day mark the Port which ruled the Western seas. The Battle of Charleston Harbor. April 7th, 1863. By Paul H. Hayne. I. Two hours, or more, beyond the prime of a blithe April day, The Northman's mailed "Invincibles" steamed up fair Charleston Bay; They came in sullen file, and slow, low-breasted on the wave, Black as a midnight front of storm, and silent as the grave. II. A thousand warrior-hearts beat high as those dread monsters drew More closely to the game of death across the breezeless blue, And twice ten thousand hearts of those who watched the scene afar, Thrill in the awful hush that bides the battle's broadening Star! III. Each gunner, moveless by his gun, with rigid aspect stands, The ready linstocks firmly grasped in bold, untrembling hands, So moveless in their marbled calm, their stern heroic guise, They looked like forms of statued stone with burning human eyes! IV. Our banners on the outmost walls, with stately rustling fold, Flash back from arch and parapet the sunlight's ruddy gold-- They mount to the deep roll of drums, and widely-echoing cheers, And then--once more, dark, breathless, hushed, wait the grim cannoneers. V. Onward--in sullen file, and slow, low glooming on the wave, Near, nearer still, the haughty fleet glides silent as the grave, When sudden, shivering up the calm, o'er startled flood and shore, Burst from the sacred Island Fort the thunder-wrath of yore![1] VI. Ha! brutal Corsairs! tho' ye come thrice-cased in iron mail, Beware the storm that's opening now, God's vengeance guides the hail! Ye strive the ruffian types of Might 'gainst law, and truth, and Right, Now quail beneath a sturdier Power, and own a mightier Might! VII. No empty boast! I for while we speak, more furious, wilder, higher, Dart from the circling batteries a hundred tongues of fire. The waves gleam red, the lurid vault of heaven seems rent above. Fight on! oh! knightly Gentlemen! for faith, and home, and love! VIII. There's not in all that line of flame, one soul that would not rise, To seize the Victor's wreath of blood, tho' Death must give the prize-- There's not in all this anxious crowd that throngs the ancient Town, A maid who does not yearn for power to strike one despot down. IX. The strife grows fiercer! ship by ship the proud Armada sweeps, Where hot from Sumter's raging breast the volleyed lightning leaps; And ship by ship, raked, overborne, 'ere burned the sunset bloom, Crawls seaward, like a hangman's hearse bound to his felon tomb! X. Oh! glorious Empress of the Main! from out thy storied spires, Thou well mayst peal thy bells of joy, and light thy festal fires-- Since Heaven this day hath striven for thee, hath nerved thy dauntless sons, And thou, in clear-eyed faith hast seen God's Angels near the guns! [1] Fort Moultrie fired the first gun. Fort Wagner. By W. Gilmore Simms. I. Glory unto the gallant boys who stood At Wagner, and, unflinching, sought the van; Dealing fierce blows, and shedding precious blood, For homes as precious, and dear rights of man! They've won the meed, and they shall have the glory;-- Song, with melodious memories, shall repeat The legend, which shall grow to themes for story, Told through long ages, and forever sweet! II. High honor to our youth--our sons and brothers, Georgians and Carolinians, where they stand! They will not shame their birthrights, or their mothers, But keep, through storm, the bulwarks of the land! They feel that they _must_ conquer! Not to do it, Were worse than death--perdition! Should they fail, The innocent races yet unborn shall rue it, The whole world feel the wound, and nations wail! III. No! They must conquer in the breach or perish! Assured, in the last consciousness of breath, That love shall deck their graves, and memory cherish Their deeds, with honors that shall sweeten death! They shall have trophies in long future hours, And loving recollections, which shall be Green, as the summer leaves, and fresh as flowers, That, through all seasons, bloom eternally! IV. Their memories shall be monuments, to rise Next those of mightiest martyrs of the past; Beacons, when angry tempests sweep the skies, And feeble souls bend crouching to the blast! A shrine for thee, young Cheves, well devoted, Most worthy of a great, illustrious sire;-- A niche for thee, young Haskell, nobly noted, When skies and seas around thee shook with fire! V. And others as well chronicled shall be! What though they fell with unrecorded name-- They live among the archives of the free, With proudest title to undying fame! The unchisell'd marble under which they sleep, Shall tell of heroes, fearless still of fate; Not asking if their memories shall keep, But if they nobly served, and saved, the State! VI. For thee, young Fortress Wagner--thou shalt wear Green laurels, worthy of the names that now, Thy sister forts of Moultrie, Sumter, bear! See that thou lift'st, for aye, as proud a brow! And thou shalt be, to future generations, A trophied monument; whither men shall come In homage; and report to distant nations, A SHRINE, which foes shall never make a TOMB! Charleston Mercury. Sumter in Ruins. By W. Gilmore Simms. I. Ye batter down the lion's den, But yet the lordly beast g'oes free; And ye shall hear his roar again, From mountain height, from lowland glen, From sandy shore and reedy fen-- Where'er a band of freeborn men Rears sacred shrines to liberty. II. The serpent scales the eagle's nest, And yet the royal bird, in air, Triumphant wins the mountain's crest, And sworn for strife, yet takes his rest, And plumes, to calm, his ruffled breast, Till, like a storm-bolt from the west, He strikes the invader in his lair. III. What's loss of den, or nest, or home, If, like the lion, free to go;-- If, like the eagle, wing'd to roam, We span the rock and breast the foam, Still watchful for the hour of doom, When, with the knell of thunder-boom, We bound upon the serpent foe! IV. Oh! noble sons of lion heart! Oh! gallant hearts of eagle wing! What though your batter'd bulwarks part, Your nest be spoiled by reptile art-- Your souls, on wings of hate, shall start For vengeance, and with lightning-dart, Rend the foul serpent ere he sting! V. Your battered den, your shattered nest, Was but the lion's crouching-place;-- It heard his roar, and bore his crest, His, or the eagle's place of rest;-- But not the soul in either breast! This arms the twain, by freedom bless'd, To save and to avenge their race! Charleston Mercury. Morris Island. By W. Gilmore Simms. Oh! from the deeds well done, the blood well shed In a good cause springs up to crown the land With ever-during verdure, memory fed, Wherever freedom rears one fearless band, The genius, which makes sacred time and place, Shaping the grand memorials of a race! The barren rock becomes a monument, The sea-shore sands a shrine; And each brave life, in desperate conflict spent, Grows to a memory which prolongs a line! Oh! barren isle--oh! fruitless shore, Oh! realm devoid of beauty--how the light From glory's sun streams down for evermore, Hallowing your ancient barrenness with bright! Brief dates, your lowly forts; but full of glory, Worthy a life-long story; Remembered, to be chronicled and read, When all your gallant garrisons are dead; And to be sung While liberty and letters find a tongue! Taught by the grandsires at the ingle-blaze, Through the long winter night; Pored over, memoried well, in winter days, While youthful admiration, with delight, Hangs, breathless, o'er the tale, with silent praise; Seasoning delight with wonder, as he reads Of stubborn conflict and audacious deeds; Watching the endurance of the free and brave, Through the protracted struggle and close fight, Contending for the lands they may not save, Against the felon, and innumerous foe; Still struggling, though each rampart proves a grave. For home, and all that's dear to man below! Earth reels and ocean rocks at every blow; But still undaunted, with a martyr's might, They make for man a new Thermopylæ; And, perishing for freedom, still go free! Let but each humble islet of our coast Thus join the terrible issue to the last; And never shall the invader make his boast Of triumph, though with mightiest panoply He seeks to rend and rive, to blight and blast! Promise of Spring. The sun-beguiling breeze, From the soft Cuban seas, With life-bestowing kiss wakes the pride of garden bowers; And lo! our city elms, Have plumed with buds their helms, And, with tiny spears salute the coming on of flowers. The promise of the Spring, Is in every glancing wing That tells its flight in song which shall long survive the flight; And mocking Winter's glooms, Skies, air and earth grow blooms, With change as bless'd as ever came with passage of a night! Ah! could our hearts but share The promise rich and rare, That welcomes life to rapture in each happy fond caress, That makes each innocent thing Put on its bloom and wing, Singing for Spring to come to the realm she still would bless! But, alas for us, no more Shall the coming hour rescore The glory, sweet and wonted, of the seasons to our souls; Even as the Spring appears, Her smiling makes our tears, While with each bitter memory the torrent o'er us rolls. Even as our zephyrs sing That they bring us in the Spring, Even as our bird grows musical in ecstasy of flight-- We see the serpent crawl, With his slimy coat o'er all, And blended with the song is the hissing of his blight. We shudder at the blooms, Which but serve to cover tombs-- At the very sweet of odors which blend venom with the breath; Sad shapes look out from trees, And in sky and earth and breeze, We behold but the aspect of a Horror worse than Death! South Carolinian. Spring. By Henry Timrod. Spring, with that nameless pathos in the air Which dwells with all things fair, Spring, with her golden suns and silver rain, Is with us once again. Out in the lonely woods the jasmine burns Its fragrant lamps, and turns Into a royal court with green festoons The banks of dark lagoons. In the deep heart of every forest tree The blood is all aglee, And there's a look about the leafless bowers As if they dreamed of flowers. Yet still on every side appears the hand Of Winter in the land, Save where the maple reddens on the lawn, Flushed by the season's dawn; Or where, like those strange semblances we find That age to childhood bind, The elm puts on, as if in Nature's scorn, The brown of Autumn corn. As yet the turf is dark, although you know That, not a span below, A thousand germs are groping through the gloom, And soon will burst their tomb. Already, here and there, on frailest stems Appear some azure gems, Small as might deck, upon a gala day, The forehead of a fay. In gardens you may see, amid the dearth, The crocus breaking earth; And near the snowdrop's tender white and green, The violet in its screen. But many gleams and shadows need must pass Along the budding grass, And weeks go by, before the enamored South Shall kiss the rose's mouth. Still there's a sense of blossoms yet unborn In the sweet airs of morn; One almost looks to see the very street Grow purple at his feet. At times a fragrant breeze comes floating by And brings, you know not why, A feeling as when eager crowds await Before a palace gate. Some wondrous pageant; and you scarce would start, If from a beech's heart A blue-eyed Dryad, stepping forth, should say "Behold me! I am May!" Ah! who would couple thoughts of war and crime With such a blessed time! Who in the west-wind's aromatic breath Could hear the call of Death! Yet not more surely shall the Spring awake The voice of wood and brake, Than she shall rouse, for all her tranquil charms A million men to arms. There shall be deeper hues upon her plains Than all her sunlight rains, And every gladdening influence around Can summon from the ground. Oh! standing on this desecrated mould, Methinks that I behold, Lifting her bloody daisies up to God, Spring, kneeling on the sod, And calling with the voice of all her rills Upon the ancient hills, To fall and crush the tyrants and the slaves Who turn her meads to graves. Chickmauga--"The Stream of Death." Richmond Senitnel. Chickamuga! Chickamauga! O'er thy dark and turbid wave Rolls the death-cry of the daring, Rings the war-shout of the brave; Round thy shore the red fires flashing, Startling shot and screaming shell-- Chickamauga, stream of battle, Who thy fearful tale shall tell? Olden memories of horror, Sown by scourge of deadly plague, Long hath clothed thy circling forests With a terror vast and vague; Now to gather further vigor From the phantoms grim with gore, Hurried, by war's wilder carnage, To their graves on thy lone shore. Long, with hearts subdued and saddened, As th' oppressor's hosts moved on, Fell the arms of freedom backward, Till our hopes had almost flown; Till outspoke stern valor's fiat-- "_Here_ th' invading wave shall stay; _Here_ shall cease the foe's proud progress; _Here_ be crushed his grand array!" _Then_ their eager hearts all throbbing, Backward flashed each battle-flag Of the veteran corps of Longstreet, And the sturdy troops of Bragg; Fierce upon the foemen turning, All their pent-up wrath breaks out In the furious battle-clangor, And the frenzied battle-shout. Roll thy dark waves, Chickamauga, Trembles all thy ghastly shore, With the rude shock of the onset, And the tumult's horrid roar; As the Southern battle-giants Hurl their bolts of death along, Breckenridge, the iron-hearted, Cheatham, chivalric and strong: Polk Preston--gallant Buckner, Hill and Hindman, strong in might, Cleburne, flower of manly valor, Hood, the Ajax of the fight; Benning, bold and hardy warrior, Fearless, resolute Kershaw; Mingle battle-yell and death-bolt, Volley fierce and wild hurrah! At the volleys bleed their bodies, At the fierce shout rise their souls, While the fiery wave of vengeance On their quailing column rolls; And the parched throats of the stricken Breathe for air the roaring flame, Horrors of that hell foretasted, Who shall ever dare to name! Borne by' those who, stiff and mangled, Paid, upon that bloody field, Direful, cringing, awe-struck homage To the sword our heroes yield; And who felt, by fiery trial, That the men who will be free. Though in conflict baffled often, Ever will unconquered be! Learned, though long unchecked they spoil us, Dealing desolation round, Marking, with the tracks of ruin, Many a rood of Southern ground; Yet, whatever course they follow, _Somewhere_ in their pathway flows, Dark and deep, a Chickamauga, _Stream of death_ to vandal foes! They have found it darkly flowing By Manassas' famous plain, And by rushing Shenandoah Met the tide of woe again; Chickahominy, immortal, By the long, ensanguined fight, Rappahannock, glorious river, Twice renowned for matchless fight. Heed the story, dastard spoilers, Mark the tale these waters tell, Ponder well your fearful lesson, And the doom that there befell; Learn to shun the Southern vengeance, Sworn upon the votive sword, "_Every_ stream a Chickamauga To the vile invading horde!" In Memoriam Of Our Right-Revered Father in God, Leonidas Polk, Lieutenant-General Confederate States Army. Peace, troubled soul! The strife is done, This life's fierce conflicts and its woes are ended: There is no more--eternity begun, Faith merged in sight--hope with fruition blended. Peace, troubled soul! The Warrior rests upon his bier, Within his coffin calmly sleeping. His requiem the cannon peals, And heroes of a hundred fields Their last sad watch are round him keeping. Joy, sainted soul! Within the vale Of Heaven's great temple, is thy blissful dwelling; Bathed in a light, to which the sun is pale, Archangels' hymns in endless transports swelling. Joy, sainted soul! Back to her altar which he served, The Holy Church her child is bringing. The organ's wail then dies away, And kneeling priests around him pray, As _De Profundis_ they are singing. Bring all the trophies, that are owed To him at once so great, so good. His Bible and his well-used sword-- His snowy lawn not "stained with blood!" No! pure as when before his God, He laid its spotless folds aside, War's path of awful duty trod, And on his country's altar died! Oh! Warrior-bishop, Church and State Sustain in thee an equal loss; But who would call thee from thy weight Of glory, back to bear life's cross! The Faith was kept--thy course was run, Thy good fight finished; hence the word, "Well done, oh! faithful child, well done, Taste thou the mercies of thy Lord!" No dull decay nor lingering pain, By slow degrees, consumed thy health, A glowing messenger of flame Translated thee by fiery death! And we who in one common grief Are bending now beneath the rod, In this sweet thought may find relief, "Our holy father walked with God, And is not--God has taken him!" Viola. "Stonewall" Jackson By H. L. Flash. Not 'midst the lightning of the stormy fight Not in the rush upon the vandal foe, Did kingly death, with his resistless might, Lay the great leader low! His warrior soul its earthly shackles bore In the full sunshine of a peaceful town; When all the storm, was hushed, the trusty oak That propped our cause, went down. Though his alone the blood that flecks the ground, Recording all his grand heroic deeds, Freedom herself is writhing with his wound, And all the country bleeds. He entered not the nation's "Promised Land," At the red belching of the cannon's mouth; But broke the "House of Bondage" with his hand-- The Moses of the South! Oh, gracious God! not gainless is our loss: A glorious sunbeam gilds Thy sternest frown; And while his country staggers with the cross-- He rises with the crown! "Stonewall" Jackson.--A Dirge. Go to thy rest, great chieftain! In the zenith of thy fame; With the proud heart stilled and frozen, No foeman e'er could tame; With the eye that met the battle As the eagle's meets the sun, Rayless-beneath its marble lid, Repose-thou mighty one! Yet ill our cause could spare thee; And harsh the blow of fate That struck its staunchest pillar From 'neath our dome of state. Of thee, as of the Douglas, We say, with Scotland's king, "There is not one to take his place In all the knightly ring." Thou wert the noblest captain Of all that martial host That front the haughty Northman, And put to shame his boast. Thou wert the strongest bulwark To stay the tide of fight; The name thy soldiers gave thee Bore witness of thy might! But we may not weep above thee; This is no time for tears! Thou wouldst not brook their shedding, Oh! saint among thy peers! Couldst thou speak from yonder heaven, Above us smiling spread, Thou wouldst not have us pause, for grief, On the blood-stained path we tread! Not--while our homes in ashes Lie smouldering on the sod! Not--while our houseless women Send up wild wails to God! Not--while the mad fanatic Strews ruin on his track! _Dare_ any Southron give the rein To feeling, and look back! No! Still the cry is "onward!" This is no time for tears; No I Still the word is "vengeance!" Leave ruth for coming years. We will snatch thy glorious banner From thy dead and stiffening hand, And high, 'mid battle's deadly storm, We'll bear it through the land. And all who mark it streaming-- Oh! soldier of the cross!-- Shall gird them with a fresh resolve Sternly to avenge our loss; Whilst thou, enrolled a martyr, Thy sacred mission shown, Shalt lay the record of our wrongs Before the Eternal throne! Beaufort. By W. J. Grayson, of South Carolina. Old home! what blessings late were yours; The gifts of peace, the songs of joy! Now, hostile squadrons seek your shores, To ravage and destroy. The Northman comes no longer there, With soft address and measured phrase, With bated breath, and sainted air, And simulated praise. He comes a vulture to his prey; A wolf to raven in your streets: Around on shining stream and bay Gather his bandit fleets. They steal the pittance of the poor; Pollute the precincts of the dead; Despoil the widow of her store,-- The orphan of his bread. Crimes like their crimes--of lust and blood, No Christian land has known before; Oh, for some scourge of fire and flood, To sweep them from the shore! Exiles from home, your people fly, In adverse fortune's hardest school; With swelling breast and flashing eye-- They scorn the tyrant's rule! Away, from all their joys away, The sports that active youth engage; The scenes where childhood loves to play, The resting-place of age. Away, from fertile field and farm; The oak-fringed island-homes that seem To sit like swans, with matchless charm, On sea-born sound and stream. Away, from palm-environed coast, The beach that ocean beats in vain; The Royal Port, your pride and boast, The loud-resounding main. Away, from orange groves that glow With golden fruit or snowy flowers, Roses that never cease to blow, Myrtle and jasmine bowers. From these afar, the hoary bead Of feeble age, the timid maid, Mothers and nurslings, all have fled, Of ruthless foes afraid. But, ready, with avenging hand, By wood and fen, in ambush lie Your sons, a stern, determined band, Intent to do or die. Whene'er the foe advance to dare The onset, urged by hate and wrath, Still have they found, aghast with fear, A Lion in the path. Scourged, to their ships they wildly rush, Their shattered ranks to shield and save, And learn how hard a task to crush The spirit of the brave. Oh, God! Protector of the right, The widows' stay, the orphans' friend, Restrain the rage of lawless might, The wronged and crushed defend! Be guide and helper, sword and shield! From hill and vale, where'er they roam, Bring back the yeoman to his field, The exile to his home! Pastors and scattered flocks restore; Their fanes rebuild, their altars raise; And let their quivering lips once more Rejoice in songs of praise! The Empty Sleeve. By Dr. J. R. Bagby, Of Virginia. Tom, old fellow, I grieve to see The sleeve hanging loose at your side The arm you lost was worth to me Every Yankee that ever died. But you don't mind it at all; You swear you've a beautiful stump, And laugh at that damnable ball-- Tom, I knew you were always a trump. A good right arm, a nervy hand, A wrist as strong as a sapling oak, Buried deep in the Malverri sand-- To laugh at that, is a sorry joke. Never again your iron grip Shall I feel in my shrinking palm-- Tom, Tom, I see your trembling lip; All within is not so calm. Well! the arm is gone, it is true; But the one that is nearest the heart Is left--and that's as good as two; Tom, old fellow, what makes you start? Why, man, _she_ thinks that empty sleeve A badge of honor; so do I, And all of us:--I do believe The fellow is going to cry! "She deserves a perfect man," you say; "You were not worth her in your prime:" Tom! the arm that has turned to clay, Your whole body has made sublime; For you have placed in the Malvern earth The proof and pledge of a noble life-- And the rest, henceforward of higher worth, Will be dearer than all to your wife. I see the people in the street Look at your sleeve with kindling eyes; And you know, Torn, there's naught so sweet As homage shown in mute surmise. Bravely your arm in battle strove, Freely for Freedom's sake, you gave it; It has perished--but a nation's love In proud remembrance will save it. Go to your sweetheart, then, forthwith-- You're a fool for staying so long-- Woman's love you'll find no myth, But a truth; living, tender, strong. And when around her slender belt Your left is clasped in fond embrace, Your right will thrill, as if it felt, In its grave, the usurper's place. As I look through the coming years, I see a one-armed married man; A little woman, with smiles and tears, Is helping--as hard as she can To put on his coat, to pin his sleeve, Tie his cravat, and cut his food; And I say, as these fancies I weave, "That is Tom, and the woman he wooed." The years roll on, and then I see A wedding picture, bright and fair; I look closer, and its plain to me That is Tom with the silver hair. He gives away the lovely bride, And the guests linger, loth to leave The house of him in whom they pride-- "Brave old Tom with the empty sleeve." The Cotton-Burners' Hymn. "On yesterday, all the cotton in Memphis, and throughout the country, was burned. Probably not less than 300,000 bales have been burned in the last three days, in West Tennessee and North Mississippi."--_Memphis Appeal._ I. Lo! where Mississippi rolls Oceanward its stream, Upward mounting, folds on folds, Flaming fire-tongues gleam; 'Tis the planters' grand oblation On the altar of the nation; 'Tis a willing sacrifice-- Let the golden incense rise-- Pile the Cotton to the skies! CHORUS--Lo! the sacrificial flame Gilds the starry dome of night! Nations! read the mute acclaim-- 'Tis for liberty we fight! Homes! Religion! Right! II. Never such a golden light Lit the vaulted sky; Never sacrifice as bright, Rose to God on high: Thousands oxen, what were they To the offering we pay? And the brilliant holocaust-- When the revolution's past-- In the nation's songs will last! CHORUS-Lo! the sacrificial flame, etc. III. Though the night be dark above, Broken though the shield-- Those who love us, those we love, Bid us never yield: Never! though our bravest bleed, And the vultures on them feed; Never! though the Serpents' race-- Hissing hate and vile disgrace-- By the million should menace! CHORUS-Lo! the sacrificial flame, etc. IV. Pile the Cotton to the skies; Lo! the Northmen gaze; England! see our sacrifice-- See the Cotton blaze! God of nations! now to Thee, Southrons bend th' imploring knee; 'Tis our country's hour of need-- Hear the mothers intercede-- Hear the little children plead! CHORUS-Lo! the sacrificial flame, etc. Reading the List. "Is there any news of the war?" she said-- "Only a list of the wounded and dead," Was the man's reply, Without lifting his eye To the face of the woman standing by. "'Tis the very thing--I want," she said; "Read me a list of the wounded and dead." He read the list--'twas a sad array Of the wounded and killed in the fatal fray; In the very midst, was a pause to tell Of a gallant youth, who fought so well That his comrades asked: "Who is he, pray?" "The only son of the Widow Gray," Was the proud reply Of his Captain nigh. What ails the woman standing near? Her face has the ashen hue of fear! "Well, well, read on; is he wounded? quick! Oh God! but my heart is sorrow-sick!" "Is he wounded? No! he fell, they say, Killed outright on that fatal day." But see, the woman has swooned away! Sadly she opened her eyes to the light; Slowly recalled the events of the fight; Faintly she murmured: "Killed outright! It has cost me the life of my only son; But the battle is fought, and the victory won; The will of the Lord, let it be done!" God pity the cheerless Widow Gray, And send from the halls of eternal day, The light of His peace to illumine her way! His Last Words. "A few moments before his death (Stonewall Jackson) he called out in his delirium: 'Order A.P. Hill to prepare for action. Pass the infantry rapidly to the front. Tell Major Hawks--.' Here the sentence was left unfinished. Bat, soon after, a sweet smile overspread his face, and he murmured quietly, with an air of relief: 'Let us cross the river and rest under the shade of the trees.' These were his last words; and, without any expression of pain, or sign of struggle, his spirit passed away." I. Come, let us cross the river, and rest beneath the trees, And list the merry leaflets at sport with every breeze; Our rest is won by fighting, and Peace awaits us there. Strange that a cause so blighting produces fruit so fair! II. Come, let us cross the river, those that have gone before, Crush'd in the strife for freedom, await on yonder shore; So bright the sunshine sparkles, so merry hums the breeze, Come, let us cross the river, and rest beneath the trees. III. Come, let us cross the river, the stream that runs so dark: 'Tis none but cowards quiver, so let us all embark. Come, men with hearts undaunted, we'll stem the tide with ease, We'll cross the flowing river, and rest beneath the trees. IV. Come, let us cross the river, the dying hero cried, And God, of life the giver, then bore him o'er the tide. Life's wars for him are over, the warrior takes his ease, There, by the flowing river, at rest beneath the trees. Charge of Hagood's Brigade. Weldon Railroad, August 21, 1864. The following lines were written in the summer of 1864, immediately after the charge referred to in them, which was always considered by the brigade as their most desperate encounter. Scarce seven hundred men they stand In tattered, rude array, A remnant of that gallant band, Who erstwhile held the sea-girt strand Of Morris' isle, with iron hand 'Gainst Yankees' hated sway. SECESSIONVILLE their banner claims, And SUMTER, held 'mid smoke and flames, And the dark battle on the streams Of POCOTALIGO: And WALTHALL'S JUNCTION'S hard-earned fight, And DREWRY'S BLUFF'S embattled height, Whence, at the gray dawn of the light, They rushed upon the foe. Tattered and torn those banners now, But not less proud each lofty brow, Untaught as yet to yield: With mien unblenched, unfaltering eye, Forward, where bombshells shrieking fly Flecking with smoke the azure sky On Weldon's fated field. Sweeps from the woods the bold array, Not theirs to falter in the fray, No men more sternly trained than they To meet their deadly doom: While, from a hundred throats agape, A hundred sulphurous flames escape, Round shot, and canister, and grape, The thundering cannon's boom! Swift, on their flank, with fearful crash Shrapnel and ball commingling clash, And bursting shells, with lurid flash, Their dazzled sight confound: Trembles the earth beneath their feet, Along their front a rattling sheet Of leaden hail concentric meet, And numbers strew the ground. On, o'er the dying and the dead, O'er mangled limb and gory head, With martial look, with martial tread, March Hagood's men to bloody bed, Honor their sole reward; Himself doth lead their battle line, Himself those banners guard. They win the height, those gallant few, A fiercer struggle to renew, Resolved as gallant men to do Or sink in glory's shroud; But scarcely gain its stubborn crest, Ere, from the ensign's murdered breast, An impious foe has dared to wrest That banner proud. Upon him, Hagood, in thy might! Flash on thy soul th' immortal light Of those brave deeds that blazon bright Our Southern Cross. He dies. Unfurl its folds again, Let it wave proudly o'er the plain; The dying shall forget their pain, Count not their loss. Then, rallying to your chieftain's call, Ploughed through by cannon-shot and ball Hemmed in, as by a living wall, Cleave back your way. Those bannered deeds their souls inspire, Borne, amid sheets of forkéd fire, By the Two Hundred who retire Of that array. Ah, Carolina! well the tear May dew thy cheek; thy clasped hands rear In passion, o'er their tombless bier, Thy fallen chivalry! Malony, mirror of the brave, And Sellers lie in glorious grave; No prouder fate than theirs, who gave Their lives for Liberty. Carolina. April 14, 1861. By John A. Wagener, of S.C. Carolina! Carolina! Noble name in State and story, How I love thy truthful glory, As I love the blue sky o'er ye, Carolina evermore! Carolina! Carolina! Land of chivalry unfearing, Daughters fair beyond comparing, Sons of worth, and noble daring, Carolina evermore! Carolina! Carolina! Soft thy clasp in loving greeting, Plenteous board and kindly meeting, All thy pulses nobly beating, Carolina evermore! Carolina! Carolina! Green thy valleys, bright thy heaven, Bold thy streams through forest riven, Bright thy laurels, hero-given, Carolina evermore! Carolina! Carolina! Holy name, and dear forever, Never shall thy childen, never, Fail to strike with grand endeavor, Carolina evermore! Savannah. By Alethea S. Burroughs. Thou hast not drooped thy stately head, Thy woes a wondrous beauty shed! Not like a lamb to slaughter led, But with the lion's monarch tread, Thou eomest to thy battle bed, Savannah! oh, Savannah! Thine arm of flesh is girded strong; The blue veins swell beneath thy wrong; To thee, the triple cords belong, Of woe, and death, and shameless wrong, And spirit vaunted long, _too_ long! Savannah! oh, Savannah! No blood-stains spot thy forehead fair; Only the martyrs' blood is there; It gleams upon thy bosom bier, It moves thy deep, deep soul to prayer, And tunes a dirge for thy sad ear, Savannah! oh, Savannah! Thy clean white hand is opened wide For weal or woe, thou Freedom Bride; The sword-sheath sparkles at thy side, Thy plighted troth, whate'er betide, Thou hast but Freedom for thy guide, Savannah! oh, Savannah! What though the heavy storm-cloud lowers-- Still at thy feet the old oak towers; Still fragrant are thy jessamine bowers, And things of beauty, love, and flowers Are smiling o'er this land of ours, My sunny home, Savannah! There is no film before thy sight-- Thou seest woe, and death, and night-- And blood upon thy banner bright; But in thy full wrath's kindled might, What carest _thou_ for woe, or night? My rebel home, Savannah! Come--for the crown is on thy head! Thy woes a wondrous beauty shed, Not like a lamb to slaughter led, But with the lion's monarch tread, Oh! come unto thy battle bed, Savannah! oh, Savannah! "Old Betsy." By John Killum. Come, with the rifle so long in your keeping, Clean the old gun up and hurry it forth; Better to die while "Old Betsy" is speaking, Than live with arms folded, the slave of the North. Hear ye the yelp of the North-wolf resounding, Scenting the blood of the warm-hearted South; Quick! or his villainous feet will be bounding Where the gore of our maidens may drip from his mouth. Oft in the wildwood "Old Bess" has relieved you, When the fierce bear was cut down in his track-- If at that moment she never deceived you, Trust her to-day with this ravenous pack. Then come with the rifle so long in your keeping, Clean the old girl up and hurry her forth; Better to die while "Old Betsy" is speaking, Than live with arms folded, the slave of the North. Awake--Arise! By G. W. Archer, M. D. Sons of the South--awake--arise! A million foes sweep down amain, Fierce hatred gleaming in their eyes, And fire and rapine in their train, Like savage Hun and merciless Dane! "We come as brothers!" Trust them not! By all that's dear in heaven and earth, By every tie that hath its birth Within your homes--around your hearth; Believe me, 'tis a tyrant's plot, Worse for the fair and sleek disguise-- A traitor in a patriot's cloak! "Your country's good Demands your blood!" Was it a fiend from hell that spoke? They point us to the Stripes and Stars; (Our banner erst--the despot's now!) But let not thoughts of by-gone wars, When beat we back the common foe, And felled them fast and shamed them so, Divide us at this fearful hour; But think of dungeons and of chains-- Think of your violated fanes-- Of your loved homestead's gory stains-- Eternal thraldom for your dower! No love of country fires their breasts-- The fell fanatics fain would free A grovelling race, And in their place Would fetter us with fiendish glee! Sons of the South--awake--awake! And strike for rights full dear as those For which our struggling sires did shake Earth's proudest throne--while freedom rose, Baptized in blood of braggart foes. Awake--that hour hath come again! Strike! as ye look to Heaven's high throne-- Strike! for the Christian patriot's crown-- Strike! in the name of Washington, Who taught you once to rend the chain, Smiles now from heaven upon our cause, So like his own. His spirit moves Through every fight, And lends its might To every heart that freedom loves. Ye beauteous of the sunny land! Unmatched your charms in all the earth, 'Neath freedom's banner take your stand; And, though ye strike not, prove your worth, As wont in days of joy and mirth: Lavish your praises on the brave-- Pray when the battle fiercely lowers-- Smile when the victory is ours-- Frown on the wretch who basely cowers-- Mourn o'er each fallen hero's grave! Lend thus your favors whilst we smite! Full soon we'll crush this vandal host!-- With woman's charms To nerve their arms, Oh! when have men their freedom lost! General Albert Sidney Johnston. By Mary Jervy, of Charleston. In thickest fight triumphantly he fell, While into victory's arms he led us on; A death so glorious our grief should quell: We mourn him, yet his battle-crown is won. No slanderous tongue can vex his spirit now, No bitter taunts can stain his blood-bought fame Immortal honor rests upon his brow, And noble memories cluster round his name. For hearts shall thrill and eyes g-row dim with tears, To read the story of his touching fate; How in his death the gallant soldier wears The crown that came for earthly life too late. Ye people! guard his memory--sacred keep The garlands green above his hero-grave; Yet weep, for praise can never wake his sleep, To tell him he is shrined among the brave! Eulogy of the Dead. By B. F. Porter, of Alabama. _"Weep not for the dead; neither bemoan him"--Jeremiah._ Oh! weep not for the dead, Whose blood, for freedom shed, Is hallowed evermore! Who on the battle-field Gould die--but never yield! Oh, bemoan them never more-- They live immortal in their gore! Oh, what is it to die Midst shouts of victory, Our rights and homes defending! Oh! what were fame and life Gained in that basest strife For tyrants' power contending, Our country's bosom rending! Oh! dead of red Manassah! Oh! dead of Shiloh's fray! Oh! victors of the Richmond field! Dead on your mother's breast, You live in glorious rest; Each on[1] his honored shield, Immortal in each bloody field! Oh! sons of noble mothers! Oh! youth of maiden lovers! Oh! husbands of chaste wives! Though asleep in beds of gore, You return, oh! never more; Still immortal are your lives! Immortal mothers! lovers! wives! How blest is he who draws His sword in freedom's cause! Though dead on battle-field, Forever to his tomb Shall youthful heroes come, Their hearts for freedom steeled, And learn to die on battle-field. As at Thermopylæ, Grecian child of liberty; Swears to despot ne'er to yield-- Here, by our glorious dead, Let's revenge the blood they've shed, Or die on bloody field, By the sons who scorned to yield! Oh! mothers! lovers! wives! Oh! weep no more--our lives Are our country's evermore! More glorious in your graves, Than if living Lincoln's slaves, Ye will perish never more, Martyred on our fields of gore! [1] The Grecian mother, on sending her son to battle, pointing to his shield, said--"With it, or on it." The Beaufort Exile's Lament. Now chant me a dirge for the Isles of the Sea, And sing the sad wanderer's psalm-- Ye women and children in exile that flee From the land of the orange and palm. Lament for your homes, for the house of your God, Now the haunt of the vile and the low; Lament for the graves of your fathers, now trod By the foot of the Puritan foe! No longer for thee, when the sables of night Are fading like shadows away, Does the mocking-bird, drinking the first beams of light, Praise God for the birth of a day. No longer for thee, when the rays are now full, Do the oaks form an evergreen glade; While the drone of the locust overhead, seemed to lull The cattle that rest in the shade. No longer for thee does the soft-shining moon Silver o'er the green waves of the bay; Nor at evening, the notes of the wandering loon Bid farewell to the sun's dying ray. Nor when night drops her pall over river and shore, And scatters eve's merry-voiced throng, Does there rise, keeping time to the stroke of the oar, The wild chant of the sacred boat-song. Then the revellers would cease ere the red wine they'd quaff, The traveller would pause on his way; And maidens would hush their low silvery laugh, To list to the negro's rude lay. "Going home! going home!" methinks I now hear At the close of each solemn refrain; 'Twill be many a day, aye, and many a year, Ere ye'll sing that dear word "Home" again. Your noble sons slain, on the battle-field lie, Your daughters' mid strangers now roam; Your aged and helpless in poverty sigh O'er the days when they once had a _home_. "Going home! going home!" for the exile alone Can those words sweep the chords of the soul, And raise from the grave the loved ones who are gone, As the tide-waves of time backward roll. "Going home! going home!" Ah! how many who pine, Dear Beaufort, to press thy green soul, Ere then will have passed to shores brighter than thine-- Will have gone home at last to their God! Somebody's Darling. By Marie La Coste, of Georgia. Into a ward of the whitewashed halls, Where the dead and the dying lay-- Wounded by bayonets, shells, and balls, Somebody's darling was borne one day-- Somebody's darling, so young and so brave! Wearing yet on his sweet, pale face-- Soon to be hid in the dust of the grave-- The lingering light of his boyhood's grace! Matted and damp are the curls of gold Kissing the snow of that fair young brow, Pale are the lips of delicate mould-- Somebody's darling is dying now. Back from his beautiful blue-veined brow Brush his wandering waves of gold; Cross his hands on his bosom now-- Somebody's darling is still and cold. Kiss him once for somebody's sake, Murmur a prayer soft and low-- One bright curl from its fair mates take-- They were somebody's pride you know. Somebody's hand hath rested there; Was it a mother's, soft and white? Or have the lips of a sister fair-- Been baptized in their waves of light? God knows best! He has somebody's love; Somebody's heart enshrined him there-- Somebody wafted his name above, Night and morn, on the wings of prayer. Somebody wept when he marched away, Looking so handsome, brave, and grand! Somebody's kiss on his forehead lay-- Somebody clung to his parting hand. Somebody's watching and waiting for him, Yearning to hold him again to her heart; And there he lies with his blue eyes dim, And the smiling child-like lips apart. Tenderly bury the fair young dead-- Pausing to drop on his grave a tear; Carve on the wooden slab o'er his head-- "Somebody's darling slumbers here." John Pegram, Fell at the Head of His Division, Feb. 6th, 1865, Ætat XXXIII. By W. Gordon McCabe. What shall we say, now, of our gentle knight, Or how express the measure of our woe, For him who rode the foremost in the fight, Whose good blade flashed so far amid the foe? Of all his knightly deeds what need to tell?-- That good blade now lies fast within its sheath; What can we do but point to where he fell, And, like a soldier, met a soldier's death? We sorrow not as those who have no hope; For he was pure in heart as brave in deed-- God pardon us, if blindly we should grope, And love be questioned by the hearts that bleed. And yet--oh! foolish and of little faith! We cannot choose but weep our useless tears; We loved him so; we never dreamed that death Would dare to touch him in his brave young years. Ah! dear, browned face, so fearless and so bright! As kind to friend as thou wast stern to foe-- No more we'll see thee radiant in the fight, The eager eyes--the flush on cheek and brow! No more we'll greet the lithe, familiar form, Amid the surging smoke, with deaf'ning cheer; No more shall soar above the iron storm, Thy ringing voice in accents sweet and clear. Aye! he has fought the fight and passed away-- Our grand young leader smitten in the strife! So swift to seize the chances of the fray, And careless only of his noble life. He is not dead, but sleepeth! well we know The form that lies to-day beneath the sod, Shall rise that time the golden bugles blow, And pour their music through the courts of God. And there amid our great heroic dead-- The war-worn sons of God, whose work is done-- His face shall shine, as they with stately tread, In grand review, sweep past the jasper throne. Let not our hearts be troubled! Few and brief His days were here, yet rich in love and faith: Lord, we believe, help thou our unbelief, And grant thy servants such a life and death! Captives Going Home. No flaunting banners o'er them wave, No arms flash back the sun's bright ray, No shouting crowds around them throng, No music cheers them on their way: They're going home. By adverse fate Compelled their trusty swords to sheathe; True soldiers they, even though disarmed-- Heroes, though robbed of victory's wreath. Brave Southrons! 'Tis with sorrowing hearts We gaze upon them through our tears, And sadly feel how vain were all Their heroic deeds through weary years; Yet 'mid their enemies they move With firm, bold step and dauntless mien: Oh, Liberty! in every age, Such have thy chosen heroes been. Going home! Alas, to them the words Bring visions fraught with gloom and woe: Since last they saw those cherished homes The legions of the invading foe Have swept them, simoon-like, along, Spreading destruction with the wind! "They found a garden, but they left A howling wilderness behind." Ah! in those desolated homes To which the "fate of war has come," Sad is the welcome--poor the feast-- That waits the soldier's coming home; Yet loving ones will round him throng, With smiles more tender, if less gay, And joy will brighten pallid cheeks At sight of the dear boys in gray. Aye, give them welcome home, fair South, For you they've made a deathless name; Bright through all after-time will glow The glorious record of their fame. They made a nation. What, though soon Its radiant sun has seemed to set; The past has shown what they can do, The future holds bright promise yet. The Heights of Mission Ridge. By J. Augustine Signaigo. When the foes, in conflict heated, Battled over road and bridge, While Bragg sullenly retreated From the heights of Mission Ridge-- There, amid the pines and wildwood, Two opposing colonels fell, Who had schoolmates been in childhood, And had loved each other well. There, amid the roar and rattle, Facing Havoc's fiery breath, Met the wounded two in battle, In the agonies of death. But they saw each other reeling On the dead and dying men, And the old time, full of feeling, Came upon them once again. When that night the moon came creeping, With its gold streaks, o'er the slain, She beheld two soldiers, sleeping, Free from every earthly pain. Close beside the mountain heather, Where the rocks obscure the sand, They had died, it seems, together, As they clasped each other's hand. "Our Left at Manassas." From dawn to dark they stood, That long midsummer's day! While fierce and fast The battle-blast Swept rank on rank away! From dawn to dark, they fought With legions swept and cleft, While black and wide, The battle-tide Poured ever on our "Left!" They closed each ghastly gap! They dressed each shattered rank They knew, how well! That Freedom fell With that exhausted flank! "Oh! for a thousand men, Like these that melt away!" And down they came, With steel and flame, _Four thousand_ to the fray! They left the laggard train; The panting steam might stay; And down they came, With steel and flame, Head-foremost to the fray! Right through the blackest cloud Their lightning-path they cleft! Freedom and Fame With triumph came To our immortal Left. Ye! of your living, sure! Ye! of your dead, bereft! Honor the brave Who died to save _Your all_, upon our Left. On to Richmond. After Southey's "March to Moscow." By John R. Thompson, of Virginia. Major-General Scott An order had got To push on the columns to Richmond; For loudly went forth, From all parts of the North, The cry that an end of the war must be made In time for the regular yearly Fall Trade: Mr. Greeley spoke freely about the delay, The Yankees "to hum" were all hot for the fray; The chivalrous Grow Declared they were slow, And therefore the order To march from the border And make an excursion to Richmond. Major-General Scott Most likely was not Very loth to obey this instruction, I wot; In his private opinion The Ancient Dominion Deserved to be pillaged, her sons to be shot, And the reason is easily noted; Though this part of the earth Had given him birth, And medals and swords, Inscribed with fine words, It never for Winfield had voted. Besides, you must know that our First of Commanders Had sworn, quite as hard as the Army in Flanders, With his finest of armies and proudest of navies, To wreak his old grudge against Jefferson Davis. Then "forward the column," he said to McDowell; And the Zouaves, with a shout, Most fiercely cried out, "To Richmond or h--ll" (I omit here the vowel), And Winfield, he ordered his carriage and four, A dashing turn-out, to be brought to the door, For a pleasant excursion to Richmond. Major-General Scott Had there on the spot A splendid array To plunder and slay; In the camp he might boast Such a numerous host, As he never had yet In the battle-field set; Every class and condition of Northern society Were in for the trip, a most varied variety: In the camp he might hear every lingo in vogue, "The sweet German accent, the rich Irish brogue." The buthiful boy From the banks of the Shannon, Was there to employ His excellent cannon; And besides the long files of dragoons and artillery. The Zouaves and Hussars, All the children of Mars, There were barbers and cooks And writers of books,-- The _chef de cuisine_ with his French bills of fare, And the artists to dress the young officers' hair. And the scribblers all ready at once to prepare An eloquent story Of conquest and glory; And servants with numberless baskets of Sillery, Though Wilson, the Senator, followed the train, At a distance quite safe, to "conduct the _champagne_:" While the fields were so green and the sky was so blue, There was certainly nothing more pleasant to do On this pleasant excursion to Richmond. In Congress the talk, as I said, was of action, To crush out _instanter_ the traitorous faction. In the press, and the mess, They would hear nothing less Than to make the advance, spite of rhyme or of reason, And at once put an end to the insolent treason. There was Greeley, And Ely, The bloodthirsty Grow, And Hickman (the rowdy, not Hickman the beau), And that terrible Baker Who would seize on the South, every acre, And Webb, who would drive us all into the Gulf, or Some nameless locality smelling of sulphur; And with all this bold crew Nothing would do, While the fields were so green and the sky was so blue, But to march on directly to Richmond. Then the gallant McDowell Drove madly the rowel Of spur that had never been "won" by him, In the flank of his steed, To accomplish a deed, Such as never before had been done by him; And the battery called Sherman's Was wheeled into line, While the beer-drinking Germans, From Neckar and Rhine, With minie and yager, Came on with a swagger, Full of fury and lager, (The day and the pageant were equally fine.) Oh! the fields were so green and the sky was so blue, Indeed 'twas a spectacle pleasant to view, As the column pushed onward to Richmond. Ere the march was begun, In a spirit of fun, General Scott in a speech Said this army should teach The Southrons the lesson the laws to obey, And just before dusk of the third or fourth day, Should joyfully march into Richmond. He spoke of their drill And their courage and skill, And declared that the ladies of Richmond would rave O'er such matchless perfection, and gracefully wave In rapture their delicate kerchiefs in air At their morning parades on the Capitol Square. But alack! and alas! Mark what soon came to pass, When this army, in spite of his flatteries, Amid war's loudest thunder Must stupidly blunder Upon those accursed "masked batteries." Then Beauregard came, Like a tempest of flame, To consume them in wrath On their perilous path; And Johnston bore down in a whirlwind to sweep Their ranks from the field Where their doom had been sealed, As the storm rushes over the face of the deep; While swift on the centre our President pressed. And the foe might descry In the glance of his eye The light that once blazed upon Diomed's crest. McDowell! McDowell! weep, weep for the day. When the Southrons you meet in their battle array; To your confident hosts with its bullets and steel 'Twas worse than Culloden to luckless Lochiel. Oh! the generals were green and old Scott is now blue, And a terrible business, McDowell, to you, Was that pleasant excursion to Richmond. Richmond Whig. Turner Ashby. By John R. Thompson, of Virginia To the brave all homage render, Weep, ye skies of June! With a radiance pure and tender, Shine, oh saddened moon! "Dead upon the field of glory," Hero fit for song and story, Lies our bold dragoon! Well they learned, whose hands have slain him, Braver, knightlier foe Never fought with Moor nor Paynim-- Rode at Templestowe; With a mien how high and joyous, 'Gainst the hordes that would destroy us, Went he forth we know. Never more, alas I shall sabre Gleam around his crest; Fought his fight, fulfilled his labor, Stilled his manly breast; All unheard sweet nature's cadence, Trump of fame and voice of maidens-- Now he takes his rest. Earth, that all too soon hath bound him? Gently wrap his clay; Linger lovingly around him, Light of dying day; Softly fall the summer showers, Birds and bees among the flowers Make the gloom seem gay. There, throughout the coming ages, When his sword is rust, And his deeds in classic pages; Mindful of her trust, Shall Virginia, bending lowly, Still a ceaseless vigil holy Keep above his dust. Captain Latane. By John R. Thompson, of Virginia. The combat raged not long; but ours the day, And through the hosts which compassed us around Our little band rode proudly on its way, Leaving one gallant spirit, glory crowned, Unburied on the field he died to gain; Single, of all his men, among the hostile slain! One moment at the battle's edge he stood, Hope's halo, like a helmet, round his hair-- The next, beheld him dabbled in his blood, Prostrate in death; and yet in death how fair! And thus he passed, through the red gates of strife, From earthly crowns and palms, to an eternal life. A brother bore his body from the field, And gave it into strangers' hands, who closed His calm blue eyes, on earth forever sealed, And tenderly the slender limbs composed; Strangers, but _sisters, who, with Mary's love, Sat by the open tomb and, weeping, looked above._ A little girl strewed roses on his bier, Pale roses--not more stainless than his soul, Nor yet more fragrant than his life sincere, That blossomed with good actions--brief, but whole. The aged matron, with the faithful slave, Approached with reverent steps the hero's lowly grave. No man of God might read the burial rite Above the rebel--thus declared the foe, Who blanched before him in the deadly fight; But woman's voice, in accents soft and low, Trembling with pity, touched with pathos, read Over his hallowed dust, the ritual for the dead! "'Tis sown in weakness; it is raised in power." Softly the promise floated on the air, Arid the sweet breathings of the sunset hour, Come back responsive to the mourner's prayer. Gently they laid him underneath the sod, And left him with his fame, his country, and his God. We should not weep for him! His deeds endure; So young, so beautiful, so brave--he died As he would wish to die. The past secure, Whatever yet of sorrow may betide Those who still linger by the stormy shore; Change cannot hurt him now, nor fortune reach him more. And when Virginia, leaning on her spear, _Vitrix et vidua_, the conflict done, Shall raise her mailéd hand to wipe the tear That starts, as she recalls each martyr son; No prouder memory her breast shall sway Than thine--the early lost--lamented Lat-a-nè! The Men. By Maurice Bell. In the dusk of the forest shade A sallow and dusty group reclined; Gallops a horseman up the glade-- "Where will I your leader find? Tidings I bring from the morning's scout-- I've borne them o'er mound, and moor, and fen." "Well, sir, stay not hereabout, Here are only a few of 'the men.' "Here no collar has bar or star, No rich lacing adorns a sleeve; Further on our officers are, Let them your report receive. Higher up, on the hill up there, Overlooking this shady glen. There are their quarters--don't stop here, We are only some of 'the men.' "Yet stay, courier, if you bear Tidings that the fight is near; Tell them we're ready, and that where They wish us to be we'll soon appear; Tell them only to let us know Where to form our ranks, and when; And we'll teach the vaunting foe That they've met a few of 'the men.' "We're _the men_, though our clothes are worn-- We're _the men_, though we wear no lace-- We're _the men_, who the foe hath torn, And scattered their ranks in dire disgrace; We're the men who have triumphed before-- We're the men who will triumph again; For the dust, and the smoke, and the cannon's roar, And the clashing bayonets--'_we're the men_.' "Ye who sneer at the battle-scars, Of garments faded, and soiled and bare, Yet who have for the 'stars and bars' Praise, and homage, and dainty fare; Mock the wearers and pass them on, Refuse them kindly word--and then Know, if your freedom is ever won By human agents--_these are the men!_" "A Rebel Soldier Killed in the Trenches before Petersburg, Va., April 15, 1865." By a Kentucky Girl. Killed in the trenches! How cold and bare The inscription graved on the white card there. 'Tis a photograph, taken last Spring, they say, Ere the smoke of battle had cleared away-- Of a rebel soldier--just as he fell, When his heart was pierced by a Union shell; And his image was stamped by the sunbeam's ray, As he lay in the trenches that April day. Oh God! Oh God! How my woman's heart Thrills with a quick, convulsive pain, As I view, unrolled by the magic of Art, One dreadful scene from the battle-plain:-- White as the foam of the storm-tossed wave, Lone as the rocks those billows lave-- Gray sky above--cold clay beneath-- A gallant form lies stretched in death! With his calm face fresh on the trampled clay, And the brave hands clasped o'er the manly breast: Save the sanguine stains on his jacket gray, We might deem him taking a soldier's rest. Ah no! Too red is that crimson tide-- Too deeply pierced that wounded side; Youth, hope, love, glory--manhood's pride-- Have all in vain Death's bolt defied. His faithful carbine lies useless there, As it dropped from its master's nerveless ward; And the sunbeams glance on his waving hair Which the fallen cap has ceased to guard-- Oh Heaven! spread o'er it thy merciful shield, No more to my sight be the battle revealed! Oh fiercer than tempest--grim Hades as dread-- On woman's eye flashes the field of the dead! The scene is changed: In a quiet room, Far from the spot where the lone corse lies, A mother kneels in the evening gloom To offer her nightly sacrifice. The noon is past, and the day is done, She knows that the battle is lost or won-- Who lives? Who died? Hush! be thou still! The boy lies dead on the trench-barred hill. Battle of Hampton Roads. By Ossian D. Gorman. Ne'er had a scene of beauty smiled On placid waters 'neath the sun, Like that on Hampton's watery plain, The fatal morn the fight begun. Far toward the silvery Sewell shores, Below the guns of Craney Isle, Were seen our fleet advancing fast, Beneath the sun's auspicious smile. Oh, fatal sight! the hostile hordes Of Newport camp spread dire alarms: The Cumberland for fight prepares-- The fierce marines now rush to arms. The Merrimac, strong cladded o'er, In quarters close begins her fire, Nor fears the rushing hail of shot, And deadly missiles swift and dire; But, rushing on 'mid smoke and flame, And belching thunder long and loud, Salutes the ship with bow austere, And then withdraws in wreaths of cloud. The work is done. The frigate turns In agonizing, doubtful poise-- She sinks, she sinks! along the deck Is heard a shrieking, wailing noise. Engulfed beneath those placid waves Disturbed by battle's onward surge, The crew is gone; the vessel sleeps, And whistling bombshells sing her dirge. The battle still is raging fierce: The Congress, "high and dry" aground, Maintains in vain her boasted power, For now the gunboats flock around, With "stars and bars" at mainmast reared, And pour their lightning on the main, While Merrimac, approaching fast Sends forth her shell and hot-shot rain. Meantime the Jamestown, gallant boat, Engages strong redoubts at land-- While Patrick Henry glides along, To board the Congress, still astrand. This done, we turn intently on The Minnesota, which replies, With whizzing shell to Teuser's gun, Whose booming cleaves the distant skies. The naval combat sounds anew; The hostile fleets are not withdrawn, Though night is closing earth and sea In twilight's pale and mystic dawn. Strange whistling noises fill the air; The powdered smoke looks dark as night, And deadly, lurid flames, pour forth Their radiance on the missiles' flight; Grand picture on the noisy waves! The breezy zephyrs onward roam, And echoing volleys float afar, Disturbing Neptune's coral home. The victory's ours, and let the world Record Buchanan's[1] name with pride; The _crew is brave, the banner bright_, That ruled the day when Hutter[2] died. [1] Commander of the "Merrimac." [2] Midshipman on the "Patrick Henry." Macon Daily Telegraph. Is This a Time to Dance? The breath of evening' sweeps the plain, And sheds its perfume in the dell, But on its wings are sounds of pain, Sad tones that drown the echo's swell; And yet we hear a mirthful call, Fair pleasure smiles with beaming glance, Gay music sounds in the joyous hall: Oh God! is this a time to dance? Sad notes, as if a spirit sighed, Float from the crimson battle-plain, As if a mighty spirit cried In awful agony and pain: Our friends we know there suffering lay, Our brothers, too, perchance, And in reproachful accents say, Loved ones, is this a time to dance? Oh, lift your festal robes on high! The human gore that flows around Will stain their hues with crimson dye; And louder let your music sound To drown the dying warrior's cry! Let sparkling wine your joy enhance Forget that _blood_ has tinged its dye, And quicker urge the maniac dance. But stop! the floor beneath your feet Gives back a _coffin's_ hollow moan, And every strain of music sweet, Wafts forth a _dying soldier's groan_. Oh, sisters! who have brothers dear Exposed to every battle's chance, Brings dark Remorse no forms of fear, To fright you from the heartless dance? Go, fling your festal robes away! Go, don the mourner's sable veil! Go, bow before your God, and pray! If yet your prayers may aught avail. Go, face the fearful form of Death! And trembling meet his chilling glance, And then, for once, with truthful breath, Answer, _Is this a time to dance?_ "The Maryland Line." By J.D. M'Cabe, Jr. The Maryland regiments in the Confederate army have adopted the title of "The Maryland Line," which was so heroically sustained by their patriot sires of the first Revolution, and which the deeds of Marylanders at Manassas, show that the patriot Marylanders of this second Revolution are worthy to bear. By old Potomac's rushing tide, Our bayonets are gleaming; And o'er the bounding waters wide We gaze, while tears are streaming. The distant hills of Maryland Rise sadly up before us-- And tyrant bands have chained our laud, Our mother proud that bore us. Our proud old mother's queenly head Is bowed in subjugation; With her children's blood her soil is red, And fiends in exultation Taunt her with shame as they bind her chains, While her heart is torn with anguish; Old mother, on famed Manassas' plains Our vengeance did not languish. We thought of your wrongs as on we rushed, 'Mid shot and shell appalling; We heard your voice as it upward gush'd, From the Maryland life-blood falling. No pity we knew! Did they mercy show When they bound the mother that bore us? But we scattered death 'mid the dastard foe Till they, shrieking, fled before us. We mourn for our brothers brave that fell On that field so stern and gory; But their spirits rose with our triumph yell To the heavenly realms of glory. And their bodies rest on the hard-won field-- By their love so true and tender, We'll keep the prize they would not yield, We'll die, but we'll not surrender. The Virginians of the Shenandoah Valley. "_Sic Jurat_." By Frank Ticknor, M.D., of Georgia. The knightliest of the knightly race Who, since the clays of old, Have kept the lamp of chivalry Alight in hearts of gold; The kindliest of the kindly band Who rarely hated ease, Yet rode with Smith around the land, And Raleigh o'er the seas; Who climbed the blue Virginia hills, Amid embattled foes, And planted there, in valleys fair, The lily and the rose; Whose fragrance lives in many lands, Whose beauty stars the earth, And lights the hearths of thousand homes With loveliness and worth,-- We feared they slept!--the sons who kept The names of noblest sires, And waked not, though the darkness crept Around their vigil fires; But still the Golden Horse-shoe Knights Their "Old Dominion" keep: The foe has found the enchanted ground, But not a knight asleep. Torch-Hall, Georgia. Sonnet.--The Avatar of Hell. Charleston Mercury. Six thousand years of commune, God with man,-- Two thousand years of Ohrist; yet from such roots, Immortal, earth reaps only bitterest fruits! The fiends rage now as when they first began! Hate, Lust, Greed, Vanity, triumphant still, Yell, shout, exult, and lord o'er human will! The sun moves back! The fond convictions felt, That, in the progress of the race, we stood, Two thousand years of height above the flood Before the day's experience sink and melt, As frost beneath the fire! and what remains Of all our grand ideals and great gains, With Goth, Hun, Vandal, warring in their pride, While the meek Christ is hourly crucified! Pax. "Stonewall" Jackson's Way. These verses, according to the newspaper account, _may_ have been found in the bosom of a dead rebel, after one of Jackson's battles in the Shenandoah valley; but we are pleased to state that the _author_ of them is a still living rebel, and able to write even better things. Come, stack arms, men! Pile on the rails; Stir up the camp-fire bright; No matter if the canteen fails, We'll make a roaring night. Here Shenandoah brawls along, Here burly Blue Ridge echoes strong, To swell the brigade's rousing song, Of "Stonewall Jackson's way." We see him now--the old slouched hat Cocked o'er his eye askew-- The shrewd dry smile--the speech so pat, So calm, so blunt, so true. The "Blue Light Elder" knows 'em well: Says he, "That's Banks; he's fond of shell. Lord save his soul! we'll give him ----" well That's "Stonewall Jackson's way." Silence! Ground arms! Kneel all! Caps off! Old "Blue Light's" going to pray. Strangle the fool that dares to scoff! Attention! it's his way! Appealing from his native sod _In forma pauperis_ to God, "Lay bare thine arm! Stretch forth thy rod! Amen!" That's Stonewall's way. He's in the saddle now: Fall in! Steady! The whole brigade! Hill's at the ford, cut off; we'll win His way out, ball and blade. What matter if our shoes are worn? What matter if our feet are torn? Quick step! we're with him before dawn! That's Stonewall Jackson's way! The sun's bright lances rout the mists Of morning--and, by George! Here's Longstreet, struggling in the lists, Hemmed in an ugly gorge. Pope and his Yankees, whipped before: "Bayonets and grape!" hear Stonewall roar; "Charge, Stuart! Pay off Ashby's score, In Stonewall Jackson's way!" Ah, maiden! wait, and watch, and yearn, For news of Stonewall's band! Ah, widow! read--with eyes that burn, That ring upon thy hand! Ah! wife, sew on, pray on, hope on: Thy life shall not be all forlorn. The foe had better ne'er been born, That gets in Stonewall's way. The Silent March. On one occasion during the war in Virginia, General Lee was lying asleep by the wayside, when an army of fifteen thousand men passed by with hushed voices and footsteps, lest they should disturb his slumbers. O'ercome with weariness and care, The war-worn veteran lay On the green turf of his native land, And slumbered by the way; The breeze that sighed across his brow, And smoothed its deepened lines, Fresh from his own loved mountain bore The murmur of their pines; And the glad sound of waters, The blue rejoicing streams, Whose sweet familiar tones were blent With the music of his dreams: They brought no sound of battle's din, Shrill fife or clarion, But only tenderest memories Of his own fair Arlington. While thus the chieftain slumbered, Forgetful of his care, The hollow tramp of thousands Came sounding through the air. With ringing spur and sabre, And trampling feet they come, Gay plume and rustling banner, And fife, and trump, and drum; But soon the foremost column Sees where, beneath the shade, In slumber, calm as childhood, Their wearied chief is laid; And down the line a murmur From lip to lip there ran, Until the stilly whisper Had spread to rear from van; And o'er the host a silence As deep and sudden fell, As though some mighty wizard Had hushed them with a spell; And every sound was muffled, And every soldier's tread Fell lightly as a mother's 'Round her baby's cradle-bed; And rank, and file, and column, So softly by they swept, It seemed a ghostly army Had passed him as he slept; But mightier than enchantment Was that with magic move-- The spell that hushed their voices-- Deep reverence and love. Pro Memoria. Air--There is rest for the weary. By Ina M. Porter, of Alabama. Lo! the Southland Queen, emerging From her sad and wintry gloom, Robes her torn and bleeding bosom In her richest orient bloom: CHORUS.--(Repeat first line three times.) For her weary sons are resting By the Edenshore; They have won the crown immortal, And the cross of death is o'er! Where the Oriflamme is burning On the starlit Edenshore! Brightly still, in gorgeous glory, God's great jewel lights our sky; Look! upon the heart's white dial There's a SHADOW flitting by! CHORUS.--But the weary feet are resting, etc. Homes are dark and hearts are weary, Souls are numb with hopeless pain; For the footfall on the threshold Never more to sound again! CHORUS.--They have gone from us forever, Aye, for evermore! We must win the crown immortal, Follow where they led before, Where the Oriflamme is burning On the starlit Edenshore. Proudly, as our Southern forests Meet the winter's shafts so keen: Time-defying memories cluster Round our hearts in living green. CHORUS.--They have gone from us forever, etc. May our faltering voices mingle In the angel-chanted psalm; May our earthly chaplets linger By the bright celestial palm. CHORUS.--They have gone from us forever, etc. Crest to crest they bore our banner, Side by side they fell asleep; Hand in hand we scatter flowers, Heart to heart we kneel and weep! CHORUS.--They have gone from us forever, etc. When the May eternal dawneth At the living God's behest, We will quaff divine Nepenthe, We will share the Soldier's rest. CHORUS.--Where the weary feet are resting, etc. Where the shadows are uplifted 'Neath the never-waning sun, Shout we, Gloria in Excelsis! We have lost, but ye have won! CHORUS.--Our hearts are yours forever, Aye, for evermore! Ye have won the crown immortal, And the cross of death is o'er, Where the Oriflamme is burning On the starlit Edenshore! The Southern Homes in Ruin. By R. B. Vance, of North Carolina. "We know a great deal about war now; but, dear readers, the Southern women know more. Blood has not dripped on our doorsills yet; shells have not burst above our _homesteads_--let us pray they never may." --_Frank Leslie's Illustrated_. Many a gray-haired sire has died, As falls the oak, to rise no more, Because his son, his prop, his pride, Breathed out his last all red with gore. No more on earth, at morn, at eve, Shall age and youth, entwined as one-- Nor father, son, for either grieve-- Life's work, alas, for both is done! Many a mother's heart has bled While gazing on her darling child, As in its tiny eyes she read The father's image, kind and mild; For ne'er again his voice will cheer The widowed heart, which mourns him dead; Nor kisses dry the scalding tear, Fast falling on the orphan's head! Many a little form will stray Adown the glen and o'er the hill, And watch, with wistful looks, the way For him whose step is missing still; And when the twilight steals apace O'er mead, and brook, and lonely home, And shadows cloud the dear, sweet face-- The cry will be, "Oh, papa, come!" And many a home's in ashes now, Where joy was once a constant guest, And mournful groups there are, I trow, With neither house nor place of rest; And blood is on the broken _sill_, Where happy feet went to and fro, And everywhere, by field and hill, Are sickening sights and sounds of woe! There is a God who rules on high, The widow's and the orphan's friend, Who sees each tear and hears each sigh, That these lone hearts to Him may send! And when in wrath He tears away The reasons vain which men indite, The record book will plainest say Who's in the wrong, and who is right. "Rappahannock Army Song." By John C. M'Lemore. The toil of the march is over-- The pack will be borne no more-- For we've come for the help of Richmond, From the Rappahannock's shore. The foe is closing round us-- We can hear his ravening cry; So, ho! for fair old Richmond! Like soldiers we'll do or die. We have left the land that bore us, Full many a league away, And our mothers and sisters miss us, As with tearful eyes they pray; But _this_ will repress their weeping, And still the rising sigh-- For all, for fair old Richmond, Have come to do or die. We have come to join our brothers From the proud Dominion's vales, And to meet the dark-cheeked soldier, Tanned by the Tropic gales; To greet them all full gladly, With hand and beaming eye, And to swear, for fair old Richmond, We all will do or die. The fair Carolina sisters Stand ready, lance in hand, To fight as they did in an older war, For the sake of their fatherland. The glories of Sumter and Bethel Have raised their fame full high, But they'll fade, if for fair old Richmond They swear not to do or die. Zollicoffer looks down on his people, And trusts to their hearts and arms, To avenge the blood he has shed, In the midst of the battle's alarms. Alabamians, remember the past, Be the "South at Manassas," their cry; As onward for fair old Richmond, They marched to do or die. Brave Bartow, from home on high, Calls the Empire State to the front, To bear once more as she has borne With glory the battle's brunt. Mississippians who know no surrender, Bear the flag of the Chief on high; For he, too, for fair old Richmond, Has sworn to do or die. Fair land of my birth--sweet Florida-- Your arm is weak, but your soul Must tell of a purer, holier strength, When the drums for the battle roll. Look within, for your hope in the combat, Nor think of your few with a sigh-- If you win not for fair old Richmond, At least you can bravely die. Onward all! Oh! band of brothers! The beat of the long roll's heard! And the hearts of the columns advancing, By the sound of its music is stirred. Onward all! and never return, Till our foes from the Borders fly-- To be crowned by the fair of old Richmond, As those who could do or die. Richmond Enquirer. The Soldier in the Rain. By Julia L. Keyes. Ah me! the rain has a sadder sound Than it ever had before; And the wind more plaintively whistles through The crevices of the door. We know we are safe beneath our roof From every drop that falls; And we feel secure and blest, within The shelter of our walls. Then why do we dread to hear the noise Of the rapid, rushing rain-- And the plash of the wintry drops, that beat Through the blinds, on the window-pane? We think of the tents on the lowly ground, Where our patriot soldiers lie; And the sentry's bleak and lonely march, 'Neath the dark and starless sky. And we pray, with a tearful heart, for those Who brave for us yet more-- And we wish this war, with its thousand ills And griefs, was only o'er. We pray when the skies are bright and clear, When the winds are soft and warm-- But oh! we pray with an aching heart 'Mid the winter's rain and storm. We fain would lift these mantling clouds That shadow our sunny clime; We can but wait--for we know there'll be A day, in the coming time, When peace, like a rosy dawn, will flood Our land with softest light: Then--we will scarcely hearken the rain In the dreary winter's night. My Country. By W. D. Porter, S. C. I. Go, read the stories of the great and free, The nations on the long, bright roll of fame, Whose noble rage has baffled the decree Of tyrants to despoil their life and name; II. Whose swords have flashed like lightning in the eyes Of robber despots, glorying in their might, And taught the world, by deeds of high emprise, The power of truth and sacredness of right: III. Whose people, strong to suffer and endure, In faith have wrestled till the blessing came, And won through woes a victory doubly sure, As martyr wins his crown through blood and flame. IV. The purest virtue has been sorest tried, Nor is there glory without patient toil; And he who woos fair Freedom for his bride, Through suffering must be purged of stain and soil. V. My country! in this hour of trial sore, When in the balance trembling hangs thy fate, Brace thy great heart with courage to the core, Nor let one jot of faith or hope abate! IV. The world's bright eye is fixed upon thee still; _Life, honor, fame_--these all are in the scale: _Endure! endure! endure!_ with iron will, And by the truth of heaven, thou shalt not fail! Patriot and Mountaineer. "After the Battle." By Miss Agnes Leonard. I. All day long the sun had wandered, Through the slowly creeping hours, And at last the stars were shining Like some golden-petalled flowers Scattered o'er the azure bosom Of the glory-haunted night, Flooding all the sky with grandeur, Filling all the earth with light. II. And the fair moon, with the sweet stars, Gleamed amid the radiant spheres Like "a pearl of great price" shining Just as it had shone for years, On the young land that had risen, In her beauty and her might, Like some gorgeous superstructure Woven in the dreams of night: III. With her "cities hung like jewels" On her green and peaceful breast, With her harvest fields of plenty, And her quiet homes of rest. But a change had fallen sadly O'er the young and beauteous land, Brothers on the field fought madly That once wandered hand in hand. IV. And "the hearts of distant mountains Shuddered," with a fearful wonder, As the echoes burst upon them Of the cannon's awful thunder. Through the long hours waged the battle Till the setting of the sun Dropped a seal upon the record, That the day's mad work was done. V. Thickly on the trampled grasses Lay the battle's awful traces, 'Mid the blood-stained clover-blossoms Lay the stark and ghastly faces, With no mourners bending downward O'er a costly funeral pall; And the dying daylight softly, With the starlight watched o'er all. VI. And, where eager, joyous footsteps Once perchance were wont to pass, Ran a little streamlet making One "blue fold in the dark grass;" And where, from its hidden fountain, Clear and bright the brooklet burst Two had crawled, and each was bending O'er to slake his burning thirst. VII. Then beneath the solemn starlight Of the radiant jewelled skies, Both had turned, and were intently Gazing in each other's eyes. Both were solemnly forgiving-- Hushed the pulse of passion's breath-- Calmed the maddening thirst for battle, By the chilling hand of death. VIII. Then spoke one, in bitter anguish: "God have pity on my wife, And my children, in New Hampshire; Orphans by this cruel strife." And the other, leaning closer, Underneath the solemn sky, Bowed his head to hide the moisture Gathering in his downcast eye: IX. "_I've_ a wife and little daughter, 'Mid the fragrant Georgia bloom,"-- Then his cry rang sharper, wilder, "Oh, God! pity all their gloom." And the wounded, in their death-hour, Talking of the loved ones' woes, Nearer drew unto each other, Till they were no longer foes. X. And the Georgian listened sadly As the other tried to speak, While the tears were dropping softly O'er the pallor of his cheek: "How she used to stand and listen, Looking o'er the fields for me, Waiting, till she saw me coming, 'Neath the shadowy old plum-tree. Never more I'll hear her laughter, As she sees me at the gate, And beneath the plum-tree's shadows, All in vain for me she'll wait." XI. Then the Georgian, speaking softly, Said: "A brown-eyed little one Used to wait among the roses, For _me_, when the day was done; And amid the early fragrance Of those blossoms, fresh and sweet, Up and down the old verandah I would chase my darling's feet. But on earth no more the beauty Of her face my eye shall greet, Nevermore I'll hear the music Of those merry pattering feet-- Ah, the solemn starlight, falling On the far-off Georgia bloom, Tells no tale unto my darling Of her absent father's doom." XII. Through the tears that rose between them Both were trying grief to smother, As they clasped each other's fingers Whispering: _"Let's forgive each other."_ XIII. When the morning sun was walking "Up the gray stairs of the dawn," And the crimson east was flushing All the forehead of the morn, Pitying skies were looking sadly On the "once proud, happy land," On the Southron and the Northman, Holding fast each other's hand. Fatherless the golden tresses, Watching 'neath the old plum-tree; Fatherless the little Georgian Sporting in unconscious glee. Chicago Journal of Commerce, June, 1868. Our Confederate Dead. What the Heart of a Young Girl Said to the Dead Soldier. By a Lady of Augusta, Geo. Unknown to me, brave boy, but still I wreathe For you the tenderest of wildwood flowers; And o'er your tomb a virgin's prayer I breathe, To greet the pure moon and the April showers. I only know, I only care to know, You died for me--for me and country bled; A thousand Springs and wild December snow Will weep for one of all the SOUTHERN DEAD. Perchance, some mother gazes up the skies, Wailing, like Rachel, for her martyred brave-- Oh, for her darling sake, my dewy eyes Moisten the turf above your lowly grave. The cause is sacred, when our maidens stand Linked with sad matrons and heroic sires, Above the relics of a vanquished land And light the torch of sanctifying fires. Your bed of honor has a rosy cope To shimmer back the tributary stars; And every petal glistens with a hope Where Love hath blossomed in the disk of Mars. Sleep! On your couch of glory slumber comes Bosomed amid the archangelic choir; Not with the grumble of impetuous drums Deepening the chorus of embattled ire. Above you shall the oak and cedar fling Their giant plumage and protecting shade; For you the song-bird pause upon his wing And warble requiems ever undismayed. Farewell! And if your spirit wander near To kiss this plant of unaspiring art-- Translate it, even in the heavenly sphere, As the libretto of a maiden's heart. Ye Cavaliers of Dixie By Benj. F. Pouter, of Alabama. Ye Cavaliers of Dixie That guard our Southern shores, Whose standards brave the battle-storm That round the border roars; Your glorious sabres draw again, And charge the invading foe; Reap the columns deep Where the battle tempests blow, Where the iron hail in floods descends, And the bloody torrents flow. Ye Cavaliers of Dixie! Though dark the tempest lower, No arms will wear a tyrant's chains! No dastard heart will cower! Bright o'er the cloud the sign will rise, To lead to victory; While your swords reap his hordes, Where the battle-tempests blow, And the iron hail in floods descends, And the bloody torrents flow. Ye Cavaliers of Dixie! Though Vicksburg's towers fall, Here still are sacred rights to shield! Your wives, your homes, your all! With gleaming arms advance again, Drive back the raging foe, Nor yield your native field, While the battle-tempests blow, And the iron hail in floods descends, And the bloody torrents flow. Our country needs no ramparts, No batteries to shield! Your bosoms are her bulwarks strong, Breastworks that cannot yield! The thunders of your battle-blades Shall sweep the hated foe, While their gore stains the shore, Where the battle-tempests blow, And the iron hail in floods descends, And the bloody torrents flow. The spirits of your fathers Shall rise from every grave! Our country is their field of fame, They nobly died to save! Where Johnson, Jackson, Tilghman fell, Your patriot hearts shall glow; While you reap columns deep, Through the armies of the foe, Where the battle-storm is raging loud, And the bloody torrents flow. The battle-flag of Dixie On crimson field shall flame, With azure cross, and silver stars, To light her sons to fame! When peace with olive-branch returns, That flag's white folds shall glow, Still bright on every height, Where the storm has ceased to blow, Where battle-tempests rage no more, Nor bloody torrents flow. The battle-flag of Dixie Shall long triumphant wave, Where'er the storms of battle roar, And victory crowns the brave! The Cavaliers of Dixie! In woman's songs shall glow The fame of your name, When the storm has ceased to blow, When the battle-tempests rage no more, Nor the bloody torrents flow. Song of Spring, (1864.) By John A. Wagener, of South Carolina. Spring has come! Spring has come! The brightening earth, the sparkling dew, The bursting buds, the sky of blue, The mocker's carol, in tree and hedge, Proclaim anew Jehovah's pledge-- "So long as man shall earth retain, The seasons gone shall come again." Spring has come! Springs has come! We have her here, in the balmy air, In the blossoms that bourgeon without a care; The violet bounds from her lowly bed, And the jasmin flaunts with a lofty head; All nature, in her baptismal dress, Is abroad--to win, to soothe, and bless. Spring has come! Spring has come! Yes, and eternal as the Lord, Who spells her being at a word; All blest but man, whose passions proud Wrap Nature in her bloody shroud-- His heart is winter to the core, His spring, alas! shall come no more! "What the Village Bell Said." By John C. M'Lemore, of South Carolina.[1] Full many a year in the village church, Above the world have I made my home; And happier there, than if I had hung High up in the air in a golden dome; For I have tolled When the slow hearse rolled Its burden sad to my door; And each echo that woke, With the solemn stroke, Was a sigh from the heart of the poor. I know the great bell of the city spire Is a far prouder one than such as I; And its deafening stroke, compared with mine, Is thunder compared with a sigh: But the shattering note Of his brazen throat, As it swells on the Sabbath air, Far oftener rings For other things Than a call to the house of prayer. Brave boy, I tolled when your father died, And you wept while my tones pealed loud; And more gently I rung when the lily-white dame, Your mother dear, lay in her shroud: And I sang in sweet tone The angels might own, When your sister you gave to your friend; Oh! I rang with delight, On that sweet summer night, When they vowed they would love to the end! But a base foe comes from the regions of crime, With a heart all hot with the flames of hell; And the tones of the bell you have loved so long No more on the air shall swell: For the people's chief, With his proud belief That his country's cause is God's own, Would change the song, The hills have rung, To the thunder's harsher tone. Then take me down from the village church, Where in peace so long I have hung; But I charge you, by all the loved and lost, _Remember the songs I have sung._ Remember the mound Of holy ground, Where your father and mother lie; And swear by the love For the dead above To beat your foul foe or die. Then take me; but when (I charge you this) You have come to the bloody field, That the bell of God, to a cannon grown, You will ne'er to the foeman yield. By the love of the past, Be that hour your last, When the foe has reached this trust; And make him a bed Of patriot dead, And let him sleep in this holy dust. [1] Mortally wounded at the battle of Seven Pines. The Tree, the Serpent, and the Star. By A. P. Gray, of South Carolina. From the silver sands of a gleaming shore, Where the wild sea-waves were breaking, A lofty shoot from a twining root Sprang forth as the dawn was waking; And the crest, though fed by the sultry beam, (And the shaft by the salt wave only,) Spread green to the breeze of the curling seas, And rose like a column lonely. Then hail to the tree, the Palmetto tree, Ensign of the noble, the brave, and the free. As the sea-winds rustled the bladed crest, And the sun to the noon rose higher, A serpent came, with an eye of flame, And coiled by the leafy pyre; His ward he would keep by the lonely tree, To guard it with constant devotion; Oh, sharp was the fang, and the arméd clang, That pierced through the roar of the ocean, And guarded the tree, the Palmetto tree, Ensign of the noble, the brave, and the free. And the day wore down to the twilight close, The breeze died away from the billow; Yet the wakeful clang of the rattles rang Anon from the serpent's pillow; When I saw through the night a gleaming star O'er the branching summit growing, Till the foliage green and the serpent's sheen In the golden light were glowing, That hung o'er the tree, the Palmetto tree, Ensign of the noble, the brave, and the free. By the standard cleave every loyal son, When the drums' long roll shall rattle; Let the folds stream high to the victor's eye; Or sink in the shock of the battle. Should triumph rest on the red field won, With a victor's song let us hail it; If the battle fail and the star grow pale, Yet never in shame will we veil it, But cherish the tree, the Palmetto tree, Ensign of the noble, the brave, and the free. Southern War Hymn By John A. Wagener, of South Carolina. Arise! arise! with arm of might, Sons of our sunny home! Gird on the sword for the sacred fight, For the battle-hour hath come! Arise! for the felon foe draws nigh In battle's dread array; To the front, ye brave! let the coward fly, 'Tis the hero that bides the fray! Strike hot and hard, my noble band, With the arm of fight and fire; Strike fast for God and Fatherland, For mother, and wife, and sire. Though thunders roar and lightnings flash, Oh! Southrons, never fear, Ye shall turn the bolt with the sabre's clash, And the shaft with the steely spear. Bright blooms shall wave o'er the hero's grave, While the craven finds no rest; Thrice cursed the traitor, the slave, the knave, While thrice is the hero blessed To the front in the fight, ye Southrons, stand, Brave spirits, with eagle eye, And standing for God and for Fatherland, Ye will gallantly do or die. Charleston Courier. The Battle Rainbow. By John R. Thompson, of Virginia. The poem which follows was written just after the Seven Days of Battle, near Richmond, in 1862. It was suggested by the appearance of a rainbow, the evening before the grand trial of strength between the contending armies. This rainbow overspread the eastern sky, and exactly defined the position of the Confederate army, as seen from the Capitol at Richmond. The warm, weary day, was departing--the smile Of the sunset gave token the tempest had ceased; And the lightning yet fitfully gleamed for a while On the cloud that sank sullen and dark in the east. There our army--awaiting the terrible fight Of the morrow--lay hopeful, and watching, and still; Where their tents all the region had sprinkled with white, From river to river, o'er meadow and hill. While above them the fierce cannonade of the sky Blazed and burst from the vapors that muffled the sun, Their "counterfeit clamors" gave forth no reply; And slept till the battle, the charge in each gun. When lo! on the cloud, a miraculous thing! Broke in beauty the rainbow our host to enfold! The centre o'erspread by its arch, and each wing Suffused with its azure and crimson and gold. Blest omen of victory, symbol divine Of peace after tumult, repose after pain; How sweet and how glowing with promise the sign, To eyes that should never behold it again! For the fierce flame of war on the morrow flashed out, And its thunder-peals filled all the tremulous air: Over slippery intrenchment and reddened redoubt, Rang the wild cheer of triumph, the cry of despair. Then a long week of glory and agony came-- Of mute supplication, and yearning, and dread; When day unto day gave the record of fame, And night unto night gave the list of its dead. We had triumphed--the foe had fled back to his ships-- His standard in rags and his legions a wreck-- But alas! the stark faces and colorless lips Of our loved ones, gave triumph's rejoicing a check. Not yet, oh not yet, as a sign of release, Had the Lord set in mercy his bow in the cloud; Not yet had the Comforter whispered of peace To the hearts that around us lay bleeding and bowed. But the promise was given--the beautiful arc, With its brilliant profusion of colors, that spanned The sky on that exquisite eve, was the mark Of the Infinite Love overarching the land: And that Love, shining richly and full as the day, Through the tear-drops that moisten each martyr's proud pall, On the gloom of the past the bright bow shall display Of Freedom, Peace, Victory, bent over all. Stonewall Jackson. Mortally wounded--"_The Brigade must not know, sir._" "Who've ye got there?"--"Only a dying brother, Hurt in the front just now." "Good boy! he'll do. Somebody tell his mother Where he was killed, and how." "Whom have you there?"--"A crippled courier, major, Shot by mistake, we hear. He was with Stonewall." "Cruel work they've made here: Quick with him to the rear!" "Well, who comes next?"--"Doctor, speak low, speak low, sir; Don't let the men find out. It's STONEWALL!" "God!" "The brigade must not know, sir, While there's a foe about." Whom have we _here_--shrouded in martial manner, Crowned with a martyr's charm? A grand dead hero, in a living banner, Born of his heart and arm: The heart whereon his cause hung--see how clingeth That banner to his bier! The arm wherewith his cause struck--hark! how ringeth His trumpet in their rear! What have we left? His glorious inspiration, His prayers in council met. Living, he laid the first stones of a nation; And dead, he builds it yet. Dirge for Ashby. By Mrs. M. J. Preston. Heard ye that thrilling word-- Accent of dread-- Fall, like a thunderbolt, Bowing each head? Over the battle dun, Over each booming gun-- Ashby, our bravest one! Ashby is dead! Saw ye the veterans-- Hearts that had known Never a quail of fear, Never a groan-- Sob, though the fight they win, Tears their stern eyes within-- Ashby, our Paladin, Ashby is dead! Dash, dash the tear away-- Crush down the pain! _Dulce et decus_, be Fittest refrain! Why should the dreary pall, Round _him_, be flung at all? Did not our hero fall Gallantly slain! Catch the last words of cheer, Dropt from his tongue; Over the battle's din, Let them be rung! "Follow _me!_ follow _me!_" Soldier, oh! could there be Pæan or dirge for thee, Loftier sung? Bold as the lion's heart-- Dauntlessly brave-- Knightly as knightliest Bayard might crave; Sweet, with all Sydney's grace. Tender as Hampden's face, Who now shall fill the space, Void by his grave? 'Tis not one broken heart, Wild with dismay-- Crazed in her agony, Weeps o'er his clay! Ah! from a thousand eyes, Flow the pure tears that rise-- Widowed Virginia lies Stricken to-day! Yet, charge as gallantly, Ye, whom he led! Jackson, the victor, still Leads, at your head! Heroes! be battle done Bravelier, every one Nerved by the thought alone-- Ashby is dead! Sacrifice. I. Another victim for the sacrifice! Oh! my own mother South, How terrible this wail above thy youth, Dying at the cannon's mouth,-- And for no crime--no vice-- No scheme of selfish greed--no avarice, Or insolent ambition, seeking power;--. But that, with resolute soul and will sublime, They made their proud election to be free,-- To leave a grand inheritance to time, And to their sons and race, of liberty! II. Oh! widow'd woman, sitting in thy weeds, With thy young brood around thee, sad and lone, Thy fancy sees thy hero where he bleeds, And still thou hear'st his moan! Dying he calls on thee--again--again! With blessing and fond memories. Be of cheer; He has not died--he did not bless--in vain: For, in the eternal rounds of GOD, HE squares The account with sorrowing hearts; and soothes the fears, And leads the orphans home, and dries the widow's tears. Charleston Mercury. Sonnet. Written in 1864. What right to freedom when we are not free? When all the passions goad us into lust; When, for the worthless spoil we lick the dust, And while one-half our people die, that we May sit with peace and freedom 'neath our tree, The other gloats for plunder and for spoil: Bustles through daylight, vexes night with toil, Cheats, swindles, lies and steals!--Shall such things be Endowed with such grand boons as Liberty Brings in her train of blessings? Should we pray That such as these should still maintain the sway-- These soulless, senseless, heartless enemies Of all that's good and great, of all that's wise, Worthy on earth, or in the Eternal Eyes! Charleston Mercury. Grave of A. Sydney Johnston. By J. B. Synnott. The Lone Star State secretes the clay Of him who led on Shiloh's field, Where mourning wives will stop to pray, And maids a weeping tribute yield. In after time, when spleen and strife Their madd'ning flame shall have expired, The noble deeds that gemm'd this life By Age and Youth will be admired. As o'er the stream the boatmen rove By Pittsburg Bend at early Spring, They'll show with moist'ning eye the grave Where havoc spread her sable wing. There, 'neath the budding foliage green, Ere Night evolved her dewy breath, While Vict'ry smiled upon the scene, Our Chieftain met the blow of death. Great men to come will bless the brave; The soldier, bronzed in War's career, Shall weave a chaplet o'er his grave, While Mem'ry drops the glist'ning tear. Though envy wag her scorpion tongue, The march of Time shall find his fame; Where Bravery's loved and Glory's sung, There children's lips shall lisp his name. "Not Doubtful of Your Fatherland." I. Not doubtful of your fatherland, Or of the God who gave it; On, Southrons! 'gainst the hireling band That struggle to enslave it; Ring boldly out Your battle-shout, Charge fiercely 'gainst these felon hordes: One hour of strife Is freedom's life, And glory hangs upon your swords! II. A thousand mothers' matron eyes, Wives, sisters, daughters weeping, Watch, where your virgin banner flies, To battle fiercely sweeping: Though science fails, The steel prevails, When hands that wield, own hearts of oak: These, though the wall Of stone may fall, Grow stronger with each hostile stroke. III. The faith that feels its cause as true, The virtue to maintain it; The soul to brave, the will to do,-- These seek the fight, and gain it! The precious prize Before your eyes, The all that life conceives of charm, Home, freedom, life, Child, sister, wife, All rest upon your soul and arm! IV. And what the foe, the felon race, That seek your subjugation? The scum of Europe, her disgrace. The lepers of the nation. And what the spoil That tempts their toil, The bait that goads them on to fight? Lust, crime, and blood, Each fiendish mood That prompts and follows appetite. V. Shall such prevail, and shall you fail, Asserting cause so holy? With souls of might, go, seek the fight, And crush these wretches lowly. On, with the cry, To do or die, As did, in darker days, your sires, Nor stay the blow, Till every foe, Down stricken, in your path, expires! Charleston Mercury. Only a Soldier's Grave. By S. A. Jones, of Aberdeen, Mississippi. Only a soldier's grave! Pass by, For soldiers, like other mortals, die. Parents he had--they are far away; No sister weeps o'er the soldier's clay; No brother comes, with a tearful eye: It's only a soldier's grave--pass by. True, he was loving, and young, and brave, Though no glowing epitaph honors his grave; No proud recital of virtues known, Of griefs endured, or of triumphs won; No tablet of marble, or obelisk high;-- Only a soldier's grave--pass by. Yet bravely he wielded his sword in fight, And he gave his life in the cause of right! When his hope was high, and his youthful dream As warm as the sunlight on yonder stream; His heart unvexed by sorrow or sigh;-- Yet,'tis only a soldier's grave:--pass by. Yet, should we mark it--the soldier's grave, Some one may seek him in hope to save! Some of the dear ones, far away, Would bear him home to his native clay: 'Twere sad, indeed, should they wander nigh, Find not the hillock, and pass him by. The Guerilla Martyrs. I. Ay, to the doom--the scaffold and the chain,-- To all your cruel tortures, bear them on, Ye foul and coward Hangmen;--but in vain!-- Ye cannot touch the glory they have won-- And win--thus yielding up the martyr's breath For freedom!--Theirs is a triumphant death!-- A sacred pledge from Nature, that her womb Still keeps some sacred fires;--that yet shall burst, Even from the reeking ravage of their doom, As glorious--ay, more glorious--than the first! Exult, shout, triumph! Wretches, do your worst! 'Tis for a season only! There shall come An hour when ye shall feel yourselves accurst; When the dread vengeance of a century Shall reap its harvest in a single day; And ye shall howl in horror;--and, to die, Shall be escape and refuge! Ye may slay; But to be cruel and brutal, does not make Ye conquerors; and the vulture yet shall prey On living hearts; and vengeance fiercely slake The unappeasable appetite ye wake, In the hot blood of victims, that have been, Most eager, binding freemen to the stake,-- Most greedy, in the orgies of this sin! II. Ye slaughter,--do ye triumph? Ask your chains, Ye Sodom-hearted butchers!--turn your eyes, Where reeks yon bloody scaffold; and the pains, Ungroaned, of a true martyr, ere he dies, Attest the damned folly of your crime, Now at its carnival! His spirit flies, Unscathed by all your fires, through every clime, Into the world's wide bosom. Thousands rise, Prompt at its call, and principled to strike The tyrants and the tyrannies alike!-- Voices, that doom ye, speak in all your deeds, And cry to heaven, arm earth, and kindle hell! A host of freemen, where one martyr bleeds, Spring from his place of doom, and make his knell The toscin, to arouse a myriad race, T'avenge Humanity's wrong, and wipe off man's disgrace! III. We mourn not for our martyrs!--for they perish, As the good perish, for a deathless faith: Their glorious memories men will fondly cherish, In terms and signs that shall ennoble death! Their blood becomes a principle, to guide, Onward, forever onward, in proud flow, Restless, resistless, as the ocean tide, The Spirit heaven yields freedom here below! How should we mourn the martyrs, who arise, Even from the stake and scaffold, to the skies;-- And take their thrones, as slars; and o'er the night, Shed a new glory; and to other souls, Shine out with blessed guidance, and true light, Which leads successive races to their goals! Charleston Mercury. "Libera Nos, O Domine!" By James Barron Hope. What! ye hold yourselves as freemen? Tyrants love just such as ye! Go! abate your lofty manner! Write upon the State's old banner, "_A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!_" Sink before the federal altar, Each one low, on bended knee, Pray, with lips that sob and falter, This prayer from the coward's psalter,-- "_A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!_" But ye hold that quick repentance In the Northern mind will be; This repentance comes no sooner Than the robbers did, at Luna! "_A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!_" He repented _him_:--the Bishop Gave him absolution free; Poured upon him sacred chrism In the pomp of his baptism. _"A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!"_ He repented;--then he sickened! Was he pining for the sea? _In extremis_ was he shriven, The viaticum was given, _"A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!"_ Then the old cathedral's choir Took the plaintive minor key; With the Host upraised before him, Down the marble aisles they bore him; _"A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!"_ While the bishop and the abbot-- All the monks of high degree, Chanting praise to the Madonna, Came to do him Christian honor! _"A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!"_ Now the _miserere's_ cadence, Takes the voices of the sea; As the music-billows quiver, See the dead freebooter shiver! _"A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!"_ Is it that these intonations Thrill him thus from head to knee? Lo, his cerements burst asunder! 'Tis a sight of fear and wonder! _"A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!"_ Fierce, he stands before the bishop, Dark as shape of Destinie. Hark! a shriek ascends, appalling,-- Down the prelate goes--dead--falling! _"A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!"_ Hastings lives! He was but feigning! What! Repentant? Never he! Down he smites the priests and friars, And the city lights with fires! _"A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!"_ Ah! the children and the maidens, 'Tis in vain they strive to flee! Where the white-haired priests lie bleeding, Is no place for woman's pleading. _"A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!"_ Louder swells the frightful tumult-- Pallid Death holds revelrie! Dies the organ's mighty clamor, By the horseman's iron hammer! _"A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!"_ So they thought that he'd repented! Had they nailed him to the tree, He had not deserved their pity, And they had not--lost their city. _"A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!"_ For the moral in this story, Which is plain as truth can be: If we trust the North's relenting, We shall shriek-too late repenting-- _"A furore Normanorum, Libera nos, O Domine!"_ [1] [1] For this incident in the life of the sea-robber, Hastings, see Milman's History of Latin Christianity. The Knell Shall Sound Once More. I know that the knell shall sound once more, And the dirge be sung o'er a bloody grave; And there shall be storm on the beaten shore, And there shall be strife on the stormy wave; And we shall wail, with a mighty wail, And feel the keen sorrow through many years, But shall not our banner at last prevail, And our eyes be dried of tears? There's a bitter pledge for each fruitful tree, And the nation whose course is long to run, Must make, though in anguish still it be, The tribute of many a noble son; The roots of each mighty shaft must grow In the blood-red fountains of mighty hearts; And to conquer the right from a bloody foe, Brings a pang as when soul and body parts! But the blood and the pang are the need, alas! To strengthen the sovereign will that svrays The generations that rise, and pass To the full fruition that crowns their days! 'Tis still in the strife, they must grow to life: And sorrow shall strengthen the soul for care; And the freedom sought must ever be bought By the best blood-offerings, held most dear. Heroes, the noblest, shall still be first To mount the red altar of sacrifice; Homes the most sacred shall fare the worst, Ere we conquer and win the precious prize!-- The struggle may last for a thousand years, And only with blood shall the field be bought; But the sons shall inherit, through blood and tears, The birth-right for 'which their old fathers fought. Charleston Mercury. Gendron Palmer, of the Holcombe Legion By Ina M. Porter, of Alabama. He sleeps upon Virginia's strand, While comrades of the Legion stand With arms reversed--a mournful band-- Around his early bier! His war-horse paws the shaking ground, The volleys ring--they close around-- And on the white brow, laurel-bound, Falls many a soldier's tear. Up, stricken mourners! look on high, Loud anthems rend the echoing sky, Re-born where heroes never die-- The warrior is at rest! Gone is the weary, pain-traced frown; Life's march is o'er, his arms cast down, His plumes replaced by shining--crown, The red cross on his breast! Though Gendron's arm is with the dust, Let not his blood-stained weapon rust, Bequeathed to one who'll bear the trust, Where Southern banners fly! Some brave, who followed where he led-- Aye, swear him o'er the martyred dead, To avenge each drop of blood he shed, Or, like him, bravely die! He deemed a death for honor sweet.-- And thus he fell!-'Tis doubly meet, Our flag should be his winding-sheet, Proud banner of the free! Oh, let his honored form be laid Beneath the loved Palmetto's shade; His praises sung by Southern maid, While flows the broad Santee! We come around his urn to twine Sweet clusters of the jasmine vine, Culled where our tropic sunbeams shine, From skies deep-dyed and bright; And, kneeling, vow no right to yield!-- On, brothers, on!--Fight! win the field! Or dead return on battered shield, As martyrs for the right! Where camp-fires light the reddened sod, The grief-bowed Legion kneel to God, In Palmer's name, and by his blood, They swell the battle-cry; We'll sheathe no more our dripping steel, 'Till tyrants Southern vengeance feel, And menial hordes as suppliants kneel, Or, terror-stricken, fly! Mumford, the Martyr of New Orleans. By Ina M. Porter, of Alabama. Where murdered Mumford lies, Bewailed in bitter sighs, Low-bowed beneath the flag he loved, Martyrs of Liberty, Defenders of the Free! Come, humbly nigh, And learn to die! Ah, Freedom, on that day, Turned fearfully away, While pitying angels lingered near, To gaze upon the sod, Red with a martyr's blood; And woman's tear Fell on his bier! O God! that he should die Beneath a Southern sky! Upon a felon's gallows swung, Murdered by tyrant hand,-- While round a helpless band, On Butler's name Poured scorn and shame. But hark! loud pæans fly From earth to vaulted sky, He's crowned at Freedom's holy throne! List! sweet-voiced Israfel[1] Tolls far the martyr's knell! Shout, Southrons, high, Our battle cry! Come, all of Southern blood, Come, kneel to Freedom's God! Here at her crimsoned altar swear! Accursed for evermore The flag that Mumford tore, And o'er his grave Our colors wave! [1] "The sweetest-voiced angel around the throne of God." --_Oriental Legend._ The Foe at the Gates.--Charleston. By J. Dickson Bruns, M. D. Ring round her! children of her gloridus skies, Whom she hath nursed to stature proud and great; Catch one last glance from her imploring eyes, Then close your ranks and face the threatening fate. Ring round her! with a wall of horrent steel Confront the foe, nor mercy ask nor give; And in her hour of anguish let her feel That ye can die whom she has taught to live. Ring round her! swear, by every lifted blade, To shield from wrong the mother who gave you birth; That never villain hand on her be laid, Nor base foot desecrate her hallowed hearth. See how she thrills all o'er with noble shame, As through deep sobs she draws the laboring breath, Her generous brow and bosom all aflame At the bare thought of insult, worse than death. And stained and rent her snowy garments are; The big drops gather on her pallid face, Gashed with great wounds by cowards who strove to mar The beauteous form that spurned their foul embrace. And still she pleads, oh! how she pleads, with prayers And bitter tears, to every loving child To stand between her and the doom she fears, To keep her fame untarnished, undefiled! Curst be the dastard who shall halt or doubt! And doubly damned who casts one look behind! Ye who are men! with unsheathed sword, and shout, Up with her banner! give it to the wind. Peal your wild slogan, echoing far and wide, Till every ringing avenue repeat The gathering cry, and Ashley's angry tide Calls to the sea-waves beating round her feet. Sons, to the rescue! spurred and belted, come! Kneeling, with clasp'd hands, she invokes you now By the sweet memories of your childhood's home, By every manly hope and filial vow, To save her proud soul from that loathéd thrall Which yet her spirit cannot brook to name; Or, if her fate be near, and she must fall, Spare her--she sues--the agony and the shame. From all her fanes let solemn bells be tolled, Heap with kind hands her costly funeral pyre, And thus, with pæan sung and anthem rolled, Give her, unspotted, to the God of Fire. Gather around her sacred ashes then, Sprinkle the cherished dust with crimson rain, Die! as becomes a race of free-born men, Who will not crouch to wear the bondman's chain. So, dying, ye shall win a high renown, If not in life, at least by death, set free-- And send her fame, through endless ages down, The last grand holocaust of liberty. Savannah Fallen. By Alethea S. Burroughs, of Georgia. I. Bowing her head to the dust of the earth. Smitten and stricken is she, Light after light gone out from her hearth, Son after son from her knee. Bowing her head to the dust at her feet, Weeping her beautiful slain, Silence! keep silence, for aye in the street, See! they are coming again. II. Coming again, oh! glorious ones, Wrapped in the flag of the free; Queen of the South! bright crowns for thy sons, Only the cypress for _thee!_ Laurel, and banner, and music, and drum, Marches, and requiems sweet; Silence! keep silence! alas, how they come, Oh! how they move through the street! III. Slowly, ah! mournfully, slowly they go, Bearing the young and the brave, Fair as the summer, but white as the snow Bearing them down to the grave. Some in the morning, and some in the noou, Some in the hey-day of life; Bower nor blossom, nor summer nor June, Wooing them back to the strife. IV. Some in the billow, afar, oh! afar, Staining the waves with their blood; One on the vessel's high deck, like a star, Sinking in glory's bright-flood.[1] Bowing her head to the dust of the earth, Humbled but honored is she, lighting the skies with the stars from her hearth, Who shall her comforter be? V. Bring her, oh! bring her the garments of woe, Sackcloth and ashes for aye; Winds of the South! oh, a requiem blow, Sighing and sorrow to-day. Sprinkle the showers from heaven's blue eyes Wide o'er the green summer lea, Rachel is weeping, oh! Lord of the skies, Thou shalt her comforter be! [1] Captain Thomas Pelot, C. S. N., killed at the capture of the "Water Witch." Bull Run.--A Parody. I. At Bull Run when the sun was low, Each Southern face grew pale as snow, While loud as jackdaws rose the crow Of Yankees boasting terribly! II. But Bull Run saw another sight, When at the deepening shades of night, Towards Fairfax Court-House rose the flight Of Yankees running rapidly. III. Then broke each corps with terror riven, Then rushed the steeds from battle driven, The men of battery Number Seven Forsook their Red artillery! IV. Still on McDowell's farthest left, The roar of cannon strikes one deaf, Where furious Abe and fiery Jeff Contend for death or victory. V. The panic thickens--off, ye brave! Throw down your arms! your bacon save! Waive, Washington, all scruples waive, And fly, with all your chivalry! "Stack Arms." Written in the Prison of Fort Delaware, Del., on Hearing of the Surrender of General Lee. By Jos. Blyth Alston. "Stack Arms!" I've gladly heard the cry When, weary with the dusty tread Of marching troops, as night drew nigh, I sank upon my soldier bed, And camly slept; the starry dome Of heaven's blue arch my canopy, And mingled with my dreams of home, The thoughts of Peace and Liberty. "Stack Arms!" I've heard it, when the shout Exulting, rang along our line, Of foes hurled back in bloody rout, Captured, dispersed; its tones divine Then came to mine enraptured ear. Guerdon of duty nobly done, And glistened on my cheek the tear Of grateful joy for victory won. "Stack Arms!" In faltering accents, slow And sad, it creeps from tongue to tongue, A broken, murmuring wail of woe, From manly hearts by anguish wrung. Like victims of a midnight dream, We move, we know not how nor why, For life and hope but phantoms seem, And it would be relief--to die! Doffing the Gray. By Lieutenant Falligant, of Savannah, Geo. Off with your gray suits, boys-- Off with your rebel gear-- They smack too much of the cannons' peal, The lightning flash of your deadly steel, The terror of your spear. Their color is like the smoke That curled o'er your battle-line; They call to mind the yell that woke When the dastard columns before you broke, And their dead were your fatal sign. Off with the starry wreath, Ye who have led our van; To you 'twas the pledge of glorious death, When we followed you over the gory heath, Where we whipped them man to man. Down with the cross of stars-- Too long hath it waved on high; 'Tis covered all over with battle scars, But its gleam the Northern banner mars-- 'Tis time to lay it by. Down with the vows we've made, Down, with each memory-- Down with the thoughts of our noble dead-- Down, down to the dust, where their forms are laid And down with Liberty. In the Land Where We Were Dreaming By D. B. Lucas, Esq., of Jefferson. Fair were our visions! Oh, they were as grand As ever floated out of Faerie land; Children were we in single faith, But God-like children, whom, nor death, Nor threat, nor danger drove from Honor's path, In the land where we were dreaming. Proud were our men, as pride of birth could render; As violets, our women pure and tender; And when they spoke, their voice did thrill Until at eve, the whip-poor-will, At morn the mocking-bird, were mute and still In the land where we were dreaming. And we had graves that covered more of glory Than ever tracked tradition's ancient story; And in our dream we wove the thread Of principles for which had bled And suffered long our own immortal dead In the land where we were dreaming. Though in our land we had both bond and free, Both were content; and so God let them be;-- 'Till envy coveted our land And those fair fields our valor won: But little recked we, for we still slept on, In the land where we were dreaming. Our sleep grew troubled and our dreams grew wild-- Red meteors flashed across our heaven's field; Crimson the moon; between the Twins Barbed arrows fly, and then begins Such strife as when disorder's Chaos reigns, In the land where we were dreaming. Down from her sun-lit heights smiled Liberty And waved her cap in sign of Victory-- The world approved, and everywhere Except where growled the Russian bear, The good, the brave, the just gave us their prayer In the land where we were dreaming. We fancied that a Government was ours-- We challenged place among the world's great powers; We talked in sleep of Rank, Commission, Until so life-like grew our vision, That he who dared to doubt but met derision In the land where we were dreaming. We looked on high: a banner there was seen, Whose field was blanched and spotless in its sheen-- Chivalry's cross its Union bears, And vet'rans swearing by their scars Vowed they would bear it through a hundred wars In the land where we were dreaming. A hero came amongst us as we slept; At first he lowly knelt--then rose and wept; Then gathering up a thousand spears He swept across the field of Mars; Then bowed farewell and walked beyond the stars-- In the land where we were dreaming. We looked again: another figure still Gave hope, and nerved each individual will-- Full of grandeur, clothed with power, Self-poised, erect, he ruled the hour With stern, majestic sway--of strength a tower In the land where we were dreaming. As, while great Jove, in bronze, a warder God, Gazed eastward from the Forum where he stood, Rome felt herself secure and free, So, "Richmond's safe," we said, while we Beheld a bronzed Hero--God-like Lee, In the land where we were dreaming. As wakes the soldier when the alarum calls-- As wakes the mother when the infant falls-- As starts the traveller when around His sleeping couch the fire-bells sound-- So woke our nation with a single bound In the land where we were dreaming. Woe! woe is me! the startled mother cried-- While we have slept our noble sons have died! Woe! woe is me! how strange and sad, That all our glorious vision's fled And left us nothing real but the dead In the land where we were dreaming. And are they really dead, our martyred slain? No! dreamers! morn shall bid them rise again From every vale--from every height On which they _seemed_ to die for right-- Their gallant spirits shall renew the fight In the land where we were dreaming. Ballad--"Yes, Build Your Walls." I. Yes, build your walls of stone or sand, But know, when all is builded--then, The proper breastworks of the land Are in a race of freeborn men! The sons of sires, who knew, in life, That, of all virtues, manhood first, Still nursing peace, yet arms for strife, And braves, for liberty, the worst! II. What grand examples have been ours! Oh! sons of Moultrie, Marion,--call From mansions of the past, the powers, That plucked ye from the despot's thrall! Do Sumter, Rutledge, Gadsden, live? Oh! for your City by the Sea, They gladly gave, what men could give, Blood, life, and toil, and made it free! III. The grand inheritance, in trust For children of your loins, must know No taint of shame, no loss by lust, Your own, or of the usurping foe! Let not your sons, in future days, The children now that bear your name, Exulting in a grandsire's praise, Droop o'er a father's grave in shame! Charleston Mercury. The Lines Around Petersburg. By Samuel Davis, of North Carolina. "Such a sleep they sleep, The men I loved!" Tennyson. Oh, silence, silence! now, when night is near, And I am left alone, Thou art so strange, so sad reposing here-- And all so changed hath grown, Where all was once exuberant with life Through day and night, in deep and deadly strife. If I must weep, oh, tell me, is there not Some plaintive story breathed into mine ear By spirit-whispers from thy voiceless sphere, Haunting this awful spot? To my sad soul, more mutely eloquent Than words of fame on sculptured monument Outspeaks yon crumbling parapet, where lies The broken gun, the idly rusting ball, Mute tokens of an ill-starred enterprise! Rude altars reared for costly sacrifice! Vast work of hero-hands left in thy fall! Where are they now, that fearless brotherhood, Who marshalled here, That fearful year, In pain and peril, yet undaunted stood,-- Though Death rode fiercest on the battle-storm And earth lay strewn with many a glorious form? Where are they now, who, when the strife was done, With kindly greeting 'round the camp-fire met,-- And made an hour of mirth, from triumphs won, Repay the day's stern toil, when the slow sun had set? Where are they?-- Let the nameless grave declare,-- In strange unwonted hillocks--frequent seen! Alas I who knows how much lies buried there!-- What worlds, of love, and all that might have been! The rest are scattered now, we know not where; And Life to each a new employment brings; But still they seem to gather round me here, To whom these places were familiar things! Wide sundered now, by mountain and by stream, Once brothers--still a brotherhood they seem;-- More firm united, since a common woe Hath brought to common hopes their overthrow! Brave souls and true;--in toil and danger tried,-- I see them still as in those glorious years, When strong, and battling bravely side by side, All crowned their deeds with praise,--and some with tears 'Tis done! the sword is sheathed; the banner furled, No sound where late the crashing missile whirled-- The dead alone possess the battle-plain; The living turn them to life's cares again. Oh, Silence! blessed dreams upon thee wait; here Thought and Feeling ope their precious store, And Memory, gathering from the spoils of Fate Love's scattered treasures, brings them back once more! So let me often dream, As up the brightening stream Of olden Time, thought gently leads me on, Seeking those better days, lost, lost, alas! and gone! All Is Gone. Fadette.--Memphis Appeal. Sister, hark! Atween the trees cometh naught but summer breeze? All is gone-- Summer breezes come and go. Hope doth never wander so-- No, nor evermore doth Woe. Sister, look! Adown the lane treadeth only April rain? All is gone-- Through the tangled hedge-rows green glimmer thus the sunbeam's sheen, Dropping from cloud-rifts between? Sister, hark! the very air heavy on my heart doth bear-- All is gone!-- E'en the birds that chirped erewhile for the frowning sun to smile, Hush at that drum near the stile. Sister, pray!--it is the foe! On thy knees--aye, very low-- All is gone, And the proud South on her knees to a mongrel race like these-- But the dead sleep 'neath the trees. See--they come--their banners flare gayly in our gloomy air-- All is gone-- Flashed our Southern Cross all night--naught but a meteoric light In a moment lost to sight? Aye, so gay--the brave array--marching from no battle fray-- All is gone,-- Yet who vaunteth, of your host, maketh he but little boast If he think on battles most. On they wind, behind the wood. Dost remember once we stood-- All is gone-- All but memory, of those days--but we've stood here while the haze Of the battle met the blaze. Of the sun adown yon hill. Charge on charge--I hear them still.-- All is gone!-- Yet I hear the echoing crash--see the sabres gleam and flash-- See one gallant headlong dash. One, amid the battle-wreck, restive plunged his charger black-- All is gone-- Whirrs the partridge there--didst see where he rode so recklessly? Once he turned and waved to me. "Ah," thou saidst, "the smoke is dark, scarce can I our banner mark"-- All is gone-- All but memory; yet I see, darksome howsoever it be, How to death--to death--rode he. Not a star he proudly bore, but a sword all dripping gore-- All is gone-- Dashes on our little band like yon billow on the strand-- Like yon strand unmoved they stand. For their serried ranks are strong: thousands upon thousands throng-- All is gone, And the handful, true and brave, spent, like yonder dying wave, Fall back slowly from that grave. Low our banner drooped--and fell. Back he spurs, mid shot and shell-- All _was_ gone, But he waves it high--and then, on--we sweep them from the glen-- But he ne'er rode back again. Ah, I smiled to see him go. How my cheek with pride did glow! All is gone-- All, of pride or hope, for me--but that evening, hopefully Stood I at the gate with thee, Sister, when at twilight gray marched our soldiers back this way-- All is gone-- In the woods rang many a cheer--how we smiled! I did not fear Till--at last was borne a bier. Sweetest sister, dost thou weep? Hush! he only fell asleep-- All is gone-- And'twere better he had died--free, whatever us betide-- Our galling chains untried. We were leaning on the gate. Dost remember, it grew late-- All is gone-- Yet I see the stars so pale--see the shadows down the vale-- Hear the whip-poor-will's far wail, As if all were in a dream. Through yon pines the moon did gleam-- All is gone-- On that banner-pall of death--on that red sword without sheath-- And--I knew who lay beneath. Did I speak? I thought I said, let me look upon your dead-- All is gone--- Was I cold? I did not weep. Tears are spray from founts not deep-- My heart lies in frozen sleep. Sister, pray for me. Thine eyes gleam like God's own midnight skies-- All is gone-- Tuneless are my spirit's chords. I but look up, like the birds, And trust Christ to say the words. Bowing Her Head. Her head is bowed downwards; so pensive her air, As she looks on the ground with her pale, solemn face, It were hard to decide whether faith or despair, Whether anguish or trust, in her heart holds a place. Her hair was all gold in the sun's joyous light, Her brow was as smooth as the soft, placid sea: But the furrows of care came with shadows of night, And the gold silvered pale when the light left the lea. Her lips slightly parted, deep thought in her eye, While sorrow cuts seams in her forehead so fair; Her bosom heaves gently, she stifles a sigh, And just moistens her lid with the dews of a tear. Why droops she thus earthward--why bends she? Oh, see! There are gyves on her limbs! see her manacled hand! She is loaded with chains; but her spirit is free-- Free to love and to mourn for her desolate land. Her jailer, though cunning, lacks wit to devise How to fetter her thoughts, as her limbs he has done; The eagle that's snatched from his flight to the skies, From the bars of his cage may still gaze at the sun. No sound does she utter; all voiceless her pains; The wounds of her spirit with pride she conceals; She is dumb to her shearers; the clank of her chains And the throbs of her heart only tell what she feels. She looks sadly around her; now sombre the scene! How thick the deep shadows that darken her view! The black embers of homes where the earth was so green, And the smokes of her wreck where the heavens shone blue. Her daughters bereaved of all succor but God, Her bravest sons perished--the light of her eyes; But oppression's sharp heel does not cut 'neath the sod, And she knows that the chains cannot bind in the skies. She thinks of the vessel she aided to build, Of all argosies richest that floated the seas; Compacted so strong, framed by architects skilled, Or to dare the wild storm, or to sail to the breeze. The balmiest winds blowing soft where she steers, The favor of heaven illuming her path-- She might sail as she pleased to the mild summer airs, And avoid the dread regions of tempest and wrath. But the crew quarrelled soon o'er the cargo she bore; 'Twas adjusted unfairly, the cavillers said; And the anger of men marred the peace that of yore Spread a broad path of glory and sunshine ahead. There were seams in her planks--there were spots on her flag-- So the fanatics said, as they seized on her helm; And from soft summer seas, turned her prow where the crag And the wild breakers rose the good ship to overwhelm. Then the South, though true love to the vessel she bore, Since she first laid its keel in the days that were gone-- Saw it plunge madly on to the wild billows' roar, And rush to destruction and ruin forlorn. So she passed from the decks, in the faith of her heart That justice and God her protectors would be; Not dashed like a frail, fragile spar, without chart, In the fury and foam of the wild raging sea. The life-boat that hung by the stout vessel's side She seized, and embarked on the wide, trackless main, In the faith that she'd reach, making virtue her guide, The haven the mother-ship failed to attain But the crew rose in wrath, and they swore by their might They would sink the brave boat that did buffet the sea, For daring to seek, by her honor and right, A new port from the storms, a new home for the free. So they crushed the brave boat; all forbearance they lost; They littered with ruins the ocean so wild-- Till the hulk of the parent ship, beaten and tossed, Drifted prone on the flood by the wreck of the child. And the bold rower, loaded with fetters and chains, In the gloom of her heart sings the proud vessel's dirge; Half forgets, in its wreck, all the pangs of her pains, As she sees its stout parts floating loose in the surge. Savannah Broadside. The Confederate Flag By Anna Feyre Dinnies, of Louisiana. Take that banner down,'tis weary, Round its staff 'tis drooping dreary, Furl it, hide it, let it rest; For there's not a man to wave it-- For there's not a soul to lave it In the blood that heroes gave it. Furl it, hide it, let it rest. Take that banner down,'tis tattered; Broken is its staff, and shattered; And the valiant hearts are scattered Over whom it floated high. Oh! 'tis hard for us to fold it-- Hard to think there's none to hold it-- Hard that those, who once unrolled it, Now must furl it with a sigh. Furl that banner, furl it sadly; Once six millions hailed it gladly, And three hundred thousand, madly, Swore it should forever wave-- Swore that foeman's sword should never Hearts like theirs entwined dissever-- That their flag should float forever O'er their freedom or their grave! Furl it, for the hands that grasped it, And the hearts that fondly clasped it, Cold and dead are lying low; And that banner--it is trailing, While around it sounds the wailing Of its people in their woe; For, though conquered, they adore it, Love the cold, dead hands that bore it, Weep for those who fell before it-- Oh! how wildly they deplore it, Now to furl and fold it so! Furl that banner; true 'tis gory, But 'tis wreathed around with glory, And'twill live in song and story, Though its folds are in the dust; For its fame, on brightest pages-- Sung by poets, penned by sages-- Shall go sounding down to ages-- Furl its folds though now we must. Furl that banner-softly, slowly; Furl it gently, it is holy, For it droops above the dead. Touch it not, unfurl it never, Let it droop there, furled forever, For its people's hopes are fled. Ashes of Glory. A. J. Requier. Fold up the gorgeous silken sun, By bleeding martyrs blest, And heap the laurels it has won Above its place of rest. No trumpet's note need harshly blare-- No drum funereal roll-- Nor trailing sables drape the bier That frees a dauntless soul! It lived with Lee, and decked his brow From Fate's empyreal Palm: It sleeps the sleep of Jackson now-- As spotless and as calm. It was outnumbered--not outdone; And they shall shuddering tell, Who struck the blow, its latest gun Flashed ruin as it fell. Sleep, shrouded Ensign! not the breeze That smote the victor tar, With death across the heaving seas Of fiery Trafalgar; Not Arthur's knights, amid the gloom Their knightly deeds have starred; Nor Gallic Henry's matchless plume, Nor peerless-born Bayard; Not all that antique fables feign, And Orient dreams disgorge; Nor yet, the Silver Cross of Spain, And Lion of St. George, Can bid thee pale! Proud emblem, still Thy crimson glory shines Beyond the lengthened shades that fill Their proudest kingly lines. Sleep! in thine own historic night,-- And be thy blazoned scroll, _A warrior's Banner takes its flight, To greet the warrior's soul!_ 
9559	----	THE RIDE TO THE LADY And Other Poems BY HELEN GRAY CONE 1891 CONTENTS The Ride to the Lady The First Guest Silence Arraignment The Going Out of the Tide King Raedwald Ivo of Chartres Madonna Pia Two Moods of Failure The Story of the "Orient" A Resurrection The Glorious Company The Trumpeter Comrades The House of Hate The Arrowmaker A Nest in a Lyre Thisbe The Spring Beauties Kinship Compensation When Willows Green At the Parting of the Ways The Fair Gray Lady The Encounter. Summer Hours Love Unsung The Wish for a Chaplet Sonnets: The Torch Race To Sleep Sister Snow The Contrast A Mystery Triumph In Winter, with the Book we had in Spring Sere Wisdom Isolation The Lost Dryad The Gifts of the Oak The Strayed Singer The Immortal Word THE RIDE TO THE LADY "Now since mine even is come at last,-- For I have been the sport of steel, And hot life ebbeth from me fast, And I in saddle roll and reel,-- Come bind me, bind me on my steed! Of fingering leech I have no need!" The chaplain clasped his mailed knee. "Nor need I more thy whine and thee! No time is left my sins to tell; But look ye bind me, bind me well!" They bound him strong with leathern thong, For the ride to the lady should be long. Day was dying; the poplars fled, Thin as ghosts, on a sky blood-red; Out of the sky the fierce hue fell, And made the streams as the streams of hell. All his thoughts as a river flowed, Flowed aflame as fleet he rode, Onward flowed to her abode, Ceased at her feet, mirrored her face. (Viewless Death apace, apace, Rode behind him in that race.) "Face, mine own, mine alone, Trembling lips my lips have known, Birdlike stir of the dove-soft eyne Under the kisses that make them mine! Only of thee, of thee, my need! Only to thee, to thee, I speed!" The Cross flashed by at the highway's turn; In a beam of the moon the Face shone stern. Far behind had the fight's din died; The shuddering stars in the welkin wide Crowded, crowded, to see him ride. The beating hearts of the stars aloof kept time to the beat of the horse's hoof, "What is the throb that thrills so sweet? Heart of my lady, I feel it beat!" But his own strong pulse the fainter fell, Like the failing tongue of a hushing bell. The flank of the great-limbed steed was wet Not alone with the started sweat. Fast, and fast, and the thick black wood Arched its cowl like a black friar's hood; Fast, and fast, and they plunged therein,-- But the viewless rider rode to win, Out of the wood to the highway's light Galloped the great-limbed steed in fright; The mail clashed cold, and the sad owl cried, And the weight of the dead oppressed his side. Fast, and fast, by the road he knew; And slow, and slow, the stars withdrew; And the waiting heaven turned weirdly blue, As a garment worn of a wizard grim. He neighed at the gate in the morning dim. She heard no sound before her gate, Though very quiet was her bower. All was as her hand had left it late: The needle slept on the broidered vine, Where the hammer and spikes of the passion-flower Her fashioning did wait. On the couch lay something fair, With steadfast lips and veiled eyne; But the lady was not there, On the wings of shrift and prayer, Pure as winds that winnow snow, Her soul had risen twelve hours ago. The burdened steed at the barred gate stood, No whit the nearer to his goal. Now God's great grace assoil the soul That went out in the wood! THE FIRST GUEST When the house is finished, Death enters. _Eastern Proverb_ Life's House being ready all, Each chamber fair and dumb, Ere life, the Lord, is come With pomp into his hall,-- Ere Toil has trod the floors, Ere Love has lit the fires, Or young great-eyed Desires Have, timid, tried the doors; Or from east-window leaned One Hope, to greet the sun, Or one gray Sorrow screened Her sight against the west,-- Then enters the first guest, The House of life being done. He waits there in the shade. I deem he is Life's twin, For whom the house was made. Whatever his true name, Be sure, to enter in He has both key and claim. The daybeams, free of fear, Creep drowsy toward his feet; His heart were heard to beat, Were any there to hear; Ah, not for ends malign, Like wild thing crouched in lair, Or watcher of a snare, But with a friend's design He lurks in shadow there! He goes not to the gates To welcome any other, Nay, not Lord Life, his brother; But still his hour awaits Each several guest to find Alone, yea, quite alone; Pacing with pensive mind The cloister's echoing stone, Or singing, unaware, At the turning of the stair Tis truth, though we forget, In Life's House enters none Who shall that seeker shun, Who shall not so be met. "Is this mine hour?" each saith. "So be it, gentle Death!" Each has his way to end, Encountering this friend. Griefs die to memories mild; Hope turns a weanèd child; Love shines a spirit white, With eyes of deepened light. When many a guest has passed, Some day 'tis Life's at last To front the face of Death. Then, casements closed, men say: "Lord Life is gone away; He went, we trust and pray, To God, who gave him breath." Beginning, End, He is: Are not these sons both His? Lo, these with Him are one! To phrase it so were best: God's self is that first Guest, The House of Life being done! SILENCE Why should I sing of earth or heaven? not rather rest, Powerless to speak of that which hath my soul possessed,-- For full possession dumb? Yea, Silence, that were best. And though for what it failed to sound I brake the string, And dashed the sweet lute down, a too much fingered thing, And found a wild new voice,--oh, still, why should I sing? An earth-song could I make, strange as the breath of earth, Filled with the great calm joy of life and death and birth? Yet, were it less than this, the song were little worth. For this the fields caress; brown clods tell each to each; Sad-colored leaves have sense whereto I cannot reach; Spiced everlasting-flowers outstrip my range of speech. A heaven-song could I make, all fire that yet was peace, And tenderness not lost, though glory did increase? But were it less than this, 't were well the song should cease. For this the still west saith, with plumy flames bestrewn; Heaven's body sapphire-clear, at stirless height of noon; The cloud where lightnings pulse, beside the untroubled moon. I will not sing of earth or heaven, but rather rest, Rapt by the face of heaven, and hold on earth's warm breast. Hushed lips, a beating heart, yea, Silence, that were best. ARRAIGNMENT "Not ye who have stoned, not ye who have smitten us," cry The sad, great souls, as they go out hence into dark, "Not ye we accuse, though for you was our passion borne; And ye we reproach not, who silently passed us by. We forgive blind eyes and the ears that would not hark, The careless and causeless hate and the shallow scorn. "But ye, who have seemed to know us, have seen and heard; Who have set us at feasts and have crowned with the costly rose; Who have spread us the purple of praises beneath our feet; Yet guessed not the word that we spake was a living word, Applauding the sound,--we account you as worse than foes! We sobbed you our message; ye said, 'It is song, and sweet!'" THE GOING OUT OF THE TIDE The eastern heaven was all faint amethyst, Whereon the moon hung dreaming in the mist; To north yet drifted one long delicate plume Of roseate cloud; like snow the ocean-spume. Now when the first foreboding swiftly ran Through the loud-glorying sea that it began To lose its late gained lordship of the land, Uprose the billow like an angered man, And flung its prone strength far along the sand; Almost, almost to the old bound, the dark And taunting triumph-mark. But no, no, no! and slow, and slow, and slow, Like a heart losing hold, this wave must go,-- Must go, must go,--dragged heavily back, back, Beneath the next wave plunging on its track, Charging, with thunderous and defiant shout, To fore-determined rout. Again, again the unexhausted main Renews fierce effort, drawing force unguessed From awful deeps of its mysterious breast: Like arms of passionate protest, tossed in vain, The spray upflings above the billow's crest. Again the appulse, again the backward strain-- Till ocean must have rest. With one abandoned movement, swift and wild,-- As though bowed head and outstretched arms it laid On the earth's lap, soft sobbing,--hushed and stayed, The great sea quiets, like a soothed child. Ha! what sharp memory clove the calm, and drave This last fleet furious wave? On, on, endures the struggle into night, Ancient as Time, yet fresh as the fresh hour; As oft repeated since the birth of light As the strong agony and mortal fight Of human souls, blind-reaching, with the Power Aloof, unmoved, impossible to cross, Whose law is seeming loss. Low-sunken from the longed-for triumph-mark; The spent sea sighs as one that grieves in sleep. The unveiled moon along the rippling plain Casts many a keen, cold, shifting silvery spark, Wild as the pulses of strange joy, that leap Even in the quick of pain. And she compelling, she that stands for law,-- As law for Will eternal,--perfect, clear, And uncompassionate shines: to her appear Vast sequences close-linked without a flaw. All past despairs of ocean unforgot, All raptures past, serene her light she gives, The moon too high for pity, since she lives Aware that loss is not. KING RAEDWALD Will you hear now the speech of King Raedwald,--heathen Raedwald, the simple yet wise? He, the ruler of North-folk and South-folk, a man open-browed as the skies, Held the eyes of the eager Italians with his blue, bold, Englishman's eyes. In his hall, on his throne, so he sat, with the light of the fire on him full: Colored bright as the ring of red gold on his hand, fit to buffet a bull, Was the mane that grew down on his neck, was the beard he would pondering pull. To the priests, to the eager Italians, thus fearless less he poured his free speech; "O my honey-tongued fathers, I turn not away from the faith that ye teach! Not the less hath a man many moods, and may ask a religion for each. "Grant that all things are well with the realm on a delicate day of the spring, Easter month, time of hopes and of swallows! The praises, the psalms that ye sing, As in pleasant accord they float heavenward, are good in the ears of the king. "Then the heart bubbles forth with clear waters, to the time of this wonder-word Peace, From the chanting and preaching whereof ye who serve the white Christ never cease; And your curly, soft incense ascending enwraps my content like a fleece. "But a churl comes adrip from the rivers, pants me out, fallen spent on the floor, 'O King Raedwald, Northumberland marches, and to-morrow knocks hard at thy door, Hot for melting thy crown on the hearth!' Then commend me to Woden and Thor! "Could I sit then and listen to preachments on turning the cheek to the blow, And saying a prayer for the smiter, and holding my seen treasure low For the sake of a treasure unseen? By the sledge of the Thunderer, no! "For my thought flashes out as a sword, cleaving counsel as clottage of cream; And your incense and chanting are but as the smoke of burnt towns and the scream; And I quaff me the thick mead of triumph from enemies' skulls in my dream! "And 'tis therefore this day I resolve me,--for King Raedwald will cringe not, nor lie!-- I will bring back the altar of Woden; in the temple will have it, hard by The new altar of this your white Christ. As my mood may decide, worship I!" So he spake in his large self-reliance,--he, a man open-browed as the skies; Would not measure his soul by a standard that was womanish-weak to his eyes, Smite his breast and go on with his sinning,--savage Raedwald, the simple yet wise! And the centuries bloom o'er his barrow. But for us,--have we mastered it quite, The old riddle, that sweet is strong's outcome, the old marvel, that meekness is might, That the child is the leader of lions, that forgiveness is force at its height? When we summon the shade of rude Raedwald, in his candor how king-like he towers! Have the centuries, over his slumber, only borne sterile falsehoods for flowers? Pray you, what if Christ found him the nobler, having weighed his frank manhood with ours? IVO OF CHARTRES Now may it please my lord, Louis the king, Lily of Christ and France! riding his quest, I, Bishop Ivo, saw a wondrous thing. There was no light of sun left in the west, And slowly did the moon's new light increase. Heaven, without cloud, above the near hill's crest, Lay passion purple in a breathless peace. Stars started like still tears, in rapture shed, Which without consciousness the lids release. All steadily, one little sparkle red, Afar, drew close. A woman's form grew up Out of the dimness, tall, with queen-like head, And in one hand was fire; in one, a cup. Of aspect grave she was, with eyes upraised, As one whose thoughts perpetually did sup At the Lord's table. While the cresset blazed, Her I regarded. "Daughter, whither bent, And wherefore?" As by speech of man amazed, One moment her deep look to me she lent; Then, in a voice of hymn-like, solemn fall, Calm, as by role, she spake out her intent: "I in my cruse bear water, wherewithal To quench the flames of Hell; and with my fire I Paradise would burn: that hence no small Fear shall impel, and no mean hope shall hire, Men to serve God as they have served of yore; But to his will shall set their whole desire, For love, love, love alone, forevermore!" And "love, love, love," rang round her as she passed From sight, with mystic murmurs o'er and o'er Reverbed from hollow heaven, as from some vast, Deep-colored, vaulted, ocean-answering shell. I, Ivo, had no power to ban or bless, But was as one withholden by a spell. Forward she fared in lofty loneliness, Urged on by an imperious inward stress, To waste fair Eden, and to drown fierce Hell. MADONNA PIA Ricordati di me, che son la Pia. Siena mi fe; disfecomi Maremma; Salsi colui, che, inanellata pria, Disposato m'avea colla sua gemma. _Purgatorio_, Canto V. To westward lies the unseen sea, Blue sea the live winds wander o'er. The many-colored sails can flee, And leave the dead, low-lying shore. Her longing does not seek the main, Her face turns northward first at morn; There, crowning all the wide champaign, Siena stood, where she was born. Siena stands, and still shall stand; She ne'er shall see or town or tower. Warm life and beauty, hand in hand, Steal farther from her hour by hour. Yet forth she leans, with trembling knees, And northward will she stare and stare Through that thick wall of cypress-trees, And sigh adown the stirless air: "Shall no remembrance in Siena linger Of me, once fair, whom slow Maremma slays? As well he knows, whose ring upon my finger Hath sealed for his alone mine earthly days!" From wilds where shudders through the weeds The dull, mean-headed, silent snake, Like voiceless doubt that creeps and breeds; From swamps where sluggish waters take, As lives unblest a passing love, The flag-flower's image in the spring, Or seem, when flits the bird above, To stir within with shadowed wing, A Presence mounts in pallid mist To fold her close: she breathes its breath; She waxes wan, by Fever kissed, Who weds her for his master, Death, Aside are set her dimmed hopes all, She counts no more the uncurrent hoard; On gray Death's neck she fain would fall, To own him for her proper lord. She minds the journey here by night: When some red sudden torch would blaze, She saw by fits, with childish fright, The cork-trees twist beside the ways. Like dancing demon shapes they showed, With malice drunk; the bat beat by, The owlet sobbed; on, on they rode, She knew not where, she knows not why. For Nello--when in piteous wise She lifted up her look to ask, Except the ever-burning eyes His face was like a marble mask. And so it always meets her now; The tomb wherein at last he lies Shall bear such carven lips and brow, All save the ever-burning eyes. Perchance it is his form alone Doth stroke his hound, at meat doth sit, And, for the soul that was his own, A fiend awhile inhabits it; While he sinks through the fiery throng, Down, to fill an evil bond, Since false conceit of others' wrong Hath wrought him to a sin beyond. But she--if when her years were glad Vain fluttering thoughts were hers, that hid Behind that gracious fame she had; If e'er observance hard she did That sinful men might call her saint,-- White-handed Pia, dovelike-eyed,-- The sick blank hours shall yet acquaint Her heart with all her blameful pride. And Death shall find her kneeling low, And lift her to the porphyry stair, And she from ledge to ledge shall go, Stayed by the staff of that last prayer, Until the high, sweet-singing wood Whence folk are rapt to heaven, she win; Therein the unpardoned never stood, Nor may one Sorrow nest therein. But through the Tuscan land shall beat Her Sorrow, like a wounded bird; And if her suit at Mary's feet Avail, its moan shall yet be heard By some just poet, who shall shed, Whate'er the theme that leads his rhyme Bright words like tears above her, dead, Entreating of the after time: "Among you let her mournful memory linger! Siena bare her, whom Maremma slew; And this dark lord, who gave her maiden finger His ancient gem, the secret only knew." TWO MOODS OF FAILURE I THE LAST CUP OF CANARY Sir Harry Lovelock, 1645 So, the powder's low, and the larder's clean, And surrender drapes, with its black impending, All the stage for a sorry and sullen scene: Yet indulge me my whim of a madcap ending! Let us once more fill, ere the final chill, Every vein with the glow of the rich canary! Since the sweet hot liquor of life's to spill, Of the last of the cellar what boots be chary? Then hear the conclusion: I'll yield my breath, But my leal old house and my good blade never! Better one bitter kiss on the lips of Death Than despoiled Defeat as a wife forever! Let the faithful fire hold the walls in ward Till the roof-tree crash! Be the smoke once riven While we flash from the gate like a single sword, True steel to the hilt, though in dull earth driven! Do you frown, Sir Richard, above your ruff, In the Holbein yonder? My deed ensures you! For the flame like a fencer shall give rebuff To your blades that blunder, you Roundhead boors, you! And my ladies, a-row on the gallery wall, Not a sing-song sergeant or corporal sainted Shall pierce their breasts with his Puritan ball, To annul the charms of the flesh, though painted! I have worn like a jewel the life they gave; As the ring in mine ear I can lightly lose it, If my days be done, why, my days were brave! If the end arrive, I as master choose it! Then fill to the brim, and a health, I say, To our liege King Charles, and I pray God bless him! 'T would amend worse vintage to drink dismay To the clamorous mongrel pack that press him! And a health to the fair women, past recall, That like birds astray through the heart's hall flitted; To the lean devil Failure last of all, And the lees in his beard for a fiend outwitted! II THE YOUNG MAN CHARLES STUART REVIEWETH THE TROOPS ON BLACKHEATH (Private Constant-in-Tribulation Joyce, _May_, 1660) We were still as a wood without wind; as 't were set by a spell Stayed the gleam on the steel cap, the glint on the slant petronel. He to left of me drew down his grim grizzled lip with his teeth,-- I remember his look; so we grew like dumb trees on the heath. But the people,--the people were mad as with store of new wine; Oh, they cheered him, they capped him, they roared as he rode down the line: He that fled us at Worcester, the boy, the green brier-shoot, the son Of the Stuart on whom for his sin the great judgment was done! Swam before us the field of our shame, and our souls walked afar; Saw the glory, the blaze of the sun bursting over Dunbar; Saw the faces of friends, in the morn riding jocund to fight; Saw the stern pallid faces again, as we saw them at night! "O ye blessed, who died in the Lord! would to God that we too Had so passed, only sad that we ceased his high justice to do, With the words of the psalm on our lips that from Israel's once came, How the Lord is a strong man of war; yea, the Lord is his name! "Not for us, not for us! who have served for his kingdom seven years, Yea, and yet other seven have we served, sweating blood, bleeding tears, For the kingdom of God and the saints! Rachel's beauty made bold, Yet we bear but a Leah at last to a hearth that is cold!" Burned the fire while I mused, while I gloomed; in the end came a call; Settled o'er me a calm like a cloud, spake a voice still and small: "Take thou Leah to bride, take thou Failure to bed and to board! Thou shalt rear up new strengths at her knees; she is given of the Lord! "If with weight of his right hand, with power, he denieth to deal, And the smoke clouds, and thunders of guns, and the lightnings of steel, Shall the cool silent dews of his grace, in a season of peace, Not descend on the land, as of old, for a sign, on the fleece? "Hath he cleft not the rock, to the yield of a stream that is sweet? Hath he set in the ribs of the lion no honey for meat? Can he bring not delight to the desert, and buds to the rod? He will shine, he will visit his vine; he hath sworn, he is God!" Then I thought of the gate I rode through on the roan that's long dead,-- I remember the dawn was but pale, and the stars overhead; Of the babe that is grown to a maid, and of Martha, my wife, And the spring on the wolds far away, and gave thanks for my life! THE STORY OF THE "ORIENT" 'T was a pleasant Sunday morning while the spring was in its glory, English spring of gentle glory; smoking by his cottage door, Florid-faced, the man-o'-war's-man told his white-head boy the story, Noble story of Aboukir, told a hundred times before. "Here, the _Theseus_--here, the _Vanguard_;" as he spoke each name sonorous,-- _Minotaur, Defence, Majestic_, stanch old comrades of the brine, That against the ships of Brucys made their broadsides roar in chorus,-- Ranging daisies on his doorstone, deft he mapped the battle-line. Mapped the curve of tall three-deckers, deft as might a man left-handed, Who had given an arm to England later on at Trafalgar. While he poured the praise of Nelson to the child with eyes expanded, Bright athwart his honest forehead blushed the scarlet cutlass-scar. For he served aboard the _Vanguard_, saw the Admiral blind and bleeding Borne below by silent sailors, borne to die as then they deemed. Every stout heart sick but stubborn, fought the sea-dogs on unheeding, Guns were cleared and manned and cleared, the battle thundered, flashed, and screamed. Till a cry swelled loud and louder,--towered on fire the _Orient_ stately, Brucys' flag-ship, she that carried guns a hundred and a score; Then came groping up the hatchway he they counted dead but lately, Came the little one-armed Admiral to guide the fight once more. "'Lower the boats!' was Nelson's order."-- But the listening boy beside him, Who had followed all his motions with an eager wide blue eye, Nursed upon the name of Nelson till he half had deified him, Here, with childhood's crude consistence, broke the tale to question "Why?" For by children facts go streaming in a throng that never pauses, Noted not, till, of a sudden, thought, a sunbeam, gilds the motes, All at once the known words quicken, and the child would deal with causes. Since to kill the French was righteous, why bade Nelson lower the boats? Quick the man put by the question. "But the _Orient_, none could save her; We could see the ships, the ensigns, clear as daylight by the flare; And a many leaped and left her; but, God rest 'em! some were braver; Some held by her, firing steady till she blew to God knows where." At the shock, he said, the _Vanguard_ shook through all her timbers oaken; It was like the shock of Doomsday,--not a tar but shuddered hard. All was hushed for one strange moment; then that awful calm was broken By the heavy plash that answered the descent of mast and yard. So, her cannon still defying, and her colors flaming, flying, In her pit her wounded helpless, on her deck her Admiral dead, Soared the _Orient_ into darkness with her living and her dying: "Yet our lads made shift to rescue three-score souls," the seaman said. Long the boy with knit brows wondered o'er that friending of the foeman; Long the man with shut lips pondered; powerless he to tell the cause Why the brother in his bosom that desired the death of no man, In the crash of battle wakened, snapped the bonds of hate like straws. While he mused, his toddling maiden drew the daisies to a posy; Mild the bells of Sunday morning rang across the church-yard sod; And, helped on by tender hands, with sturdy feet all bare and rosy, Climbed his babe to mother's breast, as climbs the slow world up to God. A RESURRECTION _Neither would they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead_. I was quick in the flesh, was warm, and the live heart shook my breast; In the market I bought and sold, in the temple I bowed my head. I had swathed me in shows and forms, and was honored above the rest For the sake of the life I lived; nor did any esteem me dead. But at last, when the hour was ripe--was it sudden-remembered word? Was it sight of a bird that mounted, or sound of a strain that stole? I was 'ware of a spell that snapped, of an inward strength that stirred, Of a Presence that filled that place; and it shone, and I knew my Soul. And the dream I had called my life was a garment about my feet, For the web of the years was rent with the throe of a yearning strong. With a sweep as of winds in heaven, with a rush as of flames that meet, The Flesh and the Spirit clasped; and I cried, "Was I dead so long?" I had glimpse of the Secret, flashed through the symbol obscure and mean, And I felt as a fire what erst I repeated with lips of clay; And I knew for the things eternal the things eye hath not seen; Yea, the heavens and the earth shall pass; but they never shall pass away. And the miracle on me wrought, in the streets I would straight make known: "When this marvel of mine is heard, without cavil shall men receive Any legend of haloed saint, staring up through the sealèd stone!" So I spake in the trodden ways; but behold, there would none believe! THE GLORIOUS COMPANY "Faces, faces, faces of the streaming marching surge, Streaming on the weary road, toward the awful steep, Whence your glow and glory, as ye set to that sharp verge, Faces lit as sunlit stars, shining as ye sweep? "Whence this wondrous radiance that ye somehow catch and cast, Faces rapt, that one discerns 'mid the dusky press Herding in dull wonder, gathering fearful to the Vast? Surely all is dark before, night of nothingness!" _Lo, the Light!_ (they answer) _O the pure, the pulsing Light, Beating like a heart of life, like a heart of love, Soaring, searching, filling all the breadth and depth and height, Welling, whelming with its peace worlds below, above!_ "O my soul, how art thou to that living Splendor blind, Sick with thy desire to see even as these men see!-- Yet to look upon them is to know that God hath shined: Faces lit as sunlit stars, be all my light to me!" THE TRUMPETER Two ships, alone in sky and sea, Hang clinched, with crash and roar; There is but one--whiche'er it be-- Will ever come to shore. And will it be the grim black bulk, That towers so evil now? Or will it be The Grace of God, With the angel at her prow? The man that breathes the battle's breath May live at last to know; But the trumpeter lies sick to death In the stifling dark below. He hears the fight above him rave; He fears his mates must yield; He lies as in a narrow grave Beneath a battle-field. His fate will fall before the ship's, Whate'er the ship betide; He lifts the trumpet to his lips As though he kissed a bride. "Now blow thy best, blow thy last, My trumpet, for the Right!"-- He has sent his soul in one strong blast, To hearten them that fight. COMRADES "Oh, whither, whither, rider toward the west?" "And whither, whither, rider toward the east?" "I rode we ride upon the same high quest, Whereon who enters may not be released; "To seek the Cup whose form none ever saw,-- A nobler form than e'er was shapen yet, Though million million cups without a flaw, Afire with gems, on princes' boards are set; "To seek the Wine whereof none ever had One draught, though many a generous wine flows free,-- The spiritual blood that shall make glad The hearts of mighty men that are to be." "But shall one find it, brother? Where I ride, Men mock and stare, who never had the dream, Yet hope within my breast has never died." "Nor ever died in mine that trembling gleam." "Eastward, I deem: the sun and all good things Are born to bless us of the Orient old." "Westward, I deem: an untried ocean sings Against that coast, 'New shores await the bold.'" "God speed or thee or me, so coming men But have the Cup!" "God speed!"--Not once before Their eyes had met, nor ever met again, Yet were they loving comrades evermore. THE HOUSE OF HATE Mine enemy builded well, with the soft blue hills in sight; But betwixt his house and the hills I builded a house for spite: And the name thereof I set in the stone-work over the gate, With a carving of bats and apes; and I called it the House of Hate. And the front was alive with masks of malice and of despair; Horned demons that leered in stone, and women with serpent hair; That whenever his glance would rest on the soft hills far and blue, It must fall on mine evil work, and my hatred should pierce him through. And I said, "I will dwell herein, for beholding my heart's desire On my foe;" and I knelt, and fain had brightened the hearth with fire; But the brands they would hiss and die, as with curses a strangled man, And the hearth was cold from the day that the House of Hate began. And I called at the open door, "Make ye merry, all friends of mine, In the hall of my House of Hate, where is plentiful store and wine. We will drink unhealth together unto him I have foiled and fooled!" And they stared and they passed me by; but I scorned to be thereby schooled. And I ordered my board for feast; and I drank, in the topmost seat, Choice grape from a curious cup; and the first it was wonder-sweet; But the second was bitter indeed, and the third was bitter and black, And the gloom of the grave came on me, and I cast the cup to wrack. Alone, I was stark alone, and the shadows were each a fear; And thinly I laughed, but once, for the echoes were strange to hear; And the wind in the hallways howled as a green-eyed wolf might cry, And I heard my heart: I must look on the face of a man, or die! So I crept to my mirrored face, and I looked, and I saw it grown (By the light in my shaking hand) to the like of the masks of stone; And with horror I shrieked aloud as I flung my torch and fled, And a fire-snake writhed where it fell; and at midnight the sky was red. And at morn, when the House of Hate was a ruin, despoiled of flame, I fell at mine enemy's feet, and besought him to slay my shame; But he looked in mine eyes and smiled, and his eyes were calm and great: "You rave, or have dreamed," he said; "I saw not your House of Hate." THE ARROWMAKER Day in, day out, or sun or rain, Or sallow leaf, or summer grain, Beneath a wintry morning moon Or through red smouldering afternoon, With simple joy, with careful pride, He plies the craft he long has plied: To shape the stave, to set the sting, To fit the shaft with irised wing; And farers by may hear him sing, For still his door is wide: "Laugh and sigh, live and die,-- The world swings round; I know not, I, If north or south mine arrows fly!" And sometimes, while he works, he dreams, And on his soul a vision gleams: Some storied field fought long ago, Where arrows fell as thick as snow. His breath comes fast, his eyes grow bright, To think upon that ancient fight. Oh, leaping from the strained string Against an armored Wrong to ring, Brave the songs that arrows sing! He weighs the finished flight: "Live and die; by and by The sun kills dark; I know not, I, In what good fight mine arrows fly!" Or at the gray hour, weary grown, When curfew o'er the wold is blown, He sees, as in a magic glass, Some lost and lonely mountain-pass; And lo! a sign of deathful rout The mocking vine has wound about,-- An earth-fixed arrow by a spring, All greenly mossed, a mouldered thing; That stifled shaft no more shall sing! He shakes his head in doubt. "Laugh and sigh, live and die,-- The hand is blind: I know not, I, In what lost pass mine arrows lie! One to east, one to west, Another for the eagle's breast,-- The archer and the wind know best!" The stars are in the sky; He lays his arrows by. A NEST IN A LYRE As sign before a playhouse serves A giant Lyre, ornately gilded, On whose convenient coignes and curves The pert brown sparrows late have builded. They flit, and flirt, and prune their wings, Not awed at all by golden glitter, And make among the silent strings Their satisfied ephemeral twitter. Ah, somewhat so we perch and flit, And spy some crumb and dash to win it, And with a witty chirping twit Our sheltering Time--there's nothing in it! In Life's large frame, a glorious Lyre's, We nest, content, our season flighty, Nor guess we brush the powerful wires Might witch the stars with music mighty. THISBE The garden within was shaded, And guarded about from sight; The fragrance flowed to the south wind, The fountain leaped to the light. And the street without was narrow, And dusty, and hot, and mean; But the bush that bore white roses, She leaned to the fence between: And softly she sought a crevice In that barrier blank and tall, And shyly she thrust out through it Her loveliest bud of all. And tender to touch, and gracious, And pure as the moon's pure shine, The full rose paled and was perfect,-- For whose eyes, for whose lips, but mine! THE SPRING BEAUTIES The Puritan Spring Beauties stood freshly clad for church; A Thrush, white-breasted, o'er them sat singing on his perch. "Happy be! for fair are ye!" the gentle singer told them, But presently a buff-coat Bee came booming up to scold them. "Vanity, oh, vanity! Young maids, beware of vanity!" Grumbled out the buff-coat Bee, Half parson-like, half soldierly. The sweet-faced maidens trembled, with pretty, pinky blushes, Convinced that it was wicked to listen to the Thrushes; And when, that shady afternoon, I chanced that way to pass, They hung their little bonnets down and looked into the grass, All because the buff-coat Bee Lectured them so solemnly:-- "Vanity, oh, vanity! Young maids, beware of vanity!" KINSHIP A lily grew in the tangle, In a flame red garment dressed, And many a ruby spangle Besprinkled her tawny breast. And the silken moth sailed by her With a swift and a snow-white sail; Not a gilt-girt bee came nigh her, Nor a fly in his gay green mail. And the bronze-brown wings and the golden, O'er the billowing meadows blown, Were still as by magic holden From the lily that flamed alone; Till over the fragrant tangle A wanderer winging went, And with many a ruby spangle Were his tawny vans besprent. And he hovered one moment stilly O'er the thicket, her mazy bower, Then he sank to the heart of the lily, And they seemed but a single flower. COMPENSATION The brook ran laughing from the shade, And in the sunshine danced all day: The starlight and the moonlight made Its glimmering path a Milky Way. The blue sky burned, with summer fired; For parching fields, for pining flowers, The spirits of the air desired The brook's bright life to shed in showers. It gave its all that thirst to slake; Its dusty channel lifeless lay; Now softest flowers, white-foaming, make Its winding bed a Milky Way. WHEN WILLOWS GREEN When goldenly the willows green, And, mirrored in the sunset pool, Hang wavering, wild-rose clouds between: When robins call in twilights cool: What is it we await? Who lingers and is late? What strange unrest, what yearning stirs us all When willows green, when robins call? When fields of flowering grass respire A sweet that seems the breath of Peace, And liquid-voiced the thrushes choir, Oh, whence the sense of glad release? What is it life uplifts? Who entered, bearing gifts? What floods from heaven the being overpower When thrushes choir, when grasses flower? AT THE PARTING OF THE WAYS (AD COMITEM JUNIOREM) Comrade Youth! Sit down with me Underneath the summer tree, Cool green dome whose shade is sweet, Where the sunny roadways meet, See, the ancient finger-post, Silver-bleached with rain and shine, Warns us like a noon-day ghost: That way's yours, and this way's mine! I would hold you with delays Here at parting of the ways. Hold you! I as well might look To detain the racing brook With regrets and grievance tender, As my comrade swift and slender, Shy, capricious, all of spring! Catch the wind with blossoms laden, Catch the wild bird on the wing, Catch the heart of boy or maiden! Yet I'll hold your image fast, As this hour I saw you last,-- As with staff in hand you sat, Soft curls putting forth defiant From the tilted Mercury's hat, Wreathen with the wilding grace Of the fresh-leaved vine and pliant, Stealing down to see your face. Eyes of pleasance, lips of laughter, I shall hoard you long hereafter; Very dear shall be the days Ere the parting of the ways! Shall you deem them dear, in truth, Days when we, o'er hill and hollow, Trudged together, Comrade Youth? Ah, you dream of days to follow! Hand in hand we jogged along; I would fetch from out my scrip, Crust or jest or antique song,-- Live and lovely, on your lip, Such poor needments as I had Were as yours; you made me glad. --Lo, the dial! No prayer stays Time, at parting of the ways! This gold memory--rings it true? Half for me and half for you. Cleave and share it. Now, good sooth, God be with you, Comrade Youth! THE FAIR GRAY LADY When the charm at last is fled From the woodland stark and pale, And like shades of glad hours dead Whirl the leaves before the gale: When against the western fire Darkens many an empty nest, Like a thwarted heart's desire That in prime was hardly guessed: Then the fair gray Lady leans, Lingering, o'er the faded grass, Still the soul of all the scenes Once she graced, a golden lass. O'er the Year's discrownèd sleep, Dear as in her earlier day, She her bending watch doth keep, She the Goldenrod grown gray. THE ENCOUNTER There's a wood-way winding high, Roofed far up with light-green flicker, Save one midmost star of sky. Underfoot 'tis all pale brown With the dead leaves matted down One on other, thick and thicker; Soft, but springing to the tread. There a youth late met a maid Running lightly,--oh, so fleetly! "Whence art thou?" the herd-boy said. Either side her long hair swayed, Half a tress and half a braid, Colored like the soft dead leaf, As she answered, laughing sweetly, On she ran, as flies the swallow; He could not choose but follow Though it had been to his grief. "I have come up from the valley,-- From the valley!" Once he caught her, Swerving down a sidelong alley, For a moment, by the hand. "Tell me, tell me," he besought her, "Sweetest, I would understand Why so cold thy palm, that slips From me like the shy cold minnow? The wood is warm, and smells of fern, And below the meadows burn. Hard to catch and hard to win, oh! Why are those brown finger tips Crinkled as with lines of water?" Laughing while she featly footed, With the herd-boy hasting after, Sprang she on a trunk uprooted, Clung she by a roping vine; Leaped behind a birch, and told, Still eluding, through its fine, Mocking, slender, leafy laughter, Why her finger tips were cold: "I went down to tease the brook, With her fishes, there below; She comes dancing, thou must know, And the bushes arch above her; But the seeking sunbeams look, Dodging through the wind-blown cover, Find and kiss her into stars. Silvery veins entwine and crook Where a stone her tripping bars; There be smooth, clear sweeps, and swirls Bubbling up crisp drops like pearls. There I lie, along the rocks Thick with greenest slippery moss, And I have in hand a strip Of gray, pliant, dappled bark; And I comb her liquid locks Till her tangling currents cross; And I have delight to hark To the chiding of her lip, Taking on the talking stone With each turn another tone. Oh, to set her wavelets bickering! Oh, to hear her laughter simple, See her fret and flash and dimple! Ha, ha, ha!" The woodland rang With the rippling through the flickering. At the birch the herd-boy sprang. On a sudden something wound Vine-like round his throbbing throat; On a sudden something smote Sharply on his longing lips, Stung him as the birch bough whips: Was it kiss or was it blow? Never after could he know; She was gone without a sound. Never after could he see In the wood or in the mead, Or in any company Of the rustic mortal maids, Her with acorn-colored braids; Never came she to his need. Never more the lad was merry, Strayed apart, and learned to dream, Feeding on the tart wild berry; Murmuring words none understood,-- Words with music of the wood, And with music of the stream. SUMMER HOURS Hours aimless-drifting as the milkweed's down In seeming, still a seed of joy ye bear That steals into the soul when unaware, And springs up Memory in the stony town. LOVE UNSUNG Seven jewelled rays has the Sun fast bound In his arrow of blinding sheen; But he quickens the breast of the fruitful ground With a subtlest ray unseen. And the rainbow moods of this love of ours I may blend in the song I bring; But the magic that makes life laugh with flowers Is the love that I cannot sing. THE WISH FOR A CHAPLET Vineleaf and rose I would my chaplet make: I would my word were wine for all men's sake. Pure from the pressing of the stainless feet Of unblamed Hours, and for an altar meet. Vineleaf and rose: I would, had I the art, Distil, to lasting sweet, Joy's rosy heart, That no sere autumn should its fragrance wrong, Closed in the crystal glass of slender song. SONNETS THE TORCH-RACE Brave racer, who hast sped the living light With throat outstretched and every nerve a-strain, Now on thy left hand labors gray-faced Pain, And Death hangs close behind thee on the right. Soon flag the flying feet, soon fails the sight, With every pulse the gaunt pursuers gain; And all thy splendor of strong life must wane And set into the mystery of night. Yet fear not, though in falling, blindness hide Whose hand shall snatch, before it scars the sod, The light thy lessening grasp no more controls: Truth's rescuer, Truth shall instantly provide: This is the torch-race game, that noblest souls Play on through time beneath the eyes of God. TO SLEEP All slumb'rous images that be, combined, To this white couch and cool shall woo thee, Sleep! First will I think on fields of grasses deep In gray-green flower, o'er which the transient wind Runs like a smile; and next will call to mind How glistening poplar-tops, when breezes creep Among their leaves, a tender motion keep, Stroking the sky, like touch of lovers kind. Ah, having felt thy calm kiss on mine eyes, All night inspiring thy divine pure breath, I shall awake as into godhood born, And with a fresh, undaunted soul arise, Clear as the blue convolvulus at morn. --Dear bedfellow, deals thus thy brother, Death? SISTER SNOW Praised be our Lord (to echo the sweet phrase Of saintly Francis) for our sister Snow: Whose soft, soft coming never man may know By any sound; whose down-light touch allays All fevers of worn earth. She clothes the days In garments without spot, and hence doth go Her noiseless shuttle swiftly to and fro, And very pure, and pleasant, are her ways. But yesterday, how loveless looked the skies! How cold the sun's last glance, and unbenign, Across the field forsaken, russet-leaved! Now pearly peace on all the landscape lies. --Wast thou not sent us, Sister, for a sign Of that vast Mercy of God, else unconceived? RETROSPECT "Backward," he said, "dear heart I like to look To those half-spring, half-winter days, when first We drew together, ere the leaf-buds burst. Sunbeams were silver yet, keen gusts yet shook The boughs. Have you remembered that kind book, That for our sake Galeotto's part rehearsed, (The friend of lovers,--this time blessed, not cursed!) And that best hour, when reading we forsook?" She, listening, wore the smile a mother wears At childish fancies needless to control; Yet felt a fine, hid pain with pleasure blend. Better it seemed to think that love of theirs, Native as breath, eternal as the soul, Knew no beginning, could not have an end. THE CONTRAST He loved her; having felt his love begin With that first look,--as lover oft avers. He made pale flowers his pleading ministers, Impressed sweet music, drew the springtime in To serve his suit; but when he could not win, Forgot her face and those gray eyes of hers; And at her name his pulse no longer stirs, And life goes on as though she had not been. She never loved him; but she loved Love so, So reverenced Love, that all her being shook At his demand whose entrance she denied. Her thoughts of him such tender color took As western skies that keep the afterglow. The words he spoke were with her till she died. A MYSTERY That sunless day no living shadow swept Across the hills, fleet shadow chasing light, Twin of the sailing cloud: but, mists wool white, Slow-stealing mists, on those heaved shoulders crept, And wrought about the strong hills while they slept In witches' wise, and rapt their forms from sight. Dreams were they; less than dream, the noblest height And farthest; and the chilly woodland wept. A sunless day and sad: yet all the while Within the grave green twilight of the wood, inscrutable, immutable, apart, Hearkening the brook, whose song she understood, The secret birch-tree kept her silver smile, Strange as the peace that gleams at sorrow's heart. TRIUMPH This windy sunlit morning after rain, The wet bright laurel laughs with beckoning gleam In the blown wood, whence breaks the wild white stream Rushing and flashing, glorying in its gain; Nor swerves nor parts, but with a swift disdain O'erleaps the boulders lying in long dream, Lapped in cold moss; and in its joy doth seem A wood-born creature bursting from a chain. And "Triumph, triumph, triumph!" is its hoarse Fierce-whispered word. O fond, and dost not know Thy triumph on another wise must be,-- To render all the tribute of thy force, And lose thy little being in the flow Of the unvaunting river toward the sea! IN WINTER, WITH THE BOOK WE READ IN SPRING The blackberry's bloom, when last we went this way, Veiled all her bowsome rods with trembling white; The robin's sunset breast gave forth delight At sunset hour; the wind was warm with May. Armored in ice the sere stems arch to-day, Each tiny thorn encased and argent bright; Where clung the birds that long have taken flight, Dead songless leaves cling fluttering on the spray. O hand in mine, that mak'st all paths the same, Being paths of peace, where falls nor chill nor gloom, Made sweet with ardors of an inward spring! I hold thee--frozen skies to rosy flame Are turned, and snows to living snows of bloom, And once again the gold-brown thrushes sing. SERE WISDOM I had remembrance of a summer morn, When all the glistening field was softly stirred And like a child's in happy sleep I heard The low and healthful breathing of the corn. Late when the sumach's red was dulled and worn, And fainter grew the trite and troublous word Of tristful cricket, that replaced the bird, I sought the slope, and found a waste forlorn. Against that cold clear west, whence winter peers, All spectral stood the bleached stalks thin-leaved, Dry as papyrus kept a thousand years, And hissing whispered to the wind that grieved, _It was a dream--we have no goodly ears-- There was no summer-time--deceived! deceived!_ ISOLATION White fog around, soft snow beneath the tread, All sunless, windless, tranced, the morning lay; All noiseless, trackless, new, the well-known way. The silence weighed upon the sense; in dread, "Alone, I am alone," I shuddering said, "And wander in a region where no ray Has ever shone, and as on earth's first day Or last, my kind are not yet born or dead." Yet not afar, meanwhile, there faltered feet Like mine, through that wide mystery of the snow, Nor could the old accustomed paths divine; And even as mine, unheard spake voices low, And hearts were near, that as my own heart beat, Warm hands, and faces fashioned like to mine. THE LOST DRYAD (TO EDITH M. THOMAS) Into what beech or silvern birch, O friend Suspected ever of a dryad strain, Hast crept at last, delighting to regain Thy sylvan house? Now whither shall I wend, Or by what wingèd post my greeting send, Bird, butterfly, or bee? Shall three moons wane, And yet not found?--Ah, surely it was pain Of old, for mortal youth his heart to lend To any hamadryad! In his hour Of simple trust, wild impulse him bereaves: She flees, she seeks her strait enmossèd bower And while he, searching, softly calls, and grieves, Oblivious, high above she laughs in leaves, Or patters tripping talk to the quick shower. A MEMORY Though pent in stony streets, 'tis joy to know, 'Tis joy, although we breathe a fainter air, The spirit of those places far and fair That we have loved, abides; and fern-scents flow Out of the wood's heart still, and shadows grow Long on remembered roads as warm days wear; And still the dark wild water, in its lair, The narrow chasm, stirs blindly to and fro. Delight is in the sea-gull's dancing wings, And sunshine wakes to rose the ruddy hue Of rocks; and from her tall wind-slanted stem A soft bright plume the goldenrod outflings Along the breeze, above a sea whose blue Is like the light that kindles through a gem. THE GIFTS OF THE OAK (FOR THE SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL) 'There needs no crown to mark the forest's king.' Thus, long ago thou sang'st the sound-heart tree Sacred to sovereign Jove, and dear to thee Since first, a venturous youth with eyes of spring,-- Whose pilgrim-staff each side put forth a wing,-- Beneath the oak thou lingeredst lovingly To crave, as largess of his majesty, Firm-rooted strength, and grace of leaves that sing. He gave; we thank him! Graciousness as grave, And power as easeful as his own he gave; Long broodings rich with sun, and laughters kind; And singing leaves, whose later bronze is dear As the first amber of the budding year,-- Whose voices answer the autumnnal wind. THE STRAYED SINGER (MATTHEW ARNOLD) He wandered from us long, oh, long ago, Rare singer, with the note unsatisfied; Into what charmèd wood, what shade star-eyed With the wind's April darlings, none may know. We lost him. Songless, one with seed to sow, Keen-smiling toiler, came in place, and plied His strength in furrowed field till eventide, And passed to slumber when the sun was low. But now,--as though Death spoke some mystic word Solving a spell,--present to thought appears The morn's estray, not him we saw but late; And on his lips the strain that once we heard, And in his hand, cool as with Springtime's tears, The melancholy wood-flowers delicate. THE IMMORTAL WORD One soiled and shamed and foiled in this world's fight, Deserter from the host of God, that here Still darkly struggles,--waked from death in fear, And strove to screen his forehead from the white And blinding glory of the awful Light, The revelation and reproach austere. Then with strong hand outstretched a Shape drew near, Bright-browed, majestic, armored like a knight. "Great Angel, servant of the Highest, why Stoop'st thou to me?" although his lips were mute, His eyes inquired. The Shining One replied: "Thy Book, thy birth, life of thy life am I, Son of thy soul, thy youth's forgotten fruit. We two go up to judgment side by side." 
9560	----	This eBook was produced by David Widger NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER PUBLISHERS' ADVERTISEMENT The Standard Library Edition of Mr. Whittier's writings comprises his poetical and prose works as re-arranged and thoroughly revised by himself or with his cooperation. Mr. Whittier has supplied such additional information regarding the subject and occasion of certain poems as may be stated in brief head-notes, and this edition has been much enriched by the poet's personal comment. So far as practicable the dates of publication of the various articles have been given, and since these were originally published soon after composition, the dates of their first appearance have been taken as determining the time at which they were written. At the request of the Publishers, Mr. Whittier has allowed his early poems, discarded from previous collections, to be placed, in the general order of their appearance, in an appendix to the final volume of poems. By this means the present edition is made so complete and retrospective that students of the poet's career will always find the most abundant material for their purpose. The Publishers congratulate themselves and the public that the careful attention which Mr. Whittier has been able to give to this revision of his works has resulted in so comprehensive and well-adjusted a collection. The portraits prefixed to the several volumes have been chosen with a view to illustrating successive periods in the poet's life. The original sources and dates are indicated in each case. NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS CONTENTS: THE VAUDOIS TEACHER THE FEMALE MARTYR EXTRACT FROM "A NEW ENGLAND LEGEND" THE DEMON OF THE STUDY THE FOUNTAIN PENTUCKET THE NORSEMEN FUNERAL TREE OF THE SOKOKIS ST JOHN THE CYPRESS-TREE OF CEYLON THE EXILES THE KNIGHT OF ST JOHN CASSANDRA SOUTHWICK THE NEW WIFE AND THE OLD THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK I. THE MERRIMAC II. THE BASHABA III. THE DAUGHTER IV. THE WEDDING V. THE NEW HOME VI. AT PENNACOOK VII. THE DEPARTURE VIII. SONG OF INDIAN WOMEN BARCLAY OF URY THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA THE LEGEND OF ST MARK KATHLEEN THE WELL OF LOCH MAREE THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS TAULER THE HERMIT OF THE THEBAID THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE THE SYCAMORES THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW TELLING THE BEES THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERY THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE OF NEWBURY MABEL MARTIN: A HARVEST IDYL PROEM I. THE RIVER VALLEY II. THE HUSKING III. THE WITCH'S DAUGHTER IV. THE CHAMPION V. IN THE SHADOW VI. THE BETROTHAL THE PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL THE RED RIVER VOYAGEUR THE PREACHER THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA MY PLAYMATE COBBLER KEEZAR'S VISION AMY WENTWORTH THE COUNTESS AMONG THE HILLS PRELUDE AMONG THE HILLS THE DOLE OF JARL THORKELL THE TWO RABBINS NOREMBEGA MIRIAM MAUD MULLER MARY GARVIN THE RANGER NAUHAUGHT, THE DEACON THE SISTERS MARGUERITE THE ROBIN THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM INTRODUCTORY NOTE PRELUDE THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM KING VOLMER AND ELSIE THE THREE BELLS JOHN UNDERHILL CONDUCTOR BRADLEY THE WITCH OF WENHAM KING SOLOMON AND THE ANTS IN THE "OLD SOUTH" THE HENCHMAN THE DEAD FEAST OF THE KOL-FOLK THE KHAN'S DEVIL THE KING'S MISSIVE VALUATION RABBI ISHMAEL THE ROCK-TOMB OF BRADORE THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS To H P S THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS THE WISHING BRIDGE HOW THE WOMEN WENT FROM DOVER ST GREGORY'S GUEST CONTENTS BIRCHBROOK MILL THE TWO ELIZABETHS REQUITAL THE HOMESTEAD HOW THE ROBIN CAME BANISHED FROM MASSACHUSETTS THE BROWN DWARF OF RUGEN NOTES NOTE.-The portrait prefixed to this volume was etched by S. A. Schoff, in 1888, after a painting by Bass Otis, a pupil of Gilbert Stuart, made in the winter of 1836-1837. PROEM I LOVE the old melodious lays Which softly melt the ages through, The songs of Spenser's golden days, Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase, Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning dew. Yet, vainly in my quiet hours To breathe their marvellous notes I try; I feel them, as the leaves and flowers In silence feel the dewy showers, And drink with glad, still lips the blessing of the sky. The rigor of a frozen clime, The harshness of an untaught ear, The jarring words of one whose rhyme Beat often Labor's hurried time, Or Duty's rugged march through storm and strife, are here. Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace, No rounded art the lack supplies; Unskilled the subtle lines to trace, Or softer shades of Nature's face, I view her common forms with unanointed eyes. Nor mine the seer-like power to show The secrets of the heart and mind; To drop the plummet-line below Our common world of joy and woe, A more intense despair or brighter hope to find. Yet here at least an earnest sense Of human right and weal is shown; A hate of tyranny intense, And hearty in its vehemence, As if my brother's pain and sorrow were my own. O Freedom! if to me belong Nor mighty Milton's gift divine, Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song, Still with a love as deep and strong As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy shrine. AMESBURY, 11th mo., 1847. INTRODUCTION The edition of my poems published in 1857 contained the following note by way of preface:-- "In these volumes, for the first time, a complete collection of my poetical writings has been made. While it is satisfactory to know that these scattered children of my brain have found a home, I cannot but regret that I have been unable, by reason of illness, to give that attention to their revision and arrangement, which respect for the opinions of others and my own afterthought and experience demand. "That there are pieces in this collection which I would 'willingly let die,' I am free to confess. But it is now too late to disown them, and I must submit to the inevitable penalty of poetical as well as other sins. There are others, intimately connected with the author's life and times, which owe their tenacity of vitality to the circumstances under which they were written, and the events by which they were suggested. "The long poem of Mogg Megone was in a great measure composed in early life; and it is scarcely necessary to say that its subject is not such as the writer would have chosen at any subsequent period." After a lapse of thirty years since the above was written, I have been requested by my publishers to make some preparation for a new and revised edition of my poems. I cannot flatter myself that I have added much to the interest of the work beyond the correction of my own errors and those of the press, with the addition of a few heretofore unpublished pieces, and occasional notes of explanation which seemed necessary. I have made an attempt to classify the poems under a few general heads, and have transferred the long poem of Mogg Megone to the Appendix, with other specimens of my earlier writings. I have endeavored to affix the dates of composition or publication as far as possible. In looking over these poems I have not been unmindful of occasional prosaic lines and verbal infelicities, but at this late day I have neither strength nor patience to undertake their correction. Perhaps a word of explanation may be needed in regard to a class of poems written between the years 1832 and 1865. Of their defects from an artistic point of view it is not necessary to speak. They were the earnest and often vehement expression of the writer's thought and feeling at critical periods in the great conflict between Freedom and Slavery. They were written with no expectation that they would survive the occasions which called them forth: they were protests, alarm signals, trumpet-calls to action, words wrung from the writer's heart, forged at white heat, and of course lacking the finish and careful word-selection which reflection and patient brooding over them might have given. Such as they are, they belong to the history of the Anti-Slavery movement, and may serve as way-marks of its progress. If their language at times seems severe and harsh, the monstrous wrong of Slavery which provoked it must be its excuse, if any is needed. In attacking it, we did not measure our words. "It is," said Garrison, "a waste of politeness to be courteous to the devil." But in truth the contest was, in a great measure, an impersonal one,--hatred of slavery and not of slave-masters. "No common wrong provoked our zeal, The silken gauntlet which is thrown In such a quarrel rings like steel." Even Thomas Jefferson, in his terrible denunciation of Slavery in the Notes on Virginia, says "It is impossible to be temperate and pursue the subject of Slavery." After the great contest was over, no class of the American people were more ready, with kind words and deprecation of harsh retaliation, to welcome back the revolted States than the Abolitionists; and none have since more heartily rejoiced at the fast increasing prosperity of the South. Grateful for the measure of favor which has been accorded to my writings, I leave this edition with the public. It contains all that I care to re-publish, and some things which, had the matter of choice been left solely to myself, I should have omitted. J. G. W. NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS THE VAUDOIS TEACHER. This poem was suggested by the account given of the manner which the Waldenses disseminated their principles among the Catholic gentry. They gained access to the house through their occupation as peddlers of silks, jewels, and trinkets. "Having disposed of some of their goods," it is said by a writer who quotes the inquisitor Rainerus Sacco, "they cautiously intimated that they had commodities far more valuable than these, inestimable jewels, which they would show if they could be protected from the clergy. They would then give their purchasers a Bible or Testament; and thereby many were deluded into heresy." The poem, under the title Le Colporteur Vaudois, was translated into French by Professor G. de Felice, of Montauban, and further naturalized by Professor Alexandre Rodolphe Vinet, who quoted it in his lectures on French literature, afterwards published. It became familiar in this form to the Waldenses, who adopted it as a household poem. An American clergyman, J. C. Fletcher, frequently heard it when he was a student, about the year 1850, in the theological seminary at Geneva, Switzerland, but the authorship of the poem was unknown to those who used it. Twenty-five years later, Mr. Fletcher, learning the name of the author, wrote to the moderator of the Waldensian synod at La Tour, giving the information. At the banquet which closed the meeting of the synod, the moderator announced the fact, and was instructed in the name of the Waldensian church to write to me a letter of thanks. My letter, written in reply, was translated into Italian and printed throughout Italy. "O LADY fair, these silks of mine are beautiful and rare,-- The richest web of the Indian loom, which beauty's queen might wear; And my pearls are pure as thy own fair neck, with whose radiant light they vie; I have brought them with me a weary way,--will my gentle lady buy?" The lady smiled on the worn old man through the dark and clustering curls Which veiled her brow, as she bent to view his silks and glittering pearls; And she placed their price in the old man's hand and lightly turned away, But she paused at the wanderer's earnest call,-- "My gentle lady, stay! "O lady fair, I have yet a gem which a purer lustre flings, Than the diamond flash of the jewelled crown on the lofty brow of kings; A wonderful pearl of exceeding price, whose virtue shall not decay, Whose light shall be as a spell to thee and a blessing on thy way!" The lady glanced at the mirroring steel where her form of grace was seen, Where her eye shone clear, and her dark locks waved their clasping pearls between; "Bring forth thy pearl of exceeding worth, thou traveller gray and old, And name the price of thy precious gem, and my page shall count thy gold." The cloud went off from the pilgrim's brow, as a small and meagre book, Unchased with gold or gem of cost, from his folding robe he took! "Here, lady fair, is the pearl of price, may it prove as such to thee Nay, keep thy gold--I ask it not, for the word of God is free!" The hoary traveller went his way, but the gift he left behind Hath had its pure and perfect work on that high- born maiden's mind, And she hath turned from the pride of sin to the lowliness of truth, And given her human heart to God in its beautiful hour of youth And she hath left the gray old halls, where an evil faith had power, The courtly knights of her father's train, and the maidens of her bower; And she hath gone to the Vaudois vales by lordly feet untrod, Where the poor and needy of earth are rich in the perfect love of God! 1830. THE FEMALE MARTYR. Mary G-----, aged eighteen, a "Sister of Charity," died in one of our Atlantic cities, during the prevalence of the Indian cholera, while in voluntary attendance upon the sick. "BRING out your dead!" The midnight street Heard and gave back the hoarse, low call; Harsh fell the tread of hasty feet, Glanced through the dark the coarse white sheet, Her coffin and her pall. "What--only one!" the brutal hack-man said, As, with an oath, he spurned away the dead. How sunk the inmost hearts of all, As rolled that dead-cart slowly by, With creaking wheel and harsh hoof-fall! The dying turned him to the wall, To hear it and to die! Onward it rolled; while oft its driver stayed, And hoarsely clamored, "Ho! bring out your dead." It paused beside the burial-place; "Toss in your load!" and it was done. With quick hand and averted face, Hastily to the grave's embrace They cast them, one by one, Stranger and friend, the evil and the just, Together trodden in the churchyard dust. And thou, young martyr! thou wast there; No white-robed sisters round thee trod, Nor holy hymn, nor funeral prayer Rose through the damp and noisome air, Giving thee to thy God; Nor flower, nor cross, nor hallowed taper gave Grace to the dead, and beauty to the grave! Yet, gentle sufferer! there shall be, In every heart of kindly feeling, A rite as holy paid to thee As if beneath the convent-tree Thy sisterhood were kneeling, At vesper hours, like sorrowing angels, keeping Their tearful watch around thy place of sleeping. For thou wast one in whom the light Of Heaven's own love was kindled well; Enduring with a martyr's might, Through weary day and wakeful night, Far more than words may tell Gentle, and meek, and lowly, and unknown, Thy mercies measured by thy God alone! Where manly hearts were failing, where The throngful street grew foul with death, O high-souled martyr! thou wast there, Inhaling, from the loathsome air, Poison with every breath. Yet shrinking not from offices of dread For the wrung dying, and the unconscious dead. And, where the sickly taper shed Its light through vapors, damp, confined, Hushed as a seraph's fell thy tread, A new Electra by the bed Of suffering human-kind! Pointing the spirit, in its dark dismay, To that pure hope which fadeth not away. Innocent teacher of the high And holy mysteries of Heaven! How turned to thee each glazing eye, In mute and awful sympathy, As thy low prayers were given; And the o'er-hovering Spoiler wore, the while, An angel's features, a deliverer's smile! A blessed task! and worthy one Who, turning from the world, as thou, Before life's pathway had begun To leave its spring-time flower and sun, Had sealed her early vow; Giving to God her beauty and her youth, Her pure affections and her guileless truth. Earth may not claim thee. Nothing here Could be for thee a meet reward; Thine is a treasure far more dear Eye hath not seen it, nor the ear Of living mortal heard The joys prepared, the promised bliss above, The holy presence of Eternal Love! Sleep on in peace. The earth has not A nobler name than thine shall be. The deeds by martial manhood wrought, The lofty energies of thought, The fire of poesy, These have but frail and fading honors; thine Shall Time unto Eternity consign. Yea, and when thrones shall crumble down, And human pride and grandeur fall, The herald's line of long renown, The mitre and the kingly crown,-- Perishing glories all! The pure devotion of thy generous heart Shall live in Heaven, of which it was a part. 1833. EXTRACT FROM "A NEW ENGLAND LEGEND." (Originally a part of the author's Moll Pitcher.) How has New England's romance fled, Even as a vision of the morning! Its rites foredone, its guardians dead, Its priestesses, bereft of dread, Waking the veriest urchin's scorning! Gone like the Indian wizard's yell And fire-dance round the magic rock, Forgotten like the Druid's spell At moonrise by his holy oak! No more along the shadowy glen Glide the dim ghosts of murdered men; No more the unquiet churchyard dead Glimpse upward from their turfy bed, Startling the traveller, late and lone; As, on some night of starless weather, They silently commune together, Each sitting on his own head-stone The roofless house, decayed, deserted, Its living tenants all departed, No longer rings with midnight revel Of witch, or ghost, or goblin evil; No pale blue flame sends out its flashes Through creviced roof and shattered sashes! The witch-grass round the hazel spring May sharply to the night-air sing, But there no more shall withered hags Refresh at ease their broomstick nags, Or taste those hazel-shadowed waters As beverage meet for Satan's daughters; No more their mimic tones be heard, The mew of cat, the chirp of bird, Shrill blending with the hoarser laughter Of the fell demon following after! The cautious goodman nails no more A horseshoe on his outer door, Lest some unseemly hag should fit To his own mouth her bridle-bit; The goodwife's churn no more refuses Its wonted culinary uses Until, with heated needle burned, The witch has to her place returned! Our witches are no longer old And wrinkled beldames, Satan-sold, But young and gay and laughing creatures, With the heart's sunshine on their features; Their sorcery--the light which dances Where the raised lid unveils its glances; Or that low-breathed and gentle tone, The music of Love's twilight hours, Soft, dream-like, as a fairy's moan Above her nightly closing flowers, Sweeter than that which sighed of yore Along the charmed Ausonian shore! Even she, our own weird heroine, Sole Pythoness of ancient Lynn,' Sleeps calmly where the living laid her; And the wide realm of sorcery, Left by its latest mistress free, Hath found no gray and skilled invader. So--perished Albion's "glammarye," With him in Melrose Abbey sleeping, His charmed torch beside his knee, That even the dead himself might see The magic scroll within his keeping. And now our modern Yankee sees Nor omens, spells, nor mysteries; And naught above, below, around, Of life or death, of sight or sound, Whate'er its nature, form, or look, Excites his terror or surprise, All seeming to his knowing eyes Familiar as his "catechise," Or "Webster's Spelling-Book." 1833. THE DEMON OF THE STUDY. THE Brownie sits in the Scotchman's room, And eats his meat and drinks his ale, And beats the maid with her unused broom, And the lazy lout with his idle flail; But he sweeps the floor and threshes the corn, And hies him away ere the break of dawn. The shade of Denmark fled from the sun, And the Cocklane ghost from the barn-loft cheer, The fiend of Faust was a faithful one, Agrippa's demon wrought in fear, And the devil of Martin Luther sat By the stout monk's side in social chat. The Old Man of the Sea, on the neck of him Who seven times crossed the deep, Twined closely each lean and withered limb, Like the nightmare in one's sleep. But he drank of the wine, and Sindbad cast The evil weight from his back at last. But the demon that cometh day by day To my quiet room and fireside nook, Where the casement light falls dim and gray On faded painting and ancient book, Is a sorrier one than any whose names Are chronicled well by good King James. No bearer of burdens like Caliban, No runner of errands like Ariel, He comes in the shape of a fat old man, Without rap of knuckle or pull of bell; And whence he comes, or whither he goes, I know as I do of the wind which blows. A stout old man with a greasy hat Slouched heavily down to his dark, red nose, And two gray eyes enveloped in fat, Looking through glasses with iron bows. Read ye, and heed ye, and ye who can, Guard well your doors from that old man! He comes with a careless "How d' ye do?" And seats himself in my elbow-chair; And my morning paper and pamphlet new Fall forthwith under his special care, And he wipes his glasses and clears his throat, And, button by button, unfolds his coat. And then he reads from paper and book, In a low and husky asthmatic tone, With the stolid sameness of posture and look Of one who reads to himself alone; And hour after hour on my senses come That husky wheeze and that dolorous hum. The price of stocks, the auction sales, The poet's song and the lover's glee, The horrible murders, the seaboard gales, The marriage list, and the jeu d'esprit, All reach my ear in the self-same tone,-- I shudder at each, but the fiend reads on! Oh, sweet as the lapse of water at noon O'er the mossy roots of some forest tree, The sigh of the wind in the woods of June, Or sound of flutes o'er a moonlight sea, Or the low soft music, perchance, which seems To float through the slumbering singer's dreams, So sweet, so dear is the silvery tone, Of her in whose features I sometimes look, As I sit at eve by her side alone, And we read by turns, from the self-same book, Some tale perhaps of the olden time, Some lover's romance or quaint old rhyme. Then when the story is one of woe,-- Some prisoner's plaint through his dungeon-bar, Her blue eye glistens with tears, and low Her voice sinks down like a moan afar; And I seem to hear that prisoner's wail, And his face looks on me worn and pale. And when she reads some merrier song, Her voice is glad as an April bird's, And when the tale is of war and wrong, A trumpet's summons is in her words, And the rush of the hosts I seem to hear, And see the tossing of plume and spear! Oh, pity me then, when, day by day, The stout fiend darkens my parlor door; And reads me perchance the self-same lay Which melted in music, the night before, From lips as the lips of Hylas sweet, And moved like twin roses which zephyrs meet! I cross my floor with a nervous tread, I whistle and laugh and sing and shout, I flourish my cane above his head, And stir up the fire to roast him out; I topple the chairs, and drum on the pane, And press my hands on my ears, in vain! I've studied Glanville and James the wise, And wizard black-letter tomes which treat Of demons of every name and size Which a Christian man is presumed to meet, But never a hint and never a line Can I find of a reading fiend like mine. I've crossed the Psalter with Brady and Tate, And laid the Primer above them all, I've nailed a horseshoe over the grate, And hung a wig to my parlor wall Once worn by a learned Judge, they say, At Salem court in the witchcraft day! "Conjuro te, sceleratissime, Abire ad tuum locum!"--still Like a visible nightmare he sits by me,-- The exorcism has lost its skill; And I hear again in my haunted room The husky wheeze and the dolorous hum! Ah! commend me to Mary Magdalen With her sevenfold plagues, to the wandering Jew, To the terrors which haunted Orestes when The furies his midnight curtains drew, But charm him off, ye who charm him can, That reading demon, that fat old man! 1835. THE FOUNTAIN. On the declivity of a hill in Salisbury, Essex County, is a fountain of clear water, gushing from the very roots of a venerable oak. It is about two miles from the junction of the Powow River with the Merrimac. TRAVELLER! on thy journey toiling By the swift Powow, With the summer sunshine falling On thy heated brow, Listen, while all else is still, To the brooklet from the hill. Wild and sweet the flowers are blowing By that streamlet's side, And a greener verdure showing Where its waters glide, Down the hill-slope murmuring on, Over root and mossy stone. Where yon oak his broad arms flingeth O'er the sloping hill, Beautiful and freshly springeth That soft-flowing rill, Through its dark roots wreathed and bare, Gushing up to sun and air. Brighter waters sparkled never In that magic well, Of whose gift of life forever Ancient legends tell, In the lonely desert wasted, And by mortal lip untasted. Waters which the proud Castilian Sought with longing eyes, Underneath the bright pavilion Of the Indian skies, Where his forest pathway lay Through the blooms of Florida. Years ago a lonely stranger, With the dusky brow Of the outcast forest-ranger, Crossed the swift Powow, And betook him to the rill And the oak upon the hill. O'er his face of moody sadness For an instant shone Something like a gleam of gladness, As he stooped him down To the fountain's grassy side, And his eager thirst supplied. With the oak its shadow throwing O'er his mossy seat, And the cool, sweet waters flowing Softly at his feet, Closely by the fountain's rim That lone Indian seated him. Autumn's earliest frost had given To the woods below Hues of beauty, such as heaven Lendeth to its bow; And the soft breeze from the west Scarcely broke their dreamy rest. Far behind was Ocean striving With his chains of sand; Southward, sunny glimpses giving, 'Twixt the swells of land, Of its calm and silvery track, Rolled the tranquil Merrimac. Over village, wood, and meadow Gazed that stranger man, Sadly, till the twilight shadow Over all things ran, Save where spire and westward pane Flashed the sunset back again. Gazing thus upon the dwelling Of his warrior sires, Where no lingering trace was telling Of their wigwam fires, Who the gloomy thoughts might know Of that wandering child of woe? Naked lay, in sunshine glowing, Hills that once had stood Down their sides the shadows throwing Of a mighty wood, Where the deer his covert kept, And the eagle's pinion swept! Where the birch canoe had glided Down the swift Powow, Dark and gloomy bridges strided Those clear waters now; And where once the beaver swam, Jarred the wheel and frowned the dam. For the wood-bird's merry singing, And the hunter's cheer, Iron clang and hammer's ringing Smote upon his ear; And the thick and sullen smoke From the blackened forges broke. Could it be his fathers ever Loved to linger here? These bare hills, this conquered river,-- Could they hold them dear, With their native loveliness Tamed and tortured into this? Sadly, as the shades of even Gathered o'er the hill, While the western half of heaven Blushed with sunset still, From the fountain's mossy seat Turned the Indian's weary feet. Year on year hath flown forever, But he came no more To the hillside on the river Where he came before. But the villager can tell Of that strange man's visit well. And the merry children, laden With their fruits or flowers, Roving boy and laughing maiden, In their school-day hours, Love the simple tale to tell Of the Indian and his well. 1837 PENTUCKET. The village of Haverhill, on the Merrimac, called by the Indians Pentucket, was for nearly seventeen years a frontier town, and during thirty years endured all the horrors of savage warfare. In the year 1708, a combined body of French and Indians, under the command of De Chaillons, and Hertel de Rouville, the famous and bloody sacker of Deerfield, made an attack upon the village, which at that time contained only thirty houses. Sixteen of the villagers were massacred, and a still larger number made prisoners. About thirty of the enemy also fell, among them Hertel de Rouville. The minister of the place, Benjamin Rolfe, was killed by a shot through his own door. In a paper entitled The Border War of 1708, published in my collection of Recreations and Miscellanies, I have given a prose narrative of the surprise of Haverhill. How sweetly on the wood-girt town The mellow light of sunset shone! Each small, bright lake, whose waters still Mirror the forest and the hill, Reflected from its waveless breast The beauty of a cloudless west, Glorious as if a glimpse were given Within the western gates of heaven, Left, by the spirit of the star Of sunset's holy hour, ajar! Beside the river's tranquil flood The dark and low-walled dwellings stood, Where many a rood of open land Stretched up and down on either hand, With corn-leaves waving freshly green The thick and blackened stumps between. Behind, unbroken, deep and dread, The wild, untravelled forest spread, Back to those mountains, white and cold, Of which the Indian trapper told, Upon whose summits never yet Was mortal foot in safety set. Quiet and calm without a fear, Of danger darkly lurking near, The weary laborer left his plough, The milkmaid carolled by her cow; From cottage door and household hearth Rose songs of praise, or tones of mirth. At length the murmur died away, And silence on that village lay. --So slept Pompeii, tower and hall, Ere the quick earthquake swallowed all, Undreaming of the fiery fate Which made its dwellings desolate. Hours passed away. By moonlight sped The Merrimac along his bed. Bathed in the pallid lustre, stood Dark cottage-wall and rock and wood, Silent, beneath that tranquil beam, As the hushed grouping of a dream. Yet on the still air crept a sound, No bark of fox, nor rabbit's bound, Nor stir of wings, nor waters flowing, Nor leaves in midnight breezes blowing. Was that the tread of many feet, Which downward from the hillside beat? What forms were those which darkly stood Just on the margin of the wood?-- Charred tree-stumps in the moonlight dim, Or paling rude, or leafless limb? No,--through the trees fierce eyeballs glowed, Dark human forms in moonshine showed, Wild from their native wilderness, With painted limbs and battle-dress. A yell the dead might wake to hear Swelled on the night air, far and clear; Then smote the Indian tomahawk On crashing door and shattering lock; Then rang the rifle-shot, and then The shrill death-scream of stricken men,-- Sank the red axe in woman's brain, And childhood's cry arose in vain. Bursting through roof and window came, Red, fast, and fierce, the kindled flame, And blended fire and moonlight glared On still dead men and scalp-knives bared. The morning sun looked brightly through The river willows, wet with dew. No sound of combat filled the air, No shout was heard, nor gunshot there; Yet still the thick and sullen smoke From smouldering ruins slowly broke; And on the greensward many a stain, And, here and there, the mangled slain, Told how that midnight bolt had sped Pentucket, on thy fated head. Even now the villager can tell Where Rolfe beside his hearthstone fell, Still show the door of wasting oak, Through which the fatal death-shot broke, And point the curious stranger where De Rouville's corse lay grim and bare; Whose hideous head, in death still feared, Bore not a trace of hair or beard; And still, within the churchyard ground, Heaves darkly up the ancient mound, Whose grass-grown surface overlies The victims of that sacrifice. 1838. THE NORSEMEN. In the early part of the present century, a fragment of a statue, rudely chiselled from dark gray stone, was found in the town of Bradford, on the Merrimac. Its origin must be left entirely to conjecture. The fact that the ancient Northmen visited the north-east coast of North America and probably New England, some centuries before the discovery of the western world by Columbus, is very generally admitted. GIFT from the cold and silent Past! A relic to the present cast, Left on the ever-changing strand Of shifting and unstable sand, Which wastes beneath the steady chime And beating of the waves of Time! Who from its bed of primal rock First wrenched thy dark, unshapely block? Whose hand, of curious skill untaught, Thy rude and savage outline wrought? The waters of my native stream Are glancing in the sun's warm beam; From sail-urged keel and flashing oar The circles widen to its shore; And cultured field and peopled town Slope to its willowed margin down. Yet, while this morning breeze is bringing The home-life sound of school-bells ringing, And rolling wheel, and rapid jar Of the fire-winged and steedless car, And voices from the wayside near Come quick and blended on my ear,-- A spell is in this old gray stone, My thoughts are with the Past alone! A change!--The steepled town no more Stretches along the sail-thronged shore; Like palace-domes in sunset's cloud, Fade sun-gilt spire and mansion proud Spectrally rising where they stood, I see the old, primeval wood; Dark, shadow-like, on either hand I see its solemn waste expand; It climbs the green and cultured hill, It arches o'er the valley's rill, And leans from cliff and crag to throw Its wild arms o'er the stream below. Unchanged, alone, the same bright river Flows on, as it will flow forever I listen, and I hear the low Soft ripple where its waters go; I hear behind the panther's cry, The wild-bird's scream goes thrilling by, And shyly on the river's brink The deer is stooping down to drink. But hark!--from wood and rock flung back, What sound comes up the Merrimac? What sea-worn barks are those which throw The light spray from each rushing prow? Have they not in the North Sea's blast Bowed to the waves the straining mast? Their frozen sails the low, pale sun Of Thule's night has shone upon; Flapped by the sea-wind's gusty sweep Round icy drift, and headland steep. Wild Jutland's wives and Lochlin's daughters Have watched them fading o'er the waters, Lessening through driving mist and spray, Like white-winged sea-birds on their way! Onward they glide,--and now I view Their iron-armed and stalwart crew; Joy glistens in each wild blue eye, Turned to green earth and summer sky. Each broad, seamed breast has cast aside Its cumbering vest of shaggy hide; Bared to the sun and soft warm air, Streams back the Norsemen's yellow hair. I see the gleam of axe and spear, The sound of smitten shields I hear, Keeping a harsh and fitting time To Saga's chant, and Runic rhyme; Such lays as Zetland's Scald has sung, His gray and naked isles among; Or muttered low at midnight hour Round Odin's mossy stone of power. The wolf beneath the Arctic moon Has answered to that startling rune; The Gael has heard its stormy swell, The light Frank knows its summons well; Iona's sable-stoled Culdee Has heard it sounding o'er the sea, And swept, with hoary beard and hair, His altar's foot in trembling prayer. 'T is past,--the 'wildering vision dies In darkness on my dreaming eyes The forest vanishes in air, Hill-slope and vale lie starkly bare; I hear the common tread of men, And hum of work-day life again; The mystic relic seems alone A broken mass of common stone; And if it be the chiselled limb Of Berserker or idol grim, A fragment of Valhalla's Thor, The stormy Viking's god of War, Or Praga of the Runic lay, Or love-awakening Siona, I know not,--for no graven line, Nor Druid mark, nor Runic sign, Is left me here, by which to trace Its name, or origin, or place. Yet, for this vision of the Past, This glance upon its darkness cast, My spirit bows in gratitude Before the Giver of all good, Who fashioned so the human mind, That, from the waste of Time behind, A simple stone, or mound of earth, Can summon the departed forth; Quicken the Past to life again, The Present lose in what hath been, And in their primal freshness show The buried forms of long ago. As if a portion of that Thought By which the Eternal will is wrought, Whose impulse fills anew with breath The frozen solitude of Death, To mortal mind were sometimes lent, To mortal musings sometimes sent, To whisper-even when it seems But Memory's fantasy of dreams-- Through the mind's waste of woe and sin, Of an immortal origin! 1841. FUNERAL TREE OF THE SOKOKIS. Polan, chief of the Sokokis Indians of the country between Agamenticus and Casco Bay, was killed at Windham on Sebago Lake in the spring of 1756. After the whites had retired, the surviving Indians "swayed" or bent down a young tree until its roots were upturned, placed the body of their chief beneath it, then released the tree, which, in springing back to its old position, covered the grave. The Sokokis were early converts to the Catholic faith. Most of them, prior to the year 1756, had removed to the French settlements on the St. Francois. AROUND Sebago's lonely lake There lingers not a breeze to break The mirror which its waters make. The solemn pines along its shore, The firs which hang its gray rocks o'er, Are painted on its glassy floor. The sun looks o'er, with hazy eye, The snowy mountain-tops which lie Piled coldly up against the sky. Dazzling and white! save where the bleak, Wild winds have bared some splintering peak, Or snow-slide left its dusky streak. Yet green are Saco's banks below, And belts of spruce and cedar show, Dark fringing round those cones of snow. The earth hath felt the breath of spring, Though yet on her deliverer's wing The lingering frosts of winter cling. Fresh grasses fringe the meadow-brooks, And mildly from its sunny nooks The blue eye of the violet looks. And odors from the springing grass, The sweet birch and the sassafras, Upon the scarce-felt breezes pass. Her tokens of renewing care Hath Nature scattered everywhere, In bud and flower, and warmer air. But in their hour of bitterness, What reek the broken Sokokis, Beside their slaughtered chief, of this? The turf's red stain is yet undried, Scarce have the death-shot echoes died Along Sebago's wooded side; And silent now the hunters stand, Grouped darkly, where a swell of land Slopes upward from the lake's white sand. Fire and the axe have swept it bare, Save one lone beech, unclosing there Its light leaves in the vernal air. With grave, cold looks, all sternly mute, They break the damp turf at its foot, And bare its coiled and twisted root. They heave the stubborn trunk aside, The firm roots from the earth divide,-- The rent beneath yawns dark and wide. And there the fallen chief is laid, In tasselled garb of skins arrayed, And girded with his wampum-braid. The silver cross he loved is pressed Beneath the heavy arms, which rest Upon his scarred and naked breast. 'T is done: the roots are backward sent, The beechen-tree stands up unbent, The Indian's fitting monument! When of that sleeper's broken race Their green and pleasant dwelling-place, Which knew them once, retains no trace; Oh, long may sunset's light be shed As now upon that beech's head, A green memorial of the dead! There shall his fitting requiem be, In northern winds, that, cold and free, Howl nightly in that funeral tree. To their wild wail the waves which break Forever round that lonely lake A solemn undertone shall make! And who shall deem the spot unblest, Where Nature's younger children rest, Lulled on their sorrowing mother's breast? Deem ye that mother loveth less These bronzed forms of the wilderness She foldeth in her long caress? As sweet o'er them her wild-flowers blow, As if with fairer hair and brow The blue-eyed Saxon slept below. What though the places of their rest No priestly knee hath ever pressed,-- No funeral rite nor prayer hath blessed? What though the bigot's ban be there, And thoughts of wailing and despair, And cursing in the place of prayer. Yet Heaven hath angels watching round The Indian's lowliest forest-mound,-- And they have made it holy ground. There ceases man's frail judgment; all His powerless bolts of cursing fall Unheeded on that grassy pall. O peeled and hunted and reviled, Sleep on, dark tenant of the wild! Great Nature owns her simple child! And Nature's God, to whom alone The secret of the heart is known,-- The hidden language traced thereon; Who from its many cumberings Of form and creed, and outward things, To light the naked spirit brings; Not with our partial eye shall scan, Not with our pride and scorn shall ban, The spirit of our brother man! 1841. ST. JOHN. The fierce rivalry between Charles de La Tour, a Protestant, and D'Aulnay Charnasy, a Catholic, for the possession of Acadia, forms one of the most romantic passages in the history of the New World. La Tour received aid in several instances from the Puritan colony of Massachusetts. During one of his voyages for the purpose of obtaining arms and provisions for his establishment at St. John, his castle was attacked by D'Aulnay, and successfully defended by its high-spirited mistress. A second attack however followed in the fourth month, 1647, when D'Aulnay was successful, and the garrison was put to the sword. Lady La Tour languished a few days in the hands of her enemy, and then died of grief. "To the winds give our banner! Bear homeward again!" Cried the Lord of Acadia, Cried Charles of Estienne; From the prow of his shallop He gazed, as the sun, From its bed in the ocean, Streamed up the St. John. O'er the blue western waters That shallop had passed, Where the mists of Penobscot Clung damp on her mast. St. Saviour had looked On the heretic sail, As the songs of the Huguenot Rose on the gale. The pale, ghostly fathers Remembered her well, And had cursed her while passing, With taper and bell; But the men of Monhegan, Of Papists abhorred, Had welcomed and feasted The heretic Lord. They had loaded his shallop With dun-fish and ball, With stores for his larder, And steel for his wall. Pemaquid, from her bastions And turrets of stone, Had welcomed his coming With banner and gun. And the prayers of the elders Had followed his way, As homeward he glided, Down Pentecost Bay. Oh, well sped La Tour For, in peril and pain, His lady kept watch, For his coming again. O'er the Isle of the Pheasant The morning sun shone, On the plane-trees which shaded The shores of St. John. "Now, why from yon battlements Speaks not my love! Why waves there no banner My fortress above?" Dark and wild, from his deck St. Estienne gazed about, On fire-wasted dwellings, And silent redoubt; From the low, shattered walls Which the flame had o'errun, There floated no banner, There thundered no gun! But beneath the low arch Of its doorway there stood A pale priest of Rome, In his cloak and his hood. With the bound of a lion, La Tour sprang to land, On the throat of the Papist He fastened his hand. "Speak, son of the Woman Of scarlet and sin! What wolf has been prowling My castle within?" From the grasp of the soldier The Jesuit broke, Half in scorn, half in sorrow, He smiled as he spoke: "No wolf, Lord of Estienne, Has ravaged thy hall, But thy red-handed rival, With fire, steel, and ball! On an errand of mercy I hitherward came, While the walls of thy castle Yet spouted with flame. "Pentagoet's dark vessels Were moored in the bay, Grim sea-lions, roaring Aloud for their prey." "But what of my lady?" Cried Charles of Estienne. "On the shot-crumbled turret Thy lady was seen: "Half-veiled in the smoke-cloud, Her hand grasped thy pennon, While her dark tresses swayed In the hot breath of cannon! But woe to the heretic, Evermore woe! When the son of the church And the cross is his foe! "In the track of the shell, In the path of the ball, Pentagoet swept over The breach of the wall! Steel to steel, gun to gun, One moment,--and then Alone stood the victor, Alone with his men! "Of its sturdy defenders, Thy lady alone Saw the cross-blazoned banner Float over St. John." "Let the dastard look to it!" Cried fiery Estienne, "Were D'Aulnay King Louis, I'd free her again!" "Alas for thy lady! No service from thee Is needed by her Whom the Lord hath set free; Nine days, in stern silence, Her thraldom she bore, But the tenth morning came, And Death opened her door!" As if suddenly smitten La Tour staggered back; His hand grasped his sword-hilt, His forehead grew black. He sprang on the deck Of his shallop again. "We cruise now for vengeance! Give way!" cried Estienne. "Massachusetts shall hear Of the Huguenot's wrong, And from island and creekside Her fishers shall throng! Pentagoet shall rue What his Papists have done, When his palisades echo The Puritan's gun!" Oh, the loveliest of heavens Hung tenderly o'er him, There were waves in the sunshine, And green isles before him: But a pale hand was beckoning The Huguenot on; And in blackness and ashes Behind was St. John! 1841 THE CYPRESS-TREE OF CEYLON. Ibn Batuta, the celebrated Mussulman traveller of the fourteenth century, speaks of a cypress-tree in Ceylon, universally held sacred by the natives, the leaves of which were said to fall only at certain intervals, and he who had the happiness to find and eat one of them was restored, at once, to youth and vigor. The traveller saw several venerable Jogees, or saints, sitting silent and motionless under the tree, patiently awaiting the falling of a leaf. THEY sat in silent watchfulness The sacred cypress-tree about, And, from beneath old wrinkled brows, Their failing eyes looked out. Gray Age and Sickness waiting there Through weary night and lingering day,-- Grim as the idols at their side, And motionless as they. Unheeded in the boughs above The song of Ceylon's birds was sweet; Unseen of them the island flowers Bloomed brightly at their feet. O'er them the tropic night-storm swept, The thunder crashed on rock and hill; The cloud-fire on their eyeballs blazed, Yet there they waited still! What was the world without to them? The Moslem's sunset-call, the dance Of Ceylon's maids, the passing gleam Of battle-flag and lance? They waited for that falling leaf Of which the wandering Jogees sing: Which lends once more to wintry age The greenness of its spring. Oh, if these poor and blinded ones In trustful patience wait to feel O'er torpid pulse and failing limb A youthful freshness steal; Shall we, who sit beneath that Tree Whose healing leaves of life are shed, In answer to the breath of prayer, Upon the waiting head; Not to restore our failing forms, And build the spirit's broken shrine, But on the fainting soul to shed A light and life divine-- Shall we grow weary in our watch, And murmur at the long delay? Impatient of our Father's time And His appointed way? Or shall the stir of outward things Allure and claim the Christian's eye, When on the heathen watcher's ear Their powerless murmurs die? Alas! a deeper test of faith Than prison cell or martyr's stake, The self-abasing watchfulness Of silent prayer may make. We gird us bravely to rebuke Our erring brother in the wrong,-- And in the ear of Pride and Power Our warning voice is strong. Easier to smite with Peter's sword Than "watch one hour" in humbling prayer. Life's "great things," like the Syrian lord, Our hearts can do and dare. But oh! we shrink from Jordan's side, From waters which alone can save; And murmur for Abana's banks And Pharpar's brighter wave. O Thou, who in the garden's shade Didst wake Thy weary ones again, Who slumbered at that fearful hour Forgetful of Thy pain; Bend o'er us now, as over them, And set our sleep-bound spirits free, Nor leave us slumbering in the watch Our souls should keep with Thee! 1841 THE EXILES. The incidents upon which the following ballad has its foundation about the year 1660. Thomas Macy was one of the first, if not the first white settler of Nantucket. The career of Macy is briefly but carefully outlined in James S. Pike's The New Puritan. THE goodman sat beside his door One sultry afternoon, With his young wife singing at his side An old and goodly tune. A glimmer of heat was in the air,-- The dark green woods were still; And the skirts of a heavy thunder-cloud Hung over the western hill. Black, thick, and vast arose that cloud Above the wilderness, As some dark world from upper air Were stooping over this. At times the solemn thunder pealed, And all was still again, Save a low murmur in the air Of coming wind and rain. Just as the first big rain-drop fell, A weary stranger came, And stood before the farmer's door, With travel soiled and lame. Sad seemed he, yet sustaining hope Was in his quiet glance, And peace, like autumn's moonlight, clothed His tranquil countenance,-- A look, like that his Master wore In Pilate's council-hall: It told of wrongs, but of a love Meekly forgiving all. "Friend! wilt thou give me shelter here?" The stranger meekly said; And, leaning on his oaken staff, The goodman's features read. "My life is hunted,--evil men Are following in my track; The traces of the torturer's whip Are on my aged back; "And much, I fear, 't will peril thee Within thy doors to take A hunted seeker of the Truth, Oppressed for conscience' sake." Oh, kindly spoke the goodman's wife, "Come in, old man!" quoth she, "We will not leave thee to the storm, Whoever thou mayst be." Then came the aged wanderer in, And silent sat him down; While all within grew dark as night Beneath the storm-cloud's frown. But while the sudden lightning's blaze Filled every cottage nook, And with the jarring thunder-roll The loosened casements shook, A heavy tramp of horses' feet Came sounding up the lane, And half a score of horse, or more, Came plunging through the rain. "Now, Goodman Macy, ope thy door,-- We would not be house-breakers; A rueful deed thou'st done this day, In harboring banished Quakers." Out looked the cautious goodman then, With much of fear and awe, For there, with broad wig drenched with rain The parish priest he saw. Open thy door, thou wicked man, And let thy pastor in, And give God thanks, if forty stripes Repay thy deadly sin." "What seek ye?" quoth the goodman; "The stranger is my guest; He is worn with toil and grievous wrong,-- Pray let the old man rest." "Now, out upon thee, canting knave!" And strong hands shook the door. "Believe me, Macy," quoth the priest, "Thou 'lt rue thy conduct sore." Then kindled Macy's eye of fire "No priest who walks the earth, Shall pluck away the stranger-guest Made welcome to my hearth." Down from his cottage wall he caught The matchlock, hotly tried At Preston-pans and Marston-moor, By fiery Ireton's side; Where Puritan, and Cavalier, With shout and psalm contended; And Rupert's oath, and Cromwell's prayer, With battle-thunder blended. Up rose the ancient stranger then "My spirit is not free To bring the wrath and violence Of evil men on thee; "And for thyself, I pray forbear, Bethink thee of thy Lord, Who healed again the smitten ear, And sheathed His follower's sword. "I go, as to the slaughter led. Friends of the poor, farewell!" Beneath his hand the oaken door Back on its hinges fell. "Come forth, old graybeard, yea and nay," The reckless scoffers cried, As to a horseman's saddle-bow The old man's arms were tied. And of his bondage hard and long In Boston's crowded jail, Where suffering woman's prayer was heard, With sickening childhood's wail, It suits not with our tale to tell; Those scenes have passed away; Let the dim shadows of the past Brood o'er that evil day. "Ho, sheriff!" quoth the ardent priest, "Take Goodman Macy too; The sin of this day's heresy His back or purse shall rue." "Now, goodwife, haste thee!" Macy cried. She caught his manly arm; Behind, the parson urged pursuit, With outcry and alarm. Ho! speed the Macys, neck or naught,-- The river-course was near; The plashing on its pebbled shore Was music to their ear. A gray rock, tasselled o'er with birch, Above the waters hung, And at its base, with every wave, A small light wherry swung. A leap--they gain the boat--and there The goodman wields his oar; "Ill luck betide them all," he cried, "The laggards on the shore." Down through the crashing underwood, The burly sheriff came:-- "Stand, Goodman Macy, yield thyself; Yield in the King's own name." "Now out upon thy hangman's face!" Bold Macy answered then,-- "Whip women, on the village green, But meddle not with men." The priest came panting to the shore, His grave cocked hat was gone; Behind him, like some owl's nest, hung His wig upon a thorn. "Come back,--come back!" the parson cried, "The church's curse beware." "Curse, an' thou wilt," said Macy, "but Thy blessing prithee spare." "Vile scoffer!" cried the baffled priest, "Thou 'lt yet the gallows see." "Who's born to be hanged will not be drowned," Quoth Macy, merrily; "And so, sir sheriff and priest, good-by!" He bent him to his oar, And the small boat glided quietly From the twain upon the shore. Now in the west, the heavy clouds Scattered and fell asunder, While feebler came the rush of rain, And fainter growled the thunder. And through the broken clouds, the sun Looked out serene and warm, Painting its holy symbol-light Upon the passing storm. Oh, beautiful! that rainbow span, O'er dim Crane-neck was bended; One bright foot touched the eastern hills, And one with ocean blended. By green Pentucket's southern'slope The small boat glided fast; The watchers of the Block-house saw The strangers as they passed. That night a stalwart garrison Sat shaking in their shoes, To hear the dip of Indian oars, The glide of birch canoes. The fisher-wives of Salisbury-- The men were all away-- Looked out to see the stranger oar Upon their waters play. Deer-Island's rocks and fir-trees threw Their sunset-shadows o'er them, And Newbury's spire and weathercock Peered o'er the pines before them. Around the Black Rocks, on their left, The marsh lay broad and green; And on their right, with dwarf shrubs crowned, Plum Island's hills were seen. With skilful hand and wary eye The harbor-bar was crossed; A plaything of the restless wave, The boat on ocean tossed. The glory of the sunset heaven On land and water lay; On the steep hills of Agawam, On cape, and bluff, and bay. They passed the gray rocks of Cape Ann, And Gloucester's harbor-bar; The watch-fire of the garrison Shone like a setting star. How brightly broke the morning On Massachusetts Bay! Blue wave, and bright green island, Rejoicing in the day. On passed the bark in safety Round isle and headland steep; No tempest broke above them, No fog-cloud veiled the deep. Far round the bleak and stormy Cape The venturous Macy passed, And on Nantucket's naked isle Drew up his boat at last. And how, in log-built cabin, They braved the rough sea-weather; And there, in peace and quietness, Went down life's vale together; How others drew around them, And how their fishing sped, Until to every wind of heaven Nantucket's sails were spread; How pale Want alternated With Plenty's golden smile; Behold, is it not written In the annals of the isle? And yet that isle remaineth A refuge of the free, As when true-hearted Macy Beheld it from the sea. Free as the winds that winnow Her shrubless hills of sand, Free as the waves that batter Along her yielding land. Than hers, at duty's summons, No loftier spirit stirs, Nor falls o'er human suffering A readier tear then hers. God bless the sea-beat island! And grant forevermore, That charity and freedom dwell As now upon her shore! 1841. THE KNIGHT OF ST. JOHN. ERE down yon blue Carpathian hills The sun shall sink again, Farewell to life and all its ills, Farewell to cell and chain! These prison shades are dark and cold, But, darker far than they, The shadow of a sorrow old Is on my heart alway. For since the day when Warkworth wood Closed o'er my steed, and I, An alien from my name and blood, A weed cast out to die,-- When, looking back in sunset light, I saw her turret gleam, And from its casement, far and white, Her sign of farewell stream, Like one who, from some desert shore, Doth home's green isles descry, And, vainly longing, gazes o'er The waste of wave and sky; So from the desert of my fate I gaze across the past; Forever on life's dial-plate The shade is backward cast! I've wandered wide from shore to shore, I've knelt at many a shrine; And bowed me to the rocky floor Where Bethlehem's tapers shine; And by the Holy Sepulchre I've pledged my knightly sword To Christ, His blessed Church, and her, The Mother of our Lord. Oh, vain the vow, and vain the strife! How vain do all things seem! My soul is in the past, and life To-day is but a dream. In vain the penance strange and long, And hard for flesh to bear; The prayer, the fasting, and the thong, And sackcloth shirt of hair. The eyes of memory will not sleep, Its ears are open still; And vigils with the past they keep Against my feeble will. And still the loves and joys of old Do evermore uprise; I see the flow of locks of gold, The shine of loving eyes! Ah me! upon another's breast Those golden locks recline; I see upon another rest The glance that once was mine. "O faithless priest! O perjured knight!" I hear the Master cry; "Shut out the vision from thy sight, Let Earth and Nature die. "The Church of God is now thy spouse, And thou the bridegroom art; Then let the burden of thy vows Crush down thy human heart!" In vain! This heart its grief must know, Till life itself hath ceased, And falls beneath the self-same blow The lover and the priest! O pitying Mother! souls of light, And saints and martyrs old! Pray for a weak and sinful knight, A suffering man uphold. Then let the Paynim work his will, And death unbind my chain, Ere down yon blue Carpathian hill The sun shall fall again. 1843 CASSANDRA SOUTHWICK. In 1658 two young persons, son and daughter of Lawrence Smithwick of Salem, who had himself been imprisoned and deprived of nearly all his property for having entertained Quakers at his house, were fined for non-attendance at church. They being unable to pay the fine, the General Court issued an order empowering "the Treasurer of the County to sell the said persons to any of the English nation of Virginia or Barbadoes, to answer said fines." An attempt was made to carry this order into execution, but no shipmaster was found willing to convey them to the West Indies. To the God of all sure mercies let my blessing rise to-day, From the scoffer and the cruel He hath plucked the spoil away; Yea, He who cooled the furnace around the faithful three, And tamed the Chaldean lions, hath set His hand- maid free! Last night I saw the sunset melt through my prison bars, Last night across my damp earth-floor fell the pale gleam of stars; In the coldness and the darkness all through the long night-time, My grated casement whitened with autumn's early rime. Alone, in that dark sorrow, hour after hour crept by; Star after star looked palely in and sank adown the sky; No sound amid night's stillness, save that which seemed to be The dull and heavy beating of the pulses of the sea; All night I sat unsleeping, for I knew that on the morrow The ruler and the cruel priest would mock me in my sorrow, Dragged to their place of market, and bargained for and sold, Like a lamb before the shambles, like a heifer from the fold! Oh, the weakness of the flesh was there, the shrinking and the shame; And the low voice of the Tempter like whispers to me came: "Why sit'st thou thus forlornly," the wicked murmur said, "Damp walls thy bower of beauty, cold earth thy maiden bed? "Where be the smiling faces, and voices soft and sweet, Seen in thy father's dwelling, heard in the pleasant street? Where be the youths whose glances, the summer Sabbath through, Turned tenderly and timidly unto thy father's pew? "Why sit'st thou here, Cassandra?-Bethink thee with what mirth Thy happy schoolmates gather around the warm bright hearth; How the crimson shadows tremble on foreheads white and fair, On eyes of merry girlhood, half hid in golden hair. "Not for thee the hearth-fire brightens, not for thee kind words are spoken, Not for thee the nuts of Wenham woods by laughing boys are broken; No first-fruits of the orchard within thy lap are laid, For thee no flowers of autumn the youthful hunters braid. "O weak, deluded maiden!--by crazy fancies led, With wild and raving railers an evil path to tread; To leave a wholesome worship, and teaching pure and sound, And mate with maniac women, loose-haired and sackcloth bound,-- "Mad scoffers of the priesthood; who mock at things divine, Who rail against the pulpit, and holy bread and wine; Sore from their cart-tail scourgings, and from the pillory lame, Rejoicing in their wretchedness, and glorying in their shame. "And what a fate awaits thee!--a sadly toiling slave, Dragging the slowly lengthening chain of bondage to the grave! Think of thy woman's nature, subdued in hopeless thrall, The easy prey of any, the scoff and scorn of all!" Oh, ever as the Tempter spoke, and feeble Nature's fears Wrung drop by drop the scalding flow of unavailing tears, I wrestled down the evil thoughts, and strove in silent prayer, To feel, O Helper of the weak! that Thou indeed wert there! I thought of Paul and Silas, within Philippi's cell, And how from Peter's sleeping limbs the prison shackles fell, Till I seemed to hear the trailing of an angel's robe of white, And to feel a blessed presence invisible to sight. Bless the Lord for all his mercies!--for the peace and love I felt, Like dew of Hermon's holy hill, upon my spirit melt; When "Get behind me, Satan!" was the language of my heart, And I felt the Evil Tempter with all his doubts depart. Slow broke the gray cold morning; again the sunshine fell, Flecked with the shade of bar and grate within my lonely cell; The hoar-frost melted on the wall, and upward from the street Came careless laugh and idle word, and tread of passing feet. At length the heavy bolts fell back, my door was open cast, And slowly at the sheriff's side, up the long street I passed; I heard the murmur round me, and felt, but dared not see, How, from every door and window, the people gazed on me. And doubt and fear fell on me, shame burned upon my cheek, Swam earth and sky around me, my trembling limbs grew weak: "O Lord! support thy handmaid; and from her soul cast out The fear of man, which brings a snare, the weakness and the doubt." Then the dreary shadows scattered, like a cloud in morning's breeze, And a low deep voice within me seemed whispering words like these: "Though thy earth be as the iron, and thy heaven a brazen wall, Trust still His loving-kindness whose power is over all." We paused at length, where at my feet the sunlit waters broke On glaring reach of shining beach, and shingly wall of rock; The merchant-ships lay idly there, in hard clear lines on high, Tracing with rope and slender spar their network on the sky. And there were ancient citizens, cloak-wrapped and grave and cold, And grim and stout sea-captains with faces bronzed and old, And on his horse, with Rawson, his cruel clerk at hand, Sat dark and haughty Endicott, the ruler of the land. And poisoning with his evil words the ruler's ready ear, The priest leaned o'er his saddle, with laugh and scoff and jeer; It stirred my soul, and from my lips the seal of silence broke, As if through woman's weakness a warning spirit spoke. I cried, "The Lord rebuke thee, thou smiter of the meek, Thou robber of the righteous, thou trampler of the weak! Go light the dark, cold hearth-stones,--go turn the prison lock Of the poor hearts thou hast hunted, thou wolf amid the flock!" Dark lowered the brows of Endicott, and with a deeper red O'er Rawson's wine-empurpled cheek the flush of anger spread; "Good people," quoth the white-lipped priest, "heed not her words so wild, Her Master speaks within her,--the Devil owns his child!" But gray heads shook, and young brows knit, the while the sheriff read That law the wicked rulers against the poor have made, Who to their house of Rimmon and idol priesthood bring No bended knee of worship, nor gainful offering. Then to the stout sea-captains the sheriff, turning, said,-- "Which of ye, worthy seamen, will take this Quaker maid? In the Isle of fair Barbadoes, or on Virginia's shore, You may hold her at a higher price than Indian girl or Moor." Grim and silent stood the captains; and when again he cried, "Speak out, my worthy seamen!"--no voice, no sign replied; But I felt a hard hand press my own, and kind words met my ear,-- "God bless thee, and preserve thee, my gentle girl and dear!" A weight seemed lifted from my heart, a pitying friend was nigh,-- I felt it in his hard, rough hand, and saw it in his eye; And when again the sheriff spoke, that voice, so kind to me, Growled back its stormy answer like the roaring of the sea,-- "Pile my ship with bars of silver, pack with coins of Spanish gold, From keel-piece up to deck-plank, the roomage of her hold, By the living God who made me!--I would sooner in your bay Sink ship and crew and cargo, than bear this child away!" "Well answered, worthy captain, shame on their cruel laws!" Ran through the crowd in murmurs loud the people's just applause. "Like the herdsman of Tekoa, in Israel of old, Shall we see the poor and righteous again for silver sold?" I looked on haughty Endicott; with weapon half- way drawn, Swept round the throng his lion glare of bitter hate and scorn; Fiercely he drew his bridle-rein, and turned in silence back, And sneering priest and baffled clerk rode murmuring in his track. Hard after them the sheriff looked, in bitterness of soul; Thrice smote his staff upon the ground, and crushed his parchment roll. "Good friends," he said, "since both have fled, the ruler and the priest, Judge ye, if from their further work I be not well released." Loud was the cheer which, full and clear, swept round the silent bay, As, with kind words and kinder looks, he bade me go my way; For He who turns the courses of the streamlet of the glen, And the river of great waters, had turned the hearts of men. Oh, at that hour the very earth seemed changed beneath my eye, A holier wonder round me rose the blue walls of the sky, A lovelier light on rock and hill and stream and woodland lay, And softer lapsed on sunnier sands the waters of the bay. Thanksgiving to the Lord of life! to Him all praises be, Who from the hands of evil men hath set his hand- maid free; All praise to Him before whose power the mighty are afraid, Who takes the crafty in the snare which for the poor is laid! Sing, O my soul, rejoicingly, on evening's twilight calm Uplift the loud thanksgiving, pour forth the grateful psalm; Let all dear hearts with me rejoice, as did the saints of old, When of the Lord's good angel the rescued Peter told. And weep and howl, ye evil priests and mighty men of wrong, The Lord shall smite the proud, and lay His hand upon the strong. Woe to the wicked rulers in His avenging hour! Woe to the wolves who seek the flocks to raven and devour! But let the humble ones arise, the poor in heart be glad, And let the mourning ones again with robes of praise be clad. For He who cooled the furnace, and smoothed the stormy wave, And tamed the Chaldean lions, is mighty still to save! 1843. THE NEW WIFE AND THE OLD. The following ballad is founded upon one of the marvellous legends connected with the famous General ----, of Hampton, New Hampshire, who was regarded by his neighbors as a Yankee Faust, in league with the adversary. I give the story, as I heard it when a child, from a venerable family visitant. DARK the halls, and cold the feast, Gone the bridemaids, gone the priest. All is over, all is done, Twain of yesterday are one! Blooming girl and manhood gray, Autumn in the arms of May! Hushed within and hushed without, Dancing feet and wrestlers' shout; Dies the bonfire on the hill; All is dark and all is still, Save the starlight, save the breeze Moaning through the graveyard trees, And the great sea-waves below, Pulse of the midnight beating slow. From the brief dream of a bride She hath wakened, at his side. With half-uttered shriek and start,-- Feels she not his beating heart? And the pressure of his arm, And his breathing near and warm? Lightly from the bridal bed Springs that fair dishevelled head, And a feeling, new, intense, Half of shame, half innocence, Maiden fear and wonder speaks Through her lips and changing cheeks. From the oaken mantel glowing, Faintest light the lamp is throwing On the mirror's antique mould, High-backed chair, and wainscot old, And, through faded curtains stealing, His dark sleeping face revealing. Listless lies the strong man there, Silver-streaked his careless hair; Lips of love have left no trace On that hard and haughty face; And that forehead's knitted thought Love's soft hand hath not unwrought. "Yet," she sighs, "he loves me well, More than these calm lips will tell. Stooping to my lowly state, He hath made me rich and great, And I bless him, though he be Hard and stern to all save me!" While she speaketh, falls the light O'er her fingers small and white; Gold and gem, and costly ring Back the timid lustre fling,-- Love's selectest gifts, and rare, His proud hand had fastened there. Gratefully she marks the glow From those tapering lines of snow; Fondly o'er the sleeper bending His black hair with golden blending, In her soft and light caress, Cheek and lip together press. Ha!--that start of horror! why That wild stare and wilder cry, Full of terror, full of pain? Is there madness in her brain? Hark! that gasping, hoarse and low, "Spare me,--spare me,--let me go!" God have mercy!--icy cold Spectral hands her own enfold, Drawing silently from them Love's fair gifts of gold and gem. "Waken! save me!" still as death At her side he slumbereth. Ring and bracelet all are gone, And that ice-cold hand withdrawn; But she hears a murmur low, Full of sweetness, full of woe, Half a sigh and half a moan "Fear not! give the dead her own!" Ah!--the dead wife's voice she knows! That cold hand whose pressure froze, Once in warmest life had borne Gem and band her own hath worn. "Wake thee! wake thee!" Lo, his eyes Open with a dull surprise. In his arms the strong man folds her, Closer to his breast he holds her; Trembling limbs his own are meeting, And he feels her heart's quick beating "Nay, my dearest, why this fear?" "Hush!" she saith, "the dead is here!" "Nay, a dream,--an idle dream." But before the lamp's pale gleam Tremblingly her hand she raises. There no more the diamond blazes, Clasp of pearl, or ring of gold,-- "Ah!" she sighs, "her hand was cold!" Broken words of cheer he saith, But his dark lip quivereth, And as o'er the past he thinketh, From his young wife's arms he shrinketh; Can those soft arms round him lie, Underneath his dead wife's eye? She her fair young head can rest Soothed and childlike on his breast, And in trustful innocence Draw new strength and courage thence; He, the proud man, feels within But the cowardice of sin! She can murmur in her thought Simple prayers her mother taught, And His blessed angels call, Whose great love is over all; He, alone, in prayerless pride, Meets the dark Past at her side! One, who living shrank with dread From his look, or word, or tread, Unto whom her early grave Was as freedom to the slave, Moves him at this midnight hour, With the dead's unconscious power! Ah, the dead, the unforgot! From their solemn homes of thought, Where the cypress shadows blend Darkly over foe and friend, Or in love or sad rebuke, Back upon the living look. And the tenderest ones and weakest, Who their wrongs have borne the meekest, Lifting from those dark, still places, Sweet and sad-remembered faces, O'er the guilty hearts behind An unwitting triumph find. 1843 
9561	----	This eBook was produced by David Widger NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK I. THE MERRIMAC II. THE BASHABA III. THE DAUGHTER IV. THE WEDDING V. THE NEW HOME VI. AT PENNACOOK VII. THE DEPARTURE VIII. SONG OF INDIAN WOMEN THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK. Winnepurkit, otherwise called George, Sachem of Saugus, married a daughter of Passaconaway, the great Pennacook chieftain, in 1662. The wedding took place at Pennacook (now Concord, N. H.), and the ceremonies closed with a great feast. According to the usages of the chiefs, Passaconaway ordered a select number of his men to accompany the newly-married couple to the dwelling of the husband, where in turn there was another great feast. Some time after, the wife of Winnepurkit expressing a desire to visit her father's house was permitted to go, accompanied by a brave escort of her husband's chief men. But when she wished to return, her father sent a messenger to Saugus, informing her husband, and asking him to come and take her away. He returned for answer that he had escorted his wife to her father's house in a style that became a chief, and that now if she wished to return, her father must send her back, in the same way. This Passaconaway refused to do, and it is said that here terminated the connection of his daughter with the Saugus chief.--Vide MORTON'S New Canaan. WE had been wandering for many days Through the rough northern country. We had seen The sunset, with its bars of purple cloud, Like a new heaven, shine upward from the lake Of Winnepiseogee; and had felt The sunrise breezes, midst the leafy isles Which stoop their summer beauty to the lips Of the bright waters. We had checked our steeds, Silent with wonder, where the mountain wall Is piled to heaven; and, through the narrow rift Of the vast rocks, against whose rugged feet Beats the mad torrent with perpetual roar, Where noonday is as twilight, and the wind Comes burdened with the everlasting moan Of forests and of far-off waterfalls, We had looked upward where the summer sky, Tasselled with clouds light-woven by the sun, Sprung its blue arch above the abutting crags O'er-roofing the vast portal of the land Beyond the wall of mountains. We had passed The high source of the Saco; and bewildered In the dwarf spruce-belts of the Crystal Hills, Had heard above us, like a voice in the cloud, The horn of Fabyan sounding; and atop Of old Agioochook had seen the mountains' Piled to the northward, shagged with wood, and thick As meadow mole-hills,--the far sea of Casco, A white gleam on the horizon of the east; Fair lakes, embosomed in the woods and hills; Moosehillock's mountain range, and Kearsarge Lifting his granite forehead to the sun! And we had rested underneath the oaks Shadowing the bank, whose grassy spires are shaken By the perpetual beating of the falls Of the wild Ammonoosuc. We had tracked The winding Pemigewasset, overhung By beechen shadows, whitening down its rocks, Or lazily gliding through its intervals, From waving rye-fields sending up the gleam Of sunlit waters. We had seen the moon Rising behind Umbagog's eastern pines, Like a great Indian camp-fire; and its beams At midnight spanning with a bridge of silver The Merrimac by Uncanoonuc's falls. There were five souls of us whom travel's chance Had thrown together in these wild north hills A city lawyer, for a month escaping From his dull office, where the weary eye Saw only hot brick walls and close thronged streets; Briefless as yet, but with an eye to see Life's sunniest side, and with a heart to take Its chances all as godsends; and his brother, Pale from long pulpit studies, yet retaining The warmth and freshness of a genial heart, Whose mirror of the beautiful and true, In Man and Nature, was as yet undimmed By dust of theologic strife, or breath Of sect, or cobwebs of scholastic lore; Like a clear crystal calm of water, taking The hue and image of o'erleaning flowers, Sweet human faces, white clouds of the noon, Slant starlight glimpses through the dewy leaves, And tenderest moonrise. 'T was, in truth, a study, To mark his spirit, alternating between A decent and professional gravity And an irreverent mirthfulness, which often Laughed in the face of his divinity, Plucked off the sacred ephod, quite unshrined The oracle, and for the pattern priest Left us the man. A shrewd, sagacious merchant, To whom the soiled sheet found in Crawford's inn, Giving the latest news of city stocks And sales of cotton, had a deeper meaning Than the great presence of the awful mountains Glorified by the sunset; and his daughter, A delicate flower on whom had blown too long Those evil winds, which, sweeping from the ice And winnowing the fogs of Labrador, Shed their cold blight round Massachusetts Bay, With the same breath which stirs Spring's opening leaves And lifts her half-formed flower-bell on its stem, Poisoning our seaside atmosphere. It chanced that as we turned upon our homeward way, A drear northeastern storm came howling up The valley of the Saco; and that girl Who had stood with us upon Mount Washington, Her brown locks ruffled by the wind which whirled In gusts around its sharp, cold pinnacle, Who had joined our gay trout-fishing in the streams Which lave that giant's feet; whose laugh was heard Like a bird's carol on the sunrise breeze Which swelled our sail amidst the lake's green islands, Shrank from its harsh, chill breath, and visibly drooped Like a flower in the frost. So, in that quiet inn Which looks from Conway on the mountains piled Heavily against the horizon of the north, Like summer thunder-clouds, we made our home And while the mist hung over dripping hills, And the cold wind-driven rain-drops all day long Beat their sad music upon roof and pane, We strove to cheer our gentle invalid. The lawyer in the pauses of the storm Went angling down the Saco, and, returning, Recounted his adventures and mishaps; Gave us the history of his scaly clients, Mingling with ludicrous yet apt citations Of barbarous law Latin, passages From Izaak Walton's Angler, sweet and fresh As the flower-skirted streams of Staffordshire, Where, under aged trees, the southwest wind Of soft June mornings fanned the thin, white hair Of the sage fisher. And, if truth be told, Our youthful candidate forsook his sermons, His commentaries, articles and creeds, For the fair page of human loveliness, The missal of young hearts, whose sacred text Is music, its illumining, sweet smiles. He sang the songs she loved; and in his low, Deep, earnest voice, recited many a page Of poetry, the holiest, tenderest lines Of the sad bard of Olney, the sweet songs, Simple and beautiful as Truth and Nature, Of him whose whitened locks on Rydal Mount Are lifted yet by morning breezes blowing From the green hills, immortal in his lays. And for myself, obedient to her wish, I searched our landlord's proffered library,-- A well-thumbed Bunyan, with its nice wood pictures Of scaly fiends and angels not unlike them; Watts' unmelodious psalms; Astrology's Last home, a musty pile of almanacs, And an old chronicle of border wars And Indian history. And, as I read A story of the marriage of the Chief Of Saugus to the dusky Weetamoo, Daughter of Passaconaway, who dwelt In the old time upon the Merrimac, Our fair one, in the playful exercise Of her prerogative,--the right divine Of youth and beauty,--bade us versify The legend, and with ready pencil sketched Its plan and outlines, laughingly assigning To each his part, and barring our excuses With absolute will. So, like the cavaliers Whose voices still are heard in the Romance Of silver-tongued Boccaccio, on the banks Of Arno, with soft tales of love beguiling The ear of languid beauty, plague-exiled From stately Florence, we rehearsed our rhymes To their fair auditor, and shared by turns Her kind approval and her playful censure. It may be that these fragments owe alone To the fair setting of their circumstances,-- The associations of time, scene, and audience,-- Their place amid the pictures which fill up The chambers of my memory. Yet I trust That some, who sigh, while wandering in thought, Pilgrims of Romance o'er the olden world, That our broad land,--our sea-like lakes and mountains Piled to the clouds, our rivers overhung By forests which have known no other change For ages than the budding and the fall Of leaves, our valleys lovelier than those Which the old poets sang of,--should but figure On the apocryphal chart of speculation As pastures, wood-lots, mill-sites, with the privileges, Rights, and appurtenances, which make up A Yankee Paradise, unsung, unknown, To beautiful tradition; even their names, Whose melody yet lingers like the last Vibration of the red man's requiem, Exchanged for syllables significant, Of cotton-mill and rail-car, will look kindly Upon this effort to call up the ghost Of our dim Past, and listen with pleased ear To the responses of the questioned Shade. I. THE MERRIMAC. O child of that white-crested mountain whose springs Gush forth in the shade of the cliff-eagle's wings, Down whose slopes to the lowlands thy wild waters shine, Leaping gray walls of rock, flashing through the dwarf pine; From that cloud-curtained cradle so cold and so lone, From the arms of that wintry-locked mother of stone, By hills hung with forests, through vales wide and free, Thy mountain-born brightness glanced down to the sea. No bridge arched thy waters save that where the trees Stretched their long arms above thee and kissed in the breeze: No sound save the lapse of the waves on thy shores, The plunging of otters, the light dip of oars. Green-tufted, oak-shaded, by Amoskeag's fall Thy twin Uncanoonucs rose stately and tall, Thy Nashua meadows lay green and unshorn, And the hills of Pentucket were tasselled with corn. But thy Pennacook valley was fairer than these, And greener its grasses and taller its trees, Ere the sound of an axe in the forest had rung, Or the mower his scythe in the meadows had swung. In their sheltered repose looking out from the wood The bark-builded wigwams of Pennacook stood; There glided the corn-dance, the council-fire shone, And against the red war-post the hatchet was thrown. There the old smoked in silence their pipes, and the young To the pike and the white-perch their baited lines flung; There the boy shaped his arrows, and there the shy maid Wove her many-hued baskets and bright wampum braid. O Stream of the Mountains! if answer of thine Could rise from thy waters to question of mine, Methinks through the din of thy thronged banks a moan Of sorrow would swell for the days which have gone. Not for thee the dull jar of the loom and the wheel, The gliding of shuttles, the ringing of steel; But that old voice of waters, of bird and of breeze, The dip of the wild-fowl, the rustling of trees. II. THE BASHABA. Lift we the twilight curtains of the Past, And, turning from familiar sight and sound, Sadly and full of reverence let us cast A glance upon Tradition's shadowy ground, Led by the few pale lights which, glimmering round That dim, strange land of Eld, seem dying fast; And that which history gives not to the eye, The faded coloring of Time's tapestry, Let Fancy, with her dream-dipped brush, supply. Roof of bark and walls of pine, Through whose chinks the sunbeams shine, Tracing many a golden line On the ample floor within; Where, upon that earth-floor stark, Lay the gaudy mats of bark, With the bear's hide, rough and dark, And the red-deer's skin. Window-tracery, small and slight, Woven of the willow white, Lent a dimly checkered light; And the night-stars glimmered down, Where the lodge-fire's heavy smoke, Slowly through an opening broke, In the low roof, ribbed with oak, Sheathed with hemlock brown. Gloomed behind the changeless shade By the solemn pine-wood made; Through the rugged palisade, In the open foreground planted, Glimpses came of rowers rowing, Stir of leaves and wild-flowers blowing, Steel-like gleams of water flowing, In the sunlight slanted. Here the mighty Bashaba Held his long-unquestioned sway, From the White Hills, far away, To the great sea's sounding shore; Chief of chiefs, his regal word All the river Sachems heard, At his call the war-dance stirred, Or was still once more. There his spoils of chase and war, Jaw of wolf and black bear's paw, Panther's skin and eagle's claw, Lay beside his axe and bow; And, adown the roof-pole hung, Loosely on a snake-skin strung, In the smoke his scalp-locks swung Grimly to and fro. Nightly down the river going, Swifter was the hunter's rowing, When he saw that lodge-fire, glowing O'er the waters still and red; And the squaw's dark eye burned brighter, And she drew her blanket tighter, As, with quicker step and lighter, From that door she fled. For that chief had magic skill, And a Panisee's dark will, Over powers of good and ill, Powers which bless and powers which ban; Wizard lord of Pennacook, Chiefs upon their war-path shook, When they met the steady look Of that wise dark man. Tales of him the gray squaw told, When the winter night-wind cold Pierced her blanket's thickest fold, And her fire burned low and small, Till the very child abed, Drew its bear-skin over bead, Shrinking from the pale lights shed On the trembling wall. All the subtle spirits hiding Under earth or wave, abiding In the caverned rock, or riding Misty clouds or morning breeze; Every dark intelligence, Secret soul, and influence Of all things which outward sense Feels, or bears, or sees,-- These the wizard's skill confessed, At his bidding banned or blessed, Stormful woke or lulled to rest Wind and cloud, and fire and flood; Burned for him the drifted snow, Bade through ice fresh lilies blow, And the leaves of summer grow Over winter's wood! Not untrue that tale of old! Now, as then, the wise and bold All the powers of Nature hold Subject to their kingly will; From the wondering crowds ashore, Treading life's wild waters o'er, As upon a marble floor, Moves the strong man still. Still, to such, life's elements With their sterner laws dispense, And the chain of consequence Broken in their pathway lies; Time and change their vassals making, Flowers from icy pillows waking, Tresses of the sunrise shaking Over midnight skies. Still, to th' earnest soul, the sun Rests on towered Gibeon, And the moon of Ajalon Lights the battle-grounds of life; To his aid the strong reverses Hidden powers and giant forces, And the high stars, in their courses, Mingle in his strife! III. THE DAUGHTER. The soot-black brows of men, the yell Of women thronging round the bed, The tinkling charm of ring and shell, The Powah whispering o'er the dead! All these the Sachem's home had known, When, on her journey long and wild To the dim World of Souls, alone, In her young beauty passed the mother of his child. Three bow-shots from the Sachem's dwelling They laid her in the walnut shade, Where a green hillock gently swelling Her fitting mound of burial made. There trailed the vine in summer hours, The tree-perched squirrel dropped his shell,-- On velvet moss and pale-hued flowers, Woven with leaf and spray, the softened sunshine fell! The Indian's heart is hard and cold, It closes darkly o'er its care, And formed in Nature's sternest mould, Is slow to feel, and strong to bear. The war-paint on the Sachem's face, Unwet with tears, shone fierce and red, And still, in battle or in chase, Dry leaf and snow-rime crisped beneath his foremost tread. Yet when her name was heard no more, And when the robe her mother gave, And small, light moccasin she wore, Had slowly wasted on her grave, Unmarked of him the dark maids sped Their sunset dance and moonlit play; No other shared his lonely bed, No other fair young head upon his bosom lay. A lone, stern man. Yet, as sometimes The tempest-smitten tree receives From one small root the sap which climbs Its topmost spray and crowning leaves, So from his child the Sachem drew A life of Love and Hope, and felt His cold and rugged nature through The softness and the warmth of her young being melt. A laugh which in the woodland rang Bemocking April's gladdest bird,-- A light and graceful form which sprang To meet him when his step was heard,-- Eyes by his lodge-fire flashing dark, Small fingers stringing bead and shell Or weaving mats of bright-hued bark,-- With these the household-god [3] had graced his wigwam well. Child of the forest! strong and free, Slight-robed, with loosely flowing hair, She swam the lake or climbed the tree, Or struck the flying bird in air. O'er the heaped drifts of winter's moon Her snow-shoes tracked the hunter's way; And dazzling in the summer noon The blade of her light oar threw off its shower of spray! Unknown to her the rigid rule, The dull restraint, the chiding frown, The weary torture of the school, The taming of wild nature down. Her only lore, the legends told Around the hunter's fire at night; Stars rose and set, and seasons rolled, Flowers bloomed and snow-flakes fell, unquestioned in her sight. Unknown to her the subtle skill With which the artist-eye can trace In rock and tree and lake and hill The outlines of divinest grace; Unknown the fine soul's keen unrest, Which sees, admires, yet yearns alway; Too closely on her mother's breast To note her smiles of love the child of Nature lay! It is enough for such to be Of common, natural things a part, To feel, with bird and stream and tree, The pulses of the same great heart; But we, from Nature long exiled, In our cold homes of Art and Thought Grieve like the stranger-tended child, Which seeks its mother's arms, and sees but feels them not. The garden rose may richly bloom In cultured soil and genial air, To cloud the light of Fashion's room Or droop in Beauty's midnight hair; In lonelier grace, to sun and dew The sweetbrier on the hillside shows Its single leaf and fainter hue, Untrained and wildly free, yet still a sister rose! Thus o'er the heart of Weetamoo Their mingling shades of joy and ill The instincts of her nature threw; The savage was a woman still. Midst outlines dim of maiden schemes, Heart-colored prophecies of life, Rose on the ground of her young dreams The light of a new home, the lover and the wife. IV. THE WEDDING. Cool and dark fell the autumn night, But the Bashaba's wigwam glowed with light, For down from its roof, by green withes hung, Flaring and smoking the pine-knots swung. And along the river great wood-fires Shot into the night their long, red spires, Showing behind the tall, dark wood, Flashing before on the sweeping flood. In the changeful wind, with shimmer and shade, Now high, now low, that firelight played, On tree-leaves wet with evening dews, On gliding water and still canoes. The trapper that night on Turee's brook, And the weary fisher on Contoocook, Saw over the marshes, and through the pine, And down on the river, the dance-lights shine. For the Saugus Sachem had come to woo The Bashaba's daughter Weetamoo, And laid at her father's feet that night His softest furs and wampum white. From the Crystal Hills to the far southeast The river Sagamores came to the feast; And chiefs whose homes the sea-winds shook Sat down on the mats of Pennacook. They came from Sunapee's shore of rock, From the snowy sources of Snooganock, And from rough Coos whose thick woods shake Their pine-cones in Umbagog Lake. From Ammonoosuc's mountain pass, Wild as his home, came Chepewass; And the Keenomps of the bills which throw Their shade on the Smile of Manito. With pipes of peace and bows unstrung, Glowing with paint came old and young, In wampum and furs and feathers arrayed, To the dance and feast the Bashaba made. Bird of the air and beast of the field, All which the woods and the waters yield, On dishes of birch and hemlock piled, Garnished and graced that banquet wild. Steaks of the brown bear fat and large From the rocky slopes of the Kearsarge; Delicate trout from Babboosuck brook, And salmon speared in the Contoocook; Squirrels which fed where nuts fell thick in the gravelly bed of the Otternic; And small wild-hens in reed-snares caught from the banks of Sondagardee brought; Pike and perch from the Suncook taken, Nuts from the trees of the Black Hills shaken, Cranberries picked in the Squamscot bog, And grapes from the vines of Piscataquog: And, drawn from that great stone vase which stands In the river scooped by a spirit's hands,[4] Garnished with spoons of shell and horn, Stood the birchen dishes of smoking corn. Thus bird of the air and beast of the field, All which the woods and the waters yield, Furnished in that olden day The bridal feast of the Bashaba. And merrily when that feast was done On the fire-lit green the dance begun, With squaws' shrill stave, and deeper hum Of old men beating the Indian drum. Painted and plumed, with scalp-locks flowing, And red arms tossing and black eyes glowing, Now in the light and now in the shade Around the fires the dancers played. The step was quicker, the song more shrill, And the beat of the small drums louder still Whenever within the circle drew The Saugus Sachem and Weetamoo. The moons of forty winters had shed Their snow upon that chieftain's head, And toil and care and battle's chance Had seamed his hard, dark countenance. A fawn beside the bison grim,-- Why turns the bride's fond eye on him, In whose cold look is naught beside The triumph of a sullen pride? Ask why the graceful grape entwines The rough oak with her arm of vines; And why the gray rock's rugged cheek The soft lips of the mosses seek. Why, with wise instinct, Nature seems To harmonize her wide extremes, Linking the stronger with the weak, The haughty with the soft and meek! V. THE NEW HOME. A wild and broken landscape, spiked with firs, Roughening the bleak horizon's northern edge; Steep, cavernous hillsides, where black hemlock spurs And sharp, gray splinters of the wind-swept ledge Pierced the thin-glazed ice, or bristling rose, Where the cold rim of the sky sunk down upon the snows. And eastward cold, wide marshes stretched away, Dull, dreary flats without a bush or tree, O'er-crossed by icy creeks, where twice a day Gurgled the waters of the moon-struck sea; And faint with distance came the stifled roar, The melancholy lapse of waves on that low shore. No cheerful village with its mingling smokes, No laugh of children wrestling in the snow, No camp-fire blazing through the hillside oaks, No fishers kneeling on the ice below; Yet midst all desolate things of sound and view, Through the long winter moons smiled dark-eyed Weetamoo. Her heart had found a home; and freshly all Its beautiful affections overgrew Their rugged prop. As o'er some granite wall Soft vine-leaves open to the moistening dew And warm bright sun, the love of that young wife Found on a hard cold breast the dew and warmth of life. The steep, bleak hills, the melancholy shore, The long, dead level of the marsh between, A coloring of unreal beauty wore Through the soft golden mist of young love seen. For o'er those hills and from that dreary plain, Nightly she welcomed home her hunter chief again. No warmth of heart, no passionate burst of feeling, Repaid her welcoming smile and parting kiss, No fond and playful dalliance half concealing, Under the guise of mirth, its tenderness; But, in their stead, the warrior's settled pride, And vanity's pleased smile with homage satisfied. Enough for Weetamoo, that she alone Sat on his mat and slumbered at his side; That he whose fame to her young ear had flown Now looked upon her proudly as his bride; That he whose name the Mohawk trembling heard Vouchsafed to her at times a kindly look or word. For she had learned the maxims of her race, Which teach the woman to become a slave, And feel herself the pardonless disgrace Of love's fond weakness in the wise and brave,-- The scandal and the shame which they incur, Who give to woman all which man requires of her. So passed the winter moons. The sun at last Broke link by link the frost chain of the rills, And the warm breathings of the southwest passed Over the hoar rime of the Saugus hills; The gray and desolate marsh grew green once more, And the birch-tree's tremulous shade fell round the Sachem's door. Then from far Pennacook swift runners came, With gift and greeting for the Saugus chief; Beseeching him in the great Sachem's name, That, with the coming of the flower and leaf, The song of birds, the warm breeze and the rain, Young Weetamoo might greet her lonely sire again. And Winnepurkit called his chiefs together, And a grave council in his wigwam met, Solemn and brief in words, considering whether The rigid rules of forest etiquette Permitted Weetamoo once more to look Upon her father's face and green-banked Pennacook. With interludes of pipe-smoke and strong water, The forest sages pondered, and at length, Concluded in a body to escort her Up to her father's home of pride and strength, Impressing thus on Pennacook a sense Of Winnepurkit's power and regal consequence. So through old woods which Aukeetamit's[5] hand, A soft and many-shaded greenness lent, Over high breezy hills, and meadow land Yellow with flowers, the wild procession went, Till, rolling down its wooded banks between, A broad, clear, mountain stream, the Merrimac was seen. The hunter leaning on his bow undrawn, The fisher lounging on the pebbled shores, Squaws in the clearing dropping the seed-corn, Young children peering through the wigwam doors, Saw with delight, surrounded by her train Of painted Saugus braves, their Weetamoo again. VI. AT PENNACOOK. The hills are dearest which our childish feet Have climbed the earliest; and the streams most sweet Are ever those at which our young lips drank, Stooped to their waters o'er the grassy bank. Midst the cold dreary sea-watch, Home's hearth-light Shines round the helmsman plunging through the night; And still, with inward eye, the traveller sees In close, dark, stranger streets his native trees. The home-sick dreamer's brow is nightly fanned By breezes whispering of his native land, And on the stranger's dim and dying eye The soft, sweet pictures of his childhood lie. Joy then for Weetamoo, to sit once more A child upon her father's wigwam floor! Once more with her old fondness to beguile From his cold eye the strange light of a smile. The long, bright days of summer swiftly passed, The dry leaves whirled in autumn's rising blast, And evening cloud and whitening sunrise rime Told of the coming of the winter-time. But vainly looked, the while, young Weetamoo, Down the dark river for her chief's canoe; No dusky messenger from Saugus brought The grateful tidings which the young wife sought. At length a runner from her father sent, To Winnepurkit's sea-cooled wigwam went "Eagle of Saugus,--in the woods the dove Mourns for the shelter of thy wings of love." But the dark chief of Saugus turned aside In the grim anger of hard-hearted pride; I bore her as became a chieftain's daughter, Up to her home beside the gliding water. If now no more a mat for her is found Of all which line her father's wigwam round, Let Pennacook call out his warrior train, And send her back with wampum gifts again." The baffled runner turned upon his track, Bearing the words of Winnepurkit back. "Dog of the Marsh," cried Pennacook, "no more Shall child of mine sit on his wigwam floor. "Go, let him seek some meaner squaw to spread The stolen bear-skin of his beggar's bed; Son of a fish-hawk! let him dig his clams For some vile daughter of the Agawams, "Or coward Nipmucks! may his scalp dry black In Mohawk smoke, before I send her back." He shook his clenched hand towards the ocean wave, While hoarse assent his listening council gave. Alas poor bride! can thy grim sire impart His iron hardness to thy woman's heart? Or cold self-torturing pride like his atone For love denied and life's warm beauty flown? On Autumn's gray and mournful grave the snow Hung its white wreaths; with stifled voice and low The river crept, by one vast bridge o'er-crossed, Built by the boar-locked artisan of Frost. And many a moon in beauty newly born Pierced the red sunset with her silver horn, Or, from the east, across her azure field Rolled the wide brightness of her full-orbed shield. Yet Winnepurkit came not,--on the mat Of the scorned wife her dusky rival sat; And he, the while, in Western woods afar, Urged the long chase, or trod the path of war. Dry up thy tears, young daughter of a chief! Waste not on him the sacredness of grief; Be the fierce spirit of thy sire thine own, His lips of scorning, and his heart of stone. What heeds the warrior of a hundred fights, The storm-worn watcher through long hunting nights, Cold, crafty, proud of woman's weak distress, Her home-bound grief and pining loneliness? VII. THE DEPARTURE. The wild March rains had fallen fast and long The snowy mountains of the North among, Making each vale a watercourse, each hill Bright with the cascade of some new-made rill. Gnawed by the sunbeams, softened by the rain, Heaved underneath by the swollen current's strain, The ice-bridge yielded, and the Merrimac Bore the huge ruin crashing down its track. On that strong turbid water, a small boat Guided by one weak hand was seen to float; Evil the fate which loosed it from the shore, Too early voyager with too frail an oar! Down the vexed centre of that rushing tide, The thick huge ice-blocks threatening either side, The foam-white rocks of Amoskeag in view, With arrowy swiftness sped that light canoe. The trapper, moistening his moose's meat On the wet bank by Uncanoonuc's feet, Saw the swift boat flash down the troubled stream; Slept he, or waked he? was it truth or dream? The straining eye bent fearfully before, The small hand clenching on the useless oar, The bead-wrought blanket trailing o'er the water-- He knew them all--woe for the Sachem's daughter! Sick and aweary of her lonely life, Heedless of peril, the still faithful wife Had left her mother's grave, her father's door, To seek the wigwam of her chief once more. Down the white rapids like a sear leaf whirled, On the sharp rocks and piled-up ices hurled, Empty and broken, circled the canoe In the vexed pool below--but where was Weetamoo. VIII. SONG OF INDIAN WOMEN. The Dark eye has left us, The Spring-bird has flown; On the pathway of spirits She wanders alone. The song of the wood-dove has died on our shore Mat wonck kunna-monee![6] We hear it no more! O dark water Spirit We cast on thy wave These furs which may never Hang over her grave; Bear down to the lost one the robes that she wore Mat wonck kunna-monee! We see her no more! Of the strange land she walks in No Powah has told: It may burn with the sunshine, Or freeze with the cold. Let us give to our lost one the robes that she wore: Mat wonck kunna-monee! We see her no more! The path she is treading Shall soon be our own; Each gliding in shadow Unseen and alone! In vain shall we call on the souls gone before: Mat wonck kunna-monee! They hear us no more! O mighty Sowanna![7] Thy gateways unfold, From thy wigwam of sunset Lift curtains of gold! Take home the poor Spirit whose journey is o'er Mat wonck kunna-monee! We see her no more! So sang the Children of the Leaves beside The broad, dark river's coldly flowing tide; Now low, now harsh, with sob-like pause and swell, On the high wind their voices rose and fell. Nature's wild music,--sounds of wind-swept trees, The scream of birds, the wailing of the breeze, The roar of waters, steady, deep, and strong,-- Mingled and murmured in that farewell song. 1844. 
9562	----	This eBook was produced by David Widger NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER CONTENTS: BARCLAY OF URY THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA THE LEGEND OF ST MARK KATHLEEN THE WELL OF LOCH MAREE THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS TAULER THE HERMIT OF THE THEBAID THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE THE SYCAMORES THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW TELLING THE BEES THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERY THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE OF NEWBURY BARCLAY OF URY. Among the earliest converts to the doctrines of Friends in Scotland was Barclay of Ury, an old and distinguished soldier, who had fought under Gustavus Adolphus, in Germany. As a Quaker, he became the object of persecution and abuse at the hands of the magistrates and the populace. None bore the indignities of the mob with greater patience and nobleness of soul than this once proud gentleman and soldier. One of his friends, on an occasion of uncommon rudeness, lamented that he should be treated so harshly in his old age who had been so honored before. "I find more satisfaction," said Barclay, "as well as honor, in being thus insulted for my religious principles, than when, a few years ago, it was usual for the magistrates, as I passed the city of Aberdeen, to meet me on the road and conduct me to public entertainment in their hall, and then escort me out again, to gain my favor." Up the streets of Aberdeen, By the kirk and college green, Rode the Laird of Ury; Close behind him, close beside, Foul of mouth and evil-eyed, Pressed the mob in fury. Flouted him the drunken churl, Jeered at him the serving-girl, Prompt to please her master; And the begging carlin, late Fed and clothed at Ury's gate, Cursed him as he passed her. Yet, with calm and stately mien, Up the streets of Aberdeen Came he slowly riding; And, to all he saw and heard, Answering not with bitter word, Turning not for chiding. Came a troop with broadswords swinging, Bits and bridles sharply ringing, Loose and free and froward; Quoth the foremost, "Ride him down! Push him! prick him! through the town Drive the Quaker coward!" But from out the thickening crowd Cried a sudden voice and loud "Barclay! Ho! a Barclay!" And the old man at his side Saw a comrade, battle tried, Scarred and sunburned darkly; Who with ready weapon bare, Fronting to the troopers there, Cried aloud: "God save us, Call ye coward him who stood Ankle deep in Lutzen's blood, With the brave Gustavus?" "Nay, I do not need thy sword, Comrade mine," said Ury's lord; "Put it up, I pray thee Passive to His holy will, Trust I in my Master still, Even though He slay me. "Pledges of thy love and faith, Proved on many a field of death, Not by me are needed." Marvelled much that henchman bold, That his laird, so stout of old, Now so meekly pleaded. "Woe's the day!" he sadly said, With a slowly shaking head, And a look of pity; "Ury's honest lord reviled, Mock of knave and sport of child, In his own good city. "Speak the word, and, master mine, As we charged on Tilly's[8] line, And his Walloon lancers, Smiting through their midst we'll teach Civil look and decent speech To these boyish prancers!" "Marvel not, mine ancient friend, Like beginning, like the end:" Quoth the Laird of Ury; "Is the sinful servant more Than his gracious Lord who bore Bonds and stripes in Jewry? "Give me joy that in His name I can bear, with patient frame, All these vain ones offer; While for them He suffereth long, Shall I answer wrong with wrong, Scoffing with the scoffer? "Happier I, with loss of all, Hunted, outlawed, held in thrall, With few friends to greet me, Than when reeve and squire were seen, Riding out from Aberdeen, With bared heads to meet me. "When each goodwife, o'er and o'er, Blessed me as I passed her door; And the snooded daughter, Through her casement glancing down, Smiled on him who bore renown From red fields of slaughter. "Hard to feel the stranger's scoff, Hard the old friend's falling off, Hard to learn forgiving; But the Lord His own rewards, And His love with theirs accords, Warm and fresh and living. "Through this dark and stormy night Faith beholds a feeble light Up the blackness streaking; Knowing God's own time is best, In a patient hope I rest For the full day-breaking!" So the Laird of Ury said, Turning slow his horse's head Towards the Tolbooth prison, Where, through iron gates, he heard Poor disciples of the Word Preach of Christ arisen! Not in vain, Confessor old, Unto us the tale is told Of thy day of trial; Every age on him who strays From its broad and beaten ways Pours its seven-fold vial. Happy he whose inward ear Angel comfortings can hear, O'er the rabble's laughter; And while Hatred's fagots burn, Glimpses through the smoke discern Of the good hereafter. Knowing this, that never yet Share of Truth was vainly set In the world's wide fallow; After hands shall sow the seed, After hands from hill and mead Reap the harvests yellow. Thus, with somewhat of the Seer, Must the moral pioneer From the Future borrow; Clothe the waste with dreams of grain, And, on midnight's sky of rain, Paint the golden morrow! THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA. A letter-writer from Mexico during the Mexican war, when detailing some of the incidents at the terrible fight of Buena Vista, mentioned that Mexican women were seen hovering near the field of death, for the purpose of giving aid and succor to the wounded. One poor woman was found surrounded by the maimed and suffering of both armies, ministering to the wants of Americans as well as Mexicans, with impartial tenderness. SPEAK and tell us, our Ximena, looking northward far away, O'er the camp of the invaders, o'er the Mexican array, Who is losing? who is winning? are they far or come they near? Look abroad, and tell us, sister, whither rolls the storm we hear. Down the hills of Angostura still the storm of battle rolls; Blood is flowing, men are dying; God have mercy on their souls! "Who is losing? who is winning?" Over hill and over plain, I see but smoke of cannon clouding through the mountain rain." Holy Mother! keep our brothers! Look, Ximena, look once more. "Still I see the fearful whirlwind rolling darkly as before, Bearing on, in strange confusion, friend and foeman, foot and horse, Like some wild and troubled torrent sweeping down its mountain course." Look forth once more, Ximena! "Ah! the smoke has rolled away; And I see the Northern rifles gleaming down the ranks of gray. Hark! that sudden blast of bugles! there the troop of Minon wheels; There the Northern horses thunder, with the cannon at their heels. "Jesu, pity I how it thickens I now retreat and now advance! Bight against the blazing cannon shivers Puebla's charging lance! Down they go, the brave young riders; horse and foot together fall; Like a ploughshare in the fallow, through them ploughs the Northern ball." Nearer came the storm and nearer, rolling fast and frightful on! Speak, Ximena, speak and tell us, who has lost, and who has won? Alas! alas! I know not; friend and foe together fall, O'er the dying rush the living: pray, my sisters, for them all! "Lo! the wind the smoke is lifting. Blessed Mother, save my brain! I can see the wounded crawling slowly out from heaps of slain. Now they stagger, blind and bleeding; now they fall, and strive to rise; Hasten, sisters, haste and save them, lest they die before our eyes! "O my hearts love! O my dear one! lay thy poor head on my knee; Dost thou know the lips that kiss thee? Canst thou hear me? canst thou see? O my husband, brave and gentle! O my Bernal, look once more On the blessed cross before thee! Mercy! all is o'er!" Dry thy tears, my poor Ximena; lay thy dear one down to rest; Let his hands be meekly folded, lay the cross upon his breast; Let his dirge be sung hereafter, and his funeral masses said; To-day, thou poor bereaved one, the living ask thy aid. Close beside her, faintly moaning, fair and young, a soldier lay, Torn with shot and pierced with lances, bleeding slow his life away; But, as tenderly before him the lorn Ximena knelt, She saw the Northern eagle shining on his pistol- belt. With a stifled cry of horror straight she turned away her head; With a sad and bitter feeling looked she back upon her dead; But she heard the youth's low moaning, and his struggling breath of pain, And she raised the cooling water to his parching lips again. Whispered low the dying soldier, pressed her hand and faintly smiled; Was that pitying face his mother's? did she watch beside her child? All his stranger words with meaning her woman's heart supplied; With her kiss upon his forehead, "Mother!" murmured he, and died! "A bitter curse upon them, poor boy, who led thee forth, From some gentle, sad-eyed mother, weeping, lonely, in the North!" Spake the mournful Mexic woman, as she laid him with her dead, And turned to soothe the living, and bind the wounds which bled. "Look forth once more, Ximena!" Like a cloud before the wind Rolls the battle down the mountains, leaving blood and death behind; Ah! they plead in vain for mercy; in the dust the wounded strive; "Hide your faces, holy angels! O thou Christ of God, forgive!" Sink, O Night, among thy mountains! let the cool, gray shadows fall; Dying brothers, fighting demons, drop thy curtain over all! Through the thickening winter twilight, wide apart the battle rolled, In its sheath the sabre rested, and the cannon's lips grew cold. But the noble Mexic women still their holy task pursued, Through that long, dark night of sorrow, worn and faint and lacking food. Over weak and suffering brothers, with a tender care they hung, And the dying foeman blessed them in a strange and Northern tongue. Not wholly lost, O Father! is this evil world of ours; Upward, through its blood and ashes, spring afresh the Eden flowers; From its smoking hell of battle, Love and Pity send their prayer, And still thy white-winged angels hover dimly in our air! 1847. THE LEGEND OF ST. MARK. "This legend [to which my attention was called by my friend Charles Sumner], is the subject of a celebrated picture by Tintoretto, of which Mr. Rogers possesses the original sketch. The slave lies on the ground, amid a crowd of spectators, who look on, animated by all the various emotions of sympathy, rage, terror; a woman, in front, with a child in her arms, has always been admired for the lifelike vivacity of her attitude and expression. The executioner holds up the broken implements; St. Mark, with a headlong movement, seems to rush down from heaven in haste to save his worshipper. The dramatic grouping in this picture is wonderful; the coloring, in its gorgeous depth and harmony, is, in Mr. Rogers's sketch, finer than in the picture."--MRS. JAMESON'S Sacred and Legendary Art, I. 154. THE day is closing dark and cold, With roaring blast and sleety showers; And through the dusk the lilacs wear The bloom of snow, instead of flowers. I turn me from the gloom without, To ponder o'er a tale of old; A legend of the age of Faith, By dreaming monk or abbess told. On Tintoretto's canvas lives That fancy of a loving heart, In graceful lines and shapes of power, And hues immortal as his art. In Provence (so the story runs) There lived a lord, to whom, as slave, A peasant-boy of tender years The chance of trade or conquest gave. Forth-looking from the castle tower, Beyond the hills with almonds dark, The straining eye could scarce discern The chapel of the good St. Mark. And there, when bitter word or fare The service of the youth repaid, By stealth, before that holy shrine, For grace to bear his wrong, he prayed. The steed stamped at the castle gate, The boar-hunt sounded on the hill; Why stayed the Baron from the chase, With looks so stern, and words so ill? "Go, bind yon slave! and let him learn, By scath of fire and strain of cord, How ill they speed who give dead saints The homage due their living lord!" They bound him on the fearful rack, When, through the dungeon's vaulted dark, He saw the light of shining robes, And knew the face of good St. Mark. Then sank the iron rack apart, The cords released their cruel clasp, The pincers, with their teeth of fire, Fell broken from the torturer's grasp. And lo! before the Youth and Saint, Barred door and wall of stone gave way; And up from bondage and the night They passed to freedom and the day! O dreaming monk! thy tale is true; O painter! true thy pencil's art; in tones of hope and prophecy, Ye whisper to my listening heart! Unheard no burdened heart's appeal Moans up to God's inclining ear; Unheeded by his tender eye, Falls to the earth no sufferer's tear. For still the Lord alone is God The pomp and power of tyrant man Are scattered at his lightest breath, Like chaff before the winnower's fan. Not always shall the slave uplift His heavy hands to Heaven in vain. God's angel, like the good St. Mark, Comes shining down to break his chain! O weary ones! ye may not see Your helpers in their downward flight; Nor hear the sound of silver wings Slow beating through the hush of night! But not the less gray Dothan shone, With sunbright watchers bending low, That Fear's dim eye beheld alone The spear-heads of the Syrian foe. There are, who, like the Seer of old, Can see the helpers God has sent, And how life's rugged mountain-side Is white with many an angel tent! They hear the heralds whom our Lord Sends down his pathway to prepare; And light, from others hidden, shines On their high place of faith and prayer. Let such, for earth's despairing ones, Hopeless, yet longing to be free, Breathe once again the Prophet's prayer "Lord, ope their eyes, that they may see!" 1849. KATHLEEN. This ballad was originally published in my prose work, Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal, as the song of a wandering Milesian schoolmaster. In the seventeenth century, slavery in the New World was by no means confined to the natives of Africa. Political offenders and criminals were transported by the British government to the plantations of Barbadoes and Virginia, where they were sold like cattle in the market. Kidnapping of free and innocent white persons was practised to a considerable extent in the seaports of the United Kingdom. O NORAH, lay your basket down, And rest your weary hand, And come and hear me sing a song Of our old Ireland. There was a lord of Galaway, A mighty lord was he; And he did wed a second wife, A maid of low degree. But he was old, and she was young, And so, in evil spite, She baked the black bread for his kin, And fed her own with white. She whipped the maids and starved the kern, And drove away the poor; "Ah, woe is me!" the old lord said, "I rue my bargain sore!" This lord he had a daughter fair, Beloved of old and young, And nightly round the shealing-fires Of her the gleeman sung. "As sweet and good is young Kathleen As Eve before her fall;" So sang the harper at the fair, So harped he in the hall. "Oh, come to me, my daughter dear! Come sit upon my knee, For looking in your face, Kathleen, Your mother's own I see!" He smoothed and smoothed her hair away, He kissed her forehead fair; "It is my darling Mary's brow, It is my darling's hair!" Oh, then spake up the angry dame, "Get up, get up," quoth she, "I'll sell ye over Ireland, I'll sell ye o'er the sea!" She clipped her glossy hair away, That none her rank might know; She took away her gown of silk, And gave her one of tow, And sent her down to Limerick town And to a seaman sold This daughter of an Irish lord For ten good pounds in gold. The lord he smote upon his breast, And tore his beard so gray; But he was old, and she was young, And so she had her way. Sure that same night the Banshee howled To fright the evil dame, And fairy folks, who loved Kathleen, With funeral torches came. She watched them glancing through the trees, And glimmering down the hill; They crept before the dead-vault door, And there they all stood still! "Get up, old man! the wake-lights shine!" "Ye murthering witch," quoth he, "So I'm rid of your tongue, I little care If they shine for you or me." "Oh, whoso brings my daughter back, My gold and land shall have!" Oh, then spake up his handsome page, "No gold nor land I crave! "But give to me your daughter dear, Give sweet Kathleen to me, Be she on sea or be she on land, I'll bring her back to thee." "My daughter is a lady born, And you of low degree, But she shall be your bride the day You bring her back to me." He sailed east, he sailed west, And far and long sailed he, Until he came to Boston town, Across the great salt sea. "Oh, have ye seen the young Kathleen, The flower of Ireland? Ye'll know her by her eyes so blue, And by her snow-white hand!" Out spake an ancient man, "I know The maiden whom ye mean; I bought her of a Limerick man, And she is called Kathleen. "No skill hath she in household work, Her hands are soft and white, Yet well by loving looks and ways She doth her cost requite." So up they walked through Boston town, And met a maiden fair, A little basket on her arm So snowy-white and bare. "Come hither, child, and say hast thou This young man ever seen?" They wept within each other's arms, The page and young Kathleen. "Oh give to me this darling child, And take my purse of gold." "Nay, not by me," her master said, "Shall sweet Kathleen be sold. "We loved her in the place of one The Lord hath early ta'en; But, since her heart's in Ireland, We give her back again!" Oh, for that same the saints in heaven For his poor soul shall pray, And Mary Mother wash with tears His heresies away. Sure now they dwell in Ireland; As you go up Claremore Ye'll see their castle looking down The pleasant Galway shore. And the old lord's wife is dead and gone, And a happy man is he, For he sits beside his own Kathleen, With her darling on his knee. 1849. THE WELL OF LOCH MAREE Pennant, in his Voyage to the Hebrides, describes the holy well of Loch Maree, the waters of which were supposed to effect a miraculous cure of melancholy, trouble, and insanity. CALM on the breast of Loch Maree A little isle reposes; A shadow woven of the oak And willow o'er it closes. Within, a Druid's mound is seen, Set round with stony warders; A fountain, gushing through the turf, Flows o'er its grassy borders. And whoso bathes therein his brow, With care or madness burning, Feels once again his healthful thought And sense of peace returning. O restless heart and fevered brain, Unquiet and unstable, That holy well of Loch Maree Is more than idle fable! Life's changes vex, its discords stun, Its glaring sunshine blindeth, And blest is he who on his way That fount of healing findeth! The shadows of a humbled will And contrite heart are o'er it; Go read its legend, "TRUST IN GOD," On Faith's white stones before it. 1850. THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS. The incident upon which this poem is based is related in a note to Bernardin Henri Saint Pierre's Etudes de la Nature. "We arrived at the habitation of the Hermits a little before they sat down to their table, and while they were still at church. J. J. Rousseau proposed to me to offer up our devotions. The hermits were reciting the Litanies of Providence, which are remarkably beautiful. After we had addressed our prayers to God, and the hermits were proceeding to the refectory, Rousseau said to me, with his heart overflowing, 'At this moment I experience what is said in the gospel: Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. There is here a feeling of peace and happiness which penetrates the soul.' I said, 'If Finelon had lived, you would have been a Catholic.' He exclaimed, with tears in his eyes, 'Oh, if Finelon were alive, I would struggle to get into his service, even as a lackey!'" In my sketch of Saint Pierre, it will be seen that I have somewhat antedated the period of his old age. At that time he was not probably more than fifty. In describing him, I have by no means exaggerated his own history of his mental condition at the period of the story. In the fragmentary Sequel to his Studies of Nature, he thus speaks of himself: "The ingratitude of those of whom I had deserved kindness, unexpected family misfortunes, the total loss of my small patrimony through enterprises solely undertaken for the benefit of my country, the debts under which I lay oppressed, the blasting of all my hopes,--these combined calamities made dreadful inroads upon my health and reason. . . . I found it impossible to continue in a room where there was company, especially if the doors were shut. I could not even cross an alley in a public garden, if several persons had got together in it. When alone, my malady subsided. I felt myself likewise at ease in places where I saw children only. At the sight of any one walking up to the place where I was, I felt my whole frame agitated, and retired. I often said to myself, 'My sole study has been to merit well of mankind; why do I fear them?'" He attributes his improved health of mind and body to the counsels of his friend, J. J. Rousseau. "I renounced," says he, "my books. I threw my eyes upon the works of nature, which spake to all my senses a language which neither time nor nations have it in their power to alter. Thenceforth my histories and my journals were the herbage of the fields and meadows. My thoughts did not go forth painfully after them, as in the case of human systems; but their thoughts, under a thousand engaging forms, quietly sought me. In these I studied, without effort, the laws of that Universal Wisdom which had surrounded me from the cradle, but on which heretofore I had bestowed little attention." Speaking of Rousseau, he says: "I derived inexpressible satisfaction from his society. What I prized still more than his genius was his probity. He was one of the few literary characters, tried in the furnace of affliction, to whom you could, with perfect security, confide your most secret thoughts. . . . Even when he deviated, and became the victim of himself or of others, he could forget his own misery in devotion to the welfare of mankind. He was uniformly the advocate of the miserable. There might be inscribed on his tomb these affecting words from that Book of which he carried always about him some select passages, during the last years of his life: 'His sins, which are many, are forgiven, for he loved much.'" "I DO believe, and yet, in grief, I pray for help to unbelief; For needful strength aside to lay The daily cumberings of my way. "I 'm sick at heart of craft and cant, Sick of the crazed enthusiast's rant, Profession's smooth hypocrisies, And creeds of iron, and lives of ease. "I ponder o'er the sacred word, I read the record of our Lord; And, weak and troubled, envy them Who touched His seamless garment's hem; "Who saw the tears of love He wept Above the grave where Lazarus slept; And heard, amidst the shadows dim Of Olivet, His evening hymn. "How blessed the swineherd's low estate, The beggar crouching at the gate, The leper loathly and abhorred, Whose eyes of flesh beheld the Lord! "O sacred soil His sandals pressed! Sweet fountains of His noonday rest! O light and air of Palestine, Impregnate with His life divine! "Oh, bear me thither! Let me look On Siloa's pool, and Kedron's brook; Kneel at Gethsemane, and by Gennesaret walk, before I die! "Methinks this cold and northern night Would melt before that Orient light; And, wet by Hermon's dew and rain, My childhood's faith revive again!" So spake my friend, one autumn day, Where the still river slid away Beneath us, and above the brown Red curtains of the woods shut down. Then said I,--for I could not brook The mute appealing of his look,-- "I, too, am weak, and faith is small, And blindness happeneth unto all. "Yet, sometimes glimpses on my sight, Through present wrong, the eternal right; And, step by step, since time began, I see the steady gain of man; "That all of good the past hath had Remains to make our own time glad, Our common daily life divine, And every land a Palestine. "Thou weariest of thy present state; What gain to thee time's holiest date? The doubter now perchance had been As High Priest or as Pilate then! "What thought Chorazin's scribes? What faith In Him had Nain and Nazareth? Of the few followers whom He led One sold Him,--all forsook and fled. "O friend! we need nor rock nor sand, Nor storied stream of Morning-Land; The heavens are glassed in Merrimac,-- What more could Jordan render back? "We lack but open eye and ear To find the Orient's marvels here; The still small voice in autumn's hush, Yon maple wood the burning bush. "For still the new transcends the old, In signs and tokens manifold; Slaves rise up men; the olive waves, With roots deep set in battle graves! "Through the harsh noises of our day A low, sweet prelude finds its way; Through clouds of doubt, and creeds of fear, A light is breaking, calm and clear. "That song of Love, now low and far, Erelong shall swell from star to star! That light, the breaking day, which tips The golden-spired Apocalypse!" Then, when my good friend shook his head, And, sighing, sadly smiled, I said: "Thou mind'st me of a story told In rare Bernardin's leaves of gold." And while the slanted sunbeams wove The shadows of the frost-stained grove, And, picturing all, the river ran O'er cloud and wood, I thus began:-- . . . . . . . . . . . . . In Mount Valerien's chestnut wood The Chapel of the Hermits stood; And thither, at the close of day, Came two old pilgrims, worn and gray. One, whose impetuous youth defied The storms of Baikal's wintry side, And mused and dreamed where tropic day Flamed o'er his lost Virginia's bay. His simple tale of love and woe All hearts had melted, high or low;-- A blissful pain, a sweet distress, Immortal in its tenderness. Yet, while above his charmed page Beat quick the young heart of his age, He walked amidst the crowd unknown, A sorrowing old man, strange and lone. A homeless, troubled age,--the gray Pale setting of a weary day; Too dull his ear for voice of praise, Too sadly worn his brow for bays. Pride, lust of power and glory, slept; Yet still his heart its young dream kept, And, wandering like the deluge-dove, Still sought the resting-place of love. And, mateless, childless, envied more The peasant's welcome from his door By smiling eyes at eventide, Than kingly gifts or lettered pride. Until, in place of wife and child, All-pitying Nature on him smiled, And gave to him the golden keys To all her inmost sanctities. Mild Druid of her wood-paths dim! She laid her great heart bare to him, Its loves and sweet accords;--he saw The beauty of her perfect law. The language of her signs lie knew, What notes her cloudy clarion blew; The rhythm of autumn's forest dyes, The hymn of sunset's painted skies. And thus he seemed to hear the song Which swept, of old, the stars along; And to his eyes the earth once more Its fresh and primal beauty wore. Who sought with him, from summer air, And field and wood, a balm for care; And bathed in light of sunset skies His tortured nerves and weary eyes? His fame on all the winds had flown; His words had shaken crypt and throne; Like fire, on camp and court and cell They dropped, and kindled as they fell. Beneath the pomps of state, below The mitred juggler's masque and show, A prophecy, a vague hope, ran His burning thought from man to man. For peace or rest too well he saw The fraud of priests, the wrong of law, And felt how hard, between the two, Their breath of pain the millions drew. A prophet-utterance, strong and wild, The weakness of an unweaned child, A sun-bright hope for human-kind, And self-despair, in him combined. He loathed the false, yet lived not true To half the glorious truths he knew; The doubt, the discord, and the sin, He mourned without, he felt within. Untrod by him the path he showed, Sweet pictures on his easel glowed Of simple faith, and loves of home, And virtue's golden days to come. But weakness, shame, and folly made The foil to all his pen portrayed; Still, where his dreamy splendors shone, The shadow of himself was thrown. Lord, what is man, whose thought, at times, Up to Thy sevenfold brightness climbs, While still his grosser instinct clings To earth, like other creeping things! So rich in words, in acts so mean; So high, so low; chance-swung between The foulness of the penal pit And Truth's clear sky, millennium-lit! Vain, pride of star-lent genius!--vain, Quick fancy and creative brain, Unblest by prayerful sacrifice, Absurdly great, or weakly wise! Midst yearnings for a truer life, Without were fears, within was strife; And still his wayward act denied The perfect good for which he sighed. The love he sent forth void returned; The fame that crowned him scorched and burned, Burning, yet cold and drear and lone,-- A fire-mount in a frozen zone! Like that the gray-haired sea-king passed,[9] Seen southward from his sleety mast, About whose brows of changeless frost A wreath of flame the wild winds tossed. Far round the mournful beauty played Of lambent light and purple shade, Lost on the fixed and dumb despair Of frozen earth and sea and air! A man apart, unknown, unloved By those whose wrongs his soul had moved, He bore the ban of Church and State, The good man's fear, the bigot's hate! Forth from the city's noise and throng, Its pomp and shame, its sin and wrong, The twain that summer day had strayed To Mount Valerien's chestnut shade. To them the green fields and the wood Lent something of their quietude, And golden-tinted sunset seemed Prophetical of all they dreamed. The hermits from their simple cares The bell was calling home to prayers, And, listening to its sound, the twain Seemed lapped in childhood's trust again. Wide open stood the chapel door; A sweet old music, swelling o'er Low prayerful murmurs, issued thence,-- The Litanies of Providence! Then Rousseau spake: "Where two or three In His name meet, He there will be!" And then, in silence, on their knees They sank beneath the chestnut-trees. As to the blind returning light, As daybreak to the Arctic night, Old faith revived; the doubts of years Dissolved in reverential tears. That gush of feeling overpast, "Ah me!" Bernardin sighed at last, I would thy bitterest foes could see Thy heart as it is seen of me! "No church of God hast thou denied; Thou hast but spurned in scorn aside A bare and hollow counterfeit, Profaning the pure name of it! "With dry dead moss and marish weeds His fire the western herdsman feeds, And greener from the ashen plain The sweet spring grasses rise again. "Nor thunder-peal nor mighty wind Disturb the solid sky behind; And through the cloud the red bolt rends The calm, still smile of Heaven descends. "Thus through the world, like bolt and blast, And scourging fire, thy words have passed. Clouds break,--the steadfast heavens remain; Weeds burn,--the ashes feed the grain! "But whoso strives with wrong may find Its touch pollute, its darkness blind; And learn, as latent fraud is shown In others' faith, to doubt his own. "With dream and falsehood, simple trust And pious hope we tread in dust; Lost the calm faith in goodness,--lost The baptism of the Pentecost! "Alas!--the blows for error meant Too oft on truth itself are spent, As through the false and vile and base Looks forth her sad, rebuking face. "Not ours the Theban's charmed life; We come not scathless from the strife! The Python's coil about us clings, The trampled Hydra bites and stings! "Meanwhile, the sport of seeming chance, The plastic shapes of circumstance, What might have been we fondly guess, If earlier born, or tempted less. "And thou, in these wild, troubled days, Misjudged alike in blame and praise, Unsought and undeserved the same The skeptic's praise, the bigot's blame;-- "I cannot doubt, if thou hadst been Among the highly favored men Who walked on earth with Fenelon, He would have owned thee as his son; "And, bright with wings of cherubim Visibly waving over him, Seen through his life, the Church had seemed All that its old confessors dreamed." "I would have been," Jean Jaques replied, "The humblest servant at his side, Obscure, unknown, content to see How beautiful man's life may be! "Oh, more than thrice-blest relic, more Than solemn rite or sacred lore, The holy life of one who trod The foot-marks of the Christ of God! "Amidst a blinded world he saw The oneness of the Dual law; That Heaven's sweet peace on Earth began, And God was loved through love of man. "He lived the Truth which reconciled The strong man Reason, Faith the child; In him belief and act were one, The homilies of duty done!" So speaking, through the twilight gray The two old pilgrims went their way. What seeds of life that day were sown, The heavenly watchers knew alone. Time passed, and Autumn came to fold Green Summer in her brown and gold; Time passed, and Winter's tears of snow Dropped on the grave-mound of Rousseau. "The tree remaineth where it fell, The pained on earth is pained in hell!" So priestcraft from its altars cursed The mournful doubts its falsehood nursed. Ah! well of old the Psalmist prayed, "Thy hand, not man's, on me be laid!" Earth frowns below, Heaven weeps above, And man is hate, but God is love! No Hermits now the wanderer sees, Nor chapel with its chestnut-trees; A morning dream, a tale that's told, The wave of change o'er all has rolled. Yet lives the lesson of that day; And from its twilight cool and gray Comes up a low, sad whisper, "Make The truth thine own, for truth's own sake. "Why wait to see in thy brief span Its perfect flower and fruit in man? No saintly touch can save; no balm Of healing hath the martyr's palm. "Midst soulless forms, and false pretence Of spiritual pride and pampered sense, A voice saith, 'What is that to thee? Be true thyself, and follow Me! "In days when throne and altar heard The wanton's wish, the bigot's word, And pomp of state and ritual show Scarce hid the loathsome death below,-- "Midst fawning priests and courtiers foul, The losel swarm of crown and cowl, White-robed walked Francois Fenelon, Stainless as Uriel in the sun! "Yet in his time the stake blazed red, The poor were eaten up like bread Men knew him not; his garment's hem No healing virtue had for them. "Alas! no present saint we find; The white cymar gleams far behind, Revealed in outline vague, sublime, Through telescopic mists of time! "Trust not in man with passing breath, But in the Lord, old Scripture saith; The truth which saves thou mayst not blend With false professor, faithless friend. "Search thine own heart. What paineth thee In others in thyself may be; All dust is frail, all flesh is weak; Be thou the true man thou dost seek! "Where now with pain thou treadest, trod The whitest of the saints of God! To show thee where their feet were set, the light which led them shineth yet. "The footprints of the life divine, Which marked their path, remain in thine; And that great Life, transfused in theirs, Awaits thy faith, thy love, thy prayers!" A lesson which I well may heed, A word of fitness to my need; So from that twilight cool and gray Still saith a voice, or seems to say. We rose, and slowly homeward turned, While down the west the sunset burned; And, in its light, hill, wood, and tide, And human forms seemed glorified. The village homes transfigured stood, And purple bluffs, whose belting wood Across the waters leaned to hold The yellow leaves like lamps of hold. Then spake my friend: "Thy words are true; Forever old, forever new, These home-seen splendors are the same Which over Eden's sunsets came. "To these bowed heavens let wood and hill Lift voiceless praise and anthem still; Fall, warm with blessing, over them, Light of the New Jerusalem! "Flow on, sweet river, like the stream Of John's Apocalyptic dream This mapled ridge shall Horeb be, Yon green-banked lake our Galilee! "Henceforth my heart shall sigh no more For olden time and holier shore; God's love and blessing, then and there, Are now and here and everywhere." 1851. TAULER. TAULER, the preacher, walked, one autumn day, Without the walls of Strasburg, by the Rhine, Pondering the solemn Miracle of Life; As one who, wandering in a starless night, Feels momently the jar of unseen waves, And hears the thunder of an unknown sea, Breaking along an unimagined shore. And as he walked he prayed. Even the same Old prayer with which, for half a score of years, Morning, and noon, and evening, lip and heart Had groaned: "Have pity upon me, Lord! Thou seest, while teaching others, I am blind. Send me a man who can direct my steps!" Then, as he mused, he heard along his path A sound as of an old man's staff among The dry, dead linden-leaves; and, looking up, He saw a stranger, weak, and poor, and old. "Peace be unto thee, father!" Tauler said, "God give thee a good day!" The old man raised Slowly his calm blue eyes. "I thank thee, son; But all my days are good, and none are ill." Wondering thereat, the preacher spake again, "God give thee happy life." The old man smiled, "I never am unhappy." Tauler laid His hand upon the stranger's coarse gray sleeve "Tell me, O father, what thy strange words mean. Surely man's days are evil, and his life Sad as the grave it leads to." "Nay, my son, Our times are in God's hands, and all our days Are as our needs; for shadow as for sun, For cold as heat, for want as wealth, alike Our thanks are due, since that is best which is; And that which is not, sharing not His life, Is evil only as devoid of good. And for the happiness of which I spake, I find it in submission to his will, And calm trust in the holy Trinity Of Knowledge, Goodness, and Almighty Power." Silently wondering, for a little space, Stood the great preacher; then he spake as one Who, suddenly grappling with a haunting thought Which long has followed, whispering through the dark Strange terrors, drags it, shrieking, into light "What if God's will consign thee hence to Hell?" "Then," said the stranger, cheerily, "be it so. What Hell may be I know not; this I know,-- I cannot lose the presence of the Lord. One arm, Humility, takes hold upon His dear Humanity; the other, Love, Clasps his Divinity. So where I go He goes; and better fire-walled Hell with Him Than golden-gated Paradise without." Tears sprang in Tauler's eyes. A sudden light, Like the first ray which fell on chaos, clove Apart the shadow wherein he had walked Darkly at noon. And, as the strange old man Went his slow way, until his silver hair Set like the white moon where the hills of vine Slope to the Rhine, he bowed his head and said "My prayer is answered. God hath sent the man Long sought, to teach me, by his simple trust, Wisdom the weary schoolmen never knew." So, entering with a changed and cheerful step The city gates, he saw, far down the street, A mighty shadow break the light of noon, Which tracing backward till its airy lines Hardened to stony plinths, he raised his eyes O'er broad facade and lofty pediment, O'er architrave and frieze and sainted niche, Up the stone lace-work chiselled by the wise Erwin of Steinbach, dizzily up to where In the noon-brightness the great Minster's tower, Jewelled with sunbeams on its mural crown, Rose like a visible prayer. "Behold!" he said, "The stranger's faith made plain before mine eyes. As yonder tower outstretches to the earth The dark triangle of its shade alone When the clear day is shining on its top, So, darkness in the pathway of Man's life Is but the shadow of God's providence, By the great Sun of Wisdom cast thereon; And what is dark below is light in Heaven." 1853. THE HERMIT OF THE THEBAID. O STRONG, upwelling prayers of faith, From inmost founts of life ye start,-- The spirit's pulse, the vital breath Of soul and heart! From pastoral toil, from traffic's din, Alone, in crowds, at home, abroad, Unheard of man, ye enter in The ear of God. Ye brook no forced and measured tasks, Nor weary rote, nor formal chains; The simple heart, that freely asks In love, obtains. For man the living temple is The mercy-seat and cherubim, And all the holy mysteries, He bears with him. And most avails the prayer of love, Which, wordless, shapes itself in needs, And wearies Heaven for naught above Our common needs. Which brings to God's all-perfect will That trust of His undoubting child Whereby all seeming good and ill Are reconciled. And, seeking not for special signs Of favor, is content to fall Within the providence which shines And rains on all. Alone, the Thebaid hermit leaned At noontime o'er the sacred word. Was it an angel or a fiend Whose voice be heard? It broke the desert's hush of awe, A human utterance, sweet and mild; And, looking up, the hermit saw A little child. A child, with wonder-widened eyes, O'erawed and troubled by the sight Of hot, red sands, and brazen skies, And anchorite. "'What dost thou here, poor man? No shade Of cool, green palms, nor grass, nor well, Nor corn, nor vines." The hermit said "With God I dwell. "Alone with Him in this great calm, I live not by the outward sense; My Nile his love, my sheltering palm His providence." The child gazed round him. "Does God live Here only?--where the desert's rim Is green with corn, at morn and eve, We pray to Him. "My brother tills beside the Nile His little field; beneath the leaves My sisters sit and spin, the while My mother weaves. "And when the millet's ripe heads fall, And all the bean-field hangs in pod, My mother smiles, and, says that all Are gifts from God." Adown the hermit's wasted cheeks Glistened the flow of human tears; "Dear Lord!" he said, "Thy angel speaks, Thy servant hears." Within his arms the child he took, And thought of home and life with men; And all his pilgrim feet forsook Returned again. The palmy shadows cool and long, The eyes that smiled through lavish locks, Home's cradle-hymn and harvest-song, And bleat of flocks. "O child!" he said, "thou teachest me There is no place where God is not; That love will make, where'er it be, A holy spot." He rose from off the desert sand, And, leaning on his staff of thorn, Went with the young child hand in hand, Like night with morn. They crossed the desert's burning line, And heard the palm-tree's rustling fan, The Nile-bird's cry, the low of kine, And voice of man. Unquestioning, his childish guide He followed, as the small hand led To where a woman, gentle-eyed, Her distaff fed. She rose, she clasped her truant boy, She thanked the stranger with her eyes; The hermit gazed in doubt and joy And dumb surprise. And to!--with sudden warmth and light A tender memory thrilled his frame; New-born, the world-lost anchorite A man became. "O sister of El Zara's race, Behold me!--had we not one mother?" She gazed into the stranger's face "Thou art my brother!" "And when to share our evening meal, She calls the stranger at the door, She says God fills the hands that deal Food to the poor." "O kin of blood! Thy life of use And patient trust is more than mine; And wiser than the gray recluse This child of thine. "For, taught of him whom God hath sent, That toil is praise, and love is prayer, I come, life's cares and pains content With thee to share." Even as his foot the threshold crossed, The hermit's better life began; Its holiest saint the Thebaid lost, And found a man! 1854. MAUD MULLER. The recollection of some descendants of a Hessian deserter in the Revolutionary war bearing the name of Muller doubtless suggested the somewhat infelicitous title of a New England idyl. The poem had no real foundation in fact, though a hint of it may have been found in recalling an incident, trivial in itself, of a journey on the picturesque Maine seaboard with my sister some years before it was written. We had stopped to rest our tired horse under the shade of an apple-tree, and refresh him with water from a little brook which rippled through the stone wall across the road. A very beautiful young girl in scantest summer attire was at work in the hay-field, and as we talked with her we noticed that she strove to hide her bare feet by raking hay over them, blushing as she did so, through the tan of her cheek and neck. MAUD MULLER on a summer's day, Raked the meadow sweet with hay. Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth Of simple beauty and rustic-health. Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee The mock-bird echoed from his tree. But when she glanced to the far-off town, White from its hill-slope looking down, The sweet song died, and a vague unrest And a nameless longing filled her breast,-- A wish, that she hardly dared to own, For something better than she had known. The Judge rode slowly down the lane, Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane. He drew his bridle in the shade Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid, And asked a draught from the spring that flowed Through the meadow across the road. She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up, And filled for him her small tin cup, And blushed as she gave it, looking down On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown. "Thanks!" said the Judge; "a sweeter draught From a fairer hand was never quaffed." He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees, Of the singing birds and the humming bees; Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether The cloud in the west would bring foul weather. And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown, And her graceful ankles bare and brown; And listened, while a pleased surprise Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes. At last, like one who for delay Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away. Maud Muller looked and sighed: "Ah me! That I the Judge's bride might be! "He would dress me up in silks so fine, And praise and toast me at his wine. "My father should wear a broadcloth coat; My brother should sail a painted boat. "I'd dress my mother so grand and gay, And the baby should have a new toy each day. "And I 'd feed the hungry and clothe the poor, And all should bless me who left our door." The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill, And saw Maud Muller standing still. A form more fair, a face more sweet, Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet. "And her modest answer and graceful air Show her wise and good as she is fair. "Would she were mine, and I to-day, Like her, a harvester of hay; "No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs, Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues, "But low of cattle and song of birds, And health and quiet and loving words." But he thought of his sisters, proud and cold, And his mother, vain of her rank and gold. So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on, And Maud was left in the field alone. But the lawyers smiled that afternoon, When he hummed in court an old love-tune; And the young girl mused beside the well Till the rain on the unraked clover fell. He wedded a wife of richest dower, Who lived for fashion, as he for power. Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow, He watched a picture come and go; And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes Looked out in their innocent surprise. Oft, when the wine in his glass was red, He longed for the wayside well instead; And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms To dream of meadows and clover-blooms. And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain, "Ah, that I were free again! "Free as when I rode that day, Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay." She wedded a man unlearned and poor, And many children played round her door. But care and sorrow, and childbirth pain, Left their traces on heart and brain. And oft, when the summer sun shone hot On the new-mown hay in the meadow lot, And she heard the little spring brook fall Over the roadside, through the wall, In the shade of the apple-tree again She saw a rider draw his rein. And, gazing down with timid grace, She felt his pleased eyes read her face. Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls Stretched away into stately halls; The weary wheel to a spinnet turned, The tallow candle an astral burned, And for him who sat by the chimney lug, Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug, A manly form at her side she saw, And joy was duty and love was law. Then she took up her burden of life again, Saying only, "It might have been." Alas for maiden, alas for Judge, For rich repiner and household drudge! God pity them both! and pity us all, Who vainly the dreams of youth recall. For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: "It might have been!" Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies Deeply buried from human eyes; And, in the hereafter, angels may Roll the stone from its grave away! 1854. MARY GARVIN. FROM the heart of Waumbek Methna, from the lake that never fails, Falls the Saco in the green lap of Conway's intervales; There, in wild and virgin freshness, its waters foam and flow, As when Darby Field first saw them, two hundred years ago. But, vexed in all its seaward course with bridges, dams, and mills, How changed is Saco's stream, how lost its freedom of the hills, Since travelled Jocelyn, factor Vines, and stately Champernoon Heard on its banks the gray wolf's howl, the trumpet of the loon! With smoking axle hot with speed, with steeds of fire and steam, Wide-waked To-day leaves Yesterday behind him like a dream. Still, from the hurrying train of Life, fly backward far and fast The milestones of the fathers, the landmarks of the past. But human hearts remain unchanged: the sorrow and the sin, The loves and hopes and fears of old, are to our own akin; And if, in tales our fathers told, the songs our mothers sung, Tradition wears a snowy beard, Romance is always young. O sharp-lined man of traffic, on Saco's banks today! O mill-girl watching late and long the shuttle's restless play! Let, for the once, a listening ear the working hand beguile, And lend my old Provincial tale, as suits, a tear or smile! . . . . . . . . . . . . . The evening gun had sounded from gray Fort Mary's walls; Through the forest, like a wild beast, roared and plunged the Saco's' falls. And westward on the sea-wind, that damp and gusty grew, Over cedars darkening inland the smokes of Spurwink blew. On the hearth of Farmer Garvin, blazed the crackling walnut log; Right and left sat dame and goodman, and between them lay the dog, Head on paws, and tail slow wagging, and beside him on her mat, Sitting drowsy in the firelight, winked and purred the mottled cat. "Twenty years!" said Goodman Garvin, speaking sadly, under breath, And his gray head slowly shaking, as one who speaks of death. The goodwife dropped her needles: "It is twenty years to-day, Since the Indians fell on Saco, and stole our child away." Then they sank into the silence, for each knew the other's thought, Of a great and common sorrow, and words were, needed not. "Who knocks?" cried Goodman Garvin. The door was open thrown; On two strangers, man and maiden, cloaked and furred, the fire-light shone. One with courteous gesture lifted the bear-skin from his head; "Lives here Elkanah Garvin?" "I am he," the goodman said. "Sit ye down, and dry and warm ye, for the night is chill with rain." And the goodwife drew the settle, and stirred the fire amain. The maid unclasped her cloak-hood, the firelight glistened fair In her large, moist eyes, and over soft folds of dark brown hair. Dame Garvin looked upon her: "It is Mary's self I see!" "Dear heart!" she cried, "now tell me, has my child come back to me?" "My name indeed is Mary," said the stranger sobbing wild; "Will you be to me a mother? I am Mary Garvin's child!" "She sleeps by wooded Simcoe, but on her dying day She bade my father take me to her kinsfolk far away. "And when the priest besought her to do me no such wrong, She said, 'May God forgive me! I have closed my heart too long.' "'When I hid me from my father, and shut out my mother's call, I sinned against those dear ones, and the Father of us all. "'Christ's love rebukes no home-love, breaks no tie of kin apart; Better heresy in doctrine, than heresy of heart. "'Tell me not the Church must censure: she who wept the Cross beside Never made her own flesh strangers, nor the claims of blood denied; "'And if she who wronged her parents, with her child atones to them, Earthly daughter, Heavenly Mother! thou at least wilt not condemn!' "So, upon her death-bed lying, my blessed mother spake; As we come to do her bidding, So receive us for her sake." "God be praised!" said Goodwife Garvin, "He taketh, and He gives; He woundeth, but He healeth; in her child our daughter lives!" "Amen!" the old man answered, as he brushed a tear away, And, kneeling by his hearthstone, said, with reverence, "Let us pray." All its Oriental symbols, and its Hebrew pararphrase, Warm with earnest life and feeling, rose his prayer of love and praise. But he started at beholding, as he rose from off his knee, The stranger cross his forehead with the sign of Papistrie. "What is this?" cried Farmer Garvin. "Is an English Christian's home A chapel or a mass-house, that you make the sign of Rome?" Then the young girl knelt beside him, kissed his trembling hand, and cried: Oh, forbear to chide my father; in that faith my mother died! "On her wooden cross at Simcoe the dews and sunshine fall, As they fall on Spurwink's graveyard; and the dear God watches all!" The old man stroked the fair head that rested on his knee; "Your words, dear child," he answered, "are God's rebuke to me. "Creed and rite perchance may differ, yet our faith and hope be one. Let me be your father's father, let him be to me a son." When the horn, on Sabbath morning, through the still and frosty air, From Spurwink, Pool, and Black Point, called to sermon and to prayer, To the goodly house of worship, where, in order due and fit, As by public vote directed, classed and ranked the people sit; Mistress first and goodwife after, clerkly squire before the clown, "From the brave coat, lace-embroidered, to the gray frock, shading down;" From the pulpit read the preacher, "Goodman Garvin and his wife Fain would thank the Lord, whose kindness has followed them through life, "For the great and crowning mercy, that their daughter, from the wild, Where she rests (they hope in God's peace), has sent to them her child; "And the prayers of all God's people they ask, that they may prove Not unworthy, through their weakness, of such special proof of love." As the preacher prayed, uprising, the aged couple stood, And the fair Canadian also, in her modest maiden- hood. Thought the elders, grave and doubting, "She is Papist born and bred;" Thought the young men, "'T is an angel in Mary Garvin's stead!" THE RANGER. Originally published as Martha Mason; a Song of the Old French War. ROBERT RAWLIN!--Frosts were falling When the ranger's horn was calling Through the woods to Canada. Gone the winter's sleet and snowing, Gone the spring-time's bud and blowing, Gone the summer's harvest mowing, And again the fields are gray. Yet away, he's away! Faint and fainter hope is growing In the hearts that mourn his stay. Where the lion, crouching high on Abraham's rock with teeth of iron, Glares o'er wood and wave away, Faintly thence, as pines far sighing, Or as thunder spent and dying, Come the challenge and replying, Come the sounds of flight and fray. Well-a-day! Hope and pray! Some are living, some are lying In their red graves far away. Straggling rangers, worn with dangers, Homeward faring, weary strangers Pass the farm-gate on their way; Tidings of the dead and living, Forest march and ambush, giving, Till the maidens leave their weaving, And the lads forget their play. "Still away, still away!" Sighs a sad one, sick with grieving, "Why does Robert still delay!" Nowhere fairer, sweeter, rarer, Does the golden-locked fruit bearer Through his painted woodlands stray, Than where hillside oaks and beeches Overlook the long, blue reaches, Silver coves and pebbled beaches, And green isles of Casco Bay; Nowhere day, for delay, With a tenderer look beseeches, "Let me with my charmed earth stay." On the grain-lands of the mainlands Stands the serried corn like train-bands, Plume and pennon rustling gay; Out at sea, the islands wooded, Silver birches, golden-hooded, Set with maples, crimson-blooded, White sea-foam and sand-hills gray, Stretch away, far away. Dim and dreamy, over-brooded By the hazy autumn day. Gayly chattering to the clattering Of the brown nuts downward pattering, Leap the squirrels, red and gray. On the grass-land, on the fallow, Drop the apples, red and yellow; Drop the russet pears and mellow, Drop the red leaves all the day. And away, swift away, Sun and cloud, o'er hill and hollow Chasing, weave their web of play. "Martha Mason, Martha Mason, Prithee tell us of the reason Why you mope at home to-day Surely smiling is not sinning; Leave, your quilling, leave your spinning; What is all your store of linen, If your heart is never gay? Come away, come away! Never yet did sad beginning Make the task of life a play." Overbending, till she's blending With the flaxen skein she's tending Pale brown tresses smoothed away From her face of patient sorrow, Sits she, seeking but to borrow, From the trembling hope of morrow, Solace for the weary day. "Go your way, laugh and play; Unto Him who heeds the sparrow And the lily, let me pray." "With our rally, rings the valley,-- Join us!" cried the blue-eyed Nelly; "Join us!" cried the laughing May, "To the beach we all are going, And, to save the task of rowing, West by north the wind is blowing, Blowing briskly down the bay Come away, come away! Time and tide are swiftly flowing, Let us take them while we may! "Never tell us that you'll fail us, Where the purple beach-plum mellows On the bluffs so wild and gray. Hasten, for the oars are falling; Hark, our merry mates are calling; Time it is that we were all in, Singing tideward down the bay!" "Nay, nay, let me stay; Sore and sad for Robert Rawlin Is my heart," she said, "to-day." "Vain your calling for Rob Rawlin Some red squaw his moose-meat's broiling, Or some French lass, singing gay; Just forget as he's forgetting; What avails a life of fretting? If some stars must needs be setting, Others rise as good as they." "Cease, I pray; go your way!" Martha cries, her eyelids wetting; "Foul and false the words you say!" "Martha Mason, hear to reason!-- Prithee, put a kinder face on!" "Cease to vex me," did she say; "Better at his side be lying, With the mournful pine-trees sighing, And the wild birds o'er us crying, Than to doubt like mine a prey; While away, far away, Turns my heart, forever trying Some new hope for each new day. "When the shadows veil the meadows, And the sunset's golden ladders Sink from twilight's walls of gray,-- From the window of my dreaming, I can see his sickle gleaming, Cheery-voiced, can hear him teaming Down the locust-shaded way; But away, swift away, Fades the fond, delusive seeming, And I kneel again to pray. "When the growing dawn is showing, And the barn-yard cock is crowing, And the horned moon pales away From a dream of him awaking, Every sound my heart is making Seems a footstep of his taking; Then I hush the thought, and say, 'Nay, nay, he's away!' Ah! my heart, my heart is breaking For the dear one far away." Look up, Martha! worn and swarthy, Glows a face of manhood worthy "Robert!" "Martha!" all they say. O'er went wheel and reel together, Little cared the owner whither; Heart of lead is heart of feather, Noon of night is noon of day! Come away, come away! When such lovers meet each other, Why should prying idlers stay? Quench the timber's fallen embers, Quench the recd leaves in December's Hoary rime and chilly spray. But the hearth shall kindle clearer, Household welcomes sound sincerer, Heart to loving heart draw nearer, When the bridal bells shall say: "Hope and pray, trust alway; Life is sweeter, love is dearer, For the trial and delay!" 1856. THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN. FROM the hills of home forth looking, far beneath the tent-like span Of the sky, I see the white gleam of the headland of Cape Ann. Well I know its coves and beaches to the ebb-tide glimmering down, And the white-walled hamlet children of its ancient fishing town. Long has passed the summer morning, and its memory waxes old, When along yon breezy headlands with a pleasant friend I strolled. Ah! the autumn sun is shining, and the ocean wind blows cool, And the golden-rod and aster bloom around thy grave, Rantoul! With the memory of that morning by the summer sea I blend A wild and wondrous story, by the younger Mather penned, In that quaint Magnalia Christi, with all strange and marvellous things, Heaped up huge and undigested, like the chaos Ovid sings. Dear to me these far, faint glimpses of the dual life of old, Inward, grand with awe and reverence; outward, mean and coarse and cold; Gleams of mystic beauty playing over dull and vulgar clay, Golden-threaded fancies weaving in a web of hodden gray. The great eventful Present hides the Past; but through the din Of its loud life hints and echoes from the life behind steal in; And the lore of homeland fireside, and the legendary rhyme, Make the task of duty lighter which the true man owes his time. So, with something of the feeling which the Covenanter knew, When with pious chisel wandering Scotland's moorland graveyards through, From the graves of old traditions I part the black- berry-vines, Wipe the moss from off the headstones, and retouch the faded lines. Where the sea-waves back and forward, hoarse with rolling pebbles, ran, The garrison-house stood watching on the gray rocks of Cape Ann; On its windy site uplifting gabled roof and palisade, And rough walls of unhewn timber with the moonlight overlaid. On his slow round walked the sentry, south and eastward looking forth O'er a rude and broken coast-line, white with breakers stretching north,-- Wood and rock and gleaming sand-drift, jagged capes, with bush and tree, Leaning inland from the smiting of the wild and gusty sea. Before the deep-mouthed chimney, dimly lit by dying brands, Twenty soldiers sat and waited, with their muskets in their hands; On the rough-hewn oaken table the venison haunch was shared, And the pewter tankard circled slowly round from beard to beard. Long they sat and talked together,--talked of wizards Satan-sold; Of all ghostly sights and noises,--signs and wonders manifold; Of the spectre-ship of Salem, with the dead men in her shrouds, Sailing sheer above the water, in the loom of morning clouds; Of the marvellous valley hidden in the depths of Gloucester woods, Full of plants that love the summer,--blooms of warmer latitudes; Where the Arctic birch is braided by the tropic's flowery vines, And the white magnolia-blossoms star the twilight of the pines! But their voices sank yet lower, sank to husky tones of fear, As they spake of present tokens of the powers of evil near; Of a spectral host, defying stroke of steel and aim of gun; Never yet was ball to slay them in the mould of mortals run. Thrice, with plumes and flowing scalp-locks, from the midnight wood they came,-- Thrice around the block-house marching, met, unharmed, its volleyed flame; Then, with mocking laugh and gesture, sunk in earth or lost in air, All the ghostly wonder vanished, and the moonlit sands lay bare. Midnight came; from out the forest moved a dusky mass that soon Grew to warriors, plumed and painted, grimly marching in the moon. "Ghosts or witches," said the captain, "thus I foil the Evil One!" And he rammed a silver button, from his doublet, down his gun. Once again the spectral horror moved the guarded wall about; Once again the levelled muskets through the palisades flashed out, With that deadly aim the squirrel on his tree-top might not shun, Nor the beach-bird seaward flying with his slant wing to the sun. Like the idle rain of summer sped the harmless shower of lead. With a laugh of fierce derision, once again the phantoms fled; Once again, without a shadow on the sands the moonlight lay, And the white smoke curling through it drifted slowly down the bay! "God preserve us!" said the captain; "never mortal foes were there; They have vanished with their leader, Prince and Power of the air! Lay aside your useless weapons; skill and prowess naught avail; They who do the Devil's service wear their master's coat of mail!" So the night grew near to cock-crow, when again a warning call Roused the score of weary soldiers watching round the dusky hall And they looked to flint and priming, and they longed for break of day; But the captain closed his Bible: "Let us cease from man, and pray!" To the men who went before us, all the unseen powers seemed near, And their steadfast strength of courage struck its roots in holy fear. Every hand forsook the musket, every head was bowed and bare, Every stout knee pressed the flag-stones, as the captain led in prayer. Ceased thereat the mystic marching of the spectres round the wall, But a sound abhorred, unearthly, smote the ears and hearts of all,-- Howls of rage and shrieks of anguish! Never after mortal man Saw the ghostly leaguers marching round the block-house of Cape Ann. So to us who walk in summer through the cool and sea-blown town, From the childhood of its people comes the solemn legend down. Not in vain the ancient fiction, in whose moral lives the youth And the fitness and the freshness of an undecaying truth. Soon or late to all our dwellings come the spectres of the mind, Doubts and fears and dread forebodings, in the darkness undefined; Round us throng the grim projections of the heart and of the brain, And our pride of strength is weakness, and the cunning hand is vain. In the dark we cry like children; and no answer from on high Breaks the crystal spheres of silence, and no white wings downward fly; But the heavenly help we pray for comes to faith, and not to sight, And our prayers themselves drive backward all the spirits of the night! 1857. THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS. TRITEMIUS of Herbipolis, one day, While kneeling at the altar's foot to pray, Alone with God, as was his pious choice, Heard from without a miserable voice, A sound which seemed of all sad things to tell, As of a lost soul crying out of hell. Thereat the Abbot paused; the chain whereby His thoughts went upward broken by that cry; And, looking from the casement, saw below A wretched woman, with gray hair a-flow, And withered hands held up to him, who cried For alms as one who might not be denied. She cried, "For the dear love of Him who gave His life for ours, my child from bondage save,-- My beautiful, brave first-born, chained with slaves In the Moor's galley, where the sun-smit waves Lap the white walls of Tunis!"--"What I can I give," Tritemius said, "my prayers."--"O man Of God!" she cried, for grief had made her bold, "Mock me not thus; I ask not prayers, but gold. Words will not serve me, alms alone suffice; Even while I speak perchance my first-born dies." "Woman!" Tritemius answered, "from our door None go unfed, hence are we always poor; A single soldo is our only store. Thou hast our prayers;--what can we give thee more?" "Give me," she said, "the silver candlesticks On either side of the great crucifix. God well may spare them on His errands sped, Or He can give you golden ones instead." Then spake Tritemius, "Even as thy word, Woman, so be it! (Our most gracious Lord, Who loveth mercy more than sacrifice, Pardon me if a human soul I prize Above the gifts upon his altar piled! Take what thou askest, and redeem thy child." But his hand trembled as the holy alms He placed within the beggar's eager palms; And as she vanished down the linden shade, He bowed his head and for forgiveness prayed. So the day passed, and when the twilight came He woke to find the chapel all aflame, And, dumb with grateful wonder, to behold Upon the altar candlesticks of gold! 1857. SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE. In the valuable and carefully prepared History of Marblehead, published in 1879 by Samuel Roads, Jr., it is stated that the crew of Captain Ireson, rather than himself, were responsible for the abandonment of the disabled vessel. To screen themselves they charged their captain with the crime. In view of this the writer of the ballad addressed the following letter to the historian:-- OAK KNOLL, DANVERS, 5 mo. 18, 1880. MY DEAR FRIEND: I heartily thank thee for a copy of thy History of Marblehead. I have read it with great interest and think good use has been made of the abundant material. No town in Essex County has a record more honorable than Marblehead; no one has done more to develop the industrial interests of our New England seaboard, and certainly none have given such evidence of self-sacrificing patriotism. I am glad the story of it has been at last told, and told so well. I have now no doubt that thy version of Skipper Ireson's ride is the correct one. My verse was founded solely on a fragment of rhyme which I heard from one of my early schoolmates, a native of Marblehead. I supposed the story to which it referred dated back at least a century. I knew nothing of the participators, and the narrative of the ballad was pure fancy. I am glad for the sake of truth and justice that the real facts are given in thy book. I certainly would not knowingly do injustice to any one, dead or living. I am very truly thy friend, JOHN G. WHITTIER. OF all the rides since, the birth of time, Told in story or sung in rhyme,-- On Apuleius's Golden Ass, Or one-eyed Calendar's horse of brass; Witch astride of a human back, Islam's prophet on Al-Borak,-- The strangest ride that ever was sped Was Ireson's, out from Marblehead! Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead! Body of turkey, head of owl, Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl, Feathered and ruffled in every part, Skipper Ireson stood in the cart. Scores of women, old and young, Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue, Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane, Shouting and singing the shrill refrain "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women o' Morble'ead!" Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips, Girls in bloom of cheek and lips, Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase Bacchus round some antique vase, Brief of skirt, with ankles bare, Loose of kerchief and loose of hair, With conch-shells blowing and fish-horns' twang, Over and over the Manads sang "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an dorr'd in a corrt By the women o' Morble'ead!" Small pity for him!--He sailed away From a leaking ship, in Chaleur Bay,-- Sailed away from a sinking wreck, With his own town's-people on her deck! "Lay by! lay by!" they called to him. Back he answered, "Sink or swim! Brag of your catch of fish again!" And off he sailed through the fog and rain! Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead! Fathoms deep in dark Chaleur That wreck shall lie forevermore. Mother and sister, wife and maid, Looked from the rocks of Marblehead Over the moaning and rainy sea,-- Looked for the coming that might not be! What did the winds and the sea-birds say Of the cruel captain who sailed away?-- Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead! Through the street, on either side, Up flew windows, doors swung wide; Sharp-tongued spinsters, old wives gray, Treble lent the fish-horn's bray. Sea-worn grandsires, cripple-bound, Hulks of old sailors run aground, Shook head, and fist, and hat, and cane, And cracked with curses the hoarse refrain "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women o''Morble'ead!" Sweetly along the Salem road Bloom of orchard and lilac showed. Little the wicked skipper knew Of the fields so green and the sky so blue. Riding there in his sorry trim, Like to Indian idol glum and grim, Scarcely he seemed the sound to hear Of voices shouting, far and near "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women o' Morble'ead!" "Hear me, neighbors!" at last he cried,-- "What to me is this noisy ride? What is the shame that clothes the skin To the nameless horror that lives within? Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck, And hear a cry from a reeling deck! Hate me and curse me,--I only dread The hand of God and the face of the dead!" Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead! Then the wife of the skipper lost at sea Said, "God has touched him! why should we?" Said an old wife mourning her only son, "Cut the rogue's tether and let him run!" So with soft relentings and rude excuse, Half scorn, half pity, they cut him loose, And gave him a cloak to hide him in, And left him alone with his shame and sin. Poor Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead! 1857. THE SYCAMORES. Hugh Tallant was the first Irish resident of Haverhill, Mass. He planted the button-wood trees on the bank of the river below the village in the early part of the seventeenth century. Unfortunately this noble avenue is now nearly destroyed. IN the outskirts of the village, On the river's winding shores, Stand the Occidental plane-trees, Stand the ancient sycamores. One long century hath been numbered, And another half-way told, Since the rustic Irish gleeman Broke for them the virgin mould. Deftly set to Celtic music, At his violin's sound they grew, Through the moonlit eves of summer, Making Amphion's fable true. Rise again, then poor Hugh Tallant Pass in jerkin green along, With thy eyes brimful of laughter, And thy mouth as full of song. Pioneer of Erin's outcasts, With his fiddle and his pack; Little dreamed the village Saxons Of the myriads at his back. How he wrought with spade and fiddle, Delved by day and sang by night, With a hand that never wearied, And a heart forever light,-- Still the gay tradition mingles With a record grave and drear, Like the rollic air of Cluny, With the solemn march of Mear. When the box-tree, white with blossoms, Made the sweet May woodlands glad, And the Aronia by the river Lighted up the swarming shad, And the bulging nets swept shoreward, With their silver-sided haul, Midst the shouts of dripping fishers, He was merriest of them all. When, among the jovial huskers, Love stole in at Labor's side, With the lusty airs of England, Soft his Celtic measures vied. Songs of love and wailing lyke--wake, And the merry fair's carouse; Of the wild Red Fox of Erin And the Woman of Three Cows, By the blazing hearths of winter, Pleasant seemed his simple tales, Midst the grimmer Yorkshire legends And the mountain myths of Wales. How the souls in Purgatory Scrambled up from fate forlorn, On St. Eleven's sackcloth ladder, Slyly hitched to Satan's horn. Of the fiddler who at Tara Played all night to ghosts of kings; Of the brown dwarfs, and the fairies Dancing in their moorland rings. Jolliest of our birds of singing, Best he loved the Bob-o-link. "Hush!" he 'd say, "the tipsy fairies Hear the little folks in drink!" Merry-faced, with spade and fiddle, Singing through the ancient town, Only this, of poor Hugh Tallant, Hath Tradition handed down. Not a stone his grave discloses; But if yet his spirit walks, 'T is beneath the trees he planted, And when Bob-o-Lincoln talks; Green memorials of the gleeman I Linking still the river-shores, With their shadows cast by sunset, Stand Hugh Tallant's sycamores! When the Father of his Country Through the north-land riding came, And the roofs were starred with banners, And the steeples rang acclaim,-- When each war-scarred Continental, Leaving smithy, mill, and farm, Waved his rusted sword in welcome, And shot off his old king's arm,-- Slowly passed that August Presence Down the thronged and shouting street; Village girls as white as angels, Scattering flowers around his feet. Midway, where the plane-tree's shadow Deepest fell, his rein he drew On his stately head, uncovered, Cool and soft the west-wind blew. And he stood up in his stirrups, Looking up and looking down On the hills of Gold and Silver Rimming round the little town,-- On the river, full of sunshine, To the lap of greenest vales Winding down from wooded headlands, Willow-skirted, white with sails. And he said, the landscape sweeping Slowly with his ungloved hand, "I have seen no prospect fairer In this goodly Eastern land." Then the bugles of his escort Stirred to life the cavalcade And that head, so bare and stately, Vanished down the depths of shade. Ever since, in town and farm-house, Life has had its ebb and flow; Thrice hath passed the human harvest To its garner green and low. But the trees the gleeman planted, Through the changes, changeless stand; As the marble calm of Tadmor Mocks the desert's shifting sand. Still the level moon at rising Silvers o'er each stately shaft; Still beneath them, half in shadow, Singing, glides the pleasure craft; Still beneath them, arm-enfolded, Love and Youth together stray; While, as heart to heart beats faster, More and more their feet delay. Where the ancient cobbler, Keezar, On the open hillside wrought, Singing, as he drew his stitches, Songs his German masters taught, Singing, with his gray hair floating Round his rosy ample face,-- Now a thousand Saxon craftsmen Stitch and hammer in his place. All the pastoral lanes so grassy Now are Traffic's dusty streets; From the village, grown a city, Fast the rural grace retreats. But, still green, and tall, and stately, On the river's winding shores, Stand the Occidental plane-trees, Stand, Hugh Taliant's sycamores. 1857. THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW. An incident of the Sepoy mutiny. PIPES of the misty moorlands, Voice of the glens and hills; The droning of the torrents, The treble of the rills! Not the braes of broom and heather, Nor the mountains dark with rain, Nor maiden bower, nor border tower, Have heard your sweetest strain! Dear to the Lowland reaper, And plaided mountaineer,-- To the cottage and the castle The Scottish pipes are dear;-- Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch O'er mountain, loch, and glade; But the sweetest of all music The pipes at Lucknow played. Day by day the Indian tiger Louder yelled, and nearer crept; Round and round the jungle-serpent Near and nearer circles swept. "Pray for rescue, wives and mothers,-- Pray to-day!" the soldier said; "To-morrow, death's between us And the wrong and shame we dread." Oh, they listened, looked, and waited, Till their hope became despair; And the sobs of low bewailing Filled the pauses of their prayer. Then up spake a Scottish maiden, With her ear unto the ground "Dinna ye hear it?--dinna ye hear it? The pipes o' Havelock sound!" Hushed the wounded man his groaning; Hushed the wife her little ones; Alone they heard the drum-roll And the roar of Sepoy guns. But to sounds of home and childhood The Highland ear was true;-- As her mother's cradle-crooning The mountain pipes she knew. Like the march of soundless music Through the vision of the seer, More of feeling than of hearing, Of the heart than of the ear, She knew the droning pibroch, She knew the Campbell's call "Hark! hear ye no' MacGregor's, The grandest o' them all!" Oh, they listened, dumb and breathless, And they caught the sound at last; Faint and far beyond the Goomtee Rose and fell the piper's blast Then a burst of wild thanksgiving Mingled woman's voice and man's; "God be praised!--the march of Havelock! The piping of the clans!" Louder, nearer, fierce as vengeance, Sharp and shrill as swords at strife, Came the wild MacGregor's clan-call, Stinging all the air to life. But when the far-off dust-cloud To plaided legions grew, Full tenderly and blithesomely The pipes of rescue blew! Round the silver domes of Lucknow, Moslem mosque and Pagan shrine, Breathed the air to Britons dearest, The air of Auld Lang Syne. O'er the cruel roll of war-drums Rose that sweet and homelike strain; And the tartan clove the turban, As the Goomtee cleaves the plain. Dear to the corn-land reaper And plaided mountaineer,-- To the cottage and the castle The piper's song is dear. Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibroch O'er mountain, glen, and glade; But the sweetest of all music The Pipes at Lucknow played! 1858. TELLING THE BEES. A remarkable custom, brought from the Old Country, formerly prevailed in the rural districts of New England. On the death of a member of the family, the bees were at once informed of the event, and their hives dressed in mourning. This ceremonial was supposed to be necessary to prevent the swarms from leaving their hives and seeking a new home. HERE is the place; right over the hill Runs the path I took; You can see the gap in the old wall still, And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook. There is the house, with the gate red-barred, And the poplars tall; And the barn's brown length, and the cattle-yard, And the white horns tossing above the wall. There are the beehives ranged in the sun; And down by the brink Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o'errun, Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink. A year has gone, as the tortoise goes, Heavy and slow; And the same rose blooms, and the same sun glows, And the same brook sings of a year ago. There's the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze; And the June sun warm Tangles his wings of fire in the trees, Setting, as then, over Fernside farm. I mind me how with a lover's care From my Sunday coat I brushed off the burrs, and smoothed my hair, And cooled at the brookside my brow and throat. Since we parted, a month had passed,-- To love, a year; Down through the beeches I looked at last On the little red gate and the well-sweep near. I can see it all now,--the slantwise rain Of light through the leaves, The sundown's blaze on her window-pane, The bloom of her roses under the eaves. Just the same as a month before,-- The house and the trees, The barn's brown gable, the vine by the door,-- Nothing changed but the hives of bees. Before them, under the garden wall, Forward and back, Went drearily singing the chore-girl small, Draping each hive with a shred of black. Trembling, I listened: the summer sun Had the chill of snow; For I knew she was telling the bees of one Gone on the journey we all must go. Then I said to myself, "My Mary weeps For the dead to-day; Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps The fret and the pain of his age away." But her dog whined low; on the doorway sill, With his cane to his chin, The old man sat; and the chore-girl still Sung to the bees stealing out and in. And the song she was singing ever since In my ear sounds on:-- "Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence! Mistress Mary is dead and gone!" 1858. THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERY. In Young's Chronicles of Massachusetts Bay front 1623 to 1636 may be found Anthony Thacher's Narrative of his Shipwreck. Thacher was Avery's companion and survived to tell the tale. Mather's Magnalia, III. 2, gives further Particulars of Parson Avery's End, and suggests the title of the poem. WHEN the reaper's task was ended, and the summer wearing late, Parson Avery sailed from Newbury, with his wife and children eight, Dropping down the river-harbor in the shallop "Watch and Wait." Pleasantly lay the clearings in the mellow summer- morn, With the newly planted orchards dropping their fruits first-born, And the home-roofs like brown islands amid a sea of corn. Broad meadows reached out 'seaward the tided creeks between, And hills rolled wave-like inland, with oaks and walnuts green;-- A fairer home, a--goodlier land, his eyes had never seen. Yet away sailed Parson Avery, away where duty led, And the voice of God seemed calling, to break the living bread To the souls of fishers starving on the rocks of Marblehead. All day they sailed: at nightfall the pleasant land- breeze died, The blackening sky, at midnight, its starry lights denied, And far and low the thunder of tempest prophesied. Blotted out were all the coast-lines, gone were rock, and wood, and sand; Grimly anxious stood the skipper with the rudder in his hand, And questioned of the darkness what was sea and what was land. And the preacher heard his dear ones, nestled round him, weeping sore, "Never heed, my little children! Christ is walking on before; To the pleasant land of heaven, where the sea shall be no more." All at once the great cloud parted, like a curtain drawn aside, To let down the torch of lightning on the terror far and wide; And the thunder and the whirlwind together smote the tide. There was wailing in the shallop, woman's wail and man's despair, A crash of breaking timbers on the rocks so sharp and bare, And, through it all, the murmur of Father Avery's prayer. From his struggle in the darkness with the wild waves and the blast, On a rock, where every billow broke above him as it passed, Alone, of all his household, the man of God was cast. There a comrade heard him praying, in the pause of wave and wind "All my own have gone before me, and I linger just behind; Not for life I ask, but only for the rest Thy ransomed find! "In this night of death I challenge the promise of Thy word!-- Let me see the great salvation of which mine ears have heard!-- Let me pass from hence forgiven, through the grace of Christ, our Lord! "In the baptism of these waters wash white my every sin, And let me follow up to Thee my household and my kin! Open the sea-gate of Thy heaven, and let me enter in!" When the Christian sings his death-song, all the listening heavens draw near, And the angels, leaning over the walls of crystal, hear How the notes so faint and broken swell to music in God's ear. The ear of God was open to His servant's last request; As the strong wave swept him downward the sweet hymn upward pressed, And the soul of Father Avery went, singing, to its rest. There was wailing on the mainland, from the rocks of Marblehead; In the stricken church of Newbury the notes of prayer were read; And long, by board and hearthstone, the living mourned the dead. And still the fishers outbound, or scudding from the squall, With grave and reverent faces, the ancient tale recall, When they see the white waves breaking on the Rock of Avery's Fall! 1808. THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE OF NEWBURY. "Concerning ye Amphisbaena, as soon as I received your commands, I made diligent inquiry: . . . he assures me yt it had really two heads, one at each end; two mouths, two stings or tongues."--REV. CHRISTOPHER TOPPAN to COTTON MATHER. FAR away in the twilight time Of every people, in every clime, Dragons and griffins and monsters dire, Born of water, and air, and fire, Or nursed, like the Python, in the mud And ooze of the old Deucalion flood, Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage, Through dusk tradition and ballad age. So from the childhood of Newbury town And its time of fable the tale comes down Of a terror which haunted bush and brake, The Amphisbaena, the Double Snake! Thou who makest the tale thy mirth, Consider that strip of Christian earth On the desolate shore of a sailless sea, Full of terror and mystery, Half redeemed from the evil hold Of the wood so dreary, and dark, and old, Which drank with its lips of leaves the dew When Time was young, and the world was new, And wove its shadows with sun and moon, Ere the stones of Cheops were squared and hewn. Think of the sea's dread monotone, Of the mournful wail from the pine-wood blown, Of the strange, vast splendors that lit the North, Of the troubled throes of the quaking earth, And the dismal tales the Indian told, Till the settler's heart at his hearth grew cold, And he shrank from the tawny wizard boasts, And the hovering shadows seemed full of ghosts, And above, below, and on every side, The fear of his creed seemed verified;-- And think, if his lot were now thine own, To grope with terrors nor named nor known, How laxer muscle and weaker nerve And a feebler faith thy need might serve; And own to thyself the wonder more That the snake had two heads, and not a score! Whether he lurked in the Oldtown fen Or the gray earth-flax of the Devil's Den, Or swam in the wooded Artichoke, Or coiled by the Northman's Written Rock, Nothing on record is left to show; Only the fact that be lived, we know, And left the cast of a double head In the scaly mask which he yearly shed. For he carried a head where his tail should be, And the two, of course, could never agree, But wriggled about with main and might, Now to the left and now to the right; Pulling and twisting this way and that, Neither knew what the other was at. A snake with two beads, lurking so near! Judge of the wonder, guess at the fear! Think what ancient gossips might say, Shaking their heads in their dreary way, Between the meetings on Sabbath-day! How urchins, searching at day's decline The Common Pasture for sheep or kine, The terrible double-ganger heard In leafy rustle or whir of bird! Think what a zest it gave to the sport, In berry-time, of the younger sort, As over pastures blackberry-twined, Reuben and Dorothy lagged behind, And closer and closer, for fear of harm, The maiden clung to her lover's arm; And how the spark, who was forced to stay, By his sweetheart's fears, till the break of day, Thanked the snake for the fond delay. Far and wide the tale was told, Like a snowball growing while it rolled. The nurse hushed with it the baby's cry; And it served, in the worthy minister's eye, To paint the primitive serpent by. Cotton Mather came galloping down All the way to Newbury town, With his eyes agog and his ears set wide, And his marvellous inkhorn at his side; Stirring the while in the shallow pool Of his brains for the lore he learned at school, To garnish the story, with here a streak Of Latin, and there another of Greek And the tales he heard and the notes he took, Behold! are they not in his Wonder-Book? Stories, like dragons, are hard to kill. If the snake does not, the tale runs still In Byfield Meadows, on Pipestave Hill. And still, whenever husband and wife Publish the shame of their daily strife, And, with mad cross-purpose, tug and strain At either end of the marriage-chain, The gossips say, with a knowing shake Of their gray heads, "Look at the Double Snake One in body and two in will, The Amphisbaena is living still!" 1859. 
9563	----	This eBook was produced by David Widger NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER CONTENTS: MABEL MARTIN: A HARVEST IDYL PROEM I. THE RIVER VALLEY II. THE HUSKING III. THE WITCH'S DAUGHTER IV. THE CHAMPION V. IN THE SHADOW VI. THE BETROTHAL THE PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL THE RED RIVER VOYAGEUR THE PREACHER THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA MY PLAYMATE COBBLER KEEZAR'S VISION AMY WENTWORTH THE COUNTESS MABEL MARTIN. A HARVEST IDYL. Susanna Martin, an aged woman of Amesbury, Mass., was tried and executed for the alleged crime of witchcraft. Her home was in what is now known as Pleasant Valley on the Merrimac, a little above the old Ferry way, where, tradition says, an attempt was made to assassinate Sir Edmund Andros on his way to Falmouth (afterward Portland) and Pemaquid, which was frustrated by a warning timely given. Goody Martin was the only woman hanged on the north side of the Merrimac during the dreadful delusion. The aged wife of Judge Bradbury who lived on the other side of the Powow River was imprisoned and would have been put to death but for the collapse of the hideous persecution. The substance of the poem which follows was published under the name of The Witch's Daughter, in The National Era in 1857. In 1875 my publishers desired to issue it with illustrations, and I then enlarged it and otherwise altered it to its present form. The principal addition was in the verses which constitute Part I. PROEM. I CALL the old time back: I bring my lay in tender memory of the summer day When, where our native river lapsed away, We dreamed it over, while the thrushes made Songs of their own, and the great pine-trees laid On warm noonlights the masses of their shade. And she was with us, living o'er again Her life in ours, despite of years and pain,-- The Autumn's brightness after latter rain. Beautiful in her holy peace as one Who stands, at evening, when the work is done, Glorified in the setting of the sun! Her memory makes our common landscape seem Fairer than any of which painters dream; Lights the brown hills and sings in every stream; For she whose speech was always truth's pure gold Heard, not unpleased, its simple legends told, And loved with us the beautiful and old. I. THE RIVER VALLEY. Across the level tableland, A grassy, rarely trodden way, With thinnest skirt of birchen spray And stunted growth of cedar, leads To where you see the dull plain fall Sheer off, steep-slanted, ploughed by all The seasons' rainfalls. On its brink The over-leaning harebells swing, With roots half bare the pine-trees cling; And, through the shadow looking west, You see the wavering river flow Along a vale, that far below Holds to the sun, the sheltering hills And glimmering water-line between, Broad fields of corn and meadows green, And fruit-bent orchards grouped around The low brown roofs and painted eaves, And chimney-tops half hid in leaves. No warmer valley hides behind Yon wind-scourged sand-dunes, cold and bleak; No fairer river comes to seek The wave-sung welcome of the sea, Or mark the northmost border line Of sun-loved growths of nut and vine. Here, ground-fast in their native fields, Untempted by the city's gain, The quiet farmer folk remain Who bear the pleasant name of Friends, And keep their fathers' gentle ways And simple speech of Bible days; In whose neat homesteads woman holds With modest ease her equal place, And wears upon her tranquil face The look of one who, merging not Her self-hood in another's will, Is love's and duty's handmaid still. Pass with me down the path that winds Through birches to the open land, Where, close upon the river strand You mark a cellar, vine o'errun, Above whose wall of loosened stones The sumach lifts its reddening cones, And the black nightshade's berries shine, And broad, unsightly burdocks fold The household ruin, century-old. Here, in the dim colonial time Of sterner lives and gloomier faith, A woman lived, tradition saith, Who wrought her neighbors foul annoy, And witched and plagued the country-side, Till at the hangman's hand she died. Sit with me while the westering day Falls slantwise down the quiet vale, And, haply ere yon loitering sail, That rounds the upper headland, falls Below Deer Island's pines, or sees Behind it Hawkswood's belt of trees Rise black against the sinking sun, My idyl of its days of old, The valley's legend, shall be told. II. THE HUSKING. It was the pleasant harvest-time, When cellar-bins are closely stowed, And garrets bend beneath their load, And the old swallow-haunted barns,-- Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams Through which the rooted sunlight streams, And winds blow freshly in, to shake The red plumes of the roosted cocks, And the loose hay-mow's scented locks, Are filled with summer's ripened stores, Its odorous grass and barley sheaves, From their low scaffolds to their eaves. On Esek Harden's oaken floor, With many an autumn threshing worn, Lay the heaped ears of unhusked corn. And thither came young men and maids, Beneath a moon that, large and low, Lit that sweet eve of long ago. They took their places; some by chance, And others by a merry voice Or sweet smile guided to their choice. How pleasantly the rising moon, Between the shadow of the mows, Looked on them through the great elm-boughs! On sturdy boyhood, sun-embrowned, On girlhood with its solid curves Of healthful strength and painless nerves! And jests went round, and laughs that made The house-dog answer with his howl, And kept astir the barn-yard fowl; And quaint old songs their fathers sung In Derby dales and Yorkshire moors, Ere Norman William trod their shores; And tales, whose merry license shook The fat sides of the Saxon thane, Forgetful of the hovering Dane,-- Rude plays to Celt and Cimbri known, The charms and riddles that beguiled On Oxus' banks the young world's child,-- That primal picture-speech wherein Have youth and maid the story told, So new in each, so dateless old, Recalling pastoral Ruth in her Who waited, blushing and demure, The red-ear's kiss of forfeiture. But still the sweetest voice was mute That river-valley ever heard From lips of maid or throat of bird; For Mabel Martin sat apart, And let the hay-mow's shadow fall Upon the loveliest face of all. She sat apart, as one forbid, Who knew that none would condescend To own the Witch-wife's child a friend. The seasons scarce had gone their round, Since curious thousands thronged to see Her mother at the gallows-tree; And mocked the prison-palsied limbs That faltered on the fatal stairs, And wan lip trembling with its prayers! Few questioned of the sorrowing child, Or, when they saw the mother die; Dreamed of the daughter's agony. They went up to their homes that day, As men and Christians justified God willed it, and the wretch had died! Dear God and Father of us all, Forgive our faith in cruel lies,-- Forgive the blindness that denies! Forgive thy creature when he takes, For the all-perfect love Thou art, Some grim creation of his heart. Cast down our idols, overturn Our bloody altars; let us see Thyself in Thy humanity! Young Mabel from her mother's grave Crept to her desolate hearth-stone, And wrestled with her fate alone; With love, and anger, and despair, The phantoms of disordered sense, The awful doubts of Providence! Oh, dreary broke the winter days, And dreary fell the winter nights When, one by one, the neighboring lights Went out, and human sounds grew still, And all the phantom-peopled dark Closed round her hearth-fire's dying spark. And summer days were sad and long, And sad the uncompanioned eves, And sadder sunset-tinted leaves, And Indian Summer's airs of balm; She scarcely felt the soft caress, The beauty died of loneliness! The school-boys jeered her as they passed, And, when she sought the house of prayer, Her mother's curse pursued her there. And still o'er many a neighboring door She saw the horseshoe's curved charm, To guard against her mother's harm! That mother, poor and sick and lame, Who daily, by the old arm-chair, Folded her withered hands in prayer;-- Who turned, in Salem's dreary jail, Her worn old Bible o'er and o'er, When her dim eyes could read no more! Sore tried and pained, the poor girl kept Her faith, and trusted that her way, So dark, would somewhere meet the day. And still her weary wheel went round Day after day, with no relief Small leisure have the poor for grief. IV. THE CHAMPION. So in the shadow Mabel sits; Untouched by mirth she sees and hears, Her smile is sadder than her tears. But cruel eyes have found her out, And cruel lips repeat her name, And taunt her with her mother's shame. She answered not with railing words, But drew her apron o'er her face, And, sobbing, glided from the place. And only pausing at the door, Her sad eyes met the troubled gaze Of one who, in her better days, Had been her warm and steady friend, Ere yet her mother's doom had made Even Esek Harden half afraid. He felt that mute appeal of tears, And, starting, with an angry frown, Hushed all the wicked murmurs down. "Good neighbors mine," he sternly said, "This passes harmless mirth or jest; I brook no insult to my guest. "She is indeed her mother's child; But God's sweet pity ministers Unto no whiter soul than hers. "Let Goody Martin rest in peace; I never knew her harm a fly, And witch or not, God knows--not I. "I know who swore her life away; And as God lives, I'd not condemn An Indian dog on word of them." The broadest lands in all the town, The skill to guide, the power to awe, Were Harden's; and his word was law. None dared withstand him to his face, But one sly maiden spake aside "The little witch is evil-eyed! "Her mother only killed a cow, Or witched a churn or dairy-pan; But she, forsooth, must charm a man!" V. IN THE SHADOW. Poor Mabel, homeward turning, passed The nameless terrors of the wood, And saw, as if a ghost pursued, Her shadow gliding in the moon; The soft breath of the west-wind gave A chill as from her mother's grave. How dreary seemed the silent house! Wide in the moonbeams' ghastly glare Its windows had a dead man's stare! And, like a gaunt and spectral hand, The tremulous shadow of a birch Reached out and touched the door's low porch, As if to lift its latch; hard by, A sudden warning call she beard, The night-cry of a boding bird. She leaned against the door; her face, So fair, so young, so full of pain, White in the moonlight's silver rain. The river, on its pebbled rim, Made music such as childhood knew; The door-yard tree was whispered through By voices such as childhood's ear Had heard in moonlights long ago; And through the willow-boughs below. She saw the rippled waters shine; Beyond, in waves of shade and light, The hills rolled off into the night. She saw and heard, but over all A sense of some transforming spell, The shadow of her sick heart fell. And still across the wooded space The harvest lights of Harden shone, And song and jest and laugh went on. And he, so gentle, true, and strong, Of men the bravest and the best, Had he, too, scorned her with the rest? She strove to drown her sense of wrong, And, in her old and simple way, To teach her bitter heart to pray. Poor child! the prayer, begun in faith, Grew to a low, despairing cry Of utter misery: "Let me die! "Oh! take me from the scornful eyes, And hide me where the cruel speech And mocking finger may not reach! "I dare not breathe my mother's name A daughter's right I dare not crave To weep above her unblest grave! "Let me not live until my heart, With few to pity, and with none To love me, hardens into stone. "O God! have mercy on Thy child, Whose faith in Thee grows weak and small, And take me ere I lose it all!" A shadow on the moonlight fell, And murmuring wind and wave became A voice whose burden was her name. VI. THE BETROTHAL. Had then God heard her? Had He sent His angel down? In flesh and blood, Before her Esek Harden stood! He laid his hand upon her arm "Dear Mabel, this no more shall be; Who scoffs at you must scoff at me. "You know rough Esek Harden well; And if he seems no suitor gay, And if his hair is touched with gray, "The maiden grown shall never find His heart less warm than when she smiled, Upon his knees, a little child!" Her tears of grief were tears of joy, As, folded in his strong embrace, She looked in Esek Harden's face. "O truest friend of all'" she said, "God bless you for your kindly thought, And make me worthy of my lot!" He led her forth, and, blent in one, Beside their happy pathway ran The shadows of the maid and man. He led her through his dewy fields, To where the swinging lanterns glowed, And through the doors the huskers showed. "Good friends and neighbors!" Esek said, "I'm weary of this lonely life; In Mabel see my chosen wife! "She greets you kindly, one and all; The past is past, and all offence Falls harmless from her innocence. "Henceforth she stands no more alone; You know what Esek Harden is;-- He brooks no wrong to him or his. "Now let the merriest tales be told, And let the sweetest songs be sung That ever made the old heart young! "For now the lost has found a home; And a lone hearth shall brighter burn, As all the household joys return!" Oh, pleasantly the harvest-moon, Between the shadow of the mows, Looked on them through the great elm--boughs! On Mabel's curls of golden hair, On Esek's shaggy strength it fell; And the wind whispered, "It is well!" THE PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL. The prose version of this prophecy is to be found in Sewall's The New Heaven upon the New Earth, 1697, quoted in Joshua Coffin's History of Newbury. Judge Sewall's father, Henry Sewall, was one of the pioneers of Newbury. UP and down the village streets Strange are the forms my fancy meets, For the thoughts and things of to-day are hid, And through the veil of a closed lid The ancient worthies I see again I hear the tap of the elder's cane, And his awful periwig I see, And the silver buckles of shoe and knee. Stately and slow, with thoughtful air, His black cap hiding his whitened hair, Walks the Judge of the great Assize, Samuel Sewall the good and wise. His face with lines of firmness wrought, He wears the look of a man unbought, Who swears to his hurt and changes not; Yet, touched and softened nevertheless With the grace of Christian gentleness, The face that a child would climb to kiss! True and tender and brave and just, That man might honor and woman trust. Touching and sad, a tale is told, Like a penitent hymn of the Psalmist old, Of the fast which the good man lifelong kept to With a haunting sorrow that never slept, As the circling year brought round the time Of an error that left the sting of crime, When he sat on the bench of the witchcraft courts, With the laws of Moses and Hale's Reports, And spake, in the name of both, the word That gave the witch's neck to the cord, And piled the oaken planks that pressed The feeble life from the warlock's breast! All the day long, from dawn to dawn, His door was bolted, his curtain drawn; No foot on his silent threshold trod, No eye looked on him save that of God, As he baffled the ghosts of the dead with charms Of penitent tears, and prayers, and psalms, And, with precious proofs from the sacred word Of the boundless pity and love of the Lord, His faith confirmed and his trust renewed That the sin of his ignorance, sorely rued, Might be washed away in the mingled flood Of his human sorrow and Christ's dear blood! Green forever the memory be Of the Judge of the old Theocracy, Whom even his errors glorified, Like a far-seen, sunlit mountain-side By the cloudy shadows which o'er it glide I Honor and praise to the Puritan Who the halting step of his age outran, And, seeing the infinite worth of man In the priceless gift the Father gave, In the infinite love that stooped to save, Dared not brand his brother a slave "Who doth such wrong," he was wont to say, In his own quaint, picture-loving way, "Flings up to Heaven a hand-grenade Which God shall cast down upon his head!" Widely as heaven and hell, contrast That brave old jurist of the past And the cunning trickster and knave of courts Who the holy features of Truth distorts, Ruling as right the will of the strong, Poverty, crime, and weakness wrong; Wide-eared to power, to the wronged and weak Deaf as Egypt's gods of leek; Scoffing aside at party's nod Order of nature and law of God; For whose dabbled ermine respect were waste, Reverence folly, and awe misplaced; Justice of whom 't were vain to seek As from Koordish robber or Syrian Sheik! Oh, leave the wretch to his bribes and sins; Let him rot in the web of lies he spins! To the saintly soul of the early day, To the Christian judge, let us turn and say "Praise and thanks for an honest man!-- Glory to God for the Puritan!" I see, far southward, this quiet day, The hills of Newbury rolling away, With the many tints of the season gay, Dreamily blending in autumn mist Crimson, and gold, and amethyst. Long and low, with dwarf trees crowned, Plum Island lies, like a whale aground, A stone's toss over the narrow sound. Inland, as far as the eye can go, The hills curve round like a bended bow; A silver arrow from out them sprung, I see the shine of the Quasycung; And, round and round, over valley and hill, Old roads winding, as old roads will, Here to a ferry, and there to a mill; And glimpses of chimneys and gabled eaves, Through green elm arches and maple leaves,-- Old homesteads sacred to all that can Gladden or sadden the heart of man, Over whose thresholds of oak and stone Life and Death have come and gone There pictured tiles in the fireplace show, Great beams sag from the ceiling low, The dresser glitters with polished wares, The long clock ticks on the foot-worn stairs, And the low, broad chimney shows the crack By the earthquake made a century back. Up from their midst springs the village spire With the crest of its cock in the sun afire; Beyond are orchards and planting lands, And great salt marshes and glimmering sands, And, where north and south the coast-lines run, The blink of the sea in breeze and sun! I see it all like a chart unrolled, But my thoughts are full of the past and old, I hear the tales of my boyhood told; And the shadows and shapes of early days Flit dimly by in the veiling haze, With measured movement and rhythmic chime Weaving like shuttles my web of rhyme. I think of the old man wise and good Who once on yon misty hillsides stood, (A poet who never measured rhyme, A seer unknown to his dull-eared time,) And, propped on his staff of age, looked down, With his boyhood's love, on his native town, Where, written, as if on its hills and plains, His burden of prophecy yet remains, For the voices of wood, and wave, and wind To read in the ear of the musing mind:-- "As long as Plum Island, to guard the coast As God appointed, shall keep its post; As long as a salmon shall haunt the deep Of Merrimac River, or sturgeon leap; As long as pickerel swift and slim, Or red-backed perch, in Crane Pond swim; As long as the annual sea-fowl know Their time to come and their time to go; As long as cattle shall roam at will The green, grass meadows by Turkey Hill; As long as sheep shall look from the side Of Oldtown Hill on marishes wide, And Parker River, and salt-sea tide; As long as a wandering pigeon shall search The fields below from his white-oak perch, When the barley-harvest is ripe and shorn, And the dry husks fall from the standing corn; As long as Nature shall not grow old, Nor drop her work from her doting hold, And her care for the Indian corn forget, And the yellow rows in pairs to set;-- So long shall Christians here be born, Grow up and ripen as God's sweet corn!-- By the beak of bird, by the breath of frost, Shall never a holy ear be lost, But, husked by Death in the Planter's sight, Be sown again in the fields of light!" The Island still is purple with plums, Up the river the salmon comes, The sturgeon leaps, and the wild-fowl feeds On hillside berries and marish seeds,-- All the beautiful signs remain, From spring-time sowing to autumn rain The good man's vision returns again! And let us hope, as well we can, That the Silent Angel who garners man May find some grain as of old lie found In the human cornfield ripe and sound, And the Lord of the Harvest deign to own The precious seed by the fathers sown! 1859. THE RED RIPER VOYAGEUR. OUT and in the river is winding The links of its long, red chain, Through belts of dusky pine-land And gusty leagues of plain. Only, at times, a smoke-wreath With the drifting cloud-rack joins,-- The smoke of the hunting-lodges Of the wild Assiniboins. Drearily blows the north-wind From the land of ice and snow; The eyes that look are weary, And heavy the hands that row. And with one foot on the water, And one upon the shore, The Angel of Shadow gives warning That day shall be no more. Is it the clang of wild-geese? Is it the Indian's yell, That lends to the voice of the north-wind The tones of a far-off bell? The voyageur smiles as he listens To the sound that grows apace; Well he knows the vesper ringing Of the bells of St. Boniface. The bells of the Roman Mission, That call from their turrets twain, To the boatman on the river, To the hunter on the plain! Even so in our mortal journey The bitter north-winds blow, And thus upon life's Red River Our hearts, as oarsmen, row. And when the Angel of Shadow Rests his feet on wave and shore, And our eyes grow dim with watching And our hearts faint at the oar, Happy is he who heareth The signal of his release In the bells of the Holy City, The chimes of eternal peace! 1859 THE PREACHER. George Whitefield, the celebrated preacher, died at Newburyport in 1770, and was buried under the church which has since borne his name. ITS windows flashing to the sky, Beneath a thousand roofs of brown, Far down the vale, my friend and I Beheld the old and quiet town; The ghostly sails that out at sea Flapped their white wings of mystery; The beaches glimmering in the sun, And the low wooded capes that run Into the sea-mist north and south; The sand-bluffs at the river's mouth; The swinging chain-bridge, and, afar, The foam-line of the harbor-bar. Over the woods and meadow-lands A crimson-tinted shadow lay, Of clouds through which the setting day Flung a slant glory far away. It glittered on the wet sea-sands, It flamed upon the city's panes, Smote the white sails of ships that wore Outward or in, and glided o'er The steeples with their veering vanes! Awhile my friend with rapid search O'erran the landscape. "Yonder spire Over gray roofs, a shaft of fire; What is it, pray?"--"The Whitefield Church! Walled about by its basement stones, There rest the marvellous prophet's bones." Then as our homeward way we walked, Of the great preacher's life we talked; And through the mystery of our theme The outward glory seemed to stream, And Nature's self interpreted The doubtful record of the dead; And every level beam that smote The sails upon the dark afloat A symbol of the light became, Which touched the shadows of our blame, With tongues of Pentecostal flame. Over the roofs of the pioneers Gathers the moss of a hundred years; On man and his works has passed the change Which needs must be in a century's range. The land lies open and warm in the sun, Anvils clamor and mill-wheels run,-- Flocks on the hillsides, herds on the plain, The wilderness gladdened with fruit and grain! But the living faith of the settlers old A dead profession their children hold; To the lust of office and greed of trade A stepping-stone is the altar made. The church, to place and power the door, Rebukes the sin of the world no more, Nor sees its Lord in the homeless poor. Everywhere is the grasping hand, And eager adding of land to land; And earth, which seemed to the fathers meant But as a pilgrim's wayside tent,-- A nightly shelter to fold away When the Lord should call at the break of day,-- Solid and steadfast seems to be, And Time has forgotten Eternity! But fresh and green from the rotting roots Of primal forests the young growth shoots; From the death of the old the new proceeds, And the life of truth from the rot of creeds On the ladder of God, which upward leads, The steps of progress are human needs. For His judgments still are a mighty deep, And the eyes of His providence never sleep When the night is darkest He gives the morn; When the famine is sorest, the wine and corn! In the church of the wilderness Edwards wrought, Shaping his creed at the forge of thought; And with Thor's own hammer welded and bent The iron links of his argument, Which strove to grasp in its mighty span The purpose of God and the fate of man Yet faithful still, in his daily round To the weak, and the poor, and sin-sick found, The schoolman's lore and the casuist's art Drew warmth and life from his fervent heart. Had he not seen in the solitudes Of his deep and dark Northampton woods A vision of love about him fall? Not the blinding splendor which fell on Saul, But the tenderer glory that rests on them Who walk in the New Jerusalem, Where never the sun nor moon are known, But the Lord and His love are the light alone And watching the sweet, still countenance Of the wife of his bosom rapt in trance, Had he not treasured each broken word Of the mystical wonder seen and heard; And loved the beautiful dreamer more That thus to the desert of earth she bore Clusters of Eshcol from Canaan's shore? As the barley-winnower, holding with pain Aloft in waiting his chaff and grain, Joyfully welcomes the far-off breeze Sounding the pine-tree's slender keys, So he who had waited long to hear The sound of the Spirit drawing near, Like that which the son of Iddo heard When the feet of angels the myrtles stirred, Felt the answer of prayer, at last, As over his church the afflatus passed, Breaking its sleep as breezes break To sun-bright ripples a stagnant lake. At first a tremor of silent fear, The creep of the flesh at danger near, A vague foreboding and discontent, Over the hearts of the people went. All nature warned in sounds and signs The wind in the tops of the forest pines In the name of the Highest called to prayer, As the muezzin calls from the minaret stair. Through ceiled chambers of secret sin Sudden and strong the light shone in; A guilty sense of his neighbor's needs Startled the man of title-deeds; The trembling hand of the worldling shook The dust of years from the Holy Book; And the psalms of David, forgotten long, Took the place of the scoffer's song. The impulse spread like the outward course Of waters moved by a central force; The tide of spiritual life rolled down From inland mountains to seaboard town. Prepared and ready the altar stands Waiting the prophet's outstretched hands And prayer availing, to downward call The fiery answer in view of all. Hearts are like wax in the furnace; who Shall mould, and shape, and cast them anew? Lo! by the Merrimac Whitefield stands In the temple that never was made by hands,-- Curtains of azure, and crystal wall, And dome of the sunshine over all-- A homeless pilgrim, with dubious name Blown about on the winds of fame; Now as an angel of blessing classed, And now as a mad enthusiast. Called in his youth to sound and gauge The moral lapse of his race and age, And, sharp as truth, the contrast draw Of human frailty and perfect law; Possessed by the one dread thought that lent Its goad to his fiery temperament, Up and down the world he went, A John the Baptist crying, Repent! No perfect whole can our nature make; Here or there the circle will break; The orb of life as it takes the light On one side leaves the other in night. Never was saint so good and great As to give no chance at St. Peter's gate For the plea of the Devil's advocate. So, incomplete by his being's law, The marvellous preacher had his flaw; With step unequal, and lame with faults, His shade on the path of History halts. Wisely and well said the Eastern bard Fear is easy, but love is hard,-- Easy to glow with the Santon's rage, And walk on the Meccan pilgrimage; But he is greatest and best who can Worship Allah by loving man. Thus he,--to whom, in the painful stress Of zeal on fire from its own excess, Heaven seemed so vast and earth so small That man was nothing, since God was all,-- Forgot, as the best at times have done, That the love of the Lord and of man are one. Little to him whose feet unshod The thorny path of the desert trod, Careless of pain, so it led to God, Seemed the hunger-pang and the poor man's wrong, The weak ones trodden beneath the strong. Should the worm be chooser?--the clay withstand The shaping will of the potter's hand? In the Indian fable Arjoon hears The scorn of a god rebuke his fears "Spare thy pity!" Krishna saith; "Not in thy sword is the power of death! All is illusion,--loss but seems; Pleasure and pain are only dreams; Who deems he slayeth doth not kill; Who counts as slain is living still. Strike, nor fear thy blow is crime; Nothing dies but the cheats of time; Slain or slayer, small the odds To each, immortal as Indra's gods!" So by Savannah's banks of shade, The stones of his mission the preacher laid On the heart of the negro crushed and rent, And made of his blood the wall's cement; Bade the slave-ship speed from coast to coast, Fanned by the wings of the Holy Ghost; And begged, for the love of Christ, the gold Coined from the hearts in its groaning hold. What could it matter, more or less Of stripes, and hunger, and weariness? Living or dying, bond or free, What was time to eternity? Alas for the preacher's cherished schemes! Mission and church are now but dreams; Nor prayer nor fasting availed the plan To honor God through the wrong of man. Of all his labors no trace remains Save the bondman lifting his hands in chains. The woof he wove in the righteous warp Of freedom-loving Oglethorpe, Clothes with curses the goodly land, Changes its greenness and bloom to sand; And a century's lapse reveals once more The slave-ship stealing to Georgia's shore. Father of Light! how blind is he Who sprinkles the altar he rears to Thee With the blood and tears of humanity! He erred: shall we count His gifts as naught? Was the work of God in him unwrought? The servant may through his deafness err, And blind may be God's messenger; But the Errand is sure they go upon,-- The word is spoken, the deed is done. Was the Hebrew temple less fair and good That Solomon bowed to gods of wood? For his tempted heart and wandering feet, Were the songs of David less pure and sweet? So in light and shadow the preacher went, God's erring and human instrument; And the hearts of the people where he passed Swayed as the reeds sway in the blast, Under the spell of a voice which took In its compass the flow of Siloa's brook, And the mystical chime of the bells of gold On the ephod's hem of the priest of old,-- Now the roll of thunder, and now the awe Of the trumpet heard in the Mount of Law. A solemn fear on the listening crowd Fell like the shadow of a cloud. The sailor reeling from out the ships Whose masts stood thick in the river-slips Felt the jest and the curse die on his lips. Listened the fisherman rude and hard, The calker rough from the builder's yard; The man of the market left his load, The teamster leaned on his bending goad, The maiden, and youth beside her, felt Their hearts in a closer union melt, And saw the flowers of their love in bloom Down the endless vistas of life to come. Old age sat feebly brushing away From his ears the scanty locks of gray; And careless boyhood, living the free Unconscious life of bird and tree, Suddenly wakened to a sense Of sin and its guilty consequence. It was as if an angel's voice Called the listeners up for their final choice; As if a strong hand rent apart The veils of sense from soul and heart, Showing in light ineffable The joys of heaven and woes of hell All about in the misty air The hills seemed kneeling in silent prayer; The rustle of leaves, the moaning sedge, The water's lap on its gravelled edge, The wailing pines, and, far and faint, The wood-dove's note of sad complaint,-- To the solemn voice of the preacher lent An undertone as of low lament; And the note of the sea from its sand coast, On the easterly wind, now heard, now lost, Seemed the murmurous sound of the judgment host. Yet wise men doubted, and good men wept, As that storm of passion above them swept, And, comet-like, adding flame to flame, The priests of the new Evangel came,-- Davenport, flashing upon the crowd, Charged like summer's electric cloud, Now holding the listener still as death With terrible warnings under breath, Now shouting for joy, as if he viewed The vision of Heaven's beatitude! And Celtic Tennant, his long coat bound Like a monk's with leathern girdle round, Wild with the toss of unshorn hair, And wringing of hands, and, eyes aglare, Groaning under the world's despair! Grave pastors, grieving their flocks to lose, Prophesied to the empty pews That gourds would wither, and mushrooms die, And noisiest fountains run soonest dry, Like the spring that gushed in Newbury Street, Under the tramp of the earthquake's feet, A silver shaft in the air and light, For a single day, then lost in night, Leaving only, its place to tell, Sandy fissure and sulphurous smell. With zeal wing-clipped and white-heat cool, Moved by the spirit in grooves of rule, No longer harried, and cropped, and fleeced, Flogged by sheriff and cursed by priest, But by wiser counsels left at ease To settle quietly on his lees, And, self-concentred, to count as done The work which his fathers well begun, In silent protest of letting alone, The Quaker kept the way of his own,-- A non-conductor among the wires, With coat of asbestos proof to fires. And quite unable to mend his pace To catch the falling manna of grace, He hugged the closer his little store Of faith, and silently prayed for more. And vague of creed and barren of rite, But holding, as in his Master's sight, Act and thought to the inner light, The round of his simple duties walked, And strove to live what the others talked. And who shall marvel if evil went Step by step with the good intent, And with love and meekness, side by side, Lust of the flesh and spiritual pride?-- That passionate longings and fancies vain Set the heart on fire and crazed the brain? That over the holy oracles Folly sported with cap and bells? That goodly women and learned men Marvelling told with tongue and pen How unweaned children chirped like birds Texts of Scripture and solemn words, Like the infant seers of the rocky glens In the Puy de Dome of wild Cevennes Or baby Lamas who pray and preach From Tartir cradles in Buddha's speech? In the war which Truth or Freedom wages With impious fraud and the wrong of ages, Hate and malice and self-love mar The notes of triumph with painful jar, And the helping angels turn aside Their sorrowing faces the shame to bide. Never on custom's oiled grooves The world to a higher level moves, But grates and grinds with friction hard On granite boulder and flinty shard. The heart must bleed before it feels, The pool be troubled before it heals; Ever by losses the right must gain, Every good have its birth of pain; The active Virtues blush to find The Vices wearing their badge behind, And Graces and Charities feel the fire Wherein the sins of the age expire; The fiend still rends as of old he rent The tortured body from which be went. But Time tests all. In the over-drift And flow of the Nile, with its annual gift, Who cares for the Hadji's relics sunk? Who thinks of the drowned-out Coptic monk? The tide that loosens the temple's stones, And scatters the sacred ibis-bones, Drives away from the valley-land That Arab robber, the wandering sand, Moistens the fields that know no rain, Fringes the desert with belts of grain, And bread to the sower brings again. So the flood of emotion deep and strong Troubled the land as it swept along, But left a result of holier lives, Tenderer-mothers and worthier wives. The husband and father whose children fled And sad wife wept when his drunken tread Frightened peace from his roof-tree's shade, And a rock of offence his hearthstone made, In a strength that was not his own began To rise from the brute's to the plane of man. Old friends embraced, long held apart By evil counsel and pride of heart; And penitence saw through misty tears, In the bow of hope on its cloud of fears, The promise of Heaven's eternal years,-- The peace of God for the world's annoy,-- Beauty for ashes, and oil of joy Under the church of Federal Street, Under the tread of its Sabbath feet, Walled about by its basement stones, Lie the marvellous preacher's bones. No saintly honors to them are shown, No sign nor miracle have they known; But be who passes the ancient church Stops in the shade of its belfry-porch, And ponders the wonderful life of him Who lies at rest in that charnel dim. Long shall the traveller strain his eye From the railroad car, as it plunges by, And the vanishing town behind him search For the slender spire of the Whitefield Church; And feel for one moment the ghosts of trade, And fashion, and folly, and pleasure laid, By the thought of that life of pure intent, That voice of warning yet eloquent, Of one on the errands of angels sent. And if where he labored the flood of sin Like a tide from the harbor-bar sets in, And over a life of tune and sense The church-spires lift their vain defence, As if to scatter the bolts of God With the points of Calvin's thunder-rod,-- Still, as the gem of its civic crown, Precious beyond the world's renown, His memory hallows the ancient town! 1859. THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA. In the winter of 1675-76, the Eastern Indians, who had been making war upon the New Hampshire settlements, were so reduced in numbers by fighting and famine that they agreed to a peace with Major Waldron at Dover, but the peace was broken in the fall of 1676. The famous chief, Squando, was the principal negotiator on the part of the savages. He had taken up the hatchet to revenge the brutal treatment of his child by drunken white sailors, which caused its death. It not unfrequently happened during the Border wars that young white children were adopted by their Indian captors, and so kindly treated that they were unwilling to leave the free, wild life of the woods; and in some instances they utterly refused to go back with their parents to their old homes and civilization. RAZE these long blocks of brick and stone, These huge mill-monsters overgrown; Blot out the humbler piles as well, Where, moved like living shuttles, dwell The weaving genii of the bell; Tear from the wild Cocheco's track The dams that hold its torrents back; And let the loud-rejoicing fall Plunge, roaring, down its rocky wall; And let the Indian's paddle play On the unbridged Piscataqua! Wide over hill and valley spread Once more the forest, dusk and dread, With here and there a clearing cut From the walled shadows round it shut; Each with its farm-house builded rude, By English yeoman squared and hewed, And the grim, flankered block-house bound With bristling palisades around. So, haply shall before thine eyes The dusty veil of centuries rise, The old, strange scenery overlay The tamer pictures of to-day, While, like the actors in a play, Pass in their ancient guise along The figures of my border song What time beside Cocheco's flood The white man and the red man stood, With words of peace and brotherhood; When passed the sacred calumet From lip to lip with fire-draught wet, And, puffed in scorn, the peace-pipe's smoke Through the gray beard of Waldron broke, And Squando's voice, in suppliant plea For mercy, struck the haughty key Of one who held, in any fate, His native pride inviolate! "Let your ears be opened wide! He who speaks has never lied. Waldron of Piscataqua, Hear what Squando has to say! "Squando shuts his eyes and sees, Far off, Saco's hemlock-trees. In his wigwam, still as stone, Sits a woman all alone, "Wampum beads and birchen strands Dropping from her careless hands, Listening ever for the fleet Patter of a dead child's feet! "When the moon a year ago Told the flowers the time to blow, In that lonely wigwam smiled Menewee, our little child. "Ere that moon grew thin and old, He was lying still and cold; Sent before us, weak and small, When the Master did not call! "On his little grave I lay; Three times went and came the day, Thrice above me blazed the noon, Thrice upon me wept the moon. "In the third night-watch I heard, Far and low, a spirit-bird; Very mournful, very wild, Sang the totem of my child. "'Menewee, poor Menewee, Walks a path he cannot see Let the white man's wigwam light With its blaze his steps aright. "'All-uncalled, he dares not show Empty hands to Manito Better gifts he cannot bear Than the scalps his slayers wear.' "All the while the totem sang, Lightning blazed and thunder rang; And a black cloud, reaching high, Pulled the white moon from the sky. "I, the medicine-man, whose ear All that spirits bear can hear,-- I, whose eyes are wide to see All the things that are to be,-- "Well I knew the dreadful signs In the whispers of the pines, In the river roaring loud, In the mutter of the cloud. "At the breaking of the day, From the grave I passed away; Flowers bloomed round me, birds sang glad, But my heart was hot and mad. "There is rust on Squando's knife, From the warm, red springs of life; On the funeral hemlock-trees Many a scalp the totem sees. "Blood for blood! But evermore Squando's heart is sad and sore; And his poor squaw waits at home For the feet that never come! "Waldron of Cocheco, hear! Squando speaks, who laughs at fear; Take the captives he has ta'en; Let the land have peace again!" As the words died on his tongue, Wide apart his warriors swung; Parted, at the sign he gave, Right and left, like Egypt's wave. And, like Israel passing free Through the prophet-charmed sea, Captive mother, wife, and child Through the dusky terror filed. One alone, a little maid, Middleway her steps delayed, Glancing, with quick, troubled sight, Round about from red to white. Then his hand the Indian laid On the little maiden's head, Lightly from her forehead fair Smoothing back her yellow hair. "Gift or favor ask I none; What I have is all my own Never yet the birds have sung, Squando hath a beggar's tongue.' "Yet for her who waits at home, For the dead who cannot come, Let the little Gold-hair be In the place of Menewee! "Mishanock, my little star! Come to Saco's pines afar; Where the sad one waits at home, Wequashim, my moonlight, come!" "What!" quoth Waldron, "leave a child Christian-born to heathens wild? As God lives, from Satan's hand I will pluck her as a brand!" "Hear me, white man!" Squando cried; "Let the little one decide. Wequashim, my moonlight, say, Wilt thou go with me, or stay?" Slowly, sadly, half afraid, Half regretfully, the maid Owned the ties of blood and race,-- Turned from Squando's pleading face. Not a word the Indian spoke, But his wampum chain he broke, And the beaded wonder hung On that neck so fair and young. Silence-shod, as phantoms seem In the marches of a dream, Single-filed, the grim array Through the pine-trees wound away. Doubting, trembling, sore amazed, Through her tears the young child gazed. "God preserve her!" Waldron said; "Satan hath bewitched the maid!" Years went and came. At close of day Singing came a child from play, Tossing from her loose-locked head Gold in sunshine, brown in shade. Pride was in the mother's look, But her head she gravely shook, And with lips that fondly smiled Feigned to chide her truant child. Unabashed, the maid began "Up and down the brook I ran, Where, beneath the bank so steep, Lie the spotted trout asleep. "'Chip!' went squirrel on the wall, After me I heard him call, And the cat-bird on the tree Tried his best to mimic me. "Where the hemlocks grew so dark That I stopped to look and hark, On a log, with feather-hat, By the path, an Indian sat. "Then I cried, and ran away; But he called, and bade me stay; And his voice was good and mild As my mother's to her child. "And he took my wampum chain, Looked and looked it o'er again; Gave me berries, and, beside, On my neck a plaything tied." Straight the mother stooped to see What the Indian's gift might be. On the braid of wampum hung, Lo! a cross of silver swung. Well she knew its graven sign, Squando's bird and totem pine; And, a mirage of the brain, Flowed her childhood back again. Flashed the roof the sunshine through, Into space the walls outgrew; On the Indian's wigwam-mat, Blossom-crowned, again she sat. Cool she felt the west-wind blow, In her ear the pines sang low, And, like links from out a chain, Dropped the years of care and pain. From the outward toil and din, From the griefs that gnaw within, To the freedom of the woods Called the birds, and winds, and floods. Well, O painful minister! Watch thy flock, but blame not her, If her ear grew sharp to hear All their voices whispering near. Blame her not, as to her soul All the desert's glamour stole, That a tear for childhood's loss Dropped upon the Indian's cross. When, that night, the Book was read, And she bowed her widowed head, And a prayer for each loved name Rose like incense from a flame, With a hope the creeds forbid In her pitying bosom hid, To the listening ear of Heaven Lo! the Indian's name was given. 1860. MY PLAYMATE. THE pines were dark on Ramoth hill, Their song was soft and low; The blossoms in the sweet May wind Were falling like the snow. The blossoms drifted at our feet, The orchard birds sang clear; The sweetest and the saddest day It seemed of all the year. For, more to me than birds or flowers, My playmate left her home, And took with her the laughing spring, The music and the bloom. She kissed the lips of kith and kin, She laid her hand in mine What more could ask the bashful boy Who fed her father's kine? She left us in the bloom of May The constant years told o'er Their seasons with as sweet May morns, But she came back no more. I walk, with noiseless feet, the round Of uneventful years; Still o'er and o'er I sow the spring And reap the autumn ears. She lives where all the golden year Her summer roses blow; The dusky children of the sun Before her come and go. There haply with her jewelled hands She smooths her silken gown,-- No more the homespun lap wherein I shook the walnuts down. The wild grapes wait us by the brook, The brown nuts on the hill, And still the May-day flowers make sweet The woods of Follymill. The lilies blossom in the pond, The bird builds in the tree, The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill The slow song of the sea. I wonder if she thinks of them, And how the old time seems,-- If ever the pines of Ramoth wood Are sounding in her dreams. I see her face, I hear her voice; Does she remember mine? And what to her is now the boy Who fed her father's kine? What cares she that the orioles build For other eyes than ours,-- That other hands with nuts are filled, And other laps with flowers? O playmate in the golden time! Our mossy seat is green, Its fringing violets blossom yet, The old trees o'er it lean. The winds so sweet with birch and fern A sweeter memory blow; And there in spring the veeries sing The song of long ago. And still the pines of Ramoth wood Are moaning like the sea,-- The moaning of the sea of change Between myself and thee! 1860. COBBLER KEEZAR'S VISION. This ballad was written on the occasion of a Horticultural Festival. Cobbler Keezar was a noted character among the first settlers in the valley of the Merrimac. THE beaver cut his timber With patient teeth that day, The minks were fish-wards, and the crows Surveyors of highway,-- When Keezar sat on the hillside Upon his cobbler's form, With a pan of coals on either hand To keep his waxed-ends warm. And there, in the golden weather, He stitched and hammered and sung; In the brook he moistened his leather, In the pewter mug his tongue. Well knew the tough old Teuton Who brewed the stoutest ale, And he paid the goodwife's reckoning In the coin of song and tale. The songs they still are singing Who dress the hills of vine, The tales that haunt the Brocken And whisper down the Rhine. Woodsy and wild and lonesome, The swift stream wound away, Through birches and scarlet maples Flashing in foam and spray,-- Down on the sharp-horned ledges Plunging in steep cascade, Tossing its white-maned waters Against the hemlock's shade. Woodsy and wild and lonesome, East and west and north and south; Only the village of fishers Down at the river's mouth; Only here and there a clearing, With its farm-house rude and new, And tree-stumps, swart as Indians, Where the scanty harvest grew. No shout of home-bound reapers, No vintage-song he heard, And on the green no dancing feet The merry violin stirred. "Why should folk be glum," said Keezar, "When Nature herself is glad, And the painted woods are laughing At the faces so sour and sad?" Small heed had the careless cobbler What sorrow of heart was theirs Who travailed in pain with the births of God, And planted a state with prayers,-- Hunting of witches and warlocks, Smiting the heathen horde,-- One hand on the mason's trowel, And one on the soldier's sword. But give him his ale and cider, Give him his pipe and song, Little he cared for Church or State, Or the balance of right and wrong. "T is work, work, work," he muttered,-- "And for rest a snuffle of psalms!" He smote on his leathern apron With his brown and waxen palms. "Oh for the purple harvests Of the days when I was young For the merry grape-stained maidens, And the pleasant songs they sung! "Oh for the breath of vineyards, Of apples and nuts and wine For an oar to row and a breeze to blow Down the grand old river Rhine!" A tear in his blue eye glistened, And dropped on his beard so gray. "Old, old am I," said Keezar, "And the Rhine flows far away!" But a cunning man was the cobbler; He could call the birds from the trees, Charm the black snake out of the ledges, And bring back the swarming bees. All the virtues of herbs and metals, All the lore of the woods, he knew, And the arts of the Old World mingle With the marvels of the New. Well he knew the tricks of magic, And the lapstone on his knee Had the gift of the Mormon's goggles Or the stone of Doctor Dee.[11] For the mighty master Agrippa Wrought it with spell and rhyme From a fragment of mystic moonstone In the tower of Nettesheim. To a cobbler Minnesinger The marvellous stone gave he,-- And he gave it, in turn, to Keezar, Who brought it over the sea. He held up that mystic lapstone, He held it up like a lens, And he counted the long years coming Ey twenties and by tens. "One hundred years," quoth Keezar, "And fifty have I told Now open the new before me, And shut me out the old!" Like a cloud of mist, the blackness Rolled from the magic stone, And a marvellous picture mingled The unknown and the known. Still ran the stream to the river, And river and ocean joined; And there were the bluffs and the blue sea-line, And cold north hills behind. But--the mighty forest was broken By many a steepled town, By many a white-walled farm-house, And many a garner brown. Turning a score of mill-wheels, The stream no more ran free; White sails on the winding river, White sails on the far-off sea. Below in the noisy village The flags were floating gay, And shone on a thousand faces The light of a holiday. Swiftly the rival ploughmen Turned the brown earth from their shares; Here were the farmer's treasures, There were the craftsman's wares. Golden the goodwife's butter, Ruby her currant-wine; Grand were the strutting turkeys, Fat were the beeves and swine. Yellow and red were the apples, And the ripe pears russet-brown, And the peaches had stolen blushes From the girls who shook them down. And with blooms of hill and wildwood, That shame the toil of art, Mingled the gorgeous blossoms Of the garden's tropic heart. "What is it I see?" said Keezar "Am I here, or ant I there? Is it a fete at Bingen? Do I look on Frankfort fair? "But where are the clowns and puppets, And imps with horns and tail? And where are the Rhenish flagons? And where is the foaming ale? "Strange things, I know, will happen,-- Strange things the Lord permits; But that droughty folk should be jolly Puzzles my poor old wits. "Here are smiling manly faces, And the maiden's step is gay; Nor sad by thinking, nor mad by drinking, Nor mopes, nor fools, are they. "Here's pleasure without regretting, And good without abuse, The holiday and the bridal Of beauty and of use. "Here's a priest and there is a Quaker, Do the cat and dog agree? Have they burned the stocks for ovenwood? Have they cut down the gallows-tree? "Would the old folk know their children? Would they own the graceless town, With never a ranter to worry And never a witch to drown?" Loud laughed the cobbler Keezar, Laughed like a school-boy gay; Tossing his arms above him, The lapstone rolled away. It rolled down the rugged hillside, It spun like a wheel bewitched, It plunged through the leaning willows, And into the river pitched. There, in the deep, dark water, The magic stone lies still, Under the leaning willows In the shadow of the hill. But oft the idle fisher Sits on the shadowy bank, And his dreams make marvellous pictures Where the wizard's lapstone sank. And still, in the summer twilights, When the river seems to run Out from the inner glory, Warm with the melted sun, The weary mill-girl lingers Beside the charmed stream, And the sky and the golden water Shape and color her dream. Air wave the sunset gardens, The rosy signals fly; Her homestead beckons from the cloud, And love goes sailing by. 1861. AMY WENTWORTH TO WILLIAM BRADFORD. As they who watch by sick-beds find relief Unwittingly from the great stress of grief And anxious care, in fantasies outwrought From the hearth's embers flickering low, or caught From whispering wind, or tread of passing feet, Or vagrant memory calling up some sweet Snatch of old song or romance, whence or why They scarcely know or ask,--so, thou and I, Nursed in the faith that Truth alone is strong In the endurance which outwearies Wrong, With meek persistence baffling brutal force, And trusting God against the universe,-- We, doomed to watch a strife we may not share With other weapons than the patriot's prayer, Yet owning, with full hearts and moistened eyes, The awful beauty of self-sacrifice, And wrung by keenest sympathy for all Who give their loved ones for the living wall 'Twixt law and treason,--in this evil day May haply find, through automatic play Of pen and pencil, solace to our pain, And hearten others with the strength we gain. I know it has been said our times require No play of art, nor dalliance with the lyre, No weak essay with Fancy's chloroform To calm the hot, mad pulses of the storm, But the stern war-blast rather, such as sets The battle's teeth of serried bayonets, And pictures grim as Vernet's. Yet with these Some softer tints may blend, and milder keys Relieve the storm-stunned ear. Let us keep sweet, If so we may, our hearts, even while we eat The bitter harvest of our own device And half a century's moral cowardice. As Nurnberg sang while Wittenberg defied, And Kranach painted by his Luther's side, And through the war-march of the Puritan The silver stream of Marvell's music ran, So let the household melodies be sung, The pleasant pictures on the wall be hung-- So let us hold against the hosts of night And slavery all our vantage-ground of light. Let Treason boast its savagery, and shake From its flag-folds its symbol rattlesnake, Nurse its fine arts, lay human skins in tan, And carve its pipe-bowls from the bones of man, And make the tale of Fijian banquets dull By drinking whiskey from a loyal skull,-- But let us guard, till this sad war shall cease, (God grant it soon!) the graceful arts of peace No foes are conquered who the victors teach Their vandal manners and barbaric speech. And while, with hearts of thankfulness, we bear Of the great common burden our full share, Let none upbraid us that the waves entice Thy sea-dipped pencil, or some quaint device, Rhythmic, and sweet, beguiles my pen away From the sharp strifes and sorrows of to-day. Thus, while the east-wind keen from Labrador Sings it the leafless elms, and from the shore Of the great sea comes the monotonous roar Of the long-breaking surf, and all the sky Is gray with cloud, home-bound and dull, I try To time a simple legend to the sounds Of winds in the woods, and waves on pebbled bounds,-- A song for oars to chime with, such as might Be sung by tired sea-painters, who at night Look from their hemlock camps, by quiet cove Or beach, moon-lighted, on the waves they love. (So hast thou looked, when level sunset lay On the calm bosom of some Eastern bay, And all the spray-moist rocks and waves that rolled Up the white sand-slopes flashed with ruddy gold.) Something it has--a flavor of the sea, And the sea's freedom--which reminds of thee. Its faded picture, dimly smiling down From the blurred fresco of the ancient town, I have not touched with warmer tints in vain, If, in this dark, sad year, it steals one thought from pain. . . . . . . . . . . . . Her fingers shame the ivory keys They dance so light along; The bloom upon her parted lips Is sweeter than the song. O perfumed suitor, spare thy smiles! Her thoughts are not of thee; She better loves the salted wind, The voices of the sea. Her heart is like an outbound ship That at its anchor swings; The murmur of the stranded shell Is in the song she sings. She sings, and, smiling, hears her praise, But dreams the while of one Who watches from his sea-blown deck The icebergs in the sun. She questions all the winds that blow, And every fog-wreath dim, And bids the sea-birds flying north Bear messages to him. She speeds them with the thanks of men He perilled life to save, And grateful prayers like holy oil To smooth for him the wave. Brown Viking of the fishing-smack! Fair toast of all the town!-- The skipper's jerkin ill beseems The lady's silken gown! But ne'er shall Amy Wentworth wear For him the blush of shame Who dares to set his manly gifts Against her ancient name. The stream is brightest at its spring, And blood is not like wine; Nor honored less than he who heirs Is he who founds a line. Full lightly shall the prize be won, If love be Fortune's spur; And never maiden stoops to him Who lifts himself to her. Her home is brave in Jaffrey Street, With stately stairways worn By feet of old Colonial knights And ladies gentle-born. Still green about its ample porch The English ivy twines, Trained back to show in English oak The herald's carven signs. And on her, from the wainscot old, Ancestral faces frown,-- And this has worn the soldier's sword, And that the judge's gown. But, strong of will and proud as they, She walks the gallery floor As if she trod her sailor's deck By stormy Labrador. The sweetbrier blooms on Kittery-side, And green are Elliot's bowers; Her garden is the pebbled beach, The mosses are her flowers. She looks across the harbor-bar To see the white gulls fly; His greeting from the Northern sea Is in their clanging cry. She hums a song, and dreams that he, As in its romance old, Shall homeward ride with silken sails And masts of beaten gold! Oh, rank is good, and gold is fair, And high and low mate ill; But love has never known a law Beyond its own sweet will! 1862. THE COUNTESS. TO E. W. I inscribed this poem to Dr. Elias Weld of Haverhill, Massachusetts, to whose kindness I was much indebted in my boyhood. He was the one cultivated man in the neighborhood. His small but well-chosen library was placed at my disposal. He is the "wise old doctor" of Snow-Bound. Count Francois de Vipart with his cousin Joseph Rochemont de Poyen came to the United States in the early part of the present century. They took up their residence at Rocks Village on the Merrimac, where they both married. The wife of Count Vipart was Mary Ingalls, who as my father remembered her was a very lovely young girl. Her wedding dress, as described by a lady still living, was "pink satin with an overdress of white lace, and white satin slippers." She died in less than a year after her marriage. Her husband returned to his native country. He lies buried in the family tomb of the Viparts at Bordeaux. I KNOW not, Time and Space so intervene, Whether, still waiting with a trust serene, Thou bearest up thy fourscore years and ten, Or, called at last, art now Heaven's citizen; But, here or there, a pleasant thought of thee, Like an old friend, all day has been with me. The shy, still boy, for whom thy kindly hand Smoothed his hard pathway to the wonder-land Of thought and fancy, in gray manhood yet Keeps green the memory of his early debt. To-day, when truth and falsehood speak their words Through hot-lipped cannon and the teeth of swords, Listening with quickened heart and ear intent To each sharp clause of that stern argument, I still can hear at times a softer note Of the old pastoral music round me float, While through the hot gleam of our civil strife Looms the green mirage of a simpler life. As, at his alien post, the sentinel Drops the old bucket in the homestead well, And hears old voices in the winds that toss Above his head the live-oak's beard of moss, So, in our trial-time, and under skies Shadowed by swords like Islam's paradise, I wait and watch, and let my fancy stray To milder scenes and youth's Arcadian day; And howsoe'er the pencil dipped in dreams Shades the brown woods or tints the sunset streams, The country doctor in the foreground seems, Whose ancient sulky down the village lanes Dragged, like a war-car, captive ills and pains. I could not paint the scenery of my song, Mindless of one who looked thereon so long; Who, night and day, on duty's lonely round, Made friends o' the woods and rocks, and knew the sound Of each small brook, and what the hillside trees Said to the winds that touched their leafy keys; Who saw so keenly and so well could paint The village-folk, with all their humors quaint, The parson ambling on his wall-eyed roan. Grave and erect, with white hair backward blown; The tough old boatman, half amphibious grown; The muttering witch-wife of the gossip's tale, And the loud straggler levying his blackmail,-- Old customs, habits, superstitions, fears, All that lies buried under fifty years. To thee, as is most fit, I bring my lay, And, grateful, own the debt I cannot pay. . . . . . . . . . . Over the wooded northern ridge, Between its houses brown, To the dark tunnel of the bridge The street comes straggling down. You catch a glimpse, through birch and pine, Of gable, roof, and porch, The tavern with its swinging sign, The sharp horn of the church. The river's steel-blue crescent curves To meet, in ebb and flow, The single broken wharf that serves For sloop and gundelow. With salt sea-scents along its shores The heavy hay-boats crawl, The long antennae of their oars In lazy rise and fall. Along the gray abutment's wall The idle shad-net dries; The toll-man in his cobbler's stall Sits smoking with closed eyes. You hear the pier's low undertone Of waves that chafe and gnaw; You start,--a skipper's horn is blown To raise the creaking draw. At times a blacksmith's anvil sounds With slow and sluggard beat, Or stage-coach on its dusty rounds Fakes up the staring street. A place for idle eyes and ears, A cobwebbed nook of dreams; Left by the stream whose waves are years The stranded village seems. And there, like other moss and rust, The native dweller clings, And keeps, in uninquiring trust, The old, dull round of things. The fisher drops his patient lines, The farmer sows his grain, Content to hear the murmuring pines Instead of railroad-train. Go where, along the tangled steep That slopes against the west, The hamlet's buried idlers sleep In still profounder rest. Throw back the locust's flowery plume, The birch's pale-green scarf, And break the web of brier and bloom From name and epitaph. A simple muster-roll of death, Of pomp and romance shorn, The dry, old names that common breath Has cheapened and outworn. Yet pause by one low mound, and part The wild vines o'er it laced, And read the words by rustic art Upon its headstone traced. Haply yon white-haired villager Of fourscore years can say What means the noble name of her Who sleeps with common clay. An exile from the Gascon land Found refuge here and rest, And loved, of all the village band, Its fairest and its best. He knelt with her on Sabbath morns, He worshipped through her eyes, And on the pride that doubts and scorns Stole in her faith's surprise. Her simple daily life he saw By homeliest duties tried, In all things by an untaught law Of fitness justified. For her his rank aside he laid; He took the hue and tone Of lowly life and toil, and made Her simple ways his own. Yet still, in gay and careless ease, To harvest-field or dance He brought the gentle courtesies, The nameless grace of France. And she who taught him love not less From him she loved in turn Caught in her sweet unconsciousness What love is quick to learn. Each grew to each in pleased accord, Nor knew the gazing town If she looked upward to her lord Or he to her looked down. How sweet, when summer's day was o'er, His violin's mirth and wail, The walk on pleasant Newbury's shore, The river's moonlit sail! Ah! life is brief, though love be long; The altar and the bier, The burial hymn and bridal song, Were both in one short year! Her rest is quiet on the hill, Beneath the locust's bloom Far off her lover sleeps as still Within his scutcheoned tomb. The Gascon lord, the village maid, In death still clasp their hands; The love that levels rank and grade Unites their severed lands. What matter whose the hillside grave, Or whose the blazoned stone? Forever to her western wave Shall whisper blue Garonne! O Love!--so hallowing every soil That gives thy sweet flower room, Wherever, nursed by ease or toil, The human heart takes bloom!-- Plant of lost Eden, from the sod Of sinful earth unriven, White blossom of the trees of God Dropped down to us from heaven! This tangled waste of mound and stone Is holy for thy sale; A sweetness which is all thy own Breathes out from fern and brake. And while ancestral pride shall twine The Gascon's tomb with flowers, Fall sweetly here, O song of mine, With summer's bloom and showers! And let the lines that severed seem Unite again in thee, As western wave and Gallic stream Are mingled in one sea! 1863. 
7400	----	THE POETICAL WORKS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES [1893 three volume set] CONTENTS: TO MY READERS EARLIER POEMS (1830-1836). OLD IRONSIDES THE LAST LEAF THE CAMBRIDGE CHURCHYARD TO AN INSECT THE DILEMMA MY AUNT REFLECTIONS OF A PROUD PEDESTRIAN DAILY TRIALS, BY A SENSITIVE MAN EVENING, BY A TAILOR THE DORCHESTER GIANT TO THE PORTRAIT OF "A LADY" THE COMET THE Music-GRINDERS THE TREADMILL SONG THE SEPTEMBER GALE THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS THE LAST READER POETRY: A METRICAL ESSAY ADDITIONAL POEMS (1837-1848): THE PILGRIM'S VISION THE STEAMBOAT LEXINGTON ON LENDING A PUNCH BOWL A SONG FOR THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF HARVARD COLLEGE, THE ISLAND HUNTING-SONG DEPARTED DAYS THE ONLY DAUGHTER SONG WRITTEN FOR THE DINNER GIVEN TO CHARLES DICKENS, BY THE YOUNG MEN OF BOSTON, FEBRUARY 1, 1842 LINES RECITED AT THE BERKSHIRE JUBILEE NUX POSTCOENATICA VERSES FOR AFTER-DINNER A MODEST REQUEST, COMPLIED WITH AFTER THE DINNER AT PRESIDENT EVERETT'S INAUGURATION THE PARTING WORD A SONG OF OTHER DAYS SONG FOR A TEMPERANCE DINNER TO WHICH LADIES WERE INVITED (NEW YORK MERCANTILE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, NOVEMBER, 1842) A SENTIMENT A RHYMED LESSON (URANIA) AN AFTER-DINNER POEM (TERPSICHORE) MEDICAL POEMS: THE MORNING VISIT THE TWO ARMIES THE STETHOSCOPE SONG EXTRACTS FROM A MEDICAL POEM A POEM FOR THE MEETING OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION AT NEW YORK, MAY 5, 1853 A SENTIMENT RIP VAN WINKLE, M. D. SONGS IN MANY KEYS (1849-1861) PROLOGUE AGNES THE PLOUGHMAN SPRING THE STUDY THE BELLS NON-RESISTANCE THE MORAL BULLY THE MIND'S DIET OUR LIMITATIONS THE OLD PLAYER A POEM DEDICATION OF THE PITTSFIELD CEMETERY, SEPTEMBER 9,1850 TO GOVERNOR SWAIN TO AN ENGLISH FRIEND AFTER A LECTURE ON WORDSWORTH AFTER A LECTURE ON MOORE AFTER A LECTURE ON KEATS AFTER A LECTURE ON SHELLEY AT THE CLOSE OF A COURSE OF LECTURES THE HUDSON THE NEW EDEN SEMI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY, NEW YORK, DECEMBER 22,1855 FAREWELL TO J. R. LOWELL FOR THE MEETING OF THE BURNS CLUB, 1856 ODE FOR WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY BIRTHDAY OF DANIEL WEBSTER THE VOICELESS THE TWO STREAMS THE PROMISE AVIS THE LIVING TEMPLE AT A BIRTHDAY FESTIVAL: TO J. R. LOWELL A BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE TO J. F. CLARKE THE GRAY CHIEF THE LAST LOOK: W. W. SWAIN IN MEMORY OF CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM, JR. MARTHA MEETING OF THE ALUMNI OF HARVARD COLLEGE THE PARTING SONG FOR THE MEETING OF THE NATIONAL SANITARY ASSOCIATION FOR THE BURNS CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION, AT A MEETING OF FRIENDS BOSTON COMMON: THREE PICTURES THE OLD MAN OF THE SEA INTERNATIONAL ODE VIVE LA FRANCE BROTHER JONATHAN'S LAMENT FOR SISTER CAROLINE NOTES [Volume 2 of the 1893 three volume set] CONTENTS: POEMS OF THE CLASS OF '29 (1851-1889) BILL AND JOE A SONG OF "TWENTY-NINE" QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS AN IMPROMPTU THE OLD MAN DREAMS REMEMBER--FORGET OUR INDIAN SUMMER MARE RUBRUM THE Boys LINES A VOICE OF THE LOYAL NORTH J. D. R. VOYAGE OF THE GOOD SHIP UNION "CHOOSE YOU THIS DAY WHOM YE WILL SERVE" F. W. C. THE LAST CHARGE OUR OLDEST FRIEND SHERMAN 'S IN SAVANNAH MY ANNUAL ALL HERE ONCE MORE THE OLD CRUISER HYMN FOR THE CLASS-MEETING EVEN-SONG THE SMILING LISTENER OUR SWEET SINGER: J. A. H. C. M., H. S., J. K. W. WHAT I HAVE COME FOR OUR BANKER FOR CLASS-MEETING "AD AMICOS" HOW NOT TO SETTLE IT THE LAST SURVIVOR THE ARCHBISHOP AND GIL BLAS THE SHADOWS BENJAMIN PEIRCE IN THE TWILIGHT A LOVING-CUP SONG THE GIRDLE OF FRIENDSHIP THE LYRE OF ANACREON THE OLD TUNE THE BROKEN CIRCLE THE ANGEL-THIEF AFTER THE CURFEW POEMS FROM THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE (1857-1858) THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS SUN AND SHADOW MUSA A PARTING HEALTH: To J. L. MOTLEY WHAT WE ALL THINK SPRING HAS COME PROLOGUE LATTER-DAY WARNINGS ALBUM VERSES A GOOD TIME GOING! THE LAST BLOSSOM CONTENTMENT AESTIVATION THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE; OR, THE WONDERFUL "ONE-HOSE SHAY" PARSON TURELL'S LEGACY; OR, THE PRESIDENT'S OLD ARM-CHAIR ODE FOR A SOCIAL MEETING, WITH SLIGHT ALTERATIONS BY A TEETOTALER POEMS FROM THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE (1858-1859) UNDER THE VIOLETS HYMN OF TRUST A SUN-DAY HYMN THE CROOKED FOOTPATH IRIS, HER BOOK ROBINSON OF LEYDEN ST ANTHONY THE REFORMER THE OPENING OF THE PIANO MIDSUMMER DE SAUTY POEMS FROM THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE (1871-1872) HOMESICK IN HEAVEN FANTASIA AUNT TABITHA WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS EPILOGUE TO THE BREAKFAST-TABLE SERIES SONGS OF MANY SEASONS (1862-1874) OPENING THE WINDOW PROGRAMME IN THE QUIET DAYS AN OLD-YEAR SONG DOROTHY Q: A FAMILY PORTRAIT THE ORGAN-BLOWER AT THE PANTOMIME AFTER THE FIRE A BALLAD OF THE BOSTON TEA-PARTY NEARING THE SNOW-LINE IN WAR TIME TO CANAAN: A PURITAN WAR-SONG "THUS SAITH THE LORD, I OFFER THEE THREE THINGS" NEVER OR NOW ONE COUNTRY GOD SAVE THE FLAG! HYMN AFTER THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION HYMN FOR THE FAIR AT CHICAGO UNDER THE WASHINGTON ELM, CAMBRIDGE FREEDOM, OUR QUEEN ARMY HYMN PARTING HYMN THE FLOWER OF LIBERTY THE SWEET LITTLE MAN UNION AND LIBERTY SONGS OF WELCOME AND FAREWELL AMERICA TO RUSSIA WELCOME TO THE GRAND DUKE ALEXIS AT THE BANQUET TO THE GRAND DUKE ALEXIS AT THE BANQUET TO THE CHINESE EMBASSY AT THE BANQUET TO THE JAPANESE EMBASSY BRYANT'S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY A FAREWELL TO AGASSIZ AT A DINNER TO ADMIRAL FARRAGUT AT A DINNER TO GENERAL GRANT To H W LONGFELLOW To CHRISTIAN GOTTFRIED EHRENBERG A TOAST TO WILKIE COLLINS MEMORIAL VERSES FOR THE SERVICES IN MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, BOSTON, 1865 FOR THE COMMEMORATION SERVICES, CAMBRIDGE JULY 21, 1865 EDWARD EVERETT: JANUARY 30, 1865 SHAKESPEARE TERCENTENNIAL CELEBRATION, APRIL 23, 1864 IN MEMORY OF JOHN AND ROBERT WARE, MAY 25, 1864 HUMBOLDT'S BIRTHDAY: CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION, SEPTEMBER 14, 1869 POEM AT THE DEDICATION OF THE HALLECK MONUMENT, JULY 8, 1869 HYMN FOR THE CELEBRATION AT THE LAYING OF THE CORNER-STONE OF HARVARD MEMORIAL HALL, CAMBRIDGE, OCTOBER 6, 1870 HYMN FOR THE DEDICATION OF MEMORIAL HALL AT CAMBRIDGE, 1874 HYMN AT THE FUNERAL SERVICES OF CHARLES SUMNER, APRIL 29, 1874 RHYMES OF AN HOUR ADDRESS FOR THE OPENING OF THE FIFTH AVENUE THEATRE, N. Y. 1873 A SEA DIALOGUE CHANSON WITHOUT MUSIC FOR THE CENTENNIAL DINNER, PROPRIETORS OF BOSTON PIER, 1873 A POEM SERVED TO ORDER THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH No TIME LIKE THE OLD TIME A HYMN OF PEACE, TO THE MUSIC OF KELLER'S "AMERICAN HYMN" NOTES [Volume 3 of the 1893 three volume set] CONTENTS BUNKER-HILL BATTLE AND OTHER POEMS GRANDMOTHER'S STORY OF BUNKER-HILL BATTLE AT THE "ATLANTIC" DINNER, DECEMBER 15, 1874 "LUCY." FOR HER GOLDEN WEDDING, OCTOBER 18, 1875 HYMN FOR THE INAUGURATION OF THE STATUE OF GOVERNOR ANDREW, HINGHAM, OCTOBER 7, 1875 A MEMORIAL TRIBUTE TO DR. SAMUEL G. HOWE JOSEPH WARREN, M. D. OLD CAMBRIDGE, JULY 3, 1875 WELCOME TO THE NATIONS, PHILADELPHIA, JULY 4, 1876 A FAMILIAR LETTER UNSATISFIED HOW THE OLD HORSE WON THE BET AN APPEAL FOR "THE OLD SOUTH" THE FIRST FAN To R. B. H. THE SHIP OF STATE A FAMILY RECORD THE IRON GATE AND OTHER POEMS. THE IRON GATE VESTIGIA QUINQUE RETRORSUM MY AVIARY ON THE THRESHOLD TO GEORGE PEABODY AT THE PAPYRUS CLUB FOR WHITTIER'S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY TWO SONNETS: HARVARD THE COMING ERA IN RESPONSE FOR THE MOORE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION TO JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE WELCOME TO THE CHICAGO COMMERCIAL CLUB AMERICAN ACADEMY CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION THE SCHOOL-BOY THE SILENT MELODY OUR HOME--OUR COUNTRY POEM AT THE CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY DINNER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL SOCIETY RHYMES OF A LIFE-TIME BEFORE THE CURFEW AT MY FIRESIDE AT THE SATURDAY CLUB OUR DEAD SINGER. H. W. L. TWO POEMS TO HARRIET BEECHER STOWE ON HER SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY. I. AT THE SUMMIT II. THE WORLD'S HOMAGE A WELCOME TO DR. BENJAMIN APTHORP GOULD TO FREDERICK HENRY HEDGE ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY TO JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL TO JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY PRELUDE TO A VOLUME PRINTED IN RAISED LETTERS FOR THE BLIND BOSTON TO FLORENCE AT THE UNITARIAN FESTIVAL, MARCH 8, 1882 POEM FOR THE TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDING OF HARVARD COLLEGE POST-PRANDIAL: PHI BETA KAPPA, 1881 THE FLANEUR: DURING THE TRANSIT OF VENUS, 1882 AVE KING'S CHAPEL READ AT THE TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY HYMN FOR THE SAME OCCASION HYMN.--THE WORD OF PROMISE HYMN READ AT THE DEDICATION OF THE OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES HOSPITAL AT HUDSON, WISCONSIN, JUNE 7, 1887 ON THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD THE GOLDEN FLOWER HAIL, COLUMBIA! POEM FOR THE DEDICATION OF THE FOUNTAIN AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON, PRESENTED BY GEORGE CHILDS, OF PHILADELPHIA TO THE POETS WHO ONLY READ AND LISTEN FOR THE DEDICATION OF THE NEW CITY LIBRARY FOR THE WINDOW IN ST. MARGARET'S JAMES RUSSELL LO WELL: 1819-1891 POEMS FROM OVER THE TEACUPS. TO THE ELEVEN LADIES WHO PRESENTED ME WITH A SILVER LOVING CUP THE PEAU DE CHAGRIN OF STATE STREET CACOETHES SCRIBENDI THE ROSE AND THE FERN I LIKE YOU AND I LOVE YOU LA MAISON D'OR BAR HARBOR TOO YOUNG FOR LOVE THE BROOMSTICK TRAIN; OR, THE RETURN OF THE WITCHES TARTARUS AT THE TURN OF THE ROAD INVITA MINERVA READINGS OVER THE TEACUPS TO MY OLD READERS THE BANKER'S SECRET THE EXILE'S SECRET THE LOVER'S SECRET THE STATESMAN'S SECRET THE MOTHER'S SECRET THE SECRET OF THE STARS VERSES FROM THE OLDEST PORTFOLIO FIRST VERSES: TRANSLATION FROM THE THE MEETING OF THE DRYADS THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR THE TOADSTOOL THE SPECTRE PIG TO A CAGED LION THE STAR AND THE WATER-LILY ILLUSTRATION OF A PICTURE: "A SPANISH GIRL REVERIE" A ROMAN AQUEDUCT FROM A BACHELOR'S PRIVATE JOURNAL LA GRISETTE OUR YANKEE GIRLS L'INCONNUE STANZAS LINES BY A CLERK THE PHILOSOPHER TO HIS LOVE THE POET'S LOT TO A BLANK SHEET OF PAPER TO THE PORTRAIT OF "A GENTLEMAN" IN THE ATHENAEUM GALLERY THE BALLAD OF THE OYSTERMAN A NOONTIDE LYRIC THE HOT SEASON A PORTRAIT AN EVENING THOUGHT. WRITTEN AT SEA THE WASP AND THE HORNET "QUI VIVE?" NOTES TO MY READERS NAY, blame me not; I might have spared Your patience many a trivial verse, Yet these my earlier welcome shared, So, let the better shield the worse. And some might say, "Those ruder songs Had freshness which the new have lost; To spring the opening leaf belongs, The chestnut-burs await the frost." When those I wrote, my locks were brown, When these I write--ah, well a-day! The autumn thistle's silvery down Is not the purple bloom of May. Go, little book, whose pages hold Those garnered years in loving trust; How long before your blue and gold Shall fade and whiten in the dust? O sexton of the alcoved tomb, Where souls in leathern cerements lie, Tell me each living poet's doom! How long before his book shall die? It matters little, soon or late, A day, a month, a year, an age,-- I read oblivion in its date, And Finis on its title-page. Before we sighed, our griefs were told; Before we smiled, our joys were sung; And all our passions shaped of old In accents lost to mortal tongue. In vain a fresher mould we seek,-- Can all the varied phrases tell That Babel's wandering children speak How thrushes sing or lilacs smell? Caged in the poet's lonely heart, Love wastes unheard its tenderest tone; The soul that sings must dwell apart, Its inward melodies unknown. Deal gently with us, ye who read Our largest hope is unfulfilled,-- The promise still outruns the deed,-- The tower, but not the spire, we build. Our whitest pearl we never find; Our ripest fruit we never reach; The flowering moments of the mind Drop half their petals in our speech. These are my blossoms; if they wear One streak of morn or evening's glow, Accept them; but to me more fair The buds of song that never blow. April 8, 1862. EARLIER POEMS 1830-1836 OLD IRONSIDES This was the popular name by which the frigate Constitution was known. The poem was first printed in the Boston Daily Advertiser, at the time when it was proposed to break up the old ship as unfit for service. I subjoin the paragraph which led to the writing of the poem. It is from the Advertiser of Tuesday, September 14, 1830:-- "Old Ironsides.--It has been affirmed upon good authority that the Secretary of the Navy has recommended to the Board of Navy Commissioners to dispose of the frigate Constitution. Since it has been understood that such a step was in contemplation we have heard but one opinion expressed, and that in decided disapprobation of the measure. Such a national object of interest, so endeared to our national pride as Old Ironsides is, should never by any act of our government cease to belong to the Navy, so long as our country is to be found upon the map of nations. In England it was lately determined by the Admiralty to cut the Victory, a one-hundred gun ship (which it will be recollected bore the flag of Lord Nelson at the battle of Trafalgar,) down to a seventy-four, but so loud were the lamentations of the people upon the proposed measure that the intention was abandoned. We confidently anticipate that the Secretary of the Navy will in like manner consult the general wish in regard to the Constitution, and either let her remain in ordinary or rebuild her whenever the public service may require."--New York Journal of Commerce. The poem was an impromptu outburst of feeling and was published on the next day but one after reading the above paragraph. AY, tear her tattered ensign down Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky; Beneath it rung the battle shout, And burst the cannon's roar;-- The meteor of the ocean air Shall sweep the clouds no more. Her deck, once red with heroes' blood, Where knelt the vanquished foe, When winds were hurrying o'er the flood, And waves were white below, No more shall feel the victor's tread, Or know the conquered knee;-- The harpies of the shore shall pluck The eagle of the sea! Oh better that her shattered hulk Should sink beneath the wave; Her thunders shook the mighty deep, And there should be her grave; Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storms, The lightning and the gale! THE LAST LEAF This poem was suggested by the appearance in one of our streets of a venerable relic of the Revolution, said to be one of the party who threw the tea overboard in Boston Harbor. He was a fine monumental specimen in his cocked hat and knee breeches, with his buckled shoes and his sturdy cane. The smile with which I, as a young man, greeted him, meant no disrespect to an honored fellow-citizen whose costume was out of date, but whose patriotism never changed with years. I do not recall any earlier example of this form of verse, which was commended by the fastidious Edgar Allan Poe, who made a copy of the whole poem which I have in his own handwriting. Good Abraham Lincoln had a great liking for the poem, and repeated it from memory to Governor Andrew, as the governor himself told me. I SAW him once before, As he passed by the door, And again The pavement stones resound, As he totters o'er the ground With his cane. They say that in his prime, Ere the pruning-knife of Time Cut him down, Not a better man was found By the Crier on his round Through the town. But now he walks the streets, And he looks at all he meets Sad and wan, And he shakes his feeble head, That it seems as if he said, "They are gone." The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has prest In their bloom, And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On the tomb. My grandmamma has said-- Poor old lady, she is dead Long ago-- That he had a Roman nose, And his cheek was like a rose In the snow. But now his nose is thin, And it rests upon his chin Like a staff, And a crook is in his back, And a melancholy crack In his laugh. I know it is a sin For me to sit and grin At him here; But the old three-cornered hat, And the breeches, and all that, Are so queer! And if I should live to be The last leaf upon the tree In the spring, Let them smile, as I do now, At the old forsaken bough Where I cling. THE CAMBRIDGE CHURCHYARD OUR ancient church! its lowly tower, Beneath the loftier spire, Is shadowed when the sunset hour Clothes the tall shaft in fire; It sinks beyond the distant eye Long ere the glittering vane, High wheeling in the western sky, Has faded o'er the plain. Like Sentinel and Nun, they keep Their vigil on the green; One seems to guard, and one to weep, The dead that lie between; And both roll out, so full and near, Their music's mingling waves, They shake the grass, whose pennoned spear Leans on the narrow graves. The stranger parts the flaunting weeds, Whose seeds the winds have strown So thick, beneath the line he reads, They shade the sculptured stone; The child unveils his clustered brow, And ponders for a while The graven willow's pendent bough, Or rudest cherub's smile. But what to them the dirge, the knell? These were the mourner's share,-- The sullen clang, whose heavy swell Throbbed through the beating air; The rattling cord, the rolling stone, The shelving sand that slid, And, far beneath, with hollow tone Rung on the coffin's lid. The slumberer's mound grows fresh and green, Then slowly disappears; The mosses creep, the gray stones lean, Earth hides his date and years; But, long before the once-loved name Is sunk or worn away, No lip the silent dust may claim, That pressed the breathing clay. Go where the ancient pathway guides, See where our sires laid down Their smiling babes, their cherished brides, The patriarchs of the town; Hast thou a tear for buried love? A sigh for transient power? All that a century left above, Go, read it in an hour! The Indian's shaft, the Briton's ball, The sabre's thirsting edge, The hot shell, shattering in its fall, The bayonet's rending wedge,-- Here scattered death; yet, seek the spot, No trace thine eye can see, No altar,--and they need it not Who leave their children free! Look where the turbid rain-drops stand In many a chiselled square; The knightly crest, the shield, the brand Of honored names were there;-- Alas! for every tear is dried Those blazoned tablets knew, Save when the icy marble's side Drips with the evening dew. Or gaze upon yon pillared stone, The empty urn of pride; There stand the Goblet and the Sun,-- What need of more beside? Where lives the memory of the dead, Who made their tomb a toy? Whose ashes press that nameless bed? Go, ask the village boy! Lean o'er the slender western wall, Ye ever-roaming girls; The breath that bids the blossom fall May lift your floating curls, To sweep the simple lines that tell An exile's date and doom; And sigh, for where his daughters dwell, They wreathe the stranger's tomb. And one amid these shades was born, Beneath this turf who lies, Once beaming as the summer's morn, That closed her gentle eyes; If sinless angels love as we, Who stood thy grave beside, Three seraph welcomes waited thee, The daughter, sister, bride. I wandered to thy buried mound When earth was hid below The level of the glaring ground, Choked to its gates with snow, And when with summer's flowery waves The lake of verdure rolled, As if a Sultan's white-robed slaves Had scattered pearls and gold. Nay, the soft pinions of the air, That lift this trembling tone, Its breath of love may almost bear To kiss thy funeral stone; And, now thy smiles have passed away, For all the joy they gave, May sweetest dews and warmest ray Lie on thine early grave! When damps beneath and storms above Have bowed these fragile towers, Still o'er the graves yon locust grove Shall swing its Orient flowers; And I would ask no mouldering bust, If e'er this humble line, Which breathed a sigh o'er other's dust, Might call a tear on mine. TO AN INSECT The Katydid is "a species of grasshopper found in the United States, so called from the sound which it makes."--Worcester. I used to hear this insect in Providence, Rhode Island, but I do not remember hearing it in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I passed my boyhood. It is well known in other towns in the neighborhood of Boston. I LOVE to hear thine earnest voice, Wherever thou art hid, Thou testy little dogmatist, Thou pretty Katydid Thou mindest me of gentlefolks,-- Old gentlefolks are they,-- Thou say'st an undisputed thing In such a solemn way. Thou art a female, Katydid I know it by the trill That quivers through thy piercing notes, So petulant and shrill; I think there is a knot of you Beneath the hollow tree,-- A knot of spinster Katydids,--- Do Katydids drink tea? Oh tell me where did Katy live, And what did Katy do? And was she very fair and young, And yet so wicked, too? Did Katy love a naughty man, Or kiss more cheeks than one? I warrant Katy did no more Than many a Kate has done. Dear me! I'll tell you all about My fuss with little Jane, And Ann, with whom I used to walk So often down the lane, And all that tore their locks of black, Or wet their eyes of blue,-- Pray tell me, sweetest Katydid, What did poor Katy do? Ah no! the living oak shall crash, That stood for ages still, The rock shall rend its mossy base And thunder down the hill, Before the little Katydid Shall add one word, to tell The mystic story of the maid Whose name she knows so well. Peace to the ever-murmuring race! And when the latest one Shall fold in death her feeble wings Beneath the autumn sun, Then shall she raise her fainting voice, And lift her drooping lid, And then the child of future years Shall hear what Katy did. THE DILEMMA Now, by the blessed Paphian queen, Who heaves the breast of sweet sixteen; By every name I cut on bark Before my morning star grew dark; By Hymen's torch, by Cupid's dart, By all that thrills the beating heart; The bright black eye, the melting blue,-- I cannot choose between the two. I had a vision in my dreams;-- I saw a row of twenty beams; From every beam a rope was hung, In every rope a lover swung; I asked the hue of every eye That bade each luckless lover die; Ten shadowy lips said, heavenly blue, And ten accused the darker hue. I asked a matron which she deemed With fairest light of beauty beamed; She answered, some thought both were fair,-- Give her blue eyes and golden hair. I might have liked her judgment well, But, as she spoke, she rung the bell, And all her girls, nor small nor few, Came marching in,--their eyes were blue. I asked a maiden; back she flung The locks that round her forehead hung, And turned her eye, a glorious one, Bright as a diamond in the sun, On me, until beneath its rays I felt as if my hair would blaze; She liked all eyes but eyes of green; She looked at me; what could she mean? Ah! many lids Love lurks between, Nor heeds the coloring of his screen; And when his random arrows fly, The victim falls, but knows not why. Gaze not upon his shield of jet, The shaft upon the string is set; Look not beneath his azure veil, Though every limb were cased in mail. Well, both might make a martyr break The chain that bound him to the stake; And both, with but a single ray, Can melt our very hearts away; And both, when balanced, hardly seem To stir the scales, or rock the beam; But that is dearest, all the while, That wears for us the sweetest smile. MY AUNT MY aunt! my dear unmarried aunt! Long years have o'er her flown; Yet still she strains the aching clasp That binds her virgin zone; I know it hurts her,--though she looks As cheerful as she can; Her waist is ampler than her life, For life is but a span. My aunt! my poor deluded aunt! Her hair is almost gray; Why will she train that winter curl In such a spring-like way? How can she lay her glasses down, And say she reads as well, When through a double convex lens She just makes out to spell? Her father--grandpapa I forgive This erring lip its smiles-- Vowed she should make the finest girl Within a hundred miles; He sent her to a stylish school; 'T was in her thirteenth June; And with her, as the rules required, "Two towels and a spoon." They braced my aunt against a board, To make her straight and tall; They laced her up, they starved her down, To make her light and small; They pinched her feet, they singed her hair, They screwed it up with pins;-- Oh never mortal suffered more In penance for her sins. So, when my precious aunt was done, My grandsire brought her back; (By daylight, lest some rabid youth Might follow on the track;) "Ah!" said my grandsire, as he shook Some powder in his pan, "What could this lovely creature do Against a desperate man!" Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche, Nor bandit cavalcade, Tore from the trembling father's arms His all-accomplished maid. For her how happy had it been And Heaven had spared to me To see one sad, ungathered rose On my ancestral tree. REFLECTIONS OF A PROUD PEDESTRIAN I SAW the curl of his waving lash, And the glance of his knowing eye, And I knew that he thought he was cutting a dash, As his steed went thundering by. And he may ride in the rattling gig, Or flourish the Stanhope gay, And dream that he looks exceeding big To the people that walk in the way; But he shall think, when the night is still, On the stable-boy's gathering numbers, And the ghost of many a veteran bill Shall hover around his slumbers; The ghastly dun shall worry his sleep, And constables cluster around him, And he shall creep from the wood-hole deep Where their spectre eyes have found him! Ay! gather your reins, and crack your thong, And bid your steed go faster; He does not know, as he scrambles along, That he has a fool for his master; And hurry away on your lonely ride, Nor deign from the mire to save me; I will paddle it stoutly at your side With the tandem that nature gave me! DAILY TRIALS BY A SENSITIVE MAN OH, there are times When all this fret and tumult that we hear Do seem more stale than to the sexton's ear His own dull chimes. Ding dong! ding dong! The world is in a simmer like a sea Over a pent volcano,--woe is me All the day long! From crib to shroud! Nurse o'er our cradles screameth lullaby, And friends in boots tramp round us as we die, Snuffling aloud. At morning's call The small-voiced pug-dog welcomes in the sun, And flea-bit mongrels, wakening one by one, Give answer all. When evening dim Draws round us, then the lonely caterwaul, Tart solo, sour duet, and general squall,-- These are our hymn. Women, with tongues Like polar needles, ever on the jar; Men, plugless word-spouts, whose deep fountains are Within their lungs. Children, with drums Strapped round them by the fond paternal ass; Peripatetics with a blade of grass Between their thumbs. Vagrants, whose arts Have caged some devil in their mad machine, Which grinding, squeaks, with husky groans between, Come out by starts. Cockneys that kill Thin horses of a Sunday,--men, with clams, Hoarse as young bisons roaring for their dams From hill to hill. Soldiers, with guns, Making a nuisance of the blessed air, Child-crying bellmen, children in despair, Screeching for buns. Storms, thunders, waves! Howl, crash, and bellow till ye get your fill; Ye sometimes rest; men never can be still But in their graves. EVENING BY A TAILOR DAY hath put on his jacket, and around His burning bosom buttoned it with stars. Here will I lay me on the velvet grass, That is like padding to earth's meagre ribs, And hold communion with the things about me. Ah me! how lovely is the golden braid That binds the skirt of night's descending robe! The thin leaves, quivering on their silken threads, Do make a music like to rustling satin, As the light breezes smooth their downy nap. Ha! what is this that rises to my touch, So like a cushion? Can it be a cabbage? It is, it is that deeply injured flower, Which boys do flout us with;--but yet I love thee, Thou giant rose, wrapped in a green surtout. Doubtless in Eden thou didst blush as bright As these, thy puny brethren; and thy breath Sweetened the fragrance of her spicy air; But now thou seemest like a bankrupt beau, Stripped of his gaudy hues and essences, And growing portly in his sober garments. Is that a swan that rides upon the water? Oh no, it is that other gentle bird, Which is the patron of our noble calling. I well remember, in my early years, When these young hands first closed upon a goose; I have a scar upon my thimble finger, Which chronicles the hour of young ambition. My father was a tailor, and his father, And my sire's grandsire, all of them were tailors; They had an ancient goose,--it was an heirloom From some remoter tailor of our race. It happened I did see it on a time When none was near, and I did deal with it, And it did burn me,--oh, most fearfully! It is a joy to straighten out one's limbs, And leap elastic from the level counter, Leaving the petty grievances of earth, The breaking thread, the din of clashing shears, And all the needles that do wound the spirit, For such a pensive hour of soothing silence. Kind Nature, shuffling in her loose undress, Lays bare her shady bosom;--I can feel With all around me;--I can hail the flowers That sprig earth's mantle,--and yon quiet bird, That rides the stream, is to me as a brother. The vulgar know not all the hidden pockets, Where Nature stows away her loveliness. But this unnatural posture of the legs Cramps my extended calves, and I must go Where I can coil them in their wonted fashion. THE DORCHESTER GIANT The "pudding-stone" is a remarkable conglomerate found very abundantly in the towns mentioned, all of which are in the neighborhood of Boston. We used in those primitive days to ask friends to _ride_ with us when we meant to take them to _drive_ with us. THERE was a giant in time of old, A mighty one was he; He had a wife, but she was a scold, So he kept her shut in his mammoth fold; And he had children three. It happened to be an election day, And the giants were choosing a king The people were not democrats then, They did not talk of the rights of men, And all that sort of thing. Then the giant took his children three, And fastened them in the pen; The children roared; quoth the giant, "Be still!" And Dorchester Heights and Milton Hill Rolled back the sound again. Then he brought them a pudding stuffed with plums, As big as the State-House dome; Quoth he, "There 's something for you to eat; So stop your mouths with your 'lection treat, And wait till your dad comes home." So the giant pulled him a chestnut stout, And whittled the boughs away; The boys and their mother set up a shout, Said he, "You 're in, and you can't get out, Bellow as loud as you may." Off he went, and he growled a tune As he strode the fields along; 'T is said a buffalo fainted away, And fell as cold as a lump of clay, When he heard the giant's song. But whether the story 's true or not, It is n't for me to show; There 's many a thing that 's twice as queer In somebody's lectures that we hear, And those are true, you know. What are those lone ones doing now, The wife and the children sad? Oh, they are in a terrible rout, Screaming, and throwing their pudding about, Acting as they were mad. They flung it over to Roxbury hills, They flung it over the plain, And all over Milton and Dorchester too Great lumps of pudding the giants threw; They tumbled as thick as rain. Giant and mammoth have passed away, For ages have floated by; The suet is hard as a marrow-bone, And every plum is turned to a stone, But there the puddings lie. And if, some pleasant afternoon, You 'll ask me out to ride, The whole of the story I will tell, And you shall see where the puddings fell, And pay for the punch beside. TO THE PORTRAIT OF "A LADY" IN THE ATHENAEUM GALLERY WELL, Miss, I wonder where you live, I wonder what's your name, I wonder how you came to be In such a stylish frame; Perhaps you were a favorite child, Perhaps an only one; Perhaps your friends were not aware You had your portrait done. Yet you must be a harmless soul; I cannot think that Sin Would care to throw his loaded dice, With such a stake to win; I cannot think you would provoke The poet's wicked pen, Or make young women bite their lips, Or ruin fine young men. Pray, did you ever hear, my love, Of boys that go about, Who, for a very trifling sum, Will snip one's picture out? I'm not averse to red and white, But all things have their place, I think a profile cut in black Would suit your style of face! I love sweet features; I will own That I should like myself To see my portrait on a wall, Or bust upon a shelf; But nature sometimes makes one up Of such sad odds and ends, It really might be quite as well Hushed up among one's friends! THE COMET THE Comet! He is on his way, And singing as he flies; The whizzing planets shrink before The spectre of the skies; Ah! well may regal orbs burn blue, And satellites turn pale, Ten million cubic miles of head, Ten billion leagues of tail! On, on by whistling spheres of light He flashes and he flames; He turns not to the left nor right, He asks them not their names; One spurn from his demoniac heel,-- Away, away they fly, Where darkness might be bottled up And sold for "Tyrian dye." And what would happen to the land, And how would look the sea, If in the bearded devil's path Our earth should chance to be? Full hot and high the sea would boil, Full red the forests gleam; Methought I saw and heard it all In a dyspeptic dream! I saw a tutor take his tube The Comet's course to spy; I heard a scream,--the gathered rays Had stewed the tutor's eye; I saw a fort,--the soldiers all Were armed with goggles green; Pop cracked the guns! whiz flew the balls! Bang went the magazine! I saw a poet dip a scroll Each moment in a tub, I read upon the warping back, "The Dream of Beelzebub;" He could not see his verses burn, Although his brain was fried, And ever and anon he bent To wet them as they dried. I saw the scalding pitch roll down The crackling, sweating pines, And streams of smoke, like water-spouts, Burst through the rumbling mines; I asked the firemen why they made Such noise about the town; They answered not,--but all the while The brakes went up and down. I saw a roasting pullet sit Upon a baking egg; I saw a cripple scorch his hand Extinguishing his leg; I saw nine geese upon the wing Towards the frozen pole, And every mother's gosling fell Crisped to a crackling coal. I saw the ox that browsed the grass Writhe in the blistering rays, The herbage in his shrinking jaws Was all a fiery blaze; I saw huge fishes, boiled to rags, Bob through the bubbling brine; And thoughts of supper crossed my soul; I had been rash at mine. Strange sights! strange sounds! Oh fearful dream! Its memory haunts me still, The steaming sea, the crimson glare, That wreathed each wooded hill; Stranger! if through thy reeling brain Such midnight visions sweep, Spare, spare, oh, spare thine evening meal, And sweet shall be thy sleep! THE MUSIC-GRINDERS THERE are three ways in which men take One's money from his purse, And very hard it is to tell Which of the three is worse; But all of them are bad enough To make a body curse. You're riding out some pleasant day, And counting up your gains; A fellow jumps from out a bush, And takes your horse's reins, Another hints some words about A bullet in your brains. It's hard to meet such pressing friends In such a lonely spot; It's very hard to lose your cash, But harder to be shot; And so you take your wallet out, Though you would rather not. Perhaps you're going out to dine,-- Some odious creature begs You'll hear about the cannon-ball That carried off his pegs, And says it is a dreadful thing For men to lose their legs. He tells you of his starving wife, His children to be fed, Poor little, lovely innocents, All clamorous for bread,-- And so you kindly help to put A bachelor to bed. You're sitting on your window-seat, Beneath a cloudless moon; You hear a sound, that seems to wear The semblance of a tune, As if a broken fife should strive To drown a cracked bassoon. And nearer, nearer still, the tide Of music seems to come, There's something like a human voice, And something like a drum; You sit in speechless agony, Until your ear is numb. Poor "home, sweet home" should seem to be A very dismal place; Your "auld acquaintance" all at once Is altered in the face; Their discords sting through Burns and Moore, Like hedgehogs dressed in lace. You think they are crusaders, sent From some infernal clime, To pluck the eyes of Sentiment, And dock the tail of Rhyme, To crack the voice of Melody, And break the legs of Time. But hark! the air again is still, The music all is ground, And silence, like a poultice, comes To heal the blows of sound; It cannot be,--it is,--it is,-- A hat is going round! No! Pay the dentist when he leaves A fracture in your jaw, And pay the owner of the bear That stunned you with his paw, And buy the lobster that has had Your knuckles in his claw; But if you are a portly man, Put on your fiercest frown, And talk about a constable To turn them out of town; Then close your sentence with an oath, And shut the window down! And if you are a slender man, Not big enough for that, Or, if you cannot make a speech, Because you are a flat, Go very quietly and drop A button in the hat! THE TREADMILL SONG THE stars are rolling in the sky, The earth rolls on below, And we can feel the rattling wheel Revolving as we go. Then tread away, my gallant boys, And make the axle fly; Why should not wheels go round about, Like planets in the sky? Wake up, wake up, my duck-legged man, And stir your solid pegs Arouse, arouse, my gawky friend, And shake your spider legs; What though you're awkward at the trade, There's time enough to learn,-- So lean upon the rail, my lad, And take another turn. They've built us up a noble wall, To keep the vulgar out; We've nothing in the world to do But just to walk about; So faster, now, you middle men, And try to beat the ends,-- It's pleasant work to ramble round Among one's honest friends. Here, tread upon the long man's toes, He sha'n't be lazy here,-- And punch the little fellow's ribs, And tweak that lubber's ear,-- He's lost them both,--don't pull his hair, Because he wears a scratch, But poke him in the further eye, That is n't in the patch. Hark! fellows, there 's the supper-bell, And so our work is done; It's pretty sport,--suppose we take A round or two for fun! If ever they should turn me out, When I have better grown, Now hang me, but I mean to have A treadmill of my own! THE SEPTEMBER GALE This tremendous hurricane occurred on the 23d of September, 1815. I remember it well, being then seven years old. A full account of it was published, I think, in the records of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Some of my recollections are given in The Seasons, an article to be found in a book of mine entitled Pages from an Old Volume of Life. I'M not a chicken; I have seen Full many a chill September, And though I was a youngster then, That gale I well remember; The day before, my kite-string snapped, And I, my kite pursuing, The wind whisked off my palm-leaf hat; For me two storms were brewing! It came as quarrels sometimes do, When married folks get clashing; There was a heavy sigh or two, Before the fire was flashing,-- A little stir among the clouds, Before they rent asunder,-- A little rocking of the trees, And then came on the thunder. Lord! how the ponds and rivers boiled! They seemed like bursting craters! And oaks lay scattered on the ground As if they were p'taters; And all above was in a howl, And all below a clatter,-- The earth was like a frying-pan, Or some such hissing matter. It chanced to be our washing-day, And all our things were drying; The storm came roaring through the lines, And set them all a flying; I saw the shirts and petticoats Go riding off like witches; I lost, ah! bitterly I wept,-- I lost my Sunday breeches! I saw them straddling through the air, Alas! too late to win them; I saw them chase the clouds, as if The devil had been in them; They were my darlings and my pride, My boyhood's only riches,-- "Farewell, farewell," I faintly cried,-- "My breeches! Oh my breeches!" That night I saw them in my dreams, How changed from what I knew them! The dews had steeped their faded threads, The winds had whistled through them I saw the wide and ghastly rents Where demon claws had torn them; A hole was in their amplest part, As if an imp had worn them. I have had many happy years, And tailors kind and clever, But those young pantaloons have gone Forever and forever! And not till fate has cut the last Of all my earthly stitches, This aching heart shall cease to mourn My loved, my long-lost breeches! THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS I WROTE some lines once on a time In wondrous merry mood, And thought, as usual, men would say They were exceeding good. They were so queer, so very queer, I laughed as I would die; Albeit, in the general way, A sober man am I. I called my servant, and he came; How kind it was of him To mind a slender man like me, He of the mighty limb. "These to the printer," I exclaimed, And, in my humorous way, I added, (as a trifling jest,) "There'll be the devil to pay." He took the paper, and I watched, And saw him peep within; At the first line he read, his face Was all upon the grin. He read the next; the grin grew broad, And shot from ear to ear; He read the third; a chuckling noise I now began to hear. The fourth; he broke into a roar; The fifth; his waistband split; The sixth; he burst five buttons off, And tumbled in a fit. Ten days and nights, with sleepless eye, I watched that wretched man, And since, I never dare to write As funny as I can. THE LAST READER I SOMETIMES sit beneath a tree And read my own sweet songs; Though naught they may to others be, Each humble line prolongs A tone that might have passed away But for that scarce remembered lay. I keep them like a lock or leaf That some dear girl has given; Frail record of an hour, as brief As sunset clouds in heaven, But spreading purple twilight still High over memory's shadowed hill. They lie upon my pathway bleak, Those flowers that once ran wild, As on a father's careworn cheek The ringlets of his child; The golden mingling with the gray, And stealing half its snows away. What care I though the dust is spread Around these yellow leaves, Or o'er them his sarcastic thread Oblivion's insect weaves Though weeds are tangled on the stream, It still reflects my morning's beam. And therefore love I such as smile On these neglected songs, Nor deem that flattery's needless wile My opening bosom wrongs; For who would trample, at my side, A few pale buds, my garden's pride? It may be that my scanty ore Long years have washed away, And where were golden sands before Is naught but common clay; Still something sparkles in the sun For memory to look back upon. And when my name no more is heard, My lyre no more is known, Still let me, like a winter's bird, In silence and alone, Fold over them the weary wing Once flashing through the dews of spring. Yes, let my fancy fondly wrap My youth in its decline, And riot in the rosy lap Of thoughts that once were mine, And give the worm my little store When the last reader reads no more! POETRY: A METRICAL ESSAY, READ BEFORE THE PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, AUGUST, 1836 TO CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM, THE FOLLOWING METRICAL ESSAY IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. This Academic Poem presents the simple and partial views of a young person trained after the schools of classical English verse as represented by Pope, Goldsmith, and Campbell, with whose lines his memory was early stocked. It will be observed that it deals chiefly with the constructive side of the poet's function. That which makes him a poet is not the power of writing melodious rhymes, it is not the possession of ordinary human sensibilities nor even of both these qualities in connection with each other. I should rather say, if I were now called upon to define it, it is the power of transfiguring the experiences and shows of life into an aspect which comes from his imagination and kindles that of others. Emotion is its stimulus and language furnishes its expression; but these are not all, as some might infer was the doctrine of the poem before the reader. A common mistake made by young persons who suppose themselves to have the poetical gift is that their own spiritual exaltation finds a true expression in the conventional phrases which are borrowed from the voices of the singers whose inspiration they think they share. Looking at this poem as an expression of some aspects of the _ars poetica_, with some passages which I can read even at this mature period of life without blushing for them, it may stand as the most serious representation of my early efforts. Intended as it was for public delivery, many of its paragraphs may betray the fact by their somewhat rhetorical and sonorous character. SCENES of my youth! awake its slumbering fire! Ye winds of Memory, sweep the silent lyre! Ray of the past, if yet thou canst appear, Break through the clouds of Fancy's waning year; Chase from her breast the thin autumnal snow, If leaf or blossom still is fresh below! Long have I wandered; the returning tide Brought back an exile to his cradle's side; And as my bark her time-worn flag unrolled, To greet the land-breeze with its faded fold, So, in remembrance of my boyhood's time, I lift these ensigns of neglected rhyme; Oh, more than blest, that, all my wanderings through, My anchor falls where first my pennons flew! . . . . . . . . . The morning light, which rains its quivering beams Wide o'er the plains, the summits, and the streams, In one broad blaze expands its golden glow On all that answers to its glance below; Yet, changed on earth, each far reflected ray Braids with fresh hues the shining brow of day; Now, clothed in blushes by the painted flowers, Tracks on their cheeks the rosy-fingered hours; Now, lost in shades, whose dark entangled leaves Drip at the noontide from their pendent eaves, Fades into gloom, or gleams in light again From every dew-drop on the jewelled plain. We, like the leaf, the summit, or the wave, Reflect the light our common nature gave, But every sunbeam, falling from her throne, Wears on our hearts some coloring of our own Chilled in the slave, and burning in the free, Like the sealed cavern by the sparkling sea; Lost, like the lightning in the sullen clod, Or shedding radiance, like the smiles of God; Pure, pale in Virtue, as the star above, Or quivering roseate on the leaves of Love; Glaring like noontide, where it glows upon Ambition's sands,--the desert in the sun,-- Or soft suffusing o'er the varied scene Life's common coloring,--intellectual green. Thus Heaven, repeating its material plan, Arched over all the rainbow mind of man; But he who, blind to universal laws, Sees but effects, unconscious of their cause,-- Believes each image in itself is bright, Not robed in drapery of reflected light,-- Is like the rustic who, amidst his toil, Has found some crystal in his meagre soil, And, lost in rapture, thinks for him alone Earth worked her wonders on the sparkling stone, Nor dreams that Nature, with as nice a line, Carved countless angles through the boundless mine. Thus err the many, who, entranced to find Unwonted lustre in some clearer mind, Believe that Genius sets the laws at naught Which chain the pinions of our wildest thought; Untaught to measure, with the eye of art, The wandering fancy or the wayward heart; Who match the little only with the less, And gaze in rapture at its slight excess, Proud of a pebble, as the brightest gem Whose light might crown an emperor's diadem. And, most of all, the pure ethereal fire Which seems to radiate from the poet's lyre Is to the world a mystery and a charm, An AEgis wielded on a mortal's arm, While Reason turns her dazzled eye away, And bows her sceptre to her subject's sway; And thus the poet, clothed with godlike state, Usurped his Maker's title--to create; He, whose thoughts differing not in shape, but dress, What others feel more fitly can express, Sits like the maniac on his fancied throne, Peeps through the bars, and calls the world his own. There breathes no being but has some pretence To that fine instinct called poetic sense The rudest savage, roaming through the wild; The simplest rustic, bending o'er his child; The infant, listening to the warbling bird; The mother, smiling at its half-formed word; The boy uncaged, who tracks the fields at large; The girl, turned matron to her babe-like charge; The freeman, casting with unpurchased hand The vote that shakes the turret of the land; The slave, who, slumbering on his rusted chain, Dreams of the palm-trees on his burning plain; The hot-cheeked reveller, tossing down the wine, To join the chorus pealing "Auld lang syne"; The gentle maid, whose azure eye grows dim, While Heaven is listening to her evening hymn; The jewelled beauty, when her steps draw near The circling dance and dazzling chandelier; E'en trembling age, when Spring's renewing air Waves the thin ringlets of his silvered hair;-- All, all are glowing with the inward flame, Whose wider halo wreathes the poet's name, While, unenbalmed, the silent dreamer dies, His memory passing with his smiles and sighs! If glorious visions, born for all mankind, The bright auroras of our twilight mind; If fancies, varying as the shapes that lie Stained on the windows of the sunset sky; If hopes, that beckon with delusive gleams, Till the eye dances in the void of dreams; If passions, following with the winds that urge Earth's wildest wanderer to her farthest verge;-- If these on all some transient hours bestow Of rapture tingling with its hectic glow, Then all are poets; and if earth had rolled Her myriad centuries, and her doom were told, Each moaning billow of her shoreless wave Would wail its requiem o'er a poet's grave! If to embody in a breathing word Tones that the spirit trembled when it heard; To fix the image all unveiled and warm, And carve in language its ethereal form, So pure, so perfect, that the lines express No meagre shrinking, no unlaced excess; To feel that art, in living truth, has taught Ourselves, reflected in the sculptured thought;-- If this alone bestow the right to claim The deathless garland and the sacred name, Then none are poets save the saints on high, Whose harps can murmur all that words deny! But though to none is granted to reveal In perfect semblance all that each may feel, As withered flowers recall forgotten love, So, warmed to life, our faded passions move In every line, where kindling fancy throws The gleam of pleasures or the shade of woes. When, schooled by time, the stately queen of art Had smoothed the pathways leading to the heart, Assumed her measured tread, her solemn tone, And round her courts the clouds of fable thrown, The wreaths of heaven descended on her shrine, And wondering earth proclaimed the Muse divine. Yet if her votaries had but dared profane The mystic symbols of her sacred reign, How had they smiled beneath the veil to find What slender threads can chain the mighty mind! Poets, like painters, their machinery claim, And verse bestows the varnish and the frame; Our grating English, whose Teutonic jar Shakes the racked axle of Art's rattling car, Fits like mosaic in the lines that gird Fast in its place each many-angled word; From Saxon lips Anacreon's numbers glide, As once they melted on the Teian tide, And, fresh transfused, the Iliad thrills again From Albion's cliffs as o'er Achaia's plain The proud heroic, with, its pulse-like beat, Rings like the cymbals clashing as they meet; The sweet Spenserian, gathering as it flows, Sweeps gently onward to its dying close, Where waves on waves in long succession pour, Till the ninth billow melts along the shore; The lonely spirit of the mournful lay, Which lives immortal as the verse of Gray, In sable plumage slowly drifts along, On eagle pinion, through the air of song; The glittering lyric bounds elastic by, With flashing ringlets and exulting eye, While every image, in her airy whirl, Gleams like a diamond on a dancing girl! Born with mankind, with man's expanded range And varying fates the poet's numbers change; Thus in his history may we hope to find Some clearer epochs of the poet's mind, As from the cradle of its birth we trace, Slow wandering forth, the patriarchal race. I. When the green earth, beneath the zephyr's wing, Wears on her breast the varnished buds of Spring; When the loosed current, as its folds uncoil, Slides in the channels of the mellowed soil; When the young hyacinth returns to seek The air and sunshine with her emerald beak; When the light snowdrops, starting from their cells, Hang each pagoda with its silver bells; When the frail willow twines her trailing bow With pallid leaves that sweep the soil below; When the broad elm, sole empress of the plain, Whose circling shadow speaks a century's reign, Wreathes in the clouds her regal diadem,-- A forest waving on a single stem;-- Then mark the poet; though to him unknown The quaint-mouthed titles, such as scholars own, See how his eye in ecstasy pursues The steps of Nature tracked in radiant hues; Nay, in thyself, whate'er may be thy fate, Pallid with toil or surfeited with state, Mark how thy fancies, with the vernal rose, Awake, all sweetness, from their long repose; Then turn to ponder o'er the classic page, Traced with the idyls of a greener age, And learn the instinct which arose to warm Art's earliest essay and her simplest form. To themes like these her narrow path confined The first-born impulse moving in the mind; In vales unshaken by the trumpet's sound, Where peaceful Labor tills his fertile ground, The silent changes of the rolling years, Marked on the soil or dialled on the spheres, The crested forests and the colored flowers, The dewy grottos and the blushing bowers,-- These, and their guardians, who, with liquid names, Strephons and Chloes, melt in mutual flames, Woo the young Muses from their mountain shade, To make Arcadias in the lonely glade. Nor think they visit only with their smiles The fabled valleys and Elysian isles; He who is wearied of his village plain May roam the Edens of the world in vain. 'T is not the star-crowned cliff, the cataract's flow, The softer foliage or the greener glow, The lake of sapphire or the spar-hung cave, The brighter sunset or the broader wave, Can warm his heart whom every wind has blown To every shore, forgetful of his own. Home of our childhood! how affection clings And hovers round thee with her seraph wings! Dearer thy hills, though clad in autumn brown, Than fairest summits which the cedars crown! Sweeter the fragrance of thy summer breeze Than all Arabia breathes along the seas! The stranger's gale wafts home the exile's sigh, For the heart's temple is its own blue sky! Oh happiest they, whose early love unchanged, Hopes undissolved, and friendship unestranged, Tired of their wanderings, still can deign to see Love, hopes, and friendship, centring all in thee! And thou, my village! as again I tread Amidst thy living and above thy dead; Though some fair playmates guard with charter fears Their cheeks, grown holy with the lapse of years; Though with the dust some reverend locks may blend, Where life's last mile-stone marks the journey's end; On every bud the changing year recalls, The brightening glance of morning memory falls, Still following onward as the months unclose The balmy lilac or the bridal rose; And still shall follow, till they sink once more Beneath the snow-drifts of the frozen shore, As when my bark, long tossing in the gale, Furled in her port her tempest-rended sail! What shall I give thee? Can a simple lay, Flung on thy bosom like a girl's bouquet, Do more than deck thee for an idle hour, Then fall unheeded, fading like the flower? Yet, when I trod, with footsteps wild and free, The crackling leaves beneath yon linden-tree, Panting from play or dripping from the stream, How bright the visions of my boyish dream Or, modest Charles, along thy broken edge, Black with soft ooze and fringed with arrowy sedge, As once I wandered in the morning sun, With reeking sandal and superfluous gun, How oft, as Fancy whispered in the gale, Thou wast the Avon of her flattering tale! Ye hills, whose foliage, fretted on the skies, Prints shadowy arches on their evening dyes, How should my song with holiest charm invest Each dark ravine and forest-lifting crest! How clothe in beauty each familiar scene, Till all was classic on my native green! As the drained fountain, filled with autumn leaves, The field swept naked of its garnered sheaves, So wastes at noon the promise of our dawn, The springs all choking, and the harvest gone. Yet hear the lay of one whose natal star Still seemed the brightest when it shone afar; Whose cheek, grown pallid with ungracious toil, Glows in the welcome of his parent soil; And ask no garlands sought beyond the tide, But take the leaflets gathered at your side. II. But times were changed; the torch of terror came, To light the summits with the beacon's flame; The streams ran crimson, the tall mountain pines Rose a new forest o'er embattled lines; The bloodless sickle lent the warrior's steel, The harvest bowed beneath his chariot wheel; Where late the wood-dove sheltered her repose The raven waited for the conflict's close; The cuirassed sentry walked his sleepless round Where Daphne smiled or Amaryllis frowned; Where timid minstrels sung their blushing charms, Some wild Tyrtaeus called aloud, "To arms!" When Glory wakes, when fiery spirits leap, Roused by her accents from their tranquil sleep, The ray that flashes from the soldier's crest Lights, as it glances, in the poet's breast;-- Not in pale dreamers, whose fantastic lay Toys with smooth trifles like a child at play, But men, who act the passions they inspire, Who wave the sabre as they sweep the lyre! Ye mild enthusiasts, whose pacific frowns Are lost like dew-drops caught in burning towns, Pluck as ye will the radiant plumes of fame, Break Caesar's bust to make yourselves a name; But if your country bares the avenger's blade For wrongs unpunished or for debts unpaid, When the roused nation bids her armies form, And screams her eagle through the gathering storm, When from your ports the bannered frigate rides, Her black bows scowling to the crested tides, Your hour has past; in vain your feeble cry As the babe's wailings to the thundering sky! Scourge of mankind! with all the dread array That wraps in wrath thy desolating way, As the wild tempest wakes the slumbering sea, Thou only teachest all that man can be. Alike thy tocsin has the power to charm The toil-knit sinews of the rustic's arm, Or swell the pulses in the poet's veins, And bid the nations tremble at his strains. The city slept beneath the moonbeam's glance, Her white walls gleaming through the vines of France, And all was hushed, save where the footsteps fell, On some high tower, of midnight sentinel. But one still watched; no self-encircled woes Chased from his lids the angel of repose; He watched, he wept, for thoughts of bitter years Bowed his dark lashes, wet with burning tears His country's sufferings and her children's shame Streamed o'er his memory like a forest's flame; Each treasured insult, each remembered wrong, Rolled through his heart and kindled into song. His taper faded; and the morning gales Swept through the world the war-song of Marseilles! Now, while around the smiles of Peace expand, And Plenty's wreaths festoon the laughing land; While France ships outward her reluctant ore, And half our navy basks upon the shore; From ruder themes our meek-eyed Muses turn To crown with roses their enamelled urn. If e'er again return those awful days Whose clouds were crimsoned with the beacon's blaze, Whose grass was trampled by the soldier's heel, Whose tides were reddened round the rushing keel, God grant some lyre may wake a nobler strain To rend the silence of our tented plain! When Gallia's flag its triple fold displays, Her marshalled legions peal the Marseillaise; When round the German close the war-clouds dim, Far through their shadows floats his battle-hymn; When, crowned with joy, the camps' of England ring, A thousand voices shout, "God save the King!" When victory follows with our eagle's glance, Our nation's anthem pipes a country dance! Some prouder Muse, when comes the hour at last, May shake our hillsides with her bugle-blast; Not ours the task; but since the lyric dress Relieves the statelier with its sprightliness, Hear an old song, which some, perchance, have seen In stale gazette or cobwebbed magazine. There was an hour when patriots dared profane The mast that Britain strove to bow in vain; And one, who listened to the tale of shame, Whose heart still answered to that sacred name, Whose eye still followed o'er his country's tides Thy glorious flag, our brave Old Ironsides From yon lone attic, on a smiling morn, Thus mocked the spoilers with his school-boy scorn. III. When florid Peace resumed her golden reign, And arts revived, and valleys bloomed again, While War still panted on his-broken blade, Once more the Muse her heavenly wing essayed. Rude was the song: some ballad, stern and wild, Lulled the light slumbers of the soldier's child; Or young romancer, with his threatening glance And fearful fables of his bloodless lance, Scared the soft fancy of the clinging girls, Whose snowy fingers smoothed his raven curls. But when long years the stately form had bent, And faithless Memory her illusions lent, So vast the outlines of Tradition grew That History wondered at the shapes she drew, And veiled at length their too ambitious hues Beneath the pinions of the Epic Muse. Far swept her wing; for stormier days had brought With darker passions deeper tides of thought. The camp's harsh tumult and the conflict's glow, The thrill of triumph and the gasp of woe, The tender parting and the glad return, The festal banquet and the funeral urn, And all the drama which at once uprears Its spectral shadows through the clash of spears, From camp and field to echoing verse transferred, Swelled the proud song that listening nations heard. Why floats the amaranth in eternal bloom O'er Ilium's turrets and Achilles' tomb? Why lingers fancy where the sunbeams smile On Circe's gardens and Calypso's isle? Why follows memory to the gate of Troy Her plumed defender and his trembling boy? Lo! the blind dreamer, kneeling on the sand To trace these records with his doubtful hand; In fabled tones his own emotion flows, And other lips repeat his silent woes; In Hector's infant see the babes that shun Those deathlike eyes, unconscious of the sun, Or in his hero hear himself implore, "Give me to see, and Ajax asks no more!" Thus live undying through the lapse of time The solemn legends of the warrior's clime; Like Egypt's pyramid or Paestum's fane, They stand the heralds of the voiceless plain. Yet not like them, for Time, by slow degrees, Saps the gray stone and wears the embroidered frieze, And Isis sleeps beneath her subject Nile, And crumbled Neptune strews his Dorian pile; But Art's fair fabric, strengthening as it rears Its laurelled columns through the mist of years, As the blue arches of the bending skies Still gird the torrent, following as it flies, Spreads, with the surges bearing on mankind, Its starred pavilion o'er the tides of mind! In vain the patriot asks some lofty lay To dress in state our wars of yesterday. The classic days, those mothers of romance, That roused a nation for a woman's glance; The age of mystery, with its hoarded power, That girt the tyrant in his storied tower, Have passed and faded like a dream of youth, And riper eras ask for history's truth. On other shores, above their mouldering towns, In sullen pomp the tall cathedral frowns, Pride in its aisles and paupers at the door, Which feeds the beggars whom it fleeced of yore. Simple and frail, our lowly temples throw Their slender shadows on the paths below; Scarce steal the winds, that sweep his woodland tracks, The larch's perfume from the settler's axe, Ere, like a vision of the morning air, His slight--framed steeple marks the house of prayer; Its planks all reeking and its paint undried, Its rafters sprouting on the shady side, It sheds the raindrops from its shingled eaves Ere its green brothers once have changed their leaves. Yet Faith's pure hymn, beneath its shelter rude, Breathes out as sweetly to the tangled wood As where the rays through pictured glories pour On marble shaft and tessellated floor;-- Heaven asks no surplice round the heart that feels, And all is holy where devotion kneels. Thus on the soil the patriot's knee should bend Which holds the dust once living to defend; Where'er the hireling shrinks before the free, Each pass becomes "a new Thermopylae"! Where'er the battles of the brave are won, There every mountain "looks on Marathon"! Our fathers live; they guard in glory still The grass-grown bastions of the fortressed hill; Still ring the echoes of the trampled gorge, With _God and Freedom. England and Saint George_! The royal cipher on the captured gun Mocks the sharp night-dews and the blistering sun; The red-cross banner shades its captor's bust, Its folds still loaded with the conflict's dust; The drum, suspended by its tattered marge, Once rolled and rattled to the Hessian's charge; The stars have floated from Britannia's mast, The redcoat's trumpets blown the rebel's blast. Point to the summits where the brave have bled, Where every village claims its glorious dead; Say, when their bosoms met the bayonet's shock, Their only corselet was the rustic frock; Say, when they mustered to the gathering horn, The titled chieftain curled his lip in scorn, Yet, when their leader bade his lines advance, No musket wavered in the lion's glance; Say, when they fainted in the forced retreat, They tracked the snow-drifts with their bleeding feet, Yet still their banners, tossing in the blast, Bore Ever Ready, faithful to the last, Through storm and battle, till they waved again On Yorktown's hills and Saratoga's plain. Then, if so fierce the insatiate patriot's flame, Truth looks too pale and history seems too tame, Bid him await some new Columbiad's page, To gild the tablets of an iron age, And save his tears, which yet may fall upon Some fabled field, some fancied Washington! IV. But once again, from their AEolian cave, The winds of Genius wandered on the wave. Tired of the scenes the timid pencil drew, Sick of the notes the sounding clarion blew, Sated with heroes who had worn so long The shadowy plumage of historic song, The new-born poet left the beaten course, To track the passions to their living source. Then rose the Drama;--and the world admired Her varied page with deeper thought inspired Bound to no clime, for Passion's throb is one In Greenland's twilight or in India's sun; Born for no age, for all the thoughts that roll In the dark vortex of the stormy soul, Unchained in song, no freezing years can tame; God gave them birth, and man is still the same. So full on life her magic mirror shone, Her sister Arts paid tribute to her throne; One reared her temple, one her canvas warmed, And Music thrilled, while Eloquence informed. The weary rustic left his stinted task For smiles and tears, the dagger and the mask; The sage, turned scholar, half forgot his lore, To be the woman he despised before. O'er sense and thought she threw her golden chain, And Time, the anarch, spares her deathless reign. Thus lives Medea, in our tamer age, As when her buskin pressed the Grecian stage; Not in the cells where frigid learning delves In Aldine folios mouldering on their shelves, But breathing, burning in the glittering throng, Whose thousand bravoes roll untired along, Circling and spreading through the gilded halls, From London's galleries to San Carlo's walls! Thus shall he live whose more than mortal name Mocks with its ray the pallid torch of Fame; So proudly lifted that it seems afar No earthly Pharos, but a heavenly star, Who, unconfined to Art's diurnal bound, Girds her whole zodiac in his flaming round, And leads the passions, like the orb that guides, From pole to pole, the palpitating tides! V. Though round the Muse the robe of song is thrown, Think not the poet lives in verse alone. Long ere the chisel of the sculptor taught The lifeless stone to mock the living thought; Long ere the painter bade the canvas glow With every line the forms of beauty know; Long ere the iris of the Muses threw On every leaf its own celestial hue, In fable's dress the breath of genius poured, And warmed the shapes that later times adored. Untaught by Science how to forge the keys That loose the gates of Nature's mysteries; Unschooled by Faith, who, with her angel tread, Leads through the labyrinth with a single thread, His fancy, hovering round her guarded tower, Rained through its bars like Danae's golden shower. He spoke; the sea-nymph answered from her cave He called; the naiad left her mountain wave He dreamed of beauty; lo, amidst his dream, Narcissus, mirrored in the breathless stream; And night's chaste empress, in her bridal play, Laughed through the foliage where Endymion lay; And ocean dimpled, as the languid swell Kissed the red lip of Cytherea's shell. Of power,--Bellona swept the crimson field, And blue-eyed Pallas shook her Gorgon shield; O'er the hushed waves their mightier monarch drove, And Ida trembled to the tread of Jove! So every grace that plastic language knows To nameless poets its perfection owes. The rough-hewn words to simplest thoughts confined Were cut and polished in their nicer mind; Caught on their edge, imagination's ray Splits into rainbows, shooting far away;-- From sense to soul, from soul to sense, it flies, And through all nature links analogies; He who reads right will rarely look upon A better poet than his lexicon! There is a race which cold, ungenial skies Breed from decay, as fungous growths arise; Though dying fast, yet springing fast again, Which still usurps an unsubstantial reign, With frames too languid for the charms of sense, And minds worn down with action too intense; Tired of a world whose joys they never knew, Themselves deceived, yet thinking all untrue; Scarce men without, and less than girls within, Sick of their life before its cares begin;-- The dull disease, which drains their feeble hearts, To life's decay some hectic thrill's imparts, And lends a force which, like the maniac's power, Pays with blank years the frenzy of an hour. And this is Genius! Say, does Heaven degrade The manly frame, for health, for action made? Break down the sinews, rack the brow with pains, Blanch the right cheek and drain the purple veins, To clothe the mind with more extended sway, Thus faintly struggling in degenerate clay? No! gentle maid, too ready to admire, Though false its notes, the pale enthusiast's lyre; If this be genius, though its bitter springs Glowed like the morn beneath Aurora's wings, Seek not the source whose sullen bosom feeds But fruitless flowers and dark, envenomed weeds. But, if so bright the dear illusion seems, Thou wouldst be partner of thy poet's dreams, And hang in rapture on his bloodless charms, Or die, like Raphael, in his angel arms, Go and enjoy thy blessed lot,--to share In Cowper's gloom or Chatterton's despair! Not such were they whom, wandering o'er the waves, I looked to meet, but only found their graves; If friendship's smile, the better part of fame, Should lend my song the only wreath I claim, Whose voice would greet me with a sweeter tone, Whose living hand more kindly press my own, Than theirs,--could Memory, as her silent tread Prints the pale flowers that blossom o'er the dead, Those breathless lips, now closed in peace, restore, Or wake those pulses hushed to beat no more? Thou calm, chaste scholar! I can see thee now, The first young laurels on thy pallid brow, O'er thy slight figure floating lightly down In graceful folds the academic gown, On thy curled lip the classic lines that taught How nice the mind that sculptured them with thought, And triumph glistening in the clear blue eye, Too bright to live,--but oh, too fair to die! And thou, dear friend, whom Science still deplores, And Love still mourns, on ocean-severed shores, Though the bleak forest twice has bowed with snow Since thou wast laid its budding leaves below, Thine image mingles with my closing strain, As when we wandered by the turbid Seine, Both blessed with hopes, which revelled, bright and free, On all we longed or all we dreamed to be; To thee the amaranth and the cypress fell,-- And I was spared to breathe this last farewell! But lived there one in unremembered days, Or lives there still, who spurns the poet's bays, Whose fingers, dewy from Castalia's springs, Rest on the lyre, yet scorn to touch the strings? Who shakes the senate with the silver tone The groves of Pindus might have sighed to own? Have such e'er been? Remember Canning's name! Do such still live? Let "Alaric's Dirge" proclaim! Immortal Art! where'er the rounded sky Bends o'er the cradle where thy children lie, Their home is earth, their herald every tongue Whose accents echo to the voice that sung. One leap of Ocean scatters on the sand The quarried bulwarks of the loosening land; One thrill of earth dissolves a century's toil Strewed like the leaves that vanish in the soil; One hill o'erflows, and cities sink below, Their marbles splintering in the lava's glow; But one sweet tone, scarce whispered to the air, From shore to shore the blasts of ages bear; One humble name, which oft, perchance, has borne The tyrant's mockery and the courtier's scorn, Towers o'er the dust of earth's forgotten graves, As once, emerging through the waste of waves, The rocky Titan, round whose shattered spear Coiled the last whirlpool of the drowning sphere! ADDITIONAL POEMS 1837-1848 THE PILGRIM'S VISION IN the hour of twilight shadows The Pilgrim sire looked out; He thought of the "bloudy Salvages" That lurked all round about, Of Wituwamet's pictured knife And Pecksuot's whooping shout; For the baby's limbs were feeble, Though his father's arms were stout. His home was a freezing cabin, Too bare for the hungry rat; Its roof was thatched with ragged grass, And bald enough of that; The hole that served for casement Was glazed with an ancient hat, And the ice was gently thawing From the log whereon he sat. Along the dreary landscape His eyes went to and fro, The trees all clad in icicles, The streams that did not flow; A sudden thought flashed o'er him,-- A dream of long ago,-- He smote his leathern jerkin, And murmured, "Even so!" "Come hither, God-be-Glorified, And sit upon my knee; Behold the dream unfolding, Whereof I spake to thee By the winter's hearth in Leyden And on the stormy sea. True is the dream's beginning,-- So may its ending be! "I saw in the naked forest Our scattered remnant cast, A screen of shivering branches Between them and the blast; The snow was falling round them, The dying fell as fast; I looked to see them perish, When lo, the vision passed. "Again mine eyes were opened;-- The feeble had waxed strong, The babes had grown to sturdy men, The remnant was a throng; By shadowed lake and winding stream, And all the shores along, The howling demons quaked to hear The Christian's godly song. "They slept, the village fathers, By river, lake, and shore, When far adown the steep of Time The vision rose once more I saw along the winter snow A spectral column pour, And high above their broken ranks A tattered flag they bore. "Their Leader rode before them, Of bearing calm and high, The light of Heaven's own kindling Throned in his awful eye; These were a Nation's champions Her dread appeal to try. God for the right! I faltered, And lo, the train passed by. "Once more;--the strife is ended, The solemn issue tried, The Lord of Hosts, his mighty arm Has helped our Israel's side; Gray stone and grassy hillock Tell where our martyrs died, But peaceful smiles the harvest, And stainless flows the tide. "A crash, as when some swollen cloud Cracks o'er the tangled trees With side to side, and spar to spar, Whose smoking decks are these? I know Saint George's blood-red cross, Thou Mistress of the Seas, But what is she whose streaming bars Roll out before the breeze? "Ah, well her iron ribs are knit, Whose thunders strive to quell The bellowing throats, the blazing lips, That pealed the Armada's knell! The mist was cleared,--a wreath of stars Rose o'er the crimsoned swell, And, wavering from its haughty peak, The cross of England fell! "O trembling Faith! though dark the morn, A heavenly torch is thine; While feebler races melt away, And paler orbs decline, Still shall the fiery pillar's ray Along thy pathway shine, To light the chosen tribe that sought This Western Palestine. "I see the living tide roll on; It crowns with flaming towers The icy capes of Labrador, The Spaniard's 'land of flowers'! It streams beyond the splintered ridge That parts the northern showers; From eastern rock to sunset wave The Continent is ours!" He ceased, the grim old soldier-saint, Then softly bent to cheer The Pilgrim-child, whose wasting face Was meekly turned to hear; And drew his toil-worn sleeve across To brush the manly tear From cheeks that never changed in woe, And never blanched in fear. The weary Pilgrim slumbers, His resting-place unknown; His hands were crossed, his lips were closed, The dust was o'er him strown; The drifting soil, the mouldering leaf, Along the sod were blown; His mound has melted into earth, His memory lives alone. So let it live unfading, The memory of the dead, Long as the pale anemone Springs where their tears were shed, Or, raining in the summer's wind In flakes of burning red, The wild rose sprinkles with its leaves The turf where once they bled! Yea, when the frowning bulwarks That guard this holy strand Have sunk beneath the trampling surge In beds of sparkling sand, While in the waste of ocean One hoary rock shall stand, Be this its latest legend,-- HERE WAS THE PILGRIM'S LAND! THE STEAMBOAT SEE how yon flaming herald treads The ridged and rolling waves, As, crashing o'er their crested heads, She bows her surly slaves! With foam before and fire behind, She rends the clinging sea, That flies before the roaring wind, Beneath her hissing lee. The morning spray, like sea-born flowers, With heaped and glistening bells, Falls round her fast, in ringing showers, With every wave that swells; And, burning o'er the midnight deep, In lurid fringes thrown, The living gems of ocean sweep Along her flashing zone. With clashing wheel and lifting keel, And smoking torch on high, When winds are loud and billows reel, She thunders foaming by; When seas are silent and serene, With even beam she glides, The sunshine glimmering through the green That skirts her gleaming sides. Now, like a wild, nymph, far apart She veils her shadowy form, The beating of her restless heart Still sounding through the storm; Now answers, like a courtly dame, The reddening surges o'er, With flying scarf of spangled flame, The Pharos of the shore. To-night yon pilot shall not sleep, Who trims his narrowed sail; To-night yon frigate scarce shall keep Her broad breast to the gale; And many a foresail, scooped and strained, Shall break from yard and stay, Before this smoky wreath has stained The rising mist of day. Hark! hark! I hear yon whistling shroud, I see yon quivering mast; The black throat of the hunted cloud Is panting forth the blast! An hour, and, whirled like winnowing chaff, The giant surge shall fling His tresses o'er yon pennon staff, White as the sea-bird's wing. Yet rest, ye wanderers of the deep; Nor wind nor wave shall tire Those fleshless arms, whose pulses leap With floods of living fire; Sleep on, and, when the morning light Streams o'er the shining bay, Oh think of those for whom the night Shall never wake in day. LEXINGTON SLOWLY the mist o'er the meadow was creeping, Bright on the dewy buds glistened the sun, When from his couch, while his children were sleeping, Rose the bold rebel and shouldered his gun. Waving her golden veil Over the silent dale, Blithe looked the morning on cottage and spire; Hushed was his parting sigh, While from his noble eye Flashed the last sparkle of liberty's fire. On the smooth green where the fresh leaf is springing Calmly the first-born of glory have met; Hark! the death-volley around them is ringing! Look! with their life-blood the young grass is wet Faint is the feeble breath, Murmuring low in death, "Tell to our sons how their fathers have died;" Nerveless the iron hand, Raised for its native land, Lies by the weapon that gleams at its side. Over the hillsides the wild knell is tolling, From their far hamlets the yeomanry come; As through the storm-clouds the thunder-burst rolling, Circles the beat of the mustering drum. Fast on the soldier's path Darken the waves of wrath,-- Long have they gathered and loud shall they fall; Red glares the musket's flash, Sharp rings the rifle's crash, Blazing and clanging from thicket and wall. Gayly the plume of the horseman was dancing, Never to shadow his cold brow again; Proudly at morning the war-steed was prancing, Reeking and panting he droops on the rein; Pale is the lip of scorn, Voiceless the trumpet horn, Torn is the silken-fringed red cross on high; Many a belted breast Low on the turf shall rest Ere the dark hunters the herd have passed by. Snow-girdled crags where the hoarse wind is raving, Rocks where the weary floods murmur and wail, Wilds where the fern by the furrow is waving, Reeled with the echoes that rode on the gale; Far as the tempest thrills Over the darkened hills, Far as the sunshine streams over the plain, Roused by the tyrant band, Woke all the mighty land, Girded for battle, from mountain to main. Green be the graves where her martyrs are lying! Shroudless and tombless they sunk to their rest, While o'er their ashes the starry fold flying Wraps the proud eagle they roused from his nest. Borne on her Northern pine, Long o'er the foaming brine Spread her broad banner to storm and to sun; Heaven keep her ever free, Wide as o'er land and sea Floats the fair emblem her heroes have won. ON LENDING A PUNCH-BOWL This "punch-bowl" was, according to old family tradition, a caudle-cup. It is a massive piece of silver, its cherubs and other ornaments of coarse repousse work, and has two handles like a loving-cup, by which it was held, or passed from guest to guest. THIS ancient silver bowl of mine, it tells of good old times, Of joyous days and jolly nights, and merry Christmas times; They were a free and jovial race, but honest, brave, and true, Who dipped their ladle in the punch when this old bowl was new. A Spanish galleon brought the bar,--so runs the ancient tale; 'T was hammered by an Antwerp smith, whose arm was like a flail; And now and then between the strokes, for fear his strength should fail, He wiped his brow and quaffed a cup of good old Flemish ale. 'T was purchased by an English squire to please his loving dame, Who saw the cherubs, and conceived a longing for the same; And oft as on the ancient stock another twig was found, 'T was filled with candle spiced and hot, and handed smoking round. But, changing hands, it reached at length a Puritan divine, Who used to follow Timothy, and take a little wine, But hated punch and prelacy; and so it was, perhaps, He went to Leyden, where he found conventicles and schnapps. And then, of course, you know what's next: it left the Dutchman's shore With those that in the Mayflower came,--a hundred souls and more,-- Along with all the furniture, to fill their new abodes,-- To judge by what is still on hand, at least a hundred loads. 'T was on a dreary winter's eve, the night was closing, dim, When brave Miles Standish took the bowl, and filled it to the brim; The little Captain stood and stirred the posset with his sword, And all his sturdy men-at-arms were ranged about the board. He poured the fiery Hollands in,--the man that never feared,-- He took a long and solemn draught, and wiped his yellow beard; And one by one the musketeers--the men that fought and prayed-- All drank as 't were their mother's milk, and not a man afraid. That night, affrighted from his nest, the screaming eagle flew, He heard the Pequot's ringing whoop, the soldier's wild halloo; And there the sachem learned the rule he taught to kith and kin, Run from the white man when you find he smells of "Hollands gin!" A hundred years, and fifty more, had spread their leaves and snows, A thousand rubs had flattened down each little cherub's nose, When once again the bowl was filled, but not in mirth or joy,-- 'T was mingled by a mother's hand to cheer her parting boy. Drink, John, she said, 't will do you good,--poor child, you'll never bear This working in the dismal trench, out in the midnight air; And if--God bless me!--you were hurt, 't would keep away the chill. So John did drink,--and well he wrought that night at Bunker's Hill! I tell you, there was generous warmth in good old English cheer; I tell you, 't was a pleasant thought to bring its symbol here. 'T is but the fool that loves excess; hast thou a drunken soul? Thy bane is in thy shallow skull, not in my silver bowl! I love the memory of the past,--its pressed yet fragrant flowers,-- The moss that clothes its broken walls, the ivy on its towers; Nay, this poor bauble it bequeathed,--my eyes grow moist and dim, To think of all the vanished joys that danced around its brim. Then fill a fair and honest cup, and bear it straight to me; The goblet hallows all it holds, whate'er the liquid be; And may the cherubs on its face protect me from the sin That dooms one to those dreadful words,--"My dear, where HAVE you been?" A SONG FOR THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF HARVARD COLLEGE, 1836 This song, which I had the temerity to sing myself (_felix auda-cia_, Mr. Franklin Dexter had the goodness to call it), was sent in a little too late to be printed with the official account of the celebration. It was written at the suggestion of Dr. Jacob Bigelow, who thought the popular tune "The Poacher's Song" would be a good model for a lively ballad or ditty. He himself wrote the admirable Latin song to be found in the record of the meeting. WHEN the Puritans came over Our hills and swamps to clear, The woods were full of catamounts, And Indians red as deer, With tomahawks and scalping-knives, That make folks' heads look queer; Oh the ship from England used to bring A hundred wigs a year! The crows came cawing through the air To pluck the Pilgrims' corn, The bears came snuffing round the door Whene'er a babe was born, The rattlesnakes were bigger round Than the but of the old rams horn The deacon blew at meeting time On every "Sabbath" morn. But soon they knocked the wigwams down, And pine-tree trunk and limb Began to sprout among the leaves In shape of steeples slim; And out the little wharves were stretched Along the ocean's rim, And up the little school-house shot To keep the boys in trim. And when at length the College rose, The sachem cocked his eye At every tutor's meagre ribs Whose coat-tails whistled by But when the Greek and Hebrew words Came tumbling from his jaws, The copper-colored children all Ran screaming to the squaws. And who was on the Catalogue When college was begun? Two nephews of the President, And the Professor's son; (They turned a little Indian by, As brown as any bun;) Lord! how the seniors knocked about The freshman class of one! They had not then the dainty things That commons now afford, But succotash and hominy Were smoking on the board; They did not rattle round in gigs, Or dash in long-tailed blues, But always on Commencement days The tutors blacked their shoes. God bless the ancient Puritans! Their lot was hard enough; But honest hearts make iron arms, And tender maids are tough; So love and faith have formed and fed Our true-born Yankee stuff, And keep the kernel in the shell The British found so rough! THE ISLAND HUNTING-SONG The island referred to is a domain of princely proportions, which has long been the seat of a generous hospitality. Naushon is its old Indian name. William Swain, Esq., commonly known as "the Governor," was the proprietor of it at the time when this song was written. Mr. John M. Forbes is his worthy successor in territorial rights and as a hospitable entertainer. The Island Book has been the recipient of many poems from visitors and friends of the owners of the old mansion. No more the summer floweret charms, The leaves will soon be sere, And Autumn folds his jewelled arms Around the dying year; So, ere the waning seasons claim Our leafless groves awhile, With golden wine and glowing flame We 'll crown our lonely isle. Once more the merry voices sound Within the antlered hall, And long and loud the baying hounds Return the hunter's call; And through the woods, and o'er the hill, And far along the bay, The driver's horn is sounding shrill,-- Up, sportsmen, and away! No bars of steel or walls of stone Our little empire bound, But, circling with his azure zone, The sea runs foaming round; The whitening wave, the purpled skies, The blue and lifted shore, Braid with their dim and blending dyes Our wide horizon o'er. And who will leave the grave debate That shakes the smoky town, To rule amid our island-state, And wear our oak-leaf crown? And who will be awhile content To hunt our woodland game, And leave the vulgar pack that scent The reeking track of fame? Ah, who that shares in toils like these Will sigh not to prolong Our days beneath the broad-leaved trees, Our nights of mirth and song? Then leave the dust of noisy streets, Ye outlaws of the wood, And follow through his green retreats Your noble Robin Hood. DEPARTED DAYS YES, dear departed, cherished days, Could Memory's hand restore Your morning light, your evening rays, From Time's gray urn once more, Then might this restless heart be still, This straining eye might close, And Hope her fainting pinions fold, While the fair phantoms rose. But, like a child in ocean's arms, We strive against the stream, Each moment farther from the shore Where life's young fountains gleam; Each moment fainter wave the fields, And wider rolls the sea; The mist grows dark,--the sun goes down,-- Day breaks,--and where are we? THE ONLY DAUGHTER ILLUSTRATION OF A PICTURE THEY bid me strike the idle strings, As if my summer days Had shaken sunbeams from their wings To warm my autumn lays; They bring to me their painted urn, As if it were not time To lift my gauntlet and to spurn The lists of boyish rhyme; And were it not that I have still Some weakness in my heart That clings around my stronger will And pleads for gentler art, Perchance I had not turned away The thoughts grown tame with toil, To cheat this lone and pallid ray, That wastes the midnight oil. Alas! with every year I feel Some roses leave my brow; Too young for wisdom's tardy seal, Too old for garlands now. Yet, while the dewy breath of spring Steals o'er the tingling air, And spreads and fans each emerald wing The forest soon shall wear. How bright the opening year would seem, Had I one look like thine To meet me when the morning beam Unseals these lids of mine! Too long I bear this lonely lot, That bids my heart run wild To press the lips that love me not, To clasp the stranger's child. How oft beyond the dashing seas, Amidst those royal bowers, Where danced the lilacs in the breeze, And swung the chestnut-flowers, I wandered like a wearied slave Whose morning task is done, To watch the little hands that gave Their whiteness to the sun; To revel in the bright young eyes, Whose lustre sparkled through The sable fringe of Southern skies Or gleamed in Saxon blue! How oft I heard another's name Called in some truant's tone; Sweet accents! which I longed to claim, To learn and lisp my own! Too soon the gentle hands, that pressed The ringlets of the child, Are folded on the faithful breast Where first he breathed and smiled; Too oft the clinging arms untwine, The melting lips forget, And darkness veils the bridal shrine Where wreaths and torches met; If Heaven but leaves a single thread Of Hope's dissolving chain, Even when her parting plumes are spread, It bids them fold again; The cradle rocks beside the tomb; The cheek now changed and chill Smiles on us in the morning bloom Of one that loves us still. Sweet image! I have done thee wrong To claim this destined lay; The leaf that asked an idle song Must bear my tears away. Yet, in thy memory shouldst thou keep This else forgotten strain, Till years have taught thine eyes to weep, And flattery's voice is vain; Oh then, thou fledgling of the nest, Like the long-wandering dove, Thy weary heart may faint for rest, As mine, on changeless love; And while these sculptured lines retrace The hours now dancing by, This vision of thy girlish grace May cost thee, too, a sigh. SONG WRITTEN FOR THE DINNER GIVEN TO CHARLES DICKENS BY THE YOUNG MEN OF BOSTON, FEBRUARY 1, 1842 THE stars their early vigils keep, The silent hours are near, When drooping eyes forget to weep,-- Yet still we linger here; And what--the passing churl may ask-- Can claim such wondrous power, That Toil forgets his wonted task, And Love his promised hour? The Irish harp no longer thrills, Or breathes a fainter tone; The clarion blast from Scotland's hills, Alas! no more is blown; And Passion's burning lip bewails Her Harold's wasted fire, Still lingering o'er the dust that veils The Lord of England's lyre. But grieve not o'er its broken strings, Nor think its soul hath died, While yet the lark at heaven's gate sings, As once o'er Avon's side; While gentle summer sheds her bloom, And dewy blossoms wave, Alike o'er Juliet's storied tomb And Nelly's nameless grave. Thou glorious island of the sea! Though wide the wasting flood That parts our distant land from thee, We claim thy generous blood; Nor o'er thy far horizon springs One hallowed star of fame, But kindles, like an angel's wings, Our western skies in flame! LINES RECITED AT THE BERKSHIRE JUBILEE, PITTSFIELD, MASS., AUGUST 23, 1844 COME back to your mother, ye children, for shame, Who have wandered like truants for riches or fame! With a smile on her face, and a sprig in her cap, She calls you to feast from her bountiful lap. Come out from your alleys, your courts, and your lanes, And breathe, like young eagles, the air of our plains; Take a whiff from our fields, and your excellent wives Will declare it 's all nonsense insuring your lives. Come you of the law, who can talk, if you please, Till the man in the moon will allow it's a cheese, And leave "the old lady, that never tells lies," To sleep with her handkerchief over her eyes. Ye healers of men, for a moment decline Your feats in the rhubarb and ipecac line; While you shut up your turnpike, your neighbors can go The old roundabout road to the regions below. You clerk, on whose ears are a couple of pens, And whose head is an ant-hill of units and tens, Though Plato denies you, we welcome you still As a featherless biped, in spite of your quill. Poor drudge of the city! how happy he feels, With the burs on his legs and the grass at his heels No dodger behind, his bandannas to share, No constable grumbling, "You must n't walk there!" In yonder green meadow, to memory dear, He slaps a mosquito and brushes a tear; The dew-drops hang round him on blossoms and shoots, He breathes but one sigh for his youth and his boots. There stands the old school-house, hard by the old church; That tree at its side had the flavor of birch; Oh, sweet were the days of his juvenile tricks, Though the prairie of youth had so many "big licks." By the side of yon river he weeps and he slumps, The boots fill with water, as if they were pumps, Till, sated with rapture, he steals to his bed, With a glow in his heart and a cold in his head. 'T is past,--he is dreaming,--I see him again; The ledger returns as by legerdemain; His neckcloth is damp with an easterly flaw, And he holds in his fingers an omnibus straw. He dreams the chill gust is a blossomy gale, That the straw is a rose from his dear native vale; And murmurs, unconscious of space and of time, "A 1. Extra super. Ah, is n't it PRIME!" Oh, what are the prizes we perish to win To the first little "shiner" we caught with a pin! No soil upon earth is so dear to our eyes As the soil we first stirred in terrestrial pies! Then come from all parties and parts to our feast; Though not at the "Astor," we'll give you at least A bite at an apple, a seat on the grass, And the best of old--water--at nothing a glass. NUX POSTCOENATICA I WAS sitting with my microscope, upon my parlor rug, With a very heavy quarto and a very lively bug; The true bug had been organized with only two antennae, But the humbug in the copperplate would have them twice as many. And I thought, like Dr. Faustus, of the emptiness of art, How we take a fragment for the whole, and call the whole a part, When I heard a heavy footstep that was loud enough for two, And a man of forty entered, exclaiming, "How d' ye do?" He was not a ghost, my visitor, but solid flesh and bone; He wore a Palo Alto hat, his weight was twenty stone; (It's odd how hats expand their brims as riper years invade, As if when life had reached its noon it wanted them for shade!) I lost my focus,--dropped my book,--the bug, who was a flea, At once exploded, and commenced experiments on me. They have a certain heartiness that frequently appalls,-- Those mediaeval gentlemen in semilunar smalls! "My boy," he said, (colloquial ways,--the vast, broad-hatted man,) "Come dine with us on Thursday next,--you must, you know you can; We're going to have a roaring time, with lots of fun and noise, Distinguished guests, et cetera, the JUDGE, and all the boys." Not so,--I said,--my temporal bones are showing pretty clear. It 's time to stop,--just look and see that hair above this ear; My golden days are more than spent,--and, what is very strange, If these are real silver hairs, I'm getting lots of change. Besides--my prospects--don't you know that people won't employ A man that wrongs his manliness by laughing like a boy? And suspect the azure blossom that unfolds upon a shoot, As if wisdom's old potato could not flourish at its root? It's a very fine reflection, when you 're etching out a smile On a copperplate of faces that would stretch at least a mile, That, what with sneers from enemies and cheapening shrugs of friends, It will cost you all the earnings that a month of labor lends! It's a vastly pleasing prospect, when you're screwing out a laugh, That your very next year's income is diminished by a half, And a little boy trips barefoot that Pegasus may go, And the baby's milk is watered that your Helicon may flow! No;--the joke has been a good one,--but I'm getting fond of quiet, And I don't like deviations from my customary diet; So I think I will not go with you to hear the toasts and speeches, But stick to old Montgomery Place, and have some pig and peaches. The fat man answered: Shut your mouth, and hear the genuine creed; The true essentials of a feast are only fun and feed; The force that wheels the planets round delights in spinning tops, And that young earthquake t' other day was great at shaking props. I tell you what, philosopher, if all the longest heads That ever knocked their sinciputs in stretching on their beds Were round one great mahogany, I'd beat those fine old folks With twenty dishes, twenty fools, and twenty clever jokes! Why, if Columbus should be there, the company would beg He'd show that little trick of his of balancing the egg! Milton to Stilton would give in, and Solomon to Salmon, And Roger Bacon be a bore, and Francis Bacon gammon! And as for all the "patronage" of all the clowns and boors That squint their little narrow eyes at any freak of yours, Do leave them to your prosier friends,--such fellows ought to die When rhubarb is so very scarce and ipecac so high! And so I come,--like Lochinvar, to tread a single measure,-- To purchase with a loaf of bread a sugar-plum of pleasure, To enter for the cup of glass that's run for after dinner, Which yields a single sparkling draught, then breaks and cuts the winner. Ah, that's the way delusion comes,--a glass of old Madeira, A pair of visual diaphragms revolved by Jane or Sarah, And down go vows and promises without the slightest question If eating words won't compromise the organs of digestion! And yet, among my native shades, beside my nursing mother, Where every stranger seems a friend, and every friend a brother, I feel the old convivial glow (unaided) o'er me stealing,-- The warm, champagny, the old-particular brandy-punchy feeling. We're all alike;--Vesuvius flings the scoriae from his fountain, But down they come in volleying rain back to the burning mountain; We leave, like those volcanic stones, our precious Alma Mater, But will keep dropping in again to see the dear old crater. VERSES FOR AFTER-DINNER PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY, 1844 I WAS thinking last night, as I sat in the cars, With the charmingest prospect of cinders and stars, Next Thursday is--bless me!--how hard it will be, If that cannibal president calls upon me! There is nothing on earth that he will not devour, From a tutor in seed to a freshman in flower; No sage is too gray, and no youth is too green, And you can't be too plump, though you're never too lean. While others enlarge on the boiled and the roast, He serves a raw clergyman up with a toast, Or catches some doctor, quite tender and young, And basely insists on a bit of his tongue. Poor victim, prepared for his classical spit, With a stuffing of praise and a basting of wit, You may twitch at your collar and wrinkle your brow, But you're up on your legs, and you're in for it now. Oh think of your friends,--they are waiting to hear Those jokes that are thought so remarkably queer; And all the Jack Horners of metrical buns Are prying and fingering to pick out the puns. Those thoughts which, like chickens, will always thrive best When reared by the heat of the natural nest, Will perish if hatched from their embryo dream In the mist and the glow of convivial steam. Oh pardon me, then, if I meekly retire, With a very small flash of ethereal fire; No rubbing will kindle your Lucifer match, If the fiz does not follow the primitive scratch. Dear friends, who are listening so sweetly the while, With your lips double--reefed in a snug little smile, I leave you two fables, both drawn from the deep,-- The shells you can drop, but the pearls you may keep. . . . . . . . . . . . The fish called the FLOUNDER, perhaps you may know, Has one side for use and another for show; One side for the public, a delicate brown, And one that is white, which he always keeps down. A very young flounder, the flattest of flats, (And they 're none of them thicker than opera hats,) Was speaking more freely than charity taught Of a friend and relation that just had been caught. "My! what an exposure! just see what a sight! I blush for my race,--he is showing his white Such spinning and wriggling,--why, what does he wish? How painfully small to respectable fish!" Then said an Old SCULPIN,--"My freedom excuse, You're playing the cobbler with holes in your shoes; Your brown side is up,--but just wait till you're tried And you'll find that all flounders are white on one side." . . . . . . . . . . There's a slice near the PICKEREL'S pectoral fins, Where the thorax leaves off and the venter begins, Which his brother, survivor of fish-hooks and lines, Though fond of his family, never declines. He loves his relations; he feels they'll be missed; But that one little tidbit he cannot resist; So your bait may be swallowed, no matter how fast, For you catch your next fish with a piece of the last. And thus, O survivor, whose merciless fate Is to take the next hook with the president's bait, You are lost while you snatch from the end of his line The morsel he rent from this bosom of mine! A MODEST REQUEST COMPLIED WITH AFTER THE DINNER AT PRESIDENT EVERETT'S INAUGURATION SCENE,--a back parlor in a certain square, Or court, or lane,--in short, no matter where; Time,--early morning, dear to simple souls Who love its sunshine and its fresh-baked rolls; Persons,--take pity on this telltale blush, That, like the AEthiop, whispers, "Hush, oh hush!" Delightful scene! where smiling comfort broods, Nor business frets, nor anxious care intrudes; _O si sic omnia_ I were it ever so! But what is stable in this world below? _Medio e fonte_,--Virtue has her faults,-- The clearest fountains taste of Epsom salts; We snatch the cup and lift to drain it dry,-- Its central dimple holds a drowning fly Strong is the pine by Maine's ambrosial streams, But stronger augers pierce its thickest beams; No iron gate, no spiked and panelled door, Can keep out death, the postman, or the bore. Oh for a world where peace and silence reign, And blunted dulness verebrates in vain! --The door-bell jingles,--enter Richard Fox, And takes this letter from his leathern box. "Dear Sir,-- In writing on a former day, One little matter I forgot to say; I now inform you in a single line, On Thursday next our purpose is to dine. The act of feeding, as you understand, Is but a fraction of the work in hand; Its nobler half is that ethereal meat The papers call 'the intellectual treat;' Songs, speeches, toasts, around the festive board Drowned in the juice the College pumps afford; For only water flanks our knives and forks, So, sink or float, we swim without the corks. Yours is the art, by native genius taught, To clothe in eloquence the naked thought; Yours is the skill its music to prolong Through the sweet effluence of mellifluous song; Yours the quaint trick to cram the pithy line That cracks so crisply over bubbling wine; And since success your various gifts attends, We--that is, I and all your numerous friends-- Expect from you--your single self a host-- A speech, a song, excuse me, and a toast; Nay, not to haggle on so small a claim, A few of each, or several of the same. (Signed), Yours, most truly, ________" No! my sight must fail,-- If that ain't Judas on the largest scale! Well, this is modest;--nothing else than that? My coat? my boots? my pantaloons? my hat? My stick? my gloves? as well as all my wits, Learning and linen,--everything that fits! Jack, said my lady, is it grog you'll try, Or punch, or toddy, if perhaps you're dry? Ah, said the sailor, though I can't refuse, You know, my lady, 't ain't for me to choose; I'll take the grog to finish off my lunch, And drink the toddy while you mix the punch. . . . . . . . . THE SPEECH. (The speaker, rising to be seen, Looks very red, because so very green.) I rise--I rise--with unaffected fear, (Louder!--speak louder!--who the deuce can hear?) I rise--I said--with undisguised dismay --Such are my feelings as I rise, I say Quite unprepared to face this learned throng, Already gorged with eloquence and song; Around my view are ranged on either hand The genius, wisdom, virtue of the land; "Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed" Close at my elbow stir their lemonade; Would you like Homer learn to write and speak, That bench is groaning with its weight of Greek; Behold the naturalist who in his teens Found six new species in a dish of greens; And lo, the master in a statelier walk, Whose annual ciphering takes a ton of chalk; And there the linguist, who by common roots Thro' all their nurseries tracks old Noah's shoots,-- How Shem's proud children reared the Assyrian piles, While Ham's were scattered through the Sandwich Isles! --Fired at the thought of all the present shows, My kindling fancy down the future flows: I see the glory of the coming days O'er Time's horizon shoot its streaming rays; Near and more near the radiant morning draws In living lustre (rapturous applause); From east to west the blazing heralds run, Loosed from the chariot of the ascending sun, Through the long vista of uncounted years In cloudless splendor (three tremendous cheers). My eye prophetic, as the depths unfold, Sees a new advent of the age of gold; While o'er the scene new generations press, New heroes rise the coming time to bless,-- Not such as Homer's, who, we read in Pope, Dined without forks and never heard of soap,-- Not such as May to Marlborough Chapel brings, Lean, hungry, savage, anti-everythings, Copies of Luther in the pasteboard style,-- But genuine articles, the true Carlyle; While far on high the blazing orb shall shed Its central light on Harvard's holy head, And learning's ensigns ever float unfurled Here in the focus of the new-born world The speaker stops, and, trampling down the pause, Roars through the hall the thunder of applause, One stormy gust of long-suspended Ahs! One whirlwind chaos of insane hurrahs! . . . . . . . . THE SONG. But this demands a briefer line,-- A shorter muse, and not the old long Nine; Long metre answers for a common song, Though common metre does not answer long. She came beneath the forest dome To seek its peaceful shade, An exile from her ancient home, A poor, forsaken maid; No banner, flaunting high above, No blazoned cross, she bore; One holy book of light and love Was all her worldly store. The dark brown shadows passed away, And wider spread the green, And where the savage used to stray The rising mart was seen; So, when the laden winds had brought Their showers of golden rain, Her lap some precious gleanings caught, Like Ruth's amid the grain. But wrath soon gathered uncontrolled Among the baser churls, To see her ankles red with gold, Her forehead white with pearls. "Who gave to thee the glittering bands That lace thine azure veins? Who bade thee lift those snow-white hands We bound in gilded chains?" "These are the gems my children gave," The stately dame replied; "The wise, the gentle, and the brave, I nurtured at my side. If envy still your bosom stings, Take back their rims of gold; My sons will melt their wedding-rings, And give a hundred-fold!" . . . . . . . . THE TOAST. Oh tell me, ye who thoughtless ask Exhausted nature for a threefold task, In wit or pathos if one share remains, A safe investment for an ounce of brains! Hard is the job to launch the desperate pun, A pun-job dangerous as the Indian one. Turned by the current of some stronger wit Back from the object that you mean to hit, Like the strange missile which the Australian throws, Your verbal boomerang slaps you on the nose. One vague inflection spoils the whole with doubt, One trivial letter ruins all, left out; A knot can choke a felon into clay, A not will save him, spelt without the k; The smallest word has some unguarded spot, And danger lurks in i without a dot. Thus great Achilles, who had shown his zeal In healing wounds, died of a wounded heel; Unhappy chief, who, when in childhood doused, Had saved his bacon had his feet been soused Accursed heel that killed a hero stout Oh, had your mother known that you were out, Death had not entered at the trifling part That still defies the small chirurgeon's art With corns and bunions,--not the glorious John, Who wrote the book we all have pondered on, But other bunions, bound in fleecy hose, To "Pilgrim's Progress" unrelenting foes! . . . . . . . . A HEALTH, unmingled with the reveller's wine, To him whose title is indeed divine; Truth's sleepless watchman on her midnight tower, Whose lamp burns brightest when the tempests lower. Oh, who can tell with what a leaden flight Drag the long watches of his weary night, While at his feet the hoarse and blinding gale Strews the torn wreck and bursts the fragile sail, When stars have faded, when the wave is dark, When rocks and sands embrace the foundering bark! But still he pleads with unavailing cry, Behold the light, O wanderer, look or die! A health, fair Themis! Would the enchanted vine Wreathed its green tendrils round this cup of thine! If Learning's radiance fill thy modern court, Its glorious sunshine streams through Blackstone's port. Lawyers are thirsty, and their clients too, Witness at least, if memory serve me true, Those old tribunals, famed for dusty suits, Where men sought justice ere they brushed their boots; And what can match, to solve a learned doubt, The warmth within that comes from "cold with-out"? Health to the art whose glory is to give The crowning boon that makes it life to live. Ask not her home;--the rock where nature flings Her arctic lichen, last of living things; The gardens, fragrant with the orient's balm, From the low jasmine to the star-like palm, Hail her as mistress o'er the distant waves, And yield their tribute to her wandering slaves. Wherever, moistening the ungrateful soil, The tear of suffering tracks the path of toil, There, in the anguish of his fevered hours, Her gracious finger points to healing flowers; Where the lost felon steals away to die, Her soft hand waves before his closing eye; Where hunted misery finds his darkest lair, The midnight taper shows her kneeling there! VIRTUE,--the guide that men and nations own; And LAW,--the bulwark that protects her throne; And HEALTH,--to all its happiest charm that lends; These and their servants, man's untiring friends Pour the bright lymph that Heaven itself lets fall, In one fair bumper let us toast them all! THE PARTING WORD I MUST leave thee, lady sweet Months shall waste before we meet; Winds are fair and sails are spread, Anchors leave their ocean bed; Ere this shining day grow dark, Skies shall gird my shoreless bark. Through thy tears, O lady mine, Read thy lover's parting line. When the first sad sun shall set, Thou shalt tear thy locks of jet; When the morning star shall rise, Thou shalt wake with weeping eyes; When the second sun goes down, Thou more tranquil shalt be grown, Taught too well that wild despair Dims thine eyes and spoils thy hair. All the first unquiet week Thou shalt wear a smileless cheek; In the first month's second half Thou shalt once attempt to laugh; Then in Pickwick thou shalt dip, Slightly puckering round the lip, Till at last, in sorrow's spite, Samuel makes thee laugh outright. While the first seven mornings last, Round thy chamber bolted fast Many a youth shall fume and pout, "Hang the girl, she's always out!" While the second week goes round, Vainly shall they ring and pound; When the third week shall begin, "Martha, let the creature in." Now once more the flattering throng Round thee flock with smile and song, But thy lips, unweaned as yet, Lisp, "Oh, how can I forget!" Men and devils both contrive Traps for catching girls alive; Eve was duped, and Helen kissed,-- How, oh how can you resist? First be careful of your fan, Trust it not to youth or man; Love has filled a pirate's sail Often with its perfumed gale. Mind your kerchief most of all, Fingers touch when kerchiefs fall; Shorter ell than mercers clip Is the space from hand to lip. Trust not such as talk in tropes, Full of pistols, daggers, ropes; All the hemp that Russia bears Scarce would answer lovers' prayers; Never thread was spun so fine, Never spider stretched the line, Would not hold the lovers true That would really swing for you. Fiercely some shall storm and swear, Beating breasts in black despair; Others murmur with a sigh, You must melt, or they will die: Painted words on empty lies, Grubs with wings like butterflies; Let them die, and welcome, too; Pray what better could they do? Fare thee well: if years efface From thy heart love's burning trace, Keep, oh keep that hallowed seat From the tread of vulgar feet; If the blue lips of the sea Wait with icy kiss for me, Let not thine forget the vow, Sealed how often, Love, as now. A SONG OF OTHER DAYS As o'er the glacier's frozen sheet Breathes soft the Alpine rose, So through life's desert springing sweet The flower of friendship grows; And as where'er the roses grow Some rain or dew descends, 'T is nature's law that wine should flow To wet the lips of friends. Then once again, before we part, My empty glass shall ring; And he that has the warmest heart Shall loudest laugh and sing. They say we were not born to eat; But gray-haired sages think It means, Be moderate in your meat, And partly live to drink. For baser tribes the rivers flow That know not wine or song; Man wants but little drink below, But wants that little strong. Then once again, etc. If one bright drop is like the gem That decks a monarch's crown, One goblet holds a diadem Of rubies melted down! A fig for Caesar's blazing brow, But, like the Egyptian queen, Bid each dissolving jewel glow My thirsty lips between. Then once again, etc. The Grecian's mound, the Roman's urn, Are silent when we call, Yet still the purple grapes return To cluster on the wall; It was a bright Immortal's head They circled with the vine, And o'er their best and bravest dead They poured the dark-red wine. Then once again, etc. Methinks o'er every sparkling glass Young Eros waves his wings, And echoes o'er its dimples pass From dead Anacreon's strings; And, tossing round its beaded brim Their locks of floating gold, With bacchant dance and choral hymn Return the nymphs of old. Then once again, etc. A welcome then to joy and mirth, From hearts as fresh as ours, To scatter o'er the dust of earth Their sweetly mingled flowers; 'T is Wisdom's self the cup that fills In spite of Folly's frown, And Nature, from her vine-clad hills, That rains her life-blood down! Then once again, before we part, My empty glass shall ring; And he that has the warmest heart Shall loudest laugh and sing. SONG FOR A TEMPERANCE DINNER TO WHICH LADIES WERE INVITED (NEW YORK MERCANTILE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, NOVEMBER, 1842) A HEALTH to dear woman! She bids us untwine, From the cup it encircles, the fast-clinging vine; But her cheek in its crystal with pleasure will glow, And mirror its bloom in the bright wave below. A health to sweet woman! The days are no more When she watched for her lord till the revel was o'er, And smoothed the white pillow, and blushed when he came, As she pressed her cold lips on his forehead of flame. Alas for the loved one! too spotless and fair The joys of his banquet to chasten and share; Her eye lost its light that his goblet might shine, And the rose of her cheek was dissolved in his wine. Joy smiles in the fountain, health flows in the rills, As their ribbons of silver unwind from the hills; They breathe not the mist of the bacchanal's dream, But the lilies of innocence float on their stream. Then a health and a welcome to woman once more! She brings us a passport that laughs at our door; It is written on crimson,--its letters are pearls,-- It is countersigned Nature.--So, room for the Girls! A SENTIMENT THE pledge of Friendship! it is still divine, Though watery floods have quenched its burning wine; Whatever vase the sacred drops may hold, The gourd, the shell, the cup of beaten gold, Around its brim the hand of Nature throws A garland sweeter than the banquet's rose. Bright are the blushes of the vine-wreathed bowl, Warm with the sunshine of Anacreon's soul, But dearer memories gild the tasteless wave That fainting Sidney perished as he gave. 'T is the heart's current lends the cup its glow, Whate'er the fountain whence the draught may flow,-- The diamond dew-drops sparkling through the sand, Scooped by the Arab in his sunburnt hand, Or the dark streamlet oozing from the snow, Where creep and crouch the shuddering Esquimaux; Ay, in the stream that, ere again we meet, Shall burst the pavement, glistening at our feet, And, stealing silent from its leafy hills, Thread all our alleys with its thousand rills,-- In each pale draught if generous feeling blend, And o'er the goblet friend shall smile on friend, Even cold Cochituate every heart shall warm, And genial Nature still defy reform! A RHYMED LESSON (URANIA) This poem was delivered before the Boston Mercantile Library Association, October 14, 1846. YES, dear Enchantress,--wandering far and long, In realms unperfumed by the breath of song, Where flowers ill-flavored shed their sweets around, And bitterest roots invade the ungenial ground, Whose gems are crystals from the Epsom mine, Whose vineyards flow with antimonial wine, Whose gates admit no mirthful feature in, Save one gaunt mocker, the Sardonic grin, Whose pangs are real, not the woes of rhyme That blue-eyed misses warble out of time;-- Truant, not recreant to thy sacred claim, Older by reckoning, but in heart the same, Freed for a moment from the chains of toil, I tread once more thy consecrated soil; Here at thy feet my old allegiance own, Thy subject still, and loyal to thy throne! My dazzled glance explores the crowded hall; Alas, how vain to hope the smiles of all! I know my audience. All the gay and young Love the light antics of a playful tongue; And these, remembering some expansive line My lips let loose among the nuts and wine, Are all impatience till the opening pun Proclaims the witty shamfight is begun. Two fifths at least, if not the total half, Have come infuriate for an earthquake laugh; I know full well what alderman has tied His red bandanna tight about his side; I see the mother, who, aware that boys Perform their laughter with superfluous noise, Beside her kerchief brought an extra one To stop the explosions of her bursting son; I know a tailor, once a friend of mine, Expects great doings in the button line,-- For mirth's concussions rip the outward case, And plant the stitches in a tenderer place. I know my audience,--these shall have their due; A smile awaits them ere my song is through! I know myself. Not servile for applause, My Muse permits no deprecating clause; Modest or vain, she will not be denied One bold confession due to honest pride; And well she knows the drooping veil of song Shall save her boldness from the caviller's wrong. Her sweeter voice the Heavenly Maid imparts To tell the secrets of our aching hearts For this, a suppliant, captive, prostrate, bound, She kneels imploring at the feet of sound; For this, convulsed in thought's maternal pains, She loads her arms with rhyme's resounding chains; Faint though the music of her fetters be, It lends one charm,--her lips are ever free! Think not I come, in manhood's fiery noon, To steal his laurels from the stage buffoon; His sword of lath the harlequin may wield; Behold the star upon my lifted shield Though the just critic pass my humble name, And sweeter lips have drained the cup of fame, While my gay stanza pleased the banquet's lords, The soul within was tuned to deeper chords! Say, shall my arms, in other conflicts taught To swing aloft the ponderous mace of thought, Lift, in obedience to a school-girl's law, Mirth's tinsel wand or laughter's tickling straw? Say, shall I wound with satire's rankling spear The pure, warm hearts that bid me welcome here? No! while I wander through the land of dreams, To strive with great and play with trifling themes, Let some kind meaning fill the varied line. You have your judgment; will you trust to mine? . . . . . . . . . . Between two breaths what crowded mysteries lie,-- The first short gasp, the last and long-drawn sigh! Like phantoms painted on the magic slide, Forth from the darkness of the past we glide, As living shadows for a moment seen In airy pageant on the eternal screen, Traced by a ray from one unchanging flame, Then seek the dust and stillness whence we came. But whence and why, our trembling souls inquire, Caught these dim visions their awakening fire? Oh, who forgets when first the piercing thought Through childhood's musings found its way unsought? I AM;--I LIVE. The mystery and the fear When the dread question, WHAT HAS BROUGHT ME HERE? Burst through life's twilight, as before the sun Roll the deep thunders of the morning gun! Are angel faces, silent and serene, Bent on the conflicts of this little scene, Whose dream-like efforts, whose unreal strife, Are but the preludes to a larger life? Or does life's summer see the end of all, These leaves of being mouldering as they fall, As the old poet vaguely used to deem, As WESLEY questioned in his youthful dream? Oh, could such mockery reach our souls indeed, Give back the Pharaohs' or the Athenian's creed; Better than this a Heaven of man's device,-- The Indian's sports, the Moslem's paradise! Or is our being's only end and aim To add new glories to our Maker's name, As the poor insect, shrivelling in the blaze, Lends a faint sparkle to its streaming rays? Does earth send upward to the Eternal's ear The mingled discords of her jarring sphere To swell his anthem, while creation rings With notes of anguish from its shattered strings? Is it for this the immortal Artist means These conscious, throbbing, agonized machines? Dark is the soul whose sullen creed can bind In chains like these the all-embracing Mind; No! two-faced bigot, thou dost ill reprove The sensual, selfish, yet benignant Jove, And praise a tyrant throned in lonely pride, Who loves himself, and cares for naught beside; Who gave thee, summoned from primeval night, A thousand laws, and not a single right,-- A heart to feel, and quivering nerves to thrill, The sense of wrong, the death-defying will; Who girt thy senses with this goodly frame, Its earthly glories and its orbs of flame, Not for thyself, unworthy of a thought, Poor helpless victim of a life unsought, But all for him, unchanging and supreme, The heartless centre of thy frozen scheme. Trust not the teacher with his lying scroll, Who tears the charter of thy shuddering soul; The God of love, who gave the breath that warms All living dust in all its varied forms, Asks not the tribute of a world like this To fill the measure of his perfect bliss. Though winged with life through all its radiant shores, Creation flowed with unexhausted stores Cherub and seraph had not yet enjoyed; For this he called thee from the quickening void! Nor this alone; a larger gift was thine, A mightier purpose swelled his vast design Thought,--conscience,--will,--to make them all thine own, He rent a pillar from the eternal throne! Made in his image, thou must nobly dare The thorny crown of sovereignty to share. With eye uplifted, it is thine to view, From thine own centre, Heaven's o'erarching blue; So round thy heart a beaming circle lies No fiend can blot, no hypocrite disguise; From all its orbs one cheering voice is heard, Full to thine ear it bears the Father's word, Now, as in Eden where his first-born trod "Seek thine own welfare, true to man and God!" Think not too meanly of thy low estate; Thou hast a choice; to choose is to create! Remember whose the sacred lips that tell, Angels approve thee when thy choice is well; Remember, One, a judge of righteous men, Swore to spare Sodom if she held but ten! Use well the freedom which thy Master gave, (Think'st thou that Heaven can tolerate a slave?) And He who made thee to be just and true Will bless thee, love thee,--ay, respect thee too! Nature has placed thee on a changeful tide, To breast its waves, but not without a guide; Yet, as the needle will forget its aim, Jarred by the fury of the electric flame, As the true current it will falsely feel, Warped from its axis by a freight of steel; So will thy CONSCIENCE lose its balanced truth If passion's lightning fall upon thy youth, So the pure effluence quit its sacred hold Girt round too deeply with magnetic gold. Go to yon tower, where busy science plies Her vast antennae, feeling through the skies That little vernier on whose slender lines The midnight taper trembles as it shines, A silent index, tracks the planets' march In all their wanderings through the ethereal arch; Tells through the mist where dazzled Mercury burns, And marks the spot where Uranus returns. So, till by wrong or negligence effaced, The living index which thy Maker traced Repeats the line each starry Virtue draws Through the wide circuit of creation's laws; Still tracks unchanged the everlasting ray Where the dark shadows of temptation stray, But, once defaced, forgets the orbs of light, And leaves thee wandering o'er the expanse of night. "What is thy creed?" a hundred lips inquire; "Thou seekest God beneath what Christian spire?" Nor ask they idly, for uncounted lies Float upward on the smoke of sacrifice; When man's first incense rose above the plain, Of earth's two altars one was built by Cain! Uncursed by doubt, our earliest creed we take; We love the precepts for the teacher's sake; The simple lessons which the nursery taught Fell soft and stainless on the buds of thought, And the full blossom owes its fairest hue To those sweet tear-drops of affection's dew. Too oft the light that led our earlier hours Fades with the perfume of our cradle flowers; The clear, cold question chills to frozen doubt; Tired of beliefs, we dread to live without Oh then, if Reason waver at thy side, Let humbler Memory be thy gentle guide; Go to thy birthplace, and, if faith was there, Repeat thy father's creed, thy mother's prayer! Faith loves to lean on Time's destroying arm, And age, like distance, lends a double charm; In dim cathedrals, dark with vaulted gloom, What holy awe invests the saintly tomb! There pride will bow, and anxious care expand, And creeping avarice come with open hand; The gay can weep, the impious can adore, From morn's first glimmerings on the chancel floor Till dying sunset sheds his crimson stains Through the faint halos of the irised panes. Yet there are graves, whose rudely-shapen sod Bears the fresh footprints where the sexton trod; Graves where the verdure has not dared to shoot, Where the chance wild-flower has not fixed its root, Whose slumbering tenants, dead without a name, The eternal record shall at length proclaim Pure as the holiest in the long array Of hooded, mitred, or tiaraed clay! Come, seek the air; some pictures we may gain Whose passing shadows shall not be in vain; Not from the scenes that crowd the stranger's soil, Not from our own amidst the stir of toil, But when the Sabbath brings its kind release, And Care lies slumbering on the lap of Peace. The air is hushed, the street is holy ground; Hark! The sweet bells renew their welcome sound As one by one awakes each silent tongue, It tells the turret whence its voice is flung. The Chapel, last of sublunary things That stirs our echoes with the name of Kings, Whose bell, just glistening from the font and forge, Rolled its proud requiem for the second George, Solemn and swelling, as of old it rang, Flings to the wind its deep, sonorous clang; The simpler pile, that, mindful of the hour When Howe's artillery shook its half-built tower, Wears on its bosom, as a bride might do, The iron breastpin which the "Rebels" threw, Wakes the sharp echoes with the quivering thrill Of keen vibrations, tremulous and shrill; Aloft, suspended in the morning's fire, Crash the vast cymbals from the Southern spire; The Giant, standing by the elm-clad green, His white lance lifted o'er the silent scene, Whirling in air his brazen goblet round, Swings from its brim the swollen floods of sound; While, sad with memories of the olden time, Throbs from his tower the Northern Minstrel's chime,-- Faint, single tones, that spell their ancient song, But tears still follow as they breathe along. Child of the soil, whom fortune sends to range Where man and nature, faith and customs change, Borne in thy memory, each familiar tone Mourns on the winds that sigh in every zone. When Ceylon sweeps thee with her perfumed breeze Through the warm billows of the Indian seas; When--ship and shadow blended both in one-- Flames o'er thy mast the equatorial sun, From sparkling midnight to refulgent noon Thy canvas swelling with the still monsoon; When through thy shrouds the wild tornado sings, And thy poor sea-bird folds her tattered wings,-- Oft will delusion o'er thy senses steal, And airy echoes ring the Sabbath peal Then, dim with grateful tears, in long array Rise the fair town, the island-studded bay, Home, with its smiling board, its cheering fire, The half-choked welcome of the expecting sire, The mother's kiss, and, still if aught remain, Our whispering hearts shall aid the silent strain. Ah, let the dreamer o'er the taffrail lean To muse unheeded, and to weep unseen; Fear not the tropic's dews, the evening's chills, His heart lies warm among his triple hills! Turned from her path by this deceitful gleam, My wayward fancy half forgets her theme. See through the streets that slumbered in repose The living current of devotion flows, Its varied forms in one harmonious band Age leading childhood by its dimpled hand; Want, in the robe whose faded edges fall To tell of rags beneath the tartan shawl; And wealth, in silks that, fluttering to appear, Lift the deep borders of the proud cashmere. See, but glance briefly, sorrow-worn and pale, Those sunken cheeks beneath the widow's veil; Alone she wanders where with HIM she trod, No arm to stay her, but she leans on God. While other doublets deviate here and there, What secret handcuff binds that pretty pair? Compactest couple! pressing side to side,-- Ah, the white bonnet that reveals the bride! By the white neckcloth, with its straitened tie, The sober hat, the Sabbath-speaking eye, Severe and smileless, he that runs may read The stern disciple of Geneva's creed Decent and slow, behold his solemn march; Silent he enters through yon crowded arch. A livelier bearing of the outward man, The light-hued gloves, the undevout rattan, Now smartly raised or half profanely twirled,-- A bright, fresh twinkle from the week-day world,-- Tell their plain story; yes, thine eyes behold A cheerful Christian from the liberal fold. Down the chill street that curves in gloomiest shade What marks betray yon solitary maid? The cheek's red rose that speaks of balmier air, The Celtic hue that shades her braided hair, The gilded missal in her kerchief tied,-- Poor Nora, exile from Killarney's side! Sister in toil, though blanched by colder skies, That left their azure in her downcast eyes, See pallid Margaret, Labor's patient child, Scarce weaned from home, the nursling of the wild, Where white Katahdin o'er the horizon shines, And broad Penobscot dashes through the pines. Still, as she hastes, her careful fingers hold The unfailing hymn-book in its cambric fold. Six days at drudgery's heavy wheel she stands, The seventh sweet morning folds her weary hands. Yes, child of suffering, thou mayst well be sure He who ordained the Sabbath loves the poor! This weekly picture faithful Memory draws, Nor claims the noisy tribute of applause; Faint is the glow such barren hopes can lend, And frail the line that asks no loftier end. Trust me, kind listener, I will yet beguile Thy saddened features of the promised smile. This magic mantle thou must well divide, It has its sable and its ermine side; Yet, ere the lining of the robe appears, Take thou in silence what I give in tears. Dear listening soul, this transitory scene Of murmuring stillness, busily serene,-- This solemn pause, the breathing-space of man, The halt of toil's exhausted caravan,-- Comes sweet with music to thy wearied ear; Rise with its anthems to a holier sphere! Deal meekly, gently, with the hopes that guide The lowliest brother straying from thy side If right, they bid thee tremble for thine own; If wrong, the verdict is for God alone. What though the champions of thy faith esteem The sprinkled fountain or baptismal stream; Shall jealous passions in unseemly strife Cross their dark weapons o'er the waves of life? Let my free soul, expanding as it can, Leave to his scheme the thoughtful Puritan; But Calvin's dogma shall my lips deride? In that stern faith my angel Mary died; Or ask if mercy's milder creed can save, Sweet sister, risen from thy new-made grave? True, the harsh founders of thy church reviled That ancient faith, the trust of Erin's child; Must thou be raking in the crumbled past For racks and fagots in her teeth to cast? See from the ashes of Helvetia's pile The whitened skull of old Servetus smile! Round her young heart thy "Romish Upas" threw Its firm, deep fibres, strengthening as she grew; Thy sneering voice may call them "Popish tricks," Her Latin prayers, her dangling crucifix, But De Profundis blessed her father's grave, That "idol" cross her dying mother gave! What if some angel looks with equal eyes On her and thee, the simple and the wise, Writes each dark fault against thy brighter creed, And drops a tear with every foolish bead! Grieve, as thou must, o'er history's reeking page; Blush for the wrongs that stain thy happier age; Strive with the wanderer from the better path, Bearing thy message meekly, not in wrath; Weep for the frail that err, the weak that fall, Have thine own faith,--but hope and pray for all! Faith; Conscience; Love. A meaner task remains, And humbler thoughts must creep in lowlier strains. Shalt thou be honest? Ask the worldly schools, And all will tell thee knaves are busier fools; Prudent? Industrious? Let not modern pens Instruct "Poor Richard's" fellow-citizens. Be firm! One constant element in luck Is genuine solid old Teutonic pluck. See yon tall shaft; it felt the earthquake's thrill, Clung to its base, and greets the sunrise still. Stick to your aim: the mongrel's hold will slip, But only crowbars loose the bulldog's grip; Small as he looks, the jaw that never yields Drags down the bellowing monarch of the fields! Yet in opinions look not always back,-- Your wake is nothing, mind the coming track; Leave what you've done for what you have to do; Don't be "consistent," but be simply true. Don't catch the fidgets; you have found your place Just in the focus of a nervous race, Fretful to change and rabid to discuss, Full of excitements, always in a fuss. Think of the patriarchs; then compare as men These lean-cheeked maniacs of the tongue and pen! Run, if you like, but try to keep your breath; Work like a man, but don't be worked to death; And with new notions,--let me change the rule,-- Don't strike the iron till it 's slightly cool. Choose well your set; our feeble nature seeks The aid of clubs, the countenance of cliques; And with this object settle first of all Your weight of metal and your size of ball. Track not the steps of such as hold you cheap, Too mean to prize, though good enough to keep; The "real, genuine, no-mistake Tom Thumbs" Are little people fed on great men's crumbs. Yet keep no followers of that hateful brood That basely mingles with its wholesome food The tumid reptile, which, the poet said, Doth wear a precious jewel in his head. If the wild filly, "Progress," thou wouldst ride, Have young companions ever at thy side; But wouldst thou stride the stanch old mare, "Success," Go with thine elders, though they please thee less. Shun such as lounge through afternoons and eves, And on thy dial write, "Beware of thieves!" Felon of minutes, never taught to feel The worth of treasures which thy fingers steal, Pick my left pocket of its silver dime, But spare the right,--it holds my golden time! Does praise delight thee? Choose some _ultra_ side,-- A sure old recipe, and often tried; Be its apostle, congressman, or bard, Spokesman or jokesman, only drive it hard; But know the forfeit which thy choice abides, For on two wheels the poor reformer rides,-- One black with epithets the _anti_ throws, One white with flattery painted by the pros. Though books on MANNERS are not out of print, An honest tongue may drop a harmless hint. Stop not, unthinking, every friend you meet, To spin your wordy fabric in the street; While you are emptying your colloquial pack, The fiend Lumbago jumps upon his back. Nor cloud his features with the unwelcome tale Of how he looks, if haply thin and pale; Health is a subject for his child, his wife, And the rude office that insures his life. Look in his face, to meet thy neighbor's soul, Not on his garments, to detect a hole; "How to observe" is what thy pages show, Pride of thy sex, Miss Harriet Martineau! Oh, what a precious book the one would be That taught observers what they 're NOT to see! I tell in verse--'t were better done in prose-- One curious trick that everybody knows; Once form this habit, and it's very strange How long it sticks, how hard it is to change. Two friendly people, both disposed to smile, Who meet, like others, every little while, Instead of passing with a pleasant bow, And "How d' ye do?" or "How 's your uncle now?" Impelled by feelings in their nature kind, But slightly weak and somewhat undefined, Rush at each other, make a sudden stand, Begin to talk, expatiate, and expand; Each looks quite radiant, seems extremely struck, Their meeting so was such a piece of luck; Each thinks the other thinks he 's greatly pleased To screw the vice in which they both are squeezed; So there they talk, in dust, or mud, or snow, Both bored to death, and both afraid to go! Your hat once lifted, do not hang your fire, Nor, like slow Ajax, fighting still, retire; When your old castor on your crown you clap, Go off; you've mounted your percussion cap. Some words on LANGUAGE may be well applied, And take them kindly, though they touch your pride. Words lead to things; a scale is more precise,-- Coarse speech, bad grammar, swearing, drinking, vice. Our cold Northeaster's icy fetter clips The native freedom of the Saxon lips; See the brown peasant of the plastic South, How all his passions play about his mouth! With us, the feature that transmits the soul, A frozen, passive, palsied breathing-hole. The crampy shackles of the ploughboy's walk Tie the small muscles when he strives to talk; Not all the pumice of the polished town Can smooth this roughness of the barnyard down; Rich, honored, titled, he betrays his race By this one mark,--he's awkward in the face;-- Nature's rude impress, long before he knew The sunny street that holds the sifted few. It can't be helped, though, if we're taken young, We gain some freedom of the lips and tongue; But school and college often try in vain To break the padlock of our boyhood's chain One stubborn word will prove this axiom true,-- No quondam rustic can enunciate view. A few brief stanzas may be well employed To speak of errors we can all avoid. Learning condemns beyond the reach of hope The careless lips that speak of so'ap for soap; Her edict exiles from her fair abode The clownish voice that utters ro'ad for road Less stern to him who calls his coat a co'at, And steers his boat, believing it a bo'at, She pardoned one, our classic city's boast, Who said at Cambridge mo'st instead of most, But knit her brows and stamped her angry foot To hear a Teacher call a root a ro'ot. Once more: speak clearly, if you speak at all; Carve every word before you let it fall; Don't, like a lecturer or dramatic star, Try over-hard to roll the British R; Do put your accents in the proper spot; Don't,--let me beg you,--don't say "How?" for "What?" And when you stick on conversation's burs, Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful _urs_. From little matters let us pass to less, And lightly touch the mysteries of DRESS; The outward forms the inner man reveal,-- We guess the pulp before we cut the peel. I leave the broadcloth,--coats and all the rest,-- The dangerous waistcoat, called by cockneys "vest," The things named "pants" in certain documents, A word not made for gentlemen, but "gents;" One single precept might the whole condense Be sure your tailor is a man of sense; But add a little care, a decent pride, And always err upon the sober side. Three pairs of boots one pair of feet demands, If polished daily by the owner's hands; If the dark menial's visit save from this, Have twice the number,--for he 'll sometimes miss. One pair for critics of the nicer sex, Close in the instep's clinging circumflex, Long, narrow, light; the Gallic boot of love, A kind of cross between a boot and glove. Compact, but easy, strong, substantial, square, Let native art compile the medium pair. The third remains, and let your tasteful skill Here show some relics of affection still; Let no stiff cowhide, reeking from the tan, No rough caoutchoue, no deformed brogan, Disgrace the tapering outline of your feet, Though yellow torrents gurgle through the street. Wear seemly gloves; not black, nor yet too light, And least of all the pair that once was white; Let the dead party where you told your loves Bury in peace its dead bouquets and gloves; Shave like the goat, if so your fancy bids, But be a parent,--don't neglect your kids. Have a good hat; the secret of your looks Lives with the beaver in Canadian brooks; Virtue may flourish in an old cravat, But man and nature scorn the shocking hat. Does beauty slight you from her gay abodes? Like bright Apollo, you must take to Rhoades,-- Mount the new castor,--ice itself will melt; Boots, gloves, may fail; the hat is always felt. Be shy of breastpins; plain, well-ironed white, With small pearl buttons,--two of them in sight,-- Is always genuine, while your gems may pass, Though real diamonds, for ignoble glass. But spurn those paltry Cisatlantic lies That round his breast the shabby rustic ties; Breathe not the name profaned to hallow things The indignant laundress blushes when she brings! Our freeborn race, averse to every check, Has tossed the yoke of Europe from its _neck_; From the green prairie to the sea-girt town, The whole wide nation turns its collars down. The stately neck is manhood's manliest part; It takes the life-blood freshest from the heart. With short, curled ringlets close around it spread, How light and strong it lifts the Grecian head! Thine, fair Erechtheus of Minerva's wall; Or thine, young athlete of the Louvre's hall, Smooth as the pillar flashing in the sun That filled the arena where thy wreaths were won, Firm as the band that clasps the antlered spoil Strained in the winding anaconda's coil I spare the contrast; it were only kind To be a little, nay, intensely blind. Choose for yourself: I know it cuts your ear; I know the points will sometimes interfere; I know that often, like the filial John, Whom sleep surprised with half his drapery on, You show your features to the astonished town With one side standing and the other down;-- But, O, my friend! my favorite fellow-man! If Nature made you on her modern plan, Sooner than wander with your windpipe bare,-- The fruit of Eden ripening in the air,-- With that lean head-stalk, that protruding chin, Wear standing collars, were they made of tin! And have a neckcloth--by the throat of Jove!-- Cut from the funnel of a rusty stove! The long-drawn lesson narrows to its close, Chill, slender, slow, the dwindled current flows; Tired of the ripples on its feeble springs, Once more the Muse unfolds her upward wings. Land of my birth, with this unhallowed tongue, Thy hopes, thy dangers, I perchance had sung; But who shall sing, in brutal disregard Of all the essentials of the "native bard"? Lake, sea, shore, prairie, forest, mountain, fall, His eye omnivorous must devour them all; The tallest summits and the broadest tides His foot must compass with its giant strides, Where Ocean thunders, where Missouri rolls, And tread at once the tropics and the poles; His food all forms of earth, fire, water, air, His home all space, his birthplace everywhere. Some grave compatriot, having seen perhaps The pictured page that goes in Worcester's Maps, And, read in earnest what was said in jest, "Who drives fat oxen"--please to add the rest,-- Sprung the odd notion that the poet's dreams Grow in the ratio of his hills and streams; And hence insisted that the aforesaid "bard," Pink of the future, fancy's pattern-card, The babe of nature in the "giant West," Must be of course her biggest and her best. Oh! when at length the expected bard shall come, Land of our pride, to strike thine echoes dumb, (And many a voice exclaims in prose and rhyme, It's getting late, and he's behind his time,) When all thy mountains clap their hands in joy, And all thy cataracts thunder, "That 's the boy,"-- Say if with him the reign of song shall end, And Heaven declare its final dividend! Becalm, dear brother! whose impassioned strain Comes from an alley watered by a drain; The little Mincio, dribbling to the Po, Beats all the epics of the Hoang Ho; If loved in earnest by the tuneful maid, Don't mind their nonsense,--never be afraid! The nurse of poets feeds her winged brood By common firesides, on familiar food; In a low hamlet, by a narrow stream, Where bovine rustics used to doze and dream, She filled young William's fiery fancy full, While old John Shakespeare talked of beeves and wool! No Alpine needle, with its climbing spire, Brings down for mortals the Promethean fire, If careless nature have forgot to frame An altar worthy of the sacred flame. Unblest by any save the goatherd's lines, Mont Blanc rose soaring through his "sea of pines;" In vain the rivers from their ice-caves flash; No hymn salutes them but the Ranz des Vaches, Till lazy Coleridge, by the morning's light, Gazed for a moment on the fields of white, And lo! the glaciers found at length a tongue, Mont Blanc was vocal, and Chamouni sung! Children of wealth or want, to each is given One spot of green, and all the blue of heaven! Enough if these their outward shows impart; The rest is thine,--the scenery of the heart. If passion's hectic in thy stanzas glow, Thy heart's best life-blood ebbing as they flow; If with thy verse thy strength and bloom distil, Drained by the pulses of the fevered thrill; If sound's sweet effluence polarize thy brain, And thoughts turn crystals in thy fluid strain,-- Nor rolling ocean, nor the prairie's bloom, Nor streaming cliffs, nor rayless cavern's gloom, Need'st thou, young poet, to inform thy line; Thy own broad signet stamps thy song divine! Let others gaze where silvery streams are rolled, And chase the rainbow for its cup of gold; To thee all landscapes wear a heavenly dye, Changed in the glance of thy prismatic eye; Nature evoked thee in sublimer throes, For thee her inmost Arethusa flows,-- The mighty mother's living depths are stirred,-- Thou art the starred Osiris of the herd! A few brief lines; they touch on solemn chords, And hearts may leap to hear their honest words; Yet, ere the jarring bugle-blast is blown, The softer lyre shall breathe its soothing tone. New England! proudly may thy children claim Their honored birthright by its humblest name Cold are thy skies, but, ever fresh and clear, No rank malaria stains thine atmosphere; No fungous weeds invade thy scanty soil, Scarred by the ploughshares of unslumbering toil. Long may the doctrines by thy sages taught, Raised from the quarries where their sires have wrought, Be like the granite of thy rock-ribbed land,-- As slow to rear, as obdurate to stand; And as the ice that leaves thy crystal mine Chills the fierce alcohol in the Creole's wine, So may the doctrines of thy sober school Keep the hot theories of thy neighbors cool! If ever, trampling on her ancient path, Cankered by treachery or inflamed by wrath, With smooth "Resolves" or with discordant cries, The mad Briareus of disunion rise, Chiefs of New England! by your sires' renown, Dash the red torches of the rebel down! Flood his black hearthstone till its flames expire, Though your old Sachem fanned his council-fire! But if at last, her fading cycle run, The tongue must forfeit what the arm has won, Then rise, wild Ocean! roll thy surging shock Full on old Plymouth's desecrated rock! Scale the proud shaft degenerate hands have hewn, Where bleeding Valor stained the flowers of June! Sweep in one tide her spires and turrets down, And howl her dirge above Monadnock's crown! List not the tale; the Pilgrim's hallowed shore, Though strewn with weeds, is granite at the core; Oh, rather trust that He who made her free Will keep her true as long as faith shall be! Farewell! yet lingering through the destined hour, Leave, sweet Enchantress, one memorial flower! An Angel, floating o'er the waste of snow That clad our Western desert, long ago, (The same fair spirit who, unseen by day, Shone as a star along the Mayflower's way,)-- Sent, the first herald of the Heavenly plan, To choose on earth a resting-place for man,-- Tired with his flight along the unvaried field, Turned to soar upwards, when his glance revealed A calm, bright bay enclosed in rocky bounds, And at its entrance stood three sister mounds. The Angel spake: "This threefold hill shall be The home of Arts, the nurse of Liberty! One stately summit from its shaft shall pour Its deep-red blaze along the darkened shore; Emblem of thoughts that, kindling far and wide, In danger's night shall be a nation's guide. One swelling crest the citadel shall crown, Its slanted bastions black with battle's frown, And bid the sons that tread its scowling heights Bare their strong arms for man and all his rights! One silent steep along the northern wave Shall hold the patriarch's and the hero's grave; When fades the torch, when o'er the peaceful scene The embattled fortress smiles in living green, The cross of Faith, the anchor staff of Hope, Shall stand eternal on its grassy slope; There through all time shall faithful Memory tell, 'Here Virtue toiled, and Patriot Valor fell; Thy free, proud fathers slumber at thy side; Live as they lived, or perish as they died!'" AN AFTER-DINNER POEM (TERPSICHORE) Read at the Annual Dinner of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 24, 1843. IN narrowest girdle, O reluctant Muse, In closest frock and Cinderella shoes, Bound to the foot-lights for thy brief display, One zephyr step, and then dissolve away! . . . . . . . . . . Short is the space that gods and men can spare To Song's twin brother when she is not there. Let others water every lusty line, As Homer's heroes did their purple wine; Pierian revellers! Know in strains like these The native juice, the real honest squeeze,--- Strains that, diluted to the twentieth power, In yon grave temple might have filled an hour. Small room for Fancy's many-chorded lyre, For Wit's bright rockets with their trains of fire, For Pathos, struggling vainly to surprise The iron tutor's tear-denying eyes, For Mirth, whose finger with delusive wile Turns the grim key of many a rusty smile, For Satire, emptying his corrosive flood On hissing Folly's gas-exhaling brood, The pun, the fun, the moral, and the joke, The hit, the thrust, the pugilistic poke,-- Small space for these, so pressed by niggard Time, Like that false matron, known to nursery rhyme,-- Insidious Morey,--scarce her tale begun, Ere listening infants weep the story done. Oh, had we room to rip the mighty bags That Time, the harlequin, has stuffed with rags! Grant us one moment to unloose the strings, While the old graybeard shuts his leather wings. But what a heap of motley trash appears Crammed in the bundles of successive years! As the lost rustic on some festal day Stares through the concourse in its vast array,-- Where in one cake a throng of faces runs, All stuck together like a sheet of buns,-- And throws the bait of some unheeded name, Or shoots a wink with most uncertain aim, So roams my vision, wandering over all, And strives to choose, but knows not where to fall. Skins of flayed authors, husks of dead reviews, The turn-coat's clothes, the office-seeker's shoes, Scraps from cold feasts, where conversation runs Through mouldy toasts to oxidated puns, And grating songs a listening crowd endures, Rasped from the throats of bellowing amateurs; Sermons, whose writers played such dangerous tricks Their own heresiarchs called them heretics, (Strange that one term such distant poles should link, The Priestleyan's copper and the Puseyan's zinc); Poems that shuffle with superfluous legs A blindfold minuet over addled eggs, Where all the syllables that end in ed, Like old dragoons, have cuts across the head; Essays so dark Champollion might despair To guess what mummy of a thought was there, Where our poor English, striped with foreign phrase, Looks like a zebra in a parson's chaise; Lectures that cut our dinners down to roots, Or prove (by monkeys) men should stick to fruits,-- Delusive error, as at trifling charge Professor Gripes will certify at large; Mesmeric pamphlets, which to facts appeal, Each fact as slippery as a fresh-caught eel; And figured heads, whose hieroglyphs invite To wandering knaves that discount fools at sight: Such things as these, with heaps of unpaid bills, And candy puffs and homoeopathic pills, And ancient bell-crowns with contracted rim, And bonnets hideous with expanded brim, And coats whose memory turns the sartor pale, Their sequels tapering like a lizard's tale,-- How might we spread them to the smiling day, And toss them, fluttering like the new-mown hay, To laughter's light or sorrow's pitying shower, Were these brief minutes lengthened to an hour. The narrow moments fit like Sunday shoes,-- How vast the heap, how quickly must we choose! A few small scraps from out his mountain mass We snatch in haste, and let the vagrant pass. This shrunken CRUST that Cerberus could not bite, Stamped (in one corner) "Pickwick copyright," Kneaded by youngsters, raised by flattery's yeast, Was once a loaf, and helped to make a feast. He for whose sake the glittering show appears Has sown the world with laughter and with tears, And they whose welcome wets the bumper's brim Have wit and wisdom,--for they all quote him. So, many a tongue the evening hour prolongs With spangled speeches,--let alone the songs; Statesmen grow merry, lean attorneys laugh, And weak teetotals warm to half and half, And beardless Tullys, new to festive scenes, Cut their first crop of youth's precocious greens, And wits stand ready for impromptu claps, With loaded barrels and percussion caps, And Pathos, cantering through the minor keys, Waves all her onions to the trembling breeze; While the great Feasted views with silent glee His scattered limbs in Yankee fricassee. Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays The pleasing game of interchanging praise. Self-love, grimalkin of the human heart, Is ever pliant to the master's art; Soothed with a word, she peacefully withdraws And sheathes in velvet her obnoxious claws, And thrills the hand that smooths her glossy fur With the light tremor of her grateful purr. But what sad music fills the quiet hall, If on her back a feline rival fall! And oh, what noises shake the tranquil house If old Self-interest cheats her of a mouse. Thou, O my country, hast thy foolish ways, Too apt to purr at every stranger's praise; But if the stranger touch thy modes or laws, Off goes the velvet and out come the claws! And thou, Illustrious! but too poorly paid In toasts from Pickwick for thy great crusade, Though, while the echoes labored with thy name, The public trap denied thy little game, Let other lips our jealous laws revile,-- The marble Talfourd or the rude Carlyle,-- But on thy lids, which Heaven forbids to close Where'er the light of kindly nature glows, Let not the dollars that a churl denies Weigh like the shillings on a dead man's eyes! Or, if thou wilt, be more discreetly blind, Nor ask to see all wide extremes combined. Not in our wastes the dainty blossoms smile That crowd the gardens of thy scanty isle. There white-cheeked Luxury weaves a thousand charms; Here sun-browned Labor swings his naked arms. Long are the furrows he must trace between The ocean's azure and the prairie's green; Full many a blank his destined realm displays, Yet sees the promise of his riper days Far through yon depths the panting engine moves, His chariots ringing in their steel-shod grooves; And Erie's naiad flings her diamond wave O'er the wild sea-nymph in her distant cave! While tasks like these employ his anxious hours, What if his cornfields are not edged with flowers? Though bright as silver the meridian beams Shine through the crystal of thine English streams, Turbid and dark the mighty wave is whirled That drains our Andes and divides a world! But lo! a PARCHMENT! Surely it would seem The sculptured impress speaks of power supreme; Some grave design the solemn page must claim That shows so broadly an emblazoned name. A sovereign's promise! Look, the lines afford All Honor gives when Caution asks his word: There sacred Faith has laid her snow-white hands, And awful Justice knit her iron bands; Yet every leaf is stained with treachery's dye, And every letter crusted with a lie. Alas! no treason has degraded yet The Arab's salt, the Indian's calumet; A simple rite, that bears the wanderer's pledge, Blunts the keen shaft and turns the dagger's edge; While jockeying senates stop to sign and seal, And freeborn statesmen legislate to steal. Rise, Europe, tottering with thine Atlas load, Turn thy proud eye to Freedom's blest abode, And round her forehead, wreathed with heavenly flame, Bind the dark garland of her daughter's shame! Ye ocean clouds, that wrap the angry blast, Coil her stained ensign round its haughty mast, Or tear the fold that wears so foul a scar, And drive a bolt through every blackened star! Once more,--once only,--- we must stop so soon: What have we here? A GERMAN-SILVER SPOON; A cheap utensil, which we often see Used by the dabblers in aesthetic tea, Of slender fabric, somewhat light and thin, Made of mixed metal, chiefly lead and tin; The bowl is shallow, and the handle small, Marked in large letters with the name JEAN PAUL. Small as it is, its powers are passing strange, For all who use it show a wondrous change; And first, a fact to make the barbers stare, It beats Macassar for the growth of hair. See those small youngsters whose expansive ears Maternal kindness grazed with frequent shears; Each bristling crop a dangling mass becomes, And all the spoonies turn to Absaloms Nor this alone its magic power displays, It alters strangely all their works and ways; With uncouth words they tire their tender lungs, The same bald phrases on their hundred tongues "Ever" "The Ages" in their page appear, "Alway" the bedlamite is called a "Seer;" On every leaf the "earnest" sage may scan, Portentous bore! their "many-sided" man,-- A weak eclectic, groping vague and dim, Whose every angle is a half-starved whim, Blind as a mole and curious as a lynx, Who rides a beetle, which he calls a "Sphinx." And oh, what questions asked in clubfoot rhyme Of Earth the tongueless and the deaf-mute Time! Here babbling "Insight" shouts in Nature's ears His last conundrum on the orbs and spheres; There Self-inspection sucks its little thumb, With "Whence am I?" and "Wherefore did I come?" Deluded infants! will they ever know Some doubts must darken o'er the world below, Though all the Platos of the nursery trail Their "clouds of glory" at the go-cart's tail? Oh might these couplets their attention claim That gain their author the Philistine's name (A stubborn race, that, spurning foreign law, Was much belabored with an ass's jaw.) Melodious Laura! From the sad retreats That hold thee, smothered with excess of sweets, Shade of a shadow, spectre of a dream, Glance thy wan eye across the Stygian stream! The slipshod dreamer treads thy fragrant halls, The sophist's cobwebs hang thy roseate walls, And o'er the crotchets of thy jingling tunes The bard of mystery scrawls his crooked "runes." Yes, thou art gone, with all the tuneful hordes That candied thoughts in amber-colored words, And in the precincts of thy late abodes The clattering verse-wright hammers Orphic odes. Thou, soft as zephyr, wast content to fly On the gilt pinions of a balmy sigh; He, vast as Phoebus on his burning wheels, Would stride through ether at Orion's heels. Thy emblem, Laura, was a perfume-jar, And thine, young Orpheus, is a pewter star. The balance trembles,--be its verdict told When the new jargon slumbers with the old! . . . . . . . . Cease, playful goddess! From thine airy bound Drop like a feather softly to the ground; This light bolero grows a ticklish dance, And there is mischief in thy kindling glance. To-morrow bids thee, with rebuking frown, Change thy gauze tunic for a home-made gown, Too blest by fortune if the passing day Adorn thy bosom with its frail bouquet, But oh, still happier if the next forgets Thy daring steps and dangerous pirouettes! MEDICAL POEMS THE MORNING VISIT A sick man's chamber, though it often boast The grateful presence of a literal toast, Can hardly claim, amidst its various wealth, The right unchallenged to propose a health; Yet though its tenant is denied the feast, Friendship must launch his sentiment at least, As prisoned damsels, locked from lovers' lips, Toss them a kiss from off their fingers' tips. The morning visit,--not till sickness falls In the charmed circles of your own safe walls; Till fever's throb and pain's relentless rack Stretch you all helpless on your aching back; Not till you play the patient in your turn, The morning visit's mystery shall you learn. 'T is a small matter in your neighbor's case, To charge your fee for showing him your face; You skip up-stairs, inquire, inspect, and touch, Prescribe, take leave, and off to twenty such. But when at length, by fate's transferred decree, The visitor becomes the visitee, Oh, then, indeed, it pulls another string; Your ox is gored, and that's a different thing! Your friend is sick: phlegmatic as a Turk, You write your recipe and let it work; Not yours to stand the shiver and the frown, And sometimes worse, with which your draught goes down. Calm as a clock your knowing hand directs, _Rhei, jalapae ana grana sex_, Or traces on some tender missive's back, _Scrupulos duos pulveris ipecac_; And leaves your patient to his qualms and gripes, Cool as a sportsman banging at his snipes. But change the time, the person, and the place, And be yourself "the interesting case," You'll gain some knowledge which it's well to learn; In future practice it may serve your turn. Leeches, for instance,--pleasing creatures quite; Try them,--and bless you,--don't you find they bite? You raise a blister for the smallest cause, But be yourself the sitter whom it draws, And trust my statement, you will not deny The worst of draughtsmen is your Spanish fly! It's mighty easy ordering when you please, _Infusi sennae capiat uncias tres_; It's mighty different when you quackle down Your own three ounces of the liquid brown. _Pilula, pulvis_,--pleasant words enough, When other throats receive the shocking stuff; But oh, what flattery can disguise the groan That meets the gulp which sends it through your own! Be gentle, then, though Art's unsparing rules Give you the handling of her sharpest tools; Use them not rashly,--sickness is enough; Be always "ready," but be never "rough." Of all the ills that suffering man endures, The largest fraction liberal Nature cures; Of those remaining, 't is the smallest part Yields to the efforts of judicious Art; But simple _Kindness_, kneeling by the bed To shift the pillow for the sick man's head, Give the fresh draught to cool the lips that burn, Fan the hot brow, the weary frame to turn,-- Kindness, untutored by our grave M. D.'s, But Nature's graduate, when she schools to please, Wins back more sufferers with her voice and smile Than all the trumpery in the druggist's pile. Once more, be quiet: coming up the stair, Don't be a plantigrade, a human bear, But, stealing softly on the silent toe, Reach the sick chamber ere you're heard below. Whatever changes there may greet your eyes, Let not your looks proclaim the least surprise; It's not your business by your face to show All that your patient does not want to know; Nay, use your optics with considerate care, And don't abuse your privilege to stare. But if your eyes may probe him overmuch, Beware still further how you rudely touch; Don't clutch his carpus in your icy fist, But warm your fingers ere you take the wrist. If the poor victim needs must be percussed, Don't make an anvil of his aching bust; (Doctors exist within a hundred miles Who thump a thorax as they'd hammer piles;) If you must listen to his doubtful chest, Catch the essentials, and ignore the rest. Spare him; the sufferer wants of you and art A track to steer by, not a finished chart. So of your questions: don't in mercy try To pump your patient absolutely dry; He's not a mollusk squirming in a dish, You're not Agassiz; and he's not a fish. And last, not least, in each perplexing case, Learn the sweet magic of a cheerful face; Not always smiling, but at least serene, When grief and anguish cloud the anxious scene. Each look, each movement, every word and tone, Should tell your patient you are all his own; Not the mere artist, purchased to attend, But the warm, ready, self-forgetting friend, Whose genial visit in itself combines The best of cordials, tonics, anodynes. Such is the _visit_ that from day to day Sheds o'er my chamber its benignant ray. I give his health, who never cared to claim Her babbling homage from the tongue of Fame; Unmoved by praise, he stands by all confest, The truest, noblest, wisest, kindest, best. 1849. THE TWO ARMIES As Life's unending column pours, Two marshalled hosts are seen,-- Two armies on the trampled shores That Death flows black between. One marches to the drum-beat's roll, The wide-mouthed clarion's bray, And bears upon a crimson scroll, "Our glory is to slay." One moves in silence by the stream, With sad, yet watchful eyes, Calm as the patient planet's gleam That walks the clouded skies. Along its front no sabres shine, No blood-red pennons wave; Its banner bears the single line, "Our duty is to save." For those no death-bed's lingering shade; At Honor's trumpet-call, With knitted brow and lifted blade In Glory's arms they fall. For these no clashing falchions bright, No stirring battle-cry; The bloodless stabber calls by night,-- Each answers, "Here am I!" For those the sculptor's laurelled bust, The builder's marble piles, The anthems pealing o'er their dust Through long cathedral aisles. For these the blossom-sprinkled turf That floods the lonely graves When Spring rolls in her sea-green surf In flowery-foaming waves. Two paths lead upward from below, And angels wait above, Who count each burning life-drop's flow, Each falling tear of Love. Though from the Hero's bleeding breast Her pulses Freedom drew, Though the white lilies in her crest Sprang from that scarlet dew,-- While Valor's haughty champions wait Till all their scars are shown, Love walks unchallenged through the gate, To sit beside the Throne. THE STETHOSCOPE SONG A PROFESSIONAL BALLAD THERE was a young man in Boston town, He bought him a stethoscope nice and new, All mounted and finished and polished down, With an ivory cap and a stopper too. It happened a spider within did crawl, And spun him a web of ample size, Wherein there chanced one day to fall A couple of very imprudent flies. The first was a bottle-fly, big and blue, The second was smaller, and thin and long; So there was a concert between the two, Like an octave flute and a tavern gong. Now being from Paris but recently, This fine young man would show his skill; And so they gave him, his hand to try, A hospital patient extremely ill. Some said that his liver was short of bile, And some that his heart was over size, While some kept arguing, all the while, He was crammed with tubercles up to his eyes. This fine young man then up stepped he, And all the doctors made a pause; Said he, The man must die, you see, By the fifty-seventh of Louis's laws. But since the case is a desperate one, To explore his chest it may be well; For if he should die and it were not done, You know the autopsy would not tell. Then out his stethoscope he took, And on it placed his curious ear; Mon Dieu! said he, with a knowing look, Why, here is a sound that 's mighty queer. The bourdonnement is very clear,-- Amphoric buzzing, as I'm alive Five doctors took their turn to hear; Amphoric buzzing, said all the five. There's empyema beyond a doubt; We'll plunge a trocar in his side. The diagnosis was made out,-- They tapped the patient; so he died. Now such as hate new-fashioned toys Began to look extremely glum; They said that rattles were made for boys, And vowed that his buzzing was all a hum. There was an old lady had long been sick, And what was the matter none did know Her pulse was slow, though her tongue was quick; To her this knowing youth must go. So there the nice old lady sat, With phials and boxes all in a row; She asked the young doctor what he was at, To thump her and tumble her ruffles so. Now, when the stethoscope came out, The flies began to buzz and whiz Oh ho! the matter is clear, no doubt; An aneurism there plainly is. The bruit de rape and the bruit de scie And the bruit de diable are all combined; How happy Bouillaud would be, If he a case like this could find! Now, when the neighboring doctors found A case so rare had been descried, They every day her ribs did pound In squads of twenty; so she died. Then six young damsels, slight and frail, Received this kind young doctor's cares; They all were getting slim and pale, And short of breath on mounting stairs. They all made rhymes with "sighs" and "skies," And loathed their puddings and buttered rolls, And dieted, much to their friends' surprise, On pickles and pencils and chalk and coals. So fast their little hearts did bound, The frightened insects buzzed the more; So over all their chests he found The rale sifflant and the rale sonore. He shook his head. There's grave disease,-- I greatly fear you all must die; A slight post-mortem, if you please, Surviving friends would gratify. The six young damsels wept aloud, Which so prevailed on six young men That each his honest love avowed, Whereat they all got well again. This poor young man was all aghast; The price of stethoscopes came down; And so he was reduced at last To practise in a country town. The doctors being very sore, A stethoscope they did devise That had a rammer to clear the bore, With a knob at the end to kill the flies. Now use your ears, all you that can, But don't forget to mind your eyes, Or you may be cheated, like this young man, By a couple of silly, abnormal flies. EXTRACTS FROM A MEDICAL POEM THE STABILITY OF SCIENCE THE feeble sea-birds, blinded in the storms, On some tall lighthouse dash their little forms, And the rude granite scatters for their pains Those small deposits that were meant for brains. Yet the proud fabric in the morning's sun Stands all unconscious of the mischief done; Still the red beacon pours its evening rays For the lost pilot with as full a blaze,-- Nay, shines, all radiance, o'er the scattered fleet Of gulls and boobies brainless at its feet. I tell their fate, though courtesy disclaims To call our kind by such ungentle names; Yet, if your rashness bid you vainly dare, Think of their doom, ye simple, and beware. See where aloft its hoary forehead rears The towering pride of twice a thousand years! Far, far below the vast incumbent pile Sleeps the gray rock from art's AEgean isle Its massive courses, circling as they rise, Swell from the waves to mingle with the skies; There every quarry lends its marble spoil, And clustering ages blend their common toil; The Greek, the Roman, reared its ancient walls, The silent Arab arched its mystic halls; In that fair niche, by countless billows laved, Trace the deep lines that Sydenham engraved; On yon broad front that breasts the changing swell, Mark where the ponderous sledge of Hunter fell; By that square buttress look where Louis stands, The stone yet warm from his uplifted hands; And say, O Science, shall thy life-blood freeze, When fluttering folly flaps on walls like these? A PORTRAIT Thoughtful in youth, but not austere in age; Calm, but not cold, and cheerful though a sage; Too true to flatter and too kind to sneer, And only just when seemingly severe; So gently blending courtesy and art That wisdom's lips seemed borrowing friendship's heart. Taught by the sorrows that his age had known In others' trials to forget his own, As hour by hour his lengthened day declined, A sweeter radiance lingered o'er his mind. Cold were the lips that spoke his early praise, And hushed the voices of his morning days, Yet the same accents dwelt on every tongue, And love renewing kept him ever young. A SENTIMENT _O Bios Bpaxus_,--life is but a song; _H rexvn uakpn_,--art is wondrous long; Yet to the wise her paths are ever fair, And Patience smiles, though Genius may despair. Give us but knowledge, though by slow degrees, And blend our toil with moments bright as these; Let Friendship's accents cheer our doubtful way, And Love's pure planet lend its guiding ray,-- Our tardy Art shall wear an angel's wings, And life shall lengthen with the joy it brings! A POEM FOR THE MEETING OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION AT NEW YORK, MAY 5, 1853 I HOLD a letter in my hand,-- A flattering letter, more's the pity,-- By some contriving junto planned, And signed _per order of Committee_. It touches every tenderest spot,-- My patriotic predilections, My well-known-something--don't ask what,-- My poor old songs, my kind affections. They make a feast on Thursday next, And hope to make the feasters merry; They own they're something more perplexed For poets than for port and sherry. They want the men of--(word torn out); Our friends will come with anxious faces, (To see our blankets off, no doubt, And trot us out and show our paces.) They hint that papers by the score Are rather musty kind of rations,-- They don't exactly mean a bore, But only trying to the patience; That such as--you know who I mean-- Distinguished for their--what d' ye call 'em-- Should bring the dews of Hippocrene To sprinkle on the faces solemn. --The same old story: that's the chaff To catch the birds that sing the ditties; Upon my soul, it makes me laugh To read these letters from Committees! They're all so loving and so fair,-- All for your sake such kind compunction; 'T would save your carriage half its wear To touch its wheels with such an unction! Why, who am I, to lift me here And beg such learned folk to listen, To ask a smile, or coax a tear Beneath these stoic lids to glisten? As well might some arterial thread Ask the whole frame to feel it gushing, While throbbing fierce from heel to head The vast aortic tide was rushing. As well some hair-like nerve might strain To set its special streamlet going, While through the myriad-channelled brain The burning flood of thought was flowing; Or trembling fibre strive to keep The springing haunches gathered shorter, While the scourged racer, leap on leap, Was stretching through the last hot quarter! Ah me! you take the bud that came Self-sown in your poor garden's borders, And hand it to the stately dame That florists breed for, all she orders. She thanks you,--it was kindly meant,-- (A pale afair, not worth the keeping,)-- Good morning; and your bud is sent To join the tea-leaves used for sweeping. Not always so, kind hearts and true,-- For such I know are round me beating; Is not the bud I offer you, Fresh gathered for the hour of meeting, Pale though its outer leaves may be, Rose-red in all its inner petals?-- Where the warm life we cannot see-- The life of love that gave it--settles. We meet from regions far away, Like rills from distant mountains streaming; The sun is on Francisco's bay, O'er Chesapeake the lighthouse gleaming; While summer girds the still bayou In chains of bloom, her bridal token, Monadnock sees the sky grow blue, His crystal bracelet yet unbroken. Yet Nature bears the selfsame heart Beneath her russet-mantled bosom As where, with burning lips apart, She breathes and white magnolias blossom; The selfsame founts her chalice fill With showery sunlight running over, On fiery plain and frozen hill, On myrtle-beds and fields of clover. I give you Home! its crossing lines United in one golden suture, And showing every day that shines The present growing to the future,-- A flag that bears a hundred stars In one bright ring, with love for centre, Fenced round with white and crimson bars No prowling treason dares to enter! O brothers, home may be a word To make affection's living treasure, The wave an angel might have stirred, A stagnant pool of selfish pleasure; HOME! It is where the day-star springs And where the evening sun reposes, Where'er the eagle spreads his wings, From northern pines to southern roses! A SENTIMENT A TRIPLE health to Friendship, Science, Art, From heads and hands that own a common heart! Each in its turn the others' willing slave, Each in its season strong to heal and save. Friendship's blind service, in the hour of need, Wipes the pale face, and lets the victim bleed. Science must stop to reason and explain; ART claps his finger on the streaming vein. But Art's brief memory fails the hand at last; Then SCIENCE lifts the flambeau of the past. When both their equal impotence deplore, When Learning sighs, and Skill can do no more, The tear of FRIENDSHIP pours its heavenly balm, And soothes the pang no anodyne may calm May 1, 1855. RIP VAN WINKLE, M. D. AN AFTER-DINNER PRESCRIPTION TAKEN BY THE MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL SOCIETY, AT THEIR MEETING HELD MAY 25, 1870 CANTO FIRST OLD Rip Van Winkle had a grandson, Rip, Of the paternal block a genuine chip,-- A lazy, sleepy, curious kind of chap; He, like his grandsire, took a mighty nap, Whereof the story I propose to tell In two brief cantos, if you listen well. The times were hard when Rip to manhood grew; They always will be when there's work to do. He tried at farming,--found it rather slow,-- And then at teaching--what he did n't know; Then took to hanging round the tavern bars, To frequent toddies and long-nine cigars, Till Dame Van Winkle, out of patience, vexed With preaching homilies, having for their text A mop, a broomstick, aught that might avail To point a moral or adorn a tale, Exclaimed, "I have it! Now, then, Mr. V. He's good for something,--make him an M. D.!" The die was cast; the youngster was content; They packed his shirts and stockings, and he went. How hard he studied it were vain to tell; He drowsed through Wistar, nodded over Bell, Slept sound with Cooper, snored aloud on Good; Heard heaps of lectures,--doubtless understood,-- A constant listener, for he did not fail To carve his name on every bench and rail. Months grew to years; at last he counted three, And Rip Van Winkle found himself M. D. Illustrious title! in a gilded frame He set the sheepskin with his Latin name, RIPUM VAN WINKLUM, QUEM we--SCIMUS--know IDONEUM ESSE--to do so and so. He hired an office; soon its walls displayed His new diploma and his stock in trade, A mighty arsenal to subdue disease, Of various names, whereof I mention these Lancets and bougies, great and little squirt, Rhubarb and Senna, Snakeroot, Thoroughwort, Ant. Tart., Vin. Colch., Pil. Cochiae, and Black Drop, Tinctures of Opium, Gentian, Henbane, Hop, Pulv. Ipecacuanhae, which for lack Of breath to utter men call Ipecac, Camphor and Kino, Turpentine, Tolu, Cubebs, "Copeevy," Vitriol,--white and blue,-- Fennel and Flaxseed, Slippery Elm and Squill, And roots of Sassafras, and "Sassaf'rill," Brandy,--for colics,--Pinkroot, death on worms,-- Valerian, calmer of hysteric squirms, Musk, Assafoetida, the resinous gum Named from its odor,--well, it does smell some,-- Jalap, that works not wisely, but too well, Ten pounds of Bark and six of Calomel. For outward griefs he had an ample store, Some twenty jars and gallipots, or more: _Ceratum simplex_--housewives oft compile The same at home, and call it "wax and ile;" _Unguentum resinosum_--change its name, The "drawing salve" of many an ancient dame; _Argenti Nitras_, also Spanish flies, Whose virtue makes the water-bladders rise-- (Some say that spread upon a toper's skin They draw no water, only rum or gin); Leeches, sweet vermin! don't they charm the sick? And Sticking-plaster--how it hates to stick _Emplastrum Ferri_--ditto _Picis_, Pitch; Washes and Powders, Brimstone for the--which, _Scabies_ or _Psora_, is thy chosen name Since Hahnemann's goose-quill scratched thee into fame, Proved thee the source of every nameless ill, Whose sole specific is a moonshine pill, Till saucy Science, with a quiet grin, Held up the Acarus, crawling on a pin? --Mountains have labored and have brought forth mice The Dutchman's theory hatched a brood of--twice I've well-nigh said them--words unfitting quite For these fair precincts and for ears polite. The surest foot may chance at last to slip, And so at length it proved with Doctor Rip. One full-sized bottle stood upon the shelf, Which held the medicine that he took himself; Whate'er the reason, it must be confessed He filled that bottle oftener than the rest; What drug it held I don't presume to know-- The gilded label said "Elixir Pro." One day the Doctor found the bottle full, And, being thirsty, took a vigorous pull, Put back the "Elixir" where 't was always found, And had old Dobbin saddled and brought round. --You know those old-time rhubarb-colored nags That carried Doctors and their saddle-bags; Sagacious beasts! they stopped at every place Where blinds were shut--knew every patient's case-- Looked up and thought--The baby's in a fit-- That won't last long--he'll soon be through with it; But shook their heads before the knockered door Where some old lady told the story o'er Whose endless stream of tribulation flows For gastric griefs and peristaltic woes. What jack-o'-lantern led him from his way, And where it led him, it were hard to say; Enough that wandering many a weary mile Through paths the mountain sheep trod single file, O'ercome by feelings such as patients know Who dose too freely with "Elixir Pro.," He tumbl--dismounted, slightly in a heap, And lay, promiscuous, lapped in balmy sleep. Night followed night, and day succeeded day, But snoring still the slumbering Doctor lay. Poor Dobbin, starving, thought upon his stall, And straggled homeward, saddle-bags and all. The village people hunted all around, But Rip was missing,--never could be found. "Drownded," they guessed;--for more than half a year The pouts and eels did taste uncommon queer; Some said of apple-brandy--other some Found a strong flavor of New England rum. Why can't a fellow hear the fine things said About a fellow when a fellow's dead? The best of doctors--so the press declared-- A public blessing while his life was spared, True to his country, bounteous to the poor, In all things temperate, sober, just, and pure; The best of husbands! echoed Mrs. Van, And set her cap to catch another man. So ends this Canto--if it's quantum suff., We'll just stop here and say we've had enough, And leave poor Rip to sleep for thirty years; I grind the organ--if you lend your ears To hear my second Canto, after that We 'll send around the monkey with the hat. CANTO SECOND So thirty years had passed--but not a word In all that time of Rip was ever heard; The world wagged on--it never does go back-- The widow Van was now the widow Mac---- France was an Empire--Andrew J. was dead, And Abraham L. was reigning in his stead. Four murderous years had passed in savage strife, Yet still the rebel held his bloody knife. --At last one morning--who forgets the day When the black cloud of war dissolved away The joyous tidings spread o'er land and sea, Rebellion done for! Grant has captured Lee! Up every flagstaff sprang the Stars and Stripes-- Out rushed the Extras wild with mammoth types-- Down went the laborer's hod, the school-boy's book-- "Hooraw!" he cried, "the rebel army's took!" Ah! what a time! the folks all mad with joy Each fond, pale mother thinking of her boy; Old gray-haired fathers meeting--"Have--you--heard?" And then a choke--and not another word; Sisters all smiling--maidens, not less dear, In trembling poise between a smile and tear; Poor Bridget thinking how she 'll stuff the plums In that big cake for Johnny when he comes; Cripples afoot; rheumatics on the jump; Old girls so loving they could hug the pump; Guns going bang! from every fort and ship; They banged so loud at last they wakened Rip. I spare the picture, how a man appears Who's been asleep a score or two of years; You all have seen it to perfection done By Joe Van Wink--I mean Rip Jefferson. Well, so it was; old Rip at last came back, Claimed his old wife--the present widow Mac---- Had his old sign regilded, and began To practise physic on the same old plan. Some weeks went by--it was not long to wait-- And "please to call" grew frequent on the slate. He had, in fact, an ancient, mildewed air, A long gray beard, a plenteous lack of hair,-- The musty look that always recommends Your good old Doctor to his ailing friends. --Talk of your science! after all is said There's nothing like a bare and shiny head; Age lends the graces that are sure to please; Folks want their Doctors mouldy, like their cheese. So Rip began to look at people's tongues And thump their briskets (called it "sound their lungs"), Brushed up his knowledge smartly as he could, Read in old Cullen and in Doctor Good. The town was healthy; for a month or two He gave the sexton little work to do. About the time when dog-day heats begin, The summer's usual maladies set in; With autumn evenings dysentery came, And dusky typhoid lit his smouldering flame; The blacksmith ailed, the carpenter was down, And half the children sickened in the town. The sexton's face grew shorter than before-- The sexton's wife a brand-new bonnet wore-- Things looked quite serious--Death had got a grip On old and young, in spite of Doctor Rip. And now the Squire was taken with a chill-- Wife gave "hot-drops"--at night an Indian pill; Next morning, feverish--bedtime, getting worse-- Out of his head--began to rave and curse; The Doctor sent for--double quick he came _Ant. Tart. gran. duo_, and repeat the same If no et cetera. Third day--nothing new; Percussed his thorax till 't was black and blue-- Lung-fever threatening--something of the sort-- Out with the lancet--let him bleed--a quart-- Ten leeches next--then blisters to his side; Ten grains of calomel; just then he died. The Deacon next required the Doctor's care-- Took cold by sitting in a draught of air-- Pains in the back, but what the matter is Not quite so clear,--wife calls it "rheumatiz." Rubs back with flannel--gives him something hot-- "Ah!" says the Deacon, "that goes nigh the spot." Next day a rigor--"Run, my little man, And say the Deacon sends for Doctor Van." The Doctor came--percussion as before, Thumping and banging till his ribs were sore-- "Right side the flattest"--then more vigorous raps-- "Fever--that's certain--pleurisy, perhaps. A quart of blood will ease the pain, no doubt, Ten leeches next will help to suck it out, Then clap a blister on the painful part-- But first two grains of _Antimonium Tart_. Last with a dose of cleansing calomel Unload the portal system--(that sounds well!)" But when the selfsame remedies were tried, As all the village knew, the Squire had died; The neighbors hinted. "This will never do; He's killed the Squire--he'll kill the Deacon too." Now when a doctor's patients are perplexed, A consultation comes in order next-- You know what that is? In a certain place Meet certain doctors to discuss a case And other matters, such as weather, crops, Potatoes, pumpkins, lager-beer, and hops. For what's the use?--there 's little to be said, Nine times in ten your man's as good as dead; At best a talk (the secret to disclose) Where three men guess and sometimes one man knows. The counsel summoned came without delay-- Young Doctor Green and shrewd old Doctor Gray-- They heard the story--"Bleed!" says Doctor Green, "That's downright murder! cut his throat, you mean Leeches! the reptiles! Why, for pity's sake, Not try an adder or a rattlesnake? Blisters! Why bless you, they 're against the law-- It's rank assault and battery if they draw Tartrate of Antimony! shade of Luke, Stomachs turn pale at thought of such rebuke! The portal system! What's the man about? Unload your nonsense! Calomel's played out! You've been asleep--you'd better sleep away Till some one calls you." "Stop!" says Doctor Gray-- "The story is you slept for thirty years; With brother Green, I own that it appears You must have slumbered most amazing sound; But sleep once more till thirty years come round, You'll find the lancet in its honored place, Leeches and blisters rescued from disgrace, Your drugs redeemed from fashion's passing scorn, And counted safe to give to babes unborn." Poor sleepy Rip, M. M. S. S., M. D., A puzzled, serious, saddened man was he; Home from the Deacon's house he plodded slow And filled one bumper of "Elixir Pro." "Good-by," he faltered, "Mrs. Van, my dear! I'm going to sleep, but wake me once a year; I don't like bleaching in the frost and dew, I'll take the barn, if all the same to you. Just once a year--remember! no mistake! Cry, 'Rip Van Winkle! time for you to wake!' Watch for the week in May when laylocks blow, For then the Doctors meet, and I must go." Just once a year the Doctor's worthy dame Goes to the barn and shouts her husband's name; "Come, Rip Van Winkle!" (giving him a shake) "Rip! Rip Van Winkle! time for you to wake! Laylocks in blossom! 't is the month of May-- The Doctors' meeting is this blessed day, And come what will, you know I heard you swear You'd never miss it, but be always there!" And so it is, as every year comes round Old Rip Van Winkle here is always found. You'll quickly know him by his mildewed air, The hayseed sprinkled through his scanty hair, The lichens growing on his rusty suit-- I've seen a toadstool sprouting on his boot-- Who says I lie? Does any man presume?-- Toadstool? No matter--call it a mushroom. Where is his seat? He moves it every year; But look, you'll find him,--he is always here,-- Perhaps you'll track him by a whiff you know-- A certain flavor of "Elixir Pro." Now, then, I give you--as you seem to think We can give toasts without a drop to drink-- Health to the mighty sleeper,--long live he! Our brother Rip, M. M. S. S., M. D.! SONGS IN MANY KEYS 1849-1861 THE piping of our slender, peaceful reeds Whispers uncared for while the trumpets bray; Song is thin air; our hearts' exulting play Beats time but to the tread of marching deeds, Following the mighty van that Freedom leads, Her glorious standard flaming to the day! The crimsoned pavement where a hero bleeds Breathes nobler lessons than the poet's lay. Strong arms, broad breasts, brave hearts, are better worth Than strains that sing the ravished echoes dumb. Hark! 't is the loud reverberating drum Rolls o'er the prairied West, the rock-bound North The myriad-handed Future stretches forth Its shadowy palms. Behold, we come,--we come! Turn o'er these idle leaves. Such toys as these Were not unsought for, as, in languid dreams, We lay beside our lotus-feeding streams, And nursed our fancies in forgetful ease. It matters little if they pall or please, Dropping untimely, while the sudden gleams Glare from the mustering clouds whose blackness seems Too swollen to hold its lightning from the trees. Yet, in some lull of passion, when at last These calm revolving moons that come and go-- Turning our months to years, they creep so slow-- Have brought us rest, the not unwelcome past May flutter to thee through these leaflets, cast On the wild winds that all around us blow. May 1, 1861. AGNES The story of Sir Harry Frankland and Agnes Surriage is told in the ballad with a very strict adhesion to the facts. These were obtained from information afforded me by the Rev. Mr. Webster, of Hopkinton, in company with whom I visited the Frankland Mansion in that town, then standing; from a very interesting Memoir, by the Rev. Elias Nason, of Medford; and from the manuscript diary of Sir Harry, or more properly Sir Charles Henry Frankland, now in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society. At the time of the visit referred to, old Julia was living, and on our return we called at the house where she resided.--[She was living June 10, 1861, when this ballad was published]--Her account is little more than paraphrased in the poem. If the incidents are treated with a certain liberality at the close of the fifth part, the essential fact that Agnes rescued Sir Harry from the ruins after the earthquake, and their subsequent marriage as related, may be accepted as literal truth. So with regard to most of the trifling details which are given; they are taken from the record. It is greatly to be regretted that the Frankland Mansion no longer exists. It was accidentally burned on the 23d of January, 1858, a year or two after the first sketch of this ballad was written. A visit to it was like stepping out of the century into the years before the Revolution. A new house, similar in plan and arrangements to the old one, has been built upon its site, and the terraces, the clump of box, and the lilacs doubtless remain to bear witness to the truth of this story. The story, which I have told literally in rhyme, has been made the subject of a carefully studied and interesting romance by Mr. E. L. Bynner. PART FIRST THE KNIGHT THE tale I tell is gospel true, As all the bookmen know, And pilgrims who have strayed to view The wrecks still left to show. The old, old story,--fair, and young, And fond,--and not too wise,-- That matrons tell, with sharpened tongue, To maids with downcast eyes. Ah! maidens err and matrons warn Beneath the coldest sky; Love lurks amid the tasselled corn As in the bearded rye! But who would dream our sober sires Had learned the old world's ways, And warmed their hearths with lawless fires In Shirley's homespun days? 'T is like some poet's pictured trance His idle rhymes recite,-- This old New England-born romance Of Agnes and the Knight; Yet, known to all the country round, Their home is standing still, Between Wachusett's lonely mound And Shawmut's threefold hill. One hour we rumble on the rail, One half-hour guide the rein, We reach at last, o'er hill and dale, The village on the plain. With blackening wall and mossy roof, With stained and warping floor, A stately mansion stands aloof And bars its haughty door. This lowlier portal may be tried, That breaks the gable wall; And lo! with arches opening wide, Sir Harry Frankland's hall! 'T was in the second George's day They sought the forest shade, The knotted trunks they cleared away, The massive beams they laid, They piled the rock-hewn chimney tall, They smoothed the terraced ground, They reared the marble-pillared wall That fenced the mansion round. Far stretched beyond the village bound The Master's broad domain; With page and valet, horse and hound, He kept a goodly train. And, all the midland county through, The ploughman stopped to gaze Whene'er his chariot swept in view Behind the shining bays, With mute obeisance, grave and slow, Repaid by nod polite,-- For such the way with high and low Till after Concord fight. Nor less to courtly circles known That graced the three-hilled town With far-off splendors of the Throne, And glimmerings from the Crown; Wise Phipps, who held the seals of state For Shirley over sea; Brave Knowles, whose press-gang moved of late The King Street mob's decree; And judges grave, and colonels grand, Fair dames and stately men, The mighty people of the land, The "World" of there and then. 'T was strange no Chloe's "beauteous Form," And "Eyes' celestial Blew," This Strephon of the West could warm, No Nymph his Heart subdue. Perchance he wooed as gallants use, Whom fleeting loves enchain, But still unfettered, free to choose, Would brook no bridle-rein. He saw the fairest of the fair, But smiled alike on all; No band his roving foot might snare, No ring his hand enthrall. PART SECOND THE MAIDEN Why seeks the knight that rocky cape Beyond the Bay of Lynn? What chance his wayward course may shape To reach its village inn? No story tells; whate'er we guess, The past lies deaf and still, But Fate, who rules to blight or bless, Can lead us where she will. Make way! Sir Harry's coach and four, And liveried grooms that ride! They cross the ferry, touch the shore On Winnisimmet's side. They hear the wash on Chelsea Beach,-- The level marsh they pass, Where miles on miles the desert reach Is rough with bitter grass. The shining horses foam and pant, And now the smells begin Of fishy Swampscott, salt Nahant, And leather-scented Lynn. Next, on their left, the slender spires And glittering vanes that crown The home of Salem's frugal sires, The old, witch-haunted town. So onward, o'er the rugged way That runs through rocks and sand, Showered by the tempest-driven spray, From bays on either hand, That shut between their outstretched arms The crews of Marblehead, The lords of ocean's watery farms, Who plough the waves for bread. At last the ancient inn appears, The spreading elm below, Whose flapping sign these fifty years Has seesawed to and fro. How fair the azure fields in sight Before the low-browed inn The tumbling billows fringe with light The crescent shore of Lynn; Nahant thrusts outward through the waves Her arm of yellow sand, And breaks the roaring surge that braves The gauntlet on her hand; With eddying whirl the waters lock Yon treeless mound forlorn, The sharp-winged sea-fowl's breeding-rock, That fronts the Spouting Horn; Then free the white-sailed shallops glide, And wide the ocean smiles, Till, shoreward bent, his streams divide The two bare Misery Isles. The master's silent signal stays The wearied cavalcade; The coachman reins his smoking bays Beneath the elm-tree's shade. A gathering on the village green! The cocked-hats crowd to see, On legs in ancient velveteen, With buckles at the knee. A clustering round the tavern-door Of square-toed village boys, Still wearing, as their grandsires wore, The old-world corduroys! A scampering at the "Fountain" inn,--- A rush of great and small,-- With hurrying servants' mingled din And screaming matron's call. Poor Agnes! with her work half done They caught her unaware; As, humbly, like a praying nun, She knelt upon the stair; Bent o'er the steps, with lowliest mien She knelt, but not to pray,-- Her little hands must keep them clean, And wash their stains away. A foot, an ankle, bare and white, Her girlish shapes betrayed,-- "Ha! Nymphs and Graces!" spoke the Knight; "Look up, my beauteous Maid!" She turned,--a reddening rose in bud, Its calyx half withdrawn,-- Her cheek on fire with damasked blood Of girlhood's glowing dawn! He searched her features through and through, As royal lovers look On lowly maidens, when they woo Without the ring and book. "Come hither, Fair one! Here, my Sweet! Nay, prithee, look not down! Take this to shoe those little feet,"-- He tossed a silver crown. A sudden paleness struck her brow,-- A swifter blush succeeds; It burns her cheek; it kindles now Beneath her golden beads. She flitted, but the glittering eye Still sought the lovely face. Who was she? What, and whence? and why Doomed to such menial place? A skipper's daughter,--so they said,-- Left orphan by the gale That cost the fleet of Marblehead And Gloucester thirty sail. Ah! many a lonely home is found Along the Essex shore, That cheered its goodman outward bound, And sees his face no more! "Not so," the matron whispered,--"sure No orphan girl is she,-- The Surriage folk are deadly poor Since Edward left the sea, "And Mary, with her growing brood, Has work enough to do To find the children clothes and food With Thomas, John, and Hugh. "This girl of Mary's, growing tall,-- (Just turned her sixteenth year,)-- To earn her bread and help them all, Would work as housemaid here." So Agnes, with her golden beads, And naught beside as dower, Grew at the wayside with the weeds, Herself a garden-flower. 'T was strange, 't was sad,--so fresh, so fair! Thus Pity's voice began. Such grace! an angel's shape and air! The half-heard whisper ran. For eyes could see in George's time, As now in later days, And lips could shape, in prose and rhyme, The honeyed breath of praise. No time to woo! The train must go Long ere the sun is down, To reach, before the night-winds blow, The many-steepled town. 'T is midnight,--street and square are still; Dark roll the whispering waves That lap the piers beneath the hill Ridged thick with ancient graves. Ah, gentle sleep! thy hand will smooth The weary couch of pain, When all thy poppies fail to soothe The lover's throbbing brain! 'T is morn,--the orange-mantled sun Breaks through the fading gray, And long and loud the Castle gun Peals o'er the glistening bay. "Thank God 't is day!" With eager eye He hails the morning shine:-- "If art can win, or gold can buy, The maiden shall be mine!" PART THIRD THE CONQUEST "Who saw this hussy when she came? What is the wench, and who?" They whisper. "Agnes--is her name? Pray what has she to do?" The housemaids parley at the gate, The scullions on the stair, And in the footmen's grave debate The butler deigns to share. Black Dinah, stolen when a child, And sold on Boston pier, Grown up in service, petted, spoiled, Speaks in the coachman's ear: "What, all this household at his will? And all are yet too few? More servants, and more servants still,-- This pert young madam too!" "_Servant!_ fine servant!" laughed aloud The man of coach and steeds; "She looks too fair, she steps too proud, This girl with golden beads! "I tell you, you may fret and frown, And call her what you choose, You 'll find my Lady in her gown, Your Mistress in her shoes!" Ah, gentle maidens, free from blame, God grant you never know The little whisper, loud with shame, That makes the world your foe! Why tell the lordly flatterer's art, That won the maiden's ear,-- The fluttering of the frightened heart, The blush, the smile, the tear? Alas! it were the saddening tale That every language knows,-- The wooing wind, the yielding sail, The sunbeam and the rose. And now the gown of sober stuff Has changed to fair brocade, With broidered hem, and hanging cuff, And flower of silken braid; And clasped around her blanching wrist A jewelled bracelet shines, Her flowing tresses' massive twist A glittering net confines; And mingling with their truant wave A fretted chain is hung; But ah! the gift her mother gave,-- Its beads are all unstrung! Her place is at the master's board, Where none disputes her claim; She walks beside the mansion's lord, His bride in all but name. The busy tongues have ceased to talk, Or speak in softened tone, So gracious in her daily walk The angel light has shown. No want that kindness may relieve Assails her heart in vain, The lifting of a ragged sleeve Will check her palfrey's rein. A thoughtful calm, a quiet grace In every movement shown, Reveal her moulded for the place She may not call her own. And, save that on her youthful brow There broods a shadowy care, No matron sealed with holy vow In all the land so fair. PART FOURTH THE RESCUE A ship comes foaming up the bay, Along the pier she glides; Before her furrow melts away, A courier mounts and rides. "Haste, Haste, post Haste!" the letters bear; "Sir Harry Frankland, These." Sad news to tell the loving pair! The knight must cross the seas. "Alas! we part!"--the lips that spoke Lost all their rosy red, As when a crystal cup is broke, And all its wine is shed. "Nay, droop not thus,--where'er," he cried, "I go by land or sea, My love, my life, my joy, my pride, Thy place is still by me!" Through town and city, far and wide, Their wandering feet have strayed, From Alpine lake to ocean tide, And cold Sierra's shade. At length they see the waters gleam Amid the fragrant bowers Where Lisbon mirrors in the stream Her belt of ancient towers. Red is the orange on its bough, To-morrow's sun shall fling O'er Cintra's hazel-shaded brow The flush of April's wing. The streets are loud with noisy mirth, They dance on every green; The morning's dial marks the birth Of proud Braganza's queen. At eve beneath their pictured dome The gilded courtiers throng; The broad moidores have cheated Rome Of all her lords of song. AH! Lisbon dreams not of the day-- Pleased with her painted scenes-- When all her towers shall slide away As now these canvas screens! The spring has passed, the summer fled, And yet they linger still, Though autumn's rustling leaves have spread The flank of Cintra's hill. The town has learned their Saxon name, And touched their English gold, Nor tale of doubt nor hint of blame From over sea is told. Three hours the first November dawn Has climbed with feeble ray Through mists like heavy curtains drawn Before the darkened day. How still the muffled echoes sleep! Hark! hark! a hollow sound,-- A noise like chariots rumbling deep Beneath the solid ground. The channel lifts, the water slides And bares its bar of sand, Anon a mountain billow strides And crashes o'er the land. The turrets lean, the steeples reel Like masts on ocean's swell, And clash a long discordant peal, The death-doomed city's knell. The pavement bursts, the earth upheaves Beneath the staggering town! The turrets crack--the castle cleaves-- The spires come rushing down. Around, the lurid mountains glow With strange unearthly gleams; While black abysses gape below, Then close in jagged seams. And all is over. Street and square In ruined heaps are piled; Ah! where is she, so frail, so fair, Amid the tumult wild? Unscathed, she treads the wreck-piled street, Whose narrow gaps afford A pathway for her bleeding feet, To seek her absent lord. A temple's broken walls arrest Her wild and wandering eyes; Beneath its shattered portal pressed, Her lord unconscious lies. The power that living hearts obey Shall lifeless blocks withstand? Love led her footsteps where he lay,-- Love nerves her woman's hand. One cry,--the marble shaft she grasps,-- Up heaves the ponderous stone:-- He breathes,--her fainting form he clasps,-- Her life has bought his own! PART FIFTH THE REWARD How like the starless night of death Our being's brief eclipse, When faltering heart and failing breath Have bleached the fading lips! The earth has folded like a wave, And thrice a thousand score, Clasped, shroudless, in their closing grave, The sun shall see no more! She lives! What guerdon shall repay His debt of ransomed life? One word can charm all wrongs away,-- The sacred name of WIFE! The love that won her girlish charms Must shield her matron fame, And write beneath the Frankland arms The village beauty's name. Go, call the priest! no vain delay Shall dim the sacred ring! Who knows what change the passing day, The fleeting hour, may bring? Before the holy altar bent, There kneels a goodly pair; A stately man, of high descent, A woman, passing fair. No jewels lend the blinding sheen That meaner beauty needs, But on her bosom heaves unseen A string of golden beads. The vow is spoke,--the prayer is said,-- And with a gentle pride The Lady Agnes lifts her head, Sir Harry Frankland's bride. No more her faithful heart shall bear Those griefs so meekly borne,-- The passing sneer, the freezing stare, The icy look of scorn; No more the blue-eyed English dames Their haughty lips shall curl, Whene'er a hissing whisper names The poor New England girl. But stay!--his mother's haughty brow,-- The pride of ancient race,-- Will plighted faith, and holy vow, Win back her fond embrace? Too well she knew the saddening tale Of love no vow had blest, That turned his blushing honors pale And stained his knightly crest. They seek his Northern home,--alas He goes alone before;-- His own dear Agnes may not pass The proud, ancestral door. He stood before the stately dame; He spoke; she calmly heard, But not to pity, nor to blame; She breathed no single word. He told his love,--her faith betrayed; She heard with tearless eyes; Could she forgive the erring maid? She stared in cold surprise. How fond her heart, he told,--how true; The haughty eyelids fell;-- The kindly deeds she loved to do; She murmured, "It is well." But when he told that fearful day, And how her feet were led To where entombed in life he lay, The breathing with the dead, And how she bruised her tender breasts Against the crushing stone, That still the strong-armed clown protests No man can lift alone,-- Oh! then the frozen spring was broke; By turns she wept and smiled;-- "Sweet Agnes!" so the mother spoke, "God bless my angel child. "She saved thee from the jaws of death,-- 'T is thine to right her wrongs; I tell thee,--I, who gave thee breath,-- To her thy life belongs!" Thus Agnes won her noble name, Her lawless lover's hand; The lowly maiden so became A lady in the land! PART SIXTH CONCLUSION The tale is done; it little needs To track their after ways, And string again the golden beads Of love's uncounted days. They leave the fair ancestral isle For bleak New England's shore; How gracious is the courtly smile Of all who frowned before! Again through Lisbon's orange bowers They watch the river's gleam, And shudder as her shadowy towers Shake in the trembling stream. Fate parts at length the fondest pair; His cheek, alas! grows pale; The breast that trampling death could spare His noiseless shafts assail. He longs to change the heaven of blue For England's clouded sky,-- To breathe the air his boyhood knew; He seeks then but to die. Hard by the terraced hillside town, Where healing streamlets run, Still sparkling with their old renown,-- The "Waters of the Sun,"-- The Lady Agnes raised the stone That marks his honored grave, And there Sir Harry sleeps alone By Wiltshire Avon's wave. The home of early love was dear; She sought its peaceful shade, And kept her state for many a year, With none to make afraid. At last the evil days were come That saw the red cross fall; She hears the rebels' rattling drum,-- Farewell to Frankland Hall! I tell you, as my tale began, The hall is standing still; And you, kind listener, maid or man, May see it if you will. The box is glistening huge and green, Like trees the lilacs grow, Three elms high-arching still are seen, And one lies stretched below. The hangings, rough with velvet flowers, Flap on the latticed wall; And o'er the mossy ridge-pole towers The rock-hewn chimney tall. The doors on mighty hinges clash With massive bolt and bar, The heavy English-moulded sash Scarce can the night-winds jar. Behold the chosen room he sought Alone, to fast and pray, Each year, as chill November brought The dismal earthquake day. There hung the rapier blade he wore, Bent in its flattened sheath; The coat the shrieking woman tore Caught in her clenching teeth;-- The coat with tarnished silver lace She snapped at as she slid, And down upon her death-white face Crashed the huge coffin's lid. A graded terrace yet remains; If on its turf you stand And look along the wooded plains That stretch on either hand, The broken forest walls define A dim, receding view, Where, on the far horizon's line, He cut his vista through. If further story you shall crave, Or ask for living proof, Go see old Julia, born a slave Beneath Sir Harry's roof. She told me half that I have told, And she remembers well The mansion as it looked of old Before its glories fell;-- The box, when round the terraced square Its glossy wall was drawn; The climbing vines, the snow-balls fair, The roses on the lawn. And Julia says, with truthful look Stamped on her wrinkled face, That in her own black hands she took The coat with silver lace. And you may hold the story light, Or, if you like, believe; But there it was, the woman's bite,-- A mouthful from the sleeve. Now go your ways;--I need not tell The moral of my rhyme; But, youths and maidens, ponder well This tale of olden time! THE PLOUGHMAN ANNIVERSARY OF THE BERKSHIRE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, OCTOBER 4, 1849 CLEAR the brown path, to meet his coulter's gleam! Lo! on he comes, behind his smoking team, With toil's bright dew-drops on his sunburnt brow, The lord of earth, the hero of the plough! First in the field before the reddening sun, Last in the shadows when the day is done, Line after line, along the bursting sod, Marks the broad acres where his feet have trod; Still, where he treads, the stubborn clods divide, The smooth, fresh furrow opens deep and wide; Matted and dense the tangled turf upheaves, Mellow and dark the ridgy cornfield cleaves; Up the steep hillside, where the laboring train Slants the long track that scores the level plain; Through the moist valley, clogged with oozing clay, The patient convoy breaks its destined way; At every turn the loosening chains resound, The swinging ploughshare circles glistening round, Till the wide field one billowy waste appears, And wearied hands unbind the panting steers. These are the hands whose sturdy labor brings The peasant's food, the golden pomp of kings; This is the page, whose letters shall be seen Changed by the sun to words of living green; This is the scholar, whose immortal pen Spells the first lesson hunger taught to men; These are the lines which heaven-commanded Toil Shows on his deed,--the charter of the soil. O gracious Mother, whose benignant breast Wakes us to life, and lulls us all to rest, How thy sweet features, kind to every clime, Mock with their smile the wrinkled front of time We stain thy flowers,--they blossom o'er the dead; We rend thy bosom, and it gives us bread; O'er the red field that trampling strife has torn, Waves the green plumage of thy tasselled corn; Our maddening conflicts sear thy fairest plain, Still thy soft answer is the growing grain. Yet, O our Mother, while uncounted charms Steal round our hearts in thine embracing arms, Let not our virtues in thy love decay, And thy fond sweetness waste our strength away. No! by these hills, whose banners now displayed In blazing cohorts Autumn has arrayed; By yon twin summits, on whose splintery crests The tossing hemlocks hold the eagles' nests; By these fair plains the mountain circle screens, And feeds with streamlets from its dark ravines, True to their home, these faithful arms shall toil To crown with peace their own untainted soil; And, true to God, to freedom, to mankind, If her chained bandogs Faction shall unbind, These stately forms, that bending even now Bowed their strong manhood to the humble plough, Shall rise erect, the guardians of the land, The same stern iron in the same right hand, Till o'er their hills the shouts of triumph run, The sword has rescued what the ploughshare won! SPRING WINTER is past; the heart of Nature warms Beneath the wrecks of unresisted storms; Doubtful at first, suspected more than seen, The southern slopes are fringed with tender green; On sheltered banks, beneath the dripping eaves, Spring's earliest nurslings spread their glowing leaves, Bright with the hues from wider pictures won, White, azure, golden,--drift, or sky, or sun,-- The snowdrop, bearing on her patient breast The frozen trophy torn from Winter's crest; The violet, gazing on the arch of blue Till her own iris wears its deepened hue; The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mould Naked and shivering with his cup of gold. Swelled with new life, the darkening elm on high Prints her thick buds against the spotted sky On all her boughs the stately chestnut cleaves The gummy shroud that wraps her embryo leaves; The house-fly, stealing from his narrow grave, Drugged with the opiate that November gave, Beats with faint wing against the sunny pane, Or crawls, tenacious, o'er its lucid plain; From shaded chinks of lichen-crusted walls, In languid curves, the gliding serpent crawls; The bog's green harper, thawing from his sleep, Twangs a hoarse note and tries a shortened leap; On floating rails that face the softening noons The still shy turtles range their dark platoons, Or, toiling aimless o'er the mellowing fields, Trail through the grass their tessellated shields. At last young April, ever frail and fair, Wooed by her playmate with the golden hair, Chased to the margin of receding floods O'er the soft meadows starred with opening buds, In tears and blushes sighs herself away, And hides her cheek beneath the flowers of May. Then the proud tulip lights her beacon blaze, Her clustering curls the hyacinth displays; O'er her tall blades the crested fleur-de-lis, Like blue-eyed Pallas, towers erect and free; With yellower flames the lengthened sunshine glows, And love lays bare the passion-breathing rose; Queen of the lake, along its reedy verge The rival lily hastens to emerge, Her snowy shoulders glistening as she strips, Till morn is sultan of her parted lips. Then bursts the song from every leafy glade, The yielding season's bridal serenade; Then flash the wings returning Summer calls Through the deep arches of her forest halls,-- The bluebird, breathing from his azure plumes The fragrance borrowed where the myrtle blooms; The thrush, poor wanderer, dropping meekly down, Clad in his remnant of autumnal brown; The oriole, drifting like a flake of fire Rent by a whirlwind from a blazing spire. The robin, jerking his spasmodic throat, Repeats, imperious, his staccato note; The crack-brained bobolink courts his crazy mate, Poised on a bulrush tipsy with his weight; Nay, in his cage the lone canary sings, Feels the soft air, and spreads his idle wings. Why dream I here within these caging walls, Deaf to her voice, while blooming Nature calls; Peering and gazing with insatiate looks Through blinding lenses, or in wearying books? Off, gloomy spectres of the shrivelled past! Fly with the leaves that fill the autumn blast Ye imps of Science, whose relentless chains Lock the warm tides within these living veins, Close your dim cavern, while its captive strays Dazzled and giddy in the morning's blaze! THE STUDY YET in the darksome crypt I left so late, Whose only altar is its rusted grate,-- Sepulchral, rayless, joyless as it seems, Shamed by the glare of May's refulgent beams,-- While the dim seasons dragged their shrouded train, Its paler splendors were not quite in vain. From these dull bars the cheerful firelight's glow Streamed through the casement o'er the spectral snow; Here, while the night-wind wreaked its frantic will On the loose ocean and the rock-bound hill, Rent the cracked topsail from its quivering yard, And rived the oak a thousand storms had scarred, Fenced by these walls the peaceful taper shone, Nor felt a breath to slant its trembling cone. Not all unblest the mild interior scene When the red curtain spread its falling screen; O'er some light task the lonely hours were past, And the long evening only flew too fast; Or the wide chair its leathern arms would lend In genial welcome to some easy friend, Stretched on its bosom with relaxing nerves, Slow moulding, plastic, to its hollow curves; Perchance indulging, if of generous creed, In brave Sir Walter's dream-compelling weed. Or, happier still, the evening hour would bring To the round table its expected ring, And while the punch-bowl's sounding depths were stirred,-- Its silver cherubs smiling as they heard,-- Our hearts would open, as at evening's hour The close-sealed primrose frees its hidden flower. Such the warm life this dim retreat has known, Not quite deserted when its guests were flown; Nay, filled with friends, an unobtrusive set, Guiltless of calls and cards and etiquette, Ready to answer, never known to ask, Claiming no service, prompt for every task. On those dark shelves no housewife hand profanes, O'er his mute files the monarch folio reigns; A mingled race, the wreck of chance and time, That talk all tongues and breathe of every clime, Each knows his place, and each may claim his part In some quaint corner of his master's heart. This old Decretal, won from Moss's hoards, Thick-leaved, brass-cornered, ribbed with oaken boards, Stands the gray patriarch of the graver rows, Its fourth ripe century narrowing to its close; Not daily conned, but glorious still to view, With glistening letters wrought in red and blue. There towers Stagira's all-embracing sage, The Aldine anchor on his opening page; There sleep the births of Plato's heavenly mind, In yon dark tomb by jealous clasps confused, "Olim e libris" (dare I call it mine?) Of Yale's grave Head and Killingworth's divine! In those square sheets the songs of Maro fill The silvery types of smooth-leaved Baskerville; High over all, in close, compact array, Their classic wealth the Elzevirs display. In lower regions of the sacred space Range the dense volumes of a humbler race; There grim chirurgeons all their mysteries teach, In spectral pictures, or in crabbed speech; Harvey and Haller, fresh from Nature's page, Shoulder the dreamers of an earlier age, Lully and Geber, and the learned crew That loved to talk of all they could not do. Why count the rest,--those names of later days That many love, and all agree to praise,-- Or point the titles, where a glance may read The dangerous lines of party or of creed? Too well, perchance, the chosen list would show What few may care and none can claim to know. Each has his features, whose exterior seal A brush may copy, or a sunbeam steal; Go to his study,--on the nearest shelf Stands the mosaic portrait of himself. What though for months the tranquil dust descends, Whitening the heads of these mine ancient friends, While the damp offspring of the modern press Flaunts on my table with its pictured dress; Not less I love each dull familiar face, Nor less should miss it from the appointed place; I snatch the book, along whose burning leaves His scarlet web our wild romancer weaves, Yet, while proud Hester's fiery pangs I share, My old MAGNALIA must be standing _there_! THE BELLS WHEN o'er the street the morning peal is flung From yon tall belfry with the brazen tongue, Its wide vibrations, wafted by the gale, To each far listener tell a different tale. The sexton, stooping to the quivering floor Till the great caldron spills its brassy roar, Whirls the hot axle, counting, one by one, Each dull concussion, till his task is done. Toil's patient daughter, when the welcome note Clangs through the silence from the steeple's throat, Streams, a white unit, to the checkered street, Demure, but guessing whom she soon shall meet; The bell, responsive to her secret flame, With every note repeats her lover's name. The lover, tenant of the neighboring lane, Sighing, and fearing lest he sigh in vain, Hears the stern accents, as they come and go, Their only burden one despairing No! Ocean's rough child, whom many a shore has known Ere homeward breezes swept him to his own, Starts at the echo as it circles round, A thousand memories kindling with the sound; The early favorite's unforgotten charms, Whose blue initials stain his tawny arms; His first farewell, the flapping canvas spread, The seaward streamers crackling overhead, His kind, pale mother, not ashamed to weep Her first-born's bridal with the haggard deep, While the brave father stood with tearless eye, Smiling and choking with his last good-by. 'T is but a wave, whose spreading circle beats, With the same impulse, every nerve it meets, Yet who shall count the varied shapes that ride On the round surge of that aerial tide! O child of earth! If floating sounds like these Steal from thyself their power to wound or please, If here or there thy changing will inclines, As the bright zodiac shifts its rolling signs, Look at thy heart, and when its depths are known, Then try thy brother's, judging by thine own, But keep thy wisdom to the narrower range, While its own standards are the sport of change, Nor count us rebels when we disobey The passing breath that holds thy passion's sway. NON-RESISTANCE PERHAPS too far in these considerate days Has patience carried her submissive ways; Wisdom has taught us to be calm and meek, To take one blow, and turn the other cheek; It is not written what a man shall do, If the rude caitiff smite the other too! Land of our fathers, in thine hour of need God help thee, guarded by the passive creed! As the lone pilgrim trusts to beads and cowl, When through the forest rings the gray wolf's howl; As the deep galleon trusts her gilded prow When the black corsair slants athwart her bow; As the poor pheasant, with his peaceful mien, Trusts to his feathers, shining golden-green, When the dark plumage with the crimson beak Has rustled shadowy from its splintered peak,-- So trust thy friends, whose babbling tongues would charm The lifted sabre from thy foeman's arm, Thy torches ready for the answering peal From bellowing fort and thunder-freighted keel! THE MORAL BULLY YON whey-faced brother, who delights to wear A weedy flux of ill-conditioned hair, Seems of the sort that in a crowded place One elbows freely into smallest space; A timid creature, lax of knee and hip, Whom small disturbance whitens round the lip; One of those harmless spectacled machines, The Holy-Week of Protestants convenes; Whom school-boys question if their walk transcends The last advices of maternal friends; Whom John, obedient to his master's sign, Conducts, laborious, up to ninety-nine, While Peter, glistening with luxurious scorn, Husks his white ivories like an ear of corn; Dark in the brow and bilious in the cheek, Whose yellowish linen flowers but once a week, Conspicuous, annual, in their threadbare suits, And the laced high-lows which they call their boots, Well mayst thou shun that dingy front severe, But him, O stranger, him thou canst not _fear_. Be slow to judge, and slower to despise, Man of broad shoulders and heroic size The tiger, writhing from the boa's rings, Drops at the fountain where the cobra stings. In that lean phantom, whose extended glove Points to the text of universal love, Behold the master that can tame thee down To crouch, the vassal of his Sunday frown; His velvet throat against thy corded wrist, His loosened tongue against thy doubled fist. The MORAL BULLY, though he never swears, Nor kicks intruders down his entry stairs, Though meekness plants his backward-sloping hat, And non-resistance ties his white cravat, Though his black broadcloth glories to be seen In the same plight with Shylock's gaberdine, Hugs the same passion to his narrow breast That heaves the cuirass on the trooper's chest, Hears the same hell-hounds yelling in his rear That chase from port the maddened buccaneer, Feels the same comfort while his acrid words Turn the sweet milk of kindness into curds, Or with grim logic prove, beyond debate, That all we love is worthiest of our hate, As the scarred ruffian of the pirate's deck, When his long swivel rakes the staggering wreck! Heaven keep us all! Is every rascal clown Whose arm is stronger free to knock us down? Has every scarecrow, whose cachectic soul Seems fresh from Bedlam, airing on parole, Who, though he carries but a doubtful trace Of angel visits on his hungry face, From lack of marrow or the coins to pay, Has dodged some vices in a shabby way, The right to stick us with his cutthroat terms, And bait his homilies with his brother worms? THE MIND'S DIET No life worth naming ever comes to good If always nourished on the selfsame food; The creeping mite may live so if he please, And feed on Stilton till he turns to cheese, But cool Magendie proves beyond a doubt, If mammals try it, that their eyes drop out. No reasoning natures find it safe to feed, For their sole diet, on a single creed; It spoils their eyeballs while it spares their tongues, And starves the heart to feed the noisy lungs. When the first larvae on the elm are seen, The crawling wretches, like its leaves, are green; Ere chill October shakes the latest down, They, like the foliage, change their tint to brown; On the blue flower a bluer flower you spy, You stretch to pluck it--'tis a butterfly; The flattened tree-toads so resemble bark, They're hard to find as Ethiops in the dark; The woodcock, stiffening to fictitious mud, Cheats the young sportsman thirsting for his blood; So by long living on a single lie, Nay, on one truth, will creatures get its dye; Red, yellow, green, they take their subject's hue,-- Except when squabbling turns them black and blue! OUR LIMITATIONS WE trust and fear, we question and believe, From life's dark threads a trembling faith to weave, Frail as the web that misty night has spun, Whose dew-gemmed awnings glitter in the sun. While the calm centuries spell their lessons out, Each truth we conquer spreads the realm of doubt; When Sinai's summit was Jehovah's throne, The chosen Prophet knew his voice alone; When Pilate's hall that awful question heard, The Heavenly Captive answered not a word. Eternal Truth! beyond our hopes and fears Sweep the vast orbits of thy myriad spheres! From age to age, while History carves sublime On her waste rock the flaming curves of time, How the wild swayings of our planet show That worlds unseen surround the world we know. THE OLD PLAYER THE curtain rose; in thunders long and loud The galleries rung; the veteran actor bowed. In flaming line the telltales of the stage Showed on his brow the autograph of age; Pale, hueless waves amid his clustered hair, And umbered shadows, prints of toil and care; Round the wide circle glanced his vacant eye,-- He strove to speak,--his voice was but a sigh. Year after year had seen its short-lived race Flit past the scenes and others take their place; Yet the old prompter watched his accents still, His name still flaunted on the evening's bill. Heroes, the monarchs of the scenic floor, Had died in earnest and were heard no more; Beauties, whose cheeks such roseate bloom o'er-spread They faced the footlights in unborrowed red, Had faded slowly through successive shades To gray duennas, foils of younger maids; Sweet voices lost the melting tones that start With Southern throbs the sturdy Saxon heart, While fresh sopranos shook the painted sky With their long, breathless, quivering locust-cry. Yet there he stood,--the man of other days, In the clear present's full, unsparing blaze, As on the oak a faded leaf that clings While a new April spreads its burnished wings. How bright yon rows that soared in triple tier, Their central sun the flashing chandelier! How dim the eye that sought with doubtful aim Some friendly smile it still might dare to claim How fresh these hearts! his own how worn and cold! Such the sad thoughts that long-drawn sigh had told. No word yet faltered on his trembling tongue; Again, again, the crashing galleries rung. As the old guardsman at the bugle's blast Hears in its strain the echoes of the past, So, as the plaudits rolled and thundered round, A life of memories startled at the sound. He lived again,--the page of earliest days,-- Days of small fee and parsimonious praise; Then lithe young Romeo--hark that silvered tone, From those smooth lips--alas! they were his own. Then the bronzed Moor, with all his love and woe, Told his strange tale of midnight melting snow; And dark--plumed Hamlet, with his cloak and blade, Looked on the royal ghost, himself a shade. All in one flash, his youthful memories came, Traced in bright hues of evanescent flame, As the spent swimmer's in the lifelong dream, While the last bubble rises through the stream. Call him not old, whose visionary brain Holds o'er the past its undivided reign. For him in vain the envious seasons roll Who bears eternal summer in his soul. If yet the minstrel's song, the poet's lay, Spring with her birds, or children at their play, Or maiden's smile, or heavenly dream of art, Stir the few life-drops creeping round his heart, Turn to the record where his years are told,-- Count his gray hairs,--they cannot make him old! What magic power has changed the faded mime? One breath of memory on the dust of time. As the last window in the buttressed wall Of some gray minster tottering to its fall, Though to the passing crowd its hues are spread, A dull mosaic, yellow, green, and red, Viewed from within, a radiant glory shows When through its pictured screen the sunlight flows, And kneeling pilgrims on its storied pane See angels glow in every shapeless stain; So streamed the vision through his sunken eye, Clad in the splendors of his morning sky. All the wild hopes his eager boyhood knew, All the young fancies riper years proved true, The sweet, low-whispered words, the winning glance From queens of song, from Houris of the dance, Wealth's lavish gift, and Flattery's soothing phrase, And Beauty's silence when her blush was praise, And melting Pride, her lashes wet with tears, Triumphs and banquets, wreaths and crowns and cheers, Pangs of wild joy that perish on the tongue, And all that poets dream, but leave unsung! In every heart some viewless founts are fed From far-off hillsides where the dews were shed; On the worn features of the weariest face Some youthful memory leaves its hidden trace, As in old gardens left by exiled kings The marble basins tell of hidden springs, But, gray with dust, and overgrown with weeds, Their choking jets the passer little heeds, Till time's revenges break their seals away, And, clad in rainbow light, the waters play. Good night, fond dreamer! let the curtain fall The world's a stage, and we are players all. A strange rehearsal! Kings without their crowns, And threadbare lords, and jewel-wearing clowns, Speak the vain words that mock their throbbing hearts, As Want, stern prompter! spells them out their parts. The tinselled hero whom we praise and pay Is twice an actor in a twofold play. We smile at children when a painted screen Seems to their simple eyes a real scene; Ask the poor hireling, who has left his throne To seek the cheerless home he calls his own, Which of his double lives most real seems, The world of solid fact or scenic dreams? Canvas, or clouds,--the footlights, or the spheres,-- The play of two short hours, or seventy years? Dream on! Though Heaven may woo our open eyes, Through their closed lids we look on fairer skies; Truth is for other worlds, and hope for this; The cheating future lends the present's bliss; Life is a running shade, with fettered hands, That chases phantoms over shifting sands; Death a still spectre on a marble seat, With ever clutching palms and shackled feet; The airy shapes that mock life's slender chain, The flying joys he strives to clasp in vain, Death only grasps; to live is to pursue,-- Dream on! there 's nothing but illusion true! A POEM DEDICATION OF THE PITTSFIELD CEMETERY, SEPTEMBER 9,1850 ANGEL of Death! extend thy silent reign! Stretch thy dark sceptre o'er this new domain No sable car along the winding road Has borne to earth its unresisting load; No sudden mound has risen yet to show Where the pale slumberer folds his arms below; No marble gleams to bid his memory live In the brief lines that hurrying Time can give; Yet, O Destroyer! from thy shrouded throne Look on our gift; this realm is all thine own! Fair is the scene; its sweetness oft beguiled From their dim paths the children of the wild; The dark-haired maiden loved its grassy dells, The feathered warrior claimed its wooded swells, Still on its slopes the ploughman's ridges show The pointed flints that left his fatal bow, Chipped with rough art and slow barbarian toil,-- Last of his wrecks that strews the alien soil! Here spread the fields that heaped their ripened store Till the brown arms of Labor held no more; The scythe's broad meadow with its dusky blush; The sickle's harvest with its velvet flush; The green-haired maize, her silken tresses laid, In soft luxuriance, on her harsh brocade; The gourd that swells beneath her tossing plume; The coarser wheat that rolls in lakes of bloom,-- Its coral stems and milk-white flowers alive With the wide murmurs of the scattered hive; Here glowed the apple with the pencilled streak Of morning painted on its southern cheek; The pear's long necklace strung with golden drops, Arched, like the banian, o'er its pillared props; Here crept the growths that paid the laborer's care With the cheap luxuries wealth consents to spare; Here sprang the healing herbs which could not save The hand that reared them from the neighboring grave. Yet all its varied charms, forever free From task and tribute, Labor yields to thee No more, when April sheds her fitful rain, The sower's hand shall cast its flying grain; No more, when Autumn strews the flaming leaves, The reaper's band shall gird its yellow sheaves; For thee alike the circling seasons flow Till the first blossoms heave the latest snow. In the stiff clod below the whirling drifts, In the loose soil the springing herbage lifts, In the hot dust beneath the parching weeds, Life's withering flower shall drop its shrivelled seeds; Its germ entranced in thy unbreathing sleep Till what thou sowest mightier angels reap! Spirit of Beauty! let thy graces blend With loveliest Nature all that Art can lend. Come from the bowers where Summer's life-blood flows Through the red lips of June's half-open rose, Dressed in bright hues, the loving sunshine's dower; For tranquil Nature owns no mourning flower. Come from the forest where the beech's screen Bars the fierce moonbeam with its flakes of green; Stay the rude axe that bares the shadowy plains, Stanch the deep wound That dries the maple's veins. Come with the stream whose silver-braided rills Fling their unclasping bracelets from the hills, Till in one gleam, beneath the forest's wings, Melts the white glitter of a hundred springs. Come from the steeps where look majestic forth From their twin thrones the Giants of the North On the huge shapes, that, crouching at their knees, Stretch their broad shoulders, rough with shaggy trees. Through the wide waste of ether, not in vain, Their softened gaze shall reach our distant plain; There, while the mourner turns his aching eyes On the blue mounds that print the bluer skies, Nature shall whisper that the fading view Of mightiest grief may wear a heavenly hue. Cherub of Wisdom! let thy marble page Leave its sad lesson, new to every age; Teach us to live, not grudging every breath To the chill winds that waft us on to death, But ruling calmly every pulse it warms, And tempering gently every word it forms. Seraph of Love! in heaven's adoring zone, Nearest of all around the central throne, While with soft hands the pillowed turf we spread That soon shall hold us in its dreamless bed, With the low whisper,--Who shall first be laid In the dark chamber's yet unbroken shade?-- Let thy sweet radiance shine rekindled here, And all we cherish grow more truly dear. Here in the gates of Death's o'erhanging vault, Oh, teach us kindness for our brother's fault Lay all our wrongs beneath this peaceful sod, And lead our hearts to Mercy and its God. FATHER of all! in Death's relentless claim We read thy mercy by its sterner name; In the bright flower that decks the solemn bier, We see thy glory in its narrowed sphere; In the deep lessons that affliction draws, We trace the curves of thy encircling laws; In the long sigh that sets our spirits free, We own the love that calls us back to Thee! Through the hushed street, along the silent plain, The spectral future leads its mourning train, Dark with the shadows of uncounted bands, Where man's white lips and woman's wringing hands Track the still burden, rolling slow before, That love and kindness can protect no more; The smiling babe that, called to mortal strife, Shuts its meek eyes and drops its little life; The drooping child who prays in vain to live, And pleads for help its parent cannot give; The pride of beauty stricken in its flower; The strength of manhood broken in an hour; Age in its weakness, bowed by toil and care, Traced in sad lines beneath its silvered hair. The sun shall set, and heaven's resplendent spheres Gild the smooth turf unhallowed yet by tears, But ah! how soon the evening stars will shed Their sleepless light around the slumbering dead! Take them, O Father, in immortal trust! Ashes to ashes, dust to kindred dust, Till the last angel rolls the stone away, And a new morning brings eternal day! TO GOVERNOR SWAIN DEAR GOVERNOR, if my skiff might brave The winds that lift the ocean wave, The mountain stream that loops and swerves Through my broad meadow's channelled curves Should waft me on from bound to bound To where the River weds the Sound, The Sound should give me to the Sea, That to the Bay, the Bay to thee. It may not be; too long the track To follow down or struggle back. The sun has set on fair Naushon Long ere my western blaze is gone; The ocean disk is rolling dark In shadows round your swinging bark, While yet the yellow sunset fills The stream that scarfs my spruce-clad hills; The day-star wakes your island deer Long ere my barnyard chanticleer; Your mists are soaring in the blue While mine are sparks of glittering dew. It may not be; oh, would it might, Could I live o'er that glowing night! What golden hours would come to life, What goodly feats of peaceful strife,-- Such jests, that, drained of every joke, The very bank of language broke,-- Such deeds, that Laughter nearly died With stitches in his belted side; While Time, caught fast in pleasure's chain, His double goblet snapped in twain, And stood with half in either hand,-- Both brimming full,--but not of sand! It may not be; I strive in vain To break my slender household chain,-- Three pairs of little clasping hands, One voice, that whispers, not commands. Even while my spirit flies away, My gentle jailers murmur nay; All shapes of elemental wrath They raise along my threatened path; The storm grows black, the waters rise, The mountains mingle with the skies, The mad tornado scoops the ground, The midnight robber prowls around,-- Thus, kissing every limb they tie, They draw a knot and heave a sigh, Till, fairly netted in the toil, My feet are rooted to the soil. Only the soaring wish is free!-- And that, dear Governor, flies to thee! PITTSFIELD, 1851. TO AN ENGLISH FRIEND THE seed that wasteful autumn cast To waver on its stormy blast, Long o'er the wintry desert tost, Its living germ has never lost. Dropped by the weary tempest's wing, It feels the kindling ray of spring, And, starting from its dream of death, Pours on the air its perfumed breath. So, parted by the rolling flood, The love that springs from common blood Needs but a single sunlit hour Of mingling smiles to bud and flower; Unharmed its slumbering life has flown, From shore to shore, from zone to zone, Where summer's falling roses stain The tepid waves of Pontchartrain, Or where the lichen creeps below Katahdin's wreaths of whirling snow. Though fiery sun and stiffening cold May change the fair ancestral mould, No winter chills, no summer drains The life-blood drawn from English veins, Still bearing wheresoe'er it flows The love that with its fountain rose, Unchanged by space, unwronged by time, From age to age, from clime to clime! 1852. AFTER A LECTURE ON WORDSWORTH COME, spread your wings, as I spread mine, And leave the crowded hall For where the eyes of twilight shine O'er evening's western wall. These are the pleasant Berkshire hills, Each with its leafy crown; Hark! from their sides a thousand rills Come singing sweetly down. A thousand rills; they leap and shine, Strained through the shadowy nooks, Till, clasped in many a gathering twine, They swell a hundred brooks. A hundred brooks, and still they run With ripple, shade, and gleam, Till, clustering all their braids in one, They flow a single stream. A bracelet spun from mountain mist, A silvery sash unwound, With ox-bow curve and sinuous twist It writhes to reach the Sound. This is my bark,--a pygmy's ship; Beneath a child it rolls; Fear not,--one body makes it dip, But not a thousand souls. Float we the grassy banks between; Without an oar we glide; The meadows, drest in living green, Unroll on either side. Come, take the book we love so well, And let us read and dream We see whate'er its pages tell, And sail an English stream. Up to the clouds the lark has sprung, Still trilling as he flies; The linnet sings as there he sung; The unseen cuckoo cries, And daisies strew the banks along, And yellow kingcups shine, With cowslips, and a primrose throng, And humble celandine. Ah foolish dream! when Nature nursed Her daughter in the West, The fount was drained that opened first; She bared her other breast. On the young planet's orient shore Her morning hand she tried; Then turned the broad medallion o'er And stamped the sunset side. Take what she gives, her pine's tall stem, Her elm with hanging spray; She wears her mountain diadem Still in her own proud way. Look on the forests' ancient kings, The hemlock's towering pride Yon trunk had thrice a hundred rings, And fell before it died. Nor think that Nature saves her bloom And slights our grassy plain; For us she wears her court costume,-- Look on its broidered train; The lily with the sprinkled dots, Brands of the noontide beam; The cardinal, and the blood-red spots, Its double in the stream, As if some wounded eagle's breast, Slow throbbing o'er the plain, Had left its airy path impressed In drops of scarlet rain. And hark! and hark! the woodland rings; There thrilled the thrush's soul; And look! that flash of flamy wings,-- The fire-plumed oriole! Above, the hen-hawk swims and swoops, Flung from the bright, blue sky; Below, the robin hops, and whoops His piercing, Indian cry. Beauty runs virgin in the woods Robed in her rustic green, And oft a longing thought intrudes, As if we might have seen. Her every finger's every joint Ringed with some golden line, Poet whom Nature did anoint Had our wild home been thine. Yet think not so; Old England's blood Runs warm in English veins; But wafted o'er the icy flood Its better life remains. Our children know each wildwood smell, The bayberry and the fern, The man who does not know them well Is all too old to learn. Be patient! On the breathing page Still pants our hurried past; Pilgrim and soldier, saint and sage, The poet comes the last! Though still the lark-voiced matins ring The world has known so long; The wood-thrush of the West shall sing Earth's last sweet even-song! AFTER A LECTURE ON MOORE SHINE soft, ye trembling tears of light That strew the mourning skies; Hushed in the silent dews of night The harp of Erin lies. What though her thousand years have past Of poets, saints, and kings,-- Her echoes only hear the last That swept those golden strings. Fling o'er his mound, ye star-lit bowers, The balmiest wreaths ye wear, Whose breath has lent your earth-born flowers Heaven's own ambrosial air. Breathe, bird of night, thy softest tone, By shadowy grove and rill; Thy song will soothe us while we own That his was sweeter still. Stay, pitying Time, thy foot for him Who gave thee swifter wings, Nor let thine envious shadow dim The light his glory flings. If in his cheek unholy blood Burned for one youthful hour, 'T was but the flushing of the bud That blooms a milk-white flower. Take him, kind mother, to thy breast, Who loved thy smiles so well, And spread thy mantle o'er his rest Of rose and asphodel. The bark has sailed the midnight sea, The sea without a shore, That waved its parting sign to thee,-- "A health to thee, Tom Moore!" And thine, long lingering on the strand, Its bright-hued streamers furled, Was loosed by age, with trembling hand, To seek the silent world. Not silent! no, the radiant stars Still singing as they shine, Unheard through earth's imprisoning bars, Have voices sweet as thine. Wake, then, in happier realms above, The songs of bygone years, Till angels learn those airs of love That ravished mortal ears! AFTER A LECTURE ON KEATS "Purpureos spargam flores." THE wreath that star-crowned Shelley gave Is lying on thy Roman grave, Yet on its turf young April sets Her store of slender violets; Though all the Gods their garlands shower, I too may bring one purple flower. Alas! what blossom shall I bring, That opens in my Northern spring? The garden beds have all run wild, So trim when I was yet a child; Flat plantains and unseemly stalks Have crept across the gravel walks; The vines are dead, long, long ago, The almond buds no longer blow. No more upon its mound I see The azure, plume-bound fleur-de-lis; Where once the tulips used to show, In straggling tufts the pansies grow; The grass has quenched my white-rayed gem, The flowering "Star of Bethlehem," Though its long blade of glossy green And pallid stripe may still be seen. Nature, who treads her nobles down, And gives their birthright to the clown, Has sown her base-born weedy things Above the garden's queens and kings. Yet one sweet flower of ancient race Springs in the old familiar place. When snows were melting down the vale, And Earth unlaced her icy mail, And March his stormy trumpet blew, And tender green came peeping through, I loved the earliest one to seek That broke the soil with emerald beak, And watch the trembling bells so blue Spread on the column as it grew. Meek child of earth! thou wilt not shame The sweet, dead poet's holy name; The God of music gave thee birth, Called from the crimson-spotted earth, Where, sobbing his young life away, His own fair Hyacinthus lay. The hyacinth my garden gave Shall lie upon that Roman grave! AFTER A LECTURE ON SHELLEY ONE broad, white sail in Spezzia's treacherous bay On comes the blast; too daring bark, beware I The cloud has clasped her; to! it melts away; The wide, waste waters, but no sail is there. Morning: a woman looking on the sea; Midnight: with lamps the long veranda burns; Come, wandering sail, they watch, they burn for thee! Suns come and go, alas! no bark returns. And feet are thronging on the pebbly sands, And torches flaring in the weedy caves, Where'er the waters lay with icy hands The shapes uplifted from their coral graves. Vainly they seek; the idle quest is o'er; The coarse, dark women, with their hanging locks, And lean, wild children gather from the shore To the black hovels bedded in the rocks. But Love still prayed, with agonizing wail, "One, one last look, ye heaving waters, yield!" Till Ocean, clashing in his jointed mail, Raised the pale burden on his level shield. Slow from the shore the sullen waves retire; His form a nobler element shall claim; Nature baptized him in ethereal fire, And Death shall crown him with a wreath of flame. Fade, mortal semblance, never to return; Swift is the change within thy crimson shroud; Seal the white ashes in the peaceful urn; All else has risen in yon silvery cloud. Sleep where thy gentle Adonais lies, Whose open page lay on thy dying heart, Both in the smile of those blue-vaulted skies, Earth's fairest dome of all divinest art. Breathe for his wandering soul one passing sigh, O happier Christian, while thine eye grows dim,-- In all the mansions of the house on high, Say not that Mercy has not one for him! AT THE CLOSE OF A COURSE OF LECTURES As the voice of the watch to the mariner's dream, As the footstep of Spring on the ice-girdled stream, There comes a soft footstep, a whisper, to me,-- The vision is over,--the rivulet free. We have trod from the threshold of turbulent March, Till the green scarf of April is hung on the larch, And down the bright hillside that welcomes the day, We hear the warm panting of beautiful May. We will part before Summer has opened her wing, And the bosom of June swells the bodice of Spring, While the hope of the season lies fresh in the bud, And the young life of Nature runs warm in our blood. It is but a word, and the chain is unbound, The bracelet of steel drops unclasped to the ground; No hand shall replace it,--it rests where it fell,--- It is but one word that we all know too well. Yet the hawk with the wildness untamed in his eye, If you free him, stares round ere he springs to the sky; The slave whom no longer his fetters restrain Will turn for a moment and look at his chain. Our parting is not as the friendship of years, That chokes with the blessing it speaks through its tears; We have walked in a garden, and, looking around, Have plucked a few leaves from the myrtles we found. But now at the gate of the garden we stand, And the moment has come for unclasping the hand; Will you drop it like lead, and in silence retreat Like the twenty crushed forms from an omnibus seat? Nay! hold it one moment,--the last we may share,-- I stretch it in kindness, and not for my fare; You may pass through the doorway in rank or in file, If your ticket from Nature is stamped with a smile. For the sweetest of smiles is the smile as we part, When the light round the lips is a ray from the heart; And lest a stray tear from its fountain might swell, We will seal the bright spring with a quiet farewell. THE HUDSON AFTER A LECTURE AT ALBANY 'T WAS a vision of childhood that came with its dawn, Ere the curtain that covered life's day-star was drawn; The nurse told the tale when the shadows grew long, And the mother's soft lullaby breathed it in song. "There flows a fair stream by the hills of the West,"-- She sang to her boy as he lay on her breast; "Along its smooth margin thy fathers have played; Beside its deep waters their ashes are laid." I wandered afar from the land of my birth, I saw the old rivers, renowned upon earth, But fancy still painted that wide-flowing stream With the many-hued pencil of infancy's dream. I saw the green banks of the castle-crowned Rhine, Where the grapes drink the moonlight and change it to wine; I stood by the Avon, whose waves as they glide Still whisper his glory who sleeps at their side. But my heart would still yearn for the sound of the waves That sing as they flow by my forefathers' graves; If manhood yet honors my cheek with a tear, I care not who sees it,--no blush for it here! Farewell to the deep-bosomed stream of the West! I fling this loose blossom to float on its breast; Nor let the dear love of its children grow cold, Till the channel is dry where its waters have rolled! December, 1854. THE NEW EDEN MEETING OF THE BERKSHIRE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY, AT STOCKBRIDGE, SEPTEMBER 13,1854 SCARCE could the parting ocean close, Seamed by the Mayflower's cleaving bow, When o'er the rugged desert rose The waves that tracked the Pilgrim's plough. Then sprang from many a rock-strewn field The rippling grass, the nodding grain, Such growths as English meadows yield To scanty sun and frequent rain. But when the fiery days were done, And Autumn brought his purple haze, Then, kindling in the slanted sun, The hillsides gleamed with golden maize. The food was scant, the fruits were few A red-streak glistening here and there; Perchance in statelier precincts grew Some stern old Puritanic pear. Austere in taste, and tough at core, Its unrelenting bulk was shed, To ripen in the Pilgrim's store When all the summer sweets were fled. Such was his lot, to front the storm With iron heart and marble brow, Nor ripen till his earthly form Was cast from life's autumnal bough. But ever on the bleakest rock We bid the brightest beacon glow, And still upon the thorniest stock The sweetest roses love to blow. So on our rude and wintry soil We feed the kindling flame of art, And steal the tropic's blushing spoil To bloom on Nature's ice-clad heart. See how the softening Mother's breast Warms to her children's patient wiles, Her lips by loving Labor pressed Break in a thousand dimpling smiles, From when the flushing bud of June Dawns with its first auroral hue, Till shines the rounded harvest-moon, And velvet dahlias drink the dew. Nor these the only gifts she brings; Look where the laboring orchard groans, And yields its beryl-threaded strings For chestnut burs and hemlock cones. Dear though the shadowy maple be, And dearer still the whispering pine, Dearest yon russet-laden tree Browned by the heavy rubbing kine! There childhood flung its rustling stone, There venturous boyhood learned to climb,-- How well the early graft was known Whose fruit was ripe ere harvest-time! Nor be the Fleming's pride forgot, With swinging drops and drooping bells, Freckled and splashed with streak and spot, On the warm-breasted, sloping swells; Nor Persia's painted garden-queen,-- Frail Houri of the trellised wall,-- Her deep-cleft bosom scarfed with green,-- Fairest to see, and first to fall. . . . . . . . . . . . . . When man provoked his mortal doom, And Eden trembled as he fell, When blossoms sighed their last perfume, And branches waved their long farewell, One sucker crept beneath the gate, One seed was wafted o'er the wall, One bough sustained his trembling weight; These left the garden,--these were all. And far o'er many a distant zone These wrecks of Eden still are flung The fruits that Paradise hath known Are still in earthly gardens hung. Yes, by our own unstoried stream The pink-white apple-blossoms burst That saw the young Euphrates gleam,-- That Gihon's circling waters nursed. For us the ambrosial pear--displays The wealth its arching branches hold, Bathed by a hundred summery days In floods of mingling fire and gold. And here, where beauty's cheek of flame With morning's earliest beam is fed, The sunset-painted peach may claim To rival its celestial red. . . . . . . . . . . . What though in some unmoistened vale The summer leaf grow brown and sere, Say, shall our star of promise fail That circles half the rolling sphere, From beaches salt with bitter spray, O'er prairies green with softest rain, And ridges bright with evening's ray, To rocks that shade the stormless main? If by our slender-threaded streams The blade and leaf and blossom die, If, drained by noontide's parching beams, The milky veins of Nature dry, See, with her swelling bosom bare, Yon wild-eyed Sister in the West,-- The ring of Empire round her hair, The Indian's wampum on her breast! We saw the August sun descend, Day after day, with blood-red stain, And the blue mountains dimly blend With smoke-wreaths from the burning plain; Beneath the hot Sirocco's wings We sat and told the withering hours, Till Heaven unsealed its hoarded springs, And bade them leap in flashing showers. Yet in our Ishmael's thirst we knew The mercy of the Sovereign hand Would pour the fountain's quickening dew To feed some harvest of the land. No flaming swords of wrath surround Our second Garden of the Blest; It spreads beyond its rocky bound, It climbs Nevada's glittering crest. God keep the tempter from its gate! God shield the children, lest they fall From their stern fathers' free estate,-- Till Ocean is its only wall! SEMI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY NEW YORK, DECEMBER 22, 1855 NEW ENGLAND, we love thee; no time can erase From the hearts of thy children the smile on thy face. 'T is the mother's fond look of affection and pride, As she gives her fair son to the arms of his bride. His bride may be fresher in beauty's young flower; She may blaze in the jewels she brings with her dower. But passion must chill in Time's pitiless blast; The one that first loved us will love to the last. You have left the dear land of the lake and the hill, But its winds and its waters will talk with you still. "Forget not," they whisper, "your love is our debt," And echo breathes softly, "We never forget." The banquet's gay splendors are gleaming around, But your hearts have flown back o'er the waves of the Sound; They have found the brown home where their pulses were born; They are throbbing their way through the trees and the corn. There are roofs you remember,--their glory is fled; There are mounds in the churchyard,--one sigh for the dead. There are wrecks, there are ruins, all scattered around; But Earth has no spot like that corner of ground. Come, let us be cheerful,--remember last night, How they cheered us, and--never mind--meant it all right; To-night, we harm nothing,--we love in the lump; Here's a bumper to Maine, in the juice of the pump! Here 's to all the good people, wherever they be, Who have grown in the shade of the liberty-tree; We all love its leaves, and its blossoms and fruit, But pray have a care of the fence round its root. We should like to talk big; it's a kind of a right, When the tongue has got loose and the waistband grown tight; But, as pretty Miss Prudence remarked to her beau, On its own heap of compost no biddy should crow. Enough! There are gentlemen waiting to talk, Whose words are to mine as the flower to the stalk. Stand by your old mother whatever befall; God bless all her children! Good night to you all! FAREWELL TO J. R. LOWELL FAREWELL, for the bark has her breast to the tide, And the rough arms of Ocean are stretched for his bride; The winds from the mountain stream over the bay; One clasp of the hand, then away and away! I see the tall mast as it rocks by the shore; The sun is declining, I see it once more; To-day like the blade in a thick-waving field, To-morrow the spike on a Highlander's shield. Alone, while the cloud pours its treacherous breath, With the blue lips all round her whose kisses are death; Ah, think not the breeze that is urging her sail Has left her unaided to strive with the gale. There are hopes that play round her, like fires on the mast, That will light the dark hour till its danger has past; There are prayers that will plead with the storm when it raves, And whisper "Be still!" to the turbulent waves. Nay, think not that Friendship has called us in vain To join the fair ring ere we break it again; There is strength in its circle,--you lose the bright star, But its sisters still chain it, though shining afar. I give you one health in the juice of the vine, The blood of the vineyard shall mingle with mine; Thus, thus let us drain the last dew-drops of gold, As we empty our hearts of the blessings they hold. April 29, 1855. FOR THE MEETING OF THE BURNS CLUB THE mountains glitter in the snow A thousand leagues asunder; Yet here, amid the banquet's glow, I hear their voice of thunder; Each giant's ice-bound goblet clinks; A flowing stream is summoned; Wachusett to Ben Nevis drinks; Monadnock to Ben Lomond! Though years have clipped the eagle's plume That crowned the chieftain's bonnet, The sun still sees the heather bloom, The silver mists lie on it; With tartan kilt and philibeg, What stride was ever bolder Than his who showed the naked leg Beneath the plaided shoulder? The echoes sleep on Cheviot's hills, That heard the bugles blowing When down their sides the crimson rills With mingled blood were flowing; The hunts where gallant hearts were game, The slashing on the border, The raid that swooped with sword and flame, Give place to "law and order." Not while the rocking steeples reel With midnight tocsins ringing, Not while the crashing war-notes peal, God sets his poets singing; The bird is silent in the night, Or shrieks a cry of warning While fluttering round the beacon-light,-- But hear him greet the morning! The lark of Scotia's morning sky! Whose voice may sing his praises? With Heaven's own sunlight in his eye, He walked among the daisies, Till through the cloud of fortune's wrong He soared to fields of glory; But left his land her sweetest song And earth her saddest story. 'T is not the forts the builder piles That chain the earth together; The wedded crowns, the sister isles, Would laugh at such a tether; The kindling thought, the throbbing words, That set the pulses beating, Are stronger than the myriad swords Of mighty armies meeting. Thus while within the banquet glows, Without, the wild winds whistle, We drink a triple health,--the Rose, The Shamrock, and the Thistle Their blended hues shall never fade Till War has hushed his cannon,-- Close-twined as ocean-currents braid The Thames, the Clyde, the Shannon! ODE FOR WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION OF THE MERCANTILE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, FEBRUARY 22, 1856 WELCOME to the day returning, Dearer still as ages flow, While the torch of Faith is burning, Long as Freedom's altars glow! See the hero whom it gave us Slumbering on a mother's breast; For the arm he stretched to save us, Be its morn forever blest! Hear the tale of youthful glory, While of Britain's rescued band Friend and foe repeat the story, Spread his fame o'er sea and land, Where the red cross, proudly streaming, Flaps above the frigate's deck, Where the golden lilies, gleaming, Star the watch-towers of Quebec. Look! The shadow on the dial Marks the hour of deadlier strife; Days of terror, years of trial, Scourge a nation into life. Lo, the youth, become her leader All her baffled tyrants yield; Through his arm the Lord hath freed her; Crown him on the tented field! Vain is Empire's mad temptation Not for him an earthly crown He whose sword hath freed a nation Strikes the offered sceptre down. See the throneless Conqueror seated, Ruler by a people's choice; See the Patriot's task completed; Hear the Father's dying voice! "By the name that you inherit, By the sufferings you recall, Cherish the fraternal spirit; Love your country first of all! Listen not to idle questions If its bands maybe untied; Doubt the patriot whose suggestions Strive a nation to divide!" Father! We, whose ears have tingled With the discord-notes of shame,-- We, whose sires their blood have mingled In the battle's thunder-flame,-- Gathering, while this holy morning Lights the land from sea to sea, Hear thy counsel, heed thy warning; Trust us, while we honor thee! BIRTHDAY OF DANIEL WEBSTER JANUARY 18, 1856 WHEN life hath run its largest round Of toil and triumph, joy and woe, How brief a storied page is found To compass all its outward show! The world-tried sailor tires and droops; His flag is rent, his keel forgot; His farthest voyages seem but loops That float from life's entangled knot. But when within the narrow space Some larger soul hath lived and wrought, Whose sight was open to embrace The boundless realms of deed and thought,-- When, stricken by the freezing blast, A nation's living pillars fall, How rich the storied page, how vast, A word, a whisper, can recall! No medal lifts its fretted face, Nor speaking marble cheats your eye, Yet, while these pictured lines I trace, A living image passes by: A roof beneath the mountain pines; The cloisters of a hill-girt plain; The front of life's embattled lines; A mound beside the heaving main. These are the scenes: a boy appears; Set life's round dial in the sun, Count the swift arc of seventy years, His frame is dust; his task is done. Yet pause upon the noontide hour, Ere the declining sun has laid His bleaching rays on manhood's power, And look upon the mighty shade. No gloom that stately shape can hide, No change uncrown its brow; behold I Dark, calm, large-fronted, lightning-eyed, Earth has no double from its mould. Ere from the fields by valor won The battle-smoke had rolled away, And bared the blood-red setting sun, His eyes were opened on the day. His land was but a shelving strip Black with the strife that made it free He lived to see its banners dip Their fringes in the Western sea. The boundless prairies learned his name, His words the mountain echoes knew, The Northern breezes swept his fame From icy lake to warm bayou. In toil he lived; in peace he died; When life's full cycle was complete, Put off his robes of power and pride, And laid them at his Master's feet. His rest is by the storm-swept waves Whom life's wild tempests roughly trie Whose heart was like the streaming eaves Of ocean, throbbing at his side. Death's cold white hand is like the snow Laid softly on the furrowed hill, It hides the broken seams below, And leaves the summit brighter still. In vain the envious tongue upbraids; His name a nation's heart shall keep Till morning's latest sunlight fades On the blue tablet of the deep. THE VOICELESS WE count the broken lyres that rest Where the sweet wailing singers slumber, But o'er their silent sister's breast The wild-flowers who will stoop to number? A few can touch the magic string, And noisy Fame is proud to win them:-- Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them! Nay, grieve not for the dead alone Whose song has told their hearts' sad story,-- Weep for the voiceless, who have known The cross without the crown of glory Not where Leucadian breezes sweep O'er Sappho's memory-haunted billow, But where the glistening night-dews weep On nameless sorrow's churchyard pillow. O hearts that break and give no sign Save whitening lip and fading tresses, Till Death pours out his longed-for wine Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing presses,-- If singing breath or echoing chord To every hidden pang were given, What endless melodies were poured, As sad as earth, as sweet as heaven! THE TWO STREAMS BEHOLD the rocky wall That down its sloping sides Pours the swift rain-drops, blending, as they fall, In rushing river-tides! Yon stream, whose sources run Turned by a pebble's edge, Is Athabasca, rolling toward the sun Through the cleft mountain-ledge. The slender rill had strayed, But for the slanting stone, To evening's ocean, with the tangled braid Of foam-flecked Oregon. So from the heights of Will Life's parting stream descends, And, as a moment turns its slender rill, Each widening torrent bends,-- From the same cradle's side, From the same mother's knee,-- One to long darkness and the frozen tide, One to the Peaceful Sea! THE PROMISE NOT charity we ask, Nor yet thy gift refuse; Please thy light fancy with the easy task Only to look and choose. The little-heeded toy That wins thy treasured gold May be the dearest memory, holiest joy, Of coming years untold. Heaven rains on every heart, But there its showers divide, The drops of mercy choosing, as they part, The dark or glowing side. One kindly deed may turn The fountain of thy soul To love's sweet day-star, that shall o'er thee burn Long as its currents roll. The pleasures thou hast planned,-- Where shall their memory be When the white angel with the freezing hand Shall sit and watch by thee? Living, thou dost not live, If mercy's spring run dry; What Heaven has lent thee wilt thou freely give, Dying, thou shalt not die. HE promised even so! To thee his lips repeat,-- Behold, the tears that soothed thy sister's woe Have washed thy Master's feet! March 20, 1859. AVIS I MAY not rightly call thy name,-- Alas! thy forehead never knew The kiss that happier children claim, Nor glistened with baptismal dew. Daughter of want and wrong and woe, I saw thee with thy sister-band, Snatched from the whirlpool's narrowing flow By Mercy's strong yet trembling hand. "Avis!"--With Saxon eye and cheek, At once a woman and a child, The saint uncrowned I came to seek Drew near to greet us,--spoke, and smiled. God gave that sweet sad smile she wore All wrong to shame, all souls to win,-- A heavenly sunbeam sent before Her footsteps through a world of sin. "And who is Avis?"--Hear the tale The calm-voiced matrons gravely tell,-- The story known through all the vale Where Avis and her sisters dwell. With the lost children running wild, Strayed from the hand of human care, They find one little refuse child Left helpless in its poisoned lair. The primal mark is on her face,-- The chattel-stamp,--the pariah-stain That follows still her hunted race,-- The curse without the crime of Cain. How shall our smooth-turned phrase relate The little suffering outcast's ail? Not Lazarus at the rich man's gate So turned the rose-wreathed revellers pale. Ah, veil the living death from sight That wounds our beauty-loving eye! The children turn in selfish fright, The white-lipped nurses hurry by. Take her, dread Angel! Break in love This bruised reed and make it thine!-- No voice descended from above, But Avis answered, "She is mine." The task that dainty menials spurn The fair young girl has made her own; Her heart shall teach, her hand shall learn The toils, the duties yet unknown. So Love and Death in lingering strife Stand face to face from day to day, Still battling for the spoil of Life While the slow seasons creep away. Love conquers Death; the prize is won; See to her joyous bosom pressed The dusky daughter of the sun,-- The bronze against the marble breast! Her task is done; no voice divine Has crowned her deeds with saintly fame. No eye can see the aureole shine That rings her brow with heavenly flame. Yet what has holy page more sweet, Or what had woman's love more fair, When Mary clasped her Saviour's feet With flowing eyes and streaming hair? Meek child of sorrow, walk unknown, The Angel of that earthly throng, And let thine image live alone To hallow this unstudied song! THE LIVING TEMPLE NOT in the world of light alone, Where God has built his blazing throne, Nor yet alone in earth below, With belted seas that come and go, And endless isles of sunlit green, Is all thy Maker's glory seen: Look in upon thy wondrous frame,-- Eternal wisdom still the same! The smooth, soft air with pulse-like waves Flows murmuring through its hidden caves, Whose streams of brightening purple rush, Fired with a new and livelier blush, While all their burden of decay The ebbing current steals away, And red with Nature's flame they start From the warm fountains of the heart. No rest that throbbing slave may ask, Forever quivering o'er his task, While far and wide a crimson jet Leaps forth to fill the woven net Which in unnumbered crossing tides The flood of burning life divides, Then, kindling each decaying part, Creeps back to find the throbbing heart. But warmed with that unchanging flame Behold the outward moving frame, Its living marbles jointed strong With glistening band and silvery thong, And linked to reason's guiding reins By myriad rings in trembling chains, Each graven with the threaded zone Which claims it as the master's own. See how yon beam of seeming white Is braided out of seven-hued light, Yet in those lucid globes no ray By any chance shall break astray. Hark how the rolling surge of sound, Arches and spirals circling round, Wakes the hushed spirit through thine ear With music it is heaven to hear. Then mark the cloven sphere that holds All thought in its mysterious folds; That feels sensation's faintest thrill, And flashes forth the sovereign will; Think on the stormy world that dwells Locked in its dim and clustering cells! The lightning gleams of power it sheds Along its hollow glassy threads! O Father! grant thy love divine To make these mystic temples thine! When wasting age and wearying strife Have sapped the leaning walls of life, When darkness gathers over all, And the last tottering pillars fall, Take the poor dust thy mercy warms, And mould it into heavenly forms! AT A BIRTHDAY FESTIVAL TO J. R. LOWELL WE will not speak of years to-night,-- For what have years to bring But larger floods of love and light, And sweeter songs to sing? We will not drown in wordy praise The kindly thoughts that rise; If Friendship own one tender phrase, He reads it in our eyes. We need not waste our school-boy art To gild this notch of Time;-- Forgive me if my wayward heart Has throbbed in artless rhyme. Enough for him the silent grasp That knits us hand in hand, And he the bracelet's radiant clasp That locks our circling band. Strength to his hours of manly toil! Peace to his starlit dreams! Who loves alike the furrowed soil, The music-haunted streams! Sweet smiles to keep forever bright The sunshine on his lips, And faith that sees the ring of light Round nature's last eclipse! February 22, 1859. A BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE TO J. F. CLARKE WHO is the shepherd sent to lead, Through pastures green, the Master's sheep? What guileless "Israelite indeed" The folded flock may watch and keep? He who with manliest spirit joins The heart of gentlest human mould, With burning light and girded loins, To guide the flock, or watch the fold; True to all Truth the world denies, Not tongue-tied for its gilded sin; Not always right in all men's eyes, But faithful to the light within; Who asks no meed of earthly fame, Who knows no earthly master's call, Who hopes for man, through guilt and shame, Still answering, "God is over all"; Who makes another's grief his own, Whose smile lends joy a double cheer; Where lives the saint, if such be known?-- Speak softly,--such an one is here! O faithful shepherd! thou hast borne The heat and burden of the clay; Yet, o'er thee, bright with beams unshorn, The sun still shows thine onward way. To thee our fragrant love we bring, In buds that April half displays, Sweet first-born angels of the spring, Caught in their opening hymn of praise. What though our faltering accents fail, Our captives know their message well, Our words unbreathed their lips exhale, And sigh more love than ours can tell. April 4, 1860. THE GRAY CHIEF FOR THE MEETING OF THE MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL SOCIETY, 1859 'T is sweet to fight our battles o'er, And crown with honest praise The gray old chief, who strikes no more The blow of better days. Before the true and trusted sage With willing hearts we bend, When years have touched with hallowing age Our Master, Guide, and Friend. For all his manhood's labor past, For love and faith long tried, His age is honored to the last, Though strength and will have died. But when, untamed by toil and strife, Full in our front he stands, The torch of light, the shield of life, Still lifted in his hands, No temple, though its walls resound With bursts of ringing cheers, Can hold the honors that surround His manhood's twice-told years! THE LAST LOOK W. W. SWAIN BEHOLD--not him we knew! This was the prison which his soul looked through, Tender, and brave, and true. His voice no more is heard; And his dead name--that dear familiar word-- Lies on our lips unstirred. He spake with poet's tongue; Living, for him the minstrel's lyre was strung: He shall not die unsung. Grief tried his love, and pain; And the long bondage of his martyr-chain Vexed his sweet soul,--in vain! It felt life's surges break, As, girt with stormy seas, his island lake, Smiling while tempests wake. How can we sorrow more? Grieve not for him whose heart had gone before To that untrodden shore! Lo, through its leafy screen, A gleam of sunlight on a ring of green, Untrodden, half unseen! Here let his body rest, Where the calm shadows that his soul loved best May slide above his breast. Smooth his uncurtained bed; And if some natural tears are softly shed, It is not for the dead. Fold the green turf aright For the long hours before the morning's light, And say the last Good Night! And plant a clear white stone Close by those mounds which hold his loved, his own,-- Lonely, but not alone. Here let him sleeping lie, Till Heaven's bright watchers slumber in the sky And Death himself shall die! Naushon, September 22, 1858. IN MEMORY OF CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM, JR. HE was all sunshine; in his face The very soul of sweetness shone; Fairest and gentlest of his race; None like him we can call our own. Something there was of one that died In her fresh spring-time long ago, Our first dear Mary, angel-eyed, Whose smile it was a bliss to know. Something of her whose love imparts Such radiance to her day's decline, We feel its twilight in our hearts Bright as the earliest morning-shine. Yet richer strains our eye could trace That made our plainer mould more fair, That curved the lip with happier grace, That waved the soft and silken hair. Dust unto dust! the lips are still That only spoke to cheer and bless; The folded hands lie white and chill Unclasped from sorrow's last caress. Leave him in peace; he will not heed These idle tears we vainly pour, Give back to earth the fading weed Of mortal shape his spirit wore. "Shall I not weep my heartstrings torn, My flower of love that falls half blown, My youth uncrowned, my life forlorn, A thorny path to walk alone?" O Mary! one who bore thy name, Whose Friend and Master was divine, Sat waiting silent till He came, Bowed down in speechless grief like thine. "Where have ye laid him?" "Come," they say, Pointing to where the loved one slept; Weeping, the sister led the way,-- And, seeing Mary, "Jesus wept." He weeps with thee, with all that mourn, And He shall wipe thy streaming eyes Who knew all sorrows, woman-born,-- Trust in his word; thy dead shall rise! April 15, 1860. MARTHA DIED JANUARY 7, 1861 SEXTON! Martha's dead and gone; Toll the bell! toll the bell! Her weary hands their labor cease; Good night, poor Martha,--sleep in peace! Toll the bell! Sexton! Martha's dead and gone; Toll the bell! toll the bell! For many a year has Martha said, "I'm old and poor,--would I were dead!" Toll the bell! Sexton! Martha's dead and gone; Toll the bell! toll the bell! She'll bring no more, by day or night, Her basket full of linen white. Toll the bell! Sexton! Martha's dead and gone; Toll the bell! toll the bell! 'T is fitting she should lie below A pure white sheet of drifted snow. Toll the bell! Sexton! Martha's dead and gone; Toll the bell! toll the bell! Sleep, Martha, sleep, to wake in light, Where all the robes are stainless white. Toll the bell! MEETING OF THE ALUMNI OF HARVARD COLLEGE 1857 I THANK you, MR. PRESIDENT, you've kindly broke the ice; Virtue should always be the first,--I 'm only SECOND VICE-- (A vice is something with a screw that's made to hold its jaw Till some old file has played away upon an ancient saw). Sweet brothers by the Mother's side, the babes of days gone by, All nurslings of her Juno breasts whose milk is never dry, We come again, like half-grown boys, and gather at her beck About her knees, and on her lap, and clinging round her neck. We find her at her stately door, and in her ancient chair, Dressed in the robes of red and green she always loved to wear. Her eye has all its radiant youth, her cheek its morning flame; We drop our roses as we go, hers flourish still the same. We have been playing many an hour, and far away we've strayed, Some laughing in the cheerful sun, some lingering in the shade; And some have tired, and laid them down where darker shadows fall, Dear as her loving voice may be, they cannot hear its call. What miles we 've travelled since we shook the dew-drops from our shoes We gathered on this classic green, so famed for heavy dues! How many boys have joined the game, how many slipped away, Since we've been running up and down, and having out our play! One boy at work with book and brief, and one with gown and band, One sailing vessels on the pool, one digging sand, One flying paper kites on change, one planting little pills,-- The seeds of certain annual flowers well known as little bills. What maidens met us on our way, and clasped us hand in hand! What cherubs,--not the legless kind, that fly, but never stand! How many a youthful head we've seen put on its silver crown What sudden changes back again to youth's empurpled brown! But fairer sights have met our eyes, and broader lights have shone, Since others lit their midnight lamps where once we trimmed our own; A thousand trains that flap the sky with flags of rushing fire, And, throbbing in the Thunderer's hand, Thought's million-chorded lyre. We've seen the sparks of Empire fly beyond the mountain bars, Till, glittering o'er the Western wave, they joined the setting stars; And ocean trodden into paths that trampling giants ford, To find the planet's vertebrae and sink its spinal cord. We've tried reform,--and chloroform,--and both have turned our brain; When France called up the photograph, we roused the foe to pain; Just so those earlier sages shared the chaplet of renown,-- Hers sent a bladder to the clouds, ours brought their lightning down. We've seen the little tricks of life, its varnish and veneer, Its stucco-fronts of character flake off and disappear, We 've learned that oft the brownest hands will heap the biggest pile, And met with many a "perfect brick" beneath a rimless "tile." What dreams we 've had of deathless name, as scholars, statesmen, bards, While Fame, the lady with the trump, held up her picture cards! Till, having nearly played our game, she gayly whispered, "Ah! I said you should be something grand,--you'll soon be grandpapa." Well, well, the old have had their day, the young must take their turn; There's something always to forget, and something still to learn; But how to tell what's old or young, the tap-root from the sprigs, Since Florida revealed her fount to Ponce de Leon Twiggs? The wisest was a Freshman once, just freed from bar and bolt, As noisy as a kettle-drum, as leggy as a colt; Don't be too savage with the boys,--the Primer does not say The kitten ought to go to church because the cat doth prey. The law of merit and of age is not the rule of three; Non constat that A. M. must prove as busy as A. B. When Wise the father tracked the son, ballooning through the skies, He taught a lesson to the old,--go thou and do like Wise! Now then, old boys, and reverend youth, of high or low degree, Remember how we only get one annual out of three, And such as dare to simmer down three dinners into one Must cut their salads mighty short, and pepper well with fun. I've passed my zenith long ago, it's time for me to set; A dozen planets wait to shine, and I am lingering yet, As sometimes in the blaze of day a milk-and-watery moon Stains with its dim and fading ray the lustrous blue of noon. Farewell! yet let one echo rise to shake our ancient hall; God save the Queen,--whose throne is here,--the Mother of us all Till dawns the great commencement-day on every shore and sea, And "Expectantur" all mankind, to take their last Degree! THE PARTING SONG FESTIVAL OF THE ALUMNI, 1857 THE noon of summer sheds its ray On Harvard's holy ground; The Matron calls, the sons obey, And gather smiling round. CHORUS. Then old and young together stand, The sunshine and the snow, As heart to heart, and hand in hand, We sing before we go! Her hundred opening doors have swung Through every storied hall The pealing echoes loud have rung, "Thrice welcome one and all!" Then old and young, etc. We floated through her peaceful bay, To sail life's stormy seas But left our anchor where it lay Beneath her green old trees. Then old and young, etc. As now we lift its lengthening chain, That held us fast of old, The rusted rings grow bright again,-- Their iron turns to gold. Then old and young, etc. Though scattered ere the setting sun, As leaves when wild winds blow, Our home is here, our hearts are one, Till Charles forgets to flow. Then old and young, etc. FOR THE MEETING OF THE NATIONAL SANITARY ASSOCIATION 1860 WHAT makes the Healing Art divine? The bitter drug we buy and sell, The brands that scorch, the blades that shine, The scars we leave, the "cures" we tell? Are these thy glories, holiest Art,-- The trophies that adorn thee best,-- Or but thy triumph's meanest part,-- Where mortal weakness stands confessed? We take the arms that Heaven supplies For Life's long battle with Disease, Taught by our various need to prize Our frailest weapons, even these. But ah! when Science drops her shield-- Its peaceful shelter proved in vain-- And bares her snow-white arm to wield The sad, stern ministry of pain; When shuddering o'er the fount of life, She folds her heaven-anointed wings, To lift unmoved the glittering knife That searches all its crimson springs; When, faithful to her ancient lore, She thrusts aside her fragrant balm For blistering juice, or cankering ore, And tames them till they cure or calm; When in her gracious hand are seen The dregs and scum of earth and seas, Her kindness counting all things clean That lend the sighing sufferer ease; Though on the field that Death has won, She save some stragglers in retreat;-- These single acts of mercy done Are but confessions of defeat. What though our tempered poisons save Some wrecks of life from aches and ails; Those grand specifics Nature gave Were never poised by weights or scales! God lent his creatures light and air, And waters open to the skies; Man locks him in a stifling lair, And wonders why his brother dies! In vain our pitying tears are shed, In vain we rear the sheltering pile Where Art weeds out from bed to bed The plagues we planted by the mile! Be that the glory of the past; With these our sacred toils begin So flies in tatters from its mast The yellow flag of sloth and sin, And lo! the starry folds reveal The blazoned truth we hold so dear To guard is better than to heal,-- The shield is nobler than the spear! FOR THE BURNS CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION JANUARY 25, 1859 His birthday.--Nay, we need not speak The name each heart is beating,-- Each glistening eye and flushing cheek In light and flame repeating! We come in one tumultuous tide,-- One surge of wild emotion,-- As crowding through the Frith of Clyde Rolls in the Western Ocean; As when yon cloudless, quartered moon Hangs o'er each storied river, The swelling breasts of Ayr and Doon With sea green wavelets quiver. The century shrivels like a scroll,-- The past becomes the present,-- And face to face, and soul to soul, We greet the monarch-peasant. While Shenstone strained in feeble flights With Corydon and Phillis,-- While Wolfe was climbing Abraham's heights To snatch the Bourbon lilies,-- Who heard the wailing infant's cry, The babe beneath the sheeliug, Whose song to-night in every sky Will shake earth's starry ceiling,-- Whose passion-breathing voice ascends And floats like incense o'er us, Whose ringing lay of friendship blends With labor's anvil chorus? We love him, not for sweetest song, Though never tone so tender; We love him, even in his wrong,-- His wasteful self-surrender. We praise him, not for gifts divine,-- His Muse was born of woman,-- His manhood breathes in every line,-- Was ever heart more human? We love him, praise him, just for this In every form and feature, Through wealth and want, through woe and bliss, He saw his fellow-creature! No soul could sink beneath his love,-- Not even angel blasted; No mortal power could soar above The pride that all outlasted! Ay! Heaven had set one living man Beyond the pedant's tether,-- His virtues, frailties, HE may scan, Who weighs them all together! I fling my pebble on the cairn Of him, though dead, undying; Sweet Nature's nursling, bonniest bairn Beneath her daisies lying. The waning suns, the wasting globe, Shall spare the minstrel's story,-- The centuries weave his purple robe, The mountain-mist of glory! AT A MEETING OF FRIENDS AUGUST 29, 1859 I REMEMBER--why, yes! God bless me! and was it so long ago? I fear I'm growing forgetful, as old folks do, you know; It must have been in 'forty--I would say 'thirty-nine-- We talked this matter over, I and a friend of mine. He said, "Well now, old fellow, I'm thinking that you and I, If we act like other people, shall be older by and by; What though the bright blue ocean is smooth as a pond can be, There is always a line of breakers to fringe the broadest sea. "We're taking it mighty easy, but that is nothing strange, For up to the age of thirty we spend our years like Change; But creeping up towards the forties, as fast as the old years fill, And Time steps in for payment, we seem to change a bill." "I know it," I said, "old fellow; you speak the solemn truth; A man can't live to a hundred and likewise keep his youth; But what if the ten years coming shall silver-streak my hair, You know I shall then be forty; of course I shall not care. "At forty a man grows heavy and tired of fun and noise; Leaves dress to the five-and-twenties and love to the silly boys; No foppish tricks at forty, no pinching of waists and toes, But high-low shoes and flannels and good thick worsted hose." But one fine August morning I found myself awake My birthday:--By Jove, I'm forty! Yes, forty, and no mistake! Why, this is the very milestone, I think I used to hold, That when a fellow had come to, a fellow would then be old! But that is the young folks' nonsense; they're full of their foolish stuff; A man's in his prime at forty,--I see that plain enough; At fifty a man is wrinkled, and may be bald or gray; I call men old at fifty, in spite of all they say. At last comes another August with mist and rain and shine; Its mornings are slowly counted and creep to twenty-nine, And when on the western summits the fading light appears, It touches with rosy fingers the last of my fifty years. There have been both men and women whose hearts were firm and bold, But there never was one of fifty that loved to say "I'm old"; So any elderly person that strives to shirk his years, Make him stand up at a table and try him by his peers. Now here I stand at fifty, my jury gathered round; Sprinkled with dust of silver, but not yet silver-crowned, Ready to meet your verdict, waiting to hear it told; Guilty of fifty summers; speak! Is the verdict _old_. No! say that his hearing fails him; say that his sight grows dim; Say that he's getting wrinkled and weak in back and limb, Losing his wits and temper, but pleading, to make amends, The youth of his fifty summers he finds in his twenty friends. FOR THE FAIR IN AID OF THE FUND TO PROCURE BALL'S STATUE OF WASHINGTON 1630 ALL overgrown with bush and fern, And straggling clumps of tangled trees, With trunks that lean and boughs that turn, Bent eastward by the mastering breeze,-- With spongy bogs that drip and fill A yellow pond with muddy rain, Beneath the shaggy southern hill Lies wet and low the Shawinut plain. And hark! the trodden branches crack; A crow flaps off with startled scream; A straying woodchuck canters back; A bittern rises from the stream; Leaps from his lair a frightened deer; An otter plunges in the pool;-- Here comes old Shawmut's pioneer, The parson on his brindled bull! 1774 The streets are thronged with trampling feet, The northern hill is ridged with graves, But night and morn the drum is beat To frighten down the "rebel knaves." The stones of King Street still are red, And yet the bloody red-coats come I hear their pacing sentry's tread, The click of steel, the tap of drum, And over all the open green, Where grazed of late the harmless kine, The cannon's deepening ruts are seen, The war-horse stamps, the bayonets shine. The clouds are dark with crimson rain Above the murderous hirelings' den, And soon their whistling showers shall stain The pipe-clayed belts of Gage's men. 186- Around the green, in morning light, The spired and palaced summits blaze, And, sunlike, from her Beacon-height The dome-crowned city spreads her rays; They span the waves, they belt the plains, They skirt the roads with bands of white, Till with a flash of gilded panes Yon farthest hillside bounds the sight. Peace, Freedom, Wealth! no fairer view, Though with the wild-bird's restless wings We sailed beneath the noontide's blue Or chased the moonlight's endless rings! Here, fitly raised by grateful hands His holiest memory to recall, The Hero's, Patriot's image stands; He led our sires who won them all! November 14, 1859. THE OLD MAN OF THE SEA A NIGHTMARE DREAM BY DAYLIGHT Do you know the Old Man of the Sea, of the Sea? Have you met with that dreadful old man? If you have n't been caught, you will be, you will be; For catch you he must and he can. He does n't hold on by your throat, by your throat, As of old in the terrible tale; But he grapples you tight by the coat, by the coat, Till its buttons and button-holes fail. There's the charm of a snake in his eye, in his eye, And a polypus-grip in his hands; You cannot go back, nor get by, nor get by, If you look at the spot where he stands. Oh, you're grabbed! See his claw on your sleeve, on your sleeve! It is Sinbad's Old Man of the Sea! You're a Christian, no doubt you believe, you believe You're a martyr, whatever you be! Is the breakfast-hour past? They must wait, they must wait, While the coffee boils sullenly down, While the Johnny-cake burns on the grate, on the grate, And the toast is done frightfully brown. Yes, your dinner will keep; let it cool, let it cool, And Madam may worry and fret, And children half-starved go to school, go to school; He can't think of sparing you yet. Hark! the bell for the train! "Come along! Come along! For there is n't a second to lose." "ALL ABOARD!" (He holds on.) "Fsht I ding-dong! Fsht! ding-dong!"-- You can follow on foot, if you choose. There's a maid with a cheek like a peach, like a peach, That is waiting for you in the church;-- But he clings to your side like a leech, like a leech, And you leave your lost bride in the lurch. There's a babe in a fit,--hurry quick! hurry quick! To the doctor's as fast as you can! The baby is off, while you stick, while you stick, In the grip of the dreadful Old Man! I have looked on the face of the Bore, of the Bore; The voice of the Simple I know; I have welcomed the Flat at my door, at my door; I have sat by the side of the Slow; I have walked like a lamb by the friend, by the friend, That stuck to my skirts like a bur; I have borne the stale talk without end, without end, Of the sitter whom nothing could stir. But my hamstrings grow loose, and I shake, and I shake, At the sight of the dreadful Old Man; Yea, I quiver and quake, and I take, and I take, To my legs with what vigor I can! Oh the dreadful Old Man of the Sea, of the Sea He's come back like the Wandering Jew! He has had his cold claw upon me, upon me,-- And be sure that he 'll have it on you! INTERNATIONAL ODE OUR FATHERS' LAND GOD bless our Fathers' Land! Keep her in heart and hand One with our own! From all her foes defend, Be her brave People's Friend, On all her realms descend, Protect her Throne! Father, with loving care Guard Thou her kingdom's Heir, Guide all his ways Thine arm his shelter be, From him by land and sea Bid storm and danger flee, Prolong his days! Lord, let War's tempest cease, Fold the whole Earth in peace Under thy wings Make all thy nations one, All hearts beneath the sun, Till Thou shalt reign alone, Great King of kings! A SENTIMENT OFFERED AT THE DINNER TO H. I. H. THE PRINCE NAPOLEON, AT THE REVERE HOUSE, SEPTEMBER 25,1861 THE land of sunshine and of song! Her name your hearts divine; To her the banquet's vows belong Whose breasts have poured its wine; Our trusty friend, our true ally Through varied change and chance So, fill your flashing goblets high,-- I give you, VIVE LA FRANCE! Above our hosts in triple folds The selfsame colors spread, Where Valor's faithful arm upholds The blue, the white, the red; Alike each nation's glittering crest Reflects the morning's glance,-- Twin eagles, soaring east and west Once more, then, VIVE LA FRANCE! Sister in trial! who shall count Thy generous friendship's claim, Whose blood ran mingling in the fount That gave our land its name, Till Yorktown saw in blended line Our conquering arms advance, And victory's double garlands twine Our banners? VIVE LA FRANCE! O land of heroes! in our need One gift from Heaven we crave To stanch these wounds that vainly bleed,-- The wise to lead the brave! Call back one Captain of thy past From glory's marble trance, Whose name shall be a bugle-blast To rouse us! VIVE LA FRANCE! Pluck Conde's baton from the trench, Wake up stout Charles Martel, Or find some woman's hand to clench The sword of La Pucelle! Give us one hour of old Turenne,-- One lift of Bayard's lance,-- Nay, call Marengo's Chief again To lead us! VIVE LA FRANCE! Ah, hush! our welcome Guest shall hear But sounds of peace and joy; No angry echo vex thine ear, Fair Daughter of Savoy Once more! the land of arms and arts, Of glory, grace, romance; Her love lies warm in all our hearts God bless her! VIVE LA FRANCE! BROTHER JONATHAN'S LAMENT FOR SISTER CAROLINE SHE has gone,--she has left us in passion and pride,-- Our stormy-browed sister, so long at our side! She has torn her own star from our firmament's glow, And turned on her brother the face of a foe! Oh, Caroline, Caroline, child of the sun, We can never forget that our hearts have been one,-- Our foreheads both sprinkled in Liberty's name, From the fountain of blood with the finger of flame! You were always too ready to fire at a touch; But we said, "She is hasty,--she does not mean much." We have scowled, when you uttered some turbulent threat; But Friendship still whispered, "Forgive and forget!" Has our love all died out? Have its altars grown cold? Has the curse come at last which the fathers foretold? Then Nature must teach us the strength of the chain That her petulant children would sever in vain. They may fight till the buzzards are gorged with their spoil, Till the harvest grows black as it rots in the soil, Till the wolves and the catamounts troop from their eaves, And the shark tracks the pirate, the lord of the waves: In vain is the strife! When its fury is past, Their fortunes must flow in one channel at last, As the torrents that rush from the mountains of snow Roll mingled in peace through the valleys below. Our Union is river, lake, ocean, and sky Man breaks not the medal, when God cuts the die! Though darkened with sulphur, though cloven with steel, The blue arch will brighten, the waters will heal! Oh, Caroline, Caroline, child of the sun, There are battles with Fate that can never be won! The star-flowering banner must never be furled, For its blossoms of light are the hope of the world! Go, then, our rash sister! afar and aloof, Run wild in the sunshine away from our roof; But when your heart aches and your feet have grown sore, Remember the pathway that leads to our door! March 25, 1861. NOTES: (For original print volume one) [There stand the Goblet and the Sun.] The Goblet and the Sun (Vas-Sol), sculptured on a free-stone slab supported by five pillars, are the only designation of the family tomb of the Vassalls. [Thus mocked the spoilers with his school-boy scorn.] See "Old Ironsides," of this volume. [On other shores, above their mouldering towns.] Daniel Webster quoted several of the verses which follow, in his address at the laying of the corner-stone of the addition to the Capitol at Washington, July 4, 1851. [Thou calm, chaste scholar.] Charles Chauncy Emerson; died May 9, 1836. [And thou, dear friend, whom Science still deplores.] James Jackson, Jr., M. D.; died March 28, 1834. [THE STEAMBOAT.] Mr. Emerson has quoted some lines from this poem, but somewhat disguised as he recalled them. It is never safe to quote poetry without referring to the original. [Hark! The sweet bells renew their welcome sound.] The churches referred to in the lines which follow are,-- 1. King's Chapel, the foundation of which was laid by Governor Shirley in 1749. 2. Brattle Street Church, consecrated in 1773. The completion of this edifice, the design of which included a spire, was prevented by the troubles of the Revolution, and its plain, square tower presented nothing more attractive than a massive simplicity. In the front of this tower, till the church was demolished in 1872, there was to be seen, half imbedded in the brick-work, a cannon-ball, which was thrown from the American fortifications at Cambridge, during the bombard-ment of the city, then occupied by the British troops. 3. The Old South, first occupied for public worship in 1730. 4. Park Street Church, built in 1809, the tall white steeple of which is the most conspicuous of all the Boston spires. 5. Christ Church, opened for public worship in 1723, and containing a set of eight bells, long the only chime in Boston. [INTERNATIONAL ODE.] This ode was sung in unison by twelve hundred children of the public schools, to the air of "God save the Queen," at the visit of the Prince of Wales to Boston, October 18, 1860. THE POETICAL WORKS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES [Volume 2 or the 1893 three volume set] CONTENTS: POEMS OF THE CLASS OF '29 (1851-1889) BILL AND JOE A SONG OF "TWENTY-NINE" QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS AN IMPROMPTU THE OLD MAN DREAMS REMEMBER--FORGET OUR INDIAN SUMMER MARE RUBRUM THE Boys LINES A VOICE OF THE LOYAL NORTH J. D. R. VOYAGE OF THE GOOD SHIP UNION "CHOOSE YOU THIS DAY WHOM YE WILL SERVE" F. W. C. THE LAST CHARGE OUR OLDEST FRIEND SHERMAN 'S IN SAVANNAH MY ANNUAL ALL HERE ONCE MORE THE OLD CRUISER HYMN FOR THE CLASS-MEETING EVEN-SONG THE SMILING LISTENER OUR SWEET SINGER: J. A. H. C. M., H. S., J. K. W. WHAT I HAVE COME FOR OUR BANKER FOR CLASS-MEETING "AD AMICOS" HOW NOT TO SETTLE IT THE LAST SURVIVOR THE ARCHBISHOP AND GIL BLAS THE SHADOWS BENJAMIN PEIRCE IN THE TWILIGHT A LOVING-CUP SONG THE GIRDLE OF FRIENDSHIP THE LYRE OF ANACREON THE OLD TUNE THE BROKEN CIRCLE THE ANGEL-THIEF AFTER THE CURFEW POEMS FROM THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE (1857-1858) THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS SUN AND SHADOW MUSA A PARTING HEALTH: To J. L. MOTLEY WHAT WE ALL THINK SPRING HAS COME PROLOGUE LATTER-DAY WARNINGS ALBUM VERSES A GOOD TIME GOING! THE LAST BLOSSOM CONTENTMENT AESTIVATION THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE; OR, THE WONDERFUL "ONE-HOSE SHAY" PARSON TURELL'S LEGACY; OR, THE PRESIDENT'S OLD ARM-CHAIR ODE FOR A SOCIAL MEETING, WITH SLIGHT ALTERATIONS BY A TEETOTALER POEMS FROM THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE (1858-1859) UNDER THE VIOLETS HYMN OF TRUST A SUN-DAY HYMN THE CROOKED FOOTPATH IRIS, HER BOOK ROBINSON OF LEYDEN ST ANTHONY THE REFORMER THE OPENING OF THE PIANO MIDSUMMER DE SAUTY POEMS FROM THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE (1871-1872) HOMESICK IN HEAVEN FANTASIA AUNT TABITHA WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS EPILOGUE TO THE BREAKFAST-TABLE SERIES SONGS OF MANY SEASONS (1862-1874) OPENING THE WINDOW PROGRAMME IN THE QUIET DAYS AN OLD-YEAR SONG DOROTHY Q: A FAMILY PORTRAIT THE ORGAN-BLOWER AT THE PANTOMIME AFTER THE FIRE A BALLAD OF THE BOSTON TEA-PARTY NEARING THE SNOW-LINE IN WAR TIME TO CANAAN: A PURITAN WAR-SONG "THUS SAITH THE LORD, I OFFER THEE THREE THINGS" NEVER OR NOW ONE COUNTRY GOD SAVE THE FLAG! HYMN AFTER THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION HYMN FOR THE FAIR AT CHICAGO UNDER THE WASHINGTON ELM, CAMBRIDGE FREEDOM, OUR QUEEN ARMY HYMN PARTING HYMN THE FLOWER OF LIBERTY THE SWEET LITTLE MAN UNION AND LIBERTY SONGS OF WELCOME AND FAREWELL AMERICA TO RUSSIA WELCOME TO THE GRAND DUKE ALEXIS AT THE BANQUET TO THE GRAND DUKE ALEXIS AT THE BANQUET TO THE CHINESE EMBASSY AT THE BANQUET TO THE JAPANESE EMBASSY BRYANT'S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY A FAREWELL TO AGASSIZ AT A DINNER TO ADMIRAL FARRAGUT AT A DINNER TO GENERAL GRANT To H W LONGFELLOW To CHRISTIAN GOTTFRIED EHRENBERG A TOAST TO WILKIE COLLINS MEMORIAL VERSES FOR THE SERVICES IN MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, BOSTON, 1865 FOR THE COMMEMORATION SERVICES, CAMBRIDGE JULY 21, 1865 EDWARD EVERETT: JANUARY 30, 1865 SHAKESPEARE TERCENTENNIAL CELEBRATION, APRIL 23, 1864 IN MEMORY OF JOHN AND ROBERT WARE, MAY 25, 1864 HUMBOLDT'S BIRTHDAY: CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION, SEPTEMBER 14, 1869 POEM AT THE DEDICATION OF THE HALLECK MONUMENT, JULY 8, 1869 HYMN FOR THE CELEBRATION AT THE LAYING OF THE CORNER-STONE OF HARVARD MEMORIAL HALL, CAMBRIDGE, OCTOBER 6, 1870 HYMN FOR THE DEDICATION OF MEMORIAL HALL AT CAMBRIDGE, 1874 HYMN AT THE FUNERAL SERVICES OF CHARLES SUMNER, APRIL 29, 1874 RHYMES OF AN HOUR ADDRESS FOR THE OPENING OF THE FIFTH AVENUE THEATRE, N. Y. 1873 A SEA DIALOGUE CHANSON WITHOUT MUSIC FOR THE CENTENNIAL DINNER, PROPRIETORS OF BOSTON PIER, 1873 A POEM SERVED TO ORDER THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH No TIME LIKE THE OLD TIME A HYMN OF PEACE, TO THE MUSIC OF KELLER'S "AMERICAN HYMN" NOTES POEMS OF THE CLASS OF '29 1851-1889 BILL AND JOE COME, dear old comrade, you and I Will steal an hour from days gone by, The shining days when life was new, And all was bright with morning dew, The lusty days of long ago, When you were Bill and I was Joe. Your name may flaunt a titled trail Proud as a cockerel's rainbow tail, And mine as brief appendix wear As Tam O'Shanter's luckless mare; To-day, old friend, remember still That I am Joe and you are Bill. You've won the great world's envied prize, And grand you look in people's eyes, With H O N. and L L. D. In big brave letters, fair to see,-- Your fist, old fellow! off they go!-- How are you, Bill? How are you, Joe? You've worn the judge's ermined robe; You 've taught your name to half the globe; You've sung mankind a deathless strain; You've made the dead past live again The world may call you what it will, But you and I are Joe and Bill. The chaffing young folks stare and say "See those old buffers, bent and gray,-- They talk like fellows in their teens! Mad, poor old boys! That's what it means,"-- And shake their heads; they little know The throbbing hearts of Bill and Joe!-- How Bill forgets his hour of pride, While Joe sits smiling at his side; How Joe, in spite of time's disguise, Finds the old schoolmate in his eyes,-- Those calm, stern eyes that melt and fill As Joe looks fondly up at Bill. Ah, pensive scholar, what is fame? A fitful tongue of leaping flame; A giddy whirlwind's fickle gust, That lifts a pinch of mortal dust; A few swift years, and who can show Which dust was Bill and which was Joe? The weary idol takes his stand, Holds out his bruised and aching hand, While gaping thousands come and go,-- How vain it seems, this empty show! Till all at once his pulses thrill;-- 'T is poor old Joe's "God bless you, Bill!" And shall we breathe in happier spheres The names that pleased our mortal ears; In some sweet lull of harp and song For earth-born spirits none too long, Just whispering of the world below Where this was Bill and that was Joe? No matter; while our home is here No sounding name is half so dear; When fades at length our lingering day, Who cares what pompous tombstones say? Read on the hearts that love us still, _Hic jacet_ Joe. _Hic jacet_ Bill. A SONG OF "TWENTY-NINE" 1851 THE summer dawn is breaking On Auburn's tangled bowers, The golden light is waking On Harvard's ancient towers; The sun is in the sky That must see us do or die, Ere it shine on the line Of the CLASS OF '29. At last the day is ended, The tutor screws no more, By doubt and fear attended Each hovers round the door, Till the good old Praeses cries, While the tears stand in his eyes, "You have passed, and are classed With the Boys of '29." Not long are they in making The college halls their own, Instead of standing shaking, Too bashful to be known; But they kick the Seniors' shins Ere the second week begins, When they stray in the way Of the BOYS OF '29. If a jolly set is trolling The last _Der Freischutz_ airs, Or a "cannon bullet" rolling Comes bouncing down the stairs, The tutors, looking out, Sigh, "Alas! there is no doubt, 'T is the noise of the Boys Of the CLASS OF '29." Four happy years together, By storm and sunshine tried, In changing wind and weather, They rough it side by side, Till they hear their Mother cry, "You are fledged, and you must fly," And the bell tolls the knell Of the days of '29. Since then, in peace or trouble, Full many a year has rolled, And life has counted double The days that then we told; Yet we'll end as we've begun, For though scattered, we are one, While each year sees us here, Round the board of '29. Though fate may throw between us The mountains or the sea, No time shall ever wean us, No distance set us free; But around the yearly board, When the flaming pledge is poured, It shall claim every name On the roll of '29. To yonder peaceful ocean That glows with sunset fires, Shall reach the warm emotion This welcome day inspires, Beyond the ridges cold Where a brother toils for gold, Till it shine through the mine Round the Boy of '29. If one whom fate has broken Shall lift a moistened eye, We'll say, before he 's spoken-- "Old Classmate, don't you cry! Here, take the purse I hold, There 's a tear upon the gold-- It was mine-it is thine-- A'n't we BOYS OF '29?" As nearer still and nearer The fatal stars appear, The living shall be dearer With each encircling year, Till a few old men shall say, "We remember 't is the day-- Let it pass with a glass For the CLASS OF '29." As one by one is falling Beneath the leaves or snows, Each memory still recalling, The broken ring shall close, Till the nightwinds softly pass O'er the green and growing grass, Where it waves on the graves Of the BOYS OF '29! QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 1852 WHERE, oh where are the visions of morning, Fresh as the dews of our prime? Gone, like tenants that quit without warning, Down the back entry of time. Where, oh where are life's lilies and roses, Nursed in the golden dawn's smile? Dead as the bulrushes round little Moses, On the old banks of the Nile. Where are the Marys, and Anns, and Elizas, Loving and lovely of yore? Look in the columns of old Advertisers,-- Married and dead by the score. Where the gray colts and the ten-year-old fillies, Saturday's triumph and joy? Gone, like our friend (--Greek--) Achilles, Homer's ferocious old boy. Die-away dreams of ecstatic emotion, Hopes like young eagles at play, Vows of unheard-of and endless devotion, How ye have faded away! Yet, through the ebbing of Time's mighty river Leave our young blossoms to die, Let him roll smooth in his current forever, Till the last pebble is dry. AN IMPROMPTU Not premeditated 1853 THE clock has struck noon; ere it thrice tell the hours We shall meet round the table that blushes with flowers, And I shall blush deeper with shame-driven blood That I came to the banquet and brought not a bud. Who cares that his verse is a beggar in art If you see through its rags the full throb of his heart? Who asks if his comrade is battered and tanned When he feels his warm soul in the clasp of his hand? No! be it an epic, or be it a line, The Boys will all love it because it is mine; I sung their last song on the morn of the day That tore from their lives the last blossom of May. It is not the sunset that glows in the wine, But the smile that beams over it, makes it divine; I scatter these drops, and behold, as they fall, The day-star of memory shines through them all! And these are the last; they are drops that I stole From a wine-press that crushes the life from the soul, But they ran through my heart and they sprang to my brain Till our twentieth sweet summer was smiling again! THE OLD MAN DREAMS 1854 OH for one hour of youthful joy! Give back my twentieth spring! I'd rather laugh, a bright-haired boy, Than reign, a gray-beard king. Off with the spoils of wrinkled age! Away with Learning's crown! Tear out life's Wisdom-written page, And dash its trophies down! One moment let my life-blood stream From boyhood's fount of flame! Give me one giddy, reeling dream Of life all love and fame. My listening angel heard the prayer, And, calmly smiling, said, "If I but touch thy silvered hair Thy hasty wish hath sped. "But is there nothing in thy track, To bid thee fondly stay, While the swift seasons hurry back To find the wished-for day?" "Ah, truest soul of womankind! Without thee what were life? One bliss I cannot leave behind: I'll take--my--precious--wife!" The angel took a sapphire pen And wrote in rainbow dew, _The man would be a boy again, And be a husband too!_ "And is there nothing yet unsaid, Before the change appears? Remember, all their gifts have fled With those dissolving years." "Why, yes;" for memory would recall My fond paternal joys; "I could not bear to leave them all I'll take--my--girl--and--boys." The smiling angel dropped his pen,-- "Why, this will never do; The man would be a boy again, And be a father too!" And so I laughed,--my laughter woke The household with its noise,-- And wrote my dream, when morning broke, To please the gray-haired boys. REMEMBER--FORGET 1855 AND what shall be the song to-night, If song there needs must be? If every year that brings us here Must steal an hour from me? Say, shall it ring a merry peal, Or heave a mourning sigh O'er shadows cast, by years long past, On moments flitting by? Nay, take the first unbidden line The idle hour may send, No studied grace can mend the face That smiles as friend on friend; The balsam oozes from the pine, The sweetness from the rose, And so, unsought, a kindly thought Finds language as it flows. The years rush by in sounding flight, I hear their ceaseless wings; Their songs I hear, some far, some near, And thus the burden rings "The morn has fled, the noon has past, The sun will soon be set, The twilight fade to midnight shade; Remember-and Forget!" Remember all that time has brought-- The starry hope on high, The strength attained, the courage gained, The love that cannot die. Forget the bitter, brooding thought,-- The word too harshly said, The living blame love hates to name, The frailties of the dead! We have been younger, so they say, But let the seasons roll, He doth not lack an almanac Whose youth is in his soul. The snows may clog life's iron track, But does the axle tire, While bearing swift through bank and drift The engine's heart of fire? I lift a goblet in my hand; If good old wine it hold, An ancient skin to keep it in Is just the thing, we 're told. We 're grayer than the dusty flask,-- We 're older than our wine; Our corks reveal the "white top" seal, The stamp of '29. Ah, Boys! we clustered in the dawn, To sever in the dark; A merry crew, with loud halloo, We climbed our painted bark; We sailed her through the four years' cruise, We 'll sail her to the last, Our dear old flag, though but a rag, Still flying on her mast. So gliding on, each winter's gale Shall pipe us all on deck, Till, faint and few, the gathering crew Creep o'er the parting wreck, Her sails and streamers spread aloft To fortune's rain or shine, Till storm or sun shall all be one, And down goes TWENTY-NINE! OUR INDIAN SUMMER 1856 You 'll believe me, dear boys, 't is a pleasure to rise, With a welcome like this in your darling old eyes; To meet the same smiles and to hear the same tone Which have greeted me oft in the years that have flown. Were I gray as the grayest old rat in the wall, My locks would turn brown at the sight of you all; If my heart were as dry as the shell on the sand, It would fill like the goblet I hold in my hand. There are noontides of autumn when summer returns. Though the leaves are all garnered and sealed in their urns, And the bird on his perch, that was silent so long, Believes the sweet sunshine and breaks into song. We have caged the young birds of our beautiful June; Their plumes are still bright and their voices in tune; One moment of sunshine from faces like these And they sing as they sung in the green-growing trees. The voices of morning! how sweet is their thrill When the shadows have turned, and the evening grows still! The text of our lives may get wiser with age, But the print was so fair on its twentieth page! Look off from your goblet and up from your plate, Come, take the last journal, and glance at its date: Then think what we fellows should say and should do, If the 6 were a 9 and the 5 were a 2. Ah, no! for the shapes that would meet with as here, From the far land of shadows, are ever too dear! Though youth flung around us its pride and its charms, We should see but the comrades we clasped in our arms. A health to our future--a sigh for our past, We love, we remember, we hope to the last; And for all the base lies that the almanacs hold, While we've youth in our hearts we can never grow old! MARE RUBRUM 1858 FLASH out a stream of blood-red wine, For I would drink to other days, And brighter shall their memory shine, Seen flaming through its crimson blaze! The roses die, the summers fade, But every ghost of boyhood's dream By nature's magic power is laid To sleep beneath this blood-red stream! It filled the purple grapes that lay, And drank the splendors of the sun, Where the long summer's cloudless day Is mirrored in the broad Garonne; It pictures still the bacchant shapes That saw their hoarded sunlight shed,-- The maidens dancing on the grapes,-- Their milk-white ankles splashed with red. Beneath these waves of crimson lie, In rosy fetters prisoned fast, Those flitting shapes that never die,-- The swift-winged visions of the past. Kiss but the crystal's mystic rim, Each shadow rends its flowery chain, Springs in a bubble from its brim, And walks the chambers of the brain. Poor beauty! Time and fortune's wrong No shape nor feature may withstand; Thy wrecks are scattered all along, Like emptied sea-shells on the sand; Yet, sprinkled with this blushing rain, The dust restores each blooming girl, As if the sea-shells moved again Their glistening lips of pink and pearl. Here lies the home of school-boy life, With creaking stair and wind-swept hall, And, scarred by many a truant knife, Our old initials on the wall; Here rest, their keen vibrations mute, The shout of voices known so well, The ringing laugh, the wailing flute, The chiding of the sharp-tongued bell. Here, clad in burning robes, are laid Life's blossomed joys, untimely shed, And here those cherished forms have strayed We miss awhile, and call them dead. What wizard fills the wondrous glass? What soil the enchanted clusters grew? That buried passions wake and pass In beaded drops of fiery dew? Nay, take the cup of blood-red wine,-- Our hearts can boast a warmer glow, Filled from a vintage more divine, Calmed, but not chilled, by winter's snow! To-night the palest wave we sip Rich as the priceless draught shall be That wet the bride of Cana's lip,-- The wedding wine of Galilee! THE BOYS 1859 HAS there any old fellow got mixed with the boys? If there has, take him out, without making a noise. Hang the Almanac's cheat and the Catalogue's spite! Old Time is a liar! We're twenty to-night! We're twenty! We're twenty! Who says we are more? He's tipsy,--young jackanapes!--show him the door! "Gray temples at twenty?"--Yes! white if we please; Where the snow-flakes fall thickest there's nothing can freeze! Was it snowing I spoke of? Excuse the mistake! Look close,--you will see not a sign of a flake! We want some new garlands for those we have shed,-- And these are white roses in place of the red. We've a trick, we young fellows, you may have been told, Of talking (in public) as if we were old:-- That boy we call "Doctor," and this we call "Judge;" It 's a neat little fiction,--of course it 's all fudge. That fellow's the "Speaker,"--the one on the right; "Mr. Mayor," my young one, how are you to-night? That's our "Member of Congress," we say when we chaff; There's the "Reverend" What's his name?--don't make me laugh. That boy with the grave mathematical look Made believe he had written a wonderful book, And the ROYAL SOCIETY thought it was _true_! So they chose him right in; a good joke it was, too! There's a boy, we pretend, with a three-decker brain, That could harness a team with a logical chain; When he spoke for our manhood in syllabled fire, We called him "The Justice," but now he's "The Squire." And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith,-- Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith; But he shouted a song for the brave and the free,-- Just read on his medal, "My country," "of thee!" You hear that boy laughing?--You think he's all fun; But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done; The children laugh loud as they troop to his call, And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all! Yes, we 're boys,--always playing with tongue or with pen,-- And I sometimes have asked,--Shall we ever be men? Shall we always be youthful, and laughing, and gay, Till the last dear companion drops smiling away? Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its gray! The stars of its winter, the dews of its May! And when we have done with our life-lasting toys, Dear Father, take care of thy children, THE BOYS! LINES 1860 I 'm ashamed,--that 's the fact,--it 's a pitiful case,-- Won't any kind classmate get up in my place? Just remember how often I've risen before,-- I blush as I straighten my legs on the floor! There are stories, once pleasing, too many times told,-- There are beauties once charming, too fearfully old,-- There are voices we've heard till we know them so well, Though they talked for an hour they'd have nothing to tell. Yet, Classmates! Friends! Brothers! Dear blessed old boys! Made one by a lifetime of sorrows and joys, What lips have such sounds as the poorest of these, Though honeyed, like Plato's, by musical bees? What voice is so sweet and what greeting so dear As the simple, warm welcome that waits for us here? The love of our boyhood still breathes in its tone, And our hearts throb the answer, "He's one of our own!" Nay! count not our numbers; some sixty we know, But these are above, and those under the snow; And thoughts are still mingled wherever we meet For those we remember with those that we greet. We have rolled on life's journey,--how fast and how far! One round of humanity's many-wheeled car, But up-hill and down-hill, through rattle and rub, Old, true Twenty-niners! we've stuck to our hub! While a brain lives to think, or a bosom to feel, We will cling to it still like the spokes of a wheel! And age, as it chills us, shall fasten the tire That youth fitted round in his circle of fire! A VOICE OF THE LOYAL NORTH 1861 JANUARY THIRD WE sing "Our Country's" song to-night With saddened voice and eye; Her banner droops in clouded light Beneath the wintry sky. We'll pledge her once in golden wine Before her stars have set Though dim one reddening orb may shine, We have a Country yet. 'T were vain to sigh o'er errors past, The fault of sires or sons; Our soldier heard the threatening blast, And spiked his useless guns; He saw the star-wreathed ensign fall, By mad invaders torn; But saw it from the bastioned wall That laughed their rage to scorn! What though their angry cry is flung Across the howling wave,-- They smite the air with idle tongue The gathering storm who brave; Enough of speech! the trumpet rings; Be silent, patient, calm,-- God help them if the tempest swings The pine against the palm! Our toilsome years have made us tame; Our strength has slept unfelt; The furnace-fire is slow to flame That bids our ploughshares melt; 'T is hard to lose the bread they win In spite of Nature's frowns,-- To drop the iron threads we spin That weave our web of towns, To see the rusting turbines stand Before the emptied flumes, To fold the arms that flood the land With rivers from their looms,-- But harder still for those who learn The truth forgot so long; When once their slumbering passions burn, The peaceful are the strong! The Lord have mercy on the weak, And calm their frenzied ire, And save our brothers ere they shriek, "We played with Northern fire!" The eagle hold his mountain height,-- The tiger pace his den Give all their country, each his right! God keep us all! Amen! J. D. R. 1862 THE friends that are, and friends that were, What shallow waves divide! I miss the form for many a year Still seated at my side. I miss him, yet I feel him still Amidst our faithful band, As if not death itself could chill The warmth of friendship's hand. His story other lips may tell,-- For me the veil is drawn; I only knew he loved me well, He loved me--and is gone! VOYAGE OF THE GOOD SHIP UNION 1862 'T is midnight: through my troubled dream Loud wails the tempest's cry; Before the gale, with tattered sail, A ship goes plunging by. What name? Where bound?--The rocks around Repeat the loud halloo. --The good ship Union, Southward bound: God help her and her crew! And is the old flag flying still That o'er your fathers flew, With bands of white and rosy light, And field of starry blue? --Ay! look aloft! its folds full oft Have braved the roaring blast, And still shall fly when from the sky This black typhoon has past! Speak, pilot of the storm-tost bark! May I thy peril share? --O landsman, there are fearful seas The brave alone may dare! --Nay, ruler of the rebel deep, What matters wind or wave? The rocks that wreck your reeling deck Will leave me naught to save! O landsman, art thou false or true? What sign hast thou to show? --The crimson stains from loyal veins That hold my heart-blood's flow --Enough! what more shall honor claim? I know the sacred sign; Above thy head our flag shall spread, Our ocean path be thine! The bark sails on; the Pilgrim's Cape Lies low along her lee, Whose headland crooks its anchor-flukes To lock the shore and sea. No treason here! it cost too dear To win this barren realm And true and free the hands must be That hold the whaler's helm! Still on! Manhattan's narrowing bay No rebel cruiser scars; Her waters feel no pirate's keel That flaunts the fallen stars! --But watch the light on yonder height,-- Ay, pilot, have a care! Some lingering cloud in mist may shroud The capes of Delaware! Say, pilot, what this fort may be, Whose sentinels look down From moated walls that show the sea Their deep embrasures' frown? The Rebel host claims all the coast, But these are friends, we know, Whose footprints spoil the "sacred soil," And this is?--Fort Monroe! The breakers roar,--how bears the shore? --The traitorous wreckers' hands Have quenched the blaze that poured its rays Along the Hatteras sands. --Ha! say not so! I see its glow! Again the shoals display The beacon light that shines by night, The Union Stars by day! The good ship flies to milder skies, The wave more gently flows, The softening breeze wafts o'er the seas The breath of Beaufort's rose. What fold is this the sweet winds kiss, Fair-striped and many-starred, Whose shadow palls these orphaned walls, The twins of Beauregard? What! heard you not Port Royal's doom? How the black war-ships came And turned the Beaufort roses' bloom To redder wreaths of flame? How from Rebellion's broken reed We saw his emblem fall, As soon his cursed poison-weed Shall drop from Sumter's wall? On! on! Pulaski's iron hail Falls harmless on Tybee! The good ship feels the freshening gales, She strikes the open sea; She rounds the point, she threads the keys That guard the Land of Flowers, And rides at last where firm and fast Her own Gibraltar towers! The good ship Union's voyage is o'er, At anchor safe she swings, And loud and clear with cheer on cheer Her joyous welcome rings: Hurrah! Hurrah! it shakes the wave, It thunders on the shore,-- One flag, one land, one heart, one hand, One Nation, evermore! "CHOOSE YOU THIS DAY WHOM YE WILL SERVE" 1863 YES, tyrants, you hate us, and fear while you hate The self-ruling, chain-breaking, throne-shaking State! The night-birds dread morning,--your instinct is true,-- The day-star of Freedom brings midnight for you! Why plead with the deaf for the cause of mankind? The owl hoots at noon that the eagle is blind! We ask not your reasons,--'t were wasting our time,-- Our life is a menace, our welfare a crime! We have battles to fight, we have foes to subdue,-- Time waits not for us, and we wait not for you! The mower mows on, though the adder may writhe And the copper-head coil round the blade of his scythe! "No sides in this quarrel," your statesmen may urge, Of school-house and wages with slave-pen scourge!-- No sides in the quarrel! proclaim it as well To the angels that fight with the legions of hell! They kneel in God's temple, the North and the South, With blood on each weapon and prayers in each mouth. Whose cry shall be answered? Ye Heavens, attend The lords of the lash as their voices ascend! "O Lord, we are shaped in the image of Thee,-- Smite down the base millions that claim to be free, And lend thy strong arm to the soft-handed race Who eat not their bread in the sweat of their face!" So pleads the proud planter. What echoes are these? The bay of his bloodhound is borne on the breeze, And, lost in the shriek of his victim's despair, His voice dies unheard.--Hear the Puritan's prayer! "O Lord, that didst smother mankind in thy flood, The sun is as sackcloth, the moon is as blood, The stars fall to earth as untimely are cast The figs from the fig-tree that shakes in the blast! "All nations, all tribes in whose nostrils is breath Stand gazing at Sin as she travails with Death! Lord, strangle the monster that struggles to birth, Or mock us no more with thy 'Kingdom on Earth!' "If Ammon and Moab must reign in the land Thou gavest thine Israel, fresh from thy hand, Call Baal and Ashtaroth out of their graves To be the new gods for the empire of slaves!" Whose God will ye serve, O ye rulers of men? Will ye build you new shrines in the slave-breeder's den? Or bow with the children of light, as they call On the Judge of the Earth and the Father of All? Choose wisely, choose quickly, for time moves apace,-- Each day is an age in the life of our race! Lord, lead them in love, ere they hasten in fear From the fast-rising flood that shall girdle the sphere! F. W. C. 1864 FAST as the rolling seasons bring The hour of fate to those we love, Each pearl that leaves the broken string Is set in Friendship's crown above. As narrower grows the earthly chain, The circle widens in the sky; These are our treasures that remain, But those are stars that beam on high. We miss--oh, how we miss!--his face,-- With trembling accents speak his name. Earth cannot fill his shadowed place From all her rolls of pride and fame; Our song has lost the silvery thread That carolled through his jocund lips; Our laugh is mute, our smile is fled, And all our sunshine in eclipse. And what and whence the wondrous charm That kept his manhood boylike still,-- That life's hard censors could disarm And lead them captive at his will? His heart was shaped of rosier clay,-- His veins were filled with ruddier fire,-- Time could not chill him, fortune sway, Nor toil with all its burdens tire. His speech burst throbbing from its fount And set our colder thoughts aglow, As the hot leaping geysers mount And falling melt the Iceland snow. Some word, perchance, we counted rash,-- Some phrase our calmness might disclaim, Yet 't was the sunset's lightning's flash, No angry bolt, but harmless flame. Man judges all, God knoweth each; We read the rule, He sees the law; How oft his laughing children teach The truths his prophets never saw O friend, whose wisdom flowered in mirth, Our hearts are sad, our eyes are dim; He gave thy smiles to brighten earth,-- We trust thy joyous soul to Him! Alas!--our weakness Heaven forgive! We murmur, even while we trust, "How long earth's breathing burdens live, Whose hearts, before they die, are dust!" But thou!--through grief's untimely tears We ask with half-reproachful sigh-- "Couldst thou not watch a few brief years Till Friendship faltered, 'Thou mayst die'?" Who loved our boyish years so well? Who knew so well their pleasant tales, And all those livelier freaks could tell Whose oft-told story never fails? In vain we turn our aching eyes,-- In vain we stretch our eager hands,-- Cold in his wintry shroud he lies Beneath the dreary drifting sands! Ah, speak not thus! _He_ lies not there! We see him, hear him as of old! He comes! He claims his wonted chair; His beaming face we still behold! His voice rings clear in all our songs, And loud his mirthful accents rise; To us our brother's life belongs,-- Dear friends, a classmate never dies! THE LAST CHARGE 1864 Now, men of the North! will you join in the strife For country, for freedom, for honor, for life? The giant grows blind in his fury and spite,-- One blow on his forehead will settle the fight! Flash full in his eyes the blue lightning of steel, And stun him with cannon-bolts, peal upon peal! Mount, troopers, and follow your game to its lair, As the hound tracks the wolf and the beagle the hare! Blow, trumpets, your summons, till sluggards awake! Beat, drums, till the roofs of the faint-hearted shake! Yet, yet, ere the signet is stamped on the scroll, Their names may be traced on the blood-sprinkled roll! Trust not the false herald that painted your shield True honor to-day must be sought on the field! Her scutcheon shows white with a blazon of red,-- The life-drops of crimson for liberty shed. The hour is at hand, and the moment draws nigh; The dog-star of treason grows dim in the sky; Shine forth from the battle-cloud, light of the morn, Call back the bright hour when the Nation was born! The rivers of peace through our valleys shall run, As the glaciers of tyranny melt in the sun; Smite, smite the proud parricide down from his throne,-- His sceptre once broken, the world is our own! OUR OLDEST FRIEND 1865 I GIVE you the health of the oldest friend That, short of eternity, earth can lend,-- A friend so faithful and tried and true That nothing can wean him from me and you. When first we screeched in the sudden blaze Of the daylight's blinding and blasting rays, And gulped at the gaseous, groggy air, This old, old friend stood waiting there. And when, with a kind of mortal strife, We had gasped and choked into breathing life, He watched by the cradle, day and night, And held our hands till we stood upright. From gristle and pulp our frames have grown To stringy muscle and solid bone; While we were changing, he altered not; We might forget, but he never forgot. He came with us to the college class,-- Little cared he for the steward's pass! All the rest must pay their fee, Put the grim old dead-head entered free. He stayed with us while we counted o'er Four times each of the seasons four; And with every season, from year to year, The dear name Classmate he made more dear. He never leaves us,--he never will, Till our hands are cold and our hearts are still; On birthdays, and Christmas, and New-Year's too, He always remembers both me and you. Every year this faithful friend His little present is sure to send; Every year, wheresoe'er we be, He wants a keepsake from you and me. How he loves us! he pats our heads, And, lo! they are gleaming with silver threads; And he 's always begging one lock of hair, Till our shining crowns have nothing to wear. At length he will tell us, one by one, "My child, your labor on earth is done; And now you must journey afar to see My elder brother,--Eternity!" And so, when long, long years have passed, Some dear old fellow will be the last,-- Never a boy alive but he Of all our goodly company! When he lies down, but not till then, Our kind Class-Angel will drop the pen That writes in the day-book kept above Our lifelong record of faith and love. So here's a health in homely rhyme To our oldest classmate, Father Time! May our last survivor live to be As bald and as wise and as tough as he! SHERMAN 'S IN SAVANNAH A HALF-RHYMED IMPROMPTU 1865 LIKE the tribes of Israel, Fed on quails and manna, Sherman and his glorious band Journeyed through the rebel land, Fed from Heaven's all-bounteous hand, Marching on Savannah! As the moving pillar shone, Streamed the starry banner All day long in rosy light, Flaming splendor all the night, Till it swooped in eagle flight Down on doomed Savannah! Glory be to God on high! Shout the loud Hosanna! Treason's wilderness is past, Canaan's shore is won at last, Peal a nation's trumpet-blast,-- Sherman 's in Savannah! Soon shall Richmond's tough old hide Find a tough old tanner! Soon from every rebel wall Shall the rag of treason fall, Till our banner flaps o'er all As it crowns Savannah! MY ANNUAL 1866 How long will this harp which you once loved to hear Cheat your lips of a smile or your eyes of a tear? How long stir the echoes it wakened of old, While its strings were unbroken, untarnished its gold? Dear friends of my boyhood, my words do you wrong; The heart, the heart only, shall throb in my song; It reads the kind answer that looks from your eyes,-- "We will bid our old harper play on till he dies." Though Youth, the fair angel that looked o'er the strings, Has lost the bright glory that gleamed on his wings, Though the freshness of morning has passed from its tone It is still the old harp that was always your own. I claim not its music,--each note it affords I strike from your heart-strings, that lend me its chords; I know you will listen and love to the last, For it trembles and thrills with the voice of your past. Ah, brothers! dear brothers! the harp that I hold No craftsman could string and no artisan mould; He shaped it, He strung it, who fashioned the lyres That ring with the hymns of the seraphim choirs. Not mine are the visions of beauty it brings, Not mine the faint fragrance around it that clings; Those shapes are the phantoms of years that are fled, Those sweets breathe from roses your summers have shed. Each hour of the past lends its tribute to this, Till it blooms like a bower in the Garden of Bliss; The thorn and the thistle may grow as they will, Where Friendship unfolds there is Paradise still. The bird wanders careless while summer is green, The leaf-hidden cradle that rocked him unseen; When Autumn's rude fingers the woods have undressed, The boughs may look bare, but they show him his nest. Too precious these moments! the lustre they fling Is the light of our year, is the gem of its ring, So brimming with sunshine, we almost forget The rays it has lost, and its border of jet. While round us the many-hued halo is shed, How dear are the living, how near are the dead! One circle, scarce broken, these waiting below, Those walking the shores where the asphodels blow! Not life shall enlarge it nor death shall divide,-- No brother new-born finds his place at my side; No titles shall freeze us, no grandeurs infest, His Honor, His Worship, are boys like the rest. Some won the world's homage, their names we hold dear,-- But Friendship, not Fame, is the countersign here; Make room by the conqueror crowned in the strife For the comrade that limps from the battle of life! What tongue talks of battle? Too long we have heard In sorrow, in anguish, that terrible word; It reddened the sunshine, it crimsoned the wave, It sprinkled our doors with the blood of our brave. Peace, Peace comes at last, with her garland of white; Peace broods in all hearts as we gather to-night; The blazon of Union spreads full in the sun; We echo its words,--We are one! We are one! ALL HERE 1867 IT is not what we say or sing, That keeps our charm so long unbroken, Though every lightest leaf we bring May touch the heart as friendship's token; Not what we sing or what we say Can make us dearer to each other; We love the singer and his lay, But love as well the silent brother. Yet bring whate'er your garden grows, Thrice welcome to our smiles and praises; Thanks for the myrtle and the rose, Thanks for the marigolds and daisies; One flower erelong we all shall claim, Alas! unloved of Amaryllis-- Nature's last blossom-need I name The wreath of threescore's silver lilies? How many, brothers, meet to-night Around our boyhood's covered embers? Go read the treasured names aright The old triennial list remembers; Though twenty wear the starry sign That tells a life has broke its tether, The fifty-eight of 'twenty-nine-- God bless THE Boys!--are all together! These come with joyous look and word, With friendly grasp and cheerful greeting,-- Those smile unseen, and move unheard, The angel guests of every meeting; They cast no shadow in the flame That flushes from the gilded lustre, But count us--we are still the same; One earthly band, one heavenly cluster! Love dies not when he bows his head To pass beyond the narrow portals,-- The light these glowing moments shed Wakes from their sleep our lost immortals; They come as in their joyous prime, Before their morning days were numbered,-- Death stays the envious hand of Time,-- The eyes have not grown dim that slumbered! The paths that loving souls have trod Arch o'er the dust where worldlings grovel High as the zenith o'er the sod,-- The cross above the sexton's shovel! We rise beyond the realms of day; They seem to stoop from spheres of glory With us one happy hour to stray, While youth comes back in song and story. Ah! ours is friendship true as steel That war has tried in edge and temper; It writes upon its sacred seal The priest's _ubique--omnes--semper_! It lends the sky a fairer sun That cheers our lives with rays as steady As if our footsteps had begun To print the golden streets already! The tangling years have clinched its knot Too fast for mortal strength to sunder; The lightning bolts of noon are shot; No fear of evening's idle thunder! Too late! too late!--no graceless hand Shall stretch its cords in vain endeavor To rive the close encircling band That made and keeps us one forever! So when upon the fated scroll The falling stars have all descended, And, blotted from the breathing roll, Our little page of life is ended, We ask but one memorial line Traced on thy tablet, Gracious Mother "My children. Boys of '29. In pace. How they loved each other!" ONCE MORE ONCE MORE 1868 "Will I come?" That is pleasant! I beg to inquire If the gun that I carry has ever missed fire? And which was the muster-roll-mention but one-- That missed your old comrade who carries the gun? You see me as always, my hand on the lock, The cap on the nipple, the hammer full cock; It is rusty, some tell me; I heed not the scoff; It is battered and bruised, but it always goes off! "Is it loaded?" I'll bet you! What doesn't it hold? Rammed full to the muzzle with memories untold; Why, it scares me to fire, lest the pieces should fly Like the cannons that burst on the Fourth of July. One charge is a remnant of College-day dreams (Its wadding is made of forensics and themes); Ah, visions of fame! what a flash in the pan As the trigger was pulled by each clever young man! And love! Bless my stars, what a cartridge is there! With a wadding of rose-leaves and ribbons and hair,-- All crammed in one verse to go off at a shot! "Were there ever such sweethearts?" Of course there were not! And next,--what a load! it wall split the old gun,-- Three fingers,--four fingers,--five fingers of fun! Come tell me, gray sages, for mischief and noise Was there ever a lot like us fellows, "The Boys"? Bump I bump! down the staircase the cannon-ball goes,-- Aha, old Professor! Look out for your toes! Don't think, my poor Tutor, to sleep in your bed,-- Two "Boys"--'twenty-niners-room over your head! Remember the nights when the tar-barrel blazed! From red "Massachusetts" the war-cry was raised; And "Hollis" and "Stoughton" reechoed the call; Till P----- poked his head out of Holworthy Hall! Old P----, as we called him,--at fifty or so,-- Not exactly a bud, but not quite in full blow; In ripening manhood, suppose we should say, Just nearing his prime, as we boys are to-day! Oh say, can you look through the vista of age To the time when old Morse drove the regular stage? When Lyon told tales of the long-vanished years, And Lenox crept round with the rings in his ears? And dost thou, my brother, remember indeed The days of our dealings with Willard and Read? When "Dolly" was kicking and running away, And punch came up smoking on Fillebrown's tray? But where are the Tutors, my brother, oh tell!-- And where the Professors, remembered so well? The sturdy old Grecian of Holworthy Hall, And Latin, and Logic, and Hebrew, and all? "They are dead, the old fellows" (we called them so then, Though we since have found out they were lusty young men). They are dead, do you tell me?--but how do you know? You've filled once too often. I doubt if it's so. I'm thinking. I'm thinking. Is this 'sixty-eight? It's not quite so clear. It admits of debate. I may have been dreaming. I rather incline To think--yes, I'm certain--it is 'twenty-nine! "By Zhorzhe!"--as friend Sales is accustomed to cry,-- You tell me they're dead, but I know it's a lie! Is Jackson not President?--What was 't you said? It can't be; you're joking; what,--all of 'em dead? Jim,--Harry,--Fred,--Isaac,--all gone from our side? They could n't have left us,--no, not if they tried. Look,--there 's our old Prises,--he can't find his text; See,--P----- rubs his leg, as he growls out "The next!" I told you 't was nonsense. Joe, give us a song! Go harness up "Dolly," and fetch her along!-- Dead! Dead! You false graybeard, I swear they are not! Hurrah for Old Hickory!--Oh, I forgot! Well, _one_ we have with us (how could he contrive To deal with us youngsters and still to survive?) Who wore for our guidance authority's robe,-- No wonder he took to the study of Job! And now, as my load was uncommonly large, Let me taper it off with a classical charge; When that has gone off, I shall drop my old gun-- And then stand at ease, for my service is done. _Bibamus ad Classem vocatam_ "The Boys" _Et eorum Tutorem cui nomen est "Noyes";_ _Et floreant, valeant, vigeant tam,_ _Non Peircius ipse enumeret quam!_ THE OLD CRUISER 1869 HERE 's the old cruiser, 'Twenty-nine, Forty times she 's crossed the line; Same old masts and sails and crew, Tight and tough and as good as new. Into the harbor she bravely steers Just as she 's done for these forty years, Over her anchor goes, splash and clang! Down her sails drop, rattle and bang! Comes a vessel out of the dock Fresh and spry as a fighting-cock, Feathered with sails and spurred with steam, Heading out of the classic stream. Crew of a hundred all aboard, Every man as fine as a lord. Gay they look and proud they feel, Bowling along on even keel. On they float with wind and tide,-- Gain at last the old ship's side; Every man looks down in turn,-- Reads the name that's on her stern. "Twenty-nine!--Diable you say! That was in Skipper Kirkland's day! What was the Flying Dutchman's name? This old rover must be the same. "Ho! you Boatswain that walks the deck, How does it happen you're not a wreck? One and another have come to grief, How have you dodged by rock and reef?" Boatswain, lifting one knowing lid, Hitches his breeches and shifts his quid "Hey? What is it? Who 's come to grief Louder, young swab, I 'm a little deaf." "I say, old fellow, what keeps your boat With all you jolly old boys afloat, When scores of vessels as good as she Have swallowed the salt of the bitter sea? "Many a crew from many a craft Goes drifting by on a broken raft Pieced from a vessel that clove the brine Taller and prouder than 'Twenty-nine. "Some capsized in an angry breeze, Some were lost in the narrow seas, Some on snags and some on sands Struck and perished and lost their hands. "Tell us young ones, you gray old man, What is your secret, if you can. We have a ship as good as you, Show us how to keep our crew." So in his ear the youngster cries; Then the gray Boatswain straight replies:-- "All your crew be sure you know,-- Never let one of your shipmates go. "If he leaves you, change your tack, Follow him close and fetch him back; When you've hauled him in at last, Grapple his flipper and hold him fast. "If you've wronged him, speak him fair, Say you're sorry and make it square; If he's wronged you, wink so tight None of you see what 's plain in sight. "When the world goes hard and wrong, Lend a hand to help him along; When his stockings have holes to darn, Don't you grudge him your ball of yarn. "Once in a twelvemonth, come what may, Anchor your ship in a quiet bay, Call all hands and read the log, And give 'em a taste of grub and grog. "Stick to each other through thick and thin; All the closer as age leaks in; Squalls will blow and clouds will frown, But stay by your ship till you all go down!" ADDED FOR THE ALUMNI MEETING, JUNE 29, 1869. So the gray Boatswain of 'Twenty-nine Piped to "The Boys" as they crossed the line; Round the cabin sat thirty guests, Babes of the nurse with a thousand breasts. There were the judges, grave and grand, Flanked by the priests on either hand; There was the lord of wealth untold, And the dear good fellow in broadcloth old. Thirty men, from twenty towns, Sires and grandsires with silvered crowns,-- Thirty school-boys all in a row,-- Bens and Georges and Bill and Joe. In thirty goblets the wine was poured, But threescore gathered around the board,-- For lo! at the side of every chair A shadow hovered--we all were there! HYMN FOR THE CLASS-MEETING 1869 THOU Gracious Power, whose mercy lends The light of home, the smile of friends, Our gathered flock thine arms infold As in the peaceful days of old. Wilt thou not hear us while we raise, In sweet accord of solemn praise, The voices that have mingled long In joyous flow of mirth and song? For all the blessings life has brought, For all its sorrowing hours have taught, For all we mourn, for all we keep, The hands we clasp, the loved that sleep; The noontide sunshine of the past, These brief, bright moments fading fast, The stars that gild our darkening years, The twilight ray from holier spheres; We thank thee, Father! let thy grace Our narrowing circle still embrace, Thy mercy shed its heavenly store, Thy peace be with us evermore! EVEN-SONG. 1870 IT may be, yes, it must be, Time that brings An end to mortal things, That sends the beggar Winter in the train Of Autumn's burdened wain,-- Time, that is heir of all our earthly state, And knoweth well to wait Till sea hath turned to shore and shore to sea, If so it need must be, Ere he make good his claim and call his own Old empires overthrown,-- Time, who can find no heavenly orb too large To hold its fee in charge, Nor any motes that fill its beam so small, But he shall care for all,-- It may be, must be,--yes, he soon shall tire This hand that holds the lyre. Then ye who listened in that earlier day When to my careless lay I matched its chords and stole their first-born thrill, With untaught rudest skill Vexing a treble from the slender strings Thin as the locust sings When the shrill-crying child of summer's heat Pipes from its leafy seat, The dim pavilion of embowering green Beneath whose shadowy screen The small sopranist tries his single note Against the song-bird's throat, And all the echoes listen, but in vain; They hear no answering strain,-- Then ye who listened in that earlier day Shall sadly turn away, Saying, "The fire burns low, the hearth is cold That warmed our blood of old; Cover its embers and its half-burnt brands, And let us stretch our hands Over a brighter and fresh-kindled flame; Lo, this is not the same, The joyous singer of our morning time, Flushed high with lusty rhyme! Speak kindly, for he bears a human heart, But whisper him apart,-- Tell him the woods their autumn robes have shed And all their birds have fled, And shouting winds unbuild the naked nests They warmed with patient breasts; Tell him the sky is dark, the summer o'er, And bid him sing no more!" Ah, welladay! if words so cruel-kind A listening ear might find! But who that hears the music in his soul Of rhythmic waves that roll Crested with gleams of fire, and as they flow Stir all the deeps below Till the great pearls no calm might ever reach Leap glistening on the beach,-- Who that has known the passion and the pain, The rush through heart and brain, The joy so like a pang his hand is pressed Hard on his throbbing breast, When thou, whose smile is life and bliss and fame Hast set his pulse aflame, Muse of the lyre! can say farewell to thee? Alas! and must it be? In many a clime, in many a stately tongue, The mighty bards have sung; To these the immemorial thrones belong And purple robes of song; Yet the slight minstrel loves the slender tone His lips may call his own, And finds the measure of the verse more sweet, Timed by his pulse's beat, Than all the hymnings of the laurelled throng. Say not I do him wrong, For Nature spoils her warblers,--them she feeds In lotus-growing meads And pours them subtle draughts from haunted streams That fill their souls with dreams. Full well I know the gracious mother's wiles And dear delusive smiles! No callow fledgling of her singing brood But tastes that witching food, And hearing overhead the eagle's wing, And how the thrushes sing, Vents his exiguous chirp, and from his nest Flaps forth--we know the rest. I own the weakness of the tuneful kind,-- Are not all harpers blind? I sang too early, must I sing too late? The lengthening shadows wait The first pale stars of twilight,--yet how sweet The flattering whisper's cheat,-- "Thou hast the fire no evening chill can tame, Whose coals outlast its flame!" Farewell, ye carols of the laughing morn, Of earliest sunshine born! The sower flings the seed and looks not back Along his furrowed track; The reaper leaves the stalks for other hands To gird with circling bands; The wind, earth's careless servant, truant-born, Blows clean the beaten corn And quits the thresher's floor, and goes his way To sport with ocean's spray; The headlong-stumbling rivulet scrambling down To wash the sea-girt town, Still babbling of the green and billowy waste Whose salt he longs to taste, Ere his warm wave its chilling clasp may feel Has twirled the miller's wheel. The song has done its task that makes us bold With secrets else untold,-- And mine has run its errand; through the dews I tracked the flying Muse; The daughter of the morning touched my lips With roseate finger-tips; Whether I would or would not, I must sing With the new choirs of spring; Now, as I watch the fading autumn day And trill my softened lay, I think of all that listened, and of one For whom a brighter sun Dawned at high summer's noon. Ah, comrades dear, Are not all gathered here? Our hearts have answered.--Yes! they hear our call: All gathered here! all! all! THE SMILING LISTENER 1871 PRECISELY. I see it. You all want to say That a tear is too sad and a laugh is too gay; You could stand a faint smile, you could manage a sigh, But you value your ribs, and you don't want to cry. And why at our feast of the clasping of hands Need we turn on the stream of our lachrymal glands? Though we see the white breakers of age on our bow, Let us take a good pull in the jolly-boat now! It's hard if a fellow cannot feel content When a banquet like this does n't cost him a cent, When his goblet and plate he may empty at will, And our kind Class Committee will settle the bill. And here's your old friend, the identical bard Who has rhymed and recited you verse by the yard Since the days of the empire of Andrew the First Till you 're full to the brim and feel ready to burst. It's awful to think of,--how year after year With his piece in his pocket he waits for you here; No matter who's missing, there always is one To lug out his manuscript, sure as a gun. "Why won't he stop writing?" Humanity cries The answer is briefly, "He can't if he tries; He has played with his foolish old feather so long, That the goose-quill in spite of him cackles in song." You have watched him with patience from morning to dusk Since the tassel was bright o'er the green of the husk, And now--it 's too bad--it 's a pitiful job-- He has shelled the ripe ear till he's come to the cob. I see one face beaming--it listens so well There must be some music yet left in my shell-- The wine of my soul is not thick on the lees; One string is unbroken, one friend I can please! Dear comrade, the sunshine of seasons gone by Looks out from your tender and tear-moistened eye, A pharos of love on an ice-girdled coast,-- Kind soul!--Don't you hear me?--He's deaf as a post! Can it be one of Nature's benevolent tricks That you grow hard of hearing as I grow prolix? And that look of delight which would angels beguile Is the deaf man's prolonged unintelligent smile? Ah! the ear may grow dull, and the eye may wax dim, But they still know a classmate--they can't mistake him; There is something to tell us, "That's one of our band," Though we groped in the dark for a touch of his hand. Well, Time with his snuffers is prowling about And his shaky old fingers will soon snuff us out; There's a hint for us all in each pendulum tick, For we're low in the tallow and long in the wick. You remember Rossini--you 've been at the play? How his overture-endings keep crashing away Till you think, "It 's all over--it can't but stop now-- That 's the screech and the bang of the final bow-wow." And you find you 're mistaken; there 's lots more to come, More banging, more screeching of fiddle and drum, Till when the last ending is finished and done, You feel like a horse when the winning-post 's won. So I, who have sung to you, merry or sad, Since the days when they called me a promising lad, Though I 've made you more rhymes than a tutor could scan, Have a few more still left, like the razor-strop man. Now pray don't be frightened--I 'm ready to stop My galloping anapests' clatter and pop-- In fact, if you say so, retire from to-day To the garret I left, on a poet's half-pay. And yet--I can't help it--perhaps--who can tell? You might miss the poor singer you treated so well, And confess you could stand him five minutes or so, "It was so like old times we remember, you know." 'T is not that the music can signify much, But then there are chords that awake with a touch,-- And our hearts can find echoes of sorrow and joy To the winch of the minstrel who hails from Savoy. So this hand-organ tune that I cheerfully grind May bring the old places and faces to mind, And seen in the light of the past we recall The flowers that have faded bloom fairest of all! OUR SWEET SINGER J. A. 1872 ONE memory trembles on our lips; It throbs in every breast; In tear-dimmed eyes, in mirth's eclipse, The shadow stands confessed. O silent voice, that cheered so long Our manhood's marching day, Without thy breath of heavenly song, How weary seems the way! Vain every pictured phrase to tell Our sorrowing heart's desire,-- The shattered harp, the broken shell, The silent unstrung lyre; For youth was round us while he sang; It glowed in every tone; With bridal chimes the echoes rang, And made the past our own. Oh blissful dream! Our nursery joys We know must have an end, But love and friendship's broken toys May God's good angels mend! The cheering smile, the voice of mirth And laughter's gay surprise That please the children born of earth. Why deem that Heaven denies? Methinks in that refulgent sphere That knows not sun or moon, An earth-born saint might long to hear One verse of "Bonny Doon"; Or walking through the streets of gold In heaven's unclouded light, His lips recall the song of old And hum "The sky is bright." And can we smile when thou art dead? Ah, brothers, even so! The rose of summer will be red, In spite of winter's snow. Thou wouldst not leave us all in gloom Because thy song is still, Nor blight the banquet-garland's bloom With grief's untimely chill. The sighing wintry winds complain,-- The singing bird has flown,-- Hark! heard I not that ringing strain, That clear celestial tone? How poor these pallid phrases seem, How weak this tinkling line, As warbles through my waking dream That angel voice of thine! Thy requiem asks a sweeter lay; It falters on my tongue; For all we vainly strive to say, Thou shouldst thyself have sung! H. C. M. H. S. J. K. W. 1873 THE dirge is played, the throbbing death-peal rung, The sad-voiced requiem sung; On each white urn where memory dwells The wreath of rustling immortelles Our loving hands have hung, And balmiest leaves have strown and tenderest blossoms flung. The birds that filled the air with songs have flown, The wintry blasts have blown, And these for whom the voice of spring Bade the sweet choirs their carols sing Sleep in those chambers lone Where snows untrodden lie, unheard the night-winds moan. We clasp them all in memory, as the vine Whose running stems intwine The marble shaft, and steal around The lowly stone, the nameless mound; With sorrowing hearts resign Our brothers true and tried, and close our broken line. How fast the lamps of life grow dim and die Beneath our sunset sky! Still fading, as along our track We cast our saddened glances back, And while we vainly sigh The shadowy day recedes, the starry night draws nigh. As when from pier to pier across the tide With even keel we glide, The lights we left along the shore Grow less and less, while more, yet more New vistas open wide Of fair illumined streets and casements golden-eyed. Each closing circle of our sunlit sphere Seems to bring heaven more near Can we not dream that those we love Are listening in the world above And smiling as they hear The voices known so well of friends that still are dear? Does all that made us human fade away With this dissolving clay? Nay, rather deem the blessed isles Are bright and gay with joyous smiles, That angels have their play, And saints that tire of song may claim their holiday. All else of earth may perish; love alone Not heaven shall find outgrown! Are they not here, our spirit guests, With love still throbbing in their breasts? Once more let flowers be strown. Welcome, ye shadowy forms, we count you still our own! WHAT I HAVE COME FOR 1873 I HAVE come with my verses--I think I may claim It is not the first time I have tried on the same. They were puckered in rhyme, they were wrinkled in wit; But your hearts were so large that they made them a fit. I have come--not to tease you with more of my rhyme, But to feel as I did in the blessed old time; I want to hear him with the Brobdingnag laugh-- We count him at least as three men and a half. I have come to meet judges so wise and so grand That I shake in my shoes while they're shaking my hand; And the prince among merchants who put back the crown When they tried to enthrone him the King of the Town. I have come to see George--Yes, I think there are four, If they all were like these I could wish there were more. I have come to see one whom we used to call "Jim," I want to see--oh, don't I want to see him? I have come to grow young--on my word I declare I have thought I detected a change in my hair! One hour with "The Boys" will restore it to brown-- And a wrinkle or two I expect to rub down. Yes, that's what I've come for, as all of us come; When I meet the dear Boys I could wish I were dumb. You asked me, you know, but it's spoiling the fun; I have told what I came for; my ditty is done. OUR BANKER 1874 OLD TIME, in whose bank we deposit our notes, Is a miser who always wants guineas for groats; He keeps all his customers still in arrears By lending them minutes and charging them years. The twelvemonth rolls round and we never forget On the counter before us to pay him our debt. We reckon the marks he has chalked on the door, Pay up and shake hands and begin a new score. How long he will lend us, how much we may owe, No angel will tell us, no mortal may know. At fivescore, at fourscore, at threescore and ten, He may close the account with a stroke of his pen. This only we know,--amid sorrows and joys Old Time has been easy and kind with "The Boys." Though he must have and will have and does have his pay, We have found him good-natured enough in his way. He never forgets us, as others will do,-- I am sure he knows me, and I think he knows you, For I see on your foreheads a mark that he lends As a sign he remembers to visit his friends. In the shape of a classmate (a wig on his crown,-- His day-book and ledger laid carefully down) He has welcomed us yearly, a glass in his hand, And pledged the good health of our brotherly band. He 's a thief, we must own, but how many there be That rob us less gently and fairly than he He has stripped the green leaves that were over us all, But they let in the sunshine as fast as they fall. Young beauties may ravish the world with a glance As they languish in song, as they float in the dance,-- They are grandmothers now we remember as girls, And the comely white cap takes the place of the curls. But the sighing and moaning and groaning are o'er, We are pining and moping and sleepless no more, And the hearts that were thumping like ships on the rocks Beat as quiet and steady as meeting-house clocks. The trump of ambition, loud sounding and shrill, May blow its long blast, but the echoes are still, The spring-tides are past, but no billow may reach The spoils they have landed far up on the beach. We see that Time robs us, we know that he cheats, But we still find a charm in his pleasant deceits, While he leaves the remembrance of all that was best, Love, friendship, and hope, and the promise of rest. Sweet shadows of twilight! how calm their repose, While the dewdrops fall soft in the breast of the rose! How blest to the toiler his hour of release When the vesper is heard with its whisper of peace! Then here's to the wrinkled old miser, our friend; May he send us his bills to the century's end, And lend us the moments no sorrow alloys, Till he squares his account with the last of "The Boys." FOR CLASS MEETING 1875 IT is a pity and a shame--alas! alas! I know it is, To tread the trodden grapes again, but so it has been, so it is; The purple vintage long is past, with ripened clusters bursting so They filled the wine-vats to the brim,-'t is strange you will be thirsting so! Too well our faithful memory tells what might be rhymed or sung about, For all have sighed and some have wept since last year's snows were flung about; The beacon flame that fired the sky, the modest ray that gladdened us, A little breath has quenched their light, and deepening shades have saddened us. No more our brother's life is ours for cheering or for grieving us, One only sadness they bequeathed, the sorrow of their leaving us; Farewell! Farewell!--I turn the leaf I read my chiming measure in; Who knows but something still is there a friend may find a pleasure in? For who can tell by what he likes what other people's fancies are? How all men think the best of wives their own particular Nancies are? If what I sing you brings a smile, you will not stop to catechise, Nor read Bceotia's lumbering line with nicely scanning Attic eyes. Perhaps the alabaster box that Mary broke so lovingly, While Judas looked so sternly on, the Master so approvingly, Was not so fairly wrought as those that Pilate's wife and daughters had, Or many a dame of Judah's line that drank of Jordan's waters had. Perhaps the balm that cost so dear, as some remarked officiously, The precious nard that filled the room with fragrance so deliciously, So oft recalled in storied page and sung in verse melodious, The dancing girl had thought too cheap,--that daughter of Herodias. Where now are all the mighty deeds that Herod boasted loudest of? Where now the flashing jewelry the tetrarch's wife was proudest of? Yet still to hear how Mary loved, all tribes of men are listening, And still the sinful woman's tears like stars heaven are glistening. 'T is not the gift our hands have brought, the love it is we bring with it,-- The minstrel's lips may shape the song, his heart in tune must sing with it; And so we love the simple lays, and wish we might have more of them, Our poet brothers sing for us,--there must be half a score of them. It may be that of fame and name our voices once were emulous,-- With deeper thoughts, with tenderer throbs their softening tones are tremulous; The dead seem listening as of old, ere friendship was bereft of them; The living wear a kinder smile, the remnant that is left of them. Though on the once unfurrowed brows the harrow- teeth of Time may show, Though all the strain of crippling years the halting feet of rhyme may show, We look and hear with melting hearts, for what we all remember is The morn of Spring, nor heed how chill the sky of gray November is. Thanks to the gracious powers above from all mankind that singled us, And dropped the pearl of friendship in the cup they kindly mingled us, And bound us in a wreath of flowers with hoops of steel knit under it;-- Nor time, nor space, nor chance, nor change, nor death himself shall sunder it! "AD AMICOS" 1876 "Dumque virent genua Et decet, obducta solvatur fonte senectus." THE muse of boyhood's fervid hour Grows tame as skies get chill and hazy; Where once she sought a passion-flower, She only hopes to find a daisy. Well, who the changing world bewails? Who asks to have it stay unaltered? Shall grown-up kittens chase their tails? Shall colts be never shod or haltered? Are we "The Boys" that used to make The tables ring with noisy follies? Whose deep-lunged laughter oft would shake The ceiling with its thunder-volleys? Are we the youths with lips unshorn, At beauty's feet unwrinkled suitors, Whose memories reach tradition's morn,-- The days of prehistoric tutors? "The Boys" we knew,--but who are these Whose heads might serve for Plutarch's sages, Or Fox's martyrs, if you please, Or hermits of the dismal ages? "The Boys" we knew--can these be those? Their cheeks with morning's blush were painted;-- Where are the Harrys, Jims, and Joes With whom we once were well acquainted? If we are they, we're not the same; If they are we, why then they're masking; Do tell us, neighbor What 's--your--name, Who are you?--What's the use of asking? You once were George, or Bill, or Ben; There's you, yourself--there 's you, that other-- I know you now--I knew you then-- You used to be your younger brother! You both are all our own to-day,-- But ah! I hear a warning whisper; Yon roseate hour that flits away Repeats the Roman's sad _paulisper_. Come back! come back! we've need of you To pay you for your word of warning; We'll bathe your wings in brighter dew Than ever wet the lids of morning! Behold this cup; its mystic wine No alien's lip has ever tasted; The blood of friendship's clinging vine, Still flowing, flowing, yet unwasted Old Time forgot his running sand And laid his hour-glass down to fill it, And Death himself with gentle hand Has touched the chalice, not to spill it. Each bubble rounding at the brim Is rainbowed with its magic story; The shining days with age grown dim Are dressed again in robes of glory; In all its freshness spring returns With song of birds and blossoms tender; Once more the torch of passion burns, And youth is here in all its splendor! Hope swings her anchor like a toy, Love laughs and shows the silver arrow We knew so well as man and boy,-- The shaft that stings through bone and marrow; Again our kindling pulses beat, With tangled curls our fingers dally, And bygone beauties smile as sweet As fresh-blown lilies of the valley. O blessed hour! we may forget Its wreaths, its rhymes, its songs, its laughter, But not the loving eyes we met, Whose light shall gild the dim hereafter. How every heart to each grows warm! Is one in sunshine's ray? We share it. Is one in sorrow's blinding storm? A look, a word, shall help him bear it. "The Boys" we were, "The Boys" we 'll be As long as three, as two, are creeping; Then here 's to him--ah! which is he?-- Who lives till all the rest are sleeping; A life with tranquil comfort blest, The young man's health, the rich man's plenty, All earth can give that earth has best, And heaven at fourscore years and twenty. HOW NOT TO SETTLE IT 1877 I LIKE, at times, to hear the steeples' chimes With sober thoughts impressively that mingle; But sometimes, too, I rather like--don't you?-- To hear the music of the sleigh bells' jingle. I like full well the deep resounding swell Of mighty symphonies with chords inwoven; But sometimes, too, a song of Burns--don't you? After a solemn storm-blast of Beethoven. Good to the heels the well-worn slipper feels When the tired player shuffles off the buskin; A page of Hood may do a fellow good After a scolding from Carlyle or Ruskin. Some works I find,--say Watts upon the Mind,-- No matter though at first they seemed amusing, Not quite the same, but just a little tame After some five or six times' reperusing. So, too, at times when melancholy rhymes Or solemn speeches sober down a dinner, I've seen it 's true, quite often,--have n't you?-- The best-fed guests perceptibly grow thinner. Better some jest (in proper terms expressed) Or story (strictly moral) even if musty, Or song we sung when these old throats were young,-- Something to keep our souls from getting rusty. The poorest scrap from memory's ragged lap Comes like an heirloom from a dear dead mother-- Hush! there's a tear that has no business here, A half-formed sigh that ere its birth we smother. We cry, we laugh; ah, life is half and half, Now bright and joyous as a song of Herrick's, Then chill and bare as funeral-minded Blair; As fickle as a female in hysterics. If I could make you cry I would n't try; If you have hidden smiles I'd like to find them, And that although, as well I ought to know, The lips of laughter have a skull behind them. Yet when I think we may be on the brink Of having Freedom's banner to dispose of, All crimson-hued, because the Nation would Insist on cutting its own precious nose off, I feel indeed as if we rather need A sermon such as preachers tie a text on. If Freedom dies because a ballot lies, She earns her grave; 't is time to call the sexton! But if a fight can make the matter right, Here are we, classmates, thirty men of mettle; We're strong and tough, we've lived nigh long enough,-- What if the Nation gave it us to settle? The tale would read like that illustrious deed When Curtius took the leap the gap that filled in, Thus: "Fivescore years, good friends, as it appears, At last this people split on Hayes and Tilden. "One half cried, 'See! the choice is S. J. T.!' And one half swore as stoutly it was t' other; Both drew the knife to save the Nation's life By wholesale vivisection of each other. "Then rose in mass that monumental Class,-- 'Hold! hold!' they cried, 'give us, give us the daggers!' 'Content! content!' exclaimed with one consent The gaunt ex-rebels and the carpet-baggers. "Fifteen each side, the combatants divide, So nicely balanced are their predilections; And first of all a tear-drop each lets fall, A tribute to their obsolete affections. "Man facing man, the sanguine strife began, Jack, Jim and Joe against Tom, Dick and Harry, Each several pair its own account to square, Till both were down or one stood solitary. "And the great fight raged furious all the night Till every integer was made a fraction; Reader, wouldst know what history has to show As net result of the above transaction? "Whole coat-tails, four; stray fragments, several score; A heap of spectacles; a deaf man's trumpet; Six lawyers' briefs; seven pocket-handkerchiefs; Twelve canes wherewith the owners used to stump it; "Odd rubber-shoes; old gloves of different hues; Tax--bills,--unpaid,--and several empty purses; And, saved from harm by some protecting charm, A printed page with Smith's immortal verses; "Trifles that claim no very special name,-- Some useful, others chiefly ornamental; Pins, buttons, rings, and other trivial things, With various wrecks, capillary and dental. "Also, one flag,--'t was nothing but a rag, And what device it bore it little matters; Red, white, and blue, but rent all through and through, 'Union forever' torn to shreds and tatters. "They fought so well not one was left to tell Which got the largest share of cuts and slashes; When heroes meet, both sides are bound to beat; They telescoped like cars in railroad smashes. "So the great split that baffled human wit And might have cost the lives of twenty millions, As all may see that know the rule of three, Was settled just as well by these civilians. "As well. Just so. Not worse, not better. No, Next morning found the Nation still divided; Since all were slain, the inference is plain They left the point they fought for undecided." If not quite true, as I have told it you, This tale of mutual extermination, To minds perplexed with threats of what comes next, Perhaps may furnish food for contemplation. To cut men's throats to help them count their votes Is asinine--nay, worse--ascidian folly; Blindness like that would scare the mole and bat, And make the liveliest monkey melancholy. I say once more, as I have said before, If voting for our Tildens and our Hayeses Means only fight, then, Liberty, good night! Pack up your ballot-box and go to blazes. Unfurl your blood-red flags, you murderous hags, You petroleuses of Paris, fierce and foamy; We'll sell our stock in Plymouth's blasted rock, Pull up our stakes and migrate to Dahomey! THE LAST SURVIVOR 1878 YES! the vacant chairs tell sadly we are going, going fast, And the thought comes strangely o'er me, who will live to be the last? When the twentieth century's sunbeams climb the far-off eastern hill, With his ninety winters burdened, will he greet the morning still? Will he stand with Harvard's nurslings when they hear their mother's call And the old and young are gathered in the many alcoved hall? Will he answer to the summons when they range themselves in line And the young mustachioed marshal calls out "Class of '29 "? Methinks I see the column as its lengthened ranks appear In the sunshine of the morrow of the nineteen hundredth year; Through the yard 't is creeping, winding, by the walls of dusky red,-- What shape is that which totters at the long procession's head? Who knows this ancient graduate of fourscore years and ten,-- What place he held, what name he bore among the sons of men? So speeds the curious question; its answer travels slow; "'T is the last of sixty classmates of seventy years ago." His figure shows but dimly, his face I scarce can see,-- There's something that reminds me,--it looks like--is it he? He? Who? No voice may whisper what wrinkled brow shall claim The wreath of stars that circles our last survivor's name. Will he be some veteran minstrel, left to pipe in feeble rhyme All the stories and the glories of our gay and golden time? Or some quiet, voiceless brother in whose lonely,loving breast Fond memory broods in silence, like a dove upon her nest? Will it be some old Emeritus, who taught so long ago The boys that heard him lecture have heads as white as snow? Or a pious, painful preacher, holding forth from year to year Till his colleague got a colleague whom the young folks flocked to hear? Will it be a rich old merchant in a square-tied white cravat, Or select-man of a village in a pre-historic hat? Will his dwelling be a mansion in a marble-fronted row, Or a homestead by a hillside where the huckleberries grow? I can see our one survivor, sitting lonely by himself,-- All his college text-books round him, ranged in order on their shelf; There are classic "interliners" filled with learning's choicest pith, Each _cum notis variorum, quas recensuit doctus_ Smith; Physics, metaphysics, logic, mathematics--all the lot Every wisdom--crammed octavo he has mastered and forgot, With the ghosts of dead professors standing guard beside them all; And the room is fall of shadows which their lettered backs recall. How the past spreads out in vision with its far receding train, Like a long embroidered arras in the chambers of the brain, From opening manhood's morning when first we learned to grieve To the fond regretful moments of our sorrow-saddened eve! What early shadows darkened our idle summer's joy When death snatched roughly from us that lovely bright-eyed boy! The years move swiftly onwards; the deadly shafts fall fast,-- Till all have dropped around him--lo, there he stands,--the last! Their faces flit before him, some rosy-hued and fair, Some strong in iron manhood, some worn with toil and care; Their smiles no more shall greet him on cheeks with pleasure flushed! The friendly hands are folded, the pleasant voices hushed! My picture sets me dreaming; alas! and can it be Those two familiar faces we never more may see? In every entering footfall I think them drawing near, With every door that opens I say, "At last they 're here!" The willow bends unbroken when angry tempests blow, The stately oak is levelled and all its strength laid low; So fell that tower of manhood, undaunted, patient, strong, White with the gathering snowflakes, who faced the storm so long. And he,--what subtle phrases their varying light must blend To paint as each remembers our many-featured friend! His wit a flash auroral that laughed in every look, His talk a sunbeam broken on the ripples of a brook, Or, fed from thousand sources, a fountain's glittering jet, Or careless handfuls scattered of diamond sparks unset; Ah, sketch him, paint him, mould him in every shape you will, He was himself--the only--the one unpictured still! Farewell! our skies are darkened and--yet the stars will shine, We 'll close our ranks together and still fall into line Till one is left, one only, to mourn for all the rest; And Heaven bequeath their memories to him who loves us best! THE ARCHBISHOP AND GIL BLAS A MODERNIZED VERSION 1879 I DON'T think I feel much older; I'm aware I'm rather gray, But so are many young folks; I meet 'em every day. I confess I 'm more particular in what I eat and drink, But one's taste improves with culture; that is all it means, I think. _Can you read as once you used to?_ Well, the printing is so bad, No young folks' eyes can read it like the books that once we had. _Are you quite as quick of hearing?_ Please to say that once again. _Don't I use plain words, your Reverence?_ Yes, I often use a cane, But it's not because I need it,--no, I always liked a stick; And as one might lean upon it, 't is as well it should be thick. Oh, I'm smart, I'm spry, I'm lively,--I can walk, yes, that I can, On the days I feel like walking, just as well as you, young man! _Don't you get a little sleepy after dinner every day?_ Well, I doze a little, sometimes, but that always was my way. _Don't you cry a little easier than some twenty years ago?_ Well, my heart is very tender, but I think 't was always so. _Don't you find it sometimes happens that you can't recall a name?_ Yes, I know such lots of people,--but my memory 's not to blame. What! You think my memory's failing! Why, it's just as bright and clear, I remember my great-grandma! She's been dead these sixty year! _Is your voice a little trembly?_ Well, it may be, now and then, But I write as well as ever with a good old-fashioned pen; It 's the Gillotts make the trouble,--not at all my finger-ends,-- That is why my hand looks shaky when I sign for dividends. _Don't you stoop a little, walking?_ It 's a way I 've always had, I have always been round-shouldered, ever since I was a lad. _Don't you hate to tie your shoe-strings?_ Yes, I own it--that is true. _Don't you tell old stories over?_ I am not aware I do. _Don't you stay at home of evenings? Don't you love a cushioned seat_ _In a corner, by the fireside, with your slippers on your feet?_ _Don't you wear warm fleecy flannels? Don't you muffle up your throat_ _Don't you like to have one help you when you're putting on your coat?_ _Don't you like old books you've dogs-eared, you can't remember when?_ _Don't you call it late at nine o'clock and go to bed at ten?_ _How many cronies can you count of all you used to know_ _Who called you by your Christian name some fifty years ago?_ _How look the prizes to you that used to fire your brain?_ _You've reared your mound-how high is it above the level plain?_ _You 've drained the brimming golden cup that made your fancy reel,_ _You've slept the giddy potion off,--now tell us how you feel!_ _You've watched the harvest ripening till every stem was cropped,_ _You 've seen the rose of beauty fade till every petal dropped,_ _You've told your thought, you 've done your task, you've tracked your dial round,_ --I backing down! Thank Heaven, not yet! I'm hale and brisk and sound, And good for many a tussle, as you shall live to see; My shoes are not quite ready yet,--don't think you're rid of me! Old Parr was in his lusty prime when he was older far, And where will you be if I live to beat old Thomas Parr? _Ah well,--I know,--at every age life has a certain charm,_-- _You're going? Come, permit me, please, I beg you'll take my arm._ I take your arm! Why take your arm? I 'd thank you to be told I 'm old enough to walk alone, but not so _very_ old! THE SHADOWS 1880 "How many have gone?" was the question of old Ere Time our bright ring of its jewels bereft; Alas! for too often the death-bell has tolled, And the question we ask is, "How many are left?" Bright sparkled the wine; there were fifty that quaffed; For a decade had slipped and had taken but three. How they frolicked and sung, how they shouted and laughed, Like a school full of boys from their benches set free! There were speeches and toasts, there were stories and rhymes, The hall shook its sides with their merriment's noise; As they talked and lived over the college-day times,-- No wonder they kept their old name of "The Boys"! The seasons moved on in their rhythmical flow With mornings like maidens that pouted or smiled, With the bud and the leaf and the fruit and the snow, And the year-books of Time in his alcoves were piled. There were forty that gathered where fifty had met; Some locks had got silvered, some lives had grown sere, But the laugh of the laughers was lusty as yet, And the song of the singers rose ringing and clear. Still flitted the years; there were thirty that came; "The Boys" they were still, and they answered their call; There were foreheads of care, but the smiles were the same, And the chorus rang loud through the garlanded hall. The hour-hand moved on, and they gathered again; There were twenty that joined in the hymn that was sung; But ah! for our song-bird we listened in vain,-- The crystalline tones like a seraph's that rung! How narrow the circle that holds us to-night! How many the loved ones that greet us no more, As we meet like the stragglers that come from the fight, Like the mariners flung from a wreck on the shore! We look through the twilight for those we have lost; The stream rolls between us, and yet they seem near; Already outnumbered by those who have crossed, Our band is transplanted, its home is not here! They smile on us still--is it only a dream?-- While fondly or proudly their names we recall; They beckon--they come--they are crossing the stream-- Lo! the Shadows! the Shadows! room--room for them all! BENJAMIN PEIRCE ASTRONOMER, MATHEMATICIAN. 1809-1890 1881 FOR him the Architect of all Unroofed our planet's starlit hall; Through voids unknown to worlds unseen His clearer vision rose serene. With us on earth he walked by day, His midnight path how far away! We knew him not so well who knew The patient eyes his soul looked through; For who his untrod realm could share Of us that breathe this mortal air, Or camp in that celestial tent Whose fringes gild our firmament? How vast the workroom where he brought The viewless implements of thought! The wit how subtle, how profound, That Nature's tangled webs unwound; That through the clouded matrix saw The crystal planes of shaping law, Through these the sovereign skill that planned,-- The Father's care, the Master's hand! To him the wandering stars revealed The secrets in their cradle sealed The far-off, frozen sphere that swings Through ether, zoned with lucid rings; The orb that rolls in dim eclipse Wide wheeling round its long ellipse,-- His name Urania writes with these And stamps it on her Pleiades. We knew him not? Ah, well we knew The manly soul, so brave, so true, The cheerful heart that conquered age, The childlike silver-bearded sage. No more his tireless thought explores The azure sea with golden shores; Rest, wearied frame I the stars shall keep A loving watch where thou shalt sleep. Farewell! the spirit needs must rise, So long a tenant of the skies,-- Rise to that home all worlds above Whose sun is God, whose light is love. IN THE TWILIGHT 1882 NOT bed-time yet! The night-winds blow, The stars are out,--full well we know The nurse is on the stair, With hand of ice and cheek of snow, And frozen lips that whisper low, "Come, children, it is time to go My peaceful couch to share." No years a wakeful heart can tire; Not bed-time yet! Come, stir the fire And warm your dear old hands; Kind Mother Earth we love so well Has pleasant stories yet to tell Before we hear the curfew bell; Still glow the burning brands. Not bed-time yet! We long to know What wonders time has yet to show, What unborn years shall bring; What ship the Arctic pole shall reach, What lessons Science waits to teach, What sermons there are left to preach. What poems yet to sing. What next? we ask; and is it true The sunshine falls on nothing new, As Israel's king declared? Was ocean ploughed with harnessed fire? Were nations coupled with a wire? Did Tarshish telegraph to Tyre? How Hiram would have stared! And what if Sheba's curious queen, Who came to see,--and to be seen,-- Or something new to seek, And swooned, as ladies sometimes do, At sights that thrilled her through and through, Had heard, as she was "coming to," A locomotive's shriek, And seen a rushing railway train As she looked out along the plain From David's lofty tower,-- A mile of smoke that blots the sky And blinds the eagles as they fly Behind the cars that thunder by A score of leagues an hour! See to my _fiat lux_ respond This little slumbering fire-tipped wand,-- One touch,--it bursts in flame! Steal me a portrait from the sun,-- One look,--and to! the picture done! Are these old tricks, King Solomon, We lying moderns claim? Could you have spectroscoped a star? If both those mothers at your bar, The cruel and the mild, The young and tender, old and tough, Had said, "Divide,--you're right, though rough,"-- Did old Judea know enough To etherize the child? These births of time our eyes have seen, With but a few brief years between; What wonder if the text, For other ages doubtless true, For coming years will never do,-- Whereof we all should like a few, If but to see what next. If such things have been, such may be; Who would not like to live and see-- If Heaven may so ordain-- What waifs undreamed of, yet in store, The waves that roll forevermore On life's long beach may east ashore From out the mist-clad main? Will Earth to pagan dreams return To find from misery's painted urn That all save hope has flown,-- Of Book and Church and Priest bereft, The Rock of Ages vainly cleft, Life's compass gone, its anchor left, Left,--lost,--in depths unknown? Shall Faith the trodden path pursue The _crux ansata_ wearers knew Who sleep with folded hands, Where, like a naked, lidless eye, The staring Nile rolls wandering by Those mountain slopes that climb the sky Above the drifting sands? Or shall a nobler Faith return, Its fanes a purer gospel learn, With holier anthems ring, And teach us that our transient creeds Were but the perishable seeds Of harvests sown for larger needs, That ripening years shall bring? Well, let the present do its best, We trust our Maker for the rest, As on our way we plod; Our souls, full dressed in fleshly suits, Love air and sunshine, flowers and fruits, The daisies better than their roots Beneath the grassy sod. Not bed-time yet! The full-blown flower Of all the year--this evening hour-- With friendship's flame is bright; Life still is sweet, the heavens are fair, Though fields are brown and woods are bare, And many a joy is left to share Before we say Good-night! And when, our cheerful evening past, The nurse, long waiting, comes at last, Ere on her lap we lie In wearied nature's sweet repose, At peace with all her waking foes, Our lips shall murmur, ere they close, Good-night! and not Good-by! A LOVING-CUP SONG 1883 COME, heap the fagots! Ere we go Again the cheerful hearth shall glow; We 'll have another blaze, my boys! When clouds are black and snows are white, Then Christmas logs lend ruddy light They stole from summer days, my boys, They stole from summer days. And let the Loving-Cup go round, The Cup with blessed memories crowned, That flows whene'er we meet, my boys; No draught will hold a drop of sin If love is only well stirred in To keep it sound and sweet, my boys, To keep it sound and sweet. Give me, to pin upon my breast, The blossoms twain I love the best, A rosebud and a pink, my boys; Their leaves shall nestle next my heart, Their perfumed breath shall own its part In every health we drink, my boys, In every health we drink. The breathing blossoms stir my blood, Methinks I see the lilacs bud And hear the bluebirds sing, my boys; Why not? Yon lusty oak has seen Full tenscore years, yet leaflets green Peep out with every spring, my boys, Peep out with every spring. Old Time his rusty scythe may whet, The unmowed grass is glowing yet Beneath the sheltering snow, my boys; And if the crazy dotard ask, Is love worn out? Is life a task? We'll bravely answer No! my boys, We 'll bravely answer No! For life's bright taper is the same Love tipped of old with rosy flame That heaven's own altar lent, my boys, To glow in every cup we fill Till lips are mute and hearts are still, Till life and love are spent, my boys, Till life and love are spent. THE GIRDLE OF FRIENDSHIP 1884 SHE gathered at her slender waist The beauteous robe she wore; Its folds a golden belt embraced, One rose-hued gem it bore. The girdle shrank; its lessening round Still kept the shining gem, But now her flowing locks it bound, A lustrous diadem. And narrower still the circlet grew; Behold! a glittering band, Its roseate diamond set anew, Her neck's white column spanned. Suns rise and set; the straining clasp The shortened links resist, Yet flashes in a bracelet's grasp The diamond, on her wrist. At length, the round of changes past The thieving years could bring, The jewel, glittering to the last, Still sparkles in a ring. So, link by link, our friendships part, So loosen, break, and fall, A narrowing zone; the loving heart Lives changeless through them all. THE LYRE OF ANACREON 1885 THE minstrel of the classic lay Of love and wine who sings Still found the fingers run astray That touched the rebel strings. Of Cadmus he would fain have sung, Of Atreus and his line; But all the jocund echoes rung With songs of love and wine. Ah, brothers! I would fain have caught Some fresher fancy's gleam; My truant accents find, unsought, The old familiar theme. Love, Love! but not the sportive child With shaft and twanging bow, Whose random arrows drove us wild Some threescore years ago; Not Eros, with his joyous laugh, The urchin blind and bare, But Love, with spectacles and staff, And scanty, silvered hair. Our heads with frosted locks are white, Our roofs are thatched with snow, But red, in chilling winter's spite, Our hearts and hearthstones glow. Our old acquaintance, Time, drops in, And while the running sands Their golden thread unheeded spin, He warms his frozen hands. Stay, winged hours, too swift, too sweet, And waft this message o'er To all we miss, from all we meet On life's fast-crumbling shore: Say that, to old affection true, We hug the narrowing chain That binds our hearts,--alas, how few The links that yet remain! The fatal touch awaits them all That turns the rocks to dust; From year to year they break and fall,-- They break, but never rust. Say if one note of happier strain This worn-out harp afford,-- One throb that trembles, not in vain,-- Their memory lent its chord. Say that when Fancy closed her wings And Passion quenched his fire, Love, Love, still echoed from the strings As from Anacreon's lyre! THE OLD TUNE THIRTY-SIXTH VARIATION 1886 THIS shred of song you bid me bring Is snatched from fancy's embers; Ah, when the lips forget to sing, The faithful heart remembers! Too swift the wings of envious Time To wait for dallying phrases, Or woven strands of labored rhyme To thread their cunning mazes. A word, a sigh, and lo, how plain Its magic breath discloses Our life's long vista through a lane Of threescore summers' roses! One language years alone can teach Its roots are young affections That feel their way to simplest speech Through silent recollections. That tongue is ours. How few the words We need to know a brother! As simple are the notes of birds, Yet well they know each other. This freezing month of ice and snow That brings our lives together Lends to our year a living glow That warms its wintry weather. So let us meet as eve draws nigh, And life matures and mellows, Till Nature whispers with a sigh, "Good-night, my dear old fellows!" THE BROKEN CIRCLE 1887 I STOOD On Sarum's treeless plain, The waste that careless Nature owns; Lone tenants of her bleak domain, Loomed huge and gray the Druid stones. Upheaved in many a billowy mound The sea-like, naked turf arose, Where wandering flocks went nibbling round The mingled graves of friends and foes. The Briton, Roman, Saxon, Dane, This windy desert roamed in turn; Unmoved these mighty blocks remain Whose story none that lives may learn. Erect, half buried, slant or prone, These awful listeners, blind and dumb, Hear the strange tongues of tribes unknown, As wave on wave they go and come. "Who are you, giants, whence and why?" I stand and ask in blank amaze; My soul accepts their mute reply "A mystery, as are you that gaze. "A silent Orpheus wrought the charm From riven rocks their spoils to bring; A nameless Titan lent his arm To range us in our magic ring. "But Time with still and stealthy stride, That climbs and treads and levels all, That bids the loosening keystone slide, And topples down the crumbling wall,-- "Time, that unbuilds the quarried past, Leans on these wrecks that press the sod; They slant, they stoop, they fall at last, And strew the turf their priests have trod. "No more our altar's wreath of smoke Floats up with morning's fragrant dew; The fires are dead, the ring is broke, Where stood the many stand the few." My thoughts had wandered far away, Borne off on Memory's outspread wing, To where in deepening twilight lay The wrecks of friendship's broken ring. Ah me! of all our goodly train How few will find our banquet hall! Yet why with coward lips complain That this must lean, and that must fall? Cold is the Druid's altar-stone, Its vanished flame no more returns; But ours no chilling damp has known,-- Unchanged, unchanging, still it burns. So let our broken circle stand A wreck, a remnant, yet the same, While one last, loving, faithful hand Still lives to feed its altar-flame! THE ANGEL-THIEF 1888 TIME is a thief who leaves his tools behind him; He comes by night, he vanishes at dawn; We track his footsteps, but we never find him Strong locks are broken, massive bolts are drawn, And all around are left the bars and borers, The splitting wedges and the prying keys, Such aids as serve the soft-shod vault-explorers To crack, wrench open, rifle as they please. Ah, these are tools which Heaven in mercy lends us When gathering rust has clenched our shackles fast, Time is the angel-thief that Nature sends us To break the cramping fetters of our past. Mourn as we may for treasures he has taken, Poor as we feel of hoarded wealth bereft, More precious are those implements forsaken, Found in the wreck his ruthless hands have left. Some lever that a casket's hinge has broken Pries off a bolt, and lo! our souls are free; Each year some Open Sesame is spoken, And every decade drops its master-key. So as from year to year we count our treasure, Our loss seems less, and larger look our gains; Time's wrongs repaid in more than even measure,-- We lose our jewels, but we break our chains. AFTER THE CURFEW 1889 THE Play is over. While the light Yet lingers in the darkening hall, I come to say a last Good-night Before the final _Exeunt all_. We gathered once, a joyous throng: The jovial toasts went gayly round; With jest, and laugh, and shout, and song, We made the floors and walls resound. We come with feeble steps and slow, A little band of four or five, Left from the wrecks of long ago, Still pleased to find ourselves alive. Alive! How living, too, are they Whose memories it is ours to share! Spread the long table's full array,-- There sits a ghost in every chair! One breathing form no more, alas! Amid our slender group we see; With him we still remained "The Class,"-- Without his presence what are we? The hand we ever loved to clasp,-- That tireless hand which knew no rest,-- Loosed from affection's clinging grasp, Lies nerveless on the peaceful breast. The beaming eye, the cheering voice, That lent to life a generous glow, Whose every meaning said "Rejoice," We see, we hear, no more below. The air seems darkened by his loss, Earth's shadowed features look less fair, And heavier weighs the daily cross His willing shoulders helped us bear. Why mourn that we, the favored few Whom grasping Time so long has spared Life's sweet illusions to pursue, The common lot of age have shared? In every pulse of Friendship's heart There breeds unfelt a throb of pain,-- One hour must rend its links apart, Though years on years have forged the chain. . . . . . . . . . . . . So ends "The Boys,"--a lifelong play. We too must hear the Prompter's call To fairer scenes and brighter day Farewell! I let the curtain fall. POEMS FROM THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE 1857-1858 THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS THIS is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main,-- The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; Wrecked is the ship of pearl! And every chambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed,-- Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed! Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap, forlorn! From thy dead lips a clearer note is born Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn While on mine ear it rings, Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:-- Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! SUN AND SHADOW As I look from the isle, o'er its billows of green, To the billows of foam-crested blue, Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen, Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray As the chaff in the stroke of the flail; Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way, The sun gleaming bright on her sail. Yet her pilot is thinking of dangers to shun,-- Of breakers that whiten and roar; How little he cares, if in shadow or sun They see him who gaze from the shore! He looks to the beacon that looms from the reef, To the rock that is under his lee, As he drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted leaf, O'er the gulfs of the desolate sea. Thus drifting afar to the dim-vaulted caves Where life and its ventures are laid, The dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves May see us in sunshine or shade; Yet true to our course, though the shadows grow dark, We'll trim our broad sail as before, And stand by the rudder that governs the bark, Nor ask how we look from the shore! MUSA O MY lost beauty!--hast thou folded quite Thy wings of morning light Beyond those iron gates Where Life crowds hurrying to the haggard Fates, And Age upon his mound of ashes waits To chill our fiery dreams, Hot from the heart of youth plunged in his icy streams? Leave me not fading in these weeds of care, Whose flowers are silvered hair! Have I not loved thee long, Though my young lips have often done thee wrong, And vexed thy heaven-tuned ear with careless song? Ah, wilt thou yet return, Bearing thy rose-hued torch, and bid thine altar burn? Come to me!--I will flood thy silent shrine With my soul's sacred wine, And heap thy marble floors As the wild spice-trees waste their fragrant stores, In leafy islands walled with madrepores And lapped in Orient seas, When all their feathery palms toss, plume-like, in the breeze. Come to me!--thou shalt feed on honeyed words, Sweeter than song of birds;-- No wailing bulbul's throat, No melting dulcimer's melodious note When o'er the midnight wave its murmurs float, Thy ravished sense might soothe With flow so liquid-soft, with strain so velvet-smooth. Thou shalt be decked with jewels, like a queen, Sought in those bowers of green Where loop the clustered vines And the close-clinging dulcamara twines,-- Pure pearls of Maydew where the moonlight shines, And Summer's fruited gems, And coral pendants shorn from Autumn's berried stems. Sit by me drifting on the sleepy waves,-- Or stretched by grass-grown graves, Whose gray, high-shouldered stones, Carved with old names Life's time-worn roll disowns, Lean, lichen-spotted, o'er the crumbled bones Still slumbering where they lay While the sad Pilgrim watched to scare the wolf away. Spread o'er my couch thy visionary wing! Still let me dream and sing,-- Dream of that winding shore Where scarlet cardinals bloom-for me no more,-- The stream with heaven beneath its liquid floor, And clustering nenuphars Sprinkling its mirrored blue like golden-chaliced stars! Come while their balms the linden-blossoms shed!-- Come while the rose is red,-- While blue-eyed Summer smiles On the green ripples round yon sunken piles Washed by the moon-wave warm from Indian isles, And on the sultry air The chestnuts spread their palms like holy men in prayer! Oh for thy burning lips to fire my brain With thrills of wild, sweet pain!-- On life's autumnal blast, Like shrivelled leaves, youth's passion-flowers are cast,-- Once loving thee, we love thee to the last!-- Behold thy new-decked shrine, And hear once more the voice that breathed "Forever thine!" A PARTING HEALTH TO J. L. MOTLEY YES, we knew we must lose him,--though friendship may claim To blend her green leaves with the laurels of fame; Though fondly, at parting, we call him our own, 'T is the whisper of love when the bugle has blown. As the rider that rests with the spur on his heel, As the guardsman that sleeps in his corselet of steel, As the archer that stands with his shaft on the string, He stoops from his toil to the garland we bring. What pictures yet slumber unborn in his loom, Till their warriors shall breathe and their beauties shall bloom, While the tapestry lengthens the life-glowing dyes That caught from our sunsets the stain of their skies! In the alcoves of death, in the charnels of timid, Where flit the gaunt spectres of passion and crime, There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs unsung, There are heroes yet silent to speak with his tongue! Let us hear the proud story which time has bequeathed! From lips that are warm with the freedom they breathed! Let him summon its tyrants, and tell us their doom, Though he sweep the black past like Van Tromp with his broom! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The dream flashes by, for the west-winds awake On pampas, on prairie, o'er mountain and lake, To bathe the swift bark, like a sea-girdled shrine, With incense they stole from the rose and the pine. So fill a bright cup with the sunlight that gushed When the dead summer's jewels were trampled and crushed: THE TRUE KNIGHT OF LEARNING,--the world holds him dear,-- Love bless him, Joy crown him, God speed his career! 1857. WHAT WE ALL THINK THAT age was older once than now, In spite of locks untimely shed, Or silvered on the youthful brow; That babes make love and children wed. That sunshine had a heavenly glow, Which faded with those "good old days" When winters came with deeper snow, And autumns with a softer haze. That--mother, sister, wife, or child-- The "best of women" each has known. Were school-boys ever half so wild? How young the grandpapas have grown! That but for this our souls were free, And but for that our lives were blest; That in some season yet to be Our cares will leave us time to rest. Whene'er we groan with ache or pain,-- Some common ailment of the race,-- Though doctors think the matter plain,-- That ours is "a peculiar case." That when like babes with fingers burned We count one bitter maxim more, Our lesson all the world has learned, And men are wiser than before. That when we sob o'er fancied woes, The angels hovering overhead Count every pitying drop that flows, And love us for the tears we shed. That when we stand with tearless eye And turn the beggar from our door, They still approve us when we sigh, "Ah, had I but one thousand more!" Though temples crowd the crumbled brink O'erhanging truth's eternal flow, Their tablets bold with what we think, Their echoes dumb to what we know; That one unquestioned text we read, All doubt beyond, all fear above, Nor crackling pile nor cursing creed Can burn or blot it: GOD IS LOVE! SPRING HAS COME INTRA MUROS THE sunbeams, lost for half a year, Slant through my pane their morning rays; For dry northwesters cold and clear, The east blows in its thin blue haze. And first the snowdrop's bells are seen, Then close against the sheltering wall The tulip's horn of dusky green, The peony's dark unfolding ball. The golden-chaliced crocus burns; The long narcissus-blades appear; The cone-beaked hyacinth returns To light her blue-flamed chandelier. The willow's whistling lashes, wrung By the wild winds of gusty March, With sallow leaflets lightly strung, Are swaying by the tufted larch. The elms have robed their slender spray With full-blown flower and embryo leaf; Wide o'er the clasping arch of day Soars like a cloud their hoary chief. See the proud tulip's flaunting cup, That flames in glory for an hour,-- Behold it withering,--then look up,-- How meek the forest monarch's flower! When wake the violets, Winter dies; When sprout the elm-buds, Spring is near: When lilacs blossom, Summer cries, "Bud, little roses! Spring is here!" The windows blush with fresh bouquets, Cut with the May-dew on their lips; The radish all its bloom displays, Pink as Aurora's finger-tips. Nor less the flood of light that showers On beauty's changed corolla-shades,-- The walks are gay as bridal bowers With rows of many-petalled maids. The scarlet shell-fish click and clash In the blue barrow where they slide; The horseman, proud of streak and splash, Creeps homeward from his morning ride. Here comes the dealer's awkward string, With neck in rope and tail in knot,-- Rough colts, with careless country-swing, In lazy walk or slouching trot. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wild filly from the mountain-side, Doomed to the close and chafing thills, Lend me thy long, untiring stride To seek with thee thy western hills! I hear the whispering voice of Spring, The thrush's trill, the robin's cry, Like some poor bird with prisoned wing That sits and sings, but longs to fly. Oh for one spot of living greed,-- One little spot where leaves can grow,-- To love unblamed, to walk unseen, To dream above, to sleep below! PROLOGUE A PROLOGUE? Well, of course the ladies know,-- I have my doubts. No matter,--here we go! What is a Prologue? Let our Tutor teach: Pro means beforehand; logos stands for speech. 'T is like the harper's prelude on the strings, The prima donna's courtesy ere she sings; Prologues in metre are to other pros As worsted stockings are to engine-hose. "The world's a stage,"--as Shakespeare said, one day; The stage a world--was what he meant to say. The outside world's a blunder, that is clear; The real world that Nature meant is here. Here every foundling finds its lost mamma; Each rogue, repentant, melts his stern papa; Misers relent, the spendthrift's debts are paid, The cheats are taken in the traps they laid; One after one the troubles all are past Till the fifth act comes right side up at last, When the young couple, old folks, rogues, and all, Join hands, so happy at the curtain's fall. Here suffering virtue ever finds relief, And black-browed ruffians always come to grief. When the lorn damsel, with a frantic screech, And cheeks as hueless as a brandy-peach, Cries, "Help, kyind Heaven!" and drops upon her knees On the green--baize,--beneath the (canvas) trees,-- See to her side avenging Valor fly:-- "Ha! Villain! Draw! Now, Terraitorr, yield or die!" When the poor hero flounders in despair, Some dear lost uncle turns up millionaire, Clasps the young scapegrace with paternal joy, Sobs on his neck, "My boy! MY BOY!! _MY BOY_!!!" Ours, then, sweet friends, the real world to-night, Of love that conquers in disaster's spite. Ladies, attend! While woful cares and doubt Wrong the soft passion in the world without, Though fortune scowl, though prudence interfere, One thing is certain: Love will triumph here! Lords of creation, whom your ladies rule,-- The world's great masters, when you 're out of school,-- Learn the brief moral of our evening's play Man has his will,--but woman has her way! While man's dull spirit toils in smoke and fire, Woman's swift instinct threads the electric wire,-- The magic bracelet stretched beneath the waves Beats the black giant with his score of slaves. All earthly powers confess your sovereign art But that one rebel,--woman's wilful heart. All foes you master, but a woman's wit Lets daylight through you ere you know you 're hit. So, just to picture what her art can do, Hear an old story, made as good as new. Rudolph, professor of the headsman's trade, Alike was famous for his arm and blade. One day a prisoner Justice had to kill Knelt at the block to test the artist's skill. Bare-armed, swart-visaged, gaunt, and shaggy-browed, Rudolph the headsman rose above the crowd. His falchion lighted with a sudden gleam, As the pike's armor flashes in the stream. He sheathed his blade; he turned as if to go; The victim knelt, still waiting for the blow. "Why strikest not? Perform thy murderous act," The prisoner said. (His voice was slightly cracked.) "Friend, I have struck," the artist straight replied; "Wait but one moment, and yourself decide." He held his snuff-box,--"Now then, if you please!" The prisoner sniffed, and, with a crashing sneeze, Off his head tumbled,--bowled along the floor,-- Bounced down the steps;--the prisoner said no more! Woman! thy falchion is a glittering eye; If death lurk in it, oh how sweet to die! Thou takest hearts as Rudolph took the head; We die with love, and never dream we're dead! LATTER-DAY WARNINGS WHEN legislators keep the law, When banks dispense with bolts and looks, When berries--whortle, rasp, and straw-- Grow bigger downwards through the box,-- When he that selleth house or land Shows leak in roof or flaw in right,-- When haberdashers choose the stand Whose window hath the broadest light,-- When preachers tell us all they think, And party leaders all they mean,-- When what we pay for, that we drink, From real grape and coffee-bean,-- When lawyers take what they would give, And doctors give what they would take,-- When city fathers eat to live, Save when they fast for conscience' sake,-- When one that hath a horse on sale Shall bring his merit to the proof, Without a lie for every nail That holds the iron on the hoof,-- When in the usual place for rips Our gloves are stitched with special care, And guarded well the whalebone tips Where first umbrellas need repair,-- When Cuba's weeds have quite forgot The power of suction to resist, And claret-bottles harbor not Such dimples as would hold your fist,-- When publishers no longer steal, And pay for what they stole before,-- When the first locomotive's wheel Rolls through the Hoosac Tunnel's bore;-- Till then let Cumming blaze away, And Miller's saints blow up the globe; But when you see that blessed day, Then order your ascension robe. ALBUM VERSES WHEN Eve had led her lord away, And Cain had killed his brother, The stars and flowers, the poets say, Agreed with one another. To cheat the cunning tempter's art, And teach the race its duty, By keeping on its wicked heart Their eyes of light and beauty. A million sleepless lids, they say, Will be at least a warning; And so the flowers would watch by day, The stars from eve to morning. On hill and prairie, field and lawn, Their dewy eyes upturning, The flowers still watch from reddening dawn Till western skies are burning. Alas! each hour of daylight tells A tale of shame so crushing, That some turn white as sea-bleached shells, And some are always blushing. But when the patient stars look down On all their light discovers, The traitor's smile, the murderer's frown, The lips of lying lovers, They try to shut their saddening eyes, And in the vain endeavor We see them twinkling in the skies, And so they wink forever. A GOOD TIME GOING! BRAVE singer of the coming time, Sweet minstrel of the joyous present, Crowned with the noblest wreath of rhyme, The holly-leaf of Ayrshire's peasant, Good by! Good by!--Our hearts and hands, Our lips in honest Saxon phrases, Cry, God be with him, till he stands His feet among the English daisies! 'T is here we part;--for other eyes The busy deck, the fluttering streamer, The dripping arms that plunge and rise, The waves in foam, the ship in tremor, The kerchiefs waving from the pier, The cloudy pillar gliding o'er him, The deep blue desert, lone and drear, With heaven above and home before him! His home!--the Western giant smiles, And twirls the spotty globe to find it; This little speck the British Isles? 'T is but a freckle,--never mind it! He laughs, and all his prairies roll, Each gurgling cataract roars and chuckles, And ridges stretched from pole to pole Heave till they crack their iron knuckles! But Memory blushes at the sneer, And Honor turns with frown defiant, And Freedom, leaning on her spear, Laughs louder than the laughing giant "An islet is a world," she said, "When glory with its dust has blended, And Britain keeps her noble dead Till earth and seas and skies are rended!" Beneath each swinging forest-bough Some arm as stout in death reposes,-- From wave-washed foot to heaven-kissed brow Her valor's life-blood runs in roses; Nay, let our brothers of the West Write smiling in their florid pages, One half her soil has walked the rest In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages! Hugged in the clinging billow's clasp, From sea-weed fringe to mountain heather, The British oak with rooted grasp Her slender handful holds together;-- With cliffs of white and bowers of green, And Ocean narrowing to caress her, And hills and threaded streams between,-- Our little mother isle, God bless her! In earth's broad temple where we stand, Fanned by the eastern gales that brought us, We hold the missal in our hand, Bright with the lines our Mother taught us. Where'er its blazoned page betrays The glistening links of gilded fetters, Behold, the half-turned leaf displays Her rubric stained in crimson letters! Enough! To speed a parting friend 'T is vain alike to speak and listen;-- Yet stay,--these feeble accents blend With rays of light from eyes that glisten. Good by! once more,--and kindly tell In words of peace the young world's story,-- And say, besides, we love too well Our mothers' soil, our fathers' glory. THE LAST BLOSSOM THOUGH young no more, we still would dream Of beauty's dear deluding wiles; The leagues of life to graybeards seem Shorter than boyhood's lingering miles. Who knows a woman's wild caprice? 'It played with Goethe's silvered hair, And many a Holy Father's "niece" Has softly smoothed the papal chair. When sixty bids us sigh in vain To melt the heart of sweet sixteen, We think upon those ladies twain Who loved so well the tough old Dean. We see the Patriarch's wintry face, The maid of Egypt's dusky glow, And dream that Youth and Age embrace, As April violets fill with snow. Tranced in her lord's Olympian smile His lotus-loving Memphian lies,-- The musky daughter of the Nile, With plaited hair and almond eyes. Might we but share one wild caress Ere life's autumnal blossoms fall, And Earth's brown, clinging lips impress The long cold kiss that waits us all! My bosom heaves, remembering yet The morning of that blissful day, When Rose, the flower of spring, I met, And gave my raptured soul away. Flung from her eyes of purest blue, A lasso, with its leaping chain, Light as a loop of larkspurs, flew O'er sense and spirit, heart and brain. Thou com'st to cheer my waning age, Sweet vision, waited for so long! Dove that would seek the poet's cage Lured by the magic breath of song! She blushes! Ah, reluctant maid, Love's drapeau rouge the truth has told! O' er girlhood's yielding barricade Floats the great Leveller's crimson fold! Come to my arms!--love heeds not years; No frost the bud of passion knows. Ha! what is this my frenzy hears? A voice behind me uttered,--Rose! Sweet was her smile,--but not for me; Alas! when woman looks too kind, Just turn your foolish head and see,-- Some youth is walking close behind! CONTENTMENT "Man wants but little here below" LITTLE I ask; my wants are few; I only wish a hut of stone, (A _very plain_ brown stone will do,) That I may call my own;-- And close at hand is such a one, In yonder street that fronts the sun. Plain food is quite enough for me; Three courses are as good as ten;-- If Nature can subsist on three, Thank Heaven for three. Amen I always thought cold victual nice;-- My _choice_ would be vanilla-ice. I care not much for gold or land;-- Give me a mortgage here and there,-- Some good bank-stock, some note of hand, Or trifling railroad share,-- I only ask that Fortune send A _little_ more than I shall spend. Honors are silly toys, I know, And titles are but empty names; I would, _perhaps_, be Plenipo,-- But only near St. James; I'm very sure I should not care To fill our Gubernator's chair. Jewels are baubles; 't is a sin To care for such unfruitful things;-- One good-sized diamond in a pin,-- Some, not so large, in rings,-- A ruby, and a pearl, or so, Will do for me;--I laugh at show. My dame should dress in cheap attire; (Good, heavy silks are never dear;)-- I own perhaps I might desire Some shawls of true Cashmere,-- Some marrowy crapes of China silk, Like wrinkled skins on scalded milk. I would not have the horse I drive So fast that folks must stop and stare; An easy gait--two, forty-five-- Suits me; I do not care;-- Perhaps, for just a _single spurt_, Some seconds less would do no hurt. Of pictures, I should like to own Titians and Raphaels three or four,-- I love so much their style and tone, One Turner, and no more, (A landscape,--foreground golden dirt,-- The sunshine painted with a squirt.) Of books but few,--some fifty score For daily use, and bound for wear; The rest upon an upper floor;-- Some _little_ luxury _there_ Of red morocco's gilded gleam And vellum rich as country cream. Busts, cameos, gems,--such things as these, Which others often show for pride, I value for their power to please, And selfish churls deride;-- _One_ Stradivarius, I confess, _Two_ Meerschaums, I would fain possess. Wealth's wasteful tricks I will not learn, Nor ape the glittering upstart fool;-- Shall not carved tables serve my turn, But _all_ must be of buhl? Give grasping pomp its double share,-- I ask but _one_ recumbent chair. Thus humble let me live and die, Nor long for Midas' golden touch; If Heaven more generous gifts deny, I shall not miss them much,-- Too grateful for the blessing lent Of simple tastes and mind content! AESTIVATION AN UNPUBLISHED POEM, BY MY LATE LATIN TUTOR IN candent ire the solar splendor flames; The foles, langueseent, pend from arid rames; His humid front the Give, anheling, wipes, And dreams of erring on ventiferous riper. How dulce to vive occult to mortal eyes, Dorm on the herb with none to supervise, Carp the suave berries from the crescent vine, And bibe the flow from longicaudate kine! To me, alas! no verdurous visions come, Save yon exiguous pool's conferva-scum,-- No concave vast repeats the tender hue That laves my milk-jug with celestial blue! Me wretched! Let me curr to quercine shades! Effund your albid hausts, lactiferous maids! Oh, might I vole to some umbrageous clump,-- Depart,--be off,--excede,--evade,--erump! THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE OR, THE WONDERFUL "ONE-HOSS SHAY" A LOGICAL STORY HAVE you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, That was built in such a logical way It ran a hundred years to a day, And then, of a sudden, it--ah, but stay, I 'll tell you what happened without delay, Scaring the parson into fits, Frightening people out of their wits,-- Have you ever heard of that, I say? Seventeen hundred and fifty-five. _Georgius Secundus_ was then alive,-- Snuffy old drone from the German hive. That was the year when Lisbon-town Saw the earth open and gulp her down, And Braddock's army was done so brown, Left without a scalp to its crown. It was on the terrible Earthquake-day That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay. Now in building of chaises, I tell you what, There is always _somewhere_ a weakest spot,-- In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill, In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill, In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace,--lurking still, Find it somewhere you must and will,-- Above or below, or within or without,-- And that 's the reason, beyond a doubt, That a chaise breaks down, but does n't wear out. But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do, With an "I dew vum," or an "I tell yeou ") He would build one shay to beat the taown 'n' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun'; It should be so built that it couldn' break daown "Fur," said the Deacon, "'t 's mighty plain Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain; 'n' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain, Is only jest T' make that place uz strong uz the rest." So the Deacon inquired of the village folk Where he could find the strongest oak, That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke,-- That was for spokes and floor and sills; He sent for lancewood to make the thills; The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees, The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese, But lasts like iron for things like these; The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"-- Last of its timber,--they could n't sell 'em, Never an axe had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died. That was the way he "put her through." "There!" said the Deacon, "naow she 'll dew!" Do! I tell you, I rather guess She was a wonder, and nothing less! Colts grew horses, beards turned gray, Deacon and deaconess dropped away, Children and grandchildren--where were they? But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day! EIGHTEEN HUNDRED;--it came and found The Deacon's masterpiece strong and sound. Eighteen hundred increased by ten;-- "Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then. Eighteen hundred and twenty came;-- Running as usual; much the same. Thirty and forty at last arrive, And then come fifty, and FIFTY-FIVE. First of November, 'Fifty-five! This morning the parson takes a drive. Now, small boys, get out of the way! Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay, Little of all we value here Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year Without both feeling and looking queer. In fact, there 's nothing that keeps its youth, So far as I know, but a tree and truth. (This is a moral that runs at large; Take it.--You 're welcome.--No extra charge.) FIRST OF NOVEMBER,--the Earthquake-day,-- There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay, A general flavor of mild decay, But nothing local, as one may say. There couldn't be,--for the Deacon's art Had made it so like in every part That there was n't a chance for one to start. For the wheels were just as strong as the thills, And the floor was just as strong as the sills, And the panels just as strong as the floor, And the whipple-tree neither less nor more, And the back-crossbar as strong as the fore, And spring and axle and hub encore. And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt In another hour it will be worn out! Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay. "Huddup!" said the parson.--Off went they. The parson was working his Sunday's text,-- Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed At what the--Moses--was coming next. All at once the horse stood still, Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill. First a shiver, and then a thrill, Then something decidedly like a spill,-- And the parson was sitting upon a rock, At half past nine by the meet'n'-house clock,-- Just the hour of the Earthquake shock! What do you think the parson found, When he got up and stared around? The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, As if it had been to the mill and ground! You see, of course, if you 're not a dunce, How it went to pieces all at once,-- All at once, and nothing first,-- Just as bubbles do when they burst. End of the wonderful one-hoss shay. Logic is logic. That's all I say. PARSON TURELL'S LEGACY OR, THE PRESIDENT'S OLD ARM-CHAIR A MATHEMATICAL STORY FACTS respecting an old arm-chair. At Cambridge. Is kept in the College there. Seems but little the worse for wear. That 's remarkable when I say It was old in President Holyoke's day. (One of his boys, perhaps you know, Died, _at one hundred_, years ago.) He took lodgings for rain or shine Under green bed-clothes in '69. Know old Cambridge? Hope you do.-- Born there? Don't say so! I was, too. (Born in a house with a gambrel-roof,-- Standing still, if you must have proof.-- "Gambrel?--Gambrel?"--Let me beg You'll look at a horse's hinder leg,-- First great angle above the hoof,-- That 's the gambrel; hence gambrel-roof.) Nicest place that ever was seen,-- Colleges red and Common green, Sidewalks brownish with trees between. Sweetest spot beneath the skies When the canker-worms don't rise,-- When the dust, that sometimes flies Into your mouth and ears and eyes, In a quiet slumber lies, _Not_ in the shape of umbaked pies Such as barefoot children prize. A kind of harbor it seems to be, Facing the flow of a boundless sea. Rows of gray old Tutors stand Ranged like rocks above the sand; Rolling beneath them, soft and green, Breaks the tide of bright sixteen,-- One wave, two waves, three waves, four,-- Sliding up the sparkling floor. Then it ebbs to flow no more, Wandering off from shore to shore With its freight of golden ore! Pleasant place for boys to play;-- Better keep your girls away; Hearts get rolled as pebbles do Which countless fingering waves pursue, And every classic beach is strown With heart-shaped pebbles of blood-red stone. But this is neither here nor there; I'm talking about an old arm-chair. You 've heard, no doubt, of PARSON TURELL? Over at Medford he used to dwell; Married one of the Mathers' folk; Got with his wife a chair of oak,-- Funny old chair with seat like wedge, Sharp behind and broad front edge,-- One of the oddest of human things, Turned all over with knobs and rings,-- But heavy, and wide, and deep, and grand,-- Fit for the worthies of the land,-- Chief Justice Sewall a cause to try in, Or Cotton Mather to sit--and lie--in. Parson Turell bequeathed the same To a certain student,--SMITH by name; These were the terms, as we are told: "Saide Smith saide Chaire to have and holde; When he doth graduate, then to passe To ye oldest Youth in ye Senior Classe. On payment of "--(naming a certain sum)-- "By him to whom ye Chaire shall come; He to ye oldest Senior next, And soe forever,"--(thus runs the text,)-- "But one Crown lesse then he gave to claime, That being his Debte for use of same." Smith transferred it to one of the BROWNS, And took his money,--five silver crowns. Brown delivered it up to MOORE, Who paid, it is plain, not five, but four. Moore made over the chair to LEE, Who gave him crowns of silver three. Lee conveyed it unto DREW, And now the payment, of course, was two. Drew gave up the chair to DUNN,-- All he got, as you see, was one. Dunn released the chair to HALL, And got by the bargain no crown at all. And now it passed to a second BROWN, Who took it and likewise claimed a crown. When Brown conveyed it unto WARE, Having had one crown, to make it fair, He paid him two crowns to take the chair; And Ware, being honest, (as all Wares be,) He paid one POTTER, who took it, three. Four got ROBINSON; five got Dix; JOHNSON primus demanded six; And so the sum kept gathering still Till after the battle of Bunker's Hill. When paper money became so cheap, Folks would n't count it, but said "a heap," A certain RICHARDS,--the books declare,-- (A. M. in '90? I've looked with care Through the Triennial,--name not there,)-- This person, Richards, was offered then Eightscore pounds, but would have ten; Nine, I think, was the sum he took,-- Not quite certain,--but see the book. By and by the wars were still, But nothing had altered the Parson's will. The old arm-chair was solid yet, But saddled with such a monstrous debt! Things grew quite too bad to bear, Paying such sums to get rid of the chair But dead men's fingers hold awful tight, And there was the will in black and white, Plain enough for a child to spell. What should be done no man could tell, For the chair was a kind of nightmare curse, And every season but made it worse. As a last resort, to clear the doubt, They got old GOVERNOR HANCOCK out. The Governor came with his Lighthorse Troop And his mounted truckmen, all cock-a-hoop; Halberds glittered and colors flew, French horns whinnied and trumpets blew, The yellow fifes whistled between their teeth, And the bumble-bee bass-drums boomed beneath; So he rode with all his band, Till the President met him, cap in hand. The Governor "hefted" the crowns, and said,-- "A will is a will, and the Parson's dead." The Governor hefted the crowns. Said he,-- "There is your p'int. And here 's my fee. "These are the terms you must fulfil,-- On such conditions I BREAK THE WILL!" The Governor mentioned what these should be. (Just wait a minute and then you 'll see.) The President prayed. Then all was still, And the Governor rose and BROKE THE WILL! "About those conditions?" Well, now you go And do as I tell you, and then you'll know. Once a year, on Commencement day, If you 'll only take the pains to stay, You'll see the President in the CHAIR, Likewise the Governor sitting there. The President rises; both old and young May hear his speech in a foreign tongue, The meaning whereof, as lawyers swear, Is this: Can I keep this old arm-chair? And then his Excellency bows, As much as to say that he allows. The Vice-Gub. next is called by name; He bows like t' other, which means the same. And all the officers round 'em bow, As much as to say that they allow. And a lot of parchments about the chair Are handed to witnesses then and there, And then the lawyers hold it clear That the chair is safe for another year. God bless you, Gentlemen! Learn to give Money to colleges while you live. Don't be silly and think you'll try To bother the colleges, when you die, With codicil this, and codicil that, That Knowledge may starve while Law grows fat; For there never was pitcher that wouldn't spill, And there's always a flaw in a donkey's will! ODE FOR A SOCIAL MEETING WITH SLIGHT ALTERATIONS BY A TEETOTALER--(...) COME! fill a fresh bumper, for why should we go While the nectar (logwood) still reddens our cups as they flow? Pour out the rich juices (decoction) still bright with the sun, Till o'er the brimmed crystal the rubies (dye-stuff) shall run. The purple-globed clusters (half-ripened apples) their life-dews have bled; How sweet is the breath (taste) of the fragrance they shed!(sugar of lead) For summer's last roses (rank poisons) lie hid in the wines (wines!!!) That were garnered by maidens who laughed through the vines (stable-boys smoking long-nines) Then a smile (scowl) and a glass (howl) and a toast (scoff) and a cheer (sneer); For all the good wine, and we 've some of it here! (strychnine and whiskey, and ratsbane and beer!) In cellar, in pantry, in attic, in hall, Long live the gay servant that laughs for us all! (Down, down with the tyrant that masters us all!) POEMS FROM THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE 1858-1859 UNDER THE VIOLETS HER hands are cold; her face is white; No more her pulses come and go; Her eyes are shut to life and light;-- Fold the white vesture, snow on snow, And lay her where the violets blow. But not beneath a graven stone, To plead for tears with alien eyes; A slender cross of wood alone Shall say, that here a maiden lies In peace beneath the peaceful skies. And gray old trees of hugest limb Shall wheel their circling shadows round To make the scorching sunlight dim That drinks the greenness from the ground, And drop their dead leaves on her mound. When o'er their boughs the squirrels run, And through their leaves the robins call, And, ripening in the autumn sun, The acorns and the chestnuts fall, Doubt not that she will heed them all. For her the morning choir shall sing Its matins from the branches high, And every minstrel-voice of Spring, That trills beneath the April sky, Shall greet her with its earliest cry. When, turning round their dial-track, Eastward the lengthening shadows pass, Her little mourners, clad in black, The crickets, sliding through the grass, Shall pipe for her an evening mass. At last the rootlets of the trees Shall find the prison where she lies, And bear the buried dust they seize In leaves and blossoms to the skies. So may the soul that warmed it rise! If any, born of kindlier blood, Should ask, What maiden lies below? Say only this: A tender bud, That tried to blossom in the snow, Lies withered where the violets blow. HYMN OF TRUST O Love Divine, that stooped to share Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear, On Thee we cast each earth-born care, We smile at pain while Thou art near! Though long the weary way we tread, And sorrow crown each lingering year, No path we shun, no darkness dread, Our hearts still whispering, Thou art near! When drooping pleasure turns to grief, And trembling faith is changed to fear, The murmuring wind, the quivering leaf, Shall softly tell us, Thou art near! On Thee we fling our burdening woe, O Love Divine, forever dear, Content to suffer while we know, Living and dying, Thou art near! A SUN-DAY HYMN LORD of all being! throned afar, Thy glory flames from sun and star; Centre and soul of every sphere, Yet to each loving heart how near! Sun of our life, thy quickening ray Sheds on our path the glow of day; Star of our hope, thy softened light Cheers the long watches of the night. Our midnight is thy smile withdrawn; Our noontide is thy gracious dawn; Our rainbow arch thy mercy's sign; All, save the clouds of sin, are thin! Lord of all life, below, above, Whose light is truth, whose warmth is love, Before thy ever-blazing throne We ask no lustre of our own. Grant us thy truth to make us free, And kindling hearts that burn for thee, Till all thy living altars claim One holy light, one heavenly flame! THE CROOKED FOOTPATH AH, here it is! the sliding rail That marks the old remembered spot,-- The gap that struck our school-boy trail,-- The crooked path across the lot. It left the road by school and church, A pencilled shadow, nothing more, That parted from the silver-birch And ended at the farm-house door. No line or compass traced its plan; With frequent bends to left or right, In aimless, wayward curves it ran, But always kept the door in sight. The gabled porch, with woodbine green,-- The broken millstone at the sill,-- Though many a rood might stretch between, The truant child could see them still. No rocks across the pathway lie,-- No fallen trunk is o'er it thrown,-- And yet it winds, we know not why, And turns as if for tree or stone. Perhaps some lover trod the way With shaking knees and leaping heart,-- And so it often runs astray With sinuous sweep or sudden start. Or one, perchance, with clouded brain From some unholy banquet reeled,-- And since, our devious steps maintain His track across the trodden field. Nay, deem not thus,--no earthborn will Could ever trace a faultless line; Our truest steps are human still,-- To walk unswerving were divine! Truants from love, we dream of wrath; Oh, rather let us trust the more! Through all the wanderings of the path, We still can see our Father's door! IRIS, HER BOOK I PRAY thee by the soul of her that bore thee, By thine own sister's spirit I implore thee, Deal gently with the leaves that lie before thee! For Iris had no mother to infold her, Nor ever leaned upon a sister's shoulder, Telling the twilight thoughts that Nature told her. She had not learned the mystery of awaking Those chorded keys that soothe a sorrow's aching, Giving the dumb heart voice, that else were breaking. Yet lived, wrought, suffered. Lo, the pictured token Why should her fleeting day-dreams fade unspoken, Like daffodils that die with sheaths unbroken? She knew not love, yet lived in maiden fancies,-- Walked simply clad, a queen of high romances, And talked strange tongues with angels in her trances. Twin-souled she seemed, a twofold nature wearing: Sometimes a flashing falcon in her daring, Then a poor mateless dove that droops despairing. Questioning all things: Why her Lord had sent her? What were these torturing gifts, and wherefore lent her? Scornful as spirit fallen, its own tormentor. And then all tears and anguish: Queen of Heaven, Sweet Saints, and Thou by mortal sorrows riven, Save me! Oh, save me! Shall I die forgiven? And then--Ah, God! But nay, it little matters: Look at the wasted seeds that autumn scatters, The myriad germs that Nature shapes and shatters! If she had--Well! She longed, and knew not wherefore. Had the world nothing she might live to care for? No second self to say her evening prayer for? She knew the marble shapes that set men dreaming, Yet with her shoulders bare and tresses streaming Showed not unlovely to her simple seeming. Vain? Let it be so! Nature was her teacher. What if a lonely and unsistered creature Loved her own harmless gift of pleasing feature, Saying, unsaddened,--This shall soon be faded, And double-hued the shining tresses braided, And all the sunlight of the morning shaded? This her poor book is full of saddest follies, Of tearful smiles and laughing melancholies, With summer roses twined and wintry hollies. In the strange crossing of uncertain chances, Somewhere, beneath some maiden's tear-dimmed glances May fall her little book of dreams and fancies. Sweet sister! Iris, who shall never name thee, Trembling for fear her open heart may shame thee, Speaks from this vision-haunted page to claim thee. Spare her, I pray thee! If the maid is sleeping, Peace with her! she has had her hour of weeping. No more! She leaves her memory in thy keeping. ROBINSON OF LEYDEN HE sleeps not here; in hope and prayer His wandering flock had gone before, But he, the shepherd, might not share Their sorrows on the wintry shore. Before the Speedwell's anchor swung, Ere yet the Mayflower's sail was spread, While round his feet the Pilgrims clung, The pastor spake, and thus he said:-- "Men, brethren, sisters, children dear! God calls you hence from over sea; Ye may not build by Haerlem Meer, Nor yet along the Zuyder-Zee. "Ye go to bear the saving word To tribes unnamed and shores untrod; Heed well the lessons ye have heard From those old teachers taught of God. "Yet think not unto them was lent All light for all the coming days, And Heaven's eternal wisdom spent In making straight the ancient ways; "The living fountain overflows For every flock, for every lamb, Nor heeds, though angry creeds oppose With Luther's dike or Calvin's dam." He spake; with lingering, long embrace, With tears of love and partings fond, They floated down the creeping Maas, Along the isle of Ysselmond. They passed the frowning towers of Briel, The "Hook of Holland's" shelf of sand, And grated soon with lifting keel The sullen shores of Fatherland. No home for these!--too well they knew The mitred king behind the throne;-- The sails were set, the pennons flew, And westward ho! for worlds unknown. And these were they who gave us birth, The Pilgrims of the sunset wave, Who won for us this virgin earth, And freedom with the soil they gave. The pastor slumbers by the Rhine,-- In alien earth the exiles lie,-- Their nameless graves our holiest shrine, His words our noblest battle-cry! Still cry them, and the world shall hear, Ye dwellers by the storm-swept sea! Ye _have_ not built by Haerlem Meer, Nor on the land-locked Zuyder-Zee! ST. ANTHONY THE REFORMER HIS TEMPTATION No fear lest praise should make us proud! We know how cheaply that is won; The idle homage of the crowd Is proof of tasks as idly done. A surface-smile may pay the toil That follows still the conquering Right, With soft, white hands to dress the spoil That sun-browned valor clutched in fight. Sing the sweet song of other days, Serenely placid, safely true, And o'er the present's parching ways The verse distils like evening dew. But speak in words of living power,-- They fall like drops of scalding rain That plashed before the burning shower Swept o' er the cities of the plain! Then scowling Hate turns deadly pale,-- Then Passion's half-coiled adders spring, And, smitten through their leprous mail, Strike right and left in hope to sting. If thou, unmoved by poisoning wrath, Thy feet on earth, thy heart above, Canst walk in peace thy kingly path, Unchanged in trust, unchilled in love,-- Too kind for bitter words to grieve, Too firm for clamor to dismay, When Faith forbids thee to believe, And Meekness calls to disobey,-- Ah, then beware of mortal pride! The smiling pride that calmly scorns Those foolish fingers, crimson dyed In laboring on thy crown of thorns! THE OPENING OF THE PIANO IN the little southern parlor of the house you may have seen With the gambrel-roof, and the gable looking westward to the green, At the side toward the sunset, with the window on its right, Stood the London-made piano I am dreaming of to-night! Ah me I how I remember the evening when it came! What a cry of eager voices, what a group of cheeks in flame, When the wondrous box was opened that had come from over seas, With its smell of mastic-varnish and its flash of ivory keys! Then the children all grew fretful in the restlessness of joy, For the boy would push his sister, and the sister crowd the boy, Till the father asked for quiet in his grave paternal way, But the mother hushed the tumult with the words, "Now, Mary, play." For the dear soul knew that music was a very sovereign balm; She had sprinkled it over Sorrow and seen its brow grow calm, In the days of slender harpsichords with tapping tinkling quills, Or carolling to her spinet with its thin metallic thrills. So Mary, the household minstrel, who always loved to please, Sat down to the new "Clementi," and struck the glittering keys. Hushed were the children's voices, and every eye grew dim, As, floating from lip and finger, arose the "Vesper Hymn." Catharine, child of a neighbor, curly and rosy-red, (Wedded since, and a widow,--something like ten years dead,) Hearing a gush of music such as none before, Steals from her mother's chamber and peeps at the open door. Just as the "Jubilate" in threaded whisper dies, "Open it! open it, lady!" the little maiden cries, (For she thought 't was a singing creature caged in a box she heard,) "Open it! open it, lady! and let me see the _bird!_" MIDSUMMER HERE! sweep these foolish leaves away, I will not crush my brains to-day! Look! are the southern curtains drawn? Fetch me a fan, and so begone! Not that,--the palm-tree's rustling leaf Brought from a parching coral-reef Its breath is heated;--I would swing The broad gray plumes,--the eagle's wing. I hate these roses' feverish blood! Pluck me a half-blown lily-bud, A long-stemmed lily from the lake, Cold as a coiling water-snake. Rain me sweet odors on the air, And wheel me up my Indian chair, And spread some book not overwise Flat out before my sleepy eyes. Who knows it not,--this dead recoil Of weary fibres stretched with toil,-- The pulse that flutters faint and low When Summer's seething breezes blow! O Nature! bare thy loving breast, And give thy child one hour of rest,-- One little hour to lie unseen Beneath thy scarf of leafy green! So, curtained by a singing pine, Its murmuring voice shall blend with mine, Till, lost in dreams, my faltering lay In sweeter music dies away. DE SAUTY AN ELECTRO-CHEMICAL ECLOGUE The first messages received through the submarine cable were sent by an electrical expert, a mysterious personage who signed himself De Sauty. Professor Blue-Nose PROFESSOR TELL me, O Provincial! speak, Ceruleo-Nasal! Lives there one De Sauty extant now among you, Whispering Boanerges, son of silent thunder, Holding talk with nations? Is there a De Sauty ambulant on Tellus, Bifid-cleft like mortals, dormient in nightcap, Having sight, smell, hearing, food-receiving feature Three times daily patent? Breathes there such a being, O Ceruleo-Nasal? Or is he a _mythus_,--ancient word for "humbug"-- Such as Livy told about the wolf that wet-nursed Romulus and Remus? Was he born of woman, this alleged De Sauty? Or a living product of galvanic action, Like the acarus bred in Crosse's flint-solution? Speak, thou Cyano-Rhinal! BLUE-NOSE Many things thou askest, jackknife-bearing stranger, Much-conjecturing mortal, pork-and-treacle-waster! Pretermit thy whittling, wheel thine ear-flap toward me, Thou shall hear them answered. When the charge galvanic tingled through the cable, At the polar focus of the wire electric Suddenly appeared a white-faced man among us Called himself "DE SAUTY." As the small opossum held in pouch maternal Grasps the nutrient organ whence the term mammalia, So the unknown stranger held the wire electric, Sucking in the current. When the current strengthened, bloomed the pale-faced stranger,-- Took no drink nor victual, yet grew fat and rosy,-- And from time to time, in sharp articulation, Said, "All right! DE SAUTY." From the lonely station passed the utterance, spreading Through the pines and hemlocks to the groves of steeples, Till the land was filled with loud reverberations Of "_All right_ DE SAUTY." When the current slackened, drooped the mystic stranger,-- Faded, faded, faded, as the stream grew weaker,-- Wasted to a shadow, with a hartshorn odor Of disintegration. Drops of deliquescence glistened on his forehead, Whitened round his feet the dust of efflorescence, Till one Monday morning, when the flow suspended, There was no De Sauty. Nothing but a cloud of elements organic, C. O. H. N. Ferrum, Chlor. Flu. Sil. Potassa, Cale. Sod. Phosph. Mag. Sulphur, Mang. (?) Alumin. (?) Cuprum, (?) Such as man is made of. Born of stream galvanic, with it he had perished! There is no De Sauty now there is no current! Give us a new cable, then again we'll hear him Cry, "All right! DE SAUTY." POEMS FROM THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE 1871-1872 HOMESICK IN HEAVEN THE DIVINE VOICE Go seek thine earth-born sisters,--thus the Voice That all obey,--the sad and silent three; These only, while the hosts of Heaven rejoice, Smile never; ask them what their sorrows be; And when the secret of their griefs they tell, Look on them with thy mild, half-human eyes; Say what thou wast on earth; thou knowest well; So shall they cease from unavailing sighs. THE ANGEL Why thus, apart,--the swift-winged herald spake,-- Sit ye with silent lips and unstrung lyres While the trisagion's blending chords awake In shouts of joy from all the heavenly choirs? FIRST SPIRIT Chide not thy sisters,--thus the answer came;-- Children of earth, our half-weaned nature clings To earth's fond memories, and her whispered name Untunes our quivering lips, our saddened strings; For there we loved, and where we love is home, Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts, Though o'er us shine the jasper-lighted dome:-- The chain may lengthen, but it never parts! Sometimes a sunlit sphere comes rolling by, And then we softly whisper,--can it be? And leaning toward the silvery orb, we try To hear the music of its murmuring sea; To catch, perchance, some flashing glimpse of green, Or breathe some wild-wood fragrance, wafted through The opening gates of pearl, that fold between The blinding splendors and the changeless blue. THE ANGEL Nay, sister, nay! a single healing leaf Plucked from the bough of yon twelve-fruited tree Would soothe such anguish,--deeper stabbing grief Has pierced thy throbbing heart-- THE FIRST SPIRIT Ah, woe is me! I from my clinging babe was rudely torn; His tender lips a loveless bosom pressed; Can I forget him in my life new born? Oh that my darling lay upon my breast! THE ANGEL And thou?-- THE SECOND SPIRIT I was a fair and youthful bride, The kiss of love still burns upon my cheek, He whom I worshipped, ever at my side,-- Him through the spirit realm in vain I seek. Sweet faces turn their beaming eyes on mine; Ah! not in these the wished-for look I read; Still for that one dear human smile I pine; _Thou and none other!_--is the lover's creed. THE ANGEL And whence thy sadness in a world of bliss Where never parting comes, nor mourner's tear? Art thou, too, dreaming of a mortal's kiss Amid the seraphs of the heavenly sphere? THE THIRD SPIRIT Nay, tax not me with passion's wasting fire; When the swift message set my spirit free, Blind, helpless, lone, I left my gray-haired sire; My friends were many, he had none save me. I left him, orphaned, in the starless night; Alas, for him no cheerful morning's dawn I wear the ransomed spirit's robe of white, Yet still I hear him moaning, _She is gone!_ THE ANGEL Ye know me not, sweet sisters?--All in vain Ye seek your lost ones in the shapes they wore; The flower once opened may not bud again, The fruit once fallen finds the stem no more. Child, lover, sire,--yea, all things loved below,-- Fair pictures damasked on a vapor's fold,-- Fade like the roseate flush, the golden glow, When the bright curtain of the day is rolled. I was the babe that slumbered on thy breast. And, sister, mine the lips that called thee bride. Mine were the silvered locks thy hand caressed, That faithful hand, my faltering footstep's guide! Each changing form, frail vesture of decay, The soul unclad forgets it once hath worn, Stained with the travel of the weary day, And shamed with rents from every wayside thorn. To lie, an infant, in thy fond embrace,-- To come with love's warm kisses back to thee,-- To show thine eyes thy gray-haired father's face, Not Heaven itself could grant; this may not be! Then spread your folded wings, and leave to earth The dust once breathing ye have mourned so long, Till Love, new risen, owns his heavenly birth, And sorrow's discords sweeten into song! FANTASIA THE YOUNG GIRL'S POEM KISS mine eyelids, beauteous Morn, Blushing into life new-born! Lend me violets for my hair, And thy russet robe to wear, And thy ring of rosiest hue Set in drops of diamond dew! Kiss my cheek, thou noontide ray, From my Love so far away Let thy splendor streaming down Turn its pallid lilies brown, Till its darkening shades reveal Where his passion pressed its seal! Kiss my lips, thou Lord of light, Kiss my lips a soft good-night! Westward sinks thy golden car; Leave me but the evening star, And my solace that shall be, Borrowing all its light from thee! AUNT TABITHA THE YOUNG GIRL'S POEM WHATEVER I do, and whatever I say, Aunt Tabitha tells me that is n't the way; When she was a girl (forty summers ago) Aunt Tabitha tells me they never did so. Dear aunt! If I only would take her advice! But I like my own way, and I find it so nice And besides, I forget half the things I am told; But they all will come back to me--when I am old. If a youth passes by, it may happen, no doubt, He may chance to look in as I chance to look out; She would never endure an impertinent stare,-- It is horrid, she says, and I must n't sit there. A walk in the moonlight has pleasures, I own, But it is n't quite safe to be walking alone; So I take a lad's arm,--just for safety, you know,-- But Aunt Tabitha tells me they did n't do so. How wicked we are, and how good they were then! They kept at arm's length those detestable men; What an era of virtue she lived in!--But stay-- Were the men all such rogues in Aunt Tabitha's day? If the men were so wicked, I 'll ask my papa How he dared to propose to my darling mamma; Was he like the rest of them? Goodness! Who knows? And what shall I say, if a wretch should propose? I am thinking if Aunt knew so little of sin, What a wonder Aunt Tabitha's aunt must have been! And her grand-aunt--it scares me--how shockingly sad That we girls of to-day are so frightfully bad! A martyr will save us, and nothing else can; Let me perish--to rescue some wretched young man! Though when to the altar a victim I go, Aunt Tabitha 'll tell me she never did so. WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS FROM THE YOUNG ASTRONOMER'S POEM I. AMBITION ANOTHER clouded night; the stars are hid, The orb that waits my search is hid with them. Patience! Why grudge an hour, a month, a year, To plant my ladder and to gain the round That leads my footsteps to the heaven of fame, Where waits the wreath my sleepless midnights won? Not the stained laurel such as heroes wear That withers when some stronger conqueror's heel Treads down their shrivelling trophies in the dust; But the fair garland whose undying green Not time can change, nor wrath of gods or men! With quickened heart-beats I shall hear tongues That speak my praise; but better far the sense That in the unshaped ages, buried deep In the dark mines of unaccomplished time Yet to be stamped with morning's royal die And coined in golden days,--in those dim years I shall be reckoned with the undying dead, My name emblazoned on the fiery arch, Unfading till the stars themselves shall fade. Then, as they call the roll of shining worlds, Sages of race unborn in accents new Shall count me with the Olympian ones of old, Whose glories kindle through the midnight sky Here glows the God of Battles; this recalls The Lord of Ocean, and yon far-off sphere The Sire of Him who gave his ancient name To the dim planet with the wondrous rings; Here flames the Queen of Beauty's silver lamp, And there the moon-girt orb of mighty Jove; But this, unseen through all earth's ions past, A youth who watched beneath the western star Sought in the darkness, found, and shewed to men; Linked with his name thenceforth and evermore So shall that name be syllabled anew In all the tongues of all the tribes of men: I that have been through immemorial years Dust in the dust of my forgotten time Shall live in accents shaped of blood-warm breath, Yea, rise in mortal semblance, newly born In shining stone, in undecaying bronze, And stand on high, and look serenely down On the new race that calls the earth its own. Is this a cloud, that, blown athwart my soul, Wears a false seeming of the pearly stain Where worlds beyond the world their mingling rays Blend in soft white,--a cloud that, born of earth, Would cheat the soul that looks for light from heaven? Must every coral-insect leave his sign On each poor grain he lent to build the reef, As Babel's builders stamped their sunburnt clay, Or deem his patient service all in vain? What if another sit beneath the shade Of the broad elm I planted by the way,-- What if another heed the beacon light I set upon the rock that wrecked my keel,-- Have I not done my task and served my kind? Nay, rather act thy part, unnamed, unknown, And let Fame blow her trumpet through the world With noisy wind to swell a fool's renown, Joined with some truth he stumbled blindly o'er, Or coupled with some single shining deed That in the great account of all his days Will stand alone upon the bankrupt sheet His pitying angel shows the clerk of Heaven. The noblest service comes from nameless hands, And the best servant does his work unseen. Who found the seeds of fire and made them shoot, Fed by his breath, in buds and flowers of flame? Who forged in roaring flames the ponderous stone, And shaped the moulded metal to his need? Who gave the dragging car its rolling wheel, And tamed the steed that whirls its circling round? All these have left their work and not their names,-- Why should I murmur at a fate like theirs? This is the heavenly light; the pearly stain Was but a wind-cloud drifting o'er the stars! II. REGRETS BRIEF glimpses of the bright celestial spheres, False lights, false shadows, vague, uncertain gleams, Pale vaporous mists, wan streaks of lurid flame, The climbing of the upward-sailing cloud, The sinking of the downward-falling star,-- All these are pictures of the changing moods Borne through the midnight stillness of my soul. Here am I, bound upon this pillared rock, Prey to the vulture of a vast desire That feeds upon my life. I burst my bands And steal a moment's freedom from the beak, The clinging talons and the shadowing plumes; Then comes the false enchantress, with her song; "Thou wouldst not lay thy forehead in the dust Like the base herd that feeds and breeds and dies Lo, the fair garlands that I weave for thee, Unchanging as the belt Orion wears, Bright as the jewels of the seven-starred Crown, The spangled stream of Berenice's hair!" And so she twines the fetters with the flowers Around my yielding limbs, and the fierce bird Stoops to his quarry,--then to feed his rage Of ravening hunger I must drain my blood And let the dew-drenched, poison-breeding night Steal all the freshness from my fading cheek, And leave its shadows round my caverned eyes. All for a line in some unheeded scroll; All for a stone that tells to gaping clowns, "Here lies a restless wretch beneath a clod Where squats the jealous nightmare men call Fame!" I marvel not at him who scorns his kind And thinks not sadly of the time foretold When the old hulk we tread shall be a wreck, A slag, a cinder drifting through the sky Without its crew of fools! We live too long, And even so are not content to die, But load the mould that covers up our bones With stones that stand like beggars by the road And show death's grievous wound and ask for tears; Write our great books to teach men who we are, Sing our fine songs that tell in artful phrase The secrets of our lives, and plead and pray For alms of memory with the after time, Those few swift seasons while the earth shall wear Its leafy summers, ere its core grows cold And the moist life of all that breathes shall die; Or as the new-born seer, perchance more wise, Would have us deem, before its growing mass, Pelted with star-dust, stoned with meteor-balls, Heats like a hammered anvil, till at last Man and his works and all that stirred itself Of its own motion, in the fiery glow Turns to a flaming vapor, and our orb Shines a new sun for earths that shall be born. I am as old as Egypt to myself, Brother to them that squared the pyramids By the same stars I watch. I read the page Where every letter is a glittering world, With them who looked from Shinar's clay-built towers, Ere yet the wanderer of the Midland sea Had missed the fallen sister of the seven. I dwell in spaces vague, remote, unknown, Save to the silent few, who, leaving earth, Quit all communion with their living time. I lose myself in that ethereal void, Till I have tired my wings and long to fill My breast with denser air, to stand, to walk With eyes not raised above my fellow-men. Sick of my unwalled, solitary realm, I ask to change the myriad lifeless worlds I visit as mine own for one poor patch Of this dull spheroid and a little breath To shape in word or deed to serve my kind. Was ever giant's dungeon dug so deep, Was ever tyrant's fetter forged so strong, Was e'er such deadly poison in the draught The false wife mingles for the trusting fool, As he whose willing victim is himself, Digs, forges, mingles, for his captive soul? III. SYMPATHIES THE snows that glittered on the disk of Mars Have melted, and the planet's fiery orb Rolls in the crimson summer of its year; But what to me the summer or the snow Of worlds that throb with life in forms unknown, If life indeed be theirs; I heed not these. My heart is simply human; all my care For them whose dust is fashioned like mine own; These ache with cold and hunger, live in pain, And shake with fear of worlds more full of woe; There may be others worthier of my love, But such I know not save through these I know. There are two veils of language, hid beneath Whose sheltering folds, we dare to be ourselves; And not that other self which nods and smiles And babbles in our name; the one is Prayer, Lending its licensed freedom to the tongue That tells our sorrows and our sins to Heaven; The other, Verse, that throws its spangled web Around our naked speech and makes it bold. I, whose best prayer is silence; sitting dumb In the great temple where I nightly serve Him who is throned in light, have dared to claim The poet's franchise, though I may not hope To wear his garland; hear me while I tell My story in such form as poets use, But breathed in fitful whispers, as the wind Sighs and then slumbers, wakes and sighs again. Thou Vision, floating in the breathless air Between me and the fairest of the stars, I tell my lonely thoughts as unto thee. Look not for marvels of the scholar's pen In my rude measure; I can only show A slender-margined, unillumined page, And trust its meaning to the flattering eye That reads it in the gracious light of love. Ah, wouldst thou clothe thyself in breathing shape And nestle at my side, my voice should lend Whate'er my verse may lack of tender rhythm To make thee listen. I have stood entranced When, with her fingers wandering o'er the keys, The white enchantress with the golden hair Breathed all her soul through some unvalued rhyme; Some flower of song that long had lost its bloom; Lo! its dead summer kindled as she sang! The sweet contralto, like the ringdove's coo, Thrilled it with brooding, fond, caressing tones, And the pale minstrel's passion lived again, Tearful and trembling as a dewy rose The wind has shaken till it fills the air With light and fragrance. Such the wondrous charm A song can borrow when the bosom throbs That lends it breath. So from the poet's lips His verse sounds doubly sweet, for none like him Feels every cadence of its wave-like flow; He lives the passion over, while he reads, That shook him as he sang his lofty strain, And pours his life through each resounding line, As ocean, when the stormy winds are hushed, Still rolls and thunders through his billowy caves. IV. MASTER AND SCHOLAR LET me retrace the record of the years That made me what I am. A man most wise, But overworn with toil and bent with age, Sought me to be his scholar,-me, run wild From books and teachers,-kindled in my soul The love of knowledge; led me to his tower, Showed me the wonders of the midnight realm His hollow sceptre ruled, or seemed to rule, Taught me the mighty secrets of the spheres, Trained me to find the glimmering specks of light Beyond the unaided sense, and on my chart To string them one by one, in order due, As on a rosary a saint his beads. I was his only scholar; I became The echo to his thought; whate'er he knew Was mine for asking; so from year to year W e wrought together, till there came a time When I, the learner, was the master half Of the twinned being in the dome-crowned tower. Minds roll in paths like planets; they revolve, This in a larger, that a narrower ring, But round they come at last to that same phase, That selfsame light and shade they showed before. I learned his annual and his monthly tale, His weekly axiom and his daily phrase, I felt them coming in the laden air, And watched them laboring up to vocal breath, Even as the first-born at his father's board Knows ere he speaks the too familiar jest Is on its way, by some mysterious sign Forewarned, the click before the striking bell. He shrivelled as I spread my growing leaves, Till trust and reverence changed to pitying care; He lived for me in what he once had been, But I for him, a shadow, a defence, The guardian of his fame, his guide, his staff, Leaned on so long he fell if left alone. I was his eye, his ear, his cunning hand, Love was my spur and longing after fame, But his the goading thorn of sleepless age That sees its shortening span, its lengthening shades, That clutches what it may with eager grasp, And drops at last with empty, outstretched hands. All this he dreamed not. He would sit him down Thinking to work his problems as of old, And find the star he thought so plain a blur, The columned figures labyrinthine wilds Without my comment, blind and senseless scrawls That vexed him with their riddles; he would strive And struggle for a while, and then his eye Would lose its light, and over all his mind The cold gray mist would settle; and erelong The darkness fell, and I was left alone. V. ALONE ALONE! no climber of an Alpine cliff, No Arctic venturer on the waveless sea, Feels the dread stillness round him as it chills The heart of him who leaves the slumbering earth To watch the silent worlds that crowd the sky. Alone! And as the shepherd leaves his flock To feed upon the hillside, he meanwhile Finds converse in the warblings of the pipe Himself has fashioned for his vacant hour, So have I grown companion to myself, And to the wandering spirits of the air That smile and whisper round us in our dreams. Thus have I learned to search if I may know The whence and why of all beneath the stars And all beyond them, and to weigh my life As in a balance,--poising good and ill Against each other,--asking of the Power That flung me forth among the whirling worlds, If I am heir to any inborn right, Or only as an atom of the dust That every wind may blow where'er it will. VI. QUESTIONING I AM not humble; I was shown my place, Clad in such robes as Nature had at hand; Took what she gave, not chose; I know no shame, No fear for being simply what I am. I am not proud, I hold my every breath At Nature's mercy. I am as a babe Borne in a giant's arms, he knows not where; Each several heart-beat, counted like the coin A miser reckons, is a special gift As from an unseen hand; if that withhold Its bounty for a moment, I am left A clod upon the earth to which I fall. Something I find in me that well might claim The love of beings in a sphere above This doubtful twilight world of right and wrong; Something that shows me of the self-same clay That creeps or swims or flies in humblest form. Had I been asked, before I left my bed Of shapeless dust, what clothing I would wear, I would have said, More angel and less worm; But for their sake who are even such as I, Of the same mingled blood, I would not choose To hate that meaner portion of myself Which makes me brother to the least of men. I dare not be a coward with my lips Who dare to question all things in my soul; Some men may find their wisdom on their knees, Some prone and grovelling in the dust like slaves; Let the meek glowworm glisten in the dew; I ask to lift my taper to the sky As they who hold their lamps above their heads, Trusting the larger currents up aloft, Rather than crossing eddies round their breast, Threatening with every puff the flickering blaze. My life shall be a challenge, not a truce! This is my homage to the mightier powers, To ask my boldest question, undismayed By muttered threats that some hysteric sense Of wrong or insult will convulse the throne Where wisdom reigns supreme; and if I err, They all must err who have to feel their way As bats that fly at noon; for what are we But creatures of the night, dragged forth by day, Who needs must stumble, and with stammering steps Spell out their paths in syllables of pain? Thou wilt not hold in scorn the child who dares Look up to Thee, the Father,--dares to ask More than thy wisdom answers. From thy hand The worlds were cast; yet every leaflet claims From that same hand its little shining sphere Of star-lit dew; thine image, the great sun, Girt with his mantle of tempestuous flame, Glares in mid-heaven; but to his noon-tide blaze The slender violet lifts its lidless eye, And from his splendor steals its fairest hue, Its sweetest perfume from his scorching fire. VII. WORSHIP FROM my lone turret as I look around O'er the green meadows to the ring of blue, From slope, from summit, and from half-hid vale The sky is stabbed with dagger-pointed spires, Their gilded symbols whirling in the wind, Their brazen tongues proclaiming to the world, "Here truth is sold, the only genuine ware; See that it has our trade-mark! You will buy Poison instead of food across the way, The lies of -----" this or that, each several name The standard's blazon and the battle-cry Of some true-gospel faction, and again The token of the Beast to all beside. And grouped round each I see a huddling crowd Alike in all things save the words they use; In love, in longing, hate and fear the same. Whom do we trust and serve? We speak of one And bow to many; Athens still would find The shrines of all she worshipped safe within Our tall barbarian temples, and the thrones That crowned Olympus mighty as of old. The god of music rules the Sabbath choir; The lyric muse must leave the sacred nine To help us please the dilettante's ear; Plutus limps homeward with us, as we leave The portals of the temple where we knelt And listened while the god of eloquence (Hermes of ancient days, but now disguised In sable vestments) with that other god Somnus, the son of Erebus and Nox, Fights in unequal contest for our souls; The dreadful sovereign of the under world Still shakes his sceptre at us, and we hear The baying of the triple-throated hound; Eros is young as ever, and as fair The lovely Goddess born of ocean's foam. These be thy gods, O Israel! Who is he, The one ye name and tell us that ye serve, Whom ye would call me from my lonely tower To worship with the many-headed throng? Is it the God that walked in Eden's grove In the cool hour to seek our guilty sire? The God who dealt with Abraham as the sons Of that old patriarch deal with other men? The jealous God of Moses, one who feels An image as an insult, and is wroth With him who made it and his child unborn? The God who plagued his people for the sin Of their adulterous king, beloved of him,-- The same who offers to a chosen few The right to praise him in eternal song While a vast shrieking world of endless woe Blends its dread chorus with their rapturous hymn? Is this the God ye mean, or is it he Who heeds the sparrow's fall, whose loving heart Is as the pitying father's to his child, Whose lesson to his children is "Forgive," Whose plea for all, "They know not what they do"? VIII. MANHOOD I CLAIM the right of knowing whom I serve, Else is my service idle; He that asks My homage asks it from a reasoning soul. To crawl is not to worship; we have learned A drill of eyelids, bended neck and knee, Hanging our prayers on hinges, till we ape The flexures of the many-jointed worm. Asia has taught her Allahs and salaams To the world's children,-we have grown to men! We who have rolled the sphere beneath our feet To find a virgin forest, as we lay The beams of our rude temple, first of all Must frame its doorway high enough for man To pass unstooping; knowing as we do That He who shaped us last of living forms Has long enough been served by creeping things, Reptiles that left their footprints in the sand Of old sea-margins that have turned to stone, And men who learned their ritual; we demand To know Him first, then trust Him and then love When we have found Him worthy of our love, Tried by our own poor hearts and not before; He must be truer than the truest friend, He must be tenderer than a woman's love, A father better than the best of sires; Kinder than she who bore us, though we sin Oftener than did the brother we are told We--poor ill-tempered mortals--must forgive, Though seven times sinning threescore times and ten. This is the new world's gospel: Be ye men! Try well the legends of the children's time; Ye are the chosen people, God has led Your steps across the desert of the deep As now across the desert of the shore; Mountains are cleft before you as the sea Before the wandering tribe of Israel's sons; Still onward rolls the thunderous caravan, Its coming printed on the western sky, A cloud by day, by night a pillared flame; Your prophets are a hundred unto one Of them of old who cried, "Thus saith the Lord;" They told of cities that should fall in heaps, But yours of mightier cities that shall rise Where yet the lonely fishers spread their nets, Where hides the fox and hoots the midnight owl; The tree of knowledge in your garden grows Not single, but at every humble door; Its branches lend you their immortal food, That fills you with the sense of what ye are, No servants of an altar hewed and carved From senseless stone by craft of human hands, Rabbi, or dervish, brahmin, bishop, bonze, But masters of the charm with which they work To keep your hands from that forbidden tree! Ye that have tasted that divinest fruit, Look on this world of yours with opened eyes! Y e are as gods! Nay, makers of your gods,-- Each day ye break an image in your shrine And plant a fairer image where it stood Where is the Moloch of your fathers' creed, Whose fires of torment burned for span--long babes? Fit object for a tender mother's love! Why not? It was a bargain duly made For these same infants through the surety's act Intrusted with their all for earth and heaven, By Him who chose their guardian, knowing well His fitness for the task,--this, even this, Was the true doctrine only yesterday As thoughts are reckoned,--and to--day you hear In words that sound as if from human tongues Those monstrous, uncouth horrors of the past That blot the blue of heaven and shame the earth As would the saurians of the age of slime, Awaking from their stony sepulchres And wallowing hateful in the eye of day! IX. RIGHTS WHAT am I but the creature Thou hast made? What have I save the blessings Thou hast lent? What hope I but thy mercy and thy love? Who but myself shall cloud my soul with fear? Whose hand protect me from myself but thine? I claim the rights of weakness, I, the babe, Call on my sire to shield me from the ills That still beset my path, not trying me With snares beyond my wisdom or my strength, He knowing I shall use them to my harm, And find a tenfold misery in the sense That in my childlike folly I have sprung The trap upon myself as vermin use, Drawn by the cunning bait to certain doom. Who wrought the wondrous charm that leads us on To sweet perdition, but the selfsame power That set the fearful engine to destroy His wretched offspring (as the Rabbis tell), And hid its yawning jaws and treacherous springs In such a show of innocent sweet flowers It lured the sinless angels and they fell? Ah! He who prayed the prayer of all mankind Summed in those few brief words the mightiest plea For erring souls before the courts of heaven,-- _Save us from being tempted_,--lest we fall! If we are only as the potter's clay Made to be fashioned as the artist wills, And broken into shards if we offend The eye of Him who made us, it is well; Such love as the insensate lump of clay That spins upon the swift-revolving wheel Bears to the hand that shapes its growing form,-- Such love, no more, will be our hearts' return To the great Master-workman for his care,-- Or would be, save that this, our breathing clay, Is intertwined with fine innumerous threads That make it conscious in its framer's hand; And this He must remember who has filled These vessels with the deadly draught of life,-- Life, that means death to all it claims. Our love Must kindle in the ray that streams from heaven, A faint reflection of the light divine; The sun must warm the earth before the rose Can show her inmost heart-leaves to the sun. He yields some fraction of the Maker's right Who gives the quivering nerve its sense of pain; Is there not something in the pleading eye Of the poor brute that suffers, which arraigns The law that bids it suffer? Has it not A claim for some remembrance in the book That fills its pages with the idle words Spoken of men? Or is it only clay, Bleeding and aching in the potter's hand, Yet all his own to treat it as He will And when He will to cast it at his feet, Shattered, dishonored, lost forevermore? My dog loves me, but could he look beyond His earthly master, would his love extend To Him who--Hush! I will not doubt that He Is better than our fears, and will not wrong The least, the meanest of created things! He would not trust me with the smallest orb That circles through the sky; He would not give A meteor to my guidance; would not leave The coloring of a cloudlet to my hand; He locks my beating heart beneath its bars And keeps the key himself; He measures out The draughts of vital breath that warm my blood, Winds up the springs of instinct which uncoil, Each in its season; ties me to my home, My race, my time, my nation, and my creed So closely that if I but slip my wrist Out of the band that cuts it to the bone, Men say, "He hath a devil;" He has lent All that I hold in trust, as unto one By reason of his weakness and his years Not fit to hold the smallest shred in fee Of those most common things he calls his own,-- And yet--my Rabbi tells me--He has left The care of that to which a million worlds Filled with unconscious life were less than naught, Has left that mighty universe, the Soul, To the weak guidance of our baby hands, Let the foul fiends have access at their will, Taking the shape of angels, to our hearts,-- Our hearts already poisoned through and through With the fierce virus of ancestral sin; Turned us adrift with our immortal charge, To wreck ourselves in gulfs of endless woe. If what my Rabbi tells me is the truth Why did the choir of angels sing for joy? Heaven must be compassed in a narrow space, And offer more than room enough for all That pass its portals; but the under-world, The godless realm, the place where demons forge Their fiery darts and adamantine chains, Must swarm with ghosts that for a little while Had worn the garb of flesh, and being heirs Of all the dulness of their stolid sires, And all the erring instincts of their tribe, Nature's own teaching, rudiments of "sin," Fell headlong in the snare that could not fail To trap the wretched creatures shaped of clay And cursed with sense enough to lose their souls! Brother, thy heart is troubled at my word; Sister, I see the cloud is on thy brow. He will not blame me, He who sends not peace, But sends a sword, and bids us strike amain At Error's gilded crest, where in the van Of earth's great army, mingling with the best And bravest of its leaders, shouting loud The battle-cries that yesterday have led The host of Truth to victory, but to-day Are watchwords of the laggard and the slave, He leads his dazzled cohorts. God has made This world a strife of atoms and of spheres; With every breath I sigh myself away And take my tribute from the wandering wind To fan the flame of life's consuming fire; So, while my thought has life, it needs must burn, And, burning, set the stubble-fields ablaze, Where all the harvest long ago was reaped And safely garnered in the ancient barns. But still the gleaners, groping for their food, Go blindly feeling through the close-shorn straw, While the young reapers flash, their glittering steel Where later suns have ripened nobler grain! X. TRUTHS THE time is racked with birth-pangs; every hour Brings forth some gasping truth, and truth newborn Looks a misshapen and untimely growth, The terror of the household and its shame, A monster coiling in its nurse's lap That some would strangle, some would only starve; But still it breathes, and passed from hand to hand, And suckled at a hundred half-clad breasts, Comes slowly to its stature and its form, Calms the rough ridges of its dragon-scales, Changes to shining locks its snaky hair, And moves transfigured into angel guise, Welcomed by all that cursed its hour of birth, And folded in the same encircling arms That cast it like a serpent from their hold! If thou wouldst live in honor, die in peace, Have the fine words the marble-workers learn To carve so well, upon thy funeral-stone, And earn a fair obituary, dressed In all the many-colored robes of praise, Be deafer than the adder to the cry Of that same foundling truth, until it grows To seemly favor, and at length has won The smiles of hard-mouthed men and light-lipped dames; Then snatch it from its meagre nurse's breast, Fold it in silk and give it food from gold; So shalt thou share its glory when at last It drops its mortal vesture, and, revealed In all the splendor of its heavenly form, Spreads on the startled air its mighty wings! Alas! how much that seemed immortal truth That heroes fought for, martyrs died to save, Reveals its earth-born lineage, growing old And limping in its march, its wings unplumed, Its heavenly semblance faded like a dream! Here in this painted casket, just unsealed, Lies what was once a breathing shape like thine, Once loved as thou art loved; there beamed the eyes That looked on Memphis in its hour of pride, That saw the walls of hundred-gated Thebes, And all the mirrored glories of the Nile. See how they toiled that all-consuming time Might leave the frame immortal in its tomb; Filled it with fragrant balms and odorous gums That still diffuse their sweetness through the air, And wound and wound with patient fold on fold The flaxen bands thy hand has rudely torn! Perchance thou yet canst see the faded stain Of the sad mourner's tear. XI. IDOLS BUT what is this? The sacred beetle, bound upon the breast Of the blind heathen! Snatch the curious prize, Give it a place among thy treasured spoils, Fossil and relic,--corals, encrinites, The fly in amber and the fish in stone, The twisted circlet of Etruscan gold, Medal, intaglio, poniard, poison-ring,-- Place for the Memphian beetle with thine hoard! AM longer than thy creed has blest the world This toy, thus ravished from thy brother's breast, Was to the heart of Mizraim as divine, As holy, as the symbol that we lay On the still bosom of our white-robed dead, And raise above their dust that all may know Here sleeps an heir of glory. Loving friends, With tears of trembling faith and choking sobs, And prayers to those who judge of mortal deeds, Wrapped this poor image in the cerement's fold That Isis and Osiris, friends of man, Might know their own and claim the ransomed soul. An idol? Man was born to worship such! An idol is an image of his thought; Sometimes he carves it out of gleaming stone, And sometimes moulds it out of glittering gold, Or rounds it in a mighty frescoed dome, Or lifts it heavenward in a lofty spire, Or shapes it in a cunning frame of words, Or pays his priest to make it day by day; For sense must have its god as well as soul; A new-born Dian calls for silver shrines, And Egypt's holiest symbol is our own, The sign we worship as did they of old When Isis and Osiris ruled the world. Let us be true to our most subtle selves, We long to have our idols like the rest. Think! when the men of Israel had their God Encamped among them, talking with their chief, Leading them in the pillar of the cloud And watching o'er them in the shaft of fire, They still must have an image; still they longed For somewhat of substantial, solid form Whereon to hang their garlands, and to fix Their wandering thoughts and gain a stronger hold For their uncertain faith, not yet assured If those same meteors of the day and night Were not mere exhalations of the soil. Are we less earthly than the chosen race? Are we more neighbors of the living God Than they who gathered manna every morn, Reaping where none had sown, and heard the voice Of him who met the Highest in the mount, And brought them tables, graven with His hand? Yet these must have their idol, brought their gold, That star-browed Apis might be god again; Yea, from their ears the women brake the rings That lent such splendors to the gypsy brown Of sunburnt cheeks,--what more could woman do To show her pious zeal? They went astray, But nature led them as it leads us all. We too, who mock at Israel's golden calf And scoff at Egypt's sacred scarabee, Would have our amulets to clasp and kiss, And flood with rapturous tears, and bear with us To be our dear companions in the dust; Such magic works an image in our souls. Man is an embryo; see at twenty years His bones, the columns that uphold his frame Not yet cemented, shaft and capital, Mere fragments of the temple incomplete. At twoscore, threescore, is he then full grown? Nay, still a child, and as the little maids Dress and undress their puppets, so he tries To dress a lifeless creed, as if it lived, And change its raiment when the world cries shame! We smile to see our little ones at play So grave, so thoughtful, with maternal care Nursing the wisps of rags they call their babes;-- Does He not smile who sees us with the toys We call by sacred names, and idly feign To be what we have called them? He is still The Father of this helpless nursery-brood, Whose second childhood joins so close its first, That in the crowding, hurrying years between We scarce have trained our senses to their task Before the gathering mist has dimmed our eyes, And with our hollowed palm we help our ear, And trace with trembling hand our wrinkled names, And then begin to tell our stories o'er, And see--not hear--the whispering lips that say, "You know? Your father knew him.--This is he, Tottering and leaning on the hireling's arm,"-- And so, at length, disrobed of all that clad The simple life we share with weed and worm, Go to our cradles, naked as we came. XII. LOVE WHAT if a soul redeemed, a spirit that loved While yet on earth and was beloved in turn, And still remembered every look and tone Of that dear earthly sister who was left Among the unwise virgins at the gate,-- Itself admitted with the bridegroom's train,-- What if this spirit redeemed, amid the host Of chanting angels, in some transient lull Of the eternal anthem, heard the cry Of its lost darling, whom in evil hour Some wilder pulse of nature led astray And left an outcast in a world of fire, Condemned to be the sport of cruel fiends, Sleepless, unpitying, masters of the skill To wring the maddest ecstasies of pain From worn-out souls that only ask to die,-- Would it not long to leave the bliss of heaven,-- Bearing a little water in its hand To moisten those poor lips that plead in vain With Him we call our Father? Or is all So changed in such as taste celestial joy They hear unmoved the endless wail of woe; The daughter in the same dear tones that hushed Her cradle slumbers; she who once had held A babe upon her bosom from its voice Hoarse with its cry of anguish, yet the same? No! not in ages when the Dreadful Bird Stamped his huge footprints, and the Fearful Beast Strode with the flesh about those fossil bones We build to mimic life with pygmy hands,-- Not in those earliest days when men ran wild And gashed each other with their knives of stone, When their low foreheads bulged in ridgy brows And their flat hands were callous in the palm With walking in the fashion of their sires, Grope as they might to find a cruel god To work their will on such as human wrath Had wrought its worst to torture, and had left With rage unsated, white and stark and cold, Could hate have shaped a demon more malign Than him the dead men mummied in their creed And taught their trembling children to adore! Made in his image! Sweet and gracious souls Dear to my heart by nature's fondest names, Is not your memory still the precious mould That lends its form to Him who hears my prayer? Thus only I behold Him, like to them, Long-suffering, gentle, ever slow to wrath, If wrath it be that only wounds to heal, Ready to meet the wanderer ere he reach The door he seeks, forgetful of his sin, Longing to clasp him in a father's arms, And seal his pardon with a pitying tear! Four gospels tell their story to mankind, And none so full of soft, caressing words That bring the Maid of Bethlehem and her Babe Before our tear-dimmed eyes, as his who learned In the meek service of his gracious art The tones which, like the medicinal balms That calm the sufferer's anguish, soothe our souls. Oh that the loving woman, she who sat So long a listener at her Master's feet, Had left us Mary's Gospel,--all she heard Too sweet, too subtle for the ear of man! Mark how the tender-hearted mothers read The messages of love between the lines Of the same page that loads the bitter tongue Of him who deals in terror as his trade With threatening words of wrath that scorch like flame They tell of angels whispering round the bed Of the sweet infant smiling in its dream, Of lambs enfolded in the Shepherd's arms, Of Him who blessed the children; of the land Where crystal rivers feed unfading flowers, Of cities golden-paved with streets of pearl, Of the white robes the winged creatures wear, The crowns and harps from whose melodious strings One long, sweet anthem flows forevermore! We too had human mothers, even as Thou, Whom we have learned to worship as remote From mortal kindred, wast a cradled babe. The milk of woman filled our branching veins, She lulled us with her tender nursery-song, And folded round us her untiring arms, While the first unremembered twilight yeas Shaped us to conscious being; still we feel Her pulses in our own,--too faintly feel; Would that the heart of woman warmed our creeds! Not from the sad-eyed hermit's lonely cell, Not from the conclave where the holy men Glare on each other, as with angry eyes They battle for God's glory and their own, Till, sick of wordy strife, a show of hands Fixes the faith of ages yet unborn,-- Ah, not from these the listening soul can hear The Father's voice that speaks itself divine! Love must be still our Master; till we learn What he can teach us of a woman's heart, We know not His whose love embraces all. EPILOGUE TO THE BREAKFAST-TABLE SERIES AUTOCRAT-PROFESSOR-POET AT A BOOKSTORE Anno Domini 1972 A CRAZY bookcase, placed before A low-price dealer's open door; Therein arrayed in broken rows A ragged crew of rhyme and prose, The homeless vagrants, waifs, and strays Whose low estate this line betrays (Set forth the lesser birds to lime) YOUR CHOICE AMONG THESE BOORS 1 DIME! Ho! dealer; for its motto's sake This scarecrow from the shelf I take; Three starveling volumes bound in one, Its covers warping in the sun. Methinks it hath a musty smell, I like its flavor none too well, But Yorick's brain was far from dull, Though Hamlet pah!'d, and dropped his skull. Why, here comes rain! The sky grows dark,-- Was that the roll of thunder? Hark! The shop affords a safe retreat, A chair extends its welcome seat, The tradesman has a civil look (I 've paid, impromptu, for my book), The clouds portend a sudden shower,-- I 'll read my purchase for an hour. What have I rescued from the shelf? A Boswell, writing out himself! For though he changes dress and name, The man beneath is still the same, Laughing or sad, by fits and starts, One actor in a dozen parts, And whatsoe'er the mask may be, The voice assures us, This is he. I say not this to cry him down; I find my Shakespeare in his clown, His rogues the selfsame parent own; Nay! Satan talks in Milton's tone! Where'er the ocean inlet strays, The salt sea wave its source betrays; Where'er the queen of summer blows, She tells the zephyr, "I'm the rose!" And his is not the playwright's page; His table does not ape the stage; What matter if the figures seen Are only shadows on a screen, He finds in them his lurking thought, And on their lips the words he sought, Like one who sits before the keys And plays a tune himself to please. And was he noted in his day? Read, flattered, honored? Who shall say? Poor wreck of time the wave has cast To find a peaceful shore at last, Once glorying in thy gilded name And freighted deep with hopes of fame, Thy leaf is moistened with a tear, The first for many a long, long year. For be it more or less of art That veils the lowliest human heart Where passion throbs, where friendship glows, Where pity's tender tribute flows, Where love has lit its fragrant fire, And sorrow quenched its vain desire, For me the altar is divine, Its flame, its ashes,--all are mine! And thou, my brother, as I look And see thee pictured in thy book, Thy years on every page confessed In shadows lengthening from the west, Thy glance that wanders, as it sought Some freshly opening flower of thought, Thy hopeful nature, light and free, I start to find myself in thee! . . . . . . . . . . . Come, vagrant, outcast, wretch forlorn In leather jerkin stained and torn, Whose talk has filled my idle hour And made me half forget the shower, I'll do at least as much for you, Your coat I'll patch, your gilt renew, Read you--perhaps--some other time. Not bad, my bargain! Price one dime! SONGS OF MANY SEASONS 1862-1874 OPENING THE WINDOW THUS I lift the sash, so long Shut against the flight of song; All too late for vain excuse,-- Lo, my captive rhymes are loose. Rhymes that, flitting through my brain, Beat against my window-pane, Some with gayly colored wings, Some, alas! with venomed stings. Shall they bask in sunny rays? Shall they feed on sugared praise? Shall they stick with tangled feet On the critic's poisoned sheet? Are the outside winds too rough? Is the world not wide enough? Go, my winged verse, and try,-- Go, like Uncle Toby's fly! PROGRAMME READER--gentle--if so be Such still live, and live for me, Will it please you to be told What my tenscore pages hold? Here are verses that in spite Of myself I needs must write, Like the wine that oozes first When the unsqueezed grapes have burst. Here are angry lines, "too hard!" Says the soldier, battle-scarred. Could I smile his scars away I would blot the bitter lay, Written with a knitted brow, Read with placid wonder now. Throbbed such passion in my heart? Did his wounds once really smart? Here are varied strains that sing All the changes life can bring, Songs when joyous friends have met, Songs the mourner's tears have wet. See the banquet's dead bouquet, Fair and fragrant in its day; Do they read the selfsame lines,-- He that fasts and he that dines? Year by year, like milestones placed, Mark the record Friendship traced. Prisoned in the walls of time Life has notched itself in rhyme. As its seasons slid along, Every year a notch of song, From the June of long ago, When the rose was full in blow, Till the scarlet sage has come And the cold chrysanthemum. Read, but not to praise or blame; Are not all our hearts the same? For the rest, they take their chance,-- Some may pay a passing glance; Others,-well, they served a turn,-- Wherefore written, would you learn? Not for glory, not for pelf, Not, be sure, to please myself, Not for any meaner ends,-- Always "by request of friends." Here's the cousin of a king,-- Would I do the civil thing? Here 's the first-born of a queen; Here 's a slant-eyed Mandarin. Would I polish off Japan? Would I greet this famous man, Prince or Prelate, Sheik or Shah?-- Figaro gi and Figaro la! Would I just this once comply?-- So they teased and teased till I (Be the truth at once confessed) Wavered--yielded--did my best. Turn my pages,--never mind If you like not all you find; Think not all the grains are gold Sacramento's sand-banks hold. Every kernel has its shell, Every chime its harshest bell, Every face its weariest look, Every shelf its emptiest book, Every field its leanest sheaf, Every book its dullest leaf, Every leaf its weakest line,-- Shall it not be so with mine? Best for worst shall make amends, Find us, keep us, leave us friends Till, perchance, we meet again. Benedicite.--Amen! October 7, 1874. IN THE QUIET DAYS AN OLD-YEAR SONG As through the forest, disarrayed By chill November, late I strayed, A lonely minstrel of the wood Was singing to the solitude I loved thy music, thus I said, When o'er thy perch the leaves were spread Sweet was thy song, but sweeter now Thy carol on the leafless bough. Sing, little bird! thy note shall cheer The sadness of the dying year. When violets pranked the turf with blue And morning filled their cups with dew, Thy slender voice with rippling trill The budding April bowers would fill, Nor passed its joyous tones away When April rounded into May: Thy life shall hail no second dawn,-- Sing, little bird! the spring is gone. And I remember--well-a-day!-- Thy full-blown summer roundelay, As when behind a broidered screen Some holy maiden sings unseen With answering notes the woodland rung, And every tree-top found a tongue. How deep the shade! the groves how fair! Sing, little bird! the woods are bare. The summer's throbbing chant is done And mute the choral antiphon; The birds have left the shivering pines To flit among the trellised vines, Or fan the air with scented plumes Amid the love-sick orange-blooms, And thou art here alone,--alone,-- Sing, little bird! the rest have flown. The snow has capped yon distant hill, At morn the running brook was still, From driven herds the clouds that rise Are like the smoke of sacrifice; Erelong the frozen sod shall mock The ploughshare, changed to stubborn rock, The brawling streams shall soon be dumb,-- Sing, little bird! the frosts have come. Fast, fast the lengthening shadows creep, The songless fowls are half asleep, The air grows chill, the setting sun May leave thee ere thy song is done, The pulse that warms thy breast grow cold, Thy secret die with thee, untold The lingering sunset still is bright,-- Sing, little bird! 't will soon be night. 1874. DOROTHY Q. A FAMILY PORTRAIT I cannot tell the story of Dorothy Q. more simply in prose than I have told it in verse, but I can add something to it. Dorothy was the daughter of Judge Edmund Quincy, and the niece of Josiah Quincy, junior, the young patriot and orator who died just before the American Revolution, of which he was one of the most eloquent and effective promoters. The son of the latter, Josiah Quincy, the first mayor of Boston bearing that name, lived to a great age, one of the most useful and honored citizens of his time. The canvas of the painting was so much decayed that it had to be replaced by a new one, in doing which the rapier thrust was of course filled up. GRANDMOTHER'S mother: her age, I guess, Thirteen summers, or something less; Girlish bust, but womanly air; Smooth, square forehead with uprolled hair; Lips that lover has never kissed; Taper fingers and slender wrist; Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade; So they painted the little maid. On her hand a parrot green Sits unmoving and broods serene. Hold up the canvas full in view,-- Look! there's a rent the light shines through, Dark with a century's fringe of dust,-- That was a Red-Coat's rapier-thrust! Such is the tale the lady old, Dorothy's daughter's daughter, told. Who the painter was none may tell,-- One whose best was not over well; Hard and dry, it must be confessed, Flat as a rose that has long been pressed; Yet in her cheek the hues are bright, Dainty colors of red and white, And in her slender shape are seen Hint and promise of stately mien. Look not on her with eyes of scorn,-- Dorothy Q. was a lady born! Ay! since the galloping Normans came, England's annals have known her name; And still to the three-billed rebel town Dear is that ancient name's renown, For many a civic wreath they won, The youthful sire and the gray-haired son. O Damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.! Strange is the gift that I owe to you; Such a gift as never a king Save to daughter or son might bring,-- All my tenure of heart and hand, All my title to house and land; Mother and sister and child and wife And joy and sorrow and death and life! What if a hundred years ago Those close-shut lips had answered No, When forth the tremulous question came That cost the maiden her Norman name, And under the folds that look so still The bodice swelled with the bosom's thrill? Should I be I, or would it be One tenth another, to nine tenths me? Soft is the breath of a maiden's YES Not the light gossamer stirs with less; But never a cable that holds so fast Through all the battles of wave and blast, And never an echo of speech or song That lives in the babbling air so long! There were tones in the voice that whispered then You may hear to-day in a hundred men. O lady and lover, how faint and far Your images hover,--and here we are, Solid and stirring in flesh and bone,-- Edward's and Dorothy's--all their own,-- A goodly record for Time to show Of a syllable spoken so long ago!-- Shall I bless you, Dorothy, or forgive For the tender whisper that bade me live? It shall be a blessing, my little maid! I will heal the stab of the Red-Coat's blade, And freshen the gold of the tarnished frame, And gild with a rhyme your household name; So you shall smile on us brave and bright As first you greeted the morning's light, And live untroubled by woes and fears Through a second youth of a hundred years. 1871. THE ORGAN-BLOWER DEVOUTEST of My Sunday friends, The patient Organ-blower bends; I see his figure sink and rise, (Forgive me, Heaven, my wandering eyes!) A moment lost, the next half seen, His head above the scanty screen, Still measuring out his deep salaams Through quavering hymns and panting psalms. No priest that prays in gilded stole, To save a rich man's mortgaged soul; No sister, fresh from holy vows, So humbly stoops, so meekly bows; His large obeisance puts to shame The proudest genuflecting dame, Whose Easter bonnet low descends With all the grace devotion lends. O brother with the supple spine, How much we owe those bows of thine Without thine arm to lend the breeze, How vain the finger on the keys! Though all unmatched the player's skill, Those thousand throats were dumb and still: Another's art may shape the tone, The breath that fills it is thine own. Six days the silent Memnon waits Behind his temple's folded gates; But when the seventh day's sunshine falls Through rainbowed windows on the walls, He breathes, he sings, he shouts, he fills The quivering air with rapturous thrills; The roof resounds, the pillars shake, And all the slumbering echoes wake! The Preacher from the Bible-text With weary words my soul has vexed (Some stranger, fumbling far astray To find the lesson for the day); He tells us truths too plainly true, And reads the service all askew,-- Why, why the--mischief--can't he look Beforehand in the service-book? But thou, with decent mien and face, Art always ready in thy place; Thy strenuous blast, whate'er the tune, As steady as the strong monsoon; Thy only dread a leathery creak, Or small residual extra squeak, To send along the shadowy aisles A sunlit wave of dimpled smiles. Not all the preaching, O my friend, Comes from the church's pulpit end! Not all that bend the knee and bow Yield service half so true as thou! One simple task performed aright, With slender skill, but all thy might, Where honest labor does its best, And leaves the player all the rest. This many-diapasoned maze, Through which the breath of being strays, Whose music makes our earth divine, Has work for mortal hands like mine. My duty lies before me. Lo, The lever there! Take hold and blow And He whose hand is on the keys Will play the tune as He shall please. 1812. AT THE PANTOMIME THE house was crammed from roof to floor, Heads piled on heads at every door; Half dead with August's seething heat I crowded on and found my seat, My patience slightly out of joint, My temper short of boiling-point, Not quite at _Hate mankind as such_, Nor yet at _Love them overmuch_. Amidst the throng the pageant drew Were gathered Hebrews not a few, Black-bearded, swarthy,--at their side Dark, jewelled women, orient-eyed: If scarce a Christian hopes for grace Who crowds one in his narrow place, What will the savage victim do Whose ribs are kneaded by a Jew? Next on my left a breathing form Wedged up against me, close and warm; The beak that crowned the bistred face Betrayed the mould of Abraham's race,-- That coal-black hair, that smoke-brown hue,-- Ah, cursed, unbelieving Jew I started, shuddering, to the right, And squeezed--a second Israelite. Then woke the evil brood of rage That slumber, tongueless, in their cage; I stabbed in turn with silent oaths The hook-nosed kite of carrion clothes, The snaky usurer, him that crawls And cheats beneath the golden balls, Moses and Levi, all the horde, Spawn of the race that slew its Lord. Up came their murderous deeds of old, The grisly story Chaucer told, And many an ugly tale beside Of children caught and crucified; I heard the ducat-sweating thieves Beneath the Ghetto's slouching eaves, And, thrust beyond the tented green, The lepers cry, "Unclean! Unclean!" The show went on, but, ill at ease, My sullen eye it could not please, In vain my conscience whispered, "Shame! Who but their Maker is to blame?" I thought of Judas and his bribe, And steeled my soul against their tribe My neighbors stirred; I looked again Full on the younger of the twain. A fresh young cheek whose olive hue The mantling blood shows faintly through; Locks dark as midnight, that divide And shade the neck on either side; Soft, gentle, loving eyes that gleam Clear as a starlit mountain stream;-- So looked that other child of Shem, The Maiden's Boy of Bethlehem! And thou couldst scorn the peerless blood That flows immingled from the Flood,-- Thy scutcheon spotted with the stains Of Norman thieves and pirate Danes! The New World's foundling, in thy pride Scowl on the Hebrew at thy side, And lo! the very semblance there The Lord of Glory deigned to wear! I see that radiant image rise, The flowing hair, the pitying eyes, The faintly crimsoned cheek that shows The blush of Sharon's opening rose,-- Thy hands would clasp his hallowed feet Whose brethren soil thy Christian seat, Thy lips would press his garment's hem That curl in wrathful scorn for them! A sudden mist, a watery screen, Dropped like a veil before the scene; The shadow floated from my soul, And to my lips a whisper stole,-- "Thy prophets caught the Spirit's flame, From thee the Son of Mary came, With thee the Father deigned to dwell,-- Peace be upon thee, Israel!" 18--. Rewritten 1874. AFTER THE FIRE WHILE far along the eastern sky I saw the flags of Havoc fly, As if his forces would assault The sovereign of the starry vault And hurl Him back the burning rain That seared the cities of the plain, I read as on a crimson page The words of Israel's sceptred sage:-- _For riches make them wings, and they Do as an eagle fly away_. O vision of that sleepless night, What hue shall paint the mocking light That burned and stained the orient skies Where peaceful morning loves to rise, As if the sun had lost his way And dawned to make a second day,-- Above how red with fiery glow, How dark to those it woke below! On roof and wall, on dome and spire, Flashed the false jewels of the fire; Girt with her belt of glittering panes, And crowned with starry-gleaming vanes, Our northern queen in glory shone With new-born splendors not her own, And stood, transfigured in our eyes, A victim decked for sacrifice! The cloud still hovers overhead, And still the midnight sky is red; As the lost wanderer strays alone To seek the place he called his own, His devious footprints sadly tell How changed the pathways known so well; The scene, how new! The tale, how old Ere yet the ashes have grown cold! Again I read the words that came Writ in the rubric of the flame Howe'r we trust to mortal things, Each hath its pair of folded wings; Though long their terrors rest unspread Their fatal plumes are never shed; At last, at last they spread in flight, And blot the day and blast then night! Hope, only Hope, of all that clings Around us, never spreads her wings; Love, though he break his earthly chain, Still whispers he will come again; But Faith that soars to seek the sky Shall teach our half-fledged souls to fly, And find, beyond the smoke and flame, The cloudless azure whence they came! 1872. A BALLAD OF THE BOSTON TEA-PARTY Read at a meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society. No! never such a draught was poured Since Hebe served with nectar The bright Olympians and their Lord, Her over-kind protector,-- Since Father Noah squeezed the grape And took to such behaving As would have shamed our grandsire ape Before the days of shaving,-- No! ne'er was mingled such a draught In palace, hall, or arbor, As freemen brewed and tyrants quaffed That night in Boston Harbor! The Western war-cloud's crimson stained The Thames, the Clyde, the Shannon; Full many a six-foot grenadier The flattened grass had measured, And many a mother many a year Her tearful memories treasured; Fast spread the tempest's darkening pall, The mighty realms were troubled, The storm broke loose, but first of all The Boston teapot bubbled! An evening party,--only that, No formal invitation, No gold-laced coat, no stiff cravat, No feast in contemplation, No silk-robed dames, no fiddling band, No flowers, no songs, no dancing,-- A tribe of red men, axe in hand,-- Behold the guests advancing! How fast the stragglers join the throng, From stall and workshop gathered! The lively barber skips along And leaves a chin half-lathered; The smith has flung his hammer down, The horseshoe still is glowing; The truant tapster at the Crown Has left a beer-cask flowing; The cooper's boys have dropped the adze, And trot behind their master; Up run the tarry ship-yard lads,-- The crowd is hurrying faster,-- Out from the Millpond's purlieus gush The streams of white-faced millers, And down their slippery alleys rush The lusty young Fort-Hillers-- The ropewalk lends its 'prentice crew,-- The tories seize the omen: "Ay, boys, you'll soon have work to do For England's rebel foemen, 'King Hancock,' Adams, and their gang, That fire the mob with treason,-- When these we shoot and those we hang The town will come to reason." On--on to where the tea-ships ride! And now their ranks are forming,-- A rush, and up the Dartmouth's side The Mohawk band is swarming! See the fierce natives! What a glimpse Of paint and fur and feather, As all at once the full-grown imps Light on the deck together! A scarf the pigtail's secret keeps, A blanket hides the breeches,-- And out the cursed cargo leaps, And overboard it pitches! O woman, at the evening board So gracious, sweet, and purring, So happy while the tea is poured, So blest while spoons are stirring, What martyr can compare with thee, The mother, wife, or daughter, That night, instead of best Bohea, Condemned to milk and water! Ah, little dreams the quiet dame Who plies with' rock and spindle The patient flax, how great a flame Yon little spark shall kindle! The lurid morning shall reveal A fire no king can smother Where British flint and Boston steel Have clashed against each other! Old charters shrivel in its track, His Worship's bench has crumbled, It climbs and clasps the union-jack, Its blazoned pomp is humbled, The flags go down on land and sea Like corn before the reapers; So burned the fire that brewed the tea That Boston served her keepers! The waves that wrought a century's wreck Have rolled o'er whig and tory; The Mohawks on the Dartmouth's deck Still live in song and story; The waters in the rebel bay Have kept the tea-leaf savor; Our old North-Enders in their spray Still taste a Hyson flavor; And Freedom's teacup still o'erflows With ever fresh libations, To cheat of slumber all her foes And cheer the wakening nations. 1874. NEARING THE SNOW-LINE SLOW toiling upward from' the misty vale, I leave the bright enamelled zones below; No more for me their beauteous bloom shall glow, Their lingering sweetness load the morning gale; Few are the slender flowerets, scentless, pale, That on their ice-clad stems all trembling blow Along the margin of unmelting snow; Yet with unsaddened voice thy verge I hail, White realm of peace above the flowering line; Welcome thy frozen domes, thy rocky spires! O'er thee undimmed the moon-girt planets shine, On thy majestic altars fade the fires That filled the air with smoke of vain desires, And all the unclouded blue of heaven is thine! 1870. IN WARTIME TO CANAAN A PURITAN WAR SONG This poem, published anonymously in the Boston Evening Transcript, was claimed by several persons, three, if I remember correctly, whose names I have or have had, but never thought it worth while to publish. WHERE are you going, soldiers, With banner, gun, and sword? We 're marching South to Canaan To battle for the Lord What Captain leads your armies Along the rebel coasts? The Mighty One of Israel, His name is Lord of Hosts! To Canaan, to Canaan The Lord has led us forth, To blow before the heathen walls The trumpets of the North! What flag is this you carry Along the sea and shore? The same our grandsires lifted up,-- The same our fathers bore In many a battle's tempest It shed the crimson rain,-- What God has woven in his loom Let no man rend in twain! To Canaan, to Canaan The Lord has led us forth, To plant upon the rebel towers The banners of the North! What troop is this that follows, All armed with picks and spades? These are the swarthy bondsmen,-- The iron-skin brigades! They'll pile up Freedom's breastwork, They 'LL scoop out rebels' graves; Who then will be their owner And march them off for slaves? To Canaan, to Canaan The Lord has led us forth, To strike upon the captive's chain The hammers of the North! What song is this you're singing? The same that Israel sung When Moses led the mighty choir, And Miriam's timbrel rung! To Canaan! To Canaan! The priests and maidens cried: To Canaan! To Canaan! The people's voice replied. To Canaan, to Canaan The Lord has led us forth, To thunder through its adder dens The anthems of the North. When Canaan's hosts are scattered, And all her walls lie flat, What follows next in order? The Lord will see to that We'll break the tyrant's sceptre,-- We 'll build the people's throne,-- When half the world is Freedom's, Then all the world's our own To Canaan, to Canaan The Lord has led us forth, To sweep the rebel threshing-floors, A whirlwind from the North. August 12, 1862. "THUS SAITH THE LORD, I OFFER THEE THREE THINGS." IN poisonous dens, where traitors hide Like bats that fear the day, While all the land our charters claim Is sweating blood and breathing flame, Dead to their country's woe and shame, The recreants whisper STAY! In peaceful homes, where patriot fires On Love's own altars glow, The mother hides her trembling fear, The wife, the sister, checks a tear, To breathe the parting word of cheer, Soldier of Freedom, Go! In halls where Luxury lies at ease, And Mammon keeps his state, Where flatterers fawn and menials crouch, The dreamer, startled from his couch, Wrings a few counters from his pouch, And murmurs faintly WAIT! In weary camps, on trampled plains That ring with fife and drum, The battling host, whose harness gleams Along the crimson-flowing streams, Calls, like a warning voice in dreams, We want you, Brother! COME! Choose ye whose bidding ye will do,-- To go, to wait, to stay! Sons of the Freedom-loving town, Heirs of the Fathers' old renown, The servile yoke, the civic crown, Await your choice To-DAY! The stake is laid! O gallant youth With yet unsilvered brow, If Heaven should lose and Hell should win, On whom shall lie the mortal sin, That cries aloud, It might have been? God calls you--answer NOW. 1862. NEVER OR NOW AN APPEAL LISTEN, young heroes! your country is calling! Time strikes the hour for the brave and the true! Now, while the foremost are fighting and falling, Fill up the ranks that have opened for you! You whom the fathers made free and defended, Stain not the scroll that emblazons their fame You whose fair heritage spotless descended, Leave not your children a birthright of shame! Stay not for questions while Freedom stands gasping! Wait not till Honor lies wrapped in his pall! Brief the lips' meeting be, swift the hands' clasping,-- "Off for the wars!" is enough for them all! Break from the arms that would fondly caress you! Hark! 't is the bugle-blast, sabres are drawn! Mothers shall pray for you, fathers shall bless you, Maidens shall weep for you when you are gone! Never or now! cries the blood of a nation, Poured on the turf where the red rose should bloom; Now is the day and the hour of salvation,-- Never or now! peals the trumpet of doom! Never or now! roars the hoarse-throated cannon Through the black canopy blotting the skies; Never or now! flaps the shell-blasted pennon O'er the deep ooze where the Cumberland lies! From the foul dens where our brothers are dying, Aliens and foes in the land of their birth,-- From the rank swamps where our martyrs are lying Pleading in vain for a handful of earth,-- From the hot plains where they perish outnumbered, Furrowed and ridged by the battle-field's plough, Comes the loud summons; too long you have slumbered, Hear the last Angel-trump,--Never or Now! 1862. ONE COUNTRY ONE country! Treason's writhing asp Struck madly at her girdle's clasp, And Hatred wrenched with might and main To rend its welded links in twain, While Mammon hugged his golden calf Content to take one broken half, While thankless churls stood idly by And heard unmoved a nation's cry! One country! "Nay,"--the tyrant crew Shrieked from their dens,--"it shall be two! Ill bodes to us this monstrous birth, That scowls on all the thrones of earth, Too broad yon starry cluster shines, Too proudly tower the New-World pines, Tear down the 'banner of the free,' And cleave their land from sea to sea!" One country still, though foe and "friend" Our seamless empire strove to rend; Safe! safe' though all the fiends of hell Join the red murderers' battle-yell! What though the lifted sabres gleam, The cannons frown by shore and stream,-- The sabres clash, the cannons thrill, In wild accord, One country still! One country! in her stress and strain We heard the breaking of a chain! Look where the conquering Nation swings Her iron flail,--its shivered rings! Forged by the rebels' crimson hand, That bolt of wrath shall scourge the land Till Peace proclaims on sea and shore One Country now and evermore! 1865. GOD SAVE THE FLAG WASHED in the blood of the brave and the blooming, Snatched from the altars of insolent foes, Burning with star-fires, but never consuming, Flash its broad ribbons of lily and rose. Vainly the prophets of Baal would rend it, Vainly his worshippers pray for its fall; Thousands have died for it, millions defend it, Emblem of justice and mercy to all: Justice that reddens the sky with her terrors, Mercy that comes with her white-handed train, Soothing all passions, redeeming all errors, 'Sheathing the sabre and breaking the chain. Borne on the deluge of old usurpations, Drifted our Ark o'er the desolate seas, Bearing the rainbow of hope to the nations, Torn from the storm-cloud and flung to the breeze! God bless the Flag and its loyal defenders, While its broad folds o'er the battle-field wave, Till the dim star-wreath rekindle its splendors, Washed from its stains in the blood of the brave! 1865. HYMN AFTER THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION GIVER of all that crowns our days, With grateful hearts we sing thy praise; Through deep and desert led by Thee, Our promised land at last we see. Ruler of Nations, judge our cause! If we have kept thy holy laws, The sons of Belial curse in vain The day that rends the captive's chain. Thou God of vengeance! Israel's Lord! Break in their grasp the shield and sword, And make thy righteous judgments known Till all thy foes are overthrown! Then, Father, lay thy healing hand In mercy on our stricken land; Lead all its wanderers to the fold, And be their Shepherd as of old. So shall one Nation's song ascend To Thee, our Ruler, Father, Friend, While Heaven's wide arch resounds again With Peace on earth, good-will to men! 1865. HYMN FOR THE FAIR AT CHICAGO O GOD! in danger's darkest hour, In battle's deadliest field, Thy name has been our Nation's tower, Thy truth her help and shield. Our lips should fill the air with praise, Nor pay the debt we owe, So high above the songs we raise The floods of mercy flow. Yet Thou wilt hear the prayer we speak, The song of praise we sing,-- Thy children, who thine altar seek Their grateful gifts to bring. Thine altar is the sufferer's bed, The home of woe and pain, The soldier's turfy pillow, red With battle's crimson rain. No smoke of burning stains the air, No incense-clouds arise; Thy peaceful servants, Lord, prepare A bloodless sacrifice. Lo! for our wounded brothers' need, We bear the wine and oil; For us they faint, for us they bleed, For them our gracious toil! O Father, bless the gifts we bring! Cause Thou thy face to shine, Till every nation owns her King, And all the earth is thine. 1865. UNDER THE WASHINGTON ELM, CAMBRIDGE APRIL 27,1861 EIGHTY years have passed, and more, Since under the brave old tree Our fathers gathered in arms, and swore They would follow the sign their banners bore, And fight till the land was free. Half of their work was done, Half is left to do,-- Cambridge, and Concord, and Lexington! When the battle is fought and won, What shall be told of you? Hark!--'t is the south-wind moans,-- Who are the martyrs down? Ah, the marrow was true in your children's bones That sprinkled with blood the cursed stones Of the murder-haunted town! What if the storm-clouds blow? What if the green leaves fall? Better the crashing tempest's throe Than the army of worms that gnawed below; Trample them one and all! Then, when the battle is won, And the land from traitors free, Our children shall tell of the strife begun When Liberty's second April sun Was bright on our brave old tree! FREEDOM, OUR QUEEN LAND where the banners wave last in the sun, Blazoned with star-clusters, many in one, Floating o'er prairie and mountain and sea; Hark! 't is the voice of thy children to thee! Here at thine altar our vows we renew Still in thy cause to be loyal and true,-- True to thy flag on the field and the wave, Living to honor it, dying to save! Mother of heroes! if perfidy's blight Fall on a star in thy garland of light, Sound but one bugle-blast! Lo! at the sign Armies all panoplied wheel into line! Hope of the world! thou'hast broken its chains,-- Wear thy bright arms while a tyrant remains, Stand for the right till the nations shall own Freedom their sovereign, with Law for her throne! Freedom! sweet Freedom! our voices resound, Queen by God's blessing, unsceptred, uncrowned! Freedom, sweet Freedom, our pulses repeat, Warm with her life-blood, as long as they beat! Fold the broad banner-stripes over her breast,-- Crown her with star-jewels Queen of the West! Earth for her heritage, God for her friend, She shall reign over us, world without end! ARMY HYMN "OLD HUNDRED" O LORD of Hosts! Almighty King! Behold the sacrifice we bring To every arm thy strength impart, Thy spirit shed through every heart! Wake in our breasts the living fires, The holy faith that warmed our sires; Thy hand hath made our Nation free; To die for her is serving Thee. Be Thou a pillared flame to show The midnight snare, the silent foe; And when the battle thunders loud, Still guide us in its moving cloud. God of all Nations! Sovereign Lord In thy dread name we draw the sword, We lift the starry flag on high That fills with light our stormy sky. From treason's rent, from murder's stain, Guard Thou its folds till Peace shall reign,-- Till fort and field, till shore and sea, Join our loud anthem, PRAISE TO THEE! PARTING HYMN "DUNDEE" FATHER of Mercies, Heavenly Friend, We seek thy gracious throne; To Thee our faltering prayers ascend, Our fainting hearts are known. From blasts that chill, from suns that smite, From every plague that harms; In camp and march, in siege and fight, Protect our men-at-arms. Though from our darkened lives they take What makes our life most dear, We yield them for their country's sake With no relenting tear. Our blood their flowing veins will shed, Their wounds our breasts will share; Oh, save us from the woes we dread, Or grant us strength to bear! Let each unhallowed cause that brings The stern destroyer cease, Thy flaming angel fold his wings, And seraphs whisper Peace! Thine are the sceptre and the sword, Stretch forth thy mighty hand,-- Reign Thou our kingless nation's Lord, Rule Thou our throneless land! THE FLOWER OF LIBERTY WHAT flower is this that greets the morn, Its hues from Heaven so freshly born? With burning star and flaming band It kindles all the sunset land Oh tell us what its name may be,-- Is this the Flower of Liberty? It is the banner of the free, The starry Flower of Liberty! In savage Nature's far abode Its tender seed our fathers sowed; The storm-winds rocked its swelling bud, Its opening leaves were streaked with blood, Till Lo! earth's tyrants shook to see The full-blown Flower of Liberty Then hail the banner of the free, The starry Flower of Liberty! Behold its streaming rays unite, One mingling flood of braided light,-- The red that fires the Southern rose, With spotless white from Northern snows, And, spangled o'er its azure, see The sister Stars of Liberty! Then hail the banner of the free, The starry Flower of Liberty! The blades of heroes fence it round, Where'er it springs is holy ground; From tower and dome its glories spread; It waves where lonely sentries tread; It makes the land as ocean free, And plants an empire on the sea! Then hail the banner of the free, The starry Flower of Liberty! Thy sacred leaves, fair Freedom's flower, Shall ever float on dome and tower, To all their heavenly colors true, In blackening frost or crimson dew,-- And God love us as we love thee, Thrice holy Flower of Liberty! Then hail the banner of the free, The starry FLOWER OF LIBERTY! THE SWEET LITTLE MAN DEDICATED TO THE STAY-AT-HOME RANGERS Now, while our soldiers are fighting our battles, Each at his post to do all that he can, Down among rebels and contraband chattels, What are you doing, my sweet little man? All the brave boys under canvas are sleeping, All of them pressing to march with the van, Far from the home where their sweethearts are weeping; What are you waiting for, sweet little man? You with the terrible warlike mustaches, Fit for a colonel or chief of a clan, You with the waist made for sword-belts and sashes, Where are your shoulder-straps, sweet little man? Bring him the buttonless garment of woman! Cover his face lest it freckle and tan; Muster the Apron-String Guards on the Common, That is the corps for the sweet little man! Give him for escort a file of young misses, Each of them armed with a deadly rattan; They shall defend him from laughter and hisses, Aimed by low boys at the sweet little man. All the fair maidens about him shall cluster, Pluck the white feathers from bonnet and fan, Make him a plume like a turkey-wing duster,-- That is the crest for the sweet little man! Oh, but the Apron-String Guards are the fellows Drilling each day since our troubles began,-- "Handle your walking-sticks!" "Shoulder umbrellas!" That is the style for the sweet little man! Have we a nation to save? In the first place Saving ourselves is the sensible plan,-- Surely the spot where there's shooting's the worst place Where I can stand, says the sweet little man. Catch me confiding my person with strangers! Think how the cowardly Bull-Runners ran! In the brigade of the Stay-at-Home Rangers Marches my corps, says the sweet little man. Such was the stuff of the Malakoff-takers, Such were the soldiers that scaled the Redan; Truculent housemaids and bloodthirsty Quakers, Brave not the wrath of the sweet little man! Yield him the sidewalk, ye nursery maidens! _Sauve qui peut_! Bridget, and right about! Ann;-- Fierce as a shark in a school of menhadens, See him advancing, the sweet little man! When the red flails of the battle-field's threshers Beat out the continent's wheat from its bran, While the wind scatters the chaffy seceshers, What will become of our sweet little man? When the brown soldiers come back from the borders, How will he look while his features they scan? How will he feel when he gets marching orders, Signed by his lady love? sweet little man! Fear not for him, though the rebels expect him,-- Life is too precious to shorten its span; Woman her broomstick shall raise to protect him, Will she not fight for the sweet little man? Now then, nine cheers for the Stay-at-Home Ranger! Blow the great fish-horn and beat the big pan! First in the field that is farthest from danger, Take your white-feather plume, sweet little man! UNION AND LIBERTY FLAG of the heroes who left us their glory, Borne through their battle-fields' thunder and flame, Blazoned in song and illumined in story, Wave o'er us all who inherit their fame! Up with our banner bright, Sprinkled with starry light, Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore, While through the sounding sky Loud rings the Nation's cry,-- UNION AND LIBERTY! ONE EVERMORE! Light of our firmament, guide of our Nation, Pride of her children, and honored afar, Let the wide beams of thy full constellation Scatter each cloud that would darken a star Up with our banner bright, etc. Empire unsceptred! what foe shall assail thee, Bearing the standard of Liberty's van? Think not the God of thy fathers shall fail thee, Striving with men for the birthright of man! Up with our banner bright, etc. Yet if, by madness and treachery blighted, Dawns the dark hour when the sword thou must draw, Then with the arms of thy millions united, Smite the bold traitors to Freedom and Law! Up with our banner bright, etc. Lord of the Universe! shield us and guide us, Trusting Thee always, through shadow and sun! Thou hast united us, who shall divide us? Keep us, oh keep us the MANY IN ONE! Up with our banner bright, Sprinkled with starry light, Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore, While through the sounding sky Loud rings the Nation's cry,-- UNION AND LIBERTY! ONE EVERMORE! SONGS OF WELCOME AND FAREWELL AMERICA TO RUSSIA AUGUST 5, 1866 Read by Hon. G. V. Fox at a dinner given to the Mission from the United States, St. Petersburg. THOUGH watery deserts hold apart The worlds of East and West, Still beats the selfsame human heart In each proud Nation's breast. Our floating turret tempts the main And dares the howling blast To clasp more close the golden chain That long has bound them fast. In vain the gales of ocean sweep, In vain the billows roar That chafe the wild and stormy steep Of storied Elsinore. She comes! She comes! her banners dip In Neva's flashing tide, With greetings on her cannon's lip, The storm-god's iron bride! Peace garlands with the olive-bough Her thunder-bearing tower, And plants before her cleaving prow The sea-foam's milk-white flower. No prairies heaped their garnered store To fill her sunless hold, Not rich Nevada's gleaming ore Its hidden caves infold, But lightly as the sea-bird swings She floats the depths above, A breath of flame to lend her wings, Her freight a people's love! When darkness hid the starry skies In war's long winter night, One ray still cheered our straining eyes, The far-off Northern light. And now the friendly rays return From lights that glow afar, Those clustered lamps of Heaven that burn Around the Western Star. A nation's love in tears and smiles We bear across the sea, O Neva of the banded isles, We moor our hearts in thee! WELCOME TO THE GRAND DUKE ALEXIS MUSIC HALL, DECEMBER 6, 1871 Sung to the Russian national air by the children of the public schools. SHADOWED so long by the storm-cloud of danger, Thou whom the prayers of an empire defend, Welcome, thrice welcome! but not as a stranger, Come to the nation that calls thee its friend! Bleak are our shores with the blasts of December, Fettered and chill is the rivulet's flow; Throbbing and warm are the hearts that remember Who was our friend when the world was our foe. Look on the lips that are smiling to greet thee, See the fresh flowers that a people has strewn Count them thy sisters and brothers that meet thee; Guest of the Nation, her heart is thine own! Fires of the North, in eternal communion, Blend your broad flashes with evening's bright star! God bless the Empire that loves the Great Union; Strength to her people! Long life to the Czar! AT THE BANQUET TO THE GRAND DUKE ALEXIS DECEMBER 9, 1871 ONE word to the guest we have gathered to greet! The echoes are longing that word to repeat,-- It springs to the lips that are waiting to part, For its syllables spell themselves first in the heart. Its accents may vary, its sound may be strange, But it bears a kind message that nothing can change; The dwellers by Neva its meaning can tell, For the smile, its interpreter, shows it full well. That word! How it gladdened the Pilgrim yore, As he stood in the snow on the desolate shore! When the shout of the sagamore startled his ear In the phrase of the Saxon, 't was music to hear! Ah, little could Samoset offer our sire,-- The cabin, the corn-cake, the seat by the fire; He had nothing to give,--the poor lord of the land,-- But he gave him a WELCOME,--his heart in his hand! The tribe of the sachem has melted away, But the word that he spoke is remembered to-day, And the page that is red with the record of shame The tear-drops have whitened round Samoset's name. The word that he spoke to the Pilgrim of old May sound like a tale that has often been told; But the welcome we speak is as fresh as the dew,-- As the kiss of a lover, that always is new! Ay, Guest of the Nation! each roof is thine own Through all the broad continent's star-bannered zone; From the shore where the curtain of morn is uprolled, To the billows that flow through the gateway of gold. The snow-crested mountains are calling aloud; Nevada to Ural speaks out of the cloud, And Shasta shouts forth, from his throne in the sky, To the storm-splintered summits, the peaks of Altai! You must leave him, they say, till the summer is green! Both shores are his home, though the waves roll between; And then we'll return him, with thanks for the same, As fresh and as smiling and tall as he came. But ours is the region of arctic delight; We can show him auroras and pole-stars by night; There's a Muscovy sting in the ice-tempered air, And our firesides are warm and our maidens are fair. The flowers are full-blown in the garlanded hall,-- They will bloom round his footsteps wherever they fall; For the splendors of youth and the sunshine they bring Make the roses believe 't is the summons of Spring. One word of our language he needs must know well, But another remains that is harder to spell; We shall speak it so ill, if he wishes to learn How we utter Farewell, he will have to return! AT THE BANQUET TO THE CHINESE EMBASSY AUGUST 21, 1868 BROTHERS, whom we may not reach Through the veil of alien speech, Welcome! welcome! eyes can tell What the lips in vain would spell,-- Words that hearts can understand, Brothers from the Flowery Land! We, the evening's latest born, Hail the children of the morn! We, the new creation's birth, Greet the lords of ancient earth, From their storied walls and towers Wandering to these tents of ours! Land of wonders, fair Cathay, Who long hast shunned the staring day, Hid in mists of poet's dreams By thy blue and yellow streams,-- Let us thy shadowed form behold,-- Teach us as thou didst of old. Knowledge dwells with length of days; Wisdom walks in ancient ways; Thine the compass that could guide A nation o'er the stormy tide, Scourged by passions, doubts, and fears, Safe through thrice a thousand years! Looking from thy turrets gray Thou hast seen the world's decay,-- Egypt drowning in her sands,-- Athens rent by robbers' hands,-- Rome, the wild barbarian's prey, Like a storm-cloud swept away: Looking from thy turrets gray Still we see thee. Where are they? And to I a new-born nation waits, Sitting at the golden gates That glitter by the sunset sea,-- Waits with outspread arms for thee! Open wide, ye gates of gold, To the Dragon's banner-fold! Builders of the mighty wall, Bid your mountain barriers fall! So may the girdle of the sun. Bind the East and West in one, Till Mount Shasta's breezes fan The snowy peaks of Ta Sieue-Shan,-- Till Erie blends its waters blue With the waves of Tung-Ting-Hu,-- Till deep Missouri lends its flow To swell the rushing Hoang-Ho! AT THE BANQUET TO THE JAPANESE EMBASSY AUGUST 2, 1872 WE welcome you, Lords of the Land of the Sun! The voice of the many sounds feebly through one; Ah! would 't were a voice of more musical tone, But the dog-star is here, and the song-birds have flown. And what shall I sing that can cheat you of smiles, Ye heralds of peace from the Orient isles? If only the Jubilee--Why did you wait? You are welcome, but oh! you're a little too late! We have greeted our brothers of Ireland and France, Round the fiddle of Strauss we have joined in the dance, We have lagered Herr Saro, that fine-looking man, And glorified Godfrey, whose name it is Dan. What a pity! we've missed it and you've missed it too, We had a day ready and waiting for you; We'd have shown you--provided, of course, you had come-- You 'd have heard--no, you would n't, because it was dumb. And then the great organ! The chorus's shout Like the mixture teetotalers call "Cold without"-- A mingling of elements, strong, but not sweet; And the drum, just referred to, that "couldn't be beat." The shrines of our pilgrims are not like your own, Where white Fusiyama lifts proudly its cone, (The snow-mantled mountain we see on the fan That cools our hot cheeks with a breeze from Japan.) But ours the wide temple where worship is free As the wind of the prairie, the wave of the sea; You may build your own altar wherever you will, For the roof of that temple is over you still. One dome overarches the star-bannered shore; You may enter the Pope's or the Puritan's door, Or pass with the Buddhist his gateway of bronze, For a priest is but Man, be he bishop or bonze. And the lesson we teach with the sword and the pen Is to all of God's children, "We also are men! If you wrong us we smart, if you prick us we bleed, If you love us, no quarrel with color or creed!" You'll find us a well-meaning, free-spoken crowd, Good-natured enough, but a little too loud,-- To be sure, there is always a bit of a row When we choose our Tycoon, and especially now. You'll take it all calmly,--we want you to see What a peaceable fight such a contest can be, And of one thing be certain, however it ends, You will find that our voters have chosen your friends. If the horse that stands saddled is first in the race, You will greet your old friend with the weed in his face; And if the white hat and the White House agree, You'll find H. G. really as loving as he. But oh, what a pity--once more I must say-- That we could not have joined in a "Japanese day"! Such greeting we give you to-night as we can; Long life to our brothers and friends of Japan! The Lord of the mountain looks down from his crest As the banner of morning unfurls in the West; The Eagle was always the friend of the Sun; You are welcome!--The song of the cage-bird is done. BRYANT'S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY NOVEMBER 3, 1864 O EVEN-HANDED Nature! we confess This life that men so honor, love, and bless Has filled thine olden measure. Not the less. We count the precious seasons that remain; Strike not the level of the golden grain, But heap it high with years, that earth may gain. What heaven can lose,--for heaven is rich in song Do not all poets, dying, still prolong Their broken chants amid the seraph throng, Where, blind no more, Ionia's bard is seen, And England's heavenly minstrel sits between The Mantuan and the wan-cheeked Florentine? This was the first sweet singer in the cage Of our close-woven life. A new-born age Claims in his vesper song its heritage. Spare us, oh spare us long our heart's desire! Moloch, who calls our children through the fire, Leaves us the gentle master of the lyre. We count not on the dial of the sun The hours, the minutes, that his sands have run; Rather, as on those flowers that one by one. From earliest dawn their ordered bloom display Till evening's planet with her guiding ray Leads in the blind old mother of the day, We reckon by his songs, each song a flower, The long, long daylight, numbering hour by hour, Each breathing sweetness like a bridal bower. His morning glory shall we e'er forget? His noontide's full-blown lily coronet? His evening primrose has not opened yet; Nay, even if creeping Time should hide the skies In midnight from his century-laden eyes, Darkened like his who sang of Paradise, Would not some hidden song-bud open bright As the resplendent cactus of the night That floods the gloom with fragrance and with light? How can we praise the verse whose music flows With solemn cadence and majestic close, Pure as the dew that filters through the rose? How shall we thank him that in evil days He faltered never,--nor for blame, nor praise, Nor hire, nor party, shamed his earlier lays? But as his boyhood was of manliest hue, So to his youth his manly years were true, All dyed in royal purple through and through! He for whose touch the lyre of Heaven is strung Needs not the flattering toil of mortal tongue Let not the singer grieve to die unsung! Marbles forget their message to mankind: In his own verse the poet still we find, In his own page his memory lives enshrined, As in their amber sweets the smothered bees,-- As the fair cedar, fallen before the breeze, Lies self-embalmed amidst the mouldering trees. Poets, like youngest children, never grow Out of their mother's fondness. Nature so Holds their soft hands, and will not let them go, Till at the last they track with even feet Her rhythmic footsteps, and their pulses beat Twinned with her pulses, and their lips repeat. The secrets she has told them, as their own Thus is the inmost soul of Nature known, And the rapt minstrel shares her awful throne! O lover of her mountains and her woods, Her bridal chamber's leafy solitudes, Where Love himself with tremulous step intrudes, Her snows fall harmless on thy sacred fire Far be the day that claims thy sounding lyre To join the music of the angel choir! Yet, since life's amplest measure must be filled, Since throbbing hearts must be forever stilled, And all must fade that evening sunsets gild, Grant, Father, ere he close the mortal eyes That see a Nation's reeking sacrifice, Its smoke may vanish from these blackened skies! Then, when his summons comes, since come it must, And, looking heavenward with unfaltering trust, He wraps his drapery round him for the dust, His last fond glance will show him o'er his head The Northern fires beyond the zenith spread In lambent glory, blue and white and red,-- The Southern cross without its bleeding load, The milky way of peace all freshly strowed, And every white-throned star fixed in its lost abode! A FAREWELL TO AGASSIZ How the mountains talked together, Looking down upon the weather, When they heard our friend had planned his Little trip among the Andes! How they'll bare their snowy scalps To the climber of the Alps When the cry goes through their passes, "Here comes the great Agassiz!" "Yes, I'm tall," says Chimborazo, "But I wait for him to say so,-- That's the only thing that lacks,--he Must see me, Cotopaxi!" "Ay! ay!" the fire-peak thunders, "And he must view my wonders! I'm but a lonely crater Till I have him for spectator!" The mountain hearts are yearning, The lava-torches burning, The rivers bend to meet him, The forests bow to greet him, It thrills the spinal column Of fossil fishes solemn, And glaciers crawl the faster To the feet of their old master! Heaven keep him well and hearty, Both him and all his party! From the sun that broils and smites, From the centipede that bites, From the hail-storm and the thunder, From the vampire and the condor, From the gust upon the river, From the sudden earthquake shiver, From the trip of mule or donkey, From the midnight howling monkey, From the stroke of knife or dagger, From the puma and the jaguar, From the horrid boa-constrictor That has scared us in the pictur', From the Indians of the Pampas Who would dine upon their grampas, From every beast and vermin That to think of sets us squirmin', From every snake that tries on The traveller his p'ison, From every pest of Natur', Likewise the alligator, And from two things left behind him,-- (Be sure they'll try to find him,) The tax-bill and assessor,-- Heaven keep the great Professor May he find, with his apostles, That the land is full of fossils, That the waters swarm with fishes Shaped according to his wishes, That every pool is fertile In fancy kinds of turtle, New birds around him singing, New insects, never stinging, With a million novel data About the articulata, And facts that strip off all husks From the history of mollusks. And when, with loud Te Deum, He returns to his Museum, May he find the monstrous reptile That so long the land has kept ill By Grant and Sherman throttled, And by Father Abraham bottled, (All specked and streaked and mottled With the scars of murderous battles, Where he clashed the iron rattles That gods and men he shook at,) For all the world to look at. God bless the great Professor! And Madam, too, God bless her! Bless him and all his band, On the sea and on the land, Bless them head and heart and hand, Till their glorious raid is o'er, And they touch our ransomed shore! Then the welcome of a nation, With its shout of exultation, Shall awake the dumb creation, And the shapes of buried aeons Join the living creatures' poeans, Till the fossil echoes roar; While the mighty megalosaurus Leads the palaeozoic chorus,-- God bless the great Professor, And the land his proud possessor,-- Bless them now and evermore! 1865. AT A DINNER TO ADMIRAL FARRAGUT JULY 6, 1865 Now, smiling friends and shipmates all, Since half our battle 's won, A broadside for our Admiral! Load every crystal gun Stand ready till I give the word,-- You won't have time to tire,-- And when that glorious name is heard, Then hip! hurrah! and fire! Bow foremost sinks the rebel craft,-- Our eyes not sadly turn And see the pirates huddling aft To drop their raft astern; Soon o'er the sea-worm's destined prey The lifted wave shall close,-- So perish from the face of day All Freedom's banded foes! But ah! what splendors fire the sky What glories greet the morn! The storm-tost banner streams on high, Its heavenly hues new-born! Its red fresh dyed in heroes' blood, Its peaceful white more pure, To float unstained o'er field and flood While earth and seas endure! All shapes before the driving blast Must glide from mortal view; Black roll the billows of the past Behind the present's blue, Fast, fast, are lessening in the light The names of high renown,-- Van Tromp's proud besom fades from sight, And Nelson's half hull down! Scarce one tall frigate walks the sea Or skirts the safer shores Of all that bore to victory Our stout old commodores; Hull, Bainbridge, Porter,--where are they? The waves their answer roll, "Still bright in memory's sunset ray,-- God rest each gallant soul!" A brighter name must dim their light With more than noontide ray, The Sea-King of the "River Fight," The Conqueror of the Bay,-- Now then the broadside! cheer on cheer To greet him safe on shore! Health, peace, and many a bloodless year To fight his battles o'er! AT A DINNER TO GENERAL GRANT JULY 31, 1865 WHEN treason first began the strife That crimsoned sea and shore, The Nation poured her hoarded life On Freedom's threshing-floor; From field and prairie, east and west, From coast and hill and plain, The sheaves of ripening manhood pressed Thick as the bearded grain. Rich was the harvest; souls as true As ever battle tried; But fiercer still the conflict grew, The floor of death more wide; Ah, who forgets that dreadful day Whose blot of grief and shame Four bitter years scarce wash away In seas of blood and flame? Vain, vain the Nation's lofty boasts,-- Vain all her sacrifice! "Give me a man to lead my hosts, O God in heaven!" she cries. While Battle whirls his crushing flail, And plies his winnowing fan,-- Thick flies the chaff on every gale,-- She cannot find her man! Bravely they fought who failed to win,-- Our leaders battle-scarred,-- Fighting the hosts of hell and sin, But devils die always hard! Blame not the broken tools of God That helped our sorest needs; Through paths that martyr feet have trod The conqueror's steps He leads. But now the heavens grow black with doubt, The ravens fill the sky, "Friends" plot within, foes storm without, Hark,--that despairing cry, "Where is the heart, the hand, the brain To dare, to do, to plan?" The bleeding Nation shrieks in vain,-- She has not found her man! A little echo stirs the air,-- Some tale, whate'er it be, Of rebels routed in their lair Along the Tennessee. The little echo spreads and grows, And soon the trump of Fame Has taught the Nation's friends and foes The "man on horseback"'s name. So well his warlike wooing sped, No fortress might resist His billets-doux of lisping lead, The bayonets in his fist,-- With kisses from his cannons' mouth He made his passion known Till Vicksburg, vestal of the South, Unbound her virgin zone. And still where'er his banners led He conquered as he came, The trembling hosts of treason fled Before his breath of flame, And Fame's still gathering echoes grew Till high o'er Richmond's towers The starry fold of Freedom flew, And all the land was ours. Welcome from fields where valor fought To feasts where pleasure waits; A Nation gives you smiles unbought At all her opening gates! Forgive us when we press your hand,-- Your war-worn features scan,-- God sent you to a bleeding land; Our Nation found its man! TO H. W. LONGFELLOW BEFORE HIS DEPARTURE FOR EUROPE, MAY 27, 1868 OUR Poet, who has taught the Western breeze To waft his songs before him o'er the seas, Will find them wheresoe'er his wanderings reach Borne on the spreading tide of English speech Twin with the rhythmic waves that kiss the farthest beach. Where shall the singing bird a stranger be That finds a nest for him in every tree? How shall he travel who can never go Where his own voice the echoes do not know, Where his own garden flowers no longer learn to grow? Ah! gentlest soul! how gracious, how benign Breathes through our troubled life that voice of thine, Filled with a sweetness born of happier spheres, That wins and warms, that kindles, softens, cheers, That calms the wildest woe and stays the bitterest tears! Forgive the simple words that sound like praise; The mist before me dims my gilded phrase; Our speech at best is half alive and cold, And save that tenderer moments make us bold Our whitening lips would close, their truest truth untold. We who behold our autumn sun below The Scorpion's sign, against the Archer's bow, Know well what parting means of friend from friend; After the snows no freshening dews descend, And what the frost has marred, the sunshine will not mend. So we all count the months, the weeks, the days, That keep thee from us in unwonted ways, Grudging to alien hearths our widowed time; And one has shaped a breath in artless rhyme That sighs, "We track thee still through each remotest clime." What wishes, longings, blessings, prayers shall be The more than golden freight that floats with thee! And know, whatever welcome thou shalt find,-- Thou who hast won the hearts of half mankind,-- The proudest, fondest love thou leavest still behind! TO CHRISTIAN GOTTFRIED EHRENBERG FOR HIS "JUBILAEUM" AT BERLIN, NOVEMBER 5, 1868 This poem was written at the suggestion of Mr. George Bancroft, the historian. THOU who hast taught the teachers of mankind How from the least of things the mightiest grow, What marvel jealous Nature made thee blind, Lest man should learn what angels long to know? Thou in the flinty rock, the river's flow, In the thick-moted sunbeam's sifted light Hast trained thy downward-pointed tube to show Worlds within worlds unveiled to mortal sight, Even as the patient watchers of the night,-- The cyclope gleaners of the fruitful skies,-- Show the wide misty way where heaven is white All paved with suns that daze our wondering eyes. Far o'er the stormy deep an empire lies, Beyond the storied islands of the blest, That waits to see the lingering day-star rise; The forest-tinctured Eden of the West; Whose queen, fair Freedom, twines her iron crest With leaves from every wreath that mortals wear, But loves the sober garland ever best That science lends the sage's silvered hair;-- Science, who makes life's heritage more fair, Forging for every lock its mastering key, Filling with life and hope the stagnant air, Pouring the light of Heaven o'er land and sea! From her unsceptred realm we come to thee, Bearing our slender tribute in our hands; Deem it not worthless, humble though it be, Set by the larger gifts of older lands The smallest fibres weave the strongest bands,-- In narrowest tubes the sovereign nerves are spun,-- A little cord along the deep sea-sands Makes the live thought of severed nations one Thy fame has journeyed westering with the sun, Prairies and lone sierras know thy name And the long day of service nobly done That crowns thy darkened evening with its flame! One with the grateful world, we own thy claim,-- Nay, rather claim our right to join the throng Who come with varied tongues, but hearts the same, To hail thy festal morn with smiles and song; Ah, happy they to whom the joys belong Of peaceful triumphs that can never die From History's record,--not of gilded wrong, But golden truths that, while the world goes by With all its empty pageant, blazoned high Around the Master's name forever shine So shines thy name illumined in the sky,-- Such joys, such triumphs, such remembrance thine! A TOAST TO WILKIE COLLINS FEBRUARY 16, 1874 THE painter's and the poet's fame Shed their twinned lustre round his name, To gild our story-teller's art, Where each in turn must play his part. What scenes from Wilkie's pencil sprung, The minstrel saw but left unsung! What shapes the pen of Collins drew, No painter clad in living hue! But on our artist's shadowy screen A stranger miracle is seen Than priest unveils or pilgrim seeks,-- The poem breathes, the picture speaks! And so his double name comes true, They christened better than they knew, And Art proclaims him twice her son,-- Painter and poet, both in one! MEMORIAL VERSES FOR THE SERVICES IN MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN CITY OF BOSTON, JUNE 1, 1865 CHORAL: "LUTHER'S JUDGMENT HYMN." O THOU of soul and sense and breath The ever-present Giver, Unto thy mighty Angel, Death, All flesh thou dost deliver; What most we cherish we resign, For life and death alike are thine, Who reignest Lord forever! Our hearts lie buried in the dust With him so true and tender, The patriot's stay, the people's trust, The shield of the offender; Yet every murmuring voice is still, As, bowing to thy sovereign will, Our best-loved we surrender. Dear Lord, with pitying eye behold This martyr generation, Which thou, through trials manifold, Art showing thy salvation Oh let the blood by murder spilt Wash out thy stricken children's guilt And sanctify our nation! Be thou thy orphaned Israel's friend, Forsake thy people never, In One our broken Many blend, That none again may sever! Hear us, O Father, while we raise With trembling lips our song of praise, And bless thy name forever! FOR THE COMMEMORATION SERVICES CAMBRIDGE, JULY 21, 1865 FOUR summers coined their golden light in leaves, Four wasteful autumns flung them to the gale, Four winters wore the shroud the tempest weaves, The fourth wan April weeps o'er hill and vale; And still the war-clouds scowl on sea and land, With the red gleams of battle staining through, When lo! as parted by an angel's hand, They open, and the heavens again are blue! Which is the dream, the present or the past? The night of anguish or the joyous morn? The long, long years with horrors overcast, Or the sweet promise of the day new-born? Tell us, O father, as thine arms infold Thy belted first-born in their fast embrace, Murmuring the prayer the patriarch breathed of old,-- "Now let me die, for I have seen thy face!" Tell us, O mother,--nay, thou canst not speak, But thy fond eyes shall answer, brimmed with joy,-- Press thy mute lips against the sunbrowned cheek, Is this a phantom,--thy returning boy? Tell us, O maiden,--ah, what canst thou tell That Nature's record is not first to teach,-- The open volume all can read so well, With its twin rose-hued pages full of speech? And ye who mourn your dead,--how sternly true The crushing hour that wrenched their lives away, Shadowed with sorrow's midnight veil for you, For them the dawning of immortal day! Dream-like these years of conflict, not a dream! Death, ruin, ashes tell the awful tale, Read by the flaming war-track's lurid gleam No dream, but truth that turns the nations pale. For on the pillar raised by martyr hands Burns the rekindled beacon of the right, Sowing its seeds of fire o'er all the lands,-- Thrones look a century older in its light! Rome had her triumphs; round the conqueror's car The ensigns waved, the brazen clarions blew, And o'er the reeking spoils of bandit war With outspread wings the cruel eagles flew; Arms, treasures, captives, kings in clanking chains Urged on by trampling cohorts bronzed and scarred, And wild-eyed wonders snared on Lybian plains, Lion and ostrich and camelopard. Vain all that praetors clutched, that consuls brought When Rome's returning legions crowned their lord; Less than the least brave deed these hands have wrought, We clasp, unclinching from the bloody sword. Theirs was the mighty work that seers foretold; They know not half their glorious toil has won, For this is Heaven's same battle,-joined of old When Athens fought for us at Marathon! Behold a vision none hath understood! The breaking of the Apocalyptic seal; Twice rings the summons.--Hail and fire and blood! Then the third angel blows his trumpet-peal. Loud wail the dwellers on the myrtled coasts, The green savannas swell the maddened cry, And with a yell from all the demon hosts Falls the great star called Wormwood from the sky! Bitter it mingles with the poisoned flow Of the warm rivers winding to the shore, Thousands must drink the waves of death and woe, But the star Wormwood stains the heavens no more! Peace smiles at last; the Nation calls her sons To sheathe the sword; her battle-flag she furls, Speaks in glad thunders from unspotted guns, No terror shrouded in the smoke-wreath's curls. O ye that fought for Freedom, living, dead, One sacred host of God's anointed Queen, For every holy, drop your veins have shed We breathe a welcome to our bowers of green! Welcome, ye living! from the foeman's gripe Your country's banner it was yours to wrest,-- Ah, many a forehead shows the banner-stripe, And stars, once crimson, hallow many a breast. And ye, pale heroes, who from glory's bed Mark when your old battalions form in line, Move in their marching ranks with noiseless tread, And shape unheard the evening countersign, Come with your comrades, the returning brave; Shoulder to shoulder they await you here; These lent the life their martyr-brothers gave,-- Living and dead alike forever dear! EDWARD EVERETT "OUR FIRST CITIZEN" Read at the meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society, January 30, 1865. WINTER'S cold drift lies glistening o'er his breast; For him no spring shall bid the leaf unfold What Love could speak, by sudden grief oppressed, What swiftly summoned Memory tell, is told. Even as the bells, in one consenting chime, Filled with their sweet vibrations all the air, So joined all voices, in that mournful time, His genius, wisdom, virtues, to declare. What place is left for words of measured praise, Till calm-eyed History, with her iron pen, Grooves in the unchanging rock the final phrase That shapes his image in the souls of men? Yet while the echoes still repeat his name, While countless tongues his full-orbed life rehearse, Love, by his beating pulses taught, will claim The breath of song, the tuneful throb of verse,-- Verse that, in ever-changing ebb and flow, Moves, like the laboring heart, with rush and rest, Or swings in solemn cadence, sad and slow, Like the tired heaving of a grief-worn breast. This was a mind so rounded, so complete, No partial gift of Nature in excess, That, like a single stream where many meet, Each separate talent counted something less. A little hillock, if it lonely stand, Holds o'er the fields an undisputed reign; While the broad summit of the table-land Seems with its belt of clouds a level plain. Servant of all his powers, that faithful slave, Unsleeping Memory, strengthening with his toils, To every ruder task his shoulder gave, And loaded every day with golden spoils. Order, the law of Heaven, was throned supreme O'er action, instinct, impulse, feeling, thought; True as the dial's shadow to the beam, Each hour was equal to the charge it brought. Too large his compass for the nicer skill That weighs the world of science grain by grain; All realms of knowledge owned the mastering will That claimed the franchise of its whole domain. Earth, air, sea, sky, the elemental fire, Art, history, song,--what meanings lie in each Found in his cunning hand a stringless lyre, And poured their mingling music through his speech. Thence flowed those anthems of our festal days, Whose ravishing division held apart The lips of listening throngs in sweet amaze, Moved in all breasts the selfsame human heart. Subdued his accents, as of one who tries To press some care, some haunting sadness down; His smile half shadow; and to stranger eyes The kingly forehead wore an iron crown. He was not armed to wrestle with the storm, To fight for homely truth with vulgar power; Grace looked from every feature, shaped his form, The rose of Academe,--the perfect flower! Such was the stately scholar whom we knew In those ill days of soul-enslaving calm, Before the blast of Northern vengeance blew Her snow-wreathed pine against the Southern palm. Ah, God forgive us! did we hold too cheap The heart we might have known, but would not see, And look to find the nation's friend asleep Through the dread hour of her Gethsemane? That wrong is past; we gave him up to Death With all a hero's honors round his name; As martyrs coin their blood, he coined his breath, And dimmed the scholar's in the patriot's fame. So shall we blazon on the shaft we raise,-- Telling our grief, our pride, to unborn years,-- "He who had lived the mark of all men's praise Died with the tribute of a Nation's tears." SHAKESPEARE TERCENTENNIAL CELEBRATION APRIL 23, 1864 "Who claims our Shakespeare from that realm unknown, Beyond the storm-vexed islands of the deep, Where Genoa's roving mariner was blown? Her twofold Saint's-day let our England keep; Shall warring aliens share her holy task?" The Old World echoes ask. O land of Shakespeare! ours with all thy past, Till these last years that make the sea so wide; Think not the jar of battle's trumpet-blast Has dulled our aching sense to joyous pride In every noble word thy sons bequeathed The air our fathers breathed! War-wasted, haggard, panting from the strife, We turn to other days and far-off lands, Live o'er in dreams the Poet's faded life, Come with fresh lilies in our fevered hands To wreathe his bust, and scatter purple flowers,-- Not his the need, but ours! We call those poets who are first to mark Through earth's dull mist the coming of the dawn,-- Who see in twilight's gloom the first pale spark, While others only note that day is gone; For him the Lord of light the curtain rent That veils the firmament. The greatest for its greatness is half known, Stretching beyond our narrow quadrant-lines,-- As in that world of Nature all outgrown Where Calaveras lifts his awful pines, And cast from Mariposa's mountain-wall Nevada's cataracts fall. Yet heaven's remotest orb is partly ours, Throbbing its radiance like a beating heart; In the wide compass of angelic powers The instinct of the blindworm has its part; So in God's kingliest creature we behold The flower our buds infold. With no vain praise we mock the stone-carved name Stamped once on dust that moved with pulse and breath, As thinking to enlarge that amplest fame Whose undimmed glories gild the night of death: We praise not star or sun; in these we see Thee, Father, only thee! Thy gifts are beauty, wisdom, power, and love: We read, we reverence on this human soul,-- Earth's clearest mirror of the light above,-- Plain as the record on thy prophet's scroll, When o'er his page the effluent splendors poured, Thine own "Thus saith the Lord!" This player was a prophet from on high, Thine own elected. Statesman, poet, sage, For him thy sovereign pleasure passed them by; Sidney's fair youth, and Raleigh's ripened age, Spenser's chaste soul, and his imperial mind Who taught and shamed mankind. Therefore we bid our hearts' Te Deum rise, Nor fear to make thy worship less divine, And hear the shouted choral shake the skies, Counting all glory, power, and wisdom thine; For thy great gift thy greater name adore, And praise thee evermore! In this dread hour of Nature's utmost need, Thanks for these unstained drops of freshening dew! Oh, while our martyrs fall, our heroes bleed, Keep us to every sweet remembrance true, Till from this blood-red sunset springs new-born Our Nation's second morn! IN MEMORY OF JOHN AND ROBERT WARE Read at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Medical Society, May 25, 1864. No mystic charm, no mortal art, Can bid our loved companions stay; The bands that clasp them to our heart Snap in death's frost and fall apart; Like shadows fading with the day, They pass away. The young are stricken in their pride, The old, long tottering, faint and fall; Master and scholar, side by side, Through the dark portals silent glide, That open in life's mouldering wall And close on all. Our friend's, our teacher's task was done, When Mercy called him from on high; A little cloud had dimmed the sun, The saddening hours had just begun, And darker days were drawing nigh: 'T was time to die. A whiter soul, a fairer mind, A life with purer course and aim, A gentler eye, a voice more kind, We may not look on earth to find. The love that lingers o'er his name Is more than fame. These blood-red summers ripen fast; The sons are older than the sires; Ere yet the tree to earth is cast, The sapling falls before the blast; Life's ashes keep their covered fires,-- Its flame expires. Struck by the noiseless, viewless foe, Whose deadlier breath than shot or shell Has laid the best and bravest low, His boy, all bright in morning's glow, That high-souled youth he loved so well, Untimely fell. Yet still he wore his placid smile, And, trustful in the cheering creed That strives all sorrow to beguile, Walked calmly on his way awhile Ah, breast that leans on breaking reed Must ever bleed! So they both left us, sire and son, With opening leaf, with laden bough The youth whose race was just begun, The wearied man whose course was run, Its record written on his brow, Are brothers now. Brothers!--The music of the sound Breathes softly through my closing strain; The floor we tread is holy ground, Those gentle spirits hovering round, While our fair circle joins again Its broken chain. 1864. HUMBOLDT'S BIRTHDAY CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION, SEPTEMBER 14, 1869 BONAPARTE, AUGUST 15, 1769.-HUMBOLDT, SEPTEMBER 14, 1769 ERE yet the warning chimes of midnight sound, Set back the flaming index of the year, Track the swift-shifting seasons in their round Through fivescore circles of the swinging sphere! Lo, in yon islet of the midland sea That cleaves the storm-cloud with its snowy crest, The embryo-heir of Empires yet to be, A month-old babe upon his mother's breast. Those little hands that soon shall grow so strong In their rude grasp great thrones shall rock and fall, Press her soft bosom, while a nursery song Holds the world's master in its slender thrall. Look! a new crescent bends its silver bow; A new-lit star has fired the eastern sky; Hark! by the river where the lindens blow A waiting household hears an infant's cry. This, too, a conqueror! His the vast domain, Wider than widest sceptre-shadowed lands; Earth and the weltering kingdom of the main Laid their broad charters in his royal hands. His was no taper lit in cloistered cage, Its glimmer borrowed from the grove or porch; He read the record of the planet's page By Etna's glare and Cotopaxi's torch. He heard the voices of the pathless woods; On the salt steppes he saw the starlight shine; He scaled the mountain's windy solitudes, And trod the galleries of the breathless mine. For him no fingering of the love-strung lyre, No problem vague, by torturing schoolmen vexed; He fed no broken altar's dying fire, Nor skulked and scowled behind a Rabbi's text. For God's new truth he claimed the kingly robe That priestly shoulders counted all their own, Unrolled the gospel of the storied globe And led young Science to her empty throne. While the round planet on its axle spins One fruitful year shall boast its double birth, And show the cradles of its mighty twins, Master and Servant of the sons of earth. Which wears the garland that shall never fade, Sweet with fair memories that can never die? Ask not the marbles where their bones are laid, But bow thine ear to hear thy brothers' cry:-- "Tear up the despot's laurels by the root, Like mandrakes, shrieking as they quit the soil! Feed us no more upon the blood-red fruit That sucks its crimson from the heart of Toil! "We claim the food that fixed our mortal fate,-- Bend to our reach the long-forbidden tree! The angel frowned at Eden's eastern gate,-- Its western portal is forever free! "Bring the white blossoms of the waning year, Heap with full hands the peaceful conqueror's shrine Whose bloodless triumphs cost no sufferer's tear! Hero of knowledge, be our tribute thine!" POEM AT THE DEDICATION OF THE HALLECK MONUMENT, JULY 8, 1869 SAY not the Poet dies! Though in the dust he lies, He cannot forfeit his melodious breath, Unsphered by envious death! Life drops the voiceless myriads from its roll; Their fate he cannot share, Who, in the enchanted air Sweet with the lingering strains that Echo stole, Has left his dearer self, the music of his soul! We o'er his turf may raise Our notes of feeble praise, And carve with pious care for after eyes The stone with "Here he lies;" He for himself has built a nobler shrine, Whose walls of stately rhyme Roll back the tides of time, While o'er their gates the gleaming tablets shine That wear his name inwrought with many a golden line! Call not our Poet dead, Though on his turf we tread! Green is the wreath their brows so long have worn,-- The minstrels of the morn, Who, while the Orient burned with new-born flame, Caught that celestial fire And struck a Nation's lyre These taught the western winds the poet's name; Theirs the first opening buds, the maiden flowers of fame! Count not our Poet dead! The stars shall watch his bed, The rose of June its fragrant life renew His blushing mound to strew, And all the tuneful throats of summer swell With trills as crystal-clear As when he wooed the ear Of the young muse that haunts each wooded dell, With songs of that "rough land" he loved so long and well! He sleeps; he cannot die! As evening's long-drawn sigh, Lifting the rose-leaves on his peaceful mound, Spreads all their sweets around, So, laden with his song, the breezes blow From where the rustling sedge Frets our rude ocean's edge To the smooth sea beyond the peaks of snow. His soul the air enshrines and leaves but dust below! HYMN FOR THE CELEBRATION AT THE LAYING OF THE CORNERSTONE OF HARVARD MEMORIAL HALL, CAMBRIDGE, OCTOBER 6, 1870 NOT with the anguish of hearts that are breaking Come we as mourners to weep for our dead; Grief in our breasts has grown weary of aching, Green is the turf where our tears we have shed. While o'er their marbles the mosses are creeping, Stealing each name and its legend away, Give their proud story to Memory's keeping, Shrined in the temple we hallow to-day. Hushed are their battle-fields, ended their marches, Deaf are their ears to the drum-beat of morn,-- Rise from the sod, ye fair columns and arches Tell their bright deeds to the ages unborn! Emblem and legend may fade from the portal, Keystone may crumble and pillar may fall; They were the builders whose work is immortal, Crowned with the dome that is over us all! HYMN FOR THE DEDICATION OF MEMORIAL HALL AT CAMBRIDGE, JUNE 23, 1874 WHERE, girt around by savage foes, Our nurturing Mother's shelter rose, Behold, the lofty temple stands, Reared by her children's grateful hands! Firm are the pillars that defy The volleyed thunders of the sky; Sweet are the summer wreaths that twine With bud and flower our martyrs' shrine. The hues their tattered colors bore Fall mingling on the sunlit floor Till evening spreads her spangled pall, And wraps in shade the storied hall. Firm were their hearts in danger's hour, Sweet was their manhood's morning flower, Their hopes with rainbow hues were bright,-- How swiftly winged the sudden night! O Mother! on thy marble page Thy children read, from age to age, The mighty word that upward leads Through noble thought to nobler deeds. TRUTH, heaven-born TRUTH, their fearless guide, Thy saints have lived, thy heroes died; Our love has reared their earthly shrine, Their glory be forever thine! HYMN AT THE FUNERAL SERVICES OF CHARLES SUMNER, APRIL 29, 1874 SUNG BY MALE VOICES TO A NATIONAL AIR OF HOLLAND ONCE more, ye sacred towers, Your solemn dirges sound; Strew, loving hands, the April flowers, Once more to deck his mound. A nation mourns its dead, Its sorrowing voices one, As Israel's monarch bowed his head And cried, "My son! My son!" Why mourn for him?--For him The welcome angel came Ere yet his eye with age was dim Or bent his stately frame; His weapon still was bright, His shield was lifted high To slay the wrong, to save the right,-- What happier hour to die? Thou orderest all things well; Thy servant's work was done; He lived to hear Oppression's knell, The shouts for Freedom won. Hark!! from the opening skies The anthem's echoing swell,-- "O mourning Land, lift up thine eyes! God reigneth. All is well!" RHYMES OF AN HOUR ADDRESS FOR THE OPENING OF THE FIFTH AVENUE THEATRE, NEW YORK, DECEMBER 3, 1873 HANG out our banners on the stately tower It dawns at last--the long-expected hour I The steep is climbed, the star-lit summit won, The builder's task, the artist's labor done; Before the finished work the herald stands, And asks the verdict of your lips and hands! Shall rosy daybreak make us all forget The golden sun that yester-evening set? Fair was the fabric doomed to pass away Ere the last headaches born of New Year's Day; With blasting breath the fierce destroyer came And wrapped the victim in his robes of flame; The pictured sky with redder morning blushed, With scorching streams the naiad's fountain gushed, With kindling mountains glowed the funeral pyre, Forests ablaze and rivers all on fire,-- The scenes dissolved, the shrivelling curtain fell,-- Art spread her wings and sighed a long farewell! Mourn o'er the Player's melancholy plight,-- Falstaff in tears, Othello deadly white,-- Poor Romeo reckoning what his doublet cost, And Juliet whimpering for her dresses lost,-- Their wardrobes burned, their salaries all undrawn, Their cues cut short, their occupation gone! "Lie there in dust," the red-winged demon cried, "Wreck of the lordly city's hope and pride!" Silent they stand, and stare with vacant gaze, While o'er the embers leaps the fitful blaze; When, to! a hand, before the startled train, Writes in the ashes, "It shall rise again,-- Rise and confront its elemental foes!" The word was spoken, and the walls arose, And ere the seasons round their brief career The new-born temple waits the unborn year. Ours was the toil of many a weary day Your smiles, your plaudits, only can repay; We are the monarchs of the painted scenes, You, you alone the real Kings and Queens! Lords of the little kingdom where we meet, We lay our gilded sceptres at your feet, Place in your grasp our portal's silvered keys With one brief utterance: We have tried to please. Tell us, ye sovereigns of the new domain, Are you content-or have we toiled in vain? With no irreverent glances look around The realm you rule, for this is haunted ground! Here stalks the Sorcerer, here the Fairy trips, Here limps the Witch with malice-working lips, The Graces here their snowy arms entwine, Here dwell the fairest sisters of the Nine,-- She who, with jocund voice and twinkling eye, Laughs at the brood of follies as they fly; She of the dagger and the deadly bowl, Whose charming horrors thrill the trembling soul; She who, a truant from celestial spheres, In mortal semblance now and then appears, Stealing the fairest earthly shape she can-- Sontag or Nilsson, Lind or Malibran; With these the spangled houri of the dance,-- What shaft so dangerous as her melting glance, As poised in air she spurns the earth below, And points aloft her heavenly-minded toe! What were our life, with all its rents and seams, Stripped of its purple robes, our waking dreams? The poet's song, the bright romancer's page, The tinselled shows that cheat us on the stage Lead all our fancies captive at their will; Three years or threescore, we are children still. The little listener on his father's knee, With wandering Sindbad ploughs the stormy sea, With Gotham's sages hears the billows roll (Illustrious trio of the venturous bowl, Too early shipwrecked, for they died too soon To see their offspring launch the great balloon); Tracks the dark brigand to his mountain lair, Slays the grim giant, saves the lady fair, Fights all his country's battles o'er again From Bunker's blazing height to Lundy's Lane; Floats with the mighty captains as they sailed, Before whose flag the flaming red-cross paled, And claims the oft-told story of the scars Scarce yet grown white, that saved the stripes and stars! Children of later growth, we love the PLAY, We love its heroes, be they grave or gay, From squeaking, peppery, devil-defying Punch To roaring Richard with his camel-hunch; Adore its heroines, those immortal dames, Time's only rivals, whom he never tames, Whose youth, unchanging, lives while thrones decay (Age spares the Pyramids-and Dejazet); The saucy-aproned, razor-tongued soubrette, The blond-haired beauty with the eyes of jet, The gorgeous Beings whom the viewless wires Lift to the skies in strontian-crimsoned fires, And all the wealth of splendor that awaits The throng that enters those Elysian gates. See where the hurrying crowd impatient pours, With noise of trampling feet and flapping doors, Streams to the numbered seat each pasteboard fits And smooths its caudal plumage as it sits; Waits while the slow musicians saunter in, Till the bald leader taps his violin; Till the old overture we know so well, Zampa or Magic Flute or William Tell, Has done its worst-then hark! the tinkling bell! The crash is o'er--the crinkling curtain furled, And to! the glories of that brighter world! Behold the offspring of the Thespian cart, This full-grown temple of the magic art, Where all the conjurers of illusion meet, And please us all the more, the more they cheat. These are the wizards and the witches too Who win their honest bread by cheating you With cheeks that drown in artificial tears And lying skull-caps white with seventy years, Sweet-tempered matrons changed to scolding Kates, Maids mild as moonbeams crazed with murderous hates, Kind, simple souls that stab and slash and slay And stick at nothing, if it 's in the play! Would all the world told half as harmless lies! Would all its real fools were half as wise As he who blinks through dull Dundreary's eyes I Would all the unhanged bandits of the age Were like the peaceful ruffians of the stage! Would all the cankers wasting town and state, The mob of rascals, little thieves and great, Dealers in watered milk and watered stocks, Who lead us lambs to pasture on the rocks,-- Shepherds--Jack Sheppards--of their city flocks,-- The rings of rogues that rob the luckless town, Those evil angels creeping up and down The Jacob's ladder of the treasury stairs,-- Not stage, but real Turpins and Macaires,-- Could doff, like us, their knavery with their clothes, And find it easy as forgetting oaths! Welcome, thrice welcome to our virgin dome, The Muses' shrine, the Drama's new-found home Here shall the Statesman rest his weary brain, The worn-out Artist find his wits again; Here Trade forget his ledger and his cares, And sweet communion mingle Bulls and Bears; Here shall the youthful Lover, nestling near The shrinking maiden, her he holds most dear, Gaze on the mimic moonlight as it falls On painted groves, on sliding canvas walls, And sigh, "My angel! What a life of bliss We two could live in such a world as this!" Here shall the timid pedants of the schools, The gilded boors, the labor-scorning fools, The grass-green rustic and the smoke-dried cit, Feel each in turn the stinging lash of wit, And as it tingles on some tender part Each find a balsam in his neighbor's smart; So every folly prove a fresh delight As in the picture of our play to-night. Farewell! The Players wait the Prompter's call; Friends, lovers, listeners! Welcome one and all! A SEA DIALOGUE Cabin Passenger. Man at Wheel. CABIN PASSENGER. FRIEND, you seem thoughtful. I not wonder much That he who sails the ocean should be sad. I am myself reflective. When I think Of all this wallowing beast, the Sea, has sucked Between his sharp, thin lips, the wedgy waves, What heaps of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls; What piles of shekels, talents, ducats, crowns, What bales of Tyrian mantles, Indian shawls, Of laces that have blanked the weavers' eyes, Of silken tissues, wrought by worm and man, The half-starved workman, and the well-fed worm; What marbles, bronzes, pictures, parchments, books; What many-lobuled, thought-engendering brains; Lie with the gaping sea-shells in his maw,-- I, too, am silent; for all language seems A mockery, and the speech of man is vain. O mariner, we look upon the waves And they rebuke our babbling. "Peace!" they say,-- "Mortal, be still!" My noisy tongue is hushed, And with my trembling finger on my lips My soul exclaims in ecstasy-- MAN AT WHEEL. Belay! CABIN PASSENGER. Ah yes! "Delay,"--it calls, "nor haste to break The charm of stillness with an idle word!" O mariner, I love thee, for thy thought Strides even with my own, nay, flies before. Thou art a brother to the wind and wave; Have they not music for thine ear as mine, When the wild tempest makes thy ship his lyre, Smiting a cavernous basso from the shrouds And climbing up his gamut through the stays, Through buntlines, bowlines, ratlines, till it shrills An alto keener than the locust sings, And all the great Aeolian orchestra Storms out its mad sonata in the gale? Is not the scene a wondrous and-- MAN AT WHEEL. A vast! CABIN PASSENGER. Ah yes, a vast, a vast and wondrous scene! I see thy soul is open as the day That holds the sunshine in its azure bowl To all the solemn glories of the deep. Tell me, O mariner, dost thou never feel The grandeur of thine office,--to control The keel that cuts the ocean like a knife And leaves a wake behind it like a seam In the great shining garment of the world? MAN AT WHEEL. Belay y'r jaw, y' swab! y' hoss-marine! (To the Captain.) Ay, ay, Sir! Stiddy, Sir! Sou'wes' b' sou'! November 10, 1864. CHANSON WITHOUT MUSIC BY THE PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF DEAD AND LIVE LANGUAGES PHI BETA KAPPA.--CAMBRIDGE, 1867 You bid me sing,--can I forget The classic ode of days gone by,-- How belle Fifine and jeune Lisette Exclaimed, "Anacreon, geron ei"? "Regardez done," those ladies said,-- "You're getting bald and wrinkled too When summer's roses all are shed, Love 's nullum ite, voyez-vous!" In vain ce brave Anacreon's cry, "Of Love alone my banjo sings" (Erota mounon). "Etiam si,-- Eh b'en?" replied the saucy things,-- "Go find a maid whose hair is gray, And strike your lyre,--we sha'n't complain; But parce nobis, s'il vous plait,-- Voila Adolphe! Voila Eugene!" Ah, jeune Lisette! Ah, belle Fifine! Anacreon's lesson all must learn; O kairos oxiis; Spring is green, But Acer Hyems waits his turn I hear you whispering from the dust, "Tiens, mon cher, c'est toujours so,-- The brightest blade grows dim with rust, The fairest meadow white with snow!" You do not mean it! _Not_ encore? Another string of playday rhymes? You 've heard me--nonne est?-before, Multoties,-more than twenty times; Non possum,--vraiment,--pas du tout, I cannot! I am loath to shirk; But who will listen if I do, My memory makes such shocking work? Ginosko. Scio. Yes, I 'm told Some ancients like my rusty lay, As Grandpa Noah loved the old Red-sandstone march of Jubal's day. I used to carol like the birds, But time my wits has quite unfixed, Et quoad verba,--for my words,-- Ciel! Eheu! Whe-ew!--how they're mixed! Mehercle! Zeu! Diable! how My thoughts were dressed when I was young, But tempus fugit! see them now Half clad in rags of every tongue! O philoi, fratres, chers amis I dare not court the youthful Muse, For fear her sharp response should be, "Papa Anacreon, please excuse!" Adieu! I 've trod my annual track How long!--let others count the miles,-- And peddled out my rhyming pack To friends who always paid in smiles. So, laissez-moi! some youthful wit No doubt has wares he wants to show; And I am asking, "Let me sit," Dum ille clamat, "Dos pou sto!" FOR THE CENTENNIAL DINNER OF THE PROPRIETORS OF BOSTON PIER, OR THE LONG WHARF, APRIL 16, 1873 DEAR friends, we are strangers; we never before Have suspected what love to each other we bore; But each of us all to his neighbor is dear, Whose heart has a throb for our time-honored pier. As I look on each brother proprietor's face, I could open my arms in a loving embrace; What wonder that feelings, undreamed of so long, Should burst all at once in a blossom of song! While I turn my fond glance on the monarch of piers, Whose throne has stood firm through his eightscore of years, My thought travels backward and reaches the day When they drove the first pile on the edge of the bay. See! The joiner, the shipwright, the smith from his forge, The redcoat, who shoulders his gun for King George, The shopman, the 'prentice, the boys from the lane, The parson, the doctor with gold-headed cane, Come trooping down King Street, where now may be seen The pulleys and ropes of a mighty machine; The weight rises slowly; it drops with a thud; And, to! the great timber sinks deep in the mud! They are gone, the stout craftsmen that hammered the piles, And the square-toed old boys in the three-cornered tiles; The breeches, the buckles, have faded from view, And the parson's white wig and the ribbon-tied queue. The redcoats have vanished; the last grenadier Stepped into the boat from the end of our pier; They found that our hills were not easy to climb, And the order came, "Countermarch, double-quick time!" They are gone, friend and foe,--anchored fast at the pier, Whence no vessel brings back its pale passengers here; But our wharf, like a lily, still floats on the flood, Its breast in the sunshine, its roots in the mud. Who--who that has loved it so long and so well-- The flower of his birthright would barter or sell? No: pride of the bay, while its ripples shall run, You shall pass, as an heirloom, from father to son! Let me part with the acres my grandfather bought, With the bonds that my uncle's kind legacy brought, With my bank-shares,--old "Union," whose ten per cent stock Stands stiff through the storms as the Eddystone rock; With my rights (or my wrongs) in the "Erie,"--alas! With my claims on the mournful and "Mutual Mass.;" With my "Phil. Wil. and Balt.," with my "C. B. and Q.;" But I never, no never, will sell out of you. We drink to thy past and thy future to-day, Strong right arm of Boston, stretched out o'er the bay. May the winds waft the wealth of all nations to thee, And thy dividends flow like the waves of the sea! A POEM SERVED TO ORDER PHI BETA KAPPA, JUNE 26, 1873 THE Caliph ordered up his cook, And, scowling with a fearful look That meant,--We stand no gammon,-- "To-morrow, just at two," he said, "Hassan, our cook, will lose his head, Or serve us up a salmon." "Great sire," the trembling chef replied, "Lord of the Earth and all beside, Sun, Moon, and Stars, and so on (Look in Eothen,-there you'll find A list of titles. Never mind; I have n't time to go on:) "Great sire," and so forth, thus he spoke, "Your Highness must intend a joke; It doesn't stand to reason For one to order salmon brought, Unless that fish is sometimes caught, And also is in season. "Our luck of late is shocking bad, In fact, the latest catch we had (We kept the matter shady), But, hauling in our nets,--alack! We found no salmon, but a sack That held your honored Lady!" "Allah is great!" the Caliph said, "My poor Zuleika, you are dead, I once took interest in you." "Perhaps, my Lord, you'd like to know We cut the lines and let her go." "Allah be praised! Continue." "It is n't hard one's hook to bait, And, squatting down, to watch and wait, To see the cork go under; At last suppose you've got your bite, You twitch away with all your might,-- You've hooked an eel, by thunder!" The Caliph patted Hassan's head "Slave, thou hast spoken well," he said, "And won thy master's favor. Yes; since what happened t' other morn The salmon of the Golden Horn Might have a doubtful flavor. "That last remark about the eel Has also justice that we feel Quite to our satisfaction. To-morrow we dispense with fish, And, for the present, if you wish, You'll keep your bulbous fraction." "Thanks! thanks!" the grateful chef replied, His nutrient feature showing wide The gleam of arches dental: "To cut my head off wouldn't pay, I find it useful every day, As well as ornamental." . . . . . . . . . . . . . Brothers, I hope you will not fail To see the moral of my tale And kindly to receive it. You know your anniversary pie Must have its crust, though hard and dry, And some prefer to leave it. How oft before these youths were born I've fished in Fancy's Golden Horn For what the Muse might send me! How gayly then I cast the line, When all the morning sky was mine, And Hope her flies would lend me! And now I hear our despot's call, And come, like Hassan, to the hall,-- If there's a slave, I am one,-- My bait no longer flies, but worms! I 've caught--Lord bless me! how he squirms! An eel, and not a salmon! THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH READ AT THE MEETING OF THE HARVARD ALUMNI ASSOCIATION, JUNE 25, 1873 THE fount the Spaniard sought in vain Through all the land of flowers Leaps glittering from the sandy plain Our classic grove embowers; Here youth, unchanging, blooms and smiles, Here dwells eternal spring, And warm from Hope's elysian isles The winds their perfume bring. Here every leaf is in the bud, Each singing throat in tune, And bright o'er evening's silver flood Shines the young crescent moon. What wonder Age forgets his staff And lays his glasses down, And gray-haired grandsires look and laugh As when their locks were brown! With ears grown dull and eyes grown dim They greet the joyous day That calls them to the fountain's brim To wash their years away. What change has clothed the ancient sire In sudden youth? For, to! The Judge, the Doctor, and the Squire Are Jack and Bill and Joe! And be his titles what they will, In spite of manhood's claim The graybeard is a school-boy still And loves his school-boy name; It calms the ruler's stormy breast Whom hurrying care pursues, And brings a sense of peace and rest, Like slippers after shoes.-- And what are all the prizes won To youth's enchanted view? And what is all the man has done To what the boy may do? O blessed fount, whose waters flow Alike for sire and son, That melts our winter's frost and snow And makes all ages one! I pledge the sparkling fountain's tide, That flings its golden shower With age to fill and youth to guide, Still fresh in morning flower Flow on with ever-widening stream, In ever-brightening morn,-- Our story's pride, our future's dream, The hope of times unborn! NO TIME LIKE THE OLD TIME THERE is no time like the old time, when you and I were young, When the buds of April blossomed, and the birds of spring-time sung! The garden's brightest glories by summer suns are nursed, But oh, the sweet, sweet violets, the flowers that opened first! There is no place like the old place, where you and I were born, Where we lifted first our eyelids on the splendors of the morn From the milk-white breast that warmed us, from the clinging arms that bore, Where the dear eyes glistened o'er us that will look on us no more! There is no friend like the old friend, who has shared our morning days, No greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise Fame is the scentless sunflower, with gaudy crown of gold; But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold. There is no love like the old love, that we courted in our pride; Though our leaves are falling, falling, and we're fading side by side, There are blossoms all around us with the colors of our dawn, And we live in borrowed sunshine when the day-star is withdrawn. There are no times like the old times,--they shall never be forgot! There is no place like the old place,--keep green the dear old spot! There are no friends like our old friends,--may Heaven prolong their lives There are no loves like our old loves,--God bless our loving wives! 1865. A HYMN OF PEACE SUNG AT THE "JUBILEE," JUNE 15, 1869, TO THE MUSIC OF SELLER'S "AMERICAN HYMN" ANGEL of Peace, thou hast wandered too long! Spread thy white wings to the sunshine of love! Come while our voices are blended in song,-- Fly to our ark like the storm-beaten dove! Fly to our ark on the wings of the dove,-- Speed o'er the far-sounding billows of song, Crowned with thine olive-leaf garland of love,-- Angel of Peace, thou hast waited too long! Joyous we meet, on this altar of thine Mingling the gifts we have gathered for thee, Sweet with the odors of myrtle and pine, Breeze of the prairie and breath of the sea,-- Meadow and mountain and forest and sea! Sweet is the fragrance of myrtle and pine, Sweeter the incense we offer to thee, Brothers once more round this altar of thine! Angels of Bethlehem, answer the strain! Hark! a new birth-song is filling the sky!-- Loud as the storm-wind that tumbles the main Bid the full breath of the organ reply,-- Let the loud tempest of voices reply,-- Roll its long surge like the-earth-shaking main! Swell the vast song till it mounts to the sky! Angels of Bethlehem, echo the strain! NOTES. THE BOYS. The members of the Harvard College class of 1829 referred to in this poem are: "Doctor," Francis Thomas; "Judge," G. T. Bigelow, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts; "O Speaker," Hon. Francis B. Crowninshield, Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives; "Mr. Mayor," G. W. Richardson, of Worcester,Mass.; "Member of Congress," Hon. George T. Davis; "Reverend," James Freeman Clarke; "boy with the grave mathematical look," Benjamin Peirce; "boy with a three-decker brain," Judge Benjamin R. Curtis, of the Supreme Court of the United States; "nice youngster of excellent pith," S. F. Smith, author of "My Country, 't is of Thee." "That lovely, bright-eyed boy." William Sturgis. "Who faced the storm so long." Francis B. Crowninshield. "Our many featured friend." George T. Davis. "The close-clinging dulcamara." The "bitter-sweet" of New England is the _Celastrus scandens_, "bourreau des arbres" of the Canadian French. "All armed with picks and spades." The captured slaves were at this time organized as pioneers. THE POETICAL WORKS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES VOL. III CONTENTS BUNKER-HILL BATTLE AND OTHER POEMS GRANDMOTHER'S STORY OF BUNKER-HILL BATTLE AT THE "ATLANTIC" DINNER, DECEMBER 15, 1874 "LUCY." FOR HER GOLDEN WEDDING, OCTOBER 18, 1875 HYMN FOR THE INAUGURATION OF THE STATUE OF GOVERNOR ANDREW, HINGHAM, OCTOBER 7, 1875 A MEMORIAL TRIBUTE TO DR. SAMUEL G. HOWE JOSEPH WARREN, M. D. OLD CAMBRIDGE, JULY 3, 1875 WELCOME TO THE NATIONS, PHILADELPHIA, JULY 4, 1876 A FAMILIAR LETTER UNSATISFIED HOW THE OLD HORSE WON THE BET AN APPEAL FOR "THE OLD SOUTH" THE FIRST FAN To R. B. H. THE SHIP OF STATE A FAMILY RECORD THE IRON GATE AND OTHER POEMS. THE IRON GATE VESTIGIA QUINQUE RETRORSUM MY AVIARY ON THE THRESHOLD TO GEORGE PEABODY AT THE PAPYRUS CLUB FOR WHITTIER'S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY TWO SONNETS: HARVARD THE COMING ERA IN RESPONSE FOR THE MOORE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION TO JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE WELCOME TO THE CHICAGO COMMERCIAL CLUB AMERICAN ACADEMY CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION THE SCHOOL-BOY THE SILENT MELODY OUR HOME--OUR COUNTRY POEM AT THE CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY DINNER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL SOCIETY RHYMES OF A LIFE-TIME BEFORE THE CURFEW AT MY FIRESIDE AT THE SATURDAY CLUB OUR DEAD SINGER. H. W. L. TWO POEMS TO HARRIET BEECHER STOWE ON HER SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY. I. AT THE SUMMIT II. THE WORLD'S HOMAGE A WELCOME TO DR. BENJAMIN APTHORP GOULD TO FREDERICK HENRY HEDGE ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY TO JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL TO JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY PRELUDE TO A VOLUME PRINTED IN RAISED LETTERS FOR THE BLIND BOSTON TO FLORENCE AT THE UNITARIAN FESTIVAL, MARCH 8, 1882 POEM FOR THE TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDING OF HARVARD COLLEGE POST-PRANDIAL: PHI BETA KAPPA, 1881 THE FLANEUR: DURING THE TRANSIT OF VENUS, 1882 AVE KING'S CHAPEL READ AT THE TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY HYMN FOR THE SAME OCCASION HYMN.--THE WORD OF PROMISE HYMN READ AT THE DEDICATION OF THE OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES HOSPITAL AT HUDSON, WISCONSIN, JUNE 7, 1887 ON THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD THE GOLDEN FLOWER HAIL, COLUMBIA! POEM FOR THE DEDICATION OF THE FOUNTAIN AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON, PRESENTED BY GEORGE CHILDS, OF PHILADELPHIA TO THE POETS WHO ONLY READ AND LISTEN FOR THE DEDICATION OF THE NEW CITY LIBRARY FOR THE WINDOW IN ST. MARGARET'S JAMES RUSSELL LO WELL: 1819-1891 POEMS FROM OVER THE TEACUPS. TO THE ELEVEN LADIES WHO PRESENTED ME WITH A SILVER LOVING CUP THE PEAU DE CHAGRIN OF STATE STREET CACOETHES SCRIBENDI THE ROSE AND THE FERN I LIKE YOU AND I LOVE YOU LA MAISON D'OR BAR HARBOR TOO YOUNG FOR LOVE THE BROOMSTICK TRAIN; OR, THE RETURN OF THE WITCHES TARTARUS AT THE TURN OF THE ROAD INVITA MINERVA READINGS OVER THE TEACUPS TO MY OLD READERS THE BANKER'S SECRET THE EXILE'S SECRET THE LOVER'S SECRET THE STATESMAN'S SECRET THE MOTHER'S SECRET THE SECRET OF THE STARS VERSES FROM THE OLDEST PORTFOLIO FIRST VERSES: TRANSLATION FROM THE THE MEETING OF THE DRYADS THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR THE TOADSTOOL THE SPECTRE PIG TO A CAGED LION THE STAR AND THE WATER-LILY ILLUSTRATION OF A PICTURE: "A SPANISH GIRL REVERIE" A ROMAN AQUEDUCT FROM A BACHELOR'S PRIVATE JOURNAL LA GRISETTE OUR YANKEE GIRLS L'INCONNUE STANZAS LINES BY A CLERK THE PHILOSOPHER TO HIS LOVE THE POET'S LOT TO A BLANK SHEET OF PAPER TO THE PORTRAIT OF "A GENTLEMAN" IN THE ATHENAEUM GALLERY THE BALLAD OF THE OYSTERMAN A NOONTIDE LYRIC THE HOT SEASON A PORTRAIT AN EVENING THOUGHT. WRITTEN AT SEA THE WASP AND THE HORNET "QUI VIVE?" NOTES BUNKER-HILL BATTLE AND OTHER POEMS 1874-1877 GRANDMOTHER'S STORY OF BUNKER-HILL BATTLE AS SHE SAW IT FROM THE BELFRY 'T is like stirring living embers when, at eighty, one remembers All the achings and the quakings of "the times that tried men's souls"; When I talk of Whig and Tory, when I tell the Rebel story, To you the words are ashes, but to me they're burning coals. I had heard the muskets' rattle of the April running battle; Lord Percy's hunted soldiers, I can see their red-coats still; But a deadly chill comes o'er me, as the day looms up before me, When a thousand men lay bleeding on the slopes of Bunker's Hill. 'T was a peaceful summer's morning, when the first thing gave us warning Was the booming of the cannon from the river and the shore: "Child," says grandma, "what 's the matter, what is all this noise and clatter? Have those scalping Indian devils come to murder us once more?" Poor old soul! my sides were shaking in the midst of all my quaking, To hear her talk of Indians when the guns began to roar: She had seen the burning village, and the slaughter and the pillage, When the Mohawks killed her father with their bullets through his door. Then I said, "Now, dear old granny, don't you fret and worry any, For I'll soon come back and tell you whether this is work or play; There can't be mischief in it, so I won't be gone a minute"-- For a minute then I started. I was gone the live-long day. No time for bodice-lacing or for looking-glass grimacing; Down my hair went as I hurried, tumbling half-way to my heels; God forbid your ever knowing, when there's blood around her flowing, How the lonely, helpless daughter of a quiet house-hold feels! In the street I heard a thumping; and I knew it was the stumping Of the Corporal, our old neighbor, on that wooden leg he wore, With a knot of women round him,-it was lucky I had found him, So I followed with the others, and the Corporal marched before. They were making for the steeple,--the old soldier and his people; The pigeons circled round us as we climbed the creaking stair. Just across the narrow river--oh, so close it made me shiver!-- Stood a fortress on the hill-top that but yesterday was bare. Not slow our eyes to find it; well we knew who stood behind it, Though the earthwork hid them from us, and the stubborn walls were dumb Here were sister, wife, and mother, looking wild upon each other, And their lips were white with terror as they said, THE HOUR HAS COME! The morning slowly wasted, not a morsel had we tasted, And our heads were almost splitting with the cannons' deafening thrill, When a figure tall and stately round the rampart strode sedately; It was PRESCOTT, one since told me; he commanded on the hill. Every woman's heart grew bigger when we saw his manly figure, With the banyan buckled round it, standing up so straight and tall; Like a gentleman of leisure who is strolling out for pleasure, Through the storm of shells and cannon-shot he walked around the wall. At eleven the streets were swarming, for the red-coats' ranks were forming; At noon in marching order they were moving to the piers; How the bayonets gleamed and glistened, as we looked far down, and listened To the trampling and the drum-beat of the belted grenadiers! At length the men have started, with a cheer (it seemed faint-hearted), In their scarlet regimentals, with their knapsacks on their backs, And the reddening, rippling water, as after a sea-fight's slaughter, Round the barges gliding onward blushed like blood along their tracks. So they crossed to the other border, and again they formed in order; And the boats came back for soldiers, came for soldiers, soldiers still: The time seemed everlasting to us women faint and fasting,-- At last they're moving, marching, marching proudly up the hill. We can see the bright steel glancing all along the lines advancing,-- Now the front rank fires a volley,--they have thrown away their shot; For behind their earthwork lying, all the balls above them flying, Our people need not hurry; so they wait and answer not. Then the Corporal, our old cripple (he would swear sometimes and tipple), He had heard the bullets whistle (in the old French war) before,-- Calls out in words of jeering, just as if they all were hearing,-- And his wooden leg thumps fiercely on the dusty belfry floor:-- "Oh! fire away, ye villains, and earn King George's shillin's, But ye 'll waste a ton of powder afore a 'rebel' falls; You may bang the dirt and welcome, they're as safe as Dan'l Malcolm Ten foot beneath the gravestone that you've splintered with your balls!" In the hush of expectation, in the awe and trepidation Of the dread approaching moment, we are well-nigh breathless all; Though the rotten bars are failing on the rickety belfry railing, We are crowding up against them like the waves against a wall. Just a glimpse (the air is clearer), they are nearer,--nearer,--nearer, When a flash--a curling smoke-wreath--then a crash--the steeple shakes-- The deadly truce is ended; the tempest's shroud is rended; Like a morning mist it gathered, like a thunder-cloud it breaks! Oh the sight our eyes discover as the blue-black smoke blows over! The red-coats stretched in windrows as a mower rakes his hay; Here a scarlet heap is lying, there a headlong crowd is flying Like a billow that has broken and is shivered into spray. Then we cried, "The troops are routed! they are beat--it can't be doubted! God be thanked, the fight is over!"--Ah! the grim old soldier's smile! "Tell us, tell us why you look so?" (we could hardly speak, we shook so), "Are they beaten? Are they beaten? ARE they beaten?"--"Wait a while." Oh the trembling and the terror! for too soon we saw our error: They are baffled, not defeated; we have driven them back in vain; And the columns that were scattered, round the colors that were tattered, Toward the sullen, silent fortress turn their belted breasts again. All at once, as we are gazing, lo the roofs of Charlestown blazing! They have fired the harmless village; in an hour it will be down! The Lord in heaven confound them, rain his fire and brimstone round them, The robbing, murdering red-coats, that would burn a peaceful town! They are marching, stern and solemn; we can see each massive column As they near the naked earth-mound with the slanting walls so steep. Have our soldiers got faint-hearted, and in noiseless haste departed? Are they panic-struck and helpless? Are they palsied or asleep? Now! the walls they're almost under! scarce a rod the foes asunder! Not a firelock flashed against them! up the earth-work they will swarm! But the words have scarce been spoken, when the ominous calm is broken, And a bellowing crash has emptied all the vengeance of the storm! So again, with murderous slaughter, pelted backwards to the water, Fly Pigot's running heroes and the frightened braves of Howe; And we shout, "At last they're done for, it's their barges they have run for: They are beaten, beaten, beaten; and the battle 's over now!" And we looked, poor timid creatures, on the rough old soldier's features, Our lips afraid to question, but he knew what we would ask: "Not sure," he said; "keep quiet,--once more, I guess, they 'll try it-- Here's damnation to the cut-throats!"--then he handed me his flask, Saying, "Gal, you're looking shaky; have a drop of old Jamaiky; I 'm afeard there 'll be more trouble afore the job is done"; So I took one scorching swallow; dreadful faint I felt and hollow, Standing there from early morning when the firing was begun. All through those hours of trial I had watched a calm clock dial, As the hands kept creeping, creeping,--they were creeping round to four, When the old man said, "They're forming with their bagonets fixed for storming: It 's the death-grip that's a coming,--they will try the works once more." With brazen trumpets blaring, the flames behind them glaring, The deadly wall before them, in close array they come; Still onward, upward toiling, like a dragon's fold uncoiling,-- Like the rattlesnake's shrill warning the reverberating drum. Over heaps all torn and gory--shall I tell the fearful story, How they surged above the breastwork, as a sea breaks over a deck; How, driven, yet scarce defeated, our worn-out men retreated, With their powder-horns all emptied, like the swimmers from a wreck? It has all been told and painted; as for me, they say I fainted, And the wooden-legged old Corporal stumped with me down the stair: When I woke from dreams affrighted the evening lamps were lighted,-- On the floor a youth was lying; his bleeding breast was bare. And I heard through all the flurry, "Send for WARREN! hurry! hurry! Tell him here's a soldier bleeding, and he 'll come and dress his wound!" Ah, we knew not till the morrow told its tale of death and sorrow, How the starlight found him stiffened on the dark and bloody ground. Who the youth was, what his name was, where the place from which he came was, Who had brought him from the battle, and had left him at our door, He could not speak to tell us; but 't was one of our brave fellows, As the homespun plainly showed us which the dying soldier wore. For they all thought he was dying, as they gathered round him crying,-- And they said, "Oh, how they'll miss him!" and, "What will his mother do?" Then, his eyelids just unclosing like a child's that has been dozing, He faintly murmured, "Mother!"--and--I saw his eyes were blue. "Why, grandma, how you 're winking!" Ah, my child, it sets me thinking Of a story not like this one. Well, he somehow lived along; So we came to know each other, and I nursed him like a--mother, Till at last he stood before me, tall, and rosy-checked, and strong. And we sometimes walked together in the pleasant summer weather,-- "Please to tell us what his name was?" Just your own, my little dear,-- There's his picture Copley painted: we became so well acquainted, That--in short, that's why I 'm grandma, and you children all are here! AT THE "ATLANTIC" DINNER DECEMBER 15, 1874 I SUPPOSE it's myself that you're making allusion to And bringing the sense of dismay and confusion to. Of course some must speak,--they are always selected to, But pray what's the reason that I am expected to? I'm not fond of wasting my breath as those fellows do; That want to be blowing forever as bellows do; Their legs are uneasy, but why will you jog any That long to stay quiet beneath the mahogany? Why, why call me up with your battery of flatteries? You say "He writes poetry,"--that 's what the matter is "It costs him no trouble--a pen full of ink or two And the poem is done in the time of a wink or two; As for thoughts--never mind--take the ones that lie uppermost, And the rhymes used by Milton and Byron and Tupper most; The lines come so easy! at one end he jingles 'em, At the other with capital letters he shingles 'em,-- Why, the thing writes itself, and before he's half done with it He hates to stop writing, he has such good fun with it!" Ah, that is the way in which simple ones go about And draw a fine picture of things they don't know about! We all know a kitten, but come to a catamount The beast is a stranger when grown up to that amount, (A stranger we rather prefer should n't visit us, A _felis_ whose advent is far from felicitous.) The boy who can boast that his trap has just got a mouse Must n't draw it and write underneath "hippopotamus"; Or say unveraciously, "This is an elephant,"-- Don't think, let me beg, these examples irrelevant,-- What they mean is just this--that a thing to be painted well Should always be something with which we're acquainted well. You call on your victim for "things he has plenty of,-- Those copies of verses no doubt at least twenty of; His desk is crammed full, for he always keeps writing 'em And reading to friends as his way of delighting 'em!" I tell you this writing of verses means business,-- It makes the brain whirl in a vortex of dizziness You think they are scrawled in the languor of laziness-- I tell you they're squeezed by a spasm of craziness, A fit half as bad as the staggering vertigos That seize a poor fellow and down in the dirt he goes! And therefore it chimes with the word's etytology That the sons of Apollo are great on apology, For the writing of verse is a struggle mysterious And the gayest of rhymes is a matter that's serious. For myself, I'm relied on by friends in extremities, And I don't mind so much if a comfort to them it is; 'T is a pleasure to please, and the straw that can tickle us Is a source of enjoyment though slightly ridiculous. I am up for a--something--and since I 've begun with it, I must give you a toast now before I have done with it. Let me pump at my wits as they pumped the Cochituate That moistened--it may be--the very last bit you ate: Success to our publishers, authors and editors To our debtors good luck,--pleasant dreams to our creditors; May the monthly grow yearly, till all we are groping for Has reached the fulfilment we're all of us hoping for; Till the bore through the tunnel--it makes me let off a sigh To think it may possibly ruin my prophecy-- Has been punned on so often 't will never provoke again One mild adolescent to make the old joke again; Till abstinent, all-go-to-meeting society Has forgotten the sense of the word inebriety; Till the work that poor Hannah and Bridget and Phillis do The humanized, civilized female gorillas do; Till the roughs, as we call them, grown loving and dutiful, Shall worship the true and the pure and the beautiful, And, preying no longer as tiger and vulture do, All read the "Atlantic" as persons of culture do! "LUCY" FOR HER GOLDEN WEDDING, OCTOBER 18, 1875 "Lucy."--The old familiar name Is now, as always, pleasant, Its liquid melody the same Alike in past or present; Let others call you what they will, I know you'll let me use it; To me your name is Lucy still, I cannot bear to lose it. What visions of the past return With Lucy's image blended! What memories from the silent urn Of gentle lives long ended! What dreams of childhood's fleeting morn, What starry aspirations, That filled the misty days unborn With fancy's coruscations! Ah, Lucy, life has swiftly sped From April to November; The summer blossoms all are shed That you and I remember; But while the vanished years we share With mingling recollections, How all their shadowy features wear The hue of old affections! Love called you. He who stole your heart Of sunshine half bereft us; Our household's garland fell apart The morning that you left us; The tears of tender girlhood streamed Through sorrow's opening sluices; Less sweet our garden's roses seemed, Less blue its flower-de-luces. That old regret is turned to smiles, That parting sigh to greeting; I send my heart-throb fifty miles Through every line 't is beating; God grant you many and happy years, Till when the last has crowned you The dawn of endless day appears, And heaven is shining round you! October 11, 1875. HYMN FOR THE INAUGURATION OF THE STATUE OF GOVERNOR ANDREW, HINGHAM, OCTOBER 7, 1875 BEHOLD the shape our eyes have known! It lives once more in changeless stone; So looked in mortal face and form Our guide through peril's deadly storm. But hushed the beating heart we knew, That heart so tender, brave, and true, Firm as the rooted mountain rock, Pure as the quarry's whitest block! Not his beneath the blood-red star To win the soldier's envied sear; Unarmed he battled for the right, In Duty's never-ending fight. Unconquered will, unslumbering eye, Faith such as bids the martyr die, The prophet's glance, the master's hand To mould the work his foresight planned, These were his gifts; what Heaven had lent For justice, mercy, truth, he spent, First to avenge the traitorous blow, And first to lift the vanquished foe. Lo, thus he stood; in danger's strait The pilot of the Pilgrim State! Too large his fame for her alone,-- A nation claims him as her own! A MEMORIAL TRIBUTE READ AT THE MEETING HELD AT MUSIC HALL, FEBRUARY 8, 1876, IN MEMORY OF DR. SAMUEL G. HOWE I. LEADER of armies, Israel's God, Thy soldier's fight is won! Master, whose lowly path he trod, Thy servant's work is done! No voice is heard from Sinai's steep Our wandering feet to guide; From Horeb's rock no waters leap; No Jordan's waves divide; No prophet cleaves our western sky On wheels of whirling fire; No shepherds hear the song on high Of heaven's angelic choir. Yet here as to the patriarch's tent God's angel comes a guest; He comes on heaven's high errand sent, In earth's poor raiment drest. We see no halo round his brow Till love its own recalls, And, like a leaf that quits the bough, The mortal vesture falls. In autumn's chill declining day, Ere winter's killing frost, The message came; so passed away The friend our earth has lost. Still, Father, in thy love we trust; Forgive us if we mourn The saddening hour that laid in dust His robe of flesh outworn. II. How long the wreck-strewn journey seems To reach the far-off past That woke his youth from peaceful dreams With Freedom's trumpet-blast. Along her classic hillsides rung The Paynim's battle-cry, And like a red-cross knight he sprung For her to live or die. No trustier service claimed the wreath For Sparta's bravest son; No truer soldier sleeps beneath The mound of Marathon; Yet not for him the warrior's grave In front of angry foes; To lift, to shield, to help, to save, The holier task he chose. He touched the eyelids of the blind, And lo! the veil withdrawn, As o'er the midnight of the mind He led the light of dawn. He asked not whence the fountains roll No traveller's foot has found, But mapped the desert of the soul Untracked by sight or sound. What prayers have reached the sapphire throne, By silent fingers spelt, For him who first through depths unknown His doubtful pathway felt, Who sought the slumbering sense that lay Close shut with bolt and bar, And showed awakening thought the ray Of reason's morning star. Where'er he moved, his shadowy form The sightless orbs would seek, And smiles of welcome light and warm The lips that could not speak. No labored line, no sculptor's art, Such hallowed memory needs; His tablet is the human heart, His record loving deeds. III. The rest that earth denied is thine,-- Ah, is it rest? we ask, Or, traced by knowledge more divine, Some larger, nobler task? Had but those boundless fields of blue One darkened sphere like this; But what has heaven for thee to do In realms of perfect bliss? No cloud to lift, no mind to clear, No rugged path to smooth, No struggling soul to help and cheer, No mortal grief to soothe! Enough; is there a world of love, No more we ask to know; The hand will guide thy ways above That shaped thy task below. JOSEPH WARREN, M. D. TRAINED in the holy art whose lifted shield Wards off the darts a never-slumbering foe, By hearth and wayside lurking, waits to throw, Oppression taught his helpful arm to wield The slayer's weapon: on the murderous field The fiery bolt he challenged laid him low, Seeking its noblest victim. Even so The charter of a nation must be sealed! The healer's brow the hero's honors crowned, From lowliest duty called to loftiest deed. Living, the oak-leaf wreath his temples bound; Dying, the conqueror's laurel was his meed, Last on the broken ramparts' turf to bleed Where Freedom's victory in defeat was found. June 11, 1875. OLD CAMBRIDGE JULY 3, 1875 AND can it be you've found a place Within this consecrated space, That makes so fine a show, For one of Rip Van Winkle's race? And is it really so? Who wants an old receipted bill? Who fishes in the Frog-pond still? Who digs last year's potato hill?-- That's what he'd like to know! And were it any spot on earth Save this dear home that gave him birth Some scores of years ago, He had not come to spoil your mirth And chill your festive glow; But round his baby-nest he strays, With tearful eye the scene surveys, His heart unchanged by changing days, That's what he'd have you know. Can you whose eyes not yet are dim Live o'er the buried past with him, And see the roses blow When white-haired men were Joe and Jim Untouched by winter's snow? Or roll the years back one by one As Judah's monarch backed the sun, And see the century just begun?-- That's what he'd like to know! I come, but as the swallow dips, Just touching with her feather-tips The shining wave below, To sit with pleasure-murmuring lips And listen to the flow Of Elmwood's sparkling Hippocrene, To tread once more my native green, To sigh unheard, to smile unseen,-- That's what I'd have you know. But since the common lot I've shared (We all are sitting "unprepared," Like culprits in a row, Whose heads are down, whose necks are bared To wait the headsman's blow), I'd like to shift my task to you, By asking just a thing or two About the good old times I knew,-- Here's what I want to know. The yellow meetin' house--can you tell Just where it stood before it fell Prey of the vandal foe,-- Our dear old temple, loved so well, By ruthless hands laid low? Where, tell me, was the Deacon's pew? Whose hair was braided in a queue? (For there were pig-tails not a few,)-- That's what I'd like to know. The bell--can you recall its clang? And how the seats would slam and bang? The voices high and low? The basso's trump before he sang? The viol and its bow? Where was it old Judge Winthrop sat? Who wore the last three-cornered hat? Was Israel Porter lean or fat?-- That's what I'd like to know. Tell where the market used to be That stood beside the murdered tree? Whose dog to church would go? Old Marcus Reemie, who was he? Who were the brothers Snow? Does not your memory slightly fail About that great September gale?-- Whereof one told a moving tale, As Cambridge boys should know. When Cambridge was a simple town, Say just when Deacon William Brown (Last door in yonder row), For honest silver counted down, His groceries would bestow?-- For those were days when money meant Something that jingled as you went,-- No hybrid like the nickel cent, I'd have you all to know, But quarter, ninepence, pistareen, And fourpence hapennies in between, All metal fit to show, Instead of rags in stagnant green, The scum of debts we owe; How sad to think such stuff should be Our Wendell's cure-all recipe,-- Not Wendell H., but Wendell P.,-- The one you all must know! I question--but you answer not-- Dear me! and have I quite forgot How fivescore years ago, Just on this very blessed spot, The summer leaves below, Before his homespun ranks arrayed In green New England's elmbough shade The great Virginian drew the blade King George full soon should know! O George the Third! you found it true Our George was more than double you, For nature made him so. Not much an empire's crown can do If brains are scant and slow,-- Ah, not like that his laurel crown Whose presence gilded with renown Our brave old Academic town, As all her children know! So here we meet with loud acclaim To tell mankind that here he came, With hearts that throb and glow; Ours is a portion of his fame Our trumpets needs must blow! On yonder hill the Lion fell, But here was chipped the eagle's shell,-- That little hatchet did it well, As all the world shall know! WELCOME TO THE NATIONS PHILADELPHIA, JULY 4, 1876 BRIGHT on the banners of lily and rose Lo! the last sun of our century sets! Wreathe the black cannon that scowled on our foes, All but her friendships the nation forgets All but her friends and their welcome forgets! These are around her; but where are her foes? Lo, while the sun of her century sets, Peace with her garlands of lily and rose! Welcome! a shout like the war trumpet's swell Wakes the wild echoes that slumber around Welcome! it quivers from Liberty's bell; Welcome! the walls of her temple resound! Hark! the gray walls of her temple resound Fade the far voices o'er hillside and dell; Welcome! still whisper the echoes around; Welcome I still trembles on Liberty's bell! Thrones of the continents! isles of the sea Yours are the garlands of peace we entwine; Welcome, once more, to the land of the free, Shadowed alike by the pahn and the pine; Softly they murmur, the palm and the pine, "Hushed is our strife, in the land of the free"; Over your children their branches entwine, Thrones of the continents! isles of the sea! A FAMILIAR LETTER TO SEVERAL CORRESPONDENTS YES, write, if you want to, there's nothing like trying; Who knows what a treasure your casket may hold? I'll show you that rhyming's as easy as lying, If you'll listen to me while the art I unfold. Here's a book full of words; one can choose as he fancies, As a painter his tint, as a workman his tool; Just think! all the poems and plays and romances Were drawn out of this, like the fish from a pool! You can wander at will through its syllabled mazes, And take all you want,--not a copper they cost,-- What is there to hinder your picking out phrases For an epic as clever as "Paradise Lost"? Don't mind if the index of sense is at zero, Use words that run smoothly, whatever they mean; Leander and Lilian and Lillibullero Are much the same thing in the rhyming machine. There are words so delicious their sweetness will smother That boarding-school flavor of which we 're afraid,-- There is "lush" is a good one, and "swirl" another,-- Put both in one stanza, its fortune is made. With musical murmurs and rhythmical closes You can cheat us of smiles when you've nothing to tell; You hand us a nosegay of milliner's roses, And we cry with delight, "Oh, how sweet they do smell!" Perhaps you will answer all needful conditions For winning the laurels to which you aspire, By docking the tails of the two prepositions I' the style o' the bards you so greatly admire. As for subjects of verse, they are only too plenty For ringing the changes on metrical chimes; A maiden, a moonbeam, a lover of twenty Have filled that great basket with bushels of rhymes. Let me show you a picture--'tis far from irrelevant-- By a famous old hand in the arts of design; 'T is only a photographed sketch of an elephant,-- The name of the draughtsman was Rembrandt of Rhine. How easy! no troublesome colors to lay on, It can't have fatigued him,--no, not in the least,-- A dash here and there with a hap-hazard crayon, And there stands the wrinkled-skinned, baggy-limbed beast. Just so with your verse,--'t is as easy as sketching,-- You--can reel off a song without knitting your brow, As lightly as Rembrandt a drawing or etching; It is nothing at all, if you only know how. Well; imagine you've printed your volume of verses: Your forehead is wreathed with the garland of fame, Your poems the eloquent school-boy rehearses, Her album the school-girl presents for your name; Each morning the post brings you autograph letters; You'll answer them promptly,--an hour is n't much For the honor of sharing a page with your betters, With magistrates, members of Congress, and such. Of course you're delighted to serve the committees That come with requests from the country all round, You would grace the occasion with poems and ditties When they've got a new schoolhouse, or poor-house, or pound. With a hymn for the saints and a song for the sinners, You go and are welcome wherever you please; You're a privileged guest at all manner of dinners, You've a seat on the platform among the grandees. At length your mere presence becomes a sensation, Your cup of enjoyment is filled to its brim With the pleasure Horatian of digitmonstration, As the whisper runs round of "That's he!" or "That Is him!" But remember, O dealer in phrases sonorous, So daintily chosen, so tunefully matched, Though you soar with the wings of the cherubim o'er us, The ovum was human from which you were hatched. No will of your own with its puny compulsion Can summon the spirit that quickens the lyre; It comes, if at all, like the Sibyl's convulsion And touches the brain with a finger of fire. So perhaps, after all, it's as well to be quiet, If you've nothing you think is worth saying in prose, As to furnish a meal of their cannibal diet To the critics, by publishing, as you propose. But it's all of no use, and I 'm sorry I've written,-- I shall see your thin volume some day on my shelf; For the rhyming tarantula surely has bitten, And music must cure you, so pipe it yourself. UNSATISFIED "ONLY a housemaid!" She looked from the kitchen,-- Neat was the kitchen and tidy was she; There at her window a sempstress sat stitching; "Were I a sempstress, how happy I'd be!" "Only a Queen!" She looked over the waters,-- Fair was her kingdom and mighty was she; There sat an Empress, with Queens for her daughters; "Were I an Empress, how happy I'd be!" Still the old frailty they all of them trip in! Eve in her daughters is ever the same; Give her all Eden, she sighs for a pippin; Give her an Empire, she pines for a name! May 8, 1876. HOW THE OLD HORSE WON THE BET DEDICATED BY A CONTRIBUTOR TO THE COLLEGIAN, 1830, TO THE EDITORS OF THE HARVARD ADVOCATE, 1876. 'T WAS on the famous trotting-ground, The betting men were gathered round From far and near; the "cracks" were there Whose deeds the sporting prints declare The swift g. m., Old Hiram's nag, The fleet s. h., Dan Pfeiffer's brag, With these a third--and who is he That stands beside his fast b. g.? Budd Doble, whose catarrhal name So fills the nasal trump of fame. There too stood many a noted steed Of Messenger and Morgan breed; Green horses also, not a few; Unknown as yet what they could do; And all the hacks that know so well The scourgings of the Sunday swell. Blue are the skies of opening day; The bordering turf is green with May; The sunshine's golden gleam is thrown On sorrel, chestnut, bay, and roan; The horses paw and prance and neigh, Fillies and colts like kittens play, And dance and toss their rippled manes Shining and soft as silken skeins; Wagons and gigs are ranged about, And fashion flaunts her gay turn-out; Here stands--each youthful Jehu's dream The jointed tandem, ticklish team! And there in ampler breadth expand The splendors of the four-in-hand; On faultless ties and glossy tiles The lovely bonnets beam their smiles; (The style's the man, so books avow; The style's the woman, anyhow); From flounces frothed with creamy lace Peeps out the pug-dog's smutty face, Or spaniel rolls his liquid eye, Or stares the wiry pet of Skye,-- O woman, in your hours of ease So shy with us, so free with these! "Come on! I 'll bet you two to one I 'll make him do it!" "Will you? Done!" What was it who was bound to do? I did not hear and can't tell you,-- Pray listen till my story's through. Scarce noticed, back behind the rest, By cart and wagon rudely prest, The parson's lean and bony bay Stood harnessed in his one-horse shay-- Lent to his sexton for the day; (A funeral--so the sexton said; His mother's uncle's wife was dead.) Like Lazarus bid to Dives' feast, So looked the poor forlorn old beast; His coat was rough, his tail was bare, The gray was sprinkled in his hair; Sportsmen and jockeys knew him not, And yet they say he once could trot Among the fleetest of the town, Till something cracked and broke him down,-- The steed's, the statesman's, common lot! "And are we then so soon forgot?" Ah me! I doubt if one of you Has ever heard the name "Old Blue," Whose fame through all this region rung In those old days when I was young! "Bring forth the horse!" Alas! he showed Not like the one Mazeppa rode; Scant-maned, sharp-backed, and shaky-kneed, The wreck of what was once a steed, Lips thin, eyes hollow, stiff in joints; Yet not without his knowing points. The sexton laughing in his sleeve, As if 't were all a make-believe, Led forth the horse, and as he laughed Unhitched the breeching from a shaft, Unclasped the rusty belt beneath, Drew forth the snaffle from his teeth, Slipped off his head-stall, set him free From strap and rein,--a sight to see! So worn, so lean in every limb, It can't be they are saddling him! It is! his back the pig-skin strides And flaps his lank, rheumatic sides; With look of mingled scorn and mirth They buckle round the saddle-girth; With horsey wink and saucy toss A youngster throws his leg across, And so, his rider on his back, They lead him, limping, to the track, Far up behind the starting-point, To limber out each stiffened joint. As through the jeering crowd he past, One pitying look Old Hiram cast; "Go it, ye cripple, while ye can!" Cried out unsentimental Dan; "A Fast-Day dinner for the crows!" Budd Doble's scoffing shout arose. Slowly, as when the walking-beam First feels the gathering head of steam, With warning cough and threatening wheeze The stiff old charger crooks his knees; At first with cautious step sedate, As if he dragged a coach of state He's not a colt; he knows full well That time is weight and sure to tell; No horse so sturdy but he fears The handicap of twenty years. As through the throng on either hand The old horse nears the judges' stand, Beneath his jockey's feather-weight He warms a little to his gait, And now and then a step is tried That hints of something like a stride. "Go!"--Through his ear the summons stung As if a battle-trump had rung; The slumbering instincts long unstirred Start at the old familiar word; It thrills like flame through every limb,-- What mean his twenty years to him? The savage blow his rider dealt Fell on his hollow flanks unfelt; The spur that pricked his staring hide Unheeded tore his bleeding side; Alike to him are spur and rein,-- He steps a five-year-old again! Before the quarter pole was past, Old Hiram said, "He's going fast." Long ere the quarter was a half, The chuckling crowd had ceased to laugh; Tighter his frightened jockey clung As in a mighty stride he swung, The gravel flying in his track, His neck stretched out, his ears laid back, His tail extended all the while Behind him like a rat-tail file! Off went a shoe,--away it spun, Shot like a bullet from a gun; The quaking jockey shapes a prayer From scraps of oaths he used to swear; He drops his whip, he drops his rein, He clutches fiercely for a mane; He'll lose his hold--he sways and reels-- He'll slide beneath those trampling heels! The knees of many a horseman quake, The flowers on many a bonnet shake, And shouts arise from left and right, "Stick on! Stick on!" "Hould tight! Hould tight!" "Cling round his neck and don't let go--" "That pace can't hold--there! steady! whoa!" But like the sable steed that bore The spectral lover of Lenore, His nostrils snorting foam and fire, No stretch his bony limbs can tire; And now the stand he rushes by, And "Stop him!--stop him!" is the cry. Stand back! he 's only just begun-- He's having out three heats in one! "Don't rush in front! he'll smash your brains; But follow up and grab the reins!" Old Hiram spoke. Dan Pfeiffer heard, And sprang impatient at the word; Budd Doble started on his bay, Old Hiram followed on his gray, And off they spring, and round they go, The fast ones doing "all they know." Look! twice they follow at his heels, As round the circling course he wheels, And whirls with him that clinging boy Like Hector round the walls of Troy; Still on, and on, the third time round They're tailing off! they're losing ground! Budd Doble's nag begins to fail! Dan Pfeiffer's sorrel whisks his tail! And see! in spite of whip and shout, Old Hiram's mare is giving out! Now for the finish! at the turn, The old horse--all the rest astern-- Comes swinging in, with easy trot; By Jove! he's distanced all the lot! That trot no mortal could explain; Some said, "Old Dutchman come again!" Some took his time,--at least they tried, But what it was could none decide; One said he couldn't understand What happened to his second hand; One said 2.10; that could n't be-- More like two twenty-two or three; Old Hiram settled it at last; "The time was two--too dee-vel-ish fast!" The parson's horse had won the bet; It cost him something of a sweat; Back in the one-horse shay he went; The parson wondered what it meant, And murmured, with a mild surprise And pleasant twinkle of the eyes, That funeral must have been a trick, Or corpses drive at double-quick; I should n't wonder, I declare, If brother--Jehu--made the prayer! And this is all I have to say About that tough old trotting bay, Huddup! Huddup! G'lang! Good day! Moral for which this tale is told A horse can trot, for all he 's old. AN APPEAL FOR "THE OLD SOUTH" "While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand; When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall." FULL sevenscore years our city's pride-- The comely Southern spire-- Has cast its shadow, and defied The storm, the foe, the fire; Sad is the sight our eyes behold; Woe to the three-hilled town, When through the land the tale is told-- "The brave 'Old South' is down!" Let darkness blot the starless dawn That hears our children tell, "Here rose the walls, now wrecked and gone, Our fathers loved so well; Here, while his brethren stood aloof, The herald's blast was blown That shook St. Stephen's pillared roof And rocked King George's throne! "The home-bound wanderer of the main Looked from his deck afar, To where the gilded, glittering vane Shone like the evening star, And pilgrim feet from every clime The floor with reverence trod, Where holy memories made sublime The shrine of Freedom's God!" The darkened skies, alas! have seen Our monarch tree laid low, And spread in ruins o'er the green, But Nature struck the blow; No scheming thrift its downfall planned, It felt no edge of steel, No soulless hireling raised his hand The deadly stroke to deal. In bridal garlands, pale and mute, Still pleads the storied tower; These are the blossoms, but the fruit Awaits the golden shower; The spire still greets the morning sun,-- Say, shall it stand or fall? Help, ere the spoiler has begun! Help, each, and God help all! THE FIRST FAN READ AT A MEETING OF THE BOSTON BRIC-A-BRAC CLUB, FEBRUARY 21, 1877 WHEN rose the cry "Great Pan is dead!" And Jove's high palace closed its portal, The fallen gods, before they fled, Sold out their frippery to a mortal. "To whom?" you ask. I ask of you. The answer hardly needs suggestion; Of course it was the Wandering Jew,-- How could you put me such a question? A purple robe, a little worn, The Thunderer deigned himself to offer; The bearded wanderer laughed in scorn,-- You know he always was a scoffer. "Vife shillins! 't is a monstrous price; Say two and six and further talk shun." "Take it," cried Jove; "we can't be nice,-- 'T would fetch twice that at Leonard's auction." The ice was broken; up they came, All sharp for bargains, god and goddess, Each ready with the price to name For robe or head-dress, scarf or bodice. First Juno, out of temper, too,-- Her queenly forehead somewhat cloudy; Then Pallas in her stockings blue, Imposing, but a little dowdy. The scowling queen of heaven unrolled Before the Jew a threadbare turban "Three shillings." "One. 'T will suit some old Terrific feminine suburban." But as for Pallas,--how to tell In seemly phrase a fact so shocking? She pointed,--pray excuse me,--well, She pointed to her azure stocking. And if the honest truth were told, Its heel confessed the need of darning; "Gods!" low-bred Vulcan cried, "behold! There! that's what comes of too much larning!" Pale Proserpine came groping round, Her pupils dreadfully dilated With too much living underground,-- A residence quite overrated; This kerchief's what you want, I know,-- Don't cheat poor Venus of her cestus,-- You'll find it handy when you go To--you know where; it's pure asbestus. Then Phoebus of the silverr bow, And Hebe, dimpled as a baby, And Dian with the breast of snow, Chaser and chased--and caught, it may be: One took the quiver from her back, One held the cap he spent the night in, And one a bit of bric-a-brac, Such as the gods themselves delight in. Then Mars, the foe of human kind, Strode up and showed his suit of armor; So none at last was left behind Save Venus, the celestial charmer. Poor Venus! What had she to sell? For all she looked so fresh and jaunty, Her wardrobe, as I blush' to tell, Already seemed but quite too scanty. Her gems were sold, her sandals gone,-- She always would be rash and flighty,-- Her winter garments all in pawn, Alas for charming Aphrodite. The lady of a thousand loves, The darling of the old religion, Had only left of all the doves That drew her car one fan-tailed pigeon. How oft upon her finger-tips He perched, afraid of Cupid's arrow, Or kissed her on the rosebud lips, Like Roman Lesbia's loving sparrow! "My bird, I want your train," she cried; "Come, don't let's have a fuss about it; I'll make it beauty's pet and pride, And you'll be better off without it. "So vulgar! Have you noticed, pray, An earthly belle or dashing bride walk, And how her flounces track her way, Like slimy serpents on the sidewalk? "A lover's heart it quickly cools; In mine it kindles up enough rage To wring their necks. How can such fools Ask men to vote for woman suffrage?" The goddess spoke, and gently stripped Her bird of every caudal feather; A strand of gold-bright hair she clipped, And bound the glossy plumes together, And lo, the Fan! for beauty's hand, The lovely queen of beauty made it; The price she named was hard to stand, But Venus smiled: the Hebrew paid it. Jove, Juno, Venus, where are you? Mars, Mercury, Phoebus, Neptune, Saturn? But o'er the world the Wandering Jew Has borne the Fan's celestial pattern. So everywhere we find the Fan,-- In lonely isles of the Pacific, In farthest China and Japan,-- Wherever suns are sudorific. Nay, even the oily Esquimaux In summer court its cooling breezes,-- In fact, in every clime 't is so, No matter if it fries or freezes. And since from Aphrodite's dove The pattern of the fan was given, No wonder that it breathes of love And wafts the perfumed gales of heaven! Before this new Pandora's gift In slavery woman's tyrant kept her, But now he kneels her glove to lift,-- The fan is mightier than the sceptre. The tap it gives how arch and sly! The breath it wakes how fresh and grateful! Behind its shield how soft the sigh! The whispered tale of shame how fateful! Its empire shadows every throne And every shore that man is tost on; It rules the lords of every zone, Nay, even the bluest blood of Boston! But every one that swings to-night, Of fairest shape, from farthest region, May trace its pedigree aright To Aphrodite's fan-tailed pigeon. TO R. B. H. AT THE DINNER TO THE PRESIDENT, BOSTON, JUNE 26, 1877 How to address him? awkward, it is true Call him "Great Father," as the Red Men do? Borrow some title? this is not the place That christens men Your Highness and Your Grace; We tried such names as these awhile, you know, But left them off a century ago. His Majesty? We've had enough of that Besides, that needs a crown; he wears a hat. What if, to make the nicer ears content, We say His Honesty, the President? Sir, we believed you honest, truthful, brave, When to your hands their precious trust we gave, And we have found you better than we knew, Braver, and not less honest, not less true! So every heart has opened, every hand Tingles with welcome, and through all the land All voices greet you in one broad acclaim, Healer of strife! Has earth a nobler name? What phrases mean you do not need to learn; We must be civil, and they serve our turn "Your most obedient humble" means--means what? Something the well-bred signer just is not. Yet there are tokens, sir, you must believe; There is one language never can deceive The lover knew it when the maiden smiled; The mother knows it when she clasps her child; Voices may falter, trembling lips turn pale, Words grope and stumble; this will tell their tale Shorn of all rhetoric, bare of all pretence, But radiant, warm, with Nature's eloquence. Look in our eyes! Your welcome waits you there,-- North, South, East, West, from all and everywhere! THE SHIP OF STATE A SENTIMENT This "sentiment" was read on the same occasion as the "Family Record," which immediately follows it. The latter poem is the dutiful tribute of a son to his father and his father's ancestors, residents of Woodstock from its first settlement. THE Ship of State! above her skies are blue, But still she rocks a little, it is true, And there are passengers whose faces white Show they don't feel as happy as they might; Yet on the whole her crew are quite content, Since its wild fury the typhoon has spent, And willing, if her pilot thinks it best, To head a little nearer south by west. And this they feel: the ship came too near wreck, In the long quarrel for the quarter-deck, Now when she glides serenely on her way,-- The shallows past where dread explosives lay,-- The stiff obstructive's churlish game to try Let sleeping dogs and still torpedoes lie! And so I give you all the Ship of State; Freedom's last venture is her priceless freight; God speed her, keep her, bless her, while she steers Amid the breakers of unsounded years; Lead her through danger's paths with even keel, And guide the honest hand that holds her wheel! WOODSTOCK, CONN., July 4, 1877. A FAMILY RECORD WOODSTOCK, CONN., JULY 4, 1877 NOT to myself this breath of vesper song, Not to these patient friends, this kindly throng, Not to this hallowed morning, though it be Our summer Christmas, Freedom's jubilee, When every summit, topmast, steeple, tower, That owns her empire spreads her starry flower, Its blood-streaked leaves in heaven's benignant dew Washed clean from every crimson stain they knew,-- No, not to these the passing thrills belong That steal my breath to hush themselves with song. These moments all are memory's; I have come To speak with lips that rather should be dumb; For what are words? At every step I tread The dust that wore the footprints of the dead But for whose life my life had never known This faded vesture which it calls its own. Here sleeps my father's sire, and they who gave That earlier life here found their peaceful grave. In days gone by I sought the hallowed ground; Climbed yon long slope; the sacred spot I found Where all unsullied lies the winter snow, Where all ungathered spring's pale violets blow, And tracked from stone to stone the Saxon name That marks the blood I need not blush to claim, Blood such as warmed the Pilgrim sons of toil, Who held from God the charter of the soil. I come an alien to your hills and plains, Yet feel your birthright tingling in my veins; Mine are this changing prospect's sun and shade, In full-blown summer's bridal pomp arrayed; Mine these fair hillsides and the vales between; Mine the sweet streams that lend their brightening green; I breathed your air--the sunlit landscape smiled; I touch your soil--it knows its children's child; Throned in my heart your heritage is mine; I claim it all by memory's right divine Waking, I dream. Before my vacant eyes In long procession shadowy forms arise; Far through the vista of the silent years I see a venturous band; the pioneers, Who let the sunlight through the forest's gloom, Who bade the harvest wave, the garden bloom. Hark! loud resounds the bare-armed settler's axe, See where the stealthy panther left his tracks! As fierce, as stealthy creeps the skulking foe With stone-tipped shaft and sinew-corded bow; Soon shall he vanish from his ancient reign, Leave his last cornfield to the coming train, Quit the green margin of the wave he drinks, For haunts that hide the wild-cat and the lynx. But who the Youth his glistening axe that swings To smite the pine that shows a hundred rings? His features?--something in his look I find That calls the semblance of my race to mind. His name?--my own; and that which goes before The same that once the loved disciple bore. Young, brave, discreet, the father of a line Whose voiceless lives have found a voice in mine; Thinned by unnumbered currents though they be, Thanks for the ruddy drops I claim from thee! The seasons pass; the roses come and go; Snows fall and melt; the waters freeze and flow; The boys are men; the girls, grown tall and fair, Have found their mates; a gravestone here and there Tells where the fathers lie; the silvered hair Of some bent patriarch yet recalls the time That saw his feet the northern hillside climb, A pilgrim from the pilgrims far away, The godly men, the dwellers by the bay. On many a hearthstone burns the cheerful fire; The schoolhouse porch, the heavenward pointing spire Proclaim in letters every eye can read, Knowledge and Faith, the new world's simple creed. Hush! 't is the Sabbath's silence-stricken morn No feet must wander through the tasselled corn; No merry children laugh around the door, No idle playthings strew the sanded floor; The law of Moses lays its awful ban On all that stirs; here comes the tithing-man At last the solemn hour of worship calls; Slowly they gather in the sacred walls; Man in his strength and age with knotted staff, And boyhood aching for its week-day laugh, The toil-worn mother with the child she leads, The maiden, lovely in her golden beads,-- The popish symbols round her neck she wears, But on them counts her lovers, not her prayers,-- Those youths in homespun suits and ribboned queues, Whose hearts are beating in the high-backed pews. The pastor rises; looks along the seats With searching eye; each wonted face he meets; Asks heavenly guidance; finds the chapter's place That tells some tale of Israel's stubborn race; Gives out the sacred song; all voices join, For no quartette extorts their scanty coin; Then while both hands their black-gloved palms display, Lifts his gray head, and murmurs, "Let us pray!" And pray he does! as one that never fears To plead unanswered by the God that hears; What if he dwells on many a fact as though Some things Heaven knew not which it ought to know,-- Thanks God for all his favors past, and yet, Tells Him there's something He must not forget; Such are the prayers his people love to hear,-- See how the Deacon slants his listening ear! What! look once more! Nay, surely there I trace The hinted outlines of a well-known face! Not those the lips for laughter to beguile, Yet round their corners lurks an embryo smile, The same on other lips my childhood knew That scarce the Sabbath's mastery could subdue. Him too my lineage gives me leave to claim,-- The good, grave man that bears the Psalmist's name. And still in ceaseless round the seasons passed; Spring piped her carol; Autumn blew his blast; Babes waxed to manhood; manhood shrunk to age; Life's worn-out players tottered off the stage; The few are many; boys have grown to men Since Putnam dragged the wolf from Pomfret's den; Our new-old Woodstock is a thriving town; Brave are her children; faithful to the crown; Her soldiers' steel the savage redskin knows; Their blood has crimsoned his Canadian snows. And now once more along the quiet vale Rings the dread call that turns the mothers pale; Full well they know the valorous heat that runs In every pulse-beat of their loyal sons; Who would not bleed in good King George's cause When England's lion shows his teeth and claws? With glittering firelocks on the village green In proud array a martial band is seen; You know what names those ancient rosters hold,-- Whose belts were buckled when the drum-beat rolled,-- But mark their Captain! tell us, who is he? On his brown face that same old look I see Yes! from the homestead's still retreat he came, Whose peaceful owner bore the Psalmist's name; The same his own. Well, Israel's glorious king Who struck the harp could also whirl the sling,-- Breathe in his song a penitential sigh And smite the sons of Amalek hip and thigh: These shared their task; one deaconed out the psalm, One slashed the scalping hell-hounds of calm; The praying father's pious work is done, Now sword in hand steps forth the fighting son. On many a field he fought in wilds afar; See on his swarthy cheek the bullet's scar! There hangs a murderous tomahawk; beneath, Without its blade, a knife's embroidered sheath; Save for the stroke his trusty weapon dealt His scalp had dangled at their owner's belt; But not for him such fate; he lived to see The bloodier strife that made our nation free, To serve with willing toil, with skilful hand, The war-worn saviors of the bleeding land. His wasting life to others' needs he gave,-- Sought rest in home and found it in the grave. See where the stones life's brief memorials keep, The tablet telling where he "fell on sleep,"-- Watched by a winged cherub's rayless eye,-- A scroll above that says we all must die,-- Those saddening lines beneath, the "Night-Thoughts" lent: So stands the Soldier's, Surgeon's monument. Ah! at a glance my filial eye divines The scholar son in those remembered lines. The Scholar Son. His hand my footsteps led. No more the dim unreal past I tread. O thou whose breathing form was once so dear, Whose cheering voice was music to my ear, Art thou not with me as my feet pursue The village paths so well thy boyhood knew, Along the tangled margin of the stream Whose murmurs blended with thine infant dream, Or climb the hill, or thread the wooded vale, Or seek the wave where gleams yon distant sail, Or the old homestead's narrowed bounds explore, Where sloped the roof that sheds the rains no more, Where one last relic still remains to tell Here stood thy home,--the memory-haunted well, Whose waters quench a deeper thirst than thine, Changed at my lips to sacramental wine,-- Art thou not with me, as I fondly trace The scanty records of thine honored race, Call up the forms that earlier years have known, And spell the legend of each slanted stone? With thoughts of thee my loving verse began, Not for the critic's curious eye to scan, Not for the many listeners, but the few Whose fathers trod the paths my fathers knew; Still in my heart thy loved remembrance burns; Still to my lips thy cherished name returns; Could I but feel thy gracious presence near Amid the groves that once to thee were dear Could but my trembling lips with mortal speech Thy listening ear for one brief moment reach! How vain the dream! The pallid voyager's track No sign betrays; he sends no message back. No word from thee since evening's shadow fell On thy cold forehead with my long farewell,-- Now from the margin of the silent sea, Take my last offering ere I cross to thee! THE IRON GATE AND OTHER POEMS 1877-1881 THE IRON GATE Read at the Breakfast given in honor of Dr. Holmes's Seventieth Birthday by the publishers of the "Atlantic Monthly," Boston, December 3, 1879. WHERE is this patriarch you are kindly greeting? Not unfamiliar to my ear his name, Nor yet unknown to many a joyous meeting In days long vanished,--is he still the same, Or changed by years, forgotten and forgetting, Dull-eared, dim-sighted, slow of speech and thought, Still o'er the sad, degenerate present fretting, Where all goes wrong, and nothing as it ought? Old age, the graybeard! Well, indeed, I know him,-- Shrunk, tottering, bent, of aches and ills the prey; In sermon, story, fable, picture, poem, Oft have I met him from my earliest day. In my old AEsop, toiling with his bundle,-- His load of sticks,--politely asking Death, Who comes when called for,--would he lug or trundle His fagot for him?--he was scant of breath. And sad "Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher,"-- Has he not stamped the image on my soul, In that last chapter, where the worn-out Teacher Sighs o'er the loosened cord, the broken bowl? Yes, long, indeed, I've known him at a distance, And now my lifted door-latch shows him here; I take his shrivelled hand without resistance, And find him smiling as his step draws near. What though of gilded baubles he bereaves us, Dear to the heart of youth, to manhood's prime; Think of the calm he brings, the wealth he leaves us, The hoarded spoils, the legacies of time! Altars once flaming, still with incense fragrant, Passion's uneasy nurslings rocked asleep, Hope's anchor faster, wild desire less vagrant, Life's flow less noisy, but the stream how deep! Still as the silver cord gets worn and slender, Its lightened task-work tugs with lessening strain, Hands get more helpful, voices, grown more tender, Soothe with their softened tones the slumberous brain. Youth longs and manhood strives, but age remembers, Sits by the raked-up ashes of the past, Spreads its thin hands above the whitening embers That warm its creeping life-blood till the last. Dear to its heart is every loving token That comes unbidden ere its pulse grows cold, Ere the last lingering ties of life are broken, Its labors ended and its story told. Ah, while around us rosy youth rejoices, For us the sorrow-laden breezes sigh, And through the chorus of its jocund voices Throbs the sharp note of misery's hopeless cry. As on the gauzy wings of fancy flying From some far orb I track our watery sphere, Home of the struggling, suffering, doubting, dying, The silvered globule seems a glistening tear. But Nature lends her mirror of illusion To win from saddening scenes our age-dimmed eyes, And misty day-dreams blend in sweet confusion The wintry landscape and the summer skies. So when the iron portal shuts behind us, And life forgets us in its noise and whirl, Visions that shunned the glaring noonday find us, And glimmering starlight shows the gates of pearl. I come not here your morning hour to sadden, A limping pilgrim, leaning on his staff,-- I, who have never deemed it sin to gladden This vale of sorrows with a wholesome laugh. If word of mine another's gloom has brightened, Through my dumb lips the heaven-sent message came; If hand of mine another's task has lightened, It felt the guidance that it dares not claim. But, O my gentle sisters, O my brothers, These thick-sown snow-flakes hint of toil's release; These feebler pulses bid me leave to others The tasks once welcome; evening asks for peace. Time claims his tribute; silence now is golden; Let me not vex the too long suffering lyre; Though to your love untiring still beholden, The curfew tells me--cover up the fire. And now with grateful smile and accents cheerful, And warmer heart than look or word can tell, In simplest phrase--these traitorous eyes are tearful-- Thanks, Brothers, Sisters,--Children,--and farewell! VESTIGIA QUINQUE RETRORSUM AN ACADEMIC POEM 1829-1879 Read at the Commencement Dinner of the Alumni of Harvard University, June 25, 1879. WHILE fond, sad memories all around us throng, Silence were sweeter than the sweetest song; Yet when the leaves are green and heaven is blue, The choral tribute of the grove is due, And when the lengthening nights have chilled the skies, We fain would hear the song-bird ere be flies, And greet with kindly welcome, even as now, The lonely minstrel on his leafless bough. This is our golden year,--its golden day; Its bridal memories soon must pass away; Soon shall its dying music cease to ring, And every year must loose some silver string, Till the last trembling chords no longer thrill,-- Hands all at rest and hearts forever still. A few gray heads have joined the forming line; We hear our summons,--"Class of 'Twenty-Nine!" Close on the foremost, and, alas, how few! Are these "The Boys" our dear old Mother knew? Sixty brave swimmers. Twenty--something more-- Have passed the stream and reached this frosty shore! How near the banks these fifty years divide When memory crosses with a single stride! 'T is the first year of stern "Old Hickory" 's rule When our good Mother lets us out of school, Half glad, half sorrowing, it must be confessed, To leave her quiet lap, her bounteous breast, Armed with our dainty, ribbon-tied degrees, Pleased and yet pensive, exiles and A. B.'s. Look back, O comrades, with your faded eyes, And see the phantoms as I bid them rise. Whose smile is that? Its pattern Nature gave, A sunbeam dancing in a dimpled wave; KIRKLAND alone such grace from Heaven could win, His features radiant as the soul within; That smile would let him through Saint Peter's gate While sad-eyed martyrs had to stand and wait. Here flits mercurial _Farrar_; standing there, See mild, benignant, cautious, learned _Ware_, And sturdy, patient, faithful, honest _Hedge_, Whose grinding logic gave our wits their edge; _Ticknor_, with honeyed voice and courtly grace; And _Willard_, larynxed like a double bass; And _Channing_, with his bland, superior look, Cool as a moonbeam on a frozen brook, While the pale student, shivering in his shoes, Sees from his theme the turgid rhetoric ooze; And the born soldier, fate decreed to wreak His martial manhood on a class in Greek, _Popkin_! How that explosive name recalls The grand old Busby of our ancient halls Such faces looked from Skippon's grim platoons, Such figures rode with Ireton's stout dragoons: He gave his strength to learning's gentle charms, But every accent sounded "Shoulder arms!" Names,--empty names! Save only here and there Some white-haired listener, dozing in his chair, Starts at the sound he often used to hear, And upward slants his Sunday-sermon ear. And we--our blooming manhood we regain; Smiling we join the long Commencement train, One point first battled in discussion hot,-- Shall we wear gowns? and settled: We will not. How strange the scene,--that noisy boy-debate Where embryo-speakers learn to rule the State! This broad-browed youth, sedate and sober-eyed, Shall wear the ermined robe at Taney's side; And he, the stripling, smooth of face and slight, Whose slender form scarce intercepts the light, Shall rule the Bench where Parsons gave the law, And sphinx-like sat uncouth, majestic Shaw Ah, many a star has shed its fatal ray On names we loved--our brothers--where are they? Nor these alone; our hearts in silence claim Names not less dear, unsyllabled by fame. How brief the space! and yet it sweeps us back Far, far along our new-born history's track Five strides like this;--the sachem rules the land; The Indian wigwams cluster where we stand. The second. Lo! a scene of deadly strife-- A nation struggling into infant life; Not yet the fatal game at Yorktown won Where failing Empire fired its sunset gun. LANGDON sits restless in the ancient chair,-- Harvard's grave Head,--these echoes heard his prayer When from yon mansion, dear to memory still, The banded yeomen marched for Bunker's Hill. Count on the grave triennial's thick-starred roll What names were numbered on the lengthening scroll,-- Not unfamiliar in our ears they ring,-- Winthrop, Hale, Eliot, Everett, Dexter, Tyng. Another stride. Once more at 'twenty-nine,-- GOD SAVE KING GEORGE, the Second of his line! And is Sir Isaac living? Nay, not so,-- He followed Flainsteed two short years ago,-- And what about the little hump-backed man Who pleased the bygone days of good Queen Anne? What, Pope? another book he's just put out,-- "The Dunciad,"--witty, but profane, no doubt. Where's Cotton Mather? he was always here. And so he would be, but he died last year. Who is this preacher our Northampton claims, Whose rhetoric blazes with sulphureous flames And torches stolen from Tartarean mines? Edwards, the salamander of divines. A deep, strong nature, pure and undefiled; Faith, firm as his who stabbed his sleeping child; Alas for him who blindly strays apart, And seeking God has lost his human heart! Fall where they might, no flying cinders caught These sober halls where WADSWORTH ruled and taught. One footstep more; the fourth receding stride Leaves the round century on the nearer side. GOD SAVE KING CHARLES! God knows that pleasant knave His grace will find it hard enough to save. Ten years and more, and now the Plague, the Fire, Talk of all tongues, at last begin to tire; One fear prevails, all other frights forgot,-- White lips are whispering,--hark! The Popish Plot! Happy New England, from such troubles free In health and peace beyond the stormy sea! No Romish daggers threat her children's throats, No gibbering nightmare mutters "Titus Oates;" Philip is slain, the Quaker graves are green, Not yet the witch has entered on the scene; Happy our Harvard; pleased her graduates four; URIAN OAKES the name their parchments bore. Two centuries past, our hurried feet arrive At the last footprint of the scanty five; Take the fifth stride; our wandering eyes explore A tangled forest on a trackless shore; Here, where we stand, the savage sorcerer howls, The wild cat snarls, the stealthy gray wolf prowls, The slouching bear, perchance the trampling moose Starts the brown squaw and scares her red pappoose; At every step the lurking foe is near; His Demons reign; God has no temple here! Lift up your eyes! behold these pictured walls; Look where the flood of western glory falls Through the great sunflower disk of blazing panes In ruby, saffron, azure, emerald stains; With reverent step the marble pavement tread Where our proud Mother's martyr-roll is read; See the great halls that cluster, gathering round This lofty shrine with holiest memories crowned; See the fair Matron in her summer bower, Fresh as a rose in bright perennial flower; Read on her standard, always in the van, "TRUTH,"--the one word that makes a slave a man; Think whose the hands that fed her altar-fires, Then count the debt we owe our scholar-sires! Brothers, farewell! the fast declining ray Fades to the twilight of our golden day; Some lesson yet our wearied brains may learn, Some leaves, perhaps, in life's thin volume turn. How few they seem as in our waning age We count them backwards to the title-page! Oh let us trust with holy men of old Not all the story here begun is told; So the tired spirit, waiting to be freed, On life's last leaf with tranquil eye shall read By the pale glimmer of the torch reversed, Not Finis, but _The End of Volume First_! MY AVIARY Through my north window, in the wintry weather,-- My airy oriel on the river shore,-- I watch the sea-fowl as they flock together Where late the boatman flashed his dripping oar. The gull, high floating, like a sloop unladen, Lets the loose water waft him as it will; The duck, round-breasted as a rustic maiden, Paddles and plunges, busy, busy still. I see the solemn gulls in council sitting On some broad ice-floe pondering long and late, While overhead the home-bound ducks are flitting, And leave the tardy conclave in debate, Those weighty questions in their breasts revolving Whose deeper meaning science never learns, Till at some reverend elder's look dissolving, The speechless senate silently adjourns. But when along the waves the shrill north-easter Shrieks through the laboring coaster's shrouds "Beware!" The pale bird, kindling like a Christmas feaster When some wild chorus shakes the vinous air, Flaps from the leaden wave in fierce rejoicing, Feels heaven's dumb lightning thrill his torpid nerves, Now on the blast his whistling plumage poising, Now wheeling, whirling in fantastic curves. Such is our gull; a gentleman of leisure, Less fleshed than feathered; bagged you'll find him such; His virtue silence; his employment pleasure; Not bad to look at, and not good for much. What of our duck? He has some high-bred cousins,-- His Grace the Canvas-back, My Lord the Brant,-- Anas and Anser,--both served up by dozens, At Boston's Rocher, half-way to Nahant. As for himself, he seems alert and thriving,-- Grubs up a living somehow--what, who knows? Crabs? mussels? weeds?--Look quick! there 's one just diving! Flop! Splash! his white breast glistens--down he goes! And while he 's under--just about a minute-- I take advantage of the fact to say His fishy carcase has no virtue in it The gunning idiot's worthless hire to pay. Shrewd is our bird; not easy to outwit him! Sharp is the outlook of those pin-head eyes; Still, he is mortal and a shot may hit him, One cannot always miss him if he tries. He knows you! "sportsmen" from suburban alleys, Stretched under seaweed in the treacherous punt; Knows every lazy, shiftless lout that sallies Forth to waste powder--as he says, to "hunt." I watch you with a patient satisfaction, Well pleased to discount your predestined luck; The float that figures in your sly transaction Will carry back a goose, but not a duck. Look! there's a young one, dreaming not of danger; Sees a flat log come floating down the stream; Stares undismayed upon the harmless stranger; Ah! were all strangers harmless as they seem! _Habet_! a leaden shower his breast has shattered; Vainly he flutters, not again to rise; His soft white plumes along the waves are scattered; Helpless the wing that braved the tempest lies. He sees his comrades high above him flying To seek their nests among the island reeds; Strong is their flight; all lonely he is lying Washed by the crimsoned water as he bleeds. O Thou who carest for the falling sparrow, Canst Thou the sinless sufferer's pang forget? Or is thy dread account-book's page so narrow Its one long column scores thy creatures' debt? Poor gentle guest, by nature kindly cherished, A world grows dark with thee in blinding death; One little gasp--thy universe has perished, Wrecked by the idle thief who stole thy breath! Is this the whole sad story of creation, Lived by its breathing myriads o'er and o'er,-- One glimpse of day, then black annihilation,-- A sunlit passage to a sunless shore? Give back our faith, ye mystery-solving lynxes! Robe us once more in heaven-aspiring creeds Happier was dreaming Egypt with her sphinxes, The stony convent with its cross and beads! How often gazing where a bird reposes, Rocked on the wavelets, drifting with the tide, I lose myself in strange metempsychosis And float a sea-fowl at a sea-fowl's side; From rain, hail, snow in feathery mantle muffled, Clear-eyed, strong-limbed, with keenest sense to hear My mate soft murmuring, who, with plumes unruffled, Where'er I wander still is nestling near; The great blue hollow like a garment o'er me; Space all unmeasured, unrecorded time; While seen with inward eye moves on before me Thought's pictured train in wordless pantomime. A voice recalls me.--From my window turning I find myself a plumeless biped still; No beak, no claws, no sign of wings discerning,-- In fact with nothing bird-like but my quill. ON THE THRESHOLD INTRODUCTION TO A COLLECTION OF POEMS BYDIFFERENT AUTHORS AN usher standing at the door I show my white rosette; A smile of welcome, nothing more, Will pay my trifling debt; Why should I bid you idly wait Like lovers at the swinging gate? Can I forget the wedding guest? The veteran of the sea? In vain the listener smites his breast,-- "There was a ship," cries he! Poor fasting victim, stunned and pale, He needs must listen to the tale. He sees the gilded throng within, The sparkling goblets gleam, The music and the merry din Through every window stream, But there he shivers in the cold Till all the crazy dream is told. Not mine the graybeard's glittering eye That held his captive still To hold my silent prisoners by And let me have my will; Nay, I were like the three-years' child, To think you could be so beguiled! My verse is but the curtain's fold That hides the painted scene, The mist by morning's ray unrolled That veils the meadow's green, The cloud that needs must drift away To show the rose of opening day. See, from the tinkling rill you hear In hollowed palm I bring These scanty drops, but ah, how near The founts that heavenward spring! Thus, open wide the gates are thrown And founts and flowers are all your own! TO GEORGE PEABODY DANVERS, 1866 BANKRUPT! our pockets inside out! Empty of words to speak his praises! Worcester and Webster up the spout! Dead broke of laudatory phrases! Yet why with flowery speeches tease, With vain superlatives distress him? Has language better words than these? THE FRIEND OF ALL HIS RACE, GOD BLESS HIM! A simple prayer--but words more sweet By human lips were never uttered, Since Adam left the country seat Where angel wings around him fluttered. The old look on with tear-dimmed eyes, The children cluster to caress him, And every voice unbidden cries, THE FRIEND OF ALL HIS RACE, GOD BLESS HIM! AT THE PAPYRUS CLUB A LOVELY show for eyes to see I looked upon this morning,-- A bright-hued, feathered company Of nature's own adorning; But ah! those minstrels would not sing A listening ear while I lent,-- The lark sat still and preened his wing, The nightingale was silent; I longed for what they gave me not-- Their warblings sweet and fluty, But grateful still for all I got I thanked them for their beauty. A fairer vision meets my view Of Claras, Margarets, Marys, In silken robes of varied hue, Like bluebirds and canaries; The roses blush, the jewels gleam, The silks and satins glisten, The black eyes flash, the blue eyes beam, We look--and then we listen Behold the flock we cage to-night-- Was ever such a capture? To see them is a pure delight; To hear them--ah! what rapture! Methinks I hear Delilah's laugh At Samson bound in fetters; "We captured!" shrieks each lovelier half, "Men think themselves our betters! We push the bolt, we turn the key On warriors, poets, sages, Too happy, all of them, to be Locked in our golden cages!" Beware! the boy with bandaged eyes Has flung away his blinder; He 's lost his mother--so he cries-- And here he knows he'll find her: The rogue! 't is but a new device,-- Look out for flying arrows Whene'er the birds of Paradise Are perched amid the sparrows! FOR WHITTIER'S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY DECEMBER 17, 1877 I BELIEVE that the copies of verses I've spun, Like Scheherezade's tales, are a thousand and one; You remember the story,--those mornings in bed,-- 'T was the turn of a copper,--a tale or a head. A doom like Scheherezade's falls upon me In a mandate as stern as the Sultan's decree I'm a florist in verse, and what would people say If I came to a banquet without my bouquet? It is trying, no doubt, when the company knows Just the look and the smell of each lily and rose, The green of each leaf in the sprigs that I bring, And the shape of the bunch and the knot of the string. Yes,--"the style is the man," and the nib of one's pen Makes the same mark at twenty, and threescore and ten; It is so in all matters, if truth may be told; Let one look at the cast he can tell you the mould. How we all know each other! no use in disguise; Through the holes in the mask comes the flash of the eyes; We can tell by his--somewhat--each one of our tribe, As we know the old hat which we cannot describe. Though in Hebrew, in Sanscrit, in Choctaw you write, Sweet singer who gave us the Voices of Night, Though in buskin or slipper your song may be shod; Or the velvety verse that Evangeline trod, We shall say, "You can't cheat us,--we know it is you," There is one voice like that, but there cannot be two, Maestro, whose chant like the dulcimer rings And the woods will be hushed while the nightingale sings. And he, so serene, so majestic, so true, Whose temple hypethral the planets shine through, Let us catch but five words from that mystical pen, We should know our one sage from all children of men. And he whose bright image no distance can dim, Through a hundred disguises we can't mistake him, Whose play is all earnest, whose wit is the edge (With a beetle behind) of a sham-splitting wedge. Do you know whom we send you, Hidalgos of Spain? Do you know your old friends when you see them again? Hosea was Sancho! you Dons of Madrid, But Sancho that wielded the lance of the Cid! And the wood-thrush of Essex,--you know whom I mean, Whose song echoes round us while he sits unseen, Whose heart-throbs of verse through our memories thrill Like a breath from the wood, like a breeze from the hill, So fervid, so simple, so loving, so pure, We hear but one strain and our verdict is sure,-- Thee cannot elude us,--no further we search,-- 'T is Holy George Herbert cut loose from his church! We think it the voice of a seraph that sings,-- Alas! we remember that angels have wings,-- What story is this of the day of his birth? Let him live to a hundred! we want him on earth! One life has been paid him (in gold) by the sun; One account has been squared and another begun; But he never will die if he lingers below Till we've paid him in love half the balance we owe! TWO SONNETS: HARVARD At the meeting of the New York Harvard Club, February 21, 1878. "CHRISTO ET ECCLESLE." 1700 To GOD'S ANOINTED AND HIS CHOSEN FLOCK So ran the phrase the black-robed conclave chose To guard the sacred cloisters that arose Like David's altar on Moriah's rock. Unshaken still those ancient arches mock The ram's-horn summons of the windy foes Who stand like Joshua's army while it blows And wait to see them toppling with the shock. Christ and the Church. Their church, whose narrow door Shut out the many, who if overbold Like hunted wolves were driven from the fold, Bruised with the flails these godly zealots bore, Mindful that Israel's altar stood of old Where echoed once Araunah's threshing-floor. 1643 "VERITAS." 1878 TRUTH: So the frontlet's older legend ran, On the brief record's opening page displayed; Not yet those clear-eyed scholars were afraid Lest the fair fruit that wrought the woe of man By far Euphrates--where our sire began His search for truth, and, seeking, was betrayed-- Might work new treason in their forest shade, Doubling the curse that brought life's shortened span. Nurse of the future, daughter of the past, That stern phylactery best becomes thee now Lift to the morning star thy marble brow Cast thy brave truth on every warring blast! Stretch thy white hand to that forbidden bough, And let thine earliest symbol be thy last! THE COMING ERA THEY tell us that the Muse is soon to fly hence, Leaving the bowers of song that once were dear, Her robes bequeathing to her sister, Science, The groves of Pindus for the axe to clear. Optics will claim the wandering eye of fancy, Physics will grasp imagination's wings, Plain fact exorcise fiction's necromancy, The workshop hammer where the minstrel sings, No more with laugher at Thalia's frolics Our eyes shall twinkle till the tears run down, But in her place the lecturer on hydraulics Spout forth his watery science to the town. No more our foolish passions and affections The tragic Muse with mimic grief shall try, But, nobler far, a course of vivisections Teach what it costs a tortured brute to die. The unearthed monad, long in buried rocks hid, Shall tell the secret whence our being came; The chemist show us death is life's black oxide, Left when the breath no longer fans its flame. Instead of crack-brained poets in their attics Filling thin volumes with their flowery talk, There shall be books of wholesome mathematics; The tutor with his blackboard and his chalk. No longer bards with madrigal and sonnet Shall woo to moonlight walks the ribboned sex, But side by side the beaver and the bonnet Stroll, calmly pondering on some problem's x. The sober bliss of serious calculation Shall mock the trivial joys that fancy drew, And, oh, the rapture of a solved equation,-- One self-same answer on the lips of two! So speak in solemn tones our youthful sages, Patient, severe, laborious, slow, exact, As o'er creation's protoplasmic pages They browse and munch the thistle crops of fact. And yet we 've sometimes found it rather pleasant To dream again the scenes that Shakespeare drew,-- To walk the hill-side with the Scottish peasant Among the daisies wet with morning's dew; To leave awhile the daylight of the real, Led by the guidance of the master's hand, For the strange radiance of the far ideal,-- "The light that never was on sea or land." Well, Time alone can lift the future's curtain,-- Science may teach our children all she knows, But Love will kindle fresh young hearts, 't is certain, And June will not forget her blushing rose. And so, in spite of all that Time is bringing,-- Treasures of truth and miracles of art, Beauty and Love will keep the poet singing, And song still live, the science of the heart. IN RESPONSE Breakfast at the Century Club, New York, May, 1879. SUCH kindness! the scowl of a cynic would soften, His pulse beat its way to some eloquent words, Alas! my poor accents have echoed too often, Like that Pinafore music you've some of you heard. Do you know me, dear strangers--the hundredth time comer At banquets and feasts since the days of my Spring? Ah! would I could borrow one rose of my Summer, But this is a leaf of my Autumn I bring. I look at your faces,--I'm sure there are some from The three-breasted mother I count as my own; You think you remember the place you have come from, But how it has changed in the years that have flown! Unaltered, 't is true, is the hall we call "Funnel," Still fights the "Old South" in the battle for life, But we've opened our door to the West through the tunnel, And we've cut off Fort Hill with our Amazon knife. You should see the new Westminster Boston has builded,-- Its mansions, its spires, its museums of arts,-- You should see the great dome we have gorgeously gilded,-- 'T is the light of our eyes, 't is the joy of our hearts. When first in his path a young asteroid found it, As he sailed through the skies with the stars in his wake, He thought 't was the sun, and kept circling around it Till Edison signalled, "You've made a mistake." We are proud of our city,--her fast-growing figure, The warp and the woof of her brain and her hands,-- But we're proudest of all that her heart has grown bigger, And warms with fresh blood as her girdle expands. One lesson the rubric of conflict has taught her Though parted awhile by war's earth-rending shock, The lines that divide us are written in water, The love that unites us cut deep in the rock. As well might the Judas of treason endeavor To write his black name on the disk of the sun As try the bright star-wreath that binds us to sever And blot the fair legend of "Many in One." We love You, tall sister, the stately, the splendid,-- The banner of empire floats high on your towers, Yet ever in welcome your arms are extended,-- We share in your splendors, your glory is ours. Yes, Queen of the Continent! All of us own thee,-- The gold-freighted argosies flock at thy call, The naiads, the sea-nymphs have met to enthrone thee, But the Broadway of one is the Highway of all! I thank you. Three words that can hardly be mended, Though phrases on phrases their eloquence pile, If you hear the heart's throb with their eloquence blended, And read all they mean in a sunshiny smile. FOR THE MOORE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION MAY 28, 1879. ENCHANTER of Erin, whose magic has bound us, Thy wand for one moment we fondly would claim, Entranced while it summons the phantoms around us That blush into life at the sound of thy name. The tell-tales of memory wake from their slumbers,-- I hear the old song with its tender refrain,-- What passion lies hid in those honey-voiced numbers What perfume of youth in each exquisite strain! The home of my childhood comes back as a vision,-- Hark! Hark! A soft chord from its song-haunted room,-- 'T is a morning of May, when the air is Elysian,-- The syringa in bud and the lilac in bloom,-- We are clustered around the "Clementi" piano,-- There were six of us then,--there are two of us now,-- She is singing--the girl with the silver soprano-- How "The Lord of the Valley" was false to his vow; "Let Erin remember" the echoes are calling; Through "The Vale of Avoca" the waters are rolled; "The Exile" laments while the night-dews falling; "The Morning of Life" dawns again as of old. But ah! those warm love-songs of fresh adolescence! Around us such raptures celestial they flung That it seemed as if Paradise breathed its quintessence Through the seraph-toned lips of the maiden that sung! Long hushed are the chords that my boyhood enchanted As when the smooth wave by the angel was stirred, Yet still with their music is memory haunted, And oft in my dreams are their melodies heard. I feel like the priest to his altar returning,-- The crowd that was kneeling no longer is there, The flame has died down, but the brands are still burning, And sandal and cinnamon sweeten the air. II. The veil for her bridal young Summer is weaving In her azure-domed hall with its tapestried floor, And Spring the last tear-drop of May-dew is leaving On the daisy of Burns and the shamrock of Moore. How like, how unlike, as we view them together, The song of the minstrels whose record we scan,-- One fresh as the breeze blowing over the heather, One sweet as the breath from an odalisque's fan! Ah, passion can glow mid a palace's splendor; The cage does not alter the song of the bird; And the curtain of silk has known whispers as tender As ever the blossoming hawthorn has heard. No fear lest the step of the soft-slippered Graces Should fright the young Loves from their warm little nest, For the heart of a queen, under jewels and laces, Beats time with the pulse in the peasant girl's breast! Thrice welcome each gift of kind Nature's bestowing! Her fountain heeds little the goblet we hold; Alike, when its musical waters are flowing, The shell from the seaside, the chalice of gold. The twins of the lyre to her voices had listened; Both laid their best gifts upon Liberty's shrine; For Coila's loved minstrel the holly-wreath glistened; For Erin's the rose and the myrtle entwine. And while the fresh blossoms of summer are braided For the sea-girdled, stream-silvered, lake-jewelled isle, While her mantle of verdure is woven unfaded, While Shannon and Liffey shall dimple and smile, The land where the staff of Saint Patrick was planted, Where the shamrock grows green from the cliffs to the shore, The land of fair maidens and heroes undaunted, Shall wreathe her bright harp with the garlands of Moore! TO JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE APRIL 4, 1880 I BRING the simplest pledge of love, Friend of my earlier days; Mine is the hand without the glove, The heart-beat, not the phrase. How few still breathe this mortal air We called by school-boy names! You still, whatever robe you wear, To me are always James. That name the kind apostle bore Who shames the sullen creeds, Not trusting less, but loving more, And showing faith by deeds. What blending thoughts our memories share! What visions yours and mine Of May-days in whose morning air The dews were golden wine, Of vistas bright with opening day, Whose all-awakening sun Showed in life's landscape, far away, The summits to be won! The heights are gained. Ah, say not so For him who smiles at time, Leaves his tired comrades down below, And only lives to climb! His labors,--will they ever cease,-- With hand and tongue and pen? Shall wearied Nature ask release At threescore years and ten? Our strength the clustered seasons tax,-- For him new life they mean; Like rods around the lictor's axe They keep him bright and keen. The wise, the brave, the strong, we know,-- We mark them here or there, But he,--we roll our eyes, and lo! We find him everywhere! With truth's bold cohorts, or alone, He strides through error's field; His lance is ever manhood's own, His breast is woman's shield. Count not his years while earth has need Of souls that Heaven inflames With sacred zeal to save, to lead,-- Long live our dear Saint James! WELCOME TO THE CHICAGO COMMERCIAL CLUB January 14, 1880 CHICAGO sounds rough to the maker of verse; One comfort we have--Cincinnati sounds worse; If we only were licensed to say Chicago! But Worcester and Webster won't let us, you know. No matter, we songsters must sing as we can; We can make some nice couplets with Lake Michigan, And what more resembles a nightingale's voice, Than the oily trisyllable, sweet Illinois? Your waters are fresh, while our harbor is salt, But we know you can't help it--it is n't your fault; Our city is old and your city is new, But the railroad men tell us we're greener than you. You have seen our gilt dome, and no doubt you've been told That the orbs of the universe round it are rolled; But I'll own it to you, and I ought to know best, That this is n't quite true of all stars of the West. You'll go to Mount Auburn,--we'll show you the track,-- And can stay there,--unless you prefer to come back; And Bunker's tall shaft you can climb if you will, But you'll puff like a paragraph praising a pill. You must see--but you have seen--our old Faneuil Hall, Our churches, our school-rooms, our sample-rooms, all; And, perhaps, though the idiots must have their jokes, You have found our good people much like other folks. There are cities by rivers, by lakes, and by seas, Each as full of itself as a cheese-mite of cheese; And a city will brag as a game-cock will crow Don't your cockerels at home--just a little, you know? But we'll crow for you now--here's a health to the boys, Men, maidens, and matrons of fair Illinois, And the rainbow of friendship that arches its span From the green of the sea to the blue Michigan! AMERICAN ACADEMY CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION MAY 26, 1880 SIRE, son, and grandson; so the century glides; Three lives, three strides, three foot-prints in the sand; Silent as midnight's falling meteor slides Into the stillness of the far-off land; How dim the space its little arc has spanned! See on this opening page the names renowned Tombed in these records on our dusty shelves, Scarce on the scroll of living memory found, Save where the wan-eyed antiquarian delves; Shadows they seem; ab, what are we ourselves? Pale ghosts of Bowdoin, Winthrop, Willard, West, Sages of busy brain and wrinkled brow, Searchers of Nature's secrets unconfessed, Asking of all things Whence and Why and How-- What problems meet your larger vision now? Has Gannett tracked the wild Aurora's path? Has Bowdoin found his all-surrounding sphere? What question puzzles ciphering Philomath? Could Williams make the hidden causes clear Of the Dark Day that filled the land with fear? Dear ancient school-boys! Nature taught to them The simple lessons of the star and flower, Showed them strange sights; how on a single stem,-- Admire the marvels of Creative Power!-- Twin apples grew, one sweet, the other sour; How from the hill-top where our eyes beheld In even ranks the plumed and bannered maize Range its long columns, in the days of old The live volcano shot its angry blaze,-- Dead since the showers of Noah's watery days; How, when the lightning split the mighty rock, The spreading fury of the shaft was spent! How the young scion joined the alien stock, And when and where the homeless swallows went To pass the winter of their discontent. Scant were the gleanings in those years of dearth; No Cuvier yet had clothed the fossil bones That slumbered, waiting for their second birth; No Lyell read the legend of the stones; Science still pointed to her empty thrones. Dreaming of orbs to eyes of earth unknown, Herschel looked heavenwards in the starlight pale; Lost in those awful depths he trod alone, Laplace stood mute before the lifted veil; While home-bred Humboldt trimmed his toy ship's sail. No mortal feet these loftier heights had gained Whence the wide realms of Nature we descry; In vain their eyes our longing fathers strained To scan with wondering gaze the summits high That far beneath their children's footpaths lie. Smile at their first small ventures as we may, The school-boy's copy shapes the scholar's hand, Their grateful memory fills our hearts to-day; Brave, hopeful, wise, this bower of peace they planned, While war's dread ploughshare scarred the suffering land. Child of our children's children yet unborn, When on this yellow page you turn your eyes, Where the brief record of this May-day morn In phrase antique and faded letters lies, How vague, how pale our flitting ghosts will rise! Yet in our veins the blood ran warm and red, For us the fields were green, the skies were blue, Though from our dust the spirit long has fled, We lived, we loved, we toiled, we dreamed like you, Smiled at our sires and thought how much we knew. Oh might our spirits for one hour return, When the next century rounds its hundredth ring, All the strange secrets it shall teach to learn, To hear the larger truths its years shall bring, Its wiser sages talk, its sweeter minstrels sing! THE SCHOOL-BOY Read at the Centennial Celebration of the foundation of Phillips Academy, Andover. 1778-1878 THESE hallowed precincts, long to memory dear, Smile with fresh welcome as our feet draw near; With softer gales the opening leaves are fanned, With fairer hues the kindling flowers expand, The rose-bush reddens with the blush of June, The groves are vocal with their minstrels' tune, The mighty elm, beneath whose arching shade The wandering children of the forest strayed, Greets the bright morning in its bridal dress, And spreads its arms the gladsome dawn to bless. Is it an idle dream that nature shares Our joys, our griefs, our pastimes, and our cares? Is there no summons when, at morning's call, The sable vestments of the darkness fall? Does not meek evening's low-voiced Ave blend With the soft vesper as its notes ascend? Is there no whisper in the perfumed air When the sweet bosom of the rose is bare? Does not the sunshine call us to rejoice? Is there no meaning in the storm-cloud's voice? No silent message when from midnight skies Heaven looks upon us with its myriad eyes? Or shift the mirror; say our dreams diffuse O'er life's pale landscape their celestial hues, Lend heaven the rainbow it has never known, And robe the earth in glories not its own, Sing their own music in the summer breeze, With fresher foliage clothe the stately trees, Stain the June blossoms with a livelier dye And spread a bluer azure on the sky,-- Blest be the power that works its lawless will And finds the weediest patch an Eden still; No walls so fair as those our fancies build,-- No views so bright as those our visions gild! So ran my lines, as pen and paper met, The truant goose-quill travelling like Planchette; Too ready servant, whose deceitful ways Full many a slipshod line, alas! betrays; Hence of the rhyming thousand not a few Have builded worse--a great deal--than they knew. What need of idle fancy to adorn Our mother's birthplace on her birthday morn? Hers are the blossoms of eternal spring, From these green boughs her new-fledged birds take wing, These echoes hear their earliest carols sung, In this old nest the brood is ever young. If some tired wanderer, resting from his flight, Amid the gay young choristers alight, These gather round him, mark his faded plumes That faintly still the far-off grove perfumes, And listen, wondering if some feeble note Yet lingers, quavering in his weary throat:-- I, whose fresh voice yon red-faced temple knew, What tune is left me, fit to sing to you? Ask not the grandeurs of a labored song, But let my easy couplets slide along; Much could I tell you that you know too well; Much I remember, but I will not tell; Age brings experience; graybeards oft are wise, But oh! how sharp a youngster's ears and eyes! My cheek was bare of adolescent down When first I sought the academic town; Slow rolls the coach along the dusty road, Big with its filial and parental load; The frequent hills, the lonely woods are past, The school-boy's chosen home is reached at last. I see it now, the same unchanging spot, The swinging gate, the little garden plot, The narrow yard, the rock that made its floor, The flat, pale house, the knocker-garnished door, The small, trim parlor, neat, decorous, chill, The strange, new faces, kind, but grave and still; Two, creased with age,--or what I then called age,-- Life's volume open at its fiftieth page; One, a shy maiden's, pallid, placid, sweet As the first snow-drop, which the sunbeams greet; One, the last nursling's; slight she was, and fair, Her smooth white forehead warmed with auburn hair; Last came the virgin Hymen long had spared, Whose daily cares the grateful household shared, Strong, patient, humble; her substantial frame Stretched the chaste draperies I forbear to name. Brave, but with effort, had the school-boy come To the cold comfort of a stranger's home; How like a dagger to my sinking heart Came the dry summons, "It is time to part; Good-by!" "Goo-ood-by!" one fond maternal kiss. . . . Homesick as death! Was ever pang like this? Too young as yet with willing feet to stray From the tame fireside, glad to get away,-- Too old to let my watery grief appear,-- And what so bitter as a swallowed tear! One figure still my vagrant thoughts pursue; First boy to greet me, Ariel, where are you? Imp of all mischief, heaven alone knows how You learned it all,--are you an angel now, Or tottering gently down the slope of years, Your face grown sober in the vale of tears? Forgive my freedom if you are breathing still; If in a happier world, I know you will. You were a school-boy--what beneath the sun So like a monkey? I was also one. Strange, sure enough, to see what curious shoots The nursery raises from the study's roots! In those old days the very, very good Took up more room--a little--than they should; Something too much one's eyes encountered then Of serious youth and funeral-visaged men; The solemn elders saw life's mournful half,-- Heaven sent this boy, whose mission was to laugh, Drollest of buffos, Nature's odd protest, A catbird squealing in a blackbird's nest. Kind, faithful Nature! While the sour-eyed Scot-- Her cheerful smiles forbidden or forgot-- Talks only of his preacher and his kirk,-- Hears five-hour sermons for his Sunday work,-- Praying and fasting till his meagre face Gains its due length, the genuine sign of grace,-- An Ayrshire mother in the land of Knox Her embryo poet in his cradle rocks;-- Nature, long shivering in her dim eclipse, Steals in a sunbeam to those baby lips; So to its home her banished smile returns, And Scotland sweetens with the song of Burns! The morning came; I reached the classic hall; A clock-face eyed me, staring from the wall; Beneath its hands a printed line I read YOUTH IS LIFE'S SEED-TIME: so the clock-face said: Some took its counsel, as the sequel showed,-- Sowed,--their wild oats,--and reaped as they had sowed. How all comes back! the upward slanting floor,-- The masters' thrones that flank the central door,-- The long, outstretching alleys that divide The rows of desks that stand on either side,-- The staring boys, a face to every desk, Bright, dull, pale, blooming, common, picturesque. Grave is the Master's look; his forehead wears Thick rows of wrinkles, prints of worrying cares; Uneasy lie the heads of all that rule, His most of all whose kingdom is a school. Supreme he sits; before the awful frown That bends his brows the boldest eye goes down; Not more submissive Israel heard and saw At Sinai's foot the Giver of the Law. Less stern he seems, who sits in equal Mate On the twin throne and shares the empire's weight; Around his lips the subtle life that plays Steals quaintly forth in many a jesting phrase; A lightsome nature, not so hard to chafe, Pleasant when pleased; rough-handled, not so safe; Some tingling memories vaguely I recall, But to forgive him. God forgive us all! One yet remains, whose well-remembered name Pleads in my grateful heart its tender claim; His was the charm magnetic, the bright look That sheds its sunshine on the dreariest book; A loving soul to every task he brought That sweetly mingled with the lore he taught; Sprung from a saintly race that never could From youth to age be anything but good, His few brief years in holiest labors spent, Earth lost too soon the treasure heaven had lent. Kindest of teachers, studious to divine Some hint of promise in my earliest line, These faint and faltering words thou canst not hear Throb from a heart that holds thy memory dear. As to the traveller's eye the varied plain Shows through the window of the flying train, A mingled landscape, rather felt than seen, A gravelly bank, a sudden flash of green, A tangled wood, a glittering stream that flows Through the cleft summit where the cliff once rose, All strangely blended in a hurried gleam, Rock, wood, waste, meadow, village, hill-side, stream,-- So, as we look behind us, life appears, Seen through the vista of our bygone years. Yet in the dead past's shadow-filled domain, Some vanished shapes the hues of life retain; Unbidden, oft, before our dreaming eyes From the vague mists in memory's path they rise. So comes his blooming image to my view, The friend of joyous days when life was new, Hope yet untamed, the blood of youth unchilled, No blank arrear of promise unfulfilled, Life's flower yet hidden in its sheltering fold, Its pictured canvas yet to be unrolled. His the frank smile I vainly look to greet, His the warm grasp my clasping hand should meet; How would our lips renew their school-boy talk, Our feet retrace the old familiar walk! For thee no more earth's cheerful morning shines Through the green fringes of the tented pines; Ah me! is heaven so far thou canst not hear, Or is thy viewless spirit hovering near, A fair young presence, bright with morning's glow, The fresh-cheeked boy of fifty years ago? Yes, fifty years, with all their circling suns, Behind them all my glance reverted runs; Where now that time remote, its griefs, its joys, Where are its gray-haired men, its bright-haired boys? Where is the patriarch time could hardly tire,-- The good old, wrinkled, immemorial "squire "? (An honest treasurer, like a black-plumed swan, Not every day our eyes may look upon.) Where the tough champion who, with Calvin's sword, In wordy conflicts battled for the Lord? Where the grave scholar, lonely, calm, austere, Whose voice like music charmed the listening ear, Whose light rekindled, like the morning star Still shines upon us through the gates ajar? Where the still, solemn, weary, sad-eyed man, Whose care-worn face and wandering eyes would scan,-- His features wasted in the lingering strife With the pale foe that drains the student's life? Where my old friend, the scholar, teacher, saint, Whose creed, some hinted, showed a speck of taint; He broached his own opinion, which is not Lightly to be forgiven or forgot; Some riddle's point,--I scarce remember now,-- Homoi-, perhaps, where they said homo-ou. (If the unlettered greatly wish to know Where lies the difference betwixt oi and o, Those of the curious who have time may search Among the stale conundrums of their church.) Beneath his roof his peaceful life I shared, And for his modes of faith I little cared,-- I, taught to judge men's dogmas by their deeds, Long ere the days of india-rubber creeds. Why should we look one common faith to find, Where one in every score is color-blind? If here on earth they know not red from green, Will they see better into things unseen! Once more to time's old graveyard I return And scrape the moss from memory's pictured urn. Who, in these days when all things go by steam, Recalls the stage-coach with its four-horse team? Its sturdy driver,--who remembers him? Or the old landlord, saturnine and grim, Who left our hill-top for a new abode And reared his sign-post farther down the road? Still in the waters of the dark Shawshine Do the young bathers splash and think they're clean? Do pilgrims find their way to Indian Ridge, Or journey onward to the far-off bridge, And bring to younger ears the story back Of the broad stream, the mighty Merrimac? Are there still truant feet that stray beyond These circling bounds to Pomp's or Haggett's Pond, Or where the legendary name recalls The forest's earlier tenant,--"Deerjump Falls"? Yes, every nook these youthful feet explore, Just as our sires and grand sires did of yore; So all life's opening paths, where nature led Their father's feet, the children's children tread. Roll the round century's fivescore years away, Call from our storied past that earliest day When great Eliphalet (I can see him now,-- Big name, big frame, big voice, and beetling brow), Then young Eliphalet,--ruled the rows of boys In homespun gray or old-world corduroys,-- And save for fashion's whims, the benches show The self-same youths, the very boys we know. Time works strange marvels: since I trod the green And swung the gates, what wonders I have seen! But come what will,--the sky itself may fall,-- As things of course the boy accepts them all. The prophet's chariot, drawn by steeds of flame, For daily use our travelling millions claim; The face we love a sunbeam makes our own; No more the surgeon hears the sufferer's groan; What unwrit histories wrapped in darkness lay Till shovelling Schliemann bared them to the day! Your Richelieu says, and says it well, my lord, The pen is (sometimes) mightier than the sword; Great is the goosequill, say we all; Amen! Sometimes the spade is mightier than the pen; It shows where Babel's terraced walls were raised, The slabs that cracked when Nimrod's palace blazed, Unearths Mycenee, rediscovers Troy,-- Calmly he listens, that immortal boy. A new Prometheus tips our wands with fire, A mightier Orpheus strains the whispering wire, Whose lightning thrills the lazy winds outrun And hold the hours as Joshua stayed the sun,-- So swift, in truth, we hardly find a place For those dim fictions known as time and space. Still a new miracle each year supplies,-- See at his work the chemist of the skies, Who questions Sirius in his tortured rays And steals the secret of the solar blaze; Hush! while the window-rattling bugles play The nation's airs a hundred miles away! That wicked phonograph! hark! how it swears! Turn it again and make it say its prayers! And was it true, then, what the story said Of Oxford's friar and his brazen head? While wondering Science stands, herself perplexed At each day's miracle, and asks "What next?" The immortal boy, the coming heir of all, Springs from his desk to "urge the flying ball," Cleaves with his bending oar the glassy waves, With sinewy arm the dashing current braves, The same bright creature in these haunts of ours That Eton shadowed with her "antique towers." Boy! Where is he? the long-limbed youth inquires, Whom his rough chin with manly pride inspires; Ah, when the ruddy cheek no longer glows, When the bright hair is white as winter snows, When the dim eye has lost its lambent flame, Sweet to his ear will be his school-boy name Nor think the difference mighty as it seems Between life's morning and its evening dreams; Fourscore, like twenty, has its tasks and toys; In earth's wide school-house all are girls and boys. Brothers, forgive my wayward fancy. Who Can guess beforehand what his pen will do? Too light my strain for listeners such as these, Whom graver thoughts and soberer speech shall please. Is he not here whose breath of holy song Has raised the downcast eyes of Faith so long? Are they not here, the strangers in your gates, For whom the wearied ear impatient waits,-- The large-brained scholars whom their toils release,-- The bannered heralds of the Prince of Peace? Such was the gentle friend whose youth unblamed In years long past our student-benches claimed; Whose name, illumined on the sacred page, Lives in the labors of his riper age; Such he whose record time's destroying march Leaves uneffaced on Zion's springing arch Not to the scanty phrase of measured song, Cramped in its fetters, names like these belong; One ray they lend to gild my slender line,-- Their praise I leave to sweeter lips than mine. Homes of our sires, where Learning's temple rose, While vet they struggled with their banded foes, As in the West thy century's sun descends, One parting gleam its dying radiance lends. Darker and deeper though the shadows fall From the gray towers on Doubting Castle's wall, Though Pope and Pagan re-array their hosts, And her new armor youthful Science boasts, Truth, for whose altar rose this holy shrine, Shall fly for refuge to these bowers of thine; No past shall chain her with its rusted vow, No Jew's phylactery bind her Christian brow, But Faith shall smile to find her sister free, And nobler manhood draw its life from thee. Long as the arching skies above thee spread, As on thy groves the dews of heaven are shed, With currents widening still from year to year, And deepening channels, calm, untroubled, clear, Flow the twin streamlets from thy sacred hill-- Pieria's fount and Siloam's shaded rill! THE SILENT MELODY "BRING me my broken harp," he said; "We both are wrecks,--but as ye will,-- Though all its ringing tones have fled, Their echoes linger round it still; It had some golden strings, I know, But that was long--how long!--ago. "I cannot see its tarnished gold, I cannot hear its vanished tone, Scarce can my trembling fingers hold The pillared frame so long their own; We both are wrecks,--a while ago It had some silver strings, I know, "But on them Time too long has played The solemn strain that knows no change, And where of old my fingers strayed The chords they find are new and strange,-- Yes! iron strings,--I know,--I know,-- We both are wrecks of long ago. "We both are wrecks,--a shattered pair,-- Strange to ourselves in time's disguise. What say ye to the lovesick air That brought the tears from Marian's eyes? Ay! trust me,--under breasts of snow Hearts could be melted long ago! "Or will ye hear the storm-song's crash That from his dreams the soldier woke, And bade him face the lightning flash When battle's cloud in thunder broke? . . . Wrecks,--nought but wrecks!--the time was when We two were worth a thousand men!" And so the broken harp they bring With pitying smiles that none could blame; Alas! there's not a single string Of all that filled the tarnished frame! But see! like children overjoyed, His fingers rambling through the void! "I clasp thee! Ay . . . mine ancient lyre . . . Nay, guide my wandering fingers. . . There They love to dally with the wire As Isaac played with Esau's hair. Hush! ye shall hear the famous tune That Marian called the Breath of June!" And so they softly gather round Rapt in his tuneful trance he seems His fingers move: but not a sound! A silence like the song of dreams. . . . "There! ye have heard the air," he cries, "That brought the tears from Marian's eyes!" Ah, smile not at his fond conceit, Nor deem his fancy wrought in vain; To him the unreal sounds are sweet,-- No discord mars the silent strain Scored on life's latest, starlit page-- The voiceless melody of age. Sweet are the lips, of all that sing, When Nature's music breathes unsought, But never yet could voice or string So truly shape our tenderest thought As when by life's decaying fire Our fingers sweep the stringless lyre! OUR HOME--OUR COUNTRY FOR THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE SETTLEMENT OF CAMBRIDGE, MASS., DECEMBER 28, 1880 YOUR home was mine,--kind Nature's gift; My love no years can chill; In vain their flakes the storm-winds sift, The snow-drop hides beneath the drift, A living blossom still. Mute are a hundred long-famed lyres, Hushed all their golden strings; One lay the coldest bosom fires, One song, one only, never tires While sweet-voiced memory sings. No spot so lone but echo knows That dear familiar strain; In tropic isles, on arctic snows, Through burning lips its music flows And rings its fond refrain. From Pisa's tower my straining sight Roamed wandering leagues away, When lo! a frigate's banner bright, The starry blue, the red, the white, In far Livorno's bay. Hot leaps the life-blood from my heart, Forth springs the sudden tear; The ship that rocks by yonder mart Is of my land, my life, a part,-- Home, home, sweet home, is here! Fades from my view the sunlit scene,-- My vision spans the waves; I see the elm-encircled green, The tower,--the steeple,--and, between, The field of ancient graves. There runs the path my feet would tread When first they learned to stray; There stands the gambrel roof that spread Its quaint old angles o'er my head When first I saw the day. The sounds that met my boyish ear My inward sense salute,-- The woodnotes wild I loved to hear,-- The robin's challenge, sharp and clear,-- The breath of evening's flute. The faces loved from cradle days,-- Unseen, alas, how long! As fond remembrance round them plays, Touched with its softening moonlight rays, Through fancy's portal throng. And see! as if the opening skies Some angel form had spared Us wingless mortals to surprise, The little maid with light-blue eyes, White necked and golden haired! . . . . . . . . . . So rose the picture full in view I paint in feebler song; Such power the seamless banner knew Of red and white and starry blue For exiles banished long. Oh, boys, dear boys, who wait as men To guard its heaven-bright folds, Blest are the eyes that see again That banner, seamless now, as then,-- The fairest earth beholds! Sweet was the Tuscan air and soft In that unfading hour, And fancy leads my footsteps oft Up the round galleries, high aloft On Pisa's threatening tower. And still in Memory's holiest shrine I read with pride and joy, "For me those stars of empire shine; That empire's dearest home is mine; I am a Cambridge boy!" POEM AT THE CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY DINNER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL SOCIETY, JUNE 8, 1881 THREE paths there be where Learning's favored sons, Trained in the schools which hold her favored ones, Follow their several stars with separate aim; Each has its honors, each its special claim. Bred in the fruitful cradle of the East, First, as of oldest lineage, comes the Priest; The Lawyer next, in wordy conflict strong, Full armed to battle for the right,--or wrong; Last, he whose calling finds its voice in deeds, Frail Nature's helper in her sharpest needs. Each has his gifts, his losses and his gains, Each his own share of pleasures and of pains; No life-long aim with steadfast eye pursued Finds a smooth pathway all with roses strewed; Trouble belongs to man of woman born,-- Tread where he may, his foot will find its thorn. Of all the guests at life's perennial feast, Who of her children sits above the Priest? For him the broidered robe, the carven seat, Pride at his beck, and beauty at his feet, For him the incense fumes, the wine is poured, Himself a God, adoring and adored! His the first welcome when our hearts rejoice, His in our dying ear the latest voice, Font, altar, grave, his steps on all attend, Our staff, our stay, our all but heavenly friend! Where is the meddling hand that dares to probe The secret grief beneath his sable robe? How grave his port! how every gesture tells Here truth abides, here peace forever dwells; Vex not his lofty soul with comments vain; Faith asks no questions; silence, ye profane! Alas! too oft while all is calm without The stormy spirit wars with endless doubt; This is the mocking spectre, scarce concealed Behind tradition's bruised and battered shield. He sees the sleepless critic, age by age, Scrawl his new readings on the hallowed page, The wondrous deeds that priests and prophets saw Dissolved in legend, crystallized in law, And on the soil where saints and martyrs trod Altars new builded to the Unknown God; His shrines imperilled, his evangels torn,-- He dares not limp, but ah! how sharp his thorn! Yet while God's herald questions as he reads The outworn dogmas of his ancient creeds, Drops from his ritual the exploded verse, Blots from its page the Athanasian curse, Though by the critic's dangerous art perplexed, His holy life is Heaven's unquestioned text; That shining guidance doubt can never mar,-- The pillar's flame, the light of Bethlehem's star! Strong is the moral blister that will draw Laid on the conscience of the Man of Law Whom blindfold Justice lends her eyes to see Truth in the scale that holds his promised fee. What! Has not every lie its truthful side, Its honest fraction, not to be denied? Per contra,--ask the moralist,--in sooth Has not a lie its share in every truth? Then what forbids an honest man to try To find the truth that lurks in every lie, And just as fairly call on truth to yield The lying fraction in its breast concealed? So the worst rogue shall claim a ready friend His modest virtues boldly to defend, And he who shows the record of a saint See himself blacker than the devil could paint. What struggles to his captive soul belong Who loves the right, yet combats for the wrong, Who fights the battle he would fain refuse, And wins, well knowing that he ought to lose, Who speaks with glowing lips and look sincere In spangled words that make the worse appear The better reason; who, behind his mask, Hides his true self and blushes at his task,-- What quips, what quillets cheat the inward scorn That mocks such triumph? Has he not his thorn? Yet stay thy judgment; were thy life the prize, Thy death the forfeit, would thy cynic eyes See fault in him who bravely dares defend The cause forlorn, the wretch without a friend Nay, though the rightful side is wisdom's choice, Wrong has its rights and claims a champion's voice; Let the strong arm be lifted for the weak, For the dumb lips the fluent pleader speak;-- When with warm "rebel" blood our street was dyed Who took, unawed, the hated hirelings' side? No greener civic wreath can Adams claim, No brighter page the youthful Quincy's name! How blest is he who knows no meaner strife Than Art's long battle with the foes of life! No doubt assails him, doing still his best, And trusting kindly Nature for the rest; No mocking conscience tears the thin disguise That wraps his breast, and tells him that he lies. He comes: the languid sufferer lifts his head And smiles a welcome from his weary bed; He speaks: what music like the tones that tell, "Past is the hour of danger,--all is well!" How can he feel the petty stings of grief Whose cheering presence always brings relief? What ugly dreams can trouble his repose Who yields himself to soothe another's woes? Hour after hour the busy day has found The good physician on his lonely round; Mansion and hovel, low and lofty door, He knows, his journeys every path explore,-- Where the cold blast has struck with deadly chill The sturdy dweller on the storm-swept hill, Where by the stagnant marsh the sickening gale Has blanched the poisoned tenants of the vale, Where crushed and maimed the bleeding victim lies, Where madness raves, where melancholy sighs, And where the solemn whisper tells too plain That all his science, all his art, were vain. How sweet his fireside when the day is done And cares have vanished with the setting sun! Evening at last its hour of respite brings And on his couch his weary length he flings. Soft be thy pillow, servant of mankind, Lulled by an opiate Art could never find; Sweet be thy slumber,--thou hast earned it well,-- Pleasant thy dreams! Clang! goes the midnight bell! Darkness and storm! the home is far away That waits his coming ere the break of day; The snow-clad pines their wintry plumage toss,-- Doubtful the frozen stream his road must cross; Deep lie the drifts, the slanted heaps have shut The hardy woodman in his mountain hut,-- Why should thy softer frame the tempest brave? Hast thou no life, no health, to lose or save? Look! read the answer in his patient eyes,-- For him no other voice when suffering cries; Deaf to the gale that all around him blows, A feeble whisper calls him,--and he goes. Or seek the crowded city,--summer's heat Glares burning, blinding, in the narrow street, Still, noisome, deadly, sleeps the envenomed air, Unstirred the yellow flag that says "Beware!" Tempt not thy fate,--one little moment's breath Bears on its viewless wing the seeds of death; Thou at whose door the gilded chariots stand, Whose dear-bought skill unclasps the miser's hand, Turn from thy fatal quest, nor cast away That life so precious; let a meaner prey Feed the destroyer's hunger; live to bless Those happier homes that need thy care no less! Smiling he listens; has he then a charm Whose magic virtues peril can disarm? No safeguard his; no amulet he wears, Too well he knows that Nature never spares Her truest servant, powerless to defend From her own weapons her unshrinking friend. He dares the fate the bravest well might shun, Nor asks reward save only Heaven's "Well done!" Such are the toils, the perils that he knows, Days without rest and nights without repose, Yet all unheeded for the love he bears His art, his kind, whose every grief he shares. Harder than these to know how small the part Nature's proud empire yields to striving Art; How, as the tide that rolls around the sphere Laughs at the mounds that delving arms uprear,-- Spares some few roods of oozy earth, but still Wastes and rebuilds the planet at its will, Comes at its ordered season, night or noon, Led by the silver magnet of the moon,-- So life's vast tide forever comes and goes, Unchecked, resistless, as it ebbs and flows. Hardest of all, when Art has done her best, To find the cuckoo brooding in her nest; The shrewd adventurer, fresh from parts unknown, Kills off the patients Science thought her own; Towns from a nostrum-vender get their name, Fences and walls the cure-all drug proclaim, Plasters and pads the willing world beguile, Fair Lydia greets us with astringent smile, Munchausen's fellow-countryman unlocks His new Pandora's globule-holding box, And as King George inquired, with puzzled grin, "How--how the devil get the apple in?" So we ask how,--with wonder-opening eyes,-- Such pygmy pills can hold such giant lies! Yes, sharp the trials, stern the daily tasks That suffering Nature from her servant asks; His the kind office dainty menials scorn, His path how hard,--at every step a thorn! What does his saddening, restless slavery buy? What save a right to live, a chance to die,-- To live companion of disease and pain, To die by poisoned shafts untimely slain? Answer from hoary eld, majestic shades,-- From Memphian courts, from Delphic colonnades, Speak in the tones that Persia's despot heard When nations treasured every golden word The wandering echoes wafted o'er the seas, From the far isle that held Hippocrates; And thou, best gift that Pergamus could send Imperial Rome, her noblest Caesar's friend, Master of masters, whose unchallenged sway Not bold Vesalius dared to disobey; Ye who while prophets dreamed of dawning times Taught your rude lessons in Salerno's rhymes, And ye, the nearer sires, to whom we owe The better share of all the best we know, In every land an ever-growing train, Since wakening Science broke her rusted chain,-- Speak from the past, and say what prize was sent To crown the toiling years so freely spent! List while they speak: In life's uneven road Our willing hands have eased our brothers' load; One forehead smoothed, one pang of torture less, One peaceful hour a sufferer's couch to bless, The smile brought back to fever's parching lips, The light restored to reason in eclipse, Life's treasure rescued like a burning brand Snatched from the dread destroyer's wasteful hand; Such were our simple records day by day, For gains like these we wore our lives away. In toilsome paths our daily bread we sought, But bread from heaven attending angels brought; Pain was our teacher, speaking to the heart, Mother of pity, nurse of pitying art; Our lesson learned, we reached the peaceful shore Where the pale sufferer asks our aid no more,-- These gracious words our welcome, our reward Ye served your brothers; ye have served your Lord! RHYMES OF A LIFE-TIME FROM the first gleam of morning to the gray Of peaceful evening, lo, a life unrolled! In woven pictures all its changes told, Its lights, its shadows, every flitting ray, Till the long curtain, falling, dims the day, Steals from the dial's disk the sunlight's gold, And all the graven hours grow dark and cold Where late the glowing blaze of noontide lay. Ah! the warm blood runs wild in youthful veins,-- Let me no longer play with painted fire; New songs for new-born days! I would not tire The listening ears that wait for fresher strains In phrase new-moulded, new-forged rhythmic chains, With plaintive measures from a worn-out lyre. August 2, 1881. === BEFORE THE CURFEW AT MY FIRESIDE ALONE, beneath the darkened sky, With saddened heart and unstrung lyre, I heap the spoils of years gone by, And leave them with a long-drawn sigh, Like drift-wood brands that glimmering lie, Before the ashes hide the fire. Let not these slow declining days The rosy light of dawn outlast; Still round my lonely hearth it plays, And gilds the east with borrowed rays, While memory's mirrored sunset blaze Flames on the windows of the past. March 1, 1888. AT THE SATURDAY CLUB THIS is our place of meeting; opposite That towered and pillared building: look at it; King's Chapel in the Second George's day, Rebellion stole its regal name away,-- Stone Chapel sounded better; but at last The poisoned name of our provincial past Had lost its ancient venom; then once more Stone Chapel was King's Chapel as before. (So let rechristened North Street, when it can, Bring back the days of Marlborough and Queen Anne!) Next the old church your wandering eye will meet-- A granite pile that stares upon the street-- Our civic temple; slanderous tongues have said Its shape was modelled from St. Botolph's head, Lofty, but narrow; jealous passers-by Say Boston always held her head too high. Turn half-way round, and let your look survey The white facade that gleams across the way,-- The many-windowed building, tall and wide, The palace-inn that shows its northern side In grateful shadow when the sunbeams beat The granite wall in summer's scorching heat. This is the place; whether its name you spell Tavern, or caravansera, or hotel. Would I could steal its echoes! you should find Such store of vanished pleasures brought to mind Such feasts! the laughs of many a jocund hour That shook the mortar from King George's tower; Such guests! What famous names its record boasts, Whose owners wander in the mob of ghosts! Such stories! Every beam and plank is filled With juicy wit the joyous talkers spilled, Ready to ooze, as once the mountain pine The floors are laid with oozed its turpentine! A month had flitted since The Club had met; The day came round; I found the table set, The waiters lounging round the marble stairs, Empty as yet the double row of chairs. I was a full half hour before the rest, Alone, the banquet-chamber's single guest. So from the table's side a chair I took, And having neither company nor book To keep me waking, by degrees there crept A torpor over me,--in short, I slept. Loosed from its chain, along the wreck-strown track Of the dead years my soul goes travelling back; My ghosts take on their robes of flesh; it seems Dreaming is life; nay, life less life than dreams, So real are the shapes that meet my eyes. They bring no sense of wonder, no surprise, No hint of other than an earth-born source; All seems plain daylight, everything of course. How dim the colors are, how poor and faint This palette of weak words with which I paint! Here sit my friends; if I could fix them so As to my eyes they seem, my page would glow Like a queen's missal, warm as if the brush Of Titian or Velasquez brought the flush Of life into their features. Ay de mi! If syllables were pigments, you should see Such breathing portraitures as never man Found in the Pitti or the Vatican. Here sits our POET, Laureate, if you will. Long has he worn the wreath, and wears it still. Dead? Nay, not so; and yet they say his bust Looks down on marbles covering royal dust, Kings by the Grace of God, or Nature's grace; Dead! No! Alive! I see him in his place, Full-featured, with the bloom that heaven denies Her children, pinched by cold New England skies, Too often, while the nursery's happier few Win from a summer cloud its roseate hue. Kind, soft-voiced, gentle, in his eye there shines The ray serene that filled Evangeline's. Modest he seems, not shy; content to wait Amid the noisy clamor of debate The looked-for moment when a peaceful word Smooths the rough ripples louder tongues have stirred. In every tone I mark his tender grace And all his poems hinted in his face; What tranquil joy his friendly presence gives! How could. I think him dead? He lives! He lives! There, at the table's further end I see In his old place our Poet's vis-a-vis, The great PROFESSOR, strong, broad-shouldered, square, In life's rich noontide, joyous, debonair. His social hour no leaden care alloys, His laugh rings loud and mirthful as a boy's,-- That lusty laugh the Puritan forgot,-- What ear has heard it and remembers not? How often, halting at some wide crevasse Amid the windings of his Alpine pass, High up the cliffs, the climbing mountaineer, Listening the far-off avalanche to hear, Silent, and leaning on his steel-shod staff, Has heard that cheery voice, that ringing laugh, From the rude cabin whose nomadic walls Creep with the moving glacier as it crawls How does vast Nature lead her living train In ordered sequence through that spacious brain, As in the primal hour when Adam named The new-born tribes that young creation claimed!-- How will her realm be darkened, losing thee, Her darling, whom we call _our_ AGASSIZ! But who is he whose massive frame belies The maiden shyness of his downcast eyes? Who broods in silence till, by questions pressed, Some answer struggles from his laboring breast? An artist Nature meant to dwell apart, Locked in his studio with a human heart, Tracking its eaverned passions to their lair, And all its throbbing mysteries laying bare. Count it no marvel that he broods alone Over the heart he studies,--'t is his own; So in his page, whatever shape it wear, The Essex wizard's shadowed self is there,-- The great ROMANCER, hid beneath his veil Like the stern preacher of his sombre tale; Virile in strength, yet bashful as a girl, Prouder than Hester, sensitive as Pearl. From his mild throng of worshippers released, Our Concord Delphi sends its chosen priest, Prophet or poet, mystic, sage, or seer, By every title always welcome here. Why that ethereal spirit's frame describe? You know the race-marks of the Brahmin tribe, The spare, slight form, the sloping shoulders' droop, The calm, scholastic mien, the clerkly stoop, The lines of thought the sharpened features wear, Carved by the edge of keen New England air. List! for he speaks! As when a king would choose The jewels for his bride, he might refuse This diamond for its flaw,--find that less bright Than those, its fellows, and a pearl less white Than fits her snowy neck, and yet at last, The fairest gems are chosen, and made fast In golden fetters; so, with light delays He seeks the fittest word to fill his phrase; Nor vain nor idle his fastidious quest, His chosen word is sure to prove the best. Where in the realm of thought, whose air is song, Does he, the Buddha of the West, belong? He seems a winged Franklin, sweetly wise, Born to unlock the secrets of the skies; And which the nobler calling,--if 't is fair Terrestrial with celestial to compare,-- To guide the storm-cloud's elemental flame, Or walk the chambers whence the lightning came, Amidst the sources of its subtile fire, And steal their effluence for his lips and lyre? If lost at times in vague aerial flights, None treads with firmer footstep when he lights; A soaring nature, ballasted with sense, Wisdom without her wrinkles or pretence, In every Bible he has faith to read, And every altar helps to shape his creed. Ask you what name this prisoned spirit bears While with ourselves this fleeting breath it shares? Till angels greet him with a sweeter one In heaven, on earth we call him EMERSON. I start; I wake; the vision is withdrawn; Its figures fading like the stars at dawn; Crossed from the roll of life their cherished names, And memory's pictures fading in their frames; Yet life is lovelier for these transient gleams Of buried friendships; blest is he who dreams! OUR DEAD SINGER H. W. L. PRIDE of the sister realm so long our own, We claim with her that spotless fame of thine, White as her snow and fragrant as her pine! Ours was thy birthplace, but in every zone Some wreath of song thy liberal hand has thrown Breathes perfume from its blossoms, that entwine Where'er the dewdrops fall, the sunbeams shine, On life's long path with tangled cares o'ergrown. Can Art thy truthful counterfeit command,-- The silver-haloed features, tranquil, mild,-- Soften the lips of bronze as when they smiled, Give warmth and pressure to the marble hand? Seek the lost rainbow in the sky it spanned Farewell, sweet Singer! Heaven reclaims its child. Carved from the block or cast in clinging mould, Will grateful Memory fondly try her best The mortal vesture from decay to wrest; His look shall greet us, calm, but ah, how cold! No breath can stir the brazen drapery's fold, No throb can heave the statue's stony breast; "He is not here, but risen," will stand confest In all we miss, in all our eyes behold. How Nature loved him! On his placid brow, Thought's ample dome, she set the sacred sign That marks the priesthood of her holiest shrine, Nor asked a leaflet from the laurel's bough That envious Time might clutch or disallow, To prove her chosen minstrel's song divine. On many a saddened hearth the evening fire Burns paler as the children's hour draws near,-- That joyous hour his song made doubly dear,-- And tender memories touch the faltering choir. He sings no more on earth; our vain desire Aches for the voice we loved so long to hear In Dorian flute-notes breathing soft and clear,-- The sweet contralto that could never tire. Deafened with listening to a harsher strain, The Maenad's scream, the stark barbarian's cry, Still for those soothing, loving tones we sigh; Oh, for our vanished Orpheus once again! The shadowy silence hears us call in vain! His lips are hushed; his song shall never die. TWO POEMS TO HARRIET BEECHER STOWE ON HER SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY, JUNE 14, 1882 I. AT THE SUMMIT SISTER, we bid you welcome,--we who stand On the high table-land; We who have climbed life's slippery Alpine slope, And rest, still leaning on the staff of hope, Looking along the silent Mer de Glace, Leading our footsteps where the dark crevasse Yawns in the frozen sea we all must pass,-- Sister, we clasp your hand! Rest with us in the hour that Heaven has lent Before the swift descent. Look! the warm sunbeams kiss the glittering ice; See! next the snow-drift blooms the edelweiss; The mated eagles fan the frosty air; Life, beauty, love, around us everywhere, And, in their time, the darkening hours that bear Sweet memories, peace, content. Thrice welcome! shining names our missals show Amid their rubrics' glow, But search the blazoned record's starry line, What halo's radiance fills the page like thine? Thou who by some celestial clue couldst find The way to all the hearts of all mankind, On thee, already canonized, enshrined, What more can Heaven bestow! II. THE WORLD'S HOMAGE IF every tongue that speaks her praise For whom I shape my tinkling phrase Were summoned to the table, The vocal chorus that would meet Of mingling accents harsh or sweet, From every land and tribe, would beat The polyglots at Babel. Briton and Frenchman, Swede and Dane, Turk, Spaniard, Tartar of Ukraine, Hidalgo, Cossack, Cadi, High Dutchman and Low Dutchman, too, The Russian serf, the Polish Jew, Arab, Armenian, and Mantchoo, Would shout, "We know the lady!" Know her! Who knows not Uncle Tom And her he learned his gospel from Has never heard of Moses; Full well the brave black hand we know That gave to freedom's grasp the hoe That killed the weed that used to grow Among the Southern roses. When Archimedes, long ago, Spoke out so grandly, "_dos pou sto_-- Give me a place to stand on, I'll move your planet for you, now,"-- He little dreamed or fancied how The _sto_ at last should find its _pou_ For woman's faith to land on. Her lever was the wand of art, Her fulcrum was the human heart, Whence all unfailing aid is; She moved the earth! Its thunders pealed, Its mountains shook, its temples reeled, The blood-red fountains were unsealed, And Moloch sunk to Hades. All through the conflict, up and down Marched Uncle Tom and Old John Brown, One ghost, one form ideal; And which was false and which was true, And which was mightier of the two, The wisest sibyl never knew, For both alike were real. Sister, the holy maid does well Who counts her beads in convent cell, Where pale devotion lingers; But she who serves the sufferer's needs, Whose prayers are spelt in loving deeds, May trust the Lord will count her beads As well as human fingers. When Truth herself was Slavery's slave, Thy hand the prisoned suppliant gave The rainbow wings of fiction. And Truth who soared descends to-day Bearing an angel's wreath away, Its lilies at thy feet to lay With Heaven's own benediction. A WELCOME TO DR. BENJAMIN APTHORP GOULD ON HIS RETURN FROM SOUTH AMERICA AFTER FIFTEEN YEARS DEVOTED TO CATALOGUING THE STARS OF THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE Read at the Dinner given at the Hotel Vendome, May 6,1885. ONCE more Orion and the sister Seven Look on thee from the skies that hailed thy birth,-- How shall we welcome thee, whose home was heaven, From thy celestial wanderings back to earth? Science has kept her midnight taper burning To greet thy coming with its vestal flame; Friendship has murmured, "When art thou returning?" "Not yet! Not yet!" the answering message came. Thine was unstinted zeal, unchilled devotion, While the blue realm had kingdoms to explore,-- Patience, like his who ploughed the unfurrowed ocean, Till o'er its margin loomed San Salvador. Through the long nights I see thee ever waking, Thy footstool earth, thy roof the hemisphere, While with thy griefs our weaker hearts are aching, Firm as thine equatorial's rock-based pier. The souls that voyaged the azure depths before thee Watch with thy tireless vigils, all unseen,-- Tycho and Kepler bend benignant o'er thee, And with his toy-like tube the Florentine,-- He at whose word the orb that bore him shivered To find her central sovereignty disowned, While the wan lips of priest and pontiff quivered, Their jargon stilled, their Baal disenthroned. Flamsteed and Newton look with brows unclouded, Their strife forgotten with its faded scars,-- (Titans, who found the world of space too crowded To walk in peace among its myriad stars.) All cluster round thee,--seers of earliest ages, Persians, Ionians, Mizraim's learned kings, From the dim days of Shinar's hoary sages To his who weighed the planet's fluid rings. And we, for whom the northern heavens are lighted, For whom the storm has passed, the sun has smiled, Our clouds all scattered, all our stars united, We claim thee, clasp thee, like a long-lost child. Fresh from the spangled vault's o'er-arching splendor, Thy lonely pillar, thy revolving dome, In heartfelt accents, proud, rejoicing, tender, We bid thee welcome to thine earthly home! TO FREDERICK HENRY HEDGE AT A DINNER GIVEN HIM ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY, DECEMBER 12, 1885 With a bronze statuette of John of Bologna's Mercury, presented by a few friends. FIT emblem for the altar's side, And him who serves its daily need, The stay, the solace, and the guide Of mortal men, whate'er his creed! Flamen or Auspex, Priest or Bonze, He feeds the upward-climbing fire, Still teaching, like the deathless bronze, Man's noblest lesson,--to aspire. Hermes lies prone by fallen Jove, Crushed are the wheels of Krishna's car, And o'er Dodona's silent grove Streams the white, ray from Bethlehem's star. Yet snatched from Time's relentless clutch, A godlike shape, that human hands Have fired with Art's electric touch, The herald of Olympus stands. Ask not what ore the furnace knew; Love mingled with the flowing mass, And lends its own unchanging hue, Like gold in Corinth's molten brass. Take then our gift; this airy form Whose bronze our benedictions gild, The hearts of all its givers warm With love by freezing years unchilled. With eye undimmed, with strength unworn, Still toiling in your Master's field, Before you wave the growths unshorn, Their ripened harvest yet to yield. True servant of the Heavenly Sire, To you our tried affection clings, Bids you still labor, still aspire, But clasps your feet and steals their wings. TO JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL THIS is your month, the month of "perfect days," Birds in full song and blossoms all ablaze. Nature herself your earliest welcome breathes, Spreads every leaflet, every bower inwreathes; Carpets her paths for your returning feet, Puts forth her best your coming steps to greet; And Heaven must surely find the earth in tune When Home, sweet Home, exhales the breath of June. These blessed days are waning all too fast, And June's bright visions mingling with the past; Lilacs have bloomed and faded, and the rose Has dropped its petals, but the clover blows, And fills its slender tubes with honeyed sweets; The fields are pearled with milk-white margarites; The dandelion, which you sang of old, Has lost its pride of place, its crown of gold, But still displays its feathery-mantled globe, Which children's breath, or wandering winds unrobe. These were your humble friends; your opened eyes Nature had trained her common gifts to prize; Not Cam nor Isis taught you to despise Charles, with his muddy margin and the harsh, Plebeian grasses of the reeking marsh. New England's home-bred scholar, well you knew Her soil, her speech, her people, through and through, And loved them ever with the love that holds All sweet, fond memories in its fragrant folds. Though far and wide your winged words have flown, Your daily presence kept you all our own, Till, with a sorrowing sigh, a thrill of pride, We heard your summons, and you left our side For larger duties and for tasks untried. How pleased the Spaniards for a while to claim This frank Hidalgo with the liquid name, Who stored their classics on his crowded shelves And loved their Calderon as they did themselves! Before his eyes what changing pageants pass! The bridal feast how near the funeral mass! The death-stroke falls,--the Misereres wail; The joy-bells ring,--the tear-stained cheeks unveil, While, as the playwright shifts his pictured scene, The royal mourner crowns his second queen. From Spain to Britain is a goodly stride,-- Madrid and London long-stretched leagues divide. What if I send him, "Uncle S., says he," To my good cousin whom he calls "J. B."? A nation's servants go where they are sent,-- He heard his Uncle's orders, and he went. By what enchantments, what alluring arts, Our truthful James led captive British hearts,-- Whether his shrewdness made their statesmen halt, Or if his learning found their Dons at fault, Or if his virtue was a strange surprise, Or if his wit flung star-dust in their eyes,-- Like honest Yankees we can simply guess; But that he did it all must needs confess. England herself without a blush may claim Her only conqueror since the Norman came. Eight years an exile! What a weary while Since first our herald sought the mother isle! His snow-white flag no churlish wrong has soiled,--- He left unchallenged, he returns unspoiled. Here let us keep him, here he saw the light,-- His genius, wisdom, wit, are ours by right; And if we lose him our lament will be We have "five hundred"--_not_ "as good as he." TO JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY 1887 FRIEND, whom thy fourscore winters leave more dear Than when life's roseate summer on thy cheek Burned in the flush of manhood's manliest year, Lonely, how lonely! is the snowy peak Thy feet have reached, and mine have climbed so near! Close on thy footsteps 'mid the landscape drear I stretch my hand thine answering grasp to seek, Warm with the love no rippling rhymes can speak! Look backward! From thy lofty height survey Thy years of toil, of peaceful victories won, Of dreams made real, largest hopes outrun! Look forward! Brighter than earth's morning ray Streams the pure light of Heaven's unsetting sun, The unclouded dawn of life's immortal day! PRELUDE TO A VOLUME PRINTED IN RAISED LETTERS FOR THE BLIND DEAR friends, left darkling in the long eclipse That veils the noonday,--you whose finger-tips A meaning in these ridgy leaves can find Where ours go stumbling, senseless, helpless, blind. This wreath of verse how dare I offer you To whom the garden's choicest gifts are due? The hues of all its glowing beds are ours, Shall you not claim its sweetest-smelling flowers? Nay, those I have I bring you,--at their birth Life's cheerful sunshine warmed the grateful earth; If my rash boyhood dropped some idle seeds, And here and there you light on saucy weeds Among the fairer growths, remember still Song comes of grace, and not of human will: We get a jarring note when most we try, Then strike the chord we know not how or why; Our stately verse with too aspiring art Oft overshoots and fails to reach the heart, While the rude rhyme one human throb endears Turns grief to smiles, and softens mirth to tears. Kindest of critics, ye whose fingers read, From Nature's lesson learn the poet's creed; The queenly tulip flaunts in robes of flame, The wayside seedling scarce a tint may claim, Yet may the lowliest leaflets that unfold A dewdrop fresh from heaven's own chalice hold. BOSTON TO FLORENCE Sent to "The Philological Circle" of Florence for its meeting in commemoration of Dante, January 27, 1881, the anniversary of his first condemnation. PROUD of her clustering spires, her new-built towers, Our Venice, stolen from the slumbering sea, A sister's kindliest greeting wafts to thee, Rose of Val d' Arno, queen of all its flowers! Thine exile's shrine thy sorrowing love embowers, Yet none with truer homage bends the knee, Or stronger pledge of fealty brings, than we, Whose poets make thy dead Immortal ours. Lonely the height, but ah, to heaven how near! Dante, whence flowed that solemn verse of thine Like the stern river from its Apennine Whose name the far-off Scythian thrilled with fear: Now to all lands thy deep-toned voice is dear, And every language knows the Song Divine! AT THE UNITARIAN FESTIVAL MARCH 8, 1882 THE waves unbuild the wasting shore; Where mountains towered the billows sweep, Yet still their borrowed spoils restore, And build new empires from the deep. So while the floods of thought lay waste The proud domain of priestly creeds, Its heaven-appointed tides will haste To plant new homes for human needs. Be ours to mark with hearts unchilled The change an outworn church deplores; The legend sinks, but Faith shall build A fairer throne on new-found shores. POEM FOR THE TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDING OF HARVARD COLLEGE TWICE had the mellowing sun of autumn crowned The hundredth circle of his yearly round, When, as we meet to-day, our fathers met: That joyous gathering who can e'er forget, When Harvard's nurslings, scattered far and wide, Through mart and village, lake's and ocean's side, Came, with one impulse, one fraternal throng, And crowned the hours with banquet, speech, and song? Once more revived in fancy's magic glass, I see in state the long procession pass Tall, courtly, leader as by right divine, Winthrop, our Winthrop, rules the marshalled line, Still seen in front, as on that far-off day His ribboned baton showed the column's way. Not all are gone who marched in manly pride And waved their truncheons at their leader's side; Gray, Lowell, Dixwell, who his empire shared, These to be with us envious Time has spared. Few are the faces, so familiar then, Our eyes still meet amid the haunts of men; Scarce one of all the living gathered there, Whose unthinned locks betrayed a silver hair, Greets us to-day, and yet we seem the same As our own sires and grandsires, save in name. There are the patriarchs, looking vaguely round For classmates' faces, hardly known if found; See the cold brow that rules the busy mart; Close at its side the pallid son of art, Whose purchased skill with borrowed meaning clothes, And stolen hues, the smirking face he loathes. Here is the patient scholar; in his looks You read the titles of his learned books; What classic lore those spidery crow's-feet speak! What problems figure on that wrinkled cheek! For never thought but left its stiffened trace, Its fossil footprint, on the plastic face, As the swift record of a raindrop stands, Fixed on the tablet of the hardening sands. On every face as on the written page Each year renews the autograph of age; One trait alone may wasting years defy,-- The fire still lingering in the poet's eye, While Hope, the siren, sings her sweetest strain,-- _Non omnis moriar_ is its proud refrain. Sadly we gaze upon the vacant chair; He who should claim its honors is not there,-- Otis, whose lips the listening crowd enthrall That press and pack the floor of Boston's hall. But Kirkland smiles, released from toil and care Since the silk mantle younger shoulders wear,-- Quincy's, whose spirit breathes the selfsame fire That filled the bosom of his youthful sire, Who for the altar bore the kindled torch To freedom's temple, dying in its porch. Three grave professions in their sons appear, Whose words well studied all well pleased will hear Palfrey, ordained in varied walks to shine, Statesman, historian, critic, and divine; Solid and square behold majestic Shaw, A mass of wisdom and a mine of law; Warren, whose arm the doughtiest warriors fear, Asks of the startled crowd to lend its ear,-- Proud of his calling, him the world loves best, Not as the coming, but the parting guest. Look on that form,--with eye dilating scan The stately mould of nature's kingliest man! Tower-like he stands in life's unfaded prime; Ask you his name? None asks a second time He from the land his outward semblance takes, Where storm-swept mountains watch o'er slumbering lakes. See in the impress which the body wears How its imperial might the soul declares The forehead's large expansion, lofty, wide, That locks unsilvered vainly strive to hide; The lines of thought that plough the sober cheek; Lips that betray their wisdom ere they speak In tones like answers from Dodona's grove; An eye like Juno's when she frowns on Jove. I look and wonder; will he be content-- This man, this monarch, for the purple meant-- The meaner duties of his tribe to share, Clad in the garb that common mortals wear? Ah, wild Ambition, spread thy restless wings, Beneath whose plumes the hidden cestrum stings; Thou whose bold flight would leave earth's vulgar crowds, And like the eagle soar above the clouds, Must feel the pang that fallen angels know When the red lightning strikes thee from below! Less bronze, more silver, mingles in the mould Of him whom next my roving eyes behold; His, more the scholar's than the statesman's face, Proclaims him born of academic race. Weary his look, as if an aching brain Left on his brow the frozen prints of pain; His voice far-reaching, grave, sonorous, owns A shade of sadness in its plaintive tones, Yet when its breath some loftier thought inspires Glows with a heat that every bosom fires. Such Everett seems; no chance-sown wild flower knows The full-blown charms of culture's double rose,-- Alas, how soon, by death's unsparing frost, Its bloom is faded and its fragrance lost! Two voices, only two, to earth belong, Of all whose accents met the listening throng: Winthrop, alike for speech and guidance framed, On that proud day a twofold duty claimed; One other yet,--remembered or forgot,-- Forgive my silence if I name him not. Can I believe it? I, whose youthful voice Claimed a brief gamut,--notes not over choice, Stood undismayed before the solemn throng, And _propria voce_ sung that saucy song Which even in memory turns my soul aghast,-- _Felix audacia_ was the verdict cast. What were the glory of these festal days Shorn of their grand illumination's blaze? Night comes at last with all her starry train To find a light in every glittering pane. From "Harvard's" windows see the sudden flash,-- Old "Massachusetts" glares through every sash; From wall to wall the kindling splendors run Till all is glorious as the noonday sun. How to the scholar's mind each object brings What some historian tells, some poet sings! The good gray teacher whom we all revered-- Loved, honored, laughed at, and by freshmen feared, As from old "Harvard," where its light began, From hall to hall the clustering splendors ran-- Took down his well-worn Eschylus and read, Lit by the rays a thousand tapers shed, How the swift herald crossed the leagues between Mycenae's monarch and his faithless queen; And thus he read,--my verse but ill displays The Attic picture, clad in modern phrase. On Ida's summit flames the kindling pile, And Lemnos answers from his rocky isle; From Athos next it climbs the reddening skies, Thence where the watch-towers of Macistus rise. The sentries of Mesapius in their turn Bid the dry heath in high piled masses burn, Cithoeron's crag the crimson billows stain, Far AEgiplanctus joins the fiery train. Thus the swift courier through the pathless night Has gained at length the Arachnoean height, Whence the glad tidings, borne on wings offlame, "Ilium has fallen!" reach the royal dame. So ends the day; before the midnight stroke The lights expiring cloud the air with smoke; While these the toil of younger hands employ, The slumbering Grecian dreams of smouldering Troy. As to that hour with backward steps I turn, Midway I pause; behold a funeral urn! Ah, sad memorial! known but all too well The tale which thus its golden letters tell: This dust, once breathing, changed its joyous life For toil and hunger, wounds and mortal strife; Love, friendship, learning's all prevailing charms, For the cold bivouac and the clash of arms. The cause of freedom won, a race enslaved Called back to manhood, and a nation saved, These sons of Harvard, falling ere their prime, Leave their proud memory to the coming time. While in their still retreats our scholars turn The mildewed pages of the past, to learn With endless labor of the sleepless brain What once has been and ne'er shall be again, We reap the harvest of their ceaseless toil And find a fragrance in their midnight oil. But let a purblind mortal dare the task The embryo future of itself to ask, The world reminds him, with a scornful laugh, That times have changed since Prospero broke his staff. Could all the wisdom of the schools foretell The dismal hour when Lisbon shook and fell, Or name the shuddering night that toppled down Our sister's pride, beneath whose mural crown Scarce had the scowl forgot its angry lines, When earth's blind prisoners fired their fatal mines? New realms, new worlds, exulting Science claims, Still the dim future unexplored remains; Her trembling scales the far-off planet weigh, Her torturing prisms its elements betray,-- We know what ores the fires of Sirius melt, What vaporous metals gild Orion's belt; Angels, archangels, may have yet to learn Those hidden truths our heaven-taught eyes discern; Yet vain is Knowledge, with her mystic wand, To pierce the cloudy screen and read beyond; Once to the silent stars the fates were known, To us they tell no secrets but their own. At Israel's altar still we humbly bow, But where, oh where, are Israel's prophets now? Where is the sibyl with her hoarded leaves? Where is the charm the weird enchantress weaves? No croaking raven turns the auspex pale, No reeking altars tell the morrow's tale; The measured footsteps of the Fates are dumb, Unseen, unheard, unheralded, they come, Prophet and priest and all their following fail. Who then is left to rend the future's veil? Who but the poet, he whose nicer sense No film can baffle with its slight defence, Whose finer vision marks the waves that stray, Felt, but unseen, beyond the violet ray?-- Who, while the storm-wind waits its darkening shroud, Foretells the tempest ere he sees the cloud,-- Stays not for time his secrets to reveal, But reads his message ere he breaks the seal. So Mantua's bard foretold the coming day Ere Bethlehem's infant in the manger lay; The promise trusted to a mortal tongue Found listening ears before the angels sung. So while his load the creeping pack-horse galled, While inch by inch the dull canal-boat crawled, Darwin beheld a Titan from "afar Drag the slow barge or drive the rapid car," That panting giant fed by air and flame, The mightiest forges task their strength to tame. Happy the poet! him no tyrant fact Holds in its clutches to be chained and racked; Him shall no mouldy document convict, No stern statistics gravely contradict; No rival sceptre threats his airy throne; He rules o'er shadows, but he reigns alone. Shall I the poet's broad dominion claim Because you bid me wear his sacred name For these few moments? Shall I boldly clash My flint and steel, and by the sudden flash Read the fair vision which my soul descries Through the wide pupils of its wondering eyes? List then awhile; the fifty years have sped; The third full century's opened scroll is spread, Blank to all eyes save his who dimly sees The shadowy future told in words like these. How strange the prospect to my sight appears, Changed by the busy hands of fifty years! Full well I know our ocean-salted Charles, Filling and emptying through the sands and marls That wall his restless stream on either bank, Not all unlovely when the sedges rank Lend their coarse veil the sable ooze to hide That bares its blackness with the ebbing tide. In other shapes to my illumined eyes Those ragged margins of our stream arise Through walls of stone the sparkling waters flow, In clearer depths the golden sunsets glow, On purer waves the lamps of midnight gleam, That silver o'er the unpolluted stream. Along his shores what stately temples rise, What spires, what turrets, print the shadowed skies! Our smiling Mother sees her broad domain Spread its tall roofs along the western plain; Those blazoned windows' blushing glories tell Of grateful hearts that loved her long and well; Yon gilded dome that glitters in the sun Was Dives' gift,--alas, his only one! These buttressed walls enshrine a banker's name, That hallowed chapel hides a miser's shame; Their wealth they left,--their memory cannot fade Though age shall crumble every stone they laid. Great lord of millions,--let me call thee great, Since countless servants at thy bidding wait,-- Richesse oblige: no mortal must be blind To all but self, or look at human kind Laboring and suffering,--all its want and woe,-- Through sheets of crystal, as a pleasing show That makes life happier for the chosen few Duty for whom is something not to do. When thy last page of life at length is filled, What shall thine heirs to keep thy memory build? Will piles of stone in Auburn's mournful shade Save from neglect the spot where thou art laid? Nay, deem not thus; the sauntering stranger's eye Will pass unmoved thy columned tombstone by, No memory wakened, not a teardrop shed, Thy name uncared for and thy date unread. But if thy record thou indeed dost prize, Bid from the soil some stately temple rise,-- Some hall of learning, some memorial shrine, With names long honored to associate thine: So shall thy fame outlive thy shattered bust When all around thee slumber in the dust. Thus England's Henry lives in Eton's towers, Saved from the spoil oblivion's gulf devours; Our later records with as fair a fame Have wreathed each uncrowned benefactor's name; The walls they reared the memories still retain That churchyard marbles try to keep in vain. In vain the delving antiquary tries To find the tomb where generous Harvard lies Here, here, his lasting monument is found, Where every spot is consecrated ground! O'er Stoughton's dust the crumbling stone decays, Fast fade its lines of lapidary praise; There the wild bramble weaves its ragged nets, There the dry lichen spreads its gray rosettes; Still in yon walls his memory lives unspent, Nor asks a braver, nobler monument. Thus Hollis lives, and Holden, honored, praised, And good Sir Matthew, in the halls they raised; Thus live the worthies of these later times, Who shine in deeds, less brilliant, grouped in rhymes. Say, shall the Muse with faltering steps retreat, Or dare these names in rhythmic form repeat? Why not as boldly as from Homer's lips The long array, of Argive battle-ships? When o'er our graves a thousand years have past (If to such date our threatened globe shall last) These classic precincts, myriad feet have pressed, Will show on high, in beauteous garlands dressed, Those honored names that grace our later day,-- Weld, Matthews, Sever, Thayer, Austin, Gray, Sears, Phillips, Lawrence, Hemenway,--to the list Add Sanders, Sibley,--all the Muse has missed. Once more I turn to read the pictured page Bright with the promise of the coming age. Ye unborn sons of children yet unborn, Whose youthful eyes shall greet that far-off morn, Blest are those eyes that all undimmed behold The sights so longed for by the wise of old. From high-arched alcoves, through resounding halls, Clad in full robes majestic Science calls, Tireless, unsleeping, still at Nature's feet, Whate'er she utters fearless to repeat, Her lips at last from every cramp released That Israel's prophet caught from Egypt's priest. I see the statesman, firm, sagacious, bold, For life's long conflict cast in amplest mould; Not his to clamor with the senseless throng That shouts unshamed, "Our party, right or wrong," But in the patriot's never-ending fight To side with Truth, who changes wrong to right. I see the scholar; in that wondrous time Men, women, children, all can write in rhyme. These four brief lines addressed to youth inclined To idle rhyming in his notes I find: Who writes in verse that should have writ in prose Is like a traveller walking on his toes; Happy the rhymester who in time has found The heels he lifts were made to touch the ground. I see gray teachers,--on their work intent, Their lavished lives, in endless labor spent, Had closed at last in age and penury wrecked, Martyrs, not burned, but frozen in neglect, Save for the generous hands that stretched in aid Of worn-out servants left to die half paid. Ah, many a year will pass, I thought, ere we Such kindly forethought shall rejoice to see,-- Monarchs are mindful of the sacred debt That cold republics hasten to forget. I see the priest,--if such a name he bears Who without pride his sacred vestment wears; And while the symbols of his tribe I seek Thus my first impulse bids me think and speak: Let not the mitre England's prelate wears Next to the crown whose regal pomp it shares, Though low before it courtly Christians bow, Leave its red mark on Younger England's brow. We love, we honor, the maternal dame, But let her priesthood wear a modest name, While through the waters of the Pilgrim's bay A new-born Mayflower shows her keels the way. Too old grew Britain for her mother's beads,-- Must we be necklaced with her children's creeds? Welcome alike in surplice or in gown The loyal lieges of the Heavenly Crown! We greet with cheerful, not submissive, mien A sister church, but not a mitred Queen! A few brief flutters, and the unwilling Muse, Who feared the flight she hated to refuse, Shall fold the wings whose gayer plumes are shed, Here where at first her half-fledged pinions spread. Well I remember in the long ago How in the forest shades of Fontainebleau, Strained through a fissure in a rocky cell, One crystal drop with measured cadence fell. Still, as of old, forever bright and clear, The fissured cavern drops its wonted tear, And wondrous virtue, simple folk aver, Lies in that teardrop of la roche qui pleure. Of old I wandered by the river's side Between whose banks the mighty waters glide, Where vast Niagara, hurrying to its fall, Builds and unbuilds its ever-tumbling wall; Oft in my dreams I hear the rush and roar Of battling floods, and feel the trembling shore, As the huge torrent, girded for its leap, With bellowing thunders plunges down the steep. Not less distinct, from memory's pictured urn, The gray old rock, the leafy woods, return; Robed in their pride the lofty oaks appear, And once again with quickened sense I hear, Through the low murmur of the leaves that stir, The tinkling teardrop of _la roche qui pleure_. So when the third ripe century stands complete, As once again the sons of Harvard meet, Rejoicing, numerous as the seashore sands, Drawn from all quarters,--farthest distant lands, Where through the reeds the scaly saurian steals, Where cold Alaska feeds her floundering seals, Where Plymouth, glorying, wears her iron crown, Where Sacramento sees the suns go down; Nay, from the cloisters whence the refluent tide Wafts their pale students to our Mother's side,-- Mid all the tumult that the day shall bring, While all the echoes shout, and roar, and ring, These tinkling lines, oblivion's easy prey, Once more emerging to the light of day, Not all unpleasing to the listening ear Shall wake the memories of this bygone year, Heard as I hear the measured drops that flow From the gray rock of wooded Fontainebleau. Yet, ere I leave, one loving word for all Those fresh young lives that wait our Mother's call: One gift is yours, kind Nature's richest dower,-- Youth, the fair bud that holds life's opening flower, Full of high hopes no coward doubts enchain, With all the future throbbing in its brain, And mightiest instincts which the beating heart Fills with the fire its burning waves impart. O joyous youth, whose glory is to dare,-- Thy foot firm planted on the lowest stair, Thine eye uplifted to the loftiest height Where Fame stands beckoning in the rosy light, Thanks for thy flattering tales, thy fond deceits, Thy loving lies, thy cheerful smiling cheats Nature's rash promise every day is broke,-- A thousand acorns breed a single oak, The myriad blooms that make the orchard gay In barren beauty throw their lives away; Yet shall we quarrel with the sap that yields The painted blossoms which adorn the fields, When the fair orchard wears its May-day suit Of pink-white petals, for its scanty fruit? Thrice happy hours, in hope's illusion dressed, In fancy's cradle nurtured and caressed, Though rich the spoils that ripening years may bring, To thee the dewdrops of the Orient cling,-- Not all the dye-stuffs from the vats of truth Can match the rainbow on the robes of youth! Dear unborn children, to our Mother's trust We leave you, fearless, when we lie in dust: While o'er these walls the Christian banner waves From hallowed lips shall flow the truth that saves; While o'er those portals Veritas you read No church shall bind you with its human creed. Take from the past the best its toil has won, But learn betimes its slavish ruts to shun. Pass the old tree whose withered leaves are shed, Quit the old paths that error loved to tread, And a new wreath of living blossoms seek, A narrower pathway up a loftier peak; Lose not your reverence, but unmanly fear Leave far behind you, all who enter here! As once of old from Ida's lofty height The flaming signal flashed across the night, So Harvard's beacon sheds its unspent rays Till every watch-tower shows its kindling blaze. Caught from a spark and fanned by every gale, A brighter radiance gilds the roofs of Yale; Amherst and Williams bid their flambeaus shine, And Bowdoin answers through her groves of pine; O'er Princeton's sands the far reflections steal, Where mighty Edwards stamped his iron heel; Nay, on the hill where old beliefs were bound Fast as if Styx had girt them nine times round, Bursts such a light that trembling souls inquire If the whole church of Calvin is on fire! Well may they ask, for what so brightly burns As a dry creed that nothing ever learns? Thus link by link is knit the flaming chain Lit by the torch of Harvard's hallowed plain. Thy son, thy servant, dearest Mother mine, Lays this poor offering on thy holy shrine, An autumn leaflet to the wild winds tost, Touched by the finger of November's frost, With sweet, sad memories of that earlier day, And all that listened to my first-born lay. With grateful heart this glorious morn I see,-- Would that my tribute worthier were of thee! POST-PRANDIAL PHI BETA KAPPA WENDELL PHILLIPS, ORATOR; CHARLES GODFREY LELAND, POET 1881 "THE Dutch have taken Holland,"--so the schoolboys used to say; The Dutch have taken Harvard,--no doubt of that to-day! For the Wendells were low Dutchmen, and all their vrows were Vans; And the Breitmanns are high Dutchmen, and here is honest Hans. Mynheers, you both are welcome! Fair cousin Wendell P., Our ancestors were dwellers beside the Zuyder Zee; Both Grotius and Erasmus were countrymen of we, And Vondel was our namesake, though he spelt it with a V. It is well old Evert Jansen sought a dwelling over sea On the margin of the Hudson, where he sampled you and me Through our grandsires and great-grandsires, for you would n't quite agree With the steady-going burghers along the Zuyder Zee. Like our Motley's John of Barnveld, you have always been inclined To speak,--well,--somewhat frankly,--to let us know your mind, And the Mynheers would have told you to be cautious what you said, Or else that silver tongue of yours might cost your precious head. But we're very glad you've kept it; it was always Freedom's own, And whenever Reason chose it she found a royal throne; You have whacked us with your sceptre; our backs were little harmed, And while we rubbed our bruises we owned we had been charmed. And you, our quasi Dutchman, what welcome should be yours For all the wise prescriptions that work your laughter-cures? "Shake before taking"?--not a bit,--the bottle-cure's a sham; Take before shaking, and you 'll find it shakes your diaphragm. "Hans Breitmann gif a barty,--vhere is dot barty now?" On every shelf where wit is stored to smooth the careworn brow A health to stout Hans Breitmann! How long before we see Another Hans as handsome,--as bright a man as he! THE FLANEUR BOSTON COMMON, DECEMBER 6, 1882 DURING THE TRANSIT OF VENUS I LOVE all sights of earth and skies, From flowers that glow to stars that shine; The comet and the penny show, All curious things, above, below, Hold each in turn my wandering eyes: I claim the Christian Pagan's line, _Humani nihil_,--even so,-- And is not human life divine? When soft the western breezes blow, And strolling youths meet sauntering maids, I love to watch the stirring trades Beneath the Vallombrosa shades Our much-enduring elms bestow; The vender and his rhetoric's flow, That lambent stream of liquid lies; The bait he dangles from his line, The gudgeon and his gold-washed prize. I halt before the blazoned sign That bids me linger to admire The drama time can never tire, The little hero of the hunch, With iron arm and soul of fire, And will that works his fierce desire,-- Untamed, unscared, unconquered Punch My ear a pleasing torture finds In tones the withered sibyl grinds,-- The dame sans merci's broken strain, Whom I erewhile, perchance, have known, When Orleans filled the Bourbon throne, A siren singing by the Seine. But most I love the tube that spies The orbs celestial in their march; That shows the comet as it whisks Its tail across the planets' disks, As if to blind their blood-shot eyes; Or wheels so close against the sun We tremble at the thought of risks Our little spinning ball may run, To pop like corn that children parch, From summer something overdone, And roll, a cinder, through the skies. Grudge not to-day the scanty fee To him who farms the firmament, To whom the Milky Way is free; Who holds the wondrous crystal key, The silent Open Sesame That Science to her sons has lent; Who takes his toll, and lifts the bar That shuts the road to sun and star. If Venus only comes to time, (And prophets say she must and shall,) To-day will hear the tinkling chime Of many a ringing silver dime, For him whose optic glass supplies The crowd with astronomic eyes,-- The Galileo of the Mall. Dimly the transit morning broke; The sun seemed doubting what to do, As one who questions how to dress, And takes his doublets from the press, And halts between the old and new. Please Heaven he wear his suit of blue, Or don, at least, his ragged cloak, With rents that show the azure through! I go the patient crowd to join That round the tube my eyes discern, The last new-comer of the file, And wait, and wait, a weary while, And gape, and stretch, and shrug, and smile, (For each his place must fairly earn, Hindmost and foremost, in his turn,) Till hitching onward, pace by pace, I gain at last the envied place, And pay the white exiguous coin: The sun and I are face to face; He glares at me, I stare at him; And lo! my straining eye has found A little spot that, black and round, Lies near the crimsoned fire-orb's rim. O blessed, beauteous evening star, Well named for her whom earth adores,-- The Lady of the dove-drawn car,-- I know thee in thy white simar; But veiled in black, a rayless spot, Blank as a careless scribbler's blot, Stripped of thy robe of silvery flame,-- The stolen robe that Night restores When Day has shut his golden doors,-- I see thee, yet I know thee not; And canst thou call thyself the same? A black, round spot,--and that is all; And such a speck our earth would be If he who looks upon the stars Through the red atmosphere of Mars Could see our little creeping ball Across the disk of crimson crawl As I our sister planet see. And art thou, then, a world like ours, Flung from the orb that whirled our own A molten pebble from its zone? How must thy burning sands absorb The fire-waves of the blazing orb, Thy chain so short, thy path so near, Thy flame-defying creatures hear The maelstroms of the photosphere! And is thy bosom decked with flowers That steal their bloom from scalding showers? And bast thou cities, domes, and towers, And life, and love that makes it dear, And death that fills thy tribes with fear? Lost in my dream, my spirit soars Through paths the wandering angels know; My all-pervading thought explores The azure ocean's lucent shores; I leave my mortal self below, As up the star-lit stairs I climb, And still the widening view reveals In endless rounds the circling wheels That build the horologe of time. New spheres, new suns, new systems gleam; The voice no earth-born echo hears Steals softly on my ravished ears I hear them "singing as they shine"-- A mortal's voice dissolves my dream: My patient neighbor, next in line, Hints gently there are those who wait. O guardian of the starry gate, What coin shall pay this debt of mine? Too slight thy claim, too small the fee That bids thee turn the potent key. The Tuscan's hand has placed in thine. Forgive my own the small affront, The insult of the proffered dime; Take it, O friend, since this thy wont, But still shall faithful memory be A bankrupt debtor unto thee, And pay thee with a grateful rhyme. AVE PRELUDE TO "ILLUSTRATED POEMS" FULL well I know the frozen hand has come That smites the songs of grove and garden dumb, And chills sad autumn's last chrysanthemum; Yet would I find one blossom, if I might, Ere the dark loom that weaves the robe of white Hides all the wrecks of summer out of sight. Sometimes in dim November's narrowing day, When all the season's pride has passed away, As mid the blackened stems and leaves we stray, We spy in sheltered nook or rocky cleft A starry disk the hurrying winds have left, Of all its blooming sisterhood bereft. Some pansy, with its wondering baby eyes Poor wayside nursling!--fixed in blank surprise At the rough welcome of unfriendly skies; Or golden daisy,--will it dare disclaim The lion's tooth, to wear this gentler name? Or blood-red salvia, with its lips aflame. The storms have stripped the lily and the rose, Still on its cheek the flush of summer glows, And all its heart-leaves kindle as it blows. So had I looked some bud of song to find The careless winds of autumn left behind, With these of earlier seasons' growth to bind. Ah me! my skies are dark with sudden grief, A flower lies faded on my garnered sheaf; Yet let the sunshine gild this virgin leaf, The joyous, blessed sunshine of the past, Still with me, though the heavens are overcast,-- The light that shines while life and memory last. Go, pictured rhymes, for loving readers meant; Bring back the smiles your jocund morning lent, And warm their hearts with sunbeams yet unspent! BEVERLY FARMS, July 24, 1884. KING'S CHAPEL READ AT THE TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY Is it a weanling's weakness for the past That in the stormy, rebel-breeding town, Swept clean of relics by the levelling blast, Still keeps our gray old chapel's name of "King's," Still to its outworn symbols fondly clings,-- Its unchurched mitres and its empty crown? Poor harmless emblems! All has shrunk away That made them gorgons in the patriot's eyes; The priestly plaything harms us not to-day; The gilded crown is but a pleasing show, An old-world heirloom, left from long ago, Wreck of the past that memory bids us prize, Lightly we glance the fresh-cut marbles o'er; Those two of earlier date our eyes enthrall: The proud old Briton's by the western door, And hers, the Lady of Colonial days, Whose virtues live in long-drawn classic phrase,-- The fair Francesca of the southern wall. Ay! those were goodly men that Reynolds drew, And stately dames our Copley's canvas holds, To their old Church, their Royal Master, true, Proud of the claim their valiant sires had earned, That "gentle blood," not lightly to be spurned, Save by the churl ungenerous Nature moulds. All vanished! It were idle to complain That ere the fruits shall come the flowers must fall; Yet somewhat we have lost amidst our gain, Some rare ideals time may not restore,-- The charm of courtly breeding, seen no more, And reverence, dearest ornament of all. Thus musing, to the western wall I came, Departing: lo! a tablet fresh and fair, Where glistened many a youth's remembered name In golden letters on the snow-white stone,-- Young lives these aisles and arches once have known, Their country's bleeding altar might not spare. These died that we might claim a soil unstained, Save by the blood of heroes; their bequests A realm unsevered and a race unchained. Has purer blood through Norman veins come down From the rough knights that clutched the Saxon's crown Than warmed the pulses in these faithful breasts? These, too, shall live in history's deathless page, High on the slow-wrought pedestals of fame, Ranged with the heroes of remoter age; They could not die who left their nation free, Firm as the rock, unfettered as the sea, Its heaven unshadowed by the cloud of shame. While on the storied past our memory dwells, Our grateful tribute shall not be denied,-- The wreath, the cross of rustling immortelles; And willing hands shall clear each darkening bust, As year by year sifts down the clinging dust On Shirley's beauty and on Vassall's pride. But for our own, our loved and lost, we bring With throbbing hearts and tears that still must flow, In full-heaped hands, the opening flowers of spring, Lilies half-blown, and budding roses, red As their young cheeks, before the blood was shed That lent their morning bloom its generous glow. Ah, who shall count a rescued nation's debt, Or sum in words our martyrs' silent claims? Who shall our heroes' dread exchange forget,-- All life, youth, hope, could promise to allure For all that soul could brave or flesh endure? They shaped our future; we but carve their names. HYMN FOR THE SAME OCCASION SUNG BY THE CONGREGATION TO THE TUNE OF TALLIS'S EVENING HYMN O'ERSHADOWED by the walls that climb, Piled up in air by living hands, A rock amid the waves of time, Our gray old house of worship stands. High o'er the pillared aisles we love The symbols of the past look down; Unharmed, unharming, throned above, Behold the mitre and the crown! Let not our younger faith forget The loyal souls that held them dear; The prayers we read their tears have wet, The hymns we sing they loved to hear. The memory of their earthly throne Still to our holy temple clings, But here the kneeling suppliants own One only Lord, the King of kings. Hark! while our hymn of grateful praise The solemn echoing vaults prolong, The far-off voice of earlier days Blends with our own in hallowed song: To Him who ever lives and reigns, Whom all the hosts of heaven adore, Who lent the life His breath sustains, Be glory now and evermore! HYMN.--THE WORD OF PROMISE (by supposition) An Hymn set forth to be sung by the Great Assembly at Newtown, [Mass.] Mo. 12. 1. 1636. [Written by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, eldest son of Rev. ABIEL HOLMES, eighth Pastor of the First Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts.] LORD, Thou hast led us as of old Thine Arm led forth the chosen Race Through Foes that raged, through Floods that roll'd, To Canaan's far-off Dwelling-Place. Here is Thy bounteous Table spread, Thy Manna falls on every Field, Thy Grace our hungering Souls hath fed, Thy Might hath been our Spear and Shield. Lift high Thy Buckler, Lord of Hosts! Guard Thou Thy Servants, Sons and Sires, While on the Godless heathen Coasts They light Thine Israel's Altar-fires! The salvage Wilderness remote Shall hear Thy Works and Wonders sung; So from the Rock that Moses smote The Fountain of the Desart sprung. Soon shall the slumbering Morn awake, From wandering Stars of Errour freed, When Christ the Bread of Heaven shall break For Saints that own a common Creed. The Walls that fence His Flocks apart Shall crack and crumble in Decay, And every Tongue and every Heart Shall welcome in the new-born Day. Then shall His glorious Church rejoice His Word of Promise to recall,-- ONE SHELTERING FOLD, ONE SHEPHERD'S VOICE, ONE GOD AND FATHER OVER ALL! HYMN READ AT THE DEDICATION OF THE OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES HOSPITAL AT HUDSON, WISCONSIN JUNE 7, 1877 ANGEL of love, for every grief Its soothing balm thy mercy brings, For every pang its healing leaf, For homeless want, thine outspread, wings. Enough for thee the pleading eye, The knitted brow of silent pain; The portals open to a sigh Without the clank of bolt or chain. Who is our brother? He that lies Left at the wayside, bruised and sore His need our open hand supplies, His welcome waits him at our door. Not ours to ask in freezing tones His race, his calling, or his creed; Each heart the tie of kinship owns, When those are human veins that bleed. Here stand the champions to defend From every wound that flesh can feel; Here science, patience, skill, shall blend To save, to calm, to help, to heal. Father of Mercies! Weak and frail, Thy guiding hand Thy children ask; Let not the Great Physician fail To aid us in our holy task. Source of all truth, and love, and light, That warm and cheer our earthly days, Be ours to serve Thy will aright, Be Thine the glory and the praise! ON THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD I. FALLEN with autumn's falling leaf Ere yet his summer's noon was past, Our friend, our guide, our trusted chief,-- What words can match a woe so vast! And whose the chartered claim to speak The sacred grief where all have part, Where sorrow saddens every cheek And broods in every aching heart? Yet Nature prompts the burning phrase That thrills the hushed and shrouded hall, The loud lament, the sorrowing praise, The silent tear that love lets fall. In loftiest verse, in lowliest rhyme, Shall strive unblamed the minstrel choir,--- The singers of the new-born time, And trembling age with outworn lyre. No room for pride, no place for blame,-- We fling our blossoms on the grave, Pale,--scentless,--faded,--all we claim, This only,--what we had we gave. Ah, could the grief of all who mourn Blend in one voice its bitter cry, The wail to heaven's high arches borne Would echo through the caverned sky. II. O happiest land, whose peaceful choice Fills with a breath its empty throne! God, speaking through thy people's voice, Has made that voice for once His own. No angry passion shakes the state Whose weary servant seeks for rest; And who could fear that scowling hate Would strike at that unguarded breast? He stands, unconscious of his doom, In manly strength, erect, serene; Around him Summer spreads her bloom; He falls,--what horror clothes the scene! How swift the sudden flash of woe Where all was bright as childhood's dream! As if from heaven's ethereal bow Had leaped the lightning's arrowy gleam. Blot the foul deed from history's page; Let not the all-betraying sun Blush for the day that stains an age When murder's blackest wreath was won. III. Pale on his couch the sufferer lies, The weary battle-ground of pain Love tends his pillow; Science tries Her every art, alas! in vain. The strife endures how long! how long! Life, death, seem balanced in the scale, While round his bed a viewless throng Await each morrow's changing tale. In realms the desert ocean parts What myriads watch with tear-filled eyes, His pulse-beats echoing in their hearts, His breathings counted with their sighs! Slowly the stores of life are spent, Yet hope still battles with despair; Will Heaven not yield when knees are bent? Answer, O thou that hearest prayer. But silent is the brazen sky; On sweeps the meteor's threatening train, Unswerving Nature's mute reply, Bound in her adamantine chain. Not ours the verdict to decide Whom death shall claim or skill shall save; The hero's life though Heaven denied, It gave our land a martyr's grave. Nor count the teaching vainly sent How human hearts their griefs may share,-- The lesson woman's love has lent, What hope may do, what faith can bear! Farewell! the leaf-strown earth enfolds Our stay, our pride, our hopes, our fears, And autumn's golden sun beholds A nation bowed, a world in tears. THE GOLDEN FLOWER WHEN Advent dawns with lessening days, While earth awaits the angels' hymn; When bare as branching coral sways In whistling winds each leafless limb; When spring is but a spendthrift's dream, And summer's wealth a wasted dower, Nor dews nor sunshine may redeem,-- Then autumn coins his Golden Flower. Soft was the violet's vernal hue, Fresh was the rose's morning red, Full-orbed the stately dahlia grew,-- All gone! their short-lived splendors shed. The shadows, lengthening, stretch at noon; The fields are stripped, the groves are dumb; The frost-flowers greet the icy moon,-- Then blooms the bright chrysanthemum. The stiffening turf is white with snow, Yet still its radiant disks are seen Where soon the hallowed morn will show The wreath and cross of Christmas green; As if in autumn's dying days It heard the heavenly song afar, And opened all its glowing rays, The herald lamp of Bethlehem's star. Orphan of summer, kindly sent To cheer the fading year's decline, In all that pitying Heaven has lent No fairer pledge of hope than thine. Yes! June lies hid beneath the snow, And winter's unborn heir shall claim For every seed that sleeps below A spark that kindles into flame. Thy smile the scowl of winter braves Last of the bright-robed, flowery train, Soft sighing o'er the garden graves, "Farewell! farewell! we meet again!" So may life's chill November bring Hope's golden flower, the last of all, Before we hear the angels sing Where blossoms never fade and fall! HAIL, COLUMBIA! 1798 THE FIRST VERSE OF THE SONG BY JOSEPH HOPKINSON "HAIL, Columbia! Happy land! Hail, ye heroes, heaven-born band, Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause, Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause, And when the storm of war was gone Enjoy'd the peace your valor won. Let independence be our boast, Ever mindful what it cost; Ever grateful for the prize, Let its altar reach the skies. "Firm--united--let us be, Rallying round our Liberty; As a band of brothers join'd, Peace and safety we shall find." ADDITIONAL VERSES WRITTEN AT THE REQUEST OF THE COMMITTEE FOR THE CONSTITUTIONAL CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION AT PHILADELPHIA, 1887 LOOK our ransomed shores around, Peace and safety we have found! Welcome, friends who once were foes! Welcome, friends who once were foes, To all the conquering years have gained,-- A nation's rights, a race unchained! Children of the day new-born, Mindful of its glorious morn, Let the pledge our fathers signed Heart to heart forever bind! While the stars of heaven shall burn, While the ocean tides return, Ever may the circling sun Find the Many still are One! Graven deep with edge of steel, Crowned with Victory's crimson seal, All the world their names shall read! All the world their names shall read, Enrolled with his, the Chief that led The hosts whose blood for us was shed. Pay our sires their children's debt, Love and honor, nor forget Only Union's golden key Guards the Ark of Liberty! While the stars of heaven shall burn, While the ocean tides return, Ever may the circling sun Find the Many still are One! Hail, Columbia! strong and free, Throned in hearts from sea to sea Thy march triumphant still pursue! Thy march triumphant still pursue With peaceful stride from zone to zone, Till Freedom finds the world her own. Blest in Union's holy ties, Let our grateful song arise, Every voice its tribute lend, All in loving chorus blend! While the stars in heaven shall burn, While the ocean tides return, Ever shall the circling sun Find the Many still are One! POEM FOR THE DEDICATION OF THE FOUNTAIN AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON, PRESENTED BY GEORGE W. CHILDS, OF PHILADELPHIA WELCOME, thrice welcome is thy silvery gleam, Thou long-imprisoned stream! Welcome the tinkle of thy crystal beads As plashing raindrops to the flowery meads, As summer's breath to Avon's whispering reeds! From rock-walled channels, drowned in rayless night, Leap forth to life and light; Wake from the darkness of thy troubled dream, And greet with answering smile the morning's beam! No purer lymph the white-limbed Naiad knows Than from thy chalice flows; Not the bright spring of Afric's sunny shores, Starry with spangles washed from golden ores, Nor glassy stream Bandusia's fountain pours, Nor wave translucent where Sabrina fair Braids her loose-flowing hair, Nor the swift current, stainless as it rose Where chill Arveiron steals from Alpine snows. Here shall the traveller stay his weary feet To seek thy calm retreat; Here at high noon the brown-armed reaper rest; Here, when the shadows, lengthening from the west, Call the mute song-bird to his leafy nest, Matron and maid shall chat the cares away That brooded o'er the day, While flocking round them troops of children meet, And all the arches ring with laughter sweet. Here shall the steed, his patient life who spends In toil that never ends, Hot from his thirsty tramp o'er hill and plain, Plunge his red nostrils, while the torturing rein Drops in loose loops beside his floating mane; Nor the poor brute that shares his master's lot Find his small needs forgot,-- Truest of humble, long-enduring friends, Whose presence cheers, whose guardian care defends! Here lark and thrush and nightingale shall sip, And skimming swallows dip, And strange shy wanderers fold their lustrous plumes Fragrant from bowers that lent their sweet perfumes Where Paestum's rose or Persia's lilac blooms; Here from his cloud the eagle stoop to drink At the full basin's brink, And whet his beak against its rounded lip, His glossy feathers glistening as they drip. Here shall the dreaming poet linger long, Far from his listening throng,-- Nor lute nor lyre his trembling hand shall bring; Here no frail Muse shall imp her crippled wing, No faltering minstrel strain his throat to sing! These hallowed echoes who shall dare to claim Whose tuneless voice would shame, Whose jangling chords with jarring notes would wrong The nymphs that heard the Swan if Avon's song? What visions greet the pilgrim's raptured eyes! What ghosts made real rise! The dead return,--they breathe,--they live again, Joined by the host of Fancy's airy train, Fresh from the springs of Shakespeare's quickening brain! The stream that slakes the soul's diviner thirst Here found the sunbeams first; Rich with his fame, not less shall memory prize The gracious gift that humbler wants supplies. O'er the wide waters reached the hand that gave To all this bounteous wave, With health and strength and joyous beauty fraught; Blest be the generous pledge of friendship, brought From the far home of brothers' love, unbought! Long may fair Avon's fountain flow, enrolled With storied shrines of old, Castalia's spring, Egeria's dewy cave, And Horeb's rock the God of Israel slave! Land of our fathers, ocean makes us two, But heart to heart is true! Proud is your towering daughter in the West, Yet in her burning life-blood reign confest Her mother's pulses beating in her breast. This holy fount, whose rills from heaven descend, Its gracious drops shall lend,-- Both foreheads bathed in that baptismal dew, And love make one the old home and the new! August 29, 1887. TO THE POETS WHO ONLY READ AND LISTEN WHEN evening's shadowy fingers fold The flowers of every hue, Some shy, half-opened bud will hold Its drop of morning's dew. Sweeter with every sunlit hour The trembling sphere has grown, Till all the fragrance of the flower Becomes at last its own. We that have sung perchance may find Our little meed of praise, And round our pallid temples bind The wreath of fading bays. Ah, Poet, who hast never spent Thy breath in idle strains, For thee the dewdrop morning lent Still in thy heart remains; Unwasted, in its perfumed cell It waits the evening gale; Then to the azure whence it fell Its lingering sweets exhale. FOR THE DEDICATION OF THE NEW CITY LIBRARY, BOSTON PROUDLY, beneath her glittering dome, Our three-hilled city greets the morn; Here Freedom found her virgin home,-- The Bethlehem where her babe was born. The lordly roofs of traffic rise Amid the smoke of household fires; High o'er them in the peaceful skies Faith points to heaven her clustering spires. Can Freedom breathe if ignorance reign? Shall Commerce thrive where anarchs rule? Will Faith her half-fledged brood retain If darkening counsels cloud the school? Let in the light! from every age Some gleams of garnered wisdom pour, And, fixed on thought's electric page, Wait all their radiance to restore. Let in the light! in diamond mines Their gems invite the hand that delves; So learning's treasured jewels shine Ranged on the alcove's ordered shelves. From history's scroll the splendor streams, From science leaps the living ray; Flashed from the poet's glowing dreams The opal fires of fancy play. Let in the light! these windowed walls Shall brook no shadowing colonnades, But day shall flood the silent halls Till o'er yon hills the sunset fades. Behind the ever open gate No pikes shall fence a crumbling throne, No lackeys cringe, no courtiers wait, This palace is the people's own! Heirs of our narrow-girdled past, How fair the prospect we survey, Where howled unheard the wintry blast, And rolled unchecked the storm-swept bay! These chosen precincts, set apart For learned toil and holy shrines, Yield willing homes to every art That trains, or strengthens, or refines. Here shall the sceptred mistress reign Who heeds her meanest subject's call, Sovereign of all their vast domain, The queen, the handmaid of them all! November 26, 1888. FOR THE WINDOW IN ST. MARGARET'S IN MEMORY OF A SON OF ARCHDEACON FARRAR AFAR he sleeps whose name is graven here, Where loving hearts his early doom deplore; Youth, promise, virtue, all that made him dear Heaven lent, earth borrowed, sorrowing to restore. BOSTON, April 12, 1891. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 1819-1891 THOU shouldst have sung the swan-song for the choir That filled our groves with music till the day Lit the last hilltop with its reddening fire, And evening listened for thy lingering lay. But thou hast found thy voice in realms afar Where strains celestial blend their notes with thine; Some cloudless sphere beneath a happier star Welcomes the bright-winged spirit we resign. How Nature mourns thee in the still retreat Where passed in peace thy love-enchanted hours! Where shall she find an eye like thine to greet Spring's earliest footprints on her opening flowers? Have the pale wayside weeds no fond regret For him who read the secrets they enfold? Shall the proud spangles of the field forget The verse that lent new glory to their gold? And ye whose carols wooed his infant ear, Whose chants with answering woodnotes he repaid, Have ye no song his spirit still may hear From Elmwood's vaults of overarching shade? Friends of his studious hours, who thronged to teach The deep-read scholar all your varied lore, Shall he no longer seek your shelves to reach The treasure missing from his world-wide store? This singer whom we long have held so dear Was Nature's darling, shapely, strong, and fair; Of keenest wit, of judgment crystal-clear, Easy of converse, courteous, debonair, Fit for the loftiest or the lowliest lot, Self-poised, imperial, yet of simplest ways; At home alike in castle or in cot, True to his aim, let others blame or praise. Freedom he found an heirloom from his sires; Song, letters, statecraft, shared his years in turn; All went to feed the nation's altar-fires Whose mourning children wreathe his funeral urn. He loved New England,--people, language, soil, Unweaned by exile from her arid breast. Farewell awhile, white-handed son of toil, Go with her brown-armed laborers to thy rest. Peace to thy slumber in the forest shade! Poet and patriot, every gift was thine; Thy name shall live while summers bloom and fade, And grateful Memory guard thy leafy shrine! === POEMS FROM OVER THE TEACUPS TO THE ELEVEN LADIES WHO PRESENTED ME WITH A SILVER LOVING CUP ON THE TWENTY-NINTH OF AUGUST, M DCCC LXXXIX "WHO gave this cup?" The secret thou wouldst steal Its brimming flood forbids it to reveal: No mortal's eye shall read it till he first Cool the red throat of thirst. If on the golden floor one draught remain, Trust me, thy careful search will be in vain; Not till the bowl is emptied shalt thou know The names enrolled below. Deeper than Truth lies buried in her well Those modest names the graven letters spell Hide from the sight; but wait, and thou shalt see Who the good angels be. Whose bounty glistens in the beauteous gift That friendly hands to loving lips shall lift Turn the fair goblet when its floor is dry,-- Their names shall meet thine eye. Count thou their number on the beads of Heaven Alas! the clustered Pleiads are but seven; Nay, the nine sister Muses are too few,-- The Graces must add two. "For whom this gift?" For one who all too long Clings to his bough among the groves of song; Autumn's last leaf, that spreads its faded wing To greet a second spring. Dear friends, kind friends, whate'er the cup may hold, Bathing its burnished depths, will change to gold Its last bright drop let thirsty Maenads drain, Its fragrance will remain. Better love's perfume in the empty bowl Than wine's nepenthe for the aching soul; Sweeter than song that ever poet sung, It makes an old heart young! THE PEAU DE CHAGRIN OF STATE STREET How beauteous is the bond In the manifold array Of its promises to pay, While the eight per cent it gives And the rate at which one lives Correspond! But at last the bough is bare Where the coupons one by one Through their ripening days have run, And the bond, a beggar now, Seeks investment anyhow, Anywhere! CACOETHES SCRIBENDI IF all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth's living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for ten thousand ages, day and night, The human race should write, and write, and write, Till all the pens and paper were used up, And the huge inkstand was an empty cup, Still would the scribblers clustered round its brink Call for more pens, more paper, and more ink. THE ROSE AND THE FERN LADY, life's sweetest lesson wouldst thou learn, Come thou with me to Love's enchanted bower High overhead the trellised roses burn; Beneath thy feet behold the feathery fern,-- A leaf without a flower. What though the rose leaves fall? They still are sweet, And have been lovely in their beauteous prime, While the bare frond seems ever to repeat, "For us no bud, no blossom, wakes to greet The joyous flowering time!" Heed thou the lesson. Life has leaves to tread And flowers to cherish; summer round thee glows; Wait not till autumn's fading robes are shed, But while its petals still are burning red Gather life's full-blown rose! I LIKE YOU AND I LOVE YOU I LIKE YOU Met I LOVE You, face to face; The path was narrow, and they could not pass. I LIKE YOU smiled; I LOVE YOU cried, Alas! And so they halted for a little space. "Turn thou and go before," I LOVE YOU said, "Down the green pathway, bright with many a flower; Deep in the valley, lo! my bridal bower Awaits thee." But I LIKE YOU shook his head. Then while they lingered on the span-wide shelf That shaped a pathway round the rocky ledge, I LIKE You bared his icy dagger's edge, And first he slew I LOVE You,--then himself. LA MAISON D'OR (BAR HARBOR) FROM this fair home behold on either side The restful mountains or the restless sea So the warm sheltering walls of life divide Time and its tides from still eternity. Look on the waves: their stormy voices teach That not on earth may toil and struggle cease. Look on the mountains: better far than speech Their silent promise of eternal peace. TOO YOUNG FOR LOVE Too young for love? Ah, say not so! Tell reddening rose-buds not to blow Wait not for spring to pass away,-- Love's summer months begin with May! Too young for love? Ah, say not so! Too young? Too young? Ah, no! no! no! Too young for love? Ah, say not so, To practise all love learned in May. June soon will come with lengthened day While daisies bloom and tulips glow! Too young for love? Ah, say not so! Too young? Too young? Ah, no! no! no! THE BROOMSTICK TRAIN; OR, THE RETURN OF THE WITCHES LOOK out! Look out, boys! Clear the track! The witches are here! They've all come back! They hanged them high,--No use! No use! What cares a witch for a hangman's noose? They buried them deep, but they wouldn't lie still, For cats and witches are hard to kill; They swore they shouldn't and wouldn't die,-- Books said they did, but they lie! they lie! A couple of hundred years, or so, They had knocked about in the world below, When an Essex Deacon dropped in to call, And a homesick feeling seized them all; For he came from a place they knew full well, And many a tale he had to tell. They longed to visit the haunts of men, To see the old dwellings they knew again, And ride on their broomsticks all around Their wide domain of unhallowed ground. In Essex county there's many a roof Well known to him of the cloven hoof; The small square windows are full in view Which the midnight hags went sailing through, On their well-trained broomsticks mounted high, Seen like shadows against the sky; Crossing the track of owls and bats, Hugging before them their coal-black cats. Well did they know, those gray old wives, The sights we see in our daily drives Shimmer of lake and shine of sea, Browne's bare hill with its lonely tree, (It was n't then as we see it now, With one scant scalp-lock to shade its brow;) Dusky nooks in the Essex woods, Dark, dim, Dante-like solitudes, Where the tree-toad watches the sinuous snake Glide through his forests of fern and brake; Ipswich River; its old stone bridge; Far off Andover's Indian Ridge, And many a scene where history tells Some shadow of bygone terror dwells,-- Of "Norman's Woe" with its tale of dread, Of the Screeching Woman of Marblehead, (The fearful story that turns men pale Don't bid me tell it,--my speech would fail.) Who would not, will not, if he can, Bathe in the breezes of fair Cape Ann,-- Rest in the bowers her bays enfold, Loved by the sachems and squaws of old? Home where the white magnolias bloom, Sweet with the bayberry's chaste perfume, Hugged by the woods and kissed by the sea! Where is the Eden like to thee? For that "couple of hundred years, or so," There had been no peace in the world below; The witches still grumbling, "It is n't fair; Come, give us a taste of the upper air! We 've had enough of your sulphur springs, And the evil odor that round them clings; We long for a drink that is cool and nice,-- Great buckets of water with Wenham ice; We've served you well up-stairs, you know; You 're a good old--fellow--come, let us go!" I don't feel sure of his being good, But he happened to be in a pleasant mood,-- As fiends with their skins full sometimes are,-- (He'd been drinking with "roughs" at a Boston bar.) So what does he do but up and shout To a graybeard turnkey, "Let 'em out!" To mind his orders was all he knew; The gates swung open, and out they flew. "Where are our broomsticks?" the beldams cried. "Here are your broomsticks," an imp replied. "They 've been in--the place you know--so long They smell of brimstone uncommon strong; But they've gained by being left alone,-- Just look, and you'll see how tall they've grown." "And where is my cat?" a vixen squalled. "Yes, where are our cats?" the witches bawled, And began to call them all by name As fast as they called the cats, they came There was bob-tailed Tommy and long-tailed Tim, And wall-eyed Jacky and green-eyed Jim, And splay-foot Benny and slim-legged Beau, And Skinny and Squally, and Jerry and Joe, And many another that came at call,-- It would take too long to count them all. All black,--one could hardly tell which was which, But every cat knew his own old witch; And she knew hers as hers knew her,-- Ah, didn't they curl their tails and purr! No sooner the withered hags were free Than out they swarmed for a midnight spree; I couldn't tell all they did in rhymes, But the Essex people had dreadful times. The Swampscott fishermen still relate How a strange sea-monster stole their bait; How their nets were tangled in loops and knots, And they found dead crabs in their lobster-pots. Poor Danvers grieved for her blasted crops, And Wilmington mourned over mildewed hops. A blight played havoc with Beverly beans,-- It was all the work of those hateful queans! A dreadful panic began at "Pride's," Where the witches stopped in their midnight rides, And there rose strange rumors and vague alarms 'Mid the peaceful dwellers at Beverly Farms. Now when the Boss of the Beldams found That without his leave they were ramping round, He called,--they could hear him twenty miles, From Chelsea beach to the Misery Isles; The deafest old granny knew his tone Without the trick of the telephone. "Come here, you witches! Come here!" says he,-- "At your games of old, without asking me! I'll give you a little job to do That will keep you stirring, you godless crew!" They came, of course, at their master's call, The witches, the broomsticks, the cats, and all; He led the hags to a railway train The horses were trying to drag in vain. "Now, then," says he, "you've had your fun, And here are the cars you've got to run. The driver may just unhitch his team, We don't want horses, we don't want steam; You may keep your old black cats to hug, But the loaded train you've got to lug." Since then on many a car you 'll see A broomstick plain as plain can be; On every stick there's a witch astride,-- The string you see to her leg is tied. She will do a mischief if she can, But the string is held by a careful man, And whenever the evil-minded witch Would cut some caper, he gives a twitch. As for the hag, you can't see her, But hark! you can hear her black cat's purr, And now and then, as a car goes by, You may catch a gleam from her wicked eye. Often you've looked on a rushing train, But just what moved it was not so plain. It couldn't be those wires above, For they could neither pull nor shove; Where was the motor that made it go You couldn't guess, but now you know. Remember my rhymes when you ride again On the rattling rail by the broomstick train! TARTARUS WHILE in my simple gospel creed That "God is Love" so plain I read, Shall dreams of heathen birth affright My pathway through the coming night? Ah, Lord of life, though spectres pale Fill with their threats the shadowy vale, With Thee my faltering steps to aid, How can I dare to be afraid? Shall mouldering page or fading scroll Outface the charter of the soul? Shall priesthood's palsied arm protect The wrong our human hearts reject, And smite the lips whose shuddering cry Proclaims a cruel creed a lie? The wizard's rope we disallow Was justice once,--is murder now! Is there a world of blank despair, And dwells the Omnipresent there? Does He behold with smile serene The shows of that unending scene, Where sleepless, hopeless anguish lies, And, ever dying, never dies? Say, does He hear the sufferer's groan, And is that child of wrath his own? O mortal, wavering in thy trust, Lift thy pale forehead from the dust! The mists that cloud thy darkened eyes Fade ere they reach the o'erarching skies When the blind heralds of despair Would bid thee doubt a Father's care, Look up from earth, and read above On heaven's blue tablet, GOD IS LOVE! AT THE TURN OF THE ROAD THE glory has passed from the goldenrod's plume, The purple-hued asters still linger in bloom The birch is bright yellow, the sumachs are red, The maples like torches aflame overhead. But what if the joy of the summer is past, And winter's wild herald is blowing his blast? For me dull November is sweeter than May, For my love is its sunshine,--she meets me to-day! Will she come? Will the ring-dove return to her nest? Will the needle swing back from the east or the west? At the stroke of the hour she will be at her gate; A friend may prove laggard,--love never comes late. Do I see her afar in the distance? Not yet. Too early! Too early! She could not forget! When I cross the old bridge where the brook overflowed, She will flash full in sight at the turn of the road. I pass the low wall where the ivy entwines; I tread the brown pathway that leads through the pines; I haste by the boulder that lies in the field, Where her promise at parting was lovingly sealed. Will she come by the hillside or round through the wood? Will she wear her brown dress or her mantle and hood? The minute draws near,--but her watch may go wrong; My heart will be asking, What keeps her so long? Why doubt for a moment? More shame if I do! Why question? Why tremble? Are angels more true? She would come to the lover who calls her his own Though she trod in the track of a whirling cyclone! I crossed the old bridge ere the minute had passed. I looked: lo! my Love stood before me at last. Her eyes, how they sparkled, her cheeks, how they glowed, As we met, face to face, at the turn of the road! IN VITA MINERVA VEX not the Muse with idle prayers,-- She will not hear thy call; She steals upon thee unawares, Or seeks thee not at all. Soft as the moonbeams when they sought Endymion's fragrant bower, She parts the whispering leaves of thought To show her full-blown flower. For thee her wooing hour has passed, The singing birds have flown, And winter comes with icy blast To chill thy buds unblown. Yet, though the woods no longer thrill As once their arches rung, Sweet echoes hover round thee still Of songs thy summer sung. Live in thy past; await no more The rush of heaven-sent wings; Earth still has music left in store While Memory sighs and sings. READINGS OVER THE TEACUPS FIVE STORIES AND A SEQUEL TO MY OLD READERS You know "The Teacups," that congenial set Which round the Teapot you have often met; The grave DICTATOR, him you knew of old,-- Knew as the shepherd of another fold Grayer he looks, less youthful, but the same As when you called him by a different name. Near him the MISTRESS, whose experienced skill Has taught her duly every cup to fill; "Weak;" "strong;" "cool;" "lukewarm;" "hot as you can pour;" "No sweetening;" "sugared;" "two lumps;" "one lump more." Next, the PROFESSOR, whose scholastic phrase At every turn the teacher's tongue betrays, Trying so hard to make his speech precise The captious listener finds it overnice. Nor be forgotten our ANNEXES twain, Nor HE, the owner of the squinting brain, Which, while its curious fancies we pursue, Oft makes us question, "Are we crack-brained too?" Along the board our growing list extends, As one by one we count our clustering friends,-- The youthful DOCTOR waiting for his share Of fits and fevers when his crown gets bare; In strong, dark lines our square-nibbed pen should draw The lordly presence of the MAN OF LAW; Our bashful TUTOR claims a humbler place, A lighter touch, his slender form to trace. Mark the fair lady he is seated by,-- Some say he is her lover,--some deny,-- Watch them together,--time alone can show If dead-ripe friendship turns to love or no. Where in my list of phrases shall I seek The fitting words of NUMBER FIVE to speak? Such task demands a readier pen than mine,-- What if I steal the Tutor's Valentine? Why should I call her gracious, winning, fair? Why with the loveliest of her sex compare? Those varied charms have many a Muse inspired,-- At last their worn superlatives have tired; Wit, beauty, sweetness, each alluring grace, All these in honeyed verse have found their place; I need them not,--two little words I find Which hold them all in happiest form combined; No more with baffled language will I strive,-- All in one breath I utter: Number Five! Now count our teaspoons--if you care to learn How many tinkling cups were served in turn,-- Add all together, you will find them ten,-- Our young MUSICIAN joined us now and then. Our bright DELILAH you must needs recall, The comely handmaid, youngest of us all; Need I remind you how the little maid Came at a pinch to our Professor's aid,-- Trimmed his long locks with unrelenting shears And eased his looks of half a score of years? Sometimes, at table, as you well must know, The stream of talk will all at once run low, The air seems smitten with a sudden chill, The wit grows silent and the gossip still; This was our poet's chance, the hour of need, When rhymes and stories we were used to read. One day a whisper round the teacups stole,-- "No scrap of paper in the silver bowl!" (Our "poet's corner" may I not expect My kindly reader still may recollect?) "What! not a line to keep our souls alive?" Spoke in her silvery accents Number Five. "No matter, something we must find to read,-- Find it or make it,--yes, we must indeed! Now I remember I have seen at times Some curious stories in a book of rhymes,-- How certain secrets, long in silence sealed, In after days were guessed at or revealed. Those stories, doubtless, some of you must know,-- They all were written many a year ago; But an old story, be it false or true, Twice told, well told, is twice as good as new; Wait but three sips and I will go myself, And fetch the book of verses from its shelf." No time was lost in finding what she sought,-- Gone but one moment,--lo! the book is brought. "Now, then, Professor, fortune has decreed That you, this evening, shall be first to read,-- Lucky for us that listen, for in fact Who reads this poem must know how to _act_." Right well she knew that in his greener age He had a mighty hankering for the stage. The patient audience had not long to wait; Pleased with his chance, he smiled and took the bait; Through his wild hair his coaxing fingers ran,-- He spread the page before him and began. THE BANKER'S SECRET THE Banker's dinner is the stateliest feast The town has heard of for a year, at least; The sparry lustres shed their broadest blaze, Damask and silver catch and spread the rays; The florist's triumphs crown the daintier spoil Won from the sea, the forest, or the soil; The steaming hot-house yields its largest pines, The sunless vaults unearth their oldest wines; With one admiring look the scene survey, And turn a moment from the bright display. Of all the joys of earthly pride or power, What gives most life, worth living, in an hour? When Victory settles on the doubtful fight And the last foeman wheels in panting flight, No thrill like this is felt beneath the sun; Life's sovereign moment is a battle won. But say what next? To shape a Senate's choice, By the strong magic of the master's voice; To ride the stormy tempest of debate That whirls the wavering fortunes of the state. Third in the list, the happy lover's prize Is won by honeyed words from women's eyes. If some would have it first instead of third, So let it be,--I answer not a word. The fourth,--sweet readers, let the thoughtless half Have its small shrug and inoffensive laugh; Let the grave quarter wear its virtuous frown, The stern half-quarter try to scowl us down; But the last eighth, the choice and sifted few, Will hear my words, and, pleased, confess them true. Among the great whom Heaven has made to shine, How few have learned the art of arts,--to dine! Nature, indulgent to our daily need, Kind-hearted mother! taught us all to feed; But the chief art,--how rarely Nature flings This choicest gift among her social kings Say, man of truth, has life a brighter hour Than waits the chosen guest who knows his power? He moves with ease, itself an angel charm,-- Lifts with light touch my lady's jewelled arm, Slides to his seat, half leading and half led, Smiling but quiet till the grace is said, Then gently kindles, while by slow degrees Creep softly out the little arts that please; Bright looks, the cheerful language of the eye, The neat, crisp question and the gay reply,-- Talk light and airy, such as well may pass Between the rested fork and lifted glass;-- With play like this the earlier evening flies, Till rustling silks proclaim the ladies rise. His hour has come,--he looks along the chairs, As the Great Duke surveyed his iron squares. That's the young traveller,--is n't much to show,-- Fast on the road, but at the table slow. Next him,--you see the author in his look,-- His forehead lined with wrinkles like a book,-- Wrote the great history of the ancient Huns,-- Holds back to fire among the heavy guns. Oh, there's our poet seated at his side, Beloved of ladies, soft, cerulean-eyed. Poets are prosy in their common talk, As the fast trotters, for the most part, walk. And there's our well-dressed gentleman, who sits, By right divine, no doubt, among the wits, Who airs his tailor's patterns when he walks, The man that often speaks, but never talks. Why should he talk, whose presence lends a grace To every table where he shows his face? He knows the manual of the silver fork, Can name his claret--if he sees the cork,-- Remark that "White-top" was considered fine, But swear the "Juno" is the better wine;-- Is not this talking? Ask Quintilian's rules; If they say No, the town has many fools. Pause for a moment,--for our eyes behold The plain unsceptred king, the man of gold, The thrice illustrious threefold millionnaire; Mark his slow-creeping, dead, metallic stare; His eyes, dull glimmering, like the balance-pan That weighs its guinea as he weighs his man. Who's next? An artist in a satin tie Whose ample folds defeat the curious eye. And there 's the cousin,--must be asked, you know,-- Looks like a spinster at a baby-show. Hope he is cool,--they set him next the door,-- And likes his place, between the gap and bore. Next comes a Congressman, distinguished guest We don't count him,--they asked him with the rest; And then some white cravats, with well-shaped ties, And heads above them which their owners prize. Of all that cluster round the genial board, Not one so radiant as the banquet's lord. Some say they fancy, but they know not why, A shade of trouble brooding in his eye, Nothing, perhaps,--the rooms are overhot,-- Yet see his cheek,--the dull-red burning spot,-- Taste the brown sherry which he does not pass,-- Ha! That is brandy; see him fill his glass! But not forgetful of his feasting friends, To each in turn some lively word he sends; See how he throws his baited lines about, And plays his men as anglers play their trout. A question drops among the listening crew And hits the traveller, pat on Timbuctoo. We're on the Niger, somewhere near its source,-- Not the least hurry, take the river's course Through Kissi, Foota, Kankan, Bammakoo, Bambarra, Sego, so to Timbuctoo, Thence down to Youri;--stop him if we can, We can't fare worse,--wake up the Congressman! The Congressman, once on his talking legs, Stirs up his knowledge to its thickest dregs; Tremendous draught for dining men to quaff! Nothing will choke him but a purpling laugh. A word,--a shout,--a mighty roar,--'t is done; Extinguished; lassoed by a treacherous pun. A laugh is priming to the loaded soul; The scattering shots become a steady roll, Broke by sharp cracks that run along the line, The light artillery of the talker's wine. The kindling goblets flame with golden dews, The hoarded flasks their tawny fire diffuse, And the Rhine's breast-milk gushes cold and bright, Pale as the moon and maddening as her light; With crimson juice the thirsty southern sky Sucks from the hills where buried armies lie, So that the dreamy passion it imparts Is drawn from heroes' bones and lovers' hearts. But lulls will come; the flashing soul transmits Its gleams of light in alternating fits. The shower of talk that rattled down amain Ends in small patterings like an April's rain; With the dry sticks all bonfires are begun; Bring the first fagot, proser number one The voices halt; the game is at a stand; Now for a solo from the master-hand 'T is but a story,--quite a simple thing,-- An aria touched upon a single string, But every accent comes with such a grace The stupid servants listen in their place, Each with his waiter in his lifted hands, Still as a well-bred pointer when he stands. A query checks him: "Is he quite exact?" (This from a grizzled, square-jawed man of fact.) The sparkling story leaves him to his fate, Crushed by a witness, smothered with a date, As a swift river, sown with many a star, Runs brighter, rippling on a shallow bar. The smooth divine suggests a graver doubt; A neat quotation bowls the parson out; Then, sliding gayly from his own display, He laughs the learned dulness all away. So, with the merry tale and jovial song, The jocund evening whirls itself along, Till the last chorus shrieks its loud encore, And the white neckcloths vanish through the door. One savage word!--The menials know its tone, And slink away; the master stands alone. "Well played, by ---"; breathe not what were best unheard; His goblet shivers while he speaks the word,-- "If wine tells truth,--and so have said the wise,-- It makes me laugh to think how brandy lies! Bankrupt to-morrow,--millionnaire to-day,-- The farce is over,--now begins the play!" The spring he touches lets a panel glide; An iron closet harks beneath the slide, Bright with such treasures as a search might bring From the deep pockets of a truant king. Two diamonds, eyeballs of a god of bronze, Bought from his faithful priest, a pious bonze; A string of brilliants; rubies, three or four; Bags of old coin and bars of virgin ore; A jewelled poniard and a Turkish knife, Noiseless and useful if we come to strife. Gone! As a pirate flies before the wind, And not one tear for all he leaves behind From all the love his better years have known Fled like a felon,--ah! but not alone! The chariot flashes through a lantern's glare,-- Oh the wild eyes! the storm of sable hair! Still to his side the broken heart will cling,-- The bride of shame, the wife without the ring Hark, the deep oath,--the wail of frenzied woe,-- Lost! lost to hope of Heaven and peace below! He kept his secret; but the seed of crime Bursts of itself in God's appointed time. The lives he wrecked were scattered far and wide; One never blamed nor wept,--she only died. None knew his lot, though idle tongues would say He sought a lonely refuge far away, And there, with borrowed name and altered mien, He died unheeded, as he lived unseen. The moral market had the usual chills Of Virtue suffering from protested bills; The White Cravats, to friendship's memory true, Sighed for the past, surveyed the future too; Their sorrow breathed in one expressive line,-- "Gave pleasant dinners; who has got his wine?" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The reader paused,--the Teacups knew his ways,-- He, like the rest, was not averse to praise. Voices and hands united; every one Joined in approval: "Number Three, well done!" "Now for the Exile's story; if my wits Are not at fault, his curious record fits Neatly as sequel to the tale we've heard; Not wholly wild the fancy, nor absurd That this our island hermit well might be That story's hero, fled from over sea. Come, Number Seven, we would not have you strain The fertile powers of that inventive brain. Read us 'The Exile's Secret'; there's enough Of dream-like fiction and fantastic stuff In the strange web of mystery that invests The lonely isle where sea birds build their nests." "Lies! naught but lies!" so Number Seven began,-- No harm was known of that secluded man. He lived alone,--who would n't if he might, And leave the rogues and idiots out of sight? A foolish story,--still, I'll do my best,-- The house was real,--don't believe the rest. How could a ruined dwelling last so long Without its legends shaped in tale and song? Who was this man of whom they tell the lies? Perhaps--why not?--NAPOLEON! in disguise,-- So some said, kidnapped from his ocean coop, Brought to this island in a coasting sloop,-- Meanwhile a sham Napoleon in his place Played Nap. and saved Sir Hudson from disgrace. Such was one story; others used to say, "No,--not Napoleon,--it was Marshal Ney." "Shot?" Yes, no doubt, but not with balls of lead, But balls of pith that never shoot folks dead. He wandered round, lived South for many a year, At last came North and fixed his dwelling here. Choose which you will of all the tales that pile Their mingling fables on the tree-crowned isle. Who wrote this modest version I suppose That truthful Teacup, our Dictator, knows; Made up of various legends, it would seem, The sailor's yarn, the crazy poet's dream. Such tales as this, by simple souls received, At first are stared at and at last believed; From threads like this the grave historians try To weave their webs, and never know they lie. Hear, then, the fables that have gathered round The lonely home an exiled stranger found. THE EXILE'S SECRET YE that have faced the billows and the spray Of good St. Botolph's island-studded bay, As from the gliding bark your eye has scanned The beaconed rocks, the wave-girt hills of sand, Have ye not marked one elm-o'ershadowed isle, Round as the dimple chased in beauty's smile,-- A stain of verdure on an azure field, Set like a jewel in a battered shield? Fixed in the narrow gorge of Ocean's path, Peaceful it meets him in his hour of wrath; When the mailed Titan, scourged by hissing gales, Writhes in his glistening coat of clashing scales, The storm-beat island spreads its tranquil green, Calm as an emerald on an angry queen. So fair when distant should be fairer near; A boat shall waft us from the outstretched pier. The breeze blows fresh; we reach the island's edge, Our shallop rustling through the yielding sedge. No welcome greets us on the desert isle; Those elms, far-shadowing, hide no stately pile Yet these green ridges mark an ancient road; And to! the traces of a fair abode; The long gray line that marks a garden-wall, And heaps of fallen beams,--fire-branded all. Who sees unmoved, a ruin at his feet, The lowliest home where human hearts have beat? Its hearthstone, shaded with the bistre stain A century's showery torrents wash in vain; Its starving orchard, where the thistle blows And mossy trunks still mark the broken rows; Its chimney-loving poplar, oftenest seen Next an old roof, or where a roof has been; Its knot-grass, plantain,--all the social weeds, Man's mute companions, following where he leads; Its dwarfed, pale flowers, that show their straggling heads, Sown by the wind from grass-choked garden-beds; Its woodbine, creeping where it used to climb; Its roses, breathing of the olden time; All the poor shows the curious idler sees, As life's thin shadows waste by slow degrees, Till naught remains, the saddening tale to tell, Save home's last wrecks,--the cellar and the well? And whose the home that strews in black decay The one green-glowing island of the bay? Some dark-browed pirate's, jealous of the fate That seized the strangled wretch of "Nix's Mate"? Some forger's, skulking in a borrowed name, Whom Tyburn's dangling halter yet may claim? Some wan-eyed exile's, wealth and sorrow's heir, Who sought a lone retreat for tears and prayer? Some brooding poet's, sure of deathless fame, Had not his epic perished in the flame? Or some gray wooer's, whom a girlish frown Chased from his solid friends and sober town? Or some plain tradesman's, fond of shade and ease, Who sought them both beneath these quiet trees? Why question mutes no question can unlock, Dumb as the legend on the Dighton rock? One thing at least these ruined heaps declare,-- They were a shelter once; a man lived there. But where the charred and crumbling records fail, Some breathing lips may piece the half-told tale; No man may live with neighbors such as these, Though girt with walls of rock and angry seas, And shield his home, his children, or his wife, His ways, his means, his vote, his creed, his life, From the dread sovereignty of Ears and Eyes And the small member that beneath them lies. They told strange things of that mysterious man; Believe who will, deny them such as can; Why should we fret if every passing sail Had its old seaman talking on the rail? The deep-sunk schooner stuffed with Eastern lime, Slow wedging on, as if the waves were slime; The knife-edged clipper with her ruffled spars, The pawing steamer with her inane of stars, The bull-browed galliot butting through the stream, The wide-sailed yacht that slipped along her beam, The deck-piled sloops, the pinched chebacco-boats, The frigate, black with thunder-freighted throats, All had their talk about the lonely man; And thus, in varying phrase, the story ran. His name had cost him little care to seek, Plain, honest, brief, a decent name to speak, Common, not vulgar, just the kind that slips With least suggestion from a stranger's lips. His birthplace England, as his speech might show, Or his hale cheek, that wore the red-streak's glow; His mouth sharp-moulded; in its mirth or scorn There came a flash as from the milky corn, When from the ear you rip the rustling sheath, And the white ridges show their even teeth. His stature moderate, but his strength confessed, In spite of broadcloth, by his ample breast; Full-armed, thick-handed; one that had been strong, And might be dangerous still, if things went wrong. He lived at ease beneath his elm-trees' shade, Did naught for gain, yet all his debts were paid; Rich, so 't was thought, but careful of his store; Had all he needed, claimed to have no more. But some that lingered round the isle at night Spoke of strange stealthy doings in their sight; Of creeping lonely visits that he made To nooks and corners, with a torch and spade. Some said they saw the hollow of a cave; One, given to fables, swore it was a grave; Whereat some shuddered, others boldly cried, Those prowling boatmen lied, and knew they lied. They said his house was framed with curious cares, Lest some old friend might enter unawares; That on the platform at his chamber's door Hinged a loose square that opened through the floor; Touch the black silken tassel next the bell, Down, with a crash, the flapping trap-door fell; Three stories deep the falling wretch would strike, To writhe at leisure on a boarder's pike. By day armed always; double-armed at night, His tools lay round him; wake him such as might. A carbine hung beside his India fan, His hand could reach a Turkish ataghan; Pistols, with quaint-carved stocks and barrels gilt, Crossed a long dagger with a jewelled hilt; A slashing cutlass stretched along the bed;-- All this was what those lying boatmen said. Then some were full of wondrous stories told Of great oak chests and cupboards full of gold; Of the wedged ingots and the silver bars That cost old pirates ugly sabre-scars; How his laced wallet often would disgorge The fresh-faced guinea of an English George, Or sweated ducat, palmed by Jews of yore, Or double Joe, or Portuguese moidore; And how his finger wore a rubied ring Fit for the white-necked play-girl of a king. But these fine legends, told with staring eyes, Met with small credence from the old and wise. Why tell each idle guess, each whisper vain? Enough: the scorched and cindered beams remain. He came, a silent pilgrim to the West, Some old-world mystery throbbing in his breast; Close to the thronging mart he dwelt alone; He lived; he died. The rest is all unknown. Stranger, whose eyes the shadowy isle survey, As the black steamer dashes through the bay, Why ask his buried secret to divine? He was thy brother; speak, and tell us thine! . . . . . . . . . . . Silence at first, a kind of spell-bound pause; Then all the Teacups tinkled their applause; When that was hushed no sound the stillness broke Till once again the soft-voiced lady spoke: "The Lover's Secret,--surely that must need The youngest voice our table holds to read. Which of our two 'Annexes' shall we choose? Either were charming, neither will refuse; But choose we must,--what better can we do Than take the younger of the youthful two?" True to the primal instinct of her sex, "Why, that means me," half whispered each Annex. "What if it does?" the voiceless question came, That set those pale New England cheeks aflame; "Our old-world scholar may have ways to teach Of Oxford English, Britain's purest speech,-- She shall be youngest,--youngest for _to-day_,-- Our dates we'll fix hereafter as we may; _All rights reserved_,--the words we know so well, That guard the claims of books which never sell." The British maiden bowed a pleased assent, Her two long ringlets swinging as she bent; The glistening eyes her eager soul looked through Betrayed her lineage in their Saxon blue. Backward she flung each too obtrusive curl And thus began,--the rose-lipped English girl. THE LOVER'S SECRET WHAT ailed young Lucius? Art had vainly tried To guess his ill, and found herself defied. The Augur plied his legendary skill; Useless; the fair young Roman languished still. His chariot took him every cloudless day Along the Pincian Hill or Appian Way; They rubbed his wasted limbs with sulphurous oil, Oozed from the far-off Orient's heated soil; They led him tottering down the steamy path Where bubbling fountains filled the thermal bath; Borne in his litter to Egeria's cave, They washed him, shivering, in her icy wave. They sought all curious herbs and costly stones, They scraped the moss that grew on dead men's bones, They tried all cures the votive tablets taught, Scoured every place whence healing drugs were brought, O'er Thracian hills his breathless couriers ran, His slaves waylaid the Syrian caravan. At last a servant heard a stranger speak A new chirurgeon's name; a clever Greek, Skilled in his art; from Pergamus he came To Rome but lately; GALEN was the name. The Greek was called: a man with piercing eyes, Who must be cunning, and who might be wise. He spoke but little,--if they pleased, he said, He 'd wait awhile beside the sufferer's bed. So by his side he sat, serene and calm, His very accents soft as healing balm; Not curious seemed, but every movement spied, His sharp eyes searching where they seemed to glide; Asked a few questions,--what he felt, and where? "A pain just here," "A constant beating there." Who ordered bathing for his aches and ails? "Charmis, the water-doctor from Marseilles." What was the last prescription in his case? "A draught of wine with powdered chrysoprase." Had he no secret grief he nursed alone? A pause; a little tremor; answer,--"None." Thoughtful, a moment, sat the cunning leech, And muttered "Eros!" in his native speech. In the broad atrium various friends await The last new utterance from the lips of fate; Men, matrons, maids, they talk the question o'er, And, restless, pace the tessellated floor. Not unobserved the youth so long had pined By gentle-hearted dames and damsels kind; One with the rest, a rich Patrician's pride, The lady Hermia, called "the golden-eyed"; The same the old Proconsul fain must woo, Whom, one dark night, a masked sicarius slew; The same black Crassus over roughly pressed To hear his suit,--the Tiber knows the rest. (Crassus was missed next morning by his set; Next week the fishers found him in their net.) She with the others paced the ample hall, Fairest, alas! and saddest of them all. At length the Greek declared, with puzzled face, Some strange enchantment mingled in the case, And naught would serve to act as counter-charm Save a warm bracelet from a maiden's arm. Not every maiden's,--many might be tried; Which not in vain, experience must decide. Were there no damsels willing to attend And do such service for a suffering friend? The message passed among the waiting crowd, First in a whisper, then proclaimed aloud. Some wore no jewels; some were disinclined, For reasons better guessed at than defined; Though all were saints,--at least professed to be,-- The list all counted, there were named but three. The leech, still seated by the patient's side, Held his thin wrist, and watched him, eagle-eyed. Aurelia first, a fair-haired Tuscan girl, Slipped off her golden asp, with eyes of pearl. His solemn head the grave physician shook; The waxen features thanked her with a look. Olympia next, a creature half divine, Sprung from the blood of old Evander's line, Held her white arm, that wore a twisted chain Clasped with an opal-sheeny cymophane. In vain, O daughter I said the baffled Greek. The patient sighed the thanks he could not speak. Last, Hermia entered; look, that sudden start! The pallium heaves above his leaping heart; The beating pulse, the cheek's rekindled flame, Those quivering lips, the secret all proclaim. The deep disease long throbbing in the breast, The dread enchantment, all at once confessed! The case was plain; the treatment was begun; And Love soon cured the mischief he had done. Young Love, too oft thy treacherous bandage slips Down from the eyes it blinded to the lips! Ask not the Gods, O youth, for clearer sight, But the bold heart to plead thy cause aright. And thou, fair maiden, when thy lovers sigh, Suspect thy flattering ear, but trust thine eye; And learn this secret from the tale of old No love so true as love that dies untold. . . . . . . . . . . "Bravo, Annex!" they shouted, every one,-- "Not Mrs. Kemble's self had better done." "Quite so," she stammered in her awkward way,-- Not just the thing, but something she must say. The teaspoon chorus tinkled to its close When from his chair the MAN OF LAW arose, Called by her voice whose mandate all obeyed, And took the open volume she displayed. Tall, stately, strong, his form begins to own Some slight exuberance in its central zone,-- That comely fulness of the growing girth Which fifty summers lend the sons of earth. A smooth, round disk about whose margin stray, Above the temples, glistening threads of gray; Strong, deep-cut grooves by toilsome decades wrought On brow and mouth, the battle-fields of thought; A voice that lingers in the listener's ear, Grave, calm, far-reaching, every accent clear,-- (Those tones resistless many a foreman knew That shaped their verdict ere the twelve withdrew;) A statesman's forehead, athlete's throat and jaw, Such the proud semblance of the Man of Law. His eye just lighted on the printed leaf, Held as a practised pleader holds his brief. One whispered softly from behind his cup, "He does not read,--his book is wrong side up! He knows the story that it holds by heart,-- So like his own! How well he'll act his part!" Then all were silent; not a rustling fan Stirred the deep stillness as the voice began. THE STATESMAN'S SECRET WHO of all statesmen is his country's pride, Her councils' prompter and her leaders' guide? He speaks; the nation holds its breath to hear; He nods, and shakes the sunset hemisphere. Born where the primal fount of Nature springs By the rude cradles of her throneless kings, In his proud eye her royal signet flames, By his own lips her Monarch she proclaims. Why name his countless triumphs, whom to meet Is to be famous, envied in defeat? The keen debaters, trained to brawls and strife, Who fire one shot, and finish with the knife, Tried him but once, and, cowering in their shame, Ground their hacked blades to strike at meaner game. The lordly chief, his party's central stay, Whose lightest word a hundred votes obey, Found a new listener seated at his side, Looked in his eye, and felt himself defied, Flung his rash gauntlet on the startled floor, Met the all-conquering, fought,--and ruled no more. See where he moves, what eager crowds attend! What shouts of thronging multitudes ascend! If this is life,--to mark with every hour The purple deepening in his robes of power, To see the painted fruits of honor fall Thick at his feet, and choose among them all, To hear the sounds that shape his spreading name Peal through the myriad organ-stops of fame, Stamp the lone isle that spots the seaman's chart, And crown the pillared glory of the mart, To count as peers the few supremely wise Who mark their planet in the angels' eyes,-- If this is life-- What savage man is he Who strides alone beside the sounding sea? Alone he wanders by the murmuring shore, His thoughts as restless as the waves that roar; Looks on the sullen sky as stormy-browed As on the waves yon tempest-brooding cloud, Heaves from his aching breast a wailing sigh, Sad as the gust that sweeps the clouded sky. Ask him his griefs; what midnight demons plough The lines of torture on his lofty brow; Unlock those marble lips, and bid them speak The mystery freezing in his bloodless cheek. His secret? Hid beneath a flimsy word; One foolish whisper that ambition heard; And thus it spake: "Behold yon gilded chair, The world's one vacant throne,--thy plate is there!" Ah, fatal dream! What warning spectres meet In ghastly circle round its shadowy seat! Yet still the Tempter murmurs in his ear The maddening taunt he cannot choose but hear "Meanest of slaves, by gods and men accurst, He who is second when he might be first Climb with bold front the ladder's topmost round, Or chain thy creeping footsteps to the ground!" Illustrious Dupe! Have those majestic eyes Lost their proud fire for such a vulgar prize? Art thou the last of all mankind to know That party-fights are won by aiming low? Thou, stamped by Nature with her royal sign, That party-hirelings hate a look like thine? Shake from thy sense the wild delusive dream Without the purple, art thou not supreme? And soothed by love unbought, thy heart shall own A nation's homage nobler than its throne! . . . . . . . . . . Loud rang the plaudits; with them rose the thought, "Would he had learned the lesson he has taught!" Used to the tributes of the noisy crowd, The stately speaker calmly smiled and bowed; The fire within a flushing cheek betrayed, And eyes that burned beneath their penthouse shade. "The clock strikes ten, the hours are flying fast,-- Now, Number Five, we've kept you till the last!" What music charms like those caressing tones Whose magic influence every listener owns,-- Where all the woman finds herself expressed, And Heaven's divinest effluence breathes confessed? Such was the breath that wooed our ravished ears, Sweet as the voice a dreaming vestal hears; Soft as the murmur of a brooding dove, It told the mystery of a mother's love. THE MOTHER'S SECRET How sweet the sacred legend--if unblamed In my slight verse such holy things are named-- Of Mary's secret hours of hidden joy, Silent, but pondering on her wondrous boy! Ave, Maria! Pardon, if I wrong Those heavenly words that shame my earthly song! The choral host had closed the Angel's strain Sung to the listening watch on Bethlehem's plain, And now the shepherds, hastening on their way, Sought the still hamlet where the Infant lay. They passed the fields that gleaning Ruth toiled o'er,-- They saw afar the ruined threshing-floor Where Moab's daughter, homeless and forlorn, Found Boaz slumbering by his heaps of corn; And some remembered how the holy scribe, Skilled in the lore of every jealous tribe, Traced the warm blood of Jesse's royal son To that fair alien, bravely wooed and won. So fared they on to seek the promised sign, That marked the anointed heir of David's line. At last, by forms of earthly semblance led, They found the crowded inn, the oxen's shed. No pomp was there, no glory shone around On the coarse straw that strewed the reeking ground; One dim retreat a flickering torch betrayed,-- In that poor cell the Lord of Life was laid The wondering shepherds told their breathless tale Of the bright choir that woke the sleeping vale; Told how the skies with sudden glory flamed, Told how the shining multitude proclaimed, "Joy, joy to earth! Behold the hallowed morn In David's city Christ the Lord is born! 'Glory to God!' let angels shout on high, 'Good-will to men!' the listening earth reply!" They spoke with hurried words and accents wild; Calm in his cradle slept the heavenly child. No trembling word the mother's joy revealed,-- One sigh of rapture, and her lips were sealed; Unmoved she saw the rustic train depart, But kept their words to ponder in her heart. Twelve years had passed; the boy was fair and tall, Growing in wisdom, finding grace with all. The maids of Nazareth, as they trooped to fill Their balanced urns beside the mountain rill, The gathered matrons, as they sat and spun, Spoke in soft words of Joseph's quiet son. No voice had reached the Galilean vale Of star-led kings, or awe-struck shepherd's tale; In the meek, studious child they only saw The future Rabbi, learned in Israel's law. Beyond the hills that girt the village green; Save when at midnight, o'er the starlit sands, Snatched from the steel of Herod's murdering bands, A babe, close folded to his mother's breast, Through Edom's wilds he sought the sheltering West. Then Joseph spake: "Thy boy hath largely grown; Weave him fine raiment, fitting to be shown; Fair robes beseem the pilgrim, as the priest; Goes he not with us to the holy feast?" And Mary culled the flaxen fibres white; Till eve she spun; she spun till morning light. The thread was twined; its parting meshes through From hand to hand her restless shuttle flew, Till the full web was wound upon the beam; Love's curious toil,--a vest without a seam! They reach the Holy Place, fulfil the days To solemn feasting given, and grateful praise. At last they turn, and far Moriah's height Melts in the southern sky and fades from sight. All day the dusky caravan has flowed In devious trails along the winding road; (For many a step their homeward path attends, And all the sons of Abraham are as friends.) Evening has come,--the hour of rest and joy,-- Hush! Hush! That whisper,--"Where is Mary's boy?" Oh, weary hour! Oh, aching days that passed Filled with strange fears each wilder than the last,-- The soldier's lance, the fierce centurion's sword, The crushing wheels that whirl some Roman lord, The midnight crypt that sucks the captive's breath, The blistering sun on Hinnom's vale of death! Thrice on his cheek had rained the morning light; Thrice on his lips the mildewed kiss of night, Crouched by a sheltering column's shining plinth, Or stretched beneath the odorous terebinth. At last, in desperate mood, they sought once more The Temple's porches, searched in vain before; They found him seated with the ancient men,-- The grim old rufflers of the tongue and pen,-- Their bald heads glistening as they clustered near, Their gray beards slanting as they turned to hear, Lost in half-envious wonder and surprise That lips so fresh should utter words so wise. And Mary said,--as one who, tried too long, Tells all her grief and half her sense of wrong,-- What is this thoughtless thing which thou hast done? Lo, we have sought thee sorrowing, O my son! Few words he spake, and scarce of filial tone, Strange words, their sense a mystery yet unknown; Then turned with them and left the holy hill, To all their mild commands obedient still. The tale was told to Nazareth's sober men, And Nazareth's matrons told it oft again; The maids retold it at the fountain's side, The youthful shepherds doubted or denied; It passed around among the listening friends, With all that fancy adds and fiction lends, Till newer marvels dimmed the young renown Of Joseph's son, who talked the Rabbis down. But Mary, faithful to its lightest word, Kept in her heart the sayings she had heard, Till the dread morning rent the Temple's veil, And shuddering earth confirmed the wondrous tale. Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall A mother's secret hope outlives them all. . . . . . . . . . . . Hushed was the voice, but still its accents thrilled The throbbing hearts its lingering sweetness filled. The simple story which a tear repays Asks not to share the noisy breath of praise. A trance-like stillness,--scarce a whisper heard, No tinkling teaspoon in its saucer stirred; A deep-drawn sigh that would not be suppressed, A sob, a lifted kerchief told the rest. "Come now, Dictator," so the lady spoke, "You too must fit your shoulder to the yoke; You'll find there's something, doubtless, if you look, To serve your purpose,--so, now take the book." "Ah, my dear lady, you must know full well, 'Story, God bless you, I have none to tell.' To those five stories which these pages hold You all have listened,--every one is told. There's nothing left to make you smile or weep,-- A few grave thoughts may work you off to sleep." THE SECRET OF THE STARS Is man's the only throbbing heart that hides The silent spring that feeds its whispering tides? Speak from thy caverns, mystery-breeding Earth, Tell the half-hinted story of thy birth, And calm the noisy champions who have thrown The book of types against the book of stone! Have ye not secrets, ye refulgent spheres, No sleepless listener of the starlight hears? In vain the sweeping equatorial pries Through every world-sown corner of the skies, To the far orb that so remotely strays Our midnight darkness is its noonday blaze; In vain the climbing soul of creeping man Metes out the heavenly concave with a span, Tracks into space the long-lost meteor's trail, And weighs an unseen planet in the scale; Still o'er their doubts the wan-eyed watchers sigh, And Science lifts her still unanswered cry "Are all these worlds, that speed their circling flight, Dumb, vacant, soulless,--baubles of the night? Warmed with God's smile and wafted by his breath, To weave in ceaseless round the dance of Death? Or rolls a sphere in each expanding zone, Crowned with a life as varied as our own?" Maker of earth and stars! If thou hast taught By what thy voice hath spoke, thy hand hath wrought, By all that Science proves, or guesses true, More than thy poet dreamed, thy prophet knew,-- The heavens still bow in darkness at thy feet, And shadows veil thy cloud-pavilioned seat! Not for ourselves we ask thee to reveal One awful word beneath the future's seal; What thou shalt tell us, grant us strength to bear; What thou withholdest is thy single care. Not for ourselves; the present clings too fast, Moored to the mighty anchors of the past; But when, with angry snap, some cable parts, The sound re-echoing in our startled hearts,-- When, through the wall that clasps the harbor round, And shuts the raving ocean from its bound, Shattered and rent by sacrilegious hands, The first mad billow leaps upon the sands,-- Then to the Future's awful page we turn, And what we question hardly dare to learn. Still let us hope! for while we seem to tread The time-worn pathway of the nations dead, Though Sparta laughs at all our warlike deeds, And buried Athens claims our stolen creeds, Though Rome, a spectre on her broken throne, Beholds our eagle and recalls her own, Though England fling her pennons on the breeze And reign before us Mistress of the seas,-- While calm-eyed History tracks us circling round Fate's iron pillar where they all were bound, Still in our path a larger curve she finds, The spiral widening as the chain unwinds Still sees new beacons crowned with brighter flame Than the old watch-fires, like, but not the same No shameless haste shall spot with bandit-crime Our destined empire snatched before its time. Wait,--wait, undoubting, for the winds have caught From our bold speech the heritage of thought; No marble form that sculptured truth can wear Vies with the image shaped in viewless air; And thought unfettered grows through speech to deeds, As the broad forest marches in its seeds. What though we perish ere the day is won? Enough to see its glorious work begun! The thistle falls before a trampling clown, But who can chain the flying thistle-down? Wait while the fiery seeds of freedom fly, The prairie blazes when the grass is dry! What arms might ravish, leave to peaceful arts, Wisdom and love shall win the roughest hearts; So shall the angel who has closed for man The blissful garden since his woes began Swing wide the golden portals of the West, And Eden's secret stand at length confessed! . . . . . . . . . . . The reader paused; in truth he thought it time,-- Some threatening signs accused the drowsy rhyme. The Mistress nodded, the Professor dozed, The two Annexes sat with eyelids closed,-- Not sleeping,--no! But when one shuts one's eyes, That one hears better no one, sure, denies. The Doctor whispered in Delilah's ear, Or seemed to whisper, for their heads drew near. Not all the owner's efforts could restrain The wild vagaries of the squinting brain,-- Last of the listeners Number Five alone The patient reader still could call his own. "Teacups, arouse!" 'T was thus the spell I broke; The drowsy started and the slumberers woke. "The sleep I promised you have now enjoyed, Due to your hour of labor well employed. Swiftly the busy moments have been passed; This, our first 'Teacups,' must not be our last. Here, on this spot, now consecrated ground, The Order of 'The Teacups' let us found! By winter's fireside and in summer's bower Still shall it claim its ever-welcome hour, In distant regions where our feet may roam The magic teapot find or make a home; Long may its floods their bright infusion pour, Till time and teacups both shall be no more!" VERSES FROM THE OLDEST PORTFOLIO FROM THE "COLLEGIAN," 1830, ILLUSTRATED ANNUALS, ETC. Nescit vox missa reverti.--Horat. Ars Poetica. Ab lis qua non adjuvant quam mollissime oportet pedem referre.-- Quintillian, L. VI. C. 4. These verses have always been printed in my collected poems, and as the best of them may bear a single reading, I allow them to appear, but in a less conspicuous position than the other productions. A chick, before his shell is off his back, is hardly a fair subject for severe criticism. If one has written anything worth preserving, his first efforts may be objects of interest and curiosity. Other young authors may take encouragement from seeing how tame, how feeble, how commonplace were the rudimentary attempts of the half-fledged poet. If the boy or youth had anything in him, there will probably be some sign of it in the midst of his imitative mediocrities and ambitious failures. These "first verses" of mine, written before I was sixteen, have little beyond a common academy boy's ordinary performance. Yet a kindly critic said there was one line which showed a poetical quality:-- "The boiling ocean trembled into calm." One of these poems--the reader may guess which--won fair words from Thackeray. The Spectre Pig was a wicked suggestion which came into my head after reading Dana's Buccaneer. Nobody seemed to find it out, and I never mentioned it to the venerable poet, who might not have been pleased with the parody. This is enough to say of these unvalued copies of verses. FIRST VERSES PHILLIPS ACADEMY, ANDOVER, MASS., 1824 OR 1825 TRANSLATION FROM THE ENEID, BOOK I. THE god looked out upon the troubled deep Waked into tumult from its placid sleep; The flame of anger kindles in his eye As the wild waves ascend the lowering sky; He lifts his head above their awful height And to the distant fleet directs his sight, Now borne aloft upon the billow's crest, Struck by the bolt or by the winds oppressed, And well he knew that Juno's vengeful ire Frowned from those clouds and sparkled in that fire. On rapid pinions as they whistled by He calls swift Zephyrus and Eurus nigh Is this your glory in a noble line To leave your confines and to ravage mine? Whom I--but let these troubled waves subside-- Another tempest and I'll quell your pride! Go--bear our message to your master's ear, That wide as ocean I am despot here; Let him sit monarch in his barren caves, I wield the trident and control the waves He said, and as the gathered vapors break The swelling ocean seemed a peaceful lake; To lift their ships the graceful nymphs essayed And the strong trident lent its powerful aid; The dangerous banks are sunk beneath the main, And the light chariot skims the unruffled plain. As when sedition fires the public mind, And maddening fury leads the rabble blind, The blazing torch lights up the dread alarm, Rage points the steel and fury nerves the arm, Then, if some reverend Sage appear in sight, They stand--they gaze, and check their headlong flight,-- He turns the current of each wandering breast And hushes every passion into rest,-- Thus by the power of his imperial arm The boiling ocean trembled into calm; With flowing reins the father sped his way And smiled serene upon rekindled day. THE MEETING OF THE DRYADS Written after a general pruning of the trees around Harvard College. A little poem, on a similar occasion, may be found in the works of Swift, from which, perhaps, the idea was borrowed; although I was as much surprised as amused to meet with it some time after writing the following lines. IT was not many centuries since, When, gathered on the moonlit green, Beneath the Tree of Liberty, A ring of weeping sprites was seen. The freshman's lamp had long been dim, The voice of busy day was mute, And tortured Melody had ceased Her sufferings on the evening flute. They met not as they once had met, To laugh o'er many a jocund tale But every pulse was beating low, And every cheek was cold and pale. There rose a fair but faded one, Who oft had cheered them with her song; She waved a mutilated arm, And silence held the listening throng. "Sweet friends," the gentle nymph began, "From opening bud to withering leaf, One common lot has bound us all, In every change of joy and grief. "While all around has felt decay, We rose in ever-living prime, With broader shade and fresher green, Beneath the crumbling step of Time. "When often by our feet has past Some biped, Nature's walking whim, Say, have we trimmed one awkward shape, Or lopped away one crooked limb? "Go on, fair Science; soon to thee Shall. Nature yield her idle boast; Her vulgar fingers formed a tree, But thou halt trained it to a post. "Go, paint the birch's silver rind, And quilt the peach with softer down; Up with the willow's trailing threads, Off with the sunflower's radiant crown! "Go, plant the lily on the shore, And set the rose among the waves, And bid the tropic bud unbind Its silken zone in arctic caves; "Bring bellows for the panting winds, Hang up a lantern by the moon, And give the nightingale a fife, And lend the eagle a balloon! "I cannot smile,--the tide of scorn, That rolled through every bleeding vein, Comes kindling fiercer as it flows Back to its burning source again. "Again in every quivering leaf That moment's agony I feel, When limbs, that spurned the northern blast, Shrunk from the sacrilegious steel. "A curse upon the wretch who dared To crop us with his felon saw! May every fruit his lip shall taste Lie like a bullet in his maw. "In every julep that he drinks, May gout, and bile, and headache be; And when he strives to calm his pain, May colic mingle with his tea. "May nightshade cluster round his path, And thistles shoot, and brambles cling; May blistering ivy scorch his veins, And dogwood burn, and nettles sting. "On him may never shadow fall, When fever racks his throbbing brow, And his last shilling buy a rope To hang him on my highest bough!" She spoke;--the morning's herald beam Sprang from the bosom of the sea, And every mangled sprite returned In sadness to her wounded tree. THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR THERE was a sound of hurrying feet, A tramp on echoing stairs, There was a rush along the aisles,-- It was the hour of prayers. And on, like Ocean's midnight wave, The current rolled along, When, suddenly, a stranger form Was seen amidst the throng. He was a dark and swarthy man, That uninvited guest; A faded coat of bottle-green Was buttoned round his breast. There was not one among them all Could say from whence he came; Nor beardless boy, nor ancient man, Could tell that stranger's name. All silent as the sheeted dead, In spite of sneer and frown, Fast by a gray-haired senior's side He sat him boldly down. There was a look of horror flashed From out the tutor's eyes; When all around him rose to pray, The stranger did not rise! A murmur broke along the crowd, The prayer was at an end; With ringing heels and measured tread, A hundred forms descend. Through sounding aisle, o'er grating stair, The long procession poured, Till all were gathered on the seats Around the Commons board. That fearful stranger! down he sat, Unasked, yet undismayed; And on his lip a rising smile Of scorn or pleasure played. He took his hat and hung it up, With slow but earnest air; He stripped his coat from off his back, And placed it on a chair. Then from his nearest neighbor's side A knife and plate he drew; And, reaching out his hand again, He took his teacup too. How fled the sugar from the bowl How sunk the azure cream! They vanished like the shapes that float Upon a summer's dream. A long, long draught,--an outstretched hand,-- And crackers, toast, and tea, They faded from the stranger's touch, Like dew upon the sea. Then clouds were dark on many a brow, Fear sat upon their souls, And, in a bitter agony, They clasped their buttered rolls. A whisper trembled through the crowd, Who could the stranger be? And some were silent, for they thought A cannibal was he. What if the creature should arise,-- For he was stout and tall,-- And swallow down a sophomore, Coat, crow's-foot, cap, and all! All sullenly the stranger rose; They sat in mute despair; He took his hat from off the peg, His coat from off the chair. Four freshmen fainted on the seat, Six swooned upon the floor; Yet on the fearful being passed, And shut the chapel door. There is full many a starving man, That walks in bottle green, But never more that hungry one In Commons hall was seen. Yet often at the sunset hour, When tolls the evening bell, The freshman lingers on the steps, That frightful tale to tell. THE TOADSTOOL THERE 's a thing that grows by the fainting flower, And springs in the shade of the lady's bower; The lily shrinks, and the rose turns pale, When they feel its breath in the summer gale, And the tulip curls its leaves in pride, And the blue-eyed violet starts aside; But the lily may flaunt, and the tulip stare, For what does the honest toadstool care? She does not glow in a painted vest, And she never blooms on the maiden's breast; But she comes, as the saintly sisters do, In a modest suit of a Quaker hue. And, when the stars in the evening skies Are weeping dew from their gentle eyes, The toad comes out from his hermit cell, The tale of his faithful love to tell. Oh, there is light in her lover's glance, That flies to her heart like a silver lance; His breeches are made of spotted skin, His jacket 'is tight, and his pumps are thin; In a cloudless night you may hear his song, As its pensive melody floats along, And, if you will look by the moonlight fair, The trembling form of the toad is there. And he twines his arms round her slender stem, In the shade of her velvet diadem; But she turns away in her maiden shame, And will not breathe on the kindling flame; He sings at her feet through the live-long night, And creeps to his cave at the break of light; And whenever he comes to the air above, His throat is swelling with baffled love. THE SPECTRE PIG A BALLAD IT was the stalwart butcher man, That knit his swarthy brow, And said the gentle Pig must die, And sealed it with a vow. And oh! it was the gentle Pig Lay stretched upon the ground, And ah! it was the cruel knife His little heart that found. They took him then, those wicked men, They trailed him all along; They put a stick between his lips, And through his heels a thong; And round and round an oaken beam A hempen cord they flung, And, like a mighty pendulum, All solemnly he swung! Now say thy prayers, thou sinful man, And think what thou hast done, And read thy catechism well, Thou bloody-minded one; For if his sprite should walk by night, It better were for thee, That thou wert mouldering in the ground, Or bleaching in the sea. It was the savage butcher then, That made a mock of sin, And swore a very wicked oath, He did not care a pin. It was the butcher's youngest son,-- His voice was broke with sighs, And with his pocket-handkerchief He wiped his little eyes; All young and ignorant was he, But innocent and mild, And, in his soft simplicity, Out spoke the tender child:-- "Oh, father, father, list to me; The Pig is deadly sick, And men have hung him by his heels, And fed him with a stick." It was the bloody butcher then, That laughed as he would die, Yet did he soothe the sorrowing child, And bid him not to cry;-- "Oh, Nathan, Nathan, what's a Pig, That thou shouldst weep and wail? Come, bear thee like a butcher's child, And thou shalt have his tail!" It was the butcher's daughter then, So slender and so fair, That sobbed as it her heart would break, And tore her yellow hair; And thus she spoke in thrilling tone,-- Fast fell the tear-drops big:-- "Ah! woe is me! Alas! Alas! The Pig! The Pig! The Pig!" Then did her wicked father's lips Make merry with her woe, And call her many a naughty name, Because she whimpered so. Ye need not weep, ye gentle ones, In vain your tears are shed, Ye cannot wash his crimson hand, Ye cannot soothe the dead. The bright sun folded on his breast His robes of rosy flame, And softly over all the west The shades of evening came. He slept, and troops of murdered Pigs Were busy with his dreams; Loud rang their wild, unearthly shrieks, Wide yawned their mortal seams. The clock struck twelve; the Dead hath heard; He opened both his eyes, And sullenly he shook his tail To lash the feeding flies. One quiver of the hempen cord,-- One struggle and one bound,-- With stiffened limb and leaden eye, The Pig was on the ground. And straight towards the sleeper's house His fearful way he wended; And hooting owl and hovering bat On midnight wing attended. Back flew the bolt, up rose the latch, And open swung the door, And little mincing feet were heard Pat, pat along the floor. Two hoofs upon the sanded floor, And two upon the bed; And they are breathing side by side, The living and the dead! "Now wake, now wake, thou butcher man! What makes thy cheek so pale? Take hold! take hold! thou dost not fear To clasp a spectre's tail?" Untwisted every winding coil; The shuddering wretch took hold, All like an icicle it seemed, So tapering and so cold. "Thou com'st with me, thou butcher man!"-- He strives to loose his grasp, But, faster than the clinging vine, Those twining spirals clasp; And open, open swung the door, And, fleeter than the wind, The shadowy spectre swept before, The butcher trailed behind. Fast fled the darkness of the night, And morn rose faint and dim; They called full loud, they knocked full long, They did not waken him. Straight, straight towards that oaken beam, A trampled pathway ran; A ghastly shape was swinging there,-- It was the butcher man. TO A CAGED LION Poor conquered monarch! though that haughty glance Still speaks thy courage unsubdued by time, And in the grandeur of thy sullen tread Lives the proud spirit of thy burning clime;-- Fettered by things that shudder at thy roar, Torn from thy pathless wilds to pace this narrow floor! Thou wast the victor, and all nature shrunk Before the thunders of thine awful wrath; The steel-armed hunter viewed thee from afar, Fearless and trackless in thy lonely path! The famished tiger closed his flaming eye, And crouched and panted as thy step went by! Thou art the vanquished, and insulting man Bars thy broad bosom as a sparrow's wing; His nerveless arms thine iron sinews bind, And lead in chains the desert's fallen king; Are these the beings that have dared to twine Their feeble threads around those limbs of thine? So must it be; the weaker, wiser race, That wields the tempest and that rides the sea, Even in the stillness of thy solitude Must teach the lesson of its power to thee; And thou, the terror of the trembling wild, Must bow thy savage strength, the mockery of a child! THE STAR AND THE WATER-LILY THE sun stepped down from his golden throne. And lay in the silent sea, And the Lily had folded her satin leaves, For a sleepy thing was she; What is the Lily dreaming of? Why crisp the waters blue? See, see, she is lifting her varnished lid! Her white leaves are glistening through! The Rose is cooling his burning cheek In the lap of the breathless tide;-- The Lily hath sisters fresh and fair, That would lie by the Rose's side; He would love her better than all the rest, And he would be fond and true;-- But the Lily unfolded her weary lids, And looked at the sky so blue. Remember, remember, thou silly one, How fast will thy summer glide, And wilt thou wither a virgin pale, Or flourish a blooming bride? Oh, the Rose is old, and thorny, and cold, "And he lives on earth," said she; "But the Star is fair and he lives in the air, And he shall my bridegroom be." But what if the stormy cloud should come, And ruffle the silver sea? Would he turn his eye from the distant sky, To smile on a thing like thee? Oh no, fair Lily, he will not send One ray from his far-off throne; The winds shall blow and the waves shall flow, And thou wilt be left alone. There is not a leaf on the mountain-top, Nor a drop of evening dew, Nor a golden sand on the sparkling shore, Nor a pearl in the waters blue, That he has not cheered with his fickle smile, And warmed with his faithless beam,-- And will he be true to a pallid flower, That floats on the quiet stream? Alas for the Lily! she would not heed, But turned to the skies afar, And bared her breast to the trembling ray That shot from the rising star; The cloud came over the darkened sky, And over the waters wide She looked in vain through the beating rain, And sank in the stormy tide. ILLUSTRATION OF A PICTURE "A SPANISH GIRL IN REVERIE," SHE twirled the string of golden beads, That round her neck was hung,--- My grandsire's gift; the good old man Loved girls when he was young; And, bending lightly o'er the cord, And turning half away, With something like a youthful sigh, Thus spoke the maiden gray:-- "Well, one may trail her silken robe, And bind her locks with pearls, And one may wreathe the woodland rose Among her floating curls; And one may tread the dewy grass, And one the marble floor, Nor half-hid bosom heave the less, Nor broidered corset more! "Some years ago, a dark-eyed girl Was sitting in the shade,-- There's something brings her to my mind In that young dreaming maid,-- And in her hand she held a flower, A flower, whose speaking hue Said, in the language of the heart, 'Believe the giver true.' "And, as she looked upon its leaves, The maiden made a vow To wear it when the bridal wreath Was woven for her brow; She watched the flower, as, day by day, The leaflets curled and died; But he who gave it never came To claim her for his bride. "Oh, many a summer's morning glow Has lent the rose its ray, And many a winter's drifting snow Has swept its bloom away; But she has kept that faithless pledge To this, her winter hour, And keeps it still, herself alone, And wasted like the flower." Her pale lip quivered, and the light Gleamed in her moistening eyes;-- I asked her how she liked the tints In those Castilian skies? "She thought them misty,--'t was perhaps Because she stood too near;" She turned away, and as she turned I saw her wipe a tear. A ROMAN AQUEDUCT THE sun-browned girl, whose limbs recline When noon her languid hand has laid Hot on the green flakes of the pine, Beneath its narrow disk of shade; As, through the flickering noontide glare, She gazes on the rainbow chain Of arches, lifting once in air The rivers of the Roman's plain;-- Say, does her wandering eye recall The mountain-current's icy wave,-- Or for the dead one tear let fall, Whose founts are broken by their grave? From stone to stone the ivy weaves Her braided tracery's winding veil, And lacing stalks and tangled leaves Nod heavy in the drowsy gale. And lightly floats the pendent vine, That swings beneath her slender bow, Arch answering arch,--whose rounded line Seems mirrored in the wreath below. How patient Nature smiles at Fame! The weeds, that strewed the victor's way, Feed on his dust to shroud his name, Green where his proudest towers decay. See, through that channel, empty now, The scanty rain its tribute pours,-- Which cooled the lip and laved the brow Of conquerors from a hundred shores. Thus bending o'er the nation's bier, Whose wants the captive earth supplied, The dew of Memory's passing tear Falls on the arches of her pride! FROM A BACHELOR'S PRIVATE JOURNAL SWEET Mary, I have never breathed The love it were in vain to name; Though round my heart a serpent wreathed, I smiled, or strove to smile, the same. Once more the pulse of Nature glows With faster throb and fresher fire, While music round her pathway flows, Like echoes from a hidden lyre. And is there none with me to share The glories of the earth and sky? The eagle through the pathless air Is followed by one burning eye. Ah no! the cradled flowers may wake, Again may flow the frozen sea, From every cloud a star may break,-- There conies no second spring to me. Go,--ere the painted toys of youth Are crushed beneath the tread of years; Ere visions have been chilled to truth, And hopes are washed away in tears. Go,--for I will not bid thee weep,-- Too soon my sorrows will be thine, And evening's troubled air shall sweep The incense from the broken shrine. If Heaven can hear the dying tone Of chords that soon will cease to thrill, The prayer that Heaven has heard alone May bless thee when those chords are still. LA GRISETTE As Clemence! when I saw thee last Trip down the Rue de Seine, And turning, when thy form had past, I said, "We meet again,"-- I dreamed not in that idle glance Thy latest image came, And only left to memory's trance A shadow and a name. The few strange words my lips had taught Thy timid voice to speak, Their gentler signs, which often brought Fresh roses to thy cheek, The trailing of thy long loose hair Bent o'er my couch of pain, All, all returned, more sweet, more fair; Oh, had we met again! I walked where saint and virgin keep The vigil lights of Heaven, I knew that thou hadst woes to weep, And sins to be forgiven; I watched where Genevieve was laid, I knelt by Mary's shrine, Beside me low, soft voices prayed; Alas! but where was thine? And when the morning sun was bright, When wind and wave were calm, And flamed, in thousand-tinted light, The rose of Notre Dame, I wandered through the haunts of men, From Boulevard to Quai, Till, frowning o'er Saint Etienne, The Pantheon's shadow lay. In vain, in vain; we meet no more, Nor dream what fates befall; And long upon the stranger's shore My voice on thee may call, When years have clothed the line in moss That tells thy name and days, And withered, on thy simple cross, The wreaths of Pere-la-Chaise! OUR YANKEE GIRLS LET greener lands and bluer skies, If such the wide earth shows, With fairer cheeks and brighter eyes, Match us the star and rose; The winds that lift the Georgian's veil, Or wave Circassia's curls, Waft to their shores the sultan's sail,-- Who buys our Yankee girls? The gay grisette, whose fingers touch Love's thousand chords so well; The dark Italian, loving much, But more than one can tell; And England's fair-haired, blue-eyed dame, Who binds her brow with pearls;-- Ye who have seen them, can they shame Our own sweet Yankee girls? And what if court or castle vaunt Its children loftier born?-- Who heeds the silken tassel's flaunt Beside the golden corn? They ask not for the dainty toil Of ribboned knights and earls, The daughters of the virgin soil, Our freeborn Yankee girls! By every hill whose stately pines Wave their dark arms above The home where some fair being shines, To warm the wilds with love, From barest rock to bleakest shore Where farthest sail unfurls, That stars and stripes are streaming o'er,-- God bless our Yankee girls! L'INCONNUE Is thy name Mary, maiden fair? Such should, methinks, its music be; The sweetest name that mortals bear Were best befitting thee; And she to whom it once was given, Was half of earth and half of heaven. I hear thy voice, I see thy smile, I look upon thy folded hair; Ah! while we dream not they beguile, Our hearts are in the snare; And she who chains a wild bird's wing Must start not if her captive sing. So, lady, take the leaf that falls, To all but thee unseen, unknown; When evening shades thy silent walls, Then read it all alone; In stillness read, in darkness seal, Forget, despise, but not reveal! STANZAS STRANGE! that one lightly whispered tone Is far, far sweeter unto me, Than all the sounds that kiss the earth, Or breathe along the sea; But, lady, when thy voice I greet, Not heavenly music seems so sweet. I look upon the fair blue skies, And naught but empty air I see; But when I turn me to thin eyes, It seemeth unto me Ten thousand angels spread their wings Within those little azure rings. The lily bath the softest leaf That ever western breeze bath fanned, But thou shalt have the tender flower, So I may take thy hand; That little hand to me doth yield More joy than all the broidered field. O lady! there be many things That seem right fair, below, above; But sure not one among them all Is half so sweet as love;-- Let us not pay our vows alone, But join two altars both in one. LINES BY A CLERK OH! I did love her dearly, And gave her toys and rings, And I thought she meant sincerely, When she took my pretty things. But her heart has grown as icy As a fountain in the fall, And her love, that was so spicy, It did not last at all. I gave her once a locket, It was filled with my own hair, And she put it in her pocket With very special care. But a jeweller has got it,-- He offered it to me,-- And another that is not it Around her neck I see. For my cooings and my billings I do not now complain, But my dollars and my shillings Will never come again; They were earned with toil and sorrow, But I never told her that, And now I have to borrow, And want another hat. Think, think, thou cruel Emma, When thou shalt hear my woe, And know my sad dilemma, That thou hast made it so. See, see my beaver rusty, Look, look upon this hole, This coat is dim and dusty; Oh let it rend thy soul! Before the gates of fashion I daily bent my knee, But I sought the shrine of passion, And found my idol,--thee. Though never love intenser Had bowed a soul before it, Thine eye was on the censer, And not the hand that bore it. THE PHILOSOPHER TO HIS LOVE DEAREST, a look is but a ray Reflected in a certain way; A word, whatever tone it wear, Is but a trembling wave of air; A touch, obedience to a clause In nature's pure material laws. The very flowers that bend and meet, In sweetening others, grow more sweet; The clouds by day, the stars by night, Inweave their floating locks of light; The rainbow, Heaven's own forehead's braid, Is but the embrace of sun and shade. Oh! in the hour when I shall feel Those shadows round my senses steal, When gentle eyes are weeping o'er The clay that feels their tears no more, Then let thy spirit with me be, Or some sweet angel, likest thee! How few that love us have we found! How wide the world that girds them round Like mountain streams we meet and part, Each living in the other's heart, Our course unknown, our hope to be Yet mingled in the distant sea. But Ocean coils and heaves in vain, Bound in the subtle moonbeam's chain; And love and hope do but obey Some cold, capricious planet's ray, Which lights and leads the tide it charms To Death's dark caves and icy arms. Alas! one narrow line is drawn, That links our sunset with our dawn; In mist and shade life's morning rose, And clouds are round it at its close; But ah! no twilight beam ascends To whisper where that evening ends. THE POET'S LOT WHAT is a poet's love?-- To write a girl a sonnet, To get a ring, or some such thing, And fustianize upon it. What is a poet's fame?-- Sad hints about his reason, And sadder praise from garreteers, To be returned in season. Where go the poet's lines?-- Answer, ye evening tapers! Ye auburn locks, ye golden curls, Speak from your folded papers! Child of the ploughshare, smile; Boy of the counter, grieve not, Though muses round thy trundle-bed Their broidered tissue weave not. The poet's future holds No civic wreath above him; Nor slated roof, nor varnished chaise, Nor wife nor child to love him. Maid of the village inn, Who workest woe on satin, (The grass in black, the graves in green, The epitaph in Latin,) Trust not to them who say, In stanzas, they adore thee; Oh rather sleep in churchyard clay, With urn and cherub o'er thee! TO A BLANK SHEET OF PAPER WAN-VISAGED thing! thy virgin leaf To me looks more than deadly pale, Unknowing what may stain thee yet,-- A poem or a tale. Who can thy unborn meaning scan? Can Seer or Sibyl read thee now? No,--seek to trace the fate of man Writ on his infant brow. Love may light on thy snowy cheek, And shake his Eden-breathing plumes; Then shalt thou tell how Lelia smiles, Or Angelina blooms. Satire may lift his bearded lance, Forestalling Time's slow-moving scythe, And, scattered on thy little field, Disjointed bards may writhe. Perchance a vision of the night, Some grizzled spectre, gaunt and thin, Or sheeted corpse, may stalk along, Or skeleton may grin. If it should be in pensive hour Some sorrow-moving theme I try, Ah, maiden, how thy tears will fall, For all I doom to die! But if in merry mood I touch Thy leaves, then shall the sight of thee Sow smiles as thick on rosy lips As ripples on the sea. The Weekly press shall gladly stoop To bind thee up among its sheaves; The Daily steal thy shining ore, To gild its leaden leaves. Thou hast no tongue, yet thou canst speak, Till distant shores shall hear the sound; Thou hast no life, yet thou canst breathe Fresh life on all around. Thou art the arena of the wise, The noiseless battle-ground of fame; The sky where halos may be wreathed Around the humblest name. Take, then, this treasure to thy trust, To win some idle reader's smile, Then fade and moulder in the dust, Or swell some bonfire's pile. TO THE PORTRAIT OF "A GENTLEMAN" IN THE ATHENIEUM GALLERY IT may be so,--perhaps thou hast A warm and loving heart; I will not blame thee for thy face, Poor devil as thou art. That thing thou fondly deem'st a nose, Unsightly though it be,-- In spite of all the cold world's scorn, It may be much to thee. Those eyes,--among thine elder friends Perhaps they pass for blue,-- No matter,--if a man can see, What more have eyes to do? Thy mouth,--that fissure in thy face, By something like a chin,-- May be a very useful place To put thy victual in. I know thou hast a wife at home, I know thou hast a child, By that subdued, domestic smile Upon thy features mild. That wife sits fearless by thy side, That cherub on thy knee; They do not shudder at thy looks, They do not shrink from thee. Above thy mantel is a hook,-- A portrait once was there; It was thine only ornament,-- Alas! that hook is bare. She begged thee not to let it go, She begged thee all in vain; She wept,--and breathed a trembling prayer To meet it safe again. It was a bitter sight to see That picture torn away; It was a solemn thought to think What all her friends would say! And often in her calmer hours, And in her happy dreams, Upon its long-deserted hook The absent portrait seems. Thy wretched infant turns his head In melancholy wise, And looks to meet the placid stare Of those unbending eyes. I never saw thee, lovely one,-- Perchance I never may; It is not often that we cross Such people in our way; But if we meet in distant years, Or on some foreign shore, Sure I can take my Bible oath, I've seen that face before. THE BALLAD OF THE OYSTERMAN IT was a tall young oysterman lived by the river-side, His shop was just upon the bank, his boat was on the tide; The daughter of a fisherman, that was so straight and slim, Lived over on the other bank, right opposite to him. It was the pensive oysterman that saw a lovely maid, Upon a moonlight evening, a sitting in the shade; He saw her wave her handkerchief, as much as if to say, "I 'm wide awake, young oysterman, and all the folks away." Then up arose the oysterman, and to himself said he, "I guess I 'll leave the skiff at home, for fear that folks should see I read it in the story-book, that, for to kiss his dear, Leander swam the Hellespont,--and I will swim this here." And he has leaped into the waves, and crossed the shining stream, And he has clambered up the bank, all in the moonlight gleam; Oh there were kisses sweet as dew, and words as soft as rain,-- But they have heard her father's step, and in he leaps again! Out spoke the ancient fisherman,--"Oh, what was that, my daughter?" "'T was nothing but a pebble, sir, I threw into the water." "And what is that, pray tell me, love, that paddles off so fast?" "It's nothing but a porpoise, sir, that 's been a swimming past." Out spoke the ancient fisherman,--"Now bring me my harpoon! I'll get into my fishing-boat, and fix the fellow soon." Down fell that pretty innocent, as falls a snow-white lamb, Her hair drooped round her pallid cheeks, like sea-weed on a clam. Alas for those two loving ones! she waked not from her swound, And he was taken with the cramp, and in the waves was drowned; But Fate has metamorphosed them, in pity of their woe, And now they keep an oyster-shop for mermaids down below. A NOONTIDE LYRIC THE dinner-bell, the dinner-bell Is ringing loud and clear; Through hill and plain, through street and lane, It echoes far and near; From curtained hall and whitewashed stall, Wherever men can hide, Like bursting waves from ocean caves, They float upon the tide. I smell the smell of roasted meat! I hear the hissing fry The beggars know where they can go, But where, oh where shall I? At twelve o'clock men took my hand, At two they only stare, And eye me with a fearful look, As if I were a bear! The poet lays his laurels down, And hastens to his greens; The happy tailor quits his goose, To riot on his beans; The weary cobbler snaps his thread, The printer leaves his pi; His very devil hath a home, But what, oh what have I? Methinks I hear an angel voice, That softly seems to say "Pale stranger, all may yet be well, Then wipe thy tears away; Erect thy head, and cock thy hat, And follow me afar, And thou shalt have a jolly meal, And charge it at the bar." I hear the voice! I go! I go! Prepare your meat and wine! They little heed their future need Who pay not when they dine. Give me to-day the rosy bowl, Give me one golden dream,-- To-morrow kick away the stool, And dangle from the beam! THE HOT SEASON THE folks, that on the first of May Wore winter coats and hose, Began to say, the first of June, "Good Lord! how hot it grows!" At last two Fahrenheits blew up, And killed two children small, And one barometer shot dead A tutor with its ball! Now all day long the locusts sang Among the leafless trees; Three new hotels warped inside out, The pumps could only wheeze; And ripe old wine, that twenty years Had cobwebbed o'er in vain, Came spouting through the rotten corks Like Joly's best champagne. The Worcester locomotives did Their trip in half an hour; The Lowell cars ran forty miles Before they checked the power; Roll brimstone soon became a drug, And loco-focos fell; All asked for ice, but everywhere Saltpetre was to sell. Plump men of mornings ordered tights, But, ere the scorching noons, Their candle-moulds had grown as loose As Cossack pantaloons! The dogs ran mad,--men could not try If water they would choose; A horse fell dead,--he only left Four red-hot, rusty shoes! But soon the people could not bear The slightest hint of fire; Allusions to caloric drew A flood of savage ire; The leaves on heat were all torn out From every book at school, And many blackguards kicked and caned, Because they said, "Keep cool!" The gas-light companies were mobbed, The bakers all were shot, The penny press began to talk Of lynching Doctor Nott; And all about the warehouse steps Were angry men in droves, Crashing and splintering through the doors To smash the patent stoves! The abolition men and maids Were tanned to such a hue, You scarce could tell them from their friends, Unless their eyes were blue; And, when I left, society Had burst its ancient guards, And Brattle Street and Temple Place Were interchanging cards. A PORTRAIT A STILL, sweet, placid, moonlight face, And slightly nonchalant, Which seems to claim a middle place Between one's love and aunt, Where childhood's star has left a ray In woman's sunniest sky, As morning dew and blushing day On fruit and blossom lie. And yet,--and yet I cannot love Those lovely lines on steel; They beam too much of heaven above, Earth's darker shades to feel; Perchance some early weeds of care Around my heart have grown, And brows unfurrowed seem not fair, Because they mock my own. Alas! when Eden's gates were sealed, How oft some sheltered flower Breathed o'er the wanderers of the field, Like their own bridal bower; Yet, saddened by its loveliness, And humbled by its pride, Earth's fairest child they could not bless, It mocked them when they sighed. AN EVENING THOUGHT WRITTEN AT SEA IF sometimes in the dark blue eye, Or in the deep red wine, Or soothed by gentlest melody, Still warms this heart of mine, Yet something colder in the blood, And calmer in the brain, Have whispered that my youth's bright flood Ebbs, not to flow again. If by Helvetia's azure lake, Or Arno's yellow stream, Each star of memory could awake, As in my first young dream, I know that when mine eye shall greet The hillsides bleak and bare, That gird my home, it will not meet My childhood's sunsets there. Oh, when love's first, sweet, stolen kiss Burned on my boyish brow, Was that young forehead worn as this? Was that flushed cheek as now? Were that wild pulse and throbbing heart Like these, which vainly strive, In thankless strains of soulless art, To dream themselves alive? Alas! the morning dew is gone, Gone ere the full of day; Life's iron fetter still is on, Its wreaths all torn away; Happy if still some casual hour Can warm the fading shrine, Too soon to chill beyond the power Of love, or song, or wine! THE WASP AND THE HORNET THE two proud sisters of the sea, In glory and in doom!-- Well may the eternal waters be Their broad, unsculptured tomb! The wind that rings along the wave, The clear, unshadowed sun, Are torch and trumpet o'er the brave, Whose last green wreath is won! No stranger-hand their banners furled, No victor's shout they heard; Unseen, above them ocean curled, Safe by his own pale bird; The gnashing billows heaved and fell; Wild shrieked the midnight gale; Far, far beneath the morning swell Were pennon, spar, and sail. The land of Freedom! Sea and shore Are guarded now, as when Her ebbing waves to victory bore Fair barks and gallant men; Oh, many a ship of prouder name May wave her starry fold, Nor trail, with deeper light of fame, The paths they swept of old! "QUI VIVE?" "Qui vive?" The sentry's musket rings, The channelled bayonet gleams; High o'er him, like a raven's wings The broad tricolored banner flings Its shadow, rustling as it swings Pale in the moonlight beams; Pass on! while steel-clad sentries keep Their vigil o'er the monarch's sleep, Thy bare, unguarded breast Asks not the unbroken, bristling zone That girds yon sceptred trembler's throne;-- Pass on, and take thy rest! "Qui vive?" How oft the midnight air That startling cry has borne! How oft the evening breeze has fanned The banner of this haughty land, O'er mountain snow and desert sand, Ere yet its folds were torn! Through Jena's carnage flying red, Or tossing o'er Marengo's dead, Or curling on the towers Where Austria's eagle quivers yet, And suns the ruffled plumage, wet With battle's crimson showers! "Qui vive?" And is the sentry's cry,-- The sleepless soldier's hand,-- Are these--the painted folds that fly And lift their emblems, printed high On morning mist and sunset sky-- The guardians of a land? No! If the patriot's pulses sleep, How vain the watch that hirelings keep, The idle flag that waves, When Conquest, with his iron heel, Treads down the standards and the steel That belt the soil of slaves! NOTES. Page 6. "They're as safe as Dan'l Malcolm." The following epitaph is still to be read on a tall grave-stone standing as yet undisturbed among the transplanted monuments of the dead in Copp's Hill Burial-Ground, one of the three city cemeteries which have been desecrated and ruined within my own remembrance:-- "Here lies buried in a Stone Grave 10 feet deep, Cap' DANIEL MALCOLM Merch' Who departed this Life October 23d, 1769, Aged 44 years, a true son of Liberty, a Friend to the Publick, an Enemy to oppression, and one of the foremost in opposing the Revenue Acts on America." Page 62. This broad-browed youth. Benjamin Robbins Curtis. Page 62. The stripling smooth of face and slight. George Tyler Bigelow. 
9564	----	This eBook was produced by David Widger NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER CONTENTS: AMONG THE HILLS PRELUDE AMONG THE HILLS THE DOLE OF JARL THORKELL THE TWO RABBINS NOREMBEGA MIRIAM MAUD MULLER MARY GARVIN THE RANGER NAUHAUGHT, THE DEACON THE SISTERS MARGUERITE THE ROBIN AMONG THE HILLS This poem, when originally published, was dedicated to Annie Fields, wife of the distinguished publisher, James T. Fields, of Boston, in grateful acknowledgment of the strength and inspiration I have found in her friendship and sympathy. The poem in its first form was entitled The Wife: an Idyl of Bearcamp Water, and appeared in The Atlantic Monthly for January, 1868. When I published the volume Among the Hills, in December of the same year, I expanded the Prelude and filled out also the outlines of the story. PRELUDE. ALONG the roadside, like the flowers of gold That tawny Incas for their gardens wrought, Heavy with sunshine droops the golden-rod, And the red pennons of the cardinal-flowers Hang motionless upon their upright staves. The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind, Vying-weary with its long flight from the south, Unfelt; yet, closely scanned, yon maple leaf With faintest motion, as one stirs in dreams, Confesses it. The locust by the wall Stabs the noon-silence with his sharp alarm. A single hay-cart down the dusty road Creaks slowly, with its driver fast asleep On the load's top. Against the neighboring hill, Huddled along the stone wall's shady side, The sheep show white, as if a snowdrift still Defied the dog-star. Through the open door A drowsy smell of flowers-gray heliotrope, And white sweet clover, and shy mignonette-- Comes faintly in, and silent chorus lends To the pervading symphony of peace. No time is this for hands long over-worn To task their strength; and (unto Him be praise Who giveth quietness!) the stress and strain Of years that did the work of centuries Have ceased, and we can draw our breath once more Freely and full. So, as yon harvesters Make glad their nooning underneath the elms With tale and riddle and old snatch of song, I lay aside grave themes, and idly turn The leaves of memory's sketch-book, dreaming o'er Old summer pictures of the quiet hills, And human life, as quiet, at their feet. And yet not idly all. A farmer's son, Proud of field-lore and harvest craft, and feeling All their fine possibilities, how rich And restful even poverty and toil Become when beauty, harmony, and love Sit at their humble hearth as angels sat At evening in the patriarch's tent, when man Makes labor noble, and his farmer's frock The symbol of a Christian chivalry Tender and just and generous to her Who clothes with grace all duty; still, I know Too well the picture has another side,-- How wearily the grind of toil goes on Where love is wanting, how the eye and ear And heart are starved amidst the plenitude Of nature, and how hard and colorless Is life without an atmosphere. I look Across the lapse of half a century, And call to mind old homesteads, where no flower Told that the spring had come, but evil weeds, Nightshade and rough-leaved burdock in the place Of the sweet doorway greeting of the rose And honeysuckle, where the house walls seemed Blistering in sun, without a tree or vine To cast the tremulous shadow of its leaves Across the curtainless windows, from whose panes Fluttered the signal rags of shiftlessness. Within, the cluttered kitchen-floor, unwashed (Broom-clean I think they called it); the best room Stifling with cellar damp, shut from the air In hot midsummer, bookless, pictureless, Save the inevitable sampler hung Over the fireplace, or a mourning piece, A green-haired woman, peony-cheeked, beneath Impossible willows; the wide-throated hearth Bristling with faded pine-boughs half concealing The piled-up rubbish at the chimney's back; And, in sad keeping with all things about them, Shrill, querulous-women, sour and sullen men, Untidy, loveless, old before their time, With scarce a human interest save their own Monotonous round of small economies, Or the poor scandal of the neighborhood; Blind to the beauty everywhere revealed, Treading the May-flowers with regardless feet; For them the song-sparrow and the bobolink Sang not, nor winds made music in the leaves; For them in vain October's holocaust Burned, gold and crimson, over all the hills, The sacramental mystery of the woods. Church-goers, fearful of the unseen Powers, But grumbling over pulpit-tax and pew-rent, Saving, as shrewd economists, their souls And winter pork with the least possible outlay Of salt and sanctity; in daily life Showing as little actual comprehension Of Christian charity and love and duty, As if the Sermon on the Mount had been Outdated like a last year's almanac Rich in broad woodlands and in half-tilled fields, And yet so pinched and bare and comfortless, The veriest straggler limping on his rounds, The sun and air his sole inheritance, Laughed at a poverty that paid its taxes, And hugged his rags in self-complacency! Not such should be the homesteads of a land Where whoso wisely wills and acts may dwell As king and lawgiver, in broad-acred state, With beauty, art, taste, culture, books, to make His hour of leisure richer than a life Of fourscore to the barons of old time, Our yeoman should be equal to his home Set in the fair, green valleys, purple walled, A man to match his mountains, not to creep Dwarfed and abased below them. I would fain In this light way (of which I needs must own With the knife-grinder of whom Canning sings, "Story, God bless you! I have none to tell you!") Invite the eye to see and heart to feel The beauty and the joy within their reach,-- Home, and home loves, and the beatitudes Of nature free to all. Haply in years That wait to take the places of our own, Heard where some breezy balcony looks down On happy homes, or where the lake in the moon Sleeps dreaming of the mountains, fair as Ruth, In the old Hebrew pastoral, at the feet Of Boaz, even this simple lay of mine May seem the burden of a prophecy, Finding its late fulfilment in a change Slow as the oak's growth, lifting manhood up Through broader culture, finer manners, love, And reverence, to the level of the hills. O Golden Age, whose light is of the dawn, And not of sunset, forward, not behind, Flood the new heavens and earth, and with thee bring All the old virtues, whatsoever things Are pure and honest and of good repute, But add thereto whatever bard has sung Or seer has told of when in trance and dream They saw the Happy Isles of prophecy Let Justice hold her scale, and Truth divide Between the right and wrong; but give the heart The freedom of its fair inheritance; Let the poor prisoner, cramped and starved so long, At Nature's table feast his ear and eye With joy and wonder; let all harmonies Of sound, form, color, motion, wait upon The princely guest, whether in soft attire Of leisure clad, or the coarse frock of toil, And, lending life to the dead form of faith, Give human nature reverence for the sake Of One who bore it, making it divine With the ineffable tenderness of God; Let common need, the brotherhood of prayer, The heirship of an unknown destiny, The unsolved mystery round about us, make A man more precious than the gold of Ophir. Sacred, inviolate, unto whom all things Should minister, as outward types and signs Of the eternal beauty which fulfils The one great purpose of creation, Love, The sole necessity of Earth and Heaven! . . . . . . . . . . . For weeks the clouds had raked the hills And vexed the vales with raining, And all the woods were sad with mist, And all the brooks complaining. At last, a sudden night-storm tore The mountain veils asunder, And swept the valleys clean before The besom of the thunder. Through Sandwich notch the west-wind sang Good morrow to the cotter; And once again Chocorua's horn Of shadow pierced the water. Above his broad lake Ossipee, Once more the sunshine wearing, Stooped, tracing on that silver shield His grim armorial bearing. Clear drawn against the hard blue sky, The peaks had winter's keenness; And, close on autumn's frost, the vales Had more than June's fresh greenness. Again the sodden forest floors With golden lights were checkered, Once more rejoicing leaves in wind And sunshine danced and flickered. It was as if the summer's late Atoning for it's sadness Had borrowed every season's charm To end its days in gladness. Rivers of gold-mist flowing down From far celestial fountains,-- The great sun flaming through the rifts Beyond the wall of mountains. We paused at last where home-bound cows Brought down the pasture's treasure, And in the barn the rhythmic flails Beat out a harvest measure. We heard the night-hawk's sullen plunge, The crow his tree-mates calling The shadows lengthening down the slopes About our feet were falling. And through them smote the level sun In broken lines of splendor, Touched the gray rocks and made the green Of the shorn grass more tender. The maples bending o'er the gate, Their arch of leaves just tinted With yellow warmth, the golden glow Of coming autumn hinted. Keen white between the farm-house showed, And smiled on porch and trellis, The fair democracy of flowers That equals cot and palace. And weaving garlands for her dog, 'Twixt chidings and caresses, A human flower of childhood shook The sunshine from her tresses. Clear drawn against the hard blue sky, The peaks had winter's keenness; And, close on autumn's frost, the vales Had more than June's fresh greenness. Again the sodden forest floors With golden lights were checkered, Once more rejoicing leaves in wind And sunshine danced and flickered. It was as if the summer's late Atoning for it's sadness Had borrowed every season's charm To end its days in gladness. I call to mind those banded vales Of shadow and of shining, Through which, my hostess at my side, I drove in day's declining. We held our sideling way above The river's whitening shallows, By homesteads old, with wide-flung barns Swept through and through by swallows; By maple orchards, belts of pine And larches climbing darkly The mountain slopes, and, over all, The great peaks rising starkly. You should have seen that long hill-range With gaps of brightness riven,-- How through each pass and hollow streamed The purpling lights of heaven,-- On either hand we saw the signs Of fancy and of shrewdness, Where taste had wound its arms of vines Round thrift's uncomely rudeness. The sun-brown farmer in his frock Shook hands, and called to Mary Bare-armed, as Juno might, she came, White-aproned from her dairy. Her air, her smile, her motions, told Of womanly completeness; A music as of household songs Was in her voice of sweetness. Not fair alone in curve and line, But something more and better, The secret charm eluding art, Its spirit, not its letter;-- An inborn grace that nothing lacked Of culture or appliance, The warmth of genial courtesy, The calm of self-reliance. Before her queenly womanhood How dared our hostess utter The paltry errand of her need To buy her fresh-churned butter? She led the way with housewife pride, Her goodly store disclosing, Full tenderly the golden balls With practised hands disposing. Then, while along the western hills We watched the changeful glory Of sunset, on our homeward way, I heard her simple story. The early crickets sang; the stream Plashed through my friend's narration Her rustic patois of the hills Lost in my free-translation. "More wise," she said, "than those who swarm Our hills in middle summer, She came, when June's first roses blow, To greet the early comer. "From school and ball and rout she came, The city's fair, pale daughter, To drink the wine of mountain air Beside the Bearcamp Water. "Her step grew firmer on the hills That watch our homesteads over; On cheek and lip, from summer fields, She caught the bloom of clover. "For health comes sparkling in the streams From cool Chocorua stealing There's iron in our Northern winds; Our pines are trees of healing. "She sat beneath the broad-armed elms That skirt the mowing-meadow, And watched the gentle west-wind weave The grass with shine and shadow. "Beside her, from the summer heat To share her grateful screening, With forehead bared, the farmer stood, Upon his pitchfork leaning. "Framed in its damp, dark locks, his face Had nothing mean or common,-- Strong, manly, true, the tenderness And pride beloved of woman. "She looked up, glowing with the health The country air had brought her, And, laughing, said: 'You lack a wife, Your mother lacks a daughter. "'To mend your frock and bake your bread You do not need a lady Be sure among these brown old homes Is some one waiting ready,-- "'Some fair, sweet girl with skilful hand And cheerful heart for treasure, Who never played with ivory keys, Or danced the polka's measure.' "He bent his black brows to a frown, He set his white teeth tightly. ''T is well,' he said, 'for one like you To choose for me so lightly. "You think, because my life is rude I take no note of sweetness I tell you love has naught to do With meetness or unmeetness. "'Itself its best excuse, it asks No leave of pride or fashion When silken zone or homespun frock It stirs with throbs of passion. "'You think me deaf and blind: you bring Your winning graces hither As free as if from cradle-time We two had played together. "'You tempt me with your laughing eyes, Your cheek of sundown's blushes, A motion as of waving grain, A music as of thrushes. "'The plaything of your summer sport, The spells you weave around me You cannot at your will undo, Nor leave me as you found me. "'You go as lightly as you came, Your life is well without me; What care you that these hills will close Like prison-walls about me? "'No mood is mine to seek a wife, Or daughter for my mother Who loves you loses in that love All power to love another! "'I dare your pity or your scorn, With pride your own exceeding; I fling my heart into your lap Without a word of pleading.' "She looked up in his face of pain So archly, yet so tender 'And if I lend you mine,' she said, 'Will you forgive the lender? "'Nor frock nor tan can hide the man; And see you not, my farmer, How weak and fond a woman waits Behind this silken armor? "'I love you: on that love alone, And not my worth, presuming, Will you not trust for summer fruit The tree in May-day blooming?' "Alone the hangbird overhead, His hair-swung cradle straining, Looked down to see love's miracle,-- The giving that is gaining. "And so the farmer found a wife, His mother found a daughter There looks no happier home than hers On pleasant Bearcamp Water. "Flowers spring to blossom where she walks The careful ways of duty; Our hard, stiff lines of life with her Are flowing curves of beauty. "Our homes are cheerier for her sake, Our door-yards brighter blooming, And all about the social air Is sweeter for her coming. "Unspoken homilies of peace Her daily life is preaching; The still refreshment of the dew Is her unconscious teaching. "And never tenderer hand than hers Unknits the brow of ailing; Her garments to the sick man's ear Have music in their trailing. "And when, in pleasant harvest moons, The youthful huskers gather, Or sleigh-drives on the mountain ways Defy the winter weather,-- "In sugar-camps, when south and warm The winds of March are blowing, And sweetly from its thawing veins The maple's blood is flowing,-- "In summer, where some lilied pond Its virgin zone is baring, Or where the ruddy autumn fire Lights up the apple-paring,-- "The coarseness of a ruder time Her finer mirth displaces, A subtler sense of pleasure fills Each rustic sport she graces. "Her presence lends its warmth and health To all who come before it. If woman lost us Eden, such As she alone restore it. "For larger life and wiser aims The farmer is her debtor; Who holds to his another's heart Must needs be worse or better. "Through her his civic service shows A purer-toned ambition; No double consciousness divides The man and politician. "In party's doubtful ways he trusts Her instincts to determine; At the loud polls, the thought of her Recalls Christ's Mountain Sermon. "He owns her logic of the heart, And wisdom of unreason, Supplying, while he doubts and weighs, The needed word in season. "He sees with pride her richer thought, Her fancy's freer ranges; And love thus deepened to respect Is proof against all changes. "And if she walks at ease in ways His feet are slow to travel, And if she reads with cultured eyes What his may scarce unravel, "Still clearer, for her keener sight Of beauty and of wonder, He learns the meaning of the hills He dwelt from childhood under. "And higher, warmed with summer lights, Or winter-crowned and hoary, The ridged horizon lifts for him Its inner veils of glory. "He has his own free, bookless lore, The lessons nature taught him, The wisdom which the woods and hills And toiling men have brought him: "The steady force of will whereby Her flexile grace seems sweeter; The sturdy counterpoise which makes Her woman's life completer. "A latent fire of soul which lacks No breath of love to fan it; And wit, that, like his native brooks, Plays over solid granite. "How dwarfed against his manliness She sees the poor pretension, The wants, the aims, the follies, born Of fashion and convention. "How life behind its accidents Stands strong and self-sustaining, The human fact transcending all The losing and the gaining. "And so in grateful interchange Of teacher and of hearer, Their lives their true distinctness keep While daily drawing nearer. "And if the husband or the wife In home's strong light discovers Such slight defaults as failed to meet The blinded eyes of lovers, "Why need we care to ask?--who dreams Without their thorns of roses, Or wonders that the truest steel The readiest spark discloses? "For still in mutual sufferance lies The secret of true living; Love scarce is love that never knows The sweetness of forgiving. "We send the Squire to General Court, He takes his young wife thither; No prouder man election day Rides through the sweet June weather. "He sees with eyes of manly trust All hearts to her inclining; Not less for him his household light That others share its shining." Thus, while my hostess spake, there grew Before me, warmer tinted And outlined with a tenderer grace, The picture that she hinted. The sunset smouldered as we drove Beneath the deep hill-shadows. Below us wreaths of white fog walked Like ghosts the haunted meadows. Sounding the summer night, the stars Dropped down their golden plummets; The pale arc of the Northern lights Rose o'er the mountain summits, Until, at last, beneath its bridge, We heard the Bearcamp flowing, And saw across the mapled lawn The welcome home lights glowing. And, musing on the tale I heard, 'T were well, thought I, if often To rugged farm-life came the gift To harmonize and soften; If more and more we found the troth Of fact and fancy plighted, And culture's charm and labor's strength In rural homes united,-- The simple life, the homely hearth, With beauty's sphere surrounding, And blessing toil where toil abounds With graces more abounding. 1868. THE DOLE OF JARL THORKELL. THE land was pale with famine And racked with fever-pain; The frozen fiords were fishless, The earth withheld her grain. Men saw the boding Fylgja Before them come and go, And, through their dreams, the Urdarmoon From west to east sailed slow. Jarl Thorkell of Thevera At Yule-time made his vow; On Rykdal's holy Doom-stone He slew to Frey his cow. To bounteous Frey he slew her; To Skuld, the younger Norn, Who watches over birth and death, He gave her calf unborn. And his little gold-haired daughter Took up the sprinkling-rod, And smeared with blood the temple And the wide lips of the god. Hoarse below, the winter water Ground its ice-blocks o'er and o'er; Jets of foam, like ghosts of dead waves, Rose and fell along the shore. The red torch of the Jokul, Aloft in icy space, Shone down on the bloody Horg-stones And the statue's carven face. And closer round and grimmer Beneath its baleful light The Jotun shapes of mountains Came crowding through the night. The gray-haired Hersir trembled As a flame by wind is blown; A weird power moved his white lips, And their voice was not his own. "The AEsir thirst!" he muttered; "The gods must have more blood Before the tun shall blossom Or fish shall fill the flood. "The AEsir thirst and hunger, And hence our blight and ban; The mouths of the strong gods water For the flesh and blood of man! "Whom shall we give the strong ones? Not warriors, sword on thigh; But let the nursling infant And bedrid old man die." "So be it!" cried the young men, "There needs nor doubt nor parle." But, knitting hard his red brows, In silence stood the Jarl. A sound of woman's weeping At the temple door was heard, But the old men bowed their white heads, And answered not a word. Then the Dream-wife of Thingvalla, A Vala young and fair, Sang softly, stirring with her breath The veil of her loose hair. She sang: "The winds from Alfheim Bring never sound of strife; The gifts for Frey the meetest Are not of death, but life. "He loves the grass-green meadows, The grazing kine's sweet breath; He loathes your bloody Horg-stones, Your gifts that smell of death. "No wrong by wrong is righted, No pain is cured by pain; The blood that smokes from Doom-rings Falls back in redder rain. "The gods are what you make them, As earth shall Asgard prove; And hate will come of hating, And love will come of love. "Make dole of skyr and black bread That old and young may live; And look to Frey for favor When first like Frey you give. "Even now o'er Njord's sea-meadows The summer dawn begins The tun shall have its harvest, The fiord its glancing fins." Then up and swore Jarl Thorkell "By Gimli and by Hel, O Vala of Thingvalla, Thou singest wise and well! "Too dear the AEsir's favors Bought with our children's lives; Better die than shame in living Our mothers and our wives. "The full shall give his portion To him who hath most need; Of curdled skyr and black bread, Be daily dole decreed." He broke from off his neck-chain Three links of beaten gold; And each man, at his bidding, Brought gifts for young and old. Then mothers nursed their children, And daughters fed their sires, And Health sat down with Plenty Before the next Yule fires. The Horg-stones stand in Rykdal; The Doom-ring still remains; But the snows of a thousand winters Have washed away the stains. Christ ruleth now; the Asir Have found their twilight dim; And, wiser than she dreamed, of old The Vala sang of Him 1868. THE TWO RABBINS. THE Rabbi Nathan two-score years and ten Walked blameless through the evil world, and then, Just as the almond blossomed in his hair, Met a temptation all too strong to bear, And miserably sinned. So, adding not Falsehood to guilt, he left his seat, and taught No more among the elders, but went out From the great congregation girt about With sackcloth, and with ashes on his head, Making his gray locks grayer. Long he prayed, Smiting his breast; then, as the Book he laid Open before him for the Bath-Col's choice, Pausing to hear that Daughter of a Voice, Behold the royal preacher's words: "A friend Loveth at all times, yea, unto the end; And for the evil day thy brother lives." Marvelling, he said: "It is the Lord who gives Counsel in need. At Ecbatana dwells Rabbi Ben Isaac, who all men excels In righteousness and wisdom, as the trees Of Lebanon the small weeds that the bees Bow with their weight. I will arise, and lay My sins before him." And he went his way Barefooted, fasting long, with many prayers; But even as one who, followed unawares, Suddenly in the darkness feels a hand Thrill with its touch his own, and his cheek fanned By odors subtly sweet, and whispers near Of words he loathes, yet cannot choose but hear, So, while the Rabbi journeyed, chanting low The wail of David's penitential woe, Before him still the old temptation came, And mocked him with the motion and the shame Of such desires that, shuddering, he abhorred Himself; and, crying mightily to the Lord To free his soul and cast the demon out, Smote with his staff the blankness round about. At length, in the low light of a spent day, The towers of Ecbatana far away Rose on the desert's rim; and Nathan, faint And footsore, pausing where for some dead saint The faith of Islam reared a domed tomb, Saw some one kneeling in the shadow, whom He greeted kindly: "May the Holy One Answer thy prayers, O stranger!" Whereupon The shape stood up with a loud cry, and then, Clasped in each other's arms, the two gray men Wept, praising Him whose gracious providence Made their paths one. But straightway, as the sense Of his transgression smote him, Nathan tore Himself away: "O friend beloved, no more Worthy am I to touch thee, for I came, Foul from my sins, to tell thee all my shame. Haply thy prayers, since naught availeth mine, May purge my soul, and make it white like thine. Pity me, O Ben Isaac, I have sinned!" Awestruck Ben Isaac stood. The desert wind Blew his long mantle backward, laying bare The mournful secret of his shirt of hair. "I too, O friend, if not in act," he said, "In thought have verily sinned. Hast thou not read, 'Better the eye should see than that desire Should wander?' Burning with a hidden fire That tears and prayers quench not, I come to thee For pity and for help, as thou to me. Pray for me, O my friend!" But Nathan cried, "Pray thou for me, Ben Isaac!" Side by side In the low sunshine by the turban stone They knelt; each made his brother's woe his own, Forgetting, in the agony and stress Of pitying love, his claim of selfishness; Peace, for his friend besought, his own became; His prayers were answered in another's name; And, when at last they rose up to embrace, Each saw God's pardon in his brother's face! Long after, when his headstone gathered moss, Traced on the targum-marge of Onkelos In Rabbi Nathan's hand these words were read: "/Hope not the cure of sin till Self is dead; Forget it in love's service, and the debt Thou, canst not pay the angels shall forget; Heaven's gate is shut to him who comes alone; Save thou a soul, and it shall save thy own!/" 1868. NOREMBEGA. Norembega, or Norimbegue, is the name given by early French fishermen and explorers to a fabulous country south of Cape Breton, first discovered by Verrazzani in 1524. It was supposed to have a magnificent city of the same name on a great river, probably the Penobscot. The site of this barbaric city is laid down on a map published at Antwerp in 1570. In 1604 Champlain sailed in search of the Northern Eldorado, twenty-two leagues up the Penobscot from the Isle Haute. He supposed the river to be that of Norembega, but wisely came to the conclusion that those travellers who told of the great city had never seen it. He saw no evidences of anything like civilization, but mentions the finding of a cross, very old and mossy, in the woods. THE winding way the serpent takes The mystic water took, From where, to count its beaded lakes, The forest sped its brook. A narrow space 'twixt shore and shore, For sun or stars to fall, While evermore, behind, before, Closed in the forest wall. The dim wood hiding underneath Wan flowers without a name; Life tangled with decay and death, League after league the same. Unbroken over swamp and hill The rounding shadow lay, Save where the river cut at will A pathway to the day. Beside that track of air and light, Weak as a child unweaned, At shut of day a Christian knight Upon his henchman leaned. The embers of the sunset's fires Along the clouds burned down; "I see," he said, "the domes and spires Of Norembega town." "Alack! the domes, O master mine, Are golden clouds on high; Yon spire is but the branchless pine That cuts the evening sky." "Oh, hush and hark! What sounds are these But chants and holy hymns?" "Thou hear'st the breeze that stirs the trees Though all their leafy limbs." "Is it a chapel bell that fills The air with its low tone?" "Thou hear'st the tinkle of the rills, The insect's vesper drone." "The Christ be praised!--He sets for me A blessed cross in sight!" "Now, nay, 't is but yon blasted tree With two gaunt arms outright!" "Be it wind so sad or tree so stark, It mattereth not, my knave; Methinks to funeral hymns I hark, The cross is for my grave! "My life is sped; I shall not see My home-set sails again; The sweetest eyes of Normandie Shall watch for me in vain. "Yet onward still to ear and eye The baffling marvel calls; I fain would look before I die On Norembega's walls. "So, haply, it shall be thy part At Christian feet to lay The mystery of the desert's heart My dead hand plucked away. "Leave me an hour of rest; go thou And look from yonder heights; Perchance the valley even now Is starred with city lights." The henchman climbed the nearest hill, He saw nor tower nor town, But, through the drear woods, lone and still, The river rolling down. He heard the stealthy feet of things Whose shapes he could not see, A flutter as of evil wings, The fall of a dead tree. The pines stood black against the moon, A sword of fire beyond; He heard the wolf howl, and the loon Laugh from his reedy pond. He turned him back: "O master dear, We are but men misled; And thou hast sought a city here To find a grave instead." "As God shall will! what matters where A true man's cross may stand, So Heaven be o'er it here as there In pleasant Norman land? "These woods, perchance, no secret hide Of lordly tower and hall; Yon river in its wanderings wide Has washed no city wall; "Yet mirrored in the sullen stream The holy stars are given Is Norembega, then, a dream Whose waking is in Heaven? "No builded wonder of these lands My weary eyes shall see; A city never made with hands Alone awaiteth me-- "'_Urbs Syon mystica_;' I see Its mansions passing fair, '/Condita caelo/;' let me be, Dear Lord, a dweller there!" Above the dying exile hung The vision of the bard, As faltered on his failing tongue The song of good Bernard. The henchman dug at dawn a grave Beneath the hemlocks brown, And to the desert's keeping gave The lord of fief and town. Years after, when the Sieur Champlain Sailed up the unknown stream, And Norembega proved again A shadow and a dream, He found the Norman's nameless grave Within the hemlock's shade, And, stretching wide its arms to save, The sign that God had made, The cross-boughed tree that marked the spot And made it holy ground He needs the earthly city not Who hath the heavenly found. 1869. MIRIAM. TO FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD. THE years are many since, in youth and hope, Under the Charter Oak, our horoscope We drew thick-studded with all favoring stars. Now, with gray beards, and faces seamed with scars From life's hard battle, meeting once again, We smile, half sadly, over dreams so vain; Knowing, at last, that it is not in man Who walketh to direct his steps, or plan His permanent house of life. Alike we loved The muses' haunts, and all our fancies moved To measures of old song. How since that day Our feet have parted from the path that lay So fair before us! Rich, from lifelong search Of truth, within thy Academic porch Thou sittest now, lord of a realm of fact, Thy servitors the sciences exact; Still listening with thy hand on Nature's keys, To hear the Samian's spheral harmonies And rhythm of law. I called from dream and song, Thank God! so early to a strife so long, That, ere it closed, the black, abundant hair Of boyhood rested silver-sown and spare On manhood's temples, now at sunset-chime Tread with fond feet the path of morning time. And if perchance too late I linger where The flowers have ceased to blow, and trees are bare, Thou, wiser in thy choice, wilt scarcely blame The friend who shields his folly with thy name. AMESBURY, 10th mo., 1870. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . One Sabbath day my friend and I After the meeting, quietly Passed from the crowded village lanes, White with dry dust for lack of rains, And climbed the neighboring slope, with feet Slackened and heavy from the heat, Although the day was wellnigh done, And the low angle of the sun Along the naked hillside cast Our shadows as of giants vast. We reached, at length, the topmost swell, Whence, either way, the green turf fell In terraces of nature down To fruit-hung orchards, and the town With white, pretenceless houses, tall Church-steeples, and, o'ershadowing all, Huge mills whose windows had the look Of eager eyes that ill could brook The Sabbath rest. We traced the track Of the sea-seeking river back, Glistening for miles above its mouth, Through the long valley to the south, And, looking eastward, cool to view, Stretched the illimitable blue Of ocean, from its curved coast-line; Sombred and still, the warm sunshine Filled with pale gold-dust all the reach Of slumberous woods from hill to beach,-- Slanted on walls of thronged retreats From city toil and dusty streets, On grassy bluff, and dune of sand, And rocky islands miles from land; Touched the far-glancing sails, and showed White lines of foam where long waves flowed Dumb in the distance. In the north, Dim through their misty hair, looked forth The space-dwarfed mountains to the sea, From mystery to mystery! So, sitting on that green hill-slope, We talked of human life, its hope And fear, and unsolved doubts, and what It might have been, and yet was not. And, when at last the evening air Grew sweeter for the bells of prayer Ringing in steeples far below, We watched the people churchward go, Each to his place, as if thereon The true shekinah only shone; And my friend queried how it came To pass that they who owned the same Great Master still could not agree To worship Him in company. Then, broadening in his thought, he ran Over the whole vast field of man,-- The varying forms of faith and creed That somehow served the holders' need; In which, unquestioned, undenied, Uncounted millions lived and died; The bibles of the ancient folk, Through which the heart of nations spoke; The old moralities which lent To home its sweetness and content, And rendered possible to bear The life of peoples everywhere And asked if we, who boast of light, Claim not a too exclusive right To truths which must for all be meant, Like rain and sunshine freely sent. In bondage to the letter still, We give it power to cramp and kill,-- To tax God's fulness with a scheme Narrower than Peter's house-top dream, His wisdom and his love with plans Poor and inadequate as man's. It must be that He witnesses Somehow to all men that He is That something of His saving grace Reaches the lowest of the race, Who, through strange creed and rite, may draw The hints of a diviner law. We walk in clearer light;--but then, Is He not God?--are they not men? Are His responsibilities For us alone and not for these? And I made answer: "Truth is one; And, in all lands beneath the sun, Whoso hath eyes to see may see The tokens of its unity. No scroll of creed its fulness wraps, We trace it not by school-boy maps, Free as the sun and air it is Of latitudes and boundaries. In Vedic verse, in dull Koran, Are messages of good to man; The angels to our Aryan sires Talked by the earliest household fires; The prophets of the elder day, The slant-eyed sages of Cathay, Read not the riddle all amiss Of higher life evolved from this. "Nor doth it lessen what He taught, Or make the gospel Jesus brought Less precious, that His lips retold Some portion of that truth of old; Denying not the proven seers, The tested wisdom of the years; Confirming with his own impress The common law of righteousness. We search the world for truth; we cull The good, the pure, the beautiful, From graven stone and written scroll, From all old flower-fields of the soul; And, weary seekers of the best, We come back laden from our quest, To find that all the sages said Is in the Book our mothers read, And all our treasure of old thought In His harmonious fulness wrought Who gathers in one sheaf complete The scattered blades of God's sown wheat, The common growth that maketh good His all-embracing Fatherhood. "Wherever through the ages rise The altars of self-sacrifice, Where love its arms has opened wide, Or man for man has calmly died, I see the same white wings outspread That hovered o'er the Master's head! Up from undated time they come, The martyr souls of heathendom, And to His cross and passion bring Their fellowship of suffering. I trace His presence in the blind Pathetic gropings of my kind,-- In prayers from sin and sorrow wrung, In cradle-hymns of life they sung, Each, in its measure, but a part Of the unmeasured Over-Heart; And with a stronger faith confess The greater that it owns the less. Good cause it is for thankfulness That the world-blessing of His life With the long past is not at strife; That the great marvel of His death To the one order witnesseth, No doubt of changeless goodness wakes, No link of cause and sequence breaks, But, one with nature, rooted is In the eternal verities; Whereby, while differing in degree As finite from infinity, The pain and loss for others borne, Love's crown of suffering meekly worn, The life man giveth for his friend Become vicarious in the end; Their healing place in nature take, And make life sweeter for their sake. "So welcome I from every source The tokens of that primal Force, Older than heaven itself, yet new As the young heart it reaches to, Beneath whose steady impulse rolls The tidal wave of human souls; Guide, comforter, and inward word, The eternal spirit of the Lord Nor fear I aught that science brings From searching through material things; Content to let its glasses prove, Not by the letter's oldness move, The myriad worlds on worlds that course The spaces of the universe; Since everywhere the Spirit walks The garden of the heart, and talks With man, as under Eden's trees, In all his varied languages. Why mourn above some hopeless flaw In the stone tables of the law, When scripture every day afresh Is traced on tablets of the flesh? By inward sense, by outward signs, God's presence still the heart divines; Through deepest joy of Him we learn, In sorest grief to Him we turn, And reason stoops its pride to share The child-like instinct of a prayer." And then, as is my wont, I told A story of the days of old, Not found in printed books,--in sooth, A fancy, with slight hint of truth, Showing how differing faiths agree In one sweet law of charity. Meanwhile the sky had golden grown, Our faces in its glory shone; But shadows down the valley swept, And gray below the ocean slept, As time and space I wandered o'er To tread the Mogul's marble floor, And see a fairer sunset fall On Jumna's wave and Agra's wall. The good Shah Akbar (peace be his alway!) Came forth from the Divan at close of day Bowed with the burden of his many cares, Worn with the hearing of unnumbered prayers,-- Wild cries for justice, the importunate Appeals of greed and jealousy and hate, And all the strife of sect and creed and rite, Santon and Gouroo waging holy fight For the wise monarch, claiming not to be Allah's avenger, left his people free, With a faint hope, his Book scarce justified, That all the paths of faith, though severed wide, O'er which the feet of prayerful reverence passed, Met at the gate of Paradise at last. He sought an alcove of his cool hareem, Where, far beneath, he heard the Jumna's stream Lapse soft and low along his palace wall, And all about the cool sound of the fall Of fountains, and of water circling free Through marble ducts along the balcony; The voice of women in the distance sweet, And, sweeter still, of one who, at his feet, Soothed his tired ear with songs of a far land Where Tagus shatters on the salt sea-sand The mirror of its cork-grown hills of drouth And vales of vine, at Lisbon's harbor-mouth. The date-palms rustled not; the peepul laid Its topmost boughs against the balustrade, Motionless as the mimic leaves and vines That, light and graceful as the shawl-designs Of Delhi or Umritsir, twined in stone; And the tired monarch, who aside had thrown The day's hard burden, sat from care apart, And let the quiet steal into his heart From the still hour. Below him Agra slept, By the long light of sunset overswept The river flowing through a level land, By mango-groves and banks of yellow sand, Skirted with lime and orange, gay kiosks, Fountains at play, tall minarets of mosques, Fair pleasure-gardens, with their flowering trees Relieved against the mournful cypresses; And, air-poised lightly as the blown sea-foam, The marble wonder of some holy dome Hung a white moonrise over the still wood, Glassing its beauty in a stiller flood. Silent the monarch gazed, until the night Swift-falling hid the city from his sight; Then to the woman at his feet he said "Tell me, O Miriam, something thou hast read In childhood of the Master of thy faith, Whom Islam also owns. Our Prophet saith 'He was a true apostle, yea, a Word And Spirit sent before me from the Lord.' Thus the Book witnesseth; and well I know By what thou art, O dearest, it is so. As the lute's tone the maker's hand betrays, The sweet disciple speaks her Master's praise." Then Miriam, glad of heart, (for in some sort She cherished in the Moslem's liberal court The sweet traditions of a Christian child; And, through her life of sense, the undefiled And chaste ideal of the sinless One Gazed on her with an eye she might not shun,-- The sad, reproachful look of pity, born Of love that hath no part in wrath or scorn,) Began, with low voice and moist eyes, to tell Of the all-loving Christ, and what befell When the fierce zealots, thirsting for her blood, Dragged to his feet a shame of womanhood. How, when his searching answer pierced within Each heart, and touched the secret of its sin, And her accusers fled his face before, He bade the poor one go and sin no more. And Akbar said, after a moment's thought, "Wise is the lesson by thy prophet taught; Woe unto him who judges and forgets What hidden evil his own heart besets! Something of this large charity I find In all the sects that sever human kind; I would to Allah that their lives agreed More nearly with the lesson of their creed! Those yellow Lamas who at Meerut pray By wind and water power, and love to say 'He who forgiveth not shall, unforgiven, Fail of the rest of Buddha,' and who even Spare the black gnat that stings them, vex my ears With the poor hates and jealousies and fears Nursed in their human hives. That lean, fierce priest Of thy own people, (be his heart increased By Allah's love!) his black robes smelling yet Of Goa's roasted Jews, have I not met Meek-faced, barefooted, crying in the street The saying of his prophet true and sweet,-- 'He who is merciful shall mercy meet!'" But, next day, so it chanced, as night began To fall, a murmur through the hareem ran That one, recalling in her dusky face The full-lipped, mild-eyed beauty of a race Known as the blameless Ethiops of Greek song, Plotting to do her royal master wrong, Watching, reproachful of the lingering light, The evening shadows deepen for her flight, Love-guided, to her home in a far land, Now waited death at the great Shah's command. Shapely as that dark princess for whose smile A world was bartered, daughter of the Nile Herself, and veiling in her large, soft eyes The passion and the languor of her skies, The Abyssinian knelt low at the feet Of her stern lord: "O king, if it be meet, And for thy honor's sake," she said, "that I, Who am the humblest of thy slaves, should die, I will not tax thy mercy to forgive. Easier it is to die than to outlive All that life gave me,--him whose wrong of thee Was but the outcome of his love for me, Cherished from childhood, when, beneath the shade Of templed Axum, side by side we played. Stolen from his arms, my lover followed me Through weary seasons over land and sea; And two days since, sitting disconsolate Within the shadow of the hareem gate, Suddenly, as if dropping from the sky, Down from the lattice of the balcony Fell the sweet song by Tigre's cowherds sung In the old music of his native tongue. He knew my voice, for love is quick of ear, Answering in song. This night he waited near To fly with me. The fault was mine alone He knew thee not, he did but seek his own; Who, in the very shadow of thy throne, Sharing thy bounty, knowing all thou art, Greatest and best of men, and in her heart Grateful to tears for favor undeserved, Turned ever homeward, nor one moment swerved From her young love. He looked into my eyes, He heard my voice, and could not otherwise Than he hath done; yet, save one wild embrace When first we stood together face to face, And all that fate had done since last we met Seemed but a dream that left us children yet, He hath not wronged thee nor thy royal bed; Spare him, O king! and slay me in his stead!" But over Akbar's brows the frown hung black, And, turning to the eunuch at his back, "Take them," he said, "and let the Jumna's waves Hide both my shame and these accursed slaves!" His loathly length the unsexed bondman bowed "On my head be it!" Straightway from a cloud Of dainty shawls and veils of woven mist The Christian Miriam rose, and, stooping, kissed The monarch's hand. Loose down her shoulders bare Swept all the rippled darkness of her hair, Veiling the bosom that, with high, quick swell Of fear and pity, through it rose and fell. "Alas!" she cried, "hast thou forgotten quite The words of Him we spake of yesternight? Or thy own prophet's, 'Whoso doth endure And pardon, of eternal life is sure'? O great and good! be thy revenge alone Felt in thy mercy to the erring shown; Let thwarted love and youth their pardon plead, Who sinned but in intent, and not in deed!" One moment the strong frame of Akbar shook With the great storm of passion. Then his look Softened to her uplifted face, that still Pleaded more strongly than all words, until Its pride and anger seemed like overblown, Spent clouds of thunder left to tell alone Of strife and overcoming. With bowed head, And smiting on his bosom: "God," he said, "Alone is great, and let His holy name Be honored, even to His servant's shame! Well spake thy prophet, Miriam,--he alone Who hath not sinned is meet to cast a stone At such as these, who here their doom await, Held like myself in the strong grasp of fate. They sinned through love, as I through love forgive; Take them beyond my realm, but let them live!" And, like a chorus to the words of grace, The ancient Fakir, sitting in his place, Motionless as an idol and as grim, In the pavilion Akbar built for him Under the court-yard trees, (for he was wise, Knew Menu's laws, and through his close-shut eyes Saw things far off, and as an open book Into the thoughts of other men could look,) Began, half chant, half howling, to rehearse The fragment of a holy Vedic verse; And thus it ran: "He who all things forgives Conquers himself and all things else, and lives Above the reach of wrong or hate or fear, Calm as the gods, to whom he is most dear." Two leagues from Agra still the traveller sees The tomb of Akbar through its cypress-trees; And, near at hand, the marble walls that hide The Christian Begum sleeping at his side. And o'er her vault of burial (who shall tell If it be chance alone or miracle?) The Mission press with tireless hand unrolls The words of Jesus on its lettered scrolls,-- Tells, in all tongues, the tale of mercy o'er, And bids the guilty, "Go and sin no more!" . . . . . . . . . . . It now was dew-fall; very still The night lay on the lonely hill, Down which our homeward steps we bent, And, silent, through great silence went, Save that the tireless crickets played Their long, monotonous serenade. A young moon, at its narrowest, Curved sharp against the darkening west; And, momently, the beacon's star, Slow wheeling o'er its rock afar, From out the level darkness shot One instant and again was not. And then my friend spake quietly The thought of both: "Yon crescent see! Like Islam's symbol-moon it gives Hints of the light whereby it lives Somewhat of goodness, something true From sun and spirit shining through All faiths, all worlds, as through the dark Of ocean shines the lighthouse spark, Attests the presence everywhere Of love and providential care. The faith the old Norse heart confessed In one dear name,--the hopefulest And tenderest heard from mortal lips In pangs of birth or death, from ships Ice-bitten in the winter sea, Or lisped beside a mother's knee,-- The wiser world hath not outgrown, And the All-Father is our own!" NAUHAUGHT, THE DEACON. NAUHAUGHT, the Indian deacon, who of old Dwelt, poor but blameless, where his narrowing Cape Stretches its shrunk arm out to all the winds And the relentless smiting of the waves, Awoke one morning from a pleasant dream Of a good angel dropping in his hand A fair, broad gold-piece, in the name of God. He rose and went forth with the early day Far inland, where the voices of the waves Mellowed and Mingled with the whispering leaves, As, through the tangle of the low, thick woods, He searched his traps. Therein nor beast nor bird He found; though meanwhile in the reedy pools The otter plashed, and underneath the pines The partridge drummed: and as his thoughts went back To the sick wife and little child at home, What marvel that the poor man felt his faith Too weak to bear its burden,--like a rope That, strand by strand uncoiling, breaks above The hand that grasps it. "Even now, O Lord! Send me," he prayed, "the angel of my dream! Nauhaught is very poor; he cannot wait." Even as he spake he heard at his bare feet A low, metallic clink, and, looking down, He saw a dainty purse with disks of gold Crowding its silken net. Awhile he held The treasure up before his eyes, alone With his great need, feeling the wondrous coins Slide through his eager fingers, one by one. So then the dream was true. The angel brought One broad piece only; should he take all these? Who would be wiser, in the blind, dumb woods? The loser, doubtless rich, would scarcely miss This dropped crumb from a table always full. Still, while he mused, he seemed to hear the cry Of a starved child; the sick face of his wife Tempted him. Heart and flesh in fierce revolt Urged the wild license of his savage youth Against his later scruples. Bitter toil, Prayer, fasting, dread of blame, and pitiless eyes To watch his halting,--had he lost for these The freedom of the woods;--the hunting-grounds Of happy spirits for a walled-in heaven Of everlasting psalms? One healed the sick Very far off thousands of moons ago Had he not prayed him night and day to come And cure his bed-bound wife? Was there a hell? Were all his fathers' people writhing there-- Like the poor shell-fish set to boil alive-- Forever, dying never? If he kept This gold, so needed, would the dreadful God Torment him like a Mohawk's captive stuck With slow-consuming splinters? Would the saints And the white angels dance and laugh to see him Burn like a pitch-pine torch? His Christian garb Seemed falling from him; with the fear and shame Of Adam naked at the cool of day, He gazed around. A black snake lay in coil On the hot sand, a crow with sidelong eye Watched from a dead bough. All his Indian lore Of evil blending with a convert's faith In the supernal terrors of the Book, He saw the Tempter in the coiling snake And ominous, black-winged bird; and all the while The low rebuking of the distant waves Stole in upon him like the voice of God Among the trees of Eden. Girding up His soul's loins with a resolute hand, he thrust The base thought from him: "Nauhaught, be a man Starve, if need be; but, while you live, look out From honest eyes on all men, unashamed. God help me! I am deacon of the church, A baptized, praying Indian! Should I do This secret meanness, even the barken knots Of the old trees would turn to eyes to see it, The birds would tell of it, and all the leaves Whisper above me: 'Nauhaught is a thief!' The sun would know it, and the stars that hide Behind his light would watch me, and at night Follow me with their sharp, accusing eyes. Yea, thou, God, seest me!" Then Nauhaught drew Closer his belt of leather, dulling thus The pain of hunger, and walked bravely back To the brown fishing-hamlet by the sea; And, pausing at the inn-door, cheerily asked "Who hath lost aught to-day?" "I," said a voice; "Ten golden pieces, in a silken purse, My daughter's handiwork." He looked, and to One stood before him in a coat of frieze, And the glazed bat of a seafaring man, Shrewd-faced, broad-shouldered, with no trace of wings. Marvelling, he dropped within the stranger's hand The silken web, and turned to go his way. But the man said: "A tithe at least is yours; Take it in God's name as an honest man." And as the deacon's dusky fingers closed Over the golden gift, "Yea, in God's name I take it, with a poor man's thanks," he said. So down the street that, like a river of sand, Ran, white in sunshine, to the summer sea, He sought his home singing and praising God; And when his neighbors in their careless way Spoke of the owner of the silken purse-- A Wellfleet skipper, known in every port That the Cape opens in its sandy wall-- He answered, with a wise smile, to himself "I saw the angel where they see a man." 1870. THE SISTERS. ANNIE and Rhoda, sisters twain, Woke in the night to the sound of rain, The rush of wind, the ramp and roar Of great waves climbing a rocky shore. Annie rose up in her bed-gown white, And looked out into the storm and night. "Hush, and hearken!" she cried in fear, "Hearest thou nothing, sister dear?" "I hear the sea, and the plash of rain, And roar of the northeast hurricane. "Get thee back to the bed so warm, No good comes of watching a storm. "What is it to thee, I fain would know, That waves are roaring and wild winds blow? "No lover of thine's afloat to miss The harbor-lights on a night like this." "But I heard a voice cry out my name, Up from the sea on the wind it came. "Twice and thrice have I heard it call, And the voice is the voice of Estwick Hall!" On her pillow the sister tossed her head. "Hall of the Heron is safe," she said. "In the tautest schooner that ever swam He rides at anchor in Anisquam. "And, if in peril from swamping sea Or lee shore rocks, would he call on thee?" But the girl heard only the wind and tide, And wringing her small white hands she cried, "O sister Rhoda, there's something wrong; I hear it again, so loud and long. "'Annie! Annie!' I hear it call, And the voice is the voice of Estwick Hall!" Up sprang the elder, with eyes aflame, "Thou liest! He never would call thy name! "If he did, I would pray the wind and sea To keep him forever from thee and me!" Then out of the sea blew a dreadful blast; Like the cry of a dying man it passed. The young girl hushed on her lips a groan, But through her tears a strange light shone,-- The solemn joy of her heart's release To own and cherish its love in peace. "Dearest!" she whispered, under breath, "Life was a lie, but true is death. "The love I hid from myself away Shall crown me now in the light of day. "My ears shall never to wooer list, Never by lover my lips be kissed. "Sacred to thee am I henceforth, Thou in heaven and I on earth!" She came and stood by her sister's bed "Hall of the Heron is dead!" she said. "The wind and the waves their work have done, We shall see him no more beneath the sun. "Little will reek that heart of thine, It loved him not with a love like mine. "I, for his sake, were he but here, Could hem and 'broider thy bridal gear, "Though hands should tremble and eyes be wet, And stitch for stitch in my heart be set. "But now my soul with his soul I wed; Thine the living, and mine the dead!" 1871. MARGUERITE. MASSACHUSETTS BAY, 1760. Upwards of one thousand of the Acadian peasants forcibly taken from their homes on the Gaspereau and Basin of Minas were assigned to the several towns of the Massachusetts colony, the children being bound by the authorities to service or labor. THE robins sang in the orchard, the buds into blossoms grew; Little of human sorrow the buds and the robins knew! Sick, in an alien household, the poor French neutral lay; Into her lonesome garret fell the light of the April day, Through the dusty window, curtained by the spider's warp and woof, On the loose-laid floor of hemlock, on oaken ribs of roof, The bedquilt's faded patchwork, the teacups on the stand, The wheel with flaxen tangle, as it dropped from her sick hand. What to her was the song of the robin, or warm morning light, As she lay in the trance of the dying, heedless of sound or sight? Done was the work of her bands, she had eaten her bitter bread; The world of the alien people lay behind her dim and dead. But her soul went back to its child-time; she saw the sun o'erflow With gold the Basin of Minas, and set over Gaspereau; The low, bare flats at ebb-tide, the rush of the sea at flood, Through inlet and creek and river, from dike to upland wood; The gulls in the red of morning, the fish-hawk's rise and fall, The drift of the fog in moonshine, over the dark coast-wall. She saw the face of her mother, she heard the song she sang; And far off, faintly, slowly, the bell for vespers rang. By her bed the hard-faced mistress sat, smoothing the wrinkled sheet, Peering into the face, so helpless, and feeling the ice-cold feet. With a vague remorse atoning for her greed and long abuse, By care no longer heeded and pity too late for use. Up the stairs of the garret softly the son of the mistress stepped, Leaned over the head-board, covering his face with his hands, and wept. Outspake the mother, who watched him sharply, with brow a-frown "What! love you the Papist, the beggar, the charge of the town?" Be she Papist or beggar who lies here, I know and God knows I love her, and fain would go with her wherever she goes! "O mother! that sweet face came pleading, for love so athirst. You saw but the town-charge; I knew her God's angel at first." Shaking her gray head, the mistress hushed down a bitter cry; And awed by the silence and shadow of death drawing nigh, She murmured a psalm of the Bible; but closer the young girl pressed, With the last of her life in her fingers, the cross to her breast. "My son, come away," cried the mother, her voice cruel grown. "She is joined to her idols, like Ephraim; let her alone!" But he knelt with his hand on her forehead, his lips to her ear, And he called back the soul that was passing "Marguerite, do you hear?" She paused on the threshold of Heaven; love, pity, surprise, Wistful, tender, lit up for an instant the cloud of her eyes. With his heart on his lips he kissed her, but never her cheek grew red, And the words the living long for he spake in the ear of the dead. And the robins sang in the orchard, where buds to blossoms grew; Of the folded hands and the still face never the robins knew! 1871. THE ROBIN. MY old Welsh neighbor over the way Crept slowly out in the sun of spring, Pushed from her ears the locks of gray, And listened to hear the robin sing. Her grandson, playing at marbles, stopped, And, cruel in sport as boys will be, Tossed a stone at the bird, who hopped From bough to bough in the apple-tree. "Nay!" said the grandmother; "have you not heard, My poor, bad boy! of the fiery pit, And how, drop by drop, this merciful bird Carries the water that quenches it? "He brings cool dew in his little bill, And lets it fall on the souls of sin You can see the mark on his red breast still Of fires that scorch as he drops it in. "My poor Bron rhuddyn! my breast-burned bird, Singing so sweetly from limb to limb, Very dear to the heart of Our Lord Is he who pities the lost like Him!" "Amen!" I said to the beautiful myth; "Sing, bird of God, in my heart as well: Each good thought is a drop wherewith To cool and lessen the fires of hell. "Prayers of love like rain-drops fall, Tears of pity are cooling dew, And dear to the heart of Our Lord are all Who suffer like Him in the good they do! " 1871. 
9565	----	This eBook was produced by David Widger NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER CONTENTS: THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM INTRODUCTORY NOTE PRELUDE THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM KING VOLMER AND ELSIE THE THREE BELLS JOHN UNDERHILL CONDUCTOR BRADLEY THE WITCH OF WENHAM KING SOLOMON AND THE ANTS IN THE "OLD SOUTH" THE HENCHMAN THE DEAD FEAST OF THE KOL-FOLK THE KHAN'S DEVIL THE KING'S MISSIVE VALUATION RABBI ISHMAEL THE ROCK-TOMB OF BRADORE THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM. INTRODUCTORY NOTE. THE beginning of German emigration to America may be traced to the personal influence of William Penn, who in 1677 visited the Continent, and made the acquaintance of an intelligent and highly cultivated circle of Pietists, or Mystics, who, reviving in the seventeenth century the spiritual faith and worship of Tauler and the "Friends of God" in the fourteenth, gathered about the pastor Spener, and the young and beautiful Eleonora Johanna Von Merlau. In this circle originated the Frankfort Land Company, which bought of William Penn, the Governor of Pennsylvania, a tract of land near the new city of Philadelphia. The company's agent in the New World was a rising young lawyer, Francis Daniel Pastorius, son of Judge Pastorius, of Windsheim, who, at the age of seventeen, entered the University of Altorf. He studied law at, Strasburg, Basle, and Jena, and at Ratisbon, the seat of the Imperial Government, obtained a practical knowledge of international polity. Successful in all his examinations and disputations, he received the degree of Doctor of Law at Nuremberg in 1676. In 1679 he was a law-lecturer at Frankfort, where he became deeply interested in the teachings of Dr. Spener. In 1680-81 he travelled in France, England, Ireland, and Italy with his friend Herr Von Rodeck. "I was," he says, "glad to enjoy again the company of my Christian friends, rather than be with Von Rodeck feasting and dancing." In 1683, in company with a small number of German Friends, he emigrated to America, settling upon the Frankfort Company's tract between the Schuylkill and the Delaware rivers. The township was divided into four hamlets, namely, Germantown, Krisheim, Crefield, and Sommerhausen. Soon after his arrival he united himself with the Society of Friends, and became one of its most able and devoted members, as well as the recognized head and lawgiver of the settlement. He married, two years after his arrival, Anneke (Anna), daughter of Dr. Klosterman, of Muhlheim. In the year 1688 he drew up a memorial against slaveholding, which was adopted by the Germantown Friends and sent up to the Monthly Meeting, and thence to the Yearly Meeting at Philadelphia. It is noteworthy as the first protest made by a religious body against Negro Slavery. The original document was discovered in 1844 by the Philadelphia antiquarian, Nathan Kite, and published in The Friend (Vol. XVIII. No. 16). It is a bold and direct appeal to the best instincts of the heart. "Have not," he asks, "these negroes as much right to fight for their freedom as you have to keep them slaves?" Under the wise direction of Pastorius, the German-town settlement grew and prospered. The inhabitants planted orchards and vineyards, and surrounded themselves with souvenirs of their old home. A large number of them were linen-weavers, as well as small farmers. The Quakers were the principal sect, but men of all religions were tolerated, and lived together in harmony. In 1692 Richard Frame published, in what he called verse, a Description of Pennsylvania, in which he alludes to the settlement:-- "The German town of which I spoke before, Which is at least in length one mile or more, Where lives High German people and Low Dutch, Whose trade in weaving linen cloth is much, --There grows the flax, as also you may know That from the same they do divide the tow. Their trade suits well their habitation, We find convenience for their occupation." Pastorius seems to have been on intimate terms with William Penn, Thomas Lloyd, Chief Justice Logan, Thomas Story, and other leading men in the Province belonging to his own religious society, as also with Kelpius, the learned Mystic of the Wissahickon, with the pastor of the Swedes' church, and the leaders of the Mennonites. He wrote a description of Pennsylvania, which was published at Frankfort and Leipsic in 1700 and 1701. His Lives of the Saints, etc., written in German and dedicated to Professor Schurmberg, his old teacher, was published in 1690. He left behind him many unpublished manuscripts covering a very wide range of subjects, most of which are now lost. One huge manuscript folio, entitled Hive Beestock, Melliotropheum Alucar, or Rusca Apium, still remains, containing one thousand pages with about one hundred lines to a page. It is a medley of knowledge and fancy, history, philosophy, and poetry, written in seven languages. A large portion of his poetry is devoted to the pleasures of gardening, the description of flowers, and the care of bees. The following specimen of his punning Latin is addressed to an orchard-pilferer:-- "Quisquis in haec furtim reptas viridaria nostra Tangere fallaci poma caveto mane, Si non obsequeris faxit Deus omne quod opto, Cum malis nostris ut mala cuncta feras." Professor Oswald Seidensticker, to whose papers in Der Deutsche Pioneer and that able periodical the Penn Monthly, of Philadelphia, I am indebted for many of the foregoing facts in regard to the German pilgrims of the New World, thus closes his notice of Pastorius:-- "No tombstone, not even a record of burial, indicates where his remains have found their last resting-place, and the pardonable desire to associate the homage due to this distinguished man with some visible memento can not be gratified. There is no reason to suppose that he was interred in any other place than the Friends' old burying-ground in Germantown, though the fact is not attested by any definite source of information. After all, this obliteration of the last trace of his earthly existence is but typical of what has overtaken the times which he represents; that Germantown which he founded, which saw him live and move, is at present but a quaint idyl of the past, almost a myth, barely remembered and little cared for by the keener race that has succeeded. The Pilgrims of Plymouth have not lacked historian and poet. Justice has been done to their faith, courage, and self-sacrifice, and to the mighty influence of their endeavors to establish righteousness on the earth. The Quaker pilgrims of Pennsylvania, seeking the same object by different means, have not been equally fortunate. The power of their testimony for truth and holiness, peace and freedom, enforced only by what Milton calls "the unresistible might of meekness," has been felt through two centuries in the amelioration of penal severities, the abolition of slavery, the reform of the erring, the relief of the poor and suffering,--felt, in brief, in every step of human progress. But of the men themselves, with the single exception of William Penn, scarcely anything is known. Contrasted, from the outset, with the stern, aggressive Puritans of New England, they have come to be regarded as "a feeble folk," with a personality as doubtful as their unrecorded graves. They were not soldiers, like Miles Standish; they had no figure so picturesque as Vane, no leader so rashly brave and haughty as Endicott. No Cotton Mather wrote their Magnalia; they had no awful drama of supernaturalism in which Satan and his angels were actors; and the only witch mentioned in their simple annals was a poor old Swedish woman, who, on complaint of her countrywomen, was tried and acquitted of everything but imbecility and folly. Nothing but common-place offices of civility came to pass between them and the Indians; indeed, their enemies taunted them with the fact that the savages did not regard them as Christians, but just such men as themselves. Yet it must be apparent to every careful observer of the progress of American civilization that its two principal currents had their sources in the entirely opposite directions of the Puritan and Quaker colonies. To use the words of a late writer: [1] "The historical forces, with which no others may be compared in their influence on the people, have been those of the Puritan and the Quaker. The strength of the one was in the confession of an invisible Presence, a righteous, eternal Will, which would establish righteousness on earth; and thence arose the conviction of a direct personal responsibility, which could be tempted by no external splendor and could be shaken by no internal agitation, and could not be evaded or transferred. The strength of the other was the witness in the human spirit to an eternal Word, an Inner Voice which spoke to each alone, while yet it spoke to every man; a Light which each was to follow, and which yet was the light of the world; and all other voices were silent before this, and the solitary path whither it led was more sacred than the worn ways of cathedral-aisles." It will be sufficiently apparent to the reader that, in the poem which follows, I have attempted nothing beyond a study of the life and times of the Pennsylvania colonist,--a simple picture of a noteworthy man and his locality. The colors of my sketch are all very sober, toned down to the quiet and dreamy atmosphere through which its subject is visible. Whether, in the glare and tumult of the present time, such a picture will find favor may well be questioned. I only know that it has beguiled for me some hours of weariness, and that, whatever may be its measure of public appreciation, it has been to me its own reward." J. G. W. AMESBURY, 5th mo., 1872. HAIL to posterity! Hail, future men of Germanopolis! Let the young generations yet to be Look kindly upon this. Think how your fathers left their native land,-- Dear German-land! O sacred hearths and homes!-- And, where the wild beast roams, In patience planned New forest-homes beyond the mighty sea, There undisturbed and free To live as brothers of one family. What pains and cares befell, What trials and what fears, Remember, and wherein we have done well Follow our footsteps, men of coming years! Where we have failed to do Aright, or wisely live, Be warned by us, the better way pursue, And, knowing we were human, even as you, Pity us and forgive! Farewell, Posterity! Farewell, dear Germany Forevermore farewell! [From the Latin of Francis DANIEL PASTORIUS in the Germantown Records. 1688.] PRELUDE. I SING the Pilgrim of a softer clime And milder speech than those brave men's who brought To the ice and iron of our winter time A will as firm, a creed as stern, and wrought With one mailed hand, and with the other fought. Simply, as fits my theme, in homely rhyme I sing the blue-eyed German Spener taught, Through whose veiled, mystic faith the Inward Light, Steady and still, an easy brightness, shone, Transfiguring all things in its radiance white. The garland which his meekness never sought I bring him; over fields of harvest sown With seeds of blessing, now to ripeness grown, I bid the sower pass before the reapers' sight. . . . . . . . . . . Never in tenderer quiet lapsed the day From Pennsylvania's vales of spring away, Where, forest-walled, the scattered hamlets lay Along the wedded rivers. One long bar Of purple cloud, on which the evening star Shone like a jewel on a scimitar, Held the sky's golden gateway. Through the deep Hush of the woods a murmur seemed to creep, The Schuylkill whispering in a voice of sleep. All else was still. The oxen from their ploughs Rested at last, and from their long day's browse Came the dun files of Krisheim's home-bound cows. And the young city, round whose virgin zone The rivers like two mighty arms were thrown, Marked by the smoke of evening fires alone, Lay in the distance, lovely even then With its fair women and its stately men Gracing the forest court of William Penn, Urban yet sylvan; in its rough-hewn frames Of oak and pine the dryads held their claims, And lent its streets their pleasant woodland names. Anna Pastorius down the leafy lane Looked city-ward, then stooped to prune again Her vines and simples, with a sigh of pain. For fast the streaks of ruddy sunset paled In the oak clearing, and, as daylight failed, Slow, overhead, the dusky night-birds sailed. Again she looked: between green walls of shade, With low-bent head as if with sorrow weighed, Daniel Pastorius slowly came and said, "God's peace be with thee, Anna!" Then he stood Silent before her, wrestling with the mood Of one who sees the evil and not good. "What is it, my Pastorius?" As she spoke, A slow, faint smile across his features broke, Sadder than tears. "Dear heart," he said, "our folk "Are even as others. Yea, our goodliest Friends Are frail; our elders have their selfish ends, And few dare trust the Lord to make amends "For duty's loss. So even our feeble word For the dumb slaves the startled meeting heard As if a stone its quiet waters stirred; "And, as the clerk ceased reading, there began A ripple of dissent which downward ran In widening circles, as from man to man. "Somewhat was said of running before sent, Of tender fear that some their guide outwent, Troublers of Israel. I was scarce intent "On hearing, for behind the reverend row Of gallery Friends, in dumb and piteous show, I saw, methought, dark faces full of woe. "And, in the spirit, I was taken where They toiled and suffered; I was made aware Of shame and wrath and anguish and despair! "And while the meeting smothered our poor plea With cautious phrase, a Voice there seemed to be, As ye have done to these ye do to me!' "So it all passed; and the old tithe went on Of anise, mint, and cumin, till the sun Set, leaving still the weightier work undone. "Help, for the good man faileth! Who is strong, If these be weak? Who shall rebuke the wrong, If these consent? How long, O Lord! how long!" He ceased; and, bound in spirit with the bound, With folded arms, and eyes that sought the ground, Walked musingly his little garden round. About him, beaded with the falling dew, Rare plants of power and herbs of healing grew, Such as Van Helmont and Agrippa knew. For, by the lore of Gorlitz' gentle sage, With the mild mystics of his dreamy age He read the herbal signs of nature's page, As once he heard in sweet Von Merlau's' bowers Fair as herself, in boyhood's happy hours, The pious Spener read his creed in flowers. "The dear Lord give us patience!" said his wife, Touching with finger-tip an aloe, rife With leaves sharp-pointed like an Aztec knife Or Carib spear, a gift to William Penn From the rare gardens of John Evelyn, Brought from the Spanish Main by merchantmen. "See this strange plant its steady purpose hold, And, year by year, its patient leaves unfold, Till the young eyes that watched it first are old. "But some time, thou hast told me, there shall come A sudden beauty, brightness, and perfume, The century-moulded bud shall burst in bloom. "So may the seed which hath been sown to-day Grow with the years, and, after long delay, Break into bloom, and God's eternal Yea! "Answer at last the patient prayers of them Who now, by faith alone, behold its stem Crowned with the flowers of Freedom's diadem. "Meanwhile, to feel and suffer, work and wait, Remains for us. The wrong indeed is great, But love and patience conquer soon or late." "Well hast thou said, my Anna!" Tenderer Than youth's caress upon the head of her Pastorius laid his hand. "Shall we demur "Because the vision tarrieth? In an hour We dream not of, the slow-grown bud may flower, And what was sown in weakness rise in power!" Then through the vine-draped door whose legend read, "Procul este profani!" Anna led To where their child upon his little bed Looked up and smiled. "Dear heart," she said, "if we Must bearers of a heavy burden be, Our boy, God willing, yet the day shall see "When from the gallery to the farthest seat, Slave and slave-owner shall no longer meet, But all sit equal at the Master's feet." On the stone hearth the blazing walnut block Set the low walls a-glimmer, showed the cock Rebuking Peter on the Van Wyck clock, Shone on old tomes of law and physic, side By side with Fox and Belimen, played at hide And seek with Anna, midst her household pride Of flaxen webs, and on the table, bare Of costly cloth or silver cup, but where, Tasting the fat shads of the Delaware, The courtly Penn had praised the goodwife's cheer, And quoted Horace o'er her home brewed beer, Till even grave Pastorius smiled to hear. In such a home, beside the Schuylkill's wave, He dwelt in peace with God and man, and gave Food to the poor and shelter to the slave. For all too soon the New World's scandal shamed The righteous code by Penn and Sidney framed, And men withheld the human rights they claimed. And slowly wealth and station sanction lent, And hardened avarice, on its gains intent, Stifled the inward whisper of dissent. Yet all the while the burden rested sore On tender hearts. At last Pastorius bore Their warning message to the Church's door In God's name; and the leaven of the word Wrought ever after in the souls who heard, And a dead conscience in its grave-clothes stirred To troubled life, and urged the vain excuse Of Hebrew custom, patriarchal use, Good in itself if evil in abuse. Gravely Pastorius listened, not the less Discerning through the decent fig-leaf dress Of the poor plea its shame of selfishness. One Scripture rule, at least, was unforgot; He hid the outcast, and betrayed him not; And, when his prey the human hunter sought, He scrupled not, while Anna's wise delay And proffered cheer prolonged the master's stay, To speed the black guest safely on his way. Yet, who shall guess his bitter grief who lends His life to some great cause, and finds his friends Shame or betray it for their private ends? How felt the Master when his chosen strove In childish folly for their seats above; And that fond mother, blinded by her love, Besought him that her sons, beside his throne, Might sit on either hand? Amidst his own A stranger oft, companionless and lone, God's priest and prophet stands. The martyr's pain Is not alone from scourge and cell and chain; Sharper the pang when, shouting in his train, His weak disciples by their lives deny The loud hosannas of their daily cry, And make their echo of his truth a lie. His forest home no hermit's cell he found, Guests, motley-minded, drew his hearth around, And held armed truce upon its neutral ground. There Indian chiefs with battle-bows unstrung, Strong, hero-limbed, like those whom Homer sung, Pastorius fancied, when the world was young, Came with their tawny women, lithe and tall, Like bronzes in his friend Von Rodeck's hall, Comely, if black, and not unpleasing all. There hungry folk in homespun drab and gray Drew round his board on Monthly Meeting day, Genial, half merry in their friendly way. Or, haply, pilgrims from the Fatherland, Weak, timid, homesick, slow to understand The New World's promise, sought his helping hand. Or painful Kelpius [13] from his hermit den By Wissahickon, maddest of good men, Dreamed o'er the Chiliast dreams of Petersen. Deep in the woods, where the small river slid Snake-like in shade, the Helmstadt Mystic hid, Weird as a wizard, over arts forbid, Reading the books of Daniel and of John, And Behmen's Morning-Redness, through the Stone Of Wisdom, vouchsafed to his eyes alone, Whereby he read what man ne'er read before, And saw the visions man shall see no more, Till the great angel, striding sea and shore, Shall bid all flesh await, on land or ships, The warning trump of the Apocalypse, Shattering the heavens before the dread eclipse. Or meek-eyed Mennonist his bearded chin Leaned o'er the gate; or Ranter, pure within, Aired his perfection in a world of sin. Or, talking of old home scenes, Op der Graaf Teased the low back-log with his shodden staff, Till the red embers broke into a laugh And dance of flame, as if they fain would cheer The rugged face, half tender, half austere, Touched with the pathos of a homesick tear! Or Sluyter, [14] saintly familist, whose word As law the Brethren of the Manor heard, Announced the speedy terrors of the Lord, And turned, like Lot at Sodom, from his race, Above a wrecked world with complacent face Riding secure upon his plank of grace! Haply, from Finland's birchen groves exiled, Manly in thought, in simple ways a child, His white hair floating round his visage mild, The Swedish pastor sought the Quaker's door, Pleased from his neighbor's lips to hear once more His long-disused and half-forgotten lore. For both could baffle Babel's lingual curse, And speak in Bion's Doric, and rehearse Cleanthes' hymn or Virgil's sounding verse. And oft Pastorius and the meek old man Argued as Quaker and as Lutheran, Ending in Christian love, as they began. With lettered Lloyd on pleasant morns he strayed Where Sommerhausen over vales of shade Looked miles away, by every flower delayed, Or song of bird, happy and free with one Who loved, like him, to let his memory run Over old fields of learning, and to sun Himself in Plato's wise philosophies, And dream with Philo over mysteries Whereof the dreamer never finds the keys; To touch all themes of thought, nor weakly stop For doubt of truth, but let the buckets drop Deep down and bring the hidden waters up [15] For there was freedom in that wakening time Of tender souls; to differ was not crime; The varying bells made up the perfect chime. On lips unlike was laid the altar's coal, The white, clear light, tradition-colored, stole Through the stained oriel of each human soul. Gathered from many sects, the Quaker brought His old beliefs, adjusting to the thought That moved his soul the creed his fathers taught. One faith alone, so broad that all mankind Within themselves its secret witness find, The soul's communion with the Eternal Mind, The Spirit's law, the Inward Rule and Guide, Scholar and peasant, lord and serf, allied, The polished Penn and Cromwell's Ironside. As still in Hemskerck's Quaker Meeting, [16] face By face in Flemish detail, we may trace How loose-mouthed boor and fine ancestral grace Sat in close contrast,--the clipt-headed churl, Broad market-dame, and simple serving-girl By skirt of silk and periwig in curl For soul touched soul; the spiritual treasure-trove Made all men equal, none could rise above Nor sink below that level of God's love. So, with his rustic neighbors sitting down, The homespun frock beside the scholar's gown, Pastorius to the manners of the town Added the freedom of the woods, and sought The bookless wisdom by experience taught, And learned to love his new-found home, while not Forgetful of the old; the seasons went Their rounds, and somewhat to his spirit lent Of their own calm and measureless content. Glad even to tears, he heard the robin sing His song of welcome to the Western spring, And bluebird borrowing from the sky his wing. And when the miracle of autumn came, And all the woods with many-colored flame Of splendor, making summer's greenness tame, Burned, unconsumed, a voice without a sound Spake to him from each kindled bush around, And made the strange, new landscape holy ground And when the bitter north-wind, keen and swift, Swept the white street and piled the dooryard drift, He exercised, as Friends might say, his gift Of verse, Dutch, English, Latin, like the hash Of corn and beans in Indian succotash; Dull, doubtless, but with here and there a flash Of wit and fine conceit,--the good man's play Of quiet fancies, meet to while away The slow hours measuring off an idle day. At evening, while his wife put on her look Of love's endurance, from its niche he took The written pages of his ponderous book. And read, in half the languages of man, His "Rusca Apium," which with bees began, And through the gamut of creation ran. Or, now and then, the missive of some friend In gray Altorf or storied Nurnberg penned Dropped in upon him like a guest to spend The night beneath his roof-tree. Mystical The fair Von Merlau spake as waters fall And voices sound in dreams, and yet withal Human and sweet, as if each far, low tone, Over the roses of her gardens blown Brought the warm sense of beauty all her own. Wise Spener questioned what his friend could trace Of spiritual influx or of saving grace In the wild natures of the Indian race. And learned Schurmberg, fain, at times, to look From Talmud, Koran, Veds, and Pentateuch, Sought out his pupil in his far-off nook, To query with him of climatic change, Of bird, beast, reptile, in his forest range, Of flowers and fruits and simples new and strange. And thus the Old and New World reached their hands Across the water, and the friendly lands Talked with each other from their severed strands. Pastorius answered all: while seed and root Sent from his new home grew to flower and fruit Along the Rhine and at the Spessart's foot; And, in return, the flowers his boyhood knew Smiled at his door, the same in form and hue, And on his vines the Rhenish clusters grew. No idler he; whoever else might shirk, He set his hand to every honest work,-- Farmer and teacher, court and meeting clerk. Still on the town seal his device is found, Grapes, flax, and thread-spool on a trefoil ground, With "Vinum, Linum et Textrinum" wound. One house sufficed for gospel and for law, Where Paul and Grotius, Scripture text and saw, Assured the good, and held the rest in awe. Whatever legal maze he wandered through, He kept the Sermon on the Mount in view, And justice always into mercy grew. No whipping-post he needed, stocks, nor jail, Nor ducking-stool; the orchard-thief grew pale At his rebuke, the vixen ceased to rail, The usurer's grasp released the forfeit land; The slanderer faltered at the witness-stand, And all men took his counsel for command. Was it caressing air, the brooding love Of tenderer skies than German land knew of, Green calm below, blue quietness above, Still flow of water, deep repose of wood That, with a sense of loving Fatherhood And childlike trust in the Eternal Good, Softened all hearts, and dulled the edge of hate, Hushed strife, and taught impatient zeal to wait The slow assurance of the better state? Who knows what goadings in their sterner way O'er jagged ice, relieved by granite gray, Blew round the men of Massachusetts Bay? What hate of heresy the east-wind woke? What hints of pitiless power and terror spoke In waves that on their iron coast-line broke? Be it as it may: within the Land of Penn The sectary yielded to the citizen, And peaceful dwelt the many-creeded men. Peace brooded over all. No trumpet stung The air to madness, and no steeple flung Alarums down from bells at midnight rung. The land slept well. The Indian from his face Washed all his war-paint off, and in the place Of battle-marches sped the peaceful chase, Or wrought for wages at the white man's side,-- Giving to kindness what his native pride And lazy freedom to all else denied. And well the curious scholar loved the old Traditions that his swarthy neighbors told By wigwam-fires when nights were growing cold, Discerned the fact round which their fancy drew Its dreams, and held their childish faith more true To God and man than half the creeds he knew. The desert blossomed round him; wheat-fields rolled Beneath the warm wind waves of green and gold; The planted ear returned its hundred-fold. Great clusters ripened in a warmer sun Than that which by the Rhine stream shines upon The purpling hillsides with low vines o'errun. About each rustic porch the humming-bird Tried with light bill, that scarce a petal stirred, The Old World flowers to virgin soil transferred; And the first-fruits of pear and apple, bending The young boughs down, their gold and russet blending, Made glad his heart, familiar odors lending To the fresh fragrance of the birch and pine, Life-everlasting, bay, and eglantine, And all the subtle scents the woods combine. Fair First-Day mornings, steeped in summer calm, Warm, tender, restful, sweet with woodland balm, Came to him, like some mother-hallowed psalm To the tired grinder at the noisy wheel Of labor, winding off from memory's reel A golden thread of music. With no peal Of bells to call them to the house of praise, The scattered settlers through green forest-ways Walked meeting-ward. In reverent amaze The Indian trapper saw them, from the dim Shade of the alders on the rivulet's rim, Seek the Great Spirit's house to talk with Him. There, through the gathered stillness multiplied And made intense by sympathy, outside The sparrows sang, and the gold-robin cried, A-swing upon his elm. A faint perfume Breathed through the open windows of the room From locust-trees, heavy with clustered bloom. Thither, perchance, sore-tried confessors came, Whose fervor jail nor pillory could tame, Proud of the cropped ears meant to be their shame, Men who had eaten slavery's bitter bread In Indian isles; pale women who had bled Under the hangman's lash, and bravely said God's message through their prison's iron bars; And gray old soldier-converts, seamed with scars From every stricken field of England's wars. Lowly before the Unseen Presence knelt Each waiting heart, till haply some one felt On his moved lips the seal of silence melt. Or, without spoken words, low breathings stole Of a diviner life from soul to soul, Baptizing in one tender thought the whole. When shaken hands announced the meeting o'er, The friendly group still lingered at the door, Greeting, inquiring, sharing all the store Of weekly tidings. Meanwhile youth and maid Down the green vistas of the woodland strayed, Whispered and smiled and oft their feet delayed. Did the boy's whistle answer back the thrushes? Did light girl laughter ripple through the bushes, As brooks make merry over roots and rushes? Unvexed the sweet air seemed. Without a wound The ear of silence heard, and every sound Its place in nature's fine accordance found. And solemn meeting, summer sky and wood, Old kindly faces, youth and maidenhood Seemed, like God's new creation, very good! And, greeting all with quiet smile and word, Pastorius went his way. The unscared bird Sang at his side; scarcely the squirrel stirred At his hushed footstep on the mossy sod; And, wheresoe'er the good man looked or trod, He felt the peace of nature and of God. His social life wore no ascetic form, He loved all beauty, without fear of harm, And in his veins his Teuton blood ran warm. Strict to himself, of other men no spy, He made his own no circuit-judge to try The freer conscience of his neighbors by. With love rebuking, by his life alone, Gracious and sweet, the better way was shown, The joy of one, who, seeking not his own, And faithful to all scruples, finds at last The thorns and shards of duty overpast, And daily life, beyond his hope's forecast, Pleasant and beautiful with sight and sound, And flowers upspringing in its narrow round, And all his days with quiet gladness crowned. He sang not; but, if sometimes tempted strong, He hummed what seemed like Altorf's Burschen-song; His good wife smiled, and did not count it wrong. For well he loved his boyhood's brother band; His Memory, while he trod the New World's strand, A double-ganger walked the Fatherland If, when on frosty Christmas eves the light Shone on his quiet hearth, he missed the sight Of Yule-log, Tree, and Christ-child all in white; And closed his eyes, and listened to the sweet Old wait-songs sounding down his native street, And watched again the dancers' mingling feet; Yet not the less, when once the vision passed, He held the plain and sober maxims fast Of the dear Friends with whom his lot was cast. Still all attuned to nature's melodies, He loved the bird's song in his dooryard trees, And the low hum of home-returning bees; The blossomed flax, the tulip-trees in bloom Down the long street, the beauty and perfume Of apple-boughs, the mingling light and gloom Of Sommerhausen's woodlands, woven through With sun--threads; and the music the wind drew, Mournful and sweet, from leaves it overblew. And evermore, beneath this outward sense, And through the common sequence of events, He felt the guiding hand of Providence Reach out of space. A Voice spake in his ear, And to all other voices far and near Died at that whisper, full of meanings clear. The Light of Life shone round him; one by one The wandering lights, that all-misleading run, Went out like candles paling in the sun. That Light he followed, step by step, where'er It led, as in the vision of the seer The wheels moved as the spirit in the clear And terrible crystal moved, with all their eyes Watching the living splendor sink or rise, Its will their will, knowing no otherwise. Within himself he found the law of right, He walked by faith and not the letter's sight, And read his Bible by the Inward Light. And if sometimes the slaves of form and rule, Frozen in their creeds like fish in winter's pool, Tried the large tolerance of his liberal school, His door was free to men of every name, He welcomed all the seeking souls who came, And no man's faith he made a cause of blame. But best he loved in leisure hours to see His own dear Friends sit by him knee to knee, In social converse, genial, frank, and free. There sometimes silence (it were hard to tell Who owned it first) upon the circle fell, Hushed Anna's busy wheel, and laid its spell On the black boy who grimaced by the hearth, To solemnize his shining face of mirth; Only the old clock ticked amidst the dearth Of sound; nor eye was raised nor hand was stirred In that soul-sabbath, till at last some word Of tender counsel or low prayer was heard. Then guests, who lingered but farewell to say And take love's message, went their homeward way; So passed in peace the guileless Quaker's day. His was the Christian's unsung Age of Gold, A truer idyl than the bards have told Of Arno's banks or Arcady of old. Where still the Friends their place of burial keep, And century-rooted mosses o'er it creep, The Nurnberg scholar and his helpmeet sleep. And Anna's aloe? If it flowered at last In Bartram's garden, did John Woolman cast A glance upon it as he meekly passed? And did a secret sympathy possess That tender soul, and for the slave's redress Lend hope, strength, patience? It were vain to guess. Nay, were the plant itself but mythical, Set in the fresco of tradition's wall Like Jotham's bramble, mattereth not at all. Enough to know that, through the winter's frost And summer's heat, no seed of truth is lost, And every duty pays at last its cost. For, ere Pastorius left the sun and air, God sent the answer to his life-long prayer; The child was born beside the Delaware, Who, in the power a holy purpose lends, Guided his people unto nobler ends, And left them worthier of the name of Friends. And to! the fulness of the time has come, And over all the exile's Western home, From sea to sea the flowers of freedom bloom! And joy-bells ring, and silver trumpets blow; But not for thee, Pastorius! Even so The world forgets, but the wise angels know. KING VOLMER AND ELSIE. AFTER THE DANISH OF CHRISTIAN WINTER. WHERE, over heathen doom-rings and gray stones of the Horg, In its little Christian city stands the church of Vordingborg, In merry mood King Volmer sat, forgetful of his power, As idle as the Goose of Gold that brooded on his tower. Out spake the King to Henrik, his young and faithful squire "Dar'st trust thy little Elsie, the maid of thy desire?" "Of all the men in Denmark she loveth only me As true to me is Elsie as thy Lily is to thee." Loud laughed the king: "To-morrow shall bring another day, [18] When I myself will test her; she will not say me nay." Thereat the lords and gallants, that round about him stood, Wagged all their heads in concert and smiled as courtiers should. The gray lark sings o'er Vordingborg, and on the ancient town From the tall tower of Valdemar the Golden Goose looks down; The yellow grain is waving in the pleasant wind of morn, The wood resounds with cry of hounds and blare of hunter's horn. In the garden of her father little Elsie sits and spins, And, singing with the early birds, her daily task, begins. Gay tulips bloom and sweet mint curls around her garden-bower, But she is sweeter than the mint and fairer than the flower. About her form her kirtle blue clings lovingly, and, white As snow, her loose sleeves only leave her small, round wrists in sight; Below, the modest petticoat can only half conceal The motion of the lightest foot that ever turned a wheel. The cat sits purring at her side, bees hum in sunshine warm; But, look! she starts, she lifts her face, she shades it with her arm. And, hark! a train of horsemen, with sound of dog and horn, Come leaping o'er the ditches, come trampling down the corn! Merrily rang the bridle-reins, and scarf and plume streamed gay, As fast beside her father's gate the riders held their way; And one was brave in scarlet cloak, with golden spur on heel, And, as he checked his foaming steed, the maiden checked her wheel. "All hail among thy roses, the fairest rose to me! For weary months in secret my heart has longed for thee!" What noble knight was this? What words for modest maiden's ear? She dropped a lowly courtesy of bashfulness and fear. She lifted up her spinning-wheel; she fain would seek the door, Trembling in every limb, her cheek with blushes crimsoned o'er. "Nay, fear me not," the rider said, "I offer heart and hand, Bear witness these good Danish knights who round about me stand. "I grant you time to think of this, to answer as you may, For to-morrow, little Elsie, shall bring another day." He spake the old phrase slyly as, glancing round his train, He saw his merry followers seek to hide their smiles in vain. "The snow of pearls I'll scatter in your curls of golden hair, I'll line with furs the velvet of the kirtle that you wear; All precious gems shall twine your neck; and in a chariot gay You shall ride, my little Elsie, behind four steeds of gray. "And harps shall sound, and flutes shall play, and brazen lamps shall glow; On marble floors your feet shall weave the dances to and fro. At frosty eventide for us the blazing hearth shall shine, While, at our ease, we play at draughts, and drink the blood-red wine." Then Elsie raised her head and met her wooer face to face; A roguish smile shone in her eye and on her lip found place. Back from her low white forehead the curls of gold she threw, And lifted up her eyes to his, steady and clear and blue. "I am a lowly peasant, and you a gallant knight; I will not trust a love that soon may cool and turn to slight. If you would wed me henceforth be a peasant, not a lord; I bid you hang upon the wall your tried and trusty sword." "To please you, Elsie, I will lay keen Dynadel away, And in its place will swing the scythe and mow your father's hay." "Nay, but your gallant scarlet cloak my eyes can never bear; A Vadmal coat, so plain and gray, is all that you must wear." "Well, Vadmal will I wear for you," the rider gayly spoke, "And on the Lord's high altar I'll lay my scarlet cloak." "But mark," she said, "no stately horse my peasant love must ride, A yoke of steers before the plough is all that he must guide." The knight looked down upon his steed: "Well, let him wander free No other man must ride the horse that has been backed by me. Henceforth I'll tread the furrow and to my oxen talk, If only little Elsie beside my plough will walk." "You must take from out your cellar cask of wine and flask and can; The homely mead I brew you may serve a peasant. man." "Most willingly, fair Elsie, I'll drink that mead of thine, And leave my minstrel's thirsty throat to drain my generous wine." "Now break your shield asunder, and shatter sign and boss, Unmeet for peasant-wedded arms, your knightly knee across. And pull me down your castle from top to basement wall, And let your plough trace furrows in the ruins of your hall!" Then smiled he with a lofty pride; right well at last he knew The maiden of the spinning-wheel was to her troth. plight true. "Ah, roguish little Elsie! you act your part full well You know that I must bear my shield and in my castle dwell! "The lions ramping on that shield between the hearts aflame Keep watch o'er Denmark's honor, and guard her ancient name. "For know that I am Volmer; I dwell in yonder towers, Who ploughs them ploughs up Denmark, this goodly home of ours'. "I tempt no more, fair Elsie! your heart I know is true; Would God that all our maidens were good and pure as you! Well have you pleased your monarch, and he shall well repay; God's peace! Farewell! To-morrow will bring another day!" He lifted up his bridle hand, he spurred his good steed then, And like a whirl-blast swept away with all his gallant men. The steel hoofs beat the rocky path; again on winds of morn The wood resounds with cry of hounds and blare of hunter's horn. "Thou true and ever faithful!" the listening Henrik cried; And, leaping o'er the green hedge, he stood by Elsie's side. None saw the fond embracing, save, shining from afar, The Golden Goose that watched them from the tower of Valdemar. O darling girls of Denmark! of all the flowers that throng Her vales of spring the fairest, I sing for you my song. No praise as yours so bravely rewards the singer's skill; Thank God! of maids like Elsie the land has plenty still! 1872. THE THREE BELLS. BENEATH the low-hung night cloud That raked her splintering mast The good ship settled slowly, The cruel leak gained fast. Over the awful ocean Her signal guns pealed out. Dear God! was that Thy answer From the horror round about? A voice came down the wild wind, "Ho! ship ahoy!" its cry "Our stout Three Bells of Glasgow Shall lay till daylight by!" Hour after hour crept slowly, Yet on the heaving swells Tossed up and down the ship-lights, The lights of the Three Bells! And ship to ship made signals, Man answered back to man, While oft, to cheer and hearten, The Three Bells nearer ran; And the captain from her taffrail Sent down his hopeful cry "Take heart! Hold on!" he shouted; "The Three Bells shall lay by!" All night across the waters The tossing lights shone clear; All night from reeling taffrail The Three Bells sent her cheer. And when the dreary watches Of storm and darkness passed, Just as the wreck lurched under, All souls were saved at last. Sail on, Three Bells, forever, In grateful memory sail! Ring on, Three Bells of rescue, Above the wave and gale! Type of the Love eternal, Repeat the Master's cry, As tossing through our darkness The lights of God draw nigh! 1872. JOHN UNDERHILL. A SCORE of years had come and gone Since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth stone, When Captain Underhill, bearing scars From Indian ambush and Flemish wars, Left three-hilled Boston and wandered down, East by north, to Cocheco town. With Vane the younger, in counsel sweet, He had sat at Anna Hutchinson's feet, And, when the bolt of banishment fell On the head of his saintly oracle, He had shared her ill as her good report, And braved the wrath of the General Court. He shook from his feet as he rode away The dust of the Massachusetts Bay. The world might bless and the world might ban, What did it matter the perfect man, To whom the freedom of earth was given, Proof against sin, and sure of heaven? He cheered his heart as he rode along With screed of Scripture and holy song, Or thought how he rode with his lances free By the Lower Rhine and the Zuyder-Zee, Till his wood-path grew to a trodden road, And Hilton Point in the distance showed. He saw the church with the block-house nigh, The two fair rivers, the flakes thereby, And, tacking to windward, low and crank, The little shallop from Strawberry Bank; And he rose in his stirrups and looked abroad Over land and water, and praised the Lord. Goodly and stately and grave to see, Into the clearing's space rode he, With the sun on the hilt of his sword in sheath, And his silver buckles and spurs beneath, And the settlers welcomed him, one and all, From swift Quampeagan to Gonic Fall. And he said to the elders: "Lo, I come As the way seemed open to seek a home. Somewhat the Lord hath wrought by my hands In the Narragansett and Netherlands, And if here ye have work for a Christian man, I will tarry, and serve ye as best I can. "I boast not of gifts, but fain would own The wonderful favor God hath shown, The special mercy vouchsafed one day On the shore of Narragansett Bay, As I sat, with my pipe, from the camp aside, And mused like Isaac at eventide. "A sudden sweetness of peace I found, A garment of gladness wrapped me round; I felt from the law of works released, The strife of the flesh and spirit ceased, My faith to a full assurance grew, And all I had hoped for myself I knew. "Now, as God appointeth, I keep my way, I shall not stumble, I shall not stray; He hath taken away my fig-leaf dress, I wear the robe of His righteousness; And the shafts of Satan no more avail Than Pequot arrows on Christian mail." "Tarry with us," the settlers cried, "Thou man of God, as our ruler and guide." And Captain Underhill bowed his head. "The will of the Lord be done!" he said. And the morrow beheld him sitting down In the ruler's seat in Cocheco town. And he judged therein as a just man should; His words were wise and his rule was good; He coveted not his neighbor's land, From the holding of bribes he shook his hand; And through the camps of the heathen ran A wholesome fear of the valiant man. But the heart is deceitful, the good Book saith, And life hath ever a savor of death. Through hymns of triumph the tempter calls, And whoso thinketh he standeth falls. Alas! ere their round the seasons ran, There was grief in the soul of the saintly man. The tempter's arrows that rarely fail Had found the joints of his spiritual mail; And men took note of his gloomy air, The shame in his eye, the halt in his prayer, The signs of a battle lost within, The pain of a soul in the coils of sin. Then a whisper of scandal linked his name With broken vows and a life of blame; And the people looked askance on him As he walked among them sullen and grim, Ill at ease, and bitter of word, And prompt of quarrel with hand or sword. None knew how, with prayer and fasting still, He strove in the bonds of his evil will; But he shook himself like Samson at length, And girded anew his loins of strength, And bade the crier go up and down And call together the wondering town. Jeer and murmur and shaking of head Ceased as he rose in his place and said "Men, brethren, and fathers, well ye know How I came among you a year ago, Strong in the faith that my soul was freed From sin of feeling, or thought, or deed. "I have sinned, I own it with grief and shame, But not with a lie on my lips I came. In my blindness I verily thought my heart Swept and garnished in every part. He chargeth His angels with folly; He sees The heavens unclean. Was I more than these? "I urge no plea. At your feet I lay The trust you gave me, and go my way. Hate me or pity me, as you will, The Lord will have mercy on sinners still; And I, who am chiefest, say to all, Watch and pray, lest ye also fall." No voice made answer: a sob so low That only his quickened ear could know Smote his heart with a bitter pain, As into the forest he rode again, And the veil of its oaken leaves shut down On his latest glimpse of Cocheco town. Crystal-clear on the man of sin The streams flashed up, and the sky shone in; On his cheek of fever the cool wind blew, The leaves dropped on him their tears of dew, And angels of God, in the pure, sweet guise Of flowers, looked on him with sad surprise. Was his ear at fault that brook and breeze Sang in their saddest of minor keys? What was it the mournful wood-thrush said? What whispered the pine-trees overhead? Did he hear the Voice on his lonely way That Adam heard in the cool of day? Into the desert alone rode he, Alone with the Infinite Purity; And, bowing his soul to its tender rebuke, As Peter did to the Master's look, He measured his path with prayers of pain For peace with God and nature again. And in after years to Cocheco came The bruit of a once familiar name; How among the Dutch of New Netherlands, From wild Danskamer to Haarlem sands, A penitent soldier preached the Word, And smote the heathen with Gideon's sword! And the heart of Boston was glad to hear How he harried the foe on the long frontier, And heaped on the land against him barred The coals of his generous watch and ward. Frailest and bravest! the Bay State still Counts with her worthies John Underhill. 1873. CONDUCTOR BRADLEY. A railway conductor who lost his life in an accident on a Connecticut railway, May 9, 1873. CONDUCTOR BRADLEY, (always may his name Be said with reverence!) as the swift doom came, Smitten to death, a crushed and mangled frame, Sank, with the brake he grasped just where he stood To do the utmost that a brave man could, And die, if needful, as a true man should. Men stooped above him; women dropped their tears On that poor wreck beyond all hopes or fears, Lost in the strength and glory of his years. What heard they? Lo! the ghastly lips of pain, Dead to all thought save duty's, moved again "Put out the signals for the other train!" No nobler utterance since the world began From lips of saint or martyr ever ran, Electric, through the sympathies of man. Ah me! how poor and noteless seem to this The sick-bed dramas of self-consciousness, Our sensual fears of pain and hopes of bliss! Oh, grand, supreme endeavor! Not in vain That last brave act of failing tongue and brain Freighted with life the downward rushing train, Following the wrecked one, as wave follows wave, Obeyed the warning which the dead lips gave. Others he saved, himself he could not save. Nay, the lost life was saved. He is not dead Who in his record still the earth shall tread With God's clear aureole shining round his head. We bow as in the dust, with all our pride Of virtue dwarfed the noble deed beside. God give us grace to live as Bradley died! 1873. THE WITCH OF WENHAM. The house is still standing in Danvers, Mass., where, it is said, a suspected witch was confined overnight in the attic, which was bolted fast. In the morning when the constable came to take her to Salem for trial she was missing, although the door was still bolted. Her escape was doubtless aided by her friends, but at the time it was attributed to Satanic interference. I. ALONG Crane River's sunny slopes Blew warm the winds of May, And over Naumkeag's ancient oaks The green outgrew the gray. The grass was green on Rial-side, The early birds at will Waked up the violet in its dell, The wind-flower on its hill. "Where go you, in your Sunday coat, Son Andrew, tell me, pray." For striped perch in Wenham Lake I go to fish to-day." "Unharmed of thee in Wenham Lake The mottled perch shall be A blue-eyed witch sits on the bank And weaves her net for thee. "She weaves her golden hair; she sings Her spell-song low and faint; The wickedest witch in Salem jail Is to that girl a saint." "Nay, mother, hold thy cruel tongue; God knows," the young man cried, "He never made a whiter soul Than hers by Wenham side. "She tends her mother sick and blind, And every want supplies; To her above the blessed Book She lends her soft blue eyes. "Her voice is glad with holy songs, Her lips are sweet with prayer; Go where you will, in ten miles round Is none more good and fair." "Son Andrew, for the love of God And of thy mother, stay!" She clasped her hands, she wept aloud, But Andrew rode away. "O reverend sir, my Andrew's soul The Wenham witch has caught; She holds him with the curled gold Whereof her snare is wrought. "She charms him with her great blue eyes, She binds him with her hair; Oh, break the spell with holy words, Unbind him with a prayer!" "Take heart," the painful preacher said, "This mischief shall not be; The witch shall perish in her sins And Andrew shall go free. "Our poor Ann Putnam testifies She saw her weave a spell, Bare-armed, loose-haired, at full of moon, Around a dried-up well. "'Spring up, O well!' she softly sang The Hebrew's old refrain (For Satan uses Bible words), Till water flowed a-main. "And many a goodwife heard her speak By Wenham water words That made the buttercups take wings And turn to yellow birds. "They say that swarming wild bees seek The hive at her command; And fishes swim to take their food From out her dainty hand. "Meek as she sits in meeting-time, The godly minister Notes well the spell that doth compel The young men's eyes to her. "The mole upon her dimpled chin Is Satan's seal and sign; Her lips are red with evil bread And stain of unblest wine. "For Tituba, my Indian, saith At Quasycung she took The Black Man's godless sacrament And signed his dreadful book. "Last night my sore-afflicted child Against the young witch cried. To take her Marshal Herrick rides Even now to Wenham side." The marshal in his saddle sat, His daughter at his knee; "I go to fetch that arrant witch, Thy fair playmate," quoth he. "Her spectre walks the parsonage, And haunts both hall and stair; They know her by the great blue eyes And floating gold of hair." "They lie, they lie, my father dear! No foul old witch is she, But sweet and good and crystal-pure As Wenham waters be." "I tell thee, child, the Lord hath set Before us good and ill, And woe to all whose carnal loves Oppose His righteous will. "Between Him and the powers of hell Choose thou, my child, to-day No sparing hand, no pitying eye, When God commands to slay!" He went his way; the old wives shook With fear as he drew nigh; The children in the dooryards held Their breath as he passed by. Too well they knew the gaunt gray horse The grim witch-hunter rode The pale Apocalyptic beast By grisly Death bestrode. II. Oh, fair the face of Wenham Lake Upon the young girl's shone, Her tender mouth, her dreaming eyes, Her yellow hair outblown. By happy youth and love attuned To natural harmonies, The singing birds, the whispering wind, She sat beneath the trees. Sat shaping for her bridal dress Her mother's wedding gown, When lo! the marshal, writ in hand, From Alford hill rode down. His face was hard with cruel fear, He grasped the maiden's hands "Come with me unto Salem town, For so the law commands!" "Oh, let me to my mother say Farewell before I go!" He closer tied her little hands Unto his saddle bow. "Unhand me," cried she piteously, "For thy sweet daughter's sake." "I'll keep my daughter safe," he said, "From the witch of Wenham Lake." "Oh, leave me for my mother's sake, She needs my eyes to see." "Those eyes, young witch, the crows shall peck From off the gallows-tree." He bore her to a farm-house old, And up its stairway long, And closed on her the garret-door With iron bolted strong. The day died out, the night came down Her evening prayer she said, While, through the dark, strange faces seemed To mock her as she prayed. The present horror deepened all The fears her childhood knew; The awe wherewith the air was filled With every breath she drew. And could it be, she trembling asked, Some secret thought or sin Had shut good angels from her heart And let the bad ones in? Had she in some forgotten dream Let go her hold on Heaven, And sold herself unwittingly To spirits unforgiven? Oh, weird and still the dark hours passed; No human sound she heard, But up and down the chimney stack The swallows moaned and stirred. And o'er her, with a dread surmise Of evil sight and sound, The blind bats on their leathern wings Went wheeling round and round. Low hanging in the midnight sky Looked in a half-faced moon. Was it a dream, or did she hear Her lover's whistled tune? She forced the oaken scuttle back; A whisper reached her ear "Slide down the roof to me," it said, "So softly none may hear." She slid along the sloping roof Till from its eaves she hung, And felt the loosened shingles yield To which her fingers clung. Below, her lover stretched his hands And touched her feet so small; "Drop down to me, dear heart," he said, "My arms shall break the fall." He set her on his pillion soft, Her arms about him twined; And, noiseless as if velvet-shod, They left the house behind. But when they reached the open way, Full free the rein he cast; Oh, never through the mirk midnight Rode man and maid more fast. Along the wild wood-paths they sped, The bridgeless streams they swam; At set of moon they passed the Bass, At sunrise Agawam. At high noon on the Merrimac The ancient ferryman Forgot, at times, his idle oars, So fair a freight to scan. And when from off his grounded boat He saw them mount and ride, "God keep her from the evil eye, And harm of witch!" he cried. The maiden laughed, as youth will laugh At all its fears gone by; "He does not know," she whispered low, "A little witch am I." All day he urged his weary horse, And, in the red sundown, Drew rein before a friendly door In distant Berwick town. A fellow-feeling for the wronged The Quaker people felt; And safe beside their kindly hearths The hunted maiden dwelt, Until from off its breast the land The haunting horror threw, And hatred, born of ghastly dreams, To shame and pity grew. Sad were the year's spring morns, and sad Its golden summer day, But blithe and glad its withered fields, And skies of ashen gray; For spell and charm had power no more, The spectres ceased to roam, And scattered households knelt again Around the hearths of home. And when once more by Beaver Dam The meadow-lark outsang, And once again on all the hills The early violets sprang, And all the windy pasture slopes Lay green within the arms Of creeks that bore the salted sea To pleasant inland farms, The smith filed off the chains he forged, The jail-bolts backward fell; And youth and hoary age came forth Like souls escaped from hell. 1877 KING SOLOMON AND THE ANTS OUT from Jerusalem The king rode with his great War chiefs and lords of state, And Sheba's queen with them; Comely, but black withal, To whom, perchance, belongs That wondrous Song of songs, Sensuous and mystical, Whereto devout souls turn In fond, ecstatic dream, And through its earth-born theme The Love of loves discern. Proud in the Syrian sun, In gold and purple sheen, The dusky Ethiop queen Smiled on King Solomon. Wisest of men, he knew The languages of all The creatures great or small That trod the earth or flew. Across an ant-hill led The king's path, and he heard Its small folk, and their word He thus interpreted: "Here comes the king men greet As wise and good and just, To crush us in the dust Under his heedless feet." The great king bowed his head, And saw the wide surprise Of the Queen of Sheba's eyes As he told her what they said. "O king!" she whispered sweet, "Too happy fate have they Who perish in thy way Beneath thy gracious feet! "Thou of the God-lent crown, Shall these vile creatures dare Murmur against thee where The knees of kings kneel down?" "Nay," Solomon replied, "The wise and strong should seek The welfare of the weak," And turned his horse aside. His train, with quick alarm, Curved with their leader round The ant-hill's peopled mound, And left it free from harm. The jewelled head bent low; "O king!" she said, "henceforth The secret of thy worth And wisdom well I know. "Happy must be the State Whose ruler heedeth more The murmurs of the poor Than flatteries of the great." 1877. IN THE "OLD SOUTH." On the 8th of July, 1677, Margaret Brewster with four other Friends went into the South Church in time of meeting, "in sack-cloth, with ashes upon her head, barefoot, and her face blackened," and delivered "a warning from the great God of Heaven and Earth to the Rulers and Magistrates of Boston." For the offence she was sentenced to be "whipped at a cart's tail up and down the Town, with twenty lashes." SHE came and stood in the Old South Church, A wonder and a sign, With a look the old-time sibyls wore, Half-crazed and half-divine. Save the mournful sackcloth about her wound, Unclothed as the primal mother, With limbs that trembled and eyes that blazed With a fire she dare not smother. Loose on her shoulders fell her hair, With sprinkled ashes gray; She stood in the broad aisle strange and weird As a soul at the judgment day. And the minister paused in his sermon's midst, And the people held their breath, For these were the words the maiden spoke Through lips as the lips of death: "Thus saith the Lord, with equal feet All men my courts shall tread, And priest and ruler no more shall eat My people up like bread! "Repent! repent! ere the Lord shall speak In thunder and breaking seals Let all souls worship Him in the way His light within reveals." She shook the dust from her naked feet, And her sackcloth closer drew, And into the porch of the awe-hushed church She passed like a ghost from view. They whipped her away at the tail o' the cart Through half the streets of the town, But the words she uttered that day nor fire Could burn nor water drown. And now the aisles of the ancient church By equal feet are trod, And the bell that swings in its belfry rings Freedom to worship God! And now whenever a wrong is done It thrills the conscious walls; The stone from the basement cries aloud And the beam from the timber calls. There are steeple-houses on every hand, And pulpits that bless and ban, And the Lord will not grudge the single church That is set apart for man. For in two commandments are all the law And the prophets under the sun, And the first is last and the last is first, And the twain are verily one. So, long as Boston shall Boston be, And her bay-tides rise and fall, Shall freedom stand in the Old South Church And plead for the rights of all! 1877. THE HENCHMAN. MY lady walks her morning round, My lady's page her fleet greyhound, My lady's hair the fond winds stir, And all the birds make songs for her. Her thrushes sing in Rathburn bowers, And Rathburn side is gay with flowers; But ne'er like hers, in flower or bird, Was beauty seen or music heard. The distance of the stars is hers; The least of all her worshippers, The dust beneath her dainty heel, She knows not that I see or feel. Oh, proud and calm!--she cannot know Where'er she goes with her I go; Oh, cold and fair!--she cannot guess I kneel to share her hound's caress! Gay knights beside her hunt and hawk, I rob their ears of her sweet talk; Her suitors come from east and west, I steal her smiles from every guest. Unheard of her, in loving words, I greet her with the song of birds; I reach her with her green-armed bowers, I kiss her with the lips of flowers. The hound and I are on her trail, The wind and I uplift her veil; As if the calm, cold moon she were, And I the tide, I follow her. As unrebuked as they, I share The license of the sun and air, And in a common homage hide My worship from her scorn and pride. World-wide apart, and yet so near, I breathe her charmed atmosphere, Wherein to her my service brings The reverence due to holy things. Her maiden pride, her haughty name, My dumb devotion shall not shame; The love that no return doth crave To knightly levels lifts the slave, No lance have I, in joust or fight, To splinter in my lady's sight But, at her feet, how blest were I For any need of hers to die! 1877. THE DEAD FEAST OF THE KOL-FOLK. E. B. Tylor in his Primitive Culture, chapter xii., gives an account of the reverence paid the dead by the Kol tribes of Chota Nagpur, Assam. "When a Ho or Munda," he says, "has been burned on the funeral pile, collected morsels of his bones are carried in procession with a solemn, ghostly, sliding step, keeping time to the deep-sounding drum, and when the old woman who carries the bones on her bamboo tray lowers it from time to time, then girls who carry pitchers and brass vessels mournfully reverse them to show that they are empty; thus the remains are taken to visit every house in the village, and every dwelling of a friend or relative for miles, and the inmates come out to mourn and praise the goodness of the departed; the bones are carried to all the dead man's favorite haunts, to the fields he cultivated, to the grove he planted, to the threshing-floor where he worked, to the village dance-room where he made merry. At last they are taken to the grave, and buried in an earthen vase upon a store of food, covered with one of those huge stone slabs which European visitors wonder at in the districts of the aborigines of India." In the Journal of the Asiatic Society, Bengal, vol. ix., p. 795, is a Ho dirge. WE have opened the door, Once, twice, thrice! We have swept the floor, We have boiled the rice. Come hither, come hither! Come from the far lands, Come from the star lands, Come as before! We lived long together, We loved one another; Come back to our life. Come father, come mother, Come sister and brother, Child, husband, and wife, For you we are sighing. Come take your old places, Come look in our faces, The dead on the dying, Come home! We have opened the door, Once, twice, thrice! We have kindled the coals, And we boil the rice For the feast of souls. Come hither, come hither! Think not we fear you, Whose hearts are so near you. Come tenderly thought on, Come all unforgotten, Come from the shadow-lands, From the dim meadow-lands Where the pale grasses bend Low to our sighing. Come father, come mother, Come sister and brother, Come husband and friend, The dead to the dying, Come home! We have opened the door You entered so oft; For the feast of souls We have kindled the coals, And we boil the rice soft. Come you who are dearest To us who are nearest, Come hither, come hither, From out the wild weather; The storm clouds are flying, The peepul is sighing; Come in from the rain. Come father, come mother, Come sister and brother, Come husband and lover, Beneath our roof-cover. Look on us again, The dead on the dying, Come home! We have opened the door! For the feast of souls We have kindled the coals We may kindle no more! Snake, fever, and famine, The curse of the Brahmin, The sun and the dew, They burn us, they bite us, They waste us and smite us; Our days are but few In strange lands far yonder To wonder and wander We hasten to you. List then to our sighing, While yet we are here Nor seeing nor hearing, We wait without fearing, To feel you draw near. O dead, to the dying Come home! 1879. THE KHAN'S DEVIL. THE Khan came from Bokhara town To Hamza, santon of renown. "My head is sick, my hands are weak; Thy help, O holy man, I seek." In silence marking for a space The Khan's red eyes and purple face, Thick voice, and loose, uncertain tread, "Thou hast a devil!" Hamza said. "Allah forbid!" exclaimed the Khan. Rid me of him at once, O man!" "Nay," Hamza said, "no spell of mine Can slay that cursed thing of thine. "Leave feast and wine, go forth and drink Water of healing on the brink "Where clear and cold from mountain snows, The Nahr el Zeben downward flows. "Six moons remain, then come to me; May Allah's pity go with thee!" Awestruck, from feast and wine the Khan Went forth where Nahr el Zeben ran. Roots were his food, the desert dust His bed, the water quenched his thirst; And when the sixth moon's scimetar Curved sharp above the evening star, He sought again the santon's door, Not weak and trembling as before, But strong of limb and clear of brain; "Behold," he said, "the fiend is slain." "Nay," Hamza answered, "starved and drowned, The curst one lies in death-like swound. "But evil breaks the strongest gyves, And jins like him have charmed lives. "One beaker of the juice of grape May call him up in living shape. "When the red wine of Badakshan Sparkles for thee, beware, O Khan, "With water quench the fire within, And drown each day thy devilkin!" Thenceforth the great Khan shunned the cup As Shitan's own, though offered up, With laughing eyes and jewelled hands, By Yarkand's maids and Samarcand's. And, in the lofty vestibule Of the medress of Kaush Kodul, The students of the holy law A golden-lettered tablet saw, With these words, by a cunning hand, Graved on it at the Khan's command: "In Allah's name, to him who hath A devil, Khan el Hamed saith, "Wisely our Prophet cursed the vine The fiend that loves the breath of wine, "No prayer can slay, no marabout Nor Meccan dervis can drive out. "I, Khan el Hamed, know the charm That robs him of his power to harm. "Drown him, O Islam's child! the spell To save thee lies in tank and well!" 1879. THE KING'S MISSIVE. 1661. This ballad, originally written for The Memorial History of Boston, describes, with pardonable poetic license, a memorable incident in the annals of the city. The interview between Shattuck and the Governor took place, I have since learned, in the residence of the latter, and not in the Council Chamber. The publication of the ballad led to some discussion as to the historical truthfulness of the picture, but I have seen no reason to rub out any of the figures or alter the lines and colors. UNDER the great hill sloping bare To cove and meadow and Common lot, In his council chamber and oaken chair, Sat the worshipful Governor Endicott. A grave, strong man, who knew no peer In the pilgrim land, where he ruled in fear Of God, not man, and for good or ill Held his trust with an iron will. He had shorn with his sword the cross from out The flag, and cloven the May-pole down, Harried the heathen round about, And whipped the Quakers from town to town. Earnest and honest, a man at need To burn like a torch for his own harsh creed, He kept with the flaming brand of his zeal The gate of the holy common weal. His brow was clouded, his eye was stern, With a look of mingled sorrow and wrath; "Woe's me!" he murmured: "at every turn The pestilent Quakers are in my path! Some we have scourged, and banished some, Some hanged, more doomed, and still they come, Fast as the tide of yon bay sets in, Sowing their heresy's seed of sin. "Did we count on this? Did we leave behind The graves of our kin, the comfort and ease Of our English hearths and homes, to find Troublers of Israel such as these? Shall I spare? Shall I pity them? God forbid! I will do as the prophet to Agag did They come to poison the wells of the Word, I will hew them in pieces before the Lord!" The door swung open, and Rawson the clerk Entered, and whispered under breath, "There waits below for the hangman's work A fellow banished on pain of death-- Shattuck, of Salem, unhealed of the whip, Brought over in Master Goldsmith's ship At anchor here in a Christian port, With freight of the devil and all his sort!" Twice and thrice on the chamber floor Striding fiercely from wall to wall, "The Lord do so to me and more," The Governor cried, "if I hang not all! Bring hither the Quaker." Calm, sedate, With the look of a man at ease with fate, Into that presence grim and dread Came Samuel Shattuck, with hat on head. "Off with the knave's hat!" An angry hand Smote down the offence; but the wearer said, With a quiet smile, "By the king's command I bear his message and stand in his stead." In the Governor's hand a missive he laid With the royal arms on its seal displayed, And the proud man spake as he gazed thereat, Uncovering, "Give Mr. Shattuck his hat." He turned to the Quaker, bowing low,-- "The king commandeth your friends' release; Doubt not he shall be obeyed, although To his subjects' sorrow and sin's increase. What he here enjoineth, John Endicott, His loyal servant, questioneth not. You are free! God grant the spirit you own May take you from us to parts unknown." So the door of the jail was open cast, And, like Daniel, out of the lion's den Tender youth and girlhood passed, With age-bowed women and gray-locked men. And the voice of one appointed to die Was lifted in praise and thanks on high, And the little maid from New Netherlands Kissed, in her joy, the doomed man's hands. And one, whose call was to minister To the souls in prison, beside him went, An ancient woman, bearing with her The linen shroud for his burial meant. For she, not counting her own life dear, In the strength of a love that cast out fear, Had watched and served where her brethren died, Like those who waited the cross beside. One moment they paused on their way to look On the martyr graves by the Common side, And much scourged Wharton of Salem took His burden of prophecy up and cried "Rest, souls of the valiant! Not in vain Have ye borne the Master's cross of pain; Ye have fought the fight, ye are victors crowned, With a fourfold chain ye have Satan bound!" The autumn haze lay soft and still On wood and meadow and upland farms; On the brow of Snow Hill the great windmill Slowly and lazily swung its arms; Broad in the sunshine stretched away, With its capes and islands, the turquoise bay; And over water and dusk of pines Blue hills lifted their faint outlines. The topaz leaves of the walnut glowed, The sumach added its crimson fleck, And double in air and water showed The tinted maples along the Neck; Through frost flower clusters of pale star-mist, And gentian fringes of amethyst, And royal plumes of golden-rod, The grazing cattle on Centry trod. But as they who see not, the Quakers saw The world about them; they only thought With deep thanksgiving and pious awe On the great deliverance God had wrought. Through lane and alley the gazing town Noisily followed them up and down; Some with scoffing and brutal jeer, Some with pity and words of cheer. One brave voice rose above the din. Upsall, gray with his length of days, Cried from the door of his Red Lion Inn "Men of Boston, give God the praise No more shall innocent blood call down The bolts of wrath on your guilty town. The freedom of worship, dear to you, Is dear to all, and to all is due. "I see the vision of days to come, When your beautiful City of the Bay Shall be Christian liberty's chosen home, And none shall his neighbor's rights gainsay. The varying notes of worship shall blend And as one great prayer to God ascend, And hands of mutual charity raise Walls of salvation and gates of praise." So passed the Quakers through Boston town, Whose painful ministers sighed to see The walls of their sheep-fold falling down, And wolves of heresy prowling free. But the years went on, and brought no wrong; With milder counsels the State grew strong, As outward Letter and inward Light Kept the balance of truth aright. The Puritan spirit perishing not, To Concord's yeomen the signal sent, And spake in the voice of the cannon-shot That severed the chains of a continent. With its gentler mission of peace and good-will The thought of the Quaker is living still, And the freedom of soul he prophesied Is gospel and law where the martyrs died. 1880. VALUATION. THE old Squire said, as he stood by his gate, And his neighbor, the Deacon, went by, "In spite of my bank stock and real estate, You are better off, Deacon, than I. "We're both growing old, and the end's drawing near, You have less of this world to resign, But in Heaven's appraisal your assets, I fear, Will reckon up greater than mine. "They say I am rich, but I'm feeling so poor, I wish I could swap with you even The pounds I have lived for and laid up in store For the shillings and pence you have given." "Well, Squire," said the Deacon, with shrewd common sense, While his eye had a twinkle of fun, "Let your pounds take the way of my shillings and pence, And the thing can be easily done!" 1880. RABBI ISHMAEL. "Rabbi Ishmael Ben Elisha said, Once, I entered into the Holy of Holies [as High Priest] to burn incense, when I saw Aktriel [the Divine Crown] Jah, Lord of Hosts, sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, who said unto me, 'Ishmael, my son, bless me.' I answered, 'May it please Thee to make Thy compassion prevail over Thine anger; may it be revealed above Thy other attributes; mayest Thou deal with Thy children according to it, and not according to the strict measure of judgment.' It seemed to me that He bowed His head, as though to answer Amen to my blessing."-- Talmud (Beraehoth, I. f. 6. b.) THE Rabbi Ishmael, with the woe and sin Of the world heavy upon him, entering in The Holy of Holies, saw an awful Face With terrible splendor filling all the place. "O Ishmael Ben Elisha!" said a voice, "What seekest thou? What blessing is thy choice?" And, knowing that he stood before the Lord, Within the shadow of the cherubim, Wide-winged between the blinding light and him, He bowed himself, and uttered not a word, But in the silence of his soul was prayer "O Thou Eternal! I am one of all, And nothing ask that others may not share. Thou art almighty; we are weak and small, And yet Thy children: let Thy mercy spare!" Trembling, he raised his eyes, and in the place Of the insufferable glory, lo! a face Of more than mortal tenderness, that bent Graciously down in token of assent, And, smiling, vanished! With strange joy elate, The wondering Rabbi sought the temple's gate. Radiant as Moses from the Mount, he stood And cried aloud unto the multitude "O Israel, hear! The Lord our God is good! Mine eyes have seen his glory and his grace; Beyond his judgments shall his love endure; The mercy of the All Merciful is sure!" 1881. THE ROCK-TOMB OF BRADORE. H. Y. Hind, in Explorations in the Interior of the Labrador Peninsula (ii. 166) mentions the finding of a rock tomb near the little fishing port of Bradore, with the inscription upon it which is given in the poem. A DREAR and desolate shore! Where no tree unfolds its leaves, And never the spring wind weaves Green grass for the hunter's tread; A land forsaken and dead, Where the ghostly icebergs go And come with the ebb and flow Of the waters of Bradore! A wanderer, from a land By summer breezes fanned, Looked round him, awed, subdued, By the dreadful solitude, Hearing alone the cry Of sea-birds clanging by, The crash and grind of the floe, Wail of wind and wash of tide. "O wretched land!" he cried, "Land of all lands the worst, God forsaken and curst! Thy gates of rock should show The words the Tuscan seer Read in the Realm of Woe Hope entereth not here!" Lo! at his feet there stood A block of smooth larch wood, Waif of some wandering wave, Beside a rock-closed cave By Nature fashioned for a grave; Safe from the ravening bear And fierce fowl of the air, Wherein to rest was laid A twenty summers' maid, Whose blood had equal share Of the lands of vine and snow, Half French, half Eskimo. In letters uneffaced, Upon the block were traced The grief and hope of man, And thus the legend ran "We loved her! Words cannot tell how well! We loved her! God loved her! And called her home to peace and rest. We love her." The stranger paused and read. "O winter land!" he said, "Thy right to be I own; God leaves thee not alone. And if thy fierce winds blow Over drear wastes of rock and snow, And at thy iron gates The ghostly iceberg waits, Thy homes and hearts are dear. Thy sorrow o'er thy sacred dust Is sanctified by hope and trust; God's love and man's are here. And love where'er it goes Makes its own atmosphere; Its flowers of Paradise Take root in the eternal ice, And bloom through Polar snows!" 1881. 
9566	----	This eBook was produced by David Widger NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER CONTENTS: THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS To H P S THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS THE WISHING BRIDGE HOW THE WOMEN WENT FROM DOVER ST GREGORY'S GUEST CONTENTS BIRCHBROOK MILL THE TWO ELIZABETHS REQUITAL THE HOMESTEAD HOW THE ROBIN CAME BANISHED FROM MASSACHUSETTS THE BROWN DWARF OF RUGEN THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS. The volume in which "The Bay of Seven Islands" was published was dedicated to the late Edwin Percy Whipple, to whom more than to any other person I was indebted for public recognition as one worthy of a place in American literature, at a time when it required a great degree of courage to urge such a claim for a pro-scribed abolitionist. Although younger than I, he had gained the reputation of a brilliant essayist, and was regarded as the highest American authority in criticism. His wit and wisdom enlivened a small literary circle of young men including Thomas Starr King, the eloquent preacher, and Daniel N. Haskell of the Daily Transcript, who gathered about our common friend dames T. Fields at the Old Corner Bookstore. The poem which gave title to the volume I inscribed to my friend and neighbor Harriet Prescott Spofford, whose poems have lent a new interest to our beautiful river-valley. FROM the green Amesbury hill which bears the name Of that half mythic ancestor of mine Who trod its slopes two hundred years ago, Down the long valley of the Merrimac, Midway between me and the river's mouth, I see thy home, set like an eagle's nest Among Deer Island's immemorial pines, Crowning the crag on which the sunset breaks Its last red arrow. Many a tale and song, Which thou bast told or sung, I call to mind, Softening with silvery mist the woods and hills, The out-thrust headlands and inreaching bays Of our northeastern coast-line, trending where The Gulf, midsummer, feels the chill blockade Of icebergs stranded at its northern gate. To thee the echoes of the Island Sound Answer not vainly, nor in vain the moan Of the South Breaker prophesying storm. And thou hast listened, like myself, to men Sea-periled oft where Anticosti lies Like a fell spider in its web of fog, Or where the Grand Bank shallows with the wrecks Of sunken fishers, and to whom strange isles And frost-rimmed bays and trading stations seem Familiar as Great Neck and Kettle Cove, Nubble and Boon, the common names of home. So let me offer thee this lay of mine, Simple and homely, lacking much thy play Of color and of fancy. If its theme And treatment seem to thee befitting youth Rather than age, let this be my excuse It has beguiled some heavy hours and called Some pleasant memories up; and, better still, Occasion lent me for a kindly word To one who is my neighbor and my friend. 1883. . . . . . . . . . . The skipper sailed out of the harbor mouth, Leaving the apple-bloom of the South For the ice of the Eastern seas, In his fishing schooner Breeze. Handsome and brave and young was he, And the maids of Newbury sighed to see His lessening white sail fall Under the sea's blue wall. Through the Northern Gulf and the misty screen Of the isles of Mingan and Madeleine, St. Paul's and Blanc Sablon, The little Breeze sailed on, Backward and forward, along the shore Of lorn and desolate Labrador, And found at last her way To the Seven Islands Bay. The little hamlet, nestling below Great hills white with lingering snow, With its tin-roofed chapel stood Half hid in the dwarf spruce wood; Green-turfed, flower-sown, the last outpost Of summer upon the dreary coast, With its gardens small and spare, Sad in the frosty air. Hard by where the skipper's schooner lay, A fisherman's cottage looked away Over isle and bay, and. behind On mountains dim-defined. And there twin sisters, fair and young, Laughed with their stranger guest, and sung In their native tongue the lays Of the old Provencal days. Alike were they, save the faint outline Of a scar on Suzette's forehead fine; And both, it so befell, Loved the heretic stranger well. Both were pleasant to look upon, But the heart of the skipper clave to one; Though less by his eye than heart He knew the twain apart. Despite of alien race and creed, Well did his wooing of Marguerite speed; And the mother's wrath was vain As the sister's jealous pain. The shrill-tongued mistress her house forbade, And solemn warning was sternly said By the black-robed priest, whose word As law the hamlet heard. But half by voice and half by signs The skipper said, "A warm sun shines On the green-banked Merrimac; Wait, watch, till I come back. "And when you see, from my mast head, The signal fly of a kerchief red, My boat on the shore shall wait; Come, when the night is late." Ah! weighed with childhood's haunts and friends, And all that the home sky overbends, Did ever young love fail To turn the trembling scale? Under the night, on the wet sea sands, Slowly unclasped their plighted hands One to the cottage hearth, And one to his sailor's berth. What was it the parting lovers heard? Nor leaf, nor ripple, nor wing of bird, But a listener's stealthy tread On the rock-moss, crisp and dead. He weighed his anchor, and fished once more By the black coast-line of Labrador; And by love and the north wind driven, Sailed back to the Islands Seven. In the sunset's glow the sisters twain Saw the Breeze come sailing in again; Said Suzette, "Mother dear, The heretic's sail is here." "Go, Marguerite, to your room, and hide; Your door shall be bolted!" the mother cried: While Suzette, ill at ease, Watched the red sign of the Breeze. At midnight, down to the waiting skiff She stole in the shadow of the cliff; And out of the Bay's mouth ran The schooner with maid and man. And all night long, on a restless bed, Her prayers to the Virgin Marguerite said And thought of her lover's pain Waiting for her in vain. Did he pace the sands? Did he pause to hear The sound of her light step drawing near? And, as the slow hours passed, Would he doubt her faith at last? But when she saw through the misty pane, The morning break on a sea of rain, Could even her love avail To follow his vanished sail? Meantime the Breeze, with favoring wind, Left the rugged Moisic hills behind, And heard from an unseen shore The falls of Manitou roar. On the morrow's morn, in the thick, gray weather They sat on the reeling deck together, Lover and counterfeit, Of hapless Marguerite. With a lover's hand, from her forehead fair He smoothed away her jet-black hair. What was it his fond eyes met? The scar of the false Suzette! Fiercely he shouted: "Bear away East by north for Seven Isles Bay!" The maiden wept and prayed, But the ship her helm obeyed. Once more the Bay of the Isles they found They heard the bell of the chapel sound, And the chant of the dying sung In the harsh, wild Indian tongue. A feeling of mystery, change, and awe Was in all they heard and all they saw Spell-bound the hamlet lay In the hush of its lonely bay. And when they came to the cottage door, The mother rose up from her weeping sore, And with angry gestures met The scared look of Suzette. "Here is your daughter," the skipper said; "Give me the one I love instead." But the woman sternly spake; "Go, see if the dead will wake!" He looked. Her sweet face still and white And strange in the noonday taper light, She lay on her little bed, With the cross at her feet and head. In a passion of grief the strong man bent Down to her face, and, kissing it, went Back to the waiting Breeze, Back to the mournful seas. Never again to the Merrimac And Newbury's homes that bark came back. Whether her fate she met On the shores of Carraquette, Miscou, or Tracadie, who can say? But even yet at Seven Isles Bay Is told the ghostly tale Of a weird, unspoken sail, In the pale, sad light of the Northern day Seen by the blanketed Montagnais, Or squaw, in her small kyack, Crossing the spectre's track. On the deck a maiden wrings her hands; Her likeness kneels on the gray coast sands; One in her wild despair, And one in the trance of prayer. She flits before no earthly blast, The red sign fluttering from her mast, Over the solemn seas, The ghost of the schooner Breeze! 1882. THE WISHING BRIDGE. AMONG the legends sung or said Along our rocky shore, The Wishing Bridge of Marblehead May well be sung once more. An hundred years ago (so ran The old-time story) all Good wishes said above its span Would, soon or late, befall. If pure and earnest, never failed The prayers of man or maid For him who on the deep sea sailed, For her at home who stayed. Once thither came two girls from school, And wished in childish glee And one would be a queen and rule, And one the world would see. Time passed; with change of hopes and fears, And in the self-same place, Two women, gray with middle years, Stood, wondering, face to face. With wakened memories, as they met, They queried what had been "A poor man's wife am I, and yet," Said one, "I am a queen. "My realm a little homestead is, Where, lacking crown and throne, I rule by loving services And patient toil alone." The other said: "The great world lies Beyond me as it lay; O'er love's and duty's boundaries My feet may never stray. "I see but common sights of home, Its common sounds I hear, My widowed mother's sick-bed room Sufficeth for my sphere. "I read to her some pleasant page Of travel far and wide, And in a dreamy pilgrimage We wander side by side. "And when, at last, she falls asleep, My book becomes to me A magic glass: my watch I keep, But all the world I see. "A farm-wife queen your place you fill, While fancy's privilege Is mine to walk the earth at will, Thanks to the Wishing Bridge." "Nay, leave the legend for the truth," The other cried, "and say God gives the wishes of our youth, But in His own best way!" 1882. HOW THE WOMEN WENT FROM DOVER. The following is a copy of the warrant issued by Major Waldron, of Dover, in 1662. The Quakers, as was their wont, prophesied against him, and saw, as they supposed, the fulfilment of their prophecy when, many years after, he was killed by the Indians. To the constables of Dover, Hampton, Salisbury, Newbury, Rowley, Ipswich, Wenham, Lynn, Boston, Roxbury, Dedham, and until these vagabond Quakers are carried out of this jurisdiction. You, and every one of you, are required, in the King's Majesty's name, to take these vagabond Quakers, Anne Colman, Mary Tomkins, and Alice Ambrose, and make them fast to the cart's tail, and driving the cart through your several towns, to whip them upon their naked backs not exceeding ten stripes apiece on each of them, in each town; and so to convey them from constable to constable till they are out of this jurisdiction, as you will answer it at your peril; and this shall be your warrant. RICHARD WALDRON. Dated at Dover, December 22, 1662. This warrant was executed only in Dover and Hampton. At Salisbury the constable refused to obey it. He was sustained by the town's people, who were under the influence of Major Robert Pike, the leading man in the lower valley of the Merrimac, who stood far in advance of his time, as an advocate of religious freedom, and an opponent of ecclesiastical authority. He had the moral courage to address an able and manly letter to the court at Salem, remonstrating against the witchcraft trials. THE tossing spray of Cocheco's fall Hardened to ice on its rocky wall, As through Dover town in the chill, gray dawn, Three women passed, at the cart-tail drawn! Bared to the waist, for the north wind's grip And keener sting of the constable's whip, The blood that followed each hissing blow Froze as it sprinkled the winter snow. Priest and ruler, boy and maid Followed the dismal cavalcade; And from door and window, open thrown, Looked and wondered gaffer and crone. "God is our witness," the victims cried, We suffer for Him who for all men died; The wrong ye do has been done before, We bear the stripes that the Master bore! And thou, O Richard Waldron, for whom We hear the feet of a coming doom, On thy cruel heart and thy hand of wrong Vengeance is sure, though it tarry long. "In the light of the Lord, a flame we see Climb and kindle a proud roof-tree; And beneath it an old man lying dead, With stains of blood on his hoary head." "Smite, Goodman Hate-Evil!--harder still!" The magistrate cried, "lay on with a will! Drive out of their bodies the Father of Lies, Who through them preaches and prophesies!" So into the forest they held their way, By winding river and frost-rimmed bay, Over wind-swept hills that felt the beat Of the winter sea at their icy feet. The Indian hunter, searching his traps, Peered stealthily through the forest gaps; And the outlying settler shook his head,-- "They're witches going to jail," he said. At last a meeting-house came in view; A blast on his horn the constable blew; And the boys of Hampton cried up and down, "The Quakers have come!" to the wondering town. From barn and woodpile the goodman came; The goodwife quitted her quilting frame, With her child at her breast; and, hobbling slow, The grandam followed to see the show. Once more the torturing whip was swung, Once more keen lashes the bare flesh stung. "Oh, spare! they are bleeding!"' a little maid cried, And covered her face the sight to hide. A murmur ran round the crowd: "Good folks," Quoth the constable, busy counting the strokes, "No pity to wretches like these is due, They have beaten the gospel black and blue!" Then a pallid woman, in wild-eyed fear, With her wooden noggin of milk drew near. "Drink, poor hearts!" a rude hand smote Her draught away from a parching throat. "Take heed," one whispered, "they'll take your cow For fines, as they took your horse and plough, And the bed from under you." "Even so," She said; "they are cruel as death, I know." Then on they passed, in the waning day, Through Seabrook woods, a weariful way; By great salt meadows and sand-hills bare, And glimpses of blue sea here and there. By the meeting-house in Salisbury town, The sufferers stood, in the red sundown, Bare for the lash! O pitying Night, Drop swift thy curtain and hide the sight. With shame in his eye and wrath on his lip The Salisbury constable dropped his whip. "This warrant means murder foul and red; Cursed is he who serves it," he said. "Show me the order, and meanwhile strike A blow at your peril!" said Justice Pike. Of all the rulers the land possessed, Wisest and boldest was he and best. He scoffed at witchcraft; the priest he met As man meets man; his feet he set Beyond his dark age, standing upright, Soul-free, with his face to the morning light. He read the warrant: "These convey From our precincts; at every town on the way Give each ten lashes." "God judge the brute! I tread his order under my foot! "Cut loose these poor ones and let them go; Come what will of it, all men shall know No warrant is good, though backed by the Crown, For whipping women in Salisbury town!" The hearts of the villagers, half released From creed of terror and rule of priest, By a primal instinct owned the right Of human pity in law's despite. For ruth and chivalry only slept, His Saxon manhood the yeoman kept; Quicker or slower, the same blood ran In the Cavalier and the Puritan. The Quakers sank on their knees in praise And thanks. A last, low sunset blaze Flashed out from under a cloud, and shed A golden glory on each bowed head. The tale is one of an evil time, When souls were fettered and thought was crime, And heresy's whisper above its breath Meant shameful scourging and bonds and death! What marvel, that hunted and sorely tried, Even woman rebuked and prophesied, And soft words rarely answered back The grim persuasion of whip and rack. If her cry from the whipping-post and jail Pierced sharp as the Kenite's driven nail, O woman, at ease in these happier days, Forbear to judge of thy sister's ways! How much thy beautiful life may owe To her faith and courage thou canst not know, Nor how from the paths of thy calm retreat She smoothed the thorns with her bleeding feet. 1883. SAINT GREGORY'S GUEST. A TALE for Roman guides to tell To careless, sight-worn travellers still, Who pause beside the narrow cell Of Gregory on the Caelian Hill. One day before the monk's door came A beggar, stretching empty palms, Fainting and fast-sick, in the name Of the Most Holy asking alms. And the monk answered, "All I have In this poor cell of mine I give, The silver cup my mother gave; In Christ's name take thou it, and live." Years passed; and, called at last to bear The pastoral crook and keys of Rome, The poor monk, in Saint Peter's chair, Sat the crowned lord of Christendom. "Prepare a feast," Saint Gregory cried, "And let twelve beggars sit thereat." The beggars came, and one beside, An unknown stranger, with them sat. "I asked thee not," the Pontiff spake, "O stranger; but if need be thine, I bid thee welcome, for the sake Of Him who is thy Lord and mine." A grave, calm face the stranger raised, Like His who on Gennesaret trod, Or His on whom the Chaldeans gazed, Whose form was as the Son of God. "Know'st thou," he said, "thy gift of old?" And in the hand he lifted up The Pontiff marvelled to behold Once more his mother's silver cup. "Thy prayers and alms have risen, and bloom Sweetly among the flowers of heaven. I am The Wonderful, through whom Whate'er thou askest shall be given." He spake and vanished. Gregory fell With his twelve guests in mute accord Prone on their faces, knowing well Their eyes of flesh had seen the Lord. The old-time legend is not vain; Nor vain thy art, Verona's Paul, Telling it o'er and o'er again On gray Vicenza's frescoed wall. Still wheresoever pity shares Its bread with sorrow, want, and sin, And love the beggar's feast prepares, The uninvited Guest comes in. Unheard, because our ears are dull, Unseen, because our eyes are dim, He walks our earth, The Wonderful, And all good deeds are done to Him. 1883. BIRCHBROOK MILL. A NOTELESS stream, the Birchbrook runs Beneath its leaning trees; That low, soft ripple is its own, That dull roar is the sea's. Of human signs it sees alone The distant church spire's tip, And, ghost-like, on a blank of gray, The white sail of a ship. No more a toiler at the wheel, It wanders at its will; Nor dam nor pond is left to tell Where once was Birchbrook mill. The timbers of that mill have fed Long since a farmer's fires; His doorsteps are the stones that ground The harvest of his sires. Man trespassed here; but Nature lost No right of her domain; She waited, and she brought the old Wild beauty back again. By day the sunlight through the leaves Falls on its moist, green sod, And wakes the violet bloom of spring And autumn's golden-rod. Its birches whisper to the wind, The swallow dips her wings In the cool spray, and on its banks The gray song-sparrow sings. But from it, when the dark night falls, The school-girl shrinks with dread; The farmer, home-bound from his fields, Goes by with quickened tread. They dare not pause to hear the grind Of shadowy stone on stone; The plashing of a water-wheel Where wheel there now is none. Has not a cry of pain been heard Above the clattering mill? The pawing of an unseen horse, Who waits his mistress still? Yet never to the listener's eye Has sight confirmed the sound; A wavering birch line marks alone The vacant pasture ground. No ghostly arms fling up to heaven The agony of prayer; No spectral steed impatient shakes His white mane on the air. The meaning of that common dread No tongue has fitly told; The secret of the dark surmise The brook and birches hold. What nameless horror of the past Broods here forevermore? What ghost his unforgiven sin Is grinding o'er and o'er? Does, then, immortal memory play The actor's tragic part, Rehearsals of a mortal life And unveiled human heart? God's pity spare a guilty soul That drama of its ill, And let the scenic curtain fall On Birchbrook's haunted mill 1884. THE TWO ELIZABETHS. Read at the unveiling of the bust of Elizabeth Fry at the Friends' School, Providence, R. I. A. D. 1209. AMIDST Thuringia's wooded hills she dwelt, A high-born princess, servant of the poor, Sweetening with gracious words the food she dealt To starving throngs at Wartburg's blazoned door. A blinded zealot held her soul in chains, Cramped the sweet nature that he could not kill, Scarred her fair body with his penance-pains, And gauged her conscience by his narrow will. God gave her gifts of beauty and of grace, With fast and vigil she denied them all; Unquestioning, with sad, pathetic face, She followed meekly at her stern guide's call. So drooped and died her home-blown rose of bliss In the chill rigor of a discipline That turned her fond lips from her children's kiss, And made her joy of motherhood a sin. To their sad level by compassion led, One with the low and vile herself she made, While thankless misery mocked the hand that fed, And laughed to scorn her piteous masquerade. But still, with patience that outwearied hate, She gave her all while yet she had to give; And then her empty hands, importunate, In prayer she lifted that the poor might live. Sore pressed by grief, and wrongs more hard to bear, And dwarfed and stifled by a harsh control, She kept life fragrant with good deeds and prayer, And fresh and pure the white flower of her soul. Death found her busy at her task: one word Alone she uttered as she paused to die, "Silence!"--then listened even as one who heard With song and wing the angels drawing nigh! Now Fra Angelico's roses fill her hands, And, on Murillo's canvas, Want and Pain Kneel at her feet. Her marble image stands Worshipped and crowned in Marburg's holy fane. Yea, wheresoe'er her Church its cross uprears, Wide as the world her story still is told; In manhood's reverence, woman's prayers and tears, She lives again whose grave is centuries old. And still, despite the weakness or the blame Of blind submission to the blind, she hath A tender place in hearts of every name, And more than Rome owns Saint Elizabeth! A. D. 1780. Slow ages passed: and lo! another came, An English matron, in whose simple faith Nor priestly rule nor ritual had claim, A plain, uncanonized Elizabeth. No sackcloth robe, nor ashen-sprinkled hair, Nor wasting fast, nor scourge, nor vigil long, Marred her calm presence. God had made her fair, And she could do His goodly work no wrong. Their yoke is easy and their burden light Whose sole confessor is the Christ of God; Her quiet trust and faith transcending sight Smoothed to her feet the difficult paths she trod. And there she walked, as duty bade her go, Safe and unsullied as a cloistered nun, Shamed with her plainness Fashion's gaudy show, And overcame the world she did not shun. In Earlham's bowers, in Plashet's liberal hall, In the great city's restless crowd and din, Her ear was open to the Master's call, And knew the summons of His voice within. Tender as mother, beautiful as wife, Amidst the throngs of prisoned crime she stood In modest raiment faultless as her life, The type of England's worthiest womanhood. To melt the hearts that harshness turned to stone The sweet persuasion of her lips sufficed, And guilt, which only hate and fear had known, Saw in her own the pitying love of Christ. So wheresoe'er the guiding Spirit went She followed, finding every prison cell It opened for her sacred as a tent Pitched by Gennesaret or by Jacob's well. And Pride and Fashion felt her strong appeal, And priest and ruler marvelled as they saw How hand in hand went wisdom with her zeal, And woman's pity kept the bounds of law. She rests in God's peace; but her memory stirs The air of earth as with an angel's wings, And warms and moves the hearts of men like hers, The sainted daughter of Hungarian kings. United now, the Briton and the Hun, Each, in her own time, faithful unto death, Live sister souls! in name and spirit one, Thuringia's saint and our Elizabeth! 1885. REQUITAL. As Islam's Prophet, when his last day drew Nigh to its close, besought all men to say Whom he had wronged, to whom he then should pay A debt forgotten, or for pardon sue, And, through the silence of his weeping friends, A strange voice cried: "Thou owest me a debt," "Allah be praised!" he answered. "Even yet He gives me power to make to thee amends. O friend! I thank thee for thy timely word." So runs the tale. Its lesson all may heed, For all have sinned in thought, or word, or deed, Or, like the Prophet, through neglect have erred. All need forgiveness, all have debts to pay Ere the night cometh, while it still is day. 1885. THE HOMESTEAD. AGAINST the wooded hills it stands, Ghost of a dead home, staring through Its broken lights on wasted lands Where old-time harvests grew. Unploughed, unsown, by scythe unshorn, The poor, forsaken farm-fields lie, Once rich and rife with golden corn And pale green breadths of rye. Of healthful herb and flower bereft, The garden plot no housewife keeps; Through weeds and tangle only left, The snake, its tenant, creeps. A lilac spray, still blossom-clad, Sways slow before the empty rooms; Beside the roofless porch a sad Pathetic red rose blooms. His track, in mould and dust of drouth, On floor and hearth the squirrel leaves, And in the fireless chimney's mouth His web the spider weaves. The leaning barn, about to fall, Resounds no more on husking eves; No cattle low in yard or stall, No thresher beats his sheaves. So sad, so drear! It seems almost Some haunting Presence makes its sign; That down yon shadowy lane some ghost Might drive his spectral kine! O home so desolate and lorn! Did all thy memories die with thee? Were any wed, were any born, Beneath this low roof-tree? Whose axe the wall of forest broke, And let the waiting sunshine through? What goodwife sent the earliest smoke Up the great chimney flue? Did rustic lovers hither come? Did maidens, swaying back and forth In rhythmic grace, at wheel and loom, Make light their toil with mirth? Did child feet patter on the stair? Did boyhood frolic in the snow? Did gray age, in her elbow chair, Knit, rocking to and fro? The murmuring brook, the sighing breeze, The pine's slow whisper, cannot tell; Low mounds beneath the hemlock-trees Keep the home secrets well. Cease, mother-land, to fondly boast Of sons far off who strive and thrive, Forgetful that each swarming host Must leave an emptier hive. O wanderers from ancestral soil, Leave noisome mill and chaffering store: Gird up your loins for sturdier toil, And build the home once more! Come back to bayberry-scented slopes, And fragrant fern, and ground-nut vine; Breathe airs blown over holt and copse Sweet with black birch and pine. What matter if the gains are small That life's essential wants supply? Your homestead's title gives you all That idle wealth can buy. All that the many-dollared crave, The brick-walled slaves of 'Change and mart, Lawns, trees, fresh air, and flowers, you have, More dear for lack of art. Your own sole masters, freedom-willed, With none to bid you go or stay, Till the old fields your fathers tilled, As manly men as they! With skill that spares your toiling hands, And chemic aid that science brings, Reclaim the waste and outworn lands, And reign thereon as kings 1886. HOW THE ROBIN CAME. AN ALGONQUIN LEGEND. HAPPY young friends, sit by me, Under May's blown apple-tree, While these home-birds in and out Through the blossoms flit about. Hear a story, strange and old, By the wild red Indians told, How the robin came to be: Once a great chief left his son,-- Well-beloved, his only one,-- When the boy was well-nigh grown, In the trial-lodge alone. Left for tortures long and slow Youths like him must undergo, Who their pride of manhood test, Lacking water, food, and rest. Seven days the fast he kept, Seven nights he never slept. Then the young boy, wrung with pain, Weak from nature's overstrain, Faltering, moaned a low complaint "Spare me, father, for I faint!" But the chieftain, haughty-eyed, Hid his pity in his pride. "You shall be a hunter good, Knowing never lack of food; You shall be a warrior great, Wise as fox and strong as bear; Many scalps your belt shall wear, If with patient heart you wait Bravely till your task is done. Better you should starving die Than that boy and squaw should cry Shame upon your father's son!" When next morn the sun's first rays Glistened on the hemlock sprays, Straight that lodge the old chief sought, And boiled sainp and moose meat brought. "Rise and eat, my son!" he said. Lo, he found the poor boy dead! As with grief his grave they made, And his bow beside him laid, Pipe, and knife, and wampum-braid, On the lodge-top overhead, Preening smooth its breast of red And the brown coat that it wore, Sat a bird, unknown before. And as if with human tongue, "Mourn me not," it said, or sung; "I, a bird, am still your son, Happier than if hunter fleet, Or a brave, before your feet Laying scalps in battle won. Friend of man, my song shall cheer Lodge and corn-land; hovering near, To each wigwam I shall bring Tidings of the corning spring; Every child my voice shall know In the moon of melting snow, When the maple's red bud swells, And the wind-flower lifts its bells. As their fond companion Men shall henceforth own your son, And my song shall testify That of human kin am I." Thus the Indian legend saith How, at first, the robin came With a sweeter life from death, Bird for boy, and still the same. If my young friends doubt that this Is the robin's genesis, Not in vain is still the myth If a truth be found therewith Unto gentleness belong Gifts unknown to pride and wrong; Happier far than hate is praise,-- He who sings than he who slays. BANISHED FROM MASSACHUSETTS. 1660. On a painting by E. A. Abbey. The General Court of Massachusetts enacted Oct. 19, 1658, that "any person or persons of the cursed sect of Quakers" should, on conviction of the same, be banished, on pain of death, from the jurisdiction of the common-wealth. OVER the threshold of his pleasant home Set in green clearings passed the exiled Friend, In simple trust, misdoubting not the end. "Dear heart of mine!" he said, "the time has come To trust the Lord for shelter." One long gaze The goodwife turned on each familiar thing,-- The lowing kine, the orchard blossoming, The open door that showed the hearth-fire's blaze,-- And calmly answered, "Yes, He will provide." Silent and slow they crossed the homestead's bound, Lingering the longest by their child's grave-mound. "Move on, or stay and hang!" the sheriff cried. They left behind them more than home or land, And set sad faces to an alien strand. Safer with winds and waves than human wrath, With ravening wolves than those whose zeal for God Was cruelty to man, the exiles trod Drear leagues of forest without guide or path, Or launching frail boats on the uncharted sea, Round storm-vexed capes, whose teeth of granite ground The waves to foam, their perilous way they wound, Enduring all things so their souls were free. Oh, true confessors, shaming them who did Anew the wrong their Pilgrim Fathers bore For you the Mayflower spread her sail once more, Freighted with souls, to all that duty bid Faithful as they who sought an unknown land, O'er wintry seas, from Holland's Hook of Sand! So from his lost home to the darkening main, Bodeful of storm, stout Macy held his way, And, when the green shore blended with the gray, His poor wife moaned: "Let us turn back again." "Nay, woman, weak of faith, kneel down," said he, And say thy prayers: the Lord himself will steer; And led by Him, nor man nor devils I fear! So the gray Southwicks, from a rainy sea, Saw, far and faint, the loom of land, and gave With feeble voices thanks for friendly ground Whereon to rest their weary feet, and found A peaceful death-bed and a quiet grave Where, ocean-walled, and wiser than his age, The lord of Shelter scorned the bigot's rage. Aquidneck's isle, Nantucket's lonely shores, And Indian-haunted Narragansett saw The way-worn travellers round their camp-fire draw, Or heard the plashing of their weary oars. And every place whereon they rested grew Happier for pure and gracious womanhood, And men whose names for stainless honor stood, Founders of States and rulers wise and true. The Muse of history yet shall make amends To those who freedom, peace, and justice taught, Beyond their dark age led the van of thought, And left unforfeited the name of Friends. O mother State, how foiled was thy design The gain was theirs, the loss alone was thine. THE BROWN DWARF OF RUGEN. The hint of this ballad is found in Arndt's Miirchen, Berlin, 1816. The ballad appeared first in St. Nicholas, whose young readers were advised, while smiling at the absurd superstition, to remember that bad companionship and evil habits, desires, and passions are more to be dreaded now than the Elves and Trolls who frightened the children of past ages. THE pleasant isle of Rugen looks the Baltic water o'er, To the silver-sanded beaches of the Pomeranian shore; And in the town of Rambin a little boy and maid Plucked the meadow-flowers together and in the sea-surf played. Alike were they in beauty if not in their degree He was the Amptman's first-born, the miller's child was she. Now of old the isle of Rugen was full of Dwarfs and Trolls, The brown-faced little Earth-men, the people without souls; And for every man and woman in Rugen's island found Walking in air and sunshine, a Troll was underground. It chanced the little maiden, one morning, strolled away Among the haunted Nine Hills, where the elves and goblins play. That day, in barley-fields below, the harvesters had known Of evil voices in the air, and heard the small horns blown. She came not back; the search for her in field and wood was vain They cried her east, they cried her west, but she came not again. "She's down among the Brown Dwarfs," said the dream-wives wise and old, And prayers were made, and masses said, and Rambin's church bell tolled. Five years her father mourned her; and then John Deitrich said "I will find my little playmate, be she alive or dead." He watched among the Nine Hills, he heard the Brown Dwarfs sing, And saw them dance by moonlight merrily in a ring. And when their gay-robed leader tossed up his cap of red, Young Deitrich caught it as it fell, and thrust it on his head. The Troll came crouching at his feet and wept for lack of it. "Oh, give me back my magic cap, for your great head unfit!" "Nay," Deitrich said; "the Dwarf who throws his charmed cap away, Must serve its finder at his will, and for his folly pay. "You stole my pretty Lisbeth, and hid her in the earth; And you shall ope the door of glass and let me lead her forth." "She will not come; she's one of us; she's mine!" the Brown Dwarf said; The day is set, the cake is baked, to-morrow we shall wed." "The fell fiend fetch thee!" Deitrich cried, "and keep thy foul tongue still. Quick! open, to thy evil world, the glass door of the hill!" The Dwarf obeyed; and youth and Troll down, the long stair-way passed, And saw in dim and sunless light a country strange and vast. Weird, rich, and wonderful, he saw the elfin under-land,-- Its palaces of precious stones, its streets of golden sand. He came unto a banquet-hall with tables richly spread, Where a young maiden served to him the red wine and the bread. How fair she seemed among the Trolls so ugly and so wild! Yet pale and very sorrowful, like one who never smiled! Her low, sweet voice, her gold-brown hair, her tender blue eyes seemed Like something he had seen elsewhere or some. thing he had dreamed. He looked; he clasped her in his arms; he knew the long-lost one; "O Lisbeth! See thy playmate--I am the Amptman's son!" She leaned her fair head on his breast, and through her sobs she spoke "Oh, take me from this evil place, and from the elfin folk, "And let me tread the grass-green fields and smell the flowers again, And feel the soft wind on my cheek and hear the dropping rain! "And oh, to hear the singing bird, the rustling of the tree, The lowing cows, the bleat of sheep, the voices of the sea; "And oh, upon my father's knee to sit beside the door, And hear the bell of vespers ring in Rambin church once more!" He kissed her cheek, he kissed her lips; the Brown Dwarf groaned to see, And tore his tangled hair and ground his long teeth angrily. But Deitrich said: "For five long years this tender Christian maid Has served you in your evil world and well must she be paid! "Haste!--hither bring me precious gems, the richest in your store; Then when we pass the gate of glass, you'll take your cap once more." No choice was left the baffled Troll, and, murmuring, he obeyed, And filled the pockets of the youth and apron of the maid. They left the dreadful under-land and passed the gate of glass; They felt the sunshine's warm caress, they trod the soft, green grass. And when, beneath, they saw the Dwarf stretch up to them his brown And crooked claw-like fingers, they tossed his red cap down. Oh, never shone so bright a sun, was never sky so blue, As hand in hand they homeward walked the pleasant meadows through! And never sang the birds so sweet in Rambin's woods before, And never washed the waves so soft along the Baltic shore; And when beneath his door-yard trees the father met his child, The bells rung out their merriest peal, the folks with joy ran wild. 
9568	----	This eBook was produced by David Widger POEMS OF NATURE POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT RELIGIOUS POEMS BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER ENTIRE CONTENTS: POEMS OF NATURE: THE FROST SPIRIT THE MERRIMAC HAMPTON BEACH A DREAM OF SUMMER THE LAKESIDE AUTUMN THOUGHTS ON RECEIVING AN EAGLE'S QUILL FROM LAKE SUPERIOR APRIL PICTURES SUMMER BY THE LAKESIDE THE FRUIT-GIFT FLOWERS IN WINTER THE MAYFLOWERS THE LAST WALK IN AUTUMN THE FIRST FLOWERS THE OLD BURYING-GROUND THE PALM-TREE THE RIVER PATH MOUNTAIN PICTURES I. FRANCONIA FROM THE PEMIGEWASSET II. MONADNOCK FROM WACHUSET THE VANISHERS THE PAGEANT THE PRESSED GENTIAN A MYSTERY A SEA DREAM HAZEL BLOSSOMS SUNSET ON THE BEARCAMP THE SEEKING OF THE WATERFALL THE TRAILING ARBUTUS ST. MARTINS SUMMER STORM ON LAKE ASQUAM A SUMMER PILGRIMAGE SWEET FERN THE WOOD GIANT A DAY POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT: MEMORIES RAPHAEL EGO THE PUMPKIN FORGIVENESS TO MY SISTER MY THANKS REMEMBRANCE MY NAMESAKE A MEMORY MY DREAM THE BAREFOOT BOY MY PSALM THE WAITING SNOW-BOUND MY TRIUMPH IN SCHOOL-DAYS MY BIRTHDAY RED RIDING-HOOD RESPONSE AT EVENTIDE VOYAGE OF THE JETTIE MY TRUST A NAME GREETING CONTENTS AN AUTOGRAPH ABRAM MORRISON A LEGACY RELIGIOUS POEMS: THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN THE CALL OF THE CHRISTIAN THE CRUCIFIXION PALESTINE HYMNS FROM THE FRENCH OF LAMARTINE I. ENCORE UN HYMNE II. LE CRI DE L'AME THE FAMILIST'S HYMN EZEKIEL WHAT THE VOICE SAID THE ANGEL OF PATIENCE THE WIFE OF MANOAH TO HER HUSBAND MY SOUL AND I WORSHIP THE HOLY LAND THE REWARD THE WISH OF TO-DAY ALL'S WELL INVOCATION QUESTIONS OF LIFE FIRST-DAY THOUGHTS TRUST TRINITAS THE SISTERS "THE ROCK" IN EL GHOR THE OVER-HEART THE SHADOW AND THE LIGHT THE CRY OF A LOST SOUL ANDREW RYKMAN'S PRAYER THE ANSWER THE ETERNAL GOODNESS THE COMMON QUESTION OUR MASTER THE MEETING THE CLEAR VISION DIVINE COMPASSION THE PRAYER-SEEKER THE BREWING OF SOMA A WOMAN THE PRAYER OF AGASSIZ IN QUEST THE FRIEND'S BURIAL A CHRISTMAS CARMEN VESTA CHILD-SONGS THE HEALER THE TWO ANGELS OVERRULED HYMN OF THE DUNKERS GIVING AND TAKING THE VISION OF ECHARD INSCRIPTIONS ON A SUN-DIAL ON A FOUNTAIN THE MINISTER'S DAUGHTER BY THEIR WORKS THE WORD THE BOOK REQUIREMENT HELP UTTERANCE ORIENTAL MAXIMS THE INWARD JUDGE LAYING UP TREASURE CONDUCT AN EASTER FLOWER GIFT THE MYSTIC'S CHRISTMAS AT LAST WHAT THE TRAVELLER SAID AT SUNSET THE "STORY OF IDA" THE LIGHT THAT IS FELT THE TWO LOVES ADJUSTMENT HYMNS OF THE BRAHMO SOMAJ REVELATION POEMS OF NATURE THE FROST SPIRIT He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes You may trace his footsteps now On the naked woods and the blasted fields and the brown hill's withered brow. He has smitten the leaves of the gray old trees where their pleasant green came forth, And the winds, which follow wherever he goes, have shaken them down to earth. He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes! from the frozen Labrador, From the icy bridge of the Northern seas, which the white bear wanders o'er, Where the fisherman's sail is stiff with ice, and the luckless forms below In the sunless cold of the lingering night into marble statues grow He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes on the rushing Northern blast, And the dark Norwegian pines have bowed as his fearful breath went past. With an unscorched wing he has hurried on, where the fires of Hecla glow On the darkly beautiful sky above and the ancient ice below. He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes and the quiet lake shall feel The torpid touch of his glazing breath, and ring to the skater's heel; And the streams which danced on the broken rocks, or sang to the leaning grass, Shall bow again to their winter chain, and in mournful silence pass. He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes! Let us meet him as we may, And turn with the light of the parlor-fire his evil power away; And gather closer the circle round, when that fire-light dances high, And laugh at the shriek of the baffled Fiend as his sounding wing goes by! 1830. THE MERRIMAC. "The Indians speak of a beautiful river, far to the south, which they call Merrimac."--SIEUR. DE MONTS, 1604. Stream of my fathers! sweetly still The sunset rays thy valley fill; Poured slantwise down the long defile, Wave, wood, and spire beneath them smile. I see the winding Powow fold The green hill in its belt of gold, And following down its wavy line, Its sparkling waters blend with thine. There 's not a tree upon thy side, Nor rock, which thy returning tide As yet hath left abrupt and stark Above thy evening water-mark; No calm cove with its rocky hem, No isle whose emerald swells begin Thy broad, smooth current; not a sail Bowed to the freshening ocean gale; No small boat with its busy oars, Nor gray wall sloping to thy shores; Nor farm-house with its maple shade, Or rigid poplar colonnade, But lies distinct and full in sight, Beneath this gush of sunset light. Centuries ago, that harbor-bar, Stretching its length of foam afar, And Salisbury's beach of shining sand, And yonder island's wave-smoothed strand, Saw the adventurer's tiny sail, Flit, stooping from the eastern gale; And o'er these woods and waters broke The cheer from Britain's hearts of oak, As brightly on the voyager's eye, Weary of forest, sea, and sky, Breaking the dull continuous wood, The Merrimac rolled down his flood; Mingling that clear pellucid brook, Which channels vast Agioochook When spring-time's sun and shower unlock The frozen fountains of the rock, And more abundant waters given From that pure lake, "The Smile of Heaven," Tributes from vale and mountain-side,-- With ocean's dark, eternal tide! On yonder rocky cape, which braves The stormy challenge of the waves, Midst tangled vine and dwarfish wood, The hardy Anglo-Saxon stood, Planting upon the topmost crag The staff of England's battle-flag; And, while from out its heavy fold Saint George's crimson cross unrolled, Midst roll of drum and trumpet blare, And weapons brandishing in air, He gave to that lone promontory The sweetest name in all his story; Of her, the flower of Islam's daughters, Whose harems look on Stamboul's waters,-- Who, when the chance of war had bound The Moslem chain his limbs around, Wreathed o'er with silk that iron chain, Soothed with her smiles his hours of pain, And fondly to her youthful slave A dearer gift than freedom gave. But look! the yellow light no more Streams down on wave and verdant shore; And clearly on the calm air swells The twilight voice of distant bells. From Ocean's bosom, white and thin, The mists come slowly rolling in; Hills, woods, the river's rocky rim, Amidst the sea--like vapor swim, While yonder lonely coast-light, set Within its wave-washed minaret, Half quenched, a beamless star and pale, Shines dimly through its cloudy veil! Home of my fathers!--I have stood Where Hudson rolled his lordly flood Seen sunrise rest and sunset fade Along his frowning Palisade; Looked down the Appalachian peak On Juniata's silver streak; Have seen along his valley gleam The Mohawk's softly winding stream; The level light of sunset shine Through broad Potomac's hem of pine; And autumn's rainbow-tinted banner Hang lightly o'er the Susquehanna; Yet wheresoe'er his step might be, Thy wandering child looked back to thee! Heard in his dreams thy river's sound Of murmuring on its pebbly bound, The unforgotten swell and roar Of waves on thy familiar shore; And saw, amidst the curtained gloom And quiet of his lonely room, Thy sunset scenes before him pass; As, in Agrippa's magic glass, The loved and lost arose to view, Remembered groves in greenness grew, Bathed still in childhood's morning dew, Along whose bowers of beauty swept Whatever Memory's mourners wept, Sweet faces, which the charnel kept, Young, gentle eyes, which long had slept; And while the gazer leaned to trace, More near, some dear familiar face, He wept to find the vision flown,-- A phantom and a dream alone! 1841. HAMPTON BEACH The sunlight glitters keen and bright, Where, miles away, Lies stretching to my dazzled sight A luminous belt, a misty light, Beyond the dark pine bluffs and wastes of sandy gray. The tremulous shadow of the Sea! Against its ground Of silvery light, rock, hill, and tree, Still as a picture, clear and free, With varying outline mark the coast for miles around. On--on--we tread with loose-flung rein Our seaward way, Through dark-green fields and blossoming grain, Where the wild brier-rose skirts the lane, And bends above our heads the flowering locust spray. Ha! like a kind hand on my brow Comes this fresh breeze, Cooling its dull and feverish glow, While through my being seems to flow The breath of a new life, the healing of the seas! Now rest we, where this grassy mound His feet hath set In the great waters, which have bound His granite ankles greenly round With long and tangled moss, and weeds with cool spray wet. Good-by to Pain and Care! I take Mine ease to-day Here where these sunny waters break, And ripples this keen breeze, I shake All burdens from the heart, all weary thoughts away. I draw a freer breath, I seem Like all I see-- Waves in the sun, the white-winged gleam Of sea-birds in the slanting beam, And far-off sails which flit before the south-wind free. So when Time's veil shall fall asunder, The soul may know No fearful change, nor sudden wonder, Nor sink the weight of mystery under, But with the upward rise, and with the vastness grow. And all we shrink from now may seem No new revealing; Familiar as our childhood's stream, Or pleasant memory of a dream The loved and cherished Past upon the new life stealing. Serene and mild the untried light May have its dawning; And, as in summer's northern night The evening and the dawn unite, The sunset hues of Time blend with the soul's new morning. I sit alone; in foam and spray Wave after wave Breaks on the rocks which, stern and gray, Shoulder the broken tide away, Or murmurs hoarse and strong through mossy cleft and cave. What heed I of the dusty land And noisy town? I see the mighty deep expand From its white line of glimmering sand To where the blue of heaven on bluer waves shuts down! In listless quietude of mind, I yield to all The change of cloud and wave and wind And passive on the flood reclined, I wander with the waves, and with them rise and fall. But look, thou dreamer! wave and shore In shadow lie; The night-wind warns me back once more To where, my native hill-tops o'er, Bends like an arch of fire the glowing sunset sky. So then, beach, bluff, and wave, farewell! I bear with me No token stone nor glittering shell, But long and oft shall Memory tell Of this brief thoughtful hour of musing by the Sea. 1843. A DREAM OF SUMMER. Bland as the morning breath of June The southwest breezes play; And, through its haze, the winter noon Seems warm as summer's day. The snow-plumed Angel of the North Has dropped his icy spear; Again the mossy earth looks forth, Again the streams gush clear. The fox his hillside cell forsakes, The muskrat leaves his nook, The bluebird in the meadow brakes Is singing with the brook. "Bear up, O Mother Nature!" cry Bird, breeze, and streamlet free; "Our winter voices prophesy Of summer days to thee!" So, in those winters of the soul, By bitter blasts and drear O'erswept from Memory's frozen pole, Will sunny days appear. Reviving Hope and Faith, they show The soul its living powers, And how beneath the winter's snow Lie germs of summer flowers! The Night is mother of the Day, The Winter of the Spring, And ever upon old Decay The greenest mosses cling. Behind the cloud the starlight lurks, Through showers the sunbeams fall; For God, who loveth all His works, Has left His hope with all! 4th 1st month, 1847. THE LAKESIDE The shadows round the inland sea Are deepening into night; Slow up the slopes of Ossipee They chase the lessening light. Tired of the long day's blinding heat, I rest my languid eye, Lake of the Hills! where, cool and sweet, Thy sunset waters lie! Along the sky, in wavy lines, O'er isle and reach and bay, Green-belted with eternal pines, The mountains stretch away. Below, the maple masses sleep Where shore with water blends, While midway on the tranquil deep The evening light descends. So seemed it when yon hill's red crown, Of old, the Indian trod, And, through the sunset air, looked down Upon the Smile of God. To him of light and shade the laws No forest skeptic taught; Their living and eternal Cause His truer instinct sought. He saw these mountains in the light Which now across them shines; This lake, in summer sunset bright, Walled round with sombering pines. God near him seemed; from earth and skies His loving voice he beard, As, face to face, in Paradise, Man stood before the Lord. Thanks, O our Father! that, like him, Thy tender love I see, In radiant hill and woodland dim, And tinted sunset sea. For not in mockery dost Thou fill Our earth with light and grace; Thou hid'st no dark and cruel will Behind Thy smiling face! 1849. AUTUMN THOUGHTS Gone hath the Spring, with all its flowers, And gone the Summer's pomp and show, And Autumn, in his leafless bowers, Is waiting for the Winter's snow. I said to Earth, so cold and gray, "An emblem of myself thou art." "Not so," the Earth did seem to say, "For Spring shall warm my frozen heart." I soothe my wintry sleep with dreams Of warmer sun and softer rain, And wait to hear the sound of streams And songs of merry birds again. But thou, from whom the Spring hath gone, For whom the flowers no longer blow, Who standest blighted and forlorn, Like Autumn waiting for the snow; No hope is thine of sunnier hours, Thy Winter shall no more depart; No Spring revive thy wasted flowers, Nor Summer warm thy frozen heart. 1849. ON RECEIVING AN EAGLE'S QUILL FROM LAKE SUPERIOR. All day the darkness and the cold Upon my heart have lain, Like shadows on the winter sky, Like frost upon the pane; But now my torpid fancy wakes, And, on thy Eagle's plume, Rides forth, like Sindbad on his bird, Or witch upon her broom! Below me roar the rocking pines, Before me spreads the lake Whose long and solemn-sounding waves Against the sunset break. I hear the wild Rice-Eater thresh The grain he has not sown; I see, with flashing scythe of fire, The prairie harvest mown! I hear the far-off voyager's horn; I see the Yankee's trail,-- His foot on every mountain-pass, On every stream his sail. By forest, lake, and waterfall, I see his pedler show; The mighty mingling with the mean, The lofty with the low. He's whittling by St. Mary's Falls, Upon his loaded wain; He's measuring o'er the Pictured Rocks, With eager eyes of gain. I hear the mattock in the mine, The axe-stroke in the dell, The clamor from the Indian lodge, The Jesuit chapel bell! I see the swarthy trappers come From Mississippi's springs; And war-chiefs with their painted brows, And crests of eagle wings. Behind the scared squaw's birch canoe, The steamer smokes and raves; And city lots are staked for sale Above old Indian graves. I hear the tread of pioneers Of nations yet to be; The first low wash of waves, where soon Shall roll a human sea. The rudiments of empire here Are plastic yet and warm; The chaos of a mighty world Is rounding into form! Each rude and jostling fragment soon Its fitting place shall find,-- The raw material of a State, Its muscle and its mind! And, westering still, the star which leads The New World in its train Has tipped with fire the icy spears Of many a mountain chain. The snowy cones of Oregon Are kindling on its way; And California's golden sands Gleam brighter in its ray! Then blessings on thy eagle quill, As, wandering far and wide, I thank thee for this twilight dream And Fancy's airy ride! Yet, welcomer than regal plumes, Which Western trappers find, Thy free and pleasant thoughts, chance sown, Like feathers on the wind. Thy symbol be the mountain-bird, Whose glistening quill I hold; Thy home the ample air of hope, And memory's sunset gold! In thee, let joy with duty join, And strength unite with love, The eagle's pinions folding round The warm heart of the dove! So, when in darkness sleeps the vale Where still the blind bird clings The sunshine of the upper sky Shall glitter on thy wings! 1849. APRIL. "The spring comes slowly up this way." Christabel. 'T is the noon of the spring-time, yet never a bird In the wind-shaken elm or the maple is heard; For green meadow-grasses wide levels of snow, And blowing of drifts where the crocus should blow; Where wind-flower and violet, amber and white, On south-sloping brooksides should smile in the light, O'er the cold winter-beds of their late-waking roots The frosty flake eddies, the ice-crystal shoots; And, longing for light, under wind-driven heaps, Round the boles of the pine-wood the ground-laurel creeps, Unkissed of the sunshine, unbaptized of showers, With buds scarcely swelled, which should burst into flowers We wait for thy coming, sweet wind of the south! For the touch of thy light wings, the kiss of thy mouth; For the yearly evangel thou bearest from God, Resurrection and life to the graves of the sod! Up our long river-valley, for days, have not ceased The wail and the shriek of the bitter northeast, Raw and chill, as if winnowed through ices and snow, All the way from the land of the wild Esquimau, Until all our dreams of the land of the blest, Like that red hunter's, turn to the sunny southwest. O soul of the spring-time, its light and its breath, Bring warmth to this coldness, bring life to this death; Renew the great miracle; let us behold The stone from the mouth of the sepulchre rolled, And Nature, like Lazarus, rise, as of old! Let our faith, which in darkness and coldness has lain, Revive with the warmth and the brightness again, And in blooming of flower and budding of tree The symbols and types of our destiny see; The life of the spring-time, the life of the whole, And, as sun to the sleeping earth, love to the soul! 1852. PICTURES I. Light, warmth, and sprouting greenness, and o'er all Blue, stainless, steel-bright ether, raining down Tranquillity upon the deep-hushed town, The freshening meadows, and the hillsides brown; Voice of the west-wind from the hills of pine, And the brimmed river from its distant fall, Low hum of bees, and joyous interlude Of bird-songs in the streamlet-skirting wood,-- Heralds and prophecies of sound and sight, Blessed forerunners of the warmth and light, Attendant angels to the house of prayer, With reverent footsteps keeping pace with mine,-- Once more, through God's great love, with you I share A morn of resurrection sweet and fair As that which saw, of old, in Palestine, Immortal Love uprising in fresh bloom From the dark night and winter of the tomb! 2d, 5th mo., 1852. II. White with its sun-bleached dust, the pathway winds Before me; dust is on the shrunken grass, And on the trees beneath whose boughs I pass; Frail screen against the Hunter of the sky, Who, glaring on me with his lidless eye, While mounting with his dog-star high and higher Ambushed in light intolerable, unbinds The burnished quiver of his shafts of fire. Between me and the hot fields of his South A tremulous glow, as from a furnace-mouth, Glimmers and swims before my dazzled sight, As if the burning arrows of his ire Broke as they fell, and shattered into light; Yet on my cheek I feel the western wind, And hear it telling to the orchard trees, And to the faint and flower-forsaken bees, Tales of fair meadows, green with constant streams, And mountains rising blue and cool behind, Where in moist dells the purple orchis gleams, And starred with white the virgin's bower is twined. So the o'erwearied pilgrim, as he fares Along life's summer waste, at times is fanned, Even at noontide, by the cool, sweet airs Of a serener and a holier land, Fresh as the morn, and as the dewfall bland. Breath of the blessed Heaven for which we pray, Blow from the eternal hills! make glad our earthly way! 8th mo., 1852. SUMMER BY THE LAKESIDE LAKE WINNIPESAUKEE. I. NOON. White clouds, whose shadows haunt the deep, Light mists, whose soft embraces keep The sunshine on the hills asleep! O isles of calm! O dark, still wood! And stiller skies that overbrood Your rest with deeper quietude! O shapes and hues, dim beckoning, through Yon mountain gaps, my longing view Beyond the purple and the blue, To stiller sea and greener land, And softer lights and airs more bland, And skies,--the hollow of God's hand! Transfused through you, O mountain friends! With mine your solemn spirit blends, And life no more hath separate ends. I read each misty mountain sign, I know the voice of wave and pine, And I am yours, and ye are mine. Life's burdens fall, its discords cease, I lapse into the glad release Of Nature's own exceeding peace. O welcome calm of heart and mind! As falls yon fir-tree's loosened rind To leave a tenderer growth behind, So fall the weary years away; A child again, my head I lay Upon the lap of this sweet day. This western wind hath Lethean powers, Yon noonday cloud nepenthe showers, The lake is white with lotus-flowers! Even Duty's voice is faint and low, And slumberous Conscience, waking slow, Forgets her blotted scroll to show. The Shadow which pursues us all, Whose ever-nearing steps appall, Whose voice we hear behind us call,-- That Shadow blends with mountain gray, It speaks but what the light waves say,-- Death walks apart from Fear to-day! Rocked on her breast, these pines and I Alike on Nature's love rely; And equal seems to live or die. Assured that He whose presence fills With light the spaces of these hills No evil to His creatures wills, The simple faith remains, that He Will do, whatever that may be, The best alike for man and tree. What mosses over one shall grow, What light and life the other know, Unanxious, leaving Him to show. II. EVENING. Yon mountain's side is black with night, While, broad-orhed, o'er its gleaming crown The moon, slow-rounding into sight, On the hushed inland sea looks down. How start to light the clustering isles, Each silver-hemmed! How sharply show The shadows of their rocky piles, And tree-tops in the wave below! How far and strange the mountains seem, Dim-looming through the pale, still light The vague, vast grouping of a dream, They stretch into the solemn night. Beneath, lake, wood, and peopled vale, Hushed by that presence grand and grave, Are silent, save the cricket's wail, And low response of leaf and wave. Fair scenes! whereto the Day and Night Make rival love, I leave ye soon, What time before the eastern light The pale ghost of the setting moon Shall hide behind yon rocky spines, And the young archer, Morn, shall break His arrows on the mountain pines, And, golden-sandalled, walk the lake! Farewell! around this smiling bay Gay-hearted Health, and Life in bloom, With lighter steps than mine, may stray In radiant summers yet to come. But none shall more regretful leave These waters and these hills than I Or, distant, fonder dream how eve Or dawn is painting wave and sky; How rising moons shine sad and mild On wooded isle and silvering bay; Or setting suns beyond the piled And purple mountains lead the day; Nor laughing girl, nor bearding boy, Nor full-pulsed manhood, lingering here, Shall add, to life's abounding joy, The charmed repose to suffering dear. Still waits kind Nature to impart Her choicest gifts to such as gain An entrance to her loving heart Through the sharp discipline of pain. Forever from the Hand that takes One blessing from us others fall; And, soon or late, our Father makes His perfect recompense to all! Oh, watched by Silence and the Night, And folded in the strong embrace Of the great mountains, with the light Of the sweet heavens upon thy face, Lake of the Northland! keep thy dower Of beauty still, and while above Thy solemn mountains speak of power, Be thou the mirror of God's love. 1853. THE FRUIT-GIFT. Last night, just as the tints of autumn's sky Of sunset faded from our hills and streams, I sat, vague listening, lapped in twilight dreams, To the leaf's rustle, and the cricket's cry. Then, like that basket, flush with summer fruit, Dropped by the angels at the Prophet's foot, Came, unannounced, a gift of clustered sweetness, Full-orbed, and glowing with the prisoned beams Of summery suns, and rounded to completeness By kisses of the south-wind and the dew. Thrilled with a glad surprise, methought I knew The pleasure of the homeward-turning Jew, When Eshcol's clusters on his shoulders lay, Dropping their sweetness on his desert way. I said, "This fruit beseems no world of sin. Its parent vine, rooted in Paradise, O'ercrept the wall, and never paid the price Of the great mischief,--an ambrosial tree, Eden's exotic, somehow smuggled in, To keep the thorns and thistles company." Perchance our frail, sad mother plucked in haste A single vine-slip as she passed the gate, Where the dread sword alternate paled and burned, And the stern angel, pitying her fate, Forgave the lovely trespasser, and turned Aside his face of fire; and thus the waste And fallen world hath yet its annual taste Of primal good, to prove of sin the cost, And show by one gleaned ear the mighty harvest lost. 1854. FLOWERS IN WINTER PAINTED UPON A PORTE LIVRE. How strange to greet, this frosty morn, In graceful counterfeit of flowers, These children of the meadows, born Of sunshine and of showers! How well the conscious wood retains The pictures of its flower-sown home, The lights and shades, the purple stains, And golden hues of bloom! It was a happy thought to bring To the dark season's frost and rime This painted memory of spring, This dream of summer-time. Our hearts are lighter for its sake, Our fancy's age renews its youth, And dim-remembered fictions take The guise of--present truth. A wizard of the Merrimac,-- So old ancestral legends say, Could call green leaf and blossom back To frosted stem and spray. The dry logs of the cottage wall, Beneath his touch, put out their leaves The clay-bound swallow, at his call, Played round the icy eaves. The settler saw his oaken flail Take bud, and bloom before his eyes; From frozen pools he saw the pale, Sweet summer lilies rise. To their old homes, by man profaned, Came the sad dryads, exiled long, And through their leafy tongues complained Of household use and wrong. The beechen platter sprouted wild, The pipkin wore its old-time green The cradle o'er the sleeping child Became a leafy screen. Haply our gentle friend hath met, While wandering in her sylvan quest, Haunting his native woodlands yet, That Druid of the West; And, while the dew on leaf and flower Glistened in moonlight clear and still, Learned the dusk wizard's spell of power, And caught his trick of skill. But welcome, be it new or old, The gift which makes the day more bright, And paints, upon the ground of cold And darkness, warmth and light. Without is neither gold nor green; Within, for birds, the birch-logs sing; Yet, summer-like, we sit between The autumn and the spring. The one, with bridal blush of rose, And sweetest breath of woodland balm, And one whose matron lips unclose In smiles of saintly calm. Fill soft and deep, O winter snow! The sweet azalea's oaken dells, And hide the bank where roses blow, And swing the azure bells! O'erlay the amber violet's leaves, The purple aster's brookside home, Guard all the flowers her pencil gives A life beyond their bloom. And she, when spring comes round again, By greening slope and singing flood Shall wander, seeking, not in vain, Her darlings of the wood. 1855. THE MAYFLOWERS The trailing arbutus, or mayflower, grows abundantly in the vicinity of Plymouth, and was the first flower that greeted the Pilgrims after their fearful winter. The name mayflower was familiar in England, as the application of it to the historic vessel shows, but it was applied by the English, and still is, to the hawthorn. Its use in New England in connection with _Epigma repens _dates from a very early day, some claiming that the first Pilgrims so used it, in affectionate memory of the vessel and its English flower association. Sad Mayflower! watched by winter stars, And nursed by winter gales, With petals of the sleeted spars, And leaves of frozen sails! What had she in those dreary hours, Within her ice-rimmed bay, In common with the wild-wood flowers, The first sweet smiles of May? Yet, "God be praised!" the Pilgrim said, Who saw the blossoms peer Above the brown leaves, dry and dead, "Behold our Mayflower here!" "God wills it: here our rest shall be, Our years of wandering o'er; For us the Mayflower of the sea Shall spread her sails no more." O sacred flowers of faith and hope, As sweetly now as then Ye bloom on many a birchen slope, In many a pine-dark glen. Behind the sea-wall's rugged length, Unchanged, your leaves unfold, Like love behind the manly strength Of the brave hearts of old. So live the fathers in their sons, Their sturdy faith be ours, And ours the love that overruns Its rocky strength with flowers! The Pilgrim's wild and wintry day Its shadow round us draws; The Mayflower of his stormy bay, Our Freedom's struggling cause. But warmer suns erelong shall bring To life the frozen sod; And through dead leaves of hope shall spring Afresh the flowers of God! 1856. THE LAST WALK IN AUTUMN. I. O'er the bare woods, whose outstretched hands Plead with the leaden heavens in vain, I see, beyond the valley lands, The sea's long level dim with rain. Around me all things, stark and dumb, Seem praying for the snows to come, And, for the summer bloom and greenness gone, With winter's sunset lights and dazzling morn atone. II. Along the river's summer walk, The withered tufts of asters nod; And trembles on its arid stalk The boar plume of the golden-rod. And on a ground of sombre fir, And azure-studded juniper, The silver birch its buds of purple shows, And scarlet berries tell where bloomed the sweet wild-rose! III. With mingled sound of horns and bells, A far-heard clang, the wild geese fly, Storm-sent, from Arctic moors and fells, Like a great arrow through the sky, Two dusky lines converged in one, Chasing the southward-flying sun; While the brave snow-bird and the hardy jay Call to them from the pines, as if to bid them stay. IV. I passed this way a year ago The wind blew south; the noon of day Was warm as June's; and save that snow Flecked the low mountains far away, And that the vernal-seeming breeze Mocked faded grass and leafless trees, I might have dreamed of summer as I lay, Watching the fallen leaves with the soft wind at play. V. Since then, the winter blasts have piled The white pagodas of the snow On these rough slopes, and, strong and wild, Yon river, in its overflow Of spring-time rain and sun, set free, Crashed with its ices to the sea; And over these gray fields, then green and gold, The summer corn has waved, the thunder's organ rolled. VI. Rich gift of God! A year of time What pomp of rise and shut of day, What hues wherewith our Northern clime Makes autumn's dropping woodlands gay, What airs outblown from ferny dells, And clover-bloom and sweetbrier smells, What songs of brooks and birds, what fruits and flowers, Green woods and moonlit snows, have in its round been ours! VII. I know not how, in other lands, The changing seasons come and go; What splendors fall on Syrian sands, What purple lights on Alpine snow! Nor how the pomp of sunrise waits On Venice at her watery gates; A dream alone to me is Arno's vale, And the Alhambra's halls are but a traveller's tale. VIII. Yet, on life's current, he who drifts Is one with him who rows or sails And he who wanders widest lifts No more of beauty's jealous veils Than he who from his doorway sees The miracle of flowers and trees, Feels the warm Orient in the noonday air, And from cloud minarets hears the sunset call to prayer! IX. The eye may well be glad that looks Where Pharpar's fountains rise and fall; But he who sees his native brooks Laugh in the sun, has seen them all. The marble palaces of Ind Rise round him in the snow and wind; From his lone sweetbrier Persian Hafiz smiles, And Rome's cathedral awe is in his woodland aisles. X. And thus it is my fancy blends The near at hand and far and rare; And while the same horizon bends Above the silver-sprinkled hair Which flashed the light of morning skies On childhood's wonder-lifted eyes, Within its round of sea and sky and field, Earth wheels with all her zones, the Kosmos stands revealed. XI. And thus the sick man on his bed, The toiler to his task-work bound, Behold their prison-walls outspread, Their clipped horizon widen round! While freedom-giving fancy waits, Like Peter's angel at the gates, The power is theirs to baffle care and pain, To bring the lost world back, and make it theirs again! XII. What lack of goodly company, When masters of the ancient lyre Obey my call, and trace for me Their words of mingled tears and fire! I talk with Bacon, grave and wise, I read the world with Pascal's eyes; And priest and sage, with solemn brows austere, And poets, garland-bound, the Lords of Thought, draw near. XIII. Methinks, O friend, I hear thee say, "In vain the human heart we mock; Bring living guests who love the day, Not ghosts who fly at crow of cock! The herbs we share with flesh and blood Are better than ambrosial food With laurelled shades." I grant it, nothing loath, But doubly blest is he who can partake of both. XIV. He who might Plato's banquet grace, Have I not seen before me sit, And watched his puritanic face, With more than Eastern wisdom lit? Shrewd mystic! who, upon the back Of his Poor Richard's Almanac, Writing the Sufi's song, the Gentoo's dream, Links Manu's age of thought to Fulton's age of steam! XV. Here too, of answering love secure, Have I not welcomed to my hearth The gentle pilgrim troubadour, Whose songs have girdled half the earth; Whose pages, like the magic mat Whereon the Eastern lover sat, Have borne me over Rhine-land's purple vines, And Nubia's tawny sands, and Phrygia's mountain pines! XVI. And he, who to the lettered wealth Of ages adds the lore unpriced, The wisdom and the moral health, The ethics of the school of Christ; The statesman to his holy trust, As the Athenian archon, just, Struck down, exiled like him for truth alone, Has he not graced my home with beauty all his own? XVII. What greetings smile, what farewells wave, What loved ones enter and depart! The good, the beautiful, the brave, The Heaven-lent treasures of the heart! How conscious seems the frozen sod And beechen slope whereon they trod The oak-leaves rustle, and the dry grass bends Beneath the shadowy feet of lost or absent friends. XVIII. Then ask not why to these bleak hills I cling, as clings the tufted moss, To bear the winter's lingering chills, The mocking spring's perpetual loss. I dream of lands where summer smiles, And soft winds blow from spicy isles, But scarce would Ceylon's breath of flowers be sweet, Could I not feel thy soil, New England, at my feet! XIX. At times I long for gentler skies, And bathe in dreams of softer air, But homesick tears would fill the eyes That saw the Cross without the Bear. The pine must whisper to the palm, The north-wind break the tropic calm; And with the dreamy languor of the Line, The North's keen virtue blend, and strength to beauty join. XX. Better to stem with heart and hand The roaring tide of life, than lie, Unmindful, on its flowery strand, Of God's occasions drifting by Better with naked nerve to bear The needles of this goading air, Than, in the lap of sensual ease, forego The godlike power to do, the godlike aim to know. XXI. Home of my heart! to me more fair Than gay Versailles or Windsor's halls, The painted, shingly town-house where The freeman's vote for Freedom falls! The simple roof where prayer is made, Than Gothic groin and colonnade; The living temple of the heart of man, Than Rome's sky-mocking vault, or many-spired Milan! XXII. More dear thy equal village schools, Where rich and poor the Bible read, Than classic halls where Priestcraft rules, And Learning wears the chains of Creed; Thy glad Thanksgiving, gathering in The scattered sheaves of home and kin, Than the mad license ushering Lenten pains, Or holidays of slaves who laugh and dance in chains. XXIII. And sweet homes nestle in these dales, And perch along these wooded swells; And, blest beyond Arcadian vales, They hear the sound of Sabbath bells! Here dwells no perfect man sublime, Nor woman winged before her time, But with the faults and follies of the race, Old home-bred virtues hold their not unhonored place. XXIV. Here manhood struggles for the sake Of mother, sister, daughter, wife, The graces and the loves which make The music of the march of life; And woman, in her daily round Of duty, walks on holy ground. No unpaid menial tills the soil, nor here Is the bad lesson learned at human rights to sneer. XXV. Then let the icy north-wind blow The trumpets of the coming storm, To arrowy sleet and blinding snow Yon slanting lines of rain transform. Young hearts shall hail the drifted cold, As gayly as I did of old; And I, who watch them through the frosty pane, Unenvious, live in them my boyhood o'er again. XXVI. And I will trust that He who heeds The life that hides in mead and wold, Who hangs yon alder's crimson beads, And stains these mosses green and gold, Will still, as He hath done, incline His gracious care to me and mine; Grant what we ask aright, from wrong debar, And, as the earth grows dark, make brighter every star! XXVII. I have not seen, I may not see, My hopes for man take form in fact, But God will give the victory In due time; in that faith I act. And lie who sees the future sure, The baffling present may endure, And bless, meanwhile, the unseen Hand that leads The heart's desires beyond the halting step of deeds. XXVIII. And thou, my song, I send thee forth, Where harsher songs of mine have flown; Go, find a place at home and hearth Where'er thy singer's name is known; Revive for him the kindly thought Of friends; and they who love him not, Touched by some strain of thine, perchance may take The hand he proffers all, and thank him for thy sake. 1857. THE FIRST FLOWERS For ages on our river borders, These tassels in their tawny bloom, And willowy studs of downy silver, Have prophesied of Spring to come. For ages have the unbound waters Smiled on them from their pebbly hem, And the clear carol of the robin And song of bluebird welcomed them. But never yet from smiling river, Or song of early bird, have they Been greeted with a gladder welcome Than whispers from my heart to-day. They break the spell of cold and darkness, The weary watch of sleepless pain; And from my heart, as from the river, The ice of winter melts again. Thanks, Mary! for this wild-wood token Of Freya's footsteps drawing near; Almost, as in the rune of Asgard, The growing of the grass I hear. It is as if the pine-trees called me From ceiled room and silent books, To see the dance of woodland shadows, And hear the song of April brooks! As in the old Teutonic ballad Of Odenwald live bird and tree, Together live in bloom and music, I blend in song thy flowers and thee. Earth's rocky tablets bear forever The dint of rain and small bird's track Who knows but that my idle verses May leave some trace by Merrimac! The bird that trod the mellow layers Of the young earth is sought in vain; The cloud is gone that wove the sandstone, From God's design, with threads of rain! So, when this fluid age we live in Shall stiffen round my careless rhyme, Who made the vagrant tracks may puzzle The savants of the coming time; And, following out their dim suggestions, Some idly-curious hand may draw My doubtful portraiture, as Cuvier Drew fish and bird from fin and claw. And maidens in the far-off twilights, Singing my words to breeze and stream, Shall wonder if the old-time Mary Were real, or the rhymer's dream! 1st 3d mo., 1857. THE OLD BURYING-GROUND. Our vales are sweet with fern and rose, Our hills are maple-crowned; But not from them our fathers chose The village burying-ground. The dreariest spot in all the land To Death they set apart; With scanty grace from Nature's hand, And none from that of Art. A winding wall of mossy stone, Frost-flung and broken, lines A lonesome acre thinly grown With grass and wandering vines. Without the wall a birch-tree shows Its drooped and tasselled head; Within, a stag-horned sumach grows, Fern-leafed, with spikes of red. There, sheep that graze the neighboring plain Like white ghosts come and go, The farm-horse drags his fetlock chain, The cow-bell tinkles slow. Low moans the river from its bed, The distant pines reply; Like mourners shrinking from the dead, They stand apart and sigh. Unshaded smites the summer sun, Unchecked the winter blast; The school-girl learns the place to shun, With glances backward cast. For thus our fathers testified, That he might read who ran, The emptiness of human pride, The nothingness of man. They dared not plant the grave with flowers, Nor dress the funeral sod, Where, with a love as deep as ours, They left their dead with God. The hard and thorny path they kept From beauty turned aside; Nor missed they over those who slept The grace to life denied. Yet still the wilding flowers would blow, The golden leaves would fall, The seasons come, the seasons go, And God be good to all. Above the graves the' blackberry hung In bloom and green its wreath, And harebells swung as if they rung The chimes of peace beneath. The beauty Nature loves to share, The gifts she hath for all, The common light, the common air, O'ercrept the graveyard's wall. It knew the glow of eventide, The sunrise and the noon, And glorified and sanctified It slept beneath the moon. With flowers or snow-flakes for its sod, Around the seasons ran, And evermore the love of God Rebuked the fear of man. We dwell with fears on either hand, Within a daily strife, And spectral problems waiting stand Before the gates of life. The doubts we vainly seek to solve, The truths we know, are one; The known and nameless stars revolve Around the Central Sun. And if we reap as we have sown, And take the dole we deal, The law of pain is love alone, The wounding is to heal. Unharmed from change to change we glide, We fall as in our dreams; The far-off terror at our side A smiling angel seems. Secure on God's all-tender heart Alike rest great and small; Why fear to lose our little part, When He is pledged for all? O fearful heart and troubled brain Take hope and strength from this,-- That Nature never hints in vain, Nor prophesies amiss. Her wild birds sing the same sweet stave, Her lights and airs are given Alike to playground and the grave; And over both is Heaven. 1858 THE PALM-TREE. Is it the palm, the cocoa-palm, On the Indian Sea, by the isles of balm? Or is it a ship in the breezeless calm? A ship whose keel is of palm beneath, Whose ribs of palm have a palm-bark sheath, And a rudder of palm it steereth with. Branches of palm are its spars and rails, Fibres of palm are its woven sails, And the rope is of palm that idly trails! What does the good ship bear so well? The cocoa-nut with its stony shell, And the milky sap of its inner cell. What are its jars, so smooth and fine, But hollowed nuts, filled with oil and wine, And the cabbage that ripens under the Line? Who smokes his nargileh, cool and calm? The master, whose cunning and skill could charm Cargo and ship from the bounteous palm. In the cabin he sits on a palm-mat soft, From a beaker of palm his drink is quaffed, And a palm-thatch shields from the sun aloft! His dress is woven of palmy strands, And he holds a palm-leaf scroll in his hands, Traced with the Prophet's wise commands! The turban folded about his head Was daintily wrought of the palm-leaf braid, And the fan that cools him of palm was made. Of threads of palm was the carpet spun Whereon he kneels when the day is done, And the foreheads of Islam are bowed as one! To him the palm is a gift divine, Wherein all uses of man combine,-- House, and raiment, and food, and wine! And, in the hour of his great release, His need of the palm shall only cease With the shroud wherein he lieth in peace. "Allah il Allah!" he sings his psalm, On the Indian Sea, by the isles of balm; "Thanks to Allah who gives the palm!" 1858. THE RIVER PATH. No bird-song floated down the hill, The tangled bank below was still; No rustle from the birchen stem, No ripple from the water's hem. The dusk of twilight round us grew, We felt the falling of the dew; For, from us, ere the day was done, The wooded hills shut out the sun. But on the river's farther side We saw the hill-tops glorified,-- A tender glow, exceeding fair, A dream of day without its glare. With us the damp, the chill, the gloom With them the sunset's rosy bloom; While dark, through willowy vistas seen, The river rolled in shade between. From out the darkness where we trod, We gazed upon those bills of God, Whose light seemed not of moon or sun. We spake not, but our thought was one. We paused, as if from that bright shore Beckoned our dear ones gone before; And stilled our beating hearts to hear The voices lost to mortal ear! Sudden our pathway turned from night; The hills swung open to the light; Through their green gates the sunshine showed, A long, slant splendor downward flowed. Down glade and glen and bank it rolled; It bridged the shaded stream with gold; And, borne on piers of mist, allied The shadowy with the sunlit side! "So," prayed we, "when our feet draw near The river dark, with mortal fear, "And the night cometh chill with dew, O Father! let Thy light break through! "So let the hills of doubt divide, So bridge with faith the sunless tide! "So let the eyes that fail on earth On Thy eternal hills look forth; "And in Thy beckoning angels know The dear ones whom we loved below!" 1880. 
9569	----	This eBook was produced by David Widger POEMS OF NATURE POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT RELIGIOUS POEMS BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER CONTENTS: MOUNTAIN PICTURES I. FRANCONIA FROM THE PEMIGEWASSET II. MONADNOCK FROM WACHUSET THE VANISHERS THE PAGEANT THE PRESSED GENTIAN A MYSTERY A SEA DREAM HAZEL BLOSSOMS SUNSET ON THE BEARCAMP THE SEEKING OF THE WATERFALL THE TRAILING ARBUTUS ST. MARTINS SUMMER STORM ON LAKE ASQUAM A SUMMER PILGRIMAGE SWEET FERN THE WOOD GIANT A DAY MOUNTAIN PICTURES. I. FRANCONIA FROM THE PEMIGEWASSET Once more, O Mountains of the North, unveil Your brows, and lay your cloudy mantles by And once more, ere the eyes that seek ye fail, Uplift against the blue walls of the sky Your mighty shapes, and let the sunshine weave Its golden net-work in your belting woods, Smile down in rainbows from your falling floods, And on your kingly brows at morn and eve Set crowns of fire! So shall my soul receive Haply the secret of your calm and strength, Your unforgotten beauty interfuse My common life, your glorious shapes and hues And sun-dropped splendors at my bidding come, Loom vast through dreams, and stretch in billowy length From the sea-level of my lowland home! They rise before me! Last night's thunder-gust Roared not in vain: for where its lightnings thrust Their tongues of fire, the great peaks seem so near, Burned clean of mist, so starkly bold and clear, I almost pause the wind in the pines to hear, The loose rock's fall, the steps of browsing deer. The clouds that shattered on yon slide-worn walls And splintered on the rocks their spears of rain Have set in play a thousand waterfalls, Making the dusk and silence of the woods Glad with the laughter of the chasing floods, And luminous with blown spray and silver gleams, While, in the vales below, the dry-lipped streams Sing to the freshened meadow-lands again. So, let me hope, the battle-storm that beats The land with hail and fire may pass away With its spent thunders at the break of day, Like last night's clouds, and leave, as it retreats, A greener earth and fairer sky behind, Blown crystal-clear by Freedom's Northern wind! II. MONADNOCK FROM WACHUSET. I would I were a painter, for the sake Of a sweet picture, and of her who led, A fitting guide, with reverential tread, Into that mountain mystery. First a lake Tinted with sunset; next the wavy lines Of far receding hills; and yet more far, Monadnock lifting from his night of pines His rosy forehead to the evening star. Beside us, purple-zoned, Wachuset laid His head against the West, whose warm light made His aureole; and o'er him, sharp and clear, Like a shaft of lightning in mid-launching stayed, A single level cloud-line, shone upon By the fierce glances of the sunken sun, Menaced the darkness with its golden spear! So twilight deepened round us. Still and black The great woods climbed the mountain at our back; And on their skirts, where yet the lingering day On the shorn greenness of the clearing lay, The brown old farm-house like a bird's-nest hung. With home-life sounds the desert air was stirred The bleat of sheep along the hill we heard, The bucket plashing in the cool, sweet well, The pasture-bars that clattered as they fell; Dogs barked, fowls fluttered, cattle lowed; the gate Of the barn-yard creaked beneath the merry weight Of sun-brown children, listening, while they swung, The welcome sound of supper-call to hear; And down the shadowy lane, in tinklings clear, The pastoral curfew of the cow-bell rung. Thus soothed and pleased, our backward path we took, Praising the farmer's home. He only spake, Looking into the sunset o'er the lake, Like one to whom the far-off is most near: "Yes, most folks think it has a pleasant look; I love it for my good old mother's sake, Who lived and died here in the peace of God!" The lesson of his words we pondered o'er, As silently we turned the eastern flank Of the mountain, where its shadow deepest sank, Doubling the night along our rugged road: We felt that man was more than his abode,-- The inward life than Nature's raiment more; And the warm sky, the sundown-tinted hill, The forest and the lake, seemed dwarfed and dim Before the saintly soul, whose human will Meekly in the Eternal footsteps trod, Making her homely toil and household ways An earthly echo of the song of praise Swelling from angel lips and harps of seraphim. 1862. THE VANISHERS. Sweetest of all childlike dreams In the simple Indian lore Still to me the legend seems Of the shapes who flit before. Flitting, passing, seen and gone, Never reached nor found at rest, Baffling search, but beckoning on To the Sunset of the Blest. From the clefts of mountain rocks, Through the dark of lowland firs, Flash the eyes and flow the locks Of the mystic Vanishers! And the fisher in his skiff, And the hunter on the moss, Hear their call from cape and cliff, See their hands the birch-leaves toss. Wistful, longing, through the green Twilight of the clustered pines, In their faces rarely seen Beauty more than mortal shines. Fringed with gold their mantles flow On the slopes of westering knolls; In the wind they whisper low Of the Sunset Land of Souls. Doubt who may, O friend of mine! Thou and I have seen them too; On before with beck and sign Still they glide, and we pursue. More than clouds of purple trail In the gold of setting day; More than gleams of wing or sail Beckon from the sea-mist gray. Glimpses of immortal youth, Gleams and glories seen and flown, Far-heard voices sweet with truth, Airs from viewless Eden blown; Beauty that eludes our grasp, Sweetness that transcends our taste, Loving hands we may not clasp, Shining feet that mock our haste; Gentle eyes we closed below, Tender voices heard once more, Smile and call us, as they go On and onward, still before. Guided thus, O friend of mine Let us walk our little way, Knowing by each beckoning sign That we are not quite astray. Chase we still, with baffled feet, Smiling eye and waving hand, Sought and seeker soon shall meet, Lost and found, in Sunset Land 1864. THE PAGEANT. A sound as if from bells of silver, Or elfin cymbals smitten clear, Through the frost-pictured panes I hear. A brightness which outshines the morning, A splendor brooking no delay, Beckons and tempts my feet away. I leave the trodden village highway For virgin snow-paths glimmering through A jewelled elm-tree avenue; Where, keen against the walls of sapphire, The gleaming tree-bolls, ice-embossed, Hold up their chandeliers of frost. I tread in Orient halls enchanted, I dream the Saga's dream of caves Gem-lit beneath the North Sea waves! I walk the land of Eldorado, I touch its mimic garden bowers, Its silver leaves and diamond flowers! The flora of the mystic mine-world Around me lifts on crystal stems The petals of its clustered gems! What miracle of weird transforming In this wild work of frost and light, This glimpse of glory infinite! This foregleam of the Holy City Like that to him of Patmos given, The white bride coming down from heaven! How flash the ranked and mail-clad alders, Through what sharp-glancing spears of reeds The brook its muffled water leads! Yon maple, like the bush of Horeb, Burns unconsumed: a white, cold fire Rays out from every grassy spire. Each slender rush and spike of mullein, Low laurel shrub and drooping fern, Transfigured, blaze where'er I turn. How yonder Ethiopian hemlock Crowned with his glistening circlet stands! What jewels light his swarthy hands! Here, where the forest opens southward, Between its hospitable pines, As through a door, the warm sun shines. The jewels loosen on the branches, And lightly, as the soft winds blow, Fall, tinkling, on the ice below. And through the clashing of their cymbals I hear the old familiar fall Of water down the rocky wall, Where, from its wintry prison breaking, In dark and silence hidden long, The brook repeats its summer song. One instant flashing in the sunshine, Keen as a sabre from its sheath, Then lost again the ice beneath. I hear the rabbit lightly leaping, The foolish screaming of the jay, The chopper's axe-stroke far away; The clamor of some neighboring barn-yard, The lazy cock's belated crow, Or cattle-tramp in crispy snow. And, as in some enchanted forest The lost knight hears his comrades sing, And, near at hand, their bridles ring,-- So welcome I these sounds and voices, These airs from far-off summer blown, This life that leaves me not alone. For the white glory overawes me; The crystal terror of the seer Of Chebar's vision blinds me here. Rebuke me not, O sapphire heaven! Thou stainless earth, lay not on me, Thy keen reproach of purity, If, in this August presence-chamber, I sigh for summer's leaf-green gloom And warm airs thick with odorous bloom! Let the strange frost-work sink and crumble, And let the loosened tree-boughs swing, Till all their bells of silver ring. Shine warmly down, thou sun of noontime, On this chill pageant, melt and move The winter's frozen heart with love. And, soft and low, thou wind south-blowing, Breathe through a veil of tenderest haze Thy prophecy of summer days. Come with thy green relief of promise, And to this dead, cold splendor bring The living jewels of the spring! 1869. THE PRESSED GENTIAN. The time of gifts has come again, And, on my northern window-pane, Outlined against the day's brief light, A Christmas token hangs in sight. The wayside travellers, as they pass, Mark the gray disk of clouded glass; And the dull blankness seems, perchance, Folly to their wise ignorance. They cannot from their outlook see The perfect grace it hath for me; For there the flower, whose fringes through The frosty breath of autumn blew, Turns from without its face of bloom To the warm tropic of my room, As fair as when beside its brook The hue of bending skies it took. So from the trodden ways of earth, Seem some sweet souls who veil their worth, And offer to the careless glance The clouding gray of circumstance. They blossom best where hearth-fires burn, To loving eyes alone they turn The flowers of inward grace, that hide Their beauty from the world outside. But deeper meanings come to me, My half-immortal flower, from thee! Man judges from a partial view, None ever yet his brother knew; The Eternal Eye that sees the whole May better read the darkened soul, And find, to outward sense denied, The flower upon its inmost side 1872. A MYSTERY. The river hemmed with leaning trees Wound through its meadows green; A low, blue line of mountains showed The open pines between. One sharp, tall peak above them all Clear into sunlight sprang I saw the river of my dreams, The mountains that I sang! No clue of memory led me on, But well the ways I knew; A feeling of familiar things With every footstep grew. Not otherwise above its crag Could lean the blasted pine; Not otherwise the maple hold Aloft its red ensign. So up the long and shorn foot-hills The mountain road should creep; So, green and low, the meadow fold Its red-haired kine asleep. The river wound as it should wind; Their place the mountains took; The white torn fringes of their clouds Wore no unwonted look. Yet ne'er before that river's rim Was pressed by feet of mine, Never before mine eyes had crossed That broken mountain line. A presence, strange at once and known, Walked with me as my guide; The skirts of some forgotten life Trailed noiseless at my side. Was it a dim-remembered dream? Or glimpse through ions old? The secret which the mountains kept The river never told. But from the vision ere it passed A tender hope I drew, And, pleasant as a dawn of spring, The thought within me grew, That love would temper every change, And soften all surprise, And, misty with the dreams of earth, The hills of Heaven arise. 1873. A SEA DREAM. We saw the slow tides go and come, The curving surf-lines lightly drawn, The gray rocks touched with tender bloom Beneath the fresh-blown rose of dawn. We saw in richer sunsets lost The sombre pomp of showery noons; And signalled spectral sails that crossed The weird, low light of rising moons. On stormy eves from cliff and head We saw the white spray tossed and spurned; While over all, in gold and red, Its face of fire the lighthouse turned. The rail-car brought its daily crowds, Half curious, half indifferent, Like passing sails or floating clouds, We saw them as they came and went. But, one calm morning, as we lay And watched the mirage-lifted wall Of coast, across the dreamy bay, And heard afar the curlew call, And nearer voices, wild or tame, Of airy flock and childish throng, Up from the water's edge there came Faint snatches of familiar song. Careless we heard the singer's choice Of old and common airs; at last The tender pathos of his voice In one low chanson held us fast. A song that mingled joy and pain, And memories old and sadly sweet; While, timing to its minor strain, The waves in lapsing cadence beat. . . . . . The waves are glad in breeze and sun; The rocks are fringed with foam; I walk once more a haunted shore, A stranger, yet at home, A land of dreams I roam. Is this the wind, the soft sea wind That stirred thy locks of brown? Are these the rocks whose mosses knew The trail of thy light gown, Where boy and girl sat down? I see the gray fort's broken wall, The boats that rock below; And, out at sea, the passing sails We saw so long ago Rose-red in morning's glow. The freshness of the early time On every breeze is blown; As glad the sea, as blue the sky,-- The change is ours alone; The saddest is my own. A stranger now, a world-worn man, Is he who bears my name; But thou, methinks, whose mortal life Immortal youth became, Art evermore the same. Thou art not here, thou art not there, Thy place I cannot see; I only know that where thou art The blessed angels be, And heaven is glad for thee. Forgive me if the evil years Have left on me their sign; Wash out, O soul so beautiful, The many stains of mine In tears of love divine! I could not look on thee and live, If thou wert by my side; The vision of a shining one, The white and heavenly bride, Is well to me denied. But turn to me thy dear girl-face Without the angel's crown, The wedded roses of thy lips, Thy loose hair rippling down In waves of golden brown. Look forth once more through space and time, And let thy sweet shade fall In tenderest grace of soul and form On memory's frescoed wall, A shadow, and yet all! Draw near, more near, forever dear! Where'er I rest or roam, Or in the city's crowded streets, Or by the blown sea foam, The thought of thee is home! . . . . . At breakfast hour the singer read The city news, with comment wise, Like one who felt the pulse of trade Beneath his finger fall and rise. His look, his air, his curt speech, told The man of action, not of books, To whom the corners made in gold And stocks were more than seaside nooks. Of life beneath the life confessed His song had hinted unawares; Of flowers in traffic's ledgers pressed, Of human hearts in bulls and bears. But eyes in vain were turned to watch That face so hard and shrewd and strong; And ears in vain grew sharp to catch The meaning of that morning song. In vain some sweet-voiced querist sought To sound him, leaving as she came; Her baited album only caught A common, unromantic name. No word betrayed the mystery fine, That trembled on the singer's tongue; He came and went, and left no sign Behind him save the song he sung. 1874. HAZEL BLOSSOMS. The summer warmth has left the sky, The summer songs have died away; And, withered, in the footpaths lie The fallen leaves, but yesterday With ruby and with topaz gay. The grass is browning on the hills; No pale, belated flowers recall The astral fringes of the rills, And drearily the dead vines fall, Frost-blackened, from the roadside wall. Yet through the gray and sombre wood, Against the dusk of fir and pine, Last of their floral sisterhood, The hazel's yellow blossoms shine, The tawny gold of Afric's mine! Small beauty hath my unsung flower, For spring to own or summer hail; But, in the season's saddest hour, To skies that weep and winds that wail Its glad surprisals never fail. O days grown cold! O life grown old No rose of June may bloom again; But, like the hazel's twisted gold, Through early frost and latter rain Shall hints of summer-time remain. And as within the hazel's bough A gift of mystic virtue dwells, That points to golden ores below, And in dry desert places tells Where flow unseen the cool, sweet wells, So, in the wise Diviner's hand, Be mine the hazel's grateful part To feel, beneath a thirsty land, The living waters thrill and start, The beating of the rivulet's heart! Sufficeth me the gift to light With latest bloom the dark, cold days; To call some hidden spring to sight That, in these dry and dusty ways, Shall sing its pleasant song of praise. O Love! the hazel-wand may fail, But thou canst lend the surer spell, That, passing over Baca's vale, Repeats the old-time miracle, And makes the desert-land a well. 1874. SUNSET ON THE BEARCAMP. A gold fringe on the purpling hem Of hills the river runs, As down its long, green valley falls The last of summer's suns. Along its tawny gravel-bed Broad-flowing, swift, and still, As if its meadow levels felt The hurry of the hill, Noiseless between its banks of green From curve to curve it slips; The drowsy maple-shadows rest Like fingers on its lips. A waif from Carroll's wildest hills, Unstoried and unknown; The ursine legend of its name Prowls on its banks alone. Yet flowers as fair its slopes adorn As ever Yarrow knew, Or, under rainy Irish skies, By Spenser's Mulla grew; And through the gaps of leaning trees Its mountain cradle shows The gold against the amethyst, The green against the rose. Touched by a light that hath no name, A glory never sung, Aloft on sky and mountain wall Are God's great pictures hung. How changed the summits vast and old! No longer granite-browed, They melt in rosy mist; the rock Is softer than the cloud; The valley holds its breath; no leaf Of all its elms is twirled The silence of eternity Seems falling on the world. The pause before the breaking seals Of mystery is this; Yon miracle-play of night and day Makes dumb its witnesses. What unseen altar crowns the hills That reach up stair on stair? What eyes look through, what white wings fan These purple veils of air? What Presence from the heavenly heights To those of earth stoops down? Not vainly Hellas dreamed of gods On Ida's snowy crown! Slow fades the vision of the sky, The golden water pales, And over all the valley-land A gray-winged vapor sails. I go the common way of all; The sunset fires will burn, The flowers will blow, the river flow, When I no more return. No whisper from the mountain pine Nor lapsing stream shall tell The stranger, treading where I tread, Of him who loved them well. But beauty seen is never lost, God's colors all are fast; The glory of this sunset heaven Into my soul has passed, A sense of gladness unconfined To mortal date or clime; As the soul liveth, it shall live Beyond the years of time. Beside the mystic asphodels Shall bloom the home-born flowers, And new horizons flush and glow With sunset hues of ours. Farewell! these smiling hills must wear Too soon their wintry frown, And snow-cold winds from off them shake The maple's red leaves down. But I shall see a summer sun Still setting broad and low; The mountain slopes shall blush and bloom, The golden water flow. A lover's claim is mine on all I see to have and hold,-- The rose-light of perpetual hills, And sunsets never cold! 1876 THE SEEKING OF THE WATERFALL. They left their home of summer ease Beneath the lowland's sheltering trees, To seek, by ways unknown to all, The promise of the waterfall. Some vague, faint rumor to the vale Had crept--perchance a hunter's tale-- Of its wild mirth of waters lost On the dark woods through which it tossed. Somewhere it laughed and sang; somewhere Whirled in mad dance its misty hair; But who had raised its veil, or seen The rainbow skirts of that Undine? They sought it where the mountain brook Its swift way to the valley took; Along the rugged slope they clomb, Their guide a thread of sound and foam. Height after height they slowly won; The fiery javelins of the sun Smote the bare ledge; the tangled shade With rock and vine their steps delayed. But, through leaf-openings, now and then They saw the cheerful homes of men, And the great mountains with their wall Of misty purple girdling all. The leaves through which the glad winds blew Shared. the wild dance the waters knew; And where the shadows deepest fell The wood-thrush rang his silver bell. Fringing the stream, at every turn Swung low the waving fronds of fern; From stony cleft and mossy sod Pale asters sprang, and golden-rod. And still the water sang the sweet, Glad song that stirred its gliding feet, And found in rock and root the keys Of its beguiling melodies. Beyond, above, its signals flew Of tossing foam the birch-trees through; Now seen, now lost, but baffling still The weary seekers' slackening will. Each called to each: "Lo here! Lo there! Its white scarf flutters in the air!" They climbed anew; the vision fled, To beckon higher overhead. So toiled they up the mountain-slope With faint and ever fainter hope; With faint and fainter voice the brook Still bade them listen, pause, and look. Meanwhile below the day was done; Above the tall peaks saw the sun Sink, beam-shorn, to its misty set Behind the hills of violet. "Here ends our quest!" the seekers cried, "The brook and rumor both have lied! The phantom of a waterfall Has led us at its beck and call." But one, with years grown wiser, said "So, always baffled, not misled, We follow where before us runs The vision of the shining ones. "Not where they seem their signals fly, Their voices while we listen die; We cannot keep, however fleet, The quick time of their winged feet. "From youth to age unresting stray These kindly mockers in our way; Yet lead they not, the baffling elves, To something better than themselves? "Here, though unreached the goal we sought, Its own reward our toil has brought: The winding water's sounding rush, The long note of the hermit thrush, "The turquoise lakes, the glimpse of pond And river track, and, vast, beyond Broad meadows belted round with pines, The grand uplift of mountain lines! "What matter though we seek with pain The garden of the gods in vain, If lured thereby we climb to greet Some wayside blossom Eden-sweet? "To seek is better than to gain, The fond hope dies as we attain; Life's fairest things are those which seem, The best is that of which we dream. "Then let us trust our waterfall Still flashes down its rocky wall, With rainbow crescent curved across Its sunlit spray from moss to moss. "And we, forgetful of our pain, In thought shall seek it oft again; Shall see this aster-blossomed sod, This sunshine of the golden-rod, "And haply gain, through parting boughs, Grand glimpses of great mountain brows Cloud-turbaned, and the sharp steel sheen Of lakes deep set in valleys green. "So failure wins; the consequence Of loss becomes its recompense; And evermore the end shall tell The unreached ideal guided well. "Our sweet illusions only die Fulfilling love's sure prophecy; And every wish for better things An undreamed beauty nearer brings. "For fate is servitor of love; Desire and hope and longing prove The secret of immortal youth, And Nature cheats us into truth. "O kind allurers, wisely sent, Beguiling with benign intent, Still move us, through divine unrest, To seek the loveliest and the best! "Go with us when our souls go free, And, in the clear, white light to be, Add unto Heaven's beatitude The old delight of seeking good!" 1878. THE TRAILING ARBUTUS I wandered lonely where the pine-trees made Against the bitter East their barricade, And, guided by its sweet Perfume, I found, within a narrow dell, The trailing spring flower tinted like a shell Amid dry leaves and mosses at my feet. From under dead boughs, for whose loss the pines Moaned ceaseless overhead, the blossoming vines Lifted their glad surprise, While yet the bluebird smoothed in leafless trees His feathers ruffled by the chill sea-breeze, And snow-drifts lingered under April skies. As, pausing, o'er the lonely flower I bent, I thought of lives thus lowly, clogged and pent, Which yet find room, Through care and cumber, coldness and decay, To lend a sweetness to the ungenial day And make the sad earth happier for their bloom. 1879. ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER. This name in some parts of Europe is given to the season we call Indian Summer, in honor of the good St. Martin. The title of the poem was suggested by the fact that the day it refers to was the exact date of that set apart to the Saint, the 11th of November. Though flowers have perished at the touch Of Frost, the early comer, I hail the season loved so much, The good St. Martin's summer. O gracious morn, with rose-red dawn, And thin moon curving o'er it! The old year's darling, latest born, More loved than all before it! How flamed the sunrise through the pines! How stretched the birchen shadows, Braiding in long, wind-wavered lines The westward sloping meadows! The sweet day, opening as a flower Unfolds its petals tender, Renews for us at noontide's hour The summer's tempered splendor. The birds are hushed; alone the wind, That through the woodland searches, The red-oak's lingering leaves can find, And yellow plumes of larches. But still the balsam-breathing pine Invites no thought of sorrow, No hint of loss from air like wine The earth's content can borrow. The summer and the winter here Midway a truce are holding, A soft, consenting atmosphere Their tents of peace enfolding. The silent woods, the lonely hills, Rise solemn in their gladness; The quiet that the valley fills Is scarcely joy or sadness. How strange! The autumn yesterday In winter's grasp seemed dying; On whirling winds from skies of gray The early snow was flying. And now, while over Nature's mood There steals a soft relenting, I will not mar the present good, Forecasting or lamenting. My autumn time and Nature's hold A dreamy tryst together, And, both grown old, about us fold The golden-tissued weather. I lean my heart against the day To feel its bland caressing; I will not let it pass away Before it leaves its blessing. God's angels come not as of old The Syrian shepherds knew them; In reddening dawns, in sunset gold, And warm noon lights I view them. Nor need there is, in times like this When heaven to earth draws nearer, Of wing or song as witnesses To make their presence clearer. O stream of life, whose swifter flow Is of the end forewarning, Methinks thy sundown afterglow Seems less of night than morning! Old cares grow light; aside I lay The doubts and fears that troubled; The quiet of the happy day Within my soul is doubled. That clouds must veil this fair sunshine Not less a joy I find it; Nor less yon warm horizon line That winter lurks behind it. The mystery of the untried days I close my eyes from reading; His will be done whose darkest ways To light and life are leading! Less drear the winter night shall be, If memory cheer and hearten Its heavy hours with thoughts of thee, Sweet summer of St. Martin! 1880. STORM ON LAKE ASQUAM. A cloud, like that the old-time Hebrew saw On Carmel prophesying rain, began To lift itself o'er wooded Cardigan, Growing and blackening. Suddenly, a flaw Of chill wind menaced; then a strong blast beat Down the long valley's murmuring pines, and woke The noon-dream of the sleeping lake, and broke Its smooth steel mirror at the mountains' feet. Thunderous and vast, a fire-veined darkness swept Over the rough pine-bearded Asquam range; A wraith of tempest, wonderful and strange, From peak to peak the cloudy giant stepped. One moment, as if challenging the storm, Chocorua's tall, defiant sentinel Looked from his watch-tower; then the shadow fell, And the wild rain-drift blotted out his form. And over all the still unhidden sun, Weaving its light through slant-blown veils of rain, Smiled on the trouble, as hope smiles on pain; And, when the tumult and the strife were done, With one foot on the lake and one on land, Framing within his crescent's tinted streak A far-off picture of the Melvin peak, Spent broken clouds the rainbow's angel spanned. 1882. A SUMMER PILGRIMAGE. To kneel before some saintly shrine, To breathe the health of airs divine, Or bathe where sacred rivers flow, The cowled and turbaned pilgrims go. I too, a palmer, take, as they With staff and scallop-shell, my way To feel, from burdening cares and ills, The strong uplifting of the hills. The years are many since, at first, For dreamed-of wonders all athirst, I saw on Winnipesaukee fall The shadow of the mountain wall. Ah! where are they who sailed with me The beautiful island-studded sea? And am I he whose keen surprise Flashed out from such unclouded eyes? Still, when the sun of summer burns, My longing for the hills returns; And northward, leaving at my back The warm vale of the Merrimac, I go to meet the winds of morn, Blown down the hill-gaps, mountain-born, Breathe scent of pines, and satisfy The hunger of a lowland eye. Again I see the day decline Along a ridged horizon line; Touching the hill-tops, as a nun Her beaded rosary, sinks the sun. One lake lies golden, which shall soon Be silver in the rising moon; And one, the crimson of the skies And mountain purple multiplies. With the untroubled quiet blends The distance-softened voice of friends; The girl's light laugh no discord brings To the low song the pine-tree sings; And, not unwelcome, comes the hail Of boyhood from his nearing sail. The human presence breaks no spell, And sunset still is miracle! Calm as the hour, methinks I feel A sense of worship o'er me steal; Not that of satyr-charming Pan, No cult of Nature shaming man, Not Beauty's self, but that which lives And shines through all the veils it weaves,-- Soul of the mountain, lake, and wood, Their witness to the Eternal Good! And if, by fond illusion, here The earth to heaven seems drawing near, And yon outlying range invites To other and serener heights, Scarce hid behind its topmost swell, The shining Mounts Delectable A dream may hint of truth no less Than the sharp light of wakefulness. As through her vale of incense smoke. Of old the spell-rapt priestess spoke, More than her heathen oracle, May not this trance of sunset tell That Nature's forms of loveliness Their heavenly archetypes confess, Fashioned like Israel's ark alone From patterns in the Mount made known? A holier beauty overbroods These fair and faint similitudes; Yet not unblest is he who sees Shadows of God's realities, And knows beyond this masquerade Of shape and color, light and shade, And dawn and set, and wax and wane, Eternal verities remain. O gems of sapphire, granite set! O hills that charmed horizons fret I know how fair your morns can break, In rosy light on isle and lake; How over wooded slopes can run The noonday play of cloud and sun, And evening droop her oriflamme Of gold and red in still Asquam. The summer moons may round again, And careless feet these hills profane; These sunsets waste on vacant eyes The lavish splendor of the skies; Fashion and folly, misplaced here, Sigh for their natural atmosphere, And travelled pride the outlook scorn Of lesser heights than Matterhorn. But let me dream that hill and sky Of unseen beauty prophesy; And in these tinted lakes behold The trailing of the raiment fold Of that which, still eluding gaze, Allures to upward-tending ways, Whose footprints make, wherever found, Our common earth a holy ground. 1883. SWEET FERN. The subtle power in perfume found Nor priest nor sibyl vainly learned; On Grecian shrine or Aztec mound No censer idly burned. That power the old-time worships knew, The Corybantes' frenzied dance, The Pythian priestess swooning through The wonderland of trance. And Nature holds, in wood and field, Her thousand sunlit censers still; To spells of flower and shrub we yield Against or with our will. I climbed a hill path strange and new With slow feet, pausing at each turn; A sudden waft of west wind blew The breath of the sweet fern. That fragrance from my vision swept The alien landscape; in its stead, Up fairer hills of youth I stepped, As light of heart as tread. I saw my boyhood's lakelet shine Once more through rifts of woodland shade; I knew my river's winding line By morning mist betrayed. With me June's freshness, lapsing brook, Murmurs of leaf and bee, the call Of birds, and one in voice and look In keeping with them all. A fern beside the way we went She plucked, and, smiling, held it up, While from her hand the wild, sweet scent I drank as from a cup. O potent witchery of smell! The dust-dry leaves to life return, And she who plucked them owns the spell And lifts her ghostly fern. Or sense or spirit? Who shall say What touch the chord of memory thrills? It passed, and left the August day Ablaze on lonely hills. THE WOOD GIANT From Alton Bay to Sandwich Dome, From Mad to Saco river, For patriarchs of the primal wood We sought with vain endeavor. And then we said: "The giants old Are lost beyond retrieval; This pygmy growth the axe has spared Is not the wood primeval. "Look where we will o'er vale and hill, How idle are our searches For broad-girthed maples, wide-limbed oaks, Centennial pines and birches. "Their tortured limbs the axe and saw Have changed to beams and trestles; They rest in walls, they float on seas, They rot in sunken vessels. "This shorn and wasted mountain land Of underbrush and boulder,-- Who thinks to see its full-grown tree Must live a century older." At last to us a woodland path, To open sunset leading, Revealed the Anakim of pines Our wildest wish exceeding. Alone, the level sun before; Below, the lake's green islands; Beyond, in misty distance dim, The rugged Northern Highlands. Dark Titan on his Sunset Hill Of time and change defiant How dwarfed the common woodland seemed, Before the old-time giant! What marvel that, in simpler days Of the world's early childhood, Men crowned with garlands, gifts, and praise Such monarchs of the wild-wood? That Tyrian maids with flower and song Danced through the hill grove's spaces, And hoary-bearded Druids found In woods their holy places? With somewhat of that Pagan awe With Christian reverence blending, We saw our pine-tree's mighty arms Above our heads extending. We heard his needles' mystic rune, Now rising, and now dying, As erst Dodona's priestess heard The oak leaves prophesying. Was it the half-unconscious moan Of one apart and mateless, The weariness of unshared power, The loneliness of greatness? O dawns and sunsets, lend to him Your beauty and your wonder! Blithe sparrow, sing thy summer song His solemn shadow under! Play lightly on his slender keys, O wind of summer, waking For hills like these the sound of seas On far-off beaches breaking, And let the eagle and the crow Find shelter in his branches, When winds shake down his winter snow In silver avalanches. The brave are braver for their cheer, The strongest need assurance, The sigh of longing makes not less The lesson of endurance. 1885. A DAY. Talk not of sad November, when a day Of warm, glad sunshine fills the sky of noon, And a wind, borrowed from some morn of June, Stirs the brown grasses and the leafless spray. On the unfrosted pool the pillared pines Lay their long shafts of shadow: the small rill, Singing a pleasant song of summer still, A line of silver, down the hill-slope shines. Hushed the bird-voices and the hum of bees, In the thin grass the crickets pipe no more; But still the squirrel hoards his winter store, And drops his nut-shells from the shag-bark trees. Softly the dark green hemlocks whisper: high Above, the spires of yellowing larches show, Where the woodpecker and home-loving crow And jay and nut-hatch winter's threat defy. O gracious beauty, ever new and old! O sights and sounds of nature, doubly dear When the low sunshine warns the closing year Of snow-blown fields and waves of Arctic cold! Close to my heart I fold each lovely thing The sweet day yields; and, not disconsolate, With the calm patience of the woods I wait For leaf and blossom when God gives us Spring! 29th, Eleventh Month, 1886. 
9570	----	This eBook was produced by David Widger POEMS OF NATURE POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT RELIGIOUS POEMS BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER CONTENTS: POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT: MEMORIES RAPHAEL EGO THE PUMPKIN FORGIVENESS TO MY SISTER MY THANKS REMEMBRANCE MY NAMESAKE A MEMORY MY DREAM THE BAREFOOT BOY MY PSALM THE WAITING POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT MEMORIES A beautiful and happy girl, With step as light as summer air, Eyes glad with smiles, and brow of pearl, Shadowed by many a careless curl Of unconfined and flowing hair; A seeming child in everything, Save thoughtful brow and ripening charms, As Nature wears the smile of Spring When sinking into Summer's arms. A mind rejoicing in the light Which melted through its graceful bower, Leaf after leaf, dew-moist and bright, And stainless in its holy white, Unfolding like a morning flower A heart, which, like a fine-toned lute, With every breath of feeling woke, And, even when the tongue was mute, From eye and lip in music spoke. How thrills once more the lengthening chain Of memory, at the thought of thee! Old hopes which long in dust have lain Old dreams, come thronging back again, And boyhood lives again in me; I feel its glow upon my cheek, Its fulness of the heart is mine, As when I leaned to hear thee speak, Or raised my doubtful eye to thine. I hear again thy low replies, I feel thy arm within my own, And timidly again uprise The fringed lids of hazel eyes, With soft brown tresses overblown. Ah! memories of sweet summer eves, Of moonlit wave and willowy way, Of stars and flowers, and dewy leaves, And smiles and tones more dear than they! Ere this, thy quiet eye hath smiled My picture of thy youth to see, When, half a woman, half a child, Thy very artlessness beguiled, And folly's self seemed wise in thee; I too can smile, when o'er that hour The lights of memory backward stream, Yet feel the while that manhood's power Is vainer than my boyhood's dream. Years have passed on, and left their trace, Of graver care and deeper thought; And unto me the calm, cold face Of manhood, and to thee the grace Of woman's pensive beauty brought. More wide, perchance, for blame than praise, The school-boy's humble name has flown; Thine, in the green and quiet ways Of unobtrusive goodness known. And wider yet in thought and deed Diverge our pathways, one in youth; Thine the Genevan's sternest creed, While answers to my spirit's need The Derby dalesman's simple truth. For thee, the priestly rite and prayer, And holy day, and solemn psalm; For me, the silent reverence where My brethren gather, slow and calm. Yet hath thy spirit left on me An impress Time has worn not out, And something of myself in thee, A shadow from the past, I see, Lingering, even yet, thy way about; Not wholly can the heart unlearn That lesson of its better hours, Not yet has Time's dull footstep worn To common dust that path of flowers. Thus, while at times before our eyes The shadows melt, and fall apart, And, smiling through them, round us lies The warm light of our morning skies,-- The Indian Summer of the heart! In secret sympathies of mind, In founts of feeling which retain Their pure, fresh flow, we yet may find Our early dreams not wholly vain 1841. RAPHAEL. Suggested by the portrait of Raphael, at the age of fifteen. I shall not soon forget that sight The glow of Autumn's westering day, A hazy warmth, a dreamy light, On Raphael's picture lay. It was a simple print I saw, The fair face of a musing boy; Yet, while I gazed, a sense of awe Seemed blending with my joy. A simple print,--the graceful flow Of boyhood's soft and wavy hair, And fresh young lip and cheek, and brow Unmarked and clear, were there. Yet through its sweet and calm repose I saw the inward spirit shine; It was as if before me rose The white veil of a shrine. As if, as Gothland's sage has told, The hidden life, the man within, Dissevered from its frame and mould, By mortal eye were seen. Was it the lifting of that eye, The waving of that pictured hand? Loose as a cloud-wreath on the sky, I saw the walls expand. The narrow room had vanished,--space, Broad, luminous, remained alone, Through which all hues and shapes of grace And beauty looked or shone. Around the mighty master came The marvels which his pencil wrought, Those miracles of power whose fame Is wide as human thought. There drooped thy more than mortal face, O Mother, beautiful and mild Enfolding in one dear embrace Thy Saviour and thy Child! The rapt brow of the Desert John; The awful glory of that day When all the Father's brightness shone Through manhood's veil of clay. And, midst gray prophet forms, and wild Dark visions of the days of old, How sweetly woman's beauty smiled Through locks of brown and gold! There Fornarina's fair young face Once more upon her lover shone, Whose model of an angel's grace He borrowed from her own. Slow passed that vision from my view, But not the lesson which it taught; The soft, calm shadows which it threw Still rested on my thought: The truth, that painter, bard, and sage, Even in Earth's cold and changeful clime, Plant for their deathless heritage The fruits and flowers of time. We shape ourselves the joy or fear Of which the coming life is made, And fill our Future's atmosphere With sunshine or with shade. The tissue of the Life to be We weave with colors all our own, And in the field of Destiny We reap as we have sown. Still shall the soul around it call The shadows which it gathered here, And, painted on the eternal wall, The Past shall reappear. Think ye the notes of holy song On Milton's tuneful ear have died? Think ye that Raphael's angel throng Has vanished from his side? Oh no!--We live our life again; Or warmly touched, or coldly dim, The pictures of the Past remain,--- Man's works shall follow him! 1842. EGO. WRITTEN IN THE ALBUM OF A FRIEND. On page of thine I cannot trace The cold and heartless commonplace, A statue's fixed and marble grace. For ever as these lines I penned, Still with the thought of thee will blend That of some loved and common friend, Who in life's desert track has made His pilgrim tent with mine, or strayed Beneath the same remembered shade. And hence my pen unfettered moves In freedom which the heart approves, The negligence which friendship loves. And wilt thou prize my poor gift less For simple air and rustic dress, And sign of haste and carelessness? Oh, more than specious counterfeit Of sentiment or studied wit, A heart like thine should value it. Yet half I fear my gift will be Unto thy book, if not to thee, Of more than doubtful courtesy. A banished name from Fashion's sphere, A lay unheard of Beauty's ear, Forbid, disowned,--what do they here? Upon my ear not all in vain Came the sad captive's clanking chain, The groaning from his bed of pain. And sadder still, I saw the woe Which only wounded spirits know When Pride's strong footsteps o'er them go. Spurned not alone in walks abroad, But from the temples of the Lord Thrust out apart, like things abhorred. Deep as I felt, and stern and strong, In words which Prudence smothered long, My soul spoke out against the wrong; Not mine alone the task to speak Of comfort to the poor and weak, And dry the tear on Sorrow's cheek; But, mingled in the conflict warm, To pour the fiery breath of storm Through the harsh trumpet of Reform; To brave Opinion's settled frown, From ermined robe and saintly gown, While wrestling reverenced Error down. Founts gushed beside my pilgrim way, Cool shadows on the greensward lay, Flowers swung upon the bending spray. And, broad and bright, on either hand, Stretched the green slopes of Fairy-land, With Hope's eternal sunbow spanned; Whence voices called me like the flow, Which on the listener's ear will grow, Of forest streamlets soft and low. And gentle eyes, which still retain Their picture on the heart and brain, Smiled, beckoning from that path of pain. In vain! nor dream, nor rest, nor pause Remain for him who round him draws The battered mail of Freedom's cause. From youthful hopes, from each green spot Of young Romance, and gentle Thought, Where storm and tumult enter not; From each fair altar, where belong The offerings Love requires of Song In homage to her bright-eyed throng; With soul and strength, with heart and hand, I turned to Freedom's struggling band, To the sad Helots of our land. What marvel then that Fame should turn Her notes of praise to those of scorn; Her gifts reclaimed, her smiles withdrawn? What matters it? a few years more, Life's surge so restless heretofore Shall break upon the unknown shore! In that far land shall disappear The shadows which we follow here, The mist-wreaths of our atmosphere! Before no work of mortal hand, Of human will or strength expand The pearl gates of the Better Land; Alone in that great love which gave Life to the sleeper of the grave, Resteth the power to seek and save. Yet, if the spirit gazing through The vista of the past can view One deed to Heaven and virtue true; If through the wreck of wasted powers, Of garlands wreathed from Folly's bowers, Of idle aims and misspent hours, The eye can note one sacred spot By Pride and Self profaned not, A green place in the waste of thought, Where deed or word hath rendered less The sum of human wretchedness, And Gratitude looks forth to bless; The simple burst of tenderest feeling From sad hearts worn by evil-dealing, For blessing on the hand of healing; Better than Glory's pomp will be That green and blessed spot to me, A palm-shade in Eternity! Something of Time which may invite The purified and spiritual sight To rest on with a calm delight. And when the summer winds shall sweep With their light wings my place of sleep, And mosses round my headstone creep; If still, as Freedom's rallying sign, Upon the young heart's altars shine The very fires they caught from mine; If words my lips once uttered still, In the calm faith and steadfast will Of other hearts, their work fulfil; Perchance with joy the soul may learn These tokens, and its eye discern The fires which on those altars burn; A marvellous joy that even then, The spirit hath its life again, In the strong hearts of mortal men. Take, lady, then, the gift I bring, No gay and graceful offering, No flower-smile of the laughing spring. Midst the green buds of Youth's fresh May, With Fancy's leaf-enwoven bay, My sad and sombre gift I lay. And if it deepens in thy mind A sense of suffering human-kind,-- The outcast and the spirit-blind; Oppressed and spoiled on every side, By Prejudice, and Scorn, and Pride, Life's common courtesies denied; Sad mothers mourning o'er their trust, Children by want and misery nursed, Tasting life's bitter cup at first; If to their strong appeals which come From fireless hearth, and crowded room, And the close alley's noisome gloom,-- Though dark the hands upraised to thee In mute beseeching agony, Thou lend'st thy woman's sympathy; Not vainly on thy gentle shrine, Where Love, and Mirth, and Friendship twine Their varied gifts, I offer mine. 1843. THE PUMPKIN. Oh, greenly and fair in the lands of the sun, The vines of the gourd and the rich melon run, And the rock and the tree and the cottage enfold, With broad leaves all greenness and blossoms all gold, Like that which o'er Nineveh's prophet once grew, While he waited to know that his warning was true, And longed for the storm-cloud, and listened in vain For the rush of the whirlwind and red fire-rain. On the banks of the Xenil the dark Spanish maiden Comes up with the fruit of the tangled vine laden; And the Creole of Cuba laughs out to behold Through orange-leaves shining the broad spheres of gold; Yet with dearer delight from his home in the North, On the fields of his harvest the Yankee looks forth, Where crook-necks are coiling and yellow fruit shines, And the sun of September melts down on his vines. Ah! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and from West, From North and from South come the pilgrim and guest, When the gray-haired New-Englander sees round his board The old broken links of affection restored, When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more, And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before, What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye? What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie? Oh, fruit loved of boyhood! the old days recalling, When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling! When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin, Glaring out through the dark with a candle within! When we laughed round the corn-heap, with hearts all in tune, Our chair a broad pumpkin,--our lantern the moon, Telling tales of the fairy who travelled like steam, In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two rats for her team Then thanks for thy present! none sweeter or better E'er smoked from an oven or circled a platter! Fairer hands never wrought at a pastry more fine, Brighter eyes never watched o'er its baking, than thine! And the prayer, which my mouth is too full to express, Swells my heart that thy shadow may never be less, That the days of thy lot may be lengthened below, And the fame of thy worth like a pumpkin-vine grow, And thy life be as sweet, and its last sunset sky Golden-tinted and fair as thy own Pumpkin pie! 1844. FORGIVENESS. My heart was heavy, for its trust had been Abused, its kindness answered with foul wrong; So, turning gloomily from my fellow-men, One summer Sabbath day I strolled among The green mounds of the village burial-place; Where, pondering how all human love and hate Find one sad level; and how, soon or late, Wronged and wrongdoer, each with meekened face, And cold hands folded over a still heart, Pass the green threshold of our common grave, Whither all footsteps tend, whence none depart, Awed for myself, and pitying my race, Our common sorrow, like a nighty wave, Swept all my pride away, and trembling I forgave! 1846. TO MY SISTER, WITH A COPY OF "THE SUPERNATURALISM OF NEW ENGLAND." The work referred to was a series of papers under this title, contributed to the Democratic Review and afterward collected into a volume, in which I noted some of the superstitions and folklore prevalent in New England. The volume has not been kept in print, but most of its contents are distributed in my Literary Recreations and Miscellanies. Dear Sister! while the wise and sage Turn coldly from my playful page, And count it strange that ripened age Should stoop to boyhood's folly; I know that thou wilt judge aright Of all which makes the heart more light, Or lends one star-gleam to the night Of clouded Melancholy. Away with weary cares and themes! Swing wide the moonlit gate of dreams! Leave free once more the land which teems With wonders and romances Where thou, with clear discerning eyes, Shalt rightly read the truth which lies Beneath the quaintly masking guise Of wild and wizard fancies. Lo! once again our feet we set On still green wood-paths, twilight wet, By lonely brooks, whose waters fret The roots of spectral beeches; Again the hearth-fire glimmers o'er Home's whitewashed wall and painted floor, And young eyes widening to the lore Of faery-folks and witches. Dear heart! the legend is not vain Which lights that holy hearth again, And calling back from care and pain, And death's funereal sadness, Draws round its old familiar blaze The clustering groups of happier days, And lends to sober manhood's gaze A glimpse of childish gladness. And, knowing how my life hath been A weary work of tongue and pen, A long, harsh strife with strong-willed men, Thou wilt not chide my turning To con, at times, an idle rhyme, To pluck a flower from childhood's clime, Or listen, at Life's noonday chime, For the sweet bells of Morning! 1847. MY THANKS, ACCOMPANYING MANUSCRIPTS PRESENTED TO A FRIEND. 'T is said that in the Holy Land The angels of the place have blessed The pilgrim's bed of desert sand, Like Jacob's stone of rest. That down the hush of Syrian skies Some sweet-voiced saint at twilight sings The song whose holy symphonies Are beat by unseen wings; Till starting from his sandy bed, The wayworn wanderer looks to see The halo of an angel's head Shine through the tamarisk-tree. So through the shadows of my way Thy smile hath fallen soft and clear, So at the weary close of day Hath seemed thy voice of cheer. That pilgrim pressing to his goal May pause not for the vision's sake, Yet all fair things within his soul The thought of it shall wake: The graceful palm-tree by the well, Seen on the far horizon's rim; The dark eyes of the fleet gazelle, Bent timidly on him; Each pictured saint, whose golden hair Streams sunlike through the convent's gloom; Pale shrines of martyrs young and fair, And loving Mary's tomb; And thus each tint or shade which falls, From sunset cloud or waving tree, Along my pilgrim path, recalls The pleasant thought of thee. Of one in sun and shade the same, In weal and woe my steady friend, Whatever by that holy name The angels comprehend. Not blind to faults and follies, thou Hast never failed the good to see, Nor judged by one unseemly bough The upward-struggling tree. These light leaves at thy feet I lay,-- Poor common thoughts on common things, Which time is shaking, day by day, Like feathers from his wings; Chance shootings from a frail life-tree, To nurturing care but little known, Their good was partly learned of thee, Their folly is my own. That tree still clasps the kindly mould, Its leaves still drink the twilight dew, And weaving its pale green with gold, Still shines the sunlight through. There still the morning zephyrs play, And there at times the spring bird sings, And mossy trunk and fading spray Are flowered with glossy wings. Yet, even in genial sun and rain, Root, branch, and leaflet fail and fade; The wanderer on its lonely plain Erelong shall miss its shade. O friend beloved, whose curious skill Keeps bright the last year's leaves and flowers, With warm, glad, summer thoughts to fill The cold, dark, winter hours Pressed on thy heart, the leaves I bring May well defy the wintry cold, Until, in Heaven's eternal spring, Life's fairer ones unfold. 1847. REMEMBRANCE WITH COPIES OF THE AUTHOR'S WRITINGS. Friend of mine! whose lot was cast With me in the distant past; Where, like shadows flitting fast, Fact and fancy, thought and theme, Word and work, begin to seem Like a half-remembered dream! Touched by change have all things been, Yet I think of thee as when We had speech of lip and pen. For the calm thy kindness lent To a path of discontent, Rough with trial and dissent; Gentle words where such were few, Softening blame where blame was true, Praising where small praise was due; For a waking dream made good, For an ideal understood, For thy Christian womanhood; For thy marvellous gift to cull From our common life and dull Whatsoe'er is beautiful; Thoughts and fancies, Hybla's bees Dropping sweetness; true heart's-ease Of congenial sympathies;-- Still for these I own my debt; Memory, with her eyelids wet, Fain would thank thee even yet! And as one who scatters flowers Where the Queen of May's sweet hours Sits, o'ertwined with blossomed bowers, In superfluous zeal bestowing Gifts where gifts are overflowing, So I pay the debt I'm owing. To thy full thoughts, gay or sad, Sunny-hued or sober clad, Something of my own I add; Well assured that thou wilt take Even the offering which I make Kindly for the giver's sake. 1851. MY NAMESAKE. Addressed to Francis Greenleaf Allison of Burlington, New Jersey. You scarcely need my tardy thanks, Who, self-rewarded, nurse and tend-- A green leaf on your own Green Banks-- The memory of your friend. For me, no wreath, bloom-woven, hides The sobered brow and lessening hair For aught I know, the myrtled sides Of Helicon are bare. Their scallop-shells so many bring The fabled founts of song to try, They've drained, for aught I know, the spring Of Aganippe dry. Ah well!--The wreath the Muses braid Proves often Folly's cap and bell; Methinks, my ample beaver's shade May serve my turn as well. Let Love's and Friendship's tender debt Be paid by those I love in life. Why should the unborn critic whet For me his scalping-knife? Why should the stranger peer and pry One's vacant house of life about, And drag for curious ear and eye His faults and follies out?-- Why stuff, for fools to gaze upon, With chaff of words, the garb he wore, As corn-husks when the ear is gone Are rustled all the more? Let kindly Silence close again, The picture vanish from the eye, And on the dim and misty main Let the small ripple die. Yet not the less I own your claim To grateful thanks, dear friends of mine. Hang, if it please you so, my name Upon your household line. Let Fame from brazen lips blow wide Her chosen names, I envy none A mother's love, a father's pride, Shall keep alive my own! Still shall that name as now recall The young leaf wet with morning dew, The glory where the sunbeams fall The breezy woodlands through. That name shall be a household word, A spell to waken smile or sigh; In many an evening prayer be heard And cradle lullaby. And thou, dear child, in riper days When asked the reason of thy name, Shalt answer: One 't were vain to praise Or censure bore the same. "Some blamed him, some believed him good, The truth lay doubtless 'twixt the two; He reconciled as best he could Old faith and fancies new. "In him the grave and playful mixed, And wisdom held with folly truce, And Nature compromised betwixt Good fellow and recluse. "He loved his friends, forgave his foes; And, if his words were harsh at times, He spared his fellow-men,--his blows Fell only on their crimes. "He loved the good and wise, but found His human heart to all akin Who met him on the common ground Of suffering and of sin. "Whate'er his neighbors might endure Of pain or grief his own became; For all the ills he could not cure He held himself to blame. "His good was mainly an intent, His evil not of forethought done; The work he wrought was rarely meant Or finished as begun. "Ill served his tides of feeling strong To turn the common mills of use; And, over restless wings of song, His birthright garb hung loose! "His eye was beauty's powerless slave, And his the ear which discord pains; Few guessed beneath his aspect grave What passions strove in chains. "He had his share of care and pain, No holiday was life to him; Still in the heirloom cup we drain The bitter drop will swim. "Yet Heaven was kind, and here a bird And there a flower beguiled his way; And, cool, in summer noons, he heard The fountains plash and play. "On all his sad or restless moods The patient peace of Nature stole; The quiet of the fields and woods Sank deep into his soul. "He worshipped as his fathers did, And kept the faith of childish days, And, howsoe'er he strayed or slid, He loved the good old ways. "The simple tastes, the kindly traits, The tranquil air, and gentle speech, The silence of the soul that waits For more than man to teach. "The cant of party, school, and sect, Provoked at times his honest scorn, And Folly, in its gray respect, He tossed on satire's horn. "But still his heart was full of awe And reverence for all sacred things; And, brooding over form and law,' He saw the Spirit's wings! "Life's mystery wrapt him like a cloud; He heard far voices mock his own, The sweep of wings unseen, the loud, Long roll of waves unknown. "The arrows of his straining sight Fell quenched in darkness; priest and sage, Like lost guides calling left and right, Perplexed his doubtful age. "Like childhood, listening for the sound Of its dropped pebbles in the well, All vainly down the dark profound His brief-lined plummet fell. "So, scattering flowers with pious pains On old beliefs, of later creeds, Which claimed a place in Truth's domains, He asked the title-deeds. "He saw the old-time's groves and shrines In the long distance fair and dim; And heard, like sound of far-off pines, The century-mellowed hymn! "He dared not mock the Dervish whirl, The Brahmin's rite, the Lama's spell; God knew the heart; Devotion's pearl Might sanctify the shell. "While others trod the altar stairs He faltered like the publican; And, while they praised as saints, his prayers Were those of sinful man. "For, awed by Sinai's Mount of Law, The trembling faith alone sufficed, That, through its cloud and flame, he saw The sweet, sad face of Christ! "And listening, with his forehead bowed, Heard the Divine compassion fill The pauses of the trump and cloud With whispers small and still. "The words he spake, the thoughts he penned, Are mortal as his hand and brain, But, if they served the Master's end, He has not lived in vain!" Heaven make thee better than thy name, Child of my friends!--For thee I crave What riches never bought, nor fame To mortal longing gave. I pray the prayer of Plato old: God make thee beautiful within, And let thine eyes the good behold In everything save sin! Imagination held in check To serve, not rule, thy poised mind; Thy Reason, at the frown or beck Of Conscience, loose or bind. No dreamer thou, but real all,-- Strong manhood crowning vigorous youth; Life made by duty epical And rhythmic with the truth. So shall that life the fruitage yield Which trees of healing only give, And green-leafed in the Eternal field Of God, forever live! 1853. A MEMORY Here, while the loom of Winter weaves The shroud of flowers and fountains, I think of thee and summer eves Among the Northern mountains. When thunder tolled the twilight's close, And winds the lake were rude on, And thou wert singing, _Ca' the Yowes_, The bonny yowes of Cluden! When, close and closer, hushing breath, Our circle narrowed round thee, And smiles and tears made up the wreath Wherewith our silence crowned thee; And, strangers all, we felt the ties Of sisters and of brothers; Ah! whose of all those kindly eyes Now smile upon another's? The sport of Time, who still apart The waifs of life is flinging; Oh, nevermore shall heart to heart Draw nearer for that singing! Yet when the panes are frosty-starred, And twilight's fire is gleaming, I hear the songs of Scotland's bard Sound softly through my dreaming! A song that lends to winter snows The glow of summer weather,-- Again I hear thee ca' the yowes To Cluden's hills of heather 1854. MY DREAM. In my dream, methought I trod, Yesternight, a mountain road; Narrow as Al Sirat's span, High as eagle's flight, it ran. Overhead, a roof of cloud With its weight of thunder bowed; Underneath, to left and right, Blankness and abysmal night. Here and there a wild-flower blushed, Now and then a bird-song gushed; Now and then, through rifts of shade, Stars shone out, and sunbeams played. But the goodly company, Walking in that path with me, One by one the brink o'erslid, One by one the darkness hid. Some with wailing and lament, Some with cheerful courage went; But, of all who smiled or mourned, Never one to us returned. Anxiously, with eye and ear, Questioning that shadow drear, Never hand in token stirred, Never answering voice I heard! Steeper, darker!--lo! I felt From my feet the pathway melt. Swallowed by the black despair, And the hungry jaws of air, Past the stony-throated caves, Strangled by the wash of waves, Past the splintered crags, I sank On a green and flowery bank,-- Soft as fall of thistle-down, Lightly as a cloud is blown, Soothingly as childhood pressed To the bosom of its rest. Of the sharp-horned rocks instead, Green the grassy meadows spread, Bright with waters singing by Trees that propped a golden sky. Painless, trustful, sorrow-free, Old lost faces welcomed me, With whose sweetness of content Still expectant hope was blent. Waking while the dawning gray Slowly brightened into day, Pondering that vision fled, Thus unto myself I said:-- "Steep and hung with clouds of strife Is our narrow path of life; And our death the dreaded fall Through the dark, awaiting all. "So, with painful steps we climb Up the dizzy ways of time, Ever in the shadow shed By the forecast of our dread. "Dread of mystery solved alone, Of the untried and unknown; Yet the end thereof may seem Like the falling of my dream. "And this heart-consuming care, All our fears of here or there, Change and absence, loss and death, Prove but simple lack of faith." Thou, O Most Compassionate! Who didst stoop to our estate, Drinking of the cup we drain, Treading in our path of pain,-- Through the doubt and mystery, Grant to us thy steps to see, And the grace to draw from thence Larger hope and confidence. Show thy vacant tomb, and let, As of old, the angels sit, Whispering, by its open door "Fear not! He hath gone before!" 1855. THE BAREFOOT BOY. Blessings on thee, little man, Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan With thy turned-up pantaloons, And thy merry whistled tunes; With thy red lip, redder still Kissed by strawberries on the hill; With the sunshine on thy face, Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace; From my heart I give thee joy,-- I was once a barefoot boy! Prince thou art,--the grown-up man Only is republican. Let the million-dollared ride! Barefoot, trudging at his side, Thou hast more than he can buy In the reach of ear and eye,-- Outward sunshine, inward joy Blessings on thee, barefoot boy! Oh for boyhood's painless play, Sleep that wakes in laughing day, Health that mocks the doctor's rules, Knowledge never learned of schools, Of the wild bee's morning chase, Of the wild-flower's time and place, Flight of fowl and habitude Of the tenants of the wood; How the tortoise bears his shell, How the woodchuck digs his cell, And the ground-mole sinks his well; How the robin feeds her young, How the oriole's nest is hung; Where the whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries grow, Where the ground-nut trails its vine, Where the wood-grape's clusters shine; Of the black wasp's cunning way, Mason of his walls of clay, And the architectural plans Of gray hornet artisans! For, eschewing books and tasks, Nature answers all he asks, Hand in hand with her he walks, Face to face with her he talks, Part and parcel of her joy,-- Blessings on the barefoot boy! Oh for boyhood's time of June, Crowding years in one brief moon, When all things I heard or saw, Me, their master, waited for. I was rich in flowers and trees, Humming-birds and honey-bees; For my sport the squirrel played, Plied the snouted mole his spade; For my taste the blackberry cone Purpled over hedge and stone; Laughed the brook for my delight Through the day and through the night, Whispering at the garden wall, Talked with me from fall to fall; Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond, Mine the walnut slopes beyond, Mine, on bending orchard trees, Apples of Hesperides! Still as my horizon grew, Larger grew my riches too; All the world I saw or knew Seemed a complex Chinese toy, Fashioned for a barefoot boy! Oh for festal dainties spread, Like my bowl of milk and bread; Pewter spoon and bowl of wood, On the door-stone, gray and rude! O'er me, like a regal tent, Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent, Purple-curtained, fringed with gold, Looped in many a wind-swung fold; While for music came the play Of the pied frogs' orchestra; And, to light the noisy choir, Lit the fly his lamp of fire. I was monarch: pomp and joy Waited on the barefoot boy! Cheerily, then, my little man, Live and laugh, as boyhood can Though the flinty slopes be hard, Stubble-speared the new-mown sward, Every morn shall lead thee through Fresh baptisms of the dew; Every evening from thy feet Shall the cool wind kiss the heat All too soon these feet must hide In the prison cells of pride, Lose the freedom of the sod, Like a colt's for work be shod, Made to tread the mills of toil, Up and down in ceaseless moil Happy if their track be found Never on forbidden ground; Happy if they sink not in Quick and treacherous sands of sin. Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy, Ere it passes, barefoot boy! 1855. MY PSALM. I mourn no more my vanished years Beneath a tender rain, An April rain of smiles and tears, My heart is young again. The west-winds blow, and, singing low, I hear the glad streams run; The windows of my soul I throw Wide open to the sun. No longer forward nor behind I look in hope or fear; But, grateful, take the good I find, The best of now and here. I plough no more a desert land, To harvest weed and tare; The manna dropping from God's hand Rebukes my painful care. I break my pilgrim staff, I lay Aside the toiling oar; The angel sought so far away I welcome at my door. The airs of spring may never play Among the ripening corn, Nor freshness of the flowers of May Blow through the autumn morn. Yet shall the blue-eyed gentian look Through fringed lids to heaven, And the pale aster in the brook Shall see its image given;-- The woods shall wear their robes of praise, The south-wind softly sigh, And sweet, calm days in golden haze Melt down the amber sky. Not less shall manly deed and word Rebuke an age of wrong; The graven flowers that wreathe the sword Make not the blade less strong. But smiting hands shall learn to heal,-- To build as to destroy; Nor less my heart for others feel That I the more enjoy. All as God wills, who wisely heeds To give or to withhold, And knoweth more of all my needs Than all my prayers have told. Enough that blessings undeserved Have marked my erring track; That wheresoe'er my feet have swerved, His chastening turned me back; That more and more a Providence Of love is understood, Making the springs of time and sense Sweet with eternal good;-- That death seems but a covered way Which opens into light, Wherein no blinded child can stray Beyond the Father's sight; That care and trial seem at last, Through Memory's sunset air, Like mountain-ranges overpast, In purple distance fair; That all the jarring notes of life Seem blending in a psalm, And all the angles of its strife Slow rounding into calm. And so the shadows fall apart, And so the west-winds play; And all the windows of my heart I open to the day. 1859. THE WAITING. I wait and watch: before my eyes Methinks the night grows thin and gray; I wait and watch the eastern skies To see the golden spears uprise Beneath the oriflamme of day! Like one whose limbs are bound in trance I hear the day-sounds swell and grow, And see across the twilight glance, Troop after troop, in swift advance, The shining ones with plumes of snow! I know the errand of their feet, I know what mighty work is theirs; I can but lift up hands unmeet, The threshing-floors of God to beat, And speed them with unworthy prayers. I will not dream in vain despair The steps of progress wait for me The puny leverage of a hair The planet's impulse well may spare, A drop of dew the tided sea. The loss, if loss there be, is mine, And yet not mine if understood; For one shall grasp and one resign, One drink life's rue, and one its wine, And God shall make the balance good. Oh power to do! Oh baffled will! Oh prayer and action! ye are one. Who may not strive, may yet fulfil The harder task of standing still, And good but wished with God is done! 1862. 
9571	----	This eBook was produced by David Widger POEMS OF NATURE POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT RELIGIOUS POEMS BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER CONTENTS: SNOW-BOUND MY TRIUMPH IN SCHOOL-DAYS MY BIRTHDAY RED RIDING-HOOD RESPONSE AT EVENTIDE VOYAGE OF THE JETTIE MY TRUST A NAME GREETING CONTENTS AN AUTOGRAPH ABRAM MORRISON A LEGACY SNOW-BOUND. A WINTER IDYL. TO THE MEMORY OF THE HOUSEHOLD IT DESCRIBES, THIS POEM IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. The inmates of the family at the Whittier homestead who are referred to in the poem were my father, mother, my brother and two sisters, and my uncle and aunt both unmarried. In addition, there was the district school-master who boarded with us. The "not unfeared, half-welcome guest" was Harriet Livermore, daughter of Judge Livermore, of New Hampshire, a young woman of fine natural ability, enthusiastic, eccentric, with slight control over her violent temper, which sometimes made her religious profession doubtful. She was equally ready to exhort in school-house prayer-meetings and dance in a Washington ball-room, while her father was a member of Congress. She early embraced the doctrine of the Second Advent, and felt it her duty to proclaim the Lord's speedy coming. With this message she crossed the Atlantic and spent the greater part of a long life in travelling over Europe and Asia. She lived some time with Lady Hester Stanhope, a woman as fantastic and mentally strained as herself, on the slope of Mt. Lebanon, but finally quarrelled with her in regard to two white horses with red marks on their backs which suggested the idea of saddles, on which her titled hostess expected to ride into Jerusalem with the Lord. A friend of mine found her, when quite an old woman, wandering in Syria with a tribe of Arabs, who with the Oriental notion that madness is inspiration, accepted her as their prophetess and leader. At the time referred to in Snow-Bound she was boarding at the Rocks Village about two miles from us. In my boyhood, in our lonely farm-house, we had scanty sources of information; few books and only a small weekly newspaper. Our only annual was the Almanac. Under such circumstances story-telling was a necessary resource in the long winter evenings. My father when a young man had traversed the wilderness to Canada, and could tell us of his adventures with Indians and wild beasts, and of his sojourn in the French villages. My uncle was ready with his record of hunting and fishing and, it must be confessed, with stories which he at least half believed, of witchcraft and apparitions. My mother, who was born in the Indian-haunted region of Somersworth, New Hampshire, between Dover and Portsmouth, told us of the inroads of the savages, and the narrow escape of her ancestors. She described strange people who lived on the Piscataqua and Cocheco, among whom was Bantam the sorcerer. I have in my possession the wizard's "conjuring book," which he solemnly opened when consulted. It is a copy of Cornelius Agrippa's Magic printed in 1651, dedicated to Dr. Robert Child, who, like Michael Scott, had learned "the art of glammorie In Padua beyond the sea," and who is famous in the annals of Massachusetts, where he was at one time a resident, as the first man who dared petition the General Court for liberty of conscience. The full title of the book is Three Books of Occult Philosophy, by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Knight, Doctor of both Laws, Counsellor to Caesar's Sacred Majesty and Judge of the Prerogative Court. "As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so Good Spirits, which be Angels of Light, are augmented not only by the Divine light of the Sun, but also by our common Wood Fire: and as the Celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our Fire of Wood doth the same."--Cor. AGRIPPA, Occult Philosophy, Book I. ch. v. "Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the rivet and the heaven, And veils the farm-house at the garden's end. The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm." Emerson. The Snow Storm. The sun that brief December day Rose cheerless over hills of gray, And, darkly circled, gave at noon A sadder light than waning moon. Slow tracing down the thickening sky Its mute and ominous prophecy, A portent seeming less than threat, It sank from sight before it set. A chill no coat, however stout, Of homespun stuff could quite, shut out, A hard, dull bitterness of cold, That checked, mid-vein, the circling race Of life-blood in the sharpened face, The coming of the snow-storm told. The wind blew east; we heard the roar Of Ocean on his wintry shore, And felt the strong pulse throbbing there Beat with low rhythm our inland air. Meanwhile we did our nightly chores,-- Brought in the wood from out of doors, Littered the stalls, and from the mows Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows Heard the horse whinnying for his corn; And, sharply clashing horn on horn, Impatient down the stanchion rows The cattle shake their walnut bows; While, peering from his early perch Upon the scaffold's pole of birch, The cock his crested helmet bent And down his querulous challenge sent. Unwarmed by any sunset light The gray day darkened into night, A night made hoary with the swarm, And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, As zigzag, wavering to and fro, Crossed and recrossed the winged snow And ere the early bedtime came The white drift piled the window-frame, And through the glass the clothes-line posts Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. So all night long the storm roared on The morning broke without a sun; In tiny spherule traced with lines Of Nature's geometric signs, In starry flake, and pellicle, All day the hoary meteor fell; And, when the second morning shone, We looked upon a world unknown, On nothing we could call our own. Around the glistening wonder bent The blue walls of the firmament, No cloud above, no earth below,-- A universe of sky and snow The old familiar sights of ours Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood, Or garden-wall, or belt of wood; A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed, A fenceless drift what once was road; The bridle-post an old man sat With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat; The well-curb had a Chinese roof; And even the long sweep, high aloof, In its slant splendor, seemed to tell Of Pisa's leaning miracle. A prompt, decisive man, no breath Our father wasted: "Boys, a path!" Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy Count such a summons less than joy?) Our buskins on our feet we drew; With mittened hands, and caps drawn low, To guard our necks and ears from snow, We cut the solid whiteness through. And, where the drift was deepest, made A tunnel walled and overlaid With dazzling crystal: we had read Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave, And to our own his name we gave, With many a wish the luck were ours To test his lamp's supernal powers. We reached the barn with merry din, And roused the prisoned brutes within. The old horse thrust his long head out, And grave with wonder gazed about; The cock his lusty greeting said, And forth his speckled harem led; The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked, And mild reproach of hunger looked; The horned patriarch of the sheep, Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep, Shook his sage head with gesture mute, And emphasized with stamp of foot. All day the gusty north-wind bore The loosening drift its breath before; Low circling round its southern zone, The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone. No church-bell lent its Christian tone To the savage air, no social smoke Curled over woods of snow-hung oak. A solitude made more intense By dreary-voiced elements, The shrieking of the mindless wind, The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind, And on the glass the unmeaning beat Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet. Beyond the circle of our hearth No welcome sound of toil or mirth Unbound the spell, and testified Of human life and thought outside. We minded that the sharpest ear The buried brooklet could not hear, The music of whose liquid lip Had been to us companionship, And, in our lonely life, had grown To have an almost human tone. As night drew on, and, from the crest Of wooded knolls that ridged the west, The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank From sight beneath the smothering bank, We piled, with care, our nightly stack Of wood against the chimney-back,-- The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, And on its top the stout back-stick; The knotty forestick laid apart, And filled between with curious art The ragged brush; then, hovering near, We watched the first red blaze appear, Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, Until the old, rude-furnished room Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom; While radiant with a mimic flame Outside the sparkling drift became, And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free. The crane and pendent trammels showed, The Turks' heads on the andirons glowed; While childish fancy, prompt to tell The meaning of the miracle, Whispered the old rhyme: "_Under the tree, When fire outdoors burns merrily, There the witches are making tea_." The moon above the eastern wood Shone at its full; the hill-range stood Transfigured in the silver flood, Its blown snows flashing cold and keen, Dead white, save where some sharp ravine Took shadow, or the sombre green Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black Against the whiteness at their back. For such a world and such a night Most fitting that unwarming light, Which only seemed where'er it fell To make the coldness visible. Shut in from all the world without, We sat the clean-winged hearth about, Content to let the north-wind roar In baffled rage at pane and door, While the red logs before us beat The frost-line back with tropic heat; And ever, when a louder blast Shook beam and rafter as it passed, The merrier up its roaring draught The great throat of the chimney laughed; The house-dog on his paws outspread Laid to the fire his drowsy head, The cat's dark silhouette on the wall A couchant tiger's seemed to fall; And, for the winter fireside meet, Between the andirons' straddling feet, The mug of cider simmered slow, The apples sputtered in a row, And, close at hand, the basket stood With nuts from brown October's wood. What matter how the night behaved? What matter how the north-wind raved? Blow high, blow low, not all its snow Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow. O Time and Change!--with hair as gray As was my sire's that winter day, How strange it seems, with so much gone Of life and love, to still live on! Ah, brother! only I and thou Are left of all that circle now,-- The dear home faces whereupon That fitful firelight paled and shone. Henceforward, listen as we will, The voices of that hearth are still; Look where we may, the wide earth o'er Those lighted faces smile no more. We tread the paths their feet have worn, We sit beneath their orchard trees, We hear, like them, the hum of bees And rustle of the bladed corn; We turn the pages that they read, Their written words we linger o'er, But in the sun they cast no shade, No voice is heard, no sign is made, No step is on the conscious floor! Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust, (Since He who knows our need is just,) That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. Alas for him who never sees The stars shine through his cypress-trees Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, Nor looks to see the breaking day Across the mournful marbles play! Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, The truth to flesh and sense unknown, That Life is ever lord of Death, And Love can never lose its own! We sped the time with stories old, Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told, Or stammered from our school-book lore The Chief of Gambia's "golden shore." How often since, when all the land Was clay in Slavery's shaping hand, As if a far-blown trumpet stirred The languorous sin-sick air, I heard "_Does not the voice of reason cry, Claim the first right which Nature gave, From the red scourge of bondage fly, Nor deign to live a burdened slave_!" Our father rode again his ride On Memphremagog's wooded side; Sat down again to moose and samp In trapper's hut and Indian camp; Lived o'er the old idyllic ease Beneath St. Francois' hemlock-trees; Again for him the moonlight shone On Norman cap and bodiced zone; Again he heard the violin play Which led the village dance away, And mingled in its merry whirl The grandam and the laughing girl. Or, nearer home, our steps he led Where Salisbury's level marshes spread Mile-wide as flies the laden bee; Where merry mowers, hale and strong, Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along The low green prairies of the sea. We shared the fishing off Boar's Head, And round the rocky Isles of Shoals The hake-broil on the drift-wood coals; The chowder on the sand-beach made, Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot, With spoons of clam-shell from the pot. We heard the tales of witchcraft old, And dream and sign and marvel told To sleepy listeners as they lay Stretched idly on the salted hay, Adrift along the winding shores, When favoring breezes deigned to blow The square sail of the gundelow And idle lay the useless oars. Our mother, while she turned her wheel Or run the new-knit stocking-heel, Told how the Indian hordes came down At midnight on Cocheco town, And how her own great-uncle bore His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore. Recalling, in her fitting phrase, So rich and picturesque and free, (The common unrhymed poetry Of simple life and country ways,) The story of her early days,-- She made us welcome to her home; Old hearths grew wide to give us room; We stole with her a frightened look At the gray wizard's conjuring-book, The fame whereof went far and wide Through all the simple country side; We heard the hawks at twilight play, The boat-horn on Piscataqua, The loon's weird laughter far away; We fished her little trout-brook, knew What flowers in wood and meadow grew, What sunny hillsides autumn-brown She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down, Saw where in sheltered cove and bay The ducks' black squadron anchored lay, And heard the wild-geese calling loud Beneath the gray November cloud. Then, haply, with a look more grave, And soberer tone, some tale she gave From painful Sewell's ancient tome, Beloved in every Quaker home, Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom, Or Chalkley's Journal, old and quaint,-- Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint!-- Who, when the dreary calms prevailed, And water-butt and bread-cask failed, And cruel, hungry eyes pursued His portly presence mad for food, With dark hints muttered under breath Of casting lots for life or death, Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies, To be himself the sacrifice. Then, suddenly, as if to save The good man from his living grave, A ripple on the water grew, A school of porpoise flashed in view. "Take, eat," he said, "and be content; These fishes in my stead are sent By Him who gave the tangled ram To spare the child of Abraham." Our uncle, innocent of books, Was rich in lore of fields and brooks, The ancient teachers never dumb Of Nature's unhoused lyceum. In moons and tides and weather wise, He read the clouds as prophecies, And foul or fair could well divine, By many an occult hint and sign, Holding the cunning-warded keys To all the woodcraft mysteries; Himself to Nature's heart so near That all her voices in his ear Of beast or bird had meanings clear, Like Apollonius of old, Who knew the tales the sparrows told, Or Hermes who interpreted What the sage cranes of Nilus said; Content to live where life began; A simple, guileless, childlike man, Strong only on his native grounds, The little world of sights and sounds Whose girdle was the parish bounds, Whereof his fondly partial pride The common features magnified, As Surrey hills to mountains grew In White of Selborne's loving view,-- He told how teal and loon he shot, And how the eagle's eggs he got, The feats on pond and river done, The prodigies of rod and gun; Till, warming with the tales he told, Forgotten was the outside cold, The bitter wind unheeded blew, From ripening corn the pigeons flew, The partridge drummed I' the wood, the mink Went fishing down the river-brink. In fields with bean or clover gay, The woodchuck, like a hermit gray, Peered from the doorway of his cell; The muskrat plied the mason's trade, And tier by tier his mud-walls laid; And from the shagbark overhead The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell. Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of cheer And voice in dreams I see and hear,-- The sweetest woman ever Fate Perverse denied a household mate, Who, lonely, homeless, not the less Found peace in love's unselfishness, And welcome wheresoe'er she went, A calm and gracious element,-- Whose presence seemed the sweet income And womanly atmosphere of home,-- Called up her girlhood memories, The huskings and the apple-bees, The sleigh-rides and the summer sails, Weaving through all the poor details And homespun warp of circumstance A golden woof-thread of romance. For well she kept her genial mood And simple faith of maidenhood; Before her still a cloud-land lay, The mirage loomed across her way; The morning dew, that dries so soon With others, glistened at her noon; Through years of toil and soil and care, From glossy tress to thin gray hair, All unprofaned she held apart The virgin fancies of the heart. Be shame to him of woman born Who hath for such but thought of scorn. There, too, our elder sister plied Her evening task the stand beside; A full, rich nature, free to trust, Truthful and almost sternly just, Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act, And make her generous thought a fact, Keeping with many a light disguise The secret of self-sacrifice. O heart sore-tried! thou hast the best That Heaven itself could give thee,--rest, Rest from all bitter thoughts and things! How many a poor one's blessing went With thee beneath the low green tent Whose curtain never outward swings! As one who held herself a part Of all she saw, and let her heart Against the household bosom lean, Upon the motley-braided mat Our youngest and our dearest sat, Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes, Now bathed in the unfading green And holy peace of Paradise. Oh, looking from some heavenly hill, Or from the shade of saintly palms, Or silver reach of river calms, Do those large eyes behold me still? With me one little year ago:-- The chill weight of the winter snow For months upon her grave has lain; And now, when summer south-winds blow And brier and harebell bloom again, I tread the pleasant paths we trod, I see the violet-sprinkled sod Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak The hillside flowers she loved to seek, Yet following me where'er I went With dark eyes full of love's content. The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills The air with sweetness; all the hills Stretch green to June's unclouded sky; But still I wait with ear and eye For something gone which should be nigh, A loss in all familiar things, In flower that blooms, and bird that sings. And yet, dear heart' remembering thee, Am I not richer than of old? Safe in thy immortality, What change can reach the wealth I hold? What chance can mar the pearl and gold Thy love hath left in trust with me? And while in life's late afternoon, Where cool and long the shadows grow, I walk to meet the night that soon Shall shape and shadow overflow, I cannot feel that thou art far, Since near at need the angels are; And when the sunset gates unbar, Shall I not see thee waiting stand, And, white against the evening star, The welcome of thy beckoning hand? Brisk wielder of the birch and rule, The master of the district school Held at the fire his favored place, Its warm glow lit a laughing face Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared The uncertain prophecy of beard. He teased the mitten-blinded cat, Played cross-pins on my uncle's hat, Sang songs, and told us what befalls In classic Dartmouth's college halls. Born the wild Northern hills among, From whence his yeoman father wrung By patient toil subsistence scant, Not competence and yet not want, He early gained the power to pay His cheerful, self-reliant way; Could doff at ease his scholar's gown To peddle wares from town to town; Or through the long vacation's reach In lonely lowland districts teach, Where all the droll experience found At stranger hearths in boarding round, The moonlit skater's keen delight, The sleigh-drive through the frosty night, The rustic party, with its rough Accompaniment of blind-man's-buff, And whirling plate, and forfeits paid, His winter task a pastime made. Happy the snow-locked homes wherein He tuned his merry violin, Or played the athlete in the barn, Or held the good dame's winding-yarn, Or mirth-provoking versions told Of classic legends rare and old, Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome Had all the commonplace of home, And little seemed at best the odds 'Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods; Where Pindus-born Arachthus took The guise of any grist-mill brook, And dread Olympus at his will Became a huckleberry hill. A careless boy that night be seemed; But at his desk he had the look And air of one who wisely schemed, And hostage from the future took In trained thought and lore of book. Large-brained, clear-eyed, of such as he Shall Freedom's young apostles be, Who, following in War's bloody trail, Shall every lingering wrong assail; All chains from limb and spirit strike, Uplift the black and white alike; Scatter before their swift advance The darkness and the ignorance, The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth, Which nurtured Treason's monstrous growth, Made murder pastime, and the hell Of prison-torture possible; The cruel lie of caste refute, Old forms remould, and substitute For Slavery's lash the freeman's will, For blind routine, wise-handed skill; A school-house plant on every hill, Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence The quick wires of intelligence; Till North and South together brought Shall own the same electric thought, In peace a common flag salute, And, side by side in labor's free And unresentful rivalry, Harvest the fields wherein they fought. Another guest that winter night Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light. Unmarked by time, and yet not young, The honeyed music of her tongue And words of meekness scarcely told A nature passionate and bold, Strong, self-concentred, spurning guide, Its milder features dwarfed beside Her unbent will's majestic pride. She sat among us, at the best, A not unfeared, half-welcome guest, Rebuking with her cultured phrase Our homeliness of words and ways. A certain pard-like, treacherous grace Swayed the lithe limbs and dropped the lash, Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash; And under low brows, black with night, Rayed out at times a dangerous light; The sharp heat-lightnings of her face Presaging ill to him whom Fate Condemned to share her love or hate. A woman tropical, intense In thought and act, in soul and sense, She blended in a like degree The vixen and the devotee, Revealing with each freak or feint The temper of Petruchio's Kate, The raptures of Siena's saint. Her tapering hand and rounded wrist Had facile power to form a fist; The warm, dark languish of her eyes Was never safe from wrath's surprise. Brows saintly calm and lips devout Knew every change of scowl and pout; And the sweet voice had notes more high And shrill for social battle-cry. Since then what old cathedral town Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown, What convent-gate has held its lock Against the challenge of her knock! Through Smyrna's plague-hushed thoroughfares, Up sea-set Malta's rocky stairs, Gray olive slopes of hills that hem Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem, Or startling on her desert throne The crazy Queen of Lebanon s With claims fantastic as her own, Her tireless feet have held their way; And still, unrestful, bowed, and gray, She watches under Eastern skies, With hope each day renewed and fresh, The Lord's quick coming in the flesh, Whereof she dreams and prophesies! Where'er her troubled path may be, The Lord's sweet pity with her go! The outward wayward life we see, The hidden springs we may not know. Nor is it given us to discern What threads the fatal sisters spun, Through what ancestral years has run The sorrow with the woman born, What forged her cruel chain of moods, What set her feet in solitudes, And held the love within her mute, What mingled madness in the blood, A life-long discord and annoy, Water of tears with oil of joy, And hid within the folded bud Perversities of flower and fruit. It is not ours to separate The tangled skein of will and fate, To show what metes and bounds should stand Upon the soul's debatable land, And between choice and Providence Divide the circle of events; But lie who knows our frame is just, Merciful and compassionate, And full of sweet assurances And hope for all the language is, That He remembereth we are dust! At last the great logs, crumbling low, Sent out a dull and duller glow, The bull's-eye watch that hung in view, Ticking its weary circuit through, Pointed with mutely warning sign Its black hand to the hour of nine. That sign the pleasant circle broke My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke, Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray, And laid it tenderly away, Then roused himself to safely cover The dull red brands with ashes over. And while, with care, our mother laid The work aside, her steps she stayed One moment, seeking to express Her grateful sense of happiness For food and shelter, warmth and health, And love's contentment more than wealth, With simple wishes (not the weak, Vain prayers which no fulfilment seek, But such as warm the generous heart, O'er-prompt to do with Heaven its part) That none might lack, that bitter night, For bread and clothing, warmth and light. Within our beds awhile we heard The wind that round the gables roared, With now and then a ruder shock, Which made our very bedsteads rock. We heard the loosened clapboards tost, The board-nails snapping in the frost; And on us, through the unplastered wall, Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall. But sleep stole on, as sleep will do When hearts are light and life is new; Faint and more faint the murmurs grew, Till in the summer-land of dreams They softened to the sound of streams, Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars, And lapsing waves on quiet shores. Next morn we wakened with the shout Of merry voices high and clear; And saw the teamsters drawing near To break the drifted highways out. Down the long hillside treading slow We saw the half-buried oxen' go, Shaking the snow from heads uptost, Their straining nostrils white with frost. Before our door the straggling train Drew up, an added team to gain. The elders threshed their hands a-cold, Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes From lip to lip; the younger folks Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling, rolled, Then toiled again the cavalcade O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine, And woodland paths that wound between Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed. From every barn a team afoot, At every house a new recruit, Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest law Haply the watchful young men saw Sweet doorway pictures of the curls And curious eyes of merry girls, Lifting their hands in mock defence Against the snow-ball's compliments, And reading in each missive tost The charm with Eden never lost. We heard once more the sleigh-bells' sound; And, following where the teamsters led, The wise old Doctor went his round, Just pausing at our door to say, In the brief autocratic way Of one who, prompt at Duty's call, Was free to urge her claim on all, That some poor neighbor sick abed At night our mother's aid would need. For, one in generous thought and deed, What mattered in the sufferer's sight The Quaker matron's inward light, The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed? All hearts confess the saints elect Who, twain in faith, in love agree, And melt not in an acid sect The Christian pearl of charity! So days went on: a week had passed Since the great world was heard from last. The Almanac we studied o'er, Read and reread our little store, Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score; One harmless novel, mostly hid From younger eyes, a book forbid, And poetry, (or good or bad, A single book was all we had,) Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse, A stranger to the heathen Nine, Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine, The wars of David and the Jews. At last the floundering carrier bore The village paper to our door. Lo! broadening outward as we read, To warmer zones the horizon spread; In panoramic length unrolled We saw the marvels that it told. Before us passed the painted Creeks, And daft McGregor on his raids In Costa Rica's everglades. And up Taygetos winding slow Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks, A Turk's head at each saddle-bow Welcome to us its week-old news, Its corner for the rustic Muse, Its monthly gauge of snow and rain, Its record, mingling in a breath The wedding bell and dirge of death; Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale, The latest culprit sent to jail; Its hue and cry of stolen and lost, Its vendue sales and goods at cost, And traffic calling loud for gain. We felt the stir of hall and street, The pulse of life that round us beat; The chill embargo of the snow Was melted in the genial glow; Wide swung again our ice-locked door, And all the world was ours once more! Clasp, Angel of the backward look And folded wings of ashen gray And voice of echoes far away, The brazen covers of thy book; The weird palimpsest old and vast, Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past; Where, closely mingling, pale and glow The characters of joy and woe; The monographs of outlived years, Or smile-illumed or dim with tears, Green hills of life that slope to death, And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees Shade off to mournful cypresses With the white amaranths underneath. Even while I look, I can but heed The restless sands' incessant fall, Importunate hours that hours succeed, Each clamorous with its own sharp need, And duty keeping pace with all. Shut down and clasp the heavy lids; I hear again the voice that bids The dreamer leave his dream midway For larger hopes and graver fears Life greatens in these later years, The century's aloe flowers to-day! Yet, haply, in some lull of life, Some Truce of God which breaks its strife, The worldling's eyes shall gather dew, Dreaming in throngful city ways Of winter joys his boyhood knew; And dear and early friends--the few Who yet remain--shall pause to view These Flemish pictures of old days; Sit with me by the homestead hearth, And stretch the hands of memory forth To warm them at the wood-fire's blaze! And thanks untraced to lips unknown Shall greet me like the odors blown From unseen meadows newly mown, Or lilies floating in some pond, Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond; The traveller owns the grateful sense Of sweetness near, he knows not whence, And, pausing, takes with forehead bare The benediction of the air. 1866. MY TRIUMPH. The autumn-time has come; On woods that dream of bloom, And over purpling vines, The low sun fainter shines. The aster-flower is failing, The hazel's gold is paling; Yet overhead more near The eternal stars appear! And present gratitude Insures the future's good, And for the things I see I trust the things to be; That in the paths untrod, And the long days of God, My feet shall still be led, My heart be comforted. O living friends who love me! O dear ones gone above me! Careless of other fame, I leave to you my name. Hide it from idle praises, Save it from evil phrases Why, when dear lips that spake it Are dumb, should strangers wake it? Let the thick curtain fall; I better know than all How little I have gained, How vast the unattained. Not by the page word-painted Let life be banned or sainted Deeper than written scroll The colors of the soul. Sweeter than any sung My songs that found no tongue; Nobler than any fact My wish that failed of act. Others shall sing the song, Others shall right the wrong,-- Finish what I begin, And all I fail of win. What matter, I or they? Mine or another's day, So the right word be said And life the sweeter made? Hail to the coming singers Hail to the brave light-bringers! Forward I reach and share All that they sing and dare. The airs of heaven blow o'er me; A glory shines before me Of what mankind shall be,-- Pure, generous, brave, and free. A dream of man and woman Diviner but still human, Solving the riddle old, Shaping the Age of Gold. The love of God and neighbor; An equal-handed labor; The richer life, where beauty Walks hand in hand with duty. Ring, bells in unreared steeples, The joy of unborn peoples! Sound, trumpets far off blown, Your triumph is my own! Parcel and part of all, I keep the festival, Fore-reach the good to be, And share the victory. I feel the earth move sunward, I join the great march onward, And take, by faith, while living, My freehold of thanksgiving. 1870. IN SCHOOL-DAYS. Still sits the school-house by the road, A ragged beggar sleeping; Around it still the sumachs grow, And blackberry-vines are creeping. Within, the master's desk is seen, Deep scarred by raps official; The warping floor, the battered seats, The jack-knife's carved initial; The charcoal frescos on its wall; Its door's worn sill, betraying The feet that, creeping slow to school, Went storming out to playing! Long years ago a winter sun Shone over it at setting; Lit up its western window-panes, And low eaves' icy fretting. It touched the tangled golden curls, And brown eyes full of grieving, Of one who still her steps delayed When all the school were leaving. For near her stood the little boy Her childish favor singled: His cap pulled low upon a face Where pride and shame were mingled. Pushing with restless feet the snow To right and left, he lingered;-- As restlessly her tiny hands The blue-checked apron fingered. He saw her lift her eyes; he felt The soft hand's light caressing, And heard the tremble of her voice, As if a fault confessing. "I 'm sorry that I spelt the word I hate to go above you, Because,"--the brown eyes lower fell,-- "Because you see, I love you!" Still memory to a gray-haired man That sweet child-face is showing. Dear girl! the grasses on her grave Have forty years been growing! He lives to learn, in life's hard school, How few who pass above him Lament their triumph and his loss, Like her,--because they love him. MY BIRTHDAY. Beneath the moonlight and the snow Lies dead my latest year; The winter winds are wailing low Its dirges in my ear. I grieve not with the moaning wind As if a loss befell; Before me, even as behind, God is, and all is well! His light shines on me from above, His low voice speaks within,-- The patience of immortal love Outwearying mortal sin. Not mindless of the growing years Of care and loss and pain, My eyes are wet with thankful tears For blessings which remain. If dim the gold of life has grown, I will not count it dross, Nor turn from treasures still my own To sigh for lack and loss. The years no charm from Nature take; As sweet her voices call, As beautiful her mornings break, As fair her evenings fall. Love watches o'er my quiet ways, Kind voices speak my name, And lips that find it hard to praise Are slow, at least, to blame. How softly ebb the tides of will! How fields, once lost or won, Now lie behind me green and still Beneath a level sun. How hushed the hiss of party hate, The clamor of the throng! How old, harsh voices of debate Flow into rhythmic song! Methinks the spirit's temper grows Too soft in this still air; Somewhat the restful heart foregoes Of needed watch and prayer. The bark by tempest vainly tossed May founder in the calm, And he who braved the polar frost Faint by the isles of balm. Better than self-indulgent years The outflung heart of youth, Than pleasant songs in idle ears The tumult of the truth. Rest for the weary hands is good, And love for hearts that pine, But let the manly habitude Of upright souls be mine. Let winds that blow from heaven refresh, Dear Lord, the languid air; And let the weakness of the flesh Thy strength of spirit share. And, if the eye must fail of light, The ear forget to hear, Make clearer still the spirit's sight, More fine the inward ear! Be near me in mine hours of need To soothe, or cheer, or warn, And down these slopes of sunset lead As up the hills of morn! 1871. RED RIDING-HOOD. On the wide lawn the snow lay deep, Ridged o'er with many a drifted heap; The wind that through the pine-trees sung The naked elm-boughs tossed and swung; While, through the window, frosty-starred, Against the sunset purple barred, We saw the sombre crow flap by, The hawk's gray fleck along the sky, The crested blue-jay flitting swift, The squirrel poising on the drift, Erect, alert, his broad gray tail Set to the north wind like a sail. It came to pass, our little lass, With flattened face against the glass, And eyes in which the tender dew Of pity shone, stood gazing through The narrow space her rosy lips Had melted from the frost's eclipse "Oh, see," she cried, "the poor blue-jays! What is it that the black crow says? The squirrel lifts his little legs Because he has no hands, and begs; He's asking for my nuts, I know May I not feed them on the snow?" Half lost within her boots, her head Warm-sheltered in her hood of red, Her plaid skirt close about her drawn, She floundered down the wintry lawn; Now struggling through the misty veil Blown round her by the shrieking gale; Now sinking in a drift so low Her scarlet hood could scarcely show Its dash of color on the snow. She dropped for bird and beast forlorn Her little store of nuts and corn, And thus her timid guests bespoke "Come, squirrel, from your hollow oak,-- Come, black old crow,--come, poor blue-jay, Before your supper's blown away Don't be afraid, we all are good; And I'm mamma's Red Riding-Hood!" O Thou whose care is over all, Who heedest even the sparrow's fall, Keep in the little maiden's breast The pity which is now its guest! Let not her cultured years make less The childhood charm of tenderness, But let her feel as well as know, Nor harder with her polish grow! Unmoved by sentimental grief That wails along some printed leaf, But, prompt with kindly word and deed To own the claims of all who need, Let the grown woman's self make good The promise of Red Riding-Hood 1877. RESPONSE. On the occasion of my seventieth birthday in 1877, I was the recipient of many tokens of esteem. The publishers of the _Atlantic Monthly_ gave a dinner in my name, and the editor of _The Literary World_ gathered in his paper many affectionate messages from my associates in literature and the cause of human progress. The lines which follow were written in acknowledgment. Beside that milestone where the level sun, Nigh unto setting, sheds his last, low rays On word and work irrevocably done, Life's blending threads of good and ill outspun, I hear, O friends! your words of cheer and praise, Half doubtful if myself or otherwise. Like him who, in the old Arabian joke, A beggar slept and crowned Caliph woke. Thanks not the less. With not unglad surprise I see my life-work through your partial eyes; Assured, in giving to my home-taught songs A higher value than of right belongs, You do but read between the written lines The finer grace of unfulfilled designs. AT EVENTIDE. Poor and inadequate the shadow-play Of gain and loss, of waking and of dream, Against life's solemn background needs must seem At this late hour. Yet, not unthankfully, I call to mind the fountains by the way, The breath of flowers, the bird-song on the spray, Dear friends, sweet human loves, the joy of giving And of receiving, the great boon of living In grand historic years when Liberty Had need of word and work, quick sympathies For all who fail and suffer, song's relief, Nature's uncloying loveliness; and chief, The kind restraining hand of Providence, The inward witness, the assuring sense Of an Eternal Good which overlies The sorrow of the world, Love which outlives All sin and wrong, Compassion which forgives To the uttermost, and Justice whose clear eyes Through lapse and failure look to the intent, And judge our frailty by the life we meant. 1878. VOYAGE OF THE JETTIE. The picturesquely situated Wayside Inn at West Ossipee, N. H., is now in ashes; and to its former guests these somewhat careless rhymes may be a not unwelcome reminder of pleasant summers and autumns on the banks of the Bearcamp and Chocorua. To the author himself they have a special interest from the fact that they were written, or improvised, under the eye and for the amusement of a beloved invalid friend whose last earthly sunsets faded from the mountain ranges of Ossipee and Sandwich. A shallow stream, from fountains Deep in the Sandwich mountains, Ran lake ward Bearcamp River; And, between its flood-torn shores, Sped by sail or urged by oars No keel had vexed it ever. Alone the dead trees yielding To the dull axe Time is wielding, The shy mink and the otter, And golden leaves and red, By countless autumns shed, Had floated down its water. From the gray rocks of Cape Ann, Came a skilled seafaring man, With his dory, to the right place; Over hill and plain he brought her, Where the boatless Beareamp water Comes winding down from White-Face. Quoth the skipper: "Ere she floats forth; I'm sure my pretty boat's worth, At least, a name as pretty." On her painted side he wrote it, And the flag that o'er her floated Bore aloft the name of Jettie. On a radiant morn of summer, Elder guest and latest comer Saw her wed the Bearcamp water; Heard the name the skipper gave her, And the answer to the favor From the Bay State's graceful daughter. Then, a singer, richly gifted, Her charmed voice uplifted; And the wood-thrush and song-sparrow Listened, dumb with envious pain, To the clear and sweet refrain Whose notes they could not borrow. Then the skipper plied his oar, And from off the shelving shore, Glided out the strange explorer; Floating on, she knew not whither,-- The tawny sands beneath her, The great hills watching o'er her. On, where the stream flows quiet As the meadows' margins by it, Or widens out to borrow a New life from that wild water, The mountain giant's daughter, The pine-besung Chocorua. Or, mid the tangling cumber And pack of mountain lumber That spring floods downward force, Over sunken snag, and bar Where the grating shallows are, The good boat held her course. Under the pine-dark highlands, Around the vine-hung islands, She ploughed her crooked furrow And her rippling and her lurches Scared the river eels and perches, And the musk-rat in his burrow. Every sober clam below her, Every sage and grave pearl-grower, Shut his rusty valves the tighter; Crow called to crow complaining, And old tortoises sat craning Their leathern necks to sight her. So, to where the still lake glasses The misty mountain masses Rising dim and distant northward, And, with faint-drawn shadow pictures, Low shores, and dead pine spectres, Blends the skyward and the earthward, On she glided, overladen, With merry man and maiden Sending back their song and laughter,-- While, perchance, a phantom crew, In a ghostly birch canoe, Paddled dumb and swiftly after! And the bear on Ossipee Climbed the topmost crag to see The strange thing drifting under; And, through the haze of August, Passaconaway and Paugus Looked down in sleepy wonder. All the pines that o'er her hung In mimic sea-tones sung The song familiar to her; And the maples leaned to screen her, And the meadow-grass seemed greener, And the breeze more soft to woo her. The lone stream mystery-haunted, To her the freedom granted To scan its every feature, Till new and old were blended, And round them both extended The loving arms of Nature. Of these hills the little vessel Henceforth is part and parcel; And on Bearcamp shall her log Be kept, as if by George's Or Grand Menan, the surges Tossed her skipper through the fog. And I, who, half in sadness, Recall the morning gladness Of life, at evening time, By chance, onlooking idly, Apart from all so widely, Have set her voyage to rhyme. Dies now the gay persistence Of song and laugh, in distance; Alone with me remaining The stream, the quiet meadow, The hills in shine and shadow, The sombre pines complaining. And, musing here, I dream Of voyagers on a stream From whence is no returning, Under sealed orders going, Looking forward little knowing, Looking back with idle yearning. And I pray that every venture The port of peace may enter, That, safe from snag and fall And siren-haunted islet, And rock, the Unseen Pilot May guide us one and all. 1880. MY TRUST. A picture memory brings to me I look across the years and see Myself beside my mother's knee. I feel her gentle hand restrain My selfish moods, and know again A child's blind sense of wrong and pain. But wiser now, a man gray grown, My childhood's needs are better known, My mother's chastening love I own. Gray grown, but in our Father's sight A child still groping for the light To read His works and ways aright. I wait, in His good time to see That as my mother dealt with me So with His children dealeth He. I bow myself beneath His hand That pain itself was wisely planned I feel, and partly understand. The joy that comes in sorrow's guise, The sweet pains of self-sacrifice, I would not have them otherwise. And what were life and death if sin Knew not the dread rebuke within, The pang of merciful discipline? Not with thy proud despair of old, Crowned stoic of Rome's noblest mould! Pleasure and pain alike I hold. I suffer with no vain pretence Of triumph over flesh and sense, Yet trust the grievous providence, How dark soe'er it seems, may tend, By ways I cannot comprehend, To some unguessed benignant end; That every loss and lapse may gain The clear-aired heights by steps of pain, And never cross is borne in vain. 1880. A NAME Addressed to my grand-nephew, Greenleaf Whittier Pickard. Jonathan Greenleaf, in A Genealogy of the Greenleaf Family, says briefly: "From all that can be gathered, it is believed that the ancestors of the Greenleaf family were Huguenots, who left France on account of their religious principles some time in the course of the sixteenth century, and settled in England. The name was probably translated from the French Feuillevert." The name the Gallic exile bore, St. Malo! from thy ancient mart, Became upon our Western shore Greenleaf for Feuillevert. A name to hear in soft accord Of leaves by light winds overrun, Or read, upon the greening sward Of May, in shade and sun. The name my infant ear first heard Breathed softly with a mother's kiss; His mother's own, no tenderer word My father spake than this. No child have I to bear it on; Be thou its keeper; let it take From gifts well used and duty done New beauty for thy sake. The fair ideals that outran My halting footsteps seek and find-- The flawless symmetry of man, The poise of heart and mind. Stand firmly where I felt the sway Of every wing that fancy flew, See clearly where I groped my way, Nor real from seeming knew. And wisely choose, and bravely hold Thy faith unswerved by cross or crown, Like the stout Huguenot of old Whose name to thee comes down. As Marot's songs made glad the heart Of that lone exile, haply mine May in life's heavy hours impart Some strength and hope to thine. Yet when did Age transfer to Youth The hard-gained lessons of its day? Each lip must learn the taste of truth, Each foot must feel its way. We cannot hold the hands of choice That touch or shun life's fateful keys; The whisper of the inward voice Is more than homilies. Dear boy! for whom the flowers are born, Stars shine, and happy song-birds sing, What can my evening give to morn, My winter to thy spring! A life not void of pure intent, With small desert of praise or blame, The love I felt, the good I meant, I leave thee with my name. 1880. GREETING. Originally prefixed to the volume, The King's Missive and other Poems. I spread a scanty board too late; The old-time guests for whom I wait Come few and slow, methinks, to-day. Ah! who could hear my messages Across the dim unsounded seas On which so many have sailed away! Come, then, old friends, who linger yet, And let us meet, as we have met, Once more beneath this low sunshine; And grateful for the good we 've known, The riddles solved, the ills outgrown, Shake bands upon the border line. The favor, asked too oft before, From your indulgent ears, once more I crave, and, if belated lays To slower, feebler measures move, The silent, sympathy of love To me is dearer now than praise. And ye, O younger friends, for whom My hearth and heart keep open room, Come smiling through the shadows long, Be with me while the sun goes down, And with your cheerful voices drown The minor of my even-song. For, equal through the day and night, The wise Eternal oversight And love and power and righteous will Remain: the law of destiny The best for each and all must be, And life its promise shall fulfil. 1881. AN AUTOGRAPH. I write my name as one, On sands by waves o'errun Or winter's frosted pane, Traces a record vain. Oblivion's blankness claims Wiser and better names, And well my own may pass As from the strand or glass. Wash on, O waves of time! Melt, noons, the frosty rime! Welcome the shadow vast, The silence that shall last. When I and all who know And love me vanish so, What harm to them or me Will the lost memory be? If any words of mine, Through right of life divine, Remain, what matters it Whose hand the message writ? Why should the "crowner's quest" Sit on my worst or best? Why should the showman claim The poor ghost of my name? Yet, as when dies a sound Its spectre lingers round, Haply my spent life will Leave some faint echo still. A whisper giving breath Of praise or blame to death, Soothing or saddening such As loved the living much. Therefore with yearnings vain And fond I still would fain A kindly judgment seek, A tender thought bespeak. And, while my words are read, Let this at least be said "Whate'er his life's defeatures, He loved his fellow-creatures. "If, of the Law's stone table, To hold he scarce was able The first great precept fast, He kept for man the last. "Through mortal lapse and dulness What lacks the Eternal Fulness, If still our weakness can Love Him in loving man? "Age brought him no despairing Of the world's future faring; In human nature still He found more good than ill. "To all who dumbly suffered, His tongue and pen he offered; His life was not his own, Nor lived for self alone. "Hater of din and riot He lived in days unquiet; And, lover of all beauty, Trod the hard ways of duty. "He meant no wrong to any He sought the good of many, Yet knew both sin and folly,-- May God forgive him wholly!" 1882. ABRAM MORRISON. 'Midst the men and things which will Haunt an old man's memory still, Drollest, quaintest of them all, With a boy's laugh I recall Good old Abram Morrison. When the Grist and Rolling Mill Ground and rumbled by Po Hill, And the old red school-house stood Midway in the Powow's flood, Here dwelt Abram Morrison. From the Beach to far beyond Bear-Hill, Lion's Mouth and Pond, Marvellous to our tough old stock, Chips o' the Anglo-Saxon block, Seemed the Celtic Morrison. Mudknock, Balmawhistle, all Only knew the Yankee drawl, Never brogue was heard till when, Foremost of his countrymen, Hither came Friend Morrison; Yankee born, of alien blood, Kin of his had well withstood Pope and King with pike and ball Under Derry's leaguered wall, As became the Morrisons. Wandering down from Nutfield woods With his household and his goods, Never was it clearly told How within our quiet fold Came to be a Morrison. Once a soldier, blame him not That the Quaker he forgot, When, to think of battles won, And the red-coats on the run, Laughed aloud Friend Morrison. From gray Lewis over sea Bore his sires their family tree, On the rugged boughs of it Grafting Irish mirth and wit, And the brogue of Morrison. Half a genius, quick to plan, Blundering like an Irishman, But with canny shrewdness lent By his far-off Scotch descent, Such was Abram Morrison. Back and forth to daily meals, Rode his cherished pig on wheels, And to all who came to see "Aisier for the pig an' me, Sure it is," said Morrison. Simple-hearted, boy o'er-grown, With a humor quite his own, Of our sober-stepping ways, Speech and look and cautious phrase, Slow to learn was Morrison. Much we loved his stories told Of a country strange and old, Where the fairies danced till dawn, And the goblin Leprecaun Looked, we thought, like Morrison. Or wild tales of feud and fight, Witch and troll and second sight Whispered still where Stornoway Looks across its stormy bay, Once the home of Morrisons. First was he to sing the praise Of the Powow's winding ways; And our straggling village took City grandeur to the look Of its poet Morrison. All his words have perished. Shame On the saddle-bags of Fame, That they bring not to our time One poor couplet of the rhyme Made by Abram Morrison! When, on calm and fair First Days, Rattled down our one-horse chaise, Through the blossomed apple-boughs To the old, brown meeting-house, There was Abram Morrison. Underneath his hat's broad brim Peered the queer old face of him; And with Irish jauntiness Swung the coat-tails of the dress Worn by Abram Morrison. Still, in memory, on his feet, Leaning o'er the elders' seat, Mingling with a solemn drone, Celtic accents all his own, Rises Abram Morrison. "Don't," he's pleading, "don't ye go, Dear young friends, to sight and show, Don't run after elephants, Learned pigs and presidents And the likes!" said Morrison. On his well-worn theme intent, Simple, child-like, innocent, Heaven forgive the half-checked smile Of our careless boyhood, while Listening to Friend Morrison! We have learned in later days Truth may speak in simplest phrase; That the man is not the less For quaint ways and home-spun dress, Thanks to Abram Morrison! Not to pander nor to please Come the needed homilies, With no lofty argument Is the fitting message sent, Through such lips as Morrison's. Dead and gone! But while its track Powow keeps to Merrimac, While Po Hill is still on guard, Looking land and ocean ward, They shall tell of Morrison! After half a century's lapse, We are wiser now, perhaps, But we miss our streets amid Something which the past has hid, Lost with Abram Morrison. Gone forever with the queer Characters of that old year Now the many are as one; Broken is the mould that run Men like Abram Morrison. 1884. A LEGACY Friend of my many years When the great silence falls, at last, on me, Let me not leave, to pain and sadden thee, A memory of tears, But pleasant thoughts alone Of one who was thy friendship's honored guest And drank the wine of consolation pressed From sorrows of thy own. I leave with thee a sense Of hands upheld and trials rendered less-- The unselfish joy which is to helpfulness Its own great recompense; The knowledge that from thine, As from the garments of the Master, stole Calmness and strength, the virtue which makes whole And heals without a sign; Yea more, the assurance strong That love, which fails of perfect utterance here, Lives on to fill the heavenly atmosphere With its immortal song. 1887. 
9572	----	This eBook was produced by David Widger POEMS OF NATURE POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT RELIGIOUS POEMS BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER CONTENTS: RELIGIOUS POEMS: THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN THE CALL OF THE CHRISTIAN THE CRUCIFIXION PALESTINE HYMNS FROM THE FRENCH OF LAMARTINE I. ENCORE UN HYMNE II. LE CRI DE L'AME THE FAMILIST'S HYMN EZEKIEL WHAT THE VOICE SAID THE ANGEL OF PATIENCE THE WIFE OF MANOAH TO HER HUSBAND MY SOUL AND I WORSHIP THE HOLY LAND THE REWARD THE WISH OF TO-DAY ALL'S WELL INVOCATION QUESTIONS OF LIFE FIRST-DAY THOUGHTS TRUST TRINITAS THE SISTERS "THE ROCK" IN EL GHOR THE OVER-HEART THE SHADOW AND THE LIGHT THE CRY OF A LOST SOUL ANDREW RYKMAN'S PRAYER RELIGIOUS POEMS THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM Where Time the measure of his hours By changeful bud and blossom keeps, And, like a young bride crowned with flowers, Fair Shiraz in her garden sleeps; Where, to her poet's turban stone, The Spring her gift of flowers imparts, Less sweet than those his thoughts have sown In the warm soil of Persian hearts: There sat the stranger, where the shade Of scattered date-trees thinly lay, While in the hot clear heaven delayed The long and still and weary day. Strange trees and fruits above him hung, Strange odors filled the sultry air, Strange birds upon the branches swung, Strange insect voices murmured there. And strange bright blossoms shone around, Turned sunward from the shadowy bowers, As if the Gheber's soul had found A fitting home in Iran's flowers. Whate'er he saw, whate'er he heard, Awakened feelings new and sad,-- No Christian garb, nor Christian word, Nor church with Sabbath-bell chimes glad, But Moslem graves, with turban stones, And mosque-spires gleaming white, in view, And graybeard Mollahs in low tones Chanting their Koran service through. The flowers which smiled on either hand, Like tempting fiends, were such as they Which once, o'er all that Eastern land, As gifts on demon altars lay. As if the burning eye of Baal The servant of his Conqueror knew, From skies which knew no cloudy veil, The Sun's hot glances smote him through. "Ah me!" the lonely stranger said, "The hope which led my footsteps on, And light from heaven around them shed, O'er weary wave and waste, is gone! "Where are the harvest fields all white, For Truth to thrust her sickle in? Where flock the souls, like doves in flight, From the dark hiding-place of sin? "A silent-horror broods o'er all,-- The burden of a hateful spell,-- The very flowers around recall The hoary magi's rites of hell! "And what am I, o'er such a land The banner of the Cross to bear? Dear Lord, uphold me with Thy hand, Thy strength with human weakness share!" He ceased; for at his very feet In mild rebuke a floweret smiled; How thrilled his sinking heart to greet The Star-flower of the Virgin's child! Sown by some wandering Frank, it drew Its life from alien air and earth, And told to Paynim sun and dew The story of the Saviour's birth. From scorching beams, in kindly mood, The Persian plants its beauty screened, And on its pagan sisterhood, In love, the Christian floweret leaned. With tears of joy the wanderer felt The darkness of his long despair Before that hallowed symbol melt, Which God's dear love had nurtured there. From Nature's face, that simple flower The lines of sin and sadness swept; And Magian pile and Paynim bower In peace like that of Eden slept. Each Moslem tomb, and cypress old, Looked holy through the sunset air; And, angel-like, the Muezzin told From tower and mosque the hour of prayer. With cheerful steps, the morrow's dawn From Shiraz saw the stranger part; The Star-flower of the Virgin-Born Still blooming in his hopeful heart! 1830. THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN "Get ye up from the wrath of God's terrible day! Ungirded, unsandalled, arise and away! 'T is the vintage of blood, 't is the fulness of time, And vengeance shall gather the harvest of crime!" The warning was spoken--the righteous had gone, And the proud ones of Sodom were feasting alone; All gay was the banquet--the revel was long, With the pouring of wine and the breathing of song. 'T was an evening of beauty; the air was perfume, The earth was all greenness, the trees were all bloom; And softly the delicate viol was heard, Like the murmur of love or the notes of a bird. And beautiful maidens moved down in the dance, With the magic of motion and sunshine of glance And white arms wreathed lightly, and tresses fell free As the plumage of birds in some tropical tree. Where the shrines of foul idols were lighted on high, And wantonness tempted the lust of the eye; Midst rites of obsceneness, strange, loathsome, abhorred, The blasphemer scoffed at the name of the Lord. Hark! the growl of the thunder,--the quaking of earth! Woe, woe to the worship, and woe to the mirth! The black sky has opened; there's flame in the air; The red arm of vengeance is lifted and bare! Then the shriek of the dying rose wild where the song And the low tone of love had been whispered along; For the fierce flames went lightly o'er palace and bower, Like the red tongues of demons, to blast and devour! Down, down on the fallen the red ruin rained, And the reveller sank with his wine-cup undrained; The foot of the dancer, the music's loved thrill, And the shout and the laughter grew suddenly still. The last throb of anguish was fearfully given; The last eye glared forth in its madness on Heaven! The last groan of horror rose wildly and vain, And death brooded over the pride of the Plain! 1831. THE CALL OF THE CHRISTIAN Not always as the whirlwind's rush On Horeb's mount of fear, Not always as the burning bush To Midian's shepherd seer, Nor as the awful voice which came To Israel's prophet bards, Nor as the tongues of cloven flame, Nor gift of fearful words,-- Not always thus, with outward sign Of fire or voice from Heaven, The message of a truth divine, The call of God is given! Awaking in the human heart Love for the true and right,-- Zeal for the Christian's better part, Strength for the Christian's fight. Nor unto manhood's heart alone The holy influence steals Warm with a rapture not its own, The heart of woman feels! As she who by Samaria's wall The Saviour's errand sought,-- As those who with the fervent Paul And meek Aquila wrought: Or those meek ones whose martyrdom Rome's gathered grandeur saw Or those who in their Alpine home Braved the Crusader's war, When the green Vaudois, trembling, heard, Through all its vales of death, The martyr's song of triumph poured From woman's failing breath. And gently, by a thousand things Which o'er our spirits pass, Like breezes o'er the harp's fine strings, Or vapors o'er a glass, Leaving their token strange and new Of music or of shade, The summons to the right and true And merciful is made. Oh, then, if gleams of truth and light Flash o'er thy waiting mind, Unfolding to thy mental sight The wants of human-kind; If, brooding over human grief, The earnest wish is known To soothe and gladden with relief An anguish not thine own; Though heralded with naught of fear, Or outward sign or show; Though only to the inward ear It whispers soft and low; Though dropping, as the manna fell, Unseen, yet from above, Noiseless as dew-fall, heed it well,--- Thy Father's call of love! THE CRUCIFIXION. Sunlight upon Judha's hills! And on the waves of Galilee; On Jordan's stream, and on the rills That feed the dead and sleeping sea! Most freshly from the green wood springs The light breeze on its scented wings; And gayly quiver in the sun The cedar tops of Lebanon! A few more hours,--a change hath come! The sky is dark without a cloud! The shouts of wrath and joy are dumb, And proud knees unto earth are bowed. A change is on the hill of Death, The helmed watchers pant for breath, And turn with wild and maniac eyes From the dark scene of sacrifice! That Sacrifice!--the death of Him,-- The Christ of God, the holy One! Well may the conscious Heaven grow dim, And blacken the beholding, Sun. The wonted light hath fled away, Night settles on the middle day, And earthquake from his caverned bed Is waking with a thrill of dread! The dead are waking underneath! Their prison door is rent away! And, ghastly with the seal of death, They wander in the eye of day! The temple of the Cherubim, The House of God is cold and dim; A curse is on its trembling walls, Its mighty veil asunder falls! Well may the cavern-depths of Earth Be shaken, and her mountains nod; Well may the sheeted dead come forth To see the suffering son of God! Well may the temple-shrine grow dim, And shadows veil the Cherubim, When He, the chosen one of Heaven, A sacrifice for guilt is given! And shall the sinful heart, alone, Behold unmoved the fearful hour, When Nature trembled on her throne, And Death resigned his iron power? Oh, shall the heart--whose sinfulness Gave keenness to His sore distress, And added to His tears of blood-- Refuse its trembling gratitude! 1834. PALESTINE Blest land of Judaea! thrice hallowed of song, Where the holiest of memories pilgrim-like throng; In the shade of thy palms, by the shores of thy sea, On the hills of thy beauty, my heart is with thee. With the eye of a spirit I look on that shore Where pilgrim and prophet have lingered before; With the glide of a spirit I traverse the sod Made bright by the steps of the angels of God. Blue sea of the hills! in my spirit I hear Thy waters, Gennesaret, chime on my ear; Where the Lowly and Just with the people sat down, And thy spray on the dust of His sandals was thrown. Beyond are Bethulia's mountains of green, And the desolate hills of the wild Gadarene; And I pause on the goat-crags of Tabor to see The gleam of thy waters, O dark Galilee! Hark, a sound in the valley! where, swollen and strong, Thy river, O Kishon, is sweeping along; Where the Canaanite strove with Jehovah in vain, And thy torrent grew dark with the blood of the slain. There down from his mountains stern Zebulon came, And Naphthali's stag, with his eyeballs of flame, And the chariots of Jabin rolled harmlessly on, For the arm of the Lord was Abinoam's son! There sleep the still rocks and the caverns which rang To the song which the beautiful prophetess sang, When the princes of Issachar stood by her side, And the shout of a host in its triumph replied. Lo, Bethlehem's hill-site before me is seen, With the mountains around, and the valleys between; There rested the shepherds of Judah, and there The song of the angels rose sweet on the air. And Bethany's palm-trees in beauty still throw Their shadows at noon on the ruins below; But where are the sisters who hastened to greet The lowly Redeemer, and sit at His feet? I tread where the twelve in their wayfaring trod; I stand where they stood with the chosen of God-- Where His blessing was heard and His lessons were taught, Where the blind were restored and the healing was wrought. Oh, here with His flock the sad Wanderer came; These hills He toiled over in grief are the same; The founts where He drank by the wayside still flow, And the same airs are blowing which breathed on His brow! And throned on her hills sits Jerusalem yet, But with dust on her forehead, and chains on her feet; For the crown of her pride to the mocker hath gone, And the holy Shechinah is dark where it shone. But wherefore this dream of the earthly abode Of Humanity clothed in the brightness of God? Were my spirit but turned from the outward and dim, It could gaze, even now, on the presence of Him! Not in clouds and in terrors, but gentle as when, In love and in meekness, He moved among men; And the voice which breathed peace to the waves of the sea In the hush of my spirit would whisper to me! And what if my feet may not tread where He stood, Nor my ears hear the dashing of Galilee's flood, Nor my eyes see the cross which he bowed Him to bear, Nor my knees press Gethsemane's garden of prayer. Yet, Loved of the Father, Thy Spirit is near To the meek, and the lowly, and penitent here; And the voice of Thy love is the same even now As at Bethany's tomb or on Olivet's brow. Oh, the outward hath gone! but in glory and power. The spirit surviveth the things of an hour; Unchanged, undecaying, its Pentecost flame On the heart's secret altar is burning the same 1837. HYMNS. FROM THE FRENCH OF LAMARTINE I. "Encore un hymne, O ma lyre Un hymn pour le Seigneur, Un hymne dans mon delire, Un hymne dans mon bonheur." One hymn more, O my lyre! Praise to the God above, Of joy and life and love, Sweeping its strings of fire! Oh, who the speed of bird and wind And sunbeam's glance will lend to me, That, soaring upward, I may find My resting-place and home in Thee? Thou, whom my soul, midst doubt and gloom, Adoreth with a fervent flame,-- Mysterious spirit! unto whom Pertain nor sign nor name! Swiftly my lyre's soft murmurs go, Up from the cold and joyless earth, Back to the God who bade them flow, Whose moving spirit sent them forth. But as for me, O God! for me, The lowly creature of Thy will, Lingering and sad, I sigh to Thee, An earth-bound pilgrim still! Was not my spirit born to shine Where yonder stars and suns are glowing? To breathe with them the light divine From God's own holy altar flowing? To be, indeed, whate'er the soul In dreams hath thirsted for so long,-- A portion of heaven's glorious whole Of loveliness and song? Oh, watchers of the stars at night, Who breathe their fire, as we the air,-- Suns, thunders, stars, and rays of light, Oh, say, is He, the Eternal, there? Bend there around His awful throne The seraph's glance, the angel's knee? Or are thy inmost depths His own, O wild and mighty sea? Thoughts of my soul, how swift ye go! Swift as the eagle's glance of fire, Or arrows from the archer's bow, To the far aim of your desire! Thought after thought, ye thronging rise, Like spring-doves from the startled wood, Bearing like them your sacrifice Of music unto God! And shall these thoughts of joy and love Come back again no more to me? Returning like the patriarch's dove Wing-weary from the eternal sea, To bear within my longing arms The promise-bough of kindlier skies, Plucked from the green, immortal palms Which shadow Paradise? All-moving spirit! freely forth At Thy command the strong wind goes Its errand to the passive earth, Nor art can stay, nor strength oppose, Until it folds its weary wing Once more within the hand divine; So, weary from its wandering, My spirit turns to Thine! Child of the sea, the mountain stream, From its dark caverns, hurries on, Ceaseless, by night and morning's beam, By evening's star and noontide's sun, Until at last it sinks to rest, O'erwearied, in the waiting sea, And moans upon its mother's breast,-- So turns my soul to Thee! O Thou who bidst the torrent flow, Who lendest wings unto the wind,-- Mover of all things! where art Thou? Oh, whither shall I go to find The secret of Thy resting-place? Is there no holy wing for me, That, soaring, I may search the space Of highest heaven for Thee? Oh, would I were as free to rise As leaves on autumn's whirlwind borne,-- The arrowy light of sunset skies, Or sound, or ray, or star of morn, Which melts in heaven at twilight's close, Or aught which soars unchecked and free Through earth and heaven; that I might lose Myself in finding Thee! II. LE CRI DE L'AME. "Quand le souffle divin qui flotte sur le monde." When the breath divine is flowing, Zephyr-like o'er all things going, And, as the touch of viewless fingers, Softly on my soul it lingers, Open to a breath the lightest, Conscious of a touch the slightest,-- As some calm, still lake, whereon Sinks the snowy-bosomed swan, And the glistening water-rings Circle round her moving wings When my upward gaze is turning Where the stars of heaven are burning Through the deep and dark abyss, Flowers of midnight's wilderness, Blowing with the evening's breath Sweetly in their Maker's path When the breaking day is flushing All the east, and light is gushing Upward through the horizon's haze, Sheaf-like, with its thousand rays, Spreading, until all above Overflows with joy and love, And below, on earth's green bosom, All is changed to light and blossom: When my waking fancies over Forms of brightness flit and hover Holy as the seraphs are, Who by Zion's fountains wear On their foreheads, white and broad, "Holiness unto the Lord!" When, inspired with rapture high, It would seem a single sigh Could a world of love create; That my life could know no date, And my eager thoughts could fill Heaven and Earth, o'erflowing still! Then, O Father! Thou alone, From the shadow of Thy throne, To the sighing of my breast And its rapture answerest. All my thoughts, which, upward winging, Bathe where Thy own light is springing,-- All my yearnings to be free Are at echoes answering Thee! Seldom upon lips of mine, Father! rests that name of Thine; Deep within my inmost breast, In the secret place of mind, Like an awful presence shrined, Doth the dread idea rest Hushed and holy dwells it there, Prompter of the silent prayer, Lifting up my spirit's eye And its faint, but earnest cry, From its dark and cold abode, Unto Thee, my Guide and God! 1837 THE FAMILIST'S HYMN. The Puritans of New England, even in their wilderness home, were not exempted from the sectarian contentions which agitated the mother country after the downfall of Charles the First, and of the established Episcopacy. The Quakers, Baptists, and Catholics were banished, on pain of death, from the Massachusetts Colony. One Samuel Gorton, a bold and eloquent declaimer, after preaching for a time in Boston against the doctrines of the Puritans, and declaring that their churches were mere human devices, and their sacrament and baptism an abomination, was driven out of the jurisdiction of the colony, and compelled to seek a residence among the savages. He gathered round him a considerable number of converts, who, like the primitive Christians, shared all things in common. His opinions, however, were so troublesome to the leading clergy of the colony, that they instigated an attack upon his "Family" by an armed force, which seized upon the principal men in it, and brought them into Massachusetts, where they were sentenced to be kept at hard labor in several towns (one only in each town), during the pleasure of the General Court, they being forbidden, under severe penalties, to utter any of their religious sentiments, except to such ministers as might labor for their conversion. They were unquestionably sincere in their opinions, and, whatever may have been their errors, deserve to be ranked among those who have in all ages suffered for the freedom of conscience. Father! to Thy suffering poor Strength and grace and faith impart, And with Thy own love restore Comfort to the broken heart! Oh, the failing ones confirm With a holier strength of zeal! Give Thou not the feeble worm Helpless to the spoiler's heel! Father! for Thy holy sake We are spoiled and hunted thus; Joyful, for Thy truth we take Bonds and burthens unto us Poor, and weak, and robbed of all, Weary with our daily task, That Thy truth may never fall Through our weakness, Lord, we ask. Round our fired and wasted homes Flits the forest-bird unscared, And at noon the wild beast comes Where our frugal meal was shared; For the song of praises there Shrieks the crow the livelong day; For the sound of evening prayer Howls the evil beast of prey! Sweet the songs we loved to sing Underneath Thy holy sky; Words and tones that used to bring Tears of joy in every eye; Dear the wrestling hours of prayer, When we gathered knee to knee, Blameless youth and hoary hair, Bowed, O God, alone to Thee. As Thine early children, Lord, Shared their wealth and daily bread, Even so, with one accord, We, in love, each other fed. Not with us the miser's hoard, Not with us his grasping hand; Equal round a common board, Drew our meek and brother band! Safe our quiet Eden lay When the war-whoop stirred the land And the Indian turned away From our home his bloody hand. Well that forest-ranger saw, That the burthen and the curse Of the white man's cruel law Rested also upon us. Torn apart, and driven forth To our toiling hard and long, Father! from the dust of earth Lift we still our grateful song! Grateful, that in bonds we share In Thy love which maketh free; Joyful, that the wrongs we bear, Draw us nearer, Lord, to Thee! Grateful! that where'er we toil,-- By Wachuset's wooded side, On Nantucket's sea-worn isle, Or by wild Neponset's tide,-- Still, in spirit, we are near, And our evening hymns, which rise Separate and discordant here, Meet and mingle in the skies! Let the scoffer scorn and mock, Let the proud and evil priest Rob the needy of his flock, For his wine-cup and his feast,-- Redden not Thy bolts in store Through the blackness of Thy skies? For the sighing of the poor Wilt Thou not, at length, arise? Worn and wasted, oh! how long Shall thy trodden poor complain? In Thy name they bear the wrong, In Thy cause the bonds of pain! Melt oppression's heart of steel, Let the haughty priesthood see, And their blinded followers feel, That in us they mock at Thee! In Thy time, O Lord of hosts, Stretch abroad that hand to save Which of old, on Egypt's coasts, Smote apart the Red Sea's wave Lead us from this evil land, From the spoiler set us free, And once more our gathered band, Heart to heart, shall worship Thee! 1838. EZEKIEL Also, thou son of man, the children of thy people still are talking against thee by the walls and in the doors of the houses, and speak one to another, every one to his brother, saying, Come, I pray you, and hear what is the word that cometh forth from the Lord. And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them: for with their mouth they skew much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness. And, lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument: for they hear thy words, but they do them not. And when this cometh to pass, (lo, it will come,) then shall they know that a prophet hath been among them.--EZEKIEL, xxxiii. 30-33. They hear Thee not, O God! nor see; Beneath Thy rod they mock at Thee; The princes of our ancient line Lie drunken with Assyrian wine; The priests around Thy altar speak The false words which their hearers seek; And hymns which Chaldea's wanton maids Have sung in Dura's idol-shades Are with the Levites' chant ascending, With Zion's holiest anthems blending! On Israel's bleeding bosom set, The heathen heel is crushing yet; The towers upon our holy hill Echo Chaldean footsteps still. Our wasted shrines,--who weeps for them? Who mourneth for Jerusalem? Who turneth from his gains away? Whose knee with mine is bowed to pray? Who, leaving feast and purpling cup, Takes Zion's lamentation up? A sad and thoughtful youth, I went With Israel's early banishment; And where the sullen Chebar crept, The ritual of my fathers kept. The water for the trench I drew, The firstling of the flock I slew, And, standing at the altar's side, I shared the Levites' lingering pride, That still, amidst her mocking foes, The smoke of Zion's offering rose. In sudden whirlwind, cloud and flame, The Spirit of the Highest came! Before mine eyes a vision passed, A glory terrible and vast; With dreadful eyes of living things, And sounding sweep of angel wings, With circling light and sapphire throne, And flame-like form of One thereon, And voice of that dread Likeness sent Down from the crystal firmament! The burden of a prophet's power Fell on me in that fearful hour; From off unutterable woes The curtain of the future rose; I saw far down the coming time The fiery chastisement of crime; With noise of mingling hosts, and jar Of falling towers and shouts of war, I saw the nations rise and fall, Like fire-gleams on my tent's white wall. In dream and trance, I--saw the slain Of Egypt heaped like harvest grain. I saw the walls of sea-born Tyre Swept over by the spoiler's fire; And heard the low, expiring moan Of Edom on his rocky throne; And, woe is me! the wild lament From Zion's desolation sent; And felt within my heart each blow Which laid her holy places low. In bonds and sorrow, day by day, Before the pictured tile I lay; And there, as in a mirror, saw The coming of Assyria's war; Her swarthy lines of spearmen pass Like locusts through Bethhoron's grass; I saw them draw their stormy hem Of battle round Jerusalem; And, listening, heard the Hebrew wail! Blend with the victor-trump of Baal! Who trembled at my warning word? Who owned the prophet of the Lord? How mocked the rude, how scoffed the vile, How stung the Levites' scornful smile, As o'er my spirit, dark and slow, The shadow crept of Israel's woe As if the angel's mournful roll Had left its record on my soul, And traced in lines of darkness there The picture of its great despair! Yet ever at the hour I feel My lips in prophecy unseal. Prince, priest, and Levite gather near, And Salem's daughters haste to hear, On Chebar's waste and alien shore, The harp of Judah swept once more. They listen, as in Babel's throng The Chaldeans to the dancer's song, Or wild sabbeka's nightly play,-- As careless and as vain as they. . . . . . And thus, O Prophet-bard of old, Hast thou thy tale of sorrow told The same which earth's unwelcome seers Have felt in all succeeding years. Sport of the changeful multitude, Nor calmly heard nor understood, Their song has seemed a trick of art, Their warnings but, the actor's part. With bonds, and scorn, and evil will, The world requites its prophets still. So was it when the Holy One The garments of the flesh put on Men followed where the Highest led For common gifts of daily bread, And gross of ear, of vision dim, Owned not the Godlike power of Him. Vain as a dreamer's words to them His wail above Jerusalem, And meaningless the watch He kept Through which His weak disciples slept. Yet shrink not thou, whoe'er thou art, For God's great purpose set apart, Before whose far-discerning eyes, The Future as the Present lies! Beyond a narrow-bounded age Stretches thy prophet-heritage, Through Heaven's vast spaces angel-trod, And through the eternal years of God Thy audience, worlds!--all things to be The witness of the Truth in thee! 1844. WHAT THE VOICE SAID MADDENED by Earth's wrong and evil, "Lord!" I cried in sudden ire, "From Thy right hand, clothed with thunder, Shake the bolted fire! "Love is lost, and Faith is dying; With the brute the man is sold; And the dropping blood of labor Hardens into gold. "Here the dying wail of Famine, There the battle's groan of pain; And, in silence, smooth-faced Mammon Reaping men like grain. "'Where is God, that we should fear Him?' Thus the earth-born Titans say 'God! if Thou art living, hear us!' Thus the weak ones pray." "Thou, the patient Heaven upbraiding," Spake a solemn Voice within; "Weary of our Lord's forbearance, Art thou free from sin? "Fearless brow to Him uplifting, Canst thou for His thunders call, Knowing that to guilt's attraction Evermore they fall? "Know'st thou not all germs of evil In thy heart await their time? Not thyself, but God's restraining, Stays their growth of crime. "Couldst thou boast, O child of weakness! O'er the sons of wrong and strife, Were their strong temptations planted In thy path of life? "Thou hast seen two streamlets gushing From one fountain, clear and free, But by widely varying channels Searching for the sea. "Glideth one through greenest valleys, Kissing them with lips still sweet; One, mad roaring down the mountains, Stagnates at their feet. "Is it choice whereby the Parsee Kneels before his mother's fire? In his black tent did the Tartar Choose his wandering sire? "He alone, whose hand is bounding Human power and human will, Looking through each soul's surrounding, Knows its good or ill. "For thyself, while wrong and sorrow Make to thee their strong appeal, Coward wert thou not to utter What the heart must feel. "Earnest words must needs be spoken When the warm heart bleeds or burns With its scorn of wrong, or pity For the wronged, by turns. "But, by all thy nature's weakness, Hidden faults and follies known, Be thou, in rebuking evil, Conscious of thine own. "Not the less shall stern-eyed Duty To thy lips her trumpet set, But with harsher blasts shall mingle Wailings of regret." Cease not, Voice of holy speaking, Teacher sent of God, be near, Whispering through the day's cool silence, Let my spirit hear! So, when thoughts of evil-doers Waken scorn, or hatred move, Shall a mournful fellow-feeling Temper all with love. 1847. THE ANGEL OF PATIENCE. A FREE PARAPHRASE OF THE GERMAN. To weary hearts, to mourning homes, God's meekest Angel gently comes No power has he to banish pain, Or give us back our lost again; And yet in tenderest love, our dear And Heavenly Father sends him here. There's quiet in that Angel's glance, There 's rest in his still countenance! He mocks no grief with idle cheer, Nor wounds with words the mourner's ear; But ills and woes he may not cure He kindly trains us to endure. Angel of Patience! sent to calm Our feverish brows with cooling palm; To lay the storms of hope and fear, And reconcile life's smile and tear; The throbs of wounded pride to still, And make our own our Father's will. O thou who mournest on thy way, With longings for the close of day; He walks with thee, that Angel kind, And gently whispers, "Be resigned Bear up, bear on, the end shall tell The dear Lord ordereth all things well!" 1847. THE WIFE OF MANOAH TO HER HUSBAND. Against the sunset's glowing wall The city towers rise black and tall, Where Zorah, on its rocky height, Stands like an armed man in the light. Down Eshtaol's vales of ripened grain Falls like a cloud the night amain, And up the hillsides climbing slow The barley reapers homeward go. Look, dearest! how our fair child's head The sunset light hath hallowed, Where at this olive's foot he lies, Uplooking to the tranquil skies. Oh, while beneath the fervent heat Thy sickle swept the bearded wheat, I've watched, with mingled joy and dread, Our child upon his grassy bed. Joy, which the mother feels alone Whose morning hope like mine had flown, When to her bosom, over-blessed, A dearer life than hers is pressed. Dread, for the future dark and still, Which shapes our dear one to its will; Forever in his large calm eyes, I read a tale of sacrifice. The same foreboding awe I felt When at the altar's side we knelt, And he, who as a pilgrim came, Rose, winged and glorious, through the flame. I slept not, though the wild bees made A dreamlike murmuring in the shade, And on me the warm-fingered hours Pressed with the drowsy smell of flowers. Before me, in a vision, rose The hosts of Israel's scornful foes,-- Rank over rank, helm, shield, and spear, Glittered in noon's hot atmosphere. I heard their boast, and bitter word, Their mockery of the Hebrew's Lord, I saw their hands His ark assail, Their feet profane His holy veil. No angel down the blue space spoke, No thunder from the still sky broke; But in their midst, in power and awe, Like God's waked wrath, our child I saw! A child no more!--harsh-browed and strong, He towered a giant in the throng, And down his shoulders, broad and bare, Swept the black terror of his hair. He raised his arm--he smote amain; As round the reaper falls the grain, So the dark host around him fell, So sank the foes of Israel! Again I looked. In sunlight shone The towers and domes of Askelon; Priest, warrior, slave, a mighty crowd Within her idol temple bowed. Yet one knelt not; stark, gaunt, and blind, His arms the massive pillars twined,-- An eyeless captive, strong with hate, He stood there like an evil Fate. The red shrines smoked,--the trumpets pealed He stooped,--the giant columns reeled; Reeled tower and fane, sank arch and wall, And the thick dust-cloud closed o'er all! Above the shriek, the crash, the groan Of the fallen pride of Askelon, I heard, sheer down the echoing sky, A voice as of an angel cry,-- The voice of him, who at our side Sat through the golden eventide; Of him who, on thy altar's blaze, Rose fire-winged, with his song of praise. "Rejoice o'er Israel's broken chain, Gray mother of the mighty slain! Rejoice!" it cried, "he vanquisheth! The strong in life is strong in death! "To him shall Zorah's daughters raise Through coming years their hymns of praise, And gray old men at evening tell Of all be wrought for Israel. "And they who sing and they who hear Alike shall hold thy memory dear, And pour their blessings on thy head, O mother of the mighty dead!" It ceased; and though a sound I heard As if great wings the still air stirred, I only saw the barley sheaves And hills half hid by olive leaves. I bowed my face, in awe and fear, On the dear child who slumbered near; "With me, as with my only son, O God," I said, "Thy will be done!" 1847. MY SOUL AND I Stand still, my soul, in the silent dark I would question thee, Alone in the shadow drear and stark With God and me! What, my soul, was thy errand here? Was it mirth or ease, Or heaping up dust from year to year? "Nay, none of these!" Speak, soul, aright in His holy sight Whose eye looks still And steadily on thee through the night "To do His will!" What hast thou done, O soul of mine, That thou tremblest so? Hast thou wrought His task, and kept the line He bade thee go? Aha! thou tremblest!--well I see Thou 'rt craven grown. Is it so hard with God and me To stand alone? Summon thy sunshine bravery back, O wretched sprite! Let me hear thy voice through this deep and black Abysmal night. What hast thou wrought for Right and Truth, For God and Man, From the golden hours of bright-eyed youth To life's mid span? What, silent all! art sad of cheer? Art fearful now? When God seemed far and men were near, How brave wert thou! Ah, soul of mine, thy tones I hear, But weak and low, Like far sad murmurs on my ear They come and go. I have wrestled stoutly with the Wrong, And borne the Right From beneath the footfall of the throng To life and light. "Wherever Freedom shivered a chain, God speed, quoth I; To Error amidst her shouting train I gave the lie." Ah, soul of mine! ah, soul of mine! Thy deeds are well: Were they wrought for Truth's sake or for thine? My soul, pray tell. "Of all the work my hand hath wrought Beneath the sky, Save a place in kindly human thought, No gain have I." Go to, go to! for thy very self Thy deeds were done Thou for fame, the miser for pelf, Your end is one! And where art thou going, soul of mine? Canst see the end? And whither this troubled life of thine Evermore doth tend? What daunts thee now? what shakes thee so? My sad soul say. "I see a cloud like a curtain low Hang o'er my way. "Whither I go I cannot tell That cloud hangs black, High as the heaven and deep as hell Across my track. "I see its shadow coldly enwrap The souls before. Sadly they enter it, step by step, To return no more. "They shrink, they shudder, dear God! they kneel To Thee in prayer. They shut their eyes on the cloud, but feel That it still is there. "In vain they turn from the dread Before To the Known and Gone; For while gazing behind them evermore Their feet glide on. "Yet, at times, I see upon sweet pale faces A light begin To tremble, as if from holy places And shrines within. "And at times methinks their cold lips move With hymn and prayer, As if somewhat of awe, but more of love And hope were there. "I call on the souls who have left the light To reveal their lot; I bend mine ear to that wall of night, And they answer not. "But I hear around me sighs of pain And the cry of fear, And a sound like the slow sad dropping of rain, Each drop a tear! "Ah, the cloud is dark, and day by day I am moving thither I must pass beneath it on my way-- God pity me!--whither?" Ah, soul of mine! so brave and wise In the life-storm loud, Fronting so calmly all human eyes In the sunlit crowd! Now standing apart with God and me Thou art weakness all, Gazing vainly after the things to be Through Death's dread wall. But never for this, never for this Was thy being lent; For the craven's fear is but selfishness, Like his merriment. Folly and Fear are sisters twain One closing her eyes. The other peopling the dark inane With spectral lies. Know well, my soul, God's hand controls Whate'er thou fearest; Round Him in calmest music rolls Whate'er thou Nearest. What to thee is shadow, to Him is day, And the end He knoweth, And not on a blind and aimless way The spirit goeth. Man sees no future,--a phantom show Is alone before him; Past Time is dead, and the grasses grow, And flowers bloom o'er him. Nothing before, nothing behind; The steps of Faith Fall on the seeming void, and find The rock beneath. The Present, the Present is all thou hast For thy sure possessing; Like the patriarch's angel hold it fast Till it gives its blessing. Why fear the night? why shrink from Death; That phantom wan? There is nothing in heaven or earth beneath Save God and man. Peopling the shadows we turn from Him And from one another; All is spectral and vague and dim Save God and our brother! Like warp and woof all destinies Are woven fast, Linked in sympathy like the keys Of an organ vast. Pluck one thread, and the web ye mar; Break but one Of a thousand keys, and the paining jar Through all will run. O restless spirit! wherefore strain Beyond thy sphere? Heaven and hell, with their joy and pain, Are now and here. Back to thyself is measured well All thou hast given; Thy neighbor's wrong is thy present hell, His bliss, thy heaven. And in life, in death, in dark and light, All are in God's care Sound the black abyss, pierce the deep of night, And He is there! All which is real now remaineth, And fadeth never The hand which upholds it now sustaineth The soul forever. Leaning on Him, make with reverent meekness His own thy will, And with strength from Him shall thy utter weakness Life's task fulfil; And that cloud itself, which now before thee Lies dark in view, Shall with beams of light from the inner glory Be stricken through. And like meadow mist through autumn's dawn Uprolling thin, Its thickest folds when about thee drawn Let sunlight in. Then of what is to be, and of what is done, Why queriest thou? The past and the time to be are one, And both are now! 1847. WORSHIP. "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this. To visit the fatherless and widows in, their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."--JAMES I. 27. The Pagan's myths through marble lips are spoken, And ghosts of old Beliefs still flit and moan Round fane and altar overthrown and broken, O'er tree-grown barrow and gray ring of stone. Blind Faith had martyrs in those old high places, The Syrian hill grove and the Druid's wood, With mother's offering, to the Fiend's embraces, Bone of their bone, and blood of their own blood. Red altars, kindling through that night of error, Smoked with warm blood beneath the cruel eye Of lawless Power and sanguinary Terror, Throned on the circle of a pitiless sky; Beneath whose baleful shadow, overcasting All heaven above, and blighting earth below, The scourge grew red, the lip grew pale with fasting, And man's oblation was his fear and woe! Then through great temples swelled the dismal moaning Of dirge-like music and sepulchral prayer; Pale wizard priests, o'er occult symbols droning, Swung their white censers in the burdened air As if the pomp of rituals, and the savor Of gums and spices could the Unseen One please; As if His ear could bend, with childish favor, To the poor flattery of the organ keys! Feet red from war-fields trod the church aisles holy, With trembling reverence: and the oppressor there, Kneeling before his priest, abased and lowly, Crushed human hearts beneath his knee of prayer. Not such the service the benignant Father Requireth at His earthly children's hands Not the poor offering of vain rites, but rather The simple duty man from man demands. For Earth He asks it: the full joy of heaven Knoweth no change of waning or increase; The great heart of the Infinite beats even, Untroubled flows the river of His peace. He asks no taper lights, on high surrounding The priestly altar and the saintly grave, No dolorous chant nor organ music sounding, Nor incense clouding tip the twilight nave. For he whom Jesus loved hath truly spoken The holier worship which he deigns to bless Restores the lost, and binds the spirit broken, And feeds the widow and the fatherless! Types of our human weakness and our sorrow! Who lives unhaunted by his loved ones dead? Who, with vain longing, seeketh not to borrow From stranger eyes the home lights which have fled? O brother man! fold to thy heart thy brother; Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there; To worship rightly is to love each other, Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer. Follow with reverent steps the great example Of Him whose holy work was "doing good;" So shall the wide earth seem our Father's temple, Each loving life a psalm of gratitude. Then shall all shackles fall; the stormy clangor Of wild war music o'er the earth shall cease; Love shall tread out the baleful fire of anger, And in its ashes plant the tree of peace! 1848. THE HOLY LAND Paraphrased from the lines in Lamartine's _Adieu to Marseilles_, beginning "Je n'ai pas navigue sur l'ocean de sable." I have not felt, o'er seas of sand, The rocking of the desert bark; Nor laved at Hebron's fount my hand, By Hebron's palm-trees cool and dark; Nor pitched my tent at even-fall, On dust where Job of old has lain, Nor dreamed beneath its canvas wall, The dream of Jacob o'er again. One vast world-page remains unread; How shine the stars in Chaldea's sky, How sounds the reverent pilgrim's tread, How beats the heart with God so nigh How round gray arch and column lone The spirit of the old time broods, And sighs in all the winds that moan Along the sandy solitudes! In thy tall cedars, Lebanon, I have not heard the nations' cries, Nor seen thy eagles stooping down Where buried Tyre in ruin lies. The Christian's prayer I have not said In Tadmor's temples of decay, Nor startled, with my dreary tread, The waste where Memnon's empire lay. Nor have I, from thy hallowed tide, O Jordan! heard the low lament, Like that sad wail along thy side Which Israel's mournful prophet sent! Nor thrilled within that grotto lone Where, deep in night, the Bard of Kings Felt hands of fire direct his own, And sweep for God the conscious strings. I have not climbed to Olivet, Nor laid me where my Saviour lay, And left His trace of tears as yet By angel eyes unwept away; Nor watched, at midnight's solemn time, The garden where His prayer and groan, Wrung by His sorrow and our crime, Rose to One listening ear alone. I have not kissed the rock-hewn grot Where in His mother's arms He lay, Nor knelt upon the sacred spot Where last His footsteps pressed the clay; Nor looked on that sad mountain head, Nor smote my sinful breast, where wide His arms to fold the world He spread, And bowed His head to bless--and died! 1848. THE REWARD Who, looking backward from his manhood's prime, Sees not the spectre of his misspent time? And, through the shade Of funeral cypress planted thick behind, Hears no reproachful whisper on the wind From his loved dead? Who bears no trace of passion's evil force? Who shuns thy sting, O terrible Remorse? Who does not cast On the thronged pages of his memory's book, At times, a sad and half-reluctant look, Regretful of the past? Alas! the evil which we fain would shun We do, and leave the wished-for good undone Our strength to-day Is but to-morrow's weakness, prone to fall; Poor, blind, unprofitable servants all Are we alway. Yet who, thus looking backward o'er his years, Feels not his eyelids wet with grateful tears, If he hath been Permitted, weak and sinful as he was, To cheer and aid, in some ennobling cause, His fellow-men? If he hath hidden the outcast, or let in A ray of sunshine to the cell of sin; If he hath lent Strength to the weak, and, in an hour of need, Over the suffering, mindless of his creed Or home, hath bent; He has not lived in vain, and while he gives The praise to Him, in whom he moves and lives, With thankful heart; He gazes backward, and with hope before, Knowing that from his works he nevermore Can henceforth part. 1848. THE WISH OF TO-DAY. I ask not now for gold to gild With mocking shine a weary frame; The yearning of the mind is stilled, I ask not now for Fame. A rose-cloud, dimly seen above, Melting in heaven's blue depths away; Oh, sweet, fond dream of human Love For thee I may not pray. But, bowed in lowliness of mind, I make my humble wishes known; I only ask a will resigned, O Father, to Thine own! To-day, beneath Thy chastening eye I crave alone for peace and rest, Submissive in Thy hand to lie, And feel that it is best. A marvel seems the Universe, A miracle our Life and Death; A mystery which I cannot pierce, Around, above, beneath. In vain I task my aching brain, In vain the sage's thought I scan, I only feel how weak and vain, How poor and blind, is man. And now my spirit sighs for home, And longs for light whereby to see, And, like a weary child, would come, O Father, unto Thee! Though oft, like letters traced on sand, My weak resolves have passed away, In mercy lend Thy helping hand Unto my prayer to-day! 1848. ALL'S WELL The clouds, which rise with thunder, slake Our thirsty souls with rain; The blow most dreaded falls to break From off our limbs a chain; And wrongs of man to man but make The love of God more plain. As through the shadowy lens of even The eye looks farthest into heaven On gleams of star and depths of blue The glaring sunshine never knew! 1850. INVOCATION Through Thy clear spaces, Lord, of old, Formless and void the dead earth rolled; Deaf to Thy heaven's sweet music, blind To the great lights which o'er it shined; No sound, no ray, no warmth, no breath,-- A dumb despair, a wandering death. To that dark, weltering horror came Thy spirit, like a subtle flame,-- A breath of life electrical, Awakening and transforming all, Till beat and thrilled in every part The pulses of a living heart. Then knew their bounds the land and sea; Then smiled the bloom of mead and tree; From flower to moth, from beast to man, The quick creative impulse ran; And earth, with life from thee renewed, Was in thy holy eyesight good. As lost and void, as dark and cold And formless as that earth of old; A wandering waste of storm and night, Midst spheres of song and realms of light; A blot upon thy holy sky, Untouched, unwarned of thee, am I. O Thou who movest on the deep Of spirits, wake my own from sleep Its darkness melt, its coldness warm, The lost restore, the ill transform, That flower and fruit henceforth may be Its grateful offering, worthy Thee. 1851. QUESTIONS OF LIFE And the angel that was sent unto me, whose name was Uriel, gave me an answer and said, "Thy heart hath gone too far in this world, and thinkest thou to comprehend the way of the Most High?" Then said I, "Yea, my Lord." Then said he unto me, "Go thy way, weigh me the weight of the fire or measure me the blast of the wind, or call me again the day that is past."--2 ESDRAS, chap. iv. A bending staff I would not break, A feeble faith I would not shake, Nor even rashly pluck away The error which some truth may stay, Whose loss might leave the soul without A shield against the shafts of doubt. And yet, at times, when over all A darker mystery seems to fall, (May God forgive the child of dust, Who seeks to know, where Faith should trust!) I raise the questions, old and dark, Of Uzdom's tempted patriarch, And, speech-confounded, build again The baffled tower of Shinar's plain. I am: how little more I know! Whence came I? Whither do I go? A centred self, which feels and is; A cry between the silences; A shadow-birth of clouds at strife With sunshine on the hills of life; A shaft from Nature's quiver cast Into the Future from the Past; Between the cradle and the shroud, A meteor's flight from cloud to cloud. Thorough the vastness, arching all, I see the great stars rise and fall, The rounding seasons come and go, The tided oceans ebb and flow; The tokens of a central force, Whose circles, in their widening course, O'erlap and move the universe; The workings of the law whence springs The rhythmic harmony of things, Which shapes in earth the darkling spar, And orbs in heaven the morning star. Of all I see, in earth and sky,-- Star, flower, beast, bird,--what part have I? This conscious life,--is it the same Which thrills the universal frame, Whereby the caverned crystal shoots, And mounts the sap from forest roots, Whereby the exiled wood-bird tells When Spring makes green her native dells? How feels the stone the pang of birth, Which brings its sparkling prism forth? The forest-tree the throb which gives The life-blood to its new-born leaves? Do bird and blossom feel, like me, Life's many-folded mystery,-- The wonder which it is to be? Or stand I severed and distinct, From Nature's "chain of life" unlinked? Allied to all, yet not the less Prisoned in separate consciousness, Alone o'erburdened with a sense Of life, and cause, and consequence? In vain to me the Sphinx propounds The riddle of her sights and sounds; Back still the vaulted mystery gives The echoed question it receives. What sings the brook? What oracle Is in the pine-tree's organ swell? What may the wind's low burden be? The meaning of the moaning sea? The hieroglyphics of the stars? Or clouded sunset's crimson bars? I vainly ask, for mocks my skill The trick of Nature's cipher still. I turn from Nature unto men, I ask the stylus and the pen; What sang the bards of old? What meant The prophets of the Orient? The rolls of buried Egypt, hid In painted tomb and pyramid? What mean Idumea's arrowy lines, Or dusk Elora's monstrous signs? How speaks the primal thought of man From the grim carvings of Copan? Where rests the secret? Where the keys Of the old death-bolted mysteries? Alas! the dead retain their trust; Dust hath no answer from the dust. The great enigma still unguessed, Unanswered the eternal quest; I gather up the scattered rays Of wisdom in the early days, Faint gleams and broken, like the light Of meteors in a northern night, Betraying to the darkling earth The unseen sun which gave them birth; I listen to the sibyl's chant, The voice of priest and hierophant; I know what Indian Kreeshna saith, And what of life and what of death The demon taught to Socrates; And what, beneath his garden-trees Slow pacing, with a dream-like tread,-- The solemn-thoughted Plato said; Nor lack I tokens, great or small, Of God's clear light in each and all, While holding with more dear regard The scroll of Hebrew seer and bard, The starry pages promise-lit With Christ's Evangel over-writ, Thy miracle of life and death, O Holy One of Nazareth! On Aztec ruins, gray and lone, The circling serpent coils in stone,-- Type of the endless and unknown; Whereof we seek the clue to find, With groping fingers of the blind! Forever sought, and never found, We trace that serpent-symbol round Our resting-place, our starting bound Oh, thriftlessness of dream and guess! Oh, wisdom which is foolishness! Why idly seek from outward things The answer inward silence brings? Why stretch beyond our proper sphere And age, for that which lies so near? Why climb the far-off hills with pain, A nearer view of heaven to gain? In lowliest depths of bosky dells The hermit Contemplation dwells. A fountain's pine-hung slope his seat, And lotus-twined his silent feet, Whence, piercing heaven, with screened sight, He sees at noon the stars, whose light Shall glorify the coining night. Here let me pause, my quest forego; Enough for me to feel and know That He in whom the cause and end, The past and future, meet and blend,-- Who, girt with his Immensities, Our vast and star-hung system sees, Small as the clustered Pleiades,-- Moves not alone the heavenly quires, But waves the spring-time's grassy spires, Guards not archangel feet alone, But deigns to guide and keep my own; Speaks not alone the words of fate Which worlds destroy, and worlds create, But whispers in my spirit's ear, In tones of love, or warning fear, A language none beside may hear. To Him, from wanderings long and wild, I come, an over-wearied child, In cool and shade His peace to find, Lice dew-fall settling on my mind. Assured that all I know is best, And humbly trusting for the rest, I turn from Fancy's cloud-built scheme, Dark creed, and mournful eastern dream Of power, impersonal and cold, Controlling all, itself controlled, Maker and slave of iron laws, Alike the subject and the cause; From vain philosophies, that try The sevenfold gates of mystery, And, baffled ever, babble still, Word-prodigal of fate and will; From Nature, and her mockery, Art; And book and speech of men apart, To the still witness in my heart; With reverence waiting to behold His Avatar of love untold, The Eternal Beauty new and old! 1862. FIRST-DAY THOUGHTS. In calm and cool and silence, once again I find my old accustomed place among My brethren, where, perchance, no human tongue Shall utter words; where never hymn is sung, Nor deep-toned organ blown, nor censer swung, Nor dim light falling through the pictured pane! There, syllabled by silence, let me hear The still small voice which reached the prophet's ear; Read in my heart a still diviner law Than Israel's leader on his tables saw! There let me strive with each besetting sin, Recall my wandering fancies, and restrain The sore disquiet of a restless brain; And, as the path of duty is made plain, May grace be given that I may walk therein, Not like the hireling, for his selfish gain, With backward glances and reluctant tread, Making a merit of his coward dread, But, cheerful, in the light around me thrown, Walking as one to pleasant service led; Doing God's will as if it were my own, Yet trusting not in mine, but in His strength alone! 1852. TRUST. The same old baffling questions! O my friend, I cannot answer them. In vain I send My soul into the dark, where never burn The lamps of science, nor the natural light Of Reason's sun and stars! I cannot learn Their great and solemn meanings, nor discern The awful secrets of the eyes which turn Evermore on us through the day and night With silent challenge and a dumb demand, Proffering the riddles of the dread unknown, Like the calm Sphinxes, with their eyes of stone, Questioning the centuries from their veils of sand! I have no answer for myself or thee, Save that I learned beside my mother's knee; "All is of God that is, and is to be; And God is good." Let this suffice us still, Resting in childlike trust upon His will Who moves to His great ends unthwarted by the ill. 1853. TRINITAS. At morn I prayed, "I fain would see How Three are One, and One is Three; Read the dark riddle unto me." I wandered forth, the sun and air I saw bestowed with equal care On good and evil, foul and fair. No partial favor dropped the rain; Alike the righteous and profane Rejoiced above their heading grain. And my heart murmured, "Is it meet That blindfold Nature thus should treat With equal hand the tares and wheat?" A presence melted through my mood,-- A warmth, a light, a sense of good, Like sunshine through a winter wood. I saw that presence, mailed complete In her white innocence, pause to greet A fallen sister of the street. Upon her bosom snowy pure The lost one clung, as if secure From inward guilt or outward lure. "Beware!" I said; "in this I see No gain to her, but loss to thee Who touches pitch defiled must be." I passed the haunts of shame and sin, And a voice whispered, "Who therein Shall these lost souls to Heaven's peace win? "Who there shall hope and health dispense, And lift the ladder up from thence Whose rounds are prayers of penitence?" I said, "No higher life they know; These earth-worms love to have it so. Who stoops to raise them sinks as low." That night with painful care I read What Hippo's saint and Calvin said; The living seeking to the dead! In vain I turned, in weary quest, Old pages, where (God give them rest!) The poor creed-mongers dreamed and guessed. And still I prayed, "Lord, let me see How Three are One, and One is Three; Read the dark riddle unto me!" Then something whispered, "Dost thou pray For what thou hast? This very day The Holy Three have crossed thy way. "Did not the gifts of sun and air To good and ill alike declare The all-compassionate Father's care? "In the white soul that stooped to raise The lost one from her evil ways, Thou saw'st the Christ, whom angels praise! "A bodiless Divinity, The still small Voice that spake to thee Was the Holy Spirit's mystery! "O blind of sight, of faith how small! Father, and Son, and Holy Call This day thou hast denied them all! "Revealed in love and sacrifice, The Holiest passed before thine eyes, One and the same, in threefold guise. "The equal Father in rain and sun, His Christ in the good to evil done, His Voice in thy soul;--and the Three are One!" I shut my grave Aquinas fast; The monkish gloss of ages past, The schoolman's creed aside I cast. And my heart answered, "Lord, I see How Three are One, and One is Three; Thy riddle hath been read to me!" 1858. THE SISTERS A PICTURE BY BARRY The shade for me, but over thee The lingering sunshine still; As, smiling, to the silent stream Comes down the singing rill. So come to me, my little one,-- My years with thee I share, And mingle with a sister's love A mother's tender care. But keep the smile upon thy lip, The trust upon thy brow; Since for the dear one God hath called We have an angel now. Our mother from the fields of heaven Shall still her ear incline; Nor need we fear her human love Is less for love divine. The songs are sweet they sing beneath The trees of life so fair, But sweetest of the songs of heaven Shall be her children's prayer. Then, darling, rest upon my breast, And teach my heart to lean With thy sweet trust upon the arm Which folds us both unseen! 1858 "THE ROCK" IN EL GHOR. Dead Petra in her hill-tomb sleeps, Her stones of emptiness remain; Around her sculptured mystery sweeps The lonely waste of Edom's plain. From the doomed dwellers in the cleft The bow of vengeance turns not back; Of all her myriads none are left Along the Wady Mousa's track. Clear in the hot Arabian day Her arches spring, her statues climb; Unchanged, the graven wonders pay No tribute to the spoiler, Time! Unchanged the awful lithograph Of power and glory undertrod; Of nations scattered like the chaff Blown from the threshing-floor of God. Yet shall the thoughtful stranger turn From Petra's gates with deeper awe, To mark afar the burial urn Of Aaron on the cliffs of Hor; And where upon its ancient guard Thy Rock, El Ghor, is standing yet,-- Looks from its turrets desertward, And keeps the watch that God has set. The same as when in thunders loud It heard the voice of God to man, As when it saw in fire and cloud The angels walk in Israel's van, Or when from Ezion-Geber's way It saw the long procession file, And heard the Hebrew timbrels play The music of the lordly Nile; Or saw the tabernacle pause, Cloud-bound, by Kadesh Barnea's wells, While Moses graved the sacred laws, And Aaron swung his golden bells. Rock of the desert, prophet-sung! How grew its shadowing pile at length, A symbol, in the Hebrew tongue, Of God's eternal love and strength. On lip of bard and scroll of seer, From age to age went down the name, Until the Shiloh's promised year, And Christ, the Rock of Ages, came! The path of life we walk to-day Is strange as that the Hebrews trod; We need the shadowing rock, as they,-- We need, like them, the guides of God. God send His angels, Cloud and Fire, To lead us o'er the desert sand! God give our hearts their long desire, His shadow in a weary land! 1859. THE OVER-HEART. "For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever! "--PAUL. Above, below, in sky and sod, In leaf and spar, in star and man, Well might the wise Athenian scan The geometric signs of God, The measured order of His plan. And India's mystics sang aright Of the One Life pervading all,-- One Being's tidal rise and fall In soul and form, in sound and sight,-- Eternal outflow and recall. God is: and man in guilt and fear The central fact of Nature owns; Kneels, trembling, by his altar-stones, And darkly dreams the ghastly smear Of blood appeases and atones. Guilt shapes the Terror: deep within The human heart the secret lies Of all the hideous deities; And, painted on a ground of sin, The fabled gods of torment rise! And what is He? The ripe grain nods, The sweet dews fall, the sweet flowers blow; But darker signs His presence show The earthquake and the storm are God's, And good and evil interflow. O hearts of love! O souls that turn Like sunflowers to the pure and best! To you the truth is manifest: For they the mind of Christ discern Who lean like John upon His breast! In him of whom the sibyl told, For whom the prophet's harp was toned, Whose need the sage and magian owned, The loving heart of God behold, The hope for which the ages groaned! Fade, pomp of dreadful imagery Wherewith mankind have deified Their hate, and selfishness, and pride! Let the scared dreamer wake to see The Christ of Nazareth at his side! What doth that holy Guide require? No rite of pain, nor gift of blood, But man a kindly brotherhood, Looking, where duty is desire, To Him, the beautiful and good. Gone be the faithlessness of fear, And let the pitying heaven's sweet rain Wash out the altar's bloody stain; The law of Hatred disappear, The law of Love alone remain. How fall the idols false and grim! And to! their hideous wreck above The emblems of the Lamb and Dove! Man turns from God, not God from him; And guilt, in suffering, whispers Love! The world sits at the feet of Christ, Unknowing, blind, and unconsoled; It yet shall touch His garment's fold, And feel the heavenly Alchemist Transform its very dust to gold. The theme befitting angel tongues Beyond a mortal's scope has grown. O heart of mine! with reverence own The fulness which to it belongs, And trust the unknown for the known. 1859. THE SHADOW AND THE LIGHT. "And I sought, whence is Evil: I set before the eye of my spirit the whole creation; whatsoever we see therein,--sea, earth, air, stars, trees, moral creatures,--yea, whatsoever there is we do not see,--angels and spiritual powers. Where is evil, and whence comes it, since God the Good hath created all things? Why made He anything at all of evil, and not rather by His Almightiness cause it not to be? These thoughts I turned in my miserable heart, overcharged with most gnawing cares." "And, admonished to return to myself, I entered even into my inmost soul, Thou being my guide, and beheld even beyond my soul and mind the Light unchangeable. He who knows the Truth knows what that Light is, and he that knows it knows Eternity! O--Truth, who art Eternity! Love, who art Truth! Eternity, who art Love! And I beheld that Thou madest all things good, and to Thee is nothing whatsoever evil. From the angel to the worm, from the first motion to the last, Thou settest each in its place, and everything is good in its kind. Woe is me!--how high art Thou in the highest, how deep in the deepest! and Thou never departest from us and we scarcely return to Thee." --AUGUSTINE'S Soliloquies, Book VII. The fourteen centuries fall away Between us and the Afric saint, And at his side we urge, to-day, The immemorial quest and old complaint. No outward sign to us is given,-- From sea or earth comes no reply; Hushed as the warm Numidian heaven He vainly questioned bends our frozen sky. No victory comes of all our strife,-- From all we grasp the meaning slips; The Sphinx sits at the gate of life, With the old question on her awful lips. In paths unknown we hear the feet Of fear before, and guilt behind; We pluck the wayside fruit, and eat Ashes and dust beneath its golden rind. From age to age descends unchecked The sad bequest of sire to son, The body's taint, the mind's defect; Through every web of life the dark threads run. Oh, why and whither? God knows all; I only know that He is good, And that whatever may befall Or here or there, must be the best that could. Between the dreadful cherubim A Father's face I still discern, As Moses looked of old on Him, And saw His glory into goodness turn! For He is merciful as just; And so, by faith correcting sight, I bow before His will, and trust Howe'er they seem He doeth all things right. And dare to hope that Tie will make The rugged smooth, the doubtful plain; His mercy never quite forsake; His healing visit every realm of pain; That suffering is not His revenge Upon His creatures weak and frail, Sent on a pathway new and strange With feet that wander and with eyes that fail; That, o'er the crucible of pain, Watches the tender eye of Love The slow transmuting of the chain Whose links are iron below to gold above! Ah me! we doubt the shining skies, Seen through our shadows of offence, And drown with our poor childish cries The cradle-hymn of kindly Providence. And still we love the evil cause, And of the just effect complain We tread upon life's broken laws, And murmur at our self-inflicted pain; We turn us from the light, and find Our spectral shapes before us thrown, As they who leave the sun behind Walk in the shadows of themselves alone. And scarce by will or strength of ours We set our faces to the day; Weak, wavering, blind, the Eternal Powers Alone can turn us from ourselves away. Our weakness is the strength of sin, But love must needs be stronger far, Outreaching all and gathering in The erring spirit and the wandering star. A Voice grows with the growing years; Earth, hushing down her bitter cry, Looks upward from her graves, and hears, "The Resurrection and the Life am I." O Love Divine!--whose constant beam Shines on the eyes that will not see, And waits to bless us, while we dream Thou leavest us because we turn from thee! All souls that struggle and aspire, All hearts of prayer by thee are lit; And, dim or clear, thy tongues of fire On dusky tribes and twilight centuries sit. Nor bounds, nor clime, nor creed thou know'st, Wide as our need thy favors fall; The white wings of the Holy Ghost Stoop, seen or unseen, o'er the heads of all. O Beauty, old yet ever new! Eternal Voice, and Inward Word, The Logos of the Greek and Jew, The old sphere-music which the Samian heard! Truth, which the sage and prophet saw, Long sought without, but found within, The Law of Love beyond all law, The Life o'erflooding mortal death and sin! Shine on us with the light which glowed Upon the trance-bound shepherd's way. Who saw the Darkness overflowed And drowned by tides of everlasting Day. Shine, light of God!--make broad thy scope To all who sin and suffer; more And better than we dare to hope With Heaven's compassion make our longings poor! 1860. THE CRY OF A LOST SOUL. Lieutenant Herndon's Report of the Exploration of the Amazon has a striking description of the peculiar and melancholy notes of a bird heard by night on the shores of the river. The Indian guides called it "The Cry of a Lost Soul"! Among the numerous translations of this poem is one by the Emperor of Brazil. In that black forest, where, when day is done, With a snake's stillness glides the Amazon Darkly from sunset to the rising sun, A cry, as of the pained heart of the wood, The long, despairing moan of solitude And darkness and the absence of all good, Startles the traveller, with a sound so drear, So full of hopeless agony and fear, His heart stands still and listens like his ear. The guide, as if he heard a dead-bell toll, Starts, drops his oar against the gunwale's thole, Crosses himself, and whispers, "A lost soul!" "No, Senor, not a bird. I know it well,-- It is the pained soul of some infidel Or cursed heretic that cries from hell. "Poor fool! with hope still mocking his despair, He wanders, shrieking on the midnight air For human pity and for Christian prayer. "Saints strike him dumb! Our Holy Mother hath No prayer for him who, sinning unto death, Burns always in the furnace of God's wrath!" Thus to the baptized pagan's cruel lie, Lending new horror to that mournful cry, The voyager listens, making no reply. Dim burns the boat-lamp: shadows deepen round, From giant trees with snake-like creepers wound, And the black water glides without a sound. But in the traveller's heart a secret sense Of nature plastic to benign intents, And an eternal good in Providence, Lifts to the starry calm of heaven his eyes; And to! rebuking all earth's ominous cries, The Cross of pardon lights the tropic skies! "Father of all!" he urges his strong plea, "Thou lovest all: Thy erring child may be Lost to himself, but never lost to Thee! "All souls are Thine; the wings of morning bear None from that Presence which is everywhere, Nor hell itself can hide, for Thou art there. "Through sins of sense, perversities of will, Through doubt and pain, through guilt and shame and ill, Thy pitying eye is on Thy creature still. "Wilt thou not make, Eternal Source and Goal! In Thy long years, life's broken circle whole, And change to praise the cry of a lost soul?" 1862. ANDREW RYKMAN'S PRAYER Andrew Rykman's dead and gone; You can see his leaning slate In the graveyard, and thereon Read his name and date. "_Trust is truer than our fears_," Runs the legend through the moss, "_Gain is not in added years, Nor in death is loss_." Still the feet that thither trod, All the friendly eyes are dim; Only Nature, now, and God Have a care for him. There the dews of quiet fall, Singing birds and soft winds stray: Shall the tender Heart of all Be less kind than they? What he was and what he is They who ask may haply find, If they read this prayer of his Which he left behind. . . . . Pardon, Lord, the lips that dare Shape in words a mortal's prayer! Prayer, that, when my day is done, And I see its setting sun, Shorn and beamless, cold and dim, Sink beneath the horizon's rim,-- When this ball of rock and clay Crumbles from my feet away, And the solid shores of sense Melt into the vague immense, Father! I may come to Thee Even with the beggar's plea, As the poorest of Thy poor, With my needs, and nothing more. Not as one who seeks his home With a step assured I come; Still behind the tread I hear Of my life-companion, Fear; Still a shadow deep and vast From my westering feet is cast, Wavering, doubtful, undefined, Never shapen nor outlined From myself the fear has grown, And the shadow is my own. Yet, O Lord, through all a sense Of Thy tender providence Stays my failing heart on Thee, And confirms the feeble knee; And, at times, my worn feet press Spaces of cool quietness, Lilied whiteness shone upon Not by light of moon or sun. Hours there be of inmost calm, Broken but by grateful psalm, When I love Thee more than fear Thee, And Thy blessed Christ seems near me, With forgiving look, as when He beheld the Magdalen. Well I know that all things move To the spheral rhythm of love,-- That to Thee, O Lord of all! Nothing can of chance befall Child and seraph, mote and star, Well Thou knowest what we are Through Thy vast creative plan Looking, from the worm to man, There is pity in Thine eyes, But no hatred nor surprise. Not in blind caprice of will, Not in cunning sleight of skill, Not for show of power, was wrought Nature's marvel in Thy thought. Never careless hand and vain Smites these chords of joy and pain; No immortal selfishness Plays the game of curse and bless Heaven and earth are witnesses That Thy glory goodness is. Not for sport of mind and force Hast Thou made Thy universe, But as atmosphere and zone Of Thy loving heart alone. Man, who walketh in a show, Sees before him, to and fro, Shadow and illusion go; All things flow and fluctuate, Now contract and now dilate. In the welter of this sea, Nothing stable is but Thee; In this whirl of swooning trance, Thou alone art permanence; All without Thee only seems, All beside is choice of dreams. Never yet in darkest mood Doubted I that Thou wast good, Nor mistook my will for fate, Pain of sin for heavenly hate,-- Never dreamed the gates of pearl Rise from out the burning marl, Or that good can only live Of the bad conservative, And through counterpoise of hell Heaven alone be possible. For myself alone I doubt; All is well, I know, without; I alone the beauty mar, I alone the music jar. Yet, with hands by evil stained, And an ear by discord pained, I am groping for the keys Of the heavenly harmonies; Still within my heart I bear Love for all things good and fair. Hands of want or souls in pain Have not sought my door in vain; I have kept my fealty good To the human brotherhood; Scarcely have I asked in prayer That which others might not share. I, who hear with secret shame Praise that paineth more than blame, Rich alone in favors lent, Virtuous by accident, Doubtful where I fain would rest, Frailest where I seem the best, Only strong for lack of test,-- What am I, that I should press Special pleas of selfishness, Coolly mounting into heaven On my neighbor unforgiven? Ne'er to me, howe'er disguised, Comes a saint unrecognized; Never fails my heart to greet Noble deed with warmer beat; Halt and maimed, I own not less All the grace of holiness; Nor, through shame or self-distrust, Less I love the pure and just. Lord, forgive these words of mine What have I that is not Thine? Whatsoe'er I fain would boast Needs Thy pitying pardon most. Thou, O Elder Brother! who In Thy flesh our trial knew, Thou, who hast been touched by these Our most sad infirmities, Thou alone the gulf canst span In the dual heart of man, And between the soul and sense Reconcile all difference, Change the dream of me and mine For the truth of Thee and Thine, And, through chaos, doubt, and strife, Interfuse Thy calm of life. Haply, thus by Thee renewed, In Thy borrowed goodness good, Some sweet morning yet in God's Dim, veonian periods, Joyful I shall wake to see Those I love who rest in Thee, And to them in Thee allied Shall my soul be satisfied. Scarcely Hope hath shaped for me What the future life may be. Other lips may well be bold; Like the publican of old, I can only urge the plea, "Lord, be merciful to me!" Nothing of desert I claim, Unto me belongeth shame. Not for me the, crowns of gold, Palms, and harpings manifold; Not for erring eye and feet Jasper wall and golden street. What thou wilt, O Father, give I All is gain that I receive. If my voice I may not raise In the elders' song of praise, If I may not, sin-defiled, Claim my birthright as a child, Suffer it that I to Thee As an hired servant be; Let the lowliest task be mine, Grateful, so the work be Thine; Let me find the humblest place In the shadow of Thy grace Blest to me were any spot Where temptation whispers not. If there be some weaker one, Give me strength to help him on If a blinder soul there be, Let me guide him nearer Thee. Make my mortal dreams come true With the work I fain would do; Clothe with life the weak intent, Let me be the thing I meant; Let me find in Thy employ Peace that dearer is than joy; Out of self to love be led And to heaven acclimated, Until all things sweet and good Seem my natural habitude. . . . . So we read the prayer of him Who, with John of Labadie, Trod, of old, the oozy rim Of the Zuyder Zee. Thus did Andrew Rykman pray. Are we wiser, better grown, That we may not, in our day, Make his prayer our own? 
9573	----	This eBook was produced by David Widger POEMS OF NATURE POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT RELIGIOUS POEMS BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER CONTENTS: THE ANSWER THE ETERNAL GOODNESS THE COMMON QUESTION OUR MASTER THE MEETING THE CLEAR VISION DIVINE COMPASSION THE PRAYER-SEEKER THE BREWING OF SOMA A WOMAN THE PRAYER OF AGASSIZ IN QUEST THE FRIEND'S BURIAL A CHRISTMAS CARMEN VESTA CHILD-SONGS THE HEALER THE TWO ANGELS OVERRULED HYMN OF THE DUNKERS GIVING AND TAKING THE VISION OF ECHARD INSCRIPTIONS ON A SUN-DIAL ON A FOUNTAIN THE MINISTER'S DAUGHTER BY THEIR WORKS THE WORD THE BOOK REQUIREMENT HELP UTTERANCE ORIENTAL MAXIMS THE INWARD JUDGE LAYING UP TREASURE CONDUCT AN EASTER FLOWER GIFT THE MYSTIC'S CHRISTMAS AT LAST WHAT THE TRAVELLER SAID AT SUNSET THE "STORY OF IDA" THE LIGHT THAT IS FELT THE TWO LOVES ADJUSTMENT HYMNS OF THE BRAHMO SOMAJ REVELATION THE ANSWER. Spare me, dread angel of reproof, And let the sunshine weave to-day Its gold-threads in the warp and woof Of life so poor and gray. Spare me awhile; the flesh is weak. These lingering feet, that fain would stray Among the flowers, shall some day seek The strait and narrow way. Take off thy ever-watchful eye, The awe of thy rebuking frown; The dullest slave at times must sigh To fling his burdens down; To drop his galley's straining oar, And press, in summer warmth and calm, The lap of some enchanted shore Of blossom and of balm. Grudge not my life its hour of bloom, My heart its taste of long desire; This day be mine: be those to come As duty shall require. The deep voice answered to my own, Smiting my selfish prayers away; "To-morrow is with God alone, And man hath but to-day. "Say not, thy fond, vain heart within, The Father's arm shall still be wide, When from these pleasant ways of sin Thou turn'st at eventide. "'Cast thyself down,' the tempter saith, 'And angels shall thy feet upbear.' He bids thee make a lie of faith, And blasphemy of prayer. "Though God be good and free be heaven, No force divine can love compel; And, though the song of sins forgiven May sound through lowest hell, "The sweet persuasion of His voice Respects thy sanctity of will. He giveth day: thou hast thy choice To walk in darkness still; "As one who, turning from the light, Watches his own gray shadow fall, Doubting, upon his path of night, If there be day at all! "No word of doom may shut thee out, No wind of wrath may downward whirl, No swords of fire keep watch about The open gates of pearl; "A tenderer light than moon or sun, Than song of earth a sweeter hymn, May shine and sound forever on, And thou be deaf and dim. "Forever round the Mercy-seat The guiding lights of Love shall burn; But what if, habit-bound, thy feet Shall lack the will to turn? "What if thine eye refuse to see, Thine ear of Heaven's free welcome fail, And thou a willing captive be, Thyself thy own dark jail? "Oh, doom beyond the saddest guess, As the long years of God unroll, To make thy dreary selfishness The prison of a soul! "To doubt the love that fain would break The fetters from thy self-bound limb; And dream that God can thee forsake As thou forsakest Him!" 1863. THE ETERNAL GOODNESS. O friends! with whom my feet have trod The quiet aisles of prayer, Glad witness to your zeal for God And love of man I bear. I trace your lines of argument; Your logic linked and strong I weigh as one who dreads dissent, And fears a doubt as wrong. But still my human hands are weak To hold your iron creeds Against the words ye bid me speak My heart within me pleads. Who fathoms the Eternal Thought? Who talks of scheme and plan? The Lord is God! He needeth not The poor device of man. I walk with bare, hushed feet the ground Ye tread with boldness shod; I dare not fix with mete and bound The love and power of God. Ye praise His justice; even such His pitying love I deem Ye seek a king; I fain would touch The robe that hath no seam. Ye see the curse which overbroods A world of pain and loss; I hear our Lord's beatitudes And prayer upon the cross. More than your schoolmen teach, within Myself, alas! I know Too dark ye cannot paint the sin, Too small the merit show. I bow my forehead to the dust, I veil mine eyes for shame, And urge, in trembling self-distrust, A prayer without a claim. I see the wrong that round me lies, I feel the guilt within; I hear, with groan and travail-cries, The world confess its sin. Yet, in the maddening maze of things, And tossed by storm and flood, To one fixed trust my spirit clings; I know that God is good! Not mine to look where cherubim And seraphs may not see, But nothing can be good in Him Which evil is in me. The wrong that pains my soul below I dare not throne above, I know not of His hate,--I know His goodness and His love. I dimly guess from blessings known Of greater out of sight, And, with the chastened Psalmist, own His judgments too are right. I long for household voices gone, For vanished smiles I long, But God hath led my dear ones on, And He can do no wrong. I know not what the future hath Of marvel or surprise, Assured alone that life and death His mercy underlies. And if my heart and flesh are weak To bear an untried pain, The bruised reed He will not break, But strengthen and sustain. No offering of my own I have, Nor works my faith to prove; I can but give the gifts He gave, And plead His love for love. And so beside the Silent Sea I wait the muffled oar; No harm from Him can come to me On ocean or on shore. I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care. O brothers! if my faith is vain, If hopes like these betray, Pray for me that my feet may gain The sure and safer way. And Thou, O Lord! by whom are seen Thy creatures as they be, Forgive me if too close I lean My human heart on Thee! 1865. THE COMMON QUESTION. Behind us at our evening meal The gray bird ate his fill, Swung downward by a single claw, And wiped his hooked bill. He shook his wings and crimson tail, And set his head aslant, And, in his sharp, impatient way, Asked, "What does Charlie want?" "Fie, silly bird!" I answered, "tuck Your head beneath your wing, And go to sleep;"--but o'er and o'er He asked the self-same thing. Then, smiling, to myself I said How like are men and birds! We all are saying what he says, In action or in words. The boy with whip and top and drum, The girl with hoop and doll, And men with lands and houses, ask The question of Poor Poll. However full, with something more We fain the bag would cram; We sigh above our crowded nets For fish that never swam. No bounty of indulgent Heaven The vague desire can stay; Self-love is still a Tartar mill For grinding prayers alway. The dear God hears and pities all; He knoweth all our wants; And what we blindly ask of Him His love withholds or grants. And so I sometimes think our prayers Might well be merged in one; And nest and perch and hearth and church Repeat, "Thy will be done." OUR MASTER. Immortal Love, forever full, Forever flowing free, Forever shared, forever whole, A never-ebbing sea! Our outward lips confess the name All other names above; Love only knoweth whence it came And comprehendeth love. Blow, winds of God, awake and blow The mists of earth away! Shine out, O Light Divine, and show How wide and far we stray! Hush every lip, close every book, The strife of tongues forbear; Why forward reach, or backward look, For love that clasps like air? We may not climb the heavenly steeps To bring the Lord Christ down In vain we search the lowest deeps, For Him no depths can drown. Nor holy bread, nor blood of grape, The lineaments restore Of Him we know in outward shape And in the flesh no more. He cometh not a king to reign; The world's long hope is dim; The weary centuries watch in vain The clouds of heaven for Him. Death comes, life goes; the asking eye And ear are answerless; The grave is dumb, the hollow sky Is sad with silentness. The letter fails, and systems fall, And every symbol wanes; The Spirit over-brooding all Eternal Love remains. And not for signs in heaven above Or earth below they look, Who know with John His smile of love, With Peter His rebuke. In joy of inward peace, or sense Of sorrow over sin, He is His own best evidence, His witness is within. No fable old, nor mythic lore, Nor dream of bards and seers, No dead fact stranded on the shore Of the oblivious years;-- But warm, sweet, tender, even yet A present help is He; And faith has still its Olivet, And love its Galilee. The healing of His seamless dress Is by our beds of pain; We touch Him in life's throng and press, And we are whole again. Through Him the first fond prayers are said Our lips of childhood frame, The last low whispers of our dead Are burdened with His name. Our Lord and Master of us all! Whate'er our name or sign, We own Thy sway, we hear Thy call, We test our lives by Thine. Thou judgest us; Thy purity Doth all our lusts condemn; The love that draws us nearer Thee Is hot with wrath to them. Our thoughts lie open to Thy sight; And, naked to Thy glance, Our secret sins are in the light Of Thy pure countenance. Thy healing pains, a keen distress Thy tender light shines in; Thy sweetness is the bitterness, Thy grace the pang of sin. Yet, weak and blinded though we be, Thou dost our service own; We bring our varying gifts to Thee, And Thou rejectest none. To Thee our full humanity, Its joys and pains, belong; The wrong of man to man on Thee Inflicts a deeper wrong. Who hates, hates Thee, who loves becomes Therein to Thee allied; All sweet accords of hearts and homes In Thee are multiplied. Deep strike Thy roots, O heavenly Vine, Within our earthly sod, Most human and yet most divine, The flower of man and God! O Love! O Life! Our faith and sight Thy presence maketh one As through transfigured clouds of white We trace the noon-day sun. So, to our mortal eyes subdued, Flesh-veiled, but not concealed, We know in Thee the fatherhood And heart of God revealed. We faintly hear, we dimly see, In differing phrase we pray; But, dim or clear, we own in Thee The Light, the Truth, the Way! The homage that we render Thee Is still our Father's own; No jealous claim or rivalry Divides the Cross and Throne. To do Thy will is more than praise, As words are less than deeds, And simple trust can find Thy ways We miss with chart of creeds. No pride of self Thy service hath, No place for me and mine; Our human strength is weakness, death Our life, apart from Thine. Apart from Thee all gain is loss, All labor vainly done; The solemn shadow of Thy Cross Is better than the sun. Alone, O Love ineffable! Thy saving name is given; To turn aside from Thee is hell, To walk with Thee is heaven! How vain, secure in all Thou art, Our noisy championship The sighing of the contrite heart Is more than flattering lip. Not Thine the bigot's partial plea, Nor Thine the zealot's ban; Thou well canst spare a love of Thee Which ends in hate of man. Our Friend, our Brother, and our Lord, What may Thy service be?-- Nor name, nor form, nor ritual word, But simply following Thee. We bring no ghastly holocaust, We pile no graven stone; He serves thee best who loveth most His brothers and Thy own. Thy litanies, sweet offices Of love and gratitude; Thy sacramental liturgies, The joy of doing good. In vain shall waves of incense drift The vaulted nave around, In vain the minster turret lift Its brazen weights of sound. The heart must ring Thy Christmas bells, Thy inward altars raise; Its faith and hope Thy canticles, And its obedience praise! 1866. THE MEETING. The two speakers in the meeting referred to in this poem were Avis Keene, whose very presence was a benediction, a woman lovely in spirit and person, whose words seemed a message of love and tender concern to her hearers; and Sibyl Jones, whose inspired eloquence and rare spirituality impressed all who knew her. In obedience to her apprehended duty she made visits of Christian love to various parts of Europe, and to the West Coast of Africa and Palestine. The elder folks shook hands at last, Down seat by seat the signal passed. To simple ways like ours unused, Half solemnized and half amused, With long-drawn breath and shrug, my guest His sense of glad relief expressed. Outside, the hills lay warm in sun; The cattle in the meadow-run Stood half-leg deep; a single bird The green repose above us stirred. "What part or lot have you," he said, "In these dull rites of drowsy-head? Is silence worship? Seek it where It soothes with dreams the summer air, Not in this close and rude-benched hall, But where soft lights and shadows fall, And all the slow, sleep-walking hours Glide soundless over grass and flowers! From time and place and form apart, Its holy ground the human heart, Nor ritual-bound nor templeward Walks the free spirit of the Lord! Our common Master did not pen His followers up from other men; His service liberty indeed, He built no church, He framed no creed; But while the saintly Pharisee Made broader his phylactery, As from the synagogue was seen The dusty-sandalled Nazarene Through ripening cornfields lead the way Upon the awful Sabbath day, His sermons were the healthful talk That shorter made the mountain-walk, His wayside texts were flowers and birds, Where mingled with His gracious words The rustle of the tamarisk-tree And ripple-wash of Galilee." "Thy words are well, O friend," I said; "Unmeasured and unlimited, With noiseless slide of stone to stone, The mystic Church of God has grown. Invisible and silent stands The temple never made with hands, Unheard the voices still and small Of its unseen confessional. He needs no special place of prayer Whose hearing ear is everywhere; He brings not back the childish days That ringed the earth with stones of praise, Roofed Karnak's hall of gods, and laid The plinths of Phil e's colonnade. Still less He owns the selfish good And sickly growth of solitude,-- The worthless grace that, out of sight, Flowers in the desert anchorite; Dissevered from the suffering whole, Love hath no power to save a soul. Not out of Self, the origin And native air and soil of sin, The living waters spring and flow, The trees with leaves of healing grow. "Dream not, O friend, because I seek This quiet shelter twice a week, I better deem its pine-laid floor Than breezy hill or sea-sung shore; But nature is not solitude She crowds us with her thronging wood; Her many hands reach out to us, Her many tongues are garrulous; Perpetual riddles of surprise She offers to our ears and eyes; She will not leave our senses still, But drags them captive at her will And, making earth too great for heaven, She hides the Giver in the given. "And so, I find it well to come For deeper rest to this still room, For here the habit of the soul Feels less the outer world's control; The strength of mutual purpose pleads More earnestly our common needs; And from the silence multiplied By these still forms on either side, The world that time and sense have known Falls off and leaves us God alone. "Yet rarely through the charmed repose Unmixed the stream of motive flows, A flavor of its many springs, The tints of earth and sky it brings; In the still waters needs must be Some shade of human sympathy; And here, in its accustomed place, I look on memory's dearest face; The blind by-sitter guesseth not What shadow haunts that vacant spot; No eyes save mine alone can see The love wherewith it welcomes me! And still, with those alone my kin, In doubt and weakness, want and sin, I bow my head, my heart I bare As when that face was living there, And strive (too oft, alas! in vain) The peace of simple trust to gain, Fold fancy's restless wings, and lay The idols of my heart away. "Welcome the silence all unbroken, Nor less the words of fitness spoken,-- Such golden words as hers for whom Our autumn flowers have just made room; Whose hopeful utterance through and through The freshness of the morning blew; Who loved not less the earth that light Fell on it from the heavens in sight, But saw in all fair forms more fair The Eternal beauty mirrored there. Whose eighty years but added grace And saintlier meaning to her face,-- The look of one who bore away Glad tidings from the hills of day, While all our hearts went forth to meet The coming of her beautiful feet! Or haply hers, whose pilgrim tread Is in the paths where Jesus led; Who dreams her childhood's Sabbath dream By Jordan's willow-shaded stream, And, of the hymns of hope and faith, Sung by the monks of Nazareth, Hears pious echoes, in the call To prayer, from Moslem minarets fall, Repeating where His works were wrought The lesson that her Master taught, Of whom an elder Sibyl gave, The prophecies of Cuma 's cave. "I ask no organ's soulless breath To drone the themes of life and death, No altar candle-lit by day, No ornate wordsman's rhetoric-play, No cool philosophy to teach Its bland audacities of speech To double-tasked idolaters Themselves their gods and worshippers, No pulpit hammered by the fist Of loud-asserting dogmatist, Who borrows for the Hand of love The smoking thunderbolts of Jove. I know how well the fathers taught, What work the later schoolmen wrought; I reverence old-time faith and men, But God is near us now as then; His force of love is still unspent, His hate of sin as imminent; And still the measure of our needs Outgrows the cramping bounds of creeds; The manna gathered yesterday Already savors of decay; Doubts to the world's child-heart unknown Question us now from star and stone; Too little or too much we know, And sight is swift and faith is slow; The power is lost to self-deceive With shallow forms of make-believe. W e walk at high noon, and the bells Call to a thousand oracles, But the sound deafens, and the light Is stronger than our dazzled sight; The letters of the sacred Book Glimmer and swim beneath our look; Still struggles in the Age's breast With deepening agony of quest The old entreaty: 'Art thou He, Or look we for the Christ to be?' "God should be most where man is least So, where is neither church nor priest, And never rag of form or creed To clothe the nakedness of need,-- Where farmer-folk in silence meet,-- I turn my bell-unsummoned feet;' I lay the critic's glass aside, I tread upon my lettered pride, And, lowest-seated, testify To the oneness of humanity; Confess the universal want, And share whatever Heaven may grant. He findeth not who seeks his own, The soul is lost that's saved alone. Not on one favored forehead fell Of old the fire-tongued miracle, But flamed o'er all the thronging host The baptism of the Holy Ghost; Heart answers heart: in one desire The blending lines of prayer aspire; 'Where, in my name, meet two or three,' Our Lord hath said, 'I there will be!' "So sometimes comes to soul and sense The feeling which is evidence That very near about us lies The realm of spiritual mysteries. The sphere of the supernal powers Impinges on this world of ours. The low and dark horizon lifts, To light the scenic terror shifts; The breath of a diviner air Blows down the answer of a prayer That all our sorrow, pain, and doubt A great compassion clasps about, And law and goodness, love and force, Are wedded fast beyond divorce. Then duty leaves to love its task, The beggar Self forgets to ask; With smile of trust and folded hands, The passive soul in waiting stands To feel, as flowers the sun and dew, The One true Life its own renew. "So, to the calmly gathered thought The innermost of truth is taught, The mystery dimly understood, That love of God is love of good, And, chiefly, its divinest trace In Him of Nazareth's holy face; That to be saved is only this,-- Salvation from our selfishness, From more than elemental fire, The soul's unsanetified desire, From sin itself, and not the pain That warns us of its chafing chain; That worship's deeper meaning lies In mercy, and not sacrifice, Not proud humilities of sense And posturing of penitence, But love's unforced obedience; That Book and Church and Day are given For man, not God,--for earth, not heaven,-- The blessed means to holiest ends, Not masters, but benignant friends; That the dear Christ dwells not afar, The king of some remoter star, Listening, at times, with flattered ear To homage wrung from selfish fear, But here, amidst the poor and blind, The bound and suffering of our kind, In works we do, in prayers we pray, Life of our life, He lives to-day." 1868. THE CLEAR VISION. I did but dream. I never knew What charms our sternest season wore. Was never yet the sky so blue, Was never earth so white before. Till now I never saw the glow Of sunset on yon hills of snow, And never learned the bough's designs Of beauty in its leafless lines. Did ever such a morning break As that my eastern windows see? Did ever such a moonlight take Weird photographs of shrub and tree? Rang ever bells so wild and fleet The music of the winter street? Was ever yet a sound by half So merry as you school-boy's laugh? O Earth! with gladness overfraught, No added charm thy face hath found; Within my heart the change is wrought, My footsteps make enchanted ground. From couch of pain and curtained room Forth to thy light and air I come, To find in all that meets my eyes The freshness of a glad surprise. Fair seem these winter days, and soon Shall blow the warm west-winds of spring, To set the unbound rills in tune And hither urge the bluebird's wing. The vales shall laugh in flowers, the woods Grow misty green with leafing buds, And violets and wind-flowers sway Against the throbbing heart of May. Break forth, my lips, in praise, and own The wiser love severely kind; Since, richer for its chastening grown, I see, whereas I once was blind. The world, O Father! hath not wronged With loss the life by Thee prolonged; But still, with every added year, More beautiful Thy works appear! As Thou hast made thy world without, Make Thou more fair my world within; Shine through its lingering clouds of doubt; Rebuke its haunting shapes of sin; Fill, brief or long, my granted span Of life with love to thee and man; Strike when thou wilt the hour of rest, But let my last days be my best! 2d mo., 1868. DIVINE COMPASSION. Long since, a dream of heaven I had, And still the vision haunts me oft; I see the saints in white robes clad, The martyrs with their palms aloft; But hearing still, in middle song, The ceaseless dissonance of wrong; And shrinking, with hid faces, from the strain Of sad, beseeching eyes, full of remorse and pain. The glad song falters to a wail, The harping sinks to low lament; Before the still unlifted veil I see the crowned foreheads bent, Making more sweet the heavenly air, With breathings of unselfish prayer; And a Voice saith: "O Pity which is pain, O Love that weeps, fill up my sufferings which remain! "Shall souls redeemed by me refuse To share my sorrow in their turn? Or, sin-forgiven, my gift abuse Of peace with selfish unconcern? Has saintly ease no pitying care? Has faith no work, and love no prayer? While sin remains, and souls in darkness dwell, Can heaven itself be heaven, and look unmoved on hell?" Then through the Gates of Pain, I dream, A wind of heaven blows coolly in; Fainter the awful discords seem, The smoke of torment grows more thin, Tears quench the burning soil, and thence Spring sweet, pale flowers of penitence And through the dreary realm of man's despair, Star-crowned an angel walks, and to! God's hope is there! Is it a dream? Is heaven so high That pity cannot breathe its air? Its happy eyes forever dry, Its holy lips without a prayer! My God! my God! if thither led By Thy free grace unmerited, No crown nor palm be mine, but let me keep A heart that still can feel, and eyes that still can weep. 1868. THE PRAYER-SEEKER. Along the aisle where prayer was made, A woman, all in black arrayed, Close-veiled, between the kneeling host, With gliding motion of a ghost, Passed to the desk, and laid thereon A scroll which bore these words alone, _Pray for me_! Back from the place of worshipping She glided like a guilty thing The rustle of her draperies, stirred By hurrying feet, alone was heard; While, full of awe, the preacher read, As out into the dark she sped: "_Pray for me_!" Back to the night from whence she came, To unimagined grief or shame! Across the threshold of that door None knew the burden that she bore; Alone she left the written scroll, The legend of a troubled soul,-- _Pray for me_! Glide on, poor ghost of woe or sin! Thou leav'st a common need within; Each bears, like thee, some nameless weight, Some misery inarticulate, Some secret sin, some shrouded dread, Some household sorrow all unsaid. _Pray for us_! Pass on! The type of all thou art, Sad witness to the common heart! With face in veil and seal on lip, In mute and strange companionship, Like thee we wander to and fro, Dumbly imploring as we go _Pray for us_! Ah, who shall pray, since he who pleads Our want perchance hath greater needs? Yet they who make their loss the gain Of others shall not ask in vain, And Heaven bends low to hear the prayer Of love from lips of self-despair _Pray for us_! In vain remorse and fear and hate Beat with bruised bands against a fate Whose walls of iron only move And open to the touch of love. He only feels his burdens fall Who, taught by suffering, pities all. _Pray for us_! He prayeth best who leaves unguessed The mystery of another's breast. Why cheeks grow pale, why eyes o'erflow, Or heads are white, thou need'st not know. Enough to note by many a sign That every heart hath needs like thine. _Pray for us_! 1870 THE BREWING OF SOMA. "These libations mixed with milk have been prepared for Indra: offer Soma to the drinker of Soma." --Vashista, translated by MAX MULLER. The fagots blazed, the caldron's smoke Up through the green wood curled; "Bring honey from the hollow oak, Bring milky sap," the brewers spoke, In the childhood of the world. And brewed they well or brewed they ill, The priests thrust in their rods, First tasted, and then drank their fill, And shouted, with one voice and will, "Behold the drink of gods!" They drank, and to! in heart and brain A new, glad life began; The gray of hair grew young again, The sick man laughed away his pain, The cripple leaped and ran. "Drink, mortals, what the gods have sent, Forget your long annoy." So sang the priests. From tent to tent The Soma's sacred madness went, A storm of drunken joy. Then knew each rapt inebriate A winged and glorious birth, Soared upward, with strange joy elate, Beat, with dazed head, Varuna's gate, And, sobered, sank to earth. The land with Soma's praises rang; On Gihon's banks of shade Its hymns the dusky maidens sang; In joy of life or mortal pang All men to Soma prayed. The morning twilight of the race Sends down these matin psalms; And still with wondering eyes we trace The simple prayers to Soma's grace, That Vedic verse embalms. As in that child-world's early year, Each after age has striven By music, incense, vigils drear, And trance, to bring the skies more near, Or lift men up to heaven! Some fever of the blood and brain, Some self-exalting spell, The scourger's keen delight of pain, The Dervish dance, the Orphic strain, The wild-haired Bacchant's yell,-- The desert's hair-grown hermit sunk The saner brute below; The naked Santon, hashish-drunk, The cloister madness of the monk, The fakir's torture-show! And yet the past comes round again, And new doth old fulfil; In sensual transports wild as vain We brew in many a Christian fane The heathen Soma still! Dear Lord and Father of mankind, Forgive our foolish ways! Reclothe us in our rightful mind, In purer lives Thy service find, In deeper reverence, praise. In simple trust like theirs who heard Beside the Syrian sea The gracious calling of the Lord, Let us, like them, without a word, Rise up and follow Thee. O Sabbath rest by Galilee! O calm of hills above, Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee The silence of eternity Interpreted by love! With that deep hush subduing all Our words and works that drown The tender whisper of Thy call, As noiseless let Thy blessing fall As fell Thy manna down. Drop Thy still dews of quietness, Till all our strivings cease; Take from our souls the strain and stress, And let our ordered lives confess The beauty of Thy peace. Breathe through the heats of our desire Thy coolness and Thy balm; Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, O still, small voice of calm! 1872. A WOMAN. Oh, dwarfed and wronged, and stained with ill, Behold! thou art a woman still! And, by that sacred name and dear, I bid thy better self appear. Still, through thy foul disguise, I see The rudimental purity, That, spite of change and loss, makes good Thy birthright-claim of womanhood; An inward loathing, deep, intense; A shame that is half innocence. Cast off the grave-clothes of thy sin! Rise from the dust thou liest in, As Mary rose at Jesus' word, Redeemed and white before the Lord! Reclairn thy lost soul! In His name, Rise up, and break thy bonds of shame. Art weak? He 's strong. Art fearful? Hear The world's O'ercomer: "Be of cheer!" What lip shall judge when He approves? Who dare to scorn the child He loves? THE PRAYER OF AGASSIZ. The island of Penikese in Buzzard's Bay was given by Mr. John Anderson to Agassiz for the uses of a summer school of natural history. A large barn was cleared and improvised as a lecture-room. Here, on the first morning of the school, all the company was gathered. "Agassiz had arranged no programme of exercises," says Mrs. Agassiz, in Louis Agassiz; his Life and Correspondence, "trusting to the interest of the occasion to suggest what might best be said or done. But, as he looked upon his pupils gathered there to study nature with him, by an impulse as natural as it was unpremeditated, he called upon then to join in silently asking God's blessing on their work together. The pause was broken by the first words of an address no less fervent than its unspoken prelude." This was in the summer of 1873, and Agassiz died the December following. On the isle of Penikese, Ringed about by sapphire seas, Fanned by breezes salt and cool, Stood the Master with his school. Over sails that not in vain Wooed the west-wind's steady strain, Line of coast that low and far Stretched its undulating bar, Wings aslant along the rim Of the waves they stooped to skim, Rock and isle and glistening bay, Fell the beautiful white day. Said the Master to the youth "We have come in search of truth, Trying with uncertain key Door by door of mystery; We are reaching, through His laws, To the garment-hem of Cause, Him, the endless, unbegun, The Unnamable, the One Light of all our light the Source, Life of life, and Force of force. As with fingers of the blind, We are groping here to find What the hieroglyphics mean Of the Unseen in the seen, What the Thought which underlies Nature's masking and disguise, What it is that hides beneath Blight and bloom and birth and death. By past efforts unavailing, Doubt and error, loss and failing, Of our weakness made aware, On the threshold of our task Let us light and guidance ask, Let us pause in silent prayer!" Then the Master in his place Bowed his head a little space, And the leaves by soft airs stirred, Lapse of wave and cry of bird, Left the solemn hush unbroken Of that wordless prayer unspoken, While its wish, on earth unsaid, Rose to heaven interpreted. As, in life's best hours, we hear By the spirit's finer ear His low voice within us, thus The All-Father heareth us; And His holy ear we pain With our noisy words and vain. Not for Him our violence Storming at the gates of sense, His the primal language, His The eternal silences! Even the careless heart was moved, And the doubting gave assent, With a gesture reverent, To the Master well-beloved. As thin mists are glorified By the light they cannot hide, All who gazed upon him saw, Through its veil of tender awe, How his face was still uplit By the old sweet look of it. Hopeful, trustful, full of cheer, And the love that casts out fear. Who the secret may declare Of that brief, unuttered prayer? Did the shade before him come Of th' inevitable doom, Of the end of earth so near, And Eternity's new year? In the lap of sheltering seas Rests the isle of Penikese; But the lord of the domain Comes not to his own again Where the eyes that follow fail, On a vaster sea his sail Drifts beyond our beck and hail. Other lips within its bound Shall the laws of life expound; Other eyes from rock and shell Read the world's old riddles well But when breezes light and bland Blow from Summer's blossomed land, When the air is glad with wings, And the blithe song-sparrow sings, Many an eye with his still face Shall the living ones displace, Many an ear the word shall seek He alone could fitly speak. And one name forevermore Shall be uttered o'er and o'er By the waves that kiss the shore, By the curlew's whistle sent Down the cool, sea-scented air; In all voices known to her, Nature owns her worshipper, Half in triumph, half lament. Thither Love shall tearful turn, Friendship pause uncovered there, And the wisest reverence learn From the Master's silent prayer. 1873. IN QUEST Have I not voyaged, friend beloved, with thee On the great waters of the unsounded sea, Momently listening with suspended oar For the low rote of waves upon a shore Changeless as heaven, where never fog-cloud drifts Over its windless wood, nor mirage lifts The steadfast hills; where never birds of doubt Sing to mislead, and every dream dies out, And the dark riddles which perplex us here In the sharp solvent of its light are clear? Thou knowest how vain our quest; how, soon or late, The baffling tides and circles of debate Swept back our bark unto its starting-place, Where, looking forth upon the blank, gray space, And round about us seeing, with sad eyes, The same old difficult hills and cloud-cold skies, We said: "This outward search availeth not To find Him. He is farther than we thought, Or, haply, nearer. To this very spot Whereon we wait, this commonplace of home, As to the well of Jacob, He may come And tell us all things." As I listened there, Through the expectant silences of prayer, Somewhat I seemed to hear, which hath to me Been hope, strength, comfort, and I give it thee. "The riddle of the world is understood Only by him who feels that God is good, As only he can feel who makes his love The ladder of his faith, and climbs above On th' rounds of his best instincts; draws no line Between mere human goodness and divine, But, judging God by what in him is best, With a child's trust leans on a Father's breast, And hears unmoved the old creeds babble still Of kingly power and dread caprice of will, Chary of blessing, prodigal of curse, The pitiless doomsman of the universe. Can Hatred ask for love? Can Selfishness Invite to self-denial? Is He less Than man in kindly dealing? Can He break His own great law of fatherhood, forsake And curse His children? Not for earth and heaven Can separate tables of the law be given. No rule can bind which He himself denies; The truths of time are not eternal lies." So heard I; and the chaos round me spread To light and order grew; and, "Lord," I said, "Our sins are our tormentors, worst of all Felt in distrustful shame that dares not call Upon Thee as our Father. We have set A strange god up, but Thou remainest yet. All that I feel of pity Thou hast known Before I was; my best is all Thy own. From Thy great heart of goodness mine but drew Wishes and prayers; but Thou, O Lord, wilt do, In Thy own time, by ways I cannot see, All that I feel when I am nearest Thee!" 1873. THE FRIEND'S BURIAL. My thoughts are all in yonder town, Where, wept by many tears, To-day my mother's friend lays down The burden of her years. True as in life, no poor disguise Of death with her is seen, And on her simple casket lies No wreath of bloom and green. Oh, not for her the florist's art, The mocking weeds of woe; Dear memories in each mourner's heart Like heaven's white lilies blow. And all about the softening air Of new-born sweetness tells, And the ungathered May-flowers wear The tints of ocean shells. The old, assuring miracle Is fresh as heretofore; And earth takes up its parable Of life from death once more. Here organ-swell and church-bell toll Methinks but discord were; The prayerful silence of the soul Is best befitting her. No sound should break the quietude Alike of earth and sky O wandering wind in Seabrook wood, Breathe but a half-heard sigh! Sing softly, spring-bird, for her sake; And thou not distant sea, Lapse lightly as if Jesus spake, And thou wert Galilee! For all her quiet life flowed on As meadow streamlets flow, Where fresher green reveals alone The noiseless ways they go. From her loved place of prayer I see The plain-robed mourners pass, With slow feet treading reverently The graveyard's springing grass. Make room, O mourning ones, for me, Where, like the friends of Paul, That you no more her face shall see You sorrow most of all. Her path shall brighten more and more Unto the perfect day; She cannot fail of peace who bore Such peace with her away. O sweet, calm face that seemed to wear The look of sins forgiven! O voice of prayer that seemed to bear Our own needs up to heaven! How reverent in our midst she stood, Or knelt in grateful praise! What grace of Christian womanhood Was in her household ways! For still her holy living meant No duty left undone; The heavenly and the human blent Their kindred loves in one. And if her life small leisure found For feasting ear and eye, And Pleasure, on her daily round, She passed unpausing by, Yet with her went a secret sense Of all things sweet and fair, And Beauty's gracious providence Refreshed her unaware. She kept her line of rectitude With love's unconscious ease; Her kindly instincts understood All gentle courtesies. An inborn charm of graciousness Made sweet her smile and tone, And glorified her farm-wife dress With beauty not its own. The dear Lord's best interpreters Are humble human souls; The Gospel of a life like hers Is more than books or scrolls. From scheme and creed the light goes out, The saintly fact survives; The blessed Master none can doubt Revealed in holy lives. 1873. A CHRISTMAS CARMEN. I. Sound over all waters, reach out from all lands, The chorus of voices, the clasping of hands; Sing hymns that were sung by the stars of the morn, Sing songs of the angels when Jesus was born! With glad jubilations Bring hope to the nations The dark night is ending and dawn has begun Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun, All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one! II. Sing the bridal of nations! with chorals of love Sing out the war-vulture and sing in the dove, Till the hearts of the peoples keep time in accord, And the voice of the world is the voice of the Lord! Clasp hands of the nations In strong gratulations: The dark night is ending and dawn has begun; Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun, All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one! III. Blow, bugles of battle, the marches of peace; East, west, north, and south let the long quarrel cease Sing the song of great joy that the angels began, Sing of glory to God and of good-will to man! Hark! joining in chorus The heavens bend o'er us' The dark night is ending and dawn has begun; Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun, All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one! 1873. VESTA. O Christ of God! whose life and death Our own have reconciled, Most quietly, most tenderly Take home Thy star-named child! Thy grace is in her patient eyes, Thy words are on her tongue; The very silence round her seems As if the angels sung. Her smile is as a listening child's Who hears its mother call; The lilies of Thy perfect peace About her pillow fall. She leans from out our clinging arms To rest herself in Thine; Alone to Thee, dear Lord, can we Our well-beloved resign! Oh, less for her than for ourselves We bow our heads and pray; Her setting star, like Bethlehem's, To Thee shall point the way! 1874. CHILD-SONGS. Still linger in our noon of time And on our Saxon tongue The echoes of the home-born hymns The Aryan mothers sung. And childhood had its litanies In every age and clime; The earliest cradles of the race Were rocked to poet's rhyme. Nor sky, nor wave, nor tree, nor flower, Nor green earth's virgin sod, So moved the singer's heart of old As these small ones of God. The mystery of unfolding life Was more than dawning morn, Than opening flower or crescent moon The human soul new-born. And still to childhood's sweet appeal The heart of genius turns, And more than all the sages teach From lisping voices learns,-- The voices loved of him who sang, Where Tweed and Teviot glide, That sound to-day on all the winds That blow from Rydal-side,-- Heard in the Teuton's household songs, And folk-lore of the Finn, Where'er to holy Christmas hearths The Christ-child enters in! Before life's sweetest mystery still The heart in reverence kneels; The wonder of the primal birth The latest mother feels. We need love's tender lessons taught As only weakness can; God hath His small interpreters; The child must teach the man. We wander wide through evil years, Our eyes of faith grow dim; But he is freshest from His hands And nearest unto Him! And haply, pleading long with Him For sin-sick hearts and cold, The angels of our childhood still The Father's face behold. Of such the kingdom!--Teach Thou us, O-Master most divine, To feel the deep significance Of these wise words of Thine! The haughty eye shall seek in vain What innocence beholds; No cunning finds the key of heaven, No strength its gate unfolds. Alone to guilelessness and love That gate shall open fall; The mind of pride is nothingness, The childlike heart is all! 1875. THE HEALER. TO A YOUNG PHYSICIAN, WITH DORE'S PICTURE OF CHRIST HEALING THE SICK. So stood of old the holy Christ Amidst the suffering throng; With whom His lightest touch sufficed To make the weakest strong. That healing gift He lends to them Who use it in His name; The power that filled His garment's hem Is evermore the same. For lo! in human hearts unseen The Healer dwelleth still, And they who make His temples clean The best subserve His will. The holiest task by Heaven decreed, An errand all divine, The burden of our common need To render less is thine. The paths of pain are thine. Go forth With patience, trust, and hope; The sufferings of a sin-sick earth Shall give thee ample scope. Beside the unveiled mysteries Of life and death go stand, With guarded lips and reverent eyes And pure of heart and hand. So shalt thou be with power endued From Him who went about The Syrian hillsides doing good, And casting demons out. That Good Physician liveth yet Thy friend and guide to be; The Healer by Gennesaret Shall walk the rounds with thee. THE TWO ANGELS. God called the nearest angels who dwell with Him above: The tenderest one was Pity, the dearest one was Love. "Arise," He said, "my angels! a wail of woe and sin Steals through the gates of heaven, and saddens all within. "My harps take up the mournful strain that from a lost world swells, The smoke of torment clouds the light and blights the asphodels. "Fly downward to that under world, and on its souls of pain Let Love drop smiles like sunshine, and Pity tears like rain!" Two faces bowed before the Throne, veiled in their golden hair; Four white wings lessened swiftly down the dark abyss of air. The way was strange, the flight was long; at last the angels came Where swung the lost and nether world, red-wrapped in rayless flame. There Pity, shuddering, wept; but Love, with faith too strong for fear, Took heart from God's almightiness and smiled a smile of cheer. And lo! that tear of Pity quenched the flame whereon it fell, And, with the sunshine of that smile, hope entered into hell! Two unveiled faces full of joy looked upward to the Throne, Four white wings folded at the feet of Him who sat thereon! And deeper than the sound of seas, more soft than falling flake, Amidst the hush of wing and song the Voice Eternal spake: "Welcome, my angels! ye have brought a holier joy to heaven; Henceforth its sweetest song shall be the song of sin forgiven!" 1875. OVERRULED. The threads our hands in blindness spin No self-determined plan weaves in; The shuttle of the unseen powers Works out a pattern not as ours. Ah! small the choice of him who sings What sound shall leave the smitten strings; Fate holds and guides the hand of art; The singer's is the servant's part. The wind-harp chooses not the tone That through its trembling threads is blown; The patient organ cannot guess What hand its passive keys shall press. Through wish, resolve, and act, our will Is moved by undreamed forces still; And no man measures in advance His strength with untried circumstance. As streams take hue from shade and sun, As runs the life the song must run; But, glad or sad, to His good end God grant the varying notes may tend! 1877. HYMN OF THE DUNKERS KLOSTER KEDAR, EPHRATA, PENNSYLVANIA (1738) SISTER MARIA CHRISTINA sings Wake, sisters, wake! the day-star shines; Above Ephrata's eastern pines The dawn is breaking, cool and calm. Wake, sisters, wake to prayer and psalm! Praised be the Lord for shade and light, For toil by day, for rest by night! Praised be His name who deigns to bless Our Kedar of the wilderness! Our refuge when the spoiler's hand Was heavy on our native land; And freedom, to her children due, The wolf and vulture only knew. We praised Him when to prison led, We owned Him when the stake blazed red; We knew, whatever might befall, His love and power were over all. He heard our prayers; with outstretched arm He led us forth from cruel harm; Still, wheresoe'er our steps were bent, His cloud and fire before us went! The watch of faith and prayer He set, We kept it then, we keep it yet. At midnight, crow of cock, or noon, He cometh sure, He cometh soon. He comes to chasten, not destroy, To purge the earth from sin's alloy. At last, at last shall all confess His mercy as His righteousness. The dead shall live, the sick be whole, The scarlet sin be white as wool; No discord mar below, above, The music of eternal love! Sound, welcome trump, the last alarm! Lord God of hosts, make bare thine arm, Fulfil this day our long desire, Make sweet and clean the world with fire! Sweep, flaming besom, sweep from sight The lies of time; be swift to smite, Sharp sword of God, all idols down, Genevan creed and Roman crown. Quake, earth, through all thy zones, till all The fanes of pride and priesteraft fall; And lift thou up in place of them Thy gates of pearl, Jerusalem! Lo! rising from baptismal flame, Transfigured, glorious, yet the same, Within the heavenly city's bound Our Kloster Kedar shall be found. He cometh soon! at dawn or noon Or set of sun, He cometh soon. Our prayers shall meet Him on His way; Wake, sisters, wake! arise and pray! 1877. GIVING AND TAKING. I have attempted to put in English verse a prose translation of a poem by Tinnevaluva, a Hindoo poet of the third century of our era. Who gives and hides the giving hand, Nor counts on favor, fame, or praise, Shall find his smallest gift outweighs The burden of the sea and land. Who gives to whom hath naught been given, His gift in need, though small indeed As is the grass-blade's wind-blown seed, Is large as earth and rich as heaven. Forget it not, O man, to whom A gift shall fall, while yet on earth; Yea, even to thy seven-fold birth Recall it in the lives to come. Who broods above a wrong in thought Sins much; but greater sin is his Who, fed and clothed with kindnesses, Shall count the holy alms as nought. Who dares to curse the hands that bless Shall know of sin the deadliest cost; The patience of the heavens is lost Beholding man's unthankfulness. For he who breaks all laws may still In Sivam's mercy be forgiven; But none can save, in earth or heaven, The wretch who answers good with ill. 1877. THE VISION OF ECHARD. The Benedictine Echard Sat by the wayside well, Where Marsberg sees the bridal Of the Sarre and the Moselle. Fair with its sloping vineyards And tawny chestnut bloom, The happy vale Ausonius sunk For holy Treves made room. On the shrine Helena builded To keep the Christ coat well, On minster tower and kloster cross, The westering sunshine fell. There, where the rock-hewn circles O'erlooked the Roman's game, The veil of sleep fell on him, And his thought a dream became. He felt the heart of silence Throb with a soundless word, And by the inward ear alone A spirit's voice he heard. And the spoken word seemed written On air and wave and sod, And the bending walls of sapphire Blazed with the thought of God. "What lack I, O my children? All things are in my band; The vast earth and the awful stars I hold as grains of sand. "Need I your alms? The silver And gold are mine alone; The gifts ye bring before me Were evermore my own. "Heed I the noise of viols, Your pomp of masque and show? Have I not dawns and sunsets Have I not winds that blow? "Do I smell your gums of incense? Is my ear with chantings fed? Taste I your wine of worship, Or eat your holy bread? "Of rank and name and honors Am I vain as ye are vain? What can Eternal Fulness From your lip-service gain? "Ye make me not your debtor Who serve yourselves alone; Ye boast to me of homage Whose gain is all your own. "For you I gave the prophets, For you the Psalmist's lay For you the law's stone tables, And holy book and day. "Ye change to weary burdens The helps that should uplift; Ye lose in form the spirit, The Giver in the gift. "Who called ye to self-torment, To fast and penance vain? Dream ye Eternal Goodness Has joy in mortal pain? "For the death in life of Nitria, For your Chartreuse ever dumb, What better is the neighbor, Or happier the home? "Who counts his brother's welfare As sacred as his own, And loves, forgives, and pities, He serveth me alone. "I note each gracious purpose, Each kindly word and deed; Are ye not all my children? Shall not the Father heed? "No prayer for light and guidance Is lost upon mine ear The child's cry in the darkness Shall not the Father hear? "I loathe your wrangling councils, I tread upon your creeds; Who made ye mine avengers, Or told ye of my needs; "I bless men and ye curse them, I love them and ye hate; Ye bite and tear each other, I suffer long and wait. "Ye bow to ghastly symbols, To cross and scourge and thorn; Ye seek his Syrian manger Who in the heart is born. "For the dead Christ, not the living, Ye watch His empty grave, Whose life alone within you Has power to bless and save. "O blind ones, outward groping, The idle quest forego; Who listens to His inward voice Alone of Him shall know. "His love all love exceeding The heart must needs recall, Its self-surrendering freedom, Its loss that gaineth all. "Climb not the holy mountains, Their eagles know not me; Seek not the Blessed Islands, I dwell not in the sea. "Gone is the mount of Meru, The triple gods are gone, And, deaf to all the lama's prayers, The Buddha slumbers on. "No more from rocky Horeb The smitten waters gush; Fallen is Bethel's ladder, Quenched is the burning bush. "The jewels of the Urim And Thurnmim all are dim; The fire has left the altar, The sign the teraphim. "No more in ark or hill grove The Holiest abides; Not in the scroll's dead letter The eternal secret hides. "The eye shall fail that searches For me the hollow sky; The far is even as the near, The low is as the high. "What if the earth is hiding Her old faiths, long outworn? What is it to the changeless truth That yours shall fail in turn? "What if the o'erturned altar Lays bare the ancient lie? What if the dreams and legends Of the world's childhood die? "Have ye not still my witness Within yourselves alway, My hand that on the keys of life For bliss or bale I lay? "Still, in perpetual judgment, I hold assize within, With sure reward of holiness, And dread rebuke of sin. "A light, a guide, a warning, A presence ever near, Through the deep silence of the flesh I reach the inward ear. "My Gerizim and Ebal Are in each human soul, The still, small voice of blessing, And Sinai's thunder-roll. "The stern behest of duty, The doom-book open thrown, The heaven ye seek, the hell ye fear, Are with yourselves alone." . . . . . A gold and purple sunset Flowed down the broad Moselle; On hills of vine and meadow lands The peace of twilight fell. A slow, cool wind of evening Blew over leaf and bloom; And, faint and far, the Angelus Rang from Saint Matthew's tomb. Then up rose Master Echard, And marvelled: "Can it be That here, in dream and vision, The Lord hath talked with me?" He went his way; behind him The shrines of saintly dead, The holy coat and nail of cross, He left unvisited. He sought the vale of Eltzbach His burdened soul to free, Where the foot-hills of the Eifel Are glassed in Laachersee. And, in his Order's kloster, He sat, in night-long parle, With Tauler of the Friends of God, And Nicolas of Basle. And lo! the twain made answer "Yea, brother, even thus The Voice above all voices Hath spoken unto us. "The world will have its idols, And flesh and sense their sign But the blinded eyes shall open, And the gross ear be fine. "What if the vision tarry? God's time is always best; The true Light shall be witnessed, The Christ within confessed. "In mercy or in judgment He shall turn and overturn, Till the heart shall be His temple Where all of Him shall learn." INSCRIPTIONS. ON A SUN-DIAL. FOR DR. HENRY I. BOWDITCH. With warning hand I mark Time's rapid flight From life's glad morning to its solemn night; Yet, through the dear God's love, I also show There's Light above me by the Shade below. 1879. ON A FOUNTAIN. FOR DOROTHEA L. DIX. Stranger and traveller, Drink freely and bestow A kindly thought on her Who bade this fountain flow, Yet hath no other claim Than as the minister Of blessing in God's name. Drink, and in His peace go 1879 THE MINISTER'S DAUGHTER. In the minister's morning sermon He had told of the primal fall, And how thenceforth the wrath of God Rested on each and all. And how of His will and pleasure, All souls, save a chosen few, Were doomed to the quenchless burning, And held in the way thereto. Yet never by faith's unreason A saintlier soul was tried, And never the harsh old lesson A tenderer heart belied. And, after the painful service On that pleasant Sabbath day, He walked with his little daughter Through the apple-bloom of May. Sweet in the fresh green meadows Sparrow and blackbird sung; Above him their tinted petals The blossoming orchards hung. Around on the wonderful glory The minister looked and smiled; "How good is the Lord who gives us These gifts from His hand, my child. "Behold in the bloom of apples And the violets in the sward A hint of the old, lost beauty Of the Garden of the Lord!" Then up spake the little maiden, Treading on snow and pink "O father! these pretty blossoms Are very wicked, I think. "Had there been no Garden of Eden There never had been a fall; And if never a tree had blossomed God would have loved us all." "Hush, child!" the father answered, "By His decree man fell; His ways are in clouds and darkness, But He doeth all things well. "And whether by His ordaining To us cometh good or ill, Joy or pain, or light or shadow, We must fear and love Him still." "Oh, I fear Him!" said the daughter, "And I try to love Him, too; But I wish He was good and gentle, Kind and loving as you." The minister groaned in spirit As the tremulous lips of pain And wide, wet eyes uplifted Questioned his own in vain. Bowing his head he pondered The words of the little one; Had he erred in his life-long teaching? Had he wrong to his Master done? To what grim and dreadful idol Had he lent the holiest name? Did his own heart, loving and human, The God of his worship shame? And lo! from the bloom and greenness, From the tender skies above, And the face of his little daughter, He read a lesson of love. No more as the cloudy terror Of Sinai's mount of law, But as Christ in the Syrian lilies The vision of God he saw. And, as when, in the clefts of Horeb, Of old was His presence known, The dread Ineffable Glory Was Infinite Goodness alone. Thereafter his hearers noted In his prayers a tenderer strain, And never the gospel of hatred Burned on his lips again. And the scoffing tongue was prayerful, And the blinded eyes found sight, And hearts, as flint aforetime, Grew soft in his warmth and light. 1880. BY THEIR WORKS. Call him not heretic whose works attest His faith in goodness by no creed confessed. Whatever in love's name is truly done To free the bound and lift the fallen one Is done to Christ. Whoso in deed and word Is not against Him labors for our Lord. When He, who, sad and weary, longing sore For love's sweet service, sought the sisters' door, One saw the heavenly, one the human guest, But who shall say which loved the Master best? 1881. THE WORD. Voice of the Holy Spirit, making known Man to himself, a witness swift and sure, Warning, approving, true and wise and pure, Counsel and guidance that misleadeth none! By thee the mystery of life is read; The picture-writing of the world's gray seers, The myths and parables of the primal years, Whose letter kills, by thee interpreted Take healthful meanings fitted to our needs, And in the soul's vernacular express The common law of simple righteousness. Hatred of cant and doubt of human creeds May well be felt: the unpardonable sin Is to deny the Word of God within! 1881. THE BOOK. Gallery of sacred pictures manifold, A minster rich in holy effigies, And bearing on entablature and frieze The hieroglyphic oracles of old. Along its transept aureoled martyrs sit; And the low chancel side-lights half acquaint The eye with shrines of prophet, bard, and saint, Their age-dimmed tablets traced in doubtful writ! But only when on form and word obscure Falls from above the white supernal light We read the mystic characters aright, And life informs the silent portraiture, Until we pause at last, awe-held, before The One ineffable Face, love, wonder, and adore. 1881 REQUIREMENT. We live by Faith; but Faith is not the slave Of text and legend. Reason's voice and God's, Nature's and Duty's, never are at odds. What asks our Father of His children, save Justice and mercy and humility, A reasonable service of good deeds, Pure living, tenderness to human needs, Reverence and trust, and prayer for light to see The Master's footprints in our daily ways? No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife, But the calm beauty of an ordered life Whose very breathing is unworded praise!-- A life that stands as all true lives have stood, Firm-rooted in the faith that God is Good. 1881. HELP. Dream not, O Soul, that easy is the task Thus set before thee. If it proves at length, As well it may, beyond thy natural strength, Faint not, despair not. As a child may ask A father, pray the Everlasting Good For light and guidance midst the subtle snares Of sin thick planted in life's thoroughfares, For spiritual strength and moral hardihood; Still listening, through the noise of time and sense, To the still whisper of the Inward Word; Bitter in blame, sweet in approval heard, Itself its own confirming evidence To health of soul a voice to cheer and please, To guilt the wrath of the Eumenides. 1881. UTTERANCE. But what avail inadequate words to reach The innermost of Truth? Who shall essay, Blinded and weak, to point and lead the way, Or solve the mystery in familiar speech? Yet, if it be that something not thy own, Some shadow of the Thought to which our schemes, Creeds, cult, and ritual are at best but dreams, Is even to thy unworthiness made known, Thou mayst not hide what yet thou shouldst not dare To utter lightly, lest on lips of thine The real seem false, the beauty undivine. So, weighing duty in the scale of prayer, Give what seems given thee. It may prove a seed Of goodness dropped in fallow-grounds of need. 1881. ORIENTAL MAXIMS. PARAPHRASE OF SANSCRIT TRANSLATIONS. THE INWARD JUDGE. From Institutes of Manu. The soul itself its awful witness is. Say not in evil doing, "No one sees," And so offend the conscious One within, Whose ear can hear the silences of sin. Ere they find voice, whose eyes unsleeping see The secret motions of iniquity. Nor in thy folly say, "I am alone." For, seated in thy heart, as on a throne, The ancient Judge and Witness liveth still, To note thy act and thought; and as thy ill Or good goes from thee, far beyond thy reach, The solemn Doomsman's seal is set on each. 1878. LAYING UP TREASURE From the Mahabharata. Before the Ender comes, whose charioteer Is swift or slow Disease, lay up each year Thy harvests of well-doing, wealth that kings Nor thieves can take away. When all the things Thou tallest thine, goods, pleasures, honors fall, Thou in thy virtue shalt survive them all. 1881. CONDUCT From the Mahabharata. Heed how thou livest. Do no act by day Which from the night shall drive thy peace away. In months of sun so live that months of rain Shall still be happy. Evermore restrain Evil and cherish good, so shall there be Another and a happier life for thee. 1881. AN EASTER FLOWER GIFT. O dearest bloom the seasons know, Flowers of the Resurrection blow, Our hope and faith restore; And through the bitterness of death And loss and sorrow, breathe a breath Of life forevermore! The thought of Love Immortal blends With fond remembrances of friends; In you, O sacred flowers, By human love made doubly sweet, The heavenly and the earthly meet, The heart of Christ and ours! 1882. THE MYSTIC'S CHRISTMAS. "All hail!" the bells of Christmas rang, "All hail!" the monks at Christmas sang, The merry monks who kept with cheer The gladdest day of all their year. But still apart, unmoved thereat, A pious elder brother sat Silent, in his accustomed place, With God's sweet peace upon his face. "Why sitt'st thou thus?" his brethren cried. "It is the blessed Christmas-tide; The Christmas lights are all aglow, The sacred lilies bud and blow. "Above our heads the joy-bells ring, Without the happy children sing, And all God's creatures hail the morn On which the holy Christ was born! "Rejoice with us; no more rebuke Our gladness with thy quiet look." The gray monk answered: "Keep, I pray, Even as ye list, the Lord's birthday. "Let heathen Yule fires flicker red Where thronged refectory feasts are spread; With mystery-play and masque and mime And wait-songs speed the holy time! "The blindest faith may haply save; The Lord accepts the things we have; And reverence, howsoe'er it strays, May find at last the shining ways. "They needs must grope who cannot see, The blade before the ear must be; As ye are feeling I have felt, And where ye dwell I too have dwelt. "But now, beyond the things of sense, Beyond occasions and events, I know, through God's exceeding grace, Release from form and time and place. "I listen, from no mortal tongue, To hear the song the angels sung; And wait within myself to know The Christmas lilies bud and blow. "The outward symbols disappear From him whose inward sight is clear; And small must be the choice of clays To him who fills them all with praise! "Keep while you need it, brothers mine, With honest zeal your Christmas sign, But judge not him who every morn Feels in his heart the Lord Christ born!" 1882. AT LAST. When on my day of life the night is falling, And, in the winds from unsunned spaces blown, I hear far voices out of darkness calling My feet to paths unknown, Thou who hast made my home of life so pleasant, Leave not its tenant when its walls decay; O Love Divine, O Helper ever present, Be Thou my strength and stay! Be near me when all else is from me drifting Earth, sky, home's pictures, days of shade and shine, And kindly faces to my own uplifting The love which answers mine. I have but Thee, my Father! let Thy spirit Be with me then to comfort and uphold; No gate of pearl, no branch of palm I merit, Nor street of shining gold. Suffice it if--my good and ill unreckoned, And both forgiven through Thy abounding grace-- I find myself by hands familiar beckoned Unto my fitting place. Some humble door among Thy many mansions, Some sheltering shade where sin and striving cease, And flows forever through heaven's green expansions The river of Thy peace. There, from the music round about me stealing, I fain would learn the new and holy song, And find at last, beneath Thy trees of healing, The life for which I long. 1882 WHAT THE TRAVELLER SAID AT SUNSET. The shadows grow and deepen round me, I feel the deffall in the air; The muezzin of the darkening thicket, I hear the night-thrush call to prayer. The evening wind is sad with farewells, And loving hands unclasp from mine; Alone I go to meet the darkness Across an awful boundary-line. As from the lighted hearths behind me I pass with slow, reluctant feet, What waits me in the land of strangeness? What face shall smile, what voice shall greet? What space shall awe, what brightness blind me? What thunder-roll of music stun? What vast processions sweep before me Of shapes unknown beneath the sun? I shrink from unaccustomed glory, I dread the myriad-voiced strain; Give me the unforgotten faces, And let my lost ones speak again. He will not chide my mortal yearning Who is our Brother and our Friend; In whose full life, divine and human, The heavenly and the earthly blend. Mine be the joy of soul-communion, The sense of spiritual strength renewed, The reverence for the pure and holy, The dear delight of doing good. No fitting ear is mine to listen An endless anthem's rise and fall; No curious eye is mine to measure The pearl gate and the jasper wall. For love must needs be more than knowledge: What matter if I never know Why Aldebaran's star is ruddy, Or warmer Sirius white as snow! Forgive my human words, O Father! I go Thy larger truth to prove; Thy mercy shall transcend my longing I seek but love, and Thou art Love! I go to find my lost and mourned for Safe in Thy sheltering goodness still, And all that hope and faith foreshadow Made perfect in Thy holy will! 1883. THE "STORY OF IDA." Francesca Alexander, whose pen and pencil have so reverently transcribed the simple faith and life of the Italian peasantry, wrote the narrative published with John Ruskin's introduction under the title, _The Story of Ida_. Weary of jangling noises never stilled, The skeptic's sneer, the bigot's hate, the din Of clashing texts, the webs of creed men spin Round simple truth, the children grown who build With gilded cards their new Jerusalem, Busy, with sacerdotal tailorings And tinsel gauds, bedizening holy things, I turn, with glad and grateful heart, from them To the sweet story of the Florentine Immortal in her blameless maidenhood, Beautiful as God's angels and as good; Feeling that life, even now, may be divine With love no wrong can ever change to hate, No sin make less than all-compassionate! 1884. THE LIGHT THAT IS FELT. A tender child of summers three, Seeking her little bed at night, Paused on the dark stair timidly. "Oh, mother! Take my hand," said she, "And then the dark will all be light." We older children grope our way From dark behind to dark before; And only when our hands we lay, Dear Lord, in Thine, the night is day, And there is darkness nevermore. Reach downward to the sunless days Wherein our guides are blind as we, And faith is small and hope delays; Take Thou the hands of prayer we raise, And let us feel the light of Thee! 1884. THE TWO LOVES Smoothing soft the nestling head Of a maiden fancy-led, Thus a grave-eyed woman said: "Richest gifts are those we make, Dearer than the love we take That we give for love's own sake. "Well I know the heart's unrest; Mine has been the common quest, To be loved and therefore blest. "Favors undeserved were mine; At my feet as on a shrine Love has laid its gifts divine. "Sweet the offerings seemed, and yet With their sweetness came regret, And a sense of unpaid debt. "Heart of mine unsatisfied, Was it vanity or pride That a deeper joy denied? "Hands that ope but to receive Empty close; they only live Richly who can richly give. "Still," she sighed, with moistening eyes, "Love is sweet in any guise; But its best is sacrifice! "He who, giving, does not crave Likest is to Him who gave Life itself the loved to save. "Love, that self-forgetful gives, Sows surprise of ripened sheaves, Late or soon its own receives." 1884. ADJUSTMENT. The tree of Faith its bare, dry boughs must shed That nearer heaven the living ones may climb; The false must fail, though from our shores of time The old lament be heard, "Great Pan is dead!" That wail is Error's, from his high place hurled; This sharp recoil is Evil undertrod; Our time's unrest, an angel sent of God Troubling with life the waters of the world. Even as they list the winds of the Spirit blow To turn or break our century-rusted vanes; Sands shift and waste; the rock alone remains Where, led of Heaven, the strong tides come and go, And storm-clouds, rent by thunderbolt and wind, Leave, free of mist, the permanent stars behind. Therefore I trust, although to outward sense Both true and false seem shaken; I will hold With newer light my reverence for the old, And calmly wait the births of Providence. No gain is lost; the clear-eyed saints look down Untroubled on the wreck of schemes and creeds; Love yet remains, its rosary of good deeds Counting in task-field and o'erpeopled town; Truth has charmed life; the Inward Word survives, And, day by day, its revelation brings; Faith, hope, and charity, whatsoever things Which cannot be shaken, stand. Still holy lives Reveal the Christ of whom the letter told, And the new gospel verifies the old. 1885. HYMNS OF THE BRAHMO SOMAJ. I have attempted this paraphrase of the Hymns of the Brahmo Somaj of India, as I find them in Mozoomdar's account of the devotional exercises of that remarkable religious development which has attracted far less attention and sympathy from the Christian world than it deserves, as a fresh revelation of the direct action of the Divine Spirit upon the human heart. I. The mercy, O Eternal One! By man unmeasured yet, In joy or grief, in shade or sun, I never will forget. I give the whole, and not a part, Of all Thou gayest me; My goods, my life, my soul and heart, I yield them all to Thee! II. We fast and plead, we weep and pray, From morning until even; We feel to find the holy way, We knock at the gate of heaven And when in silent awe we wait, And word and sign forbear, The hinges of the golden gate Move, soundless, to our prayer! Who hears the eternal harmonies Can heed no outward word; Blind to all else is he who sees The vision of the Lord! III. O soul, be patient, restrain thy tears, Have hope, and not despair; As a tender mother heareth her child God hears the penitent prayer. And not forever shall grief be thine; On the Heavenly Mother's breast, Washed clean and white in the waters of joy Shall His seeking child find rest. Console thyself with His word of grace, And cease thy wail of woe, For His mercy never an equal hath, And His love no bounds can know. Lean close unto Him in faith and hope; How many like thee have found In Him a shelter and home of peace, By His mercy compassed round! There, safe from sin and the sorrow it brings, They sing their grateful psalms, And rest, at noon, by the wells of God, In the shade of His holy palms! 1885. REVELATION. "And I went into the Vale of Beavor, and as I went I preached repentance to the people. And one morning, sitting by the fire, a great cloud came over me, and a temptation beset me. And it was said: All things come by Nature; and the Elements and the Stars came over me. And as I sat still and let it alone, a living hope arose in me, and a true Voice which said: There is a living God who made all things. And immediately the cloud and the temptation vanished, and Life rose over all, and my heart was glad and I praised the Living God."--Journal of George Fox, 1690. Still, as of old, in Beavor's Vale, O man of God! our hope and faith The Elements and Stars assail, And the awed spirit holds its breath, Blown over by a wind of death. Takes Nature thought for such as we, What place her human atom fills, The weed-drift of her careless sea, The mist on her unheeding hills? What reeks she of our helpless wills? Strange god of Force, with fear, not love, Its trembling worshipper! Can prayer Reach the shut ear of Fate, or move Unpitying Energy to spare? What doth the cosmic Vastness care? In vain to this dread Unconcern For the All-Father's love we look; In vain, in quest of it, we turn The storied leaves of Nature's book, The prints her rocky tablets took. I pray for faith, I long to trust; I listen with my heart, and hear A Voice without a sound: "Be just, Be true, be merciful, revere The Word within thee: God is near! "A light to sky and earth unknown Pales all their lights: a mightier force Than theirs the powers of Nature own, And, to its goal as at its source, His Spirit moves the Universe. "Believe and trust. Through stars and suns, Through life and death, through soul and sense, His wise, paternal purpose runs; The darkness of His providence Is star-lit with benign intents." O joy supreme! I know the Voice, Like none beside on earth or sea; Yea, more, O soul of mine, rejoice, By all that He requires of me, I know what God himself must be. No picture to my aid I call, I shape no image in my prayer; I only know in Him is all Of life, light, beauty, everywhere, Eternal Goodness here and there! I know He is, and what He is, Whose one great purpose is the good Of all. I rest my soul on His Immortal Love and Fatherhood; And trust Him, as His children should. I fear no more. The clouded face Of Nature smiles; through all her things Of time and space and sense I trace The moving of the Spirit's wings, And hear the song of hope she sings. 1886 
9581	----	This eBook was produced by David Widger PERSONAL POEMS BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER CONTENTS PERSONAL POEMS A LAMENT TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES B. STORRS LINES ON THE DEATH OF S. OLIVER TORREY TO ----, WITH A COPY OF WOOLMAN'S JOURNAL LEGGETT'S MONUMENT TO A FRIEND, ON HER RETURN FROM EUROPE LUCY HOOPER FOLLEN TO J. P. CHALKLEY HALL GONE TO RONGE CHANNING TO MY FRIEND ON THE DEATH OF HIS SISTER DANIEL WHEELER TO FREDRIKA BREMER TO AVIS KEENE THE HILL-TOP ELLIOTT ICHABOD THE LOST OCCASION WORDSWORTH TO ---- LINES WRITTEN AFTER A SUMMER DAY'S EXCURSION IN PEACE BENEDICITE KOSSUTH TO MY OLD SCHOOLMASTER THE CROSS THE HERO RANTOUL WILLIAM FORSTER TO CHARLES SUMNER BURNS TO GEORGE B. CHEEVER TO JAMES T. FIELDS THE MEMORY OF BURNS IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOSEPH STURGER BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE NAPLES A MEMORIAL BRYANT ON HIS BIRTHDAY THOMAS STARR KING LINES ON A FLY-LEAF GEORGE L. STEARNS GARIBALDI TO LYDIA MARIA CHILD THE SINGER HOW MARY GREW SUMNER THIERS FITZ-GREENE HALLECK WILLIAM FRANCIS BARTLETT BAYARD TAYLOR OUR AUTOCRAT WITHIN THE GATE IN MEMORY: JAMES T. FIELDS WILSON THE POET AND THE CHILDREN A WELCOME TO LOWELL AN ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL MULFORD TO A CAPE ANN SCHOONER SAMUEL J. TILDEN OCCASIONAL POEMS. EVA A LAY OF OLD TIME A SONG OF HARVEST KENOZA LAKE FOR AN AUTUMN FESTIVAL THE QUAKER ALUMNI OUR RIVER REVISITED "THE LAURELS" JUNE ON THE MERRIMAC HYMN FOR THE OPENING OF THOMAS STARR KING'S HOUSE OF WORSHIP HYMN FOR THE HOUSE OF WORSHIP AT GEORGETOWN, ERECTED IN MEMORY OF A MOTHER A SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION CHICAGO KINSMAN THE GOLDEN WEDDING OF LONGWOOD HYMN FOR THE OPENING OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH, ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA LEXINGTON THE LIBRARY "I WAS A STRANGER, AND YE TOOK ME IN" CENTENNIAL HYMN AT SCHOOL-CLOSE HYMN OF THE CHILDREN THE LANDMARKS GARDEN A GREETING GODSPEED WINTER ROSES THE REUNION NORUMBEGA HALL THE BARTHOLDI STATUE ONE OF THE SIGNERS THE TENT ON THE BEACH. PRELUDE THE TENT ON THE BEACH THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH THE GRAVE BY THE LAKE THE BROTHER OF MERCY THE CHANGELING THE MAIDS OF ATTITASH KALLUNDBORG CHURCH THE CABLE HYMN THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPSWELL THE PALATINE ABRAHAM DAVENPORT THE WORSHIP OF NATURE AT SUNDOWN. TO E. C. S. THE CHRISTMAS OF 1888. THE Vow OF WASHINGTON THE CAPTAIN'S WELL AN OUTDOOR RECEPTION R. S. S., AT DEER ISLAND ON THE MERRIMAC BURNING DRIFT-WOOD. O. W. HOLMES ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL HAVERHILL. 1640-1890 To G. G. PRESTON POWERS, INSCRIPTION FOR BASS-RELIEF LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY, INSCRIPTION ON TABLET MILTON, ON MEMORIAL WINDOW THE BIRTHDAY WREATH THE WIND OF MARCH BETWEEN THE GATES THE LAST EVE OF SUMMER TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 8TH Mo. 29TH, 1892 NOTE. The portrait prefacing this volume is from an engraving on steel by J. A. J. WILCOX in 1888, after a photograph taken by Miss ISA E. GRAY in July, 1885. PERSONAL POEMS A LAMENT "The parted spirit, Knoweth it not our sorrow? Answereth not Its blessing to our tears?" The circle is broken, one seat is forsaken, One bud from the tree of our friendship is shaken; One heart from among us no longer shall thrill With joy in our gladness, or grief in our ill. Weep! lonely and lowly are slumbering now The light of her glances, the pride of her brow; Weep! sadly and long shall we listen in vain To hear the soft tones of her welcome again. Give our tears to the dead! For humanity's claim From its silence and darkness is ever the same; The hope of that world whose existence is bliss May not stifle the tears of the mourners of this. For, oh! if one glance the freed spirit can throw On the scene of its troubled probation below, Than the pride of the marble, the pomp of the dead, To that glance will be dearer the tears which we shed. Oh, who can forget the mild light of her smile, Over lips moved with music and feeling the while, The eye's deep enchantment, dark, dream-like, and clear, In the glow of its gladness, the shade of its tear. And the charm of her features, while over the whole Played the hues of the heart and the sunshine of soul; And the tones of her voice, like the music which seems Murmured low in our ears by the Angel of dreams! But holier and dearer our memories hold Those treasures of feeling, more precious than gold, The love and the kindness and pity which gave Fresh flowers for the bridal, green wreaths for the grave! The heart ever open to Charity's claim, Unmoved from its purpose by censure and blame, While vainly alike on her eye and her ear Fell the scorn of the heartless, the jesting and jeer. How true to our hearts was that beautiful sleeper With smiles for the joyful, with tears for the weeper, Yet, evermore prompt, whether mournful or gay, With warnings in love to the passing astray. For, though spotless herself, she could sorrow for them Who sullied with evil the spirit's pure gem; And a sigh or a tear could the erring reprove, And the sting of reproof was still tempered by love. As a cloud of the sunset, slow melting in heaven, As a star that is lost when the daylight is given, As a glad dream of slumber, which wakens in bliss, She hath passed to the world of the holy from this. 1834. TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES B. STORRS, Late President of Western Reserve College, who died at his post of duty, overworn by his strenuous labors with tongue and pen in the cause of Human Freedom. Thou hast fallen in thine armor, Thou martyr of the Lord With thy last breath crying "Onward!" And thy hand upon the sword. The haughty heart derideth, And the sinful lip reviles, But the blessing of the perishing Around thy pillow smiles! When to our cup of trembling The added drop is given, And the long-suspended thunder Falls terribly from Heaven,-- When a new and fearful freedom Is proffered of the Lord To the slow-consuming Famine, The Pestilence and Sword! When the refuges of Falsehood Shall be swept away in wrath, And the temple shall be shaken, With its idol, to the earth, Shall not thy words of warning Be all remembered then? And thy now unheeded message Burn in the hearts of men? Oppression's hand may scatter Its nettles on thy tomb, And even Christian bosoms Deny thy memory room; For lying lips shall torture Thy mercy into crime, And the slanderer shall flourish As the bay-tree for a time. But where the south-wind lingers On Carolina's pines, Or falls the careless sunbeam Down Georgia's golden mines; Where now beneath his burthen The toiling slave is driven; Where now a tyrant's mockery Is offered unto Heaven; Where Mammon hath its altars Wet o'er with human blood, And pride and lust debases The workmanship of God,-- There shall thy praise be spoken, Redeemed from Falsehood's ban, When the fetters shall be broken, And the slave shall be a man! Joy to thy spirit, brother! A thousand hearts are warm, A thousand kindred bosoms Are baring to the storm. What though red-handed Violence With secret Fraud combine? The wall of fire is round us, Our Present Help was thine. Lo, the waking up of nations, From Slavery's fatal sleep; The murmur of a Universe, Deep calling unto Deep! Joy to thy spirit, brother! On every wind of heaven The onward cheer and summons Of Freedom's voice is given! Glory to God forever! Beyond the despot's will The soul of Freedom liveth Imperishable still. The words which thou hast uttered Are of that soul a part, And the good seed thou hast scattered Is springing from the heart. In the evil days before us, And the trials yet to come, In the shadow of the prison, Or the cruel martyrdom,-- We will think of thee, O brother! And thy sainted name shall be In the blessing of the captive, And the anthem of the free. 1834 LINES ON THE DEATH OF S. OLIVER TORREY, SECRETARY OF THE BOSTON YOUNG MEN'S ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY. Gone before us, O our brother, To the spirit-land! Vainly look we for another In thy place to stand. Who shall offer youth and beauty On the wasting shrine Of a stern and lofty duty, With a faith like thine? Oh, thy gentle smile of greeting Who again shall see? Who amidst the solemn meeting Gaze again on thee? Who when peril gathers o'er us, Wear so calm a brow? Who, with evil men before us, So serene as thou? Early hath the spoiler found thee, Brother of our love! Autumn's faded earth around thee, And its storms above! Evermore that turf lie lightly, And, with future showers, O'er thy slumbers fresh and brightly Blow the summer flowers In the locks thy forehead gracing, Not a silvery streak; Nor a line of sorrow's tracing On thy fair young cheek; Eyes of light and lips of roses, Such as Hylas wore,-- Over all that curtain closes, Which shall rise no more! Will the vigil Love is keeping Round that grave of thine, Mournfully, like Jazer weeping Over Sibmah's vine; Will the pleasant memories, swelling Gentle hearts, of thee, In the spirit's distant dwelling All unheeded be? If the spirit ever gazes, From its journeyings, back; If the immortal ever traces O'er its mortal track; Wilt thou not, O brother, meet us Sometimes on our way, And, in hours of sadness, greet us As a spirit may? Peace be with thee, O our brother, In the spirit-land Vainly look we for another In thy place to stand. Unto Truth and Freedom giving All thy early powers, Be thy virtues with the living, And thy spirit ours! 1837. TO ------, WITH A COPY OF WOOLMAN'S JOURNAL. "Get the writings of John Woolman by heart."--Essays of Elia. Maiden! with the fair brown tresses Shading o'er thy dreamy eye, Floating on thy thoughtful forehead Cloud wreaths of its sky. Youthful years and maiden beauty, Joy with them should still abide,-- Instinct take the place of Duty, Love, not Reason, guide. Ever in the New rejoicing, Kindly beckoning back the Old, Turning, with the gift of Midas, All things into gold. And the passing shades of sadness Wearing even a welcome guise, As, when some bright lake lies open To the sunny skies, Every wing of bird above it, Every light cloud floating on, Glitters like that flashing mirror In the self-same sun. But upon thy youthful forehead Something like a shadow lies; And a serious soul is looking From thy earnest eyes. With an early introversion, Through the forms of outward things, Seeking for the subtle essence, And the bidden springs. Deeper than the gilded surface Hath thy wakeful vision seen, Farther than the narrow present Have thy journeyings been. Thou hast midst Life's empty noises Heard the solemn steps of Time, And the low mysterious voices Of another clime. All the mystery of Being Hath upon thy spirit pressed,-- Thoughts which, like the Deluge wanderer, Find no place of rest: That which mystic Plato pondered, That which Zeno heard with awe, And the star-rapt Zoroaster In his night-watch saw. From the doubt and darkness springing Of the dim, uncertain Past, Moving to the dark still shadows O'er the Future cast, Early hath Life's mighty question Thrilled within thy heart of youth, With a deep and strong beseeching What and where is Truth? Hollow creed and ceremonial, Whence the ancient life hath fled, Idle faith unknown to action, Dull and cold and dead. Oracles, whose wire-worked meanings Only wake a quiet scorn,-- Not from these thy seeking spirit Hath its answer drawn. But, like some tired child at even, On thy mother Nature's breast, Thou, methinks, art vainly seeking Truth, and peace, and rest. O'er that mother's rugged features Thou art throwing Fancy's veil, Light and soft as woven moonbeams, Beautiful and frail O'er the rough chart of Existence, Rocks of sin and wastes of woe, Soft airs breathe, and green leaves tremble, And cool fountains flow. And to thee an answer cometh From the earth and from the sky, And to thee the hills and waters And the stars reply. But a soul-sufficing answer Hath no outward origin; More than Nature's many voices May be heard within. Even as the great Augustine Questioned earth and sea and sky, And the dusty tomes of learning And old poesy. But his earnest spirit needed More than outward Nature taught; More than blest the poet's vision Or the sage's thought. Only in the gathered silence Of a calm and waiting frame, Light and wisdom as from Heaven To the seeker came. Not to ease and aimless quiet Doth that inward answer tend, But to works of love and duty As our being's end; Not to idle dreams and trances, Length of face, and solemn tone, But to Faith, in daily striving And performance shown. Earnest toil and strong endeavor Of a spirit which within Wrestles with familiar evil And besetting sin; And without, with tireless vigor, Steady heart, and weapon strong, In the power of truth assailing Every form of wrong. Guided thus, how passing lovely Is the track of Woolman's feet! And his brief and simple record How serenely sweet! O'er life's humblest duties throwing Light the earthling never knew, Freshening all its dark waste places As with Hermon's dew. All which glows in Pascal's pages, All which sainted Guion sought, Or the blue-eyed German Rahel Half-unconscious taught Beauty, such as Goethe pictured, Such as Shelley dreamed of, shed Living warmth and starry brightness Round that poor man's head. Not a vain and cold ideal, Not a poet's dream alone, But a presence warm and real, Seen and felt and known. When the red right-hand of slaughter Moulders with the steel it swung, When the name of seer and poet Dies on Memory's tongue, All bright thoughts and pure shall gather Round that meek and suffering one,-- Glorious, like the seer-seen angel Standing in the sun! Take the good man's book and ponder What its pages say to thee; Blessed as the hand of healing May its lesson be. If it only serves to strengthen Yearnings for a higher good, For the fount of living waters And diviner food; If the pride of human reason Feels its meek and still rebuke, Quailing like the eye of Peter From the Just One's look! If with readier ear thou heedest What the Inward Teacher saith, Listening with a willing spirit And a childlike faith,-- Thou mayst live to bless the giver, Who, himself but frail and weak, Would at least the highest welfare Of another seek; And his gift, though poor and lowly It may seem to other eyes, Yet may prove an angel holy In a pilgrim's guise. 1840. LEGGETT'S MONUMENT. William Leggett, who died in 1839 at the age of thirty-seven, was the intrepid editor of the New York Evening Post and afterward of The Plain Dealer. His vigorous assault upon the system of slavery brought down upon him the enmity of political defenders of the system. "Ye build the tombs of the prophets."--Holy Writ. Yes, pile the marble o'er him! It is well That ye who mocked him in his long stern strife, And planted in the pathway of his life The ploughshares of your hatred hot from hell, Who clamored down the bold reformer when He pleaded for his captive fellow-men, Who spurned him in the market-place, and sought Within thy walls, St. Tammany, to bind In party chains the free and honest thought, The angel utterance of an upright mind, Well is it now that o'er his grave ye raise The stony tribute of your tardy praise, For not alone that pile shall tell to Fame Of the brave heart beneath, but of the builders' shame! 1841. TO A FRIEND, ON HER RETURN FROM EUROPE. How smiled the land of France Under thy blue eye's glance, Light-hearted rover Old walls of chateaux gray, Towers of an early day, Which the Three Colors play Flauntingly over. Now midst the brilliant train Thronging the banks of Seine Now midst the splendor Of the wild Alpine range, Waking with change on change Thoughts in thy young heart strange, Lovely, and tender. Vales, soft Elysian, Like those in the vision Of Mirza, when, dreaming, He saw the long hollow dell, Touched by the prophet's spell, Into an ocean swell With its isles teeming. Cliffs wrapped in snows of years, Splintering with icy spears Autumn's blue heaven Loose rock and frozen slide, Hung on the mountain-side, Waiting their hour to glide Downward, storm-driven! Rhine-stream, by castle old, Baron's and robber's hold, Peacefully flowing; Sweeping through vineyards green, Or where the cliffs are seen O'er the broad wave between Grim shadows throwing. Or, where St. Peter's dome Swells o'er eternal Rome, Vast, dim, and solemn; Hymns ever chanting low, Censers swung to and fro, Sable stoles sweeping slow Cornice and column! Oh, as from each and all Will there not voices call Evermore back again? In the mind's gallery Wilt thou not always see Dim phantoms beckon thee O'er that old track again? New forms thy presence haunt, New voices softly chant, New faces greet thee! Pilgrims from many a shrine Hallowed by poet's line, At memory's magic sign, Rising to meet thee. And when such visions come Unto thy olden home, Will they not waken Deep thoughts of Him whose hand Led thee o'er sea and land Back to the household band Whence thou wast taken? While, at the sunset time, Swells the cathedral's chime, Yet, in thy dreaming, While to thy spirit's eye Yet the vast mountains lie Piled in the Switzer's sky, Icy and gleaming: Prompter of silent prayer, Be the wild picture there In the mind's chamber, And, through each coming day Him who, as staff and stay, Watched o'er thy wandering way, Freshly remember. So, when the call shall be Soon or late unto thee, As to all given, Still may that picture live, All its fair forms survive, And to thy spirit give Gladness in Heaven! 1841 LUCY HOOPER. Lucy Hooper died at Brooklyn, L. I., on the 1st of 8th mo., 1841, aged twenty-four years. They tell me, Lucy, thou art dead, That all of thee we loved and cherished Has with thy summer roses perished; And left, as its young beauty fled, An ashen memory in its stead, The twilight of a parted day Whose fading light is cold and vain, The heart's faint echo of a strain Of low, sweet music passed away. That true and loving heart, that gift Of a mind, earnest, clear, profound, Bestowing, with a glad unthrift, Its sunny light on all around, Affinities which only could Cleave to the pure, the true, and good; And sympathies which found no rest, Save with the loveliest and best. Of them--of thee--remains there naught But sorrow in the mourner's breast? A shadow in the land of thought? No! Even my weak and trembling faith Can lift for thee the veil which doubt And human fear have drawn about The all-awaiting scene of death. Even as thou wast I see thee still; And, save the absence of all ill And pain and weariness, which here Summoned the sigh or wrung the tear, The same as when, two summers back, Beside our childhood's Merrimac, I saw thy dark eye wander o'er Stream, sunny upland, rocky shore, And heard thy low, soft voice alone Midst lapse of waters, and the tone Of pine-leaves by the west-wind blown, There's not a charm of soul or brow, Of all we knew and loved in thee, But lives in holier beauty now, Baptized in immortality! Not mine the sad and freezing dream Of souls that, with their earthly mould, Cast off the loves and joys of old, Unbodied, like a pale moonbeam, As pure, as passionless, and cold; Nor mine the hope of Indra's son, Of slumbering in oblivion's rest, Life's myriads blending into one, In blank annihilation blest; Dust-atoms of the infinite, Sparks scattered from the central light, And winning back through mortal pain Their old unconsciousness again. No! I have friends in Spirit Land, Not shadows in a shadowy band, Not others, but themselves are they. And still I think of them the same As when the Master's summons came; Their change,--the holy morn-light breaking Upon the dream-worn sleeper, waking,-- A change from twilight into day. They 've laid thee midst the household graves, Where father, brother, sister lie; Below thee sweep the dark blue waves, Above thee bends the summer sky. Thy own loved church in sadness read Her solemn ritual o'er thy head, And blessed and hallowed with her prayer The turf laid lightly o'er thee there. That church, whose rites and liturgy, Sublime and old, were truth to thee, Undoubted to thy bosom taken, As symbols of a faith unshaken. Even I, of simpler views, could feel The beauty of thy trust and zeal; And, owning not thy creed, could see How deep a truth it seemed to thee, And how thy fervent heart had thrown O'er all, a coloring of its own, And kindled up, intense and warm, A life in every rite and form, As. when on Chebar's banks of old, The Hebrew's gorgeous vision rolled, A spirit filled the vast machine, A life, "within the wheels" was seen. Farewell! A little time, and we Who knew thee well, and loved thee here, One after one shall follow thee As pilgrims through the gate of fear, Which opens on eternity. Yet shall we cherish not the less All that is left our hearts meanwhile; The memory of thy loveliness Shall round our weary pathway smile, Like moonlight when the sun has set, A sweet and tender radiance yet. Thoughts of thy clear-eyed sense of duty, Thy generous scorn of all things wrong, The truth, the strength, the graceful beauty Which blended in thy song. All lovely things, by thee beloved, Shall whisper to our hearts of thee; These green hills, where thy childhood roved, Yon river winding to the sea, The sunset light of autumn eves Reflecting on the deep, still floods, Cloud, crimson sky, and trembling leaves Of rainbow-tinted woods, These, in our view, shall henceforth take A tenderer meaning for thy sake; And all thou lovedst of earth and sky, Seem sacred to thy memory. 1841. FOLLEN. ON READING HIS ESSAY ON THE "FUTURE STATE." Charles Follen, one of the noblest contributions of Germany to American citizenship, was at an early age driven from his professorship in the University of Jena, and compelled to seek shelter from official prosecution in Switzerland, on account of his liberal political opinions. He became Professor of Civil Law in the University of Basle. The governments of Prussia, Austria, and Russia united in demanding his delivery as a political offender; and, in consequence, he left Switzerland, and came to the United States. At the time of the formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society he was a Professor in Harvard University, honored for his genius, learning, and estimable character. His love of liberty and hatred of oppression led him to seek an interview with Garrison and express his sympathy with him. Soon after, he attended a meeting of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. An able speech was made by Rev. A. A. Phelps, and a letter of mine addressed to the Secretary of the Society was read. Whereupon he rose and stated that his views were in unison with those of the Society, and that after hearing the speech and the letter, he was ready to join it, and abide the probable consequences of such an unpopular act. He lost by so doing his professorship. He was an able member of the Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society. He perished in the ill-fated steamer Lexington, which was burned on its passage from New York, January 13, 1840. The few writings left behind him show him to have been a profound thinker of rare spiritual insight. Friend of my soul! as with moist eye I look up from this page of thine, Is it a dream that thou art nigh, Thy mild face gazing into mine? That presence seems before me now, A placid heaven of sweet moonrise, When, dew-like, on the earth below Descends the quiet of the skies. The calm brow through the parted hair, The gentle lips which knew no guile, Softening the blue eye's thoughtful care With the bland beauty of their smile. Ah me! at times that last dread scene Of Frost and Fire and moaning Sea Will cast its shade of doubt between The failing eyes of Faith and thee. Yet, lingering o'er thy charmed page, Where through the twilight air of earth, Alike enthusiast and sage, Prophet and bard, thou gazest forth, Lifting the Future's solemn veil; The reaching of a mortal hand To put aside the cold and pale Cloud-curtains of the Unseen Land; Shall these poor elements outlive The mind whose kingly will, they wrought? Their gross unconsciousness survive Thy godlike energy of thought? In thoughts which answer to my own, In words which reach my inward ear, Like whispers from the void Unknown, I feel thy living presence here. The waves which lull thy body's rest, The dust thy pilgrim footsteps trod, Unwasted, through each change, attest The fixed economy of God. Thou livest, Follen! not in vain Hath thy fine spirit meekly borne The burthen of Life's cross of pain, And the thorned crown of suffering worn. Oh, while Life's solemn mystery glooms Around us like a dungeon's wall, Silent earth's pale and crowded tombs, Silent the heaven which bends o'er all! While day by day our loved ones glide In spectral silence, hushed and lone, To the cold shadows which divide The living from the dread Unknown; While even on the closing eye, And on the lip which moves in vain, The seals of that stern mystery Their undiscovered trust retain; And only midst the gloom of death, Its mournful doubts and haunting fears, Two pale, sweet angels, Hope and Faith, Smile dimly on us through their tears; 'T is something to a heart like mine To think of thee as living yet; To feel that such a light as thine Could not in utter darkness set. Less dreary seems the untried way Since thou hast left thy footprints there, And beams of mournful beauty play Round the sad Angel's sable hair. Oh! at this hour when half the sky Is glorious with its evening light, And fair broad fields of summer lie Hung o'er with greenness in my sight; While through these elm-boughs wet with rain The sunset's golden walls are seen, With clover-bloom and yellow grain And wood-draped hill and stream between; I long to know if scenes like this Are hidden from an angel's eyes; If earth's familiar loveliness Haunts not thy heaven's serener skies. For sweetly here upon thee grew The lesson which that beauty gave, The ideal of the pure and true In earth and sky and gliding wave. And it may be that all which lends The soul an upward impulse here, With a diviner beauty blends, And greets us in a holier sphere. Through groves where blighting never fell The humbler flowers of earth may twine; And simple draughts-from childhood's well Blend with the angel-tasted wine. But be the prying vision veiled, And let the seeking lips be dumb, Where even seraph eyes have failed Shall mortal blindness seek to come? We only know that thou hast gone, And that the same returnless tide Which bore thee from us still glides on, And we who mourn thee with it glide. On all thou lookest we shall look, And to our gaze erelong shall turn That page of God's mysterious book We so much wish yet dread to learn. With Him, before whose awful power Thy spirit bent its trembling knee; Who, in the silent greeting flower, And forest leaf, looked out on thee, We leave thee, with a trust serene, Which Time, nor Change, nor Death can move, While with thy childlike faith we lean On Him whose dearest name is Love! 1842. TO J. P. John Pierpont, the eloquent preacher and poet of Boston. Not as a poor requital of the joy With which my childhood heard that lay of thine, Which, like an echo of the song divine At Bethlehem breathed above the Holy Boy, Bore to my ear the Airs of Palestine,-- Not to the poet, but the man I bring In friendship's fearless trust my offering How much it lacks I feel, and thou wilt see, Yet well I know that thou Last deemed with me Life all too earnest, and its time too short For dreamy ease and Fancy's graceful sport; And girded for thy constant strife with wrong, Like Nehemiah fighting while he wrought The broken walls of Zion, even thy song Hath a rude martial tone, a blow in every thought! 1843. CHALKLEY HALL. Chalkley Hall, near Frankford, Pa., was the residence of Thomas Chalkley, an eminent minister of the Friends' denomination. He was one of the early settlers of the Colony, and his Journal, which was published in 1749, presents a quaint but beautiful picture of a life of unostentatious and simple goodness. He was the master of a merchant vessel, and, in his visits to the west Indies and Great Britain, omitted no opportunity to labor for the highest interests of his fellow-men. During a temporary residence in Philadelphia, in the summer of 1838, the quiet and beautiful scenery around the ancient village of Frankford frequently attracted me from the heat and bustle of the city. I have referred to my youthful acquaintance with his writings in Snow-Bound. How bland and sweet the greeting of this breeze To him who flies From crowded street and red wall's weary gleam, Till far behind him like a hideous dream The close dark city lies Here, while the market murmurs, while men throng The marble floor Of Mammon's altar, from the crush and din Of the world's madness let me gather in My better thoughts once more. Oh, once again revive, while on my ear The cry of Gain And low hoarse hum of Traffic die away, Ye blessed memories of my early day Like sere grass wet with rain! Once more let God's green earth and sunset air Old feelings waken; Through weary years of toil and strife and ill, Oh, let me feel that my good angel still Hath not his trust forsaken. And well do time and place befit my mood Beneath the arms Of this embracing wood, a good man made His home, like Abraham resting in the shade Of Mamre's lonely palms. Here, rich with autumn gifts of countless years, The virgin soil Turned from the share he guided, and in rain And summer sunshine throve the fruits and grain Which blessed his honest toil. Here, from his voyages on the stormy seas, Weary and worn, He came to meet his children and to bless The Giver of all good in thankfulness And praise for his return. And here his neighbors gathered in to greet Their friend again, Safe from the wave and the destroying gales, Which reap untimely green Bermuda's vales, And vex the Carib main. To hear the good man tell of simple truth, Sown in an hour Of weakness in some far-off Indian isle, From the parched bosom of a barren soil, Raised up in life and power. How at those gatherings in Barbadian vales, A tendering love Came o'er him, like the gentle rain from heaven, And words of fitness to his lips were given, And strength as from above. How the sad captive listened to the Word, Until his chain Grew lighter, and his wounded spirit felt The healing balm of consolation melt Upon its life-long pain How the armed warrior sat him down to hear Of Peace and Truth, And the proud ruler and his Creole dame, Jewelled and gorgeous in her beauty came, And fair and bright-eyed youth. Oh, far away beneath New England's sky, Even when a boy, Following my plough by Merrimac's green shore, His simple record I have pondered o'er With deep and quiet joy. And hence this scene, in sunset glory warm,-- Its woods around, Its still stream winding on in light and shade, Its soft, green meadows and its upland glade,-- To me is holy ground. And dearer far than haunts where Genius keeps His vigils still; Than that where Avon's son of song is laid, Or Vaucluse hallowed by its Petrarch's shade, Or Virgil's laurelled hill. To the gray walls of fallen Paraclete, To Juliet's urn, Fair Arno and Sorrento's orange-grove, Where Tasso sang, let young Romance and Love Like brother pilgrims turn. But here a deeper and serener charm To all is given; And blessed memories of the faithful dead O'er wood and vale and meadow-stream have shed The holy hues of Heaven! 1843. GONE Another hand is beckoning us, Another call is given; And glows once more with Angel-steps The path which reaches Heaven. Our young and gentle friend, whose smile Made brighter summer hours, Amid the frosts of autumn time Has left us with the flowers. No paling of the cheek of bloom Forewarned us of decay; No shadow from the Silent Land Fell round our sister's way. The light of her young life went down, As sinks behind the hill The glory of a setting star, Clear, suddenly, and still. As pure and sweet, her fair brow seemed Eternal as the sky; And like the brook's low song, her voice,-- A sound which could not die. And half we deemed she needed not The changing of her sphere, To give to Heaven a Shining One, Who walked an Angel here. The blessing of her quiet life Fell on us like the dew; And good thoughts where her footsteps pressed Like fairy blossoms grew. Sweet promptings unto kindest deeds Were in her very look; We read her face, as one who reads A true and holy book, The measure of a blessed hymn, To which our hearts could move; The breathing of an inward psalm, A canticle of love. We miss her in the place of prayer, And by the hearth-fire's light; We pause beside her door to hear Once more her sweet "Good-night!" There seems a shadow on the day, Her smile no longer cheers; A dimness on the stars of night, Like eyes that look through tears. Alone unto our Father's will One thought hath reconciled; That He whose love exceedeth ours Hath taken home His child. Fold her, O Father! in Thine arms, And let her henceforth be A messenger of love between Our human hearts and Thee. Still let her mild rebuking stand Between us and the wrong, And her dear memory serve to make Our faith in Goodness strong. And grant that she who, trembling, here Distrusted all her powers, May welcome to her holier home The well-beloved of ours. 1845. TO RONGE. This was written after reading the powerful and manly protest of Johannes Ronge against the "pious fraud" of the Bishop of Treves. The bold movement of the young Catholic priest of Prussian Silesia seemed to me full of promise to the cause of political as well as religious liberty in Europe. That it failed was due partly to the faults of the reformer, but mainly to the disagreement of the Liberals of Germany upon a matter of dogma, which prevented them from unity of action. Rouge was born in Silesia in 1813 and died in October, 1887. His autobiography was translated into English and published in London in 1846. Strike home, strong-hearted man! Down to the root Of old oppression sink the Saxon steel. Thy work is to hew down. In God's name then Put nerve into thy task. Let other men Plant, as they may, that better tree whose fruit The wounded bosom of the Church shall heal. Be thou the image-breaker. Let thy blows Fall heavy as the Suabian's iron hand, On crown or crosier, which shall interpose Between thee and the weal of Fatherland. Leave creeds to closet idlers. First of all, Shake thou all German dream-land with the fall Of that accursed tree, whose evil trunk Was spared of old by Erfurt's stalwart monk. Fight not with ghosts and shadows. Let us hear The snap of chain-links. Let our gladdened ear Catch the pale prisoner's welcome, as the light Follows thy axe-stroke, through his cell of night. Be faithful to both worlds; nor think to feed Earth's starving millions with the husks of creed. Servant of Him whose mission high and holy Was to the wronged, the sorrowing, and the lowly, Thrust not his Eden promise from our sphere, Distant and dim beyond the blue sky's span; Like him of Patmos, see it, now and here, The New Jerusalem comes down to man Be warned by Luther's error. Nor like him, When the roused Teuton dashes from his limb The rusted chain of ages, help to bind His hands for whom thou claim'st the freedom of the mind 1846. CHANNING. The last time I saw Dr. Channing was in the summer of 1841, when, in company with my English friend, Joseph Sturge, so well known for his philanthropic labors and liberal political opinions, I visited him in his summer residence in Rhode Island. In recalling the impressions of that visit, it can scarcely be necessary to say, that I have no reference to the peculiar religious opinions of a man whose life, beautifully and truly manifested above the atmosphere of sect, is now the world's common legacy. Not vainly did old poets tell, Nor vainly did old genius paint God's great and crowning miracle, The hero and the saint! For even in a faithless day Can we our sainted ones discern; And feel, while with them on the way, Our hearts within us burn. And thus the common tongue and pen Which, world-wide, echo Channing's fame, As one of Heaven's anointed men, Have sanctified his name. In vain shall Rome her portals bar, And shut from him her saintly prize, Whom, in the world's great calendar, All men shall canonize. By Narragansett's sunny bay, Beneath his green embowering wood, To me it seems but yesterday Since at his side I stood. The slopes lay green with summer rains, The western wind blew fresh and free, And glimmered down the orchard lanes The white surf of the sea. With us was one, who, calm and true, Life's highest purpose understood, And, like his blessed Master, knew The joy of doing good. Unlearned, unknown to lettered fame, Yet on the lips of England's poor And toiling millions dwelt his name, With blessings evermore. Unknown to power or place, yet where The sun looks o'er the Carib sea, It blended with the freeman's prayer And song of jubilee. He told of England's sin and wrong, The ills her suffering children know, The squalor of the city's throng, The green field's want and woe. O'er Channing's face the tenderness Of sympathetic sorrow stole, Like a still shadow, passionless, The sorrow of the soul. But when the generous Briton told How hearts were answering to his own, And Freedom's rising murmur rolled Up to the dull-eared throne, I saw, methought, a glad surprise Thrill through that frail and pain-worn frame, And, kindling in those deep, calm eyes, A still and earnest flame. His few, brief words were such as move The human heart,--the Faith-sown seeds Which ripen in the soil of love To high heroic deeds. No bars of sect or clime were felt, The Babel strife of tongues had ceased, And at one common altar knelt The Quaker and the priest. And not in vain: with strength renewed, And zeal refreshed, and hope less dim, For that brief meeting, each pursued The path allotted him. How echoes yet each Western hill And vale with Channing's dying word! How are the hearts of freemen still By that great warning stirred. The stranger treads his native soil, And pleads, with zeal unfelt before, The honest right of British toil, The claim of England's poor. Before him time-wrought barriers fall, Old fears subside, old hatreds melt, And, stretching o'er the sea's blue wall, The Saxon greets the Celt. The yeoman on the Scottish lines, The Sheffield grinder, worn and grim, The delver in the Cornwall mines, Look up with hope to him. Swart smiters of the glowing steel, Dark feeders of the forge's flame, Pale watchers at the loom and wheel, Repeat his honored name. And thus the influence of that hour Of converse on Rhode Island's strand Lives in the calm, resistless power Which moves our fatherland. God blesses still the generous thought, And still the fitting word He speeds And Truth, at His requiring taught, He quickens into deeds. Where is the victory of the grave? What dust upon the spirit lies? God keeps the sacred life he gave,-- The prophet never dies! 1844. TO MY FRIEND ON THE DEATH OF HIS SISTER. Sophia Sturge, sister of Joseph Sturge, of Birmingham, the President of the British Complete Suffrage Association, died in the 6th month, 1845. She was the colleague, counsellor, and ever-ready helpmate of her brother in all his vast designs of beneficence. The Birmingham Pilot says of her: "Never, perhaps, were the active and passive virtues of the human character more harmoniously and beautifully blended than in this excellent woman." Thine is a grief, the depth of which another May never know; Yet, o'er the waters, O my stricken brother! To thee I go. I lean my heart unto thee, sadly folding Thy hand in mine; With even the weakness of my soul upholding The strength of thine. I never knew, like thee, the dear departed; I stood not by When, in calm trust, the pure and tranquil-hearted Lay down to die. And on thy ears my words of weak condoling Must vainly fall The funeral bell which in thy heart is tolling, Sounds over all! I will not mock thee with the poor world's common And heartless phrase, Nor wrong the memory of a sainted woman With idle praise. With silence only as their benediction, God's angels come Where, in the shadow of a great affliction, The soul sits dumb! Yet, would I say what thy own heart approveth Our Father's will, Calling to Him the dear one whom He loveth, Is mercy still. Not upon thee or thine the solemn angel Hath evil wrought Her funeral anthem is a glad evangel,-- The good die not! God calls our loved ones, but we lose not wholly What He hath given; They live on earth, in thought and deed, as truly As in His heaven. And she is with thee; in thy path of trial She walketh yet; Still with the baptism of thy self-denial Her locks are wet. Up, then, my brother! Lo, the fields of harvest Lie white in view She lives and loves thee, and the God thou servest To both is true. Thrust in thy sickle! England's toilworn peasants Thy call abide; And she thou mourn'st, a pure and holy presence, Shall glean beside! 1845. DANIEL WHEELER Daniel Wheeler, a minister of the Society of Friends, who had labored in the cause of his Divine Master in Great Britain, Russia, and the islands of the Pacific, died in New York in the spring of 1840, while on a religious visit to this country. O Dearly loved! And worthy of our love! No more Thy aged form shall rise before The bushed and waiting worshiper, In meek obedience utterance giving To words of truth, so fresh and living, That, even to the inward sense, They bore unquestioned evidence Of an anointed Messenger! Or, bowing down thy silver hair In reverent awfulness of prayer, The world, its time and sense, shut out The brightness of Faith's holy trance Gathered upon thy countenance, As if each lingering cloud of doubt, The cold, dark shadows resting here In Time's unluminous atmosphere, Were lifted by an angel's hand, And through them on thy spiritual eye Shone down the blessedness on high, The glory of the Better Land! The oak has fallen! While, meet for no good work, the vine May yet its worthless branches twine, Who knoweth not that with thee fell A great man in our Israel? Fallen, while thy loins were girded still, Thy feet with Zion's dews still wet, And in thy hand retaining yet The pilgrim's staff and scallop-shell Unharmed and safe, where, wild and free, Across the Neva's cold morass The breezes from the Frozen Sea With winter's arrowy keenness pass; Or where the unwarning tropic gale Smote to the waves thy tattered sail, Or where the noon-hour's fervid heat Against Tahiti's mountains beat; The same mysterious Hand which gave Deliverance upon land and wave, Tempered for thee the blasts which blew Ladaga's frozen surface o'er, And blessed for thee the baleful dew Of evening upon Eimeo's shore, Beneath this sunny heaven of ours, Midst our soft airs and opening flowers Hath given thee a grave! His will be done, Who seeth not as man, whose way Is not as ours! 'T is well with thee! Nor anxious doubt nor dark dismay Disquieted thy closing day, But, evermore, thy soul could say, "My Father careth still for me!" Called from thy hearth and home,--from her, The last bud on thy household tree, The last dear one to minister In duty and in love to thee, From all which nature holdeth dear, Feeble with years and worn with pain, To seek our distant land again, Bound in the spirit, yet unknowing The things which should befall thee here, Whether for labor or for death, In childlike trust serenely going To that last trial of thy faith! Oh, far away, Where never shines our Northern star On that dark waste which Balboa saw From Darien's mountains stretching far, So strange, heaven-broad, and lone, that there, With forehead to its damp wind bare, He bent his mailed knee in awe; In many an isle whose coral feet The surges of that ocean beat, In thy palm shadows, Oahu, And Honolulu's silver bay, Amidst Owyhee's hills of blue, And taro-plains of Tooboonai, Are gentle hearts, which long shall be Sad as our own at thought of thee, Worn sowers of Truth's holy seed, Whose souls in weariness and need Were strengthened and refreshed by thine. For blessed by our Father's hand Was thy deep love and tender care, Thy ministry and fervent prayer,-- Grateful as Eshcol's clustered vine To Israel in a weary land. And they who drew By thousands round thee, in the hour Of prayerful waiting, hushed and deep, That He who bade the islands keep Silence before Him, might renew Their strength with His unslumbering power, They too shall mourn that thou art gone, That nevermore thy aged lip Shall soothe the weak, the erring warn, Of those who first, rejoicing, heard Through thee the Gospel's glorious word,-- Seals of thy true apostleship. And, if the brightest diadem, Whose gems of glory purely burn Around the ransomed ones in bliss, Be evermore reserved for them Who here, through toil and sorrow, turn Many to righteousness, May we not think of thee as wearing That star-like crown of light, and bearing, Amidst Heaven's white and blissful band, Th' unfading palm-branch in thy hand; And joining with a seraph's tongue In that new song the elders sung, Ascribing to its blessed Giver Thanksgiving, love, and praise forever! Farewell! And though the ways of Zion mourn When her strong ones are called away, Who like thyself have calmly borne The heat and burden of the day, Yet He who slumbereth not nor sleepeth His ancient watch around us keepeth; Still, sent from His creating hand, New witnesses for Truth shall stand, New instruments to sound abroad The Gospel of a risen Lord; To gather to the fold once more The desolate and gone astray, The scattered of a cloudy day, And Zion's broken walls restore; And, through the travail and the toil Of true obedience, minister Beauty for ashes, and the oil Of joy for mourning, unto her! So shall her holy bounds increase With walls of praise and gates of peace So shall the Vine, which martyr tears And blood sustained in other years, With fresher life be clothed upon; And to the world in beauty show Like the rose-plant of Jericho, And glorious as Lebanon! 1847 TO FREDRIKA BREMER. It is proper to say that these lines are the joint impromptus of my sister and myself. They are inserted here as an expression of our admiration of the gifted stranger whom we have since learned to love as a friend. Seeress of the misty Norland, Daughter of the Vikings bold, Welcome to the sunny Vineland, Which thy fathers sought of old! Soft as flow of Siija's waters, When the moon of summer shines, Strong as Winter from his mountains Roaring through the sleeted pines. Heart and ear, we long have listened To thy saga, rune, and song; As a household joy and presence We have known and loved thee long. By the mansion's marble mantel, Round the log-walled cabin's hearth, Thy sweet thoughts and northern fancies Meet and mingle with our mirth. And o'er weary spirits keeping Sorrow's night-watch, long and chill, Shine they like thy sun of summer Over midnight vale and hill. We alone to thee are strangers, Thou our friend and teacher art; Come, and know us as we know thee; Let us meet thee heart to heart! To our homes and household altars We, in turn, thy steps would lead, As thy loving hand has led us O'er the threshold of the Swede. 1849. TO AVIS KEENE ON RECEIVING A BASKET OF SEA-MOSSES. Thanks for thy gift Of ocean flowers, Born where the golden drift Of the slant sunshine falls Down the green, tremulous walls Of water, to the cool, still coral bowers, Where, under rainbows of perpetual showers, God's gardens of the deep His patient angels keep; Gladdening the dim, strange solitude With fairest forms and hues, and thus Forever teaching us The lesson which the many-colored skies, The flowers, and leaves, and painted butterflies, The deer's branched antlers, the gay bird that flings The tropic sunshine from its golden wings, The brightness of the human countenance, Its play of smiles, the magic of a glance, Forevermore repeat, In varied tones and sweet, That beauty, in and of itself, is good. O kind and generous friend, o'er whom The sunset hues of Time are cast, Painting, upon the overpast And scattered clouds of noonday sorrow The promise of a fairer morrow, An earnest of the better life to come; The binding of the spirit broken, The warning to the erring spoken, The comfort of the sad, The eye to see, the hand to cull Of common things the beautiful, The absent heart made glad By simple gift or graceful token Of love it needs as daily food, All own one Source, and all are good Hence, tracking sunny cove and reach, Where spent waves glimmer up the beach, And toss their gifts of weed and shell From foamy curve and combing swell, No unbefitting task was thine To weave these flowers so soft and fair In unison with His design Who loveth beauty everywhere; And makes in every zone and clime, In ocean and in upper air, All things beautiful in their time. For not alone in tones of awe and power He speaks to Inan; The cloudy horror of the thunder-shower His rainbows span; And where the caravan Winds o'er the desert, leaving, as in air The crane-flock leaves, no trace of passage there, He gives the weary eye The palm-leaf shadow for the hot noon hours, And on its branches dry Calls out the acacia's flowers; And where the dark shaft pierces down Beneath the mountain roots, Seen by the miner's lamp alone, The star-like crystal shoots; So, where, the winds and waves below, The coral-branched gardens grow, His climbing weeds and mosses show, Like foliage, on each stony bough, Of varied hues more strangely gay Than forest leaves in autumn's day;-- Thus evermore, On sky, and wave, and shore, An all-pervading beauty seems to say God's love and power are one; and they, Who, like the thunder of a sultry day, Smite to restore, And they, who, like the gentle wind, uplift The petals of the dew-wet flowers, and drift Their perfume on the air, Alike may serve Him, each, with their own gift, Making their lives a prayer! 1850 THE HILL-TOP The burly driver at my side, We slowly climbed the hill, Whose summit, in the hot noontide, Seemed rising, rising still. At last, our short noon-shadows bid The top-stone, bare and brown, From whence, like Gizeh's pyramid, The rough mass slanted down. I felt the cool breath of the North; Between me and the sun, O'er deep, still lake, and ridgy earth, I saw the cloud-shades run. Before me, stretched for glistening miles, Lay mountain-girdled Squam; Like green-winged birds, the leafy isles Upon its bosom swam. And, glimmering through the sun-haze warm, Far as the eye could roam, Dark billows of an earthquake storm Beflecked with clouds like foam, Their vales in misty shadow deep, Their rugged peaks in shine, I saw the mountain ranges sweep The horizon's northern line. There towered Chocorua's peak; and west, Moosehillock's woods were seem, With many a nameless slide-scarred crest And pine-dark gorge between. Beyond them, like a sun-rimmed cloud, The great Notch mountains shone, Watched over by the solemn-browed And awful face of stone! "A good look-off!" the driver spake; "About this time, last year, I drove a party to the Lake, And stopped, at evening, here. 'T was duskish down below; but all These hills stood in the sun, Till, dipped behind yon purple wall, He left them, one by one. "A lady, who, from Thornton hill, Had held her place outside, And, as a pleasant woman will, Had cheered the long, dull ride, Besought me, with so sweet a smile, That--though I hate delays-- I could not choose but rest awhile,-- (These women have such ways!) "On yonder mossy ledge she sat, Her sketch upon her knees, A stray brown lock beneath her hat Unrolling in the breeze; Her sweet face, in the sunset light Upraised and glorified,-- I never saw a prettier sight In all my mountain ride. "As good as fair; it seemed her joy To comfort and to give; My poor, sick wife, and cripple boy, Will bless her while they live!" The tremor in the driver's tone His manhood did not shame "I dare say, sir, you may have known"-- He named a well-known name. Then sank the pyramidal mounds, The blue lake fled away; For mountain-scope a parlor's bounds, A lighted hearth for day! From lonely years and weary miles The shadows fell apart; Kind voices cheered, sweet human smiles Shone warm into my heart. We journeyed on; but earth and sky Had power to charm no more; Still dreamed my inward-turning eye The dream of memory o'er. Ah! human kindness, human love,-- To few who seek denied; Too late we learn to prize above The whole round world beside! 1850 ELLIOTT. Ebenezer Elliott was to the artisans of England what Burns was to the peasantry of Scotland. His Corn-law Rhymes contributed not a little to that overwhelming tide of popular opinion and feeling which resulted in the repeal of the tax on bread. Well has the eloquent author of The Reforms and Reformers of Great Britain said of him, "Not corn-law repealers alone, but all Britons who moisten their scanty bread with the sweat of the brow, are largely indebted to his inspiring lay, for the mighty bound which the laboring mind of England has taken in our day." Hands off! thou tithe-fat plunderer! play No trick of priestcraft here! Back, puny lordling! darest thou lay A hand on Elliott's bier? Alive, your rank and pomp, as dust, Beneath his feet he trod. He knew the locust swarm that cursed The harvest-fields of God. On these pale lips, the smothered thought Which England's millions feel, A fierce and fearful splendor caught, As from his forge the steel. Strong-armed as Thor, a shower of fire His smitten anvil flung; God's curse, Earth's wrong, dumb Hunger's ire, He gave them all a tongue! Then let the poor man's horny hands Bear up the mighty dead, And labor's swart and stalwart bands Behind as mourners tread. Leave cant and craft their baptized bounds, Leave rank its minster floor; Give England's green and daisied grounds The poet of the poor! Lay down upon his Sheaf's green verge That brave old heart of oak, With fitting dirge from sounding forge, And pall of furnace smoke! Where whirls the stone its dizzy rounds, And axe and sledge are swung, And, timing to their stormy sounds, His stormy lays are sung. There let the peasant's step be heard, The grinder chant his rhyme, Nor patron's praise nor dainty word Befits the man or time. No soft lament nor dreamer's sigh For him whose words were bread; The Runic rhyme and spell whereby The foodless poor were fed! Pile up the tombs of rank and pride, O England, as thou wilt! With pomp to nameless worth denied, Emblazon titled guilt! No part or lot in these we claim; But, o'er the sounding wave, A common right to Elliott's name, A freehold in his grave! 1850 ICHABOD This poem was the outcome of the surprise and grief and forecast of evil consequences which I felt on reading the seventh of March speech of Daniel Webster in support of the "compromise," and the Fugitive Slave Law. No partisan or personal enmity dictated it. On the contrary my admiration of the splendid personality and intellectual power of the great Senator was never stronger than when I laid down his speech, and, in one of the saddest moments of my life, penned my protest. I saw, as I wrote, with painful clearness its sure results,--the Slave Power arrogant and defiant, strengthened and encouraged to carry out its scheme for the extension of its baleful system, or the dissolution of the Union, the guaranties of personal liberty in the free States broken down, and the whole country made the hunting-ground of slave-catchers. In the horror of such a vision, so soon fearfully fulfilled, if one spoke at all, he could only speak in tones of stern and sorrowful rebuke. But death softens all resentments, and the consciousness of a common inheritance of frailty and weakness modifies the severity of judgment. Years after, in _The Lost Occasion_ I gave utterance to an almost universal regret that the great statesman did not live to see the flag which he loved trampled under the feet of Slavery, and, in view of this desecration, make his last days glorious in defence of "Liberty and Union, one and inseparable." So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn Which once he wore! The glory from his gray hairs gone Forevermore! Revile him not, the Tempter hath A snare for all; And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, Befit his fall! Oh, dumb be passion's stormy rage, When he who might Have lighted up and led his age, Falls back in night. Scorn! would the angels laugh, to mark A bright soul driven, Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark, From hope and heaven! Let not the land once proud of him Insult him now, Nor brand with deeper shame his dim, Dishonored brow. But let its humbled sons, instead, From sea to lake, A long lament, as for the dead, In sadness make. Of all we loved and honored, naught Save power remains; A fallen angel's pride of thought, Still strong in chains. All else is gone; from those great eyes The soul has fled When faith is lost, when honor dies, The man is dead! Then, pay the reverence of old days To his dead fame; Walk backward, with averted gaze, And hide the shame! 1850 THE LOST OCCASION. Some die too late and some too soon, At early morning, heat of noon, Or the chill evening twilight. Thou, Whom the rich heavens did so endow With eyes of power and Jove's own brow, With all the massive strength that fills Thy home-horizon's granite hills, With rarest gifts of heart and head From manliest stock inherited, New England's stateliest type of man, In port and speech Olympian; Whom no one met, at first, but took A second awed and wondering look (As turned, perchance, the eyes of Greece On Phidias' unveiled masterpiece); Whose words in simplest homespun clad, The Saxon strength of Caedmon's had, With power reserved at need to reach The Roman forum's loftiest speech, Sweet with persuasion, eloquent In passion, cool in argument, Or, ponderous, falling on thy foes As fell the Norse god's hammer blows, Crushing as if with Talus' flail Through Error's logic-woven mail, And failing only when they tried The adamant of the righteous side,-- Thou, foiled in aim and hope, bereaved Of old friends, by the new deceived, Too soon for us, too soon for thee, Beside thy lonely Northern sea, Where long and low the marsh-lands spread, Laid wearily down thy August head. Thou shouldst have lived to feel below Thy feet Disunion's fierce upthrow; The late-sprung mine that underlaid Thy sad concessions vainly made. Thou shouldst have seen from Sumter's wall The star-flag of the Union fall, And armed rebellion pressing on The broken lines of Washington! No stronger voice than thine had then Called out the utmost might of men, To make the Union's charter free And strengthen law by liberty. How had that stern arbitrament To thy gray age youth's vigor lent, Shaming ambition's paltry prize Before thy disillusioned eyes; Breaking the spell about thee wound Like the green withes that Samson bound; Redeeming in one effort grand, Thyself and thy imperilled land! Ah, cruel fate, that closed to thee, O sleeper by the Northern sea, The gates of opportunity! God fills the gaps of human need, Each crisis brings its word and deed. Wise men and strong we did not lack; But still, with memory turning back, In the dark hours we thought of thee, And thy lone grave beside the sea. Above that grave the east winds blow, And from the marsh-lands drifting slow The sea-fog comes, with evermore The wave-wash of a lonely shore, And sea-bird's melancholy cry, As Nature fain would typify The sadness of a closing scene, The loss of that which should have been. But, where thy native mountains bare Their foreheads to diviner air, Fit emblem of enduring fame, One lofty summit keeps thy name. For thee the cosmic forces did The rearing of that pyramid, The prescient ages shaping with Fire, flood, and frost thy monolith. Sunrise and sunset lay thereon With hands of light their benison, The stars of midnight pause to set Their jewels in its coronet. And evermore that mountain mass Seems climbing from the shadowy pass To light, as if to manifest Thy nobler self, thy life at best! 1880 WORDSWORTH WRITTEN ON A BLANK LEAF OF HIS MEMOIRS. Dear friends, who read the world aright, And in its common forms discern A beauty and a harmony The many never learn! Kindred in soul of him who found In simple flower and leaf and stone The impulse of the sweetest lays Our Saxon tongue has known,-- Accept this record of a life As sweet and pure, as calm and good, As a long day of blandest June In green field and in wood. How welcome to our ears, long pained By strife of sect and party noise, The brook-like murmur of his song Of nature's simple joys! The violet' by its mossy stone, The primrose by the river's brim, And chance-sown daffodil, have found Immortal life through him. The sunrise on his breezy lake, The rosy tints his sunset brought, World-seen, are gladdening all the vales And mountain-peaks of thought. Art builds on sand; the works of pride And human passion change and fall; But that which shares the life of God With Him surviveth all. 1851. TO ------ LINES WRITTEN AFTER A SUMMER DAY'S EXCURSION. Fair Nature's priestesses! to whom, In hieroglyph of bud and bloom, Her mysteries are told; Who, wise in lore of wood and mead, The seasons' pictured scrolls can read, In lessons manifold! Thanks for the courtesy, and gay Good-humor, which on Washing Day Our ill-timed visit bore; Thanks for your graceful oars, which broke The morning dreams of Artichoke, Along his wooded shore! Varied as varying Nature's ways, Sprites of the river, woodland fays, Or mountain nymphs, ye seem; Free-limbed Dianas on the green, Loch Katrine's Ellen, or Undine, Upon your favorite stream. The forms of which the poets told, The fair benignities of old, Were doubtless such as you; What more than Artichoke the rill Of Helicon? Than Pipe-stave hill Arcadia's mountain-view? No sweeter bowers the bee delayed, In wild Hymettus' scented shade, Than those you dwell among; Snow-flowered azaleas, intertwined With roses, over banks inclined With trembling harebells hung! A charmed life unknown to death, Immortal freshness Nature hath; Her fabled fount and glen Are now and here: Dodona's shrine Still murmurs in the wind-swept pine,-- All is that e'er hath been. The Beauty which old Greece or Rome Sung, painted, wrought, lies close at home; We need but eye and ear In all our daily walks to trace The outlines of incarnate grace, The hymns of gods to hear! 1851 IN PEACE. A track of moonlight on a quiet lake, Whose small waves on a silver-sanded shore Whisper of peace, and with the low winds make Such harmonies as keep the woods awake, And listening all night long for their sweet sake A green-waved slope of meadow, hovered o'er By angel-troops of lilies, swaying light On viewless stems, with folded wings of white; A slumberous stretch of mountain-land, far seen Where the low westering day, with gold and green, Purple and amber, softly blended, fills The wooded vales, and melts among the hills; A vine-fringed river, winding to its rest On the calm bosom of a stormless sea, Bearing alike upon its placid breast, With earthly flowers and heavenly' stars impressed, The hues of time and of eternity Such are the pictures which the thought of thee, O friend, awakeneth,--charming the keen pain Of thy departure, and our sense of loss Requiting with the fullness of thy gain. Lo! on the quiet grave thy life-borne cross, Dropped only at its side, methinks doth shine, Of thy beatitude the radiant sign! No sob of grief, no wild lament be there, To break the Sabbath of the holy air; But, in their stead, the silent-breathing prayer Of hearts still waiting for a rest like thine. O spirit redeemed! Forgive us, if henceforth, With sweet and pure similitudes of earth, We keep thy pleasant memory freshly green, Of love's inheritance a priceless part, Which Fancy's self, in reverent awe, is seen To paint, forgetful of the tricks of art, With pencil dipped alone in colors of the heart. 1851. BENEDICITE. God's love and peace be with thee, where Soe'er this soft autumnal air Lifts the dark tresses of thy hair. Whether through city casements comes Its kiss to thee, in crowded rooms, Or, out among the woodland blooms, It freshens o'er thy thoughtful face, Imparting, in its glad embrace, Beauty to beauty, grace to grace! Fair Nature's book together read, The old wood-paths that knew our tread, The maple shadows overhead,-- The hills we climbed, the river seen By gleams along its deep ravine,-- All keep thy memory fresh and green. Where'er I look, where'er I stray, Thy thought goes with me on my way, And hence the prayer I breathe to-day; O'er lapse of time and change of scene, The weary waste which lies between Thyself and me, my heart I lean. Thou lack'st not Friendship's spell-word, nor The half-unconscious power to draw All hearts to thine by Love's sweet law. With these good gifts of God is cast Thy lot, and many a charm thou hast To hold the blessed angels fast. If, then, a fervent wish for thee The gracious heavens will heed from me, What should, dear heart, its burden be? The sighing of a shaken reed,-- What can I more than meekly plead The greatness of our common need? God's love,--unchanging, pure, and true,-- The Paraclete white-shining through His peace,--the fall of Hermon's dew! With such a prayer, on this sweet day, As thou mayst hear and I may say, I greet thee, dearest, far away! 1851. KOSSUTH It can scarcely be necessary to say that there are elements in the character and passages in the history of the great Hungarian statesman and orator, which necessarily command the admiration of those, even, who believe that no political revolution was ever worth the price of human blood. Type of two mighty continents!--combining The strength of Europe with the warmth and glow Of Asian song and prophecy,--the shining Of Orient splendors over Northern snow! Who shall receive him? Who, unblushing, speak Welcome to him, who, while he strove to break The Austrian yoke from Magyar necks, smote off At the same blow the fetters of the serf, Rearing the altar of his Fatherland On the firm base of freedom, and thereby Lifting to Heaven a patriot's stainless hand, Mocked not the God of Justice with a lie! Who shall be Freedom's mouthpiece? Who shall give Her welcoming cheer to the great fugitive? Not he who, all her sacred trusts betraying, Is scourging back to slavery's hell of pain The swarthy Kossuths of our land again! Not he whose utterance now from lips designed The bugle-march of Liberty to wind, And call her hosts beneath the breaking light, The keen reveille of her morn of fight, Is but the hoarse note of the blood-hound's baying, The wolf's long howl behind the bondman's flight! Oh for the tongue of him who lies at rest In Quincy's shade of patrimonial trees, Last of the Puritan tribunes and the best, To lend a voice to Freedom's sympathies, And hail the coming of the noblest guest The Old World's wrong has given the New World of the West! 1851. TO MY OLD SCHOOLMASTER. AN EPISTLE NOT AFTER THE MANNER OF HORACE These lines were addressed to my worthy friend Joshua Coffin, teacher, historian, and antiquarian. He was one of the twelve persons who with William Lloyd Garrison formed the first anti-slavery society in New England. Old friend, kind friend! lightly down Drop time's snow-flakes on thy crown! Never be thy shadow less, Never fail thy cheerfulness; Care, that kills the cat, may, plough Wrinkles in the miser's brow, Deepen envy's spiteful frown, Draw the mouths of bigots down, Plague ambition's dream, and sit Heavy on the hypocrite, Haunt the rich man's door, and ride In the gilded coach of pride;-- Let the fiend pass!--what can he Find to do with such as thee? Seldom comes that evil guest Where the conscience lies at rest, And brown health and quiet wit Smiling on the threshold sit. I, the urchin unto whom, In that smoked and dingy room, Where the district gave thee rule O'er its ragged winter school, Thou didst teach the mysteries Of those weary A B C's,-- Where, to fill the every pause Of thy wise and learned saws, Through the cracked and crazy wall Came the cradle-rock and squall, And the goodman's voice, at strife With his shrill and tipsy wife, Luring us by stories old, With a comic unction told, More than by the eloquence Of terse birchen arguments (Doubtful gain, I fear), to look With complacence on a book!-- Where the genial pedagogue Half forgot his rogues to flog, Citing tale or apologue, Wise and merry in its drift As was Phaedrus' twofold gift, Had the little rebels known it, Risum et prudentiam monet! I,--the man of middle years, In whose sable locks appears Many a warning fleck of gray,-- Looking back to that far day, And thy primal lessons, feel Grateful smiles my lips unseal, As, remembering thee, I blend Olden teacher, present friend, Wise with antiquarian search, In the scrolls of State and Church Named on history's title-page, Parish-clerk and justice sage; For the ferule's wholesome awe Wielding now the sword of law. Threshing Time's neglected sheaves, Gathering up the scattered leaves Which the wrinkled sibyl cast Careless from her as she passed,-- Twofold citizen art thou, Freeman of the past and now. He who bore thy name of old Midway in the heavens did hold Over Gibeon moon and sun; Thou hast bidden them backward run; Of to-day the present ray Flinging over yesterday! Let the busy ones deride What I deem of right thy pride Let the fools their treadmills grind, Look not forward nor behind, Shuffle in and wriggle out, Veer with every breeze about, Turning like a windmill sail, Or a dog that seeks his tail; Let them laugh to see thee fast Tabernacled in the Past, Working out with eye and lip, Riddles of old penmanship, Patient as Belzoni there Sorting out, with loving care, Mummies of dead questions stripped From their sevenfold manuscript. Dabbling, in their noisy way, In the puddles of to-day, Little know they of that vast Solemn ocean of the past, On whose margin, wreck-bespread, Thou art walking with the dead, Questioning the stranded years, Waking smiles, by turns, and tears, As thou callest up again Shapes the dust has long o'erlain,-- Fair-haired woman, bearded man, Cavalier and Puritan; In an age whose eager view Seeks but present things, and new, Mad for party, sect and gold, Teaching reverence for the old. On that shore, with fowler's tact, Coolly bagging fact on fact, Naught amiss to thee can float, Tale, or song, or anecdote; Village gossip, centuries old, Scandals by our grandams told, What the pilgrim's table spread, Where he lived, and whom he wed, Long-drawn bill of wine and beer For his ordination cheer, Or the flip that wellnigh made Glad his funeral cavalcade; Weary prose, and poet's lines, Flavored by their age, like wines, Eulogistic of some quaint, Doubtful, puritanic saint; Lays that quickened husking jigs, Jests that shook grave periwigs, When the parson had his jokes And his glass, like other folks; Sermons that, for mortal hours, Taxed our fathers' vital powers, As the long nineteenthlies poured Downward from the sounding-board, And, for fire of Pentecost, Touched their beards December's frost. Time is hastening on, and we What our fathers are shall be,-- Shadow-shapes of memory! Joined to that vast multitude Where the great are but the good, And the mind of strength shall prove Weaker than the heart of love; Pride of graybeard wisdom less Than the infant's guilelessness, And his song of sorrow more Than the crown the Psalmist wore Who shall then, with pious zeal, At our moss-grown thresholds kneel, From a stained and stony page Reading to a careless age, With a patient eye like thine, Prosing tale and limping line, Names and words the hoary rime Of the Past has made sublime? Who shall work for us as well The antiquarian's miracle? Who to seeming life recall Teacher grave and pupil small? Who shall give to thee and me Freeholds in futurity? Well, whatever lot be mine, Long and happy days be thine, Ere thy full and honored age Dates of time its latest page! Squire for master, State for school, Wisely lenient, live and rule; Over grown-up knave and rogue Play the watchful pedagogue; Or, while pleasure smiles on duty, At the call of youth and beauty, Speak for them the spell of law Which shall bar and bolt withdraw, And the flaming sword remove From the Paradise of Love. Still, with undimmed eyesight, pore Ancient tome and record o'er; Still thy week-day lyrics croon, Pitch in church the Sunday tune, Showing something, in thy part, Of the old Puritanic art, Singer after Sternhold's heart In thy pew, for many a year, Homilies from Oldbug hear, Who to wit like that of South, And the Syrian's golden mouth, Doth the homely pathos add Which the pilgrim preachers had; Breaking, like a child at play, Gilded idols of the day, Cant of knave and pomp of fool Tossing with his ridicule, Yet, in earnest or in jest, Ever keeping truth abreast. And, when thou art called, at last, To thy townsmen of the past, Not as stranger shalt thou come; Thou shalt find thyself at home With the little and the big, Woollen cap and periwig, Madam in her high-laced ruff, Goody in her home-made stuff,-- Wise and simple, rich and poor, Thou hast known them all before! 1851 
9583	----	This eBook was produced by David Widger OCCASIONAL POEMS BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER CONTENTS: EVA A LAY OF OLD TIME A SONG OF HARVEST KENOZA LAKE FOR AN AUTUMN FESTIVAL THE QUAKER ALUMNI OUR RIVER REVISITED "THE LAURELS" JUNE ON THE MERRIMAC HYMN FOR THE OPENING OF THOMAS STARR KING'S HOUSE OF WORSHIP HYMN FOR THE HOUSE OF WORSHIP AT GEORGETOWN, ERECTED IN MEMORY OF A MOTHER A SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION CHICAGO KINSMAN THE GOLDEN WEDDING OF LONGWOOD HYMN FOR THE OPENING OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH, ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA LEXINGTON THE LIBRARY "I WAS A STRANGER, AND YE TOOK ME IN" CENTENNIAL HYMN AT SCHOOL-CLOSE HYMN OF THE CHILDREN THE LANDMARKS GARDEN A GREETING GODSPEED WINTER ROSES THE REUNION NORUMBEGA HALL THE BARTHOLDI STATUE ONE OF THE SIGNERS EVA Suggested by Mrs. Stowe's tale of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and written when the characters in the tale were realities by the fireside of countless American homes. Dry the tears for holy Eva, With the blessed angels leave her; Of the form so soft and fair Give to earth the tender care. For the golden locks of Eva Let the sunny south-land give her Flowery pillow of repose, Orange-bloom and budding rose. In the better home of Eva Let the shining ones receive her, With the welcome-voiced psalm, Harp of gold and waving palm, All is light and peace with Eva; There the darkness cometh never; Tears are wiped, and fetters fall. And the Lord is all in all. Weep no more for happy Eva, Wrong and sin no more shall grieve her; Care and pain and weariness Lost in love so measureless. Gentle Eva, loving Eva, Child confessor, true believer, Listener at the Master's knee, "Suffer such to come to me." Oh, for faith like thine, sweet Eva, Lighting all the solemn river, And the blessings of the poor Wafting to the heavenly shore! 1852 A LAY OF OLD TIME. Written for the Essex County Agricultural Fair, and sung at the banquet at Newburyport, October 2, 1856. One morning of the first sad Fall, Poor Adam and his bride Sat in the shade of Eden's wall-- But on the outer side. She, blushing in her fig-leaf suit For the chaste garb of old; He, sighing o'er his bitter fruit For Eden's drupes of gold. Behind them, smiling in the morn, Their forfeit garden lay, Before them, wild with rock and thorn, The desert stretched away. They heard the air above them fanned, A light step on the sward, And lo! they saw before them stand The angel of the Lord! "Arise," he said, "why look behind, When hope is all before, And patient hand and willing mind, Your loss may yet restore? "I leave with you a spell whose power Can make the desert glad, And call around you fruit and flower As fair as Eden had. "I clothe your hands with power to lift The curse from off your soil; Your very doom shall seem a gift, Your loss a gain through Toil. "Go, cheerful as yon humming-bees, To labor as to play." White glimmering over Eden's trees The angel passed away. The pilgrims of the world went forth Obedient to the word, And found where'er they tilled the earth A garden of the Lord! The thorn-tree cast its evil fruit And blushed with plum and pear, And seeded grass and trodden root Grew sweet beneath their care. We share our primal parents' fate, And, in our turn and day, Look back on Eden's sworded gate As sad and lost as they. But still for us his native skies The pitying Angel leaves, And leads through Toil to Paradise New Adams and new Eves! A SONG OF HARVEST For the Agricultural and Horticultural Exhibition at Amesbury and Salisbury, September 28, 1858. This day, two hundred years ago, The wild grape by the river's side, And tasteless groundnut trailing low, The table of the woods supplied. Unknown the apple's red and gold, The blushing tint of peach and pear; The mirror of the Powow told No tale of orchards ripe and rare. Wild as the fruits he scorned to till, These vales the idle Indian trod; Nor knew the glad, creative skill, The joy of him who toils with God. O Painter of the fruits and flowers! We thank Thee for thy wise design Whereby these human hands of ours In Nature's garden work with Thine. And thanks that from our daily need The joy of simple faith is born; That he who smites the summer weed, May trust Thee for the autumn corn. Give fools their gold, and knaves their power; Let fortune's bubbles rise and fall; Who sows a field, or trains a flower, Or plants a tree, is more than all. For he who blesses most is blest; And God and man shall own his worth Who toils to leave as his bequest An added beauty to the earth. And, soon or late, to all that sow, The time of harvest shall be given; The flower shall bloom, the fruit shall grow, If not on earth, at last in heaven. KENOZA LAKE. This beautiful lake in East Haverhill was the "Great Pond" the writer's boyhood. In 1859 a movement was made for improving its shores as a public park. At the opening of the park, August 31, 1859, the poem which gave it the name of Kenoza (in Indian language signifying Pickerel) was read. As Adam did in Paradise, To-day the primal right we claim Fair mirror of the woods and skies, We give to thee a name. Lake of the pickerel!--let no more The echoes answer back, "Great Pond," But sweet Kenoza, from thy shore And watching hills beyond, Let Indian ghosts, if such there be Who ply unseen their shadowy lines, Call back the ancient name to thee, As with the voice of pines. The shores we trod as barefoot boys, The nutted woods we wandered through, To friendship, love, and social joys We consecrate anew. Here shall the tender song be sung, And memory's dirges soft and low, And wit shall sparkle on the tongue, And mirth shall overflow, Harmless as summer lightning plays From a low, hidden cloud by night, A light to set the hills ablaze, But not a bolt to smite. In sunny South and prairied West Are exiled hearts remembering still, As bees their hive, as birds their nest, The homes of Haverhill. They join us in our rites to-day; And, listening, we may hear, erelong, From inland lake and ocean bay, The echoes of our song. Kenoza! o'er no sweeter lake Shall morning break or noon-cloud sail,-- No fairer face than thine shall take The sunset's golden veil. Long be it ere the tide of trade Shall break with harsh-resounding din The quiet of thy banks of shade, And hills that fold thee in. Still let thy woodlands hide the hare, The shy loon sound his trumpet-note, Wing-weary from his fields of air, The wild-goose on thee float. Thy peace rebuke our feverish stir, Thy beauty our deforming strife; Thy woods and waters minister The healing of their life. And sinless Mirth, from care released, Behold, unawed, thy mirrored sky, Smiling as smiled on Cana's feast The Master's loving eye. And when the summer day grows dim, And light mists walk thy mimic sea, Revive in us the thought of Him Who walked on Galilee! FOR AN AUTUMN FESTIVAL The Persian's flowery gifts, the shrine Of fruitful Ceres, charm no more; The woven wreaths of oak and pine Are dust along the Isthmian shore. But beauty hath its homage still, And nature holds us still in debt; And woman's grace and household skill, And manhood's toil, are honored yet. And we, to-day, amidst our flowers And fruits, have come to own again The blessings of the summer hours, The early and the latter rain; To see our Father's hand once more Reverse for us the plenteous horn Of autumn, filled and running o'er With fruit, and flower, and golden corn! Once more the liberal year laughs out O'er richer stores than gems or gold; Once more with harvest-song and shout Is Nature's bloodless triumph told. Our common mother rests and sings, Like Ruth, among her garnered sheaves; Her lap is full of goodly things, Her brow is bright with autumn leaves. Oh, favors every year made new! Oh, gifts with rain and sunshine sent The bounty overruns our due, The fulness shames our discontent. We shut our eyes, the flowers bloom on; We murmur, but the corn-ears fill, We choose the shadow, but the sun That casts it shines behind us still. God gives us with our rugged soil The power to make it Eden-fair, And richer fruits to crown our toil Than summer-wedded islands bear. Who murmurs at his lot to-day? Who scorns his native fruit and bloom? Or sighs for dainties far away, Beside the bounteous board of home? Thank Heaven, instead, that Freedom's arm Can change a rocky soil to gold,-- That brave and generous lives can warm A clime with northern ices cold. And let these altars, wreathed with flowers And piled with fruits, awake again Thanksgivings for the golden hours, The early and the latter rain! 1859 THE QUAKER ALUMNI. Read at the Friends' School Anniversary, Providence, R. I., 6th mo., 1860. From the well-springs of Hudson, the sea-cliffs of Maine, Grave men, sober matrons, you gather again; And, with hearts warmer grown as your heads grow more cool, Play over the old game of going to school. All your strifes and vexations, your whims and complaints, (You were not saints yourselves, if the children of saints!) All your petty self-seekings and rivalries done, Round the dear Alma Mater your hearts beat as one! How widely soe'er you have strayed from the fold, Though your "thee" has grown "you," and your drab blue and gold, To the old friendly speech and the garb's sober form, Like the heart of Argyle to the tartan, you warm. But, the first greetings over, you glance round the hall; Your hearts call the roll, but they answer not all Through the turf green above them the dead cannot hear; Name by name, in the silence, falls sad as a tear! In love, let us trust, they were summoned so soon rom the morning of life, while we toil through its noon; They were frail like ourselves, they had needs like our own, And they rest as we rest in God's mercy alone. Unchanged by our changes of spirit and frame, Past, now, and henceforward the Lord is the same; Though we sink in the darkness, His arms break our fall, And in death as in life, He is Father of all! We are older: our footsteps, so light in the play Of the far-away school-time, move slower to-day;-- Here a beard touched with frost, there a bald, shining crown, And beneath the cap's border gray mingles with brown. But faith should be cheerful, and trust should be glad, And our follies and sins, not our years, make us sad. Should the heart closer shut as the bonnet grows prim, And the face grow in length as the hat grows in brim? Life is brief, duty grave; but, with rain-folded wings, Of yesterday's sunshine the grateful heart sings; And we, of all others, have reason to pay The tribute of thanks, and rejoice on our way; For the counsels that turned from the follies of youth; For the beauty of patience, the whiteness of truth; For the wounds of rebuke, when love tempered its edge; For the household's restraint, and the discipline's hedge; For the lessons of kindness vouchsafed to the least Of the creatures of God, whether human or beast, Bringing hope to the poor, lending strength to the frail, In the lanes of the city, the slave-hut, and jail; For a womanhood higher and holier, by all Her knowledge of good, than was Eve ere her fall,-- Whose task-work of duty moves lightly as play, Serene as the moonlight and warm as the day; And, yet more, for the faith which embraces the whole, Of the creeds of the ages the life and the soul, Wherein letter and spirit the same channel run, And man has not severed what God has made one! For a sense of the Goodness revealed everywhere, As sunshine impartial, and free as the air; For a trust in humanity, Heathen or Jew, And a hope for all darkness the Light shineth through. Who scoffs at our birthright?--the words of the seers, And the songs of the bards in the twilight of years, All the foregleams of wisdom in santon and sage, In prophet and priest, are our true heritage. The Word which the reason of Plato discerned; The truth, as whose symbol the Mithra-fire burned; The soul of the world which the Stoic but guessed, In the Light Universal the Quaker confessed! No honors of war to our worthies belong; Their plain stem of life never flowered into song; But the fountains they opened still gush by the way, And the world for their healing is better to-day. He who lies where the minster's groined arches curve down To the tomb-crowded transept of England's renown, The glorious essayist, by genius enthroned, Whose pen as a sceptre the Muses all owned,-- Who through the world's pantheon walked in his pride, Setting new statues up, thrusting old ones aside, And in fiction the pencils of history dipped, To gild o'er or blacken each saint in his crypt,-- How vainly he labored to sully with blame The white bust of Penn, in the niche of his fame! Self-will is self-wounding, perversity blind On himself fell the stain for the Quaker designed! For the sake of his true-hearted father before him; For the sake of the dear Quaker mother that bore him; For the sake of his gifts, and the works that outlive him, And his brave words for freedom, we freely forgive him! There are those who take note that our numbers are small,-- New Gibbons who write our decline and our fall; But the Lord of the seed-field takes care of His own, And the world shall yet reap what our sowers have sown. The last of the sect to his fathers may go, Leaving only his coat for some Barnum to show; But the truth will outlive him, and broaden with years, Till the false dies away, and the wrong disappears. Nothing fails of its end. Out of sight sinks the stone, In the deep sea of time, but the circles sweep on, Till the low-rippled murmurs along the shores run, And the dark and dead waters leap glad in the sun. Meanwhile shall we learn, in our ease, to forget To the martyrs of Truth and of Freedom our debt?-- Hide their words out of sight, like the garb that they wore, And for Barclay's Apology offer one more? Shall we fawn round the priestcraft that glutted the shears, And festooned the stocks with our grandfathers' ears? Talk of Woolman's unsoundness? count Penn heterodox? And take Cotton Mather in place of George Fox? Make our preachers war-chaplains? quote Scripture to take The hunted slave back, for Onesimus' sake? Go to burning church-candles, and chanting in choir, And on the old meeting-house stick up a spire? No! the old paths we'll keep until better are shown, Credit good where we find it, abroad or our own; And while "Lo here" and "Lo there" the multitude call, Be true to ourselves, and do justice to all. The good round about us we need not refuse, Nor talk of our Zion as if we were Jews; But why shirk the badge which our fathers have worn, Or beg the world's pardon for having been born? We need not pray over the Pharisee's prayer, Nor claim that our wisdom is Benjamin's share; Truth to us and to others is equal and one Shall we bottle the free air, or hoard up the sun? Well know we our birthright may serve but to show How the meanest of weeds in the richest soil grow; But we need not disparage the good which we hold; Though the vessels be earthen, the treasure is gold! Enough and too much of the sect and the name. What matters our label, so truth be our aim? The creed may be wrong, but the life may be true, And hearts beat the same under drab coats or blue. So the man be a man, let him worship, at will, In Jerusalem's courts, or on Gerizim's hill. When she makes up her jewels, what cares yon good town For the Baptist of Wayland, the Quaker of Brown? And this green, favored island, so fresh and seablown, When she counts up the worthies her annals have known, Never waits for the pitiful gaugers of sect To measure her love, and mete out her respect. Three shades at this moment seem walking her strand, Each with head halo-crowned, and with palms in his hand,-- Wise Berkeley, grave Hopkins, and, smiling serene On prelate and puritan, Channing is seen. One holy name bearing, no longer they need Credentials of party, and pass-words of creed The new song they sing hath a threefold accord, And they own one baptism, one faith, and one Lord! But the golden sands run out: occasions like these Glide swift into shadow, like sails on the seas While we sport with the mosses and pebbles ashore, They lessen and fade, and we see them no more. Forgive me, dear friends, if my vagrant thoughts seem Like a school-boy's who idles and plays with his theme. Forgive the light measure whose changes display The sunshine and rain of our brief April day. There are moments in life when the lip and the eye Try the question of whether to smile or to cry; And scenes and reunions that prompt like our own The tender in feeling, the playful in tone. I, who never sat down with the boys and the girls At the feet of your Slocums, and Cartlands, and Earles,-- By courtesy only permitted to lay On your festival's altar my poor gift, to-day,-- I would joy in your joy: let me have a friend's part In the warmth of your welcome of hand and of heart,-- On your play-ground of boyhood unbend the brow's care, And shift the old burdens our shoulders must bear. Long live the good School! giving out year by year Recruits to true manhood and womanhood dear Brave boys, modest maidens, in beauty sent forth, The living epistles and proof of its worth! In and out let the young life as steadily flow As in broad Narragansett the tides come and go; And its sons and its daughters in prairie and town Remember its honor, and guard its renown. Not vainly the gift of its founder was made; Not prayerless the stones of its corner were laid The blessing of Him whom in secret they sought Has owned the good work which the fathers have wrought. To Him be the glory forever! We bear To the Lord of the Harvest our wheat with the tare. What we lack in our work may He find in our will, And winnow in mercy our good from the ill! OUR RIVER. FOR A SUMMER FESTIVAL AT "THE LAURELS" ON THE MERRIMAC. Jean Pierre Brissot, the famous leader of the Girondist party in the French Revolution, when a young man travelled extensively in the United States. He visited the valley of the Merrimac, and speaks in terms of admiration of the view from Moulton's hill opposite Amesbury. The "Laurel Party" so called, as composed of ladies and gentlemen in the lower valley of the Merrimac, and invited friends and guests in other sections of the country. Its thoroughly enjoyable annual festivals were held in the early summer on the pine-shaded, laurel-blossomed slopes of the Newbury side of the river opposite Pleasant Valley in Amesbury. The several poems called out by these gatherings are here printed in sequence. Once more on yonder laurelled height The summer flowers have budded; Once more with summer's golden light The vales of home are flooded; And once more, by the grace of Him Of every good the Giver, We sing upon its wooded rim The praises of our river, Its pines above, its waves below, The west-wind down it blowing, As fair as when the young Brissot Beheld it seaward flowing,-- And bore its memory o'er the deep, To soothe a martyr's sadness, And fresco, hi his troubled sleep, His prison-walls with gladness. We know the world is rich with streams Renowned in song and story, Whose music murmurs through our dreams Of human love and glory We know that Arno's banks are fair, And Rhine has castled shadows, And, poet-tuned, the Doon and Ayr Go singing down their meadows. But while, unpictured and unsung By painter or by poet, Our river waits the tuneful tongue And cunning hand to show it,-- We only know the fond skies lean Above it, warm with blessing, And the sweet soul of our Undine Awakes to our caressing. No fickle sun-god holds the flocks That graze its shores in keeping; No icy kiss of Dian mocks The youth beside it sleeping Our Christian river loveth most The beautiful and human; The heathen streams of Naiads boast, But ours of man and woman. The miner in his cabin hears The ripple we are hearing; It whispers soft to homesick ears Around the settler's clearing In Sacramento's vales of corn, Or Santee's bloom of cotton, Our river by its valley-born Was never yet forgotten. The drum rolls loud, the bugle fills The summer air with clangor; The war-storm shakes the solid hills Beneath its tread of anger; Young eyes that last year smiled in ours Now point the rifle's barrel, And hands then stained with fruits and flowers Bear redder stains of quarrel. But blue skies smile, and flowers bloom on, And rivers still keep flowing, The dear God still his rain and sun On good and ill bestowing. His pine-trees whisper, "Trust and wait!" His flowers are prophesying That all we dread of change or fate His live is underlying. And thou, O Mountain-born!--no more We ask the wise Allotter Than for the firmness of thy shore, The calmness of thy water, The cheerful lights that overlay, Thy rugged slopes with beauty, To match our spirits to our day And make a joy of duty. 1861. REVISITED. Read at "The Laurels," on the Merrimac, 6th month, 1865. The roll of drums and the bugle's wailing Vex the air of our vales-no more; The spear is beaten to hooks of pruning, The share is the sword the soldier wore! Sing soft, sing low, our lowland river, Under thy banks of laurel bloom; Softly and sweet, as the hour beseemeth, Sing us the songs of peace and home. Let all the tenderer voices of nature Temper the triumph and chasten mirth, Full of the infinite love and pity For fallen martyr and darkened hearth. But to Him who gives us beauty for ashes, And the oil of joy for mourning long, Let thy hills give thanks, and all thy waters Break into jubilant waves of song! Bring us the airs of hills and forests, The sweet aroma of birch and pine, Give us a waft of the north-wind laden With sweethrier odors and breath of kine! Bring us the purple of mountain sunsets, Shadows of clouds that rake the hills, The green repose of thy Plymouth meadows, The gleam and ripple of Campton rills. Lead us away in shadow and sunshine, Slaves of fancy, through all thy miles, The winding ways of Pemigewasset, And Winnipesaukee's hundred isles. Shatter in sunshine over thy ledges, Laugh in thy plunges from fall to fall; Play with thy fringes of elms, and darken Under the shade of the mountain wall. The cradle-song of thy hillside fountains Here in thy glory and strength repeat; Give us a taste of thy upland music, Show us the dance of thy silver feet. Into thy dutiful life of uses Pour the music and weave the flowers; With the song of birds and bloom of meadows Lighten and gladden thy heart and ours. Sing on! bring down, O lowland river, The joy of the hills to the waiting sea; The wealth of the vales, the pomp of mountains, The breath of the woodlands, bear with thee. Here, in the calm of thy seaward, valley, Mirth and labor shall hold their truce; Dance of water and mill of grinding, Both are beauty and both are use. Type of the Northland's strength and glory, Pride and hope of our home and race,-- Freedom lending to rugged labor Tints of beauty and lines of grace. Once again, O beautiful river, Hear our greetings and take our thanks; Hither we come, as Eastern pilgrims Throng to the Jordan's sacred banks. For though by the Master's feet untrodden, Though never His word has stilled thy waves, Well for us may thy shores be holy, With Christian altars and saintly graves. And well may we own thy hint and token Of fairer valleys and streams than these, Where the rivers of God are full of water, And full of sap are His healing trees! "THE LAURELS" At the twentieth and last anniversary. FROM these wild rocks I look to-day O'er leagues of dancing waves, and see The far, low coast-line stretch away To where our river meets the sea. The light wind blowing off the land Is burdened with old voices; through Shut eyes I see how lip and hand The greeting of old days renew. O friends whose hearts still keep their prime, Whose bright example warms and cheers, Ye teach us how to smile at Time, And set to music all his years! I thank you for sweet summer days, For pleasant memories lingering long, For joyful meetings, fond delays, And ties of friendship woven strong. As for the last time, side by side, You tread the paths familiar grown, I reach across the severing tide, And blend my farewells with your own. Make room, O river of our home! For other feet in place of ours, And in the summers yet to come, Make glad another Feast of Flowers! Hold in thy mirror, calm and deep, The pleasant pictures thou hast seen; Forget thy lovers not, but keep Our memory like thy laurels green. ISLES of SHOALS, 7th mo., 1870. JUNE ON THE MERRIMAC. O dwellers in the stately towns, What come ye out to see? This common earth, this common sky, This water flowing free? As gayly as these kalmia flowers Your door-yard blossoms spring; As sweetly as these wild-wood birds Your caged minstrels sing. You find but common bloom and green, The rippling river's rune, The beauty which is everywhere Beneath the skies of June; The Hawkswood oaks, the storm-torn plumes Of old pine-forest kings, Beneath whose century-woven shade Deer Island's mistress sings. And here are pictured Artichoke, And Curson's bowery mill; And Pleasant Valley smiles between The river and the hill. You know full well these banks of bloom, The upland's wavy line, And how the sunshine tips with fire The needles of the pine. Yet, like some old remembered psalm, Or sweet, familiar face, Not less because of commonness You love the day and place. And not in vain in this soft air Shall hard-strung nerves relax, Not all in vain the o'erworn brain Forego its daily tax. The lust of power, the greed of gain Have all the year their own; The haunting demons well may let Our one bright day alone. Unheeded let the newsboy call, Aside the ledger lay The world will keep its treadmill step Though we fall out to-day. The truants of life's weary school, Without excuse from thrift We change for once the gains of toil For God's unpurchased gift. From ceiled rooms, from silent books, From crowded car and town, Dear Mother Earth, upon thy lap, We lay our tired heads down. Cool, summer wind, our heated brows; Blue river, through the green Of clustering pines, refresh the eyes Which all too much have seen. For us these pleasant woodland ways Are thronged with memories old, Have felt the grasp of friendly hands And heard love's story told. A sacred presence overbroods The earth whereon we meet; These winding forest-paths are trod By more than mortal feet. Old friends called from us by the voice Which they alone could hear, From mystery to mystery, From life to life, draw near. More closely for the sake of them Each other's hands we press; Our voices take from them a tone Of deeper tenderness. Our joy is theirs, their trust is ours, Alike below, above, Or here or there, about us fold The arms of one great love! We ask to-day no countersign, No party names we own; Unlabelled, individual, We bring ourselves alone. What cares the unconventioned wood For pass-words of the town? The sound of fashion's shibboleth The laughing waters drown. Here cant forgets his dreary tone, And care his face forlorn; The liberal air and sunshine laugh The bigot's zeal to scorn. From manhood's weary shoulder falls His load of selfish cares; And woman takes her rights as flowers And brooks and birds take theirs. The license of the happy woods, The brook's release are ours; The freedom of the unshamed wind Among the glad-eyed flowers. Yet here no evil thought finds place, Nor foot profane comes in; Our grove, like that of Samothrace, Is set apart from sin. We walk on holy ground; above A sky more holy smiles; The chant of the beatitudes Swells down these leafy aisles. Thanks to the gracious Providence That brings us here once more; For memories of the good behind And hopes of good before. And if, unknown to us, sweet days Of June like this must come, Unseen of us these laurels clothe The river-banks with bloom; And these green paths must soon be trod By other feet than ours, Full long may annual pilgrims come To keep the Feast of Flowers; The matron be a girl once more, The bearded man a boy, And we, in heaven's eternal June, Be glad for earthly joy! 1876. HYMN FOR THE OPENING OF THOMAS STARR KING'S HOUSE OF WORSHIP, 1864. The poetic and patriotic preacher, who had won fame in the East, went to California in 1860 and became a power on the Pacific coast. It was not long after the opening of the house of worship built for him that he died. Amidst these glorious works of Thine, The solemn minarets of the pine, And awful Shasta's icy shrine,-- Where swell Thy hymns from wave and gale, And organ-thunders never fail, Behind the cataract's silver veil, Our puny walls to Thee we raise, Our poor reed-music sounds Thy praise: Forgive, O Lord, our childish ways! For, kneeling on these altar-stairs, We urge Thee not with selfish prayers, Nor murmur at our daily cares. Before Thee, in an evil day, Our country's bleeding heart we lay, And dare not ask Thy hand to stay; But, through the war-cloud, pray to Thee For union, but a union free, With peace that comes of purity! That Thou wilt bare Thy arm to, save And, smiting through this Red Sea wave, Make broad a pathway for the slave! For us, confessing all our need, We trust nor rite nor word nor deed, Nor yet the broken staff of creed. Assured alone that Thou art good To each, as to the multitude, Eternal Love and Fatherhood,-- Weak, sinful, blind, to Thee we kneel, Stretch dumbly forth our hands, and feel Our weakness is our strong appeal. So, by these Western gates of Even We wait to see with Thy forgiven The opening Golden Gate of Heaven! Suffice it now. In time to be Shall holier altars rise to Thee,-- Thy Church our broad humanity White flowers of love its walls shall climb, Soft bells of peace shall ring its chime, Its days shall all be holy time. A sweeter song shall then be heard,-- The music of the world's accord Confessing Christ, the Inward Word! That song shall swell from shore to shore, One hope, one faith, one love, restore The seamless robe that Jesus wore. HYMN FOR THE HOUSE OF WORSHIP AT GEORGETOWN, ERECTED IN MEMORY OF A MOTHER. The giver of the house was the late George Peabody, of London. Thou dwellest not, O Lord of all In temples which thy children raise; Our work to thine is mean and small, And brief to thy eternal days. Forgive the weakness and the pride, If marred thereby our gift may be, For love, at least, has sanctified The altar that we rear to thee. The heart and not the hand has wrought From sunken base to tower above The image of a tender thought, The memory of a deathless love! And though should never sound of speech Or organ echo from its wall, Its stones would pious lessons teach, Its shade in benedictions fall. Here should the dove of peace be found, And blessings and not curses given; Nor strife profane, nor hatred wound, The mingled loves of earth and heaven. Thou, who didst soothe with dying breath The dear one watching by Thy cross, Forgetful of the pains of death In sorrow for her mighty loss, In memory of that tender claim, O Mother-born, the offering take, And make it worthy of Thy name, And bless it for a mother's sake! 1868. A SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION. Read at the President's Levee, Brown University, 29th 6th month, 1870. To-day the plant by Williams set Its summer bloom discloses; The wilding sweethrier of his prayers Is crowned with cultured roses. Once more the Island State repeats The lesson that he taught her, And binds his pearl of charity Upon her brown-locked daughter. Is 't fancy that he watches still His Providence plantations? That still the careful Founder takes A part on these occasions. Methinks I see that reverend form, Which all of us so well know He rises up to speak; he jogs The presidential elbow. "Good friends," he says, "you reap a field I sowed in self-denial, For toleration had its griefs And charity its trial. "Great grace, as saith Sir Thomas More, To him must needs be given Who heareth heresy and leaves The heretic to Heaven! "I hear again the snuffled tones, I see in dreary vision Dyspeptic dreamers, spiritual bores, And prophets with a mission. "Each zealot thrust before my eyes His Scripture-garbled label; All creeds were shouted in my ears As with the tongues of Babel. "Scourged at one cart-tail, each denied The hope of every other; Each martyr shook his branded fist At the conscience of his brother! "How cleft the dreary drone of man. The shriller pipe of woman, As Gorton led his saints elect, Who held all things in common! "Their gay robes trailed in ditch and swamp, And torn by thorn and thicket, The dancing-girls of Merry Mount Came dragging to my wicket. "Shrill Anabaptists, shorn of ears; Gray witch-wives, hobbling slowly; And Antinomians, free of law, Whose very sins were holy. "Hoarse ranters, crazed Fifth Monarchists, Of stripes and bondage braggarts, Pale Churchmen, with singed rubrics snatched From Puritanic fagots. "And last, not least, the Quakers came, With tongues still sore from burning, The Bay State's dust from off their feet Before my threshold spurning; "A motley host, the Lord's debris, Faith's odds and ends together; Well might I shrink from guests with lungs Tough as their breeches leather "If, when the hangman at their heels Came, rope in hand to catch them, I took the hunted outcasts in, I never sent to fetch them. "I fed, but spared them not a whit; I gave to all who walked in, Not clams and succotash alone, But stronger meat of doctrine. "I proved the prophets false, I pricked The bubble of perfection, And clapped upon their inner light The snuffers of election. "And looking backward on my times, This credit I am taking; I kept each sectary's dish apart, No spiritual chowder making. "Where now the blending signs of sect Would puzzle their assorter, The dry-shod Quaker kept the land, The Baptist held the water. "A common coat now serves for both, The hat's no more a fixture; And which was wet and which was dry, Who knows in such a mixture? "Well! He who fashioned Peter's dream To bless them all is able; And bird and beast and creeping thing Make clean upon His table! "I walked by my own light; but when The ways of faith divided, Was I to force unwilling feet To tread the path that I did? "I touched the garment-hem of truth, Yet saw not all its splendor; I knew enough of doubt to feel For every conscience tender. "God left men free of choice, as when His Eden-trees were planted; Because they chose amiss, should I Deny the gift He granted? "So, with a common sense of need, Our common weakness feeling, I left them with myself to God And His all-gracious dealing! "I kept His plan whose rain and sun To tare and wheat are given; And if the ways to hell were free, I left then free to heaven!" Take heart with us, O man of old, Soul-freedom's brave confessor, So love of God and man wax strong, Let sect and creed be lesser. The jarring discords of thy day In ours one hymn are swelling; The wandering feet, the severed paths, All seek our Father's dwelling. And slowly learns the world the truth That makes us all thy debtor,-- That holy life is more than rite, And spirit more than letter; That they who differ pole-wide serve Perchance the common Master, And other sheep He hath than they Who graze one narrow pasture! For truth's worst foe is he who claims To act as God's avenger, And deems, beyond his sentry-beat, The crystal walls in danger! Who sets for heresy his traps Of verbal quirk and quibble, And weeds the garden of the Lord With Satan's borrowed dibble. To-day our hearts like organ keys One Master's touch are feeling; The branches of a common Vine Have only leaves of healing. Co-workers, yet from varied fields, We share this restful nooning; The Quaker with the Baptist here Believes in close communing. Forgive, dear saint, the playful tone, Too light for thy deserving; Thanks for thy generous faith in man, Thy trust in God unswerving. Still echo in the hearts of men The words that thou hast spoken; No forge of hell can weld again The fetters thou hast broken. The pilgrim needs a pass no more From Roman or Genevan; Thought-free, no ghostly tollman keeps Henceforth the road to Heaven! CHICAGO The great fire at Chicago was on 8-10 October, 1871. Men said at vespers: "All is well!" In one wild night the city fell; Fell shrines of prayer and marts of gain Before the fiery hurricane. On threescore spires had sunset shone, Where ghastly sunrise looked on none. Men clasped each other's hands, and said "The City of the West is dead!" Brave hearts who fought, in slow retreat, The fiends of fire from street to street, Turned, powerless, to the blinding glare, The dumb defiance of despair. A sudden impulse thrilled each wire That signalled round that sea of fire; Swift words of cheer, warm heart-throbs came; In tears of pity died the flame! From East, from West, from South and North, The messages of hope shot forth, And, underneath the severing wave, The world, full-handed, reached to save. Fair seemed the old; but fairer still The new, the dreary void shall fill With dearer homes than those o'erthrown, For love shall lay each corner-stone. Rise, stricken city! from thee throw The ashen sackcloth of thy woe; And build, as to Amphion's strain, To songs of cheer thy walls again! How shrivelled in thy hot distress The primal sin of selfishness! How instant rose, to take thy part, The angel in the human heart! Ah! not in vain the flames that tossed Above thy dreadful holocaust; The Christ again has preached through thee The Gospel of Humanity! Then lift once more thy towers on high, And fret with spires the western sky, To tell that God is yet with us, And love is still miraculous! 1871. KINSMAN. Died at the Island of Panay (Philippine group), aged nineteen years. Where ceaseless Spring her garland twines, As sweetly shall the loved one rest, As if beneath the whispering pines And maple shadows of the West. Ye mourn, O hearts of home! for him, But, haply, mourn ye not alone; For him shall far-off eyes be dim, And pity speak in tongues unknown. There needs no graven line to give The story of his blameless youth; All hearts shall throb intuitive, And nature guess the simple truth. The very meaning of his name Shall many a tender tribute win; The stranger own his sacred claim, And all the world shall be his kin. And there, as here, on main and isle, The dews of holy peace shall fall, The same sweet heavens above him smile, And God's dear love be over all 1874. THE GOLDEN WEDDING OF LONGWOOD. Longwood, not far from Bayard Taylor's birthplace in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, was the home of my esteemed friends John and Hannah Cox, whose golden wedding was celebrated in 1874. With fifty years between you and your well-kept wedding vow, The Golden Age, old friends of mine, is not a fable now. And, sweet as has life's vintage been through all your pleasant past, Still, as at Cana's marriage-feast, the best wine is the last! Again before me, with your names, fair Chester's landscape comes, Its meadows, woods, and ample barns, and quaint, stone-builded homes. The smooth-shorn vales, the wheaten slopes, the boscage green and soft, Of which their poet sings so well from towered Cedarcroft. And lo! from all the country-side come neighbors, kith and kin; From city, hamlet, farm-house old, the wedding guests come in. And they who, without scrip or purse, mob-hunted, travel-worn, In Freedom's age of martyrs came, as victors now return. Older and slower, yet the same, files in the long array, And hearts are light and eyes are glad, though heads are badger-gray. The fire-tried men of Thirty-eight who saw with me the fall, Midst roaring flames and shouting mob, of Pennsylvania Hall; And they of Lancaster who turned the cheeks of tyrants pale, Singing of freedom through the grates of Moyamensing jail! And haply with them, all unseen, old comrades, gone before, Pass, silently as shadows pass, within your open door,-- The eagle face of Lindley Coates, brave Garrett's daring zeal, Christian grace of Pennock, the steadfast heart of Neal. Ah me! beyond all power to name, the worthies tried and true, Grave men, fair women, youth and maid, pass by in hushed review. Of varying faiths, a common cause fused all their hearts in one. God give them now, whate'er their names, the peace of duty done! How gladly would I tread again the old-remembered places, Sit down beside your hearth once more and look in the dear old faces! And thank you for the lessons your fifty years are teaching, For honest lives that louder speak than half our noisy preaching; For your steady faith and courage in that dark and evil time, When the Golden Rule was treason, and to feed the hungry, crime; For the poor slave's house of refuge when the hounds were on his track, And saint and sinner, church and state, joined hands to send him back. Blessings upon you!--What you did for each sad, suffering one, So homeless, faint, and naked, unto our Lord was done! Fair fall on Kennett's pleasant vales and Longwood's bowery ways The mellow sunset of your lives, friends of my early days. May many more of quiet years be added to your sum, And, late at last, in tenderest love, the beckoning angel come. Dear hearts are here, dear hearts are there, alike below, above; Our friends are now in either world, and love is sure of love. 1874. HYMN FOR THE OPENING OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH, ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA. All things are Thine: no gift have we, Lord of all gifts, to offer Thee; And hence with grateful hearts to-day, Thy own before Thy feet we lay. Thy will was in the builders' thought; Thy hand unseen amidst us wrought; Through mortal motive, scheme and plan, Thy wise eternal purpose ran. No lack Thy perfect fulness knew; For human needs and longings grew This house of prayer, this home of rest, In the fair garden of the West. In weakness and in want we call On Thee for whom the heavens are small; Thy glory is Thy children's good, Thy joy Thy tender Fatherhood. O Father! deign these walls to bless, Fill with Thy love their emptiness, And let their door a gateway be To lead us from ourselves to Thee! 1872. LEXINGTON 1775. No Berserk thirst of blood had they, No battle-joy was theirs, who set Against the alien bayonet Their homespun breasts in that old day. Their feet had trodden peaceful, ways; They loved not strife, they dreaded pain; They saw not, what to us is plain, That God would make man's wrath his praise. No seers were they, but simple men; Its vast results the future hid The meaning of the work they did Was strange and dark and doubtful then. Swift as their summons came they left The plough mid-furrow standing still, The half-ground corn grist in the mill, The spade in earth, the axe in cleft. They went where duty seemed to call, They scarcely asked the reason why; They only knew they could but die, And death was not the worst of all! Of man for man the sacrifice, All that was theirs to give, they gave. The flowers that blossomed from their grave Have sown themselves beneath all skies. Their death-shot shook the feudal tower, And shattered slavery's chain as well; On the sky's dome, as on a bell, Its echo struck the world's great hour. That fateful echo is not dumb The nations listening to its sound Wait, from a century's vantage-ground, The holier triumphs yet to come,-- The bridal time of Law and Love, The gladness of the world's release, When, war-sick, at the feet of Peace The hawk shall nestle with the dove!-- The golden age of brotherhood Unknown to other rivalries Than of the mild humanities, And gracious interchange of good, When closer strand shall lean to strand, Till meet, beneath saluting flags, The eagle of our mountain-crags, The lion of our Motherland! 1875. THE LIBRARY. Sung at the opening of the Haverhill Library, November 11, 1875. "Let there be light!" God spake of old, And over chaos dark and cold, And through the dead and formless frame Of nature, life and order came. Faint was the light at first that shone On giant fern and mastodon, On half-formed plant and beast of prey, And man as rude and wild as they. Age after age, like waves, o'erran The earth, uplifting brute and man; And mind, at length, in symbols dark Its meanings traced on stone and bark. On leaf of palm, on sedge-wrought roll, On plastic clay and leathern scroll, Man wrote his thoughts; the ages passed, And to! the Press was found at last! Then dead souls woke; the thoughts of men Whose bones were dust revived again; The cloister's silence found a tongue, Old prophets spake, old poets sung. And here, to-day, the dead look down, The kings of mind again we crown; We hear the voices lost so long, The sage's word, the sibyl's song. Here Greek and Roman find themselves Alive along these crowded shelves; And Shakespeare treads again his stage, And Chaucer paints anew his age. As if some Pantheon's marbles broke Their stony trance, and lived and spoke, Life thrills along the alcoved hall, The lords of thought await our call! "I WAS A STRANGER, AND YE TOOK ME IN." An incident in St. Augustine, Florida. 'Neath skies that winter never knew The air was full of light and balm, And warm and soft the Gulf wind blew Through orange bloom and groves of palm. A stranger from the frozen North, Who sought the fount of health in vain, Sank homeless on the alien earth, And breathed the languid air with pain. God's angel came! The tender shade Of pity made her blue eye dim; Against her woman's breast she laid The drooping, fainting head of him. She bore him to a pleasant room, Flower-sweet and cool with salt sea air, And watched beside his bed, for whom His far-off sisters might not care. She fanned his feverish brow and smoothed Its lines of pain with tenderest touch. With holy hymn and prayer she soothed The trembling soul that feared so much. Through her the peace that passeth sight Came to him, as he lapsed away As one whose troubled dreams of night Slide slowly into tranquil day. The sweetness of the Land of Flowers Upon his lonely grave she laid The jasmine dropped its golden showers, The orange lent its bloom and shade. And something whispered in her thought, More sweet than mortal voices be "The service thou for him hast wrought O daughter! hath been done for me." 1875. CENTENNIAL HYMN. Written for the opening of the International Exhibition, Philadelphia, May 10, 1876. The music for the hymn was written by John K. Paine, and may be found in The Atlantic Monthly for June, 1876. I. Our fathers' God! from out whose hand The centuries fall like grains of sand, We meet to-day, united, free, And loyal to our land and Thee, To thank Thee for the era done, And trust Thee for the opening one. II. Here, where of old, by Thy design, The fathers spake that word of Thine Whose echo is the glad refrain Of rended bolt and falling chain, To grace our festal time, from all The zones of earth our guests we call. III. Be with us while the New World greets The Old World thronging all its streets, Unveiling all the triumphs won By art or toil beneath the sun; And unto common good ordain This rivalship of hand and brain. IV. Thou, who hast here in concord furled The war flags of a gathered world, Beneath our Western skies fulfil The Orient's mission of good-will, And, freighted with love's Golden Fleece, Send back its Argonauts of peace. V. For art and labor met in truce, For beauty made the bride of use, We thank Thee; but, withal, we crave The austere virtues strong to save, The honor proof to place or gold, The manhood never bought nor sold. VI. Oh make Thou us, through centuries long, In peace secure, in justice strong; Around our gift of freedom draw The safeguards of Thy righteous law And, cast in some diviner mould, Let the new cycle shame the old! AT SCHOOL-CLOSE. BOWDOIN STREET, BOSTON, 1877. The end has come, as come it must To all things; in these sweet June days The teacher and the scholar trust Their parting feet to separate ways. They part: but in the years to be Shall pleasant memories cling to each, As shells bear inland from the sea The murmur of the rhythmic beach. One knew the joy the sculptor knows When, plastic to his lightest touch, His clay-wrought model slowly grows To that fine grace desired so much. So daily grew before her eyes The living shapes whereon she wrought, Strong, tender, innocently wise, The child's heart with the woman's thought. And one shall never quite forget The voice that called from dream and play, The firm but kindly hand that set Her feet in learning's pleasant way,-- The joy of Undine soul-possessed, The wakening sense, the strange delight That swelled the fabled statue's breast And filled its clouded eyes with sight. O Youth and Beauty, loved of all! Ye pass from girlhood's gate of dreams; In broader ways your footsteps fall, Ye test the truth of all that seams. Her little realm the teacher leaves, She breaks her wand of power apart, While, for your love and trust, she gives The warm thanks of a grateful heart. Hers is the sober summer noon Contrasted with your morn of spring, The waning with the waxing moon, The folded with the outspread wing. Across the distance of the years She sends her God-speed back to you; She has no thought of doubts or fears Be but yourselves, be pure, be true, And prompt in duty; heed the deep, Low voice of conscience; through the ill And discord round about you, keep Your faith in human nature still. Be gentle: unto griefs and needs, Be pitiful as woman should, And, spite of all the lies of creeds, Hold fast the truth that God is good. Give and receive; go forth and bless The world that needs the hand and heart Of Martha's helpful carefulness No less than Mary's better part. So shall the stream of time flow by And leave each year a richer good, And matron loveliness outvie The nameless charm of maidenhood. And, when the world shall link your names With gracious lives and manners fine, The teacher shall assert her claims, And proudly whisper, "These were mine!" HYMN OF THE CHILDREN. Sung at the anniversary of the Children's Mission, Boston, 1878. Thine are all the gifts, O God! Thine the broken bread; Let the naked feet be shod, And the starving fed. Let Thy children, by Thy grace, Give as they abound, Till the poor have breathing-space, And the lost are found. Wiser than the miser's hoards Is the giver's choice; Sweeter than the song of birds Is the thankful voice. Welcome smiles on faces sad As the flowers of spring; Let the tender hearts be glad With the joy they bring. Happier for their pity's sake Make their sports and plays, And from lips of childhood take Thy perfected praise! THE LANDMARKS. This poem was read at a meeting of citizens of Boston having for its object the preservation of the Old South Church famous in Colonial and Revolutionary history. I. THROUGH the streets of Marblehead Fast the red-winged terror sped; Blasting, withering, on it came, With its hundred tongues of flame, Where St. Michael's on its way Stood like chained Andromeda, Waiting on the rock, like her, Swift doom or deliverer! Church that, after sea-moss grew Over walls no longer new, Counted generations five, Four entombed and one alive; Heard the martial thousand tread Battleward from Marblehead; Saw within the rock-walled bay Treville's liked pennons play, And the fisher's dory met By the barge of Lafayette, Telling good news in advance Of the coming fleet of France! Church to reverend memories, dear, Quaint in desk and chandelier; Bell, whose century-rusted tongue Burials tolled and bridals rung; Loft, whose tiny organ kept Keys that Snetzler's hand had swept; Altar, o'er whose tablet old Sinai's law its thunders rolled! Suddenly the sharp cry came "Look! St. Michael's is aflame!" Round the low tower wall the fire Snake-like wound its coil of ire. Sacred in its gray respect From the jealousies of sect, "Save it," seemed the thought of all, "Save it, though our roof-trees fall!" Up the tower the young men sprung; One, the bravest, outward swung By the rope, whose kindling strands Smoked beneath the holder's hands, Smiting down with strokes of power Burning fragments from the tower. Then the gazing crowd beneath Broke the painful pause of breath; Brave men cheered from street to street, With home's ashes at their feet; Houseless women kerchiefs waved: "Thank the Lord! St. Michael's saved!" II. In the heart of Boston town Stands the church of old renown, From whose walls the impulse went Which set free a continent; From whose pulpit's oracle Prophecies of freedom fell; And whose steeple-rocking din Rang the nation's birth-day in! Standing at this very hour Perilled like St. Michael's tower, Held not in the clasp of flame, But by mammon's grasping claim. Shall it be of Boston said She is shamed by Marblehead? City of our pride! as there, Hast thou none to do and dare? Life was risked for Michael's shrine; Shall not wealth be staked for thine? Woe to thee, when men shall search Vainly for the Old South Church; When from Neck to Boston Stone, All thy pride of place is gone; When from Bay and railroad car, Stretched before them wide and far, Men shall only see a great Wilderness of brick and slate, Every holy spot o'erlaid By the commonplace of trade! City of our love': to thee Duty is but destiny. True to all thy record saith, Keep with thy traditions faith; Ere occasion's overpast, Hold its flowing forelock fast; Honor still the precedents Of a grand munificence; In thy old historic way Give, as thou didst yesterday At the South-land's call, or on Need's demand from fired St. John. Set thy Church's muffled bell Free the generous deed to tell. Let thy loyal hearts rejoice In the glad, sonorous voice, Ringing from the brazen mouth Of the bell of the Old South,-- Ringing clearly, with a will, "What she was is Boston still!" 1879 GARDEN The American Horticultural Society, 1882. O painter of the fruits and flowers, We own wise design, Where these human hands of ours May share work of Thine! Apart from Thee we plant in vain The root and sow the seed; Thy early and Thy later rain, Thy sun and dew we need. Our toil is sweet with thankfulness, Our burden is our boon; The curse of Earth's gray morning is The blessing of its noon. Why search the wide world everywhere For Eden's unknown ground? That garden of the primal pair May nevermore be found. But, blest by Thee, our patient toil May right the ancient wrong, And give to every clime and soil The beauty lost so long. Our homestead flowers and fruited trees May Eden's orchard shame; We taste the tempting sweets of these Like Eve, without her blame. And, North and South and East and West, The pride of every zone, The fairest, rarest, and the best May all be made our own. Its earliest shrines the young world sought In hill-groves and in bowers, The fittest offerings thither brought Were Thy own fruits and flowers. And still with reverent hands we cull Thy gifts each year renewed; The good is always beautiful, The beautiful is good. A GREETING Read at Harriet Beecher Stowe's seventieth anniversary, June 14, 1882, at a garden party at ex-Governor Claflin's in Newtonville, Mass. Thrice welcome from the Land of Flowers And golden-fruited orange bowers To this sweet, green-turfed June of ours! To her who, in our evil time, Dragged into light the nation's crime With strength beyond the strength of men, And, mightier than their swords, her pen! To her who world-wide entrance gave To the log-cabin of the slave; Made all his wrongs and sorrows known, And all earth's languages his own,-- North, South, and East and West, made all The common air electrical, Until the o'ercharged bolts of heaven Blazed down, and every chain was riven! Welcome from each and all to her Whose Wooing of the Minister Revealed the warm heart of the man Beneath the creed-bound Puritan, And taught the kinship of the love Of man below and God above; To her whose vigorous pencil-strokes Sketched into life her Oldtown Folks; Whose fireside stories, grave or gay, In quaint Sam Lawson's vagrant way, With old New England's flavor rife, Waifs from her rude idyllic life, Are racy as the legends old By Chaucer or Boccaccio told; To her who keeps, through change of place And time, her native strength and grace, Alike where warm Sorrento smiles, Or where, by birchen-shaded isles, Whose summer winds have shivered o'er The icy drift of Labrador, She lifts to light the priceless Pearl Of Harpswell's angel-beckoned girl! To her at threescore years and ten Be tributes of the tongue and pen; Be honor, praise, and heart-thanks given, The loves of earth, the hopes of heaven! Ah, dearer than the praise that stirs The air to-day, our love is hers! She needs no guaranty of fame Whose own is linked with Freedom's name. Long ages after ours shall keep Her memory living while we sleep; The waves that wash our gray coast lines, The winds that rock the Southern pines, Shall sing of her; the unending years Shall tell her tale in unborn ears. And when, with sins and follies past, Are numbered color-hate and caste, White, black, and red shall own as one The noblest work by woman done. GODSPEED Written on the occasion of a voyage made by my friends Annie Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett. Outbound, your bark awaits you. Were I one Whose prayer availeth much, my wish should be Your favoring trade-wind and consenting sea. By sail or steed was never love outrun, And, here or there, love follows her in whom All graces and sweet charities unite, The old Greek beauty set in holier light; And her for whom New England's byways bloom, Who walks among us welcome as the Spring, Calling up blossoms where her light feet stray. God keep you both, make beautiful your way, Comfort, console, and bless; and safely bring, Ere yet I make upon a vaster sea The unreturning voyage, my friends to me. 1882. WINTER ROSES. In reply to a flower gift from Mrs. Putnam's school at Jamaica Plain. My garden roses long ago Have perished from the leaf-strewn walks; Their pale, fair sisters smile no more Upon the sweet-brier stalks. Gone with the flower-time of my life, Spring's violets, summer's blooming pride, And Nature's winter and my own Stand, flowerless, side by side. So might I yesterday have sung; To-day, in bleak December's noon, Come sweetest fragrance, shapes, and hues, The rosy wealth of June! Bless the young bands that culled the gift, And bless the hearts that prompted it; If undeserved it comes, at least It seems not all unfit. Of old my Quaker ancestors Had gifts of forty stripes save one; To-day as many roses crown The gray head of their son. And with them, to my fancy's eye, The fresh-faced givers smiling come, And nine and thirty happy girls Make glad a lonely room. They bring the atmosphere of youth; The light and warmth of long ago Are in my heart, and on my cheek The airs of morning blow. O buds of girlhood, yet unblown, And fairer than the gift ye chose, For you may years like leaves unfold The heart of Sharon's rose 1883. THE REUNION Read September 10, 1885, to the surviving students of Haverhill Academy in 1827-1830. The gulf of seven and fifty years We stretch our welcoming hands across; The distance but a pebble's toss Between us and our youth appears. For in life's school we linger on The remnant of a once full list; Conning our lessons, undismissed, With faces to the setting sun. And some have gone the unknown way, And some await the call to rest; Who knoweth whether it is best For those who went or those who stay? And yet despite of loss and ill, If faith and love and hope remain, Our length of days is not in vain, And life is well worth living still. Still to a gracious Providence The thanks of grateful hearts are due, For blessings when our lives were new, For all the good vouchsafed us since. The pain that spared us sorer hurt, The wish denied, the purpose crossed, And pleasure's fond occasions lost, Were mercies to our small desert. 'T is something that we wander back, Gray pilgrims, to our ancient ways, And tender memories of old days Walk with us by the Merrimac; That even in life's afternoon A sense of youth comes back again, As through this cool September rain The still green woodlands dream of June. The eyes grown dim to present things Have keener sight for bygone years, And sweet and clear, in deafening ears, The bird that sang at morning sings. Dear comrades, scattered wide and far, Send from their homes their kindly word, And dearer ones, unseen, unheard, Smile on us from some heavenly star. For life and death with God are one, Unchanged by seeming change His care And love are round us here and there; He breaks no thread His hand has spun. Soul touches soul, the muster roll Of life eternal has no gaps; And after half a century's lapse Our school-day ranks are closed and whole. Hail and farewell! We go our way; Where shadows end, we trust in light; The star that ushers in the night Is herald also of the day! NORUMBEGA HALL. Norumbega Hall at Wellesley College, named in honor of Eben Norton Horsford, who has been one of the most munificent patrons of that noble institution, and who had just published an essay claiming the discovery of the site of the somewhat mythical city of Norumbega, was opened with appropriate ceremonies, in April, 1886. The following sonnet was written for the occasion, and was read by President Alice E. Freeman, to whom it was addressed. Not on Penobscot's wooded bank the spires Of the sought City rose, nor yet beside The winding Charles, nor where the daily tide Of Naumkeag's haven rises and retires, The vision tarried; but somewhere we knew The beautiful gates must open to our quest, Somewhere that marvellous City of the West Would lift its towers and palace domes in view, And, to! at last its mystery is made known-- Its only dwellers maidens fair and young, Its Princess such as England's Laureate sung; And safe from capture, save by love alone, It lends its beauty to the lake's green shore, And Norumbega is a myth no more. THE BARTHOLDI STATUE 1886 The land, that, from the rule of kings, In freeing us, itself made free, Our Old World Sister, to us brings Her sculptured Dream of Liberty, Unlike the shapes on Egypt's sands Uplifted by the toil-worn slave, On Freedom's soil with freemen's hands We rear the symbol free hands gave. O France, the beautiful! to thee Once more a debt of love we owe In peace beneath thy Colors Three, We hail a later Rochambeau! Rise, stately Symbol! holding forth Thy light and hope to all who sit In chains and darkness! Belt the earth With watch-fires from thy torch uplit! Reveal the primal mandate still Which Chaos heard and ceased to be, Trace on mid-air th' Eternal Will In signs of fire: "Let man be free!" Shine far, shine free, a guiding light To Reason's ways and Virtue's aim, A lightning-flash the wretch to smite Who shields his license with thy name! ONE OF THE SIGNERS. Written for the unveiling of the statue of Josiah Bartlett at Amesbury, Mass., July 4, 1888. Governor Bartlett, who was a native of the town, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Amesbury or Ambresbury, so called from the "anointed stones" of the great Druidical temple near it, was the seat of one of the earliest religious houses in Britain. The tradition that the guilty wife of King Arthur fled thither for protection forms one of the finest passages in Tennyson's Idyls of the King. O storied vale of Merrimac Rejoice through all thy shade and shine, And from his century's sleep call back A brave and honored son of thine. Unveil his effigy between The living and the dead to-day; The fathers of the Old Thirteen Shall witness bear as spirits may. Unseen, unheard, his gray compeers The shades of Lee and Jefferson, Wise Franklin reverend with his years And Carroll, lord of Carrollton! Be thine henceforth a pride of place Beyond thy namesake's over-sea, Where scarce a stone is left to trace The Holy House of Amesbury. A prouder memory lingers round The birthplace of thy true man here Than that which haunts the refuge found By Arthur's mythic Guinevere. The plain deal table where he sat And signed a nation's title-deed Is dearer now to fame than that Which bore the scroll of Runnymede. Long as, on Freedom's natal morn, Shall ring the Independence bells, Give to thy dwellers yet unborn The lesson which his image tells. For in that hour of Destiny, Which tried the men of bravest stock, He knew the end alone must be A free land or a traitor's block. Among those picked and chosen men Than his, who here first drew his breath, No firmer fingers held the pen Which wrote for liberty or death. Not for their hearths and homes alone, But for the world their work was done; On all the winds their thought has flown Through all the circuit of the sun. We trace its flight by broken chains, By songs of grateful Labor still; To-day, in all her holy fanes, It rings the bells of freed Brazil. O hills that watched his boyhood's home, O earth and air that nursed him, give, In this memorial semblance, room To him who shall its bronze outlive! And thou, O Land he loved, rejoice That in the countless years to come, Whenever Freedom needs a voice, These sculptured lips shall not be dumb! 
9582	----	This eBook was produced by David Widger PERSONAL POEMS BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER CONTENTS: THE CROSS THE HERO RANTOUL WILLIAM FORSTER TO CHARLES SUMNER BURNS TO GEORGE B. CHEEVER TO JAMES T. FIELDS THE MEMORY OF BURNS IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOSEPH STURGER BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE NAPLES A MEMORIAL BRYANT ON HIS BIRTHDAY THOMAS STARR KING LINES ON A FLY-LEAF GEORGE L. STEARNS GARIBALDI TO LYDIA MARIA CHILD THE SINGER HOW MARY GREW SUMNER THIERS FITZ-GREENE HALLECK WILLIAM FRANCIS BARTLETT BAYARD TAYLOR OUR AUTOCRAT WITHIN THE GATE IN MEMORY: JAMES T. FIELDS WILSON THE POET AND THE CHILDREN A WELCOME TO LOWELL AN ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL MULFORD TO A CAPE ANN SCHOONER SAMUEL J. TILDEN THE CROSS. Richard Dillingham, a young member of the Society of Friends, died in the Nashville penitentiary, where he was confined for the act of aiding the escape of fugitive slaves. "The cross, if rightly borne, shall be No burden, but support to thee;" So, moved of old time for our sake, The holy monk of Kempen spake. Thou brave and true one! upon whom Was laid the cross of martyrdom, How didst thou, in thy generous youth, Bear witness to this blessed truth! Thy cross of suffering and of shame A staff within thy hands became, In paths where faith alone could see The Master's steps supporting thee. Thine was the seed-time; God alone Beholds the end of what is sown; Beyond our vision, weak and dim, The harvest-time is hid with Him. Yet, unforgotten where it lies, That seed of generous sacrifice, Though seeming on the desert cast, Shall rise with bloom and fruit at last. 1852. THE HERO. The hero of the incident related in this poem was Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, the well-known philanthropist, who when a young man volunteered his aid in the Greek struggle for independence. "Oh for a knight like Bayard, Without reproach or fear; My light glove on his casque of steel, My love-knot on his spear! "Oh for the white plume floating Sad Zutphen's field above,-- The lion heart in battle, The woman's heart in love! "Oh that man once more were manly, Woman's pride, and not her scorn: That once more the pale young mother Dared to boast `a man is born'! "But, now life's slumberous current No sun-bowed cascade wakes; No tall, heroic manhood The level dulness breaks. "Oh for a knight like Bayard, Without reproach or fear! My light glove on his casque of steel, My love-knot on his spear!" Then I said, my own heart throbbing To the time her proud pulse beat, "Life hath its regal natures yet, True, tender, brave, and sweet! "Smile not, fair unbeliever! One man, at least, I know, Who might wear the crest of Bayard Or Sidney's plume of snow. "Once, when over purple mountains Died away the Grecian sun, And the far Cyllenian ranges Paled and darkened, one by one,-- "Fell the Turk, a bolt of thunder, Cleaving all the quiet sky, And against his sharp steel lightnings Stood the Suliote but to die. "Woe for the weak and halting! The crescent blazed behind A curving line of sabres, Like fire before the wind! "Last to fly, and first to rally, Rode he of whom I speak, When, groaning in his bridle-path, Sank down a wounded Greek. "With the rich Albanian costume Wet with many a ghastly stain, Gazing on earth and sky as one Who might not gaze again. "He looked forward to the mountains, Back on foes that never spare, Then flung him from his saddle, And placed the stranger there. "'Allah! hu!' Through flashing sabres, Through a stormy hail of lead, The good Thessalian charger Up the slopes of olives sped. "Hot spurred the turbaned riders; He almost felt their breath, Where a mountain stream rolled darkly down Between the hills and death. "One brave and manful struggle,-- He gained the solid land, And the cover of the mountains, And the carbines of his band!" "It was very great and noble," Said the moist-eyed listener then, "But one brave deed makes no hero; Tell me what he since hath been!" "Still a brave and generous manhood, Still an honor without stain, In the prison of the Kaiser, By the barricades of Seine. "But dream not helm and harness The sign of valor true; Peace hath higher tests of manhood Than battle ever knew. "Wouldst know him now? Behold him, The Cadmus of the blind, Giving the dumb lip language, The idiot-clay a mind. "Walking his round of duty Serenely day by day, With the strong man's hand of labor And childhood's heart of play. "True as the knights of story, Sir Lancelot and his peers, Brave in his calm endurance As they in tilt of spears. "As waves in stillest waters, As stars in noonday skies, All that wakes to noble action In his noon of calmness lies. "Wherever outraged Nature Asks word or action brave, Wherever struggles labor, Wherever groans a slave,-- "Wherever rise the peoples, Wherever sinks a throne, The throbbing heart of Freedom finds An answer in his own. "Knight of a better era, Without reproach or fear! Said I not well that Bayards And Sidneys still are here?" 1853. RANTOUL. No more fitting inscription could be placed on the tombstone of Robert Rantoul than this: "He died at his post in Congress, and his last words were a protest in the name of Democracy against the Fugitive-Slave Law." One day, along the electric wire His manly word for Freedom sped; We came next morn: that tongue of fire Said only, "He who spake is dead!" Dead! while his voice was living yet, In echoes round the pillared dome! Dead! while his blotted page lay wet With themes of state and loves of home! Dead! in that crowning grace of time, That triumph of life's zenith hour! Dead! while we watched his manhood's prime Break from the slow bud into flower! Dead! he so great, and strong, and wise, While the mean thousands yet drew breath; How deepened, through that dread surprise, The mystery and the awe of death! From the high place whereon our votes Had borne him, clear, calm, earnest, fell His first words, like the prelude notes Of some great anthem yet to swell. We seemed to see our flag unfurled, Our champion waiting in his place For the last battle of the world, The Armageddon of the race. Through him we hoped to speak the word Which wins the freedom of a land; And lift, for human right, the sword Which dropped from Hampden's dying hand. For he had sat at Sidney's feet, And walked with Pym and Vane apart; And, through the centuries, felt the beat Of Freedom's march in Cromwell's heart. He knew the paths the worthies held, Where England's best and wisest trod; And, lingering, drank the springs that welled Beneath the touch of Milton's rod. No wild enthusiast of the right, Self-poised and clear, he showed alway The coolness of his northern night, The ripe repose of autumn's day. His steps were slow, yet forward still He pressed where others paused or failed; The calm star clomb with constant will, The restless meteor flashed and paled. Skilled in its subtlest wile, he knew And owned the higher ends of Law; Still rose majestic on his view The awful Shape the schoolman saw. Her home the heart of God; her voice The choral harmonies whereby The stars, through all their spheres, rejoice, The rhythmic rule of earth and sky. We saw his great powers misapplied To poor ambitions; yet, through all, We saw him take the weaker side, And right the wronged, and free the thrall. Now, looking o'er the frozen North, For one like him in word and act, To call her old, free spirit forth, And give her faith the life of fact,-- To break her party bonds of shame, And labor with the zeal of him To make the Democratic name Of Liberty the synonyme,-- We sweep the land from hill to strand, We seek the strong, the wise, the brave, And, sad of heart, return to stand In silence by a new-made grave! There, where his breezy hills of home Look out upon his sail-white seas, The sounds of winds and waters come, And shape themselves to words like these. "Why, murmuring, mourn that he, whose power Was lent to Party over-long, Heard the still whisper at the hour He set his foot on Party wrong? "The human life that closed so well No lapse of folly now can stain The lips whence Freedom's protest fell No meaner thought can now profane. "Mightier than living voice his grave That lofty protest utters o'er; Through roaring wind and smiting wave It speaks his hate of wrong once more. "Men of the North! your weak regret Is wasted here; arise and pay To freedom and to him your debt, By following where he led the way!" 1853. WILLIAM FORSTER. William Forster, of Norwich, England, died in East Tennessee, in the 1st month, 1854, while engaged in presenting to the governors of the States of this Union the address of his religious society on the evils of slavery. He was the relative and coadjutor of the Buxtons, Gurneys, and Frys; and his whole life, extending al-most to threescore and ten years, was a pore and beautiful example of Christian benevolence. He had travelled over Europe, and visited most of its sovereigns, to plead against the slave-trade and slavery; and had twice before made visits to this country, under impressions of religious duty. He was the father of the Right Hon. William Edward Forster. He visited my father's house in Haverhill during his first tour in the United States. The years are many since his hand Was laid upon my head, Too weak and young to understand The serious words he said. Yet often now the good man's look Before me seems to swim, As if some inward feeling took The outward guise of him. As if, in passion's heated war, Or near temptation's charm, Through him the low-voiced monitor Forewarned me of the harm. Stranger and pilgrim! from that day Of meeting, first and last, Wherever Duty's pathway lay, His reverent steps have passed. The poor to feed, the lost to seek, To proffer life to death, Hope to the erring,--to the weak The strength of his own faith. To plead the captive's right; remove The sting of hate from Law; And soften in the fire of love The hardened steel of War. He walked the dark world, in the mild, Still guidance of the Light; In tearful tenderness a child, A strong man in the right. From what great perils, on his way, He found, in prayer, release; Through what abysmal shadows lay His pathway unto peace, God knoweth : we could only see The tranquil strength he gained; The bondage lost in liberty, The fear in love unfeigned. And I,--my youthful fancies grown The habit of the man, Whose field of life by angels sown The wilding vines o'erran,-- Low bowed in silent gratitude, My manhood's heart enjoys That reverence for the pure and good Which blessed the dreaming boy's. Still shines the light of holy lives Like star-beams over doubt; Each sainted memory, Christlike, drives Some dark possession out. O friend! O brother I not in vain Thy life so calm and true, The silver dropping of the rain, The fall of summer dew! How many burdened hearts have prayed Their lives like thine might be But more shall pray henceforth for aid To lay them down like thee. With weary hand, yet steadfast will, In old age as in youth, Thy Master found thee sowing still The good seed of His truth. As on thy task-field closed the day In golden-skied decline, His angel met thee on the way, And lent his arm to thine. Thy latest care for man,--thy last Of earthly thought a prayer,-- Oh, who thy mantle, backward cast, Is worthy now to wear? Methinks the mound which marks thy bed Might bless our land and save, As rose, of old, to life the dead Who touched the prophet's grave 1854. TO CHARLES SUMNER. If I have seemed more prompt to censure wrong Than praise the right; if seldom to thine ear My voice hath mingled with the exultant cheer Borne upon all our Northern winds along; If I have failed to join the fickle throng In wide-eyed wonder, that thou standest strong In victory, surprised in thee to find Brougham's scathing power with Canning's grace combined; That he, for whom the ninefold Muses sang, From their twined arms a giant athlete sprang, Barbing the arrows of his native tongue With the spent shafts Latona's archer flung, To smite the Python of our land and time, Fell as the monster born of Crissa's slime, Like the blind bard who in Castalian springs Tempered the steel that clove the crest of kings, And on the shrine of England's freedom laid The gifts of Cumve and of Delphi's' shade,-- Small need hast thou of words of praise from me. Thou knowest my heart, dear friend, and well canst guess That, even though silent, I have not the less Rejoiced to see thy actual life agree With the large future which I shaped for thee, When, years ago, beside the summer sea, White in the moon, we saw the long waves fall Baffled and broken from the rocky wall, That, to the menace of the brawling flood, Opposed alone its massive quietude, Calm as a fate; with not a leaf nor vine Nor birch-spray trembling in the still moonshine, Crowning it like God's peace. I sometimes think That night-scene by the sea prophetical, (For Nature speaks in symbols and in signs, And through her pictures human fate divines), That rock, wherefrom we saw the billows sink In murmuring rout, uprising clear and tall In the white light of heaven, the type of one Who, momently by Error's host assailed, Stands strong as Truth, in greaves of granite mailed; And, tranquil-fronted, listening over all The tumult, hears the angels say, Well done! 1854. BURNS ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER IN BLOSSOM. No more these simple flowers belong To Scottish maid and lover; Sown in the common soil of song, They bloom the wide world over. In smiles and tears, in sun and showers, The minstrel and the heather, The deathless singer and the flowers He sang of live together. Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns The moorland flower and peasant! How, at their mention, memory turns Her pages old and pleasant! The gray sky wears again its gold And purple of adorning, And manhood's noonday shadows hold The dews of boyhood's morning. The dews that washed the dust and soil From off the wings of pleasure, The sky, that flecked the, ground of toil With golden threads of leisure. I call to mind the summer day, The early harvest mowing, The sky with sun and clouds at play, And flowers with breezes blowing. I hear the blackbird in the corn, The locust in the haying; And, like the fabled hunter's horn, Old tunes my heart is playing. How oft that day, with fond delay, I sought the maple's shadow, And sang with Burns the hours away, Forgetful of the meadow. Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead I heard the squirrels leaping, The good dog listened while I read, And wagged his tail in keeping. I watched him while in sportive mood I read "_The Twa Dogs_" story, And half believed he understood The poet's allegory. Sweet day, sweet songs! The golden hours Grew brighter for that singing, From brook and bird and meadow flowers A dearer welcome bringing. New light on home-seen Nature beamed, New glory over Woman; And daily life and duty seemed No longer poor and common. I woke to find the simple truth Of fact and feeling better Than all the dreams that held my youth A still repining debtor, That Nature gives her handmaid, Art, The themes of sweet discoursing; The tender idyls of the heart In every tongue rehearsing. Why dream of lands of gold and pearl, Of loving knight and lady, When farmer boy and barefoot girl Were wandering there already? I saw through all familiar things The romance underlying; The joys and griefs that plume the wings Of Fancy skyward flying. I saw the same blithe day return, The same sweet fall of even, That rose on wooded Craigie-burn, And sank on crystal Devon. I matched with Scotland's heathery hills The sweetbrier and the clover; With Ayr and Doon, my native rills, Their wood-hymns chanting over. O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen, I saw the Man uprising; No longer common or unclean, The child of God's baptizing! With clearer eyes I saw the worth Of life among the lowly; The Bible at his Cotter's hearth Had made my own more holy. And if at times an evil strain, To lawless love appealing, Broke in upon the sweet refrain Of pure and healthful feeling, It died upon the eye and ear, No inward answer gaining; No heart had I to see or hear The discord and the staining. Let those who never erred forget His worth, in vain bewailings; Sweet Soul of Song! I own my debt Uncancelled by his failings! Lament who will the ribald line Which tells his lapse from duty, How kissed the maddening lips of wine Or wanton ones of beauty; But think, while falls that shade between The erring one and Heaven, That he who loved like Magdalen, Like her may be forgiven. Not his the song whose thunderous chime Eternal echoes render; The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme, And Milton's starry splendor! But who his human heart has laid To Nature's bosom nearer? Who sweetened toil like him, or paid To love a tribute dearer? Through all his tuneful art, how strong The human feeling gushes The very moonlight of his song Is warm with smiles and blushes! Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time, So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry; Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme, But spare his Highland Mary! 1854. TO GEORGE B. CHEEVER So spake Esaias: so, in words of flame, Tekoa's prophet-herdsman smote with blame The traffickers in men, and put to shame, All earth and heaven before, The sacerdotal robbers of the poor. All the dread Scripture lives for thee again, To smite like lightning on the hands profane Lifted to bless the slave-whip and the chain. Once more the old Hebrew tongue Bends with the shafts of God a bow new-strung! Take up the mantle which the prophets wore; Warn with their warnings, show the Christ once more Bound, scourged, and crucified in His blameless poor; And shake above our land The unquenched bolts that blazed in Hosea's hand! Not vainly shalt thou cast upon our years The solemn burdens of the Orient seers, And smite with truth a guilty nation's ears. Mightier was Luther's word Than Seckingen's mailed arm or Hutton's sword! 1858. TO JAMES T. FIELDS ON A BLANK LEAF OF "POEMS PRINTED, NOT PUBLISHED." Well thought! who would not rather hear The songs to Love and Friendship sung Than those which move the stranger's tongue, And feed his unselected ear? Our social joys are more than fame; Life withers in the public look. Why mount the pillory of a book, Or barter comfort for a name? Who in a house of glass would dwell, With curious eyes at every pane? To ring him in and out again, Who wants the public crier's bell? To see the angel in one's way, Who wants to play the ass's part,-- Bear on his back the wizard Art, And in his service speak or bray? And who his manly locks would shave, And quench the eyes of common sense, To share the noisy recompense That mocked the shorn and blinded slave? The heart has needs beyond the head, And, starving in the plenitude Of strange gifts, craves its common food,-- Our human nature's daily bread. We are but men: no gods are we, To sit in mid-heaven, cold and bleak, Each separate, on his painful peak, Thin-cloaked in self-complacency. Better his lot whose axe is swung In Wartburg woods, or that poor girl's Who by the him her spindle whirls And sings the songs that Luther sung, Than his who, old, and cold, and vain, At Weimar sat, a demigod, And bowed with Jove's imperial nod His votaries in and out again! Ply, Vanity, thy winged feet! Ambition, hew thy rocky stair! Who envies him who feeds on air The icy splendor of his seat? I see your Alps, above me, cut The dark, cold sky; and dim and lone I see ye sitting,--stone on stone,-- With human senses dulled and shut. I could not reach you, if I would, Nor sit among your cloudy shapes; And (spare the fable of the grapes And fox) I would not if I could. Keep to your lofty pedestals! The safer plain below I choose Who never wins can rarely lose, Who never climbs as rarely falls. Let such as love the eagle's scream Divide with him his home of ice For me shall gentler notes suffice,-- The valley-song of bird and stream; The pastoral bleat, the drone of bees, The flail-beat chiming far away, The cattle-low, at shut of day, The voice of God in leaf and breeze; Then lend thy hand, my wiser friend, And help me to the vales below, (In truth, I have not far to go,) Where sweet with flowers the fields extend. 1858. THE MEMORY OF BURNS. Read at the Boston celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, 25th 1st mo., 1859. In my absence these lines were read by Ralph Waldo Emerson. How sweetly come the holy psalms From saints and martyrs down, The waving of triumphal palms Above the thorny crown The choral praise, the chanted prayers From harps by angels strung, The hunted Cameron's mountain airs, The hymns that Luther sung! Yet, jarring not the heavenly notes, The sounds of earth are heard, As through the open minster floats The song of breeze and bird Not less the wonder of the sky That daisies bloom below; The brook sings on, though loud and high The cloudy organs blow! And, if the tender ear be jarred That, haply, hears by turns The saintly harp of Olney's bard, The pastoral pipe of Burns, No discord mars His perfect plan Who gave them both a tongue; For he who sings the love of man The love of God hath sung! To-day be every fault forgiven Of him in whom we joy We take, with thanks, the gold of Heaven And leave the earth's alloy. Be ours his music as of spring, His sweetness as of flowers, The songs the bard himself might sing In holier ears than ours. Sweet airs of love and home, the hum Of household melodies, Come singing, as the robins come To sing in door-yard trees. And, heart to heart, two nations lean, No rival wreaths to twine, But blending in eternal green The holly and the pine! IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOSEPH STURGE. In the fair land o'erwatched by Ischia's mountains, Across the charmed bay Whose blue waves keep with Capri's silver fountains Perpetual holiday, A king lies dead, his wafer duly eaten, His gold-bought masses given; And Rome's great altar smokes with gums to sweeten Her foulest gift to Heaven. And while all Naples thrills with mute thanksgiving, The court of England's queen For the dead monster so abhorred while living In mourning garb is seen. With a true sorrow God rebukes that feigning; By lone Edgbaston's side Stands a great city in the sky's sad raining, Bareheaded and wet-eyed! Silent for once the restless hive of labor, Save the low funeral tread, Or voice of craftsman whispering to his neighbor The good deeds of the dead. For him no minster's chant of the immortals Rose from the lips of sin; No mitred priest swung back the heavenly portals To let the white soul in. But Age and Sickness framed their tearful faces In the low hovel's door, And prayers went up from all the dark by-places And Ghettos of the poor. The pallid toiler and the negro chattel, The vagrant of the street, The human dice wherewith in games of battle The lords of earth compete, Touched with a grief that needs no outward draping, All swelled the long lament, Of grateful hearts, instead of marble, shaping His viewless monument! For never yet, with ritual pomp and splendor, In the long heretofore, A heart more loyal, warm, and true, and tender, Has England's turf closed o'er. And if there fell from out her grand old steeples No crash of brazen wail, The murmurous woe of kindreds, tongues, and peoples Swept in on every gale. It came from Holstein's birchen-belted meadows, And from the tropic calms Of Indian islands in the sunlit shadows Of Occidental palms; From the locked roadsteads of the Bothniaii peasants, And harbors of the Finn, Where war's worn victims saw his gentle presence Come sailing, Christ-like, in, To seek the lost, to build the old waste places, To link the hostile shores Of severing seas, and sow with England's daisies The moss of Finland's moors. Thanks for the good man's beautiful example, Who in the vilest saw Some sacred crypt or altar of a temple Still vocal with God's law; And heard with tender ear the spirit sighing As from its prison cell, Praying for pity, like the mournful crying Of Jonah out of hell. Not his the golden pen's or lip's persuasion, But a fine sense of right, And Truth's directness, meeting each occasion Straight as a line of light. His faith and works, like streams that intermingle, In the same channel ran The crystal clearness of an eye kept single Shamed all the frauds of man. The very gentlest of all human natures He joined to courage strong, And love outreaching unto all God's creatures With sturdy hate of wrong. Tender as woman, manliness and meekness In him were so allied That they who judged him by his strength or weakness Saw but a single side. Men failed, betrayed him, but his zeal seemed nourished By failure and by fall; Still a large faith in human-kind he cherished, And in God's love for all. And now he rests: his greatness and his sweetness No more shall seem at strife, And death has moulded into calm completeness The statue of his life. Where the dews glisten and the songbirds warble, His dust to dust is laid, In Nature's keeping, with no pomp of marble To shame his modest shade. The forges glow, the hammers all are ringing; Beneath its smoky vale, Hard by, the city of his love is swinging Its clamorous iron flail. But round his grave are quietude and beauty, And the sweet heaven above,-- The fitting symbols of a life of duty Transfigured into love! 1859. BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE John Brown of Ossawatomie spake on his dying day: "I will not have to shrive my soul a priest in Slavery's pay. But let some poor slave-mother whom I have striven to free, With her children, from the gallows-stair put up a prayer for me!" John Brown of Ossawatomie, they led him out to die; And lo! a poor slave-mother with her little child pressed nigh. Then the bold, blue eye grew tender, and the old harsh face grew mild, As he stooped between the jeering ranks and kissed the negro's child. The shadows of his stormy life that moment fell apart; And they who blamed the bloody hand forgave the loving heart. That kiss from all its guilty means redeemed the good intent, And round the grisly fighter's hair the martyr's aureole bent! Perish with him the folly that seeks through evil good Long live the generous purpose unstained with human blood! Not the raid of midnight terror, but the thought which underlies; Not the borderer's pride of daring, but the Christian's sacrifice. Nevermore may yon Blue Ridges the Northern rifle hear, Nor see the light of blazing homes flash on the negro's spear. But let the free-winged angel Truth their guarded passes scale, To teach that right is more than might, and justice more than mail! So vainly shall Virginia set her battle in array; In vain her trampling squadrons knead the winter snow with clay. She may strike the pouncing eagle, but she dares not harm the dove; And every gate she bars to Hate shall open wide to Love! 1859. NAPLES INSCRIBED TO ROBERT C. WATERSTON, OF BOSTON. Helen Waterston died at Naples in her eighteenth year, and lies buried in the Protestant cemetery there. The stone over her grave bears the lines, Fold her, O Father, in Thine arms, And let her henceforth be A messenger of love between Our human hearts and Thee. I give thee joy!--I know to thee The dearest spot on earth must be Where sleeps thy loved one by the summer sea; Where, near her sweetest poet's tomb, The land of Virgil gave thee room To lay thy flower with her perpetual bloom. I know that when the sky shut down Behind thee on the gleaming town, On Baiae's baths and Posilippo's crown; And, through thy tears, the mocking day Burned Ischia's mountain lines away, And Capri melted in its sunny bay; Through thy great farewell sorrow shot The sharp pang of a bitter thought That slaves must tread around that holy spot. Thou knewest not the land was blest In giving thy beloved rest, Holding the fond hope closer to her breast, That every sweet and saintly grave Was freedom's prophecy, and gave The pledge of Heaven to sanctify and save. That pledge is answered. To thy ear The unchained city sends its cheer, And, tuned to joy, the muffled bells of fear Ring Victor in. The land sits free And happy by the summer sea, And Bourbon Naples now is Italy! She smiles above her broken chain The languid smile that follows pain, Stretching her cramped limbs to the sun again. Oh, joy for all, who hear her call From gray Camaldoli's convent-wall And Elmo's towers to freedom's carnival! A new life breathes among her vines And olives, like the breath of pines Blown downward from the breezy Apennines. Lean, O my friend, to meet that breath, Rejoice as one who witnesseth Beauty from ashes rise, and life from death! Thy sorrow shall no more be pain, Its tears shall fall in sunlit rain, Writing the grave with flowers: "Arisen again!" 1860. A MEMORIAL Moses Austin Cartland, a dear friend and relation, who led a faithful life as a teacher and died in the summer of 1863. Oh, thicker, deeper, darker growing, The solemn vista to the tomb Must know henceforth another shadow, And give another cypress room. In love surpassing that of brothers, We walked, O friend, from childhood's day; And, looking back o'er fifty summers, Our footprints track a common way. One in our faith, and one our longing To make the world within our reach Somewhat the better for our living, And gladder for our human speech. Thou heard'st with me the far-off voices, The old beguiling song of fame, But life to thee was warm and present, And love was better than a name. To homely joys and loves and friendships Thy genial nature fondly clung; And so the shadow on the dial Ran back and left thee always young. And who could blame the generous weakness Which, only to thyself unjust, So overprized the worth of others, And dwarfed thy own with self-distrust? All hearts grew warmer in the presence Of one who, seeking not his own, Gave freely for the love of giving, Nor reaped for self the harvest sown. Thy greeting smile was pledge and prelude Of generous deeds and kindly words; In thy large heart were fair guest-chambers, Open to sunrise and the birds; The task was thine to mould and fashion Life's plastic newness into grace To make the boyish heart heroic, And light with thought the maiden's face. O'er all the land, in town and prairie, With bended heads of mourning, stand The living forms that owe their beauty And fitness to thy shaping hand. Thy call has come in ripened manhood, The noonday calm of heart and mind, While I, who dreamed of thy remaining To mourn me, linger still behind, Live on, to own, with self-upbraiding, A debt of love still due from me,-- The vain remembrance of occasions, Forever lost, of serving thee. It was not mine among thy kindred To join the silent funeral prayers, But all that long sad day of summer My tears of mourning dropped with theirs. All day the sea-waves sobbed with sorrow, The birds forgot their merry trills All day I heard the pines lamenting With thine upon thy homestead hills. Green be those hillside pines forever, And green the meadowy lowlands be, And green the old memorial beeches, Name-carven in the woods of Lee. Still let them greet thy life companions Who thither turn their pilgrim feet, In every mossy line recalling A tender memory sadly sweet. O friend! if thought and sense avail not To know thee henceforth as thou art, That all is well with thee forever I trust the instincts of my heart. Thine be the quiet habitations, Thine the green pastures, blossom-sown, And smiles of saintly recognition, As sweet and tender as thy own. Thou com'st not from the hush and shadow To meet us, but to thee we come, With thee we never can be strangers, And where thou art must still be home. 1863. BRYANT ON HIS BIRTHDAY Mr. Bryant's seventieth birthday, November 3, 1864, was celebrated by a festival to which these verses were sent. We praise not now the poet's art, The rounded beauty of his song; Who weighs him from his life apart Must do his nobler nature wrong. Not for the eye, familiar grown With charms to common sight denied, The marvellous gift he shares alone With him who walked on Rydal-side; Not for rapt hymn nor woodland lay, Too grave for smiles, too sweet for tears; We speak his praise who wears to-day The glory of his seventy years. When Peace brings Freedom in her train, Let happy lips his songs rehearse; His life is now his noblest strain, His manhood better than his verse! Thank God! his hand on Nature's keys Its cunning keeps at life's full span; But, dimmed and dwarfed, in times like these, The poet seems beside the man! So be it! let the garlands die, The singer's wreath, the painter's meed, Let our names perish, if thereby Our country may be saved and freed! 1864. THOMAS STARR KING Published originally as a prelude to the posthumous volume of selections edited by Richard Frothingham. The great work laid upon his twoscore years Is done, and well done. If we drop our tears, Who loved him as few men were ever loved, We mourn no blighted hope nor broken plan With him whose life stands rounded and approved In the full growth and stature of a man. Mingle, O bells, along the Western slope, With your deep toll a sound of faith and hope! Wave cheerily still, O banner, half-way down, From thousand-masted bay and steepled town! Let the strong organ with its loftiest swell Lift the proud sorrow of the land, and tell That the brave sower saw his ripened grain. O East and West! O morn and sunset twain No more forever!--has he lived in vain Who, priest of Freedom, made ye one, and told Your bridal service from his lips of gold? 1864. LINES ON A FLY-LEAF. I need not ask thee, for my sake, To read a book which well may make Its way by native force of wit Without my manual sign to it. Its piquant writer needs from me No gravely masculine guaranty, And well might laugh her merriest laugh At broken spears in her behalf; Yet, spite of all the critics tell, I frankly own I like her well. It may be that she wields a pen Too sharply nibbed for thin-skinned men, That her keen arrows search and try The armor joints of dignity, And, though alone for error meant, Sing through the air irreverent. I blame her not, the young athlete Who plants her woman's tiny feet, And dares the chances of debate Where bearded men might hesitate, Who, deeply earnest, seeing well The ludicrous and laughable, Mingling in eloquent excess Her anger and her tenderness, And, chiding with a half-caress, Strives, less for her own sex than ours, With principalities and powers, And points us upward to the clear Sunned heights of her new atmosphere. Heaven mend her faults!--I will not pause To weigh and doubt and peck at flaws, Or waste my pity when some fool Provokes her measureless ridicule. Strong-minded is she? Better so Than dulness set for sale or show, A household folly, capped and belled In fashion's dance of puppets held, Or poor pretence of womanhood, Whose formal, flavorless platitude Is warranted from all offence Of robust meaning's violence. Give me the wine of thought whose head Sparkles along the page I read,-- Electric words in which I find The tonic of the northwest wind; The wisdom which itself allies To sweet and pure humanities, Where scorn of meanness, hate of wrong, Are underlaid by love as strong; The genial play of mirth that lights Grave themes of thought, as when, on nights Of summer-time, the harmless blaze Of thunderless heat-lightning plays, And tree and hill-top resting dim And doubtful on the sky's vague rim, Touched by that soft and lambent gleam, Start sharply outlined from their dream. Talk not to me of woman's sphere, Nor point with Scripture texts a sneer, Nor wrong the manliest saint of all By doubt, if he were here, that Paul Would own the heroines who have lent Grace to truth's stern arbitrament, Foregone the praise to woman sweet, And cast their crowns at Duty's feet; Like her, who by her strong Appeal Made Fashion weep and Mammon feel, Who, earliest summoned to withstand The color-madness of the land, Counted her life-long losses gain, And made her own her sisters' pain; Or her who, in her greenwood shade, Heard the sharp call that Freedom made, And, answering, struck from Sappho's lyre Of love the Tyrtman carmen's fire Or that young girl,--Domremy's maid Revived a nobler cause to aid,-- Shaking from warning finger-tips The doom of her apocalypse; Or her, who world-wide entrance gave To the log-cabin of the slave, Made all his want and sorrow known, And all earth's languages his own. 1866. GEORGE L. STEARNS No man rendered greater service to the cause of freedom than Major Stearns in the great struggle between invading slave-holders and the free settlers of Kansas. He has done the work of a true man,-- Crown him, honor him, love him. Weep, over him, tears of woman, Stoop manliest brows above him! O dusky mothers and daughters, Vigils of mourning keep for him! Up in the mountains, and down by the waters, Lift up your voices and weep for him, For the warmest of hearts is frozen, The freest of hands is still; And the gap in our picked and chosen The long years may not fill. No duty could overtask him, No need his will outrun; Or ever our lips could ask him, His hands the work had done. He forgot his own soul for others, Himself to his neighbor lending; He found the Lord in his suffering brothers, And not in the clouds descending. So the bed was sweet to die on, Whence he saw the doors wide swung Against whose bolted iron The strength of his life was flung. And he saw ere his eye was darkened The sheaves of the harvest-bringing, And knew while his ear yet hearkened The voice of the reapers singing. Ah, well! The world is discreet; There are plenty to pause and wait; But here was a man who set his feet Sometimes in advance of fate; Plucked off the old bark when the inner Was slow to renew it, And put to the Lord's work the sinner When saints failed to do it. Never rode to the wrong's redressing A worthier paladin. Shall he not hear the blessing, "Good and faithful, enter in!" 1867 GARIBALDI In trance and dream of old, God's prophet saw The casting down of thrones. Thou, watching lone The hot Sardinian coast-line, hazy-hilled, Where, fringing round Caprera's rocky zone With foam, the slow waves gather and withdraw, Behold'st the vision of the seer fulfilled, And hear'st the sea-winds burdened with a sound Of falling chains, as, one by one, unbound, The nations lift their right hands up and swear Their oath of freedom. From the chalk-white wall Of England, from the black Carpathian range, Along the Danube and the Theiss, through all The passes of the Spanish Pyrenees, And from the Seine's thronged banks, a murmur strange And glad floats to thee o'er thy summer seas On the salt wind that stirs thy whitening hair,-- The song of freedom's bloodless victories! Rejoice, O Garibaldi! Though thy sword Failed at Rome's gates, and blood seemed vainly poured Where, in Christ's name, the crowned infidel Of France wrought murder with the arms of hell On that sad mountain slope whose ghostly dead, Unmindful of the gray exorcist's ban, Walk, unappeased, the chambered Vatican, And draw the curtains of Napoleon's bed! God's providence is not blind, but, full of eyes, It searches all the refuges of lies; And in His time and way, the accursed things Before whose evil feet thy battle-gage Has clashed defiance from hot youth to age Shall perish. All men shall be priests and kings, One royal brotherhood, one church made free By love, which is the law of liberty 1869. TO LYDIA MARIA CHILD, ON READING HER POEM IN "THE STANDARD." Mrs. Child wrote her lines, beginning, "Again the trees are clothed in vernal green," May 24, 1859, on the first anniversary of Ellis Gray Loring's death, but did not publish them for some years afterward, when I first read them, or I could not have made the reference which I did to the extinction of slavery. The sweet spring day is glad with music, But through it sounds a sadder strain; The worthiest of our narrowing circle Sings Loring's dirges o'er again. O woman greatly loved! I join thee In tender memories of our friend; With thee across the awful spaces The greeting of a soul I send! What cheer hath he? How is it with him? Where lingers he this weary while? Over what pleasant fields of Heaven Dawns the sweet sunrise of his smile? Does he not know our feet are treading The earth hard down on Slavery's grave? That, in our crowning exultations, We miss the charm his presence gave? Why on this spring air comes no whisper From him to tell us all is well? Why to our flower-time comes no token Of lily and of asphodel? I feel the unutterable longing, Thy hunger of the heart is mine; I reach and grope for hands in darkness, My ear grows sharp for voice or sign. Still on the lips of all we question The finger of God's silence lies; Will the lost hands in ours be folded? Will the shut eyelids ever rise? O friend! no proof beyond this yearning, This outreach of our hearts, we need; God will not mock the hope He giveth, No love He prompts shall vainly plead. Then let us stretch our hands in darkness, And call our loved ones o'er and o'er; Some day their arms shall close about us, And the old voices speak once more. No dreary splendors wait our coming Where rapt ghost sits from ghost apart; Homeward we go to Heaven's thanksgiving, The harvest-gathering of the heart. 1870. THE SINGER. This poem was written on the death of Alice Cary. Her sister Phoebe, heart-broken by her loss, followed soon after. Noble and richly gifted, lovely in person and character, they left behind them only friends and admirers. Years since (but names to me before), Two sisters sought at eve my door; Two song-birds wandering from their nest, A gray old farm-house in the West. How fresh of life the younger one, Half smiles, half tears, like rain in sun! Her gravest mood could scarce displace The dimples of her nut-brown face. Wit sparkled on her lips not less For quick and tremulous tenderness; And, following close her merriest glance, Dreamed through her eyes the heart's romance. Timid and still, the elder had Even then a smile too sweetly sad; The crown of pain that all must wear Too early pressed her midnight hair. Yet ere the summer eve grew long, Her modest lips were sweet with song; A memory haunted all her words Of clover-fields and singing birds. Her dark, dilating eyes expressed The broad horizons of the west; Her speech dropped prairie flowers; the gold Of harvest wheat about her rolled. Fore-doomed to song she seemed to me I queried not with destiny I knew the trial and the need, Yet, all the more, I said, God speed? What could I other than I did? Could I a singing-bird forbid? Deny the wind-stirred leaf? Rebuke The music of the forest brook? She went with morning from my door, But left me richer than before; Thenceforth I knew her voice of cheer, The welcome of her partial ear. Years passed: through all the land her name A pleasant household word became All felt behind the singer stood A sweet and gracious womanhood. Her life was earnest work, not play; Her tired feet climbed a weary way; And even through her lightest strain We heard an undertone of pain. Unseen of her her fair fame grew, The good she did she rarely knew, Unguessed of her in life the love That rained its tears her grave above. When last I saw her, full of peace, She waited for her great release; And that old friend so sage and bland, Our later Franklin, held her hand. For all that patriot bosoms stirs Had moved that woman's heart of hers, And men who toiled in storm and sun Found her their meet companion. Our converse, from her suffering bed To healthful themes of life she led The out-door world of bud and bloom And light and sweetness filled her room. Yet evermore an underthought Of loss to come within us wrought, And all the while we felt the strain Of the strong will that conquered pain. God giveth quietness at last! The common way that all have passed She went, with mortal yearnings fond, To fuller life and love beyond. Fold the rapt soul in your embrace, My dear ones! Give the singer place To you, to her,--I know not where,-- I lift the silence of a prayer. For only thus our own we find; The gone before, the left behind, All mortal voices die between; The unheard reaches the unseen. Again the blackbirds sing; the streams Wake, laughing, from their winter dreams, And tremble in the April showers The tassels of the maple flowers. But not for her has spring renewed The sweet surprises of the wood; And bird and flower are lost to her Who was their best interpreter. What to shut eyes has God revealed? What hear the ears that death has sealed? What undreamed beauty passing show Requites the loss of all we know? O silent land, to which we move, Enough if there alone be love, And mortal need can ne'er outgrow What it is waiting to bestow! O white soul! from that far-off shore Float some sweet song the waters o'er. Our faith confirm, our fears dispel, With the old voice we loved so well! 1871. HOW MARY GREW. These lines were in answer to an invitation to hear a lecture of Mary Grew, of Philadelphia, before the Boston Radical Club. The reference in the last stanza is to an essay on Sappho by T. W. Higginson, read at the club the preceding month. With wisdom far beyond her years, And graver than her wondering peers, So strong, so mild, combining still The tender heart and queenly will, To conscience and to duty true, So, up from childhood, Mary Grew! Then in her gracious womanhood She gave her days to doing good. She dared the scornful laugh of men, The hounding mob, the slanderer's pen. She did the work she found to do,-- A Christian heroine, Mary Grew! The freed slave thanks her; blessing comes To her from women's weary homes; The wronged and erring find in her Their censor mild and comforter. The world were safe if but a few Could grow in grace as Mary Grew! So, New Year's Eve, I sit and say, By this low wood-fire, ashen gray; Just wishing, as the night shuts down, That I could hear in Boston town, In pleasant Chestnut Avenue, From her own lips, how Mary Grew! And hear her graceful hostess tell The silver-voiced oracle Who lately through her parlors spoke As through Dodona's sacred oak, A wiser truth than any told By Sappho's lips of ruddy gold,-- The way to make the world anew, Is just to grow--as Mary Grew 1871. SUMNER "I am not one who has disgraced beauty of sentiment by deformity of conduct, or the maxims of a freeman by the actions of a slave; but, by the grace of God, I have kept my life unsullied." --MILTON'S _Defence of the People of England_. O Mother State! the winds of March Blew chill o'er Auburn's Field of God, Where, slow, beneath a leaden arch Of sky, thy mourning children trod. And now, with all thy woods in leaf, Thy fields in flower, beside thy dead Thou sittest, in thy robes of grief, A Rachel yet uncomforted! And once again the organ swells, Once more the flag is half-way hung, And yet again the mournful bells In all thy steeple-towers are rung. And I, obedient to thy will, Have come a simple wreath to lay, Superfluous, on a grave that still Is sweet with all the flowers of May. I take, with awe, the task assigned; It may be that my friend might miss, In his new sphere of heart and mind, Some token from my band in this. By many a tender memory moved, Along the past my thought I send; The record of the cause he loved Is the best record of its friend. No trumpet sounded in his ear, He saw not Sinai's cloud and flame, But never yet to Hebrew seer A clearer voice of duty came. God said: "Break thou these yokes; undo These heavy burdens. I ordain A work to last thy whole life through, A ministry of strife and pain. "Forego thy dreams of lettered ease, Put thou the scholar's promise by, The rights of man are more than these." He heard, and answered: "Here am I!" He set his face against the blast, His feet against the flinty shard, Till the hard service grew, at last, Its own exceeding great reward. Lifted like Saul's above the crowd, Upon his kingly forehead fell The first sharp bolt of Slavery's cloud, Launched at the truth he urged so well. Ah! never yet, at rack or stake, Was sorer loss made Freedom's gain, Than his, who suffered for her sake The beak-torn Titan's lingering pain! The fixed star of his faith, through all Loss, doubt, and peril, shone the same; As through a night of storm, some tall, Strong lighthouse lifts its steady flame. Beyond the dust and smoke he saw The sheaves of Freedom's large increase, The holy fanes of equal law, The New Jerusalem of peace. The weak might fear, the worldling mock, The faint and blind of heart regret; All knew at last th' eternal rock On which his forward feet were set. The subtlest scheme of compromise Was folly to his purpose bold; The strongest mesh of party lies Weak to the simplest truth he told. One language held his heart and lip, Straight onward to his goal he trod, And proved the highest statesmanship Obedience to the voice of God. No wail was in his voice,--none heard, When treason's storm-cloud blackest grew, The weakness of a doubtful word; His duty, and the end, he knew. The first to smite, the first to spare; When once the hostile ensigns fell, He stretched out hands of generous care To lift the foe he fought so well. For there was nothing base or small Or craven in his soul's broad plan; Forgiving all things personal, He hated only wrong to man. The old traditions of his State, The memories of her great and good, Took from his life a fresher date, And in himself embodied stood. How felt the greed of gold and place, The venal crew that schemed and planned, The fine scorn of that haughty face, The spurning of that bribeless hand! If than Rome's tribunes statelier He wore his senatorial robe, His lofty port was all for her, The one dear spot on all the globe. If to the master's plea he gave The vast contempt his manhood felt, He saw a brother in the slave,-- With man as equal man he dealt. Proud was he? If his presence kept Its grandeur wheresoe'er he trod, As if from Plutarch's gallery stepped The hero and the demigod, None failed, at least, to reach his ear, Nor want nor woe appealed in vain; The homesick soldier knew his cheer, And blessed him from his ward of pain. Safely his dearest friends may own The slight defects he never hid, The surface-blemish in the stone Of the tall, stately pyramid. Suffice it that he never brought His conscience to the public mart; But lived himself the truth he taught, White-souled, clean-handed, pure of heart. What if he felt the natural pride Of power in noble use, too true With thin humilities to hide The work he did, the lore he knew? Was he not just? Was any wronged By that assured self-estimate? He took but what to him belonged, Unenvious of another's state. Well might he heed the words he spake, And scan with care the written page Through which he still shall warm and wake The hearts of men from age to age. Ah! who shall blame him now because He solaced thus his hours of pain! Should not the o'erworn thresher pause, And hold to light his golden grain? No sense of humor dropped its oil On the hard ways his purpose went; Small play of fancy lightened toil; He spake alone the thing he meant. He loved his books, the Art that hints A beauty veiled behind its own, The graver's line, the pencil's tints, The chisel's shape evoked from stone. He cherished, void of selfish ends, The social courtesies that bless And sweeten life, and loved his friends With most unworldly tenderness. But still his tired eyes rarely learned The glad relief by Nature brought; Her mountain ranges never turned His current of persistent thought. The sea rolled chorus to his speech Three-banked like Latium's' tall trireme, With laboring oars; the grove and beach Were Forum and the Academe. The sensuous joy from all things fair His strenuous bent of soul repressed, And left from youth to silvered hair Few hours for pleasure, none for rest. For all his life was poor without, O Nature, make the last amends Train all thy flowers his grave about, And make thy singing-birds his friends! Revive again, thou summer rain, The broken turf upon his bed Breathe, summer wind, thy tenderest strain Of low, sweet music overhead! With calm and beauty symbolize The peace which follows long annoy, And lend our earth-bent, mourning eyes, Some hint of his diviner joy. For safe with right and truth he is, As God lives he must live alway; There is no end for souls like his, No night for children of the day! Nor cant nor poor solicitudes Made weak his life's great argument; Small leisure his for frames and moods Who followed Duty where she went. The broad, fair fields of God he saw Beyond the bigot's narrow bound; The truths he moulded into law In Christ's beatitudes he found. His state-craft was the Golden Rule, His right of vote a sacred trust; Clear, over threat and ridicule, All heard his challenge: "Is it just?" And when the hour supreme had come, Not for himself a thought he gave; In that last pang of martyrdom, His care was for the half-freed slave. Not vainly dusky hands upbore, In prayer, the passing soul to heaven Whose mercy to His suffering poor Was service to the Master given. Long shall the good State's annals tell, Her children's children long be taught, How, praised or blamed, he guarded well The trust he neither shunned nor sought. If for one moment turned thy face, O Mother, from thy son, not long He waited calmly in his place The sure remorse which follows wrong. Forgiven be the State he loved The one brief lapse, the single blot; Forgotten be the stain removed, Her righted record shows it not! The lifted sword above her shield With jealous care shall guard his fame; The pine-tree on her ancient field To all the winds shall speak his name. The marble image of her son Her loving hands shall yearly crown, And from her pictured Pantheon His grand, majestic face look down. O State so passing rich before, Who now shall doubt thy highest claim? The world that counts thy jewels o'er Shall longest pause at Sumner's name! 1874. THEIRS I. Fate summoned, in gray-bearded age, to act A history stranger than his written fact, Him who portrayed the splendor and the gloom Of that great hour when throne and altar fell With long death-groan which still is audible. He, when around the walls of Paris rung The Prussian bugle like the blast of doom, And every ill which follows unblest war Maddened all France from Finistere to Var, The weight of fourscore from his shoulders flung, And guided Freedom in the path he saw Lead out of chaos into light and law, Peace, not imperial, but republican, And order pledged to all the Rights of Man. II. Death called him from a need as imminent As that from which the Silent William went When powers of evil, like the smiting seas On Holland's dikes, assailed her liberties. Sadly, while yet in doubtful balance hung The weal and woe of France, the bells were rung For her lost leader. Paralyzed of will, Above his bier the hearts of men stood still. Then, as if set to his dead lips, the horn Of Roland wound once more to rouse and warn, The old voice filled the air! His last brave word Not vainly France to all her boundaries stirred. Strong as in life, he still for Freedom wrought, As the dead Cid at red Toloso fought. 1877. FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. AT THE UNVEILING OF HIS STATUE. Among their graven shapes to whom Thy civic wreaths belong, O city of his love, make room For one whose gift was song. Not his the soldier's sword to wield, Nor his the helm of state, Nor glory of the stricken field, Nor triumph of debate. In common ways, with common men, He served his race and time As well as if his clerkly pen Had never danced to rhyme. If, in the thronged and noisy mart, The Muses found their son, Could any say his tuneful art A duty left undone? He toiled and sang; and year by year Men found their homes more sweet, And through a tenderer atmosphere Looked down the brick-walled street. The Greek's wild onset gall Street knew; The Red King walked Broadway; And Alnwick Castle's roses blew From Palisades to Bay. Fair City by the Sea! upraise His veil with reverent hands; And mingle with thy own the praise And pride of other lands. Let Greece his fiery lyric breathe Above her hero-urns; And Scotland, with her holly, wreathe The flower he culled for Burns. Oh, stately stand thy palace walls, Thy tall ships ride the seas; To-day thy poet's name recalls A prouder thought than these. Not less thy pulse of trade shall beat, Nor less thy tall fleets swim, That shaded square and dusty street Are classic ground through him. Alive, he loved, like all who sing, The echoes of his song; Too late the tardy meed we bring, The praise delayed so long. Too late, alas! Of all who knew The living man, to-day Before his unveiled face, how few Make bare their locks of gray! Our lips of praise must soon be dumb, Our grateful eyes be dim; O brothers of the days to come, Take tender charge of him! New hands the wires of song may sweep, New voices challenge fame; But let no moss of years o'ercreep The lines of Halleck's name. 1877. WILLIAM FRANCIS BARTLETT. Oh, well may Essex sit forlorn Beside her sea-blown shore; Her well beloved, her noblest born, Is hers in life no more! No lapse of years can render less Her memory's sacred claim; No fountain of forgetfulness Can wet the lips of Fame. A grief alike to wound and heal, A thought to soothe and pain, The sad, sweet pride that mothers feel To her must still remain. Good men and true she has not lacked, And brave men yet shall be; The perfect flower, the crowning fact, Of all her years was he! As Galahad pure, as Merlin sage, What worthier knight was found To grace in Arthur's golden age The fabled Table Round? A voice, the battle's trumpet-note, To welcome and restore; A hand, that all unwilling smote, To heal and build once more; A soul of fire, a tender heart Too warm for hate, he knew The generous victor's graceful part To sheathe the sword he drew. When Earth, as if on evil dreams, Looks back upon her wars, And the white light of Christ outstreams From the red disk of Mars, His fame who led the stormy van Of battle well may cease, But never that which crowns the man Whose victory was Peace. Mourn, Essex, on thy sea-blown shore Thy beautiful and brave, Whose failing hand the olive bore, Whose dying lips forgave! Let age lament the youthful chief, And tender eyes be dim; The tears are more of joy than grief That fall for one like him! 1878. BAYARD TAYLOR. I. "And where now, Bayard, will thy footsteps tend?" My sister asked our guest one winter's day. Smiling he answered in the Friends' sweet way Common to both: "Wherever thou shall send! What wouldst thou have me see for thee?" She laughed, Her dark eyes dancing in the wood-fire's glow "Loffoden isles, the Kilpis, and the low, Unsetting sun on Finmark's fishing-craft." "All these and more I soon shall see for thee!" He answered cheerily: and he kept his pledge On Lapland snows, the North Cape's windy wedge, And Tromso freezing in its winter sea. He went and came. But no man knows the track Of his last journey, and he comes not back! II. He brought us wonders of the new and old; We shared all climes with him. The Arab's tent To him its story-telling secret lent. And, pleased, we listened to the tales he told. His task, beguiled with songs that shall endure, In manly, honest thoroughness he wrought; From humble home-lays to the heights of thought Slowly he climbed, but every step was sure. How, with the generous pride that friendship hath, We, who so loved him, saw at last the crown Of civic honor on his brows pressed down, Rejoiced, and knew not that the gift was death. And now for him, whose praise in deafened ears Two nations speak, we answer but with tears! III. O Vale of Chester! trod by him so oft, Green as thy June turf keep his memory. Let Nor wood, nor dell, nor storied stream forget, Nor winds that blow round lonely Cedarcroft; Let the home voices greet him in the far, Strange land that holds him; let the messages Of love pursue him o'er the chartless seas And unmapped vastness of his unknown star Love's language, heard beyond the loud discourse Of perishable fame, in every sphere Itself interprets; and its utterance here Somewhere in God's unfolding universe Shall reach our traveller, softening the surprise Of his rapt gaze on unfamiliar skies! 1879. OUR AUTOCRAT. Read at the breakfast given in honor of Dr. Holmes by the publishers of the Atlantic Monthly, December 3, 1879. His laurels fresh from song and lay, Romance, art, science, rich in all, And young of heart, how dare we say We keep his seventieth festival? No sense is here of loss or lack; Before his sweetness and his light The dial holds its shadow back, The charmed hours delay their flight. His still the keen analysis Of men and moods, electric wit, Free play of mirth, and tenderness To heal the slightest wound from it. And his the pathos touching all Life's sins and sorrows and regrets, Its hopes and fears, its final call And rest beneath the violets. His sparkling surface scarce betrays The thoughtful tide beneath it rolled, The wisdom of the latter days, And tender memories of the old. What shapes and fancies, grave or gay, Before us at his bidding come The Treadmill tramp, the One-Horse Shay, The dumb despair of Elsie's doom! The tale of Avis and the Maid, The plea for lips that cannot speak, The holy kiss that Iris laid On Little Boston's pallid cheek! Long may he live to sing for us His sweetest songs at evening time, And, like his Chambered Nautilus, To holier heights of beauty climb, Though now unnumbered guests surround The table that he rules at will, Its Autocrat, however crowned, Is but our friend and comrade still. The world may keep his honored name, The wealth of all his varied powers; A stronger claim has love than fame, And he himself is only ours! WITHIN THE GATE. L. M. C. I have more fully expressed my admiration and regard for Lydia Maria Child in the biographical introduction which I wrote for the volume of Letters, published after her death. We sat together, last May-day, and talked Of the dear friends who walked Beside us, sharers of the hopes and fears Of five and forty years, Since first we met in Freedom's hope forlorn, And heard her battle-horn Sound through the valleys of the sleeping North, Calling her children forth, And youth pressed forward with hope-lighted eyes, And age, with forecast wise Of the long strife before the triumph won, Girded his armor on. Sadly, ass name by name we called the roll, We heard the dead-bells toll For the unanswering many, and we knew The living were the few. And we, who waited our own call before The inevitable door, Listened and looked, as all have done, to win Some token from within. No sign we saw, we heard no voices call; The impenetrable wall Cast down its shadow, like an awful doubt, On all who sat without. Of many a hint of life beyond the veil, And many a ghostly tale Wherewith the ages spanned the gulf between The seen and the unseen, Seeking from omen, trance, and dream to gain Solace to doubtful pain, And touch, with groping hands, the garment hem Of truth sufficing them, We talked; and, turning from the sore unrest Of an all-baffling quest, We thought of holy lives that from us passed Hopeful unto the last, As if they saw beyond the river of death, Like Him of Nazareth, The many mansions of the Eternal days Lift up their gates of praise. And, hushed to silence by a reverent awe, Methought, O friend, I saw In thy true life of word, and work, and thought The proof of all we sought. Did we not witness in the life of thee Immortal prophecy? And feel, when with thee, that thy footsteps trod An everlasting road? Not for brief days thy generous sympathies, Thy scorn of selfish ease; Not for the poor prize of an earthly goal Thy strong uplift of soul. Than thine was never turned a fonder heart To nature and to art In fair-formed Hellas in her golden prime, Thy Philothea's time. Yet, loving beauty, thou couldst pass it by, And for the poor deny Thyself, and see thy fresh, sweet flower of fame Wither in blight and blame. Sharing His love who holds in His embrace The lowliest of our race, Sure the Divine economy must be Conservative of thee! For truth must live with truth, self-sacrifice Seek out its great allies; Good must find good by gravitation sure, And love with love endure. And so, since thou hast passed within the gate Whereby awhile I wait, I give blind grief and blinder sense the lie Thou hast not lived to die! 1881. IN MEMORY. JAMES T. FIELDS. As a guest who may not stay Long and sad farewells to say Glides with smiling face away, Of the sweetness and the zest Of thy happy life possessed Thou hast left us at thy best. Warm of heart and clear of brain, Of thy sun-bright spirit's wane Thou hast spared us all the pain. Now that thou hast gone away, What is left of one to say Who was open as the day? What is there to gloss or shun? Save with kindly voices none Speak thy name beneath the sun. Safe thou art on every side, Friendship nothing finds to hide, Love's demand is satisfied. Over manly strength and worth, At thy desk of toil, or hearth, Played the lambent light of mirth,-- Mirth that lit, but never burned; All thy blame to pity turned; Hatred thou hadst never learned. Every harsh and vexing thing At thy home-fire lost its sting; Where thou wast was always spring. And thy perfect trust in good, Faith in man and womanhood, Chance and change and time, withstood. Small respect for cant and whine, Bigot's zeal and hate malign, Had that sunny soul of thine. But to thee was duty's claim Sacred, and thy lips became Reverent with one holy Name. Therefore, on thy unknown way, Go in God's peace! We who stay But a little while delay. Keep for us, O friend, where'er Thou art waiting, all that here Made thy earthly presence dear; Something of thy pleasant past On a ground of wonder cast, In the stiller waters glassed! Keep the human heart of thee; Let the mortal only be Clothed in immortality. And when fall our feet as fell Thine upon the asphodel, Let thy old smile greet us well; Proving in a world of bliss What we fondly dream in this,-- Love is one with holiness! 1881. WILSON Read at the Massachusetts Club on the seventieth anniversary the birthday of Vice-President Wilson, February 16, 1882. The lowliest born of all the land, He wrung from Fate's reluctant hand The gifts which happier boyhood claims; And, tasting on a thankless soil The bitter bread of unpaid toil, He fed his soul with noble aims. And Nature, kindly provident, To him the future's promise lent; The powers that shape man's destinies, Patience and faith and toil, he knew, The close horizon round him grew, Broad with great possibilities. By the low hearth-fire's fitful blaze He read of old heroic days, The sage's thought, the patriot's speech; Unhelped, alone, himself he taught, His school the craft at which he wrought, His lore the book within his, reach. He felt his country's need; he knew The work her children had to do; And when, at last, he heard the call In her behalf to serve and dare, Beside his senatorial chair He stood the unquestioned peer of all. Beyond the accident of birth He proved his simple manhood's worth; Ancestral pride and classic grace Confessed the large-brained artisan, So clear of sight, so wise in plan And counsel, equal to his place. With glance intuitive he saw Through all disguise of form and law, And read men like an open book; Fearless and firm, he never quailed Nor turned aside for threats, nor failed To do the thing he undertook. How wise, how brave, he was, how well He bore himself, let history tell While waves our flag o'er land and sea, No black thread in its warp or weft; He found dissevered States, he left A grateful Nation, strong and free! THE POET AND THE CHILDREN. LONGFELLOW. WITH a glory of winter sunshine Over his locks of gray, In the old historic mansion He sat on his last birthday; With his books and his pleasant pictures, And his household and his kin, While a sound as of myriads singing From far and near stole in. It came from his own fair city, From the prairie's boundless plain, From the Golden Gate of sunset, And the cedarn woods of Maine. And his heart grew warm within him, And his moistening eyes grew dim, For he knew that his country's children Were singing the songs of him, The lays of his life's glad morning, The psalms of his evening time, Whose echoes shall float forever On the winds of every clime. All their beautiful consolations, Sent forth like birds of cheer, Came flocking back to his windows, And sang in the Poet's ear. Grateful, but solemn and tender, The music rose and fell With a joy akin to sadness And a greeting like farewell. With a sense of awe he listened To the voices sweet and young; The last of earth and the first of heaven Seemed in the songs they sung. And waiting a little longer For the wonderful change to come, He heard the Summoning Angel, Who calls God's children home! And to him in a holier welcome Was the mystical meaning given Of the words of the blessed Master "Of such is the kingdom of heaven!" 1882 A WELCOME TO LOWELL Take our hands, James Russell Lowell, Our hearts are all thy own; To-day we bid thee welcome Not for ourselves alone. In the long years of thy absence Some of us have grown old, And some have passed the portals Of the Mystery untold; For the hands that cannot clasp thee, For the voices that are dumb, For each and all I bid thee A grateful welcome home! For Cedarcroft's sweet singer To the nine-fold Muses dear; For the Seer the winding Concord Paused by his door to hear; For him, our guide and Nestor, Who the march of song began, The white locks of his ninety years Bared to thy winds, Cape Ann! For him who, to the music Her pines and hemlocks played, Set the old and tender story Of the lorn Acadian maid; For him, whose voice for freedom Swayed friend and foe at will, Hushed is the tongue of silver, The golden lips are still! For her whose life of duty At scoff and menace smiled, Brave as the wife of Roland, Yet gentle as a Child. And for him the three-hilled city Shall hold in memory long, Those name is the hint and token Of the pleasant Fields of Song! For the old friends unforgotten, For the young thou hast not known, I speak their heart-warm greeting; Come back and take thy own! From England's royal farewells, And honors fitly paid, Come back, dear Russell Lowell, To Elmwood's waiting shade! Come home with all the garlands That crown of right thy head. I speak for comrades living, I speak for comrades dead! AMESBURY, 6th mo., 1885. AN ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL. GEORGE FULLER Haunted of Beauty, like the marvellous youth Who sang Saint Agnes' Eve! How passing fair Her shapes took color in thy homestead air! How on thy canvas even her dreams were truth! Magician! who from commonest elements Called up divine ideals, clothed upon By mystic lights soft blending into one Womanly grace and child-like innocence. Teacher I thy lesson was not given in vain. Beauty is goodness; ugliness is sin; Art's place is sacred: nothing foul therein May crawl or tread with bestial feet profane. If rightly choosing is the painter's test, Thy choice, O master, ever was the best. 1885. MULFORD. Author of The Nation and The Republic of God. Unnoted as the setting of a star He passed; and sect and party scarcely knew When from their midst a sage and seer withdrew To fitter audience, where the great dead are In God's republic of the heart and mind, Leaving no purer, nobler soul behind. 1886. TO A CAPE ANN SCHOONER Luck to the craft that bears this name of mine, Good fortune follow with her golden spoon The glazed hat and tarry pantaloon; And wheresoe'er her keel shall cut the brine, Cod, hake and haddock quarrel for her line. Shipped with her crew, whatever wind may blow, Or tides delay, my wish with her shall go, Fishing by proxy. Would that it might show At need her course, in lack of sun and star, Where icebergs threaten, and the sharp reefs are; Lift the blind fog on Anticosti's lee And Avalon's rock; make populous the sea Round Grand Manan with eager finny swarms, Break the long calms, and charm away the storms. OAK KNOLL, 23 3rd mo., 1886. SAMUEL J. TILDEN. GREYSTONE, AUG. 4, 1886. Once more, O all-adjusting Death! The nation's Pantheon opens wide; Once more a common sorrow saith A strong, wise man has died. Faults doubtless had he. Had we not Our own, to question and asperse The worth we doubted or forgot Until beside his hearse? Ambitious, cautious, yet the man To strike down fraud with resolute hand; A patriot, if a partisan, He loved his native land. So let the mourning bells be rung, The banner droop its folds half way, And while the public pen and tongue Their fitting tribute pay, Shall we not vow above his bier To set our feet on party lies, And wound no more a living ear With words that Death denies? 1886 
9584	----	This eBook was produced by David Widger THE TENT ON THE BEACH BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER CONTENTS: THE TENT ON THE BEACH. PRELUDE THE TENT ON THE BEACH THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH THE GRAVE BY THE LAKE THE BROTHER OF MERCY THE CHANGELING THE MAIDS OF ATTITASH KALLUNDBORG CHURCH THE CABLE HYMN THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPSWELL THE PALATINE ABRAHAM DAVENPORT THE WORSHIP OF NATURE THE TENT ON THE BEACH It can scarcely be necessary to name as the two companions whom I reckoned with myself in this poetical picnic, Fields the lettered magnate, and Taylor the free cosmopolite. The long line of sandy beach which defines almost the whole of the New Hampshire sea-coast is especially marked near its southern extremity, by the salt-meadows of Hampton. The Hampton River winds through these meadows, and the reader may, if he choose, imagine my tent pitched near its mouth, where also was the scene of the _Wreck of Rivermouth_. The green bluff to the northward is Great Boar's Head; southward is the Merrimac, with Newburyport lifting its steeples above brown roofs and green trees on banks. I would not sin, in this half-playful strain,-- Too light perhaps for serious years, though born Of the enforced leisure of slow pain,-- Against the pure ideal which has drawn My feet to follow its far-shining gleam. A simple plot is mine: legends and runes Of credulous days, old fancies that have lain Silent, from boyhood taking voice again, Warmed into life once more, even as the tunes That, frozen in the fabled hunting-horn, Thawed into sound:--a winter fireside dream Of dawns and-sunsets by the summer sea, Whose sands are traversed by a silent throng Of voyagers from that vaster mystery Of which it is an emblem;--and the dear Memory of one who might have tuned my song To sweeter music by her delicate ear. When heats as of a tropic clime Burned all our inland valleys through, Three friends, the guests of summer time, Pitched their white tent where sea-winds blew. Behind them, marshes, seamed and crossed With narrow creeks, and flower-embossed, Stretched to the dark oak wood, whose leafy arms Screened from the stormy East the pleasant inland farms. At full of tide their bolder shore Of sun-bleached sand the waters beat; At ebb, a smooth and glistening floor They touched with light, receding feet. Northward a 'green bluff broke the chain Of sand-hills; southward stretched a plain Of salt grass, with a river winding down, Sail-whitened, and beyond the steeples of the town, Whence sometimes, when the wind was light And dull the thunder of the beach, They heard the bells of morn and night Swing, miles away, their silver speech. Above low scarp and turf-grown wall They saw the fort-flag rise and fall; And, the first star to signal twilight's hour, The lamp-fire glimmer down from the tall light-house tower. They rested there, escaped awhile From cares that wear the life away, To eat the lotus of the Nile And drink the poppies of Cathay,-- To fling their loads of custom down, Like drift-weed, on the sand-slopes brown, And in the sea waves drown the restless pack Of duties, claims, and needs that barked upon their track. One, with his beard scarce silvered, bore A ready credence in his looks, A lettered magnate, lording o'er An ever-widening realm of books. In him brain-currents, near and far, Converged as in a Leyden jar; The old, dead authors thronged him round about, And Elzevir's gray ghosts from leathern graves looked out. He knew each living pundit well, Could weigh the gifts of him or her, And well the market value tell Of poet and philosopher. But if he lost, the scenes behind, Somewhat of reverence vague and blind, Finding the actors human at the best, No readier lips than his the good he saw confessed. His boyhood fancies not outgrown, He loved himself the singer's art; Tenderly, gently, by his own He knew and judged an author's heart. No Rhadamanthine brow of doom Bowed the dazed pedant from his room; And bards, whose name is legion, if denied, Bore off alike intact their verses and their pride. Pleasant it was to roam about The lettered world as he had, done, And see the lords of song without Their singing robes and garlands on. With Wordsworth paddle Rydal mere, Taste rugged Elliott's home-brewed beer, And with the ears of Rogers, at fourscore, Hear Garrick's buskined tread and Walpole's wit once more. And one there was, a dreamer born, Who, with a mission to fulfil, Had left the Muses' haunts to turn The crank of an opinion-mill, Making his rustic reed of song A weapon in the war with wrong, Yoking his fancy to the breaking-plough That beam-deep turned the soil for truth to spring and grow. Too quiet seemed the man to ride The winged Hippogriff Reform; Was his a voice from side to side To pierce the tumult of the storm? A silent, shy, peace-loving man, He seemed no fiery partisan To hold his way against the public frown, The ban of Church and State, the fierce mob's hounding down. For while he wrought with strenuous will The work his hands had found to do, He heard the fitful music still Of winds that out of dream-land blew. The din about him could not drown What the strange voices whispered down; Along his task-field weird processions swept, The visionary pomp of stately phantoms stepped: The common air was thick with dreams,-- He told them to the toiling crowd; Such music as the woods and streams Sang in his ear he sang aloud; In still, shut bays, on windy capes, He heard the call of beckoning shapes, And, as the gray old shadows prompted him, To homely moulds of rhyme he shaped their legends grim. He rested now his weary hands, And lightly moralized and laughed, As, tracing on the shifting sands A burlesque of his paper-craft, He saw the careless waves o'errun His words, as time before had done, Each day's tide-water washing clean away, Like letters from the sand, the work of yesterday. And one, whose Arab face was tanned By tropic sun and boreal frost, So travelled there was scarce a land Or people left him to exhaust, In idling mood had from him hurled The poor squeezed orange of the world, And in the tent-shade, as beneath a palm, Smoked, cross-legged like a Turk, in Oriental calm. The very waves that washed the sand Below him, he had seen before Whitening the Scandinavian strand And sultry Mauritanian shore. From ice-rimmed isles, from summer seas Palm-fringed, they bore him messages; He heard the plaintive Nubian songs again, And mule-bells tinkling down the mountain-paths of Spain. His memory round the ransacked earth On Puck's long girdle slid at ease; And, instant, to the valley's girth Of mountains, spice isles of the seas, Faith flowered in minster stones, Art's guess At truth and beauty, found access; Yet loved the while, that free cosmopolite, Old friends, old ways, and kept his boyhood's dreams in sight. Untouched as yet by wealth and pride, That virgin innocence of beach No shingly monster, hundred-eyed, Stared its gray sand-birds out of reach; Unhoused, save where, at intervals, The white tents showed their canvas walls, Where brief sojourners, in the cool, soft air, Forgot their inland heats, hard toil, and year-long care. Sometimes along the wheel-deep sand A one-horse wagon slowly crawled, Deep laden with a youthful band, Whose look some homestead old recalled; Brother perchance, and sisters twain, And one whose blue eyes told, more plain Than the free language of her rosy lip, Of the still dearer claim of love's relationship. With cheeks of russet-orchard tint, The light laugh of their native rills, The perfume of their garden's mint, The breezy freedom of the hills, They bore, in unrestrained delight, The motto of the Garter's knight, Careless as if from every gazing thing Hid by their innocence, as Gyges by his ring. The clanging sea-fowl came and went, The hunter's gun in the marshes rang; At nightfall from a neighboring tent A flute-voiced woman sweetly sang. Loose-haired, barefooted, hand-in-hand, Young girls went tripping down the sand; And youths and maidens, sitting in the moon, Dreamed o'er the old fond dream from which we wake too soon. At times their fishing-lines they plied, With an old Triton at the oar, Salt as the sea-wind, tough and dried As a lean cusk from Labrador. Strange tales he told of wreck and storm,-- Had seen the sea-snake's awful form, And heard the ghosts on Haley's Isle complain, Speak him off shore, and beg a passage to old Spain! And there, on breezy morns, they saw The fishing-schooners outward run, Their low-bent sails in tack and flaw Turned white or dark to shade and sun. Sometimes, in calms of closing day, They watched the spectral mirage play, Saw low, far islands looming tall and nigh, And ships, with upturned keels, sail like a sea the sky. Sometimes a cloud, with thunder black, Stooped low upon the darkening main, Piercing the waves along its track With the slant javelins of rain. And when west-wind and sunshine warm Chased out to sea its wrecks of storm, They saw the prismy hues in thin spray showers Where the green buds of waves burst into white froth flowers. And when along the line of shore The mists crept upward chill and damp, Stretched, careless, on their sandy floor Beneath the flaring lantern lamp, They talked of all things old and new, Read, slept, and dreamed as idlers do; And in the unquestioned freedom of the tent, Body and o'er-taxed mind to healthful ease unbent. Once, when the sunset splendors died, And, trampling up the sloping sand, In lines outreaching far and wide, The white-waned billows swept to land, Dim seen across the gathering shade, A vast and ghostly cavalcade, They sat around their lighted kerosene, Hearing the deep bass roar their every pause between. Then, urged thereto, the Editor Within his full portfolio dipped, Feigning excuse while seaching for (With secret pride) his manuscript. His pale face flushed from eye to beard, With nervous cough his throat he cleared, And, in a voice so tremulous it betrayed The anxious fondness of an author's heart, he read: . . . . . THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH The Goody Cole who figures in this poem and The Changeling as Eunice Cole, who for a quarter of a century or more was feared, persecuted, and hated as the witch of Hampton. She lived alone in a hovel a little distant from the spot where the Hampton Academy now stands, and there she died, unattended. When her death was discovered, she was hastily covered up in the earth near by, and a stake driven through her body, to exorcise the evil spirit. Rev. Stephen Bachiler or Batchelder was one of the ablest of the early New England preachers. His marriage late in life to a woman regarded by his church as disreputable induced him to return to England, where he enjoyed the esteem and favor of Oliver Cromwell during the Protectorate. Rivermouth Rocks are fair to see, By dawn or sunset shone across, When the ebb of the sea has left them free, To dry their fringes of gold-green moss For there the river comes winding down, From salt sea-meadows and uplands brown, And waves on the outer rocks afoam Shout to its waters, "Welcome home!" And fair are the sunny isles in view East of the grisly Head of the Boar, And Agamenticus lifts its blue Disk of a cloud the woodlands o'er; And southerly, when the tide is down, 'Twixt white sea-waves and sand-hills brown, The beach-birds dance and the gray gulls wheel Over a floor of burnished steel. Once, in the old Colonial days, Two hundred years ago and more, A boat sailed down through the winding ways Of Hampton River to that low shore, Full of a goodly company Sailing out on the summer sea, Veering to catch the land-breeze light, With the Boar to left and the Rocks to right. In Hampton meadows, where mowers laid Their scythes to the swaths of salted grass, "Ah, well-a-day! our hay must be made!" A young man sighed, who saw them pass. Loud laughed his fellows to see him stand Whetting his scythe with a listless hand, Hearing a voice in a far-off song, Watching a white hand beckoning long. "Fie on the witch!" cried a merry girl, As they rounded the point where Goody Cole Sat by her door with her wheel atwirl, A bent and blear-eyed poor old soul. "Oho!" she muttered, "ye 're brave to-day! But I hear the little waves laugh and say, 'The broth will be cold that waits at home; For it 's one to go, but another to come!'" "She's cursed," said the skipper; "speak her fair: I'm scary always to see her shake Her wicked head, with its wild gray hair, And nose like a hawk, and eyes like a snake." But merrily still, with laugh and shout, From Hampton River the boat sailed out, Till the huts and the flakes on Star seemed nigh, And they lost the scent of the pines of Rye. They dropped their lines in the lazy tide, Drawing up haddock and mottled cod; They saw not the Shadow that walked beside, They heard not the feet with silence shod. But thicker and thicker a hot mist grew, Shot by the lightnings through and through; And muffled growls, like the growl of a beast, Ran along the sky from west to east. Then the skipper looked from the darkening sea Up to the dimmed and wading sun; But he spake like a brave man cheerily, "Yet there is time for our homeward run." Veering and tacking, they backward wore; And just as a breath-from the woods ashore Blew out to whisper of danger past, The wrath of the storm came down at last! The skipper hauled at the heavy sail "God be our help!" he only cried, As the roaring gale, like the stroke of a flail, Smote the boat on its starboard side. The Shoalsmen looked, but saw alone Dark films of rain-cloud slantwise blown, Wild rocks lit up by the lightning's glare, The strife and torment of sea and air. Goody Cole looked out from her door The Isles of Shoals were drowned and gone, Scarcely she saw the Head of the Boar Toss the foam from tusks of stone. She clasped her hands with a grip of pain, The tear on her cheek was not of rain "They are lost," she muttered, "boat and crew! Lord, forgive me! my words were true!" Suddenly seaward swept the squall; The low sun smote through cloudy rack; The Shoals stood clear in the light, and all The trend of the coast lay hard and black. But far and wide as eye could reach, No life was seen upon wave or beach; The boat that went out at morning never Sailed back again into Hampton River. O mower, lean on thy bended snath, Look from the meadows green and low The wind of the sea is a waft of death, The waves are singing a song of woe! By silent river, by moaning sea, Long and vain shall thy watching be Never again shall the sweet voice call, Never the white hand rise and fall! O Rivermouth Rocks, how sad a sight Ye saw in the light of breaking day Dead faces looking up cold and white From sand and seaweed where they lay. The mad old witch-wife wailed and wept, And cursed the tide as it backward crept "Crawl back, crawl back, blue water-snake Leave your dead for the hearts that break!" Solemn it was in that old day In Hampton town and its log-built church, Where side by side the coffins lay And the mourners stood in aisle and porch. In the singing-seats young eyes were dim, The voices faltered that raised the hymn, And Father Dalton, grave and stern, Sobbed through his prayer and wept in turn. But his ancient colleague did not pray; Under the weight of his fourscore years He stood apart with the iron-gray Of his strong brows knitted to hide his tears; And a fair-faced woman of doubtful fame, Linking her own with his honored name, Subtle as sin, at his side withstood The felt reproach of her neighborhood. Apart with them, like them forbid, Old Goody Cole looked drearily round, As, two by two, with their faces hid, The mourners walked to the burying-ground. She let the staff from her clasped hands fall "Lord, forgive us! we're sinners all!" And the voice of the old man answered her "Amen!" said Father Bachiler. So, as I sat upon Appledore In the calm of a closing summer day, And the broken lines of Hampton shore In purple mist of cloudland lay, The Rivermouth Rocks their story told; And waves aglow with sunset gold, Rising and breaking in steady chime, Beat the rhythm and kept the time. And the sunset paled, and warmed once more With a softer, tenderer after-glow; In the east was moon-rise, with boats off-shore And sails in the distance drifting slow. The beacon glimmered from Portsmouth bar, The White Isle kindled its great red star; And life and death in my old-time lay Mingled in peace like the night and day! . . . . . "Well!" said the Man of Books, "your story Is really not ill told in verse. As the Celt said of purgatory, One might go farther and fare worse." The Reader smiled; and once again With steadier voice took up his strain, While the fair singer from the neighboring tent Drew near, and at his side a graceful listener bent. 1864. THE GRAVE BY THE LAKE At the mouth of the Melvin River, which empties into Moulton-Bay in Lake Winnipesaukee, is a great mound. The Ossipee Indians had their home in the neighborhood of the bay, which is plentifully stocked with fish, and many relics of their occupation have been found. Where the Great Lake's sunny smiles Dimple round its hundred isles, And the mountain's granite ledge Cleaves the water like a wedge, Ringed about with smooth, gray stones, Rest the giant's mighty bones. Close beside, in shade and gleam, Laughs and ripples Melvin stream; Melvin water, mountain-born, All fair flowers its banks adorn; All the woodland's voices meet, Mingling with its murmurs sweet. Over lowlands forest-grown, Over waters island-strown, Over silver-sanded beach, Leaf-locked bay and misty reach, Melvin stream and burial-heap, Watch and ward the mountains keep. Who that Titan cromlech fills? Forest-kaiser, lord o' the hills? Knight who on the birchen tree Carved his savage heraldry? Priest o' the pine-wood temples dim, Prophet, sage, or wizard grim? Rugged type of primal man, Grim utilitarian, Loving woods for hunt and prowl, Lake and hill for fish and fowl, As the brown bear blind and dull To the grand and beautiful: Not for him the lesson drawn From the mountains smit with dawn, Star-rise, moon-rise, flowers of May, Sunset's purple bloom of day,-- Took his life no hue from thence, Poor amid such affluence? Haply unto hill and tree All too near akin was he Unto him who stands afar Nature's marvels greatest are; Who the mountain purple seeks Must not climb the higher peaks. Yet who knows in winter tramp, Or the midnight of the camp, What revealings faint and far, Stealing down from moon and star, Kindled in that human clod Thought of destiny and God? Stateliest forest patriarch, Grand in robes of skin and bark, What sepulchral mysteries, What weird funeral-rites, were his? What sharp wail, what drear lament, Back scared wolf and eagle sent? Now, whate'er he may have been, Low he lies as other men; On his mound the partridge drums, There the noisy blue-jay comes; Rank nor name nor pomp has he In the grave's democracy. Part thy blue lips, Northern lake! Moss-grown rocks, your silence break! Tell the tale, thou ancient tree! Thou, too, slide-worn Ossipee! Speak, and tell us how and when Lived and died this king of men! Wordless moans the ancient pine; Lake and mountain give no sign; Vain to trace this ring of stones; Vain the search of crumbling bones Deepest of all mysteries, And the saddest, silence is. Nameless, noteless, clay with clay Mingles slowly day by day; But somewhere, for good or ill, That dark soul is living still; Somewhere yet that atom's force Moves the light-poised universe. Strange that on his burial-sod Harebells bloom, and golden-rod, While the soul's dark horoscope Holds no starry sign of hope! Is the Unseen with sight at odds? Nature's pity more than God's? Thus I mused by Melvin's side, While the summer eventide Made the woods and inland sea And the mountains mystery; And the hush of earth and air Seemed the pause before a prayer,-- Prayer for him, for all who rest, Mother Earth, upon thy breast,-- Lapped on Christian turf, or hid In rock-cave or pyramid All who sleep, as all who live, Well may need the prayer, "Forgive!" Desert-smothered caravan, Knee-deep dust that once was man, Battle-trenches ghastly piled, Ocean-floors with white bones tiled, Crowded tomb and mounded sod, Dumbly crave that prayer to God. Oh, the generations old Over whom no church-bells tolled, Christless, lifting up blind eyes To the silence of the skies! For the innumerable dead Is my soul disquieted. Where be now these silent hosts? Where the camping-ground of ghosts? Where the spectral conscripts led To the white tents of the dead? What strange shore or chartless sea Holds the awful mystery? Then the warm sky stooped to make Double sunset in the lake; While above I saw with it, Range on range, the mountains lit; And the calm and splendor stole Like an answer to my soul. Hear'st thou, O of little faith, What to thee the mountain saith, What is whispered by the trees? Cast on God thy care for these; Trust Him, if thy sight be dim Doubt for them is doubt of Him. "Blind must be their close-shut eyes Where like night the sunshine lies, Fiery-linked the self-forged chain Binding ever sin to pain, Strong their prison-house of will, But without He waiteth still. "Not with hatred's undertow Doth the Love Eternal flow; Every chain that spirits wear Crumbles in the breath of prayer; And the penitent's desire Opens every gate of fire. "Still Thy love, O Christ arisen, Yearns to reach these souls in prison! Through all depths of sin and loss Drops the plummet of Thy cross! Never yet abyss was found Deeper than that cross could sound!" Therefore well may Nature keep Equal faith with all who sleep, Set her watch of hills around Christian grave and heathen mound, And to cairn and kirkyard send Summer's flowery dividend. Keep, O pleasant Melvin stream, Thy sweet laugh in shade and gleam On the Indian's grassy tomb Swing, O flowers, your bells of bloom! Deep below, as high above, Sweeps the circle of God's love. 1865 . . . . . He paused and questioned with his eye The hearers' verdict on his song. A low voice asked: Is 't well to pry Into the secrets which belong Only to God?--The life to be Is still the unguessed mystery Unsealed, unpierced the cloudy walls remain, We beat with dream and wish the soundless doors in vain. "But faith beyond our sight may go." He said: "The gracious Fatherhood Can only know above, below, Eternal purposes of good. From our free heritage of will, The bitter springs of pain and ill Flow only in all worlds. The perfect day Of God is shadowless, and love is love alway." "I know," she said, "the letter kills; That on our arid fields of strife And heat of clashing texts distils The clew of spirit and of life. But, searching still the written Word, I fain would find, Thus saith the Lord, A voucher for the hope I also feel That sin can give no wound beyond love's power to heal." "Pray," said the Man of Books, "give o'er A theme too vast for time and place. Go on, Sir Poet, ride once more Your hobby at his old free pace. But let him keep, with step discreet, The solid earth beneath his feet. In the great mystery which around us lies, The wisest is a fool, the fool Heaven-helped is wise." The Traveller said: "If songs have creeds, Their choice of them let singers make; But Art no other sanction needs Than beauty for its own fair sake. It grinds not in the mill of use, Nor asks for leave, nor begs excuse; It makes the flexile laws it deigns to own, And gives its atmosphere its color and its tone. "Confess, old friend, your austere school Has left your fancy little chance; You square to reason's rigid rule The flowing outlines of romance. With conscience keen from exercise, And chronic fear of compromise, You check the free play of your rhymes, to clap A moral underneath, and spring it like a trap." The sweet voice answered: "Better so Than bolder flights that know no check; Better to use the bit, than throw The reins all loose on fancy's neck. The liberal range of Art should be The breadth of Christian liberty, Restrained alone by challenge and alarm Where its charmed footsteps tread the border land of harm. "Beyond the poet's sweet dream lives The eternal epic of the man. He wisest is who only gives, True to himself, the best he can; Who, drifting in the winds of praise, The inward monitor obeys; And, with the boldness that confesses fear, Takes in the crowded sail, and lets his conscience steer. "Thanks for the fitting word he speaks, Nor less for doubtful word unspoken; For the false model that he breaks, As for the moulded grace unbroken; For what is missed and what remains, For losses which are truest gains, For reverence conscious of the Eternal eye, And truth too fair to need the garnish of a lie." Laughing, the Critic bowed. "I yield The point without another word; Who ever yet a case appealed Where beauty's judgment had been heard? And you, my good friend, owe to me Your warmest thanks for such a plea, As true withal as sweet. For my offence Of cavil, let her words be ample recompense." Across the sea one lighthouse star, With crimson ray that came and went, Revolving on its tower afar, Looked through the doorway of the tent. While outward, over sand-slopes wet, The lamp flashed down its yellow jet On the long wash of waves, with red and green Tangles of weltering weed through the white foam-wreaths seen. "Sing while we may,--another day May bring enough of sorrow;'--thus Our Traveller in his own sweet lay, His Crimean camp-song, hints to us," The lady said. "So let it be; Sing us a song," exclaimed all three. She smiled: "I can but marvel at your choice To hear our poet's words through my poor borrowed voice." . . . . . Her window opens to the bay, On glistening light or misty gray, And there at dawn and set of day In prayer she kneels. "Dear Lord!" she saith, "to many a borne From wind and wave the wanderers come; I only see the tossing foam Of stranger keels. "Blown out and in by summer gales, The stately ships, with crowded sails, And sailors leaning o'er their rails, Before me glide; They come, they go, but nevermore, Spice-laden from the Indian shore, I see his swift-winged Isidore The waves divide. "O Thou! with whom the night is day And one the near and far away, Look out on yon gray waste, and say Where lingers he. Alive, perchance, on some lone beach Or thirsty isle beyond the reach Of man, he hears the mocking speech Of wind and sea. "O dread and cruel deep, reveal The secret which thy waves conceal, And, ye wild sea-birds, hither wheel And tell your tale. Let winds that tossed his raven hair A message from my lost one bear,-- Some thought of me, a last fond prayer Or dying wail! "Come, with your dreariest truth shut out The fears that haunt me round about; O God! I cannot bear this doubt That stifles breath. The worst is better than the dread; Give me but leave to mourn my dead Asleep in trust and hope, instead Of life in death!" It might have been the evening breeze That whispered in the garden trees, It might have been the sound of seas That rose and fell; But, with her heart, if not her ear, The old loved voice she seemed to hear "I wait to meet thee: be of cheer, For all is well!" 1865 . . . . . The sweet voice into silence went, A silence which was almost pain As through it rolled the long lament, The cadence of the mournful main. Glancing his written pages o'er, The Reader tried his part once more; Leaving the land of hackmatack and pine For Tuscan valleys glad with olive and with vine. THE BROTHER OF MERCY. Piero Luca, known of all the town As the gray porter by the Pitti wall Where the noon shadows of the gardens fall, Sick and in dolor, waited to lay down His last sad burden, and beside his mat The barefoot monk of La Certosa sat. Unseen, in square and blossoming garden drifted, Soft sunset lights through green Val d'Arno sifted; Unheard, below the living shuttles shifted Backward and forth, and wove, in love or strife, In mirth or pain, the mottled web of life But when at last came upward from the street Tinkle of bell and tread of measured feet, The sick man started, strove to rise in vain, Sinking back heavily with a moan of pain. And the monk said, "'T is but the Brotherhood Of Mercy going on some errand good Their black masks by the palace-wall I see." Piero answered faintly, "Woe is me! This day for the first time in forty years In vain the bell hath sounded in my ears, Calling me with my brethren of the mask, Beggar and prince alike, to some new task Of love or pity,--haply from the street To bear a wretch plague-stricken, or, with feet Hushed to the quickened ear and feverish brain, To tread the crowded lazaretto's floors, Down the long twilight of the corridors, Midst tossing arms and faces full of pain. I loved the work: it was its own reward. I never counted on it to offset My sins, which are many, or make less my debt To the free grace and mercy of our Lord; But somehow, father, it has come to be In these long years so much a part of me, I should not know myself, if lacking it, But with the work the worker too would die, And in my place some other self would sit Joyful or sad,--what matters, if not I? And now all's over. Woe is me!"--"My son," The monk said soothingly, "thy work is done; And no more as a servant, but the guest Of God thou enterest thy eternal rest. No toil, no tears, no sorrow for the lost, Shall mar thy perfect bliss. Thou shalt sit down Clad in white robes, and wear a golden crown Forever and forever."--Piero tossed On his sick-pillow: "Miserable me! I am too poor for such grand company; The crown would be too heavy for this gray Old head; and God forgive me if I say It would be hard to sit there night and day, Like an image in the Tribune, doing naught With these hard hands, that all my life have wrought, Not for bread only, but for pity's sake. I'm dull at prayers: I could not keep awake, Counting my beads. Mine's but a crazy head, Scarce worth the saving, if all else be dead. And if one goes to heaven without a heart, God knows he leaves behind his better part. I love my fellow-men: the worst I know I would do good to. Will death change me so That I shall sit among the lazy saints, Turning a deaf ear to the sore complaints Of souls that suffer? Why, I never yet Left a poor dog in the strada hard beset, Or ass o'erladen! Must I rate man less Than dog or ass, in holy selfishness? Methinks (Lord, pardon, if the thought be sin!) The world of pain were better, if therein One's heart might still be human, and desires Of natural pity drop upon its fires Some cooling tears." Thereat the pale monk crossed His brow, and, muttering, "Madman! thou art lost!" Took up his pyx and fled; and, left alone, The sick man closed his eyes with a great groan That sank into a prayer, "Thy will be done!" Then was he made aware, by soul or ear, Of somewhat pure and holy bending o'er him, And of a voice like that of her who bore him, Tender and most compassionate: "Never fear! For heaven is love, as God himself is love; Thy work below shall be thy work above." And when he looked, lo! in the stern monk's place He saw the shining of an angel's face! 1864. . . . . . The Traveller broke the pause. "I've seen The Brothers down the long street steal, Black, silent, masked, the crowd between, And felt to doff my hat and kneel With heart, if not with knee, in prayer, For blessings on their pious care." Reader wiped his glasses: "Friends of mine, I'll try our home-brewed next, instead of foreign wine." THE CHANGELING. For the fairest maid in Hampton They needed not to search, Who saw young Anna Favor Come walking into church, Or bringing from the meadows, At set of harvest-day, The frolic of the blackbirds, The sweetness of the hay. Now the weariest of all mothers, The saddest two-years bride, She scowls in the face of her husband, And spurns her child aside. "Rake out the red coals, goodman,-- For there the child shall lie, Till the black witch comes to fetch her And both up chimney fly. "It's never my own little daughter, It's never my own," she said; "The witches have stolen my Anna, And left me an imp instead. "Oh, fair and sweet was my baby, Blue eyes, and hair of gold; But this is ugly and wrinkled, Cross, and cunning, and old. "I hate the touch of her fingers, I hate the feel of her skin; It's not the milk from my bosom, But my blood, that she sucks in. "My face grows sharp with the torment; Look! my arms are skin and bone! Rake open the red coals, goodman, And the witch shall have her own. "She 'll come when she hears it crying, In the shape of an owl or bat, And she'll bring us our darling Anna In place of her screeching brat." Then the goodman, Ezra Dalton, Laid his hand upon her head "Thy sorrow is great, O woman! I sorrow with thee," he said. "The paths to trouble are many, And never but one sure way Leads out to the light beyond it My poor wife, let us pray." Then he said to the great All-Father, "Thy daughter is weak and blind; Let her sight come back, and clothe her Once more in her right mind. "Lead her out of this evil shadow, Out of these fancies wild; Let the holy love of the mother Turn again to her child. "Make her lips like the lips of Mary Kissing her blessed Son; Let her hands, like the hands of Jesus, Rest on her little one. "Comfort the soul of thy handmaid, Open her prison-door, And thine shall be all the glory And praise forevermore." Then into the face of its mother The baby looked up and smiled; And the cloud of her soul was lifted, And she knew her little child. A beam of the slant west sunshine Made the wan face almost fair, Lit the blue eyes' patient wonder, And the rings of pale gold hair. She kissed it on lip and forehead, She kissed it on cheek and chin, And she bared her snow-white bosom To the lips so pale and thin. Oh, fair on her bridal morning Was the maid who blushed and smiled, But fairer to Ezra Dalton Looked the mother of his child. With more than a lover's fondness He stooped to her worn young face, And the nursing child and the mother He folded in one embrace. "Blessed be God!" he murmured. "Blessed be God!" she said; "For I see, who once was blinded,-- I live, who once was dead. "Now mount and ride, my goodman, As thou lovest thy own soul Woe's me, if my wicked fancies Be the death of Goody Cole!" His horse he saddled and bridled, And into the night rode he, Now through the great black woodland, Now by the white-beached sea. He rode through the silent clearings, He came to the ferry wide, And thrice he called to the boatman Asleep on the other side. He set his horse to the river, He swam to Newbury town, And he called up Justice Sewall In his nightcap and his gown. And the grave and worshipful justice (Upon whose soul be peace!) Set his name to the jailer's warrant For Goodwife Cole's release. Then through the night the hoof-beats Went sounding like a flail; And Goody Cole at cockcrow Came forth from Ipswich jail. 1865 . . . . . "Here is a rhyme: I hardly dare To venture on its theme worn out; What seems so sweet by Doon and Ayr Sounds simply silly hereabout; And pipes by lips Arcadian blown Are only tin horns at our own. Yet still the muse of pastoral walks with us, While Hosea Biglow sings, our new Theocritus." THE MAIDS OF ATTITASH. Attitash, an Indian word signifying "huckleberry," is the name of a large and beautiful lake in the northern part of Amesbury. In sky and wave the white clouds swam, And the blue hills of Nottingham Through gaps of leafy green Across the lake were seen, When, in the shadow of the ash That dreams its dream in Attitash, In the warm summer weather, Two maidens sat together. They sat and watched in idle mood The gleam and shade of lake and wood; The beach the keen light smote, The white sail of a boat; Swan flocks of lilies shoreward lying, In sweetness, not in music, dying; Hardback, and virgin's-bower, And white-spiked clethra-flower. With careless ears they heard the plash And breezy wash of Attitash, The wood-bird's plaintive cry, The locust's sharp reply. And teased the while, with playful band, The shaggy dog of Newfoundland, Whose uncouth frolic spilled Their baskets berry-filled. Then one, the beauty of whose eyes Was evermore a great surprise, Tossed back her queenly head, And, lightly laughing, said: "No bridegroom's hand be mine to hold That is not lined with yellow gold; I tread no cottage-floor; I own no lover poor. "My love must come on silken wings, With bridal lights of diamond rings, Not foul with kitchen smirch, With tallow-dip for torch." The other, on whose modest head Was lesser dower of beauty shed, With look for home-hearths meet, And voice exceeding sweet, Answered, "We will not rivals be; Take thou the gold, leave love to me; Mine be the cottage small, And thine the rich man's hall. "I know, indeed, that wealth is good; But lowly roof and simple food, With love that hath no doubt, Are more than gold without." Hard by a farmer hale and young His cradle in the rye-field swung, Tracking the yellow plain With windrows of ripe grain. And still, whene'er he paused to whet His scythe, the sidelong glance he met Of large dark eyes, where strove False pride and secret love. Be strong, young mower of the-grain; That love shall overmatch disdain, Its instincts soon or late The heart shall vindicate. In blouse of gray, with fishing-rod, Half screened by leaves, a stranger trod The margin of the pond, Watching the group beyond. The supreme hours unnoted come; Unfelt the turning tides of doom; And so the maids laughed on, Nor dreamed what Fate had done,-- Nor knew the step was Destiny's That rustled in the birchen trees, As, with their lives forecast, Fisher and mower passed. Erelong by lake and rivulet side The summer roses paled and died, And Autumn's fingers shed The maple's leaves of red. Through the long gold-hazed afternoon, Alone, but for the diving loon, The partridge in the brake, The black duck on the lake, Beneath the shadow of the ash Sat man and maid by Attitash; And earth and air made room For human hearts to bloom. Soft spread the carpets of the sod, And scarlet-oak and golden-rod With blushes and with smiles Lit up the forest aisles. The mellow light the lake aslant, The pebbled margin's ripple-chant Attempered and low-toned, The tender mystery owned. And through the dream the lovers dreamed Sweet sounds stole in and soft lights streamed; The sunshine seemed to bless, The air was a caress. Not she who lightly laughed is there, With scornful toss of midnight hair, Her dark, disdainful eyes, And proud lip worldly-wise. Her haughty vow is still unsaid, But all she dreamed and coveted Wears, half to her surprise, The youthful farmer's guise! With more than all her old-time pride She walks the rye-field at his side, Careless of cot or hall, Since love transfigures all. Rich beyond dreams, the vantage-ground Of life is gained; her hands have found The talisman of old That changes all to gold. While she who could for love dispense With all its glittering accidents, And trust her heart alone, Finds love and gold her own. What wealth can buy or art can build Awaits her; but her cup is filled Even now unto the brim; Her world is love and him! 1866. . . . . . The while he heard, the Book-man drew A length of make-believing face, With smothered mischief laughing through "Why, you shall sit in Ramsay's place, And, with his Gentle Shepherd, keep On Yankee hills immortal sheep, While love-lorn swains and maids the seas beyond Hold dreamy tryst around your huckleberry-pond." The Traveller laughed: "Sir Galahad Singing of love the Trouvere's lay! How should he know the blindfold lad From one of Vulcan's forge-boys?"--"Nay, He better sees who stands outside Than they who in procession ride," The Reader answered: "selectmen and squire Miss, while they make, the show that wayside folks admire. "Here is a wild tale of the North, Our travelled friend will own as one Fit for a Norland Christmas hearth And lips of Christian Andersen. They tell it in the valleys green Of the fair island he has seen, Low lying off the pleasant Swedish shore, Washed by the Baltic Sea, and watched by Elsinore." KALLUNDBORG CHURCH "Tie stille, barn min Imorgen kommer Fin, Fa'er din, Og gi'er dig Esbern Snares nine og hjerte at lege med!" Zealand Rhyme. "Build at Kallundborg by the sea A church as stately as church may be, And there shalt thou wed my daughter fair," Said the Lord of Nesvek to Esbern Snare. And the Baron laughed. But Esbern said, "Though I lose my soul, I will Helva wed!" And off he strode, in his pride of will, To the Troll who dwelt in Ulshoi hill. "Build, O Troll, a church for me At Kallundborg by the mighty sea; Build it stately, and build it fair, Build it quickly," said Esbern Snare. But the sly Dwarf said, "No work is wrought By Trolls of the Hills, O man, for naught. What wilt thou give for thy church so fair?" "Set thy own price," quoth Esbern Snare. "When Kallundborg church is builded well, Than must the name of its builder tell, Or thy heart and thy eyes must be my boon." "Build," said Esbern, "and build it soon." By night and by day the Troll wrought on; He hewed the timbers, he piled the stone; But day by day, as the walls rose fair, Darker and sadder grew Esbern Snare. He listened by night, he watched by day, He sought and thought, but he dared not pray; In vain he called on the Elle-maids shy, And the Neck and the Nis gave no reply. Of his evil bargain far and wide A rumor ran through the country-side; And Helva of Nesvek, young and fair, Prayed for the soul of Esbern Snare. And now the church was wellnigh done; One pillar it lacked, and one alone; And the grim Troll muttered, "Fool thou art To-morrow gives me thy eyes and heart!" By Kallundborg in black despair, Through wood and meadow, walked Esbern Snare, Till, worn and weary, the strong man sank Under the birches on Ulshoi bank. At, his last day's work he heard the Troll Hammer and delve in the quarry's hole; Before him the church stood large and fair "I have builded my tomb," said Esbern Snare. And he closed his eyes the sight to hide, When he heard a light step at his side "O Esbern Snare!" a sweet voice said, "Would I might die now in thy stead!" With a grasp by love and by fear made strong, He held her fast, and he held her long; With the beating heart of a bird afeard, She hid her face in his flame-red beard. "O love!" he cried, "let me look to-day In thine eyes ere mine are plucked away; Let me hold thee close, let me feel thy heart Ere mine by the Troll is torn apart! "I sinned, O Helva, for love of thee! Pray that the Lord Christ pardon me!" But fast as she prayed, and faster still, Hammered the Troll in Ulshoi hill. He knew, as he wrought, that a loving heart Was somehow baffling his evil art; For more than spell of Elf or Troll Is a maiden's prayer for her lover's soul. And Esbern listened, and caught the sound Of a Troll-wife singing underground "To-morrow comes Fine, father thine Lie still and hush thee, baby mine! "Lie still, my darling! next sunrise Thou'lt play with Esbern Snare's heart and eyes!" "Ho! ho!" quoth Esbern, "is that your game? Thanks to the Troll-wife, I know his name!" The Troll he heard him, and hurried on To Kallundborg church with the lacking stone. "Too late, Gaffer Fine!" cried Esbern Snare; And Troll and pillar vanished in air! That night the harvesters heard the sound Of a woman sobbing underground, And the voice of the Hill-Troll loud with blame Of the careless singer who told his name. Of the Troll of the Church they sing the rune By the Northern Sea in the harvest moon; And the fishers of Zealand hear him still Scolding his wife in Ulshoi hill. And seaward over its groves of birch Still looks the tower of Kallundborg church, Where, first at its altar, a wedded pair, Stood Helva of Nesvek and Esbern Snare! 1865. . . . . . "What," asked the Traveller, "would our sires, The old Norse story-tellers, say Of sun-graved pictures, ocean wires, And smoking steamboats of to-day? And this, O lady, by your leave, Recalls your song of yester eve: Pray, let us have that Cable-hymn once more." "Hear, hear!" the Book-man cried, "the lady has the floor. "These noisy waves below perhaps To such a strain will lend their ear, With softer voice and lighter lapse Come stealing up the sands to hear, And what they once refused to do For old King Knut accord to you. Nay, even the fishes shall your listeners be, As once, the legend runs, they heard St. Anthony." THE CABLE HYMN. O lonely bay of Trinity, O dreary shores, give ear! Lean down unto the white-lipped sea The voice of God to hear! From world to world His couriers fly, Thought-winged and shod with fire; The angel of His stormy sky Rides down the sunken wire. What saith the herald of the Lord? "The world's long strife is done; Close wedded by that mystic cord, Its continents are one. "And one in heart, as one in blood, Shall all her peoples be; The hands of human brotherhood Are clasped beneath the sea. "Through Orient seas, o'er Afric's plain And Asian mountains borne, The vigor of the Northern brain Shall nerve the world outworn. "From clime to clime, from shore to shore, Shall thrill the magic thread; The new Prometheus steals once more The fire that wakes the dead." Throb on, strong pulse of thunder! beat From answering beach to beach; Fuse nations in thy kindly heat, And melt the chains of each! Wild terror of the sky above, Glide tamed and dumb below! Bear gently, Ocean's carrier-dove, Thy errands to and fro. Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord, Beneath the deep so far, The bridal robe of earth's accord, The funeral shroud of war! For lo! the fall of Ocean's wall Space mocked and time outrun; And round the world the thought of all Is as the thought of one! The poles unite, the zones agree, The tongues of striving cease; As on the Sea of Galilee The Christ is whispering, Peace! 1858. . . . . . "Glad prophecy! to this at last," The Reader said, "shall all things come. Forgotten be the bugle's blast, And battle-music of the drum. "A little while the world may run Its old mad way, with needle-gun And iron-clad, but truth, at last, shall reign The cradle-song of Christ was never sung in vain!" Shifting his scattered papers, "Here," He said, as died the faint applause, "Is something that I found last year Down on the island known as Orr's. I had it from a fair-haired girl Who, oddly, bore the name of Pearl, (As if by some droll freak of circumstance,) Classic, or wellnigh so, in Harriet Stowe's romance." THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPSWELL. What flecks the outer gray beyond The sundown's golden trail? The white flash of a sea-bird's wing, Or gleam of slanting sail? Let young eyes watch from Neck and Point, And sea-worn elders pray,-- The ghost of what was once a ship Is sailing up the bay. From gray sea-fog, from icy drift, From peril and from pain, The home-bound fisher greets thy lights, O hundred-harbored Maine! But many a keel shall seaward turn, And many a sail outstand, When, tall and white, the Dead Ship looms Against the dusk of land. She rounds the headland's bristling pines; She threads the isle-set bay; No spur of breeze can speed her on, Nor ebb of tide delay. Old men still walk the Isle of Orr Who tell her date and name, Old shipwrights sit in Freeport yards Who hewed her oaken frame. What weary doom of baffled quest, Thou sad sea-ghost, is thine? What makes thee in the haunts of home A wonder and a sign? No foot is on thy silent deck, Upon thy helm no hand; No ripple hath the soundless wind That smites thee from the land! For never comes the ship to port, Howe'er the breeze may be; Just when she nears the waiting shore She drifts again to sea. No tack of sail, nor turn of helm, Nor sheer of veering side; Stern-fore she drives to sea and night, Against the wind and tide. In vain o'er Harpswell Neck the star Of evening guides her in; In vain for her the lamps are lit Within thy tower, Seguin! In vain the harbor-boat shall hail, In vain the pilot call; No hand shall reef her spectral sail, Or let her anchor fall. Shake, brown old wives, with dreary joy, Your gray-head hints of ill; And, over sick-beds whispering low, Your prophecies fulfil. Some home amid yon birchen trees Shall drape its door with woe; And slowly where the Dead Ship sails, The burial boat shall row! From Wolf Neck and from Flying Point, From island and from main, From sheltered cove and tided creek, Shall glide the funeral train. The dead-boat with the bearers four, The mourners at her stern,-- And one shall go the silent way Who shall no more return! And men shall sigh, and women weep, Whose dear ones pale and pine, And sadly over sunset seas Await the ghostly sign. They know not that its sails are filled By pity's tender breath, Nor see the Angel at the helm Who steers the Ship of Death! 1866. . . . . . "Chill as a down-east breeze should be," The Book-man said. "A ghostly touch The legend has. I'm glad to see Your flying Yankee beat the Dutch." "Well, here is something of the sort Which one midsummer day I caught In Narragansett Bay, for lack of fish." "We wait," the Traveller said; "serve hot or cold your dish." THE PALATINE. Block Island in Long Island Sound, called by the Indians Manisees, the isle of the little god, was the scene of a tragic incident a hundred years or more ago, when _The Palatine_, an emigrant ship bound for Philadelphia, driven off its course, came upon the coast at this point. A mutiny on board, followed by an inhuman desertion on the part of the crew, had brought the unhappy passengers to the verge of starvation and madness. Tradition says that wreckers on shore, after rescuing all but one of the survivors, set fire to the vessel, which was driven out to sea before a gale which had sprung up. Every twelvemonth, according to the same tradition, the spectacle of a ship on fire is visible to the inhabitants of the island. Leagues north, as fly the gull and auk, Point Judith watches with eye of hawk; Leagues south, thy beacon flames, Montauk! Lonely and wind-shorn, wood-forsaken, With never a tree for Spring to waken, For tryst of lovers or farewells taken, Circled by waters that never freeze, Beaten by billow and swept by breeze, Lieth the island of Manisees, Set at the mouth of the Sound to hold The coast lights up on its turret old, Yellow with moss and sea-fog mould. Dreary the land when gust and sleet At its doors and windows howl and beat, And Winter laughs at its fires of peat! But in summer time, when pool and pond, Held in the laps of valleys fond, Are blue as the glimpses of sea beyond; When the hills are sweet with the brier-rose, And, hid in the warm, soft dells, unclose Flowers the mainland rarely knows; When boats to their morning fishing go, And, held to the wind and slanting low, Whitening and darkening the small sails show,-- Then is that lonely island fair; And the pale health-seeker findeth there The wine of life in its pleasant air. No greener valleys the sun invite, On smoother beaches no sea-birds light, No blue waves shatter to foam more white! There, circling ever their narrow range, Quaint tradition and legend strange Live on unchallenged, and know no change. Old wives spinning their webs of tow, Or rocking weirdly to and fro In and out of the peat's dull glow, And old men mending their nets of twine, Talk together of dream and sign, Talk of the lost ship Palatine,-- The ship that, a hundred years before, Freighted deep with its goodly store, In the gales of the equinox went ashore. The eager islanders one by one Counted the shots of her signal gun, And heard the crash when she drove right on! Into the teeth of death she sped (May God forgive the hands that fed The false lights over the rocky Head!) O men and brothers! what sights were there! White upturned faces, hands stretched in prayer! Where waves had pity, could ye not spare? Down swooped the wreckers, like birds of prey Tearing the heart of the ship away, And the dead had never a word to say. And then, with ghastly shimmer and shine Over the rocks and the seething brine, They burned the wreck of the Palatine. In their cruel hearts, as they homeward sped, "The sea and the rocks are dumb," they said "There 'll be no reckoning with the dead." But the year went round, and when once more Along their foam-white curves of shore They heard the line-storm rave and roar, Behold! again, with shimmer and shine, Over the rocks and the seething brine, The flaming wreck of the Palatine! So, haply in fitter words than these, Mending their nets on their patient knees They tell the legend of Manisees. Nor looks nor tones a doubt betray; "It is known to us all," they quietly say; "We too have seen it in our day." Is there, then, no death for a word once spoken? Was never a deed but left its token Written on tables never broken? Do the elements subtle reflections give? Do pictures of all the ages live On Nature's infinite negative, Which, half in sport, in malice half, She shows at times, with shudder or laugh, Phantom and shadow in photograph? For still, on many a moonless night, From Kingston Head and from Montauk light The spectre kindles and burns in sight. Now low and dim, now clear and higher, Leaps up the terrible Ghost of Fire, Then, slowly sinking, the flames expire. And the wise Sound skippers, though skies be fine, Reef their sails when they see the sign Of the blazing wreck of the Palatine! 1867. . . . . . "A fitter tale to scream than sing," The Book-man said. "Well, fancy, then," The Reader answered, "on the wing The sea-birds shriek it, not for men, But in the ear of wave and breeze!" The Traveller mused: "Your Manisees Is fairy-land: off Narragansett shore Who ever saw the isle or heard its name before? "'T is some strange land of Flyaway, Whose dreamy shore the ship beguiles, St. Brandan's in its sea-mist gray, Or sunset loom of Fortunate Isles!" "No ghost, but solid turf and rock Is the good island known as Block," The Reader said. "For beauty and for ease I chose its Indian name, soft-flowing Manisees! "But let it pass; here is a bit Of unrhymed story, with a hint Of the old preaching mood in it, The sort of sidelong moral squint Our friend objects to, which has grown, I fear, a habit of my own. 'Twas written when the Asian plague drew near, And the land held its breath and paled with sudden fear." ABRAHAM DAVENPORT The famous Dark Day of New England, May 19, 1780, was a physical puzzle for many years to our ancestors, but its occurrence brought something more than philosophical speculation into the winds of those who passed through it. The incident of Colonel Abraham Davenport's sturdy protest is a matter of history. In the old days (a custom laid aside With breeches and cocked hats) the people sent Their wisest men to make the public laws. And so, from a brown homestead, where the Sound Drinks the small tribute of the Mianas, Waved over by the woods of Rippowams, And hallowed by pure lives and tranquil deaths, Stamford sent up to the councils of the State Wisdom and grace in Abraham Davenport. 'T was on a May-day of the far old year Seventeen hundred eighty, that there fell Over the bloom and sweet life of the Spring, Over the fresh earth and the heaven of noon, A horror of great darkness, like the night In day of which the Norland sagas tell,-- The Twilight of the Gods. The low-hung sky Was black with ominous clouds, save where its rim Was fringed with a dull glow, like that which climbs The crater's sides from the red hell below. Birds ceased to sing, and all the barn-yard fowls Roosted; the cattle at the pasture bars Lowed, and looked homeward; bats on leathern wings Flitted abroad; the sounds of labor died; Men prayed, and women wept; all ears grew sharp To hear the doom-blast of the trumpet shatter The black sky, that the dreadful face of Christ Might look from the rent clouds, not as he looked A loving guest at Bethany, but stern As Justice and inexorable Law. Meanwhile in the old State House, dim as ghosts, Sat the lawgivers of Connecticut, Trembling beneath their legislative robes. "It is the Lord's Great Day! Let us adjourn," Some said; and then, as if with one accord, All eyes were turned to Abraham Davenport. He rose, slow cleaving with his steady voice The intolerable hush. "This well may be The Day of Judgment which the world awaits; But be it so or not, I only know My present duty, and my Lord's command To occupy till He come. So at the post Where He hath set me in His providence, I choose, for one, to meet Him face to face,-- No faithless servant frightened from my task, But ready when the Lord of the harvest calls; And therefore, with all reverence, I would say, Let God do His work, we will see to ours. Bring in the candles." And they brought them in. Then by the flaring lights the Speaker read, Albeit with husky voice and shaking hands, An act to amend an act to regulate The shad and alewive fisheries. Whereupon Wisely and well spake Abraham Davenport, Straight to the question, with no figures of speech Save the ten Arab signs, yet not without The shrewd dry humor natural to the man His awe-struck colleagues listening all the while, Between the pauses of his argument, To hear the thunder of the wrath of God Break from the hollow trumpet of the cloud. And there he stands in memory to this day, Erect, self-poised, a rugged face, half seen Against the background of unnatural dark, A witness to the ages as they pass, That simple duty hath no place for fear. 1866. . . . . . He ceased: just then the ocean seemed To lift a half-faced moon in sight; And, shore-ward, o'er the waters gleamed, From crest to crest, a line of light, Such as of old, with solemn awe, The fishers by Gennesaret saw, When dry-shod o'er it walked the Son of God, Tracking the waves with light where'er his sandals trod. Silently for a space each eye Upon that sudden glory turned Cool from the land the breeze blew by, The tent-ropes flapped, the long beach churned Its waves to foam; on either hand Stretched, far as sight, the hills of sand; With bays of marsh, and capes of bush and tree, The wood's black shore-line loomed beyond the meadowy sea. The lady rose to leave. "One song, Or hymn," they urged, "before we part." And she, with lips to which belong Sweet intuitions of all art, Gave to the winds of night a strain Which they who heard would hear again; And to her voice the solemn ocean lent, Touching its harp of sand, a deep accompaniment. THE WORSHIP OF NATURE. The harp at Nature's advent strung Has never ceased to play; The song the stars of morning sung Has never died away. And prayer is made, and praise is given, By all things near and far; The ocean looketh up to heaven, And mirrors every star. Its waves are kneeling on the strand, As kneels the human knee, Their white locks bowing to the sand, The priesthood of the sea' They pour their glittering treasures forth, Their gifts of pearl they bring, And all the listening hills of earth Take up the song they sing. The green earth sends her incense up From many a mountain shrine; From folded leaf and dewy cup She pours her sacred wine. The mists above the morning rills Rise white as wings of prayer; The altar-curtains of the hills Are sunset's purple air. The winds with hymns of praise are loud, Or low with sobs of pain,-- The thunder-organ of the cloud, The dropping tears of rain. With drooping head and branches crossed The twilight forest grieves, Or speaks with tongues of Pentecost From all its sunlit leaves. The blue sky is the temple's arch, Its transept earth and air, The music of its starry march The chorus of a prayer. So Nature keeps the reverent frame With which her years began, And all her signs and voices shame The prayerless heart of man. . . . . . The singer ceased. The moon's white rays Fell on the rapt, still face of her. "_Allah il Allah_! He hath praise From all things," said the Traveller. "Oft from the desert's silent nights, And mountain hymns of sunset lights, My heart has felt rebuke, as in his tent The Moslem's prayer has shamed my Christian knee unbent." He paused, and lo! far, faint, and slow The bells in Newbury's steeples tolled The twelve dead hours; the lamp burned low; The singer sought her canvas fold. One sadly said, "At break of day We strike our tent and go our way." But one made answer cheerily, "Never fear, We'll pitch this tent of ours in type another year." 
9574	----	THE WORKS OF JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, Volume II. (of VII} POEMS OF NATURE plus POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT and RELIGIOUS POEMS By John Greenleaf Whittier CONTENTS POEMS OF NATURE: THE FROST SPIRIT THE MERRIMAC HAMPTON BEACH A DREAM OF SUMMER THE LAKESIDE AUTUMN THOUGHTS ON RECEIVING AN EAGLE'S QUILL FROM LAKE SUPERIOR APRIL PICTURES SUMMER BY THE LAKESIDE THE FRUIT-GIFT FLOWERS IN WINTER THE MAYFLOWERS THE LAST WALK IN AUTUMN THE FIRST FLOWERS THE OLD BURYING-GROUND THE PALM-TREE THE RIVER PATH MOUNTAIN PICTURES I. FRANCONIA FROM THE PEMIGEWASSET II. MONADNOCK FROM WACHUSET THE VANISHERS THE PAGEANT THE PRESSED GENTIAN A MYSTERY A SEA DREAM HAZEL BLOSSOMS SUNSET ON THE BEARCAMP THE SEEKING OF THE WATERFALL THE TRAILING ARBUTUS ST. MARTINS SUMMER STORM ON LAKE ASQUAM A SUMMER PILGRIMAGE SWEET FERN THE WOOD GIANT A DAY POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT: MEMORIES RAPHAEL EGO THE PUMPKIN FORGIVENESS TO MY SISTER MY THANKS REMEMBRANCE MY NAMESAKE A MEMORY MY DREAM THE BAREFOOT BOY MY PSALM THE WAITING SNOW-BOUND MY TRIUMPH IN SCHOOL-DAYS MY BIRTHDAY RED RIDING-HOOD RESPONSE AT EVENTIDE VOYAGE OF THE JETTIE MY TRUST A NAME GREETING CONTENTS AN AUTOGRAPH ABRAM MORRISON A LEGACY RELIGIOUS POEMS: THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN THE CALL OF THE CHRISTIAN THE CRUCIFIXION PALESTINE HYMNS FROM THE FRENCH OF LAMARTINE I. ENCORE UN HYMNE II. LE CRI DE L'AME THE FAMILIST'S HYMN EZEKIEL WHAT THE VOICE SAID THE ANGEL OF PATIENCE THE WIFE OF MANOAH TO HER HUSBAND MY SOUL AND I WORSHIP THE HOLY LAND THE REWARD THE WISH OF TO-DAY ALL'S WELL INVOCATION QUESTIONS OF LIFE FIRST-DAY THOUGHTS TRUST TRINITAS THE SISTERS "THE ROCK" IN EL GHOR THE OVER-HEART THE SHADOW AND THE LIGHT THE CRY OF A LOST SOUL ANDREW RYKMAN'S PRAYER THE ANSWER THE ETERNAL GOODNESS THE COMMON QUESTION OUR MASTER THE MEETING THE CLEAR VISION DIVINE COMPASSION THE PRAYER-SEEKER THE BREWING OF SOMA A WOMAN THE PRAYER OF AGASSIZ IN QUEST THE FRIEND'S BURIAL A CHRISTMAS CARMEN VESTA CHILD-SONGS THE HEALER THE TWO ANGELS OVERRULED HYMN OF THE DUNKERS GIVING AND TAKING THE VISION OF ECHARD INSCRIPTIONS ON A SUN-DIAL ON A FOUNTAIN THE MINISTER'S DAUGHTER BY THEIR WORKS THE WORD THE BOOK REQUIREMENT HELP UTTERANCE ORIENTAL MAXIMS THE INWARD JUDGE LAYING UP TREASURE CONDUCT AN EASTER FLOWER GIFT THE MYSTIC'S CHRISTMAS AT LAST WHAT THE TRAVELLER SAID AT SUNSET THE "STORY OF IDA" THE LIGHT THAT IS FELT THE TWO LOVES ADJUSTMENT HYMNS OF THE BRAHMO SOMAJ REVELATION POEMS OF NATURE THE FROST SPIRIT He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes You may trace his footsteps now On the naked woods and the blasted fields and the brown hill's withered brow. He has smitten the leaves of the gray old trees where their pleasant green came forth, And the winds, which follow wherever he goes, have shaken them down to earth. He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes! from the frozen Labrador, From the icy bridge of the Northern seas, which the white bear wanders o'er, Where the fisherman's sail is stiff with ice, and the luckless forms below In the sunless cold of the lingering night into marble statues grow He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes on the rushing Northern blast, And the dark Norwegian pines have bowed as his fearful breath went past. With an unscorched wing he has hurried on, where the fires of Hecla glow On the darkly beautiful sky above and the ancient ice below. He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes and the quiet lake shall feel The torpid touch of his glazing breath, and ring to the skater's heel; And the streams which danced on the broken rocks, or sang to the leaning grass, Shall bow again to their winter chain, and in mournful silence pass. He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes! Let us meet him as we may, And turn with the light of the parlor-fire his evil power away; And gather closer the circle round, when that fire-light dances high, And laugh at the shriek of the baffled Fiend as his sounding wing goes by! 1830. THE MERRIMAC. "The Indians speak of a beautiful river, far to the south, which they call Merrimac."--SIEUR. DE MONTS, 1604. Stream of my fathers! sweetly still The sunset rays thy valley fill; Poured slantwise down the long defile, Wave, wood, and spire beneath them smile. I see the winding Powow fold The green hill in its belt of gold, And following down its wavy line, Its sparkling waters blend with thine. There 's not a tree upon thy side, Nor rock, which thy returning tide As yet hath left abrupt and stark Above thy evening water-mark; No calm cove with its rocky hem, No isle whose emerald swells begin Thy broad, smooth current; not a sail Bowed to the freshening ocean gale; No small boat with its busy oars, Nor gray wall sloping to thy shores; Nor farm-house with its maple shade, Or rigid poplar colonnade, But lies distinct and full in sight, Beneath this gush of sunset light. Centuries ago, that harbor-bar, Stretching its length of foam afar, And Salisbury's beach of shining sand, And yonder island's wave-smoothed strand, Saw the adventurer's tiny sail, Flit, stooping from the eastern gale; And o'er these woods and waters broke The cheer from Britain's hearts of oak, As brightly on the voyager's eye, Weary of forest, sea, and sky, Breaking the dull continuous wood, The Merrimac rolled down his flood; Mingling that clear pellucid brook, Which channels vast Agioochook When spring-time's sun and shower unlock The frozen fountains of the rock, And more abundant waters given From that pure lake, "The Smile of Heaven," Tributes from vale and mountain-side,-- With ocean's dark, eternal tide! On yonder rocky cape, which braves The stormy challenge of the waves, Midst tangled vine and dwarfish wood, The hardy Anglo-Saxon stood, Planting upon the topmost crag The staff of England's battle-flag; And, while from out its heavy fold Saint George's crimson cross unrolled, Midst roll of drum and trumpet blare, And weapons brandishing in air, He gave to that lone promontory The sweetest name in all his story; Of her, the flower of Islam's daughters, Whose harems look on Stamboul's waters,-- Who, when the chance of war had bound The Moslem chain his limbs around, Wreathed o'er with silk that iron chain, Soothed with her smiles his hours of pain, And fondly to her youthful slave A dearer gift than freedom gave. But look! the yellow light no more Streams down on wave and verdant shore; And clearly on the calm air swells The twilight voice of distant bells. From Ocean's bosom, white and thin, The mists come slowly rolling in; Hills, woods, the river's rocky rim, Amidst the sea--like vapor swim, While yonder lonely coast-light, set Within its wave-washed minaret, Half quenched, a beamless star and pale, Shines dimly through its cloudy veil! Home of my fathers!--I have stood Where Hudson rolled his lordly flood Seen sunrise rest and sunset fade Along his frowning Palisade; Looked down the Appalachian peak On Juniata's silver streak; Have seen along his valley gleam The Mohawk's softly winding stream; The level light of sunset shine Through broad Potomac's hem of pine; And autumn's rainbow-tinted banner Hang lightly o'er the Susquehanna; Yet wheresoe'er his step might be, Thy wandering child looked back to thee! Heard in his dreams thy river's sound Of murmuring on its pebbly bound, The unforgotten swell and roar Of waves on thy familiar shore; And saw, amidst the curtained gloom And quiet of his lonely room, Thy sunset scenes before him pass; As, in Agrippa's magic glass, The loved and lost arose to view, Remembered groves in greenness grew, Bathed still in childhood's morning dew, Along whose bowers of beauty swept Whatever Memory's mourners wept, Sweet faces, which the charnel kept, Young, gentle eyes, which long had slept; And while the gazer leaned to trace, More near, some dear familiar face, He wept to find the vision flown,-- A phantom and a dream alone! 1841. HAMPTON BEACH The sunlight glitters keen and bright, Where, miles away, Lies stretching to my dazzled sight A luminous belt, a misty light, Beyond the dark pine bluffs and wastes of sandy gray. The tremulous shadow of the Sea! Against its ground Of silvery light, rock, hill, and tree, Still as a picture, clear and free, With varying outline mark the coast for miles around. On--on--we tread with loose-flung rein Our seaward way, Through dark-green fields and blossoming grain, Where the wild brier-rose skirts the lane, And bends above our heads the flowering locust spray. Ha! like a kind hand on my brow Comes this fresh breeze, Cooling its dull and feverish glow, While through my being seems to flow The breath of a new life, the healing of the seas! Now rest we, where this grassy mound His feet hath set In the great waters, which have bound His granite ankles greenly round With long and tangled moss, and weeds with cool spray wet. Good-by to Pain and Care! I take Mine ease to-day Here where these sunny waters break, And ripples this keen breeze, I shake All burdens from the heart, all weary thoughts away. I draw a freer breath, I seem Like all I see-- Waves in the sun, the white-winged gleam Of sea-birds in the slanting beam, And far-off sails which flit before the south-wind free. So when Time's veil shall fall asunder, The soul may know No fearful change, nor sudden wonder, Nor sink the weight of mystery under, But with the upward rise, and with the vastness grow. And all we shrink from now may seem No new revealing; Familiar as our childhood's stream, Or pleasant memory of a dream The loved and cherished Past upon the new life stealing. Serene and mild the untried light May have its dawning; And, as in summer's northern night The evening and the dawn unite, The sunset hues of Time blend with the soul's new morning. I sit alone; in foam and spray Wave after wave Breaks on the rocks which, stern and gray, Shoulder the broken tide away, Or murmurs hoarse and strong through mossy cleft and cave. What heed I of the dusty land And noisy town? I see the mighty deep expand From its white line of glimmering sand To where the blue of heaven on bluer waves shuts down! In listless quietude of mind, I yield to all The change of cloud and wave and wind And passive on the flood reclined, I wander with the waves, and with them rise and fall. But look, thou dreamer! wave and shore In shadow lie; The night-wind warns me back once more To where, my native hill-tops o'er, Bends like an arch of fire the glowing sunset sky. So then, beach, bluff, and wave, farewell! I bear with me No token stone nor glittering shell, But long and oft shall Memory tell Of this brief thoughtful hour of musing by the Sea. 1843. A DREAM OF SUMMER. Bland as the morning breath of June The southwest breezes play; And, through its haze, the winter noon Seems warm as summer's day. The snow-plumed Angel of the North Has dropped his icy spear; Again the mossy earth looks forth, Again the streams gush clear. The fox his hillside cell forsakes, The muskrat leaves his nook, The bluebird in the meadow brakes Is singing with the brook. "Bear up, O Mother Nature!" cry Bird, breeze, and streamlet free; "Our winter voices prophesy Of summer days to thee!" So, in those winters of the soul, By bitter blasts and drear O'erswept from Memory's frozen pole, Will sunny days appear. Reviving Hope and Faith, they show The soul its living powers, And how beneath the winter's snow Lie germs of summer flowers! The Night is mother of the Day, The Winter of the Spring, And ever upon old Decay The greenest mosses cling. Behind the cloud the starlight lurks, Through showers the sunbeams fall; For God, who loveth all His works, Has left His hope with all! 4th 1st month, 1847. THE LAKESIDE The shadows round the inland sea Are deepening into night; Slow up the slopes of Ossipee They chase the lessening light. Tired of the long day's blinding heat, I rest my languid eye, Lake of the Hills! where, cool and sweet, Thy sunset waters lie! Along the sky, in wavy lines, O'er isle and reach and bay, Green-belted with eternal pines, The mountains stretch away. Below, the maple masses sleep Where shore with water blends, While midway on the tranquil deep The evening light descends. So seemed it when yon hill's red crown, Of old, the Indian trod, And, through the sunset air, looked down Upon the Smile of God. To him of light and shade the laws No forest skeptic taught; Their living and eternal Cause His truer instinct sought. He saw these mountains in the light Which now across them shines; This lake, in summer sunset bright, Walled round with sombering pines. God near him seemed; from earth and skies His loving voice he beard, As, face to face, in Paradise, Man stood before the Lord. Thanks, O our Father! that, like him, Thy tender love I see, In radiant hill and woodland dim, And tinted sunset sea. For not in mockery dost Thou fill Our earth with light and grace; Thou hid'st no dark and cruel will Behind Thy smiling face! 1849. AUTUMN THOUGHTS Gone hath the Spring, with all its flowers, And gone the Summer's pomp and show, And Autumn, in his leafless bowers, Is waiting for the Winter's snow. I said to Earth, so cold and gray, "An emblem of myself thou art." "Not so," the Earth did seem to say, "For Spring shall warm my frozen heart." I soothe my wintry sleep with dreams Of warmer sun and softer rain, And wait to hear the sound of streams And songs of merry birds again. But thou, from whom the Spring hath gone, For whom the flowers no longer blow, Who standest blighted and forlorn, Like Autumn waiting for the snow; No hope is thine of sunnier hours, Thy Winter shall no more depart; No Spring revive thy wasted flowers, Nor Summer warm thy frozen heart. 1849. ON RECEIVING AN EAGLE'S QUILL FROM LAKE SUPERIOR. All day the darkness and the cold Upon my heart have lain, Like shadows on the winter sky, Like frost upon the pane; But now my torpid fancy wakes, And, on thy Eagle's plume, Rides forth, like Sindbad on his bird, Or witch upon her broom! Below me roar the rocking pines, Before me spreads the lake Whose long and solemn-sounding waves Against the sunset break. I hear the wild Rice-Eater thresh The grain he has not sown; I see, with flashing scythe of fire, The prairie harvest mown! I hear the far-off voyager's horn; I see the Yankee's trail,-- His foot on every mountain-pass, On every stream his sail. By forest, lake, and waterfall, I see his pedler show; The mighty mingling with the mean, The lofty with the low. He's whittling by St. Mary's Falls, Upon his loaded wain; He's measuring o'er the Pictured Rocks, With eager eyes of gain. I hear the mattock in the mine, The axe-stroke in the dell, The clamor from the Indian lodge, The Jesuit chapel bell! I see the swarthy trappers come From Mississippi's springs; And war-chiefs with their painted brows, And crests of eagle wings. Behind the scared squaw's birch canoe, The steamer smokes and raves; And city lots are staked for sale Above old Indian graves. I hear the tread of pioneers Of nations yet to be; The first low wash of waves, where soon Shall roll a human sea. The rudiments of empire here Are plastic yet and warm; The chaos of a mighty world Is rounding into form! Each rude and jostling fragment soon Its fitting place shall find,-- The raw material of a State, Its muscle and its mind! And, westering still, the star which leads The New World in its train Has tipped with fire the icy spears Of many a mountain chain. The snowy cones of Oregon Are kindling on its way; And California's golden sands Gleam brighter in its ray! Then blessings on thy eagle quill, As, wandering far and wide, I thank thee for this twilight dream And Fancy's airy ride! Yet, welcomer than regal plumes, Which Western trappers find, Thy free and pleasant thoughts, chance sown, Like feathers on the wind. Thy symbol be the mountain-bird, Whose glistening quill I hold; Thy home the ample air of hope, And memory's sunset gold! In thee, let joy with duty join, And strength unite with love, The eagle's pinions folding round The warm heart of the dove! So, when in darkness sleeps the vale Where still the blind bird clings The sunshine of the upper sky Shall glitter on thy wings! 1849. APRIL. "The spring comes slowly up this way." Christabel. 'T is the noon of the spring-time, yet never a bird In the wind-shaken elm or the maple is heard; For green meadow-grasses wide levels of snow, And blowing of drifts where the crocus should blow; Where wind-flower and violet, amber and white, On south-sloping brooksides should smile in the light, O'er the cold winter-beds of their late-waking roots The frosty flake eddies, the ice-crystal shoots; And, longing for light, under wind-driven heaps, Round the boles of the pine-wood the ground-laurel creeps, Unkissed of the sunshine, unbaptized of showers, With buds scarcely swelled, which should burst into flowers We wait for thy coming, sweet wind of the south! For the touch of thy light wings, the kiss of thy mouth; For the yearly evangel thou bearest from God, Resurrection and life to the graves of the sod! Up our long river-valley, for days, have not ceased The wail and the shriek of the bitter northeast, Raw and chill, as if winnowed through ices and snow, All the way from the land of the wild Esquimau, Until all our dreams of the land of the blest, Like that red hunter's, turn to the sunny southwest. O soul of the spring-time, its light and its breath, Bring warmth to this coldness, bring life to this death; Renew the great miracle; let us behold The stone from the mouth of the sepulchre rolled, And Nature, like Lazarus, rise, as of old! Let our faith, which in darkness and coldness has lain, Revive with the warmth and the brightness again, And in blooming of flower and budding of tree The symbols and types of our destiny see; The life of the spring-time, the life of the whole, And, as sun to the sleeping earth, love to the soul! 1852. PICTURES I. Light, warmth, and sprouting greenness, and o'er all Blue, stainless, steel-bright ether, raining down Tranquillity upon the deep-hushed town, The freshening meadows, and the hillsides brown; Voice of the west-wind from the hills of pine, And the brimmed river from its distant fall, Low hum of bees, and joyous interlude Of bird-songs in the streamlet-skirting wood,-- Heralds and prophecies of sound and sight, Blessed forerunners of the warmth and light, Attendant angels to the house of prayer, With reverent footsteps keeping pace with mine,-- Once more, through God's great love, with you I share A morn of resurrection sweet and fair As that which saw, of old, in Palestine, Immortal Love uprising in fresh bloom From the dark night and winter of the tomb! 2d, 5th mo., 1852. II. White with its sun-bleached dust, the pathway winds Before me; dust is on the shrunken grass, And on the trees beneath whose boughs I pass; Frail screen against the Hunter of the sky, Who, glaring on me with his lidless eye, While mounting with his dog-star high and higher Ambushed in light intolerable, unbinds The burnished quiver of his shafts of fire. Between me and the hot fields of his South A tremulous glow, as from a furnace-mouth, Glimmers and swims before my dazzled sight, As if the burning arrows of his ire Broke as they fell, and shattered into light; Yet on my cheek I feel the western wind, And hear it telling to the orchard trees, And to the faint and flower-forsaken bees, Tales of fair meadows, green with constant streams, And mountains rising blue and cool behind, Where in moist dells the purple orchis gleams, And starred with white the virgin's bower is twined. So the o'erwearied pilgrim, as he fares Along life's summer waste, at times is fanned, Even at noontide, by the cool, sweet airs Of a serener and a holier land, Fresh as the morn, and as the dewfall bland. Breath of the blessed Heaven for which we pray, Blow from the eternal hills! make glad our earthly way! 8th mo., 1852. SUMMER BY THE LAKESIDE LAKE WINNIPESAUKEE. I. NOON. White clouds, whose shadows haunt the deep, Light mists, whose soft embraces keep The sunshine on the hills asleep! O isles of calm! O dark, still wood! And stiller skies that overbrood Your rest with deeper quietude! O shapes and hues, dim beckoning, through Yon mountain gaps, my longing view Beyond the purple and the blue, To stiller sea and greener land, And softer lights and airs more bland, And skies,--the hollow of God's hand! Transfused through you, O mountain friends! With mine your solemn spirit blends, And life no more hath separate ends. I read each misty mountain sign, I know the voice of wave and pine, And I am yours, and ye are mine. Life's burdens fall, its discords cease, I lapse into the glad release Of Nature's own exceeding peace. O welcome calm of heart and mind! As falls yon fir-tree's loosened rind To leave a tenderer growth behind, So fall the weary years away; A child again, my head I lay Upon the lap of this sweet day. This western wind hath Lethean powers, Yon noonday cloud nepenthe showers, The lake is white with lotus-flowers! Even Duty's voice is faint and low, And slumberous Conscience, waking slow, Forgets her blotted scroll to show. The Shadow which pursues us all, Whose ever-nearing steps appall, Whose voice we hear behind us call,-- That Shadow blends with mountain gray, It speaks but what the light waves say,-- Death walks apart from Fear to-day! Rocked on her breast, these pines and I Alike on Nature's love rely; And equal seems to live or die. Assured that He whose presence fills With light the spaces of these hills No evil to His creatures wills, The simple faith remains, that He Will do, whatever that may be, The best alike for man and tree. What mosses over one shall grow, What light and life the other know, Unanxious, leaving Him to show. II. EVENING. Yon mountain's side is black with night, While, broad-orhed, o'er its gleaming crown The moon, slow-rounding into sight, On the hushed inland sea looks down. How start to light the clustering isles, Each silver-hemmed! How sharply show The shadows of their rocky piles, And tree-tops in the wave below! How far and strange the mountains seem, Dim-looming through the pale, still light The vague, vast grouping of a dream, They stretch into the solemn night. Beneath, lake, wood, and peopled vale, Hushed by that presence grand and grave, Are silent, save the cricket's wail, And low response of leaf and wave. Fair scenes! whereto the Day and Night Make rival love, I leave ye soon, What time before the eastern light The pale ghost of the setting moon Shall hide behind yon rocky spines, And the young archer, Morn, shall break His arrows on the mountain pines, And, golden-sandalled, walk the lake! Farewell! around this smiling bay Gay-hearted Health, and Life in bloom, With lighter steps than mine, may stray In radiant summers yet to come. But none shall more regretful leave These waters and these hills than I Or, distant, fonder dream how eve Or dawn is painting wave and sky; How rising moons shine sad and mild On wooded isle and silvering bay; Or setting suns beyond the piled And purple mountains lead the day; Nor laughing girl, nor bearding boy, Nor full-pulsed manhood, lingering here, Shall add, to life's abounding joy, The charmed repose to suffering dear. Still waits kind Nature to impart Her choicest gifts to such as gain An entrance to her loving heart Through the sharp discipline of pain. Forever from the Hand that takes One blessing from us others fall; And, soon or late, our Father makes His perfect recompense to all! Oh, watched by Silence and the Night, And folded in the strong embrace Of the great mountains, with the light Of the sweet heavens upon thy face, Lake of the Northland! keep thy dower Of beauty still, and while above Thy solemn mountains speak of power, Be thou the mirror of God's love. 1853. THE FRUIT-GIFT. Last night, just as the tints of autumn's sky Of sunset faded from our hills and streams, I sat, vague listening, lapped in twilight dreams, To the leaf's rustle, and the cricket's cry. Then, like that basket, flush with summer fruit, Dropped by the angels at the Prophet's foot, Came, unannounced, a gift of clustered sweetness, Full-orbed, and glowing with the prisoned beams Of summery suns, and rounded to completeness By kisses of the south-wind and the dew. Thrilled with a glad surprise, methought I knew The pleasure of the homeward-turning Jew, When Eshcol's clusters on his shoulders lay, Dropping their sweetness on his desert way. I said, "This fruit beseems no world of sin. Its parent vine, rooted in Paradise, O'ercrept the wall, and never paid the price Of the great mischief,--an ambrosial tree, Eden's exotic, somehow smuggled in, To keep the thorns and thistles company." Perchance our frail, sad mother plucked in haste A single vine-slip as she passed the gate, Where the dread sword alternate paled and burned, And the stern angel, pitying her fate, Forgave the lovely trespasser, and turned Aside his face of fire; and thus the waste And fallen world hath yet its annual taste Of primal good, to prove of sin the cost, And show by one gleaned ear the mighty harvest lost. 1854. FLOWERS IN WINTER PAINTED UPON A PORTE LIVRE. How strange to greet, this frosty morn, In graceful counterfeit of flowers, These children of the meadows, born Of sunshine and of showers! How well the conscious wood retains The pictures of its flower-sown home, The lights and shades, the purple stains, And golden hues of bloom! It was a happy thought to bring To the dark season's frost and rime This painted memory of spring, This dream of summer-time. Our hearts are lighter for its sake, Our fancy's age renews its youth, And dim-remembered fictions take The guise of--present truth. A wizard of the Merrimac,-- So old ancestral legends say, Could call green leaf and blossom back To frosted stem and spray. The dry logs of the cottage wall, Beneath his touch, put out their leaves The clay-bound swallow, at his call, Played round the icy eaves. The settler saw his oaken flail Take bud, and bloom before his eyes; From frozen pools he saw the pale, Sweet summer lilies rise. To their old homes, by man profaned, Came the sad dryads, exiled long, And through their leafy tongues complained Of household use and wrong. The beechen platter sprouted wild, The pipkin wore its old-time green The cradle o'er the sleeping child Became a leafy screen. Haply our gentle friend hath met, While wandering in her sylvan quest, Haunting his native woodlands yet, That Druid of the West; And, while the dew on leaf and flower Glistened in moonlight clear and still, Learned the dusk wizard's spell of power, And caught his trick of skill. But welcome, be it new or old, The gift which makes the day more bright, And paints, upon the ground of cold And darkness, warmth and light. Without is neither gold nor green; Within, for birds, the birch-logs sing; Yet, summer-like, we sit between The autumn and the spring. The one, with bridal blush of rose, And sweetest breath of woodland balm, And one whose matron lips unclose In smiles of saintly calm. Fill soft and deep, O winter snow! The sweet azalea's oaken dells, And hide the bank where roses blow, And swing the azure bells! O'erlay the amber violet's leaves, The purple aster's brookside home, Guard all the flowers her pencil gives A life beyond their bloom. And she, when spring comes round again, By greening slope and singing flood Shall wander, seeking, not in vain, Her darlings of the wood. 1855. THE MAYFLOWERS The trailing arbutus, or mayflower, grows abundantly in the vicinity of Plymouth, and was the first flower that greeted the Pilgrims after their fearful winter. The name mayflower was familiar in England, as the application of it to the historic vessel shows, but it was applied by the English, and still is, to the hawthorn. Its use in New England in connection with _Epigma repens _dates from a very early day, some claiming that the first Pilgrims so used it, in affectionate memory of the vessel and its English flower association. Sad Mayflower! watched by winter stars, And nursed by winter gales, With petals of the sleeted spars, And leaves of frozen sails! What had she in those dreary hours, Within her ice-rimmed bay, In common with the wild-wood flowers, The first sweet smiles of May? Yet, "God be praised!" the Pilgrim said, Who saw the blossoms peer Above the brown leaves, dry and dead, "Behold our Mayflower here!" "God wills it: here our rest shall be, Our years of wandering o'er; For us the Mayflower of the sea Shall spread her sails no more." O sacred flowers of faith and hope, As sweetly now as then Ye bloom on many a birchen slope, In many a pine-dark glen. Behind the sea-wall's rugged length, Unchanged, your leaves unfold, Like love behind the manly strength Of the brave hearts of old. So live the fathers in their sons, Their sturdy faith be ours, And ours the love that overruns Its rocky strength with flowers! The Pilgrim's wild and wintry day Its shadow round us draws; The Mayflower of his stormy bay, Our Freedom's struggling cause. But warmer suns erelong shall bring To life the frozen sod; And through dead leaves of hope shall spring Afresh the flowers of God! 1856. THE LAST WALK IN AUTUMN. I. O'er the bare woods, whose outstretched hands Plead with the leaden heavens in vain, I see, beyond the valley lands, The sea's long level dim with rain. Around me all things, stark and dumb, Seem praying for the snows to come, And, for the summer bloom and greenness gone, With winter's sunset lights and dazzling morn atone. II. Along the river's summer walk, The withered tufts of asters nod; And trembles on its arid stalk The boar plume of the golden-rod. And on a ground of sombre fir, And azure-studded juniper, The silver birch its buds of purple shows, And scarlet berries tell where bloomed the sweet wild-rose! III. With mingled sound of horns and bells, A far-heard clang, the wild geese fly, Storm-sent, from Arctic moors and fells, Like a great arrow through the sky, Two dusky lines converged in one, Chasing the southward-flying sun; While the brave snow-bird and the hardy jay Call to them from the pines, as if to bid them stay. IV. I passed this way a year ago The wind blew south; the noon of day Was warm as June's; and save that snow Flecked the low mountains far away, And that the vernal-seeming breeze Mocked faded grass and leafless trees, I might have dreamed of summer as I lay, Watching the fallen leaves with the soft wind at play. V. Since then, the winter blasts have piled The white pagodas of the snow On these rough slopes, and, strong and wild, Yon river, in its overflow Of spring-time rain and sun, set free, Crashed with its ices to the sea; And over these gray fields, then green and gold, The summer corn has waved, the thunder's organ rolled. VI. Rich gift of God! A year of time What pomp of rise and shut of day, What hues wherewith our Northern clime Makes autumn's dropping woodlands gay, What airs outblown from ferny dells, And clover-bloom and sweetbrier smells, What songs of brooks and birds, what fruits and flowers, Green woods and moonlit snows, have in its round been ours! VII. I know not how, in other lands, The changing seasons come and go; What splendors fall on Syrian sands, What purple lights on Alpine snow! Nor how the pomp of sunrise waits On Venice at her watery gates; A dream alone to me is Arno's vale, And the Alhambra's halls are but a traveller's tale. VIII. Yet, on life's current, he who drifts Is one with him who rows or sails And he who wanders widest lifts No more of beauty's jealous veils Than he who from his doorway sees The miracle of flowers and trees, Feels the warm Orient in the noonday air, And from cloud minarets hears the sunset call to prayer! IX. The eye may well be glad that looks Where Pharpar's fountains rise and fall; But he who sees his native brooks Laugh in the sun, has seen them all. The marble palaces of Ind Rise round him in the snow and wind; From his lone sweetbrier Persian Hafiz smiles, And Rome's cathedral awe is in his woodland aisles. X. And thus it is my fancy blends The near at hand and far and rare; And while the same horizon bends Above the silver-sprinkled hair Which flashed the light of morning skies On childhood's wonder-lifted eyes, Within its round of sea and sky and field, Earth wheels with all her zones, the Kosmos stands revealed. XI. And thus the sick man on his bed, The toiler to his task-work bound, Behold their prison-walls outspread, Their clipped horizon widen round! While freedom-giving fancy waits, Like Peter's angel at the gates, The power is theirs to baffle care and pain, To bring the lost world back, and make it theirs again! XII. What lack of goodly company, When masters of the ancient lyre Obey my call, and trace for me Their words of mingled tears and fire! I talk with Bacon, grave and wise, I read the world with Pascal's eyes; And priest and sage, with solemn brows austere, And poets, garland-bound, the Lords of Thought, draw near. XIII. Methinks, O friend, I hear thee say, "In vain the human heart we mock; Bring living guests who love the day, Not ghosts who fly at crow of cock! The herbs we share with flesh and blood Are better than ambrosial food With laurelled shades." I grant it, nothing loath, But doubly blest is he who can partake of both. XIV. He who might Plato's banquet grace, Have I not seen before me sit, And watched his puritanic face, With more than Eastern wisdom lit? Shrewd mystic! who, upon the back Of his Poor Richard's Almanac, Writing the Sufi's song, the Gentoo's dream, Links Manu's age of thought to Fulton's age of steam! XV. Here too, of answering love secure, Have I not welcomed to my hearth The gentle pilgrim troubadour, Whose songs have girdled half the earth; Whose pages, like the magic mat Whereon the Eastern lover sat, Have borne me over Rhine-land's purple vines, And Nubia's tawny sands, and Phrygia's mountain pines! XVI. And he, who to the lettered wealth Of ages adds the lore unpriced, The wisdom and the moral health, The ethics of the school of Christ; The statesman to his holy trust, As the Athenian archon, just, Struck down, exiled like him for truth alone, Has he not graced my home with beauty all his own? XVII. What greetings smile, what farewells wave, What loved ones enter and depart! The good, the beautiful, the brave, The Heaven-lent treasures of the heart! How conscious seems the frozen sod And beechen slope whereon they trod The oak-leaves rustle, and the dry grass bends Beneath the shadowy feet of lost or absent friends. XVIII. Then ask not why to these bleak hills I cling, as clings the tufted moss, To bear the winter's lingering chills, The mocking spring's perpetual loss. I dream of lands where summer smiles, And soft winds blow from spicy isles, But scarce would Ceylon's breath of flowers be sweet, Could I not feel thy soil, New England, at my feet! XIX. At times I long for gentler skies, And bathe in dreams of softer air, But homesick tears would fill the eyes That saw the Cross without the Bear. The pine must whisper to the palm, The north-wind break the tropic calm; And with the dreamy languor of the Line, The North's keen virtue blend, and strength to beauty join. XX. Better to stem with heart and hand The roaring tide of life, than lie, Unmindful, on its flowery strand, Of God's occasions drifting by Better with naked nerve to bear The needles of this goading air, Than, in the lap of sensual ease, forego The godlike power to do, the godlike aim to know. XXI. Home of my heart! to me more fair Than gay Versailles or Windsor's halls, The painted, shingly town-house where The freeman's vote for Freedom falls! The simple roof where prayer is made, Than Gothic groin and colonnade; The living temple of the heart of man, Than Rome's sky-mocking vault, or many-spired Milan! XXII. More dear thy equal village schools, Where rich and poor the Bible read, Than classic halls where Priestcraft rules, And Learning wears the chains of Creed; Thy glad Thanksgiving, gathering in The scattered sheaves of home and kin, Than the mad license ushering Lenten pains, Or holidays of slaves who laugh and dance in chains. XXIII. And sweet homes nestle in these dales, And perch along these wooded swells; And, blest beyond Arcadian vales, They hear the sound of Sabbath bells! Here dwells no perfect man sublime, Nor woman winged before her time, But with the faults and follies of the race, Old home-bred virtues hold their not unhonored place. XXIV. Here manhood struggles for the sake Of mother, sister, daughter, wife, The graces and the loves which make The music of the march of life; And woman, in her daily round Of duty, walks on holy ground. No unpaid menial tills the soil, nor here Is the bad lesson learned at human rights to sneer. XXV. Then let the icy north-wind blow The trumpets of the coming storm, To arrowy sleet and blinding snow Yon slanting lines of rain transform. Young hearts shall hail the drifted cold, As gayly as I did of old; And I, who watch them through the frosty pane, Unenvious, live in them my boyhood o'er again. XXVI. And I will trust that He who heeds The life that hides in mead and wold, Who hangs yon alder's crimson beads, And stains these mosses green and gold, Will still, as He hath done, incline His gracious care to me and mine; Grant what we ask aright, from wrong debar, And, as the earth grows dark, make brighter every star! XXVII. I have not seen, I may not see, My hopes for man take form in fact, But God will give the victory In due time; in that faith I act. And lie who sees the future sure, The baffling present may endure, And bless, meanwhile, the unseen Hand that leads The heart's desires beyond the halting step of deeds. XXVIII. And thou, my song, I send thee forth, Where harsher songs of mine have flown; Go, find a place at home and hearth Where'er thy singer's name is known; Revive for him the kindly thought Of friends; and they who love him not, Touched by some strain of thine, perchance may take The hand he proffers all, and thank him for thy sake. 1857. THE FIRST FLOWERS For ages on our river borders, These tassels in their tawny bloom, And willowy studs of downy silver, Have prophesied of Spring to come. For ages have the unbound waters Smiled on them from their pebbly hem, And the clear carol of the robin And song of bluebird welcomed them. But never yet from smiling river, Or song of early bird, have they Been greeted with a gladder welcome Than whispers from my heart to-day. They break the spell of cold and darkness, The weary watch of sleepless pain; And from my heart, as from the river, The ice of winter melts again. Thanks, Mary! for this wild-wood token Of Freya's footsteps drawing near; Almost, as in the rune of Asgard, The growing of the grass I hear. It is as if the pine-trees called me From ceiled room and silent books, To see the dance of woodland shadows, And hear the song of April brooks! As in the old Teutonic ballad Of Odenwald live bird and tree, Together live in bloom and music, I blend in song thy flowers and thee. Earth's rocky tablets bear forever The dint of rain and small bird's track Who knows but that my idle verses May leave some trace by Merrimac! The bird that trod the mellow layers Of the young earth is sought in vain; The cloud is gone that wove the sandstone, From God's design, with threads of rain! So, when this fluid age we live in Shall stiffen round my careless rhyme, Who made the vagrant tracks may puzzle The savants of the coming time; And, following out their dim suggestions, Some idly-curious hand may draw My doubtful portraiture, as Cuvier Drew fish and bird from fin and claw. And maidens in the far-off twilights, Singing my words to breeze and stream, Shall wonder if the old-time Mary Were real, or the rhymer's dream! 1st 3d mo., 1857. THE OLD BURYING-GROUND. Our vales are sweet with fern and rose, Our hills are maple-crowned; But not from them our fathers chose The village burying-ground. The dreariest spot in all the land To Death they set apart; With scanty grace from Nature's hand, And none from that of Art. A winding wall of mossy stone, Frost-flung and broken, lines A lonesome acre thinly grown With grass and wandering vines. Without the wall a birch-tree shows Its drooped and tasselled head; Within, a stag-horned sumach grows, Fern-leafed, with spikes of red. There, sheep that graze the neighboring plain Like white ghosts come and go, The farm-horse drags his fetlock chain, The cow-bell tinkles slow. Low moans the river from its bed, The distant pines reply; Like mourners shrinking from the dead, They stand apart and sigh. Unshaded smites the summer sun, Unchecked the winter blast; The school-girl learns the place to shun, With glances backward cast. For thus our fathers testified, That he might read who ran, The emptiness of human pride, The nothingness of man. They dared not plant the grave with flowers, Nor dress the funeral sod, Where, with a love as deep as ours, They left their dead with God. The hard and thorny path they kept From beauty turned aside; Nor missed they over those who slept The grace to life denied. Yet still the wilding flowers would blow, The golden leaves would fall, The seasons come, the seasons go, And God be good to all. Above the graves the' blackberry hung In bloom and green its wreath, And harebells swung as if they rung The chimes of peace beneath. The beauty Nature loves to share, The gifts she hath for all, The common light, the common air, O'ercrept the graveyard's wall. It knew the glow of eventide, The sunrise and the noon, And glorified and sanctified It slept beneath the moon. With flowers or snow-flakes for its sod, Around the seasons ran, And evermore the love of God Rebuked the fear of man. We dwell with fears on either hand, Within a daily strife, And spectral problems waiting stand Before the gates of life. The doubts we vainly seek to solve, The truths we know, are one; The known and nameless stars revolve Around the Central Sun. And if we reap as we have sown, And take the dole we deal, The law of pain is love alone, The wounding is to heal. Unharmed from change to change we glide, We fall as in our dreams; The far-off terror at our side A smiling angel seems. Secure on God's all-tender heart Alike rest great and small; Why fear to lose our little part, When He is pledged for all? O fearful heart and troubled brain Take hope and strength from this,-- That Nature never hints in vain, Nor prophesies amiss. Her wild birds sing the same sweet stave, Her lights and airs are given Alike to playground and the grave; And over both is Heaven. 1858 THE PALM-TREE. Is it the palm, the cocoa-palm, On the Indian Sea, by the isles of balm? Or is it a ship in the breezeless calm? A ship whose keel is of palm beneath, Whose ribs of palm have a palm-bark sheath, And a rudder of palm it steereth with. Branches of palm are its spars and rails, Fibres of palm are its woven sails, And the rope is of palm that idly trails! What does the good ship bear so well? The cocoa-nut with its stony shell, And the milky sap of its inner cell. What are its jars, so smooth and fine, But hollowed nuts, filled with oil and wine, And the cabbage that ripens under the Line? Who smokes his nargileh, cool and calm? The master, whose cunning and skill could charm Cargo and ship from the bounteous palm. In the cabin he sits on a palm-mat soft, From a beaker of palm his drink is quaffed, And a palm-thatch shields from the sun aloft! His dress is woven of palmy strands, And he holds a palm-leaf scroll in his hands, Traced with the Prophet's wise commands! The turban folded about his head Was daintily wrought of the palm-leaf braid, And the fan that cools him of palm was made. Of threads of palm was the carpet spun Whereon he kneels when the day is done, And the foreheads of Islam are bowed as one! To him the palm is a gift divine, Wherein all uses of man combine,-- House, and raiment, and food, and wine! And, in the hour of his great release, His need of the palm shall only cease With the shroud wherein he lieth in peace. "Allah il Allah!" he sings his psalm, On the Indian Sea, by the isles of balm; "Thanks to Allah who gives the palm!" 1858. THE RIVER PATH. No bird-song floated down the hill, The tangled bank below was still; No rustle from the birchen stem, No ripple from the water's hem. The dusk of twilight round us grew, We felt the falling of the dew; For, from us, ere the day was done, The wooded hills shut out the sun. But on the river's farther side We saw the hill-tops glorified,-- A tender glow, exceeding fair, A dream of day without its glare. With us the damp, the chill, the gloom With them the sunset's rosy bloom; While dark, through willowy vistas seen, The river rolled in shade between. From out the darkness where we trod, We gazed upon those bills of God, Whose light seemed not of moon or sun. We spake not, but our thought was one. We paused, as if from that bright shore Beckoned our dear ones gone before; And stilled our beating hearts to hear The voices lost to mortal ear! Sudden our pathway turned from night; The hills swung open to the light; Through their green gates the sunshine showed, A long, slant splendor downward flowed. Down glade and glen and bank it rolled; It bridged the shaded stream with gold; And, borne on piers of mist, allied The shadowy with the sunlit side! "So," prayed we, "when our feet draw near The river dark, with mortal fear, "And the night cometh chill with dew, O Father! let Thy light break through! "So let the hills of doubt divide, So bridge with faith the sunless tide! "So let the eyes that fail on earth On Thy eternal hills look forth; "And in Thy beckoning angels know The dear ones whom we loved below!" 1880. MOUNTAIN PICTURES. I. FRANCONIA FROM THE PEMIGEWASSET Once more, O Mountains of the North, unveil Your brows, and lay your cloudy mantles by And once more, ere the eyes that seek ye fail, Uplift against the blue walls of the sky Your mighty shapes, and let the sunshine weave Its golden net-work in your belting woods, Smile down in rainbows from your falling floods, And on your kingly brows at morn and eve Set crowns of fire! So shall my soul receive Haply the secret of your calm and strength, Your unforgotten beauty interfuse My common life, your glorious shapes and hues And sun-dropped splendors at my bidding come, Loom vast through dreams, and stretch in billowy length From the sea-level of my lowland home! They rise before me! Last night's thunder-gust Roared not in vain: for where its lightnings thrust Their tongues of fire, the great peaks seem so near, Burned clean of mist, so starkly bold and clear, I almost pause the wind in the pines to hear, The loose rock's fall, the steps of browsing deer. The clouds that shattered on yon slide-worn walls And splintered on the rocks their spears of rain Have set in play a thousand waterfalls, Making the dusk and silence of the woods Glad with the laughter of the chasing floods, And luminous with blown spray and silver gleams, While, in the vales below, the dry-lipped streams Sing to the freshened meadow-lands again. So, let me hope, the battle-storm that beats The land with hail and fire may pass away With its spent thunders at the break of day, Like last night's clouds, and leave, as it retreats, A greener earth and fairer sky behind, Blown crystal-clear by Freedom's Northern wind! II. MONADNOCK FROM WACHUSET. I would I were a painter, for the sake Of a sweet picture, and of her who led, A fitting guide, with reverential tread, Into that mountain mystery. First a lake Tinted with sunset; next the wavy lines Of far receding hills; and yet more far, Monadnock lifting from his night of pines His rosy forehead to the evening star. Beside us, purple-zoned, Wachuset laid His head against the West, whose warm light made His aureole; and o'er him, sharp and clear, Like a shaft of lightning in mid-launching stayed, A single level cloud-line, shone upon By the fierce glances of the sunken sun, Menaced the darkness with its golden spear! So twilight deepened round us. Still and black The great woods climbed the mountain at our back; And on their skirts, where yet the lingering day On the shorn greenness of the clearing lay, The brown old farm-house like a bird's-nest hung. With home-life sounds the desert air was stirred The bleat of sheep along the hill we heard, The bucket plashing in the cool, sweet well, The pasture-bars that clattered as they fell; Dogs barked, fowls fluttered, cattle lowed; the gate Of the barn-yard creaked beneath the merry weight Of sun-brown children, listening, while they swung, The welcome sound of supper-call to hear; And down the shadowy lane, in tinklings clear, The pastoral curfew of the cow-bell rung. Thus soothed and pleased, our backward path we took, Praising the farmer's home. He only spake, Looking into the sunset o'er the lake, Like one to whom the far-off is most near: "Yes, most folks think it has a pleasant look; I love it for my good old mother's sake, Who lived and died here in the peace of God!" The lesson of his words we pondered o'er, As silently we turned the eastern flank Of the mountain, where its shadow deepest sank, Doubling the night along our rugged road: We felt that man was more than his abode,-- The inward life than Nature's raiment more; And the warm sky, the sundown-tinted hill, The forest and the lake, seemed dwarfed and dim Before the saintly soul, whose human will Meekly in the Eternal footsteps trod, Making her homely toil and household ways An earthly echo of the song of praise Swelling from angel lips and harps of seraphim. 1862. THE VANISHERS. Sweetest of all childlike dreams In the simple Indian lore Still to me the legend seems Of the shapes who flit before. Flitting, passing, seen and gone, Never reached nor found at rest, Baffling search, but beckoning on To the Sunset of the Blest. From the clefts of mountain rocks, Through the dark of lowland firs, Flash the eyes and flow the locks Of the mystic Vanishers! And the fisher in his skiff, And the hunter on the moss, Hear their call from cape and cliff, See their hands the birch-leaves toss. Wistful, longing, through the green Twilight of the clustered pines, In their faces rarely seen Beauty more than mortal shines. Fringed with gold their mantles flow On the slopes of westering knolls; In the wind they whisper low Of the Sunset Land of Souls. Doubt who may, O friend of mine! Thou and I have seen them too; On before with beck and sign Still they glide, and we pursue. More than clouds of purple trail In the gold of setting day; More than gleams of wing or sail Beckon from the sea-mist gray. Glimpses of immortal youth, Gleams and glories seen and flown, Far-heard voices sweet with truth, Airs from viewless Eden blown; Beauty that eludes our grasp, Sweetness that transcends our taste, Loving hands we may not clasp, Shining feet that mock our haste; Gentle eyes we closed below, Tender voices heard once more, Smile and call us, as they go On and onward, still before. Guided thus, O friend of mine Let us walk our little way, Knowing by each beckoning sign That we are not quite astray. Chase we still, with baffled feet, Smiling eye and waving hand, Sought and seeker soon shall meet, Lost and found, in Sunset Land. 1864. THE PAGEANT. A sound as if from bells of silver, Or elfin cymbals smitten clear, Through the frost-pictured panes I hear. A brightness which outshines the morning, A splendor brooking no delay, Beckons and tempts my feet away. I leave the trodden village highway For virgin snow-paths glimmering through A jewelled elm-tree avenue; Where, keen against the walls of sapphire, The gleaming tree-bolls, ice-embossed, Hold up their chandeliers of frost. I tread in Orient halls enchanted, I dream the Saga's dream of caves Gem-lit beneath the North Sea waves! I walk the land of Eldorado, I touch its mimic garden bowers, Its silver leaves and diamond flowers! The flora of the mystic mine-world Around me lifts on crystal stems The petals of its clustered gems! What miracle of weird transforming In this wild work of frost and light, This glimpse of glory infinite! This foregleam of the Holy City Like that to him of Patmos given, The white bride coming down from heaven! How flash the ranked and mail-clad alders, Through what sharp-glancing spears of reeds The brook its muffled water leads! Yon maple, like the bush of Horeb, Burns unconsumed: a white, cold fire Rays out from every grassy spire. Each slender rush and spike of mullein, Low laurel shrub and drooping fern, Transfigured, blaze where'er I turn. How yonder Ethiopian hemlock Crowned with his glistening circlet stands! What jewels light his swarthy hands! Here, where the forest opens southward, Between its hospitable pines, As through a door, the warm sun shines. The jewels loosen on the branches, And lightly, as the soft winds blow, Fall, tinkling, on the ice below. And through the clashing of their cymbals I hear the old familiar fall Of water down the rocky wall, Where, from its wintry prison breaking, In dark and silence hidden long, The brook repeats its summer song. One instant flashing in the sunshine, Keen as a sabre from its sheath, Then lost again the ice beneath. I hear the rabbit lightly leaping, The foolish screaming of the jay, The chopper's axe-stroke far away; The clamor of some neighboring barn-yard, The lazy cock's belated crow, Or cattle-tramp in crispy snow. And, as in some enchanted forest The lost knight hears his comrades sing, And, near at hand, their bridles ring,-- So welcome I these sounds and voices, These airs from far-off summer blown, This life that leaves me not alone. For the white glory overawes me; The crystal terror of the seer Of Chebar's vision blinds me here. Rebuke me not, O sapphire heaven! Thou stainless earth, lay not on me, Thy keen reproach of purity, If, in this August presence-chamber, I sigh for summer's leaf-green gloom And warm airs thick with odorous bloom! Let the strange frost-work sink and crumble, And let the loosened tree-boughs swing, Till all their bells of silver ring. Shine warmly down, thou sun of noontime, On this chill pageant, melt and move The winter's frozen heart with love. And, soft and low, thou wind south-blowing, Breathe through a veil of tenderest haze Thy prophecy of summer days. Come with thy green relief of promise, And to this dead, cold splendor bring The living jewels of the spring! 1869. THE PRESSED GENTIAN. The time of gifts has come again, And, on my northern window-pane, Outlined against the day's brief light, A Christmas token hangs in sight. The wayside travellers, as they pass, Mark the gray disk of clouded glass; And the dull blankness seems, perchance, Folly to their wise ignorance. They cannot from their outlook see The perfect grace it hath for me; For there the flower, whose fringes through The frosty breath of autumn blew, Turns from without its face of bloom To the warm tropic of my room, As fair as when beside its brook The hue of bending skies it took. So from the trodden ways of earth, Seem some sweet souls who veil their worth, And offer to the careless glance The clouding gray of circumstance. They blossom best where hearth-fires burn, To loving eyes alone they turn The flowers of inward grace, that hide Their beauty from the world outside. But deeper meanings come to me, My half-immortal flower, from thee! Man judges from a partial view, None ever yet his brother knew; The Eternal Eye that sees the whole May better read the darkened soul, And find, to outward sense denied, The flower upon its inmost side 1872. A MYSTERY. The river hemmed with leaning trees Wound through its meadows green; A low, blue line of mountains showed The open pines between. One sharp, tall peak above them all Clear into sunlight sprang I saw the river of my dreams, The mountains that I sang! No clue of memory led me on, But well the ways I knew; A feeling of familiar things With every footstep grew. Not otherwise above its crag Could lean the blasted pine; Not otherwise the maple hold Aloft its red ensign. So up the long and shorn foot-hills The mountain road should creep; So, green and low, the meadow fold Its red-haired kine asleep. The river wound as it should wind; Their place the mountains took; The white torn fringes of their clouds Wore no unwonted look. Yet ne'er before that river's rim Was pressed by feet of mine, Never before mine eyes had crossed That broken mountain line. A presence, strange at once and known, Walked with me as my guide; The skirts of some forgotten life Trailed noiseless at my side. Was it a dim-remembered dream? Or glimpse through aeons old? The secret which the mountains kept The river never told. But from the vision ere it passed A tender hope I drew, And, pleasant as a dawn of spring, The thought within me grew, That love would temper every change, And soften all surprise, And, misty with the dreams of earth, The hills of Heaven arise. 1873. A SEA DREAM. We saw the slow tides go and come, The curving surf-lines lightly drawn, The gray rocks touched with tender bloom Beneath the fresh-blown rose of dawn. We saw in richer sunsets lost The sombre pomp of showery noons; And signalled spectral sails that crossed The weird, low light of rising moons. On stormy eves from cliff and head We saw the white spray tossed and spurned; While over all, in gold and red, Its face of fire the lighthouse turned. The rail-car brought its daily crowds, Half curious, half indifferent, Like passing sails or floating clouds, We saw them as they came and went. But, one calm morning, as we lay And watched the mirage-lifted wall Of coast, across the dreamy bay, And heard afar the curlew call, And nearer voices, wild or tame, Of airy flock and childish throng, Up from the water's edge there came Faint snatches of familiar song. Careless we heard the singer's choice Of old and common airs; at last The tender pathos of his voice In one low chanson held us fast. A song that mingled joy and pain, And memories old and sadly sweet; While, timing to its minor strain, The waves in lapsing cadence beat. . . . . . The waves are glad in breeze and sun; The rocks are fringed with foam; I walk once more a haunted shore, A stranger, yet at home, A land of dreams I roam. Is this the wind, the soft sea wind That stirred thy locks of brown? Are these the rocks whose mosses knew The trail of thy light gown, Where boy and girl sat down? I see the gray fort's broken wall, The boats that rock below; And, out at sea, the passing sails We saw so long ago Rose-red in morning's glow. The freshness of the early time On every breeze is blown; As glad the sea, as blue the sky,-- The change is ours alone; The saddest is my own. A stranger now, a world-worn man, Is he who bears my name; But thou, methinks, whose mortal life Immortal youth became, Art evermore the same. Thou art not here, thou art not there, Thy place I cannot see; I only know that where thou art The blessed angels be, And heaven is glad for thee. Forgive me if the evil years Have left on me their sign; Wash out, O soul so beautiful, The many stains of mine In tears of love divine! I could not look on thee and live, If thou wert by my side; The vision of a shining one, The white and heavenly bride, Is well to me denied. But turn to me thy dear girl-face Without the angel's crown, The wedded roses of thy lips, Thy loose hair rippling down In waves of golden brown. Look forth once more through space and time, And let thy sweet shade fall In tenderest grace of soul and form On memory's frescoed wall, A shadow, and yet all! Draw near, more near, forever dear! Where'er I rest or roam, Or in the city's crowded streets, Or by the blown sea foam, The thought of thee is home! . . . . . At breakfast hour the singer read The city news, with comment wise, Like one who felt the pulse of trade Beneath his finger fall and rise. His look, his air, his curt speech, told The man of action, not of books, To whom the corners made in gold And stocks were more than seaside nooks. Of life beneath the life confessed His song had hinted unawares; Of flowers in traffic's ledgers pressed, Of human hearts in bulls and bears. But eyes in vain were turned to watch That face so hard and shrewd and strong; And ears in vain grew sharp to catch The meaning of that morning song. In vain some sweet-voiced querist sought To sound him, leaving as she came; Her baited album only caught A common, unromantic name. No word betrayed the mystery fine, That trembled on the singer's tongue; He came and went, and left no sign Behind him save the song he sung. 1874. HAZEL BLOSSOMS. The summer warmth has left the sky, The summer songs have died away; And, withered, in the footpaths lie The fallen leaves, but yesterday With ruby and with topaz gay. The grass is browning on the hills; No pale, belated flowers recall The astral fringes of the rills, And drearily the dead vines fall, Frost-blackened, from the roadside wall. Yet through the gray and sombre wood, Against the dusk of fir and pine, Last of their floral sisterhood, The hazel's yellow blossoms shine, The tawny gold of Afric's mine! Small beauty hath my unsung flower, For spring to own or summer hail; But, in the season's saddest hour, To skies that weep and winds that wail Its glad surprisals never fail. O days grown cold! O life grown old No rose of June may bloom again; But, like the hazel's twisted gold, Through early frost and latter rain Shall hints of summer-time remain. And as within the hazel's bough A gift of mystic virtue dwells, That points to golden ores below, And in dry desert places tells Where flow unseen the cool, sweet wells, So, in the wise Diviner's hand, Be mine the hazel's grateful part To feel, beneath a thirsty land, The living waters thrill and start, The beating of the rivulet's heart! Sufficeth me the gift to light With latest bloom the dark, cold days; To call some hidden spring to sight That, in these dry and dusty ways, Shall sing its pleasant song of praise. O Love! the hazel-wand may fail, But thou canst lend the surer spell, That, passing over Baca's vale, Repeats the old-time miracle, And makes the desert-land a well. 1874. SUNSET ON THE BEARCAMP. A gold fringe on the purpling hem Of hills the river runs, As down its long, green valley falls The last of summer's suns. Along its tawny gravel-bed Broad-flowing, swift, and still, As if its meadow levels felt The hurry of the hill, Noiseless between its banks of green From curve to curve it slips; The drowsy maple-shadows rest Like fingers on its lips. A waif from Carroll's wildest hills, Unstoried and unknown; The ursine legend of its name Prowls on its banks alone. Yet flowers as fair its slopes adorn As ever Yarrow knew, Or, under rainy Irish skies, By Spenser's Mulla grew; And through the gaps of leaning trees Its mountain cradle shows The gold against the amethyst, The green against the rose. Touched by a light that hath no name, A glory never sung, Aloft on sky and mountain wall Are God's great pictures hung. How changed the summits vast and old! No longer granite-browed, They melt in rosy mist; the rock Is softer than the cloud; The valley holds its breath; no leaf Of all its elms is twirled The silence of eternity Seems falling on the world. The pause before the breaking seals Of mystery is this; Yon miracle-play of night and day Makes dumb its witnesses. What unseen altar crowns the hills That reach up stair on stair? What eyes look through, what white wings fan These purple veils of air? What Presence from the heavenly heights To those of earth stoops down? Not vainly Hellas dreamed of gods On Ida's snowy crown! Slow fades the vision of the sky, The golden water pales, And over all the valley-land A gray-winged vapor sails. I go the common way of all; The sunset fires will burn, The flowers will blow, the river flow, When I no more return. No whisper from the mountain pine Nor lapsing stream shall tell The stranger, treading where I tread, Of him who loved them well. But beauty seen is never lost, God's colors all are fast; The glory of this sunset heaven Into my soul has passed, A sense of gladness unconfined To mortal date or clime; As the soul liveth, it shall live Beyond the years of time. Beside the mystic asphodels Shall bloom the home-born flowers, And new horizons flush and glow With sunset hues of ours. Farewell! these smiling hills must wear Too soon their wintry frown, And snow-cold winds from off them shake The maple's red leaves down. But I shall see a summer sun Still setting broad and low; The mountain slopes shall blush and bloom, The golden water flow. A lover's claim is mine on all I see to have and hold,-- The rose-light of perpetual hills, And sunsets never cold! 1876 THE SEEKING OF THE WATERFALL. They left their home of summer ease Beneath the lowland's sheltering trees, To seek, by ways unknown to all, The promise of the waterfall. Some vague, faint rumor to the vale Had crept--perchance a hunter's tale-- Of its wild mirth of waters lost On the dark woods through which it tossed. Somewhere it laughed and sang; somewhere Whirled in mad dance its misty hair; But who had raised its veil, or seen The rainbow skirts of that Undine? They sought it where the mountain brook Its swift way to the valley took; Along the rugged slope they clomb, Their guide a thread of sound and foam. Height after height they slowly won; The fiery javelins of the sun Smote the bare ledge; the tangled shade With rock and vine their steps delayed. But, through leaf-openings, now and then They saw the cheerful homes of men, And the great mountains with their wall Of misty purple girdling all. The leaves through which the glad winds blew Shared the wild dance the waters knew; And where the shadows deepest fell The wood-thrush rang his silver bell. Fringing the stream, at every turn Swung low the waving fronds of fern; From stony cleft and mossy sod Pale asters sprang, and golden-rod. And still the water sang the sweet, Glad song that stirred its gliding feet, And found in rock and root the keys Of its beguiling melodies. Beyond, above, its signals flew Of tossing foam the birch-trees through; Now seen, now lost, but baffling still The weary seekers' slackening will. Each called to each: "Lo here! Lo there! Its white scarf flutters in the air!" They climbed anew; the vision fled, To beckon higher overhead. So toiled they up the mountain-slope With faint and ever fainter hope; With faint and fainter voice the brook Still bade them listen, pause, and look. Meanwhile below the day was done; Above the tall peaks saw the sun Sink, beam-shorn, to its misty set Behind the hills of violet. "Here ends our quest!" the seekers cried, "The brook and rumor both have lied! The phantom of a waterfall Has led us at its beck and call." But one, with years grown wiser, said "So, always baffled, not misled, We follow where before us runs The vision of the shining ones. "Not where they seem their signals fly, Their voices while we listen die; We cannot keep, however fleet, The quick time of their winged feet. "From youth to age unresting stray These kindly mockers in our way; Yet lead they not, the baffling elves, To something better than themselves? "Here, though unreached the goal we sought, Its own reward our toil has brought: The winding water's sounding rush, The long note of the hermit thrush, "The turquoise lakes, the glimpse of pond And river track, and, vast, beyond Broad meadows belted round with pines, The grand uplift of mountain lines! "What matter though we seek with pain The garden of the gods in vain, If lured thereby we climb to greet Some wayside blossom Eden-sweet? "To seek is better than to gain, The fond hope dies as we attain; Life's fairest things are those which seem, The best is that of which we dream. "Then let us trust our waterfall Still flashes down its rocky wall, With rainbow crescent curved across Its sunlit spray from moss to moss. "And we, forgetful of our pain, In thought shall seek it oft again; Shall see this aster-blossomed sod, This sunshine of the golden-rod, "And haply gain, through parting boughs, Grand glimpses of great mountain brows Cloud-turbaned, and the sharp steel sheen Of lakes deep set in valleys green. "So failure wins; the consequence Of loss becomes its recompense; And evermore the end shall tell The unreached ideal guided well. "Our sweet illusions only die Fulfilling love's sure prophecy; And every wish for better things An undreamed beauty nearer brings. "For fate is servitor of love; Desire and hope and longing prove The secret of immortal youth, And Nature cheats us into truth. "O kind allurers, wisely sent, Beguiling with benign intent, Still move us, through divine unrest, To seek the loveliest and the best! "Go with us when our souls go free, And, in the clear, white light to be, Add unto Heaven's beatitude The old delight of seeking good!" 1878. THE TRAILING ARBUTUS I wandered lonely where the pine-trees made Against the bitter East their barricade, And, guided by its sweet Perfume, I found, within a narrow dell, The trailing spring flower tinted like a shell Amid dry leaves and mosses at my feet. From under dead boughs, for whose loss the pines Moaned ceaseless overhead, the blossoming vines Lifted their glad surprise, While yet the bluebird smoothed in leafless trees His feathers ruffled by the chill sea-breeze, And snow-drifts lingered under April skies. As, pausing, o'er the lonely flower I bent, I thought of lives thus lowly, clogged and pent, Which yet find room, Through care and cumber, coldness and decay, To lend a sweetness to the ungenial day And make the sad earth happier for their bloom. 1879. ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER. This name in some parts of Europe is given to the season we call Indian Summer, in honor of the good St. Martin. The title of the poem was suggested by the fact that the day it refers to was the exact date of that set apart to the Saint, the 11th of November. Though flowers have perished at the touch Of Frost, the early comer, I hail the season loved so much, The good St. Martin's summer. O gracious morn, with rose-red dawn, And thin moon curving o'er it! The old year's darling, latest born, More loved than all before it! How flamed the sunrise through the pines! How stretched the birchen shadows, Braiding in long, wind-wavered lines The westward sloping meadows! The sweet day, opening as a flower Unfolds its petals tender, Renews for us at noontide's hour The summer's tempered splendor. The birds are hushed; alone the wind, That through the woodland searches, The red-oak's lingering leaves can find, And yellow plumes of larches. But still the balsam-breathing pine Invites no thought of sorrow, No hint of loss from air like wine The earth's content can borrow. The summer and the winter here Midway a truce are holding, A soft, consenting atmosphere Their tents of peace enfolding. The silent woods, the lonely hills, Rise solemn in their gladness; The quiet that the valley fills Is scarcely joy or sadness. How strange! The autumn yesterday In winter's grasp seemed dying; On whirling winds from skies of gray The early snow was flying. And now, while over Nature's mood There steals a soft relenting, I will not mar the present good, Forecasting or lamenting. My autumn time and Nature's hold A dreamy tryst together, And, both grown old, about us fold The golden-tissued weather. I lean my heart against the day To feel its bland caressing; I will not let it pass away Before it leaves its blessing. God's angels come not as of old The Syrian shepherds knew them; In reddening dawns, in sunset gold, And warm noon lights I view them. Nor need there is, in times like this When heaven to earth draws nearer, Of wing or song as witnesses To make their presence clearer. O stream of life, whose swifter flow Is of the end forewarning, Methinks thy sundown afterglow Seems less of night than morning! Old cares grow light; aside I lay The doubts and fears that troubled; The quiet of the happy day Within my soul is doubled. That clouds must veil this fair sunshine Not less a joy I find it; Nor less yon warm horizon line That winter lurks behind it. The mystery of the untried days I close my eyes from reading; His will be done whose darkest ways To light and life are leading! Less drear the winter night shall be, If memory cheer and hearten Its heavy hours with thoughts of thee, Sweet summer of St. Martin! 1880. STORM ON LAKE ASQUAM. A cloud, like that the old-time Hebrew saw On Carmel prophesying rain, began To lift itself o'er wooded Cardigan, Growing and blackening. Suddenly, a flaw Of chill wind menaced; then a strong blast beat Down the long valley's murmuring pines, and woke The noon-dream of the sleeping lake, and broke Its smooth steel mirror at the mountains' feet. Thunderous and vast, a fire-veined darkness swept Over the rough pine-bearded Asquam range; A wraith of tempest, wonderful and strange, From peak to peak the cloudy giant stepped. One moment, as if challenging the storm, Chocorua's tall, defiant sentinel Looked from his watch-tower; then the shadow fell, And the wild rain-drift blotted out his form. And over all the still unhidden sun, Weaving its light through slant-blown veils of rain, Smiled on the trouble, as hope smiles on pain; And, when the tumult and the strife were done, With one foot on the lake and one on land, Framing within his crescent's tinted streak A far-off picture of the Melvin peak, Spent broken clouds the rainbow's angel spanned. 1882. A SUMMER PILGRIMAGE. To kneel before some saintly shrine, To breathe the health of airs divine, Or bathe where sacred rivers flow, The cowled and turbaned pilgrims go. I too, a palmer, take, as they With staff and scallop-shell, my way To feel, from burdening cares and ills, The strong uplifting of the hills. The years are many since, at first, For dreamed-of wonders all athirst, I saw on Winnipesaukee fall The shadow of the mountain wall. Ah! where are they who sailed with me The beautiful island-studded sea? And am I he whose keen surprise Flashed out from such unclouded eyes? Still, when the sun of summer burns, My longing for the hills returns; And northward, leaving at my back The warm vale of the Merrimac, I go to meet the winds of morn, Blown down the hill-gaps, mountain-born, Breathe scent of pines, and satisfy The hunger of a lowland eye. Again I see the day decline Along a ridged horizon line; Touching the hill-tops, as a nun Her beaded rosary, sinks the sun. One lake lies golden, which shall soon Be silver in the rising moon; And one, the crimson of the skies And mountain purple multiplies. With the untroubled quiet blends The distance-softened voice of friends; The girl's light laugh no discord brings To the low song the pine-tree sings; And, not unwelcome, comes the hail Of boyhood from his nearing sail. The human presence breaks no spell, And sunset still is miracle! Calm as the hour, methinks I feel A sense of worship o'er me steal; Not that of satyr-charming Pan, No cult of Nature shaming man, Not Beauty's self, but that which lives And shines through all the veils it weaves,-- Soul of the mountain, lake, and wood, Their witness to the Eternal Good! And if, by fond illusion, here The earth to heaven seems drawing near, And yon outlying range invites To other and serener heights, Scarce hid behind its topmost swell, The shining Mounts Delectable A dream may hint of truth no less Than the sharp light of wakefulness. As through her vale of incense smoke. Of old the spell-rapt priestess spoke, More than her heathen oracle, May not this trance of sunset tell That Nature's forms of loveliness Their heavenly archetypes confess, Fashioned like Israel's ark alone From patterns in the Mount made known? A holier beauty overbroods These fair and faint similitudes; Yet not unblest is he who sees Shadows of God's realities, And knows beyond this masquerade Of shape and color, light and shade, And dawn and set, and wax and wane, Eternal verities remain. O gems of sapphire, granite set! O hills that charmed horizons fret I know how fair your morns can break, In rosy light on isle and lake; How over wooded slopes can run The noonday play of cloud and sun, And evening droop her oriflamme Of gold and red in still Asquam. The summer moons may round again, And careless feet these hills profane; These sunsets waste on vacant eyes The lavish splendor of the skies; Fashion and folly, misplaced here, Sigh for their natural atmosphere, And travelled pride the outlook scorn Of lesser heights than Matterhorn. But let me dream that hill and sky Of unseen beauty prophesy; And in these tinted lakes behold The trailing of the raiment fold Of that which, still eluding gaze, Allures to upward-tending ways, Whose footprints make, wherever found, Our common earth a holy ground. 1883. SWEET FERN. The subtle power in perfume found Nor priest nor sibyl vainly learned; On Grecian shrine or Aztec mound No censer idly burned. That power the old-time worships knew, The Corybantes' frenzied dance, The Pythian priestess swooning through The wonderland of trance. And Nature holds, in wood and field, Her thousand sunlit censers still; To spells of flower and shrub we yield Against or with our will. I climbed a hill path strange and new With slow feet, pausing at each turn; A sudden waft of west wind blew The breath of the sweet fern. That fragrance from my vision swept The alien landscape; in its stead, Up fairer hills of youth I stepped, As light of heart as tread. I saw my boyhood's lakelet shine Once more through rifts of woodland shade; I knew my river's winding line By morning mist betrayed. With me June's freshness, lapsing brook, Murmurs of leaf and bee, the call Of birds, and one in voice and look In keeping with them all. A fern beside the way we went She plucked, and, smiling, held it up, While from her hand the wild, sweet scent I drank as from a cup. O potent witchery of smell! The dust-dry leaves to life return, And she who plucked them owns the spell And lifts her ghostly fern. Or sense or spirit? Who shall say What touch the chord of memory thrills? It passed, and left the August day Ablaze on lonely hills. THE WOOD GIANT From Alton Bay to Sandwich Dome, From Mad to Saco river, For patriarchs of the primal wood We sought with vain endeavor. And then we said: "The giants old Are lost beyond retrieval; This pygmy growth the axe has spared Is not the wood primeval. "Look where we will o'er vale and hill, How idle are our searches For broad-girthed maples, wide-limbed oaks, Centennial pines and birches. "Their tortured limbs the axe and saw Have changed to beams and trestles; They rest in walls, they float on seas, They rot in sunken vessels. "This shorn and wasted mountain land Of underbrush and boulder,-- Who thinks to see its full-grown tree Must live a century older." At last to us a woodland path, To open sunset leading, Revealed the Anakim of pines Our wildest wish exceeding. Alone, the level sun before; Below, the lake's green islands; Beyond, in misty distance dim, The rugged Northern Highlands. Dark Titan on his Sunset Hill Of time and change defiant How dwarfed the common woodland seemed, Before the old-time giant! What marvel that, in simpler days Of the world's early childhood, Men crowned with garlands, gifts, and praise Such monarchs of the wild-wood? That Tyrian maids with flower and song Danced through the hill grove's spaces, And hoary-bearded Druids found In woods their holy places? With somewhat of that Pagan awe With Christian reverence blending, We saw our pine-tree's mighty arms Above our heads extending. We heard his needles' mystic rune, Now rising, and now dying, As erst Dodona's priestess heard The oak leaves prophesying. Was it the half-unconscious moan Of one apart and mateless, The weariness of unshared power, The loneliness of greatness? O dawns and sunsets, lend to him Your beauty and your wonder! Blithe sparrow, sing thy summer song His solemn shadow under! Play lightly on his slender keys, O wind of summer, waking For hills like these the sound of seas On far-off beaches breaking, And let the eagle and the crow Find shelter in his branches, When winds shake down his winter snow In silver avalanches. The brave are braver for their cheer, The strongest need assurance, The sigh of longing makes not less The lesson of endurance. 1885. A DAY. Talk not of sad November, when a day Of warm, glad sunshine fills the sky of noon, And a wind, borrowed from some morn of June, Stirs the brown grasses and the leafless spray. On the unfrosted pool the pillared pines Lay their long shafts of shadow: the small rill, Singing a pleasant song of summer still, A line of silver, down the hill-slope shines. Hushed the bird-voices and the hum of bees, In the thin grass the crickets pipe no more; But still the squirrel hoards his winter store, And drops his nut-shells from the shag-bark trees. Softly the dark green hemlocks whisper: high Above, the spires of yellowing larches show, Where the woodpecker and home-loving crow And jay and nut-hatch winter's threat defy. O gracious beauty, ever new and old! O sights and sounds of nature, doubly dear When the low sunshine warns the closing year Of snow-blown fields and waves of Arctic cold! Close to my heart I fold each lovely thing The sweet day yields; and, not disconsolate, With the calm patience of the woods I wait For leaf and blossom when God gives us Spring! 29th, Eleventh Month, 1886. POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT MEMORIES A beautiful and happy girl, With step as light as summer air, Eyes glad with smiles, and brow of pearl, Shadowed by many a careless curl Of unconfined and flowing hair; A seeming child in everything, Save thoughtful brow and ripening charms, As Nature wears the smile of Spring When sinking into Summer's arms. A mind rejoicing in the light Which melted through its graceful bower, Leaf after leaf, dew-moist and bright, And stainless in its holy white, Unfolding like a morning flower A heart, which, like a fine-toned lute, With every breath of feeling woke, And, even when the tongue was mute, From eye and lip in music spoke. How thrills once more the lengthening chain Of memory, at the thought of thee! Old hopes which long in dust have lain Old dreams, come thronging back again, And boyhood lives again in me; I feel its glow upon my cheek, Its fulness of the heart is mine, As when I leaned to hear thee speak, Or raised my doubtful eye to thine. I hear again thy low replies, I feel thy arm within my own, And timidly again uprise The fringed lids of hazel eyes, With soft brown tresses overblown. Ah! memories of sweet summer eves, Of moonlit wave and willowy way, Of stars and flowers, and dewy leaves, And smiles and tones more dear than they! Ere this, thy quiet eye hath smiled My picture of thy youth to see, When, half a woman, half a child, Thy very artlessness beguiled, And folly's self seemed wise in thee; I too can smile, when o'er that hour The lights of memory backward stream, Yet feel the while that manhood's power Is vainer than my boyhood's dream. Years have passed on, and left their trace, Of graver care and deeper thought; And unto me the calm, cold face Of manhood, and to thee the grace Of woman's pensive beauty brought. More wide, perchance, for blame than praise, The school-boy's humble name has flown; Thine, in the green and quiet ways Of unobtrusive goodness known. And wider yet in thought and deed Diverge our pathways, one in youth; Thine the Genevan's sternest creed, While answers to my spirit's need The Derby dalesman's simple truth. For thee, the priestly rite and prayer, And holy day, and solemn psalm; For me, the silent reverence where My brethren gather, slow and calm. Yet hath thy spirit left on me An impress Time has worn not out, And something of myself in thee, A shadow from the past, I see, Lingering, even yet, thy way about; Not wholly can the heart unlearn That lesson of its better hours, Not yet has Time's dull footstep worn To common dust that path of flowers. Thus, while at times before our eyes The shadows melt, and fall apart, And, smiling through them, round us lies The warm light of our morning skies,-- The Indian Summer of the heart! In secret sympathies of mind, In founts of feeling which retain Their pure, fresh flow, we yet may find Our early dreams not wholly vain 1841. RAPHAEL. Suggested by the portrait of Raphael, at the age of fifteen. I shall not soon forget that sight The glow of Autumn's westering day, A hazy warmth, a dreamy light, On Raphael's picture lay. It was a simple print I saw, The fair face of a musing boy; Yet, while I gazed, a sense of awe Seemed blending with my joy. A simple print,--the graceful flow Of boyhood's soft and wavy hair, And fresh young lip and cheek, and brow Unmarked and clear, were there. Yet through its sweet and calm repose I saw the inward spirit shine; It was as if before me rose The white veil of a shrine. As if, as Gothland's sage has told, The hidden life, the man within, Dissevered from its frame and mould, By mortal eye were seen. Was it the lifting of that eye, The waving of that pictured hand? Loose as a cloud-wreath on the sky, I saw the walls expand. The narrow room had vanished,--space, Broad, luminous, remained alone, Through which all hues and shapes of grace And beauty looked or shone. Around the mighty master came The marvels which his pencil wrought, Those miracles of power whose fame Is wide as human thought. There drooped thy more than mortal face, O Mother, beautiful and mild Enfolding in one dear embrace Thy Saviour and thy Child! The rapt brow of the Desert John; The awful glory of that day When all the Father's brightness shone Through manhood's veil of clay. And, midst gray prophet forms, and wild Dark visions of the days of old, How sweetly woman's beauty smiled Through locks of brown and gold! There Fornarina's fair young face Once more upon her lover shone, Whose model of an angel's grace He borrowed from her own. Slow passed that vision from my view, But not the lesson which it taught; The soft, calm shadows which it threw Still rested on my thought: The truth, that painter, bard, and sage, Even in Earth's cold and changeful clime, Plant for their deathless heritage The fruits and flowers of time. We shape ourselves the joy or fear Of which the coming life is made, And fill our Future's atmosphere With sunshine or with shade. The tissue of the Life to be We weave with colors all our own, And in the field of Destiny We reap as we have sown. Still shall the soul around it call The shadows which it gathered here, And, painted on the eternal wall, The Past shall reappear. Think ye the notes of holy song On Milton's tuneful ear have died? Think ye that Raphael's angel throng Has vanished from his side? Oh no!--We live our life again; Or warmly touched, or coldly dim, The pictures of the Past remain,--- Man's works shall follow him! 1842. EGO. WRITTEN IN THE ALBUM OF A FRIEND. On page of thine I cannot trace The cold and heartless commonplace, A statue's fixed and marble grace. For ever as these lines I penned, Still with the thought of thee will blend That of some loved and common friend, Who in life's desert track has made His pilgrim tent with mine, or strayed Beneath the same remembered shade. And hence my pen unfettered moves In freedom which the heart approves, The negligence which friendship loves. And wilt thou prize my poor gift less For simple air and rustic dress, And sign of haste and carelessness? Oh, more than specious counterfeit Of sentiment or studied wit, A heart like thine should value it. Yet half I fear my gift will be Unto thy book, if not to thee, Of more than doubtful courtesy. A banished name from Fashion's sphere, A lay unheard of Beauty's ear, Forbid, disowned,--what do they here? Upon my ear not all in vain Came the sad captive's clanking chain, The groaning from his bed of pain. And sadder still, I saw the woe Which only wounded spirits know When Pride's strong footsteps o'er them go. Spurned not alone in walks abroad, But from the temples of the Lord Thrust out apart, like things abhorred. Deep as I felt, and stern and strong, In words which Prudence smothered long, My soul spoke out against the wrong; Not mine alone the task to speak Of comfort to the poor and weak, And dry the tear on Sorrow's cheek; But, mingled in the conflict warm, To pour the fiery breath of storm Through the harsh trumpet of Reform; To brave Opinion's settled frown, From ermined robe and saintly gown, While wrestling reverenced Error down. Founts gushed beside my pilgrim way, Cool shadows on the greensward lay, Flowers swung upon the bending spray. And, broad and bright, on either hand, Stretched the green slopes of Fairy-land, With Hope's eternal sunbow spanned; Whence voices called me like the flow, Which on the listener's ear will grow, Of forest streamlets soft and low. And gentle eyes, which still retain Their picture on the heart and brain, Smiled, beckoning from that path of pain. In vain! nor dream, nor rest, nor pause Remain for him who round him draws The battered mail of Freedom's cause. From youthful hopes, from each green spot Of young Romance, and gentle Thought, Where storm and tumult enter not; From each fair altar, where belong The offerings Love requires of Song In homage to her bright-eyed throng; With soul and strength, with heart and hand, I turned to Freedom's struggling band, To the sad Helots of our land. What marvel then that Fame should turn Her notes of praise to those of scorn; Her gifts reclaimed, her smiles withdrawn? What matters it? a few years more, Life's surge so restless heretofore Shall break upon the unknown shore! In that far land shall disappear The shadows which we follow here, The mist-wreaths of our atmosphere! Before no work of mortal hand, Of human will or strength expand The pearl gates of the Better Land; Alone in that great love which gave Life to the sleeper of the grave, Resteth the power to seek and save. Yet, if the spirit gazing through The vista of the past can view One deed to Heaven and virtue true; If through the wreck of wasted powers, Of garlands wreathed from Folly's bowers, Of idle aims and misspent hours, The eye can note one sacred spot By Pride and Self profaned not, A green place in the waste of thought, Where deed or word hath rendered less The sum of human wretchedness, And Gratitude looks forth to bless; The simple burst of tenderest feeling From sad hearts worn by evil-dealing, For blessing on the hand of healing; Better than Glory's pomp will be That green and blessed spot to me, A palm-shade in Eternity! Something of Time which may invite The purified and spiritual sight To rest on with a calm delight. And when the summer winds shall sweep With their light wings my place of sleep, And mosses round my headstone creep; If still, as Freedom's rallying sign, Upon the young heart's altars shine The very fires they caught from mine; If words my lips once uttered still, In the calm faith and steadfast will Of other hearts, their work fulfil; Perchance with joy the soul may learn These tokens, and its eye discern The fires which on those altars burn; A marvellous joy that even then, The spirit hath its life again, In the strong hearts of mortal men. Take, lady, then, the gift I bring, No gay and graceful offering, No flower-smile of the laughing spring. Midst the green buds of Youth's fresh May, With Fancy's leaf-enwoven bay, My sad and sombre gift I lay. And if it deepens in thy mind A sense of suffering human-kind,-- The outcast and the spirit-blind; Oppressed and spoiled on every side, By Prejudice, and Scorn, and Pride, Life's common courtesies denied; Sad mothers mourning o'er their trust, Children by want and misery nursed, Tasting life's bitter cup at first; If to their strong appeals which come From fireless hearth, and crowded room, And the close alley's noisome gloom,-- Though dark the hands upraised to thee In mute beseeching agony, Thou lend'st thy woman's sympathy; Not vainly on thy gentle shrine, Where Love, and Mirth, and Friendship twine Their varied gifts, I offer mine. 1843. THE PUMPKIN. Oh, greenly and fair in the lands of the sun, The vines of the gourd and the rich melon run, And the rock and the tree and the cottage enfold, With broad leaves all greenness and blossoms all gold, Like that which o'er Nineveh's prophet once grew, While he waited to know that his warning was true, And longed for the storm-cloud, and listened in vain For the rush of the whirlwind and red fire-rain. On the banks of the Xenil the dark Spanish maiden Comes up with the fruit of the tangled vine laden; And the Creole of Cuba laughs out to behold Through orange-leaves shining the broad spheres of gold; Yet with dearer delight from his home in the North, On the fields of his harvest the Yankee looks forth, Where crook-necks are coiling and yellow fruit shines, And the sun of September melts down on his vines. Ah! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and from West, From North and from South come the pilgrim and guest, When the gray-haired New-Englander sees round his board The old broken links of affection restored, When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more, And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before, What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye? What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie? Oh, fruit loved of boyhood! the old days recalling, When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling! When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin, Glaring out through the dark with a candle within! When we laughed round the corn-heap, with hearts all in tune, Our chair a broad pumpkin,--our lantern the moon, Telling tales of the fairy who travelled like steam, In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two rats for her team Then thanks for thy present! none sweeter or better E'er smoked from an oven or circled a platter! Fairer hands never wrought at a pastry more fine, Brighter eyes never watched o'er its baking, than thine! And the prayer, which my mouth is too full to express, Swells my heart that thy shadow may never be less, That the days of thy lot may be lengthened below, And the fame of thy worth like a pumpkin-vine grow, And thy life be as sweet, and its last sunset sky Golden-tinted and fair as thy own Pumpkin pie! 1844. FORGIVENESS. My heart was heavy, for its trust had been Abused, its kindness answered with foul wrong; So, turning gloomily from my fellow-men, One summer Sabbath day I strolled among The green mounds of the village burial-place; Where, pondering how all human love and hate Find one sad level; and how, soon or late, Wronged and wrongdoer, each with meekened face, And cold hands folded over a still heart, Pass the green threshold of our common grave, Whither all footsteps tend, whence none depart, Awed for myself, and pitying my race, Our common sorrow, like a nighty wave, Swept all my pride away, and trembling I forgave! 1846. TO MY SISTER, WITH A COPY OF "THE SUPERNATURALISM OF NEW ENGLAND." The work referred to was a series of papers under this title, contributed to the Democratic Review and afterward collected into a volume, in which I noted some of the superstitions and folklore prevalent in New England. The volume has not been kept in print, but most of its contents are distributed in my Literary Recreations and Miscellanies. Dear Sister! while the wise and sage Turn coldly from my playful page, And count it strange that ripened age Should stoop to boyhood's folly; I know that thou wilt judge aright Of all which makes the heart more light, Or lends one star-gleam to the night Of clouded Melancholy. Away with weary cares and themes! Swing wide the moonlit gate of dreams! Leave free once more the land which teems With wonders and romances Where thou, with clear discerning eyes, Shalt rightly read the truth which lies Beneath the quaintly masking guise Of wild and wizard fancies. Lo! once again our feet we set On still green wood-paths, twilight wet, By lonely brooks, whose waters fret The roots of spectral beeches; Again the hearth-fire glimmers o'er Home's whitewashed wall and painted floor, And young eyes widening to the lore Of faery-folks and witches. Dear heart! the legend is not vain Which lights that holy hearth again, And calling back from care and pain, And death's funereal sadness, Draws round its old familiar blaze The clustering groups of happier days, And lends to sober manhood's gaze A glimpse of childish gladness. And, knowing how my life hath been A weary work of tongue and pen, A long, harsh strife with strong-willed men, Thou wilt not chide my turning To con, at times, an idle rhyme, To pluck a flower from childhood's clime, Or listen, at Life's noonday chime, For the sweet bells of Morning! 1847. MY THANKS, ACCOMPANYING MANUSCRIPTS PRESENTED TO A FRIEND. 'T is said that in the Holy Land The angels of the place have blessed The pilgrim's bed of desert sand, Like Jacob's stone of rest. That down the hush of Syrian skies Some sweet-voiced saint at twilight sings The song whose holy symphonies Are beat by unseen wings; Till starting from his sandy bed, The wayworn wanderer looks to see The halo of an angel's head Shine through the tamarisk-tree. So through the shadows of my way Thy smile hath fallen soft and clear, So at the weary close of day Hath seemed thy voice of cheer. That pilgrim pressing to his goal May pause not for the vision's sake, Yet all fair things within his soul The thought of it shall wake: The graceful palm-tree by the well, Seen on the far horizon's rim; The dark eyes of the fleet gazelle, Bent timidly on him; Each pictured saint, whose golden hair Streams sunlike through the convent's gloom; Pale shrines of martyrs young and fair, And loving Mary's tomb; And thus each tint or shade which falls, From sunset cloud or waving tree, Along my pilgrim path, recalls The pleasant thought of thee. Of one in sun and shade the same, In weal and woe my steady friend, Whatever by that holy name The angels comprehend. Not blind to faults and follies, thou Hast never failed the good to see, Nor judged by one unseemly bough The upward-struggling tree. These light leaves at thy feet I lay,-- Poor common thoughts on common things, Which time is shaking, day by day, Like feathers from his wings; Chance shootings from a frail life-tree, To nurturing care but little known, Their good was partly learned of thee, Their folly is my own. That tree still clasps the kindly mould, Its leaves still drink the twilight dew, And weaving its pale green with gold, Still shines the sunlight through. There still the morning zephyrs play, And there at times the spring bird sings, And mossy trunk and fading spray Are flowered with glossy wings. Yet, even in genial sun and rain, Root, branch, and leaflet fail and fade; The wanderer on its lonely plain Erelong shall miss its shade. O friend beloved, whose curious skill Keeps bright the last year's leaves and flowers, With warm, glad, summer thoughts to fill The cold, dark, winter hours Pressed on thy heart, the leaves I bring May well defy the wintry cold, Until, in Heaven's eternal spring, Life's fairer ones unfold. 1847. REMEMBRANCE WITH COPIES OF THE AUTHOR'S WRITINGS. Friend of mine! whose lot was cast With me in the distant past; Where, like shadows flitting fast, Fact and fancy, thought and theme, Word and work, begin to seem Like a half-remembered dream! Touched by change have all things been, Yet I think of thee as when We had speech of lip and pen. For the calm thy kindness lent To a path of discontent, Rough with trial and dissent; Gentle words where such were few, Softening blame where blame was true, Praising where small praise was due; For a waking dream made good, For an ideal understood, For thy Christian womanhood; For thy marvellous gift to cull From our common life and dull Whatsoe'er is beautiful; Thoughts and fancies, Hybla's bees Dropping sweetness; true heart's-ease Of congenial sympathies;-- Still for these I own my debt; Memory, with her eyelids wet, Fain would thank thee even yet! And as one who scatters flowers Where the Queen of May's sweet hours Sits, o'ertwined with blossomed bowers, In superfluous zeal bestowing Gifts where gifts are overflowing, So I pay the debt I'm owing. To thy full thoughts, gay or sad, Sunny-hued or sober clad, Something of my own I add; Well assured that thou wilt take Even the offering which I make Kindly for the giver's sake. 1851. MY NAMESAKE. Addressed to Francis Greenleaf Allison of Burlington, New Jersey. You scarcely need my tardy thanks, Who, self-rewarded, nurse and tend-- A green leaf on your own Green Banks-- The memory of your friend. For me, no wreath, bloom-woven, hides The sobered brow and lessening hair For aught I know, the myrtled sides Of Helicon are bare. Their scallop-shells so many bring The fabled founts of song to try, They've drained, for aught I know, the spring Of Aganippe dry. Ah well!--The wreath the Muses braid Proves often Folly's cap and bell; Methinks, my ample beaver's shade May serve my turn as well. Let Love's and Friendship's tender debt Be paid by those I love in life. Why should the unborn critic whet For me his scalping-knife? Why should the stranger peer and pry One's vacant house of life about, And drag for curious ear and eye His faults and follies out?-- Why stuff, for fools to gaze upon, With chaff of words, the garb he wore, As corn-husks when the ear is gone Are rustled all the more? Let kindly Silence close again, The picture vanish from the eye, And on the dim and misty main Let the small ripple die. Yet not the less I own your claim To grateful thanks, dear friends of mine. Hang, if it please you so, my name Upon your household line. Let Fame from brazen lips blow wide Her chosen names, I envy none A mother's love, a father's pride, Shall keep alive my own! Still shall that name as now recall The young leaf wet with morning dew, The glory where the sunbeams fall The breezy woodlands through. That name shall be a household word, A spell to waken smile or sigh; In many an evening prayer be heard And cradle lullaby. And thou, dear child, in riper days When asked the reason of thy name, Shalt answer: One 't were vain to praise Or censure bore the same. "Some blamed him, some believed him good, The truth lay doubtless 'twixt the two; He reconciled as best he could Old faith and fancies new. "In him the grave and playful mixed, And wisdom held with folly truce, And Nature compromised betwixt Good fellow and recluse. "He loved his friends, forgave his foes; And, if his words were harsh at times, He spared his fellow-men,--his blows Fell only on their crimes. "He loved the good and wise, but found His human heart to all akin Who met him on the common ground Of suffering and of sin. "Whate'er his neighbors might endure Of pain or grief his own became; For all the ills he could not cure He held himself to blame. "His good was mainly an intent, His evil not of forethought done; The work he wrought was rarely meant Or finished as begun. "Ill served his tides of feeling strong To turn the common mills of use; And, over restless wings of song, His birthright garb hung loose! "His eye was beauty's powerless slave, And his the ear which discord pains; Few guessed beneath his aspect grave What passions strove in chains. "He had his share of care and pain, No holiday was life to him; Still in the heirloom cup we drain The bitter drop will swim. "Yet Heaven was kind, and here a bird And there a flower beguiled his way; And, cool, in summer noons, he heard The fountains plash and play. "On all his sad or restless moods The patient peace of Nature stole; The quiet of the fields and woods Sank deep into his soul. "He worshipped as his fathers did, And kept the faith of childish days, And, howsoe'er he strayed or slid, He loved the good old ways. "The simple tastes, the kindly traits, The tranquil air, and gentle speech, The silence of the soul that waits For more than man to teach. "The cant of party, school, and sect, Provoked at times his honest scorn, And Folly, in its gray respect, He tossed on satire's horn. "But still his heart was full of awe And reverence for all sacred things; And, brooding over form and law,' He saw the Spirit's wings! "Life's mystery wrapt him like a cloud; He heard far voices mock his own, The sweep of wings unseen, the loud, Long roll of waves unknown. "The arrows of his straining sight Fell quenched in darkness; priest and sage, Like lost guides calling left and right, Perplexed his doubtful age. "Like childhood, listening for the sound Of its dropped pebbles in the well, All vainly down the dark profound His brief-lined plummet fell. "So, scattering flowers with pious pains On old beliefs, of later creeds, Which claimed a place in Truth's domains, He asked the title-deeds. "He saw the old-time's groves and shrines In the long distance fair and dim; And heard, like sound of far-off pines, The century-mellowed hymn! "He dared not mock the Dervish whirl, The Brahmin's rite, the Lama's spell; God knew the heart; Devotion's pearl Might sanctify the shell. "While others trod the altar stairs He faltered like the publican; And, while they praised as saints, his prayers Were those of sinful man. "For, awed by Sinai's Mount of Law, The trembling faith alone sufficed, That, through its cloud and flame, he saw The sweet, sad face of Christ! "And listening, with his forehead bowed, Heard the Divine compassion fill The pauses of the trump and cloud With whispers small and still. "The words he spake, the thoughts he penned, Are mortal as his hand and brain, But, if they served the Master's end, He has not lived in vain!" Heaven make thee better than thy name, Child of my friends!--For thee I crave What riches never bought, nor fame To mortal longing gave. I pray the prayer of Plato old: God make thee beautiful within, And let thine eyes the good behold In everything save sin! Imagination held in check To serve, not rule, thy poised mind; Thy Reason, at the frown or beck Of Conscience, loose or bind. No dreamer thou, but real all,-- Strong manhood crowning vigorous youth; Life made by duty epical And rhythmic with the truth. So shall that life the fruitage yield Which trees of healing only give, And green-leafed in the Eternal field Of God, forever live! 1853. A MEMORY Here, while the loom of Winter weaves The shroud of flowers and fountains, I think of thee and summer eves Among the Northern mountains. When thunder tolled the twilight's close, And winds the lake were rude on, And thou wert singing, _Ca' the Yowes_, The bonny yowes of Cluden! When, close and closer, hushing breath, Our circle narrowed round thee, And smiles and tears made up the wreath Wherewith our silence crowned thee; And, strangers all, we felt the ties Of sisters and of brothers; Ah! whose of all those kindly eyes Now smile upon another's? The sport of Time, who still apart The waifs of life is flinging; Oh, nevermore shall heart to heart Draw nearer for that singing! Yet when the panes are frosty-starred, And twilight's fire is gleaming, I hear the songs of Scotland's bard Sound softly through my dreaming! A song that lends to winter snows The glow of summer weather,-- Again I hear thee ca' the yowes To Cluden's hills of heather 1854. MY DREAM. In my dream, methought I trod, Yesternight, a mountain road; Narrow as Al Sirat's span, High as eagle's flight, it ran. Overhead, a roof of cloud With its weight of thunder bowed; Underneath, to left and right, Blankness and abysmal night. Here and there a wild-flower blushed, Now and then a bird-song gushed; Now and then, through rifts of shade, Stars shone out, and sunbeams played. But the goodly company, Walking in that path with me, One by one the brink o'erslid, One by one the darkness hid. Some with wailing and lament, Some with cheerful courage went; But, of all who smiled or mourned, Never one to us returned. Anxiously, with eye and ear, Questioning that shadow drear, Never hand in token stirred, Never answering voice I heard! Steeper, darker!--lo! I felt From my feet the pathway melt. Swallowed by the black despair, And the hungry jaws of air, Past the stony-throated caves, Strangled by the wash of waves, Past the splintered crags, I sank On a green and flowery bank,-- Soft as fall of thistle-down, Lightly as a cloud is blown, Soothingly as childhood pressed To the bosom of its rest. Of the sharp-horned rocks instead, Green the grassy meadows spread, Bright with waters singing by Trees that propped a golden sky. Painless, trustful, sorrow-free, Old lost faces welcomed me, With whose sweetness of content Still expectant hope was blent. Waking while the dawning gray Slowly brightened into day, Pondering that vision fled, Thus unto myself I said:-- "Steep and hung with clouds of strife Is our narrow path of life; And our death the dreaded fall Through the dark, awaiting all. "So, with painful steps we climb Up the dizzy ways of time, Ever in the shadow shed By the forecast of our dread. "Dread of mystery solved alone, Of the untried and unknown; Yet the end thereof may seem Like the falling of my dream. "And this heart-consuming care, All our fears of here or there, Change and absence, loss and death, Prove but simple lack of faith." Thou, O Most Compassionate! Who didst stoop to our estate, Drinking of the cup we drain, Treading in our path of pain,-- Through the doubt and mystery, Grant to us thy steps to see, And the grace to draw from thence Larger hope and confidence. Show thy vacant tomb, and let, As of old, the angels sit, Whispering, by its open door "Fear not! He hath gone before!" 1855. THE BAREFOOT BOY. Blessings on thee, little man, Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan With thy turned-up pantaloons, And thy merry whistled tunes; With thy red lip, redder still Kissed by strawberries on the hill; With the sunshine on thy face, Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace; From my heart I give thee joy,-- I was once a barefoot boy! Prince thou art,--the grown-up man Only is republican. Let the million-dollared ride! Barefoot, trudging at his side, Thou hast more than he can buy In the reach of ear and eye,-- Outward sunshine, inward joy Blessings on thee, barefoot boy! Oh for boyhood's painless play, Sleep that wakes in laughing day, Health that mocks the doctor's rules, Knowledge never learned of schools, Of the wild bee's morning chase, Of the wild-flower's time and place, Flight of fowl and habitude Of the tenants of the wood; How the tortoise bears his shell, How the woodchuck digs his cell, And the ground-mole sinks his well; How the robin feeds her young, How the oriole's nest is hung; Where the whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries grow, Where the ground-nut trails its vine, Where the wood-grape's clusters shine; Of the black wasp's cunning way, Mason of his walls of clay, And the architectural plans Of gray hornet artisans! For, eschewing books and tasks, Nature answers all he asks, Hand in hand with her he walks, Face to face with her he talks, Part and parcel of her joy,-- Blessings on the barefoot boy! Oh for boyhood's time of June, Crowding years in one brief moon, When all things I heard or saw, Me, their master, waited for. I was rich in flowers and trees, Humming-birds and honey-bees; For my sport the squirrel played, Plied the snouted mole his spade; For my taste the blackberry cone Purpled over hedge and stone; Laughed the brook for my delight Through the day and through the night, Whispering at the garden wall, Talked with me from fall to fall; Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond, Mine the walnut slopes beyond, Mine, on bending orchard trees, Apples of Hesperides! Still as my horizon grew, Larger grew my riches too; All the world I saw or knew Seemed a complex Chinese toy, Fashioned for a barefoot boy! Oh for festal dainties spread, Like my bowl of milk and bread; Pewter spoon and bowl of wood, On the door-stone, gray and rude! O'er me, like a regal tent, Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent, Purple-curtained, fringed with gold, Looped in many a wind-swung fold; While for music came the play Of the pied frogs' orchestra; And, to light the noisy choir, Lit the fly his lamp of fire. I was monarch: pomp and joy Waited on the barefoot boy! Cheerily, then, my little man, Live and laugh, as boyhood can Though the flinty slopes be hard, Stubble-speared the new-mown sward, Every morn shall lead thee through Fresh baptisms of the dew; Every evening from thy feet Shall the cool wind kiss the heat All too soon these feet must hide In the prison cells of pride, Lose the freedom of the sod, Like a colt's for work be shod, Made to tread the mills of toil, Up and down in ceaseless moil Happy if their track be found Never on forbidden ground; Happy if they sink not in Quick and treacherous sands of sin. Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy, Ere it passes, barefoot boy! 1855. MY PSALM. I mourn no more my vanished years Beneath a tender rain, An April rain of smiles and tears, My heart is young again. The west-winds blow, and, singing low, I hear the glad streams run; The windows of my soul I throw Wide open to the sun. No longer forward nor behind I look in hope or fear; But, grateful, take the good I find, The best of now and here. I plough no more a desert land, To harvest weed and tare; The manna dropping from God's hand Rebukes my painful care. I break my pilgrim staff, I lay Aside the toiling oar; The angel sought so far away I welcome at my door. The airs of spring may never play Among the ripening corn, Nor freshness of the flowers of May Blow through the autumn morn. Yet shall the blue-eyed gentian look Through fringed lids to heaven, And the pale aster in the brook Shall see its image given;-- The woods shall wear their robes of praise, The south-wind softly sigh, And sweet, calm days in golden haze Melt down the amber sky. Not less shall manly deed and word Rebuke an age of wrong; The graven flowers that wreathe the sword Make not the blade less strong. But smiting hands shall learn to heal,-- To build as to destroy; Nor less my heart for others feel That I the more enjoy. All as God wills, who wisely heeds To give or to withhold, And knoweth more of all my needs Than all my prayers have told. Enough that blessings undeserved Have marked my erring track; That wheresoe'er my feet have swerved, His chastening turned me back; That more and more a Providence Of love is understood, Making the springs of time and sense Sweet with eternal good;-- That death seems but a covered way Which opens into light, Wherein no blinded child can stray Beyond the Father's sight; That care and trial seem at last, Through Memory's sunset air, Like mountain-ranges overpast, In purple distance fair; That all the jarring notes of life Seem blending in a psalm, And all the angles of its strife Slow rounding into calm. And so the shadows fall apart, And so the west-winds play; And all the windows of my heart I open to the day. 1859. THE WAITING. I wait and watch: before my eyes Methinks the night grows thin and gray; I wait and watch the eastern skies To see the golden spears uprise Beneath the oriflamme of day! Like one whose limbs are bound in trance I hear the day-sounds swell and grow, And see across the twilight glance, Troop after troop, in swift advance, The shining ones with plumes of snow! I know the errand of their feet, I know what mighty work is theirs; I can but lift up hands unmeet, The threshing-floors of God to beat, And speed them with unworthy prayers. I will not dream in vain despair The steps of progress wait for me The puny leverage of a hair The planet's impulse well may spare, A drop of dew the tided sea. The loss, if loss there be, is mine, And yet not mine if understood; For one shall grasp and one resign, One drink life's rue, and one its wine, And God shall make the balance good. Oh power to do! Oh baffled will! Oh prayer and action! ye are one. Who may not strive, may yet fulfil The harder task of standing still, And good but wished with God is done! 1862. SNOW-BOUND. A WINTER IDYL. TO THE MEMORY OF THE HOUSEHOLD IT DESCRIBES, THIS POEM IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. The inmates of the family at the Whittier homestead who are referred to in the poem were my father, mother, my brother and two sisters, and my uncle and aunt both unmarried. In addition, there was the district school-master who boarded with us. The "not unfeared, half-welcome guest" was Harriet Livermore, daughter of Judge Livermore, of New Hampshire, a young woman of fine natural ability, enthusiastic, eccentric, with slight control over her violent temper, which sometimes made her religious profession doubtful. She was equally ready to exhort in school-house prayer-meetings and dance in a Washington ball-room, while her father was a member of Congress. She early embraced the doctrine of the Second Advent, and felt it her duty to proclaim the Lord's speedy coming. With this message she crossed the Atlantic and spent the greater part of a long life in travelling over Europe and Asia. She lived some time with Lady Hester Stanhope, a woman as fantastic and mentally strained as herself, on the slope of Mt. Lebanon, but finally quarrelled with her in regard to two white horses with red marks on their backs which suggested the idea of saddles, on which her titled hostess expected to ride into Jerusalem with the Lord. A friend of mine found her, when quite an old woman, wandering in Syria with a tribe of Arabs, who with the Oriental notion that madness is inspiration, accepted her as their prophetess and leader. At the time referred to in Snow-Bound she was boarding at the Rocks Village about two miles from us. In my boyhood, in our lonely farm-house, we had scanty sources of information; few books and only a small weekly newspaper. Our only annual was the Almanac. Under such circumstances story-telling was a necessary resource in the long winter evenings. My father when a young man had traversed the wilderness to Canada, and could tell us of his adventures with Indians and wild beasts, and of his sojourn in the French villages. My uncle was ready with his record of hunting and fishing and, it must be confessed, with stories which he at least half believed, of witchcraft and apparitions. My mother, who was born in the Indian-haunted region of Somersworth, New Hampshire, between Dover and Portsmouth, told us of the inroads of the savages, and the narrow escape of her ancestors. She described strange people who lived on the Piscataqua and Cocheco, among whom was Bantam the sorcerer. I have in my possession the wizard's "conjuring book," which he solemnly opened when consulted. It is a copy of Cornelius Agrippa's Magic printed in 1651, dedicated to Dr. Robert Child, who, like Michael Scott, had learned "the art of glammorie In Padua beyond the sea," and who is famous in the annals of Massachusetts, where he was at one time a resident, as the first man who dared petition the General Court for liberty of conscience. The full title of the book is Three Books of Occult Philosophy, by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Knight, Doctor of both Laws, Counsellor to Caesar's Sacred Majesty and Judge of the Prerogative Court. "As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so Good Spirits, which be Angels of Light, are augmented not only by the Divine light of the Sun, but also by our common Wood Fire: and as the Celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our Fire of Wood doth the same." --Cor. AGRIPPA, Occult Philosophy, Book I. ch. v. "Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the rivet and the heaven, And veils the farm-house at the garden's end. The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm." Emerson. The Snow Storm. The sun that brief December day Rose cheerless over hills of gray, And, darkly circled, gave at noon A sadder light than waning moon. Slow tracing down the thickening sky Its mute and ominous prophecy, A portent seeming less than threat, It sank from sight before it set. A chill no coat, however stout, Of homespun stuff could quite, shut out, A hard, dull bitterness of cold, That checked, mid-vein, the circling race Of life-blood in the sharpened face, The coming of the snow-storm told. The wind blew east; we heard the roar Of Ocean on his wintry shore, And felt the strong pulse throbbing there Beat with low rhythm our inland air. Meanwhile we did our nightly chores,-- Brought in the wood from out of doors, Littered the stalls, and from the mows Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows Heard the horse whinnying for his corn; And, sharply clashing horn on horn, Impatient down the stanchion rows The cattle shake their walnut bows; While, peering from his early perch Upon the scaffold's pole of birch, The cock his crested helmet bent And down his querulous challenge sent. Unwarmed by any sunset light The gray day darkened into night, A night made hoary with the swarm, And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, As zigzag, wavering to and fro, Crossed and recrossed the winged snow And ere the early bedtime came The white drift piled the window-frame, And through the glass the clothes-line posts Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. So all night long the storm roared on The morning broke without a sun; In tiny spherule traced with lines Of Nature's geometric signs, In starry flake, and pellicle, All day the hoary meteor fell; And, when the second morning shone, We looked upon a world unknown, On nothing we could call our own. Around the glistening wonder bent The blue walls of the firmament, No cloud above, no earth below,-- A universe of sky and snow The old familiar sights of ours Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood, Or garden-wall, or belt of wood; A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed, A fenceless drift what once was road; The bridle-post an old man sat With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat; The well-curb had a Chinese roof; And even the long sweep, high aloof, In its slant splendor, seemed to tell Of Pisa's leaning miracle. A prompt, decisive man, no breath Our father wasted: "Boys, a path!" Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy Count such a summons less than joy?) Our buskins on our feet we drew; With mittened hands, and caps drawn low, To guard our necks and ears from snow, We cut the solid whiteness through. And, where the drift was deepest, made A tunnel walled and overlaid With dazzling crystal: we had read Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave, And to our own his name we gave, With many a wish the luck were ours To test his lamp's supernal powers. We reached the barn with merry din, And roused the prisoned brutes within. The old horse thrust his long head out, And grave with wonder gazed about; The cock his lusty greeting said, And forth his speckled harem led; The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked, And mild reproach of hunger looked; The horned patriarch of the sheep, Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep, Shook his sage head with gesture mute, And emphasized with stamp of foot. All day the gusty north-wind bore The loosening drift its breath before; Low circling round its southern zone, The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone. No church-bell lent its Christian tone To the savage air, no social smoke Curled over woods of snow-hung oak. A solitude made more intense By dreary-voiced elements, The shrieking of the mindless wind, The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind, And on the glass the unmeaning beat Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet. Beyond the circle of our hearth No welcome sound of toil or mirth Unbound the spell, and testified Of human life and thought outside. We minded that the sharpest ear The buried brooklet could not hear, The music of whose liquid lip Had been to us companionship, And, in our lonely life, had grown To have an almost human tone. As night drew on, and, from the crest Of wooded knolls that ridged the west, The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank From sight beneath the smothering bank, We piled, with care, our nightly stack Of wood against the chimney-back,-- The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, And on its top the stout back-stick; The knotty forestick laid apart, And filled between with curious art The ragged brush; then, hovering near, We watched the first red blaze appear, Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, Until the old, rude-furnished room Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom; While radiant with a mimic flame Outside the sparkling drift became, And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free. The crane and pendent trammels showed, The Turks' heads on the andirons glowed; While childish fancy, prompt to tell The meaning of the miracle, Whispered the old rhyme: "_Under the tree, When fire outdoors burns merrily, There the witches are making tea_." The moon above the eastern wood Shone at its full; the hill-range stood Transfigured in the silver flood, Its blown snows flashing cold and keen, Dead white, save where some sharp ravine Took shadow, or the sombre green Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black Against the whiteness at their back. For such a world and such a night Most fitting that unwarming light, Which only seemed where'er it fell To make the coldness visible. Shut in from all the world without, We sat the clean-winged hearth about, Content to let the north-wind roar In baffled rage at pane and door, While the red logs before us beat The frost-line back with tropic heat; And ever, when a louder blast Shook beam and rafter as it passed, The merrier up its roaring draught The great throat of the chimney laughed; The house-dog on his paws outspread Laid to the fire his drowsy head, The cat's dark silhouette on the wall A couchant tiger's seemed to fall; And, for the winter fireside meet, Between the andirons' straddling feet, The mug of cider simmered slow, The apples sputtered in a row, And, close at hand, the basket stood With nuts from brown October's wood. What matter how the night behaved? What matter how the north-wind raved? Blow high, blow low, not all its snow Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow. O Time and Change!--with hair as gray As was my sire's that winter day, How strange it seems, with so much gone Of life and love, to still live on! Ah, brother! only I and thou Are left of all that circle now,-- The dear home faces whereupon That fitful firelight paled and shone. Henceforward, listen as we will, The voices of that hearth are still; Look where we may, the wide earth o'er Those lighted faces smile no more. We tread the paths their feet have worn, We sit beneath their orchard trees, We hear, like them, the hum of bees And rustle of the bladed corn; We turn the pages that they read, Their written words we linger o'er, But in the sun they cast no shade, No voice is heard, no sign is made, No step is on the conscious floor! Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust, (Since He who knows our need is just,) That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. Alas for him who never sees The stars shine through his cypress-trees Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, Nor looks to see the breaking day Across the mournful marbles play! Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, The truth to flesh and sense unknown, That Life is ever lord of Death, And Love can never lose its own! We sped the time with stories old, Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told, Or stammered from our school-book lore The Chief of Gambia's "golden shore." How often since, when all the land Was clay in Slavery's shaping hand, As if a far-blown trumpet stirred The languorous sin-sick air, I heard "_Does not the voice of reason cry, Claim the first right which Nature gave, From the red scourge of bondage fly, Nor deign to live a burdened slave_!" Our father rode again his ride On Memphremagog's wooded side; Sat down again to moose and samp In trapper's hut and Indian camp; Lived o'er the old idyllic ease Beneath St. Francois' hemlock-trees; Again for him the moonlight shone On Norman cap and bodiced zone; Again he heard the violin play Which led the village dance away, And mingled in its merry whirl The grandam and the laughing girl. Or, nearer home, our steps he led Where Salisbury's level marshes spread Mile-wide as flies the laden bee; Where merry mowers, hale and strong, Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along The low green prairies of the sea. We shared the fishing off Boar's Head, And round the rocky Isles of Shoals The hake-broil on the drift-wood coals; The chowder on the sand-beach made, Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot, With spoons of clam-shell from the pot. We heard the tales of witchcraft old, And dream and sign and marvel told To sleepy listeners as they lay Stretched idly on the salted hay, Adrift along the winding shores, When favoring breezes deigned to blow The square sail of the gundelow And idle lay the useless oars. Our mother, while she turned her wheel Or run the new-knit stocking-heel, Told how the Indian hordes came down At midnight on Cocheco town, And how her own great-uncle bore His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore. Recalling, in her fitting phrase, So rich and picturesque and free, (The common unrhymed poetry Of simple life and country ways,) The story of her early days,-- She made us welcome to her home; Old hearths grew wide to give us room; We stole with her a frightened look At the gray wizard's conjuring-book, The fame whereof went far and wide Through all the simple country side; We heard the hawks at twilight play, The boat-horn on Piscataqua, The loon's weird laughter far away; We fished her little trout-brook, knew What flowers in wood and meadow grew, What sunny hillsides autumn-brown She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down, Saw where in sheltered cove and bay The ducks' black squadron anchored lay, And heard the wild-geese calling loud Beneath the gray November cloud. Then, haply, with a look more grave, And soberer tone, some tale she gave From painful Sewell's ancient tome, Beloved in every Quaker home, Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom, Or Chalkley's Journal, old and quaint,-- Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint!-- Who, when the dreary calms prevailed, And water-butt and bread-cask failed, And cruel, hungry eyes pursued His portly presence mad for food, With dark hints muttered under breath Of casting lots for life or death, Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies, To be himself the sacrifice. Then, suddenly, as if to save The good man from his living grave, A ripple on the water grew, A school of porpoise flashed in view. "Take, eat," he said, "and be content; These fishes in my stead are sent By Him who gave the tangled ram To spare the child of Abraham." Our uncle, innocent of books, Was rich in lore of fields and brooks, The ancient teachers never dumb Of Nature's unhoused lyceum. In moons and tides and weather wise, He read the clouds as prophecies, And foul or fair could well divine, By many an occult hint and sign, Holding the cunning-warded keys To all the woodcraft mysteries; Himself to Nature's heart so near That all her voices in his ear Of beast or bird had meanings clear, Like Apollonius of old, Who knew the tales the sparrows told, Or Hermes who interpreted What the sage cranes of Nilus said; Content to live where life began; A simple, guileless, childlike man, Strong only on his native grounds, The little world of sights and sounds Whose girdle was the parish bounds, Whereof his fondly partial pride The common features magnified, As Surrey hills to mountains grew In White of Selborne's loving view,-- He told how teal and loon he shot, And how the eagle's eggs he got, The feats on pond and river done, The prodigies of rod and gun; Till, warming with the tales he told, Forgotten was the outside cold, The bitter wind unheeded blew, From ripening corn the pigeons flew, The partridge drummed I' the wood, the mink Went fishing down the river-brink. In fields with bean or clover gay, The woodchuck, like a hermit gray, Peered from the doorway of his cell; The muskrat plied the mason's trade, And tier by tier his mud-walls laid; And from the shagbark overhead The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell. Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of cheer And voice in dreams I see and hear,-- The sweetest woman ever Fate Perverse denied a household mate, Who, lonely, homeless, not the less Found peace in love's unselfishness, And welcome wheresoe'er she went, A calm and gracious element,-- Whose presence seemed the sweet income And womanly atmosphere of home,-- Called up her girlhood memories, The huskings and the apple-bees, The sleigh-rides and the summer sails, Weaving through all the poor details And homespun warp of circumstance A golden woof-thread of romance. For well she kept her genial mood And simple faith of maidenhood; Before her still a cloud-land lay, The mirage loomed across her way; The morning dew, that dries so soon With others, glistened at her noon; Through years of toil and soil and care, From glossy tress to thin gray hair, All unprofaned she held apart The virgin fancies of the heart. Be shame to him of woman born Who hath for such but thought of scorn. There, too, our elder sister plied Her evening task the stand beside; A full, rich nature, free to trust, Truthful and almost sternly just, Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act, And make her generous thought a fact, Keeping with many a light disguise The secret of self-sacrifice. O heart sore-tried! thou hast the best That Heaven itself could give thee,--rest, Rest from all bitter thoughts and things! How many a poor one's blessing went With thee beneath the low green tent Whose curtain never outward swings! As one who held herself a part Of all she saw, and let her heart Against the household bosom lean, Upon the motley-braided mat Our youngest and our dearest sat, Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes, Now bathed in the unfading green And holy peace of Paradise. Oh, looking from some heavenly hill, Or from the shade of saintly palms, Or silver reach of river calms, Do those large eyes behold me still? With me one little year ago:-- The chill weight of the winter snow For months upon her grave has lain; And now, when summer south-winds blow And brier and harebell bloom again, I tread the pleasant paths we trod, I see the violet-sprinkled sod Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak The hillside flowers she loved to seek, Yet following me where'er I went With dark eyes full of love's content. The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills The air with sweetness; all the hills Stretch green to June's unclouded sky; But still I wait with ear and eye For something gone which should be nigh, A loss in all familiar things, In flower that blooms, and bird that sings. And yet, dear heart' remembering thee, Am I not richer than of old? Safe in thy immortality, What change can reach the wealth I hold? What chance can mar the pearl and gold Thy love hath left in trust with me? And while in life's late afternoon, Where cool and long the shadows grow, I walk to meet the night that soon Shall shape and shadow overflow, I cannot feel that thou art far, Since near at need the angels are; And when the sunset gates unbar, Shall I not see thee waiting stand, And, white against the evening star, The welcome of thy beckoning hand? Brisk wielder of the birch and rule, The master of the district school Held at the fire his favored place, Its warm glow lit a laughing face Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared The uncertain prophecy of beard. He teased the mitten-blinded cat, Played cross-pins on my uncle's hat, Sang songs, and told us what befalls In classic Dartmouth's college halls. Born the wild Northern hills among, From whence his yeoman father wrung By patient toil subsistence scant, Not competence and yet not want, He early gained the power to pay His cheerful, self-reliant way; Could doff at ease his scholar's gown To peddle wares from town to town; Or through the long vacation's reach In lonely lowland districts teach, Where all the droll experience found At stranger hearths in boarding round, The moonlit skater's keen delight, The sleigh-drive through the frosty night, The rustic party, with its rough Accompaniment of blind-man's-buff, And whirling plate, and forfeits paid, His winter task a pastime made. Happy the snow-locked homes wherein He tuned his merry violin, Or played the athlete in the barn, Or held the good dame's winding-yarn, Or mirth-provoking versions told Of classic legends rare and old, Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome Had all the commonplace of home, And little seemed at best the odds 'Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods; Where Pindus-born Arachthus took The guise of any grist-mill brook, And dread Olympus at his will Became a huckleberry hill. A careless boy that night he seemed; But at his desk he had the look And air of one who wisely schemed, And hostage from the future took In trained thought and lore of book. Large-brained, clear-eyed, of such as he Shall Freedom's young apostles be, Who, following in War's bloody trail, Shall every lingering wrong assail; All chains from limb and spirit strike, Uplift the black and white alike; Scatter before their swift advance The darkness and the ignorance, The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth, Which nurtured Treason's monstrous growth, Made murder pastime, and the hell Of prison-torture possible; The cruel lie of caste refute, Old forms remould, and substitute For Slavery's lash the freeman's will, For blind routine, wise-handed skill; A school-house plant on every hill, Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence The quick wires of intelligence; Till North and South together brought Shall own the same electric thought, In peace a common flag salute, And, side by side in labor's free And unresentful rivalry, Harvest the fields wherein they fought. Another guest that winter night Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light. Unmarked by time, and yet not young, The honeyed music of her tongue And words of meekness scarcely told A nature passionate and bold, Strong, self-concentred, spurning guide, Its milder features dwarfed beside Her unbent will's majestic pride. She sat among us, at the best, A not unfeared, half-welcome guest, Rebuking with her cultured phrase Our homeliness of words and ways. A certain pard-like, treacherous grace Swayed the lithe limbs and dropped the lash, Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash; And under low brows, black with night, Rayed out at times a dangerous light; The sharp heat-lightnings of her face Presaging ill to him whom Fate Condemned to share her love or hate. A woman tropical, intense In thought and act, in soul and sense, She blended in a like degree The vixen and the devotee, Revealing with each freak or feint The temper of Petruchio's Kate, The raptures of Siena's saint. Her tapering hand and rounded wrist Had facile power to form a fist; The warm, dark languish of her eyes Was never safe from wrath's surprise. Brows saintly calm and lips devout Knew every change of scowl and pout; And the sweet voice had notes more high And shrill for social battle-cry. Since then what old cathedral town Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown, What convent-gate has held its lock Against the challenge of her knock! Through Smyrna's plague-hushed thoroughfares, Up sea-set Malta's rocky stairs, Gray olive slopes of hills that hem Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem, Or startling on her desert throne The crazy Queen of Lebanon s With claims fantastic as her own, Her tireless feet have held their way; And still, unrestful, bowed, and gray, She watches under Eastern skies, With hope each day renewed and fresh, The Lord's quick coming in the flesh, Whereof she dreams and prophesies! Where'er her troubled path may be, The Lord's sweet pity with her go! The outward wayward life we see, The hidden springs we may not know. Nor is it given us to discern What threads the fatal sisters spun, Through what ancestral years has run The sorrow with the woman born, What forged her cruel chain of moods, What set her feet in solitudes, And held the love within her mute, What mingled madness in the blood, A life-long discord and annoy, Water of tears with oil of joy, And hid within the folded bud Perversities of flower and fruit. It is not ours to separate The tangled skein of will and fate, To show what metes and bounds should stand Upon the soul's debatable land, And between choice and Providence Divide the circle of events; But lie who knows our frame is just, Merciful and compassionate, And full of sweet assurances And hope for all the language is, That He remembereth we are dust! At last the great logs, crumbling low, Sent out a dull and duller glow, The bull's-eye watch that hung in view, Ticking its weary circuit through, Pointed with mutely warning sign Its black hand to the hour of nine. That sign the pleasant circle broke My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke, Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray, And laid it tenderly away, Then roused himself to safely cover The dull red brands with ashes over. And while, with care, our mother laid The work aside, her steps she stayed One moment, seeking to express Her grateful sense of happiness For food and shelter, warmth and health, And love's contentment more than wealth, With simple wishes (not the weak, Vain prayers which no fulfilment seek, But such as warm the generous heart, O'er-prompt to do with Heaven its part) That none might lack, that bitter night, For bread and clothing, warmth and light. Within our beds awhile we heard The wind that round the gables roared, With now and then a ruder shock, Which made our very bedsteads rock. We heard the loosened clapboards tost, The board-nails snapping in the frost; And on us, through the unplastered wall, Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall. But sleep stole on, as sleep will do When hearts are light and life is new; Faint and more faint the murmurs grew, Till in the summer-land of dreams They softened to the sound of streams, Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars, And lapsing waves on quiet shores. Next morn we wakened with the shout Of merry voices high and clear; And saw the teamsters drawing near To break the drifted highways out. Down the long hillside treading slow We saw the half-buried oxen' go, Shaking the snow from heads uptost, Their straining nostrils white with frost. Before our door the straggling train Drew up, an added team to gain. The elders threshed their hands a-cold, Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes From lip to lip; the younger folks Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling, rolled, Then toiled again the cavalcade O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine, And woodland paths that wound between Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed. From every barn a team afoot, At every house a new recruit, Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest law Haply the watchful young men saw Sweet doorway pictures of the curls And curious eyes of merry girls, Lifting their hands in mock defence Against the snow-ball's compliments, And reading in each missive tost The charm with Eden never lost. We heard once more the sleigh-bells' sound; And, following where the teamsters led, The wise old Doctor went his round, Just pausing at our door to say, In the brief autocratic way Of one who, prompt at Duty's call, Was free to urge her claim on all, That some poor neighbor sick abed At night our mother's aid would need. For, one in generous thought and deed, What mattered in the sufferer's sight The Quaker matron's inward light, The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed? All hearts confess the saints elect Who, twain in faith, in love agree, And melt not in an acid sect The Christian pearl of charity! So days went on: a week had passed Since the great world was heard from last. The Almanac we studied o'er, Read and reread our little store, Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score; One harmless novel, mostly hid From younger eyes, a book forbid, And poetry, (or good or bad, A single book was all we had,) Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse, A stranger to the heathen Nine, Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine, The wars of David and the Jews. At last the floundering carrier bore The village paper to our door. Lo! broadening outward as we read, To warmer zones the horizon spread; In panoramic length unrolled We saw the marvels that it told. Before us passed the painted Creeks, And daft McGregor on his raids In Costa Rica's everglades. And up Taygetos winding slow Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks, A Turk's head at each saddle-bow Welcome to us its week-old news, Its corner for the rustic Muse, Its monthly gauge of snow and rain, Its record, mingling in a breath The wedding bell and dirge of death; Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale, The latest culprit sent to jail; Its hue and cry of stolen and lost, Its vendue sales and goods at cost, And traffic calling loud for gain. We felt the stir of hall and street, The pulse of life that round us beat; The chill embargo of the snow Was melted in the genial glow; Wide swung again our ice-locked door, And all the world was ours once more! Clasp, Angel of the backward look And folded wings of ashen gray And voice of echoes far away, The brazen covers of thy book; The weird palimpsest old and vast, Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past; Where, closely mingling, pale and glow The characters of joy and woe; The monographs of outlived years, Or smile-illumed or dim with tears, Green hills of life that slope to death, And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees Shade off to mournful cypresses With the white amaranths underneath. Even while I look, I can but heed The restless sands' incessant fall, Importunate hours that hours succeed, Each clamorous with its own sharp need, And duty keeping pace with all. Shut down and clasp the heavy lids; I hear again the voice that bids The dreamer leave his dream midway For larger hopes and graver fears Life greatens in these later years, The century's aloe flowers to-day! Yet, haply, in some lull of life, Some Truce of God which breaks its strife, The worldling's eyes shall gather dew, Dreaming in throngful city ways Of winter joys his boyhood knew; And dear and early friends--the few Who yet remain--shall pause to view These Flemish pictures of old days; Sit with me by the homestead hearth, And stretch the hands of memory forth To warm them at the wood-fire's blaze! And thanks untraced to lips unknown Shall greet me like the odors blown From unseen meadows newly mown, Or lilies floating in some pond, Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond; The traveller owns the grateful sense Of sweetness near, he knows not whence, And, pausing, takes with forehead bare The benediction of the air. 1866. MY TRIUMPH. The autumn-time has come; On woods that dream of bloom, And over purpling vines, The low sun fainter shines. The aster-flower is failing, The hazel's gold is paling; Yet overhead more near The eternal stars appear! And present gratitude Insures the future's good, And for the things I see I trust the things to be; That in the paths untrod, And the long days of God, My feet shall still be led, My heart be comforted. O living friends who love me! O dear ones gone above me! Careless of other fame, I leave to you my name. Hide it from idle praises, Save it from evil phrases Why, when dear lips that spake it Are dumb, should strangers wake it? Let the thick curtain fall; I better know than all How little I have gained, How vast the unattained. Not by the page word-painted Let life be banned or sainted Deeper than written scroll The colors of the soul. Sweeter than any sung My songs that found no tongue; Nobler than any fact My wish that failed of act. Others shall sing the song, Others shall right the wrong,-- Finish what I begin, And all I fail of win. What matter, I or they? Mine or another's day, So the right word be said And life the sweeter made? Hail to the coming singers Hail to the brave light-bringers! Forward I reach and share All that they sing and dare. The airs of heaven blow o'er me; A glory shines before me Of what mankind shall be,-- Pure, generous, brave, and free. A dream of man and woman Diviner but still human, Solving the riddle old, Shaping the Age of Gold. The love of God and neighbor; An equal-handed labor; The richer life, where beauty Walks hand in hand with duty. Ring, bells in unreared steeples, The joy of unborn peoples! Sound, trumpets far off blown, Your triumph is my own! Parcel and part of all, I keep the festival, Fore-reach the good to be, And share the victory. I feel the earth move sunward, I join the great march onward, And take, by faith, while living, My freehold of thanksgiving. 1870. IN SCHOOL-DAYS. Still sits the school-house by the road, A ragged beggar sleeping; Around it still the sumachs grow, And blackberry-vines are creeping. Within, the master's desk is seen, Deep scarred by raps official; The warping floor, the battered seats, The jack-knife's carved initial; The charcoal frescos on its wall; Its door's worn sill, betraying The feet that, creeping slow to school, Went storming out to playing! Long years ago a winter sun Shone over it at setting; Lit up its western window-panes, And low eaves' icy fretting. It touched the tangled golden curls, And brown eyes full of grieving, Of one who still her steps delayed When all the school were leaving. For near her stood the little boy Her childish favor singled: His cap pulled low upon a face Where pride and shame were mingled. Pushing with restless feet the snow To right and left, he lingered;-- As restlessly her tiny hands The blue-checked apron fingered. He saw her lift her eyes; he felt The soft hand's light caressing, And heard the tremble of her voice, As if a fault confessing. "I 'm sorry that I spelt the word I hate to go above you, Because,"--the brown eyes lower fell,-- "Because you see, I love you!" Still memory to a gray-haired man That sweet child-face is showing. Dear girl! the grasses on her grave Have forty years been growing! He lives to learn, in life's hard school, How few who pass above him Lament their triumph and his loss, Like her,--because they love him. MY BIRTHDAY. Beneath the moonlight and the snow Lies dead my latest year; The winter winds are wailing low Its dirges in my ear. I grieve not with the moaning wind As if a loss befell; Before me, even as behind, God is, and all is well! His light shines on me from above, His low voice speaks within,-- The patience of immortal love Outwearying mortal sin. Not mindless of the growing years Of care and loss and pain, My eyes are wet with thankful tears For blessings which remain. If dim the gold of life has grown, I will not count it dross, Nor turn from treasures still my own To sigh for lack and loss. The years no charm from Nature take; As sweet her voices call, As beautiful her mornings break, As fair her evenings fall. Love watches o'er my quiet ways, Kind voices speak my name, And lips that find it hard to praise Are slow, at least, to blame. How softly ebb the tides of will! How fields, once lost or won, Now lie behind me green and still Beneath a level sun. How hushed the hiss of party hate, The clamor of the throng! How old, harsh voices of debate Flow into rhythmic song! Methinks the spirit's temper grows Too soft in this still air; Somewhat the restful heart foregoes Of needed watch and prayer. The bark by tempest vainly tossed May founder in the calm, And he who braved the polar frost Faint by the isles of balm. Better than self-indulgent years The outflung heart of youth, Than pleasant songs in idle ears The tumult of the truth. Rest for the weary hands is good, And love for hearts that pine, But let the manly habitude Of upright souls be mine. Let winds that blow from heaven refresh, Dear Lord, the languid air; And let the weakness of the flesh Thy strength of spirit share. And, if the eye must fail of light, The ear forget to hear, Make clearer still the spirit's sight, More fine the inward ear! Be near me in mine hours of need To soothe, or cheer, or warn, And down these slopes of sunset lead As up the hills of morn! 1871. RED RIDING-HOOD. On the wide lawn the snow lay deep, Ridged o'er with many a drifted heap; The wind that through the pine-trees sung The naked elm-boughs tossed and swung; While, through the window, frosty-starred, Against the sunset purple barred, We saw the sombre crow flap by, The hawk's gray fleck along the sky, The crested blue-jay flitting swift, The squirrel poising on the drift, Erect, alert, his broad gray tail Set to the north wind like a sail. It came to pass, our little lass, With flattened face against the glass, And eyes in which the tender dew Of pity shone, stood gazing through The narrow space her rosy lips Had melted from the frost's eclipse "Oh, see," she cried, "the poor blue-jays! What is it that the black crow says? The squirrel lifts his little legs Because he has no hands, and begs; He's asking for my nuts, I know May I not feed them on the snow?" Half lost within her boots, her head Warm-sheltered in her hood of red, Her plaid skirt close about her drawn, She floundered down the wintry lawn; Now struggling through the misty veil Blown round her by the shrieking gale; Now sinking in a drift so low Her scarlet hood could scarcely show Its dash of color on the snow. She dropped for bird and beast forlorn Her little store of nuts and corn, And thus her timid guests bespoke "Come, squirrel, from your hollow oak,-- Come, black old crow,--come, poor blue-jay, Before your supper's blown away Don't be afraid, we all are good; And I'm mamma's Red Riding-Hood!" O Thou whose care is over all, Who heedest even the sparrow's fall, Keep in the little maiden's breast The pity which is now its guest! Let not her cultured years make less The childhood charm of tenderness, But let her feel as well as know, Nor harder with her polish grow! Unmoved by sentimental grief That wails along some printed leaf, But, prompt with kindly word and deed To own the claims of all who need, Let the grown woman's self make good The promise of Red Riding-Hood. 1877. RESPONSE. On the occasion of my seventieth birthday in 1877, I was the recipient of many tokens of esteem. The publishers of the _Atlantic Monthly_ gave a dinner in my name, and the editor of _The Literary World_ gathered in his paper many affectionate messages from my associates in literature and the cause of human progress. The lines which follow were written in acknowledgment. Beside that milestone where the level sun, Nigh unto setting, sheds his last, low rays On word and work irrevocably done, Life's blending threads of good and ill outspun, I hear, O friends! your words of cheer and praise, Half doubtful if myself or otherwise. Like him who, in the old Arabian joke, A beggar slept and crowned Caliph woke. Thanks not the less. With not unglad surprise I see my life-work through your partial eyes; Assured, in giving to my home-taught songs A higher value than of right belongs, You do but read between the written lines The finer grace of unfulfilled designs. AT EVENTIDE. Poor and inadequate the shadow-play Of gain and loss, of waking and of dream, Against life's solemn background needs must seem At this late hour. Yet, not unthankfully, I call to mind the fountains by the way, The breath of flowers, the bird-song on the spray, Dear friends, sweet human loves, the joy of giving And of receiving, the great boon of living In grand historic years when Liberty Had need of word and work, quick sympathies For all who fail and suffer, song's relief, Nature's uncloying loveliness; and chief, The kind restraining hand of Providence, The inward witness, the assuring sense Of an Eternal Good which overlies The sorrow of the world, Love which outlives All sin and wrong, Compassion which forgives To the uttermost, and Justice whose clear eyes Through lapse and failure look to the intent, And judge our frailty by the life we meant. 1878. VOYAGE OF THE JETTIE. The picturesquely situated Wayside Inn at West Ossipee, N. H., is now in ashes; and to its former guests these somewhat careless rhymes may be a not unwelcome reminder of pleasant summers and autumns on the banks of the Bearcamp and Chocorua. To the author himself they have a special interest from the fact that they were written, or improvised, under the eye and for the amusement of a beloved invalid friend whose last earthly sunsets faded from the mountain ranges of Ossipee and Sandwich. A shallow stream, from fountains Deep in the Sandwich mountains, Ran lake ward Bearcamp River; And, between its flood-torn shores, Sped by sail or urged by oars No keel had vexed it ever. Alone the dead trees yielding To the dull axe Time is wielding, The shy mink and the otter, And golden leaves and red, By countless autumns shed, Had floated down its water. From the gray rocks of Cape Ann, Came a skilled seafaring man, With his dory, to the right place; Over hill and plain he brought her, Where the boatless Beareamp water Comes winding down from White-Face. Quoth the skipper: "Ere she floats forth; I'm sure my pretty boat's worth, At least, a name as pretty." On her painted side he wrote it, And the flag that o'er her floated Bore aloft the name of Jettie. On a radiant morn of summer, Elder guest and latest comer Saw her wed the Bearcamp water; Heard the name the skipper gave her, And the answer to the favor From the Bay State's graceful daughter. Then, a singer, richly gifted, Her charmed voice uplifted; And the wood-thrush and song-sparrow Listened, dumb with envious pain, To the clear and sweet refrain Whose notes they could not borrow. Then the skipper plied his oar, And from off the shelving shore, Glided out the strange explorer; Floating on, she knew not whither,-- The tawny sands beneath her, The great hills watching o'er her. On, where the stream flows quiet As the meadows' margins by it, Or widens out to borrow a New life from that wild water, The mountain giant's daughter, The pine-besung Chocorua. Or, mid the tangling cumber And pack of mountain lumber That spring floods downward force, Over sunken snag, and bar Where the grating shallows are, The good boat held her course. Under the pine-dark highlands, Around the vine-hung islands, She ploughed her crooked furrow And her rippling and her lurches Scared the river eels and perches, And the musk-rat in his burrow. Every sober clam below her, Every sage and grave pearl-grower, Shut his rusty valves the tighter; Crow called to crow complaining, And old tortoises sat craning Their leathern necks to sight her. So, to where the still lake glasses The misty mountain masses Rising dim and distant northward, And, with faint-drawn shadow pictures, Low shores, and dead pine spectres, Blends the skyward and the earthward, On she glided, overladen, With merry man and maiden Sending back their song and laughter,-- While, perchance, a phantom crew, In a ghostly birch canoe, Paddled dumb and swiftly after! And the bear on Ossipee Climbed the topmost crag to see The strange thing drifting under; And, through the haze of August, Passaconaway and Paugus Looked down in sleepy wonder. All the pines that o'er her hung In mimic sea-tones sung The song familiar to her; And the maples leaned to screen her, And the meadow-grass seemed greener, And the breeze more soft to woo her. The lone stream mystery-haunted, To her the freedom granted To scan its every feature, Till new and old were blended, And round them both extended The loving arms of Nature. Of these hills the little vessel Henceforth is part and parcel; And on Bearcamp shall her log Be kept, as if by George's Or Grand Menan, the surges Tossed her skipper through the fog. And I, who, half in sadness, Recall the morning gladness Of life, at evening time, By chance, onlooking idly, Apart from all so widely, Have set her voyage to rhyme. Dies now the gay persistence Of song and laugh, in distance; Alone with me remaining The stream, the quiet meadow, The hills in shine and shadow, The sombre pines complaining. And, musing here, I dream Of voyagers on a stream From whence is no returning, Under sealed orders going, Looking forward little knowing, Looking back with idle yearning. And I pray that every venture The port of peace may enter, That, safe from snag and fall And siren-haunted islet, And rock, the Unseen Pilot May guide us one and all. 1880. MY TRUST. A picture memory brings to me I look across the years and see Myself beside my mother's knee. I feel her gentle hand restrain My selfish moods, and know again A child's blind sense of wrong and pain. But wiser now, a man gray grown, My childhood's needs are better known, My mother's chastening love I own. Gray grown, but in our Father's sight A child still groping for the light To read His works and ways aright. I wait, in His good time to see That as my mother dealt with me So with His children dealeth He. I bow myself beneath His hand That pain itself was wisely planned I feel, and partly understand. The joy that comes in sorrow's guise, The sweet pains of self-sacrifice, I would not have them otherwise. And what were life and death if sin Knew not the dread rebuke within, The pang of merciful discipline? Not with thy proud despair of old, Crowned stoic of Rome's noblest mould! Pleasure and pain alike I hold. I suffer with no vain pretence Of triumph over flesh and sense, Yet trust the grievous providence, How dark soe'er it seems, may tend, By ways I cannot comprehend, To some unguessed benignant end; That every loss and lapse may gain The clear-aired heights by steps of pain, And never cross is borne in vain. 1880. A NAME Addressed to my grand-nephew, Greenleaf Whittier Pickard. Jonathan Greenleaf, in A Genealogy of the Greenleaf Family, says briefly: "From all that can be gathered, it is believed that the ancestors of the Greenleaf family were Huguenots, who left France on account of their religious principles some time in the course of the sixteenth century, and settled in England. The name was probably translated from the French Feuillevert." The name the Gallic exile bore, St. Malo! from thy ancient mart, Became upon our Western shore Greenleaf for Feuillevert. A name to hear in soft accord Of leaves by light winds overrun, Or read, upon the greening sward Of May, in shade and sun. The name my infant ear first heard Breathed softly with a mother's kiss; His mother's own, no tenderer word My father spake than this. No child have I to bear it on; Be thou its keeper; let it take From gifts well used and duty done New beauty for thy sake. The fair ideals that outran My halting footsteps seek and find-- The flawless symmetry of man, The poise of heart and mind. Stand firmly where I felt the sway Of every wing that fancy flew, See clearly where I groped my way, Nor real from seeming knew. And wisely choose, and bravely hold Thy faith unswerved by cross or crown, Like the stout Huguenot of old Whose name to thee comes down. As Marot's songs made glad the heart Of that lone exile, haply mine May in life's heavy hours impart Some strength and hope to thine. Yet when did Age transfer to Youth The hard-gained lessons of its day? Each lip must learn the taste of truth, Each foot must feel its way. We cannot hold the hands of choice That touch or shun life's fateful keys; The whisper of the inward voice Is more than homilies. Dear boy! for whom the flowers are born, Stars shine, and happy song-birds sing, What can my evening give to morn, My winter to thy spring! A life not void of pure intent, With small desert of praise or blame, The love I felt, the good I meant, I leave thee with my name. 1880. GREETING. Originally prefixed to the volume, The King's Missive and other Poems. I spread a scanty board too late; The old-time guests for whom I wait Come few and slow, methinks, to-day. Ah! who could hear my messages Across the dim unsounded seas On which so many have sailed away! Come, then, old friends, who linger yet, And let us meet, as we have met, Once more beneath this low sunshine; And grateful for the good we 've known, The riddles solved, the ills outgrown, Shake bands upon the border line. The favor, asked too oft before, From your indulgent ears, once more I crave, and, if belated lays To slower, feebler measures move, The silent, sympathy of love To me is dearer now than praise. And ye, O younger friends, for whom My hearth and heart keep open room, Come smiling through the shadows long, Be with me while the sun goes down, And with your cheerful voices drown The minor of my even-song. For, equal through the day and night, The wise Eternal oversight And love and power and righteous will Remain: the law of destiny The best for each and all must be, And life its promise shall fulfil. 1881. AN AUTOGRAPH. I write my name as one, On sands by waves o'errun Or winter's frosted pane, Traces a record vain. Oblivion's blankness claims Wiser and better names, And well my own may pass As from the strand or glass. Wash on, O waves of time! Melt, noons, the frosty rime! Welcome the shadow vast, The silence that shall last. When I and all who know And love me vanish so, What harm to them or me Will the lost memory be? If any words of mine, Through right of life divine, Remain, what matters it Whose hand the message writ? Why should the "crowner's quest" Sit on my worst or best? Why should the showman claim The poor ghost of my name? Yet, as when dies a sound Its spectre lingers round, Haply my spent life will Leave some faint echo still. A whisper giving breath Of praise or blame to death, Soothing or saddening such As loved the living much. Therefore with yearnings vain And fond I still would fain A kindly judgment seek, A tender thought bespeak. And, while my words are read, Let this at least be said "Whate'er his life's defeatures, He loved his fellow-creatures. "If, of the Law's stone table, To hold he scarce was able The first great precept fast, He kept for man the last. "Through mortal lapse and dulness What lacks the Eternal Fulness, If still our weakness can Love Him in loving man? "Age brought him no despairing Of the world's future faring; In human nature still He found more good than ill. "To all who dumbly suffered, His tongue and pen he offered; His life was not his own, Nor lived for self alone. "Hater of din and riot He lived in days unquiet; And, lover of all beauty, Trod the hard ways of duty. "He meant no wrong to any He sought the good of many, Yet knew both sin and folly,-- May God forgive him wholly!" 1882. ABRAM MORRISON. 'Midst the men and things which will Haunt an old man's memory still, Drollest, quaintest of them all, With a boy's laugh I recall Good old Abram Morrison. When the Grist and Rolling Mill Ground and rumbled by Po Hill, And the old red school-house stood Midway in the Powow's flood, Here dwelt Abram Morrison. From the Beach to far beyond Bear-Hill, Lion's Mouth and Pond, Marvellous to our tough old stock, Chips o' the Anglo-Saxon block, Seemed the Celtic Morrison. Mudknock, Balmawhistle, all Only knew the Yankee drawl, Never brogue was heard till when, Foremost of his countrymen, Hither came Friend Morrison; Yankee born, of alien blood, Kin of his had well withstood Pope and King with pike and ball Under Derry's leaguered wall, As became the Morrisons. Wandering down from Nutfield woods With his household and his goods, Never was it clearly told How within our quiet fold Came to be a Morrison. Once a soldier, blame him not That the Quaker he forgot, When, to think of battles won, And the red-coats on the run, Laughed aloud Friend Morrison. From gray Lewis over sea Bore his sires their family tree, On the rugged boughs of it Grafting Irish mirth and wit, And the brogue of Morrison. Half a genius, quick to plan, Blundering like an Irishman, But with canny shrewdness lent By his far-off Scotch descent, Such was Abram Morrison. Back and forth to daily meals, Rode his cherished pig on wheels, And to all who came to see "Aisier for the pig an' me, Sure it is," said Morrison. Simple-hearted, boy o'er-grown, With a humor quite his own, Of our sober-stepping ways, Speech and look and cautious phrase, Slow to learn was Morrison. Much we loved his stories told Of a country strange and old, Where the fairies danced till dawn, And the goblin Leprecaun Looked, we thought, like Morrison. Or wild tales of feud and fight, Witch and troll and second sight Whispered still where Stornoway Looks across its stormy bay, Once the home of Morrisons. First was he to sing the praise Of the Powow's winding ways; And our straggling village took City grandeur to the look Of its poet Morrison. All his words have perished. Shame On the saddle-bags of Fame, That they bring not to our time One poor couplet of the rhyme Made by Abram Morrison! When, on calm and fair First Days, Rattled down our one-horse chaise, Through the blossomed apple-boughs To the old, brown meeting-house, There was Abram Morrison. Underneath his hat's broad brim Peered the queer old face of him; And with Irish jauntiness Swung the coat-tails of the dress Worn by Abram Morrison. Still, in memory, on his feet, Leaning o'er the elders' seat, Mingling with a solemn drone, Celtic accents all his own, Rises Abram Morrison. "Don't," he's pleading, "don't ye go, Dear young friends, to sight and show, Don't run after elephants, Learned pigs and presidents And the likes!" said Morrison. On his well-worn theme intent, Simple, child-like, innocent, Heaven forgive the half-checked smile Of our careless boyhood, while Listening to Friend Morrison! We have learned in later days Truth may speak in simplest phrase; That the man is not the less For quaint ways and home-spun dress, Thanks to Abram Morrison! Not to pander nor to please Come the needed homilies, With no lofty argument Is the fitting message sent, Through such lips as Morrison's. Dead and gone! But while its track Powow keeps to Merrimac, While Po Hill is still on guard, Looking land and ocean ward, They shall tell of Morrison! After half a century's lapse, We are wiser now, perhaps, But we miss our streets amid Something which the past has hid, Lost with Abram Morrison. Gone forever with the queer Characters of that old year Now the many are as one; Broken is the mould that run Men like Abram Morrison. 1884. A LEGACY Friend of my many years When the great silence falls, at last, on me, Let me not leave, to pain and sadden thee, A memory of tears, But pleasant thoughts alone Of one who was thy friendship's honored guest And drank the wine of consolation pressed From sorrows of thy own. I leave with thee a sense Of hands upheld and trials rendered less-- The unselfish joy which is to helpfulness Its own great recompense; The knowledge that from thine, As from the garments of the Master, stole Calmness and strength, the virtue which makes whole And heals without a sign; Yea more, the assurance strong That love, which fails of perfect utterance here, Lives on to fill the heavenly atmosphere With its immortal song. 1887. RELIGIOUS POEMS THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM Where Time the measure of his hours By changeful bud and blossom keeps, And, like a young bride crowned with flowers, Fair Shiraz in her garden sleeps; Where, to her poet's turban stone, The Spring her gift of flowers imparts, Less sweet than those his thoughts have sown In the warm soil of Persian hearts: There sat the stranger, where the shade Of scattered date-trees thinly lay, While in the hot clear heaven delayed The long and still and weary day. Strange trees and fruits above him hung, Strange odors filled the sultry air, Strange birds upon the branches swung, Strange insect voices murmured there. And strange bright blossoms shone around, Turned sunward from the shadowy bowers, As if the Gheber's soul had found A fitting home in Iran's flowers. Whate'er he saw, whate'er he heard, Awakened feelings new and sad,-- No Christian garb, nor Christian word, Nor church with Sabbath-bell chimes glad, But Moslem graves, with turban stones, And mosque-spires gleaming white, in view, And graybeard Mollahs in low tones Chanting their Koran service through. The flowers which smiled on either hand, Like tempting fiends, were such as they Which once, o'er all that Eastern land, As gifts on demon altars lay. As if the burning eye of Baal The servant of his Conqueror knew, From skies which knew no cloudy veil, The Sun's hot glances smote him through. "Ah me!" the lonely stranger said, "The hope which led my footsteps on, And light from heaven around them shed, O'er weary wave and waste, is gone! "Where are the harvest fields all white, For Truth to thrust her sickle in? Where flock the souls, like doves in flight, From the dark hiding-place of sin? "A silent-horror broods o'er all,-- The burden of a hateful spell,-- The very flowers around recall The hoary magi's rites of hell! "And what am I, o'er such a land The banner of the Cross to bear? Dear Lord, uphold me with Thy hand, Thy strength with human weakness share!" He ceased; for at his very feet In mild rebuke a floweret smiled; How thrilled his sinking heart to greet The Star-flower of the Virgin's child! Sown by some wandering Frank, it drew Its life from alien air and earth, And told to Paynim sun and dew The story of the Saviour's birth. From scorching beams, in kindly mood, The Persian plants its beauty screened, And on its pagan sisterhood, In love, the Christian floweret leaned. With tears of joy the wanderer felt The darkness of his long despair Before that hallowed symbol melt, Which God's dear love had nurtured there. From Nature's face, that simple flower The lines of sin and sadness swept; And Magian pile and Paynim bower In peace like that of Eden slept. Each Moslem tomb, and cypress old, Looked holy through the sunset air; And, angel-like, the Muezzin told From tower and mosque the hour of prayer. With cheerful steps, the morrow's dawn From Shiraz saw the stranger part; The Star-flower of the Virgin-Born Still blooming in his hopeful heart! 1830. THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN "Get ye up from the wrath of God's terrible day! Ungirded, unsandalled, arise and away! 'T is the vintage of blood, 't is the fulness of time, And vengeance shall gather the harvest of crime!" The warning was spoken--the righteous had gone, And the proud ones of Sodom were feasting alone; All gay was the banquet--the revel was long, With the pouring of wine and the breathing of song. 'T was an evening of beauty; the air was perfume, The earth was all greenness, the trees were all bloom; And softly the delicate viol was heard, Like the murmur of love or the notes of a bird. And beautiful maidens moved down in the dance, With the magic of motion and sunshine of glance And white arms wreathed lightly, and tresses fell free As the plumage of birds in some tropical tree. Where the shrines of foul idols were lighted on high, And wantonness tempted the lust of the eye; Midst rites of obsceneness, strange, loathsome, abhorred, The blasphemer scoffed at the name of the Lord. Hark! the growl of the thunder,--the quaking of earth! Woe, woe to the worship, and woe to the mirth! The black sky has opened; there's flame in the air; The red arm of vengeance is lifted and bare! Then the shriek of the dying rose wild where the song And the low tone of love had been whispered along; For the fierce flames went lightly o'er palace and bower, Like the red tongues of demons, to blast and devour! Down, down on the fallen the red ruin rained, And the reveller sank with his wine-cup undrained; The foot of the dancer, the music's loved thrill, And the shout and the laughter grew suddenly still. The last throb of anguish was fearfully given; The last eye glared forth in its madness on Heaven! The last groan of horror rose wildly and vain, And death brooded over the pride of the Plain! 1831. THE CALL OF THE CHRISTIAN Not always as the whirlwind's rush On Horeb's mount of fear, Not always as the burning bush To Midian's shepherd seer, Nor as the awful voice which came To Israel's prophet bards, Nor as the tongues of cloven flame, Nor gift of fearful words,-- Not always thus, with outward sign Of fire or voice from Heaven, The message of a truth divine, The call of God is given! Awaking in the human heart Love for the true and right,-- Zeal for the Christian's better part, Strength for the Christian's fight. Nor unto manhood's heart alone The holy influence steals Warm with a rapture not its own, The heart of woman feels! As she who by Samaria's wall The Saviour's errand sought,-- As those who with the fervent Paul And meek Aquila wrought: Or those meek ones whose martyrdom Rome's gathered grandeur saw Or those who in their Alpine home Braved the Crusader's war, When the green Vaudois, trembling, heard, Through all its vales of death, The martyr's song of triumph poured From woman's failing breath. And gently, by a thousand things Which o'er our spirits pass, Like breezes o'er the harp's fine strings, Or vapors o'er a glass, Leaving their token strange and new Of music or of shade, The summons to the right and true And merciful is made. Oh, then, if gleams of truth and light Flash o'er thy waiting mind, Unfolding to thy mental sight The wants of human-kind; If, brooding over human grief, The earnest wish is known To soothe and gladden with relief An anguish not thine own; Though heralded with naught of fear, Or outward sign or show; Though only to the inward ear It whispers soft and low; Though dropping, as the manna fell, Unseen, yet from above, Noiseless as dew-fall, heed it well,--- Thy Father's call of love! THE CRUCIFIXION. Sunlight upon Judha's hills! And on the waves of Galilee; On Jordan's stream, and on the rills That feed the dead and sleeping sea! Most freshly from the green wood springs The light breeze on its scented wings; And gayly quiver in the sun The cedar tops of Lebanon! A few more hours,--a change hath come! The sky is dark without a cloud! The shouts of wrath and joy are dumb, And proud knees unto earth are bowed. A change is on the hill of Death, The helmed watchers pant for breath, And turn with wild and maniac eyes From the dark scene of sacrifice! That Sacrifice!--the death of Him,-- The Christ of God, the holy One! Well may the conscious Heaven grow dim, And blacken the beholding, Sun. The wonted light hath fled away, Night settles on the middle day, And earthquake from his caverned bed Is waking with a thrill of dread! The dead are waking underneath! Their prison door is rent away! And, ghastly with the seal of death, They wander in the eye of day! The temple of the Cherubim, The House of God is cold and dim; A curse is on its trembling walls, Its mighty veil asunder falls! Well may the cavern-depths of Earth Be shaken, and her mountains nod; Well may the sheeted dead come forth To see the suffering son of God! Well may the temple-shrine grow dim, And shadows veil the Cherubim, When He, the chosen one of Heaven, A sacrifice for guilt is given! And shall the sinful heart, alone, Behold unmoved the fearful hour, When Nature trembled on her throne, And Death resigned his iron power? Oh, shall the heart--whose sinfulness Gave keenness to His sore distress, And added to His tears of blood-- Refuse its trembling gratitude! 1834. PALESTINE Blest land of Judaea! thrice hallowed of song, Where the holiest of memories pilgrim-like throng; In the shade of thy palms, by the shores of thy sea, On the hills of thy beauty, my heart is with thee. With the eye of a spirit I look on that shore Where pilgrim and prophet have lingered before; With the glide of a spirit I traverse the sod Made bright by the steps of the angels of God. Blue sea of the hills! in my spirit I hear Thy waters, Gennesaret, chime on my ear; Where the Lowly and Just with the people sat down, And thy spray on the dust of His sandals was thrown. Beyond are Bethulia's mountains of green, And the desolate hills of the wild Gadarene; And I pause on the goat-crags of Tabor to see The gleam of thy waters, O dark Galilee! Hark, a sound in the valley! where, swollen and strong, Thy river, O Kishon, is sweeping along; Where the Canaanite strove with Jehovah in vain, And thy torrent grew dark with the blood of the slain. There down from his mountains stern Zebulon came, And Naphthali's stag, with his eyeballs of flame, And the chariots of Jabin rolled harmlessly on, For the arm of the Lord was Abinoam's son! There sleep the still rocks and the caverns which rang To the song which the beautiful prophetess sang, When the princes of Issachar stood by her side, And the shout of a host in its triumph replied. Lo, Bethlehem's hill-site before me is seen, With the mountains around, and the valleys between; There rested the shepherds of Judah, and there The song of the angels rose sweet on the air. And Bethany's palm-trees in beauty still throw Their shadows at noon on the ruins below; But where are the sisters who hastened to greet The lowly Redeemer, and sit at His feet? I tread where the twelve in their wayfaring trod; I stand where they stood with the chosen of God-- Where His blessing was heard and His lessons were taught, Where the blind were restored and the healing was wrought. Oh, here with His flock the sad Wanderer came; These hills He toiled over in grief are the same; The founts where He drank by the wayside still flow, And the same airs are blowing which breathed on His brow! And throned on her hills sits Jerusalem yet, But with dust on her forehead, and chains on her feet; For the crown of her pride to the mocker hath gone, And the holy Shechinah is dark where it shone. But wherefore this dream of the earthly abode Of Humanity clothed in the brightness of God? Were my spirit but turned from the outward and dim, It could gaze, even now, on the presence of Him! Not in clouds and in terrors, but gentle as when, In love and in meekness, He moved among men; And the voice which breathed peace to the waves of the sea In the hush of my spirit would whisper to me! And what if my feet may not tread where He stood, Nor my ears hear the dashing of Galilee's flood, Nor my eyes see the cross which he bowed Him to bear, Nor my knees press Gethsemane's garden of prayer. Yet, Loved of the Father, Thy Spirit is near To the meek, and the lowly, and penitent here; And the voice of Thy love is the same even now As at Bethany's tomb or on Olivet's brow. Oh, the outward hath gone! but in glory and power. The spirit surviveth the things of an hour; Unchanged, undecaying, its Pentecost flame On the heart's secret altar is burning the same 1837. HYMNS. FROM THE FRENCH OF LAMARTINE I. "Encore un hymne, O ma lyre Un hymn pour le Seigneur, Un hymne dans mon delire, Un hymne dans mon bonheur." One hymn more, O my lyre! Praise to the God above, Of joy and life and love, Sweeping its strings of fire! Oh, who the speed of bird and wind And sunbeam's glance will lend to me, That, soaring upward, I may find My resting-place and home in Thee? Thou, whom my soul, midst doubt and gloom, Adoreth with a fervent flame,-- Mysterious spirit! unto whom Pertain nor sign nor name! Swiftly my lyre's soft murmurs go, Up from the cold and joyless earth, Back to the God who bade them flow, Whose moving spirit sent them forth. But as for me, O God! for me, The lowly creature of Thy will, Lingering and sad, I sigh to Thee, An earth-bound pilgrim still! Was not my spirit born to shine Where yonder stars and suns are glowing? To breathe with them the light divine From God's own holy altar flowing? To be, indeed, whate'er the soul In dreams hath thirsted for so long,-- A portion of heaven's glorious whole Of loveliness and song? Oh, watchers of the stars at night, Who breathe their fire, as we the air,-- Suns, thunders, stars, and rays of light, Oh, say, is He, the Eternal, there? Bend there around His awful throne The seraph's glance, the angel's knee? Or are thy inmost depths His own, O wild and mighty sea? Thoughts of my soul, how swift ye go! Swift as the eagle's glance of fire, Or arrows from the archer's bow, To the far aim of your desire! Thought after thought, ye thronging rise, Like spring-doves from the startled wood, Bearing like them your sacrifice Of music unto God! And shall these thoughts of joy and love Come back again no more to me? Returning like the patriarch's dove Wing-weary from the eternal sea, To bear within my longing arms The promise-bough of kindlier skies, Plucked from the green, immortal palms Which shadow Paradise? All-moving spirit! freely forth At Thy command the strong wind goes Its errand to the passive earth, Nor art can stay, nor strength oppose, Until it folds its weary wing Once more within the hand divine; So, weary from its wandering, My spirit turns to Thine! Child of the sea, the mountain stream, From its dark caverns, hurries on, Ceaseless, by night and morning's beam, By evening's star and noontide's sun, Until at last it sinks to rest, O'erwearied, in the waiting sea, And moans upon its mother's breast,-- So turns my soul to Thee! O Thou who bidst the torrent flow, Who lendest wings unto the wind,-- Mover of all things! where art Thou? Oh, whither shall I go to find The secret of Thy resting-place? Is there no holy wing for me, That, soaring, I may search the space Of highest heaven for Thee? Oh, would I were as free to rise As leaves on autumn's whirlwind borne,-- The arrowy light of sunset skies, Or sound, or ray, or star of morn, Which melts in heaven at twilight's close, Or aught which soars unchecked and free Through earth and heaven; that I might lose Myself in finding Thee! II. LE CRI DE L'AME. "Quand le souffle divin qui flotte sur le monde." When the breath divine is flowing, Zephyr-like o'er all things going, And, as the touch of viewless fingers, Softly on my soul it lingers, Open to a breath the lightest, Conscious of a touch the slightest,-- As some calm, still lake, whereon Sinks the snowy-bosomed swan, And the glistening water-rings Circle round her moving wings When my upward gaze is turning Where the stars of heaven are burning Through the deep and dark abyss, Flowers of midnight's wilderness, Blowing with the evening's breath Sweetly in their Maker's path When the breaking day is flushing All the east, and light is gushing Upward through the horizon's haze, Sheaf-like, with its thousand rays, Spreading, until all above Overflows with joy and love, And below, on earth's green bosom, All is changed to light and blossom: When my waking fancies over Forms of brightness flit and hover Holy as the seraphs are, Who by Zion's fountains wear On their foreheads, white and broad, "Holiness unto the Lord!" When, inspired with rapture high, It would seem a single sigh Could a world of love create; That my life could know no date, And my eager thoughts could fill Heaven and Earth, o'erflowing still! Then, O Father! Thou alone, From the shadow of Thy throne, To the sighing of my breast And its rapture answerest. All my thoughts, which, upward winging, Bathe where Thy own light is springing,-- All my yearnings to be free Are at echoes answering Thee! Seldom upon lips of mine, Father! rests that name of Thine; Deep within my inmost breast, In the secret place of mind, Like an awful presence shrined, Doth the dread idea rest Hushed and holy dwells it there, Prompter of the silent prayer, Lifting up my spirit's eye And its faint, but earnest cry, From its dark and cold abode, Unto Thee, my Guide and God! 1837 THE FAMILIST'S HYMN. The Puritans of New England, even in their wilderness home, were not exempted from the sectarian contentions which agitated the mother country after the downfall of Charles the First, and of the established Episcopacy. The Quakers, Baptists, and Catholics were banished, on pain of death, from the Massachusetts Colony. One Samuel Gorton, a bold and eloquent declaimer, after preaching for a time in Boston against the doctrines of the Puritans, and declaring that their churches were mere human devices, and their sacrament and baptism an abomination, was driven out of the jurisdiction of the colony, and compelled to seek a residence among the savages. He gathered round him a considerable number of converts, who, like the primitive Christians, shared all things in common. His opinions, however, were so troublesome to the leading clergy of the colony, that they instigated an attack upon his "Family" by an armed force, which seized upon the principal men in it, and brought them into Massachusetts, where they were sentenced to be kept at hard labor in several towns (one only in each town), during the pleasure of the General Court, they being forbidden, under severe penalties, to utter any of their religious sentiments, except to such ministers as might labor for their conversion. They were unquestionably sincere in their opinions, and, whatever may have been their errors, deserve to be ranked among those who have in all ages suffered for the freedom of conscience. Father! to Thy suffering poor Strength and grace and faith impart, And with Thy own love restore Comfort to the broken heart! Oh, the failing ones confirm With a holier strength of zeal! Give Thou not the feeble worm Helpless to the spoiler's heel! Father! for Thy holy sake We are spoiled and hunted thus; Joyful, for Thy truth we take Bonds and burthens unto us Poor, and weak, and robbed of all, Weary with our daily task, That Thy truth may never fall Through our weakness, Lord, we ask. Round our fired and wasted homes Flits the forest-bird unscared, And at noon the wild beast comes Where our frugal meal was shared; For the song of praises there Shrieks the crow the livelong day; For the sound of evening prayer Howls the evil beast of prey! Sweet the songs we loved to sing Underneath Thy holy sky; Words and tones that used to bring Tears of joy in every eye; Dear the wrestling hours of prayer, When we gathered knee to knee, Blameless youth and hoary hair, Bowed, O God, alone to Thee. As Thine early children, Lord, Shared their wealth and daily bread, Even so, with one accord, We, in love, each other fed. Not with us the miser's hoard, Not with us his grasping hand; Equal round a common board, Drew our meek and brother band! Safe our quiet Eden lay When the war-whoop stirred the land And the Indian turned away From our home his bloody hand. Well that forest-ranger saw, That the burthen and the curse Of the white man's cruel law Rested also upon us. Torn apart, and driven forth To our toiling hard and long, Father! from the dust of earth Lift we still our grateful song! Grateful, that in bonds we share In Thy love which maketh free; Joyful, that the wrongs we bear, Draw us nearer, Lord, to Thee! Grateful! that where'er we toil,-- By Wachuset's wooded side, On Nantucket's sea-worn isle, Or by wild Neponset's tide,-- Still, in spirit, we are near, And our evening hymns, which rise Separate and discordant here, Meet and mingle in the skies! Let the scoffer scorn and mock, Let the proud and evil priest Rob the needy of his flock, For his wine-cup and his feast,-- Redden not Thy bolts in store Through the blackness of Thy skies? For the sighing of the poor Wilt Thou not, at length, arise? Worn and wasted, oh! how long Shall thy trodden poor complain? In Thy name they bear the wrong, In Thy cause the bonds of pain! Melt oppression's heart of steel, Let the haughty priesthood see, And their blinded followers feel, That in us they mock at Thee! In Thy time, O Lord of hosts, Stretch abroad that hand to save Which of old, on Egypt's coasts, Smote apart the Red Sea's wave Lead us from this evil land, From the spoiler set us free, And once more our gathered band, Heart to heart, shall worship Thee! 1838. EZEKIEL Also, thou son of man, the children of thy people still are talking against thee by the walls and in the doors of the houses, and speak one to another, every one to his brother, saying, Come, I pray you, and hear what is the word that cometh forth from the Lord. And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them: for with their mouth they skew much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness. And, lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument: for they hear thy words, but they do them not. And when this cometh to pass, (lo, it will come,) then shall they know that a prophet hath been among them.-- EZEKIEL, xxxiii. 30-33. They hear Thee not, O God! nor see; Beneath Thy rod they mock at Thee; The princes of our ancient line Lie drunken with Assyrian wine; The priests around Thy altar speak The false words which their hearers seek; And hymns which Chaldea's wanton maids Have sung in Dura's idol-shades Are with the Levites' chant ascending, With Zion's holiest anthems blending! On Israel's bleeding bosom set, The heathen heel is crushing yet; The towers upon our holy hill Echo Chaldean footsteps still. Our wasted shrines,--who weeps for them? Who mourneth for Jerusalem? Who turneth from his gains away? Whose knee with mine is bowed to pray? Who, leaving feast and purpling cup, Takes Zion's lamentation up? A sad and thoughtful youth, I went With Israel's early banishment; And where the sullen Chebar crept, The ritual of my fathers kept. The water for the trench I drew, The firstling of the flock I slew, And, standing at the altar's side, I shared the Levites' lingering pride, That still, amidst her mocking foes, The smoke of Zion's offering rose. In sudden whirlwind, cloud and flame, The Spirit of the Highest came! Before mine eyes a vision passed, A glory terrible and vast; With dreadful eyes of living things, And sounding sweep of angel wings, With circling light and sapphire throne, And flame-like form of One thereon, And voice of that dread Likeness sent Down from the crystal firmament! The burden of a prophet's power Fell on me in that fearful hour; From off unutterable woes The curtain of the future rose; I saw far down the coming time The fiery chastisement of crime; With noise of mingling hosts, and jar Of falling towers and shouts of war, I saw the nations rise and fall, Like fire-gleams on my tent's white wall. In dream and trance, I--saw the slain Of Egypt heaped like harvest grain. I saw the walls of sea-born Tyre Swept over by the spoiler's fire; And heard the low, expiring moan Of Edom on his rocky throne; And, woe is me! the wild lament From Zion's desolation sent; And felt within my heart each blow Which laid her holy places low. In bonds and sorrow, day by day, Before the pictured tile I lay; And there, as in a mirror, saw The coming of Assyria's war; Her swarthy lines of spearmen pass Like locusts through Bethhoron's grass; I saw them draw their stormy hem Of battle round Jerusalem; And, listening, heard the Hebrew wail! Blend with the victor-trump of Baal! Who trembled at my warning word? Who owned the prophet of the Lord? How mocked the rude, how scoffed the vile, How stung the Levites' scornful smile, As o'er my spirit, dark and slow, The shadow crept of Israel's woe As if the angel's mournful roll Had left its record on my soul, And traced in lines of darkness there The picture of its great despair! Yet ever at the hour I feel My lips in prophecy unseal. Prince, priest, and Levite gather near, And Salem's daughters haste to hear, On Chebar's waste and alien shore, The harp of Judah swept once more. They listen, as in Babel's throng The Chaldeans to the dancer's song, Or wild sabbeka's nightly play,-- As careless and as vain as they. . . . . . And thus, O Prophet-bard of old, Hast thou thy tale of sorrow told The same which earth's unwelcome seers Have felt in all succeeding years. Sport of the changeful multitude, Nor calmly heard nor understood, Their song has seemed a trick of art, Their warnings but, the actor's part. With bonds, and scorn, and evil will, The world requites its prophets still. So was it when the Holy One The garments of the flesh put on Men followed where the Highest led For common gifts of daily bread, And gross of ear, of vision dim, Owned not the Godlike power of Him. Vain as a dreamer's words to them His wail above Jerusalem, And meaningless the watch He kept Through which His weak disciples slept. Yet shrink not thou, whoe'er thou art, For God's great purpose set apart, Before whose far-discerning eyes, The Future as the Present lies! Beyond a narrow-bounded age Stretches thy prophet-heritage, Through Heaven's vast spaces angel-trod, And through the eternal years of God Thy audience, worlds!--all things to be The witness of the Truth in thee! 1844. WHAT THE VOICE SAID MADDENED by Earth's wrong and evil, "Lord!" I cried in sudden ire, "From Thy right hand, clothed with thunder, Shake the bolted fire! "Love is lost, and Faith is dying; With the brute the man is sold; And the dropping blood of labor Hardens into gold. "Here the dying wail of Famine, There the battle's groan of pain; And, in silence, smooth-faced Mammon Reaping men like grain. "'Where is God, that we should fear Him?' Thus the earth-born Titans say 'God! if Thou art living, hear us!' Thus the weak ones pray." "Thou, the patient Heaven upbraiding," Spake a solemn Voice within; "Weary of our Lord's forbearance, Art thou free from sin? "Fearless brow to Him uplifting, Canst thou for His thunders call, Knowing that to guilt's attraction Evermore they fall? "Know'st thou not all germs of evil In thy heart await their time? Not thyself, but God's restraining, Stays their growth of crime. "Couldst thou boast, O child of weakness! O'er the sons of wrong and strife, Were their strong temptations planted In thy path of life? "Thou hast seen two streamlets gushing From one fountain, clear and free, But by widely varying channels Searching for the sea. "Glideth one through greenest valleys, Kissing them with lips still sweet; One, mad roaring down the mountains, Stagnates at their feet. "Is it choice whereby the Parsee Kneels before his mother's fire? In his black tent did the Tartar Choose his wandering sire? "He alone, whose hand is bounding Human power and human will, Looking through each soul's surrounding, Knows its good or ill. "For thyself, while wrong and sorrow Make to thee their strong appeal, Coward wert thou not to utter What the heart must feel. "Earnest words must needs be spoken When the warm heart bleeds or burns With its scorn of wrong, or pity For the wronged, by turns. "But, by all thy nature's weakness, Hidden faults and follies known, Be thou, in rebuking evil, Conscious of thine own. "Not the less shall stern-eyed Duty To thy lips her trumpet set, But with harsher blasts shall mingle Wailings of regret." Cease not, Voice of holy speaking, Teacher sent of God, be near, Whispering through the day's cool silence, Let my spirit hear! So, when thoughts of evil-doers Waken scorn, or hatred move, Shall a mournful fellow-feeling Temper all with love. 1847. THE ANGEL OF PATIENCE. A FREE PARAPHRASE OF THE GERMAN. To weary hearts, to mourning homes, God's meekest Angel gently comes No power has he to banish pain, Or give us back our lost again; And yet in tenderest love, our dear And Heavenly Father sends him here. There's quiet in that Angel's glance, There 's rest in his still countenance! He mocks no grief with idle cheer, Nor wounds with words the mourner's ear; But ills and woes he may not cure He kindly trains us to endure. Angel of Patience! sent to calm Our feverish brows with cooling palm; To lay the storms of hope and fear, And reconcile life's smile and tear; The throbs of wounded pride to still, And make our own our Father's will. O thou who mournest on thy way, With longings for the close of day; He walks with thee, that Angel kind, And gently whispers, "Be resigned Bear up, bear on, the end shall tell The dear Lord ordereth all things well!" 1847. THE WIFE OF MANOAH TO HER HUSBAND. Against the sunset's glowing wall The city towers rise black and tall, Where Zorah, on its rocky height, Stands like an armed man in the light. Down Eshtaol's vales of ripened grain Falls like a cloud the night amain, And up the hillsides climbing slow The barley reapers homeward go. Look, dearest! how our fair child's head The sunset light hath hallowed, Where at this olive's foot he lies, Uplooking to the tranquil skies. Oh, while beneath the fervent heat Thy sickle swept the bearded wheat, I've watched, with mingled joy and dread, Our child upon his grassy bed. Joy, which the mother feels alone Whose morning hope like mine had flown, When to her bosom, over-blessed, A dearer life than hers is pressed. Dread, for the future dark and still, Which shapes our dear one to its will; Forever in his large calm eyes, I read a tale of sacrifice. The same foreboding awe I felt When at the altar's side we knelt, And he, who as a pilgrim came, Rose, winged and glorious, through the flame. I slept not, though the wild bees made A dreamlike murmuring in the shade, And on me the warm-fingered hours Pressed with the drowsy smell of flowers. Before me, in a vision, rose The hosts of Israel's scornful foes,-- Rank over rank, helm, shield, and spear, Glittered in noon's hot atmosphere. I heard their boast, and bitter word, Their mockery of the Hebrew's Lord, I saw their hands His ark assail, Their feet profane His holy veil. No angel down the blue space spoke, No thunder from the still sky broke; But in their midst, in power and awe, Like God's waked wrath, our child I saw! A child no more!--harsh-browed and strong, He towered a giant in the throng, And down his shoulders, broad and bare, Swept the black terror of his hair. He raised his arm--he smote amain; As round the reaper falls the grain, So the dark host around him fell, So sank the foes of Israel! Again I looked. In sunlight shone The towers and domes of Askelon; Priest, warrior, slave, a mighty crowd Within her idol temple bowed. Yet one knelt not; stark, gaunt, and blind, His arms the massive pillars twined,-- An eyeless captive, strong with hate, He stood there like an evil Fate. The red shrines smoked,--the trumpets pealed He stooped,--the giant columns reeled; Reeled tower and fane, sank arch and wall, And the thick dust-cloud closed o'er all! Above the shriek, the crash, the groan Of the fallen pride of Askelon, I heard, sheer down the echoing sky, A voice as of an angel cry,-- The voice of him, who at our side Sat through the golden eventide; Of him who, on thy altar's blaze, Rose fire-winged, with his song of praise. "Rejoice o'er Israel's broken chain, Gray mother of the mighty slain! Rejoice!" it cried, "he vanquisheth! The strong in life is strong in death! "To him shall Zorah's daughters raise Through coming years their hymns of praise, And gray old men at evening tell Of all he wrought for Israel. "And they who sing and they who hear Alike shall hold thy memory dear, And pour their blessings on thy head, O mother of the mighty dead!" It ceased; and though a sound I heard As if great wings the still air stirred, I only saw the barley sheaves And hills half hid by olive leaves. I bowed my face, in awe and fear, On the dear child who slumbered near; "With me, as with my only son, O God," I said, "Thy will be done!" 1847. MY SOUL AND I Stand still, my soul, in the silent dark I would question thee, Alone in the shadow drear and stark With God and me! What, my soul, was thy errand here? Was it mirth or ease, Or heaping up dust from year to year? "Nay, none of these!" Speak, soul, aright in His holy sight Whose eye looks still And steadily on thee through the night "To do His will!" What hast thou done, O soul of mine, That thou tremblest so? Hast thou wrought His task, and kept the line He bade thee go? Aha! thou tremblest!--well I see Thou 'rt craven grown. Is it so hard with God and me To stand alone? Summon thy sunshine bravery back, O wretched sprite! Let me hear thy voice through this deep and black Abysmal night. What hast thou wrought for Right and Truth, For God and Man, From the golden hours of bright-eyed youth To life's mid span? What, silent all! art sad of cheer? Art fearful now? When God seemed far and men were near, How brave wert thou! Ah, soul of mine, thy tones I hear, But weak and low, Like far sad murmurs on my ear They come and go. I have wrestled stoutly with the Wrong, And borne the Right From beneath the footfall of the throng To life and light. "Wherever Freedom shivered a chain, God speed, quoth I; To Error amidst her shouting train I gave the lie." Ah, soul of mine! ah, soul of mine! Thy deeds are well: Were they wrought for Truth's sake or for thine? My soul, pray tell. "Of all the work my hand hath wrought Beneath the sky, Save a place in kindly human thought, No gain have I." Go to, go to! for thy very self Thy deeds were done Thou for fame, the miser for pelf, Your end is one! And where art thou going, soul of mine? Canst see the end? And whither this troubled life of thine Evermore doth tend? What daunts thee now? what shakes thee so? My sad soul say. "I see a cloud like a curtain low Hang o'er my way. "Whither I go I cannot tell That cloud hangs black, High as the heaven and deep as hell Across my track. "I see its shadow coldly enwrap The souls before. Sadly they enter it, step by step, To return no more. "They shrink, they shudder, dear God! they kneel To Thee in prayer. They shut their eyes on the cloud, but feel That it still is there. "In vain they turn from the dread Before To the Known and Gone; For while gazing behind them evermore Their feet glide on. "Yet, at times, I see upon sweet pale faces A light begin To tremble, as if from holy places And shrines within. "And at times methinks their cold lips move With hymn and prayer, As if somewhat of awe, but more of love And hope were there. "I call on the souls who have left the light To reveal their lot; I bend mine ear to that wall of night, And they answer not. "But I hear around me sighs of pain And the cry of fear, And a sound like the slow sad dropping of rain, Each drop a tear! "Ah, the cloud is dark, and day by day I am moving thither I must pass beneath it on my way-- God pity me!--whither?" Ah, soul of mine! so brave and wise In the life-storm loud, Fronting so calmly all human eyes In the sunlit crowd! Now standing apart with God and me Thou art weakness all, Gazing vainly after the things to be Through Death's dread wall. But never for this, never for this Was thy being lent; For the craven's fear is but selfishness, Like his merriment. Folly and Fear are sisters twain One closing her eyes. The other peopling the dark inane With spectral lies. Know well, my soul, God's hand controls Whate'er thou fearest; Round Him in calmest music rolls Whate'er thou Nearest. What to thee is shadow, to Him is day, And the end He knoweth, And not on a blind and aimless way The spirit goeth. Man sees no future,--a phantom show Is alone before him; Past Time is dead, and the grasses grow, And flowers bloom o'er him. Nothing before, nothing behind; The steps of Faith Fall on the seeming void, and find The rock beneath. The Present, the Present is all thou hast For thy sure possessing; Like the patriarch's angel hold it fast Till it gives its blessing. Why fear the night? why shrink from Death; That phantom wan? There is nothing in heaven or earth beneath Save God and man. Peopling the shadows we turn from Him And from one another; All is spectral and vague and dim Save God and our brother! Like warp and woof all destinies Are woven fast, Linked in sympathy like the keys Of an organ vast. Pluck one thread, and the web ye mar; Break but one Of a thousand keys, and the paining jar Through all will run. O restless spirit! wherefore strain Beyond thy sphere? Heaven and hell, with their joy and pain, Are now and here. Back to thyself is measured well All thou hast given; Thy neighbor's wrong is thy present hell, His bliss, thy heaven. And in life, in death, in dark and light, All are in God's care Sound the black abyss, pierce the deep of night, And He is there! All which is real now remaineth, And fadeth never The hand which upholds it now sustaineth The soul forever. Leaning on Him, make with reverent meekness His own thy will, And with strength from Him shall thy utter weakness Life's task fulfil; And that cloud itself, which now before thee Lies dark in view, Shall with beams of light from the inner glory Be stricken through. And like meadow mist through autumn's dawn Uprolling thin, Its thickest folds when about thee drawn Let sunlight in. Then of what is to be, and of what is done, Why queriest thou? The past and the time to be are one, And both are now! 1847. WORSHIP. "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this. To visit the fatherless and widows in, their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."--JAMES I. 27. The Pagan's myths through marble lips are spoken, And ghosts of old Beliefs still flit and moan Round fane and altar overthrown and broken, O'er tree-grown barrow and gray ring of stone. Blind Faith had martyrs in those old high places, The Syrian hill grove and the Druid's wood, With mother's offering, to the Fiend's embraces, Bone of their bone, and blood of their own blood. Red altars, kindling through that night of error, Smoked with warm blood beneath the cruel eye Of lawless Power and sanguinary Terror, Throned on the circle of a pitiless sky; Beneath whose baleful shadow, overcasting All heaven above, and blighting earth below, The scourge grew red, the lip grew pale with fasting, And man's oblation was his fear and woe! Then through great temples swelled the dismal moaning Of dirge-like music and sepulchral prayer; Pale wizard priests, o'er occult symbols droning, Swung their white censers in the burdened air As if the pomp of rituals, and the savor Of gums and spices could the Unseen One please; As if His ear could bend, with childish favor, To the poor flattery of the organ keys! Feet red from war-fields trod the church aisles holy, With trembling reverence: and the oppressor there, Kneeling before his priest, abased and lowly, Crushed human hearts beneath his knee of prayer. Not such the service the benignant Father Requireth at His earthly children's hands Not the poor offering of vain rites, but rather The simple duty man from man demands. For Earth He asks it: the full joy of heaven Knoweth no change of waning or increase; The great heart of the Infinite beats even, Untroubled flows the river of His peace. He asks no taper lights, on high surrounding The priestly altar and the saintly grave, No dolorous chant nor organ music sounding, Nor incense clouding tip the twilight nave. For he whom Jesus loved hath truly spoken The holier worship which he deigns to bless Restores the lost, and binds the spirit broken, And feeds the widow and the fatherless! Types of our human weakness and our sorrow! Who lives unhaunted by his loved ones dead? Who, with vain longing, seeketh not to borrow From stranger eyes the home lights which have fled? O brother man! fold to thy heart thy brother; Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there; To worship rightly is to love each other, Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer. Follow with reverent steps the great example Of Him whose holy work was "doing good;" So shall the wide earth seem our Father's temple, Each loving life a psalm of gratitude. Then shall all shackles fall; the stormy clangor Of wild war music o'er the earth shall cease; Love shall tread out the baleful fire of anger, And in its ashes plant the tree of peace! 1848. THE HOLY LAND Paraphrased from the lines in Lamartine's _Adieu to Marseilles_, beginning "Je n'ai pas navigue sur l'ocean de sable." I have not felt, o'er seas of sand, The rocking of the desert bark; Nor laved at Hebron's fount my hand, By Hebron's palm-trees cool and dark; Nor pitched my tent at even-fall, On dust where Job of old has lain, Nor dreamed beneath its canvas wall, The dream of Jacob o'er again. One vast world-page remains unread; How shine the stars in Chaldea's sky, How sounds the reverent pilgrim's tread, How beats the heart with God so nigh How round gray arch and column lone The spirit of the old time broods, And sighs in all the winds that moan Along the sandy solitudes! In thy tall cedars, Lebanon, I have not heard the nations' cries, Nor seen thy eagles stooping down Where buried Tyre in ruin lies. The Christian's prayer I have not said In Tadmor's temples of decay, Nor startled, with my dreary tread, The waste where Memnon's empire lay. Nor have I, from thy hallowed tide, O Jordan! heard the low lament, Like that sad wail along thy side Which Israel's mournful prophet sent! Nor thrilled within that grotto lone Where, deep in night, the Bard of Kings Felt hands of fire direct his own, And sweep for God the conscious strings. I have not climbed to Olivet, Nor laid me where my Saviour lay, And left His trace of tears as yet By angel eyes unwept away; Nor watched, at midnight's solemn time, The garden where His prayer and groan, Wrung by His sorrow and our crime, Rose to One listening ear alone. I have not kissed the rock-hewn grot Where in His mother's arms He lay, Nor knelt upon the sacred spot Where last His footsteps pressed the clay; Nor looked on that sad mountain head, Nor smote my sinful breast, where wide His arms to fold the world He spread, And bowed His head to bless--and died! 1848. THE REWARD Who, looking backward from his manhood's prime, Sees not the spectre of his misspent time? And, through the shade Of funeral cypress planted thick behind, Hears no reproachful whisper on the wind From his loved dead? Who bears no trace of passion's evil force? Who shuns thy sting, O terrible Remorse? Who does not cast On the thronged pages of his memory's book, At times, a sad and half-reluctant look, Regretful of the past? Alas! the evil which we fain would shun We do, and leave the wished-for good undone Our strength to-day Is but to-morrow's weakness, prone to fall; Poor, blind, unprofitable servants all Are we alway. Yet who, thus looking backward o'er his years, Feels not his eyelids wet with grateful tears, If he hath been Permitted, weak and sinful as he was, To cheer and aid, in some ennobling cause, His fellow-men? If he hath hidden the outcast, or let in A ray of sunshine to the cell of sin; If he hath lent Strength to the weak, and, in an hour of need, Over the suffering, mindless of his creed Or home, hath bent; He has not lived in vain, and while he gives The praise to Him, in whom he moves and lives, With thankful heart; He gazes backward, and with hope before, Knowing that from his works he nevermore Can henceforth part. 1848. THE WISH OF TO-DAY. I ask not now for gold to gild With mocking shine a weary frame; The yearning of the mind is stilled, I ask not now for Fame. A rose-cloud, dimly seen above, Melting in heaven's blue depths away; Oh, sweet, fond dream of human Love For thee I may not pray. But, bowed in lowliness of mind, I make my humble wishes known; I only ask a will resigned, O Father, to Thine own! To-day, beneath Thy chastening eye I crave alone for peace and rest, Submissive in Thy hand to lie, And feel that it is best. A marvel seems the Universe, A miracle our Life and Death; A mystery which I cannot pierce, Around, above, beneath. In vain I task my aching brain, In vain the sage's thought I scan, I only feel how weak and vain, How poor and blind, is man. And now my spirit sighs for home, And longs for light whereby to see, And, like a weary child, would come, O Father, unto Thee! Though oft, like letters traced on sand, My weak resolves have passed away, In mercy lend Thy helping hand Unto my prayer to-day! 1848. ALL'S WELL The clouds, which rise with thunder, slake Our thirsty souls with rain; The blow most dreaded falls to break From off our limbs a chain; And wrongs of man to man but make The love of God more plain. As through the shadowy lens of even The eye looks farthest into heaven On gleams of star and depths of blue The glaring sunshine never knew! 1850. INVOCATION Through Thy clear spaces, Lord, of old, Formless and void the dead earth rolled; Deaf to Thy heaven's sweet music, blind To the great lights which o'er it shined; No sound, no ray, no warmth, no breath,-- A dumb despair, a wandering death. To that dark, weltering horror came Thy spirit, like a subtle flame,-- A breath of life electrical, Awakening and transforming all, Till beat and thrilled in every part The pulses of a living heart. Then knew their bounds the land and sea; Then smiled the bloom of mead and tree; From flower to moth, from beast to man, The quick creative impulse ran; And earth, with life from thee renewed, Was in thy holy eyesight good. As lost and void, as dark and cold And formless as that earth of old; A wandering waste of storm and night, Midst spheres of song and realms of light; A blot upon thy holy sky, Untouched, unwarned of thee, am I. O Thou who movest on the deep Of spirits, wake my own from sleep Its darkness melt, its coldness warm, The lost restore, the ill transform, That flower and fruit henceforth may be Its grateful offering, worthy Thee. 1851. QUESTIONS OF LIFE And the angel that was sent unto me, whose name was Uriel, gave me an answer and said, "Thy heart hath gone too far in this world, and thinkest thou to comprehend the way of the Most High?" Then said I, "Yea, my Lord." Then said he unto me, "Go thy way, weigh me the weight of the fire or measure me the blast of the wind, or call me again the day that is past."--2 ESDRAS, chap. iv. A bending staff I would not break, A feeble faith I would not shake, Nor even rashly pluck away The error which some truth may stay, Whose loss might leave the soul without A shield against the shafts of doubt. And yet, at times, when over all A darker mystery seems to fall, (May God forgive the child of dust, Who seeks to know, where Faith should trust!) I raise the questions, old and dark, Of Uzdom's tempted patriarch, And, speech-confounded, build again The baffled tower of Shinar's plain. I am: how little more I know! Whence came I? Whither do I go? A centred self, which feels and is; A cry between the silences; A shadow-birth of clouds at strife With sunshine on the hills of life; A shaft from Nature's quiver cast Into the Future from the Past; Between the cradle and the shroud, A meteor's flight from cloud to cloud. Thorough the vastness, arching all, I see the great stars rise and fall, The rounding seasons come and go, The tided oceans ebb and flow; The tokens of a central force, Whose circles, in their widening course, O'erlap and move the universe; The workings of the law whence springs The rhythmic harmony of things, Which shapes in earth the darkling spar, And orbs in heaven the morning star. Of all I see, in earth and sky,-- Star, flower, beast, bird,--what part have I? This conscious life,--is it the same Which thrills the universal frame, Whereby the caverned crystal shoots, And mounts the sap from forest roots, Whereby the exiled wood-bird tells When Spring makes green her native dells? How feels the stone the pang of birth, Which brings its sparkling prism forth? The forest-tree the throb which gives The life-blood to its new-born leaves? Do bird and blossom feel, like me, Life's many-folded mystery,-- The wonder which it is to be? Or stand I severed and distinct, From Nature's "chain of life" unlinked? Allied to all, yet not the less Prisoned in separate consciousness, Alone o'erburdened with a sense Of life, and cause, and consequence? In vain to me the Sphinx propounds The riddle of her sights and sounds; Back still the vaulted mystery gives The echoed question it receives. What sings the brook? What oracle Is in the pine-tree's organ swell? What may the wind's low burden be? The meaning of the moaning sea? The hieroglyphics of the stars? Or clouded sunset's crimson bars? I vainly ask, for mocks my skill The trick of Nature's cipher still. I turn from Nature unto men, I ask the stylus and the pen; What sang the bards of old? What meant The prophets of the Orient? The rolls of buried Egypt, hid In painted tomb and pyramid? What mean Idumea's arrowy lines, Or dusk Elora's monstrous signs? How speaks the primal thought of man From the grim carvings of Copan? Where rests the secret? Where the keys Of the old death-bolted mysteries? Alas! the dead retain their trust; Dust hath no answer from the dust. The great enigma still unguessed, Unanswered the eternal quest; I gather up the scattered rays Of wisdom in the early days, Faint gleams and broken, like the light Of meteors in a northern night, Betraying to the darkling earth The unseen sun which gave them birth; I listen to the sibyl's chant, The voice of priest and hierophant; I know what Indian Kreeshna saith, And what of life and what of death The demon taught to Socrates; And what, beneath his garden-trees Slow pacing, with a dream-like tread,-- The solemn-thoughted Plato said; Nor lack I tokens, great or small, Of God's clear light in each and all, While holding with more dear regard The scroll of Hebrew seer and bard, The starry pages promise-lit With Christ's Evangel over-writ, Thy miracle of life and death, O Holy One of Nazareth! On Aztec ruins, gray and lone, The circling serpent coils in stone,-- Type of the endless and unknown; Whereof we seek the clue to find, With groping fingers of the blind! Forever sought, and never found, We trace that serpent-symbol round Our resting-place, our starting bound Oh, thriftlessness of dream and guess! Oh, wisdom which is foolishness! Why idly seek from outward things The answer inward silence brings? Why stretch beyond our proper sphere And age, for that which lies so near? Why climb the far-off hills with pain, A nearer view of heaven to gain? In lowliest depths of bosky dells The hermit Contemplation dwells. A fountain's pine-hung slope his seat, And lotus-twined his silent feet, Whence, piercing heaven, with screened sight, He sees at noon the stars, whose light Shall glorify the coining night. Here let me pause, my quest forego; Enough for me to feel and know That He in whom the cause and end, The past and future, meet and blend,-- Who, girt with his Immensities, Our vast and star-hung system sees, Small as the clustered Pleiades,-- Moves not alone the heavenly quires, But waves the spring-time's grassy spires, Guards not archangel feet alone, But deigns to guide and keep my own; Speaks not alone the words of fate Which worlds destroy, and worlds create, But whispers in my spirit's ear, In tones of love, or warning fear, A language none beside may hear. To Him, from wanderings long and wild, I come, an over-wearied child, In cool and shade His peace to find, Lice dew-fall settling on my mind. Assured that all I know is best, And humbly trusting for the rest, I turn from Fancy's cloud-built scheme, Dark creed, and mournful eastern dream Of power, impersonal and cold, Controlling all, itself controlled, Maker and slave of iron laws, Alike the subject and the cause; From vain philosophies, that try The sevenfold gates of mystery, And, baffled ever, babble still, Word-prodigal of fate and will; From Nature, and her mockery, Art; And book and speech of men apart, To the still witness in my heart; With reverence waiting to behold His Avatar of love untold, The Eternal Beauty new and old! 1862. FIRST-DAY THOUGHTS. In calm and cool and silence, once again I find my old accustomed place among My brethren, where, perchance, no human tongue Shall utter words; where never hymn is sung, Nor deep-toned organ blown, nor censer swung, Nor dim light falling through the pictured pane! There, syllabled by silence, let me hear The still small voice which reached the prophet's ear; Read in my heart a still diviner law Than Israel's leader on his tables saw! There let me strive with each besetting sin, Recall my wandering fancies, and restrain The sore disquiet of a restless brain; And, as the path of duty is made plain, May grace be given that I may walk therein, Not like the hireling, for his selfish gain, With backward glances and reluctant tread, Making a merit of his coward dread, But, cheerful, in the light around me thrown, Walking as one to pleasant service led; Doing God's will as if it were my own, Yet trusting not in mine, but in His strength alone! 1852. TRUST. The same old baffling questions! O my friend, I cannot answer them. In vain I send My soul into the dark, where never burn The lamps of science, nor the natural light Of Reason's sun and stars! I cannot learn Their great and solemn meanings, nor discern The awful secrets of the eyes which turn Evermore on us through the day and night With silent challenge and a dumb demand, Proffering the riddles of the dread unknown, Like the calm Sphinxes, with their eyes of stone, Questioning the centuries from their veils of sand! I have no answer for myself or thee, Save that I learned beside my mother's knee; "All is of God that is, and is to be; And God is good." Let this suffice us still, Resting in childlike trust upon His will Who moves to His great ends unthwarted by the ill. 1853. TRINITAS. At morn I prayed, "I fain would see How Three are One, and One is Three; Read the dark riddle unto me." I wandered forth, the sun and air I saw bestowed with equal care On good and evil, foul and fair. No partial favor dropped the rain; Alike the righteous and profane Rejoiced above their heading grain. And my heart murmured, "Is it meet That blindfold Nature thus should treat With equal hand the tares and wheat?" A presence melted through my mood,-- A warmth, a light, a sense of good, Like sunshine through a winter wood. I saw that presence, mailed complete In her white innocence, pause to greet A fallen sister of the street. Upon her bosom snowy pure The lost one clung, as if secure From inward guilt or outward lure. "Beware!" I said; "in this I see No gain to her, but loss to thee Who touches pitch defiled must be." I passed the haunts of shame and sin, And a voice whispered, "Who therein Shall these lost souls to Heaven's peace win? "Who there shall hope and health dispense, And lift the ladder up from thence Whose rounds are prayers of penitence?" I said, "No higher life they know; These earth-worms love to have it so. Who stoops to raise them sinks as low." That night with painful care I read What Hippo's saint and Calvin said; The living seeking to the dead! In vain I turned, in weary quest, Old pages, where (God give them rest!) The poor creed-mongers dreamed and guessed. And still I prayed, "Lord, let me see How Three are One, and One is Three; Read the dark riddle unto me!" Then something whispered, "Dost thou pray For what thou hast? This very day The Holy Three have crossed thy way. "Did not the gifts of sun and air To good and ill alike declare The all-compassionate Father's care? "In the white soul that stooped to raise The lost one from her evil ways, Thou saw'st the Christ, whom angels praise! "A bodiless Divinity, The still small Voice that spake to thee Was the Holy Spirit's mystery! "O blind of sight, of faith how small! Father, and Son, and Holy Call This day thou hast denied them all! "Revealed in love and sacrifice, The Holiest passed before thine eyes, One and the same, in threefold guise. "The equal Father in rain and sun, His Christ in the good to evil done, His Voice in thy soul;--and the Three are One!" I shut my grave Aquinas fast; The monkish gloss of ages past, The schoolman's creed aside I cast. And my heart answered, "Lord, I see How Three are One, and One is Three; Thy riddle hath been read to me!" 1858. THE SISTERS A PICTURE BY BARRY The shade for me, but over thee The lingering sunshine still; As, smiling, to the silent stream Comes down the singing rill. So come to me, my little one,-- My years with thee I share, And mingle with a sister's love A mother's tender care. But keep the smile upon thy lip, The trust upon thy brow; Since for the dear one God hath called We have an angel now. Our mother from the fields of heaven Shall still her ear incline; Nor need we fear her human love Is less for love divine. The songs are sweet they sing beneath The trees of life so fair, But sweetest of the songs of heaven Shall be her children's prayer. Then, darling, rest upon my breast, And teach my heart to lean With thy sweet trust upon the arm Which folds us both unseen! 1858 "THE ROCK" IN EL GHOR. Dead Petra in her hill-tomb sleeps, Her stones of emptiness remain; Around her sculptured mystery sweeps The lonely waste of Edom's plain. From the doomed dwellers in the cleft The bow of vengeance turns not back; Of all her myriads none are left Along the Wady Mousa's track. Clear in the hot Arabian day Her arches spring, her statues climb; Unchanged, the graven wonders pay No tribute to the spoiler, Time! Unchanged the awful lithograph Of power and glory undertrod; Of nations scattered like the chaff Blown from the threshing-floor of God. Yet shall the thoughtful stranger turn From Petra's gates with deeper awe, To mark afar the burial urn Of Aaron on the cliffs of Hor; And where upon its ancient guard Thy Rock, El Ghor, is standing yet,-- Looks from its turrets desertward, And keeps the watch that God has set. The same as when in thunders loud It heard the voice of God to man, As when it saw in fire and cloud The angels walk in Israel's van, Or when from Ezion-Geber's way It saw the long procession file, And heard the Hebrew timbrels play The music of the lordly Nile; Or saw the tabernacle pause, Cloud-bound, by Kadesh Barnea's wells, While Moses graved the sacred laws, And Aaron swung his golden bells. Rock of the desert, prophet-sung! How grew its shadowing pile at length, A symbol, in the Hebrew tongue, Of God's eternal love and strength. On lip of bard and scroll of seer, From age to age went down the name, Until the Shiloh's promised year, And Christ, the Rock of Ages, came! The path of life we walk to-day Is strange as that the Hebrews trod; We need the shadowing rock, as they,-- We need, like them, the guides of God. God send His angels, Cloud and Fire, To lead us o'er the desert sand! God give our hearts their long desire, His shadow in a weary land! 1859. THE OVER-HEART. "For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever! "--PAUL. Above, below, in sky and sod, In leaf and spar, in star and man, Well might the wise Athenian scan The geometric signs of God, The measured order of His plan. And India's mystics sang aright Of the One Life pervading all,-- One Being's tidal rise and fall In soul and form, in sound and sight,-- Eternal outflow and recall. God is: and man in guilt and fear The central fact of Nature owns; Kneels, trembling, by his altar-stones, And darkly dreams the ghastly smear Of blood appeases and atones. Guilt shapes the Terror: deep within The human heart the secret lies Of all the hideous deities; And, painted on a ground of sin, The fabled gods of torment rise! And what is He? The ripe grain nods, The sweet dews fall, the sweet flowers blow; But darker signs His presence show The earthquake and the storm are God's, And good and evil interflow. O hearts of love! O souls that turn Like sunflowers to the pure and best! To you the truth is manifest: For they the mind of Christ discern Who lean like John upon His breast! In him of whom the sibyl told, For whom the prophet's harp was toned, Whose need the sage and magian owned, The loving heart of God behold, The hope for which the ages groaned! Fade, pomp of dreadful imagery Wherewith mankind have deified Their hate, and selfishness, and pride! Let the scared dreamer wake to see The Christ of Nazareth at his side! What doth that holy Guide require? No rite of pain, nor gift of blood, But man a kindly brotherhood, Looking, where duty is desire, To Him, the beautiful and good. Gone be the faithlessness of fear, And let the pitying heaven's sweet rain Wash out the altar's bloody stain; The law of Hatred disappear, The law of Love alone remain. How fall the idols false and grim! And to! their hideous wreck above The emblems of the Lamb and Dove! Man turns from God, not God from him; And guilt, in suffering, whispers Love! The world sits at the feet of Christ, Unknowing, blind, and unconsoled; It yet shall touch His garment's fold, And feel the heavenly Alchemist Transform its very dust to gold. The theme befitting angel tongues Beyond a mortal's scope has grown. O heart of mine! with reverence own The fulness which to it belongs, And trust the unknown for the known. 1859. THE SHADOW AND THE LIGHT. "And I sought, whence is Evil: I set before the eye of my spirit the whole creation; whatsoever we see therein,--sea, earth, air, stars, trees, moral creatures,--yea, whatsoever there is we do not see,--angels and spiritual powers. Where is evil, and whence comes it, since God the Good hath created all things? Why made He anything at all of evil, and not rather by His Almightiness cause it not to be? These thoughts I turned in my miserable heart, overcharged with most gnawing cares." "And, admonished to return to myself, I entered even into my inmost soul, Thou being my guide, and beheld even beyond my soul and mind the Light unchangeable. He who knows the Truth knows what that Light is, and he that knows it knows Eternity! O--Truth, who art Eternity! Love, who art Truth! Eternity, who art Love! And I beheld that Thou madest all things good, and to Thee is nothing whatsoever evil. From the angel to the worm, from the first motion to the last, Thou settest each in its place, and everything is good in its kind. Woe is me!--how high art Thou in the highest, how deep in the deepest! and Thou never departest from us and we scarcely return to Thee." --AUGUSTINE'S Soliloquies, Book VII. The fourteen centuries fall away Between us and the Afric saint, And at his side we urge, to-day, The immemorial quest and old complaint. No outward sign to us is given,-- From sea or earth comes no reply; Hushed as the warm Numidian heaven He vainly questioned bends our frozen sky. No victory comes of all our strife,-- From all we grasp the meaning slips; The Sphinx sits at the gate of life, With the old question on her awful lips. In paths unknown we hear the feet Of fear before, and guilt behind; We pluck the wayside fruit, and eat Ashes and dust beneath its golden rind. From age to age descends unchecked The sad bequest of sire to son, The body's taint, the mind's defect; Through every web of life the dark threads run. Oh, why and whither? God knows all; I only know that He is good, And that whatever may befall Or here or there, must be the best that could. Between the dreadful cherubim A Father's face I still discern, As Moses looked of old on Him, And saw His glory into goodness turn! For He is merciful as just; And so, by faith correcting sight, I bow before His will, and trust Howe'er they seem He doeth all things right. And dare to hope that Tie will make The rugged smooth, the doubtful plain; His mercy never quite forsake; His healing visit every realm of pain; That suffering is not His revenge Upon His creatures weak and frail, Sent on a pathway new and strange With feet that wander and with eyes that fail; That, o'er the crucible of pain, Watches the tender eye of Love The slow transmuting of the chain Whose links are iron below to gold above! Ah me! we doubt the shining skies, Seen through our shadows of offence, And drown with our poor childish cries The cradle-hymn of kindly Providence. And still we love the evil cause, And of the just effect complain We tread upon life's broken laws, And murmur at our self-inflicted pain; We turn us from the light, and find Our spectral shapes before us thrown, As they who leave the sun behind Walk in the shadows of themselves alone. And scarce by will or strength of ours We set our faces to the day; Weak, wavering, blind, the Eternal Powers Alone can turn us from ourselves away. Our weakness is the strength of sin, But love must needs be stronger far, Outreaching all and gathering in The erring spirit and the wandering star. A Voice grows with the growing years; Earth, hushing down her bitter cry, Looks upward from her graves, and hears, "The Resurrection and the Life am I." O Love Divine!--whose constant beam Shines on the eyes that will not see, And waits to bless us, while we dream Thou leavest us because we turn from thee! All souls that struggle and aspire, All hearts of prayer by thee are lit; And, dim or clear, thy tongues of fire On dusky tribes and twilight centuries sit. Nor bounds, nor clime, nor creed thou know'st, Wide as our need thy favors fall; The white wings of the Holy Ghost Stoop, seen or unseen, o'er the heads of all. O Beauty, old yet ever new! Eternal Voice, and Inward Word, The Logos of the Greek and Jew, The old sphere-music which the Samian heard! Truth, which the sage and prophet saw, Long sought without, but found within, The Law of Love beyond all law, The Life o'erflooding mortal death and sin! Shine on us with the light which glowed Upon the trance-bound shepherd's way. Who saw the Darkness overflowed And drowned by tides of everlasting Day. Shine, light of God!--make broad thy scope To all who sin and suffer; more And better than we dare to hope With Heaven's compassion make our longings poor! 1860. THE CRY OF A LOST SOUL. Lieutenant Herndon's Report of the Exploration of the Amazon has a striking description of the peculiar and melancholy notes of a bird heard by night on the shores of the river. The Indian guides called it "The Cry of a Lost Soul"! Among the numerous translations of this poem is one by the Emperor of Brazil. In that black forest, where, when day is done, With a snake's stillness glides the Amazon Darkly from sunset to the rising sun, A cry, as of the pained heart of the wood, The long, despairing moan of solitude And darkness and the absence of all good, Startles the traveller, with a sound so drear, So full of hopeless agony and fear, His heart stands still and listens like his ear. The guide, as if he heard a dead-bell toll, Starts, drops his oar against the gunwale's thole, Crosses himself, and whispers, "A lost soul!" "No, Senor, not a bird. I know it well,-- It is the pained soul of some infidel Or cursed heretic that cries from hell. "Poor fool! with hope still mocking his despair, He wanders, shrieking on the midnight air For human pity and for Christian prayer. "Saints strike him dumb! Our Holy Mother hath No prayer for him who, sinning unto death, Burns always in the furnace of God's wrath!" Thus to the baptized pagan's cruel lie, Lending new horror to that mournful cry, The voyager listens, making no reply. Dim burns the boat-lamp: shadows deepen round, From giant trees with snake-like creepers wound, And the black water glides without a sound. But in the traveller's heart a secret sense Of nature plastic to benign intents, And an eternal good in Providence, Lifts to the starry calm of heaven his eyes; And to! rebuking all earth's ominous cries, The Cross of pardon lights the tropic skies! "Father of all!" he urges his strong plea, "Thou lovest all: Thy erring child may be Lost to himself, but never lost to Thee! "All souls are Thine; the wings of morning bear None from that Presence which is everywhere, Nor hell itself can hide, for Thou art there. "Through sins of sense, perversities of will, Through doubt and pain, through guilt and shame and ill, Thy pitying eye is on Thy creature still. "Wilt thou not make, Eternal Source and Goal! In Thy long years, life's broken circle whole, And change to praise the cry of a lost soul?" 1862. ANDREW RYKMAN'S PRAYER Andrew Rykman's dead and gone; You can see his leaning slate In the graveyard, and thereon Read his name and date. "_Trust is truer than our fears_," Runs the legend through the moss, "_Gain is not in added years, Nor in death is loss_." Still the feet that thither trod, All the friendly eyes are dim; Only Nature, now, and God Have a care for him. There the dews of quiet fall, Singing birds and soft winds stray: Shall the tender Heart of all Be less kind than they? What he was and what he is They who ask may haply find, If they read this prayer of his Which he left behind. . . . . Pardon, Lord, the lips that dare Shape in words a mortal's prayer! Prayer, that, when my day is done, And I see its setting sun, Shorn and beamless, cold and dim, Sink beneath the horizon's rim,-- When this ball of rock and clay Crumbles from my feet away, And the solid shores of sense Melt into the vague immense, Father! I may come to Thee Even with the beggar's plea, As the poorest of Thy poor, With my needs, and nothing more. Not as one who seeks his home With a step assured I come; Still behind the tread I hear Of my life-companion, Fear; Still a shadow deep and vast From my westering feet is cast, Wavering, doubtful, undefined, Never shapen nor outlined From myself the fear has grown, And the shadow is my own. Yet, O Lord, through all a sense Of Thy tender providence Stays my failing heart on Thee, And confirms the feeble knee; And, at times, my worn feet press Spaces of cool quietness, Lilied whiteness shone upon Not by light of moon or sun. Hours there be of inmost calm, Broken but by grateful psalm, When I love Thee more than fear Thee, And Thy blessed Christ seems near me, With forgiving look, as when He beheld the Magdalen. Well I know that all things move To the spheral rhythm of love,-- That to Thee, O Lord of all! Nothing can of chance befall Child and seraph, mote and star, Well Thou knowest what we are Through Thy vast creative plan Looking, from the worm to man, There is pity in Thine eyes, But no hatred nor surprise. Not in blind caprice of will, Not in cunning sleight of skill, Not for show of power, was wrought Nature's marvel in Thy thought. Never careless hand and vain Smites these chords of joy and pain; No immortal selfishness Plays the game of curse and bless Heaven and earth are witnesses That Thy glory goodness is. Not for sport of mind and force Hast Thou made Thy universe, But as atmosphere and zone Of Thy loving heart alone. Man, who walketh in a show, Sees before him, to and fro, Shadow and illusion go; All things flow and fluctuate, Now contract and now dilate. In the welter of this sea, Nothing stable is but Thee; In this whirl of swooning trance, Thou alone art permanence; All without Thee only seems, All beside is choice of dreams. Never yet in darkest mood Doubted I that Thou wast good, Nor mistook my will for fate, Pain of sin for heavenly hate,-- Never dreamed the gates of pearl Rise from out the burning marl, Or that good can only live Of the bad conservative, And through counterpoise of hell Heaven alone be possible. For myself alone I doubt; All is well, I know, without; I alone the beauty mar, I alone the music jar. Yet, with hands by evil stained, And an ear by discord pained, I am groping for the keys Of the heavenly harmonies; Still within my heart I bear Love for all things good and fair. Hands of want or souls in pain Have not sought my door in vain; I have kept my fealty good To the human brotherhood; Scarcely have I asked in prayer That which others might not share. I, who hear with secret shame Praise that paineth more than blame, Rich alone in favors lent, Virtuous by accident, Doubtful where I fain would rest, Frailest where I seem the best, Only strong for lack of test,-- What am I, that I should press Special pleas of selfishness, Coolly mounting into heaven On my neighbor unforgiven? Ne'er to me, howe'er disguised, Comes a saint unrecognized; Never fails my heart to greet Noble deed with warmer beat; Halt and maimed, I own not less All the grace of holiness; Nor, through shame or self-distrust, Less I love the pure and just. Lord, forgive these words of mine What have I that is not Thine? Whatsoe'er I fain would boast Needs Thy pitying pardon most. Thou, O Elder Brother! who In Thy flesh our trial knew, Thou, who hast been touched by these Our most sad infirmities, Thou alone the gulf canst span In the dual heart of man, And between the soul and sense Reconcile all difference, Change the dream of me and mine For the truth of Thee and Thine, And, through chaos, doubt, and strife, Interfuse Thy calm of life. Haply, thus by Thee renewed, In Thy borrowed goodness good, Some sweet morning yet in God's Dim, veonian periods, Joyful I shall wake to see Those I love who rest in Thee, And to them in Thee allied Shall my soul be satisfied. Scarcely Hope hath shaped for me What the future life may be. Other lips may well be bold; Like the publican of old, I can only urge the plea, "Lord, be merciful to me!" Nothing of desert I claim, Unto me belongeth shame. Not for me the crowns of gold, Palms, and harpings manifold; Not for erring eye and feet Jasper wall and golden street. What thou wilt, O Father, give I All is gain that I receive. If my voice I may not raise In the elders' song of praise, If I may not, sin-defiled, Claim my birthright as a child, Suffer it that I to Thee As an hired servant be; Let the lowliest task be mine, Grateful, so the work be Thine; Let me find the humblest place In the shadow of Thy grace Blest to me were any spot Where temptation whispers not. If there be some weaker one, Give me strength to help him on If a blinder soul there be, Let me guide him nearer Thee. Make my mortal dreams come true With the work I fain would do; Clothe with life the weak intent, Let me be the thing I meant; Let me find in Thy employ Peace that dearer is than joy; Out of self to love be led And to heaven acclimated, Until all things sweet and good Seem my natural habitude. . . . . So we read the prayer of him Who, with John of Labadie, Trod, of old, the oozy rim Of the Zuyder Zee. Thus did Andrew Rykman pray. Are we wiser, better grown, That we may not, in our day, Make his prayer our own? THE ANSWER. Spare me, dread angel of reproof, And let the sunshine weave to-day Its gold-threads in the warp and woof Of life so poor and gray. Spare me awhile; the flesh is weak. These lingering feet, that fain would stray Among the flowers, shall some day seek The strait and narrow way. Take off thy ever-watchful eye, The awe of thy rebuking frown; The dullest slave at times must sigh To fling his burdens down; To drop his galley's straining oar, And press, in summer warmth and calm, The lap of some enchanted shore Of blossom and of balm. Grudge not my life its hour of bloom, My heart its taste of long desire; This day be mine: be those to come As duty shall require. The deep voice answered to my own, Smiting my selfish prayers away; "To-morrow is with God alone, And man hath but to-day. "Say not, thy fond, vain heart within, The Father's arm shall still be wide, When from these pleasant ways of sin Thou turn'st at eventide. "'Cast thyself down,' the tempter saith, 'And angels shall thy feet upbear.' He bids thee make a lie of faith, And blasphemy of prayer. "Though God be good and free be heaven, No force divine can love compel; And, though the song of sins forgiven May sound through lowest hell, "The sweet persuasion of His voice Respects thy sanctity of will. He giveth day: thou hast thy choice To walk in darkness still; "As one who, turning from the light, Watches his own gray shadow fall, Doubting, upon his path of night, If there be day at all! "No word of doom may shut thee out, No wind of wrath may downward whirl, No swords of fire keep watch about The open gates of pearl; "A tenderer light than moon or sun, Than song of earth a sweeter hymn, May shine and sound forever on, And thou be deaf and dim. "Forever round the Mercy-seat The guiding lights of Love shall burn; But what if, habit-bound, thy feet Shall lack the will to turn? "What if thine eye refuse to see, Thine ear of Heaven's free welcome fail, And thou a willing captive be, Thyself thy own dark jail? "Oh, doom beyond the saddest guess, As the long years of God unroll, To make thy dreary selfishness The prison of a soul! "To doubt the love that fain would break The fetters from thy self-bound limb; And dream that God can thee forsake As thou forsakest Him!" 1863. THE ETERNAL GOODNESS. O friends! with whom my feet have trod The quiet aisles of prayer, Glad witness to your zeal for God And love of man I bear. I trace your lines of argument; Your logic linked and strong I weigh as one who dreads dissent, And fears a doubt as wrong. But still my human hands are weak To hold your iron creeds Against the words ye bid me speak My heart within me pleads. Who fathoms the Eternal Thought? Who talks of scheme and plan? The Lord is God! He needeth not The poor device of man. I walk with bare, hushed feet the ground Ye tread with boldness shod; I dare not fix with mete and bound The love and power of God. Ye praise His justice; even such His pitying love I deem Ye seek a king; I fain would touch The robe that hath no seam. Ye see the curse which overbroods A world of pain and loss; I hear our Lord's beatitudes And prayer upon the cross. More than your schoolmen teach, within Myself, alas! I know Too dark ye cannot paint the sin, Too small the merit show. I bow my forehead to the dust, I veil mine eyes for shame, And urge, in trembling self-distrust, A prayer without a claim. I see the wrong that round me lies, I feel the guilt within; I hear, with groan and travail-cries, The world confess its sin. Yet, in the maddening maze of things, And tossed by storm and flood, To one fixed trust my spirit clings; I know that God is good! Not mine to look where cherubim And seraphs may not see, But nothing can be good in Him Which evil is in me. The wrong that pains my soul below I dare not throne above, I know not of His hate,--I know His goodness and His love. I dimly guess from blessings known Of greater out of sight, And, with the chastened Psalmist, own His judgments too are right. I long for household voices gone, For vanished smiles I long, But God hath led my dear ones on, And He can do no wrong. I know not what the future hath Of marvel or surprise, Assured alone that life and death His mercy underlies. And if my heart and flesh are weak To bear an untried pain, The bruised reed He will not break, But strengthen and sustain. No offering of my own I have, Nor works my faith to prove; I can but give the gifts He gave, And plead His love for love. And so beside the Silent Sea I wait the muffled oar; No harm from Him can come to me On ocean or on shore. I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care. O brothers! if my faith is vain, If hopes like these betray, Pray for me that my feet may gain The sure and safer way. And Thou, O Lord! by whom are seen Thy creatures as they be, Forgive me if too close I lean My human heart on Thee! 1865. THE COMMON QUESTION. Behind us at our evening meal The gray bird ate his fill, Swung downward by a single claw, And wiped his hooked bill. He shook his wings and crimson tail, And set his head aslant, And, in his sharp, impatient way, Asked, "What does Charlie want?" "Fie, silly bird!" I answered, "tuck Your head beneath your wing, And go to sleep;"--but o'er and o'er He asked the self-same thing. Then, smiling, to myself I said How like are men and birds! We all are saying what he says, In action or in words. The boy with whip and top and drum, The girl with hoop and doll, And men with lands and houses, ask The question of Poor Poll. However full, with something more We fain the bag would cram; We sigh above our crowded nets For fish that never swam. No bounty of indulgent Heaven The vague desire can stay; Self-love is still a Tartar mill For grinding prayers alway. The dear God hears and pities all; He knoweth all our wants; And what we blindly ask of Him His love withholds or grants. And so I sometimes think our prayers Might well be merged in one; And nest and perch and hearth and church Repeat, "Thy will be done." OUR MASTER. Immortal Love, forever full, Forever flowing free, Forever shared, forever whole, A never-ebbing sea! Our outward lips confess the name All other names above; Love only knoweth whence it came And comprehendeth love. Blow, winds of God, awake and blow The mists of earth away! Shine out, O Light Divine, and show How wide and far we stray! Hush every lip, close every book, The strife of tongues forbear; Why forward reach, or backward look, For love that clasps like air? We may not climb the heavenly steeps To bring the Lord Christ down In vain we search the lowest deeps, For Him no depths can drown. Nor holy bread, nor blood of grape, The lineaments restore Of Him we know in outward shape And in the flesh no more. He cometh not a king to reign; The world's long hope is dim; The weary centuries watch in vain The clouds of heaven for Him. Death comes, life goes; the asking eye And ear are answerless; The grave is dumb, the hollow sky Is sad with silentness. The letter fails, and systems fall, And every symbol wanes; The Spirit over-brooding all Eternal Love remains. And not for signs in heaven above Or earth below they look, Who know with John His smile of love, With Peter His rebuke. In joy of inward peace, or sense Of sorrow over sin, He is His own best evidence, His witness is within. No fable old, nor mythic lore, Nor dream of bards and seers, No dead fact stranded on the shore Of the oblivious years;-- But warm, sweet, tender, even yet A present help is He; And faith has still its Olivet, And love its Galilee. The healing of His seamless dress Is by our beds of pain; We touch Him in life's throng and press, And we are whole again. Through Him the first fond prayers are said Our lips of childhood frame, The last low whispers of our dead Are burdened with His name. Our Lord and Master of us all! Whate'er our name or sign, We own Thy sway, we hear Thy call, We test our lives by Thine. Thou judgest us; Thy purity Doth all our lusts condemn; The love that draws us nearer Thee Is hot with wrath to them. Our thoughts lie open to Thy sight; And, naked to Thy glance, Our secret sins are in the light Of Thy pure countenance. Thy healing pains, a keen distress Thy tender light shines in; Thy sweetness is the bitterness, Thy grace the pang of sin. Yet, weak and blinded though we be, Thou dost our service own; We bring our varying gifts to Thee, And Thou rejectest none. To Thee our full humanity, Its joys and pains, belong; The wrong of man to man on Thee Inflicts a deeper wrong. Who hates, hates Thee, who loves becomes Therein to Thee allied; All sweet accords of hearts and homes In Thee are multiplied. Deep strike Thy roots, O heavenly Vine, Within our earthly sod, Most human and yet most divine, The flower of man and God! O Love! O Life! Our faith and sight Thy presence maketh one As through transfigured clouds of white We trace the noon-day sun. So, to our mortal eyes subdued, Flesh-veiled, but not concealed, We know in Thee the fatherhood And heart of God revealed. We faintly hear, we dimly see, In differing phrase we pray; But, dim or clear, we own in Thee The Light, the Truth, the Way! The homage that we render Thee Is still our Father's own; No jealous claim or rivalry Divides the Cross and Throne. To do Thy will is more than praise, As words are less than deeds, And simple trust can find Thy ways We miss with chart of creeds. No pride of self Thy service hath, No place for me and mine; Our human strength is weakness, death Our life, apart from Thine. Apart from Thee all gain is loss, All labor vainly done; The solemn shadow of Thy Cross Is better than the sun. Alone, O Love ineffable! Thy saving name is given; To turn aside from Thee is hell, To walk with Thee is heaven! How vain, secure in all Thou art, Our noisy championship The sighing of the contrite heart Is more than flattering lip. Not Thine the bigot's partial plea, Nor Thine the zealot's ban; Thou well canst spare a love of Thee Which ends in hate of man. Our Friend, our Brother, and our Lord, What may Thy service be?-- Nor name, nor form, nor ritual word, But simply following Thee. We bring no ghastly holocaust, We pile no graven stone; He serves thee best who loveth most His brothers and Thy own. Thy litanies, sweet offices Of love and gratitude; Thy sacramental liturgies, The joy of doing good. In vain shall waves of incense drift The vaulted nave around, In vain the minster turret lift Its brazen weights of sound. The heart must ring Thy Christmas bells, Thy inward altars raise; Its faith and hope Thy canticles, And its obedience praise! 1866. THE MEETING. The two speakers in the meeting referred to in this poem were Avis Keene, whose very presence was a benediction, a woman lovely in spirit and person, whose words seemed a message of love and tender concern to her hearers; and Sibyl Jones, whose inspired eloquence and rare spirituality impressed all who knew her. In obedience to her apprehended duty she made visits of Christian love to various parts of Europe, and to the West Coast of Africa and Palestine. The elder folks shook hands at last, Down seat by seat the signal passed. To simple ways like ours unused, Half solemnized and half amused, With long-drawn breath and shrug, my guest His sense of glad relief expressed. Outside, the hills lay warm in sun; The cattle in the meadow-run Stood half-leg deep; a single bird The green repose above us stirred. "What part or lot have you," he said, "In these dull rites of drowsy-head? Is silence worship? Seek it where It soothes with dreams the summer air, Not in this close and rude-benched hall, But where soft lights and shadows fall, And all the slow, sleep-walking hours Glide soundless over grass and flowers! From time and place and form apart, Its holy ground the human heart, Nor ritual-bound nor templeward Walks the free spirit of the Lord! Our common Master did not pen His followers up from other men; His service liberty indeed, He built no church, He framed no creed; But while the saintly Pharisee Made broader his phylactery, As from the synagogue was seen The dusty-sandalled Nazarene Through ripening cornfields lead the way Upon the awful Sabbath day, His sermons were the healthful talk That shorter made the mountain-walk, His wayside texts were flowers and birds, Where mingled with His gracious words The rustle of the tamarisk-tree And ripple-wash of Galilee." "Thy words are well, O friend," I said; "Unmeasured and unlimited, With noiseless slide of stone to stone, The mystic Church of God has grown. Invisible and silent stands The temple never made with hands, Unheard the voices still and small Of its unseen confessional. He needs no special place of prayer Whose hearing ear is everywhere; He brings not back the childish days That ringed the earth with stones of praise, Roofed Karnak's hall of gods, and laid The plinths of Phil e's colonnade. Still less He owns the selfish good And sickly growth of solitude,-- The worthless grace that, out of sight, Flowers in the desert anchorite; Dissevered from the suffering whole, Love hath no power to save a soul. Not out of Self, the origin And native air and soil of sin, The living waters spring and flow, The trees with leaves of healing grow. "Dream not, O friend, because I seek This quiet shelter twice a week, I better deem its pine-laid floor Than breezy hill or sea-sung shore; But nature is not solitude She crowds us with her thronging wood; Her many hands reach out to us, Her many tongues are garrulous; Perpetual riddles of surprise She offers to our ears and eyes; She will not leave our senses still, But drags them captive at her will And, making earth too great for heaven, She hides the Giver in the given. "And so, I find it well to come For deeper rest to this still room, For here the habit of the soul Feels less the outer world's control; The strength of mutual purpose pleads More earnestly our common needs; And from the silence multiplied By these still forms on either side, The world that time and sense have known Falls off and leaves us God alone. "Yet rarely through the charmed repose Unmixed the stream of motive flows, A flavor of its many springs, The tints of earth and sky it brings; In the still waters needs must be Some shade of human sympathy; And here, in its accustomed place, I look on memory's dearest face; The blind by-sitter guesseth not What shadow haunts that vacant spot; No eyes save mine alone can see The love wherewith it welcomes me! And still, with those alone my kin, In doubt and weakness, want and sin, I bow my head, my heart I bare As when that face was living there, And strive (too oft, alas! in vain) The peace of simple trust to gain, Fold fancy's restless wings, and lay The idols of my heart away. "Welcome the silence all unbroken, Nor less the words of fitness spoken,-- Such golden words as hers for whom Our autumn flowers have just made room; Whose hopeful utterance through and through The freshness of the morning blew; Who loved not less the earth that light Fell on it from the heavens in sight, But saw in all fair forms more fair The Eternal beauty mirrored there. Whose eighty years but added grace And saintlier meaning to her face,-- The look of one who bore away Glad tidings from the hills of day, While all our hearts went forth to meet The coming of her beautiful feet! Or haply hers, whose pilgrim tread Is in the paths where Jesus led; Who dreams her childhood's Sabbath dream By Jordan's willow-shaded stream, And, of the hymns of hope and faith, Sung by the monks of Nazareth, Hears pious echoes, in the call To prayer, from Moslem minarets fall, Repeating where His works were wrought The lesson that her Master taught, Of whom an elder Sibyl gave, The prophecies of Cuma 's cave. "I ask no organ's soulless breath To drone the themes of life and death, No altar candle-lit by day, No ornate wordsman's rhetoric-play, No cool philosophy to teach Its bland audacities of speech To double-tasked idolaters Themselves their gods and worshippers, No pulpit hammered by the fist Of loud-asserting dogmatist, Who borrows for the Hand of love The smoking thunderbolts of Jove. I know how well the fathers taught, What work the later schoolmen wrought; I reverence old-time faith and men, But God is near us now as then; His force of love is still unspent, His hate of sin as imminent; And still the measure of our needs Outgrows the cramping bounds of creeds; The manna gathered yesterday Already savors of decay; Doubts to the world's child-heart unknown Question us now from star and stone; Too little or too much we know, And sight is swift and faith is slow; The power is lost to self-deceive With shallow forms of make-believe. W e walk at high noon, and the bells Call to a thousand oracles, But the sound deafens, and the light Is stronger than our dazzled sight; The letters of the sacred Book Glimmer and swim beneath our look; Still struggles in the Age's breast With deepening agony of quest The old entreaty: 'Art thou He, Or look we for the Christ to be?' "God should be most where man is least So, where is neither church nor priest, And never rag of form or creed To clothe the nakedness of need,-- Where farmer-folk in silence meet,-- I turn my bell-unsummoned feet;' I lay the critic's glass aside, I tread upon my lettered pride, And, lowest-seated, testify To the oneness of humanity; Confess the universal want, And share whatever Heaven may grant. He findeth not who seeks his own, The soul is lost that's saved alone. Not on one favored forehead fell Of old the fire-tongued miracle, But flamed o'er all the thronging host The baptism of the Holy Ghost; Heart answers heart: in one desire The blending lines of prayer aspire; 'Where, in my name, meet two or three,' Our Lord hath said, 'I there will be!' "So sometimes comes to soul and sense The feeling which is evidence That very near about us lies The realm of spiritual mysteries. The sphere of the supernal powers Impinges on this world of ours. The low and dark horizon lifts, To light the scenic terror shifts; The breath of a diviner air Blows down the answer of a prayer That all our sorrow, pain, and doubt A great compassion clasps about, And law and goodness, love and force, Are wedded fast beyond divorce. Then duty leaves to love its task, The beggar Self forgets to ask; With smile of trust and folded hands, The passive soul in waiting stands To feel, as flowers the sun and dew, The One true Life its own renew. "So, to the calmly gathered thought The innermost of truth is taught, The mystery dimly understood, That love of God is love of good, And, chiefly, its divinest trace In Him of Nazareth's holy face; That to be saved is only this,-- Salvation from our selfishness, From more than elemental fire, The soul's unsanetified desire, From sin itself, and not the pain That warns us of its chafing chain; That worship's deeper meaning lies In mercy, and not sacrifice, Not proud humilities of sense And posturing of penitence, But love's unforced obedience; That Book and Church and Day are given For man, not God,--for earth, not heaven,-- The blessed means to holiest ends, Not masters, but benignant friends; That the dear Christ dwells not afar, The king of some remoter star, Listening, at times, with flattered ear To homage wrung from selfish fear, But here, amidst the poor and blind, The bound and suffering of our kind, In works we do, in prayers we pray, Life of our life, He lives to-day." 1868. THE CLEAR VISION. I did but dream. I never knew What charms our sternest season wore. Was never yet the sky so blue, Was never earth so white before. Till now I never saw the glow Of sunset on yon hills of snow, And never learned the bough's designs Of beauty in its leafless lines. Did ever such a morning break As that my eastern windows see? Did ever such a moonlight take Weird photographs of shrub and tree? Rang ever bells so wild and fleet The music of the winter street? Was ever yet a sound by half So merry as you school-boy's laugh? O Earth! with gladness overfraught, No added charm thy face hath found; Within my heart the change is wrought, My footsteps make enchanted ground. From couch of pain and curtained room Forth to thy light and air I come, To find in all that meets my eyes The freshness of a glad surprise. Fair seem these winter days, and soon Shall blow the warm west-winds of spring, To set the unbound rills in tune And hither urge the bluebird's wing. The vales shall laugh in flowers, the woods Grow misty green with leafing buds, And violets and wind-flowers sway Against the throbbing heart of May. Break forth, my lips, in praise, and own The wiser love severely kind; Since, richer for its chastening grown, I see, whereas I once was blind. The world, O Father! hath not wronged With loss the life by Thee prolonged; But still, with every added year, More beautiful Thy works appear! As Thou hast made thy world without, Make Thou more fair my world within; Shine through its lingering clouds of doubt; Rebuke its haunting shapes of sin; Fill, brief or long, my granted span Of life with love to thee and man; Strike when thou wilt the hour of rest, But let my last days be my best! 2d mo., 1868. DIVINE COMPASSION. Long since, a dream of heaven I had, And still the vision haunts me oft; I see the saints in white robes clad, The martyrs with their palms aloft; But hearing still, in middle song, The ceaseless dissonance of wrong; And shrinking, with hid faces, from the strain Of sad, beseeching eyes, full of remorse and pain. The glad song falters to a wail, The harping sinks to low lament; Before the still unlifted veil I see the crowned foreheads bent, Making more sweet the heavenly air, With breathings of unselfish prayer; And a Voice saith: "O Pity which is pain, O Love that weeps, fill up my sufferings which remain! "Shall souls redeemed by me refuse To share my sorrow in their turn? Or, sin-forgiven, my gift abuse Of peace with selfish unconcern? Has saintly ease no pitying care? Has faith no work, and love no prayer? While sin remains, and souls in darkness dwell, Can heaven itself be heaven, and look unmoved on hell?" Then through the Gates of Pain, I dream, A wind of heaven blows coolly in; Fainter the awful discords seem, The smoke of torment grows more thin, Tears quench the burning soil, and thence Spring sweet, pale flowers of penitence And through the dreary realm of man's despair, Star-crowned an angel walks, and to! God's hope is there! Is it a dream? Is heaven so high That pity cannot breathe its air? Its happy eyes forever dry, Its holy lips without a prayer! My God! my God! if thither led By Thy free grace unmerited, No crown nor palm be mine, but let me keep A heart that still can feel, and eyes that still can weep. 1868. THE PRAYER-SEEKER. Along the aisle where prayer was made, A woman, all in black arrayed, Close-veiled, between the kneeling host, With gliding motion of a ghost, Passed to the desk, and laid thereon A scroll which bore these words alone, _Pray for me_! Back from the place of worshipping She glided like a guilty thing The rustle of her draperies, stirred By hurrying feet, alone was heard; While, full of awe, the preacher read, As out into the dark she sped: "_Pray for me_!" Back to the night from whence she came, To unimagined grief or shame! Across the threshold of that door None knew the burden that she bore; Alone she left the written scroll, The legend of a troubled soul,-- _Pray for me_! Glide on, poor ghost of woe or sin! Thou leav'st a common need within; Each bears, like thee, some nameless weight, Some misery inarticulate, Some secret sin, some shrouded dread, Some household sorrow all unsaid. _Pray for us_! Pass on! The type of all thou art, Sad witness to the common heart! With face in veil and seal on lip, In mute and strange companionship, Like thee we wander to and fro, Dumbly imploring as we go _Pray for us_! Ah, who shall pray, since he who pleads Our want perchance hath greater needs? Yet they who make their loss the gain Of others shall not ask in vain, And Heaven bends low to hear the prayer Of love from lips of self-despair _Pray for us_! In vain remorse and fear and hate Beat with bruised bands against a fate Whose walls of iron only move And open to the touch of love. He only feels his burdens fall Who, taught by suffering, pities all. _Pray for us_! He prayeth best who leaves unguessed The mystery of another's breast. Why cheeks grow pale, why eyes o'erflow, Or heads are white, thou need'st not know. Enough to note by many a sign That every heart hath needs like thine. _Pray for us_! 1870 THE BREWING OF SOMA. "These libations mixed with milk have been prepared for Indra: offer Soma to the drinker of Soma." --Vashista, translated by MAX MULLER. The fagots blazed, the caldron's smoke Up through the green wood curled; "Bring honey from the hollow oak, Bring milky sap," the brewers spoke, In the childhood of the world. And brewed they well or brewed they ill, The priests thrust in their rods, First tasted, and then drank their fill, And shouted, with one voice and will, "Behold the drink of gods!" They drank, and to! in heart and brain A new, glad life began; The gray of hair grew young again, The sick man laughed away his pain, The cripple leaped and ran. "Drink, mortals, what the gods have sent, Forget your long annoy." So sang the priests. From tent to tent The Soma's sacred madness went, A storm of drunken joy. Then knew each rapt inebriate A winged and glorious birth, Soared upward, with strange joy elate, Beat, with dazed head, Varuna's gate, And, sobered, sank to earth. The land with Soma's praises rang; On Gihon's banks of shade Its hymns the dusky maidens sang; In joy of life or mortal pang All men to Soma prayed. The morning twilight of the race Sends down these matin psalms; And still with wondering eyes we trace The simple prayers to Soma's grace, That Vedic verse embalms. As in that child-world's early year, Each after age has striven By music, incense, vigils drear, And trance, to bring the skies more near, Or lift men up to heaven! Some fever of the blood and brain, Some self-exalting spell, The scourger's keen delight of pain, The Dervish dance, the Orphic strain, The wild-haired Bacchant's yell,-- The desert's hair-grown hermit sunk The saner brute below; The naked Santon, hashish-drunk, The cloister madness of the monk, The fakir's torture-show! And yet the past comes round again, And new doth old fulfil; In sensual transports wild as vain We brew in many a Christian fane The heathen Soma still! Dear Lord and Father of mankind, Forgive our foolish ways! Reclothe us in our rightful mind, In purer lives Thy service find, In deeper reverence, praise. In simple trust like theirs who heard Beside the Syrian sea The gracious calling of the Lord, Let us, like them, without a word, Rise up and follow Thee. O Sabbath rest by Galilee! O calm of hills above, Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee The silence of eternity Interpreted by love! With that deep hush subduing all Our words and works that drown The tender whisper of Thy call, As noiseless let Thy blessing fall As fell Thy manna down. Drop Thy still dews of quietness, Till all our strivings cease; Take from our souls the strain and stress, And let our ordered lives confess The beauty of Thy peace. Breathe through the heats of our desire Thy coolness and Thy balm; Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, O still, small voice of calm! 1872. A WOMAN. Oh, dwarfed and wronged, and stained with ill, Behold! thou art a woman still! And, by that sacred name and dear, I bid thy better self appear. Still, through thy foul disguise, I see The rudimental purity, That, spite of change and loss, makes good Thy birthright-claim of womanhood; An inward loathing, deep, intense; A shame that is half innocence. Cast off the grave-clothes of thy sin! Rise from the dust thou liest in, As Mary rose at Jesus' word, Redeemed and white before the Lord! Reclairn thy lost soul! In His name, Rise up, and break thy bonds of shame. Art weak? He 's strong. Art fearful? Hear The world's O'ercomer: "Be of cheer!" What lip shall judge when He approves? Who dare to scorn the child He loves? THE PRAYER OF AGASSIZ. The island of Penikese in Buzzard's Bay was given by Mr. John Anderson to Agassiz for the uses of a summer school of natural history. A large barn was cleared and improvised as a lecture-room. Here, on the first morning of the school, all the company was gathered. "Agassiz had arranged no programme of exercises," says Mrs. Agassiz, in Louis Agassiz; his Life and Correspondence, "trusting to the interest of the occasion to suggest what might best be said or done. But, as he looked upon his pupils gathered there to study nature with him, by an impulse as natural as it was unpremeditated, he called upon then to join in silently asking God's blessing on their work together. The pause was broken by the first words of an address no less fervent than its unspoken prelude." This was in the summer of 1873, and Agassiz died the December following. On the isle of Penikese, Ringed about by sapphire seas, Fanned by breezes salt and cool, Stood the Master with his school. Over sails that not in vain Wooed the west-wind's steady strain, Line of coast that low and far Stretched its undulating bar, Wings aslant along the rim Of the waves they stooped to skim, Rock and isle and glistening bay, Fell the beautiful white day. Said the Master to the youth "We have come in search of truth, Trying with uncertain key Door by door of mystery; We are reaching, through His laws, To the garment-hem of Cause, Him, the endless, unbegun, The Unnamable, the One Light of all our light the Source, Life of life, and Force of force. As with fingers of the blind, We are groping here to find What the hieroglyphics mean Of the Unseen in the seen, What the Thought which underlies Nature's masking and disguise, What it is that hides beneath Blight and bloom and birth and death. By past efforts unavailing, Doubt and error, loss and failing, Of our weakness made aware, On the threshold of our task Let us light and guidance ask, Let us pause in silent prayer!" Then the Master in his place Bowed his head a little space, And the leaves by soft airs stirred, Lapse of wave and cry of bird, Left the solemn hush unbroken Of that wordless prayer unspoken, While its wish, on earth unsaid, Rose to heaven interpreted. As, in life's best hours, we hear By the spirit's finer ear His low voice within us, thus The All-Father heareth us; And His holy ear we pain With our noisy words and vain. Not for Him our violence Storming at the gates of sense, His the primal language, His The eternal silences! Even the careless heart was moved, And the doubting gave assent, With a gesture reverent, To the Master well-beloved. As thin mists are glorified By the light they cannot hide, All who gazed upon him saw, Through its veil of tender awe, How his face was still uplit By the old sweet look of it. Hopeful, trustful, full of cheer, And the love that casts out fear. Who the secret may declare Of that brief, unuttered prayer? Did the shade before him come Of th' inevitable doom, Of the end of earth so near, And Eternity's new year? In the lap of sheltering seas Rests the isle of Penikese; But the lord of the domain Comes not to his own again Where the eyes that follow fail, On a vaster sea his sail Drifts beyond our beck and hail. Other lips within its bound Shall the laws of life expound; Other eyes from rock and shell Read the world's old riddles well But when breezes light and bland Blow from Summer's blossomed land, When the air is glad with wings, And the blithe song-sparrow sings, Many an eye with his still face Shall the living ones displace, Many an ear the word shall seek He alone could fitly speak. And one name forevermore Shall be uttered o'er and o'er By the waves that kiss the shore, By the curlew's whistle sent Down the cool, sea-scented air; In all voices known to her, Nature owns her worshipper, Half in triumph, half lament. Thither Love shall tearful turn, Friendship pause uncovered there, And the wisest reverence learn From the Master's silent prayer. 1873. IN QUEST Have I not voyaged, friend beloved, with thee On the great waters of the unsounded sea, Momently listening with suspended oar For the low rote of waves upon a shore Changeless as heaven, where never fog-cloud drifts Over its windless wood, nor mirage lifts The steadfast hills; where never birds of doubt Sing to mislead, and every dream dies out, And the dark riddles which perplex us here In the sharp solvent of its light are clear? Thou knowest how vain our quest; how, soon or late, The baffling tides and circles of debate Swept back our bark unto its starting-place, Where, looking forth upon the blank, gray space, And round about us seeing, with sad eyes, The same old difficult hills and cloud-cold skies, We said: "This outward search availeth not To find Him. He is farther than we thought, Or, haply, nearer. To this very spot Whereon we wait, this commonplace of home, As to the well of Jacob, He may come And tell us all things." As I listened there, Through the expectant silences of prayer, Somewhat I seemed to hear, which hath to me Been hope, strength, comfort, and I give it thee. "The riddle of the world is understood Only by him who feels that God is good, As only he can feel who makes his love The ladder of his faith, and climbs above On th' rounds of his best instincts; draws no line Between mere human goodness and divine, But, judging God by what in him is best, With a child's trust leans on a Father's breast, And hears unmoved the old creeds babble still Of kingly power and dread caprice of will, Chary of blessing, prodigal of curse, The pitiless doomsman of the universe. Can Hatred ask for love? Can Selfishness Invite to self-denial? Is He less Than man in kindly dealing? Can He break His own great law of fatherhood, forsake And curse His children? Not for earth and heaven Can separate tables of the law be given. No rule can bind which He himself denies; The truths of time are not eternal lies." So heard I; and the chaos round me spread To light and order grew; and, "Lord," I said, "Our sins are our tormentors, worst of all Felt in distrustful shame that dares not call Upon Thee as our Father. We have set A strange god up, but Thou remainest yet. All that I feel of pity Thou hast known Before I was; my best is all Thy own. From Thy great heart of goodness mine but drew Wishes and prayers; but Thou, O Lord, wilt do, In Thy own time, by ways I cannot see, All that I feel when I am nearest Thee!" 1873. THE FRIEND'S BURIAL. My thoughts are all in yonder town, Where, wept by many tears, To-day my mother's friend lays down The burden of her years. True as in life, no poor disguise Of death with her is seen, And on her simple casket lies No wreath of bloom and green. Oh, not for her the florist's art, The mocking weeds of woe; Dear memories in each mourner's heart Like heaven's white lilies blow. And all about the softening air Of new-born sweetness tells, And the ungathered May-flowers wear The tints of ocean shells. The old, assuring miracle Is fresh as heretofore; And earth takes up its parable Of life from death once more. Here organ-swell and church-bell toll Methinks but discord were; The prayerful silence of the soul Is best befitting her. No sound should break the quietude Alike of earth and sky O wandering wind in Seabrook wood, Breathe but a half-heard sigh! Sing softly, spring-bird, for her sake; And thou not distant sea, Lapse lightly as if Jesus spake, And thou wert Galilee! For all her quiet life flowed on As meadow streamlets flow, Where fresher green reveals alone The noiseless ways they go. From her loved place of prayer I see The plain-robed mourners pass, With slow feet treading reverently The graveyard's springing grass. Make room, O mourning ones, for me, Where, like the friends of Paul, That you no more her face shall see You sorrow most of all. Her path shall brighten more and more Unto the perfect day; She cannot fail of peace who bore Such peace with her away. O sweet, calm face that seemed to wear The look of sins forgiven! O voice of prayer that seemed to bear Our own needs up to heaven! How reverent in our midst she stood, Or knelt in grateful praise! What grace of Christian womanhood Was in her household ways! For still her holy living meant No duty left undone; The heavenly and the human blent Their kindred loves in one. And if her life small leisure found For feasting ear and eye, And Pleasure, on her daily round, She passed unpausing by, Yet with her went a secret sense Of all things sweet and fair, And Beauty's gracious providence Refreshed her unaware. She kept her line of rectitude With love's unconscious ease; Her kindly instincts understood All gentle courtesies. An inborn charm of graciousness Made sweet her smile and tone, And glorified her farm-wife dress With beauty not its own. The dear Lord's best interpreters Are humble human souls; The Gospel of a life like hers Is more than books or scrolls. From scheme and creed the light goes out, The saintly fact survives; The blessed Master none can doubt Revealed in holy lives. 1873. A CHRISTMAS CARMEN. I. Sound over all waters, reach out from all lands, The chorus of voices, the clasping of hands; Sing hymns that were sung by the stars of the morn, Sing songs of the angels when Jesus was born! With glad jubilations Bring hope to the nations The dark night is ending and dawn has begun Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun, All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one! II. Sing the bridal of nations! with chorals of love Sing out the war-vulture and sing in the dove, Till the hearts of the peoples keep time in accord, And the voice of the world is the voice of the Lord! Clasp hands of the nations In strong gratulations: The dark night is ending and dawn has begun; Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun, All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one! III. Blow, bugles of battle, the marches of peace; East, west, north, and south let the long quarrel cease Sing the song of great joy that the angels began, Sing of glory to God and of good-will to man! Hark! joining in chorus The heavens bend o'er us' The dark night is ending and dawn has begun; Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun, All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one! 1873. VESTA. O Christ of God! whose life and death Our own have reconciled, Most quietly, most tenderly Take home Thy star-named child! Thy grace is in her patient eyes, Thy words are on her tongue; The very silence round her seems As if the angels sung. Her smile is as a listening child's Who hears its mother call; The lilies of Thy perfect peace About her pillow fall. She leans from out our clinging arms To rest herself in Thine; Alone to Thee, dear Lord, can we Our well-beloved resign! Oh, less for her than for ourselves We bow our heads and pray; Her setting star, like Bethlehem's, To Thee shall point the way! 1874. CHILD-SONGS. Still linger in our noon of time And on our Saxon tongue The echoes of the home-born hymns The Aryan mothers sung. And childhood had its litanies In every age and clime; The earliest cradles of the race Were rocked to poet's rhyme. Nor sky, nor wave, nor tree, nor flower, Nor green earth's virgin sod, So moved the singer's heart of old As these small ones of God. The mystery of unfolding life Was more than dawning morn, Than opening flower or crescent moon The human soul new-born. And still to childhood's sweet appeal The heart of genius turns, And more than all the sages teach From lisping voices learns,-- The voices loved of him who sang, Where Tweed and Teviot glide, That sound to-day on all the winds That blow from Rydal-side,-- Heard in the Teuton's household songs, And folk-lore of the Finn, Where'er to holy Christmas hearths The Christ-child enters in! Before life's sweetest mystery still The heart in reverence kneels; The wonder of the primal birth The latest mother feels. We need love's tender lessons taught As only weakness can; God hath His small interpreters; The child must teach the man. We wander wide through evil years, Our eyes of faith grow dim; But he is freshest from His hands And nearest unto Him! And haply, pleading long with Him For sin-sick hearts and cold, The angels of our childhood still The Father's face behold. Of such the kingdom!--Teach Thou us, O-Master most divine, To feel the deep significance Of these wise words of Thine! The haughty eye shall seek in vain What innocence beholds; No cunning finds the key of heaven, No strength its gate unfolds. Alone to guilelessness and love That gate shall open fall; The mind of pride is nothingness, The childlike heart is all! 1875. THE HEALER. TO A YOUNG PHYSICIAN, WITH DORE'S PICTURE OF CHRIST HEALING THE SICK. So stood of old the holy Christ Amidst the suffering throng; With whom His lightest touch sufficed To make the weakest strong. That healing gift He lends to them Who use it in His name; The power that filled His garment's hem Is evermore the same. For lo! in human hearts unseen The Healer dwelleth still, And they who make His temples clean The best subserve His will. The holiest task by Heaven decreed, An errand all divine, The burden of our common need To render less is thine. The paths of pain are thine. Go forth With patience, trust, and hope; The sufferings of a sin-sick earth Shall give thee ample scope. Beside the unveiled mysteries Of life and death go stand, With guarded lips and reverent eyes And pure of heart and hand. So shalt thou be with power endued From Him who went about The Syrian hillsides doing good, And casting demons out. That Good Physician liveth yet Thy friend and guide to be; The Healer by Gennesaret Shall walk the rounds with thee. THE TWO ANGELS. God called the nearest angels who dwell with Him above: The tenderest one was Pity, the dearest one was Love. "Arise," He said, "my angels! a wail of woe and sin Steals through the gates of heaven, and saddens all within. "My harps take up the mournful strain that from a lost world swells, The smoke of torment clouds the light and blights the asphodels. "Fly downward to that under world, and on its souls of pain Let Love drop smiles like sunshine, and Pity tears like rain!" Two faces bowed before the Throne, veiled in their golden hair; Four white wings lessened swiftly down the dark abyss of air. The way was strange, the flight was long; at last the angels came Where swung the lost and nether world, red-wrapped in rayless flame. There Pity, shuddering, wept; but Love, with faith too strong for fear, Took heart from God's almightiness and smiled a smile of cheer. And lo! that tear of Pity quenched the flame whereon it fell, And, with the sunshine of that smile, hope entered into hell! Two unveiled faces full of joy looked upward to the Throne, Four white wings folded at the feet of Him who sat thereon! And deeper than the sound of seas, more soft than falling flake, Amidst the hush of wing and song the Voice Eternal spake: "Welcome, my angels! ye have brought a holier joy to heaven; Henceforth its sweetest song shall be the song of sin forgiven!" 1875. OVERRULED. The threads our hands in blindness spin No self-determined plan weaves in; The shuttle of the unseen powers Works out a pattern not as ours. Ah! small the choice of him who sings What sound shall leave the smitten strings; Fate holds and guides the hand of art; The singer's is the servant's part. The wind-harp chooses not the tone That through its trembling threads is blown; The patient organ cannot guess What hand its passive keys shall press. Through wish, resolve, and act, our will Is moved by undreamed forces still; And no man measures in advance His strength with untried circumstance. As streams take hue from shade and sun, As runs the life the song must run; But, glad or sad, to His good end God grant the varying notes may tend! 1877. HYMN OF THE DUNKERS KLOSTER KEDAR, EPHRATA, PENNSYLVANIA (1738) SISTER MARIA CHRISTINA sings Wake, sisters, wake! the day-star shines; Above Ephrata's eastern pines The dawn is breaking, cool and calm. Wake, sisters, wake to prayer and psalm! Praised be the Lord for shade and light, For toil by day, for rest by night! Praised be His name who deigns to bless Our Kedar of the wilderness! Our refuge when the spoiler's hand Was heavy on our native land; And freedom, to her children due, The wolf and vulture only knew. We praised Him when to prison led, We owned Him when the stake blazed red; We knew, whatever might befall, His love and power were over all. He heard our prayers; with outstretched arm He led us forth from cruel harm; Still, wheresoe'er our steps were bent, His cloud and fire before us went! The watch of faith and prayer He set, We kept it then, we keep it yet. At midnight, crow of cock, or noon, He cometh sure, He cometh soon. He comes to chasten, not destroy, To purge the earth from sin's alloy. At last, at last shall all confess His mercy as His righteousness. The dead shall live, the sick be whole, The scarlet sin be white as wool; No discord mar below, above, The music of eternal love! Sound, welcome trump, the last alarm! Lord God of hosts, make bare thine arm, Fulfil this day our long desire, Make sweet and clean the world with fire! Sweep, flaming besom, sweep from sight The lies of time; be swift to smite, Sharp sword of God, all idols down, Genevan creed and Roman crown. Quake, earth, through all thy zones, till all The fanes of pride and priesteraft fall; And lift thou up in place of them Thy gates of pearl, Jerusalem! Lo! rising from baptismal flame, Transfigured, glorious, yet the same, Within the heavenly city's bound Our Kloster Kedar shall be found. He cometh soon! at dawn or noon Or set of sun, He cometh soon. Our prayers shall meet Him on His way; Wake, sisters, wake! arise and pray! 1877. GIVING AND TAKING. I have attempted to put in English verse a prose translation of a poem by Tinnevaluva, a Hindoo poet of the third century of our era. Who gives and hides the giving hand, Nor counts on favor, fame, or praise, Shall find his smallest gift outweighs The burden of the sea and land. Who gives to whom hath naught been given, His gift in need, though small indeed As is the grass-blade's wind-blown seed, Is large as earth and rich as heaven. Forget it not, O man, to whom A gift shall fall, while yet on earth; Yea, even to thy seven-fold birth Recall it in the lives to come. Who broods above a wrong in thought Sins much; but greater sin is his Who, fed and clothed with kindnesses, Shall count the holy alms as nought. Who dares to curse the hands that bless Shall know of sin the deadliest cost; The patience of the heavens is lost Beholding man's unthankfulness. For he who breaks all laws may still In Sivam's mercy be forgiven; But none can save, in earth or heaven, The wretch who answers good with ill. 1877. THE VISION OF ECHARD. The Benedictine Echard Sat by the wayside well, Where Marsberg sees the bridal Of the Sarre and the Moselle. Fair with its sloping vineyards And tawny chestnut bloom, The happy vale Ausonius sunk For holy Treves made room. On the shrine Helena builded To keep the Christ coat well, On minster tower and kloster cross, The westering sunshine fell. There, where the rock-hewn circles O'erlooked the Roman's game, The veil of sleep fell on him, And his thought a dream became. He felt the heart of silence Throb with a soundless word, And by the inward ear alone A spirit's voice he heard. And the spoken word seemed written On air and wave and sod, And the bending walls of sapphire Blazed with the thought of God. "What lack I, O my children? All things are in my band; The vast earth and the awful stars I hold as grains of sand. "Need I your alms? The silver And gold are mine alone; The gifts ye bring before me Were evermore my own. "Heed I the noise of viols, Your pomp of masque and show? Have I not dawns and sunsets Have I not winds that blow? "Do I smell your gums of incense? Is my ear with chantings fed? Taste I your wine of worship, Or eat your holy bread? "Of rank and name and honors Am I vain as ye are vain? What can Eternal Fulness From your lip-service gain? "Ye make me not your debtor Who serve yourselves alone; Ye boast to me of homage Whose gain is all your own. "For you I gave the prophets, For you the Psalmist's lay For you the law's stone tables, And holy book and day. "Ye change to weary burdens The helps that should uplift; Ye lose in form the spirit, The Giver in the gift. "Who called ye to self-torment, To fast and penance vain? Dream ye Eternal Goodness Has joy in mortal pain? "For the death in life of Nitria, For your Chartreuse ever dumb, What better is the neighbor, Or happier the home? "Who counts his brother's welfare As sacred as his own, And loves, forgives, and pities, He serveth me alone. "I note each gracious purpose, Each kindly word and deed; Are ye not all my children? Shall not the Father heed? "No prayer for light and guidance Is lost upon mine ear The child's cry in the darkness Shall not the Father hear? "I loathe your wrangling councils, I tread upon your creeds; Who made ye mine avengers, Or told ye of my needs; "I bless men and ye curse them, I love them and ye hate; Ye bite and tear each other, I suffer long and wait. "Ye bow to ghastly symbols, To cross and scourge and thorn; Ye seek his Syrian manger Who in the heart is born. "For the dead Christ, not the living, Ye watch His empty grave, Whose life alone within you Has power to bless and save. "O blind ones, outward groping, The idle quest forego; Who listens to His inward voice Alone of Him shall know. "His love all love exceeding The heart must needs recall, Its self-surrendering freedom, Its loss that gaineth all. "Climb not the holy mountains, Their eagles know not me; Seek not the Blessed Islands, I dwell not in the sea. "Gone is the mount of Meru, The triple gods are gone, And, deaf to all the lama's prayers, The Buddha slumbers on. "No more from rocky Horeb The smitten waters gush; Fallen is Bethel's ladder, Quenched is the burning bush. "The jewels of the Urim And Thurnmim all are dim; The fire has left the altar, The sign the teraphim. "No more in ark or hill grove The Holiest abides; Not in the scroll's dead letter The eternal secret hides. "The eye shall fail that searches For me the hollow sky; The far is even as the near, The low is as the high. "What if the earth is hiding Her old faiths, long outworn? What is it to the changeless truth That yours shall fail in turn? "What if the o'erturned altar Lays bare the ancient lie? What if the dreams and legends Of the world's childhood die? "Have ye not still my witness Within yourselves alway, My hand that on the keys of life For bliss or bale I lay? "Still, in perpetual judgment, I hold assize within, With sure reward of holiness, And dread rebuke of sin. "A light, a guide, a warning, A presence ever near, Through the deep silence of the flesh I reach the inward ear. "My Gerizim and Ebal Are in each human soul, The still, small voice of blessing, And Sinai's thunder-roll. "The stern behest of duty, The doom-book open thrown, The heaven ye seek, the hell ye fear, Are with yourselves alone." . . . . . A gold and purple sunset Flowed down the broad Moselle; On hills of vine and meadow lands The peace of twilight fell. A slow, cool wind of evening Blew over leaf and bloom; And, faint and far, the Angelus Rang from Saint Matthew's tomb. Then up rose Master Echard, And marvelled: "Can it be That here, in dream and vision, The Lord hath talked with me?" He went his way; behind him The shrines of saintly dead, The holy coat and nail of cross, He left unvisited. He sought the vale of Eltzbach His burdened soul to free, Where the foot-hills of the Eifel Are glassed in Laachersee. And, in his Order's kloster, He sat, in night-long parle, With Tauler of the Friends of God, And Nicolas of Basle. And lo! the twain made answer "Yea, brother, even thus The Voice above all voices Hath spoken unto us. "The world will have its idols, And flesh and sense their sign But the blinded eyes shall open, And the gross ear be fine. "What if the vision tarry? God's time is always best; The true Light shall be witnessed, The Christ within confessed. "In mercy or in judgment He shall turn and overturn, Till the heart shall be His temple Where all of Him shall learn." INSCRIPTIONS. ON A SUN-DIAL. FOR DR. HENRY I. BOWDITCH. With warning hand I mark Time's rapid flight From life's glad morning to its solemn night; Yet, through the dear God's love, I also show There's Light above me by the Shade below. 1879. ON A FOUNTAIN. FOR DOROTHEA L. DIX. Stranger and traveller, Drink freely and bestow A kindly thought on her Who bade this fountain flow, Yet hath no other claim Than as the minister Of blessing in God's name. Drink, and in His peace go 1879 THE MINISTER'S DAUGHTER. In the minister's morning sermon He had told of the primal fall, And how thenceforth the wrath of God Rested on each and all. And how of His will and pleasure, All souls, save a chosen few, Were doomed to the quenchless burning, And held in the way thereto. Yet never by faith's unreason A saintlier soul was tried, And never the harsh old lesson A tenderer heart belied. And, after the painful service On that pleasant Sabbath day, He walked with his little daughter Through the apple-bloom of May. Sweet in the fresh green meadows Sparrow and blackbird sung; Above him their tinted petals The blossoming orchards hung. Around on the wonderful glory The minister looked and smiled; "How good is the Lord who gives us These gifts from His hand, my child. "Behold in the bloom of apples And the violets in the sward A hint of the old, lost beauty Of the Garden of the Lord!" Then up spake the little maiden, Treading on snow and pink "O father! these pretty blossoms Are very wicked, I think. "Had there been no Garden of Eden There never had been a fall; And if never a tree had blossomed God would have loved us all." "Hush, child!" the father answered, "By His decree man fell; His ways are in clouds and darkness, But He doeth all things well. "And whether by His ordaining To us cometh good or ill, Joy or pain, or light or shadow, We must fear and love Him still." "Oh, I fear Him!" said the daughter, "And I try to love Him, too; But I wish He was good and gentle, Kind and loving as you." The minister groaned in spirit As the tremulous lips of pain And wide, wet eyes uplifted Questioned his own in vain. Bowing his head he pondered The words of the little one; Had he erred in his life-long teaching? Had he wrong to his Master done? To what grim and dreadful idol Had he lent the holiest name? Did his own heart, loving and human, The God of his worship shame? And lo! from the bloom and greenness, From the tender skies above, And the face of his little daughter, He read a lesson of love. No more as the cloudy terror Of Sinai's mount of law, But as Christ in the Syrian lilies The vision of God he saw. And, as when, in the clefts of Horeb, Of old was His presence known, The dread Ineffable Glory Was Infinite Goodness alone. Thereafter his hearers noted In his prayers a tenderer strain, And never the gospel of hatred Burned on his lips again. And the scoffing tongue was prayerful, And the blinded eyes found sight, And hearts, as flint aforetime, Grew soft in his warmth and light. 1880. BY THEIR WORKS. Call him not heretic whose works attest His faith in goodness by no creed confessed. Whatever in love's name is truly done To free the bound and lift the fallen one Is done to Christ. Whoso in deed and word Is not against Him labors for our Lord. When He, who, sad and weary, longing sore For love's sweet service, sought the sisters' door, One saw the heavenly, one the human guest, But who shall say which loved the Master best? 1881. THE WORD. Voice of the Holy Spirit, making known Man to himself, a witness swift and sure, Warning, approving, true and wise and pure, Counsel and guidance that misleadeth none! By thee the mystery of life is read; The picture-writing of the world's gray seers, The myths and parables of the primal years, Whose letter kills, by thee interpreted Take healthful meanings fitted to our needs, And in the soul's vernacular express The common law of simple righteousness. Hatred of cant and doubt of human creeds May well be felt: the unpardonable sin Is to deny the Word of God within! 1881. THE BOOK. Gallery of sacred pictures manifold, A minster rich in holy effigies, And bearing on entablature and frieze The hieroglyphic oracles of old. Along its transept aureoled martyrs sit; And the low chancel side-lights half acquaint The eye with shrines of prophet, bard, and saint, Their age-dimmed tablets traced in doubtful writ! But only when on form and word obscure Falls from above the white supernal light We read the mystic characters aright, And life informs the silent portraiture, Until we pause at last, awe-held, before The One ineffable Face, love, wonder, and adore. 1881 REQUIREMENT. We live by Faith; but Faith is not the slave Of text and legend. Reason's voice and God's, Nature's and Duty's, never are at odds. What asks our Father of His children, save Justice and mercy and humility, A reasonable service of good deeds, Pure living, tenderness to human needs, Reverence and trust, and prayer for light to see The Master's footprints in our daily ways? No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife, But the calm beauty of an ordered life Whose very breathing is unworded praise!-- A life that stands as all true lives have stood, Firm-rooted in the faith that God is Good. 1881. HELP. Dream not, O Soul, that easy is the task Thus set before thee. If it proves at length, As well it may, beyond thy natural strength, Faint not, despair not. As a child may ask A father, pray the Everlasting Good For light and guidance midst the subtle snares Of sin thick planted in life's thoroughfares, For spiritual strength and moral hardihood; Still listening, through the noise of time and sense, To the still whisper of the Inward Word; Bitter in blame, sweet in approval heard, Itself its own confirming evidence To health of soul a voice to cheer and please, To guilt the wrath of the Eumenides. 1881. UTTERANCE. But what avail inadequate words to reach The innermost of Truth? Who shall essay, Blinded and weak, to point and lead the way, Or solve the mystery in familiar speech? Yet, if it be that something not thy own, Some shadow of the Thought to which our schemes, Creeds, cult, and ritual are at best but dreams, Is even to thy unworthiness made known, Thou mayst not hide what yet thou shouldst not dare To utter lightly, lest on lips of thine The real seem false, the beauty undivine. So, weighing duty in the scale of prayer, Give what seems given thee. It may prove a seed Of goodness dropped in fallow-grounds of need. 1881. ORIENTAL MAXIMS. PARAPHRASE OF SANSCRIT TRANSLATIONS. THE INWARD JUDGE. From Institutes of Manu. The soul itself its awful witness is. Say not in evil doing, "No one sees," And so offend the conscious One within, Whose ear can hear the silences of sin. Ere they find voice, whose eyes unsleeping see The secret motions of iniquity. Nor in thy folly say, "I am alone." For, seated in thy heart, as on a throne, The ancient Judge and Witness liveth still, To note thy act and thought; and as thy ill Or good goes from thee, far beyond thy reach, The solemn Doomsman's seal is set on each. 1878. LAYING UP TREASURE From the Mahabharata. Before the Ender comes, whose charioteer Is swift or slow Disease, lay up each year Thy harvests of well-doing, wealth that kings Nor thieves can take away. When all the things Thou tallest thine, goods, pleasures, honors fall, Thou in thy virtue shalt survive them all. 1881. CONDUCT From the Mahabharata. Heed how thou livest. Do no act by day Which from the night shall drive thy peace away. In months of sun so live that months of rain Shall still be happy. Evermore restrain Evil and cherish good, so shall there be Another and a happier life for thee. 1881. AN EASTER FLOWER GIFT. O dearest bloom the seasons know, Flowers of the Resurrection blow, Our hope and faith restore; And through the bitterness of death And loss and sorrow, breathe a breath Of life forevermore! The thought of Love Immortal blends With fond remembrances of friends; In you, O sacred flowers, By human love made doubly sweet, The heavenly and the earthly meet, The heart of Christ and ours! 1882. THE MYSTIC'S CHRISTMAS. "All hail!" the bells of Christmas rang, "All hail!" the monks at Christmas sang, The merry monks who kept with cheer The gladdest day of all their year. But still apart, unmoved thereat, A pious elder brother sat Silent, in his accustomed place, With God's sweet peace upon his face. "Why sitt'st thou thus?" his brethren cried. "It is the blessed Christmas-tide; The Christmas lights are all aglow, The sacred lilies bud and blow. "Above our heads the joy-bells ring, Without the happy children sing, And all God's creatures hail the morn On which the holy Christ was born! "Rejoice with us; no more rebuke Our gladness with thy quiet look." The gray monk answered: "Keep, I pray, Even as ye list, the Lord's birthday. "Let heathen Yule fires flicker red Where thronged refectory feasts are spread; With mystery-play and masque and mime And wait-songs speed the holy time! "The blindest faith may haply save; The Lord accepts the things we have; And reverence, howsoe'er it strays, May find at last the shining ways. "They needs must grope who cannot see, The blade before the ear must be; As ye are feeling I have felt, And where ye dwell I too have dwelt. "But now, beyond the things of sense, Beyond occasions and events, I know, through God's exceeding grace, Release from form and time and place. "I listen, from no mortal tongue, To hear the song the angels sung; And wait within myself to know The Christmas lilies bud and blow. "The outward symbols disappear From him whose inward sight is clear; And small must be the choice of clays To him who fills them all with praise! "Keep while you need it, brothers mine, With honest zeal your Christmas sign, But judge not him who every morn Feels in his heart the Lord Christ born!" 1882. AT LAST. When on my day of life the night is falling, And, in the winds from unsunned spaces blown, I hear far voices out of darkness calling My feet to paths unknown, Thou who hast made my home of life so pleasant, Leave not its tenant when its walls decay; O Love Divine, O Helper ever present, Be Thou my strength and stay! Be near me when all else is from me drifting Earth, sky, home's pictures, days of shade and shine, And kindly faces to my own uplifting The love which answers mine. I have but Thee, my Father! let Thy spirit Be with me then to comfort and uphold; No gate of pearl, no branch of palm I merit, Nor street of shining gold. Suffice it if--my good and ill unreckoned, And both forgiven through Thy abounding grace-- I find myself by hands familiar beckoned Unto my fitting place. Some humble door among Thy many mansions, Some sheltering shade where sin and striving cease, And flows forever through heaven's green expansions The river of Thy peace. There, from the music round about me stealing, I fain would learn the new and holy song, And find at last, beneath Thy trees of healing, The life for which I long. 1882 WHAT THE TRAVELLER SAID AT SUNSET. The shadows grow and deepen round me, I feel the deffall in the air; The muezzin of the darkening thicket, I hear the night-thrush call to prayer. The evening wind is sad with farewells, And loving hands unclasp from mine; Alone I go to meet the darkness Across an awful boundary-line. As from the lighted hearths behind me I pass with slow, reluctant feet, What waits me in the land of strangeness? What face shall smile, what voice shall greet? What space shall awe, what brightness blind me? What thunder-roll of music stun? What vast processions sweep before me Of shapes unknown beneath the sun? I shrink from unaccustomed glory, I dread the myriad-voiced strain; Give me the unforgotten faces, And let my lost ones speak again. He will not chide my mortal yearning Who is our Brother and our Friend; In whose full life, divine and human, The heavenly and the earthly blend. Mine be the joy of soul-communion, The sense of spiritual strength renewed, The reverence for the pure and holy, The dear delight of doing good. No fitting ear is mine to listen An endless anthem's rise and fall; No curious eye is mine to measure The pearl gate and the jasper wall. For love must needs be more than knowledge: What matter if I never know Why Aldebaran's star is ruddy, Or warmer Sirius white as snow! Forgive my human words, O Father! I go Thy larger truth to prove; Thy mercy shall transcend my longing I seek but love, and Thou art Love! I go to find my lost and mourned for Safe in Thy sheltering goodness still, And all that hope and faith foreshadow Made perfect in Thy holy will! 1883. THE "STORY OF IDA." Francesca Alexander, whose pen and pencil have so reverently transcribed the simple faith and life of the Italian peasantry, wrote the narrative published with John Ruskin's introduction under the title, _The Story of Ida_. Weary of jangling noises never stilled, The skeptic's sneer, the bigot's hate, the din Of clashing texts, the webs of creed men spin Round simple truth, the children grown who build With gilded cards their new Jerusalem, Busy, with sacerdotal tailorings And tinsel gauds, bedizening holy things, I turn, with glad and grateful heart, from them To the sweet story of the Florentine Immortal in her blameless maidenhood, Beautiful as God's angels and as good; Feeling that life, even now, may be divine With love no wrong can ever change to hate, No sin make less than all-compassionate! 1884. THE LIGHT THAT IS FELT. A tender child of summers three, Seeking her little bed at night, Paused on the dark stair timidly. "Oh, mother! Take my hand," said she, "And then the dark will all be light." We older children grope our way From dark behind to dark before; And only when our hands we lay, Dear Lord, in Thine, the night is day, And there is darkness nevermore. Reach downward to the sunless days Wherein our guides are blind as we, And faith is small and hope delays; Take Thou the hands of prayer we raise, And let us feel the light of Thee! 1884. THE TWO LOVES Smoothing soft the nestling head Of a maiden fancy-led, Thus a grave-eyed woman said: "Richest gifts are those we make, Dearer than the love we take That we give for love's own sake. "Well I know the heart's unrest; Mine has been the common quest, To be loved and therefore blest. "Favors undeserved were mine; At my feet as on a shrine Love has laid its gifts divine. "Sweet the offerings seemed, and yet With their sweetness came regret, And a sense of unpaid debt. "Heart of mine unsatisfied, Was it vanity or pride That a deeper joy denied? "Hands that ope but to receive Empty close; they only live Richly who can richly give. "Still," she sighed, with moistening eyes, "Love is sweet in any guise; But its best is sacrifice! "He who, giving, does not crave Likest is to Him who gave Life itself the loved to save. "Love, that self-forgetful gives, Sows surprise of ripened sheaves, Late or soon its own receives." 1884. ADJUSTMENT. The tree of Faith its bare, dry boughs must shed That nearer heaven the living ones may climb; The false must fail, though from our shores of time The old lament be heard, "Great Pan is dead!" That wail is Error's, from his high place hurled; This sharp recoil is Evil undertrod; Our time's unrest, an angel sent of God Troubling with life the waters of the world. Even as they list the winds of the Spirit blow To turn or break our century-rusted vanes; Sands shift and waste; the rock alone remains Where, led of Heaven, the strong tides come and go, And storm-clouds, rent by thunderbolt and wind, Leave, free of mist, the permanent stars behind. Therefore I trust, although to outward sense Both true and false seem shaken; I will hold With newer light my reverence for the old, And calmly wait the births of Providence. No gain is lost; the clear-eyed saints look down Untroubled on the wreck of schemes and creeds; Love yet remains, its rosary of good deeds Counting in task-field and o'erpeopled town; Truth has charmed life; the Inward Word survives, And, day by day, its revelation brings; Faith, hope, and charity, whatsoever things Which cannot be shaken, stand. Still holy lives Reveal the Christ of whom the letter told, And the new gospel verifies the old. 1885. HYMNS OF THE BRAHMO SOMAJ. I have attempted this paraphrase of the Hymns of the Brahmo Somaj of India, as I find them in Mozoomdar's account of the devotional exercises of that remarkable religious development which has attracted far less attention and sympathy from the Christian world than it deserves, as a fresh revelation of the direct action of the Divine Spirit upon the human heart. I. The mercy, O Eternal One! By man unmeasured yet, In joy or grief, in shade or sun, I never will forget. I give the whole, and not a part, Of all Thou gayest me; My goods, my life, my soul and heart, I yield them all to Thee! II. We fast and plead, we weep and pray, From morning until even; We feel to find the holy way, We knock at the gate of heaven And when in silent awe we wait, And word and sign forbear, The hinges of the golden gate Move, soundless, to our prayer! Who hears the eternal harmonies Can heed no outward word; Blind to all else is he who sees The vision of the Lord! III. O soul, be patient, restrain thy tears, Have hope, and not despair; As a tender mother heareth her child God hears the penitent prayer. And not forever shall grief be thine; On the Heavenly Mother's breast, Washed clean and white in the waters of joy Shall His seeking child find rest. Console thyself with His word of grace, And cease thy wail of woe, For His mercy never an equal hath, And His love no bounds can know. Lean close unto Him in faith and hope; How many like thee have found In Him a shelter and home of peace, By His mercy compassed round! There, safe from sin and the sorrow it brings, They sing their grateful psalms, And rest, at noon, by the wells of God, In the shade of His holy palms! 1885. REVELATION. "And I went into the Vale of Beavor, and as I went I preached repentance to the people. And one morning, sitting by the fire, a great cloud came over me, and a temptation beset me. And it was said: All things come by Nature; and the Elements and the Stars came over me. And as I sat still and let it alone, a living hope arose in me, and a true Voice which said: There is a living God who made all things. And immediately the cloud and the temptation vanished, and Life rose over all, and my heart was glad and I praised the Living God."--Journal of George Fox, 1690. Still, as of old, in Beavor's Vale, O man of God! our hope and faith The Elements and Stars assail, And the awed spirit holds its breath, Blown over by a wind of death. Takes Nature thought for such as we, What place her human atom fills, The weed-drift of her careless sea, The mist on her unheeding hills? What reeks she of our helpless wills? Strange god of Force, with fear, not love, Its trembling worshipper! Can prayer Reach the shut ear of Fate, or move Unpitying Energy to spare? What doth the cosmic Vastness care? In vain to this dread Unconcern For the All-Father's love we look; In vain, in quest of it, we turn The storied leaves of Nature's book, The prints her rocky tablets took. I pray for faith, I long to trust; I listen with my heart, and hear A Voice without a sound: "Be just, Be true, be merciful, revere The Word within thee: God is near! "A light to sky and earth unknown Pales all their lights: a mightier force Than theirs the powers of Nature own, And, to its goal as at its source, His Spirit moves the Universe. "Believe and trust. Through stars and suns, Through life and death, through soul and sense, His wise, paternal purpose runs; The darkness of His providence Is star-lit with benign intents." O joy supreme! I know the Voice, Like none beside on earth or sea; Yea, more, O soul of mine, rejoice, By all that He requires of me, I know what God himself must be. No picture to my aid I call, I shape no image in my prayer; I only know in Him is all Of life, light, beauty, everywhere, Eternal Goodness here and there! I know He is, and what He is, Whose one great purpose is the good Of all. I rest my soul on His Immortal Love and Fatherhood; And trust Him, as His children should. I fear no more. The clouded face Of Nature smiles; through all her things Of time and space and sense I trace The moving of the Spirit's wings, And hear the song of hope she sings. 1886 
9585	----	This eBook was produced by David Widger AT SUNDOWN BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER AT SUNDOWN. TO E. C. S. THE CHRISTMAS OF 1888. THE VOW OF WASHINGTON THE CAPTAIN'S WELL AN OUTDOOR RECEPTION R. S. S., AT DEER ISLAND ON THE MERRIMAC BURNING DRIFT-WOOD. O. W. HOLMES ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL HAVERHILL. 1640-1890 TO G. G. PRESTON POWERS, INSCRIPTION FOR BASS-RELIEF LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY, INSCRIPTION ON TABLET MILTON, ON MEMORIAL WINDOW THE BIRTHDAY WREATH THE WIND OF MARCH BETWEEN THE GATES THE LAST EVE OF SUMMER TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 8TH Mo. 29TH, 1892 AT SUNDOWN TO E. C. S. Poet and friend of poets, if thy glass Detects no flower in winter's tuft of grass, Let this slight token of the debt I owe Outlive for thee December's frozen day, And, like the arbutus budding under snow, Take bloom and fragrance from some morn of May When he who gives it shall have gone the way Where faith shall see and reverent trust shall know. THE CHRISTMAS OF 1888. Low in the east, against a white, cold dawn, The black-lined silhouette of the woods was drawn, And on a wintry waste Of frosted streams and hillsides bare and brown, Through thin cloud-films, a pallid ghost looked down, The waning moon half-faced! In that pale sky and sere, snow-waiting earth, What sign was there of the immortal birth? What herald of the One? Lo! swift as thought the heavenly radiance came, A rose-red splendor swept the sky like flame, Up rolled the round, bright sun! And all was changed. From a transfigured world The moon's ghost fled, the smoke of home-hearths curled Up the still air unblown. In Orient warmth and brightness, did that morn O'er Nain and Nazareth, when the Christ was born, Break fairer than our own? The morning's promise noon and eve fulfilled In warm, soft sky and landscape hazy-hilled And sunset fair as they; A sweet reminder of His holiest time, A summer-miracle in our winter clime, God gave a perfect day. The near was blended with the old and far, And Bethlehem's hillside and the Magi's star Seemed here, as there and then,-- Our homestead pine-tree was the Syrian palm, Our heart's desire the angels' midnight psalm, Peace, and good-will to men! THE VOW OF WASHINGTON. Read in New York, April 30, 1889, at the Centennial Celebration of the Inauguration of George Washington as the first President of the United States. The sword was sheathed: in April's sun Lay green the fields by Freedom won; And severed sections, weary of debates, Joined hands at last and were United States. O City sitting by the Sea How proud the day that dawned on thee, When the new era, long desired, began, And, in its need, the hour had found the man! One thought the cannon salvos spoke, The resonant bell-tower's vibrant stroke, The voiceful streets, the plaudit-echoing halls, And prayer and hymn borne heavenward from St. Paul's! How felt the land in every part The strong throb of a nation's heart, As its great leader gave, with reverent awe, His pledge to Union, Liberty, and Law. That pledge the heavens above him heard, That vow the sleep of centuries stirred; In world-wide wonder listening peoples bent Their gaze on Freedom's great experiment. Could it succeed? Of honor sold And hopes deceived all history told. Above the wrecks that strewed the mournful past, Was the long dream of ages true at last? Thank God! the people's choice was just, The one man equal to his trust, Wise beyond lore, and without weakness good, Calm in the strength of flawless rectitude. His rule of justice, order, peace, Made possible the world's release; Taught prince and serf that power is but a trust, And rule, alone, which serves the ruled, is just; That Freedom generous is, but strong In hate of fraud and selfish wrong, Pretence that turns her holy truths to lies, And lawless license masking in her guise. Land of his love! with one glad voice Let thy great sisterhood rejoice; A century's suns o'er thee have risen and set, And, God be praised, we are one nation yet. And still we trust the years to be Shall prove his hope was destiny, Leaving our flag, with all its added stars, Unrent by faction and unstained by wars. Lo! where with patient toil he nursed And trained the new-set plant at first, The widening branches of a stately tree Stretch from the sunrise to the sunset sea. And in its broad and sheltering shade, Sitting with none to make afraid, Were we now silent, through each mighty limb, The winds of heaven would sing the praise of him. Our first and best!--his ashes lie Beneath his own Virginian sky. Forgive, forget, O true and just and brave, The storm that swept above thy sacred grave. For, ever in the awful strife And dark hours of the nation's life, Through the fierce tumult pierced his warning word, Their father's voice his erring children heard. The change for which he prayed and sought In that sharp agony was wrought; No partial interest draws its alien line 'Twixt North and South, the cypress and the pine! One people now, all doubt beyond, His name shall be our Union-bond; We lift our hands to Heaven, and here and now. Take on our lips the old Centennial vow. For rule and trust must needs be ours; Chooser and chosen both are powers Equal in service as in rights; the claim Of Duty rests on each and all the same. Then let the sovereign millions, where Our banner floats in sun and air, From the warm palm-lands to Alaska's cold, Repeat with us the pledge a century old? THE CAPTAIN'S WELL. The story of the shipwreck of Captain Valentine Bagley, on the coast of Arabia, and his sufferings in the desert, has been familiar from my childhood. It has been partially told in the singularly beautiful lines of my friend, Harriet Prescott Spofford, an the occasion of a public celebration at the Newburyport Library. To the charm and felicity of her verse, as far as it goes, nothing can be added; but in the following ballad I have endeavored to give a fuller detail of the touching incident upon which it is founded. From pain and peril, by land and main, The shipwrecked sailor came back again; And like one from the dead, the threshold cross'd Of his wondering home, that had mourned him lost. Where he sat once more with his kith and kin, And welcomed his neighbors thronging in. But when morning came he called for his spade. "I must pay my debt to the Lord," he said. "Why dig you here?" asked the passer-by; "Is there gold or silver the road so nigh?" "No, friend," he answered: "but under this sod Is the blessed water, the wine of God." "Water! the Powow is at your back, And right before you the Merrimac, "And look you up, or look you down, There 's a well-sweep at every door in town." "True," he said, "we have wells of our own; But this I dig for the Lord alone." Said the other: "This soil is dry, you know. I doubt if a spring can be found below; "You had better consult, before you dig, Some water-witch, with a hazel twig." "No, wet or dry, I will dig it here, Shallow or deep, if it takes a year. "In the Arab desert, where shade is none, The waterless land of sand and sun, "Under the pitiless, brazen sky My burning throat as the sand was dry; "My crazed brain listened in fever dreams For plash of buckets and ripple of streams; "And opening my eyes to the blinding glare, And my lips to the breath of the blistering air, "Tortured alike by the heavens and earth, I cursed, like Job, the day of my birth. "Then something tender, and sad, and mild As a mother's voice to her wandering child, "Rebuked my frenzy; and bowing my head, I prayed as I never before had prayed: "Pity me, God! for I die of thirst; Take me out of this land accurst; "And if ever I reach my home again, Where earth has springs, and the sky has rain, "I will dig a well for the passers-by, And none shall suffer from thirst as I. "I saw, as I prayed, my home once more, The house, the barn, the elms by the door, "The grass-lined road, that riverward wound, The tall slate stones of the burying-ground, "The belfry and steeple on meeting-house hill, The brook with its dam, and gray grist mill, "And I knew in that vision beyond the sea, The very place where my well must be. "God heard my prayer in that evil day; He led my feet in their homeward way, "From false mirage and dried-up well, And the hot sand storms of a land of hell, "Till I saw at last through the coast-hill's gap, A city held in its stony lap, "The mosques and the domes of scorched Muscat, And my heart leaped up with joy thereat; "For there was a ship at anchor lying, A Christian flag at its mast-head flying, "And sweetest of sounds to my homesick ear Was my native tongue in the sailor's cheer. "Now the Lord be thanked, I am back again, Where earth has springs, and the skies have rain, "And the well I promised by Oman's Sea, I am digging for him in Amesbury." His kindred wept, and his neighbors said "The poor old captain is out of his head." But from morn to noon, and from noon to night, He toiled at his task with main and might; And when at last, from the loosened earth, Under his spade the stream gushed forth, And fast as he climbed to his deep well's brim, The water he dug for followed him, He shouted for joy: "I have kept my word, And here is the well I promised the Lord!" The long years came and the long years went, And he sat by his roadside well content; He watched the travellers, heat-oppressed, Pause by the way to drink and rest, And the sweltering horses dip, as they drank, Their nostrils deep in the cool, sweet tank, And grateful at heart, his memory went Back to that waterless Orient, And the blessed answer of prayer, which came To the earth of iron and sky of flame. And when a wayfarer weary and hot, Kept to the mid road, pausing not For the well's refreshing, he shook his head; "He don't know the value of water," he said; "Had he prayed for a drop, as I have done, In the desert circle of sand and sun, "He would drink and rest, and go home to tell That God's best gift is the wayside well!" AN OUTDOOR RECEPTION. The substance of these lines, hastily pencilled several years ago, I find among such of my unprinted scraps as have escaped the waste-basket and the fire. In transcribing it I have made some changes, additions, and omissions. On these green banks, where falls too soon The shade of Autumn's afternoon, The south wind blowing soft and sweet, The water gliding at nay feet, The distant northern range uplit By the slant sunshine over it, With changes of the mountain mist From tender blush to amethyst, The valley's stretch of shade and gleam Fair as in Mirza's Bagdad dream, With glad young faces smiling near And merry voices in my ear, I sit, methinks, as Hafiz might In Iran's Garden of Delight. For Persian roses blushing red, Aster and gentian bloom instead; For Shiraz wine, this mountain air; For feast, the blueberries which I share With one who proffers with stained hands Her gleanings from yon pasture lands, Wild fruit that art and culture spoil, The harvest of an untilled soil; And with her one whose tender eyes Reflect the change of April skies, Midway 'twixt child and maiden yet, Fresh as Spring's earliest violet; And one whose look and voice and ways Make where she goes idyllic days; And one whose sweet, still countenance Seems dreamful of a child's romance; And others, welcome as are these, Like and unlike, varieties Of pearls on nature's chaplet strung, And all are fair, for all are young. Gathered from seaside cities old, From midland prairie, lake, and wold, From the great wheat-fields, which might feed The hunger of a world at need, In healthful change of rest and play Their school-vacations glide away. No critics these: they only see An old and kindly friend in me, In whose amused, indulgent look Their innocent mirth has no rebuke. They scarce can know my rugged rhymes, The harsher songs of evil times, Nor graver themes in minor keys Of life's and death's solemnities; But haply, as they bear in mind Some verse of lighter, happier kind,-- Hints of the boyhood of the man, Youth viewed from life's meridian, Half seriously and half in play My pleasant interviewers pay Their visit, with no fell intent Of taking notes and punishment. As yonder solitary pine Is ringed below with flower and vine, More favored than that lonely tree, The bloom of girlhood circles me. In such an atmosphere of youth I half forget my age's truth; The shadow of my life's long date Runs backward on the dial-plate, Until it seems a step might span The gulf between the boy and man. My young friends smile, as if some jay On bleak December's leafless spray Essayed to sing the songs of May. Well, let them smile, and live to know, When their brown locks are flecked with snow, 'T is tedious to be always sage And pose the dignity of age, While so much of our early lives On memory's playground still survives, And owns, as at the present hour, The spell of youth's magnetic power. But though I feel, with Solomon, 'T is pleasant to behold the sun, I would not if I could repeat A life which still is good and sweet; I keep in age, as in my prime, A not uncheerful step with time, And, grateful for all blessings sent, I go the common way, content To make no new experiment. On easy terms with law and fate, For what must be I calmly wait, And trust the path I cannot see,-- That God is good sufficeth me. And when at last on life's strange play The curtain falls, I only pray That hope may lose itself in truth, And age in Heaven's immortal youth, And all our loves and longing prove The foretaste of diviner love. The day is done. Its afterglow Along the west is burning low. My visitors, like birds, have flown; I hear their voices, fainter grown, And dimly through the dusk I see Their 'kerchiefs wave good-night to me,-- Light hearts of girlhood, knowing nought Of all the cheer their coming brought; And, in their going, unaware Of silent-following feet of prayer Heaven make their budding promise good With flowers of gracious womanhood! R. S. S., AT DEER ISLAND ON THE MERRIMAC. Make, for he loved thee well, our Merrimac, From wave and shore a low and long lament For him, whose last look sought thee, as he went The unknown way from which no step comes back. And ye, O ancient pine-trees, at whose feet He watched in life the sunset's reddening glow, Let the soft south wind through your needles blow A fitting requiem tenderly and sweet! No fonder lover of all lovely things Shall walk where once he walked, no smile more glad Greet friends than his who friends in all men had, Whose pleasant memory, to that Island clings, Where a dear mourner in the home he left Of love's sweet solace cannot be bereft. BURNING DRIFT-WOOD Before my drift-wood fire I sit, And see, with every waif I burn, Old dreams and fancies coloring it, And folly's unlaid ghosts return. O ships of mine, whose swift keels cleft The enchanted sea on which they sailed, Are these poor fragments only left Of vain desires and hopes that failed? Did I not watch from them the light Of sunset on my towers in Spain, And see, far off, uploom in sight The Fortunate Isles I might not gain? Did sudden lift of fog reveal Arcadia's vales of song and spring, And did I pass, with grazing keel, The rocks whereon the sirens sing? Have I not drifted hard upon The unmapped regions lost to man, The cloud-pitched tents of Prester John, The palace domes of Kubla Khan? Did land winds blow from jasmine flowers, Where Youth the ageless Fountain fills? Did Love make sign from rose blown bowers, And gold from Eldorado's hills? Alas! the gallant ships, that sailed On blind Adventure's errand sent, Howe'er they laid their courses, failed To reach the haven of Content. And of my ventures, those alone Which Love had freighted, safely sped, Seeking a good beyond my own, By clear-eyed Duty piloted. O mariners, hoping still to meet The luck Arabian voyagers met, And find in Bagdad's moonlit street, Haroun al Raschid walking yet, Take with you, on your Sea of Dreams, The fair, fond fancies dear to youth. I turn from all that only seems, And seek the sober grounds of truth. What matter that it is not May, That birds have flown, and trees are bare, That darker grows the shortening day, And colder blows the wintry air! The wrecks of passion and desire, The castles I no more rebuild, May fitly feed my drift-wood fire, And warm the hands that age has chilled. Whatever perished with my ships, I only know the best remains; A song of praise is on my lips For losses which are now my gains. Heap high my hearth! No worth is lost; No wisdom with the folly dies. Burn on, poor shreds, your holocaust Shall be my evening sacrifice. Far more than all I dared to dream, Unsought before my door I see; On wings of fire and steeds of steam The world's great wonders come to me, And holier signs, unmarked before, Of Love to seek and Power to save,-- The righting of the wronged and poor, The man evolving from the slave; And life, no longer chance or fate, Safe in the gracious Fatherhood. I fold o'er-wearied hands and wait, In full assurance of the good. And well the waiting time must be, Though brief or long its granted days, If Faith and Hope and Charity Sit by my evening hearth-fire's blaze. And with them, friends whom Heaven has spared, Whose love my heart has comforted, And, sharing all my joys, has shared My tender memories of the dead,-- Dear souls who left us lonely here, Bound on their last, long voyage, to whom We, day by day, are drawing near, Where every bark has sailing room! I know the solemn monotone Of waters calling unto me I know from whence the airs have blown That whisper of the Eternal Sea. As low my fires of drift-wood burn, I hear that sea's deep sounds increase, And, fair in sunset light, discern Its mirage-lifted Isles of Peace. O. W. HOLMES ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTH-DAY. Climbing a path which leads back never more We heard behind his footsteps and his cheer; Now, face to face, we greet him standing here Upon the lonely summit of Fourscore Welcome to us, o'er whom the lengthened day Is closing and the shadows colder grow, His genial presence, like an afterglow, Following the one just vanishing away. Long be it ere the table shall be set For the last breakfast of the Autocrat, And love repeat with smiles and tears thereat His own sweet songs that time shall not forget. Waiting with us the call to come up higher, Life is not less, the heavens are only higher! JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. From purest wells of English undefiled None deeper drank than he, the New World's child, Who in the language of their farm-fields spoke The wit and wisdom of New England folk, Shaming a monstrous wrong. The world-wide laugh Provoked thereby might well have shaken half The walls of Slavery down, ere yet the ball And mine of battle overthrew them all. HAVERHILL. 1640-1890. Read at the Celebration of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the City, July 2, 1890. O river winding to the sea! We call the old time back to thee; From forest paths and water-ways The century-woven veil we raise. The voices of to-day are dumb, Unheard its sounds that go and come; We listen, through long-lapsing years, To footsteps of the pioneers. Gone steepled town and cultured plain, The wilderness returns again, The drear, untrodden solitude, The gloom and mystery of the wood! Once more the bear and panther prowl, The wolf repeats his hungry howl, And, peering through his leafy screen, The Indian's copper face is seen. We see, their rude-built huts beside, Grave men and women anxious-eyed, And wistful youth remembering still Dear homes in England's Haverhill. We summon forth to mortal view Dark Passaquo and Saggahew,-- Wild chiefs, who owned the mighty sway Of wizard Passaconaway. Weird memories of the border town, By old tradition handed down, In chance and change before us pass Like pictures in a magic glass,-- The terrors of the midnight raid, The-death-concealing ambuscade, The winter march, through deserts wild, Of captive mother, wife, and child. Ah! bleeding hands alone subdued And tamed the savage habitude Of forests hiding beasts of prey, And human shapes as fierce as they. Slow from the plough the woods withdrew, Slowly each year the corn-lands grew; Nor fire, nor frost, nor foe could kill The Saxon energy of will. And never in the hamlet's bound Was lack of sturdy manhood found, And never failed the kindred good Of brave and helpful womanhood. That hamlet now a city is, Its log-built huts are palaces; The wood-path of the settler's cow Is Traffic's crowded highway now. And far and wide it stretches still, Along its southward sloping hill, And overlooks on either hand A rich and many-watered land. And, gladdening all the landscape, fair As Pison was to Eden's pair, Our river to its valley brings The blessing of its mountain springs. And Nature holds with narrowing space, From mart and crowd, her old-time grace, And guards with fondly jealous arms The wild growths of outlying farms. Her sunsets on Kenoza fall, Her autumn leaves by Saltonstall; No lavished gold can richer make Her opulence of hill and lake. Wise was the choice which led out sires To kindle here their household fires, And share the large content of all Whose lines in pleasant places fall. More dear, as years on years advance, We prize the old inheritance, And feel, as far and wide we roam, That all we seek we leave at home. Our palms are pines, our oranges Are apples on our orchard trees; Our thrushes are our nightingales, Our larks the blackbirds of our vales. No incense which the Orient burns Is sweeter than our hillside ferns; What tropic splendor can outvie Our autumn woods, our sunset sky? If, where the slow years came and went, And left not affluence, but content, Now flashes in our dazzled eyes The electric light of enterprise; And if the old idyllic ease Seems lost in keen activities, And crowded workshops now replace The hearth's and farm-field's rustic grace; No dull, mechanic round of toil Life's morning charm can quite despoil; And youth and beauty, hand in hand, Will always find enchanted land. No task is ill where hand and brain And skill and strength have equal gain, And each shall each in honor hold, And simple manhood outweigh gold. Earth shall be near to Heaven when all That severs man from man shall fall, For, here or there, salvation's plan Alone is love of God and man. O dwellers by the Merrimac, The heirs of centuries at your back, Still reaping where you have not sown, A broader field is now your own. Hold fast your Puritan heritage, But let the free thought of the age Its light and hope and sweetness add To the stern faith the fathers had. Adrift on Time's returnless tide, As waves that follow waves, we glide. God grant we leave upon the shore Some waif of good it lacked before; Some seed, or flower, or plant of worth, Some added beauty to the earth; Some larger hope, some thought to make The sad world happier for its sake. As tenants of uncertain stay, So may we live our little day That only grateful hearts shall fill The homes we leave in Haverhill. The singer of a farewell rhyme, Upon whose outmost verge of time The shades of night are falling down, I pray, God bless the good old town! TO G. G. AN AUTOGRAPH. The daughter of Daniel Gurteen, Esq., delegate from Haverhill, England, to the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary celebration of Haverhill, Massachusetts. The Rev. John Ward of the former place and many of his old parishioners were the pioneer settlers of the new town on the Merrimac. Graceful in name and in thyself, our river None fairer saw in John Ward's pilgrim flock, Proof that upon their century-rooted stock The English roses bloom as fresh as ever. Take the warm welcome of new friends with thee, And listening to thy home's familiar chime Dream that thou hearest, with it keeping time, The bells on Merrimac sound across the sea. Think of our thrushes, when the lark sings clear, Of our sweet Mayflowers when the daisies bloom; And bear to our and thy ancestral home The kindly greeting of its children here. Say that our love survives the severing strain; That the New England, with the Old, holds fast The proud, fond memories of a common past; Unbroken still the ties of blood remain! INSCRIPTION For the bass-relief by Preston Powers, carved upon the huge boulder in Denver Park, Col., and representing the Last Indian and the Last Bison. The eagle, stooping from yon snow-blown peaks, For the wild hunter and the bison seeks, In the changed world below; and finds alone Their graven semblance in the eternal stone. LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY. Inscription on her Memorial Tablet in Christ Church at Hartford, Conn. She sang alone, ere womanhood had known The gift of song which fills the air to-day Tender and sweet, a music all her own May fitly linger where she knelt to pray. MILTON Inscription on the Memorial Window in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, the gift of George W. Childs, of America. The new world honors him whose lofty plea For England's freedom made her own more sure, Whose song, immortal as its theme, shall be Their common freehold while both worlds endure. THE BIRTHDAY WREATH December 17, 1891. Blossom and greenness, making all The winter birthday tropical, And the plain Quaker parlors gay, Have gone from bracket, stand, and wall; We saw them fade, and droop, and fall, And laid them tenderly away. White virgin lilies, mignonette, Blown rose, and pink, and violet, A breath of fragrance passing by; Visions of beauty and decay, Colors and shapes that could not stay, The fairest, sweetest, first to die. But still this rustic wreath of mine, Of acorned oak and needled pine, And lighter growths of forest lands, Woven and wound with careful pains, And tender thoughts, and prayers, remains, As when it dropped from love's dear hands. And not unfitly garlanded, Is he, who, country-born and bred, Welcomes the sylvan ring which gives A feeling of old summer days, The wild delight of woodland ways, The glory of the autumn leaves. And, if the flowery meed of song To other bards may well belong, Be his, who from the farm-field spoke A word for Freedom when her need Was not of dulcimer and reed. This Isthmian wreath of pine and oak. THE WIND OF MARCH. Up from the sea, the wild north wind is blowing Under the sky's gray arch; Smiling, I watch the shaken elm-boughs, knowing It is the wind of March. Between the passing and the coming season, This stormy interlude Gives to our winter-wearied hearts a reason For trustful gratitude. Welcome to waiting ears its harsh forewarning Of light and warmth to come, The longed-for joy of Nature's Easter morning, The earth arisen in bloom. In the loud tumult winter's strength is breaking; I listen to the sound, As to a voice of resurrection, waking To life the dead, cold ground. Between these gusts, to the soft lapse I hearken Of rivulets on their way; I see these tossed and naked tree-tops darken With the fresh leaves of May. This roar of storm, this sky so gray and lowering Invite the airs of Spring, A warmer sunshine over fields of flowering, The bluebird's song and wing. Closely behind, the Gulf's warm breezes follow This northern hurricane, And, borne thereon, the bobolink and swallow Shall visit us again. And, in green wood-paths, in the kine-fed pasture And by the whispering rills, Shall flowers repeat the lesson of the Master, Taught on his Syrian hills. Blow, then, wild wind! thy roar shall end in singing, Thy chill in blossoming; Come, like Bethesda's troubling angel, bringing The healing of the Spring. BETWEEN THE GATES. Between the gates of birth and death An old and saintly pilgrim passed, With look of one who witnesseth The long-sought goal at last. O thou whose reverent feet have found The Master's footprints in thy way, And walked thereon as holy ground, A boon of thee I pray. "My lack would borrow thy excess, My feeble faith the strength of thine; I need thy soul's white saintliness To hide the stains of mine. "The grace and favor else denied May well be granted for thy sake." So, tempted, doubting, sorely tried, A younger pilgrim spake. "Thy prayer, my son, transcends my gift; No power is mine," the sage replied, "The burden of a soul to lift Or stain of sin to hide. "Howe'er the outward life may seem, For pardoning grace we all must pray; No man his brother can redeem Or a soul's ransom pay. "Not always age is growth of good; Its years have losses with their gain; Against some evil youth withstood Weak hands may strive in vain. "With deeper voice than any speech Of mortal lips from man to man, What earth's unwisdom may not teach The Spirit only can. "Make thou that holy guide thine own, And following where it leads the way, The known shall lapse in the unknown As twilight into day. "The best of earth shall still remain, And heaven's eternal years shall prove That life and death, and joy and pain, Are ministers of Love." THE LAST EVE OF SUMMER. Summer's last sun nigh unto setting shines Through yon columnar pines, And on the deepening shadows of the lawn Its golden lines are drawn. Dreaming of long gone summer days like this, Feeling the wind's soft kiss, Grateful and glad that failing ear and sight Have still their old delight, I sit alone, and watch the warm, sweet day Lapse tenderly away; And, wistful, with a feeling of forecast, I ask, "Is this the last? "Will nevermore for me the seasons run Their round, and will the sun Of ardent summers yet to come forget For me to rise and set?" Thou shouldst be here, or I should be with thee Wherever thou mayst be, Lips mute, hands clasped, in silences of speech Each answering unto each. For this still hour, this sense of mystery far Beyond the evening star, No words outworn suffice on lip or scroll: The soul would fain with soul Wait, while these few swift-passing days fulfil The wise-disposing Will, And, in the evening as at morning, trust The All-Merciful and Just. The solemn joy that soul-communion feels Immortal life reveals; And human love, its prophecy and sign, Interprets love divine. Come then, in thought, if that alone may be, O friend! and bring with thee Thy calm assurance of transcendent Spheres And the Eternal Years! August 31, 1890. TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 8TH Mo. 29TH, 1892. This, the last of Mr. Whittier's poems, was written but a few weeks before his death. Among the thousands who with hail and cheer Will welcome thy new year, How few of all have passed, as thou and I, So many milestones by! We have grown old together; we have seen, Our youth and age between, Two generations leave us, and to-day We with the third hold way, Loving and loved. If thought must backward run To those who, one by one, In the great silence and the dark beyond Vanished with farewells fond, Unseen, not lost; our grateful memories still Their vacant places fill, And with the full-voiced greeting of new friends A tenderer whisper blends. Linked close in a pathetic brotherhood Of mingled ill and good, Of joy and grief, of grandeur and of shame, For pity more than blame,-- The gift is thine the weary world to make More cheerful for thy sake, Soothing the ears its Miserere pains, With the old Hellenic strains, Lighting the sullen face of discontent With smiles for blessings sent. Enough of selfish wailing has been had, Thank God! for notes more glad. Life is indeed no holiday; therein Are want, and woe, and sin, Death and its nameless fears, and over all Our pitying tears must fall. Sorrow is real; but the counterfeit Which folly brings to it, We need thy wit and wisdom to resist, O rarest Optimist! Thy hand, old friend! the service of our days, In differing moods and ways, May prove to those who follow in our train Not valueless nor vain. Far off, and faint as echoes of a dream, The songs of boyhood seem, Yet on our autumn boughs, unflown with spring, The evening thrushes sing. The hour draws near, howe'er delayed and late, When at the Eternal Gate We leave the words and works we call our own, And lift void hands alone For love to fill. Our nakedness of soul Brings to that Gate no toll; Giftless we come to Him, who all things gives, And live because He lives. 
9567	----	THE WORKS OF JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER By John Greenleaf Whittier VOLUME I. NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS PUBLISHERS' ADVERTISEMENT The Standard Library Edition of Mr. Whittier's writings comprises his poetical and prose works as re-arranged and thoroughly revised by himself or with his cooperation. Mr. Whittier has supplied such additional information regarding the subject and occasion of certain poems as may be stated in brief head-notes, and this edition has been much enriched by the poet's personal comment. So far as practicable the dates of publication of the various articles have been given, and since these were originally published soon after composition, the dates of their first appearance have been taken as determining the time at which they were written. At the request of the Publishers, Mr. Whittier has allowed his early poems, discarded from previous collections, to be placed, in the general order of their appearance, in an appendix to the final volume of poems. By this means the present edition is made so complete and retrospective that students of the poet's career will always find the most abundant material for their purpose. The Publishers congratulate themselves and the public that the careful attention which Mr. Whittier has been able to give to this revision of his works has resulted in so comprehensive and well-adjusted a collection. The portraits prefixed to the several volumes have been chosen with a view to illustrating successive periods in the poet's life. The original sources and dates are indicated in each case. CONTENTS: THE VAUDOIS TEACHER THE FEMALE MARTYR EXTRACT FROM "A NEW ENGLAND LEGEND" THE DEMON OF THE STUDY THE FOUNTAIN PENTUCKET THE NORSEMEN FUNERAL TREE OF THE SOKOKIS ST JOHN THE CYPRESS-TREE OF CEYLON THE EXILES THE KNIGHT OF ST JOHN CASSANDRA SOUTHWICK THE NEW WIFE AND THE OLD THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK I. THE MERRIMAC II. THE BASHABA III. THE DAUGHTER IV. THE WEDDING V. THE NEW HOME VI. AT PENNACOOK VII. THE DEPARTURE VIII. SONG OF INDIAN WOMEN BARCLAY OF URY THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA THE LEGEND OF ST MARK KATHLEEN THE WELL OF LOCH MAREE THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS TAULER THE HERMIT OF THE THEBAID THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE THE SYCAMORES THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW TELLING THE BEES THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERY THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE OF NEWBURY MABEL MARTIN: A HARVEST IDYL PROEM I. THE RIVER VALLEY II. THE HUSKING III. THE WITCH'S DAUGHTER IV. THE CHAMPION V. IN THE SHADOW VI. THE BETROTHAL THE PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL THE RED RIVER VOYAGEUR THE PREACHER THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA MY PLAYMATE COBBLER KEEZAR'S VISION AMY WENTWORTH THE COUNTESS AMONG THE HILLS PRELUDE AMONG THE HILLS THE DOLE OF JARL THORKELL THE TWO RABBINS NOREMBEGA MIRIAM MAUD MULLER MARY GARVIN THE RANGER NAUHAUGHT, THE DEACON THE SISTERS MARGUERITE THE ROBIN THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM INTRODUCTORY NOTE PRELUDE THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM KING VOLMER AND ELSIE THE THREE BELLS JOHN UNDERHILL CONDUCTOR BRADLEY THE WITCH OF WENHAM KING SOLOMON AND THE ANTS IN THE "OLD SOUTH" THE HENCHMAN THE DEAD FEAST OF THE KOL-FOLK THE KHAN'S DEVIL THE KING'S MISSIVE VALUATION RABBI ISHMAEL THE ROCK-TOMB OF BRADORE THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS To H P S THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS THE WISHING BRIDGE HOW THE WOMEN WENT FROM DOVER ST GREGORY'S GUEST CONTENTS BIRCHBROOK MILL THE TWO ELIZABETHS REQUITAL THE HOMESTEAD HOW THE ROBIN CAME BANISHED FROM MASSACHUSETTS THE BROWN DWARF OF RUGEN NOTE.--The portrait prefixed to this volume was etched by S. A. Schoff, in 1888, after a painting by Bass Otis, a pupil of Gilbert Stuart, made in the winter of 1836-1837. PROEM I LOVE the old melodious lays Which softly melt the ages through, The songs of Spenser's golden days, Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase, Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning dew. Yet, vainly in my quiet hours To breathe their marvellous notes I try; I feel them, as the leaves and flowers In silence feel the dewy showers, And drink with glad, still lips the blessing of the sky. The rigor of a frozen clime, The harshness of an untaught ear, The jarring words of one whose rhyme Beat often Labor's hurried time, Or Duty's rugged march through storm and strife, are here. Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace, No rounded art the lack supplies; Unskilled the subtle lines to trace, Or softer shades of Nature's face, I view her common forms with unanointed eyes. Nor mine the seer-like power to show The secrets of the heart and mind; To drop the plummet-line below Our common world of joy and woe, A more intense despair or brighter hope to find. Yet here at least an earnest sense Of human right and weal is shown; A hate of tyranny intense, And hearty in its vehemence, As if my brother's pain and sorrow were my own. O Freedom! if to me belong Nor mighty Milton's gift divine, Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song, Still with a love as deep and strong As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy shrine. AMESBURY, 11th mo., 1847. INTRODUCTION The edition of my poems published in 1857 contained the following note by way of preface:-- "In these volumes, for the first time, a complete collection of my poetical writings has been made. While it is satisfactory to know that these scattered children of my brain have found a home, I cannot but regret that I have been unable, by reason of illness, to give that attention to their revision and arrangement, which respect for the opinions of others and my own afterthought and experience demand. "That there are pieces in this collection which I would 'willingly let die,' I am free to confess. But it is now too late to disown them, and I must submit to the inevitable penalty of poetical as well as other sins. There are others, intimately connected with the author's life and times, which owe their tenacity of vitality to the circumstances under which they were written, and the events by which they were suggested. "The long poem of Mogg Megone was in a great measure composed in early life; and it is scarcely necessary to say that its subject is not such as the writer would have chosen at any subsequent period." After a lapse of thirty years since the above was written, I have been requested by my publishers to make some preparation for a new and revised edition of my poems. I cannot flatter myself that I have added much to the interest of the work beyond the correction of my own errors and those of the press, with the addition of a few heretofore unpublished pieces, and occasional notes of explanation which seemed necessary. I have made an attempt to classify the poems under a few general heads, and have transferred the long poem of Mogg Megone to the Appendix, with other specimens of my earlier writings. I have endeavored to affix the dates of composition or publication as far as possible. In looking over these poems I have not been unmindful of occasional prosaic lines and verbal infelicities, but at this late day I have neither strength nor patience to undertake their correction. Perhaps a word of explanation may be needed in regard to a class of poems written between the years 1832 and 1865. Of their defects from an artistic point of view it is not necessary to speak. They were the earnest and often vehement expression of the writer's thought and feeling at critical periods in the great conflict between Freedom and Slavery. They were written with no expectation that they would survive the occasions which called them forth: they were protests, alarm signals, trumpet-calls to action, words wrung from the writer's heart, forged at white heat, and of course lacking the finish and careful word-selection which reflection and patient brooding over them might have given. Such as they are, they belong to the history of the Anti-Slavery movement, and may serve as way-marks of its progress. If their language at times seems severe and harsh, the monstrous wrong of Slavery which provoked it must be its excuse, if any is needed. In attacking it, we did not measure our words. "It is," said Garrison, "a waste of politeness to be courteous to the devil." But in truth the contest was, in a great measure, an impersonal one,--hatred of slavery and not of slave-masters. "No common wrong provoked our zeal, The silken gauntlet which is thrown In such a quarrel rings like steel." Even Thomas Jefferson, in his terrible denunciation of Slavery in the Notes on Virginia, says "It is impossible to be temperate and pursue the subject of Slavery." After the great contest was over, no class of the American people were more ready, with kind words and deprecation of harsh retaliation, to welcome back the revolted States than the Abolitionists; and none have since more heartily rejoiced at the fast increasing prosperity of the South. Grateful for the measure of favor which has been accorded to my writings, I leave this edition with the public. It contains all that I care to re-publish, and some things which, had the matter of choice been left solely to myself, I should have omitted. J. G. W. NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS THE VAUDOIS TEACHER. This poem was suggested by the account given of the manner which the Waldenses disseminated their principles among the Catholic gentry. They gained access to the house through their occupation as peddlers of silks, jewels, and trinkets. "Having disposed of some of their goods," it is said by a writer who quotes the inquisitor Rainerus Sacco, "they cautiously intimated that they had commodities far more valuable than these, inestimable jewels, which they would show if they could be protected from the clergy. They would then give their purchasers a Bible or Testament; and thereby many were deluded into heresy." The poem, under the title Le Colporteur Vaudois, was translated into French by Professor G. de Felice, of Montauban, and further naturalized by Professor Alexandre Rodolphe Vinet, who quoted it in his lectures on French literature, afterwards published. It became familiar in this form to the Waldenses, who adopted it as a household poem. An American clergyman, J. C. Fletcher, frequently heard it when he was a student, about the year 1850, in the theological seminary at Geneva, Switzerland, but the authorship of the poem was unknown to those who used it. Twenty-five years later, Mr. Fletcher, learning the name of the author, wrote to the moderator of the Waldensian synod at La Tour, giving the information. At the banquet which closed the meeting of the synod, the moderator announced the fact, and was instructed in the name of the Waldensian church to write to me a letter of thanks. My letter, written in reply, was translated into Italian and printed throughout Italy. "O LADY fair, these silks of mine are beautiful and rare,-- The richest web of the Indian loom, which beauty's queen might wear; And my pearls are pure as thy own fair neck, with whose radiant light they vie; I have brought them with me a weary way,--will my gentle lady buy?" The lady smiled on the worn old man through the dark and clustering curls Which veiled her brow, as she bent to view his silks and glittering pearls; And she placed their price in the old man's hand and lightly turned away, But she paused at the wanderer's earnest call,-- "My gentle lady, stay! "O lady fair, I have yet a gem which a purer lustre flings, Than the diamond flash of the jewelled crown on the lofty brow of kings; A wonderful pearl of exceeding price, whose virtue shall not decay, Whose light shall be as a spell to thee and a blessing on thy way!" The lady glanced at the mirroring steel where her form of grace was seen, Where her eye shone clear, and her dark locks waved their clasping pearls between; "Bring forth thy pearl of exceeding worth, thou traveller gray and old, And name the price of thy precious gem, and my page shall count thy gold." The cloud went off from the pilgrim's brow, as a small and meagre book, Unchased with gold or gem of cost, from his folding robe he took! "Here, lady fair, is the pearl of price, may it prove as such to thee Nay, keep thy gold--I ask it not, for the word of God is free!" The hoary traveller went his way, but the gift he left behind Hath had its pure and perfect work on that high- born maiden's mind, And she hath turned from the pride of sin to the lowliness of truth, And given her human heart to God in its beautiful hour of youth And she hath left the gray old halls, where an evil faith had power, The courtly knights of her father's train, and the maidens of her bower; And she hath gone to the Vaudois vales by lordly feet untrod, Where the poor and needy of earth are rich in the perfect love of God! 1830. THE FEMALE MARTYR. Mary G-----, aged eighteen, a "Sister of Charity," died in one of our Atlantic cities, during the prevalence of the Indian cholera, while in voluntary attendance upon the sick. "BRING out your dead!" The midnight street Heard and gave back the hoarse, low call; Harsh fell the tread of hasty feet, Glanced through the dark the coarse white sheet, Her coffin and her pall. "What--only one!" the brutal hack-man said, As, with an oath, he spurned away the dead. How sunk the inmost hearts of all, As rolled that dead-cart slowly by, With creaking wheel and harsh hoof-fall! The dying turned him to the wall, To hear it and to die! Onward it rolled; while oft its driver stayed, And hoarsely clamored, "Ho! bring out your dead." It paused beside the burial-place; "Toss in your load!" and it was done. With quick hand and averted face, Hastily to the grave's embrace They cast them, one by one, Stranger and friend, the evil and the just, Together trodden in the churchyard dust. And thou, young martyr! thou wast there; No white-robed sisters round thee trod, Nor holy hymn, nor funeral prayer Rose through the damp and noisome air, Giving thee to thy God; Nor flower, nor cross, nor hallowed taper gave Grace to the dead, and beauty to the grave! Yet, gentle sufferer! there shall be, In every heart of kindly feeling, A rite as holy paid to thee As if beneath the convent-tree Thy sisterhood were kneeling, At vesper hours, like sorrowing angels, keeping Their tearful watch around thy place of sleeping. For thou wast one in whom the light Of Heaven's own love was kindled well; Enduring with a martyr's might, Through weary day and wakeful night, Far more than words may tell Gentle, and meek, and lowly, and unknown, Thy mercies measured by thy God alone! Where manly hearts were failing, where The throngful street grew foul with death, O high-souled martyr! thou wast there, Inhaling, from the loathsome air, Poison with every breath. Yet shrinking not from offices of dread For the wrung dying, and the unconscious dead. And, where the sickly taper shed Its light through vapors, damp, confined, Hushed as a seraph's fell thy tread, A new Electra by the bed Of suffering human-kind! Pointing the spirit, in its dark dismay, To that pure hope which fadeth not away. Innocent teacher of the high And holy mysteries of Heaven! How turned to thee each glazing eye, In mute and awful sympathy, As thy low prayers were given; And the o'er-hovering Spoiler wore, the while, An angel's features, a deliverer's smile! A blessed task! and worthy one Who, turning from the world, as thou, Before life's pathway had begun To leave its spring-time flower and sun, Had sealed her early vow; Giving to God her beauty and her youth, Her pure affections and her guileless truth. Earth may not claim thee. Nothing here Could be for thee a meet reward; Thine is a treasure far more dear Eye hath not seen it, nor the ear Of living mortal heard The joys prepared, the promised bliss above, The holy presence of Eternal Love! Sleep on in peace. The earth has not A nobler name than thine shall be. The deeds by martial manhood wrought, The lofty energies of thought, The fire of poesy, These have but frail and fading honors; thine Shall Time unto Eternity consign. Yea, and when thrones shall crumble down, And human pride and grandeur fall, The herald's line of long renown, The mitre and the kingly crown,-- Perishing glories all! The pure devotion of thy generous heart Shall live in Heaven, of which it was a part. 1833. EXTRACT FROM "A NEW ENGLAND LEGEND." (Originally a part of the author's Moll Pitcher.) How has New England's romance fled, Even as a vision of the morning! Its rites foredone, its guardians dead, Its priestesses, bereft of dread, Waking the veriest urchin's scorning! Gone like the Indian wizard's yell And fire-dance round the magic rock, Forgotten like the Druid's spell At moonrise by his holy oak! No more along the shadowy glen Glide the dim ghosts of murdered men; No more the unquiet churchyard dead Glimpse upward from their turfy bed, Startling the traveller, late and lone; As, on some night of starless weather, They silently commune together, Each sitting on his own head-stone The roofless house, decayed, deserted, Its living tenants all departed, No longer rings with midnight revel Of witch, or ghost, or goblin evil; No pale blue flame sends out its flashes Through creviced roof and shattered sashes! The witch-grass round the hazel spring May sharply to the night-air sing, But there no more shall withered hags Refresh at ease their broomstick nags, Or taste those hazel-shadowed waters As beverage meet for Satan's daughters; No more their mimic tones be heard, The mew of cat, the chirp of bird, Shrill blending with the hoarser laughter Of the fell demon following after! The cautious goodman nails no more A horseshoe on his outer door, Lest some unseemly hag should fit To his own mouth her bridle-bit; The goodwife's churn no more refuses Its wonted culinary uses Until, with heated needle burned, The witch has to her place returned! Our witches are no longer old And wrinkled beldames, Satan-sold, But young and gay and laughing creatures, With the heart's sunshine on their features; Their sorcery--the light which dances Where the raised lid unveils its glances; Or that low-breathed and gentle tone, The music of Love's twilight hours, Soft, dream-like, as a fairy's moan Above her nightly closing flowers, Sweeter than that which sighed of yore Along the charmed Ausonian shore! Even she, our own weird heroine, Sole Pythoness of ancient Lynn,' Sleeps calmly where the living laid her; And the wide realm of sorcery, Left by its latest mistress free, Hath found no gray and skilled invader. So--perished Albion's "glammarye," With him in Melrose Abbey sleeping, His charmed torch beside his knee, That even the dead himself might see The magic scroll within his keeping. And now our modern Yankee sees Nor omens, spells, nor mysteries; And naught above, below, around, Of life or death, of sight or sound, Whate'er its nature, form, or look, Excites his terror or surprise, All seeming to his knowing eyes Familiar as his "catechise," Or "Webster's Spelling-Book." 1833. THE DEMON OF THE STUDY. THE Brownie sits in the Scotchman's room, And eats his meat and drinks his ale, And beats the maid with her unused broom, And the lazy lout with his idle flail; But he sweeps the floor and threshes the corn, And hies him away ere the break of dawn. The shade of Denmark fled from the sun, And the Cocklane ghost from the barn-loft cheer, The fiend of Faust was a faithful one, Agrippa's demon wrought in fear, And the devil of Martin Luther sat By the stout monk's side in social chat. The Old Man of the Sea, on the neck of him Who seven times crossed the deep, Twined closely each lean and withered limb, Like the nightmare in one's sleep. But he drank of the wine, and Sindbad cast The evil weight from his back at last. But the demon that cometh day by day To my quiet room and fireside nook, Where the casement light falls dim and gray On faded painting and ancient book, Is a sorrier one than any whose names Are chronicled well by good King James. No bearer of burdens like Caliban, No runner of errands like Ariel, He comes in the shape of a fat old man, Without rap of knuckle or pull of bell; And whence he comes, or whither he goes, I know as I do of the wind which blows. A stout old man with a greasy hat Slouched heavily down to his dark, red nose, And two gray eyes enveloped in fat, Looking through glasses with iron bows. Read ye, and heed ye, and ye who can, Guard well your doors from that old man! He comes with a careless "How d' ye do?" And seats himself in my elbow-chair; And my morning paper and pamphlet new Fall forthwith under his special care, And he wipes his glasses and clears his throat, And, button by button, unfolds his coat. And then he reads from paper and book, In a low and husky asthmatic tone, With the stolid sameness of posture and look Of one who reads to himself alone; And hour after hour on my senses come That husky wheeze and that dolorous hum. The price of stocks, the auction sales, The poet's song and the lover's glee, The horrible murders, the seaboard gales, The marriage list, and the jeu d'esprit, All reach my ear in the self-same tone,-- I shudder at each, but the fiend reads on! Oh, sweet as the lapse of water at noon O'er the mossy roots of some forest tree, The sigh of the wind in the woods of June, Or sound of flutes o'er a moonlight sea, Or the low soft music, perchance, which seems To float through the slumbering singer's dreams, So sweet, so dear is the silvery tone, Of her in whose features I sometimes look, As I sit at eve by her side alone, And we read by turns, from the self-same book, Some tale perhaps of the olden time, Some lover's romance or quaint old rhyme. Then when the story is one of woe,-- Some prisoner's plaint through his dungeon-bar, Her blue eye glistens with tears, and low Her voice sinks down like a moan afar; And I seem to hear that prisoner's wail, And his face looks on me worn and pale. And when she reads some merrier song, Her voice is glad as an April bird's, And when the tale is of war and wrong, A trumpet's summons is in her words, And the rush of the hosts I seem to hear, And see the tossing of plume and spear! Oh, pity me then, when, day by day, The stout fiend darkens my parlor door; And reads me perchance the self-same lay Which melted in music, the night before, From lips as the lips of Hylas sweet, And moved like twin roses which zephyrs meet! I cross my floor with a nervous tread, I whistle and laugh and sing and shout, I flourish my cane above his head, And stir up the fire to roast him out; I topple the chairs, and drum on the pane, And press my hands on my ears, in vain! I've studied Glanville and James the wise, And wizard black-letter tomes which treat Of demons of every name and size Which a Christian man is presumed to meet, But never a hint and never a line Can I find of a reading fiend like mine. I've crossed the Psalter with Brady and Tate, And laid the Primer above them all, I've nailed a horseshoe over the grate, And hung a wig to my parlor wall Once worn by a learned Judge, they say, At Salem court in the witchcraft day! "Conjuro te, sceleratissime, Abire ad tuum locum!"--still Like a visible nightmare he sits by me,-- The exorcism has lost its skill; And I hear again in my haunted room The husky wheeze and the dolorous hum! Ah! commend me to Mary Magdalen With her sevenfold plagues, to the wandering Jew, To the terrors which haunted Orestes when The furies his midnight curtains drew, But charm him off, ye who charm him can, That reading demon, that fat old man! 1835. THE FOUNTAIN. On the declivity of a hill in Salisbury, Essex County, is a fountain of clear water, gushing from the very roots of a venerable oak. It is about two miles from the junction of the Powow River with the Merrimac. TRAVELLER! on thy journey toiling By the swift Powow, With the summer sunshine falling On thy heated brow, Listen, while all else is still, To the brooklet from the hill. Wild and sweet the flowers are blowing By that streamlet's side, And a greener verdure showing Where its waters glide, Down the hill-slope murmuring on, Over root and mossy stone. Where yon oak his broad arms flingeth O'er the sloping hill, Beautiful and freshly springeth That soft-flowing rill, Through its dark roots wreathed and bare, Gushing up to sun and air. Brighter waters sparkled never In that magic well, Of whose gift of life forever Ancient legends tell, In the lonely desert wasted, And by mortal lip untasted. Waters which the proud Castilian Sought with longing eyes, Underneath the bright pavilion Of the Indian skies, Where his forest pathway lay Through the blooms of Florida. Years ago a lonely stranger, With the dusky brow Of the outcast forest-ranger, Crossed the swift Powow, And betook him to the rill And the oak upon the hill. O'er his face of moody sadness For an instant shone Something like a gleam of gladness, As he stooped him down To the fountain's grassy side, And his eager thirst supplied. With the oak its shadow throwing O'er his mossy seat, And the cool, sweet waters flowing Softly at his feet, Closely by the fountain's rim That lone Indian seated him. Autumn's earliest frost had given To the woods below Hues of beauty, such as heaven Lendeth to its bow; And the soft breeze from the west Scarcely broke their dreamy rest. Far behind was Ocean striving With his chains of sand; Southward, sunny glimpses giving, 'Twixt the swells of land, Of its calm and silvery track, Rolled the tranquil Merrimac. Over village, wood, and meadow Gazed that stranger man, Sadly, till the twilight shadow Over all things ran, Save where spire and westward pane Flashed the sunset back again. Gazing thus upon the dwelling Of his warrior sires, Where no lingering trace was telling Of their wigwam fires, Who the gloomy thoughts might know Of that wandering child of woe? Naked lay, in sunshine glowing, Hills that once had stood Down their sides the shadows throwing Of a mighty wood, Where the deer his covert kept, And the eagle's pinion swept! Where the birch canoe had glided Down the swift Powow, Dark and gloomy bridges strided Those clear waters now; And where once the beaver swam, Jarred the wheel and frowned the dam. For the wood-bird's merry singing, And the hunter's cheer, Iron clang and hammer's ringing Smote upon his ear; And the thick and sullen smoke From the blackened forges broke. Could it be his fathers ever Loved to linger here? These bare hills, this conquered river,-- Could they hold them dear, With their native loveliness Tamed and tortured into this? Sadly, as the shades of even Gathered o'er the hill, While the western half of heaven Blushed with sunset still, From the fountain's mossy seat Turned the Indian's weary feet. Year on year hath flown forever, But he came no more To the hillside on the river Where he came before. But the villager can tell Of that strange man's visit well. And the merry children, laden With their fruits or flowers, Roving boy and laughing maiden, In their school-day hours, Love the simple tale to tell Of the Indian and his well. 1837 PENTUCKET. The village of Haverhill, on the Merrimac, called by the Indians Pentucket, was for nearly seventeen years a frontier town, and during thirty years endured all the horrors of savage warfare. In the year 1708, a combined body of French and Indians, under the command of De Chaillons, and Hertel de Rouville, the famous and bloody sacker of Deerfield, made an attack upon the village, which at that time contained only thirty houses. Sixteen of the villagers were massacred, and a still larger number made prisoners. About thirty of the enemy also fell, among them Hertel de Rouville. The minister of the place, Benjamin Rolfe, was killed by a shot through his own door. In a paper entitled The Border War of 1708, published in my collection of Recreations and Miscellanies, I have given a prose narrative of the surprise of Haverhill. How sweetly on the wood-girt town The mellow light of sunset shone! Each small, bright lake, whose waters still Mirror the forest and the hill, Reflected from its waveless breast The beauty of a cloudless west, Glorious as if a glimpse were given Within the western gates of heaven, Left, by the spirit of the star Of sunset's holy hour, ajar! Beside the river's tranquil flood The dark and low-walled dwellings stood, Where many a rood of open land Stretched up and down on either hand, With corn-leaves waving freshly green The thick and blackened stumps between. Behind, unbroken, deep and dread, The wild, untravelled forest spread, Back to those mountains, white and cold, Of which the Indian trapper told, Upon whose summits never yet Was mortal foot in safety set. Quiet and calm without a fear, Of danger darkly lurking near, The weary laborer left his plough, The milkmaid carolled by her cow; From cottage door and household hearth Rose songs of praise, or tones of mirth. At length the murmur died away, And silence on that village lay. --So slept Pompeii, tower and hall, Ere the quick earthquake swallowed all, Undreaming of the fiery fate Which made its dwellings desolate. Hours passed away. By moonlight sped The Merrimac along his bed. Bathed in the pallid lustre, stood Dark cottage-wall and rock and wood, Silent, beneath that tranquil beam, As the hushed grouping of a dream. Yet on the still air crept a sound, No bark of fox, nor rabbit's bound, Nor stir of wings, nor waters flowing, Nor leaves in midnight breezes blowing. Was that the tread of many feet, Which downward from the hillside beat? What forms were those which darkly stood Just on the margin of the wood?-- Charred tree-stumps in the moonlight dim, Or paling rude, or leafless limb? No,--through the trees fierce eyeballs glowed, Dark human forms in moonshine showed, Wild from their native wilderness, With painted limbs and battle-dress. A yell the dead might wake to hear Swelled on the night air, far and clear; Then smote the Indian tomahawk On crashing door and shattering lock; Then rang the rifle-shot, and then The shrill death-scream of stricken men,-- Sank the red axe in woman's brain, And childhood's cry arose in vain. Bursting through roof and window came, Red, fast, and fierce, the kindled flame, And blended fire and moonlight glared On still dead men and scalp-knives bared. The morning sun looked brightly through The river willows, wet with dew. No sound of combat filled the air, No shout was heard, nor gunshot there; Yet still the thick and sullen smoke From smouldering ruins slowly broke; And on the greensward many a stain, And, here and there, the mangled slain, Told how that midnight bolt had sped Pentucket, on thy fated head. Even now the villager can tell Where Rolfe beside his hearthstone fell, Still show the door of wasting oak, Through which the fatal death-shot broke, And point the curious stranger where De Rouville's corse lay grim and bare; Whose hideous head, in death still feared, Bore not a trace of hair or beard; And still, within the churchyard ground, Heaves darkly up the ancient mound, Whose grass-grown surface overlies The victims of that sacrifice. 1838. THE NORSEMEN. In the early part of the present century, a fragment of a statue, rudely chiselled from dark gray stone, was found in the town of Bradford, on the Merrimac. Its origin must be left entirely to conjecture. The fact that the ancient Northmen visited the north-east coast of North America and probably New England, some centuries before the discovery of the western world by Columbus, is very generally admitted. GIFT from the cold and silent Past! A relic to the present cast, Left on the ever-changing strand Of shifting and unstable sand, Which wastes beneath the steady chime And beating of the waves of Time! Who from its bed of primal rock First wrenched thy dark, unshapely block? Whose hand, of curious skill untaught, Thy rude and savage outline wrought? The waters of my native stream Are glancing in the sun's warm beam; From sail-urged keel and flashing oar The circles widen to its shore; And cultured field and peopled town Slope to its willowed margin down. Yet, while this morning breeze is bringing The home-life sound of school-bells ringing, And rolling wheel, and rapid jar Of the fire-winged and steedless car, And voices from the wayside near Come quick and blended on my ear,-- A spell is in this old gray stone, My thoughts are with the Past alone! A change!--The steepled town no more Stretches along the sail-thronged shore; Like palace-domes in sunset's cloud, Fade sun-gilt spire and mansion proud Spectrally rising where they stood, I see the old, primeval wood; Dark, shadow-like, on either hand I see its solemn waste expand; It climbs the green and cultured hill, It arches o'er the valley's rill, And leans from cliff and crag to throw Its wild arms o'er the stream below. Unchanged, alone, the same bright river Flows on, as it will flow forever I listen, and I hear the low Soft ripple where its waters go; I hear behind the panther's cry, The wild-bird's scream goes thrilling by, And shyly on the river's brink The deer is stooping down to drink. But hark!--from wood and rock flung back, What sound comes up the Merrimac? What sea-worn barks are those which throw The light spray from each rushing prow? Have they not in the North Sea's blast Bowed to the waves the straining mast? Their frozen sails the low, pale sun Of Thule's night has shone upon; Flapped by the sea-wind's gusty sweep Round icy drift, and headland steep. Wild Jutland's wives and Lochlin's daughters Have watched them fading o'er the waters, Lessening through driving mist and spray, Like white-winged sea-birds on their way! Onward they glide,--and now I view Their iron-armed and stalwart crew; Joy glistens in each wild blue eye, Turned to green earth and summer sky. Each broad, seamed breast has cast aside Its cumbering vest of shaggy hide; Bared to the sun and soft warm air, Streams back the Norsemen's yellow hair. I see the gleam of axe and spear, The sound of smitten shields I hear, Keeping a harsh and fitting time To Saga's chant, and Runic rhyme; Such lays as Zetland's Scald has sung, His gray and naked isles among; Or muttered low at midnight hour Round Odin's mossy stone of power. The wolf beneath the Arctic moon Has answered to that startling rune; The Gael has heard its stormy swell, The light Frank knows its summons well; Iona's sable-stoled Culdee Has heard it sounding o'er the sea, And swept, with hoary beard and hair, His altar's foot in trembling prayer. 'T is past,--the 'wildering vision dies In darkness on my dreaming eyes The forest vanishes in air, Hill-slope and vale lie starkly bare; I hear the common tread of men, And hum of work-day life again; The mystic relic seems alone A broken mass of common stone; And if it be the chiselled limb Of Berserker or idol grim, A fragment of Valhalla's Thor, The stormy Viking's god of War, Or Praga of the Runic lay, Or love-awakening Siona, I know not,--for no graven line, Nor Druid mark, nor Runic sign, Is left me here, by which to trace Its name, or origin, or place. Yet, for this vision of the Past, This glance upon its darkness cast, My spirit bows in gratitude Before the Giver of all good, Who fashioned so the human mind, That, from the waste of Time behind, A simple stone, or mound of earth, Can summon the departed forth; Quicken the Past to life again, The Present lose in what hath been, And in their primal freshness show The buried forms of long ago. As if a portion of that Thought By which the Eternal will is wrought, Whose impulse fills anew with breath The frozen solitude of Death, To mortal mind were sometimes lent, To mortal musings sometimes sent, To whisper-even when it seems But Memory's fantasy of dreams-- Through the mind's waste of woe and sin, Of an immortal origin! 1841. FUNERAL TREE OF THE SOKOKIS. Polan, chief of the Sokokis Indians of the country between Agamenticus and Casco Bay, was killed at Windham on Sebago Lake in the spring of 1756. After the whites had retired, the surviving Indians "swayed" or bent down a young tree until its roots were upturned, placed the body of their chief beneath it, then released the tree, which, in springing back to its old position, covered the grave. The Sokokis were early converts to the Catholic faith. Most of them, prior to the year 1756, had removed to the French settlements on the St. Francois. AROUND Sebago's lonely lake There lingers not a breeze to break The mirror which its waters make. The solemn pines along its shore, The firs which hang its gray rocks o'er, Are painted on its glassy floor. The sun looks o'er, with hazy eye, The snowy mountain-tops which lie Piled coldly up against the sky. Dazzling and white! save where the bleak, Wild winds have bared some splintering peak, Or snow-slide left its dusky streak. Yet green are Saco's banks below, And belts of spruce and cedar show, Dark fringing round those cones of snow. The earth hath felt the breath of spring, Though yet on her deliverer's wing The lingering frosts of winter cling. Fresh grasses fringe the meadow-brooks, And mildly from its sunny nooks The blue eye of the violet looks. And odors from the springing grass, The sweet birch and the sassafras, Upon the scarce-felt breezes pass. Her tokens of renewing care Hath Nature scattered everywhere, In bud and flower, and warmer air. But in their hour of bitterness, What reek the broken Sokokis, Beside their slaughtered chief, of this? The turf's red stain is yet undried, Scarce have the death-shot echoes died Along Sebago's wooded side; And silent now the hunters stand, Grouped darkly, where a swell of land Slopes upward from the lake's white sand. Fire and the axe have swept it bare, Save one lone beech, unclosing there Its light leaves in the vernal air. With grave, cold looks, all sternly mute, They break the damp turf at its foot, And bare its coiled and twisted root. They heave the stubborn trunk aside, The firm roots from the earth divide,-- The rent beneath yawns dark and wide. And there the fallen chief is laid, In tasselled garb of skins arrayed, And girded with his wampum-braid. The silver cross he loved is pressed Beneath the heavy arms, which rest Upon his scarred and naked breast. 'T is done: the roots are backward sent, The beechen-tree stands up unbent, The Indian's fitting monument! When of that sleeper's broken race Their green and pleasant dwelling-place, Which knew them once, retains no trace; Oh, long may sunset's light be shed As now upon that beech's head, A green memorial of the dead! There shall his fitting requiem be, In northern winds, that, cold and free, Howl nightly in that funeral tree. To their wild wail the waves which break Forever round that lonely lake A solemn undertone shall make! And who shall deem the spot unblest, Where Nature's younger children rest, Lulled on their sorrowing mother's breast? Deem ye that mother loveth less These bronzed forms of the wilderness She foldeth in her long caress? As sweet o'er them her wild-flowers blow, As if with fairer hair and brow The blue-eyed Saxon slept below. What though the places of their rest No priestly knee hath ever pressed,-- No funeral rite nor prayer hath blessed? What though the bigot's ban be there, And thoughts of wailing and despair, And cursing in the place of prayer. Yet Heaven hath angels watching round The Indian's lowliest forest-mound,-- And they have made it holy ground. There ceases man's frail judgment; all His powerless bolts of cursing fall Unheeded on that grassy pall. O peeled and hunted and reviled, Sleep on, dark tenant of the wild! Great Nature owns her simple child! And Nature's God, to whom alone The secret of the heart is known,-- The hidden language traced thereon; Who from its many cumberings Of form and creed, and outward things, To light the naked spirit brings; Not with our partial eye shall scan, Not with our pride and scorn shall ban, The spirit of our brother man! 1841. ST. JOHN. The fierce rivalry between Charles de La Tour, a Protestant, and D'Aulnay Charnasy, a Catholic, for the possession of Acadia, forms one of the most romantic passages in the history of the New World. La Tour received aid in several instances from the Puritan colony of Massachusetts. During one of his voyages for the purpose of obtaining arms and provisions for his establishment at St. John, his castle was attacked by D'Aulnay, and successfully defended by its high-spirited mistress. A second attack however followed in the fourth month, 1647, when D'Aulnay was successful, and the garrison was put to the sword. Lady La Tour languished a few days in the hands of her enemy, and then died of grief. "To the winds give our banner! Bear homeward again!" Cried the Lord of Acadia, Cried Charles of Estienne; From the prow of his shallop He gazed, as the sun, From its bed in the ocean, Streamed up the St. John. O'er the blue western waters That shallop had passed, Where the mists of Penobscot Clung damp on her mast. St. Saviour had looked On the heretic sail, As the songs of the Huguenot Rose on the gale. The pale, ghostly fathers Remembered her well, And had cursed her while passing, With taper and bell; But the men of Monhegan, Of Papists abhorred, Had welcomed and feasted The heretic Lord. They had loaded his shallop With dun-fish and ball, With stores for his larder, And steel for his wall. Pemaquid, from her bastions And turrets of stone, Had welcomed his coming With banner and gun. And the prayers of the elders Had followed his way, As homeward he glided, Down Pentecost Bay. Oh, well sped La Tour For, in peril and pain, His lady kept watch, For his coming again. O'er the Isle of the Pheasant The morning sun shone, On the plane-trees which shaded The shores of St. John. "Now, why from yon battlements Speaks not my love! Why waves there no banner My fortress above?" Dark and wild, from his deck St. Estienne gazed about, On fire-wasted dwellings, And silent redoubt; From the low, shattered walls Which the flame had o'errun, There floated no banner, There thundered no gun! But beneath the low arch Of its doorway there stood A pale priest of Rome, In his cloak and his hood. With the bound of a lion, La Tour sprang to land, On the throat of the Papist He fastened his hand. "Speak, son of the Woman Of scarlet and sin! What wolf has been prowling My castle within?" From the grasp of the soldier The Jesuit broke, Half in scorn, half in sorrow, He smiled as he spoke: "No wolf, Lord of Estienne, Has ravaged thy hall, But thy red-handed rival, With fire, steel, and ball! On an errand of mercy I hitherward came, While the walls of thy castle Yet spouted with flame. "Pentagoet's dark vessels Were moored in the bay, Grim sea-lions, roaring Aloud for their prey." "But what of my lady?" Cried Charles of Estienne. "On the shot-crumbled turret Thy lady was seen: "Half-veiled in the smoke-cloud, Her hand grasped thy pennon, While her dark tresses swayed In the hot breath of cannon! But woe to the heretic, Evermore woe! When the son of the church And the cross is his foe! "In the track of the shell, In the path of the ball, Pentagoet swept over The breach of the wall! Steel to steel, gun to gun, One moment,--and then Alone stood the victor, Alone with his men! "Of its sturdy defenders, Thy lady alone Saw the cross-blazoned banner Float over St. John." "Let the dastard look to it!" Cried fiery Estienne, "Were D'Aulnay King Louis, I'd free her again!" "Alas for thy lady! No service from thee Is needed by her Whom the Lord hath set free; Nine days, in stern silence, Her thraldom she bore, But the tenth morning came, And Death opened her door!" As if suddenly smitten La Tour staggered back; His hand grasped his sword-hilt, His forehead grew black. He sprang on the deck Of his shallop again. "We cruise now for vengeance! Give way!" cried Estienne. "Massachusetts shall hear Of the Huguenot's wrong, And from island and creekside Her fishers shall throng! Pentagoet shall rue What his Papists have done, When his palisades echo The Puritan's gun!" Oh, the loveliest of heavens Hung tenderly o'er him, There were waves in the sunshine, And green isles before him: But a pale hand was beckoning The Huguenot on; And in blackness and ashes Behind was St. John! 1841 THE CYPRESS-TREE OF CEYLON. Ibn Batuta, the celebrated Mussulman traveller of the fourteenth century, speaks of a cypress-tree in Ceylon, universally held sacred by the natives, the leaves of which were said to fall only at certain intervals, and he who had the happiness to find and eat one of them was restored, at once, to youth and vigor. The traveller saw several venerable Jogees, or saints, sitting silent and motionless under the tree, patiently awaiting the falling of a leaf. THEY sat in silent watchfulness The sacred cypress-tree about, And, from beneath old wrinkled brows, Their failing eyes looked out. Gray Age and Sickness waiting there Through weary night and lingering day,-- Grim as the idols at their side, And motionless as they. Unheeded in the boughs above The song of Ceylon's birds was sweet; Unseen of them the island flowers Bloomed brightly at their feet. O'er them the tropic night-storm swept, The thunder crashed on rock and hill; The cloud-fire on their eyeballs blazed, Yet there they waited still! What was the world without to them? The Moslem's sunset-call, the dance Of Ceylon's maids, the passing gleam Of battle-flag and lance? They waited for that falling leaf Of which the wandering Jogees sing: Which lends once more to wintry age The greenness of its spring. Oh, if these poor and blinded ones In trustful patience wait to feel O'er torpid pulse and failing limb A youthful freshness steal; Shall we, who sit beneath that Tree Whose healing leaves of life are shed, In answer to the breath of prayer, Upon the waiting head; Not to restore our failing forms, And build the spirit's broken shrine, But on the fainting soul to shed A light and life divine-- Shall we grow weary in our watch, And murmur at the long delay? Impatient of our Father's time And His appointed way? Or shall the stir of outward things Allure and claim the Christian's eye, When on the heathen watcher's ear Their powerless murmurs die? Alas! a deeper test of faith Than prison cell or martyr's stake, The self-abasing watchfulness Of silent prayer may make. We gird us bravely to rebuke Our erring brother in the wrong,-- And in the ear of Pride and Power Our warning voice is strong. Easier to smite with Peter's sword Than "watch one hour" in humbling prayer. Life's "great things," like the Syrian lord, Our hearts can do and dare. But oh! we shrink from Jordan's side, From waters which alone can save; And murmur for Abana's banks And Pharpar's brighter wave. O Thou, who in the garden's shade Didst wake Thy weary ones again, Who slumbered at that fearful hour Forgetful of Thy pain; Bend o'er us now, as over them, And set our sleep-bound spirits free, Nor leave us slumbering in the watch Our souls should keep with Thee! 1841 THE EXILES. The incidents upon which the following ballad has its foundation about the year 1660. Thomas Macy was one of the first, if not the first white settler of Nantucket. The career of Macy is briefly but carefully outlined in James S. Pike's The New Puritan. THE goodman sat beside his door One sultry afternoon, With his young wife singing at his side An old and goodly tune. A glimmer of heat was in the air,-- The dark green woods were still; And the skirts of a heavy thunder-cloud Hung over the western hill. Black, thick, and vast arose that cloud Above the wilderness, As some dark world from upper air Were stooping over this. At times the solemn thunder pealed, And all was still again, Save a low murmur in the air Of coming wind and rain. Just as the first big rain-drop fell, A weary stranger came, And stood before the farmer's door, With travel soiled and lame. Sad seemed he, yet sustaining hope Was in his quiet glance, And peace, like autumn's moonlight, clothed His tranquil countenance,-- A look, like that his Master wore In Pilate's council-hall: It told of wrongs, but of a love Meekly forgiving all. "Friend! wilt thou give me shelter here?" The stranger meekly said; And, leaning on his oaken staff, The goodman's features read. "My life is hunted,--evil men Are following in my track; The traces of the torturer's whip Are on my aged back; "And much, I fear, 't will peril thee Within thy doors to take A hunted seeker of the Truth, Oppressed for conscience' sake." Oh, kindly spoke the goodman's wife, "Come in, old man!" quoth she, "We will not leave thee to the storm, Whoever thou mayst be." Then came the aged wanderer in, And silent sat him down; While all within grew dark as night Beneath the storm-cloud's frown. But while the sudden lightning's blaze Filled every cottage nook, And with the jarring thunder-roll The loosened casements shook, A heavy tramp of horses' feet Came sounding up the lane, And half a score of horse, or more, Came plunging through the rain. "Now, Goodman Macy, ope thy door,-- We would not be house-breakers; A rueful deed thou'st done this day, In harboring banished Quakers." Out looked the cautious goodman then, With much of fear and awe, For there, with broad wig drenched with rain The parish priest he saw. Open thy door, thou wicked man, And let thy pastor in, And give God thanks, if forty stripes Repay thy deadly sin." "What seek ye?" quoth the goodman; "The stranger is my guest; He is worn with toil and grievous wrong,-- Pray let the old man rest." "Now, out upon thee, canting knave!" And strong hands shook the door. "Believe me, Macy," quoth the priest, "Thou 'lt rue thy conduct sore." Then kindled Macy's eye of fire "No priest who walks the earth, Shall pluck away the stranger-guest Made welcome to my hearth." Down from his cottage wall he caught The matchlock, hotly tried At Preston-pans and Marston-moor, By fiery Ireton's side; Where Puritan, and Cavalier, With shout and psalm contended; And Rupert's oath, and Cromwell's prayer, With battle-thunder blended. Up rose the ancient stranger then "My spirit is not free To bring the wrath and violence Of evil men on thee; "And for thyself, I pray forbear, Bethink thee of thy Lord, Who healed again the smitten ear, And sheathed His follower's sword. "I go, as to the slaughter led. Friends of the poor, farewell!" Beneath his hand the oaken door Back on its hinges fell. "Come forth, old graybeard, yea and nay," The reckless scoffers cried, As to a horseman's saddle-bow The old man's arms were tied. And of his bondage hard and long In Boston's crowded jail, Where suffering woman's prayer was heard, With sickening childhood's wail, It suits not with our tale to tell; Those scenes have passed away; Let the dim shadows of the past Brood o'er that evil day. "Ho, sheriff!" quoth the ardent priest, "Take Goodman Macy too; The sin of this day's heresy His back or purse shall rue." "Now, goodwife, haste thee!" Macy cried. She caught his manly arm; Behind, the parson urged pursuit, With outcry and alarm. Ho! speed the Macys, neck or naught,-- The river-course was near; The plashing on its pebbled shore Was music to their ear. A gray rock, tasselled o'er with birch, Above the waters hung, And at its base, with every wave, A small light wherry swung. A leap--they gain the boat--and there The goodman wields his oar; "Ill luck betide them all," he cried, "The laggards on the shore." Down through the crashing underwood, The burly sheriff came:-- "Stand, Goodman Macy, yield thyself; Yield in the King's own name." "Now out upon thy hangman's face!" Bold Macy answered then,-- "Whip women, on the village green, But meddle not with men." The priest came panting to the shore, His grave cocked hat was gone; Behind him, like some owl's nest, hung His wig upon a thorn. "Come back,--come back!" the parson cried, "The church's curse beware." "Curse, an' thou wilt," said Macy, "but Thy blessing prithee spare." "Vile scoffer!" cried the baffled priest, "Thou 'lt yet the gallows see." "Who's born to be hanged will not be drowned," Quoth Macy, merrily; "And so, sir sheriff and priest, good-by!" He bent him to his oar, And the small boat glided quietly From the twain upon the shore. Now in the west, the heavy clouds Scattered and fell asunder, While feebler came the rush of rain, And fainter growled the thunder. And through the broken clouds, the sun Looked out serene and warm, Painting its holy symbol-light Upon the passing storm. Oh, beautiful! that rainbow span, O'er dim Crane-neck was bended; One bright foot touched the eastern hills, And one with ocean blended. By green Pentucket's southern'slope The small boat glided fast; The watchers of the Block-house saw The strangers as they passed. That night a stalwart garrison Sat shaking in their shoes, To hear the dip of Indian oars, The glide of birch canoes. The fisher-wives of Salisbury-- The men were all away-- Looked out to see the stranger oar Upon their waters play. Deer-Island's rocks and fir-trees threw Their sunset-shadows o'er them, And Newbury's spire and weathercock Peered o'er the pines before them. Around the Black Rocks, on their left, The marsh lay broad and green; And on their right, with dwarf shrubs crowned, Plum Island's hills were seen. With skilful hand and wary eye The harbor-bar was crossed; A plaything of the restless wave, The boat on ocean tossed. The glory of the sunset heaven On land and water lay; On the steep hills of Agawam, On cape, and bluff, and bay. They passed the gray rocks of Cape Ann, And Gloucester's harbor-bar; The watch-fire of the garrison Shone like a setting star. How brightly broke the morning On Massachusetts Bay! Blue wave, and bright green island, Rejoicing in the day. On passed the bark in safety Round isle and headland steep; No tempest broke above them, No fog-cloud veiled the deep. Far round the bleak and stormy Cape The venturous Macy passed, And on Nantucket's naked isle Drew up his boat at last. And how, in log-built cabin, They braved the rough sea-weather; And there, in peace and quietness, Went down life's vale together; How others drew around them, And how their fishing sped, Until to every wind of heaven Nantucket's sails were spread; How pale Want alternated With Plenty's golden smile; Behold, is it not written In the annals of the isle? And yet that isle remaineth A refuge of the free, As when true-hearted Macy Beheld it from the sea. Free as the winds that winnow Her shrubless hills of sand, Free as the waves that batter Along her yielding land. Than hers, at duty's summons, No loftier spirit stirs, Nor falls o'er human suffering A readier tear then hers. God bless the sea-beat island! And grant forevermore, That charity and freedom dwell As now upon her shore! 1841. THE KNIGHT OF ST. JOHN. ERE down yon blue Carpathian hills The sun shall sink again, Farewell to life and all its ills, Farewell to cell and chain! These prison shades are dark and cold, But, darker far than they, The shadow of a sorrow old Is on my heart alway. For since the day when Warkworth wood Closed o'er my steed, and I, An alien from my name and blood, A weed cast out to die,-- When, looking back in sunset light, I saw her turret gleam, And from its casement, far and white, Her sign of farewell stream, Like one who, from some desert shore, Doth home's green isles descry, And, vainly longing, gazes o'er The waste of wave and sky; So from the desert of my fate I gaze across the past; Forever on life's dial-plate The shade is backward cast! I've wandered wide from shore to shore, I've knelt at many a shrine; And bowed me to the rocky floor Where Bethlehem's tapers shine; And by the Holy Sepulchre I've pledged my knightly sword To Christ, His blessed Church, and her, The Mother of our Lord. Oh, vain the vow, and vain the strife! How vain do all things seem! My soul is in the past, and life To-day is but a dream. In vain the penance strange and long, And hard for flesh to bear; The prayer, the fasting, and the thong, And sackcloth shirt of hair. The eyes of memory will not sleep, Its ears are open still; And vigils with the past they keep Against my feeble will. And still the loves and joys of old Do evermore uprise; I see the flow of locks of gold, The shine of loving eyes! Ah me! upon another's breast Those golden locks recline; I see upon another rest The glance that once was mine. "O faithless priest! O perjured knight!" I hear the Master cry; "Shut out the vision from thy sight, Let Earth and Nature die. "The Church of God is now thy spouse, And thou the bridegroom art; Then let the burden of thy vows Crush down thy human heart!" In vain! This heart its grief must know, Till life itself hath ceased, And falls beneath the self-same blow The lover and the priest! O pitying Mother! souls of light, And saints and martyrs old! Pray for a weak and sinful knight, A suffering man uphold. Then let the Paynim work his will, And death unbind my chain, Ere down yon blue Carpathian hill The sun shall fall again. 1843 CASSANDRA SOUTHWICK. In 1658 two young persons, son and daughter of Lawrence Smithwick of Salem, who had himself been imprisoned and deprived of nearly all his property for having entertained Quakers at his house, were fined for non-attendance at church. They being unable to pay the fine, the General Court issued an order empowering "the Treasurer of the County to sell the said persons to any of the English nation of Virginia or Barbadoes, to answer said fines." An attempt was made to carry this order into execution, but no shipmaster was found willing to convey them to the West Indies. To the God of all sure mercies let my blessing rise to-day, From the scoffer and the cruel He hath plucked the spoil away; Yea, He who cooled the furnace around the faithful three, And tamed the Chaldean lions, hath set His hand- maid free! Last night I saw the sunset melt through my prison bars, Last night across my damp earth-floor fell the pale gleam of stars; In the coldness and the darkness all through the long night-time, My grated casement whitened with autumn's early rime. Alone, in that dark sorrow, hour after hour crept by; Star after star looked palely in and sank adown the sky; No sound amid night's stillness, save that which seemed to be The dull and heavy beating of the pulses of the sea; All night I sat unsleeping, for I knew that on the morrow The ruler and the cruel priest would mock me in my sorrow, Dragged to their place of market, and bargained for and sold, Like a lamb before the shambles, like a heifer from the fold! Oh, the weakness of the flesh was there, the shrinking and the shame; And the low voice of the Tempter like whispers to me came: "Why sit'st thou thus forlornly," the wicked murmur said, "Damp walls thy bower of beauty, cold earth thy maiden bed? "Where be the smiling faces, and voices soft and sweet, Seen in thy father's dwelling, heard in the pleasant street? Where be the youths whose glances, the summer Sabbath through, Turned tenderly and timidly unto thy father's pew? "Why sit'st thou here, Cassandra?-Bethink thee with what mirth Thy happy schoolmates gather around the warm bright hearth; How the crimson shadows tremble on foreheads white and fair, On eyes of merry girlhood, half hid in golden hair. "Not for thee the hearth-fire brightens, not for thee kind words are spoken, Not for thee the nuts of Wenham woods by laughing boys are broken; No first-fruits of the orchard within thy lap are laid, For thee no flowers of autumn the youthful hunters braid. "O weak, deluded maiden!--by crazy fancies led, With wild and raving railers an evil path to tread; To leave a wholesome worship, and teaching pure and sound, And mate with maniac women, loose-haired and sackcloth bound,-- "Mad scoffers of the priesthood; who mock at things divine, Who rail against the pulpit, and holy bread and wine; Sore from their cart-tail scourgings, and from the pillory lame, Rejoicing in their wretchedness, and glorying in their shame. "And what a fate awaits thee!--a sadly toiling slave, Dragging the slowly lengthening chain of bondage to the grave! Think of thy woman's nature, subdued in hopeless thrall, The easy prey of any, the scoff and scorn of all!" Oh, ever as the Tempter spoke, and feeble Nature's fears Wrung drop by drop the scalding flow of unavailing tears, I wrestled down the evil thoughts, and strove in silent prayer, To feel, O Helper of the weak! that Thou indeed wert there! I thought of Paul and Silas, within Philippi's cell, And how from Peter's sleeping limbs the prison shackles fell, Till I seemed to hear the trailing of an angel's robe of white, And to feel a blessed presence invisible to sight. Bless the Lord for all his mercies!--for the peace and love I felt, Like dew of Hermon's holy hill, upon my spirit melt; When "Get behind me, Satan!" was the language of my heart, And I felt the Evil Tempter with all his doubts depart. Slow broke the gray cold morning; again the sunshine fell, Flecked with the shade of bar and grate within my lonely cell; The hoar-frost melted on the wall, and upward from the street Came careless laugh and idle word, and tread of passing feet. At length the heavy bolts fell back, my door was open cast, And slowly at the sheriff's side, up the long street I passed; I heard the murmur round me, and felt, but dared not see, How, from every door and window, the people gazed on me. And doubt and fear fell on me, shame burned upon my cheek, Swam earth and sky around me, my trembling limbs grew weak: "O Lord! support thy handmaid; and from her soul cast out The fear of man, which brings a snare, the weakness and the doubt." Then the dreary shadows scattered, like a cloud in morning's breeze, And a low deep voice within me seemed whispering words like these: "Though thy earth be as the iron, and thy heaven a brazen wall, Trust still His loving-kindness whose power is over all." We paused at length, where at my feet the sunlit waters broke On glaring reach of shining beach, and shingly wall of rock; The merchant-ships lay idly there, in hard clear lines on high, Tracing with rope and slender spar their network on the sky. And there were ancient citizens, cloak-wrapped and grave and cold, And grim and stout sea-captains with faces bronzed and old, And on his horse, with Rawson, his cruel clerk at hand, Sat dark and haughty Endicott, the ruler of the land. And poisoning with his evil words the ruler's ready ear, The priest leaned o'er his saddle, with laugh and scoff and jeer; It stirred my soul, and from my lips the seal of silence broke, As if through woman's weakness a warning spirit spoke. I cried, "The Lord rebuke thee, thou smiter of the meek, Thou robber of the righteous, thou trampler of the weak! Go light the dark, cold hearth-stones,--go turn the prison lock Of the poor hearts thou hast hunted, thou wolf amid the flock!" Dark lowered the brows of Endicott, and with a deeper red O'er Rawson's wine-empurpled cheek the flush of anger spread; "Good people," quoth the white-lipped priest, "heed not her words so wild, Her Master speaks within her,--the Devil owns his child!" But gray heads shook, and young brows knit, the while the sheriff read That law the wicked rulers against the poor have made, Who to their house of Rimmon and idol priesthood bring No bended knee of worship, nor gainful offering. Then to the stout sea-captains the sheriff, turning, said,-- "Which of ye, worthy seamen, will take this Quaker maid? In the Isle of fair Barbadoes, or on Virginia's shore, You may hold her at a higher price than Indian girl or Moor." Grim and silent stood the captains; and when again he cried, "Speak out, my worthy seamen!"--no voice, no sign replied; But I felt a hard hand press my own, and kind words met my ear,-- "God bless thee, and preserve thee, my gentle girl and dear!" A weight seemed lifted from my heart, a pitying friend was nigh,-- I felt it in his hard, rough hand, and saw it in his eye; And when again the sheriff spoke, that voice, so kind to me, Growled back its stormy answer like the roaring of the sea,-- "Pile my ship with bars of silver, pack with coins of Spanish gold, From keel-piece up to deck-plank, the roomage of her hold, By the living God who made me!--I would sooner in your bay Sink ship and crew and cargo, than bear this child away!" "Well answered, worthy captain, shame on their cruel laws!" Ran through the crowd in murmurs loud the people's just applause. "Like the herdsman of Tekoa, in Israel of old, Shall we see the poor and righteous again for silver sold?" I looked on haughty Endicott; with weapon half- way drawn, Swept round the throng his lion glare of bitter hate and scorn; Fiercely he drew his bridle-rein, and turned in silence back, And sneering priest and baffled clerk rode murmuring in his track. Hard after them the sheriff looked, in bitterness of soul; Thrice smote his staff upon the ground, and crushed his parchment roll. "Good friends," he said, "since both have fled, the ruler and the priest, Judge ye, if from their further work I be not well released." Loud was the cheer which, full and clear, swept round the silent bay, As, with kind words and kinder looks, he bade me go my way; For He who turns the courses of the streamlet of the glen, And the river of great waters, had turned the hearts of men. Oh, at that hour the very earth seemed changed beneath my eye, A holier wonder round me rose the blue walls of the sky, A lovelier light on rock and hill and stream and woodland lay, And softer lapsed on sunnier sands the waters of the bay. Thanksgiving to the Lord of life! to Him all praises be, Who from the hands of evil men hath set his hand- maid free; All praise to Him before whose power the mighty are afraid, Who takes the crafty in the snare which for the poor is laid! Sing, O my soul, rejoicingly, on evening's twilight calm Uplift the loud thanksgiving, pour forth the grateful psalm; Let all dear hearts with me rejoice, as did the saints of old, When of the Lord's good angel the rescued Peter told. And weep and howl, ye evil priests and mighty men of wrong, The Lord shall smite the proud, and lay His hand upon the strong. Woe to the wicked rulers in His avenging hour! Woe to the wolves who seek the flocks to raven and devour! But let the humble ones arise, the poor in heart be glad, And let the mourning ones again with robes of praise be clad. For He who cooled the furnace, and smoothed the stormy wave, And tamed the Chaldean lions, is mighty still to save! 1843. THE NEW WIFE AND THE OLD. The following ballad is founded upon one of the marvellous legends connected with the famous General ----, of Hampton, New Hampshire, who was regarded by his neighbors as a Yankee Faust, in league with the adversary. I give the story, as I heard it when a child, from a venerable family visitant. DARK the halls, and cold the feast, Gone the bridemaids, gone the priest. All is over, all is done, Twain of yesterday are one! Blooming girl and manhood gray, Autumn in the arms of May! Hushed within and hushed without, Dancing feet and wrestlers' shout; Dies the bonfire on the hill; All is dark and all is still, Save the starlight, save the breeze Moaning through the graveyard trees, And the great sea-waves below, Pulse of the midnight beating slow. From the brief dream of a bride She hath wakened, at his side. With half-uttered shriek and start,-- Feels she not his beating heart? And the pressure of his arm, And his breathing near and warm? Lightly from the bridal bed Springs that fair dishevelled head, And a feeling, new, intense, Half of shame, half innocence, Maiden fear and wonder speaks Through her lips and changing cheeks. From the oaken mantel glowing, Faintest light the lamp is throwing On the mirror's antique mould, High-backed chair, and wainscot old, And, through faded curtains stealing, His dark sleeping face revealing. Listless lies the strong man there, Silver-streaked his careless hair; Lips of love have left no trace On that hard and haughty face; And that forehead's knitted thought Love's soft hand hath not unwrought. "Yet," she sighs, "he loves me well, More than these calm lips will tell. Stooping to my lowly state, He hath made me rich and great, And I bless him, though he be Hard and stern to all save me!" While she speaketh, falls the light O'er her fingers small and white; Gold and gem, and costly ring Back the timid lustre fling,-- Love's selectest gifts, and rare, His proud hand had fastened there. Gratefully she marks the glow From those tapering lines of snow; Fondly o'er the sleeper bending His black hair with golden blending, In her soft and light caress, Cheek and lip together press. Ha!--that start of horror! why That wild stare and wilder cry, Full of terror, full of pain? Is there madness in her brain? Hark! that gasping, hoarse and low, "Spare me,--spare me,--let me go!" God have mercy!--icy cold Spectral hands her own enfold, Drawing silently from them Love's fair gifts of gold and gem. "Waken! save me!" still as death At her side he slumbereth. Ring and bracelet all are gone, And that ice-cold hand withdrawn; But she hears a murmur low, Full of sweetness, full of woe, Half a sigh and half a moan "Fear not! give the dead her own!" Ah!--the dead wife's voice she knows! That cold hand whose pressure froze, Once in warmest life had borne Gem and band her own hath worn. "Wake thee! wake thee!" Lo, his eyes Open with a dull surprise. In his arms the strong man folds her, Closer to his breast he holds her; Trembling limbs his own are meeting, And he feels her heart's quick beating "Nay, my dearest, why this fear?" "Hush!" she saith, "the dead is here!" "Nay, a dream,--an idle dream." But before the lamp's pale gleam Tremblingly her hand she raises. There no more the diamond blazes, Clasp of pearl, or ring of gold,-- "Ah!" she sighs, "her hand was cold!" Broken words of cheer he saith, But his dark lip quivereth, And as o'er the past he thinketh, From his young wife's arms he shrinketh; Can those soft arms round him lie, Underneath his dead wife's eye? She her fair young head can rest Soothed and childlike on his breast, And in trustful innocence Draw new strength and courage thence; He, the proud man, feels within But the cowardice of sin! She can murmur in her thought Simple prayers her mother taught, And His blessed angels call, Whose great love is over all; He, alone, in prayerless pride, Meets the dark Past at her side! One, who living shrank with dread From his look, or word, or tread, Unto whom her early grave Was as freedom to the slave, Moves him at this midnight hour, With the dead's unconscious power! Ah, the dead, the unforgot! From their solemn homes of thought, Where the cypress shadows blend Darkly over foe and friend, Or in love or sad rebuke, Back upon the living look. And the tenderest ones and weakest, Who their wrongs have borne the meekest, Lifting from those dark, still places, Sweet and sad-remembered faces, O'er the guilty hearts behind An unwitting triumph find. 1843 THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK. Winnepurkit, otherwise called George, Sachem of Saugus, married a daughter of Passaconaway, the great Pennacook chieftain, in 1662. The wedding took place at Pennacook (now Concord, N. H.), and the ceremonies closed with a great feast. According to the usages of the chiefs, Passaconaway ordered a select number of his men to accompany the newly-married couple to the dwelling of the husband, where in turn there was another great feast. Some time after, the wife of Winnepurkit expressing a desire to visit her father's house was permitted to go, accompanied by a brave escort of her husband's chief men. But when she wished to return, her father sent a messenger to Saugus, informing her husband, and asking him to come and take her away. He returned for answer that he had escorted his wife to her father's house in a style that became a chief, and that now if she wished to return, her father must send her back, in the same way. This Passaconaway refused to do, and it is said that here terminated the connection of his daughter with the Saugus chief.--Vide MORTON'S New Canaan. WE had been wandering for many days Through the rough northern country. We had seen The sunset, with its bars of purple cloud, Like a new heaven, shine upward from the lake Of Winnepiseogee; and had felt The sunrise breezes, midst the leafy isles Which stoop their summer beauty to the lips Of the bright waters. We had checked our steeds, Silent with wonder, where the mountain wall Is piled to heaven; and, through the narrow rift Of the vast rocks, against whose rugged feet Beats the mad torrent with perpetual roar, Where noonday is as twilight, and the wind Comes burdened with the everlasting moan Of forests and of far-off waterfalls, We had looked upward where the summer sky, Tasselled with clouds light-woven by the sun, Sprung its blue arch above the abutting crags O'er-roofing the vast portal of the land Beyond the wall of mountains. We had passed The high source of the Saco; and bewildered In the dwarf spruce-belts of the Crystal Hills, Had heard above us, like a voice in the cloud, The horn of Fabyan sounding; and atop Of old Agioochook had seen the mountains' Piled to the northward, shagged with wood, and thick As meadow mole-hills,--the far sea of Casco, A white gleam on the horizon of the east; Fair lakes, embosomed in the woods and hills; Moosehillock's mountain range, and Kearsarge Lifting his granite forehead to the sun! And we had rested underneath the oaks Shadowing the bank, whose grassy spires are shaken By the perpetual beating of the falls Of the wild Ammonoosuc. We had tracked The winding Pemigewasset, overhung By beechen shadows, whitening down its rocks, Or lazily gliding through its intervals, From waving rye-fields sending up the gleam Of sunlit waters. We had seen the moon Rising behind Umbagog's eastern pines, Like a great Indian camp-fire; and its beams At midnight spanning with a bridge of silver The Merrimac by Uncanoonuc's falls. There were five souls of us whom travel's chance Had thrown together in these wild north hills A city lawyer, for a month escaping From his dull office, where the weary eye Saw only hot brick walls and close thronged streets; Briefless as yet, but with an eye to see Life's sunniest side, and with a heart to take Its chances all as godsends; and his brother, Pale from long pulpit studies, yet retaining The warmth and freshness of a genial heart, Whose mirror of the beautiful and true, In Man and Nature, was as yet undimmed By dust of theologic strife, or breath Of sect, or cobwebs of scholastic lore; Like a clear crystal calm of water, taking The hue and image of o'erleaning flowers, Sweet human faces, white clouds of the noon, Slant starlight glimpses through the dewy leaves, And tenderest moonrise. 'T was, in truth, a study, To mark his spirit, alternating between A decent and professional gravity And an irreverent mirthfulness, which often Laughed in the face of his divinity, Plucked off the sacred ephod, quite unshrined The oracle, and for the pattern priest Left us the man. A shrewd, sagacious merchant, To whom the soiled sheet found in Crawford's inn, Giving the latest news of city stocks And sales of cotton, had a deeper meaning Than the great presence of the awful mountains Glorified by the sunset; and his daughter, A delicate flower on whom had blown too long Those evil winds, which, sweeping from the ice And winnowing the fogs of Labrador, Shed their cold blight round Massachusetts Bay, With the same breath which stirs Spring's opening leaves And lifts her half-formed flower-bell on its stem, Poisoning our seaside atmosphere. It chanced that as we turned upon our homeward way, A drear northeastern storm came howling up The valley of the Saco; and that girl Who had stood with us upon Mount Washington, Her brown locks ruffled by the wind which whirled In gusts around its sharp, cold pinnacle, Who had joined our gay trout-fishing in the streams Which lave that giant's feet; whose laugh was heard Like a bird's carol on the sunrise breeze Which swelled our sail amidst the lake's green islands, Shrank from its harsh, chill breath, and visibly drooped Like a flower in the frost. So, in that quiet inn Which looks from Conway on the mountains piled Heavily against the horizon of the north, Like summer thunder-clouds, we made our home And while the mist hung over dripping hills, And the cold wind-driven rain-drops all day long Beat their sad music upon roof and pane, We strove to cheer our gentle invalid. The lawyer in the pauses of the storm Went angling down the Saco, and, returning, Recounted his adventures and mishaps; Gave us the history of his scaly clients, Mingling with ludicrous yet apt citations Of barbarous law Latin, passages From Izaak Walton's Angler, sweet and fresh As the flower-skirted streams of Staffordshire, Where, under aged trees, the southwest wind Of soft June mornings fanned the thin, white hair Of the sage fisher. And, if truth be told, Our youthful candidate forsook his sermons, His commentaries, articles and creeds, For the fair page of human loveliness, The missal of young hearts, whose sacred text Is music, its illumining, sweet smiles. He sang the songs she loved; and in his low, Deep, earnest voice, recited many a page Of poetry, the holiest, tenderest lines Of the sad bard of Olney, the sweet songs, Simple and beautiful as Truth and Nature, Of him whose whitened locks on Rydal Mount Are lifted yet by morning breezes blowing From the green hills, immortal in his lays. And for myself, obedient to her wish, I searched our landlord's proffered library,-- A well-thumbed Bunyan, with its nice wood pictures Of scaly fiends and angels not unlike them; Watts' unmelodious psalms; Astrology's Last home, a musty pile of almanacs, And an old chronicle of border wars And Indian history. And, as I read A story of the marriage of the Chief Of Saugus to the dusky Weetamoo, Daughter of Passaconaway, who dwelt In the old time upon the Merrimac, Our fair one, in the playful exercise Of her prerogative,--the right divine Of youth and beauty,--bade us versify The legend, and with ready pencil sketched Its plan and outlines, laughingly assigning To each his part, and barring our excuses With absolute will. So, like the cavaliers Whose voices still are heard in the Romance Of silver-tongued Boccaccio, on the banks Of Arno, with soft tales of love beguiling The ear of languid beauty, plague-exiled From stately Florence, we rehearsed our rhymes To their fair auditor, and shared by turns Her kind approval and her playful censure. It may be that these fragments owe alone To the fair setting of their circumstances,-- The associations of time, scene, and audience,-- Their place amid the pictures which fill up The chambers of my memory. Yet I trust That some, who sigh, while wandering in thought, Pilgrims of Romance o'er the olden world, That our broad land,--our sea-like lakes and mountains Piled to the clouds, our rivers overhung By forests which have known no other change For ages than the budding and the fall Of leaves, our valleys lovelier than those Which the old poets sang of,--should but figure On the apocryphal chart of speculation As pastures, wood-lots, mill-sites, with the privileges, Rights, and appurtenances, which make up A Yankee Paradise, unsung, unknown, To beautiful tradition; even their names, Whose melody yet lingers like the last Vibration of the red man's requiem, Exchanged for syllables significant, Of cotton-mill and rail-car, will look kindly Upon this effort to call up the ghost Of our dim Past, and listen with pleased ear To the responses of the questioned Shade. I. THE MERRIMAC. O child of that white-crested mountain whose springs Gush forth in the shade of the cliff-eagle's wings, Down whose slopes to the lowlands thy wild waters shine, Leaping gray walls of rock, flashing through the dwarf pine; From that cloud-curtained cradle so cold and so lone, From the arms of that wintry-locked mother of stone, By hills hung with forests, through vales wide and free, Thy mountain-born brightness glanced down to the sea. No bridge arched thy waters save that where the trees Stretched their long arms above thee and kissed in the breeze: No sound save the lapse of the waves on thy shores, The plunging of otters, the light dip of oars. Green-tufted, oak-shaded, by Amoskeag's fall Thy twin Uncanoonucs rose stately and tall, Thy Nashua meadows lay green and unshorn, And the hills of Pentucket were tasselled with corn. But thy Pennacook valley was fairer than these, And greener its grasses and taller its trees, Ere the sound of an axe in the forest had rung, Or the mower his scythe in the meadows had swung. In their sheltered repose looking out from the wood The bark-builded wigwams of Pennacook stood; There glided the corn-dance, the council-fire shone, And against the red war-post the hatchet was thrown. There the old smoked in silence their pipes, and the young To the pike and the white-perch their baited lines flung; There the boy shaped his arrows, and there the shy maid Wove her many-hued baskets and bright wampum braid. O Stream of the Mountains! if answer of thine Could rise from thy waters to question of mine, Methinks through the din of thy thronged banks a moan Of sorrow would swell for the days which have gone. Not for thee the dull jar of the loom and the wheel, The gliding of shuttles, the ringing of steel; But that old voice of waters, of bird and of breeze, The dip of the wild-fowl, the rustling of trees. II. THE BASHABA. Lift we the twilight curtains of the Past, And, turning from familiar sight and sound, Sadly and full of reverence let us cast A glance upon Tradition's shadowy ground, Led by the few pale lights which, glimmering round That dim, strange land of Eld, seem dying fast; And that which history gives not to the eye, The faded coloring of Time's tapestry, Let Fancy, with her dream-dipped brush, supply. Roof of bark and walls of pine, Through whose chinks the sunbeams shine, Tracing many a golden line On the ample floor within; Where, upon that earth-floor stark, Lay the gaudy mats of bark, With the bear's hide, rough and dark, And the red-deer's skin. Window-tracery, small and slight, Woven of the willow white, Lent a dimly checkered light; And the night-stars glimmered down, Where the lodge-fire's heavy smoke, Slowly through an opening broke, In the low roof, ribbed with oak, Sheathed with hemlock brown. Gloomed behind the changeless shade By the solemn pine-wood made; Through the rugged palisade, In the open foreground planted, Glimpses came of rowers rowing, Stir of leaves and wild-flowers blowing, Steel-like gleams of water flowing, In the sunlight slanted. Here the mighty Bashaba Held his long-unquestioned sway, From the White Hills, far away, To the great sea's sounding shore; Chief of chiefs, his regal word All the river Sachems heard, At his call the war-dance stirred, Or was still once more. There his spoils of chase and war, Jaw of wolf and black bear's paw, Panther's skin and eagle's claw, Lay beside his axe and bow; And, adown the roof-pole hung, Loosely on a snake-skin strung, In the smoke his scalp-locks swung Grimly to and fro. Nightly down the river going, Swifter was the hunter's rowing, When he saw that lodge-fire, glowing O'er the waters still and red; And the squaw's dark eye burned brighter, And she drew her blanket tighter, As, with quicker step and lighter, From that door she fled. For that chief had magic skill, And a Panisee's dark will, Over powers of good and ill, Powers which bless and powers which ban; Wizard lord of Pennacook, Chiefs upon their war-path shook, When they met the steady look Of that wise dark man. Tales of him the gray squaw told, When the winter night-wind cold Pierced her blanket's thickest fold, And her fire burned low and small, Till the very child abed, Drew its bear-skin over bead, Shrinking from the pale lights shed On the trembling wall. All the subtle spirits hiding Under earth or wave, abiding In the caverned rock, or riding Misty clouds or morning breeze; Every dark intelligence, Secret soul, and influence Of all things which outward sense Feels, or bears, or sees,-- These the wizard's skill confessed, At his bidding banned or blessed, Stormful woke or lulled to rest Wind and cloud, and fire and flood; Burned for him the drifted snow, Bade through ice fresh lilies blow, And the leaves of summer grow Over winter's wood! Not untrue that tale of old! Now, as then, the wise and bold All the powers of Nature hold Subject to their kingly will; From the wondering crowds ashore, Treading life's wild waters o'er, As upon a marble floor, Moves the strong man still. Still, to such, life's elements With their sterner laws dispense, And the chain of consequence Broken in their pathway lies; Time and change their vassals making, Flowers from icy pillows waking, Tresses of the sunrise shaking Over midnight skies. Still, to th' earnest soul, the sun Rests on towered Gibeon, And the moon of Ajalon Lights the battle-grounds of life; To his aid the strong reverses Hidden powers and giant forces, And the high stars, in their courses, Mingle in his strife! III. THE DAUGHTER. The soot-black brows of men, the yell Of women thronging round the bed, The tinkling charm of ring and shell, The Powah whispering o'er the dead! All these the Sachem's home had known, When, on her journey long and wild To the dim World of Souls, alone, In her young beauty passed the mother of his child. Three bow-shots from the Sachem's dwelling They laid her in the walnut shade, Where a green hillock gently swelling Her fitting mound of burial made. There trailed the vine in summer hours, The tree-perched squirrel dropped his shell,-- On velvet moss and pale-hued flowers, Woven with leaf and spray, the softened sunshine fell! The Indian's heart is hard and cold, It closes darkly o'er its care, And formed in Nature's sternest mould, Is slow to feel, and strong to bear. The war-paint on the Sachem's face, Unwet with tears, shone fierce and red, And still, in battle or in chase, Dry leaf and snow-rime crisped beneath his foremost tread. Yet when her name was heard no more, And when the robe her mother gave, And small, light moccasin she wore, Had slowly wasted on her grave, Unmarked of him the dark maids sped Their sunset dance and moonlit play; No other shared his lonely bed, No other fair young head upon his bosom lay. A lone, stern man. Yet, as sometimes The tempest-smitten tree receives From one small root the sap which climbs Its topmost spray and crowning leaves, So from his child the Sachem drew A life of Love and Hope, and felt His cold and rugged nature through The softness and the warmth of her young being melt. A laugh which in the woodland rang Bemocking April's gladdest bird,-- A light and graceful form which sprang To meet him when his step was heard,-- Eyes by his lodge-fire flashing dark, Small fingers stringing bead and shell Or weaving mats of bright-hued bark,-- With these the household-god (3) had graced his wigwam well. Child of the forest! strong and free, Slight-robed, with loosely flowing hair, She swam the lake or climbed the tree, Or struck the flying bird in air. O'er the heaped drifts of winter's moon Her snow-shoes tracked the hunter's way; And dazzling in the summer noon The blade of her light oar threw off its shower of spray! Unknown to her the rigid rule, The dull restraint, the chiding frown, The weary torture of the school, The taming of wild nature down. Her only lore, the legends told Around the hunter's fire at night; Stars rose and set, and seasons rolled, Flowers bloomed and snow-flakes fell, unquestioned in her sight. Unknown to her the subtle skill With which the artist-eye can trace In rock and tree and lake and hill The outlines of divinest grace; Unknown the fine soul's keen unrest, Which sees, admires, yet yearns alway; Too closely on her mother's breast To note her smiles of love the child of Nature lay! It is enough for such to be Of common, natural things a part, To feel, with bird and stream and tree, The pulses of the same great heart; But we, from Nature long exiled, In our cold homes of Art and Thought Grieve like the stranger-tended child, Which seeks its mother's arms, and sees but feels them not. The garden rose may richly bloom In cultured soil and genial air, To cloud the light of Fashion's room Or droop in Beauty's midnight hair; In lonelier grace, to sun and dew The sweetbrier on the hillside shows Its single leaf and fainter hue, Untrained and wildly free, yet still a sister rose! Thus o'er the heart of Weetamoo Their mingling shades of joy and ill The instincts of her nature threw; The savage was a woman still. Midst outlines dim of maiden schemes, Heart-colored prophecies of life, Rose on the ground of her young dreams The light of a new home, the lover and the wife. IV. THE WEDDING. Cool and dark fell the autumn night, But the Bashaba's wigwam glowed with light, For down from its roof, by green withes hung, Flaring and smoking the pine-knots swung. And along the river great wood-fires Shot into the night their long, red spires, Showing behind the tall, dark wood, Flashing before on the sweeping flood. In the changeful wind, with shimmer and shade, Now high, now low, that firelight played, On tree-leaves wet with evening dews, On gliding water and still canoes. The trapper that night on Turee's brook, And the weary fisher on Contoocook, Saw over the marshes, and through the pine, And down on the river, the dance-lights shine. For the Saugus Sachem had come to woo The Bashaba's daughter Weetamoo, And laid at her father's feet that night His softest furs and wampum white. From the Crystal Hills to the far southeast The river Sagamores came to the feast; And chiefs whose homes the sea-winds shook Sat down on the mats of Pennacook. They came from Sunapee's shore of rock, From the snowy sources of Snooganock, And from rough Coos whose thick woods shake Their pine-cones in Umbagog Lake. From Ammonoosuc's mountain pass, Wild as his home, came Chepewass; And the Keenomps of the bills which throw Their shade on the Smile of Manito. With pipes of peace and bows unstrung, Glowing with paint came old and young, In wampum and furs and feathers arrayed, To the dance and feast the Bashaba made. Bird of the air and beast of the field, All which the woods and the waters yield, On dishes of birch and hemlock piled, Garnished and graced that banquet wild. Steaks of the brown bear fat and large From the rocky slopes of the Kearsarge; Delicate trout from Babboosuck brook, And salmon speared in the Contoocook; Squirrels which fed where nuts fell thick in the gravelly bed of the Otternic; And small wild-hens in reed-snares caught from the banks of Sondagardee brought; Pike and perch from the Suncook taken, Nuts from the trees of the Black Hills shaken, Cranberries picked in the Squamscot bog, And grapes from the vines of Piscataquog: And, drawn from that great stone vase which stands In the river scooped by a spirit's hands,(4) Garnished with spoons of shell and horn, Stood the birchen dishes of smoking corn. Thus bird of the air and beast of the field, All which the woods and the waters yield, Furnished in that olden day The bridal feast of the Bashaba. And merrily when that feast was done On the fire-lit green the dance begun, With squaws' shrill stave, and deeper hum Of old men beating the Indian drum. Painted and plumed, with scalp-locks flowing, And red arms tossing and black eyes glowing, Now in the light and now in the shade Around the fires the dancers played. The step was quicker, the song more shrill, And the beat of the small drums louder still Whenever within the circle drew The Saugus Sachem and Weetamoo. The moons of forty winters had shed Their snow upon that chieftain's head, And toil and care and battle's chance Had seamed his hard, dark countenance. A fawn beside the bison grim,-- Why turns the bride's fond eye on him, In whose cold look is naught beside The triumph of a sullen pride? Ask why the graceful grape entwines The rough oak with her arm of vines; And why the gray rock's rugged cheek The soft lips of the mosses seek. Why, with wise instinct, Nature seems To harmonize her wide extremes, Linking the stronger with the weak, The haughty with the soft and meek! V. THE NEW HOME. A wild and broken landscape, spiked with firs, Roughening the bleak horizon's northern edge; Steep, cavernous hillsides, where black hemlock spurs And sharp, gray splinters of the wind-swept ledge Pierced the thin-glazed ice, or bristling rose, Where the cold rim of the sky sunk down upon the snows. And eastward cold, wide marshes stretched away, Dull, dreary flats without a bush or tree, O'er-crossed by icy creeks, where twice a day Gurgled the waters of the moon-struck sea; And faint with distance came the stifled roar, The melancholy lapse of waves on that low shore. No cheerful village with its mingling smokes, No laugh of children wrestling in the snow, No camp-fire blazing through the hillside oaks, No fishers kneeling on the ice below; Yet midst all desolate things of sound and view, Through the long winter moons smiled dark-eyed Weetamoo. Her heart had found a home; and freshly all Its beautiful affections overgrew Their rugged prop. As o'er some granite wall Soft vine-leaves open to the moistening dew And warm bright sun, the love of that young wife Found on a hard cold breast the dew and warmth of life. The steep, bleak hills, the melancholy shore, The long, dead level of the marsh between, A coloring of unreal beauty wore Through the soft golden mist of young love seen. For o'er those hills and from that dreary plain, Nightly she welcomed home her hunter chief again. No warmth of heart, no passionate burst of feeling, Repaid her welcoming smile and parting kiss, No fond and playful dalliance half concealing, Under the guise of mirth, its tenderness; But, in their stead, the warrior's settled pride, And vanity's pleased smile with homage satisfied. Enough for Weetamoo, that she alone Sat on his mat and slumbered at his side; That he whose fame to her young ear had flown Now looked upon her proudly as his bride; That he whose name the Mohawk trembling heard Vouchsafed to her at times a kindly look or word. For she had learned the maxims of her race, Which teach the woman to become a slave, And feel herself the pardonless disgrace Of love's fond weakness in the wise and brave,-- The scandal and the shame which they incur, Who give to woman all which man requires of her. So passed the winter moons. The sun at last Broke link by link the frost chain of the rills, And the warm breathings of the southwest passed Over the hoar rime of the Saugus hills; The gray and desolate marsh grew green once more, And the birch-tree's tremulous shade fell round the Sachem's door. Then from far Pennacook swift runners came, With gift and greeting for the Saugus chief; Beseeching him in the great Sachem's name, That, with the coming of the flower and leaf, The song of birds, the warm breeze and the rain, Young Weetamoo might greet her lonely sire again. And Winnepurkit called his chiefs together, And a grave council in his wigwam met, Solemn and brief in words, considering whether The rigid rules of forest etiquette Permitted Weetamoo once more to look Upon her father's face and green-banked Pennacook. With interludes of pipe-smoke and strong water, The forest sages pondered, and at length, Concluded in a body to escort her Up to her father's home of pride and strength, Impressing thus on Pennacook a sense Of Winnepurkit's power and regal consequence. So through old woods which Aukeetamit's(5) hand, A soft and many-shaded greenness lent, Over high breezy hills, and meadow land Yellow with flowers, the wild procession went, Till, rolling down its wooded banks between, A broad, clear, mountain stream, the Merrimac was seen. The hunter leaning on his bow undrawn, The fisher lounging on the pebbled shores, Squaws in the clearing dropping the seed-corn, Young children peering through the wigwam doors, Saw with delight, surrounded by her train Of painted Saugus braves, their Weetamoo again. VI. AT PENNACOOK. The hills are dearest which our childish feet Have climbed the earliest; and the streams most sweet Are ever those at which our young lips drank, Stooped to their waters o'er the grassy bank. Midst the cold dreary sea-watch, Home's hearth-light Shines round the helmsman plunging through the night; And still, with inward eye, the traveller sees In close, dark, stranger streets his native trees. The home-sick dreamer's brow is nightly fanned By breezes whispering of his native land, And on the stranger's dim and dying eye The soft, sweet pictures of his childhood lie. Joy then for Weetamoo, to sit once more A child upon her father's wigwam floor! Once more with her old fondness to beguile From his cold eye the strange light of a smile. The long, bright days of summer swiftly passed, The dry leaves whirled in autumn's rising blast, And evening cloud and whitening sunrise rime Told of the coming of the winter-time. But vainly looked, the while, young Weetamoo, Down the dark river for her chief's canoe; No dusky messenger from Saugus brought The grateful tidings which the young wife sought. At length a runner from her father sent, To Winnepurkit's sea-cooled wigwam went "Eagle of Saugus,--in the woods the dove Mourns for the shelter of thy wings of love." But the dark chief of Saugus turned aside In the grim anger of hard-hearted pride; "I bore her as became a chieftain's daughter, Up to her home beside the gliding water. If now no more a mat for her is found Of all which line her father's wigwam round, Let Pennacook call out his warrior train, And send her back with wampum gifts again." The baffled runner turned upon his track, Bearing the words of Winnepurkit back. "Dog of the Marsh," cried Pennacook, "no more Shall child of mine sit on his wigwam floor. "Go, let him seek some meaner squaw to spread The stolen bear-skin of his beggar's bed; Son of a fish-hawk! let him dig his clams For some vile daughter of the Agawams, "Or coward Nipmucks! may his scalp dry black In Mohawk smoke, before I send her back." He shook his clenched hand towards the ocean wave, While hoarse assent his listening council gave. Alas poor bride! can thy grim sire impart His iron hardness to thy woman's heart? Or cold self-torturing pride like his atone For love denied and life's warm beauty flown? On Autumn's gray and mournful grave the snow Hung its white wreaths; with stifled voice and low The river crept, by one vast bridge o'er-crossed, Built by the boar-locked artisan of Frost. And many a moon in beauty newly born Pierced the red sunset with her silver horn, Or, from the east, across her azure field Rolled the wide brightness of her full-orbed shield. Yet Winnepurkit came not,--on the mat Of the scorned wife her dusky rival sat; And he, the while, in Western woods afar, Urged the long chase, or trod the path of war. Dry up thy tears, young daughter of a chief! Waste not on him the sacredness of grief; Be the fierce spirit of thy sire thine own, His lips of scorning, and his heart of stone. What heeds the warrior of a hundred fights, The storm-worn watcher through long hunting nights, Cold, crafty, proud of woman's weak distress, Her home-bound grief and pining loneliness? VII. THE DEPARTURE. The wild March rains had fallen fast and long The snowy mountains of the North among, Making each vale a watercourse, each hill Bright with the cascade of some new-made rill. Gnawed by the sunbeams, softened by the rain, Heaved underneath by the swollen current's strain, The ice-bridge yielded, and the Merrimac Bore the huge ruin crashing down its track. On that strong turbid water, a small boat Guided by one weak hand was seen to float; Evil the fate which loosed it from the shore, Too early voyager with too frail an oar! Down the vexed centre of that rushing tide, The thick huge ice-blocks threatening either side, The foam-white rocks of Amoskeag in view, With arrowy swiftness sped that light canoe. The trapper, moistening his moose's meat On the wet bank by Uncanoonuc's feet, Saw the swift boat flash down the troubled stream; Slept he, or waked he? was it truth or dream? The straining eye bent fearfully before, The small hand clenching on the useless oar, The bead-wrought blanket trailing o'er the water-- He knew them all--woe for the Sachem's daughter! Sick and aweary of her lonely life, Heedless of peril, the still faithful wife Had left her mother's grave, her father's door, To seek the wigwam of her chief once more. Down the white rapids like a sear leaf whirled, On the sharp rocks and piled-up ices hurled, Empty and broken, circled the canoe In the vexed pool below--but where was Weetamoo. VIII. SONG OF INDIAN WOMEN. The Dark eye has left us, The Spring-bird has flown; On the pathway of spirits She wanders alone. The song of the wood-dove has died on our shore Mat wonck kunna-monee!(6) We hear it no more! O dark water Spirit We cast on thy wave These furs which may never Hang over her grave; Bear down to the lost one the robes that she wore Mat wonck kunna-monee! We see her no more! Of the strange land she walks in No Powah has told: It may burn with the sunshine, Or freeze with the cold. Let us give to our lost one the robes that she wore: Mat wonck kunna-monee! We see her no more! The path she is treading Shall soon be our own; Each gliding in shadow Unseen and alone! In vain shall we call on the souls gone before: Mat wonck kunna-monee! They hear us no more! O mighty Sowanna!(7) Thy gateways unfold, From thy wigwam of sunset Lift curtains of gold! Take home the poor Spirit whose journey is o'er Mat wonck kunna-monee! We see her no more! So sang the Children of the Leaves beside The broad, dark river's coldly flowing tide; Now low, now harsh, with sob-like pause and swell, On the high wind their voices rose and fell. Nature's wild music,--sounds of wind-swept trees, The scream of birds, the wailing of the breeze, The roar of waters, steady, deep, and strong,-- Mingled and murmured in that farewell song. 1844. BARCLAY OF URY. Among the earliest converts to the doctrines of Friends in Scotland was Barclay of Ury, an old and distinguished soldier, who had fought under Gustavus Adolphus, in Germany. As a Quaker, he became the object of persecution and abuse at the hands of the magistrates and the populace. None bore the indignities of the mob with greater patience and nobleness of soul than this once proud gentleman and soldier. One of his friends, on an occasion of uncommon rudeness, lamented that he should be treated so harshly in his old age who had been so honored before. "I find more satisfaction," said Barclay, "as well as honor, in being thus insulted for my religious principles, than when, a few years ago, it was usual for the magistrates, as I passed the city of Aberdeen, to meet me on the road and conduct me to public entertainment in their hall, and then escort me out again, to gain my favor." Up the streets of Aberdeen, By the kirk and college green, Rode the Laird of Ury; Close behind him, close beside, Foul of mouth and evil-eyed, Pressed the mob in fury. Flouted him the drunken churl, Jeered at him the serving-girl, Prompt to please her master; And the begging carlin, late Fed and clothed at Ury's gate, Cursed him as he passed her. Yet, with calm and stately mien, Up the streets of Aberdeen Came he slowly riding; And, to all he saw and heard, Answering not with bitter word, Turning not for chiding. Came a troop with broadswords swinging, Bits and bridles sharply ringing, Loose and free and froward; Quoth the foremost, "Ride him down! Push him! prick him! through the town Drive the Quaker coward!" But from out the thickening crowd Cried a sudden voice and loud "Barclay! Ho! a Barclay!" And the old man at his side Saw a comrade, battle tried, Scarred and sunburned darkly; Who with ready weapon bare, Fronting to the troopers there, Cried aloud: "God save us, Call ye coward him who stood Ankle deep in Lutzen's blood, With the brave Gustavus?" "Nay, I do not need thy sword, Comrade mine," said Ury's lord; "Put it up, I pray thee Passive to His holy will, Trust I in my Master still, Even though He slay me. "Pledges of thy love and faith, Proved on many a field of death, Not by me are needed." Marvelled much that henchman bold, That his laird, so stout of old, Now so meekly pleaded. "Woe's the day!" he sadly said, With a slowly shaking head, And a look of pity; "Ury's honest lord reviled, Mock of knave and sport of child, In his own good city. "Speak the word, and, master mine, As we charged on Tilly's(8) line, And his Walloon lancers, Smiting through their midst we'll teach Civil look and decent speech To these boyish prancers!" "Marvel not, mine ancient friend, Like beginning, like the end:" Quoth the Laird of Ury; "Is the sinful servant more Than his gracious Lord who bore Bonds and stripes in Jewry? "Give me joy that in His name I can bear, with patient frame, All these vain ones offer; While for them He suffereth long, Shall I answer wrong with wrong, Scoffing with the scoffer? "Happier I, with loss of all, Hunted, outlawed, held in thrall, With few friends to greet me, Than when reeve and squire were seen, Riding out from Aberdeen, With bared heads to meet me. "When each goodwife, o'er and o'er, Blessed me as I passed her door; And the snooded daughter, Through her casement glancing down, Smiled on him who bore renown From red fields of slaughter. "Hard to feel the stranger's scoff, Hard the old friend's falling off, Hard to learn forgiving; But the Lord His own rewards, And His love with theirs accords, Warm and fresh and living. "Through this dark and stormy night Faith beholds a feeble light Up the blackness streaking; Knowing God's own time is best, In a patient hope I rest For the full day-breaking!" So the Laird of Ury said, Turning slow his horse's head Towards the Tolbooth prison, Where, through iron gates, he heard Poor disciples of the Word Preach of Christ arisen! Not in vain, Confessor old, Unto us the tale is told Of thy day of trial; Every age on him who strays From its broad and beaten ways Pours its seven-fold vial. Happy he whose inward ear Angel comfortings can hear, O'er the rabble's laughter; And while Hatred's fagots burn, Glimpses through the smoke discern Of the good hereafter. Knowing this, that never yet Share of Truth was vainly set In the world's wide fallow; After hands shall sow the seed, After hands from hill and mead Reap the harvests yellow. Thus, with somewhat of the Seer, Must the moral pioneer From the Future borrow; Clothe the waste with dreams of grain, And, on midnight's sky of rain, Paint the golden morrow! THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA. A letter-writer from Mexico during the Mexican war, when detailing some of the incidents at the terrible fight of Buena Vista, mentioned that Mexican women were seen hovering near the field of death, for the purpose of giving aid and succor to the wounded. One poor woman was found surrounded by the maimed and suffering of both armies, ministering to the wants of Americans as well as Mexicans, with impartial tenderness. SPEAK and tell us, our Ximena, looking northward far away, O'er the camp of the invaders, o'er the Mexican array, Who is losing? who is winning? are they far or come they near? Look abroad, and tell us, sister, whither rolls the storm we hear. Down the hills of Angostura still the storm of battle rolls; Blood is flowing, men are dying; God have mercy on their souls! "Who is losing? who is winning?" Over hill and over plain, I see but smoke of cannon clouding through the mountain rain. Holy Mother! keep our brothers! Look, Ximena, look once more. "Still I see the fearful whirlwind rolling darkly as before, Bearing on, in strange confusion, friend and foeman, foot and horse, Like some wild and troubled torrent sweeping down its mountain course." Look forth once more, Ximena! "Ah! the smoke has rolled away; And I see the Northern rifles gleaming down the ranks of gray. Hark! that sudden blast of bugles! there the troop of Minon wheels; There the Northern horses thunder, with the cannon at their heels. "Jesu, pity I how it thickens I now retreat and now advance! Bight against the blazing cannon shivers Puebla's charging lance! Down they go, the brave young riders; horse and foot together fall; Like a ploughshare in the fallow, through them ploughs the Northern ball." Nearer came the storm and nearer, rolling fast and frightful on! Speak, Ximena, speak and tell us, who has lost, and who has won? Alas! alas! I know not; friend and foe together fall, O'er the dying rush the living: pray, my sisters, for them all! "Lo! the wind the smoke is lifting. Blessed Mother, save my brain! I can see the wounded crawling slowly out from heaps of slain. Now they stagger, blind and bleeding; now they fall, and strive to rise; Hasten, sisters, haste and save them, lest they die before our eyes! "O my hearts love! O my dear one! lay thy poor head on my knee; Dost thou know the lips that kiss thee? Canst thou hear me? canst thou see? O my husband, brave and gentle! O my Bernal, look once more On the blessed cross before thee! Mercy! all is o'er!" Dry thy tears, my poor Ximena; lay thy dear one down to rest; Let his hands be meekly folded, lay the cross upon his breast; Let his dirge be sung hereafter, and his funeral masses said; To-day, thou poor bereaved one, the living ask thy aid. Close beside her, faintly moaning, fair and young, a soldier lay, Torn with shot and pierced with lances, bleeding slow his life away; But, as tenderly before him the lorn Ximena knelt, She saw the Northern eagle shining on his pistol- belt. With a stifled cry of horror straight she turned away her head; With a sad and bitter feeling looked she back upon her dead; But she heard the youth's low moaning, and his struggling breath of pain, And she raised the cooling water to his parching lips again. Whispered low the dying soldier, pressed her hand and faintly smiled; Was that pitying face his mother's? did she watch beside her child? All his stranger words with meaning her woman's heart supplied; With her kiss upon his forehead, "Mother!" murmured he, and died! "A bitter curse upon them, poor boy, who led thee forth, From some gentle, sad-eyed mother, weeping, lonely, in the North!" Spake the mournful Mexic woman, as she laid him with her dead, And turned to soothe the living, and bind the wounds which bled. "Look forth once more, Ximena!" Like a cloud before the wind Rolls the battle down the mountains, leaving blood and death behind; Ah! they plead in vain for mercy; in the dust the wounded strive; "Hide your faces, holy angels! O thou Christ of God, forgive!" Sink, O Night, among thy mountains! let the cool, gray shadows fall; Dying brothers, fighting demons, drop thy curtain over all! Through the thickening winter twilight, wide apart the battle rolled, In its sheath the sabre rested, and the cannon's lips grew cold. But the noble Mexic women still their holy task pursued, Through that long, dark night of sorrow, worn and faint and lacking food. Over weak and suffering brothers, with a tender care they hung, And the dying foeman blessed them in a strange and Northern tongue. Not wholly lost, O Father! is this evil world of ours; Upward, through its blood and ashes, spring afresh the Eden flowers; From its smoking hell of battle, Love and Pity send their prayer, And still thy white-winged angels hover dimly in our air! 1847. THE LEGEND OF ST. MARK. "This legend (to which my attention was called by my friend Charles Sumner), is the subject of a celebrated picture by Tintoretto, of which Mr. Rogers possesses the original sketch. The slave lies on the ground, amid a crowd of spectators, who look on, animated by all the various emotions of sympathy, rage, terror; a woman, in front, with a child in her arms, has always been admired for the lifelike vivacity of her attitude and expression. The executioner holds up the broken implements; St. Mark, with a headlong movement, seems to rush down from heaven in haste to save his worshipper. The dramatic grouping in this picture is wonderful; the coloring, in its gorgeous depth and harmony, is, in Mr. Rogers's sketch, finer than in the picture."--MRS. JAMESON'S Sacred and Legendary Art, I. 154. THE day is closing dark and cold, With roaring blast and sleety showers; And through the dusk the lilacs wear The bloom of snow, instead of flowers. I turn me from the gloom without, To ponder o'er a tale of old; A legend of the age of Faith, By dreaming monk or abbess told. On Tintoretto's canvas lives That fancy of a loving heart, In graceful lines and shapes of power, And hues immortal as his art. In Provence (so the story runs) There lived a lord, to whom, as slave, A peasant-boy of tender years The chance of trade or conquest gave. Forth-looking from the castle tower, Beyond the hills with almonds dark, The straining eye could scarce discern The chapel of the good St. Mark. And there, when bitter word or fare The service of the youth repaid, By stealth, before that holy shrine, For grace to bear his wrong, he prayed. The steed stamped at the castle gate, The boar-hunt sounded on the hill; Why stayed the Baron from the chase, With looks so stern, and words so ill? "Go, bind yon slave! and let him learn, By scath of fire and strain of cord, How ill they speed who give dead saints The homage due their living lord!" They bound him on the fearful rack, When, through the dungeon's vaulted dark, He saw the light of shining robes, And knew the face of good St. Mark. Then sank the iron rack apart, The cords released their cruel clasp, The pincers, with their teeth of fire, Fell broken from the torturer's grasp. And lo! before the Youth and Saint, Barred door and wall of stone gave way; And up from bondage and the night They passed to freedom and the day! O dreaming monk! thy tale is true; O painter! true thy pencil's art; in tones of hope and prophecy, Ye whisper to my listening heart! Unheard no burdened heart's appeal Moans up to God's inclining ear; Unheeded by his tender eye, Falls to the earth no sufferer's tear. For still the Lord alone is God The pomp and power of tyrant man Are scattered at his lightest breath, Like chaff before the winnower's fan. Not always shall the slave uplift His heavy hands to Heaven in vain. God's angel, like the good St. Mark, Comes shining down to break his chain! O weary ones! ye may not see Your helpers in their downward flight; Nor hear the sound of silver wings Slow beating through the hush of night! But not the less gray Dothan shone, With sunbright watchers bending low, That Fear's dim eye beheld alone The spear-heads of the Syrian foe. There are, who, like the Seer of old, Can see the helpers God has sent, And how life's rugged mountain-side Is white with many an angel tent! They hear the heralds whom our Lord Sends down his pathway to prepare; And light, from others hidden, shines On their high place of faith and prayer. Let such, for earth's despairing ones, Hopeless, yet longing to be free, Breathe once again the Prophet's prayer "Lord, ope their eyes, that they may see!" 1849. KATHLEEN. This ballad was originally published in my prose work, Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal, as the song of a wandering Milesian schoolmaster. In the seventeenth century, slavery in the New World was by no means confined to the natives of Africa. Political offenders and criminals were transported by the British government to the plantations of Barbadoes and Virginia, where they were sold like cattle in the market. Kidnapping of free and innocent white persons was practised to a considerable extent in the seaports of the United Kingdom. O NORAH, lay your basket down, And rest your weary hand, And come and hear me sing a song Of our old Ireland. There was a lord of Galaway, A mighty lord was he; And he did wed a second wife, A maid of low degree. But he was old, and she was young, And so, in evil spite, She baked the black bread for his kin, And fed her own with white. She whipped the maids and starved the kern, And drove away the poor; "Ah, woe is me!" the old lord said, "I rue my bargain sore!" This lord he had a daughter fair, Beloved of old and young, And nightly round the shealing-fires Of her the gleeman sung. "As sweet and good is young Kathleen As Eve before her fall;" So sang the harper at the fair, So harped he in the hall. "Oh, come to me, my daughter dear! Come sit upon my knee, For looking in your face, Kathleen, Your mother's own I see!" He smoothed and smoothed her hair away, He kissed her forehead fair; "It is my darling Mary's brow, It is my darling's hair!" Oh, then spake up the angry dame, "Get up, get up," quoth she, "I'll sell ye over Ireland, I'll sell ye o'er the sea!" She clipped her glossy hair away, That none her rank might know; She took away her gown of silk, And gave her one of tow, And sent her down to Limerick town And to a seaman sold This daughter of an Irish lord For ten good pounds in gold. The lord he smote upon his breast, And tore his beard so gray; But he was old, and she was young, And so she had her way. Sure that same night the Banshee howled To fright the evil dame, And fairy folks, who loved Kathleen, With funeral torches came. She watched them glancing through the trees, And glimmering down the hill; They crept before the dead-vault door, And there they all stood still! "Get up, old man! the wake-lights shine!" "Ye murthering witch," quoth he, "So I'm rid of your tongue, I little care If they shine for you or me." "Oh, whoso brings my daughter back, My gold and land shall have!" Oh, then spake up his handsome page, "No gold nor land I crave! "But give to me your daughter dear, Give sweet Kathleen to me, Be she on sea or be she on land, I'll bring her back to thee." "My daughter is a lady born, And you of low degree, But she shall be your bride the day You bring her back to me." He sailed east, he sailed west, And far and long sailed he, Until he came to Boston town, Across the great salt sea. "Oh, have ye seen the young Kathleen, The flower of Ireland? Ye'll know her by her eyes so blue, And by her snow-white hand!" Out spake an ancient man, "I know The maiden whom ye mean; I bought her of a Limerick man, And she is called Kathleen. "No skill hath she in household work, Her hands are soft and white, Yet well by loving looks and ways She doth her cost requite." So up they walked through Boston town, And met a maiden fair, A little basket on her arm So snowy-white and bare. "Come hither, child, and say hast thou This young man ever seen?" They wept within each other's arms, The page and young Kathleen. "Oh give to me this darling child, And take my purse of gold." "Nay, not by me," her master said, "Shall sweet Kathleen be sold. "We loved her in the place of one The Lord hath early ta'en; But, since her heart's in Ireland, We give her back again!" Oh, for that same the saints in heaven For his poor soul shall pray, And Mary Mother wash with tears His heresies away. Sure now they dwell in Ireland; As you go up Claremore Ye'll see their castle looking down The pleasant Galway shore. And the old lord's wife is dead and gone, And a happy man is he, For he sits beside his own Kathleen, With her darling on his knee. 1849. THE WELL OF LOCH MAREE Pennant, in his Voyage to the Hebrides, describes the holy well of Loch Maree, the waters of which were supposed to effect a miraculous cure of melancholy, trouble, and insanity. CALM on the breast of Loch Maree A little isle reposes; A shadow woven of the oak And willow o'er it closes. Within, a Druid's mound is seen, Set round with stony warders; A fountain, gushing through the turf, Flows o'er its grassy borders. And whoso bathes therein his brow, With care or madness burning, Feels once again his healthful thought And sense of peace returning. O restless heart and fevered brain, Unquiet and unstable, That holy well of Loch Maree Is more than idle fable! Life's changes vex, its discords stun, Its glaring sunshine blindeth, And blest is he who on his way That fount of healing findeth! The shadows of a humbled will And contrite heart are o'er it; Go read its legend, "TRUST IN GOD," On Faith's white stones before it. 1850. THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS. The incident upon which this poem is based is related in a note to Bernardin Henri Saint Pierre's Etudes de la Nature. "We arrived at the habitation of the Hermits a little before they sat down to their table, and while they were still at church. J. J. Rousseau proposed to me to offer up our devotions. The hermits were reciting the Litanies of Providence, which are remarkably beautiful. After we had addressed our prayers to God, and the hermits were proceeding to the refectory, Rousseau said to me, with his heart overflowing, 'At this moment I experience what is said in the gospel: Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. There is here a feeling of peace and happiness which penetrates the soul.' I said, 'If Finelon had lived, you would have been a Catholic.' He exclaimed, with tears in his eyes, 'Oh, if Finelon were alive, I would struggle to get into his service, even as a lackey!'" In my sketch of Saint Pierre, it will be seen that I have somewhat antedated the period of his old age. At that time he was not probably more than fifty. In describing him, I have by no means exaggerated his own history of his mental condition at the period of the story. In the fragmentary Sequel to his Studies of Nature, he thus speaks of himself: "The ingratitude of those of whom I had deserved kindness, unexpected family misfortunes, the total loss of my small patrimony through enterprises solely undertaken for the benefit of my country, the debts under which I lay oppressed, the blasting of all my hopes,--these combined calamities made dreadful inroads upon my health and reason. . . . I found it impossible to continue in a room where there was company, especially if the doors were shut. I could not even cross an alley in a public garden, if several persons had got together in it. When alone, my malady subsided. I felt myself likewise at ease in places where I saw children only. At the sight of any one walking up to the place where I was, I felt my whole frame agitated, and retired. I often said to myself, 'My sole study has been to merit well of mankind; why do I fear them?'" He attributes his improved health of mind and body to the counsels of his friend, J. J. Rousseau. "I renounced," says he, "my books. I threw my eyes upon the works of nature, which spake to all my senses a language which neither time nor nations have it in their power to alter. Thenceforth my histories and my journals were the herbage of the fields and meadows. My thoughts did not go forth painfully after them, as in the case of human systems; but their thoughts, under a thousand engaging forms, quietly sought me. In these I studied, without effort, the laws of that Universal Wisdom which had surrounded me from the cradle, but on which heretofore I had bestowed little attention." Speaking of Rousseau, he says: "I derived inexpressible satisfaction from his society. What I prized still more than his genius was his probity. He was one of the few literary characters, tried in the furnace of affliction, to whom you could, with perfect security, confide your most secret thoughts. . . . Even when he deviated, and became the victim of himself or of others, he could forget his own misery in devotion to the welfare of mankind. He was uniformly the advocate of the miserable. There might be inscribed on his tomb these affecting words from that Book of which he carried always about him some select passages, during the last years of his life: 'His sins, which are many, are forgiven, for he loved much.'" "I DO believe, and yet, in grief, I pray for help to unbelief; For needful strength aside to lay The daily cumberings of my way. "I 'm sick at heart of craft and cant, Sick of the crazed enthusiast's rant, Profession's smooth hypocrisies, And creeds of iron, and lives of ease. "I ponder o'er the sacred word, I read the record of our Lord; And, weak and troubled, envy them Who touched His seamless garment's hem; "Who saw the tears of love He wept Above the grave where Lazarus slept; And heard, amidst the shadows dim Of Olivet, His evening hymn. "How blessed the swineherd's low estate, The beggar crouching at the gate, The leper loathly and abhorred, Whose eyes of flesh beheld the Lord! "O sacred soil His sandals pressed! Sweet fountains of His noonday rest! O light and air of Palestine, Impregnate with His life divine! "Oh, bear me thither! Let me look On Siloa's pool, and Kedron's brook; Kneel at Gethsemane, and by Gennesaret walk, before I die! "Methinks this cold and northern night Would melt before that Orient light; And, wet by Hermon's dew and rain, My childhood's faith revive again!" So spake my friend, one autumn day, Where the still river slid away Beneath us, and above the brown Red curtains of the woods shut down. Then said I,--for I could not brook The mute appealing of his look,-- "I, too, am weak, and faith is small, And blindness happeneth unto all. "Yet, sometimes glimpses on my sight, Through present wrong, the eternal right; And, step by step, since time began, I see the steady gain of man; "That all of good the past hath had Remains to make our own time glad, Our common daily life divine, And every land a Palestine. "Thou weariest of thy present state; What gain to thee time's holiest date? The doubter now perchance had been As High Priest or as Pilate then! "What thought Chorazin's scribes? What faith In Him had Nain and Nazareth? Of the few followers whom He led One sold Him,--all forsook and fled. "O friend! we need nor rock nor sand, Nor storied stream of Morning-Land; The heavens are glassed in Merrimac,-- What more could Jordan render back? "We lack but open eye and ear To find the Orient's marvels here; The still small voice in autumn's hush, Yon maple wood the burning bush. "For still the new transcends the old, In signs and tokens manifold; Slaves rise up men; the olive waves, With roots deep set in battle graves! "Through the harsh noises of our day A low, sweet prelude finds its way; Through clouds of doubt, and creeds of fear, A light is breaking, calm and clear. "That song of Love, now low and far, Erelong shall swell from star to star! That light, the breaking day, which tips The golden-spired Apocalypse!" Then, when my good friend shook his head, And, sighing, sadly smiled, I said: "Thou mind'st me of a story told In rare Bernardin's leaves of gold." And while the slanted sunbeams wove The shadows of the frost-stained grove, And, picturing all, the river ran O'er cloud and wood, I thus began:-- . . . . . . . . . . . . . In Mount Valerien's chestnut wood The Chapel of the Hermits stood; And thither, at the close of day, Came two old pilgrims, worn and gray. One, whose impetuous youth defied The storms of Baikal's wintry side, And mused and dreamed where tropic day Flamed o'er his lost Virginia's bay. His simple tale of love and woe All hearts had melted, high or low;-- A blissful pain, a sweet distress, Immortal in its tenderness. Yet, while above his charmed page Beat quick the young heart of his age, He walked amidst the crowd unknown, A sorrowing old man, strange and lone. A homeless, troubled age,--the gray Pale setting of a weary day; Too dull his ear for voice of praise, Too sadly worn his brow for bays. Pride, lust of power and glory, slept; Yet still his heart its young dream kept, And, wandering like the deluge-dove, Still sought the resting-place of love. And, mateless, childless, envied more The peasant's welcome from his door By smiling eyes at eventide, Than kingly gifts or lettered pride. Until, in place of wife and child, All-pitying Nature on him smiled, And gave to him the golden keys To all her inmost sanctities. Mild Druid of her wood-paths dim! She laid her great heart bare to him, Its loves and sweet accords;--he saw The beauty of her perfect law. The language of her signs lie knew, What notes her cloudy clarion blew; The rhythm of autumn's forest dyes, The hymn of sunset's painted skies. And thus he seemed to hear the song Which swept, of old, the stars along; And to his eyes the earth once more Its fresh and primal beauty wore. Who sought with him, from summer air, And field and wood, a balm for care; And bathed in light of sunset skies His tortured nerves and weary eyes? His fame on all the winds had flown; His words had shaken crypt and throne; Like fire, on camp and court and cell They dropped, and kindled as they fell. Beneath the pomps of state, below The mitred juggler's masque and show, A prophecy, a vague hope, ran His burning thought from man to man. For peace or rest too well he saw The fraud of priests, the wrong of law, And felt how hard, between the two, Their breath of pain the millions drew. A prophet-utterance, strong and wild, The weakness of an unweaned child, A sun-bright hope for human-kind, And self-despair, in him combined. He loathed the false, yet lived not true To half the glorious truths he knew; The doubt, the discord, and the sin, He mourned without, he felt within. Untrod by him the path he showed, Sweet pictures on his easel glowed Of simple faith, and loves of home, And virtue's golden days to come. But weakness, shame, and folly made The foil to all his pen portrayed; Still, where his dreamy splendors shone, The shadow of himself was thrown. Lord, what is man, whose thought, at times, Up to Thy sevenfold brightness climbs, While still his grosser instinct clings To earth, like other creeping things! So rich in words, in acts so mean; So high, so low; chance-swung between The foulness of the penal pit And Truth's clear sky, millennium-lit! Vain, pride of star-lent genius!--vain, Quick fancy and creative brain, Unblest by prayerful sacrifice, Absurdly great, or weakly wise! Midst yearnings for a truer life, Without were fears, within was strife; And still his wayward act denied The perfect good for which he sighed. The love he sent forth void returned; The fame that crowned him scorched and burned, Burning, yet cold and drear and lone,-- A fire-mount in a frozen zone! Like that the gray-haired sea-king passed,(9) Seen southward from his sleety mast, About whose brows of changeless frost A wreath of flame the wild winds tossed. Far round the mournful beauty played Of lambent light and purple shade, Lost on the fixed and dumb despair Of frozen earth and sea and air! A man apart, unknown, unloved By those whose wrongs his soul had moved, He bore the ban of Church and State, The good man's fear, the bigot's hate! Forth from the city's noise and throng, Its pomp and shame, its sin and wrong, The twain that summer day had strayed To Mount Valerien's chestnut shade. To them the green fields and the wood Lent something of their quietude, And golden-tinted sunset seemed Prophetical of all they dreamed. The hermits from their simple cares The bell was calling home to prayers, And, listening to its sound, the twain Seemed lapped in childhood's trust again. Wide open stood the chapel door; A sweet old music, swelling o'er Low prayerful murmurs, issued thence,-- The Litanies of Providence! Then Rousseau spake: "Where two or three In His name meet, He there will be!" And then, in silence, on their knees They sank beneath the chestnut-trees. As to the blind returning light, As daybreak to the Arctic night, Old faith revived; the doubts of years Dissolved in reverential tears. That gush of feeling overpast, "Ah me!" Bernardin sighed at last, I would thy bitterest foes could see Thy heart as it is seen of me! "No church of God hast thou denied; Thou hast but spurned in scorn aside A bare and hollow counterfeit, Profaning the pure name of it! "With dry dead moss and marish weeds His fire the western herdsman feeds, And greener from the ashen plain The sweet spring grasses rise again. "Nor thunder-peal nor mighty wind Disturb the solid sky behind; And through the cloud the red bolt rends The calm, still smile of Heaven descends. "Thus through the world, like bolt and blast, And scourging fire, thy words have passed. Clouds break,--the steadfast heavens remain; Weeds burn,--the ashes feed the grain! "But whoso strives with wrong may find Its touch pollute, its darkness blind; And learn, as latent fraud is shown In others' faith, to doubt his own. "With dream and falsehood, simple trust And pious hope we tread in dust; Lost the calm faith in goodness,--lost The baptism of the Pentecost! "Alas!--the blows for error meant Too oft on truth itself are spent, As through the false and vile and base Looks forth her sad, rebuking face. "Not ours the Theban's charmed life; We come not scathless from the strife! The Python's coil about us clings, The trampled Hydra bites and stings! "Meanwhile, the sport of seeming chance, The plastic shapes of circumstance, What might have been we fondly guess, If earlier born, or tempted less. "And thou, in these wild, troubled days, Misjudged alike in blame and praise, Unsought and undeserved the same The skeptic's praise, the bigot's blame;-- "I cannot doubt, if thou hadst been Among the highly favored men Who walked on earth with Fenelon, He would have owned thee as his son; "And, bright with wings of cherubim Visibly waving over him, Seen through his life, the Church had seemed All that its old confessors dreamed." "I would have been," Jean Jaques replied, "The humblest servant at his side, Obscure, unknown, content to see How beautiful man's life may be! "Oh, more than thrice-blest relic, more Than solemn rite or sacred lore, The holy life of one who trod The foot-marks of the Christ of God! "Amidst a blinded world he saw The oneness of the Dual law; That Heaven's sweet peace on Earth began, And God was loved through love of man. "He lived the Truth which reconciled The strong man Reason, Faith the child; In him belief and act were one, The homilies of duty done!" So speaking, through the twilight gray The two old pilgrims went their way. What seeds of life that day were sown, The heavenly watchers knew alone. Time passed, and Autumn came to fold Green Summer in her brown and gold; Time passed, and Winter's tears of snow Dropped on the grave-mound of Rousseau. "The tree remaineth where it fell, The pained on earth is pained in hell!" So priestcraft from its altars cursed The mournful doubts its falsehood nursed. Ah! well of old the Psalmist prayed, "Thy hand, not man's, on me be laid!" Earth frowns below, Heaven weeps above, And man is hate, but God is love! No Hermits now the wanderer sees, Nor chapel with its chestnut-trees; A morning dream, a tale that's told, The wave of change o'er all has rolled. Yet lives the lesson of that day; And from its twilight cool and gray Comes up a low, sad whisper, "Make The truth thine own, for truth's own sake. "Why wait to see in thy brief span Its perfect flower and fruit in man? No saintly touch can save; no balm Of healing hath the martyr's palm. "Midst soulless forms, and false pretence Of spiritual pride and pampered sense, A voice saith, 'What is that to thee? Be true thyself, and follow Me! "In days when throne and altar heard The wanton's wish, the bigot's word, And pomp of state and ritual show Scarce hid the loathsome death below,-- "Midst fawning priests and courtiers foul, The losel swarm of crown and cowl, White-robed walked Francois Fenelon, Stainless as Uriel in the sun! "Yet in his time the stake blazed red, The poor were eaten up like bread Men knew him not; his garment's hem No healing virtue had for them. "Alas! no present saint we find; The white cymar gleams far behind, Revealed in outline vague, sublime, Through telescopic mists of time! "Trust not in man with passing breath, But in the Lord, old Scripture saith; The truth which saves thou mayst not blend With false professor, faithless friend. "Search thine own heart. What paineth thee In others in thyself may be; All dust is frail, all flesh is weak; Be thou the true man thou dost seek! "Where now with pain thou treadest, trod The whitest of the saints of God! To show thee where their feet were set, the light which led them shineth yet. "The footprints of the life divine, Which marked their path, remain in thine; And that great Life, transfused in theirs, Awaits thy faith, thy love, thy prayers!" A lesson which I well may heed, A word of fitness to my need; So from that twilight cool and gray Still saith a voice, or seems to say. We rose, and slowly homeward turned, While down the west the sunset burned; And, in its light, hill, wood, and tide, And human forms seemed glorified. The village homes transfigured stood, And purple bluffs, whose belting wood Across the waters leaned to hold The yellow leaves like lamps of hold. Then spake my friend: "Thy words are true; Forever old, forever new, These home-seen splendors are the same Which over Eden's sunsets came. "To these bowed heavens let wood and hill Lift voiceless praise and anthem still; Fall, warm with blessing, over them, Light of the New Jerusalem! "Flow on, sweet river, like the stream Of John's Apocalyptic dream This mapled ridge shall Horeb be, Yon green-banked lake our Galilee! "Henceforth my heart shall sigh no more For olden time and holier shore; God's love and blessing, then and there, Are now and here and everywhere." 1851. TAULER. TAULER, the preacher, walked, one autumn day, Without the walls of Strasburg, by the Rhine, Pondering the solemn Miracle of Life; As one who, wandering in a starless night, Feels momently the jar of unseen waves, And hears the thunder of an unknown sea, Breaking along an unimagined shore. And as he walked he prayed. Even the same Old prayer with which, for half a score of years, Morning, and noon, and evening, lip and heart Had groaned: "Have pity upon me, Lord! Thou seest, while teaching others, I am blind. Send me a man who can direct my steps!" Then, as he mused, he heard along his path A sound as of an old man's staff among The dry, dead linden-leaves; and, looking up, He saw a stranger, weak, and poor, and old. "Peace be unto thee, father!" Tauler said, "God give thee a good day!" The old man raised Slowly his calm blue eyes. "I thank thee, son; But all my days are good, and none are ill." Wondering thereat, the preacher spake again, "God give thee happy life." The old man smiled, "I never am unhappy." Tauler laid His hand upon the stranger's coarse gray sleeve "Tell me, O father, what thy strange words mean. Surely man's days are evil, and his life Sad as the grave it leads to." "Nay, my son, Our times are in God's hands, and all our days Are as our needs; for shadow as for sun, For cold as heat, for want as wealth, alike Our thanks are due, since that is best which is; And that which is not, sharing not His life, Is evil only as devoid of good. And for the happiness of which I spake, I find it in submission to his will, And calm trust in the holy Trinity Of Knowledge, Goodness, and Almighty Power." Silently wondering, for a little space, Stood the great preacher; then he spake as one Who, suddenly grappling with a haunting thought Which long has followed, whispering through the dark Strange terrors, drags it, shrieking, into light "What if God's will consign thee hence to Hell?" "Then," said the stranger, cheerily, "be it so. What Hell may be I know not; this I know,-- I cannot lose the presence of the Lord. One arm, Humility, takes hold upon His dear Humanity; the other, Love, Clasps his Divinity. So where I go He goes; and better fire-walled Hell with Him Than golden-gated Paradise without." Tears sprang in Tauler's eyes. A sudden light, Like the first ray which fell on chaos, clove Apart the shadow wherein he had walked Darkly at noon. And, as the strange old man Went his slow way, until his silver hair Set like the white moon where the hills of vine Slope to the Rhine, he bowed his head and said "My prayer is answered. God hath sent the man Long sought, to teach me, by his simple trust, Wisdom the weary schoolmen never knew." So, entering with a changed and cheerful step The city gates, he saw, far down the street, A mighty shadow break the light of noon, Which tracing backward till its airy lines Hardened to stony plinths, he raised his eyes O'er broad facade and lofty pediment, O'er architrave and frieze and sainted niche, Up the stone lace-work chiselled by the wise Erwin of Steinbach, dizzily up to where In the noon-brightness the great Minster's tower, Jewelled with sunbeams on its mural crown, Rose like a visible prayer. "Behold!" he said, "The stranger's faith made plain before mine eyes. As yonder tower outstretches to the earth The dark triangle of its shade alone When the clear day is shining on its top, So, darkness in the pathway of Man's life Is but the shadow of God's providence, By the great Sun of Wisdom cast thereon; And what is dark below is light in Heaven." 1853. THE HERMIT OF THE THEBAID. O STRONG, upwelling prayers of faith, From inmost founts of life ye start,-- The spirit's pulse, the vital breath Of soul and heart! From pastoral toil, from traffic's din, Alone, in crowds, at home, abroad, Unheard of man, ye enter in The ear of God. Ye brook no forced and measured tasks, Nor weary rote, nor formal chains; The simple heart, that freely asks In love, obtains. For man the living temple is The mercy-seat and cherubim, And all the holy mysteries, He bears with him. And most avails the prayer of love, Which, wordless, shapes itself in needs, And wearies Heaven for naught above Our common needs. Which brings to God's all-perfect will That trust of His undoubting child Whereby all seeming good and ill Are reconciled. And, seeking not for special signs Of favor, is content to fall Within the providence which shines And rains on all. Alone, the Thebaid hermit leaned At noontime o'er the sacred word. Was it an angel or a fiend Whose voice be heard? It broke the desert's hush of awe, A human utterance, sweet and mild; And, looking up, the hermit saw A little child. A child, with wonder-widened eyes, O'erawed and troubled by the sight Of hot, red sands, and brazen skies, And anchorite. "'What dost thou here, poor man? No shade Of cool, green palms, nor grass, nor well, Nor corn, nor vines." The hermit said "With God I dwell. "Alone with Him in this great calm, I live not by the outward sense; My Nile his love, my sheltering palm His providence." The child gazed round him. "Does God live Here only?--where the desert's rim Is green with corn, at morn and eve, We pray to Him. "My brother tills beside the Nile His little field; beneath the leaves My sisters sit and spin, the while My mother weaves. "And when the millet's ripe heads fall, And all the bean-field hangs in pod, My mother smiles, and, says that all Are gifts from God." Adown the hermit's wasted cheeks Glistened the flow of human tears; "Dear Lord!" he said, "Thy angel speaks, Thy servant hears." Within his arms the child he took, And thought of home and life with men; And all his pilgrim feet forsook Returned again. The palmy shadows cool and long, The eyes that smiled through lavish locks, Home's cradle-hymn and harvest-song, And bleat of flocks. "O child!" he said, "thou teachest me There is no place where God is not; That love will make, where'er it be, A holy spot." He rose from off the desert sand, And, leaning on his staff of thorn, Went with the young child hand in hand, Like night with morn. They crossed the desert's burning line, And heard the palm-tree's rustling fan, The Nile-bird's cry, the low of kine, And voice of man. Unquestioning, his childish guide He followed, as the small hand led To where a woman, gentle-eyed, Her distaff fed. She rose, she clasped her truant boy, She thanked the stranger with her eyes; The hermit gazed in doubt and joy And dumb surprise. And to!--with sudden warmth and light A tender memory thrilled his frame; New-born, the world-lost anchorite A man became. "O sister of El Zara's race, Behold me!--had we not one mother?" She gazed into the stranger's face "Thou art my brother!" "And when to share our evening meal, She calls the stranger at the door, She says God fills the hands that deal Food to the poor." "O kin of blood! Thy life of use And patient trust is more than mine; And wiser than the gray recluse This child of thine. "For, taught of him whom God hath sent, That toil is praise, and love is prayer, I come, life's cares and pains content With thee to share." Even as his foot the threshold crossed, The hermit's better life began; Its holiest saint the Thebaid lost, And found a man! 1854. MAUD MULLER. The recollection of some descendants of a Hessian deserter in the Revolutionary war bearing the name of Muller doubtless suggested the somewhat infelicitous title of a New England idyl. The poem had no real foundation in fact, though a hint of it may have been found in recalling an incident, trivial in itself, of a journey on the picturesque Maine seaboard with my sister some years before it was written. We had stopped to rest our tired horse under the shade of an apple-tree, and refresh him with water from a little brook which rippled through the stone wall across the road. A very beautiful young girl in scantest summer attire was at work in the hay-field, and as we talked with her we noticed that she strove to hide her bare feet by raking hay over them, blushing as she did so, through the tan of her cheek and neck. MAUD MULLER on a summer's day, Raked the meadow sweet with hay. Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth Of simple beauty and rustic-health. Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee The mock-bird echoed from his tree. But when she glanced to the far-off town, White from its hill-slope looking down, The sweet song died, and a vague unrest And a nameless longing filled her breast,-- A wish, that she hardly dared to own, For something better than she had known. The Judge rode slowly down the lane, Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane. He drew his bridle in the shade Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid, And asked a draught from the spring that flowed Through the meadow across the road. She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up, And filled for him her small tin cup, And blushed as she gave it, looking down On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown. "Thanks!" said the Judge; "a sweeter draught From a fairer hand was never quaffed." He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees, Of the singing birds and the humming bees; Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether The cloud in the west would bring foul weather. And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown, And her graceful ankles bare and brown; And listened, while a pleased surprise Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes. At last, like one who for delay Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away. Maud Muller looked and sighed: "Ah me! That I the Judge's bride might be! "He would dress me up in silks so fine, And praise and toast me at his wine. "My father should wear a broadcloth coat; My brother should sail a painted boat. "I'd dress my mother so grand and gay, And the baby should have a new toy each day. "And I 'd feed the hungry and clothe the poor, And all should bless me who left our door." The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill, And saw Maud Muller standing still. A form more fair, a face more sweet, Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet. "And her modest answer and graceful air Show her wise and good as she is fair. "Would she were mine, and I to-day, Like her, a harvester of hay; "No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs, Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues, "But low of cattle and song of birds, And health and quiet and loving words." But he thought of his sisters, proud and cold, And his mother, vain of her rank and gold. So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on, And Maud was left in the field alone. But the lawyers smiled that afternoon, When he hummed in court an old love-tune; And the young girl mused beside the well Till the rain on the unraked clover fell. He wedded a wife of richest dower, Who lived for fashion, as he for power. Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow, He watched a picture come and go; And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes Looked out in their innocent surprise. Oft, when the wine in his glass was red, He longed for the wayside well instead; And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms To dream of meadows and clover-blooms. And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain, "Ah, that I were free again! "Free as when I rode that day, Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay." She wedded a man unlearned and poor, And many children played round her door. But care and sorrow, and childbirth pain, Left their traces on heart and brain. And oft, when the summer sun shone hot On the new-mown hay in the meadow lot, And she heard the little spring brook fall Over the roadside, through the wall, In the shade of the apple-tree again She saw a rider draw his rein. And, gazing down with timid grace, She felt his pleased eyes read her face. Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls Stretched away into stately halls; The weary wheel to a spinnet turned, The tallow candle an astral burned, And for him who sat by the chimney lug, Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug, A manly form at her side she saw, And joy was duty and love was law. Then she took up her burden of life again, Saying only, "It might have been." Alas for maiden, alas for Judge, For rich repiner and household drudge! God pity them both! and pity us all, Who vainly the dreams of youth recall. For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: "It might have been!" Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies Deeply buried from human eyes; And, in the hereafter, angels may Roll the stone from its grave away! 1854. MARY GARVIN. FROM the heart of Waumbek Methna, from the lake that never fails, Falls the Saco in the green lap of Conway's intervales; There, in wild and virgin freshness, its waters foam and flow, As when Darby Field first saw them, two hundred years ago. But, vexed in all its seaward course with bridges, dams, and mills, How changed is Saco's stream, how lost its freedom of the hills, Since travelled Jocelyn, factor Vines, and stately Champernoon Heard on its banks the gray wolf's howl, the trumpet of the loon! With smoking axle hot with speed, with steeds of fire and steam, Wide-waked To-day leaves Yesterday behind him like a dream. Still, from the hurrying train of Life, fly backward far and fast The milestones of the fathers, the landmarks of the past. But human hearts remain unchanged: the sorrow and the sin, The loves and hopes and fears of old, are to our own akin; And if, in tales our fathers told, the songs our mothers sung, Tradition wears a snowy beard, Romance is always young. O sharp-lined man of traffic, on Saco's banks today! O mill-girl watching late and long the shuttle's restless play! Let, for the once, a listening ear the working hand beguile, And lend my old Provincial tale, as suits, a tear or smile! . . . . . . . . . . . . . The evening gun had sounded from gray Fort Mary's walls; Through the forest, like a wild beast, roared and plunged the Saco's' falls. And westward on the sea-wind, that damp and gusty grew, Over cedars darkening inland the smokes of Spurwink blew. On the hearth of Farmer Garvin, blazed the crackling walnut log; Right and left sat dame and goodman, and between them lay the dog, Head on paws, and tail slow wagging, and beside him on her mat, Sitting drowsy in the firelight, winked and purred the mottled cat. "Twenty years!" said Goodman Garvin, speaking sadly, under breath, And his gray head slowly shaking, as one who speaks of death. The goodwife dropped her needles: "It is twenty years to-day, Since the Indians fell on Saco, and stole our child away." Then they sank into the silence, for each knew the other's thought, Of a great and common sorrow, and words were, needed not. "Who knocks?" cried Goodman Garvin. The door was open thrown; On two strangers, man and maiden, cloaked and furred, the fire-light shone. One with courteous gesture lifted the bear-skin from his head; "Lives here Elkanah Garvin?" "I am he," the goodman said. "Sit ye down, and dry and warm ye, for the night is chill with rain." And the goodwife drew the settle, and stirred the fire amain. The maid unclasped her cloak-hood, the firelight glistened fair In her large, moist eyes, and over soft folds of dark brown hair. Dame Garvin looked upon her: "It is Mary's self I see!" "Dear heart!" she cried, "now tell me, has my child come back to me?" "My name indeed is Mary," said the stranger sobbing wild; "Will you be to me a mother? I am Mary Garvin's child!" "She sleeps by wooded Simcoe, but on her dying day She bade my father take me to her kinsfolk far away. "And when the priest besought her to do me no such wrong, She said, 'May God forgive me! I have closed my heart too long.' "'When I hid me from my father, and shut out my mother's call, I sinned against those dear ones, and the Father of us all. "'Christ's love rebukes no home-love, breaks no tie of kin apart; Better heresy in doctrine, than heresy of heart. "'Tell me not the Church must censure: she who wept the Cross beside Never made her own flesh strangers, nor the claims of blood denied; "'And if she who wronged her parents, with her child atones to them, Earthly daughter, Heavenly Mother! thou at least wilt not condemn!' "So, upon her death-bed lying, my blessed mother spake; As we come to do her bidding, So receive us for her sake." "God be praised!" said Goodwife Garvin, "He taketh, and He gives; He woundeth, but He healeth; in her child our daughter lives!" "Amen!" the old man answered, as he brushed a tear away, And, kneeling by his hearthstone, said, with reverence, "Let us pray." All its Oriental symbols, and its Hebrew pararphrase, Warm with earnest life and feeling, rose his prayer of love and praise. But he started at beholding, as he rose from off his knee, The stranger cross his forehead with the sign of Papistrie. "What is this?" cried Farmer Garvin. "Is an English Christian's home A chapel or a mass-house, that you make the sign of Rome?" Then the young girl knelt beside him, kissed his trembling hand, and cried: Oh, forbear to chide my father; in that faith my mother died! "On her wooden cross at Simcoe the dews and sunshine fall, As they fall on Spurwink's graveyard; and the dear God watches all!" The old man stroked the fair head that rested on his knee; "Your words, dear child," he answered, "are God's rebuke to me. "Creed and rite perchance may differ, yet our faith and hope be one. Let me be your father's father, let him be to me a son." When the horn, on Sabbath morning, through the still and frosty air, From Spurwink, Pool, and Black Point, called to sermon and to prayer, To the goodly house of worship, where, in order due and fit, As by public vote directed, classed and ranked the people sit; Mistress first and goodwife after, clerkly squire before the clown, "From the brave coat, lace-embroidered, to the gray frock, shading down;" From the pulpit read the preacher, "Goodman Garvin and his wife Fain would thank the Lord, whose kindness has followed them through life, "For the great and crowning mercy, that their daughter, from the wild, Where she rests (they hope in God's peace), has sent to them her child; "And the prayers of all God's people they ask, that they may prove Not unworthy, through their weakness, of such special proof of love." As the preacher prayed, uprising, the aged couple stood, And the fair Canadian also, in her modest maiden- hood. Thought the elders, grave and doubting, "She is Papist born and bred;" Thought the young men, "'T is an angel in Mary Garvin's stead!" THE RANGER. Originally published as Martha Mason; a Song of the Old French War. ROBERT RAWLIN!--Frosts were falling When the ranger's horn was calling Through the woods to Canada. Gone the winter's sleet and snowing, Gone the spring-time's bud and blowing, Gone the summer's harvest mowing, And again the fields are gray. Yet away, he's away! Faint and fainter hope is growing In the hearts that mourn his stay. Where the lion, crouching high on Abraham's rock with teeth of iron, Glares o'er wood and wave away, Faintly thence, as pines far sighing, Or as thunder spent and dying, Come the challenge and replying, Come the sounds of flight and fray. Well-a-day! Hope and pray! Some are living, some are lying In their red graves far away. Straggling rangers, worn with dangers, Homeward faring, weary strangers Pass the farm-gate on their way; Tidings of the dead and living, Forest march and ambush, giving, Till the maidens leave their weaving, And the lads forget their play. "Still away, still away!" Sighs a sad one, sick with grieving, "Why does Robert still delay!" Nowhere fairer, sweeter, rarer, Does the golden-locked fruit bearer Through his painted woodlands stray, Than where hillside oaks and beeches Overlook the long, blue reaches, Silver coves and pebbled beaches, And green isles of Casco Bay; Nowhere day, for delay, With a tenderer look beseeches, "Let me with my charmed earth stay." On the grain-lands of the mainlands Stands the serried corn like train-bands, Plume and pennon rustling gay; Out at sea, the islands wooded, Silver birches, golden-hooded, Set with maples, crimson-blooded, White sea-foam and sand-hills gray, Stretch away, far away. Dim and dreamy, over-brooded By the hazy autumn day. Gayly chattering to the clattering Of the brown nuts downward pattering, Leap the squirrels, red and gray. On the grass-land, on the fallow, Drop the apples, red and yellow; Drop the russet pears and mellow, Drop the red leaves all the day. And away, swift away, Sun and cloud, o'er hill and hollow Chasing, weave their web of play. "Martha Mason, Martha Mason, Prithee tell us of the reason Why you mope at home to-day Surely smiling is not sinning; Leave, your quilling, leave your spinning; What is all your store of linen, If your heart is never gay? Come away, come away! Never yet did sad beginning Make the task of life a play." Overbending, till she's blending With the flaxen skein she's tending Pale brown tresses smoothed away From her face of patient sorrow, Sits she, seeking but to borrow, From the trembling hope of morrow, Solace for the weary day. "Go your way, laugh and play; Unto Him who heeds the sparrow And the lily, let me pray." "With our rally, rings the valley,-- Join us!" cried the blue-eyed Nelly; "Join us!" cried the laughing May, "To the beach we all are going, And, to save the task of rowing, West by north the wind is blowing, Blowing briskly down the bay Come away, come away! Time and tide are swiftly flowing, Let us take them while we may! "Never tell us that you'll fail us, Where the purple beach-plum mellows On the bluffs so wild and gray. Hasten, for the oars are falling; Hark, our merry mates are calling; Time it is that we were all in, Singing tideward down the bay!" "Nay, nay, let me stay; Sore and sad for Robert Rawlin Is my heart," she said, "to-day." "Vain your calling for Rob Rawlin Some red squaw his moose-meat's broiling, Or some French lass, singing gay; Just forget as he's forgetting; What avails a life of fretting? If some stars must needs be setting, Others rise as good as they." "Cease, I pray; go your way!" Martha cries, her eyelids wetting; "Foul and false the words you say!" "Martha Mason, hear to reason!-- Prithee, put a kinder face on!" "Cease to vex me," did she say; "Better at his side be lying, With the mournful pine-trees sighing, And the wild birds o'er us crying, Than to doubt like mine a prey; While away, far away, Turns my heart, forever trying Some new hope for each new day. "When the shadows veil the meadows, And the sunset's golden ladders Sink from twilight's walls of gray,-- From the window of my dreaming, I can see his sickle gleaming, Cheery-voiced, can hear him teaming Down the locust-shaded way; But away, swift away, Fades the fond, delusive seeming, And I kneel again to pray. "When the growing dawn is showing, And the barn-yard cock is crowing, And the horned moon pales away From a dream of him awaking, Every sound my heart is making Seems a footstep of his taking; Then I hush the thought, and say, 'Nay, nay, he's away!' Ah! my heart, my heart is breaking For the dear one far away." Look up, Martha! worn and swarthy, Glows a face of manhood worthy "Robert!" "Martha!" all they say. O'er went wheel and reel together, Little cared the owner whither; Heart of lead is heart of feather, Noon of night is noon of day! Come away, come away! When such lovers meet each other, Why should prying idlers stay? Quench the timber's fallen embers, Quench the recd leaves in December's Hoary rime and chilly spray. But the hearth shall kindle clearer, Household welcomes sound sincerer, Heart to loving heart draw nearer, When the bridal bells shall say: "Hope and pray, trust alway; Life is sweeter, love is dearer, For the trial and delay!" 1856. THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN. FROM the hills of home forth looking, far beneath the tent-like span Of the sky, I see the white gleam of the headland of Cape Ann. Well I know its coves and beaches to the ebb-tide glimmering down, And the white-walled hamlet children of its ancient fishing town. Long has passed the summer morning, and its memory waxes old, When along yon breezy headlands with a pleasant friend I strolled. Ah! the autumn sun is shining, and the ocean wind blows cool, And the golden-rod and aster bloom around thy grave, Rantoul! With the memory of that morning by the summer sea I blend A wild and wondrous story, by the younger Mather penned, In that quaint Magnalia Christi, with all strange and marvellous things, Heaped up huge and undigested, like the chaos Ovid sings. Dear to me these far, faint glimpses of the dual life of old, Inward, grand with awe and reverence; outward, mean and coarse and cold; Gleams of mystic beauty playing over dull and vulgar clay, Golden-threaded fancies weaving in a web of hodden gray. The great eventful Present hides the Past; but through the din Of its loud life hints and echoes from the life behind steal in; And the lore of homeland fireside, and the legendary rhyme, Make the task of duty lighter which the true man owes his time. So, with something of the feeling which the Covenanter knew, When with pious chisel wandering Scotland's moorland graveyards through, From the graves of old traditions I part the black- berry-vines, Wipe the moss from off the headstones, and retouch the faded lines. Where the sea-waves back and forward, hoarse with rolling pebbles, ran, The garrison-house stood watching on the gray rocks of Cape Ann; On its windy site uplifting gabled roof and palisade, And rough walls of unhewn timber with the moonlight overlaid. On his slow round walked the sentry, south and eastward looking forth O'er a rude and broken coast-line, white with breakers stretching north,-- Wood and rock and gleaming sand-drift, jagged capes, with bush and tree, Leaning inland from the smiting of the wild and gusty sea. Before the deep-mouthed chimney, dimly lit by dying brands, Twenty soldiers sat and waited, with their muskets in their hands; On the rough-hewn oaken table the venison haunch was shared, And the pewter tankard circled slowly round from beard to beard. Long they sat and talked together,--talked of wizards Satan-sold; Of all ghostly sights and noises,--signs and wonders manifold; Of the spectre-ship of Salem, with the dead men in her shrouds, Sailing sheer above the water, in the loom of morning clouds; Of the marvellous valley hidden in the depths of Gloucester woods, Full of plants that love the summer,--blooms of warmer latitudes; Where the Arctic birch is braided by the tropic's flowery vines, And the white magnolia-blossoms star the twilight of the pines! But their voices sank yet lower, sank to husky tones of fear, As they spake of present tokens of the powers of evil near; Of a spectral host, defying stroke of steel and aim of gun; Never yet was ball to slay them in the mould of mortals run. Thrice, with plumes and flowing scalp-locks, from the midnight wood they came,-- Thrice around the block-house marching, met, unharmed, its volleyed flame; Then, with mocking laugh and gesture, sunk in earth or lost in air, All the ghostly wonder vanished, and the moonlit sands lay bare. Midnight came; from out the forest moved a dusky mass that soon Grew to warriors, plumed and painted, grimly marching in the moon. "Ghosts or witches," said the captain, "thus I foil the Evil One!" And he rammed a silver button, from his doublet, down his gun. Once again the spectral horror moved the guarded wall about; Once again the levelled muskets through the palisades flashed out, With that deadly aim the squirrel on his tree-top might not shun, Nor the beach-bird seaward flying with his slant wing to the sun. Like the idle rain of summer sped the harmless shower of lead. With a laugh of fierce derision, once again the phantoms fled; Once again, without a shadow on the sands the moonlight lay, And the white smoke curling through it drifted slowly down the bay! "God preserve us!" said the captain; "never mortal foes were there; They have vanished with their leader, Prince and Power of the air! Lay aside your useless weapons; skill and prowess naught avail; They who do the Devil's service wear their master's coat of mail!" So the night grew near to cock-crow, when again a warning call Roused the score of weary soldiers watching round the dusky hall And they looked to flint and priming, and they longed for break of day; But the captain closed his Bible: "Let us cease from man, and pray!" To the men who went before us, all the unseen powers seemed near, And their steadfast strength of courage struck its roots in holy fear. Every hand forsook the musket, every head was bowed and bare, Every stout knee pressed the flag-stones, as the captain led in prayer. Ceased thereat the mystic marching of the spectres round the wall, But a sound abhorred, unearthly, smote the ears and hearts of all,-- Howls of rage and shrieks of anguish! Never after mortal man Saw the ghostly leaguers marching round the block-house of Cape Ann. So to us who walk in summer through the cool and sea-blown town, From the childhood of its people comes the solemn legend down. Not in vain the ancient fiction, in whose moral lives the youth And the fitness and the freshness of an undecaying truth. Soon or late to all our dwellings come the spectres of the mind, Doubts and fears and dread forebodings, in the darkness undefined; Round us throng the grim projections of the heart and of the brain, And our pride of strength is weakness, and the cunning hand is vain. In the dark we cry like children; and no answer from on high Breaks the crystal spheres of silence, and no white wings downward fly; But the heavenly help we pray for comes to faith, and not to sight, And our prayers themselves drive backward all the spirits of the night! 1857. THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS. TRITEMIUS of Herbipolis, one day, While kneeling at the altar's foot to pray, Alone with God, as was his pious choice, Heard from without a miserable voice, A sound which seemed of all sad things to tell, As of a lost soul crying out of hell. Thereat the Abbot paused; the chain whereby His thoughts went upward broken by that cry; And, looking from the casement, saw below A wretched woman, with gray hair a-flow, And withered hands held up to him, who cried For alms as one who might not be denied. She cried, "For the dear love of Him who gave His life for ours, my child from bondage save,-- My beautiful, brave first-born, chained with slaves In the Moor's galley, where the sun-smit waves Lap the white walls of Tunis!"--"What I can I give," Tritemius said, "my prayers."--"O man Of God!" she cried, for grief had made her bold, "Mock me not thus; I ask not prayers, but gold. Words will not serve me, alms alone suffice; Even while I speak perchance my first-born dies." "Woman!" Tritemius answered, "from our door None go unfed, hence are we always poor; A single soldo is our only store. Thou hast our prayers;--what can we give thee more?" "Give me," she said, "the silver candlesticks On either side of the great crucifix. God well may spare them on His errands sped, Or He can give you golden ones instead." Then spake Tritemius, "Even as thy word, Woman, so be it! Our most gracious Lord, Who loveth mercy more than sacrifice, Pardon me if a human soul I prize Above the gifts upon his altar piled! Take what thou askest, and redeem thy child." But his hand trembled as the holy alms He placed within the beggar's eager palms; And as she vanished down the linden shade, He bowed his head and for forgiveness prayed. So the day passed, and when the twilight came He woke to find the chapel all aflame, And, dumb with grateful wonder, to behold Upon the altar candlesticks of gold! 1857. SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE. In the valuable and carefully prepared History of Marblehead, published in 1879 by Samuel Roads, Jr., it is stated that the crew of Captain Ireson, rather than himself, were responsible for the abandonment of the disabled vessel. To screen themselves they charged their captain with the crime. In view of this the writer of the ballad addressed the following letter to the historian:-- OAK KNOLL, DANVERS, 5 mo. 18, 1880. MY DEAR FRIEND: I heartily thank thee for a copy of thy History of Marblehead. I have read it with great interest and think good use has been made of the abundant material. No town in Essex County has a record more honorable than Marblehead; no one has done more to develop the industrial interests of our New England seaboard, and certainly none have given such evidence of self-sacrificing patriotism. I am glad the story of it has been at last told, and told so well. I have now no doubt that thy version of Skipper Ireson's ride is the correct one. My verse was founded solely on a fragment of rhyme which I heard from one of my early schoolmates, a native of Marblehead. I supposed the story to which it referred dated back at least a century. I knew nothing of the participators, and the narrative of the ballad was pure fancy. I am glad for the sake of truth and justice that the real facts are given in thy book. I certainly would not knowingly do injustice to any one, dead or living. I am very truly thy friend, JOHN G. WHITTIER. OF all the rides since, the birth of time, Told in story or sung in rhyme,-- On Apuleius's Golden Ass, Or one-eyed Calendar's horse of brass; Witch astride of a human back, Islam's prophet on Al-Borak,-- The strangest ride that ever was sped Was Ireson's, out from Marblehead! Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead! Body of turkey, head of owl, Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl, Feathered and ruffled in every part, Skipper Ireson stood in the cart. Scores of women, old and young, Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue, Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane, Shouting and singing the shrill refrain "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women o' Morble'ead!" Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips, Girls in bloom of cheek and lips, Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase Bacchus round some antique vase, Brief of skirt, with ankles bare, Loose of kerchief and loose of hair, With conch-shells blowing and fish-horns' twang, Over and over the Manads sang "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an dorr'd in a corrt By the women o' Morble'ead!" Small pity for him!--He sailed away From a leaking ship, in Chaleur Bay,-- Sailed away from a sinking wreck, With his own town's-people on her deck! "Lay by! lay by!" they called to him. Back he answered, "Sink or swim! Brag of your catch of fish again!" And off he sailed through the fog and rain! Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead! Fathoms deep in dark Chaleur That wreck shall lie forevermore. Mother and sister, wife and maid, Looked from the rocks of Marblehead Over the moaning and rainy sea,-- Looked for the coming that might not be! What did the winds and the sea-birds say Of the cruel captain who sailed away?-- Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead! Through the street, on either side, Up flew windows, doors swung wide; Sharp-tongued spinsters, old wives gray, Treble lent the fish-horn's bray. Sea-worn grandsires, cripple-bound, Hulks of old sailors run aground, Shook head, and fist, and hat, and cane, And cracked with curses the hoarse refrain "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women o''Morble'ead!" Sweetly along the Salem road Bloom of orchard and lilac showed. Little the wicked skipper knew Of the fields so green and the sky so blue. Riding there in his sorry trim, Like to Indian idol glum and grim, Scarcely he seemed the sound to hear Of voices shouting, far and near "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women o' Morble'ead!" "Hear me, neighbors!" at last he cried,-- "What to me is this noisy ride? What is the shame that clothes the skin To the nameless horror that lives within? Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck, And hear a cry from a reeling deck! Hate me and curse me,--I only dread The hand of God and the face of the dead!" Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead! Then the wife of the skipper lost at sea Said, "God has touched him! why should we?" Said an old wife mourning her only son, "Cut the rogue's tether and let him run!" So with soft relentings and rude excuse, Half scorn, half pity, they cut him loose, And gave him a cloak to hide him in, And left him alone with his shame and sin. Poor Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead! 1857. THE SYCAMORES. Hugh Tallant was the first Irish resident of Haverhill, Mass. He planted the button-wood trees on the bank of the river below the village in the early part of the seventeenth century. Unfortunately this noble avenue is now nearly destroyed. IN the outskirts of the village, On the river's winding shores, Stand the Occidental plane-trees, Stand the ancient sycamores. One long century hath been numbered, And another half-way told, Since the rustic Irish gleeman Broke for them the virgin mould. Deftly set to Celtic music, At his violin's sound they grew, Through the moonlit eves of summer, Making Amphion's fable true. Rise again, then poor Hugh Tallant Pass in jerkin green along, With thy eyes brimful of laughter, And thy mouth as full of song. Pioneer of Erin's outcasts, With his fiddle and his pack; Little dreamed the village Saxons Of the myriads at his back. How he wrought with spade and fiddle, Delved by day and sang by night, With a hand that never wearied, And a heart forever light,-- Still the gay tradition mingles With a record grave and drear, Like the rollic air of Cluny, With the solemn march of Mear. When the box-tree, white with blossoms, Made the sweet May woodlands glad, And the Aronia by the river Lighted up the swarming shad, And the bulging nets swept shoreward, With their silver-sided haul, Midst the shouts of dripping fishers, He was merriest of them all. When, among the jovial huskers, Love stole in at Labor's side, With the lusty airs of England, Soft his Celtic measures vied. Songs of love and wailing lyke--wake, And the merry fair's carouse; Of the wild Red Fox of Erin And the Woman of Three Cows, By the blazing hearths of winter, Pleasant seemed his simple tales, Midst the grimmer Yorkshire legends And the mountain myths of Wales. How the souls in Purgatory Scrambled up from fate forlorn, On St. Eleven's sackcloth ladder, Slyly hitched to Satan's horn. Of the fiddler who at Tara Played all night to ghosts of kings; Of the brown dwarfs, and the fairies Dancing in their moorland rings. Jolliest of our birds of singing, Best he loved the Bob-o-link. "Hush!" he 'd say, "the tipsy fairies Hear the little folks in drink!" Merry-faced, with spade and fiddle, Singing through the ancient town, Only this, of poor Hugh Tallant, Hath Tradition handed down. Not a stone his grave discloses; But if yet his spirit walks, 'T is beneath the trees he planted, And when Bob-o-Lincoln talks; Green memorials of the gleeman I Linking still the river-shores, With their shadows cast by sunset, Stand Hugh Tallant's sycamores! When the Father of his Country Through the north-land riding came, And the roofs were starred with banners, And the steeples rang acclaim,-- When each war-scarred Continental, Leaving smithy, mill, and farm, Waved his rusted sword in welcome, And shot off his old king's arm,-- Slowly passed that August Presence Down the thronged and shouting street; Village girls as white as angels, Scattering flowers around his feet. Midway, where the plane-tree's shadow Deepest fell, his rein he drew On his stately head, uncovered, Cool and soft the west-wind blew. And he stood up in his stirrups, Looking up and looking down On the hills of Gold and Silver Rimming round the little town,-- On the river, full of sunshine, To the lap of greenest vales Winding down from wooded headlands, Willow-skirted, white with sails. And he said, the landscape sweeping Slowly with his ungloved hand, "I have seen no prospect fairer In this goodly Eastern land." Then the bugles of his escort Stirred to life the cavalcade And that head, so bare and stately, Vanished down the depths of shade. Ever since, in town and farm-house, Life has had its ebb and flow; Thrice hath passed the human harvest To its garner green and low. But the trees the gleeman planted, Through the changes, changeless stand; As the marble calm of Tadmor Mocks the desert's shifting sand. Still the level moon at rising Silvers o'er each stately shaft; Still beneath them, half in shadow, Singing, glides the pleasure craft; Still beneath them, arm-enfolded, Love and Youth together stray; While, as heart to heart beats faster, More and more their feet delay. Where the ancient cobbler, Keezar, On the open hillside wrought, Singing, as he drew his stitches, Songs his German masters taught, Singing, with his gray hair floating Round his rosy ample face,-- Now a thousand Saxon craftsmen Stitch and hammer in his place. All the pastoral lanes so grassy Now are Traffic's dusty streets; From the village, grown a city, Fast the rural grace retreats. But, still green, and tall, and stately, On the river's winding shores, Stand the Occidental plane-trees, Stand, Hugh Taliant's sycamores. 1857. THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW. An incident of the Sepoy mutiny. PIPES of the misty moorlands, Voice of the glens and hills; The droning of the torrents, The treble of the rills! Not the braes of broom and heather, Nor the mountains dark with rain, Nor maiden bower, nor border tower, Have heard your sweetest strain! Dear to the Lowland reaper, And plaided mountaineer,-- To the cottage and the castle The Scottish pipes are dear;-- Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch O'er mountain, loch, and glade; But the sweetest of all music The pipes at Lucknow played. Day by day the Indian tiger Louder yelled, and nearer crept; Round and round the jungle-serpent Near and nearer circles swept. "Pray for rescue, wives and mothers,-- Pray to-day!" the soldier said; "To-morrow, death's between us And the wrong and shame we dread." Oh, they listened, looked, and waited, Till their hope became despair; And the sobs of low bewailing Filled the pauses of their prayer. Then up spake a Scottish maiden, With her ear unto the ground "Dinna ye hear it?--dinna ye hear it? The pipes o' Havelock sound!" Hushed the wounded man his groaning; Hushed the wife her little ones; Alone they heard the drum-roll And the roar of Sepoy guns. But to sounds of home and childhood The Highland ear was true;-- As her mother's cradle-crooning The mountain pipes she knew. Like the march of soundless music Through the vision of the seer, More of feeling than of hearing, Of the heart than of the ear, She knew the droning pibroch, She knew the Campbell's call "Hark! hear ye no' MacGregor's, The grandest o' them all!" Oh, they listened, dumb and breathless, And they caught the sound at last; Faint and far beyond the Goomtee Rose and fell the piper's blast Then a burst of wild thanksgiving Mingled woman's voice and man's; "God be praised!--the march of Havelock! The piping of the clans!" Louder, nearer, fierce as vengeance, Sharp and shrill as swords at strife, Came the wild MacGregor's clan-call, Stinging all the air to life. But when the far-off dust-cloud To plaided legions grew, Full tenderly and blithesomely The pipes of rescue blew! Round the silver domes of Lucknow, Moslem mosque and Pagan shrine, Breathed the air to Britons dearest, The air of Auld Lang Syne. O'er the cruel roll of war-drums Rose that sweet and homelike strain; And the tartan clove the turban, As the Goomtee cleaves the plain. Dear to the corn-land reaper And plaided mountaineer,-- To the cottage and the castle The piper's song is dear. Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibroch O'er mountain, glen, and glade; But the sweetest of all music The Pipes at Lucknow played! 1858. TELLING THE BEES. A remarkable custom, brought from the Old Country, formerly prevailed in the rural districts of New England. On the death of a member of the family, the bees were at once informed of the event, and their hives dressed in mourning. This ceremonial was supposed to be necessary to prevent the swarms from leaving their hives and seeking a new home. HERE is the place; right over the hill Runs the path I took; You can see the gap in the old wall still, And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook. There is the house, with the gate red-barred, And the poplars tall; And the barn's brown length, and the cattle-yard, And the white horns tossing above the wall. There are the beehives ranged in the sun; And down by the brink Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o'errun, Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink. A year has gone, as the tortoise goes, Heavy and slow; And the same rose blooms, and the same sun glows, And the same brook sings of a year ago. There's the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze; And the June sun warm Tangles his wings of fire in the trees, Setting, as then, over Fernside farm. I mind me how with a lover's care From my Sunday coat I brushed off the burrs, and smoothed my hair, And cooled at the brookside my brow and throat. Since we parted, a month had passed,-- To love, a year; Down through the beeches I looked at last On the little red gate and the well-sweep near. I can see it all now,--the slantwise rain Of light through the leaves, The sundown's blaze on her window-pane, The bloom of her roses under the eaves. Just the same as a month before,-- The house and the trees, The barn's brown gable, the vine by the door,-- Nothing changed but the hives of bees. Before them, under the garden wall, Forward and back, Went drearily singing the chore-girl small, Draping each hive with a shred of black. Trembling, I listened: the summer sun Had the chill of snow; For I knew she was telling the bees of one Gone on the journey we all must go. Then I said to myself, "My Mary weeps For the dead to-day; Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps The fret and the pain of his age away." But her dog whined low; on the doorway sill, With his cane to his chin, The old man sat; and the chore-girl still Sung to the bees stealing out and in. And the song she was singing ever since In my ear sounds on:-- "Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence! Mistress Mary is dead and gone!" 1858. THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERY. In Young's Chronicles of Massachusetts Bay front 1623 to 1636 may be found Anthony Thacher's Narrative of his Shipwreck. Thacher was Avery's companion and survived to tell the tale. Mather's Magnalia, III. 2, gives further Particulars of Parson Avery's End, and suggests the title of the poem. WHEN the reaper's task was ended, and the summer wearing late, Parson Avery sailed from Newbury, with his wife and children eight, Dropping down the river-harbor in the shallop "Watch and Wait." Pleasantly lay the clearings in the mellow summer- morn, With the newly planted orchards dropping their fruits first-born, And the home-roofs like brown islands amid a sea of corn. Broad meadows reached out 'seaward the tided creeks between, And hills rolled wave-like inland, with oaks and walnuts green;-- A fairer home, a--goodlier land, his eyes had never seen. Yet away sailed Parson Avery, away where duty led, And the voice of God seemed calling, to break the living bread To the souls of fishers starving on the rocks of Marblehead. All day they sailed: at nightfall the pleasant land- breeze died, The blackening sky, at midnight, its starry lights denied, And far and low the thunder of tempest prophesied. Blotted out were all the coast-lines, gone were rock, and wood, and sand; Grimly anxious stood the skipper with the rudder in his hand, And questioned of the darkness what was sea and what was land. And the preacher heard his dear ones, nestled round him, weeping sore, "Never heed, my little children! Christ is walking on before; To the pleasant land of heaven, where the sea shall be no more." All at once the great cloud parted, like a curtain drawn aside, To let down the torch of lightning on the terror far and wide; And the thunder and the whirlwind together smote the tide. There was wailing in the shallop, woman's wail and man's despair, A crash of breaking timbers on the rocks so sharp and bare, And, through it all, the murmur of Father Avery's prayer. From his struggle in the darkness with the wild waves and the blast, On a rock, where every billow broke above him as it passed, Alone, of all his household, the man of God was cast. There a comrade heard him praying, in the pause of wave and wind "All my own have gone before me, and I linger just behind; Not for life I ask, but only for the rest Thy ransomed find! "In this night of death I challenge the promise of Thy word!-- Let me see the great salvation of which mine ears have heard!-- Let me pass from hence forgiven, through the grace of Christ, our Lord! "In the baptism of these waters wash white my every sin, And let me follow up to Thee my household and my kin! Open the sea-gate of Thy heaven, and let me enter in!" When the Christian sings his death-song, all the listening heavens draw near, And the angels, leaning over the walls of crystal, hear How the notes so faint and broken swell to music in God's ear. The ear of God was open to His servant's last request; As the strong wave swept him downward the sweet hymn upward pressed, And the soul of Father Avery went, singing, to its rest. There was wailing on the mainland, from the rocks of Marblehead; In the stricken church of Newbury the notes of prayer were read; And long, by board and hearthstone, the living mourned the dead. And still the fishers outbound, or scudding from the squall, With grave and reverent faces, the ancient tale recall, When they see the white waves breaking on the Rock of Avery's Fall! 1808. THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE OF NEWBURY. "Concerning ye Amphisbaena, as soon as I received your commands, I made diligent inquiry: . . . he assures me yt it had really two heads, one at each end; two mouths, two stings or tongues."--REV. CHRISTOPHER TOPPAN to COTTON MATHER. FAR away in the twilight time Of every people, in every clime, Dragons and griffins and monsters dire, Born of water, and air, and fire, Or nursed, like the Python, in the mud And ooze of the old Deucalion flood, Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage, Through dusk tradition and ballad age. So from the childhood of Newbury town And its time of fable the tale comes down Of a terror which haunted bush and brake, The Amphisbaena, the Double Snake! Thou who makest the tale thy mirth, Consider that strip of Christian earth On the desolate shore of a sailless sea, Full of terror and mystery, Half redeemed from the evil hold Of the wood so dreary, and dark, and old, Which drank with its lips of leaves the dew When Time was young, and the world was new, And wove its shadows with sun and moon, Ere the stones of Cheops were squared and hewn. Think of the sea's dread monotone, Of the mournful wail from the pine-wood blown, Of the strange, vast splendors that lit the North, Of the troubled throes of the quaking earth, And the dismal tales the Indian told, Till the settler's heart at his hearth grew cold, And he shrank from the tawny wizard boasts, And the hovering shadows seemed full of ghosts, And above, below, and on every side, The fear of his creed seemed verified;-- And think, if his lot were now thine own, To grope with terrors nor named nor known, How laxer muscle and weaker nerve And a feebler faith thy need might serve; And own to thyself the wonder more That the snake had two heads, and not a score! Whether he lurked in the Oldtown fen Or the gray earth-flax of the Devil's Den, Or swam in the wooded Artichoke, Or coiled by the Northman's Written Rock, Nothing on record is left to show; Only the fact that he lived, we know, And left the cast of a double head In the scaly mask which he yearly shed. For he carried a head where his tail should be, And the two, of course, could never agree, But wriggled about with main and might, Now to the left and now to the right; Pulling and twisting this way and that, Neither knew what the other was at. A snake with two beads, lurking so near! Judge of the wonder, guess at the fear! Think what ancient gossips might say, Shaking their heads in their dreary way, Between the meetings on Sabbath-day! How urchins, searching at day's decline The Common Pasture for sheep or kine, The terrible double-ganger heard In leafy rustle or whir of bird! Think what a zest it gave to the sport, In berry-time, of the younger sort, As over pastures blackberry-twined, Reuben and Dorothy lagged behind, And closer and closer, for fear of harm, The maiden clung to her lover's arm; And how the spark, who was forced to stay, By his sweetheart's fears, till the break of day, Thanked the snake for the fond delay. Far and wide the tale was told, Like a snowball growing while it rolled. The nurse hushed with it the baby's cry; And it served, in the worthy minister's eye, To paint the primitive serpent by. Cotton Mather came galloping down All the way to Newbury town, With his eyes agog and his ears set wide, And his marvellous inkhorn at his side; Stirring the while in the shallow pool Of his brains for the lore he learned at school, To garnish the story, with here a streak Of Latin, and there another of Greek And the tales he heard and the notes he took, Behold! are they not in his Wonder-Book? Stories, like dragons, are hard to kill. If the snake does not, the tale runs still In Byfield Meadows, on Pipestave Hill. And still, whenever husband and wife Publish the shame of their daily strife, And, with mad cross-purpose, tug and strain At either end of the marriage-chain, The gossips say, with a knowing shake Of their gray heads, "Look at the Double Snake One in body and two in will, The Amphisbaena is living still!" 1859. MABEL MARTIN. A HARVEST IDYL. Susanna Martin, an aged woman of Amesbury, Mass., was tried and executed for the alleged crime of witchcraft. Her home was in what is now known as Pleasant Valley on the Merrimac, a little above the old Ferry way, where, tradition says, an attempt was made to assassinate Sir Edmund Andros on his way to Falmouth (afterward Portland) and Pemaquid, which was frustrated by a warning timely given. Goody Martin was the only woman hanged on the north side of the Merrimac during the dreadful delusion. The aged wife of Judge Bradbury who lived on the other side of the Powow River was imprisoned and would have been put to death but for the collapse of the hideous persecution. The substance of the poem which follows was published under the name of The Witch's Daughter, in The National Era in 1857. In 1875 my publishers desired to issue it with illustrations, and I then enlarged it and otherwise altered it to its present form. The principal addition was in the verses which constitute Part I. PROEM. I CALL the old time back: I bring my lay in tender memory of the summer day When, where our native river lapsed away, We dreamed it over, while the thrushes made Songs of their own, and the great pine-trees laid On warm noonlights the masses of their shade. And she was with us, living o'er again Her life in ours, despite of years and pain,-- The Autumn's brightness after latter rain. Beautiful in her holy peace as one Who stands, at evening, when the work is done, Glorified in the setting of the sun! Her memory makes our common landscape seem Fairer than any of which painters dream; Lights the brown hills and sings in every stream; For she whose speech was always truth's pure gold Heard, not unpleased, its simple legends told, And loved with us the beautiful and old. I. THE RIVER VALLEY. Across the level tableland, A grassy, rarely trodden way, With thinnest skirt of birchen spray And stunted growth of cedar, leads To where you see the dull plain fall Sheer off, steep-slanted, ploughed by all The seasons' rainfalls. On its brink The over-leaning harebells swing, With roots half bare the pine-trees cling; And, through the shadow looking west, You see the wavering river flow Along a vale, that far below Holds to the sun, the sheltering hills And glimmering water-line between, Broad fields of corn and meadows green, And fruit-bent orchards grouped around The low brown roofs and painted eaves, And chimney-tops half hid in leaves. No warmer valley hides behind Yon wind-scourged sand-dunes, cold and bleak; No fairer river comes to seek The wave-sung welcome of the sea, Or mark the northmost border line Of sun-loved growths of nut and vine. Here, ground-fast in their native fields, Untempted by the city's gain, The quiet farmer folk remain Who bear the pleasant name of Friends, And keep their fathers' gentle ways And simple speech of Bible days; In whose neat homesteads woman holds With modest ease her equal place, And wears upon her tranquil face The look of one who, merging not Her self-hood in another's will, Is love's and duty's handmaid still. Pass with me down the path that winds Through birches to the open land, Where, close upon the river strand You mark a cellar, vine o'errun, Above whose wall of loosened stones The sumach lifts its reddening cones, And the black nightshade's berries shine, And broad, unsightly burdocks fold The household ruin, century-old. Here, in the dim colonial time Of sterner lives and gloomier faith, A woman lived, tradition saith, Who wrought her neighbors foul annoy, And witched and plagued the country-side, Till at the hangman's hand she died. Sit with me while the westering day Falls slantwise down the quiet vale, And, haply ere yon loitering sail, That rounds the upper headland, falls Below Deer Island's pines, or sees Behind it Hawkswood's belt of trees Rise black against the sinking sun, My idyl of its days of old, The valley's legend, shall be told. II. THE HUSKING. It was the pleasant harvest-time, When cellar-bins are closely stowed, And garrets bend beneath their load, And the old swallow-haunted barns,-- Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams Through which the rooted sunlight streams, And winds blow freshly in, to shake The red plumes of the roosted cocks, And the loose hay-mow's scented locks, Are filled with summer's ripened stores, Its odorous grass and barley sheaves, From their low scaffolds to their eaves. On Esek Harden's oaken floor, With many an autumn threshing worn, Lay the heaped ears of unhusked corn. And thither came young men and maids, Beneath a moon that, large and low, Lit that sweet eve of long ago. They took their places; some by chance, And others by a merry voice Or sweet smile guided to their choice. How pleasantly the rising moon, Between the shadow of the mows, Looked on them through the great elm-boughs! On sturdy boyhood, sun-embrowned, On girlhood with its solid curves Of healthful strength and painless nerves! And jests went round, and laughs that made The house-dog answer with his howl, And kept astir the barn-yard fowl; And quaint old songs their fathers sung In Derby dales and Yorkshire moors, Ere Norman William trod their shores; And tales, whose merry license shook The fat sides of the Saxon thane, Forgetful of the hovering Dane,-- Rude plays to Celt and Cimbri known, The charms and riddles that beguiled On Oxus' banks the young world's child,-- That primal picture-speech wherein Have youth and maid the story told, So new in each, so dateless old, Recalling pastoral Ruth in her Who waited, blushing and demure, The red-ear's kiss of forfeiture. But still the sweetest voice was mute That river-valley ever heard From lips of maid or throat of bird; For Mabel Martin sat apart, And let the hay-mow's shadow fall Upon the loveliest face of all. She sat apart, as one forbid, Who knew that none would condescend To own the Witch-wife's child a friend. The seasons scarce had gone their round, Since curious thousands thronged to see Her mother at the gallows-tree; And mocked the prison-palsied limbs That faltered on the fatal stairs, And wan lip trembling with its prayers! Few questioned of the sorrowing child, Or, when they saw the mother die; Dreamed of the daughter's agony. They went up to their homes that day, As men and Christians justified God willed it, and the wretch had died! Dear God and Father of us all, Forgive our faith in cruel lies,-- Forgive the blindness that denies! Forgive thy creature when he takes, For the all-perfect love Thou art, Some grim creation of his heart. Cast down our idols, overturn Our bloody altars; let us see Thyself in Thy humanity! Young Mabel from her mother's grave Crept to her desolate hearth-stone, And wrestled with her fate alone; With love, and anger, and despair, The phantoms of disordered sense, The awful doubts of Providence! Oh, dreary broke the winter days, And dreary fell the winter nights When, one by one, the neighboring lights Went out, and human sounds grew still, And all the phantom-peopled dark Closed round her hearth-fire's dying spark. And summer days were sad and long, And sad the uncompanioned eyes, And sadder sunset-tinted leaves, And Indian Summer's airs of balm; She scarcely felt the soft caress, The beauty died of loneliness! The school-boys jeered her as they passed, And, when she sought the house of prayer, Her mother's curse pursued her there. And still o'er many a neighboring door She saw the horseshoe's curved charm, To guard against her mother's harm! That mother, poor and sick and lame, Who daily, by the old arm-chair, Folded her withered hands in prayer;-- Who turned, in Salem's dreary jail, Her worn old Bible o'er and o'er, When her dim eyes could read no more! Sore tried and pained, the poor girl kept Her faith, and trusted that her way, So dark, would somewhere meet the day. And still her weary wheel went round Day after day, with no relief Small leisure have the poor for grief. III. THE CHAMPION. So in the shadow Mabel sits; Untouched by mirth she sees and hears, Her smile is sadder than her tears. But cruel eyes have found her out, And cruel lips repeat her name, And taunt her with her mother's shame. She answered not with railing words, But drew her apron o'er her face, And, sobbing, glided from the place. And only pausing at the door, Her sad eyes met the troubled gaze Of one who, in her better days, Had been her warm and steady friend, Ere yet her mother's doom had made Even Esek Harden half afraid. He felt that mute appeal of tears, And, starting, with an angry frown, Hushed all the wicked murmurs down. "Good neighbors mine," he sternly said, "This passes harmless mirth or jest; I brook no insult to my guest. "She is indeed her mother's child; But God's sweet pity ministers Unto no whiter soul than hers. "Let Goody Martin rest in peace; I never knew her harm a fly, And witch or not, God knows--not I. "I know who swore her life away; And as God lives, I'd not condemn An Indian dog on word of them." The broadest lands in all the town, The skill to guide, the power to awe, Were Harden's; and his word was law. None dared withstand him to his face, But one sly maiden spake aside "The little witch is evil-eyed! "Her mother only killed a cow, Or witched a churn or dairy-pan; But she, forsooth, must charm a man!" IV. IN THE SHADOW. Poor Mabel, homeward turning, passed The nameless terrors of the wood, And saw, as if a ghost pursued, Her shadow gliding in the moon; The soft breath of the west-wind gave A chill as from her mother's grave. How dreary seemed the silent house! Wide in the moonbeams' ghastly glare Its windows had a dead man's stare! And, like a gaunt and spectral hand, The tremulous shadow of a birch Reached out and touched the door's low porch, As if to lift its latch; hard by, A sudden warning call she beard, The night-cry of a boding bird. She leaned against the door; her face, So fair, so young, so full of pain, White in the moonlight's silver rain. The river, on its pebbled rim, Made music such as childhood knew; The door-yard tree was whispered through By voices such as childhood's ear Had heard in moonlights long ago; And through the willow-boughs below. She saw the rippled waters shine; Beyond, in waves of shade and light, The hills rolled off into the night. She saw and heard, but over all A sense of some transforming spell, The shadow of her sick heart fell. And still across the wooded space The harvest lights of Harden shone, And song and jest and laugh went on. And he, so gentle, true, and strong, Of men the bravest and the best, Had he, too, scorned her with the rest? She strove to drown her sense of wrong, And, in her old and simple way, To teach her bitter heart to pray. Poor child! the prayer, begun in faith, Grew to a low, despairing cry Of utter misery: "Let me die! "Oh! take me from the scornful eyes, And hide me where the cruel speech And mocking finger may not reach! "I dare not breathe my mother's name A daughter's right I dare not crave To weep above her unblest grave! "Let me not live until my heart, With few to pity, and with none To love me, hardens into stone. "O God! have mercy on Thy child, Whose faith in Thee grows weak and small, And take me ere I lose it all!" A shadow on the moonlight fell, And murmuring wind and wave became A voice whose burden was her name. V. THE BETROTHAL. Had then God heard her? Had He sent His angel down? In flesh and blood, Before her Esek Harden stood! He laid his hand upon her arm "Dear Mabel, this no more shall be; Who scoffs at you must scoff at me. "You know rough Esek Harden well; And if he seems no suitor gay, And if his hair is touched with gray, "The maiden grown shall never find His heart less warm than when she smiled, Upon his knees, a little child!" Her tears of grief were tears of joy, As, folded in his strong embrace, She looked in Esek Harden's face. "O truest friend of all'" she said, "God bless you for your kindly thought, And make me worthy of my lot!" He led her forth, and, blent in one, Beside their happy pathway ran The shadows of the maid and man. He led her through his dewy fields, To where the swinging lanterns glowed, And through the doors the huskers showed. "Good friends and neighbors!" Esek said, "I'm weary of this lonely life; In Mabel see my chosen wife! "She greets you kindly, one and all; The past is past, and all offence Falls harmless from her innocence. "Henceforth she stands no more alone; You know what Esek Harden is;-- He brooks no wrong to him or his. "Now let the merriest tales be told, And let the sweetest songs be sung That ever made the old heart young! "For now the lost has found a home; And a lone hearth shall brighter burn, As all the household joys return!" Oh, pleasantly the harvest-moon, Between the shadow of the mows, Looked on them through the great elm--boughs! On Mabel's curls of golden hair, On Esek's shaggy strength it fell; And the wind whispered, "It is well!" THE PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL. The prose version of this prophecy is to be found in Sewall's The New Heaven upon the New Earth, 1697, quoted in Joshua Coffin's History of Newbury. Judge Sewall's father, Henry Sewall, was one of the pioneers of Newbury. UP and down the village streets Strange are the forms my fancy meets, For the thoughts and things of to-day are hid, And through the veil of a closed lid The ancient worthies I see again I hear the tap of the elder's cane, And his awful periwig I see, And the silver buckles of shoe and knee. Stately and slow, with thoughtful air, His black cap hiding his whitened hair, Walks the Judge of the great Assize, Samuel Sewall the good and wise. His face with lines of firmness wrought, He wears the look of a man unbought, Who swears to his hurt and changes not; Yet, touched and softened nevertheless With the grace of Christian gentleness, The face that a child would climb to kiss! True and tender and brave and just, That man might honor and woman trust. Touching and sad, a tale is told, Like a penitent hymn of the Psalmist old, Of the fast which the good man lifelong kept to With a haunting sorrow that never slept, As the circling year brought round the time Of an error that left the sting of crime, When he sat on the bench of the witchcraft courts, With the laws of Moses and Hale's Reports, And spake, in the name of both, the word That gave the witch's neck to the cord, And piled the oaken planks that pressed The feeble life from the warlock's breast! All the day long, from dawn to dawn, His door was bolted, his curtain drawn; No foot on his silent threshold trod, No eye looked on him save that of God, As he baffled the ghosts of the dead with charms Of penitent tears, and prayers, and psalms, And, with precious proofs from the sacred word Of the boundless pity and love of the Lord, His faith confirmed and his trust renewed That the sin of his ignorance, sorely rued, Might be washed away in the mingled flood Of his human sorrow and Christ's dear blood! Green forever the memory be Of the Judge of the old Theocracy, Whom even his errors glorified, Like a far-seen, sunlit mountain-side By the cloudy shadows which o'er it glide I Honor and praise to the Puritan Who the halting step of his age outran, And, seeing the infinite worth of man In the priceless gift the Father gave, In the infinite love that stooped to save, Dared not brand his brother a slave "Who doth such wrong," he was wont to say, In his own quaint, picture-loving way, "Flings up to Heaven a hand-grenade Which God shall cast down upon his head!" Widely as heaven and hell, contrast That brave old jurist of the past And the cunning trickster and knave of courts Who the holy features of Truth distorts, Ruling as right the will of the strong, Poverty, crime, and weakness wrong; Wide-eared to power, to the wronged and weak Deaf as Egypt's gods of leek; Scoffing aside at party's nod Order of nature and law of God; For whose dabbled ermine respect were waste, Reverence folly, and awe misplaced; Justice of whom 't were vain to seek As from Koordish robber or Syrian Sheik! Oh, leave the wretch to his bribes and sins; Let him rot in the web of lies he spins! To the saintly soul of the early day, To the Christian judge, let us turn and say "Praise and thanks for an honest man!-- Glory to God for the Puritan!" I see, far southward, this quiet day, The hills of Newbury rolling away, With the many tints of the season gay, Dreamily blending in autumn mist Crimson, and gold, and amethyst. Long and low, with dwarf trees crowned, Plum Island lies, like a whale aground, A stone's toss over the narrow sound. Inland, as far as the eye can go, The hills curve round like a bended bow; A silver arrow from out them sprung, I see the shine of the Quasycung; And, round and round, over valley and hill, Old roads winding, as old roads will, Here to a ferry, and there to a mill; And glimpses of chimneys and gabled eaves, Through green elm arches and maple leaves,-- Old homesteads sacred to all that can Gladden or sadden the heart of man, Over whose thresholds of oak and stone Life and Death have come and gone There pictured tiles in the fireplace show, Great beams sag from the ceiling low, The dresser glitters with polished wares, The long clock ticks on the foot-worn stairs, And the low, broad chimney shows the crack By the earthquake made a century back. Up from their midst springs the village spire With the crest of its cock in the sun afire; Beyond are orchards and planting lands, And great salt marshes and glimmering sands, And, where north and south the coast-lines run, The blink of the sea in breeze and sun! I see it all like a chart unrolled, But my thoughts are full of the past and old, I hear the tales of my boyhood told; And the shadows and shapes of early days Flit dimly by in the veiling haze, With measured movement and rhythmic chime Weaving like shuttles my web of rhyme. I think of the old man wise and good Who once on yon misty hillsides stood, (A poet who never measured rhyme, A seer unknown to his dull-eared time,) And, propped on his staff of age, looked down, With his boyhood's love, on his native town, Where, written, as if on its hills and plains, His burden of prophecy yet remains, For the voices of wood, and wave, and wind To read in the ear of the musing mind:-- "As long as Plum Island, to guard the coast As God appointed, shall keep its post; As long as a salmon shall haunt the deep Of Merrimac River, or sturgeon leap; As long as pickerel swift and slim, Or red-backed perch, in Crane Pond swim; As long as the annual sea-fowl know Their time to come and their time to go; As long as cattle shall roam at will The green, grass meadows by Turkey Hill; As long as sheep shall look from the side Of Oldtown Hill on marishes wide, And Parker River, and salt-sea tide; As long as a wandering pigeon shall search The fields below from his white-oak perch, When the barley-harvest is ripe and shorn, And the dry husks fall from the standing corn; As long as Nature shall not grow old, Nor drop her work from her doting hold, And her care for the Indian corn forget, And the yellow rows in pairs to set;-- So long shall Christians here be born, Grow up and ripen as God's sweet corn!-- By the beak of bird, by the breath of frost, Shall never a holy ear be lost, But, husked by Death in the Planter's sight, Be sown again in the fields of light!" The Island still is purple with plums, Up the river the salmon comes, The sturgeon leaps, and the wild-fowl feeds On hillside berries and marish seeds,-- All the beautiful signs remain, From spring-time sowing to autumn rain The good man's vision returns again! And let us hope, as well we can, That the Silent Angel who garners man May find some grain as of old lie found In the human cornfield ripe and sound, And the Lord of the Harvest deign to own The precious seed by the fathers sown! 1859. THE RED RIPER VOYAGEUR. OUT and in the river is winding The links of its long, red chain, Through belts of dusky pine-land And gusty leagues of plain. Only, at times, a smoke-wreath With the drifting cloud-rack joins,-- The smoke of the hunting-lodges Of the wild Assiniboins. Drearily blows the north-wind From the land of ice and snow; The eyes that look are weary, And heavy the hands that row. And with one foot on the water, And one upon the shore, The Angel of Shadow gives warning That day shall be no more. Is it the clang of wild-geese? Is it the Indian's yell, That lends to the voice of the north-wind The tones of a far-off bell? The voyageur smiles as he listens To the sound that grows apace; Well he knows the vesper ringing Of the bells of St. Boniface. The bells of the Roman Mission, That call from their turrets twain, To the boatman on the river, To the hunter on the plain! Even so in our mortal journey The bitter north-winds blow, And thus upon life's Red River Our hearts, as oarsmen, row. And when the Angel of Shadow Rests his feet on wave and shore, And our eyes grow dim with watching And our hearts faint at the oar, Happy is he who heareth The signal of his release In the bells of the Holy City, The chimes of eternal peace! 1859 THE PREACHER. George Whitefield, the celebrated preacher, died at Newburyport in 1770, and was buried under the church which has since borne his name. ITS windows flashing to the sky, Beneath a thousand roofs of brown, Far down the vale, my friend and I Beheld the old and quiet town; The ghostly sails that out at sea Flapped their white wings of mystery; The beaches glimmering in the sun, And the low wooded capes that run Into the sea-mist north and south; The sand-bluffs at the river's mouth; The swinging chain-bridge, and, afar, The foam-line of the harbor-bar. Over the woods and meadow-lands A crimson-tinted shadow lay, Of clouds through which the setting day Flung a slant glory far away. It glittered on the wet sea-sands, It flamed upon the city's panes, Smote the white sails of ships that wore Outward or in, and glided o'er The steeples with their veering vanes! Awhile my friend with rapid search O'erran the landscape. "Yonder spire Over gray roofs, a shaft of fire; What is it, pray?"--"The Whitefield Church! Walled about by its basement stones, There rest the marvellous prophet's bones." Then as our homeward way we walked, Of the great preacher's life we talked; And through the mystery of our theme The outward glory seemed to stream, And Nature's self interpreted The doubtful record of the dead; And every level beam that smote The sails upon the dark afloat A symbol of the light became, Which touched the shadows of our blame, With tongues of Pentecostal flame. Over the roofs of the pioneers Gathers the moss of a hundred years; On man and his works has passed the change Which needs must be in a century's range. The land lies open and warm in the sun, Anvils clamor and mill-wheels run,-- Flocks on the hillsides, herds on the plain, The wilderness gladdened with fruit and grain! But the living faith of the settlers old A dead profession their children hold; To the lust of office and greed of trade A stepping-stone is the altar made. The church, to place and power the door, Rebukes the sin of the world no more, Nor sees its Lord in the homeless poor. Everywhere is the grasping hand, And eager adding of land to land; And earth, which seemed to the fathers meant But as a pilgrim's wayside tent,-- A nightly shelter to fold away When the Lord should call at the break of day,-- Solid and steadfast seems to be, And Time has forgotten Eternity! But fresh and green from the rotting roots Of primal forests the young growth shoots; From the death of the old the new proceeds, And the life of truth from the rot of creeds On the ladder of God, which upward leads, The steps of progress are human needs. For His judgments still are a mighty deep, And the eyes of His providence never sleep When the night is darkest He gives the morn; When the famine is sorest, the wine and corn! In the church of the wilderness Edwards wrought, Shaping his creed at the forge of thought; And with Thor's own hammer welded and bent The iron links of his argument, Which strove to grasp in its mighty span The purpose of God and the fate of man Yet faithful still, in his daily round To the weak, and the poor, and sin-sick found, The schoolman's lore and the casuist's art Drew warmth and life from his fervent heart. Had he not seen in the solitudes Of his deep and dark Northampton woods A vision of love about him fall? Not the blinding splendor which fell on Saul, But the tenderer glory that rests on them Who walk in the New Jerusalem, Where never the sun nor moon are known, But the Lord and His love are the light alone And watching the sweet, still countenance Of the wife of his bosom rapt in trance, Had he not treasured each broken word Of the mystical wonder seen and heard; And loved the beautiful dreamer more That thus to the desert of earth she bore Clusters of Eshcol from Canaan's shore? As the barley-winnower, holding with pain Aloft in waiting his chaff and grain, Joyfully welcomes the far-off breeze Sounding the pine-tree's slender keys, So he who had waited long to hear The sound of the Spirit drawing near, Like that which the son of Iddo heard When the feet of angels the myrtles stirred, Felt the answer of prayer, at last, As over his church the afflatus passed, Breaking its sleep as breezes break To sun-bright ripples a stagnant lake. At first a tremor of silent fear, The creep of the flesh at danger near, A vague foreboding and discontent, Over the hearts of the people went. All nature warned in sounds and signs The wind in the tops of the forest pines In the name of the Highest called to prayer, As the muezzin calls from the minaret stair. Through ceiled chambers of secret sin Sudden and strong the light shone in; A guilty sense of his neighbor's needs Startled the man of title-deeds; The trembling hand of the worldling shook The dust of years from the Holy Book; And the psalms of David, forgotten long, Took the place of the scoffer's song. The impulse spread like the outward course Of waters moved by a central force; The tide of spiritual life rolled down From inland mountains to seaboard town. Prepared and ready the altar stands Waiting the prophet's outstretched hands And prayer availing, to downward call The fiery answer in view of all. Hearts are like wax in the furnace; who Shall mould, and shape, and cast them anew? Lo! by the Merrimac Whitefield stands In the temple that never was made by hands,-- Curtains of azure, and crystal wall, And dome of the sunshine over all-- A homeless pilgrim, with dubious name Blown about on the winds of fame; Now as an angel of blessing classed, And now as a mad enthusiast. Called in his youth to sound and gauge The moral lapse of his race and age, And, sharp as truth, the contrast draw Of human frailty and perfect law; Possessed by the one dread thought that lent Its goad to his fiery temperament, Up and down the world he went, A John the Baptist crying, Repent! No perfect whole can our nature make; Here or there the circle will break; The orb of life as it takes the light On one side leaves the other in night. Never was saint so good and great As to give no chance at St. Peter's gate For the plea of the Devil's advocate. So, incomplete by his being's law, The marvellous preacher had his flaw; With step unequal, and lame with faults, His shade on the path of History halts. Wisely and well said the Eastern bard Fear is easy, but love is hard,-- Easy to glow with the Santon's rage, And walk on the Meccan pilgrimage; But he is greatest and best who can Worship Allah by loving man. Thus he,--to whom, in the painful stress Of zeal on fire from its own excess, Heaven seemed so vast and earth so small That man was nothing, since God was all,-- Forgot, as the best at times have done, That the love of the Lord and of man are one. Little to him whose feet unshod The thorny path of the desert trod, Careless of pain, so it led to God, Seemed the hunger-pang and the poor man's wrong, The weak ones trodden beneath the strong. Should the worm be chooser?--the clay withstand The shaping will of the potter's hand? In the Indian fable Arjoon hears The scorn of a god rebuke his fears "Spare thy pity!" Krishna saith; "Not in thy sword is the power of death! All is illusion,--loss but seems; Pleasure and pain are only dreams; Who deems he slayeth doth not kill; Who counts as slain is living still. Strike, nor fear thy blow is crime; Nothing dies but the cheats of time; Slain or slayer, small the odds To each, immortal as Indra's gods!" So by Savannah's banks of shade, The stones of his mission the preacher laid On the heart of the negro crushed and rent, And made of his blood the wall's cement; Bade the slave-ship speed from coast to coast, Fanned by the wings of the Holy Ghost; And begged, for the love of Christ, the gold Coined from the hearts in its groaning hold. What could it matter, more or less Of stripes, and hunger, and weariness? Living or dying, bond or free, What was time to eternity? Alas for the preacher's cherished schemes! Mission and church are now but dreams; Nor prayer nor fasting availed the plan To honor God through the wrong of man. Of all his labors no trace remains Save the bondman lifting his hands in chains. The woof he wove in the righteous warp Of freedom-loving Oglethorpe, Clothes with curses the goodly land, Changes its greenness and bloom to sand; And a century's lapse reveals once more The slave-ship stealing to Georgia's shore. Father of Light! how blind is he Who sprinkles the altar he rears to Thee With the blood and tears of humanity! He erred: shall we count His gifts as naught? Was the work of God in him unwrought? The servant may through his deafness err, And blind may be God's messenger; But the Errand is sure they go upon,-- The word is spoken, the deed is done. Was the Hebrew temple less fair and good That Solomon bowed to gods of wood? For his tempted heart and wandering feet, Were the songs of David less pure and sweet? So in light and shadow the preacher went, God's erring and human instrument; And the hearts of the people where he passed Swayed as the reeds sway in the blast, Under the spell of a voice which took In its compass the flow of Siloa's brook, And the mystical chime of the bells of gold On the ephod's hem of the priest of old,-- Now the roll of thunder, and now the awe Of the trumpet heard in the Mount of Law. A solemn fear on the listening crowd Fell like the shadow of a cloud. The sailor reeling from out the ships Whose masts stood thick in the river-slips Felt the jest and the curse die on his lips. Listened the fisherman rude and hard, The calker rough from the builder's yard; The man of the market left his load, The teamster leaned on his bending goad, The maiden, and youth beside her, felt Their hearts in a closer union melt, And saw the flowers of their love in bloom Down the endless vistas of life to come. Old age sat feebly brushing away From his ears the scanty locks of gray; And careless boyhood, living the free Unconscious life of bird and tree, Suddenly wakened to a sense Of sin and its guilty consequence. It was as if an angel's voice Called the listeners up for their final choice; As if a strong hand rent apart The veils of sense from soul and heart, Showing in light ineffable The joys of heaven and woes of hell All about in the misty air The hills seemed kneeling in silent prayer; The rustle of leaves, the moaning sedge, The water's lap on its gravelled edge, The wailing pines, and, far and faint, The wood-dove's note of sad complaint,-- To the solemn voice of the preacher lent An undertone as of low lament; And the note of the sea from its sand coast, On the easterly wind, now heard, now lost, Seemed the murmurous sound of the judgment host. Yet wise men doubted, and good men wept, As that storm of passion above them swept, And, comet-like, adding flame to flame, The priests of the new Evangel came,-- Davenport, flashing upon the crowd, Charged like summer's electric cloud, Now holding the listener still as death With terrible warnings under breath, Now shouting for joy, as if he viewed The vision of Heaven's beatitude! And Celtic Tennant, his long coat bound Like a monk's with leathern girdle round, Wild with the toss of unshorn hair, And wringing of hands, and, eyes aglare, Groaning under the world's despair! Grave pastors, grieving their flocks to lose, Prophesied to the empty pews That gourds would wither, and mushrooms die, And noisiest fountains run soonest dry, Like the spring that gushed in Newbury Street, Under the tramp of the earthquake's feet, A silver shaft in the air and light, For a single day, then lost in night, Leaving only, its place to tell, Sandy fissure and sulphurous smell. With zeal wing-clipped and white-heat cool, Moved by the spirit in grooves of rule, No longer harried, and cropped, and fleeced, Flogged by sheriff and cursed by priest, But by wiser counsels left at ease To settle quietly on his lees, And, self-concentred, to count as done The work which his fathers well begun, In silent protest of letting alone, The Quaker kept the way of his own,-- A non-conductor among the wires, With coat of asbestos proof to fires. And quite unable to mend his pace To catch the falling manna of grace, He hugged the closer his little store Of faith, and silently prayed for more. And vague of creed and barren of rite, But holding, as in his Master's sight, Act and thought to the inner light, The round of his simple duties walked, And strove to live what the others talked. And who shall marvel if evil went Step by step with the good intent, And with love and meekness, side by side, Lust of the flesh and spiritual pride?-- That passionate longings and fancies vain Set the heart on fire and crazed the brain? That over the holy oracles Folly sported with cap and bells? That goodly women and learned men Marvelling told with tongue and pen How unweaned children chirped like birds Texts of Scripture and solemn words, Like the infant seers of the rocky glens In the Puy de Dome of wild Cevennes Or baby Lamas who pray and preach From Tartir cradles in Buddha's speech? In the war which Truth or Freedom wages With impious fraud and the wrong of ages, Hate and malice and self-love mar The notes of triumph with painful jar, And the helping angels turn aside Their sorrowing faces the shame to bide. Never on custom's oiled grooves The world to a higher level moves, But grates and grinds with friction hard On granite boulder and flinty shard. The heart must bleed before it feels, The pool be troubled before it heals; Ever by losses the right must gain, Every good have its birth of pain; The active Virtues blush to find The Vices wearing their badge behind, And Graces and Charities feel the fire Wherein the sins of the age expire; The fiend still rends as of old he rent The tortured body from which he went. But Time tests all. In the over-drift And flow of the Nile, with its annual gift, Who cares for the Hadji's relics sunk? Who thinks of the drowned-out Coptic monk? The tide that loosens the temple's stones, And scatters the sacred ibis-bones, Drives away from the valley-land That Arab robber, the wandering sand, Moistens the fields that know no rain, Fringes the desert with belts of grain, And bread to the sower brings again. So the flood of emotion deep and strong Troubled the land as it swept along, But left a result of holier lives, Tenderer-mothers and worthier wives. The husband and father whose children fled And sad wife wept when his drunken tread Frightened peace from his roof-tree's shade, And a rock of offence his hearthstone made, In a strength that was not his own began To rise from the brute's to the plane of man. Old friends embraced, long held apart By evil counsel and pride of heart; And penitence saw through misty tears, In the bow of hope on its cloud of fears, The promise of Heaven's eternal years,-- The peace of God for the world's annoy,-- Beauty for ashes, and oil of joy Under the church of Federal Street, Under the tread of its Sabbath feet, Walled about by its basement stones, Lie the marvellous preacher's bones. No saintly honors to them are shown, No sign nor miracle have they known; But he who passes the ancient church Stops in the shade of its belfry-porch, And ponders the wonderful life of him Who lies at rest in that charnel dim. Long shall the traveller strain his eye From the railroad car, as it plunges by, And the vanishing town behind him search For the slender spire of the Whitefield Church; And feel for one moment the ghosts of trade, And fashion, and folly, and pleasure laid, By the thought of that life of pure intent, That voice of warning yet eloquent, Of one on the errands of angels sent. And if where he labored the flood of sin Like a tide from the harbor-bar sets in, And over a life of tune and sense The church-spires lift their vain defence, As if to scatter the bolts of God With the points of Calvin's thunder-rod,-- Still, as the gem of its civic crown, Precious beyond the world's renown, His memory hallows the ancient town! 1859. THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA. In the winter of 1675-76, the Eastern Indians, who had been making war upon the New Hampshire settlements, were so reduced in numbers by fighting and famine that they agreed to a peace with Major Waldron at Dover, but the peace was broken in the fall of 1676. The famous chief, Squando, was the principal negotiator on the part of the savages. He had taken up the hatchet to revenge the brutal treatment of his child by drunken white sailors, which caused its death. It not unfrequently happened during the Border wars that young white children were adopted by their Indian captors, and so kindly treated that they were unwilling to leave the free, wild life of the woods; and in some instances they utterly refused to go back with their parents to their old homes and civilization. RAZE these long blocks of brick and stone, These huge mill-monsters overgrown; Blot out the humbler piles as well, Where, moved like living shuttles, dwell The weaving genii of the bell; Tear from the wild Cocheco's track The dams that hold its torrents back; And let the loud-rejoicing fall Plunge, roaring, down its rocky wall; And let the Indian's paddle play On the unbridged Piscataqua! Wide over hill and valley spread Once more the forest, dusk and dread, With here and there a clearing cut From the walled shadows round it shut; Each with its farm-house builded rude, By English yeoman squared and hewed, And the grim, flankered block-house bound With bristling palisades around. So, haply shall before thine eyes The dusty veil of centuries rise, The old, strange scenery overlay The tamer pictures of to-day, While, like the actors in a play, Pass in their ancient guise along The figures of my border song What time beside Cocheco's flood The white man and the red man stood, With words of peace and brotherhood; When passed the sacred calumet From lip to lip with fire-draught wet, And, puffed in scorn, the peace-pipe's smoke Through the gray beard of Waldron broke, And Squando's voice, in suppliant plea For mercy, struck the haughty key Of one who held, in any fate, His native pride inviolate! "Let your ears be opened wide! He who speaks has never lied. Waldron of Piscataqua, Hear what Squando has to say! "Squando shuts his eyes and sees, Far off, Saco's hemlock-trees. In his wigwam, still as stone, Sits a woman all alone, "Wampum beads and birchen strands Dropping from her careless hands, Listening ever for the fleet Patter of a dead child's feet! "When the moon a year ago Told the flowers the time to blow, In that lonely wigwam smiled Menewee, our little child. "Ere that moon grew thin and old, He was lying still and cold; Sent before us, weak and small, When the Master did not call! "On his little grave I lay; Three times went and came the day, Thrice above me blazed the noon, Thrice upon me wept the moon. "In the third night-watch I heard, Far and low, a spirit-bird; Very mournful, very wild, Sang the totem of my child. "'Menewee, poor Menewee, Walks a path he cannot see Let the white man's wigwam light With its blaze his steps aright. "'All-uncalled, he dares not show Empty hands to Manito Better gifts he cannot bear Than the scalps his slayers wear.' "All the while the totem sang, Lightning blazed and thunder rang; And a black cloud, reaching high, Pulled the white moon from the sky. "I, the medicine-man, whose ear All that spirits bear can hear,-- I, whose eyes are wide to see All the things that are to be,-- "Well I knew the dreadful signs In the whispers of the pines, In the river roaring loud, In the mutter of the cloud. "At the breaking of the day, From the grave I passed away; Flowers bloomed round me, birds sang glad, But my heart was hot and mad. "There is rust on Squando's knife, From the warm, red springs of life; On the funeral hemlock-trees Many a scalp the totem sees. "Blood for blood! But evermore Squando's heart is sad and sore; And his poor squaw waits at home For the feet that never come! "Waldron of Cocheco, hear! Squando speaks, who laughs at fear; Take the captives he has ta'en; Let the land have peace again!" As the words died on his tongue, Wide apart his warriors swung; Parted, at the sign he gave, Right and left, like Egypt's wave. And, like Israel passing free Through the prophet-charmed sea, Captive mother, wife, and child Through the dusky terror filed. One alone, a little maid, Middleway her steps delayed, Glancing, with quick, troubled sight, Round about from red to white. Then his hand the Indian laid On the little maiden's head, Lightly from her forehead fair Smoothing back her yellow hair. "Gift or favor ask I none; What I have is all my own Never yet the birds have sung, Squando hath a beggar's tongue.' "Yet for her who waits at home, For the dead who cannot come, Let the little Gold-hair be In the place of Menewee! "Mishanock, my little star! Come to Saco's pines afar; Where the sad one waits at home, Wequashim, my moonlight, come!" "What!" quoth Waldron, "leave a child Christian-born to heathens wild? As God lives, from Satan's hand I will pluck her as a brand!" "Hear me, white man!" Squando cried; "Let the little one decide. Wequashim, my moonlight, say, Wilt thou go with me, or stay?" Slowly, sadly, half afraid, Half regretfully, the maid Owned the ties of blood and race,-- Turned from Squando's pleading face. Not a word the Indian spoke, But his wampum chain he broke, And the beaded wonder hung On that neck so fair and young. Silence-shod, as phantoms seem In the marches of a dream, Single-filed, the grim array Through the pine-trees wound away. Doubting, trembling, sore amazed, Through her tears the young child gazed. "God preserve her!" Waldron said; "Satan hath bewitched the maid!" Years went and came. At close of day Singing came a child from play, Tossing from her loose-locked head Gold in sunshine, brown in shade. Pride was in the mother's look, But her head she gravely shook, And with lips that fondly smiled Feigned to chide her truant child. Unabashed, the maid began "Up and down the brook I ran, Where, beneath the bank so steep, Lie the spotted trout asleep. "'Chip!' went squirrel on the wall, After me I heard him call, And the cat-bird on the tree Tried his best to mimic me. "Where the hemlocks grew so dark That I stopped to look and hark, On a log, with feather-hat, By the path, an Indian sat. "Then I cried, and ran away; But he called, and bade me stay; And his voice was good and mild As my mother's to her child. "And he took my wampum chain, Looked and looked it o'er again; Gave me berries, and, beside, On my neck a plaything tied." Straight the mother stooped to see What the Indian's gift might be. On the braid of wampum hung, Lo! a cross of silver swung. Well she knew its graven sign, Squando's bird and totem pine; And, a mirage of the brain, Flowed her childhood back again. Flashed the roof the sunshine through, Into space the walls outgrew; On the Indian's wigwam-mat, Blossom-crowned, again she sat. Cool she felt the west-wind blow, In her ear the pines sang low, And, like links from out a chain, Dropped the years of care and pain. From the outward toil and din, From the griefs that gnaw within, To the freedom of the woods Called the birds, and winds, and floods. Well, O painful minister! Watch thy flock, but blame not her, If her ear grew sharp to hear All their voices whispering near. Blame her not, as to her soul All the desert's glamour stole, That a tear for childhood's loss Dropped upon the Indian's cross. When, that night, the Book was read, And she bowed her widowed head, And a prayer for each loved name Rose like incense from a flame, With a hope the creeds forbid In her pitying bosom hid, To the listening ear of Heaven Lo! the Indian's name was given. 1860. MY PLAYMATE. THE pines were dark on Ramoth hill, Their song was soft and low; The blossoms in the sweet May wind Were falling like the snow. The blossoms drifted at our feet, The orchard birds sang clear; The sweetest and the saddest day It seemed of all the year. For, more to me than birds or flowers, My playmate left her home, And took with her the laughing spring, The music and the bloom. She kissed the lips of kith and kin, She laid her hand in mine What more could ask the bashful boy Who fed her father's kine? She left us in the bloom of May The constant years told o'er Their seasons with as sweet May morns, But she came back no more. I walk, with noiseless feet, the round Of uneventful years; Still o'er and o'er I sow the spring And reap the autumn ears. She lives where all the golden year Her summer roses blow; The dusky children of the sun Before her come and go. There haply with her jewelled hands She smooths her silken gown,-- No more the homespun lap wherein I shook the walnuts down. The wild grapes wait us by the brook, The brown nuts on the hill, And still the May-day flowers make sweet The woods of Follymill. The lilies blossom in the pond, The bird builds in the tree, The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill The slow song of the sea. I wonder if she thinks of them, And how the old time seems,-- If ever the pines of Ramoth wood Are sounding in her dreams. I see her face, I hear her voice; Does she remember mine? And what to her is now the boy Who fed her father's kine? What cares she that the orioles build For other eyes than ours,-- That other hands with nuts are filled, And other laps with flowers? O playmate in the golden time! Our mossy seat is green, Its fringing violets blossom yet, The old trees o'er it lean. The winds so sweet with birch and fern A sweeter memory blow; And there in spring the veeries sing The song of long ago. And still the pines of Ramoth wood Are moaning like the sea,-- The moaning of the sea of change Between myself and thee! 1860. COBBLER KEEZAR'S VISION. This ballad was written on the occasion of a Horticultural Festival. Cobbler Keezar was a noted character among the first settlers in the valley of the Merrimac. THE beaver cut his timber With patient teeth that day, The minks were fish-wards, and the crows Surveyors of highway,-- When Keezar sat on the hillside Upon his cobbler's form, With a pan of coals on either hand To keep his waxed-ends warm. And there, in the golden weather, He stitched and hammered and sung; In the brook he moistened his leather, In the pewter mug his tongue. Well knew the tough old Teuton Who brewed the stoutest ale, And he paid the goodwife's reckoning In the coin of song and tale. The songs they still are singing Who dress the hills of vine, The tales that haunt the Brocken And whisper down the Rhine. Woodsy and wild and lonesome, The swift stream wound away, Through birches and scarlet maples Flashing in foam and spray,-- Down on the sharp-horned ledges Plunging in steep cascade, Tossing its white-maned waters Against the hemlock's shade. Woodsy and wild and lonesome, East and west and north and south; Only the village of fishers Down at the river's mouth; Only here and there a clearing, With its farm-house rude and new, And tree-stumps, swart as Indians, Where the scanty harvest grew. No shout of home-bound reapers, No vintage-song he heard, And on the green no dancing feet The merry violin stirred. "Why should folk be glum," said Keezar, "When Nature herself is glad, And the painted woods are laughing At the faces so sour and sad?" Small heed had the careless cobbler What sorrow of heart was theirs Who travailed in pain with the births of God, And planted a state with prayers,-- Hunting of witches and warlocks, Smiting the heathen horde,-- One hand on the mason's trowel, And one on the soldier's sword. But give him his ale and cider, Give him his pipe and song, Little he cared for Church or State, Or the balance of right and wrong. "T is work, work, work," he muttered,-- "And for rest a snuffle of psalms!" He smote on his leathern apron With his brown and waxen palms. "Oh for the purple harvests Of the days when I was young For the merry grape-stained maidens, And the pleasant songs they sung! "Oh for the breath of vineyards, Of apples and nuts and wine For an oar to row and a breeze to blow Down the grand old river Rhine!" A tear in his blue eye glistened, And dropped on his beard so gray. "Old, old am I," said Keezar, "And the Rhine flows far away!" But a cunning man was the cobbler; He could call the birds from the trees, Charm the black snake out of the ledges, And bring back the swarming bees. All the virtues of herbs and metals, All the lore of the woods, he knew, And the arts of the Old World mingle With the marvels of the New. Well he knew the tricks of magic, And the lapstone on his knee Had the gift of the Mormon's goggles Or the stone of Doctor Dee.(11) For the mighty master Agrippa Wrought it with spell and rhyme From a fragment of mystic moonstone In the tower of Nettesheim. To a cobbler Minnesinger The marvellous stone gave he,-- And he gave it, in turn, to Keezar, Who brought it over the sea. He held up that mystic lapstone, He held it up like a lens, And he counted the long years coming Ey twenties and by tens. "One hundred years," quoth Keezar, "And fifty have I told Now open the new before me, And shut me out the old!" Like a cloud of mist, the blackness Rolled from the magic stone, And a marvellous picture mingled The unknown and the known. Still ran the stream to the river, And river and ocean joined; And there were the bluffs and the blue sea-line, And cold north hills behind. But--the mighty forest was broken By many a steepled town, By many a white-walled farm-house, And many a garner brown. Turning a score of mill-wheels, The stream no more ran free; White sails on the winding river, White sails on the far-off sea. Below in the noisy village The flags were floating gay, And shone on a thousand faces The light of a holiday. Swiftly the rival ploughmen Turned the brown earth from their shares; Here were the farmer's treasures, There were the craftsman's wares. Golden the goodwife's butter, Ruby her currant-wine; Grand were the strutting turkeys, Fat were the beeves and swine. Yellow and red were the apples, And the ripe pears russet-brown, And the peaches had stolen blushes From the girls who shook them down. And with blooms of hill and wildwood, That shame the toil of art, Mingled the gorgeous blossoms Of the garden's tropic heart. "What is it I see?" said Keezar "Am I here, or ant I there? Is it a fete at Bingen? Do I look on Frankfort fair? "But where are the clowns and puppets, And imps with horns and tail? And where are the Rhenish flagons? And where is the foaming ale? "Strange things, I know, will happen,-- Strange things the Lord permits; But that droughty folk should be jolly Puzzles my poor old wits. "Here are smiling manly faces, And the maiden's step is gay; Nor sad by thinking, nor mad by drinking, Nor mopes, nor fools, are they. "Here's pleasure without regretting, And good without abuse, The holiday and the bridal Of beauty and of use. "Here's a priest and there is a Quaker, Do the cat and dog agree? Have they burned the stocks for ovenwood? Have they cut down the gallows-tree? "Would the old folk know their children? Would they own the graceless town, With never a ranter to worry And never a witch to drown?" Loud laughed the cobbler Keezar, Laughed like a school-boy gay; Tossing his arms above him, The lapstone rolled away. It rolled down the rugged hillside, It spun like a wheel bewitched, It plunged through the leaning willows, And into the river pitched. There, in the deep, dark water, The magic stone lies still, Under the leaning willows In the shadow of the hill. But oft the idle fisher Sits on the shadowy bank, And his dreams make marvellous pictures Where the wizard's lapstone sank. And still, in the summer twilights, When the river seems to run Out from the inner glory, Warm with the melted sun, The weary mill-girl lingers Beside the charmed stream, And the sky and the golden water Shape and color her dream. Air wave the sunset gardens, The rosy signals fly; Her homestead beckons from the cloud, And love goes sailing by. 1861. AMY WENTWORTH TO WILLIAM BRADFORD. As they who watch by sick-beds find relief Unwittingly from the great stress of grief And anxious care, in fantasies outwrought From the hearth's embers flickering low, or caught From whispering wind, or tread of passing feet, Or vagrant memory calling up some sweet Snatch of old song or romance, whence or why They scarcely know or ask,--so, thou and I, Nursed in the faith that Truth alone is strong In the endurance which outwearies Wrong, With meek persistence baffling brutal force, And trusting God against the universe,-- We, doomed to watch a strife we may not share With other weapons than the patriot's prayer, Yet owning, with full hearts and moistened eyes, The awful beauty of self-sacrifice, And wrung by keenest sympathy for all Who give their loved ones for the living wall 'Twixt law and treason,--in this evil day May haply find, through automatic play Of pen and pencil, solace to our pain, And hearten others with the strength we gain. I know it has been said our times require No play of art, nor dalliance with the lyre, No weak essay with Fancy's chloroform To calm the hot, mad pulses of the storm, But the stern war-blast rather, such as sets The battle's teeth of serried bayonets, And pictures grim as Vernet's. Yet with these Some softer tints may blend, and milder keys Relieve the storm-stunned ear. Let us keep sweet, If so we may, our hearts, even while we eat The bitter harvest of our own device And half a century's moral cowardice. As Nurnberg sang while Wittenberg defied, And Kranach painted by his Luther's side, And through the war-march of the Puritan The silver stream of Marvell's music ran, So let the household melodies be sung, The pleasant pictures on the wall be hung-- So let us hold against the hosts of night And slavery all our vantage-ground of light. Let Treason boast its savagery, and shake From its flag-folds its symbol rattlesnake, Nurse its fine arts, lay human skins in tan, And carve its pipe-bowls from the bones of man, And make the tale of Fijian banquets dull By drinking whiskey from a loyal skull,-- But let us guard, till this sad war shall cease, (God grant it soon!) the graceful arts of peace No foes are conquered who the victors teach Their vandal manners and barbaric speech. And while, with hearts of thankfulness, we bear Of the great common burden our full share, Let none upbraid us that the waves entice Thy sea-dipped pencil, or some quaint device, Rhythmic, and sweet, beguiles my pen away From the sharp strifes and sorrows of to-day. Thus, while the east-wind keen from Labrador Sings it the leafless elms, and from the shore Of the great sea comes the monotonous roar Of the long-breaking surf, and all the sky Is gray with cloud, home-bound and dull, I try To time a simple legend to the sounds Of winds in the woods, and waves on pebbled bounds,-- A song for oars to chime with, such as might Be sung by tired sea-painters, who at night Look from their hemlock camps, by quiet cove Or beach, moon-lighted, on the waves they love. (So hast thou looked, when level sunset lay On the calm bosom of some Eastern bay, And all the spray-moist rocks and waves that rolled Up the white sand-slopes flashed with ruddy gold.) Something it has--a flavor of the sea, And the sea's freedom--which reminds of thee. Its faded picture, dimly smiling down From the blurred fresco of the ancient town, I have not touched with warmer tints in vain, If, in this dark, sad year, it steals one thought from pain. . . . . . . . . . . . . Her fingers shame the ivory keys They dance so light along; The bloom upon her parted lips Is sweeter than the song. O perfumed suitor, spare thy smiles! Her thoughts are not of thee; She better loves the salted wind, The voices of the sea. Her heart is like an outbound ship That at its anchor swings; The murmur of the stranded shell Is in the song she sings. She sings, and, smiling, hears her praise, But dreams the while of one Who watches from his sea-blown deck The icebergs in the sun. She questions all the winds that blow, And every fog-wreath dim, And bids the sea-birds flying north Bear messages to him. She speeds them with the thanks of men He perilled life to save, And grateful prayers like holy oil To smooth for him the wave. Brown Viking of the fishing-smack! Fair toast of all the town!-- The skipper's jerkin ill beseems The lady's silken gown! But ne'er shall Amy Wentworth wear For him the blush of shame Who dares to set his manly gifts Against her ancient name. The stream is brightest at its spring, And blood is not like wine; Nor honored less than he who heirs Is he who founds a line. Full lightly shall the prize be won, If love be Fortune's spur; And never maiden stoops to him Who lifts himself to her. Her home is brave in Jaffrey Street, With stately stairways worn By feet of old Colonial knights And ladies gentle-born. Still green about its ample porch The English ivy twines, Trained back to show in English oak The herald's carven signs. And on her, from the wainscot old, Ancestral faces frown,-- And this has worn the soldier's sword, And that the judge's gown. But, strong of will and proud as they, She walks the gallery floor As if she trod her sailor's deck By stormy Labrador. The sweetbrier blooms on Kittery-side, And green are Elliot's bowers; Her garden is the pebbled beach, The mosses are her flowers. She looks across the harbor-bar To see the white gulls fly; His greeting from the Northern sea Is in their clanging cry. She hums a song, and dreams that he, As in its romance old, Shall homeward ride with silken sails And masts of beaten gold! Oh, rank is good, and gold is fair, And high and low mate ill; But love has never known a law Beyond its own sweet will! 1862. THE COUNTESS. TO E. W. I inscribed this poem to Dr. Elias Weld of Haverhill, Massachusetts, to whose kindness I was much indebted in my boyhood. He was the one cultivated man in the neighborhood. His small but well-chosen library was placed at my disposal. He is the "wise old doctor" of Snow-Bound. Count Francois de Vipart with his cousin Joseph Rochemont de Poyen came to the United States in the early part of the present century. They took up their residence at Rocks Village on the Merrimac, where they both married. The wife of Count Vipart was Mary Ingalls, who as my father remembered her was a very lovely young girl. Her wedding dress, as described by a lady still living, was "pink satin with an overdress of white lace, and white satin slippers." She died in less than a year after her marriage. Her husband returned to his native country. He lies buried in the family tomb of the Viparts at Bordeaux. I KNOW not, Time and Space so intervene, Whether, still waiting with a trust serene, Thou bearest up thy fourscore years and ten, Or, called at last, art now Heaven's citizen; But, here or there, a pleasant thought of thee, Like an old friend, all day has been with me. The shy, still boy, for whom thy kindly hand Smoothed his hard pathway to the wonder-land Of thought and fancy, in gray manhood yet Keeps green the memory of his early debt. To-day, when truth and falsehood speak their words Through hot-lipped cannon and the teeth of swords, Listening with quickened heart and ear intent To each sharp clause of that stern argument, I still can hear at times a softer note Of the old pastoral music round me float, While through the hot gleam of our civil strife Looms the green mirage of a simpler life. As, at his alien post, the sentinel Drops the old bucket in the homestead well, And hears old voices in the winds that toss Above his head the live-oak's beard of moss, So, in our trial-time, and under skies Shadowed by swords like Islam's paradise, I wait and watch, and let my fancy stray To milder scenes and youth's Arcadian day; And howsoe'er the pencil dipped in dreams Shades the brown woods or tints the sunset streams, The country doctor in the foreground seems, Whose ancient sulky down the village lanes Dragged, like a war-car, captive ills and pains. I could not paint the scenery of my song, Mindless of one who looked thereon so long; Who, night and day, on duty's lonely round, Made friends o' the woods and rocks, and knew the sound Of each small brook, and what the hillside trees Said to the winds that touched their leafy keys; Who saw so keenly and so well could paint The village-folk, with all their humors quaint, The parson ambling on his wall-eyed roan. Grave and erect, with white hair backward blown; The tough old boatman, half amphibious grown; The muttering witch-wife of the gossip's tale, And the loud straggler levying his blackmail,-- Old customs, habits, superstitions, fears, All that lies buried under fifty years. To thee, as is most fit, I bring my lay, And, grateful, own the debt I cannot pay. . . . . . . . . . . Over the wooded northern ridge, Between its houses brown, To the dark tunnel of the bridge The street comes straggling down. You catch a glimpse, through birch and pine, Of gable, roof, and porch, The tavern with its swinging sign, The sharp horn of the church. The river's steel-blue crescent curves To meet, in ebb and flow, The single broken wharf that serves For sloop and gundelow. With salt sea-scents along its shores The heavy hay-boats crawl, The long antennae of their oars In lazy rise and fall. Along the gray abutment's wall The idle shad-net dries; The toll-man in his cobbler's stall Sits smoking with closed eyes. You hear the pier's low undertone Of waves that chafe and gnaw; You start,--a skipper's horn is blown To raise the creaking draw. At times a blacksmith's anvil sounds With slow and sluggard beat, Or stage-coach on its dusty rounds Fakes up the staring street. A place for idle eyes and ears, A cobwebbed nook of dreams; Left by the stream whose waves are years The stranded village seems. And there, like other moss and rust, The native dweller clings, And keeps, in uninquiring trust, The old, dull round of things. The fisher drops his patient lines, The farmer sows his grain, Content to hear the murmuring pines Instead of railroad-train. Go where, along the tangled steep That slopes against the west, The hamlet's buried idlers sleep In still profounder rest. Throw back the locust's flowery plume, The birch's pale-green scarf, And break the web of brier and bloom From name and epitaph. A simple muster-roll of death, Of pomp and romance shorn, The dry, old names that common breath Has cheapened and outworn. Yet pause by one low mound, and part The wild vines o'er it laced, And read the words by rustic art Upon its headstone traced. Haply yon white-haired villager Of fourscore years can say What means the noble name of her Who sleeps with common clay. An exile from the Gascon land Found refuge here and rest, And loved, of all the village band, Its fairest and its best. He knelt with her on Sabbath morns, He worshipped through her eyes, And on the pride that doubts and scorns Stole in her faith's surprise. Her simple daily life he saw By homeliest duties tried, In all things by an untaught law Of fitness justified. For her his rank aside he laid; He took the hue and tone Of lowly life and toil, and made Her simple ways his own. Yet still, in gay and careless ease, To harvest-field or dance He brought the gentle courtesies, The nameless grace of France. And she who taught him love not less From him she loved in turn Caught in her sweet unconsciousness What love is quick to learn. Each grew to each in pleased accord, Nor knew the gazing town If she looked upward to her lord Or he to her looked down. How sweet, when summer's day was o'er, His violin's mirth and wail, The walk on pleasant Newbury's shore, The river's moonlit sail! Ah! life is brief, though love be long; The altar and the bier, The burial hymn and bridal song, Were both in one short year! Her rest is quiet on the hill, Beneath the locust's bloom Far off her lover sleeps as still Within his scutcheoned tomb. The Gascon lord, the village maid, In death still clasp their hands; The love that levels rank and grade Unites their severed lands. What matter whose the hillside grave, Or whose the blazoned stone? Forever to her western wave Shall whisper blue Garonne! O Love!--so hallowing every soil That gives thy sweet flower room, Wherever, nursed by ease or toil, The human heart takes bloom!-- Plant of lost Eden, from the sod Of sinful earth unriven, White blossom of the trees of God Dropped down to us from heaven! This tangled waste of mound and stone Is holy for thy sale; A sweetness which is all thy own Breathes out from fern and brake. And while ancestral pride shall twine The Gascon's tomb with flowers, Fall sweetly here, O song of mine, With summer's bloom and showers! And let the lines that severed seem Unite again in thee, As western wave and Gallic stream Are mingled in one sea! 1863. AMONG THE HILLS This poem, when originally published, was dedicated to Annie Fields, wife of the distinguished publisher, James T. Fields, of Boston, in grateful acknowledgment of the strength and inspiration I have found in her friendship and sympathy. The poem in its first form was entitled The Wife: an Idyl of Bearcamp Water, and appeared in The Atlantic Monthly for January, 1868. When I published the volume Among the Hills, in December of the same year, I expanded the Prelude and filled out also the outlines of the story. PRELUDE. ALONG the roadside, like the flowers of gold That tawny Incas for their gardens wrought, Heavy with sunshine droops the golden-rod, And the red pennons of the cardinal-flowers Hang motionless upon their upright staves. The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind, Vying-weary with its long flight from the south, Unfelt; yet, closely scanned, yon maple leaf With faintest motion, as one stirs in dreams, Confesses it. The locust by the wall Stabs the noon-silence with his sharp alarm. A single hay-cart down the dusty road Creaks slowly, with its driver fast asleep On the load's top. Against the neighboring hill, Huddled along the stone wall's shady side, The sheep show white, as if a snowdrift still Defied the dog-star. Through the open door A drowsy smell of flowers-gray heliotrope, And white sweet clover, and shy mignonette-- Comes faintly in, and silent chorus lends To the pervading symphony of peace. No time is this for hands long over-worn To task their strength; and (unto Him be praise Who giveth quietness!) the stress and strain Of years that did the work of centuries Have ceased, and we can draw our breath once more Freely and full. So, as yon harvesters Make glad their nooning underneath the elms With tale and riddle and old snatch of song, I lay aside grave themes, and idly turn The leaves of memory's sketch-book, dreaming o'er Old summer pictures of the quiet hills, And human life, as quiet, at their feet. And yet not idly all. A farmer's son, Proud of field-lore and harvest craft, and feeling All their fine possibilities, how rich And restful even poverty and toil Become when beauty, harmony, and love Sit at their humble hearth as angels sat At evening in the patriarch's tent, when man Makes labor noble, and his farmer's frock The symbol of a Christian chivalry Tender and just and generous to her Who clothes with grace all duty; still, I know Too well the picture has another side,-- How wearily the grind of toil goes on Where love is wanting, how the eye and ear And heart are starved amidst the plenitude Of nature, and how hard and colorless Is life without an atmosphere. I look Across the lapse of half a century, And call to mind old homesteads, where no flower Told that the spring had come, but evil weeds, Nightshade and rough-leaved burdock in the place Of the sweet doorway greeting of the rose And honeysuckle, where the house walls seemed Blistering in sun, without a tree or vine To cast the tremulous shadow of its leaves Across the curtainless windows, from whose panes Fluttered the signal rags of shiftlessness. Within, the cluttered kitchen-floor, unwashed (Broom-clean I think they called it); the best room Stifling with cellar damp, shut from the air In hot midsummer, bookless, pictureless, Save the inevitable sampler hung Over the fireplace, or a mourning piece, A green-haired woman, peony-cheeked, beneath Impossible willows; the wide-throated hearth Bristling with faded pine-boughs half concealing The piled-up rubbish at the chimney's back; And, in sad keeping with all things about them, Shrill, querulous-women, sour and sullen men, Untidy, loveless, old before their time, With scarce a human interest save their own Monotonous round of small economies, Or the poor scandal of the neighborhood; Blind to the beauty everywhere revealed, Treading the May-flowers with regardless feet; For them the song-sparrow and the bobolink Sang not, nor winds made music in the leaves; For them in vain October's holocaust Burned, gold and crimson, over all the hills, The sacramental mystery of the woods. Church-goers, fearful of the unseen Powers, But grumbling over pulpit-tax and pew-rent, Saving, as shrewd economists, their souls And winter pork with the least possible outlay Of salt and sanctity; in daily life Showing as little actual comprehension Of Christian charity and love and duty, As if the Sermon on the Mount had been Outdated like a last year's almanac Rich in broad woodlands and in half-tilled fields, And yet so pinched and bare and comfortless, The veriest straggler limping on his rounds, The sun and air his sole inheritance, Laughed at a poverty that paid its taxes, And hugged his rags in self-complacency! Not such should be the homesteads of a land Where whoso wisely wills and acts may dwell As king and lawgiver, in broad-acred state, With beauty, art, taste, culture, books, to make His hour of leisure richer than a life Of fourscore to the barons of old time, Our yeoman should be equal to his home Set in the fair, green valleys, purple walled, A man to match his mountains, not to creep Dwarfed and abased below them. I would fain In this light way (of which I needs must own With the knife-grinder of whom Canning sings, "Story, God bless you! I have none to tell you!") Invite the eye to see and heart to feel The beauty and the joy within their reach,-- Home, and home loves, and the beatitudes Of nature free to all. Haply in years That wait to take the places of our own, Heard where some breezy balcony looks down On happy homes, or where the lake in the moon Sleeps dreaming of the mountains, fair as Ruth, In the old Hebrew pastoral, at the feet Of Boaz, even this simple lay of mine May seem the burden of a prophecy, Finding its late fulfilment in a change Slow as the oak's growth, lifting manhood up Through broader culture, finer manners, love, And reverence, to the level of the hills. O Golden Age, whose light is of the dawn, And not of sunset, forward, not behind, Flood the new heavens and earth, and with thee bring All the old virtues, whatsoever things Are pure and honest and of good repute, But add thereto whatever bard has sung Or seer has told of when in trance and dream They saw the Happy Isles of prophecy Let Justice hold her scale, and Truth divide Between the right and wrong; but give the heart The freedom of its fair inheritance; Let the poor prisoner, cramped and starved so long, At Nature's table feast his ear and eye With joy and wonder; let all harmonies Of sound, form, color, motion, wait upon The princely guest, whether in soft attire Of leisure clad, or the coarse frock of toil, And, lending life to the dead form of faith, Give human nature reverence for the sake Of One who bore it, making it divine With the ineffable tenderness of God; Let common need, the brotherhood of prayer, The heirship of an unknown destiny, The unsolved mystery round about us, make A man more precious than the gold of Ophir. Sacred, inviolate, unto whom all things Should minister, as outward types and signs Of the eternal beauty which fulfils The one great purpose of creation, Love, The sole necessity of Earth and Heaven! . . . . . . . . . . . For weeks the clouds had raked the hills And vexed the vales with raining, And all the woods were sad with mist, And all the brooks complaining. At last, a sudden night-storm tore The mountain veils asunder, And swept the valleys clean before The besom of the thunder. Through Sandwich notch the west-wind sang Good morrow to the cotter; And once again Chocorua's horn Of shadow pierced the water. Above his broad lake Ossipee, Once more the sunshine wearing, Stooped, tracing on that silver shield His grim armorial bearing. Clear drawn against the hard blue sky, The peaks had winter's keenness; And, close on autumn's frost, the vales Had more than June's fresh greenness. Again the sodden forest floors With golden lights were checkered, Once more rejoicing leaves in wind And sunshine danced and flickered. It was as if the summer's late Atoning for it's sadness Had borrowed every season's charm To end its days in gladness. Rivers of gold-mist flowing down From far celestial fountains,-- The great sun flaming through the rifts Beyond the wall of mountains. We paused at last where home-bound cows Brought down the pasture's treasure, And in the barn the rhythmic flails Beat out a harvest measure. We heard the night-hawk's sullen plunge, The crow his tree-mates calling The shadows lengthening down the slopes About our feet were falling. And through them smote the level sun In broken lines of splendor, Touched the gray rocks and made the green Of the shorn grass more tender. The maples bending o'er the gate, Their arch of leaves just tinted With yellow warmth, the golden glow Of coming autumn hinted. Keen white between the farm-house showed, And smiled on porch and trellis, The fair democracy of flowers That equals cot and palace. And weaving garlands for her dog, 'Twixt chidings and caresses, A human flower of childhood shook The sunshine from her tresses. Clear drawn against the hard blue sky, The peaks had winter's keenness; And, close on autumn's frost, the vales Had more than June's fresh greenness. Again the sodden forest floors With golden lights were checkered, Once more rejoicing leaves in wind And sunshine danced and flickered. It was as if the summer's late Atoning for it's sadness Had borrowed every season's charm To end its days in gladness. I call to mind those banded vales Of shadow and of shining, Through which, my hostess at my side, I drove in day's declining. We held our sideling way above The river's whitening shallows, By homesteads old, with wide-flung barns Swept through and through by swallows; By maple orchards, belts of pine And larches climbing darkly The mountain slopes, and, over all, The great peaks rising starkly. You should have seen that long hill-range With gaps of brightness riven,-- How through each pass and hollow streamed The purpling lights of heaven,-- On either hand we saw the signs Of fancy and of shrewdness, Where taste had wound its arms of vines Round thrift's uncomely rudeness. The sun-brown farmer in his frock Shook hands, and called to Mary Bare-armed, as Juno might, she came, White-aproned from her dairy. Her air, her smile, her motions, told Of womanly completeness; A music as of household songs Was in her voice of sweetness. Not fair alone in curve and line, But something more and better, The secret charm eluding art, Its spirit, not its letter;-- An inborn grace that nothing lacked Of culture or appliance, The warmth of genial courtesy, The calm of self-reliance. Before her queenly womanhood How dared our hostess utter The paltry errand of her need To buy her fresh-churned butter? She led the way with housewife pride, Her goodly store disclosing, Full tenderly the golden balls With practised hands disposing. Then, while along the western hills We watched the changeful glory Of sunset, on our homeward way, I heard her simple story. The early crickets sang; the stream Plashed through my friend's narration Her rustic patois of the hills Lost in my free-translation. "More wise," she said, "than those who swarm Our hills in middle summer, She came, when June's first roses blow, To greet the early comer. "From school and ball and rout she came, The city's fair, pale daughter, To drink the wine of mountain air Beside the Bearcamp Water. "Her step grew firmer on the hills That watch our homesteads over; On cheek and lip, from summer fields, She caught the bloom of clover. "For health comes sparkling in the streams From cool Chocorua stealing There's iron in our Northern winds; Our pines are trees of healing. "She sat beneath the broad-armed elms That skirt the mowing-meadow, And watched the gentle west-wind weave The grass with shine and shadow. "Beside her, from the summer heat To share her grateful screening, With forehead bared, the farmer stood, Upon his pitchfork leaning. "Framed in its damp, dark locks, his face Had nothing mean or common,-- Strong, manly, true, the tenderness And pride beloved of woman. "She looked up, glowing with the health The country air had brought her, And, laughing, said: 'You lack a wife, Your mother lacks a daughter. "'To mend your frock and bake your bread You do not need a lady Be sure among these brown old homes Is some one waiting ready,-- "'Some fair, sweet girl with skilful hand And cheerful heart for treasure, Who never played with ivory keys, Or danced the polka's measure.' "He bent his black brows to a frown, He set his white teeth tightly. ''T is well,' he said, 'for one like you To choose for me so lightly. "You think, because my life is rude I take no note of sweetness I tell you love has naught to do With meetness or unmeetness. "'Itself its best excuse, it asks No leave of pride or fashion When silken zone or homespun frock It stirs with throbs of passion. "'You think me deaf and blind: you bring Your winning graces hither As free as if from cradle-time We two had played together. "'You tempt me with your laughing eyes, Your cheek of sundown's blushes, A motion as of waving grain, A music as of thrushes. "'The plaything of your summer sport, The spells you weave around me You cannot at your will undo, Nor leave me as you found me. "'You go as lightly as you came, Your life is well without me; What care you that these hills will close Like prison-walls about me? "'No mood is mine to seek a wife, Or daughter for my mother Who loves you loses in that love All power to love another! "'I dare your pity or your scorn, With pride your own exceeding; I fling my heart into your lap Without a word of pleading.' "She looked up in his face of pain So archly, yet so tender 'And if I lend you mine,' she said, 'Will you forgive the lender? "'Nor frock nor tan can hide the man; And see you not, my farmer, How weak and fond a woman waits Behind this silken armor? "'I love you: on that love alone, And not my worth, presuming, Will you not trust for summer fruit The tree in May-day blooming?' "Alone the hangbird overhead, His hair-swung cradle straining, Looked down to see love's miracle,-- The giving that is gaining. "And so the farmer found a wife, His mother found a daughter There looks no happier home than hers On pleasant Bearcamp Water. "Flowers spring to blossom where she walks The careful ways of duty; Our hard, stiff lines of life with her Are flowing curves of beauty. "Our homes are cheerier for her sake, Our door-yards brighter blooming, And all about the social air Is sweeter for her coming. "Unspoken homilies of peace Her daily life is preaching; The still refreshment of the dew Is her unconscious teaching. "And never tenderer hand than hers Unknits the brow of ailing; Her garments to the sick man's ear Have music in their trailing. "And when, in pleasant harvest moons, The youthful huskers gather, Or sleigh-drives on the mountain ways Defy the winter weather,-- "In sugar-camps, when south and warm The winds of March are blowing, And sweetly from its thawing veins The maple's blood is flowing,-- "In summer, where some lilied pond Its virgin zone is baring, Or where the ruddy autumn fire Lights up the apple-paring,-- "The coarseness of a ruder time Her finer mirth displaces, A subtler sense of pleasure fills Each rustic sport she graces. "Her presence lends its warmth and health To all who come before it. If woman lost us Eden, such As she alone restore it. "For larger life and wiser aims The farmer is her debtor; Who holds to his another's heart Must needs be worse or better. "Through her his civic service shows A purer-toned ambition; No double consciousness divides The man and politician. "In party's doubtful ways he trusts Her instincts to determine; At the loud polls, the thought of her Recalls Christ's Mountain Sermon. "He owns her logic of the heart, And wisdom of unreason, Supplying, while he doubts and weighs, The needed word in season. "He sees with pride her richer thought, Her fancy's freer ranges; And love thus deepened to respect Is proof against all changes. "And if she walks at ease in ways His feet are slow to travel, And if she reads with cultured eyes What his may scarce unravel, "Still clearer, for her keener sight Of beauty and of wonder, He learns the meaning of the hills He dwelt from childhood under. "And higher, warmed with summer lights, Or winter-crowned and hoary, The ridged horizon lifts for him Its inner veils of glory. "He has his own free, bookless lore, The lessons nature taught him, The wisdom which the woods and hills And toiling men have brought him: "The steady force of will whereby Her flexile grace seems sweeter; The sturdy counterpoise which makes Her woman's life completer. "A latent fire of soul which lacks No breath of love to fan it; And wit, that, like his native brooks, Plays over solid granite. "How dwarfed against his manliness She sees the poor pretension, The wants, the aims, the follies, born Of fashion and convention. "How life behind its accidents Stands strong and self-sustaining, The human fact transcending all The losing and the gaining. "And so in grateful interchange Of teacher and of hearer, Their lives their true distinctness keep While daily drawing nearer. "And if the husband or the wife In home's strong light discovers Such slight defaults as failed to meet The blinded eyes of lovers, "Why need we care to ask?--who dreams Without their thorns of roses, Or wonders that the truest steel The readiest spark discloses? "For still in mutual sufferance lies The secret of true living; Love scarce is love that never knows The sweetness of forgiving. "We send the Squire to General Court, He takes his young wife thither; No prouder man election day Rides through the sweet June weather. "He sees with eyes of manly trust All hearts to her inclining; Not less for him his household light That others share its shining." Thus, while my hostess spake, there grew Before me, warmer tinted And outlined with a tenderer grace, The picture that she hinted. The sunset smouldered as we drove Beneath the deep hill-shadows. Below us wreaths of white fog walked Like ghosts the haunted meadows. Sounding the summer night, the stars Dropped down their golden plummets; The pale arc of the Northern lights Rose o'er the mountain summits, Until, at last, beneath its bridge, We heard the Bearcamp flowing, And saw across the mapled lawn The welcome home lights glowing. And, musing on the tale I heard, 'T were well, thought I, if often To rugged farm-life came the gift To harmonize and soften; If more and more we found the troth Of fact and fancy plighted, And culture's charm and labor's strength In rural homes united,-- The simple life, the homely hearth, With beauty's sphere surrounding, And blessing toil where toil abounds With graces more abounding. 1868. THE DOLE OF JARL THORKELL. THE land was pale with famine And racked with fever-pain; The frozen fiords were fishless, The earth withheld her grain. Men saw the boding Fylgja Before them come and go, And, through their dreams, the Urdarmoon From west to east sailed slow. Jarl Thorkell of Thevera At Yule-time made his vow; On Rykdal's holy Doom-stone He slew to Frey his cow. To bounteous Frey he slew her; To Skuld, the younger Norn, Who watches over birth and death, He gave her calf unborn. And his little gold-haired daughter Took up the sprinkling-rod, And smeared with blood the temple And the wide lips of the god. Hoarse below, the winter water Ground its ice-blocks o'er and o'er; Jets of foam, like ghosts of dead waves, Rose and fell along the shore. The red torch of the Jokul, Aloft in icy space, Shone down on the bloody Horg-stones And the statue's carven face. And closer round and grimmer Beneath its baleful light The Jotun shapes of mountains Came crowding through the night. The gray-haired Hersir trembled As a flame by wind is blown; A weird power moved his white lips, And their voice was not his own. "The AEsir thirst!" he muttered; "The gods must have more blood Before the tun shall blossom Or fish shall fill the flood. "The AEsir thirst and hunger, And hence our blight and ban; The mouths of the strong gods water For the flesh and blood of man! "Whom shall we give the strong ones? Not warriors, sword on thigh; But let the nursling infant And bedrid old man die." "So be it!" cried the young men, "There needs nor doubt nor parle." But, knitting hard his red brows, In silence stood the Jarl. A sound of woman's weeping At the temple door was heard, But the old men bowed their white heads, And answered not a word. Then the Dream-wife of Thingvalla, A Vala young and fair, Sang softly, stirring with her breath The veil of her loose hair. She sang: "The winds from Alfheim Bring never sound of strife; The gifts for Frey the meetest Are not of death, but life. "He loves the grass-green meadows, The grazing kine's sweet breath; He loathes your bloody Horg-stones, Your gifts that smell of death. "No wrong by wrong is righted, No pain is cured by pain; The blood that smokes from Doom-rings Falls back in redder rain. "The gods are what you make them, As earth shall Asgard prove; And hate will come of hating, And love will come of love. "Make dole of skyr and black bread That old and young may live; And look to Frey for favor When first like Frey you give. "Even now o'er Njord's sea-meadows The summer dawn begins The tun shall have its harvest, The fiord its glancing fins." Then up and swore Jarl Thorkell "By Gimli and by Hel, O Vala of Thingvalla, Thou singest wise and well! "Too dear the AEsir's favors Bought with our children's lives; Better die than shame in living Our mothers and our wives. "The full shall give his portion To him who hath most need; Of curdled skyr and black bread, Be daily dole decreed." He broke from off his neck-chain Three links of beaten gold; And each man, at his bidding, Brought gifts for young and old. Then mothers nursed their children, And daughters fed their sires, And Health sat down with Plenty Before the next Yule fires. The Horg-stones stand in Rykdal; The Doom-ring still remains; But the snows of a thousand winters Have washed away the stains. Christ ruleth now; the Asir Have found their twilight dim; And, wiser than she dreamed, of old The Vala sang of Him 1868. THE TWO RABBINS. THE Rabbi Nathan two-score years and ten Walked blameless through the evil world, and then, Just as the almond blossomed in his hair, Met a temptation all too strong to bear, And miserably sinned. So, adding not Falsehood to guilt, he left his seat, and taught No more among the elders, but went out From the great congregation girt about With sackcloth, and with ashes on his head, Making his gray locks grayer. Long he prayed, Smiting his breast; then, as the Book he laid Open before him for the Bath-Col's choice, Pausing to hear that Daughter of a Voice, Behold the royal preacher's words: "A friend Loveth at all times, yea, unto the end; And for the evil day thy brother lives." Marvelling, he said: "It is the Lord who gives Counsel in need. At Ecbatana dwells Rabbi Ben Isaac, who all men excels In righteousness and wisdom, as the trees Of Lebanon the small weeds that the bees Bow with their weight. I will arise, and lay My sins before him." And he went his way Barefooted, fasting long, with many prayers; But even as one who, followed unawares, Suddenly in the darkness feels a hand Thrill with its touch his own, and his cheek fanned By odors subtly sweet, and whispers near Of words he loathes, yet cannot choose but hear, So, while the Rabbi journeyed, chanting low The wail of David's penitential woe, Before him still the old temptation came, And mocked him with the motion and the shame Of such desires that, shuddering, he abhorred Himself; and, crying mightily to the Lord To free his soul and cast the demon out, Smote with his staff the blankness round about. At length, in the low light of a spent day, The towers of Ecbatana far away Rose on the desert's rim; and Nathan, faint And footsore, pausing where for some dead saint The faith of Islam reared a domed tomb, Saw some one kneeling in the shadow, whom He greeted kindly: "May the Holy One Answer thy prayers, O stranger!" Whereupon The shape stood up with a loud cry, and then, Clasped in each other's arms, the two gray men Wept, praising Him whose gracious providence Made their paths one. But straightway, as the sense Of his transgression smote him, Nathan tore Himself away: "O friend beloved, no more Worthy am I to touch thee, for I came, Foul from my sins, to tell thee all my shame. Haply thy prayers, since naught availeth mine, May purge my soul, and make it white like thine. Pity me, O Ben Isaac, I have sinned!" Awestruck Ben Isaac stood. The desert wind Blew his long mantle backward, laying bare The mournful secret of his shirt of hair. "I too, O friend, if not in act," he said, "In thought have verily sinned. Hast thou not read, 'Better the eye should see than that desire Should wander?' Burning with a hidden fire That tears and prayers quench not, I come to thee For pity and for help, as thou to me. Pray for me, O my friend!" But Nathan cried, "Pray thou for me, Ben Isaac!" Side by side In the low sunshine by the turban stone They knelt; each made his brother's woe his own, Forgetting, in the agony and stress Of pitying love, his claim of selfishness; Peace, for his friend besought, his own became; His prayers were answered in another's name; And, when at last they rose up to embrace, Each saw God's pardon in his brother's face! Long after, when his headstone gathered moss, Traced on the targum-marge of Onkelos In Rabbi Nathan's hand these words were read: "_Hope not the cure of sin till Self is dead; Forget it in love's service, and the debt Thou, canst not pay the angels shall forget; Heaven's gate is shut to him who comes alone; Save thou a soul, and it shall save thy own!_" 1868. NOREMBEGA. Norembega, or Norimbegue, is the name given by early French fishermen and explorers to a fabulous country south of Cape Breton, first discovered by Verrazzani in 1524. It was supposed to have a magnificent city of the same name on a great river, probably the Penobscot. The site of this barbaric city is laid down on a map published at Antwerp in 1570. In 1604 Champlain sailed in search of the Northern Eldorado, twenty-two leagues up the Penobscot from the Isle Haute. He supposed the river to be that of Norembega, but wisely came to the conclusion that those travellers who told of the great city had never seen it. He saw no evidences of anything like civilization, but mentions the finding of a cross, very old and mossy, in the woods. THE winding way the serpent takes The mystic water took, From where, to count its beaded lakes, The forest sped its brook. A narrow space 'twixt shore and shore, For sun or stars to fall, While evermore, behind, before, Closed in the forest wall. The dim wood hiding underneath Wan flowers without a name; Life tangled with decay and death, League after league the same. Unbroken over swamp and hill The rounding shadow lay, Save where the river cut at will A pathway to the day. Beside that track of air and light, Weak as a child unweaned, At shut of day a Christian knight Upon his henchman leaned. The embers of the sunset's fires Along the clouds burned down; "I see," he said, "the domes and spires Of Norembega town." "Alack! the domes, O master mine, Are golden clouds on high; Yon spire is but the branchless pine That cuts the evening sky." "Oh, hush and hark! What sounds are these But chants and holy hymns?" "Thou hear'st the breeze that stirs the trees Though all their leafy limbs." "Is it a chapel bell that fills The air with its low tone?" "Thou hear'st the tinkle of the rills, The insect's vesper drone." "The Christ be praised!--He sets for me A blessed cross in sight!" "Now, nay, 't is but yon blasted tree With two gaunt arms outright!" "Be it wind so sad or tree so stark, It mattereth not, my knave; Methinks to funeral hymns I hark, The cross is for my grave! "My life is sped; I shall not see My home-set sails again; The sweetest eyes of Normandie Shall watch for me in vain. "Yet onward still to ear and eye The baffling marvel calls; I fain would look before I die On Norembega's walls. "So, haply, it shall be thy part At Christian feet to lay The mystery of the desert's heart My dead hand plucked away. "Leave me an hour of rest; go thou And look from yonder heights; Perchance the valley even now Is starred with city lights." The henchman climbed the nearest hill, He saw nor tower nor town, But, through the drear woods, lone and still, The river rolling down. He heard the stealthy feet of things Whose shapes he could not see, A flutter as of evil wings, The fall of a dead tree. The pines stood black against the moon, A sword of fire beyond; He heard the wolf howl, and the loon Laugh from his reedy pond. He turned him back: "O master dear, We are but men misled; And thou hast sought a city here To find a grave instead." "As God shall will! what matters where A true man's cross may stand, So Heaven be o'er it here as there In pleasant Norman land? "These woods, perchance, no secret hide Of lordly tower and hall; Yon river in its wanderings wide Has washed no city wall; "Yet mirrored in the sullen stream The holy stars are given Is Norembega, then, a dream Whose waking is in Heaven? "No builded wonder of these lands My weary eyes shall see; A city never made with hands Alone awaiteth me-- "'_Urbs Syon mystica_;' I see Its mansions passing fair, '_Condita caelo_;' let me be, Dear Lord, a dweller there!" Above the dying exile hung The vision of the bard, As faltered on his failing tongue The song of good Bernard. The henchman dug at dawn a grave Beneath the hemlocks brown, And to the desert's keeping gave The lord of fief and town. Years after, when the Sieur Champlain Sailed up the unknown stream, And Norembega proved again A shadow and a dream, He found the Norman's nameless grave Within the hemlock's shade, And, stretching wide its arms to save, The sign that God had made, The cross-boughed tree that marked the spot And made it holy ground He needs the earthly city not Who hath the heavenly found. 1869. MIRIAM. TO FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD. THE years are many since, in youth and hope, Under the Charter Oak, our horoscope We drew thick-studded with all favoring stars. Now, with gray beards, and faces seamed with scars From life's hard battle, meeting once again, We smile, half sadly, over dreams so vain; Knowing, at last, that it is not in man Who walketh to direct his steps, or plan His permanent house of life. Alike we loved The muses' haunts, and all our fancies moved To measures of old song. How since that day Our feet have parted from the path that lay So fair before us! Rich, from lifelong search Of truth, within thy Academic porch Thou sittest now, lord of a realm of fact, Thy servitors the sciences exact; Still listening with thy hand on Nature's keys, To hear the Samian's spheral harmonies And rhythm of law. I called from dream and song, Thank God! so early to a strife so long, That, ere it closed, the black, abundant hair Of boyhood rested silver-sown and spare On manhood's temples, now at sunset-chime Tread with fond feet the path of morning time. And if perchance too late I linger where The flowers have ceased to blow, and trees are bare, Thou, wiser in thy choice, wilt scarcely blame The friend who shields his folly with thy name. AMESBURY, 10th mo., 1870. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . One Sabbath day my friend and I After the meeting, quietly Passed from the crowded village lanes, White with dry dust for lack of rains, And climbed the neighboring slope, with feet Slackened and heavy from the heat, Although the day was wellnigh done, And the low angle of the sun Along the naked hillside cast Our shadows as of giants vast. We reached, at length, the topmost swell, Whence, either way, the green turf fell In terraces of nature down To fruit-hung orchards, and the town With white, pretenceless houses, tall Church-steeples, and, o'ershadowing all, Huge mills whose windows had the look Of eager eyes that ill could brook The Sabbath rest. We traced the track Of the sea-seeking river back, Glistening for miles above its mouth, Through the long valley to the south, And, looking eastward, cool to view, Stretched the illimitable blue Of ocean, from its curved coast-line; Sombred and still, the warm sunshine Filled with pale gold-dust all the reach Of slumberous woods from hill to beach,-- Slanted on walls of thronged retreats From city toil and dusty streets, On grassy bluff, and dune of sand, And rocky islands miles from land; Touched the far-glancing sails, and showed White lines of foam where long waves flowed Dumb in the distance. In the north, Dim through their misty hair, looked forth The space-dwarfed mountains to the sea, From mystery to mystery! So, sitting on that green hill-slope, We talked of human life, its hope And fear, and unsolved doubts, and what It might have been, and yet was not. And, when at last the evening air Grew sweeter for the bells of prayer Ringing in steeples far below, We watched the people churchward go, Each to his place, as if thereon The true shekinah only shone; And my friend queried how it came To pass that they who owned the same Great Master still could not agree To worship Him in company. Then, broadening in his thought, he ran Over the whole vast field of man,-- The varying forms of faith and creed That somehow served the holders' need; In which, unquestioned, undenied, Uncounted millions lived and died; The bibles of the ancient folk, Through which the heart of nations spoke; The old moralities which lent To home its sweetness and content, And rendered possible to bear The life of peoples everywhere And asked if we, who boast of light, Claim not a too exclusive right To truths which must for all be meant, Like rain and sunshine freely sent. In bondage to the letter still, We give it power to cramp and kill,-- To tax God's fulness with a scheme Narrower than Peter's house-top dream, His wisdom and his love with plans Poor and inadequate as man's. It must be that He witnesses Somehow to all men that He is That something of His saving grace Reaches the lowest of the race, Who, through strange creed and rite, may draw The hints of a diviner law. We walk in clearer light;--but then, Is He not God?--are they not men? Are His responsibilities For us alone and not for these? And I made answer: "Truth is one; And, in all lands beneath the sun, Whoso hath eyes to see may see The tokens of its unity. No scroll of creed its fulness wraps, We trace it not by school-boy maps, Free as the sun and air it is Of latitudes and boundaries. In Vedic verse, in dull Koran, Are messages of good to man; The angels to our Aryan sires Talked by the earliest household fires; The prophets of the elder day, The slant-eyed sages of Cathay, Read not the riddle all amiss Of higher life evolved from this. "Nor doth it lessen what He taught, Or make the gospel Jesus brought Less precious, that His lips retold Some portion of that truth of old; Denying not the proven seers, The tested wisdom of the years; Confirming with his own impress The common law of righteousness. We search the world for truth; we cull The good, the pure, the beautiful, From graven stone and written scroll, From all old flower-fields of the soul; And, weary seekers of the best, We come back laden from our quest, To find that all the sages said Is in the Book our mothers read, And all our treasure of old thought In His harmonious fulness wrought Who gathers in one sheaf complete The scattered blades of God's sown wheat, The common growth that maketh good His all-embracing Fatherhood. "Wherever through the ages rise The altars of self-sacrifice, Where love its arms has opened wide, Or man for man has calmly died, I see the same white wings outspread That hovered o'er the Master's head! Up from undated time they come, The martyr souls of heathendom, And to His cross and passion bring Their fellowship of suffering. I trace His presence in the blind Pathetic gropings of my kind,-- In prayers from sin and sorrow wrung, In cradle-hymns of life they sung, Each, in its measure, but a part Of the unmeasured Over-Heart; And with a stronger faith confess The greater that it owns the less. Good cause it is for thankfulness That the world-blessing of His life With the long past is not at strife; That the great marvel of His death To the one order witnesseth, No doubt of changeless goodness wakes, No link of cause and sequence breaks, But, one with nature, rooted is In the eternal verities; Whereby, while differing in degree As finite from infinity, The pain and loss for others borne, Love's crown of suffering meekly worn, The life man giveth for his friend Become vicarious in the end; Their healing place in nature take, And make life sweeter for their sake. "So welcome I from every source The tokens of that primal Force, Older than heaven itself, yet new As the young heart it reaches to, Beneath whose steady impulse rolls The tidal wave of human souls; Guide, comforter, and inward word, The eternal spirit of the Lord Nor fear I aught that science brings From searching through material things; Content to let its glasses prove, Not by the letter's oldness move, The myriad worlds on worlds that course The spaces of the universe; Since everywhere the Spirit walks The garden of the heart, and talks With man, as under Eden's trees, In all his varied languages. Why mourn above some hopeless flaw In the stone tables of the law, When scripture every day afresh Is traced on tablets of the flesh? By inward sense, by outward signs, God's presence still the heart divines; Through deepest joy of Him we learn, In sorest grief to Him we turn, And reason stoops its pride to share The child-like instinct of a prayer." And then, as is my wont, I told A story of the days of old, Not found in printed books,--in sooth, A fancy, with slight hint of truth, Showing how differing faiths agree In one sweet law of charity. Meanwhile the sky had golden grown, Our faces in its glory shone; But shadows down the valley swept, And gray below the ocean slept, As time and space I wandered o'er To tread the Mogul's marble floor, And see a fairer sunset fall On Jumna's wave and Agra's wall. The good Shah Akbar (peace be his alway!) Came forth from the Divan at close of day Bowed with the burden of his many cares, Worn with the hearing of unnumbered prayers,-- Wild cries for justice, the importunate Appeals of greed and jealousy and hate, And all the strife of sect and creed and rite, Santon and Gouroo waging holy fight For the wise monarch, claiming not to be Allah's avenger, left his people free, With a faint hope, his Book scarce justified, That all the paths of faith, though severed wide, O'er which the feet of prayerful reverence passed, Met at the gate of Paradise at last. He sought an alcove of his cool hareem, Where, far beneath, he heard the Jumna's stream Lapse soft and low along his palace wall, And all about the cool sound of the fall Of fountains, and of water circling free Through marble ducts along the balcony; The voice of women in the distance sweet, And, sweeter still, of one who, at his feet, Soothed his tired ear with songs of a far land Where Tagus shatters on the salt sea-sand The mirror of its cork-grown hills of drouth And vales of vine, at Lisbon's harbor-mouth. The date-palms rustled not; the peepul laid Its topmost boughs against the balustrade, Motionless as the mimic leaves and vines That, light and graceful as the shawl-designs Of Delhi or Umritsir, twined in stone; And the tired monarch, who aside had thrown The day's hard burden, sat from care apart, And let the quiet steal into his heart From the still hour. Below him Agra slept, By the long light of sunset overswept The river flowing through a level land, By mango-groves and banks of yellow sand, Skirted with lime and orange, gay kiosks, Fountains at play, tall minarets of mosques, Fair pleasure-gardens, with their flowering trees Relieved against the mournful cypresses; And, air-poised lightly as the blown sea-foam, The marble wonder of some holy dome Hung a white moonrise over the still wood, Glassing its beauty in a stiller flood. Silent the monarch gazed, until the night Swift-falling hid the city from his sight; Then to the woman at his feet he said "Tell me, O Miriam, something thou hast read In childhood of the Master of thy faith, Whom Islam also owns. Our Prophet saith 'He was a true apostle, yea, a Word And Spirit sent before me from the Lord.' Thus the Book witnesseth; and well I know By what thou art, O dearest, it is so. As the lute's tone the maker's hand betrays, The sweet disciple speaks her Master's praise." Then Miriam, glad of heart, (for in some sort She cherished in the Moslem's liberal court The sweet traditions of a Christian child; And, through her life of sense, the undefiled And chaste ideal of the sinless One Gazed on her with an eye she might not shun,-- The sad, reproachful look of pity, born Of love that hath no part in wrath or scorn,) Began, with low voice and moist eyes, to tell Of the all-loving Christ, and what befell When the fierce zealots, thirsting for her blood, Dragged to his feet a shame of womanhood. How, when his searching answer pierced within Each heart, and touched the secret of its sin, And her accusers fled his face before, He bade the poor one go and sin no more. And Akbar said, after a moment's thought, "Wise is the lesson by thy prophet taught; Woe unto him who judges and forgets What hidden evil his own heart besets! Something of this large charity I find In all the sects that sever human kind; I would to Allah that their lives agreed More nearly with the lesson of their creed! Those yellow Lamas who at Meerut pray By wind and water power, and love to say 'He who forgiveth not shall, unforgiven, Fail of the rest of Buddha,' and who even Spare the black gnat that stings them, vex my ears With the poor hates and jealousies and fears Nursed in their human hives. That lean, fierce priest Of thy own people, (be his heart increased By Allah's love!) his black robes smelling yet Of Goa's roasted Jews, have I not met Meek-faced, barefooted, crying in the street The saying of his prophet true and sweet,-- 'He who is merciful shall mercy meet!'" But, next day, so it chanced, as night began To fall, a murmur through the hareem ran That one, recalling in her dusky face The full-lipped, mild-eyed beauty of a race Known as the blameless Ethiops of Greek song, Plotting to do her royal master wrong, Watching, reproachful of the lingering light, The evening shadows deepen for her flight, Love-guided, to her home in a far land, Now waited death at the great Shah's command. Shapely as that dark princess for whose smile A world was bartered, daughter of the Nile Herself, and veiling in her large, soft eyes The passion and the languor of her skies, The Abyssinian knelt low at the feet Of her stern lord: "O king, if it be meet, And for thy honor's sake," she said, "that I, Who am the humblest of thy slaves, should die, I will not tax thy mercy to forgive. Easier it is to die than to outlive All that life gave me,--him whose wrong of thee Was but the outcome of his love for me, Cherished from childhood, when, beneath the shade Of templed Axum, side by side we played. Stolen from his arms, my lover followed me Through weary seasons over land and sea; And two days since, sitting disconsolate Within the shadow of the hareem gate, Suddenly, as if dropping from the sky, Down from the lattice of the balcony Fell the sweet song by Tigre's cowherds sung In the old music of his native tongue. He knew my voice, for love is quick of ear, Answering in song. This night he waited near To fly with me. The fault was mine alone He knew thee not, he did but seek his own; Who, in the very shadow of thy throne, Sharing thy bounty, knowing all thou art, Greatest and best of men, and in her heart Grateful to tears for favor undeserved, Turned ever homeward, nor one moment swerved From her young love. He looked into my eyes, He heard my voice, and could not otherwise Than he hath done; yet, save one wild embrace When first we stood together face to face, And all that fate had done since last we met Seemed but a dream that left us children yet, He hath not wronged thee nor thy royal bed; Spare him, O king! and slay me in his stead!" But over Akbar's brows the frown hung black, And, turning to the eunuch at his back, "Take them," he said, "and let the Jumna's waves Hide both my shame and these accursed slaves!" His loathly length the unsexed bondman bowed "On my head be it!" Straightway from a cloud Of dainty shawls and veils of woven mist The Christian Miriam rose, and, stooping, kissed The monarch's hand. Loose down her shoulders bare Swept all the rippled darkness of her hair, Veiling the bosom that, with high, quick swell Of fear and pity, through it rose and fell. "Alas!" she cried, "hast thou forgotten quite The words of Him we spake of yesternight? Or thy own prophet's, 'Whoso doth endure And pardon, of eternal life is sure'? O great and good! be thy revenge alone Felt in thy mercy to the erring shown; Let thwarted love and youth their pardon plead, Who sinned but in intent, and not in deed!" One moment the strong frame of Akbar shook With the great storm of passion. Then his look Softened to her uplifted face, that still Pleaded more strongly than all words, until Its pride and anger seemed like overblown, Spent clouds of thunder left to tell alone Of strife and overcoming. With bowed head, And smiting on his bosom: "God," he said, "Alone is great, and let His holy name Be honored, even to His servant's shame! Well spake thy prophet, Miriam,--he alone Who hath not sinned is meet to cast a stone At such as these, who here their doom await, Held like myself in the strong grasp of fate. They sinned through love, as I through love forgive; Take them beyond my realm, but let them live!" And, like a chorus to the words of grace, The ancient Fakir, sitting in his place, Motionless as an idol and as grim, In the pavilion Akbar built for him Under the court-yard trees, (for he was wise, Knew Menu's laws, and through his close-shut eyes Saw things far off, and as an open book Into the thoughts of other men could look,) Began, half chant, half howling, to rehearse The fragment of a holy Vedic verse; And thus it ran: "He who all things forgives Conquers himself and all things else, and lives Above the reach of wrong or hate or fear, Calm as the gods, to whom he is most dear." Two leagues from Agra still the traveller sees The tomb of Akbar through its cypress-trees; And, near at hand, the marble walls that hide The Christian Begum sleeping at his side. And o'er her vault of burial (who shall tell If it be chance alone or miracle?) The Mission press with tireless hand unrolls The words of Jesus on its lettered scrolls,-- Tells, in all tongues, the tale of mercy o'er, And bids the guilty, "Go and sin no more!" . . . . . . . . . . . It now was dew-fall; very still The night lay on the lonely hill, Down which our homeward steps we bent, And, silent, through great silence went, Save that the tireless crickets played Their long, monotonous serenade. A young moon, at its narrowest, Curved sharp against the darkening west; And, momently, the beacon's star, Slow wheeling o'er its rock afar, From out the level darkness shot One instant and again was not. And then my friend spake quietly The thought of both: "Yon crescent see! Like Islam's symbol-moon it gives Hints of the light whereby it lives Somewhat of goodness, something true From sun and spirit shining through All faiths, all worlds, as through the dark Of ocean shines the lighthouse spark, Attests the presence everywhere Of love and providential care. The faith the old Norse heart confessed In one dear name,--the hopefulest And tenderest heard from mortal lips In pangs of birth or death, from ships Ice-bitten in the winter sea, Or lisped beside a mother's knee,-- The wiser world hath not outgrown, And the All-Father is our own!" NAUHAUGHT, THE DEACON. NAUHAUGHT, the Indian deacon, who of old Dwelt, poor but blameless, where his narrowing Cape Stretches its shrunk arm out to all the winds And the relentless smiting of the waves, Awoke one morning from a pleasant dream Of a good angel dropping in his hand A fair, broad gold-piece, in the name of God. He rose and went forth with the early day Far inland, where the voices of the waves Mellowed and Mingled with the whispering leaves, As, through the tangle of the low, thick woods, He searched his traps. Therein nor beast nor bird He found; though meanwhile in the reedy pools The otter plashed, and underneath the pines The partridge drummed: and as his thoughts went back To the sick wife and little child at home, What marvel that the poor man felt his faith Too weak to bear its burden,--like a rope That, strand by strand uncoiling, breaks above The hand that grasps it. "Even now, O Lord! Send me," he prayed, "the angel of my dream! Nauhaught is very poor; he cannot wait." Even as he spake he heard at his bare feet A low, metallic clink, and, looking down, He saw a dainty purse with disks of gold Crowding its silken net. Awhile he held The treasure up before his eyes, alone With his great need, feeling the wondrous coins Slide through his eager fingers, one by one. So then the dream was true. The angel brought One broad piece only; should he take all these? Who would be wiser, in the blind, dumb woods? The loser, doubtless rich, would scarcely miss This dropped crumb from a table always full. Still, while he mused, he seemed to hear the cry Of a starved child; the sick face of his wife Tempted him. Heart and flesh in fierce revolt Urged the wild license of his savage youth Against his later scruples. Bitter toil, Prayer, fasting, dread of blame, and pitiless eyes To watch his halting,--had he lost for these The freedom of the woods;--the hunting-grounds Of happy spirits for a walled-in heaven Of everlasting psalms? One healed the sick Very far off thousands of moons ago Had he not prayed him night and day to come And cure his bed-bound wife? Was there a hell? Were all his fathers' people writhing there-- Like the poor shell-fish set to boil alive-- Forever, dying never? If he kept This gold, so needed, would the dreadful God Torment him like a Mohawk's captive stuck With slow-consuming splinters? Would the saints And the white angels dance and laugh to see him Burn like a pitch-pine torch? His Christian garb Seemed falling from him; with the fear and shame Of Adam naked at the cool of day, He gazed around. A black snake lay in coil On the hot sand, a crow with sidelong eye Watched from a dead bough. All his Indian lore Of evil blending with a convert's faith In the supernal terrors of the Book, He saw the Tempter in the coiling snake And ominous, black-winged bird; and all the while The low rebuking of the distant waves Stole in upon him like the voice of God Among the trees of Eden. Girding up His soul's loins with a resolute hand, he thrust The base thought from him: "Nauhaught, be a man Starve, if need be; but, while you live, look out From honest eyes on all men, unashamed. God help me! I am deacon of the church, A baptized, praying Indian! Should I do This secret meanness, even the barken knots Of the old trees would turn to eyes to see it, The birds would tell of it, and all the leaves Whisper above me: 'Nauhaught is a thief!' The sun would know it, and the stars that hide Behind his light would watch me, and at night Follow me with their sharp, accusing eyes. Yea, thou, God, seest me!" Then Nauhaught drew Closer his belt of leather, dulling thus The pain of hunger, and walked bravely back To the brown fishing-hamlet by the sea; And, pausing at the inn-door, cheerily asked "Who hath lost aught to-day?" "I," said a voice; "Ten golden pieces, in a silken purse, My daughter's handiwork." He looked, and to One stood before him in a coat of frieze, And the glazed hat of a seafaring man, Shrewd-faced, broad-shouldered, with no trace of wings. Marvelling, he dropped within the stranger's hand The silken web, and turned to go his way. But the man said: "A tithe at least is yours; Take it in God's name as an honest man." And as the deacon's dusky fingers closed Over the golden gift, "Yea, in God's name I take it, with a poor man's thanks," he said. So down the street that, like a river of sand, Ran, white in sunshine, to the summer sea, He sought his home singing and praising God; And when his neighbors in their careless way Spoke of the owner of the silken purse-- A Wellfleet skipper, known in every port That the Cape opens in its sandy wall-- He answered, with a wise smile, to himself "I saw the angel where they see a man." 1870. THE SISTERS. ANNIE and Rhoda, sisters twain, Woke in the night to the sound of rain, The rush of wind, the ramp and roar Of great waves climbing a rocky shore. Annie rose up in her bed-gown white, And looked out into the storm and night. "Hush, and hearken!" she cried in fear, "Hearest thou nothing, sister dear?" "I hear the sea, and the plash of rain, And roar of the northeast hurricane. "Get thee back to the bed so warm, No good comes of watching a storm. "What is it to thee, I fain would know, That waves are roaring and wild winds blow? "No lover of thine's afloat to miss The harbor-lights on a night like this." "But I heard a voice cry out my name, Up from the sea on the wind it came. "Twice and thrice have I heard it call, And the voice is the voice of Estwick Hall!" On her pillow the sister tossed her head. "Hall of the Heron is safe," she said. "In the tautest schooner that ever swam He rides at anchor in Anisquam. "And, if in peril from swamping sea Or lee shore rocks, would he call on thee?" But the girl heard only the wind and tide, And wringing her small white hands she cried, "O sister Rhoda, there's something wrong; I hear it again, so loud and long. "'Annie! Annie!' I hear it call, And the voice is the voice of Estwick Hall!" Up sprang the elder, with eyes aflame, "Thou liest! He never would call thy name! "If he did, I would pray the wind and sea To keep him forever from thee and me!" Then out of the sea blew a dreadful blast; Like the cry of a dying man it passed. The young girl hushed on her lips a groan, But through her tears a strange light shone,-- The solemn joy of her heart's release To own and cherish its love in peace. "Dearest!" she whispered, under breath, "Life was a lie, but true is death. "The love I hid from myself away Shall crown me now in the light of day. "My ears shall never to wooer list, Never by lover my lips be kissed. "Sacred to thee am I henceforth, Thou in heaven and I on earth!" She came and stood by her sister's bed "Hall of the Heron is dead!" she said. "The wind and the waves their work have done, We shall see him no more beneath the sun. "Little will reek that heart of thine, It loved him not with a love like mine. "I, for his sake, were he but here, Could hem and 'broider thy bridal gear, "Though hands should tremble and eyes be wet, And stitch for stitch in my heart be set. "But now my soul with his soul I wed; Thine the living, and mine the dead!" 1871. MARGUERITE. MASSACHUSETTS BAY, 1760. Upwards of one thousand of the Acadian peasants forcibly taken from their homes on the Gaspereau and Basin of Minas were assigned to the several towns of the Massachusetts colony, the children being bound by the authorities to service or labor. THE robins sang in the orchard, the buds into blossoms grew; Little of human sorrow the buds and the robins knew! Sick, in an alien household, the poor French neutral lay; Into her lonesome garret fell the light of the April day, Through the dusty window, curtained by the spider's warp and woof, On the loose-laid floor of hemlock, on oaken ribs of roof, The bedquilt's faded patchwork, the teacups on the stand, The wheel with flaxen tangle, as it dropped from her sick hand. What to her was the song of the robin, or warm morning light, As she lay in the trance of the dying, heedless of sound or sight? Done was the work of her bands, she had eaten her bitter bread; The world of the alien people lay behind her dim and dead. But her soul went back to its child-time; she saw the sun o'erflow With gold the Basin of Minas, and set over Gaspereau; The low, bare flats at ebb-tide, the rush of the sea at flood, Through inlet and creek and river, from dike to upland wood; The gulls in the red of morning, the fish-hawk's rise and fall, The drift of the fog in moonshine, over the dark coast-wall. She saw the face of her mother, she heard the song she sang; And far off, faintly, slowly, the bell for vespers rang. By her bed the hard-faced mistress sat, smoothing the wrinkled sheet, Peering into the face, so helpless, and feeling the ice-cold feet. With a vague remorse atoning for her greed and long abuse, By care no longer heeded and pity too late for use. Up the stairs of the garret softly the son of the mistress stepped, Leaned over the head-board, covering his face with his hands, and wept. Outspake the mother, who watched him sharply, with brow a-frown "What! love you the Papist, the beggar, the charge of the town?" Be she Papist or beggar who lies here, I know and God knows I love her, and fain would go with her wherever she goes! "O mother! that sweet face came pleading, for love so athirst. You saw but the town-charge; I knew her God's angel at first." Shaking her gray head, the mistress hushed down a bitter cry; And awed by the silence and shadow of death drawing nigh, She murmured a psalm of the Bible; but closer the young girl pressed, With the last of her life in her fingers, the cross to her breast. "My son, come away," cried the mother, her voice cruel grown. "She is joined to her idols, like Ephraim; let her alone!" But he knelt with his hand on her forehead, his lips to her ear, And he called back the soul that was passing "Marguerite, do you hear?" She paused on the threshold of Heaven; love, pity, surprise, Wistful, tender, lit up for an instant the cloud of her eyes. With his heart on his lips he kissed her, but never her cheek grew red, And the words the living long for he spake in the ear of the dead. And the robins sang in the orchard, where buds to blossoms grew; Of the folded hands and the still face never the robins knew! 1871. THE ROBIN. MY old Welsh neighbor over the way Crept slowly out in the sun of spring, Pushed from her ears the locks of gray, And listened to hear the robin sing. Her grandson, playing at marbles, stopped, And, cruel in sport as boys will be, Tossed a stone at the bird, who hopped From bough to bough in the apple-tree. "Nay!" said the grandmother; "have you not heard, My poor, bad boy! of the fiery pit, And how, drop by drop, this merciful bird Carries the water that quenches it? "He brings cool dew in his little bill, And lets it fall on the souls of sin You can see the mark on his red breast still Of fires that scorch as he drops it in. "My poor Bron rhuddyn! my breast-burned bird, Singing so sweetly from limb to limb, Very dear to the heart of Our Lord Is he who pities the lost like Him!" "Amen!" I said to the beautiful myth; "Sing, bird of God, in my heart as well: Each good thought is a drop wherewith To cool and lessen the fires of hell. "Prayers of love like rain-drops fall, Tears of pity are cooling dew, And dear to the heart of Our Lord are all Who suffer like Him in the good they do!" 1871. THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM. INTRODUCTORY NOTE. THE beginning of German emigration to America may be traced to the personal influence of William Penn, who in 1677 visited the Continent, and made the acquaintance of an intelligent and highly cultivated circle of Pietists, or Mystics, who, reviving in the seventeenth century the spiritual faith and worship of Tauler and the "Friends of God" in the fourteenth, gathered about the pastor Spener, and the young and beautiful Eleonora Johanna Von Merlau. In this circle originated the Frankfort Land Company, which bought of William Penn, the Governor of Pennsylvania, a tract of land near the new city of Philadelphia. The company's agent in the New World was a rising young lawyer, Francis Daniel Pastorius, son of Judge Pastorius, of Windsheim, who, at the age of seventeen, entered the University of Altorf. He studied law at, Strasburg, Basle, and Jena, and at Ratisbon, the seat of the Imperial Government, obtained a practical knowledge of international polity. Successful in all his examinations and disputations, he received the degree of Doctor of Law at Nuremberg in 1676. In 1679 he was a law-lecturer at Frankfort, where he became deeply interested in the teachings of Dr. Spener. In 1680-81 he travelled in France, England, Ireland, and Italy with his friend Herr Von Rodeck. "I was," he says, "glad to enjoy again the company of my Christian friends, rather than be with Von Rodeck feasting and dancing." In 1683, in company with a small number of German Friends, he emigrated to America, settling upon the Frankfort Company's tract between the Schuylkill and the Delaware rivers. The township was divided into four hamlets, namely, Germantown, Krisheim, Crefield, and Sommerhausen. Soon after his arrival he united himself with the Society of Friends, and became one of its most able and devoted members, as well as the recognized head and lawgiver of the settlement. He married, two years after his arrival, Anneke (Anna), daughter of Dr. Klosterman, of Muhlheim. In the year 1688 he drew up a memorial against slaveholding, which was adopted by the Germantown Friends and sent up to the Monthly Meeting, and thence to the Yearly Meeting at Philadelphia. It is noteworthy as the first protest made by a religious body against Negro Slavery. The original document was discovered in 1844 by the Philadelphia antiquarian, Nathan Kite, and published in The Friend (Vol. XVIII. No. 16). It is a bold and direct appeal to the best instincts of the heart. "Have not," he asks, "these negroes as much right to fight for their freedom as you have to keep them slaves?" Under the wise direction of Pastorius, the German-town settlement grew and prospered. The inhabitants planted orchards and vineyards, and surrounded themselves with souvenirs of their old home. A large number of them were linen-weavers, as well as small farmers. The Quakers were the principal sect, but men of all religions were tolerated, and lived together in harmony. In 1692 Richard Frame published, in what he called verse, a Description of Pennsylvania, in which he alludes to the settlement:-- "The German town of which I spoke before, Which is at least in length one mile or more, Where lives High German people and Low Dutch, Whose trade in weaving linen cloth is much, --There grows the flax, as also you may know That from the same they do divide the tow. Their trade suits well their habitation, We find convenience for their occupation." Pastorius seems to have been on intimate terms with William Penn, Thomas Lloyd, Chief Justice Logan, Thomas Story, and other leading men in the Province belonging to his own religious society, as also with Kelpius, the learned Mystic of the Wissahickon, with the pastor of the Swedes' church, and the leaders of the Mennonites. He wrote a description of Pennsylvania, which was published at Frankfort and Leipsic in 1700 and 1701. His Lives of the Saints, etc., written in German and dedicated to Professor Schurmberg, his old teacher, was published in 1690. He left behind him many unpublished manuscripts covering a very wide range of subjects, most of which are now lost. One huge manuscript folio, entitled Hive Beestock, Melliotropheum Alucar, or Rusca Apium, still remains, containing one thousand pages with about one hundred lines to a page. It is a medley of knowledge and fancy, history, philosophy, and poetry, written in seven languages. A large portion of his poetry is devoted to the pleasures of gardening, the description of flowers, and the care of bees. The following specimen of his punning Latin is addressed to an orchard-pilferer:-- "Quisquis in haec furtim reptas viridaria nostra Tangere fallaci poma caveto mane, Si non obsequeris faxit Deus omne quod opto, Cum malis nostris ut mala cuncta feras." Professor Oswald Seidensticker, to whose papers in Der Deutsche Pioneer and that able periodical the Penn Monthly, of Philadelphia, I am indebted for many of the foregoing facts in regard to the German pilgrims of the New World, thus closes his notice of Pastorius:-- "No tombstone, not even a record of burial, indicates where his remains have found their last resting-place, and the pardonable desire to associate the homage due to this distinguished man with some visible memento can not be gratified. There is no reason to suppose that he was interred in any other place than the Friends' old burying-ground in Germantown, though the fact is not attested by any definite source of information. After all, this obliteration of the last trace of his earthly existence is but typical of what has overtaken the times which he represents; that Germantown which he founded, which saw him live and move, is at present but a quaint idyl of the past, almost a myth, barely remembered and little cared for by the keener race that has succeeded. The Pilgrims of Plymouth have not lacked historian and poet. Justice has been done to their faith, courage, and self-sacrifice, and to the mighty influence of their endeavors to establish righteousness on the earth. The Quaker pilgrims of Pennsylvania, seeking the same object by different means, have not been equally fortunate. The power of their testimony for truth and holiness, peace and freedom, enforced only by what Milton calls "the unresistible might of meekness," has been felt through two centuries in the amelioration of penal severities, the abolition of slavery, the reform of the erring, the relief of the poor and suffering,--felt, in brief, in every step of human progress. But of the men themselves, with the single exception of William Penn, scarcely anything is known. Contrasted, from the outset, with the stern, aggressive Puritans of New England, they have come to be regarded as "a feeble folk," with a personality as doubtful as their unrecorded graves. They were not soldiers, like Miles Standish; they had no figure so picturesque as Vane, no leader so rashly brave and haughty as Endicott. No Cotton Mather wrote their Magnalia; they had no awful drama of supernaturalism in which Satan and his angels were actors; and the only witch mentioned in their simple annals was a poor old Swedish woman, who, on complaint of her countrywomen, was tried and acquitted of everything but imbecility and folly. Nothing but common-place offices of civility came to pass between them and the Indians; indeed, their enemies taunted them with the fact that the savages did not regard them as Christians, but just such men as themselves. Yet it must be apparent to every careful observer of the progress of American civilization that its two principal currents had their sources in the entirely opposite directions of the Puritan and Quaker colonies. To use the words of a late writer: (1) "The historical forces, with which no others may be compared in their influence on the people, have been those of the Puritan and the Quaker. The strength of the one was in the confession of an invisible Presence, a righteous, eternal Will, which would establish righteousness on earth; and thence arose the conviction of a direct personal responsibility, which could be tempted by no external splendor and could be shaken by no internal agitation, and could not be evaded or transferred. The strength of the other was the witness in the human spirit to an eternal Word, an Inner Voice which spoke to each alone, while yet it spoke to every man; a Light which each was to follow, and which yet was the light of the world; and all other voices were silent before this, and the solitary path whither it led was more sacred than the worn ways of cathedral-aisles." It will be sufficiently apparent to the reader that, in the poem which follows, I have attempted nothing beyond a study of the life and times of the Pennsylvania colonist,--a simple picture of a noteworthy man and his locality. The colors of my sketch are all very sober, toned down to the quiet and dreamy atmosphere through which its subject is visible. Whether, in the glare and tumult of the present time, such a picture will find favor may well be questioned. I only know that it has beguiled for me some hours of weariness, and that, whatever may be its measure of public appreciation, it has been to me its own reward. J. G. W. AMESBURY, 5th mo., 1872. HAIL to posterity! Hail, future men of Germanopolis! Let the young generations yet to be Look kindly upon this. Think how your fathers left their native land,-- Dear German-land! O sacred hearths and homes!-- And, where the wild beast roams, In patience planned New forest-homes beyond the mighty sea, There undisturbed and free To live as brothers of one family. What pains and cares befell, What trials and what fears, Remember, and wherein we have done well Follow our footsteps, men of coming years! Where we have failed to do Aright, or wisely live, Be warned by us, the better way pursue, And, knowing we were human, even as you, Pity us and forgive! Farewell, Posterity! Farewell, dear Germany Forevermore farewell! (From the Latin of Francis DANIEL PASTORIUS in the Germantown Records. 1688.) PRELUDE. I SING the Pilgrim of a softer clime And milder speech than those brave men's who brought To the ice and iron of our winter time A will as firm, a creed as stern, and wrought With one mailed hand, and with the other fought. Simply, as fits my theme, in homely rhyme I sing the blue-eyed German Spener taught, Through whose veiled, mystic faith the Inward Light, Steady and still, an easy brightness, shone, Transfiguring all things in its radiance white. The garland which his meekness never sought I bring him; over fields of harvest sown With seeds of blessing, now to ripeness grown, I bid the sower pass before the reapers' sight. . . . . . . . . . . Never in tenderer quiet lapsed the day From Pennsylvania's vales of spring away, Where, forest-walled, the scattered hamlets lay Along the wedded rivers. One long bar Of purple cloud, on which the evening star Shone like a jewel on a scimitar, Held the sky's golden gateway. Through the deep Hush of the woods a murmur seemed to creep, The Schuylkill whispering in a voice of sleep. All else was still. The oxen from their ploughs Rested at last, and from their long day's browse Came the dun files of Krisheim's home-bound cows. And the young city, round whose virgin zone The rivers like two mighty arms were thrown, Marked by the smoke of evening fires alone, Lay in the distance, lovely even then With its fair women and its stately men Gracing the forest court of William Penn, Urban yet sylvan; in its rough-hewn frames Of oak and pine the dryads held their claims, And lent its streets their pleasant woodland names. Anna Pastorius down the leafy lane Looked city-ward, then stooped to prune again Her vines and simples, with a sigh of pain. For fast the streaks of ruddy sunset paled In the oak clearing, and, as daylight failed, Slow, overhead, the dusky night-birds sailed. Again she looked: between green walls of shade, With low-bent head as if with sorrow weighed, Daniel Pastorius slowly came and said, "God's peace be with thee, Anna!" Then he stood Silent before her, wrestling with the mood Of one who sees the evil and not good. "What is it, my Pastorius?" As she spoke, A slow, faint smile across his features broke, Sadder than tears. "Dear heart," he said, "our folk "Are even as others. Yea, our goodliest Friends Are frail; our elders have their selfish ends, And few dare trust the Lord to make amends "For duty's loss. So even our feeble word For the dumb slaves the startled meeting heard As if a stone its quiet waters stirred; "And, as the clerk ceased reading, there began A ripple of dissent which downward ran In widening circles, as from man to man. "Somewhat was said of running before sent, Of tender fear that some their guide outwent, Troublers of Israel. I was scarce intent "On hearing, for behind the reverend row Of gallery Friends, in dumb and piteous show, I saw, methought, dark faces full of woe. "And, in the spirit, I was taken where They toiled and suffered; I was made aware Of shame and wrath and anguish and despair! "And while the meeting smothered our poor plea With cautious phrase, a Voice there seemed to be, As ye have done to these ye do to me!' "So it all passed; and the old tithe went on Of anise, mint, and cumin, till the sun Set, leaving still the weightier work undone. "Help, for the good man faileth! Who is strong, If these be weak? Who shall rebuke the wrong, If these consent? How long, O Lord! how long!" He ceased; and, bound in spirit with the bound, With folded arms, and eyes that sought the ground, Walked musingly his little garden round. About him, beaded with the falling dew, Rare plants of power and herbs of healing grew, Such as Van Helmont and Agrippa knew. For, by the lore of Gorlitz' gentle sage, With the mild mystics of his dreamy age He read the herbal signs of nature's page, As once he heard in sweet Von Merlau's' bowers Fair as herself, in boyhood's happy hours, The pious Spener read his creed in flowers. "The dear Lord give us patience!" said his wife, Touching with finger-tip an aloe, rife With leaves sharp-pointed like an Aztec knife Or Carib spear, a gift to William Penn From the rare gardens of John Evelyn, Brought from the Spanish Main by merchantmen. "See this strange plant its steady purpose hold, And, year by year, its patient leaves unfold, Till the young eyes that watched it first are old. "But some time, thou hast told me, there shall come A sudden beauty, brightness, and perfume, The century-moulded bud shall burst in bloom. "So may the seed which hath been sown to-day Grow with the years, and, after long delay, Break into bloom, and God's eternal Yea! "Answer at last the patient prayers of them Who now, by faith alone, behold its stem Crowned with the flowers of Freedom's diadem. "Meanwhile, to feel and suffer, work and wait, Remains for us. The wrong indeed is great, But love and patience conquer soon or late." "Well hast thou said, my Anna!" Tenderer Than youth's caress upon the head of her Pastorius laid his hand. "Shall we demur "Because the vision tarrieth? In an hour We dream not of, the slow-grown bud may flower, And what was sown in weakness rise in power!" Then through the vine-draped door whose legend read, "Procul este profani!" Anna led To where their child upon his little bed Looked up and smiled. "Dear heart," she said, "if we Must bearers of a heavy burden be, Our boy, God willing, yet the day shall see "When from the gallery to the farthest seat, Slave and slave-owner shall no longer meet, But all sit equal at the Master's feet." On the stone hearth the blazing walnut block Set the low walls a-glimmer, showed the cock Rebuking Peter on the Van Wyck clock, Shone on old tomes of law and physic, side By side with Fox and Belimen, played at hide And seek with Anna, midst her household pride Of flaxen webs, and on the table, bare Of costly cloth or silver cup, but where, Tasting the fat shads of the Delaware, The courtly Penn had praised the goodwife's cheer, And quoted Horace o'er her home brewed beer, Till even grave Pastorius smiled to hear. In such a home, beside the Schuylkill's wave, He dwelt in peace with God and man, and gave Food to the poor and shelter to the slave. For all too soon the New World's scandal shamed The righteous code by Penn and Sidney framed, And men withheld the human rights they claimed. And slowly wealth and station sanction lent, And hardened avarice, on its gains intent, Stifled the inward whisper of dissent. Yet all the while the burden rested sore On tender hearts. At last Pastorius bore Their warning message to the Church's door In God's name; and the leaven of the word Wrought ever after in the souls who heard, And a dead conscience in its grave-clothes stirred To troubled life, and urged the vain excuse Of Hebrew custom, patriarchal use, Good in itself if evil in abuse. Gravely Pastorius listened, not the less Discerning through the decent fig-leaf dress Of the poor plea its shame of selfishness. One Scripture rule, at least, was unforgot; He hid the outcast, and betrayed him not; And, when his prey the human hunter sought, He scrupled not, while Anna's wise delay And proffered cheer prolonged the master's stay, To speed the black guest safely on his way. Yet, who shall guess his bitter grief who lends His life to some great cause, and finds his friends Shame or betray it for their private ends? How felt the Master when his chosen strove In childish folly for their seats above; And that fond mother, blinded by her love, Besought him that her sons, beside his throne, Might sit on either hand? Amidst his own A stranger oft, companionless and lone, God's priest and prophet stands. The martyr's pain Is not alone from scourge and cell and chain; Sharper the pang when, shouting in his train, His weak disciples by their lives deny The loud hosannas of their daily cry, And make their echo of his truth a lie. His forest home no hermit's cell he found, Guests, motley-minded, drew his hearth around, And held armed truce upon its neutral ground. There Indian chiefs with battle-bows unstrung, Strong, hero-limbed, like those whom Homer sung, Pastorius fancied, when the world was young, Came with their tawny women, lithe and tall, Like bronzes in his friend Von Rodeck's hall, Comely, if black, and not unpleasing all. There hungry folk in homespun drab and gray Drew round his board on Monthly Meeting day, Genial, half merry in their friendly way. Or, haply, pilgrims from the Fatherland, Weak, timid, homesick, slow to understand The New World's promise, sought his helping hand. Or painful Kelpius (13) from his hermit den By Wissahickon, maddest of good men, Dreamed o'er the Chiliast dreams of Petersen. Deep in the woods, where the small river slid Snake-like in shade, the Helmstadt Mystic hid, Weird as a wizard, over arts forbid, Reading the books of Daniel and of John, And Behmen's Morning-Redness, through the Stone Of Wisdom, vouchsafed to his eyes alone, Whereby he read what man ne'er read before, And saw the visions man shall see no more, Till the great angel, striding sea and shore, Shall bid all flesh await, on land or ships, The warning trump of the Apocalypse, Shattering the heavens before the dread eclipse. Or meek-eyed Mennonist his bearded chin Leaned o'er the gate; or Ranter, pure within, Aired his perfection in a world of sin. Or, talking of old home scenes, Op der Graaf Teased the low back-log with his shodden staff, Till the red embers broke into a laugh And dance of flame, as if they fain would cheer The rugged face, half tender, half austere, Touched with the pathos of a homesick tear! Or Sluyter, (14) saintly familist, whose word As law the Brethren of the Manor heard, Announced the speedy terrors of the Lord, And turned, like Lot at Sodom, from his race, Above a wrecked world with complacent face Riding secure upon his plank of grace! Haply, from Finland's birchen groves exiled, Manly in thought, in simple ways a child, His white hair floating round his visage mild, The Swedish pastor sought the Quaker's door, Pleased from his neighbor's lips to hear once more His long-disused and half-forgotten lore. For both could baffle Babel's lingual curse, And speak in Bion's Doric, and rehearse Cleanthes' hymn or Virgil's sounding verse. And oft Pastorius and the meek old man Argued as Quaker and as Lutheran, Ending in Christian love, as they began. With lettered Lloyd on pleasant morns he strayed Where Sommerhausen over vales of shade Looked miles away, by every flower delayed, Or song of bird, happy and free with one Who loved, like him, to let his memory run Over old fields of learning, and to sun Himself in Plato's wise philosophies, And dream with Philo over mysteries Whereof the dreamer never finds the keys; To touch all themes of thought, nor weakly stop For doubt of truth, but let the buckets drop Deep down and bring the hidden waters up (15) For there was freedom in that wakening time Of tender souls; to differ was not crime; The varying bells made up the perfect chime. On lips unlike was laid the altar's coal, The white, clear light, tradition-colored, stole Through the stained oriel of each human soul. Gathered from many sects, the Quaker brought His old beliefs, adjusting to the thought That moved his soul the creed his fathers taught. One faith alone, so broad that all mankind Within themselves its secret witness find, The soul's communion with the Eternal Mind, The Spirit's law, the Inward Rule and Guide, Scholar and peasant, lord and serf, allied, The polished Penn and Cromwell's Ironside. As still in Hemskerck's Quaker Meeting, (16) face By face in Flemish detail, we may trace How loose-mouthed boor and fine ancestral grace Sat in close contrast,--the clipt-headed churl, Broad market-dame, and simple serving-girl By skirt of silk and periwig in curl For soul touched soul; the spiritual treasure-trove Made all men equal, none could rise above Nor sink below that level of God's love. So, with his rustic neighbors sitting down, The homespun frock beside the scholar's gown, Pastorius to the manners of the town Added the freedom of the woods, and sought The bookless wisdom by experience taught, And learned to love his new-found home, while not Forgetful of the old; the seasons went Their rounds, and somewhat to his spirit lent Of their own calm and measureless content. Glad even to tears, he heard the robin sing His song of welcome to the Western spring, And bluebird borrowing from the sky his wing. And when the miracle of autumn came, And all the woods with many-colored flame Of splendor, making summer's greenness tame, Burned, unconsumed, a voice without a sound Spake to him from each kindled bush around, And made the strange, new landscape holy ground And when the bitter north-wind, keen and swift, Swept the white street and piled the dooryard drift, He exercised, as Friends might say, his gift Of verse, Dutch, English, Latin, like the hash Of corn and beans in Indian succotash; Dull, doubtless, but with here and there a flash Of wit and fine conceit,--the good man's play Of quiet fancies, meet to while away The slow hours measuring off an idle day. At evening, while his wife put on her look Of love's endurance, from its niche he took The written pages of his ponderous book. And read, in half the languages of man, His "Rusca Apium," which with bees began, And through the gamut of creation ran. Or, now and then, the missive of some friend In gray Altorf or storied Nurnberg penned Dropped in upon him like a guest to spend The night beneath his roof-tree. Mystical The fair Von Merlau spake as waters fall And voices sound in dreams, and yet withal Human and sweet, as if each far, low tone, Over the roses of her gardens blown Brought the warm sense of beauty all her own. Wise Spener questioned what his friend could trace Of spiritual influx or of saving grace In the wild natures of the Indian race. And learned Schurmberg, fain, at times, to look From Talmud, Koran, Veds, and Pentateuch, Sought out his pupil in his far-off nook, To query with him of climatic change, Of bird, beast, reptile, in his forest range, Of flowers and fruits and simples new and strange. And thus the Old and New World reached their hands Across the water, and the friendly lands Talked with each other from their severed strands. Pastorius answered all: while seed and root Sent from his new home grew to flower and fruit Along the Rhine and at the Spessart's foot; And, in return, the flowers his boyhood knew Smiled at his door, the same in form and hue, And on his vines the Rhenish clusters grew. No idler he; whoever else might shirk, He set his hand to every honest work,-- Farmer and teacher, court and meeting clerk. Still on the town seal his device is found, Grapes, flax, and thread-spool on a trefoil ground, With "Vinum, Linum et Textrinum" wound. One house sufficed for gospel and for law, Where Paul and Grotius, Scripture text and saw, Assured the good, and held the rest in awe. Whatever legal maze he wandered through, He kept the Sermon on the Mount in view, And justice always into mercy grew. No whipping-post he needed, stocks, nor jail, Nor ducking-stool; the orchard-thief grew pale At his rebuke, the vixen ceased to rail, The usurer's grasp released the forfeit land; The slanderer faltered at the witness-stand, And all men took his counsel for command. Was it caressing air, the brooding love Of tenderer skies than German land knew of, Green calm below, blue quietness above, Still flow of water, deep repose of wood That, with a sense of loving Fatherhood And childlike trust in the Eternal Good, Softened all hearts, and dulled the edge of hate, Hushed strife, and taught impatient zeal to wait The slow assurance of the better state? Who knows what goadings in their sterner way O'er jagged ice, relieved by granite gray, Blew round the men of Massachusetts Bay? What hate of heresy the east-wind woke? What hints of pitiless power and terror spoke In waves that on their iron coast-line broke? Be it as it may: within the Land of Penn The sectary yielded to the citizen, And peaceful dwelt the many-creeded men. Peace brooded over all. No trumpet stung The air to madness, and no steeple flung Alarums down from bells at midnight rung. The land slept well. The Indian from his face Washed all his war-paint off, and in the place Of battle-marches sped the peaceful chase, Or wrought for wages at the white man's side,-- Giving to kindness what his native pride And lazy freedom to all else denied. And well the curious scholar loved the old Traditions that his swarthy neighbors told By wigwam-fires when nights were growing cold, Discerned the fact round which their fancy drew Its dreams, and held their childish faith more true To God and man than half the creeds he knew. The desert blossomed round him; wheat-fields rolled Beneath the warm wind waves of green and gold; The planted ear returned its hundred-fold. Great clusters ripened in a warmer sun Than that which by the Rhine stream shines upon The purpling hillsides with low vines o'errun. About each rustic porch the humming-bird Tried with light bill, that scarce a petal stirred, The Old World flowers to virgin soil transferred; And the first-fruits of pear and apple, bending The young boughs down, their gold and russet blending, Made glad his heart, familiar odors lending To the fresh fragrance of the birch and pine, Life-everlasting, bay, and eglantine, And all the subtle scents the woods combine. Fair First-Day mornings, steeped in summer calm, Warm, tender, restful, sweet with woodland balm, Came to him, like some mother-hallowed psalm To the tired grinder at the noisy wheel Of labor, winding off from memory's reel A golden thread of music. With no peal Of bells to call them to the house of praise, The scattered settlers through green forest-ways Walked meeting-ward. In reverent amaze The Indian trapper saw them, from the dim Shade of the alders on the rivulet's rim, Seek the Great Spirit's house to talk with Him. There, through the gathered stillness multiplied And made intense by sympathy, outside The sparrows sang, and the gold-robin cried, A-swing upon his elm. A faint perfume Breathed through the open windows of the room From locust-trees, heavy with clustered bloom. Thither, perchance, sore-tried confessors came, Whose fervor jail nor pillory could tame, Proud of the cropped ears meant to be their shame, Men who had eaten slavery's bitter bread In Indian isles; pale women who had bled Under the hangman's lash, and bravely said God's message through their prison's iron bars; And gray old soldier-converts, seamed with scars From every stricken field of England's wars. Lowly before the Unseen Presence knelt Each waiting heart, till haply some one felt On his moved lips the seal of silence melt. Or, without spoken words, low breathings stole Of a diviner life from soul to soul, Baptizing in one tender thought the whole. When shaken hands announced the meeting o'er, The friendly group still lingered at the door, Greeting, inquiring, sharing all the store Of weekly tidings. Meanwhile youth and maid Down the green vistas of the woodland strayed, Whispered and smiled and oft their feet delayed. Did the boy's whistle answer back the thrushes? Did light girl laughter ripple through the bushes, As brooks make merry over roots and rushes? Unvexed the sweet air seemed. Without a wound The ear of silence heard, and every sound Its place in nature's fine accordance found. And solemn meeting, summer sky and wood, Old kindly faces, youth and maidenhood Seemed, like God's new creation, very good! And, greeting all with quiet smile and word, Pastorius went his way. The unscared bird Sang at his side; scarcely the squirrel stirred At his hushed footstep on the mossy sod; And, wheresoe'er the good man looked or trod, He felt the peace of nature and of God. His social life wore no ascetic form, He loved all beauty, without fear of harm, And in his veins his Teuton blood ran warm. Strict to himself, of other men no spy, He made his own no circuit-judge to try The freer conscience of his neighbors by. With love rebuking, by his life alone, Gracious and sweet, the better way was shown, The joy of one, who, seeking not his own, And faithful to all scruples, finds at last The thorns and shards of duty overpast, And daily life, beyond his hope's forecast, Pleasant and beautiful with sight and sound, And flowers upspringing in its narrow round, And all his days with quiet gladness crowned. He sang not; but, if sometimes tempted strong, He hummed what seemed like Altorf's Burschen-song; His good wife smiled, and did not count it wrong. For well he loved his boyhood's brother band; His Memory, while he trod the New World's strand, A double-ganger walked the Fatherland If, when on frosty Christmas eves the light Shone on his quiet hearth, he missed the sight Of Yule-log, Tree, and Christ-child all in white; And closed his eyes, and listened to the sweet Old wait-songs sounding down his native street, And watched again the dancers' mingling feet; Yet not the less, when once the vision passed, He held the plain and sober maxims fast Of the dear Friends with whom his lot was cast. Still all attuned to nature's melodies, He loved the bird's song in his dooryard trees, And the low hum of home-returning bees; The blossomed flax, the tulip-trees in bloom Down the long street, the beauty and perfume Of apple-boughs, the mingling light and gloom Of Sommerhausen's woodlands, woven through With sun--threads; and the music the wind drew, Mournful and sweet, from leaves it overblew. And evermore, beneath this outward sense, And through the common sequence of events, He felt the guiding hand of Providence Reach out of space. A Voice spake in his ear, And to all other voices far and near Died at that whisper, full of meanings clear. The Light of Life shone round him; one by one The wandering lights, that all-misleading run, Went out like candles paling in the sun. That Light he followed, step by step, where'er It led, as in the vision of the seer The wheels moved as the spirit in the clear And terrible crystal moved, with all their eyes Watching the living splendor sink or rise, Its will their will, knowing no otherwise. Within himself he found the law of right, He walked by faith and not the letter's sight, And read his Bible by the Inward Light. And if sometimes the slaves of form and rule, Frozen in their creeds like fish in winter's pool, Tried the large tolerance of his liberal school, His door was free to men of every name, He welcomed all the seeking souls who came, And no man's faith he made a cause of blame. But best he loved in leisure hours to see His own dear Friends sit by him knee to knee, In social converse, genial, frank, and free. There sometimes silence (it were hard to tell Who owned it first) upon the circle fell, Hushed Anna's busy wheel, and laid its spell On the black boy who grimaced by the hearth, To solemnize his shining face of mirth; Only the old clock ticked amidst the dearth Of sound; nor eye was raised nor hand was stirred In that soul-sabbath, till at last some word Of tender counsel or low prayer was heard. Then guests, who lingered but farewell to say And take love's message, went their homeward way; So passed in peace the guileless Quaker's day. His was the Christian's unsung Age of Gold, A truer idyl than the bards have told Of Arno's banks or Arcady of old. Where still the Friends their place of burial keep, And century-rooted mosses o'er it creep, The Nurnberg scholar and his helpmeet sleep. And Anna's aloe? If it flowered at last In Bartram's garden, did John Woolman cast A glance upon it as he meekly passed? And did a secret sympathy possess That tender soul, and for the slave's redress Lend hope, strength, patience? It were vain to guess. Nay, were the plant itself but mythical, Set in the fresco of tradition's wall Like Jotham's bramble, mattereth not at all. Enough to know that, through the winter's frost And summer's heat, no seed of truth is lost, And every duty pays at last its cost. For, ere Pastorius left the sun and air, God sent the answer to his life-long prayer; The child was born beside the Delaware, Who, in the power a holy purpose lends, Guided his people unto nobler ends, And left them worthier of the name of Friends. And to! the fulness of the time has come, And over all the exile's Western home, From sea to sea the flowers of freedom bloom! And joy-bells ring, and silver trumpets blow; But not for thee, Pastorius! Even so The world forgets, but the wise angels know. KING VOLMER AND ELSIE. AFTER THE DANISH OF CHRISTIAN WINTER. WHERE, over heathen doom-rings and gray stones of the Horg, In its little Christian city stands the church of Vordingborg, In merry mood King Volmer sat, forgetful of his power, As idle as the Goose of Gold that brooded on his tower. Out spake the King to Henrik, his young and faithful squire "Dar'st trust thy little Elsie, the maid of thy desire?" "Of all the men in Denmark she loveth only me As true to me is Elsie as thy Lily is to thee." Loud laughed the king: "To-morrow shall bring another day, (18) When I myself will test her; she will not say me nay." Thereat the lords and gallants, that round about him stood, Wagged all their heads in concert and smiled as courtiers should. The gray lark sings o'er Vordingborg, and on the ancient town From the tall tower of Valdemar the Golden Goose looks down; The yellow grain is waving in the pleasant wind of morn, The wood resounds with cry of hounds and blare of hunter's horn. In the garden of her father little Elsie sits and spins, And, singing with the early birds, her daily task, begins. Gay tulips bloom and sweet mint curls around her garden-bower, But she is sweeter than the mint and fairer than the flower. About her form her kirtle blue clings lovingly, and, white As snow, her loose sleeves only leave her small, round wrists in sight; Below, the modest petticoat can only half conceal The motion of the lightest foot that ever turned a wheel. The cat sits purring at her side, bees hum in sunshine warm; But, look! she starts, she lifts her face, she shades it with her arm. And, hark! a train of horsemen, with sound of dog and horn, Come leaping o'er the ditches, come trampling down the corn! Merrily rang the bridle-reins, and scarf and plume streamed gay, As fast beside her father's gate the riders held their way; And one was brave in scarlet cloak, with golden spur on heel, And, as he checked his foaming steed, the maiden checked her wheel. "All hail among thy roses, the fairest rose to me! For weary months in secret my heart has longed for thee!" What noble knight was this? What words for modest maiden's ear? She dropped a lowly courtesy of bashfulness and fear. She lifted up her spinning-wheel; she fain would seek the door, Trembling in every limb, her cheek with blushes crimsoned o'er. "Nay, fear me not," the rider said, "I offer heart and hand, Bear witness these good Danish knights who round about me stand. "I grant you time to think of this, to answer as you may, For to-morrow, little Elsie, shall bring another day." He spake the old phrase slyly as, glancing round his train, He saw his merry followers seek to hide their smiles in vain. "The snow of pearls I'll scatter in your curls of golden hair, I'll line with furs the velvet of the kirtle that you wear; All precious gems shall twine your neck; and in a chariot gay You shall ride, my little Elsie, behind four steeds of gray. "And harps shall sound, and flutes shall play, and brazen lamps shall glow; On marble floors your feet shall weave the dances to and fro. At frosty eventide for us the blazing hearth shall shine, While, at our ease, we play at draughts, and drink the blood-red wine." Then Elsie raised her head and met her wooer face to face; A roguish smile shone in her eye and on her lip found place. Back from her low white forehead the curls of gold she threw, And lifted up her eyes to his, steady and clear and blue. "I am a lowly peasant, and you a gallant knight; I will not trust a love that soon may cool and turn to slight. If you would wed me henceforth be a peasant, not a lord; I bid you hang upon the wall your tried and trusty sword." "To please you, Elsie, I will lay keen Dynadel away, And in its place will swing the scythe and mow your father's hay." "Nay, but your gallant scarlet cloak my eyes can never bear; A Vadmal coat, so plain and gray, is all that you must wear." "Well, Vadmal will I wear for you," the rider gayly spoke, "And on the Lord's high altar I'll lay my scarlet cloak." "But mark," she said, "no stately horse my peasant love must ride, A yoke of steers before the plough is all that he must guide." The knight looked down upon his steed: "Well, let him wander free No other man must ride the horse that has been backed by me. Henceforth I'll tread the furrow and to my oxen talk, If only little Elsie beside my plough will walk." "You must take from out your cellar cask of wine and flask and can; The homely mead I brew you may serve a peasant. man." "Most willingly, fair Elsie, I'll drink that mead of thine, And leave my minstrel's thirsty throat to drain my generous wine." "Now break your shield asunder, and shatter sign and boss, Unmeet for peasant-wedded arms, your knightly knee across. And pull me down your castle from top to basement wall, And let your plough trace furrows in the ruins of your hall!" Then smiled he with a lofty pride; right well at last he knew The maiden of the spinning-wheel was to her troth. plight true. "Ah, roguish little Elsie! you act your part full well You know that I must bear my shield and in my castle dwell! "The lions ramping on that shield between the hearts aflame Keep watch o'er Denmark's honor, and guard her ancient name. "For know that I am Volmer; I dwell in yonder towers, Who ploughs them ploughs up Denmark, this goodly home of ours'. "I tempt no more, fair Elsie! your heart I know is true; Would God that all our maidens were good and pure as you! Well have you pleased your monarch, and he shall well repay; God's peace! Farewell! To-morrow will bring another day!" He lifted up his bridle hand, he spurred his good steed then, And like a whirl-blast swept away with all his gallant men. The steel hoofs beat the rocky path; again on winds of morn The wood resounds with cry of hounds and blare of hunter's horn. "Thou true and ever faithful!" the listening Henrik cried; And, leaping o'er the green hedge, he stood by Elsie's side. None saw the fond embracing, save, shining from afar, The Golden Goose that watched them from the tower of Valdemar. O darling girls of Denmark! of all the flowers that throng Her vales of spring the fairest, I sing for you my song. No praise as yours so bravely rewards the singer's skill; Thank God! of maids like Elsie the land has plenty still! 1872. THE THREE BELLS. BENEATH the low-hung night cloud That raked her splintering mast The good ship settled slowly, The cruel leak gained fast. Over the awful ocean Her signal guns pealed out. Dear God! was that Thy answer From the horror round about? A voice came down the wild wind, "Ho! ship ahoy!" its cry "Our stout Three Bells of Glasgow Shall lay till daylight by!" Hour after hour crept slowly, Yet on the heaving swells Tossed up and down the ship-lights, The lights of the Three Bells! And ship to ship made signals, Man answered back to man, While oft, to cheer and hearten, The Three Bells nearer ran; And the captain from her taffrail Sent down his hopeful cry "Take heart! Hold on!" he shouted; "The Three Bells shall lay by!" All night across the waters The tossing lights shone clear; All night from reeling taffrail The Three Bells sent her cheer. And when the dreary watches Of storm and darkness passed, Just as the wreck lurched under, All souls were saved at last. Sail on, Three Bells, forever, In grateful memory sail! Ring on, Three Bells of rescue, Above the wave and gale! Type of the Love eternal, Repeat the Master's cry, As tossing through our darkness The lights of God draw nigh! 1872. JOHN UNDERHILL. A SCORE of years had come and gone Since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth stone, When Captain Underhill, bearing scars From Indian ambush and Flemish wars, Left three-hilled Boston and wandered down, East by north, to Cocheco town. With Vane the younger, in counsel sweet, He had sat at Anna Hutchinson's feet, And, when the bolt of banishment fell On the head of his saintly oracle, He had shared her ill as her good report, And braved the wrath of the General Court. He shook from his feet as he rode away The dust of the Massachusetts Bay. The world might bless and the world might ban, What did it matter the perfect man, To whom the freedom of earth was given, Proof against sin, and sure of heaven? He cheered his heart as he rode along With screed of Scripture and holy song, Or thought how he rode with his lances free By the Lower Rhine and the Zuyder-Zee, Till his wood-path grew to a trodden road, And Hilton Point in the distance showed. He saw the church with the block-house nigh, The two fair rivers, the flakes thereby, And, tacking to windward, low and crank, The little shallop from Strawberry Bank; And he rose in his stirrups and looked abroad Over land and water, and praised the Lord. Goodly and stately and grave to see, Into the clearing's space rode he, With the sun on the hilt of his sword in sheath, And his silver buckles and spurs beneath, And the settlers welcomed him, one and all, From swift Quampeagan to Gonic Fall. And he said to the elders: "Lo, I come As the way seemed open to seek a home. Somewhat the Lord hath wrought by my hands In the Narragansett and Netherlands, And if here ye have work for a Christian man, I will tarry, and serve ye as best I can. "I boast not of gifts, but fain would own The wonderful favor God hath shown, The special mercy vouchsafed one day On the shore of Narragansett Bay, As I sat, with my pipe, from the camp aside, And mused like Isaac at eventide. "A sudden sweetness of peace I found, A garment of gladness wrapped me round; I felt from the law of works released, The strife of the flesh and spirit ceased, My faith to a full assurance grew, And all I had hoped for myself I knew. "Now, as God appointeth, I keep my way, I shall not stumble, I shall not stray; He hath taken away my fig-leaf dress, I wear the robe of His righteousness; And the shafts of Satan no more avail Than Pequot arrows on Christian mail." "Tarry with us," the settlers cried, "Thou man of God, as our ruler and guide." And Captain Underhill bowed his head. "The will of the Lord be done!" he said. And the morrow beheld him sitting down In the ruler's seat in Cocheco town. And he judged therein as a just man should; His words were wise and his rule was good; He coveted not his neighbor's land, From the holding of bribes he shook his hand; And through the camps of the heathen ran A wholesome fear of the valiant man. But the heart is deceitful, the good Book saith, And life hath ever a savor of death. Through hymns of triumph the tempter calls, And whoso thinketh he standeth falls. Alas! ere their round the seasons ran, There was grief in the soul of the saintly man. The tempter's arrows that rarely fail Had found the joints of his spiritual mail; And men took note of his gloomy air, The shame in his eye, the halt in his prayer, The signs of a battle lost within, The pain of a soul in the coils of sin. Then a whisper of scandal linked his name With broken vows and a life of blame; And the people looked askance on him As he walked among them sullen and grim, Ill at ease, and bitter of word, And prompt of quarrel with hand or sword. None knew how, with prayer and fasting still, He strove in the bonds of his evil will; But he shook himself like Samson at length, And girded anew his loins of strength, And bade the crier go up and down And call together the wondering town. Jeer and murmur and shaking of head Ceased as he rose in his place and said "Men, brethren, and fathers, well ye know How I came among you a year ago, Strong in the faith that my soul was freed From sin of feeling, or thought, or deed. "I have sinned, I own it with grief and shame, But not with a lie on my lips I came. In my blindness I verily thought my heart Swept and garnished in every part. He chargeth His angels with folly; He sees The heavens unclean. Was I more than these? "I urge no plea. At your feet I lay The trust you gave me, and go my way. Hate me or pity me, as you will, The Lord will have mercy on sinners still; And I, who am chiefest, say to all, Watch and pray, lest ye also fall." No voice made answer: a sob so low That only his quickened ear could know Smote his heart with a bitter pain, As into the forest he rode again, And the veil of its oaken leaves shut down On his latest glimpse of Cocheco town. Crystal-clear on the man of sin The streams flashed up, and the sky shone in; On his cheek of fever the cool wind blew, The leaves dropped on him their tears of dew, And angels of God, in the pure, sweet guise Of flowers, looked on him with sad surprise. Was his ear at fault that brook and breeze Sang in their saddest of minor keys? What was it the mournful wood-thrush said? What whispered the pine-trees overhead? Did he hear the Voice on his lonely way That Adam heard in the cool of day? Into the desert alone rode he, Alone with the Infinite Purity; And, bowing his soul to its tender rebuke, As Peter did to the Master's look, He measured his path with prayers of pain For peace with God and nature again. And in after years to Cocheco came The bruit of a once familiar name; How among the Dutch of New Netherlands, From wild Danskamer to Haarlem sands, A penitent soldier preached the Word, And smote the heathen with Gideon's sword! And the heart of Boston was glad to hear How he harried the foe on the long frontier, And heaped on the land against him barred The coals of his generous watch and ward. Frailest and bravest! the Bay State still Counts with her worthies John Underhill. 1873. CONDUCTOR BRADLEY. A railway conductor who lost his life in an accident on a Connecticut railway, May 9, 1873. CONDUCTOR BRADLEY, (always may his name Be said with reverence!) as the swift doom came, Smitten to death, a crushed and mangled frame, Sank, with the brake he grasped just where he stood To do the utmost that a brave man could, And die, if needful, as a true man should. Men stooped above him; women dropped their tears On that poor wreck beyond all hopes or fears, Lost in the strength and glory of his years. What heard they? Lo! the ghastly lips of pain, Dead to all thought save duty's, moved again "Put out the signals for the other train!" No nobler utterance since the world began From lips of saint or martyr ever ran, Electric, through the sympathies of man. Ah me! how poor and noteless seem to this The sick-bed dramas of self-consciousness, Our sensual fears of pain and hopes of bliss! Oh, grand, supreme endeavor! Not in vain That last brave act of failing tongue and brain Freighted with life the downward rushing train, Following the wrecked one, as wave follows wave, Obeyed the warning which the dead lips gave. Others he saved, himself he could not save. Nay, the lost life was saved. He is not dead Who in his record still the earth shall tread With God's clear aureole shining round his head. We bow as in the dust, with all our pride Of virtue dwarfed the noble deed beside. God give us grace to live as Bradley died! 1873. THE WITCH OF WENHAM. The house is still standing in Danvers, Mass., where, it is said, a suspected witch was confined overnight in the attic, which was bolted fast. In the morning when the constable came to take her to Salem for trial she was missing, although the door was still bolted. Her escape was doubtless aided by her friends, but at the time it was attributed to Satanic interference. I. ALONG Crane River's sunny slopes Blew warm the winds of May, And over Naumkeag's ancient oaks The green outgrew the gray. The grass was green on Rial-side, The early birds at will Waked up the violet in its dell, The wind-flower on its hill. "Where go you, in your Sunday coat, Son Andrew, tell me, pray." For striped perch in Wenham Lake I go to fish to-day." "Unharmed of thee in Wenham Lake The mottled perch shall be A blue-eyed witch sits on the bank And weaves her net for thee. "She weaves her golden hair; she sings Her spell-song low and faint; The wickedest witch in Salem jail Is to that girl a saint." "Nay, mother, hold thy cruel tongue; God knows," the young man cried, "He never made a whiter soul Than hers by Wenham side. "She tends her mother sick and blind, And every want supplies; To her above the blessed Book She lends her soft blue eyes. "Her voice is glad with holy songs, Her lips are sweet with prayer; Go where you will, in ten miles round Is none more good and fair." "Son Andrew, for the love of God And of thy mother, stay!" She clasped her hands, she wept aloud, But Andrew rode away. "O reverend sir, my Andrew's soul The Wenham witch has caught; She holds him with the curled gold Whereof her snare is wrought. "She charms him with her great blue eyes, She binds him with her hair; Oh, break the spell with holy words, Unbind him with a prayer!" "Take heart," the painful preacher said, "This mischief shall not be; The witch shall perish in her sins And Andrew shall go free. "Our poor Ann Putnam testifies She saw her weave a spell, Bare-armed, loose-haired, at full of moon, Around a dried-up well. "'Spring up, O well!' she softly sang The Hebrew's old refrain (For Satan uses Bible words), Till water flowed a-main. "And many a goodwife heard her speak By Wenham water words That made the buttercups take wings And turn to yellow birds. "They say that swarming wild bees seek The hive at her command; And fishes swim to take their food From out her dainty hand. "Meek as she sits in meeting-time, The godly minister Notes well the spell that doth compel The young men's eyes to her. "The mole upon her dimpled chin Is Satan's seal and sign; Her lips are red with evil bread And stain of unblest wine. "For Tituba, my Indian, saith At Quasycung she took The Black Man's godless sacrament And signed his dreadful book. "Last night my sore-afflicted child Against the young witch cried. To take her Marshal Herrick rides Even now to Wenham side." The marshal in his saddle sat, His daughter at his knee; "I go to fetch that arrant witch, Thy fair playmate," quoth he. "Her spectre walks the parsonage, And haunts both hall and stair; They know her by the great blue eyes And floating gold of hair." "They lie, they lie, my father dear! No foul old witch is she, But sweet and good and crystal-pure As Wenham waters be." "I tell thee, child, the Lord hath set Before us good and ill, And woe to all whose carnal loves Oppose His righteous will. "Between Him and the powers of hell Choose thou, my child, to-day No sparing hand, no pitying eye, When God commands to slay!" He went his way; the old wives shook With fear as he drew nigh; The children in the dooryards held Their breath as he passed by. Too well they knew the gaunt gray horse The grim witch-hunter rode The pale Apocalyptic beast By grisly Death bestrode. II. Oh, fair the face of Wenham Lake Upon the young girl's shone, Her tender mouth, her dreaming eyes, Her yellow hair outblown. By happy youth and love attuned To natural harmonies, The singing birds, the whispering wind, She sat beneath the trees. Sat shaping for her bridal dress Her mother's wedding gown, When lo! the marshal, writ in hand, From Alford hill rode down. His face was hard with cruel fear, He grasped the maiden's hands "Come with me unto Salem town, For so the law commands!" "Oh, let me to my mother say Farewell before I go!" He closer tied her little hands Unto his saddle bow. "Unhand me," cried she piteously, "For thy sweet daughter's sake." "I'll keep my daughter safe," he said, "From the witch of Wenham Lake." "Oh, leave me for my mother's sake, She needs my eyes to see." "Those eyes, young witch, the crows shall peck From off the gallows-tree." He bore her to a farm-house old, And up its stairway long, And closed on her the garret-door With iron bolted strong. The day died out, the night came down Her evening prayer she said, While, through the dark, strange faces seemed To mock her as she prayed. The present horror deepened all The fears her childhood knew; The awe wherewith the air was filled With every breath she drew. And could it be, she trembling asked, Some secret thought or sin Had shut good angels from her heart And let the bad ones in? Had she in some forgotten dream Let go her hold on Heaven, And sold herself unwittingly To spirits unforgiven? Oh, weird and still the dark hours passed; No human sound she heard, But up and down the chimney stack The swallows moaned and stirred. And o'er her, with a dread surmise Of evil sight and sound, The blind bats on their leathern wings Went wheeling round and round. Low hanging in the midnight sky Looked in a half-faced moon. Was it a dream, or did she hear Her lover's whistled tune? She forced the oaken scuttle back; A whisper reached her ear "Slide down the roof to me," it said, "So softly none may hear." She slid along the sloping roof Till from its eaves she hung, And felt the loosened shingles yield To which her fingers clung. Below, her lover stretched his hands And touched her feet so small; "Drop down to me, dear heart," he said, "My arms shall break the fall." He set her on his pillion soft, Her arms about him twined; And, noiseless as if velvet-shod, They left the house behind. But when they reached the open way, Full free the rein he cast; Oh, never through the mirk midnight Rode man and maid more fast. Along the wild wood-paths they sped, The bridgeless streams they swam; At set of moon they passed the Bass, At sunrise Agawam. At high noon on the Merrimac The ancient ferryman Forgot, at times, his idle oars, So fair a freight to scan. And when from off his grounded boat He saw them mount and ride, "God keep her from the evil eye, And harm of witch!" he cried. The maiden laughed, as youth will laugh At all its fears gone by; "He does not know," she whispered low, "A little witch am I." All day he urged his weary horse, And, in the red sundown, Drew rein before a friendly door In distant Berwick town. A fellow-feeling for the wronged The Quaker people felt; And safe beside their kindly hearths The hunted maiden dwelt, Until from off its breast the land The haunting horror threw, And hatred, born of ghastly dreams, To shame and pity grew. Sad were the year's spring morns, and sad Its golden summer day, But blithe and glad its withered fields, And skies of ashen gray; For spell and charm had power no more, The spectres ceased to roam, And scattered households knelt again Around the hearths of home. And when once more by Beaver Dam The meadow-lark outsang, And once again on all the hills The early violets sprang, And all the windy pasture slopes Lay green within the arms Of creeks that bore the salted sea To pleasant inland farms, The smith filed off the chains he forged, The jail-bolts backward fell; And youth and hoary age came forth Like souls escaped from hell. 1877 KING SOLOMON AND THE ANTS OUT from Jerusalem The king rode with his great War chiefs and lords of state, And Sheba's queen with them; Comely, but black withal, To whom, perchance, belongs That wondrous Song of songs, Sensuous and mystical, Whereto devout souls turn In fond, ecstatic dream, And through its earth-born theme The Love of loves discern. Proud in the Syrian sun, In gold and purple sheen, The dusky Ethiop queen Smiled on King Solomon. Wisest of men, he knew The languages of all The creatures great or small That trod the earth or flew. Across an ant-hill led The king's path, and he heard Its small folk, and their word He thus interpreted: "Here comes the king men greet As wise and good and just, To crush us in the dust Under his heedless feet." The great king bowed his head, And saw the wide surprise Of the Queen of Sheba's eyes As he told her what they said. "O king!" she whispered sweet, "Too happy fate have they Who perish in thy way Beneath thy gracious feet! "Thou of the God-lent crown, Shall these vile creatures dare Murmur against thee where The knees of kings kneel down?" "Nay," Solomon replied, "The wise and strong should seek The welfare of the weak," And turned his horse aside. His train, with quick alarm, Curved with their leader round The ant-hill's peopled mound, And left it free from harm. The jewelled head bent low; "O king!" she said, "henceforth The secret of thy worth And wisdom well I know. "Happy must be the State Whose ruler heedeth more The murmurs of the poor Than flatteries of the great." 1877. IN THE "OLD SOUTH." On the 8th of July, 1677, Margaret Brewster with four other Friends went into the South Church in time of meeting, "in sack-cloth, with ashes upon her head, barefoot, and her face blackened," and delivered "a warning from the great God of Heaven and Earth to the Rulers and Magistrates of Boston." For the offence she was sentenced to be "whipped at a cart's tail up and down the Town, with twenty lashes." SHE came and stood in the Old South Church, A wonder and a sign, With a look the old-time sibyls wore, Half-crazed and half-divine. Save the mournful sackcloth about her wound, Unclothed as the primal mother, With limbs that trembled and eyes that blazed With a fire she dare not smother. Loose on her shoulders fell her hair, With sprinkled ashes gray; She stood in the broad aisle strange and weird As a soul at the judgment day. And the minister paused in his sermon's midst, And the people held their breath, For these were the words the maiden spoke Through lips as the lips of death: "Thus saith the Lord, with equal feet All men my courts shall tread, And priest and ruler no more shall eat My people up like bread! "Repent! repent! ere the Lord shall speak In thunder and breaking seals Let all souls worship Him in the way His light within reveals." She shook the dust from her naked feet, And her sackcloth closer drew, And into the porch of the awe-hushed church She passed like a ghost from view. They whipped her away at the tail o' the cart Through half the streets of the town, But the words she uttered that day nor fire Could burn nor water drown. And now the aisles of the ancient church By equal feet are trod, And the bell that swings in its belfry rings Freedom to worship God! And now whenever a wrong is done It thrills the conscious walls; The stone from the basement cries aloud And the beam from the timber calls. There are steeple-houses on every hand, And pulpits that bless and ban, And the Lord will not grudge the single church That is set apart for man. For in two commandments are all the law And the prophets under the sun, And the first is last and the last is first, And the twain are verily one. So, long as Boston shall Boston be, And her bay-tides rise and fall, Shall freedom stand in the Old South Church And plead for the rights of all! 1877. THE HENCHMAN. MY lady walks her morning round, My lady's page her fleet greyhound, My lady's hair the fond winds stir, And all the birds make songs for her. Her thrushes sing in Rathburn bowers, And Rathburn side is gay with flowers; But ne'er like hers, in flower or bird, Was beauty seen or music heard. The distance of the stars is hers; The least of all her worshippers, The dust beneath her dainty heel, She knows not that I see or feel. Oh, proud and calm!--she cannot know Where'er she goes with her I go; Oh, cold and fair!--she cannot guess I kneel to share her hound's caress! Gay knights beside her hunt and hawk, I rob their ears of her sweet talk; Her suitors come from east and west, I steal her smiles from every guest. Unheard of her, in loving words, I greet her with the song of birds; I reach her with her green-armed bowers, I kiss her with the lips of flowers. The hound and I are on her trail, The wind and I uplift her veil; As if the calm, cold moon she were, And I the tide, I follow her. As unrebuked as they, I share The license of the sun and air, And in a common homage hide My worship from her scorn and pride. World-wide apart, and yet so near, I breathe her charmed atmosphere, Wherein to her my service brings The reverence due to holy things. Her maiden pride, her haughty name, My dumb devotion shall not shame; The love that no return doth crave To knightly levels lifts the slave, No lance have I, in joust or fight, To splinter in my lady's sight But, at her feet, how blest were I For any need of hers to die! 1877. THE DEAD FEAST OF THE KOL-FOLK. E. B. Tylor in his Primitive Culture, chapter xii., gives an account of the reverence paid the dead by the Kol tribes of Chota Nagpur, Assam. "When a Ho or Munda," he says, "has been burned on the funeral pile, collected morsels of his bones are carried in procession with a solemn, ghostly, sliding step, keeping time to the deep-sounding drum, and when the old woman who carries the bones on her bamboo tray lowers it from time to time, then girls who carry pitchers and brass vessels mournfully reverse them to show that they are empty; thus the remains are taken to visit every house in the village, and every dwelling of a friend or relative for miles, and the inmates come out to mourn and praise the goodness of the departed; the bones are carried to all the dead man's favorite haunts, to the fields he cultivated, to the grove he planted, to the threshing-floor where he worked, to the village dance-room where he made merry. At last they are taken to the grave, and buried in an earthen vase upon a store of food, covered with one of those huge stone slabs which European visitors wonder at in the districts of the aborigines of India." In the Journal of the Asiatic Society, Bengal, vol. ix., p. 795, is a Ho dirge. WE have opened the door, Once, twice, thrice! We have swept the floor, We have boiled the rice. Come hither, come hither! Come from the far lands, Come from the star lands, Come as before! We lived long together, We loved one another; Come back to our life. Come father, come mother, Come sister and brother, Child, husband, and wife, For you we are sighing. Come take your old places, Come look in our faces, The dead on the dying, Come home! We have opened the door, Once, twice, thrice! We have kindled the coals, And we boil the rice For the feast of souls. Come hither, come hither! Think not we fear you, Whose hearts are so near you. Come tenderly thought on, Come all unforgotten, Come from the shadow-lands, From the dim meadow-lands Where the pale grasses bend Low to our sighing. Come father, come mother, Come sister and brother, Come husband and friend, The dead to the dying, Come home! We have opened the door You entered so oft; For the feast of souls We have kindled the coals, And we boil the rice soft. Come you who are dearest To us who are nearest, Come hither, come hither, From out the wild weather; The storm clouds are flying, The peepul is sighing; Come in from the rain. Come father, come mother, Come sister and brother, Come husband and lover, Beneath our roof-cover. Look on us again, The dead on the dying, Come home! We have opened the door! For the feast of souls We have kindled the coals We may kindle no more! Snake, fever, and famine, The curse of the Brahmin, The sun and the dew, They burn us, they bite us, They waste us and smite us; Our days are but few In strange lands far yonder To wonder and wander We hasten to you. List then to our sighing, While yet we are here Nor seeing nor hearing, We wait without fearing, To feel you draw near. O dead, to the dying Come home! 1879. THE KHAN'S DEVIL. THE Khan came from Bokhara town To Hamza, santon of renown. "My head is sick, my hands are weak; Thy help, O holy man, I seek." In silence marking for a space The Khan's red eyes and purple face, Thick voice, and loose, uncertain tread, "Thou hast a devil!" Hamza said. "Allah forbid!" exclaimed the Khan. Rid me of him at once, O man!" "Nay," Hamza said, "no spell of mine Can slay that cursed thing of thine. "Leave feast and wine, go forth and drink Water of healing on the brink "Where clear and cold from mountain snows, The Nahr el Zeben downward flows. "Six moons remain, then come to me; May Allah's pity go with thee!" Awestruck, from feast and wine the Khan Went forth where Nahr el Zeben ran. Roots were his food, the desert dust His bed, the water quenched his thirst; And when the sixth moon's scimetar Curved sharp above the evening star, He sought again the santon's door, Not weak and trembling as before, But strong of limb and clear of brain; "Behold," he said, "the fiend is slain." "Nay," Hamza answered, "starved and drowned, The curst one lies in death-like swound. "But evil breaks the strongest gyves, And jins like him have charmed lives. "One beaker of the juice of grape May call him up in living shape. "When the red wine of Badakshan Sparkles for thee, beware, O Khan, "With water quench the fire within, And drown each day thy devilkin!" Thenceforth the great Khan shunned the cup As Shitan's own, though offered up, With laughing eyes and jewelled hands, By Yarkand's maids and Samarcand's. And, in the lofty vestibule Of the medress of Kaush Kodul, The students of the holy law A golden-lettered tablet saw, With these words, by a cunning hand, Graved on it at the Khan's command: "In Allah's name, to him who hath A devil, Khan el Hamed saith, "Wisely our Prophet cursed the vine The fiend that loves the breath of wine, "No prayer can slay, no marabout Nor Meccan dervis can drive out. "I, Khan el Hamed, know the charm That robs him of his power to harm. "Drown him, O Islam's child! the spell To save thee lies in tank and well!" 1879. THE KING'S MISSIVE. 1661. This ballad, originally written for The Memorial History of Boston, describes, with pardonable poetic license, a memorable incident in the annals of the city. The interview between Shattuck and the Governor took place, I have since learned, in the residence of the latter, and not in the Council Chamber. The publication of the ballad led to some discussion as to the historical truthfulness of the picture, but I have seen no reason to rub out any of the figures or alter the lines and colors. UNDER the great hill sloping bare To cove and meadow and Common lot, In his council chamber and oaken chair, Sat the worshipful Governor Endicott. A grave, strong man, who knew no peer In the pilgrim land, where he ruled in fear Of God, not man, and for good or ill Held his trust with an iron will. He had shorn with his sword the cross from out The flag, and cloven the May-pole down, Harried the heathen round about, And whipped the Quakers from town to town. Earnest and honest, a man at need To burn like a torch for his own harsh creed, He kept with the flaming brand of his zeal The gate of the holy common weal. His brow was clouded, his eye was stern, With a look of mingled sorrow and wrath; "Woe's me!" he murmured: "at every turn The pestilent Quakers are in my path! Some we have scourged, and banished some, Some hanged, more doomed, and still they come, Fast as the tide of yon bay sets in, Sowing their heresy's seed of sin. "Did we count on this? Did we leave behind The graves of our kin, the comfort and ease Of our English hearths and homes, to find Troublers of Israel such as these? Shall I spare? Shall I pity them? God forbid! I will do as the prophet to Agag did They come to poison the wells of the Word, I will hew them in pieces before the Lord!" The door swung open, and Rawson the clerk Entered, and whispered under breath, "There waits below for the hangman's work A fellow banished on pain of death-- Shattuck, of Salem, unhealed of the whip, Brought over in Master Goldsmith's ship At anchor here in a Christian port, With freight of the devil and all his sort!" Twice and thrice on the chamber floor Striding fiercely from wall to wall, "The Lord do so to me and more," The Governor cried, "if I hang not all! Bring hither the Quaker." Calm, sedate, With the look of a man at ease with fate, Into that presence grim and dread Came Samuel Shattuck, with hat on head. "Off with the knave's hat!" An angry hand Smote down the offence; but the wearer said, With a quiet smile, "By the king's command I bear his message and stand in his stead." In the Governor's hand a missive he laid With the royal arms on its seal displayed, And the proud man spake as he gazed thereat, Uncovering, "Give Mr. Shattuck his hat." He turned to the Quaker, bowing low,-- "The king commandeth your friends' release; Doubt not he shall be obeyed, although To his subjects' sorrow and sin's increase. What he here enjoineth, John Endicott, His loyal servant, questioneth not. You are free! God grant the spirit you own May take you from us to parts unknown." So the door of the jail was open cast, And, like Daniel, out of the lion's den Tender youth and girlhood passed, With age-bowed women and gray-locked men. And the voice of one appointed to die Was lifted in praise and thanks on high, And the little maid from New Netherlands Kissed, in her joy, the doomed man's hands. And one, whose call was to minister To the souls in prison, beside him went, An ancient woman, bearing with her The linen shroud for his burial meant. For she, not counting her own life dear, In the strength of a love that cast out fear, Had watched and served where her brethren died, Like those who waited the cross beside. One moment they paused on their way to look On the martyr graves by the Common side, And much scourged Wharton of Salem took His burden of prophecy up and cried "Rest, souls of the valiant! Not in vain Have ye borne the Master's cross of pain; Ye have fought the fight, ye are victors crowned, With a fourfold chain ye have Satan bound!" The autumn haze lay soft and still On wood and meadow and upland farms; On the brow of Snow Hill the great windmill Slowly and lazily swung its arms; Broad in the sunshine stretched away, With its capes and islands, the turquoise bay; And over water and dusk of pines Blue hills lifted their faint outlines. The topaz leaves of the walnut glowed, The sumach added its crimson fleck, And double in air and water showed The tinted maples along the Neck; Through frost flower clusters of pale star-mist, And gentian fringes of amethyst, And royal plumes of golden-rod, The grazing cattle on Centry trod. But as they who see not, the Quakers saw The world about them; they only thought With deep thanksgiving and pious awe On the great deliverance God had wrought. Through lane and alley the gazing town Noisily followed them up and down; Some with scoffing and brutal jeer, Some with pity and words of cheer. One brave voice rose above the din. Upsall, gray with his length of days, Cried from the door of his Red Lion Inn "Men of Boston, give God the praise No more shall innocent blood call down The bolts of wrath on your guilty town. The freedom of worship, dear to you, Is dear to all, and to all is due. "I see the vision of days to come, When your beautiful City of the Bay Shall be Christian liberty's chosen home, And none shall his neighbor's rights gainsay. The varying notes of worship shall blend And as one great prayer to God ascend, And hands of mutual charity raise Walls of salvation and gates of praise." So passed the Quakers through Boston town, Whose painful ministers sighed to see The walls of their sheep-fold falling down, And wolves of heresy prowling free. But the years went on, and brought no wrong; With milder counsels the State grew strong, As outward Letter and inward Light Kept the balance of truth aright. The Puritan spirit perishing not, To Concord's yeomen the signal sent, And spake in the voice of the cannon-shot That severed the chains of a continent. With its gentler mission of peace and good-will The thought of the Quaker is living still, And the freedom of soul he prophesied Is gospel and law where the martyrs died. 1880. VALUATION. THE old Squire said, as he stood by his gate, And his neighbor, the Deacon, went by, "In spite of my bank stock and real estate, You are better off, Deacon, than I. "We're both growing old, and the end's drawing near, You have less of this world to resign, But in Heaven's appraisal your assets, I fear, Will reckon up greater than mine. "They say I am rich, but I'm feeling so poor, I wish I could swap with you even The pounds I have lived for and laid up in store For the shillings and pence you have given." "Well, Squire," said the Deacon, with shrewd common sense, While his eye had a twinkle of fun, "Let your pounds take the way of my shillings and pence, And the thing can be easily done!" 1880. RABBI ISHMAEL. "Rabbi Ishmael Ben Elisha said, Once, I entered into the Holy of Holies (as High Priest) to burn incense, when I saw Aktriel (the Divine Crown) Jah, Lord of Hosts, sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, who said unto me, 'Ishmael, my son, bless me.' I answered, 'May it please Thee to make Thy compassion prevail over Thine anger; may it be revealed above Thy other attributes; mayest Thou deal with Thy children according to it, and not according to the strict measure of judgment.' It seemed to me that He bowed His head, as though to answer Amen to my blessing."-- Talmud (Beraehoth, I. f. 6. b.) THE Rabbi Ishmael, with the woe and sin Of the world heavy upon him, entering in The Holy of Holies, saw an awful Face With terrible splendor filling all the place. "O Ishmael Ben Elisha!" said a voice, "What seekest thou? What blessing is thy choice?" And, knowing that he stood before the Lord, Within the shadow of the cherubim, Wide-winged between the blinding light and him, He bowed himself, and uttered not a word, But in the silence of his soul was prayer "O Thou Eternal! I am one of all, And nothing ask that others may not share. Thou art almighty; we are weak and small, And yet Thy children: let Thy mercy spare!" Trembling, he raised his eyes, and in the place Of the insufferable glory, lo! a face Of more than mortal tenderness, that bent Graciously down in token of assent, And, smiling, vanished! With strange joy elate, The wondering Rabbi sought the temple's gate. Radiant as Moses from the Mount, he stood And cried aloud unto the multitude "O Israel, hear! The Lord our God is good! Mine eyes have seen his glory and his grace; Beyond his judgments shall his love endure; The mercy of the All Merciful is sure!" 1881. THE ROCK-TOMB OF BRADORE. H. Y. Hind, in Explorations in the Interior of the Labrador Peninsula (ii. 166) mentions the finding of a rock tomb near the little fishing port of Bradore, with the inscription upon it which is given in the poem. A DREAR and desolate shore! Where no tree unfolds its leaves, And never the spring wind weaves Green grass for the hunter's tread; A land forsaken and dead, Where the ghostly icebergs go And come with the ebb and flow Of the waters of Bradore! A wanderer, from a land By summer breezes fanned, Looked round him, awed, subdued, By the dreadful solitude, Hearing alone the cry Of sea-birds clanging by, The crash and grind of the floe, Wail of wind and wash of tide. "O wretched land!" he cried, "Land of all lands the worst, God forsaken and curst! Thy gates of rock should show The words the Tuscan seer Read in the Realm of Woe Hope entereth not here!" Lo! at his feet there stood A block of smooth larch wood, Waif of some wandering wave, Beside a rock-closed cave By Nature fashioned for a grave; Safe from the ravening bear And fierce fowl of the air, Wherein to rest was laid A twenty summers' maid, Whose blood had equal share Of the lands of vine and snow, Half French, half Eskimo. In letters uneffaced, Upon the block were traced The grief and hope of man, And thus the legend ran "We loved her! Words cannot tell how well! We loved her! God loved her! And called her home to peace and rest. We love her." The stranger paused and read. "O winter land!" he said, "Thy right to be I own; God leaves thee not alone. And if thy fierce winds blow Over drear wastes of rock and snow, And at thy iron gates The ghostly iceberg waits, Thy homes and hearts are dear. Thy sorrow o'er thy sacred dust Is sanctified by hope and trust; God's love and man's are here. And love where'er it goes Makes its own atmosphere; Its flowers of Paradise Take root in the eternal ice, And bloom through Polar snows!" 1881. THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS. The volume in which "The Bay of Seven Islands" was published was dedicated to the late Edwin Percy Whipple, to whom more than to any other person I was indebted for public recognition as one worthy of a place in American literature, at a time when it required a great degree of courage to urge such a claim for a pro-scribed abolitionist. Although younger than I, he had gained the reputation of a brilliant essayist, and was regarded as the highest American authority in criticism. His wit and wisdom enlivened a small literary circle of young men including Thomas Starr King, the eloquent preacher, and Daniel N. Haskell of the Daily Transcript, who gathered about our common friend dames T. Fields at the Old Corner Bookstore. The poem which gave title to the volume I inscribed to my friend and neighbor Harriet Prescott Spofford, whose poems have lent a new interest to our beautiful river-valley. FROM the green Amesbury hill which bears the name Of that half mythic ancestor of mine Who trod its slopes two hundred years ago, Down the long valley of the Merrimac, Midway between me and the river's mouth, I see thy home, set like an eagle's nest Among Deer Island's immemorial pines, Crowning the crag on which the sunset breaks Its last red arrow. Many a tale and song, Which thou bast told or sung, I call to mind, Softening with silvery mist the woods and hills, The out-thrust headlands and inreaching bays Of our northeastern coast-line, trending where The Gulf, midsummer, feels the chill blockade Of icebergs stranded at its northern gate. To thee the echoes of the Island Sound Answer not vainly, nor in vain the moan Of the South Breaker prophesying storm. And thou hast listened, like myself, to men Sea-periled oft where Anticosti lies Like a fell spider in its web of fog, Or where the Grand Bank shallows with the wrecks Of sunken fishers, and to whom strange isles And frost-rimmed bays and trading stations seem Familiar as Great Neck and Kettle Cove, Nubble and Boon, the common names of home. So let me offer thee this lay of mine, Simple and homely, lacking much thy play Of color and of fancy. If its theme And treatment seem to thee befitting youth Rather than age, let this be my excuse It has beguiled some heavy hours and called Some pleasant memories up; and, better still, Occasion lent me for a kindly word To one who is my neighbor and my friend. 1883. . . . . . . . . . . The skipper sailed out of the harbor mouth, Leaving the apple-bloom of the South For the ice of the Eastern seas, In his fishing schooner Breeze. Handsome and brave and young was he, And the maids of Newbury sighed to see His lessening white sail fall Under the sea's blue wall. Through the Northern Gulf and the misty screen Of the isles of Mingan and Madeleine, St. Paul's and Blanc Sablon, The little Breeze sailed on, Backward and forward, along the shore Of lorn and desolate Labrador, And found at last her way To the Seven Islands Bay. The little hamlet, nestling below Great hills white with lingering snow, With its tin-roofed chapel stood Half hid in the dwarf spruce wood; Green-turfed, flower-sown, the last outpost Of summer upon the dreary coast, With its gardens small and spare, Sad in the frosty air. Hard by where the skipper's schooner lay, A fisherman's cottage looked away Over isle and bay, and behind On mountains dim-defined. And there twin sisters, fair and young, Laughed with their stranger guest, and sung In their native tongue the lays Of the old Provencal days. Alike were they, save the faint outline Of a scar on Suzette's forehead fine; And both, it so befell, Loved the heretic stranger well. Both were pleasant to look upon, But the heart of the skipper clave to one; Though less by his eye than heart He knew the twain apart. Despite of alien race and creed, Well did his wooing of Marguerite speed; And the mother's wrath was vain As the sister's jealous pain. The shrill-tongued mistress her house forbade, And solemn warning was sternly said By the black-robed priest, whose word As law the hamlet heard. But half by voice and half by signs The skipper said, "A warm sun shines On the green-banked Merrimac; Wait, watch, till I come back. "And when you see, from my mast head, The signal fly of a kerchief red, My boat on the shore shall wait; Come, when the night is late." Ah! weighed with childhood's haunts and friends, And all that the home sky overbends, Did ever young love fail To turn the trembling scale? Under the night, on the wet sea sands, Slowly unclasped their plighted hands One to the cottage hearth, And one to his sailor's berth. What was it the parting lovers heard? Nor leaf, nor ripple, nor wing of bird, But a listener's stealthy tread On the rock-moss, crisp and dead. He weighed his anchor, and fished once more By the black coast-line of Labrador; And by love and the north wind driven, Sailed back to the Islands Seven. In the sunset's glow the sisters twain Saw the Breeze come sailing in again; Said Suzette, "Mother dear, The heretic's sail is here." "Go, Marguerite, to your room, and hide; Your door shall be bolted!" the mother cried: While Suzette, ill at ease, Watched the red sign of the Breeze. At midnight, down to the waiting skiff She stole in the shadow of the cliff; And out of the Bay's mouth ran The schooner with maid and man. And all night long, on a restless bed, Her prayers to the Virgin Marguerite said And thought of her lover's pain Waiting for her in vain. Did he pace the sands? Did he pause to hear The sound of her light step drawing near? And, as the slow hours passed, Would he doubt her faith at last? But when she saw through the misty pane, The morning break on a sea of rain, Could even her love avail To follow his vanished sail? Meantime the Breeze, with favoring wind, Left the rugged Moisic hills behind, And heard from an unseen shore The falls of Manitou roar. On the morrow's morn, in the thick, gray weather They sat on the reeling deck together, Lover and counterfeit, Of hapless Marguerite. With a lover's hand, from her forehead fair He smoothed away her jet-black hair. What was it his fond eyes met? The scar of the false Suzette! Fiercely he shouted: "Bear away East by north for Seven Isles Bay!" The maiden wept and prayed, But the ship her helm obeyed. Once more the Bay of the Isles they found They heard the bell of the chapel sound, And the chant of the dying sung In the harsh, wild Indian tongue. A feeling of mystery, change, and awe Was in all they heard and all they saw Spell-bound the hamlet lay In the hush of its lonely bay. And when they came to the cottage door, The mother rose up from her weeping sore, And with angry gestures met The scared look of Suzette. "Here is your daughter," the skipper said; "Give me the one I love instead." But the woman sternly spake; "Go, see if the dead will wake!" He looked. Her sweet face still and white And strange in the noonday taper light, She lay on her little bed, With the cross at her feet and head. In a passion of grief the strong man bent Down to her face, and, kissing it, went Back to the waiting Breeze, Back to the mournful seas. Never again to the Merrimac And Newbury's homes that bark came back. Whether her fate she met On the shores of Carraquette, Miscou, or Tracadie, who can say? But even yet at Seven Isles Bay Is told the ghostly tale Of a weird, unspoken sail, In the pale, sad light of the Northern day Seen by the blanketed Montagnais, Or squaw, in her small kyack, Crossing the spectre's track. On the deck a maiden wrings her hands; Her likeness kneels on the gray coast sands; One in her wild despair, And one in the trance of prayer. She flits before no earthly blast, The red sign fluttering from her mast, Over the solemn seas, The ghost of the schooner Breeze! 1882. THE WISHING BRIDGE. AMONG the legends sung or said Along our rocky shore, The Wishing Bridge of Marblehead May well be sung once more. An hundred years ago (so ran The old-time story) all Good wishes said above its span Would, soon or late, befall. If pure and earnest, never failed The prayers of man or maid For him who on the deep sea sailed, For her at home who stayed. Once thither came two girls from school, And wished in childish glee And one would be a queen and rule, And one the world would see. Time passed; with change of hopes and fears, And in the self-same place, Two women, gray with middle years, Stood, wondering, face to face. With wakened memories, as they met, They queried what had been "A poor man's wife am I, and yet," Said one, "I am a queen. "My realm a little homestead is, Where, lacking crown and throne, I rule by loving services And patient toil alone." The other said: "The great world lies Beyond me as it lay; O'er love's and duty's boundaries My feet may never stray. "I see but common sights of home, Its common sounds I hear, My widowed mother's sick-bed room Sufficeth for my sphere. "I read to her some pleasant page Of travel far and wide, And in a dreamy pilgrimage We wander side by side. "And when, at last, she falls asleep, My book becomes to me A magic glass: my watch I keep, But all the world I see. "A farm-wife queen your place you fill, While fancy's privilege Is mine to walk the earth at will, Thanks to the Wishing Bridge." "Nay, leave the legend for the truth," The other cried, "and say God gives the wishes of our youth, But in His own best way!" 1882. HOW THE WOMEN WENT FROM DOVER. The following is a copy of the warrant issued by Major Waldron, of Dover, in 1662. The Quakers, as was their wont, prophesied against him, and saw, as they supposed, the fulfilment of their prophecy when, many years after, he was killed by the Indians. To the constables of Dover, Hampton, Salisbury, Newbury, Rowley, Ipswich, Wenham, Lynn, Boston, Roxbury, Dedham, and until these vagabond Quakers are carried out of this jurisdiction. You, and every one of you, are required, in the King's Majesty's name, to take these vagabond Quakers, Anne Colman, Mary Tomkins, and Alice Ambrose, and make them fast to the cart's tail, and driving the cart through your several towns, to whip them upon their naked backs not exceeding ten stripes apiece on each of them, in each town; and so to convey them from constable to constable till they are out of this jurisdiction, as you will answer it at your peril; and this shall be your warrant. RICHARD WALDRON. Dated at Dover, December 22, 1662. This warrant was executed only in Dover and Hampton. At Salisbury the constable refused to obey it. He was sustained by the town's people, who were under the influence of Major Robert Pike, the leading man in the lower valley of the Merrimac, who stood far in advance of his time, as an advocate of religious freedom, and an opponent of ecclesiastical authority. He had the moral courage to address an able and manly letter to the court at Salem, remonstrating against the witchcraft trials. THE tossing spray of Cocheco's fall Hardened to ice on its rocky wall, As through Dover town in the chill, gray dawn, Three women passed, at the cart-tail drawn! Bared to the waist, for the north wind's grip And keener sting of the constable's whip, The blood that followed each hissing blow Froze as it sprinkled the winter snow. Priest and ruler, boy and maid Followed the dismal cavalcade; And from door and window, open thrown, Looked and wondered gaffer and crone. "God is our witness," the victims cried, We suffer for Him who for all men died; The wrong ye do has been done before, We bear the stripes that the Master bore! And thou, O Richard Waldron, for whom We hear the feet of a coming doom, On thy cruel heart and thy hand of wrong Vengeance is sure, though it tarry long. "In the light of the Lord, a flame we see Climb and kindle a proud roof-tree; And beneath it an old man lying dead, With stains of blood on his hoary head." "Smite, Goodman Hate-Evil!--harder still!" The magistrate cried, "lay on with a will! Drive out of their bodies the Father of Lies, Who through them preaches and prophesies!" So into the forest they held their way, By winding river and frost-rimmed bay, Over wind-swept hills that felt the beat Of the winter sea at their icy feet. The Indian hunter, searching his traps, Peered stealthily through the forest gaps; And the outlying settler shook his head,-- "They're witches going to jail," he said. At last a meeting-house came in view; A blast on his horn the constable blew; And the boys of Hampton cried up and down, "The Quakers have come!" to the wondering town. From barn and woodpile the goodman came; The goodwife quitted her quilting frame, With her child at her breast; and, hobbling slow, The grandam followed to see the show. Once more the torturing whip was swung, Once more keen lashes the bare flesh stung. "Oh, spare! they are bleeding!"' a little maid cried, And covered her face the sight to hide. A murmur ran round the crowd: "Good folks," Quoth the constable, busy counting the strokes, "No pity to wretches like these is due, They have beaten the gospel black and blue!" Then a pallid woman, in wild-eyed fear, With her wooden noggin of milk drew near. "Drink, poor hearts!" a rude hand smote Her draught away from a parching throat. "Take heed," one whispered, "they'll take your cow For fines, as they took your horse and plough, And the bed from under you." "Even so," She said; "they are cruel as death, I know." Then on they passed, in the waning day, Through Seabrook woods, a weariful way; By great salt meadows and sand-hills bare, And glimpses of blue sea here and there. By the meeting-house in Salisbury town, The sufferers stood, in the red sundown, Bare for the lash! O pitying Night, Drop swift thy curtain and hide the sight. With shame in his eye and wrath on his lip The Salisbury constable dropped his whip. "This warrant means murder foul and red; Cursed is he who serves it," he said. "Show me the order, and meanwhile strike A blow at your peril!" said Justice Pike. Of all the rulers the land possessed, Wisest and boldest was he and best. He scoffed at witchcraft; the priest he met As man meets man; his feet he set Beyond his dark age, standing upright, Soul-free, with his face to the morning light. He read the warrant: "These convey From our precincts; at every town on the way Give each ten lashes." "God judge the brute! I tread his order under my foot! "Cut loose these poor ones and let them go; Come what will of it, all men shall know No warrant is good, though backed by the Crown, For whipping women in Salisbury town!" The hearts of the villagers, half released From creed of terror and rule of priest, By a primal instinct owned the right Of human pity in law's despite. For ruth and chivalry only slept, His Saxon manhood the yeoman kept; Quicker or slower, the same blood ran In the Cavalier and the Puritan. The Quakers sank on their knees in praise And thanks. A last, low sunset blaze Flashed out from under a cloud, and shed A golden glory on each bowed head. The tale is one of an evil time, When souls were fettered and thought was crime, And heresy's whisper above its breath Meant shameful scourging and bonds and death! What marvel, that hunted and sorely tried, Even woman rebuked and prophesied, And soft words rarely answered back The grim persuasion of whip and rack. If her cry from the whipping-post and jail Pierced sharp as the Kenite's driven nail, O woman, at ease in these happier days, Forbear to judge of thy sister's ways! How much thy beautiful life may owe To her faith and courage thou canst not know, Nor how from the paths of thy calm retreat She smoothed the thorns with her bleeding feet. 1883. SAINT GREGORY'S GUEST. A TALE for Roman guides to tell To careless, sight-worn travellers still, Who pause beside the narrow cell Of Gregory on the Caelian Hill. One day before the monk's door came A beggar, stretching empty palms, Fainting and fast-sick, in the name Of the Most Holy asking alms. And the monk answered, "All I have In this poor cell of mine I give, The silver cup my mother gave; In Christ's name take thou it, and live." Years passed; and, called at last to bear The pastoral crook and keys of Rome, The poor monk, in Saint Peter's chair, Sat the crowned lord of Christendom. "Prepare a feast," Saint Gregory cried, "And let twelve beggars sit thereat." The beggars came, and one beside, An unknown stranger, with them sat. "I asked thee not," the Pontiff spake, "O stranger; but if need be thine, I bid thee welcome, for the sake Of Him who is thy Lord and mine." A grave, calm face the stranger raised, Like His who on Gennesaret trod, Or His on whom the Chaldeans gazed, Whose form was as the Son of God. "Know'st thou," he said, "thy gift of old?" And in the hand he lifted up The Pontiff marvelled to behold Once more his mother's silver cup. "Thy prayers and alms have risen, and bloom Sweetly among the flowers of heaven. I am The Wonderful, through whom Whate'er thou askest shall be given." He spake and vanished. Gregory fell With his twelve guests in mute accord Prone on their faces, knowing well Their eyes of flesh had seen the Lord. The old-time legend is not vain; Nor vain thy art, Verona's Paul, Telling it o'er and o'er again On gray Vicenza's frescoed wall. Still wheresoever pity shares Its bread with sorrow, want, and sin, And love the beggar's feast prepares, The uninvited Guest comes in. Unheard, because our ears are dull, Unseen, because our eyes are dim, He walks our earth, The Wonderful, And all good deeds are done to Him. 1883. BIRCHBROOK MILL. A NOTELESS stream, the Birchbrook runs Beneath its leaning trees; That low, soft ripple is its own, That dull roar is the sea's. Of human signs it sees alone The distant church spire's tip, And, ghost-like, on a blank of gray, The white sail of a ship. No more a toiler at the wheel, It wanders at its will; Nor dam nor pond is left to tell Where once was Birchbrook mill. The timbers of that mill have fed Long since a farmer's fires; His doorsteps are the stones that ground The harvest of his sires. Man trespassed here; but Nature lost No right of her domain; She waited, and she brought the old Wild beauty back again. By day the sunlight through the leaves Falls on its moist, green sod, And wakes the violet bloom of spring And autumn's golden-rod. Its birches whisper to the wind, The swallow dips her wings In the cool spray, and on its banks The gray song-sparrow sings. But from it, when the dark night falls, The school-girl shrinks with dread; The farmer, home-bound from his fields, Goes by with quickened tread. They dare not pause to hear the grind Of shadowy stone on stone; The plashing of a water-wheel Where wheel there now is none. Has not a cry of pain been heard Above the clattering mill? The pawing of an unseen horse, Who waits his mistress still? Yet never to the listener's eye Has sight confirmed the sound; A wavering birch line marks alone The vacant pasture ground. No ghostly arms fling up to heaven The agony of prayer; No spectral steed impatient shakes His white mane on the air. The meaning of that common dread No tongue has fitly told; The secret of the dark surmise The brook and birches hold. What nameless horror of the past Broods here forevermore? What ghost his unforgiven sin Is grinding o'er and o'er? Does, then, immortal memory play The actor's tragic part, Rehearsals of a mortal life And unveiled human heart? God's pity spare a guilty soul That drama of its ill, And let the scenic curtain fall On Birchbrook's haunted mill 1884. THE TWO ELIZABETHS. Read at the unveiling of the bust of Elizabeth Fry at the Friends' School, Providence, R. I. A. D. 1209. AMIDST Thuringia's wooded hills she dwelt, A high-born princess, servant of the poor, Sweetening with gracious words the food she dealt To starving throngs at Wartburg's blazoned door. A blinded zealot held her soul in chains, Cramped the sweet nature that he could not kill, Scarred her fair body with his penance-pains, And gauged her conscience by his narrow will. God gave her gifts of beauty and of grace, With fast and vigil she denied them all; Unquestioning, with sad, pathetic face, She followed meekly at her stern guide's call. So drooped and died her home-blown rose of bliss In the chill rigor of a discipline That turned her fond lips from her children's kiss, And made her joy of motherhood a sin. To their sad level by compassion led, One with the low and vile herself she made, While thankless misery mocked the hand that fed, And laughed to scorn her piteous masquerade. But still, with patience that outwearied hate, She gave her all while yet she had to give; And then her empty hands, importunate, In prayer she lifted that the poor might live. Sore pressed by grief, and wrongs more hard to bear, And dwarfed and stifled by a harsh control, She kept life fragrant with good deeds and prayer, And fresh and pure the white flower of her soul. Death found her busy at her task: one word Alone she uttered as she paused to die, "Silence!"--then listened even as one who heard With song and wing the angels drawing nigh! Now Fra Angelico's roses fill her hands, And, on Murillo's canvas, Want and Pain Kneel at her feet. Her marble image stands Worshipped and crowned in Marburg's holy fane. Yea, wheresoe'er her Church its cross uprears, Wide as the world her story still is told; In manhood's reverence, woman's prayers and tears, She lives again whose grave is centuries old. And still, despite the weakness or the blame Of blind submission to the blind, she hath A tender place in hearts of every name, And more than Rome owns Saint Elizabeth! A. D. 1780. Slow ages passed: and lo! another came, An English matron, in whose simple faith Nor priestly rule nor ritual had claim, A plain, uncanonized Elizabeth. No sackcloth robe, nor ashen-sprinkled hair, Nor wasting fast, nor scourge, nor vigil long, Marred her calm presence. God had made her fair, And she could do His goodly work no wrong. Their yoke is easy and their burden light Whose sole confessor is the Christ of God; Her quiet trust and faith transcending sight Smoothed to her feet the difficult paths she trod. And there she walked, as duty bade her go, Safe and unsullied as a cloistered nun, Shamed with her plainness Fashion's gaudy show, And overcame the world she did not shun. In Earlham's bowers, in Plashet's liberal hall, In the great city's restless crowd and din, Her ear was open to the Master's call, And knew the summons of His voice within. Tender as mother, beautiful as wife, Amidst the throngs of prisoned crime she stood In modest raiment faultless as her life, The type of England's worthiest womanhood. To melt the hearts that harshness turned to stone The sweet persuasion of her lips sufficed, And guilt, which only hate and fear had known, Saw in her own the pitying love of Christ. So wheresoe'er the guiding Spirit went She followed, finding every prison cell It opened for her sacred as a tent Pitched by Gennesaret or by Jacob's well. And Pride and Fashion felt her strong appeal, And priest and ruler marvelled as they saw How hand in hand went wisdom with her zeal, And woman's pity kept the bounds of law. She rests in God's peace; but her memory stirs The air of earth as with an angel's wings, And warms and moves the hearts of men like hers, The sainted daughter of Hungarian kings. United now, the Briton and the Hun, Each, in her own time, faithful unto death, Live sister souls! in name and spirit one, Thuringia's saint and our Elizabeth! 1885. REQUITAL. As Islam's Prophet, when his last day drew Nigh to its close, besought all men to say Whom he had wronged, to whom he then should pay A debt forgotten, or for pardon sue, And, through the silence of his weeping friends, A strange voice cried: "Thou owest me a debt," "Allah be praised!" he answered. "Even yet He gives me power to make to thee amends. O friend! I thank thee for thy timely word." So runs the tale. Its lesson all may heed, For all have sinned in thought, or word, or deed, Or, like the Prophet, through neglect have erred. All need forgiveness, all have debts to pay Ere the night cometh, while it still is day. 1885. THE HOMESTEAD. AGAINST the wooded hills it stands, Ghost of a dead home, staring through Its broken lights on wasted lands Where old-time harvests grew. Unploughed, unsown, by scythe unshorn, The poor, forsaken farm-fields lie, Once rich and rife with golden corn And pale green breadths of rye. Of healthful herb and flower bereft, The garden plot no housewife keeps; Through weeds and tangle only left, The snake, its tenant, creeps. A lilac spray, still blossom-clad, Sways slow before the empty rooms; Beside the roofless porch a sad Pathetic red rose blooms. His track, in mould and dust of drouth, On floor and hearth the squirrel leaves, And in the fireless chimney's mouth His web the spider weaves. The leaning barn, about to fall, Resounds no more on husking eves; No cattle low in yard or stall, No thresher beats his sheaves. So sad, so drear! It seems almost Some haunting Presence makes its sign; That down yon shadowy lane some ghost Might drive his spectral kine! O home so desolate and lorn! Did all thy memories die with thee? Were any wed, were any born, Beneath this low roof-tree? Whose axe the wall of forest broke, And let the waiting sunshine through? What goodwife sent the earliest smoke Up the great chimney flue? Did rustic lovers hither come? Did maidens, swaying back and forth In rhythmic grace, at wheel and loom, Make light their toil with mirth? Did child feet patter on the stair? Did boyhood frolic in the snow? Did gray age, in her elbow chair, Knit, rocking to and fro? The murmuring brook, the sighing breeze, The pine's slow whisper, cannot tell; Low mounds beneath the hemlock-trees Keep the home secrets well. Cease, mother-land, to fondly boast Of sons far off who strive and thrive, Forgetful that each swarming host Must leave an emptier hive. O wanderers from ancestral soil, Leave noisome mill and chaffering store: Gird up your loins for sturdier toil, And build the home once more! Come back to bayberry-scented slopes, And fragrant fern, and ground-nut vine; Breathe airs blown over holt and copse Sweet with black birch and pine. What matter if the gains are small That life's essential wants supply? Your homestead's title gives you all That idle wealth can buy. All that the many-dollared crave, The brick-walled slaves of 'Change and mart, Lawns, trees, fresh air, and flowers, you have, More dear for lack of art. Your own sole masters, freedom-willed, With none to bid you go or stay, Till the old fields your fathers tilled, As manly men as they! With skill that spares your toiling hands, And chemic aid that science brings, Reclaim the waste and outworn lands, And reign thereon as kings 1886. HOW THE ROBIN CAME. AN ALGONQUIN LEGEND. HAPPY young friends, sit by me, Under May's blown apple-tree, While these home-birds in and out Through the blossoms flit about. Hear a story, strange and old, By the wild red Indians told, How the robin came to be: Once a great chief left his son,-- Well-beloved, his only one,-- When the boy was well-nigh grown, In the trial-lodge alone. Left for tortures long and slow Youths like him must undergo, Who their pride of manhood test, Lacking water, food, and rest. Seven days the fast he kept, Seven nights he never slept. Then the young boy, wrung with pain, Weak from nature's overstrain, Faltering, moaned a low complaint "Spare me, father, for I faint!" But the chieftain, haughty-eyed, Hid his pity in his pride. "You shall be a hunter good, Knowing never lack of food; You shall be a warrior great, Wise as fox and strong as bear; Many scalps your belt shall wear, If with patient heart you wait Bravely till your task is done. Better you should starving die Than that boy and squaw should cry Shame upon your father's son!" When next morn the sun's first rays Glistened on the hemlock sprays, Straight that lodge the old chief sought, And boiled sainp and moose meat brought. "Rise and eat, my son!" he said. Lo, he found the poor boy dead! As with grief his grave they made, And his bow beside him laid, Pipe, and knife, and wampum-braid, On the lodge-top overhead, Preening smooth its breast of red And the brown coat that it wore, Sat a bird, unknown before. And as if with human tongue, "Mourn me not," it said, or sung; "I, a bird, am still your son, Happier than if hunter fleet, Or a brave, before your feet Laying scalps in battle won. Friend of man, my song shall cheer Lodge and corn-land; hovering near, To each wigwam I shall bring Tidings of the corning spring; Every child my voice shall know In the moon of melting snow, When the maple's red bud swells, And the wind-flower lifts its bells. As their fond companion Men shall henceforth own your son, And my song shall testify That of human kin am I." Thus the Indian legend saith How, at first, the robin came With a sweeter life from death, Bird for boy, and still the same. If my young friends doubt that this Is the robin's genesis, Not in vain is still the myth If a truth be found therewith Unto gentleness belong Gifts unknown to pride and wrong; Happier far than hate is praise,-- He who sings than he who slays. BANISHED FROM MASSACHUSETTS. 1660. On a painting by E. A. Abbey. The General Court of Massachusetts enacted Oct. 19, 1658, that "any person or persons of the cursed sect of Quakers" should, on conviction of the same, be banished, on pain of death, from the jurisdiction of the common-wealth. OVER the threshold of his pleasant home Set in green clearings passed the exiled Friend, In simple trust, misdoubting not the end. "Dear heart of mine!" he said, "the time has come To trust the Lord for shelter." One long gaze The goodwife turned on each familiar thing,-- The lowing kine, the orchard blossoming, The open door that showed the hearth-fire's blaze,-- And calmly answered, "Yes, He will provide." Silent and slow they crossed the homestead's bound, Lingering the longest by their child's grave-mound. "Move on, or stay and hang!" the sheriff cried. They left behind them more than home or land, And set sad faces to an alien strand. Safer with winds and waves than human wrath, With ravening wolves than those whose zeal for God Was cruelty to man, the exiles trod Drear leagues of forest without guide or path, Or launching frail boats on the uncharted sea, Round storm-vexed capes, whose teeth of granite ground The waves to foam, their perilous way they wound, Enduring all things so their souls were free. Oh, true confessors, shaming them who did Anew the wrong their Pilgrim Fathers bore For you the Mayflower spread her sail once more, Freighted with souls, to all that duty bid Faithful as they who sought an unknown land, O'er wintry seas, from Holland's Hook of Sand! So from his lost home to the darkening main, Bodeful of storm, stout Macy held his way, And, when the green shore blended with the gray, His poor wife moaned: "Let us turn back again." "Nay, woman, weak of faith, kneel down," said he, And say thy prayers: the Lord himself will steer; And led by Him, nor man nor devils I fear! So the gray Southwicks, from a rainy sea, Saw, far and faint, the loom of land, and gave With feeble voices thanks for friendly ground Whereon to rest their weary feet, and found A peaceful death-bed and a quiet grave Where, ocean-walled, and wiser than his age, The lord of Shelter scorned the bigot's rage. Aquidneck's isle, Nantucket's lonely shores, And Indian-haunted Narragansett saw The way-worn travellers round their camp-fire draw, Or heard the plashing of their weary oars. And every place whereon they rested grew Happier for pure and gracious womanhood, And men whose names for stainless honor stood, Founders of States and rulers wise and true. The Muse of history yet shall make amends To those who freedom, peace, and justice taught, Beyond their dark age led the van of thought, And left unforfeited the name of Friends. O mother State, how foiled was thy design The gain was theirs, the loss alone was thine. THE BROWN DWARF OF RUGEN. The hint of this ballad is found in Arndt's Murchen, Berlin, 1816. The ballad appeared first in St. Nicholas, whose young readers were advised, while smiling at the absurd superstition, to remember that bad companionship and evil habits, desires, and passions are more to be dreaded now than the Elves and Trolls who frightened the children of past ages. THE pleasant isle of Rugen looks the Baltic water o'er, To the silver-sanded beaches of the Pomeranian shore; And in the town of Rambin a little boy and maid Plucked the meadow-flowers together and in the sea-surf played. Alike were they in beauty if not in their degree He was the Amptman's first-born, the miller's child was she. Now of old the isle of Rugen was full of Dwarfs and Trolls, The brown-faced little Earth-men, the people without souls; And for every man and woman in Rugen's island found Walking in air and sunshine, a Troll was underground. It chanced the little maiden, one morning, strolled away Among the haunted Nine Hills, where the elves and goblins play. That day, in barley-fields below, the harvesters had known Of evil voices in the air, and heard the small horns blown. She came not back; the search for her in field and wood was vain They cried her east, they cried her west, but she came not again. "She's down among the Brown Dwarfs," said the dream-wives wise and old, And prayers were made, and masses said, and Rambin's church bell tolled. Five years her father mourned her; and then John Deitrich said "I will find my little playmate, be she alive or dead." He watched among the Nine Hills, he heard the Brown Dwarfs sing, And saw them dance by moonlight merrily in a ring. And when their gay-robed leader tossed up his cap of red, Young Deitrich caught it as it fell, and thrust it on his head. The Troll came crouching at his feet and wept for lack of it. "Oh, give me back my magic cap, for your great head unfit!" "Nay," Deitrich said; "the Dwarf who throws his charmed cap away, Must serve its finder at his will, and for his folly pay. "You stole my pretty Lisbeth, and hid her in the earth; And you shall ope the door of glass and let me lead her forth." "She will not come; she's one of us; she's mine!" the Brown Dwarf said; The day is set, the cake is baked, to-morrow we shall wed." "The fell fiend fetch thee!" Deitrich cried, "and keep thy foul tongue still. Quick! open, to thy evil world, the glass door of the hill!" The Dwarf obeyed; and youth and Troll down, the long stair-way passed, And saw in dim and sunless light a country strange and vast. Weird, rich, and wonderful, he saw the elfin under-land,-- Its palaces of precious stones, its streets of golden sand. He came unto a banquet-hall with tables richly spread, Where a young maiden served to him the red wine and the bread. How fair she seemed among the Trolls so ugly and so wild! Yet pale and very sorrowful, like one who never smiled! Her low, sweet voice, her gold-brown hair, her tender blue eyes seemed Like something he had seen elsewhere or some. thing he had dreamed. He looked; he clasped her in his arms; he knew the long-lost one; "O Lisbeth! See thy playmate--I am the Amptman's son!" She leaned her fair head on his breast, and through her sobs she spoke "Oh, take me from this evil place, and from the elfin folk, "And let me tread the grass-green fields and smell the flowers again, And feel the soft wind on my cheek and hear the dropping rain! "And oh, to hear the singing bird, the rustling of the tree, The lowing cows, the bleat of sheep, the voices of the sea; "And oh, upon my father's knee to sit beside the door, And hear the bell of vespers ring in Rambin church once more!" He kissed her cheek, he kissed her lips; the Brown Dwarf groaned to see, And tore his tangled hair and ground his long teeth angrily. But Deitrich said: "For five long years this tender Christian maid Has served you in your evil world and well must she be paid! "Haste!--hither bring me precious gems, the richest in your store; Then when we pass the gate of glass, you'll take your cap once more." No choice was left the baffled Troll, and, murmuring, he obeyed, And filled the pockets of the youth and apron of the maid. They left the dreadful under-land and passed the gate of glass; They felt the sunshine's warm caress, they trod the soft, green grass. And when, beneath, they saw the Dwarf stretch up to them his brown And crooked claw-like fingers, they tossed his red cap down. Oh, never shone so bright a sun, was never sky so blue, As hand in hand they homeward walked the pleasant meadows through! And never sang the birds so sweet in Rambin's woods before, And never washed the waves so soft along the Baltic shore; And when beneath his door-yard trees the father met his child, The bells rung out their merriest peal, the folks with joy ran wild. 
9600	----	INSTRUCTIONS: This is a multi volume index file The index has links to all volumes. Follow these instructions if you would like to have your own copy of this index and all the volumes of THE WORKS OF WHITTIER, on your hard disk. Doing so will allow this index to be used with all the many links to the volumes and chapters when you are not connected to the internet: 3. Go to your Download Directory and double-click on the downloaded file (9600-h.zip), and move the directory 9600-h to this or any other directory you would like. Then double-click on 9600-h; you will see several directories: you may rename the directory named FILES to any name you wish, such as WHITTIER. You may move this file to any directory on your computer. 4. In the newly named directory containing all the eBooks in this set you will find a file named INDEX.HTM in capital letters, this html file can only be used here; a shortcut to it may be installed on your desktop or any directory on your computer. This index file or its shorcut allows you to open all of the OFF-LINE files, chapters and illustrations in this set now on your hard disk. The name of the SHORTCUT may of course be renamed as you wish, for example: WHITTIER INDEX. When using the index or any of the files you may use the BACK button to return from any link. 5. This archive of Project Gutenberg eBooks in the files directory (see instruction #3) also includes, in addition to the usual HTML files for your computer, two sets of mobile viewer files for Kindles, Nooks and others which use .mobi or .epub formats. There is no index for these as after you download them to your mobile viewer it will automatially list the new title names in the usual place. The directories are named: "EPUB" and "MOBI". Double click on the directory which applies to your mobile viewer and move all the enclosed files to your device using the same connection technique you are familiar with when you have downloaded any commercial eBooks from your computer. 
9586	----	THE WORKS OF JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, Volume IV. (of VII) PERSONAL POEMS By John Greenleaf Whittier CONTENTS PERSONAL POEMS A LAMENT TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES B. STORRS LINES ON THE DEATH OF S. OLIVER TORREY TO ----, WITH A COPY OF WOOLMAN'S JOURNAL LEGGETT'S MONUMENT TO A FRIEND, ON HER RETURN FROM EUROPE LUCY HOOPER FOLLEN TO J. P. CHALKLEY HALL GONE TO RONGE CHANNING TO MY FRIEND ON THE DEATH OF HIS SISTER DANIEL WHEELER TO FREDRIKA BREMER TO AVIS KEENE THE HILL-TOP ELLIOTT ICHABOD THE LOST OCCASION WORDSWORTH TO ---- LINES WRITTEN AFTER A SUMMER DAY'S EXCURSION IN PEACE BENEDICITE KOSSUTH TO MY OLD SCHOOLMASTER THE CROSS THE HERO RANTOUL WILLIAM FORSTER TO CHARLES SUMNER BURNS TO GEORGE B. CHEEVER TO JAMES T. FIELDS THE MEMORY OF BURNS IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOSEPH STURGER BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE NAPLES A MEMORIAL BRYANT ON HIS BIRTHDAY THOMAS STARR KING LINES ON A FLY-LEAF GEORGE L. STEARNS GARIBALDI TO LYDIA MARIA CHILD THE SINGER HOW MARY GREW SUMNER THIERS FITZ-GREENE HALLECK WILLIAM FRANCIS BARTLETT BAYARD TAYLOR OUR AUTOCRAT WITHIN THE GATE IN MEMORY: JAMES T. FIELDS WILSON THE POET AND THE CHILDREN A WELCOME TO LOWELL AN ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL MULFORD TO A CAPE ANN SCHOONER SAMUEL J. TILDEN OCCASIONAL POEMS. EVA A LAY OF OLD TIME A SONG OF HARVEST KENOZA LAKE FOR AN AUTUMN FESTIVAL THE QUAKER ALUMNI OUR RIVER REVISITED "THE LAURELS" JUNE ON THE MERRIMAC HYMN FOR THE OPENING OF THOMAS STARR KING'S HOUSE OF WORSHIP HYMN FOR THE HOUSE OF WORSHIP AT GEORGETOWN, ERECTED IN MEMORY OF A MOTHER A SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION CHICAGO KINSMAN THE GOLDEN WEDDING OF LONGWOOD HYMN FOR THE OPENING OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH, ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA LEXINGTON THE LIBRARY "I WAS A STRANGER, AND YE TOOK ME IN" CENTENNIAL HYMN AT SCHOOL-CLOSE HYMN OF THE CHILDREN THE LANDMARKS GARDEN A GREETING GODSPEED WINTER ROSES THE REUNION NORUMBEGA HALL THE BARTHOLDI STATUE ONE OF THE SIGNERS THE TENT ON THE BEACH. PRELUDE THE TENT ON THE BEACH THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH THE GRAVE BY THE LAKE THE BROTHER OF MERCY THE CHANGELING THE MAIDS OF ATTITASH KALLUNDBORG CHURCH THE CABLE HYMN THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPSWELL THE PALATINE ABRAHAM DAVENPORT THE WORSHIP OF NATURE AT SUNDOWN. TO E. C. S. THE CHRISTMAS OF 1888. THE Vow OF WASHINGTON THE CAPTAIN'S WELL AN OUTDOOR RECEPTION R. S. S., AT DEER ISLAND ON THE MERRIMAC BURNING DRIFT-WOOD. O. W. HOLMES ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL HAVERHILL. 1640-1890 To G. G. PRESTON POWERS, INSCRIPTION FOR BASS-RELIEF LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY, INSCRIPTION ON TABLET MILTON, ON MEMORIAL WINDOW THE BIRTHDAY WREATH THE WIND OF MARCH BETWEEN THE GATES THE LAST EVE OF SUMMER TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 8TH Mo. 29TH, 1892 NOTE. The portrait prefacing this volume is from an engraving on steel by J. A. J. WILCOX in 1888, after a photograph taken by Miss ISA E. GRAY in July, 1885. A LAMENT "The parted spirit, Knoweth it not our sorrow? Answereth not Its blessing to our tears?" The circle is broken, one seat is forsaken, One bud from the tree of our friendship is shaken; One heart from among us no longer shall thrill With joy in our gladness, or grief in our ill. Weep! lonely and lowly are slumbering now The light of her glances, the pride of her brow; Weep! sadly and long shall we listen in vain To hear the soft tones of her welcome again. Give our tears to the dead! For humanity's claim From its silence and darkness is ever the same; The hope of that world whose existence is bliss May not stifle the tears of the mourners of this. For, oh! if one glance the freed spirit can throw On the scene of its troubled probation below, Than the pride of the marble, the pomp of the dead, To that glance will be dearer the tears which we shed. Oh, who can forget the mild light of her smile, Over lips moved with music and feeling the while, The eye's deep enchantment, dark, dream-like, and clear, In the glow of its gladness, the shade of its tear. And the charm of her features, while over the whole Played the hues of the heart and the sunshine of soul; And the tones of her voice, like the music which seems Murmured low in our ears by the Angel of dreams! But holier and dearer our memories hold Those treasures of feeling, more precious than gold, The love and the kindness and pity which gave Fresh flowers for the bridal, green wreaths for the grave! The heart ever open to Charity's claim, Unmoved from its purpose by censure and blame, While vainly alike on her eye and her ear Fell the scorn of the heartless, the jesting and jeer. How true to our hearts was that beautiful sleeper With smiles for the joyful, with tears for the weeper, Yet, evermore prompt, whether mournful or gay, With warnings in love to the passing astray. For, though spotless herself, she could sorrow for them Who sullied with evil the spirit's pure gem; And a sigh or a tear could the erring reprove, And the sting of reproof was still tempered by love. As a cloud of the sunset, slow melting in heaven, As a star that is lost when the daylight is given, As a glad dream of slumber, which wakens in bliss, She hath passed to the world of the holy from this. 1834. TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES B. STORRS, Late President of Western Reserve College, who died at his post of duty, overworn by his strenuous labors with tongue and pen in the cause of Human Freedom. Thou hast fallen in thine armor, Thou martyr of the Lord With thy last breath crying "Onward!" And thy hand upon the sword. The haughty heart derideth, And the sinful lip reviles, But the blessing of the perishing Around thy pillow smiles! When to our cup of trembling The added drop is given, And the long-suspended thunder Falls terribly from Heaven,-- When a new and fearful freedom Is proffered of the Lord To the slow-consuming Famine, The Pestilence and Sword! When the refuges of Falsehood Shall be swept away in wrath, And the temple shall be shaken, With its idol, to the earth, Shall not thy words of warning Be all remembered then? And thy now unheeded message Burn in the hearts of men? Oppression's hand may scatter Its nettles on thy tomb, And even Christian bosoms Deny thy memory room; For lying lips shall torture Thy mercy into crime, And the slanderer shall flourish As the bay-tree for a time. But where the south-wind lingers On Carolina's pines, Or falls the careless sunbeam Down Georgia's golden mines; Where now beneath his burthen The toiling slave is driven; Where now a tyrant's mockery Is offered unto Heaven; Where Mammon hath its altars Wet o'er with human blood, And pride and lust debases The workmanship of God,-- There shall thy praise be spoken, Redeemed from Falsehood's ban, When the fetters shall be broken, And the slave shall be a man! Joy to thy spirit, brother! A thousand hearts are warm, A thousand kindred bosoms Are baring to the storm. What though red-handed Violence With secret Fraud combine? The wall of fire is round us, Our Present Help was thine. Lo, the waking up of nations, From Slavery's fatal sleep; The murmur of a Universe, Deep calling unto Deep! Joy to thy spirit, brother! On every wind of heaven The onward cheer and summons Of Freedom's voice is given! Glory to God forever! Beyond the despot's will The soul of Freedom liveth Imperishable still. The words which thou hast uttered Are of that soul a part, And the good seed thou hast scattered Is springing from the heart. In the evil days before us, And the trials yet to come, In the shadow of the prison, Or the cruel martyrdom,-- We will think of thee, O brother! And thy sainted name shall be In the blessing of the captive, And the anthem of the free. 1834 LINES ON THE DEATH OF S. OLIVER TORREY, SECRETARY OF THE BOSTON YOUNG MEN'S ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY. Gone before us, O our brother, To the spirit-land! Vainly look we for another In thy place to stand. Who shall offer youth and beauty On the wasting shrine Of a stern and lofty duty, With a faith like thine? Oh, thy gentle smile of greeting Who again shall see? Who amidst the solemn meeting Gaze again on thee? Who when peril gathers o'er us, Wear so calm a brow? Who, with evil men before us, So serene as thou? Early hath the spoiler found thee, Brother of our love! Autumn's faded earth around thee, And its storms above! Evermore that turf lie lightly, And, with future showers, O'er thy slumbers fresh and brightly Blow the summer flowers In the locks thy forehead gracing, Not a silvery streak; Nor a line of sorrow's tracing On thy fair young cheek; Eyes of light and lips of roses, Such as Hylas wore,-- Over all that curtain closes, Which shall rise no more! Will the vigil Love is keeping Round that grave of thine, Mournfully, like Jazer weeping Over Sibmah's vine; Will the pleasant memories, swelling Gentle hearts, of thee, In the spirit's distant dwelling All unheeded be? If the spirit ever gazes, From its journeyings, back; If the immortal ever traces O'er its mortal track; Wilt thou not, O brother, meet us Sometimes on our way, And, in hours of sadness, greet us As a spirit may? Peace be with thee, O our brother, In the spirit-land Vainly look we for another In thy place to stand. Unto Truth and Freedom giving All thy early powers, Be thy virtues with the living, And thy spirit ours! 1837. TO ------, WITH A COPY OF WOOLMAN'S JOURNAL. "Get the writings of John Woolman by heart."--Essays of Elia. Maiden! with the fair brown tresses Shading o'er thy dreamy eye, Floating on thy thoughtful forehead Cloud wreaths of its sky. Youthful years and maiden beauty, Joy with them should still abide,-- Instinct take the place of Duty, Love, not Reason, guide. Ever in the New rejoicing, Kindly beckoning back the Old, Turning, with the gift of Midas, All things into gold. And the passing shades of sadness Wearing even a welcome guise, As, when some bright lake lies open To the sunny skies, Every wing of bird above it, Every light cloud floating on, Glitters like that flashing mirror In the self-same sun. But upon thy youthful forehead Something like a shadow lies; And a serious soul is looking From thy earnest eyes. With an early introversion, Through the forms of outward things, Seeking for the subtle essence, And the bidden springs. Deeper than the gilded surface Hath thy wakeful vision seen, Farther than the narrow present Have thy journeyings been. Thou hast midst Life's empty noises Heard the solemn steps of Time, And the low mysterious voices Of another clime. All the mystery of Being Hath upon thy spirit pressed,-- Thoughts which, like the Deluge wanderer, Find no place of rest: That which mystic Plato pondered, That which Zeno heard with awe, And the star-rapt Zoroaster In his night-watch saw. From the doubt and darkness springing Of the dim, uncertain Past, Moving to the dark still shadows O'er the Future cast, Early hath Life's mighty question Thrilled within thy heart of youth, With a deep and strong beseeching What and where is Truth? Hollow creed and ceremonial, Whence the ancient life hath fled, Idle faith unknown to action, Dull and cold and dead. Oracles, whose wire-worked meanings Only wake a quiet scorn,-- Not from these thy seeking spirit Hath its answer drawn. But, like some tired child at even, On thy mother Nature's breast, Thou, methinks, art vainly seeking Truth, and peace, and rest. O'er that mother's rugged features Thou art throwing Fancy's veil, Light and soft as woven moonbeams, Beautiful and frail O'er the rough chart of Existence, Rocks of sin and wastes of woe, Soft airs breathe, and green leaves tremble, And cool fountains flow. And to thee an answer cometh From the earth and from the sky, And to thee the hills and waters And the stars reply. But a soul-sufficing answer Hath no outward origin; More than Nature's many voices May be heard within. Even as the great Augustine Questioned earth and sea and sky, And the dusty tomes of learning And old poesy. But his earnest spirit needed More than outward Nature taught; More than blest the poet's vision Or the sage's thought. Only in the gathered silence Of a calm and waiting frame, Light and wisdom as from Heaven To the seeker came. Not to ease and aimless quiet Doth that inward answer tend, But to works of love and duty As our being's end; Not to idle dreams and trances, Length of face, and solemn tone, But to Faith, in daily striving And performance shown. Earnest toil and strong endeavor Of a spirit which within Wrestles with familiar evil And besetting sin; And without, with tireless vigor, Steady heart, and weapon strong, In the power of truth assailing Every form of wrong. Guided thus, how passing lovely Is the track of Woolman's feet! And his brief and simple record How serenely sweet! O'er life's humblest duties throwing Light the earthling never knew, Freshening all its dark waste places As with Hermon's dew. All which glows in Pascal's pages, All which sainted Guion sought, Or the blue-eyed German Rahel Half-unconscious taught Beauty, such as Goethe pictured, Such as Shelley dreamed of, shed Living warmth and starry brightness Round that poor man's head. Not a vain and cold ideal, Not a poet's dream alone, But a presence warm and real, Seen and felt and known. When the red right-hand of slaughter Moulders with the steel it swung, When the name of seer and poet Dies on Memory's tongue, All bright thoughts and pure shall gather Round that meek and suffering one,-- Glorious, like the seer-seen angel Standing in the sun! Take the good man's book and ponder What its pages say to thee; Blessed as the hand of healing May its lesson be. If it only serves to strengthen Yearnings for a higher good, For the fount of living waters And diviner food; If the pride of human reason Feels its meek and still rebuke, Quailing like the eye of Peter From the Just One's look! If with readier ear thou heedest What the Inward Teacher saith, Listening with a willing spirit And a childlike faith,-- Thou mayst live to bless the giver, Who, himself but frail and weak, Would at least the highest welfare Of another seek; And his gift, though poor and lowly It may seem to other eyes, Yet may prove an angel holy In a pilgrim's guise. 1840. LEGGETT'S MONUMENT. William Leggett, who died in 1839 at the age of thirty-seven, was the intrepid editor of the New York Evening Post and afterward of The Plain Dealer. His vigorous assault upon the system of slavery brought down upon him the enmity of political defenders of the system. "Ye build the tombs of the prophets."--Holy Writ. Yes, pile the marble o'er him! It is well That ye who mocked him in his long stern strife, And planted in the pathway of his life The ploughshares of your hatred hot from hell, Who clamored down the bold reformer when He pleaded for his captive fellow-men, Who spurned him in the market-place, and sought Within thy walls, St. Tammany, to bind In party chains the free and honest thought, The angel utterance of an upright mind, Well is it now that o'er his grave ye raise The stony tribute of your tardy praise, For not alone that pile shall tell to Fame Of the brave heart beneath, but of the builders' shame! 1841. TO A FRIEND, ON HER RETURN FROM EUROPE. How smiled the land of France Under thy blue eye's glance, Light-hearted rover Old walls of chateaux gray, Towers of an early day, Which the Three Colors play Flauntingly over. Now midst the brilliant train Thronging the banks of Seine Now midst the splendor Of the wild Alpine range, Waking with change on change Thoughts in thy young heart strange, Lovely, and tender. Vales, soft Elysian, Like those in the vision Of Mirza, when, dreaming, He saw the long hollow dell, Touched by the prophet's spell, Into an ocean swell With its isles teeming. Cliffs wrapped in snows of years, Splintering with icy spears Autumn's blue heaven Loose rock and frozen slide, Hung on the mountain-side, Waiting their hour to glide Downward, storm-driven! Rhine-stream, by castle old, Baron's and robber's hold, Peacefully flowing; Sweeping through vineyards green, Or where the cliffs are seen O'er the broad wave between Grim shadows throwing. Or, where St. Peter's dome Swells o'er eternal Rome, Vast, dim, and solemn; Hymns ever chanting low, Censers swung to and fro, Sable stoles sweeping slow Cornice and column! Oh, as from each and all Will there not voices call Evermore back again? In the mind's gallery Wilt thou not always see Dim phantoms beckon thee O'er that old track again? New forms thy presence haunt, New voices softly chant, New faces greet thee! Pilgrims from many a shrine Hallowed by poet's line, At memory's magic sign, Rising to meet thee. And when such visions come Unto thy olden home, Will they not waken Deep thoughts of Him whose hand Led thee o'er sea and land Back to the household band Whence thou wast taken? While, at the sunset time, Swells the cathedral's chime, Yet, in thy dreaming, While to thy spirit's eye Yet the vast mountains lie Piled in the Switzer's sky, Icy and gleaming: Prompter of silent prayer, Be the wild picture there In the mind's chamber, And, through each coming day Him who, as staff and stay, Watched o'er thy wandering way, Freshly remember. So, when the call shall be Soon or late unto thee, As to all given, Still may that picture live, All its fair forms survive, And to thy spirit give Gladness in Heaven! 1841 LUCY HOOPER. Lucy Hooper died at Brooklyn, L. I., on the 1st of 8th mo., 1841, aged twenty-four years. They tell me, Lucy, thou art dead, That all of thee we loved and cherished Has with thy summer roses perished; And left, as its young beauty fled, An ashen memory in its stead, The twilight of a parted day Whose fading light is cold and vain, The heart's faint echo of a strain Of low, sweet music passed away. That true and loving heart, that gift Of a mind, earnest, clear, profound, Bestowing, with a glad unthrift, Its sunny light on all around, Affinities which only could Cleave to the pure, the true, and good; And sympathies which found no rest, Save with the loveliest and best. Of them--of thee--remains there naught But sorrow in the mourner's breast? A shadow in the land of thought? No! Even my weak and trembling faith Can lift for thee the veil which doubt And human fear have drawn about The all-awaiting scene of death. Even as thou wast I see thee still; And, save the absence of all ill And pain and weariness, which here Summoned the sigh or wrung the tear, The same as when, two summers back, Beside our childhood's Merrimac, I saw thy dark eye wander o'er Stream, sunny upland, rocky shore, And heard thy low, soft voice alone Midst lapse of waters, and the tone Of pine-leaves by the west-wind blown, There's not a charm of soul or brow, Of all we knew and loved in thee, But lives in holier beauty now, Baptized in immortality! Not mine the sad and freezing dream Of souls that, with their earthly mould, Cast off the loves and joys of old, Unbodied, like a pale moonbeam, As pure, as passionless, and cold; Nor mine the hope of Indra's son, Of slumbering in oblivion's rest, Life's myriads blending into one, In blank annihilation blest; Dust-atoms of the infinite, Sparks scattered from the central light, And winning back through mortal pain Their old unconsciousness again. No! I have friends in Spirit Land, Not shadows in a shadowy band, Not others, but themselves are they. And still I think of them the same As when the Master's summons came; Their change,--the holy morn-light breaking Upon the dream-worn sleeper, waking,-- A change from twilight into day. They 've laid thee midst the household graves, Where father, brother, sister lie; Below thee sweep the dark blue waves, Above thee bends the summer sky. Thy own loved church in sadness read Her solemn ritual o'er thy head, And blessed and hallowed with her prayer The turf laid lightly o'er thee there. That church, whose rites and liturgy, Sublime and old, were truth to thee, Undoubted to thy bosom taken, As symbols of a faith unshaken. Even I, of simpler views, could feel The beauty of thy trust and zeal; And, owning not thy creed, could see How deep a truth it seemed to thee, And how thy fervent heart had thrown O'er all, a coloring of its own, And kindled up, intense and warm, A life in every rite and form, As. when on Chebar's banks of old, The Hebrew's gorgeous vision rolled, A spirit filled the vast machine, A life, "within the wheels" was seen. Farewell! A little time, and we Who knew thee well, and loved thee here, One after one shall follow thee As pilgrims through the gate of fear, Which opens on eternity. Yet shall we cherish not the less All that is left our hearts meanwhile; The memory of thy loveliness Shall round our weary pathway smile, Like moonlight when the sun has set, A sweet and tender radiance yet. Thoughts of thy clear-eyed sense of duty, Thy generous scorn of all things wrong, The truth, the strength, the graceful beauty Which blended in thy song. All lovely things, by thee beloved, Shall whisper to our hearts of thee; These green hills, where thy childhood roved, Yon river winding to the sea, The sunset light of autumn eves Reflecting on the deep, still floods, Cloud, crimson sky, and trembling leaves Of rainbow-tinted woods, These, in our view, shall henceforth take A tenderer meaning for thy sake; And all thou lovedst of earth and sky, Seem sacred to thy memory. 1841. FOLLEN. ON READING HIS ESSAY ON THE "FUTURE STATE." Charles Follen, one of the noblest contributions of Germany to American citizenship, was at an early age driven from his professorship in the University of Jena, and compelled to seek shelter from official prosecution in Switzerland, on account of his liberal political opinions. He became Professor of Civil Law in the University of Basle. The governments of Prussia, Austria, and Russia united in demanding his delivery as a political offender; and, in consequence, he left Switzerland, and came to the United States. At the time of the formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society he was a Professor in Harvard University, honored for his genius, learning, and estimable character. His love of liberty and hatred of oppression led him to seek an interview with Garrison and express his sympathy with him. Soon after, he attended a meeting of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. An able speech was made by Rev. A. A. Phelps, and a letter of mine addressed to the Secretary of the Society was read. Whereupon he rose and stated that his views were in unison with those of the Society, and that after hearing the speech and the letter, he was ready to join it, and abide the probable consequences of such an unpopular act. He lost by so doing his professorship. He was an able member of the Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society. He perished in the ill-fated steamer Lexington, which was burned on its passage from New York, January 13, 1840. The few writings left behind him show him to have been a profound thinker of rare spiritual insight. Friend of my soul! as with moist eye I look up from this page of thine, Is it a dream that thou art nigh, Thy mild face gazing into mine? That presence seems before me now, A placid heaven of sweet moonrise, When, dew-like, on the earth below Descends the quiet of the skies. The calm brow through the parted hair, The gentle lips which knew no guile, Softening the blue eye's thoughtful care With the bland beauty of their smile. Ah me! at times that last dread scene Of Frost and Fire and moaning Sea Will cast its shade of doubt between The failing eyes of Faith and thee. Yet, lingering o'er thy charmed page, Where through the twilight air of earth, Alike enthusiast and sage, Prophet and bard, thou gazest forth, Lifting the Future's solemn veil; The reaching of a mortal hand To put aside the cold and pale Cloud-curtains of the Unseen Land; Shall these poor elements outlive The mind whose kingly will, they wrought? Their gross unconsciousness survive Thy godlike energy of thought? In thoughts which answer to my own, In words which reach my inward ear, Like whispers from the void Unknown, I feel thy living presence here. The waves which lull thy body's rest, The dust thy pilgrim footsteps trod, Unwasted, through each change, attest The fixed economy of God. Thou livest, Follen! not in vain Hath thy fine spirit meekly borne The burthen of Life's cross of pain, And the thorned crown of suffering worn. Oh, while Life's solemn mystery glooms Around us like a dungeon's wall, Silent earth's pale and crowded tombs, Silent the heaven which bends o'er all! While day by day our loved ones glide In spectral silence, hushed and lone, To the cold shadows which divide The living from the dread Unknown; While even on the closing eye, And on the lip which moves in vain, The seals of that stern mystery Their undiscovered trust retain; And only midst the gloom of death, Its mournful doubts and haunting fears, Two pale, sweet angels, Hope and Faith, Smile dimly on us through their tears; 'T is something to a heart like mine To think of thee as living yet; To feel that such a light as thine Could not in utter darkness set. Less dreary seems the untried way Since thou hast left thy footprints there, And beams of mournful beauty play Round the sad Angel's sable hair. Oh! at this hour when half the sky Is glorious with its evening light, And fair broad fields of summer lie Hung o'er with greenness in my sight; While through these elm-boughs wet with rain The sunset's golden walls are seen, With clover-bloom and yellow grain And wood-draped hill and stream between; I long to know if scenes like this Are hidden from an angel's eyes; If earth's familiar loveliness Haunts not thy heaven's serener skies. For sweetly here upon thee grew The lesson which that beauty gave, The ideal of the pure and true In earth and sky and gliding wave. And it may be that all which lends The soul an upward impulse here, With a diviner beauty blends, And greets us in a holier sphere. Through groves where blighting never fell The humbler flowers of earth may twine; And simple draughts-from childhood's well Blend with the angel-tasted wine. But be the prying vision veiled, And let the seeking lips be dumb, Where even seraph eyes have failed Shall mortal blindness seek to come? We only know that thou hast gone, And that the same returnless tide Which bore thee from us still glides on, And we who mourn thee with it glide. On all thou lookest we shall look, And to our gaze erelong shall turn That page of God's mysterious book We so much wish yet dread to learn. With Him, before whose awful power Thy spirit bent its trembling knee; Who, in the silent greeting flower, And forest leaf, looked out on thee, We leave thee, with a trust serene, Which Time, nor Change, nor Death can move, While with thy childlike faith we lean On Him whose dearest name is Love! 1842. TO J. P. John Pierpont, the eloquent preacher and poet of Boston. Not as a poor requital of the joy With which my childhood heard that lay of thine, Which, like an echo of the song divine At Bethlehem breathed above the Holy Boy, Bore to my ear the Airs of Palestine,-- Not to the poet, but the man I bring In friendship's fearless trust my offering How much it lacks I feel, and thou wilt see, Yet well I know that thou Last deemed with me Life all too earnest, and its time too short For dreamy ease and Fancy's graceful sport; And girded for thy constant strife with wrong, Like Nehemiah fighting while he wrought The broken walls of Zion, even thy song Hath a rude martial tone, a blow in every thought! 1843. CHALKLEY HALL. Chalkley Hall, near Frankford, Pa., was the residence of Thomas Chalkley, an eminent minister of the Friends' denomination. He was one of the early settlers of the Colony, and his Journal, which was published in 1749, presents a quaint but beautiful picture of a life of unostentatious and simple goodness. He was the master of a merchant vessel, and, in his visits to the west Indies and Great Britain, omitted no opportunity to labor for the highest interests of his fellow-men. During a temporary residence in Philadelphia, in the summer of 1838, the quiet and beautiful scenery around the ancient village of Frankford frequently attracted me from the heat and bustle of the city. I have referred to my youthful acquaintance with his writings in Snow-Bound. How bland and sweet the greeting of this breeze To him who flies From crowded street and red wall's weary gleam, Till far behind him like a hideous dream The close dark city lies Here, while the market murmurs, while men throng The marble floor Of Mammon's altar, from the crush and din Of the world's madness let me gather in My better thoughts once more. Oh, once again revive, while on my ear The cry of Gain And low hoarse hum of Traffic die away, Ye blessed memories of my early day Like sere grass wet with rain! Once more let God's green earth and sunset air Old feelings waken; Through weary years of toil and strife and ill, Oh, let me feel that my good angel still Hath not his trust forsaken. And well do time and place befit my mood Beneath the arms Of this embracing wood, a good man made His home, like Abraham resting in the shade Of Mamre's lonely palms. Here, rich with autumn gifts of countless years, The virgin soil Turned from the share he guided, and in rain And summer sunshine throve the fruits and grain Which blessed his honest toil. Here, from his voyages on the stormy seas, Weary and worn, He came to meet his children and to bless The Giver of all good in thankfulness And praise for his return. And here his neighbors gathered in to greet Their friend again, Safe from the wave and the destroying gales, Which reap untimely green Bermuda's vales, And vex the Carib main. To hear the good man tell of simple truth, Sown in an hour Of weakness in some far-off Indian isle, From the parched bosom of a barren soil, Raised up in life and power. How at those gatherings in Barbadian vales, A tendering love Came o'er him, like the gentle rain from heaven, And words of fitness to his lips were given, And strength as from above. How the sad captive listened to the Word, Until his chain Grew lighter, and his wounded spirit felt The healing balm of consolation melt Upon its life-long pain How the armed warrior sat him down to hear Of Peace and Truth, And the proud ruler and his Creole dame, Jewelled and gorgeous in her beauty came, And fair and bright-eyed youth. Oh, far away beneath New England's sky, Even when a boy, Following my plough by Merrimac's green shore, His simple record I have pondered o'er With deep and quiet joy. And hence this scene, in sunset glory warm,-- Its woods around, Its still stream winding on in light and shade, Its soft, green meadows and its upland glade,-- To me is holy ground. And dearer far than haunts where Genius keeps His vigils still; Than that where Avon's son of song is laid, Or Vaucluse hallowed by its Petrarch's shade, Or Virgil's laurelled hill. To the gray walls of fallen Paraclete, To Juliet's urn, Fair Arno and Sorrento's orange-grove, Where Tasso sang, let young Romance and Love Like brother pilgrims turn. But here a deeper and serener charm To all is given; And blessed memories of the faithful dead O'er wood and vale and meadow-stream have shed The holy hues of Heaven! 1843. GONE Another hand is beckoning us, Another call is given; And glows once more with Angel-steps The path which reaches Heaven. Our young and gentle friend, whose smile Made brighter summer hours, Amid the frosts of autumn time Has left us with the flowers. No paling of the cheek of bloom Forewarned us of decay; No shadow from the Silent Land Fell round our sister's way. The light of her young life went down, As sinks behind the hill The glory of a setting star, Clear, suddenly, and still. As pure and sweet, her fair brow seemed Eternal as the sky; And like the brook's low song, her voice,-- A sound which could not die. And half we deemed she needed not The changing of her sphere, To give to Heaven a Shining One, Who walked an Angel here. The blessing of her quiet life Fell on us like the dew; And good thoughts where her footsteps pressed Like fairy blossoms grew. Sweet promptings unto kindest deeds Were in her very look; We read her face, as one who reads A true and holy book, The measure of a blessed hymn, To which our hearts could move; The breathing of an inward psalm, A canticle of love. We miss her in the place of prayer, And by the hearth-fire's light; We pause beside her door to hear Once more her sweet "Good-night!" There seems a shadow on the day, Her smile no longer cheers; A dimness on the stars of night, Like eyes that look through tears. Alone unto our Father's will One thought hath reconciled; That He whose love exceedeth ours Hath taken home His child. Fold her, O Father! in Thine arms, And let her henceforth be A messenger of love between Our human hearts and Thee. Still let her mild rebuking stand Between us and the wrong, And her dear memory serve to make Our faith in Goodness strong. And grant that she who, trembling, here Distrusted all her powers, May welcome to her holier home The well-beloved of ours. 1845. TO RONGE. This was written after reading the powerful and manly protest of Johannes Ronge against the "pious fraud" of the Bishop of Treves. The bold movement of the young Catholic priest of Prussian Silesia seemed to me full of promise to the cause of political as well as religious liberty in Europe. That it failed was due partly to the faults of the reformer, but mainly to the disagreement of the Liberals of Germany upon a matter of dogma, which prevented them from unity of action. Rouge was born in Silesia in 1813 and died in October, 1887. His autobiography was translated into English and published in London in 1846. Strike home, strong-hearted man! Down to the root Of old oppression sink the Saxon steel. Thy work is to hew down. In God's name then Put nerve into thy task. Let other men Plant, as they may, that better tree whose fruit The wounded bosom of the Church shall heal. Be thou the image-breaker. Let thy blows Fall heavy as the Suabian's iron hand, On crown or crosier, which shall interpose Between thee and the weal of Fatherland. Leave creeds to closet idlers. First of all, Shake thou all German dream-land with the fall Of that accursed tree, whose evil trunk Was spared of old by Erfurt's stalwart monk. Fight not with ghosts and shadows. Let us hear The snap of chain-links. Let our gladdened ear Catch the pale prisoner's welcome, as the light Follows thy axe-stroke, through his cell of night. Be faithful to both worlds; nor think to feed Earth's starving millions with the husks of creed. Servant of Him whose mission high and holy Was to the wronged, the sorrowing, and the lowly, Thrust not his Eden promise from our sphere, Distant and dim beyond the blue sky's span; Like him of Patmos, see it, now and here, The New Jerusalem comes down to man Be warned by Luther's error. Nor like him, When the roused Teuton dashes from his limb The rusted chain of ages, help to bind His hands for whom thou claim'st the freedom of the mind. 1846. CHANNING. The last time I saw Dr. Channing was in the summer of 1841, when, in company with my English friend, Joseph Sturge, so well known for his philanthropic labors and liberal political opinions, I visited him in his summer residence in Rhode Island. In recalling the impressions of that visit, it can scarcely be necessary to say, that I have no reference to the peculiar religious opinions of a man whose life, beautifully and truly manifested above the atmosphere of sect, is now the world's common legacy. Not vainly did old poets tell, Nor vainly did old genius paint God's great and crowning miracle, The hero and the saint! For even in a faithless day Can we our sainted ones discern; And feel, while with them on the way, Our hearts within us burn. And thus the common tongue and pen Which, world-wide, echo Channing's fame, As one of Heaven's anointed men, Have sanctified his name. In vain shall Rome her portals bar, And shut from him her saintly prize, Whom, in the world's great calendar, All men shall canonize. By Narragansett's sunny bay, Beneath his green embowering wood, To me it seems but yesterday Since at his side I stood. The slopes lay green with summer rains, The western wind blew fresh and free, And glimmered down the orchard lanes The white surf of the sea. With us was one, who, calm and true, Life's highest purpose understood, And, like his blessed Master, knew The joy of doing good. Unlearned, unknown to lettered fame, Yet on the lips of England's poor And toiling millions dwelt his name, With blessings evermore. Unknown to power or place, yet where The sun looks o'er the Carib sea, It blended with the freeman's prayer And song of jubilee. He told of England's sin and wrong, The ills her suffering children know, The squalor of the city's throng, The green field's want and woe. O'er Channing's face the tenderness Of sympathetic sorrow stole, Like a still shadow, passionless, The sorrow of the soul. But when the generous Briton told How hearts were answering to his own, And Freedom's rising murmur rolled Up to the dull-eared throne, I saw, methought, a glad surprise Thrill through that frail and pain-worn frame, And, kindling in those deep, calm eyes, A still and earnest flame. His few, brief words were such as move The human heart,--the Faith-sown seeds Which ripen in the soil of love To high heroic deeds. No bars of sect or clime were felt, The Babel strife of tongues had ceased, And at one common altar knelt The Quaker and the priest. And not in vain: with strength renewed, And zeal refreshed, and hope less dim, For that brief meeting, each pursued The path allotted him. How echoes yet each Western hill And vale with Channing's dying word! How are the hearts of freemen still By that great warning stirred. The stranger treads his native soil, And pleads, with zeal unfelt before, The honest right of British toil, The claim of England's poor. Before him time-wrought barriers fall, Old fears subside, old hatreds melt, And, stretching o'er the sea's blue wall, The Saxon greets the Celt. The yeoman on the Scottish lines, The Sheffield grinder, worn and grim, The delver in the Cornwall mines, Look up with hope to him. Swart smiters of the glowing steel, Dark feeders of the forge's flame, Pale watchers at the loom and wheel, Repeat his honored name. And thus the influence of that hour Of converse on Rhode Island's strand Lives in the calm, resistless power Which moves our fatherland. God blesses still the generous thought, And still the fitting word He speeds And Truth, at His requiring taught, He quickens into deeds. Where is the victory of the grave? What dust upon the spirit lies? God keeps the sacred life he gave,-- The prophet never dies! 1844. TO MY FRIEND ON THE DEATH OF HIS SISTER. Sophia Sturge, sister of Joseph Sturge, of Birmingham, the President of the British Complete Suffrage Association, died in the 6th month, 1845. She was the colleague, counsellor, and ever-ready helpmate of her brother in all his vast designs of beneficence. The Birmingham Pilot says of her: "Never, perhaps, were the active and passive virtues of the human character more harmoniously and beautifully blended than in this excellent woman." Thine is a grief, the depth of which another May never know; Yet, o'er the waters, O my stricken brother! To thee I go. I lean my heart unto thee, sadly folding Thy hand in mine; With even the weakness of my soul upholding The strength of thine. I never knew, like thee, the dear departed; I stood not by When, in calm trust, the pure and tranquil-hearted Lay down to die. And on thy ears my words of weak condoling Must vainly fall The funeral bell which in thy heart is tolling, Sounds over all! I will not mock thee with the poor world's common And heartless phrase, Nor wrong the memory of a sainted woman With idle praise. With silence only as their benediction, God's angels come Where, in the shadow of a great affliction, The soul sits dumb! Yet, would I say what thy own heart approveth Our Father's will, Calling to Him the dear one whom He loveth, Is mercy still. Not upon thee or thine the solemn angel Hath evil wrought Her funeral anthem is a glad evangel,-- The good die not! God calls our loved ones, but we lose not wholly What He hath given; They live on earth, in thought and deed, as truly As in His heaven. And she is with thee; in thy path of trial She walketh yet; Still with the baptism of thy self-denial Her locks are wet. Up, then, my brother! Lo, the fields of harvest Lie white in view She lives and loves thee, and the God thou servest To both is true. Thrust in thy sickle! England's toilworn peasants Thy call abide; And she thou mourn'st, a pure and holy presence, Shall glean beside! 1845. DANIEL WHEELER Daniel Wheeler, a minister of the Society of Friends, who had labored in the cause of his Divine Master in Great Britain, Russia, and the islands of the Pacific, died in New York in the spring of 1840, while on a religious visit to this country. O Dearly loved! And worthy of our love! No more Thy aged form shall rise before The bushed and waiting worshiper, In meek obedience utterance giving To words of truth, so fresh and living, That, even to the inward sense, They bore unquestioned evidence Of an anointed Messenger! Or, bowing down thy silver hair In reverent awfulness of prayer, The world, its time and sense, shut out The brightness of Faith's holy trance Gathered upon thy countenance, As if each lingering cloud of doubt, The cold, dark shadows resting here In Time's unluminous atmosphere, Were lifted by an angel's hand, And through them on thy spiritual eye Shone down the blessedness on high, The glory of the Better Land! The oak has fallen! While, meet for no good work, the vine May yet its worthless branches twine, Who knoweth not that with thee fell A great man in our Israel? Fallen, while thy loins were girded still, Thy feet with Zion's dews still wet, And in thy hand retaining yet The pilgrim's staff and scallop-shell Unharmed and safe, where, wild and free, Across the Neva's cold morass The breezes from the Frozen Sea With winter's arrowy keenness pass; Or where the unwarning tropic gale Smote to the waves thy tattered sail, Or where the noon-hour's fervid heat Against Tahiti's mountains beat; The same mysterious Hand which gave Deliverance upon land and wave, Tempered for thee the blasts which blew Ladaga's frozen surface o'er, And blessed for thee the baleful dew Of evening upon Eimeo's shore, Beneath this sunny heaven of ours, Midst our soft airs and opening flowers Hath given thee a grave! His will be done, Who seeth not as man, whose way Is not as ours! 'T is well with thee! Nor anxious doubt nor dark dismay Disquieted thy closing day, But, evermore, thy soul could say, "My Father careth still for me!" Called from thy hearth and home,--from her, The last bud on thy household tree, The last dear one to minister In duty and in love to thee, From all which nature holdeth dear, Feeble with years and worn with pain, To seek our distant land again, Bound in the spirit, yet unknowing The things which should befall thee here, Whether for labor or for death, In childlike trust serenely going To that last trial of thy faith! Oh, far away, Where never shines our Northern star On that dark waste which Balboa saw From Darien's mountains stretching far, So strange, heaven-broad, and lone, that there, With forehead to its damp wind bare, He bent his mailed knee in awe; In many an isle whose coral feet The surges of that ocean beat, In thy palm shadows, Oahu, And Honolulu's silver bay, Amidst Owyhee's hills of blue, And taro-plains of Tooboonai, Are gentle hearts, which long shall be Sad as our own at thought of thee, Worn sowers of Truth's holy seed, Whose souls in weariness and need Were strengthened and refreshed by thine. For blessed by our Father's hand Was thy deep love and tender care, Thy ministry and fervent prayer,-- Grateful as Eshcol's clustered vine To Israel in a weary land. And they who drew By thousands round thee, in the hour Of prayerful waiting, hushed and deep, That He who bade the islands keep Silence before Him, might renew Their strength with His unslumbering power, They too shall mourn that thou art gone, That nevermore thy aged lip Shall soothe the weak, the erring warn, Of those who first, rejoicing, heard Through thee the Gospel's glorious word,-- Seals of thy true apostleship. And, if the brightest diadem, Whose gems of glory purely burn Around the ransomed ones in bliss, Be evermore reserved for them Who here, through toil and sorrow, turn Many to righteousness, May we not think of thee as wearing That star-like crown of light, and bearing, Amidst Heaven's white and blissful band, Th' unfading palm-branch in thy hand; And joining with a seraph's tongue In that new song the elders sung, Ascribing to its blessed Giver Thanksgiving, love, and praise forever! Farewell! And though the ways of Zion mourn When her strong ones are called away, Who like thyself have calmly borne The heat and burden of the day, Yet He who slumbereth not nor sleepeth His ancient watch around us keepeth; Still, sent from His creating hand, New witnesses for Truth shall stand, New instruments to sound abroad The Gospel of a risen Lord; To gather to the fold once more The desolate and gone astray, The scattered of a cloudy day, And Zion's broken walls restore; And, through the travail and the toil Of true obedience, minister Beauty for ashes, and the oil Of joy for mourning, unto her! So shall her holy bounds increase With walls of praise and gates of peace So shall the Vine, which martyr tears And blood sustained in other years, With fresher life be clothed upon; And to the world in beauty show Like the rose-plant of Jericho, And glorious as Lebanon! 1847 TO FREDRIKA BREMER. It is proper to say that these lines are the joint impromptus of my sister and myself. They are inserted here as an expression of our admiration of the gifted stranger whom we have since learned to love as a friend. Seeress of the misty Norland, Daughter of the Vikings bold, Welcome to the sunny Vineland, Which thy fathers sought of old! Soft as flow of Siija's waters, When the moon of summer shines, Strong as Winter from his mountains Roaring through the sleeted pines. Heart and ear, we long have listened To thy saga, rune, and song; As a household joy and presence We have known and loved thee long. By the mansion's marble mantel, Round the log-walled cabin's hearth, Thy sweet thoughts and northern fancies Meet and mingle with our mirth. And o'er weary spirits keeping Sorrow's night-watch, long and chill, Shine they like thy sun of summer Over midnight vale and hill. We alone to thee are strangers, Thou our friend and teacher art; Come, and know us as we know thee; Let us meet thee heart to heart! To our homes and household altars We, in turn, thy steps would lead, As thy loving hand has led us O'er the threshold of the Swede. 1849. TO AVIS KEENE ON RECEIVING A BASKET OF SEA-MOSSES. Thanks for thy gift Of ocean flowers, Born where the golden drift Of the slant sunshine falls Down the green, tremulous walls Of water, to the cool, still coral bowers, Where, under rainbows of perpetual showers, God's gardens of the deep His patient angels keep; Gladdening the dim, strange solitude With fairest forms and hues, and thus Forever teaching us The lesson which the many-colored skies, The flowers, and leaves, and painted butterflies, The deer's branched antlers, the gay bird that flings The tropic sunshine from its golden wings, The brightness of the human countenance, Its play of smiles, the magic of a glance, Forevermore repeat, In varied tones and sweet, That beauty, in and of itself, is good. O kind and generous friend, o'er whom The sunset hues of Time are cast, Painting, upon the overpast And scattered clouds of noonday sorrow The promise of a fairer morrow, An earnest of the better life to come; The binding of the spirit broken, The warning to the erring spoken, The comfort of the sad, The eye to see, the hand to cull Of common things the beautiful, The absent heart made glad By simple gift or graceful token Of love it needs as daily food, All own one Source, and all are good Hence, tracking sunny cove and reach, Where spent waves glimmer up the beach, And toss their gifts of weed and shell From foamy curve and combing swell, No unbefitting task was thine To weave these flowers so soft and fair In unison with His design Who loveth beauty everywhere; And makes in every zone and clime, In ocean and in upper air, All things beautiful in their time. For not alone in tones of awe and power He speaks to Inan; The cloudy horror of the thunder-shower His rainbows span; And where the caravan Winds o'er the desert, leaving, as in air The crane-flock leaves, no trace of passage there, He gives the weary eye The palm-leaf shadow for the hot noon hours, And on its branches dry Calls out the acacia's flowers; And where the dark shaft pierces down Beneath the mountain roots, Seen by the miner's lamp alone, The star-like crystal shoots; So, where, the winds and waves below, The coral-branched gardens grow, His climbing weeds and mosses show, Like foliage, on each stony bough, Of varied hues more strangely gay Than forest leaves in autumn's day;-- Thus evermore, On sky, and wave, and shore, An all-pervading beauty seems to say God's love and power are one; and they, Who, like the thunder of a sultry day, Smite to restore, And they, who, like the gentle wind, uplift The petals of the dew-wet flowers, and drift Their perfume on the air, Alike may serve Him, each, with their own gift, Making their lives a prayer! 1850 THE HILL-TOP The burly driver at my side, We slowly climbed the hill, Whose summit, in the hot noontide, Seemed rising, rising still. At last, our short noon-shadows bid The top-stone, bare and brown, From whence, like Gizeh's pyramid, The rough mass slanted down. I felt the cool breath of the North; Between me and the sun, O'er deep, still lake, and ridgy earth, I saw the cloud-shades run. Before me, stretched for glistening miles, Lay mountain-girdled Squam; Like green-winged birds, the leafy isles Upon its bosom swam. And, glimmering through the sun-haze warm, Far as the eye could roam, Dark billows of an earthquake storm Beflecked with clouds like foam, Their vales in misty shadow deep, Their rugged peaks in shine, I saw the mountain ranges sweep The horizon's northern line. There towered Chocorua's peak; and west, Moosehillock's woods were seem, With many a nameless slide-scarred crest And pine-dark gorge between. Beyond them, like a sun-rimmed cloud, The great Notch mountains shone, Watched over by the solemn-browed And awful face of stone! "A good look-off!" the driver spake; "About this time, last year, I drove a party to the Lake, And stopped, at evening, here. 'T was duskish down below; but all These hills stood in the sun, Till, dipped behind yon purple wall, He left them, one by one. "A lady, who, from Thornton hill, Had held her place outside, And, as a pleasant woman will, Had cheered the long, dull ride, Besought me, with so sweet a smile, That--though I hate delays-- I could not choose but rest awhile,-- (These women have such ways!) "On yonder mossy ledge she sat, Her sketch upon her knees, A stray brown lock beneath her hat Unrolling in the breeze; Her sweet face, in the sunset light Upraised and glorified,-- I never saw a prettier sight In all my mountain ride. "As good as fair; it seemed her joy To comfort and to give; My poor, sick wife, and cripple boy, Will bless her while they live!" The tremor in the driver's tone His manhood did not shame "I dare say, sir, you may have known"-- He named a well-known name. Then sank the pyramidal mounds, The blue lake fled away; For mountain-scope a parlor's bounds, A lighted hearth for day! From lonely years and weary miles The shadows fell apart; Kind voices cheered, sweet human smiles Shone warm into my heart. We journeyed on; but earth and sky Had power to charm no more; Still dreamed my inward-turning eye The dream of memory o'er. Ah! human kindness, human love,-- To few who seek denied; Too late we learn to prize above The whole round world beside! 1850 ELLIOTT. Ebenezer Elliott was to the artisans of England what Burns was to the peasantry of Scotland. His Corn-law Rhymes contributed not a little to that overwhelming tide of popular opinion and feeling which resulted in the repeal of the tax on bread. Well has the eloquent author of The Reforms and Reformers of Great Britain said of him, "Not corn-law repealers alone, but all Britons who moisten their scanty bread with the sweat of the brow, are largely indebted to his inspiring lay, for the mighty bound which the laboring mind of England has taken in our day." Hands off! thou tithe-fat plunderer! play No trick of priestcraft here! Back, puny lordling! darest thou lay A hand on Elliott's bier? Alive, your rank and pomp, as dust, Beneath his feet he trod. He knew the locust swarm that cursed The harvest-fields of God. On these pale lips, the smothered thought Which England's millions feel, A fierce and fearful splendor caught, As from his forge the steel. Strong-armed as Thor, a shower of fire His smitten anvil flung; God's curse, Earth's wrong, dumb Hunger's ire, He gave them all a tongue! Then let the poor man's horny hands Bear up the mighty dead, And labor's swart and stalwart bands Behind as mourners tread. Leave cant and craft their baptized bounds, Leave rank its minster floor; Give England's green and daisied grounds The poet of the poor! Lay down upon his Sheaf's green verge That brave old heart of oak, With fitting dirge from sounding forge, And pall of furnace smoke! Where whirls the stone its dizzy rounds, And axe and sledge are swung, And, timing to their stormy sounds, His stormy lays are sung. There let the peasant's step be heard, The grinder chant his rhyme, Nor patron's praise nor dainty word Befits the man or time. No soft lament nor dreamer's sigh For him whose words were bread; The Runic rhyme and spell whereby The foodless poor were fed! Pile up the tombs of rank and pride, O England, as thou wilt! With pomp to nameless worth denied, Emblazon titled guilt! No part or lot in these we claim; But, o'er the sounding wave, A common right to Elliott's name, A freehold in his grave! 1850 ICHABOD This poem was the outcome of the surprise and grief and forecast of evil consequences which I felt on reading the seventh of March speech of Daniel Webster in support of the "compromise," and the Fugitive Slave Law. No partisan or personal enmity dictated it. On the contrary my admiration of the splendid personality and intellectual power of the great Senator was never stronger than when I laid down his speech, and, in one of the saddest moments of my life, penned my protest. I saw, as I wrote, with painful clearness its sure results,--the Slave Power arrogant and defiant, strengthened and encouraged to carry out its scheme for the extension of its baleful system, or the dissolution of the Union, the guaranties of personal liberty in the free States broken down, and the whole country made the hunting-ground of slave-catchers. In the horror of such a vision, so soon fearfully fulfilled, if one spoke at all, he could only speak in tones of stern and sorrowful rebuke. But death softens all resentments, and the consciousness of a common inheritance of frailty and weakness modifies the severity of judgment. Years after, in _The Lost Occasion_ I gave utterance to an almost universal regret that the great statesman did not live to see the flag which he loved trampled under the feet of Slavery, and, in view of this desecration, make his last days glorious in defence of "Liberty and Union, one and inseparable." So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn Which once he wore! The glory from his gray hairs gone Forevermore! Revile him not, the Tempter hath A snare for all; And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, Befit his fall! Oh, dumb be passion's stormy rage, When he who might Have lighted up and led his age, Falls back in night. Scorn! would the angels laugh, to mark A bright soul driven, Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark, From hope and heaven! Let not the land once proud of him Insult him now, Nor brand with deeper shame his dim, Dishonored brow. But let its humbled sons, instead, From sea to lake, A long lament, as for the dead, In sadness make. Of all we loved and honored, naught Save power remains; A fallen angel's pride of thought, Still strong in chains. All else is gone; from those great eyes The soul has fled When faith is lost, when honor dies, The man is dead! Then, pay the reverence of old days To his dead fame; Walk backward, with averted gaze, And hide the shame! 1850 THE LOST OCCASION. Some die too late and some too soon, At early morning, heat of noon, Or the chill evening twilight. Thou, Whom the rich heavens did so endow With eyes of power and Jove's own brow, With all the massive strength that fills Thy home-horizon's granite hills, With rarest gifts of heart and head From manliest stock inherited, New England's stateliest type of man, In port and speech Olympian; Whom no one met, at first, but took A second awed and wondering look (As turned, perchance, the eyes of Greece On Phidias' unveiled masterpiece); Whose words in simplest homespun clad, The Saxon strength of Caedmon's had, With power reserved at need to reach The Roman forum's loftiest speech, Sweet with persuasion, eloquent In passion, cool in argument, Or, ponderous, falling on thy foes As fell the Norse god's hammer blows, Crushing as if with Talus' flail Through Error's logic-woven mail, And failing only when they tried The adamant of the righteous side,-- Thou, foiled in aim and hope, bereaved Of old friends, by the new deceived, Too soon for us, too soon for thee, Beside thy lonely Northern sea, Where long and low the marsh-lands spread, Laid wearily down thy August head. Thou shouldst have lived to feel below Thy feet Disunion's fierce upthrow; The late-sprung mine that underlaid Thy sad concessions vainly made. Thou shouldst have seen from Sumter's wall The star-flag of the Union fall, And armed rebellion pressing on The broken lines of Washington! No stronger voice than thine had then Called out the utmost might of men, To make the Union's charter free And strengthen law by liberty. How had that stern arbitrament To thy gray age youth's vigor lent, Shaming ambition's paltry prize Before thy disillusioned eyes; Breaking the spell about thee wound Like the green withes that Samson bound; Redeeming in one effort grand, Thyself and thy imperilled land! Ah, cruel fate, that closed to thee, O sleeper by the Northern sea, The gates of opportunity! God fills the gaps of human need, Each crisis brings its word and deed. Wise men and strong we did not lack; But still, with memory turning back, In the dark hours we thought of thee, And thy lone grave beside the sea. Above that grave the east winds blow, And from the marsh-lands drifting slow The sea-fog comes, with evermore The wave-wash of a lonely shore, And sea-bird's melancholy cry, As Nature fain would typify The sadness of a closing scene, The loss of that which should have been. But, where thy native mountains bare Their foreheads to diviner air, Fit emblem of enduring fame, One lofty summit keeps thy name. For thee the cosmic forces did The rearing of that pyramid, The prescient ages shaping with Fire, flood, and frost thy monolith. Sunrise and sunset lay thereon With hands of light their benison, The stars of midnight pause to set Their jewels in its coronet. And evermore that mountain mass Seems climbing from the shadowy pass To light, as if to manifest Thy nobler self, thy life at best! 1880 WORDSWORTH, WRITTEN ON A BLANK LEAF OF HIS MEMOIRS. Dear friends, who read the world aright, And in its common forms discern A beauty and a harmony The many never learn! Kindred in soul of him who found In simple flower and leaf and stone The impulse of the sweetest lays Our Saxon tongue has known,-- Accept this record of a life As sweet and pure, as calm and good, As a long day of blandest June In green field and in wood. How welcome to our ears, long pained By strife of sect and party noise, The brook-like murmur of his song Of nature's simple joys! The violet' by its mossy stone, The primrose by the river's brim, And chance-sown daffodil, have found Immortal life through him. The sunrise on his breezy lake, The rosy tints his sunset brought, World-seen, are gladdening all the vales And mountain-peaks of thought. Art builds on sand; the works of pride And human passion change and fall; But that which shares the life of God With Him surviveth all. 1851. TO ------, LINES WRITTEN AFTER A SUMMER DAY'S EXCURSION. Fair Nature's priestesses! to whom, In hieroglyph of bud and bloom, Her mysteries are told; Who, wise in lore of wood and mead, The seasons' pictured scrolls can read, In lessons manifold! Thanks for the courtesy, and gay Good-humor, which on Washing Day Our ill-timed visit bore; Thanks for your graceful oars, which broke The morning dreams of Artichoke, Along his wooded shore! Varied as varying Nature's ways, Sprites of the river, woodland fays, Or mountain nymphs, ye seem; Free-limbed Dianas on the green, Loch Katrine's Ellen, or Undine, Upon your favorite stream. The forms of which the poets told, The fair benignities of old, Were doubtless such as you; What more than Artichoke the rill Of Helicon? Than Pipe-stave hill Arcadia's mountain-view? No sweeter bowers the bee delayed, In wild Hymettus' scented shade, Than those you dwell among; Snow-flowered azaleas, intertwined With roses, over banks inclined With trembling harebells hung! A charmed life unknown to death, Immortal freshness Nature hath; Her fabled fount and glen Are now and here: Dodona's shrine Still murmurs in the wind-swept pine,-- All is that e'er hath been. The Beauty which old Greece or Rome Sung, painted, wrought, lies close at home; We need but eye and ear In all our daily walks to trace The outlines of incarnate grace, The hymns of gods to hear! 1851 IN PEACE. A track of moonlight on a quiet lake, Whose small waves on a silver-sanded shore Whisper of peace, and with the low winds make Such harmonies as keep the woods awake, And listening all night long for their sweet sake A green-waved slope of meadow, hovered o'er By angel-troops of lilies, swaying light On viewless stems, with folded wings of white; A slumberous stretch of mountain-land, far seen Where the low westering day, with gold and green, Purple and amber, softly blended, fills The wooded vales, and melts among the hills; A vine-fringed river, winding to its rest On the calm bosom of a stormless sea, Bearing alike upon its placid breast, With earthly flowers and heavenly' stars impressed, The hues of time and of eternity Such are the pictures which the thought of thee, O friend, awakeneth,--charming the keen pain Of thy departure, and our sense of loss Requiting with the fullness of thy gain. Lo! on the quiet grave thy life-borne cross, Dropped only at its side, methinks doth shine, Of thy beatitude the radiant sign! No sob of grief, no wild lament be there, To break the Sabbath of the holy air; But, in their stead, the silent-breathing prayer Of hearts still waiting for a rest like thine. O spirit redeemed! Forgive us, if henceforth, With sweet and pure similitudes of earth, We keep thy pleasant memory freshly green, Of love's inheritance a priceless part, Which Fancy's self, in reverent awe, is seen To paint, forgetful of the tricks of art, With pencil dipped alone in colors of the heart. 1851. BENEDICITE. God's love and peace be with thee, where Soe'er this soft autumnal air Lifts the dark tresses of thy hair. Whether through city casements comes Its kiss to thee, in crowded rooms, Or, out among the woodland blooms, It freshens o'er thy thoughtful face, Imparting, in its glad embrace, Beauty to beauty, grace to grace! Fair Nature's book together read, The old wood-paths that knew our tread, The maple shadows overhead,-- The hills we climbed, the river seen By gleams along its deep ravine,-- All keep thy memory fresh and green. Where'er I look, where'er I stray, Thy thought goes with me on my way, And hence the prayer I breathe to-day; O'er lapse of time and change of scene, The weary waste which lies between Thyself and me, my heart I lean. Thou lack'st not Friendship's spell-word, nor The half-unconscious power to draw All hearts to thine by Love's sweet law. With these good gifts of God is cast Thy lot, and many a charm thou hast To hold the blessed angels fast. If, then, a fervent wish for thee The gracious heavens will heed from me, What should, dear heart, its burden be? The sighing of a shaken reed,-- What can I more than meekly plead The greatness of our common need? God's love,--unchanging, pure, and true,-- The Paraclete white-shining through His peace,--the fall of Hermon's dew! With such a prayer, on this sweet day, As thou mayst hear and I may say, I greet thee, dearest, far away! 1851. KOSSUTH It can scarcely be necessary to say that there are elements in the character and passages in the history of the great Hungarian statesman and orator, which necessarily command the admiration of those, even, who believe that no political revolution was ever worth the price of human blood. Type of two mighty continents!--combining The strength of Europe with the warmth and glow Of Asian song and prophecy,--the shining Of Orient splendors over Northern snow! Who shall receive him? Who, unblushing, speak Welcome to him, who, while he strove to break The Austrian yoke from Magyar necks, smote off At the same blow the fetters of the serf, Rearing the altar of his Fatherland On the firm base of freedom, and thereby Lifting to Heaven a patriot's stainless hand, Mocked not the God of Justice with a lie! Who shall be Freedom's mouthpiece? Who shall give Her welcoming cheer to the great fugitive? Not he who, all her sacred trusts betraying, Is scourging back to slavery's hell of pain The swarthy Kossuths of our land again! Not he whose utterance now from lips designed The bugle-march of Liberty to wind, And call her hosts beneath the breaking light, The keen reveille of her morn of fight, Is but the hoarse note of the blood-hound's baying, The wolf's long howl behind the bondman's flight! Oh for the tongue of him who lies at rest In Quincy's shade of patrimonial trees, Last of the Puritan tribunes and the best, To lend a voice to Freedom's sympathies, And hail the coming of the noblest guest The Old World's wrong has given the New World of the West! 1851. TO MY OLD SCHOOLMASTER. AN EPISTLE NOT AFTER THE MANNER OF HORACE These lines were addressed to my worthy friend Joshua Coffin, teacher, historian, and antiquarian. He was one of the twelve persons who with William Lloyd Garrison formed the first anti-slavery society in New England. Old friend, kind friend! lightly down Drop time's snow-flakes on thy crown! Never be thy shadow less, Never fail thy cheerfulness; Care, that kills the cat, may, plough Wrinkles in the miser's brow, Deepen envy's spiteful frown, Draw the mouths of bigots down, Plague ambition's dream, and sit Heavy on the hypocrite, Haunt the rich man's door, and ride In the gilded coach of pride;-- Let the fiend pass!--what can he Find to do with such as thee? Seldom comes that evil guest Where the conscience lies at rest, And brown health and quiet wit Smiling on the threshold sit. I, the urchin unto whom, In that smoked and dingy room, Where the district gave thee rule O'er its ragged winter school, Thou didst teach the mysteries Of those weary A B C's,-- Where, to fill the every pause Of thy wise and learned saws, Through the cracked and crazy wall Came the cradle-rock and squall, And the goodman's voice, at strife With his shrill and tipsy wife, Luring us by stories old, With a comic unction told, More than by the eloquence Of terse birchen arguments (Doubtful gain, I fear), to look With complacence on a book!-- Where the genial pedagogue Half forgot his rogues to flog, Citing tale or apologue, Wise and merry in its drift As was Phaedrus' twofold gift, Had the little rebels known it, Risum et prudentiam monet! I,--the man of middle years, In whose sable locks appears Many a warning fleck of gray,-- Looking back to that far day, And thy primal lessons, feel Grateful smiles my lips unseal, As, remembering thee, I blend Olden teacher, present friend, Wise with antiquarian search, In the scrolls of State and Church Named on history's title-page, Parish-clerk and justice sage; For the ferule's wholesome awe Wielding now the sword of law. Threshing Time's neglected sheaves, Gathering up the scattered leaves Which the wrinkled sibyl cast Careless from her as she passed,-- Twofold citizen art thou, Freeman of the past and now. He who bore thy name of old Midway in the heavens did hold Over Gibeon moon and sun; Thou hast bidden them backward run; Of to-day the present ray Flinging over yesterday! Let the busy ones deride What I deem of right thy pride Let the fools their treadmills grind, Look not forward nor behind, Shuffle in and wriggle out, Veer with every breeze about, Turning like a windmill sail, Or a dog that seeks his tail; Let them laugh to see thee fast Tabernacled in the Past, Working out with eye and lip, Riddles of old penmanship, Patient as Belzoni there Sorting out, with loving care, Mummies of dead questions stripped From their sevenfold manuscript. Dabbling, in their noisy way, In the puddles of to-day, Little know they of that vast Solemn ocean of the past, On whose margin, wreck-bespread, Thou art walking with the dead, Questioning the stranded years, Waking smiles, by turns, and tears, As thou callest up again Shapes the dust has long o'erlain,-- Fair-haired woman, bearded man, Cavalier and Puritan; In an age whose eager view Seeks but present things, and new, Mad for party, sect and gold, Teaching reverence for the old. On that shore, with fowler's tact, Coolly bagging fact on fact, Naught amiss to thee can float, Tale, or song, or anecdote; Village gossip, centuries old, Scandals by our grandams told, What the pilgrim's table spread, Where he lived, and whom he wed, Long-drawn bill of wine and beer For his ordination cheer, Or the flip that wellnigh made Glad his funeral cavalcade; Weary prose, and poet's lines, Flavored by their age, like wines, Eulogistic of some quaint, Doubtful, puritanic saint; Lays that quickened husking jigs, Jests that shook grave periwigs, When the parson had his jokes And his glass, like other folks; Sermons that, for mortal hours, Taxed our fathers' vital powers, As the long nineteenthlies poured Downward from the sounding-board, And, for fire of Pentecost, Touched their beards December's frost. Time is hastening on, and we What our fathers are shall be,-- Shadow-shapes of memory! Joined to that vast multitude Where the great are but the good, And the mind of strength shall prove Weaker than the heart of love; Pride of graybeard wisdom less Than the infant's guilelessness, And his song of sorrow more Than the crown the Psalmist wore Who shall then, with pious zeal, At our moss-grown thresholds kneel, From a stained and stony page Reading to a careless age, With a patient eye like thine, Prosing tale and limping line, Names and words the hoary rime Of the Past has made sublime? Who shall work for us as well The antiquarian's miracle? Who to seeming life recall Teacher grave and pupil small? Who shall give to thee and me Freeholds in futurity? Well, whatever lot be mine, Long and happy days be thine, Ere thy full and honored age Dates of time its latest page! Squire for master, State for school, Wisely lenient, live and rule; Over grown-up knave and rogue Play the watchful pedagogue; Or, while pleasure smiles on duty, At the call of youth and beauty, Speak for them the spell of law Which shall bar and bolt withdraw, And the flaming sword remove From the Paradise of Love. Still, with undimmed eyesight, pore Ancient tome and record o'er; Still thy week-day lyrics croon, Pitch in church the Sunday tune, Showing something, in thy part, Of the old Puritanic art, Singer after Sternhold's heart In thy pew, for many a year, Homilies from Oldbug hear, Who to wit like that of South, And the Syrian's golden mouth, Doth the homely pathos add Which the pilgrim preachers had; Breaking, like a child at play, Gilded idols of the day, Cant of knave and pomp of fool Tossing with his ridicule, Yet, in earnest or in jest, Ever keeping truth abreast. And, when thou art called, at last, To thy townsmen of the past, Not as stranger shalt thou come; Thou shalt find thyself at home With the little and the big, Woollen cap and periwig, Madam in her high-laced ruff, Goody in her home-made stuff,-- Wise and simple, rich and poor, Thou hast known them all before! 1851 THE CROSS. Richard Dillingham, a young member of the Society of Friends, died in the Nashville penitentiary, where he was confined for the act of aiding the escape of fugitive slaves. "The cross, if rightly borne, shall be No burden, but support to thee;" So, moved of old time for our sake, The holy monk of Kempen spake. Thou brave and true one! upon whom Was laid the cross of martyrdom, How didst thou, in thy generous youth, Bear witness to this blessed truth! Thy cross of suffering and of shame A staff within thy hands became, In paths where faith alone could see The Master's steps supporting thee. Thine was the seed-time; God alone Beholds the end of what is sown; Beyond our vision, weak and dim, The harvest-time is hid with Him. Yet, unforgotten where it lies, That seed of generous sacrifice, Though seeming on the desert cast, Shall rise with bloom and fruit at last. 1852. THE HERO. The hero of the incident related in this poem was Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, the well-known philanthropist, who when a young man volunteered his aid in the Greek struggle for independence. "Oh for a knight like Bayard, Without reproach or fear; My light glove on his casque of steel, My love-knot on his spear! "Oh for the white plume floating Sad Zutphen's field above,-- The lion heart in battle, The woman's heart in love! "Oh that man once more were manly, Woman's pride, and not her scorn: That once more the pale young mother Dared to boast 'a man is born'! "But, now life's slumberous current No sun-bowed cascade wakes; No tall, heroic manhood The level dulness breaks. "Oh for a knight like Bayard, Without reproach or fear! My light glove on his casque of steel, My love-knot on his spear!" Then I said, my own heart throbbing To the time her proud pulse beat, "Life hath its regal natures yet, True, tender, brave, and sweet! "Smile not, fair unbeliever! One man, at least, I know, Who might wear the crest of Bayard Or Sidney's plume of snow. "Once, when over purple mountains Died away the Grecian sun, And the far Cyllenian ranges Paled and darkened, one by one,-- "Fell the Turk, a bolt of thunder, Cleaving all the quiet sky, And against his sharp steel lightnings Stood the Suliote but to die. "Woe for the weak and halting! The crescent blazed behind A curving line of sabres, Like fire before the wind! "Last to fly, and first to rally, Rode he of whom I speak, When, groaning in his bridle-path, Sank down a wounded Greek. "With the rich Albanian costume Wet with many a ghastly stain, Gazing on earth and sky as one Who might not gaze again. "He looked forward to the mountains, Back on foes that never spare, Then flung him from his saddle, And placed the stranger there. "'Allah! hu!' Through flashing sabres, Through a stormy hail of lead, The good Thessalian charger Up the slopes of olives sped. "Hot spurred the turbaned riders; He almost felt their breath, Where a mountain stream rolled darkly down Between the hills and death. "One brave and manful struggle,-- He gained the solid land, And the cover of the mountains, And the carbines of his band!" "It was very great and noble," Said the moist-eyed listener then, "But one brave deed makes no hero; Tell me what he since hath been!" "Still a brave and generous manhood, Still an honor without stain, In the prison of the Kaiser, By the barricades of Seine. "But dream not helm and harness The sign of valor true; Peace hath higher tests of manhood Than battle ever knew. "Wouldst know him now? Behold him, The Cadmus of the blind, Giving the dumb lip language, The idiot-clay a mind. "Walking his round of duty Serenely day by day, With the strong man's hand of labor And childhood's heart of play. "True as the knights of story, Sir Lancelot and his peers, Brave in his calm endurance As they in tilt of spears. "As waves in stillest waters, As stars in noonday skies, All that wakes to noble action In his noon of calmness lies. "Wherever outraged Nature Asks word or action brave, Wherever struggles labor, Wherever groans a slave,-- "Wherever rise the peoples, Wherever sinks a throne, The throbbing heart of Freedom finds An answer in his own. "Knight of a better era, Without reproach or fear! Said I not well that Bayards And Sidneys still are here?" 1853. RANTOUL. No more fitting inscription could be placed on the tombstone of Robert Rantoul than this: "He died at his post in Congress, and his last words were a protest in the name of Democracy against the Fugitive-Slave Law." One day, along the electric wire His manly word for Freedom sped; We came next morn: that tongue of fire Said only, "He who spake is dead!" Dead! while his voice was living yet, In echoes round the pillared dome! Dead! while his blotted page lay wet With themes of state and loves of home! Dead! in that crowning grace of time, That triumph of life's zenith hour! Dead! while we watched his manhood's prime Break from the slow bud into flower! Dead! he so great, and strong, and wise, While the mean thousands yet drew breath; How deepened, through that dread surprise, The mystery and the awe of death! From the high place whereon our votes Had borne him, clear, calm, earnest, fell His first words, like the prelude notes Of some great anthem yet to swell. We seemed to see our flag unfurled, Our champion waiting in his place For the last battle of the world, The Armageddon of the race. Through him we hoped to speak the word Which wins the freedom of a land; And lift, for human right, the sword Which dropped from Hampden's dying hand. For he had sat at Sidney's feet, And walked with Pym and Vane apart; And, through the centuries, felt the beat Of Freedom's march in Cromwell's heart. He knew the paths the worthies held, Where England's best and wisest trod; And, lingering, drank the springs that welled Beneath the touch of Milton's rod. No wild enthusiast of the right, Self-poised and clear, he showed alway The coolness of his northern night, The ripe repose of autumn's day. His steps were slow, yet forward still He pressed where others paused or failed; The calm star clomb with constant will, The restless meteor flashed and paled. Skilled in its subtlest wile, he knew And owned the higher ends of Law; Still rose majestic on his view The awful Shape the schoolman saw. Her home the heart of God; her voice The choral harmonies whereby The stars, through all their spheres, rejoice, The rhythmic rule of earth and sky. We saw his great powers misapplied To poor ambitions; yet, through all, We saw him take the weaker side, And right the wronged, and free the thrall. Now, looking o'er the frozen North, For one like him in word and act, To call her old, free spirit forth, And give her faith the life of fact,-- To break her party bonds of shame, And labor with the zeal of him To make the Democratic name Of Liberty the synonyme,-- We sweep the land from hill to strand, We seek the strong, the wise, the brave, And, sad of heart, return to stand In silence by a new-made grave! There, where his breezy hills of home Look out upon his sail-white seas, The sounds of winds and waters come, And shape themselves to words like these. "Why, murmuring, mourn that he, whose power Was lent to Party over-long, Heard the still whisper at the hour He set his foot on Party wrong? "The human life that closed so well No lapse of folly now can stain The lips whence Freedom's protest fell No meaner thought can now profane. "Mightier than living voice his grave That lofty protest utters o'er; Through roaring wind and smiting wave It speaks his hate of wrong once more. "Men of the North! your weak regret Is wasted here; arise and pay To freedom and to him your debt, By following where he led the way!" 1853. WILLIAM FORSTER. William Forster, of Norwich, England, died in East Tennessee, in the 1st month, 1854, while engaged in presenting to the governors of the States of this Union the address of his religious society on the evils of slavery. He was the relative and coadjutor of the Buxtons, Gurneys, and Frys; and his whole life, extending al-most to threescore and ten years, was a pore and beautiful example of Christian benevolence. He had travelled over Europe, and visited most of its sovereigns, to plead against the slave-trade and slavery; and had twice before made visits to this country, under impressions of religious duty. He was the father of the Right Hon. William Edward Forster. He visited my father's house in Haverhill during his first tour in the United States. The years are many since his hand Was laid upon my head, Too weak and young to understand The serious words he said. Yet often now the good man's look Before me seems to swim, As if some inward feeling took The outward guise of him. As if, in passion's heated war, Or near temptation's charm, Through him the low-voiced monitor Forewarned me of the harm. Stranger and pilgrim! from that day Of meeting, first and last, Wherever Duty's pathway lay, His reverent steps have passed. The poor to feed, the lost to seek, To proffer life to death, Hope to the erring,--to the weak The strength of his own faith. To plead the captive's right; remove The sting of hate from Law; And soften in the fire of love The hardened steel of War. He walked the dark world, in the mild, Still guidance of the Light; In tearful tenderness a child, A strong man in the right. From what great perils, on his way, He found, in prayer, release; Through what abysmal shadows lay His pathway unto peace, God knoweth: we could only see The tranquil strength he gained; The bondage lost in liberty, The fear in love unfeigned. And I,--my youthful fancies grown The habit of the man, Whose field of life by angels sown The wilding vines o'erran,-- Low bowed in silent gratitude, My manhood's heart enjoys That reverence for the pure and good Which blessed the dreaming boy's. Still shines the light of holy lives Like star-beams over doubt; Each sainted memory, Christlike, drives Some dark possession out. O friend! O brother I not in vain Thy life so calm and true, The silver dropping of the rain, The fall of summer dew! How many burdened hearts have prayed Their lives like thine might be But more shall pray henceforth for aid To lay them down like thee. With weary hand, yet steadfast will, In old age as in youth, Thy Master found thee sowing still The good seed of His truth. As on thy task-field closed the day In golden-skied decline, His angel met thee on the way, And lent his arm to thine. Thy latest care for man,--thy last Of earthly thought a prayer,-- Oh, who thy mantle, backward cast, Is worthy now to wear? Methinks the mound which marks thy bed Might bless our land and save, As rose, of old, to life the dead Who touched the prophet's grave 1854. TO CHARLES SUMNER. If I have seemed more prompt to censure wrong Than praise the right; if seldom to thine ear My voice hath mingled with the exultant cheer Borne upon all our Northern winds along; If I have failed to join the fickle throng In wide-eyed wonder, that thou standest strong In victory, surprised in thee to find Brougham's scathing power with Canning's grace combined; That he, for whom the ninefold Muses sang, From their twined arms a giant athlete sprang, Barbing the arrows of his native tongue With the spent shafts Latona's archer flung, To smite the Python of our land and time, Fell as the monster born of Crissa's slime, Like the blind bard who in Castalian springs Tempered the steel that clove the crest of kings, And on the shrine of England's freedom laid The gifts of Cumve and of Delphi's' shade,-- Small need hast thou of words of praise from me. Thou knowest my heart, dear friend, and well canst guess That, even though silent, I have not the less Rejoiced to see thy actual life agree With the large future which I shaped for thee, When, years ago, beside the summer sea, White in the moon, we saw the long waves fall Baffled and broken from the rocky wall, That, to the menace of the brawling flood, Opposed alone its massive quietude, Calm as a fate; with not a leaf nor vine Nor birch-spray trembling in the still moonshine, Crowning it like God's peace. I sometimes think That night-scene by the sea prophetical, (For Nature speaks in symbols and in signs, And through her pictures human fate divines), That rock, wherefrom we saw the billows sink In murmuring rout, uprising clear and tall In the white light of heaven, the type of one Who, momently by Error's host assailed, Stands strong as Truth, in greaves of granite mailed; And, tranquil-fronted, listening over all The tumult, hears the angels say, Well done! 1854. BURNS, ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER IN BLOSSOM. No more these simple flowers belong To Scottish maid and lover; Sown in the common soil of song, They bloom the wide world over. In smiles and tears, in sun and showers, The minstrel and the heather, The deathless singer and the flowers He sang of live together. Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns The moorland flower and peasant! How, at their mention, memory turns Her pages old and pleasant! The gray sky wears again its gold And purple of adorning, And manhood's noonday shadows hold The dews of boyhood's morning. The dews that washed the dust and soil From off the wings of pleasure, The sky, that flecked the ground of toil With golden threads of leisure. I call to mind the summer day, The early harvest mowing, The sky with sun and clouds at play, And flowers with breezes blowing. I hear the blackbird in the corn, The locust in the haying; And, like the fabled hunter's horn, Old tunes my heart is playing. How oft that day, with fond delay, I sought the maple's shadow, And sang with Burns the hours away, Forgetful of the meadow. Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead I heard the squirrels leaping, The good dog listened while I read, And wagged his tail in keeping. I watched him while in sportive mood I read "_The Twa Dogs_" story, And half believed he understood The poet's allegory. Sweet day, sweet songs! The golden hours Grew brighter for that singing, From brook and bird and meadow flowers A dearer welcome bringing. New light on home-seen Nature beamed, New glory over Woman; And daily life and duty seemed No longer poor and common. I woke to find the simple truth Of fact and feeling better Than all the dreams that held my youth A still repining debtor, That Nature gives her handmaid, Art, The themes of sweet discoursing; The tender idyls of the heart In every tongue rehearsing. Why dream of lands of gold and pearl, Of loving knight and lady, When farmer boy and barefoot girl Were wandering there already? I saw through all familiar things The romance underlying; The joys and griefs that plume the wings Of Fancy skyward flying. I saw the same blithe day return, The same sweet fall of even, That rose on wooded Craigie-burn, And sank on crystal Devon. I matched with Scotland's heathery hills The sweetbrier and the clover; With Ayr and Doon, my native rills, Their wood-hymns chanting over. O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen, I saw the Man uprising; No longer common or unclean, The child of God's baptizing! With clearer eyes I saw the worth Of life among the lowly; The Bible at his Cotter's hearth Had made my own more holy. And if at times an evil strain, To lawless love appealing, Broke in upon the sweet refrain Of pure and healthful feeling, It died upon the eye and ear, No inward answer gaining; No heart had I to see or hear The discord and the staining. Let those who never erred forget His worth, in vain bewailings; Sweet Soul of Song! I own my debt Uncancelled by his failings! Lament who will the ribald line Which tells his lapse from duty, How kissed the maddening lips of wine Or wanton ones of beauty; But think, while falls that shade between The erring one and Heaven, That he who loved like Magdalen, Like her may be forgiven. Not his the song whose thunderous chime Eternal echoes render; The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme, And Milton's starry splendor! But who his human heart has laid To Nature's bosom nearer? Who sweetened toil like him, or paid To love a tribute dearer? Through all his tuneful art, how strong The human feeling gushes The very moonlight of his song Is warm with smiles and blushes! Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time, So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry; Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme, But spare his Highland Mary! 1854. TO GEORGE B. CHEEVER So spake Esaias: so, in words of flame, Tekoa's prophet-herdsman smote with blame The traffickers in men, and put to shame, All earth and heaven before, The sacerdotal robbers of the poor. All the dread Scripture lives for thee again, To smite like lightning on the hands profane Lifted to bless the slave-whip and the chain. Once more the old Hebrew tongue Bends with the shafts of God a bow new-strung! Take up the mantle which the prophets wore; Warn with their warnings, show the Christ once more Bound, scourged, and crucified in His blameless poor; And shake above our land The unquenched bolts that blazed in Hosea's hand! Not vainly shalt thou cast upon our years The solemn burdens of the Orient seers, And smite with truth a guilty nation's ears. Mightier was Luther's word Than Seckingen's mailed arm or Hutton's sword! 1858. TO JAMES T. FIELDS ON A BLANK LEAF OF "POEMS PRINTED, NOT PUBLISHED." Well thought! who would not rather hear The songs to Love and Friendship sung Than those which move the stranger's tongue, And feed his unselected ear? Our social joys are more than fame; Life withers in the public look. Why mount the pillory of a book, Or barter comfort for a name? Who in a house of glass would dwell, With curious eyes at every pane? To ring him in and out again, Who wants the public crier's bell? To see the angel in one's way, Who wants to play the ass's part,-- Bear on his back the wizard Art, And in his service speak or bray? And who his manly locks would shave, And quench the eyes of common sense, To share the noisy recompense That mocked the shorn and blinded slave? The heart has needs beyond the head, And, starving in the plenitude Of strange gifts, craves its common food,-- Our human nature's daily bread. We are but men: no gods are we, To sit in mid-heaven, cold and bleak, Each separate, on his painful peak, Thin-cloaked in self-complacency. Better his lot whose axe is swung In Wartburg woods, or that poor girl's Who by the him her spindle whirls And sings the songs that Luther sung, Than his who, old, and cold, and vain, At Weimar sat, a demigod, And bowed with Jove's imperial nod His votaries in and out again! Ply, Vanity, thy winged feet! Ambition, hew thy rocky stair! Who envies him who feeds on air The icy splendor of his seat? I see your Alps, above me, cut The dark, cold sky; and dim and lone I see ye sitting,--stone on stone,-- With human senses dulled and shut. I could not reach you, if I would, Nor sit among your cloudy shapes; And (spare the fable of the grapes And fox) I would not if I could. Keep to your lofty pedestals! The safer plain below I choose Who never wins can rarely lose, Who never climbs as rarely falls. Let such as love the eagle's scream Divide with him his home of ice For me shall gentler notes suffice,-- The valley-song of bird and stream; The pastoral bleat, the drone of bees, The flail-beat chiming far away, The cattle-low, at shut of day, The voice of God in leaf and breeze; Then lend thy hand, my wiser friend, And help me to the vales below, (In truth, I have not far to go,) Where sweet with flowers the fields extend. 1858. THE MEMORY OF BURNS. Read at the Boston celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, 25th 1st mo., 1859. In my absence these lines were read by Ralph Waldo Emerson. How sweetly come the holy psalms From saints and martyrs down, The waving of triumphal palms Above the thorny crown The choral praise, the chanted prayers From harps by angels strung, The hunted Cameron's mountain airs, The hymns that Luther sung! Yet, jarring not the heavenly notes, The sounds of earth are heard, As through the open minster floats The song of breeze and bird Not less the wonder of the sky That daisies bloom below; The brook sings on, though loud and high The cloudy organs blow! And, if the tender ear be jarred That, haply, hears by turns The saintly harp of Olney's bard, The pastoral pipe of Burns, No discord mars His perfect plan Who gave them both a tongue; For he who sings the love of man The love of God hath sung! To-day be every fault forgiven Of him in whom we joy We take, with thanks, the gold of Heaven And leave the earth's alloy. Be ours his music as of spring, His sweetness as of flowers, The songs the bard himself might sing In holier ears than ours. Sweet airs of love and home, the hum Of household melodies, Come singing, as the robins come To sing in door-yard trees. And, heart to heart, two nations lean, No rival wreaths to twine, But blending in eternal green The holly and the pine! IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOSEPH STURGE. In the fair land o'erwatched by Ischia's mountains, Across the charmed bay Whose blue waves keep with Capri's silver fountains Perpetual holiday, A king lies dead, his wafer duly eaten, His gold-bought masses given; And Rome's great altar smokes with gums to sweeten Her foulest gift to Heaven. And while all Naples thrills with mute thanksgiving, The court of England's queen For the dead monster so abhorred while living In mourning garb is seen. With a true sorrow God rebukes that feigning; By lone Edgbaston's side Stands a great city in the sky's sad raining, Bareheaded and wet-eyed! Silent for once the restless hive of labor, Save the low funeral tread, Or voice of craftsman whispering to his neighbor The good deeds of the dead. For him no minster's chant of the immortals Rose from the lips of sin; No mitred priest swung back the heavenly portals To let the white soul in. But Age and Sickness framed their tearful faces In the low hovel's door, And prayers went up from all the dark by-places And Ghettos of the poor. The pallid toiler and the negro chattel, The vagrant of the street, The human dice wherewith in games of battle The lords of earth compete, Touched with a grief that needs no outward draping, All swelled the long lament, Of grateful hearts, instead of marble, shaping His viewless monument! For never yet, with ritual pomp and splendor, In the long heretofore, A heart more loyal, warm, and true, and tender, Has England's turf closed o'er. And if there fell from out her grand old steeples No crash of brazen wail, The murmurous woe of kindreds, tongues, and peoples Swept in on every gale. It came from Holstein's birchen-belted meadows, And from the tropic calms Of Indian islands in the sunlit shadows Of Occidental palms; From the locked roadsteads of the Bothniaii peasants, And harbors of the Finn, Where war's worn victims saw his gentle presence Come sailing, Christ-like, in, To seek the lost, to build the old waste places, To link the hostile shores Of severing seas, and sow with England's daisies The moss of Finland's moors. Thanks for the good man's beautiful example, Who in the vilest saw Some sacred crypt or altar of a temple Still vocal with God's law; And heard with tender ear the spirit sighing As from its prison cell, Praying for pity, like the mournful crying Of Jonah out of hell. Not his the golden pen's or lip's persuasion, But a fine sense of right, And Truth's directness, meeting each occasion Straight as a line of light. His faith and works, like streams that intermingle, In the same channel ran The crystal clearness of an eye kept single Shamed all the frauds of man. The very gentlest of all human natures He joined to courage strong, And love outreaching unto all God's creatures With sturdy hate of wrong. Tender as woman, manliness and meekness In him were so allied That they who judged him by his strength or weakness Saw but a single side. Men failed, betrayed him, but his zeal seemed nourished By failure and by fall; Still a large faith in human-kind he cherished, And in God's love for all. And now he rests: his greatness and his sweetness No more shall seem at strife, And death has moulded into calm completeness The statue of his life. Where the dews glisten and the songbirds warble, His dust to dust is laid, In Nature's keeping, with no pomp of marble To shame his modest shade. The forges glow, the hammers all are ringing; Beneath its smoky vale, Hard by, the city of his love is swinging Its clamorous iron flail. But round his grave are quietude and beauty, And the sweet heaven above,-- The fitting symbols of a life of duty Transfigured into love! 1859. BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE John Brown of Ossawatomie spake on his dying day: "I will not have to shrive my soul a priest in Slavery's pay. But let some poor slave-mother whom I have striven to free, With her children, from the gallows-stair put up a prayer for me!" John Brown of Ossawatomie, they led him out to die; And lo! a poor slave-mother with her little child pressed nigh. Then the bold, blue eye grew tender, and the old harsh face grew mild, As he stooped between the jeering ranks and kissed the negro's child. The shadows of his stormy life that moment fell apart; And they who blamed the bloody hand forgave the loving heart. That kiss from all its guilty means redeemed the good intent, And round the grisly fighter's hair the martyr's aureole bent! Perish with him the folly that seeks through evil good Long live the generous purpose unstained with human blood! Not the raid of midnight terror, but the thought which underlies; Not the borderer's pride of daring, but the Christian's sacrifice. Nevermore may yon Blue Ridges the Northern rifle hear, Nor see the light of blazing homes flash on the negro's spear. But let the free-winged angel Truth their guarded passes scale, To teach that right is more than might, and justice more than mail! So vainly shall Virginia set her battle in array; In vain her trampling squadrons knead the winter snow with clay. She may strike the pouncing eagle, but she dares not harm the dove; And every gate she bars to Hate shall open wide to Love! 1859. NAPLES INSCRIBED TO ROBERT C. WATERSTON, OF BOSTON. Helen Waterston died at Naples in her eighteenth year, and lies buried in the Protestant cemetery there. The stone over her grave bears the lines, Fold her, O Father, in Thine arms, And let her henceforth be A messenger of love between Our human hearts and Thee. I give thee joy!--I know to thee The dearest spot on earth must be Where sleeps thy loved one by the summer sea; Where, near her sweetest poet's tomb, The land of Virgil gave thee room To lay thy flower with her perpetual bloom. I know that when the sky shut down Behind thee on the gleaming town, On Baiae's baths and Posilippo's crown; And, through thy tears, the mocking day Burned Ischia's mountain lines away, And Capri melted in its sunny bay; Through thy great farewell sorrow shot The sharp pang of a bitter thought That slaves must tread around that holy spot. Thou knewest not the land was blest In giving thy beloved rest, Holding the fond hope closer to her breast, That every sweet and saintly grave Was freedom's prophecy, and gave The pledge of Heaven to sanctify and save. That pledge is answered. To thy ear The unchained city sends its cheer, And, tuned to joy, the muffled bells of fear Ring Victor in. The land sits free And happy by the summer sea, And Bourbon Naples now is Italy! She smiles above her broken chain The languid smile that follows pain, Stretching her cramped limbs to the sun again. Oh, joy for all, who hear her call From gray Camaldoli's convent-wall And Elmo's towers to freedom's carnival! A new life breathes among her vines And olives, like the breath of pines Blown downward from the breezy Apennines. Lean, O my friend, to meet that breath, Rejoice as one who witnesseth Beauty from ashes rise, and life from death! Thy sorrow shall no more be pain, Its tears shall fall in sunlit rain, Writing the grave with flowers: "Arisen again!" 1860. A MEMORIAL Moses Austin Cartland, a dear friend and relation, who led a faithful life as a teacher and died in the summer of 1863. Oh, thicker, deeper, darker growing, The solemn vista to the tomb Must know henceforth another shadow, And give another cypress room. In love surpassing that of brothers, We walked, O friend, from childhood's day; And, looking back o'er fifty summers, Our footprints track a common way. One in our faith, and one our longing To make the world within our reach Somewhat the better for our living, And gladder for our human speech. Thou heard'st with me the far-off voices, The old beguiling song of fame, But life to thee was warm and present, And love was better than a name. To homely joys and loves and friendships Thy genial nature fondly clung; And so the shadow on the dial Ran back and left thee always young. And who could blame the generous weakness Which, only to thyself unjust, So overprized the worth of others, And dwarfed thy own with self-distrust? All hearts grew warmer in the presence Of one who, seeking not his own, Gave freely for the love of giving, Nor reaped for self the harvest sown. Thy greeting smile was pledge and prelude Of generous deeds and kindly words; In thy large heart were fair guest-chambers, Open to sunrise and the birds; The task was thine to mould and fashion Life's plastic newness into grace To make the boyish heart heroic, And light with thought the maiden's face. O'er all the land, in town and prairie, With bended heads of mourning, stand The living forms that owe their beauty And fitness to thy shaping hand. Thy call has come in ripened manhood, The noonday calm of heart and mind, While I, who dreamed of thy remaining To mourn me, linger still behind, Live on, to own, with self-upbraiding, A debt of love still due from me,-- The vain remembrance of occasions, Forever lost, of serving thee. It was not mine among thy kindred To join the silent funeral prayers, But all that long sad day of summer My tears of mourning dropped with theirs. All day the sea-waves sobbed with sorrow, The birds forgot their merry trills All day I heard the pines lamenting With thine upon thy homestead hills. Green be those hillside pines forever, And green the meadowy lowlands be, And green the old memorial beeches, Name-carven in the woods of Lee. Still let them greet thy life companions Who thither turn their pilgrim feet, In every mossy line recalling A tender memory sadly sweet. O friend! if thought and sense avail not To know thee henceforth as thou art, That all is well with thee forever I trust the instincts of my heart. Thine be the quiet habitations, Thine the green pastures, blossom-sown, And smiles of saintly recognition, As sweet and tender as thy own. Thou com'st not from the hush and shadow To meet us, but to thee we come, With thee we never can be strangers, And where thou art must still be home. 1863. BRYANT ON HIS BIRTHDAY Mr. Bryant's seventieth birthday, November 3, 1864, was celebrated by a festival to which these verses were sent. We praise not now the poet's art, The rounded beauty of his song; Who weighs him from his life apart Must do his nobler nature wrong. Not for the eye, familiar grown With charms to common sight denied, The marvellous gift he shares alone With him who walked on Rydal-side; Not for rapt hymn nor woodland lay, Too grave for smiles, too sweet for tears; We speak his praise who wears to-day The glory of his seventy years. When Peace brings Freedom in her train, Let happy lips his songs rehearse; His life is now his noblest strain, His manhood better than his verse! Thank God! his hand on Nature's keys Its cunning keeps at life's full span; But, dimmed and dwarfed, in times like these, The poet seems beside the man! So be it! let the garlands die, The singer's wreath, the painter's meed, Let our names perish, if thereby Our country may be saved and freed! 1864. THOMAS STARR KING Published originally as a prelude to the posthumous volume of selections edited by Richard Frothingham. The great work laid upon his twoscore years Is done, and well done. If we drop our tears, Who loved him as few men were ever loved, We mourn no blighted hope nor broken plan With him whose life stands rounded and approved In the full growth and stature of a man. Mingle, O bells, along the Western slope, With your deep toll a sound of faith and hope! Wave cheerily still, O banner, half-way down, From thousand-masted bay and steepled town! Let the strong organ with its loftiest swell Lift the proud sorrow of the land, and tell That the brave sower saw his ripened grain. O East and West! O morn and sunset twain No more forever!--has he lived in vain Who, priest of Freedom, made ye one, and told Your bridal service from his lips of gold? 1864. LINES ON A FLY-LEAF. I need not ask thee, for my sake, To read a book which well may make Its way by native force of wit Without my manual sign to it. Its piquant writer needs from me No gravely masculine guaranty, And well might laugh her merriest laugh At broken spears in her behalf; Yet, spite of all the critics tell, I frankly own I like her well. It may be that she wields a pen Too sharply nibbed for thin-skinned men, That her keen arrows search and try The armor joints of dignity, And, though alone for error meant, Sing through the air irreverent. I blame her not, the young athlete Who plants her woman's tiny feet, And dares the chances of debate Where bearded men might hesitate, Who, deeply earnest, seeing well The ludicrous and laughable, Mingling in eloquent excess Her anger and her tenderness, And, chiding with a half-caress, Strives, less for her own sex than ours, With principalities and powers, And points us upward to the clear Sunned heights of her new atmosphere. Heaven mend her faults!--I will not pause To weigh and doubt and peck at flaws, Or waste my pity when some fool Provokes her measureless ridicule. Strong-minded is she? Better so Than dulness set for sale or show, A household folly, capped and belled In fashion's dance of puppets held, Or poor pretence of womanhood, Whose formal, flavorless platitude Is warranted from all offence Of robust meaning's violence. Give me the wine of thought whose head Sparkles along the page I read,-- Electric words in which I find The tonic of the northwest wind; The wisdom which itself allies To sweet and pure humanities, Where scorn of meanness, hate of wrong, Are underlaid by love as strong; The genial play of mirth that lights Grave themes of thought, as when, on nights Of summer-time, the harmless blaze Of thunderless heat-lightning plays, And tree and hill-top resting dim And doubtful on the sky's vague rim, Touched by that soft and lambent gleam, Start sharply outlined from their dream. Talk not to me of woman's sphere, Nor point with Scripture texts a sneer, Nor wrong the manliest saint of all By doubt, if he were here, that Paul Would own the heroines who have lent Grace to truth's stern arbitrament, Foregone the praise to woman sweet, And cast their crowns at Duty's feet; Like her, who by her strong Appeal Made Fashion weep and Mammon feel, Who, earliest summoned to withstand The color-madness of the land, Counted her life-long losses gain, And made her own her sisters' pain; Or her who, in her greenwood shade, Heard the sharp call that Freedom made, And, answering, struck from Sappho's lyre Of love the Tyrtman carmen's fire Or that young girl,--Domremy's maid Revived a nobler cause to aid,-- Shaking from warning finger-tips The doom of her apocalypse; Or her, who world-wide entrance gave To the log-cabin of the slave, Made all his want and sorrow known, And all earth's languages his own. 1866. GEORGE L. STEARNS No man rendered greater service to the cause of freedom than Major Stearns in the great struggle between invading slave-holders and the free settlers of Kansas. He has done the work of a true man,-- Crown him, honor him, love him. Weep, over him, tears of woman, Stoop manliest brows above him! O dusky mothers and daughters, Vigils of mourning keep for him! Up in the mountains, and down by the waters, Lift up your voices and weep for him, For the warmest of hearts is frozen, The freest of hands is still; And the gap in our picked and chosen The long years may not fill. No duty could overtask him, No need his will outrun; Or ever our lips could ask him, His hands the work had done. He forgot his own soul for others, Himself to his neighbor lending; He found the Lord in his suffering brothers, And not in the clouds descending. So the bed was sweet to die on, Whence he saw the doors wide swung Against whose bolted iron The strength of his life was flung. And he saw ere his eye was darkened The sheaves of the harvest-bringing, And knew while his ear yet hearkened The voice of the reapers singing. Ah, well! The world is discreet; There are plenty to pause and wait; But here was a man who set his feet Sometimes in advance of fate; Plucked off the old bark when the inner Was slow to renew it, And put to the Lord's work the sinner When saints failed to do it. Never rode to the wrong's redressing A worthier paladin. Shall he not hear the blessing, "Good and faithful, enter in!" 1867 GARIBALDI In trance and dream of old, God's prophet saw The casting down of thrones. Thou, watching lone The hot Sardinian coast-line, hazy-hilled, Where, fringing round Caprera's rocky zone With foam, the slow waves gather and withdraw, Behold'st the vision of the seer fulfilled, And hear'st the sea-winds burdened with a sound Of falling chains, as, one by one, unbound, The nations lift their right hands up and swear Their oath of freedom. From the chalk-white wall Of England, from the black Carpathian range, Along the Danube and the Theiss, through all The passes of the Spanish Pyrenees, And from the Seine's thronged banks, a murmur strange And glad floats to thee o'er thy summer seas On the salt wind that stirs thy whitening hair,-- The song of freedom's bloodless victories! Rejoice, O Garibaldi! Though thy sword Failed at Rome's gates, and blood seemed vainly poured Where, in Christ's name, the crowned infidel Of France wrought murder with the arms of hell On that sad mountain slope whose ghostly dead, Unmindful of the gray exorcist's ban, Walk, unappeased, the chambered Vatican, And draw the curtains of Napoleon's bed! God's providence is not blind, but, full of eyes, It searches all the refuges of lies; And in His time and way, the accursed things Before whose evil feet thy battle-gage Has clashed defiance from hot youth to age Shall perish. All men shall be priests and kings, One royal brotherhood, one church made free By love, which is the law of liberty. 1869. TO LYDIA MARIA CHILD, ON READING HER POEM IN "THE STANDARD." Mrs. Child wrote her lines, beginning, "Again the trees are clothed in vernal green," May 24, 1859, on the first anniversary of Ellis Gray Loring's death, but did not publish them for some years afterward, when I first read them, or I could not have made the reference which I did to the extinction of slavery. The sweet spring day is glad with music, But through it sounds a sadder strain; The worthiest of our narrowing circle Sings Loring's dirges o'er again. O woman greatly loved! I join thee In tender memories of our friend; With thee across the awful spaces The greeting of a soul I send! What cheer hath he? How is it with him? Where lingers he this weary while? Over what pleasant fields of Heaven Dawns the sweet sunrise of his smile? Does he not know our feet are treading The earth hard down on Slavery's grave? That, in our crowning exultations, We miss the charm his presence gave? Why on this spring air comes no whisper From him to tell us all is well? Why to our flower-time comes no token Of lily and of asphodel? I feel the unutterable longing, Thy hunger of the heart is mine; I reach and grope for hands in darkness, My ear grows sharp for voice or sign. Still on the lips of all we question The finger of God's silence lies; Will the lost hands in ours be folded? Will the shut eyelids ever rise? O friend! no proof beyond this yearning, This outreach of our hearts, we need; God will not mock the hope He giveth, No love He prompts shall vainly plead. Then let us stretch our hands in darkness, And call our loved ones o'er and o'er; Some day their arms shall close about us, And the old voices speak once more. No dreary splendors wait our coming Where rapt ghost sits from ghost apart; Homeward we go to Heaven's thanksgiving, The harvest-gathering of the heart. 1870. THE SINGER. This poem was written on the death of Alice Cary. Her sister Phoebe, heart-broken by her loss, followed soon after. Noble and richly gifted, lovely in person and character, they left behind them only friends and admirers. Years since (but names to me before), Two sisters sought at eve my door; Two song-birds wandering from their nest, A gray old farm-house in the West. How fresh of life the younger one, Half smiles, half tears, like rain in sun! Her gravest mood could scarce displace The dimples of her nut-brown face. Wit sparkled on her lips not less For quick and tremulous tenderness; And, following close her merriest glance, Dreamed through her eyes the heart's romance. Timid and still, the elder had Even then a smile too sweetly sad; The crown of pain that all must wear Too early pressed her midnight hair. Yet ere the summer eve grew long, Her modest lips were sweet with song; A memory haunted all her words Of clover-fields and singing birds. Her dark, dilating eyes expressed The broad horizons of the west; Her speech dropped prairie flowers; the gold Of harvest wheat about her rolled. Fore-doomed to song she seemed to me I queried not with destiny I knew the trial and the need, Yet, all the more, I said, God speed? What could I other than I did? Could I a singing-bird forbid? Deny the wind-stirred leaf? Rebuke The music of the forest brook? She went with morning from my door, But left me richer than before; Thenceforth I knew her voice of cheer, The welcome of her partial ear. Years passed: through all the land her name A pleasant household word became All felt behind the singer stood A sweet and gracious womanhood. Her life was earnest work, not play; Her tired feet climbed a weary way; And even through her lightest strain We heard an undertone of pain. Unseen of her her fair fame grew, The good she did she rarely knew, Unguessed of her in life the love That rained its tears her grave above. When last I saw her, full of peace, She waited for her great release; And that old friend so sage and bland, Our later Franklin, held her hand. For all that patriot bosoms stirs Had moved that woman's heart of hers, And men who toiled in storm and sun Found her their meet companion. Our converse, from her suffering bed To healthful themes of life she led The out-door world of bud and bloom And light and sweetness filled her room. Yet evermore an underthought Of loss to come within us wrought, And all the while we felt the strain Of the strong will that conquered pain. God giveth quietness at last! The common way that all have passed She went, with mortal yearnings fond, To fuller life and love beyond. Fold the rapt soul in your embrace, My dear ones! Give the singer place To you, to her,--I know not where,-- I lift the silence of a prayer. For only thus our own we find; The gone before, the left behind, All mortal voices die between; The unheard reaches the unseen. Again the blackbirds sing; the streams Wake, laughing, from their winter dreams, And tremble in the April showers The tassels of the maple flowers. But not for her has spring renewed The sweet surprises of the wood; And bird and flower are lost to her Who was their best interpreter. What to shut eyes has God revealed? What hear the ears that death has sealed? What undreamed beauty passing show Requites the loss of all we know? O silent land, to which we move, Enough if there alone be love, And mortal need can ne'er outgrow What it is waiting to bestow! O white soul! from that far-off shore Float some sweet song the waters o'er. Our faith confirm, our fears dispel, With the old voice we loved so well! 1871. HOW MARY GREW. These lines were in answer to an invitation to hear a lecture of Mary Grew, of Philadelphia, before the Boston Radical Club. The reference in the last stanza is to an essay on Sappho by T. W. Higginson, read at the club the preceding month. With wisdom far beyond her years, And graver than her wondering peers, So strong, so mild, combining still The tender heart and queenly will, To conscience and to duty true, So, up from childhood, Mary Grew! Then in her gracious womanhood She gave her days to doing good. She dared the scornful laugh of men, The hounding mob, the slanderer's pen. She did the work she found to do,-- A Christian heroine, Mary Grew! The freed slave thanks her; blessing comes To her from women's weary homes; The wronged and erring find in her Their censor mild and comforter. The world were safe if but a few Could grow in grace as Mary Grew! So, New Year's Eve, I sit and say, By this low wood-fire, ashen gray; Just wishing, as the night shuts down, That I could hear in Boston town, In pleasant Chestnut Avenue, From her own lips, how Mary Grew! And hear her graceful hostess tell The silver-voiced oracle Who lately through her parlors spoke As through Dodona's sacred oak, A wiser truth than any told By Sappho's lips of ruddy gold,-- The way to make the world anew, Is just to grow--as Mary Grew. 1871. SUMNER "I am not one who has disgraced beauty of sentiment by deformity of conduct, or the maxims of a freeman by the actions of a slave; but, by the grace of God, I have kept my life unsullied." --MILTON'S _Defence of the People of England_. O Mother State! the winds of March Blew chill o'er Auburn's Field of God, Where, slow, beneath a leaden arch Of sky, thy mourning children trod. And now, with all thy woods in leaf, Thy fields in flower, beside thy dead Thou sittest, in thy robes of grief, A Rachel yet uncomforted! And once again the organ swells, Once more the flag is half-way hung, And yet again the mournful bells In all thy steeple-towers are rung. And I, obedient to thy will, Have come a simple wreath to lay, Superfluous, on a grave that still Is sweet with all the flowers of May. I take, with awe, the task assigned; It may be that my friend might miss, In his new sphere of heart and mind, Some token from my band in this. By many a tender memory moved, Along the past my thought I send; The record of the cause he loved Is the best record of its friend. No trumpet sounded in his ear, He saw not Sinai's cloud and flame, But never yet to Hebrew seer A clearer voice of duty came. God said: "Break thou these yokes; undo These heavy burdens. I ordain A work to last thy whole life through, A ministry of strife and pain. "Forego thy dreams of lettered ease, Put thou the scholar's promise by, The rights of man are more than these." He heard, and answered: "Here am I!" He set his face against the blast, His feet against the flinty shard, Till the hard service grew, at last, Its own exceeding great reward. Lifted like Saul's above the crowd, Upon his kingly forehead fell The first sharp bolt of Slavery's cloud, Launched at the truth he urged so well. Ah! never yet, at rack or stake, Was sorer loss made Freedom's gain, Than his, who suffered for her sake The beak-torn Titan's lingering pain! The fixed star of his faith, through all Loss, doubt, and peril, shone the same; As through a night of storm, some tall, Strong lighthouse lifts its steady flame. Beyond the dust and smoke he saw The sheaves of Freedom's large increase, The holy fanes of equal law, The New Jerusalem of peace. The weak might fear, the worldling mock, The faint and blind of heart regret; All knew at last th' eternal rock On which his forward feet were set. The subtlest scheme of compromise Was folly to his purpose bold; The strongest mesh of party lies Weak to the simplest truth he told. One language held his heart and lip, Straight onward to his goal he trod, And proved the highest statesmanship Obedience to the voice of God. No wail was in his voice,--none heard, When treason's storm-cloud blackest grew, The weakness of a doubtful word; His duty, and the end, he knew. The first to smite, the first to spare; When once the hostile ensigns fell, He stretched out hands of generous care To lift the foe he fought so well. For there was nothing base or small Or craven in his soul's broad plan; Forgiving all things personal, He hated only wrong to man. The old traditions of his State, The memories of her great and good, Took from his life a fresher date, And in himself embodied stood. How felt the greed of gold and place, The venal crew that schemed and planned, The fine scorn of that haughty face, The spurning of that bribeless hand! If than Rome's tribunes statelier He wore his senatorial robe, His lofty port was all for her, The one dear spot on all the globe. If to the master's plea he gave The vast contempt his manhood felt, He saw a brother in the slave,-- With man as equal man he dealt. Proud was he? If his presence kept Its grandeur wheresoe'er he trod, As if from Plutarch's gallery stepped The hero and the demigod, None failed, at least, to reach his ear, Nor want nor woe appealed in vain; The homesick soldier knew his cheer, And blessed him from his ward of pain. Safely his dearest friends may own The slight defects he never hid, The surface-blemish in the stone Of the tall, stately pyramid. Suffice it that he never brought His conscience to the public mart; But lived himself the truth he taught, White-souled, clean-handed, pure of heart. What if he felt the natural pride Of power in noble use, too true With thin humilities to hide The work he did, the lore he knew? Was he not just? Was any wronged By that assured self-estimate? He took but what to him belonged, Unenvious of another's state. Well might he heed the words he spake, And scan with care the written page Through which he still shall warm and wake The hearts of men from age to age. Ah! who shall blame him now because He solaced thus his hours of pain! Should not the o'erworn thresher pause, And hold to light his golden grain? No sense of humor dropped its oil On the hard ways his purpose went; Small play of fancy lightened toil; He spake alone the thing he meant. He loved his books, the Art that hints A beauty veiled behind its own, The graver's line, the pencil's tints, The chisel's shape evoked from stone. He cherished, void of selfish ends, The social courtesies that bless And sweeten life, and loved his friends With most unworldly tenderness. But still his tired eyes rarely learned The glad relief by Nature brought; Her mountain ranges never turned His current of persistent thought. The sea rolled chorus to his speech Three-banked like Latium's' tall trireme, With laboring oars; the grove and beach Were Forum and the Academe. The sensuous joy from all things fair His strenuous bent of soul repressed, And left from youth to silvered hair Few hours for pleasure, none for rest. For all his life was poor without, O Nature, make the last amends Train all thy flowers his grave about, And make thy singing-birds his friends! Revive again, thou summer rain, The broken turf upon his bed Breathe, summer wind, thy tenderest strain Of low, sweet music overhead! With calm and beauty symbolize The peace which follows long annoy, And lend our earth-bent, mourning eyes, Some hint of his diviner joy. For safe with right and truth he is, As God lives he must live alway; There is no end for souls like his, No night for children of the day! Nor cant nor poor solicitudes Made weak his life's great argument; Small leisure his for frames and moods Who followed Duty where she went. The broad, fair fields of God he saw Beyond the bigot's narrow bound; The truths he moulded into law In Christ's beatitudes he found. His state-craft was the Golden Rule, His right of vote a sacred trust; Clear, over threat and ridicule, All heard his challenge: "Is it just?" And when the hour supreme had come, Not for himself a thought he gave; In that last pang of martyrdom, His care was for the half-freed slave. Not vainly dusky hands upbore, In prayer, the passing soul to heaven Whose mercy to His suffering poor Was service to the Master given. Long shall the good State's annals tell, Her children's children long be taught, How, praised or blamed, he guarded well The trust he neither shunned nor sought. If for one moment turned thy face, O Mother, from thy son, not long He waited calmly in his place The sure remorse which follows wrong. Forgiven be the State he loved The one brief lapse, the single blot; Forgotten be the stain removed, Her righted record shows it not! The lifted sword above her shield With jealous care shall guard his fame; The pine-tree on her ancient field To all the winds shall speak his name. The marble image of her son Her loving hands shall yearly crown, And from her pictured Pantheon His grand, majestic face look down. O State so passing rich before, Who now shall doubt thy highest claim? The world that counts thy jewels o'er Shall longest pause at Sumner's name! 1874. THEIRS I. Fate summoned, in gray-bearded age, to act A history stranger than his written fact, Him who portrayed the splendor and the gloom Of that great hour when throne and altar fell With long death-groan which still is audible. He, when around the walls of Paris rung The Prussian bugle like the blast of doom, And every ill which follows unblest war Maddened all France from Finistere to Var, The weight of fourscore from his shoulders flung, And guided Freedom in the path he saw Lead out of chaos into light and law, Peace, not imperial, but republican, And order pledged to all the Rights of Man. II. Death called him from a need as imminent As that from which the Silent William went When powers of evil, like the smiting seas On Holland's dikes, assailed her liberties. Sadly, while yet in doubtful balance hung The weal and woe of France, the bells were rung For her lost leader. Paralyzed of will, Above his bier the hearts of men stood still. Then, as if set to his dead lips, the horn Of Roland wound once more to rouse and warn, The old voice filled the air! His last brave word Not vainly France to all her boundaries stirred. Strong as in life, he still for Freedom wrought, As the dead Cid at red Toloso fought. 1877. FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. AT THE UNVEILING OF HIS STATUE. Among their graven shapes to whom Thy civic wreaths belong, O city of his love, make room For one whose gift was song. Not his the soldier's sword to wield, Nor his the helm of state, Nor glory of the stricken field, Nor triumph of debate. In common ways, with common men, He served his race and time As well as if his clerkly pen Had never danced to rhyme. If, in the thronged and noisy mart, The Muses found their son, Could any say his tuneful art A duty left undone? He toiled and sang; and year by year Men found their homes more sweet, And through a tenderer atmosphere Looked down the brick-walled street. The Greek's wild onset gall Street knew; The Red King walked Broadway; And Alnwick Castle's roses blew From Palisades to Bay. Fair City by the Sea! upraise His veil with reverent hands; And mingle with thy own the praise And pride of other lands. Let Greece his fiery lyric breathe Above her hero-urns; And Scotland, with her holly, wreathe The flower he culled for Burns. Oh, stately stand thy palace walls, Thy tall ships ride the seas; To-day thy poet's name recalls A prouder thought than these. Not less thy pulse of trade shall beat, Nor less thy tall fleets swim, That shaded square and dusty street Are classic ground through him. Alive, he loved, like all who sing, The echoes of his song; Too late the tardy meed we bring, The praise delayed so long. Too late, alas! Of all who knew The living man, to-day Before his unveiled face, how few Make bare their locks of gray! Our lips of praise must soon be dumb, Our grateful eyes be dim; O brothers of the days to come, Take tender charge of him! New hands the wires of song may sweep, New voices challenge fame; But let no moss of years o'ercreep The lines of Halleck's name. 1877. WILLIAM FRANCIS BARTLETT. Oh, well may Essex sit forlorn Beside her sea-blown shore; Her well beloved, her noblest born, Is hers in life no more! No lapse of years can render less Her memory's sacred claim; No fountain of forgetfulness Can wet the lips of Fame. A grief alike to wound and heal, A thought to soothe and pain, The sad, sweet pride that mothers feel To her must still remain. Good men and true she has not lacked, And brave men yet shall be; The perfect flower, the crowning fact, Of all her years was he! As Galahad pure, as Merlin sage, What worthier knight was found To grace in Arthur's golden age The fabled Table Round? A voice, the battle's trumpet-note, To welcome and restore; A hand, that all unwilling smote, To heal and build once more; A soul of fire, a tender heart Too warm for hate, he knew The generous victor's graceful part To sheathe the sword he drew. When Earth, as if on evil dreams, Looks back upon her wars, And the white light of Christ outstreams From the red disk of Mars, His fame who led the stormy van Of battle well may cease, But never that which crowns the man Whose victory was Peace. Mourn, Essex, on thy sea-blown shore Thy beautiful and brave, Whose failing hand the olive bore, Whose dying lips forgave! Let age lament the youthful chief, And tender eyes be dim; The tears are more of joy than grief That fall for one like him! 1878. BAYARD TAYLOR. I. "And where now, Bayard, will thy footsteps tend?" My sister asked our guest one winter's day. Smiling he answered in the Friends' sweet way Common to both: "Wherever thou shall send! What wouldst thou have me see for thee?" She laughed, Her dark eyes dancing in the wood-fire's glow "Loffoden isles, the Kilpis, and the low, Unsetting sun on Finmark's fishing-craft." "All these and more I soon shall see for thee!" He answered cheerily: and he kept his pledge On Lapland snows, the North Cape's windy wedge, And Tromso freezing in its winter sea. He went and came. But no man knows the track Of his last journey, and he comes not back! II. He brought us wonders of the new and old; We shared all climes with him. The Arab's tent To him its story-telling secret lent. And, pleased, we listened to the tales he told. His task, beguiled with songs that shall endure, In manly, honest thoroughness he wrought; From humble home-lays to the heights of thought Slowly he climbed, but every step was sure. How, with the generous pride that friendship hath, We, who so loved him, saw at last the crown Of civic honor on his brows pressed down, Rejoiced, and knew not that the gift was death. And now for him, whose praise in deafened ears Two nations speak, we answer but with tears! III. O Vale of Chester! trod by him so oft, Green as thy June turf keep his memory. Let Nor wood, nor dell, nor storied stream forget, Nor winds that blow round lonely Cedarcroft; Let the home voices greet him in the far, Strange land that holds him; let the messages Of love pursue him o'er the chartless seas And unmapped vastness of his unknown star Love's language, heard beyond the loud discourse Of perishable fame, in every sphere Itself interprets; and its utterance here Somewhere in God's unfolding universe Shall reach our traveller, softening the surprise Of his rapt gaze on unfamiliar skies! 1879. OUR AUTOCRAT. Read at the breakfast given in honor of Dr. Holmes by the publishers of the Atlantic Monthly, December 3, 1879. His laurels fresh from song and lay, Romance, art, science, rich in all, And young of heart, how dare we say We keep his seventieth festival? No sense is here of loss or lack; Before his sweetness and his light The dial holds its shadow back, The charmed hours delay their flight. His still the keen analysis Of men and moods, electric wit, Free play of mirth, and tenderness To heal the slightest wound from it. And his the pathos touching all Life's sins and sorrows and regrets, Its hopes and fears, its final call And rest beneath the violets. His sparkling surface scarce betrays The thoughtful tide beneath it rolled, The wisdom of the latter days, And tender memories of the old. What shapes and fancies, grave or gay, Before us at his bidding come The Treadmill tramp, the One-Horse Shay, The dumb despair of Elsie's doom! The tale of Avis and the Maid, The plea for lips that cannot speak, The holy kiss that Iris laid On Little Boston's pallid cheek! Long may he live to sing for us His sweetest songs at evening time, And, like his Chambered Nautilus, To holier heights of beauty climb, Though now unnumbered guests surround The table that he rules at will, Its Autocrat, however crowned, Is but our friend and comrade still. The world may keep his honored name, The wealth of all his varied powers; A stronger claim has love than fame, And he himself is only ours! WITHIN THE GATE. L. M. C. I have more fully expressed my admiration and regard for Lydia Maria Child in the biographical introduction which I wrote for the volume of Letters, published after her death. We sat together, last May-day, and talked Of the dear friends who walked Beside us, sharers of the hopes and fears Of five and forty years, Since first we met in Freedom's hope forlorn, And heard her battle-horn Sound through the valleys of the sleeping North, Calling her children forth, And youth pressed forward with hope-lighted eyes, And age, with forecast wise Of the long strife before the triumph won, Girded his armor on. Sadly, ass name by name we called the roll, We heard the dead-bells toll For the unanswering many, and we knew The living were the few. And we, who waited our own call before The inevitable door, Listened and looked, as all have done, to win Some token from within. No sign we saw, we heard no voices call; The impenetrable wall Cast down its shadow, like an awful doubt, On all who sat without. Of many a hint of life beyond the veil, And many a ghostly tale Wherewith the ages spanned the gulf between The seen and the unseen, Seeking from omen, trance, and dream to gain Solace to doubtful pain, And touch, with groping hands, the garment hem Of truth sufficing them, We talked; and, turning from the sore unrest Of an all-baffling quest, We thought of holy lives that from us passed Hopeful unto the last, As if they saw beyond the river of death, Like Him of Nazareth, The many mansions of the Eternal days Lift up their gates of praise. And, hushed to silence by a reverent awe, Methought, O friend, I saw In thy true life of word, and work, and thought The proof of all we sought. Did we not witness in the life of thee Immortal prophecy? And feel, when with thee, that thy footsteps trod An everlasting road? Not for brief days thy generous sympathies, Thy scorn of selfish ease; Not for the poor prize of an earthly goal Thy strong uplift of soul. Than thine was never turned a fonder heart To nature and to art In fair-formed Hellas in her golden prime, Thy Philothea's time. Yet, loving beauty, thou couldst pass it by, And for the poor deny Thyself, and see thy fresh, sweet flower of fame Wither in blight and blame. Sharing His love who holds in His embrace The lowliest of our race, Sure the Divine economy must be Conservative of thee! For truth must live with truth, self-sacrifice Seek out its great allies; Good must find good by gravitation sure, And love with love endure. And so, since thou hast passed within the gate Whereby awhile I wait, I give blind grief and blinder sense the lie Thou hast not lived to die! 1881. IN MEMORY. JAMES T. FIELDS. As a guest who may not stay Long and sad farewells to say Glides with smiling face away, Of the sweetness and the zest Of thy happy life possessed Thou hast left us at thy best. Warm of heart and clear of brain, Of thy sun-bright spirit's wane Thou hast spared us all the pain. Now that thou hast gone away, What is left of one to say Who was open as the day? What is there to gloss or shun? Save with kindly voices none Speak thy name beneath the sun. Safe thou art on every side, Friendship nothing finds to hide, Love's demand is satisfied. Over manly strength and worth, At thy desk of toil, or hearth, Played the lambent light of mirth,-- Mirth that lit, but never burned; All thy blame to pity turned; Hatred thou hadst never learned. Every harsh and vexing thing At thy home-fire lost its sting; Where thou wast was always spring. And thy perfect trust in good, Faith in man and womanhood, Chance and change and time, withstood. Small respect for cant and whine, Bigot's zeal and hate malign, Had that sunny soul of thine. But to thee was duty's claim Sacred, and thy lips became Reverent with one holy Name. Therefore, on thy unknown way, Go in God's peace! We who stay But a little while delay. Keep for us, O friend, where'er Thou art waiting, all that here Made thy earthly presence dear; Something of thy pleasant past On a ground of wonder cast, In the stiller waters glassed! Keep the human heart of thee; Let the mortal only be Clothed in immortality. And when fall our feet as fell Thine upon the asphodel, Let thy old smile greet us well; Proving in a world of bliss What we fondly dream in this,-- Love is one with holiness! 1881. WILSON Read at the Massachusetts Club on the seventieth anniversary the birthday of Vice-President Wilson, February 16, 1882. The lowliest born of all the land, He wrung from Fate's reluctant hand The gifts which happier boyhood claims; And, tasting on a thankless soil The bitter bread of unpaid toil, He fed his soul with noble aims. And Nature, kindly provident, To him the future's promise lent; The powers that shape man's destinies, Patience and faith and toil, he knew, The close horizon round him grew, Broad with great possibilities. By the low hearth-fire's fitful blaze He read of old heroic days, The sage's thought, the patriot's speech; Unhelped, alone, himself he taught, His school the craft at which he wrought, His lore the book within his, reach. He felt his country's need; he knew The work her children had to do; And when, at last, he heard the call In her behalf to serve and dare, Beside his senatorial chair He stood the unquestioned peer of all. Beyond the accident of birth He proved his simple manhood's worth; Ancestral pride and classic grace Confessed the large-brained artisan, So clear of sight, so wise in plan And counsel, equal to his place. With glance intuitive he saw Through all disguise of form and law, And read men like an open book; Fearless and firm, he never quailed Nor turned aside for threats, nor failed To do the thing he undertook. How wise, how brave, he was, how well He bore himself, let history tell While waves our flag o'er land and sea, No black thread in its warp or weft; He found dissevered States, he left A grateful Nation, strong and free! THE POET AND THE CHILDREN. LONGFELLOW. WITH a glory of winter sunshine Over his locks of gray, In the old historic mansion He sat on his last birthday; With his books and his pleasant pictures, And his household and his kin, While a sound as of myriads singing From far and near stole in. It came from his own fair city, From the prairie's boundless plain, From the Golden Gate of sunset, And the cedarn woods of Maine. And his heart grew warm within him, And his moistening eyes grew dim, For he knew that his country's children Were singing the songs of him, The lays of his life's glad morning, The psalms of his evening time, Whose echoes shall float forever On the winds of every clime. All their beautiful consolations, Sent forth like birds of cheer, Came flocking back to his windows, And sang in the Poet's ear. Grateful, but solemn and tender, The music rose and fell With a joy akin to sadness And a greeting like farewell. With a sense of awe he listened To the voices sweet and young; The last of earth and the first of heaven Seemed in the songs they sung. And waiting a little longer For the wonderful change to come, He heard the Summoning Angel, Who calls God's children home! And to him in a holier welcome Was the mystical meaning given Of the words of the blessed Master "Of such is the kingdom of heaven!" 1882 A WELCOME TO LOWELL Take our hands, James Russell Lowell, Our hearts are all thy own; To-day we bid thee welcome Not for ourselves alone. In the long years of thy absence Some of us have grown old, And some have passed the portals Of the Mystery untold; For the hands that cannot clasp thee, For the voices that are dumb, For each and all I bid thee A grateful welcome home! For Cedarcroft's sweet singer To the nine-fold Muses dear; For the Seer the winding Concord Paused by his door to hear; For him, our guide and Nestor, Who the march of song began, The white locks of his ninety years Bared to thy winds, Cape Ann! For him who, to the music Her pines and hemlocks played, Set the old and tender story Of the lorn Acadian maid; For him, whose voice for freedom Swayed friend and foe at will, Hushed is the tongue of silver, The golden lips are still! For her whose life of duty At scoff and menace smiled, Brave as the wife of Roland, Yet gentle as a Child. And for him the three-hilled city Shall hold in memory long, Those name is the hint and token Of the pleasant Fields of Song! For the old friends unforgotten, For the young thou hast not known, I speak their heart-warm greeting; Come back and take thy own! From England's royal farewells, And honors fitly paid, Come back, dear Russell Lowell, To Elmwood's waiting shade! Come home with all the garlands That crown of right thy head. I speak for comrades living, I speak for comrades dead! AMESBURY, 6th mo., 1885. AN ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL. GEORGE FULLER Haunted of Beauty, like the marvellous youth Who sang Saint Agnes' Eve! How passing fair Her shapes took color in thy homestead air! How on thy canvas even her dreams were truth! Magician! who from commonest elements Called up divine ideals, clothed upon By mystic lights soft blending into one Womanly grace and child-like innocence. Teacher I thy lesson was not given in vain. Beauty is goodness; ugliness is sin; Art's place is sacred: nothing foul therein May crawl or tread with bestial feet profane. If rightly choosing is the painter's test, Thy choice, O master, ever was the best. 1885. MULFORD. Author of The Nation and The Republic of God. Unnoted as the setting of a star He passed; and sect and party scarcely knew When from their midst a sage and seer withdrew To fitter audience, where the great dead are In God's republic of the heart and mind, Leaving no purer, nobler soul behind. 1886. TO A CAPE ANN SCHOONER Luck to the craft that bears this name of mine, Good fortune follow with her golden spoon The glazed hat and tarry pantaloon; And wheresoe'er her keel shall cut the brine, Cod, hake and haddock quarrel for her line. Shipped with her crew, whatever wind may blow, Or tides delay, my wish with her shall go, Fishing by proxy. Would that it might show At need her course, in lack of sun and star, Where icebergs threaten, and the sharp reefs are; Lift the blind fog on Anticosti's lee And Avalon's rock; make populous the sea Round Grand Manan with eager finny swarms, Break the long calms, and charm away the storms. OAK KNOLL, 23 3rd mo., 1886. SAMUEL J. TILDEN. GREYSTONE, AUG. 4, 1886. Once more, O all-adjusting Death! The nation's Pantheon opens wide; Once more a common sorrow saith A strong, wise man has died. Faults doubtless had he. Had we not Our own, to question and asperse The worth we doubted or forgot Until beside his hearse? Ambitious, cautious, yet the man To strike down fraud with resolute hand; A patriot, if a partisan, He loved his native land. So let the mourning bells be rung, The banner droop its folds half way, And while the public pen and tongue Their fitting tribute pay, Shall we not vow above his bier To set our feet on party lies, And wound no more a living ear With words that Death denies? 1886 OCCASIONAL POEMS EVA Suggested by Mrs. Stowe's tale of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and written when the characters in the tale were realities by the fireside of countless American homes. Dry the tears for holy Eva, With the blessed angels leave her; Of the form so soft and fair Give to earth the tender care. For the golden locks of Eva Let the sunny south-land give her Flowery pillow of repose, Orange-bloom and budding rose. In the better home of Eva Let the shining ones receive her, With the welcome-voiced psalm, Harp of gold and waving palm, All is light and peace with Eva; There the darkness cometh never; Tears are wiped, and fetters fall. And the Lord is all in all. Weep no more for happy Eva, Wrong and sin no more shall grieve her; Care and pain and weariness Lost in love so measureless. Gentle Eva, loving Eva, Child confessor, true believer, Listener at the Master's knee, "Suffer such to come to me." Oh, for faith like thine, sweet Eva, Lighting all the solemn river, And the blessings of the poor Wafting to the heavenly shore! 1852 A LAY OF OLD TIME. Written for the Essex County Agricultural Fair, and sung at the banquet at Newburyport, October 2, 1856. One morning of the first sad Fall, Poor Adam and his bride Sat in the shade of Eden's wall-- But on the outer side. She, blushing in her fig-leaf suit For the chaste garb of old; He, sighing o'er his bitter fruit For Eden's drupes of gold. Behind them, smiling in the morn, Their forfeit garden lay, Before them, wild with rock and thorn, The desert stretched away. They heard the air above them fanned, A light step on the sward, And lo! they saw before them stand The angel of the Lord! "Arise," he said, "why look behind, When hope is all before, And patient hand and willing mind, Your loss may yet restore? "I leave with you a spell whose power Can make the desert glad, And call around you fruit and flower As fair as Eden had. "I clothe your hands with power to lift The curse from off your soil; Your very doom shall seem a gift, Your loss a gain through Toil. "Go, cheerful as yon humming-bees, To labor as to play." White glimmering over Eden's trees The angel passed away. The pilgrims of the world went forth Obedient to the word, And found where'er they tilled the earth A garden of the Lord! The thorn-tree cast its evil fruit And blushed with plum and pear, And seeded grass and trodden root Grew sweet beneath their care. We share our primal parents' fate, And, in our turn and day, Look back on Eden's sworded gate As sad and lost as they. But still for us his native skies The pitying Angel leaves, And leads through Toil to Paradise New Adams and new Eves! A SONG OF HARVEST For the Agricultural and Horticultural Exhibition at Amesbury and Salisbury, September 28, 1858. This day, two hundred years ago, The wild grape by the river's side, And tasteless groundnut trailing low, The table of the woods supplied. Unknown the apple's red and gold, The blushing tint of peach and pear; The mirror of the Powow told No tale of orchards ripe and rare. Wild as the fruits he scorned to till, These vales the idle Indian trod; Nor knew the glad, creative skill, The joy of him who toils with God. O Painter of the fruits and flowers! We thank Thee for thy wise design Whereby these human hands of ours In Nature's garden work with Thine. And thanks that from our daily need The joy of simple faith is born; That he who smites the summer weed, May trust Thee for the autumn corn. Give fools their gold, and knaves their power; Let fortune's bubbles rise and fall; Who sows a field, or trains a flower, Or plants a tree, is more than all. For he who blesses most is blest; And God and man shall own his worth Who toils to leave as his bequest An added beauty to the earth. And, soon or late, to all that sow, The time of harvest shall be given; The flower shall bloom, the fruit shall grow, If not on earth, at last in heaven. KENOZA LAKE. This beautiful lake in East Haverhill was the "Great Pond" the writer's boyhood. In 1859 a movement was made for improving its shores as a public park. At the opening of the park, August 31, 1859, the poem which gave it the name of Kenoza (in Indian language signifying Pickerel) was read. As Adam did in Paradise, To-day the primal right we claim Fair mirror of the woods and skies, We give to thee a name. Lake of the pickerel!--let no more The echoes answer back, "Great Pond," But sweet Kenoza, from thy shore And watching hills beyond, Let Indian ghosts, if such there be Who ply unseen their shadowy lines, Call back the ancient name to thee, As with the voice of pines. The shores we trod as barefoot boys, The nutted woods we wandered through, To friendship, love, and social joys We consecrate anew. Here shall the tender song be sung, And memory's dirges soft and low, And wit shall sparkle on the tongue, And mirth shall overflow, Harmless as summer lightning plays From a low, hidden cloud by night, A light to set the hills ablaze, But not a bolt to smite. In sunny South and prairied West Are exiled hearts remembering still, As bees their hive, as birds their nest, The homes of Haverhill. They join us in our rites to-day; And, listening, we may hear, erelong, From inland lake and ocean bay, The echoes of our song. Kenoza! o'er no sweeter lake Shall morning break or noon-cloud sail,-- No fairer face than thine shall take The sunset's golden veil. Long be it ere the tide of trade Shall break with harsh-resounding din The quiet of thy banks of shade, And hills that fold thee in. Still let thy woodlands hide the hare, The shy loon sound his trumpet-note, Wing-weary from his fields of air, The wild-goose on thee float. Thy peace rebuke our feverish stir, Thy beauty our deforming strife; Thy woods and waters minister The healing of their life. And sinless Mirth, from care released, Behold, unawed, thy mirrored sky, Smiling as smiled on Cana's feast The Master's loving eye. And when the summer day grows dim, And light mists walk thy mimic sea, Revive in us the thought of Him Who walked on Galilee! FOR AN AUTUMN FESTIVAL The Persian's flowery gifts, the shrine Of fruitful Ceres, charm no more; The woven wreaths of oak and pine Are dust along the Isthmian shore. But beauty hath its homage still, And nature holds us still in debt; And woman's grace and household skill, And manhood's toil, are honored yet. And we, to-day, amidst our flowers And fruits, have come to own again The blessings of the summer hours, The early and the latter rain; To see our Father's hand once more Reverse for us the plenteous horn Of autumn, filled and running o'er With fruit, and flower, and golden corn! Once more the liberal year laughs out O'er richer stores than gems or gold; Once more with harvest-song and shout Is Nature's bloodless triumph told. Our common mother rests and sings, Like Ruth, among her garnered sheaves; Her lap is full of goodly things, Her brow is bright with autumn leaves. Oh, favors every year made new! Oh, gifts with rain and sunshine sent The bounty overruns our due, The fulness shames our discontent. We shut our eyes, the flowers bloom on; We murmur, but the corn-ears fill, We choose the shadow, but the sun That casts it shines behind us still. God gives us with our rugged soil The power to make it Eden-fair, And richer fruits to crown our toil Than summer-wedded islands bear. Who murmurs at his lot to-day? Who scorns his native fruit and bloom? Or sighs for dainties far away, Beside the bounteous board of home? Thank Heaven, instead, that Freedom's arm Can change a rocky soil to gold,-- That brave and generous lives can warm A clime with northern ices cold. And let these altars, wreathed with flowers And piled with fruits, awake again Thanksgivings for the golden hours, The early and the latter rain! 1859 THE QUAKER ALUMNI. Read at the Friends' School Anniversary, Providence, R. I., 6th mo., 1860. From the well-springs of Hudson, the sea-cliffs of Maine, Grave men, sober matrons, you gather again; And, with hearts warmer grown as your heads grow more cool, Play over the old game of going to school. All your strifes and vexations, your whims and complaints, (You were not saints yourselves, if the children of saints!) All your petty self-seekings and rivalries done, Round the dear Alma Mater your hearts beat as one! How widely soe'er you have strayed from the fold, Though your "thee" has grown "you," and your drab blue and gold, To the old friendly speech and the garb's sober form, Like the heart of Argyle to the tartan, you warm. But, the first greetings over, you glance round the hall; Your hearts call the roll, but they answer not all Through the turf green above them the dead cannot hear; Name by name, in the silence, falls sad as a tear! In love, let us trust, they were summoned so soon rom the morning of life, while we toil through its noon; They were frail like ourselves, they had needs like our own, And they rest as we rest in God's mercy alone. Unchanged by our changes of spirit and frame, Past, now, and henceforward the Lord is the same; Though we sink in the darkness, His arms break our fall, And in death as in life, He is Father of all! We are older: our footsteps, so light in the play Of the far-away school-time, move slower to-day;-- Here a beard touched with frost, there a bald, shining crown, And beneath the cap's border gray mingles with brown. But faith should be cheerful, and trust should be glad, And our follies and sins, not our years, make us sad. Should the heart closer shut as the bonnet grows prim, And the face grow in length as the hat grows in brim? Life is brief, duty grave; but, with rain-folded wings, Of yesterday's sunshine the grateful heart sings; And we, of all others, have reason to pay The tribute of thanks, and rejoice on our way; For the counsels that turned from the follies of youth; For the beauty of patience, the whiteness of truth; For the wounds of rebuke, when love tempered its edge; For the household's restraint, and the discipline's hedge; For the lessons of kindness vouchsafed to the least Of the creatures of God, whether human or beast, Bringing hope to the poor, lending strength to the frail, In the lanes of the city, the slave-hut, and jail; For a womanhood higher and holier, by all Her knowledge of good, than was Eve ere her fall,-- Whose task-work of duty moves lightly as play, Serene as the moonlight and warm as the day; And, yet more, for the faith which embraces the whole, Of the creeds of the ages the life and the soul, Wherein letter and spirit the same channel run, And man has not severed what God has made one! For a sense of the Goodness revealed everywhere, As sunshine impartial, and free as the air; For a trust in humanity, Heathen or Jew, And a hope for all darkness the Light shineth through. Who scoffs at our birthright?--the words of the seers, And the songs of the bards in the twilight of years, All the foregleams of wisdom in santon and sage, In prophet and priest, are our true heritage. The Word which the reason of Plato discerned; The truth, as whose symbol the Mithra-fire burned; The soul of the world which the Stoic but guessed, In the Light Universal the Quaker confessed! No honors of war to our worthies belong; Their plain stem of life never flowered into song; But the fountains they opened still gush by the way, And the world for their healing is better to-day. He who lies where the minster's groined arches curve down To the tomb-crowded transept of England's renown, The glorious essayist, by genius enthroned, Whose pen as a sceptre the Muses all owned,-- Who through the world's pantheon walked in his pride, Setting new statues up, thrusting old ones aside, And in fiction the pencils of history dipped, To gild o'er or blacken each saint in his crypt,-- How vainly he labored to sully with blame The white bust of Penn, in the niche of his fame! Self-will is self-wounding, perversity blind On himself fell the stain for the Quaker designed! For the sake of his true-hearted father before him; For the sake of the dear Quaker mother that bore him; For the sake of his gifts, and the works that outlive him, And his brave words for freedom, we freely forgive him! There are those who take note that our numbers are small,-- New Gibbons who write our decline and our fall; But the Lord of the seed-field takes care of His own, And the world shall yet reap what our sowers have sown. The last of the sect to his fathers may go, Leaving only his coat for some Barnum to show; But the truth will outlive him, and broaden with years, Till the false dies away, and the wrong disappears. Nothing fails of its end. Out of sight sinks the stone, In the deep sea of time, but the circles sweep on, Till the low-rippled murmurs along the shores run, And the dark and dead waters leap glad in the sun. Meanwhile shall we learn, in our ease, to forget To the martyrs of Truth and of Freedom our debt?-- Hide their words out of sight, like the garb that they wore, And for Barclay's Apology offer one more? Shall we fawn round the priestcraft that glutted the shears, And festooned the stocks with our grandfathers' ears? Talk of Woolman's unsoundness? count Penn heterodox? And take Cotton Mather in place of George Fox? Make our preachers war-chaplains? quote Scripture to take The hunted slave back, for Onesimus' sake? Go to burning church-candles, and chanting in choir, And on the old meeting-house stick up a spire? No! the old paths we'll keep until better are shown, Credit good where we find it, abroad or our own; And while "Lo here" and "Lo there" the multitude call, Be true to ourselves, and do justice to all. The good round about us we need not refuse, Nor talk of our Zion as if we were Jews; But why shirk the badge which our fathers have worn, Or beg the world's pardon for having been born? We need not pray over the Pharisee's prayer, Nor claim that our wisdom is Benjamin's share; Truth to us and to others is equal and one Shall we bottle the free air, or hoard up the sun? Well know we our birthright may serve but to show How the meanest of weeds in the richest soil grow; But we need not disparage the good which we hold; Though the vessels be earthen, the treasure is gold! Enough and too much of the sect and the name. What matters our label, so truth be our aim? The creed may be wrong, but the life may be true, And hearts beat the same under drab coats or blue. So the man be a man, let him worship, at will, In Jerusalem's courts, or on Gerizim's hill. When she makes up her jewels, what cares yon good town For the Baptist of Wayland, the Quaker of Brown? And this green, favored island, so fresh and seablown, When she counts up the worthies her annals have known, Never waits for the pitiful gaugers of sect To measure her love, and mete out her respect. Three shades at this moment seem walking her strand, Each with head halo-crowned, and with palms in his hand,-- Wise Berkeley, grave Hopkins, and, smiling serene On prelate and puritan, Channing is seen. One holy name bearing, no longer they need Credentials of party, and pass-words of creed The new song they sing hath a threefold accord, And they own one baptism, one faith, and one Lord! But the golden sands run out: occasions like these Glide swift into shadow, like sails on the seas While we sport with the mosses and pebbles ashore, They lessen and fade, and we see them no more. Forgive me, dear friends, if my vagrant thoughts seem Like a school-boy's who idles and plays with his theme. Forgive the light measure whose changes display The sunshine and rain of our brief April day. There are moments in life when the lip and the eye Try the question of whether to smile or to cry; And scenes and reunions that prompt like our own The tender in feeling, the playful in tone. I, who never sat down with the boys and the girls At the feet of your Slocums, and Cartlands, and Earles,-- By courtesy only permitted to lay On your festival's altar my poor gift, to-day,-- I would joy in your joy: let me have a friend's part In the warmth of your welcome of hand and of heart,-- On your play-ground of boyhood unbend the brow's care, And shift the old burdens our shoulders must bear. Long live the good School! giving out year by year Recruits to true manhood and womanhood dear Brave boys, modest maidens, in beauty sent forth, The living epistles and proof of its worth! In and out let the young life as steadily flow As in broad Narragansett the tides come and go; And its sons and its daughters in prairie and town Remember its honor, and guard its renown. Not vainly the gift of its founder was made; Not prayerless the stones of its corner were laid The blessing of Him whom in secret they sought Has owned the good work which the fathers have wrought. To Him be the glory forever! We bear To the Lord of the Harvest our wheat with the tare. What we lack in our work may He find in our will, And winnow in mercy our good from the ill! OUR RIVER. FOR A SUMMER FESTIVAL AT "THE LAURELS" ON THE MERRIMAC. Jean Pierre Brissot, the famous leader of the Girondist party in the French Revolution, when a young man travelled extensively in the United States. He visited the valley of the Merrimac, and speaks in terms of admiration of the view from Moulton's hill opposite Amesbury. The "Laurel Party" so called, as composed of ladies and gentlemen in the lower valley of the Merrimac, and invited friends and guests in other sections of the country. Its thoroughly enjoyable annual festivals were held in the early summer on the pine-shaded, laurel-blossomed slopes of the Newbury side of the river opposite Pleasant Valley in Amesbury. The several poems called out by these gatherings are here printed in sequence. Once more on yonder laurelled height The summer flowers have budded; Once more with summer's golden light The vales of home are flooded; And once more, by the grace of Him Of every good the Giver, We sing upon its wooded rim The praises of our river, Its pines above, its waves below, The west-wind down it blowing, As fair as when the young Brissot Beheld it seaward flowing,-- And bore its memory o'er the deep, To soothe a martyr's sadness, And fresco, hi his troubled sleep, His prison-walls with gladness. We know the world is rich with streams Renowned in song and story, Whose music murmurs through our dreams Of human love and glory We know that Arno's banks are fair, And Rhine has castled shadows, And, poet-tuned, the Doon and Ayr Go singing down their meadows. But while, unpictured and unsung By painter or by poet, Our river waits the tuneful tongue And cunning hand to show it,-- We only know the fond skies lean Above it, warm with blessing, And the sweet soul of our Undine Awakes to our caressing. No fickle sun-god holds the flocks That graze its shores in keeping; No icy kiss of Dian mocks The youth beside it sleeping Our Christian river loveth most The beautiful and human; The heathen streams of Naiads boast, But ours of man and woman. The miner in his cabin hears The ripple we are hearing; It whispers soft to homesick ears Around the settler's clearing In Sacramento's vales of corn, Or Santee's bloom of cotton, Our river by its valley-born Was never yet forgotten. The drum rolls loud, the bugle fills The summer air with clangor; The war-storm shakes the solid hills Beneath its tread of anger; Young eyes that last year smiled in ours Now point the rifle's barrel, And hands then stained with fruits and flowers Bear redder stains of quarrel. But blue skies smile, and flowers bloom on, And rivers still keep flowing, The dear God still his rain and sun On good and ill bestowing. His pine-trees whisper, "Trust and wait!" His flowers are prophesying That all we dread of change or fate His live is underlying. And thou, O Mountain-born!--no more We ask the wise Allotter Than for the firmness of thy shore, The calmness of thy water, The cheerful lights that overlay, Thy rugged slopes with beauty, To match our spirits to our day And make a joy of duty. 1861. REVISITED. Read at "The Laurels," on the Merrimac, 6th month, 1865. The roll of drums and the bugle's wailing Vex the air of our vales-no more; The spear is beaten to hooks of pruning, The share is the sword the soldier wore! Sing soft, sing low, our lowland river, Under thy banks of laurel bloom; Softly and sweet, as the hour beseemeth, Sing us the songs of peace and home. Let all the tenderer voices of nature Temper the triumph and chasten mirth, Full of the infinite love and pity For fallen martyr and darkened hearth. But to Him who gives us beauty for ashes, And the oil of joy for mourning long, Let thy hills give thanks, and all thy waters Break into jubilant waves of song! Bring us the airs of hills and forests, The sweet aroma of birch and pine, Give us a waft of the north-wind laden With sweethrier odors and breath of kine! Bring us the purple of mountain sunsets, Shadows of clouds that rake the hills, The green repose of thy Plymouth meadows, The gleam and ripple of Campton rills. Lead us away in shadow and sunshine, Slaves of fancy, through all thy miles, The winding ways of Pemigewasset, And Winnipesaukee's hundred isles. Shatter in sunshine over thy ledges, Laugh in thy plunges from fall to fall; Play with thy fringes of elms, and darken Under the shade of the mountain wall. The cradle-song of thy hillside fountains Here in thy glory and strength repeat; Give us a taste of thy upland music, Show us the dance of thy silver feet. Into thy dutiful life of uses Pour the music and weave the flowers; With the song of birds and bloom of meadows Lighten and gladden thy heart and ours. Sing on! bring down, O lowland river, The joy of the hills to the waiting sea; The wealth of the vales, the pomp of mountains, The breath of the woodlands, bear with thee. Here, in the calm of thy seaward, valley, Mirth and labor shall hold their truce; Dance of water and mill of grinding, Both are beauty and both are use. Type of the Northland's strength and glory, Pride and hope of our home and race,-- Freedom lending to rugged labor Tints of beauty and lines of grace. Once again, O beautiful river, Hear our greetings and take our thanks; Hither we come, as Eastern pilgrims Throng to the Jordan's sacred banks. For though by the Master's feet untrodden, Though never His word has stilled thy waves, Well for us may thy shores be holy, With Christian altars and saintly graves. And well may we own thy hint and token Of fairer valleys and streams than these, Where the rivers of God are full of water, And full of sap are His healing trees! "THE LAURELS" At the twentieth and last anniversary. FROM these wild rocks I look to-day O'er leagues of dancing waves, and see The far, low coast-line stretch away To where our river meets the sea. The light wind blowing off the land Is burdened with old voices; through Shut eyes I see how lip and hand The greeting of old days renew. O friends whose hearts still keep their prime, Whose bright example warms and cheers, Ye teach us how to smile at Time, And set to music all his years! I thank you for sweet summer days, For pleasant memories lingering long, For joyful meetings, fond delays, And ties of friendship woven strong. As for the last time, side by side, You tread the paths familiar grown, I reach across the severing tide, And blend my farewells with your own. Make room, O river of our home! For other feet in place of ours, And in the summers yet to come, Make glad another Feast of Flowers! Hold in thy mirror, calm and deep, The pleasant pictures thou hast seen; Forget thy lovers not, but keep Our memory like thy laurels green. ISLES of SHOALS, 7th mo., 1870. JUNE ON THE MERRIMAC. O dwellers in the stately towns, What come ye out to see? This common earth, this common sky, This water flowing free? As gayly as these kalmia flowers Your door-yard blossoms spring; As sweetly as these wild-wood birds Your caged minstrels sing. You find but common bloom and green, The rippling river's rune, The beauty which is everywhere Beneath the skies of June; The Hawkswood oaks, the storm-torn plumes Of old pine-forest kings, Beneath whose century-woven shade Deer Island's mistress sings. And here are pictured Artichoke, And Curson's bowery mill; And Pleasant Valley smiles between The river and the hill. You know full well these banks of bloom, The upland's wavy line, And how the sunshine tips with fire The needles of the pine. Yet, like some old remembered psalm, Or sweet, familiar face, Not less because of commonness You love the day and place. And not in vain in this soft air Shall hard-strung nerves relax, Not all in vain the o'erworn brain Forego its daily tax. The lust of power, the greed of gain Have all the year their own; The haunting demons well may let Our one bright day alone. Unheeded let the newsboy call, Aside the ledger lay The world will keep its treadmill step Though we fall out to-day. The truants of life's weary school, Without excuse from thrift We change for once the gains of toil For God's unpurchased gift. From ceiled rooms, from silent books, From crowded car and town, Dear Mother Earth, upon thy lap, We lay our tired heads down. Cool, summer wind, our heated brows; Blue river, through the green Of clustering pines, refresh the eyes Which all too much have seen. For us these pleasant woodland ways Are thronged with memories old, Have felt the grasp of friendly hands And heard love's story told. A sacred presence overbroods The earth whereon we meet; These winding forest-paths are trod By more than mortal feet. Old friends called from us by the voice Which they alone could hear, From mystery to mystery, From life to life, draw near. More closely for the sake of them Each other's hands we press; Our voices take from them a tone Of deeper tenderness. Our joy is theirs, their trust is ours, Alike below, above, Or here or there, about us fold The arms of one great love! We ask to-day no countersign, No party names we own; Unlabelled, individual, We bring ourselves alone. What cares the unconventioned wood For pass-words of the town? The sound of fashion's shibboleth The laughing waters drown. Here cant forgets his dreary tone, And care his face forlorn; The liberal air and sunshine laugh The bigot's zeal to scorn. From manhood's weary shoulder falls His load of selfish cares; And woman takes her rights as flowers And brooks and birds take theirs. The license of the happy woods, The brook's release are ours; The freedom of the unshamed wind Among the glad-eyed flowers. Yet here no evil thought finds place, Nor foot profane comes in; Our grove, like that of Samothrace, Is set apart from sin. We walk on holy ground; above A sky more holy smiles; The chant of the beatitudes Swells down these leafy aisles. Thanks to the gracious Providence That brings us here once more; For memories of the good behind And hopes of good before. And if, unknown to us, sweet days Of June like this must come, Unseen of us these laurels clothe The river-banks with bloom; And these green paths must soon be trod By other feet than ours, Full long may annual pilgrims come To keep the Feast of Flowers; The matron be a girl once more, The bearded man a boy, And we, in heaven's eternal June, Be glad for earthly joy! 1876. HYMN FOR THE OPENING OF THOMAS STARR KING'S HOUSE OF WORSHIP, 1864. The poetic and patriotic preacher, who had won fame in the East, went to California in 1860 and became a power on the Pacific coast. It was not long after the opening of the house of worship built for him that he died. Amidst these glorious works of Thine, The solemn minarets of the pine, And awful Shasta's icy shrine,-- Where swell Thy hymns from wave and gale, And organ-thunders never fail, Behind the cataract's silver veil, Our puny walls to Thee we raise, Our poor reed-music sounds Thy praise: Forgive, O Lord, our childish ways! For, kneeling on these altar-stairs, We urge Thee not with selfish prayers, Nor murmur at our daily cares. Before Thee, in an evil day, Our country's bleeding heart we lay, And dare not ask Thy hand to stay; But, through the war-cloud, pray to Thee For union, but a union free, With peace that comes of purity! That Thou wilt bare Thy arm to, save And, smiting through this Red Sea wave, Make broad a pathway for the slave! For us, confessing all our need, We trust nor rite nor word nor deed, Nor yet the broken staff of creed. Assured alone that Thou art good To each, as to the multitude, Eternal Love and Fatherhood,-- Weak, sinful, blind, to Thee we kneel, Stretch dumbly forth our hands, and feel Our weakness is our strong appeal. So, by these Western gates of Even We wait to see with Thy forgiven The opening Golden Gate of Heaven! Suffice it now. In time to be Shall holier altars rise to Thee,-- Thy Church our broad humanity White flowers of love its walls shall climb, Soft bells of peace shall ring its chime, Its days shall all be holy time. A sweeter song shall then be heard,-- The music of the world's accord Confessing Christ, the Inward Word! That song shall swell from shore to shore, One hope, one faith, one love, restore The seamless robe that Jesus wore. HYMN FOR THE HOUSE OF WORSHIP AT GEORGETOWN, ERECTED IN MEMORY OF A MOTHER. The giver of the house was the late George Peabody, of London. Thou dwellest not, O Lord of all In temples which thy children raise; Our work to thine is mean and small, And brief to thy eternal days. Forgive the weakness and the pride, If marred thereby our gift may be, For love, at least, has sanctified The altar that we rear to thee. The heart and not the hand has wrought From sunken base to tower above The image of a tender thought, The memory of a deathless love! And though should never sound of speech Or organ echo from its wall, Its stones would pious lessons teach, Its shade in benedictions fall. Here should the dove of peace be found, And blessings and not curses given; Nor strife profane, nor hatred wound, The mingled loves of earth and heaven. Thou, who didst soothe with dying breath The dear one watching by Thy cross, Forgetful of the pains of death In sorrow for her mighty loss, In memory of that tender claim, O Mother-born, the offering take, And make it worthy of Thy name, And bless it for a mother's sake! 1868. A SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION. Read at the President's Levee, Brown University, 29th 6th month, 1870. To-day the plant by Williams set Its summer bloom discloses; The wilding sweethrier of his prayers Is crowned with cultured roses. Once more the Island State repeats The lesson that he taught her, And binds his pearl of charity Upon her brown-locked daughter. Is 't fancy that he watches still His Providence plantations? That still the careful Founder takes A part on these occasions. Methinks I see that reverend form, Which all of us so well know He rises up to speak; he jogs The presidential elbow. "Good friends," he says, "you reap a field I sowed in self-denial, For toleration had its griefs And charity its trial. "Great grace, as saith Sir Thomas More, To him must needs be given Who heareth heresy and leaves The heretic to Heaven! "I hear again the snuffled tones, I see in dreary vision Dyspeptic dreamers, spiritual bores, And prophets with a mission. "Each zealot thrust before my eyes His Scripture-garbled label; All creeds were shouted in my ears As with the tongues of Babel. "Scourged at one cart-tail, each denied The hope of every other; Each martyr shook his branded fist At the conscience of his brother! "How cleft the dreary drone of man. The shriller pipe of woman, As Gorton led his saints elect, Who held all things in common! "Their gay robes trailed in ditch and swamp, And torn by thorn and thicket, The dancing-girls of Merry Mount Came dragging to my wicket. "Shrill Anabaptists, shorn of ears; Gray witch-wives, hobbling slowly; And Antinomians, free of law, Whose very sins were holy. "Hoarse ranters, crazed Fifth Monarchists, Of stripes and bondage braggarts, Pale Churchmen, with singed rubrics snatched From Puritanic fagots. "And last, not least, the Quakers came, With tongues still sore from burning, The Bay State's dust from off their feet Before my threshold spurning; "A motley host, the Lord's debris, Faith's odds and ends together; Well might I shrink from guests with lungs Tough as their breeches leather "If, when the hangman at their heels Came, rope in hand to catch them, I took the hunted outcasts in, I never sent to fetch them. "I fed, but spared them not a whit; I gave to all who walked in, Not clams and succotash alone, But stronger meat of doctrine. "I proved the prophets false, I pricked The bubble of perfection, And clapped upon their inner light The snuffers of election. "And looking backward on my times, This credit I am taking; I kept each sectary's dish apart, No spiritual chowder making. "Where now the blending signs of sect Would puzzle their assorter, The dry-shod Quaker kept the land, The Baptist held the water. "A common coat now serves for both, The hat's no more a fixture; And which was wet and which was dry, Who knows in such a mixture? "Well! He who fashioned Peter's dream To bless them all is able; And bird and beast and creeping thing Make clean upon His table! "I walked by my own light; but when The ways of faith divided, Was I to force unwilling feet To tread the path that I did? "I touched the garment-hem of truth, Yet saw not all its splendor; I knew enough of doubt to feel For every conscience tender. "God left men free of choice, as when His Eden-trees were planted; Because they chose amiss, should I Deny the gift He granted? "So, with a common sense of need, Our common weakness feeling, I left them with myself to God And His all-gracious dealing! "I kept His plan whose rain and sun To tare and wheat are given; And if the ways to hell were free, I left then free to heaven!" Take heart with us, O man of old, Soul-freedom's brave confessor, So love of God and man wax strong, Let sect and creed be lesser. The jarring discords of thy day In ours one hymn are swelling; The wandering feet, the severed paths, All seek our Father's dwelling. And slowly learns the world the truth That makes us all thy debtor,-- That holy life is more than rite, And spirit more than letter; That they who differ pole-wide serve Perchance the common Master, And other sheep He hath than they Who graze one narrow pasture! For truth's worst foe is he who claims To act as God's avenger, And deems, beyond his sentry-beat, The crystal walls in danger! Who sets for heresy his traps Of verbal quirk and quibble, And weeds the garden of the Lord With Satan's borrowed dibble. To-day our hearts like organ keys One Master's touch are feeling; The branches of a common Vine Have only leaves of healing. Co-workers, yet from varied fields, We share this restful nooning; The Quaker with the Baptist here Believes in close communing. Forgive, dear saint, the playful tone, Too light for thy deserving; Thanks for thy generous faith in man, Thy trust in God unswerving. Still echo in the hearts of men The words that thou hast spoken; No forge of hell can weld again The fetters thou hast broken. The pilgrim needs a pass no more From Roman or Genevan; Thought-free, no ghostly tollman keeps Henceforth the road to Heaven! CHICAGO The great fire at Chicago was on 8-10 October, 1871. Men said at vespers: "All is well!" In one wild night the city fell; Fell shrines of prayer and marts of gain Before the fiery hurricane. On threescore spires had sunset shone, Where ghastly sunrise looked on none. Men clasped each other's hands, and said "The City of the West is dead!" Brave hearts who fought, in slow retreat, The fiends of fire from street to street, Turned, powerless, to the blinding glare, The dumb defiance of despair. A sudden impulse thrilled each wire That signalled round that sea of fire; Swift words of cheer, warm heart-throbs came; In tears of pity died the flame! From East, from West, from South and North, The messages of hope shot forth, And, underneath the severing wave, The world, full-handed, reached to save. Fair seemed the old; but fairer still The new, the dreary void shall fill With dearer homes than those o'erthrown, For love shall lay each corner-stone. Rise, stricken city! from thee throw The ashen sackcloth of thy woe; And build, as to Amphion's strain, To songs of cheer thy walls again! How shrivelled in thy hot distress The primal sin of selfishness! How instant rose, to take thy part, The angel in the human heart! Ah! not in vain the flames that tossed Above thy dreadful holocaust; The Christ again has preached through thee The Gospel of Humanity! Then lift once more thy towers on high, And fret with spires the western sky, To tell that God is yet with us, And love is still miraculous! 1871. KINSMAN. Died at the Island of Panay (Philippine group), aged nineteen years. Where ceaseless Spring her garland twines, As sweetly shall the loved one rest, As if beneath the whispering pines And maple shadows of the West. Ye mourn, O hearts of home! for him, But, haply, mourn ye not alone; For him shall far-off eyes be dim, And pity speak in tongues unknown. There needs no graven line to give The story of his blameless youth; All hearts shall throb intuitive, And nature guess the simple truth. The very meaning of his name Shall many a tender tribute win; The stranger own his sacred claim, And all the world shall be his kin. And there, as here, on main and isle, The dews of holy peace shall fall, The same sweet heavens above him smile, And God's dear love be over all 1874. THE GOLDEN WEDDING OF LONGWOOD. Longwood, not far from Bayard Taylor's birthplace in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, was the home of my esteemed friends John and Hannah Cox, whose golden wedding was celebrated in 1874. With fifty years between you and your well-kept wedding vow, The Golden Age, old friends of mine, is not a fable now. And, sweet as has life's vintage been through all your pleasant past, Still, as at Cana's marriage-feast, the best wine is the last! Again before me, with your names, fair Chester's landscape comes, Its meadows, woods, and ample barns, and quaint, stone-builded homes. The smooth-shorn vales, the wheaten slopes, the boscage green and soft, Of which their poet sings so well from towered Cedarcroft. And lo! from all the country-side come neighbors, kith and kin; From city, hamlet, farm-house old, the wedding guests come in. And they who, without scrip or purse, mob-hunted, travel-worn, In Freedom's age of martyrs came, as victors now return. Older and slower, yet the same, files in the long array, And hearts are light and eyes are glad, though heads are badger-gray. The fire-tried men of Thirty-eight who saw with me the fall, Midst roaring flames and shouting mob, of Pennsylvania Hall; And they of Lancaster who turned the cheeks of tyrants pale, Singing of freedom through the grates of Moyamensing jail! And haply with them, all unseen, old comrades, gone before, Pass, silently as shadows pass, within your open door,-- The eagle face of Lindley Coates, brave Garrett's daring zeal, Christian grace of Pennock, the steadfast heart of Neal. Ah me! beyond all power to name, the worthies tried and true, Grave men, fair women, youth and maid, pass by in hushed review. Of varying faiths, a common cause fused all their hearts in one. God give them now, whate'er their names, the peace of duty done! How gladly would I tread again the old-remembered places, Sit down beside your hearth once more and look in the dear old faces! And thank you for the lessons your fifty years are teaching, For honest lives that louder speak than half our noisy preaching; For your steady faith and courage in that dark and evil time, When the Golden Rule was treason, and to feed the hungry, crime; For the poor slave's house of refuge when the hounds were on his track, And saint and sinner, church and state, joined hands to send him back. Blessings upon you!--What you did for each sad, suffering one, So homeless, faint, and naked, unto our Lord was done! Fair fall on Kennett's pleasant vales and Longwood's bowery ways The mellow sunset of your lives, friends of my early days. May many more of quiet years be added to your sum, And, late at last, in tenderest love, the beckoning angel come. Dear hearts are here, dear hearts are there, alike below, above; Our friends are now in either world, and love is sure of love. 1874. HYMN FOR THE OPENING OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH, ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA. All things are Thine: no gift have we, Lord of all gifts, to offer Thee; And hence with grateful hearts to-day, Thy own before Thy feet we lay. Thy will was in the builders' thought; Thy hand unseen amidst us wrought; Through mortal motive, scheme and plan, Thy wise eternal purpose ran. No lack Thy perfect fulness knew; For human needs and longings grew This house of prayer, this home of rest, In the fair garden of the West. In weakness and in want we call On Thee for whom the heavens are small; Thy glory is Thy children's good, Thy joy Thy tender Fatherhood. O Father! deign these walls to bless, Fill with Thy love their emptiness, And let their door a gateway be To lead us from ourselves to Thee! 1872. LEXINGTON 1775. No Berserk thirst of blood had they, No battle-joy was theirs, who set Against the alien bayonet Their homespun breasts in that old day. Their feet had trodden peaceful, ways; They loved not strife, they dreaded pain; They saw not, what to us is plain, That God would make man's wrath his praise. No seers were they, but simple men; Its vast results the future hid The meaning of the work they did Was strange and dark and doubtful then. Swift as their summons came they left The plough mid-furrow standing still, The half-ground corn grist in the mill, The spade in earth, the axe in cleft. They went where duty seemed to call, They scarcely asked the reason why; They only knew they could but die, And death was not the worst of all! Of man for man the sacrifice, All that was theirs to give, they gave. The flowers that blossomed from their grave Have sown themselves beneath all skies. Their death-shot shook the feudal tower, And shattered slavery's chain as well; On the sky's dome, as on a bell, Its echo struck the world's great hour. That fateful echo is not dumb The nations listening to its sound Wait, from a century's vantage-ground, The holier triumphs yet to come,-- The bridal time of Law and Love, The gladness of the world's release, When, war-sick, at the feet of Peace The hawk shall nestle with the dove!-- The golden age of brotherhood Unknown to other rivalries Than of the mild humanities, And gracious interchange of good, When closer strand shall lean to strand, Till meet, beneath saluting flags, The eagle of our mountain-crags, The lion of our Motherland! 1875. THE LIBRARY. Sung at the opening of the Haverhill Library, November 11, 1875. "Let there be light!" God spake of old, And over chaos dark and cold, And through the dead and formless frame Of nature, life and order came. Faint was the light at first that shone On giant fern and mastodon, On half-formed plant and beast of prey, And man as rude and wild as they. Age after age, like waves, o'erran The earth, uplifting brute and man; And mind, at length, in symbols dark Its meanings traced on stone and bark. On leaf of palm, on sedge-wrought roll, On plastic clay and leathern scroll, Man wrote his thoughts; the ages passed, And to! the Press was found at last! Then dead souls woke; the thoughts of men Whose bones were dust revived again; The cloister's silence found a tongue, Old prophets spake, old poets sung. And here, to-day, the dead look down, The kings of mind again we crown; We hear the voices lost so long, The sage's word, the sibyl's song. Here Greek and Roman find themselves Alive along these crowded shelves; And Shakespeare treads again his stage, And Chaucer paints anew his age. As if some Pantheon's marbles broke Their stony trance, and lived and spoke, Life thrills along the alcoved hall, The lords of thought await our call! "I WAS A STRANGER, AND YE TOOK ME IN." An incident in St. Augustine, Florida. 'Neath skies that winter never knew The air was full of light and balm, And warm and soft the Gulf wind blew Through orange bloom and groves of palm. A stranger from the frozen North, Who sought the fount of health in vain, Sank homeless on the alien earth, And breathed the languid air with pain. God's angel came! The tender shade Of pity made her blue eye dim; Against her woman's breast she laid The drooping, fainting head of him. She bore him to a pleasant room, Flower-sweet and cool with salt sea air, And watched beside his bed, for whom His far-off sisters might not care. She fanned his feverish brow and smoothed Its lines of pain with tenderest touch. With holy hymn and prayer she soothed The trembling soul that feared so much. Through her the peace that passeth sight Came to him, as he lapsed away As one whose troubled dreams of night Slide slowly into tranquil day. The sweetness of the Land of Flowers Upon his lonely grave she laid The jasmine dropped its golden showers, The orange lent its bloom and shade. And something whispered in her thought, More sweet than mortal voices be "The service thou for him hast wrought O daughter! hath been done for me." 1875. CENTENNIAL HYMN. Written for the opening of the International Exhibition, Philadelphia, May 10, 1876. The music for the hymn was written by John K. Paine, and may be found in The Atlantic Monthly for June, 1876. I. Our fathers' God! from out whose hand The centuries fall like grains of sand, We meet to-day, united, free, And loyal to our land and Thee, To thank Thee for the era done, And trust Thee for the opening one. II. Here, where of old, by Thy design, The fathers spake that word of Thine Whose echo is the glad refrain Of rended bolt and falling chain, To grace our festal time, from all The zones of earth our guests we call. III. Be with us while the New World greets The Old World thronging all its streets, Unveiling all the triumphs won By art or toil beneath the sun; And unto common good ordain This rivalship of hand and brain. IV. Thou, who hast here in concord furled The war flags of a gathered world, Beneath our Western skies fulfil The Orient's mission of good-will, And, freighted with love's Golden Fleece, Send back its Argonauts of peace. V. For art and labor met in truce, For beauty made the bride of use, We thank Thee; but, withal, we crave The austere virtues strong to save, The honor proof to place or gold, The manhood never bought nor sold. VI. Oh make Thou us, through centuries long, In peace secure, in justice strong; Around our gift of freedom draw The safeguards of Thy righteous law And, cast in some diviner mould, Let the new cycle shame the old! AT SCHOOL-CLOSE. BOWDOIN STREET, BOSTON, 1877. The end has come, as come it must To all things; in these sweet June days The teacher and the scholar trust Their parting feet to separate ways. They part: but in the years to be Shall pleasant memories cling to each, As shells bear inland from the sea The murmur of the rhythmic beach. One knew the joy the sculptor knows When, plastic to his lightest touch, His clay-wrought model slowly grows To that fine grace desired so much. So daily grew before her eyes The living shapes whereon she wrought, Strong, tender, innocently wise, The child's heart with the woman's thought. And one shall never quite forget The voice that called from dream and play, The firm but kindly hand that set Her feet in learning's pleasant way,-- The joy of Undine soul-possessed, The wakening sense, the strange delight That swelled the fabled statue's breast And filled its clouded eyes with sight. O Youth and Beauty, loved of all! Ye pass from girlhood's gate of dreams; In broader ways your footsteps fall, Ye test the truth of all that seams. Her little realm the teacher leaves, She breaks her wand of power apart, While, for your love and trust, she gives The warm thanks of a grateful heart. Hers is the sober summer noon Contrasted with your morn of spring, The waning with the waxing moon, The folded with the outspread wing. Across the distance of the years She sends her God-speed back to you; She has no thought of doubts or fears Be but yourselves, be pure, be true, And prompt in duty; heed the deep, Low voice of conscience; through the ill And discord round about you, keep Your faith in human nature still. Be gentle: unto griefs and needs, Be pitiful as woman should, And, spite of all the lies of creeds, Hold fast the truth that God is good. Give and receive; go forth and bless The world that needs the hand and heart Of Martha's helpful carefulness No less than Mary's better part. So shall the stream of time flow by And leave each year a richer good, And matron loveliness outvie The nameless charm of maidenhood. And, when the world shall link your names With gracious lives and manners fine, The teacher shall assert her claims, And proudly whisper, "These were mine!" HYMN OF THE CHILDREN. Sung at the anniversary of the Children's Mission, Boston, 1878. Thine are all the gifts, O God! Thine the broken bread; Let the naked feet be shod, And the starving fed. Let Thy children, by Thy grace, Give as they abound, Till the poor have breathing-space, And the lost are found. Wiser than the miser's hoards Is the giver's choice; Sweeter than the song of birds Is the thankful voice. Welcome smiles on faces sad As the flowers of spring; Let the tender hearts be glad With the joy they bring. Happier for their pity's sake Make their sports and plays, And from lips of childhood take Thy perfected praise! THE LANDMARKS. This poem was read at a meeting of citizens of Boston having for its object the preservation of the Old South Church famous in Colonial and Revolutionary history. I. THROUGH the streets of Marblehead Fast the red-winged terror sped; Blasting, withering, on it came, With its hundred tongues of flame, Where St. Michael's on its way Stood like chained Andromeda, Waiting on the rock, like her, Swift doom or deliverer! Church that, after sea-moss grew Over walls no longer new, Counted generations five, Four entombed and one alive; Heard the martial thousand tread Battleward from Marblehead; Saw within the rock-walled bay Treville's liked pennons play, And the fisher's dory met By the barge of Lafayette, Telling good news in advance Of the coming fleet of France! Church to reverend memories, dear, Quaint in desk and chandelier; Bell, whose century-rusted tongue Burials tolled and bridals rung; Loft, whose tiny organ kept Keys that Snetzler's hand had swept; Altar, o'er whose tablet old Sinai's law its thunders rolled! Suddenly the sharp cry came "Look! St. Michael's is aflame!" Round the low tower wall the fire Snake-like wound its coil of ire. Sacred in its gray respect From the jealousies of sect, "Save it," seemed the thought of all, "Save it, though our roof-trees fall!" Up the tower the young men sprung; One, the bravest, outward swung By the rope, whose kindling strands Smoked beneath the holder's hands, Smiting down with strokes of power Burning fragments from the tower. Then the gazing crowd beneath Broke the painful pause of breath; Brave men cheered from street to street, With home's ashes at their feet; Houseless women kerchiefs waved: "Thank the Lord! St. Michael's saved!" II. In the heart of Boston town Stands the church of old renown, From whose walls the impulse went Which set free a continent; From whose pulpit's oracle Prophecies of freedom fell; And whose steeple-rocking din Rang the nation's birth-day in! Standing at this very hour Perilled like St. Michael's tower, Held not in the clasp of flame, But by mammon's grasping claim. Shall it be of Boston said She is shamed by Marblehead? City of our pride! as there, Hast thou none to do and dare? Life was risked for Michael's shrine; Shall not wealth be staked for thine? Woe to thee, when men shall search Vainly for the Old South Church; When from Neck to Boston Stone, All thy pride of place is gone; When from Bay and railroad car, Stretched before them wide and far, Men shall only see a great Wilderness of brick and slate, Every holy spot o'erlaid By the commonplace of trade! City of our love': to thee Duty is but destiny. True to all thy record saith, Keep with thy traditions faith; Ere occasion's overpast, Hold its flowing forelock fast; Honor still the precedents Of a grand munificence; In thy old historic way Give, as thou didst yesterday At the South-land's call, or on Need's demand from fired St. John. Set thy Church's muffled bell Free the generous deed to tell. Let thy loyal hearts rejoice In the glad, sonorous voice, Ringing from the brazen mouth Of the bell of the Old South,-- Ringing clearly, with a will, "What she was is Boston still!" 1879 GARDEN The American Horticultural Society, 1882. O painter of the fruits and flowers, We own wise design, Where these human hands of ours May share work of Thine! Apart from Thee we plant in vain The root and sow the seed; Thy early and Thy later rain, Thy sun and dew we need. Our toil is sweet with thankfulness, Our burden is our boon; The curse of Earth's gray morning is The blessing of its noon. Why search the wide world everywhere For Eden's unknown ground? That garden of the primal pair May nevermore be found. But, blest by Thee, our patient toil May right the ancient wrong, And give to every clime and soil The beauty lost so long. Our homestead flowers and fruited trees May Eden's orchard shame; We taste the tempting sweets of these Like Eve, without her blame. And, North and South and East and West, The pride of every zone, The fairest, rarest, and the best May all be made our own. Its earliest shrines the young world sought In hill-groves and in bowers, The fittest offerings thither brought Were Thy own fruits and flowers. And still with reverent hands we cull Thy gifts each year renewed; The good is always beautiful, The beautiful is good. A GREETING Read at Harriet Beecher Stowe's seventieth anniversary, June 14, 1882, at a garden party at ex-Governor Claflin's in Newtonville, Mass. Thrice welcome from the Land of Flowers And golden-fruited orange bowers To this sweet, green-turfed June of ours! To her who, in our evil time, Dragged into light the nation's crime With strength beyond the strength of men, And, mightier than their swords, her pen! To her who world-wide entrance gave To the log-cabin of the slave; Made all his wrongs and sorrows known, And all earth's languages his own,-- North, South, and East and West, made all The common air electrical, Until the o'ercharged bolts of heaven Blazed down, and every chain was riven! Welcome from each and all to her Whose Wooing of the Minister Revealed the warm heart of the man Beneath the creed-bound Puritan, And taught the kinship of the love Of man below and God above; To her whose vigorous pencil-strokes Sketched into life her Oldtown Folks; Whose fireside stories, grave or gay, In quaint Sam Lawson's vagrant way, With old New England's flavor rife, Waifs from her rude idyllic life, Are racy as the legends old By Chaucer or Boccaccio told; To her who keeps, through change of place And time, her native strength and grace, Alike where warm Sorrento smiles, Or where, by birchen-shaded isles, Whose summer winds have shivered o'er The icy drift of Labrador, She lifts to light the priceless Pearl Of Harpswell's angel-beckoned girl! To her at threescore years and ten Be tributes of the tongue and pen; Be honor, praise, and heart-thanks given, The loves of earth, the hopes of heaven! Ah, dearer than the praise that stirs The air to-day, our love is hers! She needs no guaranty of fame Whose own is linked with Freedom's name. Long ages after ours shall keep Her memory living while we sleep; The waves that wash our gray coast lines, The winds that rock the Southern pines, Shall sing of her; the unending years Shall tell her tale in unborn ears. And when, with sins and follies past, Are numbered color-hate and caste, White, black, and red shall own as one The noblest work by woman done. GODSPEED Written on the occasion of a voyage made by my friends Annie Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett. Outbound, your bark awaits you. Were I one Whose prayer availeth much, my wish should be Your favoring trade-wind and consenting sea. By sail or steed was never love outrun, And, here or there, love follows her in whom All graces and sweet charities unite, The old Greek beauty set in holier light; And her for whom New England's byways bloom, Who walks among us welcome as the Spring, Calling up blossoms where her light feet stray. God keep you both, make beautiful your way, Comfort, console, and bless; and safely bring, Ere yet I make upon a vaster sea The unreturning voyage, my friends to me. 1882. WINTER ROSES. In reply to a flower gift from Mrs. Putnam's school at Jamaica Plain. My garden roses long ago Have perished from the leaf-strewn walks; Their pale, fair sisters smile no more Upon the sweet-brier stalks. Gone with the flower-time of my life, Spring's violets, summer's blooming pride, And Nature's winter and my own Stand, flowerless, side by side. So might I yesterday have sung; To-day, in bleak December's noon, Come sweetest fragrance, shapes, and hues, The rosy wealth of June! Bless the young bands that culled the gift, And bless the hearts that prompted it; If undeserved it comes, at least It seems not all unfit. Of old my Quaker ancestors Had gifts of forty stripes save one; To-day as many roses crown The gray head of their son. And with them, to my fancy's eye, The fresh-faced givers smiling come, And nine and thirty happy girls Make glad a lonely room. They bring the atmosphere of youth; The light and warmth of long ago Are in my heart, and on my cheek The airs of morning blow. O buds of girlhood, yet unblown, And fairer than the gift ye chose, For you may years like leaves unfold The heart of Sharon's rose. 1883. THE REUNION Read September 10, 1885, to the surviving students of Haverhill Academy in 1827-1830. The gulf of seven and fifty years We stretch our welcoming hands across; The distance but a pebble's toss Between us and our youth appears. For in life's school we linger on The remnant of a once full list; Conning our lessons, undismissed, With faces to the setting sun. And some have gone the unknown way, And some await the call to rest; Who knoweth whether it is best For those who went or those who stay? And yet despite of loss and ill, If faith and love and hope remain, Our length of days is not in vain, And life is well worth living still. Still to a gracious Providence The thanks of grateful hearts are due, For blessings when our lives were new, For all the good vouchsafed us since. The pain that spared us sorer hurt, The wish denied, the purpose crossed, And pleasure's fond occasions lost, Were mercies to our small desert. 'T is something that we wander back, Gray pilgrims, to our ancient ways, And tender memories of old days Walk with us by the Merrimac; That even in life's afternoon A sense of youth comes back again, As through this cool September rain The still green woodlands dream of June. The eyes grown dim to present things Have keener sight for bygone years, And sweet and clear, in deafening ears, The bird that sang at morning sings. Dear comrades, scattered wide and far, Send from their homes their kindly word, And dearer ones, unseen, unheard, Smile on us from some heavenly star. For life and death with God are one, Unchanged by seeming change His care And love are round us here and there; He breaks no thread His hand has spun. Soul touches soul, the muster roll Of life eternal has no gaps; And after half a century's lapse Our school-day ranks are closed and whole. Hail and farewell! We go our way; Where shadows end, we trust in light; The star that ushers in the night Is herald also of the day! NORUMBEGA HALL. Norumbega Hall at Wellesley College, named in honor of Eben Norton Horsford, who has been one of the most munificent patrons of that noble institution, and who had just published an essay claiming the discovery of the site of the somewhat mythical city of Norumbega, was opened with appropriate ceremonies, in April, 1886. The following sonnet was written for the occasion, and was read by President Alice E. Freeman, to whom it was addressed. Not on Penobscot's wooded bank the spires Of the sought City rose, nor yet beside The winding Charles, nor where the daily tide Of Naumkeag's haven rises and retires, The vision tarried; but somewhere we knew The beautiful gates must open to our quest, Somewhere that marvellous City of the West Would lift its towers and palace domes in view, And, to! at last its mystery is made known-- Its only dwellers maidens fair and young, Its Princess such as England's Laureate sung; And safe from capture, save by love alone, It lends its beauty to the lake's green shore, And Norumbega is a myth no more. THE BARTHOLDI STATUE 1886 The land, that, from the rule of kings, In freeing us, itself made free, Our Old World Sister, to us brings Her sculptured Dream of Liberty, Unlike the shapes on Egypt's sands Uplifted by the toil-worn slave, On Freedom's soil with freemen's hands We rear the symbol free hands gave. O France, the beautiful! to thee Once more a debt of love we owe In peace beneath thy Colors Three, We hail a later Rochambeau! Rise, stately Symbol! holding forth Thy light and hope to all who sit In chains and darkness! Belt the earth With watch-fires from thy torch uplit! Reveal the primal mandate still Which Chaos heard and ceased to be, Trace on mid-air th' Eternal Will In signs of fire: "Let man be free!" Shine far, shine free, a guiding light To Reason's ways and Virtue's aim, A lightning-flash the wretch to smite Who shields his license with thy name! ONE OF THE SIGNERS. Written for the unveiling of the statue of Josiah Bartlett at Amesbury, Mass., July 4, 1888. Governor Bartlett, who was a native of the town, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Amesbury or Ambresbury, so called from the "anointed stones" of the great Druidical temple near it, was the seat of one of the earliest religious houses in Britain. The tradition that the guilty wife of King Arthur fled thither for protection forms one of the finest passages in Tennyson's Idyls of the King. O storied vale of Merrimac Rejoice through all thy shade and shine, And from his century's sleep call back A brave and honored son of thine. Unveil his effigy between The living and the dead to-day; The fathers of the Old Thirteen Shall witness bear as spirits may. Unseen, unheard, his gray compeers The shades of Lee and Jefferson, Wise Franklin reverend with his years And Carroll, lord of Carrollton! Be thine henceforth a pride of place Beyond thy namesake's over-sea, Where scarce a stone is left to trace The Holy House of Amesbury. A prouder memory lingers round The birthplace of thy true man here Than that which haunts the refuge found By Arthur's mythic Guinevere. The plain deal table where he sat And signed a nation's title-deed Is dearer now to fame than that Which bore the scroll of Runnymede. Long as, on Freedom's natal morn, Shall ring the Independence bells, Give to thy dwellers yet unborn The lesson which his image tells. For in that hour of Destiny, Which tried the men of bravest stock, He knew the end alone must be A free land or a traitor's block. Among those picked and chosen men Than his, who here first drew his breath, No firmer fingers held the pen Which wrote for liberty or death. Not for their hearths and homes alone, But for the world their work was done; On all the winds their thought has flown Through all the circuit of the sun. We trace its flight by broken chains, By songs of grateful Labor still; To-day, in all her holy fanes, It rings the bells of freed Brazil. O hills that watched his boyhood's home, O earth and air that nursed him, give, In this memorial semblance, room To him who shall its bronze outlive! And thou, O Land he loved, rejoice That in the countless years to come, Whenever Freedom needs a voice, These sculptured lips shall not be dumb! THE TENT ON THE BEACH It can scarcely be necessary to name as the two companions whom I reckoned with myself in this poetical picnic, Fields the lettered magnate, and Taylor the free cosmopolite. The long line of sandy beach which defines almost the whole of the New Hampshire sea-coast is especially marked near its southern extremity, by the salt-meadows of Hampton. The Hampton River winds through these meadows, and the reader may, if he choose, imagine my tent pitched near its mouth, where also was the scene of the _Wreck of Rivermouth_. The green bluff to the northward is Great Boar's Head; southward is the Merrimac, with Newburyport lifting its steeples above brown roofs and green trees on banks. I would not sin, in this half-playful strain,-- Too light perhaps for serious years, though born Of the enforced leisure of slow pain,-- Against the pure ideal which has drawn My feet to follow its far-shining gleam. A simple plot is mine: legends and runes Of credulous days, old fancies that have lain Silent, from boyhood taking voice again, Warmed into life once more, even as the tunes That, frozen in the fabled hunting-horn, Thawed into sound:--a winter fireside dream Of dawns and-sunsets by the summer sea, Whose sands are traversed by a silent throng Of voyagers from that vaster mystery Of which it is an emblem;--and the dear Memory of one who might have tuned my song To sweeter music by her delicate ear. When heats as of a tropic clime Burned all our inland valleys through, Three friends, the guests of summer time, Pitched their white tent where sea-winds blew. Behind them, marshes, seamed and crossed With narrow creeks, and flower-embossed, Stretched to the dark oak wood, whose leafy arms Screened from the stormy East the pleasant inland farms. At full of tide their bolder shore Of sun-bleached sand the waters beat; At ebb, a smooth and glistening floor They touched with light, receding feet. Northward a 'green bluff broke the chain Of sand-hills; southward stretched a plain Of salt grass, with a river winding down, Sail-whitened, and beyond the steeples of the town, Whence sometimes, when the wind was light And dull the thunder of the beach, They heard the bells of morn and night Swing, miles away, their silver speech. Above low scarp and turf-grown wall They saw the fort-flag rise and fall; And, the first star to signal twilight's hour, The lamp-fire glimmer down from the tall light-house tower. They rested there, escaped awhile From cares that wear the life away, To eat the lotus of the Nile And drink the poppies of Cathay,-- To fling their loads of custom down, Like drift-weed, on the sand-slopes brown, And in the sea waves drown the restless pack Of duties, claims, and needs that barked upon their track. One, with his beard scarce silvered, bore A ready credence in his looks, A lettered magnate, lording o'er An ever-widening realm of books. In him brain-currents, near and far, Converged as in a Leyden jar; The old, dead authors thronged him round about, And Elzevir's gray ghosts from leathern graves looked out. He knew each living pundit well, Could weigh the gifts of him or her, And well the market value tell Of poet and philosopher. But if he lost, the scenes behind, Somewhat of reverence vague and blind, Finding the actors human at the best, No readier lips than his the good he saw confessed. His boyhood fancies not outgrown, He loved himself the singer's art; Tenderly, gently, by his own He knew and judged an author's heart. No Rhadamanthine brow of doom Bowed the dazed pedant from his room; And bards, whose name is legion, if denied, Bore off alike intact their verses and their pride. Pleasant it was to roam about The lettered world as he had, done, And see the lords of song without Their singing robes and garlands on. With Wordsworth paddle Rydal mere, Taste rugged Elliott's home-brewed beer, And with the ears of Rogers, at fourscore, Hear Garrick's buskined tread and Walpole's wit once more. And one there was, a dreamer born, Who, with a mission to fulfil, Had left the Muses' haunts to turn The crank of an opinion-mill, Making his rustic reed of song A weapon in the war with wrong, Yoking his fancy to the breaking-plough That beam-deep turned the soil for truth to spring and grow. Too quiet seemed the man to ride The winged Hippogriff Reform; Was his a voice from side to side To pierce the tumult of the storm? A silent, shy, peace-loving man, He seemed no fiery partisan To hold his way against the public frown, The ban of Church and State, the fierce mob's hounding down. For while he wrought with strenuous will The work his hands had found to do, He heard the fitful music still Of winds that out of dream-land blew. The din about him could not drown What the strange voices whispered down; Along his task-field weird processions swept, The visionary pomp of stately phantoms stepped: The common air was thick with dreams,-- He told them to the toiling crowd; Such music as the woods and streams Sang in his ear he sang aloud; In still, shut bays, on windy capes, He heard the call of beckoning shapes, And, as the gray old shadows prompted him, To homely moulds of rhyme he shaped their legends grim. He rested now his weary hands, And lightly moralized and laughed, As, tracing on the shifting sands A burlesque of his paper-craft, He saw the careless waves o'errun His words, as time before had done, Each day's tide-water washing clean away, Like letters from the sand, the work of yesterday. And one, whose Arab face was tanned By tropic sun and boreal frost, So travelled there was scarce a land Or people left him to exhaust, In idling mood had from him hurled The poor squeezed orange of the world, And in the tent-shade, as beneath a palm, Smoked, cross-legged like a Turk, in Oriental calm. The very waves that washed the sand Below him, he had seen before Whitening the Scandinavian strand And sultry Mauritanian shore. From ice-rimmed isles, from summer seas Palm-fringed, they bore him messages; He heard the plaintive Nubian songs again, And mule-bells tinkling down the mountain-paths of Spain. His memory round the ransacked earth On Puck's long girdle slid at ease; And, instant, to the valley's girth Of mountains, spice isles of the seas, Faith flowered in minster stones, Art's guess At truth and beauty, found access; Yet loved the while, that free cosmopolite, Old friends, old ways, and kept his boyhood's dreams in sight. Untouched as yet by wealth and pride, That virgin innocence of beach No shingly monster, hundred-eyed, Stared its gray sand-birds out of reach; Unhoused, save where, at intervals, The white tents showed their canvas walls, Where brief sojourners, in the cool, soft air, Forgot their inland heats, hard toil, and year-long care. Sometimes along the wheel-deep sand A one-horse wagon slowly crawled, Deep laden with a youthful band, Whose look some homestead old recalled; Brother perchance, and sisters twain, And one whose blue eyes told, more plain Than the free language of her rosy lip, Of the still dearer claim of love's relationship. With cheeks of russet-orchard tint, The light laugh of their native rills, The perfume of their garden's mint, The breezy freedom of the hills, They bore, in unrestrained delight, The motto of the Garter's knight, Careless as if from every gazing thing Hid by their innocence, as Gyges by his ring. The clanging sea-fowl came and went, The hunter's gun in the marshes rang; At nightfall from a neighboring tent A flute-voiced woman sweetly sang. Loose-haired, barefooted, hand-in-hand, Young girls went tripping down the sand; And youths and maidens, sitting in the moon, Dreamed o'er the old fond dream from which we wake too soon. At times their fishing-lines they plied, With an old Triton at the oar, Salt as the sea-wind, tough and dried As a lean cusk from Labrador. Strange tales he told of wreck and storm,-- Had seen the sea-snake's awful form, And heard the ghosts on Haley's Isle complain, Speak him off shore, and beg a passage to old Spain! And there, on breezy morns, they saw The fishing-schooners outward run, Their low-bent sails in tack and flaw Turned white or dark to shade and sun. Sometimes, in calms of closing day, They watched the spectral mirage play, Saw low, far islands looming tall and nigh, And ships, with upturned keels, sail like a sea the sky. Sometimes a cloud, with thunder black, Stooped low upon the darkening main, Piercing the waves along its track With the slant javelins of rain. And when west-wind and sunshine warm Chased out to sea its wrecks of storm, They saw the prismy hues in thin spray showers Where the green buds of waves burst into white froth flowers. And when along the line of shore The mists crept upward chill and damp, Stretched, careless, on their sandy floor Beneath the flaring lantern lamp, They talked of all things old and new, Read, slept, and dreamed as idlers do; And in the unquestioned freedom of the tent, Body and o'er-taxed mind to healthful ease unbent. Once, when the sunset splendors died, And, trampling up the sloping sand, In lines outreaching far and wide, The white-waned billows swept to land, Dim seen across the gathering shade, A vast and ghostly cavalcade, They sat around their lighted kerosene, Hearing the deep bass roar their every pause between. Then, urged thereto, the Editor Within his full portfolio dipped, Feigning excuse while seaching for (With secret pride) his manuscript. His pale face flushed from eye to beard, With nervous cough his throat he cleared, And, in a voice so tremulous it betrayed The anxious fondness of an author's heart, he read: . . . . . THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH The Goody Cole who figures in this poem and The Changeling as Eunice Cole, who for a quarter of a century or more was feared, persecuted, and hated as the witch of Hampton. She lived alone in a hovel a little distant from the spot where the Hampton Academy now stands, and there she died, unattended. When her death was discovered, she was hastily covered up in the earth near by, and a stake driven through her body, to exorcise the evil spirit. Rev. Stephen Bachiler or Batchelder was one of the ablest of the early New England preachers. His marriage late in life to a woman regarded by his church as disreputable induced him to return to England, where he enjoyed the esteem and favor of Oliver Cromwell during the Protectorate. Rivermouth Rocks are fair to see, By dawn or sunset shone across, When the ebb of the sea has left them free, To dry their fringes of gold-green moss For there the river comes winding down, From salt sea-meadows and uplands brown, And waves on the outer rocks afoam Shout to its waters, "Welcome home!" And fair are the sunny isles in view East of the grisly Head of the Boar, And Agamenticus lifts its blue Disk of a cloud the woodlands o'er; And southerly, when the tide is down, 'Twixt white sea-waves and sand-hills brown, The beach-birds dance and the gray gulls wheel Over a floor of burnished steel. Once, in the old Colonial days, Two hundred years ago and more, A boat sailed down through the winding ways Of Hampton River to that low shore, Full of a goodly company Sailing out on the summer sea, Veering to catch the land-breeze light, With the Boar to left and the Rocks to right. In Hampton meadows, where mowers laid Their scythes to the swaths of salted grass, "Ah, well-a-day! our hay must be made!" A young man sighed, who saw them pass. Loud laughed his fellows to see him stand Whetting his scythe with a listless hand, Hearing a voice in a far-off song, Watching a white hand beckoning long. "Fie on the witch!" cried a merry girl, As they rounded the point where Goody Cole Sat by her door with her wheel atwirl, A bent and blear-eyed poor old soul. "Oho!" she muttered, "ye 're brave to-day! But I hear the little waves laugh and say, 'The broth will be cold that waits at home; For it 's one to go, but another to come!'" "She's cursed," said the skipper; "speak her fair: I'm scary always to see her shake Her wicked head, with its wild gray hair, And nose like a hawk, and eyes like a snake." But merrily still, with laugh and shout, From Hampton River the boat sailed out, Till the huts and the flakes on Star seemed nigh, And they lost the scent of the pines of Rye. They dropped their lines in the lazy tide, Drawing up haddock and mottled cod; They saw not the Shadow that walked beside, They heard not the feet with silence shod. But thicker and thicker a hot mist grew, Shot by the lightnings through and through; And muffled growls, like the growl of a beast, Ran along the sky from west to east. Then the skipper looked from the darkening sea Up to the dimmed and wading sun; But he spake like a brave man cheerily, "Yet there is time for our homeward run." Veering and tacking, they backward wore; And just as a breath-from the woods ashore Blew out to whisper of danger past, The wrath of the storm came down at last! The skipper hauled at the heavy sail "God be our help!" he only cried, As the roaring gale, like the stroke of a flail, Smote the boat on its starboard side. The Shoalsmen looked, but saw alone Dark films of rain-cloud slantwise blown, Wild rocks lit up by the lightning's glare, The strife and torment of sea and air. Goody Cole looked out from her door The Isles of Shoals were drowned and gone, Scarcely she saw the Head of the Boar Toss the foam from tusks of stone. She clasped her hands with a grip of pain, The tear on her cheek was not of rain "They are lost," she muttered, "boat and crew! Lord, forgive me! my words were true!" Suddenly seaward swept the squall; The low sun smote through cloudy rack; The Shoals stood clear in the light, and all The trend of the coast lay hard and black. But far and wide as eye could reach, No life was seen upon wave or beach; The boat that went out at morning never Sailed back again into Hampton River. O mower, lean on thy bended snath, Look from the meadows green and low The wind of the sea is a waft of death, The waves are singing a song of woe! By silent river, by moaning sea, Long and vain shall thy watching be Never again shall the sweet voice call, Never the white hand rise and fall! O Rivermouth Rocks, how sad a sight Ye saw in the light of breaking day Dead faces looking up cold and white From sand and seaweed where they lay. The mad old witch-wife wailed and wept, And cursed the tide as it backward crept "Crawl back, crawl back, blue water-snake Leave your dead for the hearts that break!" Solemn it was in that old day In Hampton town and its log-built church, Where side by side the coffins lay And the mourners stood in aisle and porch. In the singing-seats young eyes were dim, The voices faltered that raised the hymn, And Father Dalton, grave and stern, Sobbed through his prayer and wept in turn. But his ancient colleague did not pray; Under the weight of his fourscore years He stood apart with the iron-gray Of his strong brows knitted to hide his tears; And a fair-faced woman of doubtful fame, Linking her own with his honored name, Subtle as sin, at his side withstood The felt reproach of her neighborhood. Apart with them, like them forbid, Old Goody Cole looked drearily round, As, two by two, with their faces hid, The mourners walked to the burying-ground. She let the staff from her clasped hands fall "Lord, forgive us! we're sinners all!" And the voice of the old man answered her "Amen!" said Father Bachiler. So, as I sat upon Appledore In the calm of a closing summer day, And the broken lines of Hampton shore In purple mist of cloudland lay, The Rivermouth Rocks their story told; And waves aglow with sunset gold, Rising and breaking in steady chime, Beat the rhythm and kept the time. And the sunset paled, and warmed once more With a softer, tenderer after-glow; In the east was moon-rise, with boats off-shore And sails in the distance drifting slow. The beacon glimmered from Portsmouth bar, The White Isle kindled its great red star; And life and death in my old-time lay Mingled in peace like the night and day! . . . . . "Well!" said the Man of Books, "your story Is really not ill told in verse. As the Celt said of purgatory, One might go farther and fare worse." The Reader smiled; and once again With steadier voice took up his strain, While the fair singer from the neighboring tent Drew near, and at his side a graceful listener bent. 1864. THE GRAVE BY THE LAKE At the mouth of the Melvin River, which empties into Moulton-Bay in Lake Winnipesaukee, is a great mound. The Ossipee Indians had their home in the neighborhood of the bay, which is plentifully stocked with fish, and many relics of their occupation have been found. Where the Great Lake's sunny smiles Dimple round its hundred isles, And the mountain's granite ledge Cleaves the water like a wedge, Ringed about with smooth, gray stones, Rest the giant's mighty bones. Close beside, in shade and gleam, Laughs and ripples Melvin stream; Melvin water, mountain-born, All fair flowers its banks adorn; All the woodland's voices meet, Mingling with its murmurs sweet. Over lowlands forest-grown, Over waters island-strown, Over silver-sanded beach, Leaf-locked bay and misty reach, Melvin stream and burial-heap, Watch and ward the mountains keep. Who that Titan cromlech fills? Forest-kaiser, lord o' the hills? Knight who on the birchen tree Carved his savage heraldry? Priest o' the pine-wood temples dim, Prophet, sage, or wizard grim? Rugged type of primal man, Grim utilitarian, Loving woods for hunt and prowl, Lake and hill for fish and fowl, As the brown bear blind and dull To the grand and beautiful: Not for him the lesson drawn From the mountains smit with dawn, Star-rise, moon-rise, flowers of May, Sunset's purple bloom of day,-- Took his life no hue from thence, Poor amid such affluence? Haply unto hill and tree All too near akin was he Unto him who stands afar Nature's marvels greatest are; Who the mountain purple seeks Must not climb the higher peaks. Yet who knows in winter tramp, Or the midnight of the camp, What revealings faint and far, Stealing down from moon and star, Kindled in that human clod Thought of destiny and God? Stateliest forest patriarch, Grand in robes of skin and bark, What sepulchral mysteries, What weird funeral-rites, were his? What sharp wail, what drear lament, Back scared wolf and eagle sent? Now, whate'er he may have been, Low he lies as other men; On his mound the partridge drums, There the noisy blue-jay comes; Rank nor name nor pomp has he In the grave's democracy. Part thy blue lips, Northern lake! Moss-grown rocks, your silence break! Tell the tale, thou ancient tree! Thou, too, slide-worn Ossipee! Speak, and tell us how and when Lived and died this king of men! Wordless moans the ancient pine; Lake and mountain give no sign; Vain to trace this ring of stones; Vain the search of crumbling bones Deepest of all mysteries, And the saddest, silence is. Nameless, noteless, clay with clay Mingles slowly day by day; But somewhere, for good or ill, That dark soul is living still; Somewhere yet that atom's force Moves the light-poised universe. Strange that on his burial-sod Harebells bloom, and golden-rod, While the soul's dark horoscope Holds no starry sign of hope! Is the Unseen with sight at odds? Nature's pity more than God's? Thus I mused by Melvin's side, While the summer eventide Made the woods and inland sea And the mountains mystery; And the hush of earth and air Seemed the pause before a prayer,-- Prayer for him, for all who rest, Mother Earth, upon thy breast,-- Lapped on Christian turf, or hid In rock-cave or pyramid All who sleep, as all who live, Well may need the prayer, "Forgive!" Desert-smothered caravan, Knee-deep dust that once was man, Battle-trenches ghastly piled, Ocean-floors with white bones tiled, Crowded tomb and mounded sod, Dumbly crave that prayer to God. Oh, the generations old Over whom no church-bells tolled, Christless, lifting up blind eyes To the silence of the skies! For the innumerable dead Is my soul disquieted. Where be now these silent hosts? Where the camping-ground of ghosts? Where the spectral conscripts led To the white tents of the dead? What strange shore or chartless sea Holds the awful mystery? Then the warm sky stooped to make Double sunset in the lake; While above I saw with it, Range on range, the mountains lit; And the calm and splendor stole Like an answer to my soul. Hear'st thou, O of little faith, What to thee the mountain saith, What is whispered by the trees? Cast on God thy care for these; Trust Him, if thy sight be dim Doubt for them is doubt of Him. "Blind must be their close-shut eyes Where like night the sunshine lies, Fiery-linked the self-forged chain Binding ever sin to pain, Strong their prison-house of will, But without He waiteth still. "Not with hatred's undertow Doth the Love Eternal flow; Every chain that spirits wear Crumbles in the breath of prayer; And the penitent's desire Opens every gate of fire. "Still Thy love, O Christ arisen, Yearns to reach these souls in prison! Through all depths of sin and loss Drops the plummet of Thy cross! Never yet abyss was found Deeper than that cross could sound!" Therefore well may Nature keep Equal faith with all who sleep, Set her watch of hills around Christian grave and heathen mound, And to cairn and kirkyard send Summer's flowery dividend. Keep, O pleasant Melvin stream, Thy sweet laugh in shade and gleam On the Indian's grassy tomb Swing, O flowers, your bells of bloom! Deep below, as high above, Sweeps the circle of God's love. 1865 . . . . . He paused and questioned with his eye The hearers' verdict on his song. A low voice asked: Is 't well to pry Into the secrets which belong Only to God?--The life to be Is still the unguessed mystery Unsealed, unpierced the cloudy walls remain, We beat with dream and wish the soundless doors in vain. "But faith beyond our sight may go." He said: "The gracious Fatherhood Can only know above, below, Eternal purposes of good. From our free heritage of will, The bitter springs of pain and ill Flow only in all worlds. The perfect day Of God is shadowless, and love is love alway." "I know," she said, "the letter kills; That on our arid fields of strife And heat of clashing texts distils The clew of spirit and of life. But, searching still the written Word, I fain would find, Thus saith the Lord, A voucher for the hope I also feel That sin can give no wound beyond love's power to heal." "Pray," said the Man of Books, "give o'er A theme too vast for time and place. Go on, Sir Poet, ride once more Your hobby at his old free pace. But let him keep, with step discreet, The solid earth beneath his feet. In the great mystery which around us lies, The wisest is a fool, the fool Heaven-helped is wise." The Traveller said: "If songs have creeds, Their choice of them let singers make; But Art no other sanction needs Than beauty for its own fair sake. It grinds not in the mill of use, Nor asks for leave, nor begs excuse; It makes the flexile laws it deigns to own, And gives its atmosphere its color and its tone. "Confess, old friend, your austere school Has left your fancy little chance; You square to reason's rigid rule The flowing outlines of romance. With conscience keen from exercise, And chronic fear of compromise, You check the free play of your rhymes, to clap A moral underneath, and spring it like a trap." The sweet voice answered: "Better so Than bolder flights that know no check; Better to use the bit, than throw The reins all loose on fancy's neck. The liberal range of Art should be The breadth of Christian liberty, Restrained alone by challenge and alarm Where its charmed footsteps tread the border land of harm. "Beyond the poet's sweet dream lives The eternal epic of the man. He wisest is who only gives, True to himself, the best he can; Who, drifting in the winds of praise, The inward monitor obeys; And, with the boldness that confesses fear, Takes in the crowded sail, and lets his conscience steer. "Thanks for the fitting word he speaks, Nor less for doubtful word unspoken; For the false model that he breaks, As for the moulded grace unbroken; For what is missed and what remains, For losses which are truest gains, For reverence conscious of the Eternal eye, And truth too fair to need the garnish of a lie." Laughing, the Critic bowed. "I yield The point without another word; Who ever yet a case appealed Where beauty's judgment had been heard? And you, my good friend, owe to me Your warmest thanks for such a plea, As true withal as sweet. For my offence Of cavil, let her words be ample recompense." Across the sea one lighthouse star, With crimson ray that came and went, Revolving on its tower afar, Looked through the doorway of the tent. While outward, over sand-slopes wet, The lamp flashed down its yellow jet On the long wash of waves, with red and green Tangles of weltering weed through the white foam-wreaths seen. "Sing while we may,--another day May bring enough of sorrow;'--thus Our Traveller in his own sweet lay, His Crimean camp-song, hints to us," The lady said. "So let it be; Sing us a song," exclaimed all three. She smiled: "I can but marvel at your choice To hear our poet's words through my poor borrowed voice." . . . . . Her window opens to the bay, On glistening light or misty gray, And there at dawn and set of day In prayer she kneels. "Dear Lord!" she saith, "to many a borne From wind and wave the wanderers come; I only see the tossing foam Of stranger keels. "Blown out and in by summer gales, The stately ships, with crowded sails, And sailors leaning o'er their rails, Before me glide; They come, they go, but nevermore, Spice-laden from the Indian shore, I see his swift-winged Isidore The waves divide. "O Thou! with whom the night is day And one the near and far away, Look out on yon gray waste, and say Where lingers he. Alive, perchance, on some lone beach Or thirsty isle beyond the reach Of man, he hears the mocking speech Of wind and sea. "O dread and cruel deep, reveal The secret which thy waves conceal, And, ye wild sea-birds, hither wheel And tell your tale. Let winds that tossed his raven hair A message from my lost one bear,-- Some thought of me, a last fond prayer Or dying wail! "Come, with your dreariest truth shut out The fears that haunt me round about; O God! I cannot bear this doubt That stifles breath. The worst is better than the dread; Give me but leave to mourn my dead Asleep in trust and hope, instead Of life in death!" It might have been the evening breeze That whispered in the garden trees, It might have been the sound of seas That rose and fell; But, with her heart, if not her ear, The old loved voice she seemed to hear "I wait to meet thee: be of cheer, For all is well!" 1865 . . . . . The sweet voice into silence went, A silence which was almost pain As through it rolled the long lament, The cadence of the mournful main. Glancing his written pages o'er, The Reader tried his part once more; Leaving the land of hackmatack and pine For Tuscan valleys glad with olive and with vine. THE BROTHER OF MERCY. Piero Luca, known of all the town As the gray porter by the Pitti wall Where the noon shadows of the gardens fall, Sick and in dolor, waited to lay down His last sad burden, and beside his mat The barefoot monk of La Certosa sat. Unseen, in square and blossoming garden drifted, Soft sunset lights through green Val d'Arno sifted; Unheard, below the living shuttles shifted Backward and forth, and wove, in love or strife, In mirth or pain, the mottled web of life But when at last came upward from the street Tinkle of bell and tread of measured feet, The sick man started, strove to rise in vain, Sinking back heavily with a moan of pain. And the monk said, "'T is but the Brotherhood Of Mercy going on some errand good Their black masks by the palace-wall I see." Piero answered faintly, "Woe is me! This day for the first time in forty years In vain the bell hath sounded in my ears, Calling me with my brethren of the mask, Beggar and prince alike, to some new task Of love or pity,--haply from the street To bear a wretch plague-stricken, or, with feet Hushed to the quickened ear and feverish brain, To tread the crowded lazaretto's floors, Down the long twilight of the corridors, Midst tossing arms and faces full of pain. I loved the work: it was its own reward. I never counted on it to offset My sins, which are many, or make less my debt To the free grace and mercy of our Lord; But somehow, father, it has come to be In these long years so much a part of me, I should not know myself, if lacking it, But with the work the worker too would die, And in my place some other self would sit Joyful or sad,--what matters, if not I? And now all's over. Woe is me!"--"My son," The monk said soothingly, "thy work is done; And no more as a servant, but the guest Of God thou enterest thy eternal rest. No toil, no tears, no sorrow for the lost, Shall mar thy perfect bliss. Thou shalt sit down Clad in white robes, and wear a golden crown Forever and forever."--Piero tossed On his sick-pillow: "Miserable me! I am too poor for such grand company; The crown would be too heavy for this gray Old head; and God forgive me if I say It would be hard to sit there night and day, Like an image in the Tribune, doing naught With these hard hands, that all my life have wrought, Not for bread only, but for pity's sake. I'm dull at prayers: I could not keep awake, Counting my beads. Mine's but a crazy head, Scarce worth the saving, if all else be dead. And if one goes to heaven without a heart, God knows he leaves behind his better part. I love my fellow-men: the worst I know I would do good to. Will death change me so That I shall sit among the lazy saints, Turning a deaf ear to the sore complaints Of souls that suffer? Why, I never yet Left a poor dog in the strada hard beset, Or ass o'erladen! Must I rate man less Than dog or ass, in holy selfishness? Methinks (Lord, pardon, if the thought be sin!) The world of pain were better, if therein One's heart might still be human, and desires Of natural pity drop upon its fires Some cooling tears." Thereat the pale monk crossed His brow, and, muttering, "Madman! thou art lost!" Took up his pyx and fled; and, left alone, The sick man closed his eyes with a great groan That sank into a prayer, "Thy will be done!" Then was he made aware, by soul or ear, Of somewhat pure and holy bending o'er him, And of a voice like that of her who bore him, Tender and most compassionate: "Never fear! For heaven is love, as God himself is love; Thy work below shall be thy work above." And when he looked, lo! in the stern monk's place He saw the shining of an angel's face! 1864. . . . . . The Traveller broke the pause. "I've seen The Brothers down the long street steal, Black, silent, masked, the crowd between, And felt to doff my hat and kneel With heart, if not with knee, in prayer, For blessings on their pious care." Reader wiped his glasses: "Friends of mine, I'll try our home-brewed next, instead of foreign wine." THE CHANGELING. For the fairest maid in Hampton They needed not to search, Who saw young Anna Favor Come walking into church, Or bringing from the meadows, At set of harvest-day, The frolic of the blackbirds, The sweetness of the hay. Now the weariest of all mothers, The saddest two-years bride, She scowls in the face of her husband, And spurns her child aside. "Rake out the red coals, goodman,-- For there the child shall lie, Till the black witch comes to fetch her And both up chimney fly. "It's never my own little daughter, It's never my own," she said; "The witches have stolen my Anna, And left me an imp instead. "Oh, fair and sweet was my baby, Blue eyes, and hair of gold; But this is ugly and wrinkled, Cross, and cunning, and old. "I hate the touch of her fingers, I hate the feel of her skin; It's not the milk from my bosom, But my blood, that she sucks in. "My face grows sharp with the torment; Look! my arms are skin and bone! Rake open the red coals, goodman, And the witch shall have her own. "She 'll come when she hears it crying, In the shape of an owl or bat, And she'll bring us our darling Anna In place of her screeching brat." Then the goodman, Ezra Dalton, Laid his hand upon her head "Thy sorrow is great, O woman! I sorrow with thee," he said. "The paths to trouble are many, And never but one sure way Leads out to the light beyond it My poor wife, let us pray." Then he said to the great All-Father, "Thy daughter is weak and blind; Let her sight come back, and clothe her Once more in her right mind. "Lead her out of this evil shadow, Out of these fancies wild; Let the holy love of the mother Turn again to her child. "Make her lips like the lips of Mary Kissing her blessed Son; Let her hands, like the hands of Jesus, Rest on her little one. "Comfort the soul of thy handmaid, Open her prison-door, And thine shall be all the glory And praise forevermore." Then into the face of its mother The baby looked up and smiled; And the cloud of her soul was lifted, And she knew her little child. A beam of the slant west sunshine Made the wan face almost fair, Lit the blue eyes' patient wonder, And the rings of pale gold hair. She kissed it on lip and forehead, She kissed it on cheek and chin, And she bared her snow-white bosom To the lips so pale and thin. Oh, fair on her bridal morning Was the maid who blushed and smiled, But fairer to Ezra Dalton Looked the mother of his child. With more than a lover's fondness He stooped to her worn young face, And the nursing child and the mother He folded in one embrace. "Blessed be God!" he murmured. "Blessed be God!" she said; "For I see, who once was blinded,-- I live, who once was dead. "Now mount and ride, my goodman, As thou lovest thy own soul Woe's me, if my wicked fancies Be the death of Goody Cole!" His horse he saddled and bridled, And into the night rode he, Now through the great black woodland, Now by the white-beached sea. He rode through the silent clearings, He came to the ferry wide, And thrice he called to the boatman Asleep on the other side. He set his horse to the river, He swam to Newbury town, And he called up Justice Sewall In his nightcap and his gown. And the grave and worshipful justice (Upon whose soul be peace!) Set his name to the jailer's warrant For Goodwife Cole's release. Then through the night the hoof-beats Went sounding like a flail; And Goody Cole at cockcrow Came forth from Ipswich jail. 1865 . . . . . "Here is a rhyme: I hardly dare To venture on its theme worn out; What seems so sweet by Doon and Ayr Sounds simply silly hereabout; And pipes by lips Arcadian blown Are only tin horns at our own. Yet still the muse of pastoral walks with us, While Hosea Biglow sings, our new Theocritus." THE MAIDS OF ATTITASH. Attitash, an Indian word signifying "huckleberry," is the name of a large and beautiful lake in the northern part of Amesbury. In sky and wave the white clouds swam, And the blue hills of Nottingham Through gaps of leafy green Across the lake were seen, When, in the shadow of the ash That dreams its dream in Attitash, In the warm summer weather, Two maidens sat together. They sat and watched in idle mood The gleam and shade of lake and wood; The beach the keen light smote, The white sail of a boat; Swan flocks of lilies shoreward lying, In sweetness, not in music, dying; Hardback, and virgin's-bower, And white-spiked clethra-flower. With careless ears they heard the plash And breezy wash of Attitash, The wood-bird's plaintive cry, The locust's sharp reply. And teased the while, with playful band, The shaggy dog of Newfoundland, Whose uncouth frolic spilled Their baskets berry-filled. Then one, the beauty of whose eyes Was evermore a great surprise, Tossed back her queenly head, And, lightly laughing, said: "No bridegroom's hand be mine to hold That is not lined with yellow gold; I tread no cottage-floor; I own no lover poor. "My love must come on silken wings, With bridal lights of diamond rings, Not foul with kitchen smirch, With tallow-dip for torch." The other, on whose modest head Was lesser dower of beauty shed, With look for home-hearths meet, And voice exceeding sweet, Answered, "We will not rivals be; Take thou the gold, leave love to me; Mine be the cottage small, And thine the rich man's hall. "I know, indeed, that wealth is good; But lowly roof and simple food, With love that hath no doubt, Are more than gold without." Hard by a farmer hale and young His cradle in the rye-field swung, Tracking the yellow plain With windrows of ripe grain. And still, whene'er he paused to whet His scythe, the sidelong glance he met Of large dark eyes, where strove False pride and secret love. Be strong, young mower of the-grain; That love shall overmatch disdain, Its instincts soon or late The heart shall vindicate. In blouse of gray, with fishing-rod, Half screened by leaves, a stranger trod The margin of the pond, Watching the group beyond. The supreme hours unnoted come; Unfelt the turning tides of doom; And so the maids laughed on, Nor dreamed what Fate had done,-- Nor knew the step was Destiny's That rustled in the birchen trees, As, with their lives forecast, Fisher and mower passed. Erelong by lake and rivulet side The summer roses paled and died, And Autumn's fingers shed The maple's leaves of red. Through the long gold-hazed afternoon, Alone, but for the diving loon, The partridge in the brake, The black duck on the lake, Beneath the shadow of the ash Sat man and maid by Attitash; And earth and air made room For human hearts to bloom. Soft spread the carpets of the sod, And scarlet-oak and golden-rod With blushes and with smiles Lit up the forest aisles. The mellow light the lake aslant, The pebbled margin's ripple-chant Attempered and low-toned, The tender mystery owned. And through the dream the lovers dreamed Sweet sounds stole in and soft lights streamed; The sunshine seemed to bless, The air was a caress. Not she who lightly laughed is there, With scornful toss of midnight hair, Her dark, disdainful eyes, And proud lip worldly-wise. Her haughty vow is still unsaid, But all she dreamed and coveted Wears, half to her surprise, The youthful farmer's guise! With more than all her old-time pride She walks the rye-field at his side, Careless of cot or hall, Since love transfigures all. Rich beyond dreams, the vantage-ground Of life is gained; her hands have found The talisman of old That changes all to gold. While she who could for love dispense With all its glittering accidents, And trust her heart alone, Finds love and gold her own. What wealth can buy or art can build Awaits her; but her cup is filled Even now unto the brim; Her world is love and him! 1866. . . . . . The while he heard, the Book-man drew A length of make-believing face, With smothered mischief laughing through "Why, you shall sit in Ramsay's place, And, with his Gentle Shepherd, keep On Yankee hills immortal sheep, While love-lorn swains and maids the seas beyond Hold dreamy tryst around your huckleberry-pond." The Traveller laughed: "Sir Galahad Singing of love the Trouvere's lay! How should he know the blindfold lad From one of Vulcan's forge-boys?"--"Nay, He better sees who stands outside Than they who in procession ride," The Reader answered: "selectmen and squire Miss, while they make, the show that wayside folks admire. "Here is a wild tale of the North, Our travelled friend will own as one Fit for a Norland Christmas hearth And lips of Christian Andersen. They tell it in the valleys green Of the fair island he has seen, Low lying off the pleasant Swedish shore, Washed by the Baltic Sea, and watched by Elsinore." KALLUNDBORG CHURCH "Tie stille, barn min Imorgen kommer Fin, Fa'er din, Og gi'er dig Esbern Snares nine og hjerte at lege med!" Zealand Rhyme. "Build at Kallundborg by the sea A church as stately as church may be, And there shalt thou wed my daughter fair," Said the Lord of Nesvek to Esbern Snare. And the Baron laughed. But Esbern said, "Though I lose my soul, I will Helva wed!" And off he strode, in his pride of will, To the Troll who dwelt in Ulshoi hill. "Build, O Troll, a church for me At Kallundborg by the mighty sea; Build it stately, and build it fair, Build it quickly," said Esbern Snare. But the sly Dwarf said, "No work is wrought By Trolls of the Hills, O man, for naught. What wilt thou give for thy church so fair?" "Set thy own price," quoth Esbern Snare. "When Kallundborg church is builded well, Than must the name of its builder tell, Or thy heart and thy eyes must be my boon." "Build," said Esbern, "and build it soon." By night and by day the Troll wrought on; He hewed the timbers, he piled the stone; But day by day, as the walls rose fair, Darker and sadder grew Esbern Snare. He listened by night, he watched by day, He sought and thought, but he dared not pray; In vain he called on the Elle-maids shy, And the Neck and the Nis gave no reply. Of his evil bargain far and wide A rumor ran through the country-side; And Helva of Nesvek, young and fair, Prayed for the soul of Esbern Snare. And now the church was wellnigh done; One pillar it lacked, and one alone; And the grim Troll muttered, "Fool thou art To-morrow gives me thy eyes and heart!" By Kallundborg in black despair, Through wood and meadow, walked Esbern Snare, Till, worn and weary, the strong man sank Under the birches on Ulshoi bank. At, his last day's work he heard the Troll Hammer and delve in the quarry's hole; Before him the church stood large and fair "I have builded my tomb," said Esbern Snare. And he closed his eyes the sight to hide, When he heard a light step at his side "O Esbern Snare!" a sweet voice said, "Would I might die now in thy stead!" With a grasp by love and by fear made strong, He held her fast, and he held her long; With the beating heart of a bird afeard, She hid her face in his flame-red beard. "O love!" he cried, "let me look to-day In thine eyes ere mine are plucked away; Let me hold thee close, let me feel thy heart Ere mine by the Troll is torn apart! "I sinned, O Helva, for love of thee! Pray that the Lord Christ pardon me!" But fast as she prayed, and faster still, Hammered the Troll in Ulshoi hill. He knew, as he wrought, that a loving heart Was somehow baffling his evil art; For more than spell of Elf or Troll Is a maiden's prayer for her lover's soul. And Esbern listened, and caught the sound Of a Troll-wife singing underground "To-morrow comes Fine, father thine Lie still and hush thee, baby mine! "Lie still, my darling! next sunrise Thou'lt play with Esbern Snare's heart and eyes!" "Ho! ho!" quoth Esbern, "is that your game? Thanks to the Troll-wife, I know his name!" The Troll he heard him, and hurried on To Kallundborg church with the lacking stone. "Too late, Gaffer Fine!" cried Esbern Snare; And Troll and pillar vanished in air! That night the harvesters heard the sound Of a woman sobbing underground, And the voice of the Hill-Troll loud with blame Of the careless singer who told his name. Of the Troll of the Church they sing the rune By the Northern Sea in the harvest moon; And the fishers of Zealand hear him still Scolding his wife in Ulshoi hill. And seaward over its groves of birch Still looks the tower of Kallundborg church, Where, first at its altar, a wedded pair, Stood Helva of Nesvek and Esbern Snare! 1865. . . . . . "What," asked the Traveller, "would our sires, The old Norse story-tellers, say Of sun-graved pictures, ocean wires, And smoking steamboats of to-day? And this, O lady, by your leave, Recalls your song of yester eve: Pray, let us have that Cable-hymn once more." "Hear, hear!" the Book-man cried, "the lady has the floor. "These noisy waves below perhaps To such a strain will lend their ear, With softer voice and lighter lapse Come stealing up the sands to hear, And what they once refused to do For old King Knut accord to you. Nay, even the fishes shall your listeners be, As once, the legend runs, they heard St. Anthony." THE CABLE HYMN. O lonely bay of Trinity, O dreary shores, give ear! Lean down unto the white-lipped sea The voice of God to hear! From world to world His couriers fly, Thought-winged and shod with fire; The angel of His stormy sky Rides down the sunken wire. What saith the herald of the Lord? "The world's long strife is done; Close wedded by that mystic cord, Its continents are one. "And one in heart, as one in blood, Shall all her peoples be; The hands of human brotherhood Are clasped beneath the sea. "Through Orient seas, o'er Afric's plain And Asian mountains borne, The vigor of the Northern brain Shall nerve the world outworn. "From clime to clime, from shore to shore, Shall thrill the magic thread; The new Prometheus steals once more The fire that wakes the dead." Throb on, strong pulse of thunder! beat From answering beach to beach; Fuse nations in thy kindly heat, And melt the chains of each! Wild terror of the sky above, Glide tamed and dumb below! Bear gently, Ocean's carrier-dove, Thy errands to and fro. Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord, Beneath the deep so far, The bridal robe of earth's accord, The funeral shroud of war! For lo! the fall of Ocean's wall Space mocked and time outrun; And round the world the thought of all Is as the thought of one! The poles unite, the zones agree, The tongues of striving cease; As on the Sea of Galilee The Christ is whispering, Peace! 1858. . . . . . "Glad prophecy! to this at last," The Reader said, "shall all things come. Forgotten be the bugle's blast, And battle-music of the drum. "A little while the world may run Its old mad way, with needle-gun And iron-clad, but truth, at last, shall reign The cradle-song of Christ was never sung in vain!" Shifting his scattered papers, "Here," He said, as died the faint applause, "Is something that I found last year Down on the island known as Orr's. I had it from a fair-haired girl Who, oddly, bore the name of Pearl, (As if by some droll freak of circumstance,) Classic, or wellnigh so, in Harriet Stowe's romance." THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPSWELL. What flecks the outer gray beyond The sundown's golden trail? The white flash of a sea-bird's wing, Or gleam of slanting sail? Let young eyes watch from Neck and Point, And sea-worn elders pray,-- The ghost of what was once a ship Is sailing up the bay. From gray sea-fog, from icy drift, From peril and from pain, The home-bound fisher greets thy lights, O hundred-harbored Maine! But many a keel shall seaward turn, And many a sail outstand, When, tall and white, the Dead Ship looms Against the dusk of land. She rounds the headland's bristling pines; She threads the isle-set bay; No spur of breeze can speed her on, Nor ebb of tide delay. Old men still walk the Isle of Orr Who tell her date and name, Old shipwrights sit in Freeport yards Who hewed her oaken frame. What weary doom of baffled quest, Thou sad sea-ghost, is thine? What makes thee in the haunts of home A wonder and a sign? No foot is on thy silent deck, Upon thy helm no hand; No ripple hath the soundless wind That smites thee from the land! For never comes the ship to port, Howe'er the breeze may be; Just when she nears the waiting shore She drifts again to sea. No tack of sail, nor turn of helm, Nor sheer of veering side; Stern-fore she drives to sea and night, Against the wind and tide. In vain o'er Harpswell Neck the star Of evening guides her in; In vain for her the lamps are lit Within thy tower, Seguin! In vain the harbor-boat shall hail, In vain the pilot call; No hand shall reef her spectral sail, Or let her anchor fall. Shake, brown old wives, with dreary joy, Your gray-head hints of ill; And, over sick-beds whispering low, Your prophecies fulfil. Some home amid yon birchen trees Shall drape its door with woe; And slowly where the Dead Ship sails, The burial boat shall row! From Wolf Neck and from Flying Point, From island and from main, From sheltered cove and tided creek, Shall glide the funeral train. The dead-boat with the bearers four, The mourners at her stern,-- And one shall go the silent way Who shall no more return! And men shall sigh, and women weep, Whose dear ones pale and pine, And sadly over sunset seas Await the ghostly sign. They know not that its sails are filled By pity's tender breath, Nor see the Angel at the helm Who steers the Ship of Death! 1866. . . . . . "Chill as a down-east breeze should be," The Book-man said. "A ghostly touch The legend has. I'm glad to see Your flying Yankee beat the Dutch." "Well, here is something of the sort Which one midsummer day I caught In Narragansett Bay, for lack of fish." "We wait," the Traveller said; "serve hot or cold your dish." THE PALATINE. Block Island in Long Island Sound, called by the Indians Manisees, the isle of the little god, was the scene of a tragic incident a hundred years or more ago, when _The Palatine_, an emigrant ship bound for Philadelphia, driven off its course, came upon the coast at this point. A mutiny on board, followed by an inhuman desertion on the part of the crew, had brought the unhappy passengers to the verge of starvation and madness. Tradition says that wreckers on shore, after rescuing all but one of the survivors, set fire to the vessel, which was driven out to sea before a gale which had sprung up. Every twelvemonth, according to the same tradition, the spectacle of a ship on fire is visible to the inhabitants of the island. Leagues north, as fly the gull and auk, Point Judith watches with eye of hawk; Leagues south, thy beacon flames, Montauk! Lonely and wind-shorn, wood-forsaken, With never a tree for Spring to waken, For tryst of lovers or farewells taken, Circled by waters that never freeze, Beaten by billow and swept by breeze, Lieth the island of Manisees, Set at the mouth of the Sound to hold The coast lights up on its turret old, Yellow with moss and sea-fog mould. Dreary the land when gust and sleet At its doors and windows howl and beat, And Winter laughs at its fires of peat! But in summer time, when pool and pond, Held in the laps of valleys fond, Are blue as the glimpses of sea beyond; When the hills are sweet with the brier-rose, And, hid in the warm, soft dells, unclose Flowers the mainland rarely knows; When boats to their morning fishing go, And, held to the wind and slanting low, Whitening and darkening the small sails show,-- Then is that lonely island fair; And the pale health-seeker findeth there The wine of life in its pleasant air. No greener valleys the sun invite, On smoother beaches no sea-birds light, No blue waves shatter to foam more white! There, circling ever their narrow range, Quaint tradition and legend strange Live on unchallenged, and know no change. Old wives spinning their webs of tow, Or rocking weirdly to and fro In and out of the peat's dull glow, And old men mending their nets of twine, Talk together of dream and sign, Talk of the lost ship Palatine,-- The ship that, a hundred years before, Freighted deep with its goodly store, In the gales of the equinox went ashore. The eager islanders one by one Counted the shots of her signal gun, And heard the crash when she drove right on! Into the teeth of death she sped (May God forgive the hands that fed The false lights over the rocky Head!) O men and brothers! what sights were there! White upturned faces, hands stretched in prayer! Where waves had pity, could ye not spare? Down swooped the wreckers, like birds of prey Tearing the heart of the ship away, And the dead had never a word to say. And then, with ghastly shimmer and shine Over the rocks and the seething brine, They burned the wreck of the Palatine. In their cruel hearts, as they homeward sped, "The sea and the rocks are dumb," they said "There 'll be no reckoning with the dead." But the year went round, and when once more Along their foam-white curves of shore They heard the line-storm rave and roar, Behold! again, with shimmer and shine, Over the rocks and the seething brine, The flaming wreck of the Palatine! So, haply in fitter words than these, Mending their nets on their patient knees They tell the legend of Manisees. Nor looks nor tones a doubt betray; "It is known to us all," they quietly say; "We too have seen it in our day." Is there, then, no death for a word once spoken? Was never a deed but left its token Written on tables never broken? Do the elements subtle reflections give? Do pictures of all the ages live On Nature's infinite negative, Which, half in sport, in malice half, She shows at times, with shudder or laugh, Phantom and shadow in photograph? For still, on many a moonless night, From Kingston Head and from Montauk light The spectre kindles and burns in sight. Now low and dim, now clear and higher, Leaps up the terrible Ghost of Fire, Then, slowly sinking, the flames expire. And the wise Sound skippers, though skies be fine, Reef their sails when they see the sign Of the blazing wreck of the Palatine! 1867. . . . . . "A fitter tale to scream than sing," The Book-man said. "Well, fancy, then," The Reader answered, "on the wing The sea-birds shriek it, not for men, But in the ear of wave and breeze!" The Traveller mused: "Your Manisees Is fairy-land: off Narragansett shore Who ever saw the isle or heard its name before? "'T is some strange land of Flyaway, Whose dreamy shore the ship beguiles, St. Brandan's in its sea-mist gray, Or sunset loom of Fortunate Isles!" "No ghost, but solid turf and rock Is the good island known as Block," The Reader said. "For beauty and for ease I chose its Indian name, soft-flowing Manisees! "But let it pass; here is a bit Of unrhymed story, with a hint Of the old preaching mood in it, The sort of sidelong moral squint Our friend objects to, which has grown, I fear, a habit of my own. 'Twas written when the Asian plague drew near, And the land held its breath and paled with sudden fear." ABRAHAM DAVENPORT The famous Dark Day of New England, May 19, 1780, was a physical puzzle for many years to our ancestors, but its occurrence brought something more than philosophical speculation into the winds of those who passed through it. The incident of Colonel Abraham Davenport's sturdy protest is a matter of history. In the old days (a custom laid aside With breeches and cocked hats) the people sent Their wisest men to make the public laws. And so, from a brown homestead, where the Sound Drinks the small tribute of the Mianas, Waved over by the woods of Rippowams, And hallowed by pure lives and tranquil deaths, Stamford sent up to the councils of the State Wisdom and grace in Abraham Davenport. 'T was on a May-day of the far old year Seventeen hundred eighty, that there fell Over the bloom and sweet life of the Spring, Over the fresh earth and the heaven of noon, A horror of great darkness, like the night In day of which the Norland sagas tell,-- The Twilight of the Gods. The low-hung sky Was black with ominous clouds, save where its rim Was fringed with a dull glow, like that which climbs The crater's sides from the red hell below. Birds ceased to sing, and all the barn-yard fowls Roosted; the cattle at the pasture bars Lowed, and looked homeward; bats on leathern wings Flitted abroad; the sounds of labor died; Men prayed, and women wept; all ears grew sharp To hear the doom-blast of the trumpet shatter The black sky, that the dreadful face of Christ Might look from the rent clouds, not as he looked A loving guest at Bethany, but stern As Justice and inexorable Law. Meanwhile in the old State House, dim as ghosts, Sat the lawgivers of Connecticut, Trembling beneath their legislative robes. "It is the Lord's Great Day! Let us adjourn," Some said; and then, as if with one accord, All eyes were turned to Abraham Davenport. He rose, slow cleaving with his steady voice The intolerable hush. "This well may be The Day of Judgment which the world awaits; But be it so or not, I only know My present duty, and my Lord's command To occupy till He come. So at the post Where He hath set me in His providence, I choose, for one, to meet Him face to face,-- No faithless servant frightened from my task, But ready when the Lord of the harvest calls; And therefore, with all reverence, I would say, Let God do His work, we will see to ours. Bring in the candles." And they brought them in. Then by the flaring lights the Speaker read, Albeit with husky voice and shaking hands, An act to amend an act to regulate The shad and alewive fisheries. Whereupon Wisely and well spake Abraham Davenport, Straight to the question, with no figures of speech Save the ten Arab signs, yet not without The shrewd dry humor natural to the man His awe-struck colleagues listening all the while, Between the pauses of his argument, To hear the thunder of the wrath of God Break from the hollow trumpet of the cloud. And there he stands in memory to this day, Erect, self-poised, a rugged face, half seen Against the background of unnatural dark, A witness to the ages as they pass, That simple duty hath no place for fear. 1866. . . . . . He ceased: just then the ocean seemed To lift a half-faced moon in sight; And, shore-ward, o'er the waters gleamed, From crest to crest, a line of light, Such as of old, with solemn awe, The fishers by Gennesaret saw, When dry-shod o'er it walked the Son of God, Tracking the waves with light where'er his sandals trod. Silently for a space each eye Upon that sudden glory turned Cool from the land the breeze blew by, The tent-ropes flapped, the long beach churned Its waves to foam; on either hand Stretched, far as sight, the hills of sand; With bays of marsh, and capes of bush and tree, The wood's black shore-line loomed beyond the meadowy sea. The lady rose to leave. "One song, Or hymn," they urged, "before we part." And she, with lips to which belong Sweet intuitions of all art, Gave to the winds of night a strain Which they who heard would hear again; And to her voice the solemn ocean lent, Touching its harp of sand, a deep accompaniment. THE WORSHIP OF NATURE. The harp at Nature's advent strung Has never ceased to play; The song the stars of morning sung Has never died away. And prayer is made, and praise is given, By all things near and far; The ocean looketh up to heaven, And mirrors every star. Its waves are kneeling on the strand, As kneels the human knee, Their white locks bowing to the sand, The priesthood of the sea' They pour their glittering treasures forth, Their gifts of pearl they bring, And all the listening hills of earth Take up the song they sing. The green earth sends her incense up From many a mountain shrine; From folded leaf and dewy cup She pours her sacred wine. The mists above the morning rills Rise white as wings of prayer; The altar-curtains of the hills Are sunset's purple air. The winds with hymns of praise are loud, Or low with sobs of pain,-- The thunder-organ of the cloud, The dropping tears of rain. With drooping head and branches crossed The twilight forest grieves, Or speaks with tongues of Pentecost From all its sunlit leaves. The blue sky is the temple's arch, Its transept earth and air, The music of its starry march The chorus of a prayer. So Nature keeps the reverent frame With which her years began, And all her signs and voices shame The prayerless heart of man. . . . . . The singer ceased. The moon's white rays Fell on the rapt, still face of her. "_Allah il Allah_! He hath praise From all things," said the Traveller. "Oft from the desert's silent nights, And mountain hymns of sunset lights, My heart has felt rebuke, as in his tent The Moslem's prayer has shamed my Christian knee unbent." He paused, and lo! far, faint, and slow The bells in Newbury's steeples tolled The twelve dead hours; the lamp burned low; The singer sought her canvas fold. One sadly said, "At break of day We strike our tent and go our way." But one made answer cheerily, "Never fear, We'll pitch this tent of ours in type another year." AT SUNDOWN, TO E. C. S. Poet and friend of poets, if thy glass Detects no flower in winter's tuft of grass, Let this slight token of the debt I owe Outlive for thee December's frozen day, And, like the arbutus budding under snow, Take bloom and fragrance from some morn of May When he who gives it shall have gone the way Where faith shall see and reverent trust shall know. THE CHRISTMAS OF 1888. Low in the east, against a white, cold dawn, The black-lined silhouette of the woods was drawn, And on a wintry waste Of frosted streams and hillsides bare and brown, Through thin cloud-films, a pallid ghost looked down, The waning moon half-faced! In that pale sky and sere, snow-waiting earth, What sign was there of the immortal birth? What herald of the One? Lo! swift as thought the heavenly radiance came, A rose-red splendor swept the sky like flame, Up rolled the round, bright sun! And all was changed. From a transfigured world The moon's ghost fled, the smoke of home-hearths curled Up the still air unblown. In Orient warmth and brightness, did that morn O'er Nain and Nazareth, when the Christ was born, Break fairer than our own? The morning's promise noon and eve fulfilled In warm, soft sky and landscape hazy-hilled And sunset fair as they; A sweet reminder of His holiest time, A summer-miracle in our winter clime, God gave a perfect day. The near was blended with the old and far, And Bethlehem's hillside and the Magi's star Seemed here, as there and then,-- Our homestead pine-tree was the Syrian palm, Our heart's desire the angels' midnight psalm, Peace, and good-will to men! THE VOW OF WASHINGTON. Read in New York, April 30, 1889, at the Centennial Celebration of the Inauguration of George Washington as the first President of the United States. The sword was sheathed: in April's sun Lay green the fields by Freedom won; And severed sections, weary of debates, Joined hands at last and were United States. O City sitting by the Sea How proud the day that dawned on thee, When the new era, long desired, began, And, in its need, the hour had found the man! One thought the cannon salvos spoke, The resonant bell-tower's vibrant stroke, The voiceful streets, the plaudit-echoing halls, And prayer and hymn borne heavenward from St. Paul's! How felt the land in every part The strong throb of a nation's heart, As its great leader gave, with reverent awe, His pledge to Union, Liberty, and Law. That pledge the heavens above him heard, That vow the sleep of centuries stirred; In world-wide wonder listening peoples bent Their gaze on Freedom's great experiment. Could it succeed? Of honor sold And hopes deceived all history told. Above the wrecks that strewed the mournful past, Was the long dream of ages true at last? Thank God! the people's choice was just, The one man equal to his trust, Wise beyond lore, and without weakness good, Calm in the strength of flawless rectitude. His rule of justice, order, peace, Made possible the world's release; Taught prince and serf that power is but a trust, And rule, alone, which serves the ruled, is just; That Freedom generous is, but strong In hate of fraud and selfish wrong, Pretence that turns her holy truths to lies, And lawless license masking in her guise. Land of his love! with one glad voice Let thy great sisterhood rejoice; A century's suns o'er thee have risen and set, And, God be praised, we are one nation yet. And still we trust the years to be Shall prove his hope was destiny, Leaving our flag, with all its added stars, Unrent by faction and unstained by wars. Lo! where with patient toil he nursed And trained the new-set plant at first, The widening branches of a stately tree Stretch from the sunrise to the sunset sea. And in its broad and sheltering shade, Sitting with none to make afraid, Were we now silent, through each mighty limb, The winds of heaven would sing the praise of him. Our first and best!--his ashes lie Beneath his own Virginian sky. Forgive, forget, O true and just and brave, The storm that swept above thy sacred grave. For, ever in the awful strife And dark hours of the nation's life, Through the fierce tumult pierced his warning word, Their father's voice his erring children heard. The change for which he prayed and sought In that sharp agony was wrought; No partial interest draws its alien line 'Twixt North and South, the cypress and the pine! One people now, all doubt beyond, His name shall be our Union-bond; We lift our hands to Heaven, and here and now. Take on our lips the old Centennial vow. For rule and trust must needs be ours; Chooser and chosen both are powers Equal in service as in rights; the claim Of Duty rests on each and all the same. Then let the sovereign millions, where Our banner floats in sun and air, From the warm palm-lands to Alaska's cold, Repeat with us the pledge a century old? THE CAPTAIN'S WELL. The story of the shipwreck of Captain Valentine Bagley, on the coast of Arabia, and his sufferings in the desert, has been familiar from my childhood. It has been partially told in the singularly beautiful lines of my friend, Harriet Prescott Spofford, an the occasion of a public celebration at the Newburyport Library. To the charm and felicity of her verse, as far as it goes, nothing can be added; but in the following ballad I have endeavored to give a fuller detail of the touching incident upon which it is founded. From pain and peril, by land and main, The shipwrecked sailor came back again; And like one from the dead, the threshold cross'd Of his wondering home, that had mourned him lost. Where he sat once more with his kith and kin, And welcomed his neighbors thronging in. But when morning came he called for his spade. "I must pay my debt to the Lord," he said. "Why dig you here?" asked the passer-by; "Is there gold or silver the road so nigh?" "No, friend," he answered: "but under this sod Is the blessed water, the wine of God." "Water! the Powow is at your back, And right before you the Merrimac, "And look you up, or look you down, There 's a well-sweep at every door in town." "True," he said, "we have wells of our own; But this I dig for the Lord alone." Said the other: "This soil is dry, you know. I doubt if a spring can be found below; "You had better consult, before you dig, Some water-witch, with a hazel twig." "No, wet or dry, I will dig it here, Shallow or deep, if it takes a year. "In the Arab desert, where shade is none, The waterless land of sand and sun, "Under the pitiless, brazen sky My burning throat as the sand was dry; "My crazed brain listened in fever dreams For plash of buckets and ripple of streams; "And opening my eyes to the blinding glare, And my lips to the breath of the blistering air, "Tortured alike by the heavens and earth, I cursed, like Job, the day of my birth. "Then something tender, and sad, and mild As a mother's voice to her wandering child, "Rebuked my frenzy; and bowing my head, I prayed as I never before had prayed: "Pity me, God! for I die of thirst; Take me out of this land accurst; "And if ever I reach my home again, Where earth has springs, and the sky has rain, "I will dig a well for the passers-by, And none shall suffer from thirst as I. "I saw, as I prayed, my home once more, The house, the barn, the elms by the door, "The grass-lined road, that riverward wound, The tall slate stones of the burying-ground, "The belfry and steeple on meeting-house hill, The brook with its dam, and gray grist mill, "And I knew in that vision beyond the sea, The very place where my well must be. "God heard my prayer in that evil day; He led my feet in their homeward way, "From false mirage and dried-up well, And the hot sand storms of a land of hell, "Till I saw at last through the coast-hill's gap, A city held in its stony lap, "The mosques and the domes of scorched Muscat, And my heart leaped up with joy thereat; "For there was a ship at anchor lying, A Christian flag at its mast-head flying, "And sweetest of sounds to my homesick ear Was my native tongue in the sailor's cheer. "Now the Lord be thanked, I am back again, Where earth has springs, and the skies have rain, "And the well I promised by Oman's Sea, I am digging for him in Amesbury." His kindred wept, and his neighbors said "The poor old captain is out of his head." But from morn to noon, and from noon to night, He toiled at his task with main and might; And when at last, from the loosened earth, Under his spade the stream gushed forth, And fast as he climbed to his deep well's brim, The water he dug for followed him, He shouted for joy: "I have kept my word, And here is the well I promised the Lord!" The long years came and the long years went, And he sat by his roadside well content; He watched the travellers, heat-oppressed, Pause by the way to drink and rest, And the sweltering horses dip, as they drank, Their nostrils deep in the cool, sweet tank, And grateful at heart, his memory went Back to that waterless Orient, And the blessed answer of prayer, which came To the earth of iron and sky of flame. And when a wayfarer weary and hot, Kept to the mid road, pausing not For the well's refreshing, he shook his head; "He don't know the value of water," he said; "Had he prayed for a drop, as I have done, In the desert circle of sand and sun, "He would drink and rest, and go home to tell That God's best gift is the wayside well!" AN OUTDOOR RECEPTION. The substance of these lines, hastily pencilled several years ago, I find among such of my unprinted scraps as have escaped the waste-basket and the fire. In transcribing it I have made some changes, additions, and omissions. On these green banks, where falls too soon The shade of Autumn's afternoon, The south wind blowing soft and sweet, The water gliding at nay feet, The distant northern range uplit By the slant sunshine over it, With changes of the mountain mist From tender blush to amethyst, The valley's stretch of shade and gleam Fair as in Mirza's Bagdad dream, With glad young faces smiling near And merry voices in my ear, I sit, methinks, as Hafiz might In Iran's Garden of Delight. For Persian roses blushing red, Aster and gentian bloom instead; For Shiraz wine, this mountain air; For feast, the blueberries which I share With one who proffers with stained hands Her gleanings from yon pasture lands, Wild fruit that art and culture spoil, The harvest of an untilled soil; And with her one whose tender eyes Reflect the change of April skies, Midway 'twixt child and maiden yet, Fresh as Spring's earliest violet; And one whose look and voice and ways Make where she goes idyllic days; And one whose sweet, still countenance Seems dreamful of a child's romance; And others, welcome as are these, Like and unlike, varieties Of pearls on nature's chaplet strung, And all are fair, for all are young. Gathered from seaside cities old, From midland prairie, lake, and wold, From the great wheat-fields, which might feed The hunger of a world at need, In healthful change of rest and play Their school-vacations glide away. No critics these: they only see An old and kindly friend in me, In whose amused, indulgent look Their innocent mirth has no rebuke. They scarce can know my rugged rhymes, The harsher songs of evil times, Nor graver themes in minor keys Of life's and death's solemnities; But haply, as they bear in mind Some verse of lighter, happier kind,-- Hints of the boyhood of the man, Youth viewed from life's meridian, Half seriously and half in play My pleasant interviewers pay Their visit, with no fell intent Of taking notes and punishment. As yonder solitary pine Is ringed below with flower and vine, More favored than that lonely tree, The bloom of girlhood circles me. In such an atmosphere of youth I half forget my age's truth; The shadow of my life's long date Runs backward on the dial-plate, Until it seems a step might span The gulf between the boy and man. My young friends smile, as if some jay On bleak December's leafless spray Essayed to sing the songs of May. Well, let them smile, and live to know, When their brown locks are flecked with snow, 'T is tedious to be always sage And pose the dignity of age, While so much of our early lives On memory's playground still survives, And owns, as at the present hour, The spell of youth's magnetic power. But though I feel, with Solomon, 'T is pleasant to behold the sun, I would not if I could repeat A life which still is good and sweet; I keep in age, as in my prime, A not uncheerful step with time, And, grateful for all blessings sent, I go the common way, content To make no new experiment. On easy terms with law and fate, For what must be I calmly wait, And trust the path I cannot see,-- That God is good sufficeth me. And when at last on life's strange play The curtain falls, I only pray That hope may lose itself in truth, And age in Heaven's immortal youth, And all our loves and longing prove The foretaste of diviner love. The day is done. Its afterglow Along the west is burning low. My visitors, like birds, have flown; I hear their voices, fainter grown, And dimly through the dusk I see Their 'kerchiefs wave good-night to me,-- Light hearts of girlhood, knowing nought Of all the cheer their coming brought; And, in their going, unaware Of silent-following feet of prayer Heaven make their budding promise good With flowers of gracious womanhood! R. S. S., AT DEER ISLAND ON THE MERRIMAC. Make, for he loved thee well, our Merrimac, From wave and shore a low and long lament For him, whose last look sought thee, as he went The unknown way from which no step comes back. And ye, O ancient pine-trees, at whose feet He watched in life the sunset's reddening glow, Let the soft south wind through your needles blow A fitting requiem tenderly and sweet! No fonder lover of all lovely things Shall walk where once he walked, no smile more glad Greet friends than his who friends in all men had, Whose pleasant memory, to that Island clings, Where a dear mourner in the home he left Of love's sweet solace cannot be bereft. BURNING DRIFT-WOOD Before my drift-wood fire I sit, And see, with every waif I burn, Old dreams and fancies coloring it, And folly's unlaid ghosts return. O ships of mine, whose swift keels cleft The enchanted sea on which they sailed, Are these poor fragments only left Of vain desires and hopes that failed? Did I not watch from them the light Of sunset on my towers in Spain, And see, far off, uploom in sight The Fortunate Isles I might not gain? Did sudden lift of fog reveal Arcadia's vales of song and spring, And did I pass, with grazing keel, The rocks whereon the sirens sing? Have I not drifted hard upon The unmapped regions lost to man, The cloud-pitched tents of Prester John, The palace domes of Kubla Khan? Did land winds blow from jasmine flowers, Where Youth the ageless Fountain fills? Did Love make sign from rose blown bowers, And gold from Eldorado's hills? Alas! the gallant ships, that sailed On blind Adventure's errand sent, Howe'er they laid their courses, failed To reach the haven of Content. And of my ventures, those alone Which Love had freighted, safely sped, Seeking a good beyond my own, By clear-eyed Duty piloted. O mariners, hoping still to meet The luck Arabian voyagers met, And find in Bagdad's moonlit street, Haroun al Raschid walking yet, Take with you, on your Sea of Dreams, The fair, fond fancies dear to youth. I turn from all that only seems, And seek the sober grounds of truth. What matter that it is not May, That birds have flown, and trees are bare, That darker grows the shortening day, And colder blows the wintry air! The wrecks of passion and desire, The castles I no more rebuild, May fitly feed my drift-wood fire, And warm the hands that age has chilled. Whatever perished with my ships, I only know the best remains; A song of praise is on my lips For losses which are now my gains. Heap high my hearth! No worth is lost; No wisdom with the folly dies. Burn on, poor shreds, your holocaust Shall be my evening sacrifice. Far more than all I dared to dream, Unsought before my door I see; On wings of fire and steeds of steam The world's great wonders come to me, And holier signs, unmarked before, Of Love to seek and Power to save,-- The righting of the wronged and poor, The man evolving from the slave; And life, no longer chance or fate, Safe in the gracious Fatherhood. I fold o'er-wearied hands and wait, In full assurance of the good. And well the waiting time must be, Though brief or long its granted days, If Faith and Hope and Charity Sit by my evening hearth-fire's blaze. And with them, friends whom Heaven has spared, Whose love my heart has comforted, And, sharing all my joys, has shared My tender memories of the dead,-- Dear souls who left us lonely here, Bound on their last, long voyage, to whom We, day by day, are drawing near, Where every bark has sailing room! I know the solemn monotone Of waters calling unto me I know from whence the airs have blown That whisper of the Eternal Sea. As low my fires of drift-wood burn, I hear that sea's deep sounds increase, And, fair in sunset light, discern Its mirage-lifted Isles of Peace. O. W. HOLMES ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTH-DAY. Climbing a path which leads back never more We heard behind his footsteps and his cheer; Now, face to face, we greet him standing here Upon the lonely summit of Fourscore Welcome to us, o'er whom the lengthened day Is closing and the shadows colder grow, His genial presence, like an afterglow, Following the one just vanishing away. Long be it ere the table shall be set For the last breakfast of the Autocrat, And love repeat with smiles and tears thereat His own sweet songs that time shall not forget. Waiting with us the call to come up higher, Life is not less, the heavens are only higher! JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. From purest wells of English undefiled None deeper drank than he, the New World's child, Who in the language of their farm-fields spoke The wit and wisdom of New England folk, Shaming a monstrous wrong. The world-wide laugh Provoked thereby might well have shaken half The walls of Slavery down, ere yet the ball And mine of battle overthrew them all. HAVERHILL. 1640-1890. Read at the Celebration of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the City, July 2, 1890. O river winding to the sea! We call the old time back to thee; From forest paths and water-ways The century-woven veil we raise. The voices of to-day are dumb, Unheard its sounds that go and come; We listen, through long-lapsing years, To footsteps of the pioneers. Gone steepled town and cultured plain, The wilderness returns again, The drear, untrodden solitude, The gloom and mystery of the wood! Once more the bear and panther prowl, The wolf repeats his hungry howl, And, peering through his leafy screen, The Indian's copper face is seen. We see, their rude-built huts beside, Grave men and women anxious-eyed, And wistful youth remembering still Dear homes in England's Haverhill. We summon forth to mortal view Dark Passaquo and Saggahew,-- Wild chiefs, who owned the mighty sway Of wizard Passaconaway. Weird memories of the border town, By old tradition handed down, In chance and change before us pass Like pictures in a magic glass,-- The terrors of the midnight raid, The-death-concealing ambuscade, The winter march, through deserts wild, Of captive mother, wife, and child. Ah! bleeding hands alone subdued And tamed the savage habitude Of forests hiding beasts of prey, And human shapes as fierce as they. Slow from the plough the woods withdrew, Slowly each year the corn-lands grew; Nor fire, nor frost, nor foe could kill The Saxon energy of will. And never in the hamlet's bound Was lack of sturdy manhood found, And never failed the kindred good Of brave and helpful womanhood. That hamlet now a city is, Its log-built huts are palaces; The wood-path of the settler's cow Is Traffic's crowded highway now. And far and wide it stretches still, Along its southward sloping hill, And overlooks on either hand A rich and many-watered land. And, gladdening all the landscape, fair As Pison was to Eden's pair, Our river to its valley brings The blessing of its mountain springs. And Nature holds with narrowing space, From mart and crowd, her old-time grace, And guards with fondly jealous arms The wild growths of outlying farms. Her sunsets on Kenoza fall, Her autumn leaves by Saltonstall; No lavished gold can richer make Her opulence of hill and lake. Wise was the choice which led out sires To kindle here their household fires, And share the large content of all Whose lines in pleasant places fall. More dear, as years on years advance, We prize the old inheritance, And feel, as far and wide we roam, That all we seek we leave at home. Our palms are pines, our oranges Are apples on our orchard trees; Our thrushes are our nightingales, Our larks the blackbirds of our vales. No incense which the Orient burns Is sweeter than our hillside ferns; What tropic splendor can outvie Our autumn woods, our sunset sky? If, where the slow years came and went, And left not affluence, but content, Now flashes in our dazzled eyes The electric light of enterprise; And if the old idyllic ease Seems lost in keen activities, And crowded workshops now replace The hearth's and farm-field's rustic grace; No dull, mechanic round of toil Life's morning charm can quite despoil; And youth and beauty, hand in hand, Will always find enchanted land. No task is ill where hand and brain And skill and strength have equal gain, And each shall each in honor hold, And simple manhood outweigh gold. Earth shall be near to Heaven when all That severs man from man shall fall, For, here or there, salvation's plan Alone is love of God and man. O dwellers by the Merrimac, The heirs of centuries at your back, Still reaping where you have not sown, A broader field is now your own. Hold fast your Puritan heritage, But let the free thought of the age Its light and hope and sweetness add To the stern faith the fathers had. Adrift on Time's returnless tide, As waves that follow waves, we glide. God grant we leave upon the shore Some waif of good it lacked before; Some seed, or flower, or plant of worth, Some added beauty to the earth; Some larger hope, some thought to make The sad world happier for its sake. As tenants of uncertain stay, So may we live our little day That only grateful hearts shall fill The homes we leave in Haverhill. The singer of a farewell rhyme, Upon whose outmost verge of time The shades of night are falling down, I pray, God bless the good old town! TO G. G. AN AUTOGRAPH. The daughter of Daniel Gurteen, Esq., delegate from Haverhill, England, to the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary celebration of Haverhill, Massachusetts. The Rev. John Ward of the former place and many of his old parishioners were the pioneer settlers of the new town on the Merrimac. Graceful in name and in thyself, our river None fairer saw in John Ward's pilgrim flock, Proof that upon their century-rooted stock The English roses bloom as fresh as ever. Take the warm welcome of new friends with thee, And listening to thy home's familiar chime Dream that thou hearest, with it keeping time, The bells on Merrimac sound across the sea. Think of our thrushes, when the lark sings clear, Of our sweet Mayflowers when the daisies bloom; And bear to our and thy ancestral home The kindly greeting of its children here. Say that our love survives the severing strain; That the New England, with the Old, holds fast The proud, fond memories of a common past; Unbroken still the ties of blood remain! INSCRIPTION For the bass-relief by Preston Powers, carved upon the huge boulder in Denver Park, Col., and representing the Last Indian and the Last Bison. The eagle, stooping from yon snow-blown peaks, For the wild hunter and the bison seeks, In the changed world below; and finds alone Their graven semblance in the eternal stone. LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY. Inscription on her Memorial Tablet in Christ Church at Hartford, Conn. She sang alone, ere womanhood had known The gift of song which fills the air to-day Tender and sweet, a music all her own May fitly linger where she knelt to pray. MILTON Inscription on the Memorial Window in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, the gift of George W. Childs, of America. The new world honors him whose lofty plea For England's freedom made her own more sure, Whose song, immortal as its theme, shall be Their common freehold while both worlds endure. THE BIRTHDAY WREATH December 17, 1891. Blossom and greenness, making all The winter birthday tropical, And the plain Quaker parlors gay, Have gone from bracket, stand, and wall; We saw them fade, and droop, and fall, And laid them tenderly away. White virgin lilies, mignonette, Blown rose, and pink, and violet, A breath of fragrance passing by; Visions of beauty and decay, Colors and shapes that could not stay, The fairest, sweetest, first to die. But still this rustic wreath of mine, Of acorned oak and needled pine, And lighter growths of forest lands, Woven and wound with careful pains, And tender thoughts, and prayers, remains, As when it dropped from love's dear hands. And not unfitly garlanded, Is he, who, country-born and bred, Welcomes the sylvan ring which gives A feeling of old summer days, The wild delight of woodland ways, The glory of the autumn leaves. And, if the flowery meed of song To other bards may well belong, Be his, who from the farm-field spoke A word for Freedom when her need Was not of dulcimer and reed. This Isthmian wreath of pine and oak. THE WIND OF MARCH. Up from the sea, the wild north wind is blowing Under the sky's gray arch; Smiling, I watch the shaken elm-boughs, knowing It is the wind of March. Between the passing and the coming season, This stormy interlude Gives to our winter-wearied hearts a reason For trustful gratitude. Welcome to waiting ears its harsh forewarning Of light and warmth to come, The longed-for joy of Nature's Easter morning, The earth arisen in bloom. In the loud tumult winter's strength is breaking; I listen to the sound, As to a voice of resurrection, waking To life the dead, cold ground. Between these gusts, to the soft lapse I hearken Of rivulets on their way; I see these tossed and naked tree-tops darken With the fresh leaves of May. This roar of storm, this sky so gray and lowering Invite the airs of Spring, A warmer sunshine over fields of flowering, The bluebird's song and wing. Closely behind, the Gulf's warm breezes follow This northern hurricane, And, borne thereon, the bobolink and swallow Shall visit us again. And, in green wood-paths, in the kine-fed pasture And by the whispering rills, Shall flowers repeat the lesson of the Master, Taught on his Syrian hills. Blow, then, wild wind! thy roar shall end in singing, Thy chill in blossoming; Come, like Bethesda's troubling angel, bringing The healing of the Spring. BETWEEN THE GATES. Between the gates of birth and death An old and saintly pilgrim passed, With look of one who witnesseth The long-sought goal at last. O thou whose reverent feet have found The Master's footprints in thy way, And walked thereon as holy ground, A boon of thee I pray. "My lack would borrow thy excess, My feeble faith the strength of thine; I need thy soul's white saintliness To hide the stains of mine. "The grace and favor else denied May well be granted for thy sake." So, tempted, doubting, sorely tried, A younger pilgrim spake. "Thy prayer, my son, transcends my gift; No power is mine," the sage replied, "The burden of a soul to lift Or stain of sin to hide. "Howe'er the outward life may seem, For pardoning grace we all must pray; No man his brother can redeem Or a soul's ransom pay. "Not always age is growth of good; Its years have losses with their gain; Against some evil youth withstood Weak hands may strive in vain. "With deeper voice than any speech Of mortal lips from man to man, What earth's unwisdom may not teach The Spirit only can. "Make thou that holy guide thine own, And following where it leads the way, The known shall lapse in the unknown As twilight into day. "The best of earth shall still remain, And heaven's eternal years shall prove That life and death, and joy and pain, Are ministers of Love." THE LAST EVE OF SUMMER. Summer's last sun nigh unto setting shines Through yon columnar pines, And on the deepening shadows of the lawn Its golden lines are drawn. Dreaming of long gone summer days like this, Feeling the wind's soft kiss, Grateful and glad that failing ear and sight Have still their old delight, I sit alone, and watch the warm, sweet day Lapse tenderly away; And, wistful, with a feeling of forecast, I ask, "Is this the last? "Will nevermore for me the seasons run Their round, and will the sun Of ardent summers yet to come forget For me to rise and set?" Thou shouldst be here, or I should be with thee Wherever thou mayst be, Lips mute, hands clasped, in silences of speech Each answering unto each. For this still hour, this sense of mystery far Beyond the evening star, No words outworn suffice on lip or scroll: The soul would fain with soul Wait, while these few swift-passing days fulfil The wise-disposing Will, And, in the evening as at morning, trust The All-Merciful and Just. The solemn joy that soul-communion feels Immortal life reveals; And human love, its prophecy and sign, Interprets love divine. Come then, in thought, if that alone may be, O friend! and bring with thee Thy calm assurance of transcendent Spheres And the Eternal Years! August 31, 1890. TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 8TH Mo. 29TH, 1892. This, the last of Mr. Whittier's poems, was written but a few weeks before his death. Among the thousands who with hail and cheer Will welcome thy new year, How few of all have passed, as thou and I, So many milestones by! We have grown old together; we have seen, Our youth and age between, Two generations leave us, and to-day We with the third hold way, Loving and loved. If thought must backward run To those who, one by one, In the great silence and the dark beyond Vanished with farewells fond, Unseen, not lost; our grateful memories still Their vacant places fill, And with the full-voiced greeting of new friends A tenderer whisper blends. Linked close in a pathetic brotherhood Of mingled ill and good, Of joy and grief, of grandeur and of shame, For pity more than blame,-- The gift is thine the weary world to make More cheerful for thy sake, Soothing the ears its Miserere pains, With the old Hellenic strains, Lighting the sullen face of discontent With smiles for blessings sent. Enough of selfish wailing has been had, Thank God! for notes more glad. Life is indeed no holiday; therein Are want, and woe, and sin, Death and its nameless fears, and over all Our pitying tears must fall. Sorrow is real; but the counterfeit Which folly brings to it, We need thy wit and wisdom to resist, O rarest Optimist! Thy hand, old friend! the service of our days, In differing moods and ways, May prove to those who follow in our train Not valueless nor vain. Far off, and faint as echoes of a dream, The songs of boyhood seem, Yet on our autumn boughs, unflown with spring, The evening thrushes sing. The hour draws near, howe'er delayed and late, When at the Eternal Gate We leave the words and works we call our own, And lift void hands alone For love to fill. Our nakedness of soul Brings to that Gate no toll; Giftless we come to Him, who all things gives, And live because He lives.